I stood closer to him, because we had come to the heart of the matter. “Listen. There are aircraft on Vox that can fly from pole to pole without refueling. And because you’re Uptaken, the Arch is still open to us. We can leave. If we’re careful and lucky, we can get ourselves back to Equatoria.”

And in Equatoria we could surrender to Vox’s ancient enemies, the people who had nuked Vox Core in an attempt to prevent us from provoking the Hypotheticals. The cortical democracies despised and feared Vox, but they wouldn’t refuse to accept a pair of earnest refugees—I hoped. They might even help us make our way from Equatoria to one of the pleasanter Middle Worlds, where we could live out our lives in peace.

Turk was giving me a hard look. “You can fly one of these vehicles?”

“No,” I said. “But you can.”

*   *   *

I told him all of it then. I told him the plan I’d worked out in the long nights when I couldn’t sleep, nights when Treya’s loneliness threatened to shut down Allison’s defiance, nights when it was almost impossible to find a space between those two borders of self, impossible even to name myself with any real conviction. The plan was practical, I believed, or might be. But it required a sacrifice Turk might not be willing to make.

When he understood what I was asking, he didn’t give me an answer. He said he’d have to think about it. I accepted that. I said we could come up here in a few days and talk about it again.

“In the meantime,” he said, “there’s something else I need to do.”

“What?”

“I want to see the other survivor,” he said. “I want to see Isaac Dvali.”

Chapter Ten. Turk’s Story

CHAPTER NINE

SANDRA AND BOSE

After she left Bose’s condo Sandra had to drive to her apartment for fresh clothes, so she was most of an hour late for work. Not that she really cared, under the circumstances. Yesterday, Orrin Mather had been accused of a violent outburst—perhaps, or probably, if what Bose had told her was true, because Congreve or someone above him had been paid (in cash or longevity) to keep Orrin locked up. Sandra tried to contain her anger during the drive, but succeeded only in damping it down to a low simmer.

She had disliked Arthur Congreve since the day he was appointed supervisor, but it had never occurred to her that he might be as corrupt as he was unpleasant. But she knew Congreve had connections with municipal government—a cousin who was a sitting councilman—and although the street cops at HPD thought he was too stingy with admissions, the chief of police had made approving visits to State not once but twice since Congreve had been installed.