Achilles: “If I have time.” He avoided my eyes here, brave Achilles, as he had avoided telling me when word arrived that Pointer first, then Stander-G and Nogun had succumbed to the eternal peace of plastic. We do not know why Bridger’s gift fades quickly from some of his creations while others linger on. If they linger long enough, science may learn. If science can.

Utopia: “We’ll arrange a call.”

Achilles: “Patroclus will call them if I can’t.”

Utopia: “You could visit them in person if you wish.”

Achilles: “No time.”

Utopia: “You must come to the lab yourself soon, Achilles. The experiments we want to run on you are multiplying like hydras’ heads.”

Achilles: “Later.”

Utopia: “There won’t be time once real war wakes.”

Achilles: “I know.” The hero took a deep breath. “Mycroft says, however the sides fall, you and your work must be protected, at any cost.”

Utopia: “Not at apocalyptic cost, but at epic cost if need be, I agree. Each death is an infinite waste, but infinity still has degrees. If a new Dark Age tears the Great Project down again, we lose more than current lives, we lose the past ones that were sacrificed for it. Including yours.”

Achilles: “Mine?” The wars, which have nearly killed true laughter in the veteran, have strengthened its sardonic shadow. “I never died for anything useful, just glory and destruction.”

Utopia: “You can this chapter.”

Achilles: “This chapter… It is like a new chapter, isn’t it?” I recognized the shudder that washed across Achilles, that same awed shudder that had washed over Carlyle Foster when he witnessed Bridger’s miracle, and spent the next hours praying that this answer to his lifelong prayer would not turn out to be a dream. “And we are allies?”

Utopia: “We are allies.” An otherworldly hand was extended, and accepted.

Achilles: “I think we should keep this alliance secret for now.”

Utopia: “Agreed.”

Achilles: “Most of the other Hives have tried to recruit me. If I agree to work with one, I can make them help defend you, too.”

Utopia: “Will you tell them we are allies?”

Achilles: “I’ll decide when the time comes.”

Utopia: “Very sage. Will you select your side soon? Or wait to see how the players slot out? It seems some Hives may bud.”

Achilles: “I won’t wait long. I don’t think we have long.”

Utopia: “Do you have a battle plan?”

Achilles: “Not yet. I know what resources I want to prepare for the beginning, but I can’t guess at this point what the pretext will be when things finally begin.”

Humor, mankind’s survival strategy, brought absurd images before my mind here, mobs in blasted wastelands, raising impossibly honest banners: “Financial stability! Self-determination! Xenophobia!” We do need pretexts for our wars. A man may leap into the fray in the name of Liberty, Homeland, Human Rights, Justice, but never Economics.