“We have to get out of here soon,” said Harman, rubbing his reddened eyes. “The monster’s beginning to make sense to me.”

“Prospero,” said Daeman, moving his eyes from shadow to shadow in the shadowy forest of softly glowing tanks. “Who or what is this Setebos that Caliban keeps going on about?”

“Caliban’s mother’s god,” said the magus.

“And you said that Caliban’s mother is out there somewhere as well.” Daeman held the gun in one hand and rubbed his eyes with the other. The firmary was all blurry, and only partially because of the drifting steam from the spilled liquid oxygen.

“Yes, Sycorax still lives,” said Prospero. “But not on this isle. No longer on this isle.”

“And this Setebos?” prompted Daeman.

“The enemy of the Quiet,” said Prospero. “Like both his congregation of two, a bitter heart that bides its time and bites.”

Buzzers went off above the console. Harman activated virtual controls. Three more healed humans—almost healed, at least—were faxed away. Thirty-five remained.

“Where’d this Setebos come from?” asked Harman.

“Brought in from the dark with the voynix and other things,” said Prospero. “A minor miscalculation.”

“Is Odysseus one of those other things brought in from the dark?” asked Daeman.

Prospero laughed. “Oh, no. That poor fellow was sent here by a curse, from that crossroads where most of the post-humans have fled. Odysseus is lost in time, made to wander longer by a wicked, wicked lady whom I know as Ceres, but whom Odysseus knew—in every sense—as Circe.”

“I don’t understand,” said Harman. “Savi said she discovered Odysseus only a short time ago, sleeping in one of her cryo couches.”

“That was true,” said Prospero, “but a lie as well. Savi knew of Odysseus’ voyage and where he seeks to go. She used him as surely as he used her.”

“But he is the Achaean from the turin drama?” asked Daeman.

“Yes and no,” said Prospero in his maddening way. “The drama shows a time and tale that’s cleft. This Odysseus is from one of those branchings, yes. He’s not the Odysseus of all the telling, no.”

“You still haven’t told us who Setebos is,” said Harman. His temper was short. Six more humans faxed out of their tanks, finished and healed. Only twenty-nine remained. It was twenty minutes until the time they’d set to make a run for the sonie. The linear accelerator was close enough to see out the window now with no amplification. The wormhole was a sphere of shifting light and dark.

“Setebos is a god whose hallmark is pure, arbitrary power,” said Prospero. “He kills at random. He spares at a whim. He murders vast numbers, but with no pattern or plan. He’s a September eleven god. An Auschwitz god.”

“What?” said Daeman.

“It doesn’t matter,” said the magus.

“’Saith,” hissed Caliban from the darkness down by the cannibal table, “He may like, perchance, what profits Him. Ay, himself loves what does him good; but why? Gets no good otherwise.”

“God damn it!” roared Daeman. “I’m going to find that bastard.” He took the gun and bounced down toward the darkness. Five more human bodies faxed away and their tanks emptied with a whoosh. Twenty-four remaining.

There were bodies on the floor here, bodies on the table, parts of bodies on the chair. Daeman held Savi’s flashlight in his left hand, her gun in his right, his cowl and night lenses in place, but still the darkness through shadows. He watched and waited for movement out of the corner of his eyes.

“Daeman!” called Harman.

“In a minute,” shouted Daeman, waiting, using himself as bait. He wanted Caliban to leap. There were five flechette rounds in the gun right now and he knew from experience that they would fire rapidly if he held the trigger down. He could put five thousand crystal darts into the murdering son of a bitch if . . .

“Daeman!”

He turned back to Harman’s shout. “Do you see Caliban?” he shouted back at the lighted control area.

“No,” said Harman. “Something worse.”

Daeman heard the pressure valves roaring and the soft alarms then. Something was wrong with the tanks.

Harman pointed to various virtual readouts flashing red. “The tanks are draining before the last bodies are healed.”

“Caliban found a way to interrupt the nutrient flow from outside the firmary somewhere,” said Prospero. “These twenty-four men and women are dead.”

“Damn!” roared Harman. He pounded his fist against the wall.

Daeman walked into the tank forest, shining the flashlight into the draining tanks.

“The fluid level’s dropping fast,” he called to Harman.

“We’ll fax them out anyway.”

“You’ll be faxing corpses home with blue worms boiling in their guts,” said Daeman. “We have to get out of here.”

“That’s what Caliban wants,” shouted Harman. Daeman couldn’t see the control console now. He was deep in the rearmost row of tanks, in the dark places where he had been afraid to go before. The gun was heavy in his hand. He continued to shine the light from tank to tank.

Prospero was droning on in his old-man’s voice—

“Shut the fuck up!” shouted Daeman. “Harman, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” said the older man, slumped over the control panel. “We have to go, Daeman. We lost these last twenty-four. There’s nothing we can do.”

“Harman, listen to me!” Daeman was standing in the back row of the tanks, flashlight beam steady. “In this tank . . .”

“Daeman, we have to go! The power’s dying. Caliban is cutting the power.”

As if to prove Harman’s point, the holosphere faded and Prospero winked out of existence. The tank lights went off. The glow of the virtual control panel began fading away.

“Harman!” shouted Daeman from the shadows. “In this tank. It’s Hannah.”

56

The Plains of Ilium

“I have to go find Achilles and Hector,” Mahnmut said to Orphu. “I’m going to have to leave you here on Thicket Ridge.”

“Sure. Why not? Maybe the gods will mistake me for a gray boulder and not drop a bomb on me. But will you do me two favors?”

“Of course.”

“First, keep in tightbeam touch. It gets sort of lonely here in the dark when I don’t know what’s going on. Especially with only a few minutes left before the Device goes off.”

“Sure.”

“Second, tie me down, will you? I like this levitation harness stuff—although I’m damned if I can figure out how it works—but I don’t want the breeze to blow me into the sea again.”

“Already done,” said Mahnmut. “I’ve got you tied to the biggest rock on the leaping Amazon Myrine’s mounded tomb up here on the ridge.”

“Great,” said Orphu. “By the by, do you have any idea who this leaping Amazon Myrine was and why she has a tomb here just outside the walls of Ilium?”

“Not a clue,” said Mahnmut. He left his friend behind and began running on all fours across the plains of Ilium toward the Achaean camp, receiving a few curious stares from the milling Greeks in the process.