Trevor Hicks, his work finished in Washington, D.C., had taken a train to Boston, single suitcase and computer in hand. At the station, he had been met by a middle-aged, brown-haired scattered-looking woman dressed in a black wool skirt and old flower-print blouse. She had taken him to her home in Quincy in a battered Toyota sedan.

There he had rested for two days, watched owlishly by the woman's five-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter. The woman had been husbandless for three years, and the old wood-frame house was in severe disrepair— leaky pipes, decrepit wailboard, broken stairs. The children seemed surprised that he did not share her bedroom, which led him to believe she had not lacked for male company. None of this mattered much to Hicks, who had never been judgmental even before his possession. He spent much of his time sitting on the broken-down living room couch, thinking or interacting with the network, helping a dozen other people in the Northeast compile lists of people to be contacted, and/or prepared for removal from the Earth.

All of his life, Hicks had worked with high-powered personalities—bright, knowledgeable, contentious, and often cantankerous men and women. Most of the people he now communicated with in the network fit this description. To his surprise, whatever maintained and governed the network did not discourage high-powered behavior among the network's members. There was considerable debate, even acrimony, as first the categories of contac-tees and "saved" were decided, then specific communities, and finally specific individuals.

The Bosses (or Overlords or Secret Masters, all titles applied at one time or another to the anonymous organizers) had apparently decided that humans, with broad supervision, knew best how to choose and plan for their own rescue. Hicks sometimes had his doubts.

Over a dinner of macaroni and cheese served on a bare oak table, as the children listened, Hicks asked his hostess about her role in the rescue.

"I'm not sure," she said. "They got to me about six weeks ago. I took in three people about a week after that, and they stayed here for a few days and then left. Some more people after that, and now you. Maybe I'm a den mother."

The daughter giggled.

They could have chosen more hospitable lodgings. But he kept that thought to himself.

"What about you?" she asked. "What are you doing?"

"Making up a list," he said.

"Who's going, who's not?"

He hesitated, then nodded. "Actually, we're concentrating more on a list of others to recruit. There's a lot of work left to be done, and not nearly enough people to do it.?'

"I don't think my kids and I are going," the woman said. She stared at the table, her face slack, then slowly lifted her eyebrows and stood. "Jenny," she said, "let's clear the table."

"Where ain't we going, Mama?" the boy asked.

"Hush up, Jason," the daughter ordered.

"Mama?" Jason persisted.