Ilium

13 The Dry Valley

In the morning, after a good breakfast prepared by Daeman’s mother’s servitors at her Paris Crater apartments, Ada and Harman and Hannah and Daeman faxed to the site of the last Burning Man.

The faxnode was lighted, of course, but outside the circular pavilion, it was deep night and the wind howl was audible even through the semipermeable forcefield. Harman turned to Daeman. “This was the code I had—twenty-one eighty-six—does it seem right to you?”

“It’s a faxnode pavilion,” whined the younger man. “They all look alike. Plus, it’s dark outside. And it’s empty here now. How am I supposed to tell if it’s the same as some place I visited eighteen months ago, in daylight, with a mob of other people?”

“The code sounds sort of right,” said Hannah. “I was following other people, but I remember that the Burning Man node had a high number, not one I’d ever faxed to before.”

“And you were what?” sneered Daeman. “Seventeen at the time?”

“A little older,” said Hannah. Her voice was cool. Where Daeman was mostly pale flab, Hannah showed tanned muscle. As if recognizing that disparity—even though Daeman had never heard of two human beings physically fighting outside the turin-cloth drama—he took a step backward.

Ada ignored the prickly conversation and walked to the edge of the pavilion, putting her slim fingers against the forcefield. It rippled and bent but did not give way. “This is solid,” she said. “We can’t get out.”

“Nonsense,” said Harman. He joined her and the two pushed and prodded, leaned their weight against the elastic but ultimately unyielding energy shield. It wasn’t semipermeable after all—or at least not to physical objects like human beings.

“I’ve never heard of this,” said Hannah, joining them to put her shoulder against the invisible wall. “What sense does it make to have a forcefield in a fax pavilion?”

“We’re trapped!” said Daeman, eyes rolling. “Like rats.”

“Moron,” said Hannah. The two did not appear to be getting along well today. “You can always fax out. The portal’s right there behind you and it’s still working.”

As if to prove Hannah’s point, two spherical, general-use servitors came through the shimmering faxportal and floated toward the humans.

“This field is keeping us in,” Ada said to the servitors.

“Yes, Ada Uhr,” said one of the machines. “We regret the delay in getting here to help you. This faxnode is . . . rarely used.”

“So what?” said Harman, crossing his arms and scowling at the lead servitor. The other sphere had moved off to float near one of the supply cubbies in the pavilion’s white column. “Since when are faxnodes sealed off?” continued Harman.

“My apologies again, Harman Uhr,” said the servitor in the almost-male voice used by all general-purpose servitors everywhere. “The climate outside is inhospitable in the extreme at this time of year. Were you to venture out without thermskins, your chances of survival would be low.”

The second servitor extracted four thermskins from the cubby and floated past the four humans, offering the less-than-paper-thin molecular suits to each person in turn.

Daeman held the suit in two hands and looked puzzled. “Is this a joke?”

“No,” said Harman. “I’ve worn one before.”

“So have I,” said Hannah.

Daeman unfurled the thermskin. It was like holding smoke. “This won’t fit on over my clothes.”

“It’s not supposed to,” said Harman. “It has to go next to the skin. There’s a hood on it as well, but you’ll be able to see and hear through it.”

“Can we wear our regular clothes over it?” asked Ada. There was a hint of concern in her voice. After her useless exhibitionism the night before, she was not feeling very adventurous. At least not when it came to nudity.

The first servitor answered. “Except for footwear, it is not advisable to wear other layers, Ada Uhr. For the thermskin to be effective, it must be fully osmotic. Other clothes reduce its efficiency.”

“You have to be kidding,” said Daeman.

“We could always fax back home and get our coldest weather clothing,” said Harman. “Although I’m not sure that it would be up to the conditions outside here.” He glanced at the shimmering forcefield wall. The howling wind was still quite audible and frightening beyond it.

“No,” said the second servitor, “standard jackets and coats and capes would not be adequate here in the Dry Valley. We can facture more modest extreme-weather clothing and return with it within the next thirty minutes if you prefer.”

“Hell with it,” said Ada. “I want to see what’s out there.” She walked to the center of the pavilion, behind the faxportal itself, and began disrobing in plain view. Hannah took five steps and joined her, peeling off her tunic and silken balloon trousers.

Daeman goggled a moment. Harman walked over to the younger man, touched his arm, and led him to the far side of the circle, where he began undressing as well. Yet even as he disrobed, Daeman glanced over his shoulder several times at the women—Ada’s skin glowing rich and full in the light from the overhead halogens; Hannah lean and strong and brown. Hannah glanced up from tugging the thermskin up her legs and scowled at Daeman. He looked away quickly.

