The pills were supposed to be without side effects, but they made Ha feel far-off, as if the world were layered behind the thinnest sheet of glass. She had eventually woken up when a bee-sized drone Altantsetseg must have slipped under the door to her room gave her a mild electric shock. The drone told her, in Altantsetseg’s voice, to go to the beach.

But for a long moment she was unable to wake up properly. In a haze, she realized something was wrong in the room. There was too much light.

Then she saw Kamran. He was projected sideways against the wall. It was a passive feed. Somehow the oculus had been knocked off the bedstand. It lay on the carpet, projecting Kamran a meter above the floor, in the middle of the room, washing dishes at the sink. Drug-minded and slow, Ha watched the simple scene: Kamran drying a plate, looking out the window. Kamran putting silverware away.

But as her mind started to clear, a feeling of dread came over her. Had she knocked the oculus off the nightstand? She couldn’t have, could she? And now she felt as if something were in the room with her. Had been in here with her for a while now.

Get up. Turn on the light. You are in danger.

Ha snapped on the bedroom light, half expecting … what? The Shapesinger making a house call?

There was nothing in the room. From the open window came the smell of the sea, the sibilance of waves. She picked the oculus up off the floor, and set it on the nightstand. Kamran was wiping the counter. She switched it off.

The fear was not so easy to turn off. Primitive, base instinct. Eyes on me. Something watching.

Stop.

The room smelled even more than usual of the sea, didn’t it? And the open window … had she opened it? She couldn’t remember.

Enough.

A swift movement at the corner of her vision brought a scream to her lips that she was barely able to stifle.

The bee-sized drone hovered in front of her face.

“I need you down on the beach, Ha. Now. Evrim has gone missing.”

On the beach, several drones hovered over the chop of the bay scanning the surface of the water. Altantsetseg’s hands signed in her gloves. “Did you see Evrim tonight? Earlier?” Altantsetseg asked.

“No, I didn’t. But why would Evrim go into the ocean?”

“I don’t know why. I don’t understand anything that goes on in that robot’s head. But it looks like you can ask them yourself.”

The drones swept toward shore and focused their beams on the figure emerging from the wave-chop.

Evrim, naked and copper-smooth, walking out of the waves. Wet and glistening in the beams of the drones that danced in the air around them, Evrim’s skin seemed to give off its own inner light.