Manny relaxes a little, but the tension is still plain in the lines on his youthful face. “At least tell me why.”

“Because I need you here.”

“For what? That’s the part you’re not explaining, Koda.”

Mustering what’s left of her patience, Koda pulls a military map out of the generous pocket of her coat. Laying it across some overturned cans, she trails a long finger north along a micro-thin line.

“That’s pretty out of the way,” Manny observes, cocking his head to get a better look.

“Less chance of being detected,” Koda replies. Her finger stops close to the border. “This is the only jail we’ll pass. It’s small, no more than twenty cells, max.”

“You’ve gotta take me, Koda! I’m the best fighter you’ve got. The rest of these guys couldn’t shoot fish in a barrel.”

“Niiice. And you picked them out for me all by yourself, hmm?”

He scowls. “You know what I mean.”

“Once we break those women out, we’re gonna need some temporary place to put them. It’s pretty barren up this way, but I think I know of a good spot or two.”

Manny gives a grudging smile, remembering when he was young, praying for a visit from his older cousin, who would sweep him away in her truck, taking him places where their ancestors had once made a home. They were his favorite times as a boy, and he remembers them fondly still.

Koda looks at him as he remembers, a faint hint of a smile on her face. When he comes back to the present, she nods. “I’ll need to communicate their position to the base somehow so they can be picked up.”

Manny shrugs his shoulders. “So? You’ve got the world’s most powerful satellite phone in your hand there. Where’s the problem?”

“And let every droid east and west of the Mississippi know their position? Think, Manny.”

“So what are you gonna do? Make like in’juns in a John Wayne movie and blow smoke signals from the top of the Black Hills?”

Koda rolls her eyes. “Listen to me, Manny, because I’m only gonna say this once, okay?”

Manny gives a reluctant nod.

“There’s a way I can use this phone and keep the droids from knowing where the women are.”

“How?”

“Uniyapi Lakota.”

Understanding draws over his face like the wakening dawn. His brow is a squiggle of conflicting emotion; part wanting to lift in an admiring grin, part wanting to lower in a defeated scowl.

“I spoke to the base commander this morning. As far as he knows, the droids have never been programmed with the Lakota language. It’ll give us an advantage that we sorely need right now, and before you say anything, I checked. We’re the only Lakota here.” She looks at her cousin for a long moment. When she speaks again, her voice is soft. “Now do you see why I need you here?”

The scowl wins. “I see it. I don’t like it, but I see it.”

“Good.”

“I’m giving you ten days,” he warns, pointing a finger at her. “Ten days, and then I’m getting in my Tomcat and coming after your ass, hear me?”

Folding her map and storing it in her pocket, she nods. He takes a step closer and flings his arms around her, no longer the soldier, the crack pilot, the man, but rather the boy she remembers so long ago clinging desperately to her in a silent plea not to leave. Her own arms gentle themselves around his trim, hard body. She breathes in the warm, familiar scent of him as a guard against the demons of the unknown she will soon face.

All too soon, the moment ends, and by mutual consent, they both step back, neither acknowledging, except in their hearts, the sheen of tears in the other’s eyes.

6

An hour and a half later, Lizzie is sleeping peacefully in the Shiloh infirmary, her arm set and immobilized in cast and sling. She has other refugees for company, one or two with far worse injuries. Kirsten’s handgun, returned to her, rides uneasily at her belt while she spoons up the last of the best vegetable soup she has eaten in her life. For the second time since she began her flight, she feels something close to safe.

Asimov snores on the flagstones of the farm’s common room floor, a paw over his badly scratched nose. Above him, firmly ensconced in the middle of the trestle table, a white-muzzled calico purrs as Father Griffin absently strokes her fur. The two-story tall window of the refectory looks out on a meadow white with new snowfall and a small pond whose ice shimmers with gold, blue and lilac in the late sun.

Dan smiles at her across the table. “More? Or will that hold you till supper?”

Kirsten laughs, pushing the bowl away from her. “Thanks, that will do for the moment. You have no idea how good that tastes after a dozen cans or so of Dinty Moore and Ranch Style Beans.”

Dan says nothing, merely waits. Confession time, huh? Kirsten observes wryly to herself. Not yet. Maybe never. No matter how warm and fuzzy the atmosphere, she cannot forget that she is a danger to every other human she encounters. So is the knowledge she carries. Instead she trails her fingers across the surface of the white pine table in front of her, its knots and whorls so carefully matched that they form a pattern like flowing water. “This is beautiful,” she says. “Do you make furniture here?”

