After the tastings, they talk or play cards, or recite poems they have memorized, or even make up on the spot. Badim collects people he likes, Freya can see that. Devi mostly sits quietly in the corner and sips a glass of white wine without ever finishing it. She used to play cards with them, but one time Song asked her to read their tarot cards, and Devi refused. I don’t do that anymore, she said firmly. I was too good at it. Which caused a silence. Since that incident she doesn’t play any card games with them. She did still make card houses on the kitchen floor, however, when they were home alone.

Now, on this evening, Aram says he has memorized a new poem, and he stands and closes his eyes to recite it:

“How happy is the little stone

That rambles in the road alone,

And doesn’t care about careers

And exigencies never fears—

Whose coat of elemental brown

A passing universe put on,

And independent as the sun

Associates or glows alone,

Fulfilling absolute decree

In casual simplicity—”

“Isn’t that good?” he says.

Badim says, “Yes,” at the same time that Devi says, “I don’t get it.”

The others laugh at them. This combination of responses happens fairly often.

“It’s us,” Aram says. “The ship. It’s always us, in Dickinson.”

“If only!” Devi says. “Exigencies never fears? Casual simplicity? No. Definitely not. We are definitely not a little stone in the road. I wish we were.”

“Here’s one,” Badim says quickly. “Another one from Bronk, Emily’s little brother:

“However it did it, life got us to where we are

And we are servants and subjects under its laws,

In its many armies, draftees and generals.

Outraged sometimes, we think of ways out,

Of taking over, a military coup.

Apart from absurdities on the surface of that,

Could we ever be free from our own tyrannies?

As slack soldiers, we re-up and evade the rules.”

“Ouch,” Devi says. “That one I understand. Now make a couplet out of it.”

This is another game they play. Badim goes first, as usual.

“Against our lives we would like to rebel,

But we worry that then it would all go to hell.”

Aram smiles his little smile, shakes his head. “A bit doggerel,” he suggests.

“Okay, you do better,” Badim says. The two men like to tease each other.

Aram thinks for a while, then stands and declaims,

“We like to blame life for the problems we make,

We threaten to change, but it’s always a fake;

We bitch and moan that everything’s wrong,

Then we get right back to getting along.”

Badim smiles, nods. “Okay, that’s almost twice as good.”

“But it was twice as long!” Freya protests.

Badim grins. Then Freya gets it, and laughs with them.

The next time Euan and his little gang approach Freya in the park, she picks up a rock and holds it clenched in her hand in a way he can see.

“You guys aren’t really feral,” she tells them. “Your little hole in the ground, what a joke. We’re all chipped, they do it when you’re a baby. The ship knows where we are every second, no matter how you try to hide.”

Euan still looks foxy, even with his mouth clean. “Want to see my chip scar? It’s on my butt!”

“No,” Freya says. “What do you mean?”

“We take the chips out. You have to do it if you want to join us. We’ll put your chip on a dog in your building, and by the time they figure it out, you’ll be long gone. They’ll never find you again.” He grins hugely. He knows she’ll never do it. He himself hasn’t done it, she sees that.

She shakes her head. “Big talk for a little boy! The first time they catch you off leash and check who you are, you’ll be cooked.”

“That’s right. We have to be careful.”

“So why are you talking to me?”

“I don’t think you’ll tell anyone.”

“Already told my father. He’s on the security council.”

“And?”

“He doesn’t think you’re a problem.”

“We’re not a problem. We don’t want to break anything. We just want to be free.”

“Good luck with that.” She’s thinking of Devi now, how what her mother gets maddest about is the idea that they’re all trapped, no matter what they do. “I don’t want to leave where I am.”

He stares at her, grinning his foxy grin. “There’s a lot more going on in this ship than you think there is. Come with us and you’ll see. Once your chip is gone you can do a lot. You don’t have to leave forever, not at first anyway. You could just come along and see. So it’s not really an either-or.” And with a final smirk he runs off, and his friends follow him.

She’s glad she was holding the rock.

Mysteries abound. Every answer provokes ten more questions. So many things change exponentially, as they are teaching her again in school now. Shift one dot just one spot, but it’s ten times bigger, or littler. Apparently this is another case of that deceptive logarithmic power: one answer, ten new questions.

What she is finding strange is that this silly Euan’s version of what is going on in the ship sort of fits with things that Badim and Devi say, and even explains some things her parents never talk about. Well, but there are so many things they have never told her. What is she, some kind of child who has to be protected? It irritates her. She is considerably taller than either Devi or Badim.

Then she spends another stretch of days in the crèche, trying and failing to learn the geometry lesson for the week, over and over, and Devi too distracted to take her along to work, even on their regular days. So the next time Euan and his friends Huang and Jalil confront her in the park, she looks for a rock on the ground, can’t find one, bunches her fists and swells up to them, and is indeed much taller than any of them, and when Euan invites her to go with them into the closed section of the park, the wilderness where the wild animals live, one of the places where the ferals hide, she agrees to go. She wants to see it.

She follows them up into a long narrow valley that seams the hills west of Long Pond, a valley closed to people by electrified fences running along the ridgelines and across the valley’s gorge of a mouth. There’s a gate in this fence of white lines running knob to knob on trees, and Euan has the code to the lockpad on the gate. Quickly they’re inside and up the valley on what might be an animal trail. The trail goes up the valley, next to a creek. They see a deer in the distance, its head up, looking to the side but regarding them cautiously, tail high off its rump.

Then there is a shout, and the boys all disappear, and quicker than Freya can quite follow things she is being held by the arms by two big men, and marched back down to the gate. They are taking her back into town when Devi shows up and grabs Freya by the arm and drags her off. The men are surprised, confused, and as soon as they are out of sight Devi pulls her around and down so their faces are only centimeters apart, amazingly strong her hands, and Freya can see the whites of her eyes all the way around the irises, as if her eyes are about to pop out of her head as she shouts in a harsh, grinding voice, a voice tearing out of her insides, “Don’t ever mess with the ship! Not ever! Do you understand?”

And then Badim is pulling her away, trying to get between them, but Devi holds on hard to Freya’s forearm.