“Strong little bastard,” he whispered.

“Let it wander,” said Ada. “Let’s see where it goes. What it does.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. Not far, but let’s see what it wants.”

Tom kicked the low post-wall down and the Setebos baby scurried out, the baby fingers under it working in unison, blurring like some obscene centipede’s legs.

Daeman allowed himself to be tugged along behind it, keeping the leash short. Ada and Tom walked beside Daeman, ready to move quickly if the creature turned toward them. It moved too quickly and too purposefully for any of the humans not to sense the danger from it.

Tom’s flechette rifle was being held at the ready and Daeman had another rifle strapped over his shoulder.

The thing didn’t head for the campfire or the lean-to. It tugged them twenty yards into the darkness of the west lawn. Then it scurried down into one of the former defensive trenches—a flame trench Ada had helped to dig—and seemed to squat on its spraddled hands.

Two new orifices opened at either ends of the little creature and stalks without hands, pulsing proboscises, emerged, wavered, and suddenly attached themselves to the ground. There came a sound that was a mixture of a pig rooting and a baby suckling.

“What the hell?” said Tom. He had the rifle aimed, the plastic-metal stock set firmly against his shoulder. The first shot, Ada knew, would slam several thousand crystal-barbed flechettes into the pulsing pink monstrosity at a velocity greater than the speed of sound.

Ada started shivering. Her constant, pulsing headache turned to a wave of nausea.

“I know this spot,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “It’s where Reman and Emme died during the voynix attack… they burned to death here.”

The Setebos spawn continued loudly rooting and suckling.

“Then it’s …” began Daeman and stopped.

“Eating,” finished Ada.

Tom put his finger on the trigger. “Let me kill it, Ada Uhr. Please.”

“Yes,” said Ada. “But not yet. I have no doubt that the voynix will return as soon as this thing dies. And it’s still dark. And we’re nowhere near ready. Let’s go back to your camp.”

They walked back to the campfire together, Daeman tugging the reluctant and finger-dragging Setebos thing along behind them.

Harman drowned.

His last thoughts before the water filled his lungs were—That bitch Moira lied to me—and then he gagged and choked and drowned in the swirling golden liquid.

The crystal dodecahedron had filled only to within a foot of its multifaceted top while Harman had been watching the golden liquid flow into it. Savi-Moira-Miranda had called the rich golden fluid the “medium” by which he would sigl—although that had not been her term—the Taj’s gigantic collection of books. Harman had stripped down to his thermskin layer.

“That has to come off, too,” said Moira. Ariel had stepped back into the shadows and now only the young woman stood in the bright light from the cupola windows with him. The guitar was on a nearby tabletop.

“Why?” said Harman.

“Your skin has to be in contact with the medium,” said Moira. “The transfer can’t work through a bonded molecular layer like a thermskin.”

“What transfer?” Harman had asked, licking his lips. He was very nervous. His heart was pounding.

Moira gestured toward the seemingly infinite rows of shelved books lining the hundred curved stories of inner dome-wall widening out below them.

“How do I know that there’s anything in those old books that will help me get back to Ada?” said Harman.

“You don’t.”

“You and Prospero could send me home right now if you wanted,” said Harman, turning away from the filling crystal tank. “Why don’t you do that so we can skip all this nonsense?”

“It’s not that easy,” said Moira.

“The hell it isn’t,” shouted Harman.

The young woman went on as if Harman had not spoken. “First of all, you know from the turin and from what Prospero told you that all of the planet’s faxnodes and fax pavilions have been shut off.”

“By whom?” said Harman, turning back to look at the crystal cabinet again. The golden fluid was swirling to within a foot of the top, but it had stopped filling. Moira had opened a panel on the top—one of the multifaceted glass faces—and he could see the short metal rungs that would allow him to climb up to that opening.

“By Setebos or his allies,” said Moira.

“What allies? Who are they? Just tell me what I need to know.”

Moira shook her head. “My young Prometheus, you’ve been told things for the better part of a year now. Hearing things means nothing unless you have the context in which to place the information. It is time for you to gain that context.”

“Why do you keep calling me Prometheus?” he barked at her. “Everyone seems to have ten names around here… Prometheus, I don’t know that name. Why do you call me that?”

Moira smiled. “I guarantee that you will understand that at least, after the crystal cabinet.”

Harman took a deep breath. One more smug smile out of this woman, he realized, and he might hit her in the face. “Prospero said that this thing could kill me,” he said. He looked at the cabinet rather than the post-human thing in Savi’s human form.

Moira nodded. “It could. I do not believe it will.”

“What are my chances?” said Harman. His voice sounded plaintive and weak to his own ears.

“I don’t know. Very good, I think, or I would not suggest you go through this… unpleasantness.”

“Have you done it?”

“Undergone the crystal cabinet transfer?” said Moira. “No. I had no reason to.”

“Who has?” demanded Harman. “How many lived? How many died?”

“All of the Chief Librarians have experienced the crystal cabinet transfer,” said Moira. “All the many generations of the Keepers of the Taj. All the linear descendents of the original Khan Ho Tep.”

“Including your beloved Ferdinand Mark Alonzo?”

“Yes.”

“And how many of these Keepers of the Taj survived the cabinet transfer?” asked Harman. He was still wearing the thermskin, but his exposed hands and face felt the terrible chill in the air up there near the top of the dome. He concentrated on not shivering.

Harman was afraid that if Moira merely shrugged, he’d just walk away forever. And he didn’t want to do that—not yet. Not until he knew more. This awkward crystal cabinet with its glowing gold liquid might kill him… but it might also return him to Ada sooner.

Moira did not shrug. She looked him in the eye—she had Savi’s eyes—and said, “I don’t know how many died. Sometimes the flow of information is simply too much—for lesser minds. I do not believe you have a lesser mind, Prometheus.”

“Don’t call me that again.” Harman’s freezing hands were tightened into fists.

“All right.”

“How long does it take?” he asked.

“The transfer itself? Less than an hour.”

“That long?” said Harman. “The eiffelbahn car leaves in forty-five minutes.”

“We’ll make it,” said Moira. Harman hesitated.

“The medium fluid is warm,” said Moira as if reading his mind. It was more likely, he realized, she was reading his shivers and shaking.

That may have decided the issue for Harman. He had peeled off the thermskin, embarrassed to be naked in front of this stranger with whom he had had a strange sort of sex less than two hours earlier. And it was cold.

He had quickly clambered up the side of the dodecahedron, using the short rungs for hand and footholds, feeling how cold the metal was against the bare soles of his feet.

It had been a relief when he lowered himself through the open panel and actually dropped into the golden liquid. As she’d promised, the fluid was warm. It had no scent and the few drops that landed on his lips had no taste.