The lab had a similar configuration to the ones on Second Miltia and in the AMN Bureau on Fifth Jerusalem, with a control room overlooking the operating floor, but the Third Division lab was twice the size of the others and incorporated newer technology; it even looked newer, every surface scoured in the same too-brilliant light. The operating floor itself consisted of three separate platforms, arranged in a triangular formation and linked by walkways. Two of the platforms were in use, haloed by identical rings of light. Suspended above each of them was MOMO--there were two of her now, the little girl she had been and the adult she hadn't quite yet become. It was the first time Ziggy had seen both versions of her at once, and the sight left him unsettled for reasons he couldn't explain.

"Sir, the dive preparations are complete," said the Vector employee behind him. Pulling his gaze from the monitors, he walked to the dive unit and lowered the visor over his eyes.

The world blurred and dropped away into darkness, a shifting, swirling mass of shadows that never completely resolved; half-formed structures surfaced out of the haze, wavered, and subsided, and he stumbled over them blindly, searching for something he couldn't see or feel and might not recognize even if he did. Here and there he glimpsed flashes of purple flame darting among the shadows, like lightning between clouds, and sometimes the shadows themselves approached substance for a moment, mocking him with forms and faces he could almost convince himself he hadn't merely imagined.

"Erich!" he roared, and the darkness scorched his throat like smoke, burning away his voice. "I know you're here. If you have her, let her go!"

The howling in his ears took on the sound of laughter. "Very well, Jan Sauer. But are you certain she wants to come back?"

The ground--if there was anything so definite here--shifted suddenly beneath him, the dark haze parting like a curtain as he staggered forward. Now he could see his surroundings clearly, rows of transparent capsules arrayed from here to infinity. He approached the nearest and peered through the glassy membrane at the object inside: a translucent body curled into itself like a fist, its head and limbs barely formed, its eyes blind dark spots.

Warm white light radiated from the column. When he reached out with his right hand and brushed against his surface, images flashed through his mind and he pulled back with a shudder, repulsed by the momentary glimpse of someone else's paradise. Now he remembered what this place was, and what it had been--a pulpy, malignant fleshiness like the inside of a tumor, hanks of mist condensing on membrane-like walls shrink-wrapped to the contours of the straining human faces underneath, the dim fetal shapes clustered like nerve endings, quivering--a nightmare so vivid he had repressed it until now.

It only looked different on the surface, the visceral labyrinth restructured into something sterile and spare, like the nursing plant in Draper with its battery of artificial wombs. But it felt the same. Each of these cells--and there must be thousands, perhaps millions by now--contained a world constructed solely to fulfill the desires of a single inhabitant. This was the reward the Executor had promised his followers, the same lie Voyager had used to mislead the People of Zohar on Abraxas one hundred years ago. And that meant they might still be here--but he wasn't here for them, not now. He didn't even know if he'd be able to find them, and besides--

He took a deep breath. I have to focus. He was here for one reason; he had come to find MOMO. Bracing himself, he turned away from the column he had been examining. "What have you done with her, Erich?" he called without expecting an answer. "Where is she?"

More laughter, echoing down the rows. "But if I told you, that would make it too easy. I'm sure you'll be able find her. Take all the time you need. And try not to lose your temper; you know you can't concentrate when you're upset."

"I'm perfectly calm," he said, clenching his teeth against the lie. Already his composure was slipping, and he didn't know how much longer he could stay here, how much longer he could remain in control.

He started down the aisle, but a sudden impulse made him change direction, and he veered off between the rows. His sensors weren't functioning here, and he couldn't detect her signature. He wouldn't be able to find her by searching methodically, from one row to the next; if he tried, he might be here forever. Logic and strategy were of no use to him now, and he didn't trust his own intuition enough to let it guide him.

By now he had turned at random several times, and no longer knew which way he had come from or where he was going; he was out of breath, his internal systems flagging as his age caught up with him, and despite the calm he maintained on the surface he wanted to scream in frustration, destroy everything in sight until he found what he was looking for, but that wouldn't bring MOMO back either. Struggling for breath, he crashed to his knees.

I can't do this. He ached inside, a tree of pain rooted in his chest and branching up into his throat, and his face felt damp--with tears or perspiration, he couldn't tell. I can't do it alone. MOMO, I need you to help me. I need you to tell me where you are.

"Giving up already, Sauer? I thought you were more stubborn than that. There was a time when you would have shot yourself in the head rather than admit defeat--but maybe your courage died with you on that day."

