Mariah downloaded one of her image files to a printer near the dining room and took the paper copy to her room. She took a moment to admire the little table and chair her room was furnished with. She recognized it as a style that was made at a dome community in Virginia where they had an oak copse inside their dome.

She put her printout on the table, picked up a pencil and sat to study the page. She began by noting on a sheet of lined paper how many times each different character appeared. Then she started doing the same for combinations of different pairs of characters. She found that many of the pairs could be in either order, so she broke down her counts that way.

When she was pretty sure she'd found all the pairs she started on groups of three. After noting a few different combination counts of these, she realized that many of her pairs were also in her threes. She shook her head and leaned back in her chair, staring at the page with a mounting frustration.

Why did I think I could do this? I don't even know where words start and end, she thought. I don't know if I should read it right to left or left to right. She realized that she'd turned the page this way and that so many times during her counting, she couldn't even tell the top from the bottom anymore.

But when they were on Hibiru she did know where the top was. She stared at the page some more, trying to remember what it had looked like when they were there.

She could see in her mind what this tablet had looked like in front of her when she made the image. But she wasn't sure she'd had it right side up then. She remembered the one that John had been reading, and how he had handed it to her. She was sure he had passed it to her so she would see it right side up. There, in that moment, was when she got the feeling that this writing would not be hard to read. She clung to that feeling, and picked up her page again. And turned it right side up. And she knew.

She knew again what she had seen then. The central thought was captured in the middle of the page. Peripheral thoughts were captured along the sides. The whole message was starting to make some sense to her. But she still didn't know what it said. Maybe Dutch could help her with that.

She put on her QAR lenses and called him. He responded right away.

"Making progress?" he asked.

"Yes, a little. I'm starting to see the format. But I don't have a clue what it says yet. Can you help?"

"I'll be there in a minute."

It was more like thirty seconds.

He said, "What have you got?"

She showed him her notes.

"See? I figured out that it starts in the middle with the main thought. Then afterthoughts are written around the outside."

He stared at it for a bit. Then he said, "I think you're right. I never really noticed that before. But I do know translations for a lot of the words. Let me see."

She handed him her list of characters and how many of them there were. He pointed and said, "This one stands for person, this one means look, and this one means move. Not sure about any of the others yet. Let me stare at them for a bit and some of them may come to me."

They worked on it together for a while, and soon had an idea what the central theme was. The outliers echoed the theme, but with additional characters. Dutch noticed that Mariah was very focused on the task, more so than he was. He admired that. She was better at this than he was.

Then he noticed that they had become a team, both focused on the same thing, thinking each other's thoughts. As if he had said it out loud, he felt her agree with him. He tested that with a thought. We aren't entirely in Houston anymore.

Because it was a pure thought, not a verbalization, Mariah got the full depth of the concept. Her personal universe expanded, explosively. It still encompassed him, but now it also encompassed the chambers of Hibiru they had visited, were visiting, the inscriptions she'd looked at there before.

She absorbed the experience for a while. Then she came out of it, looked at Dutch and said, "What just happened?"

He said, "You know what happened. You spaced out. You went mental."

They were back in Houston, but they were still connected. She heard what he said, but she also got the thought behind it. She thought, We all do this all the time. It's so automatic we aren't consciously aware of it.

He agreed. She stood up, and put down the paper and pencil she'd forgotten she was holding. He stood up too, and they faced each other. She said, "We have to talk about this." I mean think about this. Together. So you can catch me up on what I haven't realized about it yet.

As they arrived in present time together, they realized how long they'd been immersed in their task. It was late. They'd missed dinner. Dutch thought, I have a better idea. He took her to bed.