That's all there is to it. Some security system! Some guardian!

Hissune finds himself alone with the memory-readings of everyone who has ever lived on Majipoor.

Almost everyone, at any rate. Doubtless billions of people have lived and died without bothering to make capsules of their lives. But one is allowed every ten years, beginning at the age of twenty, to contribute to these vaults, and Hissune knows that although the capsules are minute, the merest flecks of data, there are miles and miles of them in the storage levels of the Labyrinth. He puts his hands to the controls. His fingers tremble.

Where to begin?

He wants to know everything. He wants to trek across the forests of Zimroel with the first explorers, he wants to drive back the Metamorphs, to sail the Great Sea, to slaughter sea-dragons off the Rodamaunt Archipelago, to — to — to — he shakes with the frenzy of yearning. Where to begin? He studies the keys before him. He can specify a date, a place, a specific person's identity — but with fourteen thousand years to choose from — no, more like eight or nine thousand, for the records, he knows, go back only to Lord Stiamot's time or a little before — how can he decide on a starting point? For ten minutes he is paralyzed with indecision.

Then he punches at random. Something early, he thinks. The continent of Zimroel; the time of the Coronal Lord Barhold, who had lived even before Stiamot; and the person — why, anyone! Anyone!

A small gleaming capsule appears in the slot.

Quivering in amazement and delight, Hissune plugs it into the playback outlet and dons the helmet. There are crackling sounds in his ears. Vague blurred streaks of blue and green and scarlet cross his eyes behind his closed lids. Is it working? Yes! Yes! He feels the presence of another mind! Someone dead nine thousand years, and that person's mind — her mind, she was a woman, a young woman — flows into Hissune's, until he cannot be sure whether he is Hissune of the Labyrinth or this other, this Thesme of Narabal—