Seeker thrashed around, getting itself caught tighter. "Only a narrow view."

             "You said once you had contact with everything."

             Seeker shook its head in frustration. "Everything and the noth-ing."

             "What's 'the nothing'?"

             Seeker bit into a vine and tore it loose. "When a thinking being chooses to not think for a while."

             "The subconscious?"

             "The transconscious. Separation into isolated beings is a feature of evolution in the human era and before. I am a fragment of the self-awareness that arose from that early web, and now grows apace."

             "Sounds pretty exalted. Seeker After Patterns."

             "You are part of it, too," Seeker said softly.

             "I don't feel all that cosmic right this minute," Cley said, beginning to notice many aches. Her palms throbbed. She wondered if the Supras had any medical miracles handy.

             "The biome is ordinary. Not a big abstraction." Seeker wrestled free of the vines.

             "And you're a housekeeper for the system solar?" Cley smiled ruefully.

             "In a way. I voyaged once to another biome, and—"

             Cley was startled. "Another star?"

             "Yes. I journeyed to speak with that far biome. Quite different, it was."

             "What's a biome say to another?"

             "Little, at first. I had difficulties."

             "I thought Seeker After Patterns could do anything."

             Seeker made its barking laugh. "Only what my planets allow us."

             "They sent you?"

             "Yes. Eventually the biomes strewn through the spiral arms will connect. There is much work to be done, to understand those strange beings."

             "Biomes are beings?"

             "Of course. Evolution proceeds beyond the scope of individuals now, or of species and phyla. Biomes are different orders of beings."

             As it said this Seeker no longer looked like an amiable pet. She sensed quiet, eerie powers in it.

             "Seeker, you speak as if you are the system solar."

             "So we do."

             Cley chuckled and cuffed Seeker beneath its ample, matted chin. "Well, so much for words. Whatever won this, and at whatever cost, we're alive."

             "Far more important that the biome lives."

             "Yes, thank God."

             "You are welcome," said Seeker.