Marak, the voices said, and he tried to listen and learn this time. He hoped Luz could reach him, explain to him, understand their situation and get them to safety. He saw dots before his eyes, but it was one of those kind of visions he thought came from fever, not from Luz.

Then the dots, red and blue, mostly, acquired significance, individuality. They moved, and followed patterns. Life depended on them, and they made chains, spiraling like the flight of vermin.

It was surely fever. In a remote part of his mind he knew he was delirious.

Marak, the voices said again. Marak.

And in his dream, “I’m listening,” he said aloud. “Tell me what to do.”

You’ve been foolish, Luz said.

“I know that,” he said in this dream, but he was mesmerized by the dots, wholly absorbed by them, as if they were the secret to all the world, just revealed to him.

You’re looking at the nanisims, Luz said to him. These are the makers. Are you listening this time?

“Yes,” he said. “Help us get out of here.”

They heal you when you’re injured. They’re my creatures, at work now, patching the damage you’ve done.

“I’ve done. I didn’t do it. My father did.”

Small difference.

“That’s fine. I’ll get well. Go away. I’m in too much pain to talk.”

The swelling can’t be helped. Your body does that when the nanisms rush to an injury: there are so many they congest the area. They diverge, you know, the makers aren’t the only sort. The makers make other makers, some of them the body’s own nanisms, if you like.

“If I live I’m sure I’ll appreciate it.”

I’m sure you will, Luz said. Are you hearing me now? It’s rare that I can get your whole attention.

“I’m trying.”

I’m sure you are. But know this: you carry these nanisms wherever you go, and shed them into the soil and the water. Or into blood. They work very efficiently in the bloodstream.

“Nice.”

You took it on yourself to bring Norit’s baby. You risked every life in the world for one child.

“As you did, to get the Ila.” Now he roused almost to consciousness, and for a moment the dots and their movements were not the whole world. “The baby is Norit’s child. She misses her child. Is that such an offense to you?”

It’s certainly an inconvenience to her. But we have the child now: your blood shed new makers into her, not the old sort, not the sort she had from being in Norit’s body, rather the new ones we gave you at the tower. An unintended gift, and we get very little of sense from her, but she does try.

“Damn you, let the child alone.”