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that, or the digestion to cope with such gorging.
    “This is good.” Wolff licked up the remainder from the bowl, and poured water into a glass. He held it up to the light, scrutinising its pale green tinge. “Ah, filled with vitamin C and other vital antioxidants. Tastes like shite, of course.”
    Jed swallowed a mouthful of her drink. As far as she was concerned, she might just as well have been eating woodpulp in various degrees of dilution. Tastes and flavours were pale shadows beside the effulgence of conurin.
    Wolff knocked back the phytoculture’s offering and devoured what was left of his bread. Jed picked over her dish, shredding the bread listlessly and abandoning half the roll in the dish.
    Wolff raised his eyebrows. “Do you intend to honour your part of the agreement?”
    Jed folded her arms and leaned back on the seating. “There is little to be said. Any other Archer in this galaxy would tell you a story identical to mine.”
    “And if any were to, it would still be a new tale to my ears.”
    “My ship was built in the Greater Docks of the OverHalo.”
    “No, now you’re telling me about your ship. I want to know about you.” Wolff shifted his weight forward and rested his elbows on his knees.
    “An apprentice to a senior learns the Code until she can afford her own ship.”
    “Ah, and who was the senior, your mother?”
    Jed gave him an intolerant look. “Archers do not breed.”
    “Of course, back to the evils of regular conurin use. Your mother was a ‘common man’, as you call us, and your sire was an unfortunate condescender?”
    “A male Archer?” Jed rolled her eyes.
    “What you’re saying implies star Archers have no common blood, while I was under the impression they were a distinct race.”
    “We have no more blood in common than has the rest of the race of men. We are all doubly recessive in a particular set of genes. Certain dynasties have Archers in their bloodlines.”
    “And I suppose those genes are linked to certain traits in appearance, unless one does come across Archers with dark skin, or light hair.”
    “That supposition would be correct.”
    “So a certain talent was discovered in you at a young age and a senior adopted you?”
    “Yes. It progresses from there, as I said.”
    “But do you remember nothing of before you were an Archer? Say of planetary life and who your parents were?”
    “Not of ancestry, nor of planets. I adopt my ancestry as my ancestors adopted me.”
    “But surely you remember something of where you lived? Everyone remembers something about their childhood.” Wolff slackened the belt on his tunic and stifled a belch. “They say you can’t forget growing up on a planet. Did you grow up on one?”
    Jed looked uneasily at the man, then at the console. She could tell him what she liked. He had no right to know the events of her life up to the age of nine, and it wasn’t as if he’d find out from some other source.
    “I remember nothing.”
    Wolff shrugged again. “And your culture, revolving around a particular drug and a strict code, verging almost on religion?”
    This angered Jed, and she turned to him fiercely. “Do not compare my culture to religion ! Blind trust is the folly of the ignorant! True knowledge and understanding—Equilibrium as the Pagan Atheist calls it, can only be attained through discipline and strength of mind.”
    Again, that wan smile. It gave Jed an urge to break his nose. “I wasn’t referring to the component of blind trust. I was referring to how religions all seem to have codes inherent to them. You shall chew conurin. You shall meditate and contemplate. Your ship is your temple. You shall be arrogant in your noble ways and spurn the common man. You shall learn of and understand Equilibrium. When you have reached Equilibrium, you shall be truly sated.”
    Jed turned her head from him with a grimace. “What knows you of the Code?”
    “Little more than what I have here spoken or been told. And of