Gods. We’ve gone through the rabbit hole and landed in a Faulkner novel. Or maybe Flannery O’Connor. Good country people, for sure.

Koda acknowledges the introductions politely, slipping into a seat across from Elaine, Kirsten beside her. Ariel, standing with his hand on the back of one of two chairs to the right of his mother, shrugs and accepts his plate without comment. Julius serves both Dakota and Kirsten with thick slices of the meat from the platter, and Koda is pleased to find that it is venison, excellently prepared with red wine and bay leaves. A helping of mashed potatoes follows, together with disappointingly insipid pea-green peas from a can. Beside her, Kirsten tucks into her supper with enthusiasm, leaving Koda to make conversation with their hosts. It is as much tactics as hunger, Koda realizes; while no one here has apparently heard of the battle of the Cheyenne, these are precisely the sort of people who might well recognize Kirsten despite her lengthening hair and bronzed skin. A turn of phrase, a tone of voice, could give her away as easily as her face.

So Dakota is left to answer the inevitable questions. They are traveling west from Minnesota, aiming for Salt Lake and Annie’s family there, if they’re still alive. Medical school? Sorry, vet school, at U Penn. Yes, she has some experience with human medicine, too; veterinarians dissect human cadavers along with animal corpses as part of their training, studying human infections right along with distemper and feline leukemia. At this, Harriet winces and reaches for her wine glass with fingers that still show traces of a professional manicure. The children’s eyes, in contrast, grow large as their plates, and Errol pronounces his approval. “Hey, that’s cool. I bet it’s really, really, gross.” This last is aimed at his sister, who smiles sweetly and rubs a handful of her potatoes into his face.

Koda aims a sharp glance at their uncle, two seats further up the table. “Looks to me like they’re making a normal recovery.”

“Yeah,” Kriegesmann answers shortly. “Pass the gravy, would you?”

“Recovery?” says Diotima, at the same time, frowning. “Oh, those spots.” She turns to Koda. “They have allergies, that’s all. They got into some poison ivy or something awhile back, and now it’s sniffles. Nothing serious.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Koda says thoughtfully. “They’re not used to the mountains in summer?”

“No, we usually go to the beach in June. We come here in winter, just like we did last year. And now—” Diotima shoots a resentful glance around the table—“we’re stuck. We can’t get out. We can’t go back. We’ll die out here in the middle of nowhere, all because of some stupid, stupid robots. The government never should have allowed Peter Westerhaus to make those things. He’s rich, but he’s crazy, you know?” She makes a circular motion around one ear with a forefinger. “If Clinton had stopped him, we wouldn’t be here now—”

“Dio,” her father says repressively, setting his fork down beside his plate. “We’ve been through all this. Make the best of it.”

“And how many droids did you have, Dio, dear?” Tanya looks up with a bite of meat halfway to her mouth. “At least your children were here with you. And your husband.” Her smile is pure acid as she gazes at Humphrey. “Such a comfort, I’m sure.”

“So many comforts,” Elaine sniggers. “A comfortable masseur, a comfortable tennis pro, a comfortable ski instructor. . ..”

“Like you’d know,” Dio shoots back at her. “At least I’ve got kids.”

“And how about you, Humph?” Elaine asks. “Are you comforted that she has kids? At least you have a chance to have some of your own now.”

Smith, arrested in the act of cutting his venison, slowly turns the color of old brick, the blood rising under his tan from neck to receding hairline. “I have,” he says, biting off each word as if it were the texture of pemmican, “fulfilled my obligations to this family and to the corporation. I will continue to do so.”

“There isn’t any corporation any more, you idiot!” Dio wads her napkin into a knot and throws it, violently, into her plate. “It’s over. It’s gone! There’s nothing left but this—” the sweep of her arm encompasses the lodge, the mountain, the empty months and valleys between this spot and an urban existence as dead now as Babylon— this hellhole! I want out! I want out now!” She swings around on Kirsten and Koda. “When you leave in the morning, I’m going with you. The rest of you can stay here and rot!”

With a sob, Dio pushes her chair back so violently it rocks on its back legs and stumbles across the room, both hands over her face. She jerks the door open and slams it behind her; hanging upside down in its rails above the bar, the crystal chimes gently. Julius Kriegesmann’s face, stony pale where his son-in-law’s is a shade just short of purple, half rises from his own seat. His wife lays one hand over his, clenched around his wineglass. “Well,” says Kirsten calmly, “now we know what happened to the glassware.”

