“I could have? Ruined what? You’re an archeologist, aren’t you? Are you the man who sent me the message? Are there really search parties out for me?” Proteus had so many questions that he didn’t know where to start. At the same time he noted the long stone tables at one end of the bare room, the clay tablets lined up on raised wooden platforms, and the murals, in various stages of completion, that lined the walls. “A man named Window. I never knew of anyone with a name like that,” he said. “And isn’t Winter a funny name for a dog?”

“We have names that have meaning to us. I’m Window because I can see through things sometimes,” the man said. “And we found the dog in the wintertime. You’re in the Dig of the Tellers, but there’ll be plenty of time to explain. Right now you’re a danger to all of us, drawing search parties in this direction. Usually the Floaters leave us alone.”

“The Floaters?” Proteus said.

“Your people,” Window said, with a sardonic grunt. “Now come along with me. I hope you like what you see, because you’re going to be around here for some time.”

Proteus looked around uneasily now. “You mean, I’m a prisoner?” he asked.

Window shrugged and smiled. “Definitions are funny things. I wouldn’t define your position here as that of a prisoner, no. But for your own good as well as ours, I believe that you’ll voluntarily agree to limit your experience to the Dig of the Tellers for a while.”

Oversoul Seven and Josef had watched Proteus ever since he awakened from sleep and heard the Teller’s voice on the television set. Now they stood, invisible, in one corner of the room. Josef said, enraged. “What’s going on? What are they going to do with that boy? Why don’t you do something? You can, can’t you? If you didn’t help him when he fell out of his strange bubble, I don’t suppose you’ll do anything now, though.” He paused and shivered. “And that foul tunnel or whatever it was—”

“Can’t you be quiet?” Oversoul Seven said. “You’ve done nothing but yell since we started. I knew I shouldn’t have taken you along.”

“Yell? Being dragged through the air by the hair of my head almost! I’ve never had a dream in my life like this before. I suppose it’s because I’m half-starved—”

“In a way it is,” Seven said. “It clears the mind.”

“Clears the mind? You call this clearing the mind?” Josef yelled. “Who’s that? That soldier or whoever it is?”