"So in order to understand what happened, we'll use words in the way that they exist: as drawers of distinction between ideas. The impossible must defy our understanding. We have neither luck nor prophecy. We cannot change the past. There are no ghosts or spirits; the dead are dead. We have not discovered anything that allows any of this. But the possible can be understood: these are things that only defy our meager tools. Immortality is possible. There is nothing that precludes the deity just mentioned. Creating life -- "

Brownlee: "Can you switch the voice to -- ."

"Burch's?" said Cee. Burch was fitted with a light Middle accent redolent of learning despite him. Cee laughed softly. "Okay."

As Burch: "Creating life is possible. Now, about possibility."

Here Brownlee had dropped in some animation, plus a live-action with wire tricks featuring Wigmund.

"Consider a gambler with a die. The molecules in the die are moving, and if they move in agreement, the die leaps up off the table. Physical laws are ruled by logic, and are ungovernable: so when the die comes to rest on its edge, it owes neither apology nor account. And if the moving molecules of the air come to an agreement, they separate by kind into the corners of the room, and our unlucky game-player suffocates. Those who think in terms of probability in these affairs are pedants, or simply cannot understand. Time is the food which vivifies these phenomena. Possibility plus time equals certainty: if it can happen, it will happen."

Burch was reading over his shoulder. "Got me involved again."

"Group effort, Henry."

"Right. And ... look, we're all there. Please come." He limped off.

Brownlee waited. Sometimes he'd ensure that he couldn't be heard when he had nothing to say. "Yes, first officer, be there, shuffling over." He had the screen go black, which left an echo on his eyes that he watched for a while with fading interest. On his worktop, to the side, a sketchpad where all the clutter went. A die cut from welder's wax and marked, and used while thinking, driving others from the room. Old photo from home, which he pulled from its sleeve and secured in a personal file. He turned his chair into the hall and rolled two doors down the ramp into Recreation.

Cee had advised them that morning of growing gaps in the ash cloud. The Mercia was out half a unit still, six months, but the lenses were good, and there it was on the overhead, black as nothing. Cee changed the aspect, and now it was an empty place in the skin of the night sky. Down which their clumsy gazes fell. Or then a shroud, spun out of the ether, bristling at the edges and pulling apart to show a featureless face, described in tenuous light, and like black metal, matte and bent along the longitudinal, down which a knuckle had been gently drawn. Black petal.

"The Earth does not orbit the Sun: the two orbit a point in common, deep in the center of the Sun, like a fulcrum, around which the partners lurch in incorrect circles. That's the arrangement for all the things in a star's ambit: each filthy ball of gas or stone is a knot in its stomach. Every pivot-point vies for priority of place, so of course there will be a boiling at the core. Helios, held in endless torment by his charges.

"On August 7 of last year, possibility conspired with time to effect an adjusting of accounts."

Scrope stood, leaning in and putting all his great burden behind a thrust of the arm. "Marker there, Cee." Orange marker where he'd touched the display. He turned; the blood had left his head, fuel fleeing the fire. "That's the Horn." No argument, which in any event would've required an ounce of life.

"All manner of natural macro-anomalies - tremors, great displacing winds, monsoons out of season - are brought about by numberless infinitesimals coming upon a common cause. And that's how it happened in the stomach of the sun: a chance faction of protons hit their marks, wheeled and moved in furious agreement, up and out. The strain in the body would be expressed on the face: a bolus of light leaps up off the table."

Cee and Brownlee had studied the recording and smart-guessed a narrative. The Earth's diameter averages 12,700 kilometers; the solar prominence at the start was some 700,000 kilometers long, in time shedding half that. It was put out along the ecliptic at 2,000 kilometers per second, and crossed the 150 million kilometers in about a day. It did its dirty business in about 15 seconds. Maybe a hundred million degrees. Brownlee was taken with its shape.

"It was maniform. A soft arc traveling a lightly turning line. Over the hours it opened like a crocosmia. And when the planet struck its palm its fingers closed around the pebble without grasping."

Scrope stood bent beneath the display, ticking softly. "Now outlines." Of the continents. Cee put up a superimposition as best he could. Scrope: "Use that and count back. I want the point of first impact."

Cee: "Tricky. The day runs quicker, for one thing. Just over 23 hours I guess. Alright." He lit a light, a bright spot for old Oceania.

Scrope: "Now the opposite."

Burch: "What are we doing here, Roger?"

Scrope: "Show it."

Brownlee, quiet as he could: "Antipode, Cee. Contrecoup."

Cee marked South America, center of mass. Scrope touched it. "That's where we start." He was becoming the military man, finger keeping a steady tattoo. "They'd have the most time ... and at this point maybe the thing is bled out. They'd have gone for deep-bore mines. Caves. There are caves that stretch for days. I know one, Son Doong. Could hold a city. So we look at mines and caves. And we know there are bunkers from the wars. Any ideas would be helpful."

Wigmund: "How do we go about this?"

Scrope: "What?"

"Because wyverns aren't built to fly in atmosphere. They would just tumble. How do we get there? How do we land?"

Scrope blew a long breath laden with bad language. Cee: "Can you put wings on them?"

For Wigmund. "Could do," he said with some conspiracy. "I'll need drawings."

Cee: "Sending them to your planner now."

Burch: "And then who flies the thing?"

That woke McKelvey. "That's quite a question, Henry."

"I can," said Cee. Lots of AIs got their start in aviation.

"Excellent, Cee then," said Scrope. Cee: "Aim it where you will, Martha. I'll keep it afloat." McKelvey stared at the air just over Scrope's right shoulder. Scrope: "Eyes and ears open to everything, Cee." As Cee had been doing: "Will do." No room to pace, so Scrope rolled on his heels a little; a good spate of solving; he moved up and down his head with a light hand. A lull. Perhaps some were drawn to the hum of the Mercia around them.

Now quiet Mucel, who did repairs, and asked questions instead of contributing: "Again, Brownlee ... what are the odds of this happening?"

Brownlee stuck a pen in his mouth when he wanted to be heard, because the mumble meant he might get to repeat. "I could tell you, definitively, the odds of it having already happened."

Scrope had one more thing, and he gave it a little mad-eyed; there were the ruddy cheeks; as sometimes occurred, he chose his words with care but not well. "I'll tell you what's not going to happen. We're not going to fiddle with words, and we're not going to go all weak in the knees. And we're not going to give up. Not possible. There are survivors. They need help. That comes from us." And he aimed his smile at Brownlee that warned against rejoinder. "Not possible." Brownlee opened a new file in his mind: "The heroes would rely on that timeless expedient in a crisis: pretending."

Scrope left; Cee reshaped the outlines. Later, as they stared at it without expectation, the shroud closed, as if touched back by a woman of old religion.