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Ry Oyu smiled and turned toward the image of the room, and the jumbled figure of the woman within. "I'll convey all this to our hosts. I'm sure they'd be proud to have the creator of the Way go with them to meet descendant command."

Rhita focused on the wise-looking, smiling gray-haired man, feeling more secure in his presence. He did not have the fierce aspect of a Zeus, but more the calm air of Aserapis with his stalks of corn and Plutonian dogs, his ceremonial bulls and festivals of resurrection.

This calm man spoke of going home.

"I'm going back to Gaia?" she asked, her voice strong in this place without true sound or true voices.

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"Now," Ry Oyu said, "we perform the most sacred of weddings once again. Patricia, carried within me, will you have the patterns of your own granddaughter as a shell in which to live, until we can search for the home you have lost?"

Olmy saw the image of Rhita shimmer, become solid, fade in color; become solid yet again. Always, the young woman's eyes watched Korzenowski, and Korzenowski watched her.

"Rhita, will you lend part of your self to this shadow of your grandmother, that she may have the strength to go home?"

"Yes," Rhita said.

She felt a mingling of their waters, like the mingling of seas so clearly visible along the outermost pillars of Hercules, entering into the broad ocean of Atlantis.

She saw a dense weave of realities, Galas in profusion, and knew that none of them were exactly like her world. But the gray-haired, smiling man who might have been Zeus or Aserapis told her to choose one in which the Jarts never did open a gate, never did invade . . . in which the expedition never happened . . . he suggested no more.

She closed her eyes.

"Time for saying au revoir," the second avatar said. "I entrust Ser Korzenowski to these command individuals."

Korzenowski transferred his clavicle to the gate-opener and backed away. The Engineer became separated from Olmy and Ry Oyu as the bubble split in two. Olmy watched him move off and vanish behind another black barrier.

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Ry Oyu lifted the clavicle, as if to become used to its weight and capabilities again. "Ser Olmy, these are servants of the Final Mind-334 GREG BEAR

however misguided. They tell me they are eager to convey you to your chosen gate. They are preparing to find the gate and open it now. I believe we can trust them. But no one knows how much time has passed there.. "

"Always an element of risk," Olmy said.

"Uncertainty keeps us interested," Ry Oyu commented.

"Thank you."

"You are quite welcome. They will accept their modified expediter any time you choose to give him up."

Olmy was not at all reluctant to part with this reminder of his greater failure. Again, he was surrounded by a pale fire. The Jart within him vanished.

For a moment, he savored the wonderful alonenes~ To be restored, alive and sane, and to return to Timbl . . .

He thought of Tapi and Ram Kikura, of other failures less spectacular and ultimately perhaps more haunting.

"Be content, Set Oh-ny," Ry Oyu said, and clasped his hand, then released it.

Their bubble split in two again.

Ry Oyu turned to the command individuals. "I would like to travel Page 598

back to the geometry stacks. I will need to open gates to two worlds in universes very slightly different from our own."

His bubble moved back through the barriers, into the flaw station, and down to the Way.

He carried Korzenowski's clavicle lightly. The bubble spread open at the bottom and gave him access to the living bronze surface.

The gate-opener closed his eyes and murmured the ritual incantations that prepared his mind, however unnecessary they might be in his present form.

"I lift this clavicle to worlds without number, and bring a new light to the Way, guiding this gate that all may prosper, those who guide and are guided, who create and are created, who light the Way and bask in the light so given . ."

The surface of the Way grew dark with the approach of the accelerating kink. That would make opening gates even more difficult. There was little time left, perhaps only hours, and he had much work to do, much searching even after the gate was open.

He finished with, "Behold . . . I open a new world."

He had never before, in all his career as gate-opener, made a double gate. Yet this gate would open onto two precisely chosen worlds.

A circular depression began to form beneath his feet, its edges spar