“That was the first permanent thing we built. Arsibalt started it and Tris finished it. Later we’ll build a kitchen, then a Refectory around it.”

“How about messallans?” Barb asked.

“Maybe a couple of those too,” I allowed, “for those who just can’t get along without servitors.”

“So, this will become the Concent of Saunt Orolo?” Quin asked me.

I hesitated, and shipped the oars, not wanting to clobber Yul, who was wading out to come and tow us in. “It’ll be the something of Saunt Orolo,” I assured Quin. “But we are a little uneasy with the word Concent. We need a new word. Hey, Barb!” For Barb was about to jump off and wade to shore in quest of food. He didn’t hear me, but Yul—who had his big wet hand clamped on our gunwale now—touched Barb’s arm, and pointed to me. Barb turned around. “I will not drown,” he assured me, as if calming a fretful child, “my clothes are made from non-absorbent fibers.”

“You won’t eat, either. That food is for later.”

“How much later?”

“You’re going to have to sit through two auts,” I said. “One at noon. The second immediately after. Then, for the rest of the day, we eat.”

“What time is it?”

“Let’s go ask Jesry.”

Jesry’s clock was taking shape on the summit of the island. It was another of those projects that would not be finished in our natural lifetimes—but at least it was ticking! Jesry’s ideas on how to build “the real one” were so advanced that I could not understand half of them. But we had insisted he have something working for today. He and Cord had been toiling for a couple of months, building and breaking prototypes. The pace of the work had quickened as Cord had gathered in more tools. When Barb, Quin, and I hiked to the top, Cord was absent, having been called away to other preparations. Jesry was up there alone with his machines, like a half-mad holy hermit, watching through goggles as a spot of blinding light crept across a slab of synthetic stone. It was cast by a parabolic mirror that we had all taken a hand in grinding. “Lucky the sun came out,” he said, by way of greeting.

“It often does, this time of day,” I said.

“You ready?”

“Yeah, Arsibalt is a few minutes behind us, and I saw Tulia and Karvall putting their heads together, so…”

“Not for that,” he said. “I mean, are you ready for the other thing?”

“Oh, that?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Sure,” I said, “never been readier.”

“You, my fraa, are a liar.”

“How much time?” I asked, feeling a change of subject was in order.

He pulled his goggles back down over his eyes, judged the distance between the spot of light and a length of wire that lay helpless in its path. “A quarter of an hour,” he decreed. “See you there.”

“Okay, Jesry.”

“Raz? Any Deolaters down there?”

“Probably. Why?”

“Then ask them to pray that this contraption doesn’t fall apart in the next fifteen minutes.”

“Will do.”

We got to the site of the aut by following the trigger line down from the clock. The island had very little flat space, but we had created one just big enough for the cornerstone by scraping it out with hand tools and pounding it flat. Above it Yul had welded together a tripod from scrap steel. The stone—a fragment of the actual rod that the Geometers had thrown from space—was suspended from the tripod’s apex. It had been shaped to a cube by avout stonemasons, of whom we already had several. OF SAVANT OROLO was carved into one face—we’d fill in the blank later, when we’d found a suitable word—and YEAR 0 OF THE SECOND RECONSTITUTION was on another. On a third face—which would be hidden when the structure was built—we’d all been scratching our names. I invited Barb and Quin to add theirs.

Barb got so involved in it that I don’t think he heard a word or a note of the aut and the music that Arsibalt, Tulia, and Karvall had put together for us. But neither did I. I had other matters on my mind, and was too busy, anyway, marveling at all who’d showed up for the event: Ganelial Crade. Ferman Beller, with a couple of Bazian monks in tow. Three of Jesry’s siblings. Estemard and his wife. A contingent of Orithenans. Fraa Paphlagon and Emman Beldo. Geometers of all four races, equipped with nose tubes.

