It folded its arms. "Of course," it said, "you don't normally expect to be continually reminded of your folly every day for four decades, but that was the way it was to be. I didn't anticipate that at the start, though it became a useful and fit part of my Eccentricity. I picked Dajeil up a short while into my internal exile. She was the single last significant loose end from my previous life. All the other stories didn't concern me so directly, or bore no similar weight of responsibility, or were well on the way to being satisfactorily resolved or decently forgotten through the due process of time elapsing and people changing. Only Dajeil remained; my responsibility." The avatar shrugged. "I had hoped to talk her round, to cause her to accept whatever it was had happened to you both and get on with the rest of her life. Bearing the child would-be the signal that she was mended; that labour would be the end of her travails, that birth mark an end." The avatar looked away, out to sea for a moment, a frown creasing its brows. "I thought it would be easy," it said, looking back at him. "I was so used to power, to being able to influence people, ships and events. It would have been such a simple thing even to have tricked her body into giving birth — I could have started the process chemically or via an effector while she was asleep and by the time she was awake there would have been no going back- that I was sure my arguments, my reasoning — grief, even my cherished facility at emotional blackmail — would find scarcely more of an obstacle in her will than all my technologies could face in her physiology."

It shook its head quickly. "It was not to be. She proved intransigent. I hoped to persuade her — to shame her, indeed- by the very totality of my concern for her, re-creating all you see here," the avatar said, glancing round at the cliffs, marsh, tower and waters, "for real; turning my entire outer envelope into a habitat just for her and the creatures she loved." Amorphia gave a sort of dipping sideways nod, and smiled. "I admit I had another purpose as well, which such exaggerated compassion would only help disguise, but the fact is my original design was to create an environment she would feel comfortable within and into which she would feel safe bringing her baby, having seen the care I was prepared to lavish just on her." The avatar gave a rueful smile. "I got it wrong," it admitted. "I was wrong twice and each time I harmed Dajeil. You are — and this is — my last chance to get it right."

"And what am I supposed to do?"

"Why, just talk to her!" the avatar cried, holding its arms out (and, suddenly, Genar-Hofoen was reminded of Ulver).

"What if I won't play along?" he asked.

"Then you may get to share my fate," the ship's representative told him breezily. "Whatever that may be. At any rate, I may keep you here until you do at least agree to talk to her, even if — for that meeting to take place — I have to ask her to return after I've sent her away to safety."

"And what is likely to be your fate?"

"Oh, death, possibly," the avatar said, shrugging with apparent unconcern.

The man shook his head. "You haven't got any right to threaten me like that," he said, with a sort of half-laugh in his voice he hoped didn't sound as nervous as he felt.

"Nevertheless, I am threatening you like that, Genar-Hofoen," the avatar said, bending at the waist to lean towards him for a moment. "I am not as Eccentric as I appear, but consider this: only a craft that was predisposed to a degree of eccentricity in the first place would have taken on the style of life I did, forty years ago." The creature drew itself upright again. "There is an Excession without precedent at Esperi which may lead to an infinitude of universes and a level of power orders of magnitude beyond what any known Involved currently possesses. You've experienced the way SC works, Genar-Hofoen; don't be so naive as to imagine that Minds don't employ strong-arm methods now and again, or that in a matter resounding with such importance any ship would think twice about sacrificing another consciousness for such a prize. My information is that several Minds have been forfeited already; if, in the exceptional conditions prevailing, intellects on that scale are considered fair game, think about how little a single human life is likely to matter."

The man stared at the avatar. His jaw was clenched, his fists balled. "You're doing this for a single human life," he said. "Two, if you count the fetus."

"No, Genar-Hofoen," the avatar said, shaking its head. "I'm doing this for myself, because it's become an obsession. Because my pride will not now let me settle this any other way. Dajeil, in that sense, and for all her self-lacerating spite, has won. She forced you to her will forty-five years ago and she has bent me to hers for the last forty. Now more than ever, she has won. She has thrown away four decades of her life on a self-indulgent sulk, but she stands to gain by her own criteria. You have spent the last forty years enjoying and indulging yourself, Genar-Hofoen, so perhaps you could be said to have won by your criteria, and after all you did win the lady at the time, which was all you then wanted, remember? That was your obsession. Your folly. Well, the three of us are all paying for our mutual and intermingled mistakes. You did your part in creating the situation; all I'm asking is that you do your part in alleviating it."

"And all I have to do is talk to her?" The man sounded sceptical.

The creature nodded. "Talk. Try to understand, try to see things from her perspective, try to forgive, or allow yourself to be forgiven. Be honest with her and with yourself. I'm not asking you to stay with her or be her partner again or form a family of three; I just want whatever it is that has prevented her from giving birth to be identified and ameliorated; removed if possible. I want her to resume living and her child to start. You will then be free to return to your own life."

The man looked out to sea, then at his right hand. He looked surprised to see he was holding a stone in it. He threw it as hard and as far as he could into the waves; it didn't travel half the distance to the distant, invisible wall.

"What are you supposed to do?" the man asked the creature. "What is your mission?"

"Get to the Excession," Amorphia said. "Destroy it, if that's deemed necessary, and if it's possible. Perhaps just draw a response from it."

"And what about the Affront?"

"Added complication," the avatar agreed, squatting once more and looking around the stones around its feet. "I might have to deal with them too." It shrugged, and lifted a stone, hefting it. It put the stone back and chose another.

'Deal with them?" Genar-Hofoen said. "I thought they had an entire war fleet heading there."

"Oh, they do," the avatar said from beach level. "Still, you have to try, don't you?" It stood again.

Genar-Hofoen looked at it, trying to see if it was being ironic or just disingenuous. No way of telling. "So when do we get into the thick of things?" he asked, trying to skip a flat stone over the waves, without success.

"Well," Amorphia said, "the thick of things probably starts about thirty light years out from the point of the Excession itself, these days." The avatar stretched, flexing its arm far back behind it. "We should be there this evening," it said. Its arm snapped forward. The stone whistled through the air and skipped elegantly over the tops of half a dozen waves before disappearing.

Genar-Hofoen turned and stared at the avatar. "This evening? he said.

"Time is a httle tight," the avatar said with a pained expression, again peering into the distance. "It would be for the best for all of us lf you'd talk to Dajeil… soon." It smiled vacuously at him.