 
The Historian

c. 2016 Kathryn Judson

Smashwords Edition

Revised August 31, 2016

ISBN: 9781370590124

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All characters are imaginary, and not based on real persons, living or dead.

Other books in this series, each focusing on different central characters, are The Smolder, The Birdwatcher, The Unexpecteds, The Hidden, and Notes From Hiding (which takes place several years later than the other books).

# /1/

Tomas studied the report on his reader, sensing that something seemed to be wrong with it, but not able to see what.

"You think too much, Number 23," a colleague four chairs lower said, in a voice that was neither clearly joking, nor clearly serious.

Tomas hid his concern, smiled the half-smile expected in such circumstances, and shrugged. "Too much new stuff today. Haven't got it properly all sorted. But it's coming," he said, with the detached manner that was thought to best portray professionalism and party loyalty simultaneously.

He watched 'Number 27' for a reaction, but couldn't read the man. Unlike the colleague who'd been put before a firing squad the week before, this fellow had never been known to try to destroy men above him so he could move up. But, then, after an execution, there usually was an uncommon amount of jostling and treachery, in Tomas's experience. It wasn't supposed to be that way, of course. Executions were supposed to scare everyone into fuller cooperation. It just had never seemed to work that way.

Tomas looked at the large clock on the wall, to see if he had time to enter into a discussion in enough detail and nuance to secure his position. His colleague also looked at the clock, as did, one by one, every man below them in rank, and maybe half the men higher in rank. This was usual. Everyone had been taught to calculate what sorts of jobs or discussions they might undertake, based on the time left in the workday. Besides, in their dull lives, knowing when they'd be let out to go on to the next assignment at least felt important. Tomas was no longer sure that it was truly important, other than allowing a man to get something to eat so he wouldn't starve to death. Even that no longer seemed highly important, though. The world went on, regardless of who was in it. And it wasn't all that interesting of a world to live in, anyway.

It was close enough to the end of the day, that Tomas thought it safer to not launch a discussion. Discussions that cut off before you could answer any objections were even more dangerous than ones you could stretch out until you were sure you'd been clear, and those were dangerous enough. So he opted to ignore the man four chairs down, and turned back to work.

At just the right number of minutes before the end-of-shift bell, men began to tidy up their work areas, and put things away, including the electronic readers that were restricted for use in the One Hundred Room by the one hundred men deemed the top scholars at the time. Tomas put away his reader, took his regular Informer off the charging stand where it had sat all day, keeping watch on him and his fellows. He put it in his pocket – the special pocket, provided in their uniforms just for an Informer – and when the bell rang he headed for the door with the other 99 favored men, all of whom bore a family resemblance to him. His was a young breed of humans, not yet as standardized in appearance as some, but it was coming along nicely, they had all been told. In the meantime, the individual variations in looks were being overlooked thanks to an uncommonly good standardization in intellectual ability and trainability. In the meantime, too, no one was likely to mistake them for members of another breed, thanks to their uniforms and identical haircuts, and bodies that were sculpted the same thanks to a mandatory exercise program designed specifically for the fledgling Memory Unit Specialist breed.

As he walked to his apartment, Tomas passed other men heading home from work, each breed from its own work area. They exchanged greetings, as a sign of Society Unity, but were careful to not be too friendly, lest they give the impression that they wished to upset the carefully and scientifically based Order that was being perfected, which required that each breed stick to its assigned duties and places.

He walked through his front door to find a trainer waiting for him, with an older female. The female looked a bit frightened, which was usual, but she also had a slight predatory look about her, which made Tomas assume, for safety's sake, that she was tasked with making sure that he wasn't showing signs of wanting to get emotionally attached to a mate. Also, at her age, she might be facing becoming an experson if she failed to get pregnant. Females reaching the end of their breeding years did have that to face, and sometimes it made them a bit crazy. Crazier than usual, at any rate. Females, with their tendency to tie everything together in their minds, were obviously harder to keep on track than males, in Tomas's experience. Why Science had built them that way, he wasn't sure. It seemed to him that if Science could handle developing male and female units, with all the details worked out for breeding successfully outside of laboratories, then something like mental stability should have been easier by comparison. At the same time, he assumed Science was working on it, and would eventually prevail, and so there was no point dwelling on it, much less voicing your observations, for fear of having the observations come across as doubts.

"She's been known to bolt, so we're locking the two of you in," the trainer said. "But of course you aren't to tell anyone that. Mating every two days. We'll preg-test on the off days. You're both experienced and I have a meeting so I'll skip the usual briefings, and leave it to you. Carry on."

The trainer, studiously no longer paying heed to anyone or anything around him, ambled to the door and out, and Tomas could hear the lock being turned. He turned to look at his new temporary roommate, weighing in his mind how in the world a man was supposed to handle a woman who actually had been known to bolt. That was impossible, after all. Well, not impossible to happen every now and then (humans weren't perfected yet, so sometimes there was a malfunction – it was only to be expected), but for her to still be alive, instead of culled – that had been beyond imagining, before being confronted with it. Grasping at explanations, he latched onto the idea that she must surely be superior breeding stock, with unique characteristics. It seemed unlikely, but no other idea came to mind that wasn't even more taboo than that. His mind briefly tried to follow the trainer out the door, wondering if the trainer had seemed upset, but it came back, firmly, with focus, on the female in the room, presently his until she got pregnant, or until the breeders yanked her for failing to get pregnant.

"Do you mind if we eat first? I'm hungry," she said.

That was a new ploy in his experience, although, looking at her, she did look pinched, almost like an experson in the early stages of starving. He waved that thought aside. After all, sometimes actual persons got reduced rations for a while, as a disciplinary measure. He'd even had it happen to him, once, years ago, when he'd allowed himself to get irritable during a time when it was especially in fashion to discipline people with hunger. It wasn't as much in fashion as it had been, but he understood that sometimes it still happened, although usually to younger Citizens, who quite naturally hadn't learned as many tricks for staying out of trouble as their elders had.

"Let me check to see what my instructions are, if any," he said, fishing out his Informer, to see if the trainer had sent him notes on specific care of this specimen, such as warnings that she ought not be fed until she had proved compliant. There were no notes from the trainer, which meant that Tomas was left with what he'd learned from previous experiences, none of which aligned with the present situation enough for comfort.

His stomach growled. The woman laughed, quietly. But she also looked at a large clock on the wall. Tomas likewise consulted the clock, and realized that if it were a normal day with no one else on hand, he would be getting ready to have dinner. As dull as routine often seemed, at the moment it seemed more solid than usual, so he opted to go with eating at his usual time. Sometimes he did, anyway, when he had a woman around. It gave a man time to study what he was up against, and sometimes it added something like suspense to the operation. Not that it did, really, add suspense. The two of them were ordered to mate, and they would mate, within the timeframes allotted to them, or else they'd be shot to open up a slot for Citizens who were more obedient.

Again, briefly, Tomas wondered if it was worth it to avoid being shot. The thought flitted off, unwrestled, as he set about getting dinner prepared for the both of them.

"What can I do to help?" the woman asked.

"I can handle it," Tomas said.

"No doubt. But I can handle helping, too. And I like to help," she said.

This was another unaccountable thing about females. So many of them actually did seem to perk up when there was a chance of pitching in to help someone else. Some men did, too, in a way. But with women it was different. Deeper. It seemed to be almost a necessity to many of them, in his experience.

Well, if Science had made them that way, who was he to fight it? So he figured out tasks for her, and together they made dinner.

Neither of them dared talk much. Not that there really was much about which to talk, Tomas thought, since he couldn't discuss his work, and had little going on in his life except that. Since it was a night for a broadcast amusement, they sat and watched that while they ate and while their dinners settled. But that was as long as Tomas was willing to wait. Science had had the foresight to make mating feel necessary at times, and sometimes even enjoyable, and usually he felt like he'd accomplished something whenever he'd completed his assignment. The sense of satisfaction didn't generally last very long, but why should it? After the job was done, Tomas slid back into something like boredom again, until it occurred to him that he might be wise to take extra precautions with this woman – this known bolter – before he went to sleep.

The female made his task easier by dropping off to sleep, something like exhaustion etched into her face. For good measure, he shackled her to the bed she was on, dug out a bedroll that was stored in the closet for precisely those times when a man needed to sleep but didn't want to share a bed with an assigned mate, and set up on the floor where he could see her when he was turned toward her. Ordinarily, he set up the woman on the floor and kept the bed for himself, but with the more serious problem cases he liked to anchor the female to the bed. It seemed safer; and a prudent man was appreciated by the breeders, he'd found. For that matter, there were reports that sometimes a female had been known to kill the male while he slept. Officially, it never happened, but in his job, Tomas got to read reports the public would never know about. He knew. Yes, he knew.

'You think too much,' his distracted mind scolded.

To get away from his thoughts, he downed a sleeping draught and went to bed on the bedroll, his back to the woman so she couldn't study his face if she woke, and fell asleep, trying to keep an ear cocked for possible trouble.

In what seemed far too short of a time – he certainly didn't feel rested – he heard someone, some female, singing a Loyalty Song. He rolled groggily onto his back, turned his head, and confirmed that it was his present mate singing, and that it was about three hours too early to get up. Stranger yet, the woman seemed to be singing in her sleep. He gritted his jaw to keep a shout from coming out. For one thing, a sane man didn't angrily yell at someone singing a Loyalty Song. And for another, he was no longer certain that she was really sleeping. Curious, and afraid, he dragged himself more fully awake and went to sit on the bed beside her. As soon as she finished the song, he jostled her shoulder. She pretended to be waking up – her acting was good, but up close and as wary as he was, he could see that she hadn't been fully asleep – and then she stared at him with a questioning look.

"You were singing in your sleep, and it's not time to get up yet," he said.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, in a normal voice. "But you were talking in yours," she said, under her breath.

"Don't worry about it," he said, as if forgiving her for waking him up.

She nodded as if thanking him for his generosity, and dropped off back into sleep, properly afraid to say or do anything else.

Tomas wondered what he'd said, and how much of it she'd heard. Then he prepared to be a model Citizen for the next few days, until his Informer's surveillance files would go into another cycle and erase tonight's recording – unless he was on a watch list. People who got onto watch lists provided some of the more ticklish situations that he spent his working hours trying to analyze. And talking in your sleep could get you on a watch list. That kept your files on the top of the stack, intact, for as long as the government felt like it. The only way to fight back was to be relentlessly normal for a while, if you could manage it – without being obvious about it, of course.

Awake now, but groggy, he puttered around the apartment. He was prone to insomnia – most of the MUS breed were, at this stage of development, especially after someone higher than them in rank got executed – so he wasn't worried about being turned in for that, unless he prolonged it unnaturally. Eventually, he puttered around to where he could read the label on the sleeping draught, so he'd know to not accidentally take anything like it again, just in case it had caused him to blather when he didn't have his shields up.

He didn't dare stay up too long, for fear the trainers would find out about it, and for fear of being too tired at work to stay sharp enough to survive any of his colleagues who saw an opening to put him in a difficult situation. As a safety measure, he mentally repeated approved mantras over and over as he fell asleep, trying to program his mind on what it should say, in case it got unruly again and decided to be vocal as he slept.

The next morning, once he was awake enough to deal with any hostile moves on her part, he freed the woman and they had breakfast together. He left it to her to clean up, and headed to work. Or tried to. The door was still locked. He tried to not look as rattled as he felt. He'd never been locked in before because of a wild woman, and it had never occurred to him that the door wouldn't be unlocked when it was time to head to work. It was dangerous to not show up on time, so after checking his Informer to see if he'd missed a message, and finding none, he sent a message to the trainer who'd brought the woman.

The trainer sent back a message to sit tight, stay quiet, and wait for him to show up. It seemed an incomplete set of instructions, even though, of course, a trainer was never obligated to explain himself or his orders. Tomas affected an unconcerned air, and poured himself another cup of coffee.

The woman asked if anything was wrong.

Tomas pretended not to have heard anything, on the grounds that he didn't know whether the order to 'stay quiet' meant to not say anything to her.

She took the hint, and didn't ask anything more.

They settled into watching the door as they drank coffee, their hands sometimes suffering tiny tremors of fear, which they staunchly refused to acknowledge.

Tomas finally admitted to himself that his recent bout of wondering if life was worth living was being swamped by a fear of dying, especially a fear of dying at the hands of a government he'd tried his best to serve loyally. He liked breathing. He liked to feel his heart beat, even when it was pounding, like now; more accurately, he hated the idea of it not beating anymore. He liked thinking, except when it went into nightmares; but previous nightmares had always been temporary, and thus not worth worrying about overmuch. But of course, nightmares in dreams were one thing, and nightmares in the daytime, based on real circumstances, were something else again.

Besides, it was shameful to be killed by the government.

"You think too much," his mind chided. So he tried to make his mind go blank, and to some degree succeeded.

Twenty minutes slid painfully by, before the lock turned on the door, and the trainer entered.

"You will come with me. Both of you. You are being transferred," he said. He ushered them out the door.

As they walked, Tomas noted nothing out of the ordinary. This was, in a way, annoying. His world was being turned upside down, and there were no ripples. Not that he should expect any, of course. From infancy, he had been trained to think that everyone was easily replaceable, by design. It made for a smoothly running Society, and was a vast improvement over primitive cultures. So they said.

"You think too much, and are going to get yourself killed if you don't keep your face under better control," his mind warned.

He got his face under better control, but wished he could knock some part of Society off its rails, just to show his superiors that they didn't have everything as much under control as they liked to think.

To his surprise, the trainer put them into a car with tinted windows, and drove to the air field, just the three of them in the vehicle. After he parked, the trainer wiped sweat from his brow. Tomas had never seen a trainer sweat on a cool day, and it scared him. The trainer saw him reacting to it, and assumed a more professional air. That helped. A little.

They transferred to a helicopter with two pilots and a gunner in it. Tomas and the woman were strapped to the wall, and their hands cuffed, as the helicopter rose from the ground. The pilot seemed to be in a hurry. Perhaps. It was hard to tell. Pilots sometimes had an intensity that came across as hurry, of course. They were famous for it.

The gunner went forward and put his hand on the co-pilot's shoulder as he talked to him about some routine matter. The co-pilot, obviously drugged, perhaps dead, slumped forward in his seat.

The trainer looked relieved, and helped pull the co-pilot out of his seat and into the cargo and passenger area. He held his finger to his lips, begging Tomas and the woman to be silent. He cuffed the co-pilot, and put a gag in his mouth. He dug out the unconscious man's Informer, and put it in a pocket in his own jacket, so it would be upright, just in case it was set to send alarms if it got tilted too far for too long.

The gunner playfully shook his finger at the trainer. He pointedly took the handcuffs off the co-pilot long enough to take the man's shirt off, and then put the cuffs back on. He replaced his shirt with the one off the co-pilot, pulled out a bottle of dye, worked some into his own hair so it was the right color for a pilot, wiped his hands with his old shirt to get most of the dye off, donned the co-pilot's flight gloves, and crawled into the co-pilot's seat. The pilot handed him a bottle of some sort of cream, and a towel, and so he took off the gloves, scrubbed the rest of the dye off with the cream, and put the gloves back on. Tomas thought the situation strangely inefficient, which was of course not really his business, but, still, it was bothersome. Teamwork – for that matter, life itself – was supposed to be more orderly than that.

Tomas had never flown before. The sensation of it was fascinating but odd and disorienting. He wished he could pay more attention to that, but his overburdened senses could barely keep up with the kidnapping playing out in front of him. He supposed he could call it a kidnapping, for now. No other word came to mind, at any rate.

The gunner signaled to the trainer, who gingerly took the Informer out of Tomas's pocket, and the woman's Informer gingerly out of her pocket, and handed them, along with his Informer, and the co-pilot's, up to the gunner. The copter swooped and spun and dropped alarmingly. The gunner opened his window and tossed those Informers out, along with his and the pilot's. The pilot reached for switches and flipped off lights and radios, and turned other things on, before forcing the helicopter up and forward again. The gunner pulled out a sensor of some sort, and aimed it all around the inside of the copter. He grinned.

"Yes, yes, I know. I should have also done this before we 'crashed,' just in case. But we aren't sending out signals, so go ahead and talk now, if you like," he said. "Just don't expect Bunyan or me to join in small talk. We might have to weave fast and low through trees, without actually crashing. And I'm not used to this model of bird. Not for flying it. Gotta use what you have, though, right?"

The trainer reached in his pocket, then sat down leaning against the wall, laughing.

"Let me guess," the pilot Bunyan called back. "You just thought to check something on your Informer, which we just sent to a watery grave."

"You're right. The time. I was wondering if we were on time?" the trainer said.

"As far as I know we are, but pardon me if I think there's no remedy at this point if we're not," Bunyan said, as he settled more solidly into his seat. "And try to save the jumping up and down for joy until we're landed, all right? Just in case we pass monitors, we need to look like we're on a regular flight."

"Right. I'll not disturb you again, unless I need to," the trainer said.

"Sounds like a plan," Bunyan said. He glanced at his replacement co-pilot, who grinned, saluted in a cheeky manner, then morphed, in an instant, into the very model of a regular co-pilot on a regular flight.

Tomas caught movement to his side, and turned in time to see the woman faint. He was a little afraid he might faint himself. But seeing her crumple had a marvelous effect on him. Not only did he not want to suffer the shame or danger of fainting, but he felt a strange and sudden necessity of staying alert so he could keep an eye on her. What he thought he could do for her, he hadn't any idea. He was strapped to the wall, and cuffed, and couldn't get to her or to anyone who might approach her. Still, he felt a need to keep an eye out, so he did.

# /2/

The pilots landed near what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse, set in a decaying industrial park. Large, decrepit-looking hanger doors slid open in a surprisingly well-oiled way, and men jogged out to jack up the landing pad and tow the copter inside, still on the pad. Glancing back, Tomas saw men rolling a replacement landing pad into place, presumably for the next copter.

"We're sure there are easier ways to do this, but this works, and we have the materials for it," Bunyan explained to his passengers. "Besides, it's fun, isn't it? Brace yourself, though. Sometimes this crew likes to do a flourish of a spin at the end." He grinned, as the ground crew turned the copter's landing-pad-turned-trolley into a merry-go-round, for a couple of spins.

"We're guessing they hope that someday somebody will complain, so we don't give them the satisfaction," the replacement co-pilot said, with a wink, as he held onto straps and the seat to keep from getting bent sideways from the spinning.

Tomas, who had never been around men who liked to kid around, was more alarmed by the people having fun than he was from the extraneous spinning. But, like a good Citizen, he did his best to act like nothing untoward was happening. After all, pilots outranked him.

The ground crew settled into more professional behavior as a dignified man walked into the room and headed to the copter. He walked up to the pilot's door. Bunyan opened his door so they could talk.

"One helicopter, as ordered, sir," Bunyan said. "Plus one loyal co-pilot, whom I understand you know, and who is likely as glad to escape as I was; one Era co-pilot who has been knocked unconscious and taken prisoner and is in the back for your consideration; Gingrich, the trainer, who needed out; and two people, a man and a woman, who came along with Gingrich, about whom I know nothing except that they came with Gingrich, sir."

The ground crew opened the cargo bay doors, so the boss could see the people in the back. Tomas found himself looking into the eyes of a man who had an appraising stare unlike any he'd ever met with. The man turned to glance at the woman, who was awake now, but deathly pale, and frozen in fear. Then he turned his eyes and attention full bore on the trainer. "Gingrich?" he asked, leaving the name hanging in the air, speaking unspoken questions for him.

"The good news is that I haven't told them anything, leaving that all up to your discretion. The bad news is that I didn't have authorization from anybody, either side, you or the Era guys, for rescuing them. I'd apologize, but Chessa, that's the lady here, was about to get declared an experson because she increasingly won't fit their mold, plus they think she's getting too old to be useful enough; and Tomas, that's the man here, he's gotten to within possibly just one more report of suspicious behavior by a colleague before he'd get culled by firing squad, and the suspicious behavior is simply that he actually wonders what's true and what isn't, as far as I can tell. And I couldn't leave them to that, not with me leaving and not being able to run interference any more. I'm sorry. I'd promise to not do it again, only-"

The boss put his hand up. "We'll discuss it later, if we get a chance. Considering that you're being pulled from Topside permanently, it's probably a moot point, anyway."

"Do you mind turning your watch my way, so I can see what time it is?" Bunyan asked the boss. "I don't think I'll miss my Informer all that much, but it could be handy for that sort of thing."

"Carter, get Bunyan and Owen properly outfitted, and fed, and rested. We don't know how soon we'll need them again," the boss said to a man standing nearby. Bunyan and his co-pilot got out and followed Carter away. As they walked, Bunyan got hold of his escort's wrist and turned it, to read the time off of a device that was strapped there. He did it playfully, but Tomas had the impression that it mattered a great deal to him exactly what time it was.

"Nelson, get a crew and take the prisoner to a holding cell, and get him settled in," the boss said. A group of men unloaded the still-unconscious Era co-pilot and carried him off. They were surprisingly careful with him, Tomas thought; almost as if they really didn't want to risk harming him. Odd that. He was a prisoner, after all.

"Welcome to our world, Miss Chessa, and Tomas. I'm Lt. Holmes," the boss said. "Ordinarily I'd spend a little more time chatting, or would assign someone to help you get settled in, but today's a bit on the busy side, and I likely will have to leave it to Gingrich here to get you briefed. The three of you will have to be detained for a while, for safety's sake; Gingrich both for acting against orders and because he's a pacifist; and the two of you for being unknowns, and Topsiders. Not to worry. It's standard procedure, and most likely you'll all be out and getting integrated within a few weeks or months. But we set out to launch a war today, and by their natures, wars are mighty unpredictable, and so I'm going to be busy. You'll have to excuse me." He nodded a friendly goodbye, and walked off, signaling as he went for a handful of men to take Gingrich, Tomas, and Chessa, to a holding suite in a nearby building.

They were put under the supervision of a team of three men and two women. The leader of the supervisors was white of hair and seemed somewhat stiffened, but had sharp eyes. The other team members appeared to have been chosen with an eye toward quick reflexes and strong muscles. Tomas had never seen anyone over the age of 50, and so the team leader was a shock to him. The younger members, though, were pretty much what he'd expect for guards. Except they weren't, because they weren't all one breed. They were a strange mix of looks and heights and builds. He didn't dare ask about why they weren't all one breed, like guards should be. All he dared do was keep trying to look like he saw nothing amiss, unless he got clues that he was supposed to notice that something was wrong.

"It's all right, son. You'll get used to it. Really," the old man said, gently. "Let's get a little something to eat, and let you three get some rest, shall we? The washroom is over there. Rick will show you how the sink and such works. That's after Tanya gets the woman checked out on the facilities. Ladies first, is our motto. Or one of our mottoes, anyway. Off you go, Tanya and – what's her name? Chessa? Pretty name, that. Off you go, so Tomas here can get to it after you. Steady there, Chessa. It will be all right. You're fine. We expect wobbles at first. You'll get over it. It's normal to be rattled at first, and normal to get over it. Off you go," he said, as he gently herded the two women to the washroom.

"You've had a fair amount of experience at this, it looks like," Tomas guessed, meaning merely to think it, but having it come out audibly, partly out of desperation.

"Oh, yes. Gingrich here isn't the only one who can't leave fellow misfits behind, and we also regularly rescue people on purpose, after planning for it. But, here, let's help fix lunch, shall we? We might as well," the old man said, leading the way to the kitchen area, where he promptly put Tomas to work, alongside guards. He was given a washroom break as soon as Chessa and her escort came out, but otherwise he was kept busy helping prepare lunch. It seemed a mercy, being kept busy.

Oddness on top of oddness, the guards and Gingrich chatted almost nonstop, with only the briefest breaks, while they got dinner ready, covering an unruly assortment of topics. Then, at dinner, for which everyone sat at a large table, the locals didn't eat until everyone had bowed his head and the old man had said a strange request for a blessing. Tomas assumed that the strange ritual was to fulfill some Loyalty requirement. He didn't feel up to asking about details, though. Not yet. Besides, he didn't want to admit that he hadn't quite caught what the old man had said. Not more than a fraction of it, at any rate.

Not knowing yet what was expected of them, Tomas and Chessa asked no questions and ventured no observations, unless asked. To his mind, they weren't asked anything of any seeming importance. Mostly there seemed to be a concern that they get the food they wanted. Tomas was afraid it was a test of some sort – after all, a person just ate what was assigned to him, unless he was very highly ranked indeed. Which he wasn't, of course.

He looked to the trainer for instructions.

The trainer smiled gently at him, which made him seem unreal. "It's all right, Tomas," he said. "Around here, people eat what they want, from what's available. Even when food is rationed, we don't generally tell people what to eat or when to eat. We leave that to them. I know it's hard to imagine. You'll get used to it, and likely sooner than you can imagine. Oops. Grab Chessa. I think she's about to faint on us."

Tomas moved as quickly as he could, but still barely kept her head from bouncing off the floor.

"Good catch," the old man said. "Walker, help him carry her to a bunk. Tanya, help get her tucked in."

One of the guards – the shorter, stouter, paler of the younger men – helped Tomas carry Chessa to a lower bunk at one end of the room. Feeling wary for her sake as well as his own, Tomas took discreet inventory of his surroundings. There were bunks at this end of the room, and at the other. There were curtains hung from the ceiling, now drawn back, that could shut off views of the bunks from elsewhere in the room. There were five cells along part of the back wall, with what looked to be roll-down shades on the top of the bars, on the outside of the cells so that guards would have final say in whether the shades were up or down. Three of the cells had bunks for four people, one up and one down on either side of the cell. The other two cells had wide beds, about twice as wide as the bunks. The kitchen area sat between two of the cells and the other three. The middle of the room had tables and chairs and open space. Light came in via grimy, frosted windows high up on the wall. The ceiling was disturbingly high, not like a residential area at all. Probably the area would be hard to heat in cold weather, given all the extraneous air space.

Footsteps coming at a run interrupted his study.

A man stuck his head in the door. "Have you seen the billboard? Have you?" he asked, waving what looked to be a variety of reader, or deluxe Informer, around in the air with unhindered excitement.

"I haven't the least idea what you're talking about," Gingrich said.

"No, I guess you wouldn't. And likely no one else here does, either, come to think about it, since all they knew was that we planned to declare war today. But here's the deal. The first volley, I think you'll be pleased to know, was to hijack the propaganda billboards around the world – a whole bunch of them, anyway – and put this on them. Tell me what you think. This should rattle people high and low, don't you think?"

He held up his device to show a picture of a pleasant young woman, beautiful and relaxed and sporting a melting sort of smile. In text beside her picture was "My name is Oleevaba Charlesville, and I've discovered life beyond government."

"Oh, bravo. Well done," the old man in charge of the guards said. "It's not like anything the Topside government would put out, and the lady isn't like anybody topside, either. Too relaxed. Too joyous. Not flinty in the least, either. Oh, well done, I say."

"Better yet," the messenger said, "is that it does seem to be getting under people's skins. It's too early to know how it will shake out, but we've hit a nerve. No question. And all without killing anybody or blowing stuff up, which I figured you guys might appreciate." He looked a bit nervous saying that, but seemed to be in earnest about reassuring the guards.

"Just to be clear, I'm fine with blowing stuff up, if it's called for. Especially if it helps keep people from getting killed," Gingrich said.

"Um, yeah, well, I'd better be going now, but I got permission to tell you guys this much, so you'd know the war was on, and, um, that we're not, um, you know, bloodthirsty, or, um, well, I need to get back to work now. We have lots and lots to do. Finally!" He dashed back out. The door closed, the lock turned and an outside bolt slid into place, from the sounds of things.

"I guess it's time to explain to you that although we're your guards, we're also your fellow prisoners, more or less," the old man said. "All of us here are people who feel that we're not allowed to use violence against people, ever, for any reason, including self-defense. So we haven't been able to participate in some of the preparations for war. And we can't participate in some of the work related to the war. And they don't know what to do with us yet, other than sometimes lock us up where we can't get in the way, or demoralize – as they see it – anybody they're counting on to fight when they decide to fight."

"And, yes, yes, of course, if we were back where we were, under the thumbs of the Era government, we'd be dead by now, culled by the powers that be, just for not toeing the party line," Gingrich said. "But we're not under their control anymore, and the rebels among whom you've landed allow for dissent, and really are as civilized as they know how to be. We're safe enough, for now, although if history is any guide we might have vigilantes after our hides before this is all over. We'll see. That we're known to be harmless as a matter of policy could protect us with most people in this society, if for no other reason than they'd be labelled a bully and a coward for attacking us, but, well, that hasn't stopped people being martyred before this. Not by a long shot. In the meantime, there's really not much else to do but to try to redeem the time, if we can." He shook his head and let out a muffled laugh. "Sorry. I'm not sure I thoroughly believe that I'm free again. It's going to take some getting used to."

The old man laughed. "It always does. And you'll have times you'll go backwards, too."

"I was afraid I was remembering that from previous reentries, mine and historical," Gingrich said. He smiled wanly. "Sorry. I don't mean to be antisocial, but we've already done more talking and sharing than I've done in the past three years combined, I think. And I'm exhausted. Which bunk is mine?"

"Any but what Rick, Walker, or I have laid hold to, on that end of the room," the old man said, pointing. "Walker, get him set up, will you? Tomas, you might as well go claim a bunk now, too, so we're all in agreement on who goes where. I'll sit here drinking coffee unless anybody needs me, or wants to talk. Oh, by the way, for those of you who don't know, I'm Bramson. I suppose at some time it was short for Abram's son, but at any rate, it's become a rather common name hereabouts. If there's any question which Bramson you mean, I'm Bramson Fairfield. And that lovely young lady is Veneece, if you don't know yet. Off you go, now. Naps for those who want them. Quiet reflection for those who don't."

Tomas obediently followed the other men to the men's bunks, and was grateful when Gingrich acted like a trainer and just pointed him to one. It was a lower one, which was welcome at the moment, since it meant he could lay down without having to struggle, shaking, up a ladder first. Tomas hated that he was shaking. At least the other men didn't seem to care that he was shaking. He was sure they noticed; and he was sure it wasn't just his imagination adjusting to his shame that made him think so. These men, whatever else you could say about them, were men who didn't miss much. He'd stake his life on that.

He crawled into his bunk, his back to the others so they couldn't read his face if, waking or sleeping, it got away from him, and, feeling like he was back in the helicopter as it plunged in a fake crash, he passed out.

# /3/

Tomas would have gladly kept his eyes closed for another couple of days, pretending to sleep, trying to convince himself that the swirl of memories in his head were just hallucinations. But he heard other people in the room, several at once. They were trying to be quiet, but they were moving around. And the light didn't seem to be right, for his apartment. And the smells were wrong. Besides, he needed to see if it was time to go to work. Although he didn't feel rested, he had a heaviness of body that suggested he'd been in bed long enough, if not dangerously long.

