The ash on the ground absorbed the water and became a slick, intransigent mud. He was forced to drive even more slowly, and even so, the rear end of the camper fishtailed now and then on what seemed like a river of liquid clay.

But he didn’t have far to go.

He found the state capital building, or what was left of it, at the end of a broad avenue lined with ash-coated trees and fallen limbs. Three-quarters of the dome had collapsed. One section of it, like an immense splinter, remained in place, lit from below by fires still burning in the shell beneath. The broad space in front of the building was a field of ash, and the rain had given it a wet sheen, and the firelight was reflected there.

Matt wasn’t certain he would find what he wanted. But the capital buildings were the centerpiece of the city, like Buchanan’s City Hall, the most logical place, therefore, to find a Helper.

He parked and climbed out of the cab. There was blood on the steering wheel, blood on his pants.

He struggled for footing on the slick, compressed ash beneath his feet. The rain on his skin was not only cold, it was dirty. It carried soot out of the air. It turned his skin black. Matt realized he had left his jacket in the coach, with Kindle. He went to fetch it.

Beth’s breathing was barely audible.

“Don’t do this,” Kindle said.

Matt shrugged into his jacket.

Kindle sat up and took his arm. “Matthew, most likely it won’t work. And that’s bad enough. But if it does—have you thought about that?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not a hospital out there. That’s not a doctor. It’s something from outer space. Something we never did understand. And that thing in orbit isn’t humanity. How could it be? And what you’re doing, it’s not asking for help. It’s praying.”

“She’ll die,” Matt said.

“Christ, don’t I know she’ll die? Haven’t I been listening to her die? But she’s dying like a human being. Isn’t that what we decided to do last August? When it comes down to it, what we said was no thanks, I’ll die like a human being. You, me—even Colonel Tyler. Even Beth.”

“That’s not the issue.”

“The hell it isn’t! Matthew, listen. The Travellers left. They went away. Best thing that could happen. And that new Artifact, probably it’ll go away too. Go star-chasing or whatever it is they do. And that’s fine. Because we’ll be left here with some human dignity. But if you go out and pray to that thing for help—my fear is that it will help, and it won’t stop helping, and we’ll have a new God in the sky, and that’ll be the end of us, one way or another.”

“I’m only one man,” Matt said.

“Maybe one is all it takes. Maybe they can look at a thousand things at once—maybe everything matters.”

“I have to help her.” It was the only answer he could formulate. “Why?”

“Because sometimes we help each other. It’s the only decent thing we do.” He turned to the door. “Matthew!” He looked back.

“Don’t let that thing come near me. I don’t care how badly off I am. I don’t want it near me. Promise me that.” He nodded.

The Helper was at the foot of the stairs of the Wyoming state capitol building.

Scabs of wet ash clung to it in the frigid rain. Matt reached up and brushed away these impediments.

He was a little feverish and immensely weary. It was strange to be standing here at the foot of this alien structure in the ash, in the rain, with the domeless capitol building burning fitfully in the dark.

He shivered. The shiver became a convulsion, and he bent at the waist until it passed and hoped he wouldn’t faint.

Rain settled on the Helper in thick, dark drops. This Helper seemed to Matt less tall, less perfectly formed than the one at the City Hall Turnaround. He wondered whether it might have begun to erode. Perhaps it would eventually sink into the earth, a shapeless mound, discarded.

It didn’t develop eyes. It didn’t look at him. It remained impassive.

He told it about Beth. He described her wounds. Some part of him listened to the sound of his own voice and marveled at the melancholy note it added to the rainfall and the wind. He felt like an intern on rounds, reciting a patient’s symptoms for a hostile resident. Was this necessary? It seemed to be.

He said, “I know what you can do. I saw that woman. That insect woman. If you can change a human being from the inside out, you must be able to heal a chest wound. And Cindy Rhee, the little girl with the brain tumor. She was cured.”

The Helper remained impassive.

Was it dead? Deaf? Or simply not listening? “Answer me,” Matt said. “Talk to me now.”

The cold seemed to claw inside his body. He knew he couldn’t stand out in this night rain much longer. He put his hands on the body of the Helper. The Helper was as cold as the air. He left bloody prints on the alien matter.

It didn’t speak.

He carried Beth from the camper.

He knew this bordered on the insane, taking a dying woman into the cold night. But he seemed to be out of options. There was no reasoning, only a slow panic.

Beth was heavy. He held her with one hand supporting her shoulder and the other under her knees. She was a small woman, but he was terribly tired. He staggered under her weight. Her head lolled back and her breathing stopped. He waited for it to resume. Breathe, he thought. She gasped. A bubble of blood formed on her lips.

He told her how sorry he was that all this had happened. She didn’t deserve it. She wasn’t bad. It was one of those unforeseeable tragedies, like an earthquake, like a fire.

He put her down in front of the alien sentinel. She was pale and limp in the wet gray ash. Rain fell on her. Matt put his jacket over her. He pulled away one limp strand of hair that had fallen across her face.

Then he addressed the Helper.

“Here she is,” he said. “Fix her.”

Was this too peremptory? But he didn’t know another way to say it.

From that black obelisk: nothing.

“I know you can fix her. You have no excuse.”

An infinitely long time seemed to pass. A gusty wind turned the rain to needles on his skin. The wind made a sound in the ruins of the capitol building. It sounded like whispering.

The Helper was connected to the Artifact, he supposed, and the Artifact was full of humanity—or something that had once been humanity. “Are you all in there?” Several billion human souls. “Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

He was light-headed. He leaned against the Helper to steady himself. The Helper was cold, substantial, inanimate.

“Everybody in there?” He was hoarse with all this talking. “Jim Bix in there? Lillian? Annie, are you in there? Rachel?”

Silence and the sound of the spattering rain.

“You have no excuse. You can help this girl. Rachel, listen to me! This isn’t good at all. Just standing there letting this girl die. We didn’t raise you to do that.”

He closed his eyes.

Nothing had changed.

He felt himself sliding down, felt himself sitting in the wet ash beside Beth. He couldn’t hear Beth anymore. He wondered if she had stopped breathing. There was a buzzing in his ears that drowned all other sound.

“If you were human,” he said, “you would help.”

He fought to cling to his awareness, but the sense was eroding from his words. There was nothing left inside him but a weary frustration.

“If you were human. But you aren’t. I suppose we don’t matter anymore. This girl doesn’t matter. This dying girl. That offends me. Fuck you. Fuck all of you.”

He wanted to open his eyes but couldn’t. Time passed.

He roused for a moment.

“Rachel! Come out of there!”

He felt the stony body of it cradling his head.