When the four stood in the center of the pavilion again, wearing only their shoes or boots over the thermskins, Ada laughed. “These things are more revealing than if we were naked,” she said.

Daeman shuffled with embarrassment at the truth of the statement, but Harman smiled through his mask. The thermskin was more paint than clothing.

“Why are we different colors?” asked Daeman. Ada was bright yellow, Hannah orange, Harman a brilliant blue, Daeman green.

“To identify each other easily,” answered the servitor as if the question had been directed to it.

Ada laughed again—that free, easy, unselfconscious laugh that made both of the men glance at her. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that . . . it’s pretty obvious, even from a distance, which of us is which.”

Harman walked to the forcefield and set his blue hand against it. “Can we pass now?” he asked the servitors.

The machines did not answer, but the force shield wavered slightly, Harman’s hand passed through it, and then his blue body appeared to be moving through a silver waterfall as he stepped through.

The servitors followed the four into the windy darkness.

“We don’t need your escort,” Harman said to the machines. Daeman noticed that the other man’s voice was lost in the wind, but he could hear clearly through the thermskin cowl. There was some sort of transmission device and earphones in the molecular suit.

“I apologize, Harman Uhr,” said the first servitor, “but you do. For the light. “ Both servitors were illuminating the rough ground with multiple flashlight beams from their shells.

Harman shook his head. “I’ve used these thermskins before, in the high mountains and far north. They have light-enhancement devices in the cowl lenses.” He touched his temple, feeling around for a second. “There. I can see perfectly well now. The stars are brilliant.”

“Oh, my,” said Ada as her night vision switched on. Rather than the small circles of light afforded by the servitors’ flashbeams, the entire Dry Valley was now visible, each rock and boulder glowing brightly. When she looked up, the blazing stars took her breath away. When she turned her head, the lighted faxnode pavilion was a glowing, roaring furnace of light. Their thermskins glowed in color.

“This is so . . . wonderful,” said Hannah. She walked twenty paces away from the group, jumping from rock to rock. They were at the bottom of a wide, rocky valley, with gradual cliffs on either side. Above them, snowfields glowed bright blue-white in the starlight, but the valley itself was all but free from snow. Clouds moved in front of the stars like phosphorescent sheep. The wind howled around them, buffeting them even when they stood still.

“I’m cold,” said Daeman. The pudgy young man was shifting from foot to foot. He had worn only walking slippers.

“You may return to the pavilion and leave us,” Harman said to the servitors.

“With all due respect, Harman Uhr, our person-protection programming does not allow us to leave you here alone to run the risk of injury or getting lost in the Dry Valley,” said one of the servitors. “But we shall retreat a hundred yards, if that is your preference.”

“That’s our preference,” said Harman. “And turn off those damned lights. They’re too bright in our night-vision lenses.”

Both servitors complied, floating back toward the faxnode pavilion. Hannah led them across the valley. There were no trees, no grass, no signs of life whatsoever, outside of the four human beings glowing in bright color.

“What are we hunting for?” asked Hannah, stepping over what might have been a small stream in summer—if, indeed, summer ever came to this place.

“Is this the site of the Burning Man?” asked Harman.

Daeman and Hannah both looked around. Finally Daeman spoke. “It could be. But there were—you know—tents and pavilions and rest rooms and flowdomes and the forcefield over the valley and big heaters and the Burning Man and daylight and . . . it was different then. Not so cold .” He hopped gingerly from foot to foot.

“Hannah?” said Daeman.

“I’m not sure. That place was also rocky and desolate, but . . . Daeman’s right, it looked different with the thousands of people and sunlight. I don’t know.”

Ada took the lead. “Let’s fan out and hunt for some sign that the Burning Man was held here . . . campfires, rock cairns . . . something. Although I don’t think we’ll find your Wandering Jew person here tonight, Harman.”

“Shhh,” said Harman, glancing over his blue shoulder at the distant servitors, then realizing that they were broadcasting their conversation anyway. “All right,” he said with a sigh, “let’s spread out, say a couple of hundred feet apart, and look for anything that . . .”

He stopped as a large, only vaguely humanoid shape appeared from a side canyon. The creature picked its way across the rocks with a familiar awkward grace. When it got within thirty feet, Harman said, “Go back. We don’t need a voynix here.”

