Mitch took her by the hand and led her from the parking lot. Kaye thought the park was a little ugly, the grass a little patchy, but for Mitch’s sake, said nothing.

They sat on the lawn beside the chain-link fence and watched passenger seaplanes landing on Lake Union. A few lone men and women, or women with children, walked to the playground beside the factory buildings. Mitch said the attendance was a little low for a sunny Sunday.

“People don’t want to congregate,” Kaye said, but even as she spoke, chartered buses were arriving in the parking lot, pulling into spaces marked off by ropes.

“Something’s up,” Mitch said, craning his neck.

“Nothing you planned for me?” she asked lightly.

“Nope,” Mitch said, smiling. “But maybe I don’t remember, after last night.”

“You say that every night,” Kaye said. She yawned, holding her hand over her mouth, and tracked a sailboat crossing the lake, and then a wind surfer in a wetsuit.

“Eight buses,” Mitch said. “Curious.”

Kaye’s period was three days late, and she had been regular since going off the pill, after Saul’s death. This caused a steely kind of concern. When she thought about what they might have started, her teeth ground together. So quickly. Old-fashioned romance. Rolling downhill, gathering speed.

She had not told Mitch yet, in case it was a false alarm.

Kaye felt separated from her body when she thought too hard. If she pulled back from the steely concern and just explored her sensations, the natural state of tissues and cells and emotions, she felt fine; it was the context, the implications, the knowing that interfered with simply feeling good and in love.

Knowing too much and never knowing enough was the problem.

Normal.

“Ten buses, whoops, eleven,” Mitch said. “Big damn crowd.” He stroked the side of her neck. “I’m not sure I like this.”

“It’s your park. I don’t want to move for a while,” Kaye said. “It’s nice.” The sun threw bright patches over the park. The rusty tanks glowed dull orange.

Dozens of men and women in earth-colored clothes walked in small groups from the buses toward the hill. They seemed in no hurry. Four women carried a wooden ring about a yard wide, and several men helped roll a long pole on a dolly.

Kaye frowned, then chuckled. “They’re doing something with a yoni and a lingam,” she said.

Mitch squinted at the procession. “Maybe it’s a giant hoop game,” he said. “Horseshoes or something.”

“Do you think?” Kaye asked with that familiar and uncritical tone he instantly recognized as no-holds-barred disagreement.

“No,” he said, smacking his temple with his palm. “How could I have not seen it right away? It’s a yoni and a lingam.”

“And you an anthropolologist,” she said, lightly doubling the syllables. Kaye got up on her knees and shaded her eyes. “Let’s go see.”

“What if we’re not invited?”

“I doubt it’s a closed party,” she said.

Dicken went though the security check — pat-down, metal detection wand, chemical sniff — and entered the White House through the so-called diplomatic entrance. A young Marine escort immediately took him downstairs to a large meeting room in the basement. The air conditioning was running full blast and the room felt cold as a refrigerator compared to the eighty-five-degree heat and humidity outside.

Dicken was the first to arrive. Other than the Marine and a steward arranging place settings — bottles of Evian and legal pads and pens — on the long oval conference table, he was alone in the room. He sat hi a chair reserved for junior aides at the back. The steward asked him if he’d like something to drink — a Coke or glass of juice. “We’ll have coffee down here in a few minutes.”

“Coke would be great,” Dicken said.

“Just fly in?”

“Drove from Bethesda,” Dicken said.

“Going to be some miserable weather this afternoon,” the steward said. “Thunderstorms by five, so the weather people say at Andrews. We get the best weather reports here.” He winked and smiled, then left and returned after a few minutes with a Coke and a glass of chopped ice.

More people began arriving ten minutes later. Dicken recognized the governors of New Mexico, Alabama, and Maryland; they were accompanied by a small group of aides. The room would soon hold the core of the so-called Governors’ Revolt that was raising hell with the Taskforce across the country.

Augustine was going to have his finest hour, right here in the basement of the White House. He was going to try to convince ten governors, seven from very conservative states, that allowing women access to a complete range of abortion measures was the only humane course of action.

Dicken doubted the plea would be met with approval, or even polite disagreement.

Augustine entered some minutes later, accompanied by the White House-Taskforce liaison and the chief of staff. Augustine put his valise on the table and walked over to Dicken, his shoes clicking on the tile floor.

“Any ammunition?” he asked.

“A rout,” Dicken said quietly. “None of the health agencies felt we had a chance of taking control again. They feel the president has lost his grip on the issue, too.”

Augustine’s eyes wrinkled at the edges. His crow’s feet had grown noticeably deeper in the last year, and his hair had grayed. “I suppose they’re going it on their own — grass-roots solutions?”

“That’s all they see. The AMA and most of the side branches of the NIH have withdrawn their support, tacitly if not overtly.”

“Well,” Augustine said softly, “we sure as hell don’t have anything to offer to get them back in the fold — yet.” He took a cup of coffee from the steward. “Maybe we should just go home and let everyone get on with it.”

Augustine turned to look as more governors entered. The governors were followed by Shawbeck and the secretary of Health and Human Services. “Here come the lions, followed by the Christians,” he said. “That’s only as it should be.” Before leaving to sit at the opposite end of the table, in one of the three seats where no tiny flags flew, he said, in a very low voice, “The president’s been talking with Alabama and Maryland for the last two hours, Christopher. They’ve been arguing with him to delay his decision. I don’t think he wants to. Fifteen thousand pregnant women were murdered in the last six weeks. Fifteen thousand, Christopher.”

Dicken had seen that figure several times.

“We should all bend over and get our butts kicked,” Augustine growled.

Mitch estimated there were at least six hundred people in the crowd moving toward the top of the hill. A few dozen onlookers followed the resolute group with its wooden ring and pillar.

Kaye took his hand. “Is this a Seattle thing?” she asked, pulling him along. The idea of a fertility ritual intrigued her.

“Not that I’ve heard of,” Mitch said. Since San Diego, the smell of too many people gave him the willies.

At the top of the promontory, Kaye and Mitch stood on the edge of a large flat sundial, about thirty feet across. It was made of bas-relief bronze astrological figures, numerals, outstretched human hands, and calligraphic letters showing the four points of the compass. Ceramics, glass, and colored cement completed the circle.

Mitch showed Kaye how the observer became the gnomon on the dial, standing between parallel lines with the seasons and dates cast into them. It was two o’clock, by her estimation.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Kind of a pagan site, don’t you think?” Mitch nodded, keeping his eye on the advancing crowd.

Several men and boys flying kites moved out of the way, pulling and winding their strings, as the group climbed the hill. Three women carried the ring, sweating beneath the weight. They lowered it gently to the middle of the sundial. Two men carrying the pillar stood to one side, waiting to set it down.