the delicate gossamer lines drifting between struggling Citizen members, between the millions of Network drones tumbling among them. They are difficult to focus on. They’re different from the living threads that Network showed her; these are dead and dark. But of course they are: Network is not found. There’s no animating force here, nothing to fill those lines with life and light.
“Goddess,” she whispers to no one in particular. “I can see it.”
“I don’t mean to constantly talk when I know you don’t want me to talk all the time,” says Ace, “but in this case I think you would want to know that we’re surrounded by—”
“Millions of panicking intelligences,” murmurs Sarya. “I see them, don’t worry.”
“Actually,” says Ace. “I was going to say…that giant silver thing.”
And then Sarya freezes. As if waiting for Ace’s warning, a silver glob drifts through her field of view. Close behind it is another…and another. All around her, nearer than any of the struggling Citizen members out there in the black space of the Visitors’ Gallery, silver spheres drift through the air. Dozens of them gleam in the emergency lights, none of them more than a half meter across. And now that she is listening for it, she hears the ringing—soft and discordant and splintered, a different tone coming from each trembling, jerking fragment.
“What’s wrong with it?” asks Ace after a moment. “Is it…broken?”
Sarya watches these parings of Librarian drift, gleaming in the emergency lighting, and remembers her mother’s musings on its lightyears-spanning mind. “It’s not broken,” she says, watching ripples move across the face of the nearest piece. “I think it’s…broken off.” Broken off from the Network, like her…except it’s not designed to be. It doesn’t know how to function on its own. These are no more than neurons, violently excised from a mind.
Which gives her the germ of an idea.
“Well, whatever it is,” says Ace, “it’s getting a little close and I really don’t want to be eaten again.”
Sarya cannot stop her slow zero-g tumble, but she can track the nearest silver shape with her head. She watches her reflection in its surface, surprised at how calm her mind seems to be. But then, as Network recently told her: she is a Human, shaped by a Widow, amplified by a gigantic galaxy-spanning intelligence. She is not just Sarya the Daughter staring down her own killer. She is, in a weird way, Shenya the Widow gazing at the small being she nurtured all those decades near lightspeed. She is, in an even weirder way, Network looking at Itself. Somewhere in all that mess, some instinct belonging to some part of her surely knows what to do. In fact—yes. Slowly, not quite understanding why she’s doing it, she raises a hand toward this nearest piece of Librarian—
“Uh,” says Ace. “Are you hissing at it?”
She finds that she is. Not an aggressive hiss, but the croon of a mother Widow toward a Daughter. One of the many parts of Sarya the Daughter knows that this thing is frightened and alone. Another knows that it is potentially useful. Yet another knows what to do. Just as Network said: she is responding with all the parts that make up her nature. Now she reaches out again, tentatively, not with hands this time but with mind. Your mind is where your power lies, Network told her. She traces the delicate threads streaming from this small piece of Librarian. Her instincts tell her that all she has to do is touch its mind like this—
Nothing.
“Is something supposed to be happening?” asks Ace anxiously. “Because it’s kinda…getting closer.”
Sarya watches the humming globe drift toward her, her own concern rising as her distorted half-lit reflection grows. The closer it gets, the louder it calls, as if it’s…hungry. And now Sarya is paddling backward in midair, kilometers above the floor, all thoughts of minds and threads forgotten as she attempts to save her brand-new body. She puts her hands up—both biological and mechanical—then draws them back when she realizes the Librarian will simply absorb them. Frantically, she reaches for its mind again. She can feel it, it’s right there, but it’s closed to her. But she’s done this before, she would swear she has, she’s touched a mind, all she has to do is follow this thread, this thread she’s yanking on right here, goddess damn you, listen, you shiny—
And then the thread she is holding, the dark line that links this being to Network, breaks in half. It takes