Gisco and I stand quietly in the gondola, recovering from our Andean escapade.

My mother’s lullaby still echoes faintly in my ears. As I recall her sad voice, I’m also aware that the watch from my father is now powering our hot-air balloon. It feels strange that these two parents from the far future who I’ve never met, and who abandoned me, have somehow come together to take care of me.

Lightning strobes Gisco’s shaggy face, and rolling thunder makes his sensitive ears twitch back and forth.

We spin and dip, and the boy with the braid whimpers.

What are you planning to do with him? Gisco asks.

I don’t know, I admit. But wherever we’re headed, it has to be better than leaving him where he was.

Not necessarily, the dog conjectures gloomily. First, we may not make it through this storm. And second, if your spider dream was a premonition of who’s waiting for us, the poor kid might have been better off on the mountaintop.

You don’t really believe that.

It was foolish and reckless to bring him, Jack. Now we’re responsible for him, and it’s going to slow us down and endanger our mission. I understand why you did it. But the moral equation here is all a matter of proportion.

How can saving a kid’s life not be moral?

It’s just one life. The entire future is threatened by what the Dark Lord is doing in the Amazon. You haven’t seen it. I have. A world stripped of its lungs today is a world wheezing its way to a terrible death a thousand years from now. Millions of people are suffering horribly and depending on us. Your duty is to the many, Jack, and not to the few, and especially not to the one.

No, I tell Gisco. Saving the life of one person is just as important as saving the entire world. In fact, if you don’t save one person, you can’t save the entire world.

How can that be?

I don’t know, but it is.

For a while we’re both silent, watching as the cloud cover begins to change color, from black to inky purple. We’re traveling at great speed now. It also feels like we’re descending—I hope our nylon Band-Aid isn’t leaking.

Okay, Gisco, I say, you’ve seen this awful future and I haven’t. Explain the contradiction. How am I supposed to save the day? According to you, I can’t fight this Dark Lord who’s doing so much damage to the Amazon now, and to the future a thousand years from now. You made me come on this trip, but at the same time you say I don’t have a prayer of stopping him.

No one has a chance against him. Except for one man.

And who is that?