The others did. The molecular earphones rang with their exclamations.

“You stay back unless called,” Harman directed the voynix. The creature moved back thirty paces.

They walked up the valley—northwest according to their palm direction finders. The stars shook from the force of the wind and occasionally all four of them would have to huddle in the shelter of a large boulder to keep from getting blown over. When the gale lessened in intensity, they spread out again.

“There’s something here,” came Ada’s voice.

The others hurried to join the yellow form a hundred feet to their south. Ada was looking down at what at first appeared to be just another rock, but as Daeman got closer, he saw the brittle hair or fur, the odd flipper appendages, and the black holes or eyes. The thing appeared to be carved from weathered wood.

“It’s a seal,” said Harman.

“What’s that?” asked Hannah, kneeling to touch the still figure.

“An aquatic mammal. I’ve seen them near coastlines . . . away from faxnodes.” He also knelt and touched the animal’s corpse. “This thing’s dried out . . . mummified is the word. It may have been here for centuries. Millennia.”

“So we’re near a coast,” said Ada.

“Not necessarily,” said Harman, standing and looking around.

“Hey,” said Daeman, “I remember that big boulder. The beer pavilion was pitched just below it.” He made his way slowly to the boulder near the cliff wall.

“Are you sure?” asked Ada when they’d caught up. There was only the rock slab rising toward the coldly burning stars and hurrying clouds. Everyone looked on the ground for signs of the tent or campfires or carriole tracks, but there was nothing.

“It was a year and a half ago,” said Harman. “The servitors probably cleaned up well and . . .”

“Oh, my God,” interrupted Hannah.

They all turned quickly. The orange-suited young woman was looking skyward. They lifted their heads, even as they each noticed the play of colored light on the rocks around them.

The night sky was alive with curtains of shimmering, dancing light—bars of blues and yellows and dancing reds.

“What is it?” whispered Ada.

“I don’t know,” Harman responded, also whispering. The light continued to writhe across the uncloudy portions of the sky. Harman lifted off his thermskin cowl. “My God, it’s almost as brilliant without the night-vision. I think I saw something like this once decades ago when I was . . .”

“Servitors,” interrupted Daeman, “what is this light?”

“A form of atmospheric phenomenon associated with charged particles from the sun interacting with Earth’s electromagnetic field,” came the voice from the distant machine. “We no longer have the particulars of the scientific explanation, but it goes under different names, including . . .”

“All right,” said Harman. “That’s enough . . . hey.” He had pulled on his cowl again and was looking at the rock slab in front of them.

There were complex scratchings on the rock. They did not look as if they had been made by the wind or other natural causes.

“What is it?” asked Ada. “It doesn’t look like the symbols in the books.”

“No,” agreed Harman.

“Something from the Burning Man?” said Hannah.

“I don’t remember scratches on the rock near the beer tent,” said Daeman. “But maybe the servitors scratched up the surface moving some of the stuff out after the celebration.”

“Perhaps,” said Harman.

“Should we keep hunting around here?” asked Ada. “Try to find some sign that this woman you’re after was here? Or even that the Burning Man was here? Maybe there are some ashes left.”

“In this wind?” laughed Daeman. “After a year and a half?”

“A pit,” said Ada. “A campfire. We could . . .”

“No,” said Harman. “We’re not going to find anything here. Let’s fax somewhere warm and get some lunch.”

Ada turned her yellow head to look at Harman, but she said nothing.

The two servitors had floated toward them and the voynix loomed just behind them.

“We’re going,” Harman told the closer servitor. “You can use your flashlight beams to illuminate our way back to the fax pavilion.”

It was just after midday in Ulanbat and the usual hundred or so guests were milling at Tobi’s ongoing Second Twenty party on the seventy-ninth floor of the Circles to Heaven. The hanging gardens rustled and sighed from the breeze blowing off the red desert. Daeman was greeted by a host of young men and women who had not noticed his absence over the past few days, but he followed Harman, Hannah, and Ada as they found hot finger food at the long banquet table and had cold wine poured by a servitor. Harman led them away from the crowd to a stone table near the low wall at the edge of the circle. Eight hundred feet below, camel caravans driven by servitors and followed by voynix padded in on the hard-packed Gobi Highway.

“What is it?” said Ada as they sat in the garden shade and ate. “I know something happened back there.”

Harman started to speak, paused, and waited for a servitor to float past. “Do you ever wonder,” he asked, “if that utility servitor is the same one you just saw somewhere else? They all look alike.”

“That’s absurd,” said Daeman. Between bites on a chicken leg, he was licking his fingers and sipping his chilled wine.

“Perhaps,” said Harman.

“What did you see back there in the dark?” asked Hannah. “Those scratches on the rock?”

“They were numbers,” said Harman.

Daeman laughed. “No they weren’t. I know numbers. We all know numbers. Those weren’t numbers.”

“They were numbers written out in words.”

“It didn’t look like the jiggles in books,” said Ada. “Words.”

“No,” said Harman. “I think was the kind of writing people used to do by hand. The words were all loopy and connected and worn down some by the wind—I suspect that they were written there way back at the last Burning Man—but I could read them.”

“Words,” laughed Daeman. “A minute ago you said they were numbers.”

“What did they say?” asked Hannah.

Harman looked around him again. “Eight-eight-four-nine,” he said softly.

Ada shook her head. “It sounds like a faxnode code, but it’s way too high. I’ve never heard of a code that started with two eights.”

“There aren’t any,” said Daeman.

Harman shrugged. “Maybe. But when we’re done here, I’m going to try it out at the core node here.”

Ada looked out at the distant horizon. The rings were visible above them, two milky strings crossing in a pale blue sky. “Is that why you kept the four thermskins rather than throwing them in the disposal bin as the servitors told us to do?”

“I didn’t know you noticed that I did,” said Harman. He grinned and drank wine. “I tried to do it on the sly. I guess I’m not very good at secrets. At least the servitors had already faxed away.”

As if on cue, a servitor floated over to replenish their drinks. The little spherical machine floated beyond the wall—eight hundred feet above the red-yellow ground—as its dainty, white-gloved hands poured wine into their glasses.

If Harman hadn’t insisted they change into their thermskins and wear them under their clothes before faxing, they might have died.

“Good God,” cried Daeman, “where are we? What’s going on?”

There was no faxnode pavilion. Code 8849 had brought them straight into darkness and chaos. Wind howled. There was ice underfoot. The four crashed into sharp things with every step they took in the screaming blackness. Even the faxportal had disappeared behind them.

“Ada!” called Harman. “The light!” Their hoods provided night vision, but none of them had their hoods up at the moment and there seemed to be no ambient light to magnify in this absolute blackness.

“I’m trying to get it on . . . there!” The small flashlight she’d borrowed from Tobi poured a thin beam into the night, illuminating an open door rimmed with frost, icicles three feet long, frozen waves of ice under foot. Ada swung the light and three thermskinned faces stared back at her, surprise clearly visible on each face.