Wallace preceded them into the church. Atwood grabbed his partner's arm before following. "Look, Bill. About huddling all winter. You don't have to say anything back in town. It would only get folks distressed. The townies complain about the thermostat law; but these farm folk, they would be glad to turn their thermostats up to fifty-five."

"But, Jesus, Andy. We should do something for them."

"There's one thing we could do."

"What's that?"

"Drill for oil."

Bill waited to see if he were joking. Then he blurted, "But that's inappropriate technology."

Atwood followed Wallace into the church. "Yeah."

There were three coffins, one of them supported by six bearers. A dozen or so mourners were scattered through the pews. Atwood walked slowly up the aisle, looking left, then right. He didn't see any seven-foot supermen. Spectrally thin, the flyer had said. No one present fit that description. There was one woman, tall and skinny, though not seven feet by any stretch. How did the government know if the aliens were men or women?

The woman locked gazes with him. Her eyes were red-rimmed and wet with tears. Her nose was running and her cheeks were puffy. Embarrassed, Atwood let his gaze drop. He turned to his partner. "Come on, they aren't here."

"What about the van with the Minnesota plates?" Bill whispered.

"Heh. The border isn't that far. You can see Minnesota from the bluffs. Families have got relatives on both sides of the river. You see anybody here who's seven feet tall?"

Atwood winced as Bill gripped his arm tight. He saw his partner pointing surreptitiously at belt level so the mourners could not see. Pointing at the coffins. Atwood sucked in his breath. One of the coffins was easily long enough to hold a seven footer. He stepped over to it and ran his hand along the plain pine wood top. Looking up, he located Wallace.

"Look, I really hate to ask you this, Mr. Wallace; but I'm afraid you'll have to open this up. National security."

"National security?" The old man seemed amused. Atwood wondered if he would ask to see a warrant. Folks seldom did anymore.

"I can't tell you any more than that, sir." He smiled apologetically and scratched his beard. "They didn't tell me much more. This one isn't your handyman, is it?"

Wallace shook his head. "One of his friends, from out of state."

Atwood nodded. "Then you can't vouch for his identity."

Wallace gazed silently at the coffin. "The lumber of the world," he said.

"Eh?"

The old man looked at him. "The dead are the lumber of the world. Their bones are the ribbing and shoring that hold it up."

Atwood waited while Wallace located a claw hammer. He could feel the eyes of the mourners on his back. Watching with a dull anger. Atwood gritted his teeth. It was a lousy duty to pull.

The nails groaned as they came out of the coffin lid. Atwood remembered tales of elaborate, plush-lined coffins of shiny mahogany. There were special people, funeral directors, whose sole job was to manage an elaborate and impressive funeral display. Today there were just too many funerals. Sometimes the coffin was a canvas bag. Sometimes, not even that.

The lid came off and Atwood gazed into the box. The light was bad; the angle, wrong. He stood aside to get a better view.

A tall man, but not seven feet. So thin he looked almost wasted. He had the skin of a youngish man, yet with the hint of age around the eyes. Atwood glanced at the hands folded across the breast. Long, bony fingers, blackened with frostbite at the end, as were the nose and ears. He sniffed. The corpse had been washed, but the smell of death was there.

Atwood stepped back. "All right." A wave of the hand. "Nail it back up." He brushed his hands vigorously, although he hadn't touched anything. "Come on, Bill. We've bothered these people enough."

Wallace did not follow them out. In the narthex, they pulled on their outdoor gear, strapped the snowshoes to their feet. "Was that one of them?" Bill asked. "The corpse?"

Atwood shrugged. "He was tall enough and skinny enough to fit the profile."

"Aren't there supposed to be two of them? And what about the people who are supposed to be helping them escape?"

Escape to where? he wondered. "We'll pass the van's VIN along and let Minnesota check it out. But you heard what Wallace said. His handyman and a couple of friends. You saw the frostbite, didn't you? Jesus. No heating oil. No gas. They've been written off by the government. They've got to move south or die, and they're too stubborn to move. You wanted to do something for them, Bill? Then let them bury each other in peace."

The six pallbearers watched the deputies leave. The whole time the long coffin had been searched, they had held the shorter coffin aloft. Alex was growing tired. His arms ached from hanging onto the coffin handles and he was sure the four men holding the corners were just as tired. After all, they were bearing his weight and Gordon's and the coffin's, too.

"They're gone," said Wallace's wife at the back of the church.

Alex sighed and relaxed. He slumped gratefully to the floor. Thor, Bob, Fang and Steve lowered the coffin to its cart. Bob groaned and rubbed his shoulders. "I thought they'd never leave."

Gordon, leaning on the middle handle on the other side, had to be pried loose, his grip had grown so tight. They led him to one of the pews and let him stretch out.

Alex pushed himself to a crawling position. Sherrine left her pew and helped him back upright. Then he walked in slow, careful steps to the nearest pew and dropped into the hard, wooden seat. He kneaded his thigh muscles. One thing about being snowed in for three days at Wallace's farm--he and Gordon could now stand upright and walk, at least for short periods. Like Steve said, practice every day. Still, what if the security officer had noticed him hanging onto the coffin instead of lifting it?

Enoch leaned over him. "You all right, Gabe?"

"I'll be fine. That's the longest I've stood up in…" In thirty-odd years, he realized.

Sherrine patted his shoulder. "Before you, know it, you'll be walking across the room on your own."

Alex laughed. Who would have thought that walking required the mastery of such complex skills? He had walked as a child, but could not remember the learning of it. He would look on pedestrians in the future with a certain amount of awe.

"It was good of you to take us in like that," Alex told the farmer.

Wallace grunted. "Seven warm bodies during a norther? My wife and I would have froze to death without you. Like poor Jed and his friends."

Alex glanced at the coffins. "Yeah."

Enoch had been waiting for the handyman and his friends to come to his huddling place when Thor appeared on his front porch. After the storm had subsided, they had all gone out looking and found the bodies only a few hundred meters from the farmhouse. Judging from the tracks that had not filled in with snow it appeared that the three had been walking in a circle. "It happens," Enoch had said. "When the wind blows the snow up, everything whites out and you lose all your sense of direction. Thor, who had known the handyman, had insisted on staying for the funeral.

"What next?" asked Alex.

"On to Chicago," Bob told him.

Wallace shook his head. "That deputy copied down your license plate. Just routine, I suppose. But, if I were engaged in anything a shade less than perfectly normal--not that I am, mind you, or that I suggest that anyone else is--I might be a touch wary of driving that vehicle over the roads. Folks don't travel so much these days, what with fuel so hard to get. So anyone far enough from home might strike the government as suspicious."