'Really?' she questions, surprised. 'I haven't seen them for sale anywhere - oh, you mean buying from some newcomer who decided not to drink from their vial?' It's not the worst of ideas, she thinks. Or at least it wouldn't be, if the outcome were guaranteed. 'I shall look into that.'

As she speaks, she leans forward to look at her wound. It's completely closed now, even if the livid red of the fresh scar tissue makes her wince. It won't look like that forever, she tells herself, but she doesn't let her gaze linger for long before she pulls down her trouser leg again. There's no need for a fresh dressing, not after that dramatically accelerated bit of healing, so instead she wads up the old length of white cloth in one hand, and stands, slowly.

There's no pain on standing, and she smiles as she crosses the room to drop the old cloth in a wooden container there. She'll boil it clean later. The method is primitive to her mind, but the concept isn't. Tradeliners, like everyone else who came out of the early colonies, don't waste resources. Her gait is markedly less irregular now, and she returns to Levi without any unsteadiness.

'There were over two hundred on my ship,' she explains. 'Most of the cleaning was automated. The coffee machines, too. Food was different. We had a very good cook! I know how to provision a ship for a quarter-year out in the black, but not how to cook any of it. It would have been very inefficient for us all to do that! The trade-off is that we didn't get much choice in meals, but I was never fussy. I take it that your people, working in smaller units, were less specialised?'