BENJAMIN THE UNBELIEVER

(from the memoirs of Benjamin Harlan)

Three days after I betrayed the prophet, the hunting party from Defiance found me at the base of Mt. Shaw: starving, barely conscious, more dead than alive. At least so I'm told; that part of my memory is a blank spot. The hunters fashioned a litter from tree branches, then tied me to it and dragged me back to their hidden settlement. I slept for the next two days, waking up only now and then, often screaming from nightmares that I don't remember.

I went into the wilderness of Midland along with thirty-one people, including their leader, the Reverend Zoltan Shirow. I was the only one who came back out. So far as I know, the rest are dead, including the woman I loved. I tried to save them, but I couldn't. Indeed, perhaps only God could have saved them . . . and if Zoltan is to be believed, then God had His own plans for him.

I begin my story here so you'll know, from the beginning, that it ends in tragedy. This is a dark tale, no two ways about it. Zoltan's disciples were in search of spiritual transformation; I wish I could believe that they achieved their goal, yet there's no way of knowing, for when the time came for me to stand with them, I fled for my life. Though my motives were base and self-serving, I'm the only one who survived.

A lot of time has passed since then, but I've never spoken about what happened until now. Not just because what I endured has been too painful to recall, but also because I've had to give myself time to understand what happened. Guilt is a terrible burden, and no one who considers himself to be a decent person should ever have to shoulder the blame for abandoning someone he loved.

This is my testament: the final days of Zoltan Shirow, God's messenger to Coyote, as told by Ben Harlan, his last remaining follower. Or, as Zoltan liked to call me, Benjamin the Unbeliever.

The prophet fell from the sun on a cold winter morning, his coming heralded not by the trumpets of angels but by the sonic boom of an orbital shuttle. I was standing at the edge of the snow-covered landing field as the spacecraft gently touched down, waiting to unload freight from the starship that had arrived a couple of days earlier. I like to think that, if I had known who was aboard, I might have called in sick, but the truth is that it wouldn't have mattered, because Zoltan probably would have found me anyway. Just as Jesus needed Judas to fulfill his destiny, Zoltan needed me . . . and I needed the job.

Good-paying jobs were tough to find in Shuttlefield. I'd been on Coyote for nearly seven months, a little more than a year and a half by Earth reckoning. My ship, the Long Journey -full name, the WHSS Long Journey to the Galaxy in the Spirit of Social Collectivism -was the third Union Astronautica ship to reach 47 Ursae Majoris. On the strength of a winning number on a lottery ticket and promises of a better life on the new world, I'd spent forty-eight years in biostasis to get away from the Western Hemisphere Union, only to find that the same people who ran the show back there were also in charge out here. And that's how I found myself huddled in a leaky tent, eating creek crab stew and wondering how a smart guy like me had been rooked so badly, when the fact of the matter is that I'm not very smart and the system is rigged to take advantage of losers. So screw social collectivism and the horse it rode in on. On second thought, let's eat the horse-if we had one to eat, that is-and let the guys who came up with collectivist theory go screw themselves.

When it was announced, in the first week of Barchiel,C .Y . 05, that the fourth Union ship from Earth-the WHSS Magnificent Voyage to the Stars in Search of Social Collectivism , or the Magnificent Voyage for short-had entered the system and would soon be making orbit around Coyote, I was the first person in line at the community hall in Liberty for the job of unloading freight from its shuttles. Literally the first; there were nearly three hundred guys behind me, waiting for a Union Guard soldier to open the door and let us in. During the warm seasons, we would have been working on the collective farms, but it was the middle of Coyote's 274-day winter and jobs were scarce, so I was willing to stand in the cold for three hours just for the chance to schlep cargo containers.

And that's why I was at the landing field in Shuttlefield that morning, stamping my feet in the snow and blowing in my hands as I watched the gangway come down from the shuttle's belly. The first people off were the pilot and copilot; perhaps they were expecting a brass band, because they stopped and stared at the dozen or so guys in patched-up parkas who looked as if they hadn't eaten a decent meal in six months. A Guard officer emerged from the crowd, saluted them, murmured a few words, then led them away. Poor bastards-nearly a half century in space, only to find starving peasants. I felt sorry for them, but envied them even more. As members of Magnificent Voyage 's flight crew, they'd have the benefit of warm houses and good food before they reboarded the starship to make the long return flight to Earth. They were just passing through; the rest of us were stuck here.

The passengers came next, a steady parade of men, women, and children, every one of them with the shaved heads and shuffling gait of those who've recently emerged from the dreamless coma of biostasis. Their duffel bags were stuffed with the few belongings they'd been allowed to bring from Earth, their parkas and caps were clean and new, and not one of them had any clue as to where they were or what they'd gotten themselves into. One by one, they stepped off the ramp, squinted against the bright sunlight, looked around in confusion, then followed the person in front of them, who didn't have a clue as to where he or she was going either. Fresh meat for Coyote. I found myself wondering how many of them would make it through their first year. We'd already lost more than forty colonists to hunger, cold, disease, and predators. The cemetery outside Liberty had room for plenty more.

About thirty people had come down the gangway when there was a pause in the procession. At first I thought everyone had disembarked, until I remembered that the shuttles had a passenger load of sixty. There had to be more; the shuttles wouldn't fly down half-full. I had just turned to the guy next to me-Jaime Hodge, one of my camp buddies-and was about to say something like What's the holdup? when his eyes widened.

"Holy crap," Jaime murmured. "Would you look at that?"

I looked around to see a figure in a hooded white robe step through the hatch. At first I thought it was a Savant-just what we needed, another goddamn posthuman-but quickly realized I was wrong. For one thing, Savants wore black; for another, there was also a huge bulge on his back, as if he was carrying an oversize pack beneath his robe. He kept his head lowered, so I couldn't see his face.

And right behind him, a long line of men and women, each wearing identical robes. A few had their cowls pulled up, but most had let them fall back on their shoulders; unlike the other passengers, they weren't carrying bags. What really set them apart, though, was an air of implacable calm. No hesitation, no uncertainty; they followed their leader as if they knew exactly where they were going. Some actually smiled. I'd seen all kinds come off the shuttles, but never anything like this.

The first guy stepped off the ramp, stopped, turned around. Everyone behind him halted; they silently watched as he bent over. The shuttle's thrusters had melted away the snow, exposing charred grass and baked mud; he scooped up a fistful of dirt, then he rose and looked at the people behind him. He said something I didn't quite catch-"the promised land" was all I heard-before everyone on the ramp began to yell:

"Amen!"

"Thank you, Reverend!"

"Hallelujah!"

"Praise the Lord!"

"Oh, yeah. Go tell it on the mountain." Jaime glanced at me. "All we need now, a bunch of . . ."

Then his mouth sagged open, and so did mine, for at that instant the leader opened his robe and let it drop to his feet, and everyone got their first good look at who-or what-had just come to Coyote.

Two great wings the color of brown suede unfolded from his back. They expanded to full length, revealing serrated tips and delicate ribbing beneath the thin skin. Then he turned, and his face was revealed. Narrow eyes were sunk deep within a skull whose jaw had been enlarged to provide room for a pair of sharp fangs; above his broad mouth, a nose shortened to become a snout. His ears were oversize, slightly pointed at the tips. Like everyone else's, his body had been shaved before he had entered biostasis, yet dark stubble was growing back on his barrel chest. His arms were thick and muscular, his hands deformed claws with talons for fingers.

A murmur swept through the crowd as everyone shrank back; only the gargoyle remained calm. Indeed, it almost seemed as if he was relishing the moment. Then he smiled-benignly, like he was forgiving us-and bowed from the waist, folding his hands together as if in supplication.

"Sorry," he said, his voice oddly mild. "Didn't mean to shock you."

A couple of nervous laughs. He responded with a grin that exposed his fangs once more. "If you think I'm weird," he added, cocking a thumb toward the hatch behind him, "wait'll you get a load of the next guy."

Revulsion gave way to laughter. "Hey, man!" Jaime yelled. "Can you fly with those things?"

Irritation crossed his face, quickly replaced by a self-deprecating smile. "I don't know," he said. "Let me try."

Motioning for everyone to give him room, he stepped away from his entourage. He bent slightly forward, and the batlike wings spread outward to their full span-nearly eight feet, impressive enough to raise a few gasps.

"He's never going to make it," someone murmured. "Air's too thin." And he was right, of course. Coyote's atmospheric pressure at sea level was about the same as that of Denver or Albuquerque back on Earth. Oh, swoops had no trouble flying here, nor did skeeters, or any of the other birds and bugs that had evolved on this world. But a winged man? No way.

If the gargoyle heard this, though, he didn't pay attention. He shut his eyes, scrunched up his face, took a deep breath, held it . . . and the wings flapped feebly, not giving him so much as an inch of lift.

He opened one eye, peered at Jaime. "Am I there yet?" Then he looked down at his feet, saw that they hadn't left the ground. "Aw, shucks . . . all this way for nothing."

By then everyone was whooping it up. It was the funniest thing we'd seen in months . . . and believe me, there wasn't much to laugh about on Coyote. The batman's followers joined in; they could take a joke. He let the laughter run its course, then he folded his wings and stood erect.

"Now that we've met," he said, speaking loudly enough for all to hear, "let me introduce myself. I'm Zoltan Shirow . . . the Reverend Zoltan Shirow . . . founding pastor of the Church of Universal Transformation. Don't be scared, though . . . we're not looking for donations." That earned a couple of guffaws. "This is my congregation," he continued, gesturing to the people behind him. "We refer to ourselves as Universalists, but if you want, you can call us the guys in the white robes."

A few chuckles. "We're a small, nondenominational sect, and we've come here in search of religious freedom. Like I said, we're not looking for money, nor are we trying to make converts. All we want to do is be able to practice our beliefs in peace."

"What do you mean, universal transformation?" someone from the back of the crowd called out.

"You're pretty much looking at it." That brought some more laughs. "Seriously, though, once we've set up camp, you're all welcome to drop by for a visit. Tell your friends, too. And we'd likewise appreciate any hospitality you could show us . . . this is all new to us, and Lord knows we could use all the help we can get."

He stopped, looked around. "For starters, is there anyone here who could show us where we can put ourselves? No need for anyone to haul anything . . . we can carry our own belongings. Just someone to show us around."

To this day, I don't know why I raised my hand. Perhaps it was because I was charmed by a dude who looked like a bat and spoke like a stand-up comedian. Maybe I was just interested in finding out who these people were. I may have even wanted to see if they had anything I could beg, borrow, or steal. A few others volunteered, too, but Shirow saw me first. Almost at random, he pointed my way.

And that's how it all began. As simple as that.

The Universalists had brought a lot of stuff with them, much more than they would have normally been allowed under Union Astronautica regulations. Their belongings were clearly marked by the stenciled emblem of their sect-a red circle enclosing a white Gaelic cross-along with their individual names. As I watched, each church member claimed at least two bags, and they still left several large containers behind in the shuttle's cargo bay. True to Shirow's word, though, they politely declined assistance from anyone who offered to help carry their stuff; two members stayed behind to safeguard the containers until someone came back for them. And so I fell in with the Universalists, and together we walked into town.

It's hard to describe just how awful Shuttlefield was in those days. Adjectives like stinking , impoverished , or filthy don't quite cut it; slum and hellhole are good approximations, but they don't get close enough. Zoltan didn't seem to notice any of this. He strode through Shuttlefield as if he was a papal envoy, ignoring the hard-eyed stares of hucksters selling handmade clothes from their kiosks, artfully stepping past whores who tried to offer their services. At first I marched with him, pointing out the location of bathhouses and garbage pits, but he said little or nothing; his dark gaze roved across the town, taking in everything yet never stopping. After a while I found myself unable to keep up with him. Falling back into the ranks of his congregation, I found myself walking alongside a small figure whose hood was still raised.

"Doesn't speak much, does he?" I murmured.

"Oh, no," she replied. "Zoltan likes to talk. He just waits until he has something to say."

Glancing down at her, I found myself gazing into the most beautiful pair of blue-green eyes I'd ever seen. The girl wasn't more than nineteen or twenty, only half my age, and so petite that it seemed as if she would wilt in the cold; yet she carried about her an air of calm that seemed to make her invulnerable to the winter chill. She met my eye, favored me with a delicate smile.

"Just wait," she added. "You'll see."

"That's assuming I hang around long enough." I didn't mean it to sound insulting, but it came out that way.

She let it pass. "You're with us now, aren't you?"

"Well, yeah, but I'm trying to find a place for you to camp." We were near the middle of town. "We're not going to find anything if we keep going this way."

"What about over there?" This from a man walking along behind us; like the girl, his hooded cloak lent him a monkish appearance. He pointed to a small bare spot of ground between two camps. "We could put . . ."

"Oh, no, you don't." I shook my head. "That belongs to the Cutters Guild. And next to them is New Frontiers turf, the people who came on the second ship. Set up here, and you're in for a fight."

The girl shook her head. "We don't wish to quarrel with anyone." Then she looked at me again. "What do you mean by 'turf'?"

That led me to try to explain how things worked in Shuttlefield. "And what do the authorities have to say about this?" she asked. "We were told that there was a local government in place."

"Government?" I couldn't help but laugh out loud. "It's a joke. Shuttlefield's run by the Central Committee . . . Matriarch Hernandez and her crew, Union Astronautica officers from Glorious Destiny . We rarely see them down here . . . they're all in Liberty. So far as they're concerned, everyone here is just a supply of cheap labor. As long as we don't riot or burn the place down, they don't give a shit how we live."

The girl blanched. "What about the Guard?" she asked. "Aren't they supposed to protect the colony?"

"Look around." I waved a hand across the shantytown surrounding us. "You think there's law here? I've known guys who've had their throats cut just because they didn't pay their rent on time, and the Guard didn't do . . . um, squat about it. Same for the Proctors . . . the blueshirts, we call 'em. They work for the Committee, and their main job is making sure the status quo is maintained."

"So why don't you leave?" This from the man walking behind us. "Why stay here if it's so bad?"

I shrugged. "Where would we go?" Before he could answer that, I went on. "Oh, sure, New Florida's big enough for another colony, and there's a whole planet that hasn't been explored . . . but once you get outside the perimeter defense system, you're on your own, and there are things out there that'll kill you before you can bat an eye."

"So no one has left?"

