The Twelve

29


REFINERY COMPLEX

Freeport, Texas

Michael Fisher, oiler first class—Michael the Clever, Bridger of Worlds—aroused from a deep and dreamless sleep to the sensation, unmistakable, that somebody was f*cking him.

He opened his eyes. Lore was straddling him, her spine bowed forward, her brow glazed with a glinting, sex-fired sweat. Flyers, he thought, hadn’t they just done this? Most of the night, in fact? Hugely, hilariously, in every position allowable to human physiology in a sleeping berth the approximate dimensions of a coffin?

“Good morning,” she announced with a grin. “I hope you don’t mind I got started without you.”

Well, so be it, Michael thought. There were certainly worse ways to face the day. From the flush of her cheeks, he could tell that Lore was well on the way, and, come to think of it, he wasn’t far behind. She had begun to rock her hips, the weight of her sex lapping against him like waves on a beach. In and out went the waves.

“Not so fast, mister.”

“For Christ’s sake, keep it down!” a voice barked from above.

“Shut up, Ceps,” Lore replied, “I’m working in here.”

“You’re making me hard! It’s disgusting!”

This conversation seemed to Michael to be occurring in some distant orbit. With everyone bunked together, nothing but thin curtains for privacy, you learned to tune things out. But the feeling was more than that. Even as his senses sailed away into pure physicality, something about sex, its hypnotic rhythms, prompted in him a kind of disassociation. It was as if his mind were lagging three steps behind his body, sightseeing its way through a landscape of various concerns and sadnesses and emotionally neutral images that rose before him like bubbles of expanding gas in the boiler. A decaying gasket that needed replacing. The delivery schedule of fresh crude down from the depot. Memories of the Colony, which he never otherwise thought about. Above him, Lore continued on her journey, while Michael drifted in this current of mental disloyalty, trying to will his attentions into alignment with hers. It seemed the least he could do.

And in the end, he did. Lore’s accelerating passion won the day. By the time they pulled the curtain back, Ceps was gone. The clock above the hatch read 0630.

“Shit.”

Michael swung his feet to the floor and yanked on his jumpsuit. Lore, behind him, wrapped her arms around his chest.

“Stay. I’ll make it worth your while.”

“I’m first shift. If I’m late again, Karlovic will chew my ass for breakfast.” He stuffed his feet into his boots and swiveled his face to kiss her: a taste of salt, and sex, and something all her own. Michael wouldn’t have said it was love between them, exactly. Sex was a way to pass the time, but over the months their relationship had evolved, little by little, into something more than habit.

“You were thinking again, weren’t you?”

“Who, me?”

“Don’t lie.” Her tone wasn’t bitter, merely correcting. “You know, someday I’m going to f*ck all the worries out of you.” She sighed and relaxed her grip. “It’s all right. Go.”

He rose from the berth and took his hard hat and gloves from the post. “I’ll see you later?”

She had already lain back down on the cot. “That you will.”


As Michael exited the barracks, the sun was just lifting over the Gulf, making its surface shimmer like a sheet of hammered metal. It might have been the first week of October, but the heat was already building, the ocean air tart as ever with salt and the sulfurous stench of burning butane. With his stomach growling—food would have to wait—he strode at a brisk clip across the compound, past the commissary and weight cages and DS barracks to the Quonset hut, where the workers on the morning shift had gathered. Karlovic, the chief engineer, was calling out assignments from the roster. He shot Michael a cold glance.

“Are we interrupting your beauty sleep, Fisher? Our mistake.”

“Right.” Michael was zipping his jumpsuit. “Sorry.”

“You’ll be even sorrier. You’ll be firing up the Bomb. Ceps will be your second. Try not to blow up your crew.”

Distillation Tower No. 1, known as the Bomb, was the oldest of the lot, its rusty bulk held together by a combination of patch welds, baling wire, and prayer. Everybody said it was a matter of time before she was either decommissioned or launched a cooking crew halfway to Mars.

“Thanks, boss. That’s swell of you.”

“Don’t mention it.” Karlovic swept his gaze over the group. “All right, everyone. Seven days until we ship. I want those tankers full, people. And Fisher, hang back a minute. I want a word with you.”

The crews dispersed to their towers. Michael followed Karlovic into the hut. Christ, what now? He hadn’t been late by more than a couple of minutes, hardly worth a dressing down.

“Listen, Dan, I’m sorry about this morning—”

Karlovic didn’t let him finish. “Forget it, that’s not what I want to talk to you about.” Hitching up his pants, he lowered his bulk into the chair behind his desk. Karlovic was heavy in the true sense, not fat but large in every aspect, a man of weight and heft. Tacked on the wall over his head were dozens of sheets of paper—duty rosters, work flows, delivery schedules. “I had you on the Bomb anyway. You and Ceps are the best I’ve got for hotwork. Take it as a compliment I’m putting the pair of you on that cranky old bitch. If I had my druthers, that thing would be in the scrap pile.”

Michael didn’t doubt that this was so; on the other hand, he knew strategically timed praise when he heard it. “So?”

“So this.”

Karlovic slid a sheet of paper across his desk. Michael’s eyes fell quickly to the signature at the bottom: Victoria Sanchez, President, Texas Republic. He quickly scanned the letter’s three short paragraphs. Well, I’ll be, he thought.

“Any idea what this is about?”

“What makes you think I would?”

“You were the last crew chief on the offload. Maybe you caught wind of something while you were up there. Talk around the depot, extra military hanging around.”

“Nothing that rings a bell.” Michael shrugged. “Have you spoken to Stark? Maybe he knows.”

Stark was the refinery’s chief security officer. He was something of a loudmouth and liked the lick too much, but he generally commanded respect among both the oilers and DS, if for no other reason than his prowess at the poker table. His caginess with the cards had cost Michael a bundle, not that the scrip was any big loss—within the fences of the refinery, there was nothing to spend it on.

“Not yet. This won’t sit well with him, though.” Karlovic studied Michael. “Aren’t you guys friends? That whole California thing.”

“I know him, yeah.”

“So maybe you can grease the gears a bit. Act as a sort of, I don’t know, unofficial liaison between DS and the military.”

Michael allowed himself a few seconds to probe his feelings. He’d be glad to see someone from the old days, but at the same time he was aware of an inner disturbance, a sense of exposure. The self-contained life of an oiler had, in many ways, rescued him from the grief of losing his sister, occupying the mental space she had left behind. Part of him knew he was hiding, but the rest of him didn’t care.

“It should be no problem.”