Julius turns his gaze on her, his face still thunderous. Then Ariel’s head comes up from what has seemed to be an earnest contemplation of his meal. He stares at Kirsten in the silence, then begins to laugh, a chuckle that begins somewhere around the middle of his chest and gathers force as it rises, shaking his shoulders. “Dr. Annie Rivers,” he says between spasms, “you’re okay.”

The tension in the room snaps, and Julius carefully sets down his Burgundy. The two children return to their suppers with only perfunctory mayhem, overseen by Smith. Julius rises to offer after-dinner brandy to the adults, pouring Courvoisier into the bottoms of ample snifters. He hands Koda hers with a smile, half rueful. “Sorry about the fireworks. It’s been stressful since the uprising, especially for a city girl like Dio who’s used to all the luxuries. She’ll be fine in the morning.”

And we’ll be gone in the morning. Long gone. By ourselves. But she accepts her drink and the elder Kriegesmann’s oblique apology with a smile of thanks. The gathering breaks up into knots after that, the three men and Harriet huddling around the fireplace, Julius and Ariel gnawing the ends of expensive cigars. The Smith children—putatively Smith, at any rate, escape to play in the larger space of the lobby, where thumps and thuds attest to their energy. Tanya and Elaine seem to distance themselves from the rest, holding hands as their voices become quieter and more intimate. Letting her own hand linger on Kirsten’s arm, Dakota says, “You about ready to turn in? Tomorrow’s gonna be a long one.”

Tanya looks up from her conversation with Elaine. “I’ll show you to a cabin. Unless you’d rather stay here, in the main lodge?”

“Thanks, we’ll take the cabin,” Kirsten answers almost before the other woman finishes her question, and Tanya grins in silent agreement.

“It’s not always this bad,” she says. “But it’ll be quieter up the road.” To Elaine, she adds, “I’ll be up in a bit.”

“I’ll be waiting.” Elaine gives her a sultry look over the rim of her glass, all fire and smoke.

As they gather their things, Asi darts to the door ahead of them, whining. Ariel yells “Sleep tight!” to the accompaniment of quieter good nights. In the lobby, now well lit, the furniture shoved together in an improvised jungle gym, Tanya glances at her watch and announces, “Fifteen minutes, kids. Time to hit the books.”

“Awwwww, Aunt Tanya, that’s mean!”

“Pleeezzzeee, just half an hour?”

“Fifteen and not a second more. Suck it up, guys!” She lets Dakota and Kirsten out the main door onto the deck, and Asi shoots away, racing full out up the drive, turning and cannoning back at speed, only to hurtle off into the woods that line the road, barking furiously. Tanya laughs. “He’s off on one of the rabbit trails. I don’t blame him; it got pretty thick in there, didn’t it?”

The conflict on Kirsten’s face is almost comical. If she agrees, she insults the Kreigesmann family; if she does not, she contradicts the most normal one of the lot. Dakota rescues her. “People get on each other’s nerves when they get too close. Your mom and dad seem to have a pretty firm handle on it, though.”

“They’re used to managing hostile takeovers. Even our family’s a breeze after that.”

They set off down the path, the shadows thickening about them. The wind moves through the tops of the tall trees, sighing among the pine needles. Out here, free of the power struggles and tensions of the Kriegesmann brood, Koda’s own stress begins to fade. She feels as though she has been walking in boots half a size too small ever since they came upon Ariel and has only now been able to pull them off. Relief courses through her body, and, oddly, a sense of kinship with the woman beside them. There is strength in her, and though Koda suspects the presence of a wide ruthless streak, a kind of honesty she can respect. She says, “Your mother was with the bank, too?”

Tanya glances up at her, her face shadowed. “Oh, Harriet’s not my mother. Ari’s hers, and Humph from her first marriage. Dio’s the oldest, though she doesn’t want to be reminded of that. Then me, with Wife #2. Ari’s the baby.”

“And he doesn’t like to be reminded of that?” Koda finishes the thought for her.

“Or of the fact that he never made senior VP. A doorstop with a title, that’s our Ari. His talents—well, the one good thing about this situation is that he can be more useful here than he ever was at the office.” A wry smile twists her mouth. “Not that that outweighs the negatives for the rest of us.”

“Dio certainly doesn’t seem to think so.”

“She’s a born mall bunny. Julius got down in the muddy end of the gene pool with that one.”

Cabins line the main road once they pass the lodge’s turnout and parking area. Warm light spills from their windows, and the smell of woodsmoke rises from their chimneys. Though summer solstice is only a few days away, chill descends on the mountain with the dark. Here and there, women gather children into what seem to be family homes; elsewhere, two men, or three, sit late on the front decks, smoking and talking. Koda can feel their eyes on them as they pass.