Meanwhile, my eyes were at work on those faces! How many of them were familiar to me, unchanged except for the ravages of grief, how many of them I had known, even in the First Time, when they were handsome, wholesome, sturdy animals, all self-reliance and competence. Among them I saw my old friend Ben, descendant of David and his daughter Sais, and he sensed me so strongly that he was standing close against me, tears running down his face, his hands held out as if waiting for mine. I manifested myself in the shape he had seen me last, and put my hands in his, and he flung himself into my arms and stood weeping. "At last, at last," he wept, "have you come for me now? May I come now?" - and all the others pressed in about us, clutching and holding, and I nearly lost myself into the gulf of their longing. I stood there feeling myself sway, feeling my substance dragged out from me, and I stepped back from them, making them release me, and Ben, too, took away his hands, but stood close, moaning, "It's been so long, so long..."

"Tell me why you are still here?" I insisted, and they became silent while Ben spoke. But it was no different from what he had told me before, and as he finished and the others stood crying out their stories one after another, I knew I was caught and bound by the necessities of Zone Six, and my whole being was fermenting with impatience and even fear, for all my work was ahead of me, my work was calling me - and I could not get myself free. What they told was always the same, had always been the same - and I wondered if they remembered how I had stood here, they had stood here, so long ago, saying the same things... they had made themselves leave this gate, and they had turned themselves around and crossed the plain, and had entered Shikasta - some of them recently, some of them not for centuries or millennia - and all had succumbed to Shikasta, had suffered some failure of purpose and will, and had been expelled back to this place, clustering around the Eastern Gate.