Having the mindstone would unfold her, back to what she was before she learned the roles assigned to her in life. If she was blank, if she was nothing but her roles, then the mindstone would fold her back again, and she would disappear in a storm of memories and selves long dead. But if she had a real self deeper than the faces painted on her by others, she would find her way out, she would keep control, she would survive.

Either I am someone, and I'll live, or I am no one, and my self dies.

She felt Ruin lift a flap of her skin and pin it out of the way. From the grinding sound, he was cutting at her skull, but she felt no more than if her head were a slab of stone. He was a stonecutter, turning her own brain into a sort of heads hall, with all of the heads alive and staring down at her, yammering at once from their jars of gools and headworms. She shuddered.

"Hold still," murmured Ruin.

Angel began a steady monologue to calm her. "Obviously, Patience, this information about Unwyrm and the origin of the geblings and dwelfs and gauints was not discovered for the first time by whoever left these answers here. The prophecies themselves, the very name of Unwyrm, the traditions of the nonhumans that they are descended from a prehuman ancestor and that Unwyrm is their brother-these all imply that this information has been known before, perhaps many times."

Ruin pried out a section of skull and set it on the table.

It made a little clunking sound.

"But knowledge comes and goes. For instance, what happened the first time a human and a gebling met? Had the geblings already developed a language? A society?

Or did they fashion their social patterns after those of human beings?"

Ruin held the tiny scepter in his hand. "This is my heritage," he whispered. "No human being could have made this. It belongs to me and Reck, and you have no right to it."

For a moment Patience thought he was reneging on his agreement, that he would put it in his mouth, swallow it, and himself walk along the brink of madness. She was relieved, for just a moment, not to have to do it herself.

But then he set it at the base of her brain and she trembled to know it was her ordeal after all. His tongue pushed it through the small incision he had made, until it rested where he wanted it, exactly on the middle of her limbic node. Then he withdrew his tongue, licked a small dish covered with a fine powder, and reinserted it to smear the powder into place.

"And another question that intrigues me," said Angel, going on as if Ruin had not spoken, as if Patience were not now irrevocably committed to a journey that could destroy her. "How does the crystal relate to nonhuman intelligence? The geblings, of course, have humanlike brains, but the dwelfs don't. You all have the crystals, but the gaunts have no will, no sense of identity-the mindstones can't be the seat of personality. And you geblings, you and Unwyrm have in common your means of communication that transcends anything possible to human beings. And yet Unwyrm can use it to call to humans-there must be something in it that is at least latently possible to us."

"You're such an ass when you try to talk like a scholar," whispered Patience.

Angel ignored her. "And the wyrm that originally called the Starship Captain-it had that same ability, and perhaps more."

Ruin spoke without looking up from his work. "No doubt the wyrms used their ability to lure their prey and repel their enemies. One wyrm used it with your Starship Captain, but no doubt it doesn't depend on any intelligence on the part of the victim."

"And instead of eating the captain, they mated," said Reck.

"I wonder which he would rather have done, in the end, mate or die," said Angel. "I wonder how much abasement a human being can bear, and still desire to live." He sounded sad.

"With his right hand he drew what the wyrm wanted him to draw," whispered Patience. "With his left hand he warned us. He still had some part of his human will, even though the wyrm controlled most of his actions."

"Yes, a fragmentation, that's it, a breaking down. Part of the will carried in the brain, created and shaped by memory, by experience. The conscious mind, the controllable mind, the mind of words. And part of the will carried-where? In the genes? Certainly the genes are the only part of us that has any hope of surviving our death- what more appropriate place for a seat of a part of the unconscious mind ..."

Patience's vision suddenly focused. She had not realized it was blurred before. But it was not Angel speaking at all, it was old Mikail Nakos. Whose voice had she thought it was? She couldn't remember. Mikail, he was the one who had taken it upon himself to study these creatures, the geblings. I thought it could do no harm. But now he wants to implant this organic crystal in someone's mind. He doesn't understand the implications of it.

"What if the crystals actually enhance human mental abilities, make it possible for human beings to communicate telepathically, the way the geblings seem to?"

Then another voice. "It might be possible." It was her own voice, she knew, but not what she expected. For some reason she expected it to be a girl's voice, trained to be mellifluous, soothing; instead it was harsh, commanding, male. Why not male? Am I not a man? The Heptarch listened to himself, trying to remember why his own voice didn't sound right to him.

"I suspect, though, that the telepathic communication has more to do with the molecules than the crystals. The crystal is more likely to be memory. Incredibly well- ordered, clear, and powerful memory." He did not doubt his ability to converse intelligently with a brilliant scientist.

But then the old Heptarchs had been scientists, in the beginning. But why am I calling him an old Heptarch?

It's not me, then. Not really me talking, though I remember it as being myself. "I'm guessing-but the little ones, you see, the ones they call dwelfs, they can remember with absolute perfection everything that they've ever done, even though they can't hold an idea more complex than their name for very long. They store millions of items of data, but have no organizing principle."

"Not implausible, sir. Not at all. The crystal would be the data storage. The brain, the systematizer. But the telepathy-it might be in the crystal."

"I'm not even sure I believe there is any telepathy. It's only speculation. The geblings are certainly not telling, bless their murderous little viper souls."

"Still, sir, combined with a human brain, the crystal could provide a great enhancement of mental abilities."

"If it can combine. If it actually has anything to do with mentation."

"Difficult to answer. But the geblings aren't answering -and they probably don't know, anyway. Ignorant little devils."

For some reason the Heptarch wanted to correct him.

To tell him the truth about geblings. But he couldn't remember why he thought he knew geblings so well, so he said nothing.

"You see, sir, if the geblings weren't so dangerous, so deadly, we might be able to leave it alone. But they're cannibals-we saw how they eat each other's brains- and they've murdered almost a dozen of our people already. We have to understand all we can about them.

What they want, where they come from-"

"So you need a little white mouse to test the crystal."

"Unfortunately, it needs to be a highly intelligent white mouse. I intend to have it implanted in my own brain, sir."

"Nonsense. If you implant it in anyone, implant it in me."

"You're the Heptarch. I can't do that."

"I'm the Heptarch, so you must do it. There is no duty so difficult or dangerous or unpleasant that one of my people can do it, and I cannot."

Patience was suddenly aware that she was not the man who chose to have the mindstone placed in his brain.