After a moment, she shrugged. “It’s fine. Once I figured out I wasn’t losing my mind.”
“Roxy, I’ll see what I can do about getting a sturdier emitter. Might be able to rig up a carrier too, to run on your signals so you can move on your own.”
“Not into the black?” Anxiousness permeated the electronic signal, which shouldn’t have been possible. “Not to tumble, forgotten and forgetting? Not alone? Say not alone.”
“Not alone,” Kinsley murmured.
“I didn’t mean we’d eject you,” Sil reassured the rock. “Just some sort of mobility device inside theDeepWander.”
“A pet rock with its own scooter.” Kinsley sighed as she extricated herself from beneath his arm and took a step away. “Why not?”
He watched her. “Even a rock might want to seize its destiny. Which is tricky without adequate appendages or accessibility adaptations.”
She glanced back him, eyes half closed. “I suppose that’s true.”
“The way is clear,” Roxy announced through the datpad.
With effort—noticing things about Kinsley had become something of a problem for him, Sil mused—he turned his attention back to the alien stone. “A way through the interference?”
“Also too.”
Whatever other path the rock might be contemplating, it seemed a mistake to get distracted. “Can you project a map as you did before? Now that we’re closer, perhaps you can reckon more precisely.”
“Pet rock?” Roxy’s cajoling tone was even more strange than the anxiety and volume. “Me pet, pet me.”
Kinsley scowled. “Is it some sort of pervert rock?”
Sil contemplated the datpad scanner. “Roxy, do you need another source of energy? We have electrical, thermal, some chemical—”
“Pet me.”
“Kinetic energy, perhaps,” he murmured. “Which, in an optimized molecular lattice could indeed—”
“Oh, fuck it.” Kinsley grabbed one of his hands. Fingers interlaced, they touched the rock.
The sensations sleeted over him, so fast and hard he could barely suck in a startled breath, Kinsley’s hand clenched hard in his.
Cold, dark, lonely. Everything Ollie and Kinsley had already relayed. But to feel it…
Except it wasn’t Roxy he was feeling.
Light bloomed around them, the star chart recalibrating. And in his mind, he experienced too the hazy recollection of a vast, interconnected consciousness, basking in a web of light. But then a collision—a great shock splintering the wholeness. Tumbling—cold, dark, lonely, the lights winking out one by one.
Calling out into the void, but receiving no answer. Shrinking, fading. Dying.
And then, finally, a light. A touch…
“The way is clear,” Roxy said.
Kinsley let out a shaky breath. “Did you…?”
“I felt it.” Sil kept hold of her hand, equally unsteady. “Roxy was part of a larger matrix, a brain of light. So much was lost.”
“Find,” Roxy whispered. “Gather. And share.”
Kinsley stiffened. “Do you mean you could…put yourself back together?”
“No. Gone forever.”