“I’ll count it as a favor. Handle it how you like.” Karlovic angled his head toward the door. “Now get out of here, you’ve got oil to cook. And I meant what I said. Watch your ass with that thing.”


Michael arrived at the distillation tower to find his crew, a dozen roughnecks, standing around wearing expressions of puzzlement. The tanker with its cargo of fresh slick sat idle. Ceps was nowhere to be seen.

“Okay, I’ll bite. Why aren’t you people filling this thing?”

Ceps crawled from beneath the heating element at the base of the tower. His hands and bare arms were caked with black goo. “We’ll have to flush her first. We’ve got at least two meters of residuum in the base.”

“F*ck sake, that will take all morning. Who was the last crew chief?”

“This thing hasn’t been fired in months. You’d have to ask Karlovic.”

“How much crude will we have to drain off?”

“A couple of hundred barrels anyway.”

Eight thousand gallons of partially refined petroleum that had been sitting for who knew how long: they would need a large waste tanker, then a pumper truck and high-pressure steam hoses to flush the tower. They were looking at twelve hours minimum, sixteen to refill it and light the heating element, twenty-four before the first drop came out of the pipe. Karlovic would pop an aneurysm.

“Well, we better get started. I’ll call in the order, you get the hoses ready.” Michael shook his head. “I find who did this, I will kick his sorry ass.”

The draining took the rest of the morning. Michael declared the leftover oil unusable and sent the truck to the waste pools for burning. Bleeding off the junk was the easy part; flushing the tank was the job everyone dreaded. Water injected into the top of the tower would clean out most of the residuum—the sticky, toxic residue of the refining process—but not all; three men would have to suit up and go inside to brush down the base and flush out the asphalt drain. The only way in was a blind port, a meter wide, through which they’d have to crawl on their hands and knees. The term for this was “going up the anus”—not an inaccurate description, in Michael’s opinion. Michael would be one of the three. There was no rule about this; it was simply his habit, a gesture toward morale. For the other two, the custom was to draw straws.

The first to pull a short straw was Ed Pope, the oldest man on the crew. Ed had been Michael’s trainer, the one to show him the ropes. Three decades on the cookers had taken their toll; the man’s body read like a logbook of catastrophes. Three fingers sheered off by the thrown blade of a rebar cutter. One side of his head and neck seared to a hairless pink slab by a propane explosion that had killed nine men. He was deaf in that ear, and his knees were so shot that watching him bend made Michael wince. Michael thought about giving him a pass, but he knew Ed was too proud to accept, and he watched as the man made his way to the hut to suit up.

The second short straw was Ceps. “Forget it, I need you out here on the pumps,” said Michael.

Ceps shook his head. The day had left them all impatient. “The hell with it. Let’s just get this done.”

They wriggled into their hazard suits and oxygen packs and gathered their gear together: heavy brushes on poles, buckets of solvent, high-pressure wands that would feed back to a compressor. Michael pulled his mask down over his face, taped the seals on his gloves, and checked his O2. Though they’d vented the tower, the air inside it was still as lethal as it got—an airborne soup of petroleum vapors and sulfides that could sear your lungs into jerky. Michael felt a positive pop of pressure in the mask, switched on his headlamp, and knelt to unbolt the port.

“Let’s go, hombres.”

He slithered through, dropping down to find himself in three inches of standing muck. Ed and Ceps crawled in behind him.

“What a mess.”

Michael reached down into the sludge and opened the asphalt drain; the three of them began to sweep the residuum toward it. The temperature inside the tower was at least a hundred degrees; the sweat was raining off them, the trapped moisture of their breath fogging their faceplates. Once they’d cleared the worst of it, they dumped the solvent, hooked up their wands, and commenced spraying down the walls and floor.

Inside their suits, with the roar of the compressor, conversation was just about impossible. The only thing to think about was finishing the job and getting out. They’d been at it for only a couple of minutes when Michael felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see Ceps pointing at Ed. The man was just standing there, facing the wall like a statue, his wand held loosely at his side. While Michael watched, it slipped from his hand, though Ed seemed not to notice.

“Something’s wrong with him!” Ceps yelled over the racket.

Michael stepped forward and turned Ed by the shoulders. All he got was a blank stare.

“Ed, you okay?”

The man’s face startled to life. “Oh, hey, Michael,” he said, too brightly. “Hey-hey, hey-hey. Woo-woo.”

“What’s he saying?” Ceps called out.

Michael drew a finger over his throat to tell Ceps to cut the compressor. He looked at Ed squarely. “Talk to me, buddy.”

A girlish giggle escaped the man’s lips. He was heaving for breath, one hand lifting toward his faceplate. “Ashblass. Minfuth. Minfuth!”

Michael saw what was about to happen. As Ed reached for his mask, Michael seized him by the arms. The man was no kid, but he was no weakling either. He wriggled fiercely in Michael’s grasp, trying to break free, his face blue with panic. Not panic, Michael realized: hypoxia. His body convulsed with a massive twitch, his knees melting under him, his full weight crashing into Michael’s arms.

“Ceps, help me get him out of here!”

Ceps grabbed the man by his feet. His body had gone limp. Together they carried him to the port.

“Somebody take him!” Michael yelled.

Hands appeared to pull from the far side; Michael and Ceps shoved his body through. Michael scrambled into the port, tearing off his faceplate and gloves the moment he hit fresh air. Ed was lying face-up on the hardpan; someone had stripped off his mask and backpack. Michael dropped to his knees beside the body. An ominous stillness: the man wasn’t breathing. Michael placed the heel of his right hand at the center of Ed’s chest, positioned the left on top, laced his fingers together, and pushed. Nothing. Again and again he pushed, counting to thirty, as he had learned to do, then slipped one hand behind Ed’s neck to tip his airway open, pinched his nose, and pressed his mouth over the man’s blue lips. One breath, two breaths, three. Michael’s mind was clear as ice, his thoughts held in the grip of a singular purpose. Just as all seemed lost, he felt a sharp contraction of the diaphragm; Ed’s chest inflated, taking in a voluminous breath of air. He turned his face to the side, gasping and coughing.

Michael rocked back on his heels, landing ass-down in the dust, his pulse pounding with adrenaline. Somebody handed him a canteen: Ceps.

“You okay, pal?”

The question didn’t even make sense to him. He took a long drink, swishing the water inside his mouth, and spat it away. “Yeah.”

Eventually somebody helped Ed to his feet. Michael and Ceps escorted him into the hut and sat him down on one of the benches.

“How you feeling?” Michael asked.

