“‘Rock of ages,’” she sang in her tuneless, scratchy voice while Pete spread fertilizer. “‘Cleft for me’… You spread that even, Pete, you hear me? Bone lazy!” He escaped as soon as he could and went to see Petra.

She was awake, lying on a blanket, kicking her fat little legs. Caity was on duty in the babies’ corner behind its wall of buckets. At the sight of her, Pete again thought of sex, but Caity didn’t seem interested, and after a moment he realized that he wasn’t, either. Not with Caity.

She said, “Did you hear about Xiaobo?”

“What about him?

“He’s dying.”

It took Pete a moment to take it in, even though the news wasn’t unexpected. “Where?”

“His room.”

McAllister would be there. Pete walked back through the children’s room. At the sight of him, Kara started screaming. How long was that going to keep on? Kara would just have to get over it. The older children, three to five years old, were clustered around Jenna in a learning circle, being taught to count buckets and read letters and sing songs. When they were older, McAllister and Eduardo would teach them about stars and atoms and the digestive system. “We must save everything we can.”

McAllister wasn’t with Xiaobo, but Eduardo and Paolo were.

Eduardo was the oldest of the Survivors, and looked it. Only a few years older than McAllister, he seemed to Pete to be older than time. Thinning gray hair straggled around a deeply lined face. Eduardo, a quiet and courteous man, had never lost his soft Spanish accent, and when Pete had been little, he’d loved to have Eduardo tell him stories. He was Paolo’s father, and the two looked alike, although even now Eduardo was stronger than the sickly Paolo. The two sat one on each side of Xiaobo, who lay on a pile of blankets in the bare little room. Paolo held Xiaobo’s hand. Next to these three, Pete actually felt strong and whole.

He knelt at the foot of the nest of blankets. “Xiaobo.”

The dying man opened his eyes. When Pete had been very small, Xiaobo’s eyes had fascinated him: small, slanted, hooded by a fold of skin. At the same time, Xiaobo had scared him because he spoke so weird. English had come slowly to him, and now that Pete was grown himself he realized how lonely Xiaobo must have been in the Shell, the only Survivor of his people, the only one who could not talk to anyone else.

“Xiaobo, are you hurting?”

“No.”

“Can I get you anything?”

“Nothing. I go now, Pete.”

“You don’t know that you—”

“It is time. I go.” He closed his eyes again, and smiled.

I will never go that quietly. The thought built itself in his mind, solid as the Shell itself. I will not.

He didn’t know what else to say, but then there wasn’t time to say anything else. Tommy, at seven, the oldest of the children and the only one yet permitted to leave the children’s room alone, raced into Xiaobo’s room. “The Grab is bright!”

Pete leapt up. “Where’s McAllister?”

“I don’t know!” The boy throbbed with excitement. Unlike Kara, Tommy was one who’d adapted easily to his new life.

“It’s Ravi’s turn to go on the Grab,” Pete said. “Where’s Ravi?”

“I don’t know that either! Anyway Terrell was supposed to go because McAllister said he’s twelve now but Terrell got sick again and threw up and Darlene came over from the farm and told him to go lie down in his room like a useless stone.”

Darlene wasn’t supposed to tell Grab watchers anything. Pete, Paolo, and Eduardo looked at each other. How much longer would the platform stay bright? Paolo said, “You just went, Pete. Caity can go.”

“She’s on baby duty,” Pete said. And he was off running down the corridor, cursing Ravi for being—where? Doing what? It was Ravi’s turn, not Terrell’s! And why had McAllister changed the duty roster?

Tommy raced at his heels. “Can I go, Pete? Can I, huh? Can I go, too?”

“No!”

The boy stopped cold and shouted after him, “You’re selfish! You’re a selfish piggy who doesn’t care about the good of all! I’m telling! I am!”

Pete reached the Grab machinery and climbed onto the platform.

DECEMBER 2013

Julie sat on her new sleep sofa in her living room, which had grown smaller with the addition of her desk, smaller still with the broad sofa, and yet again smaller with the Christmas tree crowded into a corner. The scent of Douglas fir drifted through the room. She was wrapping presents in bright metallic paper. Jake was flying in from Wyoming and although they weren’t particularly close, each was the only family the other had since their parents had died in a plane crash three years ago, and it was Christmas. For Christmas you gathered family, even if half your heritage was Jewish. Jake, who would sleep on the extended sofa with his feet against the tree, was about to discover that he had one more family member than he thought.

She hadn’t told him earlier about her pregnancy because he was going to disapprove. Not of her getting pregnant, although he would undoubtedly consider that careless, but of her having and keeping the baby. Jake, deeply ambitious, had risen rapidly through the ranks of the U.S. Geological Survey. He was proud of both her career and his own, and he would frown at the year-long sabbatical she was taking to even have the baby, let alone the professional sacrifices that she knew perfectly well would follow. Julie did not intend to have her child raised by a succession of nannies, Even if she had had room for a nanny. She would make the transition from brilliant professor to brilliant consultant and work at home, perhaps teaching one course per semester as a sideline. Already she had feelers out for potential projects with various industries and government agencies.

She taped wrapping paper around a Bunny Mine, the current hot toy for toddlers. Her daughter, now a four-and-a-half-month fetus, wouldn’t be playing with a Bunny Mine for at least a year, but it would look cute on the shelves that Julie had put up in the nursery. The nursery was finished. The layette was complete. The childbirth classes began in January. It was all planned out, everything under control.

Julie had just begun to wrap a sweater for Jake when her cell rang. “Hello, Julie Kahn speaking.”

“This is Gordon.”

Her lips pursed. She hadn’t heard from him in nearly a month, since she’d given him her best stab at the revised data on the kidnappings. Since then she’d watched the Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maine newspapers; no child had been reported as missing. Plenty of burglaries, of course—theft always picked up as Christmas approached—but without Gordon’s input, Julie had no way of knowing which ones fit the MO that the task force had been pursuing.

“Hello, Gordon,” she said neutrally, hoping this call wasn’t personal.

It wasn’t. He said, “I wanted you to know that the A-Dic pulled the plug on the task force. Each kidnapping has been assigned to a local Special Agent in Charge. The A-Dic just doesn’t believe a connective enterprise exists.”

“The mathematical pattern exists.”

“Maybe. No more kidnappings since Kara and Jennifer Carter. No store burglaries with that MO, either.”

“Before this there have been long stretches between incidents.”

He made a noise she recognized: the verbal equivalent of a shrug. Gordon was moving on. He was not a man to hold on to what he could not control.

She said, “The pattern exists, Gordon.”

Instead of agreeing or arguing, he said, “How are you?”

“Still pregnant, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Can I come see you?”

“No. You’re married, Gordon.”

“There were two of us in those motel rooms, Julie.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I take complete responsibility for my actions, and for this result. It doesn’t involve you.”