“Look,” she roared.

The projectors came to life again.

Again she kicked him, saying, “Lift your eyes. Now.”

He found himself sitting on the illusion of the leading hull, surrounded by a forest of elaborate mirrors. The sky was black when he fell asleep, but not any longer. A lovely blue glow was washing down over his cowering form.

“They’re firing their engines again,” the Master reported.

“Why?” he muttered.

“What you’re seeing,” she explained, “is the light of their engines passing through their own watery bodies.”

But he couldn’t see the blaze of the nearest rockets. Which was peculiar, yes. It took him a long moment to understand:

The polyponds were slowing themselves.

A million polypond buds, give or take, had turned themselves 180 degrees, and now they were giving themselves the tiniest of nudges.

Why?

Then O’Layle heard himself laughing, and with that laughing voice he told the Master Captain, “Madam, I’m not the smartest soul … I know that … I know … but to me, it looks as if we should expect a little rain …”

Twenty-four

Even now it was possible to live out the days and weeks in a scrupulously ordinary fashion: normal meals eaten on a regular schedule; routine work accomplished with a gentle competence; quick visits to odd districts and ritual-drenched meetings with an array of species; and sometimes a bite of sleep swirled with the little pleasures of love and purchased dreams. The polyponds’ grand plan was being unveiled in every portion of the sky. The horde was descending, and for the moment, no force could blunt it. Yet Washen found slivers of time to enjoy a quiet dinner with friends and colleagues. Sitting at a random table inside an obscure restaurant, she discovered that she could still find the pleasure in the taste of the noodles smothered with squid and tomatoes. She could laugh honestly at one of Pamir’s peculiar stories. And with a convincing ease, she heard herself adding to his tale, giving her own perspective before concluding with a shrug and shake of the head, “Which is why we keep the Myrth and Illakan at opposite ends of the ship.”

Everyone laughed in some patient fashion. Osmium’s breathing mouth made an agreeable whistle. Quee Lee and her husband cuddled and nodded knowingly; Perri had probably already heard the tale. Aasleen glanced at her companion, and the AI took the cue to smile with its handsome face, its various hands folded on the empty place setting. What was it about engineers and their machines? Were some engineers simply so good at their art that they could accomplish more with the tools than Nature and simple courtship could manage? Washen considered asking that blunt question. Then she hesitated, and in the next moment realized that she had enjoyed perhaps one too many of the fortified wines that had been brought with their meal.

Another half dozen captains sat at the round table, plus spouses and dates, and in one case, both. The lowest-ranking captain gestured timidly, pulling up his courage to ask, “Do you eat here often, madam?”

“Never,” she confessed.

He was the onetime dream-merchant. Over the last decades, his expertise with the public mind had proved invaluable, and that was partly why she had invited him. But mostly, she found him pleasant and observant, and more than most captains, honest. The captain grinned for a moment. Then simple curiosity made him ask, “Then how exactly did you choose this place, madam?”

“I grew up nearby,” Washen mentioned, a long finger drawing a circle in the air. “In a little house barely two kilometers that way.”

The hour was exceedingly late. Except for Washen’s party, and the restaurant’s owner and robot staff, the restaurant was empty.

Quee Lee said, “Madam.”

Washen glanced at the ancient woman, eyebrows lifting.

She corrected herself, saying, “Washen.” Since Quee Lee was not a captain, there was no need for formalities. “Something just occurred to me. Maybe I’ve asked in the past, I don’t know—”

“What?”

“Have you ever been anywhere but the Great Ship?”

“Never, no,” Washen replied.

Perri lifted his delicate chin. “What about Marrow?”

She embraced the question. Then she asked him in turn, “Why is that someplace else?”

“The ship is ruled by captains,” he argued. “Who rules Marrow today?”

“Fair point.” Staring at Perri, she began dredging up random details about his long, busy life. What was catching her interest here? She wasn’t certain. She could almost see it, but then her thin logic was broken by the sound of a new voice.

“Madam.”

A young man was filling up the restaurant’s front door. Behind him, in the late-evening gloom, perhaps a dozen others stood in a loose tangle. All were young, but not all were human. At least two Janusian couples stood near the front, and a giant harum-scarum stuck up in back.

To all of them, she said, “Hello.”

“Madam,” the young man said again. Then he stepped closer, a hint of nervousness betrayed in the quick rolling of his thick fingers. “Do you remember me?”

Security systems went on silent alert.

The face might be familiar, or might not, and there could be something memorable in the broad build of his body. If that hair was longer, and if he was years younger—

“I once walked with you,” Washen recalled. “When the Master Captain and her officers met near this place.” Then came the natural doubt that follows most intuitions. “Am I right? Just a couple centuries ago—”

“Most of my life ago,” he added happily.

A name emerged from the security nexus. Washen ignored it, preferring to ask the young man, “What should I call you?”

“Julius.”

“Those are your friends, Julius? Cowering behind you?”

“Yes, madam.”

“Join us,” she said. And when he hesitated, she rose from her chair, her uniform shimmering in the dim light as she waved at everyone. “Come in. We’ll make room. Come join us, please.”

DECADES AGO, AASLEEN saw what the polyponds were planning. While the ship was still on the outskirts of the Inkwell, she had mentioned, “It would be a mess, you know. If just a tiny portion of that nebula happened to fall on our heads.”

Later, she had no memory of that offhand comment. There were good reasons why she would have dismissed the whole concept. Their ship was moving at a brutal pace, while the nebula was very nearly at rest. The polyponds preferred slow travel, and by every account, they used only patient methods to move the dust and gas. But Washen managed to remember that suggestion, and when the polypond buds first started to accelerate, she repeated those words to her chief engineer, adding, “What do you think now?”

With a dismissive shrug, Aasleen said, “Not much, madam.”

“You aren’t worried?”

“About many things, yes. But the idea that they might come at us at once, en masse … no, that’s not keeping me awake tonight …”

She had reasons, good, clear, and perfectly rational reasons. The choreography would be enormous. How could hundreds of thousands of bodies move together but never touch? Because they were large enough and massive enough that if they did touch, their watery selves would merge. A single impact would generate enough heat to boil both of the victims, and their organics would cook. In some sense, they would die. And if several of the fifty-kilometer buds joined together, and then caught up several more with their increasing mass … well, there were too many chances for mistakes, too many ways in which a cloud of little polyponds would find themselves falling into the same gravity well, building a world of steam and death that wouldn’t accomplish anything with a strategic sense.

“But what if that new world hit us?” Washen had asked.