I look around as the first black-sheathed dwarf launches himself at me from the other end of the alley and realize, I was wrong, they tagged me the first time around! He brings a weapon to bear on me as I begin to move, and I wonder desperately, Where’s his backup? — because the one you don’t see is the one who kills you. He fires as I leap with all the force my discharging leg muscles can put out in a single extension. Something tugs at my coat as I soar into the night, the ground dwindling beneath me, and I wait for the second shooter, helpless on my arc—

THUMP. I am not the only areonautical flier tonight. The sexton clears the wall in a huge, lurching bound. I see it silhouetted against the sky for a moment, the giant helical shell balanced above a broad, lenticular foot; I even glimpse the toothed maw on its underside, the scrapers that so patiently rasp stone and metal into shape, flense grave robbers, and mutilate intruders. But it doesn’t see me — their designer saw no need to gift them with nanometric sensors — and then I am tumbling back to land more or less on the spot where it launched itself from ambush.

I hear screams, and a concussion that I feel through the wall, then moist, crunching sounds. I continue on my way, chastened and cautious.

TWIN #1 HOLDS a wriggling cleaner up to the light, inspecting it minutely. “The history of life is not one of progress, but one of random contingency,” he declares pompously. “Life-forms evolve, the better to assimilate energy sources. So it says in the good book, and so I shall demonstrate.” He raises the malfunctioning microcleaner to his mandibles and bisects it cleanly, then starts to compress it between his masticators. My spirits sink: I know what’s coming next.

This is day thirty of the voyage, and we have been reduced to salon games and philosophical debate — those of us who have no major business interests to spend our time managing at some remove, that is — but to be sucked into this…!

Twin #2 casts a glance of withering scorn at his sib. “Nonsense! The religious doctrine of evolution relies on the transubstantiation of the holy design by the miracle of mutation. We do not mutate, we are manufactured. So I refute it.”

The Lyrae twins have been restaging this old chestnut for nearly ten days, now. I’m not sure whether they only do it to annoy, or if there’s some deeper meaning to the squabble, but they keep dragging it out and rehashing it between card games. And Twin #1 insists on eating live canapés while they lock horns. It’s most distressing.

(I suppose it’s even more distressing if you happen to be one of the snacks, but as the Lyrae twins seem to be fairly civilized for gourmets — they obey Rule Number One: “Never try to eat anything larger than your own head” — I’m fairly safe. For the time being, anyway.)

“There’s no such thing as random mutation,” says Sinbad-15, launching itself into the debate at short notice. “Change a random instruction in a program, and what happens? It stops working. Complexity is irreducible. Yes, complex systems — like people — can design other complex systems, including ones that exceed their own metrics, but you’d have us believe that simple systems can generate complex ones if you simply break them often enough at random? Stuff and nonsense! Superstition! Next you’ll be telling us there were no Creators—”

“On the contrary! It is from the Creators themselves that the holy scriptures of evolution come to us, from the great prophet Darwin, peace be unto him, and his saintly disciples Dawkins and Gould. We have their holy scriptures to guide us, and they are most explicit on these points—”

“But we’ve got the engineering models! And the design schemata!” Sinbad-15 is clearly annoyed by Twin #1’s irrational and superstitious insistence that people evolved by accident. “We’ve even got the purchase orders! With this upgraded arm, I refute you!” He reaches over and snags a many-legged inspection lamp from the bowl that Twin #1 is munching on, and I can’t help noticing that he’s got some very strange-looking fingers.

“Really?” Twin #1 says mockingly. “That’s just the Lamarckian heresy in disguise. I suppose you’d say that your physical size — so much bigger than the average free citizen these days — is deliberate? Or hadn’t you noticed people getting smaller these days?”

Honestly, these discussions make my head hurt. There’s something about the holy doctrine of Evolution that seems to attract the worst kind of dogmatic, evangelical, close-minded people, and sometimes it seems as if they won’t be content until they have converted everyone to their religious creed. (Some of them are even believers in the mystery of reincarnation; manikins who think they’re the reembodied state vectors of our dead Creators. Stupid superstitionists!) I try to concentrate on the cards stuck to the wall in front of me, but it’s hard to shut out the squabbling, and though I wish Sinbad-15 well of it, I think his chances of convincing Twin #1 that we were all created by rational beings are slim, even though the frustrated dreams and cautionary memories I inherited from Rhea tell me that it was ever so.

“It’s troublesome, is it not?” A cool, somewhat amused voice insinuates itself in my ear by way of electrospeak. “They’ll be at it for days, on a point of principle, long after it’s become tiresome.”

I try not to startle too violently, for the source of this intrusive and unwelcome confidence is the Venerable Granita Ford. I slowly turn my head, and see that she’s watching me from across the saloon. Her attendants are inattentive for once, spectators at the nonsensical debate that threatens to swallow two-thirds of the passengers. She blinks slowly, those huge, limpid eyes occulted by lids bedraggled by their huge blue lashes, then begins to smile. I am, it seems, invited to court. It’s the kind of invitation I can live without, but it would be unwise to ignore her. I wave a hand across my cards, resetting them, then kick off toward her.

Aside from myself, the venerable Granita is the most humanoid person in the lounge; but nobody would dare to call her an outlandish ogre. A meter and two-thirds tall, and apparently of gracile build within the confines of her spun-glass finery, she sports a full head of azure feathers confined in a net of fine gold wire; and, of course, the delicate chin, uptilted nose, and huge eyes of the bishojo aristocracy. But other than that, she could pass for a Creator maiden, albeit one who has indulged in extreme cosmetology. If I did not know her to be a two-and-a-half-century-old tyrant, a noblewoman and slaveholder, I might think her invitation was born of casual curiosity. But with Granita and her kind, nothing is casual.

“And what is your position on the matter, my lady?” I ask.

She feigns a yawn — an elaborate, archaic gesture to flush her gas-exchange reservoirs (and strictly speaking unnecessary here, for Pygmalion won’t have molecular oxygen in her passenger quarters; it’s too chemically reactive) — and glances sidelong at me. “Does it matter?” she asks. “Theology makes the ship fly no faster.”

“I suppose not,” I hear myself agreeing, somewhat to my surprise. Half of me is wondering how to get away from this vile old hag, but my other half seems to be somewhat uncertain. “It passes the time.”

“For some,” she agrees. “You interest me, madame. I have a strange sense that I seem to remember you from somewhere.” She does not smile, and a terrible chill floods up and down my spine.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” I say. “At least, before this voyage.”

“Yes. Which is what makes it such a strange feeling. Polite society in Cinnabar being as small as it is, after all. Perhaps you remind me of somebody.”