The First Chair stepped into the chamber.

What was tiny on every official map was surprisingly large to the eye. The chamber was a hundred meters across, and someone other than the fef had positioned the bright lights and changed the air to approximate earthly tastes. Wearing rubber bodies and archaic clothes, the AIs sat on convenient rises and knolls, ignoring the sharp, mirror-bright edges. Locke was the only figure sitting on a flat surface, legs crossed and the remains of a dried hammerwing in his lap. With a charming little smile, he asked, “Are they growing impatient?”

“A little,” his mother allowed. “They have their hyperfiber ready to pour. In case you want to be entombed here for all time.”

Some of the more literal-minded AIs did the lightspeed equivalent of a flinch. Then everyone was laughing, and with an easy amiability, one of the rubber bodies jumped to its feet.

“We shall leave,” the AI announced.

“But first,” said Washen. And when everyone was staring at her, she asked, “Why here? What does this place tell you?”

“It was my idea,” Locke confessed.

She wasn’t surprised.

“A different realm to jog our creativity,” reported the standing AI. The face was female and wrinkled, like the sages in ancient times. But the voice was young like a child’s. “We have questions to consider, puzzles to solve.”

“New questions?” Washen inquired.

“From a new vantage point,” the machine replied, “every question is new and intriguing.”

Locke was climbing to his feet. A tiny Wayward pouch lay beside him, and as he reached for the leather straps, his mother saw something familiar.

“May I?” she asked.

He pretended not to understand. And then he considered refusing her request, or at least asking her if he possessed that freedom. But no, he decided to hand over the tightly folded copperwing. And like every son sensitive to a mother’s opinion, he mentioned again, “These are simple, obvious questions.”

“I know.”

“Things to consider.”

“Quiet,” Washen advised.

When she held the copperwing in her hands, her hands shook. Washen noticed the shaking with amusement, and she found herself taking a couple deep breaths before unfolding what had already become old and threadbare.

By hand, Locke had written his questions, starting at one edge of the rounded wing and working down.

“Does the Great Ship have a destination?” he had written. “And if so, did human beings screw things up when they took it for themselves?”

Washen’s face went rigid, showing the tiniest nod.

“Is the ship supposed to be going somewhere specific?” Locke asked aloud, with a quiet little voice.

“What could be its destination?” she read aloud. “And does it involve the prisoner at the center of Marrow?”

She read, “Or is the ship making a flight of escape instead? And if so, have humans screwed that up?”

She looked at her son.

Locke said nothing, a wary grin trying to hide.

She read more questions. There were dozens of them, and as promised, nothing was authentically new here. How many times had she rolled these same matters around in her head? But in the course of a busy year, Washen didn’t invest more than the occasional dreamy moment considering these impregnable, unmanageable mysteries.

“What if the Great Ship began its voyage on course?” Locke had written on a later date. The letters were clearer, the ink showing a hint of shine that was peculiar to the juice of a berryblack. “And what if its trajectory had been distorted by the moon-sized bolide?”

She looked up again.

“Good question,” was her verdict. “Is that why you’re down here? For inspiration?”

Locke flashed a smile.

“There’s more,” he mentioned. “Flip the wing over.”

With respect for the long-dead appendage, she turned the wing with careful hands.

“If the Great Ship was off course,” she read aloud, “could we humans and the Wayward War be part of some grand plan? And what if this grand plan has managed to put the ship back on the right road again?”

She nodded, and breathed.

Then she read the final lines, twice:

“And what if the Great Ship has spent the last billions of years fleeing someone or something?

“What if that something has been pursuing it all this time?

“And if there is a pursuer out there—if, if, if—then how much harm have we humans done, forcing the Ship to change its trajectory, forcing it to follow a lazy, looping course through the milky waters of our galaxy?”

THE INKWELL

A multitude of specialists have tailored my newest voice. Utilizing oceans of experience as well as some considerable guesswork, they make me sound humble yet competent, harmless but enduring. In a hard whisper of microwave noise and infrared light, I show the nebula that I am very nearly nothing. A fleck. A dot. Little more than a mathematical point occupying an endlessly shifting position in space, passing quietly without complaint or important needs. My trajectory is nothing but a mistake, and I confess to being an inconvenience for whoever lives inside the cold black nebula. For this, I am sorry. Using images and the languages of the nearby worlds, I build a vocabulary I display a grammatical logic and then libraries of elaborate and honest explanations. I am a ship. A civilian vessel, I carry passengers and nothing else. Not mentioning Marrow or my ill-defined cargo is not a lie so much as a reasonable omission. How can I know exactly what resides inside my own belly? In countless ways, I am apologetic. This detour is not my plan, and I wish to make amends. In the course of traversing a great portion of our galaxy, I have managed to learn a few things. If I must pay some fee to cross their space, I will. Gladly, I will. Knowledge is my first and best currency. The cumulative experience of many thousands of species rides inside my halls and great rooms. For any distraction and discomfort brought my passage, I will be generous. “What do you wish?” I ask the darkness. “I am listening, I am here. Tell me what you need and what you deserve, and I will happily give these good things to you, in exchange for my unavoidable presence.”

It is a whimpering voice and hopefully useful. But there are moments and days when I change the tenor of my speech. Following a carefully prepared script, I show hints of other faces. Other moods. I seem tiny compared to the universe, yes, but I am also ancient and uncommonly strong. The dust and ice of the nebula are not hazards for me. Not only will I cross the blackness in a matter of decades. I will come out the other side enriched My shields can gather whatever raw material serves me. My lasers will obliterate whatever cold objects lie in my path. And if need be, I can ignite my glorious engines, changing my trajectory with power enough to move entire worlds.

Quietly, I ask the nebula for help in making my passage.

Less quietly I imply that I need little help. My requests are out of politeness and according to the standard laws of the galaxy. I am a citizen of something infinitely larger than any little cloud of gas and ash. I don’t say it in words, in images or mathematics, but brazen implications swim beneath some of my communications.

To the blackness, I chatter.

I brag.

I pretend a dialogue, answering all the likely questions from voices that I haven’t quite heard yet.

And then after many years of fruitless noise, I fall silent. Sometimes there is no better way to speak. Every one of my channels collapses to an empty hum, and I keep falling on and on toward what has been dubbed the Inkwell.

Thirty years to fall.