What she saw now was less immense—she could see all of it at once, an inverted U against the sunset—but that only made its size more starkly obvious. It must have been twenty or fifty miles high, high enough that a haze of cloud paled its uppermost curve. But at the same time it seemed delicate, almost fragile: how did it sustain its own weight? More importantly, why was it here? What was it meant to do?

An even stronger gust of wind bounced the platform and carried Turk's matted hair into his eyes. She didn't like the expression on his face as he stared at the thing in the west. For the first time since she had known him he looked lost. Lost and a little scared.

"We shouldn't stay up here," he said. "This wind."

She agreed. The view was in an unearthly way beautiful, but it was also unendurable. It implied too much.

She followed him down.

They rested at the foot of the stairs, back under the canopy of globes, like mice in a mushroom patch, she thought, protected from the wind. For a moment they didn't speak.

Then Turk reached into the left-hand pocket of his grimy jeans and brought out his compass, the same military-surplus compass in a battered brass case he had been carrying the day he first flew her into the mountains. He opened the case and looked at the gently swinging needle as if to confirm its alignment.

Then he reached for Lise's hand and put the compass in her palm.

"What's this for?"

"I don't know if there's an edge to this fucking forest, but if there is you'll probably need a compass to find your way out."

"So? I'll just follow you. Keep it."

"I want you to have it."

"But—"

"Come on, Lise. All the time we've been together, what did I ever give you? I'd like to give you something. It would make me happy. Just take it."

Gratefully but uneasily, she closed her hand on the chilly brass case.

* * * * *

"I was thinking about Dvali," Lise said as they walked back to camp. She knew she shouldn't be saying this out loud, but the combined effect of exhaustion and the twilight glitter of the forest (not entirely dark, she had to admit) and Turk's peculiar gift had made her reckless. "About Dvali putting together his commune in the desert. Sulean Moi said there were other attempts to do the same thing, but they'd been stopped in time. Dvali must have known that, right?"

"I would guess so."

"But it seemed like he was pretty free with his information. He took a lot of people into his confidence.

Including my father."

"Couldn't have been too reckless or they would have caught up with him."

"He changed his plans. That's what he told me. He was supposed to establish his compound out on the west coast, but he changed his mind after he left the university."