He opened his eyes, and faced a wall that was unfamiliar, and too close. Certain now that whatever was happening wasn't a dream, he rolled reluctantly over. A few feet away, a curtain blocked his view of whatever was on the other side of it. He was pretty sure he knew what the room would look like, but considering that his world was upside down, he was prepared to be surprised. He cast about for a way to tell what time it was before he crawled out. He had no Informer within reach, for the first time in his adult life. He stuck his head out to look for a clock. There wasn't one within sight, that he could discover.

A head leaned over from an upper bunk.

"Oh, good. You're awake. I thought I felt the bunks move," the man said. "I'm getting hungry. How about you? Oh, I'm Walker, if you forgot. You passed out before we could tell you that we don't have set times around here, at least not for now. So if you need to sleep some more, go right ahead. It's always a bad shock, when people first join us. For that matter, I was a mess for weeks, and I was just a kid, more or less. Not that set in my ways, in other words."

A familiar voice on the other side of the curtain said, "Knock, knock. Just me. Gingrich, that is." The trainer stuck his head around the end of the curtain. He took in the situation, and drew back the curtains. "Might as well get up for a while, and take care of stuff like eating and cleaning up. We don't know how long we're stuck here, or when we might have to move. Might as well keep in shape, and fueled. Up and at it, lads."

The voice had been familiar, but the friendliness of it was surreal, and so was Gingrich's manner, which was a strange mix of trainer-by-habit and freeman-by-birth, although Tomas wouldn't have known to classify it as such. Still, it was more familiar than anything else in his life right now, and Tomas was happy enough to obey.

Most of the others were sitting at the table, their heads bowed, like they'd done in the strange ritual before eating the day before. But there wasn't food in front of them.

"It's called praying. We do it a lot. Or, they do it a lot. I've had to train myself out of getting caught at it, so I'm relearning to bow my head, among other things," the trainer said. "By the way, now that we've escaped, you can call me Gingrich. Or Yans. The name is Yans Gingrich, in other words, and I answer to either, or both. Let's get some breakfast for you. Oh, if you're wondering about Chessa, she's still sleeping, with Tanya nearby in case she needs anything."

"That's probably not going to work, I see," the old man of the group said. "By the way, my name's Bramson, if you forgot. Veneece, please do me a favor and peek around and see if there's any reason he can't peek, to see for himself."

The woman smiled – smiling seemed to be frightfully common around here – and went to peek around the curtain. She motioned to Tomas to come quietly. He joined her and took a look, wondering slightly how interested in Chessa he was supposed to appear. She was a mess, like she'd tossed and turned. And she was too skinny for comfort, too. Specimens that didn't look healthy ought to be quarantined, unless you were making an example of them for some reason. But she was breathing, so he'd confirmed that she was alive. But she was sound asleep, which left him with really nothing to do but to look at Veneece, who smiled at him and led him back to the others.

"Our keepers brought some fresh clothes for you and Chessa while you were sleeping. No sense keeping you in uniform, especially since we might be moved through combat zones, in which case you don't want to look like the enemy. That could unleash just all sorts of nasty confusion, and maybe get you shot by nervous friends. Rick can get you set up with that, while Walker grabs some breakfast," Bramson said. He grinned at Walker.

"I know. I know! My appetite is legendary. I'm sorry. For what it's worth, I've been a good boy during sieges, where we were all on reduced rations. I can do it. By the way, are we on restricted rations yet? I hate to ask, but I guess I ought to," Walker said.

"Not officially. Officially, we've got six months' provisions as a buffer. Unofficially, we're just being careful to not be wasteful," Bramson said.

"Well, if I'm ever wasteful, or gluttonous, either one, sit on me," Walker said, as he headed to the kitchen area. "Would you like for me to fix you something, Tomas?" he asked.

Tomas turned to Gingrich, hoping he'd act like a trainer, and decide for him.

"Three pancakes, and two eggs, if it's convenient. Same for me," Yans said, with a strange overlay of patience.

Tomas looked at him, steadily conveying his willingness to be corrected; wondering if he'd taken a misstep somehow.

Yans shook his head. "You're fine. I'm not upset, at least not with you. Thanks for noticing that I'm not entirely sure what to do for you, versus what to get you to do for yourself. Besides the fact that I'm never sure of that with any foundling, especially during the early days, there's the problem that I'm trying to adjust to the change in place and position, too. But, you're fine. Not in any trouble at all. Now, go with Rick, and get washed up and changed, and come back for breakfast. After that, we'll have to just take it from there."

Tomas followed his keeper to the washroom, and then back to the bunk area. Rick drew the curtain, shutting them off from the others, and handed Tomas pants and shirts of varying sizes and cuts and colors. There was a similarity to the options, in Rick's eyes; but a wild inconsistency to them to Tomas's eye.

"We're not that good at guessing what will fit a person. Theoretically, we could measure you and order up clothes, but we've found that's only marginally useful anyway. So our assignment, mine and yours, is to put together some sort of outfit from what we've got here, aiming for the best combination. We can ask Tanya and Veneece to give their opinion, if you don't mind. They've got good eyes for this sort of thing. But, just so you know, around here men don't dress and undress in front of females or children, unless it's in front of a wife, so that's why we're using a curtain. But you probably don't know what a wife is, and I'm not sure I'm supposed to be the one to tell you, but let me just say that you don't have one yet. Here, try these on. They look good for a first guess, at least. Not that I much care, and maybe you don't, either, but we might as well try to look good by the standards of the women around us, if we can. No reason not to, I guess," Rick said. "Well, actually, these look comfortable to me, and I'm mostly hoping Tanya will approve. Tanya, so you know, is my wife. But Veneece isn't married to anyone, and neither is Walker, or Bramson. I guess I don't know on Yans. I haven't dared ask, considering he's been Topside so long. Hey, that looks pretty good, to me. Does it feel all right? Can you move around all right? Fine, let's see what my wife says." He pulled Tomas to where the curtain didn't hide him. "Tanya, what do you think?"

"Looks sharp. And the colors suit him, too. Can he move around all right? And sit without getting pinched? It looks like a good fit, but make sure nothing rubs wrong," she said.

"Word to the wise. Try to aim for a wife who knows how to be practical, or at least is willing to learn to be practical. You won't regret it," Rick said to Tomas, behind his hand so the others wouldn't hear.

Rick had Tomas go through more extensive stretching and sitting and squatting than before. Tomas, not ever having had any say in what he wore, bore up with it, and to his mind thought the clothes fit as well, or possibly better, than what he was used to. His biggest problem was that they weren't what he was used to. That he was being asked his assessment was nearly as big a problem, but at least he'd had experience seconding the opinions of his betters. For sanity's sake, and also as a safety measure, he was inclined to assume everyone here, except Chessa, was in one way or another his superior, and must, for now at least, be obeyed.

"Breakfast is ready," Walker announced.

Relieved to have something besides clothes to focus on, and finding that he was hungrier than he'd realized, Tomas sat where pointed, and waited for cues on the local manners, which were too baffling for words.

"We're going to pray now," Yans said. "But for various reasons it wouldn't make sense for you to pray. I'll try to explain that later. But, for now, the proper thing to do would be to sit quietly and wait to start eating until we finish praying. We won't take long. Walker, would you lead?"

"Glad to."

Yans and Walker bowed their heads, and Walker said, "Thank You, God, for this food. Please bless it to our use, and strengthen us for Your service. In the precious and most holy name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, we pray. Amen."

"Amen," Yans said.

"I renounce you and declare my loyalty to Greenley the Third!" Tomas shouted, with firm emphasis, as if his life depended on it.

"I guess he's one of those scholars that's actually been allowed to know that there are people who believe in God and Jesus. That's a step ahead of most foundlings," Bramson said, with a calmness Tomas wasn't sure was natural.

"I'm also loyal!" Chessa shouted, from behind the curtain. Her voice definitely wasn't natural, and Tomas knew that she was scared. Unwilling to admit that he was contributing to her fright, he settled into hating the other men in the room, behind a face that was as unreadable as he could make it.

The others ignored him, more or less. He wasn't sure what to make of that. He tried to eat without any show of weakness or undue belligerence, but wasn't sure he was pulling it off.

Chessa came from behind the curtain, dressed in unfamiliar clothes, more like what the other women were wearing. He thought the outfit suited her suspiciously well. Her hair was neatly combed, and styled in a new way, which also seemed suspicious. But she was looking at him like she hoped to be able to follow his lead. That might have seemed suspicious, if he hadn't been so much in need of having someone around who was beneath him in rank and authority. Escorted by the other women, she headed to the washroom, trying to look like she was under control, but with eyes that were widened enough to remind Tomas that she had reportedly been known to bolt. But, then, that report had come from a traitor. So what were the chances of it being correct?

He fought off an insane urge to flip the table upside down and toss chairs around. He'd never done anything of the sort, as far as he could remember, but it seemed marginally better than sitting around being docile, while in the presence of Supernaturalists. And of the worst sort, too.

"Tomas, you said you were loyal to Greenley. Why are you loyal to him? And is it specifically to him, or would you switch loyalties if the Era government replaced him?" Bramson asked.

"I'm not sure he's ready for questions like that," Yans said, nervously.

"I don't coddle men, and it's never too early or too late to examine what you believe, to see if you've got reasons for it," Bramson said. "Besides, there's a war on. The chances of Greenley the Third lasting very long after major disruptions is very much in doubt. Also, whatever happens, now that he's been 'thought contaminated,' Tomas probably wouldn't survive going back, even if he wanted to. I'm not sure he's realized that yet."

Tomas turned that last bit of information over in his head. It was true, as far as it went. Unless this was a psychological experiment that was carefully designed to be countered with deprogramming, he was now in experson territory, through no fault of his own.

And so was Chessa.

He turned to see if she was still behind the washroom door. She wasn't. She was standing there, silently begging him to make the nightmare go away – as if she hadn't been on the verge of being culled right before all this happened, and therefore there was nowhere known to man that wasn't a nightmare.

It was nuts. All of it. Everything was nuts. He pressed his hand down on the table, just to feel the pressure of something materially solid.

The table shook. Not just the table. A roar and rumble buffeted the room. Dust trailed down from the high-up, narrow window ledges.

Rick grabbed Tanya and took her carefully but quickly to the floor, shielding her with his body. Bramson, getting past the younger men, took on the task of shielding Veneece. Walker and Yans exchanged looks, obviously weighing whether one of them should protect Chessa. Tomas thought they seemed to be yielding to him, expecting him to do it.

Bramson stood back up and issued orders. Get food in pockets. Roll some blankets. Were there any water bottles? No? Then everyone get something to drink now, and don't let yourself get thirsty until further notice. Be ready to leave at a moment's notice.

Rick lifted his wife to her feet, kissing her before they both jogged to make preparations. Tomas found their manner distracting; almost annoying.

Another bomb blast hit, closer. Then another, farther away. Helicopters roared past. Gunfire sounded, high and low.

The supernaturalists, packed and ready to leave, got on their knees and bowed their heads and prayed. Tomas fought off an urge to kick one of them. He wasn't sure which one. Nor could he think of anything any of them could do that would help their situation. They were trapped, and the windows were too high to reach; and probably too small to get through, anyway, assuming you could knock them out.

No more bombs were heard. The helicopters seemed to have gone. The gunfire moved off. The silence stretched out. And out. Theoretically, this should have been comforting. It wasn't. It was unbearable.

Tomas decided it made more sense to kick the door than one of the guards. Unless it had been unlocked? That seemed possible, which made escape seem not just possible, but easy. Easy would be nice, for a change.

It was, as feared, still locked. He searched his memory, and found what he remembered of an inspirational video of brave, noble, Era enforcement officers kicking doors loose from their frames, before rushing in to slaughter dissidents. It was, under the circumstances, a memory that provoked mixed emotions.

He recalled that they were in an old warehouse, that might have other types of doors, including one that might slide up to let them out, then slide back down again, leaving no trace of unauthorized action. He liked that idea. A lot.

There were no such doors in sight, and no evidence of an access door to another part of the building that might have one.

Resigned to having to leave a trail of destruction, he attacked the door at hand, kicking near the hinges, which seemed more likely to give way than a bolt.

A man shouted from the other side to hold off. The lock turned, and a bloody man staggered in.

"They were going to try to get the kids to the orchard, or the farm. Run! Run," he said, waving at the open door. He fell to his knees.

"We'll catch up as best we can," Bramson said to Rick.

Rick hesitated, staring at Tanya, thinking furiously.

"I'd rather stick with you," she said.

Rick glanced at the wounded man, and then looked at Bramson.

"I've got Walker and Yans and Tomas, and the women can help if we need it. Unless you don't know how to get to the orchard, you might as well head out ahead of us," Bramson said.

"I know the way, and so does Rick," Tanya said, but she was also pinned to her spot, looking at the wounded man.

"Run!" the wounded man gasped. "We've been invaded."

"You, lad, are coming with us until we can sort this out," Walker said, tossing the wounded man over his shoulder. "Now, if someone would point me in the right direction, I'm new to around here, remember?"

They all ran, Rick and Tanya leading the way, and Bramson in the rear, preventing stragglers, or else becoming one. After all, he was old, and slower. At least he wasn't in the way for now, and that seemed the most important thing.

Tomas finally got Chessa to run right in front of him, so he could see where she was. Any other arrangement, he found, made him fall over his feet as he struggled to keep tabs on her.

# /4/

When they'd moved out of the industrial park and into woodlands, Tomas wasn't quite sure. Whether the transition had been stark, or if the facilities had gradually petered out, he didn't know. He barely registered anything about his surroundings until they ducked into a bowl in the landscape, where they all lay, panting, listening, from behind a ridiculously low berm. Having only been in carefully groomed parks, the disorderliness of the vegetation struck him, but he didn't dare dwell on it. He lay there, fighting for breath and for self-control, and listening. Listening. He wasn't sure what to listen for, except for evidence of other people.

He'd read about incidents like this, but in the official records, the people on the run had always been enemies of the state. He had assumed that enemies of the state had always chosen to be traitors. Now he wondered.

He wasn't sure he ought to be with this group of people. He didn't trust them. He didn't understand them. But as one of them had so carefully pointed out, there really wasn't any way to go back. Not anymore. He could protest his innocence all he wanted, but since thought contamination was considered so dangerous, there would be no reason for anyone to listen, and plenty of reasons for them to not listen.

Still, he'd been a loyal Citizen his whole life, and so he fought with himself, wondering if he ought to escape and report these people, even if it cost him his life, whether at the hands of rebels determined to keep him from escaping, or at the hands of those he'd be trying to help. Strangely, the idea that he'd be sacrificing his life made it seem all the more noble a gesture, at least in a theoretical way. But, having thought that, he thought that perhaps it made more sense to decide later, after he saw where they were going. No sense sacrificing your life for the sake of filing a nearly useless report, after all. Obviously, the government knew there were traitors out here, or it wouldn't have launched an attack on the place. It was better, he decided, to see what he could find out, and then decide whether to try to escape.

As if he knew how to escape? As if he had any idea where to go to report to someone? He'd been flown here, and it hadn't been a short flight. Perhaps he was beyond where a man could manage to get back to Society?

'You think too much, and this isn't the time for it,' his mind chided.

He looked over at Chessa, to see how she was doing. She looked wild. He looked at Yans, their trainer – correction, former trainer – who caught the gaze and returned it. Tomas nodded slightly at Chessa, just in time to see her bolt. Not being authorized to pursue, Tomas stared in shock.

Yans and Walker exploded after her, and soon had her back in the hiding place. They soon had her tied hand and foot with cords.

"I'll take first carry," Rick said quietly, as he maneuvered over to her. "Is everyone ready to go?"

Everyone nodded.

"I'll be careful with her, I promise," Rick said to Tomas, as he began to lift her.

She bit him. Hard. She got two bites in before he got away, once on his face, the other on his shoulder.

"I hate this, I really hate this," Yans said, under his breath as he ripped off his shirt and prepared to tear a strip off to use in her mouth as a gag.

Tanya stopped him, and handed over her headscarf to use.

"I have never gagged a woman," Yans said, as he tied the scarf in place. "Not that I've gagged many men, either. But I hate this. I hate this."

"You told us she was known to bolt. But you didn't say anything about her being a biter," Rick complained.

"I'm pretty sure she hasn't been a biter. Can you imagine them not killing her on the first offense, once she got past the age of five or so?" Yans said, as he put his shirt back on. "But I am sorry. I should have seen it coming."

"We're talking too much. And dawdling too long. Let's go," Bramson said, picking Chessa up before the other men could beat him to it. He led off, at a staggered walk, picking his way through shadows. Rick caught up to him and wrested Chessa away, although he now let Bramson assume the lead.

Walker picked up the wounded soldier again, and the party headed out, reshuffled, now with Veneece and Walker in the back, preventing stragglers. It was disorienting. Didn't these people ever stick to a hierarchy? Or protocols? And why hadn't they just killed Chessa on the spot? They acted like they didn't intend to kill her later, either. He had mixed feelings about that. At one level, he still wanted to protect her, but she seemed such a threat to them all, and he'd been taught that only barbarians allowed threats to remain. And he certainly didn't want to act like a barbarian. Did he?

They kept at a moderately fast walk until they reached a ramshackle cabin. Inside, Tanya yanked open a trap door over a root cellar. She stared at the dirty floor of the root cellar, and burst into tears.

Rick got next to her and looked down. "Fresh tracks. Including kid-sized ones. So they must have made it this far." He hugged his wife, and led the way into the cellar. The group reshuffled again, and Tomas found himself being assigned to carry Chessa. He tried to avoid her eye as he picked her up, and carried her down the steps. She was glaring hatred, and not just at him. It surprised him, not so much that she hated everyone – he was used to that sort of thing – but that she was letting everyone see it. That was dangerous, and again he wondered why the others seemed to think she was worth saving. Not that he wasn't inclined to save her, but he knew it to be irrational, and therefore could have been talked out of it, most likely. The MUS breed, after all, was nothing if not known for being rational. It was a point of pride.

"The lights in the tunnel aren't working," Rick reported, from what had looked like the end of the cellar, but now had a door slid open in the wall.

"I have a pocket light," Tanya said, digging it out and handing it over.

People looked at Bramson. He shrugged. "I have a pocket light, too, but between them, it won't amount to much, and I'm not planning on using mine more than necessary. If we weren't hot on the trail of kids, I'd say 'Let's go back outside and go overland.' And I suppose we could still do that, and head back if we don't find them farther on. But that's not going to work under the circumstances, is it? I can't say that I've got a great deal of experience feeling my way through pitch black tunnels, but all the kids' footprints went that way, and none came back, so I'm going to give it a go. Anybody who's afraid of the dark and knows the topside way is free to go the other way, if they want to."

"For those of you new to this tunnel, it's really narrow most of the way, and in some places it's too short to stand up. Some places we're going to have to improvise to get the injured through. As in, probably they're going to get pulled part of the way, instead of carried," Rick said.

"I'm game," the wounded soldier said. "And for what it's worth, I think I could crawl some, if that helps."

"It might. You're heavy. By the way, I don't know your name," Walker said to him.

"Nabeel," the soldier said.

"Pleased to meet you. I'm Walker Tadd Easterly. And I've heard every joke in the book about my name, so don't bother. All right, I'm ready, whenever the rest of you are," he said to the group at large.

Rick and Tanya led off into the tunnel. Walker went next, carrying his new friend Nabeel. Yans went next. Bramson, brushing away footprints with an odd sort of sweeping – he clearly wasn't cleaning, but just swishing dust around to erase marks – playfully used his broom to sweep Tomas in next, carrying Chessa.

"I can help with Chessa in the tight spots, if you need it. Just ask," Veneece said to him, as she followed him in.

"Or I could. That's why I took this slot," Yans said, from just ahead. "Just ask."

Bramson, laying his broom aside, stepped in last, and slid the door closed. It got so dark that it was impossible to see even a hint of an outline.

"The good news is that there aren't any branches to this tunnel. Most tunnels do have branches, you know. But in this one, if you just keep going forward, either wall will keep you on track. That's unless it's been modified since I was in here last," Bramson announced, cheerfully. "Steady as she goes. Now that we're out of sight, we're not in any hurry."

"Speak for yourself," Tanya said, trying to sound like she was joking, but with an urgency.

"The children we're following are hers and Rick's," Veneece explained to Tomas. "Of course, we'd be concerned whoever they were, but it's incredibly more important if it's your own kids, if you don't know that already."

"He probably doesn't. But he's read about it, most likely, which puts him ahead of most Topsiders," Yans said.

"Enough chat," Bramson said. "Let's chatter a little bit, now and then, to make sure we're all still together, but let's not broadcast too far ahead or back, just in case. There's a war on, you know."

"Yeah, I think I do," Nabeel said. "And I'm thinking, now that I've had time to think about it, that I shouldn't have let you carry me off like this."

"Once we've got the children and women properly rounded up and stashed, we'll send scouts back to the base to see if anyone else needs help, and to let them know where you are, and that you're hurt but among friends. But let's get the primary mission accomplished first," Bramson said.

"Ouch," Tanya said. "The wall has a rock sticking out of it up here, about knee level. That information comes courtesy of my bumped knee. I'm all right. Rick, keep going. Please. I'm all right. I just thought I should warn the others."

Gradually, the nervous chatter died down, and they inched forward, carefully, in the dark. Now and then Rick would briefly turn on his light and look ahead, but most of the time they were in pitch black, robbed of sight, finding their way forward only by feel. Sometimes Tomas bumped into Yans, and sometimes Veneece bumped into him from the back, but after a while, they seemed to learn how to sense where the others were, and the collisions got fewer and lighter.

Chessa, however, didn't get lighter. For all her worrisome skinniness, she was hard to carry. Plus, sometimes she kicked or wriggled, purposefully making his job harder. Tomas kept thinking he should ask for help, but never did.

Sometimes the rock walls felt damp, and in a few places they were sticky. Tomas didn't like his hunches on that.

"Hang on a minute, everybody," Rick said. "Stand still while I check something out. Light's coming on."

He was too far ahead for Tomas to see what he was checking, but word got back through the line that he'd just confirmed that he'd stuck his hand in blood on the wall, and that there were drips on the floor of the tunnel. Tomas found a clean place on the wall, and tried to rub his hand clean. There wasn't light enough to see if he'd done any good. But his hand still felt dirty, with the trademark feel of drying blood. He wished his hunch about what he'd been feeling hadn't been correct. Officially, of course, a Citizen wasn't supposed to be squeamish about blood. But somehow Science had let him down on that, because he didn't like it, and rarely had. Certainly it was bothering him now. Perhaps it was just the mystery of whose it was, and why it was there. Perhaps it was mostly fear for his own blood, which he wanted to keep in his veins. He hoped so, because it was shameful to care about strangers.

The light went off again, and Rick warned everyone that they were nearly to a place they'd have to crouch or get down on hands and knees.

"And for those of you trained in tunnel codes, this tunnel does have Starkweather Codes, warning about dropped ceilings and trip barriers and such. However, unlike the system devised by Jonas Starkweather, in this tunnel, the codes are embedded on the left-hand side instead of the right. Everything else is the same. Sorry I didn't tell you before, in case any of you have been trying to figure it out," Rick said.

"Ah, ha. So I'm not totally crazy yet," Yans said. "But I am rusty, so it's not like it probably matters. Thanks, though. And, yes, Bramson, I'll be quiet now."

"Good plan, since we're following a trail of blood," Bramson said.

That got everyone doubly quiet. Even the breathing seemed hushed, or at least it seemed that people were trying to muffle their breathing. At the same time, sounds suddenly seemed horribly amplified, now that it seemed important to not alert people up ahead that more people were coming; not until you could find out what you were up against.

Since no one dared talk unnecessarily, there was no one to explain Starkweather Codes, but Tomas, clued in, made a point of running his fingers along the left-hand wall with an idea of picking out patterns or clues. It was a nice distraction, and he thought he felt some descending dots and ridges right before Yans quietly warned him it was time to duck, as well as time to let him pull Chessa along for a little way. He said he'd carry her for a while after that, too.

Tomas relinquished Chessa, and gratefully got down on his hands and knees to crawl for a while, working the cramps out as he went. If he hadn't had people behind him who were caught up in a mission mindset, he might have begged for a chance to lay down for a while, until the aches went away. And a nap would be wonderful, he thought.

'Don't think about it. Not now,' his mind chided.

After the portion of tunnel with the low ceiling, there was a series of metal rods not far off the ground, designed to trip the unwary. But after that, it was back to regular inching along, feeling the walls for direction, moving the feet forward carefully. They had been picking up the pace, before the crawl space, but the trip rods haunted everyone, even though they'd been passed without much trouble. So now they were slow.

A faint light flashed up ahead, and Rick called a halt.

He walked ahead and called out, asking who was there.

"Dad!" a child's voice cried out. Rick turned on his light, and ran forward, Tanya on his heels.

There was confused motion and garbled communications for a while, but it gradually became clear that the three children had been evacuated with a small escort of soldiers, all but one of whom had been killed. The remaining one had got them off safely, although injured himself, but had collapsed in the tunnel. The children hadn't wanted to leave him – they seemed to feel some duty about taking care of him, as well as fear at pressing on alone – and so there they'd camped, in the tunnel, strangely confident that their parents would make everything turn out all right somehow. Now that their parents had shown up, the children were feeling insanely secure, to Tomas's mind.

There wasn't much time to think about it, though, because the decision of Bramson and the others was that the tunnel was probably a worse place to hide than 'the orchard' and so there was a quick sorting out of who would carry which person who needed to be carried – there were three now, Chessa, Nabeel, and the new wounded soldier – and on they stumbled through the rocky, earthy dark, toward the still mysterious orchard.

# /5/

They were cautious after they finally exited the tunnel, but they got intercepted anyway, not far down the trail from the hatch. Obviously, these men had been waiting for them.

Theoretically these soldiers were on the same side as Bramson and the others, but it seemed increasingly doubtful, considering the taunts and complaints, and the plain hatred some of them were displaying.

"You took your sweet time, didn't you? And while we've got a war to fight. It's bad enough you won't fight, but now we've got to get killed babysitting your children, and waste our time escorting you to the work camp," they said.

"We know the way to the orchard, or the work camp, if you prefer; and can get there without your help, if that helps," Bramson said.

"Don't think you can run off and not work. We're supposed to see that you earn your keep, more or less, by working on the farm until this is over."

"We have no intention of running off. Besides, where would we go? We'll work on the farm and care for the wounded, and-"

"Nothing doing. Our mates are coming with us."

"We'd be happy to care for them."

"Nothing doing."

Nabeel said, "I'll go where you want, but for what it's worth, I'm sure we can trust them to take good care of me. And I've read military history enough to know that sometimes armies have purposefully injured instead of killed enemy combatants, because injured people are such a hindrance to an army. They not only can't fight, they pull resources and focus away from the battle. I don't want to be in the way. I'm sure I'd be fine with them, too. Really. Your call, but they've risked their necks for me already, and there's no sense pretending they haven't."

"Oh, look. They're poisoning you already. Pick him up, lads, and our other mate, and let's get back to the battle. One word to you filthy pacifists, though. If I find that you haven't checked in at the farm right away, or that you've left it after you got there, I'm going to personally make sure that you wish that you'd never been born, and don't think Lt. Holmes or anyone else can stop me."

"Lt. Holmes is dead," Nabeel said.

This news caused a couple seconds of shock, before the soldiers grabbed up Nabeel and the other wounded man and ran off, presumably back toward the base at the old industrial park, but Tomas wasn't sure. He'd lost all sense of direction in the tunnel, plus no one was volunteering where they were, or where anything was from where they were, except that the orchard or farm or work camp or whatever it was, was ahead on the trail somewhere.

Walker picked up Chessa, Tanya picked up the smallest child, and Rick picked up the second smallest, and off the refugees headed, up the trail, away from the soldiers, and toward what sounded to Tomas like a place of internal exile – where, apparently, they were expected to be farm laborers. It was offensive in a high degree, but there seemed nowhere else to go right now, and this farm, wherever it was and whatever it was, had been touted as a better hiding place than the tunnel, and besides, although the thought was faint now and fragmented, there was still a bit of hope in his breast that if he just went along with these strange rebels for a while, he could find out something useful to report to someone in proper authority, who had the Future properly in mind.

-

He was learning to pay more attention to his surroundings – he even thought he'd managed to memorize some landmarks – but he was also getting awfully tired and sore, which seemed to mess up his mind at least as much as his body. When they broke out into an area where his guides could point out their destination, he was happy to see it, but upset that it wasn't closer. It didn't look like much. Indeed, he couldn't see anything to mark it out as a farm at all. Of course, he'd only 'seen' farms in reports and documentaries; and of course they were also still hindered in their view by trees and bushes and such, not to mention that infernal distance.

The others must have been getting tired, too, because Bramson called a halt for a short nap. Most of the others aired their feet, taking off their shoes and (in some cases) waving them around, as if that would do much good, and plucking their sweaty socks away from their feet, as if that would likely do much good. Some of them even took their socks off, which struck Tomas as reckless to an insane degree, if there might be other soldiers in the area. Still, taking off one's footwear seemed expected, and he was trying to blend in, so he took off his boots and picked at his socks, which had gotten uncomfortably stuck to his tender feet, and smoothed out the wrinkles. That bit of repair work done, he hastily got his boots back on. Meanwhile, Veneece took off Chessa's boots and socks, and gently wiped her feet to dry them, even though Chessa had been carried most of the way and had less need of attention than anyone else, in Tomas's estimation. He resented that she was getting such tender care, while he was left to himself.

A child noticed that there were berries nearby, and so Rick and Tanya and their children picked as many as they could find that were both handy and ripe, and distributed them. Chessa's gag was untied so she could eat her allotment, but she tried to bite people again, so the gag went back on.

Soon, too soon, they were up and at it again. People were moving stiffly and unevenly now, except for the children, who sometimes even bounced, usually for no apparent reason.

Yans suggested that it was time to have Chessa walk the rest of the way. Finding no strong objections, he took off her leg binding, and retied the rope around her waist, so it was easier to grab hold of her. With her firmly in hand in front of him, he got in the middle of the group so he'd have help in place whether she bolted up the trail or down it.

Walker, having noticed that Tomas had insisted upon having Chessa in sight earlier, placed Tomas directly behind Yans, and got in line behind him.

Tomas wanted to tell him that he was presently sick of Chessa and didn't want to have her in sight, but he didn't dare. Nor did he think it was worth it. He was getting heartily sick of hiking, and wasn't feeling any too appreciative of anyone right now. So what did it matter who was in front or behind?

After some dull trudging during which Tomas let his staggered mind go dull again, Bramson hid the others and went ahead alone. Tomas didn't like being hidden again, mostly because it scared him that someone thought it was necessary this close to what had been advertised as a safe place to hide.

The children made a game of putting a stick on the ground at the edge of a shadow, to see how far the shadow moved before Bramson came back. They were disappointed when he came back before the shadow moved enough to matter.

