This was awful. What made it worse was the way they gave Father a second chance: the Vice-Prime Elder took the goblet, held it steady, then tried to take a taste.

But the bitterness was too much. Shuddering, he handed the goblet back to the acolyte, who bowed.

No one could look at Father.

To an aroma of disgust - that was the maiden at the other end of the bench - Father rose from the marble chair and walked to the exit. Helpless, Sharp took his place behind him.

But that damning indictment remained on the floor, raw and accusing, for they were both, father and son, bitter immigrants in a land of sweetness, interlopers who could never share their deepest learning with their neighbours, outsiders forever.

It was evening when they reached the hostel at the city’s edge. Once inside the foyer, Sharp pretended an urgent need to visit the eating-room. All he wanted was to lock himself away in private, insulated from the stench of shame as Father tried to explain his failure to Mother and Bittersweet.

But when Father went up to the room, Sharp wandered outside and took the outer stairs to the roof garden. There he sat on a low wall as darkness fell and the night-blossoms opened in a symphony of cool fragrance. It was beautiful here. Silver stars grew brighter as the sky became black. So peaceful, so far from the sourness that had ruined his life today.

A green light burst into being, tiny but clear, and drifted down toward a distant range of hills. As it neared the ground - or appeared to - it shot off horizontally before finally coming to land. This was like nothing he had ever seen or smelled.

Could the green light be alive?

Frightened, he pulled himself up and headed for the steps. The rooftop seemed to sway, but that was illusion. He used the inner staircase, and found the corridor where their room was situated. Faint-scented candles lit the way.

He stopped, tried the handles, and slowly opened the door.

Bittersweet was asleep on her couch, a faint trace of milk and blood around her mouth, left over from her evening lesson with Mother. The brat was always a quick learner. Neither Mother nor Father remained in sight: they were inside the canopied bed, with the drapes drawn.

Should he waken Father?

He opened his mouth, but then an acid question rose inside: who was Father to spread the knowledge of what anyone, especially his son, had seen?

The thought accompanied him all the way down to the basement level of the hotel, where the kitchen and pantry were located. No one was around to smell him open a discreet cupboard, filch a thick sack, and fill it with vegetables. This was a time to be practical, ignoring niceties.

A nauseating thought: if things got bad, he would have to survive on vegetation in the wild. At least he would be alone in his embarrassment.

Finally he reached the hotel lobby - ducking back and holding in his scents as a duty clerk passed by - and went through to the night outside. He hitched the sack over his shoulder.

Any direction would serve, for his intention was to escape this place, to flee from his family’s shame. Perhaps that strange green light was nothing; or perhaps it marked someplace to go, the illusion of a goal when everything else in his life had rotted away to foulness.

He walked into the night.

Rekka’s hands were shaking as she planted the microwards, marking the perimeter of her camp. Soon a ragged ellipse of protective devices was in place, each spiked into the ground, making no sound but responding when her infostrand - worn bracelet-wise around her wrist - polled them one by one.

She wished she’d landed on the bright side of the terminator line, with hours to go before darkness fell. But here she was, trying to set up her first offworld campsite at night-time, telling herself there was no need to be scared, finding it hard.

Her infostrand gave a soft chime. The scanners had swept inside the perimeter, deep into the soil, detecting nothing dangerous. Now the microwards would turn their senses outward, guarding her.

Finally she powered up her biofact, having dragged the heavy device to the centre of her camp. Already in place was an evolver framework ready to create her beeswarm; as soon as the initialisation completed, she invoked the factory marrows, watched the progress displays for the first dozen instantiations, then closed down the holo, leaving the process running.

She held a breath, then slowly, slowly released it. Mind and body as one: thoughts as neurochemical events; emotions as neuropeptide flows; ‘reality’ a magnificent neural construct, the illusion known as maya, since every image she saw ‘out there’ was constructed in her head, whether she was imagining or remembering or looking at her campsite now: the image appeared to be all around her, but it was built by the collaboration between her visual and entorhinal cortexes. Or perhaps all this conscious thought was a form of internal chatter - a form of fear - that she needed to let go of.

Calm down, Rekka, girl.

Another slow breath.

Relax, relax, relax.

She had practised yoga for years, but this was different from sitting on a mat in a warm room with her friends, or working asanas in her study-bedroom at McGill.

Relax.

Several of her grad school friends had been extreme-sport adrenaline junkies; but she was quiet Rekka Chandri, shy and absorbed in her studies, almost reclusive. How she had got from there to here, via UNSA’s fast-track programme, seemed unreal. And now she was on a world so new to humankind that it was known by a numeric code, not yet named.

Climbing into her padded sleeping-suit, she wondered whether she would be able to sleep here. Differing gravity, an odd but pleasing quality to the air - her unconscious mind had not yet accepted them as normal, so it was likely to keep dragging her senses back to alertness.

‘Lights out,’ she whispered.

All artificial illumination faded as she settled back on the ground. Overhead was magnificence: black sky swirling with clear white stars, the arcing bridge of the Milky Way.

I am the alien here.

She turned on her side, but could not close her eyes. Except that she must have, because at some point she came awake, and pre-dawn was painting the sky deep-green, while fractal branches were silhouetted against the backdrop. And inside the shadows, she seemed to glimpse a pair of amber eyes: some trick of the light.

Then she shot up to a sitting position because the eyes had blinked, then the shape moved, not branches after all - maybe antlers? - and it was gone, the creature, noisily retreating into the undergrowth and out of sight.

She began to shake.

SEVEN

FULGOR, 2603 AD

Almost oblivious to the flowshaft he was descending, Carl Blackstone wondered how he could have grown old enough to have a son who had left home. This would be Roger’s first morning waking up in his new place; yet it seemed such a short time ago that Carl himself had entered the Academy in Labyrinth as a newbie trainee, while meeting Miranda still lay in the future, and the thought of parenthood was inconceivable.

Entering the conference centre’s lobby, he saw seven visitors rising from their seats. It was time to focus his attention outwards. He had already checked the meeting room upstairs and configured it the way he wanted - as facilitator, he had control of all morphing, apart from minor adjustments for comfort.

‘I’m Neliptha Braun,’ said one of the women, who had been sitting apart from the others. ‘And you must be Mr Blackstone.’