I stared at her numbly. Forcing myself not to believe.
"It's true, Phil," she said. "I got out in time. Didn't you notice I was gone?"
"There was an explosion," I mumbled. "Nothing but charred heaps of…" I didn't finish the sentence. "Annah?"
"Yes, Phil. It's me." She held open her arms.
I walked forward-knowing full well it might be a Lucifer trick. But I didn't care. If this vision of Annah transformed into a slurry of maggots that choked me to death, so be it. I was numb to fear, numb to hope, numb, numb, numb.
She wrapped her arms around me. I laid my head on her shoulder. She kissed my hair, but said nothing.
For a long time we just stood there, body to body. Her breath soft beside me; the smell of her skin and hair slowly working into my consciousness.
At some point, I put my arms around her too. But neither of us spoke as the Earth slowly drifted overhead.
We might have stood that way forever. What broke the spell was something bumping hard against my leg. I looked down and saw an amorphous black blob trying to wrap itself around my ankle. It was the size of a housecat but made of gunpowder grains that glinted in the Earthlight; I shook it off in disgust and it slid away, leaving a haphazard track in the moondust.
Annah unwrapped her arms from me. "There are lots of those things here," she said as she watched the blob weave away. I could see she was right; the cage held more than a dozen masses of similar size, moving apparently at random across the lunar surface. They showed no sign of intelligence-deprived of contact with Satan, they seemed as mindless as worms.
"They're used to being part of a larger consciousness," I said. "This laser cage cuts that connection; I guess it sends them into shock."
I told Annah what I'd learned from the good Lucifer… and as I talked, questions rose in my mind. If the good Lucifer had eventually come to its senses after being blocked off from the whole, why hadn't that happened to the wandering blobs in this cage? Were the blobs perhaps too small to regain their intelligence-not enough cellules, so not enough collective brainpower? Did the "angelic" Lucifer have a stronger self-identity than the Satanic version? Was it just that the angel had Spark Lords caring for it, and somehow the Sparks had nursed it back to sanity? Or could this version of the laser cage be different from the one in Niagara: not just sealing off the cellules from the hive mind outside, but suppressing their mental capacity so they couldn't collect their thoughts?
No answers, just questions… and when I'd finished my explanations, Annah had a question of her own. "If I understand this correctly," she said, "Dreamsinger sent Jode to this prison too. Jode had that rod which let him escape; but while he was here, wouldn't he have lost touch with the main consciousness just like these blobs?"
"You're right. Yet he kept enough intelligence to use the ‹BINK›-rod for his return." I shrugged. "Maybe the difference was that Jode was ready for the experience. He expected to get sent here. Maybe that expectation let him retain intelligence long enough to use the rod." I looked around at the scuttling blobs. "Or maybe every Lucifer retains intelligence for a while. It's only prolonged separation from the hive mind that makes them stupid. Or even… look, Jode knew in advance he'd get banished here. He could have prepared some sort of device, a clockwork attachment that swung the ‹BINK›-rod a few minutes after he'd arrived on the moon. That way it wouldn't matter if he went mindless-the rod would tap him automatically, so he'd return to Earth, and immediately link back with the hive."
"That last sounds most likely," Annah said. "It doesn't leave as much to chance; he could have been hiding the whole contraption right inside his body." She looked up at the bright blue planet in the sky. "By the way, I don't think that's the real Earth… and this isn't the real moon. There's no air on the moon, is there?"
"True. And there shouldn't be this much gravity either." I took a tentative jump. It felt like jumping on Earth-nowhere near the big bounce I'd have made under weak lunar gravity. "Both Jode and Dreamsinger talked as if those fancy rods sent you to an alternate dimension. I guess it amused the Sparks to make this prison look like the face of the moon: emphasizing the sense of banishment. But you're right, this isn't the real…"
A sizzling noise interrupted me. Annah and I whirled toward the sound.
Three paces away, Sebastian lay in the dust, still hugging himself into a fetal ball. One of the Lucifer blobs had pushed up against him during its mindless wanderings. Now, plumes of smoke billowed between it and the boy, as Sebastian's nanite protectors fought off the alien cellules; but the blob was too stupid to realize it had caught fire. It turned to one side, like a worm that has bumped against a wall and starts to inch along the wall itself-the worst thing the blob could do under the circumstances. It continued sliding along the length of Sebastian's body, burning all the way as the nanites continued to attack… but even before the blob reached Sebastian's toes and wobbled away smoldering, the nanite-generated flames had begun to dwindle. They just weren't as strong as when the blob had first stubbed up against the boy.
I wondered: was that because the nanites realized the blob wasn't bothered by fire? Or could there be another explanation?
Carefully, I stepped in and eased the bottom of my boot toward Sebastian's knee. I felt some resistance, like pushing through sand… but after a moment it yielded and my foot touched the boy's pant-leg.
"What are you doing?" Annah asked.
"Nanites," I said. She looked at me blankly; she hadn't been there when Myoko explained psionics to me. "It's too complicated to go into details," I told her, "but just as the Lucifer consists of little independent cellules, Sebastian's powers come from the same sort of thing: microscopic entities, sort of like bacteria. They're ubiquitous on Earth… but not here. The only nanites in this place are the ones we brought with us-in our bodies, in our clothes, and in Sebastian's protective shell."
Annah wrinkled her forehead. "So these nanites are cut off from the whole, just like the cellules?"
I nodded. "They're used to operating on Earth, where they're always surrounded by trillions of their kind. So think about them burning that blob just now-the nanites probably did it by incinerating themselves. On Earth that would be no problem, since there'd always be plenty of replacements for the ones that went up in flames; but here, where there are no replacements… every nanite that dies protecting Sebastian means the shell around the boy gets weaker."
"And I'll bet," said Annah, "the nanites left over aren't as smart. These things must be another collective intelligence, right? Just like the Lucifers. And when nanites burn up, it's like losing brain cells. The rest get more stupid."
She had a point. Under normal circumstances, nanites could draw on each other for brainpower-all the nanites in the air, the soil, everywhere. But here on this barren moon, with no fellow nano except themselves… it really was like the Lucifer cellules: once part of a huge brain, now fending for themselves. My ability to touch Sebastian proved his nanite protectors were no longer functioning normally.
I dabbed my foot once more against Sebastian's leg. This time there was no resistance at all; the protective shell had dissipated, the nanites too feeble-minded to stick to their programming. I crouched and hesitantly moved my gloved hand to the boy's arm. No nanites tried to stop me… so I gave him a light squeeze. "Sebastian. It's Dr. Dhubhai. Are you all right?"