Olmy moved in quickly and picted something Patricia did not understand. The man moved away resentfully, a thin circle of red around his face.

"Perhaps this wasn't such a good idea," Olmy said, escorting her to where the Frant was engaged in conversation with two neomorphs, one a radiolarian, the other recognizable as the Director of the Nexus, Hulane Ram Seija.

"I suppose we have to get used to it," Patricia said. Why get used to it? she asked herself. She didn't plan on staying forever.

"Ser Ram Seija," the Frant said, turning toward her, "here is our first guest." The Frant's wide-extended eyes seemed to naturally convey humor and good spirits. Though she found the word guest euphemistic, at best, she did not resent the Frant's using it.

"I've been looking forward to a chance to talk with you, someplace out of chambers," Ram Seija said. "Though this hardly seems the best time. . .”

Patricia focused on his face, projected at mid-level on the sphere that was his body. She had a distinct impression she was on a ride in Disneyland, seeing something extraordinary with a perfectly mundane explanation. She didn't answer for some time, and then snapped herself out of her reverie, saying, "Yes, certainly."

"You'll enjoy Timbl, our world," the Frant said. "We've been long-time clients of the Hexamon. It's a very tame gate, long established."

"We'll go there first," Ram Seija said. "A journey of four hours to the Frant gate at four ex six, and then a leisurely two-day rest stop. We're hoping the President can break away from his conference to meet us."

Four ex six—four million kilometers down the corridor—merely a hop, skip and jump, she thought. And for every thousand kilometers, an advance of one year in time; for every fraction of a millimeter, entry into an alternate universe. . .

How much closer to home?

"I look forward to meeting it—him, and to visiting Timbl," she said, acquiescing to the spirit of the occasion.

"We're requested at the bow," Lanier said, brushing by with Farley. Heineman and Carrolson were already on their way. The crowds parted before them; she had never seen so many smiling faces, or felt so much interest in her person. She hated it. She wanted to run and hide.

Feeling through her jumpsuit for the letter from Paul, finding it and pressing it, she followed the Frant and Olmy toward the bow of the flawship.

Senator Oyu was there, with three Naderite homorphs from Axis Thoreau, all historians. They smiled and made room for the five. The flawship captain, a neomorph with a masculine human trunk and a serpentine body from the waist down, fully three meters in length, joined them last.