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to give me the answer; but then, I had still struggled against it
I was in my own bedroom of the summer palace. For a moment, the terrible
thought came that the whole thing had only been some sort of dream. But then,
I knew better.
I looked around and saw Ellen, standing beside my bed with Porniarsk and
Dragger.
"Hello," I said to Ellen, and my own physical voice echoed strangely in my
ears. "I'm back."
"Yes," she answered.
It was the sort of answer I would have expected from her. I lay there,
savoring the familiar goodness of it, feeling warm and comfortable, while the
three of them stood watching me with a careful concern, as if I were some sort
of carefully brooded egg which was about to hatch and which might produce
something strange. I thought over half a dozen things to say; decided against
all of them and simply held out my arms to Ellen, who came and hugged me.
"How did I get back here?" I asked, finally, when she let me go. Outside of
feeling as weak as dishwater, I seemed to be fine.
"We brought your body here right away," said Dragger, speaking
twentieth-century English now, as well as Obsidian ever had. "Just as soon as
we caught you. We were barely in time to keep your identity from going through
the lens."
I stared at her.
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"No, you weren't," I said.
At that, Dragger looked embarrassed, like someone caught in a lie, which
surprised me. I would not have thought it possible for her to show that
particular reaction; and I would not have expected myself to be able to'
interpret it, if she had. But there was no doubt about what I was seeing now.
"At any rate," she said, almost defensively, "we trapped your mental energy
pattern in time to keep it from going through. Something else could have gone
through, that was a part of you, though what it would be, there's no way of
telling."
"His soul," said Porniarsk, firmly and clearly.
"Call it that, for the moment, then," said Dragger. "At any rate, it's been
some eight of the local days here, since then."
"Eight days? Is that all?"
"That's plenty," said Ellen.
"It felt like...." I began, and ran out of words.
"Temporal differences," said Dragger, more briskly, "or possibly differences
in temporal perception? It'll take a great deal of study."
"But you did it, Marc,** said Ellen. "Whoever they are in the other universe,
they've been sending messages hi through the lens. The engineers here
understand now. They're cutting off the inflow of differential -energy and
doing something with the downdraft instead. It's going to work out. It's all
going to work out"
"You were right in the first place, Marc," said Dragger. "We were too much a
part of the time storm ourselves to realize the forces that were building up."
"It's interesting," put in Porniarsk. "When you get down to it, there's
nothing in such great supply that it's inexhaustible, no container so large it
can't be filled."
"And that's true for a universe as well as boxes, bags, oceans, and
galaxies,** said Ellen.
"I should say, however," Porniarsk corrected himself, "it may be that the
human spirit is inexhaustible. Time and work will tell.*'
"You were right, as I said, Marc," Dragger repeated. She was apparently
determined to make her apology, or say her piece, whichever it was. "We were
too close to the problem to see it properly. Are you interested in the
details?"
"You could say that," I answered. I pulled the pillow up behind me and propped
myself up against it I got it crooked, but Ellen straightened it out
"Essentially," Dragger said, "you were right in assuming that it was a mistake
to import energy into this universe from another one-Ellen told us what you
told her, before" you tried to go through the lens."
"The energy already stored in the increase of entropy by matter falling back
in toward itself," I said, "can be tapped to push it out again, instead of
using the energy flow from Ihe other universe.'*
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"They told you about it over there, then?" Dragger asked
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