That's the understatement of the Twenty, thought Ada. Aloud she said, "You look exhausted, my dear. You really should get some sleep." thought Ada. Aloud she said, "You look exhausted, my dear. You really should get some sleep."

"When Odysseus does," said Hannah, meeting Ada's gaze with something like the bashfulness, defiance, and pride of a young lover.

Ada nodded again.

Daeman stepped up to the fire. "Ada, could we see you a minute?"

Touching Hannah's shoulder, Ada rose awkwardly and followed Daeman back to the Pit where Noman stood. The man they'd once called Odysseus was not much taller than Ada, but he was so solid and muscular that he emanated power. Ada could see the curly gray hairs on his chest through the open tunic.

"Admiring our pet?" asked Ada.

Noman did not smile. He scratched his beard, looked down into the Pit at the strangely quiescent baby, and then returned his dark-eyed gaze to Ada. "You'll have to kill it," he said.

"We plan to."

"I mean quickly," said Noman/Odysseus. "These things aren't so much babies of the real Setebos as lice."

"Lice?" Ada said. "I can hear its thoughts..."

"And you'll hear them more and more loudly until the thing comes up out of there-it probably could already if it wanted to-and sucks the energy and souls right out of your bodies."

Ada blinked and looked down into the Pit. The baby's twohemisphered brain-back was just a gray glow down there. It was on the floor of the Pit now, tendrils and hands reeled in, its motile hands tucked under its mucousy body, its many eyes closed.

"The eggs hatch and these things swarm out," continued Noman. "They're like scouts for the real Setebos. These things only grow to be about twenty feet long. They find...food...in the soil and then return to the original Setebos, I don't know quite how they travel so far, Brane Holes probably-this one's not quite old enough to summon a Hole-and when they report back, the big Setebos thanks them for the information and eats them, absorbing all the evil and terror these...babies...have sucked up from the world."

"How do you know so much about Setebos and his...lice?" asked Ada.

Noman shook his head as if that were too unimportant to deal with now.

And when are you going to start treating that sweet Hannah with the love and attention she deserves, you male pig? thought Ada. thought Ada.

"Noman had something important to tell us...ask us," said Daeman. Ada's friend looked worried.

"I need to take the sonie," said Noman.

Ada blinked again. "Take it where?"

"Up to the rings," said Noman.

"For how long?" asked Ada. She was thinking You can't take the sonie! You can't take the sonie! and she knew that Daeman was thinking the same thing. and she knew that Daeman was thinking the same thing.

"I don't know," said Odysseus in that strange accent of his.

"Well," began Ada, "it's out of the question that you take the sonie. We need it to escape this place. We need it for hunting. We'll need it for..."

"I have to take the sonie," repeated Noman. "It's the only machine on this continent that can get me up there, and I don't have time to fly to China or somewhere to find another. And the calibani calibani will have made the Mediterranean Basin unapproachable by now." will have made the Mediterranean Basin unapproachable by now."

"Well," said Ada again, hearing the edge of rockhard stubbornness that only rarely powered her voice, "you can't just take the sonie. We'll all die."

"That's not so important right now," said the gray-bearded warrior.

Ada started to laugh but ended up only staring, her mouth partially open in amazement. "It's important to us, us, Noman. We want to live." Noman. We want to live."

He shook his head as if Ada had not understood. "No one on this planet is going to live unless I can get up to the rings...and today," he said. "I need the sonie. If I can, I'll bring it back or send it back to you. If I can't...well, it won't matter."

Ada wished she had a flechette rifle with her. She glanced at the one that Daeman carried-still unslung, he carried it casually. Noman seemed to have no weapon on him, but Ada had seen how strong this man was.

"I need the sonie," Noman said again. "Today. Now."

"No," said Ada.

Down in the Pit, the many-handed orphan suddenly began a wailing, snorting, coughing sound that ended in a noise that sounded very much like a human laugh.

70.

A storm was raging far above them. The rings and stars had long since disappeared and lightning illuminated the vertical walls of water on either side and the obscenely pale slash of the Breach stretching away so far to the east and west that the lightning did not last long enough to show its immensity.

