Azador fell down into the dirt and sobbed. Sam reached for !Xabbu's hand and held it. She did not understand what had happened, but she knew what a broken heart looked like.

Azador was clearly not going to be much use for a while. Sam was helping !Xabbu gather more wood—the stepmother's campfire at least had remained—when she noticed Jongleur was gone.

"That's impacted!" she said. "He waited till we were distracted, then ditched us!"

"Perhaps." !Xabbu did not seem convinced. "Let us look."

They found the old man sitting against a tree at the edge of the clearing, as coldly serene as a statue. He was so still that for a moment, until he flicked them with an expressionless glance, Sam thought he might have had a stroke. She was mildly disappointed to discover it was not true, but could not help thinking there had been something odd about his behavior all day.

"What are you doing?" she demanded. "You could at least come help us set up camp."

"No one asked me." Jongleur rose stiffly and began to walk toward where the firelight flickered along the trunks of the trees. "Is that thing gone?"

"What Azador called the stepmother? Yes, it is gone," !Xabbu said. "Do you know what it was?"

"No. But I can guess. A function of the operating system, meant to instruct and assist. A cracked version of the things we built into many of our simulation worlds."

"Like Orlando's Trojan tortoise," said Sam, remembering. She started to explain to !Xabbu, but realized suddenly that she did not want to talk about her dead friend in front of the old man.

Just because I'm feeling a little sorry for Azador, I don't have to let it spread over to the old murderer, too.

"Do you think it spoke with the voice of the One, then?" !Xabbu asked. When he saw the sour look on Jongleur's face, he amended it to, "With the voice of the operating system?"

"Perhaps." Despite his scowl, the old man had only a little of his usual fierceness, and in fact seemed troubled. Had something in Azador's misery touched even Jongleur's heart, which Sam imagined to be as small, dark, and hard as a charcoal briquette? It seemed difficult to believe.

Azador did not look up at them when they joined him at the fire, nor would he respond to any of Sam's or !Xabbu's questions. The moon had risen into the sky and now stood framed between the black hands of the trees, the stars small but bright behind it.

Sam was nodding with fatigue, and wondering if it would be too utterly creepy to sleep in one of the empty wagons, when Azador suddenly began to talk.

"I . . . I do not remember everything," he said slowly. "But when I found the bridge, much began to come back to me, as though I saw the cover of a book I had read as a child but had forgotten.

"I remember that I grew up here, in these woods. But also I roamed with my family through all the countries. We crossed the rivers, took our wagons to villages and towns in search of work. We did what needed doing. We had enough to live. And when we came together here, at Romany Fair, all was music and laughing—all the Romany together." For a moment there was light in his face, a memory of better things, but it faded. "But I never felt that I belonged—never could I accept that this was my life, the whole of it. I was unhappy even when I was happy. 'Azador,' all the Romany called me. It is an old Spanish Gypsy word, I think. It means to make ill luck, to bring mischance. But still they were kind to me, my family, my people. They knew it was destiny that made me so, not my choice."

"What is your real name?" !Xabbu asked gently.

"I . . . I do not know. I do not remember."

Even Jongleur was listening intently, an avid look on his hawklike features.

Azador abruptly sat up straight and his face darkened with anger. "That is all I can tell you. Why do you do this to me? I did not wish to come back here. Now I have again lost all the things that I lost once before."

"She said you could follow them," Sam reminded him. "Your stepmother. She said you could follow them to . . . what was it? A well?"

"They are making a pilgrimage to Kali the Black," Azador said with a scornful laugh. "But they might as well have flown to the stars. I do not know how to get there, except to walk. We are far from the center, where the Well is—we would have to cross river after river. The world would be gone before we were halfway there."

"Do you remember nothing else?" !Xabbu leaned forward. "I met you far away, in another part of the network. You must have crossed great distances to get there. How did you do it?"

Azador shook his head. "I remember nothing. I lived here. Then I wandered in other lands. Now I am back . . . and my people are gone." He scrambled to his feet so violently that he kicked leaves into the fire, which jumped and sputtered. "I am going to sleep. If the One is merciful, I will not wake up."

He strode away. They heard the creak of leather springs as he climbed into one of the wagons.

"Didn't . . . didn't his stepmother say he might kill himself?" Sam asked worriedly. "I mean should we leave him alone?"

"Azador will not commit suicide," Jongleur said in a flat voice. "I know his type." He too rose and walked off between the wagons.

Sam and !Xabbu looked at each other across the camp-fire. "Is it my imagination," Sam asked, "or is the scan factor just, like, rocketing upward every minute?"

"I do not understand you, Sam."

"I mean, are things getting crazier and crazier?"

"No, I do not think you are imagining it." !Xabbu shook his head. "I am puzzled myself, and worried, but I am also hopeful. If all are being drawn to some place called the Well, then perhaps Renie will be going there, too."

"But we don't know how to get there. Azador said by the time we walked there, the world is going to have ended."

!Xabbu nodded sadly, but then manufactured a smile, even more admirable for the effort behind it. "But it has not happened yet, Sam Fredericks. So there is hope." He patted her. "You go sleep now—if you choose that wagon, I can see it from the fire. I wish to think."

"But. . . ."

"Sleep now. There is always hope."

Sam woke from a troubled sleep into a world of mist and shadow.

In the dream, her parents had been explaining that Orlando couldn't come with them on the camping trip because he was dead, and even though he was standing right there looking sad, he still wouldn't fit in the car because his Thargor body was too big. Sam had been angry and embarrassed, but Orlando had only smiled and rolled his eyes, sharing a silent joke with her about parents, then faded away.

When she sat up, rubbing tears from her eyes, and stumbled out of the wagon, it was into a world without daylight.

"!Xabbu!" Her voice echoed back to her. "!Xabbu! Where are you?"

To her immense relief he appeared from around the corner of the wagon. "Sam, are you all right?"

"Chizz. I just didn't know where you were. What time is it?"

He shrugged. "Who can say here? A night has passed, and this is as much morning as we are going to get, it seems."

She looked out at the wet grass, the white tendrils of mist between the trees, and felt a thrill of fear. "It's all shutting down, isn't it?"

"I don't know, Sam. It seems a strange way for a simulation to behave. But it does not make me happy, no."

"Where are the others?"

"Azador went away early this morning, but came back. Now he is sitting in the center of the meadow and will not talk to me. Jongleur has gone out walking too." !Xabbu looked tired. Sam wondered if he'd had any sleep at all, but before she could ask him, a tall, gaunt, and mostly naked shape appeared out of the gray murk at the edge of the clearing.

"We can wait here no longer," Jongleur announced before he had even reached them. "We will leave this place now."