Shuttered Sky

her?”

“Do not be so hard on her,” Tessic said. “You owe her your life a dozen times over.”

“I know that.”

“She is in love with you.”

Dillon looked away from him. “I know that, too.” After what his mind had been exposed to that day, he didn’t know why sorting out his feelings for Maddy should seem such a monumental task. He did care for Maddy deeply; this girl who had the strength to fire into his face to save him; this girl who threw away all that she had to be a companion to him, longing for a syntaxis of their own that would never come.

“I don’t want her to see me like this,” Dillon said. A blanket escape, he thought, from having to think about it any further.

But Tessic replied, “She’s seen you worse.” He turned to leave, but before exiting, he turned back to Dillon, and smiled as if in ad­miration. What’s to admire? thought Dillon, right now I’m a helpless lump on a featherbed.

“I know you don’t feel it yet, but this day in Majdanek has made you stronger. It has given you stamina. Soon you’ll have enough sta­mina to face Birkenau.”

Dillon had never been a student of history, but he knew that when people spoke of Auschwitz, they really meant Birkenau; Auschwitz’s back-factory of death. Dillon closed his eyes, feeling his lids weighty as a sunset.

* * *

Maddy went in at about midnight. She expected—almost hoped— she’d find Dillon asleep, but his eyes were already fixed on her when she cracked open the door.

“You missed the first game of our little World Series,” Dillon said.

She stepped in, her ambivalence preceding her. “I was in the out­field,” she told him. “I was in Ciechanow, making sure everything went smoothly when the buses arrived.”

“And did it?”

“Like silk.” And in that, there was no exaggeration. For eight hours she had helped to supervise the handing out of apartment keys and groceries. Four people per apartment, one bag per person, families kept together when possible. These refugees were not ones to look this mysterious gift horse in the mouth. “Three buildings are at 100% oc­cupancy.”

“A hundred and nine to go,” said Dillon.

“At least at this site.” She leaned forward and kissed him gently on his lips. He didn’t return it, and she couldn’t tell whether it was a judgment on her, or if he simply found himself too weak. She found her spirit wilting and it angered her that her feelings for him could affect her so.

“I suppose not everything can go like silk,” he said. When she looked at his eyes, she could tell he had just read her. But why should she care? What could he learn now that he didn’t already know?

“I never thought I’d get caught in that old romantic loophole,” she said, “wanting what I can never have.”

“I never thought of you as a romantic,” said Dillon.

“No. Until recently, I thought of myself as a realist.”

He tried to smile, but it came out slim. “I guess now you’re a surrealist.”

She looked at him a moment more and then shook her head quickly, trying to break the spell he cast even at his weakest moments. “Here we are in the middle of undoing the greatest crime in recorded history and I’m going on about broken hearts.” She stood from the edge of the bed. She had no illusions about her purpose in his life anymore. She was nothing more than a facilitator. She trusted that her disciplined mind would force her to accept this, and if not, she’d simply endure the pain like a good soldier. “Winston and the others are in the living room, warming themselves around the fire. You should join them. As I’m not quite so superhuman, I’m going to bed.”

“You can stay here,” Dillon offered, but it came out as an offer of mercy. Lukewarm compassion.

“Tessic gave me the best bedroom in the place,” Maddy told him. “Even better than yours.”

Maddy retreated to her room, thankful for her mental and physical exhaustion, for it hammered her into sleep and kept her from dwelling on the things she could not change.

* * *

The fireplace glowed an eerie blueish-green, and the logs were not consumed by the flames. Dillon found Michael, Tory and Winston around the fire, drinking from mugs as if this were some sort of cozy retreat—but the worn looks on their faces were anything but cozy.

Winston saw Dillon first as he entered the room and threw him that we-should-not-be-here kind of gaze.

“Don’t say it,” Dillon said.

“I ain’t saying nothing,” Winston answered, too tired to sublimate his Alabaman drawl. “I’m just gonna sit here and sip my egg nog and pretend like it’s Christmas.”

Dillon got close to the fire to find its blue glow gave off no warmth. Instead, what little warmth there was came through the furnace vents around the room. This cold could not be kept outside. Dillon glanced out of the window. The fog was cotton dense, and showed no sign of lifting. A mirror of Michael’s state of mind.

“At first,” said Michael, “I thought Tessic was bringing us to lower Manhattan.” The fog outside grew a bit dense. “It scared me to think so big. But Tessic thought bigger.”

Dillon couldn’t help but think that was also somewhere in Tessic’s plans. Where others saw sacred ground, Tessic saw opportunity.

“At least Okoya will know where to look for us now,” Dillon said.

“How can you be sure he’s even looking?” Tory asked.

“I doubt that Okoya is biting his nails in Texas,” Dillon said. “And no matter how much of a media blackout Tessic tries to impose on this, Okoya will know where we are—and remember we’re closer to the Island of Thira than we were two days ago.”

“You have a thousand reasons to stay, don’t you, Dillon?” Michael grumbled. “A thousand reasons why we should keep dragging up the dead.”

“You say it like it’s something terrible. It’s not like we’re bringing back empty shells—these people are coming back complete, in perfect health, with their souls intact. What we’re doing is incredible! It’s important.”

“It’s immoral!” Tory moved closer to the fire, “Hell, everything we do is immoral because we’re unnatural.”

“No we’re not,” Dillon insisted. “We’re just a side of nature that’s rarely seen.” He watched Tory rub her arms for warmth, but now the flames had turned from blue to green and were actually drawing heat from the room. Dillon knew it was his presence. As his own power recovered, the logs were unburning, adding to Michael’s chill.

Winston put down his mug with a shaky hand. “We’re outside of morality now.”

“Careful Winston,” Tory warned. “We put ourselves above mo­rality before, and you know what happened.”

“Not above morality,” he explained, “outside of the framework entirely. I mean, is bringing back people who should never have died an ultimate justice, or an ultimate wrong? Morality’s got no answer for the things we do. It’s got no answer for us.”

Michael spat out a resigned laugh. “And you know what they did to the last person who brought back the dead.”

Dillon shivered at the thought. There was a time a year ago that he might have felt up to the comparison, but not anymore. “I don’t want to be crucified or worshiped.”

“Oh, I think we’re gonna catch ourselves a whole lotta both,” Winston said.

“Yeah,” added Michael. “I’m sure a thousand years from now they’re going to have whole universities and seminaries devoted to studying every stupid little thing we did.”

Tory paced to the nearest heat vent, giving up on the fire. “Can we not talk about a thousand years from now and just get through today?”

“You have to understand how it is for Tory and me,” Michael said. “For both of us, the disaster at Hoover