Not if Zun and the rat-catcher and others like them rally round that silly, chicken-limned flag. They could in time rebuild the wreckage, maybe even bring back the animals from the wilderness and the veldt. Do a little of this and a little of that—but most important, embrace again the holy cause of lethargy and let the country go back to sleep for another hundred years. The rest of the world, in the immortal words of Gorelik, can take a flying fug to the moon.

I feel my face twitching slightly, just enough to be out of control. “I’m going back,” I say to Val.

“Back where?”

“Assama.”

“Now?”

“Soon.”

“You’re crazy,” she says, “your father’s son. And where do you intend to hang out, between now and soon?”

“In our cave. There’s fresh water, and bats and lizards…”

“Gracious living.”

“No worse than the rat stew we’ve been eating for months.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Assama’s the last, best, ugliest hope on earth. I want to help Zun save it, if it’s at all savable, from people like Grady.”

My words are highfalutin and suspect. They sound so turgid with false heroics and a craving (my father’s son, she called me) for the scalds of glory.

“I can’t explain it,” I tell her. “I don’t want to argue. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Maybe I do,” she says. “Maybe you have to do what has to be done, and there’s nobody else to do it.”

“Maybe.”

“Well,” she says, “I’m not going on with Grady, that’s for goddam sure.” She puts her hand in mine. “What the hell,” she says.

We turn and walk back through the night.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Eli Horowitz and Jordan Bass, who shared their editorial magic with me; my son Frederick, who pointed me down the road he had already taken; my daughters Mary and Amy, who accepted my oddities with love and understanding; Nina Wiener, who shared her erudition about the novel and its mysteries; Laura Howard, for her astuteness about the book trade; and Ron Lindblom, friend and consultant.