And of course I had an unfair advantage, since I knew the plane of the alien ship’s orbit—which of the fixed stars it would pass in front of. I held my bolt up with one hand, making a screen to block out most of the light from the crag. My eyes adjusted to the dark, to the point where I could see the stars again.

And then I saw it arcing across the sky, just where I knew it’d be: a point of red light surrounded by a grainy nimbus caused by its passage through the atmosphere. I pointed. Others around me saw this and found it for themselves. The meadow became as silent as the Mynster during an Anathem.

The shooting star winked out and vanished into the black. The red glow was gone. A round of applause started up in the meadow, but it was tentative. Nervous. It died away before it really got going.

“I feel like a fool,” Arsibalt said. He turned and looked at me. “When I think of all the things I’ve worried about and been afraid of in my life—and now it’s plain that I’ve been scared of the wrong things.”

They rang Voco at three o’clock in the morning.

No one minded the odd hour. No one was sleeping anyway. People showed up slow and late because most of them were carrying books and other things they thought they might need, supposing their names were called.

Statho Evoked seventeen.

“Lio.”

“Tulia.”

“Erasmas.”

“Arsibalt.”

“Tavener.” And some other Tenners.

I stepped over the threshold into the chancel—a step I’d taken thousands of times to wind the clock. But when I wound the clock I always knew that a few minutes later Fraa Mentaxenes would open the door again. This time, I turned my back on three hundred faces I’d never see again—unless they got Evoked and sent to—well—wherever I was being sent.

I found myself with several I knew well, and some who were strangers to me: Hundreders.

The intonation of the names stopped. There had been so many that I’d lost count, and supposed we were finished. I looked at Statho, expecting him to move on to the next phase of the aut. He was staring at the list in his hand. His expression was difficult to read: his face and body had gone stiff. He blinked slowly and shifted the list toward the nearest candle as if having trouble reading it. He seemed to be scanning the same line over and over. Finally he forced himself to raise his gaze, and looked directly across the chancel at the Millenarians’ screen.

“Voco,” he said, but it came out husky and he had to clear his throat. “Voco Fraa Jad of the Millenarians.”

Everything got quiet; or maybe it was blood raging in my ears.

There was a long wait. Then the door in the Thousanders’ screen creaked open to reveal the silhouette of an old fraa. He stood there for a moment waiting for the dust to clear—that door didn’t get opened very often. Then he stepped out into the chancel. Someone closed the door behind him.

Statho said a few more words to formally Evoke us. We said the words to answer the call. The avout behind the screens took up their anathem of mourning and farewell. All of them sang their hearts out. The Thousanders shook the Mynster with a mighty croaking bass line, so deep you felt more than heard it. That, even more than the singing of my Decenarian family, made the hairs prickle on my scalp, made my nose run and my eyes sting. The Thousanders were going to miss Fraa Jad and they were making sure he knew it in his bones.

I looked straight up, just as Paphlagon and Orolo had. The light of the candles only penetrated a short distance up the well. But I wasn’t really doing this in an attempt to see something. I was doing it to prevent a deluge from running out of my nostrils and my eyes.

The others were moving around me. I lowered my chin to see what was happening. A junior hierarch was leading us out.

“There’s a hypothesis, you know, that we just get taken to a gas chamber now,” Arsibalt muttered.

“Shut up,” I said. Not wanting to hear any more in this vein from him, I lingered, and let him go well ahead of me. Which took a while since he had made half of his bolt into a sack and was lugging a small library.

The hierarchs, all formally robed in purple, led us down the center aisle of the empty north nave and from there to the narthex just inside the Day Gate. We congregated below the Great Orrery. The Day Gate had been opened, but the plaza beyond was empty. No aerocraft was waiting for us there. No buses. Not even a pair of roller skates.

Junior hierarchs were circulating through the group handing things out. I got a shopping bag from a local department store. Inside were a pair of dungarees, a shirt, drawers, socks, and, on the bottom, a pair of walking shoes. A minute later I was handed a knapsack. Inside was a water bottle, a poly bag containing toiletries, and a money card.

There was also a wristwatch. It took me a while to understand why. Once we got more than a couple of miles from Saunt Edhar, we’d have no way of knowing the time.

Suur Trestanas addressed us. “Your destination is the Concent of Saunt Tredegarh,” she announced.

“Is it a Convox?” someone asked.

“It is now,” she answered. This killed all discussion for a minute as everyone absorbed that news.

“How are we to get there?” Tulia asked.

“Any way you can,” said Trestanas.

“What!?” That or some variation of it came from all of the Evoked at once. Part of the romance of Voco—a small consolation for being ripped away from everyone you knew—was that you got whisked away in some kind of vehicle, as Fraa Paphlagon had been. Instead of which we’d been issued walking shoes.

“You are not to wear the bolt and the chord under the open sky, night or day,” Trestanas went on. “Spheres are to be kept fist-sized or smaller and not used to make light. You are not to walk out of this gate all together—we’ll have you emerge in groups of two or three. Later, if you want, you can meet up somewhere, away from the Concent. Preferably underneath something.”

“What is the resolution of their surveillance?” Lio asked.

“We have no idea.”

“Saunt Tredegarh’s is two thousand miles away,” Barb mentioned. In case this was of interest. Which it was.

“There are local organizations, connected with arks, that are trying to round up vehicles and drivers to get you there.”

“Warden of Heaven people?” Arsibalt asked—he beat me to it.

“Some of them,” Trestanas said.

“No, thanks!” someone called out. “One of those people tried to convert me during Apert. Her arguments were pathetic.”

“Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho!” went someone very close to me.

I turned and looked. It was Fraa Jad, standing behind me with his shopping bag and his knapsack. He wasn’t laughing that loudly, so no one else had noticed him. He smelled like smoke. He had not bothered to look into the shopping bag yet. He saw my head turn, and looked me in the eye—very amused. “The Powers That Be must be pissing their pants,” he said, “or whatever they wear nowadays.”

Everyone else was too stunned by all that had happened to say much. Here I had an advantage: I had gotten used to being stunned. Like Lio was used to being punched in the head.

I climbed up onto a stone bench that had been placed where visitors could sit on it and watch the orrery. “South of the concent, not far from the Century Gate, west of the river, there’s a great roof on stilts that straddles a canal. Next to it is a machine-hall. You can’t miss it. It’s the biggest structure in the neighborhood by far. We can meet there under cover. Go there in small groups, like Suur Trestanas said. We’ll convene there later and come up with a plan.”

“What time shall we meet?” asked one of the Hundreders.

I considered it.

“Let’s meet when we—I mean, when they—ring Provener.”