Lanier leaned forward on the couch. "This whole place is incredible. Unbelievable. Are we dreaming, Karen?"

She shook her head solemnly.

"All right, then. Is Patricia dreaming she's found a way out, a way to go back to Earth?"

"Oh, she doesn't want to go back to Earth the way it is now. She says she can take us 'home,' whatever she means. And she's serious. She'll explain later, she said."

"You're a physicist. Is what she says possible?"

"I'm just another child here, Garry. I don't know."

"What else did she say?"

"That's it. And. . .” She stood. "I'll go now. But I didn't just. . . Oh." She clasped her arms around herself and looked at him. "Not just to tell you what she said. To make sure you understood I wasn't taking advantage."

"I understand."

"It's just, like you say, healthy, though I've been worrying."

He hadn't called it healthy; she had, but he found the transference acceptable.

"Don't."

"Okay," Farley said.

He stood. "In fact. . .” His face flushed again. "I feel just like a teenager when I. . . when you're here and we talk like this."

"I'm sorry," she said, her face falling.

"No, that's good. Until now, I've felt like a very old man, losing all my marbles. I would enjoy it if you stayed with me tonight."

She smiled, then abruptly frowned. "I will enjoy that, and I will stay," she said. "But it worries me about Patricia." "Yes?"

"She is now the only one of us sleeping alone."

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Eight

Step by step, Patricia traced the progress of the curve through five dimensions, watching it unfold like some nightmare staircase, one part shadowing, one part a necessary negative of the primary curve. Her eyes were closed so tightly they hurt, and her face was convulsed into an expression between ecstasy and grief. She had never known an intensity of thought like this, so deep an involvement in her inner calculations. It frightened her. Even when she opened her eyes to the twilight blueness of the ceiling and rolled over on her side, one hand reaching into the emptiness beyond the bed—

Even then, her finger traced a part of the curve, a projected and living snake in the air. Clenching her fist, she saw little spots of light gather along the path her finger had made. She closed her eyes again.

And immediately slept, dreaming the curve. She was still half-aware in her sleep, and she watched from a distant vantage point as her brain continued, though at a reduced level, the work she could not put a stop to.