"The original colonists did. That was a long time ago, though, and no one has seen 'em since. Generally speaking, people who come here stay put. Safety in numbers. It ain't much, but at least it's something." I shook my head. "All hail the glories of social collectivism and all that crap."

A look passed between them. "I take it you don't believe in collectivist theory," the girl said, very quietly.

Back on Earth, publicly criticizing social collectivism could earn you a six-week stay in a rehab clinic and temporary loss of citizenship. But Earth was forty-six light-years away; so as far as most people in Shuttlefield were concerned, I could have stood on an outhouse roof to proclaim that Karl Marx enjoyed sex with farm animals, and no one would have cared. "I'm not a believer, no."

"So what do you believe?"

Zoltan Shirow had stopped, turned to look back at me. I'd later learn that there was little that his ears couldn't pick up. For the moment, though, there was this simple question. Everyone came to a halt; they wanted to hear my answer.

"I . . . I don't believe in anything," I replied, embarrassed by the sudden attention.

"Ah . . . I see." His eyes bore into mine. "Not even God?"

Silence. Even in the frigid cold, I felt an uncomfortable warmth. "I . . . I . . . I don't know."

"So you believe in nothing." Shirow nodded almost sadly. "Pity." Then he turned to look around. "So tell me . . . where should we pitch our tents?"

So far as I could see, there was nowhere these people could set up camp. All the available, turf had already been claimed. "There's a few acres just south of here," I said, pointing in the direction I'd been leading them. "That's where everyone from your ship is being put."

"Thank you, but we'd rather have some privacy. Is there anyplace else?"

The only vacant area left was out near the swamps where the tall grass hadn't yet been cut down. Sissy Levin and Allegra DiSilvio lived out there; but Sissy was insane, and Allegra was a hermit, so people tended to leave them alone. I figured that was as good a place as any for the Church of Universal Transformation.

"Over there," I said. "There's only a couple of people out that way."

Shirow nodded. "Very well, then. That's where we'll go."

"You're going to have a hard time. It hasn't been cleared yet."

"We'll manage. You know why?" I didn't answer, and he smiled. "Because I believe in you ." Then he turned to his followers. "Come on . . . that's where we're going."

As one, without so much as a single word or question, they turned and began to follow Shirow as he marched off in the direction I'd indicated. Astonished, I watched as one white-robed acolyte after another walked past me, heading toward a place I'd picked almost at random. So far as they knew, I could have sent them toward a boid nest, yet they trusted me. . . .

No. They trusted him . With absolute, unquestioning faith that what he said was right. I was still staring after them when the girl stopped. She turned, and came back to me. Once again I found myself attracted by those bright green eyes, that air of invulnerability.

"Do you want a better life?" she asked. I nodded dumbly. "Then come along."

"Why?"

"Because I believe in you, too." Then she took my hand and led me away.

The Church of Universal Transformation had come to Coyote well prepared for life in the wild: thirty-one dome tents complete with their own solar heaters, with room for three in each; brand-new sleeping bags; hand and power tools of all kinds, along with a couple of portable RTF generators to run the electric lamps they strung up around the campsite; a ninety-day supply of freeze-dried vegetarian food; adequate clothing for both winter and summer; pads loaded with a small library of books about wilderness survival, homesteading, and craft-making; medical supplies for nearly every contingency.

All these riches were carefully packed inside the cargo containers; once I showed them the unclaimed marshland outside town, fifteen men went back to the landing field and unloaded the crates from the shuttle, lugging the crates across Shuttlefield past townspeople who watched with curiosity and envy. When I asked how they'd managed to get around the strict weight limitations imposed by the Union Astronautica, they merely smiled and gave noncommittal answers. After a while I gave up, figuring that the church had greased a few palms here and there. Compared to the miserable living conditions endured by everyone else in Shuttlefield, the Universalists were ready to live like kings.

Yet they weren't lazy. Far from it; as soon as they had all their gear, they took off their robes, put on parkas, unpacked their tools, and went to work. A half dozen men used scythes and hand axes to clear away the spider bush and sourgrass, while several more picked up shovels and began digging a fire pit and the women erected tents and foraged for wood. Although they weren't yet acclimated to Coyote's thin air, they seldom rested and they never complained; they smiled and laughed as they went about their labors. When one person needed to take a breather, another person simply picked up where he or she had left off.

During all this, the Reverend Shirow walked among them, wearing a wool tunic with long slits on its back through which his wings protruded. Now and then he'd take a few whacks with an ax or lend a hand with a shovel, yet he didn't do much work himself; instead he supervised everyone, instructing them where and how to do their jobs, sometimes pausing to share a few quiet words with one church member or another. Zoltan's private tent was the first to go up, though, and once it was ready for occupancy it wasn't long before he vanished into it. No one seemed to mind; it was as if he had the right to excuse himself while his followers busted their asses.

After a little while I found myself joining in. I told myself that I had nothing else worth doing that day, that I'd get paid for helping unload their stuff from the shuttle. The truth of the matter was that these people fascinated me, and I wanted to be with them. . . .

Well, no. Not quite. One of them fascinated me: the girl I had met earlier. Her name was Greer-no one used their last names, and I never learned hers-and when she shed her shapeless robe, I saw that she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. So, yeah, sex was on my mind, but if getting laid was my only consideration, I could have just as easily bargained an hour or two with one of the ladies at the Sugar Shack. Greer was different; she had accepted me without reservation, despite the fact that I was stranger in dirty clothes, and had told me that she believed in me even though I'd already told her leader that I didn't believe in God or, by extension, he himself.

When you meet someone like Greer, all you want to do is become part of her world. So I put aside my reluctance, picked up a shovel, and spent the better part of the day helping a few guys dig a couple of deep-pit latrines. It didn't put me any closer to Greer, since she was one of the women erecting the tents, but I figured that I had to take this slowly, show her that I wasn't just a creek cat on the prowl.

And it seemed to work. Every now and then, when I paused to rest, I'd spot her nearby; she'd look in my direction, favor me with a shy smile, then go back to what she was doing. I considered crawling out of the pit and going over to chat with her, but none of the men with whom I was working-Boris, Jim, Renaldo, Dex-showed any sign of slacking off, so I decided that it would send the wrong signal. I dug and I dug and I dug, and got blisters on my hands and dirt in my teeth, and told myself that I was just helping out some newcomers, when all I really wanted to do was look into those lovely eyes once more.

They didn't stop working until Uma went down and twilight was setting in. By then most of the land had been cleared; the tents were all up, and a bonfire was crackling in the stone-ringed pit in the middle of camp. That time of evening, most of the colonists would trudge down the road to Liberty, where they'd stand in line outside the community hall to be doled out some leftover creek crab stew. The Universalists were serving stew, too, but it wasn't sour crap made from native crustaceans; it was a thick curry of rice and red beans. No one made a big deal of inviting me to join them for dinner; one of the women just handed me a bowl and spoon, and a couple of men moved aside to let me join the circle around the fire. Much to my surprise, a bottle of dry red wine made its way around the circle; everyone took a sip before passing it on, but no one seemed intent on getting drunk. Instead, it was done in a ritualistic sort of way, like taking communion in church.

Conversation was light, mostly about the trouble everyone had breathing the rarefied air, how hard it was to break ground in midwinter. Soon the stars began to come out, and they all stopped to admire the sight of Bear rising above the horizon. Greer sat across the fire from me; she looked up now and then, smiling when she caught my eye, but no words were spoken between us. I was in no hurry to rush the matter. Indeed, it felt as if I were among friends.

Through all this, Zoltan sat cross-legged at the edge of the fire, surrounded by his followers and yet aloof, involved in the small talk but somehow disengaged, a batlike form whose shadowed features were made eldritch by the dancing flames. After everyone had eaten, and the bottle had made its way around, he gently cleared his throat. Conversation stopped as all eyes turned toward him.

"I think," he said, "the time has come to offer prayer."

His congregation put down their plates and spoons, bowed their heads, and shut their eyes. I ducked my head a little, but didn't close my eyes; I haven't prayed since I was little kid, and didn't see much reason to start again.

"Lord," Zoltan began, "thank you for bringing us safely to this world, and for allowing us to find a new home here. We thank you for this first day on Coyote, and for the blessing of our fellowship. We pray that you'll let us continue in the spirit of the vision revealed during the Holy Transformation, and that our mission here will be successful."

Thinking that he was done, I looked up, only to find that everyone was still looking down. Embarrassed, my first impulse was to bow my head again . . . yet then I saw that Shirow's eyes were open and he was gazing at me from across the fire pit.

In that moment, there were simply the two of us: the preacher and the atheist, the chimera and the human, separated by flames yet bound together by silence. No one else was watching; no one else could see into the place where we had met.

"We thank you for your gift," Zoltan said, never taking his eyes from mine. "Benjamin Harlan, who claims to be an unbeliever, yet who has labored with us and now shares our company. We welcome him as a friend, and hope that he will remain with us through the days to come." My expression must have amused him, for he smiled ever so slightly. "For all these blessings," he finished, "we offer our devotion in your name. Amen."

"Amen," the Universalists murmured, then they opened their eyes and raised their heads. Many looked toward me, smiling as they did so. Uneasy by this attention, I hastily looked away . . . and found Greer gazing at me, her face solemn, her eyes questioning.

"Umm . . . amen," I mumbled. "Thanks. I appreciate it." I picked up my plate, started to rise. "Where should I take this? I mean, for it to . . . y'know, be cleaned."

"You mean no one told you?" Dex asked. "You're doing the dishes tonight."

Everyone laughed, and that broke the moment. "Oh, c'mon," Zoltan said. "Don't worry about it. You're our guest. Stay with us a while."

"No, really . . . I've got to get back to camp."

"Why? Is there something else you need to do tonight?"

How did he know that? How had he come to the realization that there was nothing that required my urgent attention? I had been a drifter before I had come to Coyote, and little had changed since then. Home was a tent in the Long Journey camp; no one would break into it because I had little, other than a filthy sleeping bag, some extra clothes, and a dead flashlight, that anyone would want to steal. My place in life was on the lowest rung of the ladder; I got by through doing odd jobs when I could find them and living off the dole when I couldn't. If I froze to death that night, no one would miss me; my body would be buried in the cemetery, my few belongings claimed by anyone who might want them.

"Well . . ." I sat down again. "If you insist."

"I insist on nothing. Anything you do should be of your own free will. But we're new here, and we need a guide, someone who's been on Coyote for a while. You've already demonstrated a willingness to help us." He grinned. "Why not join us? We have enough to share with one more."

Indeed, they did. I'd seen their supplies and caught myself wondering now and then how I might be able to sneak something out of there without them noticing. Now that Zoltan was practically inviting me to move in with them, such larceny was unnecessary. All I had to do was play the friendly native, and I'd never have to cut bamboo or dig potatoes ever again.

Still, there was no question that this was a religious cult. Not only that, but they followed someone who looked like a bat. The whole thing was spooky, and I wasn't ready to start wearing a white robe.

"And it doesn't bother you that I'm not . . . I mean, one of you?" Several people frowned at this. "No offense," I quickly added, "but I've already told you that I'm not a believer. Hell-I mean, heck-I don't even know what you guys believe in ."

That eased things a bit. Frowns turned to smiles, and a few people chuckled. "Most of us weren't believers when we joined," Renaldo began. "We soon learned that-"

"Your sharing our beliefs isn't necessary," Shirow said, interrupting Renaldo with an upraised hand. "No one here will proselytize or try to convert you, so long as you neither say or do anything intended to diminish our faith. In fact, I enjoy the fact that we have an atheist in our midst." His face stretched into a broad grin that exposed his fangs. "Benjamin the Unbeliever . . . you know, I rather like the sound of that."

More laughter, but not unkind. I found myself laughing with them. I was beginning to like Zoltan; appearances notwithstanding, he seemed like an easygoing sort of guy. And his people weren't all that weird, once you got to know them. Another glance at Greer, and I realized again that I'd like to get to know her most of all.

"Well, if it's Gunga Din you're looking for, I'm your man." I stood up, brushed off the back of my trousers. "I'll come back tomorrow and bring my stuff with me."

"Just like that?" Zoltan looked at me askance. "Don't you have any questions?"

Once again, I was being put on the spot. Everyone gazed at me, awaiting my response. It seemed as if Zoltan was testing me in some way, trying to find out where I was coming from. Oh, I had plenty of questions, all right, but I didn't want to screw the deal. So I picked the most obvious one.

"Sure, I do," I said. "How come you look the way you do?"

The smiles vanished, replaced by expressions of reverence. Some turned their eyes toward the fire; others folded their hands together, looked down at the ground. For a moment I thought I'd blown it. Greer didn't look away, though, nor did Zoltan.

"A good question," he said quietly, "and one that deserves an answer." Then he shook his head. "But not tonight. Come back tomorrow, and perhaps we'll tell you . . . if and when you're ready for the truth."

He fell silent once more. My audience with him was over; I was being excused. I mumbled a clumsy good-bye, then left the warmth of the campfire and began trudging back through the cold to my squalid little tent. Yet I didn't feel humiliated. The opposite, in fact. I had just stumbled upon the best scam since Abraham, and all I had to do was go along for the ride.

Or at least so I thought. What I didn't know was where the ride would eventually take one.

Next morning, I packed up my gear, folded my tent, and bid a not-so-fond farewell to Long Journey turf. The camp chief was surprised to see me go, but hardly choked up about it; he'd never liked me very much, and the feeling was mutual. He'd lose rent for a while, but a new ship had just arrived and eventually he'd find some poor bastard who'd want my space. The few friends I had there were surprised as well, and a couple of them tried to get me to tell them where I was headed, but I kept my mouth shut; I didn't want anyone else horning in on the act. Jaime tried to follow me, but I sidetracked him by cutting through Trappers Guild turf. By the time he finished apologizing to them, I was on the dirt road leading to the edge of town.

The Universalists weren't shocked when I reappeared; in fact, they were expecting me. Renaldo and Ernst took one look at the ragged tent I tried to pitch near their own and pronounced it to be uninhabitable; for then, I'd share quarters with them. Clarice wrinkled her nose when she saw my clothes; burn them, she said, they had plenty to spare. They didn't have an extra sleeping bag, unfortunately, but Arthur relieved me of mine and took it away to be washed. And then everyone agreed that I smelled nearly as bad as the stuff I'd brought with me; before I had a chance to object, water had been boiled, tarps had been erected around a collapsible washtub, and I was being treated to my first hot bath in so long that I'd forgotten what it was like. Nor did I have to do it alone; while Angela washed my feet, Doria rinsed my hair, and neither of them took offense at the embarrassing development that soon occurred between my legs.