A bit of color had flowed back into Ed’s cheeks, though his skin was damp and clammy-looking. He shook his head miserably. “I don’t know what happened. I could have sworn I checked my oxygen.”

Michael had already looked; the bottles were empty. “Maybe it’s time, Ed.”

“Jesus, Michael. Are you firing me?”

“No. It’s your choice. I’m just saying there’s no disgrace in calling it a day.” When Ed made no reply, Michael rose to his feet. “Give it some thought. I’ll back you, whatever you want to do. You want a ride to the barracks?”

Ed was staring disconsolately into space. Michael could read the truth in his face: the man had nothing else.

“I think I’ll sit here a while. Get my strength back.”

Michael stepped from the hut to find the rest of the crew hovering by the door. “What the hell are you all standing around for?”

“The shift’s over, Chief.”

Michael checked his watch: so it was.

“Not for us it isn’t. Show’s over, everybody. Get your lazy asses back to work.”


It was past midnight when Lore said to him, “Lucky thing, about Ed.”

The two of them were curled in Michael’s berth. Despite Lore’s best efforts, his mind had been unable to move on from the day’s events. All he kept seeing when he closed his eyes was the look on Ed’s face in the hut, like someone being marched to the gallows.

“What do you mean, lucky?”

“That you were there, I mean. That thing you did.”

“It wasn’t anything.”

“Yes, it was. The man could have died. How did you know how to do that?”

The past loomed up inside him, a wave of pain.

“My sister taught me,” said Michael. “She was a nurse.”





30


THE CITY

Kerrville, Texas

They arrived behind the rain. First the fields, sodden with moisture, the air rich with the smell of dirt, then, as they ascended out of the valley, the walls of the city, looming eight stories tall against the brown Texas hills. At the gate they found themselves in a line of traffic—transports, heavy mechanicals, DS pickups crowded with men in their thick pads. Peter climbed out, asked the driver to deposit his locker at the barracks, and showed his orders to the guard at the pedestrian tunnel, who waved him through.

“Welcome home, sir.”

After sixteen months in the territories, Peter’s senses were instantly assaulted by the vast, overwhelming humanness of the place. He’d spent little time in the city, not enough to adjust to its claustrophobic density of sounds and smells and overflowing faces. The Colony had never numbered more than a hundred souls; here there were over forty thousand.

Peter made his way to the quartermaster to collect his pay. He’d never really gotten used to the idea of money, either. “Equal share,” the governing economic unit of the Colony, had made sense to him. You had your share, and you used it how you liked, but it was the same as everybody else’s, never less or more. How could these slips of inked paper—Austins they were called, after the man whose image, with its high, domed forehead and beaked nose and perplexing arrangement of clothing, adorned each bill—actually correspond to the value of a person’s labor?

The clerk, a civilian, doled out the scrip from the lockbox, snapping the bills onto the counter, and shoved a clipboard toward him through the grate, all without once meeting his eye.

“Sign here.”

The money, a fat wad, felt odd in Peter’s pocket. As he stepped back into the brightening afternoon, he was already scheming how to be rid of it. Six hours remained until curfew—barely enough time to visit both the orphanage and the stockade before reporting to the barracks. The afternoon was all he had; the transport to the refinery was leaving at 0600.

Greer would come first; that way Peter wouldn’t have to disappoint Caleb by leaving before the horn. The stockade was located in the old jailhouse on the west edge of downtown. He signed in at the desk—in Kerrville you were always signing things, another oddity—and stripped off his blade and sidearm. He was about to proceed when the guard stopped him.

“Have to pat you down, Lieutenant.”

As a member of the Expeditionary, Peter was accustomed to a certain automatic deference—certainly from a junior domestic, not a day over twenty. “Is that really necessary?”

“I don’t make the rules, sir.”

Irritating, but Peter didn’t have time for an argument. “Just be quick about it.”

The guard ran his hands up and down Peter’s arms and legs, then produced a heavy ring of keys and led him back into the holding area, a long hall of heavy steel doors. The air was dense and smelled of men. They came to the cell marked with the number 62.

“Funny,” the guard remarked, “Greer doesn’t see anyone in close to three years, and now he’s had two visitors in just a month.”

“Who else was here?”

“I wasn’t on duty. You’d have to ask him.”

The guard located the correct key, inserted it into the tumbler, and swung the door open to a sound of groaning hinges. Greer, shoeless, clothed only in a pair of rough canvas trousers cinched at his waist, was seated on the edge of his bunk. His broad chest gleamed with perspiration; his hands were serenely folded in his lap. His hair, what remained of it, a silvering white, fanned to his massive shoulders, while a great tangle of beard—the beard of a prophet, a wanderer in the wilderness—straggled halfway up his cheeks. A deep stillness radiated off him; the impression he communicated was one of composure, as if he had reduced his mind and body to their essences. For an unsettling moment, he gave no indication that he was aware of the two figures standing in the doorway, causing Peter to wonder if the isolation had done something to his mind. But then he lifted his eyes, his face brightening.

“Peter. There you are.”

“Major Greer. It’s good to see you.”

Greer laughed ironically, his voice thick with disuse. “Nobody’s called me that in some time. It’s just Lucius now. Or Sixty-two, if you prefer. Most people seem to.” Greer addressed the guard. “Give us a few minutes, will you, Sanders?”

“I’m not supposed to leave anyone alone with a prisoner.”

Peter shot him a cold glare. “I think I can take care of myself, son.”

A moment’s hesitancy; then the guard relented. “Well, seeing as it’s you, sir, I guess ten minutes would be okay. After that my shift ends, though. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

Peter frowned. “Do we know each other?”

“I saw your signature. Everybody knows who you are. You’re the guy from California. It’s, like, a legend.” All pretense of his authority was gone; suddenly he was just a starstruck kid, his face beaming with admiration. “What was it like? Coming all that way, I mean.”

Peter wasn’t quite sure how to respond. “It was a long walk.”

“I don’t know how you did it. I would have been scared shitless.”

“Take my word for it,” Peter assured him, “that was a big part of it.”

Sanders left them alone. Peter took the room’s only chair, straddling it backward across from Greer.

“Looks like you made quite an impression on our boy there. I told you it would be a hard story to keep quiet.”

“It’s still strange to hear it,” Peter said. “How are you doing?”

Greer shrugged. “Oh, I get by. And you? You look well, Peter. The uniform suits you.”

“Lish says hello. She just got bumped to captain.”

Greer nodded equably. “A remarkable girl, our Lish. Destined for big things, I’d say. So how goes the fight? Or do I have to ask?”

