RUSTEM STOOD AT THE RAIL OF THE FERRY, looking out over the indigo chop of the Bosporus. Just below the surface jellyfish drifted, the organ-structures in their transparent bodies reminiscent of cartoonish human faces. Faces wide-eyed, mouths gaping, shocked to find themselves transformed into nothing more than drifting creatures without will, at the mercy of the current.

That is hell. To come back as a gelatinous, mindlessly feeding glob of flesh. To have your volition and choice devolved away, back to the basics of stimulus and response. To drift in the current, meaningless.

Hell is a lack of choice.

He saw her approaching out of the corner of his eye. He did not look at her right away. But the appearance of her in his peripheral vision, the swirl of the abglanz, irritated the mind on a primitive level. He could feel it tugging at him—feel his mind needing to know. What is that? A threat to us? Underneath the conscious mind was this other mind, working every second to sort and order the world. The churning cloud of the abglanz would not fit into that order.

Now she was at the rail—leaning back against it, her humanity hidden behind the hornet-swarm of color.

“So,” she said, the mechanical flatness tearing away the intonation of what he was sure was sarcasm, “finally the great Bakunin has managed to produce.”

“Yes. I have found your portal for you—your weak point. It’s all mapped here.” He raised the terminal, extended it to her.

“It took you long enough.”

“It was the hardest thing I have ever done. And I am the only one who could have done it.”

“Perhaps.” The whirlwind of shattered stained glass tilted toward the screen. “It’s locked. What’s the password?”

“The password is the meaning of their name.”

“Don’t play games with us. Just say it.”

“Evolution. Evrim means ‘evolution’—and it is a perfect name for them. At first I thought this mind was as sophisticated as a human mind, and that was the beauty of it—a human mind, but built. A perfect piece of construction. But then I reached deeper into its core. It isn’t a human mind at all. It is better. It is building neural circuits there that are more complex than anything the human mind could build. Not the broken tangles of human memory—no. It is building castles of pure recall. This backup image of it that you stole is, what—three years old?”

“Something like that.”

“By now it has built crystalline structures of memory that dwarf anything any of us will build in a lifetime. Imagine perfect recall of every action in your life. Of everything you had seen or done. A palace of memory you could wander in at will. Imagine how much you could learn about the world, with that kind of mind. How much you could grow.”

“I’m sure it’s impressive.”