Immobility

6

MORNING AND AWAKE AGAIN and after a moment of panic relieved to find he was still himself, still able to remember his name. Horkai, Josef. His doubts, his nightmares, held at a distance, at least for now.

He lay on the narrow bed, staring at the bare and glowing concrete walls crumbling in places to reveal a network of dark rebar. What had the room been before? A large supply closet, maybe, or a small office. What time was it? In the artificial light, it was impossible to tell. He reached over and ran his finger along the wall; when it returned, it had picked up some of the luminescence. Some sort of phosphorescent bacteria or mold.

He pulled himself to sitting, then forced his dangling legs to hang off the side of the bed. There was, beside his bed, a kind of makeshift desk: a metal shelf attached to the wall at hip level, a chair slid beneath it. He sidled down the bed until he was closer to it, could make out in the poor light a pad of paper and a dark stick, perhaps a pencil. There was nothing else in the room, not a single book.

After moving to the very end of the bed, he found he could reach out far enough to grasp the door handle, which proved to be locked. Am I a prisoner? he wondered. Perhaps he had locked it himself when he reached for it; he looked for a button or some other device on the knob, but no, it was locked, and locked from the outside.

Fair enough, he told himself. He’d nearly killed the technician, almost without thinking about it. He’d sent both Olaf and Oleg to the infirmary. There was no need to read anything into it. Perhaps they were just being cautious.

He scooted back along the bed until he could reach the chair, pulled it next to the bed, heaved his way onto it. He could feel the jolt in his back and spine, but it wasn’t the same intense pain he’d been feeling before. His body was already adapting, learning to dampen out and process sensation, blot out pain. Soon he’d be more or less himself again, more or less human. And then maybe his memory would come back as well.

Moving the chair over to the desk proved much harder. Without functioning legs, he had no way to scoot it along. At first he could push against the side of the bed and slide the chair away, but soon he was too far away to get any leverage and his own weight kept the chair from actually moving. In the end, he had to fall out of the chair and then drag it and himself along to the desk and then pull himself up into it.

By the time he was sitting in the chair again, he’d bent one edge of the desk-shelf and cut his forearm. He felt exhausted. How would it be possible to travel forty-six miles like this, even with help? he wondered. Without legs, how could they expect him to go anywhere?

What he’d thought was a pencil was a pen. He toyed with it, twirling it between his thumb and forefinger, and then lined up the pad of paper and wrote. The lines of ink, when they came out, glowed softly:

He stopped, then with his thumb brushed over the words “with my memory” until they blurred and became a glowing splotch. Something is wrong. He stared at the wall in front of him. With his memory certainly, but it was more than just that: there was something wrong with the world at large, and something wrong here as well. The locked door suggested as much. He stared at the wall and tried to see, on it or through it, something—some scene, image at least—from his past.

At first nothing came. He closed his eyes, sighed. And then an image flitted through his half-dozing imagination that made no sense at all. He caught a glimpse, as if he were standing inside it, of a dome supported by pendentives, rising over a large rectangular space. It was made of stone, probably granite, and lit only from outside, by small slotted windows high in the dome itself. He could hear a sound like muffled laughter but when he turned toward it, it stopped, starting again once he turned back to the dome itself. The pillars, he saw, were moist, covered in a viscid gray substance that glistened where the sunlight struck it. There were paths of the same substance in the dome above as well, he saw, like snail paths, and there, at the very top of the dome, a rubbery agglutination the length and thickness of his forearm that, suddenly, moved.

He opened his eyes, shook his head. Probably just fragments of a dream, he thought, no reason to think it was a memory. It didn’t make any sense as a memory.

When he looked down, he saw his hand had been busy with the pen and had gone on doodling without him. On the pad below his list were several glowing sets of legs, independent of any bodies, each one carefully circled.

HE HAD TRIED TO BRING the image back, but it wouldn’t come, at least not with the vividness or clarity it had come the first time.

He must have dozed off in the chair for a while, for the next thing he knew, he was startled awake by the sound of the door opening. It was Olaf and Oleg. They both looked resentful. A large bruise had spread over the right side of Olaf’s face, and Oleg’s nose was taped, both eyes blackened and bloodshot.

“He’s awake already,” said Olaf.

“Probably not too eager to sleep after being stored so long,” said Oleg, and smirked.

“What do you want?” said Horkai.

“We want you,” said Oleg.

“Time to go,” said Olaf.

And then they were taking hold of either side of his chair, starting to lift it up. Olaf was, anyway, nearly tipping him out of it—Oleg had turned to the desk and was looking at the paper.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“That’s nothing,” said Horkai.

“If it’s nothing, you won’t mind if he takes it,” said Olaf as Oleg tore the sheet off the pad and folded it up, put it in his pocket.

He opened his mouth to protest and then thought, What does it matter? Without objection, he allowed them to carry him out.

RASMUS WAS WAITING FOR THEM, standing beside his desk, hands clasped behind his back.

“You didn’t have to bring the chair,” he said.

“He was already awake,” said Olaf.

“And in the chair,” said Oleg.

Rasmus shrugged. “Put him down over there,” he said brusquely, “and go fetch the mules.”

“Mules?” said Horkai.

“Hmmm?” said Rasmus, half distracted. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Good morning, by the way. Mules. They’ll take you there.”

“Two of them?”

“You’ll ride one and then you’ll ride the other.”

He thought again of how difficult it had been to get from the bed to the chair. How would he manage to get from one animal to the other?

“Will they have a handler?” he asked. “A, what’s the word, a drover?”

Rasmus looked confused. “A what? What’s a drover, and why would you need one?”

“Will I be at least given a map? Look at me,” said Horkai. “I’m a paraplegic. How am I to control two animals?”

Rasmus face broke into a grin. He threw his head back, burst out laughing.

“What?” said Horkai.

“You think I mean mules like horses,” he said. “You really can’t remember anything, can you?”

“What do you mean?”

“There aren’t any animals anymore. Most were killed in the Kollaps, or eaten shortly after. The few that survived went extinct decades ago. Most of us have never even seen an animal.”

“But you said mules,” insisted Horkai.

“The mules I was talking about have two legs instead of four. They look human enough. They’ve been trained to carry you.”

“What, for forty-two miles?”

“More like forty-six. Two individuals, actually, taking turns, day and night. The roads are too ruined to do otherwise. They’ve been trained for it. It’s all arranged.”

The door opened and he turned toward it. “Ah,” he said, “we were just talking about you. Let me introduce you to Horkai, your burden.”

ONE OF THE MULES was named Qanik, the other Qatik; they told him to refer to them as the Qs. Both spoke awkwardly, as if waiting for the words to blunder up their throats and into their mouths. Both had dark hair and olive skin but also piercing blue eyes. Both stood well over six feet tall. They were broad shouldered and muscle-bound, identical in appearance as far as he could tell.

“This is your burden,” Rasmus told them, speaking slowly and carefully. “You shall deliver him as agreed, and then you shall bring him back safely. That is your purpose.”

The mules nodded. “We shall deliver him and we shall bring him back,” one of them said. “Or we shall die trying.”

The other turned to him. “Hello, burden,” he said.

“My name is Horkai,” said Horkai.

They seemed confused by that, turned to Rasmus for instruction.

“You may call him Horkai,” Rasmus said.

“Burden Horkai,” said one of the Qs.

“Just Horkai,” said the other.

“Yes,” said Rasmus. “Now take him to prepare for your journey.”

LIKE OLAF AND OLEG, the Qs seemed brothers, identical twins, but when Horkai asked Qanik about it, he just shrugged.

“We don’t have parents exactly,” Qanik said. “If you don’t have parents, how can you be brothers?”

“But I was first,” Qatik quickly added. “Of the two of us, I mean.”

“What do you mean, you don’t have parents?” asked Horkai. “Your parents are dead?”

But Qanik only shrugged. “We just know what they’ve told us,” he said.

Strange, thought Horkai. And then wondered yet again if what he was experiencing was real or if he was dreaming.

The Qs not only looked alike—they also made almost identical, perhaps exactly identical, gestures. They even had the same facial tic, a slight quiver to their chin just before they spoke. He watched them for a while, moving around the supply room, each going for the same object at the same time. Finally, he couldn’t help but ask them if they were real.

“What do you mean, real?” asked one of the Qs, maybe Qatik.

“Of course we’re real,” said the other, offended. “We’re as real as you are.”

Which didn’t exactly answer his question, at least not in a way he was comfortable with.

WHEN THEY HAD A PILE of objects gathered, one of the Qs picked him up, effortlessly it seemed, and carried him over, seating him against the wall next to it. The other mule handed him a stainless-steel pistol, an old and well-greased semiautomatic.

“It’s a Mamba,” the Q said. “Or something like it. Probably isn’t really that old, just modeled after it. God knows where half the stuff around here comes from. Works basically like a Browning. Know how to use one?” he asked.

Horkai shook his head, but his hands were already breaking the magazine out as if they knew what to do. It was full, fifteen bullets in the magazine and one in the chamber.

The other Q nodded. “You know your way around it,” he said. “You’ll do fine.”

The first said, “That’s all the bullets we have, so be careful with them.”

“Which one are you?” asked Horkai. “Qatik?”

“I’m Qatik,” said the other Q, and Horkai looked desperately for marks that would distinguish them. There was nothing he could see. “Now, remember, it’s not enough to shoot them.”

“Who’s them?” he asked.

The Qs exchanged glances. “You can start by shooting them,” said Qatik, “but that won’t be enough.”

“Why not?”

Qatik shrugged. “They’re resilient,” he said.

“But you know that already,” said Qanik.

“What do I know?”

“Being resilient yourself, I mean,” said Qanik.

Qatik brought one big hand down on Horkai’s shoulder, making him wince. “You’ll pick it up,” he said. “You’ll do fine.”

THE GUNS THAT QATIK AND QANIK took were bigger. “But it doesn’t really matter,” Qanik told him. “They will never let us get close enough to use them.”

“Besides,” said Qatik, “we won’t be at our best by the time we arrive.”

Horkai wondered what that meant, but thought it better not to ask. Any answer the Qs would give, he was sure, was more likely to confuse the issue than clarify it.

They took packs, stuffed these with food packets and a series of small metal cylinders filled with distilled water.

“We’ll take one pack halfway,” said Qanik. “Leave it there for the way back.”

“But won’t someone steal it?” asked Horkai.

