The trauma, though, was tamped some by my anticipation of nectar. I was like a kid on Christmas Eve, anxious to tear open a big box of narcotics. Once inside the cell, I scrambled for the center where the food tube would emerge and deliver the essence of life. Patton was against the wall, clutching Pickles, zoned out.

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked.

His eyes barely opened.

“Come get some nectar,” I said.

He smiled weakly. “I don’t get nectar, Ben.”

Eyes came in and gestured toward the floor where a small panel opened. I giggled in anticipation. “Patton! Food!” I said.

Nectar is for the one who seeks the Chime, the Note of Jecca, said Eyes, handing me my tube.

“What’s he eat, then?” I asked, only half focused on the question as I pushed the tube to my umbilicus.

Eyes made a gesture and an elliptical panel opened in the floor. A shining black spine bowed upward from the hole and slithered mechanically from it. My first thought was it’s the piss eel. Remembering the blinking blue light and the forced hibernation, I panicked, and scrambled clumsily away.

This time the eel had no eye, just a hollow, scoop-shaped appendage at the head. It slithered over to Patton, and a lumpy slop the consistency of mucous-soaked oatmeal poured out of it. Patton scooted up and began to eat from it.

I watched him lap the gruel from the food eel’s face. It wasn’t ideal, but this was the way it had to be. Nectar was for people who were doing important work. He wasn’t going to find the Chime or the Note of Jecca and bring back the Bloom of God to save the Scythin.

I was.

87 Famous naturalist and broadcaster; UK national treasure.

88 Did you try Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Select, Start?

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY

“Who’s ‘they’?” asked Aptat.

“My third prior,” Naecia said, sitting upright in the dredge. “Let me...” Her head pounded and she laid back down. “Just for a bit.” Her mind felt like it had been dilacerated on three axes. Hands on face and eyes still closed, she mumbled. “She’s a human. An aircraft pilot. From long ago.”

“You’re on the cord with a human?” exclaimed Aptat, incredulously. “Then we are assuredly doomed and should delay no further. Time to run.”

“E. The woman. She was working with a scientist. A physicist or astronomer, I think. Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin.”

Aptat swooped extravagantly to the ship’s console. “I had the Child copy Earth’s archives while I was catfishing Ben. Child? Standby for query. Naecia – say that name again.”

“Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin.”