Something detonated in his mind, a buried pocket of rage, and he uttered a wordless cry and hauled himself upright, battling his own weakness as he swung around in search of the voice. Forgetting MOMO, he thought only of finding Voyager and making him answer for his crimes; but the laughter seemed to issue from everywhere at once, and he didn't know which way to turn, or where to ground the anger and loathing that surged through him like an electric charge, shorting out his senses and any reason he had left.

Then he saw it, through the screen of rage over his eyes, the blue-green glow of a single column in the midst of the white--and he knew, without requiring verification from his useless sensors, without having to calculate the odds. He staggered toward it, cutting across aisles on a diagonal now, slowing when he brushed too near a cell and intruded on the dreams of the consciousness trapped inside it. They ran the range of human desires, and many of them made him recoil in disgust, but a few enticed him enough to distract him for a moment, and he had to tear himself away with as much force as when he pulled back instinctively from the others. He had to remind himself that there was nothing here he wanted, nothing that Voyager could give to him--except MOMO.

He stood before her now, in the aquamarine glow that surrounded her. She had never been an infant, but a child's body drifted inside the column, not yet alive and not yet fully human. He could reach out and touch the glass from where he stood, but some instinct told him not to, and he kept his arms at his sides. He didn't want to know what she was dreaming.

"Why do you hesitate?" said the voice behind him, and he would have spun in its direction if he hadn't already known, somehow, that he would find no one there. "There's nothing to be afraid of--not if you're certain she loves you more than the world I've offered her. And you are certain of that, aren't you?" The low mocking rasp of a laugh. "Go ahead and reach out to her, then. What do you have left to lose?"

Everything, he thought, and for the first time in a hundred years he realized it was true. Perhaps that was why Voyager hadn't sought him out at once after he died, not until three years ago, after Ziggy had met MOMO and Juli and the others. Until then, Ziggurat 8 hadn't had anything worth bargaining for--no loved ones to threaten, no desires to manipulate, no inclination at all but the wish to annihilate himself; and Voyager, for all the power he had, seemed unwilling or unable to grant him that. Until three years ago Jan Sauer had been a dead man, and dead men had nothing left to sacrifice.

He held out his right hand and stared at it in the watery greenish light. After a moment, he took off his glove. His fingers trembled as he pressed them to the glass.

∞

He stood in a clearing at dusk, pink and yellow flowers blurring into a soft haze along the ground, fireflies drifting among them in a dance too complex to reduce to a known equation. Among the deep reds and purples of the sky above, stars glittered in the same inscrutable pattern. At the edge of the clearing he recognized the pastel trees from the environment MOMO had programmed to test the battle simulator.

Nearer at hand was a ship that resembled the Elsa, at rest in a bed of flowers. Outside the ship, by the airlock, a piano stood as if it had sprung from the earth along with the trees and flowers and grass, and as he approached he saw MOMO seated in front of it--the child-MOMO, her tiny hands poised above the keys, playing but making no sound. She didn't glance up from the display panel when he came closer.

"MOMO," he said, knowing she wouldn't respond, that perhaps she couldn't hear him at all.

A footfall in the grass behind him, a displacement of the air accompanied by a barely perceptible drop in temperature. "Call to her again, Jan Sauer. Maybe she'll answer this time."

He whipped around. Voyager stood in the meadow like a living silhouette, like a rent in the world opening into some infinitely dark place beyond. The evening sky turned bruised and menacing behind him; even the stars took on the infernal gleam of pinholes opened into a furnace, and the fireflies reddened above the darkening sward. Ziggy stepped back into a defensive posture. "Let her go," he said, and no anger rose in his throat to choke off his words; he really did feel calm now.

"Whether she stays or leaves here is not up to you to decide." A smile crept out to the corners of his mouth. "This is the world she desires--the world she created for herself. All I did was reach into her heart and make it real to her."

"Real?" Ziggy cast his gaze around the clearing, at the pink and blue and lavender trees, the sleeping bulk of the Elsa, the fireflies making garlands of light among the flowers, and he shook his head. Just because he could perceive it with his senses didn't make it real. "You gave her an illusion. You deceived her, just as you deceived my wife and child."

"I only gave them what they wanted," said Voyager. "And I did the same for her. Everything she could ask for is here--everything, that is, except you." When Ziggy stared at him in astonishment, Voyager's smile cut in deeper, twisting like a barbed hook. "That's right. Her new world doesn't include you. She doesn't need you--in fact, she's perfectly content without realizing you ever existed. And why tear her away from her new-found happiness? If you try to release her now, you'll only make her suffer. Here she'll be safe forever, shielded from anything that could harm her. She finally has the protection you could never provide for her. Doesn't that put your mind at ease?"

