A week later Janet parks the Audi downtown and they buy ice cream and Janet tells the girl behind the counter that she should use compostable spoons instead of plastic ones and the girl says, “You want sprinkles or not?”

They sit on boulders overlooking the lake and eat their ice cream and Janet takes out her phone. To their left, in the marina parking lot, idles a thirty-two-foot RV with slide-outs on either side and two air-conditioning condenser units on the roof. A man gets out, sets down a little leashed poodle, and walks it around the bend.

“When everything falls apart,” Seymour says, “guys like him will be the first to go.”

Janet pokes the screen of her phone. Seymour fidgets. The roar is close today; he can hear it crackling like a wildfire. From where they sit he can see into the core of downtown to the newly remodeled Eden’s Gate Realty office beside the library.

The RV has Montana plates. Hydraulic jacks. A satellite TV dish.

“He went to walk his dog,” he says, “but left the engine running.”

Beside him Janet takes a photo of herself, then deletes it. Over the lake the eyes of Trustyfriend open, two yellow moons.

In the grass at the edge of the marina lot Seymour spies a round piece of granite as big as a baby’s head. He walks to it. It’s heavier than it looks.

Janet is still looking at her phone. A warrior, Bishop says, truly engaged, does not experience guilt, fear, or remorse. A warrior, truly engaged, becomes something more than human.

Seymour remembers the weight of the grenade in his pocket as he carried it through the vacant lots of Eden’s Gate. Remembers putting his finger through the safety ring. Pull the pin. Pull it pull it pull it.

He lugs the stone over to the motor home. Through the buzz of the roar in his head, he hears Janet call, “Seymour?”

No guilt no fear no remorse. The difference between us and them is action.

“What are you doing?”

He raises the rock above his head.

“Seymour, if you do that, I will never—”

He glances at her. Back at the motor home. Patience, Bishop says, is over.

THE ARGOS

MISSION YEAR 64

DAY 46–DAY 276 INSIDE VAULT ONE

Konstance

Records flutter down from the shelves and stack themselves on the desk in chronological order. An Oregon birth certificate. A bleached piece of paper called a Western Union telegram.

WUX Washington AP 20 551 PM

ALMA BOYDSTUN

431 FOREST ST LAKEPORT

DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR WARD PRIVATE ZENO NINIS US ARMY IS MISSING IN ACTION SINCE 1 APRIL 1951 IN THE KOREAN AREA DURING THE PERFORMANCE OF HIS DUTY DETAILS NOT AVAILABLE