Harman sipped his wine. “Do we want to know what a Smilodont is?”

Savi shrugged. “Just a big fucking cat with big fucking sabertooth teeth. They’d eat Terror Birds for lunch and pick their sabers with the leftover claws. The idiot ARNists did bring sabertooths back, but not here. India. Anyone here know where that is . . . was? Should be? The post-humans ripped it free of Asia and broke it into a goddamned archipelago.”

The five looked at her.

“Thank you for reminding me,” said Odysseus with his stilted accent, and stood and went to the counter. “Next course, Terror Bird.” He carried the big platter back to the table. “I’ve been waiting to taste this delicacy for quite a while, but never had the time to hunt one until today. Who will join me?”

Everyone but Daeman and Savi volunteered to try a slice. They all poured more wine for themselves. Outside, the thunderstorm had arrived with a vengeance and flashes of lightning streaked around the bridge structure, illuminating the saddle and ruins far below as well as the clouds and jagged peaks on either side.

Ada, Harman, and Hannah each tried a bite of the pale meat and then drank copious water and wine. Odysseus bit off slice after slice from the point of his knife.

“It reminds me of . . . chicken,” Ada said into the silence.

“Yes,” said Hannah, “definitely chicken.”

“Chicken with a strange, strong, bitter taste,” said Harman.

“Vulture,” said Odysseus. “It reminds me of vulture.” He took another large bite, swallowed, and grinned. “If I cook Terror Bird again, I’ll use lots of sauce.”

Five of them ate their microwaved rice in silence while Odysseus enjoyed more helpings of his Terror Bird and Macrauchenia, washed down with huge draughts of wine. The conversational silence might have been uncomfortable if it had not been for the storm. The wind had come up, lightning was almost continuous—illuminating the softly lit dining bubble in blasts of white light—and the thunder would have drowned out most conversation anyway. The green dining bubble seemed to sway ever so slightly when the wind howled and the four guests glanced at each other with barely concealed anxiety.

“It’s all right,” said Savi, no longer sounding angry or all that intoxicated, as if her earlier harsh words had vented some of the pressure from her bitterness. “The pariglas does not conduct electricity and we’re firmly attached—as long as the bridge stands, we won’t fall.” Savi sipped the last of her wine and smiled without humor. “Of course, the bridge is older than God’s teeth, so I can’t guarantee it will remain standing.”

When the worst of the storm passed and Savi was offering coffee and chai heated in odd-looking glass containers, Hannah said, “You promised to tell us how you got here, Odysseus Uhr .”

“You want me to sing to you of all my twists and turns, driven time and again off course, in the days since my comrades and I plundered the hallowed heights of Pergamus?” he replied, voice soft.

“Yes,” said Hannah.

“I shall,” said Odysseus. “But first, I think, Savi Uhr has some business to discuss with all of you.”

They looked at the old woman and waited.

“I need your help,” said Savi. “For centuries I’ve avoided exposure to your world—-to the voynix and the other watchers who wish me ill—but Odysseus is here for a reason, and his ends serve my own. I ask if you would take him back—to one of your homes, where others can visit him—and allow him to meet and speak with your friends.”

Ada, Harman, Daeman, and Hannah exchanged glances.

“Why doesn’t he just fax wherever he wants?” asked Daeman.

Savi shook her head. “Odysseus can no more fax than I can.”

“That’s silly,” said Daeman. “Anyone can fax.”

Savi sighed and poured the last of the wine into her glass. “Boy,” she said, “do you know what faxing is?”

Daeman laughed. “Of course. It’s how you go from where you are to where you want to be.”

“But how does it work?” asked Savi.

Daeman shook his head at the old woman’s obtuseness. “What do you mean, ‘How does it work?’ It just works. Like servitors or running water. You use a fax portal to go from one place to another, one faxnode to the next.”

Harman held up his hand. “I think what Savi Uhr means is how does the machinery work that allows us to fax, Daeman Uhr .”

“I wondered that myself a few times,” said Hannah. “I understand how to build a furnace hearth than can melt metal. But how does one build a fax portal that sends us from here to there without having to . . . go in between?”

Savi laughed. “It doesn’t, gentle children. Your fax portals don’t send you anywhere. They destroy you. Rip you atom from atom. They don’t even send the atoms anywhere, just store them until they’re needed by the next person faxing in. You don’t go anywhere when you’re faxed. You just die and allow another you to be built somewhere else.”

Odysseus drank his wine and watched the receding storm, apparently not interested in Savi’s explanations. The other four stared at her.

“Why,” said Ada, “that’s . . . that’s . . .”

“Insane,” said Daeman.

Savi smiled. “Yes.”

Harman cleared his throat and set down his coffee cup. “If we are destroyed every time we fax, Savi Uhr, how is it that we remember everything when we . . . arrive . . . somewhere else?” He held up his right arm. “And this small scar. I received it seven years ago, when I was ninety-two. Normally, these little problems are cleared up when we go the firmary every Twenty, but . . .” He stopped as if seeing the answer himself.

“Yes,” said Savi. “The machine-minds behind the faxportals remember your little imperfections, just as they do your memories and personality’s cell structure, sending the information—not you, but the information—from faxnode to faxnode, updating you and fixing your aging cells every twenty years—what you call your firmary visits—but why do you think you disappear on your hundredth birthday, Harman Uhr. Why do they quit renewing you when you reach a hundred? And where will you go on your next birthday?”

Harman said nothing but Daeman said, “To the rings, you foolish woman. On the Fifth Twenty, we all ascend to the rings.”

“To become post-humans,” said Savi, barely avoiding a sneer. “To ascend into heaven and sit at the right hand of . . . someone.”

“Yes,” said Hannah, but she made it sound like a question.

“No,” said Savi. “I don’t know what happens to the memory patterns the logosphere keeps of you until you turn one hundred, but I know they don’t send the data to the rings. It may be stored, but I suspect it’s just destroyed. Scrambled.”

For the second time this long day, Ada felt as if she might faint. Still, she was the first to find her voice. “Why can’t you and Odysseus Uhr use the faxnodes, Savi Uhr ? Or do you just choose not to?” Choose not to be destroyed, to have the atoms of your body ripped apart like the bodies of the grazer and Terror Bird we were eating tonight. Ada dipped her fingers in her water glass and touched her fingertips to her cheek.

“Odysseus can’t fax because the logosphere has no record of him,” Savi said softly. “His first attempt to fax would be his last.”

“Logosphere?” repeated Harman.

Savi shook her head again. “That’s a complicated topic. Too complicated for an old woman who’s had too much to drink today.”

“But you will explain it soon?” pressed Harman.

“I’ll show you all tomorrow,” said Savi. “Before we go our different ways again.”

Ada caught Harman’s eye. He could barely contain his excitement.

“But this logosphere . . . whatever it is,” said Hannah, “has a record of you? For the faxnodes? So you could fax?”

Savi showed her unhappy smile. “Oh, yes. It remembers me from more than fourteen hundred years ago and when I faxed every day of my life. The logosphere is waiting for me like some invisible Terror Bird . . . it would recognize me instantly if I were to try one of your regular fax portals. But that would be my last attempt as well.”