Still, the admission shocked him. He rubbed his hollowing cheeks with his long, thin, still-strong fingers and repeated this interior revelation several times, savoring its bitterness. Whatever he had been, he had never been a quitter, and yet this was nothing if not wanting to quit.

Heineman had not wanted to quit. He had accepted mortality, but had enjoyed life to the end, and he had survived as much trauma as Lanier; perhaps more. Lenore Carrolson’s spirit was intact; she still had vitality and purpose. And Karen relished life so much she refused to think of dying, postponing that day with Hexamon technology.

No wonder he and Karen had parted ways. Like Lenore, she had not been blunted by all she had seen, and she had seen as much as he. She had grieved for their daughter as deeply as he—grief made all the more difficult because it was mixed with an impossible hope…that they might someday recover Andia’s implant. Where was his failure, then? The room’s voice announced a visitor at the main entrance. Lanier groaned, hoping for time to chew this over before having to confront his fellows, but that was not to be. He could not deny visitors now. “All right,” he said. He walked to the suite’s main entrance, a five-meter-long, two-meter-wide steel bridge suspended in a hollow sphere of meteoric crystal. A slice of the crystal moved aside from the opposite end of the bridge. Pavel Mirsky stood there, smiling his usual chagrined smile.

“Am I interrupting?”

“No,” Lanier said, spooked more by the man’s normality and solidity than by anything else. Why couldn’t he come dressed as a god, at least? A thunderbolt or two flickering in his hair…

“I do not sleep normally, and I am bored just searching for information…I need company. I hope that is fine with you?”

Lanier nodded weak assent. Of course he would be bored. Even the Stone’s incredible libraries would seem childish to him…wouldn’t they?

“I haven’t apologized for imposing on you, have I?”

“I believe you have,” Lanier said. Surely, his memory can’t be faulty?

“Perhaps I have.” He smiled again and crossed the bridge, passing Lanier. “These are spacious living areas, yet not, I think, much more luxurious than where common folks lived? Technology finally made equals of leaders and led.”

“It’s too rich for my tastes.”

“I agree,” Mirsky said as they crossed the reception rotunda, passing beneath a dome depicting the heavens as viewed from the Thistledown’s northern pole. At the moment, the Moon was visible and full, and its light cast shadows under their feet. “This is a nice effect, though, no?”

He seemed more like a child now. More spontaneous, playful, yet in control.