But I remembered what the astrophysicists had said. During the Spin the sun had aged almost four billion years. The sun was a star, and stars expand as they grow old, often enough swallowing the planets that surround them. Without the continuing intervention of the Hypotheticals, the atmosphere of the Earth would be scoured away, the seas would evaporate like puddles on a July afternoon, and the rocky mantle itself would begin to melt.

Now, at last, that protection had been withdrawn.

The influx of radiation was already driving the weather. We flew south to Antarctica at sixty thousand feet, dodging thunderheads that boiled into the stratosphere like black, fluid mountains. And as we approached Vox—as we dipped down into the buffeting winds and streaming rain—our aircraft informed us that it was pushing the limits of its performance envelope. A little more of this and it wouldn’t be able to fly.

“Cut it out of me,” I said to Allison.

We were in the forward cabin, watching the end of the world. She gave me a queasy look.

“I mean it,” I said. “You told me this vehicle would fly back to Vox by itself if I wasn’t controlling it.”

“Yes, but—”

“Then cut the node out of me.”

She thought about what I was asking her. “I’m not sure I can,” she said. “I mean … cleanly.”

“Then do it messy,” I said. “You promised me as much.”

She gave me a defiant stare, then dropped her head and nodded.

*   *   *

The man I had killed was not in any absolute sense an innocent man. Nor was my father, whose crimes were exposed by the killing.

The man I had killed (I learned) was a drifter by the name of Orrin Mather, who had robbed a half dozen liquor stores between Raleigh and Biloxi before he was hired by my father. In all of these robberies he had threatened to use a weapon (a secondhand .42 caliber pistol), and in three of them he had actually fired the gun. None of his victims died, but he left one paralyzed from the waist down. All these facts emerged during my father’s trial.

My father may not have known the man he hired was a criminal, but it surely wouldn’t have surprised him. It was his habit to recruit employees from among the casual and undocumented laborers who gathered around the Houston bus depot. He paid them in cash and asked only that they keep their mouths shut. If he happened to learn about a man’s criminal record or uncertain immigration status, he used the knowledge to extort the man’s loyalty. Generally he started such men as lifters and carriers in the warehouse, moving them into more sensitive positions if they demonstrated an acceptable combination of sobriety and servility. That had been Orrin Mather’s career path.