He remembered Pax’s face and the single desperate word… Please.

One more bad decision; one more death on his conscience.

Ellis paused at the end of Firestone Lane and stared down its length at the old farmhouse. For good or ill, this would be his home. Where else could he go?

The only one in the farmhouse was Yal, who, as always, was cooking.

Ellis didn’t have a watch—no way to tell the time except by the sun. Late afternoon, he guessed. Maybe five o’clock. Being autumn now, the days would be shorter, so maybe four o’clock? What was it, September? October? The stalks of corn in the field were brown. When did that happen in Michigan? Had the climate changed? He was annoyed with how his points of reference continually shifted. Just as he was settling in, he had skipped ahead again.

“Master Ellis Rogers.” Yal nodded, almost bowed, when Ellis entered to the scent of something baking—smelled like bread.

Pots boiled and chopped carrots and onions cascaded on the cutting board like splayed decks of cards. Yal was wearing an apron stained with handprints and held a towel in one hand, a butcher’s knife in the other.

“Master?” Ellis didn’t like the sound of the word, especially on an old-fashioned farm.

Yal nodded again. “Master Ren has decreed that the two of you should have a formal address as per your status in the community.”

“Our status? What’s our status?”

“As leaders, mentors, superiors.” Yal scooped up the carrots with the blade of the knife and slopped them into one of the bubbling pots.

“Masters? What’s wrong with elder, teacher, sir, or even sensei?”

“I think Master Ren felt masterwas more appropriate.”

“Yal!” Rob stomped along the porch, entering the kitchen covered in dirt and sweat, a wooden switch in hand. Rob raised the stick threateningly. “You lazy turd! Get your ass—” The former Ved Two halted, spotting Ellis. “Oh—” Rob quickly lowered the switch. “I didn’t know you were back, master.”

The honorific combined with the stick in Rob’s hand set off alarm bells.

“I was just coming by to whip some sense into Yal. Need to do that on occasion.”

What kind of place is Warren making?

“Why?” Ellis asked. “You can see Yal is working.” He pointed at the peeled potatoes, the chopped onions and carrots.

“That doesn’t matter.” Rob began to clap the stick into his palm. “It’s the pecking order. Ved One—ah, Bob—beats me, so I get to beat Yal.”

“And I’ll get to beat Mib, right?” Yal asked.

“Of course.”

Ellis couldn’t take his eyes off the stick as it slapped in Rob’s three-fingered hand. About as thick as his thumb, there was still bark on it, green and white patches where the branches had been trimmed off. There’s a pecking order to the world,Ricky the Dick had reminded him, and God put you at the bottom.

“But Yal isn’t doing anything wrong,” Ellis protested. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Spare the rod and spoil the child,” Rob said. “This is survival of the fittest. We don’t want weak people here. Members of the Firestone Family need to be hard as rocks to stand the brutal days ahead. Yal is still the new recruit. Master Ren wants to toughen the young one up. Indoctrinate Yal to the way things are done here.”

“Are you kidding me?” Ellis asked.

“Ah—no, master.” Rob looked puzzled. “That’s right from Master Ren’s own mouth. He wants us all to be tough as he is. Fact is, I’m trying to help Yal here. Master Ren has decided that we’ll be divided into hes, shes, and itsbased on how we behave. Now that we’ll be living among real humans—once the women arrive—he wants to get us ready. Yal is on the list right now as a she.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

Again that puzzled look. “Master Ren says women are inferior to men. Yal won’t want to be a woman, but will be unless I can shape his ass up.”

“Shape hisass up?”

“Yeah, Master Ren thinks Yal might be a little too light in the loafers.”

“Yal doesn’t even wear shoes.”

“It’s a figure of speech. It means—”

“I knowwhat it means. It’s something Warren taught you, but apparently he skipped the lesson on sarcasm.”

Rob continued to stare at him, bewildered.

Ellis was angry. He was mad at Rob for blindly following orders, mad at Yal for gleefully accepting a beating with the promise that the cook could do the same to the next recruit. He was angry with Warren for creating such a vicious system. Mostly he was mad at himself. For that he had plenty of reasons.

“Where is old Master Ren,anyway?”

“In the village—Menlo Park, inside Edison’s workshop.”

“I think maybe I ought to have a talk with him.”

Ellis aimed for the door, but stopped short, reached out, and pulled the switch away from Rob. “Don’t go hitting anyone anymore.”

“But Master Ren—”

“Yeah, I know. Master Ren likes hitting a little too much, and if I’m going to live here, that’s going to have to change.”

Ellis marched the length of Firestone Lane. Thinking back, he realized he’d made a lot of excuses for Warren over the years. Warren had lost control many times, and he had pulled his friend out of more than a few bar fights, usually because of something stupid that Warren had said. Then there was the time Ellis visited the Eckard household. Warren’s second wife, Kelly, had answered the door wearing her husband’s big mirrored aviators. The sunglasses, long-sleeved shirt, and makeup couldn’t hide the split lip.

“Fell down the stairs,” she had told him with Warren looking on.

“Maybe you should consider moving to a house that doesn’t have steps,” he had replied, never knowing if she understood his meaning. Kelly wasn’t any better at catching innuendo than Rob. That was the closest he had ever come to defying Warren.

It only took two thousand years to sink in, but Ellis Rogers could be taught. Maybe it was time Warren learned about the second half of the Bible.

The Edison laboratory was on the other side of the village, closer to where Ellis had found Geo-24’s body—where he had first met Pax. He had run by it that day, taking no notice of the long peak-roofed building that looked like an old train station with its white clapboard siding, decorative porch posts that gave the impression of archways, and round attic window bisected by muntins to look like crosshairs on a rifle scope. This wasn’t the real Edison lab. By the time Ford thought to relocate the facilities in the 1920s, there was nothing left to move. The buildings had been removed or collapsed. Ford had his workers reconstruct this replica based on photographs and using scavenged materials, but Ellis imagined there wasn’t much difference between the Dearborn version and the New Jersey original.

Ellis reached the start of the Menlo Park complex, passing the green-tarnished, bronze statue of Edison, sitting grandfatherly on a rock as if about to impart some word of genius. As he walked up Port Street, he saw someone. Although too far away to read a name tag, the Amish outfit suggested that either the person was a member of the Firestone Farm family, or the Mennonites of Pennsylvania had not only survived unobserved but were taking a vacation at the Henry Ford Museum. Whoever it was, they had been leaning on the picket fence surrounding the Menlo Park complex and rushed inside the lab the moment Ellis appeared. By the time Ellis turned onto Christie Street, Warren was on the front porch of the lab waiting for him.

“Well, well, if it ain’t Mr. Rogers. The prodigal son returns.” Warren stood, his shirt buttoned to the neck, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, with what looked to be grease staining his hands. “How you feeling?”