Axis

concessions.

They intersected in the Rub al-Khali, the sandy tableland that comprised the western quarter of Equatoria.

'That's what he's pointing at?'

'That's what he's been pointing at all summer—more urgently in the last few weeks.'

'So what is it? What's there?'

'As far as I know, nothing. Nothing's there.'

'But it's where he wants to go.'

'Yes.' Dr. Dvali looked past Lise at the other Fourths. 'And that's where we're going to take him.'

The Fourth women said nothing, only stared.

It was Mrs. Rebka who finally, reluctantly, nodded her consent.

* * * * *

Lise couldn't sleep that night. She tossed on her mattress listening to the sounds the others made. Whatever else the Fourth treatment might cure, it did nothing for snoring. And yet they slept. And she did not.

Eventually, well past midnight, she got up, stepped over sleeping bodies on her way to the bathroom, and splashed her face with lukewarm water. Instead of going back to bed she went to the window, where Turk was sitting in a chair keeping the night watch.

'Can't sleep,' she whispered.

Turk kept his gaze fixed on the street outside, a ghostly void by the light of the dust-dimmed moon. Nothing was happening. The peculiar eruptions from the ashfall showed no sign of resuming. Finally he said, 'You want to talk?'

'I don't want to wake anybody up.'

'Come out to the car.' Turk and Dr. Dvali had moved the car closer to the room, where it would be easier to keep an eye on. 'We can sit there awhile. It's safe enough now.'

Lise had not left the room since they arrived and the idea appealed to her. She was wearing her only pair of jeans and an oversized shirt she had borrowed from the Fourth compound. She pulled her shoes onto her bare feet.

Turk opened the door and eased it shut when they had stepped outside. The smell of the ash was instantly stronger. Sulfur, or something bitter like that—why did the ash smell like sulfur? Hypothetical machines grew in cold places, or so Lise had learned in school: distant asteroids, the frozen moons of frozen planets. Was there sulfur out there? She had heard of sulfur on the moons of, was it, Jupiter? The New World's solar system had a planet like that, a cold radioactive giant, far from the sun.

The wind had died with nightfall. The sky was hazy but she could see a few stars. Even when she was very young her father had loved to show her the stars. The stars need names, he would say, and together they would name them. Big Blue. Point of the Triangle. Or silly names. Belinda. Grapefruit. Antelope.

She slid into the front seat next to Turk.

'We need to talk about what happens next,' he said.

Yes. That was undeniably true. She said, 'The Fourths are taking Isaac west.'

'Right. I don't know what they hope to accomplish.'

'They think he can talk to the Hypothetical.'

'Great—what's he going to say? Greetings from the human race? Please stop dropping shit on us from outer space?'

'They're hoping to learn something profound.'

'You believe that?'

'No. But they do. Dvali does, at least.'

'Fourths are generally pretty reasonable people, but would you put a bet on that outcome? I wouldn't.'

It was like religion, Lise supposed. You didn't lay odds on the sacred, you just looked for it with an open heart and hoped for the best. But she didn't say that to Turk. 'So what do we do when they take off for the desert?'

He said, 'I'm thinking of going with them.'

'You're—what?'

'Wait, it makes sense. You saw the map, right? The place they're headed is three-quarters of the way to the west coast. From there there's a decent road all the way to the sea. The west coast, Lise, that's nothing but fishing villages and research outposts. Catch a boat on the southern route back to Port Magellan and by the time I get there nobody's looking for me anymore, the whole Fourth thing is over and Genomic Security has probably figured that out. I have enough friends in the Fourth community that I can probably get myself a whole new set of identity documents.'

Nights got chilly in the desert this time of year. The upholstery was cold and their talk had made condensation on the window. 'I can see a couple of problems with that.'

'So can I—what's your list?'

She tried to be logical. 'Well, the ashfall. Even if the roads are passable, even with a good vehicle, you could get stalled, run out of gas, have engine problems.'

'It's a risk,' he admitted, 'but you can plan for it, carry tools and parts and fuel and so on.'

'And the Fourths aren't a free ride. They expect to find something out there. What if they're right? I mean, look at the way that flying thing went after Isaac. Maybe he is special, maybe he has some special attraction to the, uh, whatever grows out of the ash, and, if so, that could be a major obstacle.'

'I thought about that too. But I haven't heard of anyone being seriously hurt by those things, except accidentally. Even Isaac. Whatever happened to him, it doesn't seem to have made him worse.'

'It landed on his face, Turk. It sank into his skin.'

'He's sitting up, he's not feverish, he's no sicker than he was before.'

'You wouldn't say that if it had been you.'

'That's the point—it wasn't me; whatever that thing was, I'm not what it wanted.'

'So we just tag along and when they're finished with Isaac—whatever that means—we go on to the coast? That's the plan?'

He said with an embarrassment Lise could feel even in the shadows of the car, 'Doesn't have to be both of us. If you want you can stick here and try to catch a ride over the pass when the ash clears. You have options I don't have. Probably safer to do that, from the objective point of view.'

The objective point of view. Doubtless Turk imagined he was giving her the latitude to back out graciously from a reckless plan. He led the kind of life that allowed for sudden reversals of fortune and heavy wagers against fate. She didn't. That was the implication, and it was, of course, true, by and large—though not lately.

'I'll think about it,' she said, and stepped out of the car into the moonlit night, wishing she had been able to sleep.

* * * * *

Come morning there was a degree of near-normality in Bustee: a few pedestrians in the street, a few capable vehicles beginning to head toward the larger towns to the south. Locals gawked at the remains of alien life clinging to the facades of buildings or littering the sidewalks like broken, once-brightly-colored toys. Life reassembling itself, Lise thought, despite the strangeness. Her own life, more deeply unraveled, was slower to knit.

The Fourths, now that they had reached a consensus, set out to procure supplies. A party of four—Dr. Dvali, Sulean Moi, Diane Dupree, and Turk—went to see what money could still buy at the local shops. Turk was even talking about a second vehicle, if they could procure one.

Lise stayed in the motel room with Mrs. Rebka and Isaac, hoping to catch another couple of hours of sleep. Which turned out to be difficult, because Isaac was agitated again. Not because of the flying thing that had attacked him—that seemed to have passed from his mind as promptly as a bad dream—but out of a new sense of urgency, a need to hurry to the heart of whatever was happening out west. Mrs. Rebka had asked a few tentative