“What crèche?” said Daeman. “I only remember the crystal coffins.”

“Cryotemporal sarcophagi,” said Hannah, enunciating each syllable with care. “I remember them in the museum there. I remember Savi talking about them. It’s where she slept some of the centuries away. It’s where she said she found Odysseus sleeping three weeks before we met here.”

“But Savi didn’t always tell the truth,” said Harman. “Perhaps she never did. Odysseus has admitted that he and Savi had known each other for a long, long time—that it was the two of them who distributed the turin cloths almost eleven years ago.”

Ada held up the turin cloth that Daeman had left behind in the other room.

“And Prospero told us… up there… that there was more to this Odysseus than we could understand. And on a couple of occasions, after a lot of wine, Odysseus has mentioned his crèche at the Golden Gate—joked about returning to it.”

“He must have meant the crystal coffins… the sarcophagi,” said Ada.

“I don’t think so,” said Harman, pacing back and forth past the empty beds. All of the other victims of last night’s fighting had decided to recuperate in their rooms in Ardis Hall or the outlying barracks. Only Noman was still here this morning. “I think there was another thing there at Golden Gate, a sort of healing crèche.”

“Blue worms,” whispered Daeman. His pale face grew even paler. Hannah was so shocked at the image—her cells remembered her hours in the worm-filled tanks up there in the Firmary on Prospero’s orbital isle even if her mind did not—that she released Odysseus’ hand.

“No, I don’t think so,” Harman said quickly. “We didn’t see anything that resembled the Firmary healing tanks when we were at the Golden Gate. No blue worms. No orange fluid. I think the crèche is something else.”

“You’re just guessing,” Ada said flatly, almost harshly.

“Yes. I’m just guessing.” He rubbed his cheeks. He was so very tired. “But I think that if Noman… Odysseus… survives the sonie flight, there might be a chance for him at the Golden Gate.”

“You can’t do that,” said Ada. “No.”

“Why not?”

“We need the sonie here. To fight the voynix if they come back tonight. When they come back tonight.”

“I’ll be back before dark,” said Harman.

Hannah stood. “How can that be? When we flew from the Golden Gate with Savi it took more than a day of flying.”

“It can fly faster than that,” said Harman. “Savi was flying slowly so as not to scare us.”

“How much faster?” asked Daeman.

Harman hesitated a few seconds. “Much faster,” he said at last. “The sonie tells me that it can get to the Golden Gate at Machu Picchu in thirty-eight minutes.”

“Thirty-eight minutes!” cried Ada, who had also been on that long, long flight up with Savi.

“The sonie told you?” said Hannah. She was upset. “When did the sonie tell you? I thought the machine couldn’t answer questions about destinations.”

“It hasn’t until this morning,” said Harman. “Just after the fighting. I had a few minutes alone up on the jinker platform with the sonie and I figured out how to interface my palm functions with its display.”

“How did you discover that?” asked Ada. “You’ve been trying to find some function interface for months.”

Harman rubbed his cheek again. “I finally just asked it how to start the function interface. Three green circles within three larger red circles. Easy.”

“And it told you how long it would take to get to Golden Gate?” said Daeman. He sounded dubious.

“It showed me,” Harman said softly. “Diagrams. Maps. Airspeed. Velocity vectors. All superimposed on my vision—just like farnet or …” He paused.

“Or allnet,” said Hannah. They’d all experienced the vertigo-inducing confusion of allnet since Savi had shown them how to access it the previous spring. None of them had mastered its use. It was just too much information to process.

“Yeah,” said Harman. “So I figure if I take Odysseus… Noman… this morning, I can see if there’s some sort of a healing crèche there for him… install him in one of the crystal coffins if there’s not—and be back here before the three p.m. meeting. Heck, I could be back here for lunch.”

“He probably wouldn’t survive the trip,” said Hannah, her voice wooden. She was staring at the gasping unconscious man whom she loved.

“He definitely won’t survive another day here at Ardis without medical care,” said Harman. “We’re just… too… fucking… ignorant.” He slammed his fist down on a wooden cabinet top and then pulled it back, knuckles bleeding. He was embarrassed by the outburst.

Ada said, “I’ll go with you. You can’t carry him into the Bridge bubbles by yourself. You’ll have to use a stretcher.”

“No,” said Harman. “You shouldn’t go, my dear.”

Ada’s pale face came up quickly and her black eyes flashed with anger. “Because I’m…”

“No, not because you’re pregnant.” Harman touched her fingers that she’d folded into a fist, setting his large, rough fingers around her slender, softer ones. “You’re just too important here. This news that Daeman brought is going to spread through the entire community in the next hour. Everyone’s going to be near panic.”

“Another reason that you shouldn’t go,” whispered Ada.

Harman shook his head. “You’re the leader here, my darling. Ardis is your estate now. We’re all guests here at your home. The people will need answers—not just at the meeting, but in the coming hours—and you need to be here to calm them.”

“I don’t have any answers,” Ada said in a small voice.

“Yes, you do,” said Harman. “What would you suggest we do about Daeman’s news?”

Ada turned her face toward the window. There was frost on the panes, but it had quit snowing and raining outside. “We need to see how many of the other communities have been invaded by the holes and blue ice,” she said softly. “Send about ten messengers out to fax to the remaining nodes.”

“Just ten?” said Daeman. There were more than three hundred remaining faxnodes that had survivor communities.

“We can’t spare more than ten, in case the voynix return during the daylight,” Ada said flatly. “They can each take thirty codes and see how many nodes they can cover before nightfall in this hemisphere.”

“And I’ll look for more flechette magazines at the Golden Gate,” said Harman. “Odysseus brought back three hundred magazines with him when he found the three rifles last fall, but we’re almost out after last night.”

“We have teams pulling crossbow bolts from the voynix carcasses,” said Ada, “but I’ll tell Reman that we’ll need to cast as many new ones as we can today. I’ll have the workshop double up on that work today. The arrows take so much longer, but we can put more bows on the ramparts by darkfall.”

“I’m going with you,” Hannah said to Harman. “You will need someone else to carry Odysseus in on the stretcher, and no one here has explored the green bubble city on the Golden Gate more than I have.”

“All right,” said Harman, seeing his wife—what a strange word and thought, “wife”—throw the younger woman a sharp glance that considered jealousy and then rejected it. Ada knew that Hannah’s only love—as hopeless and unrequited as it had been—was for Odysseus.

“I’ll go, too,” said Daeman. “You could use an extra crossbow there.”

“True,” said Harman, “but I think it would be more useful if you’d be in charge of choosing the fax-messenger teams, briefing them on what you saw, and sorting out their destinations.”

Daeman shrugged. “All right. I’ll take thirty nodes myself. Good luck.” He nodded toward Hannah and Harman, touched Ada’s arm, and left the infirmary.

“Let’s eat very quickly,” Harman said to Hannah, “and then grab some clothes and weapons and get going. We’ll get some strong young guys to help us carry Odysseus outside. I’ll bring the sonie down.”

“Couldn’t we eat in the sonie?” said Hannah.