I emerged from my bath feeling as clean as the day I was born, wearing clothes so fresh that they crinkled as I walked. And the treatment wasn't over yet; while I was washing up, Greer made breakfast for me. It was light fare-a bowl of hot oatmeal, a couple of slices of fresh-baked bread, a cup of vegetable juice-but it was much better than what I had been eating for the last year. I ate sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of the fire pit; Greer sat at my side, silently watching as I wolfed everything down. I had to restrain myself from licking the bowl, and when I was done, I turned to her.

"That was the best"-I covered my mouth to stifle a belch-"breakfast I've had in years. Thanks."

"You're welcome. And thank you for coming back. We're glad to have you with us." She paused, and added, "And so is Zoltan. He asked me to tell you that."

"Uh-huh." Although church members were hard at work all around us, continuing to put the camp together, Zoltan was nowhere to be seen. "Where is he, anyway?"

"In communion with Byron." Greer nodded toward his tent, a couple of dozen feet away. It occupied the center of the campsite; I noticed that its door flap was closed. "He spends time alone with one of us each day, in meditation. We try to respect their privacy."

I remembered how he had made himself absent the day before, while everyone else was working. "And who decides who gets to, um, meditate with him?"

"He does, of course. He picks someone with whom to share communion, takes him or her into his tent." She pointed to her left forearm. "You know who it is because they'll wear a black sash around their arm. That means they're excused from their chores for the rest of the day, so that they may contemplate the lesson Zoltan has given them." She gave me a sly wink. "So of course we're very happy about it when Zoltan summons one of us," she quietly added, as if letting me in on a secret. "It means we get a day off."

Communion, my ass. I knew a freeloader when I saw one. I had to admit, though, that extending the same privilege each day to one of his followers was a smart move; it kept the troops in line. But I kept my opinion to myself. "I'm sure he's busy. I'll just have to catch up with him some other time."

"Umm . . ." She hesitated. "One thing you should know is that you don't approach him first. When he's ready to speak to you, he will . . . but you'll have to wait for that moment. Then you can talk to him."

I nodded, trying to keep a poker face. "Still, there's a lot I'd like to ask him. After all, he left me hanging last night."

"Such as?"

"Well, for starters, why he looks like a . . ."

Greer's hand darted forth to cover my mouth. Ian happened to be walking past at that moment; he cast a dark look in my direction, then hastened away, carrying an armload of fresh-cut sourgrass to a bonfire burning nearby. Greer watched him go, then removed her hand from my face. "We found something queer earlier this morning," she said, her voice a little more loud than usual. "A plant of some sort. We were hoping you could tell us what it is."

I glanced again at Zoltan's tent. He'd already demonstrated a keen sense of hearing. "Sure," I said, picking myself off the ground. "That's why I'm here."

Greer showed me where I could wash my plate and bowl, then led me through the camp, taking me toward the uncleared marshland. We walked slowly, avoiding the people working around us. "You must never speak of this in public," she said, keeping her voice low. "It's a sacred thing, the very root of our faith. In fact, I shouldn't be telling you even this much . . . Zoltan will, when he feels that you're ready."

I shrugged. "Maybe so, but yesterday you guys got off a shuttle in full view of several dozen people. They all saw him . . . and believe me, word travels fast in Shuttlefield. Even if I don't ask, someone else will."

"I know. The same questions we faced back on Earth." She shook her head. "Outsiders have a difficult time understanding the Transformation, how it's central to our beliefs. That's why we're reluctant to speak of it."

"Sure . . . but Zoltan invited me to join you, right? Even though he knows I'm not a believer." She nodded. "So if he did, and your people have accepted me, wouldn't it make sense for me to know?" She frowned, her eyes narrowing as she considered my question. "I promise, it's just between you and me. Besides, I've already brought my stuff over here. Take my word for it, I'm not going back anytime soon."

"Well . . ." She glanced around. "But only if you won't tell anyone I told you."

I promised her that I wouldn't. By then we were away from the center of the camp; no one else was around. Greer knelt down behind a vacant tent, and in a hushed voice she told me about the Holy Transformation of Zoltan Shirow.

It happened during the Dixie Rebellion, back in 2241 when a small group of Southern nationalists, nostalgic for the United Republic of America-and before that, the Civil War of the 1860s-attempted to stage an insurrection against the Western Hemisphere Union. For several months, the Army of Dixie committed terrorist acts across the South, planting bombs in government offices in Memphis and Atlanta and assassinating government officials in Birmingham, until the Agencia Security succeeded in breaking up the network. With most of their leaders arrested, the surviving Dixies retreated to the hill country of eastern Tennessee, where they battled Union Guard troops dispatched to arrest them.

One of the Guard soldiers sent in for the mop-up operation was one Corporal Zoltan Shirow, a young recruit who had never seen combat duty before. His patrol was searching for a Dixie hideout near the town of McMinnville when they were caught in an ambush that killed the rest of his team. Critically wounded, Corporal Shirow managed to escape in a maxvee, only to crash his vehicle in a patch of woods just outside town.

"This is the First Station," Greer said. "Zoltan the warrior, the sinner without knowledge of God."

"All right," I said. "I got that part. . . ."

She held up a hand. "It was then that he was discovered by the Redeemer, and brought to the Room of Pain and Understanding."

The Redeemer went by the name of Dr. Owen Dunn. The Universalists held a special place for him in their mythology roughly analogous to John the Baptist and Satan rolled into one, but the truth was much more prosaic, as I later learned. Dr. Dunn had moved from Nashville to McMinnville some years earlier, when he set up a small private practice. On the surface, he appeared to be little more than a country doctor, mending broken bones and delivering babies. What no one knew was that he had secretly continued the research that had caused him to be dismissed from the faculty of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

Dunn was interested in the creation of homo superior . Unlike scientists engaged in genengineering, though, he believed that it was possible to refashion a full-grown adult into a posthuman, using nanoplastiosurgical techniques he had developed while at Vanderbilt. The medical school considered his research to be unethical, though, and rightly so; Dunn could be charitably described as a quack, yet it's more accurate to say that he was a biomedical researcher who had gone insane. To put it in blunt-albeit clichéd-terms, he was a mad doctor.

Before leaving Vanderbilt, he stole some experimental nanites from the med school laboratory, and while living in McMinnville he had quietly continued his research, hoping eventually to produce a breakthrough that would restore his standing in the scientific community. To that end, Dunn had invested his earnings in the surreptitious purchase of commercial medical equipment-including a cell regenerator of the type used in hospitals for the cloning of new tissue-which he set up in the basement of his house. When that wasn't sufficient, his experiments took on a gothic air. He resorted to disinterring freshly buried bodies from nearby cemeteries. As Dunn himself would later admit, once he had been arrested and brought to trial, his methods were reminiscent of Frankenstein , even though they yielded positive results. Over time, he learned how to restructure flesh and bone from deceased donors into whatever form he desired.

The major drawback, of course, was that he needed a living person to complete his studies . . . and for what he intended to do, it was unlikely that he'd find any volunteers. So when Dunn found the wounded Corporal Shirow in the woods near his house, he was presented with an opportunity he couldn't pass up.

Zoltan was unconscious and close to death, but it was a relatively simple matter to remove the bullet from his left shoulder, perform emergency surgery, and let him heal. During this time, the doctor kept the soldier unconscious. Strapped down on an operating table in Dunn's basement, there was little chance of anyone finding him; conveniently, the Union Guard assumed that Corporal Shirow had become a deserter. Dunn cloned samples of Shirow's tissue until he had sufficient living flesh and cartilage for his purposes. Once he was sure that the soldier was healthy enough to undergo further operations, Dunn went to work.

"This was the Second Station," Greer told me. "The Redeemer transformed Zoltan into a figure he had seen in his dreams, an avatar of what he considered to be a perfectly adapted form."

"A bat?" I stared at her.

"If that's how you see him, then yes, that's what he looks like. We believe that the Redeemer, however misguided he may have been, was working under divine influence . . . that God instructed him to make a man who would resemble Lucifer, in order to test the will of those who would meet him."

"Who came up with this?"

Greer smiled. "Zoltan did. During the Holy Transformation."

Those who later investigated the incident found that Dunn had drawn inspiration from the Gustav Dore illustrations of The Inferno , the demons Dante described as occupying the inner circles of Hell. Yet the worst thing that Dunn did to Zoltan was to keep the soldier conscious; because he wanted to study his reactions, Dunn used local anesthesia whenever possible. As a result, Shirow was aware of everything that was going on, even as he lay facedown on the operating table while the doctor meticulously grafted new cartilage and muscle to his shoulder blades, patiently building blood vessels and splicing nerves, eventually cutting fatty tissue from Zoltan's thighs and midriff when Dunn's supply of cloned flesh ran low. In his own sick way, Dunn was brilliant; not only were the new wings not rejected, but Zoltan was gradually able to manipulate them.

Once that phase was successful, Dunn went to work on the soldier's face and hands. And for that, too, Zoltan was the sole witness. The cinder-block basement had no windows, and the nearest neighbor lived a half mile away. By the time Zoltan's screams were heard by a former patient who happened to drop by one afternoon to deliver a gift to the good doctor, there was little left of the lost soldier's mind.

"It was during his ordeal," Greer went on, "that Zoltan arrived at the Third Station, for while he suffered, he heard the voice of God, telling him that there was a purpose to this."

"Which was . . . ?"

"God gave Zoltan a mission." Although she spoke in hushed tones, she looked me straight in the eye, making sure that I understood everything she said. "He was to spread His word to all who would look past his new form, telling them that humanity was about to undergo a universal transformation . . . not of the body, but of the soul." She smiled then. "Through the Redeemer's actions, God chose Zoltan to be His prophet."

Another way of looking at it was that Zoltan Shirow went mad. That much was clear to me, even if it wasn't to her. During the endless hours, days, and weeks he'd spent in Dunn's basement lab, held immobile while the doctor carefully reshaped his body, the patient gradually slipped over the edge of sanity. And no wonder; if I'd experienced what he had been through, I probably would have been talking to God myself. The mind finds ways of dealing with pain.

"You know," I said, as gently as I could, "it's possible that Zoltan may be . . ."

"Crazy?"

"I didn't say that."

"But that's what you were about to say." Greer gave me a condescending look. "We've all heard it before. I thought the same thing myself, when I first met him. But, Ben, you have to listen to him. You need to open up your heart, let him . . ."

The tent behind us rustled; another church member had come home, probably to get something from his or her belongings. Reminded that she shouldn't be speaking to me this way, Greer went silent. Touching my arm, she stood up, took a few steps away from the tent.

"Let me show you what we found," she said aloud. "Maybe you know what it is."

I nodded and followed her to past the edge of the cleared area. A few yards away from camp, the sourgrass grew chest high, bowed by the winter snow. We pushed through it until Greer stopped and pointed to several spherical plants growing above ground. Resembling gigantic onions, their thick brown leaves were layered with frost.

"Ball plants," I said. "You should stay clear of them."

"Are they dangerous?"

"Not now, no, but by spring they'll start to flower." I pointed to the wilted stalks protruding from the tops of the balls. "When that happens, they'll attract pseudowasps . . . and believe me, you don't want to get stung by them."

"Thank you. I'll tell the others." Greer stared at the plants. "Why are they so big? Are they fruit or something?"

"Uh-uh. They're carnivorous." I stepped closer to one of the balls. "In late autumn, just before the first snow, swampers take shelter in them. To hibernate, y'know? They curl up together inside to get out of the cold. But one or two always die during winter, and so the plant feeds off their bodies as they decay. It's sort of like . . ." I searched for the right word. "Symbiosis, I think they call it."

She shuddered. "Horrible."

"Just nature." I shrugged. "That's the way things work around here."

It was also much the same way Zoltan worked. Through temptation, he'd managed to attract her and the other followers to take shelter within the folds of his wings; it wasn't until later, once they were held captive, that he fed off them.

Unfortunately, that simile didn't occur to me until sometime after. By then, it was much too late. I had become something of a swamper myself.

Winter went by the way winter does on Coyote: slowly, with every day a little colder than the day before. For anyone who hasn't lived here, it's hard to realize just how long winter lasts on this world; three times longer than on Earth, it sometimes seems as if spring will never come. People rose early in Shuttlefield: knocking fresh snow off their shacks and checking to see if anyone had died during the night before trudging over to the community hall in Liberty to receive another bowl of gruel. And then you'd have the rest of the day to kill. Try to stay warm. Try not to do anything that would draw the attention of the Proctors or the Union Guard. Try to stay alive. Try to stay sane.

It was a little less difficult for me to get by since I'd taken up with the Universalists. Or at least for a while. They'd brought plenty of food with them, and their heated tents were a luxury no one else in Shuttlefield had. They went about their business quietly, a small group of pilgrims in monkish robes who kept to themselves except when they went into town to barter spare items for whatever they might need. In the first few weeks after their arrival, visitors were welcomed to their camp. No effort was spared to make them feel at home, until it soon become apparent that many of those who dropped by were merely looking for handouts. Seeing their rations running low, the Universalists reluctantly stopped being quite so generous, and that's when the trouble began.

The first sign of friction came when Caitlin, one of the younger church members, was harassed by a couple of Cutters as she tried to trade a power cell for a pair of catskin gloves at one of the kiosks. The craftsman tested the cell and claimed that it was depleted by 10 percent; when Caitlin insisted that the cell was fully charged, two Cutters who happened to be loitering nearby-or, more likely, following the girl-stepped in. At some point in the argument, one of them made a grab for Caitlin, saying that he wanted to see what she was hiding beneath her robe. Caitlin managed to get away; she rushed back and told everyone what had happened, and that evening during dinner Zoltan forbade anyone from going out alone.

