Agata reached over tentatively and Serena placed the child in her hands. Arianna had managed to sprout four limbs, but she was still having trouble forming fingers: six slender digits protruded from one hand, but the other limbs ended in round stubs. She stared up at Agata, frowning in puzzlement but showing no sign of fear.

‘How long until she talks?’ Agata wondered. She must have watched Pio as he was growing up, but she’d been living in a child’s timeless world herself then.

‘Five or six stints,’ Medoro replied.

‘So you have to talk to her for all that time, without getting a single reply?’

Medoro buzzed. ‘It’s not like being snubbed! She’s already listening to every word we say.’

Agata gazed into the child’s face. ‘Is that true?’ she asked Arianna. ‘But when do you start understanding?’

Arianna was struggling with something, but it wasn’t the meaning of these mysterious sounds. ‘Sorry,’ Medoro said, reaching out deftly to grab the cluster of dark faeces drifting down towards Agata’s feet. He left the room briefly and returned brushing sand from his palms.

‘And when will she learn to feed the worms directly?’ Agata asked.

‘That comes a little later. Eight stints, maybe.’

‘Better you than me.’ Agata held the child out to him; Medoro took Arianna and swung her around, eliciting chirps of delight.

Agata turned to Serena. ‘You’re both braver than I am, that’s all I can say.’

Serena was amused. ‘Brave? What’s a few days’ pain, compared to what our grandmothers did?’

‘True enough.’ Agata was tired of hearing this line from Cira, but it was hard to argue with a woman whose memory of the act was still fresh. ‘And you’re willing to do it all again?’

Serena replied without hesitation, ‘Of course. Arianna needs a brother.’

Agata glanced at Medoro, lost in adoration of the child. After the birth, a technician would have poked a few photonic cables into his chest, then into his niece’s, so the machines could fool both bodies into believing that this mere uncle had literally fathered the child. Every instinct for attachment and protection that would have arisen unaided in a natural birth had been invoked by that controlled exchange of light, and it seemed to make no difference to Medoro that he’d missed out on the once-essential prerequisites. In the sagas, bad things befell men who triggered their sisters instead of their cos, though if their brothers had died it was more or less a duty. But now that only the Starvers had cos, who did men think of when the urge arose?

‘I wonder what they’ll be doing in a couple more generations,’ Agata said. ‘Promising women?’

‘You want to wipe us out?’ Medoro joked. ‘Men can’t shed, women can’t be promised. If the words still mean anything, what else can they mean?’