Turk pressed up against the security railing that followed the edge of the roof, surveying what had become of the exterior land of Vox. The island was unprotected from the atmosphere and looked as if it had entered some grim and final autumn. The forests were dead. Leaves were brown and scattered, fruit rotted. Even the limbs of the trees looked leprous and fragile. The wind of passage was dismantling the woodlands branch by branch.

“Vox,” I said, “I mean the collective Vox, limbic Vox, considered itself redeemed when we managed to pass through the Arch. But you’re right, what they found isn’t what they expected, and disappointment is setting in. That’s what we need to talk about, up here where no one can hear us. We need to make a plan.”

He stood a moment gazing over the ruined lands. Then he said, “How bad do you expect it to get?”

“Assuming Vox fails to find a door into Paradise down in Antarctica, it could get—well, really bad. The idea of merging Vox with the Hypotheticals is a foundational faith. It’s the reason Vox exists. It’s the promise we were all given at birth, along with our nodes. No dissent from it has ever been possible, nor would it have been tolerated. But now—”

“You’re up against an awkward truth.”

“They are. I’m not one of them anymore.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Sailing to Antarctica is an act of desperation, and it’s only postponing the inevitable.”

“Okay, so reality sets in sooner or later—then what? Chaos, anarchy, blood in the streets?”

I was Voxish enough to feel a trace of shame at the answer to that question. “There have been other limbic cult communities in the past, and when they fail … well, it’s ugly. Fear and frustration are amplified by the Network to the point of self-destruction. People turn on their neighbors, their families, ultimately themselves.” There was no one to hear us, but I lowered my voice. “Social breakdown, maybe communal suicide. Eventually starvation when the food supply fails. And no one can opt out. You can’t just reconfigure the prophecies or choose to believe something else—the contradiction is built into the Coryphaeus.”

I had seen hints of it even today, as we traveled through the city—a general sullenness too subtle for Turk to pick up on but plain enough to me, like the sound of thunder on a rising wind.

“And there’s no way to protect ourselves?”

“Not if we stay here, no.”

“And nowhere to go even if we had a way out. Christ, Allison.” He couldn’t stop staring at the mottled horizon, the rotting forest. “This was a pretty nice planet, once upon a time.”