The eyes began to drift off again.

But then Locke asked, “What if? When they were fabricating the ship… what if the Builders didn’t stop with the hull? Marrow surrounds the Bleak, whatever that is, and what we call the Great Ship surrounds Marrow. But what if the hull isn’t the end of their work? What if their project reaches out a lot farther, and now, after all this time, it has reached as far as we can see, or imagine…?”

Without exception, the scribes leaned forward.

“You’re looking into the ship’s structures and exact proportions, hunting for some hidden message,” Locke concluded. “But what if the message isn’t written just in this stone and iron and hyperfiber? What if the Builders’ ship is the universe, too… the trillions of stars and the whirling galaxies, and every unmapped mote of dust, and everything else that we can see or suppose throughout the entire visible creation…?”

None of the AIs moved.

To the human ear, none made even the tiniest sound. Washen laid a hand on Locke’s shoulder, telling him, “They’re interested. They’re considering it now’ He said, “Good.”

Mother and son walked out onto the gangway, looking between their feet at the dim black face of Marrow. Every available engineer was waiting above them, ready to begin pouring hyperfiber into the base camp, then the access tunnel. This wouldn’t be a catastrophic collapse. They would take their time, slowly and thoroughly plugging this gaping hole in the chamber’s otherwise perfect wall. Plainly, the Builders had reasons for what they did. As far as Washen or Pamir could see, the only sensible course was to seal the prison again, making things much as they were before and doing it as permanently as possible… the only change being a few small, impossible-to-find security eyes stuck to the chamber’s slick silver wall, watching over her millions of grandchildren…

For a moment, as she stood on that gangway thinking about her grandchildren, Washen felt the sudden strange urge to throw herself at Marrow.

But she took a breath and the feeling passed, and with a practiced motion of her hand, she looked at the time. Then to Locke and the AI scribes, she announced, “We need to be leaving. Now.”

The machines stood and gathered in a neat line.

“Have you thought about what I told you?” Locke asked them.

One of the machines replied, “Naturally”

“Will you have answers soon?” he pressed.

The rubber face merely smiled, and with an appealing haughtiness, it said, “Soon. In a century or a million years. Yes. Soon.”

Washen barely heard the voice or her son’s hearty laugh.

Kneeling on the gangway, where the new hyperfiber would be poured first, she set out her mechanical clock with its silver lid opened, and she left it there. It was the hardest thing in the world. But she managed to stand and walk away, muttering to herself, “For later. I’ll leave it here for now and come back to get it later…”