Something warm pressed behind his eyes, and he felt a sharpness—not painful, just sharp—throughout his head. The sharpness pared his thoughts away layer by layer, and for a brief moment, there was no self at all. Still the paring went on, unwinding, unraveling. Then the process seemed to reverse, and he felt things fall back into place, but with a different texture underlying—as if he were a layer of paint on a canvas, being peeled from the old surface and pressed onto a new…. Yet there was no surface, no ground, nothing solid to hang himself on, only the pattern and some ineffable connection to Mirsky, who no longer looked like Mirsky, or any human. What he saw now was not light, and what he heard from Mirsky was not words.

I’ve been wondering what you really are, he commented without lips to move. You’re not a man at all.

No longer, Mirsky affirmed. I will put something here for Karen, that she will not have lost everything.

Lanier’s body fell to one side, crushing a fern and knocking bark from the rotten side of the stump. The eyes flickered half-open. The right hand twitched and curled sharply, then relaxed. The lungs fluttered and urine trickled into the pants. The heart continued to beat for several more minutes, but then the breathing stopped and the chest was still.

His implant was not empty, but Garry Lanier was dead.

55

Thistledown

The seventh chamber was in shadow, turned away from sun and Earth and moon, pointing to the stars. Its smooth-cut edges, its vast round cavity swept clean of debris, were a lesser and emptier black. Only four sets of lights shone on its perimeter, and fitful glows from survey parties making final alignments.

The blister capping the bore hole now contained a contingent of VIPs and guests; the official Hexamon historians, a group Korzenowski was not unfamiliar with; scientists and technicians who would assume the maintenance functions once the Way was reconnected and re-opened; the president and presiding minister; the director of Thistledown; Judith Hoffman.

Olmy, looking considerably improved.

They all hung in the dim lines of traction fields like spider’s prey, quiet, expectant.

As much ceremony as if this were the actual re-opening, Korzenowski thought, moving to the center of the dome with his extended clavicle. He had done this before, centuries ago; opening the Way for the first time after its creation, setting the Hexamon on a course far more difficult and final than any had then suspected.

He had still not made his final decision on whether to transmit Olmy’s signal. Friendship, even personal debt, was not something that could be weighed against an event as important as this…. The considerations of individuals were dwarfed by his larger responsibilities.

And yet, Olmy had never in his life done anything that was not for the good of the Hexamon. A more heroic and dedicated figure did not exist.