He had another older man along with him, who turned out to be the farm manager, as far as Tomas could make out. No formal introductions were made. The man took a quick, knowing glance at Rick's face where it had been bitten, and another knowing glance at Chessa, so apparently he'd been briefed about their wild woman. He led the whole group off to a shelter that was partially underground, featuring a sod roof with growing grass and bushes. Likely it would blend in well with the surroundings from the air, but it was all too readily visible from ground level, at least when you got close. It seemed to be a mess hall, or meeting hall. There were grills at one end, and sinks, but they didn't seem sufficient for feeding as many people as could be seated at the tables. Everything looked old and worn. Leaves and pine needles dusted parts of the floor; undoubtedly, they'd come in through the windows up at ground level, which were open air, without even any mesh over them. Small animals, brown with black and white stripes along their backs, scampered for cover, tails flicking. Tomas was put in mind of a zoo; one gone to seed, and one, sadly, where he might be becoming part of one of the exhibits.

The farm manager opened the doors of a pantry, then opened the shelves like they were another door, bowed, and waved his guests through. The other men shepherded the little flock so women and children could go first. Tomas remembered the 'ladies first' remark made shortly after his arrival, though by now he was confused about when it was to be put into effect. On the trail, and in the tunnel, the women and children had generally been shepherded into the middle of the group, with men ahead and behind. But here they were, back, apparently, to 'ladies first.' And apparently children were honorary ladies.

There wasn't much time to think about it, because he was maneuvered in behind them, and had to make his way through another tunnel – to keep from going mad he dubbed it a corridor, and excused himself for the new categorization by noting that this one had paneled walls instead of rock or dirt ones, and it had lights, too. Dim, strangely yellow lights, but adequate. And then, to his surprise, they walked into a nicely kept bunkhouse, where a cheerful old woman, wrinkled and grey, skipped away from stirring a pot of something on the stove – something that smelled awfully good – and hugged anyone who would put up with it. Wanting to blend in, Tomas accepted her hug, and even tried to return it, like he'd seen the other men do. He wasn't prepared to be emotionally challenged by the experience. But he was. It made him want to cry. Of course, he didn't cry though.

"Oh, do make yourselves at home, everyone. I'm so glad to have company. We don't get much," the old woman said. "The soup is ready, and the bread is nearly done. If you're done in, you can start in on the soup. I don't hold to making people wait for the bread, if they're hungry."

"I'm so stiff and sore it isn't even funny," Walker said, lowering himself awkwardly into a chair.

"Just wait until we put you to work. You'll likely discover yet more muscles that you don't know you have," the farm manager said, but with a wink.

"I'm not sure that's possible, but I'm game," Walker said, grinning.

"That's the spirit," the farm manager said.

"That's it. I've dropped into a pool of freedom, and am totally drunk on it," Yans said, leaning on a table to steady himself. "Either that, or I've gone irredeemably mad, and just can't see or understand what's really in front of me anymore."

"Ah, you must be a Returner, freshly returned. We're used to that," the farm manager said.

"Feel free to sit on the floor, if you're afraid you might fall over. We don't mind. Not at all. We're used to Returners, and Foundlings, and Refugees, and all that. Floors are handy, when you're dizzy," the old woman said. "I've sat on them many a time myself. Yes, floors are handy for sitting on, when you're dizzy."

Tomas, feeling dizzy, and weak in the knees, took her suggestion at face value, and sat on the floor, leaning back against a wall.

"If any of the ladies would like to help me dish up, or get the bread out of the oven, come on over," the old lady said.

"Chessa likes to help," Tomas said, meaning to sound sarcastic in a way that his colleagues back in the One Hundred Room would find appropriate, given her present state of shame. He was too tired and too worn out from shock upon shock to get the inflection right for sarcasm, though, and it came out more like an overtired man straining to speak coherently. Chagrined, he closed his eyes like he was settling into a scholarly period of rest, befitting a MUS of his rank.

"And who is Chessa?" the old lady asked. "Oh, her. Oh, I meant to tell you before now that this place is more soundproof than it might look, so you can take her gag off now."

"I wish it was only because we were afraid she might yell and give us away, although that was part of it. But we mainly did it because she has taken to biting," Bramson said.

"Oh, is that what happened to your face, young man?" the old lady asked, speaking to Rick. Tomas opened an eye in time to see Rick nod, and blush. "Oh, well, now Chessa, we won't put up with that here," the old lady continued. "We have a jail we can use to lock you up if we have to, but we'd rather you just settled in and lived with us as part of our family. Now then, why don't you gentlemen get her untied, and let her come help me get everything finished. Let me see. Did I cook rolls or a loaf? Let me peek. Oh, rolls. Good. We don't need a sharp knife for those. I can have you get those ready. If you know how to take things out of an oven? If you haven't done it, I'll teach you, just not right now, when the children are looking so hungry and everyone looks so much in need of fuel. But you can help set the table. Hamlet, would you supervise that, while this young woman – what's your name, dear? – Veneece – oh, you'll likely have to remind me of your name later, I'm horrible with unfamiliar names – while Veneece helps me dish up and such. There, that will work."

There was a general bustling about for a few minutes, while Veneece and the old lady finished preparing food to put on the table, and the farm manager and Chessa set the table, with help from Tanya and Yans – both of whom were likely trying to keep in a good position to pounce on Chessa if she got wild again – and while everyone took turns making a quick side trip to a washroom to wash up.

The farm manager assigned seats to people, which Tomas would have appreciated – he'd already made more decisions since being kidnapped than he was prepared for – except that he got seated directly across from Chessa.

To his surprise, she didn't look as wild as when they'd arrived.

To his even bigger surprise, when she managed to catch his eye she said 'thank you.'

He didn't say anything, but it must have been clear that he couldn't imagine why she would feel any cause to thank him, except that in their breed rankings she was an inferior, and inferiors were expected to thank their superiors as a sign of respect. It didn't really matter for what. It could be just to show respect. Or perhaps she was finally tired of acting shamefully, and was finally showing some long-overdue contrition.

"For suggesting me to help. I appreciate you sticking up for me like that," she said.

He wondered if he should correct her, since he'd done nothing of the kind, but no one seemed offended that he was being accused of sticking up for her, and he wanted to blend in, so he said nothing.

Everyone bowed his head, and Hamlet called on Father God to bless both the food and the people gathered at his table. Any hopes that Tomas had held onto that he might have landed among educated people and not supernaturalists evaporated. But it was probably dangerous to declare loyalty to Greenley the Third just now and just here, for all sorts of reasons; and the non-traitorous trainers of his experience did appreciate a prudent man, he remembered.

Non-traitorous trainers were feeling increasingly unreal to him, but he was sure he remembered such people, and there was no reason to think they'd all been wiped out, no matter how bad this current purge was. And when all this was sorted out, they'd be the ones in power, undoubtedly.

Tomas almost laughed. He was used to purges. This 'war,' as much as he might tell himself that it might be different, was just another variety of purge. From an early age, he'd learned to swing with new requirements whenever new requirements came along, whatever they were; and he was old enough now to have a lot of experience at it. He doubled down on blending in.

-

There was a house rule to not discuss certain sorts of upsetting matters at the dinner table, if at all possible. It wasn't clear yet which subjects were off limits, but Tomas was confident it wouldn't take long to figure it out. These were, after all, supernaturalists, and couldn't be expected to be horribly complex, all in all. Or very bright, either.

He looked across the table at Chessa, who wasn't a supernaturalist, and therefore was automatically more in his class than the others. Plus, she was a MUS. A not-very-impressive MUS, but it was a young breed yet, and Science was still grafting in various outside influences, one way and another. You had to take the outside influences in a package, at this stage of development. Science said so.

He felt increasingly attracted to her, and also remembered that she was his assigned mate. And therefore he probably ought to mate with her, whether the others liked it or not. They had a duty, after all, to help get the breed properly populated.

"You might want to slow down on that wine, Tomas," Walker said, from down the table.

"Sorry. Didn't notice he was overdoing," Bramson said, from beside Tomas, while wearily reaching over and taking his cup away.

"What's wine?" Chessa asked, in a voice that wasn't quite her usual voice.

Veneece took her cup away, too. "It's a beverage you get when you let fruit ferment. It's lovely stuff, but after a certain dosage it can change people's moods, and their thoughts, and seriously impair their judgment. And if you're not used to it at all, it will likely affect you worse than anybody, with just a little. We drink it when we can get it, and especially for celebrations, and we're celebrating that we're back together with the children, and that we're out on a farm instead of where bombs are falling, and that we all made it out here in one piece. Also, it's good for helping muscles relax, and so it's good to drink when you're stiff and sore. But it was wrong of us to not warn you to not drink but just a little bit. It can also mess up your stomach, if you drink too much. And it might give you all sorts of aches later, when it's wearing off, including a headache you'll not forget for a long time. If you drink too much, that is. Which you might have just done, accidentally."

Tomas felt an odd urge to grab the cup back from Bramson and keep drinking, in defiance of both Walker and Bramson. But his arm seemed too slow and heavy to manage it, even if he decided that it wasn't suicide to try it. It was curiously hard to figure out if it might be suicide to try it.

"We might as well tuck them in for the day," Bramson said.

"Just what I was going to suggest," Hamlet said. "And I apologize that I didn't remember about foundlings not having a clue about alcohol, unless they've been liberated from the ruling class, and in that case the problem usually goes in the other direction; having to watch to make sure they don't try to get drunk on purpose. It really has been a long time since we've had a foundling, but that's no excuse."

'They 'liberate' people from the ruling class? What does that mean?' Tomas wondered, in shock and confusion, as he drifted off toward a wine-thick sleep, and was carried away and put to bed, in a lower single bunk, like back at the old warehouse, but without a curtain for protection from prying eyes. He cumbrously turned his back to the others, and fell asleep.

# /6/

Morning was as unwelcome a morning as Tomas had ever experienced. His head hurt. His feet hurt. Almost everything in between hurt, and most of it was stiff, too. And he felt sick. Really sick. He reached for his Informer, to dutifully report his shameful condition, trusting, as he had been trained to do, that Science, in the person of breeders and trainers, would handle the situation in the manner most suitable for ensuring a glorious Future. If that meant getting euthanized, that was only a noble contribution to the greater good. A little, tiny bit of his inner self balked at the idea, but not enough to override his conviction that death might be preferable to his present condition.

He fumbled around, but couldn't find an Informer. However, his trusty trainer showed up almost immediately. Or, at least, someone bearing a strong resemblance to his trusty trainer showed up, and set about trying to get him more comfortable. This seemed fitting, since he, Tomas, was not only in the One Hundred, but in the Top Quarter of the Top One Hundred, of all the MUS men who had obtained maturity.

"Tomas, you have a fever, probably from a bug you've picked up in the last couple of days, and you're recovering from an overtaxing long hike, and you likely have a hangover into the bargain. But you're safe, among friends, and I'm sure you'll be all right in a few days," the man said. "This is normal. Almost all Topsiders who get rescued get sick a few days after arrival. You've been kept awfully isolated, and just haven't been exposed to much. Disease-wise, I mean, although it applies more broadly, too. But let's get you up enough to drink some water or tea."

"Or Cordelia's broth. It's great for addled stomachs," another man said. He leaned over to look at the invalid. The man looked familiar, in a criminal sort of way, Tomas thought.

"I'm Hamlet, if you've forgotten," the criminal said. "And you are now living on my farm and orchard, where we're going to prove that nobody needs to lay down and die just because the government tells him to, and that there's no such thing as an 'experson' either."

"He's probably not coherent enough to follow that, and most likely is going to misunderstand you," the trainer said, patiently.

"Ah, well, we'll just sort it out later, again and again, until we come to an understanding, then," Hamlet said. "Are you sure you're all right here?"

"I'm sure. Sorry I'm not going to be much use to you today, though," the trainer said.

"Oh, here now. Christ has more praise for tending the sick than He does for pulling weeds, and even if He didn't, I'd hate for him to go untended, or be left just to the women. But I'm off now. Take care of yourself, Tomas. We are glad to have you, all my joking aside."

The criminal left. The trainer shrugged.

"I'm sure the manners seem odd to you around here. I spent much of my life around people like this, and even I'm finding their manners odd and sometimes almost alarming. But you'll get used to it. There's more life in these people than you're used to, but the good news is that it's contagious. And you'll like it, if you catch it. But, here, Cordelia is getting perilously close to tapping her foot at me, making her stand there with a bowl of broth she's made for you. Veneece and I will help you sit up, and get to the table."

"I vote for the floor instead of the table. Walls make grand backrests," Cordelia said. "And it will sort of keep his feet elevated, too."

"Later I might argue with you, because I don't want him getting spoiled, but right now I think I'll bow to your wishes, m'lady, in large part because I can imagine him falling out of a chair," the trainer said.

The trainer and a surprisingly attractive young woman helped him move from the bunk to a nearby spot on the floor, where they propped him against the wall. The young woman started spooning broth into his mouth. He wanted to ask if he knew her from somewhere, but was terrified to put the question into words. A woman like that, it was inexcusable not to know if you knew her from somewhere. It was possibly also inexcusable to stare at her, but it was hard not to.

"Maybe I should take over on that, Veneece," the trainer said.

She shook her head. "I've got him. Take a load off your feet, or check on Chessa again. Really. I've done this dozens of times. Like you said, they all get flattened with shock and germs when they first get out."

The trainer looked across the room, and back at Tomas. "I think I'll put them both on this wall, so we don't have to divide our attention so much, or walk so much," the trainer wearily said. He soon came back with Chessa leaning on his arm. He eased her down, seating her on the floor about four feet from Tomas, and bundled her up with a blanket. An old lady got down on her knees beside her, and offered her some broth. Chessa hesitated, but finally gave in to the old lady's ministrations.

Tomas decided he was in a nightmare, where Science and Society were both banished, and so people got wrinkled and grey, and where a man had multiple fussy females around him at once, including an assigned mate, but also a woman he'd rather have as a mate. It wasn't fair, and a competent trainer wouldn't have put him in such a terrible spot. It was hard enough, sometimes, to just mate with whomever you were handed, without someone simultaneously confronting you with someone who was naturally more attractive.

"You can help with Chessa if you want, but I'm definitely taking over with Tomas," the trainer said, with authority.

The attractive woman got up and disappeared, and the trainer got a blanket over Tomas's legs, and started feeding him soup. It smelled good, and soothed his throat, but it tasted off. And the trainer was a poor replacement for the young woman, although of course a sane Citizen would never say so.

Tomas got his face into a proper mask to convey respect for the trainer, and dutifully swallowed what got spooned into his mouth.

-

Over the next several days, nearly everyone got sick, in ripples and changing combinations. Hamlet and the other men, and the attractive young woman – now finally remembered as Veneece, an acquaintance since the warehouse days – still went out from time to time, mostly during the day, to 'check on things,' but otherwise the group mostly stayed put, taking naps and eating food deemed fit for invalids, and, except for Tomas and Chessa, finding the situation almost humorous, or at least a good excuse to try to make mild and friendly jokes about weakness or germs or how bad everyone looked. Tanya and the children slipped off down the corridor fairly frequently, for play sessions inside the mess hall, which allowed for fresh air, a bit of sunshine, and room to scamper and bounce without annoying someone who craved a nap or who found scampering to be too much movement to appreciate.

Tomas went in and out of a fever for nearly a week, so missed much of what was going on, even in the same room. But slowly, surprisingly to him, he clearly began to mend – and without medical care, unless you counted broth and blankets and naps and sponge baths and such as medical care. Getting well – and from something this serious, too – without medical care was supposed to be impossible, he thought. And somehow all this had happened without him having been deemed an experson for being defective. It was odd, but intriguing. Also it was somewhat welcome, because life was more interesting than usual these days, even from a sickbed.

It wasn't entirely welcome, in part because as his reason and awareness returned, so did the worry about a war having broken out, with him somehow landed on what ought to be considered the enemy side.

He'd been promised a life free of major cares and confusion, and he thought he deserved it, and so he was angry as well as disappointed. Anger didn't seem to be allowed around here, though, and so to blend in he hid it as well as he could.

Through it all, little grey and wrinkled Cordelia flitted around, tending everyone. Tomas hadn't quite learned yet how to not find her aged appearance nightmarish. He was getting used to everyone's smiles, though, and especially hers. Sometimes he dreamed of smiles lifting people up through the roof, which he knew was madness, but wrote off to being feverish.

During his fever, his mind, annoyed by how they seemed to take over the room, multiplied the children, until his imaginary versions of Rick and Tanya had nine or ten children unleashed, instead of just three. The creatures, the real ones, liked to explain things to him, and the older two liked to make sure he knew their names and the names of their younger brother. And ages. They were keen on knowing ages. Tomas hadn't tracked his age in a while, and couldn't return the favor (without being able to get help from his long gone Informer), which they found odd. Or, at least, the older two found it odd that Tomas didn't know his age outside a general range.

The oldest, having apparently been warned off by a grown-up, wasn't able to stay warned off, and asked, with real concern and shock, if people 'topside' really got killed when they turned 50.

"Usually," Tomas said.

"No wonder you don't know your age!" the boy said. "If knowing your age could get you killed when you turn 50."

Tomas explained that it didn't matter whether he knew his age. Government knew his age, and would take appropriate action when it was time.

"Appropriate action!" the boy said. "What a way to think of murder!"

Tanya swept the boy away, and Tomas did his best to forget the conversation.

Sometimes it felt more like a dream than a conversation, but he was pretty sure he'd never blaspheme Government by accusing it of murder, so it had to have been a real conversation, with a real renegade child, strangely not off at a KinderFormer, where children were supposed to be, and always had been, as far as he knew.

Around him, other conversations swirled, some of which made for great eavesdropping, and some of which seemed deadly dull, but most of which seemed to be embedding not only in his mind, but in his character. No wonder, he thought, that Government was so concerned about thought contamination. It certainly was having an effect, and increasingly he couldn't write it off to the fever.

-

Finally, not really as long after the ordeal started than it felt like, they were all able to eat dinner together, sitting at the same table. This time, no one assigned him a seat, and it fell out that he was sitting across from Bramson instead of Chessa. He'd aimed to sit across from Veneece, but Walker had eased into that chair. Chessa had been seated two seats down from Bramson, which put her into conversation range. At least she, like himself, wasn't prone to talking much in groups, so he wasn't too worried that she'd insist on him talking to her, in front of everyone.

Oh, but he did mean that she 'had been seated.' While there weren't assigned seats for any of the grown-ups, there was a local custom of men or boys pulling a chair out for a female, right before she sat down. Tomas usually managed to avoid being right on the spot when the action was expected, although he was thinking it wouldn't damage his status too awfully much if he pulled out a chair for Veneece, if only he could manage to be the man right on the spot for her. But somehow it never had worked out that he was the man right on the spot. It was frustrating.

"We've got some harvesting to do tomorrow, for anyone who is up to it," Hamlet announced.

The two older children bounced in their seats, by way of volunteering. Their younger brother copied the bouncing, although no one thought he was volunteering like his siblings.

"Ah, well, perhaps we could take Kendrick along for part of it, maybe for half an hour or so, if his father approves. But Kamiah, I'm afraid you're still just a little bit too little for what we need to do out there tomorrow. Thanks for offering, though," Hamlet said.

The youngest child cooed, and Hamlet told him that he was way too young to be of help outside.

"Yeah, you're the baby around here, and don't you forget it," Kamiah teased. "What, Mom? I'm just teasing. Did I say something wrong?"

Tanya shook her head, biting back a smile.

"Oh, wait. You're not... you're not... Or are you?..." Rick stammered.

Tanya shrugged. "I'm not sure yet, but all the symptoms are there. Or not there, as the case might be."

Rick stared at her in open wonder and a variety of fear for a few seconds, trying to say something and failing. Tears spilled down his cheeks, and a grin took over his face. Then he leapt out of his chair, and scooped Tanya out of her chair, and danced with her in his arms.

"I'm translating this as a baby announcement. Correct me if I'm wrong," Bramson said, with dry humor, clearly enjoying himself.

"I think I'm pregnant, too," Chessa said, tentatively. She nervously looked at Tomas.

Tomas went numb.

Tanya looked at him with what he translated as fear. Veneece looked at him with a look he couldn't decipher (it was pity, or something like pity, but of course he hadn't learnt pity yet). What Cordelia's initial reaction was, he hadn't any idea, because he was too stricken by the reaction of the others to notice.

Veneece and Cordelia swept over to Chessa to give her hugs and congratulate her and to tell her how exciting the news was, and Tanya eased out of her husband's arms to join them.

Chessa was clearly perplexed about how she ought to respond to the insane and unprecedented attention, but soon she and the other three women were hugging and crying, while the two older children bounced up and down in excitement, and the youngest child – the youngest born child, at any rate – seesawed between bouncing in imitation, and staring with concern at his mother crying.

# /7/

Tomas threw himself into learning the covert style of farming practiced at this farm – the aim was to produce as much food as possible while not doing anything that would make spies in planes or helicopters sit up and take notice – and soon convinced himself that being an excellent farmer was presently his highest duty, not only to save himself from starving, but to have food to give to whichever army happened to come by (it seemed likely that troops would come by, and would need appeasing), and also to have something essential like food to give as a trophy and a bribe to whichever side won.

Days and days passed but no troops came by, even though the farm manager and Bramson and the others were expecting them to come pick up supplies.

"That's it. I'm for scouting to see what's up," Walker announced one morning, after staring at far reaches of the trail up on the hill they'd come down to reach the farm, and again seeing nothing.

"I don't like the idea of you going alone," Bramson said.

"And I'm not keen on taking Rick, who has a family to tend, or you, because I intend to jog and slither and such, and want to be free to sprint full tilt if the occasion seems to call for it. And until I see what's up, I'm not taking a woman, either," Walker said.

"I'm in agreement on all counts," Bramson said.

"I'm volunteering," Yans said. "Tomas? Would you like to join us, if Walker will have us?"

Tomas correctly read the cues that his former trainer thought it would be better to volunteer. As much to the point, in his previous life, when a trainer said 'would you like to,' it wasn't a question. It was an announcement of a duty. Still, he balked, slightly, having decided all on his own that farming was currently his lifeline to survival both now and into the future, and also having fallen into rather liking being hidden out in the wilds like they were.

He tried not to look at the women, but Veneece was looking up the hill like she wanted to go up it herself, and Chessa was, as usual, trying to blend into the background, which he found increasingly annoying. He mentally determined that he'd go 'in Veneece's place' since she couldn't go.

There were packs at the ready at all times, with basic supplies people might find useful if they needed to run for their lives, so once the decision was made it was only a matter of lightening the loads in three packs, taking out what didn't seem necessary for what was hoped to be a short trip to the base and back. Likely it would be a two-day trip, but they allowed for five, while also thinking that in their farming-strengthened condition, they might, possibly, make it back before sunrise, if not tonight's sunset. This last idea was recognized as outside the realm of reason, but Walker and Yans both liked to pretend out loud that they could do it, if they really felt like it. Tomas wasn't sure if this competitive spirit was a good idea, a bad idea, or merely another example of jesting, which he wasn't meant to take seriously.

They likely weren't as strong as they would have been if they hadn't been recently felled by fever, but on the other side of that, they'd all been working hard, and were past the sore muscle stage; and had been walking more than they had before coming here, and no one had anyone else to carry, plus they didn't need to slow down for Bramson or anyone else who wasn't athletic, so they made surprisingly good time without much difficulty. They also skipped the tunnel and went another way, just in case the tunnel lights were still out, so there was no inching along in pitch black, either, so that speeded things up, too.

Walker led, which seemed reasonable until Tomas remembered that back at the warehouse Walker had said he was 'new around here' and didn't know the way. This was alarming, until he convinced himself that Walker was good at landmarks, and also seemed to be using instructions that Rick had given him, and sometimes consulted a compass. This obvious reliance on memory and technology made the trip slightly less alarming, but it was still a relief when a familiar-looking abandoned-looking industrial complex came into view.

That is, it was a relief until two horrible thoughts hit simultaneously. What if enemy forces were in control? And, perhaps worse, what if the fellows who had ambushed them on the way to the farm were here, still meaning to make them wish they had never been born should they leave the farm without permission?

He quietly relayed his concerns to Yans, who smiled and patted him on the back, and said he and Walker had already considered the risks before coming, and besides, there was nothing to do about it now, besides being very cautious about proceeding, which is what they intended to do anyway.

They angled around to what looked like a better way of going into the industrial park – it had better cover, for one thing – but hurried back less downwind when sickening smells nearly overwhelmed them.

They found a good upwind spot just inside the park to listen. The place seemed more silent than possible, as if sounds were sucked away in it. They agreed that was more an emotional reaction than a reflection of reality. For that matter, once they listened for non-human sounds, there were plenty. A bird. Insects. The breeze flapping a loose flap of siding on a shed, or sighing through a cracked window. Plus, of course, they could hear whatever sounds they made themselves, which seemed ten times louder than they were; and which they assumed were dangerous no matter how quiet they really were.

They moved carefully from place to place, listening from cover, moving on, sneaking peeks inside buildings, looking for survivors and finding corpses.

Tomas wanted to go back, thinking they'd found out as much as they needed to know, which was that the base was apparently no longer a base, for either side. But he wasn't in charge, and Walker was determined to check here, there, and maybe everywhere; and Yans was in agreement with him, and there was nowhere else to go, even if he dared try running off and abandoning the only source of help he knew, which he didn't.

An eternity later, they found a man trying to get into the warehouse where they'd been held prisoner. He looked half dead, if not more than half dead, and was missing a foot. Drag marks showed where he'd crawled across from another building.

"Nabeel?" Walker called out, walking toward him, hands spread in a sign of non-aggression.

Nabeel reached for a gun, but Yans tackled him and took it away.

"We're friends. Walker, Tomas, and Yans. I'm Yans. Take it easy. We'll help you," Yans said.

Nabeel squinted in concentration, then sat and leaned against the building. "I was wondering how long it would take for you guys to get worried about us," he said.

"We got worried about you days and days ago, but didn't think to send out a search party until this morning. Sorry. Here, let's get you out of sight and get you something to drink and eat, while we check to see if we can find anybody else," Walker said, opening the door and looking inside. Finding it empty, he carried Nabeel inside, with Yans's help.

"There's no one else," Nabeel said. "I've been searching since the first day, and I think I've been everywhere. I ran out of food where I was, and thought I'd come see if there was any left in here."

"If there isn't, we've got some in our packs," Yans said. He checked the taps, and found they worked, but Nabeel warned him that the invaders had poured stuff down the well. Or maybe the defenders had. Or maybe both had. He'd been running water off and on, trying to purge the system, but he wasn't sure it was clean yet, but he was sure he hadn't run the water here, so maybe there was bad stuff in the pipes. He didn't know. But he wasn't going to drink the water if he could help it. It took a while for this information to come through, because he wasn't steadily coherent, but they finally got the message. Walker handed him his canteen, and set off for a quick check around remaining parts of the park, in hopes that Nabeel had missed a fellow survivor.

Yans turned on the taps to run the pipes clean, but warned Tomas not to drink any of it. He set Tomas on guard while he helped Nabeel get a little food and water in him.

Walker seemed to be gone a long time, but as soon as he got back he was all for immediately getting out of the park, back into the wilderness again.

Yans took the first turn at carrying Nabeel, and they headed back toward the farm, not stopping for a breather until they were well away from the smells of death.

-

They took a small detour to check a small cabin near the base, and the fugitive hole hidden near it. The fugitive hole was empty, but in a corner of the cabin, they found a soldier hiding behind a chair, napping. Tomas thought he was the man who had threatened them with a fate worse than death if he caught them off the farm, and so was all for leaving, just in case it was that man, and not someone else of his same breed, whatever unknown breed it was.

The soldier woke violently when he heard them, and this time Walker proved he was good at tackling an injured man and taking away his gun.

"We're on the same side, really," Walker said, sounding a bit exasperated. "And besides that, we're defenseless. No weapons. No wish to hurt anybody. Some of us are even opposed to tackling people, even in self-defense. Not me, obviously, at least not at this stage of my development. But there's nothing to fear from us, really."

"Who are you?" the soldier asked, trying to get one eye to focus on the newcomers. His other eye was dull, and didn't track.

"Part of the group assigned to the farm, temporarily out doing rescue work," Yans said. "More specifically, we go by Walker, Yans, and Tomas. There's also another rescued soldier with us, Nabeel. And your name is?"

"None of your business."

"Fair enough. Is there anyone else around, maybe also wounded and in need of help?"

"None of your business."

"In other words, you're a deserter, and don't have a clue what's become of anybody but yourself," Walker suggested.

"I'm not a deserter! I did the best I could, as long as it looked like we could win. And we all got scattered, all of us not killed right off. Probably there are lots of men out hiding, until it makes sense to come out again," the soldier said.

"Have you had anything to eat or drink today?" Yans asked, trying to change the subject.

"Yeah. I'm fine. There's food here. You just go on back to your farm," the soldier said, trying to make it sound like an order.

"Well, I don't know how long it's going to be until 'it makes sense to come out again,' especially for a half blinded man, but just so everyone knows, we're likely to have company soon, likely in a helicopter – our side, so don't panic," Walker said. "I thought Nabeel probably needed a surgeon and antibiotics, so while I was out taking a look around for more survivors I slipped into the command room to see if I could send a call for help. But here's the deal. The receiver was still getting updates from other battlegrounds. The good news is that according to what I glanced at, most of the war seems to be going against the Era side in a big way, contrary to what happened around here. The bad news, of course, is that no one should have been sending reports to here after the troops were gone. Nor should the communications devices have been on. So I reported that, too, along with the fact that there was fresh litter in the control room, and fresh scrapes in the dust. So my guess, and theirs, is that the enemy left someone there to tap into reports elsewhere, and I somehow managed to show up while he was on break. This means our side is launching an investigation that we don't want to be close to. But they also promised to send somebody to take Nabeel to a proper medic, and asked me to bring him here. I don't know how long it might be until they get here, and I don't know if the spy at the base – if there's a spy at the base – will notice that a message got sent out in his absence. Theoretically, he can't. I'm trained in codes and firewalls, and the guys on the other end are trained in hiding transmissions when it suits them, but for all I know the spy is a genius."

"That's not likely. More likely they got the dullest man they could find who would be able to copy and transmit messages. That's how Era bureaucracies usually work, especially in remote areas," Yans said. "And even if he's a genius, he likely wouldn't think it was his duty to track anybody down. Not if his job was transcribing messages."

"At any rate, let's not panic if we hear someone coming, but let's not assume it's friends, all right?" Walker said. He looked thoughtful and miserable for a few seconds. "Oh, rot. You guys have Nabeel and our unnamed associate under control, right? I need to go back to the base. I'll explain later. If anybody from our team asks, tell them where I've gone, and give them a good description of me. Gingrich, you're in charge here."

