Chapters (90)
Negranes lifted her head. “I’ve never felt anything like it,” she said. “It makes me feel immeasurably small. Is everything so futile, that we simply vanish and are forgotten in time?”
“Not forgotten,” Mirsky said. “Please. You are not forgotten. I am here.”
“Why you?” Negranes asked. “Why not some better-known figure from the Hexamon?”
“I volunteered, in a way. I offered myself,” Mirsky said.
Hoffman fixed Korzenowski with her clear brown eyes. “We’ve been opposed on this question for a long time. I’m sure Garry is surprised to hear I’ve been supporting re-opening. How do you feel, experiencing this? Have you changed your mind?”
Korzenowski didn’t answer for a moment. Then, using a tone of voice that made Lanier jump—a familiar tone, that of Patricia Vasquez—he said, “I’ve always known it was inevitable. I’ve never enjoyed inevitability. I don’t enjoy this, now. I designed the Way, and was punished for doing so by assassination. I was brought back, and I saw what progress we had made, and how much we had gained as human beings—not lost. We were trapped by our own glories.
“I was certain that returning to Earth would balance out our problems, but the Way is like a drug. We have been using this drug for so long, we cannot break free of it, so long as the possibility for re-opening remains.”
“You sound ambivalent,” Mason said.
“I think the Way must be re-opened. And then it must be destroyed. I see no alternative to the method presented by Ser Mirsky.”
“Re-opening,” Mason said, shaking her head. “Finally giving in.”
“Our responsibility is a heavy burden,” the Engineer continued. “The Way must be dismantled. It blocks the designs of those whose goals are far larger than anything we can easily imagine.”
“Count on this,” Mason said. “If we favor any kind of reopening, they will not let us dismantle.” She nodded at Negranes and Hoffman.
Hoffman looked at Lanier, her face only now regaining some of its color. “By all means. The Nexus must see this. I believe this man is Mirsky, and that’s remarkable enough to convince me.”
Par Jordan stood. “I’ll make my recommendation to the president.”
“What is your recommendation?” Mirsky asked.
“I doubt we can block testimony before the Nexus. I don’t know whether we’d want to. I just…don’t know.” He took a deep breath. “The disruption is going to be unbelievable.”
Lanier suddenly longed for a chance to relive that moment on the mountain, when he had first seen the hiker descending the path.
Given another chance, he might run away as fast as cramped legs allowed.