"For being brave," she said.

Lanier stared at her in complete amazement.

Patricia, Lanier and Olmy followed the medical worker to the quarters where they had spent the night. Olmy judged it would be best if Korzenowski's first perceptions were in reasonably familiar surroundings—a normal room, sparsely decorated and without too many people—or nonhumans. Ry Oyu and Yates agreed. "Besides," the gate opener said, "you've been waiting for this moment for five centuries. It's your moment much more than ours."

In the quarters, they waited for fifteen minutes before Olmy prompted the worker to display an image showing the progress of the personality it contained. Patricia raised her hand to her mouth as the image manifested before them.

The image was grossly distorted, one-half of the body large and bulbous, the other small almost to vanishing. Its apparent solidity was imperfect, with some parts opaque and others transparent. Its color was predominantly blue. The elongated, side-slipping head seemed to watch them, turning from face to face.

"Don't be disturbed," Olmy warned them. "The awareness of body shape is the last thing to mature."

Across a period of minutes, almost imperceptibly, the distortions corrected themselves. The overall blue color became more natural, and the patches of translucency filled in.

When the adjustments were completed, Korzenowski's image was fully and accurately formed, Olmy noted with satisfaction. It matched the appearance the Engineer had once chosen for the official portrait miniatures: a slender, dark-haired man of medium height, with a sharp, long nose and inquisitive, humored black eyes, his skin colored light coffee.

Olmy still searched for deviations. The Mystery imposed upon the partials, however close to Korzenowski's original, was not exact. However, it was sufficient to return Korzenowski to full awareness, and that awareness would be patterned by the virtually complete memories of the partials to reproduce closely the personality that had been erased—assassinated—before Olmy was born.

"Welcome," Olmy said aloud.

The image regarded him steadily, then attempted to speak. Its lips moved, but produced no sound. The image wavered abruptly, and when it was solid again, said, "I know you. I feel much better—very different. Have I been reconstructed?"

"As best we can manage," Olmy said.

"I remember so little—like bad dreams. You were a child. . . when we first met."

Olmy felt the rise of another emotion that Ram Kikura might have regarded as atavistic. "A boy, five years old," he said. He clearly remembered first seeing the Engineer's partials in the apartment memory, remembered his child-self frightened and fascinated at meeting someone famous—and dead.

"How long have I been incomplete, dead, whatever I was?"

"Five centuries," Olmy said.

The Engineer's expletive would have been extremely crude in his day; for Olmy, now, it was archaic and quaint. "Why was I brought back? Surely everyone was better off without me."

Oh, no," Olmy said sincerely. "We are honored to bring you back."

"I must be completely out of date."