THREE PERSONS APPROACHED FROM THE MAIN DIGGER CAMP UNDER the glider’s wings: a warrior with a steel-headed lance; a middle-aged, prematurely grizzled man with a grim look about him; and another whom Ty took for a boy until they drew closer and he saw that it was a short-haired teenaged girl, even more diminutive than was typical among these people. She carried herself oddly, keeping her head tilted down and turned to one side, looking at the world through the corner of her eye, though this might have been necessitated by the fact that she was following close behind the grizzled man and needed to peek around his rib cage in order to see where she was going. Scampering over obstructions that he took in stride, she seemed to take two steps for his every one. She looked like nothing so much as a squirrel trying to keep pace with a dog.
As they drew within speaking range the graybeard stopped the spearman with a nod, then took another pace forward. The girl faltered. Noting this, the graybeard made a gesture that encouraged her to venture a bit closer. She cringed up against his backside and peered out through his armpit.
“I am Donno,” announced the graybeard. “To me you may speak, but no others save the Psych here.” Or at least that is what Ty thought he heard.
“I am Tyuratam Lake,” Ty said. “And this is Einstein. The woman there is Kath Two; she is unlikely to join the conversation.”
“Tyuratam,” said the Psych in a husky voice, “a city in Central Asia, close to the Soviet space launch facility of Baikonur in Kazakhstan. Einstein, a theoretical physicist of the early twentieth century, before Zero.”
Donno heard the Psych out but did not look at her or make any sign of recognition. His attention was fixed on Ty. The words of the Psych were just a buzzing in his ear. “When Kath Two awakens, you will tell her the rule I have just proclaimed,” Donno said, “and see to it that she abides by it.”
“I will tell her the rule,” Ty said, “and she will keep her own counsel as to abiding by it. Over her I wield no authority. It is not how our society is organized.”
Donno looked as though he didn’t believe a word of what Ty had just said. “You are Dinan.”
So, they knew about the Seven Eves. How had they come by that knowledge? Abducting stragglers, interrogating them? Or had they been in covert contact with some Spacer?
“Yes,” Ty said.
“You are the leader of the group.”
Ty said nothing. It seemed unlikely to work for him to explain that it was complicated.
“What did you do with Marge?” Donno asked.
“Who is Marge?”
“The woman who was taken up by the thing that reached down out of space.”
Ty was tempted to make the irritable point that Donno had just answered his own question. Instead he just stared back, wondering where to begin.
“The other mutant—a Julian?”
“Yes.”
“She attacked you with your own weapon. You were surprised.”
“Indeed I was, Donno.”
“She betrayed you?”
“Yes.”
“Is she of the western people?”
To Donno, that would suggest the Spacers living in the part of Beringia west of 166 Thirty.
“Red is what we call them.”
Donno nodded as if he’d heard it before. “You are Blue, then.”
“Yes, we are Blue. We avoid using Thors.”
“Thor: a Germanic deity of immense strength, associated with lightning, armed with a hammer,” the Psych said.
“Is your name short for Encyclopedia?” Einstein asked her.
Donno threw Einstein a killing look. Einstein was oblivious to it; he was looking at the girl with fascination and then some.
“Yes,” she answered before Donno could stay her by raising his hand. She dodged away as if expecting to be cuffed, then smiled back at Einstein.
Ty had just been rendered almost dizzy by a clear and sharp image from the Epic: a photograph that Rufus had emailed to Dinah shortly before the White Sky, depicting the library that he and his friends had assembled in their underground fastness. Proudly displayed in its center was a row of identically bound volumes called the Encyclop?dia Britannica.
This girl—the Cyc, not the Psych—had read it. She had physically handled those old books. Or perhaps handwritten copies of them.
“He is Ivyn,” Donno said, nodding at Einstein. It wasn’t a question. Then, his initial flash of anger having cooled, he took a more careful look at the kid from the RIZ.
“His eyelids look that way because of epicanthic folds,” said the Cyc, who had been conducting an unnecessarily close inspection of the Ivyn’s face.
“Shut up,” Donno told her. Then he turned his attention back to Ty. “The Red Julian—”
“Ariane,” Ty said.
“She was a spy within your ranks?”
“So it would seem.”
“Interesting. Rufus’s library has some novels about such things, in the decades before Zero, but I never thought I would lay eyes on a real mole.”
It was an unusually long-winded and revealing statement from Donno, and seemed to invite a witticism about moles and living underground, but Ty thought better of following up in that vein.
“I never thought I would lay eyes on someone like you,” he tried.
“All these thousands of years, you’ve thought we were dead!” Donno said. “Well, you thought wrong.”
“Before everything went to hell down there,” Ty said, “the old man—”
“Pop Loyd.”
“Pop Loyd stated that we were not welcome here.”
“He spoke truthfully,” Donno said.
“I don’t mean to be stupid,” Ty said, “but this is important and so I am sure you will agree with me that it is something I need to understand very clearly. Your group—do you have a name for it?”