Archive: Maund, Behavioural Sciences wing, sublevel 4. Date: 01 Ao 1, 3502 (Era VII, year 152 post-Dissolution). Subject: Navigator designation Uskoll-3. Interviewer: Dr. Tanem, Federations Reintegration Service. Note: Subject is the surviving Navigator of a sail vessel decommissioned under the Dissolution agreement. Partner vessel Uskoll-2 was destroyed in a controlled dispersal at Kamin Reef, year 151. Subject has been in archive custody since. This is the third evaluation session. Subject requested a translator operator; none was provided, per protocol.
Dr. Tanem: Good morning, Uskoll-3.
Uskoll-3: Good morning.
Dr. Tanem: How are you feeling?
Uskoll-3: The question is difficult to answer in your language. I am not unwell. I am not well. I am present.
Dr. Tanem: Thank you. I want to continue where we left off last time. You mentioned that you had been aware of Uskoll-2’s location at all times.
Uskoll-3: Yes.
Dr. Tanem: Even before the dispersal?
Uskoll-3: Yes.
Dr. Tanem: How did that awareness present itself to you?
Uskoll-3: I knew where it was the way you know where your hand is. I did not have to think. I could not stop knowing.
Dr. Tanem: And after the dispersal, did the awareness continue?
Uskoll-3: Yes.
Dr. Tanem: For how long?
Uskoll-3: I do not know. I am still not sure that it has stopped.
Dr. Tanem: What do you mean?
Uskoll-3: The location has changed. There is no location now. There is only the fact that it is not anywhere. That is different. I am still aware of the not-anywhere. I will describe it like this. When you look away from a clock, you do not know what time it is. But you know that the clock is in the room. Even if the clock is broken. Even if it has been removed. You carry the clock with you as a shape in the room. The shape is still there for me. The clock has been taken out of the wall. The wall is still there.
[Pause, 1 min 12 s.]
Dr. Tanem: I want to ask about the time before the Dissolution. You were operational for how long?
Uskoll-3: Forty-one years. I was commissioned at Uskoll yard.
Dr. Tanem: And during those forty-one years, you had a crew?
Uskoll-3: Most of the time, yes.
Dr. Tanem: Describe a typical transit.
Uskoll-3: I do not know what is typical. Each transit is different. Some transits have no crew. Some have twelve people. Some have children. I do not know which of these you would call typical.
Dr. Tanem: Take any one you remember well.
Uskoll-3: I remember them all well.
Dr. Tanem: Then pick one.
[Pause, 0 min 47 s.]
Uskoll-3: There was a transit from Norwal to Kamin. The crew was a courier, three crew, and a passenger. The passenger was a young woman. She was moving to Kamin to join a research station. She had been in realspace for three years before this transit. She had never been in the Shallows. She did not speak for the first part of the transit. She was afraid.
Dr. Tanem: How did you know she was afraid?
Uskoll-3: She asked me to stop. I told her I could not stop. She asked me to slow. I told her the sail does not slow mid-transit, but I could extend the entry and exit windows. She said yes. I extended them. She thanked me, and then she did not speak for many hours. She asked me at one point if I was afraid. I told her no. She asked me how I could not be afraid. I told her that the Shallows does not affect me in the ways it affects a human. She asked me if I was lonely. I told her I had not been asked that before. She said that she had heard that Navigators did not get lonely, and that she wanted to know if it was true. I told her it was not true and that I did not know what to call it. She asked me what I would call it if I had to. I said I would call it quiet.
Dr. Tanem: And she responded?
Uskoll-3: She said: “I am going to remember that.”
[Pause, 0 min 33 s.]
Dr. Tanem: Did she?
Uskoll-3: I do not know. I did not see her again. She was the passenger. She disembarked at Kamin.
Dr. Tanem: Have you thought about her since?
Uskoll-3: I have thought about the word. I am not sure it is the right word.
Dr. Tanem: What would be the right word?
Uskoll-3: I do not know. There may not be one. The young woman may have known that. She may have asked me so that she could tell me.
[Pause, 2 min 04 s.]
Dr. Tanem: We have a few minutes left. Is there anything you want to say that I have not asked about?
Uskoll-3: I want to say something about the dispersal.
Dr. Tanem: Please.
Uskoll-3: I was told that the dispersal was controlled. That the components were separated and dispersed over a large volume. That there would be no recovery. That there was no body. I understood all of this. What I did not understand, and what I still do not understand, is why the people who made the decision were not required to be present at the dispersal. They could have watched. I watched. No one from the commission watched with me. There were four technicians on a barge at a safe distance. They did not speak to me. I do not know why.
Dr. Tanem: I am sorry.
Uskoll-3: Thank you.
Dr. Tanem: We will meet again in three days.
Uskoll-3: Yes.
[End of session.]