“As certain as I can be, given that it wasn’t something I thought I’d need to remember.” I paused. “I might be able to ask him, if I went back to Dorf. I got the impression he’d been hanging out there. He might still be in the area.”

Cordus didn’t respond to the offer. Instead he leaned back and stretched out his legs, then studied his shoes as he tapped them slowly together.

“I begin to have an idea of what Mrs. Ryder may be.” He looked up at me. “If I am right, we are facing a rather serious situation.”

He focused again on his feet. Tap, tap, tap.

I sat there wondering if there was a way I could avoid getting sucked into his “rather serious situation.” Unfortunately, I didn’t think so.

“You read the document I gave to you.”

I nodded, though it hadn’t really been a question.

“Human species have been producing essence-workers for some millions of years — not only Homo sapiens but other members of the genus Homo, as well as several other genera. Some humanoid Seconds are, thus, comparatively old, though the reptiles would scoff if they heard any of us lay claim to that adjective.”

I nodded, amazed for about the hundredth time in the last few weeks. So there were Neanderthal Seconds. People who’d been alive for tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of years. Like us and yet different. How extraordinary.

“That said, many walk among us to whom the lives of our greatest elders would seem but moments. Some of these are old enough to have passed into legend, so that we cannot be quite sure whether they ever existed. They are, in effect, our gods.”

Gods to the gods. What a thought.

“One such legend is known as ‘Eye of the Heavens.’ This ancient being is said to be made of the sky itself. As the legend goes, in times of desperation, the sky looks down upon the creatures crawling in the mud beneath it and takes pity on their miserable lives. It shapes a piece of itself into a champion and sends him down to save and protect those in need.”

“You think Justine is this Eye of the Heavens?” I shook my head. “If the sky sent her down here to be our champion, the sky has a pretty sick sense of humor.”

Cordus frowned. I guess it wasn’t a matter for levity.

“Remember that what I have just recounted is legend,” he said. “The legend may be no more than an attempt to concretize and embody vague memories of a being that no one understands, that no one has seen in millennia. Memories, for instance, of an ability to shape-shift so fully that all trace of the original form is lost, memories of a creature whose true matter appears to be a group of sky-blue balls.”