The Qs just laughed. “Have you forgotten what it’s like out there?” asked Qatik.

THEY STOOD IN THE SUPPLY ROOM, searching through the packs, counting the food packets, taking a few out, putting a few more in, checking and rechecking their guns and ammunition, until at last they were smiling.

The Qs started to climb into bulky, black full-body suits. The fabric was shiny and far from flexible, and the zippers were further covered by Velcroed flaps. Radiopaque, Horkai guessed they were. The Qs carefully checked each other’s suits to make sure that there were no openings, no gaps, then donned the hoods and affixed them with seam sealant. The front of the hood was a tempered glass faceplate, a heavily filtered breathing apparatus embedded beneath it, and a small speaker.

“Ready,” they said, their voices muffled and lifeless through the speakers.

“What about me?” asked Horkai.

One of the Qs—now that they were in their suits and had been moving around, he’d lost track again of which was which—shook his head. “You don’t need one,” he said.

“You’re not like us,” said the other.

IT TOOK A WHILE for the Qs to figure out how to get him onto the shoulders of one of them and keep him there. But when they tried to leave the supply room, they realized they were far too tall for the door, so had to take him down, carry him like a baby instead. As they set off, walking from the storage room through the common room, Rasmus stopped them.

“Can’t go yet,” he said to Horkai. “You haven’t had your shot.”

And so it was off to Rasmus’s office, where he found himself pushed down against the desk again, held down this time by two figures in shiny black hazard suits. He heard Rasmus rustling behind him and felt the sudden jab of the needle, the terrible surge of pain. He tried this time not to fight it, not to strike out, and as a result convulsed only a little.

“A big one,” Rasmus admitted. “Should last you for a while.”

He reappeared, his hands bloody.

The Qs let go of his arms and left him there a moment, lying panting on the desk, until he motioned to them that he was all right. Then one of them picked him up, cradling him like a baby again.

There had to be a ceremony before they set off. Rasmus gave a speech to the community about how here was Horkai, the one who had promised to help, promised to save them. Everyone listened in silence, as if politely. Horkai didn’t see Oleg and Olaf, wondered distractedly what had happened to them. He thought about asking Rasmus about them, but there was never a free moment. “Our hope, Josef,” said Rasmus, turning to him, “nay, our very lives, are in your hands.” There was a halfhearted smattering of applause. Horkai did his best to smile, gave a feeble half wave. And then Rasmus led Horkai and his companions up the stairs to the outer door. The rest of the community trailed along up the steps behind him but stopped well shy of the metal door. At Rasmus’s prompting, they all shook hands, and then Horkai and his two companions opened the door, climbed the granite steps, and went out into the waste.

7

A HOT VICIOUS WIND AROSE almost immediately. The sun was out, low to the east, just cresting the mountains, but the air was so hazy with dust that it appeared only as a yellow smear in a filthy sky. A scattering of cockroaches preceded them, scuttling around the mules’ feet and out of their way, the only other living things immediately visible in the landscape.

They quickly crossed what had once been a walkway, the concrete now cracked and broken. There were traces of other intersecting walkways, with patches of gouged dirt in between that could’ve once been lawn. Craning his neck to look behind, back near the opening they had come out of, he saw a large, shattered glass roof, twisted bits of metal jutting out of it, the air here dry enough that despite the time that had passed, the metal had hardly begun to rust.

Almost immediately they passed two additional shattered glass structures, much smaller and set near the ground, then two more. They were hardly bigger than a small house, and low enough that when his mule passed close to the last one, he could look down through it. In the dull glow of the sunsmear, he caught glimpses of rows of shelves, scattered and tumbled, rickety piles of books. He glimpsed as well several dead bodies, some nearly perfectly preserved, others little more than scattered bones. They’d probably been left undisturbed, he suddenly realized, for several decades.

The mule he was riding noticed him leaning and looking, and half turned so that Horkai could see a sliver of his faceplate and, through that, a sliver of his face. “Too bad they chose glass,” the speaker on the suit said. “If they had kept it concrete, there would be a lot more safe space. A few more would be alive.”

A line of twisted, blackened stumps, too small to be trees—the desiccated, petrified remains of bushes, maybe. More cracked concrete, steps this time, and sufficiently shattered that the mules had to pick their way up them for a moment on all fours. Despite this, the mule beneath him seemed to carry him effortlessly, as if this movement was well practiced. The other was carrying both packs, one slung over his back, the other over his chest, which made him look like he had a carapace.

There, to the east, over the remnants of buildings and through the haze, he could discern the vague shape of the mountains, closer than he’d imagined. He was, he realized, looking for something. And then he saw it, a grayish shape, halfway up the slope. It used to be a letter, he remembered, made of stones arranged on the side of the mountain, several hundred feet tall. What was it again? He couldn’t remember. Now it was nearly faded away, lost among the stone of a slope now mostly bare. The slope hadn’t always been like that, he sensed, had once been thick with trees and brush, but what had the letter been?

At the top of the stairs, a devastated and semi-collapsed building, roughly in the shape of an X. In front of it, fallen to one side and staring up into the sky, a bronze statue, roughly the same height as his mules. It depicted a man with long hair, clean-shaven and sporting a cravat. He was wearing the bronze equivalent of a heavy old-fashioned coat, a waistcoat beneath, something running over it—the chain of a watch or the strap of a gun holster or the thong of a canteen. In one hand he held a cane, broken halfway down.

The two mules stopped and knelt before the statue. They reached out to touch the statue’s forehead, muttering something in unison.

“What is it?” Horkai asked. “Who is he?”

“The founder,” said the mule he was riding. He gestured all around him. “He made all this,” he said. “The place that this is. Before it was destroyed.”

“Is he a kind of god to you?” asked Horkai, suddenly nervous.

“Not a kind of god,” said the mule. “The founder. He’s not a god. He’s not perfect.”

“He shouldn’t have made these roofs in glass,” said the other mule.

“He did the best he could,” said the first mule.

“Why do you touch him? For luck?”

The first mule shook his head. “Because this is as far as we’ve ever gone. We’ve never gone past him.”

“You’re kidding,” said Horkai.

“No,” said the mule. “I am not kidding.”

“We came into being there,” said the other mule, gesturing behind them. “We have stayed there ever since, studying the maps, waiting for this day. We thank you for making this day possible.”

“You’re welcome,” said Horkai, not knowing what else to say, as the two mules regained their footing and set off again.

8

THEY SKIRTED THE RUINED BUILDING, entered a broken expanse of asphalt, the remains of a parking lot dotted with cars, their tires cracked and mostly gone. Some were ruined and at angles, some parked in an orderly fashion, all of them stripped to bare metal by wind and dust, their windshields often blasted opaque. For a moment, a brief flash, he saw the lot as it had been, surrounded by trees, the curving pedestrian bridge leading a few hundred feet or so away to a stadium or coliseum, and then the vision was gone.

The bridge to the stadium was collapsed now, and the stadium, too, must have fallen, was no longer looming visibly over the road. In the lot, most of the cars were empty, though in a few he thought he saw bodies curled on the seats, long dead. Some cars had their doors open and here and there, where the asphalt was most intact, he saw odd dark stains. Distorted shapes, not unlike human bodies.

They approached a corner of the lot, beyond which remains of streets ran to the four points of the compass. At the edge of the lot they paused, and the mule walking beside him turned to him. “Does this look familiar?” the mule asked.

“Some of it,” Horkai admitted.

“Can you help us know where to go next?” the mule asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll try.”

He looked out across the intersection, to where on the far side the hill descended into a field of rubble. He tried to remember what had been there. Dormitories, maybe. To his left side a slope upward, with whatever was behind it hidden. To the right it sloped downward, going first east and then south to reveal the dark scar that the valley below had become, the lake far beyond it, a mottled gray on the horizon.

“Which way?” asked the mule. “We should not waste time.”

Horkai raised his hands somewhat helplessly, let them fall. “Straight ahead,” he finally said.

The two mules exchanged glances, though because of their hoods, Horkai had difficulty seeing the expressions on their faces. “Straight ahead we go,” said the mule beneath him, and they started off.

A SLOW BUT MILD DESCENT, picking their way through the rubble, then, soon after, an open stretch of dirt and dust. The wind picked up and blew dust everywhere. He began to wish he were wearing a suit himself. He squinted, ended up pulling his shirt high to cover his mouth, his nose. They passed an old track-and-field facility, with half-collapsed bleachers, and passed around another stadium just north of it, this one larger and in better condition. The mules gave it a wide berth.

“Why are you avoiding it?” asked Horkai.

“It might be someone’s home,” said the mule he was riding. “It will only slow us down to have to kill them.”

A ruined motel, the remains of an old museum, a replica of a dinosaur skeleton collapsing outside it. They kept up a steady pace, the mules showing no signs of flagging. Another parking lot—this one larger and spattered with large shell craters. They crossed it, came on the other side to the largest street they’d seen so far, perhaps four lanes wide or perhaps six—difficult to tell with the state it was in. In his head he saw it as six, but couldn’t tell if it was his imagination or a memory. The road was buckled and torn, but more intact than the streets they’d seen before. On one corner were the remains of a pole and the metal blade of a street sign, but it had been scoured by sand or dust until it was bare metal. Nothing Road, thought Horkai. As good a name as any. Once they were on it, they moved more quickly.

“It looks promising,” said the mule beside him, his voice just audible through the speaker. Either he wasn’t speaking directly into the microphone or his speaker had become clogged with dust.

“Which one are you?” Horkai asked.

The mule misstepped but caught himself. He drew a little closer, holding on to the other Q’s shoulder, his hand resting softly against Horkai’s side. “I’m the older one,” he said.

“The first one,” said Horkai.

The Q shook his head. “The first of the two of us,” he corrected. “But not the first one.”

“I’m sorry,” said Horkai. “I can’t remember the name of the one who was oldest.”

“I don’t think we told you the name of the one who’s the oldest.”

“No,” said Horkai. “That’s not what I mean. The oldest of the two of you. Your name.”

“Ah,” said the Q. “Why didn’t you say so? I’m Qatik.”

“Qatik,” he said. “Of course you are.”

“Why do you say of course? Is it inevitable?”

Horkai shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just a way of speaking. Why were the two of you chosen for this?”

“It is an honor to be chosen,” said Qatik.

“Yes, but why?” asked Horkai. “Why you?”

“You are our purpose.”

“How did I come to be your purpose?”

