“No,” he allowed.

Then with a soft regret, he admitted, “The polyponds seem helpful enough. They might prefer isolation, but really, they don’t have any choice in this matter. We are going to swim through their ocean—”

“Not by choice,” Washen added.

“And I think they believe us. At least, I haven’t heard any voice telling me otherwise.”

“Any voice?”

“Intuition,” he added. In a gesture as old as the species, he touched his own temple, adding, “In my old business, a voice would whisper to me. Tell me what to pursue and what to ignore.”

“I hope you’re still listening for that voice.”

He nodded, but not with total assurance. Then softly, he said, “If you want, I might offer some new dreams to the general population. Through my old companies, or other avenues.”

“Which dreams?” Washen asked.

“Reassuring ones. That the polyponds are odd but harmless, and we have nothing to fear.” He shrugged. “Just to give passengers the chance to sleep easier. Actually, I’d probably find that there’s quite a market waiting for me. For us.”

“Your intuition says so?”

“Yes,” he said.

Then he asked, “Should I pursue this?”

“Don’t ask me. Ask Captain Glenn-john.”

He nodded, returning his gaze to the screens. The cumulative wastes from a thousand ship habitats were being analyzed on his orders, artificial tongues measuring the stress hormones dissolved in the piss and feces of a great nervous multitude.

“Thank you, madam,” he said gratefully.

Washen nearly turned away. But another question occurred to her. With a quiet tone, she reminded the captain, “You know more than most of us about audiences. Certainly you know more than I do.”

He nearly argued that point, but then thought better of it.

“About the polyponds,” she continued. “You’ve studied most of our files. You know what they’ve shown us about themselves, and what Pamir has seen and deciphered. In your opinion, do you know enough about the polyponds to sell them any dream?”

The question puzzled him for an instant.

Then with a grim little smile, he had to admit, “No, madam. No. Frankly, with these particular aliens … I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

Thirteen

Because he didn’t know when the chance would come again, Pamir climbed into his cabin and tethered himself inside his crush-web mattress, and with an ease that came from considerable practice as well as simple need, he closed his eyes and relaxed his long body as his mind collapsed into a deep black slumber. When dreams came, they were his own. Wild impossible things happened; routine elements yanked from recent days repeated themselves with tireless abandon. Again and again, Pamir found himself staring through a diamond port, doing nothing while watching nothing, nothing to see but a boundless darkness punctuated with the rare burst and glimmer of ruddy light. And always, there was the deep rumbling of his little ship, both in his dreams and in reality. The main engines continued to blaze away, firing through slots opened up in the hyperfiber umbrella, killing any dusty hazards as well as the last of their enormous momentum, while the maneuvering rockets had continued firing, relentlessly nudging them along a chaotic, bug-wiggling course that had proved safe enough up to the present moment.

Since the business with the V-elbow, everything had been a little bit too perfect. Pamir wasn’t the kind of person who believed in the flawless, but for the last months he had been pressed to find anything to complain about. The streakship was diving down a narrow tunnel—a clearly defined avenue swept free of most of the large debris and much of its gravel and ice. The Inkwell was laced with thousands of similar transit zones. The only difference was that theirs had been built specifically for them, and with a patient regularity, the polyponds repeated their promise to complete a wider, longer avenue through which the Great Ship could pass with ease.

Pamir slept easily, and deeply, and after ten uninterrupted hours, he consciously triggered one of his favorite dreams.

In an instant, he found himself sitting in a little boat drifting down the Canyon of Ten Thousand Falls. Artists had produced this imagery, but Pamir was free to pluck what he wished from his own life. Did he want company? Yes. Washen appeared, sitting with her back to the bow, her elegant body dressed in nothing but a billowy soft gown. With her smile, she said, “Naughty boy.” With a tilt of her head, she warned him, “I won’t let things go where you want them.”

But what did he want?

On the Great Ship, there were many places that were considered among the most scenic, the most spectacular. Passengers had actually fought about which corner and what cave were superior to every other, to the eye and nose, and sometimes to the tough tip of a sensitive tendril. Some fights had turned violent enough to kill, if only temporarily. But whenever someone took a bloodless poll, the Canyon ended near the top hundred sights that every passenger and crew member was obligated to see and smell, and to the best of his ability, embrace.

A deep warm river pushed down the Canyon’s floor. Steep walls of pale pink granite soared high on both sides; then the slope diminished, changing to calcite and magnesite generated by beds of reef-forming species. Numerous springs burst into the cavern from just beneath its ceiling, nearly ten kilometers overhead. Ten thousand waterfalls was a low estimate, or high. Because there were really only two falls, one covering each shoreline, and each was woven into tens of thousands of individual braids and ropes of bright silvery water that slid off the bottom edge of reefs, making the granite shine a sweet candy red in a false sunlight designed to tease out the beauty and soothing perfection of this place.

“Remember our first trip down,” said the woman in the bow.

Quee Lee had replaced Washen. Dressed in a conservative sarong, she was speaking to her husband. Uninvited, Perri had placed himself on the seat between Pamir and herself.

Perri said something just to her.

The plunging water roared as it struck the river on both sides of them. Voices had to be loud, and a mouth had to point at its intended audience.

Quee Lee chuckled amiably.

“He’s tired of us,” she said, motioning at Pamir.

Pamir just shook his head. Too much time living with the same few people, and not even his dreams were private anymore.

What could he do?

Laugh, he decided.

But then the roaring stopped abruptly. He took a deep breath and looked high. The falls had stopped flowing. Every spring had been choked off, and except for a last shimmer of moisture up on the green-and-gold reefs, there was nothing to see. The reefs were dying. Who had screwed this up? He began to look at his companions, but they were gone. Washen had returned, but she was dressed as the First Chair, complete with an officious expression of worthy concern.

“Be careful,” she said to him.

His eyes jumped open. For a little moment, Pamir wondered how he had gotten trapped inside this odd little closet. Then he remembered this was his cabin and his mission, and everything about the dream was swept away … except for realization that after years of constant firing, the maneuvering rockets had abruptly fallen silent.

“THERE IS NOTHING before us,” the ship’s AI reported. “Except for the Blue World, that is. This region has been scrupulously cleaned of dust and gas. Except for a thin veil of hydrogen atoms, and that veil is only slightly above interstellar norms—”

“Understood,” Pamir interrupted.

He began to study the unbroken blackness.

The entire crew was inside the galley, pushed together at the bottom end by the smooth decelerating thrust of the main engines. The floor had been stripped of all but the minimum number of low-backed chairs. Even without tables, there was barely enough room for all. Everyone stared at images piped in through an array of lenses and radio dishes, reading what could be seen as well as weighing the telltale echoes produced by bursts of laser light. To a soul, they were disappointed. The Blue World—their host and grand benefactor—was within 10 million kilometers, but the only trace was a dull red ember showing heat seeping out of a deeply insulated sky.