These ones are, she thought, and Sagara said, as if she had spoken it: “At best, they’re imitative. But they can’t truly think on their own. It’s why they’re following Taban’s lead: it thinks for them. Implants ideas.”

“Who taught Taban to think, then?”

He was silent at that.

“It depends on how you define consciousness,” Park said, weary now. “At the very least, the androids have a deep awareness and understanding of the ship’s systems, because they’re a part of them: they’re designed to monitor them and know them intimately. That could be enough to count, in terms of the unity rain—or dimensional disintegration, or whichever.”

Sagara remained quiet for a long time after this. Finally he said, very softly, “You don’t really believe we’ve been . . . merging together with the androids, do you? Or that they’ve become more human?”

In truth, she wasn’t sure if she believed any of it at all, or was even capable of processing such things at any logical level anymore. But the explanation fit—it settled in her mind with the smooth perfection of a missing gear. “I don’t know,” Park said after a moment. “I only know it’s the only explanation we have. We might as well work with it.”

“Then going off of that, we need to get off this planet as soon as possible, wouldn’t you say? Lest we suddenly find ourselves shifted into an airless vacuum, or . . .” He paused significantly. “Worse.”

“That’s certainly what Taban implied,” Park murmured. “That things are only going to get worse from here on out. It’s not a place for humans to stay in for any length of time. But what can we do about it from in here?”

Sagara lapsed into silence again, for so long that she thought he might have finally passed out. She wondered again how the Regenext was doing, but was too tired to bend over to check his leg. A kind of cool sleepiness was falling over her: she wondered if this was what it felt like in a cryogenic pod, in those last moments of waking before oblivion crept over you like a funeral shroud. If she let sleep—or hypothermia—take her, what would become of them? Would she meet her end as a frozen, mummified corpse, to be discarded when the mutineers found their new planet—or destroyed when ISF blew the whole ship to pieces?

And what about the androids? Where were they? Would they come to find their home-bringer, light-giver, Word made flesh—or whatever they thought she was? Or had they all been destroyed?