At the traveler's camp, Ace joins Jan and the others in the virtual reality realm, known as Puterspace, where the travelers have constructed their own area called the Great Wheel. Jan is greeted by the archetypical god of universal jokes, The Trickster, who torments Jan with a goblet. Jan tells Ace that he once stole such a goblet from the Church of the Vacuum. Jan doesn't agree with their concepts of sacrifice, because long ago when he and Christopher were drafted, they volunteered for experimental drug trials, but Jan lost his nerve at the last moment and Christopher took his for him, with the result that he gained psychic abilities and lost his gender. As the travelers gather at the Wheel, Roisa tells them all that she plans to leave the group, but before she can explain a creature breaks into the Wheel. Christopher holds it off while the others escape, but his body is killed in the process.