Yans looked like he wanted to argue, but he bit his tongue, and Walker jogged out the door.

The half-blind man groped his way toward the door in his wake.

"No, you don't," Yans said, fishing ties out of his pocket, and cuffing the man's hands behind his back. "I'll get between you and them if they want to execute you, but you're not leaving. Let's get Nabeel some more water and food while we're waiting, and let's not chat much, so we can listen more." He sounded like a man with authority, and the other men in the room yielded.

-

Tomas wasn't sure whether waiting was better without a clock, or with one, but to provide some distraction he discreetly put something on a bed where a shadow lay, so he could look at it from time to time, to assure himself that time was actually moving.

He'd never studied how much shadows moved in a certain time period – for that matter he wondered if it varied in summer versus winter – but at least glancing at the shadow as it moved and moved gave him a needed break from helping to watch the half-blind man while he sat and sweated and sometimes cussed under his breath, and watching Yans tend to both Nabeel and the deserter, with what appeared equal care. It was confusing, not to mention that it felt disrespectful to Order.

Once or twice he batted off a temptation to bolt, to go to the base and see if he could find the spy, and see if they could throw in together and somehow get back to being Citizens in good standing, in a proper cultural center, with scholars and trainers and scientists and rulers all in evidence, making the world go Forward just as it should, as the glorious Future sped ever closer.

But even in his present fearful condition he could see difficulties with that idea. For one thing, Walker had said he was going to go to the base, and there didn't seem any way to make sure their paths wouldn't cross. For another, evidence was stacking up that there really was a widespread war underway, and so for now there was no realistic hope of finding anything to be normal, even if he should find his way back to a place that had been normal. All hope of that was gone.

Strangely, now that he thought of hope, his mind went to the farm, and the little community there, as ragtag and unpredictable as it was. He batted that idea off. They lacked a proper scientific viewpoint, and therefore couldn't know about how to get to the Future. He had been carefully trained, and so knew better.

Except, he wasn't entirely sure that he did know better. Or that his rulers knew as much as they thought they did.

He checked the shadow again. Two inches more, whatever that meant.

-

A helicopter came into hearing, and then into view, landing carefully in the clearing they could see out a cabin window. It had been painted to show it belonged to the rebel cause.

When the doors opened, Walker hopped out. He tried to look solemn in a matter-of-fact way, but Tomas picked up clues that he was really rather pleased with himself.

Unfamiliar men came and helped load both Nabeel and the half-blind deserter into the copter, and then, with salutes from the crew, the copter rose again and sped off.

"Do I want to know what happened down there?" Yans asked.

"Nothing bloody, I'm happy to say," Walker said.

"Unless I count the new scratches on your neck, I guess," Yans said.

"Oh, do they show? I wonder if a neckerchief would cover them?"

"Not unless you devise a new style of neckerchief that covers up to the base of your ear. And, for that matter, now that I look more closely, part of your ear."

"Really?" Walker ran a hand over his neck and ear, confirming the news. "Oh, well. Let's just ignore it then, shall we?"

"Did they find a spy?" Tomas asked.

Walker nodded. "There was one there. He's captured, and on the copter, being taken off to debriefing."

"I'm glad to hear that he's in good enough working order to be debriefed," Yans said.

Walker blushed, and suggested they shoulder their packs, and put more distance between them and the camp.

# /8/

Yans suggested they aim to spend the night at the ramshackle cabin with the root cellar that opened into the tunnel. Walker thought that a good idea, and so did Tomas, especially since storm clouds were rolling in and starting to spit rain. They got to the cabin with daylight to spare and just as a downpour started, which wasn't really an achievement, but felt like one.

With notions of deserters and enemy spies dancing in their heads, they were a bit afraid of finding someone already at the cabin, but no one was there.

The lights in the tunnel still weren't working. Walker announced his intention of fixing them, if he could. Yans wanted to see how that was done, but was feeling worn out, so got put on guard duty sitting in the cabin proper, while Tomas got deputized as assistant electrician.

"I have not been trained in whatever this job is," he said.

"I have," Walker said. "And I could use a second pair of hands and eyes. And, I'll teach you as we go. The first lesson is this. Always turn off the power before you muck around with wires or other electrified things. That would be done over here, I'm guessing. Yes, here's what we want. Here's what we do. See?"

For the next half hour, Tomas helped find tools and check connections and other unfamiliar things, in the figure-it-out-as-we-go manner of the rebels that had driven him nuts at first, but which was starting to be enjoyable (although he probably wouldn't have admitted it out loud).

At last, success! Now that he could see it, the tunnel lighting system looked terribly primitive and amateurish, and was dim by usual standards, but it was enough to get rid of the pitch black that had plagued them on the earlier trek, and that made it seem like a marvel of engineering. That, and the fact that he'd actually worked on it himself. That made it good, too, as long as he didn't have to take responsibility for the overall design, which wasn't his fault.

By then it was nearly dark outside, so they drew the curtains and turned on a small, dim lamp in the cabin, and settled in to eat and relax. After some discussion, they decided to cook up some of the older-looking food from the root cellar to supplement the trail food in their packs. No sense letting it go to waste, after all.

Not having females on hand to offend, and this being a trek instead of being at home, the men asked a quick blessing on the food, and then snacked on it while standing, eating each foodstuff as soon as they got it prepared, while they were cooking or unpacking the rest.

"So now we know that you know how to run communications equipment and repair lighting systems. Anything else we should know about you?" Yans asked Walker, as they ate.

Walker shrugged. "I was a signals specialist in the military, until I ran into conscience difficulties. I had to drop the military service, but I haven't been out of work long enough to forget everything I got taught. Someday maybe we should swap 'how I became a conscientious objector' stories, but I should warn you, mine's full of twists and turns and backslidings, with a dose of 'for a while I despised COs, and everybody knew it' for good measure."

Yans smiled. "I might not be able to top that, but then again I might." He looked pained.

"Are you all right, Yans?" Walker asked.

"Yes. Well, no. Actually, I'm not sure. You don't want to hear this, but I've been having chest pain, and I don't feel at all well."

"For how long?"

"Since shortly after the copter left us."

"It figures. I wish you'd said something earlier."

"I kept thinking it was going away."

"I'd chew you out, but my friends will tell you I've done the same sort of thing. Remind me that it's easier to be the one pretending, than the friend who finds out later and hates himself for not noticing earlier that there was trouble, all right? Do you have any meds for it?"

"No. Or, not that I know of. Topside, if you get sick they hand you to experts who are in charge of either curing you or killing you. They don't seem to care which, and they certainly don't want non-experts to be in on what they're using or doing. It might make them seem less expert, or something. Which is probably beside the point. If you can remember what the point is. I've forgotten."

"Tomas, help me get him over to a bed," Walker said.

They carried him to a bed that sat along the wall, and got his shoes off.

"I think maybe there's a pain med in my pack that's possibly also a blood thinner. Does anyone remember if that's what a person is supposed to take if he's suspected of having a heart attack?" Walker asked.

The others didn't know, but it sounded reasonable, and Yans was in more pain than before, so Walker fetched the pain meds and gave him a pill and a cup of water, which he managed to choke down before laying down, on his side, now doubled up with pain.

Walker tried to arrange blankets neatly, but gave it up. He got on his knees and prayed with Yans. Yans fell asleep. Walker stayed with him, praying and fussing with blankets by turns.

He turned to Tomas. "I don't suppose you know what to do for someone having a heart attack?"

"I am not sure I have ever been told of a heart attack," Tomas said.

"No, of course not. Topside likes to pretend that people don't have heart attacks anymore, and besides, they operate on the theory that it's easier to replace a person than tend him when he's seriously ill. Or that's what I've been told."

Tomas didn't know what to say, so said nothing.

Walker moved to a chair at the table. "Under normal circumstances, I'd know what to do. Under normal circumstances, I'd call for a medic, or help haul the sick or injured person to the infirmary. I've never lived anywhere as a grown-up where there wasn't a medic of some sort. Barring that, I'd know how to call for help, if I had a communications device. But here we are, without any way to call anybody. And it's the middle of the night, and storming, so we're pretty much stuck here for the moment. Not that I'm sure it would be safe to haul him around. I just don't know much about heart attacks, other than they can kill a person, and that they're a good reason to call someone trained and experienced in medicine. But, here, we need to get some sleep. You take the other bed. I'll take first watch."

Tomas at first wasn't sure he should sleep during the crisis, but Walker convinced him, and he dropped off into a sleep tormented by bad dreams, and worse real memories, related to what had happened during the day. When Walker woke him to take a turn at keeping watch, he was relieved, until it struck him that he had no idea whatsoever how to keep solo watch during a crisis, or tend a man who was suffering heart trouble, much less do both at once. But for the sake of morale, and pride, and the reputation of MUS men past, present, and future; and also because he was catching the adapt-as-you-go attitude of his fellows, he didn't say so. That Walker gave orders to wake him up if anything urgent came up also helped.

Possibly Walker didn't sleep very long. It was curiously impossible to tell. There weren't even any moving shadows to give a sense of time passing, only the breathing of the two sleeping men, which were out of synch one with the other. Kendrick, Rick's oldest, had informed Tomas that a person could also gauge time by watching stars move or the moon go up or down, but the clouds blocked all that. So it was just the breathing, which worked out all right, since he was obsessed with a fear that one or the other of the other men would stop breathing. Yans might die of his heart trouble, which would be alarming – but what if Walker died of something in his sleep? What if heart attacks were contagious? They hadn't said. What if the old food from the root cellar had gone poisonous, and he died of that? Or from something else? What if he died, and (the main point just now) left him, Tomas, in charge of trying to decide what to do?

Walker finally eased his fears by waking up, getting up, and ordering Tomas back to bed for some more sleep. He seemed satisfied that Yans was all right, and hadn't suffered under Tomas's ignorant and arm's-length care. So that was a relief, too.

Tomas drifted in and out of sleep. When awake, he'd look over at Yans to make sure he was still breathing – what a blessing the little lamp in the cabin was proving, to let him see that Yans was still breathing – and then he'd try to sneakily check on how Walker was doing. Walker was often at the sick man's bedside, fussing with blankets or propping him up to give him a drink of water, or sitting on the side of the bed, holding his friend's hand, or on his knees praying, sometimes alone and sometimes with Yans; but sometimes he was at a window, leaning an outspread hand against the cool glass, his head either bowed in prayer or raised to look up at the rainy sky.

Tomas, convinced finally that Walker was in charge and would do the thinking for all of them, fell into a deep, resigned and weary, take-a-break-from-all-this-worry sleep.

He shot awake as men burst through the front door, guns drawn, and wearing funny masks.

"Oh, it's you. Sorry. Didn't mean to give you heart attacks, but we're searching for spies and such, and saw the light on in here. I don't suppose you've captured any more spies for us," the leader said to Walker, as he motioned for his men to holster their guns and take off their masks.

Yans, sitting up after having been jolted awake, leaned against the wall and laughed.

"Probably he's laughing about you mentioning heart attacks, since he had one yesterday and we've been going crazy about trying to figure out how to evacuate him to somewhere with a medic. I don't suppose you know where we can find the nearest medic?" Walker said.

"We've got one right here. Eliff, go check him out. And we've got a copter hidden down the way. Hang on while I call it, just in case we need it," the leader said.

"I'm also laughing because I think he just confirmed my hunch about Walker's little, unexplained trip back to base yesterday," Yans said.

"Oh, didn't he tell you that when we got there, he had the spy neatly tied up, and all ready to haul off?" Eliff said, as he began to look over his patient.

"No, and knowing him, likely he wouldn't ever get around to it," Yans said.

"Let's talk about him later. Right now, I'm going to ask you questions about you, and don't dare tell me you're fine, or pretend that you are," Eliff said.

Walker laughed, but didn't offer explanations on why.

Some of the men disappeared outside to search the immediate woods, and the rest tried to look like they were doing anything but nervously worrying about being around a man who was grey, and being checked out by a medic.

"Definitely the copter," Eliff announced. "Destination Cowtun, unless you've got a better idea, Chief."

"Cowtun works for me," the leader said. "I'll lead the others over to the farm, and you stay with the patient. And you, Easterly, is it? Walker Easterly? You and this other fellow go with Eliff and the patient. The copter's going to have to come pick up us and a food shipment anyway, so they can bring you along to the farm, if you want, after you get the patient dropped off. Or you can stay there at Cowtun for now. That might make most sense. We'll let Hamlet know where you are. Off you go."

Once again, Tomas found himself in a helicopter, with a man lying on the floor of it, but this time it was a friend with medical trouble and not an Era loyalist who had been drugged and was being kidnapped. Down the compartment, there was a man with handcuffs on, but he wasn't tied to the wall. The man's guard said he was a deserter being taken in for questioning and probably a jail term. It was a much larger copter, one designed to carry large loads of freight, and it felt different in flight than the battle copter that had whisked him off to this strange, parallel universe.

There was a pile of masks not far from him, and Eliff good-naturedly told him to go ahead and try one on. "They've got night vision built in. That's why we had them on when we attacked your place just now. It's weird, what you see through them, but at least they let you see some of what's around you. Not like regular light, though. I think it's infrared, or something like that. Heat. Or something. I confess I'm happy to just use them, without understanding the technology behind them," Eliff said.

Getting a nod of encouragement from Walker, Tomas put one on and looked around inside the copter. It was, as the man had said, weird. But fascinating, too.

"And no, we didn't just steal these from the Era folks. We can make our own, and have for generations, at least around here. I understand that other parts of Northam might be more limited in what they can build or do, but we've got a good trade network around here, considering the circumstances, so I'm pretty sure our neighboring regions have night vision masks, too," Walker said.

"For that matter, I think the Topsiders around here might not know how to do this anymore. They've come to rely on brute force and Citizens turning each other in, that sort of thing," Yans said. "And they're not any too hot on keeping factories in repair, either. Or supply chains healthy. No one much cares, I don't think."

"We'll know sooner or later if you're right, but I'm not discounting our enemies just yet," Eliff said.

"Oh, I'm not discounting them. I just think you'll find that in general they aren't alive enough to care the way you care, about people or production, either one," Yans said. He winced as a fresh bout of pain hit him.

"Save your breath, will you?" Walker said.

"I'm trying to keep from going crazy by trying to think of something other than being airlifted," Yans said.

"Maybe praying would make more sense, especially if you wind up not making it," Walker said.

"Excellent bedside manner you have there," Eliff said.

"Actually, yes, it is," Yans said, "considering that he and I are accountability partners, and prayer partners. And believers. Are you a follower of Christ, Eliff?"

"Not like you guys," Eliff said. "But I second the motion that you save your breath. And I'd like the backseat medics to shut up for a while, too. Thanks."

Tomas thought he felt a strange and unnatural breeze move through the cargo bay, but he dismissed it; and concentrated on trying to be invisible, or at least unapproachable, in the prickly silence that Eliff, the guard, and the deserter, adopted.

# /9/

The story was that there had been a place called Cow Town somewhere near where Cowtun got built, but it was one of the earliest hidden settlements built in Northam during the Smolder (as free people called the time of suppression under global government, on the assumption that freedom may be down to ashes, but smoldering ashes could be fanned to flame somehow, someday), and if there had ever been good records about the founding, they were long gone – which left folklore to cheerfully fill in the gap. For what it was worth, there were reportedly still cattle herds nearby, running wild, but handy enough when someone wanted meat.

Tomas was dumbstruck when he got through the porthole (aka hatch) and got his first looks at a long-established rebel community, all underground, but tidy and bright, with an impressive emergency department, which had Yans under a doctor's care less than ten minutes after the copter set down near the porthole.

On the flight over, Walker had decided to stay at Cowtun at least until he was sure Yans was settled in, and he'd given Tomas permission to stick with him, which Tomas was all too glad to do, especially since his increasingly-fertile imagination was imagining that he'd wind up chained up as a deserter, if he went on alone in the copter to the farm, with only Eliff, and the guard, and the deserter, all still prickly, as escorts. Eliff promised to give a good report to Hamlet and Bramson, and that seemed to settle that.

Cowtun was abuzz with rumors about the war, but hadn't yet settled down into one general mood or another. Some people were still walking around in shock, others were eager. Some people had already left, to get somewhere directly involved in the war. Others had shown up, running from the war, or seeking old friends and relatives to connect with, now that the world was upside down. So Walker and Tomas found themselves not as much of a novelty as they might have been, had they shown up before the war started. At the same time, they were constantly being asked if they had any news from 'the outside' or from 'up there.'

Most people at least backed off when they were in the waiting room at the hospital. Walker spent most of his time in prayer there, which probably protected him from the most aggressive seekers of news, but even prayer-less Tomas found that there seemed to be protocols against asking people questions in an emergency department waiting room.

Not having any experience with medical procedures or heart attacks or the like, Tomas had no idea how long a wait to expect, so he marshalled all his training in relying on experts, and settled in to wait as long as Walker thought they should remain in this little room and wait.

He tried to be detached about it. After all, a good Citizen didn't allow himself to care too much about individual units, including himself. It was better to care about Society, and sometimes Society needed to shed individual units, either to preserve unity or to maximize efficiency, or to balance things out.

He realized that he was becoming a third-rate Citizen, if not a fourth-rate one. Because despite his indoctrination he did care whether Yans lived, and if he got well. If he hadn't been a scholar, he mused, he might have been able to convince himself that it was only because Yans was useful as a farm worker, and farm workers were especially useful just now. But, being a man trained to examine matters, he had to admit to himself that he increasingly found Yans's presence important to himself, and that some of that was simply that he liked having the man around. Yes, it was true. Whether it was from thought contamination or something else, he'd come to have emotional attachments to other people. While he was on that subject, his mind happily jumped to thinking of Veneece, who was very kind to him and attractive in fascinating ways; and Cordelia, who was also very kindly, if still a bit nightmarish because of the wrinkles and her dramatic manners. Even Chessa. He couldn't imagine why he'd feel attached to her, other than feeling responsible for her because he'd been assigned to her and they'd been evacuated together, but he did. And he'd miss Hamlet and Bramson and Rick and Tanya and the children, too, if he never got to see them again. It was a shock to realize this. Him? Indulging in taboos like personal attachments? Who could have imagined it?

But, then. There was no going back to his original life, either. That was obvious. And around here, people were expected to get attached to other people. And, a good Citizen knew how to adapt. So, on the upside, he was just doing a good job of adapting to the new authorities in his life, and blending in. Blending in was good. Blending in was, in fact, one of the highest Virtues known to man.

A doctor showed up and said hello, startling both Tomas and Walker.

"Oh, now, don't be concerned that it hasn't been very long," he said. "We've got super-duper equipment around here that lets us look inside arteries and such, and blast blockages away without having to cut our way in to scrape and bore – which is something I had to do where I lived before, which wasn't as well set up. That way works, but it's ugly and causes collateral damage. And around here we keep in practice, by putting locals through tests and clean-ups regularly, so we've gotten efficient at that particular procedure. But to get to the point, your friend is doing fine. He had a bad blockage, and he's going to have some recovering to do from the damage that got done to him, but so far it's looking like it was relatively minor damage. Now that we've got his tubing unblocked, he's in relatively good shape, considering. He's sleeping, from the drugs we used to knock him out to make him lay still during the tubing tune-up, but you can come see him if you'd like. Come on. This way."

He led off, at an impressive clip, sucking Walker and Tomas along in his wake.

"He wasn't terribly coherent before the surgery, and I didn't want to waste time chatting, so I didn't get to find out his background. But has he been living under the topside regime, do you know?" the doctor asked.

"Yes. As a trainer. Got rescued the day the billboard went out," Walker said.

"Ah, I'm not surprised. Living as a subhuman is rough on a person's body. We see some of our worst blockages in people who lived like subhumans up there," the doctor said.

"He was from our side, the whole time. Doing what he could for people who were trapped in the system," Walker said.

"Ah, that's almost worse. Medically speaking, I mean. Knowing what it's like to be fully human, and then having the stress of squashing that. That's rough. It helps, I suppose, that people know they're sacrificing for others, but it still can cause medical problems. Speaking of which, we can check your tubing if you like. No problem. It's one of the easiest things we do around here. Not at all like treating wounds or burns or pneumonia. Ah, here we are. There. You see, sleeping like a baby, and nice and pink instead of that nasty grey. I just love the equipment around here, I tell you. Can't stand seeing grey people. So, which one of you is next? If you're doing farm work, you especially need clean tubes, you know."

The doctor, for all his chatter and mildness, wasn't taking no for an answer. Walker's 'tubes' – that is, his arteries and valves and veins – were found to be clean and in no need of maintenance. Tomas, however, was found to be in need of some blasting; not much, he likely would have been fine without any work being done, but the Cowtun medical facility wasn't going to knowingly let anyone walk around with even a little bit of blockage. It was a mission of theirs, you might say.

-

The medical staff assured them that tube jobs were more or less an outpatient procedure, and sent Tomas out, with Walker in attendance, for a gentle post-op stroll to keep his blood circulating. It prevented problems, they said. Yans they also got up and walking, but at the hospital, with nurses on hand, because he'd waited too long to get cleaned out, and they were still establishing the amount of damage he'd suffered. They were predicting, without any promises of course, that he'd be ready to go home in a week or two, if not sooner.

This community being new to Walker as well as Tomas, they had great fun exploring. Until they ran into an old associate of Walker's.

"Oh, look who's here? When did they let you out of prison?" the man said, loudly, with a sneer, pulling all nearby bystanders into the mess.

"I'm working on a farm these days. I'm only here because a friend had a medical emergency. We'll be leaving soon," Walker said, gently.

"I can't believe they don't have you chained. And your keeper there, he doesn't look like much of a guard. Guess they needed the more capable guards for war work, thanks to the likes of you," the man said. He spat on the ground.

"Hey, Strickland, what are you talking about?" someone asked.

"He's a deserter, is what," Strickland said.

"I didn't run off," Walker said.

"You might as well have. And it might have been better. Pulled Rick and some of the others with you, didn't you? I wish they'd shot you. Hey, maybe I can do it now for them, what do you think?" he said, pulling a gun and pointing it at Walker. "Does your precious nonresistance mean anything when it's you in the crosshairs? Huh? Does it?"

"Put the gun down, Strickland," several people said.

"Ah, it's just an experiment. The creep says that being Christian means that he has to turn the other cheek, and love his enemies, and that his battles are spiritual ones, not worldly ones. That's what he says. Let's see if he means it, why don't we? Hey, Walker, do you love me? Do you?"

"As much as I'm able, but only because Christ commands me to. I'm new to this, remember? Don't hold me up as a shining example of a mature Christian. I'm not there yet."

"Oh, so you will crack, and then make excuses for it, now will you?" the man said, moving closer with the gun pointed squarely at Walker's forehead.

"With the Lord's help, no," Walker said, standing still, his arms at his side, offering no resistance.

"You leave him alone!" Tomas yelled, his fists clenched. "You're acting just like the people topside. Just like the people you say are so terrible you have to start a war against them. You're just like the Registry Department, or worse!"

Another man stepped forward, pulling his own gun and pointing it at Strickland. "The fellow has a point. And since I don't believe the Bible has any authority, don't count on me figuring that it's a sin to fight back, or to protect a defenseless human being from harm. And as far as I can see, this Walker fellow has decided to be defenseless. Which makes you a bloody coward as well as a bloody fool to stand there acting like you're going to blow his brains out. Put the gun away, slowly and carefully, or expect me to give you what you're suggesting to do to him."

Strickland, shaking and embarrassed, put his gun away. He spat again, and walked off, pretending to a dignity the bystanders weren't granting to him.

The other man put his gun away, shook Walker's hand, shook Tomas's hand, and walked away, shaking his head.

Most of the bystanders looked confused. Some left quietly while working at being invisible, others stepped forward to apologize or feebly shake Walker's hand by way of countering what had just happened, but in less than a minute Walker and Tomas found themselves alone except for a middle-aged woman, who stared at them, thinking.

"I think my sister needs to meet you," she finally said. "She's also a CO, but is scared to get out of the apartment."

"Can't say I blame her much at the moment," Walker said.

"Oh, people around here aren't usually that bad. Strickland lost a close friend the other day, and he's been trying to find someone to blame it on ever since. Yesterday it was his sister who got yelled at. The gun stuff is new. I'm guessing he'll be in jail within the hour. We appreciate our guns around here, but we don't put up with recklessness or cruelty. Don't worry. I'm not afraid to be seen with you, and Natalya is hiding out just down the tunnel here. It isn't far. Won't you come?"

-

Word of the standoff got to the medical facility long before the two men got back, and the nurses weren't sure whether they were more impressed by Walker, or Tomas, according to what they'd heard. Since Walker's courage was of a questionable sort in their circles (they thought it better to not undermine morale by supporting conscientious objecting), they focused on admiring the recently rescued, former topsider Tomas for sticking up for his friend, even in a dangerous situation.

"And he's kind of cute, too, don't you think?" one of them said to the others.

Walker rolled his eyes, and might have let it go at that except that one of the young women was eyeing Tomas with the look of a woman out to make a conquest.

"And I'm sure the mother of his child would agree," he said.

"Oh, well. Why didn't you say he was taken already, before this?" one of the women huffed.

Having spent as much time dangerously encouraging men who weren't in soldier mode during the current crisis, the women turned back to their work.

-

Tomas decided that he'd been wrong to say that Strickland was being just like the Registry Department. In truth, most of the officials with the Registry Department were bland and dull and methodical. They shot a lot of people, but they weren't known for stooping to taunting and bluffing. They just shot them, as a duty, and moved along, looking for the next Citizen who wasn't properly fitting a slot. It was all in a day's work. On the other hand, Citizens who were volunteering to turn other people in for perceived crimes against humanity, they had a tendency to be cruel. So were the garbage collectors, who were in charge of disposing of expersons who had been turned out of doors to starve to death, as an example to others. The collectors were supposed to wait until the experson was dead, but they usually didn't. Right in front of the public, they'd make a point of making an example of the dying wretch, stomping on them or beating them to death with sticks, or sometimes tossing them still writhing into the carts or trucks they were using to pick up all manner of trash, human or otherwise. They often laughed as they did it, and no wonder, since they usually, at least where he lived, had an appreciative audience of people who wished to show the proper disdain for expersons.

At least here at Cowtun, no one had applauded Strickland. And the bystanders' assurance that Strickland would spend time in jail for his assault came true, too. And people had been civil, overall. Still, it was a relief when Strickland's trial was over and Yans was cleared for travel and a helicopter was ordered up to take them 'home' to Hamlet's.

Walker had planned to ask Hamlet if Natalya might be welcome to join them, and then come back for her if so, but the local leaders suggested that she go along with them. If Hamlet said she could stay, fine. If not, she could come right back. Either way, there wouldn't have to be a special second trip, they said, which could be inconvenient, if not impossible. What they didn't say – what they didn't need to say – is that they were thinking it would be a good idea for her to be gone from Cowtun, at least until more people got used to the idea of there being COs in the world. (Which, they hinted, might be never. At least not at Cowtun.)

She came with no belongings but a few changes of clothes, two pair of shoes, and a sewing kit with thread and needles. She didn't own much more than that, but she'd decided to not take anything extra, nor any more than she could carry. She gave the rest away, over the objections of several members of her family (even though they got most of it).

For most of the flight, Walker kept looking at her, tearing his eyes away, and having his eyes drift back to her, apparently against his will. She blushed a lot. Neither of them talked, which struck Tomas as significant, since Walker was generally a talker.

Hamlet and Cordelia heartily welcomed her into their flock, and the helicopter sped off again, the pilot shaking his head and staring off at the sky, while the co-pilot gazed at the exiled but happy misfits with a thoughtful, concerned look on his face.

# /10/

There had been changes while they'd been gone. Chessa had miscarried, or perhaps had been too hopeful about being pregnant. This made her and most of the others sad. On the other hand, she had heard about the gospel, admitted herself a sinner, repented, and been baptized, which made everyone there almost beside himself with happiness. Even Natalya got swept into the mix of emotions, joining in weepy group hugs with the other women, and beaming and even dancing a bit when they talked about Chessa 'becoming a believer and getting baptized.'

Tomas didn't know what to think, and fell back on a lifetime of suppressing his emotions. He also didn't understand a bit of what people were telling him about sin and repentance and baptism, and furthermore didn't want to understand it, since that would, as far as he could tell, reduce him to the state of being a supernaturalist.

He'd had slim hopes Natalya would be a rationalist like himself, or at least that she could become one, but now that she was in the company of baptizers and such, she was openly as Jesus-crazy as the rest of them.

Including Chessa.

He'd already realized that she wasn't a top-rank MUS, but it still felt wrong that she could abandon the breed's creeds like she had. And yet, she seemed more alive. Calmer. Except when she was crying over the miscarriage – which a person wasn't supposed to take personally, since babies were expendable, especially if they were defective enough to die in the womb.

It was nuts. Everything was nuts.

He kicked himself for leaving her alone with the supernaturalists. Perhaps that made it partly his fault that she had succumbed to superstition.

Hamlet and Cordelia and the others had also revamped living arrangements while they were gone. Rick and Tanya and their children were now off by themselves in a small house just a few minutes away from the main bunkhouse. The two older children were full of tales of how exciting and hard it had been to make it livable, since it had been out of use for so long. Meanwhile, Bramson had been moved to a 'men's bunkhouse,' and Walker and Tomas and Yans were expected to join him there, for sleeping. At the same time, the main bunkhouse had been better partitioned with curtains, so that Veneece and Chessa, and now Natalya, could sleep there with more privacy, with Hamlet and Cordelia within shouting distance, in their attached bedroom. The bachelors were expected to eat with Hamlet and the ladies. Rick and Tanya could eat at either their house or with the others, as they pleased.

Tomas had mixed feelings about the new arrangements, but didn't say so. For that matter, for a while he pretty much stopped talking at all.

People stopped talking to him, too. This provoked more mixed feelings. On the one hand, he didn't want to be bothered. On the other, although probably they were just trying to be polite, or prudent, either of which ought to be to their credit, they were depriving him of an opportunity to lash out at someone for bothering him, which was annoying.

That wasn't all that was annoying. Rick getting to have his own quarters, with a woman assigned to him, was annoying. Walker circling around Natalya like a wounded animal looking for succor, all the while treating her with extreme courtesy, was annoying. Veneece being in nurse mode and attending to Chessa and Yans and Natalya, each according to their present weaknesses, was annoying. Hamlet and Cordelia doting on one another, and fussing over everyone, was annoying.

Not being considered a member of the elite One Hundred was annoying. No longer having a trainer seeing to everything was annoying. Not having an Informer keeping him on track was nice in some ways, but it had been a way to look up information. Not being able to look up information was annoying.

The work, the weather, the bugs that bit or flew around his face, the way the sunlight glared off of water and other things, it was all, along with everything else you might imagine, annoying.

