“Their name comes from their origins, I believe,” says O’Layle. “Although they don’t seem quite sure about where they came from. And from what I gather, they don’t seem to care much about the subject.”

O’Layle hesitates, probably feeling his house rocking on the water as she approaches.

She kneels behind him, and with a warm strong voice tells her distant audience, “Welcome to you, my friends.”

Her long legs straighten, stretching forward, one lying on each side of the little web-chair.

With an ease that looks utterly natural, O’Layle climbs off the chair and leaps backward, his swatch of clothing clinging tight as the woman’s broad pale belly absorbs his impact. Stretched out as far as possible, his bare feet lie near her hips. And when he throws back his head, flashing a smile at the universe, he uses one of the vast breasts as a pillow.

“What do you make of this?” the Master Captain asks her nearest officers. “Tell me. First impressions.”

I try to speak, but no one hears me.

Washen glances at the others, and then her eyes return to the rest of the brief, dense message. The only Submaster who actually gives an opinion is a harum-scarum. With an easy paranoia, Osmium pointed out, “This is simple biology. Make yourself bigger than your rivals, and you win every fight.”

Again, I try to offer my little thoughts.

“It’s a stupid strategy,” the harum-scarum declares. “If it wasn’t, we’d all be a thousand kilometers tall!”

Washen smiles knowingly.

But the Master says what many are thinking:

“How can we be sure they aren’t that tall?” Then with a light bitter bite, she laughs louder than anyone else.

Eleven

There was no particular point where a mark had been crossed, no precise hour or moment when they could confidently tap ceremonial bulbs of bright liquor against one another, crystal ringing in warm hands as they congratulated themselves for breaching a barrier and entering an entirely new realm. Even the ship’s AI held no consistent opinion about when they had reached the Inkwell—and that from a stubborn entity with views on every imaginable subject. They were still months removed from the nebula, slicing across seemingly empty space, when their maneuvering rockets began firing every few minutes. Stripped of every gram of excess mass, the streakship had been left with more grace than armor. Smoke-sized particles of dust could be absorbed by the hyperfiber prow, but only for a time. Lasers were used to erode or shove aside anything larger than a grain of sand. But giant hazards—pebbles and whole comets—were best avoided entirely. The same lasers flooded the space ahead with picosecond bursts of light, and the AI watched for the spectral reflections of lurking carbon and frigid ice. At a fat fraction of lightspeed, there was barely enough time to see everything and react appropriately. But by the same token, the streakship was narrow and lean, and auxiliary rockets no bigger than a thumb could be fired anywhere along its hull, giving it one or a hundred useful nudges. The nudges were what the passengers noticed. When several rockets fired in tandem, the ship gave a little shiver, the cumulative vibrations slipping through the hull. Shove the streakship’s trajectory a few millimeters now, and they would eventually miss the hazard by thousands of kilometers. But every new trajectory revealed more little motes and goblins waiting in ambush. Plus there was the fierce, uncompromising need to hold to their essential course. Every correction demanded an equal countercorrection, and every brief firing of the tiniest rocket meant consequences that had to be measured, then erased by a sleepless machine designed for this narrow job, bringing with it an intellectual clarity, a wealth of experience, and a numbing and shameless pride.

“I am not the Elassia,” the machine liked to boast.

Pamir usually clamped his mouth shut, saying nothing.

“With me,” it would purr, “you wouldn’t have died between the stars.”

Ages ago, while he still felt like a young man, Pamir had served on board a far more primitive starship. The Elassia had collided with a hunk of comet, everyone aboard killed in a single fiery instant. But luck and a predictable course meant that Pamir’s remains were discovered eventually. Enough of his mind survived to fill the rebuilt body, and the tragedy as well as his own incredible luck had given him a certain lingering fame.

The AI knew the Elassia’s story, and it knew Pamir. The boasts were bait. It loved to tease the ship’s captain, pointing out all of its laudable features as well as the rapid, unconscious brilliance that it brought to this vital undertaking.

“From ten light-hours out,” it claimed, “I could fly us through a barn door.”

What a peculiar expression. Pamir’s first instinct was to consult the library. His second instinct was to ask the AI for an explanation. But the best response was to do nothing. With a conspicuous indifference, Pamir drifted into the middle of his tiny cabin, busily preparing both of the day’s routine messages.

“Through the barn door,” the voice continued, “and in another ten light-hours, I could slip us under the Arch of the Accord.”

An old Martian sculpture, Pamir recalled. But he remained focused on his own uninspired work. An unbroken telemetry stream was being maintained with home, but a more thorough report was dispatched every twenty-four hours, encrypted and launched inside a pulse of infrared laser light. The routine was perfectly normal in these kinds of missions. What was unusual was the second message, considerably shorter and more heavily encrypted: a soft whisper, in essence; a few words offered to a closer set of ears.

“I am a marvel of design and hard experience,” the AI remarked.

It was, and it was. But why repeat what everybody knew full well? With a lazy indifference, Pamir stretched his long back and told the ship, “Send out the dailies, now.”

“This marvel shall,” said the AI.

And then, “I have.”

“Thank you.”

An instant later, Pamir heard what sounded like a burst of rain against a distant roof. They were still five light-weeks removed from what might or might not be the edge of the Inkwell. But there were more hazards every day—nearly invisible twists of grit with the occasional thumb-sized shard of ice. Quietly, Pamir asked, “Is it only dust?”

“To the best of my considerable knowledge, it is. Nothing but.”

“Show me a sampling,” he persisted. “Five hundred spectrum, spread across the last ninety minutes.”

The data were delivered in an instant.

Again, the AI mentioned, “I am perhaps the finest vessel ever built.”

Finally, Pamir took the bait. With a grimace and a slow smile, he asked, “What about the Great Ship?”

“Slow and fat,” the AI replied.

“Vast and safe,” Pamir countered. “Ancient and marvelous. Mysterious and polite.”

“Polite?”

“Silent,” he joked.

Again, the sound of rain drifted inward, coming this time from a different portion of the hull. And then moments later, there was a rattling roar directly in front of Pamir. With a grim little smile, he muttered, “I understand.”

Silence.

“I know what you’re feeling,” Pamir continued, using an insight he had carried for the last few weeks. “Don’t try to fool me. Because you can’t.”

“What do I feel?” asked a doubtful voice.

“Afraid.”

Silence.

“We’re diving into blackness,” said Pamir. “Faster than anyone should, we’re going to race toward a world you can barely see through all this nastiness. The Master sends us charts, and the polyponds give you advice. But everything you receive from them is weeks out of date, and the charts never quite agree with one another. Which is reasonable, considering the limits of everyone’s sensors. And you’re responsible for more than any sentient soul would wish to be. Our lives. Your own existence. The fate of billions, perhaps. And just maybe, the survival of a giant machine that might be as old as the universe.”