“Not so good. We’re oh-for-three. The whole Martínez thing was a catastrophe. Now it looks like Command is having second thoughts.”

“That’s always what they’ve been best at. Not to worry, the winds will turn. One thing you learn in here is patience.”

“It’s not the same without you. I can’t help thinking it would be different if you were there.”

“Oh, I very much doubt that. This has always been your show. I knew it the moment I met you. Caught upside down in a spinning net, wasn’t it?”

Peter laughed at the memory. “Michael puked all over us.”

“That’s right, I remember now. How is he? I imagine he’s not the same kid I knew back then. Always had an answer to everything.”

“I doubt he’s changed much. Either way, I’ll find out tomorrow. They’re posting me down to the refinery.”

Greer frowned. “Why there?”

“Some new initiative to secure the Oil Road.”

“DS will love that. I’d say you’ve got your hands full with that lot.” He gave his knees a slap to change the subject. “And Hollis, what do you hear of him?”

“Nothing good. He took Sara’s death hard. The story is he’s on the trade.”

Greer considered this news for a moment. “On the whole, I can’t say I blame him. That may seem strange to say, knowing Hollis, but more than one man has gone that way under those circumstances. I imagine he’ll come around sooner or later. He’s got a good head on his shoulders.”

“And what about you? You’re getting out soon. If you want, I can put a word in with Command. Maybe they’d let you reenlist.”

But Greer shook his head. “I’m afraid those days are over for me, Peter. Don’t forget, I’m a deserter. Once you cross that line, there’s no going back.”

“What will you do?”

Greer smiled mysteriously. “I imagine something will come along. It always does.”

For a while they talked of the others, bits of news, stories from the past. Being with Greer, Peter felt a warm contentment, but accompanying that, a sense of loss. The major had entered his life just when Peter needed him; it was Greer’s steadfast presence that had given him the will to move forward in the days when his resolve had wavered. It was a debt that Peter could never fully repay: the debt of borrowed courage. Peter sensed that Greer’s incarceration had changed him. He was still the same man, although something inside him ran deeper, a river of inner calm. He seemed to have drawn strength from his isolation.

As the end of the ten minutes approached, Peter told the major about the cave, and the strange man, Ignacio, and Alicia’s theory about what he was. Even as he spoke the words, he realized how far-fetched the idea sounded; and yet he felt its rightness. If anything, his feeling that the information was important had grown over the days.

“There may be something to that,” Greer agreed. “He said, ‘He left us’?”

“Those were his words.”

Greer fell silent, stroking his long beard. “The question, of course, is where did Martínez go. Did Alicia have any ideas about that?”

“Not that she told me.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think finding the Twelve is going to be more complicated than we planned on.”

He waited, watching Greer’s face. When the major made no reply, he said, “My offer still stands. We could really use you.”

“You overestimate me, Peter. I was always just along for the ride.”

“Not to me. Alicia would say the same thing. All of us would.”

“And I accept the compliment. But it doesn’t change a thing. What’s done is done.”

“It still doesn’t seem right that you’re in here.”

Greer shrugged carelessly. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Believe me, I’ve brooded plenty on the subject. The Expeditionary was my whole life, and I miss it. But I did what I thought was right in the moment. In the end, that’s all a man has to measure his life, and it’s plenty.” His eyes narrowed on Peter. “Which isn’t something I need to tell you, is it?”

The major had him dead to rights. “I suppose not.”

“You’re a good soldier, Peter. You always have been, and I wasn’t lying about that uniform. It does suit you. The question is, do you suit it?”

The question wasn’t accusing—if anything, the opposite. “Some days I wonder,” Peter confessed.

“Everybody does. The military is what it is. You can hardly take a trip to the latrine without filling out a form in triplicate. But in your case, I’d say the question runs deeper. The man I met hanging upside down in that spinner—he wasn’t following anybody’s orders but his own. I don’t think he would have even known how. Now here you are, five years later, informing me that Command wants to give up the hunt. Tell me, are they right?”

“Of course not.”

“And can you make them understand that? Make them change their minds?”

“I’m just a junior officer. They’re not going to listen to me.”

Greer nodded. “And I agree. So there we are.”

A silence followed. Then Greer said, “Maybe this will help. Do you remember what I said to you that night in Arizona?”

“There were lots of nights, Lucius. A lot of things got said.”

“So there were. But this one in particular—I’m not sure where we were exactly. A couple of days out from the Farmstead, anyway. We were sheltering underneath a bridge. Crazy-looking rocks everywhere. I remember that part because of the way the light hit them at sunset, like they were lit from the inside. The two of us got to talking. It was the night I asked you what you intended to do with the vials Lacey gave you.”

It was all coming back. The red rocks, the deep silence of the landscape, the easy flow of conversation as the two of them sat by the fire. It was as if the memory had been floating in Peter’s mind for five years, never quite touching the surface until now. “I remember.”

Greer nodded. “I thought you might. And let me just say, when you volunteered to be injected with the virus, that was, hands down, the ballsiest thing I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen some ballsy things. It was nothing I ever could have done myself. I had a lot of respect for you before that, but after …” He paused. “That night, I said something to you. ‘Everything that’s happened, it feels like more than chance.’ I was really just talking to myself at the time, trying to put something into words I couldn’t quite figure out, but I’ve given the matter a lot of thought. You finding Amy, me finding you, Lacey, Babcock, everything that happened on that mountain. Events can seem random while you’re living them, but when you look back, what do you see? A chain of coincidences? Plain old luck? Or something more? I’ll tell you what I see, Peter. A clear path. More than that. A true path. What are the chances these things would have just happened on their own? Each piece falling into place exactly when we needed it? There’s a power at work here, something beyond our understanding. You can call it what you like. It doesn’t need a name, because it knows yours, my friend. So you wonder what it is I do all day in here, and the answer is very simple. I’m waiting to see what happens next. Trusting in God’s plan.” He gave Peter an enigmatic smile; the film of sweat that dampened his face and his bare, muscled chest sharpened the air of the room. “Does it seem strange to hear me say that?” His manner lightened. “Probably you’re thinking, That poor guy, all alone in this little box, he must have lost his mind. You wouldn’t be the first.”

It took Peter a moment to answer. “Actually, no. I was thinking how much you reminded me of someone.”

“Who was that?”

“Her name was Auntie.”

Now it was Greer’s turn to remember. “Of course. The woman we buried when we got back to the Colony. You never told me anything about her, and I wondered. But I didn’t want to pry.”

