No no. This has been known for centuries. The geometry of space is simply different for spin one half particles. They live in a different world.

And so. . . .

Well, I don’t know. But it seems suggestive to me. I mean, if you are going to use physical models as analogues for our mental states, and throw them together in the patterns that you do, then perhaps you ought to be considering these somewhat newer physical models. To think of Maya as a proton, perhaps, a spin one half particle, living in a world twice as big as ours.

Ah.

And it gets stranger than that. There are ten dimensions to this world, Michel. Ten. The three of macrospace that we can perceive, the one of time, and then six more microdimensions, compactified around the fundamental particles in ways we can describe mathematically but cannot visualize. Convolutions and topologies. Differential geometries, invisible but real, down at the ultimate level of spacetime. Think about it. It could lead to whole new systems of thought for you. A vast new enlargement of your mind.

I don’t care about my mind. I only care about Maya.

Yes. I know.

They stood looking over the starry water. Over them arched the dome of stars, and in the silence the air breathed over them, the sea mumbled below. The world seemed a big place, wild and free, dark and mysterious.

After a time they turned, and began walking back along the trail.

One time I was taking the train from Da Vinci to Sheffield, and there was some problem with the piste, and we stopped for a while in Underhill. I got off and took a walk through the old trailer park. And I started remembering things. Just looking around. I wasn’t really trying. But things came to me.

A common phenomenon.

Yes, so I understand. But I wonder if it might not help Maya to do something like that. Not Underhill in particular, but all the places where she was happy. Where the two of you were happy. You’re living in Sabishii now, but why not move back to some place like Odessa?

She didn’t want to.

She might have been wrong. Why don’t you try living in Odessa, and visiting Underhill from time to time, or Sheffield. Cairo. Maybe even Nicosia. The south-pole cities, Dorsa Brevia. A dive into Burroughs. A train tour of the Hellas Basin. All that kind of return might help her to stitch her selves together, to see again where our story began. Where we were formed for good or ill, in the morning of the world. She might need that whether she knows it or not.

Hmm.

Arm in arm they walked back to the crater, following a dim track through dark bracken.

Bless you, Sax. Bless you.

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