“You have always been our purpose,” said Qatik.

They moved forward for a time in silence, Qatik still clinging to his brother. Horkai tried again.

“What do you think of Rasmus?”

For a moment Qatik didn’t speak. “What do you mean?” he finally said. “He is Rasmus.”

“What do you mean by ‘He is Rasmus’?” asked Horkai, confused.

“Exactly that,” said Qatik. “Rasmus is Rasmus and is no other.”

“But that doesn’t explain what you think of him,” said Horkai. “Do you like him?”

“He is Rasmus,” said Qatik. “He has his purpose. How can I judge how well he serves it? His purpose is different from our purpose and I do not understand it nearly as well as I do my own. That is proper. Surely you can see that?”

“Yes, I suppose,” said Horkai. “But what does that have to do with whether you like him or not?”

“Exactly. How can I like or dislike someone whose purpose I imperfectly understand? You, however, I can speak about with more authority. You are the burden. As far as I understand that portion of your purpose, you fulfill it admirably. You are sturdy but not overly heavy. You do not struggle when you are carried, you do not scream except when injured, and you do not fall off if you are not tied on. Burden, I like the way you fulfill your purpose.”

“Call me Horkai,” he said. “And liking the way I fulfill my purpose is not the same as liking me.”

“But what are we if we are not our purpose?” asked Qatik. “Burden Horkai, I like the way you fulfill your purpose.”

“Just Horkai,” said Horkai.

They might have talked more, but Qanik grunted and shrugged Qatik’s arm off his shoulder. Qatik fell silent, gradually drifted away. They walked, faster now, Horkai gently rocking up and down as they went.

THE ROAD TOOK THEM SLOWLY UP, edging closer to the mountains—unless it was the mountains that came closer of their own accord.

He thought he saw movement in one of the housing complexes they passed, a series of ruined duplexes that had once been identical and now were collapsed in somewhat disparate ways. Another flat, empty space, perhaps an old sports field. He could see it in his mind, green as it had been, rather than the slightly concave rectangle of dirt it was now. Things were coming back to him, though slowly, and not the important things. Or was it simply his imagination making an educated guess about what had been there?

A huge gouge in the ground 30 feet wide and 150 long, either a long-interrupted construction site or the result of some instrument of devastation. Farther on, in the dust, to one side of an intersection, was a metal signpost, bent over and crushed, the sign itself buried in the dust. Qatik stopped and dragged it up, straightening it until they could see at the end of it the octagonal shape of a stop sign, the word STOP faded but still faintly visible on it.

“What does it say?” asked Qatik.

“Have you never seen a stop sign?” asked Horkai.

Qatik shook his head.

“Can’t you read?”

Within his hood, Qatik shook his head again. “Neither of us read. But I can recognize letters.”

Beneath him, he felt Qanik nod. “It’s not important for everyone to read,” said Qanik. “Some read and some do other things. We all have our purpose.”

“Who told you that?” asked Horkai. “Someone who can read, I bet.”

Not detecting the irony in his tone, Qanik nodded. “Our leader,” he said. “Rasmus.”

“Should we stop?” asked Qatik. “As the sign instructs?”

“It isn’t meant for us,” Horkai said. “And besides, we’ve already stopped. Now we can go on.”

Qatik let the sign fall. They walked on, Qanik stopping every once in a while to reposition Horkai on his shoulders. A collapsed strip mall, beside it a building mostly intact. Probably a bank, Horkai thought, and then realized that yes that was what it was. He wasn’t speculating, he was remembering, this time he was almost certain of it. There were areas that were oddly undamaged—houses with their windows broken out and bricks stripped of paint but otherwise more or less habitable. And then there were other areas that had been all but leveled by mortars or shock waves or dust storms or other weather. Sometimes both areas stood side by side, with a sharp transition dividing one from the other, the whole arrangement artificial and arbitrary enough to make him wonder if it was real.

A Mormon ward house, little left of it beyond a weathered spire and a flattened roof. The houses became sparser, thinning out, and then they thickened momentarily again before thinning out further still.

They came to a large intersection, the road crossing it almost as big as the one they were traveling, and the mules stopped.

“Which way?” asked Qatik.

Horkai shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Which way?” asked Qatik again, as if he hadn’t heard. Not knowing what else to do, Horkai pushed on the back of Qanik’s head until he moved out into the intersection. From there, he looked to either side. To the east, the road ran quickly south, trailing up a high ridge. To the west, it moved straight ahead, climbing very slowly. In front of them, it continued roughly north, coming still closer to the mountains.

The map Rasmus had given them followed a path between the mountains and the lake. For now, thought Horkai, they would stay close to the mountains and wait for the lake to appear. He pushed on the back of Qanik’s head again, and they started forward and through the intersection. Qatik hesitated a moment and then followed as well.

THEY WALKED IN SILENCE for another mile or nearly so, the mountain building up to one side. The wind and dust were making him cough. An old, severely damaged electric substation, transformers crumpled or fallen over in the dust. And then the road split again, one strand of it following a slow curve westward and uphill, toward the lake, the other threading down and into the mouth of a dust-clogged canyon, immediately curving out of sight.

“Which way?” asked Qatik again.

“Maybe the canyon,” said Qanik.

“Not the canyon,” said Horkai, on impulse.

“Why not?” said Qanik from below him. “The canyon. It goes north, we’re going north. We should take the canyon.”

“I don’t think it goes where we’re going,” said Horkai.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” said Horkai. “It’s just what I feel.”

Qatik came around in front of the other mule until their faceplates were nearly touching. They stared at each other for a long time, perhaps moving their lips as well, perhaps even reading each others’ lips—it was impossible for Horkai to say, since from above he couldn’t see their faces. And then, finally, Qatik backed up, looked at him.

“All right,” he said. “We will do as you say.”

THEY MOVED ON, the two mules relentless, never stopping to rest. They went up a hill and then hit level ground, crossing again through the remains of neighborhoods, another town, perhaps, or maybe the same one, everything seeming at once familiar and utterly foreign.

They passed an anemic stream, its water bloodred. The mules kept as much distance from it as they could. The sun was high overhead now, perhaps just approaching its apex, perhaps just starting its downward arc. He was thirsty, his mouth dry from the dust in the air, his skin grainy with it and raw from the wind. They passed a ruined school, unless it was something else just as large, maybe a hospital. On the other side was another hospital, unless it was a school. The mules stopped and eyed the latter building for a moment, speaking to each other in muffled voices, their speakers half-covered with their gloves, then shook their heads, continued on.

The road began to slope downward. He could see the lake again now, glowering in the distance two or three or more miles away, looking much larger than it had seemed initially at the other end of town, if they were still in the same town. The water was an odd color, a bloodred tinge to it, though not quite as red as the stream had been. A sort of dead marsh lay beside the lake, sickly gray from this distance. Between them and the marsh, he could see a much larger road: the freeway.

Horkai patted Qanik on the head. “There,” he said. “Do you see? That’s the freeway. That’s what we need.”

The mule paused, then nodded. They picked their way toward it, and started north when they finally reached it.

FOR LONG STRETCHES, the freeway was intact and then would suddenly dissolve into a crater or buckle into peaks so that they had to either go around it or clamber up and down it. It took a long slow curve northeast, following the banks of the lake at a distance, and for an hour or two or maybe three, Horkai thought it was the wrong road. Once or twice he almost said something to the mules, but he didn’t know exactly what to say, nor did he know what other road they could take. The lake had been on the map, so maybe they were on the right road after all. How many freeways could there be?

And then, at last, the road curved north a little and began to climb. He could see, in the distance, the point where it crested the low side of the mountain, miles away. It was okay, he told himself. It was the right road.

9

BARE LAND ON ONE SIDE, ruins on the other, then ruins on both. It had started to seem all the same to him. “Any chance of a drink?” Horkai asked. “And what about food?”

“Not yet,” said Qatik. “Not here.”

“My tongue feels like it’s made of wool,” he said.

“Your tongue is not made of wool,” reasoned Qanik. “No tongues are made of wool.”

“Soon,” said Qatik. “Soon.”

What soon meant, it was hard to say. They trudged uphill. The sun had slipped lower in the sky. For the first time, Qanik stumbled, almost pitched Horkai off his shoulders. Qatik was immediately there, steadying him. Shall I take him? he was saying. Shall I have my turn? But Qanik, waving him off, kept going.

And then Qatik took off on his own, running hundreds of feet ahead of them, finally vanishing off the side of the road.

“Where’s he gone?” asked Horkai.

“Do not worry,” said Qanik from below him. “He will come back.”

“I’m not worried,” said Horkai. “I just want to know what he’s doing.”

But Qanik kept walking and didn’t respond.

They went a little farther in silence, Qanik grunting occasionally, his steps slightly less steady.

“How many hours have passed?” Horkai finally asked.

“What do you mean, hours?” asked Qanik.

“You don’t know what hours are?”

Qanik didn’t bother to respond.

“How much time has passed since we started?” asked Horkai.

“Most of the day,” said Qanik.

“Can’t you be more specific than that?”

“How?”

He was traveling with a man who seemed not to know what hours were.

He had no watch, no way to measure time, nor had he seen anything like a clock at the community. “When night falls, I can be more specific. Then it will be one day.”

Something had appeared in the road, perhaps a half mile in front of them, perhaps more. It was moving. Horkai’s heart skipped a beat before he realized it must be Qatik.

“Isn’t there anything alive out here?” he asked.

“Roaches,” said Qanik without hesitation. “Sometimes there are roaches, but only sometimes.”

“Anything else?”

Qanik pondered for a long time, his footsteps growing a little less certain. “We are alive and we are out here,” he finally said.

“Other than us,” said Horkai. “Other than the roaches.”

“No,” said Qanik. “Nothing can live here.”

“Then why can I live here? Why don’t I need a suit?”

Horkai felt Qanik’s shoulders twitch, wondered if he had forgotten he was carrying Horkai and had tried to shrug.

“You can survive,” Qanik said. “That is all I know.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because you are not dead yet.”

Qatik loped up, his black suit now covered with white dust.

“I’ve found a place,” he said. “Just off the road, a facility of some kind. Industrial or farming related. A central building, a series of round cylinders as well, ten in all, on supports, with entrances near the base. Some are still standing.”

“Anyone living in them?” asked Qanik.

“Not that I could see,” said Qatik.

