skin cells, blood cells, neurons, worth nothing by themselves. She, on the other hand…she’s worth more than she ever imagined. At each fire, she hears her name. “Sarya the Daughter!” cheers Observer’s supermind with countless smiles. And each time, she raises a cup and smiles in return. No matter what He says to her, she hears it the same way:
You matter.
She is humming her own name to Observer’s tune by the time she staggers up to a fire with no one around it. She squints; the world is slightly tilted, and she has to concentrate on standing even more than she usually does. There’s a mass lying in the orange flicker, and she feels that she should know what it is. Big, says her brain. The fire lights it unevenly, licking its textured surface. Furry? says her brain. And then, at the top of this rough black shape, dozens of gleams of reflected firelight begin to appear.
“Well, look who it is,” rumbles Mer.
The dozens of reflections blink and change size, and then Sandy scampers down Mer’s huge arm to crouch closer to the fire. She is staring at Sarya, but if she is saying anything, Sarya can’t read it. On the far side of the fire, a lanky shape enters the circle of light. It strides to the fire, squats, and begins to insert long pieces of fuel into its flickering glow. Pieces of tree, says her brain, though there is a delay before it finds the correct word. And here, for the first time since she arrived, she sees traces of Network. Two helper intelligences—Mer’s and Sandy’s—and some kind of weird conglomeration somewhere in Roche’s chest. Their strands drift, dark and disconnected, unlit by the fire.
“Hello, Sarya the Daughter,” says Roche without looking up from the fire. “We were beginning to think you didn’t care.”
Sarya wobbles in the firelight, cup in hand, her gaze making its unsteady way from one half-lit shape to the next. Even sober she would be having trouble classifying this bloom of emotion. She feels a little sick, that’s for sure, but the evening has offered many potential causes for that. Beyond that, she feels…what is this, guilt? What does she have to feel guilty about? It’s true that she hasn’t spared these three a thought since…well since Riptide, maybe. But come on: what does she really owe them? They were shipmates for a few days. They were all part of the same Network, long ago. But honestly, what weight does that carry? She could say the same about anyone on that Blackstar—and that was back when the Network was even a thing here. Now it’s not. Now they’re free. If anything, she should be feeling pride, not guilt. She swallows and focuses on remaining upright as she condenses these thoughts and more into an appropriate greeting.
“Um,” says Sarya the Daughter. She tilts, corrects, and hiccups. “Hi.”
“Hi, she says,” Mer tells the fire. From somewhere in his huge silhouette, he lifts a pitcher. She can hear the liquid splashing past his teeth, each swallow many times what she herself has had to drink all night.
“We should soothe her,” says Roche. “Look how worried she was! This whole time, while she was dancing around eating animal and partaking of ethanol, she was actually fraught with concern. My friends, she was thinking. Last I saw, they were adrift in a zero-gravity Network-deprived hellscape! Well, now you can calm yourself, Sarya the Daughter. As you can see, we survived.”
Mer drops his arm, then tosses his pitcher into the fire. He belches. “I musta killed fifty of these little guys on the Blackstar,” he says, “Didn’t matter. I still woke up here, and they still offered me a drink.” He gazes out into the darkness, his own small eyes disappearing when he turns from the fire. “Dunno why they brought me here,” he says. “I was doin’ fine on the Blackstar.”
Sarya sways. “He,” she corrects. “Not they.” She feels that she should have come up with something else to say by now, but nothing has come to mind.
Mer belches for an answer, then begins to feel around himself for another pitcher.
“Oh, don’t worry!” says Roche. “We understand, we truly do. We are mere acquaintances. Fellow passengers aboard the good ship Riptide. We may have saved your life once or twice, it’s true, but who has the time to keep track of such things? Though who knows: perhaps the galaxy would be in better shape had we left