This was the memory she always returned to, a memory of peace and solitude, where she withdrew from the welter to think her own thoughts, discover her own self. She had once imagined herself as Athene in her various forms: wise woman, bringer of victory, Athene of the storms, Athene of python and owls; Athene helmeted adorner of old coins, goddess of the great and tortured city of the Hellenes. An adolescent girl could be all of those things in the space of an hour, and yet face no danger for her hubris, for Athene understood such dreams.

Athene understood and forgave failure, even should it cost a world.

Rhita closed her eyes and opened them again. There was talk of Patrisha which was, she remembered, the way her grandmother had sometimes pronounced her own name.

“She’s been stored in a memory matrix, much like city memory,” Ry Oyu said. “She’s retreated into herself, following personal pathways…. They can’t unravel her. She’s defying them in the only way left to her.”

They watched the uncertain, wavering image of Patricia’s granddaughter, placed in the context of the house-memory like a mannequin within some museum exhibit, or a zoo animal on display. “Ser Olmy, how does your Jart justify this?” Korzenowski asked.

“It’s distressed that a valued bit of information should be damaged,” Olmy said.

“I mean the…‘packaging’ of an entire world.”

“In their own way, they try to serve the Final Mind,” Ry Oyu said. “They want to send all they’ve stored on to the Final Mind. And that is what they’ll do. But we should be able to stop this woman’s suffering…. The time has come for decisions. The Jarts know the Way will soon cease to exist. They accept me as a representative of descendant command. They’re anxious to present the fruits of their labor to the Final Mind. They’ll do anything I say…. As far as they’re concerned, this is the time they’ve been waiting for, the time that justifies their entire history.

“I can take Patricia’s Mystery, and her granddaughter’s stored mentality, back to the geometry stacks and try to give them some peace.”

“Why?” Korzenowski asked, his eyes square and cat-like now, as if he were suddenly all Patricia Vasquez. “Why just them? Why not restore all the worlds the Jarts have destroyed and packaged?”

Ry Oyu shook his head. “Not within my means. I do what I can do now largely to fulfill promises. Long ago, when I was merely a gate-opener,” he tapped his own chest emphatically, “I failed to teach Patricia Vasquez properly. I make up for that by giving her another chance, and her granddaughter, as well. Besides, there’s the aesthetic satisfaction.”

“Garry Lanier refused special privileges,” Korzenowski said, his face contorted, a mask of contradictory personality and emotion. “Why should you give us…give Patricia Vasquez special consideration?”