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.

14

Low Mars Orbit

Mahnmut reset his systems and did a quick damage assessment. Nothing disabling to either his organic or cybernetic components. The explosion had caused rapid depressurization of three forward ballast tanks, but twelve remained intact. He checked internal clocks; he had been unconscious for less than thirty seconds before reset and he was still connected virtually to his submersible across the usual bandwidths. The Dark Lady was reporting wild tumbling, some minor hull breach, monitoring-system overloads, hull temperatures above boiling, and a score of other complaints, but there was nothing that demanded Mahnmut’s immediate attention. He rebooted video connections, but all he could see was the red-hot glowing interior of the spacecraft’s hold, the open bay doors, and—through those doors—tumbling starfields.

Orphu?

There was no response on the common band or on any of the tightbeam or maser channels. Not even static.

The airlock was still open. Mahnmut grabbed a personal reaction pack and coils of unbreakable microfilament rope and pulled himself out the airlock doors, fighting the vector forces of the tumbling by grabbing handholds he knew from decades of deep-sea work. On his own hull, he checked that the sub’s payload-bay doors were fully opened, estimated how much room he would need, and then grabbed some of Koros’s carefully folded machines at random and jetted them out of his sub, out of the disintegrating spacecraft, tumbling away through the blobs of molten ship metal and glowing plasma. Mahnmut didn’t know if he was jettisoning the weapons of mass destruction that Koros had been planning to bring to the surface—on my ship! thought Mahnmut with the same outrage he’d felt earlier—or if he was jettisoning gear that he would need for survival if he ever reached Mars. At that moment, he didn’t care. He needed the space.