Qanik nodded, gestured the other mule forward with one hand. They followed him up to where the freeway had once crossed over another road—the bridge collapsed now. They clambered down the slope to the roadway below.

What Qatik had called cylinders Horkai recognized as silos. They weren’t far, only a few hundred feet from the freeway. The two or three largest had collapsed, caving in on one another, and were little more than bits and pieces of metal ribs now. But many of the others, smaller and perhaps shielded by the larger ones, were more or less intact.

They went toward them, the two mules pointing and nudging each other. They came close to one, walked around it until Qanik pointed to a huge tear in the metal. They moved on to the next one.

“What are you looking for?” asked Horkai, but neither of them answered.

The roof of the next was gone and they passed it by. The next still was slightly larger and they walked completely around it, squeezing their way through the gap between it and the next one. Finally Qatik turned, eyebrows raised.

“It will do,” Qanik stated.

With Horkai’s help they found the manual hatch release and Qatik tugged on it, but nothing happened. He pulled harder and Horkai heard the metal groan, but it was not until Qanik lumbered forward and grabbed hold as well that the hatch finally sprang open and tens of thousands of husks of long-dead beetles poured out, a fine powdery dust along with it.

When it had stopped, Qatik crunched to the top of the pile and, grabbing the lip of the chute, tried to pull his way in, but the opening was too small. He shucked the two backpacks and this time wriggled in. A moment later, his gloved hand was thrust back out, waited there, palm open.

“Come on,” said Qanik, and reached up to lift Horkai off his shoulders. He hung there helpless in the air, his lifeless legs dangling, like a child’s doll, and then Qanik thrust him up to the chute opening and Qatik’s hand closed around his shirt, dragging him awkwardly in, setting him down roughly on a narrow metal ledge.

“Find something to hold on to,” said Qatik, and thrust his hand out again.

There was a ladder beside him and he grabbed it with one hand. His gun was digging into his side so he took it out, balanced it on the ledge beside him. It was extremely hot inside, the air almost unbreathable. It was also very difficult to see. The only light was that coming up through the hatch and from an opening high above, a flap in the top of the roof, where the grain must have in the past been poured in. The backpacks flopped in beside him and then, suddenly, the light dimmed and, grunting, the black-suited form that was Qanik forced itself through. Once he was all the way in, he turned around and reached back out, pulled the hatch door closed with his fingers.

“Are you sure we’ll be able to open it again?” asked Horkai.

“Should be,” said Qatik, and then started up the ladder, nearly crushing Horkai’s fingers. Down below, beside Horkai, Qanik braced his legs against the inner edge of the hatch chute and dug through one of the backpacks, at last removing a fusee, which he cracked and threw down to rest on the hatch itself. It lay there, burning with a pale red light that cast wavering shadows all through the bottom of the silo. The acrid smoke made Horkai cough. Meanwhile, Qatik had climbed all the way to the top. Leaning far out, he pulled the upper opening closed.

Once he was down, the two mules untaped their hoods, careful to try to preserve the seal for later. They didn’t take them off, just slid them back on their heads so that their mouths were visible. Their chins, Horkai saw, were slick with sweat.

“Hungry?” asked Qanik. It was strange to watch someone talk when all you could see of their face was their mouth.

“This isn’t a good idea,” said Horkai. “The silo is going to fill with smoke.”

“We will not stay here long,” said Qatik. “We have enough air for what we need.”

“We will eat and then we will go,” said Qanik. He twisted the end off a metal cylinder and handed it to Horkai, motioned for him to drink. He did—water, warm and with a somewhat metallic taste. Qatik was already handing him a tin box that, when he opened it, he found to be full of hardtack.

“Pour some water into the box and wait a moment,” said Qatik. “Otherwise you will break your teeth.”

He poured the water in and waited. His eyes were burning from the smoke, making it difficult to see. He felt like he was suffocating.

“You’re certain I don’t need a suit?” asked Horkai. “You’re certain I’ll be all right?”

Qanik nodded. “You always have been,” he said. “If not, we’d already know.”

“How?”

“Skin rash at first, mild in the beginning but getting worse and worse. Then you would start to vomit blood. Around here, it wouldn’t take long for your skin to break into sores and ulcerate. If we were exposed to as much as you’ve been exposed to today, our circulation would be damaged and our hearts would fail.”

“Why hasn’t that happened to me?”

Qanik shrugged. “You are okay,” he said. “You always have been. You are not in any trouble.”

“We are the ones that are in trouble,” said Qatik.

“That’s why you’re wearing the suits,” said Horkai.

“They are not enough,” said Qatik.

“Not enough?”

“No need to talk about it,” said Qanik.

“But I want to talk about it,” said Horkai.

“You do not want to hear about it,” said Qatik.

“Both of you be quiet and eat,” said Qanik.

Horkai looked at the tin in front of him. The water had softened the hardtack, making it a little more flexible. He took a bite, found it tasteless, but managed to choke it down. He took a sip of water, another bite of the biscuit.

“I want to hear about it,” he said, chewing. “I want you to tell me.”

“Not a good idea,” said Qanik.

“He has a right to know,” said Qatik. As he spoke he ate, breaking off a corner of damp hardtack and chewing it. Both the mules, Horkai realized, were eating much more than he was, and eating much quicker.

Qanik shrugged.

Qatik turned to Horkai. Horkai watched his mouth moving just below the edge of the hood, the rest of his face hidden behind the shiny black fabric.

“These suits keep out only so much,” said Qatik. “They do not protect us completely.”

“So this will damage you?” asked Horkai.

“Not damage,” said Qatik. “Kill.”

“Kill? Then why are you doing it?”

“We are the mules,” said Qanik. “This is our purpose. This is what we were made to do.”

“Who told you that?”

“That is how it is,” said Qanik.

“But who told you?”

“Rasmus,” said Qatik.

Rasmus, thought Horkai. Always Rasmus.

“Can’t you do something?” he asked them. “Can’t you make better suits for yourself? Can’t we stop it?”

Qanik shook his head.

“What if we turned back now?”

“We are the mules,” said Qanik firmly. “This is what we do.”

“But—”

“What Qanik means,” said Qatik, interrupting him, “is that we are already dead. We have already been out too long. If we turn back, we still die, just not as quickly.”

“Don’t you care about that?”

Qanik shrugged. “We all have to die sometime,” he said. “Better to die doing what you are meant to do.”

“As mules,” said Horkai.

“As mules,” said Qanik, nodding.

Below them the fusee was sputtering, the shadows leaping more erratically. “Enough talk,” said Qatik. “Back in the hood, Qanik. Time to go.”

LATER, WALKING AGAIN but riding on Qatik’s shoulders this time, moving upslope and coming closer to the point of the mountain, the sun now threatening to set, he tried to raise the issue with them again. At first he tried to ease into it gently, tapping on Qatik’s hood to attract his attention.

“If you’re going to die anyway,” he asked, “why wear suits at all?”

Qatik’s response was muffled. Horkai leaned forward and swiveled one ear and then asked him to repeat it.

Qatik tapped his speaker to clear it. “If we did not wear our suits, we would already be dead,” he said. “We would not be able to achieve our purpose.”

“Why trade your lives for a purpose?” asked Horkai. “What makes that a worthwhile trade?”

Qatik slowed, briefly came to a stop. Qanik, to one side, turned slightly, raised an eyebrow behind the faceplate. “Why are you trying to make me doubt?” Qatik asked. “Why now, when it is already too late, when I am already dead, when my purpose is all that is left to me?”

He started up again, slow at first. Qanik fell into step beside them.

“And what if you convince us?” asked Qatik. “The best that can happen is for us to decide there is no point carrying you and leave you here, on the side of this roadway, to die.”

He had, Horkai had to admit, a point. Quickly, he changed the subject.

“If you’ve never been outside, how do you know what things are?”

“We had been as far as the founder,” said Qatik.

“Still,” said Horkai. “That’s not very far.”

“Pictures,” said Qatik. “We’ve been given instruction. We have seen maps. We were given scenarios and made to solve them.”

“But it was not always perfect instruction,” said Qanik. “You had, for instance, to help us to open the hatch on the cylinder.”

“The silo,” said Horkai.

“Silo,” they said in unison.

“Farming related, then,” added Qatik. “We saw many pictures and we memorized many things.”

“And among those pictures were images of farms?”

“No,” Qatik admitted. “Among those pictures were images of farming-related buildings.”

“Do you know what a farm is?”

Qatik didn’t respond.

“A farm,” said Horkai, “is a stretch of land used to grow agriculture and livestock.”

“What is agriculture?” asked Qatik.

“Plants grown for food. You know what plants are.”

“There are plants near the founder,” said Qanik. “But they are dead. If you touch them, they break and sometimes fall into dust.”

“There are no longer living plants,” said Qatik. “There are fungus and mushrooms, and that is what we eat. Agriculture is no longer an important word. This is why we were not taught it. It is not important we know it. What is livestock?”

“Animals grown for food,” said Horkai.

“There are no longer animals,” said Qatik. “This is no longer an important word. It serves no purpose.”

“How do you know there are no animals?”

“Rasmus told us,” said Qatik.

“How does Rasmus know?”

But Qatik refused to answer the question. They walked on in silence awhile.

“Where do your names come from?” Horkai asked. And when Qatik said nothing, he asked again, louder this time, hoping to draw Qanik in.

“They were given to us,” said Qanik.

“What do they mean?”

“They do not mean anything,” said Qanik. “They are names.”

“No,” said Horkai. “That’s not what I mean. I mean where do they come from? Are they family names? Are they something from your ancestors’ culture?”

“I do not know,” said Qanik.

“You don’t know?”

“He never told us where they came from.”

“He? Who’s he?” Horkai asked, even though he already knew what the answer would be.

“Rasmus,” said Qanik. “Rasmus gave us our names.”

“Why would Rasmus name you? You’re as old as he is.”

“We are not as old as he,” said Qanik. “Not nearly. And I, I am not even as old as Qatik.”

“Maybe Rasmus gave you your name as well,” said Qatik to Horkai. “Are you certain your name is really your name?”

THE SUN HAD SLID BEHIND the western mountains; all that was left of it was a wavery slit, and then that, too, was gone. There was still light but it was gradually fading away and would soon be gone entirely.

Qanik came close, rested his hand on Horkai’s lower back. “I can now be more specific,” he said. “It has been an entire day.”

Horkai nodded. “When do we stop to sleep?” he asked.

“We do not stop to sleep,” said Qatik. “There is no time. We stop when we die.”

