“Before and after,” the drone said, shutting the screen off and letting the blast of sunlight fall upon Tefwe again. Her eyes adjusted, putting a black dot over the sun to reduce the glare. The sunlight was so strong her vision would have been affected by light coming in through the surrounds of her eyes, so they would be partially silvering, she suspected. Something similar had happened to areas of her skin, again to cope with the ferocity of the sun’s glare. Grief; I’m going silver. She was, she realised, starting to look like a ship’s avatar.

“You polish them all individually?” she asked.

“I have processes, machinery to do the gross polishing,” the drone told her. “Then they are all inspected individually, by me. Any further polishing that is required I do myself.”

“That seems obsessive.”

“Meticulous care can seem so to those unwilling to recognise it for its true worth.”

“I meant you might simply discard the rejects.”

Hassipura gave the appearance of thinking about this. “That I would find offensive,” it said eventually.

“What a strange machine you are,” Tefwe told it.

“That is why I make my home here in the centre of a city in the midst of my dear fellow drones and so many, many delightfully gregarious humans.”

“Is this really all you do?” she asked, gazing round the network of sand-canals, sandfalls, sand weirs, pools, lakes and whirlpools. She wanted to call the dry, canted bridges aqueducts, but couldn’t. Silicaducts, maybe.

“Yes. Do you find it in some way inadequate?”

“No, it’s beautiful in a way. You really have no water at all?”

“None. Why should I have water? I have no need for it, nor does the sandstream complex. Water makes paste and mud. Water clogs and makes the complex stop working. Here, water is a pollutant.”

“Does it rain often here?”

“Almost never, thankfully.”

“Still, shouldn’t you have some water for guests, for visitors?”

“I try to discourage visitors.”

“What about weary travellers? Or what if some poor devil comes crawling across the sands, croaking for water?”

“Having lost their terminal, so unable to call Hub or anywhere else for help?”

“For the sake of argument.”

“Then I would call Hub or somewhere else for help. Scoaliera, do I take it you’re thirsty?”

“Not really, but I think the aphore is.”

“You should have brought more water.”

“I still have some. I’ll let it drink shortly.”

“You came from Chyan’tya?”

“Yes. Read my terminal for the detail.”

The drone was silent for a moment. “Spat on you did it?” it said. “Can’t have been that thirsty.”

“Patently.”

“I’m going to be visiting various parts of the complex over the next hour or so. Do you have anything to let you float?”

“No.”