Sixteen

Ekur-Tkalal, newly elevated as keeper-librarian over the human moiety, weighs ambition against risk and authorizes Dafyd and Jellit to perform a gravity survey that could yield valuable technology. Ekur’s calculation accepts potential human deaths as negligible if success improves its status within the Carryx hierarchy.

Preparing to depart, Dafyd works with Jellit to encode a test report that the swarm can trace through the Carryx information lattice. Dafyd fears leaving the controlled safety of the world-palace but proceeds, bound by secrecy and shame over collaborating with the entity that killed Else and now wears Jellit.

Aboard a Carryx transport, Jellit listens to planetwide, stuttering data traffic, explaining it cannot probe without detection. As they travel, the two discuss the swarm’s origins and hosts—Ameer, Else, and Jellit—highlighting Dafyd’s anger, grief, and the spy’s claim that there is no single “real” self beyond constraints and purpose.

Jellit detects a disturbance and guides Dafyd to a surface region of furrowed “fields” plied by arthropod convoys led by Carryx. A smooth, etched structure resists their approach; they land at the periphery in suffocating, sulfurous heat. The environment’s hostility reframes the palace as a rare sanctuary within a punishing world.

As they advance, Jellit sprouts fine filaments, responding to intense energies around the structure whose markings seem to rewrite themselves. Amid Carryx voices and mounting sensory overload, Dafyd steadies Jellit. At the threshold, the swarm announces a breakthrough—by interfacing with the site, it can “see everything,” implying contact with the core Carryx archival network.