This suggested two possibilities: that those who wished to unravel the Way could do so without the risk of confronting the Jarts; and if the Way were re-opened and the Jarts defeated, they might exact revenge by destroying it from outside. Mirsky, unveiling yet more of his character and capabilities, demonstrated through complex mathematics—equations that made even Korzenowski furrow his brow—that this was unlikely.

The Russian seemed in his element during the debate. The level of discussion was usually far beyond Lanier’s comprehension, even when his mind was augmented by loaned talents—a service he had never used before.

But Lanier could sense one thing perhaps not so obvious to the corpreps and senators. Reverence for the Way was deeply branded into even those who were terrified of re-opening. The Way had been their world; most of them had grown up in it, and until the Sundering, most of them had known no other existence. The debate, however fiery, was one-sided; the question rapidly became not whether to re-open, but what to do after the Way was linked again to Thistledown.

They gathered now in physical session to hear what the Nexus would recommend to the Hexamon. In addition, a vote would be taken on whether to pass the matter on with Nexus recommendations to the Hexamon as a whole, or to restrict voting to the Thistledown mens publica, or to launch an educational campaign on Earth and postpone the voting until that effort was complete, which could take years.

Lanier entered the Nexus Chamber alone; Mirsky, Korzenowski and Olmy had preceded him for some pre-session discussion with the president. The chamber was empty but for two corpreps across the circle picting at each other. He stood in an aisle, oddly at peace. He was still out of his depth, but since his confession to Mirsky, he no longer felt the inner turmoil, the dark, confused exhaustion.

He had toured the third chamber city for a few hours earlier in the day, riding a spinward train to the main library where he had once spent hours learning Russian, and where Mirsky had been shot and resurrected. The library had been reactivated thirty-five years ago; it was now a busy facility, its wide floor of pictors and seats often serving hundreds of corporeal scholars at once. The library had been built about the same time as the Nexus dome. What had once seemed monumental, alien and frightening—containing as it did the news of Earth’s death before it had happened—was still monumental, but familiar now, acceptable to him.