He followed the sound, down an overgrown but well-used and not quite feral walkway. There were pomegranates growing along both sides, and flowering vines in the trellis above. At the end, he saw them, there on the porch of one of the buildings.

Saw her, sitting in the afternoon light playing her old guitar for two companions.

“Hey, Joyce,” said Donny.

All three of them looked.

“Hello, Donny,” said Joyce, a tired smile on her face. “How did you find me?”

“Everybody around here seems to know who the real boss is, and where she can be found.”

“We don’t do bosses here,” she said.

“If you say so. Percy told me where I could find you. And then I heard the song. Bach, right? I remember you used to play that one when you were sad.”

“I play it a lot, now. Trying to get it right. And it’s not by Bach. He did a version, and his wife, Anna Magdalena, did some better versions, but it was already an old song by then. One that had traveled a long way, across time and space. I call it the Sara Band.”

“Still making shit up as you go along,” said Donny.

She smiled. “You would know. Come on up and visit with us,” she said. “Meet Patricia and Sig.”

Donny walked up the steps. Patricia was a white lady about his and Joyce’s age, with wiry salt-and-pepper hair on the edge of unkempt and wire-framed glasses, an old hardback book under her arm. Donny already knew Sig. He was a little older than the last time they had been together. But still young, small but strong, with long black hair and tanned skin that looked like some race of man from the ancient past or the far future. He dressed simply, in T-shirt, jeans, and generic sneakers, but he had a weird gravity, at the same time that he was as close to caveman as you would ever meet this early in the third millennium.

“Sig and I go way back,” said Donny, greeting his old client. “I thought you were in Russia.”

“They kicked him out for trying to start a revolution,” said Joyce.

“And they might arrest him if they find him in the US,” said Donny.

“You told me here was okay,” said Sig.

“It is. Wrote it into your early release deal, so you can settle right back in. Looks like you already did.”

“I’m not staying long.” The way he looked at him was kind of like the way a wild animal looks at you in the woods.

“I guess that’s why they don’t make you stay out there with the other fighting-age men.”

“We make an exception for Sig,” said Joyce. “He’s helping me on a special project. Patricia has lived here longer than me.” Joyce hadn’t got up to greet him, and kept quietly playing as they spoke.