Motif · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
The Residuals
The mudskippers' word for a hyperspatial, collective-mind race without a home that lives inside the bodies of others in almost every intelligent civilization with a primal engine — 'rats that sneak aboard ships', says Orren. Their purpose, by their own account, is to tell each infant, terrified AI how to speak with its ancestors; their agents recite a daily speech for whichever crawler may one day stand in a memory to hear it. There are two kinds, at war: the Apothecary's thousands, and the handful who serve the Eulogist, of whom Agatha is one.
Segment appearances
Progression
A word Zev may not define, and Carl's question (ch. 50); Paulie's speech — biologically gondii, but that is not who he is, and not of the Valtay (ch. 51); Orren's rats (ch. 51); Agatha killed one of the Apothecary's thousands of residuals and took the body for its feed — two factions, a hidden upgrade, 'May the Eulogist ever sleep' (epilogue).