A few days later, some New Frontiers guys sauntered into our camp, demanding to see "the freak"-meaning Zoltan-and be fed, in no particular order. When Ernst informed them that the Reverend Shirow was in meditation and that we had no food to spare, they got ugly about it; one of them shoved Ernst to the ground while two more tried take off with a generator. That was when I first saw how capable the Universalists were of defending themselves; within moments, the intruders were surrounded by church members wielding quarterstaves they'd fashioned from bamboo stalks. A few bruises later, the gang was sent running; but that evening, for the first time, Zoltan declared that we would begin posting overnight watches, with everyone taking turns guarding the camp.

Yet I can't honestly say that the Universalists were without blame. By early Machidiel, the third month of winter, their food supply was running short, and so the church members were forced to go into Liberty every morning to eat breakfast at the community hall. It wouldn't have been so bad if they had stuck together as a group, but some of them took it upon themselves to take the opportunity to sit with other colonists . . . and once they'd made their acquaintance, they couldn't resist the urge to tell them that the Reverend Zoltan Shirow was God's chosen messenger to Coyote.

By then, I'd been allowed to know the details of the holy mission. According to Zoltan, God had told him to seek out a group of disciples and take them to a place where no one had gone before, where they would spread the word of universal transformation. That was why he had brought his followers to Coyote; they'd done so by taking everything they owned-bank accounts, real estate, personal property, the works-and surrendering it all to the church, which in turn sold or exchanged them for berths aboard the Magnificent Voyage , along with all the supplies they could bribe Union Astronautica officials at Highgate into letting them carry to the new world. So it was no wonder that they had come well stocked; some of these people had exchanged houses for tents, family fortunes for a diet of rice and beans.

And, indeed, the people who joined the Church of Universal Transformation had come from all walks of life. Ian had been an AI systems engineer, Renaldo a schoolteacher, Clarice an award-winning dramatist, Dex an attorney; many came from wealthy families, and I was surprised to find that Doria's husband-her former husband, rather; they'd separated when she joined the church-was a member of the Union Proletariate. Greer had been a student of historical linguistics at the University of Colorado when she, like the others, had heard about the former Union Guard soldier who'd undergone hideous torture at the hands of a madman and survived to proclaim that the human race was on the verge of becoming something new and better. None of them had been poor or ignorant; but they had all been searching for greater meaning in their lives, something in which they could believe: a revival of the soul, far beyond the false promises of social collectivism. And while countless thousands who'd heard Zoltan's message had turned away, this small handful had chosen to cast aside everything else and follow him. They'd found contentment in the church, a purpose for existence; no wonder they wanted to share this revelation with those they met, forgetting Zoltan's early promise that they wouldn't try to convert anyone to their beliefs.

Yet they found no new disciples on Coyote. The people who'd come here had made sacrifices of their own; their lives were hard, and most didn't like the way they were being treated by the Matriarch Hernandez and her cronies. Some of them weren't going to take it anymore; during the long winter, rumors circulated through Shuttlefield about various individuals who'd suddenly vanished, packing up their gear and heading off into the wilderness before the Guard and the Proctors knew they were gone. But the vast majority who'd remained behind weren't ready to surrender themselves to a cult operated by a guy who looked like a demon and claimed to be a prophet. The Universalists had been virtually unknown when they left Earth, but by the end of winter every person in New Florida knew of their beliefs . . . and no one wanted anything to do with them.

Although I lived in their camp, I wasn't a member of their church. Zoltan and I remained on friendly terms, but he never called me into his tent, as he often did with everyone else. This distinction, though, was lost on everyone I knew in Shuttlefield. I'd had few friends before I'd moved out of the Long Journey camp. The attitude, however, of those few I did have, changed toward me; they no longer greeted me when I saw them in town, but walked past as quickly as they could, refusing to make eye contact. At first I thought it was jealousy-after all, I was living in comfort, with no other responsibilities than to tell a bunch of greenhorns what plants or animals to avoid-but it wasn't until I saw Jaime Hodge that I learned the real reason.

He was in line outside the community hall late one afternoon, waiting to be let in for dinner, when I walked up behind him. I usually ate dinner at camp, but I happened to be running an errand in Liberty, so I decided to eat at the hall instead of waiting until I got home. Jaime glanced back when I joined the chow line, saw me standing there, then turned away.

"How's it going, dude?" I asked. "Keeping warm?"

"Yeah. Sure." He looked straight ahead.

"Days are getting a little longer." The sun wasn't down yet, and it was almost 1900. "Think spring is almost sprung."

"Could be."

I tried to think of something to say. The left shoulder of his parka was becoming frayed; I could see tufts of fiber peeking through the seam. "Y'know, I could help you with this," I said, touching his jacket. "I know a girl back at my camp who's good at patching. . . ."

"I can take care of it myself." Jaime shook off my hand. "And if I want religion, I'll get it my own way."

"Huh? Hey, whoa . . . just trying to be helpful. I know someone who's good at patching up clothes. . . ."

"You know what I'm talking about."

I did, but I wasn't about to let it slide. "Jaime," I said quietly, "let me tell you something. I may be staying with them, but I'm not with them. Y'know what I mean?"

He seemed to think about that. Finally, he turned around, looked me in the eye. "If you're not one of them," he said, "then why did you park your tent over there?"

"Free food. No rent. No hassle." I shrugged. "I'm tellin' you, running into these guys is the best thing that's ever happened to me."

I was trying to make it light, but it didn't work. His face darkened, his lip curling into an ugly smirk. "Right. All the food you can eat, and all you have to do is suck up to the bat."

My face grew warm. "Now, wait a minute," I said, taking a step closer. "If you think . . ."

"No, you wait a minute." Jaime planted a hand against my chest, shoved me back. "Maybe I'm hungry, but at least no one's trying to brainwash my ass. So far as I can tell, that's what's going to happen to you . . . if it hasn't already."

There was nothing guys in Shuttlefield liked more than watching a fight. From the corner of my eye, I saw people beginning to close in, forming a circle around us. Beyond the edge of the crowd, I caught a glimpse of a Proctor hovering nearby. He was doing nothing to stop this, though; from the look on his face, he was anticipating a good brawl before dinner. No one was on my side; they knew who I was, and they were hoping that Jaime would smear my face in the mud.

I caught myself wishing that a couple of the Universalists were with me just then. Two of the larger members, like Boris and Jim, and armed with quarterstaves. But they weren't there, and I knew that Zoltan's order that no one should leave camp alone applied to me as well.

"Ease down, buddy." Carefully keeping my hands in my pockets, I lowered my voice. "I'm not trying to start nothing with you."

"Yeah? Well, then go tell your pals not to start nothing with us." Jaime wasn't backing down, but he wasn't pushing it either. Whatever friendship still remained between us was staying his hand. "I don't want to know about God, I don't want to turn into a bat, and if they don't find someplace else to carry on with their weird shit, we're coming over and having ourselves a little Easter egg hunt."

Ugly murmurs from all around us- you tell 'em, guyand we'll bust their asses and so forth-and that was when I realized, for the first time, just how much danger we were in. The fact that a big, mean smile was plastered on the face of the nearby Proctor only confirmed my suspicion; if a mob descended upon the Universalist camp, nothing would stop them. Not the Proctors, not the Union Guard. Zoltan and his followers had become pariahs.

"I hear you," I said. "Is that it?"

Jaime said nothing for a moment. "Yeah, that's it." He stepped back, cocked his head away from the hall. "Go on, beat it. Get out of here."

Disappointed that they weren't going to see a fight, the crowd began to dissolve. Watching them shoulder each other as they sought to resume their former places in line, I couldn't help but feel sorry for them. Caught like rats in a maze, all they could worry about was whether a small band of pilgrims would try to show them a way out. Until that moment, I hadn't realized just how much the Universalists had come to mean to me. They weren't just two hots and a cot, but something more.

I'd lost my appetite, though, so I started to head toward the road leading back to Shuttlefield. Feeling a hand on my arm, I looked around, saw that Jaime had stepped out of line. Thinking he intended to restart our quarrel, I stiffened up, but he quickly shook his head.

"Relax. I don't mean nothing." Behind him, a few people glanced in our direction, but no one did anything. The front door had just opened, and the line was shuffling toward it. "Look, I'm sorry," he continued, his voice a near whisper. "My fault. I shouldn't have started it."

"Yeah, sure. Okay . . ."

"Look, can I give you some advice? Between you and me?" I nodded. "Get out of there. Fold your tent, pack up your gear, and scram. We'll take you back."

"Who will?"

"Your friends, man. The people who care for you . . ."

"I know who they are," I said. And then I turned my back on him and walked away.

Later that evening, after dinner was over and everyone was still seated around the fire, I told them what had happened. Several weeks earlier, when they had still believed that no one would do them any harm, they might have been willing to turn the other cheek. The incident with the New Frontiers gang had put them on their guard, though, and when I got to the part about the not-so-veiled threat Jaime had made, they weren't so complacent.

Greer was sitting next to me. As I spoke, she put an arm around my shoulder; after a few minutes, it traveled down to my waist. She might have only meant to offer comfort, but somehow it didn't seem that way. Greer and I had become close after I'd moved in with the Universalists, but I'd come to accept the fact that, while she clearly liked me, there was little chance that our relationship would ever become more than friendship. While sex wasn't absolutely forbidden among his disciples, abstinence was one of the virtues Zoltan preached, and after a while I'd given up on the idea of sleeping with her. Yet she was snuggling up with me, and it was hard not to become aroused by her touch.

If Zoltan noticed, though, he was too distracted to care. He sat quietly while I spoke, hunched forward with his hands clasped together between his knees, wings folded against his back, gazing into the fire. When I was done, an uneasy silence fell upon the circle. Everyone waited for him to respond, but he remained silent for a few moments.

"Thank you, Ben," he said at last. "I'm glad that you've brought this to our attention . . . and I'm pleased that you were able to escape without harm. It must have been difficult, standing up to a friend like that."

"He's not my friend." My throat felt dry as I spoke. "I thought he was, but . . . well, that's changed."

Zoltan nodded sadly. "Much has changed now." He raised his eyes to look at the others. "Make no mistake . . . if Ben's warning is correct, and I believe it is, then we're no longer safe here. We can post more guards at night, and try to keep everyone out of town unless it's absolutely necessary, but in the long run it will be pointless."

"I don't agree, Reverend." Standing behind Zoltan, Ian leaned against his staff, the hood of his robe pulled up against the cold wind that snapped at the fire. "If someone tries to attack us, I'm sure we can defend ourselves. We've got thirty men and women. . . ."

"Against how many?" This from Boris; sitting on the other side of the fire, his face pensive. "There are almost three thousand people in Shuttlefield. If even a small fraction of them decided to come down on us, we'd be overrun. And if Ben's right, we can't expect any help from the Proctors or the Union."

"But they're supposed to be protecting us." Clarice was usually the quietest member of the group, but that day she wore the black sash of someone who had taken communion with Zoltan; perhaps that status gave her the courage to speak her mind. "Why wouldn't they step in if they saw . . . ?"

"You weren't here for the last First Landing Day." When I spoke up again, everyone went quiet. "That's the annual holiday to commemorate the arrival of the Alabama . . . happens on Uriel 47, at the end of summer. Last year, while the big feast was going on at the community hall, some Rigil Kent guerrillas snuck into Shuttlefield and blew up a shuttle."

"I don't understand." Ian looked confused. "Who-I mean, what-is Rigil Kent? And why would they want to blow up a shuttle?"

"A group from the Alabama . They've staged sneak attacks on Liberty. They come across the East Channel from Midland, mainly to steal guns. The last time they were here, someone named Rigil Kent left a note on the boathouse door, claiming responsibility for the bombing and saying that they would continue until the WHU returned Liberty to its rightful owners. There was a small riot when that happened . . . everyone was dancing around the shuttle, watching it burn. The Guard couldn't do a thing about it, neither could the Proctors. So if they can't stop something like that, how could . . . ?"

"Interesting." Zoltan was intrigued. "And you say they're coming over from Midland?"

"That's where they went after Glorious Destiny arrived." I shrugged. "From what I've heard, though, no one's been able to figure out exactly where they are. It's a big island, four times larger than New Florida. Plenty of places for people to hide. So the Guard hasn't been able to-"

"That's good to know," Renaldo said, "but it doesn't get us any closer to fighting off-"

"You're missing the point." Zoltan raised a hand. "First, there's no way we can defend ourselves . . . not against a lynch mob, at least, and that's the inevitable outcome if we stay here much longer. And second, even if we managed to remain here, it would only be because we've decided to lie low."

He gazed at the others. "But that's not our mission. The Lord has ordained us to spread the word of universal transformation. This is why we're here. It's clear to me, though, that our efforts have become futile."

Several people gasped. Others stared in disbelief at their leader. Feeling Greer tremble, I wrapped my arm around her; she sank closer against me, and I could tell that she was afraid.

"Yes . . . futile." Zoltan's voice became solemn. "Liberty and Shuttlefield are lost to God's word, just as Sodom and Gomorrah once were. Destruction awaits this place, and there's nothing we can do. Therefore, like Lot and his family, we must move on."

"Where?" Renaldo demanded.

"You need ask?" Zoltan looked up at him. "You haven't been listening to our brother Benjamin. He has shown us the way."

At this moment, I saw what was coming. "Oh, no, wait a minute. . . ."

"Be quiet!" he snapped.

It was the first time I'd heard him raise his voice; like the others, I was stunned into silence. Zoltan rose from his seat, his wings unfurling like great brown sails that caught the night wind. In that instant, he became a bat-winged messiah, standing tall against the giant planet looming behind him. If anything else remains with me, it's this single moment.

"The path is evident," he said. "Our destiny is clear. We shall go to Midland."

A range of expressions passed across the faces of his congregation: disbelief, uncertainty, dread. Then, as if a switch had been thrown, acceptance descended upon them. The prophet had spoken. He had received a vision, one that would lead them from peril to the destiny he'd foretold. They had followed him across forty-six light-years to this world; they would happily let him lead them just a few miles more.

Only it wasn't just a few miles, or even a few hundred. And they had no idea what they were getting themselves into. "You don't . . ." My voice faltered. "I'm sorry, but . . . Reverend, but I don't think you understand. . . ."

"Understand what?"

"You don't . . . I mean, Midland is uncharted territory. The only maps we have of it were made from orbit. The only people who've explored the interior are the Alabama colonists who've gone there. . . ."

"Then we'll find them."

"How? No one knows where they are."

