"Since you got back. Three hours or so."

"Do you think we should wake him up, check on him?"

"Nah, let him sleep. We'll check him after dinner."

"When is that?"

"Half an hour." Bobby Lembeck laughed. "I'm cooking."

That reminded me I was supposed to call home around dinnertime, so I went into my room and dialed.

Ellen answered the phone. "Hello? What is it!" She sounded harried. I heard Amanda crying and Eric yelling at Nicole in the background. Ellen said, "Nicole, do not do that to your brother!"

I said, "Hi, Ellen."

"Oh, thank God," she said. "You have to speak to your daughter."

"What's going on?"

"Just a minute. Nicole, it's your father." I could tell she was holding out the phone to her.

A pause, then, "Hi, Dad."

"What's going on, Nic?"

"Nothing. Eric is being a brat." Matter-of-factly.

"Nic, I want to know what you did to your brother."

"Dad." She lowered her voice to a whisper. I knew she was cupping her hand over the phone. "Aunt Ellen is not very nice."

"I heard that," Ellen said, in the background. But at least the baby had stopped crying; she'd been picked up.

"Nicole," I said. "You're the oldest child, I'm counting on you to help keep things together while I'm gone."

"I'm trying, Dad. But he is a majorly turkey butt."

From the background: "I am not! Up yours, weasel poop!"

"Dad. You see what I'm up against."

Eric: "Up your hole with a ten-foot pole!"

I looked at the monitor in front of me. It showed views of the desert outside, rotating images from all the security cameras. One camera showed my dirt bike, lying on its side, near the door to the power station. Another camera showed the outside of the storage shed, with the door swinging open and shut, revealing the outline of Rosie's body inside. Two people had died today. I had almost died. And now my family, which yesterday had been the most important thing in my life, seemed distant and petty.

"It's very simple, Dad," Nicole was saying in her most reasonable grown-up voice. "I came home with Aunt Ellen from the store, I got a very nice blouse for the show, and then Eric came into my room and knocked all my books on the floor. So I told him to pick them up. He said no and called me the b-word, so I kicked him in the butt, not very hard, and took his G.I. Joe and hid it. That's all."

I said, "You took his G.I. Joe?" G.I. Joe was Eric's most important possession. He talked to G.I. Joe. He slept with G.I. Joe on the pillow beside him.

"He can have it back," she said, "as soon as he cleans up my books."

"Nic…"

"Dad, he called me the b-word."

"Give him his G.I. Joe."

The images on the screen were rotating through the various cameras. Each image only stayed on screen for a second or two. I waited for the image of the shed to come back up. I had a nagging feeling about it. Something bothered me.

"Dad, this is humiliating."

"Nic, you're not the mother-"

"Oh yeah, and she was here for maybe five seconds."

"She was at the house? Mom was there?"

"But then, big surprise, she had to go. She had a plane to catch."

"Uh-huh. Nicole, you need to listen to Ellen-"

"Dad, I told you she's being-"

"Because she's in charge until I get back. So if she says to do something, you do it."

"Dad. I feel this is unreasonable." Her members-of-the-jury voice.

"Well, honey, that's how it is."

"But my problem-"

"Nicole. That's how it is. Until I get back."

"When are you coming home?"

"Probably tomorrow."

"Okay."

"So. We understand each other?"

"Yes, Dad. I'll probably have a nervous breakdown here…"

"Then I promise I'll visit you in the mental hospital, as soon as I get back."

"Very funny."

"Let me speak to Eric."

I had a short conversation with Eric, who told me several times that it was not fair. I told him to put Nicole's books back. He said he didn't knock them down, it was an accident. I said to put them back anyway. Then I talked to Ellen briefly. I encouraged her as best I could. Sometime during this conversation, the security camera showing the outside of the shed came up again. And I again saw the swinging door, and the outside of the shed. In this elevation the shed was slightly above grade; there were four wooden steps leading from the door down to ground level. But it all looked the way it should. I did not know what had bothered me. Then I realized.

David's body wasn't there. It wasn't in the frame. Earlier in the day, I had seen his body slide out the door and disappear from view, so it should be lying outside. Given the slight grade, it might have rolled a few yards from the door, but not more than that. No body.

But perhaps I was mistaken. Or perhaps there were coyotes. In any case the camera image had now changed. I'd have to sit through another cycle to see it again. I decided not to wait. If David's body was gone, there was nothing I could do about it now. It was about seven o'clock when we sat down to eat dinner in the little kitchen of the residential module. Bobby brought out plates of ravioli with tomato sauce, and mixed vegetables. I had been a stay-at-home dad long enough to recognize the brands of frozen food he was using. "I really think that Contadina is better ravioli."

Bobby shrugged. "I go to the fridge, I find what's there."

I was surprisingly hungry. I ate everything on my plate.

"Couldn't have been that bad," Bobby said.

Mae was silent as she ate, as usual. Beside her, Vince ate noisily. Ricky was at the far end of the table, away from me, looking down at his food and not meeting my eyes. It was all right with me. Nobody wanted to talk about Rosie and David, but the empty stools around the table were pretty obvious. Bobby said to me, "So, you're going to go out tonight?"

"Yes," I said. "When is it dark?"

"Sunset should be around seven-twenty," Bobby said. He flicked on a monitor on the wall. "I'll get you the exact time."

I said, "So we can go out three hours after that. Sometime after ten."

Bobby said, "And you think you can track the swarm?"

"We should. Charley sprayed one swarm pretty thoroughly."

"As a result of which, I glow in the dark," Charley said, laughing. He came into the room and sat down.

Everyone greeted him enthusiastically. If nothing else, it felt better to have another body at the table. I asked him how he felt.

"Okay. A little weak. And I have a fucking headache from hell."

"I know. Me too."

"And me," Mae said.

"It's worse than the headache Ricky gives me," Charley said, looking down the table. "Lasts longer, too."

Ricky said nothing. Just continued eating.

"Do you suppose these things get into your brain?" Charley said. "I mean, they're nanoparticles. They can get inhaled, cross the blood-brain barrier… and go into the brain?"

Bobby pushed a plate of pasta in front of Charley. He immediately ground pepper all over it.

"Don't you want to taste it?"

"No offense. But I'm sure it needs it." He started to eat.

"I mean," he continued, "that's what everybody's worried about nanotechnology polluting the environment, right? Nanoparticles are small enough to get places nobody's ever had to worry about before. They can get into the synapses between neurons. They can get into the cytoplasm of cardiac cells. They can get into cell nuclei. They're small enough to go anywhere inside the body. So maybe we're infected, Jack."

"You don't seem that worried about it," Ricky said.

"Hey, what can I do about it now? Hope I give it to you, is about all. Hey, this spaghetti's not bad."

"Ravioli," Bobby said.

"Whatever. Just needs a little pepper." He ground some more over the top. "Sundown is seven-twenty-seven," Bobby said, reading the time off the monitor. He went back to eating. "And it does not need pepper."