“Matthew,” Kindle had said, “let’s walk a bit. Get the kinks out.” And Matt understood that the older man had something difficult to tell him.

Neither moon nor Artifact had risen and the stars were bright in a cold sky. When he spoke, Kindle’s voice seemed to hover in the air.

“It was called the South Pass,” Kindle said. “You followed the North Platte to the Sweetwater, Sweetwater to Pacific Creek, Sandy Creek, the Green River Crossing. The Overland Stage Route came through that way. Pony Express.”

Scuff of shoes on empty road. Matt said, “Sounds like you know the territory.”

“Lived two years up in the Wind River Range. Did a lot of hiking through Whiskey Mountain and Popo Agie. Beautiful country.”

“You miss it?”

“Been thinkin’ about it a lot.”

They approached the small fire where Joey Commoner was keeping watch. Joey stood up at the sound of footsteps, turned to face them with his hand hovering at the pistol Colonel Tyler had supplied him.

“Halt,” Joey said, his voice cracking.

Kindle yawned and regarded the boy. “Joey, if you ever aim a loaded pistol in my direction I’ll feed it to you—fair warning.”

“The Colonel doesn’t like people outside camp perimeter at night.”

“I don’t suppose he does. I don’t suppose he likes my shirttail untucked, either, but he’ll have to put up with it, won’t he?”

“You go on report if you’re out of bounds.”

“Fine,” Kindle said. “Maybe later the Colonel can slap my wrist.”

“You’re such a shithead,” Joey said.

Kindle looked at him a long moment—sadly, Matt thought. Then they walked on, past the fire, past Joey.

Matt tried to imagine crossing this blank immensity in a covered wagon. No highways, no gas stations, no motels. No Helpers. The stars sharp as needles.

“Matthew… can you believe this bullshit? Pass a checkpoint before we can take a walk?”

He shrugged. “Joey’s just—”

“Joey isn’t ‘just’ anything. Joey’s following orders and loving every minute of it. We’re not living in a town anymore, we’re living in a barracks. That’s why—”

Kindle hesitated. Matt said, “Why what?”

“That’s why I’m leaving.”

No. “You can’t.”

Kindle was a shadow in the starlight, large and gray. “Matthew—”

“Christ, Tom, I know what’s going on as well as you do. Tyler did his little putsch, and now we have to live with it. It’s painful. But we’re still moving. Heading for a place where Tyler will be one small frog in a big pond. They’re holding real elections in Ohio. According to the radio—”

“When’s the last time you heard the radio? The Colonel’s got it locked up.”

“Beside the point. In Ohio, the Colonel won’t matter.”

“Don’t underestimate the man.”

“The bottom line,” Matt said, “is that we’re more likely to get there if you’re with us.”

“The bottom line is that it’s not my job.” Kindle selected a pebble and threw it into the darkness, an invisible trajectory. “Anyway—I never wanted to live in Ohio. Tell you a story. Once upon a time I hiked along the Titcomb Valley, that’s up in the Wind River Range. I was thirty-three years of age, and I thought that was pretty damn old. East side of the valley is Fremont Peak. North is Mount Sacajawea. At the head of the valley is Gannett Peak, highest in Wyoming. All well above the timberline. Glaciers on those mountains like blue rivers of ice. So pretty it hurts. I camped there a night. When I left, I promised myself I’d come back, one way or another, before I died. See all this a second time. I never got around to it.”

“Tom—”

“I know you don’t understand this, Matthew. You’re happy with people. Happiest when you’re helping them. That’s admirable. I can’t do it, however. I’d be happy by myself in the Winds. Or the Tetons, or the Beartooths.”

Matt tried to imagine this wiry, strong, aging man alone in the wilderness. “Break a leg out there,” he said, “no one comes to help.”

“I don’t relish the idea of dying alone. Who the hell does? But what choice is there? Don’t we all die alone?” He shrugged. “Used to be Shoshone and Arapahoe through there. Might still be people around.”

Matt said, “In Ohio—”

“In Ohio there’s nothing but people. People and Helpers. Which is another question. Seems to me there’s only two ways it can go, Matt. Maybe the Travellers move on and leave us alone—no Helpers, no electricity unless we make it ourselves. And pretty soon the planet is repopulated and we’re back in the same bind. Or else they build us a private Eden, which is pretty much what they promised. A safe place, a protected place, easy food and probably some kind of population control. And maybe that’s okay, too. But think about it. Everything the Travellers are capable of, doesn’t that qualify them as gods? I think it does—by the standards humanity’s used for thousands of years. But do you want to live with a god? A real one, I mean, one who appears in the sky every night? God who makes the rain fall, god who makes the crops grow, god who cures the sick child? What would we be after ten years of that—or a thousand years? Maybe about as human as those people who dropped their skins. Maybe less.”

“It might not be that way.”

“Uh-huh. But it might.”

Matt was tired again. It was as if he had made some silent bargain, traded sorrow for fatigue. Ever since Rachel left, he had been empty of grief but full of this daily exhaustion.

He wondered whether Kindle was right, whether they were headed toward a kind of domestication. He wondered what dark marvels the Earth might harbor in a hundred years or a thousand. Two species of humanity, perhaps: the wild and the tame.

He said, “Have you talked to Abby about leaving?”

“Have I told her, you mean? No. I thought I’d speak to her closer to the event. Say I’m going, then go. No time to blame herself.”

“She will, though.”

“Maybe.”

“It won’t be good for her.”

“She’s survived worse. Hell, I don’t mean all that much to Abby Cushman. Target of opportunity. If she were fifteen years younger I’d say you and her might hit it off. You both need somebody to doctor. Kindred souls. But she’ll be happy in Ohio.”

“Easy as that?”

“Not easy at all, Matthew. Abby’s been generous. You’ve been generous.”

“It’s been paid back often enough.”

Kindle looked at the stars, scratched himself. “We should maybe get back before Joey starts layin’ eggs.” They began to walk. “I’ll ride as far as Laramie,” Kindle said. “Turn back from there.”

“It’ll be hard,” Matt said. “One less voice against the Colonel.”

“Told you,” Kindle said. “It’s not my job.”

Unspoken, in a glance from Kindle to Matt, in the darkness far from the firelight: It’s your job now.

The next day dawned clear and cool. Engines revved in morning light, RVs threw long shadows over the scrub.

Colonel Tyler, leading the caravan as it wound through long miles of Wyoming prairie, was first to catch sight of the miraculous new thing:

It was a dusty blue dome on the horizon, too perfectly symmetrical to be a product of nature; capped with white, like a mountain.

Something artificial. Something large beyond comprehension. A work of engineering that beggared any solely human effort.

Calm and pretty in the dry blue distance.

It’s that spaceship, Sissy told him. To take the dead away.

He recalled the idea, dimly, from Contact, from rumors he had heard on the radio: a vast thing nearly alive that harbored emigrant souls, and a miniature of the Earth inside it; Elysian fields, a world without evil.

Her voice was like a sizzle in his ears:

We must see it more closely. We must abide here for a time.

Even Sissy was excited.

Chapter 28

Earthbound

Rosa Perry Connor had always dreamed of flying.