Nemoto stood silently beside the Kabaka while the comic-opera charade ran its course. She did this, he realized. She framed me.

To his credit, Mtesa seemed skeptical of all this, irritated by the proceedings. He seemed to have taken a liking to Malenfant, and was shrewd enough to perceive this as an obscure dispute between Malenfant and the katekiro. Why are you involving me? Can’t you sort it out yourself?

But the verdict was never really in doubt to anyone.

When it was done, the Lords of the Cord came to Malenfant. Rope was looped around his neck, and he was dragged to his feet.

Nemoto walked forward, hunched over, and stood before him. In English, she said, “You’re to be treated leniently, Malenfant. You won’t be working the Engine. You’re to be cast—”

“Into the pit.” And then he saw it. “The gateway. You’re forcing me to the Saddle Point gateway. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”

“You saw the light, Malenfant. If I thought that pressure suit of yours would fit me, I would take it from you. I would walk into the Engine of Kimera and confront the enigma at its heart, following those mysterious others who come and go… But I cannot. It is my fate to remain here, amusing the Kabaka, until the aging treatments fail, and I die.

“I had to do this, Malenfant. I could see your reluctance to go forward — even though you brought yourself here, to the center of things. I could see you could not bring yourself to take the last step.”

“So you pushed me. Why, for God’s sake? Why are you doing this?”

“Not for the sake of God. For history. Look around you, Malenfant. Look at the huge strangeness of this future Earth. Certainly the arrival of ETs deflected our history — and those exploding stars in the sky tell of more deflections yet to come. But no human has ever been in control of the great forces that shaped a world, of history and climate and geology; only a handful of us have even witnessed such changes.”

“If none of us can deflect history, you’re killing me for nothing.”

“Ah.” She smiled. “But individual humans have changed history, Malenfant — not the way I tried to, with plots and schemes and projects, but by walking into the fire, by giving themselves. Do you see? And that is your destiny.”

“You’re a monster, Nemoto. You play with lives. The right hand of this Stone Age despot is the right place for you.”

She raised a bony wrist and brushed blood-flecked spittle from her chin, seeming not to hear him.

He was overwhelmed with fear and anger. “Nemoto. Spare me.”

She leaned forward and kissed his cheek; her lips were dry as autumn leaves, and he could smell blood on her breath. “Good-bye, Malenfant.”

The cords around his neck tightened, and he was hauled away.

The rest of it unfolded with a pitiless logic. As a prisoner, condemned, Malenfant had no choice, no real volition; it was easy to submit to the process, to become detached, let his fear float away.

He was indeed treated with leniency. He was allowed to go back to his hut. He retrieved his EMU, his ancient pressure suit in its sack of rope.

He was taken to the rim of the central desolation.

There was a small party waiting: guards, with two other prisoners, both young women, naked save for loincloths, with their hands tied behind their backs. The prisoners returned his stare dully. Malenfant saw they’d both been beaten severely enough to lay open the skin over their spines.

I’ve come a long way, thought Malenfant, for this: a walk into hell, with two of the damned.

Once more he descended the crude spiral staircase.

Soon they were so deep that the circle of open sky at the top of the shaft was shrunk to a blue disc smaller than a dime, far above him. The only light came from irregularly placed reed torches. The stairs themselves were crudely cut and too far apart to make the descent easy; soon Malenfant was hot, and his legs ached.

The prisoners’ faces shone, taut with fear.

They passed two big exits gouged in the rock wall, one to either side of the cylindrical shaft. The air from these exits was marginally less stale than elsewhere. Perhaps they led to the great avenues from east and west that he’d noticed from outside, tunnels that led into the body of the hillside itself.

A hundred meters down, water spouted from clay founts, elaborately shaped, mounted on the walls. The water, almost every drop of it, was captured by spiral canals that wound around the shaft, in parallel to the stairway. The founts gushed harder as they descended — water pressure, Malenfant thought — and soon the spiral canals were filled with bubbling, frothing liquid, which took away some of the staleness of the still air of the well. But the founts and channels were severely damaged by fire, cracked and crudely repaired; water leaked continually.

Already he was hot and dizzy; a mark of the dose he’d already taken, maybe. He reached toward a canal to get a handful of water. But a dark bony hand shot out of the darkness, pushing him away. It was one of the prisoners, her eyes wide in the gloom.

Malenfant watched the narrow, bleeding shoulders of the prisoner as she descended before him. Here she was, going down into hell, no more than a kid, and yet she’d reached out to keep a foreigner from harm.

Deeper and deeper. There was no trace of natural daylight left now.

They reached a point where the two prisoners were released to a dormitory, hollowed out of the rock, presumably to be put to work later. Before they were pushed inside, they peered down into the pit, with loathing and dread. For here, after all, was the Engine that was to be their executioner.

And Malenfant was going on, deeper. The guards prodded at his back, pushing him forward.

At last the descent became more shallow. Malenfant surmised they were approaching the heart of the hollowed-out mountain. They stopped maybe fifteen meters above the base of the well. From here, Malenfant had to go on alone.

By the light of a smoking torch, with a mime, he asked a favor of the guards. They shrugged, incurious, not unwilling to take a break.

Malenfant pulled his battered old NASA pressure suit from its sack.

He lifted up his lower torso assembly, the bottom half of his EMU, trousers with boots built on, and he squirmed into it. Next he wriggled into the upper torso section. He fixed on his Snoopy flight helmet, and over the top of that he lifted his bubble helmet, starred and scratched with use. He twisted it into place against the seal at his neck.

The guards watched dully.

He looked down at himself. By the light of a different star, Madeleine Meacher had spent time repairing this suit for him. The EMU was a respectable white, with the Stars and Stripes still proudly emblazoned on his sleeve.

…But then the little ritual of donning the suit was over, and events enfolded him in their logic once more.

Was this it? After all his travels, his long life, was he now to die, alone, here?

Somehow he couldn’t believe it. He gathered his courage.

Leaving the staring guards behind, he walked farther down the crude stairwell, deeper toward the fire. The starring of his battered old bubble helmet made the flames dance and sparkle; it was kind of pretty. His own breath was loud in the confines of the helmet, and he felt hot, oxygen-starved already, although that was probably just imagination. His backpack was inert — no hiss of oxygen, no whirr of fans — and it was a heavy mass on his back. But maybe the suit would protect him a little longer.

He’d just keep walking, climbing down these steps in the dark, as long as he could. He didn’t see what else he could do.

It didn’t seem long, though, before the heat and airlessness got to him, and the world turned gray, and he pitched forward. He got his hands up to protect his helmet and rolled on his back, like a turtle.