Properly, the cat's name was Seventy-Eighth Temple Cat of the High Bells, along with a number of ceremonial titles that needn't concern us. But the people who had called her that no longer lived in the station's ruins. Every day as she made her rounds in what had been the boundaries of the temple, she saw and smelled the artifacts they had left behind, from bloodstains to scorch marks, from decaying books to singed spacesuits, and yowled her grief.

“It's more than that. It's a symphony.” When LeSony'ra had reported for national service, it was as a conscientious objector. She wanted to produce a happier future through music, which positioned her at odds with most of the other cadets. A position she was now long used to.

She joined the fragments of its mind, and it soothed her even more than she remembered. The Cataract's ghost said, <I know where the Vanguard rests. Some of its pieces lie among my own, but most of it waits beyond. Near my rudder, a trickle of water carries dissolved fragments of the Vanguard's engine. Follow the streamlet, and you may find its heart.>