"No," she admitted.

"Christ."

She stood and hugged him firmly, touching her cheek to his shoulder. "I don't know what we are to each other, but I have to thank you."

He cradled her head with one hand and stared away at the juncture of wall and ceiling, blinking, lips drawn down at the corners. "I don't know either."

"I was beginning to think I wasn't human."

"You. . .” He didn't finish.

"What I've been thinking. . . in some ways, that makes me more like them than like you. Do you understand that?"

"No."

"I suppose it also makes my Mystery appropriate for Korzenowski. He thought similar thoughts, and he had similar goals. He wanted to take his people home."

Lanier shook his head, rejecting everything.

"They're not going to hurt me. They're going to teach me. I have to say yes."

"They're blackmailing you."

She raised her head suddenly, frowning. "They aren't," she said abstractedly. "No more than I'm blackmailing them. Garry, I just thought of something. . . and why didn't I think of it before? Why are they opening another gate?"

"I don't know," Lanier said quickly. Her question seemed completely irrelevant.

"I'll ask them."

He laughed. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"That's why we were brought here, to witness the ceremony. . . . Well, that's obviously not the main reason, but it was part of the package."

He thought for a moment, still holding her. Despite, everything, despite his doubts and fears and suspicions, he had to admit. . .

That was something he would like to see.

"I think we should sleep," Patricia said.

It was not incidental that they made love, but Lanier realized the act was not necessary to Patricia. She was in sight of her goal; everything else, like the decor and the very bed they lay on, was window dressing.

That made him feel insignificant. And it made him wonder what Patricia had become since her arrival on the Stone.

"Am I human?" she asked as they lay together.

"Probably," he said, trying to keep his voice steady, and not completely succeeding.

By the time van Hamphuis's flawship arrived at the position formerly occupied by the Axis City, all gates up and down the Way had been closed and the lanes between them cleared. The situation was unprecedented in the history of the Way.

The Axis City had moved on. Under Corprep Rosen Gardner's direction, the city's flaw power stations had been seized from the last holdouts. Those who had been killed had had their implants carefully retrieved—some 183 citizens so far. The toll disturbed Gardner, but their deaths were not permanent. With the flaw shaft under his control, he had accelerated the Axis City, moving south toward the Thistledown. The journey had taken sixteen hours; van Hamphuis's flawship had followed, but there was little the President could do.