One of the servitors answered, its voice in their ears even though the sphere itself floated far behind them. “We must insist, my gentlemen and ladies. This is the most remote and hostile of all known faxnodes. We cannot risk the small chance that something here could harm you.”

“Are there dinosaurs?” asked Daeman, his voice on edge.

Ada laughed again and opened her arms and hands to the dark and howling cold. “I doubt it, Daeman. They’d have to be some tough recombinant winter breed I’ve never heard of.”

“Anything’s possible,” Hannah said, pointing to a large rock near the entrance to another side canyon about fifty yards to their right. “That could be an allosaurus right there, just waiting for us.”

Daeman took a step back and almost tripped over a rock.

“There aren’t any dinosaurs here,” said Harman. “I don’t think there’s any living thing here. It’s too damned cold. If you doubt me, lift your cowls for a second.”

The others did. The molecular earphones rang with their exclamations.

“You stay back unless called,” Harman directed the voynix. The creature moved back thirty paces.

They walked up the valley—northwest according to their palm direction finders. The stars shook from the force of the wind and occasionally all four of them would have to huddle in the shelter of a large boulder to keep from getting blown over. When the gale lessened in intensity, they spread out again.

“There’s something here,” came Ada’s voice.

The others hurried to join the yellow form a hundred feet to their south. Ada was looking down at what at first appeared to be just another rock, but as Daeman got closer, he saw the brittle hair or fur, the odd flipper appendages, and the black holes or eyes. The thing appeared to be carved from weathered wood.

“It’s a seal,” said Harman.

“What’s that?” asked Hannah, kneeling to touch the still figure.

“An aquatic mammal. I’ve seen them near coastlines . . . away from faxnodes.” He also knelt and touched the animal’s corpse. “This thing’s dried out . . . mummified is the word. It may have been here for centuries. Millennia.”

“So we’re near a coast,” said Ada.

“Not necessarily,” said Harman, standing and looking around.

“Hey,” said Daeman, “I remember that big boulder. The beer pavilion was pitched just below it.” He made his way slowly to the boulder near the cliff wall.

“Are you sure?” asked Ada when they’d caught up. There was only the rock slab rising toward the coldly burning stars and hurrying clouds. Everyone looked on the ground for signs of the tent or campfires or carriole tracks, but there was nothing.

“It was a year and a half ago,” said Harman. “The servitors probably cleaned up well and . . .”

“Oh, my God,” interrupted Hannah.

They all turned quickly. The orange-suited young woman was looking skyward. They lifted their heads, even as they each noticed the play of colored light on the rocks around them.

The night sky was alive with curtains of shimmering, dancing light—bars of blues and yellows and dancing reds.

“What is it?” whispered Ada.

“I don’t know,” Harman responded, also whispering. The light continued to writhe across the uncloudy portions of the sky. Harman lifted off his thermskin cowl. “My God, it’s almost as brilliant without the night-vision. I think I saw something like this once decades ago when I was . . .”

“Servitors,” interrupted Daeman, “what is this light?”

“A form of atmospheric phenomenon associated with charged particles from the sun interacting with Earth’s electromagnetic field,” came the voice from the distant machine. “We no longer have the particulars of the scientific explanation, but it goes under different names, including . . .”

“All right,” said Harman. “That’s enough . . . hey.” He had pulled on his cowl again and was looking at the rock slab in front of them.

There were complex scratchings on the rock. They did not look as if they had been made by the wind or other natural causes.

“What is it?” asked Ada. “It doesn’t look like the symbols in the books.”

“No,” agreed Harman.

“Something from the Burning Man?” said Hannah.

“I don’t remember scratches on the rock near the beer tent,” said Daeman. “But maybe the servitors scratched up the surface moving some of the stuff out after the celebration.”

“Perhaps,” said Harman.

“Should we keep hunting around here?” asked Ada. “Try to find some sign that this woman you’re after was here? Or even that the Burning Man was here? Maybe there are some ashes left.”

“In this wind?” laughed Daeman. “After a year and a half?”

“A pit,” said Ada. “A campfire. We could . . .”

“No,” said Harman. “We’re not going to find anything here. Let’s fax somewhere warm and get some lunch.”

Ada turned her yellow head to look at Harman, but she said nothing.

The two servitors had floated toward them and the voynix loomed just behind them.

“We’re going,” Harman told the closer servitor. “You can use your flashlight beams to illuminate our way back to the fax pavilion.”

