‘I would probably have come up with a better strategy,’ Earthshine said evenly. ‘Consider this. Each infested world is isolated, biologically, in its deepest layers. Isolated and therefore vulnerable, to an engineered virus, perhaps, a bacteriophage … It might take a thousand years or a million, but such an agent could rip through the noostrata of such a world, and – behead it. Yes, there are many such worlds, but they are connected by the Hatch network – and again that’s a weakness. Perhaps some agent could be delivered through the Hatches themselves, targeting the destination world, before moving on …

‘This is a sketchy scheme. The point is that every life form has vulnerabilities, and every community is made vulnerable by interconnectedness. Given time and motivation, I believe that I, or another, could find a way.’ He said softly, ‘It may not have taken much effort. In Norse myth, Loki killed Baldr, favourite child of the gods, with an arrow made of mistletoe. A single arrow. Perhaps I wasn’t even the first to try.

‘But that initial assault on Mars – call it a spasm of rage – was enough for me to attract the Dreamers’ attention. Enough for them to send me here, with the rest of you as a presumably unintended consequence. I think they wanted me to see this, you see. The End Time. I think they wanted me to understand what they were trying to do – and to make sure I gave up my efforts to hinder them.

‘And I did understand. In any event I would not try to harm them now – that ambition is gone. I feel – honoured – to have had my strength recognised, at least. And to have been brought to this place. To Ultima.’

Titus frowned. ‘Ultima?’

‘You know, every starfaring culture we found had a legend of Ultima, the furthest star. Even the Incas you met spoke of Kaylla, nearest star, and Karu, furthest. Perhaps alien minds frame such ideas too. We were all surprised to be delivered to Proxima, the nearest star to the sun. But in the end, you see—’

‘Every star is Ultima,’ Stef said. ‘Even Proxima. Every star is the last star. For all the stars will encounter the End Time.’

Titus looked around the group. ‘So,’ he said. ‘That’s the story told. All we need to do now in the time left is sit around and wait for the end. Is that it?’

Beth, impulsively, embraced Stef. ‘If so, there are worse places to be. And worse people to be with.’

And then the ColU coughed, making them all stare.

‘A polite interruption,’ said Stef. ‘What do you have to say, ColU?’

‘Just that the situation may not be quite so simple. Perhaps we have – an option. If not hope.’

‘An option? What do you mean?’

‘Do you recall that when Ari Guthfrithson and Inguill foolishly lost their lives in the Hatch—’

Mardina’s scream filled the dome.

Chu called, ‘It is time! The first contraction!’

The conversation broke up. Falling into a much-practised routine, the group hurried to Mardina’s side.

CHAPTER 73

After the birth, the baby grew healthy and happy, a little girl who absorbed all their attention, soon repaying in smiles.

But the time they had left dwindled, from months, to weeks, and at last to days.

Earthshine said he was calling a group conference, by the Hatch. He had matters to discuss.

Titus just grunted at this news. ‘In any other circumstances that might sound ominous.’

Of course they would all come, they would do as Earthshine asked. They were nothing if not a team by now.

But first, this morning, as every camp morning, Mardina, Beth and baby Gwen took a walk around the growing colony.

They gravely inspected the rows of terrestrial plants, sprouting from carefully manufactured and tilled soil, under ever-extending banks of sunlight lamps constructed in turn by an army of fabricators. And as they walked past the banks of Arduan green there was a soft rustle: the sound of eye-leaves turning to watch them go by. At the wall of the dome they peered out to see the further extensions of the colony beyond, scars in the ground where more fabricators were toiling to turn more Arduan rock into soil, to complete the manufacture of a second dome yet to be inflated – and it probably never would be, Mardina thought. The vision of an hourglass coalesced in her head, to be firmly pushed away.

Cradled in Mardina’s arms, bundled in a blanket, little Gwen gazed around at whatever she could see. She was three months old now. Her hair looked as if it would be crisp black, a legacy of her grandmother, Mardina Jones, and she had dark eyes, like her father’s. And those eyes were wide and seemed full of wonder, gazing at this world of marvels into which she had been thrust. Even if, and Mardina couldn’t help the thought, it was a world that would betray her long before she could hope to understand why. Just months old. Just days left to live …

‘We’re doing well,’ she said aloud, to distract herself from her own thoughts. ‘The colony, I mean. Given we started from nothing but the gadgets in Earthshine’s support kit.’

Beth said, ‘I grew up a pioneer, with my parents, alone on this world. It’s pleasing to build stuff, isn’t it, to bring life and order to a world – to make it right? Just as the builders always did. Maybe we’ve got more in common with them than people ever understood.’

‘Even if we’re running out of time,’ Stef said.

‘But that was always true, I suppose,’ Beth said. ‘Time for people, for worlds, for the stars. You just have to do the best you can in the here and now.’

Mardina hugged her baby. ‘But it all seems so solid. So real, so detailed. That big old galaxy sprawling across the sky. The way Gwen’s hair feels when I brush it. It’s hard to believe …’

Beth waited for her to finish.

‘If I don’t speak the name of this thing, it still feels like it isn’t real. Does that make any sense?’

The ColU spoke to them now, whispering in their earphones. ‘It makes plenty of sense, Mardina Eden Jones Guthfrithson. The power of names: probably one of the oldest human superstitions, going back to the birth of language itself. To deny a name is to deny a thing reality. And yet now it is time to name names. I am sorry to disturb you. Earthshine is ready for us …’

Once more they gathered around Earthshine’s support unit, under its spidery tree of extensors, his connection with the dirt and rock of Per Ardua and the legions of dreaming bugs that infested it. They sat on heaps of blankets, and low benches made from the remains of the ramshackle sled Ari and Inguill had towed here.

In the crib Titus had made, Gwen wriggled and gurgled, half asleep and content for now.

‘Only three,’ Earthshine said.

Titus frowned. ‘What’s that?’

‘Call it a headline. A key point. A summary, perhaps. For all that I myself have human origins, for all I infested the human world for decades, I still find myself clumsy when delivering ambiguous news. But if you remember this in what follows it may help. Only three.’

Titus growled, ‘No doubt you’ve brought us here to speak of what’s to become of us.’

‘And how we must respond, yes. You know that we have only a few days left, now. And there are preparations we must make.’

Only a few days. A few days, before Mardina would have to lose Gwen. She felt as if a pugio were twisting up her guts at the thought of it.

And Titus laughed sourly. ‘What preparations? Myself, I plan to get blind drunk, and sleep through the twilight of the gods—’

‘You will not,’ snapped Clodia. Sitting behind him, she grabbed his hand. ‘You’ll be right here with me, Father, that’s where you’ll be.’

Titus seemed to calm quickly, as if suddenly remembering he wasn’t trying to motivate a bunch of recalcitrant legionaries. ‘Of course I will, child.’ He wrapped his stump of an arm around her shoulders. ‘Of course I will.’