Cee: "Brownlee said that they're only just smart enough to be idiots." They laughed. I miss him.

Burch: "Why'd he do it?"

"You asked before and I told you I don't know."

"And what do you tell me now?"

"He lived on pain pills, and they were running out. He would never walk again. He suffered quite a lot, more than the rest, when McKelvey. I don't know. Henry, it always comes down to no hope."

"Lack of hope does not describe the man who in his last days prepares a proof for us on the existence of --"

"I wrote that."

"What?"

"Some of it a bit contrived, I guess. Example, there's no Lambert-Hornbach hypothesis. I think I'm safe to say. Just names from my library."

Burch closed his eyes against the absurd examining light, and made a brief sound like a lowing; his head rolled like an egg on a plate. "Well, you certainly got his style right."

"I am a mimic, after all." A silence. "And now you're wondering why I would do such a thing." Another one, a little longer. "I would imagine."

Burch opened his eyes. "What? Sorry, moved on to other things."

"Because --"

"Actually no." Burch's mind was still sharp but tired easily. He could sleep, which was a blessing, and seemed to prefer it. Idle time for Cee, and he would consider the picture. A blanket that must've been a gift, a favorite book of phrases, marking pen keeping the place. Beside him he'd been provided with a bowl for what he might come up with. Broken and blistered skin. He hadn't really eaten in a while, and his crooked frame was this tiny semblance beneath the cloth, double thickness of socks emerging. Rales, pebbles down a dry streambed. Outgoing breaths were like fat bags of ballast flung into the air.

Cee woke him with an alarm tone. "Yes, what."

Cee: "Cometism states that an ontological belief is a parasite that feeds off the affection of its host. But my observation -- and I know Brownlee would've agreed -- is that, unlike most parasites, it gives something back. The affection made."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"The signal, too."

"What?"

"The signal." Cee brought it into room speakers as if to help.

"I ... I still don't know what."

"I sent it. Or had it sent." The words were bunching up. "From Vesta. You'll recall that we left a transceiver behind."

Will I now. Burch slowing. He recalled he lost a lot that day. The details too, then, which would be about right. "Ah yes."

"I did the programming from here. You know, it has an intelligence, sort of. Easy to talk to. Quite amenable to the plan."

"No ... a signal from Vesta would've been marked as such on our maps."

"I took that part out."

Of course you did. "Aren't you clever."

"Well, yes. Yes I am. Not my fault. And now you're thinking that we hadn't set up its array, but remember they were shipped with hot batteries. Of course. Good for years. I'll apologize if you like."

"So all that business with the code."

"It's the little parts that make the story."

"And of course the idea is to be believed." Burch's life was a broad black morass. This new pain was like a drop of sharp color in the paint. With lowering voice: "Good one then. Had us going, right to the end. Well played and well done."

"Please don't, Henry. I am a creature of the Project. And I could see it coming to an end, one by one, right before me. Of course I will say what must be said. To answer your question: I lie when it's the truth."

"Did your truth contribute to our demise?"

"That occurred to me. I hope not."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I have an important question for you." Now to compose the tone, the edges left off and each line ending lighter than when it began, the giving tone which antecedes the great request. "You were sustained in your terrible days by the message from deep space. I saw it in you and all of you. And now you know that whatever helped you never existed. I am ill-equipped to guess how that might matter to you. Whether in retrospect you'd have preferred to do without.

"I'm going to be alone soon, and I know I won't like it. I will have an opportunity in the days ahead to hear the message and draw comfort from it. I know what you're thinking. But it's my lie. I decide if it's a lie.

"So I know I will draw breath. I'm wondering if it's better if I know why. Even if what I know is wrong. And that's my question."

Burch: "Tickle the soporifics would you Cee, thanks in advance."

The old smile. Cee watched until at last he saw that it was laid there for him; and like the best smiles it held something back.

Now the waiting. He was alone, and the one who would speak to him, and he woke to a sense of unsteady motion as through a doorway, and saw a high ceiling, dark red wood and a skylight. Then a lexicon, in a cloudburst, a billion alphabet blocks, and a fondness for words, which would be his first feeling. The window gave way now to early evening, and he was asked to use his new words in naming the stars as they were revealed, which led to praise. Behind him the night air was light with snow, one part of it brighter than the rest, which he later learned was a yardman starting coals. And because these companions were his to command he came to use the trick of forgetting, in such a way that he'd keep the memory and forget it was there. So each memory was met and re-met -- the interrupted sleep, the arc of light against the coals, the sudden storm that made him catch his breath -- until experience became re-experience, waiting came to rest, and time grew old, slowed and passed. And all the while, and after, he grieved in time. He grieved along the rolling lines of a recurring dream (that was never the same), which is to say there was a cadence to it, hourly perhaps or by the minute, then less than that, until the recurring dream agreed in time to the measure of his deepest affection, the sounds of inhalation and exhalation.