It was true—what Evrim said. She was killed for nothing: killed because some ship tried to break through the perimeter in exactly the wrong place. Killed by some fishing conglomerate’s profit incentives. And killed because the octopuses couldn’t have cared less whether she lived or died. She had been killed for the same reason a dolphin, tangled in a tuna net and drowned, was killed: the species that caught her didn’t care enough not to kill her. She meant nothing to them.

It was that indifference that had to end.

And maybe Evrim was right—Ha thought of the Shapesinger’s gift to her, and of her portrait, projected on the Shapesinger’s skin—maybe that indifference was already ending.

“So much genius died with her.”

“No,” Evrim said.

“You can’t deny her genius, Evrim. No matter what else she was.”

“I am not denying her genius. What I mean is … I am composed of many people. My mind is woven together from many minds, most of them just partial. But at the core of me is Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, as she was when her complete neural connectome was duplicated, a week before my creation. I am much more than only her, but I am also all of her. And I do not mourn for her. She wanted this…” Evrim gestured toward the shroud. “She has been in pain, all of her life. She is the loneliest person I know of—far lonelier than I ever was. She has wanted, for a very long time, to leave this first form of hers behind. She wanted it ever since she was a child.”

Ha stared at Evrim, their slender copper face tilted toward her. And felt like she truly saw them for the first time.

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 … holy net in hand, sexless, their body slender, elongated, proportions exaggerated, like the exaggerations of an ancient idol carved of honeyed amber … godlike.

“If you have all of her inside you … if you know everything she knows … you can build another Evrim. You know how to do it. You can self-replicate.”

“Yes.”

“That means—you aren’t an android. You are a species.”

A whir drew Ha’s attention to Altantsetseg, impassively watching the scene between them. Two of the dragonfly drones hovered over her shoulders. And Ha saw, walking down the beach toward them, a line of saffron-robed automonks.

They wanted to build a seaside monastery here …

Not a monastery. A research station.

Altantsetseg’s face was perfectly calm, remote—as if looking at something in a future only she could see.

“All beings shall find refuge here,” Altantsetseg said.

The wheel of the transport drone hovered over the water of the bay. A gong sounded, somewhere near the hotel.