"When you were four I told you a bedtime story about a boat that could travel from star to star," says Isabella. "I didn't invent that idea. There are such boats. There is one traveling through Samaria's sky. It is piloted by a technology so advanced compared to what we have here that it can - almost, but not quite - think for itself. It can talk. It can hear, through technological ears it has planted here and there. It can change the weather, and it can shoot weapons that look like lightning, and it can drop seeds and medicine out of its cargo hold. And it addresses me as 'Captain'."