This time he had picked the restaurant, a Northside theme pub, shepherd’s pie and Guinness and green paper napkins embossed with pictures of harps. He was waiting when she arrived. She was surprised to find another woman sitting at the table with him.

The woman wore a blue flower-print dress that was neither fresh nor in good repair. She was skinny to the point of emaciation and she seemed both nervous and angry. When Sandra approached the table the woman looked at her warily.

Bose stood hastily. “Sandra, I’d like you to meet Ariel Mather—Orrin’s sister.”

Chapter Seven. Sandra and Bose

CHAPTER SIX

TURK FINDLEY’S STORY

1.

There had been moments during my captivity when I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to live or die. If there was any sense or meaning in the life I had lived—from the unforgivable act that had caused me to leave Houston many years ago to the moment I woke up in the Equatorian desert—I couldn’t see it. But now the mindless urge to live came roaring back. I watched as swarms of Voxish aircraft began the systematic slaughter of the Farmer rebels, and all I wanted was to get to a safe place.

2.

From the cart on its hillside we were able to see the treeless plain surrounding Vox Core as it became the scene of a rolling apocalypse. The Farmer armies had already begun to retreat as soon as the sirens sounded. At the first sight of the approaching aircraft they dropped their makeshift pikes and broke formation, but the Voxish warplanes came on relentlessly, skimming over the ranks of their enemies like hunting birds. The weapon they used was new to me: the aircraft projected fiery wave fronts that rolled across the landscape and then vanished like summer lightning, leaving cone-shaped swathes of smoldering soil and charred bodies in their wake. The sound they made was a seismic exhalation, powerful enough that I felt it in my rib cage. The war sirens went on wailing like mournful giants.

Briefly, it seemed as if we might be safe up here on the hill. Then one of the warplanes banked nearby, as if considering us, and the wind carried up the stench of smoke and burning flesh. Our guard detail evaporated, running for the woods, with the exception of Digger Choi, who seemed immobilized. I caught his eye. He was clearly terrified. I held out my bound hands to him, hoping he could interpret the gesture: Don’t leave us tied up like hogs at a slaughter. Allison added a few pleading words in Voxish, barely audible under the general roar.

Digger Choi turned his back.