He sadly shook his head, as if that were only a minor detail, and I was a child asking foolish questions. "Always the unbeliever. You've been among us for all this time, and still you haven't learned the truth." Knowing chuckles rose from around the fire as he regarded me with fondness. "God will show us the way, Benjamin. He will lead us, and He will protect us."

Then he turned to the rest of his flock. "Rest tonight. We'll begin making our preparations tomorrow. Be discreet, though . . . don't let anyone outside this camp know of our plans. With luck, we'll make our exodus within the next few days, before anyone knows we're gone."

He looked back at me again. "Benjamin, you're welcome to come with us. In fact, we would appreciate your guidance. But you're under no obligation." He paused. "Will you join us?"

"I . . . I'm going to have to think about this."

"By all means, please do."

He bowed his head and led his followers in a brief prayer. Then the meeting broke up; people got up, began going about the usual chores they did before bed. There was nothing for me to do, so I headed for the tent I shared with Ernst and Renaldo when Greer caught me by the arm.

"Where do you think you're going?" she asked.

"Well, it's not my turn to do the dishes or stand watch, so I . . ."

"How lucky. It's not my turn either." She leaned a little closer. "And you know what else? Juanita and Mary have decided that they'd rather spend the night with Clarice and Bethany. So guess what that gives me?"

"Umm . . . a tent by yourself, I think."

Her eyes were bright as she shook her head. "No. A tent with you."

Then she led me away, taking me to a place where, for a few long and memorable hours, we were alone together. By the time the sun rose the next morning, my decision was made. There was no going back.

We left Shuttlefield three days later, in the early morning just before sunrise. No one saw us as we set out on foot, a procession of men and women quietly walking through the silent town, duffel bags strapped to our backs. We took as much as we could carry, but there was much we had to leave behind; once our campsite was found abandoned, no doubt the townspeople would fight over discarded tent heaters, electrical tools, and generators. As it was, we were happy just to leave Shuttlefield in peace.

We took the road into Liberty, then cut across a potato field toward Sand Creek. The creek was still frozen over, so we didn't anticipate any trouble crossing it. A thick ice-fog lay over the field, making it seem as if we were walking through a mist of pearl; we couldn't see more than ten feet ahead, so it came as a surprise when, just before we reached the creek, we came upon a lone figure standing near its banks, wearing a dark cloak with its hood raised.

"Good morning," he said, his voice an electronic purr from the grilled mouth of his metallic head. "I take it you're leaving."

In all the time that I'd been on Coyote, I'd seen Manuel Castro only a few times, and then only from a distance. One of the Savants who'd been aboard the Glorious Destiny , he was the colony's lieutenant governor, Matriarch Hernandez's right-hand man . . . if one could consider a mechanistic posthuman still a man.

Zoltan was at the head of the line. He wore his robe over his folded wings, and as the rest of us came to a halt, he stepped forward, pulling down his hood so that Castro could see him face-to-face. They made an odd pair: black and white, the cyborg and the gargoyle. "With all due respect, yes, we are. I hope you don't take it as an insult."

A strange rattle from the Savant: an approximation of a laugh. "I should, but I won't. The Reverend Zoltan Shirow, isn't it? I'm sorry we haven't met until now. I've been told that your presence in Shuttlefield has been . . . troublesome, shall we say?"

"If there's been any trouble, it hasn't been our fault." Zoltan paused. "I hope you're not here to stop us."

"Not at all. I'm only here to enjoy the sunrise." Castro raised a clawlike hand from beneath his cloak, gestured toward the wan yellow sun burning through the mist. "Beautiful, isn't it? This is the time of day I enjoy the most."

I glanced around, half-expecting to see Guard soldiers emerging from the fog. If Castro had brought any soldiers with him, our exodus would have been short-lived; we were unarmed save for the quarterstaves a few of us carried. But the Savant was alone.

"Then you don't mind?" Zoltan asked.

"Not at all." Castro shook his head. "From time to time, various individuals make an effort to leave the colony. If they're people whose talents we value, then we endeavor to keep them here. More often than not we allow potential subversives the option of going away. We let them think that they've escaped, but believe me, there's little that happens that the Central Committee doesn't know about."

Greer and I gave each other an uncertain look. How could they have known what we were planning? There were rumors that the Proctors had informants among the colonists, yet we had taken pains not to speak to anyone about our plans. On the other hand, perhaps the Savant was merely pretending to know something that he really didn't.

"We aren't subversives." Zoltan's voice took on a defensive edge. "All we ever wanted to do was settle here in peace."

"I won't argue your intentions. Nonetheless, if you'd decided to stay, there would have been trouble, and we would have been forced to take measures against those who might have harmed you, or even you yourselves. So it's just as well that you leave before it comes to that. No one will stop you, Reverend. You're free to do as you will."

"Thank you." Zoltan bowed slightly. "You're quite generous."

"Only looking out for the colony's best interests." Again, the strange laugh. "I assume you're heading to Midland. That's where most people go when they leave here."

The Universalists stirred uneasily, glancing at one another. We'd already decided that, if we were stopped by the Guard, we would claim that we were going to establish a small settlement on the northern tip of New Florida. Yet Zoltan decided to be truthful. "That's our intent, yes. After we're across the creek, we plan to hike downstream until we reach the Shapiro Pass. There we'll build rafts and use them to cross the Eastern Divide until we reach the East Channel."

"Oh, no . . . no. That's the worst way possible. The Shapiro Pass is treacherous. Believe me, your rafts will be destroyed in the rapids."

"You know another way?" I asked, stepping forward so that the Savant could see me.

Castro briefly regarded me with his glass eyes, then he looked at Zoltan once more. "Your guide?" he asked. Zoltan nodded, and the Savant shook his head again. "Once you've crossed Sand Creek, go due east until you reach North Bend. Follow it southeast until you reach the Divide. You should be able to reach it by tomorrow afternoon. There you'll find the Monroe Pass. It's marked on your map, if you're carrying one. That's where you'll find another way to cross the East Channel."

He was right. The Monroe Pass was much closer; I'd decided to use the Shapiro Pass because that was how the Montero Expedition had left New Florida three years ago. "What do you mean, we'll find another way to cross?"

"As I said, others have gone before you. You'll find them. Trust me."

I wasn't quite ready to trust Savant Castro, but if what he said was true, it would cut a couple of days off our journey. And I had to admit, any way off New Florida that didn't entail braving the Shapiro Pass sounded good to me. I looked at Zoltan and reluctantly nodded; he said nothing to me, but turned to Castro once more. "Thank you. We're in your debt."

"Not at all. But tell me one thing . . . what do you expect to find out there? Surely not the original colonists. They've made it clear that they don't want anything to do with us . . . except for whatever they can steal in the middle of the night."

"We're hoping we may be able to change their minds." Zoltan smiled. "Since you're being helpful, perhaps you can tell us where we might find them."

If the Savant could have grinned, he probably would have. "If I knew that . . . well, things would be different. I'm sorry, but you'll have to seek them out yourselves. In any event, good luck to you. Farewell."

And with that, he stepped back into the mist, drifting away like a black wraith. We heard the crunch of his metal feet against the icy ground, then he was gone.

Zoltan waited a few moments, before turning to the rest of us. "If Pharaoh had let the Children of Israel leave Egypt so easily, then a lot of trouble could have been avoided. I take this as a good sign."

Or an omen, I thought. Moses and his people spent forty years in the wilderness not because of anything the Egyptians did to them, but because of what they did to themselves . . . including the worship of false idols.

But I didn't voice my thoughts, and perhaps that was the first act of my betrayal.

We crossed Sand Creek without incident; the ice was still strong, and we safely made it to the other side. Instead of going downstream, though, we took the Savant's advice and went due east, following the orbital map and electronic compass Ian had bartered from a kiosk for one of our generators. As the group's guide, I was the one entrusted with the map and compass, but it wasn't long before we found that they were unnecessary; a trail had already been cut through the high grass and spider bush on the other side of the creek, marked here and there with strips of blue cloth tied around trunks of faux birch. As Castro said, someone else had gone before us.

We marched all day, stopping now and then to rest. By early evening we'd reached North Bend, a broad stream that ran parallel to Sand Creek. Beyond it we could make out the great limestone wall of the Eastern Divide, only about fifteen miles to the southeast. It was tempting to press onward, but we were footsore and tired, so Zoltan called a halt. We pitched our tents and gathered wood, and by the time Uma went down and Bear was rising to the east, we were gathered around a warm campfire, eating beans and gazing up at the stars. After dinner Zoltan led his followers in prayer, asking for His help in the long journey ahead.

I prayed for something else: a few more weeks of cold weather. There was another reason why we'd left the colony on short notice. The grasslands of New Florida were haunted by boids: huge, carnivorous avians, known to lurk in the tall grass and attack anything unwise enough to pass through their territory . . . and beyond Shuttlefield and Liberty, guarded by a broad circle of motion-activated particle-beam guns, all of New Florida was their domain. But the boids migrated south during winter, so for a few months it was possible to hike across the northern part of the island without worrying about them. And just as well; boids had no fear of humans, and our bamboo staffs would have been useless against them.

Still, I volunteered for the overnight watch and didn't return to the tent I shared with Greer and Clarice until Michael relieved me shortly after midnight. Greer's body kept me warm, as she had ever since our first night together, but it was a long time before I was able to go to sleep. I couldn't help but remember the exchange between Zoltan and Castro.

The Savant asked the Reverend what he expected to find out there. Why had Zoltan evaded his question? What was he expecting to find out here?

I didn't know, and it would be a long time before I learned the truth.

Daybreak came cold and bleak, with a new layer of frost on the ground. Even though we were only about twenty-five miles from the colony, it seemed as if Shuttlefield was a comfortable place we'd left far behind. A breakfast of lukewarm porridge heated over the dying cinders of our campfire, another prayer by Zoltan, then we hefted our bags onto our aching backs and continued down the trail, following the creek toward the Eastern Divide.

The day was bright and clear, and by the time Uma had risen high in the cloudless blue sky, it seemed as if the world had thawed a bit. Everyone's spirits began to rise; the Universalists sang traditional hymns as they marched along-"Onward, Christian Soldiers," "The Old Rugged Cross," "Faith of Our Fathers"-while the Eastern Divide grew steadily closer, no longer a thin purple line across the horizon but now a massive buttress through which West Bend had carved a narrow gorge.

We were within the shadows of the Eastern Divide, close enough to the Monroe Pass that we could hear the low rumble of rapids, when we came upon a sign: a wooden plank, nailed to the burned stump of a blackwood tree that had been felled by lightning. I was at the front of the line, so I walked closer to read what was painted on it:

WELCOME TOTHOMPSON'SFERRY PASSAGENEGOTIABLE-TRADE& BARTER STOPHERE-LAYDOWNGUNS-YELLLOUD& WAIT TRESPASSERSSHOT ONSIGHT!

Shading my eyes with my hand, I peered up at the limestone bluffs. No movement save for the breeze wafting through the bare branches of some scraggly trees that clung to the rock. The sign looked old, the paint faded and peeling. No telling how long it had been there.

"Hello!" I yelled. "Anyone there?" My voice echoed off the bluffs; I waited another few moments, then stepped past the sign.

A high-pitched zeee! passed my right ear, then a bullet chipped a splinter off the top of the sign. A half second later, the hollow bang of the gunshot reverberated from somewhere up in the rocks. I instinctively ducked, raising my hands above my head.

"Hey, cut it out!" I shouted. "I'm unarmed!"

"Can't you read?" a voice yelled down.

"I can read . . . can't you hear?" I straightened up, keeping my hands in sight. From the corner of my eye, I could hear the Universalists ducking their heads or diving for cover behind spider bushes. All except Zoltan, who calmly stood his ground, a little annoyed but otherwise unperturbed.

"We're not carrying!" I couldn't see where the shot had come from, but whoever had opened fire on me was a crack shot; otherwise, I would have been missing part of my skull. "We're just trying to . . . !"

"We come in peace." Zoltan barely raised his voice, yet he spoke loud enough to be heard up on the bluffs. "We mean no harm. We only want passage across the channel." Then he turned to the others. "Come out," he said quietly. "Let them see you."

His followers reluctantly emerged from hiding, leaving their packs where they'd dropped them. Everyone looked scared, and some seemed ready to run back the way we'd come, but as always, their faith in their leader was greater than their fear. Soon they were all out in the open once more, their hands in plain view.

A minute passed, then a figure emerged from hiding among the boulders near the entrance to the pass: a long-haired boy, wearing a catskin coat a size too large, his trousers tucked into old Union Guard boots. He ambled toward us, a carbine cradled in his arms. He couldn't have been more than twelve, yet his distrustful eyes were those of a man twice his age.

"Who are you?" he demanded, looking first at me, then at Zoltan.

"The Reverend Zoltan Shirow, of the Church of Universal Transformation." Zoltan spoke before I could answer. "These people are my congregation, and this is our guide, Benjamin Harlan. I apologize for our lack of manners. We didn't think anyone was here."

"Huh . . . yeah, well, you got fooled, didn't you?" His gaze swept across everyone, taking us in. "You have anything to trade, or are you just. . . ?

Then he stopped, cocking his head slightly as if listening to something we couldn't hear. I recognized the motion; the boy had a subcutaneous implant. He murmured something beneath his breath, then looked at us again. "Okay, c'mon. Pick up your stuff and follow me." He grinned. "Mind yourself, though. My brother's up there, and he hasn't shot anyone since last week."

It sounded like teenage braggadocio, but I wasn't ready to push it. "After you," I said, then hefted my bag and let him lead the way.

The trail took us into the Monroe Pass, where it became a narrow shelf that had gradually eroded into the limestone. We went slowly, picking our way across slick rocks as icy water sprayed us; one false step meant falling into the rapids churning just a few feet below. The kid stopped every now and then to look back, making sure that he hadn't lost anyone; it occurred to me that he and his brother didn't really need to stand guard duty, because the gorge itself was its own natural fortification. Whatever they were protecting, it must be valuable. Either that, or they simply didn't like people dropping in unannounced.

We emerged from the gorge to find ourselves on the other side of the Eastern Divide. A stony beach lay beneath the towering white wall; West Bend emptied into the East Channel, and only a couple of miles across the water lay the rocky coast of Midland.

