The Domination

Epilogue II

HOSPITAL OF THE SACRED HEART

NEW YORK CITY

FEBRUARY 1948

“Names?” The woman who looked up at the nursing sister was exhausted with the long labor, triumphant, but she had no slightest trace of the furtiveness the staff had come to expect of unwed mothers. Of course, there was some mystery involved; the nurse looked over at the godparents, a short Indian-looking man in naval blue with commander’s stripes on his arm and his blond wife with the soft Carolina accent. They visited often, and the quiet widow with her daughter, and the horse-faced man who your eyes never really seemed to rest on.

“Of course I’ve got names,” the young woman was saying, in the French accent that had been considered exotic before the War and the refugee influx. She looked over to the cradle, the two sleeping pink forms still with their golden-blond birth fuzz.

“Frederick Kustaa and Marya Sokolowska Lefarge,” she said, closing her eyes with a sigh. “I don’t believe in making it easy for children. That’ll give them something to live up to.”

LOW EARTH ORBIT

JULY 1ST, 2014

INGOLFSSON INCURSION TIMELINE

EARTH/2B

“Yet there must have been some disaster?” Nomura said. “Some . . . weakness, some . . . ”

Carmaggio shook his head. “Son, one of the scariest things about this multiple-worlds shit is that it reminds you just how much depends on people—and that’s to say, on something utterly unpredictable.” He looked out at the starscape. “After that, things moved more quickly . . . ”