"Don't be afraid," he said. "There's nothing dangerous here."

But she wasn't afraid, not exactly. It was a different emotion that had overtaken her. Fascination, dread—some dizzying combination of the two. Here were pieces of the Ab-ashken, fragments of things that had overgrown the stars themselves, bone and sinew from the body of a god.

"It's as if I can feel them," she whispered.

Or perhaps it was her own future she felt, bearing down on her like the waters of a swollen river.

* * * * *

"Again, Ms. Moi," Dr. Dvali said sternly. "How did the boy die?"

Sulean allowed a few moments to tick away in the silence of the common room. It was late. All was quiet. She imagined she could hear the sound of the desert wind pulsing in her ears.

"It was probably exhaustion that brought him to a stop. We found him at last in a small depression, invisible until we came very close. He was prostrate, barely breathing. All around him…"

She hated this image. It had haunted her all her long life.

"Go on," Dvali said.

"All around him, things had grown. He was enclosed in a sort of grove of Hypothetical remnants. They were spiky, dangerous-looking things, spears of some brittle green substance, incomplete, of course, obviously not sustainable, but still motile… still alive, if you accept that description."

"And they had surrounded him?" Mrs. Rebka asked, her voice gentler now.

"Or they had grown up around him while he slept, or he had deliberately gone to them. Some of them had… pierced him." She touched her ribs, her abdomen, to show them where.

"Killed him?"

"He was still conscious when we found him."

* * * * *

Sulean had torn herself away from Lochis and run thoughtlessly toward Esh, who was impaled on the picket of alien growths. She ignored the frightened voices calling her back.

Because this was her fault. She should never have helped Esh escape the Station. As unhappy as he had been there, he had at least been safe. Now something dreadful had overtaken him.

She felt no particular fear of the Ab-ashken growths, peculiar as they were. They had grown around the boy's body like a ring of sharpened fenceposts. She could smell them, although she was barely aware of it—a sharply chemical smell, sulfurous and rank. The growths were not healthy; they were mazed with cracks and fissures and in places blackened with something like rot. Their stalks shifted slightly when she moved among them, as if they were aware of her presence. And maybe they were.

They were certainly aware of Esh. Several of the tallest growths had arched into half-circles and pierced the boy with their sharpened tips. They had penetrated his chest and abdomen in three places, leaving little circles of dry blood on his clothing. Sulean couldn't tell at first whether he was dead or, somehow, still alive.

Then he opened his eyes and looked at her and—impossibly— smiled.