‘You never used to take things personally,’ Ramiro complained. ‘All the time we worked together on the turnaround, did I ever make a fuss when you took all the credit with the Council? We both treated each other pretty shabbily, but we still managed to solve every problem that was thrown at us.’

Greta was unmoved. ‘Try to be objective. You’re asking me to give a gnat to an automator whose greatest claim to fame will remind anyone who might have forgotten that automating a gnat is just what you need to turn it into a weapon.’

‘That’s a very negative way of looking at it.’ Ramiro thought for a moment. ‘The biggest problem with the rogue gnat was that it took us by surprise. We can arrange things so that this craft has no way of doing that. And you can always send an observer from the messagers’ side to keep me honest – if you can find any volunteers for the job.’

Greta said, ‘Right now I’m having trouble even thinking of a pilot.’

Ramiro didn’t reply. For all the help Tarquinia had given him with the debate, after the vote she’d refused to get involved with the dissenters. A dozen years away from the mountain would be too painful a sacrifice to ask from anyone with a clear conscience.

‘You’d also need an agronomist,’ Greta added. ‘I doubt that even the diehard migrationists would take your word about the prospects for growing a crop.’

‘That’s fine with me.’ That she’d bothered to make the suggestion at all was a sign that this might not be hopeless – that he might have snagged her mind on the rough edges of his plan.

‘Do you really have no idea who the bombers are?’ Greta asked.

‘None at all.’

‘I believe you,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know how to prove it to the Council.’

‘Whatever happened to the need to prove people guilty? Half the Peerless voted the same way as I did, but I doubt you’ve even locked up all the strikers.’

Greta pretended that she hadn’t heard his last remark; he wasn’t allowed to know who else had or hadn’t been imprisoned.

‘If I put this to the Council,’ she said, ‘they’ll only agree to it if it comes from them. They have to be the peacemakers, reaching out to their enemies for the sake of the greater good.’

‘Well, naturally.’

‘And they might not even want you on the mission,’ she warned him. ‘What if they go with the idea, but then pick a crew without you?’

Ramiro buzzed. ‘At worst, I might have to stay in prison for the whole four years that they’re away. Compared with spending twelve in something not much bigger than my cell, I don’t think the disappointment would crush me.’

Greta was puzzled. ‘And yet you’re willing to do it, if you’re asked.’