Now, however, the lightning flashes overlapped, thunder exploding and echoing down the hallway of energy-bound water, and, lying on his back snug in his silk-thin sleeping bag and thermskin, Harman could see the waves fifty stories above, rising and thrashing another hundred or so feet as the Atlantic Ocean threw itself into the frenzy of the storm. The whipping, writhing clouds were only a few hundred feet above the towering waves. And while the dark depths on either side stayed calm here more than five hundred feet below the surface, Harman could see the layers of agitation far above him. Also agitated were the funnel-bridges-he didn't have a good name for the transparent tubes and cones and energy-bound tunnels of water that connected the Atlantic south of the Breach to the Atlantic north of it, and Moira simply called them "conduits." There was such a funnel-bridge visible two hundred feet above the dry bottom of the Breach, visible when the lightning flashed at least, less than a half mile to the west of where they had camped and another a mile or so behind them to the east. Both water tunnels were broiling with activity, huge quantities of white water surging from one side of the Breach to the other. Harman wondered if more water was forced across the Breach during storms. Certainly there was more water falling on them now-the shifting energy walls kept the high waves from pouring over and drowning them, but the spray drifted down as a constant mist. Harman's outer clothes were tucked away in his rucksack, which was completely waterproof he'd discovered, as was the thinskin sleeping bag, but he'd left the osmosis mask open on his thermskin cowl and his face was damp. Whenever he licked his lips, he tasted salt.

Lightning struck the floor of the Breach less than a hundred yards from them. The percussion from the thunder shook Harman's molars.

"Should we move?" he shouted at Moira, who was in her own thermskin-she stripped naked and pulled on the thermskin right in front of him with no sign of embarrassment, almost as if they were lovers, which, he realized with a blush, they had been.

"What?" shouted Moira. His voice had been lost in the crash of wave and roars of thunder.

"SHOULD WE MOVE?"

She slid her sleeping skin closer and leaned over to speak close to his ear. She'd left her face exposed as well and was just lying on the sleeping bag, and the mist had soaked the outer layer of the skintight thermskin, showing every rib and rise of hipbone.

"The only place we can move to be safe," she said loudly next to his ear, "is underwater. We'd be safe from the lightning there at the bottom of the ocean. Want to adjourn?"

Harman didn't. The thought of stepping through the forcefield barrier into that almost absolute dark and terrible pressure-even if the magical thermskin would keep him from drowning or being crushed-was more than he wanted to deal with this night. Besides, the storm seemed to be letting up a bit. The waves up there only looked to be sixty or eighty feet tall now.

"No thanks," he shouted back to Moira. "I'll risk it here."

He rubbed his face dry and pulled the film-thin osmosis mask in place. Without the salt sting in his eyes and mouth, it was easier to concentrate.

And Harman had a lot to concentrate on. He was still trying to sort out his new human functions.

Many of these newly acquired-although "identified" would be a better word-functions had been interdicted along with his freefax abilities. For instance, Harman clearly saw how he could trigger access to the logosphere to acquire information or to communicate with anyone anywhere, but those functions had been interrupted by whoever or whatever was running the rings these days.

Other functions worked just fine but did not necessarily add to Harman's peace of mind. There was a medical monitor function that, when queried, told and showed Harman that his diet of food bars and water would lead to certain vitamin deficiencies if he continued it for more than three months. It also informed him that calcium was building up in his left kidney-resulting in a kidney stone in a year or less-that there were two polyps in his colon since his last Firmary visit, that his muscles were deteriorating because of age-it had, after all, been ten years since his last Firmary tune-up, that a strep virus was failing to set up a colony in his throat because of his genetic-cued defenses, that his blood pressure was too high, and that there was the slightest of shadows on his left lung that should demand immediate attention by Firmary sensors.

Great, thought Harman, rubbing his thermskinned chest as if the slight shadow that he was sure was lung cancer was already beginning to ache. thought Harman, rubbing his thermskinned chest as if the slight shadow that he was sure was lung cancer was already beginning to ache. What do I do with this information? The Firmaries are a little out of bounds to me right now. What do I do with this information? The Firmaries are a little out of bounds to me right now.

