They passed through the largest room—museum, Savi had called it—and entered the long bubble with the crystal coffins. Here the buckyglas was almost opaque and very green. It reminded Harman of the time—could it only have been a year and a half ago—when he had walked miles out into the Atlantic Breach and peered in through towering walls of water on each side to see huge fish swimming higher than his head. The light had been dim and green like this.

Hannah set down the stretcher, Harman hurried to lower it with her, and she looked around. “Which cryo-crèche?”

There were eight crystal coffins in the long room, all empty and gleaming dully in the low light. Tall boxes of humming machines were connected to each coffin and virtual lights blinked green, red, and amber above metal surfaces.

“I have no idea,” said Harman. Savi had talked to Daeman and him about her sleeping for centuries in one or more of these cryo-crèches, but that conversation had taken place more than ten months ago while they were entering the Mediterranean Basin in the crawler and he didn’t remember the details well. Perhaps there had been no details to remember.

“Let’s just try this closest one,” said Harman. He took hold of the unconscious Odysseus under the man’s bandaged arms, waited for Petyr and Hannah to find a grip, and they started lifting him into the coffin closest to a spiral staircase that Harman remembered going up into another bubble corridor.

“If you couch him there, he shall die,” said a soft, androgynous voice from the darkness.

All three hurried to lower Odysseus back onto the stretcher. Petyr raised his bow. Harman and Hannah set their hands to their sword hilts. The figure emerged from the darkness beyond the monitoring machines.

Harman instantly knew that this was the Ariel of whom Savi and Prospero had spoken, but he did not know how he knew this. The figure was short—barely five feet tall—and not-quite-human. He or she had greenish-white skin that was not really skin—Harman could see right through the outer layer to the interior, where sparkling lights seemed to float in emerald fluid—and a perfectly formed face so androgynous that it reminded Harman of pictures of angels he had sigled from some of Ardis Hall’s oldest books. He or she had long slender arms and normal hands except for the length and grace of the fingers, and appeared to be wearing soft green slippers. At first Harman thought that the Ariel figure was wearing clothes—or not so much clothes as a series of pale, leaf-embroidered vines running round and round its slim form and sewn into a tight bodysuit—but then he realized that pattern lay in the creature’s skin rather than atop it. There was still no sign of gender.

Ariel’s face was human enough—long, thin nose, full lips curved in a slight smile, black eyes, hair curling down to his or her shoulders in greenish-white strands—but the effect of looking right through Ariel’s transparent skin to the floating nodes of light within diminished any sense that one was looking at a human being.

“You’re Ariel,” said Harman, not quite making it a question.

The figure dipped its head in acknowledgment. “I see that Savi herself has told thee of me,” he or she said in that maddeningly soft voice.

“Yes. But I thought that you would be… intangible… like Prospero’s projection.”

“A hologram,” said Ariel. “No. Prospero assumes substance as he pleases, but rarely does it please him to do so. I, on the other hand, whilst being called a spirit or sprite for so very long by so very many, yet love to be corporeal.”

“Why do you say that this crèche will kill Odysseus?” asked Hannah. She was crouching next to the unconscious man, trying to find his pulse. Noman looked dead to Harman’s eye.

Ariel stepped closer. Harman glanced at Petyr, who was staring at the figure’s translucent skin. The younger man had lowered the bow but continued to look shocked and suspicious.

“These are crèches such as Savi used,” said Ariel, gesturing toward the eight crystal coffins. “Therein all activity of the body is suspended or slowed, it is true, like an insect in amber or a corpse on ice, but these couches heal no wounds, no. Odysseus has for centuries kept his own time-ark hidden here. Its abilities surpasseth my understanding. “

“What are you?” asked Hannah, rising. “Harman told us that Ariel was an avatar of the self-aware biosphere, but I don’t know what that means.”

“No one does,” said Ariel, making a delicate motion part bow, part curtsy. “Wilst thou follow me then to Odysseus’ ark?”

Ariel led them to the spiral staircase that helixed up through the ceiling, but rather than climbing, she laid her right palm against the floor and a hidden segment of the floor irised open, showing more spiral staircase continuing downward. The stairs were wide enough to accommodate the stretcher, but it was still hard and tricky work to carry the heavy Odysseus down the stairway. Petyr had to go ahead with Hannah to keep the unconscious man from sliding off.

Then they followed a green bubble corridor to an even smaller room, this one allowing in even less light than the crystal coffin chamber above. With a start, Harman realized that this space was not in one of the buckyglas bubbles, but had been carved out of the concrete and steel of the actual Bridge tower. Here there was only one crèche, wildly different from the crystal boxes—this machine was larger, heavier, darker, an onyx coffin with clear glass only above where the man or woman’s face would be. It was connected by a myriad of cables, hoses, conduits, and pipes to an even larger onyx machine that had no dials or readouts of any sort. There was a strong smell which reminded Harman of the air just before a serious thunderstorm.

Ariel touched a pressure plate on the side of the time-ark and the long lid hissed open. The cushions inside were frayed and faded, still impressed with the outline of a man just Noman’s size.

Harman looked at Hannah, they hesitated only a second, and then they set Odysseus-Noman’s body inside the ark.

Ariel made a motion as if to shut the lid, but Hannah quickly stepped closer, leaned into the ark, and kissed Odysseus gently on the lips. Then she stepped back and allowed Ariel to close the lid. It sealed shut with an ominous hiss.

An amber sphere immediately flicked into existence between the ark and the dark machine.

“What does that mean?” asked Hannah. “Will he live?”

Ariel shrugged—a graceful motion of slim shoulders. “Ariel is the last of all living things to know the heart of a mere machine. But this machine decides its occupants’ fates within three revolutions of our world. Come, we must depart. The air here will soon grow too thick and foul to breathe. Up into the light again, and we shall speak to one another like civil creatures.”

“I’m not leaving Odysseus,” said Hannah. “If we’ll know if he’ll live or die within seventy-two hours, then I’ll stay until we know.”

“You can’t stay,” said an indignant Petyr. “We have to hunt for the weapons and get back to Ardis as quick as we can.”

The temperature in the stuffy alcove was rising quickly. Harman felt sweat trickle down his ribs under his tunic. The thunderstorm burning smell was very strong now. Hannah took a step away from them and folded her arms across her chest. It was obvious that she intended to stay near the crèche.

“You will die here, cooling this fetid air with your sighs,” said Ariel. “But if thee wishes to monitor your beloved’s life or death, step closer here.”

Hannah stepped closer. She towered over the slightly glowing form that was Ariel.

“Give me your hand, child,” said Ariel.

Hannah warily extended her palm. Ariel took the hand, set it against his or her chest, and then pushed it into its green chest. Hannah gasped and tried to pull away, but Ariel’s strength was too much for her.