“Put your weapon away, Skander,” Varnett told him, not taking his gaze from the filtered landscape. “You can’t do it without me, and if you think about it you’ll realize that. In only a few months they’ll find our bodies and you here—or dying in the city—and what will that get you?”

The knife hesitated a long moment, then slowly slid back into the belt under the protective garment.

“What the hell are you, Varnett?” asked Skander suspiciously.

“An aberration,” the other replied. “We happen, sometimes. Usually they catch us and that’s that. But not me, not yet. They will, though, unless I can do something about it.”

“What do you mean, an aberration?” Skander asked unsurely.

“I’m human, Skander. A real human. And greedy. I, too, would like to be a god.”

* * *

It had taken Varnett only seven hours to crack the mathematics, but it would take a lot longer to make the Markovian brain notice them. Their project was so intense that the others began to take notice and inquire, particularly the research assistants. Finally, they decided to take them all in on it—Varnett because he was certain that, once in contact with the Markovian brain, he could adjust the others to his version of events, and Skander because he had no choice. While they worked the lab, the others combed the city and, using small flyers, the other cities and regions of the planet.

“You are to look for some sort of vent, entrance, gate, or at least a temple or similar structure that might mean some kind of direct contact with the Markovian brain,” Skander told them.

And time went on, with the others, good Universalists all, looking forward to carrying the news back to the Confederacy that the perfect society was within man’s grasp.

Finally, one day, only two months before the next ship was due in, they found it.