Other functions served more immediate purposes. In the last few days he'd discovered that he had a replay function through which he could relive with amazing clarity-much more like experiencing something in reality than through memory-any point or event in his life, pinpointing the memory in a protein memory bundle rather than in his brain, uploading it, and timing the replay to the second. He'd already replayed a few minutes of his first meeting with Ada nine times (his memory couldn't have told him that she'd been wearing that light blue gown on the evening he met her at a fax-in party) and had replayed moments from the last time they'd made love more than thirty times. Moira had even commented on his fixed stare and robotic walk when he'd been replaying. She knew what he was up to, especially since neither his thermskin nor outer clothes had hidden his reaction.

Harman had enough sense to know that this function was addictive and that he must use it very, very carefully-especially while hiking across the bottom of the ocean-but he'd flashed back to certain dialogues he'd had with Savi to mine more data out of things she'd said about the past or about the rings or about the world-things that had seemed nonsensical or mysterious then, but made more sense now after the crystal cabinet. He also realized, with a great sadness, that Savi had been working from very incomplete information in her centuries of attempts to get up to the rings to negotiate with the post-humans, including her lack of knowledge of real spaceships stored in the Mediterranean Basin or the proper way to contact Ariel via Prospero's private logo-sphere connections.

Seeing Savi so clearly through replay vision also made Harman realize how much younger this Moira-iteration of Savi's face and body were, but also how much alike the women were.

Harman trolled through the other functions. Proxnet, farnet, and allnet were all down with the fax and logosphere functions-evidently everything internal worked; anything demanding use of the planetary system of satellites, orbital mass accumulators, fax and data transmitters, and so forth did not work.

But why did his internal indicators tell him that the sigl function was not working? Harman would have thought that sigling was as body-dependent as his medical monitoring, which worked all too well. Did the sigl function depend upon relay satellites in some way? His crystal cabinet data did not explain this.

"Moira?" he shouted. Only after he'd shouted did he realize that the storm had all but passed over and that except for the slide-crash of waves far above, the sound had abated. Also, he was wearing his osmosis mask with its inset microphones so poor Moira had heard his shout in her cowl earphones.

He pulled the osmosis mask free and breathed in the rich scent of the ocean again.

"What, oh mighty-lunged one?" replied Moira in soft tones. Her sleepingskin bag was about four feet away.

"If I use the touch-sharing function with my wife-with Ada-when I get home, will my unborn child receive the information as well?"

"Counting your fetus chickens before they're hatched, my young Prometheus?"

"Just answer the damned question, would you?"

"You'll have to try it," said Moira. "I don't recall the design parameters right now and I haven't ever touch-shared with preggoes, and we godlike post-humans can't can't get pregnant-nor did it help in that department that we were all female-so give it a try if and when you get home. I do remember though that there were safety nets installed in the genetic touch-share function. You can't pour harmful information to a fetus or a young child-replaying her own moment of conception, for instance. We don't want the little tyke in therapy for thirty years, now do we?" get pregnant-nor did it help in that department that we were all female-so give it a try if and when you get home. I do remember though that there were safety nets installed in the genetic touch-share function. You can't pour harmful information to a fetus or a young child-replaying her own moment of conception, for instance. We don't want the little tyke in therapy for thirty years, now do we?"

Harman ignored the sarcasm. He rubbed his stubbled cheeks. He'd shaved before starting on this trip-the thermskin cowl was less than comfortable over a beard, he'd learned on Prospero's Isle more than ten months earlier-but two days of stubble rasped under his palm.

"You have all the functions you gave us?" he said to Moira, adding the rising inflection of the question mark at only the last instant.

"My dear," purred Moira. "Do you think we're fools? Are we going to give mere old-style humans some ability we lack?"

"So you have more than we do," said Harman. "More than this hundred you built into us?"

Moira did not answer.

Harman had discovered complex nanocameras and audioreceivers built into his skin cells. Some DNA-bound protein bundles could store this visual and auditory data. Other cells had been altered into bioelectronic transmitters-good for only short range because they were powered just by his own cellular energy, but easily strong enough to be picked up and boosted and retransmitted.