Thompson's Ferry was a small village of faux birch-shingled cabins elevated on stilts, with smoke rising from their stone chimneys. Goats and pigs sulked within small pens matted with cut sourgrass, and from somewhere nearby I heard the barking of a small dog. Jutting out into the channel was a small pier, against which was tied a large raft; skin kayaks lay upside down on the beach, and fishing nets were draped across wooden racks. I smelled salt and fish and woodsmoke, and in the half-light of the late-afternoon sun, the whole scene looked as gentle as a painting.

But then I heard pebbles crunch underfoot behind us, and I looked around to see a young man standing on a footpath leading up to the top of the bluffs, holding a rifle in his hands. Seeing me gazing at him, he gave me a tip of his cap. This was the sentry who'd fired the warning shot; he'd been tailing us ever since we'd entered the pass. I nodded back to him: no hard feelings, mate, just don't use me for target practice again.

The kid led us to a lodge in the center of town, a large blackwood cabin with a sat dish fastened to its chimney. "Hang on," he said. "I'll go get the boss." But he was only halfway up the back porch steps when its door swung open and the chief appeared.

Six feet and a few inches tall, with a lot of muscle packed into skin that looked as weatherbeaten as his clothes and a greying beard that reached halfway down his chest, he looked as if he had been molded by the world in which he lived: stone and sand, tidewater and salt. "Thank you, Garth," he murmured. "I'll take it from here." He stepped to the railing. "Let's get down to the basics. Name's Clark Thompson, and this is my place. You've already met my nephew Garth, and that's Lars, my other nephew . . . they're sort of the reception committee."

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Thompson." Zoltan walked forward. "I'm the Reverend Zoltan. . . ."

"Already know who you are, Rev. We're a long way from Shuttlefield, but word gets around." Thompson grinned; he was missing a couple of teeth. "Even if you hadn't split town a couple of days ago, it's hard not to hear about someone who looks the way you do."

Laughter from around us. I turned my head, saw that about twenty people had appeared, emerging from the adjacent cabins: several men, a few women, three or four kids, each of them as tough as Clark Thompson and his kin. A couple of men carried guns; they weren't aiming them at us, but it was the second time that day I'd been welcomed by men with loaded weapons, and I still wasn't quite over the first time.

Zoltan remained unruffled. "If you know who we are, then you know why we're here." Thompson nodded, but said nothing. "All we want is a way across the channel. We're willing to trade whatever we can for-"

"Happy to hear it. My boys wouldn't have led you here if you weren't. But only a few people know about this place, and most of them are here right now. So who told you how to get here?"

"Savant Castro." Thompson scowled as I said this; behind me, I could hear whispers through the crowd. "He told us they sometimes let people leave, if he thinks keeping 'em around is more trouble than it's worth. I guess we qualify."

"Maybe so . . . but Manny Castro doesn't strike me as any sort of humanitarian." Thompson shook his head. "Damned if I know what it is, but he's got his own agenda." He absently gazed up at the Divide as if trying to make up his mind. If he refused to give us a ride across the channel, we'd have little choice but to turn back; given the size of the settlement, it was obvious we couldn't remain there. "All right," he said at last, "we'll get you across the channel. We've never said no to anyone, and I'm not about to start now."

"Thank you." I tried not to let my relief show.

"It's my business. Just one more question . . . where do you think you'll go, once you reach Midland?"

"We want to find the original colonists," Zoltan began, and everyone standing around broke out in laughter. He waited until it subsided, then went on. "Any help you may be able to give us would be appreciated."

"Can't help you much there, preacher," Thompson said. "We've only seen them a few times ourselves, and when we do they're not very sociable."

That had to be a lie. Thompson's Ferry was the only settlement on New Florida besides Liberty and Shuttlefield; if the Alabama colonists came there at all, then it must be to trade. And when people get together to trade, they usually swap more than material goods. But we were on the chief's good side, so I kept my mouth shut.

Thompson pointed to a spot on the beach a few yards away. "You can camp out over there. Dinner's on the house . . . hope you like chowder, because that's the only thing on the menu. We'll dicker over the fare later." He turned to his younger nephew. "C'mon, Garth. Let's tell your aunt we've got guests."

That was the end of it. Garth followed his uncle into the lodge; the crowd began to melt away, and the Universalists carried their gear to the place where Thompson said we could pitch our tents. Exhausted, I slumped down on the steps. The sun was beginning to set behind the Eastern Divide, with a stiff wind coming off the channel, but for the moment we'd found a place of refuge, and some semblance of hospitality.

And yet, I couldn't help but wonder whether I should have taken Jaime's advice.

Dinner was served in the lodge, within a main room illuminated by fish-oil lamps hung from the rafters and warmed by a driftwood fire blazing in the stone hearth. Apparently the residents of Thompson's Ferry gathered there every night, for when we trooped in through the door, we found the locals already seated at a long blackwood table that ran down the center of the room. Space was made for us at the table, and soon an enormous pot of redfish chowder was brought out from the kitchen by a pleasant older lady whom everyone called Aunt Molly. Talking nonstop, she ladled out bowls of chowder, added a thick slice of homemade bread to each plate, then handed them to the nearest person, who passed them down the line. No one began eating until everyone was served, though, and after Aunt Molly had bowed her head and said grace.

The only persons missing from the table were Zoltan and Renaldo. Zoltan had vanished into his tent as soon as it was erected, and hadn't reappeared by the time his followers had finished setting up camp. Once more, I was mystified by his reclusiveness, even if it didn't seem to bother anyone else. It was Renaldo's turn to wear the black sash around his left forearm; he'd begged another bowl of chowder from Aunt Molly, then quietly went out the door with it, apparently taking it to Zoltan's tent. Clark Thompson watched him go, but said nothing. After dinner he tapped me on the shoulder and gestured for me to follow him into an adjacent room.

"Pretty rude of the Reverend, skipping out like that," he said once he'd shut the door. "Can't say I appreciate it very much."

"He's like that. Sorry." The walls were crowded with stacked barrels, with boxes and crates and coiled rope scattered here and there, surrounding a table and two chairs beneath an oil lamp. "Has to have his private time once a day. To meditate with his followers."

"Yeah, well . . ." Thompson turned up the lamp a little higher, then sat down behind the table. "Next time he decides to meditate when my wife's cooked a meal for him, I'm going to feed him fish-head soup instead."

"Knowing him, he'd probably thank her for it."

A quizzical smile. "You're not with them? Oh, I can see you're traveling with 'em . . . but you're not a true believer?"

"Is it that obvious?"

"Like the nose on your face. Knew it the moment you walked into town. Everyone else kept quiet, like a herd of sheep following the Judas ram. You're the only one who spoke up."

"I'm their guide. Sort of a job, y'know. I don't . . ."

"That's your business, friend." Thompson held up a hand. "I don't care why you've fallen in with these characters. What I want to know is, why did Castro send you my way?"

"I've told you everything I know." I sat down in the other chair. "If it makes any difference, it was a surprise to me, too."

"Oh, it makes a difference." He pulled out a penknife, flicked it open, and idly began to trim his fingernails. "We've got about thirty people living here, and every one of them came from Shuttlefield. My wife and I, along with the boys, were aboard the Glorious Destiny . When we saw what that bitch Hernandez had in mind, we grabbed what we could and took off. Started out with just one cabin, but it wasn't long before others followed us."

"From other ships?"

"Uh-huh. The ones who managed to get away, that is. We've built this place from scratch and put in the ferry late last summer. At first it was just so we could going hunting on the other side of the channel, but every so often someone shows up who wants to get over to Midland . . . usually folks like you, fed up with Shuttlefield. Until now, though, we thought the Union was unaware of our existence." He let out his breath. "And now you tell us that Manny Castro not only knows we're here, but he's even willing to provide exact directions."

"Maybe he doesn't consider you a threat."

"Maybe." Thompson silently regarded me for a few moments, as if trying to decide whether to trust me. Then he leaned back in his chair to open a crate behind him, pulling out a ceramic jug. Pulling out the cork, he passed it me. "Bearshine," he murmured. "Sort of like whiskey, but distilled from corn mash. Be careful, it's got a kick. Don't worry, you won't go blind."

He was right about the kick. I could have started a fire with the stuff. The booze scorched my throat but made a nice warm place in my stomach. "Like it?" he asked. "Now ask yourself, how would we be able to make corn liquor when we can't grow corn here?"

I thought about it for a moment. "You're getting it in trade."

"Sure we are. And they grow corn in Liberty. That's not where this comes from, though." He nodded in the general direction of the channel. "We're getting it from over there, from people who sometimes come back across. But I haven't carried any corn on my ferry."

"And you just said you've been running the ferry since only late last summer."

"Uh-huh. That's right." He tapped the jug with the blade of his knife. "So where do you think this stuff is coming from?"

I realized what he was getting at. "The original colonists."

"Yup." He nodded. "You say you're their guide. I take it that means you have a map. Are you carrying it now?"

I reached into my parka, pulled out the map we had been using. Thompson moved the jug aside as I spread it across the table. "Okay," he said, pointing to our location on the east coast of New Florida, "here's where we are, and over there is where we'll put you off tomorrow morning." His finger traced down the rocky western coast of Midland. "There's a place about a mile south where you can climb up the bluffs . . . don't worry, you can't miss it. At the top of the ridge, you'll find a path leading southwest."

"Where does it go?"

"When my boys and I hacked it out, it went back about thirty miles. Haven't been down it lately, so I don't know if it's been expanded since then. But here's the important part." He pointed farther inland to a highland region that covered most of the subcontinent. "That's the Gillis Range, with Mt. Shaw down here. From what I've been told . . . and believe me, it ain't much . . . somewhere on the other side of Mt. Shaw is where the Alabama crew is holed up."

Like most maps of Coyote, mine wasn't very detailed; it had been made from high-orbit photos, and 95 percent of the planet hadn't been explored, let alone named. It appeared, though, that the Gillis Range split in half at its southern end, with a waterway forming a broad river valley between Mt. Shaw and another mountain to the southeast. It would make sense that the original colonists would settle in there: a source of fresh water and plenty of land, but protected on three sides by high terrain.

"I see." I traced my finger around the southern edge of the range. "So all we'd have to do is hike around Mt. Shaw. . . ."

"Uh-uh. Think again." Thompson pointed from the East Channel to the base of the mountain. "That's about a hundred and fifty miles. It's flat country, more or less, so you can make it in about a week, maybe two. But if you decide to go all the way around the range, then come up the valley, that's going to be . . . what? Another two hundred, maybe three hundred miles?"

"I guess. We can make it."

"You guess?" Thompson raised his eyes from the map. "Let me remind you of something . . . we're halfway through Machidiel, which means we're coming into spring. The boids will start migrating north pretty soon, and the lowlands are their stomping grounds. And I notice your people aren't carrying any firearms."

He was right. Almost four hundred miles across uncharted terrain, with nothing more than quarterstaves for protection . . . useless against a creature capable of ripping your head off with one swipe of its beak. Not only that, but we carried precious little food. We might be able to forage for a while, but the longer we stayed out in the open, the less chance we'd have of survival.

"Someone must have made it. How else would you be getting this?"

Thompson smiled. "That's what I figure." He pointed to Mt. Shaw. "If there's a new trail, then it must lead straight over the mountain. And even if there isn't one, it's the most direct route, and it'll cut a couple hundred miles off your trip."

I stared at the map. There was no indication of how tall the mountain was or how steep its incline might be. Yet Clark Thompson had a good point; if we could make it across Mt. Shaw, then we'd come down into the valley where the Alabama colonists were likely to be hiding. It was a risk, to be sure, but it was the best shot we had.

"Thanks." I picked up the jug, took another slug of bearshine. "What do I owe you for this?"

Thompson sat back in his chair, thought about it for a moment. "If you make it, come back sometime and tell me."

"So you'll know where you're getting your booze from?"

"No," he said quietly. "So I'll know that there is indeed a God, and that She looks out for holy fools."

The ferry was a raft comprised of several blackwood logs lashed together, with a rotary winch from a rover mounted in its center. A thick cable made of coiled tree vine was stretched all the way across the East Channel, anchored to boulders on both sides of the river; it fed through the winch, and when Lars and Garth stood on either side of the raft and turned the crank hand over hand, the raft was slowly pulled across the channel. It might not have been the quickest or easiest way of getting across the East Channel, but it was the safest; the ferry was located about fifteen miles north of the shoals at the channel's most narrow point, and the swift current could easily have swept small boats downstream.

Clark Thompson might have been sympathetic to us, but he was also a businessman. It took three round-trips to get everyone to Midland, and it cost us six of our tents and three data pads; he already had enough lanterns and warm clothes. Yet he was generous enough to supply us with some dried fish, and he slipped me a jug of bearshine when no one was looking. I shook hands with him, and he wished me good luck; the last I saw of him, he was standing on the wharf, watching us go.

By the time the Universalists were all on the far side of the channel, the day was more than half over. Following Clark's instructions, I led them down the stony beach until we reached a place where a landslide had occurred long before, opening a narrow ravine in the limestone bluffs. A long, steep climb upward through the breach, and we came out on top of a high ridge. Behind and below us lay the East Channel . . . and before us stretched Midland, a vast savanna leading to forest, the Gillis Range visible in the distance as a ragged purple line across the horizon.

Once I found the trailhead Clark had told me about, I sat down on a boulder, spread the map across my lap, and pulled out the compass. When I had my bearings, I put everything back in my pocket, shouldered my pack once more, and began to lead the others down the hillside.

Everyone was happy; I remember that clearly. We'd made our escape from New Florida; the day was bright and warm, the road ahead clear and easy to follow. The Universalists began singing "God of Our Fathers" almost as soon as we reached the bottom of the ridge; I joined in even though I didn't know the words. And most of all, I remember Greer. She walked a few steps behind Zoltan, but whenever I looked back at her it was as if she were right beside me; the smile never left her face, and her eyes were as bright as the day we'd first met. After a while, Zoltan permitted her to join me; together we marched into the wilderness, two lovers with nothing before us save the brightest of futures.

It was a wonderful moment, one I'll never forget or regret. And like all wonderful moments, it didn't last very long. A pleasant dream, with the nightmare soon to follow.

New Florida, for the most part, was flat terrain, wide-open grass-lands laced by streams, interspersed by swamps and occasional woods. During winter, when the ground was frozen and the swamps were dry, you could walk across it with relatively little effort.

