Outside, the Hexamon worked steadily toward its goals. Olmy sometimes accessed a public library terminal away from his hideout, using his tracer to penetrate Hexamon propaganda, which had become oppressively thick. The Hexamon seemed to be hiding from itself, guilty for its actions. It needed to convince itself again and again.

Olmy was not encouraged by such subterfuge. It led to blunders and bad judgment. All of his worst suspicions and fears about the current Hexamon leadership were being realized.

After the mens publica mandate, the re-opening was on schedule. The defenses were nearly complete. The Way could be reconnected within a month, perhaps less; citizens on the orbiting bodies were enthusiastic but nervous.

On Earth, the Terrestrial Senate had been placed in emergency recess. The senators and corpreps were sequestered, as were a number of territorial governors.

Ram Kikura was still kept under house arrest and in a communications null in Axis Euclid.

Olmy received this information with grim resignation. There had always been the potential; now the potential was actual. The re-opening had become an obsession, and nothing would stand in its way—not even the honor and tradition of a thousand years.

In time, he might come to respect the Jarts, with their single-minded purity, more than his own people, mired in hypocrisy and confusion.

He returned to his study.

49

Earth

“Was Pavel Mirsky here?” Lanier asked as Karen turned him over and checked the flotation fields beneath him. She straightened and gave him an odd look, puzzled and irritated at once.

“No,” she said. “You’ve been dreaming.”

He swallowed and nodded: probably so. “How long have I been asleep?”

“It wasn’t sleep,” she said. “You’ve been reintegrating. They added the last repair microbes to your blood two days ago. You almost died…” She rolled him back onto the fields. “About two months ago.”

“Oh.”

She stood above him, face stern. “You almost did it.”

He smiled weakly. “I don’t remember much about it. Was I trying to find you, when it happened?”

“You were sitting on your chair on the porch. It was cold outside. You…I found you tipped over in the chair.” She shook her head slowly. “Sometimes I hated you. Sometimes…”

“I didn’t know it was coming,” he said.

“Garry, your father.”

“I’m not him.”

“You acted as if you wanted to die.”

“Maybe I did,” he said quietly. “But I didn’t want to lose you.”

“You wanted me to go with you, perhaps?” She sat on the side of the bed, on the edge of the soft purple sleep fields. “I’m not ready for that.”

“No.”

“You look old enough to be my father.”

“Thanks.”

She took his jaw in one hand and gently twisted his head to one side, touching a bump at the base of his neck. “They put a temporary implant in you. You can remove it later if you want. But right now, you’re a ward of the Hexamon.”