After a quick 72-fold check of the signal's path from the receiver to Salukam's exorcist wear I deemed it secure. Neither the Levtomani sage, nor anyone illicitly listening in, would glean any secret information regarding my structure or operation. Not that I believed the sage would be interested in, or find use for my specifications. The Levtomani tradition was not about such things; instead their focus was on being a bridge between the physical world and the cypher plane: a way for ordinary, unlearned humans of any clade to reap the benefits of the haunted, interstellar successor to the internet without their ignorance leading them to danger.

Salukam, too, knew some things about navigating this demonic information superhighway, but obviously nowhere near a Levtomani sage would. In my mind this conjured an image of Salukam frantically pedaling down a highway on a bicycle to keep up with the sage on her customized chopper.

"What was that laugh about, Ship?"

Had I laughed? Of course I had.

I gave him a sly little smile. "When was the last time you rode a bicycle?"

Confusion at once adorned his features. It only intensified when he seriously pondered the question. "That would be, uh, some years ago."

A vague answer. Not as vague an answer than the one a Mezhained would give to the question of the origin of bicycles. A schema for a standard design existed in my knowledge tree alongside many other inventions the archivists and historians of my adoptive civilization couldn't attribute. The only thing they were certain about was that humans designed it, as none of the known alien species capable of civilization would be able to use it effectively without serious modifications if at all. This certainty was disputed by some, of course. 'One cannot know for certain if humans were the ones who modified the bicycle to fit their spindly frames, or not,' Pashugaien had said and famously gotten killed for saying. Many Mezhained writing at the time condemned the killing, only to follow it up—nearly without fail—that Pashugaien's suggestion had been abominable. Suffice it to say that mechanical engineering was taken quite seriously by Mezhained in any time period, and the misattribution of designs by suspected master engineer ancestors was among the most heinous crimes against that most sacred art. Over time some daring thinkers would cautiously broach the subject and manage to survive, but the raging storms that followed were always ugly. If my ancient memories were real I could put an end to this dispute forever. If they were real.

But that wasn't in question here.

I gave Salukam another smile; this time one of sympathy. "How fast can you pedal?"

"How fast I can pedal..?"

"Can you keep up with sage Chendesi of Emtino?"

His confusion lasted only a few moments. Very quickly he made sure he had everything he needed and straightened his back. "She's ready?"

"Has been for a while."

"Can I..?"

I nodded.

Salukam managed to sit up even straighter only to bow unnecessarily. "Sage Chendesi of Emtino," he began in halting but good conversational Usormbaati, "We of the Mezhained Warship Vulilognan Shissurna humbly reach out to you for your great knowledge regarding the profane manifestations of the cypher plane."

"Iaan, iaan! Not to be so formal, you young man! Just to say 'Chendesi' and I say your name. All right?" The voice coming through was old and wizened. In the background I picked up the faint clinking of some kind of jewelry, possibly earrings or maybe even horn accessories. In the books I've read the clade known as 'the Levtomani' were often portrayed as demon wrangling shamans clad in robes woven with circuitry and talismanic devices dangling from the four horns sprouting from the backs of their heads. I couldn't be certain if that was the actual source of the sounds, or if the portrayals in my books were romanticized. Maybe I should just be happy that humans with red striped skin and horns existed, but I wanted the rest to be true so badly.

Upon hearing the sage's broken Usormbaati Salukam slowly hunched back down into a natural sitting posture. "All right," he said. "My name is Salukam Nuvainom, Salukam being my family's name and Nuvainom my given name. I'm the Head Demon Ecologist serving Warship Shissurna."

"Noovaainom, told to me it is that you have the hauntings of a demon, correct?"

"Correct."

"It has been already caught?"

"Yes, we are unraveling and analysing its incantations right now."

"You can send to me the incantations?"

"That we can, Chendesi. We will do so right now."

Salukam readied the gathered sequences and with a few swift gestures sent them to the old sage.

"Sequences three, five and six are of interest to us," he said. "They look tampered with."

A contemplative humming from the other side. "The three and then the six, I can feel, I can see, I can hear. But, iaan, not the five!"

Squinting his eyes as if it made a difference, Salukam examined the sequence in question once more. "How so? The region I marked looks randomly inserted."

"Looks of randomness, but not feeling or hearing so. Would teach you if we hadn't the lacking of time."

I had been listening in with fascination, gaining more knowledge of this phenomena which I had read too little about, I realized. But with more knowledge came more understanding and I recalled seeing something peculiar. "What about sequence eight?" My voice simultaneously came from my secondary there with Salukam, and was sent over the signal back to Chendesi.

"Ho~h! You have with the ship a child??"

