Nevertheless, she would have been ungrateful to complain. She was alive. As was most of her family. A few names were missing, including one of her cousins, but when she thought about the nature of the disaster that had overtaken them, she realized how fortunate they had been. Had they been in their homes when the storm surge came, few of them would have survived.

Everyone was giving thanks to the gods. As if they weren’t equally responsible for the storm that had drowned the land. Yet Lykonda had come to their aid. She’d seen the goddess herself.

It had been a Lykonda who somehow resembled Macao.

Well, that had been a trick of the light. But how did one explain the rest of it?

Behind her, someone threw a few more branches on the fire.

She looked out at the ocean, cold and gray. She had never before thought of it as a monster that could hurl giant waves at them. Who would have believed such things could happen? None among them, not even the oldest, knew of any similar occurrence. Nor was there anything in the Archives.

Yet it was precisely what the zhoka had predicted. Except that he’d had the wrong night.

How was that possible? Why would a demonic creature try to help them? She’d told her story over and over during the last couple of days, while the rains were pouring down, how the zhoka had warned her they needed to get to high ground, that T’Klot was a terrible storm. So many had seen the goddess in the streets that they were now prepared to believe anything. Unlike the audiences that had debated her over her tall tales, people now accepted her story, and assigned everything, good and ill, to celestial powers.

For Macao, the problem went deeper. Her view of reality had been shattered. The world was no longer a mechanical place, a place controlled by physical laws that were accessible by reason. There were gods and demon-storms and a creature called Digger Dunn and who knew what else?

She shuddered, pulled the animal skin close round her shoulders, and leaned nearer the fire.

Avery Whitlock’s Notebooks

Eventually, we will discover that honest communication with the Korbs will be to the benefit of both species. But that day is far off, because it will require more wisdom than we now possess. And more experience than they now have. Meantime, we can take pride in the fact that we have done what we could, and that the Korbs will, one assumes, still be here when that far-off day arrives.

— December 19

Woodbridge, Virginia.

Wednesday, December 24.

THE REPORT FROM Lookout arrived, as it always seemed to, at 2:00 A.M. It was the best possible news: as much success on the ground as they could reasonably have hoped for. There’d been substantial casualties among the Korbs, but an estimated 80 percent of them, thanks to Digger’s inventiveness, had taken to the hills. Of those the vast majority had survived. And her own people had come away with no additional casualties. Hutch never got back to sleep.

The staff came to work knowing that the Academy had a new set of heroes, and emotions ran high through the morning. The commissioner called a press conference, the politicians were delighted, and, because it was Christmas Eve, everyone went home early.

Hutch, of course, was ecstatic. The Korbs would live, and it was possible to assign meaning to the deaths of Jack Markover and Dave Collingdale.

She spent the afternoon toting Maureen through the malls for some last-minute shopping. Then, reluctantly, she went home, knowing the media would be there.

Did it seem like coincidence that the good news had come on Christmas Eve?

Was it true that the Academy teams had violated the Protocol?

No, she replied to both questions. And added not exactly to the latter.

They crowded up onto her front porch. A few neighbors wandered over to see what was happening. Drinks appeared from somewhere. Bells jingled.

What could she tell them about this Digger Dunn? Had he really masqueraded as a god? Wasn’t that—?

Digger was a good man. Pretty creative, wouldn’t you say? Saved tens of thousands of lives.

The porch was big and enclosed, and it turned into a party. Season’s best. Happy Hannukah. Merry Christmas. To us and to the Goompahs. To the Korbs.

“By the way,” asked the UNN representative, “have we figured out yet what those clouds are? Any idea at all?”

“We’re working on it,” she said. They shook their heads and rolled their eyes.

Later, when everyone had gone home, she relaxed with a drink and watched Tor and Maureen trying to get a kite into the air. They weren’t having much luck. Tor, who seemed to have no idea how it was done, charged about the lawn while the kite whipped in circles behind him. Maureen trailed along with all due seriousness, only to break out giggling every time the thing crashed.

In his way, Tor possessed the same innocence as the child. It was part of his charm, his sense that the world was essentially a good place, that if you worked hard and paid attention to business, everything would work out. He’d explained to her that he’d grown up with two ambitions: to become a professional golfer, and to create art for a living. He liked golf because it was leisurely, and you always went to summery places to participate. But the truth was that she had a better swing than he did.

Art, though, was a different matter altogether. Give him a brush, and put him near a passing comet, and he was a genius. When you aim high, she decided, one out of two wasn’t bad.

