Olmy said nothing, calmly listening to Korzenowski and Patricia. He's proud, Lanier thought.

"For several light-years, until the Way expands and the city's shock wave dissipates, everything will be sterilized ahead of the city. Nothing will exist in these segments but the city. All features will be wiped out, all gates fused shut." She pointed to the structures. "Obviously, the Way has expanded here, and relativistic objects along its length won't bother it quite as much."

Lanier tried to puzzle out the flaw's vanishing even before the construction of the object that would force its "evaporation." He quickly lost himself in contradictions, but the contradictions didn't seem to bother Korzenowski or the gate openers.

"When we've prepared the documentation—you can do that, can't you, soon?—" he asked Patricia.

She agreed. "With Ser Korzenowski's help."

"—Then we will know most of what we need to know," Ry Oyu said. "We can present our report to the President. His faction can do with it what they please." He smiled. "What, apparently, they must."

Bright red picts appeared before the defense monitor, signaling an urgent message. Olmy went to receive them. When he returned, his expression was jubilant—paradoxically so, considering what he said next. "The Jarts have opened their gate. It's a remote, at about one point five ex nine. They've cut off the last defense station. There's a plug of plasma reaching top velocity—it's about seven hours from us. We have to leave now."

Prescient Oyu looked to her father. "The Geshels will refuse to let the Jarts push them out," she said.

"Then the President has no choice now, does he?" Ry Oyu said. "The Way writes his destiny, and so do the Jarts. He must take his precincts, and we must take ours, and follow our separate paths."

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Three

Mirsky and the three other "defectors" had been given small spherical quarters in the Central City Wald. Three Geshel homorphs—two females and one of uncertain sex—had been assigned to host them and guide their short-term education and accustomization.

Mirsky sat within his sphere, tuned to various channels of picted information—some translated for them by pedagog partials of their hosts. He and Rodzhensky had accepted temporary implants to help speed tutoring and interpretation. They watched and listened and said little. Rodzhensky stayed close to him, while Rimskaya—the American with the feminine name—kept aloof. The others he paid little attention to. They were very small ciphers in a huge mystery.

The hosts came to them, incarnate to minimize alarm, and taught brief, high density classes while their guests absorbed as much as they could.

The sense of urgency was thick in the air; except for their hosts, the Geshels paid little attention to the defectors. The Wald was almost deserted, most of its occupants taking new work positions to ready the precincts for whatever might come.