But the whale has brought them back. The fungus is spreading. There is death in the air and in the water. The farther they travel, the more they discover. Not just orcas, but sharks and sturgeons and halibut and salmon floating in the inlet. As Jack motors the boat forward, the carcasses thump softly against the hull, their bellies rolling over white in the wake. The smell of rot rides the air.

“I don’t even want to think about what’s already in my lungs,” he says. “I don’t want to go through this again.”

Mia tugs at his sleeve and offers him a hand blistering with mushrooms.

“It’s okay, Jack,” Nora tells him.

“What is that?”

“She’s trying to protect us.”

His eyes flit between Nora and the hand and the sea. “Aren’t we supposed to be the ones protecting her?”

“Just take it.”

“But what is it?” he says. “Like medicine?”

“It’s more than that.”

He dutifully pops them in his mouth and grinds them down and gags at the earthy flavor and mucusy texture. Then his eyes widen, his pupils dilate, and he says, in a dreamy voice, that he has to sit down. He doesn’t bother with the bench. He drops to the floor and holds his head in his hands. Nora takes the wheel while he struggles to come to terms with the fact that he’s no longer himself. Himself has become themselves—the three of them are joined in a kind of mental marriage, a collective point of view. Nora’s hand is Jack’s, and Mia’s ear is Nora’s, and Jack’s heart is Nora’s. Separate but together. A they, a we.

A pole net is bracketed to the wall of the cabin, and Jack watches Mia remove it and exit the cabin. He remains on the floor, but his mind travels with her to the deck. He is here and he is there, leaning over the railing and dipping the net into the water to scoop up a steelhead still slapping its tail weakly. She brings it back into the cabin, dribbling water, and his vision of her catches up with the reality of her as she’s beside him. She takes the fish firmly in her hands and runs her thumbs along the gummed-up gills and the milky eyes. They all examine the residue scraped away by her fingernails.

“Do you know what this is?” Nora says.

The girl’s face is clenched like a fist when she looks at her mother and father. They don’t hear a voice, but they feel it, like the bass of a car radio speeding past.

The door is unlocked. When the door is unlocked, things come inside. Some of those things are bad.

“The door to where?”

The door to the other side of the comet.

“That doesn’t make sense.”

There are other worlds than this one.