The exterior wall of the downed survival chamber was still steaming—it had scorched the meadow grass it landed on—and the interior was too hot to use even as a temporary shelter. Treya and I ferried out a few armloads of salvageable material. The survival room had been liberally stocked with what I guessed were pharmaceuticals and medical supplies, less generously with packages Treya identified as food. I grabbed any box she pointed at and we stacked the salvage under a nearby tree (not a species I recognized). The tree was all we needed for shelter at the moment. The air outside was warm, the sky clear.

Despite all this physical effort I felt reasonably good, much better than I had when I first woke up in the desert. I wasn’t tired or even especially anxious, no doubt because of the drugs Treya had pumped into me. I didn’t feel sedated, just calm and energetic and not inclined to dwell on the dangers at hand. Treya dabbed some sort of ointment on her cuts and scratches, which closed immediately. Then she applied a blue glass tube to the inside of her arm. A few minutes later she appeared to be as functional as I felt, though she still wore her grief like a mask.

As the sun cleared the horizon it was possible to see more of the place where we had landed. It was a sumptuous landscape. When I was little my mother used to read to me from an illustrated children’s Bible, and the island reminded me of watercolor pictures of Eden before the Fall. Rolling meadows carpeted with small cloverlike plants merged into thickets of fruit-bearing trees in every direction. No lambs or lions, though. Or people or roads. Not even a path.

“It would help,” I said, “if you could explain a little of what’s going on.”

“That’s what I was trained for—to help you understand. But without the Network it’s hard to know where to start.”

“Just tell me what a complete stranger might like to know.”

She looked up at the sky, at the ominous pillar of smoke to windward. Her eyes reflected clouds.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I can. While we wait to be rescued.”

*   *   *

Vox had been built and populated by a community of men and women who believed it was their destiny to travel to Earth and enter into direct communication with the Hypotheticals.

That was four worlds and five centuries ago, Treya said. Since then Vox had held steadfastly to her purpose. She had traversed three Arches, making temporary alliances, fighting her declared enemies, accreting new communities and new artificial out-islands, until she reached her current configuration as the Vox Archipelago.