And yet, for a hopeful moment, Galen had entertained the notion that maybe a baby would make things better between them. A dumb idea, but still he’d thought it. But of course the baby only made them fight more. If Theo had returned from that ride down the mountain, probably they would have told him right then; Galen could pretty much imagine the scene. We’re sorry, Galen. We should have told you. It just kind of … happened. Humiliating, but at least it would have been over by now. The way things stood, he and Maus would have to live with this lie between them forever. Probably they’d end up despising each other, if they didn’t despise each other already.

He was thinking these things while also dreading the morning to come, when he was supposed to ride down to the station. The order had come from Ian, though Galen had the feeling it wasn’t his idea, that it came from somewhere else—Jimmy, probably, or maybe Sanjay. He could take a runner with him, but that was all; they couldn’t spare the hands. Box it up and wait for the next relief crew, Ian had said, three days tops. Okay, Galen? You can handle this? And of course he’d said he could, no problem. He’d even felt a little flattered. But as the hours passed, he’d found himself regretting his quick compliance. He’d been off the mountain only a few times before, and it was awful—all those empty buildings and slims cooking in their cars—but that wasn’t the worst of it, not really. The problem was that Galen was afraid. He was afraid all the time now, more and more as the days went by and the world around him continued its slow, hazy dissolving. People didn’t really know how bad his eyesight was, not even Maus. They knew, but they didn’t really know, not the full extent, and every day it seemed to be getting worse. As things stood, his field of vision had shrunk to less than two meters; everything beyond that quickly faded into a gassy blankness, all lurching shapes and formless colors and halos of light. He’d tried a variety of eyeglasses from the Storehouse, but nothing seemed to help; all he’d gotten for his troubles were headaches that felt like someone sticking a blade into his temple, so he had long since stopped trying. He was pretty good with voices and could generally aim his face in the right direction, but he missed a lot of things, and he knew this made him seem slow and stupid, which he wasn’t. He was just going blind.