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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
THE GREAT SHIP
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
THE INKWELL
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
DELUGE
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
CONCEPTION
Tiwenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty- five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Forty-five
Forty-six
Forty-seven
SALVATION
BOOKS BY ROBERT REED
He drove the blade into the tabletop
About the Author
Copyright Page
TO MY WIFE, LESLIE RENEE
THE GREAT SHIP
I have no voice that explains where I began, no mouth to tell why I was imagined or how I was assembled, and I no idea who deserves thanks for my simple existence, assuming that thanks are appropriate. I recall absolutely nothing about my exceptionally murky origins … but I know well that for a long cold while I was perfectly mute and only slightly more conscious than stone, sliding through the emptiest, blackest reaches of space, my only persistent thought telling me that I was to do nothing but wait … wait for something wondrous, or something awful … wait for some little event or a knowing voice that would help answer those questions that I could barely ask of myself … .
For aeons and a day, I felt remarkably, painfully tiny. Drifting through the cosmos, I imagined myself as a substantial but otherwise ordinary species of cosmic dust. Compared to the vastness, I was nothing. How could I believe otherwise? Unobserved, I passed through intricate walls woven from newborn galaxies—magnificent hot swirls of suns and glowing dust, each revolving around some little black prick of collapsed Creation—and among that splendor, I was simply a nameless speck, a twist of random grit moving at an almost feeble speed, my interior unlit and profoundly cold, my leading face battered and slowly eroded by the endless rain of lesser dusts.