He eased the door so that he could get his fingers around it, then slid it sideways. It jammed, and he used the pipe to work it open a little more, until he could squeeze through. His light-bees followed him.

It wasn’t a room intended for humans: too small, too full, too strange. Benzamir’s head pressed against the black fractal radiators fixed to the ceiling, and his feet barely fitted in the narrow gap between the wall and the panels that ranged from floor to roof.

He got down on his hands and knees. Some of the panel fronts were lying scattered on the floor, and when he looked inside the narrow duct, he could see disconnected brain modules discarded where they fell. He reached in and picked one up as delicately as he could.

‘Ari?’ He showed her what he could see through his eyes.

‘This is not good.’

‘I know. What’s left of her might never recover.’

‘We have to try, Benzamir.’

‘There are other panels loose. I won’t know which is memory, which is motor control, which is high function. I’m going to put them in wrong, whatever I do. And even then . . .’ He pushed back against the bulkhead and let his body sag.

‘My shipsister.’

Benzamir turned the module in his hand and watched the light play across the etched surfaces. ‘Some of these are damaged. Scratched. Chipped.’

‘You are preparing me for the fact that, at best, she still might be . . . not Persephone. But it’s in your nature to try nevertheless.’

‘It is, isn’t it?’ He carefully put the module down and shuffled back over to the door.

‘Master? Can we come in yet?’

‘Best that you don’t. Look, I might be a while. I’ve got’ – he looked round at all the loose panels – ‘a delicate job that needs all my attention. Take one of my light-bees and go back to Ariadne.’

Wahir put his head through the gap. ‘What is that?’

‘It’s Persephone’s brain, or what’s left of it. Someone’s ripped pieces out of it at random. We build them, and the ships are born into them. They were never meant to be taken apart after that. Ships are special, Wahir. They’re not pets, not servants, not machines. We love each other. Which sounds stupid, just said like that.’

‘Not at all, master. Like a trusted camel.’ Wahir reached forward and closed his fist around one of the light-bees, then tentatively set it free above his own head. His face cracked into a smile.

‘You’re just like me. Now go. I’ll see you back in Ariadne.’

The light in the corridor receded, and Benzamir bent to his task. He couldn’t work with the thick coverall gloves on, so he undid the wrist seals and placed them just outside the door.

He lay down on the floor, stretched his arm out and slid it into the first duct. He could barely see what he was doing, relying mainly on touch and faith as he started to ease the modules back into place. He was doing it with infinitely more care than those who had removed them, but he was aware that even by touching the modules he was introducing errors: dust, grease, static, the pressure of his fingertips. He was more likely to be killing the ship than curing her.

Eventually he stopped. ‘Ari, I can’t carry on.’

‘You must.’

He rolled awkwardly onto his back, flexing his wrist and fingers. He began to cry. ‘She’s gone, Ari. They’ve destroyed her. I can’t put her back together again, no matter how much I want to.’

‘Why? Why would they do this?’

‘Because she turned against them. I don’t know when that happened: after she’d entered the Earth’s system, before they landed. She repented of her crime, and they killed her for it.’

‘But to murder a ship, Benzamir! Such a thing has never happened before.’

‘And they will pay for this as much as they will pay for all the other lives they’ve snuffed out. They were my friends, Ari. How could I have misjudged them so badly? How could I have not seen this?’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘It could have been me, tearing at this door, lobotomizing this beautiful ship.’

‘It could never have been you.’

‘We wanted the same things.’ Benzamir hit the bulkhead with his fist. It hurt; it felt good.

‘You would have stood here, blocking their way. You would have died before you let them do this.’

‘I want to believe that. I don’t know if I can.’

‘Finish your job, Benzamir. Do your best.’

He worked methodically, taking each disturbed duct in turn, only pausing to wipe his eyes and blow his nose on his sleeve. He was on the last duct, the last couple of modules, when he heard footsteps running up the corridor. It sounded like Wahir.

‘You’ll have to wait.’

‘But master, you must come quickly. The princess . . .’

Benzamir pushed a module home, felt it click. He gently picked up the remaining cube and turned it so it presented the correct face to the socket.

‘What about the princess?’ He was cold and cramped, and hadn’t thought about Elenya for the entire time he’d been working on Persephone.

‘She has one of your magic devices.’

‘What? What does it look like?’

‘Small, round. It has yellow writing around the middle.’

He took a deep breath and steadied his hand. The last module slotted home. ‘I’m coming.’ He started to crawl back out of the space he was in.

Wahir didn’t wait for him. ‘Hurry, master.’

‘Stop. Don’t go near her. Just tell me where she is.’

‘She’s in the lake.’

‘In?’ Benzamir squeezed back through the door, caught up with Wahir, ran past and kept on going, tearing down the corridors and stairs, almost always on the point of falling. ‘Ari? Did you show Elenya how to work an o-space bomb?’

‘No.’

‘Then who did?’ He was in the cargo bay. Va was at the open doors. ‘What did you say to her?’ he shouted.

‘Nothing. I—’

‘Elenya’s going to kill herself.’ Benzamir jumped down, scrambled over the rocks to the lake edge, skidded to a halt and was only kept standing by Said clutching at him.

She was waist-deep in water that was barely above freezing. It pulled at her cloak and wicked up her dress, turning it black. Her hair rat-tailed down over her shoulders, and in her hands she cupped the little black orb banded with yellow.

Her passage through the water was marked by slow, swirling ice-crystals that turned the lake glassy and dark.

Said reached out and entangled Wahir as he tried to wade out to her. ‘No, little one. This is not for you.’

‘Where’s Va?’ called Elenya.

‘In the ship,’ said Benzamir. He splashed out a little way. A broken chunk of thick ice smacked against his shins. He kicked it away and watched it bob back from under the surface. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Because it’s over. I thought that he’d be different. After five years in a monastery, he’s spent months on the road with me: he needed me, my talents and my money. But he hasn’t changed. He still doesn’t love me. I know now that he never will.’

‘And this is reason enough to kill yourself? Which you won’t do with that, I have to say.’

She held up the bomb, a thumb hovering uncertainly over the button. ‘I know what this does. Death is certain.’

‘Oh, yes. Set it off and in seconds you’ll find yourself in hard vacuum somewhere above the plane of the ecliptic. If you hurry, you might even find the point of light that’s this planet before the gas bubbles forming in your blood reach your brain or your heart. That’s what’ll kill you.’ Benzamir felt the sandy lake-bed shift under him. ‘Do you really mean to do this?’

‘I thought I should try. It’s the only thing I have any control over.’ Elenya smiled. ‘I said I’d do something just for myself, rather than what everybody expects me to do.’

Benzamir lost sensation in his toes; he wriggled them, driving his feet deeper into the wet sediment, then pulled himself free with two sucking noises. ‘I can’t stop you, you know. You could activate the bomb long before I could get close enough to disarm you. Ariadne can’t stop you either, and neither can anyone else here.’