Up the Walls of the World

Chapter 20

In each mind, what happens then strikes differently.

The dying senses of Ted Yost hear a woman’s scream that ends in dark laughter, and feels salt spray sting his face.

Giadoc of Tyree, fainting into death, hears his cry echoed and amplified a millionfold, and knows that he has reached.

The sentience that had been born in the electronic artifacts of a minor planet succeeds at last in gaining access to the full circuitry of its new home.

The mind that had been Margaret Omali feels itself racked upon unearthly dimensions of experience, expanded to unhuman potency.

And the great being who for so long had drifted half-alive comes to full function around them.

A huge newborn voice speaks silently and with joyful wonder:

YES. NOW I UNDERSTAND.