Gwenda inhaled. Stretched again, slowly somersaulted. Arcane chemical processes began within her blood, her nervous system.

This is how it was aboard the spaceship House of Secrets. You slept and you woke up and you slept again. You might sleep for a year, for five years. There were six astronauts. Sometimes others were already awake. Sometimes you spent days, a few weeks alone. Except you were never really alone. Maureen was always there. She was there with you sleeping and waking. She was inside you, too.

Everyone is waiting for you in the Great Room. There’s roasted carp. A chocolate cake.

“A tidal smell,” Gwenda said, trying to place it. “Mangrove trees and the sea caught in a hundred places at their roots. I spent a summer in a place like that.”

You arrived with one boy and you left with another.

“So I did,” Gwenda said. “I’d forgotten. It was such a long time ago.”

A hundred years.

“That long!” Gwenda said.

Not long at all.

“No,” Gwenda said. “Not long at all.” She touched her hair. “I’ve been asleep…”

Seven years this time.

“Seven years,” Gwenda said.

A citrus smell. Lime trees. Other smells, pleasant ones, ones that belonged to Mei and Sullivan and Aune and Portia. Sisi. All of their body chemistries adjusted for harmonious relationships. They were, of necessity, a convivial group.

Gwenda threw off her long sleep. Sank toward the curve of the bulkhead, pressing on a drawer. It swung open and in she went to make her toilet, to be poked and prodded and injected, lathered and sluiced. She rid herself of the new growth of hair, the fine down on her arms and legs.

So slow, so slow, Maureen fretted. Let me get rid of it for you. For good.

“One day,” Gwenda said. She opened up her log, checked the charts on her guinea pigs, her carp.

This is why you are last again. You dawdle, Gwenda. You refuse to be sensible in the matter of personal grooming. Everyone is waiting for you. You’re missing all of the fun.

“Aune has asked for a Finnish disco or a Finnish sauna or the northern lights. Sullivan is playing with dogs. Mei is chatting up movie stars or famous composers, and Portia is being outrageous. There are waterfalls or redwood trees or dolphins,” Gwenda said.

Cherry blossoms. The Westminster dog show. 2009. The Sus sex Spaniel Ch. Clussexx Three D Grinchy Glee wins. Sisi is hoping you will hurry. She wants to tell you something.

“Well,” Gwenda said. “I’d better hurry, then.”

Maureen went before and after, down Corridor One. Lights flicked on, then off again so that the corridor fell away behind Gwenda in darkness. Was Maureen the golden light ahead or the darkness that followed behind? Carp swam in the glassy walls.

Then she was in the Galley and the Great Room was just above her. Long-limbed Sisi poked her head through the glory hole. “New tattoo?”