It was just after midday in Ulanbat and the usual hundred or so guests were milling at Tobi’s ongoing Second Twenty party on the seventy-ninth floor of the Circles to Heaven. The hanging gardens rustled and sighed from the breeze blowing off the red desert. Daeman was greeted by a host of young men and women who had not noticed his absence over the past few days, but he followed Harman, Hannah, and Ada as they found hot finger food at the long banquet table and had cold wine poured by a servitor. Harman led them away from the crowd to a stone table near the low wall at the edge of the circle. Eight hundred feet below, camel caravans driven by servitors and followed by voynix padded in on the hard-packed Gobi Highway.

“What is it?” said Ada as they sat in the garden shade and ate. “I know something happened back there.”

Harman started to speak, paused, and waited for a servitor to float past. “Do you ever wonder,” he asked, “if that utility servitor is the same one you just saw somewhere else? They all look alike.”

“That’s absurd,” said Daeman. Between bites on a chicken leg, he was licking his fingers and sipping his chilled wine.

“Perhaps,” said Harman.

“What did you see back there in the dark?” asked Hannah. “Those scratches on the rock?”

“They were numbers,” said Harman.

Daeman laughed. “No they weren’t. I know numbers. We all know numbers. Those weren’t numbers.”

“They were numbers written out in words.”

“It didn’t look like the jiggles in books,” said Ada. “Words.”

“No,” said Harman. “I think was the kind of writing people used to do by hand. The words were all loopy and connected and worn down some by the wind—I suspect that they were written there way back at the last Burning Man—but I could read them.”

“Words,” laughed Daeman. “A minute ago you said they were numbers.”

“What did they say?” asked Hannah.

Harman looked around him again. “Eight-eight-four-nine,” he said softly.

Ada shook her head. “It sounds like a faxnode code, but it’s way too high. I’ve never heard of a code that started with two eights.”

“There aren’t any,” said Daeman.

Harman shrugged. “Maybe. But when we’re done here, I’m going to try it out at the core node here.”

Ada looked out at the distant horizon. The rings were visible above them, two milky strings crossing in a pale blue sky. “Is that why you kept the four thermskins rather than throwing them in the disposal bin as the servitors told us to do?”

“I didn’t know you noticed that I did,” said Harman. He grinned and drank wine. “I tried to do it on the sly. I guess I’m not very good at secrets. At least the servitors had already faxed away.”

As if on cue, a servitor floated over to replenish their drinks. The little spherical machine floated beyond the wall—eight hundred feet above the red-yellow ground—as its dainty, white-gloved hands poured wine into their glasses.

If Harman hadn’t insisted they change into their thermskins and wear them under their clothes before faxing, they might have died.

“Good God,” cried Daeman, “where are we? What’s going on?”

There was no faxnode pavilion. Code 8849 had brought them straight into darkness and chaos. Wind howled. There was ice underfoot. The four crashed into sharp things with every step they took in the screaming blackness. Even the faxportal had disappeared behind them.

“Ada!” called Harman. “The light!” Their hoods provided night vision, but none of them had their hoods up at the moment and there seemed to be no ambient light to magnify in this absolute blackness.

“I’m trying to get it on . . . there!” The small flashlight she’d borrowed from Tobi poured a thin beam into the night, illuminating an open door rimmed with frost, icicles three feet long, frozen waves of ice under foot. Ada swung the light and three thermskinned faces stared back at her, surprise clearly visible on each face.

“There’s no pavilion,” Harman said aloud.

“Every faxnode has a pavilion,” said Daeman. “There can’t be a portal without a node pavilion. Right?”

“Not in the old days,” said Harman. “There were thousands of private nodes.”

“What’s he talking about?” shouted Daeman. “Let’s get out of here!”

Ada had swung the light back into the space they’d faxed into. There was no portal. They were in a small room with shelves and counters and walls, all covered with ice. Unlike all fax pavilions, there was no faxnode code-plate pedestal in the center of the room. And that meant there was no way out, no way back. A million flakes of ice danced in the flashlight beam. Beyond the walls, the wind howled.

“Daeman, what you said earlier seems to be true now,” said Harman.

“What? What did I say earlier?”

“That we’re trapped. Trapped like rats.”

Daeman blinked and the flashlight beam moved on to the frosted walls. The wind howled more loudly.

“It sounds like the wind in the Dry Valley,” said Hannah. “But there were no buildings there. Were there?”

“I don’t think so,” said Harman. “But I suspect we’re still in Antarctica.”

“Where?” said Daeman, his teeth chattering. “What’s ant . . . antattica?”

