I wasn’t just an empty ship after all.

A few of the captains journeyed to Marrow, in secret. There they were marooned, and with the scarce resources on hand, they built an entirely new civilization. Then over the course of the next centuries they lost control of everything they had built. Their children and grandchildren spoke of Builders and the Bleak. One was worshiped, the other loathed. But which was which? Who gave them visions and faith? What power born at the beginning of the universe was responsible, telling the self-named Waywards to climb up to the Great Ship and take back what had always been theirs … ?

There was a swift and devastating war, and my voice suddenly fell silent.

The Waywards’ conquest failed—just by a little ways, it collapsed—and the worst of my newest wounds were repaired. But my proud and loud and long-reaching voice remained silent. My carefully plotted course through the galaxy had been changed. Passing near an aging sun, then its sister, a massive black hole, my trajectory was twisted, sending me plunging on a course that in just a few thousand years would carry me out of the Milky Way, back into the cold, empty reaches of space.

With my other tongues gone, I could hear my true voice again.

Warnings whispered to me.

Urges tugged, too subtle for anyone else to feel.

Fear lay in my bones. My fear, or another’s? I didn’t know. I didn’t dare guess. Out of wisdom or simple exhaustion—is there any difference?—I decided not to make distinctions.

Anyone’s fear means there could well be a reason to be scared.

I have always been, as I am now. Terrified. And I shall always be this way, I imagine.

One

“So where is this holy site?” Pamir asked.

The two of them had just emerged from an unmarked cap-car. Washen paused, bright black eyes fighting the glare of a sun that was not real. “Out on the rocks,” she reported, gesturing at a long spine of basalt that reached into the blue sea. She was a tall and elegant woman, and lovely, and her smile was quick and full of a shackled but genuine pride. “The chairs are waiting for us.”

“I see them fine, but that’s not what I’m asking.”

“What’s your question?”

“Your original home,” Pamir explained, impatience lurking in his rough, low voice. “You’ve only mentioned it a few thousand times. We’re close enough to walk. Since we have time, maybe you could show me your childhood abode.”

Why not? thought Washen.

Yet for the next moment or two, she fumbled for her bearings. Centuries had passed since her last visit, and the city had changed its appearance in her absence. Entire streets had been moved or repaved, and the buildings surrounding them were either remodeled or obliterated. Unless, of course, everything was exactly the same as her last visit, and she was simply being forgetful. After more than a thousand centuries of life, not even the brightest person, on her finest day, could remember more than a fraction of everything she had seen and everything that she had done.

The easy response to the confusion was to ask a buried nexus for an address and map. But Washen resisted the temptation, and after waiting for an inspiration that never quite arrived, she started to walk, leading her companion along a likely avenue while hoping it would lead to the correct hilltop.

The cavern surrounding them was a modest-sized bubble tucked inside a vein of black basalt, strands and girders of buried hyperfiber holding the ceiling and distant walls securely in place. When first mapped by the survey teams, this entire volume was filled with water ice dirtied with nitrogen frost and veins of methane. Because of the cavern’s relatively small dimensions—barely a thousand kilometers long and half as wide at its widest—and because it was close to the ship’s bridge and Port Alpha, this was among the first habitats to be terraformed. Coaxing half a dozen nearby reactors out of their ancient sleep, the engineering corps had gradually warmed the ice to where it was an obedient, if still chilled, fluid. Then the cavern was drained. As an experiment, every drop of fluid was filtered twice and analyzed with an array of sensors, and like everywhere else on board the ship, not a single credible trace of past life was uncovered. The water was far from pure. In the ancient ice were traces of minerals and salts and a few molecules of simple organics. But missing were the telltale fragments of lipid membranes, the persistent twists of DNA or RNA, or any cell that could not be tied directly to any human being or one of her escaped bacteria.

Giant pumps and siphons were scattered throughout the ship, presumably intended for this one function. With a command, the machines began lifting the water back into the cavern, and when it was half-filled, the engineers stopped the pumping and sealed the drainage holes. Other teams began tinkering with the environmental controls, establishing a day-and-night cycle and a sequence of seasons, modeling a climate that was dubbed Mediterranean. The new ocean was salted just enough, then laced with iron. A bright blue sky was painted with holo projectors, and at night, blackness and a scattering of ancient constellations wheeled overhead. Then an array of simple microbes and planktons was released in the wind, and the rare patches of flat ground were slathered with black soils made from hydrocarbon stocks. Fish and squid were pulled from arks originally brought from Earth, rugged oaks and olive trees grew on the black shores, and a tidy few species of birds suddenly seemed to be everywhere. The ship’s first city was built on this ground, housing the engineers and other crew members who had come on the starships. Twenty-two other patches of ground and shallow water were designated for future settlements. But even after more than a thousand centuries, only half of those planned cities had so much as a few houses standing on the reserved sites. The ship’s enormity had absorbed the vast bulk of development. With more caverns than passengers, why not live in your own private paradise? Besides, since this was the first little corner of the ship to be terraformed, people better suited to repairing starship engines had done the hurried work. Every other sea seemed more elegant or beautiful or odd or special. At least that was the snobbish opinion carried by most of the passengers. But not Washen. She had grown up along this rocky black shoreline. Even now, uncertain about her bearings, she found it very easy to remember sweet moments and those long, long days when she was a child in a world with very few children, busily living her life in what was the Great Ship’s finest city.

The rising avenue was a wide lane, basalt pavers set in the traditional quasi-crystal pattern, red buckyfiber mortars pressed between them, and the lane was lined with stout oak trees that might be two hundred years old, or twenty thousand. To the left, the blue sea quietly rolled into the rocks and the increasingly high cliffs. On their right, houses and little businesses created the comfortable mood of a genuine neighborhood. The occasional resident saw Washen and Pamir passing, and too late, they would emerge into the dappled light. Had they really seen whom they thought they saw? Were these the two captains who had defeated the Waywards? Word spread up ahead and along the tributary lanes. Humans and other species hurried outdoors, waiting to see the spectacle of two people dressed in their mirrored uniforms, walking side by side up the most average of streets. No one could believe her luck. Were they holo projections? No, apparently not. One fearless little boy approached, showing a big smile before asking, “Are you really the First Chair, madam?”