It will end, Childan thought. Someday. The very idea of place. Not governed and governing, but people. - Philip K. Dick

No rational response was possible. Her irrationality made it so. The terrible power, he thought, of illogic.

The chamber was an inferno of energy. The figure had completely disappeared. Wisdom waited a moment, then nodded to the technicians operating the cube. They touched guide buttons and the muzzles slowed and died. Some sank back into the cube. All became silent. The works of the cube ceased humming. Cris Johnson was still alive. He emerged from the settling clouds of ash, blackened and singed. But unhurt. He had avoided each beam. He had weaved between them and among them as they came, a dancer leaping over glittering sword-points of pink fire. He had survived.

So that’s that, Barney said to himself. I violated Rule One of career-oriented functioning: never tell your superior something he doesn’t want to hear.