Hind stared at them. “And you saw all this, did you? These…other Earths?” For a moment there was a hint of wistfulness in her voice, that she had been sat behind a desk while her subordinates had been off having…adventures.

“Yes,” Julian confirmed, and it struck him that his reliable if unimaginative reputation was finally coming into its own. “It’s all true. Rat-creatures, dinosaurs, cavemen and, well, you’ve seen…”

“We’ve all seen,” Hind confirmed bleakly. “Perhaps you can explain just what we’re seeing.” Her eyes didn’t even stray to the window, where the hardest possible evidence of all was putting the Thames in its shadow.

“That’s Cam,” Alison explained. “It’s a person from another Earth where sentient life evolved a lot earlier. And it’s here because it has…humans on the brain? Maybe that’s the best way of putting it. It had to learn how to interact with us, and now it’s interested in us. It has kin scattered across a half-dozen Earths right now too. Maybe tomorrow they’ll all get bored and return to deep space—yes, they can do that—or maybe they’ll stick around and become the backbone of a new interdimensional United Nations. Or teach us how to reach deep space. Or some other thing. It’s not as though we can force them to do anything.”

“What’s to stop this ‘Cam’ from destroying London with its laser vision or whatever the hell it’s hiding under the bonnet?” Hind asked.

“Absolutely nothing,” said Alison, which wasn’t the reassuring answer Julian had lined up. “But it has no reason to kill us all. It’s a self-sufficient entity with the universe at its disposal, and now there are a slew of extra universes for it to investigate. We have nothing it needs—it’s just interested in our uniqueness as life forms. That’s something we can trade on without any cost to ourselves…and we might get all manner of invaluable information in return. If we’re bold enough. If we’re open-minded enough.” She was looking at Hind, her expression willing her to understand. “Leslie, do you remember your poets? Andrew Marvell? ‘Had we but world enough, and time…’ As a species, we’re facing the greatest challenge to our existence we’ve ever known, to our societies, our beliefs, to everything we hold dear. But as Dr. Khan said, it’s the greatest opportunity too. There is world enough, and time now. All we have to do is work together.” She lapsed into silence, hoping her boss was with them.

Hind paused. “And you retain your…privileged status, with the alien computer you described in your report?”

“Oh, yes.” Alison nodded.

“And Dr. Khan. Where is she now?”

Her subordinates let a few seconds pass, waiting to see who would field the thorny question.