“The aliens paid enough,” the woman replied testily. “In empty worlds, in technologies. In those things cherished by monkeys.”

The Submaster made a rude sound with his eating mouth.

Another woman used a nexus, and with a sudden expertise, she attacked his question. “Their home world was old and stable, and very simple,” she explained. “Organic rain fed a few species of plankton that fed the jellyjells. There were no other multicellular species in their universe. Until they moved into space, they never interacted with other species, much less anything intelligent. They barely imagined creatures such as us were possible, much less important.”

“They have some difficulties in their past,” Osmium allowed. “Feuds. Long wars. And ugly extinctions for certain rivals.”

His little audience glanced down the avenue.

With a gesture both fond and self-conscious, Osmium touched his uniform. “You don’t appreciate this. Until you stand inside one of these mirrored suits, you are powerless to understand: Every day, the captains must decide what is best for the ship. Every moment, small and mammoth choices are made. What passengers do we allow aboard? And which species are turned away? Who is too dangerous or too demanding, or too disruptive, or simply too hard to judge fairly?” His broad armored hand floated above its own reflection, fingers and thumbs slowly closing into a jagged fist. “A species offers us a fortune to come on board, but will that be enough? As a captain, I must consider that difficult question. And always, my first loyalty is to the Great Ship.”

The others stirred uneasily. Did their old friend mean what he said? Incredible as it seemed, they couldn’t smell duplicity or any other politics at work.

“A strange and potentially dangerous species approaches me. I am offered worlds and technologies and everything else that I deem valuable. But will I place my ship and passengers in jeopardy by accepting these newcomers?”

Quietly, he asked, “To whom do I turn?”

Then with a flash of humor, he said, “Mere,” and opened his fist, the big hand dropping into his lap.

“You don’t realize this,” he assured. “But that creature who was just sitting here … she is genuinely famous among the ranks of the captains.” Osmium looked at each of their doubting faces. “Famous, and highly respected, too.”

“What does the little monster do?” asked the woman.

“With jellyjells … with a wide assortment of species, cold and hot … she goes to live among them for a long while …”

“Ah,” said another woman. “An emissary.”

“Hardly,” Osmium countered. “Diplomats travel in full view. As emissaries, they meet with officials and queens, tyrants and presidents. What they see is what they are shown, and if they are very talented, they see a little more. But telling the captains, ‘We can absorb this new species’ … well, that’s not their responsibility or their burden, or at least it shouldn’t be …”

“She’s a scientist,” a young man speculated. “Some kind of cultural exobiologist, I would think.”

“Again, hardly.” His eating mouth spat another foul sound, and at the same moment, he explained, “Thousands of years ago, riding inside a shielded and very swift little ship, Mere visited the jellyjells’ home world. To breed, they lay eggs on shallow ridges under the methane. In secret, she studied their breeding and the eggs, then the creatures that hatched from the eggs. When the babies were old enough, and important enough, she created a duplicate of one of them, inserting her own shielded and heavily insulated mind into the new body, and like the rest of her litter mates, she slowly swam out into the great cold sea.”

Disgust and fascination held sway over his little audience.

“They are a physically slow species,” he reminded them. “It took her contrived body several centuries to mature. Yet because she knew how to act and how to speak, Mere avoided detection and serious suspicion.” With a mocking laugh, he asked, “How many of you would live just one day in those circumstances? Bathed in liquid methane. Your bodies so much slime reaching out to harvest the thin crop of plankton. A minute of that life, and which one of us wouldn’t go mad?”

No one spoke.

“Mere lived among the jellyjells,” he continued, “and when the time came, she slipped back to her hidden ship. She returned to the Great Ship. The Master Captain’s original First Chair, the old bitch Miocene, didn’t want any part of these aliens. The expert arguments about the jellyjells described them as treacherous xenophobes with a capacity for murdering entire species. But despite every smart warning and all the rational fears, Mere managed to convince the Master Captain that these cold creatures had learned and matured, becoming flexible enough and confident enough to dress up in a cold little pond and go for a roll down a public avenue.”

The faces began to look at one another, plainly impressed.

But Osmium wasn’t satisfied. With a steady, level voice, he listed several dozen species, famous and obscure, that Mere had lived among and who were aboard today because her respected voice had said, “Trust them.”

If this was true, the variety of monsters that she had lived with was astonishing. Spectacular, and numbing.

Then the Submaster offered a shorter list of species. When the angry woman admitted that she didn’t know those names, he replied, “Of course. Mere lived with them, too. Lived as them, on occasion. And she found good compelling reasons to refuse them passage.”

“A talented little creature,” one of the men conceded.

“But why her?” another man asked. “Among the multitude of humans, how did she gain this rare talent?”

“That,” Osmium replied, “is quite a story.”

“Stop,” the angry woman interrupted. “Before you tell the story—”

“If I tell it,” he warned.

“First, I want to know something else. Now.”

The Submaster waited with a keen anticipation.

“You’ve been a captain for barely twelve decades,” she pointed out. “You’re still learning your own little job, and I doubt if you know much about the history of your new profession. Which makes me wonder why you are the expert. Where did you learn about a creature that the rest of us didn’t hear about until today?”

With both of his mouths, Osmium smiled.

Then with a deep and honest pleasure, he explained, “Before you were born … before any of you were prophecies written on your parents’ seed … I spent a few happy centuries as the husband of that strange little human being …”

Seven

As a boy, Locke had always been quiet and thoughtful. The only child produced by two of the most ambitious captains, he had inherited something about their appearance and a blend of their keen intelligence but nothing of their innate desire to lead others. On a diet of Marrow nuts and grilled insects, he had grown into a moderate-sized young man, healthy in every measurable way, but distinctly and forever different. He was strong and smoothly graceful. He had his father’s eyes, busy and bright and always intense. He had much of his mother’s face and seamless confidence. But he had absolutely no interest in controlling any group or manipulating any cause, no matter how worthwhile. After much consideration, his mother had decided that it wasn’t an absence of ability; genetic shuffling hadn’t stolen away any inborn talent, and he didn’t lack for an education in the art of inspiring other souls. No, it was simply that Locke easily saw great and noble causes that to others, including his parents, were abstract and perhaps a little questionable—ethereal realms where dream and theory danced together along chains of infinite and infinitely perplexing equations.

As a young man, Locke fell in love with the Waywards’ beliefs. One of their major tenets was that in the remote past, when the universe was tiny and young, there were the Builders who created the Great Ship, and the Bleak who had tried to steal it. Then both died away, for a time. The universe was left as a sterile realm, expanding outward, with the ship wandering through the deepest, coldest reaches of space. Then the Bleak were reincarnated, and they found the ship and took it for themselves. Humans were the Bleak, claimed the Waywards. Unless of course you happened to be one of the humans conceived on Marrow, which made you into the Builders reborn, and how could it not be your duty and sole purpose to reclaim the Great Ship, taking it for yourself and your magnificent ancestors?