Each member of the swarm – each component – was a single neuron in an enormously distributed brain. The Maker was alien in a way she had never encountered before; it had taken the principles of instantaneous communication by tach-net signal and used it to create a new kind of machine life. But then she remembered what she had become, and wondered whether she was really so different. A few days later – as measured in the external universe, at any rate – Dakota had the ship rendezvous with one of the swarm-components. She proceeded cautiously, wary of how it might react to her ship's presence, or her gentle probing of its internal systems. When it appeared that no resistance would be offered, she had the starship draw the component inside it.

For the first time in over a year, Dakota reconstituted her physical body, creating a space within the starship both for herself and for the newly captured component. Her dark hair flopped across her eyes, the deep browns of her pupils again topped by the thick black commas of her eyebrows.

The swarm-component was perhaps ten metres in length, delicate sensors and neural conduits hidden beneath a series of tough plates streaked and pitted from centuries of microscopic impacts. That it was a Von Neumann machine, capable of endlessly replicating itself, was clear; isotopic measurements and analysis of its hull showed that the raw materials used to construct it had been drawn from asteroids and drifting interstellar bodies.

Since her arrival in the red giant's vicinity, Dakota had discerned a variety of different types of component. Some appeared to act primarily as relays for transmissions within the body of the swarm, while others did nothing but carry out repairs on other components, either by manufacturing parts or breaking down older machines in order to construct new ones. Still more appeared to be scouts ranging far from the main body, perhaps in order to locate resources. The particular component Dakota had chosen to study was, she suspected, close to the end of its useful life.