10

BY THE TIME THEY HAD REACHED the place where the freeway skirted the edge of the mountain and started back down, it was so dark that Horkai couldn’t see at all. The wind whipped viciously around them, making his shirt flap against his body. It was troubling to be moving through the darkness with no idea where you were going. The mules seemed to have no trouble picking a sure-footed path forward, didn’t even bother to slow down. As they passed over the top and started down, the wind tapered off, going suddenly quiet.

Above in the sky, behind the haze, arose a pale blur that he realized must be the moon. It helped him see again—though just a little, just enough to differentiate between the ground and the shape of Qanik walking beside them. If there were buildings to either side of the road, or farms, he couldn’t see them. There was a glimmer that might be water or might be something else. Nowhere were there any man-made lights.

For a long time he stayed still, listening. There were no insect noises, no birds, only the measured tread of the mules’ footsteps.

“How can you see?” he finally asked Qanik.

“We can see,” said Qanik. “That is how we are.”

“Maybe after a time, you will be able to see,” said Qatik. “Maybe your eyes will adjust.”

He waited for them to adjust, but nothing seemed to be happening.

They trudged on. They passed through an area that smelled odd. Not a bad smell exactly, or a dead smell: something else. The mules, he noticed, had sped up, unless he was imagining it.

He watched the moon smear its light through the haze. He tried again to make out the land around him, without success. He rocked back and forth, suspended in darkness. Just as, he couldn’t help but thinking, I’ve been suspended in darkness for the last thirty years, stored. Is this so different?

And what if, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking, it has all been a dream, a momentary burst of electricity in my brain caused by some small short or malfunction within the storage tank? What if I’m still, even now, in storage? That would make more sense than this ruined, lifeless world, or the fact that he seemed to have different characteristics from those around him, that he could withstand things that none of the others could. The silo, once he started thinking about it, was a lot like the tank, but very hot instead of cold—perhaps his brain was trying to tell him something. What if none of it is real?

And if it is a dream, he wondered, will it stay a dream or become a nightmare?

He closed his eyes. This isn’t real, he told himself. This isn’t real. But no matter how often he said it, no matter how much he tried to think the world away, he could still hear the sounds of footsteps crunching beneath him, could still feel the rocking rhythm of Qatik’s gait.

HORKAI PATTED QATIK’S HEAD gently.

“Doing all right?” he asked.

Below, the mule made a sound that he took for assent.

“Would it help keep you awake to talk?”

After a long pause, Qatik said, “Maybe.”

“Tell me about yourself,” said Horkai. “Tell me who you are.”

“I have already told you,” said Qatik. “A mule.”

“And the oldest,” said Horkai.

“The older of the two of us,” said Qatik, “but not the oldest.”

“And you have no parents. And despite looking alike, you are not brothers.”

“We do not have parents,” said Qatik. “We are not brothers.”

“Everybody has parents.”

He felt Qatik shake his head through the hood. “That is not how we are.”

“None of us have parents,” said Qanik, coming closer now. “Not in our community.”

“But Rasmus does,” said Horkai. “He told me the name of his father.”

Qanik shook his head. “You misheard. Rasmus is one of us. None of us have parents.”

“You’ve given up your parents?”

“If you like,” said Qatik.

“We share everything. All property is held in common,” said Qanik in a singsong voice. “We have no parents. Each of us is his own man, and each of us has a part to play in the community. We must accept our purpose or the community shall suffer.”

“Rasmus taught you this, I’m guessing,” said Horkai.

They didn’t respond.

“You’re communists,” said Horkai.

“What are communists?” asked Qatik.

“We are not that word, whatever it means,” said Qatik. “We are a hive.”

“A hive?”

“Like a beehive,” said Qanik. “It is our symbol. A united order. Next to the welfare of the community, our own welfare is nothing. We each have a part to play and we must play it. We must consecrate our lives to the service of our whole. Each of us has our purpose and each of us must fulfill that purpose or the community shall suffer.”

“Sounds almost like a religion,” said Horkai.

“A hive,” said Qatik again. “A united order. The many as one. No more, no less.”

“Who holds the property in common? Who distributes it?” asked Horkai. “Rasmus?”

Qanik didn’t respond.

“Don’t you think—?” he started to say, but then stopped as below him Qatik came to a halt, stood there motionless. “I agreed it might help to talk,” he said. “You asked me and I gave my assent. But now I no longer want to talk. And I no longer want you to talk with Qanik. Not about these things.”

Horkai stared down into the darkness, trying to discern him, but made out little more than the feeble outline of his hood. “All right,” he said. “We don’t have to talk anymore.”

He felt Qatik nod once through the hood, and then they moved on.

QATIK’S EASY MOTION was making him sleepy. At times he felt himself beginning to fall, beginning to drop off, and once Qatik had to reach up and hold him in place. Finally, when it kept happening, Qatik reached round and pulled him down, held him instead in his arms like a baby.

The suit was cool against his face, the material strange, not like anything he was familiar with. It smelled of dust and stuck gently to his cheek. He lay there, gently rocking with Qatik’s motion. Eventually, he fell asleep.

HE DREAMT THAT HE WAS IN the storage tank, just going under, waiting there with the tubes in his mouth and his eyes closed for the storage to begin. He opened his eyes, and a face on the other side of the glass—a technician of some sort, maybe someone he knew—admonished, “Keep your eyes closed. If they stay open, they might be injured.” He nodded, closed them again. He could hear, muffled and as if at a distance, the sound of the technician moving around. When will it happen? he wondered. He parted his eyelids just slightly and through veiled eyes watched the technician. He was standing there, his back to the machine, looking at something, and when he turned around, his face had on it a look of mixed fear and surprise, and it seemed, for just a moment, to be directed at him.

Horkai scrutinized the face, pretending to keep his eyes closed. Did the face look familiar? Was it someone he knew? Maybe, but in the dream, just as in life, it was hard to be certain of what he did and did not know.

And then suddenly he felt fluid flood into his mouth. His eyes opened wide and there was a hissing sound, incredibly loud, and he watched ice branch over the glass. He tried to close his eyes but they wouldn’t close and he couldn’t move. He should have been unconscious now, he knew, his existence blacked out, but he was still there, frozen but still there, still thinking. Help me, he thought. Through the glass he could hear the technician pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

11

WHEN HE AWOKE, the sun hadn’t risen yet but the sky had started to turn light, the haze streaked through with paler shades. He moved and stretched. When Qatik realized he was awake, he stopped, gestured to Qanik. Qanik nodded, quickly took the pack off his chest then the pack off his back, leaving them lying in the dirt. He lifted Horkai onto his shoulders and set off.

“I can tell you how much time has passed,” said Qanik. “A night and a day.”

“Are we close?” asked Horkai.

“We are getting close,” admitted Qanik.

They had left the freeway at some point. Horkai could see it a mile or two behind them, assuming it was the same freeway. They were heading east now, toward the rising sun, toward the mountains.

“How did you know where to turn?”

“We looked for the crater,” said Qanik.

“And did you find it?”

Qanik nodded. “And then we turned.”

“How did you know it was the right crater?”

“It was described to us. It was sung to us in detail by someone who saw it who was older than we. He was bleeding already when he sung it to us. He sung it to us and then he died.”

Sung? he wondered, but decided not to ask.

The road was large, maybe four lanes across, but not as big as the freeway. It was devastated in places, but someone had pulled the rubble off, arranging it in neat piles to one side. This seemed to make the mules nervous. They came to a place where the road curved south again and climbed, and the mules argued about whether they had taken the right road after all. But eventually, after perhaps half a mile, it wound back east again and straightened out.

They passed a ruined mall surrounded by a huge parking lot, now heaped with piles of dust. A doll’s head, Horkai saw, had been placed on the top of a stack of rubble beside the road.

“You’re sure there’s nobody out here?” asked Horkai. But neither mule answered.

Another parking lot and across from it an old hospital, the central building intact. Not only intact, but someone had covered the windows of the ground floor over with sheets of tin. Behind a window on the second floor came a flash of movement.

“I think I—,” he started to say, and then felt incredible pain in his chest. Only afterwards, as he was falling, did he realize he’d heard a shot. He hit the ground hard, suddenly couldn’t breathe. His vision blurred and dimmed, then came back. He reached down to touch his chest where the bullet had gone in, found the hole as big as his finger, perhaps even bigger. He moved his hand back where he could see it, stared at the blood on his fingers.

Qanik was shouting, bellowing. Horkai raised his head a little, saw him running in one direction, Qatik in the other. More shots rang out, a little puff of dust rising beside his head. He’s still shooting at me, he thought. He’s trying to kill me. He looked at his bloody fingers again and thought, Maybe he already has.

Another shot hit him, but since it was in the leg, he couldn’t feel it; he knew he had been hit only because he saw the leg jump and then the fabric of his pants go red with blood. I should try to crawl away, he thought, but he couldn’t move. He let his head fall back. He closed his eyes, heard another shot, then another, and then he lost count.

12

HE COULDN’T MOVE, couldn’t breathe. The world all around him didn’t exist, simply wasn’t there. The only thing around him was darkness and more darkness, and nothing he could see or feel. He was both there and not there, suspended in a void, his eyes open; he was pretty sure anyway his eyes were open, though he couldn’t blink, couldn’t manage anything.

He stayed there unmoving, trying to move his eyes, trying to move his fingers, trying to see something. How long have I been like this? he wondered. How long will I be like this?

A FIGURE IN A BLACK HAZARD suit was crouching over him, staring at him through a glass faceplate, repeating his name over and over. It took him a moment to realize it was one of the mules. Qanik or Qatik? He wasn’t sure. It hurt to breathe, was hard to think.

“He’s dead now,” said the mule, and for just a moment Horkai thought they were talking about him. “Qatik found him and took care of him. Just one,” he said. “Just a rogue living in the hospital. Had made himself a makeshift suit out of all the X-ray aprons he could find, but it was not a very good suit. He probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer.”

“I’m dead, too,” Horkai said to Qanik, his voice very low.

Qanik just laughed. “You do not know how to die,” he said. He reached down and started to gather Horkai in his arms.

Horkai felt a tremendous pressure in his chest and screamed, Qatik stopped, and instead he stood, grabbed him by the foot, and began to drag him.

It hurt like hell but was better than being carried somehow. The sound of his head scraping along the ruined asphalt echoed deep within his skull. He imagined a swath of blood unfurling behind him. He tried not to pass out.

