what would happen to the Transcendent State if he told what he knew. His mouth went as dry as flour. He was just a farmer, he told himself; he didn't have that good an imagination. 'You're saying that I don't have to have my memory of all this erased?'
'Goodness, no. Unless you'd rather forget about me.'
As they passed Comfort's body, Spur said, 'Stop a minute.'
He reached out and touched the shroud. He expected it to be some strange upsider fabric but it was just a simple cotton sheet. 'They knew that I could choose to remember, didn't they? Memsen and the High Gregory were playing me to the very end.'
'Son,' said Dr. Niss, 'the High Gregory is just a boy and nobody in the Thousand Worlds knows what the Allworthy knows.'
But Spur had stopped listening. He rubbed the shroud between his thumb and forefinger, thinking about how he and the Joerlys used to make up adventures in the ruins along Mercy's Creek when they were children. Often as not one of them would achieve some glorious death as part of the game. The explorer would boldly drink from the poisoned cup to free her comrades, the pirate captain would be run through defending his treasure, the queen of skantlings would throw down her heartstone rather than betray the castle. And then he or Vic or Comfort would stumble dramatically to the forest floor and sprawl there, cheek pressed against leaf litter, as still as scattered stones. The others would pause briefly over the body and then dash into the woods, so that the fallen hero could be reincarnated and the game could go on.
'I want to go home,' he said, at last.
The End
