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nice boy, rather weak. And then his granddaughter.., first her mother, of course, a strong, vjillful woman, but brilliant, but then the Imperial Hyps~lot~s herself as she came of age . . ."

"Do you like it here?" Rhita asked, adjusting her broad straw sun-hat.

Patrikia pushed her wizened lips out and shook her head ruefully, admitting and denying nothing.

"This is my world, and it is not my world," she said. "I would still go home, given a chance."

"Could you?"

Patrikia nodded at the bright sky. "Perhaps. But not likely. Once, another gate opened on Gaia, and with the queen's support, I spent years searching for it. But it was like a marsh ghost. It vanished, reappeared somewhere else, vanished again. And now it has been gone for nineteen years."

"Would it take you to Earth, if you found it?"

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"No," the Soph said. "It would probably take me back into the Way.

From there, however, I might be able to go home."

Rhita felt sad, hearing the old woman's soft voice fade on the last word, her face deep in shadow under her hat, feline black eyes closing, opening halfway, infinitely tired. The Soph shuddered and looked appraisingly at her young granddaughter. "Would you like to learn some interesting geometries?"

Rhita brightened. "Yes!"

She lay half-asleep on her cot in the bare whitewashed room, listening to waves from a distant storm breaking just a few dozen arms away, great poundings of Poseidon's fists on the rocks, coinciding in her dreams with the slow thump of the hooves of a huge horse. Moon filled a near corner with cold light. Rhita opened her eyes to slits, feeling a presence in the room with her. A shadow crossed the moonlight, carrying something.

The girl stirred on her leather bed, still not fully awake, her body lost in comfort.

The shadow came closer. It was Patrikia.

,. Rhita's eyes closed and then opened slightly again. She was certainly not afraid of the sophS, but why was she in her room at this late hour of the night? Patrikia grasped her granddaughter's hand in her own dry, strong fingers and placed it on something metallic, hard and smooth, unfamiliar yet pleasant to touch. LRhita murmured an incoherent question.

"This will know you, recognize you," Patrikia whispered. "By your touch, you make it yours, years from now when you mature. My child,

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