-

No one knowing how things were supposed to work as far as arranging his life for him went, Tomas finally went to Yans and demanded a new woman. One should have been provided long before now, and the man should have remembered that, even as much as he'd seemed to have forgotten since fleeing civilization. He'd been a proper trainer for years, after all.

"We don't work that way in the free world. Like we've told you before, free men don't get bed access to women unless they marry them, which is another way of saying that they promise to care for and provide for and encourage them for as long as they both live," Yans said.

"So find me a MUS to marry," Tomas said.

"I probably can't. The MUS being a new breed that's still in early development, the breeders are at increased risk of their lives if they don't keep a clamp on how the experiment is being run. The females are kept caged and under heavy guard except when they're out being mated; and the top ones aren't let out even for that. Either men are brought to their cages, or the scientists breed them artificially. Assuming it's still an ongoing project, there's likely no way to access it, at least not yet. I wish we could. I'd like to free the women, especially the others like Chessa who weren't in favor. Chessa was getting it worse than the others. Some of the other trainers were withholding food from her, in hopes that they could keep her from conceiving or at least keep her from carrying to term, so they could cull her without any messy questions. They beat her, too. Quite a bit. And terrorized her for the supposed fun of it. I'm amazed she's as close to normal as she is, given that she's been treated like an animal all of her life, and a despised animal, at that."

Tomas paced, and went in circles. He spun on Yans. "Well, I guess I'm stuck with Chessa. How do we apply to marry?"

"You aren't stuck with Chessa. For that matter, now that she's a believer, you can't marry her, as long as you're an unbeliever. It's not a matter of favored status. It's that she's in a different spiritual state, and Christians are not to marry people who are spiritually dead. There's just no way they could properly understand one another, for one thing. They'd also be working at cross purposes much of the time. It's a 'what has light to do with darkness' thing. Which we've also tried to tell you about," Yans said.

"Well, you can't expect me to live without sex. And since everyone else around here is a believer, I guess, for now at least, I need to become one. So arrange it."

Yans fought with his face. A smile got squashed, but not before it was clear that he was trying to not smile. Or perhaps laugh. Once he was back in control of himself, he said, "I can't arrange it. Every man must come to God by himself, after repenting of his sins, and surrendering his life. And true faith is never a 'for now, at least' matter. You have to be all in, for all time and all eternity, or you're not fit for the kingdom of God."

"So put me where I do fit! I have two responsibilities in life. Two. Deciding what gets put in the historical record, and breeding with MUS women, for the good of the breed, and therefore for the good of Society. You know that!"

Bramson, seeing there was trouble brewing, had wandered over. "Shall I take over for you, Yans?" he asked.

"I've got it," Yans said.

"Maybe, but you have the disadvantage of being someone he can look at and expect to understand The Plan, and also the disadvantage of being someone he thinks he knows – but he's likely plugging the Topside fitting-in you into his mind. You take a break. And hang on. I'm not going to coddle him."

"Do you think I was coddling him? How much did you hear?"

"Enough to know that you weren't coddling him. But enough to know that he expects you to cater to him, and that puts you in a bad spot. Now, Tomas, here are the facts, or some of them, in no particular order. We don't stick to breeds around here, or anywhere else in the alliance, which has more people in it than you can imagine – so you have far more women as options for a potential mate than you can probably imagine. But we don't authorize the weddings of non-Christians with Christians. People 'in the Lord' must marry 'in the Lord.' It's an apostolic command. People have been known to ignore the command. But we shouldn't, and around here we don't. But, there are more unbelievers than believers, in the wider world, so don't think you're stuck with being single if you don't convert. And here's another fact – 'conversion' for the sake of side issues isn't really conversion. You have to go to God for God Himself, before He'll adopt you. But getting back to your overriding concern of the moment. We don't assign women to men. Some cultures have done that, and sometimes it has worked surprisingly well. But we don't work that way. It's too easy for it become sex trafficking, and sex trafficking is always bad. Instead, we require men to get to know the woman who they find attractive, and convince her that they are serious about the long haul, and then we also get her to convince him that she's serious about the long haul, before we allow the couple to marry. We will do what we can to help you find a suitable wife. Chessa is not suitable for you, most likely, and it's even more likely that you're not suitable for her, even if you become a Christian. She probably needs someone who has been away from Topside longer than you have, and perhaps a widower. You are at a disadvantage here, since we're cut off from others like we are, and since the rest of us are Christians. We know that. We'll either arrange for you to transfer, or we'll try to get outside women to come in to get to know you. Seriously, we want you to be happy, and we also don't want you to feel frustrated all the time. On that last note, though, here's a very hard fact, but if you don't follow the rule, we'll toss you in jail for rape. You said that we can't expect you to live without sex. But, you're wrong. All the unmarried men in this society are expected to live without sex, and you will not be given an exception to that. No one gets an exception to that. It's difficult. Sometimes it's crazy difficult. But that's one of the many reasons we like to see most men get married. Don't panic. We all manage, somehow, and you will, too. If you need to be locked up for fear you're about to sink to the level of raping somebody, let us know. We'll be happy to lock you up, if needed. But there's no reason we should have to, if you're man enough to behave responsibly. And now I take my leave of you, for now. I have work to do. Goodbye." He bowed, smiling, and left.

"He forgot to mention that you've been fired from your old responsibilities, and now have new ones. But you probably know that already, when you're not obsessing over not having a wife yet," Yans said. He also smiled and left. He bore a strange resemblance to young Kendrick, the way he moved off, as if he were the young boy after he'd done something mischievous but was too pleased with himself to see a need to apologize.

Some of the other men were watching him from a distance. Tomas, confused, shocked, and agitated, set about being as productive and normal as humanly possible. He hoped it would make him invisible.

It seemed to work. The other men turned back to their work.

Later in the day, he began to suspect that the other men had conspired to make sure that he was never out of sight of at least one of them. It was curiously hard to be sure, but it didn't seem like a good idea to try running off to see whether they'd reconfigure to keep him in sight. It felt like a good idea, but his mind argued strongly against it.

At dinner, held in the sod-roofed sunken mess hall, no one mentioned anything about the conversation, until Bramson swung by and whispered in his ear. "Don't worry. We all struggle with it. And us men stick together, when we can. It's all right. Your secret is safe with us."

This should have been reassuring. And it was. But it was also annoying. Everything about these people, this culture, the food, even the mess hall with its scattering of pine needles on the campground-like floor, was annoying. The chipmunk chattering at him from up at ground level was obnoxious. More than anything, having women around but not being able to even touch the horrible creatures, was annoying.

# /11/

A second house, smaller than the one Rick and Tanya and their children were in, was cleaned up and put in order. As soon as it was ready, Walker married Natalya.

The wedding was a quiet affair with a great deal too much Bible reading and prayer time to suit Tomas – although, of course, if you had to put up with Bible reading and incantations to get married, he'd swallow his objections and do it, if only he could get properly lined up with a woman who would be allowed to marry him.

Since he was trying triply hard now to blend in, Tomas added his hearty congratulations to the couple along with the others, as the little community escorted the deliriously-happy but possessed-of-a-new-dignity pair from the special meal at the sunken mess hall, down the path to their newly spiffed up cottage.

Then, since it was raining, and cold, everyone except the newlyweds retired to the main bunkhouse, for hot drinks and pleasant chats. They'd already had wine, at the special feast, but care had been taken that no one overindulged. Tomas, who had learned to like to drink enough wine to feel intoxicating effects, had felt like mutinying, but had resolutely stuck to his best behavior, in hopes of speeding up the wife search. They did seem to value good behavior, after all, especially in a prospective husband. They not only said they did, but in practice they did seem to value good behavior. And if that's what they wanted, that would be what they would get; as far as he could manage it, at least.

The women, all of them, had cried at the wedding ceremony. Worse yet, they all seemed inclined to cry again, at the least provocation, or even a stray thought. Why Science had made the female sex so volatile, he wished he knew. There didn't seem to be much upside to it, other than it could make a man feel he ought to do something for them. Perhaps that had been the reason? If so, Science bloody well should have arranged for men to generally know what to do for them, because, all too often, like now, there wasn't anything obvious.

Speaking of Science, though, over the course of time he'd found that these exiles had a rather low view of Science, at least as a force for improving life and Society, and he was beginning to wonder if they had a point.

Cordelia seemed a bit sad, and Hamlet seemed more inclined than usual to attend to her.

"Are you all right?" Veneece asked Cordelia.

"Yes, darling. I'm just a bit wistful. I get that way at weddings, at least when I let my mind go forward to thinking about the babies that might come along. Mind you, I'm not jealous. I know we're not allowed to covet what our neighbors have, and with God's help I don't, but it can still be hard that Hamlet and I were born Topside, in a breeding program designed to turn out great actors for their pageants and motivational or educational films, and that we were both sterilized, so we wouldn't get sidetracked from our work. Most people were, in our troupe. Made barren, I mean." She squeezed Hamlet's hand.

He smiled gently at her. "Oh, it seemed wonderful at the time. I can't believe it did, looking back. But it did. We loved our government and thought it loved us. Until we got in trouble, that is. We'd been told that we'd been given traditional actor names, and some of us thought it would be fun, not to mention worthy, to learn about the glorious traditions that went along with our names. But what we found was that we'd been given names made famous by a famous and well-liked playwright, who had been admired for centuries. They weren't actor names at all, but character names. Even at that, we'd likely have been all right if we'd stopped there, but we got caught up in our studies, and actually read some of the plays this Shakespeare fellow wrote. Much of it went right over our heads. The language is archaic, and the customs were hard to figure out, and there were references to events and people and beliefs we'd never heard of. But what we could figure out rocked us, not only with the beauty of the language, but with the bursting-at-the-seams life of the stories. And the variety. The plays weren't anything like we have now, and often you could tell he was criticizing people in power, which of course was shocking."

"And he sometimes talked about gods. Not the real God, necessarily, but he had characters that believed in a god of some sort, or several of them. Even being that far off from the Truth – and believe me, he was very far from the Truth in what I read – it made our trainers nervous that we'd read such stuff," Cordelia said, "especially when we started to catch on to ideas of sin and betrayal and devotion, on top of just the superstitions."

"We likely would have been killed off, to prevent thought contamination, but we got rescued by people from the underground, and that was a bigger shock than meeting Shakespeare, I'll tell you," Hamlet said.

Cordelia grinned. "It took us a while to tumble to the new ways, and then, when we decided we wanted to marry someone, it was simply unthinkable to me to marry outside my breed, regardless of what people said. Hamlet here took pity on me, and we've been together ever since."

"Pity on you! I thought you took pity on me!" Hamlet said, laughing.

"Ah, well, I'm not sure I can remember what I thought or felt all the way back then. I was so different. And our new life was so confusing at first. But after we got better adjusted, they let us put our skills to work rescuing babies and children, some of whom we got to raise. So I did get to be a mother after all, and I thank God for that, but I wish I'd been a mother the other way, too. And especially that I'd had a little Hamlet to hand to big Hamlet here, as a blood and bone son."

"I know, darling. I'm sorry. If I could go back in time and keep them from turning us into 'nothing but players on the stage,' I'd do it," Hamlet said.

"I wish we had been nothing but players on the stage. Considering some of the inspirational films they had us do," Cordelia said. She shook her head. "For those of you who don't know how it's done, the Era government would sometimes assign us to do things like to go bust into rooms to gun down people who had stepped out of line. We were acting, but the victims weren't. We were expected to actually shoot people, or beat them to death, and so we did. Government actors had been doing it for generations, as we understood it, and we were actors for the government, so we did what was expected of us, and sometimes felt quite proud of ourselves. Oh, I remember sitting around reviewing films, and thinking how well our troupe had managed to handle the angles and posing and timing, to make it look the way a top-notch film should. God have mercy on us, playing to the camera as we killed people."

"Ah, but we've just had a wedding. Let's shift our minds forward instead of back, shall we?" Hamlet said, trying to draw attention away from his shivering wife.

"That's all right. We can handle grief in the midst of joy, and vice versa," Veneece said, as she wrapped Cordelia in a hug, and invited her to cry on her shoulder.

"Oh, well, it's getting late. I think I'll head back to the men's bunkhouse," Yans said. "Anybody want to join me?"

Bramson got up, and gave Cordelia a tender hug on his way out the door. Tomas trotted out after him, Yans close on his heels at a solemn walk.

# /12/

Everyone was kind enough, after the fashion of the place, but Tomas knew he didn't fit in, and people were keeping him away from Veneece, and were insisting that he couldn't court any Christians unless he became one, but were also saying that he couldn't be a Christian unless he became a supernaturalist; and no women were coming to the farm to meet him (other than one helicopter co-pilot, who flirted with him and got his hopes up, but it turned out that she had assumed he was a conscientious objector, and was having fun at his expense, since she hated COs).

It was hopeless.

Just hopeless.

And at every meal, the others prayed, but when he tried to learn to do that, they told him that there was no point praying to God if you didn't believe in Him. Nor if you believed He existed, was there any point in praying to Him except in the name of Jesus. God had made provision for man to approach, and it was dangerous to assume you could do it any other way.

Well, they did make an exception or two to that. For instance, praying in a primitive and cobbled-together manner to God asking that He would grant you belief was all right, if you were an unbeliever. In fact, it was necessary.

Tomas tried to get his head around all this, and failed.

Bramson assured him that God would reward him for trying to understand, if he kept at it.

Still, it was impossible, all the more so since he knew that the helicopters coming to pick up produce on a semi-regular basis were taking that food off to people who weren't in exile, most of whom didn't believe in Jesus like these people did. People more like him, in other words. And besides, there had been lots of women at Cowtun. And some of them he remembered as appealing. And surely some of them weren't Christian.

He became obsessed with going to Cowtun.

Hamlet put in a request for him, which was denied.

Hamlet explained more thoroughly that Tomas, while a ready and skillful worker, was not a CO, and was increasingly miserable being around COs, all the more so since he was the only non-CO at the work camp, unless you counted the youngest child of Rick and Tanya, who was currently fond of pounding on his siblings, both in fun and in fury.

The next helicopter reserved a seat for him.

-

The group sent him off with well wishes, and an invitation to come back whenever he wanted, for however long he liked, but he was so excited to be finally leaving that he could barely notice the people he was shaking off.

"You seem to be glad to be getting out of there," the pilot said, once they were off the ground.

"They're well-mannered, but I don't understand them, and they don't understand me," Tomas said.

"You have lots of company," the pilot said.

That was the best news Tomas could imagine, just then.

He was met at the landing pad by a self-important little man who took him to another man, a little on the fat side, who was in charge of interviewing him before assigning him to a proper place in the community.

"I understand that you were at the camp for COs, but aren't a CO. How did that happen?"

"On the day when the billboard was released, my trainer kidnapped myself and another MUS, and brought us along, saying afterward that he had decided to rescue us. Since then, I have been going where he goes. I am glad that finally matters are getting properly sorted."

The man looked at him over his glasses. "In other words, you grew up being loyal to our enemy, and have only recently come over to us, and not because you wanted to?"

Tomas started to panic. He hadn't expected this. "I did not know that you existed. How could I have wanted to come?" he said, hoping he wouldn't break out in a sweat.

"But you are willing to help our side now?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"For one thing, I cannot go back. I have been thought contaminated. For another, I understand that your side is winning. I shall be happy to be on the winning side."

"But you aren't sold on our goals?"

"I do not know if I know what your goals are. I have been almost exclusively around the people who you have jailed, or sent to work camps. I am not sure they can adequately express your goals, nor have we talked about them much. We have been farming. It is fulltime and honorable work, farming."

"So why did you apply to come over here?"

"I want a wife. I cannot get one there. I am not a Christian, and all the women there are Christians. When I was here before, there were many women, and I am hoping that some of them which are suitable are not Christian because those are forbidden."

"And now I have heard everything," the man said.

"I am sorry. I did not quite hear that."

"I'm going to assign you to a transition team for now. We do that with all new arrivals. Step outside for a moment while I brief the man who is to take you to your suite."

Tomas stepped out into the tunnel, and waited patiently by the door, eyeing the women who happened by, at least all those that weren't too young or too old. He hoped he might see a stray female MUS, preferably one of superior quality, but he hoped in vain.

"It will probably help matters if you learn to not stare at women in public. They don't like it, and neither do I," the guard closest to him said.

Tomas muttered his apologies, and watched the door, waiting for the man who was going to take him to his suite.

-

Tomas had jumped to a conclusion about what a transition team was, and was surprised to find that he wasn't being put on it, but under it. He kicked himself for making such an elementary mistake, before settling in to be on his very best behavior, in hopes of escaping probation as quickly as possible, and in hopes of inspiring the team to round him up a mate of superior quality.

The transition team, however, wasn't horribly interested in his good manners, per se, except perhaps as a sign that perhaps Tomas was trying a bit too hard to be pleasing, and therefore might be a spy in their midst. Tomas was now faced with the impossible task of trying to figure out whether to be less pleasing, in hopes of being seen as more trustworthy. He had done that before, topside, when required, but that was under a system he understood far better than the underground system, which sometimes seemed so illogical that it hardly seemed a system at all.

Besides, the team members who doubted his sincerity were split on whether they thought he might be a spy from topside, or a spy from the conscientious objector camp. This made it tricky, because it seemed to him that it would require different maneuvering to free himself from one suspicion, versus the other.

The team also seemed annoyed to have him there. Now that a war was on, they didn't want to bother with transitioning a 'foundling' into the community. They felt it drew them away from more important matters. To cheer themselves up about it, they were sometimes sarcastic, and sometimes they were cruel. It wasn't at all like back at Hamlet's farm, and Tomas had to deal with unexpected pangs of homesickness on top of everything else.

Finally, one day, shortly after a new shift of two men showed up, but the pair of men they were replacing had oddly stuck around to chat, a fellow historian showed up to talk history with him. She wasn't like the others; she was kinder and didn't make fun of him. But she was, in some ways, more unsettling, because she wanted to know how he approached history. Having to admit that he'd been expected to rearrange data to push a narrative was embarrassing. He'd done his best to stay as close to actual records as possible; and he'd managed to preserve some original material in hidden places, to go back to if the winds shifted; but still, he'd done what was expected of him. Also, he didn't know how much to tell her, since she was outside of official circles. Inside of official circles, most people knew that the historical record was changed as needed, but it was a matter of honor – and safety – to deny that to people on the outside. People who were not elites were notoriously inclined to distrust the wisdom of such procedures, and so were not to be told. In the Future, of course, neither the ongoing corrections nor the need to hide anything from anyone would be needed. But for now, in the Always Improving Present, such things were needed. But you mustn't say so, if you were entrusted with that knowledge.

And so Tomas dodged her questions about methodology.

But then she also wanted to know what he knew about certain periods of history.

This also seemed dangerous, so he dodged some more.

The transition team members laughed at both of them.

"Told you," one taunted. "He's a shifty fellow, isn't he?"

"Most people who get rescued are, at first, aren't they?" she said.

"More or less. But this fellow is top of the line at it," the man said.

Tomas by now knew enough about the manners of the place to know that this wasn't meant as a compliment. He had visions of being thrown into jail, or even being shot. These days, he wasn't as comfortable about being shot as he'd sometimes been.

"I have told you why I requested that I come to Cowtun. If you do not believe me, you might as well send me back to Hamlet's farm, where at least I can farm. Around here, I have nothing to do, and no hope of accomplishing anything as long as I am held in this suite," he said.

"I can probably help you there," the historian said. "At least, I can bring you material to study, if you like?"

"Studying isn't what I'd hoped for, either, and I am no longer certain it is better than farming, but I would appreciate having material to study," Tomas said, with exasperation.

"Just so you know, what he says he came here for was to find a wife," a team member said.

"Nothing wrong with a man wanting a wife, is there?" the historian said, more civilly than her informant.

"Naw, in theory. But who around here would want him? Except maybe you, Dorcas? Huh? Geeky historians, both of you, and both of you friends with COs, and you having the dad you did. Seems like a perfect match to me." The man doubled up with laughter, and a couple of his colleagues joined in.

"Don't mind them," Dorcas said. "Or, rather, I don't mean don't 'mind them,' because that could get you into trouble. I mean don't let them bother you. I'll go find you some books to read, and will be back soon, likely this evening, if I can manage it." She got up, and with strained dignity left the room.

"Oh, she's not as icy as she looks. Most likely," a man said.

"And she's single," another said.

"For good reasons, I hear," the first man said, before doubling over in laughter again.

"I do not think that is a proper way for men to talk about a woman, even if they do not like her," Tomas said.

"Oh, lookie. He's talking like those Christians he wants us to believe he doesn't like to be around," a man sneered.

"On the upside, it's proof he's trainable. There's no way he was taught _that_ Topside," another man said.

"Knock it off, fellas," the quietest man of the group said. "I'm with him on this. That's no way to treat a woman, even if she deserved it. And Dorcas may not be your style, but she's got integrity. And more manners than the rest of you catfish combined."

One of the men started to make a witty retort, but realized that the mood had shifted, and wit wasn't going to be seen as witty, just at the moment.

-

Shortly after that, everyone but the quiet man got pulled from the transition team. Dorcas and a second woman were moved in to replace the men who got booted. Dorcas, as promised, came with books, most on a well-stocked reader which was given to Tomas as his to keep, but also some printed and bound books, some looking incredibly old.

The man who'd interviewed Tomas upon arrival stopped by to see how he was doing, and to apologize for the original transition team. He also apologized for the current team, since it wasn't as experienced as the first one, and since it only had three people on it, two of them women, so they couldn't rotate like the previous minders, but would have to stay in the suite with him. It wasn't how things were normally done, he said, but they were shorthanded just now, and had people coming and going far more than usual, thanks to the war. The war, by the way, was going remarkably well, overall. The attack on the industrial park was an anomaly. As far as they could tell, it was one of the few places where a Topside official had dared to strike back without going through layers of red tape first, and to make it worse he was one of the few officials with trained troops and a fleet of helicopters at his command. But the underground troops had gotten reinforcements quickly, and the local Topside troops had been pushed back, so not to worry. Too much, at least. Everything was in flux. He again apologized to Tomas about the arrangements, and assured him that people in Cowtun were more civilized than the first team might have led him to believe, and then he left before Tomas could reply.

An upside to this team was that Dorcas did like to study, and was serious about it, and good at tying one thing to another. Tomas began to admire her skill. He was concerned at the way the quiet man, Scott, sometimes looked at her, but then Scott seemed to be concerned about the way Tomas sometimes looked at the second woman on the team, Caleba. It was awkward, but soon enough they figured out how to keep annoyances to a minimum. It helped that the suite had two bedrooms, each with two bunkbeds in it. Each person had a bunkbed, the men in one room, and the women in the other. Each person slept on one bunk, and used the spare bed as a shelf to put things on. It was a bit untidy, but seemed to work well, Tomas thought.

He almost laughed at himself, though, when he realized how protective of his bunkbed he was getting, particularly of the bed he used as a shelf for books and clothes. Where he'd lived most of his life, the government had owned everything, and assigned everyone to his place. This notion of having something to protect, not because the government expected you to protect it, but because it was to some degree yours, was novel, but strangely easy to adjust to.

He settled in to read, and to discuss the books with the others. Dorcas had a fascination with early church history, which made him think that she might be a Christian, but it slowly came out that while she believed in God, she was skeptical about Jesus. Caleba, on the other hand, was a full-blown materialist, which was even better. Scott wasn't saying, which Tomas took to mean he wasn't a Christian, since at Hamlet's farm he'd been taught that Christians were required by God to declare their faith.

Ah, but there were study materials at hand, and Tomas happily turned his thoughts away from such cloudy matters, and dove in to researching and analyzing, and comparing his ideas and recollections and discoveries with the ideas and discoveries of the others.

After a few days, the man who'd interviewed him came back to see how everyone was doing, and to say that Tomas could go for walks in the tunnels now, provided he always had an escort.

-

The more he walked in the tunnels, the more Tomas wondered why he'd been so excited to come to Cowtun. It was hard to put his finger on it, but the community here just wasn't as friendly as Hamlet's farm. At least not in the same way. It also seemed to lack depth, intellectually speaking. It wasn't bad, per se, in any particular way, but the people seemed more self-centered, and less inclined to live in the present. As with the people in 'Topside' society, the emphasis was on the future, which was somehow, surely, going to be better than now.

Until recently, Tomas would have been right alongside them on that, but now he felt out of place around people like that. He also felt impatient with them.

Dorcas told him that both her parents had been rescued from Topside, and several of her friends, too. She assured him that what he was feeling and thinking was normal, and was likely just a phase.

Tomas caught the 'likely,' and didn't like it. It implied that some people never did fit in, after they got rescued.

-

Usually the four of them walked together, but Caleba sprained her ankle, or said that she did. Tomas had a suspicion that she was angling to have time alone with Scott. This moved her down in his estimation, both because she was favoring Scott – a nice enough man, but hardly a scholar – and because she was increasingly prone to angling for attention. Dorcas, whatever her faults, had never, in his experience, tried to trick a man into paying her attention. Further, Scott had said that she had integrity, and although he wasn't a scholar, he seemed a man to know integrity or a lack of integrity when he saw it, except perhaps some of the time in the case of Caleba. However, in this case Scott, showing a surprising amount of wisdom, called in his sister and her husband to play card games with him and Caleba while Tomas and Dorcas went for a walk. Caleba hid her feelings on that, and said she liked to play card games, and further that she liked his sister and brother-in-law. Tomas doubted her on all counts, and was glad to be out the door, and on a walk, away from her.

-

Ten minutes away, alarms rang and an announcement came through speakers up and down the tunnel. Effective immediately, all electronic devices were to be turned off, including readers, until further notice. Notices would be posted in the usual locations. There were to be no more broadcasts, including announcements like the one being made, until further notice. To repeat, all electronics were to be turned off immediately, and for now, all notices were to be posted, not broadcast. And then the announcer signed off, and people, stunned, to some degree following the example of people around them more than the announcement itself, grabbed for communications devices and readers, some to turn them off immediately, others to sneak in a quick call to someone before turning their device off.

"I guess we need to double down on explaining to people what the word 'immediately' means," Dorcas said, to people standing nearby, who had turned off their devices as ordered, and were watching others get a call in. Some of the callers, overhearing Dorcas, sheepishly rang off, before trotting off toward a place where public notices were generally posted.

Dorcas grabbed Tomas by the hand, and led him, at a jog, toward a posting area. It was packed, with people excitedly getting into log jams coming and going. Worse yet, some of them who had just read the notice weren't moving off to let others in.

"Would you gentlemen remind people to walk on the right hand side of the tunnel, like usual? And to move off once they've read the notice?" Dorcas asked some hale man who were standing about helplessly, being dismayed and annoyed by the chaos and shoving.

"Yes, ma'am. Glad to," one of them said, happy to have an assignment. His fellows joined him, and soon had more volunteers working on getting people sorted out and moving again. It still wasn't entirely orderly, but at least people could get to the notice sooner or later, and get away, without getting crushed.

The notice, when they got to it, said that the helicopters the community had relied on for supplies and transport had been reassigned elsewhere, that the back-up supply chains were presently uncertain, and that people with someplace else to go should probably head off to there. Mysteriously, and more ominously, the notice said that people were not to do the usual reporting to the community offices to say where they were going.

"No wonder people were standing around, trying to figure out what to do," Dorcas said, shepherding Tomas off, back toward their suite, resolutely sticking to the right hand side of the tunnel in an effort to set a good example, which was both badly needed, and being ignored at the moment.

At the suite, no one was there. It seemed likely that they were off to a different posting location. Dorcas and Tomas packed books and clothes and food and water bottles and readers into packs, and rolled up blankets to carry. Since they had time, they strapped the blankets to the packs. Still no one came back.

"Well, this is awkward," Dorcas said. "All the more so since I don't know if I need to report with you to anybody, since you're on probation."

"Perhaps we should check," Tomas said, not wanting to get her into trouble.

As they went down the tunnel, he realized that, in fact, he was more worried about getting Dorcas into trouble than getting into trouble himself. It was an odd feeling, but not a bad one.

The man at the community office assured them that they were both free to go, and that he didn't want to know where, even for Tomas.

"You're scaring me," Dorcas told him.

"Join the club," the man said. "But you've got somewhere to go?"

"Several places. God be with you," Dorcas said, nodding at Tomas to follow her out, since the man seemed to have other things to attend to.

As they walked down the tunnel, Dorcas quietly said that she was heading toward Rivertun, and would decide on the way whether to go there or somewhere else in that general direction. She told Tomas that the way she was headed would take Tomas closer to Hamlet's, and he was welcome to come along.

It was enough, for now, and Tomas took her up on her offer.

# /13/

They didn't talk much in the tunnels, but concentrated on keeping a steady pace away from Cowtun. At first they made good time, but then they came upon an old couple struggling along, and they shouldered their packs along with their own, and slowed down to a shuffle to match their pace.

The old people were worried they were holding them up, and were embarrassed that anyone had had to help them with their packs, but Dorcas assured them it was all right, and they seemed reassured, especially after Tomas backed her up.

He nearly fell in love, when Dorcas smiled her thanks at him. Only remembering that she was a supernaturalist helped him keep his head.

Some nephews of the old couple came by, and took over, with thanks for the kindness shown to their aunt and uncle.

Tomas felt rather proud of himself for a while after that. Dorcas seemed to have forgotten the episode as soon as it was over, but Tomas was quite taken up with thinking about it.

It wasn't lost on him that not that long ago he'd never have considered helping strangers, much less old people, unless he'd been assigned to help them. Not that he would have had a chance of helping old people topside, since people got culled before they got like that.

His thoughts went to Cordelia and Hamlet and Bramson. He'd missed them more than he would have imagined. He confirmed with Dorcas that he was headed in the right direction to get back to Hamlet's farm.

"Yes. And you did say that they said you could come back any time, right?"

"That is correct."

"And you're sure they weren't just being polite?"

"I don't think they would lie, even to be polite."

"I've heard that about them. I hope you're right. I'm tired of people saying what they don't mean, especially when they don't have any life or death reason to fall back on as an excuse."

Tomas thought a while. "I am not sure that the people at Hamlet's farm would lie, even to save their life. I am not sure, but they think it is a sin to lie, and I think they would try to avoid doing it. They might slip up and do it, but I think they would correct themselves. That is my impression, at least."

"I bet they weren't happy, knowing that you've spent your adult life turning out propaganda and fudging historical records."

"We didn't talk about it much, but they said that what people do in the past can be forgiven, and they wouldn't hold it against me, and neither would God if I repented of it."

"And did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Repent?"

"I'm not sure. They told me that I don't understand repentance yet. But I'm not happy about what I did. I wish I hadn't done it, but I can't think how I could have done anything differently, because they kill anyone who doesn't do what they want. So, it was hopeless. So I'm not sure I ought to apologize. I did what I had to."

"I'm glad my parents escaped, and I lived down here where it was easier. Speaking of that, though, take that next right hand alley, and I'll show you something my dad was rather proud of."