And then Qatik was there, too, asking Qanik what was wrong with him, was he crazy?

“I couldn’t pick him up,” said Qanik. “It was the best I could do.”

They argued back and forth, Horkai watching helplessly from below. He was choking on something and coughed and could tell from the taste in his mouth that it was his own blood. And then, without transition, they were bending over him again, solicitous. One of the mules was taking hold of his hands, the other his feet.

“On the count of three,” said one of them, the one nearest his head. “One,” he said. “Two. Three.” And simultaneously they lifted him off the ground.

Pain shot through his body. His chest felt like it was being torn apart, and then he could no longer breathe. His head filled with light and he was gone.

13

HE WAS LYING NAKED on a bare concrete floor in a dim light, staring at a pile of bloody clothes that it took him a moment to recognize as his own. He smelled something familiar. At first he couldn’t place it, then realized it was the smell of a cigarette. He flicked his eyes past them, saw the two hazard suits hanging from a hook on a bare concrete wall. He touched his chest where he had been shot, but felt no scar, only a smooth, slightly softer place where the bullet had gone in. He lifted his hand, stared at it, didn’t see any blood.

“You are healing still,” said a voice, “but you are alive.”

He turned his head, saw the two mules sitting at the base of the wall to the other side of him. It was strange to see them out of their suits. They sat there in the exact same way, knees up and hands resting on them, their heads leaning back against the wall. Between them fluttered the flame of a candle. One of them was smoking, a cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth.

“Where did you find that?” asked Horkai.

“The rogue had some,” said the mule. “Don’t know where he got them. They’re old, but not too old. Someone’s growing stuff somewhere.” He took the cigarette out of the side of his mouth, stared at it. “Not bad,” he said. “We saw a video about them but have never tried them. A little harsh, but I can see how you would get used to it.”

“You learned about cigarettes, but they didn’t teach you what a farm was?”

The mule shrugged. “Apparently there are still cigarettes,” he said, holding his up. “There aren’t still farms.”

“I don’t like them,” claimed the other. “Filthy habit.”

“You’re just repeating what you heard in the video,” said the mule.

“Which one of you is which?” Horkai asked.

“You still can’t tell us apart?” asked the one not smoking.

“Please,” he said. “I’ve been shot.”

The mule who had spoken first sighed. “I’m Qatik,” he said. “I will let you sort out who that other one is.”

“Qanik,” said the other one, and waved his cigarette at him.

“You’re no fun,” said Qatik to him.

“What did you do with the body of the man who shot me?” asked Horkai.

“We left it as a warning,” Qatik said, and smirked.

Grunting, Horkai pulled himself up until he was sitting. He stared down at his chest. The hole that had been there was covered with a pliant layer of membrane, thick and semitransparent.

“What is this?” asked Horkai. “What’s on me?”

“Nothing is on you,” said Qanik. “That is you.”

“What do you mean it’s me?”

“Exactly what he says,” said Qatik. “You are different. It does not hurt you to be outside, and when you are injured, you heal very quickly.”

“It’s not natural,” said Horkai.

Qatik shrugged. “It is the way you are,” he said.

“Why?”

“Ah,” said Qanik. “The good old questions. Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?”

“No,” said Horkai. “Just one question. Why am I the way I am? Why aren’t I dead?”

“This makes two questions,” said Qatik.

Horkai didn’t respond. He stared at the two mules, who simply stared back. Finally, Qatik shrugged again. “We do not know,” he said. He lifted his arm and rolled back his sleeve, then moved it so it was fully lit by the candle. The skin, Horkai saw, was mottled, covered with a sort of red rash, seeping slightly. There were bruises running underneath the skin as well, unless it was simply the way the shadows were cast.

“We, on the other hand,” Qatik said, “do not heal quickly.”

“WHERE ARE WE?” he asked once he had slipped back into his clothes, which were still stiff with dried blood.

“A shelter below the hospital,” said Qanik. “Nice solid concrete walls, very safe here. You can see why the rogue liked it.”

“Why do you call him a rogue?”

“Because it was just him,” said Qatik. “He is not in a hive.”

“If you are not in a hive, you are a rogue,” said Qanik. He stubbed out his cigarette on the concrete floor, reducing it to flinders that he then swept away. “If you are not part of a hive, you are nothing.”

“According to Rasmus, I imagine,” said Horkai.

Qanik nodded. “According to Rasmus,” he assented.

“It is safe here,” said Qatik again. “We were lucky. We found a nice place to stay and recover. If it had been another hive and they’d been hostile, we would be dead.”

“At least Qatik and I would,” said Qanik. “You might not be so lucky.”

“He did not shoot a hole in our suits,” said Qatik. “Instead he tried to shoot you. Our suits are still intact. We might still achieve our purpose.”

“But we have no food,” said Qanik.

“Yes,” admitted Qatik. “That is a problem. Though not as much of a problem as water. We have a little water still, but only because the rogue had some.”

“If it is all the same to you,” said Qanik, “we’d like to go now.”

“All right,” said Horkai. “We can go.”

HE BEGAN TO MOVE TOWARD THEM by sitting and dragging himself backwards. He was surprised when one of his legs seemed to twitch, though he didn’t feel anything. Maybe he was just imagining it, or his body had turned a bit.

He stopped and made a conscious effort to move the leg. It didn’t obey his command exactly, didn’t rise or change position, but did twitch again.

“Hey,” he said, “did you see that?”

“See what?” asked Qatik.

So he scooted around until they could see his legs better, then pointed to the one that had twitched, made it twitch again.

“It’s regaining movement,” said Horkai.

Qatik shook his head. “Start of a spasm,” he said.

“That is another thing,” said Qanik. “We were supposed to be gone only two days, three at most. It has been longer than that.”

“We weren’t told what to do,” said Qatik. “We have been sitting here talking about what steps to take to keep the disease from spreading up your spine until you have medication. And we came up with an idea.”

He held up a bone saw.

“We should have done this before you woke up,” said Qanik. “That was our plan. But it was hard to decide who would hold you and who would saw. And you woke up sooner than we thought.”

“Saw what?” said Horkai.

“Your spine,” said Qatik.

“You’re going to saw through my spine?” asked Horkai, his voice rising.

“This is for your own good,” Qanik explained patiently. “To stop the disease from spreading. The disease must not spread.”

“No, but—”

“All right, then,” interrupted Qanik. “We are in agreement.”

“If there was any other way,” said Qatik, “we would take it.”

“But how do you know that my body won’t fight off the disease?” asked Horkai.

“Same way as you,” said Qanik. “Rasmus told us.”

“But look at me,” said Horkai, speaking quickly. “I can be shot through the chest with a bullet, and after a few days I’m just fine. Why would a disease hurt me?”

Qanik shrugged. “Life is mysterious,” he said.

“Why don’t we just see?” asked Horkai. “Why don’t we wait and see if anything happens to me. Maybe I’ll be fine.”

“We can’t wait,” said Qanik. “We’re out of food. We have to go.”

“I don’t mean wait like that,” said Horkai. “We can leave any time you’d like. All I mean is wait to cut my spine.”

“It might be too late by then,” said Qanik.

“That’s a chance I’m willing to take,” Horkai said.

Qanik and Qatik exchanged glances. “We should have done it when he was still asleep,” said Qanik. He turned to Horkai. “Understand,” he said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a little bit of pain. We will cut low and your spine will grow back. It will reconnect.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t grow back quickly enough that we will have to do this again,” said Qatik.

“That is not helpful,” said Qanik, turning to him. “Remember: if you cannot say something positive, do not say anything at all.”

“Look,” said Horkai, already anticipating the pain. “I’m begging you. Don’t do this.”

But the two mules were already standing, Qatik holding the bone saw down by his side, Qanik priming a hypodermic. Horkai began to scoot rapidly away from them.

“Can you hold him down on your own?” asked Qatik.

“Probably,” said Qanik. “For that long. Besides,” he said, louder this time, “he won’t struggle, he knows this is for his own good.”

THEY MOVED SLOWLY TOWARD HIM, Qanik flanking him on one side and Qatik on the other. Despite their size they were quick, and Horkai, without legs, knew he had no chance of escaping. But still he kept circling, kept backing away.

And then he kept his eyes focused on Qatik too long and Qanik dived in, knocking him flat. Horkai lashed out and struck him in the shoulder, was surprised to see Qanik immediately start to bleed. And then Qanik had him in a headlock, was forcing him over.

He screamed and tried to arch his back to keep from tipping over, but Qanik was too heavy. Slowly he was being turned over, forced down onto his face.

Soon he was flat against the concrete, still in a headlock, Qanik’s knee now pushing hard into his back, his ribs threatening to crack. Quick! Qanik was shouting, Quick! He felt a hand on his back, dragging up his shirt.

Something pricked into his back and he felt a sudden warmth there, the beginning of a numbness, though not numb enough. The bone saw’s blade dug deep and his vision was suddenly gone, reduced to a red haze. He screamed and flopped but Qanik rode him, kept him in place. “Again!” the mule yelled, and Horkai gritted his teeth and held his breath and the pain kept coming on stronger, and he passed out.

14

BY THE TIME HE WOKE UP, Qatik had given him a shot of morphine and the pain had moved from blinding and intense to something merely debilitating. But when Qanik tried to pick him up, it grew immediately blinding again.

“All right,” said Qanik. He put him down and leaned back, carefully lighting a cigarette off the candle. He raised it to his mouth and Horkai watched the tip glow orange, slowly fade to red, then gray. He saw that Qanik’s face was bruised, his nose broken. He wondered if he had done that. He hoped so. “We’ll wait, then,” Qanik said.

“If you ever do something like that to me again,” Horkai said, “I’ll kill you.”

“See if you still feel that way in an hour,” said Qatik.

And indeed, in another hour the pain had faded enough that Qanik could pick him up and hold him in his arms and Horkai only winced. His back, he found upon reaching behind himself to feel the cut, had already started to heal. A spongy soft material of some sort was growing firmer, stronger by the second.

“Shoulders?” asked Qanik.

“Not yet,” said Qatik. “He’s not ready for it.”

And so the two mules put on their suits again and carefully checked each other’s seams. When they were satisfied, Qanik bent down and picked Horkai up. He went out cradled in Qanik’s arms.

