Asach smiled. “I take your point. So, The Barrens Himmists won’t help anyone—because?”

Mena sighed. “Well, they cite scripture, of course. But really? I think it’s sort of tit for tat. Payback for exile.”

“Scripture?”

“ ‘May we turn our Gaze from those who refuse to See, praying fervently that they may not remain blind.’ They are pacifists, and open to evangelizing, but they feel no obligation to help nonbelievers. The most extreme fundamentalists won’t even look at a non-believer. If you head out there, you’re on your own.”

Asach nodded. “What else do I really need to know?”

Mena walked her through the catechism. Fundamentalist Himmists believed, really believed, that the Coal Sack, with its bright red sun called Murchison’s Eye, was actually the face of God. That once, during the Secession Wars, the eye had opened, awaking Howard Grote Littlemead, founder of the religion. That His Face represented the fourth arm of the Cross, which had nothing to do with crucifixion, but represented a quadrine, or quadripartite, God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and His Face, or Eye, with which he saw all. That, appalled by the sins of those who waged war in His presence, refusing to believe, he closed his Eye on them once and for all. That Himmists on New Utah could not really see that face directly in the heavens, being far from New Scotland where the phenomenon was most visible. Himmists in The Barrens felt closer to “His Earthly Eye” and Gathered once every score years to visit it. About that, Mena would say no more. She handed Asach a tract, entitled “The Catechism of the Great Weep,” and said only, “Read it. It’s what every child should know.”

Asach thanked her, pocketed the tract, looked tenderly at this sensible, helpful woman. “Mena?”

“Yes?”

“Do you believe? I mean truly believe? Do you believe in the Face of God, with Howard Grote Littlemead as His prophet?”

Mena smiled, and took Asach’s hand in her own, patting it gently. “Littlemead? I don’t know. I think Littlemead was one small man, in the vastness of space, who despaired of his lot on earth and looked for God in the heavenly lights. Who among us has not? Who among us has not, in the secret vaults of the heart, prayed for salvation in the dark of night?”

“Indeed,” said Asach. “Indeed. Don’t we all. Mena?”

“Yes?”

“What’s a Seer?”

She shook her head. “Read the Catechism, first.”

“OK, I promise. I’ll do it before I sleep tonight. But, please tell me, so that I’ll understand it after I do.”

Mena thought a moment. Sighed. “Ok,” she said, “I guess it does no harm.” Crow’s feet crinkled around her eyes. “A Seer is born at a Gathering, so a Seer spans two Gatherings, so a Seer learns to See the way and lead others to the next Gathering. The Seer spans the Gathering past, to the Gathering next. Understand?”

Asach smiled, reaching for the pamphlet. “Clear as mud.”

They departed early next morning. Just Asach, and the boys. They made a detour through the market quarter, catching pre-dawn deliveries before the stalls were even open. The boys packed the rig full with water; dried fruits; dried meats; dried nuts; blankets; self-erecting shelters. They bolted extra fuel tanks to the outer hull, and extra solar chargers to the roof. They stripped out the heavy Plate in the driver’s door and the floor. A lot of tithe credits changed hands. They gulped tea at a teamster’s stall, then headed east.

Back at the house, Mena and Nejme traded off, sending the same message, over and over, by satphone, by telegraph, by ‘tooth, with no assurance that it would even get through to the remoteness of Orcutt Station: Asach Quinn comes, a friend of truth. Meet at Butterfield Wells. We beg you: do not avert your Gaze.

The swing from cold of night to heat of day was sudden, and incredible. Before dawn, they had to chip a haze of frost from the view screen. After sunrise, they peeled away every layer of clothing decency allowed. The boys hummed and bounced to internal tunes. Bonneville fell away. Heat shimmered on salt panne and desert varnish.

It would have been more comfortable to drive at night, and sleep by day, with reflector shelters to keep them cool. But they needed the solar boost. Once up to speed, while the sun was bright and the road was level, it saved a lot of juice. With it, Butterfield Wells was the turn back point; as far as the boys could go with any guarantee of getting back before running out of fuel. Without it, they’d be marooned. There was no traffic. They were utterly alone.

The desert varnish gave way to surface glaze: silty flats, the thin crust polished smooth. Mirage shimmered in the distance, showing what had been, perhaps millennia before: vast lakes of water; lagoons and islands; estuarine pools. If anything was alive out there, it did not move. Sometimes the breeze would carry the faintest scent of water; of aromatic herbs, blown like whispers across the desert from the far, far mountains.

They passed an adobe bubble, with a minaret barely taller than a man. Once a shrine, or a roadside mosque, now fallen to ruin. “Making good time,” said the driver. They drove on.

Eventually a tiny blob rose above the road at the horizon. It hovered, upside down, a reflection in the shimmering heat that floated above the pavement. For a good while, it stayed there. Then, it set, like a tiny moon, and a real blob, a right-side-up blob, grew in its stead. At first it was nothing. Then it was solid. Then they rumbled to a stop, at a tiny public square.

The lads were disconsolate. At first, they refused to leave Asach there. But Asach was adamant. “You have to go back. You have to get Ollie back to Saint George. You have to help him find Deela and the boys. You have to help him find out what happened to Hugo.”

They could not argue with that. They tried to leave water. Asach waved them off, indicating the miniscule fountain: a rusty pipe, sticking out from a concrete block, trickling cold, clear water into a grate, where it disappeared. They tried to leave blankets, but Asach wanted no more than the cloak. They tried to leave food, and Asach acquiesced.

“Go on,” Asach waved them off. “You’re burning daylight.”

Butterfield Wells, The Barrens, New Utah

The square was little more than a dusty crossroad with a water tap. Not so much as a tree, nor anything natively tree-like. There was a good deal of wind, and a windmill to power the water pump. They sat in its thin stripe of shade. Asach entertained three pleasantly grubby children by using one handful of pebbles to knock another handful of pebbles from a circle scratched into the gravel.

Each would giggle, then throw down a pebble with that universal awkward, jerky toss of children everywhere old enough to walk and talk, but not yet old enough to be truly helpful at very much. Then, as Asach aimed and tossed in reply, in delighted unison they would shout encouragement: “WANpela! TUpela! TREEpela!” In variably, Asach would “miss” at least once, and the ecstatic associated child would run in a little circle herself, hands stretched overhead, shouting “GOOOAAAL! Mi Winim! Mi Winim!”

The game went on and on. The children were tireless. Eventually, a boy appeared, slightly older. From where, it was difficult to say. There seemed nowhere to come from, and nowhere to go to. The Barrens appeared to be utterly flat, horizon to horizon, but it was their vastness that tricked the eye. There were actually folds in the ground big enough to conceal a rail car; slashes deeper than a building that raged with water when rain fell in mountains that were mere purple stains on the rim of the horizon.