“I didn’t do anything. I hid it from everyone. I kept on studying, kept on talking to other people, kept on doing everything exactly as I had been. What seemed most important was to make sure that nobody knew. I learned to hide it. To smile. To ‘join in’ with everyone in group activities. To pretend to be someone I was not.

“Then I got into Oxford. Maybe it was the promise of something new—of a change of scene—that broke the spell. I don’t know. It didn’t happen as quickly as it had come, but over time, the colors came back. I was never able to pinpoint when I got well again, or well enough, but it happened. At Oxford I fell in love with biology, zoosemiotics, a dozen other subjects. I threw myself into science. It gave me purpose. For years I was fine. But then I was running a research station, studying cuttlefish—”

Evrim put a hand up. “I know what happened. I learned about it when we vetted your work.”

“And yet still you took me.”

“It made me even more convinced you were the right person. You have experienced failure. I determined it would make you more driven to see this effort succeed.”

“I didn’t just experience failure. It was my fault, Evrim. They all died because of me. Because I couldn’t do what needed to be done.”

“Yes,” Evrim said. “It was your fault. In many ways. But you were alone. You made yourself alone. And you are not alone here.”

It was your fault. Those were the words Ha had been waiting, for far too long, to hear. Those words should have felt like a condemnation: instead, they felt like forgiveness.

They were walking out of the building now. Ha looked around, fearing for a moment that the colors of the encroaching forest, the faded pastels of the crumbling building, would be paler than they should be. But they were not.

“Islands,” Evrim said, “are such strange places. Places of containment. Here, a prison for dissidents. This place’s history—”

“Is much the same as its present,” said Ha.