THEY UNBOLTED THE METAL DOOR and started up the winding metal staircase beyond it. Every step jarred a little, was like a dull throb against the severed end of his spine. They came to another metal door and Qatik opened it. Qanik threaded Horkai and himself through.

They were on the ground floor of the hospital, in a dark and dusty room. The outer doors and windows had been covered with sheets of tin, except for one, which had been crumpled and torn partly free. They forced their way out of it.

Outside, he could see the swath of blood they had made dragging him in. He stretched and looked past Qanik’s shoulder. The rogue’s body had been nailed by the elbows and the knees to the hospital façade. The forearms and lower legs had been cut off, left crossed as a warning to either side of the piece of tin they had just pushed past. The head was nowhere to be seen. What remained of the torso was so thick with dust that he barely recognized it as once human.

“Was that really necessary?” asked Horkai.

Qatik shrugged. “It could have been,” he said.

“It could have been worse,” said Qanik. “If you had been unconscious much longer, we probably would have had to eat him.”

They moved along in silence. Remains of houses now, those that still stood, more or less, were larger than the houses they had seen before, or seemed so to him. Mostly, but not exclusively brick. The road itself was straight, climbing very slightly, the mountains getting closer. They were heading, he could see, for a gap between them. They passed a metal pole still standing, a large rectangular sign on it. One side was stripped bare, but the other side, he saw over his shoulder, was, through some strange fluke of nature, faded but more or less intact. He had to squint to make out what was left of the letters. ERLING D it read, and below that, in smaller script, 00 E.

“What happened to his head?” Horkai finally asked.

Beside him, Qatik patted one of his backpacks. “Never know when you’ll need a good head,” he claimed.

THEY PASSED AROUND A SCHOOL BUS that had been turned over on its side and burned. The road grew briefly disjointed and broken and they had to pick their path carefully. The sun, Horkai noticed, was high in the sky, nearly directly overhead. The road here was edged on both sides by a long stone wall, mostly blown out, but the ghost of it still there. The mules plodded implacably forward, saying nothing.

A half-collapsed supermarket, complete with a sign reading ERTS. A scattering of bones around it, blankets of dust as well that might hide more. More parking lots, more malls and shopping centers. The ruins of commerce. A nondescript building that he somehow felt must have once been a coffee shop. Was it a memory?

More ruined walls, the mountains closer now. The road curved very slightly, heading for the mouth of a canyon still several miles ahead. The mules were getting nervous, he realized.

“I’m going to put you on my shoulders now,” said Qanik. “So as to have my hands free. All right?”

“All right,” said Horkai. And without another word, Qanik swung him around and dropped him there. Pain shot briefly up through his back but was quickly gone. His spine no longer pulsed with each step. He reached back to feel the cut, had difficulty locating it.

What am I exactly? he wondered.

A city bus had crashed decades before into a small building set off the road. The road was still curving ever so slightly. Suddenly it rose a little steeper, curving the other way, skirting around a hill. Houses sparser, a little more spread out now, a little more rural, the road devolving into a simple two-lane highway. An old split-rail fence, somehow in better shape than the stone walls had been. The road winding more now, moving slowly through clumps of long-dead trees, little more than stumps.

Past a small road with a sign scrubbed down to bare metal but upon which someone had written something, relatively recently, in black paint. The dust covering it made it illegible. Qatik left their side and hurried toward it, wiping the dust away with his black glove.

GLACIER LN, it read, the letters thick and clumsy.

“That first letter is a G,” said Qatik.

“What does it say?” Qanik asked, and Horkai read the sign aloud.

“We’re getting closer,” claimed Qanik from below him.

They kept on, Qatik rejoining them. A few hundred feet farther along, on the other side of the road, another smaller road split off. There was no metal sign, but someone had put up a wooden post, nailing a placard on it. OLD WASATCH BULLEVARD, it read, the last word misspelled.

“Who is doing it?” asked Horkai, gesturing at the sign.

“The ones we’re going to see,” said Qatik. “They’re reclaiming.”

“Why?” asked Horkai.

Beside him, Qatik shrugged.

They continued on, the houses even sparser now. They were well into the foothills. Each road they crossed now was carefully labeled, and some minor repair work had been done as well, the road cleared of the larger debris, the largest cracks in the surface filled with dirt and stones. A mile or two more and the houses were gone altogether, the road running along the side of a hill, sloping away to the other side. There were places now where the road was washed out, completely collapsed, and they had to either climb up the hill and through the dust and back down again or clamber down and around. But even here there were signs of someone at work, little hints of a living presence.

An old rest area, rusty metal rail still in place, the building itself having fallen off its foundations to spill into the parking lot. A sudden unbroken run of telephone poles, most snapped off partway down but a few still relatively intact. And then a few more houses, these almost unpleasantly big, at least if their rubble was any indication. Perhaps condos rather than individual houses, impossible now to say. A triangular sign with a silhouette of an animal—a deer, perhaps—crudely painted on it. The corrugated end of an old drainage ditch pipe, now full of blackish ooze, the mountains close enough now that he could see cracks and fissures in the rock face. How long have we been walking? How much time has gone by? He looked up to see the sun already well behind them, well on its way to setting.

The road dead-ended into another road, with two metal signs at the end of it. On one, someone had painted in black tar an arrow pointing left and the words S. SASQUATCH BULL. On the other, an arrow pointing right and reading LL COTTONWD CNY. The two mules consulted, their faceplates close together, gesturing back and forth, and finally went to the right. There was a parking lot, several destroyed cars still in it, and then nothing: only mountains edging down almost to the road, fragments of dead trees, a broken and gravel-edged road.

About two hundred yards along they came to a bare wire, strung at waist height across the road. The mules, seeing it, slowed and then stopped.

“What do you think it is?” asked Horkai.

“A wire,” said Qatik simply.

“No,” said Horkai. “What is it for?”

Qatik just shrugged.

They got closer. The wire, they saw, hadn’t been there long. It was freshly greased and very thin, a slight amber sheen to it.

“Maybe a trigger,” said Qanik. “A trip wire.”

“A trigger for what?” asked Horkai. “And who would be stupid enough to trip it?”

“I don’t know,” said Qanik. “During the day nobody would trip it. But at night…”

They followed it off the side of the road, careful not to touch it, found that it had been tied to a metal post that had been pounded into the ground. They followed it back in the other direction. There the end of it fed into the lid of a metal box, its outer surface covered with solar panels.

They circled around the box, crossed to the other side of the wire. There seemed no reason to worry about the wire anymore—they’d crossed it and thus it no longer existed. But the mules stayed where they were, examining the wire from the other side, nearly touching it.

Horkai patted Qanik’s head. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

But Qanik shook his head. “We need to set it off,” he said. “We need to know what it does.”

“That’s a stupid idea,” said Horkai.

“This is part of our purpose,” said Qatik. “This is what we do.”

HIVES, THOUGHT HORKAI, lying on the ground a dozen yards away from the mules, watching them squatting by the wire, searching through the backpacks for something. Mules. Burdens. Purposes. None of it really made sense: different sets of ideas, different regimes of knowledge that should compete and contrast with one another but which instead had been used by Rasmus to create a sense of community, a sense of duty. Was it only Rasmus or did it go further than that? Was Rasmus a manipulator or was he just as caught in the trap himself?

And now here he was, paralyzed from the waist down, lying in the middle of a canyon road, waiting for something to happen to kill his mules and leave him isolated and stranded.

They’d closed their backpacks again, threw them behind them, toward Horkai. They were speaking to each other, standing very close, one wildly gesticulating and the other holding still, his arms crossed over his chest. They were far enough away that Horkai couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then the one that had been gesticulating stalked off the road. A moment later he was back, carrying a large flat piece of shale, as big as Horkai’s chest.

Both mules took a few steps back; then the mule with the rock lifted it over his head and hurled it. It caught the wire and instantly snapped it, the ends whipping away.

Horkai, already braced for an explosion, closed his eyes, but no explosion came. Instead, what came was a voice.

“Welcome!” the voice said. “Welcome, brothers! If you have made it this far, perhaps this is an indication that conditions are sufficiently ameliorated for the human species to now survive. We are glad you can survive! But your own personal survival is only the first step. We have been waiting for you, waiting to receive you to let you know what you can do next to help your species.

“But first a little bit about us. We are here for you. We are here to protect you. We love you, just as God loves you, and we will fight to allow you to survive. God has chosen us to stand attendant to you and to guide you in once again founding civilization. We have waited long for you and you, too, have…”

The message continued on, but a mule had already rushed toward him, scooped him up off the ground, and placed him on his shoulders. They moved down the road, even faster than usual this time. The sound of the voice was quickly lost behind them.

“What’s wrong?” asked Horkai.

“It is a trap,” said Qatik, from beside him.

“It didn’t sound like a trap,” said Horkai. “It sounded like a message.”

“Traps never seem like traps,” Qatik said.

“They said they want to help us.”

“No,” said Qanik. “Qatik is right. This is a trap. They are not friendly.”

“How do you know?”

“We know,” said Qanik.

“Besides, the message was not for us,” said Qatik. “The message is not meant to be heard for many, many years. It is a message for those who come after us.”

“So is it a message or a trap?” said Horkai. “It can’t be both. Who told you it was a trap?”

“It does not matter who told us,” said Qatik, and Horkai thought, Rasmus.

“But if it’s a trap, shouldn’t we turn around?”

“We can’t turn around,” said Qanik. “It’s our purpose.”

“So we’re walking into a trap, knowing it’s a trap?”

“Yes,” said Qatik. “But we have the advantage.”

“What advantage can we possibly have?”

“You. You are better than a trap.”

CRAZY, HE THOUGHT. He could still hear the voice ringing in his ears: Welcome! Welcome! Either it was a trap or it wasn’t; in either case, he couldn’t help but feel they were going about things all wrong.

They continued walking. No houses at all now, just the weathered and broken white stumps of dead, dry trees. There wasn’t as much dust here—either because of the altitude or because the canyon kept it out. WASATCH NATIONAL FOREST, a weathered sign read. As they came closer, it became clear that the lines that composed the letters had been touched up, filled in so they would be visible again. The remains of another road, Horkai noticed, was running beside them and a little above, a little higher up the slope. It veered off and came back again. The sound, not too distant, of a river. If he could see the water, he wondered, would it be as bloodred as the stream he had seen before? To one side, a dozen yards from the road, two piles of carefully cut timber, tree trunks stripped of their branches and bleached now, beginning to crack and separate and flinder away.