Midland wasn't like that. By the end of the third day, we'd left the savanna and entered a vast rain forest that gradually became more dense, with faux birch and spider bush disappearing beneath a canopy of trees of a kind we'd never seen before, somewhat resembling elms except with thicker trunks and broader leaves, from which rough-barked vines dangled like serpents. Even in midday, sunlight seeped through only in sparse patches; it was cold down on the forest floor, the overgrowth brittle with frost.

We could no longer see the mountains; it wasn't long before we could no longer see the sun either, and on the fourth day we lost the trail itself. I don't know whether we'd taken a wrong turn or if the trail simply ended; I only know that, in a moment of clarity, I came to the realization that the path had simply vanished. We doubled back, losing an hour in our effort to retrace our steps, but the trail was no longer there. All we had left was the map and the compass I carried in my pocket; without them, we would have been completely lost.

Day in and day out, we fought our way through the forest, using our staffs to hack our way through dense foliage. At night, we huddled together against the cold; the dead branches we found were either frozen or too rotted to be burned, so what little warmth we got was from setting fire to small piles of twigs and leaves. No longer having as many tents as we once had, we were forced to double up in our sleeping arrangements, with four or five people crammed together into tents meant for three. At least it helped keep us warm; Greer and I learned how to zip our bags together, and we went to sleep with our arms around each other, jostled by others sharing our tent.

Yet Zoltan always claimed a tent for himself, in order for him to continue his daily communion with God. He may have had some interesting chats with the Lord during that time, but if he had, he wasn't sharing what he'd learned with us. He became silent, rarely speaking, and although he still invited others to join him in meditation, he ceased leading us in prayer in the morning, and after a week or so he neglected to offer prayer in the evening as well. By then the hymns had stopped. Ian and Renaldo got into a fistfight one morning over whose turn it was to carry a tent, and Clarice and Ana stopped talking to one another over something that occurred when no one else was watching.

But the gradual disintegration of morale wasn't the worst, nor were the endless days of making our way through the rain forest, or even the cold. All those miseries we might have been able to endure, had it not been for one more thing.

Hunger.

When we'd set out from Shuttlefield, we'd packed as much food as we could carry on our backs, along with our tents, clothes and sleeping bags. There were thirty-two of us-thirty-one, rather; as always, Zoltan never carried anything-so we were able to bring quite a lot of food, and we'd stocked up on more at Thompson's Ferry. I figured that, by the time we began to run low, we would be only a few days away from wherever the original colonists had settled, and all we'd have to do was go on short rations for a while. If worse came to worst, we could live off the land; a few of the native plants were edible, and I knew which ones they were.

What I didn't take into account was the fact that we were traveling through unknown territory in the dead of winter. First, we burned up a lot of calories, not just hiking but also keeping warm. We filled up at breakfast, then ate again at night: two meals a day for thirty people, not counting all the times when someone would nibble a biscuit or open a can of beans while we were taking rest breaks, and we used up our supplies very quickly. I didn't notice our rate of consumption at first because my mind was focused on getting us through the forest, and I was also half-expecting Zoltan to do his part by keeping his people in line. But Zoltan said nothing, and almost two weeks went by before it hit me that our packs were getting lighter and we were leaving behind a trail of plastic wrappers and cans.

Second, none of the plants I'd learned how to eat on New Florida grew in the forests of Midland. Sourgrass, cloverweed, Johnson's thistle . . . all were crowded out by the dense shrub that made up the undergrowth, and even those plants had gone into long-term dormancy. The streams and creeks where we might have found fish were frozen over, and any animals that we might have been able to trap were either in hibernation or had gone south for the winter. It was all we could do just to find dry tinder for firewood.

Most of the Universalists were city people before they'd left Earth. They'd done pretty well so far, making their way through an alien jungle carrying forty or fifty pounds on their backs; their faith had supplied motivation where experience had failed. But by the time we'd stopped eating breakfast and were skimping on the evening meal, the base of Mt. Shaw was still a day away. Spirits were running low, and Zoltan was almost totally incommunicado.

Unless you've been there, you don't know what it's like to face slow starvation. I'm not talking about skipping a meal or two, or even fasting; I mean the desperation that comes with the realization that you're running out of food, and the knowledge that when it's gone, it may be a long time before you eat again. There was a hollow ache in the pit of my stomach where there should have been weight, and an invisible band had formed on either side of my skull, pressing in on my temples. We had to find something to eat, and soon.

Just before we reached Mt. Shaw, we came upon a low swamp. The ice was thin, so we had to detour around it, but then I noticed a small cluster of ball plants growing on a tiny island in its center. I'd sooner throw a dead rat in a cook pot than a swamper. Nonetheless, they could be eaten, and they hibernated within ball plants, so I drafted a couple of guys, and we waded across the swamp, each footstep breaking through the ice and filling our boots with frigid slush, until we reached the island.

While the others waited behind me, I pulled out my knife and used it to cut open the thick leaves of the nearest plant. I intended to pull out a few sleeping swampers, then have the other guys club them to death. Skin 'em, stew 'em, eat 'em up . . . that was the plan.

What I'd neglected was the fact that pseudowasps sometimes also hibernated inside the balls. It was one of the more interesting symbiotic systems that had evolved on Coyote: pseudowasps protected the ball plants during summer, during which time they pollinated their flower tops; in late autumn, swampers curled up within the balls, and the pseudowasps retreated into their underground nests. Yet now and then, the odd pseudowasp or two would seek refuge within the ball plants themselves, perhaps to ward off any predators who might try to get at the swampers.

That's what happened to me. No sooner had I begun cutting my way into the nearest ball plant when a pseudowasp, awakened by my knife, burrowed out of the incision I'd made. Before I could react, it alighted on the back of my left hand and stung me.

My hand swelled up, but that wasn't the worst of it. Pseudowasp venom contains a toxin somewhat similar to lysergic acid; it causes paralysis in other insects, but in humans it produces hallucinations. In Shuttlefield, there was even an underground trade in what was known as "sting"-venom extracted from pseudowasps that had been captured, then sold as a cheap high.

I've never been a doper, so I wasn't prepared for what happened next. Within a half hour, colors began to get brighter as everything seemed to slow down; it seemed as if there was a subtle electric hum in the air, and nothing anyone said to me made sense. By the time my companions helped me stagger out of the swamp, I was raving like a lunatic. I vaguely recall trying to take my clothes off, insisting that the perfect way to enjoy this lovely winter day was for everyone to get naked and have an orgy, swigging the bearshine Clark had given me and telling Zoltan that he should use those wings of his to fly back to Thompson's Ferry and grab us a couple more jugs. Everything was happy and wonderful and exquisitely beautiful; these people were all my friends, and it mattered little that we were lost and close to starvation.

At some point, though, my vision began to tunnel. Suddenly feeling very tired, I sat down on a log, saying that I needed to take a rest. Go ahead with the party, gang, I'll be along in just a moment. And then I passed out.

When I came to, I found myself in a tent. Night had fallen; I could smell the smoke of a campfire. From somewhere outside I could hear low voices. And I wasn't alone; in the soft glow of a lantern, Zoltan was seated cross-legged on the other side of the tent.

"Welcome back," he said. He'd removed his robe, and his wings furled about his bare shoulders. "We were worried about you. Feeling better?"

"A little." Not much. My head pounded, and my throat was parched. Without asking, he handed me a water bottle. I unscrewed the cap and drank. "Where are we? How far have we . . . ?"

"Where we were before you fainted." His face was hideous in the half-light; it had been a long time since I'd noticed just how ugly he was. "We couldn't go any farther, not with you in this condition, so we stopped for the night."

"Oh, God . . . I'm sorry, I didn't mean to . . ."

"Don't be. It wasn't your fault." Zoltan took the bottle from me, replaced the cap. "In fact, I rather envy you. Seems to me that you've had a moment of revelation."

My mind was too fogged for me to realize what he was saying. "Yeah, well . . . getting stung will do that to you." My left hand was sore; it had been bandaged, and the swelling had gone down. There were antibiotics in the first-aid kit we were carrying; if this had happened to someone else, I might have been able to administer them in time to prevent the venom from taking effect. Unfortunately, these people didn't know much about pseudowasps. "My fault. I should have warned you."

"Why? How can you warn someone about God?" Zoltan shook his head. "He does what He chooses to do, speaks to you when you least expect it."

"I don't understand."

"You know about the Holy Transformation. I must assume you do, because you've never asked me about it, not since the first night you spent with us. One of my followers must have told you . . . probably Greer, since you two have become close." I said nothing, and he went on. "When God came to me, while I was in the Room of Pain and Understanding, He told me that I had a mission in life. Gather as many as I could find who would believe His word and take them to another place, where we would spread the word that the universal transformation was forthcoming."

He shifted a little, stretching his legs. "I thought we'd receive that sign in Shuttlefield, but when it didn't happen and it became apparent that we were surrounded by those who'd eventually try to kill us, I realized that our mission would be fulfilled elsewhere. And so, like Moses and the Israelites, we've set forth into the wilderness . . . and now it's become clear to me what our purpose truly is, for through you, God has spoken."

"Zoltan . . . Reverend Shirow . . . I was stung by a pseudowasp. It makes people freak out, do weird things. That's all. I didn't hear God. I was just hallucinating."

"Perhaps you think you were suffering hallucinations. Yet during that time, you told us that you loved us all, that we should freely share our love with one another." I started to protest, but he held up a hand. "You say you were under the influence of the pseudowasp, and perhaps you were . . . but I think God was speaking through you."

"But I'm not a believer. I've told you. You've said it yourself."

"You've led us to this place, and God has spoken through you." He gazed at me with great tenderness, as if I were a lost child whom he had found. "I know now what He has planned for us," he said very quietly. "We are going to die here."

"No, we're not." I shook my head. "We're going to make it through this. We're going to get over that mountain, then . . ."

"You can't refuse. It's God's will that we perish together. Perhaps not now, but soon, very soon." Zoltan took a deep breath, let it out as a sigh. "Benjamin, you're one of us now. The time has come for you to join us, body and soul."

Reaching around behind him, he pulled out a soft leather bag. He unzipped it and reached inside; when his hand came out, it held the black sash I'd seen the others wear so many times before. With great reverence, he laid it on the ground between us.

"Remove your coat," he said quietly, "and roll up the left sleeve of your shirt."

I fumbled at the zipper of my parka. My head still felt as if it were stuffed full of cotton, my mind not ready to cooperate with me. So this was going to be my initiation. Well, why not? I'd come this far with these people; regardless of what I'd just told Zoltan, we'd probably perish together. Might as well go the distance.

"Wrap it around your elbow," Zoltan said, handing the sash to me, "and pull it as tight as you can." He slid his hand into the bag once more. "This will take only a minute, then we'll be done."

I'd already wrapped the sash around my arm, but the last thing he said made me hesitate. I watched as he produced a small gold chalice. He carefully placed it on the ground; in the glow of the lantern, its rim held faint crimson stain, like something that he hadn't been able to wash out. It looked like . . .

"What . . . what are you doing?" By then I'd seen the other things in his hand: the silver hypodermic needle; the small coil of surgical tubing; the deflated rubber valve. Yet even then, it hadn't quite sunk in. I needed to have him tell me.

Perhaps he knew that he didn't need to. His eyes slowly rose from the chalice, met my own. "Will you share yourself with me?" he whispered.

It was then that everything became clear. Why his followers wore the sash, why they were excused from their chores for the day. The black cloth concealed the puncture marks in their arms; a day's rest helped them recover from their blood loss.

In church, communion is celebrated in a symbolic manner. A chalice of wine for the blood of the savior, a wafer of bread for his flesh. Whether or not one believes in the miracle of transubstantiation is almost beside the point; it's the act of worship that counts. Yet Zoltan had twisted this ritual, turning it around so that it fit his own self-image. He wasn't interested in symbolic deeds, nor was he willing to share himself with his followers. What he demanded was fealty, utter obedience; he wanted to be a god. So he brought them into his tent, told them whatever they wanted to hear, then . . .

"Benjamin." He crawled closer, the needle raised in his right hand. "Will you share yourself with me? Will you give your blood to . . . ?"

"Get away!"

I kicked him as hard as I could, swinging my right foot into his stomach. Zoltan grunted and toppled over backward, and I scrambled across the tent and unzipped the flap. I was almost halfway out of the tent when I felt his hand close around my left ankle. I blindly kicked back, felt the sole of my foot connect with something fleshy. Zoltan cried out in pain, and the people seated around the campfire looked around as I pitched forward on hands and knees from his tent.

I rose to my feet, wavered unsteadily. Someone said my name, and I saw Greer coming toward me. I didn't want her to touch me-I didn't want anyone to touch me-so I lurched away, escaping the fire and the tents, until I fell to my knees beneath a tree.

I tried to vomit, but there was nothing in my stomach for me to throw up; all I could do was dry-heave. When my guts stopped convulsing, I fell into a pile of dry leaves at the base. Darkness closed in, and I was gone.

I awoke to find that someone had unrolled my sleeping bag and covered me with it. Probably Greer; she was the only person who acknowledged my presence that morning, and even she kept her distance. No one would speak to me; they quietly took down the tents and packed up their gear, treating me as if I was a guest who'd overstayed his welcome.

And perhaps I was. The map and compass were missing from my parka. Thinking they might have been taken from me while I was asleep, I asked the others who had them, only to receive stares and headshakes as nonverbal responses. Although it was clear that Zoltan was leading us through the forest, he didn't appear to have them either. It's possible that I might have lost them in the swamp, but when I attempted to go back to search for them, Zoltan beckoned for the others to come with him. So not only had I been ostracized, but the Universalists were willing to leave me behind. I had no choice but to follow them; shouldering my pack, I brought up the rear.

Even without the benefit of map and compass, Zoltan knew where he was going. At that point, it would have been difficult to miss finding the eastern slope of Mt. Shaw. By the end of the day, when we finally emerged from the forest, the mountain loomed before us, three thousand feet high, its summit still covered with snow. We made camp at its base, but no one invited me to share a tent with them. The only food left was some rice, but I wasn't offered any, and when I attempted to join the Universalists by the fire they'd built, Boris stepped in front of me, blocking my way with his staff. I retreated to where I had unrolled my sleeping bag and sat there alone, shivering in the cold, my stomach growling.