“The cold place we were at this morning,” said Ada. She stepped through the doorway, leaving the others in darkness for a moment. They scrambled to catch up and huddled behind her like goslings. “There’s a hallway here,” said Ada. “Watch your step. The floor is under a foot of ice and snow.”

The frozen hallway led to a frozen kitchen, the frozen kitchen opened onto a frozen living room with overturned couches drifted with snow. Ada ran her flashlight beam across a wall of windows triple-glazed with ice.

“I think I know where we are,” whispered Harman.

“Never mind that,” said Hannah. “How do we get out?”

“Wait,” said Ada, lowering the flashlight beam to the icy floor so that everyone’s faces were illuminated by the bounce light from below. “I want to know where you think we are.”

“According to the story I’ve heard, the woman I’m hunting for—the Wandering Jew—had a home, a domi, on Mount Erberus, a volcano in Antarctica.”

“In the Dry Valley?” asked Daeman. The young man kept glancing over his shoulders at the darkness behind him. “God, I’m freezing .”

Hannah moved so quickly over the ice toward Daeman that he staggered back and almost slipped. “Silly, you have to put your thermskin hood on,” she said. “We all do. We’re going to get frostbite if we don’t. Plus, we’re losing a lot of body heat through our scalp right now.” She pulled the green cowl of the thermskin free of his shirt and tugged the hood into place over his head.

Everyone hurried to follow suit.

“That’s better,” said Harman. “I can see now. And hear better as well—the suit earphones damp out the wind howl.”

“You were saying before that this woman had a place on a volcano—near the Dry Valley? Close enough for us to walk to the fax pavilion there?”

Harman gestured helplessly. “I don’t know. I’d wondered if that’s how she had shown up at the Burning Man—just walked there—but I don’t know the geography. It might be one mile or a thousand miles from here.”

Daeman looked at the black, iced windows where the wind flexed the shatterproof panes. “I’m not going out there,” he said flatly. “Not for any reason.”

“For once I agree with Daeman,” said Hannah.

“I don’t understand any of this,” said Ada. “You said that this woman lived here long ago—lifetimes ago—centuries and centuries. How could she . . .”

“I don’t know,” said Harman. He borrowed the flashlight from Ada and started walking down the next hallway. He was stopped by what looked to be white bars. While the others watched, he went back into the drifted living room, picked up the heaviest piece of furniture he could pry free of the ice—a heavy table, the legs snapping off as he tugged it free—and walked back to smash the icicles one after the other, battering a path down the snow-filled hallway.

“Where are you going?” called Daeman. “What good is it going to do to go down there. No one’s been there for a million years. We’re just going to freeze when . . .”

Harman kicked open a door at the end of the hallway. Light poured out. So did heat. The other three moved as quickly as they could across the treacherous surface to join him.

Much like the room they had faxed into, this space was windowless and about twenty feet square. But unlike the other room, this one was warm, lighted, and free of snow or ice. And unlike the other room, this one was almost filled with an oval metal machine about fifteen feet long. The thing was floating silently three feet off the concrete floor, and a forcefield shimmered like a glass canopy over its top surface. On that surface were six indentations with a soft black material lining them; each indentation was the length of a human body with two short grips or controllers near where the hands would be.

“It looks like someone was expecting two more of us,” whispered Hannah.

“What is it?” said Daeman.

“I think it’s a sonie . . . also called an AFV,” said Harman, his own voice hushed.

“What?” said Daeman. “What do those words mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Harman. “But people in the lost ages used to fly around in them.” He touched the forcefield; it parted like quicksilver under his fingers, flowed around his hand, swallowed his wrist.

“Careful!” said Ada, but Harman had already lowered himself first onto his knees and then onto his stomach, then prone and settling into the black material. His head and back rose just slightly above the curved upper surface of the machine.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Comfortable. And warm.”

That settled it for the others. Ada was the first to crawl onto the craft, stretching out on her stomach and grasping the two handgrips. “Are these controls of some sort?”

“I have no idea,” said Harman as Hannah and Daeman crawled onto the disk and settled into the outer impressions, leaving the two rear-center depressions empty.

“You don’t know how to fly the thing?” asked Ada, a bit more shrilly this time. “From the books? From your reading?”

Harman just shook his head.

“Then what are we doing on it?” said Ada.

“Experimenting.” Harman twisted the top off his right handgrip. There was a single red button there. He pressed it.

The wall ahead of them disappeared as if it had been blown out into the antarctic night. Cold wind and flying snow swept around them in a blinding implosion, as if the air in the room had been sucked out and the storm pulled back in in its place.

