He stored nothing there but his memories of others’ expressions: his father’s smile, barely a twitch at the corner of his mouth, Son’s face when he spoke of home, Indra’s bloodstained determined grimace, the look on Thomas’s face as he went over the side. He kept them in a set of pigeonholes at the back of the rolltop desk, tied with ribbon. There were dozens already. Lying in his hammock, he would go through them, one by one, etching them deeper into his memory. Not forgetting these people—not forgetting the reality of other people—now seemed more important than the detailed plans and movements he had stashed in the many generations and rooms of the Minaguchi-ya.

“Yes,” Indra said. “You are right, of course. Time is what is needed.”

Two days later, Indra was smiling and laughing again with the others. They uncuffed him, and everyone shared a meal in the mess.

That evening he jumped over the gunwale on the ship’s port side. He moved too fast for anyone to stop him.

For several minutes, the crew leaned over the rail, watching for him. Helpless, they scanned and rescanned the churned path of the Sea Wolf through water the color of lead.

His head never rose from the sea.

Chapter 33

What does it mean to be a self? I think, more than anything else, it means the ability to select between different possible outcomes in order to direct oneself toward a desired outcome: to be future-oriented. When every day is the same, when we are not presented with the necessity to choose between different possibilities, we say we don’t “feel alive”—and here I think we guess at what being alive actually is. It is the ability to choose. We live in choices.

—Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think

33

“YOU DIDN’T WAKE UP to the intrusion alarm.”

“No. I’ve been taking pills. To sleep better.”

“I didn’t think anyone could sleep through that alarm. Dangerous, being that deep asleep. Why the pills? Are you bothered by something?”

Not dangerous at all. Dangerous to be as awake as I am, always, to everything around me. Sleep is a solution, not a problem.

“I’m bothered by everything.” Ha wrapped her arms around her torso. The breeze on the night beach was not cold, but it carried droplets of the sea in it that landed on Ha’s skin and drew away her body’s heat. “Why are we out here?”

“Because the intrusion alarm was not caused by someone coming out of the water. It was caused by someone going in. And Evrim is gone.” Altantsetseg pointed at the sand, where Evrim’s golden robe was neatly folded a few meters from the tide line.