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later confidant of sorts to Riothamus . . .
    His dawning realization of just who Riothamus really was . . .
    The Battle of Bourg-de-Déols, where Riothamus fell victim to treachery . . .
    The mountain lake and the thrown sword that had flashed in the westering sun so many times in his dreams . . . and after he had thrown it, his words to his friend Kai, welling up from he knew not where: "His name will live longer than you can possibly imagine . . . in a way, he can never die . . ."
    Tylar's final explanation of what they had been put through, and of his own people's policing of the past to assure that history followed the course that had eventuated in their own existence—including their planting of the ancestral humans on Raehan, where history said they had to be present in defiance of all evolutionary logic . . .
    "Tylar . . . aren't you going to change history by returning us to our own time. I mean, when we get back there knowing what we now know, knowing all you've just told us . . ." "Ah, but do you?"
    And the sinking into unconsciousness, as Tylar looked on with unmistakeable sadness . . .
    * * *
    "How are we feeling today?"
    "What's this 'we' stuff?" Sarnac growled as Tylar entered his quarters. He wasn't about to give over being mad at the time traveller, but he couldn't complain about the accommodations.
    He was sitting in a kind of solarium, suffused with simulated sunlight from the holoprojection that was the "sky" of this few-kilometers-wide pocket universe. It was midmorning of the local twenty-four-hour day—Sarnac wondered if that was for his benefit—and he was digesting both his breakfast and his new knowledge.
    Tylar crossed the inner living room and joined him in the solarium, obviously in no hurry. Sarnac allowed himself only a moment's glare before giving in and answering the time traveller's question.
    "Pretty good. You didn't exaggerate about the 'initial disorientation,' that's for sure. Besides the problems you mentioned, there's the freshness of these fifteen-year-old memories—I can remember it all more clearly than I can the births of my children, or things that happened just last year!"
    "But you're over the sensation by now, I trust?"
    "Yeah, I've gotten things more or less sorted out." He gave the time traveller a hard, level look. "And I've been doing some thinking."
    "Oh?" Tylar seated himself across the low table from Sarnac, as though settling in for a discussion he had known was coming.
    "I've been thinking," Sarnac repeated, "about the reason you wiped our memories: we couldn't be allowed back into our own historical period with knowledge like the origin of Raehaniv humanity that our era isn't supposed to have. And yet you had to let us return, because your history said we had gotten through to Sol. I suppose that's why I'm not exactly slobbering with gratitude for your having saved us from the Korvaasha. You had your own reasons; in fact, you needed us as much as we needed you."
    Tylar spread his hands. "What can I say? You're correct, of course—as far as you go. But I hope you can also remember that my motivations regarding you and Tiraena were, at bottom, benign."
    "Oh, yes, I can accept that. And I think I've more or less gotten over being pissed at you. But that's not the point now." He leaned forward intently. "The point is that the same reasons for not letting anybody with the knowledge you've just given back to me run around loose in the twenty-third century still apply with equal force. So why have you given me back the memories? And please don't tell me it's out of an altruistic desire to relieve me from my nagging dreams!"
    "Ah." Tylar settled back in his chair, steepling his fingers in a gesture Sarnac now remembered. "Well, I'm afraid I haven't been entirely candid with you. . . ."
    Sarnac lowered his head into his hands with a low moan and spoke without looking up. "Tylar, one of the things I remember is that every time you say that I