Connor squirms, but can't squirm his way out of the box. "How should I know what happens to it? Maybe it gets all broken up like the rest of us into a bunch of little pieces."

"But a soul isn't like that," says Diego. "It's indivisible."

"If it's indivisible," says Hayden, "maybe an Unwinds spirit stretches out, kind of like a giant balloon between all those parts of us in other places. Very poetic."

Hayden might find poetry in it, but to Connor the thought is terrifying. He tries to imagine himself stretched so thin and so wide that he can reach around the world. He imagines his spirit like a web strung between the thousand recipients of his hands, his eyes, the fragments of his brain—none of it under his control anymore, all absorbed by the bodies and wills of others. Could consciousness exist like that? He thinks about the trucker who performed a card trick for him with an Unwinds hand. Did the boy who once owned that hand still feel the satisfaction of performing the trick? Was his spirit still inexplicably whole, even though his flesh had been shuffled like that deck-of cards, or was he shredded beyond all hope of awareness—beyond Heaven, Hell, or anything eternal? Whether or not souls exist Connor doesn't know. But consciousness dues exist—that's something he knows for sure. If every part of an Unwind is still alive, then that consciousness has to go somewhere, doesn't it? He silently curses Hayden for making him think about it . . . but Hayden isn't done yet.

"Here's a little brain clot for you," says Hayden. "I knew this girl back home. There was something about her that made you want to listen to the things she had to say. I don't know whether she was really well-centered, or just psychotic. She believed that if someone actually gets unwound, then they never had a soul to begin with. She said God must know who's going to be unwound, and he doesn't give them souls."

Diego grunts his disapproval. "I don't like the sound of that."

"This girl had it all worked out in her head," continued Hayden. "She believed Unwinds are like the unborn."

"Wait a second," says Emby, finally breaking his silence. "The unborn have souls. They have souls from the moment they get made—the law says."

Connor doesn't want to get into it again with Emby, but he can't help himself. "Just because the law says it, that doesn't make it true."

"Yeah, well, just because the law says it, that doesn't make it false, either. It's only the law because a whole lot of people thought about it, and decided it made sense."

"Hmm," says Diego. "The Mouth Breather has a point."

Maybe so, but the way Connor sees it, a point ought to be sharper than that. "How can you pass laws about things that nobody knows?"

"They do it all the time," says Hayden. "That's what law is: educated guesses at right and wrong."

"And what the law says is fine with me," says Emby.

"But if it weren't for the law, would you still believe it?" asks Hayden. "Share with us a a personal opinion, Emby. Prove there's more than snot in that cranium of yours."

"You're wasting your time," says Connor. "There's not."

"Give our congested friend a chance," says Hayden.

They wait. The sound of the engine changes. Connor can feel them begin a slow descent, and wonders if the others can feel it too. Then Emby says, "Unborn babies . . . they suck their thumbs sometimes, right? And they kick. Maybe before that they're just like a bunch of cells or something, but once they kick and suck their thumbs—that's when they've got a soul."

"Good for you!" says Hayden. "An opinion! I knew you could do it."

Connor's head begins to spin. Was it the plane's banking, or a lack of oxygen?

"Connor, fair is fair—Emby found an opinion somewhere in his questionable gray matter. Now you have to give yours."

Connor sighs, not having the strength to fight anymore. He thinks about the baby he and Risa so briefly shared. "If there's such a thing as a soul—and I'm not saying that there is—then it comes when a baby's born into the world. Before that, it's just part of the mother."

"No, it's not!" says Emby.

"Hey—he wanted my opinion, I gave it."

"But it's wrong!"

"You see, Hayden? You see what you started?"

"Yes!" Hayden says excitedly. "It looks like we're about to have our own little Heartland War. Pity it's too dark for us to watch it."

"If you want my opinion, you're both wrong," says Diego. "The way I see it, it's got nothing to do with all of that. It has to do with love."

"Uh-oh," says Hayden. "Diego's getting romantic. I'm moving to the other end or the crate."

"No, I'm serious. A person don't got a soul until that person is loved. If a mother loves her baby—wants her baby—it's got a soul from the moment she knows it's there. The moment you're loved, that's when you got your soul. Punto!"

"Yeah?" says Connor. "Well, what about all those babies that get storked—or all those kids in state schools?"

"They just better hope somebody loves them some day."

Connor snorts dismissively, but in spite of himself, he can't dismiss it entirely, any more than he can dismiss the other things he's heard today. He thinks about his parents. Did they ever love him? Certainly they did when he was little. And just because they stopped, it didn't mean his soul was stolen away . . . although sometimes to admit that it felt like it was. Or at least, part of it died when his parents signed the order.

"Diego, that's really sweet," Hayden says in his best mocking voice. "Maybe you should write greeting cards."

"Maybe I should write them on your face."

Hayden just laughs.

"You always poke fun at other people's opinions," says Connor, "so how come you never give your own?"

"Yeah," says Emby.

"You're always playing people for your own entertainment. Now it's your turn. Entertain us."

"Yeah," says Emby.

"So tell us," says Connor, "in The World According to Hayden, when do we start to live?"

A long silence from Hayden, and then he says quietly, uneasily, "I don't know."

Emby razzes him. "That's not an answer."

But Connor reaches out and grabs Emby's arm, to shut him up—because Emby's wrong. Even though Connor can't see Hayden's face, he can hear the truth of it in his voice. There was no hint of evasion in Hayden's words. This was raw-honesty, void of Hayden's usual flip attitude. It was perhaps the first truly honest thing Connor had ever heard him say. "Yes, it is an answer," Connor says. "Maybe it's the best answer of all. If more people could admit they really don't know, maybe there never would have been a Heartland War."

There's a mechanical jolt beneath them. Emby gasps.

"Landing gear," says Connor.

"Oh, right."

In a few minutes they'll be there, wherever "there" is. Connor tries to guess how long they've been in the air. Ninety minutes? Two hours? There's no telling what direction they've been flying. They could be touching down anywhere. Or maybe Emby was right. Maybe it's piloted by remote control and they're just ditching the whole plane in the ocean to get rid of the evidence. Or what if it's worse than that? What if . . . what if . . .

"What if it's a harvest camp after all?" says Emby. Connor doesn't tell him to shut up this time, because he's thinking the same thing.