He was far beyond biology now, of course. It was only technology that kept him alive. With time, the Ship had infiltrated its treatments and systems deeper into the shell of what had been his body. It was as if he had become just another of the Ship’s systems, like the air scrubbers or the water purifiers, just as old and balky, and just as much in need of endless tender loving care.

The decay of his central nervous system had proceeded so far that he wasn’t sure if it returned any signals to the hardening nugget of his brain; he wasn’t sure if he perceived the outside universe unfiltered at all. And even the walls of his consciousness were wearing away. He thought of his mind as a dark hall filled with drifting forms, like zero-gravity sculptures. These were his memories - or perhaps memories of memories, recycled, reiterated, edited and processed.

And he was here, a pinpoint awareness that flitted and flew between the drifting reefs of memory. At times, as he sailed through the abstraction of emptiness, free of memory or anticipation, indeed free of any conscious thought save only a primal sense of self, he felt oddly free - light, unburdened, even young again. But whenever that innocent point settled into the dark tangle of a memory reef, the guilt came back, a deep muddy shame whose origins he had half-forgotten, and whose resolution he could no longer imagine.

He wasn’t alone, however, in this cavernous awareness. Sometimes voices called from the dark. Sometimes there were even faces, their features softened, their ages indeterminate. Here was Diluc, his brother, or Andres, or Ruul or Selur or one of the others. He knew they were all long dead save for him, who lived on and on. He had vague memories of setting up some of these Virtual personas as therapy for himself, or as ways for the Ship to attract his attention - Lethe, even as company. But by now he wasn’t sure what was Virtual and what was a dream, a schizoid fantasy of his rickety mind.

Lora was never there, however.

And Andres, the cold pharaoh who had become his longest-enduring companion, was his most persistent visitant.

‘Nobody ever said this would be easy, Rusel.’

‘You said that before.’

‘Yes. And I’ll keep on saying it until we get to Canis Major.’

‘Canis Major? . . .’ The destination. He’d forgotten about it again, forgotten that an end to all this even as a theoretical possibility might exist. The trouble was, thinking about such things as a beginning and an end made him aware of time, and that was always a mistake.

How long? The answer came to him like a whisper. Round numbers? Twenty thousand years gone. Twenty thousand years. It was ridiculous, of course.

‘Rusel,’ Andres snapped. ‘You need to focus.’

‘You’re not even Andres,’ he grumbled.