Odysseus pointed at the voynix’s right arm, still attached to the lower torso. As he wiped his sword on the grass, he said, “It had its killing blades extended.”

It was true. As the four gathered around the fallen voynix, each could see the blades—used for defending humans against such threats as dinosaurs—extended where the manipulator pads usually were.

“I don’t understand,” said Ada.

“It didn’t recognize you,” said Hannah, taking another step away from the bearded man. “Maybe it thought you were a threat to us.”

“No,” said Odysseus, sliding his short sword back into its scabbard.

Daeman was staring with appalled fascination at the cross section of the voynix—soft white organs, a profusion of blue tubules, clusters of what looked to be pink grapes, certainly not the clockwork mechanism and gears he’d always imagined to be the interior of a service voynix. The speed of the violence and now the white gore visible had almost made Daeman lose control of his anxious bowels.

“Come on,” he’d said, and started walking quickly toward Ardis Hall. The others had mistaken this for leadership and followed.

It was after Daeman had used the toilet, taken time to shower, shaved, ordered the nearest Ardis servitor to fetch him clean new clothes, and then wandered into the kitchen hunting for something to eat that he realized that it was insane to go any further with Harman and the crazy old woman. To what purpose?

Ardis Hall, despite Ada’s absence—or perhaps because of it—had filled with friends faxed in to visit and party. The servitors kept them happy with food and drink. Young people—including several beautiful young women Daeman knew from other parties, other places, from his happy life before Harman and all this nonsense—were playing lawnball-and-hoop games on the broad, sloping lawn. The evening was lovely, shadows long on the grass, laughter in the air like the sound of chimes, and dinner being prepared by servitors at the long table under the giant elm tree.

Daeman realized that he could stay here and have a proper meal and a good night’s sleep, or—better yet—summon a voynix for the short carriole ride to the fax portal and sleep in his own bed in Paris Crater this night after a late dinner prepared by his mother. Daeman missed his mother; he’d been completely out of touch with her for more than two days. He looked at the voynix in the curved driveway at the side of the large house and felt a pang of anxiety—Odysseus’ destruction of that voynix had been unwarranted and insane. One didn’t damage or destroy voynixes, any more than one would set fire to a droshky or trash one’s own domi. It didn’t make any sense, and it was another reason he should get away from these people at once.

As he came out onto the drive, he saw Harman and Ada speaking softly but urgently to one side. Farther down the hilly lawn, he could see Hannah introducing Odysseus to several curious guests. The voynix were staying far away from the bearded man, but Daeman had no idea whether that was by coincidence or design. Did voynix communicate with one another? And if so, how? Daeman had never heard one utter a sound.

He gestured to a voynix to bring a carriole around just as Ada and Harman’s conversation came to an end—Ada stalking into the house, Harman turning on his heel and heading back across the drive toward the fields and the waiting sonie. Harman walked up to Daeman and the older man’s expression was so grim that Daeman took a half-step back.

“Are you coming with us?”

“I . . . ah . . . no,” stammered Daeman. The voynix trotted up with the single-wheeled carriole behind it, upholstery gleaming in the evening light, gyroscopes humming.

Harman turned without saying another word and walked off into the field behind the house.

Daeman climbed into the conveyance, said “Fax portal” to the voynix, and sat back as the carriole hummed around the driveway, white shells crunching under the wheel. One of the young women on the lawn—Oelleo, he thought her name was—cried a good-bye to him. The carriole rolled down toward the road with the silent voynix trotting between its stays.

“Stop,” said Daeman. The voynix halted in its tracks, still holding the cart shafts. The internal gyro hummed softly to itself.

Daeman looked back behind Ardis Hall but Harman was already out of sight through the trees. For no reason in particular, he tried to remember where he had met Oelleo—at a party in Bellinbad two summers ago? At Verna’s Fourth Twenty in Chom only a few months before? At one of his own sleepover parties in Paris Crater?

He couldn’t remember. Had he slept with Oelleo? He had an image of the girl naked, but that could have been from one of the swimming parties or one of the living art displays that had been in vogue last winter. He couldn’t remember if he’d gone to bed with the woman. There were so many.

Daeman tried to remember Tobi’s Second Twenty celebration in Ulanbat only three days ago. It was a blur—a smear of laughter and sex and drink blending into all the other parties near all the other faxnodes. But when he tried to remember the Dry Valley in . . . what was it called? Antarctica? . . . or the iceberg, or the Golden Gate Bridge above Machu Picchu, or even the stupid redwood forest . . . everything was clear, distinct, sharp.

Daeman climbed down from the carriole and began walking toward the fields. This is crazy, he thought. Crazy, crazy, crazy. Halfway to the treeline, he broke into a lumbering, clumsy run.

He was out of breath and sweating heavily by the time he reached the far side of the field. The sonie was gone, only a depression in the high grass near a stone wall where it had been.

“God damn it,” said Daeman, looking up at the evening sky, empty except for the turning equatorial-ring and polar-ring. “Damn it.” He sat down heavily on the moss-slick stone wall. The sun was setting behind him. For some reason, he felt like crying.

The sonie came in low over the trees to the north, swooped, and hovered ten feet off the ground.

“I thought you might change your mind,” called down Savi. “Want a ride?”

Daeman stood.

They had flown east into darkness, climbing high enough that the stars and the orbital rings illuminated the tops of clouds already glowing from lightning rippling like visible peristalsis through milky interiors. They stopped near the coast that night and slept in a strange treehouse made up of separate little domi-houses connected by platforms and winding staircases. The place had plumbing, but no servitors or voynix, and there were no other people or dwellings nearby.

“Do you have many places like this where you stay?” Harman asked Savi.

“Yes,” said the old woman. “Away from your three hundred faxnodes, most of the Earth is empty, you know. At least empty of people. I have favorite places here and there.”

They were sitting outside on a sort of dining platform halfway up the tall tree. Below them, fireflies winked on and off in a grassy glade that held an array of huge, ancient, rusted machines that had been mostly reclaimed by the grass and ferns and hillside. Ringlight fell down between the leaves and painted the high grass a soft white. The storms they’d flown over had not reached this far east yet, and the night was warm and clear. Although there were no servitors here, there were freezers with food, and Savi had supervised the cooking of noodles, meat, and fish. Daeman was almost getting used to this odd idea of fixing the food one ate.

Suddenly Harman asked Savi, “Do you know why the post-humans left the Earth and haven’t come back?”

Daeman remembered the strange data-vision he’d suffered in the redwood clearing earlier that day. Just the memory made him a bit nauseated.

“Yes,” said Savi, “I think I do.”

“Are you going to tell us?” asked Harman.

“Not right now,” said the old woman. She rose and walked up the winding stairs to a lighted domi ten meters higher up the trunk.