Wilfred is wearing a hospital gown and sitting up in a hospital bed, both of which look oddly futuristic. Various monitors are attached to his body.

I woke up on the ward, doctors and nurses all over, though I didn't know that, seeing as they were giant crabs, six-legged elephants, all sorts. Some driving tanks, so you couldn't even see what's inside. Two near my bed: a giant caterpillar with silver fur that keeps moving, and a huge tentacled – thing. Caterpillar naked, tentacled thing wearing an all-over body-suit, only it's transparent, so I could see smears of paint all over him. Scar on his right side.

I started screaming, only the caterpillar hooted into a speaker and words came out. All flat and mechanical, like a Dalek. It said, 'Don't be ridiculous. We're not going to eat you. I'm a vegetarian, and Forty-Three is on a strict diet and can't even have stinging insects in its body-paint. Even if you come from a primitive era before Earth made contact with the rest of the galaxy, there is no need to be racist.'

I said, 'I'm not racist! My best friend back in Leeds was an Untouchable.' And Samantha was half black, and she was beautiful.

The caterpillar's fur went wild, and it said, 'Indeed? I was not aware that any ultra-high- or ultra-low-temperature beings had visited Earth in your time. What species was your friend?'

So I had to explain no, Mr Kumar was human, Untouchable was just his caste. But they didn't know what that meant. There are plenty of Hindu humans working here, religion hasn't gone away, but they seem to have dropped the idea of caste. I thought, 'Mr Kumar will be pleased,' and then remembered that of course he won't, because he's dead.

Forty-Three, the lad in the body-suit, puts a tentacle on my shoulder, hard as rock but it still feels gentle, and says, 'You must have many questions. Would you like to talk to us, or should we fetch a member of your own species?'

I said, 'Are my friends all right? Pascal? Jose? Riku?'

He said, 'I'm afraid we have some bad news for you.'

It turns out I wasn't just the only survivor when they found me. I'd been the only survivor for hundreds of years. Experiment wasn't about sending us to another star, it was about seeing if they could freeze people and thaw us out without killing us. They couldn't, or not then, anyway. They'd tried it eleven times, and then I was the only one left.

Forty-Three said, 'I am sorry. I have known loneliness, too. My husband died in saving my life, I have not seen my child since I gave birth, and I have to avoid contact with members of my own species.'

I said, 'I'm sorry. My wife – wasn't speaking to me, even before I got frozen. And nobody wanted me near their kids. Is yours a boy or a girl?'

Forty-Three said, 'My parents think it is planning on being a girl first, once it reaches puberty. We don't know what gender it will eventually settle on, of course. Most of us don't make a final decision until after having as many children as we want.'

I said, 'What do you want to be?'

Forty-Three said, 'I preferred female mode. It was my first time turning male, after my child's birth and my husband's death. But we can only change after a breeding session, so, as I cannot mate again, I will now be male for the rest of my life.'

I didn't know what to say. I'd never met any real transsexuals to talk to, only Peter down the road when we lived in Blackpool, who liked to be called Doris, and he just used to wear a pink dress and a wig. Nice chap, good gardener.

The caterpillar, whose name turns out to be Kroggoth, said, 'You don't need to be shy about asking questions. Forty-Three and its life-mate Eighteen were injured in a ship crash. Eighteen did not survive, so its organs were used to save the lives of Forty-Three and another patient. But Hudlar immune systems are so ridiculously overpowered that any Hudlar who has a transplant has to take immune-suppressants for the rest of its life, so it can't touch another Hudlar without getting sick and dying, hence the environment suit. That DBDG doctor told you to get out to some planet where there aren't any Hudlars and you don't need to worry about Hudlar germs, didn't it?'

Forty-Three said, 'There are Hudlars everywhere that there is hard work to be done. I prefer to live and work here, where I have access to good healthcare and can repay my debt of honour to the doctors who saved my life.'

I said, 'What's a DBDG?'

Kroggoth, said, 'You are. So are Nidians, Orligians and Etlans. It's supposed to be a unique species-identifier code, but creatures your shape seem to crop up all over the universe: two legs, two arms, head with two eyes facing in the same direction. Though if it comes to that, Tarlans and Sommaradvans are about the same shape, but Tarlans are BRLH, which makes it sound as if they're fish, and Sommaradvans are DCNF. I'm a DBLF, which sounds as though I'm not so different from you, but Wem, who have much the same body plan as DBDGs apart from having a long tail to help them hop, are DHCG. It's a stupid classification system, everyone knows that, but we're so busy meeting new species and reprogramming the translation computers that nobody's had time to invent a better one.'

Any road, it turns out I'd been frozen so long nobody knew who I was or why I'd been frozen. So they'd brought me to this place to thaw me out safely, so they could ask me when I woke up. Forty-Three said, 'It seems – poetic. After all, the founders of this hospital, MacEwan and Grawlya-Ki, were two DBDGs who had been frozen for eight generations until medicine had advanced enough to treat MacEwan's wounds.'