“You could have. You could say we were close, though with Auntie it was hard to tell. Half the time I think she thought I was somebody else. I used to go around to check up on her. She liked to talk about God, too.”

“Is that right?” Greer seemed pleased. “And what did she have to say?”

How strange, thought Peter, to find himself thinking of Auntie now. Like Greer’s story of their night in Arizona, his memory of the old woman, and the time they’d spent together, emerged in his mind as if it were yesterday. Her overheated kitchen, and the awful cups of tea; the precise, even reverential arrangement of objects in her cramped house, furniture and books and pictures and mementos; her gnarled old feet, always shoeless, and her puckered, toothless mouth and the vaporous tangle of white hair that seemed to hover in the air around her head, not even really attached to anything. As Auntie herself was unattached; alone in her shack at the edge of the glade, the woman seemed to exist in a wholly different realm, a pocket of accumulated human memory, outside of time. Now that Peter considered it, probably that was what had drawn him to her. In Auntie’s presence, the daily struggles of his life always felt lighter.

“More or less the same. She wasn’t the easiest woman to make sense of.” A specific recollection bubbled to the surface. “There is one thing. It was the same night Amy appeared outside the gate.”

“Oh?”

“She said, ‘The God I know about wouldn’t give us no chance.’ ”

Greer was watching him with studious intensity. “She said that to you.”

He was still a little surprised by the clarity of the memory. “At the time I just thought it was, you know, Auntie.”

Greer broke the mood with a sudden, flashing smile. “Well,” he said, “it sounds to me like the woman knew a thing or two. I’m sorry I never met her. I bet the two of us would have gotten on just fine.”

Peter laughed. “You know, I think you would have.”

“So maybe it’s time for you to trust a little more, Peter. That’s really all I’m saying. Let things come to you.”

“Like Martínez, you mean.”

“Maybe, maybe not. There’s no way to know until you know. I’ve never asked you what you believe, Peter, and I’m not going to. Every man gets to decide that for himself. And don’t get me wrong—I’m a soldier, too, or at least I was. The world needs its warriors, and the day will come when very little else is going to matter. You’ll be there for the fight, my friend, I have no doubt. But there’s more to this world than meets the eye. I don’t have all the answers, but I know that much.”

“I wish I had your confidence.”

The major shrugged this away. “Oh, you’re just trying to work things out, same as the rest of us. When I was growing up in the orphanage, the sisters always taught us that a person of faith is someone who believes something he can’t prove. I don’t disagree, but that’s only half the story. It’s the end, not the means. A hundred years ago, humanity just about destroyed itself. It’d be easy to think that God doesn’t like us very much. Or that there is no God, there’s no rhyme or reason to anything and we might just as well hang it up and call it a day. Thanks, planet Earth, it was nice knowing you. But that’s not you, Peter. For you, hunting the Twelve isn’t an answer. It’s a question. Does anybody out there care? Are we worth saving? What would God want from me, if there is a God? The greatest faith is the willingness to ask in the first place, all evidence to the contrary. Faith not just in God, but in all of us. It’s a hard place you’re in, and my guess is you’ll be in it for a while. But it’s the right one, and it’s yours.”

It was then that Peter understood what he was seeing. Greer was free, a free man. The walls of his cage held no meaning for him at all; his life was entirely elsewhere, unbounded by physical things. How surprising, to envy a man whose whole life was conducted in a prison cell not much larger than a good-sized latrine.

The sound of turning tumblers; their time was at an end. As Sanders entered the cell, the two men rose.

“So,” Greer said, and clapped his hands conclusively. “A little downtime in Freeport, courtesy of Command. Not the best-smelling town, but the view is nice. A good place to get a little thinking done. You’ve certainly earned it.”

“That’s what Colonel Apgar said.”

“Smart fellow, Apgar.” Greer extended his hand. “It was good to see you, my friend.”

They shook. “Take care of yourself, all right?”

Greer grinned through the pocket of his beard. “You know what they say. Three hots and a cot. It’s not such a bad life when you get down to it. And as for the rest, I know you, Peter. You’ll figure things out when the time is right. That’s a lesson you taught me, actually.”

Sanders escorted him into the hall. Only then did it occur to Peter that he’d forgotten to ask Greer about his other visitor. And something else: the major had never asked about Amy.

“Listen,” Sanders said as they were passing through the second door, “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but could you sign this?”

He was holding out a scrap of paper and a stub of pencil.

“It’s for my wife,” he explained. “To prove I met you.”

Peter accepted the paper, scrawled his name, and handed it back. For a moment Sanders just looked at it.

“Wow,” he said.


“Uncle Peter!”

Breaking away from the other children, Caleb flew toward him across the playground. At the last instant he took three bounding steps and catapulted into Peter’s arms, nearly knocking him over.

“Whoa now, easy.”

The boy’s face was lit with joy. “Amy said you were coming! You’re here! You’re here!”

Peter wondered how she had known. But he quickly corrected himself; Amy simply seemed to know things, as if her mind were linked to the world’s hidden rhythms. Holding Caleb in his arms, Peter was washed with his distinctive physical presence: his boyish weight and heat; the warmth of his breath; the milky smell of his hair and skin, moist with exertion, mixed with the lingering scent of the harsh lye soap the sisters used. Across the playground, the other children were watching. Peter caught a glimpse of Sister Peg eyeing him coolly from the monkey bars, his unannounced presence a disruption to her beloved routine.

“Let me have a look at you.”

He lowered Caleb to the ground. As always, Peter was struck by the boy’s uncanny resemblance to Theo. He felt a stab of regret at the time he’d carelessly allowed to pass.

“You’re getting so big. I can hardly believe it.”

The little boy’s chest puffed with pride. “Where have you been, what did you see?”

“Lots of stuff. I was in New Mexico.”

“New Mexico!” The look of wonder on his face was total; Peter might just as well have told him he’d visited the moon. Although the prevailing custom in Kerrville was not to shelter the children from knowledge of the virals, as had been done in the Colony, his child’s mind had yet to absorb the ramifications. To Caleb, the Expeditionary was a grand adventure, like pirates crossing the seas or tales of the knights of old that the sisters read to them from storybooks. “How long can you stay?” the boy pleaded.

“Not long, I’m afraid. But we have the rest of the afternoon. And I’ll be back soon, probably just a week or so. What would you like to do?”

Caleb’s answer was instantaneous: “Go to the dam.”

“Why there?”

“You can see everything!”

Peter smiled. At such moments he felt something of himself in his nephew, the same undeniable force of curiosity that had governed his life. “The dam it is.”

