For a moment he almost got dizzy, watching, because he did “see through” Window, as he explained it to himself later. Then Window seemed so physical that Proteus’ stomach lurched, and he thought: We grow up, reach up through blood and flesh as trees grow up or emerge from the flesh of the Earth.

So in leaving Earth, man had left the growing medium of himself, and Proteus knew in that moment that he must help man return to the Earth again, even if it meant returning sometime himself to the floating city. Admitting Earth, man could travel and live wherever he chose. Denying it, he denied the heritage that gave him such yearnings.

And experiencing Proteus’ thoughts, Seven knew that he would descend again and again into flesh, for there was no descent or ascent, only being in its many forms. Proteus and Window vanished, and where they had been, Ma-ah stood with Sumpter.

“I don’t know where I came from, that’s what it amounts to,” Ma-ah said. “I have no memory of parents; just finding myself, with Rampa, in the outside world a long time ago. How we got here I don’t know. I suppose we were born into it.”

“In certain terms, none of us know,” Sumpter said.

“But I want to know. I insist on it,” Ma-ah cried defiantly. (And Seven laughed.)

“And if I have a child, I won’t know where it came from, not really.”

(And Seven laughed louder). Dear, dear Ma-ah, he thought.

“I thought I heard the old man,” Ma-ah said.

“It’s all right,” Seven said to her, knowing that he was also reassuring a part of himself.

But Ma-ah said, “What’s all right?” just as Seven had so often questioned Cyprus. “And how did you direct me here, with Rampa?” she asked.

Before Seven could say “I don’t remember,” he was suddenly back, lost in Ma-ah again, struggling to walk beside Rampa, while the body signaled its great alarm. And a whispered voice that was his own and also Cyprus’ broke through only for a moment, telling him where to go and how to get there. Only then, he hadn’t been consciously aware of the voice, lost as he was in Ma-ah’s dilemma. But how did he, or Cyprus, know?

With the question came a new onslaught of images. Again he could only capture a few of them.

Cyprus: Free of being male or female, containing both, writing the first Sumari records of the Speakers; “writing” them in sound before the birth of words in terms of time—but in a reality still happening—

Images he could not decipher—

Sounds that operated directly on matter…. Of course! A force field, protecting the land of the Speakers, called into activation by … Sumpter, who was Window—but as Window he’d forgotten what he knew, and it would be Proteus who would help him remember—

And Josef—