The world, since the Hammerfall, had reacquired a biological clock. Latter-day lives ran by nearer and nearer expectations of outcome, and began to think that several days of waiting was long.

The original Old Ones not only had learned Outsider science, they had a personal memory of the Hammerfall: that was one thing. The Ila, oldest of all, had the memory of the Gene Wars and the Landing, and had originated the nanisms that had reshaped theecology, a life span that staggered the mind even to contemplate. That handful of immortals had a community that transcended old feuds, had a shared perspective that somehow anchored them in time, a shared reality from which they were all born and from which they seemed to derive their curious sense of scale. He had read Marak’s personal views on the subject, in which Marak swore he’d beget no more children, and give no one else his gift: it was too hard, Marak said, for the later born, without that cataclysmic event of the Hammerfall in their past.

Why? Why was it hard? What had the immortals all seen, that made that moment the changing point? Procyon yearned most of all to ask such questions, sure that there were more than the obvious drawbacks to immortality that a callow twenty-five-year-old could think of. He was sure there was a word somewhere in it that could give him a far different perspective than he had, a perspective that might be useful in what he did—so useful, so immensely useful, he might become an expert, an oracle in the service of the Project, if he had it.

Brazis would have his hide if he spoke to Marak unbidden, that was what—well, except for weather warnings and the like. If Marak ever wanted to exchange views with him, philosophically speaking, Marak easily could do that, and so far didn’t, and thus far showed no interest in doing so, which would likely be the rule forever.

Marak apparently liked him, however. Marak had chosen him out of a hundred possibles, not the most experienced watcher on staff—in fact, the least. Not the brightest, maybe, certainly not graced by the best record in the Project, being only third-shift watcher of one of the youngest of Memnon’s line, aged six, and having gotten into the Planetary Office by the skin of his teeth in the first place, despite his lack of connections inside the Project. He didn’t know whyMarak liked him. He certainly wasn’t the watcher the Chairman had wanted Marak to pick, he was sure of that—but the regs said all possible choices had to be in the pool when one of the seniors chose, and the ancient agreements said it was absolutely Marak’s choice to make, end of statement.

So after sifting through all availables, Marak had picked him, forreasons Marak never had to explain, and the rules, most tantalizing, never let the subject of that selection ask.

The little he did know—Marak’s seniormost watcher, the day watcher, had died of old age, time finally overtaking even the most highly modified in the Planetary Office. Marak, Drusus had told him, didn’t want somebody senior, coming in with perspective and history with him, and especially didn’t want someone with a long record of intimacy with any other of his contemporaries. Marak, he overheard in the Project hallways, zealously avoided politics and kept his own counsel. And the same whisper among the watchers, some jealous, said Marak might test him for years before he said a thing to him of a personal nature.

Or Marak might never talk directly to him at all. He knew it must frustrate the Planetary Office that Marak wasn’t talking to his daytime watcher in the frank, offhanded way he’d talked to the last one. A source of information had gone. And all he could be, all the PO could be, was patient, and hopeful, and meticulously correct.

He didn’t know where his career would take him, though he doubted he would be shunted aside, as he’d been moved from his last assignment, unless he did something extravagantly objectionable to Marak. So he had a certain security, being as high as he could get, while getting a major vacation now and again, enjoying his work as the dream job, and being paid exorbitantly.

The drawback—there wasone true drawback to it all—was that he couldn’t tell anybody on the outside what he did for a living. Watchers—Project taps—worked inside a security envelope that, if you breached it, would just swallow you down and never let you out again, in any physical sense, let alone the informational one. So assuredly he had no desire to break the rules and end up living his entire life as a shadow in the farthest recesses of the Project offices.

And what was that job? He monitored Marak’s whereabouts, activities, and observations, he took notes, he made his hour-by-hour transcript, he passed that on to Drusus, who passed it on to Auguste, who passed it back to him, as watchers had done, time out of mind. He was a highly classified instant communications system and still an observer-in-training, but he never forgot it was a dangerous planet down there, and his attention to what he didcould conceivably make a difference between life and death for a man on whom the integrity of the Project depended, a contrary and independent man who’d lived longer than any human mind could grasp.

His job, in effect, was keeping tabs on God, or such a god as the planet had, besides the Ila, besides Luz and Ian.

And learning. Fast. Marak, when he was in the Refuge, had encounters with people with various agendas hour to hour, and it was his job to consult with other watchers and suspect who was up to what. When Marak dealt with his own family, in their enclave—or with the Ila—where politics was definitely at issue—transcripts were a fast and furious production. A tap knew a mistake could racket to the halls of government.

But this, this venture into the outback, was six months of pure wonder, observations, close work with the science departments, instead of other taps. Marak traveled out into the world with his wife, enjoying the days, observing a land whose scale of change was more like his own life span and Hati’s.

Out there Marak could say, as he had yesterday, of a certain landmark—it’s almost all worn away now, the way some people would say, Hmmn, that frontage was painted green yesterday, wasn’t it? Or, The camelia’s in bloom. How nice.

His job, his enviable job, was watching God watching the world change.

Third cup of caff. Take a walk around, stretch the legs. Take a break. Meddle with the displays. Tinker with a 3-D puzzle he had laid out on the counter days ago. Take a note or two. Since the tap was audio, mostly, and one-way, at his selection, he could do that, while keeping up the transparent transcript he was building. There were other aspects he could use, including voice from his direction, simply by talking aloud and letting the resonant bone of his skull carry the sound to the tap, but such contacts were rare. He wasn’t supposed to talk aloud during his hours of observation, in order not to annoy Marak. He used a keyboard, used a tablet, drew and typed in a rapid code. Across the station, in various apartments, in various offices, the day’s records grew and sifted from one office to another, everything from repair requests to weather reports and geology.

His notes by midmorning were mostly botanical, the latest involvinga patch of low scrub of a kind, greenbush, that Marak remembered personally seeding north of the Needle River, oh, six or so hundred years ago. Reference available to Procyon’s casual scan said it tended to be a precursor species. It put down roots, and lighter seed that blew up against it lodged, grew, and fought the precursor species for water, if water was scarce.

Scarce it was not, on the Plateau, and would be less so if the Southern Wall cracked. As the climate changed, precursors and new plants would live and fight each other for sunlight, until their strongest descendants won. But that was in the future. Marak said he was seeding several other plants as they passed, a ground cover, stubweed, and a taller type of shrub, blue dryland windwalker, that, Marak said, might rim a someday sea.