Sister Peg came up behind the boy. Possessing a birdlike slightness, Sister Peg was nonetheless an intimidating figure, her dark eyes capable of shrinking your insides with a single censorious glance. Peter’s comrades who had been raised in the orphanage—men who weathered horrible conditions and constant peril—spoke of her with an awe verging on terror. My God, they all said, that woman scared the living shit out of us.

“Hello, Sister.”

Her face, a weathered topography of deep crevices and arid planes, possessed the immobility of judgment withheld. She had taken a position just beyond a normal conversational distance, a small but significant alteration that magnified her commanding presence. Her teeth were stained a yellowish brown from puffing on corn silk—an incomprehensible habit, widespread in Kerrville, that Peter regarded with a combination of wonder and revulsion.

“Lieutenant Jaxon, I didn’t expect you.”

“Sorry, it was all pretty sudden. Do you mind if I take him for the rest of the day?”

“It would have been better if you could have sent word. Things here run a certain way.”

Caleb’s body was jangling with energy. “Please, Sister!”

Her imperious gaze flicked down toward the boy, taking accounts. Delta-like fans of wrinkles deepened at the corners of her mouth as she sucked in her cheeks. “I suppose under the circumstances it would be all right. An exception, you understand, and keep an ear to the horn, Lieutenant. I know you Expeditionary feel yourselves to be above the rules, but I can’t allow it.”

Peter let the barb pass; it did, after all, possess an element of truth. “I’ll have him back by six.” Under her withering gaze, he found himself, with the next question, attempting to sound curiously offhanded. “Is Amy around? I’d like to visit with her before we go.”

“She’s gone to the market. You’ve just missed her.” This declaration was followed by a tart sigh. “I suppose you’ll want to stay for dinner.”

“Thank you, Sister. That’s kind of you.”

Caleb, bored by these formalities, was tugging at his hand. “Please, Uncle Peter, I want to go.”

For a breadth of time no longer than half a second, the woman’s stern countenance appeared to crack. A look of almost maternal tenderness flickered in her eyes. But it just as quickly vanished, leaving Peter to wonder if he’d imagined it.

“Mind the clock, Lieutenant. I’ll be watching.”


The dam was, in many ways, the heart of the city and its mechanisms. Along with the oil that powered the generators, Kerrville’s mastery of the Guadalupe River, which provided both water for irrigation and a barrier to the north and west—nobody had ever seen a viral even attempt to swim; it was widely believed that they either had a phobia of water or simply could not stay afloat—accounted for its longevity. The river itself had been a feature of scant dimension in the early days, thin and inconsequential, falling to barely a trickle in summer. But a devastating flood in the spring of 22, a harbinger of a meteorological shift that would raise the river permanently by as much as ten feet, had necessitated its taming. It had been, by all accounts, a massive project, requiring the temporary diversion of the river’s currents and the movement of huge quantities of earth and limestone to dig the bowl-like depression that would form the impoundment, followed by the erection of the dam itself, a feat of engineering on a scale Peter had always associated with the Time Before, not the world he knew. The day of the water’s first release was regarded as a foundational occurrence in the history of the Republic; more than anything else in Kerrville, the dam’s corralling of natural forces had impressed upon him how flimsy the Colony had been in comparison. They were lucky to have made it as long as they had.

Grated steel stairs ascended to the top. Caleb took them at a dash over Peter’s shouted protests to slow down. By the time Peter made the final turn, Caleb was already gazing over the water, toward the undulating ridge of hills at the horizon. Thirty feet below, the face of the impoundment possessed a stunning transparency. Peter could even see fish down there, white shapes piloting lazily in the glassy waters.

“What’s out there?” the boy asked.

“Well, more Texas mostly. That ridge you’re looking at is only a few miles away.”

“Where’s New Mexico?”

Peter pointed due west. “But it’s really, really far. Three days on a transport, and that’s without stopping.”

The boy chewed on his lower lip. “I want to see it.”

“Maybe someday you will.”

They walked along the dam’s curving top to the spillway. A series of vents released water at regular intervals into a wide pool, from which gravity pumps piped it down to the agricultural complex. Looming in the distance, regularly spaced towers marked the Orange Zone. They paused again, absorbing the view. Peter was once again struck by the elaborateness of it all. It was as if in this one place, human history still flowed in an uninterrupted continuum, undisturbed by the stark separation of eras that the virals had brought down upon the world.

“You look like him.”

Peter turned to see Caleb squinting at him. “Who do you mean?”

“Theo. My father.”

The statement caught him short; how could the boy possibly know what Theo had looked like? Of course he couldn’t, but that wasn’t the point. Caleb’s assertion was a kind of wish, a way to keep his father alive.

“That’s what everyone said. I can see a lot of him in you, you know.”

“Do you miss him?”

“Every day.” A somber silence passed; then Peter said, “I’ll tell you something, though. As long as we remember a person, they’re not really gone. Their thoughts, their feelings, their memories, they become a part of us. And even if you think you don’t remember your parents, you do. They’re inside you, the same way they’re inside me.”

“But I was just a baby.”

“Babies most of all.” A thought occurred to him. “Do you know about the Farmstead?”

“Where I was born?”

Peter nodded. “That’s right. There was something special about it. It was like we would always be safe there, like something was looking after us.” He regarded the boy for a moment. “Your father thought it was a ghost, you know.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “Do you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve thought a lot about it over the years. Maybe it was. Or at least a kind of ghost. Maybe places have memories, too.” He rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “All I know is that the world wanted you to be born, Caleb.”

The boy fell silent. Then, his face blooming with the mischievous grin of a plan unveiled: “You know what I want to do next?”

“Name it.”

“I want to go swimming.”


It was a little after four by the time they reached the base of the spillway. Standing by the edge of the pool, they stripped to their shorts. As Peter stepped out onto the rocks, he turned to find Caleb frozen at the edge.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know how.”

Somehow Peter had failed to foresee this. He offered the boy his hand. “Come on, I’ll teach you.”

The water was startlingly cold, with a distinct mineral taste. Caleb was fearful at first, but after thirty minutes of splashing around, his confidence grew. Another ten and he was moving freely on his own, dog-paddling across the surface.

“Look at me! Look at me!”

Peter had never seen the boy so happy. “Hold on to my back,” he said.

The boy climbed aboard, gripping Peter by the shoulders. “What are we going to do?”

“Just take a deep breath and hold it.”

Together they descended. Peter blew the air from his lungs, stretched out his arms, and with a whip kick sent them gliding along the stony bottom, the boy clutching him tightly, his body pulled like a cape. The water was as clear as glass. Memories of splashing in the grotto as a boy filled Peter’s mind. He had done the same thing with his father.