Harman opened his mouth to say “Hang on!” but before he could speak, the sonie leaped out of the room at an impossible velocity, pressing the bottoms of their boots back against metal and making them each cling wildly to the handgrips.

The forcefield bubble over their heads kept them alive as the sonie, the AFV, the thing, flew out from the white volcano with its ice-crusted and shattered buildings clinging to its seaward side. The night-vision lenses in their thermskin hoods showed them the fir forest along the coast gone back to ice and death, the abandoned and drifted-over robotic equipment along the curve of a bay, and then the white sea—the frozen sea.

The sonie leveled off about a thousand feet above that frozen sea and hurtled out away from land.

Harman released one of the handgrips long enough to activate the direction finder on his palm. “Northeast,” he said to the others over their suit comms.

No one replied. Everyone was clinging and shaking too fiercely to comment on the direction the machine was headed while taking them to their deaths.

What Harman did not say aloud was that if the old maps he had studied were accurate, there was nothing out this direction for thousands of miles. Nothing.

Ten minutes of flight and the sonie began losing altitude. They had passed beyond the ice and now were flying over black water scattered with icebergs.

“What’s happening?” said Ada. She hated the quaver in her own voice. “Is this thing out of energy . . . fuel . . . whatever it uses?”

“I don’t know,” said Harman.

The sonie leveled off a mere hundred feet above the water. “Look,” called Hannah. She raised a hand from its grip to point ahead of them.

Suddenly the back of something huge, alive, barnacled with age, flesh corrugated-tough, broke the cold sea, its mammal heat radiating like throbbing blood in their night-vision-enhanced sight. A spout of water shot high toward them and Harman smelled fish on the fresh air that the forcefield allowed through.

“What . . .” began Daeman.

“I think it’s called . . . a whale, I think that’s how to pronounce it . . . but I thought it was extinct millennia ago,” said Harman.

“Maybe the post-humans brought it back,” Ada said over their suit intercoms.

“Maybe.”

They hurtled farther out to sea, always east-northeast, and after a few more minutes of the sonie holding its altitude, the four passengers began relaxing a bit, adapting, as humans have done since time immemorial, to a strange new situation. Harman had rolled on his side and was looking up at the brilliant stars becoming visible between scattered clouds when Ada startled him by shouting, “Look! Ahead!”

A large iceberg had become visible over the dark horizon and the sonie was hurtling straight toward it. The machine had flown over or past other icebergs, but none this broad—it stretched sideways for miles like a gleaming blue-white wall in their night vision—and none this tall—it was apparent that the top of the monstrous thing was higher than their current altitude.

“What can we do?” asked Ada.

Harman shook his head. He had no idea how fast the sonie was going—none of them had ever traveled faster than a voynix-pulled droshky—but it was fast enough, he knew, that the impact would destroy them.

“Do you have other controls on your handgrip?” asked Hannah. Her voice was strangely calm.

“No,” said Harman.

“We could jump,” said Daeman from behind and to the left of Harman. The sonie tilted a bit as Daeman got to his knees and elbows, his head just within the forcefield bubble.

“No,” said Harman, putting the force of command in the syllable. “You wouldn’t last thirty seconds in that sea, even if you survived the fall . . . which you wouldn’t. Get down.”

Daeman dropped to his belly again.

The sonie did not slow or change course. The face of the iceberg—Harman guessed that the thing was at least two miles across—rushed at them and grew taller. Harman estimated that it rose at least three hundred feet above the water. They would strike it two-thirds of the way down its cold face.

“There’s nothing we can do?” said Ada, making it more a statement than a question.

Harman pulled his hood off and looked at her. The cold air was not so bad within their forcefield cockpit. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He reached across with his right hand to take her left hand. She swept her thermskin hood off to show him her eyes. She and Harman interlaced fingers for a few seconds.

A few hundred yards before fiery collision, the sonie slowed again and gained altitude. It whisked over the top edge of the iceberg with ten feet to spare and banked to the right until it was flying south above the icy surface. It slowed more, hovered, and settled onto the surface, snow hissing under its heated underside.

Harman and the others lay where they were for a silent moment, hanging on to the handgrips, not sharing their thoughts.

The forcefield bubble disappeared and suddenly the terrible cold and wind burned at Harman’s face. He pulled his hood down in a hurry, glancing at Ada as she did the same.

“We should get off this thing before it decides to take us somewhere else,” Hannah said softly on the comm.