Kroggoth said, 'What we don't understand is why you were frozen. Your body shows no sign of severe injury or disease. Were you so important that you were preserved for future ages to benefit from your wisdom?'

I said, 'No.'

I didn't want to say any more, only Kroggoth's fur was spiking, the way Tracey's hair looked sometimes, and it made me think of Tracey, and Mr Parlane too, saying, 'Just don't lie this time.'

So I said, 'I'd been in prison. I was frozen because nobody wanted me. And because my mind's sick, even if my body isn't.'

Forty-Three said, 'I think this one needs to talk to Lioren.'

Same scene as before, night

They've got me seeing a therapist again, only Lioren's different. He's eight feet tall and yellowish-green, like a leaf when it's starting to wilt, only he's cone-shaped with four legs, two sets of four arms, and four eyes, one on each side of his head, only they're on stalks like a snail's. He came to see me on the ward first, only I said I couldn't talk to him there. Didn't want everyone hearing, patients and staff and all. They kept me on my own in prison to stop the others killing me. Thought I'd be back to that in here.

Lioren said he could tune our translators so they were set to translate just between Earth-human English and Tarlan, but I still didn't want to tell him anything. Just that I'd been in prison.

Lioren said, 'Well, if you don't want to talk about yourself, would you like me to tell you about myself?'

I said, 'All right,' though I don't think therapists are supposed to do that. Or human ones don't, anyway. Like adults aren't supposed to talk to children.

Lioren said, 'Technically, I am a prisoner here, too. Or a mental patient, depending on how you look at it.'

He used to be a doctor, first here in this hospital, then out on a ship exploring the galaxy, like the Starship Enterprise. Only they came to this one planet where everyone was infected with a virus and they were all fighting each other all the time, and when Lioren gave them all a medicine to cure the virus, it just meant they were strong enough to kill each other.

Lioren said, 'It was entirely my fault. I had refused to listen to any of my colleagues who tried to discuss the cultural situation with me, and I was too prudish to listen when one of the natives gave a group of adolescents a lecture on the facts of life. I had not understood that this was a population so debilitated that they needed to fight each other almost to the death in order to feel enough fear that they could be aroused enough to breed. And when they found themselves suddenly strong and healthy, of course they went out to fight as usual, and it was no longer "almost" to the death. All but thirty-seven of the adults and teenagers died. Only the few we managed to restrain, plus the children too young to mate, were left.'

He'd tried to have himself court-martialled and sentenced to death for genocide, but the court refused. They reckoned he was being too hard on himself, and that he must be a bit wrong in the head to think like that. So instead they assigned him to work here, as the Chief Psychologist's assistant, so that the Chief Psychologist could keep an eye on him. He reckons it's fair, because death would have been too merciful, and having to live with his guilt is what he deserves.

I asked him what his life was like before all that, but he said he didn't really have much of a life. No wife, no kiddies – well, where he comes from, doctors take a vow of celibacy anyway, but he'd never had a girlfriend, or any friends, really. He just studied and worked. He says he'd never had friends, until he came to work for the psychology department, because everyone here is a misfit anyway.

So I told him about my life. About Janet, and how we never had children. She said she couldn't, only sometimes she said it wasn't as if she got the chance, I was never interested in sex, not with her anyway. So I didn't tell her I knew about the pills. She wasn't taking any chances, not after we had to leave Blackpool when I got sacked from the Derby Baths and the boss said don't try citing him for a reference or he'd tell the truth.

I told him about the girl who used to come to the Baths every Saturday, who used to cry because she was afraid to go into the water unless someone held her up and her mum was too busy helping her baby brother, so I used to help her, and how I told her I got frightened sometimes too because of having no friends, and she promised to be my best friend.

I told Lioren about prison – the first time round, and having to look for somewhere new to live when I got out, being the housewife while Janet looked for a job, until I managed to get one at the park. I told him about Janet's sister not letting me speak to her little girl, even though I'm her godfather. I told him about Samantha, and prison again, and the domes, and being frozen, and then waking up here.

I wanted to be in a place where there weren't any people, so I couldn't do any harm. Instead – I'm in a place that's full of people, only most of them aren't human, and there aren't any human children here, Lioren says. It's a giant space station, not a planet.

I asked him to promise not to tell anyone what I'd said, though I thought he'd probably lie and tell everyone anyway. Lioren said he could warn the ward staff just not to let me out of this ward and not let any Earth-human children in here, and not say why. Maybe they'll just think I've got some bug that they don't want other humans to catch. But he said he'll have to tell the rest of the Psychology Department, and they'll have to have a meeting to decide what to do with me. He said likely before long everyone would know about me, same as everyone knows about him, and if they could put up with him, they can put up with me.