Starplex

And then it began. In the middle of the bay was a standard Ib comfort mound. Boxcar rolled over it so that the hump supported her frame from underneath. Her web — visible in PHANTOM's giant hologram — turned an almost electric purple, another color Keith had never seen before. The light points at the web's countless intersections grew brighter and brighter, a dense constellation map with every star a nova.

Then, one by one, the lights winked out. It took perhaps two minutes for them all to go dark. Boxcar's frame tipped forward, and her web slid off to the bay floor, landing in a loose pile. Keith had thought the web was already dead, but it arched up sharply, as if a fist were pushing it up from underneath. The strands had now lost all their color; they looked like thick nylon fishing line.

After a moment, though, the web finally did expire, collapsing into a heap. Boxcar was now blind and deaf (she had once had a magnetic sense, too, but that had been neutralized through nanosurgery when she'd left her home-world; it caused severe disorientation aboard spaceships).

Next, Boxcar's wheels disengaged from the axles on the frame. Wheel disengaging wasn't unusual in and of itself.

The system that allowed nutrients to pass from the axle into each wheel didn't provide enough food for the wheels, and in their native environment they would periodically separate from the rest of the gestalt for feeding. Thick tendrils, similar to the Ib's bundle of manipulatory ropes, popped out of the sides of the wheels, preventing them from falling over (or righting them if they did).

Almost immediately after it separated, the left wheel tried to rejoin the frame. Just as PHANTOM said it might, it panicked when it realized that little bumps had risen up all around the axle's circumference, preventing it from reconnecting.

It rolled around the bay, the grabbing projections around its rim extending and retracting at a great rate. The wheel had a few vision sensors of its own, and as soon as it caught sight of the huge collection of Ibs, it made a beeline for the closest. That Ib spun away, avoiding the wheel. One of the others — Butterfly, Keith assumed, the one Ib doctor on board — surged forward, a manipulatory rope extended, a silver-and-black medical stunner held at its tip. The stunner touched the wheel, and it stopped moving. It stood for several seconds, then the rootlike appendages coming out of its sides seemed to go soft, and the wheel toppled onto its side.

Keith turned his attention back to the center of the bay.

Boxcar's bundle of ropes had slid to the floor, near the discarded sensor web. They were reaching up to the frame and disengaging the blue pump from the central green pod, and gently lifting the pump to the floor. Keith could see the pump's large central breathing orifice cycling through its usual four-step sequence of open, stretch, compress, and close. After about forty seconds, though, the sequence started to get distorted as the pump seemed to lose track of what it was doing. The orifice movements became jumbled — opening, then immediately compressing; trying to stretch wide after closing. There was a small gasping sound — the only sound in the entire bay. Finally the pump stopped moving.

All that was left was the pod, sitting on the saddle-shaped frame.

Keith whispered to Rissa: "How long can the pod survive without the pump?"

Rissa turned to him, her eyes wet. She blinked several times, dislodging tears. "A minute," she said at last. "Perhaps two."

Keith reached over and squeezed her hand. Everything was still for about three minutes. The pod expired quietly, without movement or sound — although somehow, apparently, the Ibs knew when it was gone, and, as one, they began to roll out of the bay. All their webs were dark; not a word was passing between them. Keith and Rissa were the last to leave. Butterfly would return shortly, Keith knew, to take care of jettisoning Boxcar's remains into space.

As they walked out of the bay, Keith thought about his own future. He was going to live a long, long time, apparently. He wondered whether billions of years from now he'd be able to escape the mistakes of his own past.

They couldn't sleep that night, of course. Boxcar's death had upset Rissa, and Keith was wrestling with his own demons. They lay side by side in their bed, wide-awake, Rissa staring at the dark ceiling, Keith looking at the faint red spot on the wall made by the light seeping around the plastic card he used to cover his clock face.

Rissa spoke — just one word. "If…"

Keith rolled onto his back. "Pardon?"

She was quiet for a time. Keith was about to prod her again, when she said, very softly, "If you don't remember how to make a u or an apostrophe, will you remember me — remember us?" She rolled over, looked at him. "You're going to live another ten billion years. I can't begin to comprehend that."