The curly-haired man who claimed to be in his last year and who claimed to have walked into the Atlantic Breach stopped in wonder. “It’s wonderful, Ada.” He climbed a ladder, slid it along a row of shelves, and reached a hand out to touch a thick leather volume.
Daeman laughed. “Do you think the reading function has returned, Harman Uhr?”
The man smiled, but seemed so confident that for a second Daeman half expected to see the golden rush of symbols down his arm as the reading function signaled the content. Daeman had never seen the lost function in action, of course, but had heard it described by his grandmother and other old folks describing what their great-great-grandparents had enjoyed.
No words flowed. Harman pulled his hand back. “Don’t you wish you had the reading function, Daeman Uhr?”
Daeman heard himself laughing yet again on this odd evening and was acutely aware of both of the young women looking at him with expressions somewhere between bemusement and curiosity.
“No, of course not,” he said at last. “Why should I? What could these old things tell me that could have any pertinence to our lives today?”
Harman climbed higher on the ladder. “Aren’t you curious why the post-humans are no longer seen on Earth and where they went?”
“Not at all. They went home to their cities in the rings. Everyone knows that.”
“Why?” asked Harman. “After many millennia of molding our affairs here, watching over us, why did they leave?”
“Nonsense,” said Daeman, perhaps a bit more gruffly than he had intended. “The posts are still watching over us. From above.”
Harman nodded as if enlightened and shuffled his ladder a few yards along its brass track. The man’s head was almost touching the underside of the library mezzanine now. “How about the voynix?”
“What about the voynix?”
“Did you ever wonder why they were motionless for so many centuries and are so active now?”
Daeman opened his mouth but had nothing to say to that. After a moment, he managed, “That business about the voynix not moving before the final fax is total nonsense. Myths. Folklore.”
Ada stepped closer. “Daeman, did you ever wonder where they came from?”
“Who, my dear?”
“The voynix.”
Daeman laughed heartily and honestly at this. “Of course not, my lady. The voynix have always been here. They are permanent, fixed, eternal—moving, sometimes out of sight, but always present—like the sun or the stars.”
“Or the rings?” asked Hannah in her soft voice.
“Precisely.” Daeman was pleased that she understood.
Harman pulled a heavy book from the shelves. “Daeman Uhr, Ada informs me that you are quite the lepidopterist.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Butterfly expert.”
Daeman could feel himself blush. It was always pleasing to have one’s skills recognized, even by strangers, even by less-than-sane strangers. “Hardly an expert, Harman Uhr, merely a collector who has learned a bit from his uncle.”
Harman came down the ladder and carried the heavy book to a reading table. “This should interest you then.” He opened the artifact. Page after glossy page showed colorful representations of butterflies.
Daeman stepped closer, speechless. His uncle had taught him the names of about twenty types of butterflies and he had learned from other collectors the names of a few of the others he’d captured. He reached out to touch the image of a Western Tiger Swallowtail.
“Western Tiger Swallowtail,” said Harman and added, “Pterourus rutulus .”
Daeman did not understand the last two words, but he stared at the older man in amazement. “You collect!”
“Not at all.” Harman touched a familiar gold and black image. “Monarch.”
“Yes,” said Daeman, confused.
“Red Admiral, Aphrodite Fritillary, Field Crescentspot, Common Blue, Painted Lady, Phoebus Parnassian,” Harman said, touching each image in turn. Daeman knew three of those named.
“You know butterflies,” he said.
Harman shook his head. “I’ve never even really considered that the different types have names until this minute.”
Daeman looked at the man’s blunt hand. “You have the reading function.”
Harman shook his head again. “No one has that palm function any longer. No more than they have comm function or geo-positioning or data access or self-fax away from nodes.”
“Then . . .” began Daeman and stopped in true confusion. Were these people taunting him for some reason? He had come to spend the weekend at Ardis Hall with good intentions—well, with the intention of seducing Ada, but all in good humor—and now this . . . malicious game?
As if sensing his growing anger, Ada put her slim fingers on his sleeve. “Harman doesn’t have the reading function, Daeman Uhr,” she said softly. “He has recently learned how to read .”
Daeman stared. This made no more sense than celebrating one’s ninety-ninth year or babbling on about the Atlantic Breach.
“It’s a skill,” Harman said quietly. “Rather like your learning the names of the butterflies or your fabled techniques as a . . . ladies’ man.”
This last phrase made Daeman blink. Is my other hobby so well known?
Hannah spoke. “Harman has promised to teach us this trick . . . reading. It might come in handy. I need to learn about casting before I do more of it and burn myself.”
Casting ? Daeman knew fishermen who used that word. He could not imagine how it could have anything to do with burning oneself or acquiring the reading function. He licked his lips and said, “I have no interest in these games. What do you want from me?”
“We need to find a spaceship,” said Ada. “And there’s reason to believe that you can help us.”
6
Olympos
When my shift ends on the night of Achilles’ and Agamemnon’s confrontation, I quantum teleport back to the scholic complex on Olympos, record my observations and analysis, transfer the thoughts to a word stone, and carry it into the Muse’s small white room overlooking the Lake of the Caldera. To my surprise, the Muse is there, talking to one of the other scholics.
The scholic is named Nightenhelser—a friendly bear of a man who, I had learned over the last four years of his residency here, lived and taught college and died in the American Midwest some time in the early Twentieth Century. Seeing me at the door, the Muse finishes her business with Nightenhelser and sends him away, out her bronze door toward the escalator that spirals its way down off Olympos to our barracks and the red world below.
The Muse gestures me closer. I set the word stone on the marble table in front of her and step back, expecting to be dismissed without a word, as is the usual dynamic between the two of us. Surprisingly, she lifts the word stone while I’m still there and closes her hand around it even as she closes her eyes to concentrate. I stand and wait. I confess that I am nervous. My heart pounds and my hands, clasped behind my back as I stand in a sort of professorial parody of a soldier’s “at ease” position, are sweaty. I decided years ago that that the gods cannot really read minds—that their uncanny perception of mortals’ thoughts, heroes and scholics alike, comes from some advanced science in the study of facial muscles, eye movements and the like. But I could be wrong. Perhaps they are telepathic. If so—and if they bothered to read my mind during my moment of epiphany and decision on the beach after Agamemnon’s and Achilles’ showdown—then I am a dead man. Again.