Cassy flinched and the older woman looked contrite. ‘I’m sorry, you told me most of this yourself. And of course you are bitter that your work was put to such use by those whose sole interest is in hiding the truth. But think of this, it was because of the quality of your art that the government got so much attention when they proclaimed themselves concerned and caring, which meant they had to be seen to be so. Hence the remaining pair of flamebirds that were put into the sleep pods were sent to the Eden Facility, despite the policy of only installing healthy breeding specimens. Without your drawings, they would simply have been destroyed.’

‘What about the other one?’ Cassy asked urgently.

‘It is to be kept here with other control subjects and put into cryosleep for varied periods, revived and then tested. We have very little research data on the long-term effects of stasis on the minds and bodies of living organisms, and we will need it to ensure that the creatures frozen can be revived safely. I would have argued to exempt the flamebird, since it is the last of its kind as far as we know, but the periods of frozen sleep will actually prolong its life. Of course, at some point we are going to have to put it in full, open-ended cryosleep, or it will die of its tumours. When that happens, I promise I will ensure that it is transferred to the Eden Facility.’

‘Will you go there?’ Cassy asked.

Doktaruth shook her head. ‘Erlinder will live there with a team and continue to collect and store genetic material. That is his main area of interest. He is building a computer program that will tend the cryosleep pods, so that he can focus on collection of data. I need to remain here to supervise the next stage of the project.’

Again the older woman looked uneasy, which Cassy must this time have noticed, for she asked, ‘What is the next stage of your program? You said before that more pods were being installed.’

The older woman nodded. ‘They are a good deal larger than the old pods because the next stage of my research will be conducted on human subjects. They will be volunteers with life-threatening illnesses, but I am not happy to be progressing so swiftly. We did a good deal of experimentation on the effects of short-term cryosleep on mice and birds and more recently on monkeys and pigs, and we were able to awaken all of our test subjects without physical harm, but it is impossible to accurately assess the effect of cryosleep on their brains and on their minds, and there is no way to measure its effect on anything over a period beyond ten years. That is the longest we have had an animal in stasis and that was a rat. It lived to a ripe old age. The nearest to human was a monkey called Herod. He was put into cryosleep for just over seven years, and he woke fine, but he died of an embolism about six months later. We don’t know if that was the result of the stasis or natural causes.’