“Because the war is coming,” said Odysseus.
“We’re not a part of it,” said Ada.
Odysseus folded his arms. “You will be. You’re not on the front lines yet, but those battle lines are coming this way. You’ll be part of this conflict whether you want to be or not.”
“How can we take part?” asked Ada. “We don’t know how to fight. Or even want to learn how.”
“About sixty of the young men and women who’ve stayed here will know a bit about fighting in a few weeks time,” said Odysseus. “Whether they want to fight when the time comes will be up to them. As it always is.” He pointed to Harman. “Believe it or not, your sonie’s fixable. I’ve been working on it and may have it in the air in a week or ten days.”
“I don’t want to see fighting,” said Ada. “I don’t want to be in a war.”
“No,” said Odysseus. “You’re right not to.”
Ada lowered her face as if to fight back tears. When she put her closed hand on the bed, Daeman set his fingers next to hers and handed her Hannah’s forget-me-not. Then he drifted off to sleep.
He awoke in darkness and moonlight with a shape sitting next to the bed. Caliban! Daeman instinctively lifted his right arm, folding his right hand into a fist, and the pain set off lights behind his eyes.
“Easy,” said Harman, leaning across him to straighten the bandaged arm. “Easy, Daeman.”
Daeman was gasping, trying not to vomit from the pain. “I thought you were . . .”
“I know,” said Harman.
Daeman sat up in bed. “Do you think he’s dead?”
The shadow-man shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve been wondering . . . thinking about it. About both of them.”
“Both of them?” said Daeman. “You mean Savi as well?”
“No . . . I mean, yes, I think about her a lot . . . but I was thinking about Prospero. The hologram of Prospero who said it was only an echo of a shadow or whatever.”
“What about it?”
“I think it was Prospero,” whispered Harman. He leaned closer. “I think he was imprisoned somehow on the post-humans’ asteroid city—what the Prospero holo called ‘my isle’—just as Caliban was imprisoned there.”
“By whom?” said Daeman.
Harman sat back and sighed. “I don’t know. These days I don’t know a damned thing.”
Daeman nodded. “It took us a long time to learn enough to realize that none of us knows a damned thing, didn’t it, Harman?”
The older man laughed. But when he spoke again, his whispered tone was serious. “I’m worried that we freed them.”
“Freed them?” whispered Daeman. He’d been hungry a second before, ravenous, but now his belly felt filled with icewater. “Caliban and Prospero.”
“Yes.”
“Or maybe we killed them,” said Daeman, voice hard.
“Yes.” Harman rose and clasped the younger man’s shoulder. “I’m going to go and let you get some sleep. Thank you, Daeman.”
“For what?”
“Thank you,” repeated Harman. He left the room.
Daeman lay back on the pillows, exhausted, but sleep didn’t come. He listened to night sounds coming through the broken window—crickets, night birds he couldn’t name, frogs croaking in the small pond behind the house, the rustle of leaves in the night breeze—and he found that he was grinning.
If Caliban’s alive, it’s a damned shame. But I’m alive as well. I’m alive.
He slept then, a clean and dreamless sleep that lasted until Ada awoke him an hour after dawn with his first real breakfast in five weeks.
Four days later and Daeman was walking in the gardens alone on a cool but beautiful evening when Ada, Harman, Hannah, Odysseus, Petyr, and the young woman named Peaen came down the hill to find him.
“The sonie’s fixed,” said Odysseus. “Or at least it can fly. Want to watch its test flight?”
Daeman shrugged. “Not especially. But I do want to know what you’re going to do with it.”
Odysseus glanced at Petyr, Peaen, and Harman. “First, I’m going to do some reconnaissance,” he said. “See what the meteor damage is in the surrounding area, see if the machine will carry me all the way to the coast and back.”
“And if it doesn’t?” asked Harman.
Odysseus shrugged. “I’ll walk home.”
“Where’s home?” asked Daeman. “And how long will it take for you to get there, Odysseus Uhr?”
Odysseus smiled at that, but there was great sadness in his eyes. “If you only knew,” he said softly. “If you only knew.” Trailed by his two young disciples and Hannah, the barbarian walked back up the hill toward the house.
Harman and Ada strolled with Daeman.
“What’s he up to?” Daeman asked Harman. “Really?”
“He’s going to find the voynix,” said Harman.
“And then what?”
“I don’t know.” Harman didn’t need a cane any longer, but he’d said that he’d gotten used to the walking stick and now he used it to whack a weed growing among the flowers.
“Servitors used to weed the garden,” said Ada. “I try, but I’m so busy with the meals and laundry and everything . . .”
Harman laughed. “It’s hard to get good help these days,” he said.
Harman put his arm around Ada’s waist. The young woman looked at him with a gaze that Daeman couldn’t interpret, but knew was important.
“I lied,” Harman said to Daeman. “You know and I know that Odysseus is going to attack the voynix, stop them from doing whatever they’re planning to do.”
“Yes,” said Daeman. “I know.”
“He’ll use that war to prepare his disciples for what he considers the real war,” said Harman, looking up at the white manor house on the hill. “He’s trying to teach us how to fight before the real battle arrives. He says we’ll know it—that the war will come like whirling spheres, opening holes in the sky, bringing us to new worlds and new worlds to us.”
“I know,” said Daeman. “I’ve heard him say that.”
“He’s crazy,” said Harman.
“No,” said Daeman. “He isn’t.”
“Are you going to war with him?” asked Harman, sounding as if he’d asked himself this question many times.
“Not against the voynix,” said Daeman. “Not unless I have to. I have another battle to fight first.”
“I know,” said Harman. “I know.” He kissed Ada, said, “I’ll see you up at the house,” and walked up the hill alone, still limping slightly.
Daeman found himself suddenly out of energy. There was a wooden bench here with a view of the lower lawn and the evening-shadowed river valley, and he sat on it with relief. Ada sat next to him.
“Harman understood what you were talking about,” she said, “but I don’t. What battle do you have to fight first?”
Daeman shrugged, embarrassed to talk about it.
“Daeman?” Her voice suggested that she was going to sit here on the bench until he spoke, and he didn’t have the energy to stand up and walk away at the moment.
“There’s a blue searchlight rising into the night at a place called Jerusalem,” he said at last, “and in that light are trapped more than nine thousand of Savi’s people. Nine thousand Jews. Whatever Jews are.”
Ada looked at him, not understanding. Daeman realized that she’d not heard this part of their story yet. They were all slowly relearning the fine art of storytelling—it filled the candlelit evenings with something other than washing dishes.
“Before Odysseus’ promised war gets here,” said Daeman, his voice soft but determined, “before I have no choice but to fight in some huge struggle I don’t understand, I’m going to go get those nine thousand people out of that goddamned blue light.”
“How?” asked Ada.
Daeman laughed. It was an easy, unselfconscious laugh, something he’d learned in the last two months. “I have no fucking idea,” he said.
He struggled to his feet, allowed Ada to steady him, and they walked side by side up the hill toward Ardis Hall. Some of the disciples were lighting the lanterns at the outside table already, although it was still an hour before their evening meal. It was Daeman’s turn to help cook tonight, and he was trying to remember what course he was in charge of. Salad, he hoped.