Three more kicks and they ascended, bursting into the light. “How was that?” Peter asked.

“I saw fish!”

“I told you.”

Again and again they dove this way, the boy’s pleasure inexhaustible. It was past five-thirty, the shadows lengthening, when Peter declared an end. They stepped gingerly onto the rocks and dressed.

“I can’t wait to tell Sister Peg we went outside,” Caleb said, beaming.

“It’s probably best if you don’t. Let’s keep that between us, okay?”

“A secret?” The boy spoke the word with illicit pleasure; they were part of a conspiracy now.

“Exactly.”

The boy slid his small, moist hand into Peter’s as they made their way to the hydro gate. In another few minutes, the horn would sound. The feeling came upon him in a rush of love: This is why I’m here.


He found her in the kitchen, standing before a massive stove covered with boiling pots. The room roared with heat and noise—the clatter of dishes, sisters racing to and fro, the accumulating racket of excited voices as the children gathered in the dining hall. Amy’s back was to him. Her hair, iridescent and dark, descended in a thick braid to her waist. He hesitated in the doorway, observing her. She appeared totally absorbed in her work, stirring the contents of the nearest pot with a long wooden spoon, tasting and correcting with salt, then nimbly stepping to one of the room’s several red-brick ovens to withdraw, on a long paddle, half a dozen loaves of freshly risen bread.

“Amy.”

She turned, breaking into a smile. They met in the middle of the busy room. A moment of uncertainty, then they embraced.

“Sister Peg told me you were here.”

He stepped back. He had sensed it in her touch: there was something new about her. Long departed was the voiceless, traumatized waif with the matted hair and scavenged clothes. The progress of her aging seemed to occur in fits and starts, not so much a matter of physical growth as a deepening self-possession, as if she were coming into ownership of her life. And always the paradox: the person standing before him, though to all appearances a young teenager, was in reality the oldest human being on earth. Peter’s long absence, an era to Caleb, was for Amy the blink of an eye.

“How long can you stay?” Her eyes did not move from his face.

“Just tonight. I ship out tomorrow.”

“Amy,” one of the sisters called from the stove, “is this soup ready? They’re getting loud out there.”

Amy spoke briskly over her shoulder: “Just a second.” Then, to Peter, her smile widening: “It turns out I’m not such a bad cook. Save me a place.” She quickly squeezed his hand. “It really is so good to see you.”

Peter made his way to the dining hall, where all the children had gathered at long tables, sorting themselves by age. The noise in the room was intense, a free-flowing energy of bodies and voices like the din of some immense engine. He took a place on the end of a bench beside Caleb just as Sister Peg appeared at the front of the room and clapped her hands.

The effect was like a lightning bolt: silence tensed the room. The children joined hands and bowed their heads. Peter found himself joined in the circle, Caleb on one side, on the other a little girl with brown hair who was seated across from him.

“Heavenly Father,” the woman intoned, her eyes closed, “we thank you for this meal and our togetherness and the blessing of your love and care, which you bestow upon us in your mercy. We thank you for the richness of the earth and the heavens above and your protection until we meet in the life to come. And lastly we thank you for the company of our special guest, one of your brave soldiers, who has traveled a perilous distance to be with us tonight. We pray that you will keep him, and his fellows, safe on their journeys. Amen.”

A chorus of voices: “Amen.”

Peter felt genuinely touched. So, perhaps Sister Peg didn’t mind his presence so much after all. The food appeared: vats of soup, bread cut into thick, steaming slices, pitchers of water and milk. At the head of each table, one of the sisters ladled the soup into bowls and passed them down the line as the pitchers made their way around. Amy slid onto the bench beside Peter.

“Let me know what you think of the soup,” she said.

It was delicious—the best thing he’d eaten in months. The bread, pillowy and warm in his mouth, nearly made him moan. He silenced the urge to ask for seconds, thinking it would be rude, but the moment his bowl was empty one of the sisters appeared with another, placing it before him.

“It’s not often we have company,” she explained, her face rosy with embarrassment, and scurried away.

They talked of the orphanage and Amy’s duties—the kitchen, but also teaching the youngest children to read and, in her words, “whatever else needs to be done”—and Peter’s news of the others, though they phrased this information in a general way; it wouldn’t be until after the children had gone to bed that the two of them would be able to talk in earnest. Beside him, Caleb was engaged with another boy in a vigorous conversation that Peter was only passingly able to follow, something about knights and queens and pawns. When his companion left the table, Peter asked Caleb what it was all about.

“It’s chess.”

“Chest?”

Caleb rolled his eyes. “No, chess. It’s a game. I can teach you if you want.”

Peter glanced at Amy, who laughed. “You’ll lose,” she said.

After dinner and dishes, the three of them went to the common room, where Caleb set up the board and explained the names of the various pieces and the moves they could make. By the time he got to the knights, Peter’s head was spinning.

“You really can keep all this straight in your mind? How long did it take you to learn to play?”

He shrugged innocently. “Not long. It’s pretty simple.”

“It doesn’t sound simple.” He turned to Amy, who was wearing a cagey smile.

“Don’t look at me,” she protested. “You’re on your own.”

Caleb waved over the board. “You can go first.”

The battle commenced. Peter had considered taking it easy on the boy—it was, after all, a children’s game, and no doubt he would quickly get the hang of it—but he instantly discovered how badly he had underestimated his young opponent. Caleb seemed to anticipate his every tactic, responding without hesitation, his moves crisp and assured. In growing desperation Peter decided to attack, using his knight to take one of Caleb’s bishops.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” the boy asked.

“Um, no?”

Caleb was studying the board with his chin resting on his hands. Peter could sense the complex movements of his thoughts: he was assembling a strategy, imagining a series of moves and countermoves projected forward in time. Five years old, Peter thought. Amazing.

Caleb advanced a rook three spaces, taking Peter’s other knight, which he had inadvertently left open. “Watch,” he said.

A quick exchange of pieces and Peter’s king was boxed in. “Checkmate,” the boy declared.

Peter stared hopelessly at the board. “How did you do that so fast?”

Beside him, Amy laughed—a warm, infectious sound. “I told you.”

Caleb’s grin stretched a mile wide. Peter understood what had happened; first the swimming, now this. His nephew had effortlessly turned the tables on him, showing Peter what he was capable of.

“You just have to think ahead,” Caleb said. “Try to see it like a story.”

“Tell me the truth. How good are you at this?”

