“Oh, my God,” breathed Savi. She slumped back on her high, rough stone. It looked as if she was considering leaping to the foul pool below.

“What?” whispered Daeman on the comm. “What?”

“Caliban did kill the post-humans,” whispered the old woman. She seemed older now in this sewer light. “On this Setebos’ command. Or perhaps Prospero’s. Caliban seems to worship both as gods. Perhaps there is no Setebos, only his worship of the Prospero persona.”

The creature quit snuffling and brightened up, his wide mouth-flap rising. “Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him, nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord.”

“Who is?” asked Savi. “Setebos or Prospero? Whom do you serve, Caliban?”

“Saith He is terrible,” roared Caliban, rising on his hind legs now. “Watch his feats in proof! One hurricane will spoil six good months’ hope. He hath a spite against me, that I know.”

“Who has a spite against you?” asked Harman.

Daeman thought it was insane to try to talk to this insane creature. “Shoot it,” he whispered again to Savi. “Kill the thing.”

Savi raised the gun a little higher but still did not aim it.

“Thinketh, Himself, that the posties brought wormholes, Setebos brought the worms,” said Caliban. “Prospero made maggots into gods, and Setebos made stone into Prosper’s face, and zeks to place him well. My dam said the Quiet made all things which Setebos vexed only, but then, Himself observes, who made them weak when weakness meant weakness He might vex? Had He meant other, while His hand was in, why not make horny eyes, like Caliban’s, which no thorn could prick? Or plate their scalps with bone against the snow, like thus, or overscale their flesh ‘neath joint and joint like an orc’s armor? Aye—spoil His sport! He is the One now: only He doth all.”

“Who is the one?” asked Savi.

Caliban looked as if he was going to weep again. “My blinded beast loves whoso places fleshmeat on his nose. It pleases Setebos thus, to work, use all His hands.”

“Caliban,” Savi said softly, slowly, as if to a child, “we’re tired and want to go home. Can you help us go home?”

The monster’s eyes seemed to focus on something other than his hate and self-hate now. “Aye, Lady, Caliban knows the way and wishes you well. But you and Himself both know His ways and must not play Him off, sure of the issue.”

“Tell us how . . .” began Savi.

“Doth the like himself,” said Caliban, growing more agitated now, crouching on his hind legs, his long forearms hanging down, thorned knuckles scraping moss from pipe. “There is the sport; discover how or die! Please Him and hinder this? What Prosper does? Aha, if He would tell me how! Not He!”

“Caliban, if you take us home, we can . . .” began Savi. She’d raised the gun a bit.

“All need to die,” shouted Caliban, tensing his thighs and scraping his knuckles. “Thinketh, Himself, Prosper brings crafty Odysseus here, but Setebos makes him wander. Prosper sends night cries to Jove in the skies, bringing the hollow men to Mars, but Setebos sets it right with false gods’ rage. There is the sport; discover how or die!”

Caliban hopped to the end of the pipe, girdled the pipe with his legs, swung low, and scooped an albino lizard from the ooze. The lizard’s eyes had been gouged out.

“Savi,” said Harman.

“All need not die, no,” cried Caliban, weeping and gnashing his teeth. “Some flee afar, some dive, some run up trees; those at His mercy—why, they please Him most when . . . when . . . well, never try the same way twice!”

“Shoot it, Savi,” said Daeman loudly, not on the commline, but speaking clearly, his voice echoing in the grotto.

Savi bit her lip but raised the weapon.

“Lo!” cried Caliban. “Lieth flat and loveth Setebos! Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip.”

Caliban released the blind lizard, which leaped for the pond below but struck Savi’s rock on its way to the water.

“Watch His feats in proof!” cried Caliban and leaped.

Savi fired and several hundred barbed, crystal flechettes struck Caliban in the chest, rending flesh like paper. Caliban howled again, landed on Savi’s rock, wrapped the old woman in his impossibly long arms, and bit through her neck with one powerful snap of his jaws. Savi didn’t even have time to scream before she was dead, neck almost severed, body gone limp in the monster’s arms, gun falling from lifeless fingers to the swamp below and disappearing.

Pouring blood himself, Caliban raised his bloodied jaws and yellow eyes to the grotto walls and howled again. Then, carrying Savi’s corpse under one long arm, the monster dived to the bubbling water below and disappeared beneath the scum.

47

Ardis Hall

It was on the morning of Hannah’s First Twenty, after riding with her young friend to the faxnode and watching her be escorted into the pavilion by two servitors and a voynix, that Ada began worrying in earnest.

She’d begun to worry about Harman on the second day after he’d flown away with Daeman and Savi. She didn’t really expect him to come swooping by to pick her up on a spaceship as he’d promised—that was a childish fantasy that she didn’t think even Harman believed in—but she did expect the three of them back with the sonie in two or three days. After four days, her worry turned to anger. After a week, the emotion had resolved itself into worry again—a deeper, more gnawing worry than she’d ever experienced—and she began to have trouble sleeping. After two weeks, Ada didn’t know what to think.

On the fourteenth morning after the trio’s departure, with no word of the three from visiting friends—and hundreds upon hundreds of people were certainly visiting Ardis Hall now—Ada had a voynix take her on the short carriole ride to the faxportal, and after only a minute’s hesitation—what could be harmful about faxing?—she stepped through to Paris Crater and visited Daeman’s mother’s domi there.

The young man’s mother was beside herself with worry. Daeman stayed at parties for weeks sometimes—and had even gone butterfly hunting for a full month when he was one year short of his First Twenty—but he always got word to his mother about where he was and when he would be home. For the past two weeks—nothing.

“I wouldn’t worry,” consoled Ada, patting the older woman’s arm. “Our friend Harman will watch over Daeman, and the woman we met—Savi—will watch over both of them.” Saying that helped Daeman’s mother, but it made Ada more anxious than ever.

Now, two weeks after her visit to Paris Crater, missing Hannah already but knowing that the girl must be safe in the firmary, Ada found herself lost in thought during the carriole ride over the hills to home.

Ardis Hall had been invaded during the last month. Her return from Paris Crater two weeks ago had been at night, so this morning’s ride was the first time in the past four weeks that Ada had actually seen the changes from the high road approaching the manor, and now the sight made her gasp.

Scores of colored tents surrounded the old white estate on the hill. At first, ten and twenty visitors—mostly men—had come to hear Odysseus speak in the great sloping meadow behind the house, but the dozens turned to hundreds, and by now thousands had made the fax trip. Ardis Hall had only a dozen carrioles and droshkies, and these were being worn out—as were the oddly sullen voynix—in transporting the constant stream of visitors between faxnode and house all hours of the day and night, so some of the volunteers from the first days of Odysseus’ teaching took turns staying at the fax portal and urging the constant line of visitors to walk the incredible mile and a quarter to the manor. They did. And they walked back to fax out, returning days or even hours later with more visitors—again mostly men.

Now, as Ada’s droshky rolled to a stop in the crowded circle lane in front of Ardis Hall, she realized that her isolated estate had become merely one part of an expanding city. The score of tents, erected by voynix but now looked after by men and women, included cook tents, eating pavilions, privy tents—Odysseus had showed the men how to dig a latrine away from the other tents—and sleeping tents. Ada’s mother had visited once during this madness, had been overwhelmed by the scores of people wandering into Ardis Hall as if it were a public market, and she’d immediately faxed to her domi in Ulanbat and had not returned.