He’d always wanted to be a girl because they had the positions of power, and the girl in the dream was exactly the kind of a girl he would have liked to be, for instance. On the other hand, he wanted her the way a male was supposed to want a woman—and in the way he didn’t want Story, though he thought that he should.

The half-buried thoughts brought up another that surfaced suddenly, with strong emotional vitality. “I just remembered something,” he said. “In the dream it was the girl who made the symbol in the tile. And she was supposed to live in … this particular spot, right here … but back in the past, when it was all new.” The memory almost made him dizzy—because if this was so, then the girl in the dream was imaginary, beyond all doubt, and he’d never see her again. Either that, or she’d been dead for centuries. How could she have seemed so alive? How could the dream have been so real? “I just don’t understand it,” he said.

Window smiled sympathetically. “You had a dream that explained something that had worried you,” he said. “Natural enough. And at your age, so is a dream girl. And you got the idea for her from my description of the girl I ‘saw.’”

“I know. But just suppose that I did see an actual girl and it was the same one? I know it’s not really possible, because she’d be dead. But if you can see things in your visions, then why couldn’t I, in a dream?” Proteus frowned. “I don’t believe it, but—”

“You could, of course,” Window said. “But you haven’t had the advantage of our training, so I suppose that didn’t really occur to me.”

“There, now, what training? You’ve kept so much from me because you were afraid that I’d be found, and tell it all. But since you don’t even know how this place remains secret, I don’t blame you. But I know something, I’m sure of it. That symbol on the tile is a key. That much is logical. There’s a tie-in.”

“In what way?” Window looked troubled. He turned the video off and turned to Proteus. “Maybe Story’s insights weren’t distorted as much as I thought they were, and you are connected with all this. Tell me what you mean.”

For the craziest moment Proteus felt that he should drop the whole thing, that he was dabbling in something dangerous, that this very instant had a significance beyond any he could imagine.

“Well?” Window asked, and Proteus looked the other way.