By now, Boukey was gone.

Upon his return, Boukey had asked for a meeting with the Elder. He told him all that he had dreamed, and all that had come back to him. There were still rips in the fabric of his past, but there was enough.

"So," he said, "I would like to request a fast ship, and an escort to take me to the Federation, to take me home."

The Elder looked startled. "This is your home, if you will stay."

"No," said Boukey, "I am a danger to you, whatever happens. There is more to come. I am sure you could scan and detect most of what they did to me, but there might be some trickery still. They had me for some time, I know that, and did things to me. They seem to know what is going on so quickly. I seem to be a living tracer. So I cannot stay here."

The Elder sighed, and shook his head. "You are my son, as well, now, you know that."

Boukey turned his head away. "I can't be a son to you. I was the one who brought those monsters on her. I did not save her. I lost her."

The Elder said: "No, please, no. You found her. If it weren't for you she would have ended as what -- a saloon girl in a cowtown on Polgar. She would have never sung an Earthsong again. She would not have had any happiness. She would not have met you."

Boukey could barely speak: "But she would have been alive! -- she --"

The Elder interrupted: "There is no answer to that. You cannot go on like that. Yes, you could never have met her, but that is useless. You are not to blame. You found out what you could, when you could. She struggled to find her way out of an original evil that she had nothing to do with, and was free for a time, and was trapped again by another evil that she had nothing to do with, and then from the grave she broke it all in pieces. Damn it, son, she saved this planet twice, everything on it, and the songs of Earth, she saved those too -- millions of miles from here, and without knowing that anyone would ever know or care. The first time she saved this planet for love of Tern, for her childhood, for her past; and the second time, she did it for love of you. She knew what they wanted: she had been in their hands before. She was not going to be in them again, not with the double danger of you being in them as well. She knew what they were planning to do, and she wrecked that: how she knew I don't know; but she did. She knew what was in that monster's eyes. You cannot go on like that."

Boukey sat for a few moments. Then he said: "I know one thing that was in that monster's eyes. Of all that horrible moment when Cruella came upon us, I can remember only one thing. Sharazade looked at her, surrounded by her troops, and cried out: 'You! Drusillanx! From Cybania!!' Cruella had been spawned there too: she had been recognised. And that made her all the more determined. And I have no doubt that all the troops there that night were murdered as well. She cannot let me live once she suspects that I have that memory back again. But we are into a different sort of fight now. My hope is to lay the facts as I have them before the Federation: to dismantle DisneyCorp in that way, whatever you may do here from Tern. Then she will be unable to harm me. If your son was willing to follow after me in a few days, he could gather up the appropriate records about the attack on Tern. There are other witnesses to planetary destruction they might find worthy too."

The Elder said: "So, does Mandy wish to go as well, to speak of her planet? Or would she be asked for later?"

Boukey said: "I don't know. I haven't asked her. I will. She is dealing with her own griefs as well, as you know."

The Elder said: "And then? If you are successful in bringing Cruella down, finally?"

Boukey looked at him. "I think I will go back to Calliokeh. I think Sharazade found a kind of home there. I think if she had been there longer, she would have made many friends among the Cybanian refugees there. They were, in the end, I think, her kind. And they have become mine. I am a Cybanian now myself: my mind has been violated, and my soul is slashed. "

The Elder said: "I never knew her as a woman, except through you. But in that way, you brought her to me too, when I thought she was lost forever. So that was found. There was a gap in my soul as well - which you have helped to fill, not completely, but a little."

Boukey replied: "If I make it to Calliokeh, you will have to visit."

"Perhaps -- ", said the Elder, quietly: "-- perhaps by then you will know enough to teach me a little Calliokan guitar."

And he went over to the console, and put on the record of "Calliokan Blues" and came back, and the two stood there listening to it together, arms around each other's shoulders. And the song began, simple, shimmering with the rising heat of a Destarlillo morning over the long low fields, and as the old voice growled and grumbled, there came into their minds an image of a porch in the half shade, half sunshine, a small Calliokan man in a battered work hat playing a 24 string guitar, an even smaller Calliokan woman with a determined look on her face, wielding a hairbrush, and a young woman, as beautiful as the dawn, perched on the edge of the porch, humming to the music, and waving goodbye.