There were three Frants, cloaked in the shiny foil jackets that seemed to be their usual clothing away from Timbl. A being shaped like two upside-down U's connected with a thick, gnarled rope of flesh—lacking visible eyes, its skin as smooth and featureless as black glass—stood unmoving on its four elephantine feet a few meters from the Frant, surrounded by a red line of quarantine. It apparently did not find the atmosphere uncomfortable, however.

A Talsit researcher stood on its eight limbs beside Yates on the north side of the scaffold, surrounded by a traction bubble containing its particular mix of atmosphere—very little oxygen, with a much higher percentage of carbon dioxide, at temperatures low enough to make condensation form on the field's flexible boundaries. Its mossy "antlers" were in constant motion. All the other nonhuman researchers were surrounded by similar fields, the most striking being a sinuous, snake-bodied, four-headed being suspended in coils in a levitated sphere of deep green liquid, like a preserved specimen.

From the evidence, human-form beings were not common.

Before the gathering, Lanier and the Talsit had engaged in a strange conversation—strange in its clarity and uncanny familiarity, as if they had been no stranger to each other than new neighbors at a block party.

The Talsit had stood on the north side of the scaffolding, conversing with a Frant while a second Frant waited silently nearby. The Frants had homogenized several hours before; there was little need for the second Frant to contribute to the conversation, unless parallel thinking was required. Lanier and Patricia had eaten as much from a bountiful floating lunch table as they cared to. Patricia had then gone off with Olmy to resume her conversation with Korzenowski.

Lanier found himself speaking with the Talsit almost by default. The Talsit had approached Prescient Oyu to discuss her father's plans for the ceremony's aftermath. Their conversation had been picted at first, and then she had shifted to English, introducing the Talsit to Lanier. The Talsit spoke perfect English, though nothing moved anywhere on its body in any way to show sound production.

Lanier didn't even bother to be curious; he had had a surfeit of marvels, minor and major. It took his full attention just finding the right words to explain how they had come to be here. In conversation with a being not even remotely human in shape, and of unknown psychological character (if it could speak perfect English, surely it could also provide a screen for its real thought processes), he talked casually enough about the Death, about alternate universes and invasions in space. The Talsit, in turn, discussed its own kind. Lanier found himself nodding in understanding to a story that would have been incomprehensible to him only a few short months ago.