But was this Jason with her in the darkness? Her brother Jason who had died so many years ago? No: it was the strange boy Isaac, but he sounded so much like Jason…

"I can remember you, Diane. If that's what you want, I can do it."

She understood what he was offering. The Hypotheticals remembered Jason, and so did she, but the long slow memory of the Hypotheticals was less perishable; it persisted over billions of years. Did she want to join him in that immensity?

She tried to turn her head but could not. She drew a breath, just enough to force out a single word:

"No," she said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Turk was asleep when the earthquake struck. He and Lise and Dr. Dvali had spread mattresses on the concrete floor and slept, or tried to sleep, and at some point in the darkness Lise had scooted up next to him, both of them still wearing the reeking clothes they had worn for days, not that it mattered. She curled against the small of his back and cupped her knees to his knees, her breath warming his neck and raising the small hairs there. Then the floor heaved like a live thing and the air filled with a clamorous roar, the only distinguishable element of which was Lise's scream, audible because it was next to his ear. He managed somehow to roll over and hold her—they held each other—while the noise reached an unthinkable crescendo and the room's carefully-sealed window kicked out of its flanges and shattered on the floor. Nothing to do but hold on as the floor itself slanted away from horizontal, bucking like a car that had slipped its gears.

They held each other until it stopped. How long a time that was Turk couldn't say. A medium-sized eternity. It left his ears ringing, his body bruised. He drew enough good air to ask Lise whether she was okay, and she drew enough good air to say, "I guess." So Turk called out to Dr. Dvali, who answered belatedly: "My leg's hurt. Other than that I'm all right."

The noise and vertigo went on well after the shaking ceased, but Turk began to recover some composure. He thought about aftershocks. "Maybe we should try to get outside," he said, but Dvali said no, not in the ash storm.

Turk separated himself from Lise and began to grope through the litter on the floor, finally locating the flashlight he had left beside the mattress: it had rolled all the way to the window-side wall. Switched on, it lit up a column of dust motes and debris. The room was intact, but barely. Lise huddled on the mattress, ghost-white, and Dvali, just as pale, sat propped in a corner. His left leg was bleeding where something sharp had fallen on it, but the wound didn't seem serious.

"So what do we do?" Lise asked.

Dvali said, "Wait until dawn and hope it doesn't happen again."