And then suddenly they turned a bend in the road and Qatik and Qanik stopped. Horkai looked to understand why, but saw nothing.

“What is it?” he asked. “What do you see?”

“Beautiful,” said Qanik, and Qatik answered, “Yes, it is.”

They stayed there stock-still. Horkai couldn’t see anything beyond the same broken road, the same cracked trees. And then Qanik and Qatik were moving again, slower this time, drifting to the side of the road.

And then he saw it: just past the asphalt of the road and the gravel of the shoulder, in the dirt: four small, scraggly plants, perhaps four inches tall. They were twisted and contorted in on themselves, their leaves pale and semitransparent, but they were alive: the only living plants that Horkai had seen since going outside.

As they came closer, it became clear not only that the plants were alive but that they had also been planted. They were arranged in a straight line despite the curve of the road itself, and were evenly spaced, perhaps eight inches apart.

Qatik got down on his knees and took a closer look, touching one very delicately, staring at them a long time. And then he got up and Horkai found Qanik lifting him off his shoulders, holding him down as well so that now he could see the individual veins in the leaves, the fine dusting of something not unlike hair on the stalk itself. They had been recently watered; the ground around them was still moist. What kind of plants are they? he found himself wondering. And then realized that mattered much less than the fact that they were alive, that they could live outside. And that since they could live, surely others would soon follow.

And then he was trundled onto Qatik’s shoulders while Qanik in turn bent down to have a look. He brought his head very close, almost touched them with his faceplate. He turned to Horkai.

“What is their smell?” he asked.

Horkai shook his head. “I don’t think they had a smell,” he said. “Not that I noticed.”

Qanik looked at him for a long moment then turned back to the plants. He stayed there motionless, on his knees, staring.

Finally Qanik got up and gathered the packs Qatik had dropped. Below Horkai, Qatik was coughing, ineffectually holding his hand against his faceplate as if to cover his mouth. Qanik was smiling. “It makes it worth it,” he said to Horkai. “Seeing that. Knowing that it can exist. Now I can die in peace.”

15

IT WAS NEAR SUNSET when they finally caught a glimpse of Granite Mountain. Perhaps a hundred yards from the road, they could see where the mountain had been cut back to reveal a long wall of grayish white stone. At the base, just visible, the stone had been shaped off and cut in an arch. The arch itself was blocked by some sort of metal grate. It was Qanik who noticed it first, stopping and pointing.

They broke from the road proper, took a steep climb up an unstable shale slope to reach it. As they climbed, Horkai, riding precariously on Qatik’s shoulders, watched the rest of the entrance come into view. He realized it was very tall, perhaps fifteen feet high. He could see down it, too, saw that it was a tunnel going back as far as he could see into the darkness. And there wasn’t just the one tunnel either, but several, four in all, next to one another, the others becoming visible as they climbed higher. On the outside, bolted to the inner curve of each arch, were a squarish electric light and a buzzing fan, connected by cables to something he couldn’t yet see.

They came out in the middle of a parking lot, which had been recently patched and maintained. When they moved close to the first of the tunnels, the light in the arch flicked on. The two mules, feeling overexposed, rushed to the second entrance, and when the light went on there as well rushed past it and toward the mountain itself, flattening themselves against the expanse of stone between the two middle entrances. They were both breathing heavily from the climb. Horkai saw the lights flick off. Motion sensors, he thought. The light and fan cables, he saw now, ran out into the parking lot, where they connected to a square box, which was, in turn, connected to a bank of solar panels that covered and blocked off the front half of the lot.

“What now?” asked Horkai.

“What now?” said Qatik. “For us nothing. Now is you.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

“They will not admit us,” said Qatik.

“Why not?”

But Qatik didn’t respond.

“But what makes you think they’ll let me in?” asked Horkai.

Qanik smiled behind his faceplate. “They will let you in,” he said. “You will see.”

“After you get through the gate, that is,” said Qatik.

“But how do I get in without you?”

“You will have to crawl,” said Qanik. “Where is your gun? The Mambo?”

He felt for it, found nothing. “I don’t know,” he said. “Left it at the hospital, maybe.”

Qatik searched through the backpack, pulled out a small short knife. “Put this in your boot,” he said. “Just in case you need it.”

Qanik nodded. “Do not let them see it. If they see it, they will kill you. Which entrance do you choose?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Horkai. “How should I know?”

“You will have to choose one,” said Qanik. “You can only go through one entrance. Perhaps it does not matter which. Perhaps they all go to the same place.”

“How do I get past the gate?” Horkai asked.

“Choose an entrance,” said Qanik patiently. “If the gate is unlocked, we will lift it up for you. If locked, we will break it open.”

“DO YOU REMEMBER what it looks like?” asked Qatik. He was holding him in his arms now, Qanik already straining at the gate. “You remember what Rasmus told you?”

“Silver cylinder,” said Horkai. “Red letters on the side. Subzero environment.”

Qatik nodded.

He heard, even through the suit, Qanik grunt, and then the sound of him coughing. It went on for a long time. Finally he stopped, took hold of the bottom of the gate, pulled on it again.

“You’ll have to help,” he said to Qatik.

Qatik crouched down, put Horkai on the asphalt, and joined Qanik. The two mules grunted and strained until finally, with a groan, the gate slid up a foot and a half before jamming.

“Enough,” said Qatik. “In you go.”

Horkai started crawling toward it. He had to let his breath out and wriggle to make it under, and finally one of the two mules gave him a shove. He was in.

He turned and looked back, regarded the two large figures in hazard suits standing there just on the other side, staring in at him, faceplates pressed against the grate.

“We will wait for you,” said Qanik, and then began to cough again.

“Hurry,” said Qatik. “Please.”

And only then did Horkai realize that something was wrong with Qanik, that something had, in all likelihood, been wrong with him for some time. Not only was he coughing, but he was coughing up blood. The lower part of his faceplate was streaked with it on the inside. Will he be alive by the time I return? he wondered.

“Hurry,” urged Qatik again.

He nodded, then turned. Dragging his useless legs behind him, he began to pull himself down the tunnel.

THE TUNNEL WAS WIDE AND HIGH, rounded at the top, and continued back for what seemed to Horkai, pulling himself forward by his hands, a very long way. It ran deep into the mountain. The stone of the floor was cool and had been cut straight and polished. It was dusty, but other than that seemed to have suffered no damage.

The hall continued straight back, curving not at all. Every ten yards or so, the light that was now behind him would click off and a light in front of him would click on. He counted six lights before he saw, just beyond the sixth one, a thick metal door, like a door to a vault.

He pulled himself to it. It had neither handle nor hinges, and he wouldn’t have known it was a door at all except for the metal frame it was set in. Still, he thought, staring at it, it could just be a panel. It might not be a door at all.

He knocked on it, but his knuckles hardly made a sound. He looked around for something to strike it with but found nothing.

What now? he wondered.

He sat there for a little while, staring at the door, gathering his breath. Finally he struck the door again, slapping it with his open palm this time. The noise it made was only slightly louder.

The light above him went out and he was plunged into darkness. Briefly he was seized by panic, his heart rising in his throat, but the light came immediately back on when he began to wave his arms.

He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hello!” he yelled as loud as he could. “Let me in!”

The noise resonated up and down the shaft of the hall, but there was no sign he had been heard.

What now? he wondered again. Should he crawl back down the hall and out again, find the mules, get them to open another gate for him? And if that didn’t work, would they go on to the next, and then to the final one? And what if that one didn’t open either?

He pulled himself over until he was leaning against the wall.

And what if I’ve been sent on a wild goose chase? he wondered. What if Rasmus was wrong about what is actually here? What if someone was here but now they’re gone?

But that wouldn’t explain the redone road signs, unless whoever had done them had left recently. Even if they had left recently, it wouldn’t explain the plants they had seen—freshly watered, not even a day ago. No, someone was somewhere nearby. And with a little luck, they were here.

He cupped his hands around his mouth again, yelled anew. His voice echoed up and down the hall, but again there was no sign that anyone on the other side of the door had heard.

He stayed there, wondering how long he should wait. He was still wondering, when the light switched off again.

This time, frustrated, he didn’t bother to wave his arms, just let it stay dark.

There was a hint of something else other than darkness from the far end of the tunnel, the opening out into the night, where the sky was not completely dark but fading fast. There was something else, too, he realized as his eyes adjusted, a strange tint to the darkness around him, not enough to help him see, but something keeping it from being completely dark. He cast his eyes around, looking for whatever it might be, but saw nothing, no crack under or to the side of the door, nothing on the floor or the walls. But it was still there nonetheless, puzzling him.

And then suddenly it struck him. He looked all the way up, at the ceiling, and saw there, above his head, a small red light.

He clapped his hands once and when the light came on saw, on the wall above him, a small camera. As he watched, it made a slight whirring sound, angling differently, looking for something. Looking, he realized, for him.

He knuckled across the floor and to the other side of the hall, where the camera could see him. It whirred for a little longer as it tracked past him. He stared at it, one hand lifted in greeting. Suddenly it stopped, moved to point directly at him.

“Hello,” he said to the camera. “Can you hear me?”

The camera didn’t move. He turned to determine if it possessed a microphone or speakers, but saw no evidence of either. Feeling helpless, he raised his hands high above his head as if surrendering, then gestured at the door.

Immediately he heard a thunking sound and the door loosened in its frame. As he watched, it swung open a few inches, then stopped. Because of where he was in the hall, all he could see was the door itself, not what lay behind.

“If you have any weapons,” said a voice through the crack, “we ask that you leave them outside.”

“I don’t have any weapons,” Horkai lied, stifling the urge to touch his boot and make sure the knife was still there and, if it was, that it was still hidden.

“If you come in peace,” said the voice, “you shall find us to be your friends. If you come to make war, you shall find in us formidable enemies.”

It was a statement rather than a question, so at first he didn’t bother to respond. But when the person on the other side of the door seemed to be waiting he finally said, “Duly noted.”

The door swung open a little wider. A hand, hairless and pale and strangely transparent, appeared around the edge of it, extended and open.

“You may enter,” the voice said.

Slowly Horkai began to drag himself across the floor. And now, Horkai thought, his heart pounding, we will see what is inside. If it is a trap, then I am walking into it. If it is not a trap, I will take what I came for and leave.

Jaw set, he pulled himself along. He rounded the door and for the first time saw the man on the other side.

And that was the moment that everything irrevocably changed.