So Danny had to be where Loki had been, and do what he had done, and then let memory flow into his mind. Memory that was not his own, of things he had not done. And the memory included no language. It only included what Loki came to know, at a level below language.

The moment Danny tried to make sense of the memories, his conscious mind took over. And his conscious mind introduced language. Language drove out the inchoate, wordless Loki-memories.

So he could not make sense of anything, while it was happening. He had to let it wash over him. It required a sort of trance. His conscious mind had to be off in space, not concentrating on anything.

It is so hard to concentrate on not concentrating.

So at first the memories were jagged. They flashed in and out like lightning. There was no coherency. Images of a scrawny, sun-burnt Egyptian man, small in stature, bald, his shoulders tented by thin white linen, a dusty linen kilt around his loins, but otherwise naked. The memory included heat. And then cold, and darkness.

The man was talking, but Danny heard no words. He did not want the man’s words, though this man was the teacher—some kind of hermit that Loki had consulted. A man who knew ancient lore of Egypt, knowledge older than Christianity, though he was certainly a Christian ascetic. But the memory of his words could not be recovered this way. Instead, Danny had to recover the memory of the story that Loki had built up in his own memory.

When words came to mind, then, they were not the hermit’s words, they were the words that mattered to Loki as he listened. Ka. Ba. But as soon as Danny attached to the words, their meaning in this context fled away.

Fortunately, the memory could be endlessly started over, repeated again and again. The gates were patient. What else did they have to do? So as Danny gradually mastered the art of meditation, at least well enough for this purpose, this day, the memory began again, and now it washed over Danny and became his own.

Later, he told himself. I will remember remembering the memory, and that will become the story. For now let it flow. Let it fill you.

He had no idea of the passage of time. Captured by the memory, he did not know if it was day or night where he sat alone in the desert, in front of the cavelet that he and Wheeler and Hal had cleared of sand. He only knew what the time was in the memory, as it flowed through a long, long conversation.