“It’s truly beautiful,” Mirsky said, breaking the silence. He leaned forward and shook his head enthusiastically, grinning like a boy.

“Quite a compliment from a man who’s seen the end of time,” Korzenowski observed.

He doesn’t act like an avatar, Lanier thought.

After the Sundering, Thistledown City had been reoccupied by citizens from the precincts. An abortive attempt to bring Old Natives to the asteroid and settle them had been called off after the new immigrants expressed great unhappiness; most had been returned to Earth, where they would not be overawed by unnatural splendor. Lanier sympathized.

Now, the city was about one-fifth full, citizens clustering together in certain areas, others in less populated regions often living one or two families to a building. If ever large numbers of Earth’s inhabitants could be persuaded to make Thistledown their home, space aplenty waited for them.

All of the city’s parks had been restored, unlike in Alexandria, where restoration was still in progress. Some had been replanted with flora brought up from Earth. Conservators were encouraging endangered animals from Earth to breed in various spectacular zoos completed within the past two decades. The second and third chamber libraries contained the genetic records of every Earth species known at the time of Thistledown’s launch, but a large number of species had vanished in the years after the Death; now was their chance to prevent those extinctions.

The Terrestrial Hexamon Nexus met in the middle of a thousand-acre rain forest. A wide, low translucent dome the color of a clear twilight sky vaulted over much of the forest and the Nexus meeting chambers; under the dome, the tubelight was transformed into glorious sunlight and clouds.

The Nexus was not in session this day. The meeting chambers, a circular arena and central stage, were almost empty.

Judith Hoffman sat in an aisle seat near the central stage. Lanier, Mirsky and Korzenowski walked down the aisle abreast, and she turned in her seat, cocking an eyebrow. With a quick glance, she summed up Mirsky and Korzenowski, and then she smiled at Lanier. He stepped aside and met her welcoming hug while Mirsky and Korzenowski waited.

“It’s wonderful to see you again, Garry,” she said.

“It’s been too long.” He smiled broadly, feeling more energetic and reassured just in her presence. She had allowed herself to age a little, Lanier noted, though she still appeared twenty years younger than he; her hair was steely gray and her face carried a look of tired, careworn dignity.

She had deliberately ignored the more advanced fashions of Thistledown City, where apparel might consist of illusion as much as cloth. Instead, she had chosen a stolid gray pants suit with just a hint of feminine cut to her lapels. She wore a pictor necklace and carried a small slate at least four decades old, the equivalent here of a quill pen.

“How’s Karen? Have you been keeping up with Lenore and Larry?”