“I don’t understand,” said Hannah.

“Let’s put all this technical double-talk aside for a while,” said Savi. “Accept that neither Odysseus here, nor I, can use your precious fax portals. And if I visited your wonderful society by flying there, it would be my life.”

“Why?” asked Harman. “There’s no violence in our world. Other than the turin drama. And none of us believe that is real.” He looked pointedly at Odysseus, but the gray-haired man did not respond in any way.

Savi sipped her wine. “Just believe me when I say that to show myself openly would be death. Also believe me that it is imperative that Odysseus be allowed to meet people, to speak to them, to be heard. If I were to fly you back, would one of you host him at your home for a few weeks? A month?”

“Three weeks,” interrupted Odysseus, sounding brusque, as if hearing himself spoken about as if he weren’t there had irritated him. “No more.”

“All right,” said Savi. “Three weeks. Will any of you offer three weeks of hospitality to this stranger in a strange land?”

“Wouldn’t Odysseus be in danger in the same way you are?” asked Daeman.

“Odysseus Uhr can take care of himself,” said Savi.

The four were silent a minute, trying to understand the request and the circumstances of the request. Finally Harman said, “I’d like to host Odysseus, but I also want to visit this place you said might have spacecraft, Savi Uhr. My goal is to get to the rings. And as you pointed out, I’m approaching my final Twenty—I don’t have any time to waste. I’d rather spend the time finding this drained sea where you say the post-humans kept something that can fly to the e- and p-rings. Perhaps if you showed me how to pilot your sonie . . .”

Savi rubbed her brow as if her head hurt. “The Mediterranean Basin? You can’t fly there, Harman Uhr .”

“You mean it’s forbidden?”

“No,” said Savi. “I mean you can’t fly there. The sonies and other flying machines won’t work over the Basin.” She paused and looked around the table. “But it’s possible to hike or drive into the Basin. I’ve tried and failed to go there over centuries, but I can lead you there. If one of your friends agrees to host Odysseus for three weeks.”

“I want to go with you and Harman,” said Ada.

“So do I,” said Daeman. “I want to see this Whatchamacallit Basin.”

Harman looked at the younger man in surprise.

“To hell with it,” said Daeman. “I’m no coward. I’ll wager that I’m the only one here who’s been eaten by an allosaurus.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Odysseus, and drained the last of his wine.

Savi looked at Hannah. “That leaves you, my dear.”

“I’d be happy to host Odysseus,” said the young woman. “But I don’t fax that much or go to parties. I live with my mother and she doesn’t host groups that often either.”

“No, that won’t work, I’m afraid,” said Savi. “Odysseus only has three weeks and we need to start with a place that is well known and where many can stay for weeks on end. Actually, Ardis Hall would have been perfect.” She looked at Ada.

“How do you know about Ardis Hall, Savi Uhr?” asked Ada. “For that matter, how do you know about Harman’s reading or anything about the world, if you cannot walk among us or use the faxnodes?”

“I do watch,” said the older woman. “I watch and wait and sometimes fly to places where I can mingle with you.”

“The Burning Man,” said Hannah.

“Yes, among other places,” said Savi. She looked around the table and said, “You all look exhausted. Why don’t I show you to your rooms so you can get a good night’s sleep? We’ll continue the conversation in the morning. Just leave the dishes, I’ll clear them and wash them later.”

The idea of picking up or washing dishes had never occurred to the guests. Once again, Ada looked around and felt the absence of servitors and voynix.

Ada wanted to protest this enforced bedtime—they’d not yet heard Odysseus tell his tale—but she looked at her friends—Hannah hollow-eyed with fatigue, Daeman drunk and barely able to keep his head up, Harman’s face showing his age—and felt the exhaustion working at her as well. It had been one hell of a day. It was time to sleep.

Odysseus stayed at the table as Savi led the other four from the dining room, down hallways lighted only by the diminishing lightning, up a glass-covered escalator that wound around the Golden Gate tower, and down a long corridor to a series of bubble-rooms at the highest point on the north tower. These sleeping rooms were not physically attached to the tower top, only to the glass corridor that had bridge steel as its south wall, and the sleeping cubbies themselves protruded precariously into space, like clusters of green grapes.

Savi was offering them all separate sleep-bubbles, and gestured Hannah into the first room along the corridor. The young woman hesitated at the entrance to the small space. Inside the sleeping cubbie, even the floor was transparent, so that Hannah took one step forward and then hopped quickly backward into the relative solidity of the carpeted access hall.

“It’s perfectly safe,” said Savi.

“All right,” said Hannah and tried again. The bed was set against the far wall and there was a privately partitioned toilet and sink space near the corridor wall, ensuring privacy from the viewpoint of the other sleep bubbles, but elsewhere the curving walls and floor were so clear that you could look down eight hundred feet to the lightning-illuminated stones and hillside directly below.

Hannah walked gingerly across the clear floor and settled gratefully onto the solid shape of the bed. The other three laughed and applauded. “If I have to go to the toilet in the night, I may not have the nerve to cross that floor again,” said Hannah.

“You’ll get used to it, Hannah Uhr,” said Savi. “You may close and open the door by voice command and it is keyed to your voice only.”

“Door, close,” said Hannah.

The door irised closed. Savi dropped them off one at a time in their cubbies—first Daeman, who staggered to his bed with no apparent fear of the empty space under his feet, then Harman, who wished them both good night before ordering his door closed, then Ada.

“Sleep well, my dear,” said Savi. “The sunrises here are rather beautiful and I hope you enjoy the view in the morning. I shall see you at breakfast.”

There were fresh silk sleeping clothes set out on her bed. Ada went into the toilet area, took a quick hot shower, dried her hair, left her clothes on the counter next to the sink, dressed in the silk sleeping gown, and returned to the bed. Once under the covers, she turned her face to the wall and looked out at the mountain peaks and cloud tops. The thunderstorm had passed on to the east now, the lightning illuminated the receding clouds from within, and now the nearby peaks and grassy saddle were illuminated by moonlight. Ada looked down at the roadway and stone ruins so far below. What had Odysseus said about that place? That it was inhabited only by jaguars, chipmunks, and ghosts? Looking at the ancient pale-gray stones in the moonlight, Ada almost believed in the ghosts.

There came a soft tapping at her door.

Ada slipped from the bed and tiptoed across the cold floor, setting her fingertips against the irised metal. “Who is it?”

“Harman.”

Ada’s heart thudded in her chest. She had been hoping, silently wishing, that Harman would join her tonight. “Door open,” she whispered, stepping back, noting in the wall’s reflection how milky her arms and thin gown looked in the moonlight.

Harman stepped just inside and paused as Ada whispered the door closed again. Harman was wearing only blue silk sleep garb. She waited for him to embrace her, to lift her in his arms and carry her to the soft bed against the clear, curved wall. What would it be like, she wondered, to make love as if one were floating above these clouds, these mountains?