A fourth goes with them, a smaller being with nimble, clever hands and the black half-mask of a bandit. The cats she knows. Even in her dream, Koda is aware of the bobcat’s human form lying warm beside her under the down comforter. The mountain lion, lean muscles rippling like river water under his fur, is the spirit of her warrior brother, Tacoma. As she puzzles over the fourth, scudding clouds blot out the moon and stars, and thunder rolls down, echoing from cliff to promontory and back like the pounding of the great drum of the Sun Dance. She and the other creatures who accompany her scramble for higher ground, leaping now from ledge to ledge, the unknown fourth keeping pace with the rest. Lightning splits the sky above, and thunder again and again about them until the whole world shakes with it. It splits the shelf where the four have taken refuge, sending it plummeting away from the rockface and them with it, and they are falling, falling into the night, into the unformed world from which they came forth at Ina Maka’s summoning, plunging headlong down and down . . ..

“What the hell?”

Somehow the words penetrate the cacophony of thunder and falling rock. Koda is vaguely aware of Maggie as she rolls over and reaches across her for the switch of the bedside lamp. “Sorry,” she adds as the too-bright light stabs at Koda’s eyes and she sits up, half-caught still in her dream.

“What—?”

“Somebody at the door.” Maggie slips from beneath the comforter and into the robe she has left folded over the back of a chair. From the bedside table she takes her pilot’s sidearm and slides a round into the chamber with a metallic chunk. “Be right back.”

Koda reaches for her own shirt as Maggie closes the door softly behind her. Her mind snaps sharply back into the present as she pads barefoot after the other woman. Pounding on the door at 4:30 in the morning can mean nothing but trouble. A blast of chill air from the open door raises goosebumps on her bare legs as she steps into the entryway. Directly across the hall from her, Asimov stands at guard in the living room door, tail erect. Kirsten holds his ruff with one hand and her .45 in the other. Despite the shadows about her eyes, her gaze is sharp and brittle as obsidian.

Koda flashes her a grin, an acknowledgement of one member of the hunting pack to another. Kirsten bares her teeth slightly in return just as Maggie draws the visitor on the doorstep into the foyer and shuts the door behind him. Bundled to the eyes and further masked by the cloud of his own breath, he snaps a salute at Maggie, then, looking past her shoulder, another at Koda and Kirsten. Maggie herself smiles as she turns to find her unexpected backup behind her. “Go on, Corporal,” she says evenly. ‘Dr. Rivers and Dr. King have a stake in this, too.”

“Yes’m,” he says, averting his eyes carefully from Koda’s bare legs and Kirsten’s neat figure, which is covered but is not hidden by her form-fitting thermals. He appears to be addressing the hall tree with its array of hats and jackets. “The General’s compliments Ma’am. There will be a meeting of all staff and senior officers at Wing Headquarters at oh-five-hundred. A number of small forces appear to be moving north from Peterson at Colorado Springs and from the Space Wing at Warren. Threat assessment and response to be discussed.” The trooper salutes yet again. “Ma’am.”

“Thank you, Corporal. My compliments to the General, and I’m on my way.”

Maggie shuts the door behind the courier and turns to Koda and Kirsten with a smile. “Thanks for the backup.” Her eyes become suddenly solemn. “This is the way it’s going to be from now on, you know,” she says softly. “Every unknown person will represent a possible danger. Everything unexplained will be potentially lethal until it is either explained or neutralized.” The Colonel’s gaze shifts to Kirsten. “Women will hold most of the positions of authority in whatever society we have left. We will occupy most of the professions that survive. We will do most of the fighting until the droids are contained. After that happens, we’ll still do most of the fighting—against other women, most likely—and the nation building. The rest of our lives will look a whole lot like tonight.”

A tight smile pulls at Kirsten’s mouth, but there is no irony in her voice. “Forward—into the past.”

“Back to the beginning,” Koda murmurs. And her dream is with her again, the landscape of first creation before humans grew away from Ina Maka and her other children and power belonged to her and her daughters only. With the eyes of vision Koda watches as Kirsten fades, to be replaced by a woman in a brief leather skirt and halter and a towering mask with a bird’s face and a mane of grass and feathers. When she tears her eyes away, Maggie is gone, too, her form melted into the shape of a woman with golden skin and knives glittering in either hand. Between one breath and the next the images vanish, and she is standing in the hallway with two other half-clothed women, cold and in need of coffee. “I’ll make breakfast,” she says, and follows Maggie back to the bedroom to dress.

