“That sure sounds like what you’re doing.” A door opened and closed. Footsteps trickled over the nave’s stone floor. A men’s choir sang. The sound seemed to come from everywhere at once. Tara couldn’t make out the words, but the harmony was close and smooth. She made herself smile. “I can do this,” she said. “I just need to be smarter than everyone else. So what else is new?”

“Cat and I are here for you. You’ve spent the last year working and sleeping, outside of one poker night that didn’t go well. If you wanted to, you know, have a beer, or anything—well, I’m here. That’s all I wanted to say.”

Her watch chimed. “I have to go.”

“See you later,” he told her retreating back.

29

29

Daphne met Ms. Ramp on the roof of the Alt Coulumb Arms a half hour before sundown, on schedule. Ramp was eating pistachios from a bag. They cracked in midair in front of her, and the nutmeat floated to her mouth. The shells crisped to ash and rained as a fine powder to the roof.

“How did you find your meeting with our dear Ms. Abernathy?” Ramp said.

Daphne sighed, and set her briefcase on the gravel. “Went about as well as you expected. I don’t get it. The Tara I knew would never be satisfied with these conditions.” The brass latches popped and the briefcase clamshelled open, whereupon she opened it a second time, space unfolding from within until a three-meter pallet heaped with fabric and rope lay before them. “You think they got to her? Religious experience triggers an endorphin rush, which leads to dependency. Gods push inside your head. Like distributed Craftwork, but for everything at once.”

“Possible.” Ramp knelt, gathered striped fabric in both hands, and dragged it back over the gravel. “But you can’t assume mind control every time someone’s goals differ from your own.”

“She wanted to get out of her hick town. She wanted to be somebody.”

“And she’s ended up in Alt Coulumb, which is hardly a hick town. She is a person of local importance. I bet she even thinks she’s doing the right thing, in that wonderfully abstract language young people use, as if there were a ‘right thing’ independent of context, interest, or timing.” She fluffed the fabric. A cloud of packing dust cracked from its taut surface. Daphne connected a hydrogen tank, and the balloon inflated. “If you build a roof without walls, it will fall. Build walls before foundation, and they will collapse. Lay a foundation without digging out the soil, it will crumble. Does that mean it is wrong to build roof or walls or foundation? Not at all. Whenever we build, we must dirty our hands first.”