They scrambled off. The wind shoved them off balance, relented, shoved at them again. Spindrift pelted their outer clothing and hoods.

“What now?” whispered Ada.

As if in answer, a double row of red infrared beacons winked on, outlining a ten-foot-wide path from the sonie for a hundred yards to . . . nothing.

They walked together, holding each other upright in the wind. If the beacon lights had not burned so brightly in their night vision, they would have turned their backs to the wind and been lost in seconds—lost until they stepped off the edge of the iceberg somewhere to their right.

The path ended in a hole in the iceberg’s surface. Steps had been hacked out of the ice and disappeared toward another red glow far below.

“Shall we?” said Hannah.

“What choice do we have?” asked Daeman.

The steps were slippery under their street boots, but some sort of climbing rope had been attached to the right wall with metal spikes and loops, and the four clung to the line while descending. Harman had counted forty steps when the stairway ended in a wall of ice. No, the steps continued to their right and down—fifty steps this time—then left and down again for fifty more, the whole descent illuminated by spaced infrared cold-flares set into the ice.

At the bottom of the steps, a corridor led deep into the iceberg, the way illuminated now by green and blue cold-flares as well as red. At places they came to junctions, but one choice was always dark, the other illuminated. Once they climbed along a slowly ascending corridor; another time they descended for a hundred feet or more. The bends and junctions and choices became too labyrinthine to keep track.

“Someone’s expecting us,” whispered Hannah.

“I’m counting on it,” said Ada.

They emerged into a broad hall, perhaps a hundred feet across at the widest, the ice ceiling thirty feet above, various other entrances dotting the walls and connected by ice stairways, the floor graded to different levels. Heaters on pedestals glowed orange and there were a variety of light sources spiked into the walls, floors, and ceilings. On one of the low platforms lay what looked to be furry animal hides, cushions, and a low table with bowls of food and pitchers and goblets of drink. The four gathered around the table but looked dubiously at its contents.

“It’s all right,” said a woman’s voice behind them. “It’s not poisoned.”

She had emerged from a high ice door near the platform and now she descended a zigzag of stairs toward them. Harman had time to notice the woman’s hair—gray-white, an almost unheard-of choice except for a few eccentrics—and her face: lined with wrinkles just as Daeman had said. This woman was old in a way none of them—except for Daeman at the last Burning Man—had ever seen, and the effect unsettled even Harman with his ninety and nine years.

Other than the obvious age, the woman was attractive enough. Her stride was strong and she wore a commonplace blue tunic top, cord trousers, and solid boots, the one dash of eccentricity being the red wool cape over her shoulders. The cape’s cut was complicated, never quite resolving itself into simple folds. As she stepped onto the platform a few feet from them, Harman noticed the dark metal object in her right hand.

As if noticing the device for the first time herself, she raised it toward them. “Do any of you know what this is?”

“No,” said Daeman, Ada, and Hannah in a soft chorus.

“Yes,” said Harman. “It’s some sort of Lost Age weapon.”

The other three looked at him. They had seen weapons in the turin-cloth drama—swords, spears, shields, bows and arrows—but nothing so machinelike as this blunt black thing.

“Correct,” said the woman. “This is called a gun and it only does one thing—it kills.”

Daeman took a step toward the old woman. “Are you going to kill us? Did you bring us all this way to kill us?”

The old woman smiled and set the weapon on the table, next to a bowl of oranges. “Hello, Daeman,” she said. “It’s nice to see you again, although I’m not sure you’d remember me from our last meeting. You were in a pretty advanced state of inebriation.”

“I remember you, Savi,” said Daeman, his tone cool.

“And all of you,” continued the old woman, “Hannah, Ada, Harman . . . welcome. You were very persistent in following clues, Harman.” She sat on the furs, gestured, and one after the other, the four sat around the low table with her. Savi picked up an orange, offered it, and began peeling it with a sharp fingernail when the others declined.

“We haven’t met,” said Harman. “How do you know my name . . . our names?”

“You’ve left quite a wake behind you—what is your people’s honorific these days? Harman Uhr .”

“Wake?”

“Hiking far from faxnodes so the voynix have to follow you. Learning to read. Seeking out the few remaining libraries in the world . . . including Ada Uhr’s.” She nodded in Ada’s direction and the young woman nodded in return.

“How do you know that voynix followed me anywhere?” asked Harman.

“The voynix monitor anyone unusual,” said Savi. She separated the orange into segments, put two segments on four linen cloths, and offered them around. All four accepted them this time. “I monitor you,” she finished, looking at Harman.

