I was a neutral in the conflict, insofar as that was possible. It wasn’t my fight. And I wondered whether Allison Pearl, the Champlain Ghost, might be similarly neutral. Maybe that was what Treya found so disconcerting: “Allison” and I were both shades of a disinterested past, both potentially disloyal to Vox Core.

6.

We broke camp at dawn and followed the curving cliff until we came to what Treya had called “stairs,” broad declivities cut into the face of the granite. Time had beveled the steps into sloping ledges separated by giddy ten-foot drops. Every surface was slick with mossy growths and bird dung, and the deeper we descended the louder the roar of the ocean became. Eventually the high edges of the two adjoining islands closed off all of the sky apart from a few slanting rays of sunlight. We made slow progress, and twice we paused while Treya took hits from her high-tech syringe. Her expression was grim and, under that, terrified. She kept glancing backward and up, as if she was afraid we were being followed.

By the angle of the light I guessed it was past noon when I helped her down the last vertical gap to the roof of the tunnel itself. The roof of the tunnel was broader than it had looked from above and we were able to stand on it safely enough, though it was unnerving to walk on a surface that rounded away on both sides to a sheer drop. It was maybe a half mile to the opposite anchor point, now concealed by mist, where we would have to do another round of serious climbing, with any luck before darkness set in. Night would come fast down here.

For the sake of distraction I asked Treya what she (or Allison Pearl) remembered about Champlain.

“I’m not sure it’s safe to answer that question.” But she sighed and went on: “Champlain. Cold winters. Hot summers. Swimming in the lake at Catfish Point. My family was broke most of the time. Those were the years after the Spin, when everybody was talking about how the Hypotheticals might actually be benevolent, protecting us. But I never believed that. Walking down those Champlain sidewalks, you know the way concrete glitters in the summer sun? I couldn’t have been more than ten years old but I remember thinking that was how we must look to the Hypotheticals—not just us but our whole planet, just a glimmer underfoot, something you notice and then forget.”

“That’s not how Treya talks about the Hypotheticals.”

She gave me an angry look. “I am Treya.” And walked a few paces more. “Allison was wrong. The Hypotheticals—they’re gods by any reasonable definition, but they’re not indifferent.” She stopped and squinted at me, wiping salt mist from her eyes. “You ought to know that!”