All this Achilles remembers from his lessons at the hoof of Chiron. A fucking lot of good it does me, he thinks.

“Does it speak?” booms Panthea, sounding startled.

“It squeaks,” says Ione.

All three of the giant Oceanids lean closer to listen to Achilles’ attempts at communication. Every attempt is terribly painful for the mankiller, since it means breathing in and trying to use the noxious atmosphere. An observer would have guessed from the resulting sounds—and guessed correctly—that there is an unusual amount of helium remaining in the carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia mix of Tartarus’ soup-thick atmosphere.

“It soundeth like a mouse that hath been squashed flat,” laughs Asia.

“But the squeaks sound vaguely like a squashed mouse’s attempt at civilized language,” booms Ione.

“With a terrible dialect,” agrees Panthea.

“We need to take him to the Demogorgon,” says Asia, looming closer.

Two huge hands roughly lift Achilles, the giant fingers squeezing most of the ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, and helium out of his aching lungs. Now the hero of the Argives is gaping and gasping like a fish out of water.

“The DemOgorgon will want to see this strange creature,” agrees Ione. “Carry him, Sister, carry him to the Demogorgon.”

“Carry him to the Demogorgon!!” echo the giant, insectoid shapes following the three giant women.

“Carry him to the Demogorgon!!” echo larger, less familiar shapes following farther behind.

The eiffelbahn ended along the 40th Parallel, on the coast where the nation of Portugal had once existed, just south of Figueira da Foz. Harman knew that less than a couple of hundred miles southeast, the modulated forcefield templates called the Hands of Hercules held the Atlantic Ocean out of the dry Mediterranean Basin, and he knew exactly why the post-humans had drained the Basin and to what purpose they’d used it for almost two millennia. He knew that less than a couple of hundred miles northeast of where the eiffelbahn ended here, there was a sixty-mile-wide circle of the terrain fused into glass where thirty-two hundred years ago the Global Caliphate had fought its determining battle with the N.E.U.—more than three million proto-voynix pouring over and past two hundred thousand doomed human mechanized-infantry knights. Harman knew that…

All in all, he knew, he knew too much. And understood too little.

The three of them—Moira, the solidified Prospero hologram, and Harman still-with-the-headache-of-a-lifetime—were standing on the top platform of the final eiffelbahn tower. Harman was finished with his cablecar ride—perhaps forever.

Behind them were the green hills of former Portugal. Ahead of them was the Atlantic Ocean with the Breach continuing due west from the line of the eiffelbahn route. The day was perfect—temperature perfect, mild breezes, not a cloud in the sky—and sunlight reflected off green at the top of the cliffs, white sand, and broad expanses of blue on either side of the slash of the Atlantic Breach. Harman knew that even from the top of the eiffelbahn tower he could see only sixty miles or so to the west, but the view seemed to go on for a thousand miles, the Breach starting as a hundred-meter-wide avenue with low blue-green berms on either side, but continuing on until it was only a black line intersecting with the distant horizon.

“You can’t seriously expect me to walk to North America,” said Harman.

“We seriously expect you to try,” said Prospero.

“Why?”

Neither the post-human nor the never-human answered him. Moira led the way down the steps to the lower elevator platform. She was carrying a rucksack and some other gear for Harman’s hike. The elevator doors opened and they stepped into the cagelike structure and began humming lower past iron trellises.

“I’ll walk with you for a day or two,” said Moira.

Harman was surprised. “You will? Why?

“I thought you might enjoy the company.”

Harman had no response to this. As they stepped out onto the grassy shelf under the eiffelbahn tower, he said, “You know, just a few hundred miles southeast of us here, in the Med Basin, there are a dozen post-human storage facilities that Savi never knew anything about. She knew about Atlantis and the Three Chairs way of riding lightning to the rings, but that was more or less a cruel post-human joke—she didn’t know about the sonies and actual cargo spacecraft stored at the other stasis bubbles. Or at least these stasis bubbles used to be there…”

“They still are,” said Prospero.

Harman turned to Moira. “Well, walk with me a few days to the Basin rather than send me on a three-month hike across the ocean floor… a hike I’ll probably never complete. We’ll fly a sonie to Ardis or one of the shuttles up the rings to have them turn the power and fax-node links back on.”

Moira shook her head. “I assure you, my young Prometheus, you do not want to walk toward the Mediterranean Basin.”

“Almost one million calibani are loose there,” said Prospero. “They used to be contained to the Basin, but Setebos has released them. They’ve slaughtered the voynix that once guarded Jerusalem, have swarmed across North Africa and the Middle East, and would have covered much of Europe now if Ariel weren’t holding them back.”

“Ariel!” cried Harman. The thought of the tiny little… sprite … single-handedly holding back a million rampaging calibani—or even one—was totally absurd.

“Ariel can call upon more resources than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Harman, friend of Noman,” said Prospero.

“Hmm,” said Harman, unconvinced. The three walked to the edge of the grassy cliff. A narrow path switchbacked down to the beach. From this close, the Atlantic Breach looked much more real and strangely terrifying. Waves lapped up on either side of the impossible segment cut out of the ocean. “Prospero,” said Harman, “you created the calibani to counter the voynix threat. Why do you allow them to rampage?”

“I no longer control them,” said the old magus.

“Since Setebos arrived?”

The magus smiled. “I lost control of the calibani—and of Caliban himself—many centuries before Setebos.”

“Why did you create the damned things in the first place?”

“Security,” said Prospero. And he smiled again at the irony of the word.

“We… the post-humans,” said Moira, “asked Prospero and his… companion… to create a race of creatures ferocious enough to stop the replicating voynix from flooding into the Mediterranean Basin and compromising our operations there. You see, we used the Basin for…”

“Growing food, cotton, tea, and other materials you needed in the orbital islands,” finished Harman. “I know.” He paused, thinking about what the post had just said. “Companion? Do you mean Ariel?”

“No, not Ariel,” said Moira. “You see, fifteen hundred years ago, the creature we call Sycorax was not yet the…”

“That will do,” interrupted Prospero. The hologram actually sounded embarrassed.

Harman didn’t want to let it go. “But what you told us a year ago is true, isn’t it?” he asked the magus. “Caliban’s mother was Sycorax and its father was Setebos… or was that a lie as well?”

“No, no,” said Prospero. “Caliban is a creature out of the witch by a monster.”

“I’ve been curious how a giant brain the size of a warehouse with dozens of hands bigger than me manages to mate with a human-sized witch,” said Harman.

“Very carefully,” said Moira—rather predictably, Harman thought.

The woman who looked like young Savi pointed to the Breach. “Are we ready to start?”

“Just another question for Prospero,” said Harman, but when he turned around to speak to the magus, he was gone. “Damn it. I hate it when he does that.”