"Come on, kids! Let's make some real noise now! B-Jay can't hear you yet! Let it go! Let's hear some real screaming! I can still hear myself think! Come on, let's make the biggest noise in the whole world!" The girl was good.

For a moment, I thought of Delandro and his Revelations. This looked almost the same. She was coaching those bobbing little bodies into a frenzy. The children screamed like geese and steam whistles. They whooped and hollered until they collapsed laughing to the grass.

The circle broke then and they all ran over and fell on top of the girls, tumbling into a big happy heap of hugs and giggles.

"All right-let's go now!" The girl handed her bullhorn over to one of the other teenagers, who began herding the children down toward the community center.

The girl in the jeans turned toward me now. Her expression turned as dark as her skin.

"All right," she said, walking up to the Jeep. "Who the hell are you? And how did you get onto the peninsula? Did you get an eyeful? Did you see everything you wanted to?"

"I drove across the bridge." I pointed back over my shoulder.

"The bridge was down?"

"Yeah."

"Dammit! I'm going to kill that Danny! Well, listen you, you turn that Jeep around right now and head on back the way you came. "

"Is this place called Family?"

"Yes, and you're on private property."

"I'm looking for Juanita Wise," I said. I had to give the twerp credit. He'd married her anyway.

"She's not here. Who are you?"

"I'm Lieutenant James Edward McCarthy of the United States Army. And this country is still under military jurisdiction. So I'll ask some questions now. Who are you?"

I had to give her credit. She didn't back down. She said, "They call me Little Ivy."

"When will Mrs. Wise be back?"

"She's not coming back. What do you want with her?"

"Do you know where she went?"

"She's dead."

Suddenly the sun was awfully bright. And I felt dizzy. This day wasn't real. I could feel my gut tightening. "Are you sure?"

"I assisted with the autopsy." Her tone was matter of fact.

"Her name used to be McCarthy-?"

"I don't know. I guess so. Listen, if you're still looking for her son, we already told you, he was never here."

"I am her son."

"Huh? Oh, my God-" She looked as if I'd hit her with a shovel. Her face went gray. "I-I'm sorry."

I couldn't hear her. "What did she die of?"

"A millipede bit her. On the mainland. We don't have any on the peninsula."

I felt a cold chill in my belly. "Was it the blood thing, where all the red cells just explode?"

She shook her head. "No, nothing that fancy. A staph infection."

"Staphlococcus? Staph? But that's-stupid!"

Little Ivy looked flustered and embarrassed. "That's what Birdie said-she's our doctor. But we don't always have all the medicines we need. Uh, listen, Lieutenant. I'm awfully sorry. About the way I treated you. I didn't know. We used to get a lot of strangers coming in here and . . ."

"Spare me your excuses." I held up a hand. I was trying to think. I couldn't think. There was a terrible pounding in my head. She couldn't be dead. That was stupid. Not like this. People don't die like this any more.

But even as I tried to tell myself it wasn't true, I knew it was. But I couldn't cry. I wouldn't cry.

There were tears rolling down my cheeks, but it wasn't me. I wasn't there. I wasn't crying. Not me. Not yet.

I should have gotten back in the Jeep and driven away somewhere. But I didn't have any place to go. And besides, Betty-John had told me to stay as long as I needed. They had the room. They didn't mind.

But there wasn't all that much to do around Family. At least, not for me. They had a hundred and seventeen kids to take care of, all various ages from six months up to the age where they stopped being kids and started being assistants. There were thirty-one adults in the town-well, actually, nineteen adults and twelve teenagers, but the teenagers still counted as adults because they were doing adult jobs. Sixteen women, three men, eight girls, four boys; that was the core around which Family revolved.

Three of the women were the mothers of the three youngest children, but it wasn't readily apparent. All the babies seemed interchangeable, regardless of parentage. No one here, either adult or child, acted as if they belonged specifically to any other person. All of the children responded to all of the adults as if they were all their parents. But, of course, that was the whole purpose of the settlement: to parent as many orphans as possible.

I felt as useful as a third nostril.

I tried to keep out of the way. I puttered around the library for a day or two, at first just looking for something to read; somehow, I ended up stacking and shelving and organizing-the place was a mess-but there is nothing that can erode the love of books quite like having to move and sort kilos and kilos and kilos of dusty hardcopies.

I hung around the mess hall for a while, trying to find someone to play dominoes with, but it seemed as if everybody had something else more important to do.

Like I said, I should have gotten back in the Jeep and driven away somewhere.

But this was the last place my mother had been, and . . .

. . . that was odd. I didn't really miss her. I mean, I missed her, but there wasn't an aching hole in my heart that twinged every time I thought of her.

What I did feel was guilt-that I didn't feel more pain. No. What I felt was anger.

It was the divorce, of course. She'd disowned me-a fact that I had conveniently refused to believe. I'd gotten in the Jeep and I'd come looking for her. I didn't know why-and I did.

Sort of.

I wanted her to welcome me with open arms, hug me, and tell me that everything was going to be all right.

Instead . . . she'd disowned me again. This time for good. This time there was no chance of apologizing. Ever.

Goddamn her for leaving me!

And goddamn me-for everything!

I didn't know what to do. All I knew how to do was keep on keeping on. So that was what I did.

I lurched from one day to the next, doing odd chores for Betty-John and the others and waiting for things to sort themselves out.

Of course, they didn't. They never did. Jason had always said

Fuck Jason.

So, mostly, I hung around the mess hall. I ate their food, there wasn't any shortage of food here. I swept their floors. I washed their dishes. Maybe I could stay here for a while. I could lose myself in books and sandwiches and videodiscs and games. I'd been pretty much that way as a kid.

But there had to be something else, something moreBetty-John came striding through the mess hall on some busy errand or other. I tried to flag her down, but she hardly noticed me. She was involved in some uproar concerning committee schedules. She was yelling into her phone

"Betty-John?" I touched her sleeve.

"Oh, Jim-look, I'm awfully busy right now. Can it wait? Thanks. Look, be a love and go down and watch for the bus. We've got some new kids coming in. Okay?"

"Yeah, sure." I felt grumpy, but one thing about Betty-John. If she said, you did. You couldn't really argue with her; the more you talked to her, the more jobs she laid on you.

Kids. They were an annoyance; underfoot, loud, and messy. Runny noses, scabbed knees with red stains of Mercurochrome, dirty faces, small clammy hands-and it was hot outside too.