“Or maybe they just think you’re lucky and they’re trying to get some of it to rub off,” added Orphu.

Before Mahnmut could express his opinion of this idea, the last of the LGM in line had reached him, but instead of patting the moravec’s carbonfiber shoulder and moving on, the little green man went to his knees, lifted Mahnmut’s right hand, and set it against his chest.

“Oh, no,” Mahnmut groaned to Orphu. “They want to do the communication thing again.”

“That’s good,” said the Ionian. “We have questions to ask.”

“The answers aren’t worth the death of another of these little green men,” said Mahnmut. He was pulling his hand back as hard as the black-eyed LGM was tugging it toward his green chest.

“It might well be worth it,” said Orphu. “Even if the LGM unit does undergo anything similar to our idea of death, which I doubt. Besides, it’s his initiative. Let him make contact.”

Mahnmut quit struggling and let the LGM pull his hand against its chest—into its chest.

Once again there was the shocking, sickening feeling of his fingers sliding through flesh and being immersed in the warm, thick saline solution, of his hand contacting and then encircling that pulsing organ the size of a human heart.

“Try holding it a bit less tightly this time,” suggested Orphu. “If the communication is truly through molecular packets of organic nanobytes, less surface area of contact might cut down the volume of their thoughts.”

Mahnmut nodded, realized that Orphu could not see his nod, but then focused only on the strange vibration from his hand through his arm to his mind as the little green man began the conversation.

WE GIVE YOU

GRATITUDE FOR

SAVING

OUR SHIP.

“You’re welcome,” Mahnmut said aloud, focusing his thoughts through spoken language at the same time he shared the exchange with Orphu on the tightbeam band. “Who are you?” he asked. “What do you call yourselves?”

ZEKS.

The word meant nothing to Mahnmut. He felt the LGM’s communication organ pulse in his hand and had the wild urge to release it, to rip his fist from this doomed person’s chest—but that would help neither of them now. Do you know this word—‘Zeks’? Mahnmut asked Orphu.

Just a minute, sent Orphu. Accessing third-tier memory. Here it is—from A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It was a slang term related to the Russian word “sharashka”—“a special scientific or technical institute staffed with prisoners”—the prisoners of these Soviet labor camps were called zeks.

Well, sent Mahnmut, I don’t think these chlorophyll-based Martian LGM are prisoners of some short-lived Earth regime from more than two thousand years ago. The entire exchange with Orphu had taken less than two seconds. To the little green man, he said, “Would you tell us where you’re from?”

This time the answer was not in words but images—green fields, a blue sky, a sun much larger than the one in Mars’s sky, a distant range of mountains hazy in the thick air. “Earth?” said Mahnmut, shocked.

NOT THE STAR IN THE NIGHT SKY HERE

was the LGM’s response.

A DIFFERENT EARTH.

Mahnmut pondered this but did not know how to phrase a clarifying question other than his clumsy “Which Earth, then?”

The little green man answered only with the same images of green fields, distant mountains, an Earthlike view of the sun. Mahnmut could feel this LGM’s energy fading, the heartlike organ pulsing with less vitality. I’m killing him, he thought in panic.

Ask about the stone faces came Orphu on the commline.

“Who is the man represented in the stone faces?” Mahnmut asked dully.

THE MAGUS.

HE OF THE BOOKS.

LORD OF THE SON OF SYCORAX, WHO BROUGHT US HERE.

THE MAGUS IS MASTER EVEN OF SETEBOS, OUR LORD’S

MOTHER’S GOD.

Magus! sent Mahnmut to Orphu.

It means magician, sorcerer—as in the Three Magi . . .

Goddammit, Mahnmut sent fiercely, angrily—he was wasting this dying green person’s time. The heart-organ pulsed more weakly with every second that passed. I know what “magus” means, but I don’t believe in magic and neither do you, Orphu.

But it appears that our LGM do, responded Orphu. Ask about the dwellers on Olympus.

“Who are the chariot people on Olympus?” Mahnmut asked dutifully, feeling that he was asking all the wrong questions. But he could think of none better to pose.

MERE GODS,

responded the little green man through bursts of nanobyte images decohering to words.

HELD IN THRALL HERE

BY A BITTER HEART THAT BIDES ITS TIME AND BITES.

“Who is . . .” began Mahnmut but too late—the little green man had suddenly toppled backward, the moravec’s hand holding nothing but a desiccated wrapper instead of a pulsing heart now. The LGM began to wither and contract as soon as his body hit the deck. Clear fluid ran across the boards as the little person’s anthracite eyes sank into its collapsing green face, then brown face as the skin changed color and wrinkled inward and ceased to be the shape of a man. Other LGM came closer and carried the shriveled brown skin-envelope away.

Mahnmut began shivering uncontrollably.

“We have to find another communicator and finish this conversation,” said Orphu.

“Not now,” said Mahnmut between shudders.

“ ‘ A bitter heart that bides its time and bites, ’ “ quoted Orphu. “You must have recognized that.”

Mahnmut shook his head dully, remembered his friend’s blindness, and said, “No.”

“But you’re the Shakespeare scholar!”

“That’s not from Shakespeare,” said Mahnmut.

“No,” agreed Orphu. “Browning. ‘Caliban upon Setebos.’ “

“I’ve never heard of it,” said Mahnmut. He managed to get to his feet—two feet—and stagger to the rail. The water curling back alongside the felucca now was more blue than red. Mahnmut knew that if he were human, he’d be vomiting over the side now.

“Caliban!” Orphu all but shouted over the tightbeam line. “ ‘A bitter heart that bides its time and bites.’ The deformed creature, part sea-beast, part man, had a mother who was a witch—Sycorax—and her god was Setebos.”

Mahnmut remembered the dying LGM using those words, but he couldn’t concentrate on their meaning now. The entire conversation had been like stringing bloody beads on a sinew of living tissue.

“Could the LGM have heard us reciting from The Tempest three days ago when you first regained control of the felucca?” asked Orphu.

“Heard us?” echoed Mahnmut. “They don’t have ears.”

“Then it’s us, not them, echoing to this strange new reality,” rumbled the Ionian, but with a rumble more ominous than his usual laughter.

“What are you talking about?” asked Mahnmut. Red cliffs had become visible to the west. They rose seven or eight hundred meters above the water of the widening delta of Candor Chasma.

“We seem to be in some mad dream,” said Orphu. “But the logic here is consistent . . . in its own mad way.”

“What are you talking about?” repeated Mahnmut. He was in no mood for more games.

“We know the identity of the stone face now,” said Orphu.

“We do?”

“Yes. The magus. He of the books. Lord of the son of Sycorax.”

Mahnmut’s mind wouldn’t work to connect these obvious dots. His system was still filled with the alien surge of nanobytes, a peaceful but dying clarity that was alien to Mahnmut but welcome . . . very welcome. “Who?” he said to Orphu, not caring if his friend thought him dull.

“Prospero,” said Orphu.