As noon drew near, we launched into a version of the Hylaean Anathem that Arsibalt had chosen for what he called its “temporal elasticity,” meaning that if the clock malfunctioned we’d be able to cover it up. But at some point—I have no idea whether it was even close to true solar noon—I saw Jesry spring up out of his clock-hovel, fling his goggles aside, and take off toward us at a run. I could tell by his gait that the news was good. The trigger line was getting noticeably tighter. I looked over at Yul, who was under the tripod, and drew my thumb across my throat. He grabbed Barb in a bear hug and jerked him back to safety. A moment later, a mechanism snapped and the stone dropped into its place with a thud that we all felt in our ankles. There was applause and cheering, which I didn’t really get to take part in since Arsibalt—presiding at a lectern, and leading the Anathem—was staring into my eyes and jerking his head in the direction of a tent a short ways up the hill. “Okay,” I mouthed, and obeyed.

Yul reached the tent a few moments after I did. He helped me change into a fancy Tredegarh-style bolt while I helped him put on a formal going-to-Ark suit. And both of us proved so incompetent at our respective tasks that these preparations outlasted the aut, and led to audible restlessness and rude comments from the crowd milling around just on the other side of the canvas. Emman Beldo had to tear himself away from bothering Suur Karvall, come into the tent, and intervene on Yul’s behalf. Meanwhile my overwraps were pleated and fixed into place by, of all people, Fraa Lodoghir, who had showed up probably to make sure that Saunt Orolo’s would include an influential Procian faculty.

Yul and I dithered and swapped after-yous at the threshold—which was obviated when the threshold ceased to exist. Lio and some of the Valers had lost patience, cut the tent’s guy ropes, and swept it off over our heads, like unveiling a couple of statues.

And, as a matter of fact, statues is probably what we acted like when we caught sight of Ala and Cord, who had done a much better job of getting dressed. I’d expected that my bride would be garlanded with starblossom and other invasive species. But I understood, now, that Quin’s fetch had been loaded with proper flowers, raised in faraway fields and hothouses.

The aut was a little complicated, since I had to give away Yul’s bride, but it had all been worked out by better minds. Cord and Yul were joined in matrimony by Magister Sark, who pulled it off pretty well, considering he’d been up until three A.M. in Dialog with Arsibalt over bottles of wine. He used the occasion to uncork one of his amazing, exasperating sermons, filled with wisdom and upsight and human truths, fettered to a cosmographical scheme that had been blown out of the water four thousand years ago.

When Sark’s part of the ceremony was complete, I, seconded by Jesry, and Ala, backed up by Tulia, came together in the presence of Fraa Paphlagon, and, to the accompaniment of a joyous song, and the distant rumble of Ma Cartas rolling over in her chalcedony sarcophagus, joined ourselves together in a Perelithian liaison.

It was traditional for the presiding fraa or suur to deliver some remarks, so we came to a place in the aut when all of the avout fell silent and turned their eyes to Fraa Paphlagon. This could have been awkward, since there was no avoiding the fact that the listeners would view his words, not entirely in their own light, but as a counterbalance to what Magister Sark had said. I thought it good that Paphlagon did not try to sneak around this.

“Since we pride ourselves on our Dialogs, let me welcome Magister Sark as a respected interlocutor. In his words I clearly see the traces left, thousands of years ago, when one of his forebears hit on an upsight and a way of expressing it that, for that moment, were true. As when the parts of a clock tick into alignment, and a pin falls into a slot, and something happens: a gate swings open, there’s a little Apert, and through it, a glimpse into the next cosmos. Or—in light of recent developments—perhaps I should say a next cosmos.” As he was saying this, Paphlagon looked around and made eye contact with Urnudans, Troans, Laterrans, and Fthosians. “Those who were there when that gate opened, knew it for a real upsight, wrote it down, made it part of their religion—which is a way of saying that they did all that was in their power to pass it on to the ones they loved. We can, on some other occasion, have a lively debate as to whether they succeeded; I regret to say that in my case they did not.”