I didn’t know what to say. What could it conceivably mean that the Voice meant to join a New York meeting if the Voice was emanating from Mekare? Would the Voice somehow through Khayman force the twins to travel to New York? I couldn’t figure it. And what of Maharet envisioning that volcano and their fiery finish? Did the others know about that? I didn’t dare to think of it in this company of minds that could rake mine with total ease.

“Believe me,” said Sevraine. “I offered my presence, my sympathy, and my strength to Maharet only nights ago and I was rebuffed. I have told her in plain words who the Voice is and she has refused to believe it. She insists the Voice cannot be what we know it is. Maharet is a bruised and broken soul now. Maharet cannot stop this thing. She can’t fathom that the Voice is coming from her own sister. Maharet is ruined.”

“I can’t give up on her that easily,” I said. “I understand what you’re saying. It’s true. I went there and tried to talk with her and she forced me to leave. She used her power to physically push me away. Quite literally. But I can’t give up on her as broken and bruised. That can’t be right. The last time, when we all faced annihilation, she and Mekare saved us! We would all have died if … Look, we ought to go to her now. You, me, Marius, whoever else we can find …”

“Say this to them when we meet, all of us, under Armand’s roof,” Sevraine said.

But I was horror-struck at the thought of what might be happening in that jungle compound now. What if the Voice through Khayman found some way to do away with Maharet? It was unthinkable to me, and equally unthinkable that I might stand by and let this happen.

“I know this,” said Sevraine. She was responding to my thoughts. “I am fully aware of it. But as I told you, this creature’s destiny has been fulfilled. Maharet’s found her twin, and in her twin she’s confronted the nothingness, the emptiness—the sheer meaninglessness of life—that all of us face sooner or later, and maybe more than once, and maybe even many times. Maharet has not survived this final encounter. She has divorced herself from her mortal family. She has nothing now to sustain her. The tragedy of her mindless sister, Mekare, has devoured her. She’s finished.”

“You go join the others,” I said. “I’ll go back to the Amazon now and I’ll take my stand with her. I can reach there before sunrise in that hemisphere.”