“They claim to be self- sufficient,” he said of the commune, “trading organic dairy goods for things they can’t raise on the farm. But even when I was a kid, I could tell something was fishy. We all lived too well; there was money coming in from somewhere.”

“Now who’s paranoid?” Elza said.

“You could have them investigated,” I said. “Section E audit.”

“Well, they were, of course, back when I joined the Farce. I’ve read the file, but it doesn’t go beyond a few background checks, my parents and the commune’s leaders. All harmless nuts.”

“You want them to be more interesting than that.”

“Dad was always hinting that the commune was part of something big. When I was old enough, I’d be brought into the inner circle.”

I’d heard the story. “But you ran away anyhow.”

“Along with most of my generation. Not many people under fifty there now.” He tasted his coffee and added more hot. “That’s typical of cults, once the charismatic leader dies or leaves. That was Randy Miles Brewer; he was pretty senile when I left.”

“Dead now?” Elza said.

He shrugged. “Technically not. He’s composting away in some LX center in San Francisco.” The Life Extension centers could keep you going past legal brain death, in some states, as long as blood or some equivalent fluid kept circulating. “So tell me, who pays for that? It’d be a lot of eggs and cheese.”

“You could subpoena their records,” I said.

He waved it away. “Don’t want to cause my parents any grief. In fifty years, it’ll all be in some dusty file in Washington, or Sacramento. I’ll look it up then.”

“They might still be alive.”

“Not with natural medicine. Your dad has a better chance at, what, ninety?”

“Ninety-two. He says he’ll try to wait it out, but I don’t think he’ll try hard. That age, if you don’t really enjoy life, you won’t get much more of it.”

“It feels strange,” Elza said, her voice a little husky. “Saying good-bye to my granddad and g- ma. If I were staying on Earth, I might have twenty more years with them.”

“Think of it as being social pioneers,” Dustin said. “The social protocols of relativity. When you come back, you’ll be thirteen years older. But your parents and grandparents . . .”

She broke the moment of silence by laughing, with an edge of hysteria. “Like it’ll make any difference. Chances are . . . chances are we’re not . . .”

“Elza,” I said, “sweetheart—we ought to make it a rule: We don’t talk about the end until it’s near. There’s no use plowing the same field over and over.”

“I don’t think that’s healthy,” Dustin said. “Ignoring reality. When you were in combat, you guys never talked about dying?”

I tried to be honest. “In the Faith War, no, not much. But we were all eighteen and nineteen, and felt immortal. When someone got killed, it was like a supernatural visitation.