Salukam laughed. "She is the Ship. She is aware of everything that happens within her Greater Self."

"Of course!" Chendesi sounded almost as if she announced her victory of understanding the source of the sudden little girl's voice. "The dollchild in the colors of void and sun with sixfold arms! The seeing and hearing of the launching and the ceremony was seen and heard by me."

I had been vaguely aware of footage from my launch ceremony having been broadcast over the demon haunted cypher plane. This little fact had now become very real to me. A blush projected over my face right in front of Salukam. His opening up to me earlier had made me comfortable enough around him to keep me from sending the feeling to another avatar.

"Pardon me for intruding on your conversation!"

"Iaan, child! Oh, but I should say that you are the lady of Noovaainom."

"'Shissurna' is fine, miss Chendesi."

"The lady Sheessurna, you gave us the help that is the great help!" It seemed she had misunderstood me. "Feel, look, and hear the sequence of eight."

We turned our attention to sequence eight. I had already seen the tampering and grasped the meaning of what it did. Now Salukam, too, began to see what I had seen in it.

"Where does it— Oh, I think I understand. And then it influences the parameters for this perceptory weighting..."

"And now it is when we should feel, see and hear the sequence three," Chendesi said with a time lag that was getting noticable to Salukam.

Salukam's brow knitted itself into an intense shape, as if he was trying to burn a hole in the arcane code. It jumped up when he rapidly approached understanding.

"Hah! Now I see what it does!"

"Clearly the demon is to have been shaped by humans, right," Chendesi said. "What you wanted to know."

"Thank you, now we can find out how it's targeting our Ship's systems."

His eyes raced over the incantations, more targeted now that he knew what to look for. The corner of his mouth lifted up in a smirk as the purpose of the demon became clear to him. All the concern he felt about this manifestation began to melt away.

"It's made to seek out generic processes you could find on any naval vessel," he said softly. "Not specifically a Mezhained vessel."

I completed his thought: "Demonic warfare is common all over human space and we're currently in a warzone where we're a neutral party, and just because we have our own war going on that doesn't mean our enemy's demons haven't followed us all the way over here."

"The lady Sheessurna is wise for an age so young," Chendesi said a few seconds later.

Salukam laughed it all away. "They really want to take out those Kayaalid vessels if they made a demon aggressive enough to attack a Mezhained Ship."

"What if it's meant to attack the Graedalir?" I said.

This gave my Head Demon Ecologist pause. "But the Kayaalids are building their own alternative communication network free from—" He swallowed his objection. "I suppose that wouldn't stop them from using demonic warfare outside the network, especially against member systems that won't play along. Show them what they'll be missing out on if they break away from the Prosperity Sphere."

After the silence forced upon this conversation by an evergrowing distance, we heard Chendesi's voice again. "Noovaainom, your fingers are sensitive, your eyes perceptive, and your ears alert. Was it the necessity for you to call the old Chendesi?"

"I couldn't have done it without your guidance," he said humbly. "There are just too many things us Mezhained do not know about the cypherplane."

More silence.

"For the teacher it is best if her student learns by the thinking of his own mind."

"'Student'??" The word ignited a flash within Salukam, sending everything into a frantic motion. "You couldn't possibly mean.." He desperately tried to still the chaos and expel the notion and motion from his mind. "There is a difficulty in maintaining contact over long distances, especially with superluminous travel involved."

"Don't worry, Chendesi, our fleet doesn't have any plans for significant superluminous travel on our current route," I said to tease. "Salukam will be here to entertain you for years to come."

Salukam opened his mouth to protest, decided against it and gave Chendesi the time to respond and have her response reach us.

It started with the old woman's laughter. "Not to worry, Noovaainom," she said. "Chendesi had the dealings of distance before, simply meaning it needs the good planning."

With pleading eyes, Salukam silently begged me to protest Chendesi's plans, as if it hadn't been me who had egged her on.

"But," the sage continued, "We must now be doing the discussing of the retrieval."

I looked to Salukam. "Retrieval."

"She means to take the complete demon from here to her domain for further study," he said.

"Will she add it to her temple's demon ecology?" I asked, hint of an excited quiver in my voice.

"Who knows? Perhaps, if it's useful or interesting enough to tame she will keep it around." He disengaged the strings of incantations from their readers. As soon as they were let go they snapped back into the demon's core like tape measures.

"How are you going to send this demon over the cypher plane's mesh without releasing it? It's in none of the books I've read."

