“In certain ways, the mind acts across the quantum universe.” Perri seemed to have moved closer than before. His voice was both softer and louder, and with only the barest trace of anger, he explained, “Memories can be enhanced. If the one person that you are can be linked with an infinite number of very similar O’Layles, and if all of you can work together to resurrect forgotten things—”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not sorry,” Perri told him. “You’re just scared for the moment.”

And maybe for the rest of my life, O’Layle thought.

“Yes,” Perri said. “That’s when we met.”

“I wish I was sorry.”

“Oh, sure.”

O’Layle took a deep, deep breath. But he could still smell nothing but emptiness and himself.

“Do you know why you’ve come here?” Perri inquired.

“No. Why?”

“I have no idea. Washen asked you here.” His interrogator laughed for a long moment. “She told me where to find you. I asked about yoù because I want to pose a few questions to you, while I still had the chance.”

O’Layle bristled. “What questions?”

Silence.

There were no lights below him now. But above, moving swiftly and silently, were sparkles and glimmers bright enough to show O’Layle the outline of one of his trembling hands.

“About the long-ago past,” Perri offered.

“All right.”

“And aliens.”

“What aliens?”

Silence.

Again, O’Layle’s mind felt the odd cold touch of a trillion fingers. With a quavering voice, he asked, “Which species?”

“I want to know about the aliens that you never think of.”

Now the lights above were quietly blinking out of existence, and suddenly every cold finger dove inside O’Layle’s helpless mind.

Thirty-six

The skin of the water was sticky and thick, warm and pleasantly scented—not unlike the aroma of a spent petal from a blooming lilac. Mere lay upon it, on her back, hands folded across her narrow belly and her bare ankles crossed; and to the best of her limited capacity, she listened to the water, feeling for the pulse and tides of the world beneath her.

During the last long while, the pulse had quickened.

Great organs were beginning to move, shifting positions according to some fresh need. The water was gradually warming, and sometimes a jet of fluid caused its skin to ripple slightly. This tiny living dollop—a nameless drop of the great polypond—was making itself ready for something. And Mere was a minuscule twist of life clinging to the creature, stripped of clothes and machinery, helpless in every meaningful way.

“I will show you now.”

Her response was to do nothing. She lay motionless, her breathing slow and even, the newborn heart beating lazily while she kept her eyes closed tightly enough that only the slightest hint of light crept into them.

“Mere,” said the vaguely feminine voice.

She would do nothing easily or instantly.

“You will wish to see this,” the polypond decided. Then with an impatient gesture, it evaporated the lids of her eyes.

The Great Ship filled the sky, and Mere barely recognized what she saw.

“Watch,” the voice commanded.

That was her only choice. Her head was suddenly locked in place, her helpless eyes unable to make tears. What she watched was an enormous sphere flecked with vivid colors and slippery bolts of energy. The hull lay hidden beneath a deep, stormy ocean. The only landmarks to survive were the rocket nozzles, but each wore a fresh appendage that had grown out of the water. None of the engines were firing. The ship was drifting, helpless and ensnared. And as she thought about the consequences of that helplessness, a sudden flash of light filled the central nozzle, leaving in its wake a thin vertical trail of ionized matter standing in the rarefied gases that had pooled inside the great nozzle.

Mere’s new heart hammered against her new ribs.

The polypond released her, and she stood, only her tiny feet still gripped by the world’s skin.

“Why?” she asked.

“You can’t hit the target,” she assured herself.

Then with a genuine curiosity, she had to ask, “What do you call it? What you think is at the center of the ship—?”

“The All.”

“Inside Marrow?”

“The All,” the voice repeated.

She mouthed the word, “All,” and nodded grimly. Then in a tone of simple confession, she admitted, “I don’t know the mathematics, the philosophy. The seventh theory isn’t often taught in my realm, and almost never believed.”

Silence.

“The universe is unfinished. You claim.”

“Do you regard the Creation as being finished?” The voice responded with a tone both reasonable and amused. “Have the stars finished aging? Has every species evolved to perfection? Will another trillion years bring no change to everything that you see and can imagine?”

Mere was positioned behind and to one side of the Great Ship. She could see past its wet limb, out into the depths of the Inkwell. With a finger, she reached at what looked like a simple blue dot, and the dot grew larger, magnified and highlighted until she could see too much: an ensemble of powerful machinery and living limbs steering a sphere of hyperfiber, and inside that sphere, highly charged and held in suspension, was something very tiny and exceptionally powerful. She knew it. Another black hole was being aimed, a careful hand lobbing it at a very tiny target.

“The universe is changing, changing,” she allowed. “Everything evolves in every way, yes.”

“But what you see is only shadow,” the polypond assured. “Shadow and vague possibility, and with each moment, the useful energies of the universe diminish. Stars age. Entropy rises. Matter compresses into pockets of nothingness, while the galaxies ride the dark tides, receding from one another at a rate that only quickens with the next moment, and the next.”

As Mere watched, the shepherding machines began to fold themselves up into knots and dive into the sphere, lending their mass to the final weapon. With a tight little voice, she said, “If the All is riding inside my ship … if it is anywhere, and real … how big is the All?”

“It has no definable size.”

“But how large is your actual target?” She pressed a finger and thumb together, adding, “You want to rip it out of its containment. Its prison. So just how large is this nut that you want to crack?”

“Quite small, yes.”

“Like a nut?” She held an imaginary walnut in her hand. “Bigger? Smaller? Or do you even know?”

Silence.

“O’Layle knew nothing about it. Just rumors thrown over some half-truths. The specifics, if there were any … only the people who lived on Marrow were privy to what was inside …”

Living pieces of polypond were now crawling inside the hyperfiber sphere, presumably falling all the way to the black hole, living water and dying flesh accelerating to the brink of lightspeed before vanishing with a quick flash of X-rays that left nothing to see.

Mere pulled her view back to the Great Ship.

“Waywards,” she muttered.

“Yes?” the polypond replied.

“O’Layle wasn’t the only soul that you rescued. Was he? Of course he wasn’t. Thousands threw themselves off the ship. Who else did you find? A little taxi jammed full of odd gray people, maybe?”

She nodded, answering her own question.

“In the center of Marrow, under the hot iron and nickel, is a machine. A prison cell, maybe. Something ancient, whatever it is. I saw the official files, years later. And Washen told me what she knew. The Waywards would weave hyperfiber around gold and lead ballast, and inside refrigerated cabins, they sank down. Down to the prison, down the containment vessel, whatever we agree to call it … down where the All is safely and forever entombed.”

“There were twenty-three Waywards,” the voice allowed, “one of whom happened to have the rank and good fortune to see the All for herself.”