There along the icy strand of their little lake came a group of Hiroko’s brood. They couldn’t be called kids anymore, the youngest were fifteen or sixteen Terran years old, the oldest— well, the oldest were out scattered over the world; Kasei was probably fifty by now, and his daughter Jackie nearly twenty-five, a graduate of the new university in Sabishii, active in demimonde politics. That group of ectogenes were back in Gamete on a visit, like Ann herself. There they were, coming along the beach. Jackie was leading the group, a tall graceful black-haired young woman, quite beautiful and imperious, the leader of her generation no doubt. Unless it might be the cheery Nirgal, or the brooding Dao. But Jackie led them— Dao followed her with doggy loyalty, and even Nirgal kept an eye on her. Simon had loved Nirgal, and Peter did too, and Ann could see why; he was the only one among Hiroko’s gang of ectogenes who did not put her off. The rest cavorted in their self-absorption, kings and queens of their little world, but Nirgal had left Zygote soon after Simon’s death, and had hardly ever come back. He had studied in Sabishii, which was what had given Jackie the idea, and now he spent most of his time in Sabishii, or out with Coyote or Peter, or visiting the cities of the north. So was he too a Red? Impossible to say. But he was interested in everything, aware of everything, running around everywhere, a kind of young male Hiroko if such a creature was possible, but less strange than Hiroko, more engaged with other people; more human. Ann had never in her life managed to have a normal conversation with Hiroko, who seemed an alien consciousness, with entirely different meanings for all the words in the language, and, despite her brilliance at ecosystem design, not really a scientist at all, but rather some kind of prophet. Nirgal on the other hand seemed intuitively to strike right to the heart of whatever was most important to the person he was talking to— and he focused on that, and asked question after question, curious, assimilative, sympathetic. As Ann watched him trailing Jackie down the strand, running here and there, she recalled how slowly and carefully he had walked at Simon’s side. How he had looked so frightened that last night, when Hiroko in her peculiar way had brought him in to say good-bye. All that business had been a cruel thing to subject a boy to, but Ann hadn’t objected at the time; she had been desperate, ready to try anything. Another mistake she could never repair.