chunk: In this condition, Tropile wakes, manages to retain his sanity, and wakes the other humans. They eventually merge with one another to form a sophisticated collective mind. The freed Snowflake then spies on the Pyramids, finding that they have been traveling for some two million years, and have collected many species as Components, but seem locked in meaningless rituals surrounding an alien creature at the world's North Pole. They later realize that this is the last survivor of the race that created the Pyramids.
  In the meantime, they have modified the collection process of human Components so that it selects persons known to at least one of the eight people composing the Snowflake (which has become almost as ruthless and inhuman as the alien Pyramids). These humans are intended as 'mice,' disrupters of the planet, and later as an army with which to fight the Pyramids. Roget Germyn is one of them, as is Tropile's wife.