But Proteus frowned. “I’ve lost it. But I’m more excited than I’ve ever been in my life. You’ve got to let me take that training. Maybe we’ll discover how this place has remained secret—you never know. But you have to send out expeditions to other parts of the planet. We have to. Suppose there are other places like this that we don’t know about. They’d be hidden, too, from us. Unless we find out what conceals this dig, we’ll never know if there are others like it or not. Maybe there’s several, for all we know, all waiting to set up new life on the surface of the Earth.”

“Maybe,” Window said. “But Proteus, don’t be too excited. We may be the only ones, you know. What makes you think there may be others? This is an amazingly complex—”

“I don’t know,” Proteus interrupted. “But I’m sure that there are others. And I don’t know how I know.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Ma-ah and Sumpter — In Which Ma-ah Speaks Through Proteus

Sumpter said, “Ma-ah, how much of the Dream Tribunal do you recall?” “How much do you remember?” Ma-ah asked, grinning at him. “I have the feeling that more happened than you counted on.”

“Ma-ah, be serious,” he said.

“Don’t ‘Ma-ah’ me that way, or I won’t mix your stock with mine. What a confused baby I’ll have. He won’t know if he’s awake or asleep-awake.”

“He? And anyway, you already have—”

“But nothing’s happened yet.” She grinned at Sumpter seductively, on purpose. “I think we should do it again right now, just to make sure.” Then she laughed uneasily and shook her head. “I remember the old woman who turned young, I’ll tell you that. She was dead, and didn’t know it. I guess I remember that most of all because in a queer way I almost felt like I was her—or a version of her. I can’t explain it—”

“You’re doing very well,” Sumpter said. “You recalled that with no distortion; that is, without any hallucinations of your own. You seem to have those under good control.”

“Is that what happens when I lose the right focus of consciousness?”

He nodded. “What else do you remember?”

She closed her eyes to think. “A boy, a few years younger than me. But he said that I lived in the past and he lived in the present, and we almost argued about it. He seemed so smug. I said that I didn’t live in anybody’s past. I lived now.” Unaccountably Ma-ah found herself growing angry. “Why should he say that I lived in his past?”

“He lives in your future, Ma-ah,” Sumpter said softly.

“Do you know him?”

“No. I’ve never met him before, but he’s connected with you, and someday you’ll realize how. I can’t tell you.”