And me, Sulean thought. What do I want with Isaac? Above all she had wanted to forestall his birth. It was to prevent such tragedies that she had left the Martian embassy in New York. She had made herself a dark, often unwelcome presence in the community of Terrestrial Fourths, subsisting on their charity while scolding them for their hubris. Don't worship the Hypotheticals: they are not gods. Don't contrive to bridge the divide between the Hypotheticals and the human: that gap cannot be bridged. We know. We tried. We failed. And in the process we committed what can only be called a crime. We shaped a human life for our own purposes and produced, in the end, only pain, only death.

Twice in her wanderings on Earth she had forestalled such a project. Two rogue communities of Fourths, one in Vermont and one in rural Denmark, had been on the verge of attempting to create a hybrid child.

In both cases Sulean had alerted more conservative Fourths and exerted the moral weight they accorded her as a Martian Fourth. In both cases she had succeeded in preventing tragedies. Here she had failed.

She was a dozen years too late.

And yet she insisted on accompanying the child on what was no doubt his final journey, when she could have walked away and continued her work elsewhere. Why? She allowed herself to wonder whether she might be as susceptible as Dr. Dvali to the seductive lure of contact… even though she knew it was impossible and absurd.

More likely it was because the boy Isaac had spoken a few words in a language he couldn't possibly have known.

That is to say: because she was afraid of him.

* * * * *

"You make much of that," Turk asked, "what the lady said about earthquakes?"

He rode in the lead vehicle with Dvali, who had taken the wheel. The wind still pushed snaketrails of dust across the road, but most of the ash seemed to have been blown away—or had been absorbed into the earth, the same way that flapping thing had been absorbed into Isaac's skin.

Another day of driving and they would reach the outskirts of the oil concessions. The target they had triangulated was a couple hundred miles west of there.

"I don't disbelieve her," Dr. Dvali said evenly. "Was there anything in the news?"

Turk had been keeping Dr. Dvali's radio plugged into one ear, though reception was intermittent. They were a long way from the aerostats. "Nothing about earthquakes. But I wouldn't rule it out." He wouldn't rule out munchkins or dinosaurs, at this point. "They say it could happen again, the ashfall. You think that's possible?"

"I don't know," Dr. Dvali said. "No one knows."

Except maybe Isaac, Turk thought.

* * * * *

They stopped for the night at a gas-food-lodging complex that had once catered to tanker drivers but was now deserted.