The waters parted way; a path began to form, from the shallows down to the depths. Mud and seashells and rocks and coral. The Leviathans were doing some of that, Mariam saw. They created suction, moving the sea, pulling the water away while the globsters formed crude walls and the smart coral spread vertically.

Beyond the path, deep under the sea, Mariam thought she could see something forming. Like a shimmering mirror, or perhaps a mirage. But she couldn’t make out what it was.

A small and serious-faced woman came and stood to one side and watched the golden man with a strange, lost expression.

“Will you be gone long?” she said, and the golden man turned, and regarded her, and said, “Would you like to come with me?”

“I would like it very much,” the woman said. She went to the golden man and hugged it, the way a mother holds her child.

“I had done wrong by you,” she said.

“Hello, Nasu,” the robot said.

The woman nodded to the robot.

“I remember you now,” she said.

“And I, you. I had hunted you for a long time, you know.”

The woman smiled.

“That Nasu is gone,” she said. “And she was never that easy to catch.”

The robot nodded. “Then I will not shoot you,” it said.

“And I will not scramble your brain and remodel your guts from the inside,” Nasu said.

Robots don’t smile, so the robot just nodded.

It turned to Mariam.

“Goodbye,” it said. “And thank you for the rose.”

“Go well,” Mariam said, and she touched the robot gently on the shoulder in farewell.

The golden man took one step, and then another, and began to descend to the bed of the sea.

Mariam and Nasir moved out of the way. Soon the golden man appeared as little more than a speck of gold in the distance. The robots followed it down, one by one and two by two, and all the birds in the sky descended, all headed to that shimmering mirage that Mariam could not make out clearly.

Then they were gone, one by one and two by two, and when the last of the robots stepped onto the seabed the water closed over their heads, and the Leviathans sank into the depths.

A bright light flashed, deep under, and then the sea returned just how it was.

“Well, I suppose that’s that,” a tall, grasshopper-like UXO said.

“Who are you?” Mariam said in surprise.

“Nehemiah’s the name,” the UXO said. “Amateur naturalist and lepidopterologist. That means I collect—”

“Butterflies, yes,” Mariam said. “I know. You didn’t go with the others?”

“Now, why would I want to do that?” Nehemiah said. “Fool’s errand, the whole thing, and I have my insects to catalogue, and so many more pretty butterflies to catch. Well, I wish you well but I must return to my work. Ma’a salama.”