“Perhaps the head I nod and the muscles I stretch are simply not within your field of vision.”

Panille took a glass of water from his cubby spigot and drank before replying.

“You’re just imagining what it’s like to stretch. That’s not the same at all.”

“I actually stretched. Perhaps it is you who imagines what it is to stretch.”

“I really stretch because I have a body and that body sometimes wants to sleep.”

Waela thought he sounded defensive, but there were plain hints at amusement in Ship’s tones.

“Never underestimate the power of imagination, Kerro. Notice the word itself: creator of images. Is that not the essence of your human experience?”

“But images are . . . just images.”

“And the artistry in your images, what is that? If, someday, you compose an account of all your experiences, will that be artistry? Tell me how you know that you exist.”

Waela slapped the shut-off switch. The holo image of young Panille held itself in the negative, like an afterthought, then died. But she thought he had been nodding as she stopped the replay, as though he had acquired sudden insight.

What did he acquire in his odd way of relating to Ship? She felt herself inadequate to the task of understanding Panille, despite these mysterious recordings. How had Hali Ekel known about these holos? Waela glanced around the tiny study cubby. What a strange little place hidden away here behind a secret hatch.

Why did Hali want me to look at these recordings? Will I really find him there in his past—lay the ghost of his childhood to rest or drive his voice from my mind?

Waela pressed her palms against her temples. That voice! In her most unguarded moments of panic, that voice came into her mind, telling her to be calm, to accept, telling her eerie things about someone called Avata.

I’m going mad. I know I am.

She dropped her hands and pressed them against her abdomen, as though this pressure would stop the terrible speed of that growth within her.

Hali Ekel’s diffident knock sounded at the hatch. It opened just enough to let her slip through. She sealed the hatch, swung her pribox around to her hip.

“What have you learned?” Hali asked.

Waela indicated the jumble of holo recordings around her chair. “Who made these?”

“Ship.” Hali put her pribox on the arm of Waela’s chair.

“They don’t tell me what I want to know.”

“Ship is not a fortuneteller.”

Waela wondered at the oddity of that response. There were times when Hali seemed at the point of saying something important about Ship, something private and secret, but the disclosure never came—just these odd statements.

Hali attached the cold platinum node of the pribox to the back of Waela’s left hand. There was a moment of painful itching at the contact, but it subsided quickly.