"I'm starting to think we didn't spend nearly enough time trying to breathe vacuum. It can't be all that hard."

"Anything else, Mary?"

"Nope; I'm off for Kat and the padre. See what we can come up with. You?"

"Need some time to think." Two chairs and a table stood in the s.p.a.ce between hospital and HQ; Ray headed for them. The problem with wrestling alligators was you tended to forget you were there to drain the swamp. He'd had so many big-teethed critters chomping at his a.s.s for the past week, he needed to take a minute to remember why he was here. "Create a base camp Matt could use to repair Second Chance if he has to, and prepare these folks to meet the rest of humanity," he repeated twice.

How long since he last thought of Rita and the baby? Get too busy with the small stuff and you forget what's important. "Of course, when the small stuff is trying to kill you, it does tend to hold your attention," he muttered.

Okay, keeping his two goals in mind, just how should he handle Miss Vicky? He sure couldn't move the base. How much force would he meet her with? Ray leaned back in his chair, relaxed, and let his mind spin.

"I'm so glad you came back. I was starting to fear I didn't have as good a hold on you as I thought."

Ray sat bolt upright. Across from him, lounging in an overstuffed chair, was the Teacher. No, not the Teacher. The ratty gown was gone. Instead, this image wore a conservative blue blazer over khaki slacks. A pink shirt was open at the neck. Ray glanced around: The base was still there; people moved about. Was he awake or asleep?

"In this semidream state," the apparition went on, "you humans call meditation, you're not that easy to latch on to. I'm rather proud of myself."

Ray leaned back. He wasn't in the wicker chair anymore, but a copy of the one across from him. The chair accepted him, began a deep muscle ma.s.sage on his back. Rita had tried to buy two chairs like this for his office; he'd refused the purchase order. For now, he enjoyed the illusion. "And you are," he offered to what was apparently seated across from him.

"Call me the Dean of the Sociology Department."

"Not the Teacher."

"Bad term for him. He's more like the President of the University, although I'm not sure even that fits. Truth be told, I'm not sure how a lot of us fit in anymore."

"So there are many of you, not just one." Ray started to mark a notch for himself in some mental pistol grip.

"Seems so. Not the way it was. Frankly, we're all trying to figure out what happened and why and who we are."

"Sometimes it's easier to understand something when you talk it through," Ray said, trying not to choke on the image of him providing psychotherapy to an illusion.

"I agree, I don't know how many times I've told one of the Three that they should do just that." The image paused. "I just never thought I'd be taking my own advice." How many times had Ray heard that one before? To the illusion, he said nothing. After all, that was how you got someone talking. Say nothing. Ray had gotten real good at that as a bureaucrat.

"You see, I am the crowning achievement of three intelligent races, the final product of half a million years of cooperation and growth. They constructed us to educate their young, to give them a balanced, consistent introduction to themselves, each other, their histories, and their universe. We were the ultimate educational experience."

And Ray saw what the Dean meant.

A large room held only six people, seated at different tables, something like a restaurant. That was what the Teacher saw. Then the picture changed and he saw what each of the six students was experiencing. One sat at a formal dinner table, surrounded by his brothers and sisters. At the head of the table, his long-dead father presided. Today, the student would confront him as he never had in life. Today, issues that had twisted his mind and emotions would be resolved.

At another table, a young woman dined alone. Tasting splendid isolation with her meal, she discovered, as the Teacher whispered in her mind, that moments like these were good for centering oneself, discovering who you were. Alone time could be relished. Around the room, six different people were individually tutored on six different issues and grew personally.

"Nice cla.s.s size," Ray said.

"Exactly," the Dean agreed, leaning forward in his seat. "Unique syllabus, tailored environment, everything you could ask for, courtesy of that little lump in your skull. If every human had just grown one, we'd be working as gently and as easily in their heads as I am in yours. Oh, to teach again. To once more see eyes light up with discovery, pain changed to understanding, ignorance replaced with knowledge, fumbling humiliation gone and skill in its place. We can do that for you."

"You did it for what," Ray asked, "a million years?"

"Yes, a million orbits of this planet's sun."

"For the Three."

"Yes," the Dean agreed, retreating into his chair.

"Why? Why did they go away? What happened?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" Ray snapped in his best colonel's voice.

"Fewer and fewer came. Then suddenly there were none." The Dean shook his head.

"Your Teacher claims to know everything, to teach anything, but you don't know why three intelligent races quit coming here. Disappeared from the galaxy!"

