embodiment a year or two earlier, she might have had some prospect ofgoing further: finding a path of gradual change that led to newabilities, such as the power to interpret the Mimosans' languagefirsthand. As it was, she didn’t even have time for the smallest act ofself-indulgence: a simulated swim, a solid meal, a glass of cool water.After five years, all the pleasures she’d been pining for had becomeattainable at the very moment when they would be nothing but unwelcomedistractions.

She slipped her hand free of Rainzi’s and turned toexamine the display. A faint spray of particles was radiating out fromthe center of the Quietener, the sign of an unstable boundary betweenold vacuum and new.

The data had only been coming in for a few hundredths ofa picosecond, so the statistics were still ambiguous. As she watched,rows of figures were updated, the sprinkling of points on half a dozencharts grew denser, curves shifted slightly. Cass knew where everynumber and every curve was heading; it was like watching the face of along-awaited friend materialize out of the darkness, having picturedthe reunion a thousand times. And if the face might yet turn out to bea stranger’s, that had nothing to do with the way she felt. There waspleasure enough in anticipation; she didn’t need to conjure up tracesof doubt just to savor the added suspense.

"What we’re doing isn’t all that unusual," Darsono mused. "I thinkeveryone lives in at least two time scales: one of them fastand immediate, and too detailed to retain in anything but outline; theother slow enough to be absorbed completely. We think our memory has nogaps, we think we carry our entire past inside us, because we’reaccustomed to looking back and seeing only sketches and highlights. Butwe all experience more than we remember."

"That’s not true of everyone," Bakim countered. "Thereare people who record every thought they have."