Borne by his personal aircraft, Dain rested in silence. Barely subsonic, he rode ahead of any noisy proof that engines labored to keep him airborne. And, protected from the chill sparse atmosphere, he was likewise insulated from any enfeebled sounds it could carry or vibrations it could cause. He dedicated these times to meditation, body relaxed, eyes shut, so even the sounds of his own thoughts were smoothed away by the faint insistence of his mantra.
     Entranced, Dain dreamed of life after he, through Le Coeur, had changed the continent. He would start by taking control of Ganj Dareh Direvnya. Then other direvnya would fall as their service combines flocked openly to the new consortium, led by tacticians already loyal to the cause. Eventually, Byukan-Hamil would crumple, an empty husk. Then and only then, master of all contracts and therefore, all society, Dain would change the Patterns that shaped life on Popovich. He'd let the new ways settle in, then walk away.
     He would become a teacher. With the Network of Learning expunged — he planned other changes, but this one remained his prime goal — he could teach as he'd always wanted to be taught, in small groups at scheduled times during the day.
     He could see his classroom: a curved line of tall hedge for a wall, bright sunlight filling the open-air chamber, the children reclined on the soft green of a grassy carpet as they responded eagerly to his interactive lecture. In fact, he'd teach in many such classrooms, laid out as pockets in a modest labyrinth amid the vast gardens of the permanent campus. Each day, he'd leave the class with hints about the location of the next session, and each day they would have to find him before class could start. And they would do so happily, laughing and striving.
     And the things he would teach them: power and peace-of-mind, self-discipline and focus, determination and its application to self and others. Oh, the lectures, the games, the skits. He dreamed about the words he'd say and the gestures he'd make ...
     When Kär called him, several thousand seconds had been consumed by the universe's timeline. Dain could almost believe that they had never existed in his.
     But he didn't think that. Very real, the seconds had died, never to be regained. He — not one his alternate personalities — had killed them well, in travel and recuperation between two cultures.
     Dain opened his eyes. A foilscreen at his knee echoed Kär's verbal message. Descending rapidly, they approached the Laetoli Valley.
     However, the message came as courtesy only, a gentle wake-up before the flight got rough. Around Dain, the aircraft's controls sat dark. The Continental Collective didn't allow humans to pilot aircraft into Laetoli Valley: atmospheric phenomena were too tricky. And the Inn's membership, including Dain, permitted no scheduled flights. Only private and chartered aircraft with automata as capable as Kär could land, assisted, of course, by the infraware at the Inn's drome.
     Dain watched calmly, expectantly. He had left fretting behind in Bedlip's personality; it accomplished nothing — and it shrouded humility. Dain had discovered that humility was an important basis for ambition. Only when he was freed of delusions induced by society or fermented by his egos, could he dominate without fear, lead without doubt, and discipline without mercy. With those means, he would command Le Coeur de la Patrie as it ripped through the fabric of society.
     For Dain, humility came only from perspective bestowed by Nature, grand Nature, overwhelming Nature, in the Laetoli Valley.
     Dain flew along the center of the Valley. On his left and right, distant yet enclosing hills pimpled the horizons with their low, rounded nubs. Stretching below him, blurred by his speed into an even color, tawny grass defined the smooth ground. Behind him, out the back of his bubble canopy, this same golden brown marked the edge between the plain and sky. Ahead, though, an uneven line of mountains refuted the serenity that otherwise surrounded him.
     First, the westernmost mount lifted itself from the flat valley floor as a wavery pillar worn smooth by the ages. A core of lava, it stood as monument to the original volcanic cone of ash and rock that had washed and blown away.
     Beyond rose six more peaks, generations in a volcanic succession, each taller and rougher, topping its older brother in a time-lapse montage that allowed an era to slog by between exposures. The last cone, a veritable youth, soared more than sixty-four hundred meters to jab the sky into stanching its intrusion with perpetual ice and snow.
     After that, nothing. The Seven Fathers drew Dain's gaze from the level veldt higher and higher into the sky until ... there was nothing. He pulled back toward the youngest volcano and found a faint line that traced the division between tawny land and blue sky until it somehow merged with the northern hills.
     Kär, with permission from the Inn's automata, had flown straight toward this filament.

     Now Dain stood at The Edge of the World.
     Escarpment — over a thousand sheer meters — separated the savanna at his back from lifeless salt flat. Far below, a chalky blur that seemed as much sky as ground, was Death. Behind him, indeed starting right here at his feet, was Life, all manner of living things that warred against entropy.
     In between, a boundary, an edge: stark, undeniable evidence of Nature and its cataclysms. While he teetered here, Dain was to the planet what the planet was to the galaxy and the galaxy to the universe. Insignificance cubed.
     So small everything could fit into one mind.

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