“Yes,” said Hannah.

“Did you see any other faxnode communities?” asked Loes. “Any other survivors?”

Hannah shook her head. Ada noticed that her young friend’s always-short hair had grown out some. “We stopped at two other nodes between Hughes Town and Ardis,” said Hannah. “Small-population nodes—Live Oak and Hulmanica. They’d both been sacked by voynix—there were voynix carcasses and human bones left, nothing more.”

“How many people do you think died there?” Ada asked softly.

Hannah shrugged and sipped the last of her coffee. “No more than forty or fifty total,” she said with the unemotional lack of affect common to all the Ardis survivors. “Nothing like the disaster here.” Hannah looked around. “I can feel something scrabbling at my mind like a bad memory.”

“That’s the little Setebos,” said Ada. “It wants to get in our minds and out of its Pit.” She always thought of the thing’s hole as “the Pit” with a capital “P.”

“Aren’t you afraid that its mother—father—whatever that thing in Paris Crater was that Daeman saw, will come for it?”

Ada looked over to where Daeman was standing by the Pit, speaking earnestly to Noman. “The big Setebos hasn’t showed up yet,” she said. “We’re more worried about what the little one will do.” She described to them all how the many-handed thing seemed to suck energy out of the earth where someone had died horribly.

Hannah shivered even though the sunlight was stronger now. “We saw the voynix in the woods with our searchlight,” she said softly. “Countless numbers of them. Row upon row of them. Just standing there under the trees and along the ridgelines, the closest about two miles out, I think. What are you going to do?”

Ada told her about the plan for the island.

Elian cleared his throat again. “Excuse me,” he said. “It’s not my business and I know I don’t get a vote here, but it seems to me that a rocky island like that would put you in our position in the tower. The voynix would keep coming—and you have so many more around you here—and you’d die off one by one. Someplace like the Bridge that Hannah told us about seems to make more sense.”

Ada nodded. She didn’t want to argue strategies quite yet—too many of the listening Ardis survivors sitting around this circle would vote for the island. “You do get a vote here, Elian,” she said instead. “Every one of you does. You’re part of our community now—any refugee we find will be—and you get as much of a vote as I do. Thank you for your opinion. We’re all going to discuss this at the noon meal and even the sentries will vote by proxy. I think you should get some sleep before then.”

Elian, Beman, the blond Iyayi—who somehow had remained beautiful despite her scratches and rags—and the short, silent woman named Susan and the big, bearded man named Stefe nodded and moved off with Tom and Siris to find empty bedrolls under canvas somewhere.

“You should sleep, too,” Ada said, touching Hannah’s forearm.

“What happened to your wrist, Ada?”

Ada looked down at the rough plaster cast and grubby bandage. “I broke it during the fight here. It’s nothing. I’m interested that the voynix disappeared from the Golden Gate at Machu Picchu. It makes me think we’re fighting a finite number of the things… if they have to redeploy, I mean.”

“A finite number,” agreed Hannah. “But Odysseus thinks there are more than a million voynix, and fewer than a hundred thousand of us humans.” She thought a second and added, “A hundred thousand of us before the slaughters began.”

“Does Noman have any idea why the voynix are killing us?” asked Ada, holding Hannah’s strong hand now.

“I think he does, but he hasn’t told me,” said Hannah. “There’s a lot he keeps to himself.”

That’s the understatement of the Twenty, thought Ada. Aloud she said, “You look exhausted, my dear. You really should get some sleep.”

“When Odysseus does,” said Hannah, meeting Ada’s gaze with something like the bashfulness, defiance, and pride of a young lover.

Ada nodded again.

Daeman stepped up to the fire. “Ada, could we see you a minute?”

Touching Hannah’s shoulder, Ada rose awkwardly and followed Daeman back to the Pit where Noman stood. The man they’d once called Odysseus was not much taller than Ada, but he was so solid and muscular that he emanated power. Ada could see the curly gray hairs on his chest through the open tunic.

“Admiring our pet?” asked Ada.

Noman did not smile. He scratched his beard, looked down into the Pit at the strangely quiescent baby, and then returned his dark-eyed gaze to Ada. “You’ll have to kill it,” he said.

“We plan to.”

“I mean quickly,” said Noman/Odysseus. “These things aren’t so much babies of the real Setebos as lice.”

“Lice?” Ada said. “I can hear its thoughts…”

“And you’ll hear them more and more loudly until the thing comes up out of there—it probably could already if it wanted to—and sucks the energy and souls right out of your bodies.”

Ada blinked and looked down into the Pit. The baby’s twohemisphered brain-back was just a gray glow down there. It was on the floor of the Pit now, tendrils and hands reeled in, its motile hands tucked under its mucousy body, its many eyes closed.

“The eggs hatch and these things swarm out,” continued Noman. “They’re like scouts for the real Setebos. These things only grow to be about twenty feet long. They find… food… in the soil and then return to the original Setebos, I don’t know quite how they travel so far, Brane Holes probably—this one’s not quite old enough to summon a Hole—and when they report back, the big Setebos thanks them for the information and eats them, absorbing all the evil and terror these… babies… have sucked up from the world.”

“How do you know so much about Setebos and his… lice?” asked Ada.

Noman shook his head as if that were too unimportant to deal with now.

And when are you going to start treating that sweet Hannah with the love and attention she deserves, you male pig? thought Ada.

“Noman had something important to tell us… ask us,” said Daeman. Ada’s friend looked worried.

“I need to take the sonie,” said Noman.

Ada blinked again. “Take it where?”

“Up to the rings,” said Noman.

“For how long?” asked Ada. She was thinking You can’t take the sonie! and she knew that Daeman was thinking the same thing.

“I don’t know,” said Odysseus in that strange accent of his.

“Well,” began Ada, “it’s out of the question that you take the sonie. We need it to escape this place. We need it for hunting. We’ll need it for…”

“I have to take the sonie,” repeated Noman. “It’s the only machine on this continent that can get me up there, and I don’t have time to fly to China or somewhere to find another. And the calibani will have made the Mediterranean Basin unapproachable by now.”

“Well,” said Ada again, hearing the edge of rockhard stubbornness that only rarely powered her voice, “you can’t just take the sonie. We’ll all die.”

“That’s not so important right now,” said the gray-bearded warrior.

Ada started to laugh but ended up only staring, her mouth partially open in amazement. “It’s important to us, Noman. We want to live.”

He shook his head as if Ada had not understood. “No one on this planet is going to live unless I can get up to the rings… and today,” he said. “I need the sonie. If I can, I’ll bring it back or send it back to you. If I can’t… well, it won’t matter.”

Ada wished she had a flechette rifle with her. She glanced at the one that Daeman carried—still unslung, he carried it casually. Noman seemed to have no weapon on him, but Ada had seen how strong this man was.

“I need the sonie,” Noman said again. “Today. Now.”

“No,” said Ada.

Down in the Pit, the many-handed orphan suddenly began a wailing, snorting, coughing sound that ended in a noise that sounded very much like a human laugh.