How had he gotten there? Jones wasn’t sure.

“Far enough. Stage four, they call it. I’ve got elevated creatine levels, family history of diabetes and high blood pressure.

“You were on dialysis?”

“Just started! My third session was scheduled for the day we got scooped.” He smiled. “I guess I don’t need to tell you about shitty luck.”

“No, got that covered, thanks. What would make you feel better?”

“Got any calcitriol?” That was one of the medications he’d been given, a hormone. He was so new to suffering from chronic kidney disease that he had yet to really read up on his condition and treatment. No time.

“I’ll check on the top shelf, but meanwhile try this.” Jones had noticed a beer bottle in Harley’s lap but had been too tired and distracted to ask why.

“A Miller Genuine Draft is supposed to help me how?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Gabe. It’s not beer. One of Nayar’s guys has learned to play the Temple food controls like a virtuoso. He’s pumped out an amazing variety of foodstuffs, so far. It’s a little like playing Battleship—he’s just adjusting one parameter one way, a couple of others a different direction. And out comes nasty food, and finally this. Go ahead, take a drink. I did.”

Jones sipped from the bottle. “Tastes like cold coffee!”

“We think it is cold coffee.”

His head hurt, and not just from his physical condition. “This is all too magical for me. How is that possible?”

“We’re doing nothing but speculating, but I keep going back to what Zack knows, what we’ve established so far. The Architects were able to pull a human consciousness out of space and attach it to a rebuilt body that seems to have been identical to the original. That shows not only that they are aware of and able to detect and manipulate a whole class of information we know nothing about, but they can search it, re-form it into something useful.”

“Turn that information into a program, you mean—”

“Then use their molecular machines or gray goo or whatever it is to duplicate the original item.

“My point is, if their machines can do people—”

“—Dead people.”

“Yeah, even better. If the Architects have machines that can find and capture whatever it is that makes up a human soul and regenerate that person, they can certainly scan a dozen or ten dozen human beings and generate the right atmosphere or a properly sized table.” He pointed to the beer bottle. “A cup of Starbucks ought to be pretty basic. Come to think of it, I’m going to get Jaidev and his guys working on cups, plates, and flatware. That beer bottle is one of the better containers we have.”

Gabe had grown quite interested in Camilla’s activities, but he’d needed Sasha Blaine to translate and couldn’t find her, either.

Then, feeling tired, he had just sat down to rest….

It was a good thing he hadn’t been elected mayor. For the first two days, from the scoop to maybe two hours past the landing—to the point where the Chinese man had killed Bynum—he had fancied himself a modern-day Moses.

Yeah, he was Moses, all right. Not the Moses who brought the Israelites to the Promised Land but died without reaching it himself.

He was the Moses who was lucky to get the Israelites across the Red Sea, where they then face forty years of wandering and uncertainty.

He felt weak again.

“Hey, Gabe,” Harley said. “Drink up. We don’t think it’ll hurt you. Jaidev’s been guzzling the stuff for the past two hours and he seems to be happier than any of us.”

“It seems like a waste of resources.” But he drank. It was cold and thick and tasted coffeelike, not that he was a judge. Nevertheless, out of thirst or desperation, he drained the bottle. As Harley was saying, “We have a lot of resources. We’ve just started learning how to make use of them.”

“Fine, I’ll concede that you can feed and maybe clothe people; that that’s what the Architects had in mind when they brought us here. But I don’t see medicines; I don’t see a hospital. Hell, Harley, we don’t even have a doctor in the house!” He belched loudly, and so strongly that he thought the Temple coffee was coming back up.

But no, he was safe. All he did was spark amused laughter from Harley Drake. “Come on, Gabe, allow yourself to hope! If, in the space of a day, we can get the Temple to turn out food, water, furniture, and what appears to be cappuccino…who’s to say that in a week’s time we can’t be replicating a dialysis machine?”

“I find that preposterous.”

“Okay, a month. Two months.”

“I won’t last that long.”

“Stranger things have happened, my friend. Or haven’t you noticed?”

Gabriel stood. He was feeling better. Maybe that damned drink from the Temple was worthwhile—

No, idiot. All it was was fluid that filled the hollow in your stomach for a few moments. It’s fooling your body into thinking it’s worthwhile.

You were a dead man the moment the Object scooped you up.

“Any word on Rachel? Or Zack?”

“Nada. I sent Zhao after Rachel.”

“Was that wise?”

“It’s not as though he’s going to run off,” Harley said. “And Rachel’s a smart kid. She’ll turn up.”

For the past minute, Gabriel had thought he was hearing singing but blamed it on his illness, as if tinnitus were something else he would have to endure as he fell apart.

Now it was unmistakable. Somebody was singing—

Camilla walked around the rock, a smile on her face, unself-consciously presenting what sounded like a nursery rhyme, but in Portuguese.

The only odd thing—

“What happened to your arm, sweetheart?” God, he had fallen back into the parental voice. His staff used to tease him, saying that he used it with department heads who were being especially stubborn.

She didn’t resist as Gabriel took her left arm and gently turned it, noting that the girl seemed hot, almost feverish.

Harley rolled closer. “Yikes,” he said, softly, not wanting to alarm the girl.

She had a palm-sized carbuncle on her upper arm that had split and now oozed a glistening liquid. Not blood, not pus.

But clearly nothing good.

“Let’s take her to Sasha.”

“Wait—” Gabriel realized that the girl was holding something in her hand. “What have you got there?” He squeezed her hand and gently tried to turn it. Camilla didn’t resist; she opened her hand, revealing a bug of some kind.

It was squarish, almost freakishly so…and brightly colored: yellow, blue, red, none of them natural to his eye. “What is this little thing?” he said.

“Don’t ask me,” Harley said. “I’m good as far as mosquitoes, bees, and spiders, and that’s it.”

“Well, I know a bit about the insect world, and I can’t place this.”

“How are you on insects found in India?”

Harley had a point. “About as good as you on insects in general. Someone at the Temple will recognize it.”

“Unless it’s native to Keanu.”

“We haven’t seen anything like that yet.”

Gabriel smiled at Camilla and let her close her hand on the bug again. Continuing her song, she bowed her head, then resumed her journey. “Looks like a Woggle-Bug,” Harley said. “It’s actually kind of cute.”

“Okay, what’s a Woggle-Bug?”

“From Frank Baum, the guy who wrote the Oz books.”

“Ah, fictional.”

“Yeah, sorry. I know more fictional bugs than I do real-life insects.”

He maneuvered his wheelchair around to follow Camilla. Gabriel got in position to push.

He was feeling better. He wondered how long it would last.

Part Five

Hello, my darling niece!

Camilla, this is your uncle, Lucas. I am safe at home with your loving mother, my sister, all your family…all of them so interested in the magic that brought you back to me, to all of us, however distantly and briefly.