“That is the most stupendous, miraculous sight,” she said, spellbound. Her hands were gripping the rail, knuckles whitening. “And they’re not even xenocs. They’re ours. Earth’s.”

“Not any more.” Mosul was at her side, as mesmerized as she.

Thank Providence we had the sense to preserve the genes. Although I’m still staggered the Confederation Assembly allowed you to bring them here.

The whales don’t interfere with the food chain, they stand outside it. This ocean can easily spare a million tonnes of krill a day. And nothing analogous could ever possibly evolve on Atlantis, so they’re not competing with anything. The whales are mammals, after all, they need land for part of their development. No, the largest thing Atlantis has produced is the redshark, and that’s only six metres long.

Syrinx curled her arm round his, and pressed against him. I meant, it’s pretty staggering for the Assembly to show this much common sense. It would have been a monumental crime to allow these creatures to die out.

What a cynical old soul you are.

She kissed him lightly. A foretaste of what’s to come.then rested her head against him, and returned her entire attention to the whales, gathering up every nuance and committing it lovingly to memory.

They followed the school for the rest of the afternoon as the giant animals played and wallowed in the ocean. Then when dusk fell, Mosul turned the Spiros ’s bow away. The last she saw of the school was their massive dark bodies arching gracefully against the golden red skyline, whilst the roar of the blow-holes faded away into the ocean’s swell.

That night twisters of phosphenic radiance wriggled through the water around the hull, casting a wan diamond-blue light over the half-reefed sail membrane. Syrinx and Mosul brought cushions out onto the deck, and made love under the stars. Several times Oenone gazed down on their entwined bodies, its presence contributing to the wondrous sense of fulfilment in Syrinx’s mind. She didn’t tell Mosul.

The Laymil project’s Electronics Division was housed in a three-storey octagonal building near the middle of the campus. The walls were a soft white polyp with large oval windows, and climbing hydrangeas had reached the bottom of the second-storey windows. Chuantawa trees from Raouil were planted around the outside, forty-metre-high specimens, their rubbery bark and long tongue-shaped leaves a bright purple, clusters of bronze berries dangling from every branch.

Ione walked towards it down the amaranthus-lined path from the nearest of the campus’s five tube stations, three serjeant bodyguards in tow. Her hair was still slightly damp from her swim with Haile, and the ends brushed against the collar of her formal green-silk suit jacket. She drew wide-eyed stares and cautious smiles from the few project staff wandering around the campus.

Parker Higgens was waiting just outside the main entrance, dressed as ever in his hazel-coloured suit with red spirals on the flared arms. The trousers were fashionably baggy, but he was filling out the jacket quite comfortably. His mop of white hair hung down over his forehead in some disarray.

Ione forbade a smile as they shook hands. The director was always so nervous around her. He was good at his job, but they certainly didn’t share the same sense of humour. He would think teasing was a personal insult.

She greeted Oski Katsura, the head of the Electronics Division. She had taken over from the former head six months ago; her appointment had been the first Ione had confirmed. A seventy-year-old, taller than Ione, with a distinguished willowy beauty, wearing an ordinary white lab smock.

“You have some good news for me, then?” Ione asked as they went inside and started walking down the central corridor.

“Yes, ma’am,” Parker Higgens said.

“Most of the stack’s circuitry was composed of memory crystals,” Oski Katsura said. “The processors were subsidiary elements to facilitate access and recording. Basically it was a memory core.”

“I see. And had the ice preserved it like we hoped?” Ione asked. “It looked intact when I saw it.”

“Oh, yes. It was almost completely intact, the chips and crystals encased in ice functioned perfectly after they had been removed and cleaned. The reason it has taken us so long to decrypt the data stored in the crystals is that it is non-standard.” They came to a set of wide double doors, and Oski Katsura datavised a security code to open them, gesturing Ione through.

The Electronics Division always reminded her of a cyberfactory: rows of identical clean rooms illuminated by harsh white lighting, all of them filled with enigmatic blocks of equipment trailing wires and cables everywhere. This room was no different, broad benches ran round the walls, with another down the centre, cluttered with customized electronics cabinets and test rigs. The far end was a glass wall partitioning off six workshop cubicles. Several researchers were inside, using robot precision-assembly cells to fabricate various units. At the opposite end of the room to the cubicles a stainless steel pedestal sat on the floor, supporting a big sphere made up of tough transparent composite. Thick environmental-support hoses snaked away from the lower quarter of the sphere, plugging into bulky conditioning units. Ione saw the Laymil electronics stack in the middle of the sphere, with power leads and fibre-optic cables radiating out of its base. More surprisingly, Lieria was standing in front of the long bench in the middle of the room, her tractamorphic arms branching into five or six tentacles apiece, all of which were wound through an electronics cabinet.

Ione was quite proud she could recognize the Kiint immediately. Good morning, Lieria, I thought you worked in the Physiology Division.

The tentacle appendages uncoiled from the cabinet, flowing back into one solid pillar of flesh again. Lieria turned ponderously, careful not to knock into anything. Welcome, Ione Saldana. I am here because Oski Katsura requested my input in this programme. I have been able to contribute to the analysis of data stored in the Laymil crystals; there is some crossover into my primary field of study.

Excellent.

I note your cranial hair carries a residue of salt water; have you been swimming?

Yes, I gave Haile a scrub down. She’s getting impatient to look around Tranquillity. You’ll have to let me know when you think she’s ready.

Your kindness is most welcome. We judge her mature enough to be allowed outside parental restriction providing she is accompanied. But do not permit her to impose upon your own time.

She’s no bother.

One of Lieria’s arms lengthened to pick up a slender white wafer ten centimetres square from the bench. The unit emitted a single whistle, then spoke. “Greetings, Director Parker Higgens.”

He gave the xenoc a small bow.

Oski Katsura tapped the environment bubble with a fingernail. “We cleaned and tested all the components before we reassembled it,” she told Ione. “That ice wasn’t pure water, there were some peculiar hydrocarbons mixed in.”

“Laymil faecal matter,” Lieria said through the wafer.

“Quite. But the real challenge came from the data itself, it was like nothing we have found so far. It seemed almost totally randomized. At first we thought it might be some kind of artform, then we began to notice irregular trait repetition.”

The same patterns repeated in different combinations,tranquillity translated.

The science staff always go through this rigmarole, don’t they?she asked, half amused.

It is their chance to demonstrate to you, their paymaster, the effort they put in. Don’t disillusion them, it is impolite.

Ione kept her face neutral during the second-long exchange. “Which was enough to formulate a recognition program,” she said smoothly.