Quilen's eyelids went down. Paxma dropped his friend's hands, laid his own on his knees, closed his eyes, and slipped into a psychedelic routine mastered at the Seminar through endless practical sessions. The trampling of soldiers, livestock, moving wagons, the departure's bedlam that had been growing in the last few hours, gradually dropped, shrunk to a dim buzz, disappeared altogether.
The semi-darkness of a familiar room enveloped him: the starting place for all those practices. He sat on fluffy pillows and turned his head slowly, recognizing every detail of that virtual site. He looked up and found what he was searching for: on the wall, just beneath the ceiling line, an oval, gray glass lens had appeared, animated by a fickle opalescence. Anything he might think, or even say, while h
