I’m reviewing the data on the blue beam, sent Orphu. Definitely a neutrino beam sheathed in tachyons. I don’t have a clue as to what function that might have and I bet our best scientists don’t either.

Oh, wait a minute… sent Mahnmut. I’ve zoomed on the Old City and it’s… crawling with life.

People? Humans?

No…

Those headless humpy organic-robotic things?

No, tightbeamed Mahnmut. Would you just let me describe these things at my own speed?

Sorry.

There are thousands—more than thousands—of the clawed, fin-footed amphibian things that you suggested looked like Caliban from The Tempest.

What are they doing? asked Orphu.

Just milling around, essentially, sent Mahnmut. No, wait, there are bodies on David Street near the Jaffa Gate… more bodies on the Tariq el-Wad in the old Jewish section near the Western Wall Plaza…

Human bodies? sent Orphu.

No… those headless humpy organic-robotic things. They’re pretty torn up… a lot of them look eviscerated.

Food for the Caliban monsters? asked Orphu.

I have no idea.

“We’re going to overfly the blue beam,” Suma IV broadcast on the intercom. “Everyone stay strapped in tight—I need to get some of our boom sensors into the beam itself.”

Is this wise? Mahnmut asked Orphu. Nothing about this expedition to Earth is wise, old friend. We don’t have a maggid aboard.

A what? tightbeamed Mahnmut.

Maggid, sent Orphu of Io. In olden days, the old Jews—long before the caliphate wars and the rubicon, I mean, back when humans wore bearskins and T-shirts—the old Jews said that a wise person had a maggid—a sort of spiritual counselor from a different world.

Maybe we’re the maggids, sent Mahnmut. We’re all from another world.

True, sent Orphu. But we’re not very wise. Mahnmut, did I ever tell you that I’m a gnostic?

Spell that, sent Mahnmut.

Orphu of Io did so.

What the hell is a gnostic? asked Mahnmut. He’d had several revelations about his old friend recently—including the fact that Orphu was an expert on James Joyce and Lost Era writers other than Proust—and he wasn’t sure he was ready for more.

It doesn’t matter what a gnostic is, sent Orphu, but a hundred years before the Christians burned Giordano Bruno at the stake in Venice, they burned a gnostic, a Sufi magus named Solomon Molkho in Mantua. Solomon Molkho taught that when the change occurred, the Dragon would be destroyed without weapons and everything on Earth and in the heavens would be changed.

“Dragons? Magus?” Mahnmut said aloud.

“What?” said Suma IV from the cockpit bubble.

“Say again?” commed Centurion Leader Mep Ahoo from his jumpseat in the troop transport module.

“Please say that again,” came Prime Integrator Asteague/Che’s British-accented voice from the Queen Mab, telling Mahnmut that the mother ship was monitoring their intercom chatter as well as their official transmissions. But not, he fervently hoped, tapping into their tight-beam conversations.

Never mind, sent Mahnmut. I’ll ask about the dragon and the maguses and such another time.

On the intercom, Mahnmut said, “Sorry… nothing… just thinking out loud.”

“Let’s maintain radio discipline,” snapped Suma IV.

“Yes… uh… sir,” said Mahnmut.

Down in the hold, Orphu of Io rumbled in the subsonic.

Odysseus’ construction shuttle slowly approached the brightly lit glass city girdling the asteroid. Sensors from the shuttle confirmed that the underlying asteroid was roughly potato-shaped and about twenty kilometers long by almost eleven kilometers in diameter. Every square meter of the asteroid’s nickel-iron surface was covered by the crystal city, with the steel, glass, and buckycarbon towers and bubbles rising to a maximum height of half a kilometer. Sensors showed that the entire structure was pressurized at sea-level Earth normal, that the molecules of air inevitably leaking out through the glass suggested Earth-norm oxygen-nitrogen-carbon-dioxide mix atmosphere, and that the internal temperatures would be comfortable for a human who had lived around the Mediterranean Sea before the late Lost Era climate changes… someone from Odysseus’ era, for instance.

On the bridge of the Queen Mab a thousand kilometers away and holding, all of the command ‘vecs monitored their sensors and screens more intently as an invisible tentacle of forcefield energy reached out from the crystal asteroid city, grabbed the construction shuttle, and pulled it in toward an airlock-like opening high on the tallest glass tower.

“Shut down the shuttle’s thrusters and autopilot,” commanded Cho Li.

Retrograde Sinopessen monitored Odysseus’ biotelemetry and said, “Our human friend is fine. Excited… heart rate up a bit and adrenaline levels rising… he can see out that little window… but otherwise healthy.”

Holographic images flickered above consoles and the chart table as the shuttle was drawn closer and then pulled into the dark rectangle of the airlock. A glass door slid shut. Sensors on the shuttle registered a forcefield differential pushing it “down”—substituting for gravity to within 0.68 Earth standard—and then the sensors recorded atmosphere rushing into the large airlock chamber. It was as breathable as the air at Ilium.

“Radio, maser, and quantum telemetric data is quite clear,” reported Cho Li. “The glass of the city wall does not block it.”

“He’s not in the city yet,” grumbled General Beh bin Adee. “He’s just in the airlock. Don’t be surprised if the Voice cuts off transmissions as soon as Odysseus is inside.”

They watched on the subjective skin cameras—and so did everyone aboard the dropship some fifty thousand kilometers away—as Odysseus uncoiled from the small space, stretched, and began walking toward an interior door. Although wearing soft shipsuit clothing, the human had insisted over all the moravecs’ protests on bringing his round shield and short sword. The shield was raised now and the sword was ready as the bearded man approached the brightly illuminated door.

“Unless anyone has any further need to study Jerusalem or the neutrino beam, I’ll set course for Europe now,” Suma IV said over the intercom.

No one protested, although Mahnmut was busy describing the colors of the Old City of Jerusalem to Ophu—the reds of the late afternoon sun on the ancient buildings, the gold gleaming of the mosque, the clay-colored streets and dark gray shadows of the alleys, the shocking, sudden green of olive groves here and there, and everywhere the slick, wet, slimy green of the amphibian creatures.

The dropship accelerated to Mach 3 and headed northeast toward the old capital of Dimashq in what had once been called Syria or the Kahn Ho Tep Province of Nyainqêntanglha Shan West, Suma IV keeping a distance between the aircraft and the dome of nullifying energy over the dried-up Mediterranean. As they covered the length of old Syria and banked sharply left to head west along the Anatolian Peninsula over the bones of old Turkey, the ship fully stealthed and doing a silent Mach 2.8 at an altitude of thirty-four thousand meters, Mahnmut suddenly said, “Can we slow down and orbit near the Aegean coast south of the Hellespont?”

“We can,” replied Suma IV over the intercom, “but we’re behind schedule for our survey of the blue-ice city in France. Is there something along the coast up here that’s worth our detour and time?”

“The site of Troy,” said Mahnmut. “Ilium.”

The dropship began decelerating and losing altitude. When it reached the crawling pace of three hundred kilometers per hour—and with the brown and green of the emptied Mediterranean approaching fast and the water of the Hellespont to the north—Suma IV retracted the stubby delta wings and unfolded the hundred-meter-long, multiplaned gossamer wings with their slowly turning propellers.