"Garry, I'm losing touch. I'm going to end up like that rogue, all distorted and unreal. I can't stop thinking. The President's advocate said. . . Garry, I need help. I need something distracting."

"What?" Lanier asked. She extended one arm and spread her hand, gesturing with her fingers. He gripped the hand.

"I'm human, aren't I? I'm real. I'm not just some toy or program."

"You're real," Lanier affirmed. "I'm touching you."

"I can't be sure of that now. You wouldn't believe what's in my head. I'm seeing. . . I mean, it's not artificial, not an adjunct or anything. It's from inside me, all the calculations, theorizing. I'm seeing universes bunched up like Bible leaves, and I know the page numbers. Olmy didn't believe me, not completely. But I still think I'm right. They have these gate-opening devices, some big, some small. If I could get one of those, I could take all of us home right now. Back to where everything is all right. I know the page number."

"Patricia—"

"Let me talk!" she said fiercely. "Back to where there is no nuclear war. Where my father reads Tiempos de Los Angeles. Where Paul waits for me. So I'm thinking, but not just about those things. The President said they could send the Axis City down the corridor, the Way, at relativistic speeds. Relativistic. Wipe out their enemies. It would work. But. . .”

"Slow down, Patricia."

"I can't, Garry. I need touch. I need Paul, but he's still dead until I find him." She gripped his hand tighter. "You'll help. Please."

"How?"

She scrunched her eyes up as if facing into a wind and forced an uncertain smile. "The Way would expand like a bugle. If there was a large relativistic object traveling the singularity. It would balloon. It would shut gates, just fuse them closed."

"How can I help? I'll get Carrolson—"

"No, please. Just you. I've been making notes." She held up her slate. The screen was covered with figures that made absolutely no sense to Lanier. "I have the proof. Let me go to the point in the stack geometry. . . and I can take us out. But I can't stop this."

"Patricia, you said I could help"

"Make love to me," she said abruptly.

Lanier stared at her in shock.

"I'm just a thought right now. Give me a body."

"Don't be ridiculous," he said, angry—doubly angry because he felt a sympathetic response.

She flinched. "Paul's dead. It won't be cheating on him. When I open the gate, he'll be alive again, but right now he's nowhere. I know you've been staying with Farley. . . . And Hoffman. . .”

She had almost said the wrong thing, almost brought up the question of his responsibility for her, and both of them knew it. "I am jealous, and I'm not," she said. "I like Karen. I like all of you. I've felt apart from you, different, but I've wanted to be. . . with all of you. I've wanted you to like me."