"What?"

"Don't get impatient. I don't want to be overheard or make anyone suspicious," she whispered.

Well, that made Tomas suspicious, but it didn't seem a good time to say so. When they got to the intersection, he turned right, and found himself in a wonderland of amateur art, large panel after large panel on display, each apparently decorated by a different artist. Tomas prepared himself to admire something painted by Dorcas's father, since she was bothering to show it to him.

The alleyway curved slightly. When they were out of sight of the main tunnel, Dorcas unlatched a hummingbird-bespeckled panel, and uncovered a secret passageway.

"Come on. Quiet," she said, motioning Tomas in, and replacing the panel behind them. "Dad got adopted into the family that was in charge of keeping this passage more or less secret. Quite a few people know about it, but it's not public knowledge, and we're not to make it public knowledge," she said.

She pulled out a pocket light, and handed it to Tomas, asking him to lead the way.

Tomas reminded himself that Dorcas was supposedly a woman of integrity, and bravely led off. The tunnel was wide enough for them and their packs but Tomas thought the overweight man who had overseen the transition teams probably wouldn't have been able to come with them this way. Eventually (not far, really, but it felt moderately far because of the dark) they got to a ladder that went up farther than seemed necessary, through a rectangular tube that narrowed as it went up.

"We've been going gradually down, which means we're deeper than we were," Dorcas said. "But also, this leads up to a watchtower. So we go all the way up and through a trap door in the tower. Then down again on stairs zigging and zagging down on the outside. Assuming they're in working order. I say that because once, when I was a kid, we got to the tower and the stairs had been hacked to pieces. And I haven't been there in a while. For that matter, I don't know if the tower is in good repair, so be careful going up. If this doesn't work, we can backtrack, and go down the main tunnel again, to a regular porthole. But this cuts off miles and miles, and hills and hills, and also takes us past a fugitive hole that's always had maps in it, and I'm hoping for a good map. So let's give it a try, shall we? Here. Let me strap that pocket light to my wrist, so I can light the way for both of us."

They more snugly cinched their blankets to their packs, and their packs to their backs, for fear of having anything drop off partway up, and headed up.

The ladder – cautiously tested rung by rung – seemed sturdy the whole way up, and when they cautiously eased through the trap door at the top, the tower seemed solid enough.

It was too dark to see much of anything though.

"Well, this is awkward," Dorcas said, her voice low so it wouldn't carry over the countryside. "I hate to admit it, but I've lived in tunnels so long that I forgot about day and night being a factor, and didn't even guess it wouldn't be light out here. Sorry about that. We could have holed up in the tunnel for a while, and rested down there. I suppose we could work our way down the stairs by pocket light if we wanted, but that would risk being seen from far away. I vote for resting up here, until dawn, unless you have a better idea."

Tomas, who wasn't yet recovered from the inherent terrors of climbing a tall and presumably ill-maintained ladder by unevenly oscillating pocket light, decided that the only course of action more insane than resting in the crazy-high tower would be to go down the possibly-hacked-up crazy-long flights of stairs by pocket light. He agreed to her plan.

"Once we get to ground level, it isn't far, maybe three miles, to the fugitive hole. It's better set up for resting, and it's got maps. Or it always has. If it doesn't, I think I remember how to get to Hamlet's from there. If not, I'm sure I can find the way to a tunnel that ties into the Rivertun tunnel system from there. One way or another, we should be to a community within three or four days."

"Lord willing," Tomas said, because that was what the COs had said whenever guessing about the future, and somehow it seemed appropriate just now.

"God willing," Dorcas said. He thought she was agreeing with the idea, but there was a slight chance she was correcting him, by using 'God' instead of 'Lord.'

It wasn't something he wanted to argue about. In fact, he wished he hadn't said it. He could almost hear Bramson or Walker or Yans reminding him that people who didn't believe in God shouldn't lightly reference God.

He turned his attention to getting his blanket detached and unrolled, and trying to figure out where to lie down.

Dorcas helpfully pointed him to one side of the tower enclosure, while she took the other. He watched her struggle to untie her blanket, and wondered if she'd get upset if he offered to help her. She got it untied before he could decide.

She laid on the floor, using her pack as a pillow, and wrapped the blanket close to her. He got the feeling, though, that she was determined to not fall asleep until after he did.

"I'll take first watch," he said, carefully positioning himself so he was watching the top of the stairs instead of her.

It was too dark to tell her exact reaction, but he got the feeling that she relaxed a little. A short while later, he was sure she was asleep. Resolutely, he kept most of his attention on the stairs, and on listening for trouble. After all, he'd said he'd take first watch, and that meant he should actually be on guard. Unless he wanted to be a liar, of course.

It wasn't long before it was dawn. He woke her by talking gently to her from where he sat.

The stairs were too slight and – what was the word he wanted? airy? – for his taste (again, he thought that an overweight person wouldn't be wise to try this escape route), but they were fine, except for one of them, which had cracked and had to be bypassed. That wasn't so bad, and it wasn't too much bother to help Dorcas manage it.

Dorcas led him from one landmark to another, and got them to the fugitive hole in good time, while rarely breaking out of cover.

Tomas regretted that he hadn't been farming for a while. He was sure that 'only about three miles' wouldn't have been so hard, if he'd been in better shape. But he wasn't in better shape, and he hadn't slept, so when they got to the fugitive hole he gratefully slumped onto what struck him as the second best cot, wearily removed his boots, laid down, and fell asleep. Dorcas must have tucked him in while he slept, because when he woke, he not only had a pillow under his head, which might possibly have been there when he laid down (he couldn't remember), but he also had a sheet and blanket over him, which he was sure hadn't been over him before he fell asleep.

-

When he woke, Dorcas was studying at a small table, her 'nose in a book' as the locals like to put it. She smiled at him. "We might as well rest up here for most of the day, letting our feet and muscles recover," she said. "For that matter, we could stay here until tomorrow morning, if we like. It's secure, and we have food, and the next leg of the journey can be either two miles, or five, or fifteen or twenty. It's only about thirty miles to Hamlet's, from here, but there are hills, and I'm not in shape like I used to be in shape. I used to be able to run for thirty miles at a time, even on hills, back when we were having another communications blackout, and they needed runners to take messages around. But that's been a while, and I haven't been on this particular trail for probably four or five years. I certainly haven't been on it since they put the base in at the industrial park. When they did that, they shut off some of our main trails, because they were too near the base. But, here, I started to tell you that it was all right to sleep longer if you wanted, and then went on to jabber at you. Sorry. Go back to sleep, if you like."

Tomas sat up, carefully stretching sore muscles. "I will get up, for now, I think," he said. He stood, testing his feet, finding them sore, but not overly so (which pleased him).

Dorcas got him checked out on the layout of the place, and went back to studying while he washed up and marveled over the primitive but functional fixtures of the place. Water, accessed through a faucet, came down through a gravity feed, and drained away into a porous tank in the ground, she said. It was a small tank, she warned. Getting carried away with water use could cause a small, temporary flood. She admitted to knowing that from experience.

Light came in through fiber cables. Air came in through various tubes, but it paid to pump the air exchanger now and then, especially when there was more than one person down here. It was a straightforward air exchanger, strictly manual.

Dorcas, for whom living underground was natural, and who had pleasant childhood memories tied up with this particular place, was content, but Tomas found the fugitive hole too small, plus his imagination conjured up flooding and suffocation killing them while they slept. Plus, being at close quarters with Dorcas when she felt at home, and was happily studying, was almost too distracting. If his feet had been badly blistered or his muscles had remained sore enough to be crippling, he might not have ventured to ask how Dorcas was doing, feet and muscle wise. But he felt well enough to try it. She took the hint, and in the early evening, she led him down the trail another couple of miles, to an old mine shaft near a small creek. It wasn't as secure, but under the circumstances, that fact almost helped. At least, it forced Tomas to concentrate on guard duties, which slightly countered his growing obsession with his travel guide.

He wished, though, that he'd asked more questions back at the fugitive hole, which was closer to soundproof, because now that the first rush of escaping from Cowtun was over, there were many questions that seemed to need asking.

"Why do you think they wanted people to turn off devices and leave?" he asked, quietly.

"I'd be guessing on some of it, but probably they are, too. For what it's worth, even before this war got launched, Subterrans – that would be us – have been fleeing from place to place. We might not be used to being involved in a widespread shooting and bombing war, but evacuations of whole communities have actually been pretty common. Not around here, though, as you might have guessed, seeing how jumbled people got when they got told it would likely be a good idea. Probably we should have done some drills, or more education. But, for this case, the way it fell out, I have to guess, as my first guess, that they found they had a security breach, or that the enemy was actually monitoring us. Like they were at the base. That would explain why they didn't want any information on other communities to be passed around or destinations recorded. But I don't know. Usually this sort of mess clears up quickly, but sometimes it doesn't. We just need to find someplace to plug back into a community, now that our old one got disbanded under our feet, to mix my metaphors a little. Then we just need to take it from there."

Tomas got the feeling that Subterrans thought this sort of life, this sort of unpredictability, was only normal, and only to be expected. He thought so now, with Dorcas, and he'd felt that way some of the time back at Hamlet's farm.

For a man raised under carefully arranged conditions, it was jarring. But that same streak of personality and frustration that had wanted to shove someone while Yans Gingrich was leading him away from his government-furnished apartment, made him feel that the unpredictability had its inherent satisfactions, since it proved that Government wasn't as much in total control as it liked to pretend.

That didn't make it easy, though.

He was glad the next morning when they could leave the open-ended mine shaft and travel on to an earthen shelter farther down the trail. It had doors to bolt shut, and that was a relief, even though so far there had been no hint of trouble, airborne or on the ground; nor for that matter, any hint of any other person being alive on the face of the planet.

He got homesick for Bramson and Hamlet and Cordelia and the others again, and wished he was to the farm already, so he could see everyone with his own eyes again. To a lesser degree, he wondered about Scott and Caleba and the others at Cowtun, and even – though he wished he wouldn't – he wondered about his old colleagues back in the One Hundred Room, and also the men he used to greet, cautiously, on his way to and from work. He hadn't liked them, or known them, but they had been part of his life, or at least were familiar, and they had been proof he wasn't the last male left on earth.

By now, under the careful instruction of Dorcas, he was learning to use the map she'd borrowed from the fugitive hole. He'd studied countless maps through the years, but that wasn't the same as using them, which required extra skills, and a sense of distance and terrain. He'd been happy enough to let her lead the way – for that matter, with a trace of Topside mentality, he was unhappy at any task being taken over by a non-expert, even if he was the non-expert and wanted to learn how maps played out in real life. But she had insisted he learn, and sometimes she even insisted that he lead the way, and he didn't know how to object to that.

Other than to teach him about maps and the countryside and other practical matters, Dorcas didn't seem to want to talk much. Tomas, having been warned by other men that women were notorious for feeling attached to any man who listened to them, and having experienced something of the sort with some of the women brought to him as mates, thought her unwillingness to talk with him probably made his life safer, whether she knew it or not.

-

In many respects, the journey came to feel more and more routine. Tomas was even getting accustomed to leading the way, on those sections where Dorcas thought a rookie could be trusted to lead the way.

On the other hand, his mind did keep things more lively by imagining every sort of disaster known to man – or at least known to Tomas – from forest fires to floods to earthquakes to attacks by enemy soldiers. This was embarrassing, he thought, especially since he increasingly enjoyed the idea of a calamity happening, just as long as he also imagined himself saving Dorcas.

He finally convinced himself that he wasn't crazy, by concentrating on the idea that to imagine a wide variety of possibilities was, in a way, to work out ahead of time what might be a good course of action, or a bad course of action. It was, in a way, to be prudent.

Prudent was good.

-

When he looked down the hill and recognized Hamlet's, he didn't know whether to weep with relief, or panic. Panic nearly won out, in part because it wasn't firmly anchored to any one thing, but was loosely attached to several things at once. What if they didn't want him? Did this mean Dorcas would be heading on to Rivertun? Was it good that they might be going their separate ways? Or was it bad? Should he invite her to stay? Could he?

He'd tried not to think about it before now, trusting/hoping/dreaming that by the time they got to the farm it would have magically worked itself out.

But it hadn't.

Dorcas also seemed uncertain what to do. She hinted that perhaps she should press on alone now that he had his destination in sight. Tomas thought that she was afraid that the COs wouldn't welcome her. That didn't seem fair to Hamlet and the others, and besides, perhaps they had news, and she really ought to check in to see if there was news, or new instructions for refugees.

So he talked her into staying.

Because it was prudent that she check in.

Prudent was good.

-

They seemed glad to see him again, and also seemed perfectly fine with Dorcas resting up there, and possibly staying – they made a point of telling her she was welcome to join the farm crew if she liked, and that she'd be properly treated.

There wasn't any fresh news from Cowtun or anywhere else, there not having been any contact since a helicopter crew that was on its way out of the area had offered seats to anyone who wanted to be moved to a new work camp.

Tomas kicked himself. In all his imaginary calamities, he hadn't imagined that Hamlet and the others might have been evacuated. He was glad they were all there, but he hoped they weren't being foolish to stay, if the region was in as much turmoil as he imagined it was.

They did have news, though. Big news. While he'd been gone, Yans and Chessa had gotten married, and were now living in one of the old barns. Or part of it. Part of it was still being used as a barn.

Tomas was stunned. At least no one seemed to assume that he was stunned because he might be jealous of someone marrying Chessa. That would have been horrible, especially in front of Dorcas and Veneece. He was, however, genuinely stunned that Yans and Chessa had so suddenly tied the knot.

Bramson explained that it hadn't been as sudden as all that, because of course Yans had been protecting Chessa topside for a couple of years, keeping her from being declared an experson, and preventing, or at least reducing, cruelties against her. And they had sort of known each other during that time, although Yans had necessarily been putting himself forward as a trainer, and loyal enough to Greenley the Third and the whole Era government apparatus.

Hamlet's eyes were twinkling as Bramson made his explanations, and Tomas guessed (correctly) that he and Cordelia had done some encouraging of the match, and were delighted that it had moved so quickly to the covenant stage.

"And if you're wondering where in the world we're going to be able to stash another married couple, when we get one, we have a couple of places yet in mind. The next couple will most likely wind up in what we have come to call The Den. It's an underground shelter. It has excellent insulation, so it stays cooler in summer and warmer in winter, with fewer drafts than the barn. We offered it to Yans, but he and Chessa like the view from the loft in the barn, and also both of them like the smell of a barn. I do, too, but not when I'm trying to sleep, but, to each his own, I guess," Hamlet said. He laughed.

"Better yet," Cordelia said, her eyes twinkling, "is that I think they really do like living in a barn, so once the honeymoon is over I don't think they'll want to move. It really has been wonderful, to see how their romance blossomed once Yans got over the idea that he mustn't consider someone over whom he'd had authority once upon a time. That was a tough hurdle – and if he hadn't seen it as a hurdle, I wouldn't have liked it, because of course a man shouldn't take advantage of a woman who might be cowed by his authority or status – but he was sensible of the potential abuse of power, and sensible enough to be talked out of it." She smiled, and looked quite amazingly content.

"If we'd known you were coming back this soon, probably they would have waited for you to be here for the wedding, but we didn't expect you back so soon, and there didn't seem to be any good reason to wait, under the circumstances. Since they did know each other, and have been through trials together, and all that. And since Chessa really wants to try for another baby, now that she's in a position to be a mother to it, and she's almost too old, and they didn't dare hold off very long," Veneece said.

Tomas tried to nod to at least look like he understood and approved, but he got hung up, needing all his concentration to keep from gaping at Veneece, who struck him as even more attractive than he remembered her, and therefore really should not have, under the circumstances, been referring to sex. And here she was in the same room with Dorcas, who suddenly struck him as more attractive than she had been out on the trail or back at Cowtun. Worse yet, they were attractive for different reasons, and in what struck him as almost opposite directions. There was, in short, no obviously good way to compare them, and thus no way to choose between them. He forgot, temporarily, that they were both supernaturalists, and that Veneece was a Christian and had been declared off limits.

It was impossible to consider either of them outside of his reach, should he find the courage to reach.

It was likewise impossible to sort out anything to do with them. His mind wouldn't do it, and his heart wouldn't even try to do it.

Cordelia smiled at him and invited Veneece and Dorcas to help her make supper. They both happily got to work under her direction.

Hamlet took pity on Tomas and took him outside to point out the barn where the newlyweds were living, so he'd have a proper understanding of what was where.

# /14/

Dorcas felt surprisingly at home, especially after it was decided that it would be safe enough to use readers in The Den, since it was pretty much signal-proofed. She was a ready worker around the farm, and also an avid reader of the printed books in the farm's library, and of the printed books she and Tomas had toted with them. But she delighted in spending her spare time in The Den, studying, especially on her reader, which was well-stocked.

The isolation stretched into weeks, with no helicopters showing up, and no messengers showing up on foot or by horseback.

Dorcas sometimes still thought about hiking along to Rivertun, for news if for no other reason, but no one liked the idea of her traveling alone, not just now; nor did it seem to be a good idea to make the farm shorthanded just now by sending someone along with her.

A cut-off date was set, at which time probably Walker and another person or two would hike out for word, but until then, they decided, they'd just keep working, and stockpiling what they harvested. There was certainly enough work to do, especially since they'd decided to expand the orchards and vineyards, hoping that by the time the baby trees and vines were big enough to draw attention from the air, the war would be over, and it would be safe and legal to farm privately again.

Increasingly, at dinner, the talk fell into discussions of early church history. Dorcas was pleased to find that some of the others were well read in early church teachings, and on persecution through the centuries. They had many questions for her, and she had many questions for them. At first, Tomas basked in seeing everyone getting such satisfaction from discussing history, and its lessons, and seeing what was better these days. But eventually a shift was noticeable, and it worried him. Increasingly, Dorcas was asking about teachings and doctrine, and it seemed dangerous to wander into those waters.

But she wouldn't be dissuaded. And the discussions were making her thoughtful in worrisome ways.

Finally, it was clear. She was becoming more confirmed in her belief in the supernatural, and worse yet, she was drifting toward Christianity, which would take her completely out of his reach. (Veneece and the others had, by now, retaught him that he could expect no exceptions to the Christians-do-not-marry-unbelievers rule.)

Tomas volunteered to go to Rivertun for news, if only Dorcas would serve as his guide. She had, he reminded them all, been a courier and knew the route well.

The farmlings, as he was now classifying them in his head, were quick to note that he had behaved himself with distinction while on the trail alone with Dorcas on the way there from Cowtun, and they commended him for that; but now that circumstances didn't require it, they were insisting that he wasn't going anywhere with a female without an escort.

-

With Dorcas feeling an increasing need to check in with friends at Rivertun, and to check for news in general, and being the person who probably knew best how to get there, she was set up as guide for the expedition. Tomas didn't want her to go without him to help keep an eye on her, and Walker (with Natalya's considerate but chaperone-appreciative blessing), more or less felt the same. Besides, Walker had previously been chosen as the main scout. But Tomas might be handy. And so on and so on, until it was clear that both men pretty much had to go. That arrangement might, more or less, have served as 'well-chaperoned,' since each man would be keeping an eye on the other (not that anyone doubted that either man wouldn't rather die than mistreat Dorcas or betray anyone's trust), but it still seemed a good idea for another woman to go along. Cordelia regretted that she didn't have the stamina or speed that she used to, because she yearned for a bit of expeditioning. But she didn't have the stamina, and Veneece did, and unlike Tanya and Chessa, Veneece wasn't tied up with children inside or out, real or imagined (Chessa again thought she might be pregnant), nor did she want to stay home like Natalya. And so, with uneasiness amongst the older men about sending two men in their prime off with two husbandless women in their prime, preparations were made, and on the previously-picked cut-off date, there having been no visitors to bring them news, the foursome made preparations to set out.

The weather was getting cooler, so they had to wear and pack heavier clothes. Although they didn't have lightweight 'snow sheets' and so had to carry a heavier tarp for shelter, at least they had some of the more technologically advanced sleeping bags available, which were light and rain resistant, and thin enough to roll up tightly in a small roll.

It was early enough that snow was unlikely, but they prepared for it, just in case, not only with extra socks and other clothes, but with extra food. Because, as you know, prudence is good.

Dorcas, taking stock of the situation, and with Hamlet's approval, left her books and reader behind to save on weight. It was understood that she wasn't sure where she wanted to settle in for the winter, but that if she decided on Rivertun or elsewhere in the tunnels, she'd just make do with what they had there for reading, until it made sense to swing back by, either to collect her things, or to stay with them again at Hamlet's.

Tomas once again marveled at how everyone else seemed to think that this lack of planning, this lack of certainty, wasn't really a problem.

As unsettling as that was, it was more unsettling to realize that he seemed to be inclined to believe it, too. So much for all that careful training from infancy onwards, that had emphasized The Plan, and everyone and everything working toward making The Plan run as smoothly as possible.

Was there even a Plan left in the world?, he wondered.

Now that he thought about it, he doubted that The Plan had provisions built into it for dealing with a large scale uprising, uprisings of any size having been outlawed, and also being outmoded. These days, these glorious almost to The Future days, _no one_ did uprisings. That had been the assumption even in the One Hundred Room, where the scholars were permitted to know about past rebellions, about which the Citizens were kept in the dark.

Tomas wondered about that now. If the glorious and all-wise leaders knew that rebellions were a thing of The Past, and were sure that mankind had outgrown them, why had they insisted on not letting the scientifically bred and reared populace know about how far they had come?

And yet it had been taboo, to let people know how unruly humankind had been through the thousands of years of recorded history. Of course, Science had taken a while to reach its present high level, but now that it had...

If it had.

Tomas had his doubts. From what he'd seen inside and outside the totalitarian regime, he definitely had his doubts that Science was as much up to the job of perfecting society and biological units as it had claimed.

'You think too much,' part of his mind chided.

'I doubt that,' a more alive part of his mind retorted.

And just like that, Tomas realized that for better or worse, he'd switched camps, and not just to try to get along with the people who had authority where he was.

It seemed important to shift his focus to memorizing landmarks, and listening and watching for trouble as they hiked, so he put his unsettling musing aside.

-

In anticipation of the journey, they'd all been jogging, and otherwise getting into shape, so the hope was that they'd only spend a night or two in the wilds.

As they jogged and walked, they watched the sky getting more ominous. They picked up their pace. It wasn't enough to get them to the old cabin they were aiming for before the storm hit, so they found a natural windbreak, with good tree cover, and hunkered down under a tarp until the worst of the wind and rain passed. If they hadn't been afraid of soldiers doing patrols, they likely would have laughed, right out loud. They felt like it. They weren't sure why they felt like it, other than the situation just seemed ridiculous; but they all agreed it was hard not to laugh.

When they resumed their trek, they were careful to avoid bare mud, lest they leave too much in the way of footprints, but they still made good time, and got to the cabin just as it was getting dark.

There was a light in the cabin. It flickered, like a candle.

Walker gently but firmly got his flock back into better cover, moving slowly in hopes of not startling anyone into wondering what had just moved.

"Now what?" Tomas asked, at a whisper.

"I don't know yet. For now, we wait and watch," Walker said.

-

No one came out of the cabin, and no one showed up to go in, and the curtains didn't allow enough of a peek inside, so after the candle was blown out, they settled in to sleep in the woods, just out of sight of the cabin, with people taking turns watching the cabin from cover.

Toward morning, in bright moonlight, Tomas caught sight of a small pack of men walking toward the cabin, some of them wearing funny masks like those back in the helicopter which had allowed night vision; while others had slid the masks down around their neck, choosing to walk by the moonlight and hints of sunrise, instead of the less natural infrared.

Before he could figure out how to try to notify Walker without being seen or heard, one of the patrol looked his way, mask on, and called out that he had a "hot target." Yells and rushing followed. Tomas put his hands in the air, offering no resistance, and hoping that somehow he wouldn't betray the existence of the others until he could confirm these were Subterrans.

They didn't seem like Subterrans. They seemed like Topside troops trying to act like Subterrans, but of course it was hard to tell since so many Subterrans he'd met, including the deserters, had acted at least somewhat like Topside thugs.

He decided to be useful, if he could.

"I had hoped to spend the night in the cabin, but there was candlelight in it when I got here, and I did not dare see who was there. Was it you?" he asked.

That got a fast result, and nearly the one he'd wanted since most of the men sprang away from where his companions were still presumably located (precisely what he'd hoped for). However, unfortunately, some ducked into the woods the wrong way (to his way of thinking), barreling toward the hidden travelers.

Tomas was about to call out a warning when one of the patrol called out that he'd found three more people, and another soldier tackled Tomas as bullets started flying from the cabin.

"I am sorry," Tomas said, after he'd been dragged to cover. "I probably should have dived for cover myself, only I was afraid to move quickly for fear of you."

"Smart man. No problem. I'd rather drag you than shoot you. Or I presume I would. Stay still and shut up for now," the soldier said.

Tomas nodded, slightly, hoping that barely nodding qualified as staying still if he lay totally still afterwards.

For a few minutes, gunfire was exchanged, then a man inside called out that he wanted to surrender and that the other men with him had committed suicide, so if they would allow it, he would come out now, with a woman who was with him.

The patrol leader said to come out, slowly and carefully.

The man came out, holding the woman hostage, a knife to her throat.

Tomas nearly fainted. It was a MUS woman, still in her breed uniform, still with her hair in its sanctioned breed style.

When he could see past the woman (it was curiously hard to see anything but her), it was to see one of his colleagues from the One Hundred Room. Probably Number 27, although just by sight it was impossible to tell away from the room, where everyone had his assigned spot.

Desperately, Tomas assumed his best "More Highly Ranked Than You" manner, and thanked the man for holding up the honor of the breed so well during this experiment, and telling him it was time to report to debriefing, after which they would move along to the next stage of planned operations.

The man, out of a habit of obedience, tried to look cooperative and submissive. Soldiers ripped the woman from him and had him on the ground in seconds.

Tomas sat on the ground, shaking, and felt horribly sick.

"That was a neat trick. I wouldn't have thought of that," the patrol leader said.

"I don't think I thought of it, either. I think I panicked and that's what came out," Tomas said, nervously. "Oh, help. I could have gotten her killed. I could have gotten her killed. And I lied to him, too." He moaned.

Arms wrapped around him, from both sides. Veneece and Dorcas hugged him and told him he'd be all right, and that they'd sort it out later with him.

"I wouldn't worry about lying to him. All's well that ends well," the patrol leader said.

"Says the man who hasn't sinned against God, if there is a God, like people say," Tomas said, miserably, and not much louder than under his breath.

The hugs got tighter, until Walker showed up to haul him to his feet. Tomas wasn't sure his knees would hold him up, but he was grateful that Walker thought he could stand. It seemed a compliment somehow, or at least an attempt to help a friend regain some of his lost face.

The captured man was spewing curses.

His former hostage told the patrol leader that the 'suicides' hadn't been self-inflicted. She tossed a look of triumph at the captured man, having just handed him to the wolves.

The soldiers sent in to check out the cabin came out to confirm that in fact the 'suicides' seemed more like homicides.

"He thought he could get away with having me to himself, as a gift from you for turning himself in. I trust you will not favor him," the woman said, with a scorn that did a bad job of hiding her fear that they might.

"Oh, no. They are civilized. They are civilized in ways it takes a while to understand, and I am still learning to understand. But they are civilized and wouldn't let him have any slave. Especially you," Tomas sputtered, trying to reassure her, and possibly trying to reassure himself as well.

There followed a fair bit of quiet consultation between Walker and the patrol captain. The patrol captain wasn't happy to find that he was dealing with COs that had left a work camp. He was partially mollified when he got it through his head that they were escorting Dorcas to Rivertun and intended to go right back, once they'd gotten some news, but it was clear that he didn't dare trust that they would have gone back.

The captain herded everyone to a clearing that had a helicopter in it. It wasn't large enough for everyone, especially with all their packs and gear.

Dorcas took the captain aside and talked to him. What she said, Tomas wasn't sure, but the next thing he knew, he and the others from Hamlet's, plus Dorcas, plus the MUS woman, were loaded into the copter, and flown right back to Hamlet's. The helicopter took on a small load of food, and took off again, with warnings to not go trooping around again, until further notice. They would aim to be back in a week or two, for more food, and possibly to pick up the MUS woman for debriefing. In the meantime, Hamlet was under orders to feed her and not let her get away.

"Oh, it's so nice to have more company!" Cordelia said to her. She turned to the group at large. "Here, now, who would like to help me get dinner ready and the table set?"

# /15/

The days went by in a blur. Cordelia and the others adopted the new woman, who came with a name of Unity, but consented, after getting approval from Tomas and Yans (as her adopted breed representatives) to switch to Nita. Not that anyone thought there was anything all that wrong with Unity as a name or as a concept in its true form, but for her it had been a slave name, and she hated it, as well as what she thought it meant (not having met any sort of unity except the coerced, fake kind).

Tomas found her ability to hate her former culture, and her willingness to adapt to new surroundings and rules, simply fascinating, especially for someone who had just been rescued. It seemed almost precocious, somehow. Or it showed a good, solid core. Or something. At any rate, it was simply fascinating.

Meanwhile, Veneece was still turning his head, and he was still somewhat smitten with Dorcas.

He didn't know whether to be miserable, or elated, or what. So he threw himself into work, and tried to not think about it just yet. And, of course, as he sternly told himself, Veneece was not an option, unless she became an apostate, or he became a believer. For that matter, if she became an apostate, and the others thought it was even partially his fault, likely they'd never let her marry him, on that account. So she was not, repeat not, to be considered. His mind got good at thinking this, but his eyes and heart were having trouble getting on board.

Dorcas was a more difficult prospect yet. She wasn't yet a Christian, but she seemed to be bending that way, so if he was to marry her, it would have to be quickly, before she fell away. But that didn't seem likely, because she was increasingly disinclined to take any major steps in her life until she'd wrestled this faith business to the ground, as she liked to put it.

Meanwhile, Nita still rather hated men, not having been well treated by a one of them in all her years.

Definitely, this was a season of his life where he ought to throw himself into work, and study. Definitely. It was not only safer, but less exhausting.

-

When the helicopter came a week and half later, it came with a passenger to drop off. His was a familiar face, although he'd plumped up some since they'd seen him last. He wasn't fat, but it was clear that he hadn't been exercising enough.

"Nabeel, is that you?" Walker asked.

"And how many one-footed men do you know these days?" Nabeel shot back, as he got his crutches arranged so he could swing his way over to them.

"I take it that means you're his Nabeel," Hamlet said.

He nodded.

"He's gone CO on us, or something close to CO, and is considered a threat to morale. Plus, he can't do much work. So we're handing him off to you," the pilot said, as if it were a grand joke to hand a crippled man off to someone else to feed and otherwise put up with.

"And we're glad to have you," Hamlet said.

