“I need you guys to boost me up there,” Xavier said.

Fortunately, there was limited discussion. Jones did point out, “We’re dealing with a lot less gravity, folks.” He showed his spirit by steadying Xavier as he raised his foot to step into Sasha Blaine’s clenched hands. Sasha and Jones boosted him onto Weldon’s shoulders.

Xavier told Weldon to take him right up to the adjoining wall. Steadying himself with his hands, he carefully pulled himself up. Finally he was standing…still a good half-meter short of the plate.

“Do you see anything?” Jones asked.

“Get ready,” Xavier told Weldon. “I’m gonna—” Jump was the word he didn’t say. He popped up and slapped the plate with his hand.

Weldon went tottering backward, and Xavier scraped against the wall as he hit the floor. But Jones had been right about the low gravity. He had almost felt as though he were flying…and the fall took twice as long, giving him sufficient time to tuck and roll.

Nevertheless, the floor was hard. As the others complained about the silliness of his actions, Xavier lay on his back, looking up at the plate—

Which had changed color, from a dull purple to a brighter shade. “Anyone feel that?” Sasha Blaine said, alarmed.

Xavier had; a pulse had just rippled across the floor.

“Everybody out!” Jones was saying, because the ripple was clearly a signal that something was about to happen to the Temple.

First the wall began to move back to its prior position…

And the ceiling began to drop. “Move, move!” Weldon shouted. “It’s going to squash us!”

Xavier stood his ground for several moments, fascinated by the relative smoothness of the operation. There was no horrific grinding, no screech of stone or metal or whatever it was being wrenched from place to place. Just a slow, relentless glide. He could see a fluid of some kind forming at the top, bottom, and side edges of every moving slab, as if the elements were self-lubricating.

The fluid had a funny but familiar smell, too, almost like the pawpaws—

But then Sasha Blaine tugged his shirt and pulled him away.

He joined the others just outside the big opening. A larger crowd had formed, too, mostly Bangalores. Like those who had fled the Temple, all of them stared in openmouthed amazement as they watched the interior of the Temple rearrange itself. “Should we move farther back?” Nayar said.

“Excellent idea,” Weldon said, pointing to either side of them.

The exterior walls were moving now, too, shrinking the opening to a third its original width and two thirds its original height.

As a final touch, once the new exterior seemed to be settled, a doorlike covering swung into place, too. Unlike the other surfaces of the Temple—exteriors layered and textured, interiors flat and smooth—the door bore markings and irregular bumps. “Bas relief,” Sasha said to Harley.

Who said, loud enough for Xavier and the others to hear, “But carved by a crazy person.”

“Carved by an alien,” Jones said.

“What’s the difference?”

“How long do we wait before we go in?” Sasha Blaine had somehow managed to pick up the baby and was sitting next to Harley, rocking. It had been fifteen minutes, by Xavier’s best guess, since the shiftings and movements inside the Temple had stopped.

“Jones, Nayar, and Weldon are walking the perimeter,” Harley told her. “Let’s wait until they get back. Besides,” he said, indicating the new door, “we don’t have a key.”

Hearing this, Xavier rose from the ground and marched directly toward the door. Harley called, “Hey, friend, what’s the rush?” But Xavier was simply tired of waiting.

He was also quite curious.

He stopped in front of the door, which was still wider and taller than any door ought to be. The various protuberances made it look odd, too.

And there was no obvious handle.

Well, what the hell. He simply pushed on the right side, hoping the Temple had thought to create alien door hinges on the left.

Nothing. He only established that the door was solidly in place.

So he pushed on the left side, reasoning that alien beings might not share his particular preferences regarding right and left. Even some humans didn’t.

Nothing again.

“Xavier, what the hell are you doing over there?” Gabriel Jones and Shane Weldon had returned from their scout around the Temple.

Xavier was tired of the timidity.

“Trying to get the door open!”

More out of frustration than logic, he simply leaned forward and pressed in the middle.

The door divided itself in two from top to bottom, swinging open to reveal a ground floor that was smaller, but now internally lit.

“Xavier,” Jones said, still a good distance behind him, “before you enter…be sure there isn’t something nasty waiting for you.”

“Yes, Momma,” he said, but under his breath. Did the man think he was an idiot? Xavier stood in the opening and looked at the interior…which was now shorter, smaller, more normal looking.

There were lighted tubes all around the room, where the walls met the ceiling. They looked a little funny: too bright. When Xavier took a step inside, he noticed that the dust and who-knew-what-kind-of-fragments on his shirt gave off a glow, which reminded him of the black lights used in bars. His teeth were probably blinding.

And along the right side, rising to an obvious opening in the ceiling, was a long, gently sloped ramp.

“It’s okay,” he said.

As Sasha carried the baby in, right behind Harley in his wheelchair, she said, “So the aliens use French doors. Didn’t see that coming.”

“Yeah,” Harley said, “maybe Architects is the wrong name for them. Maybe we should call them the Interior Designers.”

Once the whole council, and a dozen HB bystanders, had reentered the Temple, human bravery had reestablished itself. Weldon and Nayar were the first to charge the ramp, disappearing through the opening for several moments.

Weldon returned with the breathless news, “There’s a second floor up here.”

Then Nayar returned with more interesting word. “There are some structures or facilities or machines on the second floor, and many more on the one above it.”

Sasha said, “It’s as if the Temple was in caretaker status.”

And Harley said, “You mean, waiting for us?”

“This habitat was. It’s got the right air, gravity close enough, temperatures—”

“Look at the light, both interior and exterior. And while the proportions of the building are still a little off, it’s pretty close to human standard, don’t you think?”

Other HBs slid past them, going up the ramp and likely higher.

Sasha and Harley noticed that Xavier wasn’t moving. “Don’t you want to see what’s up there?” Sasha asked.

“Time enough when the crowd dies down,” he said.

Xavier emerged from the Temple to find that the crowd had grown even larger. It was as if every one of the HBs wanted to climb to the top of the Temple now.

To Xavier, it just meant that it took him longer to edge his way through the throng, bumping up against a number of women with hair still damp from a dunking in Lake Ganges.

What the hell, he still had one more trash trip to make…just in time to get ready for the afternoon feed, whatever it was.

He gathered a final armful of greens and set off toward Lake Ganges and the dump, following his newly established path through the nearest trees.

He had gone only a few dozen meters when he heard laughter, and someone singing a song. Emerging into a clearing, he found Camilla dancing around, eyes closed, blissfully unaware of his presence.

She was the singer, something in Portuguese, he assumed. It sounded like a nursery rhyme, something about a “rato.” Rat?

“Hey, hi,” he said, not having much experience chatting with nine-year-olds even in normal circumstances. And this one, he knew, had been brought back to life by the alien Architects.