Then there was a room, warm and golden and as bedecked with finery as the inside of any wealthy merchant’s tent, in any desert caravan from the Arabian Nights. And Sunday was awake, looking at herself. A memory stirred: an error she would not make twice. It was not her own face looking down at her, but there were sufficient similarities that a blood relationship could not be denied. A woman’s face, close enough to her own that they might have been sisters or cousins. And she had seen this woman before, behind layers of glass, in a landscape older than Africa. Her mouth was dry, her lips gummed together. Nonetheless she managed a word. ‘Soya.’ ‘Glad you remember me. You were both pretty cold by the time we reached you. Your suits only had a few hours of effective life support left in them.’ Soya was dressed in a white blouse, draped with about a dozen necklaces, some hung with jewelled pendants, some with wooden charms. She was all skin and bones, lean and angular where Sunday (as she would readily admit) was padded and ample.
