“Sure,” Sonar said, a little too blithely for Ty’s taste. But before he could press her, she added: “Guess we’ll be going north then?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the main group is going south. Probably as soon as the sun is up.”
“How far south were they thinking of going?” As it was, they were less than a hundred kilometers from the southern coast of Beringia.
“To the sea,” Sonar said, as if this were self-evident.
“What’s going to happen then?”
The question seemed simple enough, but it led to an outburst of chuckles from Sonar. “They’re going to wonder what became of me, that’s what!” she said, when she could get her mirth under control.
“They’re probably wondering that already,” Einstein remarked.
“No, I mean they’ll be needing me then!”
“Why?” Einstein asked.
“It’s a riddle.”
The bolt had been removed now, freeing the end of the chain, which Ty pulled clear of his collar. He opened the thing up and tossed it on the ground. The gesture caught the eye of the Cyc, who probably saw it as a shocking way to treat valuable metal. Ty was now free, holding the massive stake fragment and managing to control a certain natural impulse to bash her head in. This was not a time for riddles.
Einstein got the chain out of his own collar, then carried it in the direction of Kath so that he could help her.
“The purpose of your expedition—before we blundered into your path, that is—was to go to the edge of the water and make contact with the Pingers,” Ty ventured.
“Pingers?” Bard asked.
Ty ignored him, maintaining his focus on the Cyc. “You, by virtue of your mastery of volume seventeen of the Encyclop?dia Britannica, are the closest thing your folk have to an expert on the only technology capable of summoning them.”
“Oh, I’m an expert on other topics as well!” Sonar said. “Sophism, South Carolina, Pope Sylvester II . . .”
Ty decided to let the witticisms go by without positive or negative reinforcement. “What were you guys going to say to them?”
“It’s they who want to talk to us!” Sonar said. “They left us a message—a cairn on the beach. We are coming to respond.”
The ensuing silence lasted a long time: long enough for the final stanza of “Bread of Heaven” to stop reverberating from the mountain walls, long enough for the A?dan leader’s opening greeting—written and pronounced in flawless pre-Zero English—to move through a solid paragraph of awe-inspiringly sycophantic salutations. Long enough for Bard to get the unchained Kath socketed into his backpack.
“We move south,” Ty announced. “Bard, you keep pace with the Cyc. If she slows us down, carry her. I’m going to need your radio.”
“My what?!” Bard exclaimed.
“An electromagnetic communications device—” Sonar began, but Ty cut her off.
“The thingamajibber you use to talk to Denali. I’m going to tell them we have a second chance.”
“A second chance to do what?”
“To make friends with the natives of this planet.”
THEY CRESTED A PASS IN THE COASTAL RANGE THE FOLLOWING DAY and began making their way down toward the sea. When the going became easy enough to allow for something like normal conversation, Ty asked, “How many Cycs are there in total?”
Sonar’s little head snapped around, like a bird’s, to regard him curiously. She would never look you directly in the eye, but she would lurk in your peripheral vision and sneak peeks all day long.
“I know,” Ty said. “As many as there are volumes of the Encyclop?dia Britannica. But I don’t know what that number is, because we no longer have copies of it lying around.”
“Well, there are the Ten, the Nineteen, and the One,” Sonar said. “The Ten are the Microp?dia. Many short articles. The Nineteen are the Macrop?dia: longer, more in-depth articles. The One is the Prop?dia, the Outline.”
“Which category do you belong to?”
Einstein, walking ahead of them down the slope, wheeled around. “She already told us she was volume seventeen!” Normally good-natured, he was being unusually chippy all of a sudden. He returned his attention to the rocky terrain in front of him, displaying a flushed neck beneath his ponytail.
“Excuse me,” Ty said. Then, turning back to the Cyc, he asked, “Is that just luck of the draw? Or—”
“No!”
Of course not.
“The older Cycs started me on smaller books, to evaluate me.”
“When? At what age did they start you?”
“When it was decided that I was not a breeder.”
Einstein turned around again, this time so suddenly that he lost his footing and fell on his ass. The reaction was so outsized that Ty had to look away from it lest he break out laughing. But this brought Langobard into his line of sight, and the Neoander was in similar trouble. The two men had to stop walking and turn their backs on each other for a few moments just to keep their composure.