Ziggy glared at Voyager over his raised fists. It took all his resistance not to look back at MOMO; if he did, he might have to admit Voyager was right about her happiness. Ziggy couldn't keep her safe. He couldn't even guarantee her peace of mind; he could only tell her the truth.

But maybe the truth is enough.

He straightened, lowering his arms and letting his fists uncurl at his sides. "You left her alive," he said. "You didn't kill her, like ... the others."

"Her consciousness is tethered to your world by a single thread. If you try to wake her against her will, that thread will be severed."

Ziggy raised his head and stared into the dark red eyes. "What is this about, Erich? This game you're playing? I want the truth."

He laughed again. Behind him the last of the color drained from the night, leaving only an afterglow around the edges of the darkness. "And what makes you think I can tell you that? You already know it yourself."

"That's not what I'm asking. I want to know why you've been following me, and why you wouldn't leave me in peace even after I was dead. I want to know why you're still threatening me if I'm worthless to you." He dropped his gaze. "If you're really what you say you are, then you're practically a god. I can't possibly have anything you need to achieve your objectives. So what's the reason for this? Are you doing it for your own enjoyment? Why?"

Voyager moved closer and the darkness followed at his heels, bleeding light and color out of the world, until he stood eye to eye with Ziggy, a few inches away from his face. "Do you want to find out?" he said, on the edge of a whisper. "I'll make you a trade. Your soul in exchange for hers."

Ziggy said nothing. He had been expecting this. He took a deep breath. "You'll let her go?"

"There's one way to find out."

"Ziggy, no! Don't listen to him!"

At the sound of her voice they both looked back toward the place where they had left her. MOMO stood, overturning the piano bench in her haste, and as she ran toward them her outline blurred, so that Ziggy couldn't tell whether she was young or grown, a child or a woman. At his side he heard a hiss of indrawn breath, felt a spike in the air, and he realized MOMO had caught Voyager off guard.

She flickered into her adult form and remained stable, her ether bow materializing in her hands. Ziggy sidestepped instinctively as the arrows flew past him. Taking his place beside MOMO, he saw the last of the arrows strike the invisible barrier around Voyager, where they disappeared in a flash of purple-black light and left him unscathed.

MOMO stepped out in front of Ziggy. "Leave us alone, Voyager!" She aimed her bow again, without firing. "You can't get away with this anymore. You could never give me what I really wanted."

"And what makes you say that? You seemed happy enough with what you had."

"But it wasn't what I wanted." MOMO shook her head fiercely, still aiming her bow. "Because--I didn't even know what that was, until now, until I realized what I don't want. I think I'm finally starting to grow up, and that's--I think that's what I want after all."

"MOMO ...." Ziggy stared at her, but he didn't move or reach out to her.

She took another step forward. "I want to grow up," she said, loosing each word like an arrow, "and I want to watch my children grow up, and I want to see their children grow up too. That's what my father would have wanted for me. That's why he died, so he could make a world where everyone who hadn't been born yet could live in peace. He sacrificed his life to give his dream to me. And I--I want to carry out that dream, so I can make him proud. So I can make Mommy proud, and--" She turned, looked over her shoulder for a moment. "And you, Ziggy."

"I'm already proud of you."

MOMO shook her head again. "I know. But I want you to be happy."

Before he could answer, she drew back her bowstring and released another volley of arrows. Voyager's silhouette flickered behind a shell of bright explosions, but the darkness that had erased the world behind him kept advancing, surging past him now, into the clearing. Ziggy launched a round from his own weapon--it wouldn't stop Voyager for long, but maybe it would buy them enough time to escape. He fled after MOMO across the field, toward the margin of trees at the far end. Shadows like black smoke boiled across the sky in their pursuit.

"I've got her!" he called as they ran, hoping someone could still hear his transmission outside the network. "Hurry up and log us out of here!"

The tree line ahead of him blurred. Silvery mercury drops scattered across his vision and the ground bucked between his strides, pitching him forward before he caught his balance. He raced to keep up with MOMO, but exhaustion seized the workings of his inner machinery and he knew he was losing ground. He had overestimated himself again.

"Faster, Ziggy!" MOMO looked back at him and thrust out her arm. "Grab my hand!"

He pushed himself for a final sprint as they neared the edge of the clearing, and as his fingers touched hers the world turned to glass and shattered, and he broke through into a confusion of light and noise.