Fifteen minutes later, Maggie pulls out of the drive with an insulated mug of coffee and a slice of Themungha’s fry bread wrapped around a scrambled egg. Koda can hear water splashing in the bathroom a couple yards down the small cross-hall that connects the entrance to the back of the house as Kirsten showers, and a hint of Maggie’s lavender-scented soap mingles with the aromas of dark-roasted Columbian coffee and melting butter. Koda sets out more of Themunga’s frybread, together with the fresh milk and eggs her mother has sent with her. The eggs are brown, and while Koda’s scientific mind knows very well that their shells merely reflect the color of the hens who laid them, she cannot quite shed her mother’s utter conviction that they are somehow tastier and more nutritious than the white variety. A psychologist might put that down to her mother’s feelings about race, she muses, but she knows too many white farmers and ranchers who are equally convinced. Face it, she tells herself as she sets to chopping sweet onion and tomato, they are better, and there’s no particular reason why.

The rich aroma of sautéd onion and tomato wafts into Kirsten’s room as she pulls on her boots and sweater, mingling in an odd harmony with the herbal soap whose fragrance lingers on her skin. It reminds her, a little, of weekend forays across the border into Tijuana and the exotic prizes waiting in the open air markets for a ten-year-old child with too little companionship and perhaps too much imagination. It reminds her, too, of Twenty-Nine Palms and Los Jacales, the tiny but imcomparable Mexican restaurant just outside the base where she and her parents had breakfast every Sunday. The memory is a small pang in her heart, almost physical, sharper than the ache left by the defibrillators and the bruises that linger on her chest. Carefully she removes a small woven straw box from the pants she wore the previous day and transfers it to her pocket. Guatemalan worry dolls, nearly twenty years old now, bought for her one bright summer day by her father. She still remembers the names she gave each of them, the stories she built about each bright thread-wrapped figure.

They are one of her few remaining material links to the past. Oddly, they seem now as much a talisman of the future as a relic of her childhood. The indigenous peoples they represent, the traditional societies, have the best chance of survival now. As she opens her door and steps into the hall, it comes to her that somehow in the last few days the past has loosened its hold on her. Or she on it; she is not quite sure which it is. For the first time since her flight from Washington, the future has a habitation and a name. It is not just that the earth has not, despite the horror, ground to a halt in its orbit. Somewhere in the depths of her mind is the recognition that, against all odds, she may somehow live to see the birth of a new and very different world.

And that may not be a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all.

She has Asi, whose return she would call miraculous if she were inclined to believe in miracles. And she has—no, not friends exactly—colleagues and companions who share her purpose. “Morning,” she says to one of them as she steps into the kitchen. The window over the sink frames a square of black sky, and she winces. “Middle of the night. Whatever.”

Dakota turns her attention briefly from the stove to smile at her. “Morning. Breakfast’s almost ready.” She nods at the table, where a cup of coffee already steams on one of the two placemats. “Have a seat.”

Kirsten shovels sugar into her cup, together with a generous dollop of cream. The adrenaline rush of an hour ago is gone, and she can feel reaction beginning to set in, her blood sugar starting to slide. The caffeine and glucose hit her system like a thunderbolt, finishing the job the hot water has begun. From underneath her lashes, she watches the other woman as she prepares their meal, moving around the room with the abrupt, angular grace of one of the great predators—a cheetah, perhaps, or a wolf. She wears the same plaid flannel shirt she had on earlier, but now it is tucked neatly into the waistband of the jeans that do little to conceal the taut elegance of her legs. Her hair, which had flowed over her shoulders like a river at midnight, is now caught back with a rubber band. It still sets off the sharp planes of her cheekbones and forehead, the generous lines of her mouth, the inexplicable blue eyes.

Kirsten feels heat rising in her cheeks that has nothing to do with the coffee or its effects. She feels suddenly disoriented, as if the room had suddenly turned itself upside down to leave her hanging weightless from the ceiling. To cover her confusion, she asks, “What do you think is going on?”