As Kira made a web of struts from the Soft Blade to hold herself upon the mattress, she kept thinking about the bonsai tree. The memory made her smile. Life. She’d spent so long on spaceships and space stations and cold, rocky asteroids, she’d almost forgotten the joy that came from growing things.

She recalled each and every one of the sensations she’d felt from the Soft Blade during the healing process. And she compared them to the similar sensations from Orsted. There was something in them worth investigating, she thought. As they traveled through FTL, she would continue to work on her control of the xeno—always that—and on improving the ease of communication between her and the organism so that it could better carry out her wishes without her having to worry about micromanaging it so much. But more than any of that, Kira wanted to explore the urge she’d felt from the Soft Blade—only in fleeting snatches before, now more strongly—the urge to build and create.

It stirred her interest, and for the first time, it was something Kira wanted to do with the xeno.

So she set her weekly alarm, as she had done during each trip since 61 Cygni, and then she once again began to work with the Soft Blade.

It was a curious experience. Kira was determined to keep the xeno from damaging the Wallfish, as it had Orsted, but at the same time, she wanted to experiment. In certain controlled ways, she wanted to remove all restrictions and let the Soft Blade do what it so obviously wanted.

She started with the handhold by the side of her bed. It was a nonessential part of the ship; if the xeno destroyed it, Hwa-jung could easily print a replacement, although Falconi might not be too pleased about it.…

Go, she whispered in her mind.

From her palm, soft fibrils extended, black and seeking. They fused with the composite grip, and again, Kira felt the delicious, addictive sensation of making something. What, she didn’t know, but there was a satisfaction to the feeling that reminded her of the joy she so often found in solving a difficult problem.

She let out a sigh, her breath a pale wraith twining in the chilled air.

When the fibers from the Soft Blade had completely covered the grip, and when she felt from it a sense of completion and—more—a desire to move past the hold and extend deeper into the hull, she stopped it and withdrew the xeno, curious to see what it had wrought.

She saw, but she didn’t understand.

There, where the curved, cylindrical handhold had been, she saw … something. A length of patterned material that reminded Kira of a cellular structure or an intricate sculpture, one covered with a repeating pattern of subdivided triangles. The surface was slightly metallic and had a greenish iridescence to it, and there were small round nodules of palest chartreuse nestled within the triangles.

She touched the transformed grip. It was warm.