“He’s getting worse,” said Samm. Buddy the horse was tamer now, snuffling as Samm patted his neck. Kira was convinced that he and Bobo were brothers, but it might have just been their coloring. They’d been traveling for a week now, and were in the midst of the Appalachian Mountains. Afa had gone through map after map, circling and underlining little roads and towns and peaks, finally insisting on a detour to the top of Camelback Mountain, an imposing giant promising a thousand-foot climb. There was a radio repeater there, he claimed, and with one of his mini Zoble solar panels he could get it up and running again to keep them in contact with the Long Island radios. Heron, to her credit, didn’t object, and they made the trek up a winding road through what looked like an old ski resort. The top, however, brought nothing but disappointment: It wasn’t a mountain at all but the leading edge of a massive plateau stretching west as far as the Partials could see. Heron scrounged the place for usable equipment, while Afa collapsed in a heap of maps and faulty calculations, insisting that this was wrong, that the mountain was here, they were just in the wrong place. It took them nearly two hours to calm him down, and then only when they agreed to stop for the night and rig up the Zoble anyway. Mountain or plateau, there was still a radio repeater, and Kira marveled at the massive latticework of the old metal tower. Afa assured them he’d set everything up correctly, but night had fallen before he finished, and there was no way to know for sure until the morning. The waiting, the inability to do anything productive, made Kira antsy. She decided to brush Bobo’s coat, and Samm joined her.

“I know that we need him,” Samm said, his voice low. “I just don’t know if he’s going to be much use to us at this point.”

“Is that how you think of him?” asked Kira. “Some kind of tool?”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” said Samm. “I’m telling you that I’m worried. We’ve only been out here a week, and there are at least three weeks to go before we make it to Chicago, probably more. By the time we get there, he’ll be a basket case.”

“Then we need to help keep him calm,” said Kira, and as if on cue Afa stood up, waddling to the horses with his backpack clutched in his arms.

“We need to go back,” he said, trying to pick up Oddjob’s saddle with one hand. “All my records—everything we’re looking for. I’ve already found it, we don’t need to go to a data center, we need to go back. It’s right there. It’s safe—”