Typhōn made a sound like a small dog choking, and its speech became much clearer. “Not possible. Already close to exceeding budget. Your world will have its uses. It will become its own repository; whoever wishes to study Gaia in later cycles will come here and do so. Meanwhile, it serves as a place to raise and train young. What you would call a holy place.”

“None of my people are alive?”

“Very few have died,” Typhōn said, adjusting a shoulder.

She remembered the unexpected yielding of its substance and turned away again, fist thrust into her mouth.

“In truth, more of your kind would have died had we not come here. By far the great majority are in storage. It is not unpleasant; my selves have been there many times. Unlike death, storage is not final.”

She shook her head, numb to the horror but unwilling to listen to more useless talk. “Where are my companions? You said you’d bring them here.”

“They are here.” The bubble moved through Patrikia’s gray and withered garden; the orange trees were dusty skeletons. They approached the house, and from behind the house other bubbles emerged, one containing Demetrios, another Lugotorix, a third Oresias. Each was accompanied by an escort: Oresias by what seemed to be an older woman, Lugotorix by a red-headed old man, Demetrios by a slender young male in student’s garb.

Lugotorix stood with arms crossed and eyes tightly closed. What he can’t see can’t make him more miserable.

Typhōn kept silent behind her. The bubbles orbited slowly about each other in Patrikia’s yard. Lugotorix seemed to sense her presence and opened his eyes, looking on her with an expression of fierce joy; he had not failed completely. Demetrios merely nodded, unwilling to meet her stare. Oresias seemed unable to raise his head.

Defeat. Final and total. No going back.

What would Patrikia do? If she were here, having lost two homes, two worlds…. Rhita did not doubt the old sophē would simply have laid herself down and died. The enormity was truly outside the range of a human mind.

There was no hope. “The whole world is dead,” she said.

“No,” Typhōn corrected her.

“Shut up,” she said sharply. “It’s dead.”

The escort did not contradict her again.

She tried to speak with the others, but no sound passed between them. Suddenly, she turned and faced Typhōn. On his distorted face there was a triumphant expression, brief but unmistakable. He had absorbed enough humanity to mimic exultation.

She had been brought here, she now believed, in part at least so that the victors could measure their triumph. Prisoners on parade.