Tarquinia hummed irritably. ‘You didn’t do as badly as you think. And for anyone you didn’t convince, there are five more debates to come!’

‘But if people here have made up their minds they won’t want to hear it all rehashed.’

‘You put a strong case,’ Tarquinia insisted. ‘You stumbled with the timing, that’s all.’

Ramiro could tell that she was beginning to find his pessimism wearisome. ‘Thanks for your help,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t have faced that crowd without it.’

‘I couldn’t have faced that crowd at all,’ Tarquinia replied. ‘But this way I can still tell my children that I played a part.’

‘A part in what, though?’ Ramiro joked. ‘Victory or farce?’

Tarquinia said, ‘Let’s not rule anything out. Last time we worked together, we managed both at once.’

10

Medoro had promised that he’d bring Agata food for her vigil, but when she spotted him approaching the voting hall she saw that he’d also brought his whole family.

Medoro and Serena left two baskets of loaves with her then everyone went in to vote. Agata felt a little foolish now, camped beside the moss-red wall with her supplies, no longer able to pass herself off as someone merely waiting for the queues to thin. She could have watched the results accumulating from anywhere in the mountain, but it was the sight of voters coming and going in the flesh that made the experience real for her. At home she would have felt as if the whole thing were some kind of simulation, with a random-number generator filling out the counts.

Gineto emerged first and squeezed his way through the crowd towards Agata. ‘I can’t say I just made you happy,’ he warned her.

‘Let’s not have an argument,’ Agata pleaded. ‘I’ve voted, you’ve voted; there’s not much point in us trying to change each other’s minds now.’

‘The whole thing’s so unnecessary, though,’ Gineto brooded. ‘We got through the turnaround safely. What threat are we facing? In the home cluster’s terms we’re just retracing our old path, and the Hurtlers are completely tame now. We could have had a quiet life, waiting patiently to arrive back home. But no, we had to find something to argue about.’

Agata did have some sympathy for this view. ‘We can’t undo the whole dispute now, but at least this should settle it. Believe me, I’m not going to argue with the result.’

‘Nor will I,’ Gineto replied, ‘but we all saw what happened last time.’

Agata glanced at the screen above the entrance; the pro-system vote was lagging by about a twelfth of the count. If Gineto wanted her to start looking for a downside to victory, she’d need to have victory itself in sight.

Serena and Vala joined them. Agata had tied the food baskets to a guide rope where it met the wall behind her, and Serena wasted no time in opening them.

‘I hope this isn’t rude, but I’m trying to put on mass,’ she explained, biting deeply into her first loaf. ‘I talked to the technician yesterday, and she said I’m still about three hefts below the ideal.’