His surroundings hadn't yet snapped into focus when he staggered up from the dive unit, pulling off the headset as he stood. A few technicians started from their workstations to caution him against getting up too soon, but they stopped before they reached him, perhaps realizing their efforts would be about as effective as leaping into traffic in the path of a speeding truck.

Beyond the glass partition separating the control room from the operating floor, the blue glow faded and MOMO--the older MOMO--folded to her knees in slow motion, as if lowered to the floor by invisible hands.

He reached her first, and helped her to her feet as Juli arrived. Juli stopped at the edge of the platform, but MOMO pulled away from Ziggy and ran toward her, throwing her arms around Juli with such force that for a moment Ziggy worried they would both lose their balance. When MOMO let go, Juli stepped back to catch her breath, her face pale and drawn in the stark light. "MOMO," she whispered, still half in disbelief. "Are you-- How did you-- What happened?"

MOMO shook her head. "It's--I don't know if I can explain now." She looked around at the vast white chamber, the suspended platforms, the control room at the far end. "Are we on the Dämmerung? This looks like where I had my operation."

"It is," said Juli. "After the incident last week, we had to bring you back to Third Division for repairs."

MOMO's eyes widened. "Last week? It's only been a week? But I thought--" Shaking her head again, she stared at the control-room window. "I guess I lost track of time. Ziggy, are you okay?"

He ran a quick self-scan of his internal systems now that his sensors were functioning again, and winced at the readouts. Clots of black and silver still drifted before his eyes; he ached wherever he could still feel pain, and his coordination lagged. "I'll be all right."

Juli cast him a significant look, the one that said she didn't believe his reassurance. He'd been getting that a lot from her lately. "I think we could all use some rest," she said, and her tone followed her gaze; it was the way she proposed suggestions when she intended for them to be interpreted as commands, a manner of speaking she had probably honed during countless meetings of the SOCE and Parliament. "Let's head back to the residential sector for now. That way, MOMO, you can get filled in on everything that's happened in the past few days. I'm afraid there've been ... a number of significant developments in our investigation."

"Significant developments?" MOMO stared at Juli, reading the concern on her face; then she turned to Ziggy, but not for reassurance, not if she could read him as well as he thought she could. "Did something bad happen?"

He nodded, tight-lipped.

"I'll explain when we get back to our room," said Juli, looking out across the walkway as a few Vector employees hurried toward the platform. While Juli conferred with them, MOMO wandered over to the adjacent platform where her former body hovered in stasis, the blank doll-eyes closed and the head tipped back, the limbs rigid and still.

MOMO didn't turn around when Ziggy approached behind her. "She looks kind of sad, don't you think?" she said after a while. "Like she knows she's going to sleep and won't wake up anymore. I wonder if KOS-MOS ever felt like that."

He kept silent, because he didn't know what to say.

When she pulled her gaze away from the body and looked up at him, her eyes were liquid, and they spilled over when she tried to smile. "I miss her," she said, and he wasn't sure, at first, whether she meant KOS-MOS or herself. "I miss everyone so much. Do you think, when all this is over, we'll get to see them again?"

"I'm not sure." He put his arm around her shoulders. "But I hope so. I miss them too."

She looked startled at the admission; he guessed it was unusual for him to express his feelings so candidly. "After we're done reuniting the Federation," said MOMO, "when it's safe to reopen the sealed column, then we'll try to find them, right?"

That had been part of the original proposal for the AMN project, he remembered. But after they had made the gate-jump to Second Miltia and sealed off the entrance to the other galaxy, after the government got involved, the objective of reestablishing contact with the Lost Jerusalem expedition had been buried under the more pressing goal of rebuilding political and social infrastructure within the Federation. At the time, MOMO had protested: Why should one be more important than the other? Wasn't that why they were building the AMN in the first place? But maybe it had been an unexpected blessing; as long as the Federation couldn't reach Lost Jerusalem, maybe Ormus and Voyager couldn't either.

"I had a dream that they came back." She was staring into the blue sphere again, as if addressing her other self inside it. "Jr. and the others, I mean, and everything was just like it was, and .... But it wasn't real. It wasn't the same. It can never be the same again, can it?"

"It might be different," he said. "Maybe it will be better."

"A better world." She held out her hands, spanning the diameter of the blue shell. The sphere glowed like the surface of a miniature planet circled by rings of light. "That's what we're building, right? And we'll be here to see it."

He nodded. Even if he didn't live to see it completed, at least he had watched it begin.