She heard two pairs of heavy footsteps outside her door and felt a moment of anxiety. There was a rap on the doorframe, and a male voice inquired, “Rhita Berenikē Vaskayza?”

“Yes,” she said, standing to face whoever might come in.

“I’m here with your bodyguard,” the man said in polished common Hellenic. “Her Imperial Hypsēlotēs requests your presence by the sixth hour of this day.”

Rhita opened the door and saw Lugotorix standing behind a tall, bulky Aigyptian in royal livery. The Kelt nodded at Rhita and she blinked. “Now?”

“Now,” the Aigyptian confirmed.

Lugotorix helped her gather the cases containing Patrikia’s Objects. She felt faintly ridiculous, having tried the Mouseion at all; but that had been her father’s strategy, at her mother’s suggestion, years back. Best not to approach her Imperial Hypsēlotēs directly, her mother had advised. Especially after the fiasco of the disappearing gates.

A much larger motorized wagon waited for her on the cobble road curving past the main archway of the residence hall. Three other Aigyptians, also in royal livery, carefully loaded her cases into the back. The Kelt took a seat beside the driver, and the guards stood on running boards. With a wind-horn roaring, she was driven from the grounds of the Mouseion, west to the palace.

Leaving the main gate, she looked back and realized, with an intuitive shudder, that her brief sojourn in the Mouseion was at an end.

17

Thistledown

Once, before the age of thirty, life had been bordered by walls of reasonable proportions; Garry Lanier had not had to face a constant barrage of explosive re-evaluations of reality and where he fit in. Since the arrival of the Stone, he had had to come to grips with mind-stretching truths so often, he had once thought nothing would amaze him any more.

He lay in the bunk prepared for him by Svard, Korzenowski’s assistant. In the dark, on his back, half-covered by a sheet, he sighed and knew that he was not so jaded after all. The Russian’s story had flabbergasted him.

Mirsky had returned, after traveling beyond the end of time and becoming at least a minor deity.

He was an avatar, a reincarnated symbol of forces outside even Korzenowski’s comprehension.

“Jesus,” Lanier said almost automatically. The name had lost considerable power in the past few decades. After all, the miracles at the foundation of Christianity were almost all duplicated weekly in the Terrestrial Hexamon. Technology had superseded religion.

But what was Mirsky, that his reappearance should supersede even the abilities of the Hexamon? Had wonders gone full circle, back to the realm of religion again?

What Mirsky had shown them…The combination of simplified visuals and words and incomprehensible sounds projected into their minds…His innards still curled at the memory of the experience.