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line against the horizon that marked the Great Wall. The movement was more pleasant than I had expected; I realized we must have had a long run this time, for me to be so stiff.
    We were silent for the first few moments. Her darkfurred head was facing the horizon, but her eyes were not seeing it. I couldn’t tell if she were in rapport with Yayshah or merely looking into Antonia’s world. I reached for words to help or comfort her.
    “It must be startling,” I said at last, “to begin to question what you have taken for granted all your life.”
    Her head turned toward me. “Surely you faced this, too?” she asked.
    I shook my head. “It wasn’t the same for me,” I explained. “I am basically a man from a different world; I’ve always seen the differences first. It took conscious effort to use Markasset’s memories for me to be comfortable here.”
    “And I am essentially Gandalaran, with the memory and viewpoint of an”—she had to search for a word—“a stranger to disrupt my acceptance of the world I have always known.”
    “Exactly,” I agreed. “What was it that disturbed you a moment ago?”
    She looked at the ground. The tan leather of our boots was even paler for the coating of sand garnered from three days in the Kapiral Desert.
    “I was wondering what lay beyond the Great Wall,” she said.
    It was simple statement, a simple thought—to a human. A Gandalaran was never out of sight of the boundaries of the “world,” and the night sky was almost continually hidden by the thick cloud cover. Gandalarans had never learned the concept of a planet.
    She looked up at me. “Do you know?”
    “I wish I did,” I said, and felt the tremendous relief of being able to discuss the questions that had plagued me since I had arrived in Gandalara. Tarani listened intently while I talked, not even blinking when I couldn’t find a Gandalaran word for the concepts and used the Italian. The language felt strange and very musical in the Gandalaran throat.
    When I was talked out, Tarani walked away from me and stared at the Great Wall, her hands braced against her hips. “Antonia remembers nothing like the Great Wall in her home world,” Tarani said. “But the sight of the Wall from this distance—it stirs something, Rikardon.” She stared for a moment, then shrugged and came back to me. “A memory—a thought—it will come in its own time.”
    “Are you sure it is Antonia who remembers?” I asked. “Your link to the All-Mind is so strong, Tarani—might you not be subconsciously sharing memory with your own ancestors, who might have stood here and wondered about the strip of blue on the horizon?”
    She considered. “It may be that, yes,” she said, and sighed heavily. “Mysteries within mysteries.” She put her hand on my cheek and caressed it. “I see the burden this has been for you, Rikardon. I see, too, that you were right to keep silence about Antonia. Because of her, I
know
now, I can accept awareness of your strange world. Had you spoken earlier, while I lacked that understanding, my fear of the strangeness would have forced me to deny your truth—possibly even to deny you.”
    Her fingers glided down my cheek to my neck, played there with a light touch that sent my blood singing. But Tarani wasn’t aware of the effect she was creating; she was turned inward, thinking.
    “How?” she asked softly. “Why?”
    I held her upper arms in my hands, drawing her attention back to my face. “We may never know
how
,” I said. “But haven’t we been working for
why
for a long time now?”
    “You mean the Ra’ira?” she asked. “That might explain why we are here,” she said, “but why is it
we
and not two other people with human minds that are not subject to the Ra’ira’s power? That is—I mean to say, why were you brought here?”
    I’m sure my mouth dropped open. “Do you mean to say that you know why
you
were brought here—Antonia, that is?”
    “I—well, of course not. I