In terms of separation from her friends, five years wasnothing compared to the centuries she’d already lost. Still, Cass foundthe prospect daunting. It must have shown on her face, because Bakimresponded, "You could always return to Earth immediately, and wait forthe results there." Some of the Mimosans had trouble understanding whyanyone who found life in the station arduous would feel obliged to behere in person at all.

Darsono, empathetic as ever, added quickly, "Or we couldgive you new quarters. There’s a suitable cavity on the other side ofthe station, almost twice as large; it’s just a matter of reroutingsome cables."

Cass laughed. "Thank you." Maybe they could build her anew body, too, four whole millimeters long. Or she could abandon herscruples, melt into software, and wallow in whatever luxuries shedesired. That was the hazard she’d face every day, here: not just therisk that she’d give in to temptation, but the risk that all theprinciples she’d chosen to define herself would come to seem likenothing but masochistic nonsense.

She lowered her gaze toward the illusory meadow,laserpainted on her retinas like everything around her, but her mind’seye conjured up another image just as strongly from within: the DiamondGraph, as she saw it in her dreams. She could never reach it, nevertouch it, but she could learn to see it from a new direction,understand it in a new way. She’d come here in the hope of beingchanged, by that knowledge if by nothing else. To flee back to Earthout of fear that she might test her own boundaries more rigorouslyhere, in a mere five years of consciousness, than if she’d spent thesame three-quarters of a millennium at home, would be the greatest actof cowardice in her life.

"I’ll accept the staged experiments," she declared. "Iendorse Livia’s proposal."

Rainzi said, "All in favor?"

There was silence. Cass could hear crickets chirping. Noone? Not Livia herself? Not even Darsono?