"The turin drama," he said aloud.

"What's that?" Moira said sleepily. The post-human woman had been dozing.

"I realize how you transmitted the images from Ilium-or your transvestite god-sisters did-and how we were able to receive them through the turin cloths."

"Well...duh," said Moira and went back to sleep.

Harman saw how he would no longer need a turin cloth to receive such transmissions. Between logosphere voice-over protocols and this multimedia connection, he could share both voice and full sensory data with any other human being who volunteered to uplink the input stream.

What would that be like, linked to Ada, while we made love? wondered Harman and then chided himself for being a dirty old man. wondered Harman and then chided himself for being a dirty old man. A A horny horny, dirty old man, he corrected himself. he corrected himself.

Besides the logosphere function, there was another function he could trigger that offered a complicated sensory interface with the biosphere. Since it was satellite-dependent and interdicted at the moment, he could only guess how it worked and what it felt like. Was it like a chat with Ariel or did a person suddenly become one with the dandelions and hummingbirds? Could he communicate directly and at a distance with the Little Green Men that way? Feeling serious again, Harman remembered Prospero saying that Ariel was using the LGM to hold off the thousands upon thousands of attacking calibani calibani along the southern fringes of Old Europe, and he immediately saw how he could use such a connection to ask the along the southern fringes of Old Europe, and he immediately saw how he could use such a connection to ask the zeks zeks for help fighting the voynix. for help fighting the voynix.

All this function-searching was giving Harman a worse headache. Almost by accident, he checked his medical monitor function and saw that indeed, his adrenaline levels and blood pressure combined was high enough to give him the headache he'd suffered with for two weeks now. He activated another medical function-this one more active than mere monitoring-and tentatively allowed some chemicals to be released into his system. Blood vessels in his neck dilated and relaxed. Warmth flowed back into his icy fingertips. The headache receded.

A teenaged boy could really use this function to chase away unwanted erections, thought Harman. He realized that he really thought Harman. He realized that he really was was a horny, dirty old man. a horny, dirty old man.

Not so old, really, thought Harman. The medical monitor had told him that he had the physical body of an average slightly out-of-shape thirty-one-year-old man. thought Harman. The medical monitor had told him that he had the physical body of an average slightly out-of-shape thirty-one-year-old man.

Other functions floated onto his mental checklist: figure-ground enhancement, enhanced empathy, another that he thought of as the beserker function-a temporary spiking of adrenaline and all other physical and strength-multiplying abilities, probably to be used as a last resort in a fight or if one had to lift a ton or two off one's child. Besides the already used and misused memory replay function, Harman saw that replay data inputted through someone else's sharing function. There was a function that would allow him to put his body into a sort of hibernation, a temporary slowing of everything to the point of stasis. He realized that this wasn't a quick way to catch a nap but designed to be used with something like the crystal coffin in the Taj Moira if one needed to remain alive but intert for long periods of time-in Moira's case, very very long periods of time-without suffering bedsores, muscle atrophy, morning breath, and the other side effects of normal human unconsciousness. Harman saw at once that the real Savi had used this function many times in her time creche on the Golden Gate at Machu Picchu and elsewhere to survive and thrive over the fourteen centuries of her hiding from the voynix and the post-humans. long periods of time-without suffering bedsores, muscle atrophy, morning breath, and the other side effects of normal human unconsciousness. Harman saw at once that the real Savi had used this function many times in her time creche on the Golden Gate at Machu Picchu and elsewhere to survive and thrive over the fourteen centuries of her hiding from the voynix and the post-humans.

There were many more functions-some of them intriguing beyond words-but the concentration necessary to explore them was bringing back Harman's headache. He shut down that part of his brain for the night.

Immediately more powerful sensory information flowed in. The surge of waves far above. A photoluminescent-phytoplanktonish glow in the upper strata of the Atlantic that looked like an underwater aurora borealis to his tired eyes.

