Every day, Mere translated a very human account of the expedition, reshaping it into a form with which she might work.

If she had any secret, this was it. Mere was not truly human. Or Tilan, either. Or anything else to which any accepted name could be affixed. She was a species of one. Alone, yet unlonely because of it. Freed because of it. At least that was what she always told her lovers, explaining how they might consider themselves lucky, enjoying this rare, almost singular chance to copulate with what only appeared to be an Earth-made primate.

“I don’t think as other people do.”

“You seem more like one of us,” a long-ago husband observed. From his breathing hole, he joked, “If I was blind and my pricks were numb, I would swear that I was screwing a very tiny harum-scarum.”

“A good screw, I would hope.”

“Hope all you want. You are barely better than my hand.”

“You’re joking,” she told him.

Human beings almost never recognized when harum-scarums were having fun. To humans, everything about Osmium’s species looked like bluster and insults and a thousand battles barely averted.

“My oddness makes you drunk,” Mere told him.

Osmium had to agree.

“My secret,” she began. And then with remarkably little pain, she removed herself from him and pulled his severed prick from her vagina, staunching both of their bloods with a casual hand while a smooth warm and impenetrable voice admitted, “My secret is in my head. And I don’t know what it is.”

THE SCATTERED SHIP continued its long, long plunge.

A thousand times, by various means and with varying levels of intensity, Mere was examined. Light and microwaves danced off the various pieces, and perhaps most of the echoes went unnoticed. Several times, elaborate pulses of energy emerged from the Inkwell, joined with the streakship’s daily signal. Plainly, something was sitting near the ship’s wake, looking back along its trajectory. Hunting for stragglers? Perhaps. But a human conclusion was too tempting, and she firmly resisted the urge. Really, after all of these years of constant work and practiced thought, the polyponds were still a deep mystery, and they were a source of constant, studied pleasure.

Twice at least, probes flew through the middle of her scattered ship.

They were not small machines, and they acted interested. With Mere’s various eyes, she saw mirrored dishes using the last ruddy traces of starlight, staring back at her with an unnerving intensity. But both of the flybys were finished in less than a second, and if anyone felt suspicious, or even simply interested, they would launch a new probe with the opposite trajectory. And until someone or something flew beside her, Mere would cling to her present course.

As Pamir reached his destination, Mere was finally diving into the nebula itself. The tunnel remained open—a well-tended route leading back to the Great Ship. There was nothing unexpected about that. Pamir needed a clean path home, and the polyponds were being nothing but helpful.

One morning, as Mere breakfasted on a whisper of current barely powerful enough to feed a horsefly—as the taste of Tilan fish and earthly seaweeds filled her frozen mouth—she opened her eyes to the outside.

Nothing could be seen.

The blackness was relentless, seamless and ancient and brutally cold. Despite every wise thought and every comfortable platitude, she felt afraid. Her imaginary breath grew tight and slow. Suffocating, she began to doubt everything that she held dear about her own toughness and endurance.

The claustrophobia was awful for a day or two.

In a rare breach of her own rules, Mere medicated her cold mind. Tranquilizers and mood enhancers gave her a false euphoria that allowed her time to prepare for the inevitable.

Who knew this would feel so awful?

She felt ashamed, and sad. For the first time since she was a newborn, Mere struggled with the kind of horrible solitude that would have stunted any soul.

The medications faded.

Gradually, gradually, Mere learned how to look into the dust, noticing glimmers of heat and ropes of energy and odd, slow, and rather large vessels moving patiently from warm body to warm body. From polypond to polypond. What a remarkable and unexpected, odd and oddly beautiful realm.

Finally, something obvious occurred to her.

Could it be?

When Mere felt certain, she sent home the first message in nearly ten years. A carefully encrypted and very quiet message—a few words dressed inside a snarl of ordinary static—was broadcast to the Master Captain and Washen.

“I don’t know yet how the polyponds evolved,” she admitted. “I don’t know if they came from a natural world, or if they were someone’s tool that got loose. But they were not fully sentient until they were here. Inside the Inkwell. Inside all this dust and black.”

A genuine excitement lifted her bare metabolism.

“When they were born … I’m nearly certain about this … when the first polyponds grew self-aware, and for a long time after that, they reasonably assumed they were the only souls in existence, and their home was everything, and that the Creation was blackness without end … !”

Fifteen

“Her clothes are a little bland, I’ll grant you. But everything beneath is beautiful. Gorgeous. Absolutely glorious.” Then with a deep, nearly winded gasp, O’Layle added, “She’s a wondrous, perfect lady. She really is.”

The object of his considerable affections was the Mars-sized sphere dressed in a nearly perfect black. Except in infrared, where she glowed like the final coal in a very old fire.

“Have you ever imagined such a creature?” O’Layle inquired. And then he halfway giggled, underscoring again the simple fact, “That’s what she is. A creature. An organism. A single fully functioning entity. And a lady who happens to be seven thousand kilometers across.”

“It is spectacular,” Quee Lee offered.

“She is,” O’Layle corrected.

“Of course. She.”

Pamir remained silent. Piloting the shuttle was simple enough, three onboard AIs doing the bulk of the work. But he was already tired of the Blue World’s emissary. Better this chore than another tedious and entirely useless conversation with O’Layle. After rechecking their course and insertion site, Pamir glanced back at the streakship, magnifying a patch of the sable sky until he saw a bright fleck still singing “All is well,” with a preset and very precise melody.

“I named her the Blue World.”

Or the polypond simply allowed him to call her that. But Pamir didn’t offer the possibility; cynical thoughts rarely found purchase in souls that believe themselves to be in love.

“She’s excited to meet you,” O’Layle claimed.

Quee Lee nodded, replying, “We are thrilled to meet her.”

A third of the streakship’s crew was crammed inside the tiny shuttle. The mood was complex, ever-shifting. Excitement bled into a nervous energy that would suddenly drain away, leaving everyone suspicious, even paranoid. Then as the mood drifted back to optimism—as the first smiles reemerged—O’Layle would make a fresh declaration or an exponential promise. Without obviously intending it, he would chum up the excitements and doubts all over again.

“Before her,” he said, “I had never believed this would happen to me.”

Perri rose to the bait. “What would happen?”

O’Layle winked and grinned. “An alien for a lover. Really, I never dreamed that I could stomach it. Much less enjoy the experience.”

Pamir glanced at the idiot.

Misreading that simple expression, the man said, “You don’t know, Submaster Pamir. None of you can. What she accomplishes as a lover … you have no idea what her affections can achieve …”

“I have a good imagination,” Pamir replied.