"We shouldn't need to ask it anything, not if that's the right answer," Quiss said, looking at the old woman. 'This was your answer, remember."

"I remember," Ajayi said. "The next one can be yours, if this one isn't right, but we did agree to do it this way; it was just luck it's my answer first. We agreed to do it this way, do you remember?"

"That was your idea, too," Quiss said, not looking at her, but lowering his eyes to watch his finger moving over the table's cut patterns.

"Just don't start any recriminations, that's all," Ajayi said.

"I won't." Quiss widened his eyes, held his hands up and out, his voice suddenly high in protest, so that he reminded Ajayi of a very large young child. "It's going to be a long time before we get another chance though, isn't it though?"

"That's just the way things have been set up," Ajayi said, "that isn't my fault."

"I didn't say it was your fault, did I?" Quiss said.

Ajayi sat back, putting her gloves back on. She looked doubtfully at the man on the far side of the table. "All right then," she said.

It had taken them almost two hundred and fifty of Quiss's "days" to discover what the way out was. They had to answer a single question. But first they had to play a series of odd games, working out the rules for each one in turn, playing each one to a conclusion, without cheating or colluding. At the end of each game they had one chance and one chance only to answer the riddle they had been set. This was their first game, their first attempt to answer the question. One-Dimensional Chess hadn't been all that difficult once they worked out the rules, and now their first answer was being carried or transmitted or processed - whatever - by the small attendant with the little red boots.