When he vanished a second time, she tried to suppress her anxiety over what changes the ship might be making to him, and instead distracted herself by linking into the Magi ships external senses and watching the face of the galaxy shift and morph with each successive jump across unimaginable gulfs of space. Before long, the Calafat-Holt Cluster, in which the Wanderer had been hiding for so long, had visually shrunk to nothing.

She thought often of Gabrielles baby, Evie, and knew her duty was to find her. Knowing that the Maker Swarm had to be dealt with first did nothing to reduce her heartache every time she thought about what might have happened to the child.

Bash this time returned to her after a period of little more than a day, and his disappearances and subsequent reappearances would soon become a regular occurrence. She could never predict how long he might remain with her on each occasion, and she fought to suppress the fear that these absences might grow longer and longer, until finally he never returned at all.

She dreamed, on one occasion, of wandering through a house where some of the rooms were left forever in darkness, while others remained brightly lit. Somehow or other, she realized upon waking, she had been dreaming about Bash. But each time he returned and, to her relief, he always did come back he seemed a little more voluble, a little more his old self, until eventually the intervals between his absences grew longer and longer, and then they ceased entirely.

But, as much as it gladdened her to see him restored, it was clear that something had changed in him. He was quieter, more withdrawn, no longer as effusive as he had once been. But, then, she had changed as well; death, as she had long since learned, tended to do that to a person. And for a long time Bash had been more dead than alive.

Then, just a few months away from their final encounter with the Maker Swarm, the ship detoured to pick up a passenger.

Like all its kind, the Atn reminded Dakota of a giant turtle crossbred with a scrapheap. It now stood before them, in yet another docking bay inside the Magi ship which had not existed until moments before. Its massive wedge-shaped head swung from side to side as it regarded first Dakota, then Bash and finally the Librarian. A scratchy and abrasive sound, like a heavily distorted trumpet, eventually emanated from it.

It says hello, explained the Librarian, standing on the creatures other side.

That was saying hello? joked Bash. What the hell does it sound like when its angry?

He enunciated each word very carefully, in the manner of someone unused to exercising their vocal cords. His voice still faltered occasionally even now, and had not yet regained the quiet strength that Dakota remembered.