Well, he thought, the only solution was to stay ahead of them—in technology and everything else.

It was time to go home. But first Harman had one stop he wanted to make. He shook hands with Alcinuous and Raman and freefaxed away.

Harman had come back to the Golden Gate at Machu Picchu, the place where he had been given his life back seven and a half years earlier. He freefaxed not to the Bridge itself, but to a ridgeline across the valley from the bridge and the high ruins on the terrace of Machu Picchu. He never tired of looking at the ancient structure, the green habitation globules hardly visible from this distance, but he’d come back not just out of sentiment.

He was to meet someone here.

Harman watched the early afternoon clouds shift up the valley from the direction of the waterfall. For a while, the sunlight turned the mists to gold, half obscuring the ruins of Machu Picchu, making them appear as half-glimpsed stepping-stones there beyond the old Bridge’s span. Everywhere Harman looked, life was winning its anti-entropic battle against chaos and energy loss—the grass on the hillsides, the canopy of trees in the mist-shrouded valley, the condors circling slowly on thermals, the tatters of blowing moss on the suspension cables of the Bridge itself, even the rust-colored lichen on the rocks near Harman.

As if to distract him from thoughts about life and living things, a very artificial spaceship rocketed from south to north across the sky, its long contrail slowly breaking up in the jet steam high above the Andes. Before Harman could be sure of the make and model of the ship, the gleaming speck was gone over the northern horizon behind the ruins, trailed by three sonic booms. It had been too large and too fast to be one of the hornets hauling gear north from the Dry Valley. Harman wondered if perhaps it was Daeman, returning from one of their joint expeditions with the moravecs, plotting and recording the decreasing quantum disturbances between Earth-system and Mars.

We have our own spacecraft now, thought Harman. He smiled at his own hubris at even thinking such a thing. But the thought still made him warm inside. Then he reminded himself that we have our own spacecraft, but we can’t yet build our own spacecraft.

Harman hoped he would live long enough to see that. This led his thoughts to the search for the rejuvenation vats in the polar and equatorial rings

“Good afternoon,” said a familiar voice behind him.

Harman raised the energy weapon out of habit and training, but lowered it even before he’d fully turned. “Good afternoon, Prospero,” he said.

The old magus stepped out of a niche in the rocks. “You’re wearing a full combat suit, my young friend. Did you expect to find me armed?”

Harman smiled. “I’ll never find you without weapons.”

“If one counts wit as a weapon,” said Prospero.

“Or guile,” said Harman.

The magus moved his veined old hands as if in defeat. “Ariel said you wished to see me. Is it about the situation in China?”

“No,” said Harman, “we’ll deal with that later. I came to remind you about the play.”

“Ah,” said Prospero, “the play.”

“You’ve forgotten? Or decided not to come?” said Harman. “Everyone will be disappointed except your understudy if you’re not coming.”

Prospero smiled. “So many lines to learn, my young Prometheus.”

“Not so many as you gave us,” said Harman.

Prospero opened his hands again.

“Shall I tell the understudy that he has to go on?” asked Harman. “He’ll be thrilled to do so.”

“Perhaps I would like to attend after all,” said the magus. “But must it be as a performer, not as a guest?”

“For this play, it must be as a performer,” said Harman. “When we do Henry IV, you can be our honored guest.”

“Actually,” said Prospero, “I’ve always wanted to play Sir John Falstaff.”

Harman’s laugh echoed off the crags and cliff face. “So I can tell Ada that you’ll be there and will stay for refreshments and conversation afterward?”

“I look forward to the conversation,” said the solid hologram, “if not to the stage fright.”

“Well …” said Harman, “break a leg.” He nodded and freefaxed away.

At Ardis House, he checked in his weapon and the combat suit, pulled on canvas jeans and a tunic, slipped on light shoes, and walked out to the north meadow where final preparations were going on at the playhouse. Men were rigging the colored lights that would hang over the rows of freshly sawed wooden seats and over the beer gardens and in the trellises. Hannah was busy testing the sound system from the stage. Some of the volunteers were slapping a final coat of paint on backdrops and someone kept drawing the curtain to and fro.

Ada saw him and tried walking with their two-year-old, Sarah, but the toddler was tired and fussy, so Ada swept her up and carried her up the grassy hill to her father. Harman kissed both of them, and then kissed Ada again.

She looked back at the stage and rows of seats, pulled a long strand of black hair out of her face, and said, “The Tempest? Do you really think we’re all ready for this?”

Harman shrugged, then put his arm around her shoulders. “It was next.”

“Is our star really coming?” she asked, leaning back against him. Sarah whimpered and shifted position a little bit so that her cheek was touching both her parents’ shoulders.

“He says he is,” said Harman, not believing it himself.

“It would have been nice if he’d rehearsed with the others,” said Ada.

“Well… we can’t ask for everything.”

“Can’t we?” said Ada, giving him the look that had typed her as the dangerous sort to Harman more than eight years ago.

A sonie rocketed low over the trees and houses, sweeping low toward the river and the town. “I hope that was one of the idiot adult males and not one of the boys,” said Ada.

“Speaking of boys,” said Harman. “Where’s ours? I didn’t see him this morning and I want to say hello.”

“He’s on the porch, getting ready for story time,” said Ada.

“Ah, story time,” said Harman. He turned to walk toward the dell in the south meadow where story time usually took place, but Ada gripped his arm.

“Harman…”

He looked at her.

“Mahnmut arrived a while ago. He says that Moira may be coming to the play tonight.”

He took her hand. “Well, that’s good… isn’t it?”

Ada nodded. “But if Prospero is here, and Moira, and you said you invited Ariel, although he wouldn’t play the part… what if Caliban comes?”

“He’s not invited,” said Harman.

She squeezed his hand to show that she was serious.

Harman pointed to the sites around the playhouse, trellised beer gardens, and house where the guards would be posted with their energy rifles.

“But the children will be at the play,” said Ada. “The people from the town…”

Harman nodded, still holding her hand. “Caliban can QT here any time he wants, my love. He hasn’t done so yet.”

She nodded slightly but she did not release his hand.

Harman kissed her. “Elian has been rehearsing Caliban’s moves and lines for five weeks,” he said. “Be not afeard. This isle is full of noises,/Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.”

“I wish that were always so,” said Ada.

“I do, too, my love. But we both know—you better than I—that it’s not the case. Shall we go watch John enjoy story hour?”

Orphu of Io was still blind, but the parents were never afraid he’d bump into something or hit anyone, even as the eight or nine boldest children of Ardis piled on his huge shell, climbing barefoot to find a perch. The tradition had become for the kids to ride Orphu down to the dell for the story hour. John, at a little over seven one of the oldest, sat at the highest point on that shell.

The big moravec proceeded slowly on its silent repellors, moving almost solemnly—except for the explosion of giggles from the children riding and the shouts from the other children trailing behind—carrying them from the porch down past the old elm to the dell between the bushes and the new houses.