"Oh, it's just wonderful to have more company," Cordelia said. "And likely the men around here will find work for you to do. Hamlet is a genius for matching people to chores, if I do say so myself." Her eyes twinkled.

"That would be appreciated," Nabeel said, trying to look like being in the spotlight wasn't killing him, although it was, especially being in the spotlight as a maimed and disabled person.

"Ah, well, let's get the food loaded, so the pilots can be on their way," Hamlet said, scurrying people into assignments, while having Bramson lead Nabeel away, up to the men's bunkhouse.

The pilots had orders to confirm that Unity was still there, but instructions to not bring her back, it having been determined that she'd been caged most of her life and couldn't tell them much, except possibly from a psychological slant; and with a war on, they really weren't interested in interviewing the hundred thousandth woman to be sprung from the worst sort of Era breeding centers. (One hundred thousand was their estimate, or at least their way of saying that there was nothing new about it, and nothing likely to learned about it that they didn't know already.)

They duly noted that she was still there, had been a good worker, seemed to be adapting well enough, and was now going by the name of Nita.

Having duly checked her off their checklist, which they thought of as getting her properly registered, they secured the food that had just been loaded, got on board, and went off to somewhere, most likely Rivertun, but they weren't saying.

Right before they left they said they probably wouldn't come much more until spring. That's not to say they shouldn't be expected at any moment, they said, but the weather was likely to be nasty, and their pantries weren't bare, so it might be springtime before they bothered again.

As soon as they were over the horizon, Hamlet laughed and slapped his thigh.

"Do I want to know what's so funny?" Rick asked.

"Oh, probably it's not all that funny, except to an old actor. But they were trying so hard to try to put us on pins and needles about them possibly showing up at any moment, as if otherwise we might run off. And as if I'd leave this place, barring a real need to evacuate it," Hamlet said. "And I guess I also can't help relishing the prospect of having a cozy and quiet winter, without all the pinpricks the pilots try to stick us with. Not that I mind that much. Or that I can't forgive them for it. But the idea that they might be spending the whole winter imagining us being their watchful servants, waiting to be found faithful whenever they show up again, as if they were Jesus. It's probably not funny. But it tickled me, all the same. Especially since those two were about the two worst actors I've ever met in my life, but were so cocky at the same time. Zounds. They need some training!"

"Yes, dear, I'm sure," Cordelia said. "But let's not be too harsh on them."

"Ah, my love, you're right. Like usual. But people who can't pull off suspense ought to not be mucking around in it. It makes it hard for a fellow to keep a straight face while he's dealing with them."

"I know. I nearly giggled, too," Cordelia said.

"I beg your pardon. I didn't giggle. Laughed, perhaps. But I most assuredly did not giggle," Hamlet said, with mock severity.

Cordelia dropped a splendid curtsey, especially given her age, and then bounced up and down like a child. "Oh," she said, clasping her hands, "how wonderful that they've left so many friends with us. What a lovely winter we can look forward to, Lord willing, with so many of us here, and children, too. Oh, what a blessing for an old woman like me. Oh, but, here, I don't mean to stand around taking up everyone's time. I think I'll go start on dinner. Would anyone like to help me? I think we ought to make it special, to welcome Nabeel – that is his name is it?, I'm so horrible with unfamiliar names – and also to celebrate that they didn't take Nita away. I've become quite fond of that girl, you know."

She swished off, her full skirt floating gracefully, making it look almost as if she were gliding along the ground instead of walking.

"Oh, moving like that is harder than you might think. She had to spend hours learning that trick, when she was young. Haven't seen it in a while, though. Probably it just means she's so happy she almost can't stand it," Hamlet said, looking quite happy that she was happy.

-

A person would have been hard pressed to say who was most uneasy at dinner. Nabeel was concerned that he wouldn't fit in. Nita had assumed she would be carried off, and hadn't yet adjusted to having been left. Tomas had assumed Nita would have been taken from him, and hadn't yet adjusted to her being left. Veneece, a nurse at heart, was fighting her impulses to nurse Nabeel, because clearly he didn't need it, and also because he was altogether too handsome to cope with, at least not yet. Yans and Chessa, while happy in general, were suffering from a disagreement that got started that afternoon, but hadn't been resolved by dinnertime. On another occasion, they probably would have just eaten at home, but this was a welcome dinner for Nabeel and Nita, and they felt obligated to attend. Dorcas was struggling with blossoming attraction toward nearly every grown male on the place, married or unmarried, known or new (Nabeel really was handsome, in his way). She, of course, being a woman of integrity, was batting down the feelings where they wandered into forbidden territory, but it was hard for her to look at a married couple and not feel jealous, and not to feel that jealousy as unwanted attraction. And over all this, and more, was the realization that ahead of them stretched a long winter, wherein they were all going to be spending a fair bit of time together, by cozy fires, listening to the winds howl outside, just this group of people.

-

Although there was work to do in the winter, there wasn't as much, and it was also less pleasant to take walks. Also, since the war was presumably still on, there were concerns about leaving too many tracks, on the off chance that an Era helicopter might fly overhead someday, and find tracks to be evidence of someone who needed killing.

So trails through cover were laid out between the various bunkhouses and houses, and the sunken mess hall was given much use, especially as a playground for Rick and Tanya's children, who would rather have been rolling around in the snow and making snow angels and sledding.

Still, all in all, the adults were convinced that for a wartime existence, they were getting off very lightly indeed, and should be grateful that they had so much peace and quiet, companionship, unbombed shelter, and more food than they needed. Even in peacetime, Dorcas assured them, most people in history had never had such good conditions.

They had sensed that already, but to have a historian confirm it brought it better into focus, and the Christians among them doubled down on their prayers for brothers and sisters around the world who were struggling to get by, or running for their lives from one violent faction or another.

Tomas started to feel lonely in ways he hadn't before. Never mind that everyone was friendly and welcomed him into their company, except sometimes Nita, when she was being moody. Never mind that his times of solitude were almost always his idea. Robbed of his job, his routine – the carefully arranged busyness of his life – with wilderness around him, and, in the long nights, vast reaches of stars to stare at whenever he wanted (in his government service days, he'd been shut in at night, or else out with bright streetlamps outshining the sky), Tomas began to feel both smaller than he ever had, and part of something larger than ever. But he didn't want to talk about it with anyone. Not yet.

'You think too much,' his mind suggested.

Perhaps that was true, he thought.

But, then. What was truth?

Seriously, what was truth?

And could a man know it? The others seemed to think so, at least the Christians.

Oh, but what did they know? They clung to old ideas.

-

The weather got brutal, and they huddled together more and more at the main place, where everyone could see that everyone else was all right, and so they didn't have to burn as many fires all around the clock. Plus, it just seemed needful to swap stories, considering that the wider world was shut off from them, except in their minds.

Tomas found that he didn't have as much to contribute to the discussions as he might have thought, if you'd asked him back when he was gloating over his elite status as one of the One Hundred top MUS scholars. But he was still asked to contribute, and he did, trying to be honest about what his life had been like, and what he'd thought was important then, and what he thought was important now. But mostly, he sat and listened, all the more so since both Nabeel and Dorcas were seriously trying to figure out the meaning of life, the duties of man, and the calls of Jesus – if any – on their life. It was fascinating to watch, but also made him squirm. It bothered him that such apparently intelligent people could be taking "the Word" seriously, even though it was thousands of years out of date, and for all he knew had never been taken seriously by most people living even at the time.

Cordelia caught wind of that attitude, and set about to set him straight. "Of course only a fraction of the people at any given time take it seriously. That's only to be expected, since it's foolishness to those who are perishing, and most people at any given time are perishing."

Dorcas jumped in. "But putting that to one side, don't tell me that you got taught that something is valid or worthy based on whether it is universally accepted?"

She had him there. No progress would have ever been made, if progress required everyone to understand or agree, and he conceded that.

"I think you're dodging, at least a bit," Cordelia said, but with a friendly smile. "That's if you're thinking of the sort of 'progress' that has to be imposed, and is aimed at creating a utopia. I'm talking about whether something is true, as in it lines up with reality, and rescues people from delusion."

Tomas still wasn't too sure who around him was deluded about what, but didn't want to say so. They seemed to sense this, and didn't press him.

Nabeel especially wanted to understand what the others – at least the Christian others who were in the work camp because they were conscientious objectors to war work – thought about nonresistance, and how they'd gotten to that. He'd gotten as far as thinking he couldn't be a soldier anymore, but he wasn't sure about what he should do about self-defense, or harder yet, about what he should do if someone else was under attack. There were good, long, detailed discussions on that, with much patience on both sides, at least most of the time.

Tomas got to where he had some of the related Scripture and arguments memorized, and he also learned which passages had been the ones to convince each of the more radical persons there that, as a Christian, he wasn't to be violent, even in self-defense.

"I think you're crazy," Nita said, finally. "We got taught non-violence, too, but it was only because they wanted to control us. Our superiors use violence all the time. It's time to even things up, I say. And I don't care what you or that book say. I got sprung, and I'm not going to be pushed back down. Nobody's going to take me down without a fight, and as soon as I can get my hands on some good weapons, or even some rotten weapons, they're going to be mine, even if I have to steal them."

Cordelia smiled at her. "Nita, as an unregenerate person, I can see how you might feel that way. But Christ's kingdom isn't of this world, and worldly ways of fighting can't protect it or expand it, and more than that, we're commanded to not fight that way. We're even to love our enemies. And as a Christian, I'm past where anyone can 'put me down' even by killing me or torturing me. I know that's hard to understand, but it's a matter of thinking that our earthly life isn't what's most important, and it certainly isn't the most lasting."

"Yeah, yeah. I know. 'Our battles are not with flesh and blood.' And 'do not fear him who can kill the body and then do nothing more to you, rather fear him who can cast your body into hell' and 'what is it to gain the world and lose your soul.' And so on, and so on. Shall I repeat the others to you?" Nita said, looking down her nose at Cordelia.

Tomas tried to convince himself that he wasn't seeing what he was seeing. Some of them had told him that 'God's Word never returns empty, in that it either softens someone toward God, or hardens them in their rebellion.' He didn't want to believe it, but night after night he'd sensed Chessa and Dorcas growing into deep and gentle women, but Nita getting more petulant.

'And what about you?' his mind asked.

He didn't want to answer that. Not yet.

-

As time went on, fewer of the discussions were about nonresistance, and more were along the lines of what Christianity really was. Some of the best discussions happened back at the men's bunkhouse, mostly with just Bramson and Tomas and Nabeel, but sometimes with the addition of a married man or two who came by for time with just other men. Walker and Bramson were keen on explaining that it's not a matter of having the right philosophy as much as being actually transformed from the inside out. Also that it involves learning, but the learning by itself won't do it. Christ had a rightful call on everyone's life, they said. And the Holy Spirit was necessary to respond correctly, and live it out.

It was confusing, all the more so since otherwise these other men seemed so sensible. More sensible, in fact, than anyone he'd known before he got yanked from his government job and his orderly but empty government-guided life, the one where (could he be remembering this right?) he'd wondered if it might not be a mercy to get shot.

They also talked about what made for real community. That was almost easier, especially after someone brought up the idea that 'a dream of community will kill real community.' That is, unrealistic expectations made for disaster.

That was an interesting idea to chew on, and Tomas wondered if that was what had gone wrong with the Era society.

"That's definitely a big part of what's wrong with it," Bramson said. "You might ask Yans, though. He's got the most experience at actually living in both societies."

Tomas mulled that over. How in the world had he come to a place where the man who could probably help him the most was a man he probably ought to consider a traitor? Or, at least, that if he were still being a good little puppet, he almost certainly would have considered a traitor.

"If you're thinking what I suspect you're thinking, I'm pretty sure you knew you were being treated as a puppet long before Yans got you free of that. And I think Yans knew that. Otherwise, he wouldn't have risked his life to get you out. Not just then, not just that way. It was insane, what he did, unless you consider that he was sure that you wouldn't have lasted a day once trouble hit," Bramson said. "And for what it's worth, I think he was right. I think you were already seeing what the others couldn't see, and were ready to break out."

Was I? Tomas wondered.

It was hard to remember.

His mind wandered to spring. He was ready for spring to break out. He knew that much.

-

They let their guard down. They didn't know they were being invaded until five armed men burst in on them while they were sitting at dinner with Hamlet and Cordelia. Rick and Tanya and the children weren't with them, since a couple of the children were sick and in quarantine, and Tomas had to fight off an urge to try to escape to warn them, if they hadn't been found yet.

"Oh, you're just in time for dinner," Cordelia said. "Not that we wouldn't have fed you if you'd come at an off-time, but here we are with food already on the table. Won't you join us?"

"Is that some sort of trick?!" one of the men yelled. "Because I won't stand for tricks. Away from the table, all of you. Over against that wall, where we can see you. No fast moves, and keep your hands where we can see them."

The residents all moved to the wall, as instructed, and kept their hands in plain sight. The invaders dove on the food, eating it standing up, only pausing now and then to stick a hand out toward the fire, to warm it.

"We have more, if you need it," Hamlet said. "You're welcome to as much as you want."

"As if that's going to buy us off, old man," one of the invaders said, dismissively.

"But we appreciate knowing that you're willing to negotiate. That's good. It might keep you alive," another said.

"Or not," another said.

Some of his fellows laughed, but most were too centered on the food and the warmth to much care.

"I should have made myself more clear," Hamlet said. "We're Christians here, at least most of us, and in the name of Christ, you are welcome to food, with nothing expected in return."

Tomas's heart sank.

Nita hooted. "Oh, they're crazy. Which is to say I think they really think they should be kind to their enemies. Losers! I hate living here, among them. They're weaklings, and disgusting. They won't even defend themselves, as you can see."

Tomas's heart nearly stopped.

"Oh, so you're not a Christian, I take it?" one of the invaders said to Nita, eyeing her up and down, like merchandise.

"I should say not," Nita said.

A couple of the invaders grinned, and started dancing up and down the row of people lined up against the wall. "Anybody else here not a Christian? Huh?" they chanted, aiming guns at people as they asked.

One of them, who'd been appraising the women, let his eyes roam to Chessa's stomach, which had a bulge that correctly suggested a baby growing inside. "How about you?" he asked. "Are you a Christian?"

"Yes," she said, meekly, but with resolve.

Tomas awkwardly sat on the floor, up against the wall, hands on his knees so the brutes could see he wasn't reaching for anything.

"Oh, and you? Are you a Christian?" one of the brutes asked him, dancing over to point a gun at him.

"I wish I were. I would have no reason to be afraid of you, like I'm afraid of you now," Tomas said, surprising himself.

Nita snorted. "He's not sure what he is," she said, with a sneer.

Tomas recognized what she was doing. She was trying to save herself, at the expense of anyone she could throw to the wolves. Not that long ago, he'd have done the same thing, only with more subtlety because he was a scholar, and because he'd been sheltered from unsupervised interaction, especially with non-scholars.

He realized, belatedly, that the farmling men had subtly positioned themselves where they could jump in front of a woman should bullets start flying. It seemed the right thing to do, so he crawled his way up the wall until he was standing again, taking care always to keep his hands in plain sight, and away from his body.

"Oh, he's not worth shooting. Save your bullets," the apparent leader of the little pack told the man who was taunting Tomas with a gun. "Now, then, you – you get to decide whether I shoot you or that broodmare next to you," he said to Yans.

Yans quietly stepped forward. The leader laughed and shot him dead. His little pack braced for retaliation, but blinked when it didn't come. Walker quietly stepped in front of his wife, Bramson shielded Chessa, Hamlet shielded Cordelia, who was shielding Nita; Nabeel, harder pressed than the others to keep from fighting back, latched onto Veneece, once she gave him her encouragement to stick with her. Tomas, staggered with fear, got in front of Dorcas. But none of them fought. Chessa sobbed, quietly, on Bramson's shoulder, and Dorcas gagged with nausea, but overall the farmlings were radiating a quietness of both body and soul that was unnerving.

"I told you they were nuts," Nita said, fighting her way forward. "Take me with you, will you? I'll trade sex for protection. You won't be sorry."

"No, Nita, don't," Tomas groaned.

"Think of your soul, dear," Cordelia said.

'Yes,' Tomas thought, 'think of your soul,' although he couldn't bring himself to say it.

"I'm more worried about my sanity. And besides, I rather like sex," Nita said, batting her eyes at the lead invader.

"I don't know what's going on here, but I don't like it," the leader said. "It's like they're stalling, or something. I smell an ambush or something."

"Well, we do get helicopters showing up unannounced fairly often, to pick up supplies, and we're overdue for one. Perhaps they're hoping for that," Nita said.

"That's probably the last thing they'd want, and you know it," Tomas said, knowing it was true, but not knowing how to explain it was true.

"Nuts, I tell you. All of them nuts, and it's apparently contagious, because he used to be at least somewhat rational," Nita said, pointing at Tomas.

"Grab as much food as you can carry, and let's get out of here," the leader said, trying to not look as rattled as he felt, and failing.

His frightened and confused pack of men grabbed food and Nita and bolted back out into the cold they'd so gratefully left just minutes before. One of them kicked Yans's body on the way out, which seemed to score him points with those of his fellows who saw it.

Chessa went to Yans's body and held it gently, then tightly, and rocked and wept, then started to sing a hymn of lament as she rocked, and caressed his forehead.

"Oh, God, I don't understand this. I don't understand what's just happened. I don't understand what's happening now," Tomas whimpered.

"Floors are very good for sitting on," Cordelia said, swooping over to sit him down right where he stood. She was surprisingly strong for an old lady.

"Or laying on, if you're afraid you're about to faint," Hamlet said, tipping him over where he sat. "Veneece, darling, could you get him some water? Oh, never mind, Dorcas is a step ahead of us. Walker, help me get him to a bunk, will you? Or..."

Tomas didn't know what the next option was, or which option they chose, because he got heavy and dizzy and the lights woozed in and out, and he passed out.

# /16/

Dorcas seemed to hover over him a lot, but then it turned out to be Veneece, with Nabeel always at her elbow, whatever that meant. Chessa also seemed to come by now and then, to fuss with his blankets to make them smooth, or to feed him some sort of broth or gruel after he'd been propped up. Sometimes a child or two or three would come up to talk to him, or wave a gift at him. "It's not a flower cuz it's still winter and we can't find flowers yet, but we made it look like a flower. See?" one of them said, holding what appeared to be a twig with something tied to it.

"Very nice. Thank you," someone said. Was it himself?

It wasn't his old self, that was certain. His One Hundred Room self wouldn't have tolerated children (which he would have thought belonged in a KinderFormer until reliably tamed), or said thank you for a gift from an 'inferior,' nor would he have considered an imaginary flower acceptable.

"Mom! He's smiling. See! I knew he'd like to get a flower! See! He's smiling!" some youngster yelled, while bouncing up and down.

'Do all children bounce so much?' he wondered. Strangely, especially given that he still felt woozy and the motion was almost painful to be around, still, he rather hoped that children more or less universally bounced a few times a day, like these children generally did. Except when they'd been sick. He remembered that being sick had flattened them temporarily. He was glad that they were well enough to bounce. He was glad, too, that he could be glad about it. That was something else his old self couldn't have dreamed of, which was a pity for his old self, but a plus for the new, he thought, before drifting off to sleep again.

-

He sat up to better see who was sweeping into the room, all bustle and authority.

"Oh, let him sit up if he wants to. Makes it easier to check a few things. I'll shove him back down if I think he needs it," a man said. He was a stranger, but maybe not a stranger, so Tomas fought to place him.

"I'm the fellow who cleaned out your tubes not all that long ago. Glad I did it, too. If you've had a heart attack like they think, it's better if you had basically good support systems in place, recently tuned up. And before you make yourself nuts trying to figure out why Cowtun looks like Hamlet's, it's because we're not at Cowtun, but at Hamlet's. After they argued amongst themselves about whether there was any chance anyone would be left at Cowtun who knew how to treat heart problems, Dorcas talked them into letting her play messenger like in the old days, and jogged over to see. And there I was, getting tired of being nearly the only person left, and thinking I needed to evacuate, but dithering on where to go. And she said she had a patient for me, and one I'd treated before, too. So, here I am. My name's Shane Wellington, by the way. And your pulse is really quite good considering, but now we both stop talking so I can listen to your heart and lungs. Shh, now."

After a bit more checking and prodding and questioning, Shane laughed. "You probably don't need me at all. But let's pretend I know what I'm doing when I don't have all my lovely equipment and staff and other stuff to back me up, shall we? Up you go. No walking without help yet, mind you. But walking all the same. Here, someone get on the other side of him. Just across the room and back, I think. Just to see where we're at, strength and stamina wise. And how he takes it. Now, Tomas, let us know if you get chest pain or other pain, all right? Here we go. Not to worry about falling. Dorcas has you on that side, and I have you on this, and Walker there has the unmistakable look of an athlete ready to spring to help if help is needed, and he's well positioned for it, too. Good lad. Here we go. That's right. That's good. Any trouble breathing? No, I didn't think you would have trouble breathing, but it's nice to confirm it. Steady there. Step by step, no hurry."

-

Day by day he got stronger. He also grew more and more fond of Shane's banter, especially when the doctor was commending his companions for their good sense and practical nursing skills.

"I expected to find you dehydrated half to death, to be honest. Happens all too often with bedridden people, I'm afraid. Even in hospitals, we have to be careful, because for some reason it's easy to rationalize not bothering bedridden patients with food and water. Sometimes you just lose track of such things, too. It happens. But this crew? They did a good job, just guessing at what to do. You're surprisingly healthy, you know, for having a body that got too big of a shock after stumbling along under too much stress for a long time. They've fed you properly, and turned you so didn't get bedsores, and talked to you so your mind didn't check out entirely. I'd hire the lot of them, if they weren't so keen on being farmers and orchardists instead. And if I was still in business, and needed employees. Not having an office and surgery is a bit of a hindrance, as is being off away from population. Ah, well. But it's a pleasure to work with them while I'm here. You're fortunate, having the option to stay."

"You don't?"

"Have the option to stay? Not really. I'm not a CO, and likely the people in charge of various operations won't like hearing that I've been out here so long. But I'm not hiking out in this weather and so I'm here until they send a copter in for supplies. Or until better weather. Then I'd probably better get back to the war, wherever it's moved off to these days. It's hard, sometimes, not having news, isn't it?"

Shane's eyes went far away, and he muttered something about the difficulties of being a doctor dedicated to saving lives, during a time when it was expected to help prosecute a war. But then he shook himself back to the bunkhouse and his companions, and changed the subject.

-

Tomas was soon well enough to go for walks without help, but of course it wasn't wise to wander off without a companion yet. Dorcas usually managed to be there when he wanted to take a walk. Or perhaps he wanted to take a walk whenever she came by. It was curiously hard to pin down cause and effect, but relatively easy to convince himself that it was a happy coincidence how she so often was available when it was time for a walk.

As a scholar, he suspected he was being sloppy, accepting this as a string of happy coincidences.

As a man, however, it seemed safer to not try to read too much into it.

-

Having heard a rumor from Cowtun, that had spread to Rivertun via refugees, that Dr. Wellington had hiked to Hamlet's work camp to attend to an emergency, the local authorities ordered a helicopter crew to give him an additional week or two of rest out there in the back beyond, but then to go fetch him, for Rivertun, or even Underhaven, both of which were accumulating wounded people from both sides of the conflict.

Since matters were a bit hectic, and since the fighting had gone to other regions and therefore it required a long detour to get to Hamlet's, the helicopter crew gave him two weeks, hoping matters would calm down a little by then.

Circumstances intervened, and it was nearly another week after that until they could fit in a rush flight to Hamlet's. For anything other than a doctor or other specialist in short supply, they likely would have left him there and let him hike out when he got good and ready to return to 'civilization.' But he was a doctor, and in demand, so they swooped over to pick him up, ready or not.

He was ready, but reluctantly so, having found 'Hamlet's hamlet' an oasis in a sandy, dusty world.

As the Subterran crew picked him up, they grumpily dropped off one of their own, to stay a while. Roy had helped pick up supplies from Hamlet's several times, and had become fascinated with COs to the point of thinking he might be one himself. His officers doubted he could stand to be out of the action, and also didn't like his questions to them and to fellow pilots and gunners, especially those regarding the finer points of ethics related to the war, so they were sending him out with the idea that a stint with actual COs might cure him more thoroughly than being left to wander around with his head in the clouds, dreaming of utopia while they were trying to demolish a dystopia.

"Oh, more company. Oh, how wonderful," Cordelia exclaimed, welcoming him with open arms.

"She must not recognize you," one of his companions said, with a dig.

"Oh, we know how to forgive people who have sneered at us, if that's what you're thinking about," Hamlet said. "And he'd be welcome even if he was still sneering."

"And before you doubt that, they offered food and a warm fire to people who murdered one of their own, in cold blood," Shane said, as he climbed into the helicopter.

"That's crazy!" the co-pilot said, looking around like he expected harbored enemies to spring out of cover at any moment.

"Oh, there aren't any Era sorts on the premises just now," Shane said. "Even Nita, who retained some sympathy with Topside, has fled. The totalitarians and their poor slaves can't stand COs any more than you do. Maybe less. They have that awful fear of thought contamination, you know."

"Roy, are you sure you want to stay? I think I can smooth things over with the higher ups if you come back with us," the pilot said.

Roy was uncomfortable about staying, but planted his feet firmly, and stayed.

Tomas had mixed feelings about that. Mostly he feared the man would find Dorcas horribly attractive (because, of course, she was – anybody could see that), and vice versa (Roy had a certain air about him, like a stray puppy, which Tomas thought might appeal to Dorcas when she wasn't in scholar mode).

-

Dorcas decided she needed to go stare at Yans's grave. Tomas went with her, as did Bramson, as chaperone, and also because he sometimes liked to go out to the graveyard, and ponder.

Hamlet had had the foresight to have a few graves dug before the heavy frosts had set in, and fill dirt stored over compost and under a lot of mulch, so it hadn't been much bother to bury Yans right away. Meanwhile, there were a couple of open graves nearby, handy in case someone else died on the premises.

The snow had melted, but it was still cold enough that there wasn't mud. Dorcas stared at the bare earth heaped above her friend's remains, her thoughts unreadable, at least to Tomas, who was a bit distracted anyway, trying to figure out the graveyard, which struck him as odd, perhaps even impractical.

"Dad said that the 'Topside' government doesn't bury people, but puts them in compost bins along with other garbage. Is that right?" Dorcas asked.

"Yes. Of course," Tomas said.

"Why 'of course'?" Bramson asked.

Tomas couldn't say why. It seemed too obvious on the one hand, and on the other he couldn't articulate it. He also had a hunch that Dorcas didn't like the idea, so he didn't want to defend it, until he knew what her objections were.

"Dad said it made sense to him, until he learned better. He said it was just another way they had of pretending that people weren't anything more than biological units that temporarily used up resources, which needed to be recycled. I also heard other people who lived topside say that their group was allowed to believe in a soul, of sorts, but that they also liked treating corpses like garbage, because they believed that the 'soul' was trapped in the body, and once it was free, the body had no purpose anymore."

"Sounds like gnostics, in a way," Bramson said, "I mean, those people who like to think of breaking free of a body and being nothing but a spirit. The gnostics falsely taught that."

"That's what I thought," Dorcas said. "But do I have this straight? You guys, you Christians, you bury people because you expect to be raised from the dead? And so the body is like a seed?"

"Yes, and no," Bramson said. "We believe God will raise everyone, to be judged and sorted, to be gathered to God or sent to hell, regardless of what's happened to their earthly body. The composted people, the cremated, the lost at sea, people eaten by animals, none of them will escape God in the end, and we're all to be ourselves forever, in bodies forever. But we think it shows respect to bury people, because the Bible talks about bodies being like planted seeds, that will come to life in ways we can't imagine. I can show you where in the Bible later."

"And you believe, really, that everyone will spend eternity somewhere?" Dorcas said.

"Absolutely," Bramson said. "And that God will judge us based upon what He's revealed to us as what's important and right in His eyes, not ours. Salvation might be open to everyone, but only those who obey Christ will be recognized by Him, when it comes down to it. Good deeds, good thoughts, by themselves, will never get you right with God."

"I'd already come to that conclusion," Dorcas said. "I think God let me coast along for a while, while I was getting to this point, but I'm also convinced that He's insisting that I can go no further in getting closer to Him unless I do it through Christ. I've already been confessing my sins, and asking for help going forward, and all that keeps happening is that I keep getting pointed back to Christ. I've reached the point I need to be baptized. Someone here can do that, right?"

"We'd be delighted," Bramson said, shepherding her back to the main bunkhouse.

When they got there, they discovered that, on a hunch, some of the others had been heating up water, and prepping a stock tank out in the barn where Yans and Chessa had lived together. Just in case. And assuming that Dorcas didn't mind being baptized in a water trough inside a barn, which she didn't.

Tomas nearly came out of his skin during the proceedings. It's not that he objected to her getting baptized. It seemed somehow right that she was getting baptized, for that matter. But he was fighting the nearly overwhelming feeling that he needed to get baptized, too; and not so Dorcas wouldn't leave him behind, like the others had. It was more fundamental than that. He felt a need to be baptized. At the same time, all that talk about 'dying in Christ' and 'dying to self' and 'remission of sins' and the like, it scared him. It really, really scared him.

But so did the open graves.

And also, to his surprise, did the thought of being cut off from God forever.

When did that happen? When did he start believing there really was a God? Much less one who had revealed Himself to men? And cared about them? But Who, sooner or later, sorted people into heaven and hell?

Well, it was too much to deal with, and too contrary to what he'd been raised with, so he shoved the thoughts aside, and tried to look calm and professional and scholarly, as if that would help him, either inside his own swirly mind and gut, or with these farmlings.

# /17/

Cordelia of course had to have a special dinner to commemorate the occasion of a baptism, and the women were weepy and doing group hugs again, and the men were happy in their own ways.

Roy, who had always understood baptism to be merely a formality, was intrigued and asked a lot of questions, which gave Tomas answers to most of his own questions.

But he still fought hard against it.

Roy got reminded that in the Bible it says that Jesus promises that anyone who seeks first the kingdom of God will get other things added onto that, but that the kingdom needs to come first. And that Jesus will answer those who truly seek Him. And so on.

That night, Tomas turned his back to the room and pretended to sleep. He wasn't sure he fooled anyone, but they left him alone, and also didn't chat amongst themselves.

When the others were asleep, he settled in to wrestle with himself.

What were his objections, really?

That modern thought had outrun Christianity, and therefore a smart man shouldn't let Christianity into his head?

Really? Great chunks of 'modern thought' were built on falsehoods, as he well knew, both from experience, and because he'd help lay the foundational falsehoods as his assigned work.

That supernaturalists were impractical people, and the world couldn't afford impractical people?

Really? The Christians around here were better adapted to dealing with the real world, and with difficulties, and with change, than he'd ever been trained to do. They were competent. It might possibly be argued that they were competent despite a belief in God and heaven and hell and sin and such, but it couldn't be argued that their brains had rotted or that they were incompetent.

