Her eyes widened. “I can…but this should be acknowledged.” She clasped his hand. “I’ll be all right. It’s…cathartic. A healing grief.”

Once a full orbit had been completed, the school took up a new formation around its lost member, essentially stacking themselves into a column with it in the middle, keeping a few hundred meters between them. The rings of red lights within their bodies, normally almost washed out by their overall glow, began to shine brighter. “They seem to be…drawing residual energy from the dead one’s distortion generators,” Jaza reported. “Sharing it among themselves.”

Vale was startled. “That seems…a bit vampiric.”

“No,” Deanna said. “They’re preserving a part of its life essence, making sure it endures within the school.”

“It also makes practical sense,” Jaza added, “if they mean to inter the body on the planet. Even lifeless, those generators contain massive amounts of energy—enough to warp space. They’d have to either drain them or remove them first, if they didn’t want to risk serious environmental damage in the event of a rupture.” He furrowed his brow. “I suppose the sessile young don’t fully charge theirs until they leave the surface.”

“Or else they don’t grow in until adulthood,” Vale countered.

“Maybe. But they’d need gravity manipulation to be able to lift their own mass into orbit.”

“Unless the adults carry them there.”

“People,” Riker advised, “could we curb the scientific speculation for now, out of respect?”

Vale bowed her head. “Sorry, sir.”

Once the energy transfer was complete, the two pall-bearer jellies took hold of the corpse once more, and the school began a deorbit maneuver. Titanfollowed suit for part of the way, until they began drawing too close to the atmosphere. “Their destination appears to be a cluster of wide, deep hydrothermal lakes in the southern hemisphere,” Jaza reported. “I’m reading what must be sessile jellies in various stages of growth, living in the lakes. Of course—I should have realized. Living things that huge, they’d need to live in water to avoid being crushed in planetary gravity—at least until their gravity-control systems are mature.”

“Helm,” Riker ordered, “maintain orbit over those lakes at current altitude.”

“Maintaining, aye,” Lavena said, entering the commands for the forced orbit.

Meanwhile, Jaza was checking his scans. “The other regions of heavy geothermal activity on the planet…I’m reading very similar lake complexes at each of them. There’s little chance of that happening naturally, with such regularity all over the planet. The jellies must engage in…I don’t know whether to call it nesting or terraforming. Amazing. Seeing them out in space, it’s easy to lose your sense of scale about these creatures. They need to transform whole ecosystems just to nurture their young.”

“Mr. Jaza,” Riker cautioned. “I don’t want to repeat myself.”

“Sorry, Captain. But this ishow I show reverence for the universe—by trying to understand its truths. The more I learn about them, the more I can appreciate their beauty.”

Deanna touched his arm. “It’s all right, Will. They’re a curious people themselves. They appreciate our inquisitiveness toward them. Even now. It’s a sad time, yes, but it’s also a time of renewal, of growth. Once they inter their sibling in the nesting ground, its biomass will sustain the ecology that in turn sustains the growing jellies. And the energy they drew from it…” She drew her brows together. “I’m having trouble interpreting what they’re telling me, but they say it will bring new life as well. In fact, I think that will be the final part of the ceremony.”

Soon the jellies reached the largest lake in the cluster and hovered above it. Jaza put a magnified overhead view on the main screen. Around the rim of the lake were a number of shapes that had to be immature jellies, half-submerged in the water. From above they appeared as eight-pointed starbursts, consisting of eight narrow radial vanes with lobes growing outward between them from their central masses. The lobes were different in color from the adult jellies; if not for their regular shapes he would have assumed they were islands. It appeared they had plants and soil atop them, and presumably animals living upon them as well, much as the Pa’haquel had described.

Something bleeped on Jaza’s console, and he looked at the readouts in amazement. “Prophets. Sir, I’m reading huge amounts of transporter activity down there. Directed beneath the lake.” Even as he spoke, the deceased jelly began to glow with a watery purple-white shimmer which Riker had seen—and experienced firsthand—before. “Of course,” Jaza breathed. “Any other way of trying to bury a creature a kilometer wide would massively disrupt the ecosystem. They’re beaming out a space for it beneath the lakebed, then beaming it in quickly before the bed collapses.”

“What are they doing with the excavated earth?” Vale wanted to know.

“It’s being stored inside one of the jellies.”

Now the jellies, their grim burden delivered to rest at last, hovered in slow circles above the nesting grounds. “They’re communing with the children,” Deanna said. “Explaining to them what’s happened, sharing their memories and emotions. Assuring them that the cycle of life continues…that after death there is new birth.” She gasped, and just then the jellies began to circle faster, spiraling upward into the sky. “Oh my God,” Deanna breathed, though it was with excitement and wonder. “They’re starting.”

“What?”

She beamed at him. “Something wonderful.”

The jellies’ helical dance carried them up into orbital space, past Titanand beyond. The pattern twisted, evolved, and came to center around one jelly, now glowing more brightly than the rest. “It’s the one that took in the clay and soil,” Jaza said. “There’s something happening inside it now…some kind of matter transformation.”

Deanna met Riker’s eyes with wonder. “Conception!” she said. “After death…comes new birth.”

Riker stared at the screen. “This one…just happened to be ready to conceive? Or are they always ready?”

“It makes sense,” Jaza said. “With their ability to transmute matter, synthesize anything, they could create an ovum whenever they wanted. Or maybe ‘bud’ is a better term for it. Asexual reproduction.”

Deanna shook her head. “No. Well, not entirely. What I’m feeling…it’s decidedly not ‘asexual.’ ” Indeed, she was breathing hard, and Riker noted a familiar flush in her cheeks. He stared at her. She reached out and took his hand, but otherwise seemed only distantly aware of his presence. “The others…the whole school, we’re all part of it.” We?“This is just the beginning…oh!”

“Transporter activity,” Jaza said. “The, uhh, embryo, it’s been beamed into another jelly!”

“It passes through every one,” Deanna said, as the onscreen dance shifted to center on a different jelly, presumably the embryo’s recipient. “Each one contributes something…each one helps craft the final form. It passes through all until a consensus is reached…until it reflects them all, their essences, their visions. It’s…” She shook herself, and gave an abashed chuckle at herself for getting so carried away. “It feels as much like…a creative collaboration, a group sculpture or performance piece, as a sexual act.”

“If they can make an egg from scratch,” Vale said, “they can remake it. Rewrite its genes, edit them into whatever form they want.”

“Eugenics,” Keru said, disapprovingly. “Choosing every trait about your baby…it seems so cold and calculating.”

“It’s not like that at all,” Deanna said. “There’s no set of preconceived notions behind it, no attempt to give themselves greater power or limit their diversity. What I’m sensing…there must be a more scientific way of putting it, but I’m feeling it like a work of art. Learning the right techniques, the right basic forms to use, making sure they’re free of error…but once you have them laid down, there’s still so much freedom, and getting them right is what gives you that freedom.”