Morrow had no idea what lay above Deck One, or below Deck Four. The Planners didn’t encourage curiosity.

There were few people about as he crossed the Deck. He walked, of course; the world was only a mile across, so walking or cycling almost always sufficed. Morrow lived in Segment 2, an undesirable slice of the Deck close to the outer hull. The Temple was in Sector 3 — almost diametrically opposite, but close to the heart of the Deck. Morrow was able to cut down the radial walkways, past Sector 5, and walk almost directly to the Temple.

Much of Sector 4 was still known as Poole Park — a name which had been attached to it since the ship’s launch, Morrow had heard. There was nothing very park-like about it now, though. Morrow, in no hurry to be early for Milpitas, walked slowly past rows of poor, shack-like dwellings and shops. The shops bore the names of their owners and their wares, but also crude, vivid paintings of the goods to be obtained inside. Here and there, between the walls of the shops, weeds and wild flowers struggled to survive. He passed a couple of maintenance ’bots: low-slung trolleys fitted with brushes and scoops, toiling their way down the worn streets.

The rows of small dwellings, the boxy shops and meeting places, the libraries and factories, looked as they always did: not drab, exactly — each night everything was cleansed by the rain machines — but uniform.

Some old spark stirred in Morrow’s tired mind. Uniform. Yes, that was the word. Dreadfully uniform. Now he was approaching the Planners’ Temple. The tetrahedral pyramid was fully fifty yards high, built of gleaming metal and with its edges highlighted in blue. Morrow felt dwarfed as he approached it, and his steps slowed, involuntarily; in a world in which few buildings were taller than two stories, the Temples were visible everywhere, huge, faceless — and intimidating.

As, no doubt, they were meant to be.

Planner Milpitas turned the bit of metal over and over in his long fingers, eyeing Morrow. His desk was bare, the walls without adornment. “You ask too many questions, Morrow.” The Planner’s bare scalp was stretched paper-thin over his skull and betrayed a faint tracery of scars.

Morrow tried to smile; already, as he entered the interview, he felt immensely tired. “I always have.”

The Planner didn’t smile. “Yes. You always have. But my problem is that your questions sometimes disturb others.”

Morrow tried to keep himself from trembling. At the surface of his mind there was fear, and a sense of powerlessness — but beneath that there was an anger he knew he must struggle to control. Milpitas could, if he wished, make life very unpleasant for Morrow.

Milpitas held up the artifact. “Tell me what this is.”

“It’s a figure-of-eight ring.”

“Did you make it?”

Morrow shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps. It’s a standard design in the shops on Deck Four.”

“All right.” Milpitas placed the ring on his desk, with a soft clink. “Tell me what else you make. Give me a list.”

Morrow closed his eyes and thought. “Parts for some of the machines — the food dispensers, for instance. Not the innards, of course — we leave that to the nanobots — but the major external components. Material for buildings — joists, pipes, cables. Spectacles, cutlery: simple things that the nanobot maintenance crews can’t repair.”

Milpitas nodded. “And?”

“And things like your figure-of-eight ring.” Morrow struggled, probably failing, to keep a note of frustration out of his voice. “And ratchets, and stirrups. Scrapers — ”

“All right. Now, Morrow, the value of a joist, or a pair of spectacles, is obvious. But what do you think of this question: what is the value of your figure-of-eight rings, ratchets and stirrups?”

Morrow hesitated. This was exactly the kind of question which had landed him in trouble in the first place. “I don’t know,” he blurted at last. “Planner, it drives me crazy not to know. I look at these things and try to work out what they might be used for, but — ”

The Planner raised his hands. “You’re not answering me, Morrow.”

Morrow was confused. He’d long since learned that when dealing with people like Milpitas, words turned into weapons, fine blades whose movements he could barely follow. “But you asked me what the ratchets were for.”

“No. I asked you what you thought of the question, not for an answer to the question itself. That’s very different.”

Morrow tried to work that out. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“No.” The Planner rested his long, surgery-scarred fingers on the desk before him. Milpitas seemed to be one of those unfortunate individuals suffering a partial AS failure, necessitating this kind of gross rework of his body. “No, I really believe you don’t. And that’s precisely the problem, isn’t it, Morrow?”

He stood and walked to the window of his office. From here Morrow could see the outer frame of the Temple; its face was a tilted plane of golden light. Milpitas’ wide, bony face was framed by the iron sky, the sourceless daylight.

“The question has no value,” Milpitas said at length. “And so an answer to it would have no value — it would be meaningless, because the question in itself has no reference to anything meaningful.” He turned to Morrow and smiled searchingly. “I know you’re not happy with that answer. Go ahead; don’t be afraid. Tell me what you think.”

Morrow sighed. I think you’re crazy. “I think you’re playing with words.” He picked up the ring. “Of course this thing has a purpose. It exists, physically. We expend effort in making it — ”

“Everything we do has a purpose, Morrow, and one purpose only.” Milpitas looked solemn. “Do you know what that is?”

Morrow felt vaguely irritated. “The survival of the species. I’m not a child, Planner.”

“Exactly. Good. That’s why we’re here; that’s why Superet built this ship-world of ours; that’s why my grandmother — dead now, of course — and the others initiated this voyage. That’s the purpose that informs everything we do.”

Morrow’s irritation turned into a vague rebelliousness. Everything? Even the elimination of the children?

He wondered how many interviews, like this, he had suffered over the years.

Vaguely he remembered a time when things hadn’t been like this. Right at the start of his life, half a millennium ago, the great Virtual devices, hidden somewhere in the fabric of the world, had covered the drab hull walls with scenes of lost, beautiful panoramas: he remembered Virtual suns and moons crossing a Virtual sky, children running in the streets.

There had been a feeling of space — of infinity. The Virtuals had had the power to make this box-world seem immense, without constraints.

But Superet had closed down the Virtuals, one by one, exposing the skull-like reality of the world which lay beneath the illusion. No one now seemed to know where the Virtual machines were, or how to get access to them, even if they still worked.

At the same time Superet had first discouraged, then abolished, childbirth. Morrow had been one of the last children to be born, in fact.

Virtual dioramas — and the voices of children — were no longer necessary, Superet said.

There were no young, and the people grew old. There was neither day nor night, but only the endless, steel-gray, sourceless light which — diffused from the metal hull — gave the impression of a continual dawn. Leisure activities theaters, study groups, play groups — had fallen into disuse. The world was structured only by the endless drudgery of work.

Work, and study of the words of the founders of Superet, of course.

Milpitas turned his wide, rather coarse face to Morrow. “Superet’s one imperative is to ensure the survival of the species — physically, through our genes, and culturally, through the memes we carry — into the indefinite future.” He pointed to the iron sky. “Everything we do is driven by that logic, Morrow. For all we know, we are the only humans alive, anywhere. And so we must optimize the use of our resources.