"Captain" Lazuli said, "Humpty Dumpty- go to bed!" The nullboat waddled away; the little girls joined us, one taking my free hand, the other taking the Senior's free hand, with Minerva between us. These freckled flametops would have had my whole attention had not Minerva been there. I am not compulsively fond of children; some youngsters seem to me rather poisonous, especially precocious ones. But in their case I found their solemn precocity charming rather than irritating...and to see the Senior's features, rugged rather than handsome and with that too-large nose, unmistakably reproduced but transformed into piquant girlish features-well, had I been alone, I would have chuckled with delight.

I said "Just a moment," and held onto Lorelei's hand and thereby caused, all to pause while I took a second look. "Lazarus, who is the architect?"

"I don't know," he said. "Dead more than four thousand years. The original belonged to the political boss of Pompeii, a city destroyed about that long ago. I saw a model of it, restored, in a museum in a place called Denver, and took pictures; it pleased me. Those pictures are long gone, but it turned out that, when I tried to describe it to Athene, she had a solly in the historical section of her gizzards of the ruins of that same house-and from that and my description, she designed this version. Some minor mods, nothing that changed its sweet proportions. Then Athene built it, using extensionals and radio links. It's practical for this climate; the weather here is much like that of Pompeii-and I prefer a house that looks inward, on a court. Safer, even in a place as safe as this one."

"By the way, where is Athene? The main computer itself, I mean."

"Here. She was still in the 'Dora' when she built this; now she's under the house-she built her underground home first, then built our house on top of it."

Minerva said simply, "A computer prefers to feel safe, and close to her own people. Lazarus-forgive me, dear, but you have reversed a time sequence; that was more than three years ago."

"Oh, so I have. Minerva, when you have lived as long as I have-and you will-you'll find yourself inverting time sequences endlessly, a flesh-and-blood shortcoming you had to accept when you took the plunge. Correction, Justin- 'Minerva,' not 'Athene.'"

"Yet it is Athene who built it-now," Minerva added, "since engineering and the details of this construction and others are things I left behind in Athene, where they belong, and abstracted only a simplified memory of having built it-I wanted to remember that much."

I said, "Whoever built it, it's beautiful." I was suddenly upset. It is one thing to accept intellectually the startling idea that a young woman has had a former life as a computer- and even to accept that one had worked with that computer years back and light-years away. But this discussion suddenly brought home to me emotional belief that this lovely girl with her arm warm in mine had in sober fact been a computer so short a time ago that she had built this new house- while a computer. It shook me-even though I am a historiographer, old, and my sense of wonder was dulled even before my first rejuvenation.

We went in, and my upset was swept away by greetings. We were kissed all around-two beautiful young women, one of whom I recognized when I heard her name, Ira's daughter Hamadryad and she looks like one, the other a statuesque blonde whose name, Ishtar, was familiar to me through talk, and a young man as beautiful as the women and who seemed familiar though I could not place him. Even the twin flametops insisted on kissing me since they had not greeted me that way earlier.

In Boondock a kiss of greeting is not the ritual peck it usually is in New Rome; even the twins bussed me in a fashion that made me certain of their sex-I've had poorer kisses from grown women whose intentions were direct and immediate. But the young man, introduced as "Galahad," startled me. He hugged me, with kisses on my cheeks followed by a kiss on my mouth worthy of a Ganymede- which surprised me, but I tried to return as good as I got.

Instead of letting me go, he pounded my back and said, "Justin, it tickles my root to see you again! Oh, this is wonderful!"

I pulled my face back to look at his. I must have looked puzzled for he blinked, then said mournfully: "Ish, I boasted too soon! Hamadear, get me a towel, I'm weeping. He's forgotten me...after all the things he said."

I said, "Obadiah Jones, what are you doing here?"

"Weeping. Being humiliated in front of my family."

I don't know how long it had been since I had seen him. It may have been more than a century since it has been that long since I left the Howard campus. Brilliant young specialist in ancient cultures he was then, with an impish sense of humor. I recalled, dredging it up out of memory, having shared a Seven Hours with him and two other savants, both female and happily so-but I could not recall their faces nor who they were; what I remembered was his playful, joyous, boisterous good company. "Obadiah," I said sternly, "why are you calling yourself 'Galahad'? Hiding from the police again? Lazarus, I'm shocked to find this, uh, macho in your house- lock up your daughters!"

"Oh, that name" he said brokenly. "Don't repeat it, Justin. They don't know it. When I reformed, I changed my name. You won't give me away? Promise me, dear!" Suddenly he grinned and said in a cheerful voice, "Come on into the atrium and let's get a skinful of rum into you. Lazi, who has the duty?"

"Lori does. Even-numbered day. But I'll help. Straight rum?"

"Better flavor it. I want to add a welcome the Borgias used on old friends."

"Sure thing, Uncle Cuddly. Who are the Borgias?"

"A family from the greatest days of Old Earth's rise and fall, sugar lump. The Howards of their time. Very suave in handling guests. I'm descended from them, and their secrets were passed down to me by word of mouth."

"Laz," said Lazarus, "ask Athene for a rundown on the Borgias before you mix a drink for Justin."

"I see; he's at it again-"

"-so we'll tickle him-

"-and blow in his ears-

"-until he cries Pax-

"-and promises Veritas-

"-he's no problem. Come on, Lazi."

I had found the village of Boondock pleasantly unimpressive, more pleasant and less impressive than I had expected. Ira and Lazarus had accepted only seven thousand for their first wave from applicants numbering more than ninety thousand; therefore the present population of Tertius could not be much over ten thousand and was in fact slightly less.

Boondock seemed to have only a few hundred people and was centered on a few small buildings for public and semipublic purposes, most colonists being scattered around the countryside. The home of Lazarus Long was by far the most impressive structure I had seen-not counting the large flat cone of the Senior's yacht and the much larger bulk of one robot space freighter on the skyfield where my packet had grounded. (The skyfield was a level place a few kilometers across; one could not call it a port. There was not one godown. It must have an autobeacon since I grounded safely; I did not see it.)

This rudimentary settlement had not prepared me for the Senior's house. Its lines and plan were simple; that long-dead Roman had picked a good designer. It was a walled garden, the house itself being its four walls. But it had two stories, and each level could have been divided, it seemed to me, into twelve to sixteen large rooms plus the usual ancillary spaces. Twenty-four or more rooms for a household of eight? The more blatantly rich in New Rome might display ego in so much space, but it seemed inappropriate in a new colony, as well as out of tune with what I had learned in my long research of the Senior's lives.