“Why?” Harman looked at the slices and set the cloth down on the table. “Why spy on me? And how?”

“Two different questions, my young friend.”

Harman had to smile at this. No one who knew him had called him young in a very long time. “Then answer the first,” he said. “Why spy on me?”

Savi finished the second slice of orange and licked her fingers. Harman noticed Ada studying the older woman with fascination, looking at her wrinkled fingers and age-mottled hands. If Savi noticed the inspection, she ignored it. “Harman . . . may I drop the Uhr?” She did not wait for an answer, but went on, “Harman, right now you are the only human being on Earth, out of a population of more than three hundred thousand souls . . . the only human being other than me . . . who can read a written language. Or who wants to.”

“But . . .” began Harman.

“Three hundred thousand people?” interrupted Hannah. “There are a million of us. There have always been a million of us.”

Savi smiled but shook her head. “My dear, who told you that there a million living human beings on the Earth today?”

“Why . . . no one . . . I mean, everyone knows . . .”

“Precisely,” said Savi. “Everyone knows. But there is no mechanism to count the population.”

“But when someone ascends to the rings . . .” continued Hannah, showing her confusion.

“Another child is allowed to be born,” finished Savi. “Yes. So I have noticed during the last millennium or so. But there is no population of a million of you. Far fewer.”

“Why would the posts lie to us?” asked Daeman.

Savi raised one eyebrow. “The posts. Ah, yes . . . the posts. Have you spoken to a post-human recently, Daeman Uhr?”

Daeman must have considered that question rhetorical; he did not answer.

“I have spoken to post-humans,” Savi said quietly.

This carried the others into silence. They waited silently. Such an idea was—at least to Harman and Ada—literally breathtaking.

“But that was a long time ago,” the old woman said, speaking so softly that the other leaned closer to hear. “A long, long time ago. Before the final fax.” Her eyes, a startling gray-blue a second before, now looked clouded, distracted.

Harman shook his head. “I was the one who heard the story about you—the Wandering Jew, the last of your Lost Age—but I don’t understand. How can you live beyond your Fifth Twenty?”

Ada blinked at Harman’s rudeness, but Savi did not seem to mind. “First of all, this hundred-year life span is a relatively recent addition to humankind, my dears. It is something the posts came up with only after the final fax. Only after they botched everything—our future, the Earth’s future—in that disastrous final fax. Only centuries after my nine thousand one hundred and thirteen post-rubicon fellow humans were faxed into the neutrino stream—never to be returned, although the posts promised them they would be—only after that . . . genocide . . . did your precious post-humans rebuild the core population of your ancestors and come up with this idea of one hundred years and a theoretical herd population of a million people . . .”

Savi stopped and took a breath. She was obviously agitated. She took another breath and gestured to the pitchers on the table. “I have tea here, if you are interested. Or a very strong wine. I am going to take some wine.” She did so, pouring with slightly shaking hands. She gestured to their goblets. Daeman shook his head. Hannah and Ada took tea. Harman accepted a goblet of red wine.

“Harman,” she began again, more composed now, “you asked two questions before I digressed from my answer. First, why have I noticed you. Second, how have I survived for so long.

“The answer to your first question is that I am interested in what the voynix are interested in and alarmed by, and they are interested in and alarmed by your behavior over the past decades . . .”

“But why would the voynix notice or care about me . . . “ began Harman.

Savi held up one finger. “To your second question, I can say that I stay alive over these past centuries by sleeping much of the time and by hiding when I am awake. When I move, it is either by sonie—you enjoyed a ride in one today—or through walking, hiking between the faxnode pavilions.”

“I don’t understand,” said Ada. “How can you hike between faxnodes?”

Savi stood. The others stood with her. “I understand it’s been a busy day for you, my young friends, but much lies ahead if you choose to follow me. If not, the sonie will return you to the nearest faxnode pavilion . . . in what used to be Africa, I believe. It is your choice.” She looked at Daeman. “Each of you must choose.”

Hannah drank the last of her tea and set the goblet down. “And what are you going to show us if we follow you, Savi Uhr?”

“Many things, my child. But first of all, I will show you how to fly and to visit places you’ve never heard of . . . places you’ve never dreamt of.”

The four looked at each other. Harman and Ada nodded to each other, agreeing that they would follow the woman. Hannah said, “Yes, count me in.”

Daeman seemed to be pondering the choice for a silent moment. Then he said, “I’ll go. But before I go, I want some of that strong wine after all.”

Savi filled his goblet.