"No, I'm not running away from anything," Rachel said. "I'm going to go meet the man I love."

By a curious coincidence she'd been allocated the same seat in first class as she'd had on her first flight out to Kaua'i, so there was an odd moment of deja vu as she accepted a glass of champagne and settled back. Only once it had passed did she allow herself the luxury of indulging her memories of the island. The conversations she'd had with Jimmy Hornbeck as they drove to Anahola, talking about mystery and Mammon; then the house, and the lawn and the beach, and Niolopua; later, the church on the bluff the day she'd been caught in the rainstorm; her first sighting of the sails of what she'd later know to be The Samarkand, and the fire on the beach, and finally Galilee's appearance at the house. It was just a few weeks since all this had taken place, but so much had happened to her since then-so many things she wanted to put out of her head forever-that it felt like a memory of a dream. She would only believe it all completely when she was back there, in the house. No, when she saw the sails of The Samarkand, that's when she'd believe it; when she saw the sails.

Out in the unforgiving waters of the South Pacific, the boat Rachel longed to see was a pitiful sight. It had been uncaptained for eleven days now, its sole occupant allowing it to take the brunt of whatever the waves and the wind brought along. Most of the equipment on deck, which in normal circumstances Galilee would have stowed or lashed down, had been washed away; the main mast was cracked, and the sails tattered. The wheelhouse was chaotic; and the scene below deck was even less pretty.

The Samarkand knew she was doomed. Galilee could hear the sound in her boards; the way they moaned and shuddered when she was struck on broadside by a wave. She'd never made noises quite like this before. Sometimes he thought he could almost hear her speaking to him; begging him to stir himself from his stupor and take charge of her again. But the last four days had seen such a vertiginous descent into frailty that he had no reserves of energy left. Even if he'd wanted to save himself and his vessel now, it was too late. He'd let go of his desire to live, and his body-which had survived so many excesses-quickly fell into a state of decay. He wasn't even visited by deliriums now, though he was still drinking two bottles of brandy a day. His mind was too exhausted to hallucinate; just as his limbs were too weary to bear him up. He lay on the pitching deck, staring up at the sky, and waited.

Toward dusk, he thought the moment had come; the moment of his death that is. He'd been watching the sun drop into the ocean, the clouds it burned through as molten as the water below, when The Samarkand suddenly fell absolutely silent around him. The boards gave up their complaints, the tattered canvas was stilled.

He raised his head off the deck a few inches. The sun was still falling, but its descent had slowed. So had his pulse, as though his body-knowing it was close to the end-had become covetous of every sensation, and was turning down its flame so that it could burn just a little longer. Just until the sun disappeared; until the sky lost the last of its color; until he could see the Southern Cross, bright above.

What a mess his life had been, what an ungainly performance. There was scarcely a part of it he didn't have reason to regret. Nor did he have any excuses for what he'd done. He'd come into the world with all the blessings of divinity, and he was leaving it empty-handed, every gift he'd been given wasted. Worse than wasted: turned to cruel purposes. He'd hurt so many people (few of them true innocents, of course, but that was no comfort now); he'd allowed himself to be reduced to a common assassin, in service of mere ambition. Human ambition; Geary ambition; the hunger to own stockyards and railroads and plains and forests, to govern people and states; to be little kings.

They'd almost all of them passed away, of course, and many times he'd been there to witness their last moments: their tears, their pathetic prayers, their desperate hope for redemption. Why hadn't he learned the lessons of those departures? Why hadn't he changed his life, seeing what death was like? Defied his masters, and dared go home to look for forgiveness?

Why, in the end, was he alone, and frightened, when he'd been born into certainties the faiths of the world would have given all their dogmas and their holy books to taste?

There was only one face he could bring to mind without agony; only one soul he hadn't betrayed. He said her name as the disc of the sun touched the sea, and the last phase of its descent, and his, began.

"Rachel," he murmured. "Wherever you are… I love you…"

Then he closed his eyes.

Garrison Geary stood in his grandfather's bedroom and surveyed the scene before him with a tic of exhilaration in his belly. It was hard to suppress his happiness, but he was doing his best. He'd made a brief, somber statement to the press, explaining that nobody yet knew the precise circumstances of Cadmus Geary's passing, but that it hadn't come as any great surprise to anyone. He'd then gone on to spend a frustrating hour with Loretta, in which he'd attempted to get her to tell him what had taken place in the house. There were plenty of rumors flying, he told her; the din of destruction had been audible a block away. Wouldn't it be better if she told him the truth, so that he could present the facts to the authorities and the press in a suitably doctored form, rather than their being reduced to speculation like everyone else? She couldn't help him, she said; she simply didn't remember. Whatever the nature of the cataclysm, it had driven all recollection out of her head. Maybe it would all come back, given time. But right now, he and the police and the press would have to invent their own answers to whatever questions they had.

All this was fabrication, of course; she didn't even attempt to make it sound particularly plausible. She just mouthed the words, and defied him to contradict her. He chose not to challenge her, at least for now. He could afford to wait. Lord knows, he'd learned patience, playing the supplicant grandchild while Cadmus held on to his life and his power. Now the old bastard was gone, and Loretta was almost out of cards to play. The only thing she had left in her hand was the truth; and being the cool player she was she'd hold on to it for as long as she could. It would avail her nothing. Events would move quickly now, and before she knew it the card she held would be valueless. He'd pluck it out of her fingers, for curiosity's sake, when she was out of the game completely.

Mitchell came to join him in the bedroom.

"I had a few words with Jocelyn," he said. "She always liked me."

"So?"

"So I got her to tell me what happened." Mitchell wandered over to the old man's bed, milking the moment for all it was worth. "For one thing, Rachel was here."

"So what?" Garrison said, with a shrug. "She's an irrelevance, Mitchell. For God's sake start treating her like one."

"Don't you think it's suspicious that she was here?"

"Suspicious how?"

"Maybe she's working with whoever did this. Maybe she let them in. Then helped them get away."

Garrison stared at his brother with that waxwork look of his. "Whoever did this," he said slowly, "does not need help from your fucking wife, Mitchell. Do you understand me?"

"Don't talk to me that way," Mitchell said, jabbing his finger in his brother's direction. "I'm not an imbecile and neither's Rachel. She got hold of the journal, remember that."

Garrison ignored the remark.

"What else did Jocelyn tell you?" he said.

"Nothing."

"That's all you got out of her?"