And anyhow if you didn’t like it here in this small floating village you could always escape. You could pay for passage aboard one of the Nord’s endless stream of FTL visitors, and head for any of the worlds of a proliferating human Galaxy. And likewise some of those visitors, charmed by the Nord’s antiquity and peace, chose to stay.

Thus the Nord had sailed on, its crew rebuilding their ship over and over, until it had passed through the dense molecular clouds that shielded the Galaxy’s Core from eyes on Earth, and had broken into a new cold light.

And half a million years had worn away.

The sisters’ home was a cluster of bubble-chambers lodged just underneath the Nord’s ceramic hull. Windows had been cut into that ancient surface, so that from Alia’s own room you could see out into space. The room was small, but it was a pleasant retreat she had always cherished.

But today there was a visitor here. An intruder.

It was a man, a stranger. He stood quietly in the center of the floor, hands behind his back. Her mother, Bel, stood beside the visitor, her hands twisting together.

The stranger was tall, so tall he had to duck to avoid the ceiling. He was dressed in a drab pale gray robe that swept to the ground, despite his angular tallness. His face was long, a thing of planes and hard edges of bone, as if there wasn’t a morsel of spare fat under his flesh. His arms were short, too stiff for climbing; he was a planet-dweller. His expression was kindly, almost amused, as he looked at her. But Alia thought he had an air of detachment, as if she were some kind of specimen. He kept subtly away from the furniture, her bed and chairs and table and Witnessing tank, all heaped with clutter and clothes.

She didn’t like this judgmental stranger in her room, looking at her stuff. Resentment flared.

Her mother’s face was flushed, and she seemed tense, agitated. It took a lot to get a bicentenarian so visibly excited. “Alia, this is Reath. He’s come to see you, all this way. He’s from the Commonwealth. ”

The man, Reath, stepped forward, arms outspread. “I’m sorry to intrude on you like this, Alia. It’s all terribly ill-mannered. And I know this will come as a shock to you. But I’ve come to offer you an opportunity.”

She couldn’t tell how old he was. But then, you couldn’t tell how old anybody was past the age of thirty or so. He was different, however, she thought. There was a stillness about him, as if he had weightier concerns than those around him.

She said suspiciously, “What kind of opportunity? Are you offering me some kind of job?”

“In a sense—”

“I don’t want a job. Nobody works. ”

“Some do. A very few,” he said. “Perhaps you will be one of them.” His voice was deep, compelling, his whole manner mesmeric. She felt he was drawing her down some path she might not want to follow.

Her mother had gone, she noticed, slipped out of the room while Reath distracted her.

Reath turned away and walked around the room, his hands still folded behind his back. “You have windows. Most people would prefer to be hidden away, buried in the human world, to forget that they are on a starship at all. But not you, Alia.”

“My parents chose the apartment,” she said. “Not me.”

“Well, perhaps.” With an elegant finger he traced faint shadows on the wall, a cross-hatching of rectangles, hexagons, ovals, and circles. As the occupancy patterns of the Nord had changed, windows had been cut here, then filled in and cut again, each repair leaving a ghostly mark. “And these usage scars? They don’t bother you?”

“Why should they?” In fact she liked the sense of history the faint scarring gave her, the idea that she wasn’t the first to live here, to breathe this air.

He nodded. “You don’t mind. Even though it must give you a sense of transience, of the evanescence of all things — of youth, of love, even of your own identity. I don’t mean to patronize you, Alia. But I suspect you’re still too young to understand how rare that is. Just as they would prefer to forget where they are in space, most people would rather not think about their position in time. They would certainly prefer not to think about death!”

She felt increasingly uncomfortable. “And that’s why you’ve come here? Because I think too much?”

“Nobody thinks too much. Anyhow you can’t help it, can you?” He approached her Witnessing tank. It was a silvered cube half his height. “May I?”

She shrugged.

He tapped the tank’s surface.

It turned clear to reveal a softly translucent interior, filled with light that underlit the planes of Reath’s face. And through the light snaked a pale pink rope, looping and turning back on itself. If you looked closely you could see that the line wasn’t a simple cable, but had small protuberances and ridges. And if you looked closer still you could just see that it was actually a kind of chain, with its links tiny human figures, one fading seamlessly into the next: there was a tiny baby at one end, fingers and toes pink, and at the other end of the sequence an old man, bent and gaunt.

Reath said, “Your subject is Michael Poole, isn’t it? I envy you. Though it’s no coincidence you’ve been assigned such a significant figure, historically.”

“It isn’t?”

“Oh, no. We — I mean, the councils of the Commonwealth — have had our eye on you for a long time, Alia.”

That chilled her. And she still didn’t know what he wanted.

“I am certainly pleased to see you keep up your Witnessing.”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“Sadly, no. Even though we all have our duty: to Witness is to participate in the Redemption, which has been mandated by the Transcendence.” When he said the name, Reath bowed his head.

Alia knew this was true. She had always been fascinated by her assigned Witnessing subject; others, even her own sister, thought that was a bit too earnest, and in the interests of popularity she’d learned not to talk about it.

Reath reached into the tank and touched the flesh-colored chain, close to one end. That “link” was cut out, magnified, and became animated, and the tank filled up with the light of a distant sun, a vanished beach. A boy played, throwing brightly colored discs to and fro through the air. There was a contrail traced by a spark of light climbing in the sky, maybe a rocket; the boy quit his playing to watch, his hand peaked over his eyes.

Reath murmured, “My history’s a little rusty. Didn’t this Poole grow up in Baikonur? Or was it Florida? One of those paleological spaceports…”

“I like watching him as a kid,” Alia blurted. “He’s so full of life. Full of ideas. Always tinkering with things. Like those toys. He would cut and shape them, trying to make them fly better.”

“Yes. The shapeless dreams of youth, so soon replaced by the complexities and compromises of adulthood. But his life was so short. By the time he was your age Poole’s life was probably half over. Most of them could only follow one career, make one significant contribution before—” Reath snapped his fingers. “Imagine that! But we, who have so much time by comparison, often choose to do nothing at all.”

He was trying to recruit her, Alia realized. But for what? “Whywould I want to work, for you or anyone else?”

“It’s a valid point,” Reath said. “In our society of limitless material wealth, what rewards can there be? Have you ever heard of money, child?”

“Only historically.”

“Ah, yes.” He turned to her Witnessing tank. “They still had money in Poole’s time, didn’t they?”

“Yes.”

“And Poole himself worked.”

“He was involved in one of the big geoengineering projects—”

“Yes,” Reath said. “The struggles to get past the great Bottleneck of his day. But what motivated Poole, do you think? I’m sure he was paid. But was it just money he wanted?”