**You don’t recognise me, do you, Harij?**

Seeker had no good way to respond to that.

**What do you mean?**

**We were in Mistress Ahn’s class together. Or is that gone too?**

For a frowning moment, it seemed Seeker might pull back something from the past, some trace remanence encoding a memory; then it slipped from him, was lost.

**I’m sorry.**

**Ah, Harij . . . I’m Zirkana.**

Reflected moonlight flowed upon her flawless polished skin. She smiled, and Seeker could not help smiling back.

**You never really noticed me back then, Harij. Do you mind if . . . If I call you that? At least when others are not around.**

The question shimmered with implications that Seeker did not want to examine too closely.

**You can call me that, yes. Would you like to look around the project?**

**And to find a place on it. A way to help.**

Perhaps her inner excitement, resonating to make him feel the same, was half-driven by the hunger for new Ideas; but there was more to it than that, undeniably, as mutual induction caused Seeker’s and Zirkana’s flux to mirror each other, no longer strangers, despite having just met.

**This way.**

As they walked, he held out his hand, and she took it, silver in silver; and they continued on, rendered by moonlight into a single shining form.

On the ninth night after Zirkana’s arrival, Kolarin’s team dug through to the long-buried hull: a huge success following sustained effort. In the meantime, Zirkana had found a job with the project manager, Starij, helping him with his massive workload. During the days she slept in the single women’s cavern: like the other shelters, something of a trudge from the excavation site, but protected.

At night, before and after work, Seeker kept her company.

**You always dreamed of Seeking, Harij. And now you do.**

Her private cast possessed a melancholy tinge, but how could he regret forgotten desires? Especially when they were nevertheless fulfilled in present reality.

And then, the breakthrough.

**Everyone back!**

The warning cast, ferociously strong, came from Kolarin at the central dig: flux whirling through the air in response to collapsing ferrimagnetic sand, but instead of disaster, it brought the final uncovering of the hull, previously revealed trowel-stroke by careful trowel-stroke.

That ancient hull was a dull grey-green, marked with paler excrement-like streaks. Once, many generations ago, it had shone a lustrous dark green with glistening white bands, sailing the heaven void; now it was a relic, its crew long dead, but perhaps their Ideas might still be unearthed.

Stolid Starij and lean Kolarin grinned and clapped each other’s shoulders. The volunteer diggers were smiling and laughing, while trying not to cause too much disturbance, because this remained a fragile dig.

Triumph, right enough.

**It’s there. It’s really there.**

Zirkana and Seeker embraced each other, glad of the public excuse.

Overhead, the black-webbed disc of Magnus shone down upon metal that had known only darkness and extinction for so very long: longer than anyone here could calculate.

And yet, and yet . . .

Every lifeless desert, given unexpected moisture, is capable of blossoming almost in an instant, as if ancient life can always find a way to remain dormant in shelter, waiting indefinitely for the environment to alter, at which point everything will change.

The next night, another Seeker joined them. This was the man whom Seeker-once-Harij had saved from alien corruption. Seeker-once-captive had been trapped by invaders, the crew from another spacegoing ship, destroyed in a vortex storm. They had been of two varieties, those demons: some looking very human, yet lacking silver skins – their softness repulsive – while others were metallic and winged, but refusing to venture far out of their ship, as if the world’s air were toxic to them.

Most abominably, the creatures were conjoined as single mentality. A blue glow had accompanied their absorption of Seeker-once-captive; but when the flux-storm fell, Seeker-once-Harij harnessed its energy, desperately retaining inductive control, severing the captors’ link. At the time, as the two Seekers crawled away beneath the storm, they scarcely perceived the captor-demons’ fear and shock; but later, it seemed obvious that no one had ever before freed a trapped individual from their collective, composite self.

Their ship, already damaged, had crashed and exploded when trying to take off inside the storm. Such wreckage as remained was unapproachable, permeated with wild flux likely to wipe minds, much as had been done in the past to Seeker-once-Harij, erasing his former identity: this he under stood without remembering.

Now, the two Seekers clasped forearms in greeting. Then Seeker-once-Harij introduced Zirkana to Seeker-once-captive, who responded:

**You resonate well together, you and this hero who rescued me.**

Zirkana smiled, while Seeker-once-Harij grew mottled with embarrassment.

Kolarin came up, greeting Seeker-once-captive, who had visited before. Together, the four of them went to examine the unearthed section of ancient hull. Everyone kept their flux resonance tightly controlled, because the Ideas trapped deep inside the vessel might be fragile, prone to easy collapse.

Truly, it seemed impossible that so much remained intact. The ancients had possessed incredible engineering capability.

Now, someone spun the tocsin-coil to announce the end of shift. Time to get under shelter before the dawn. Back inside the main communal cavern, they sat together at one of the long tables, drinking mycomilk and discussing the unknown mysteries trapped within the ancients’ ship.

Two nights earlier, at just such a time, Kolarin had reminisced about his dead wife Ilara; later, Zirkana had disturbed Seeker-once-Harij by asking whether he remembered his own Ilara, his sister. Of course he could not; he did not understand how Zirkana would ask such a question. But then they had embraced, and the past ceased to matter.

Now Seeker-once-captive shared a free-floating partial Idea he had captured nearby:

** . . . flowmetal arrays governed by quantum resonance effects induced by successive ‘sequential observation’ manipulation by programmed smartatoms. Addressed femtatomic eigenvalue storage with cross-qutrit resonant entanglement is fashioned into memory and logic gates. Furthermore, any correctly aligned induction, any signal at all, can be used during emergency bootstrap procedures, since it is modality more than content that verifies the signal’s provenance.**

Zirkana thought it was too complicated to understand without some kind of context. But Seeker-once-Harij touched her shoulder – love-hysteresis swept through them both – and gave his suggestion.

**It’s an echo of something inside the old ship. Don’t you sense the flavour?**

All four looked at each other, then Kolarin cast:

**Perhaps it defines an emergency procedure. Something that works without exact wording, for use by panicking passengers.**

The Idea talked about modality being more important than content. But if it referred to a ship’s operation—

Seeker-once-Harij swallowed, scarcely believing his own hopeful thought.

**Something like opening a door?**

Could the ancient vessel really be intact with regard to more than superstructure? Might it even respond to flux commands?

Zirkana took hold of his hand.

**The sun is nearly up.**

**But if we hurry . . .**

It was dangerous, but none of them could hide their emotional intent. Just a quick look, to see if they might generate a response. Very quick, and then they could hurry back to shelter without getting burnt.