He returned to the first room, where Beni had died, and opened a small box of equipment. Onto the panel’s output device he locked a data valve. Drawing several leads from the valve’s smooth round surface, he fastened them to the curved band that would slide tightly around the base of his skull.

The downloading could take hours; the equipment here was ancient. The valve would not allow any unregulated surge of information.

You’re about to become a bomb, he told himself. A very dangerous rogue indeed.

The room was silent but for the faint hum of the valve. He thought of the fifth chamber landscape, six kilometers above, and of the mass of the Thistledown all around them; even more ancient than this equipment. A weight of history and responsibility that he had carried for most of his life.

If he were to die right now, killed by this rash process or by some unexpected irregularity in his body—rare, but not unknown—he knew he would have performed his duty to the Hexamon many times over. He would not regret simply ceasing to be. And perhaps Korzenowski or someone else would pull the Hexamon through these dangerous times.

He reexamined the wires. All fittings were correct. First, however, he had to take a few precautions. He rigged a strong traction field near the door, laying two small nodes on each side. The nodes would draw from the room’s hidden power supply. If he simply tapped a remote button, or sent a sharp whistle, or blinked his eyes in a rapid code, the field would activate…And there was no way to turn it off or harm the nodes, since they would lie within their own field.

He would not be able to escape. Nothing inside him would be able to escape. This would be a tomb for both of them.

If necessary, Olmy would stay in the room for several weeks, waiting to see if the process was successful. He had rigged other traps for himself in Alexandria, in the fifth chamber near the train station, in the third chamber. All he had to do, should something go wrong away from this small sanctuary, would be to make his way to one of those traps, activate traction fields, and wait to die—or wait to be discovered.

Nobody knew of these traps. Nobody knew of his plans.

And then, there were the traps within his own mind…Mental trip-wires controlled by the same internally-downloaded partial that would oversee the Jart’s mentality.

If he felt himself losing all control, and could not make it to a trap, a blunder across these trip-wires would release a small explosive charge in his chest.