The sky over the ocean was also alive with light-not air-to-sea lightning this time but internal cloud lightning, silent explosions showing the fractal complexity of the churning clouds as lit from within. These pulses and explosions of light were silent-not the slightest hint of thunder reaching his little sleeping bag on the bottom of the Atlantic Breach-so Harman crossed his arms behind his head and just enjoyed the light show, also appreciating the effect of the cloud lightning on the still-churning surface of the ocean.

Patterns. Patterns everywhere. All of nature and the universe dancing at the edge of chaos, reprieved by fractal boundaries and a billion hidden algorithmic protocols hardwired into everything and every interaction, but beautiful nonetheless-oh, so beautiful. He realized that there was at least one function he hadn't really explored that could sort out most of these patterns for him, far better than mere evolved human senses and sensibilities could, but it would probably be an interdicted function requiring ring-connections, and besides...Harman didn't need a genetically enhanced function to appreciate the pure beauty of this silent mid-Atlantic show that was being put on just for him.

He lay on the floor of the Breach, hands behind his head, and said a prayer for Ada and his possible son or daughter. (Her functions, when activated, would tell her which it was.) He wished he could be with her now. He prayed to the God he'd never really thought about-to the Quiet God whom Setebos and his lackey Caliban feared above all else according to what the monster had blurted out on Prospero's Isle-and he prayed only that his beloved Ada would remain well and alive and as happy as the terrible circumstances of these times and their separation across space would allow.

As he fell asleep, Harman heard the rasp and sawing of Moira's snoring. He smiled as he drifted off. A thousand years of post-human nanocyte and DNA-rearranging cleverness hadn't cured them from snoring. But, of course, it was Savi's human body that...

Harman fell asleep in midthought.

71.

Achilles wishes he was dead.

The air is so foul and thick here in Tartarus, his lungs burn so fiercely, his eyes are watering and hurting so much, his skin and guts feel like they are ready simultaneously to implode and explode from the pressure, the Oceanids monster-woman is carrying him so rib-shattering tightly in her thigh-fingered fist, and his outlook for the future is so fucking dim, that he wishes that he could just die and get it over with.

But the quantum Fates will not allow him this option. That bitch of a goddess mother of his, that tart Thetis who'd professed love to his father-the man whom he'd always honored as his father, Peleus-and then lain with Zeus like the aquatic roundheels she was, had held him in the Celestial Fire and created a quantum singularity point for his death-to be reached only through the actions of the now dead and cremated Paris of Ilium-and that, as they say, is that.

So he suffers and tries to focus on what is going on outside his tight, rapidly imploding sphere of pain and discomfort.

The three Titan-giant daughters of Okeanos-Asia, Panthea, and Ione-are striding quickly through the poisonous gloom toward a brighter glow that might be a volcanic eruption, Achilles held tight in Asia's huge, sweaty fist. When Achilles is able to open his burning eyes and catch glimpses of the landscape through his tears-tears from toxic chemicals in the air, not from emotion-he gets blurry views of high, rocky ridges such as the one the three Oceanids are now striding along, thundering volcanoes, deep chasms filled with lava and oddly shaped monsters, an escort of the giant centipede-things that must be related to the Healer on Olympos, occasional glimpses of silhouettes that must be other Titans crashing and bellowing through the gloom, and a sky filled with orange-limned clouds, wild lightning, and other electrical displays.

Suddenly the giantess Titan named Panthea speaks-"Is that the veiled form we seek who sits on that ebony throne?"

Asia, bitch-voice booming like boulders crashing down a rocky slope. (Achilles has not the strength to cover his aching ears with his acid-scalded hands.)-"It is. The veil has fallen."

Panthea-"I see a mighty darkness filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom dart round, as light from the meridian sun.-But the Demogorgon itself remains ungazed upon and shapeless, neither limb, nor form, nor outline; yet we all three feel it is a living Spirit."

The Demogorgon speaks then and Achilles buries his face in Asia's huge, rough palm in a vain effort to muffle the subsonic pain of that allencroaching voice. "ASK WHAT THOU WOULDST KNOW, OCEANIDS." "ASK WHAT THOU WOULDST KNOW, OCEANIDS."