He bowed his balding and gray-haired head a bit.

“ ‘Tithonus,’ ” said Moira. “Tennyson before breakfast always makes my bowels ache. Tell me, is the world sane yet, Prospero?”

“No, Miranda.”

“Are my folk all dead or changeling’d then, as you say?” She ate grapes and redolent cheese and drank from a large goblet of ice water the floating servitors continued to refill for her.

“They are dead or changeling’d or both.”

“Are they coming back, Prospero?”

“God knows, my daughter.”

“Don’t give me God, please,” said Moira. “What about Savi’s nine thousand one hundred and thirteen fellow Jews? Have they been retrieved from the neutrino loop?”

“No, my dear. All the Jews and rubicon survivors in this universe remain a blue beam rising from Jerusalem and nothing more.”

“We did not keep our promise then, did we?” asked Moira, pushing her plate away and brushing crumbs and juice from her palms.

“No, daughter.”

“And you, Rapist,” she said, turning to the blinking Harman, “do you have any other purpose in this world than taking advantage of sleeping strangers?”

Harman opened his mouth to speak, thought of nothing to say, and shut his mouth. He felt actively ill.

Moira touched his hand. “Do not reproach yourself, my Prometheus. You had little choice. The air inside the sarcophagus was scented with an aerosol aphrodisiac so potent that Prospero sent it off with one of the original changelings—Aphrodite herself. Lucky for both of us its effects are very temporary.”

Harman felt a surge of relief followed by fury. “You mean I had no choice?”

“Not if you carried the DNA of Ahman Ferdinand Mark Alonzo Khan Ho Tep,” said Moira. “And all males of your race should.”

She turned back to Prospero. “Where is Ferdinand Mark Alonzo? Or rather, what was his fate?”

The magus bowed his head. “Miranda, beloved, three years after you entered the loop-fax sarcophagus, he died of one of the wildcat variants of rubicon that swept through the old population every year as surely as a summer zephyr. He was interred in a crystal sarcophagus next to yours—although all the fax equipment could do was keep his corpse from rotting then, since the Firmary tanks had not yet learned how to deal with rubicon. Before the vats could educate themselves, a score of Caliphate mandroids climbed Mount Everest, evaded the security shields, and began looting the Taj. The first thing they looted was poor Ferdinand Mark Alonzo’s heavy coffin—throwing it over the side.”

“Why didn’t they throw me over as well?” asked Moira. “Or for that matter, finish their looting? I noticed all the agate, jasper, bloodstones, emeralds, lapis, cornelian, and other baubles were still in place on the walls and screen maze.”

“Caliban faxed in and dispatched the twenty Caliphate mandroids for you,” said Prospero. “It took the servitors a month to mop up all the blood.”

Moira’s head came up. “Caliban still lives?”

“Oh, yes. Ask our friend Harman here.”

She glanced at Harman but refocused her attention on the magus. “I’m surprised Caliban didn’t rape me as well.”

Prospero smiled sadly. “Oh, he tried, Miranda my dear, he tried many times, but the sarcophagus would not open to him. Had the world bent to Caliban’s will and member, he would have long since peopled this island earth with little Calibans by you.”

Moira shuddered. Finally she turned to Harman again, ignoring the old man. “I need to know your story and your character and your life,” she said. “Give me your palm.” She set her right elbow on the table and held up one hand, palm toward him.

Confused, Harman did the same, but not touching her.

“No,” said Moira. “Have the old-style humans forgotten the sharing function?”

“They have, actually,” said Prospero. “Our friend Harman here can—or could until the eiffelbahn inhibited his access—call up only the finder, allnet, proxnet, and farnet functions. And those only by visualizing certain geometric shapes.”

“Mother of Heaven,” said Moira. She dropped her hand to the table. “Can they still read?”

“Only Harman and a handful of others he’s taught in the last few months,” said Prospero. “Oh, I forgot to mention that our friend did learn to sigl some months ago.”

“Sigl?” Moira laughed. “That was never meant to be used to understand books. That was an indexing function. It must feel like glancing at a recipe in a cookbook and thinking you’ve actually eaten the dinner. Harman’s people must be the dullest subspecies of homo sapiens ever to receive a patent.”

“Hey,” said Harman. “I’m right here. Don’t talk about me as if I’m not even here. And I may not know this sharing function, but I can learn it quickly. In the meantime, we can talk. I have questions to ask too, you know.”

Moira looked at him. He noticed the rich gray-green of her eyes.

“Yes,” she said at last, “I have been rude. You must have come a long way to waken me—and you took that action against your will—and I am sure you would rather be elsewhere in the world. The least I can do is show you some manners and answer your questions.”

“Can you show me how to do this sharing function you were talking about?” asked Harman. He was determined not to lose his temper with this woman who looked so much like Savi and spoke in her voice. “Or show me how to fax without faxnode pavilions,” he added. “The way Ariel does it.”

“Ah, Ariel,” said Moira. She glanced at Prospero. “The old-styles have forgotten how to freefax?”

“They’ve forgotten almost everything,” said Prospero. “They were made to forget. By your people, Moira. By Vala, by Tirzah, by Rahaba—by all your Urizened Beulahs.”

Moira tapped the flat of her knife against her palm. “Why did you use this person to wake me, Prospero? Has Sycorax consolidated her power and freed your monster Caliban from your control?”

“She has and he is free,” Prospero said softly, “but I felt it was time you woke because Setebos now walks this world.”

“Sycorax, Caliban, and Setebos,” repeated Moira. She drew in a long breath, hissing it between her teeth.

“Between the witch, the demidevil, and the thing of darkness,” Prospero said softly, “they would control the moon and Earth, decide all ebbs and flows, and deal all power to their command.”

Moira nodded and chewed her full lower lip for a moment. “When does your eiffelbahn car depart again?”

“In one hour,” said the magus. “Will you be on it, Miranda dear? Or will you be sleeping in the fax-coffin of time again, allowing your atoms and memories to be restored in such a meaningless loop forever?”

“I’ll be on your damned car,” said Moira. “And I’ll take from the update banks what I need to know about this brave new world I’m born into yet again. But first, young Prometheus has his questions to ask and then I have a suggestion on what he can do to regain his function status.” She glanced toward the apex of the dome.

“No, Moira,” said Prospero.

“Harman,” she said softly, putting her soft hand on the back of his, “ask your questions now.”

He licked his lips. “Are you really a post-human?”

“Yes, I am. That is what Savi’s people called us before the Final Fax.”

“Why do you look like Savi?”

“Ah … you knew her, then? Well, I will learn her health or fate when I call up the update function. I knew Savi, but more important, Ahman Ferdinand Mark Alonzo Khan Ho Tep was in love with her and she returned no love for him—they were of separate tribes, so to speak. So I took her form, her memories, her voice… everything… before coming here to the Taj.”

“How did you take her form?” asked Harman.

Moira looked at Prospero again. “His people do know nothing, don’t they?” To Harman she said, “We post-humans had reached the point where we had no bodies of our own, my young Prometheus. At least none that you would recognize as bodies. We needed none. There were only a few thousand of us, but we had bred ourselves out of the human gene pool, thanks to the genetic skills of the avatar of the cyberspace logosphere here…”