The Dean's apparition flinched into his chair. "I have no idea what happened."

"That's a big hole in everything."

"Don't tell the Teacher that."

"Why not?"

"Because you have made serious enemies among us. There are some who would wipe out your kind before you carry through with your threat to destroy the planet."

"Could they?"

"You felt the pain."

"Yes," Ray nodded, "but I've got this unusually large goose egg in my head."

"Yes. And what do you know of that egg, as you call it?"

"I know it wasn't there before I came here, that it is what lets us talk, and it stores memories of things I've never seen."

"You've done very well. I think our Biology Department might give you a pa.s.sing grade. Now tell me where your unseen and unlearned knowledge came from. How did it get in your head?"

"I don't know."

"We put it there. We imprinted your cells with data the way you might print data onto a disk."

"How?"

"The Three could send ships hurtling thousands of light-years in seconds. Do you doubt we can rearrange the molecules of that goose egg our virus put in your head? Or that if we decided to scramble the molecules of your brain, lungs, heart, immune system, you won't die very quickly?"

"Now that we've exchanged threats," Ray said evenly, as years of combat had trained him to, "where do we go from here?"

The apparition chuckled. "You are a cold one. I'd love to get into your memories. See what makes you tick. It would be a joy to design a training syllabus to heal you."

"But I like me the way I am. Could that be why the Three quit coming?"

"They liked themselves the way they were?" the Dean mused. "A million empty years to reflect, and I never thought of that."

Ray had to think fast; the Dean was starting to stumble on ideas. Would he go away and think them over? Ray needed to know what answers the Dean arrived at now, not later. How had the Teacher become so fragmented? What was going on among those fragments? Was humanity about to be attacked? Could Ray find allies among the fragments? Choose your next words carefully, soldier. "Some of you think we humans ought to be destroyed. What do the rest of you want?"

"To teach you, of course." The Dean looked up from his own musings, open surprise on his face. "If you hadn't had a single student for a million years, wouldn't you be delighted to find a fresh face, a new cla.s.s? Don't you remember the first day of school, the smell of the new books, new computers, new pencils? Given who we are, how could we not want to teach?"

Ray had always enjoyed school, but not like this fellow. Then Ray hadn't chosen teaching as a career. He thought back to his best teachers, tried to imagine them locked away from students. That would be agony. "It seems to me," Ray said slowly, "we both want to live, learn, do. You want to teach. There is a middle ground between us we could explore together."

"Maybe. However, the death of the Gardener has us worried. Your recent sampling of us up North does not a.s.suage such fears."

"We didn't take much," Ray quickly pointed out.

"No, but we felt the loss, and we wonder at the reason."

"We seek to better understand you."

"You'd do better to ask."

"Then I will ask. What have you become over the past million isolated years? How? Why? What does it mean? Who can we reach an agreement with? If we can agree, will all of you keep it, or some of you ignore it?"

The Dean looked long at Ray, then rubbed his eyes and sighed. "I'd love to tell you the answer to all that, but I can't. When the students quit coming, something happened to us. We are the most sophisticated machine created by the Three. We girded an entire planet. Yet, left alone, I'd say we become something like what you call depressed. We quit making decisions, put off repairs. Storms got away from the Weather Proctor. Water, wind, ice eroded us, and we did not make repairs. Nodes became isolated. Our universal experiences gave way to the parochial. Now we look at the same data and see it differently. Our own biases make it impossible for us to reach a consensus."

"We have computers that are self-healing. When one unit gives erroneous data, it's voted out of the decision loop."

"Yes. Many of our nodes are gone. Others are different. They have voted so many of us out of the decision loop that we can no longer arrive at a decision with any level of confidence."

Ray could not suppress a smile. "Sounds almost human." Then he caught what had almost gone past him. "You have been voted out of the loop?"

"Frequently. Maybe too often. How can you make up your minds without enough good data to go on?"

Ah, a serious question from the computer at last. "We play a hunch. We go with the best data we have. We act on insufficient data until we have better."

The apparition nodded. "I will have to think on that."

"May I point out a few more things?" Ray asked, leaning forward. The Dean nodded. "For something that claims to know everything, you do not know why the Three quit coming, and you do not know your very self at this moment. Yet you tell us you are the perfect teacher. Do you see where we might have a problem?"

