. Maud seemed to be standing it the best; maybe
she'd got a little preparation from the long watches between stars; and
then she is older than all of us, even Sid, though with a small "o" in
"older."

* * * * *

The restless work of the search for the Maintainer had masked the
feeling, but now it was beginning to come full force. Before the search,
Bruce's speech and Erich's interruptions had done a passable masking job
too. I tried to remember when I'd first got the feeling and decided it
was after Erich had jumped on the bomb, about the time he mentioned
poetry. Though I couldn't be sure. Maybe the Maintainer had been
Introverted even earlier, when I'd turned to look at the Ghostgirls. I
wouldn't have known. Nuts!

Believe me, I could feel that hardened cement on every inch of me. I
remembered Bruce's beautiful picture of a universe without Big Change
and decided it was about the worst idea going. I went on eating, though
I wasn't so sure now it was a good idea to keep myself strong.

"Does the Maintainer have an Introversion telltale? Siddy!"

"'Sdeath, chit, and you love me, speak lower. Of a sudden, I feel not
well, as if I'd drunk a butt of Rhenish and slept inside it. Marry yes,
blue. In short flashes, saith the manual. Why ask'st thou?"

"No reason. God, Siddy, what I'd give for a breath of Change Wind."

"Thou can'st say that eftsoons," he groaned. I must have looked pretty
miserable myself, for he put his arm around my shoulders and whispered
gruffly, "Comfort thyself, sweetling, that while we suffer thus sorely,
we yet cannot die the Change Death."

"What's that?" I asked him.

I didn't want to bounce around like the others. I had a suspicion I'd
carry it too far. So, to keep myself from going batty, I started to
rework the business of who had done what to the Maintainer.

During the hunt, there had been some pretty wild suggestions tossed
around as to its disappearance or at least its Introversion: a feat of
Snake science amounting to sorcery; the Spider high command bunkering
the Places from above, perhaps in reaction to the loss of the Express
Room, in such a hurry that they hadn't even time to transmit warnings;
the hand of the Late Cosmicians, those mysterious hypothetical beings
who are supposed to have successfully resisted the extension of the
Change War into the future much beyond Sevensee's epoch--unless the Late
Cosmicians are the ones fighting the Change W