“Are you crazy?” her sister asked her. “She was planning to turn us in for a reward at the lost and found!”
Still, Susan couldn’t shake the bad feeling it gave her.
“Put it away, anyway,” she said to Max. “We don’t need to ask for trouble, do we?”
“Our faces are asking for trouble,” Nell said. “You don’t think that, out here in the sunlight, anybody’s going to be fooled by a little bit of dirt from the fireplace, do you? Besides, it’s only good planning to be prepared.”
Max grinned at her.
Susan thought that if the two of them were so keen on being Boy Scouts, they ought to at least work on the important things, like marking direction by the sun and finding running water now that the daylight glared down through the buildings in long, searing lines. By midmorning, the dawn cool had burned away, and even the patches of mud along the curbstones sizzled where the light hit them. The streaks of ash on Susan’s face itched, and the outhouse stench of the city rose with the heat. Worse, all the blocks had begun to look the same, full of squat, small-windowed buildings of pebbled concrete or wooden slats, flat roofed, with overhangs of cloth or rippled lengths of tin. Some had been painted, but the paint had chipped and faded, and occasionally Susan would catch sight of a flake of it underfoot, pressed into the dried mud in the road.
“Max, do you remember this street from yesterday?” she asked him as they rounded a corner where an oily table displaying broken bits of machinery sat in the sun, advertising the wares of the dark shop inside. Past it stood another reeking shed, a single sleeper curled inside.
“Sure I do. We go this way.”
A few blocks later and Susan knew that they’d taken a wrong turn. They stood facing a tall building much older than the rest, though just as dirty. Sleepers lay thick along one of its walls, propped against one another or sprawling into the roadway. There was little traffic here. A stray cat snarled at the five of them, then went on hunting rats. Yet despite the ruin of the street, this building was better made than the others they’d seen. It sported an ornate front portico through which Susan spied a wide, high-ceilinged hall littered with shards of old crockery, legless chairs, and so much trash it looked impassable.
“Now, this I know we didn’t see before.”
Max frowned. “We just took one wrong turn. Let’s go that way.”
They slid along the road, trying to keep their heads down and making their way back to the crowded avenues, which had grown more crowded as the lunch hour drew near. The five of them bunched together, moving as quickly as they could manage without drawing attention.
Another turn and they found themselves facing a second grand old building, as empty of life as the first. It seemed to Susan a ghost city had sprung up in the midst of the living one.
“We didn’t see this, either,” she said.
They went on, but nothing seemed familiar. After a while, a bullhorn sounded in the distance.
“What’s it saying?” Kate asked. “I can’t understand it.”
None of them could, but at the sound of it, people started streaming into the streets, making for the source of the noise.
“Is it laundry day again?” Jean wanted to know.
Nobody was carrying any clothes. A few of them carried babies, though, and one had a picnic basket under his arm. They were in a jolly mood, too, talking and waving to friends. The few who glanced at the children only grinned widely.
“That’s strange,” Max said.
“We should go the other way,” Nell whispered to Susan as a man jostled them in his rush to get ahead. “Everyone’s going this way.”
“Good point,” Susan said.
But when they tried to turn around, the crowd was too thick. A woman knocked into Kate, ripping her from Susan.
“Let’s at least get to a side street,” Susan said, grabbing Kate’s hand again. “Then we’ll get out of the crowd.”
The bullhorn continued its squawking.
And now Susan could make out the words.
“Citizens, gather! Citizens, rejoice!” it screeched. “Come all, come all! It’s rally day!”
Susan tried to backpedal, but the crowd swept her forward into a wide square dominated by a large open-topped bandstand. The platform was draped in scarlet bunting, and soldiers moved across it busily, their ruddy cloaks glossy in the sun.
They were unrolling a long banner, and, watching them work, the people around Susan vibrated with anticipation. After a moment, the soldiers straightened and hoisted the banner in a sudden triumphant gesture of raised arms. The crowd cheered.
Susan looked up and froze.
A man’s face, fifteen times life-size, smiled down from the painted sign. But he wasn’t like Liyla. He had none of the stretched features, neither the hair nor the raw skin. He was just a reasonably good-looking middle-aged man beaming above a slogan that read “Our past, your future — all hail the Genius!”
“He’s normal!” Jean gasped. “Look at him!”
Hope rushed at Susan so fast it made her knees weak.
“He’s normal,” she repeated.
Around them, the square buzzed with excitement. People glanced their way and sang out “rally day!” as if the children themselves had brought it. They clapped Max on the shoulder and winked at the girls, laughing.
At first the five of them shied away. Susan felt as if she had stumbled into a carnival to which she hadn’t bought tickets. But after a while, it didn’t seem to matter. Good feeling abounded. Soldiers moved through, shouting “rally day!” through megaphones. Children zigzagged, laughing, between the adults, and nobody scolded them. A woman handed out sweets, and a boy made a point of pressing one into Susan’s hand, then her siblings’. When she tried to give it back,
