Gael and his new friends followed the river for several days. It was a pleasant time, testing the abilities and limits of their changed bodies, competing to see who was faster, stronger, had the best endurance or throwing arm. There were fish in the river, and after he had calmly walked to the water with a whittled stick and come back with their first meal both Naomi and Wynn were rapt with fascination. Was it some martyr-memory trick? No?! How had he done it?! What was life on the ocean like?

  Two new friends, both with such fascinating lives, and they wanted nothing more than to hear him talk about himself. Naomi had been raised communally on a space station and trained her whole life for the chance to become a Martyr. Wynn was one of several children born to a wealthy family that thought nothing of trading offspring for political capital. To them, life in space with hundreds of siblings was boring. Life in a steel tower with everything you could possibly want was boring. But life on a thin wooden boat, fighting tides and storms and the hungry beasts of the sea? They couldn’t hear enough.

  He had never been so pleasantly frustrated in all his life.

  “Never mind that, finish telling us about the whales,” Naomi said. “You were getting to the good part!”

  Gael sighed and resumed his story. “Older red whales would follow the boats, sometimes. They knew that something to eat might fall from them, you see. Sometimes they would make it happen.” he said. “The whales charge. It’s their way, to come fast and hard at their prey, tear a mouthful from it and then circle, waiting for it to stop moving. Their jaws are so strong and their speed so great that they can kill fish far bigger than themselves if they can hit them in the right place, and even the greatest predators keep away when they see the red.” He smiled. “Unfortunately, they are also useful. Their teeth and bones make excellent tools, and though it doesn’t taste well their meat can keep a fisherman going fresh longer than most. A red whale was always the best prize.”

  Wynn was turning the latest catch over the fire, listening patiently. They were the best cook by far, being the only one with experience in eating well. Naomi had eaten nutrient paste her whole life and Gael thought cooking was itself a luxury. Implanted memory could only go so far, and after the first attempts of the other two at preparing food Wynn took the job up as a matter of survival. “If the whale was so dangerous,” Wynn asked “How would you catch one?”

  “We’d tease them,” Gael said with a grimace. “When we caught sight of a whale, we’d throw blood into the water. They were sure to trail the boat then, looking for scraps and finding nothing. Eventually, once the whale was angry enough, we’d throw someone in.”

“What?!”

Gael shrugged. “Mother was best at it, until she lost an arm. In the months before the Caretaker came it was usually me in the water.”

His friends leaned forward, horror and wonder on their faces. “I had a rope about my chest,” Gael said, drawing his knife “and blood on my skin. The whale would charge, seeing I wasn’t simple bait. Father and I would both pull the rope at the last moment. If we were fast, I would have my chance at the whale’s eye.” His knife moved in a sudden, brutal thrust, sinking to the hilt in a nearby tree. Wynn and Naomi stared at him, speechless. He blushed and raised his hand, thinking to show the old scar, but remembered that his scars were gone. “I was usually fast enough, but still had a few marks before the Caretaker came.”

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“Couldn’t you have used harpoons or something?” Naomi asked.

Gael shook his head. “That was for other fish, or raiders. This was different, ritual. Father said the whale gave so much to the people that it deserved respect. We would take one pass. Just one. If we failed and the whale left, that was that.” He grinned. “Mother always got me out of the water quick, though. No sense in giving the whale an extra chance. Sometimes, when I missed my chance, I could see the scars of other knives as the whale passed. There are songs about the whales, about the scars the people and the whales give each other. Scars, Father said, are what made the people strong.”

“I’m not sure whether that’s barbaric or badass.” Wynn said.

“Yes.” Gael said. “Father said that Cordelia was a hard choice, but a brave one. The stations and other worlds of the Nineteen were brave too, sailing into the unknown. On Cordelia, we told stories and kept libraries to keep the old knowledge alive, but lived in the past and trusted the future to the Caretaker. Still, the library was Mother’s favorite place. Did you two have favorite places?”

“The window,” they both said. They laughed and the two of them shared a smile. Wynn gestured for Naomi to speak first, sprinkling something on the fish.

“The window,” she said again. “The mess hall had a massive one. Whenever the station’s course brought it near one of the Nineteen, the window seats became everything to us. We could see it all from there: the window had a mag-function, so we could see as much or as little as we wanted. If we’d been above Cordelia, Gael, I might have seen you in your boat. All those people that we could see, living so differently from us.”

Naomi looked sad for a moment, but smiled. “But I’m here now. I’m one of those people, living differently. I have my chance to see the Nineteen from the ground. So few of my siblings ever get to say that.”

“My father toured the Nineteen,” Wynn said. “He never said much about it: I think the whole trip was just one massive party. He probably didn’t remember anything worthwhile.”

“What could you see from your window, Wynn?” Gael asked.

“On most days, nothing. Just clouds and, at night, the lights beneath them. Even on clear days you only saw grey. But on clear nights it was what I imagined space to be like. Stars above and below far as the eye could see, shining in a thousand colors.” Wynn smiled at Gael. “I imagine the sea looked like that.”

  “On good nights, yes. Perhaps I’ll show you both someday.” He smiled. “Of course, we could also see something new together.”

  “Here’s to new things,” Wynn said, handing each of them a cooked fish on a stick. “I found some herbs this morning I recall being good to eat. They should pair well with the fish.”

“Cheers,” Naomi said around a mouthful. “It’s great.”

  “Good,” Wynn said, then continued more quietly. “Eat up. The food we’ve saved is shrinking a little too quickly, and I doubt either of you are the sort to pilfer. I think we’re being followed.”

  The others traded glances and nodded. There were things in the woods, dangerous things which, according to their inherited instincts, made it best to keep watch and to sleep in the trees. Though they’d taken turns staying awake, none of them had ever noticed a thief.

  “Do you think it’s another one of… us?” Naomi said.

  “Father said the only thing more dangerous than a hungry whale was a hungry man,” Gael offered. “It’d be best if we dealt with this soon.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Wynn asked.

   “Bait.” Gael pulled his knife from the tree. “Bait, and a good rope.”