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must give you a sense of transience, of the evanescence of all things—of youth, of love, even of your own identity. I don’t mean to patronize you, Alia. But I suspect you’re still too young to understand how rare that is. Just as they would prefer to forget where they are in space, most people would rather not think about their position in time. They would certainly prefer not to think about death!”
    She felt increasingly uncomfortable. “And that’s why you’ve come here? Because I think too much?”
    “Nobody thinks too much. Anyhow you can’t help it, can you?” He approached her Witnessing tank. It was a silvered cube half his height. “May I?”
    She shrugged.
    He tapped the tank’s surface.
    It turned clear to reveal a softly translucent interior, filled with light that underlit the planes of Reath’s face. And through the light snaked a pale pink rope, looping and turning back on itself. If you looked closely you could see that the line wasn’t a simple cable, but had small protuberances and ridges. And if you looked closer still you could just see that it was actually a kind of chain, with its links tiny human figures, one fading seamlessly into the next: there was a tiny baby at one end, fingers and toes pink, and at the other end of the sequence an old man, bent and gaunt.
    Reath said, “Your subject is Michael Poole, isn’t it? I envy you. Though it’s no coincidence you’ve been assigned such a significant figure, historically.”
    “It isn’t?”
    “Oh, no. We—I mean, the councils of the Commonwealth—have had our eye on you for a long time, Alia.”
    That chilled her. And she still didn’t know what he wanted.
    “I am certainly pleased to see you keep up your Witnessing.”
    “Doesn’t everybody?”
    “Sadly, no. Even though we all have our duty: to Witness is to participate in the Redemption, which has been mandated by the Transcendence.” When he said the name, Reath bowed his head.
    Alia knew this was true. She had always been fascinated by her assigned Witnessing subject; others, even her own sister, thought that was a bit too earnest, and in the interests of popularity she’d learned not to talk about it.
    Reath reached into the tank and touched the flesh-colored chain, close to one end. That “link” was cut out, magnified, and became animated, and the tank filled up with the light of a distant sun, a vanished beach. A boy played, throwing brightly colored discs to and fro through the air. There was a contrail traced by a spark of light climbing in the sky, maybe a rocket; the boy quit his playing to watch, his hand peaked over his eyes.
    Reath murmured, “My history’s a little rusty. Didn’t this Poole grow up in Baikonur? Or was it Florida? One of those paleological spaceports . . .”
    “I like watching him as a kid,” Alia blurted. “He’s so full of life. Full of ideas. Always tinkering with things. Like those toys. He would cut and shape them, trying to make them fly better.”
    “Yes. The shapeless dreams of youth, so soon replaced by the complexities and compromises of adulthood. But his life was so short. By the time he was your age Poole’s life was probably half over. Most of them could only follow one career, make one significant contribution before—” Reath snapped his fingers. “Imagine that! But we, who have so much time by comparison, often choose to do nothing at all.”
    He was trying to recruit her, Alia realized. But for what? “
Why
would I want to work, for you or anyone else?”
    “It’s a valid point,” Reath said. “In our society of limitless material wealth, what rewards can there be? Have you ever heard of money, child?”
    “Only historically.”
    “Ah, yes.” He turned to her Witnessing tank. “They still had money in Poole’s time, didn’t they?”
    “Yes.”
    “And Poole himself worked.”
    “He was involved in one of the big geoengineering projects—”
    “Yes,” Reath said. “The struggles to get past the