The first chamber had changed little. Even the de-rotation and re-rotation of the Thistledown had left it relatively unmarred. Of course, there had been little but sandy desert on the first chamber’s floor in the first place. As they departed the elevator, a steady, cool breeze fell on them from the face of the chamber’s southern cap, a great, demeaning gray wall behind them. Around the axis shimmered the hazy white light of the plasma tube, twenty kilometers above them where they now stood on the “valley” floor.

To each side, the chamber stretched as flat and normal as could be imagined for a dozen kilometers, then with a slow, lazy vault began to creep upward, finally rising in an impossible vertical curve to meet overhead, behind the plasma tube, like some bridge for gods. After a good many years—how long had it been since his last visit, ten, twelve?—the dimensions of the Thistledown’s inner chambers struck Lanier all over again. He remembered the feeling of those awful months before the Death, when he had been swamped by administrative duties, by intrigues on Earth and within the Stone, by mystery and foreknowledge. He had called it being Stoned.

The rush of memories did not cheer him. He found it difficult to believe men had ever dwarfed themselves by such a creation. That was how he felt; small, overpowered. Stoned again.

They were greeted by a tall man, skeletally slender and very bald, an assistant to Korzenowski. “My name is Svard. Ser Korzenowski sends his regrets that he does not meet you personally.” He gave the Russian a quick appraising stare, then he led them toward a tractor. “The Engineer has a research compound in the middle of the valley, and he invites you to join him there.”

They boarded the tractor. The eight-passenger vehicle rode over the sand on a traction field, not treads or tires; it had been manufactured aboard Thistledown and was sleek and beautiful, with a pearly white exterior and a soft, adaptable gray interior that shaped itself to spoken or picted commands.

Svard wore a pictor hidden within his low collar. Lanier had never quite learned the art of picting. “I trust you’ve had an interesting journey, Mr. Lanier, Mr. Mirsky,” Svard said. Lanier nodded abstractedly. The tractor floated smoothly and swiftly over low scrub and brown and white patches of sand and soil.

“What keeps Ser Korzenowski busy now?” Lanier asked. “We haven’t spoken for some time.”

“He has been doing research,” Svard said.

“For the Hexamon?” Lanier asked.

“In part. Mostly to satisfy his own curiosity.”

“Who pays the bills?”

Svard smiled over his shoulder. “Really, Mr. Lanier. You should know that Ser Korzenowski has—what is the old phrase?—carte blanche to spend any reasonable amount, either in resources or money. He was given that privilege before his death, and the circumstances did not change with his resurrection.”

“I see,” Lanier said.