The first thing he noticed was that Kira was not there. Mari was sitting at Kira's desk, holding a sheet of paper, her expression both resigned to fate and worried. "Now we know why that vision showed Kira being involved in the danger from Urth."

Alain took the letter and read rapidly. "The vision showed our future daughter standing with us against some danger from Urth. But Kira is facing part of this threat on her own."

"As you have often told me, foresight isn't exactly precise." Mari looked out the window as if it offered a view of their daughter somewhere in the distance. "There's no doubt this involves some serious danger. She says they were going to use that flier thing to get past the security patrols around this house and put some distance behind them, but Kira didn't say which way they were going."

"She believes that you and I must not be directly involved as targets for the ship from Urth."

"And she's right about that. This is the first place that Talese Groveen will come looking, and we couldn't have protected Jason and that device. Legally, we wouldn't have a leg to stand on trying to keep the device from her."

"Millions of lives?" Alain asked, looking back at the letter. "Billions? What do those numbers mean?" His training as a Mage had denied the meaning of such things as Mari's "math" and Alain still had trouble grasping it.

"Can you visualize a hundred people?" Mari asked. "That's about the size of a company of foot soldiers."

"Yes," Alain said.

"Can you see ten groups of a hundred? That would be a thousand. Now imagine that group of a thousand people, repeated a thousand times. That's a million. Imagine a million repeated a thousand times, and that's a billion."

He could not grasp such numbers, but he knew they were huge. "So many lives depend on this?"

"Kira would have been able to tell if Jason was lying about that, right?"

"Yes. She tells us that she saw truth in his words."

Mari stood up, looking around the room, distressed. "It seems like only yesterday that little Kira was toddling around. I hope we've prepared her for this. We did our best to give her the skills to handle any situation, but should we have told her earlier about the foresight?"

"If we had told Kira, she would have spent every day focused on that danger to come. It would have warped her life," Alain said. "But does she understand the danger? There are many who would like to harm her or capture her to use against you."

"Only if they know she's out there," Mari said. "We have to keep it quiet. And keep attention focused on us."

"Kira resembles you," Alain cautioned. "Many pictures of you have been made since the war."