Actually, he was luckier than most people, and not because he had talent. What he really possessed was an ability to enjoy life on its most basic levels. He loved having Maureen chase him around the lawn, enjoyed slapstick comedy, talked endlessly about his camping experiences with the local Boy Scout troop (where he was an assistant scoutmaster), and he could never get enough ice cream. He was a big kid.

He pretended to be modest about his work, to look surprised when he was nominated for the Delmar Award, or the Fitzgibbon. And when one of the media did a piece on him, he was thrilled.

She watched the kite arc high. It had gotten dark, and the Christmas lights were coming on. A virtual stable blinked into existence on the lawn at the Harbisons. Complete with kneeling shepherds, camels, and a blazing star a few meters overhead.

Projectors came on all over the neighborhood. Santa and his sleigh were just landing on Jerry Adams’s roof. A river of soft blue-and-white stars floated past the Proctors’ place. No red or orange or green for Hal Proctor, who claimed to believe in the power of understatement. At the far end of the lane, three camels were approaching with wise men in the saddle.

It was all a bit much, but Hutch never said anything, knowing she’d be perceived as having no spirit. Still, she wondered what invisible aliens, had they been there somewhere, would have made of it all.

“By the way, have we figured out yet what those clouds are? Any idea at all?”

A group of carolers were wandering from door to door.

Tor gave the kite more string and a quick pull, probably a mistake. It turned over in midflight and crashed. Maureen exploded with giggles.

She pleaded for a chance to try, and Tor let her have the string. She raced off, still screaming with laughter, dragging the kite behind her.

Tor joined Hutch on the porch. “You’re woolgathering again,” he said.

She laughed. “You really look good out there.”

“One of my many talents.” Maureen charged by, squealing with delight. “You okay?”

“Oh, yes. I’m fine. Couldn’t be better.” An elf turned methodical somersaults on her lawn. And a blue lantern glowed in a window. They were her sole concessions to the lighting frenzy.

“It’s over,” he said gently.

“We still have a supply problem. I’ll feel safer after Judy gets there. When we’ve begun to get some help to the Goompahs.”

“You think?”

“What else?”

“I don’t know. You seem restless.”

“I wish Harold were here.”

Tor rocked back and forth a few times. “He may not have known anything.”

“It’s not that. I’d just like to see him again.”

What had he known?

They talked about inconsequentials. Then Tor asked whether Charlie Wilson had gotten any closer to a solution.

Charlie was a good guy, but he wasn’t the right person to figure it out. Charlie was an analysis guy. Here’s the data. Here’s what it tells us. But he was not equipped to make the kind of imaginative leap that Harold might have done. “No. I think Charlie feels we don’t have enough information yet. He’s like you. Doesn’t believe Harold really had anything.” She shook her head. “Maybe that’s right. Maybe Harold was going to say that the omegas are a gigantic research project of some sort, probably gone wrong but maybe not, and that would have been it. No big secret. That’s, by the way, pretty much what Charlie thinks. But as to what sort of research, he says there’s no way to know.”

The reindeer atop the Adams house appeared to be gamboling, enjoying themselves, anxious to get to their next stop.

“Everything’s showbiz,” she said.

Tor’s eyes darkened momentarily. “Sometimes you’re a bit hard on people. Showbiz is what life is about.”

Lights appeared in George Brauschwitz’s array of hedges, green and white and gold, and began to ripple in waves through the gathering twilight.

Green and white and gold.

A myriad of color, hypnotic in its effect. It was hard to draw her eyes away. “I wonder,” she said. “Maybe there’s a connection with the Georgetown Gallery after all.” A possibility had occurred to her. But it was so outrageous that it seemed impossible. Yet right from the beginning they’d noted that the tewks showed up in clusters.

Tor watched her while she surveyed the stable, the camels, the hedge, Santa.

“We’ve assumed all along,” she said, “that, in some way, the clouds were connected with research. Or that they were a weapons system run amok, or a slum clearance project run amok. These were things we could understand.”

“Okay.”

“Were they performing light experiments? Testing weapons?” She pushed back in her chair. Maureen tumbled over, scrambled back to her feet, looked puzzled, and began to cry. Hutch hurried to her side. “Skinned your knee,” she told the child. “Does it hurt?”

Maureen couldn’t get an answer past the sobs.

Hutch took her into the house, repaired the damage, got her some ice cream, and took a little for herself. She read to the child for a while. Lobo Louie. As she did, she considered the possibility that had occurred to her, and began to wonder if she might have the answer.