Come morning there was a degree of near-normality in Bustee: a few pedestrians in the street, a few capable vehicles beginning to head toward the larger towns to the south. Locals gawked at the remains of alien life clinging to the facades of buildings or littering the sidewalks like broken, once-brightly-colored toys. Life reassembling itself, Lise thought, despite the strangeness. Her own life, more deeply unraveled, was slower to knit.

The Fourths, now that they had reached a consensus, set out to procure supplies. A party of four—Dr.

Dvali, Sulean Moi, Diane Dupree, and Turk—went to see what money could still buy at the local shops.

Turk was even talking about a second vehicle, if they could procure one.

Lise stayed in the motel room with Mrs. Rebka and Isaac, hoping to catch another couple of hours of sleep. Which turned out to be difficult, because Isaac was agitated again. Not because of the flying thing that had attacked him—that seemed to have passed from his mind as promptly as a bad dream—but out of a new sense of urgency, a need to hurry to the heart of whatever was happening out west. Mrs. Rebka had asked a few tentative questions. What did he mean when he talked about something "underground"?

But Isaac couldn't answer and grew frustrated when he tried.

So Mrs. Rebka told him they were going west, they were going west, as soon as they possibly could; and eventually Isaac accepted this consolation and fell back to sleep.

Mrs. Rebka left the bedside and moved to a chair. Lise pulled her own chair closer.

Mrs. Rebka looked about fifty years old. Lise had assumed she was older. She was a Fourth, and Fourths could appear "about fifty" for decades. But if Isaac was hers, she couldn't be much older than she looked. And anyway, Lise thought, wasn't it true that Fourths were biologically unable to conceive?

So Mrs. Rebka's pregnancy must have begun before her conversion.

The obvious question was difficult but Lise was determined to ask it, and she wasn't likely to have a better opportunity. "How did it happen, Mrs. Rebka? The boy, I mean. How did he… I mean, if this isn't too personal."

Mrs. Rebka closed her eyes. Fatigue was written all over her face, fatigue or some deep, intractable despair. "What are you asking, Miss Adams? How he was altered or why he was conceived?"