Pamir saw the reasoning instantly.

But Locke felt compelled to explain himself. “A functioning starship follows the inert, pilotless Great Ship. Its velocity isn’t any swifter. Otherwise, the race would have been finished long ago. And it can’t be even slightly slower. For the same reason.” A pause. Then he said, “But even with a matching velocity, it will close a gap of anything less than five or six thousand light-years.”

The chart changed again, expanding backward in time while reaching into deepest space, following what was judged to be the most likely course for the ship over these last billions of years. Whatever the Builders had been, they obviously didn’t wish their creation bulldozing its way through star-rich realms. The universe appeared as thin beery foam, every bubble formed by clusters of interacting galaxies. The ship always crossed the bubble walls at some thin spot. Passing through the Local Group was an aberration, and the Milky Way just happened to lie in its path. If the Great Ship was born in the early days of the universe, when space was tiny and highly compressed, no credible set of eyes could have seen clearly enough or far enough to make such a perfect shot. So maybe the Builders were lucky. Or as some souls had mentioned, on occasion and usually while drinking beery foams, maybe the Builders had built quite a bit more than this little ball of hyperfiber and stone, iron and empty caves.

Perhaps the universe itself was theirs.

“A good pilot,” said Locke, glancing across the table at Pamir. “A good determined pilot would study the ship, watch for impacts and the effects of passing masses. Because there would be a few wandering suns between the galaxies, and solar-mass black holes, and the usual detritus. The pilot would make its own tiny course corrections, using the same masses for its benefit. Everything is an estimate, naturally. I’ve spent years poring through the available data and star charts before I made my best guess. If there was a pursuer chasing after the Great Ship, it would have been less than ten thousand light-years behind. And with a little confidence, I can say it had to be more than three thousand light-years to the rear. A window of seven thousand …”

Locke paused, regarding Pamir with a measured amusement.

“Our trip through the Milky Way,” Pamir began.

“Exactly.” With a command, the chart changed a third time. The last hundred thousand years were accomplished in moments. The ship’s engines had ignited, perhaps for the first time ever. A white dwarf sun, cold and old, embraced the ship and flung it into a new trajectory. Then the captains rode their prize on a constantly changing course, using flybys and the big engines to achieve a wobbly course through the populated zones of the galaxy. No real momentum was lost, but like a swimmer navigating around endless buoys, their lead over the hungry shark had been significantly diminished.

Quietly, Pamir pointed out, “We would have noticed a ship tagging after us. Long ago, I’d hope.”

Locke agreed.

Then in the next instant, the pragmatic captain came to the conclusion that Locke had derived from days of data searches, careful calculations, and elaborate models built inside AIs and drawn on the palm of his pale gray hand.

A closer rendezvous with the white dwarf.

A sharper course correction.

“If I was five thousand light-years behind you,” Pamir said, “and if I saw you fire your engines and dive into the galaxy … into all those stars and worlds … I might have been tempted to make a tighter turn and stay above you.”

With a hand laid flat, he showed the Milky Way. With the other hand’s index finger, he traced a straight sure course above the swirling stars.

Both hands dropped.

“The white dwarf,” Pamir muttered. “I remember. We put probes into orbit. To map the space, measure its exact mass … just to be triple sure that we weren’t going to smash into anything on our flyby …”

Impressed, Locke nodded.

“Are the probes still functioning?” Pamir asked.

Then he answered his own question, saying, “They used to be, and we kept track of their broadcasts.” It had taken him several moments to find the proper log with his own nexuses. “For the first half of the voyage—”

“Captains are thorough,” Washen interjected.

The data was easy to find because Locke had tagged it just days ago. And the results were still obvious, half a hundred individual entries glowing where he had reached deep to examine the ancient numbers.

“What’s the verdict?” Pamir asked, looking across the table. “Are we being chased through the cosmos?”

Locke glanced at his mother.

Washen straightened her back, squared her shoulders, and waited.

“Nothing else has passed by that dead star,” said Locke.

And then with a different voice—a louder, distinctly intrigued voice—he said, “That means there was no other ship. Ever. Unless, of course, it managed to find a different route, or it was built on principles we don’t understood. Or maybe, we were looking in the wrong direction to begin with …”

ANOTHER NIGHT CAME.

It was days later, or perhaps weeks. The press of moments and months didn’t feel important of late. Nothing of substance seemed to change on board the ship, and perhaps it never would. That was the general consensus. Pamir couldn’t discount the sameness with either muscular reasoning or cold practicality. The human mind had been improved in a multitude of ways … but it still could be lulled into a sense of foreverness, a velvetlike complacency that made even a hardhearted son of a bitch think that he had been here forever, flying through the heart of the Inkwell …

They were lying in Washen’s bed, again. On her ceiling, images from the ship’s leading face appeared in real time, in a shifting range of frequencies and details. The polypond buds had begun to arrive, and despite good simulations predicting all types of behavior, they had done nothing. Thousands were scattered across a light-week of dark dusty space, and despite endless pleas from the Master Captain and her Submasters, none of the interlopers had said one word in response, much less tried to explain their looming presence.

One night, the captains made love under that crowded sky.

Another night, too exhausted for anything else, they slept.

And then came a third night when Pamir woke too soon, finding himself on his back, watching as another hundred of those great watery bodies swam out of the black, pushing themselves close with sloppy muscular engines.

Washen stirred, a dream causing her to roll away from him.

Pamir sat up and drank ice water and said nothing, staring at the fine long back of his lover.

“What?” she asked, her face invisible to him.

“Feel my eyes?” he asked.

“I thought they were knives,” she joked. Then she rolled closer to him, and after a moment’s consideration asked, “What are you thinking?”

What wasn’t he thinking?

“What bothers you?” she asked.

Everything.

Then she said his name with a brittle tenderness, tired of this game and this moment, wishing for the things to finally happen now. Just to break the deadlock.

“Pamir,” she said. “What is it?”

“I was wondering,” he whispered. “In the face of all this, why are you and your son … why are you spending so much time and effort asking if the ship is being chased by somebody … ?”

“But what if we are?” she replied.

“I’m not questioning the importance of it.”

“Then what?”

“Where does this obsession come from?” Pamir smiled and offered a big shrug. “The two people most thoroughly and intimately tied to Marrow, and neither of you can stop thinking about things that can’t be found …

“Does that ever strike you as being more than just a little bit interesting … ?”