“One of our members is a carpenter and cabinetmaker. Our resident Kabbalist—you’ll meet him at supper.”

“Kabbalist? I thought—I’m sorry, I thought this was a monastery or something.”

“Monks with shotguns?” Dan’s brows rise in mock surprise. “Not that there isn’t a precedent, mind. Go back to the ‘or something,’ though. Shiloh is an intentional community, made up of the lost sheep and farseekers of a dozen traditions. We have pacifists, mystic warriors, celibates, couples and families, Native American shamen and followers of Kali. We look for the things that are common in all our ways and attempt to live as lightly as possible upon our Mother Earth.”

“That’s why you didn’t have any droids.”

“That’s why we didn’t have any droids, and why we’ve survived. Fortunately, we did have excellent communications before the uprising. We can still get what’s left of the Net on satellite and listen in on CB. We don’t broadcast, though.”

“There’s not much left, Dan. Lizzie’s only the third living human I’ve seen between here and Pennsylvania.”

“I know.” Dan’s fingers curl around his mug of tea as if seeking warmth, and Kirsten finds herself mimicking the gesture. “It may be that we won’t be able to recover at all, Annie. We humans may be where the Spotted Owl the Siberian Tiger were twenty years ago. Nobody’s got a breeding program for us, though.”

“It won’t come to that.’ The passion in her voice surprises Kirsten. “It can’t. I won’t—“

“YO! I’M HOME!”

The common room’s door thumps back against the wall and a giant thuds across the floor, shedding muffler, cap, gloves and a double thickness of down jacket as he comes. Kirsten blinks twice, taking in the half-halo of salt-and-pepper curls, still luxuriant around an encroaching bald patch, the snub nose in a wind-burned round face and the whisky-barrel chest connected to it by an Aran-knit collar. It is as though a two-hundred-year-old oak has sprouted feet and invaded the house.

The walking tree makes straight for Dan and bends to brush a light kiss on the other man’s lips. “Hiya, babe. Back with a cuppa.”

Kirsten, bemused, watches the man’s retreating back. “Who’s that? Fangorn?”

“Not quite. Our electrical engineer, Alan Stephanos. My partner.”

“Black sheep?”

“My Bishop thought so, yes.”

Kirsten feels the heat rise in her face. She glances down at the table in embarrassment. A long moment stretches out, becomes painful. Finally she says, “I’m sorry. That was rude. He just didn’t seem to fit—well, the other category.”

“Spirituality? Think worker saint. I met him at a peace march back in ’02.”

“The Iraq war? My father went into Baghdad with the first ground assault.”

Dan nods. “We got busted together. The LA police put us in a ‘free speech pen,’ and Alan just walked up to the fence and kicked it down. Then he flattened the cop that was trying to Mace me and a couple nuns.”

“Assault on an officer?”

“They couldn’t make it stick. He just stepped up to the guy and fell on him. Like a tree, actually.”

“Talking about me, are you?” Alan settles at the table, folding up one beefy joint at a time until he comes to rest on the bench. Absently he scratches the calico’s ears. “Met God while knocking ice off a generator twenty years ago. Talked to him again today, doing the same thing.” His eyes sparkle, meeting Dan’s across the board. Then, “In case he hasn’t already introduced me in absentia, I’m—God damn. God. Damn.”

Alan’s hand remains suspended in midair, halfway across the table toward Kirsten. He is looking at her, though, as if he has just found something unexpected in his boot. Something unpleasant. A snake, perhaps.

“It’s all right.” Dan’s voice is soft. “Your middle name is Anne, isn’t it, Kirsten?”

Shit. Oh, shit shitshitshit.

Tell the truth and shame the devil. Her grandmother had been fond of the saying. Just as a practical matter, Kirsten cannot see how it could make matters worse at this point.

“All right,” she says. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

“Your face has been all over the news at one time or another, you know. Alan, are you going to shake Dr. King’s hand or not?”

“You’re headed for Minot, aren’t you?”

The question hangs in the air above the table, much as Alan’s gesture had done. Duly shaken, the engineer’s hand now engulfs the mug of cooling tea before him. His question, however, shows no sign of withdrawing to a more comfortable distance. Kirsten’s options are limited. Lie, and be caught lying. Tell the truth and bring the good men who have offered her hospitality and at least fleeting respite into even greater danger.