For her return to the Hunter house, the Witness supplies Neith with a brace of strapping young fellows whose very willingness makes her feel older than she is. Donovan, the taller one, takes his cues entirely from her—so much so that by the time they get out of their car she is beginning to find him eerily familiar. He is one of those people who automatically fall into the pattern of speech of anyone they are trying to impress, so that his natural ambit, generationally removed from hers by a distance of ten years or more, gives way to the more formal structures she learned when she was at school. The short one, Baskin, is a workhorse in mind and body. His aptitude scores are very high, hampered only by a lack of non-linear invention. Contrary to popular belief, creativity is a habit that can be learned; no doubt some tertiary selectional weighting factored into his being picked for this duty, the hope that a few hours with Neith on a difficult case might affect his thinking.