That Christianity produced an unhealthy conformity?

He nearly laughed out loud when he thought of that.

What else?

Oh, here was a big one, and an embarrassing one. He just didn't want to give up his 'self' as it was, even though he was reasonably sure that his new self would be better.

He just didn't want to trust God to be in charge, he realized.

And this despite the fact that for most of his life he'd let the government be in control of his life.

"I'm insane," he thought.

"If Jesus is Truth, attaching yourself to Him would fix that," his mind suggested.

"How soon?" Tomas wondered, thinking of all the stories he'd heard from the others, about how messy their conversions had been, and how rocky their early Christian life had been, as they grappled with new impulses fighting old habits.

He thought especially of Chessa, who hadn't had to tell him about her confusion and transformation, because he'd watched her go from a known bolter who bit people, to a dignified widow who grieved deeply but with dips into a reservoir of deep peace. He'd never have believed she could change like that.

He fell asleep, still fighting with himself, still wanting to hang on to what little control of his life he felt he had left.

-

Dorcas was a bit goofy the next day, bursting out in hymns, when she wasn't deep in thought, or off in The Den reading.

Tomas was used to her bursting into snatches of hymns before this, but always before she'd picked hymns that could serve nicely to express a faith in God, without necessarily having a faith in Jesus. But today, all the hymns were about Jesus, and she wasn't doing it to set an example, he was sure of that.

She didn't have many whole hymns memorized, so she often ducked to the library, or to The Den to refresh her memory on a reader, but sometimes she managed a whole hymn by herself, or almost by herself, since usually there was someone on hand to help her through the song. Like this one:

We saw Thee not when Thou didst come

To this poor world of sin and death;

Nor yet beheld Thy cottage home,

In that despisèd Nazareth.

But we believe Thy footsteps trod

Its streets and plains, Thou Son of God.

But we believe Thy footsteps trod

Its streets and plains, Thou Son of God.

We did not see Thee lifted high,

Amid that wild and savage crew;

Nor heard Thy meek, imploring cry,

"Forgive, they know not what they do!"

Yet we believe the deed was done,

That shook the earth and veiled the sun.

But we believe the deed was done,

Which shook the earth and veiled the sun.

We stood not by the empty tomb,

Where late Thy sacred body lay;

Nor sat within that upper room,

Nor met Thee on the open way.

But we believe that angels said,

"Why seek the living with the dead?"

But we believe that angels said,

"Why seek the living with the dead?"

We did not mark the chosen few,

When Thou didst through the clouds ascend,

First lift to Heaven their wondering view,

Then to the earth all prostrate bend;

But we believe that mortal eyes

Beheld that journey to the skies;

But we believe that mortal eyes

Beheld that journey to the skies.

And now that Thou dost reign on high,

And thence Thy waiting people bless,

No ray of glory from the sky

Doth shine upon our wilderness;

But we believe Thy faithful Word,

And trust in our redeeming Lord;

But we believe Thy faithful Word,

And trust in our redeeming Lord.

She liked that one especially, she said, because it covered so much of the central story about Jesus, and about faith.

Tomas didn't like it, for much the same reason. He wanted a Christianity, even yet, that was stripped of the supernatural.

Except when he didn't.

Bramson and several of the others offered to answer any questions he might have, but he was afraid to ask any questions, or hear any answers.

He tried to throw himself into work and study.

It didn't help.

It especially didn't help once he got it into his head that if Christianity was true, then he was gambling with hell by putting off a decision, because putting off a decision was continuing to reject Jesus as Lord, which, if what the others believed was true, was always and in every case eternally deadly if continued too long.

Hamlet, with his uncanny sense for what a man was up against (at least it seemed uncanny, just now), swung by him and whispered in his ear, "If you're looking to Christ just to get snatched from hell, that's not good enough in the long run. But it's a necessary step, realizing that you deserve to be in hell, unless something in you gets changed. Keep it up. Keep fighting for your soul. It's vital."

With that, he patted him on the back and moved along, leaving Tomas more doubtful than ever; or at least doubtful in new ways.

Who said he was looking to Christ only to get snatched from hell? (Even if it was uncomfortably close to the truth?)

And what was that business about needing to realize that you deserved to be in hell?

Wasn't that a step too far?

Wasn't it?

Or, was it?

Tomas wanted to shove something, smash something, perhaps even run away, but even in his unconverted state he understood that there was nowhere to run to, and that smashing unrelated things would only be a variation on running. Even for the admittedly ridiculous reluctance to make the MUS breed look bad by looking cowardly, he would refuse to run away from a duty or a danger. So he was stuck with standing his ground.

Bramson swung by, to remind him that they'd told him that a person was ill-equipped to fight spiritual battles on his own, and it wasn't any shame to want the Holy Spirit's help on such things. He asked if Tomas had any questions on that. Tomas had lots of questions on that, but, afraid of coming across as desperate, he shook his head. Bramson, smiling, with no hint of mocking in his manner, moved off again, and left him to his battles.

He tried to remind himself that religion had been outrun by modern thought.

Ah, but there he was, back to the idea of running, which wasn't a comfortable one at the moment.

He tried to remind himself that religion had produced unhealthy conformity in ancient civilizations, but that was laughable. The historical record didn't uphold that, and neither did the sampling of Christians he'd met. If anything, Christianity magnified the unique gifts of each person, and steered them off on different tasks. It was disorderly. Except it wasn't.

It was too much to deal with, and Tomas went to take a much-needed nap.

-

One of the raiders came back, bringing Nita with him. She was battered and a bit crazy, and he had tied her to a sled, and had put a gag in her mouth so she couldn't scream.

The man looked really uncomfortable.

"They were going to kill her, and I thought I ought to bring her back, instead," he said. Obviously that's not all of what he wanted to say, and perhaps it wasn't the main thing he wanted to say.

"Oh, I'm so glad you brought her back!" Cordelia said.

"Yes. Thank you. And you're welcome to stay, too. We were just getting ready to eat. Will you join us?" Hamlet said.

The man cast a look back the way he'd come, but then looked at Hamlet warily, and nodded.

"It was storming hard when we left, and I think probably they don't know where we've gone, and can't follow," the newcomer said. "And I got the sled from somewhere later, so any sled tracks don't start anywhere near where we were."

"Whatever's happened has happened. We can't change it," Hamlet said. "We'll keep an eye out, so we can send the women and children to hiding if there's signs of danger."

"Oh, so you are capable of learning a lesson or two," Nita said, snidely, now that Walker had taken her gag off.

Tomas thought of telling her she was being unfair, but took his cue from the others, who were ignoring what she'd said.

The newcomer tried to follow some of the party into the bunkhouse, but froze, except for his head, which he shook back and forth, wordlessly saying no, no, no, now that he was faced with the scene of the murder.

"Why did you come back, really? Or, why else, besides rescuing Nita, I should say?" Bramson asked him.

"What have you got that I don't have? How can you not be afraid of dying? And did what Nita told us about some guy named Saul, who became Paul, did that really happen or is she making that up? She said he helped murder people, but then got forgiven, at least after a while. She said that likely any of us could come back and we'd get forgiven and told how to get right with God, and I know she was joking, and all that, but I don't think she sees things, not really. I don't think she sees that there's something really different going on around here. And I want to know if it's true, what I'm seeing."

"Join the club," Roy said.

"But let's all do it inside, or at least inside the mess hall. We have so many of us right now. Oh, isn't this wonderful," Cordelia cooed.

Hamlet, as if taking a cue, walked people around to the sunken mess hall's aboveground entrance, so that the newcomer wouldn't learn about the tunnel between it and the bunkhouse.

Veneece and Tanya and Natalya and Chessa and Dorcas slipped off to help Cordelia extend and finish preparing dinner, and they took the children with them. Rick, getting a cue from Hamlet and Bramson, took Nita off to join them, and stayed with the kitchen crew as sentinel.

This left only men to discuss God together at the mess hall, and they got right down to it.

The newcomer, whose name was Loyal, hadn't known about the Bible or known about Christians before, but Nita had done them all the good service of telling Bible stories as she mocked the farmlings, and although it had apparently hardened the others, Loyal had wondered more and more if any of it could possibly be true, especially, considering his circumstances, whether Moses had at one time been a murderer, and David, and Saul. And what about that king who ate grass like a cow, until he came to his senses? And so on. It wasn't any trouble for him to believe God was real. What he struggled with was whether men could actually know what He was like. And whether guerillas like himself could really be forgiven? And really start over? And change? Because he knew he deserved hell, but was afraid to hope for anything else.

He couldn't read, so they couldn't hand him a Bible to study, but they answered his questions, and he believed them, and believed God, and was certain he needed to follow up with baptism.

Roy, listening intently, finally really believed, at last, and likewise asked to be baptized.

Tomas, making a third, also wanted to be baptized, but to his surprise, met a bit of resistance. The others, Loyal and Roy, they took at their word, but Tomas they wanted to interview. Interrogate, really, is what it felt like. It turned out that they wanted to make sure that he was doing it out of faith, and not because he was catching the feelings of the others, or trying to join the group in a closer way, or had merely just come to accept the teachings in an intellectual way.

Tomas almost laughed. He'd fought mightily against being baptized, and yet, now, when he finally saw a need for it, here they were, blocking him.

"Don't be offended, Tomas. In our experience, intellectuals, or anyone else with a lot of education, have been prone to false conversions," Bramson said. "We need to feel confident that you're really in the process of converting. Which seems likely, to me."

"Let me take him through a few more questions," Hamlet said. Having been good at suspense in his acting days, and also having a dread of baptizing someone who wasn't really interested in being obedient to Christ, he didn't rush things now. Tomas got taken through the 'count the cost' passages, and other warnings, but steadfastly said he was ready to be baptized. Like, minutes ago. Or hours ago, it felt like.

Walker had gone to ready the stock tank. Since only men were in line to be baptized, he dragged the tank over to a water pump, and filled it with pump water. Some of the ladies, horrified, dipped some of the water out and ran to heat it. The men humored them and let them heat several buckets full, enough to take the edge off the cold.

Then Hamlet had Loyal confess his faith and renounce the devil and all his pomp and works, and baptized him. He had Roy confess his faith and renounce the devil and all his pomp and works, and baptized him. He had Tomas confess his faith and renounce the devil and all his pomp and works, and baptized him. Tomas wanted to shout when he got out of the water, or cry, and it wasn't because the water was so cold. (Even though it was mighty cold yet, despite the hard work of the fussy women.)

He was settling into standing there amazed that he'd finally stepped out in faith, when Nabeel asked to be baptized, too. He'd been baptized as a child, but was sure he hadn't known what he was doing. But now he did, he said. And so Hamlet and Bramson quizzed him a bit, then had him confess his faith, and renounce the devil and all his pomp and works, and with some help from Walker (Nabeel's missing foot made it harder to maneuver), Hamlet baptized him, too.

"Oh, just like in Acts," Cordelia said, bouncing up and down and clasping her hands. "Although not several thousand at once, of course, since we don't have that many around here. Oh, but let's get you men dried off, and fed, and hot drinks in you. Whatever am I doing, chattering away while you risk going into a shiver?"

She swooped off, happily appearing to glide over the ground as she went.

"I can't tell you how much I love that woman," Hamlet said, looking like he'd burst with love as he watched her glide away.

"Ah, now for the fun stuff," Bramson said. "Or does anyone else here realize how wild and crazy it's apt to be around here with several new Christians at once, all full of zeal but short on understanding and knowledge? Ooh, here's praying for patience and extra grace for all of us." He winked, but Tomas got the feeling that he wasn't entirely joking.

Worrying about that could wait, though.

He'd done it. He'd actually done it. He'd stepped out in faith and obedience, and had been baptized for the remission of his sins, and there was no way now to ever be what he had been. He had passed from death into life. And he knew that he had.

Dorcas was smiling at him, tears in her eyes.

Nita glared at him, like he'd turned traitor.

Veneece was too busy being excited about Nabeel to look at anyone else, at the moment.

Chessa was nowhere to be seen. She had lasted through Loyal's baptism, but Tomas couldn't remember seeing her after that. He couldn't begin to guess what it must be like for her, having a raider come back, but not as a raider from the murderous band that had slain her husband, but as a brother, possibly to stay awhile.

He tried to guess, but gave it up, because Dorcas was insisting he get dry somehow, before he got sick, and she needed to be heeded, just now.

# /18/

The next few weeks were blurry, even as they happened. Days were full of work and talk – the farm and orchard benefitted from having so many willing hands on site, but there was apparently no end of work on a farm once growing season started, nor any end to multiple running conversations – and nights were blanked out in sound sleep.

Then another helicopter showed up, this time with orders to collect Roy. At the same time, they were dropping off some goats.

"Thanks, but no thanks," Hamlet said. "We've tried goats, and they're more trouble than they're worth. Got loose and ate much of the garden to below ground level."

"Sorry, old man. Our orders are to leave the goats," the pilot said, with a look that suggested that he knew the goats had been sent out as some kind of joke, or some sort of harassment for the COs.

"Oh, well. We'll just figure out how to control them better," Bramson said, taking the lead rope of one of them.

"Never worked with goats before, have you?" Hamlet said, as he reached out for the lead of another one.

"Nope, but I'll learn," Bramson said.

"Won't we all," Cordelia said, rolling her eyes, laughing, as Rick took on another goat, one that was obviously close to birthing a kid or two. "Is this all of them?" she asked.

"Nope, two more, but we need the men on those," the pilot said. "They're in crates."

"Billies, I'm guessing," Hamlet said.

"Big ones, too," the pilot said. "With bad tempers and big horns."

"Two billies for three nannies is overkill, and asking for trouble," Hamlet said.

"Not my circus," the pilot said.

Rick handed over his nanny to Veneece, and he and Walker and Tomas, with Roy's help, got the male goats out of the copter, still in their crates. The animals butted the bars of the crates, and looked like they wished to live up to their reputations for having bad tempers, although of course perhaps they were only miserable about flying.

"I don't suppose you know why I'm being asked to come along with you?" Roy asked.

"We'll tell you later," the pilot said. "And you aren't being asked. You're being ordered."

"All right, I get it. I signed on for three years, back two and a half years ago. I'm not unwilling to go, and if you'd ask the men I've been talking to here, you'd know I've been wondering if I ought to report back, to run food runs so nobody gets hungry. But I still don't think I should be doing shooting runs, and so if that's all they want, we've got a problem."

"I don't have any problem. You might. And maybe the commander does. He's new, by the way. With all sorts of new ideas, including ordering all sorts of people back off of the sidelines. Walker here, and Rick here, they might be next, for all I know. But they're not pilots, and right now we're rounding up pilots. And you've stalled enough. Get in. I want out of here," the pilot said.

"We'll pray for you," Cordelia said, dancing up to give Roy a quick hug before he left.

"Thanks," Roy said, kissing her on the top of her grey head.

"Let go of Grandma, and let's go," the pilot said, angrily.

"Let me go grab my pack, and I'll be right back," Roy said.

"Nope. If you hadn't stalled so much, maybe I'd let someone go get it for you, under guard so there wouldn't be any tricks, but we're out of time. Get in," the pilot said.

Roy smiled, and crawled in, obviously not worried about the meager belongings he was leaving behind. This rattled his escort enough that they tried too hard to look not rattled, as they got in the copter.

"Don't you want some supplies, too?" Hamlet asked.

"Not this trip, old man," the pilot said, waving everyone off, but taking off before they had a chance to get clear of the rotor wash.

"I'd say 'poor Roy,' but he and I have been talking, and he was ready for this, if it happened. God help him, though, because who knows what they might try to force him to do," Walker said, giving Natalya a side squeeze to cheer her up.

"And if they come for you, I'll try to be ready, too," Natalya said, bravely.

"If they come for me, it will have to be some sort of new draft, because my military term of service ran out, finally. But we'll take it how it comes, when it comes," Walker said, looking at her with love and compassion, and then, impulsively, kissing her belly.

"Is that a baby announcement?" Bramson asked.

Natalya blushed and nodded. Women squealed. The goats tried to run off.

"Oops," Veneece said. She walked her nanny off away from people, and cooed at it to calm it down.

Nabeel went to help her, looking more emotional than seemed reasonable for dealing with a scared goat.

"Any idea why they sent you goats?" Rick asked Hamlet, while carefully drawing attention away from Nabeel and Veneece.

Hamlet wasn't the least fooled by Rick's attempt at subtlety, but decided to go along with him. "We had some fellows here for a while who weren't COs, or believers either. They thought it was funny what the Bible said about sheep versus goats on Judgment Day. Totally missing the point, they got the idea that goats ought to be offensive to Christians. Since then, every now and then one or more of them manages to send us a goat or two. Or someone else who has heard of the joke does. I'm guessing it's just another round of that. Of course I don't find the animals offensive; at least not because of Scripture. But they are bothersome beasts, in general. Although, if they eat only the right weeds, the milk is welcome. I say that, because we've sometimes had some mighty bad tasting goat's milk around here. I don't know what they were eating, but it was nasty."

"Oh, but it made excellent fertilizer," Cordelia said. "Especially after we learned to not pour all of it right at the stalks, but out a ways, for larger, better roots." She laughed, enjoying the memory of learning by trial and error, and emerging victorious.

"Oh, yes. It makes good fertilizer, especially some seasons of the year. I'd forgotten that. Thank you, my love, for reminding me. And the meat's not bad, in stew, if Cordelia's in charge of cooking it. We will get good use out of these beasts yet, one way or another," Hamlet said.

He cast a cautious and quick look out the side of his eye to see if he should extend his monologue to give Nabeel more time, and decided he'd given him enough. "Oh, well, no sense crying over sour milk. Let's find someplace to put these critters, and then figure out something better later," he said, with a smile that seemed out of proportion to finding housing for free livestock.

That night at the community dinner, Nabeel and Veneece announced that they planned to marry. Not even the children were surprised, but everyone was quick with congratulations, including Tomas, even though he felt a strange pain in his gut at the news.

He was pretty sure it wasn't that he'd lost Veneece, since that had been obvious for a while. Besides, he'd come to think that Dorcas was by far the better match for him, if you compared only those two. But he still felt horrible. He felt horrible because he realized that he was afraid to ask a woman to marry him, and that was embarrassing. He also felt horrible, if he was strictly honest with himself, because he wasn't sure if he didn't have some sort of duty to marry Chessa, now that his friend and rescuer Yans had left her a widow.

Between Veneece and Dorcas, it was fairly easy to conclude that Dorcas was better, especially given that Veneece was unavailable. But between duty and dream, how did a man decide?

For a few moments, he resented his pre-kidnapped life, which hadn't prepared him for making decisions or commitments. Then he missed that same previous life, because he'd been spared this sort of mess. Then for a few seconds, he regretted being stuck where he was. Then he realized that Kamiah was looking at him, and seemed puzzled.

He smiled reassuringly at her and she ran over for a friendly spin through the air. She liked being spun, and in the last couple of weeks he'd finally consented to learning how to spin children. There not being any good excuse for appearing like he wasn't agreeable to spinning a happy little girl who asked for a spin, especially since she'd considered it a great achievement that he'd finally consented to play with her, he picked her up and spun, which made his body feel like his poor, spinning, dizzy mind.

She laughed, like always, but this time it cut to his heart.

-

Tomas again tried to lose himself in work and to pretend to be too taken up in profound thought to talk to anyone at present, but it was no good. It felt cowardly, and false. Probably because it was, he thought.

He wasted a few days trying to decide which man to go to for advice, before realizing that he'd almost rather die than talk to a happily married man just now. That was also probably cowardly, and probably unreasonable – who better, after all, to give him advice about women and duty? – but, there it was. In his best moments he wasn't jealous of the married men, but his best moments weren't being outstanding for their stamina, and he feared, mightily, falling into jealousy while talking to a friend.

This left Bramson and Loyal. And Loyal was out, because what sort of person would go to him to ask what to do about the widow of a man who had been murdered by his former gang? And he was a new Christian to boot. Tossing to and fro in his understanding, just like himself. No, Loyal was out as a mentor.

Besides, it was hard to know how to talk to him anyway, even about everyday matters. Try as he could, and pray as hard as he might, Tomas wasn't quite willing to trust him yet.

Plus, he thought it might hurt Chessa's feelings if he befriended the man, or asked his advice. He didn't know that, really, because he hadn't been talking to her, nor would he dare ask her that directly, but the fear that he might upset her was genuine.

That left Bramson.

After another day of rehearsing in his mind all the reasons Bramson was unsuitable, or at least seemed unsuitable since he didn't want to face him, Tomas sought him out in the men's bunkhouse, when the two of them could be alone, and – affecting as best he could the manner of a man being mature and businesslike about an important decision – he admitted that he was concerned about Chessa, and felt a duty to her, but wasn't sure what he should do.

"I wondered if that was your problem," Bramson said.

Tomas felt like tossing a chair. Or whimpering. He wasn't sure which. Or why, exactly.

"Sit down, Tomas, and simmer down. I've not told anyone about my suspicions, and I won't repeat anything said here. But as I think I told you before, I don't think you'd be a good match for her."

Now Tomas wanted to drop his head on the table, and maybe bang it a few times. The previous objections had happened early on, before he'd had more time as a free man, and before he became a Christian, and although he was a baby Christian, and although he hadn't been free terribly long, still, he'd changed a lot, and for the better, by local standards. How much more did the man want from him?

Besides, this wasn't what he'd expected, at all. It seemed all wrong, somehow.

A horrible suspicion worked its way slowly into his mind.

"Oh, I suppose you think you'd make a better match for her? Is that it?" he said, trying to toss it off as sarcasm, but not managing to manage inflections properly.

"I hadn't even considered it," Bramson said.

The way he said it, it seemed likely that he was being honest. Besides, this was Bramson. He was generally honest. Still, it seemed so unlikely, since she was so obviously in need of a new husband, all the more so because of the child on the way, and being out here in a community that was running short of unmarried women to fellowship with.

"What does that look mean?" Bramson asked.

"I don't know what look you're seeing, but I'm surprised. You usually don't miss much. The woman needs a new husband, especially if she stays out here, where she's running low on single women to take turns keeping an eye out for her. And it's not like she needs a young man since she's getting too old to have children. And she looks up to you."

"And you'd rather be free to marry Dorcas, anyway," Bramson said.

"We're getting off track here. I came to ask you what my duties are to Chessa, now that Yans is dead. He rescued me, and looked out for me afterward. And she and I were assigned to one another, and she counted on me when we first got out. If I've got a duty to her, I need to know it. It feels like I have a duty to her, but it also feels like I have a duty to Dorcas, somehow. I don't know what to do."

"Well, I can't help you on Dorcas. You and Dorcas will have to discuss that. But for what little it's worth, I think you and Dorcas are well suited to one another, and complement one another pretty well, even already, although you haven't known each other terribly long, and aren't devoted to one another. But I don't think you'd be a good match for Chessa. Maybe in a few years you would be, but not now. And there's no reason why either of you ought to postpone getting married for a few years, if there's a suitable match for you now. And don't worry too much about Chessa. She's got friends here, and she's not ready yet to consider herself anything but Yans's wife. And, one way or another, I'll help take care of her."

Tomas had trouble listening to the last bits of advice. His mind was back on the idea of him and Dorcas not being devoted to one another.

Because, Dorcas seemed fairly devoted to him.

And he wanted to be devoted to her, he suddenly realized.

He hastily thanked Bramson for the talk and the advice, and barreled out of the bunkhouse, before he lost his nerve again.

# /19/

He was still nervous about holding a baby, even though he was getting a lot of practice at it lately, what with Rick and Tanya's baby, Chessa's baby, Walker and Natalya's baby, and Loyal and Nita's baby (it turned out that she was pregnant before he rescued her, and he thought it might be his, so – that being the only exception currently known to man wherein a believer could marry an unbeliever, as far as Tomas understood it – Loyal had offered to marry her even though she was a bit wild yet, and she'd accepted, although she wasn't fond of believers yet). Not that Tomas often got to hold Nita's baby, because she was proving to be a fiercely protective sort of mother, but sometimes she was so proud of her little son that she wanted others to hold him. It sort of depended, minute by minute, on her mood.

And then there was Yans. Precious little Yans. Named that with Chessa's permission, and having eyes that everyone agreed looked like Dorcas's eyes, but a nose that he'd gotten from Tomas. Although, according to people with more experience, as he grew, the resemblances might move around a bit, with one part going more toward the mother than at first, and other features swinging more toward the father. Babies were like that, sometimes, they said.

Tomas found that fascinating. He also just plain found the baby currently in his arms fascinating in ways the other babies weren't, although of course they were interesting and charming and amazing, and miracles in their own way. They just weren't miracles in the same way as a baby born to Dorcas was, or a baby born with himself, Tomas, as father.

The only serious downside to looking at Yans, or holding him, or thinking about him – it was incredible how much of a man's day could be spent thinking about a certain baby – was when it prompted him to think of all the children he'd fathered but never seen, back when he was being used to breed superior little MUS-breed humans – never seen, and never much thought about or cared about, before he'd become a free man, both physically and spiritually.

He prayed for them sometimes. Past that, he had no idea what else he could do, other than help raise Yans and his little friends to not be totalitarians or utopians, or breed conscious, so that the world would be a little better for everyone, including his lost and unknown offspring.

The war, assuming it was still on (that seemed most likely), had moved off, far enough away that Hamlet's hamlet hadn't had outside visitors in quite a while. So, perhaps they could have a little peace for a while; perhaps even long enough for them to have grandchildren here, in peace and quiet. It was too early to even imagine to which families he might become related by marriage of their children to his, but it was hard not to speculate.

He shook his head. It was no good dreaming of a perfect little wilderness community, all healthy and isolated. Not only was it unrealistic to think that children born here would want to live their whole life cut off from the outside world, even assuming the outside world didn't come crashing in on them; there was the problem that most of the other grown-ups around here wouldn't dream of holing up here, if that kept them from sharing the gospel with people who hadn't heard it yet. It just wasn't going to happen. Not with this crew.

Yans got fussy. The usual efforts to sooth him only seemed to make matters worse. He wailed. Tomas carried him over to his mother, who had her nose in a book, studying.

She smiled, and without complaining one wee little bit about her husband abandoning the field so early, set aside the book and took the baby. He stopped crying immediately.

"Probably he's hungry, and knows I'm who feeds him," she said.

"And probably his mother is just better with him than I am," Tomas said.

"Ah, you're getting better. And you're better than you know, anyway," Dorcas said, as she rearranged clothing so she could feed the baby.

Tomas graciously took his leave, and went to his desk. He was working on making a history of events as he knew them. In some ways, it was a memoir, but he was including material from outside sources, too, so it was, in fact, a history, and as honest a one as he could manage. There would be no fudging, like he'd been forced to do in the old days. Well, all right – to be more strictly honest – he was done with cheating, which he had to admit sometimes he'd done in the old days even when not directly forced to do it, but was only looking out for his own skin, or pretending that it was for the good of Society, whatever in the world they'd meant by 'Society' (he wasn't sure anymore that anyone had known what they meant by that, especially since the primary concerns of 'Society' had changed from day to day).

He ran his hand along the edge of the desk, enjoying the feel of the polished wood, so very different from the sterile, cold, industrial workplace of his government days. He looked around The Den, now his and his wife's to furnish and run as they pleased, and marveled at how he could, as a Christian – a supernaturalist! him! – could feel a satisfaction of having a place that was his, while at the same time could feel a detachment to it, so that he could feel confident that if it ever made sense to leave it, or to hand to someone who needed it more than he did, that he could be like Roy getting into the helicopter that day, giving up his pack without a backward glance. "Remember Lot's wife," he thought, no longer surprised that sometimes he sorted things in his head by using Scripture.

They'd lost track of Roy. By now, if he'd survived, he should be out of military service, but whether he'd have kept out of harm's way after that was less likely. Tomas imagined the man flying food to people for as long as he could manage it. He seemed that sort of man. But who knew? God knew, of course, but Tomas hoped that someday he'd know, too, and would get to see the man again, and thank him for helping clear his own path to God, just by walking ahead of him.

He cast a discreet look over at his wife. Yans had been hungry, and was heartily at work to remedy that. Dorcas still sometimes found the procedure painful, but she was beaming at the baby anyway. Amazing.

Amazing grace.

He began to hum a hymn, and Dorcas joined in, but switched to singing the words. A few lines later, she laughed.

Tomas stopped and looked at her.

"Sorry, love, it's just that Yans knows that one, and has stopped eating to listen. I guess he was paying attention to me more than I realized, back before he was born, and I was singing it so often."

"That's almost scary," Tomas said.

"I know. It's wonderful, but scary, what babies pick up on, even before they're born."

Tomas stifled a laugh.

"Do I want to know what struck you as unacceptably funny?" Dorcas asked.

"Unkind, is more like it. I was just thinking of what Nita's baby might have had to go through, while harbored in her belly."

"At least he's got lots of sweet friends and soft voices around him now. I'm not sure how much the soft stuff got blocked before, but he'll be all right now, I'm sure. Especially with Loyal as a father," Dorcas said.

"So, changing back to what we were doing, are there any hymns Yans doesn't know yet, that you'd like to try?"

"Oh, let's go ahead and finish the one we were singing. He can learn to eat and listen. I'm sure he can. He's got a smart father, after all," Dorcas said. She winked.

Being a topsider most of his life, Tomas was still sometimes uncomfortable with winks and jolly encouragement, and he fought with himself to not overreact.

Having been raised by people who had been topsiders, Dorcas sensed the culture shock, and smiled gentle acceptance at him, before quietly starting in on the hymn again.

Tomas sent up a silent prayer of thanks for the incredible woman he'd been blessed with as a wife, and joined in, so that they were praising God together, while their infant son soaked it in at his mother's breast.

... _Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,_

And grace my fears relieved,

How precious did that grace appear,

The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils, and snares,

I have already come,

'Tis grace that brought me safe thus far,

And grace will lead me home.

\- The End –

Thank you for reading The Historian. If you liked it, a review would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Books by Kathryn Judson

Almost Hopeless Horse (children's shorter fiction)

Why We Raise Belgian Horses (historical novel)

Trouble Pug (children's time travel novel)

Joanne and I Burn Up (children's shorter fiction)

Not Exactly Dead (MI5 1/2, Book 1)

Not Exactly Innocent (MI5 1/2, Book 2)

Not Exactly Allies (MI5 1/2, Book 3)

Decidedly Not Official (MI5 1/2, Book 4)

Not Quite Home (MI5 1/2, Book 5)

The MI5 1/2 Omnibus (contains the first three books)

The Smolder (The Smolder)

The Birdwatcher (The Smolder)

The Unexpecteds (The Smolder, YA novel)

The Hidden (The Smolder)

Notes From Hiding (The Smolder)

The Historian (The Smolder)

The Piano (novella)

