Besen thought it wasn’t at all obvious who would win, if it had come to a fight between the pyramid and Argo. Who knew what tricks a few billion years of evolution could cook up inside a molecular cloud?

But all this had happened while Toby was confined to the ship. He gritted his teeth, swore a little for the pure pleasure of it, and then went back to work.

When he finished his lessons and Isaac certified his work, he reported to Cermo, got his next-day assignment, and turned to leave.

“Hold on,” Cermo said. “Report to the Cap’n.”

“Huh? I wanted to go outside, get a good look at the Chandelier.”

Cermo said sternly. “Argo’s not run for your amusement. Go.”

Cap’n Killeen stood with hands behind his back, studying his office wall screens. They showed closeup images of the Chandelier being sent back by Argo’s automatic flyers. Massive spiral arms. Swooping webs that, under magnification, proved to be linked apartments. Toby tried to imagine living in such places, amid vast lines that dwindled by perspective toward glowing masses in the immense distance.

“Think it’s inhabited, Dad?”

Killeen turned slowly from the brilliant screens, his face veiled. “No. The mechs stormed all the Chandeliers thousands of years ago. This one is better preserved, so maybe there wasn’t a big fight over it.”

“Are you sure?”

Killeen shook his head slowly, obviously consulting an Aspect. “Must be. Records are poor, though.”

“Somebody must have Aspects from that far back.”

“None from this sector, so close to True Center.”

Toby knew that Aspects got hazy and scratchy with age. Chandelier Aspects had to have interpretation programs added, to understand them at all. And it wasn’t just the shifts in language. The hardest things to convey were the concepts. Nobody could really comprehend how the Chandelier folk thought. “If we could get some idea—”

Killeen shook his head. “Humans were spread all over, back then. This Chandelier, it looks pretty damn fine all right, but it might have been just a minor outpost, for all we know.”

“Huh? But it’s, it’s beautiful.”

Killeen grinned. “Suresay—to us. Maybe it was nothing special to people from the Great Times.”

Toby looked skeptical and Killeen waved at the screens, where wonders unfolded. “Look, once people retreated from their Chandeliers, they went down to live on planets again. Things got rough. We stopped building big, and settled for what we could protect from mechs. The Family of Families spread out among the stars, looking for safe places to hide.”

“That was the Hunker Down, right?”

“The beginning of it. They figured to hide out on planets. Thought mechs wouldn’t have much use for them.”

“Because mechs live best in space?”

Killeen grimaced wryly. “So they thought. On Snowglade and Trump, we first built the Grand Arcologies— cities like little Chandeliers, but smaller because of the gravity. The damn mechs smashed them. Our tech stuff got worse and we built the Low Arcologies. Still pretty damn big places, mind you. I saw the ruins of one.”

“You told me. Big as a mountain.”

“Well, maybe a little smaller. Too big for the mechs, though. They got through our defenses and flattened the little arcologies, too, eventually.”

The ancient anger in Killeen’s voice made Toby say in sympathy, “So we built the Citadels. Kept going.”

“Yeasay—and kept ’em well hid, so we thought. Had to live by raidin’ off the new mech manufacturing complexes. Then the mech city-minds sent rat-catchers to blast each Family’s Citadel. Rooting people out, casting them to the winds. Till only Citadel Bishop was left. Then came our turn—remember?”

Toby recalled with reluctance their flight from Citadel Bishop. He had been just a boy, confused, scared. Fire and smoke and death. His mother, killed by the mechs with merciful, cold swiftness.

He shook himself: “Look, Cermo said to report to you.”

Killeen nodded silently. Toby could tell that he, too, had trouble shaking off the dark past. Killeen abruptly turned and sat behind his broad, uncluttered desk. “I think you’ve been getting out of hand.”

“Oh, the sail-snake thing? Look, it wasn’t my idea.”

“You should not get Quath stirred up. She is unpredictable.”

“Quath carried me out there. There was nothing I could do.”

“You could’ve signaled us, told us what was going on.”

Toby shrugged. “I didn’t think of that.”

“When you get in trouble, consult your Aspects.”

“Didn’t think of that either.”

“You’re carrying a lot of experience in those Aspects. Let them help you.”

“They nag me a lot.”

Killeen smiled. “That goes with the deal. They don’t get to do anything except talk, remember. Imagine what that’s like.”

“I’d rather not,” Toby said, uneasy at how this conversation was turning.

“You’ve got to get used to working with them. Fluid. So you reach for them automatically, like scratching yourself.”

“They don’t ride so easy yet,” Toby admitted uncomfortably.

Killeen gazed steadily at him for a long moment that widened between them. “How . . . how is she?”

So it had finally come out. Again.

“The same . . . of course.”

Killeen’s lost love, Shibo. The woman who had come into Killeen’s life after Toby’s mother died, a woman Toby had come to accept as nearly a replacement mother. The once-vibrant Shibo now existed only as an Aspect carried in Toby.

She had been killed on Trump, cut down by enemy fire. In a trap set by His Supremacy, a mech-human hybrid. Toby and Killeen had managed to get her back to Argo. In the recording room the ship’s instruments had spoken of potassium levels and neurological amalgams and digital matching matrices, terms nobody in Family Bishop understood. Or their Aspects.

The ancient instruments had saved as much as they could of Shibo, reading the neural beds of her mind, the shape of a unique consciousness. Making a recording. Then squeezing it into a chip that slid easily into a human spinal reader. Together with cell samples from her body, for long-term Family genetic records, Toby’s Shibo Aspect was all that remained of her.

Normally an Aspect lay dormant until the trauma of death passed, often for a Family generation. But the Family needed Shibo’s skills, judgment, and lore. Killeen could not have carried her Aspect, of course; that would invite emotional disaster in their Cap’n, violating every Family precept.

Toby had been the only crew member with an open spinal slot and the right personality constellations to accept Shibo immediately. They had used her knowledge of ship’s systems innumerable times in the long voyage. Shibo had a knack for techno-craft. Even better than the advice of the older Aspects from the Low Arcology Era.

But the toll on Killeen had been heavy. Another long silence passed between the two of them, until Toby felt like jumping up and rushing out, away, free of the strain he had truly not wished to carry. “I . . .” Killeen hesitated. “Can I speak with her?”

“I don’t think so, Dad.”

Killeen opened his mouth, then closed it so abruptly Toby could hear the teeth click. “I just wanted a few words.”

“I think it’s a bad idea.”

“Why?”

“You know how you get.”

“I just wanted a little—”

“Dad, you’ve got to let go of her.”

There was a desperate look in Killeen’s eyes. “I have. I have.”

“No, you haven’t. If you had, you wouldn’t ask.”

His father’s lips thinned until they were nearly white. Toby knew Killeen was holding in a lot, the pressures of leadership on top of everything else. But he couldn’t give ground on this point.

He had, once. Killeen had hounded him to let his Shibo Aspect speak through his mouth, and he had. Once. Twice. Then again and again, until Killeen wanted that contact, as miserably fleeting and thin as it was, every day.