“That’s just because I want you to see everything at the same time.”

“I can see the clouds beyond the dome. Does the dome increase the heat of the sun?”

“Of course. But it’s all balanced. Everything is balanced. That’s what I want you to see.”

He sat back in his chair with his feet up to one side on the desk. He wore shiny clothes, clothes that shimmered as the building shimmered, a collared shirt with breast pockets like the shirts we have today, and soft creaseless pants, and sandals on his feet.

I must have been standing in front of the desk, because he was smiling up at me, positively beaming. He had just the smallest cleft in his chin, and that and the curve of his cheeks made him look so new, so young. He actually had dimples in his cheeks. Dimples.

“You can’t imagine what it was like in the beginning,” he said. “So many steps to come to this point. And what do you think might have happened if we’d never been interrupted, if they’d never come and tried to destroy us? What do you think the world would have been like?”

“I don’t want to think of that,” I said. “Because I love the world the way it is. After all, hasn’t the world come almost to the same point? I mean take a look around you in the world, and see how far they’ve come on their own. I don’t mean that what you did wasn’t splendid. It was glorious. All this is glorious. And they can’t make a city of luracastria, no, but think of all they’ve achieved without one guiding force, and subject to the squabbles, and battles and war, of a multitude of guiding forces. They’ve come out of it to achieve so much.”

“They have,” he said. There were laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, and his lips spread back so easily in such a generous smile. “They certainly have, and I would never interfere with them now. I want you to know that! I would never seek to do what I did before. But right now, here, in this world, the world of Atalantaya, savages do live beyond this dome and the Wilderness lands can be a treacherous and terrible place. But remember what I’m saying. I would never seek again to have such power, to be such a dominant note.”

“I understand.”

“But I just wanted you to see it, this world, my world. I wanted you to see what I’d done, and see what it was that Bravenna destroyed, and what time buried, and what perished from the record, and what’s remembered now only in legends and poems and songs.”