Swan was taken aback by this. At Rilke she had erected a circle of Gobekli T-stones, which looked very contemporary even though they were based on something over ten thousand years old. “Thank you,” she said. A cultured toad, it seemed. “Tell me, why did you think Alex might have left a message for you?”

“We were working together on a couple of things,” he said evasively, his fixed gaze shifting away. He didn’t want to discuss it, she saw. And yet he had come to ask about it. “And, well, she always spoke so highly of you. It was clear you two were close. So… she didn’t like to put things in the cloud or in any digital form-really, to keep records of our activities in any media at all. She preferred word of mouth.”

“I know,” Swan said, feeling a stab. She could hear Alex say it: We have to talk! It’s a face world! With her intense blue eyes, her laugh. All gone.

The big man saw the change in her and extended a hand. “I’m so sorry,” he said again.

“I know,” Swan said. Then: “Thank you.”

She sat down in one of Mqaret’s chairs and tried to think about something else.

After a while the big man said in a gentle rumble, “What will you do now?”

Swan shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose I’ll go out on the surface again. That’s my place to… to pull myself together.”

“Will you show it to me?”

“What?” Swan said.

“I would be very grateful if you were to take me out there. Maybe show me one of your installations. Or, if you don’t mind-I noticed that the city is approaching Tintoretto Crater. My shuttle doesn’t leave for a few days, and I would love to see the museum there. I have some questions that can’t be resolved on Earth.”