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outside Habitat who had captured us and were keeping us prisoners. The trouble is that if there were generations of Speci, then there must be generations of captors, and what possible use could anyone have for keeping another group of people prisoners for so long?’
    Despite my shock at discovering how long the others had been in Habitat, it struck me all at once that none of the others knew anything about the Tumen because they had not awakened from cryosleep before being put into Habitat.
    ‘I resolved to learn who our captors were,’ Swallow continued, as if sensing my interest – indeed he could probably
see
it in my aura. ‘The Speci are very passive and peaceable, and had done me no harm, so I resolved to share the truth about Habitat and their keepers, with them, when I discovered what it was. I believed my thoughts and plans were well concealed until one day a member of the Committee told me bluntly that if I persisted in wrongful thinking, it meant I was not a good Speci, and I would be judged so and punished.’
    ‘He . . . threatened you?’ I croaked.
    ‘It was a she and she was warning me,’ Swallow said. ‘I did not take her warning well. In truth I was shocked by their acuity. I asked rather belligerently what the Committee would do if I refused to believe what the rest of them believed. She assured me that no Speci would dishonour themselves with violence, for the Covenant forbids one Speci harming another. It was
God
who would punish me. I was not overly worried until one day a while later the horribly mutilated body of a man was found in the crops and I was told that God had punished him for being a bad Speci. From the glimpse I got of his body, it looked more like he had been cut to pieces by a dagger-wielding maniac than cold-bloodedly executed. I had less sympathy for him when I learned that he had raped a woman.’
    ‘One of the Speci must have killed him,’ I rasped, unable to equate such a killing with my tranquil Tumen attendant.
    ‘No Speci would harm another,’ Swallow said pointedly, reminding me to guard my tongue. He went on, ‘The man was killed during a thanksgiving ceremony conducted on the darkest night of darkmoon. This is when God traditionally strikes down bad Speci. I was weak from my resurrection during the first thanksgiving celebration, so I did not attend, then Ana arrived just before the second darkmoon, so I was with her when the man was killed. Ana and I attended the third thanksgiving, while Dragon remained with Dameon, who was newly awake. The ceremony involved copious amounts of a hellishly potent ferment brewed especially for the occasion. One mug and I had trouble standing, let alone walking, and I was a good deal less affected than the Speci who never touch a fermented drop save for during the thanksgiving celebrations – that, by the way, is also when bondings are celebrated,’ he added rather irrelevantly.
    ‘In short, all of the Speci would have staggered to their beds and slept like stones till dawn on the night the man was murdered,’ Dameon said. ‘And I, too, can vouch for the strength of the ferment they drink. No one taking a mug would have been physically capable of murder let alone –’
    Dragon urged Swallow to tell me of ‘the sisters’.
    I heard him sigh. ‘One day about a week after murder,’ he said, ‘I was assigned to a field crew when an older Speci began rattling on about some resurrected ancestor of his who had woken in the Hub seventeen years after her twin sister had been resurrected. The long-sleeping sister had some foul sickness that God had to heal before she was safe to enter Habitat. He said the sister was astounded to wake and find her twin almost two decades older.’
    ‘Older?’ I echoed, uncomprehending.
    Dameon spoke then, his words measured, but all the while he emanated caution so strongly that it made my head ache. ‘The story told to Swallow, and which he later told us, made it clear that those chosen do not