“Yes,” said Odysseus, “but you insult all those actions in which you do not honor arete. Eating? Eat as if it were your last meal. Prepare the food as if there were no more food! Sacrifices to the gods? You must make each sacrifice as if the lives of your family depended upon your energy and devotion and focus. Loving? Yes, love as if it were the most important thing in the world, but make it just one star in the constellation of excellence that is arete.”

“I don’t understand the agon, Odysseus,” said a young woman in the third row. Ada knew that her name was Peaen. She was intelligent, a skeptic of all things, but this was her fourth day here.

“The agon is simply the comparison of all like things, one to the other,” Odysseus said softly but clearly, “and the judgment of those things as equal to, greater than, or lesser than. All things in the universe take part in the dynamic of agon.” Odysseus pointed to the dead tree he was sitting on. “Was this tree greater than, lesser than, or simply equal to . . . that tree?” He pointed to a tall living tree up the hill, at the edge of the forest there. Voynix stood under the shadows of the branches. The voynix would not come close to Odysseus.

“That tree is living,” called the heavy man who had spoken earlier. “It must be superior to the dead tree.”

“Are all living things superior to all dead things?” asked Odysseus. “Many of you have gone under the turin cloth and seen the battle there. Is a dung merchant alive today a better man than Achilles was then, even if Achilles is dead now?”

“That’s comparing unlike things,” cried a woman.

“No,” said Odysseus. “Both are men. Both were born. Both will die. It matters little if one still breathes and the other resides only in the impotent shades of Hades. One must be able to compare men—or women—and that is why we need to know our fathers. Our mothers. Our history. Our stories.”

“Well, that tree you’re sitting on is still dead, Teacher,” said Petyr. This time people up and down the hill did laugh.

Odysseus joined in the laughter. He pointed to a sparrow that had just landed on one of the few branches Odysseus hadn’t hacked away from the fallen tree. “It is not only still dead,” he said, “it is newly dead. But already the usefulness of the tree—in usefulness terms of the agon—have surpassed the agon usefulness of that living tree up the hill. For that bird. For the insects even now burrowing into the bark of this fallen giant. For the mice and voles and larger creatures who will soon come to inhabit this dead tree.”

“Who is to be the final judge of the agon then?” asked a serious, older man in the fifth row. “Birds, bugs, or men?”

“All,” answered Odysseus. “Each in his turn. But the only judge who counts is you.”

“Isn’t that arrogant?” demanded a woman Ada recognized as a friend of her mother’s. “Who elected us judge? Who gave us the right to be judgmental?”

“The universe elected you through fifteen billions years of evolution,” said Odysseus. “It gave you eyes with which to see. Hands with which to hold and weigh. A heart with which to feel. A mind to learn the rules of judgment. And an imagination with which to consider the bird’s and bug’s—and even other trees’—judgment in this matter. And you must approach this judgment with arete to guide you—trust me that the bugs and birds and trees already do. They have no time for mediocrity in their world. They do not worry about the arrogance of judging, whether it is in choosing a mate, an enemy—or a home.”

Odysseus pointed to where the sparrow had hopped into a hole in the fallen trunk, disappeared into the hollow there.

“Teacher,” said a young man far back in the crowd, “why do you ask us men to wrestle at least once a day?”

Ada had heard enough. She took the last of her cold drink and walked back up to the house, pausing on the porch to look down the long grassy yard to where dozens more of the visitors—disciples—walked and talked together. Silk on the tents stirred to the warm breeze. Servitors shuffled from one visitor to the other, but few accepted offers of food or drink. Odysseus had asked that anyone staying to hear him speak more than once not allow the servitors to work for them, or the voynix to serve them. That had initially driven many away, but more and more were staying.

Ada looked up at the blue sky, noted the pale circles of the two rings orbiting there, and thought about Harman. She’d been so angry at him when he’d talked about women choosing among men’s sperm months or years or decades after intercourse—it was simply not discussed, except between mothers and daughters, and then only once. And that nonsense about a moth’s genes being involved, as if human women had not chosen the fathers of their allowed babies like that since time immemorial. That had been so . . . obscene . . . of Harman to bring that up.

But it was her new lover’s statement that he wanted to be the father of Ada’s child . . . not only be the one whose seed was chosen at some future date, but be around, be known as the father . . . that had so nonplussed and infuriated Ada that she’d sent Harman away on his harmless adventure with Savi and Daeman without so much as a kind word. In fact, with hostile words and glances.

Ada touched her lower belly. The firmary had not notified her through servitors that her time for pregnancy had arrived, but then, she had not asked to be put on the list. She was glad that she didn’t soon have to choose between—what had Harman called them?—sperm packets. But she thought of Harman—his intelligent, loving eyes, his gentle and then firm touch, his old but eager body—and she touched her belly again.

“Aman,” she whispered to herself, “son of Harman and Ada.”

She shook her head. Odysseus’ prattle the last weeks was beginning to fill her head with nonsense. Yesterday, fed up, after dark, after the scores and scores of disciples had wandered off to the fax pavilion or sleeping tents—more to the tents than to the pavilion—she had bluntly asked Odysseus how much longer he planned to stay at Ardis Hall.

The old man had smiled at her almost sadly. “Not much longer, my dear.”

“A week?” pressed Ada. “A month? A year?”

“Not so long,” said Odysseus. “Just until the sky begins falling, Ada. Just until new worlds appear in your yard.”

Furious at his flippancy, tempted to order the servitors to evict the hairy barbarian at once, Ada had stalked up to her bedroom—her last place of privacy in this suddenly public Ardis Hall—where she had lain awake being angry at Harman, missing Harman, worrying about Harman, instead of ordering servitors to do anything about old Odysseus.

Now she turned to go into the house, but a strange motion caught at the edge of her vision made her turn back. At first she thought it was just the rings rotating, as always, but then she looked again and saw another streak—like a diamond scratching a line across the perfect blue glass of the sky. Then another scratch, broader, brighter. Then yet another, so bright and so clear that Ada could clearly see flames stretching behind the streak of light. A few seconds later, three dull booms echoed across the lawn, made strolling disciples pause and look up, and caused even the servitors and voynix to freeze in their duties.

Ada heard screams and shouts from the hill behind the house. People on the lawn were pointing skyward.

There were scores of lines marring the azure sky now—bright, flaming, roiling red lines slashing and crisscrossing, falling west to east, some with plumes of color, others with rumbles and terrifying booms.

The sky was falling.