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trousers but the kind of baggy-legged pants that only beggars and wastelanders wore in the Land. These pants were stuffed into black boots of what looked like the finest herbidak leather Abel had ever seen. He wanted to touch those boots just to see if they were as supple as they looked.
    “Hello, lad, I’m Raj Whitehall,” the man said. He gestured at the surrounding mirrored walls. “And this, all around us? This is Center.”
    Greetings, Abel. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere in the mirrored room. We were concerned, but the danger has now passed. I am effecting repairs on the trauma your actions have cause to your brain. My efforts will allow you to avoid a convalescent period and, in fact, keep you from experiencing any ill effects at all, to a ninety-three percent probability.
    “This is like the flying, isn’t it?” Abel said to Raj—mostly because he knew where to look when speaking to him. “It’s not really a…a simulation. This is a”—he searched for the new terminology, found it implanted—“mind-space.”
    “You’re in the district prelate’s house, lying on his wife’s sleeping pallet,” Raj replied. “Your father and she are watching over you until you wake up. You managed to give yourself a fine concussion.”
    Raj smiled. His big white teeth shone brightly in his black beard, making him look less like a wastelander and more like a Redland barbarian.
    “Father found me?” Abel asked.
    “That he did,” Raj replied. “The high priest was with him, too. It caused quite a stir. You got picked up and taken to Prelate Zilkovsky’s home on a private litter.”
    “Father must be worried.”
    “He was. And by the sound of his voice, a bit terrified that he would lose you as he did his woman. I would not expect him to be in a happy mood when you wake up.”
    Observe:
    Abel was in the priest’s house. He lay propped up on pillows upon a sleeping pallet. The walls of the room were painted white with a wash that Abel knew had to be very expensive. He smelled the familiar odor of surkrat cooking somewhere, a dish his mother had made. His father paced back and forth, his sandals slapping in rhythm against the ceramic tile floor.
    Then Abel was back in the mirrored room.
    “I want to wake up. I want to tell Father I’m all right.”
    “In good time,” Raj answered. He hunched down to face Abel eye to eye. “Let Center do his work upon you first, lad.” Raj settled into a crisscross position on the floor. He did not fidget, and seemed like a man accustomed to occasionally sitting on floors—or wherever the situation called for.
    “You’re Raj.”
    “Yes, lad.”
    “You dress funny, but you look kind of like a man.”
    Raj smiled. His teeth flashed within his dark beard. “That’s right, lad, I’m a simulation,” he said. “But a good one. I even manage to fool myself.”
    “You’re not real.”
    “I used to be.” Raj nodded as if remembering, though how could a simulation really remember anything? “A fighter. Then a soldier. Helped bring a world or two out of darkness.”
    “And Center?”
    “Center is no simulation. He’s here on Duisberg, contained in that capsule in the storehouse. And, in a way, so am I.”
    “Then how come I see you when I’m supposed to be asleep in the prelate’s house?”
    Raj nodded, thinking. Then he smiled and spoke. “You know how the Signal Corps has those towers along the road?”
    “Those are for wigwag. You can send a message, or get one.”
    “Well, think of it like this: there’s a little wigwag tower in your head now, lad. We talk to you that way.”
    “And you can change things?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “In my head. Like make me forget about my mother. Wipe her out. You could do that, couldn’t you? And when you find out I’m not the one you’re looking for, you’re going to wipe her out. Like a rake on sand.”
    He felt a sob coming on. How could you sob in simulation? You shouldn’t be able to. It wasn’t