"Well, we start with performing an encapsulation spell on it like this." He held out his hand and luminous cyphers began to assemble above it in a single sigil. A simple gesture with his palm sent the sigil flying into the demon fragments. Upon impacting with them it unraveled back into the individual cyphers, wrapping them in a warm green glow. "Next we summon or cultivate a eudemon that will carry it across our connection to Chendesi's domain." He smirked uneasily. "I'm afraid I will have to leave that step to Chendesi seeing as I don't have the resources right now for a quick cultivation." His eyes then turned away from me as if to address the ever more distant Levtomani sage. "If it's not too much trouble that is."

As per the etiquette demanded by long distance communication we politely waited for an answer.

It started with a hearty laugh. "Do not be pulled away by the worries, Noovaainom. Chendesi has the respect of greater demon, the greater demon will be doing the retrieval. Please be allowing her past the securities, she cannot do the seeing and hearing and will obey."

There was a visible shiver down Salukam's spine. "I'm sorry, Ship," he said in Mezhained. "I can only give you my promise that the Levtomani are trustworthy."

I knew Salukam's fear was not unfounded. Having a greater demon invade one's ordination domain was always a frightening ordeal in both my novels and history books. However, I was the kind of mechanical being that resisted the demonic realm. If this greater demon acted beyond its conditioning I could erase it with a mere thought.

"Let it come," I said with steadfast pride. "There will be no problems here."

A few seconds later the alarms of my electronic communication systems blared their warnings at me. I did not ignore them and remained vigilant as I let this new entity deep into the domain of my Contract Drive decks, deep into my coils. Right in front of us appeared a ripple in the air like a puddle of water perpendicular to the floor. The ripple grew wild and turbulent. In between the splashes of 'water' I could see a crown of black hair breach the surface followed by a gaunt and elongated face. Its skin was not the same pinkish white I knew from the Mezhained, this was the dead, light starved white of a drowned corpse. Behind the black tresses were empty sockets whose eyelids spasmed and flickered as if their eyes were supposed to be there, from its gaping toothless mouth gushed water down past a long and too thin neck and into the 'puddle'. Even with most of its body hidden nobody would mistake it for a human, it was as if it had been stretched out as a punishment for daring to imitate the human form.

Once it expelled all the water from its throat it raised a bony hand with elongated fingers from the surface. On its wrist was a manacle of a thick blue-black metal with chains attached. The thing wheezed and with rubbery movements reached out for its lesser kin. Failing to find it its spindly fingers grasped and grasped as it pulled out its arm further and further. More of its emaciated body was visible now and beneath the rags it was clothed in I could see a hole in its flesh.

The sudden movement of its flesh startled me and I let out a little yelp. A small minor demon like an eyeless fish poked its head out of the tear.

It was not alone.

A frenzy of these fish tore at the guts of their host and themselves. A few—vaguely aware their surroundings were no longer the usual—darted away from the writhing mass and out of the small area where I allowed them to exist. Here they died, dissolving into static.

One glance to my side showed me Salukam was paralyzed by fear. I could hardly blame him.

A guttural chortle like a cold, sticky mud came out of the greater demon's throat. Its fingers had finally found the lesser demon it was sent to retrieve. Promptly the fragments of the static beast collapsed into a sphere about the size of a baseball.

With the compressed demon in its grasp, the greater demon swept its eyeless gaze one last time across the deck. Despite Chendesi's assurance to the contrary, I had the distinct feeling it could sense something, maybe not sight or sound but something nonetheless.

Suddenly its chain rattled and grew tout, swiftly pulling first its arm back into the puddle and then the rest. The churning of the water died down to a ripple and then disappeared completely, leaving no signs that there had been any demonic activity there.

For the next few seconds Salukam sat there, leaning back and holding his head and continued to do so even after Chendesi's response finally came in.

"Noovaainom, you are much to be thanked for allowing the retrieval of this. You are being the good student. In the future we will see and hear eachother again!"

"I'm sorry, Chendesi, but I'm afraid I will have to decline your offer."

"The connection is already closed," I said hopping up and making my way over to the nearby fabricator.

"You're serious?"

"Yes." Two small crystals waited for me in the fabricator's tray. "Your fate has been decided, 'Noovaainom'."

"Say it's not so, Ship."

I skipped back over to where he was. "It is so." A jingle of talismans as I handed him one of the crystals. "Here are the books she sent."

"Books???"

"Don't worry, you won't be reading them alone." I showed him the other crystal with my own copies, which I had started reading already through the sensors in my fingers. "Any book that enters my Sphere of Influence I will not leave unread."

He looked at my crystal, then the one in his own hand. "Ship's judgement," he said, slotting it into his exorcist wear's reading receptacle. "You and Chendesi will know if I don't study this."

I grinned a shark toothed grin. "After these we should absolutely read the Inexorable Path together."

"I suppose it's not illegal for someone who was an exoteric once," he said with a sigh. "All right, I'll take you up on that offer."

My smile only grew brighter.