The relative calm drew people out of their hiding places. A few big-tired vehicles clanked past, more or less managing the dustfall. The motel clerk knocked on the door and asked whether everyone was okay—he had seen a little of the morning's drama. Turk said they were fine and he even ventured outside again (door firmly closed behind him, Lise at the window concealing her anxiety) and came back from the car with enough groceries to last a couple of days.

Mrs. Rebka continued hovering over Isaac, who was alert and not obviously suffering. He was sitting up now, facing the western wall of the room as if he were praying to some backward Mecca. This wasn't new behavior, Lise understood, but it was still deeply spooky. When Mrs. Rebka took a bathroom break, Lise went to the boy's bedside and sat with him.

She said hello. He looked at her briefly, then turned his head back to the wall.

Lise said, "What is it, Isaac?"

"It lives underground," the boy said.

And Lise suppressed a shiver and backed away.

* * * * *

Turk and Dr. Dvali conferred over a map.

It was the standard fold-up map of the topography and sparse roads of Equatoria west of the mountains.

Lise peeked over Turk's shoulder as he marked lines with a pen and a ruler. "What's this about?"

"We're triangulating," Turk said.

"Triangulating what?"

Dvali, with only slightly strained patience, pointed at a dot on the map. "This is the compound where you met us, Miss Adams. We left there and we traveled north about two hundred miles—here." A flyspeck marked Bustee. "Back at the compound Isaac's obsession was with a very specific compass point, which we've drawn out." A long line into the west. "But where we are now, his directional sense appears to have altered slightly." Another long line, not quite parallel to the first. The lines moved closer across the amber-colored vastness of the desert, deep into the marked boundaries of the international mineral-rights concessions.

They intersected in the Rub al-Khali, the sandy tableland that comprised the western quarter of Equatoria.

"That's what he's pointing at?"

"That's what he's been pointing at all summer—more urgently in the last few weeks."

"So what is it? What's there?"

"As far as I know, nothing. Nothing's there."

"But it's where he wants to go."

"Yes." Dr. Dvali looked past Lise at the other Fourths. "And that's where we're going to take him."

The Fourth women said nothing, only stared.

It was Mrs. Rebka who finally, reluctantly, nodded her consent.

* * * * *

Lise couldn't sleep that night. She tossed on her mattress listening to the sounds the others made.

Whatever else the Fourth treatment might cure, it did nothing for snoring. And yet they slept. And she did not.