“No, thank you, I will stand.”
Again the woman blinked in surprise. Deeper surprise this time, the moravec facial-emotion analysts thought.
“Molü,” said Noman. “I think you know of it. A substance made from a rare black root which bears a milk-white bloom out of the earth once each autumn.”
Sycorax nodded slowly. “My, you have traveled far. But haven’t you heard? Hermes is dead.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Noman.
“No, I suppose it doesn’t. How did you get here, Odysseus?”
“Noman.”
“How did you get here, Noman?”
“I used Savi’s old sonie. It took me almost four full days, creeping from one orbital lump to the next, always hiding from these robotic intruder destroyers of yours or outrunning them in stealth mode. You need to get rid of those things, Circe. Or sonies need to include toilet facilities.”
Sycorax laughed softly. “And why on earth would I get rid of the interceptors?”
“Because I ask you to.”
“And why on earth would I do anything you ask, Odys… Noman?”
“I’ll tell you when I finish with my requests.”
Behind Noman, Caliban snarled. The human ignored the noise and the creature.
“By all means,” said Sycorax. “Continue with your requests.” Her smile showed how very little attention she was prepared to pay to these requests.
“First, as I say, eliminate the orbital interceptors. Or at least reprogram them so that spacecraft can move safely within and between the rings again…”
Sycorax’s smile did not waver. Nor did her violet-eyed, purple-painted gaze warm.
“Secondly,” continued Noman, “I would like you to remove the interdiction field above the Mediterranean Basin and to drop the Hands of Hercules fields.”
The witch laughed softly. “What an odd request. The resulting tsunami would be devastating.”
“You can do it gradually, Circe. I know you can. Refill the basin.”
“Before you go on,” she said coldly, “give me one reason I should do this thing.”
“There are things in the Mediterranean Basin which the old-style humans should not have soon.”
“The depots, you mean,” said Sycorax. “The spacecraft, weapons…”
“Many things,” said Noman. “Let the wine-dark sea refill the Mediterranean Basin.”
“Perhaps you haven’t noticed since you’ve been traveling,” said Sycorax, “but the old-style humans are on the verge of extinction.”
“I’ve noticed. I still ask you to refill the Mediterranean Basin—carefully, slowly. And while you’re at it, eliminate that folly that is the Atlantic Breach.”
Sycorax shook her head and lifted the two-handled cup to sip wine. She did not offer Noman any. The young Odysseus lay back glazed on the cushions, apparently unable to move.
“Is that all?” she said.
“No,” said Noman. “I’ll also ask you to reactivate all faxnodes for the old-style humans, all function links, and the rejuvenation tanks remaining on both the polar and equatorial rings.”
Sycorax said nothing.
“Finally,” said Noman, “I want you to send down your tame monster here to tell Setebos that the Quiet is coming to this Earth.”
Caliban hissed and snarled. “Thinketh, time has come to pluck the mankin’s sound legs off and leaveth stumps for him to ponder. Think-eth, He is strong and Lord and this bruised fellow shall receive a worm, nay, two worms, for using His name in vain.”
“Silence,” snapped Sycorax. She stood, looking more regal in her nakedness than other queens could in full regalia. “Noman, is the Quiet coming to this Earth?”
“I believe so, yes.” She seemed to relax. Lifting a clump of grapes from the bowl on the cushions, she carried them to Noman, offered them. He shook his head.
“You ask much of me, for an old and non-Odysseus,” she said softly, pacing the space between the cushioned bed and the man. “What would you give me in return?”
“Tales of my travels.” Sycorax laughed again. “I know your travels.”
“Not this time, you don’t. This has been twenty years, not ten.” The witch’s beautiful face twisted in something the moravecs’ interpreted as a sneer. “Always seeking the same thing… your Penelope.”
“No,” said Noman. “Not this time. This time when you sent the young me through the Calabi-Yau doorway my travels in space and time—twenty years for me—were all in search of you.”
Sycorax stopped her pacing and stared at him.
“You,” repeated Noman. “My Circe. We loved each other well and have made love well many times these twenty years. I’ve found you in your iterations as Circe, Sycorax, Alys, and Calypso.”
“Alys?” said the witch. Noman only nodded. “Did I have a slight gap between my front teeth then?”
“You did.” Sycorax shakes her head. “You lie. In all lines of reality it is the same, Odysseus-Noman. I save you, pull you from the sea, succor you, feed you honeyed wine and fine food, tend your wounds, bathe you, show you physical love of a sort you have only dreamed of, offer you immortality and eternal youth, and always you leave. Always you leave me for that weaving bitch Penelope. And your son.”
“I’ve seen my son this twenty years past,” said Noman. “He is grown into a fine man. I do not need to see him again. I wish to stay with you.”
Sycorax returns to her cushions and drinks two-handed from the large goblet. “I am thinking of turning all your moravec mariners into swine,” she said at last.
Noman shrugged. “Why not? You did that to all my other men in all these other worlds.”
“What kind of swine do you think moravecs will make?” asked the witch, her tone merely conversational. “Will they resemble a row of plastic piggybanks?”
Noman said, “Moira is awake again.” The witch blinked. “Moira? Why would she choose to waken now?”
“I don’t know,” said Noman, “but she’s in Savi’s young body. I saw her on the day I left Earth, but we didn’t speak.”
“Savi’s body?” repeated Sycorax. “What is Moira up to? And why now?”
“Thinketh,” said Caliban behind Noman, “He made the old Savi out of sweet clay for His son to bite and eat, add honeycomb and pods, chewing her neck until froth rises bladdery, quick, quick, till maggots scamper through my brain.”
Sycorax rose and paced again, coming close to Noman and raising one hand as if to touch his bare chest, then veering away. Caliban hissed and crouched, his palms on granite, his back hunched, his arms straight down between his crouched and powerful legs, his yellow eyes baleful. But he remained where she had told him to stay.
“You know I can’t send my son down to tell his father Setebos about the Quiet,” she said softly.
“I know this… thing … is not your son,” said Noman. “You built him out of shit and defective DNA in a tank of green slime.”
Caliban hissed and began to speak again in his terrible lisping rant. Sycorax waved him silent.
“Do you know your moravec friends are lifting more than seven hundred black holes into orbit even as we speak?” she asked.
Noman shrugged. “I didn’t know that, but I hoped they would be.”
“Where did they get them?”
“You know where they must have come from. Seven hundred sixty-eight black-hole warheads? There is only one place.”
“Impossible,” said Sycorax. “I sealed that wreck off inside a stasis-egg almost two millennia ago.”
“And Savi and I unsealed it more than a century ago,” said Noman.
“Yes, I watched as you and that bitch hurried around with your hopeless little schemes,” said Sycorax. “What in the hell did you hope to accomplish with those turin-cloth connections to Ilium?”