Alvin had been even amusing at times, but the others were leaden and solemn. Seranis had shown Cley their art, and it had been cloaked with images of decay. Cley knew in her bones that this was a fashion, even if shaped by the weight of drowsy centuries, not a rule of nature. Entropy increased, surely, and would doom even the glowing stars. But without the sun's abundance no light would have kindled life. The biota were like skilled accountants, living on the flow of energy, paying all required taxes but never neglecting a loophole. Burning fat in Cley's blood generated entropy, but she managed to excrete entropy even faster in waste heat and waste matter—a miraculous, improbable, but perfectly legal dodging of the second law of thermodynamics.

             She, like whole planets, shed excrement and pollution. But the pollution of one was the meat of another, and she was beginning to see that this truth worked on the interplanetary scale. Surely it worked a persistent magic in Leviathan, and would soon enough on Earth. The Supras had troubled her because they still resonated with the bleak, fixed compass of Diaspar. Alvin did not know life, that spark which hangs between two eternities. In a deep sense the Supras were immortal but not alive.

             She banished these thoughts with a shiver. They trekked through the light gravity of this inner vault, eating berries that swung from animal-snagging palm trees. The sharp fronds could slice off an arm, but Seeker showed her how to confuse the tree's ropy reflexes long enough to snatch berries. They hiked for two days along a broad beach. Seeker catching the yellow fish that thronged the lake. Through clouds Cley could see the lake curling over their heads, kilometers away, describing the vast curve of a rotating cylinder.

             "Why do we keep moving so much?" Cley asked when Seeker marched resolutely on despite gathering gloom. Blades of sunlight ebbed and flowed in the huge cylindrical vault like tides of light.

             "We hide among life."

             "You figure the Supras're still looking for me?"

             "They have gone."

             "Your own mysterious wisdom tells you that?"

             Seeker showed its sparkling teeth, recently cleaned by steaks of yellow fish. "The Supras continue outward."

             "Great. Let's go back to Leviathan's skin, then. I liked the view."

             Actually she wanted to search for the Captain. She had glimpsed humans near the transparent blisters and each time they had seemed to evaporate into the humid jungle before she could pursue.

             Seeker did not comment on her desire to find humans and would not help track them, though she suspected it could sense the smallest animals which swung or padded through the layers of green. For three days they worked their way along these lakes, stopping only to swim and surf. This zone of Leviathan was spinning, yielding curious spiral waves in the lake that worked up and down the shore.

             Two more days, by Cley's inner clock, brought them to the skin. Again Cley could not sense when they left the region of spin-gravity. Fogs had hampered their way, blowing into the Leviathan's recesses, bringing moisture along the paths of the great blades of reflected sunlight that plunged along wide shafts.

             Seeker taught her one of its favorite games. They perched in one of the translucent bubbles in Leviathan's outer reaches, waiting. In the utter vacuum outside strange forms glided and worked. Shelled things like abalone attached themselves to Leviathan's skin. Sometimes they mistakenly triggered a reflex that made the slick skin double-fold inward. When one slipped inside. Seeker would crack it open between its hard-soled feet and gulp the shell's inhabitant with lip-smacking relish.

             Long, black creatures crawled over Leviathan, grazing on the photosynthetic mats which grew everywhere. Cley could see these dark algae mottling the carbuncled skin, occasionally puflSng out spores. The grazers slurped up the brown goo and moved on, the cattle of the skies.

             Seeker tried to entice one close to the translucent layer, whirling and grimacing to attract its attention. The vacuum cow turned its slitted dark eyes toward this display. Bovine curiosity brought it closer. Seeker grabbed for it, stretching the tough, waxy wall with its hands and feet. It managed to hang on to the grazer through the thin skin. Grunting and growhng, Seeker was strong enough to pluck the strugghng cow inward against the atmospheric pressure pushing the envelope out.

             For a moment Cley thought Seeker would manage to drag the grazer far enough in to trigger the folding instability and pluck it through. Seeker yelped with tenor joy. But then the vacuum cow spurted steam, wriggled, and jetted away.

             Seeker gnashed its teeth. "Devilish things."

             "Yeah, looked appetizing."

             "They are a great delicacy," Seeker said.

             "Pretty resistant, though."

             When Clay stopped laughing at the expression on Seeker's face she glanced to the side—and was startled to find standing there a human form. But only a form, for this was like nothing she had ever seen.

             The face worked with expression, frowns and smiles and wild flaring eyes, all fidgeting and dissolving. The thing seemed demented. Then she saw that she had been imposing her own need to find expression, impose order. In fact the skittering storms rippled and fought all through the body. Colors and shapes were but passing approximations.

             The form took a tentative step toward Cley. She bit her lip. The body jiggled and warped like a bad image projected on a wobbly screen. But this was no illusion. Its lumpy foot brushed aside a stem as it took another step. The fidgeting skin seemed like a mulatto wash that blurred and shifted as the body moved.

             She realized that she could see through the thing. Plants behind it appeared as flickering images. She heard a slight thrumming as it raised an arm with one smooth unnatural motion, not the hinged pull of muscles at the pivots of shoulder and elbow.

             "Aurrouugh," it said, a sound like stones rattling in a jug.

             "It is imitating you, as it did before," Seeker said.

             "What is it?"

             "The Captain."

             "But—it's—"

             "Not all of the Captain, of course."

             "What does he—does it—want?"

             "I do not know. Often it manifests itself in the form of a new passenger, as a kind of politeness. To learn something it cannot otherwise know."

             The shape said, "Yooou waaanteed by maaaany."

             Cley pursed her lips. "Yes, many want to find me."

             "Yooou musssst lee—vah."

             "I, I can't leave. And why should I?"

             "Daaaanger. To meee."

             "You? What are you?"

             The shape stretched its arms up to encompass all the surrounding growth. Its arms ended in stumps, though momentarily a finger or two would sprout at the ends, flutter, and then ease back into the constant flow of the body.

             "Everything? You're everything?" Cley asked.

             "Wooorld."

             Seeker said, "It is the Leviathan. This composite intelligence directs its many parts and lesser minds."

             Cley gaped. "Every part of it adds to its intelligence?"