Caleb gave a modest shrug. “A few of the older kids used to beat me. But not anymore.”

“Is that so? Well, set it up again, youngster. I want my revenge.”

Caleb had racked up his third straight victory, each more mercilessly decisive than the last, when the bell sounded, summoning him to the dormitory. The time had passed too quickly. Amy departed for the girls’ quarters, leaving Peter to escort the boy to bed. In the large room of cots, Caleb exchanged his clothing for a nightshirt, then knelt on the stone floor at the side of his bed, hands pressed together, to say his prayers, a long series of “God bless”es that began with “my parents in heaven” and concluded with Peter himself.

“I always save you for last,” the boy said, “to keep you safe.”

“Who’s Mouser?”

Mouser was their cat. Peter had seen the poor creature lounging on a windowsill in the common room—a pitiful rag of a thing, flesh drooping over his brittle old bones like laundry on a line. Peter drew the blanket up to Caleb’s chin and bent to kiss him on the forehead. Sisters were moving up and down the lines of cots, shushing the other children. The room’s lights had already been extinguished.

“When are you coming back, Uncle Peter?”

“I’m not sure. Soon, I hope.”

“Can we go swimming again?”

A warm feeling spread through his entire body. “Only if you promise we can play more chess. I don’t think I have the hang of it yet. I could use a few pointers.”

The boy beamed. “I promise.”


Amy was waiting for him in the empty common room, the cat nosing around her feet. He had to report to the barracks at 2100; he and Amy would have only a few minutes together.

“That poor thing,” Peter said. “Why doesn’t anybody put him down? It seems cruel.”

Amy ran a hand along the animal’s spine. A faint purr trembled from him as he arched his back to receive her touch. “It’s past time, I suppose. But the children adore him, and the sisters don’t believe in it. Only God can take a life.”

“They’ve obviously never been to New Mexico.”

A joke, but not entirely. Amy regarded him with concern. “You look troubled, Peter.”

“Things aren’t going very well. Do you want to know about it?”

She considered the question. She seemed a little pale; Peter wondered if she was feeling all right.

“Maybe some other time.” Her eyes searched his face. “He loves you, you know. He talks about you all the time.”

“You’re making me feel guilty. Probably I deserve it.”

She lifted Mouser to settle him on her lap. “He understands. I’m only telling you so you know how important you are to him.”

“What about you? Are you doing okay here?”

She nodded. “On the whole, it suits me. I like the company, the children, the sisters. And of course there’s Caleb. Maybe for the first time in my life I actually feel … I don’t know. Useful. It’s nice to be just an ordinary person.”

Peter was struck by the frank, easy flow of the conversation. Some barrier between them had dropped. “Do the other sisters know? Besides Sister Peg, I mean.”

“A few do, or maybe just suspect. I’ve been here for five years, and they’d have to notice I’m not aging. I think I’m a bit of a wrinkle to Sister Peg, something that doesn’t really fit her view of things. But she doesn’t say anything about it to me.” Amy smiled. “After all, I make a mean barley soup.”

Too quickly, the moment of his departure was at hand. Amy walked him to the entrance, where Peter pulled the wad of bills from his pocket and held it out to her.

“Give this to Sister Peg, all right?”

Amy nodded without comment and slid the scrip into the pocket of her skirt. Once again she pulled him into a hug, more forcefully this time. “I really have missed you.” Her voice was soft against his chest. “Be safe, all right? Promise you’ll do that.”

There was something fraught in her insistence, a feeling, almost, of finality, a graver parting. What wasn’t she saying? And something else: her body was giving off a feverish heat. He could actually feel it pulsing through the heavy fabric of his uniform.

“You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

“I mean it, Peter. If anything happened, I couldn’t …” Her voice trailed away, as if pulled to the currents of a hidden wind. “I just couldn’t is all.”

Now he was certain: there was something Amy wasn’t telling him. Peter searched her face for what it was. A faint glaze of perspiration shone on her brow.

“Are you okay?”

Taking his hand in her own, she lifted them in concert, pressing her palm against his so that the pads of their fingers were just touching. It seemed a gesture with equal measures of togetherness and parting, connection and separation.

“Do you remember when I kissed you?”

They had never spoken of this—her quick, birdlike peck at the mall, the virals streaming toward them. Much had happened, but Peter had not forgotten. How could he?

“I always wondered about that,” he confessed.

Their raised hands seemed to hover in the darkened space between them. Amy studied them with her eyes. It was as if she were attempting to divine a meaning she herself had made. “I’d been alone so long. It’s nothing I can even describe. But all of a sudden, there you were. I couldn’t believe it.” Then, as if jarred from a trance, she withdrew her hand, her face suddenly flustered. “That’s all. You better go—you’ll be late.”

He didn’t want to. Like the kiss, the feeling of her hand seemed to possess a unique power to linger in his senses, as if it had taken up a permanent residence in his fingertips. He wanted to say more but couldn’t find the words, and the moment slipped away.

“You’re sure you’re all right?”

Her face assembled a smile. “Never better.”

She really did look ill, he thought. “Well, I’ll be back in ten days.”

Amy said nothing.

“I’ll see you then, right?” He wondered why he was asking this.

“Of course, Peter. Where would I go?”


After Peter had left, Amy made her way to the sisters’ residence, a smaller version of the dormitories where the children slept. The other sisters were all asleep, a few of the older ones softly snoring. She stripped off her tunic and lowered herself onto her cot.

Sometime later she awoke with a start. A cold sweat glazed her body, drenching her nightshirt. The turbulence of uneasy dreams still roiled through her.

Amy, help him.

She froze.

He is waiting for you, Amy. In the ship.

—Father?

Go to him go to him go to him go to him …

She rose, seized with a sudden purposefulness. The moment had come.

Yet one duty remained, one final task to be performed in these last days of a life she had loved, if briefly. Through the silent hallways she padded her way to the common room. She found Mouser just where she had left him, resting on the couch. Exhaustion radiated from his eyes; his limbs were limp, he could barely raise his head.

Please, his eyes said. I’m in pain. It’s all gone on too long.

Gently she lifted him to her chest. Running a hand along his back, she turned so he could face the window, with its view of the starry night.

“See the pretty world, Mouser?” she murmured, close to his ear. “See the pretty stars?”

It’s … beautiful.

His neck broke with a snap, the body going limp in her arms. Amy stayed that way for a few minutes while his presence faded, stroking his fur, kissing his head and face. Goodbye, Mouser. Godspeed to you. The children love you; you will be with them again. Then she carried him outside to the garden shed to see about a shovel.