Daeman faxed into solidity near Ada’s home and blinked stupidly at the red sun on the horizon. The sky was cloudless and the sunset burned between the tall trees on the ridgeline and set both the p-ring and the e-ring glowing as they rotated in the cobalt sky. Daeman was disoriented because it was evening here and it had been morning only a second before when he faxed away from Tobi’s Second Twenty party in Ulanbat. It had been years since he visited Ada’s home, and except for those friends whom he visited most regularly—Sedman in Paris, Ono in Bellinbad, Risir in her home on the cliffs of Chom, a few others—he never had a clue as to what continent or time zone he would find himself in. But then, Daeman did not know the names or positions of the continents, much less the concepts of geography or time zones, so his very lack of knowledge meant nothing to him.

It was still disorienting. He had lost a day. Or had he gained it? At any rate, the air smelled different here—wetter, richer, wilder.

Daeman looked around. He stood in the center of a generic faxnode pad—that usual circle of permcrete and fancy iron posts topped with a yellow crystal pergola, and near the center of the circle the post holding the inevitable coded sign that he could not read. There was no other structure visible in the valley, only grass, trees, a stream in the distance, the slow revolution of both rings crossing above like the armatures of some great, slow gyroscope.