"… it's been, well, calling it a challenge would be… inadequate. It's been hell."

The room was quiet now.

"Our world went to hell on March 14, 2003. That's the only way I can describe it, because we still don't know what happened, and frankly, I don't think we ever will. I have hundreds of scientists still working away at this every day, throwing all sorts of theories and tests and experiments at it, trying to tell me where that Wave came from and where it took all our friends and families. They've been studying it for years now, and they are no closer to knowing. So perhaps it's time to come at it from a different angle, a different kind of knowing. That's why Adam Ford is here tonight. He's not a scientist, he's a poet, and from where I stand looking back at everything that's happened since the Disappearance, I reckon his way of trying to come at the meaning of it all is every bit as valid as all those scientists writing all those reports for me. Probably more so." He gestured to the poet to make his way to the microphone. "Adam?"

Loud applause carried the poet laureate up onto the stage and the president down from it. Ford pulled a single sheet of paper out of the breast pocket of his jacket and coughed before thanking Kipper and waiting for the minor roar to die down. When the room was quiet again, he read.

"This is a poem called 'Aftermath,'" he said. "They weren't lost at sea. They are not missing in action. We weren't at their side as they breathed their last. There are no bodies to identify. They were here. Then they weren't. We're left behind with nothing to point to, No evidence that says, 'This happened here,' No shadows burned into the sides of buildings, No mountain of glasses, suitcases, and shoes, No pile of skulls, no handheld footage Of papers and shattered glass raining down. Just the near-infinite density of collected grief That distorts our universe like a black hole- Grief that we, who remain, All bear as one as we search for our place In this strange, new, far-too-different world."

New York "No siree, Mister President, you do not get these from pettin' kitty cats."

James Kipper nodded, smiling doubtfully as the slab-shouldered workman flexed his biceps and kissed each one in turn. His Secret Service guys didn't seem much bothered, and he'd long ago learned to pick up on their unspoken signals and body language. They paid much less attention to the salvage crew in front of him than to the ruined facades of the office blocks looking down on the massive, rusting pileup in Lower Manhattan. The hard work and unseasonal humidity of Lower Manhattan had left the workman drenched in sweat, and Kipper could feel the shirt sticking to his own back.

Having paid homage to his bowling-ball-sized muscles, the workman reached out one enormous, calloused paw to shake hands with the forty-fourth president of the United States. Kipper's grip was not as strong as it once had been and had certainly never been anywhere near as powerful as this gorilla's, but a long career in engineering hadn't left him with soft fingers or a limp handshake. He returned the man's iron-fisted clench with a fairly creditable squeeze of his own.

"Whoa there, Mister President," the salvage and clearance worker cried out jokingly. "I need these dainty pinkies for my second job. As a concert pianist, don'tcha know."

The small crush of men and women gathered around Kipper grinned and chuckled. This guy was obviously the clown of the bunch.

"A concert penis, you say?" Kipper shot back. "What's that, some sorta novelty act? With one of those really tiny pianos?"

The groan of his media handler, Karen Milliner, was lost in the sudden uproar of coarse, braying laughter as the S amp;C workers erupted at the exchange. That did put his security detail a little on edge, but the man-mountain with the kissable biceps was laughing the loudest of them all, pointing at the chief executive and crying out, "This fuggin' guy. He cracks me up. Best fuggin' president ever."

Kipper half expected to be grabbed in a headlock for an affectionate noogie.

That would have set his detail right off.

But after a few moments the uproar receded.

Kipper's gaze fell on a woman, who'd remained unusually reserved throughout. Doubtless one or two of his detail were watching her closely from behind their darkened sunglasses. He caught her eye and favored her with an indulgent grin by which he meant to convey a sense of amused pity. She obviously did not fit in with this gang of roughnecks. Her features were fine-boned, and she didn't look like somebody used to long days of heavy manual labor. As he so often found when he traveled around to "meet the peeps"-his daughter's term, not his-the peeps intrigued him. This nation of castaways and lost souls all had their stories. And you had to wonder what paths had brought biceps guy and this quiet woman to New York three years after the Wave had dissipated as mysteriously as it had arrived.

"Mister President," Karen Milliner said, "we really need to get a move on-the schedule, you know."

Jostled out of his momentary ponderings by the director of communications, his flak catcher in chief, he nodded and smiled apologetically to the workers.

"I'm sorry, guys. Just like you, I am a mere civil servant, and my boss here"-he jerked a thumb at Milliner-"says I gotta get back to work."

The small crowd booed her but cheered him as he waved and began to walk away with his personal security detail shadowing every step. Cries of "Thank you, Mister President" and "Way to go, Kip" followed him down into the graveyard of corporate America.

The stillness of the ruins soon returned. Grit and debris crunched underfoot as the party picked its way through the wreckage of Wall Street. Only the sound of the pigeons, which had returned to the city in plague numbers, broke the silence. The ecosystem within the Wave-affected area seemed to be outstripping all scientific predictions in terms of recovery. Wood chips and piles of tree branches lined the streets. The buzzing roar of chain saws joined in with the heavy metal crash of machinery. Much of the cleanup work in places like Manhattan pertained just as much to brush clearance as to vehicle pileups or burned-out buildings. It wasn't like the great charred wastelands left by the firestorms that had covered so much of North America. There was life here, of a sort. He could smell it in the fresh-cut timber of an island fast reverting to its original, heavily wooded state.

Away from the raucous cheers of the salvage crew, Kipper fell deep into the well of his own thoughts. He took in the sight of a Mister Softee ice cream van that had speared into the front of the Citibank at the corner of Wall and Front streets. A couple of bicycles lay crushed under its wheels, and jagged shards of glass had ripped through the scorched, filthy rags that once had clothed the riders. He had to remind himself that they hadn't died in the auto accident. They had simply Disappeared like every other soul in this empty city, like everyone across America four years ago.

"Traffic's not too bad here," he ventured to Jed Culver for want of something better to say. "Not like back on… what was that last cross street, where those guys were cleaning up?"

"Water Street, sir," one of his Secret Service detail offered. He was a new guy. Kip didn't know his name yet, but his accent was local. You had to wonder what that was doing to his head.

"Most of these cars were parked when the Wave hit," Culver added. "Mostly pedestrians and bike riders through here, health nazis, that sort of thing. Water Street was busier."

Culver's soft Southern drawl, a Louisiana lilt with a touch of transatlantic polish, trailed off. The silence of the necropolis, a vast crypt for millions of the Disappeared, seemed to press the air out of him. Kip turned back to gaze down the shadowed canyon of the old financial district. The intersection of Water and Wall was a wrecking yard of yellow cabs, private cars, and one armored van that had been broadsided by a dump truck and knocked completely over. The impact had smashed open both rear doors, and a few buff-colored sacks of old money still lay unwanted on the ground. None of the salvagers bothered with the dead currency, which long since had been replaced by the less valuable New American Dollar. They had returned to attacking the tangle of metal with earthmoving equipment, sledgehammers, chains, and pure grunt.