The community on the flat land below the hill was more than half-finished, and already it bore some resemblance to the cities on Thistledown. For the moment, all the structures—row upon row of domes and tiered prisms, broad expanses of farm belt, large community centers like inverted cups—were translucent or white, but soon organic paints and textural modifiers would be layered over them, coloring and sculpting; interiors would then be added. Very few would be equipped with decorating projectors. The Hexamon’s evacuees would have to get used to more austere environments.

No doubt they would feel deprived, Karen thought. But this community would still be more advanced by several centuries than any other city on Earth.

By being forced to live on Earth, perhaps the Hexamon citizens would finally carry out the necessary but long-delayed steps in the Recovery. Terrestrial and Orbiting Hexamons would finally be compelled to come to terms with past and future.

Unless, of course, nothing happened to Thistledown…. Then the evacuees would return and things would continue as before.

But that seemed highly unlikely. Whatever the outward explanations, Karen saw the hand of Mirsky behind the evacuation.

Again, she found herself beseeching the Russian to take care of her husband. It had become a daily ritual. She found a surprising amount of comfort in it.

If forces beyond her comprehension were still at work, it was possible Garry had not simply passed into oblivion. Even if she never saw or spoke with him again…he would exist, somewhere.

The wind blowing over the camp and toward the hill brought a scent of fresh greenery—the scent of a city growing, coming alive. Karen glanced up at the sky and cruelly, irrationally, wished for Thistledown to be destroyed.

Not until late that evening, waking from a troubled sleep, did she realize why; and in the morning, preparing for conferences between the Melbourne city fathers and newly elected corpreps for the camp town, she had almost forgotten again.

The wish remained.

You have to know where you are. You cannot live in two worlds.

64

The Way

In the odd moments—whatever those moments were, time or delusion—when Rhita was not being examined, tested, questioned, whatever it was the Jarts did to her—when she could think a thought that she was reasonably sure was her own, she tried to understand what her grandmother had told her. That she worked through a wall Patrikia herself had not penetrated was obvious to her now; a wall of ignorance regarding the Jarts. What are they doing to me? They seemed to be keeping her thoughts and self in a separate enclosure. She did not feel her real body; or at least, she did not believe her real body was still connected to her. Some of the illusions presented to her were very convincing, but she had learned to distrust all apparent realities.