Sycorax shook her head and lifted the two-handled cup to sip wine. She did not offer Noman any. The young Odysseus lay back glazed on the cushions, apparently unable to move.

“Is that all?” she said.

“No,” said Noman. “I’ll also ask you to reactivate all faxnodes for the old-style humans, all function links, and the rejuvenation tanks remaining on both the polar and equatorial rings.”

Sycorax said nothing.

“Finally,” said Noman, “I want you to send down your tame monster here to tell Setebos that the Quiet is coming to this Earth.”

Caliban hissed and snarled. “Thinketh, time has come to pluck the mankin’s sound legs off and leaveth stumps for him to ponder. Think-eth, He is strong and Lord and this bruised fellow shall receive a worm, nay, two worms, for using His name in vain.”

“Silence,” snapped Sycorax. She stood, looking more regal in her nakedness than other queens could in full regalia. “Noman, is the Quiet coming to this Earth?”

“I believe so, yes.” She seemed to relax. Lifting a clump of grapes from the bowl on the cushions, she carried them to Noman, offered them. He shook his head.

“You ask much of me, for an old and non-Odysseus,” she said softly, pacing the space between the cushioned bed and the man. “What would you give me in return?”

“Tales of my travels.” Sycorax laughed again. “I know your travels.”

“Not this time, you don’t. This has been twenty years, not ten.” The witch’s beautiful face twisted in something the moravecs’ interpreted as a sneer. “Always seeking the same thing… your Penelope.”

“No,” said Noman. “Not this time. This time when you sent the young me through the Calabi-Yau doorway my travels in space and time—twenty years for me—were all in search of you.”

Sycorax stopped her pacing and stared at him.

“You,” repeated Noman. “My Circe. We loved each other well and have made love well many times these twenty years. I’ve found you in your iterations as Circe, Sycorax, Alys, and Calypso.”

“Alys?” said the witch. Noman only nodded. “Did I have a slight gap between my front teeth then?”

“You did.” Sycorax shakes her head. “You lie. In all lines of reality it is the same, Odysseus-Noman. I save you, pull you from the sea, succor you, feed you honeyed wine and fine food, tend your wounds, bathe you, show you physical love of a sort you have only dreamed of, offer you immortality and eternal youth, and always you leave. Always you leave me for that weaving bitch Penelope. And your son.”

“I’ve seen my son this twenty years past,” said Noman. “He is grown into a fine man. I do not need to see him again. I wish to stay with you.”

Sycorax returns to her cushions and drinks two-handed from the large goblet. “I am thinking of turning all your moravec mariners into swine,” she said at last.

Noman shrugged. “Why not? You did that to all my other men in all these other worlds.”

“What kind of swine do you think moravecs will make?” asked the witch, her tone merely conversational. “Will they resemble a row of plastic piggybanks?”

Noman said, “Moira is awake again.” The witch blinked. “Moira? Why would she choose to waken now?”

“I don’t know,” said Noman, “but she’s in Savi’s young body. I saw her on the day I left Earth, but we didn’t speak.”

“Savi’s body?” repeated Sycorax. “What is Moira up to? And why now?”

“Thinketh,” said Caliban behind Noman, “He made the old Savi out of sweet clay for His son to bite and eat, add honeycomb and pods, chewing her neck until froth rises bladdery, quick, quick, till maggots scamper through my brain.”

Sycorax rose and paced again, coming close to Noman and raising one hand as if to touch his bare chest, then veering away. Caliban hissed and crouched, his palms on granite, his back hunched, his arms straight down between his crouched and powerful legs, his yellow eyes baleful. But he remained where she had told him to stay.

“You know I can’t send my son down to tell his father Setebos about the Quiet,” she said softly.

“I know this… thing … is not your son,” said Noman. “You built him out of shit and defective DNA in a tank of green slime.”

Caliban hissed and began to speak again in his terrible lisping rant. Sycorax waved him silent.

“Do you know your moravec friends are lifting more than seven hundred black holes into orbit even as we speak?” she asked.

Noman shrugged. “I didn’t know that, but I hoped they would be.”

“Where did they get them?”

“You know where they must have come from. Seven hundred sixty-eight black-hole warheads? There is only one place.”

“Impossible,” said Sycorax. “I sealed that wreck off inside a stasis-egg almost two millennia ago.”

“And Savi and I unsealed it more than a century ago,” said Noman.

“Yes, I watched as you and that bitch hurried around with your hopeless little schemes,” said Sycorax. “What in the hell did you hope to accomplish with those turin-cloth connections to Ilium?”

“Preparation,” said Noman.

“For what?” laughed Sycorax. “You don’t believe those two races of the human species will ever meet, do you? You can’t be serious. The Greeks and Trojans and their ilk would eat your naïve little old-style humans here for breakfast.”

Noman shrugged. “Call off this war with Prospero and let’s see what happens.”

Sycorax slammed down the wine goblet onto a nearby table. “Leave the field while that bastard Prospero remains on it?” she snapped. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am,” said Noman. “The old entity called Prospero is quite mad. His days are over. But you can leave before the same madness claims you. Let’s leave this place, Circe, you and I.”

“Leave?” The witch’s voice was very low, incredulous.

“I know this rock has fusion-drive engines and Brane Hole generators that could send us to the stars, beyond the stars. If we get bored, we step through the Calabi-Yau door and make love across the whole, rich universe of history—we could meet at different ages, wear our different bodies at different ages as easily as changing clothes, travel in time to join ourselves making love, freeze time itself so that we can take part in our own lovemaking. You have enough food and air here to keep us comfortable for a thousand years—ten thousand if you please.”

“You forget,” said Sycorax, rising and pacing again. “You’re a mortal man. In twenty years I’ll be changing your soiled underwear and feeding you by hand. In forty years you’ll be dead.”

“You offered me immortality once. The rejuvenation tanks are still here on your isle.”

“You rejected immortality!” screamed Sycorax. She picked up the heavy mug and threw it at him. Noman ducked but did not move his feet from where they were planted. “You rejected it again and again!” she screamed, tearing at her hair and cheeks with her nails. “You threw it in my face to return to your precious… Penelope … over and over again. You actually laughed at me.”

“I’m not laughing now. Come away with me.”

Her expression was wild with fury. “I should have Caliban kill you and eat you right here in front of me. I’ll laugh while he sucks the marrow from your cracked bones.”

“Come away with me, Circe,” said Noman. “Reactivate the faxes and functions, drop the old Hands of Hercules and other useless toys, and come away with me. Be my lover again.”

“You’re old,” she sneered. “Old and scarred and gray-haired. Why should I choose an old man over a vital younger one?” She stroked the thigh and flaccid penis of the seemingly hypnotized and motionless younger Odysseus.

“Because this Odysseus will not be leaving through the Calabi-Yau door in a week or month or eight years as that young one will,” said Noman. “And because this Odysseus loves you.”

Sycorax made a choked noise that sounded like a snarl. Caliban echoed her snarl.