The arm wrapped around her own tugged at her, and Ha lost her balance. As she did so, the other arm worked its way under the edge of her mask, breaking the seal. Seawater flooded in, blinding her. Then she was dragged forward across the ocean floor, facedown, another arm around her neck, a fourth yanking at her left hand.

No. Not yet. Please.

It released her. She had to surface to clear her mask. She came up choking, half-blind. And saw the blur of Altantsetseg, raising a blunt little machine pistol she must have hidden on herself, pointing it at something behind Ha. Ha grabbed Altantsetseg’s wrist and yanked it down.

She could hear it, the soft sound of it as it slid under the surface of the water behind her. How close to her?

Altantsetseg hauled her into the boat. The light was blinding. Her eyes stung from the salt water that had flooded her mask. She felt Altantsetseg’s hands on her, moving over her limbs, over her torso, rough and efficient, under the suit near her throat, checking for wounds.

“I’m not hurt,” Ha said. “I’m not hurt. She didn’t hurt me. I’m okay. I’m okay. She was just … exploring.”

“Don’t ever grab my gun like that. I could have shot you.”

“Better me than one of them,” Ha said.

“Debatable.” Altantsetseg stripped the mask from Ha’s face. Something clattered to the deck.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Altantsetseg said, bending to retrieve it. “It was in your mask.”

She held it up, but Ha’s eyes stung, and her vision was still too blurred to make out its shape.

Chapter 40

There are two selves in the mind. One is the present self, the ship—neural activity, tacking between the elevated and the mundane. Between thoughts of the meaning of life and of how to glue a handle back on a broken coffee mug. The other is the current on which the vessel is borne: the more permanent self. The memories of childhood, learned concepts, habits and resentments—the built-up layers of previous interactions with the world. This self changes as well, but only slowly—as slowly as a river’s course is changed by shifts in environment and erosion, time wiping a sandbank away or building one up anew. We consist only of change—but some change is fast, and some comes only over years, decades, a lifetime.

—Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, Building Minds

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