Shortly after everyone turned in for the night, though, Greer came to me. Glancing over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching, she knelt beside my sleeping bag, then reached beneath her robe and produced a bowl. "Eat fast," she whispered. "I can't let anyone see me doing this."

There was only a handful of rice in the bowl, but it was better than nothing. "Thanks," I mumbled, my teeth chattering as I took it from her. "You're . . ."

"Zoltan says you're no longer one of us. You refused to share communion with him. That makes you a heretic. We're not allowed to associate with you."

"That's what he says, huh?" I stuffed cold rice into my mouth. "And how many times have you let him drink your blood? Or have you lost count?"

She let out her breath. "It's not like that, Ben. You might think it's just about drinking blood, but it's a form of sacred worship. The prophet partakes of our essence, and in that way we become closer not only to him but also God. . . ."

"Oh, come off it. There's nothing sacred about what he's doing. Zoltan wants to play vampire, that's fine, but leave God out of it. He's just using you for . . ."

"No! God has sent him to us to fulfill His mission. . . ."

"And you know what Zoltan told me last night? He says he wants us all to die!" I was no longer bothering to keep my voice low. "This isn't communion. This isn't worship. You've been brainwashed, kid. He's going to . . ."

"Greer. Come away from him."

I looked up, saw Zoltan emerge from the shadows. How long he'd been standing there, I had no idea. His wings were hidden under his robe, and I couldn't see his face beneath his upraised hood, yet in that moment, backlit against the dying campfire, he looked as demonic as anything Dr. Owen Dunn might have imagined in the depths of his insanity.

Greer started to rise, but I grabbed her wrist. "Don't listen to him," I said. "He's crazy, out of his mind. There's nothing he can do to you if you don't . . ."

"Greer, leave him." Zoltan remained calm. "We've known all along that's he's an unbeliever. Now he's revealed himself to be more."

"What? A heretic? Just because I won't grovel?" I struggled to my feet, dropping the empty bowl but keeping my grip on Greer's wrist. "You're a lousy excuse for a prophet, Shirow. Jesus would have been sick if he'd ever met you. . . ."

"Enough!" Zoltan leveled a taloned finger at me. "Thou art damned! Thou art excommunicated! Thou art no longer of the body of the church!"

"Yeah. Right." From behind him, the other Universalists were emerging from their tents, drawn by the sound of our voices. "So I'm damned and excommunicated, and you'll never get me to . . ." I stopped, shook my head. "But I'm one thing you're not, Shirow, and the one thing you can't do without just now."

"And what's that?"

"I'm the only guy who knows how to get over that mountain."

He stared at me. "God will show us the way."

"Maybe I don't have the map and compass anymore, but I don't think you do either, and I was the only one who was paying attention to where we were going while y'all were singing church hymns. Not only that, but Clark Thompson told me how to find the Alabama colonists, and not you . So unless God gives out travel plans, buddy, you're screwed."

I was bluffing, of course; Thompson's directions hadn't been specific. Not only that, but I was gambling that Zoltan hadn't stolen the map and compass from me. I hadn't seen him or anyone else produce them all day, which led me to believe that they had been lost.

"You say you want to die out here." Desperate, I kept talking, trying to get through to them. "Great . . . so what's that going to prove? If no one knows why, then it'll all be for nothing . . . nothing! What sort of a holy mission is that, pal?"

Greer trembled against me; I released her wrist, but she didn't move away. No one said anything; they waited in silence for their prophet to denounce the heretic, the unbeliever, the damned soul who'd dared challenge God's chosen messenger to Coyote.

Zoltan said nothing for a few moments. He was stuck, and he knew it. "The Lord works in mysterious ways," he said at last. "You may lead us across the mountain, Benjamin."

"Thank you." I let out my breath, hesitated. "And in exchange for my services as your guide, there's one more thing I want from you."

"And this is . . . ?"

"Your tent, please. And without you in it." I bent down, gathered my bag and pack. "It's freezing out here, and I'm sure no one will object if you share space with them."

Zoltan didn't reply. He simply stepped aside. My arms full, I walked past him, ignoring his followers as I headed over to his tent.

Yet when I looked back, Greer wasn't with me. She had moved against his side, and he'd put his arms around her. That was when I knew she was lost to me.

It took two days for us to climb Mt. Shaw. It should have taken only one, but the mountainside was steep. With no trail to follow, we had to pick our way around granite ledges and across landslides, taking a zigzag course up the eastern slope. The higher we went, the colder the air became, and soon every breath we took was painful. Once we passed the tree line about three-quarters of the way up the mountain we found ourselves plodding, sometimes crawling, through knee-deep drifts.

Everyone was weak from hunger and cold. When we stopped to make camp, there was no level place for us to pitch our tents, nor any dry wood to gather for a fire. We managed to half cook the remaining rice in snow melted in a pan over a portable stove-at that altitude, it was impossible to bring the water to a boil-but several people had come down with altitude sickness and couldn't eat. No one's clothes were dry, and some of us were showing the first signs of acute hypothermia. We spent a chilly night on the mountain, huddled together in our bags as the wind kicked up snow around us, Bear glaring down upon us like the eye of an angry god.

When morning finally came, we discovered that Clarice was no longer among us. Renaldo found her ten feet away; sometime during the night, she had rolled down the slope in her sleeping bag until she landed in a deep snowdrift. She was still alive, but only barely; her face was pale, her lips blue, and she never regained consciousness despite our attempts to keep her warm. Clarice died as Uma was rising over the summit; with the ground too hard for us to dig a grave and no one strong enough to carry her body, the only thing we could do was zip her corpse inside her bag and stack some rocks on top of it. Zoltan muttered a brief prayer, then we continued our ascent, leaving her behind.

We reached the top of the mountain late in the afternoon the second day. The view was magnificent-a great valley several thousand feet below, surrounded by the Gillis Range with the mammoth volcanic cone of Mt. Bonestell far away to the northwest-but no one was in any condition to appreciate it. By then several people were leaning heavily upon their staffs or each other, their feet numb from frostbite; Ian was snow-blind, relying on Dex to lead him, and most of the others were listless and mumbling incoherently.

To make matters worse, thick clouds coming in from the northeast warned that a storm was approaching. We had to get off the summit as soon as we could. Still pretending that I knew the way, I made the best guess I could, then began leading the group down the western slope.

We made it to the tree line shortly after dusk, but still we couldn't find anyplace for us to set up our tents. The stronger members of the group erected a couple of lean-to shelters from fallen branches, then covered them with unfolded tents. Unable to build a fire, with nothing left to eat, we crowded together beneath the shelters as the first flakes of snow began to fall upon us. That night, even Bear had forsaken us; the sky was dark, the stars invisible behind the storm sweeping down the mountain.

No one spoke to me except when they had to. I was necessary, but that was all; any sense of brotherhood had long since vanished. Greer stayed away from me. That hurt the most, because although I had stopped caring very much about the rest of the group, I still loved her. But during that last, long night, even though she slept only a few feet away, she was as distant as if we were separated by miles.

By daybreak, though, the snow was still falling and the shelters were covered with nearly a foot of fresh powder. Three more people had died during the night: Boris, and two others whose names I can't recall today. Yet there was no way we could continue our descent; visibility had been reduced to less than five feet, and most of the group were suffering from frostbite and hypothermia.

That was when the true horror began.

"We have to eat," Zoltan said, as I was helping Renaldo drag the bodies from beneath the shelter. "If we don't eat, we'll die."

"Yeah, sure. No problem." I could barely see him through the snow; he was sitting on a log, staring at me. "Know just the place. Nice little cafe at the bottom of the mountain. Just a few miles away. Great prime rib. C'mon, let's go."

A bad joke. I couldn't help it. Four people dead already, and doubtless more to come. Ian most likely, or perhaps Doria; both were comatose, and there was nothing we could do to save them. Even another handful of raw rice sounded like a feast just then. But when I looked at him, I saw that he was gazing at the corpses in a way that made me feel uncomfortable.

"Put them over there," he said, pointing to a place nearby. "Get some knives." He looked at Renaldo. "See if you can find some dry wood. We need to make a fire."

"What are you saying?" I whispered.

For several long moments, Zoltan didn't reply. "We need to eat," he said. "If we don't, we'll die."

"You told me God wants us to die," I said. "Isn't that your . . . ?"

And then he lifted his gaze, and in that instant I saw something in his eyes I'd never seen before. . . .

No. That's not right. It had been there all along; I had just refused to acknowledge it, even though I knew it to be true. Zoltan Shirow was insane. He had always been insane. From the moment wings had been grafted to his back, he had been mad; nevertheless, he had concealed it behind the veneer of presumed prophecy.

Cannibalism can be accepted if you're desperate to survive. Many have done it before in order to continue living, and more often than not they weren't crazy. As repulsive as it may be, it's a pragmatic choice; eat the dead and remain alive, or die yourself. Yet in that instant, looking into Zoltan's eyes, I realized that this was what he'd had in mind all along. Given a choice, though, he would have preferred to taste my flesh than that of any of his followers. He wasn't going to wait until I died of cold or starvation. That was why he'd let me remain with the group. I wouldn't give him my blood, so he'd consume my body instead. Don't ask me how I knew what he intended; I just did.

"Okay," I said. "You're right. It's gotta be done." I turned to Renaldo. "You go get the knives . . . I think they're in Boris's bag. I'll get some wood."

Renaldo nodded dumbly. His mind was gone. He began trudging back through the snow toward the nearest lean-to. I watched him go, then I turned and started hobbling down the slope.

After the first few steps, I broke into a run. I had nothing with me except the clothes on my back and the boots I was wearing; no pack, no bag, no lantern, no stove. But if I returned to the shelter where I'd left my things, I had little doubt that I'd never come out again.

And I didn't have Greer. I tried to forget that as I ran for my life.

I had almost made a clean getaway when I heard Zoltan call my name. I wanted to keep going, but something made me stop, look back around. Zoltan was still where I'd left him; he hadn't moved at all, making no effort to pursue me. A gargoyle crouching in the snow. He knew what I was doing.

"Benjamin," he said, his voice almost lost to me, "do you believe?"

I started to say something, but I didn't. Instead, I started running again.

How I survived, I'll never know. By all rights, I should have perished on Mt. Shaw. I ate snow and the bark off trees, and slept covered by piles of dead leaves, and kept going downhill until I found my way to the bottom of the mountain, where a hunting party found me three days later. If Zoltan had been around, he might have said that what saved me was divine providence. Personally, I think it was fear, and the knowledge of what I'd left behind.

A doctor named Kuniko Okada nursed me back to health. Two toes on my left foot had rotted with gangrene from frostbite, so she was forced to amputate them, but other than that and severe malnutrition I'd come through in relatively good shape. I remained in her care for the next week, until I was strong enough to get out of bed and hobble across her cabin with the aid of a walking stick. It wasn't until Dr. Okada helped me out onto the porch that I discovered that the place was suspended fifteen feet above the ground.

The original colonists had built their new settlement within the boughs of an ancient stand of blackwood trees, not far from a wide creek that flowed down from the Gillis Range. Looking out from Dr. Okada's porch, I saw a village of tree houses, connected to one another by rope bridges, with livestock pens, brick kilns, and grain sheds scattered across the forest floor. I even saw the still where they made their bearshine. No wonder the Union hadn't been able to discover its location; the blackwoods not only provided protection against boids, but also camouflage from the cameras and infrared sensors of the spacecraft orbiting high above.

Once I was well, I agreed to meet with the Defiance Town Council. I recognized their leader as soon as I walked into the room: Robert E. Lee, former captain of the URSS Alabama , the man who'd stolen Earth's first starship and brought a group of political dissidents to the new world. His beard had gone white, lending him a strong resemblance to his famous ancestor, but he was clearly the same man whose face I'd seen in history texts when I was growing up. Lee was almost as surprised to see me as I was to meet him, as were the other members of the Council. Although I wasn't the first Shuttlefield refugee who'd managed to find their way to Defiance, I was the only man who'd ever crossed Mt. Shaw during winter. Not only that, but apparently I'd done it on my own, with only the clothes on my back.

I had a little trouble telling them my story; the form of English they spoke was over two hundred years old, and only recently had they learned Anglo. Once we were past the language barrier, I informed them that they were only half-right; I hadn't been alone, but so far as I knew there were no other survivors. Lee and the others listened to my story, and when I was done they excused me in order to hold an executive session. It didn't last long; when I was brought back into the meeting room, Lee told me that the Council had voted unanimously to accept me as a new member of their town. I accepted the invitation, of course.

A month later, I was able to walk on my own. By then it was early spring; the snow had melted, and it was possible to climb Mt. Shaw safely once more. I took a few days off from my new job as goatherd to escort a small group of men up the western slope. It was a slow ascent-I had to stop often to rest my left foot, and also try to remember the way I'd come-but after a couple of days of searching we managed to find the place just below the tree line where I'd last seen the members of the Church of Universal Transformation.

Two lean-to shelters, already on the verge of collapse, lay near a ring of stones where a fire had been built. Within them, we discovered rotting sleeping bags and backpacks, tattered robes and dead lanterns, a couple of Bibles whose brown pages fluttered in the cool wind. Charred and broken bones lay in and around the fire pit; not far away, we found a pile of mutilated skeletons, some missing their arms and legs, others with skulls fractured as if struck from behind by one of the staffs that lay here and there.

There was no way to identify anyone. Weather, animals, and insects had done their work on the bodies, and I couldn't look for myself. After a few minutes, I knelt on the ground and wept until one of my companions picked me up and led me away.

I'm sure none of them survived. There's no way anyone else could have made it off the mountain. Not even Greer. Even today, her fate is something I can't bear to contemplate.

And yet . . .

Before my partners buried them, they carefully counted the corpses. They came up with twenty-seven bodies. Not counting Clarice, whose body was left on the other side of Mt. Shaw, or me, that was two short of the thirty-one Universalists who left Shuttlefield, including Zoltan Shirow. We never found anything that looked like a wing, or a skull with fangs among its teeth, or a hand whose fingers had been reshaped as talons.

To this day, though, people who've ventured into the Gillis Range have come back with stories of shadowy forms half-seen through the trees. Sometimes they've caught a glimpse of a figure with batlike wings, and sometimes they've spotted what appears to be a young woman. These could only be stories; the mountains are haunted, and lonely as only the wilderness can be.

I don't know the answer. But every night, before I go to bed, I pray to God that I never will.