It was finished yesterday, Pamir decided.

Or two minutes ago.

As he walked, he spoke through a nexus, joining the tangled conversations of the crew waiting on board the streakship.

“Look at their interiors,” said a xenobiologist, studying the shuttle’s telemetry stream. Pointing a sonic eye, she said, “See this—?”

“Guts?”

“Right.”

“What about their guts?” Pamir inquired.

“They don’t have any,” the authoritative voice warned him. “Nothing like an esophagus. Stomach. Intestines, or rectum.”

Singly, the creatures were gorgeous—elaborate and deeply contrived but always lovely, dancing and weaving their way across the open ground. Anywhere from two to twenty limbs were raised high. Plumage full of cobalt blues and bloody reds made eyes blink and tear up with their glare. Elegantly shaped heads, one or two or three per body, served to hold simple eyes and great gaping mouths that were attached to nothing but a damp mass of lung tissue and powerful muscles.

“Fat,” a voice said. “And probably dissolved sugars, too.”

“For energy?” Pamir asked.

“For a little energy,” another voice warned him. Then with an impressed but disgusted tone, she added, “If they keep moving and screaming, at this rate, they’ll burn their reserves in less than an hour.”

Like mayflies, the multitude would not live out the day.

“To build everything here,” Pamir began, gazing at the gemlike green of the jungle and the high steel mountains beyond. “How much would it cost? In energy. Time. Best guesses?”

Modest energies, the experts said. Plus years of patient work.

But moments later, the same voices discounted those first guesses. Both the shuttle and streakship were jammed with sensors as well as delicate machines that could double as sensors. Subtle shifts in gravity helped map the Blue World’s interior. Sonar and the stomping of alien feet helped seismographs look into the top layers of water. Reactors on both vessels sent streams of neutrinos toward each other, cutting through the world’s body in the process. And more important, and perhaps more ominous: The ocean beneath them was filled with busy, even frantic machinery. A thousand reactors had suddenly awakened. Bright streams of neutrinos revealed a raw power, muscles far in excess of any simple organic Gaian. Moving masses caused the body to shiver and quake, and every ripple and every whispery particle gave a new clue about what lay beneath. Spongeworks, neutrally buoyant and waiting to serve whatever whim the world felt like ordering, hung scattered through the deep ocean. They were made of steel and calcium and plastic, and near the curiously oblong core, there were the unmistakable signs of pure high-grade hyperfiber.

“This is not a patient animal,” one engineer said. “Assuming fabrication methods we understand, using the resources of this entire body, and with every machine focused on a single job—”

“Fast,” said a second engineer.

“Yeah, it’s quite a show.”

“Because we’re important,” the ranking xenobiologist maintained. “She wants to put on a good performance for us.”

“Wait,” Pamir said.

“To impress or intimidate us—”

“Shut up!”

The greeters had abruptly stopped singing. Limbs were still raised high, but their bodies were rigid, powerful voices caged deep in their lungs. Into that sudden silence came the ringing of water tumbling over a distant falls. Then a moment later, the falls went dry. And in the next instant a single voice—a seemingly tiny voice—called out from between two of the towering bodies. “Hello,” it said. She said. “Friends. Is that the proper word? Friends, my friends, hello!”

SHE WAS TINY, and she was the world.

The willowy figure wore what looked like a lemon white dress. Approaching, she displayed a human form very much like a half-grown girl, curled black hair spilling down to the narrow shoulders, large curious eyes watching everything while a wide, infectious smile focused on her guests. The humans answered the smile with their own smiles. Pamir couldn’t help himself. In the bright and utterly false sunshine, she was fetching. She appeared charming. With a sweet, vexing gait, she nearly danced toward that huddle of people, the wide mouth displaying tiny teeth as a voice clearly meant to be pleasing said once again, “Hello, friends.”

Everyone gave a nod, muttering, “Hello,” with a reflexive politeness.

Then with a large, almost giddy voice, O’Layle called out, “My world, my savior! Hello to you, darling!”

Behind the figure came a parade of humanlike legs, one after another, each helping to hold high what looked to be some kind of stalk or tendril, as big around as a good-sized arm and stretching far back into the jungle. The closest legs were directly behind the girlish body, and when she walked into the open, everyone saw how the stalk lifted up into her thick black hair, dividing into thousands of strands—an army of neural connections linking those dark black eyes with some vast Gaian sub-brain.

“Superconductive proteins,” the xenobiologist guessed.

“Clumsy,” one engineer muttered.

“Wouldn’t have to be,” a second engineer countered. “She could use nexus-style linkups. No physical connections, and they’d work a lot better.”

Pamir shook his head.

“You’re missing the point,” he warned. “This is supposed to accomplish something. And that’s what?”

For an embarrassed moment, the distant experts said nothing.

“To remind us—” the xenobiologist finally began.

“What this is,” he rumbled. Then to the people standing around him, he said, “Don’t forget to whom we’re speaking.”

The world was taller than she first appeared. Taller than Pamir, and not just a little bit taller. She walked up to them, stopped, and said, “Sit before me,” while a hundred legs bent low. “Close, please, my friends. Join me.”

On the warm slick steel, everyone sat.

“It was a safe journey, I trust.”

Pamir said, “Very safe. And thank you for your considerable, gracious help.”

The shrug was rather like O’Layle’s shrug, complete with a palpable self-satisfaction. Which probably meant nothing besides the telling influence of a single teacher. The black eyes seemed to absorb the faces before her. In a soft whisper, she said each of their names. Except she ignored O’Layle, and with a distinct fondness, she said, “Pamir,” while reaching out with one long hand, fingers like brown wires touching first his nose and then the rugged end of his chin.

He didn’t move.

When the hand was withdrawn, she told everyone, “For my sort, it is important. A meeting such as this.”

“With us, too,” Quee Lee offered.

“We are not all that different,” the voice continued. “In a sense, each of you is a world, the same as me.”

That won a few polite nods.

“Just much smaller than me,” the world added.

Pamir narrowed his gaze, concentrating on one of the world’s delicate hands.

Again the arm reached, fingers quickly touching each of the nervous faces. Save for O’Layle, again.

“All is well on your Great Ship?”

Pamir gave a little nod. “We believe so.”

“Good!” The hand was withdrawn, and after a moment’s pause, the world said, “You must miss your ship, I would think.”

“Quite a lot,” Quee Lee replied.

“Return,” said the world. “Begin now, if you wish.”

O’Layle flinched. “Is that all?” he blurted. Then with a low laugh, he added, “These people came a great distance, my love. And for what? To sit here for two breaths—?”

“Quiet,” Pamir warned.

“I don’t want them to leave,” the man complained. “Not so soon, please.”

The girlish face didn’t quite look in his direction. But the voice deepened noticeably, remarking in a distinctly casual fashion, “You might wish to accompany them. Go home in their vessel, perhaps.”