Below San Francisco Bay, hours after boarding the ark, the young woman who had guided them on the fishing boat—her name was Clara Fogarty—went among the twenty in the waiting room and spoke to them, answering questions, trying to keep them all calm. She seemed none too calm herself; fragile, on the edge.

Help her, Arthur was ordered. He and several others immediately obeyed. After a few minutes, he circled back through the people to Francine and took her hands. Marty hugged him fiercely.

"I'm going to visit the areas where we'll be staying," he said to Francine.

"The network is telling you this?"

"No," he said, looking to one side, frowning slightly. "Something else. A voice I've not heard before. I'm to meet somebody."

Francine wiped her face with her hands and kissed him. Arthur lifted Marty with an oomph and told him to take care of his mother. "I'll be back in a little while."

He stood beside Clara Fogarty at the middle hatch on the side opposite where they had entered. The hatch— little more than an outline in the wall's surface—slid open and they passed through quickly, before they had a clear impression of what was on the other side.

A brightly illuminated broad hallway, curving down, stretched before them. The hatch closed and they regarded each other nervously. More hatches lined both sides of the hallway.

"Artificial gravity?" Clara Fogarty asked him.

"I don't know," he said.

At a silent request, they stepped forward. They remained upright in relation to the floor, with no odd sensations other than the visual. At the end of the hallway, another open hatchway awaited them; beyond was a warm half darkness. They entered a chamber similar to the waiting room.

In the center of this chamber rose a pedestal about a foot high and a yard wide. On the pedestal rested something that at first examination Arthur took to be a sculpture. It stood about half as tall as he, shaped like a hefty square human torso and head—rather, in fact, like a squared-off and slightly flattened kachina doll. Other than an abstracted and undivided bosom, it lacked any surface features. In color it was similar to heat-treated copper, with oily swirls of rainbow iridescence. Its skin was glossy but not reflective.

Without warning, it lifted smoothly a few inches above the pedestal and addressed them both out loud:

"I am afraid your people will soon no longer be wild and free."

Arthur had heard this same voice in his head just a few minutes ago, beckoning them through the hatches.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I am not your keeper, but I am your guide."

"Are you alive?" He did not know what else to ask.