“That’s one of my reasons for doing this,” Washen agreed. But she would have been more honest to say, “It’s just another tidy rationalization.”

This was an instinctive decision, and what could she offer?

Openness.

“Yes,” she said to the fef. “You have a comment.”

The creature bent in the middle, lifting his face high before remarking, “Our maneuver will be misunderstood. Unless aggression is the intention, and then we will be making our plans transparently plain.”

Washen nodded and waited.

Pamir responded for both of them. “What I know about polyponds—what I am certain about—is that too many of them to count are burning up a huge portion of their own big bodies to approach us. Feeding their curiosity, maybe. But I’ve never genuinely believed that. And I’d tell you what I do believe, except after months of hard thought, I still don’t know. So I’ll just assume that they want to take possession of our vessel, and like any muscle-bound bully, they don’t see the need to explain themselves.”

A pause.

Then Pamir glanced at Washen, in warning. “That’s not to say I completely agree with our First Chair’s plan. I can’t. But we’re at the point where we have very little freedom of motion. We’re going to plunge through the Satin Sack, following the same essential course, and nothing substantial can possibly change. That’s why I’ve got a little proposal of my own. Something that I haven’t quite mentioned yet.”

Washen looked at him, and she looked into herself. What was her motivation here? From everything possible and everything feared, which story did she believe in more than any other?

“A third burn,” Pamir offered. “I think we need one.”

Everyone referred to Washen’s charts, trying to guess where the new burn would happen.

He said, “An all-engine burn, this time.”

On the chart, a thin white line marked the two deft jogs in their course, and then Pamir added a bluish flare, shoving the ship’s mass forward with a very slight acceleration, pushing it faster into the blackest depths of the Sack.

“It won’t buy us much velocity,” he admitted. “But anything that throws off our enemy’s timetable sounds workable to me.”

Washen considered his model.

“More discussion?” Aasleen asked. “Or is everything decided?”

Another dozen Submasters asked the same question.

Then the fef gazed at the Master Captain, saying, “Your excellence,” with a worshipful tone. “What are your feelings and configurings on this matter, your excellence?”

Sitting at one end of the long table, flanked by her First and Second Chairs, the great woman appeared to smile. But it was a stern, unhappy expression, and the voice that came rolling out of her was sorry and dark. “I have doubts about each of these maneuvers,” she admitted. “Doubts and worries, and genuine concerns. But alone, I can’t make decisions of consequence. I know this, and I can almost accept this limitation. If my first two chairs decide that there will be three burns, then there will be three burns. I have nothing but voice and experience to offer here.”

Washen felt a chill along her neck. She glanced at the Master, then sighed and turned back to Pamir, remarking, “You don’t have an end point on this huge burn of yours.”

“Don’t I?” he kidded.

“How many days do you intend? Or is it weeks?”

“What do you want from my engines?” Aasleen pressed.

“I was thinking of years,” Pamir admitted. Then with a snort, he reminded everyone, “We’re being ambushed here. So why not gallop as fast as possible for as long as possible?”

The silence was perfect and brief.

Staring at the Master Captain, Osmium asked, “What are your doubts, madam?”

“Do you wish to maintain our present course?” asked the fef. “As we promised the polyponds?”

A wide hand swept through the air.

“No,” she replied with a rumbling voice. Then a sudden laugh took everyone by surprise. “No,” she said and again, “no, I don’t have any unique opinions on the merits and risks of any course adjustment.”

She treasured this moment, every eye firmly focused on her.

“But I do know something about duplicity and shrewdness. And as reasonable as this plan feels, I can’t help but wonder … with a tight chest and a drumming heart, wonder … if this is what the polyponds always intended us to do … !”

THE FIRST BURN was preceded by a quick, thorough, and scrupulously honest explanation of reasons. There was little time to dress up the announcements, much less tailor them for individual species. The Master Captain spoke to passengers and crew at the same time, the practice of aeons allowing her to appear both confident and in control. Yes, there would be a wave of quick impacts. Yes, there would be more large impacts. No passengers would be allowed on the ship’s leading face, at least for the time being. Repair teams and fabrication facilities would be on constant duty. Then with an unflappable resolve, she reminded billions that a large portion of the Inkwell had already been crossed, without incident, and despite the approaching polyponds, not one shot had been fired and no war was declared. “And unless we’re given spectacular reasons,” she concluded, “we will hold our new line and ask nothing of anyone but ourselves.”

The tunnel wall tested the shields and laser arrays. A few thousand mirrors were off-line for several days, and one crew of fef were vaporized when a fist-sized lump of stone fell on their heads. Then the ship was slicing its way through a bank of cold hydrogen, the shields blazing overhead, and another three engines were twisted and ignited, leaving three broad columns of fierce heat and stripped nuclei curling around one another, building elaborate and sloppy knots across millions of kilometers.

The third burn began an hour later.

For the first time since humans came upon this relic, every engine was lit in the same instant and left burning, lakes of liquid hydrogen flooding into chambers of high-grade hyperfiber, compressed and ignited and the blasts made more powerful by myriad tricks and cheats. Antimatter spiked the fuel, and the hyperfiber vibrated across a multitude of dimensions and shadowy realms. Energy normally lost was brought back again. Neutrinos were focused and ejected. A brilliant kick was delivered to the ship, and twenty Earth masses responded with an ever-so-slight acceleration.

At a distance, the fourteen engines made for a single bright point of light and a straight hot trail that grew until it was light-weeks long.

But at a greater distance, the engines were only a steady, nearly feeble glow visible only in narrow portions of the infrared. And the ship was nothing. A tiny, tiny point surrounded by a multitude of smaller engines moving tinier masses … hundreds of thousands of buds now … a diffuse sphere collapsing toward a single point, and growing in numbers by the day, by the moment … a blaze of steam and plasmas driving that multitude down on top of that sluggish and tiny and very nearly helpless machine.

Twenty-one

Handing Mere a long piece of yellow paper, he said, “Here. This is for you.”

“I can’t read this,” she complained. Nobody could read it. The paper was rough and jammed full of delicate scribbles—the hard work of a persistent and empty little child, no doubt. Looking at her dead husband, she pointed out, “This isn’t Tilan, and it isn’t human, either.”

“But it’s for you,” he claimed.

So she stared at it again, harder this time.

“Help me,” she begged.

“It is a deeply embedded pattern,” a voice told her. “A persistent thought in the fragment’s surviving memory.”

“I’m very tired,” she confessed.

Silence.

“For a moment, I thought you were someone else …”

“Madam,” the AI said. “Perhaps sleep would do you a service, madam.”