“Than to expose you all at once to our situation.” The man in the other chair was so real, so tangible, that it was impossible to think of him as some ghostly and evanescent swirl of electrons. “Heaven knows, we’ve talked enough about temporal shock. We have plenty of experience with it. You’d think we would have learned to believe in it.”

“I’m not feeling temporal shock.”

“You will. Do you insist on this form of interaction, by the way? It will severely limit the rate of information transfer.”

“I can handle this. I couldn’t take it the other way.”

“Then I suppose we’ll have to live with it. That is temporal shock, even if you don’t want to use the term. You’ll get used to the new reality after a while. I’d suggest we take this slowly, maybe have little practice sessions until you learn how to structure and sort inputs.”

“I’m ready to sort some inputs now, Tom, without any practice at all. Tell me three things. Can Ana be brought back to me? When am I? And where am I? And don’t tell me that I’ll have trouble understanding or accepting whatever the truth is. I’ve heard that line of talk every time I’ve been resurrected, and every time I managed.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Tom leaned back, pipe and lighted match in hand. He was still in his tobacco-addiction days, shortly before acute sinus problems and the anomaly of a physician practicing the opposite of what he preached had forced him to give up smoking. “You know, Drake, some of the questions that you asked are pretty damned hard to

answer.”

“I thought they seemed very basic.”

“Well, you asked about time again. I know what you mean: How many years has it been since your upload into the data banks? But you must understand that with people buzzing all over the Galaxy, or operating in electronic form, or sitting in strong gravitational fields, everyone’s clock runs at a different rate. We use a completely different technique for describing time now. If I told you how it worked, it wouldn’t mean a thing to you. I’ll give you an answer, I promise. I’ll find a way of showing you. But for the moment, why don’t we just agree that however you measure it, it’s been a very long time compared with your previous dormancies.”

A very long time — compared with fourteen million years? Drake suspected he would not like Tom’s answer, when it was stated in his old-fashioned terms.

“What about Ana?”

“Sorry. No real change since last time. We have confirmed the closed nature of the universe, so there is a possibility of ultimate resurrection close to the Omega Point, in the far, far future. Today, we can’t do a thing for her.”

“So why am I awake, instead of dormant in electronic storage? Have you forgotten what I requested?”

“Not at all. We have honored your wishes for a long time… perhaps too long. But we have our worries, too. Our own needs have finally reached a point of urgency that cannot be denied. More to the point, if we do not solve our problem, your own needs and requests will become academic. We have to save ourselves if we are to save you.”

Tom Lambert was adding to Drake’s perplexity. He could imagine that the composite might have problems; but the composite must also possess overwhelming capabilities and resources. Drake could not see how his own resurrection and involvement would change anything. If he had been a living fossil long ago, he was far more of one now.

“I don’t understand what your problem has to do with me, Tom. And I don’t see what I have to do with it. But I think you’d better tell me about it.”

“I intend to. And believe me, it is a problem, the very devil of a problem, nothing to do with you or Ana. We have gone beyond desperation. I’ll be honest, you are our last hope, and a long shot it is. A damned long shot. We need a new thought. Or maybe an old thought.” Tom’s mouth trembled, and the fingers holding his pipe writhed. On the fringes of Drake’s mind he heard again the cry and yammer of countless terrified souls. He suppressed them ruthlessly, building a gate in his own consciousness that admitted only the calmest components.

“Thanks. That’s a lot better.” Tom took the pipe from his mouth and laid it down on the broad window-sill. He rummaged in his pocket for his tobacco pouch. Drake noted, with no surprise, that it was a black leather one given to him by Ana.

“Might be a good thing if I show you directly,” Tom continued, as he filled and tamped his pipe. “Let you see for yourself, eh? You know the old advice that Professor Bonvissuto drilled into your head: Don’t tell, show.”

“Do it any way you like. I’ll let you know soon enough if I can’t take it.”

“Fine. I’m going to begin with the solar system. It is relevant, even though you may think at first that it isn’t. Hold on to your hat, Drake. And hey, presto.” Tom clapped his hands. The inside lights turned off. The scene beyond the picture window changed. The Bay of Naples had gone. Suddenly it was dark outside, with no hint of sea or sky. The room hovered on the edge of a bleak and endless void, lit only by glittering stars.

As Drake stared, the scene began to move smoothly to the right, as though the whole room was turning in space. A huge globe came into view. It was bloated and orange red, its glowing surface mottled with darker spots.

“The Sun,” Tom Lambert said simply.

Drake stared at the dull and gigantic orb. “You mean, the Sun as it is today?”

“That’s right. Real time presentation. Of course, we’re not as close as it looks. That’s as seen through an imaging system. But you’re looking at Sol, the genuine article, with realistic colors and surface features.”

Sol transformed — by nature, or human activities?

“Did you make it that way?”

“Not at all.” Tom was lighting his pipe again, and his presence was revealed only by a dull red glow that waxed and waned. “We could have done it, but we didn’t. Natural stellar evolution made the change.”

Sol had been transformed by time, from the warm star that Drake had known into a brooding stranger. He had learned enough over the millennia to understand some of the implications. Tom Lambert had answered one of Drake’s questions without saying a word. The change of the Sun from the G-2 dwarf star of their own day to a red giant required five billion years or more of stellar evolution. Sol had now depleted most of its store of hydrogen, and was relying for energy on the fusion of helium and heavier elements.

“What happened to the planets? I don’t see them at all.”

“Not enough natural reflected light. But I can highlight them for you.” The field of view changed as Tom spoke, backing off from the Sun. Brighter flashes of light appeared on each side of the glowing ball of orange. “That’s Jupiter.” One light began to blink more urgently. “And that’s Saturn, and Uranus, and Neptune.”

“Uranus used to have its own fusion reaction. Jupiter, too.”

The glowing pipe bowl moved in the darkness, as Tom shook his head. “Long gone. Those couldn’t be more than short-term fixes, given the limited fusion materials.”

“What about the inner planets? What about Earth? Can you show me them?”

“No. Sol’s red giant phase is a hundred times its old radius, two thousand times the old luminosity. If Earth had remained in its original orbit it would have been incinerated, just like Venus. Mercury was swallowed up completely. Don’t worry about Earth, though, it still exists. The singularity sphere has been removed, and it is more like the Earth that you knew of old. But it was moved far away, along with Mars. There’s no point in looking for it” — Drake had unconsciously been turning his head to scan the sky — “you’ll never see it from our present location. If you like I can show you the Moon. We left that behind.”

Far away. How far away? What would a human (if there were still such a thing as a living, flesh-and-blood human) see today, looking upward from the surface of that distant Earth?