“Nothing for five miles,” said Greogi. “It’s weird. The few voynix I saw were fleeing south as if you were in pursuit of them.”

Daeman looked at the milkily glowing egg in his backpack and sighed. “We’re not pursuing them,” he said. “We just want to get the hell out of here.” He told Greogi and the others of his plan.

There was a brief spate of argument. Some of the survivors wanted to fax to familiar locations and to see if friends and loved ones were alive. Caul was sure that the Loman Estate node wouldn’t have been invaded by this Setebos thing Daeman had told them about. Caul’s mother was there.

“All right, look!” Daeman called over the rising voices. “We don’t know where Setebos might be by now. The monster turned the huge city of Paris Crater into a castle of blue-ice strands in less than twenty-four hours. It’s been more than forty-eight hours since I got back and I was the last person to fax in. Here’s my suggestion…”

Ada noticed that the babbling stopped. People were listening. They accepted Daeman as a leader just as they had once accepted her leadership… and Harman’s. She had to stifle a sudden urge to weep.

“Let’s decide now if we’re going to stick together for a while or not,” said Daeman, his deep voice easily carrying to the edge of the crowd. “We can vote and…”

“What does ‘vote’ mean?” asked Boman.

Daeman explained the concept.

“So if just one more than half of us… votes… to stay together,” said Oko, “then we all have to do what the others want?”

“Just for a while,” said Daeman. “Let’s say… a week. We’re safer together than traveling apart. And we have people injured, sick, who can’t defend themselves. If people all fax different directions right now, how are we ever going to find each other again? Do we let those who want to strike off alone carry the flechette rifles and crossbows, or do those stay with the larger group who wants to stick together?”

“What do we do in that week… if we agree to go with you to this tropical paradise?” asked Tom.

“Just what I said,” answered Daeman. “Recuperate. Find or build some more weapons. Build some sort of defensive perimeter there… I remember a little island just beyond the reef. We could make some little boats, set up our homes and defenses on the island…”

“Do you think voynix can’t swim?” called Stoman.

Everyone laughed nervously but Ada glanced at Daeman. It had been gallows humor—a phrase she’d learned sigling the old books in Ardis Hall’s library—but it had broken the tension.

Daeman laughed easily. “I have no idea if voynix can swim, but if they can’t, that island would be the perfect place for us.”

“Until we breed so many children that we won’t fit on it anymore,” said Tom.

People laughed more easily this time.

“And we’ll send reconaissance teams out from the faxnode there,” said Daeman. “Starting the first day we arrive. That way, we’ll have some idea of what’s going on in the world and which nodes are safe to fax to. And after a week, anyone who wants to leave can. I just think it’s better for all of us if we stay together until our sick people are better and until we all get a chance to eat and sleep.”

“Let’s vote,” said Caul.

They did, hesitantly, with more laughter at the thought of raising their hands to decide such a serious issue. The vote was forty-three to seven to stay together, with three of the most seriously injured not voting because they were unconscious.

“All right,” said Daeman. He approached the faxpad.

“Wait a minute,” said Greogi. “What do we do with the sonie? It won’t fax and if we leave it here, the voynix will get it. It’s saved our lives more than once.”

“Oh, shit,” said Daeman. “I didn’t think about that.” He ran his hand over his dirty, blood-streaked face, and Ada saw how pale and tired he was under the thin veneer of energy he’d been projecting.

“I have an idea about that,” said Ada.

The crowd looked at her, their faces friendly, and waited.

“Most of you know that Savi showed some of us how to use new functions last year… proxnet, farnet, and allnet. Some of you have even tried them yourselves. When we get to Daeman’s tropical paradise, we call up the farnet function, see where the place is, and then someone faxes back here to fetch the sonie and fly it to our island. Harman, Hannah, Petyr, and Noman got to the Golden Gate at Machu Picchu in less than an hour, so it shouldn’t take too long to fly to paradise.”

There was some chuckling, much nodding.

“I have an even better idea,” said Greogi. “The rest of you fax off to paradise. I’ll stay here and guard the sonie. One of you fax back with the directions and I’ll fly it there today.”

“I’ll stay with you,” said Laman, holding up a flechette rifle in his good left hand. “You’ll need someone to shoot voynix if they come back. And to keep you awake during the flight south.”

Daeman smiled tiredly. “All right?” he asked the group.

People shuffled forward, eager to fax.

“Wait,” said Daeman. “We don’t know what’s waiting for us there, so six of you with rifles—Caul, Kaman, Elle, Boman, Casman, Edide—you come with me to the pavilion node and we’ll fax through first. If everything’s good there, one of us will be back in two minutes or less. Then we should bring the wounded and sick through. Tom, Siris, could you please organize the stretcher teams? Then Greogi will supervise half a dozen of you back there with rifles to keep watch while the rest fax though. Okay?”

Everyone nodded impatiently. The rifle team walked to the star inlaid on the fax pavilion floor while Daeman poised his hand over the keypad. “Let’s go,” he said and tapped in the code for his uninhabited node.

Nothing happened. The usual puff of air and visual flicker as people faxed out of existence simply did not happen.

“One at a time,” said Daeman, although faxnodes could easily handle six people faxing at a time. “Caul. Stand on the star.”

Caul did, shifting his rifle nervously. Daeman faxed in the code again.

Nothing. The wind made a noise as it blew snow into the open pavilion.

“Maybe that faxnode doesn’t work anymore,” called a woman named Seaes from the crowd.

“I’ll try Loman’s Estate,” said Daeman and tapped in the familiar code.

It did not work.

“Holy Jesus Christ Shit,” cried the burly Kaman. He pushed forward. “Maybe you’re doing it wrong. Let me.”

Half a dozen people had a try. Three dozen familiar faxnode codes were tried. Nothing worked. Not Paris Crater. Not Chom or Bellinbad or the many Circles of Heaven code for Ulanbat. Nothing worked.

Finally everyone stood in silence, stunned, speechless, their faces turned to masks of terror and hopelessness. Nothing in the past year, none of the nightmares of the last months—not the Fall of the Meteors, not the failing of electricity and the fall of the servitors, not the early attacks of voynix nor the news from Paris Crater, not even the Ardis Hall Massacre or the hopeless situation on Starved Rock had struck these men and women with such a sense of hopelessness.

The faxnodes no longer worked. The world as they had known it since they were born no longer existed. There was nowhere to flee, nothing to do now but wait and die. Wait for the voynix to return or for the cold to kill them or for disease and starvation to finish them off one by one.

Ada stepped up onto the small base around the faxpad column so that she could be seen as well as be heard.

“We’re going back to Ardis Hall,” she said. Her voice was strong, brooking no argument. “It’s only a little more than a mile up the road. We can be there in less than an hour, even in our condition. Greogi and Tom will bring those to sick to walk.”

“What the fuck is at Ardis Hall?” asked a short woman whom Ada did not recognize. “What’s there except corpses and carrion and ashes and voynix?”