Ha looked toward the horizon. She had been thinking, before, of how it was easier to pretend that Altantsetseg was an individual, that all of her choices were her own, than to admit that Altantsetseg was a part of them. That all of them were bound together so tightly that they formed a single entity. Now she seemed to see—as if she could map the connections themselves, extending through the air and water out past the perimeter of the archipelago, out across every border of every state and protectorate—a dense network of mutual, overlapping patterns of causality tying everything together. Not just the four of them on this island, but everything.

Somewhere out there, the decisions had been made to ruthlessly pull protein from the sea. To create that AI ship, to crew it with enslaved people, to set it in motion. And those decisions, so complex, so apparently unconnected to anything else, but in fact so densely involved in the maze of profit and exploitation, had led the ship here, to die with its crew and to smash the research and destroy the work of people the ship’s builders and owners could never have met.

Some fishing conglomerate’s insatiable greed?

No. Our insatiable greed. The ship belongs to all of us.

Ha looked at the strange machine pistol on the ground. “Did you … hurt them?”

Altantsetseg shrugged. “Hurt them? Yes. But they were not badly wounded, and certainly none of them were killed. The pistol fires beanbags. Enough to frighten, possibly break skin at the range I was firing them, leave contusions—nothing more. They left quickly enough. Like I said: they were here to do damage, to warn. If they had wanted to do more, they could have. I would be dead—and certainly the rest of you would have preceded me or followed shortly after.”

“Another failure,” Ha said. “And we are running out of time.”

“Where is Dr. Mínervudóttir-Chan?” Altantsetseg asked.

“We thought she was with you.”

Altantsetseg shook her head. “No. She was out running when the attack came. I would have located her by now, if my main control systems weren’t damaged. But no matter. I have backups. My drones will find her soon enough. It is too bad, though: I wanted her to see this moment.”

Altantsetseg raised her hand into the air.

Ha watched the drones descend. There were seven of them. Tibetan. Their sleek dragonfly bodies hummed over the surface of the terrace, low, almost playful, sweeping in over the algae-choked pool. They hovered over Altantsetseg’s shoulders. She turned her head and said something to one of the drones. It swung off, darting into the hotel itself.