When the orbiting precincts were full to capacity, camps were set up near the most technologically sophisticated urban centers on Earth. The ideal centers for relocation could provide city memory facilities and the advanced technology Hexamon citizens often needed for daily maintenance; like hothouse flowers, Karen thought, or specialized insects in a hive…Very much like all human beings, only more so.

She was assigned to the camps being constructed around Melbourne, acting as liaison between the Old Native administrators and the evacuation officials from the orbiting precincts. Day in and day out, as the week progressed, she smoothed over difficulties, improved understanding, and made sure that the resentments of the Old Natives did not hamper progress. At night, exhausted, she slept in a small, private bubble habitat, dreaming of Garry and of Andia as a child…and of Paval Mirsky.

When she did not sleep, in those short rest periods, she wept, or lay quiet as a stone on an emergency cot, face set, trying to puzzle through her reactions. Despite their separation, emotionally and sexually, she had never stopped relying on Garry’s presence, or at least the knowledge that he was available.

She was grateful for the chaos and the work. She suspected her grief was stronger and harder to come to grips with than if she and Lanier had been close all along; she could not put aside the thought that given a few more months, they might have come together as strongly as before.

The world was changing again. Karen actually relished the challenge of change; but with Garry at her side, what work they could have done! What problems they could have solved, and with such style!

The wounds of grief were already beginning to heal through her glorification of the good memories, and cloaking of the bad. She resisted these mild dishonesties at first, and then gave in, if only to shed her pain.

The camps neared completion by the end of the week. Shuttles already were arriving, disembarking evacuees.

Just after noon on the last day of the week, Karen climbed the side of a low, scrub-covered hill, carrying a small wrapped sandwich and a bottle of beer. She looked over what had once been a broad parkland. Hundreds of Hexamon machines—no larger than trucks—had planned, designed, and extruded emergency shelters, creating what would in a few days become fully functional, largely self-contained communities.

To the east, dumps of raw materials awaited the attentions of intermediate processors, which separated out the raw materials necessary for the construction machines. Purified minerals and cellulose and added foodstuffs—necessary for the machines’ quasi-organic components—were stacked in hills of meter-wide cubes.