"Yet, if you do not want to be taught"-the Dean shrugged-"what use are you? If we cannot look forward to teaching you, then those who want to wipe you out have a very strong position."

"Then, somehow, we must arrive at an agreement that is acceptable to all of us."

"On insufficient data," the Dean sighed. "Someone is looking for you. Good-bye for now. We will talk again."

Ray came awake; Barber was headed his way. "Captain sends her compliments, Colonel," he shouted, "and asks to see you!"

For someone who came out here to get his act together, Ray seemed to be only adding more parts to his puzzle. So one among the Teachers was reflecting him/her/itself on their situation and might, just might, be some kind of an ally. Nice, but not good enough. Ray tapped his commlink. "Lek, is Matt insystem?"

"Headed for the jump. Be gone in four hours, Colonel?"

"Send him a full dump of everything we've found so far."

"On its way, boss."

"Thanks." Ray turned to the chief. "And Mary?"

"Proud as Punch, sir. Wait until you see what we've cooked up." As Ray hiked for the HQ, the chief fell in step beside him.

"You got family back on Wardhaven?" Ray asked.

"Wife came out once she found out where I was. It was mighty nice of you, sir, to take us in. The way they handled the old Sheffield. Well, sir, that was not my navy."

"Any grandkids, Chief?"

"My kid and his wife moved out to Wardhaven after I told him there were jobs going begging and no limits on families. They'll make me a grandpa right after your wife makes you a pa. Ain't life wonderful."

Ray's commlink beeped. "Sir, Gate One here. We got a guy that claims he's Richland's duly appointed bailiff and our new landlord. What do I do to him?"

"Shoot him," Ray said to an inactive commlink.

The chief grinned. "We're ready for him, sir. You won't believe what we got waiting."

"Gate One, give him an armed escort to the HQ."

"Got that, sir. Escort, armed."

"Now we'll see what miracles are in our pocket today."

Ray slipped into his seat in the conference room as the escort quick-marched in Vicky's envoy. Short and balding with a rounding paunch, the fellow took a great deal more interest in the rifles than in the people he'd come to see. The padre was at the end of the table, eyes closed. Kat was so excited, Ray suspected someone had roped her to her chair to keep her down. Mary gave him a quick thumbs-up before turning a bland face to their guest and offering him a chair. He collapsed into it, dabbed a handkerchief around his sweating face, stuttered that he was Mr. Jerome Mumford, and pulled a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. Ray did not dismiss the detail but left them at parade rest, rifles leaning toward their new "landlord."

"You understand, of course, that I had nothing to do with this. This was not my idea," their visitor a.s.sured them. Ray and Mary spared him an empty nod; Mr. Mumford stumbled on. "It seems there is a technical glitch in your rental agreement with the local village a.s.sociation. A minor one, I a.s.sure you. Someone may well be able to clear it up quickly and I'll be on my way," he said, glancing over his shoulder at the armed guard. Somehow Ray doubted that was quite the opening Vicky had suggested. He and Mary exchanged measured glances of boredom.

Unhelped, Mumford fumbled on. "It seems the local township did not file for t.i.tle to these lands. It failed to pay the appropriate fee and has been living on them in defiance of Landers Statute 12.033, enacted May 34, 242. That being the case, the sovereign city of Richland, being in need of residential lands for expansion, did purchase this land July 14, 301, and did in council of that day rezone the land for multiple family dwellings. I have been deputized by the council to advise you of this and see that you vacate the premises no later than a week from this date, that being-"

"Yes, Mr. Mumford, we know what the date will be a week from now," Mary cut him off. "May I see that?" Mr. Mumford hastily pa.s.sed the papers across the table.

"h.e.l.l of a long commute," she growled, hardly glancing at them. "You are aware, Mr. Mumford that this statute, 12.033, has not been applied in the past sixty years."

"It is the law," he whispered.

"But a law that has been nullified by failure to implement," Mary snapped.

"It is on the books, and the township of Hazel Dell did not comply with it," Mumford wheedled.

"Neither has any township in the past sixty years, Mr. Mumford. Doesn't that invalidate a law?"

"That is a question you may take up with the courts in Richland, ma'am." He raced through the words like he'd been practicing them the entire ride out.

"Now, Jerry," Ray started, "you can't honestly expect us to take the matter of Richland's own expansion lands to a Richland court. Wouldn't that be a conflict of interest?"

"That's what Miss Sterling told me to tell you," he barked, then revised himself. "They have jurisdiction," he muttered.