Ry Oyu considered this for a moment. “For my past self,” he said. “We can’t correct all of our failures. But the Engineer has redeemed himself for the creation of the Way…Olmy has suffered for his ambition and feelings of self-importance…Mirsky has paid some of his own debts. Please allow me to correct one of my own failures.”

The Engineer’s face relaxed. “All right,” he said softly. “Take them home.”

“And what do you choose? Ser Olmy, freed from the Jart…where would you go? Ser Korzenowski, still carrying part of Patricia Vasquez, where would you go?”

“I am incomplete without her,” Korzenowski said. “I think she will stay with me, and be content, as long as she knows some part of her is going home. I…we’d like to journey down the Way and become part of the Final Mind.”

Olmy considered. “That would be fascinating,” he said, “but I’m not sure I’m ready. If all the stories we’ve heard are true, we follow that route wherever we are, however we go.”

“They are true,” Ry Oyu said.

“I think of how few beings have actually known this,” Olmy said. “How privileged we are. I know where I’d like to go, still alive, still incarnate.”

“Where is that?”

“Timbl,” he said. “The Frant homeworld. I have many friends there.”

“There should be enough time to re-open the gates to Timbl,” Ry Oyu said.

“Don’t you feel a bit like Santa Claus?” Korzenowski asked, or perhaps it was Patricia; the Engineer knew very little about the old terrestrial legends.

Ry Oyu smiled and turned toward the image of the room, and the jumbled figure of the woman within. “I’ll convey all this to our hosts. I’m sure they’d be proud to have the creator of the Way go with them to meet descendant command.”

Rhita focused on the wise-looking, smiling gray-haired man, feeling more secure in his presence. He did not have the fierce aspect of a Zeus, but more the calm air of Aserapis with his stalks of corn and Plutonian dogs, his ceremonial bulls and festivals of resurrection.

This calm man spoke of going home.

“I’m going back to Gaia?” she asked, her voice strong in this place without true sound or true voices.

“Now,” Ry Oyu said, “we perform the most sacred of weddings once again. Patricia, carried within me, will you have the patterns of your own granddaughter as a shell in which to live, until we can search for the home you have lost?”

Olmy saw the image of Rhita shimmer, become solid, fade in color; become solid yet again. Always, the young woman’s eyes watched Korzenowski, and Korzenowski watched her.

“Rhita, will you lend part of your self to this shadow of your grandmother, that she may have the strength to go home?”

“Yes,” Rhita said.