“I am.”
“I'm going to send you images from locations and objects we've found around the galaxy. I'd like you to tell me if you recognize any of them. Is that okay?”
“I will try.”
She relayed scenes from her brain datastore: the gateway on Coronade, the Depository, the Warden, images she'd recorded of her impressions of the Radiant Dragon's core Mind.
Surtr considered all of them. “I do not recognize these places or beings.”
“But are they familiar? I mean, the style of them, the body forms?”
“All of them give me a sensation that I find hard to identify. Perhaps … pleasure? Reassurance?”
“You feel some connection to them.”
“Yes.”
“The core intelligence of our ship once mentioned a being it referred to simply as First. Do you know who or what that is?”
“I do not.”
She considered, t
