Was my whole life encoded in this moment – the memories I possessed, the circumstances I found myself in? Taking this much and no more as given … could I have reconstructed all the rest?

It didn’t feel that way. My childhood in Sydney was unimaginable, as remote and hypothetical as the Big Bang – and even the time I’d spent in the hold on the fishing boat, and the encounter with the robot at the airport, had receded like fragments of a dream.

I’d never had cholera. I possessed no internal organs.

The stars glinted icily.

At one in the morning, the streets were still crowded, shops and restaurants still trading. Nobody seemed as somber as they should have been; maybe they still believed that they were facing nothing more than the kind of harassment they’d survived before.

There was a group of young men standing around a fountain in the square, joking and laughing. I asked them if they thought the militia would attack the airport soon. I couldn’t imagine why else they’d be in such high spirits; maybe they’d be taking part, and were psyching themselves up for it.

They stared at me in disbelief. “Attack the airport? And get slaughtered?”

“It might be your only chance.”

They exchanged amused glances. One of them put a hand on my shoulder and said solicitously, “Everything’s going to be fine. Just keep an ear to the ground, and hang on tight.”

I wondered what kind of drugs they were on.

#

When I returned to the hospital, De Groot said, “Violet’s awake. She wants to talk to you.”

I went in alone. The room was dimly lit; a monitor near the head of the bed glowed with green and orange data. Mosala’s voice was weak, but she was lucid.

“Will you ride in the ambulance with me?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“I want you to record everything. Just make good use of it, if you have to.”

“I will.” I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant – framing EnGeneUity for her death, if it came to that? I didn’t press her for details; I was weary of the politics of martyrdom.

“Karin said you went to the airport and petitioned the mercenaries on my behalf.” She searched my face. “Why?”

“I was returning a favor.”

She laughed softly. “What did I ever do to deserve that?”

“It’s a long story.” And I was no longer sure, myself, whether I’d been trying to repay Adelle Vunibobo, doing it all for technolibération , acting out of respect and admiration for Mosala, or hoping to impress Akili by “saving the Keystone” – even if the role was beginning to sound less like a revered creator than a kind of information-theoretic Typhoid Mary.