Lockstep

Seventeen

“THE RULES OF A lockstep standoff are simple,” one of Thisbe’s generals had told Toby. “Wake before the other guy and capture him in his bed.”

“That’s it?” Toby asked.

“No. The more resources you have, the higher the frequency you can set for your troops—or the more troops you can keep awake on a rotating basis. The more you push this, the more it costs you. If you have to go all the way to realtime, and don’t sleep at all, then you’ve probably already lost.”

Toby stood on a stone balcony in one of Thisbe’s mountain fortresses, gazing out at a stunning vista of white-capped peaks and roiling clouds. The air was thin and bracingly cold.

In the valley below, Thisbe’s army was burying a bunker full of supplies. The whole planet had only enough food, energy and industrial capacity to stay awake for a few weeks. It was a lockstep world, its whole infrastructure based on the slow accumulation of resources during winter-over. Even with nanotech and orbital industries, there was no way they could stay in realtime for long. Soon, the entire world would have to sleep.

The jets screaming across the sky and the busy soldiers and bots in the valley were all trying to balance an equation whose terms weren’t all known. How long to sleep? That was what it all came down to. Everybody knew when Evayne’s ships would arrive, but that wasn’t the problem. Every day the Thisbe defense forces stayed awake in anticipation of her landing was a day’s rations used, a day’s energy. If Evayne was smart—and Toby knew she was—she wouldn’t stage a landing when she arrived. She would go to sleep and wait for a while. Six more months, a year. She would slumber, unassailable in far orbits, while Thisbe bled itself dry waiting up for her.

The defense forces had come up with a rotating watch that allowed them to keep a small standing army ready at all times. The problem was, it was small. Evayne had the advantage, and everybody knew it.

“You have quite the way with women,” somebody behind him said.

Toby turned to find Jaysir and Shylif standing by the metal doors that led to the mountain tunnel. “You made it!” Toby exclaimed. The generals hadn’t wanted to allow these two civilians—stowaways, no less!—to visit their precious bunkers. Toby had been insistent, but he hadn’t been sure until this moment that his stubbornness had done any good.

Shylif stepped forward and shook Toby’s hand. Jaysir grinned and slapped him on the back. Toby frowned into Shylif’s eyes. “How are you?”

“Actually … better than I expected.” He smiled, and there was a twinkle in his eye that hadn’t been there before. “Can’t say the same about Coley. But he’ll live.”

Toby nodded and shot Jaysir a guilty look. “Corva hates me. I know.”

Jaysir shrugged. “Well, you did the one thing she didn’t want you to do. You sold out to your legend. I’m actually kind of surprised that you called for us. You hardly need our help anymore, do you? You’ve got the whole planet to play with now.”

“Tactful as always, our Jay,” rumbled Shylif with a frown.

“So I didn’t live up to her expectations.” Toby looked away across the windswept valley. “The problem is, everybody has expectations. I had to decide who to disappoint, didn’t I?”

Shylif looked away, pensive. “That, I understand. But why did you ask us to come?”

“Two things, one of which Jay already knows about—” At that moment a call came through on Toby’s glasses. He held up a finger to Jay and Shylif, and turned away. “Hang on a sec. Yes?”

“Sir.” It was Long Seville, who as minister of security had been charged with the thankless task of planning the defense of Thisbe. “We’ve received a message from your sister. It’s for … well, it’s for you.”

He turned back to Jaysir and Shylif. “It’s Evayne. Can I have a moment? You know, family stuff.” Wide-eyed, the two backed away. Toby walked to the stone balcony and took a deep breath, bracing his hands on the cold granite. Okay. You can do this. He opened the message.

The woman who appeared, as if hovering in the air before him, could have been some long-lost aunt. She looked so much like Mom it was agonizing. Evayne was now older than Peter, or so the stories said, because she had changed her frequency so many times in the pursuit of state business. Still, she looked no more than thirty—an imperious queen in green robes, beautiful and terrible in her wrath.

“What the hell, Evie,” he muttered.

“To the people of the planet Thisbe,” she declared, “I give my greetings, and a warning. You will release to me that person who falsely claims to be my brother, the holy Emperor of Time, Toby McGonigal, Who Waits. Bring him to your seat of government, and I will descend to claim him in six months, realtime. If you resist, you will be destroyed.

“To the impostor, I appeal to you to save your countrymen at least from the fate that awaits you. Come forward of your own accord, and we may be lenient. Hide, or attempt to fight us, and not only you, but all whom you love will share your fate.”

The picture blinked out.

“Long,” snapped Toby, “I’m replying.”

“What are you going to say?” There was tension in the minister’s voice.

“Don’t worry, I’ll send you a copy so you know what I said.”

With a barely perceptible sigh, Long agreed.

Toby stood for a long time staring down into the valley. Then, when he realized he was just putting things off, he shook himself and said, “Reply.

“Hey, kiddo, how’s it going? Haven’t seen you in ages, you look great! I haven’t talked to Peter yet, but I hear he’s doing good, too.

“Yeah, I got your message. Don’t make me prove that I am who I say I am. I mean, after all, I know more embarrassing stories about you than anybody alive. Well, except maybe Mom.

“Yes, it really is me. So you see, there’s no need to unload any more crap on these people, who’ve already had to put up with a lot from you. We’re gonna reset their frequency—either you or me, I don’t care which of us does it. Then you and I are going to sit down and have a conversation—long overdue, I think. Deal? Great. See you in six months.

“End.”

His smile slipped, and he tilted his head back to glare at the clouds. “Stupid, stupid.” Well, but how was he supposed to handle this? Like an adult? He was seventeen years old, and Evayne knew it—but she hadn’t seen him in forty years. If he’d acted any differently than he used to with her, she might not have recognized him.

She, on the other hand, had looked and sounded nothing whatever like the little girl he’d loved as his only sister. He closed his eyes and his face twisted into a grimace of pain.

After composing himself, he went back to where Shylif and Jaysir were standing together at the tunnel entrance. Well, it was more like they were huddling together, the way they looked. They were scared, and Toby didn’t like the idea that it was him they were scared of.

“You need to hide her,” he said. “From everybody, but most of all…” He didn’t say Halen’s name; he shouldn’t have to with these two.

His friends exchanged a glance, then Shylif smiled. “That’s a good idea.”

Corva’s brother had styled himself as the right-hand man to the new messiah. He was bursting with ideas—what Toby should wear, the uniforms his new staff should wear. He wanted to design a symbol for Toby’s new movement (really, Halen’s movement), something that could be printed on banners and hung off buildings. Toby had refused to let news of his return spill out of government circles, so naturally rumors were flying everywhere, and he was sure Halen was eagerly spreading many of them. Halen couldn’t wait for the moment when Toby would step onto the stage of some gargantuan amphitheater and command a crowd of tens of thousands to go down on their knees before him.

“And then,” Toby went on, “you need to do the same yourselves. Shy, you take care of Corva. Jay … remember what I asked you to look into? —That is, if you’re sure no one else is listening.”

Jay laughed. “If they are, their ears just pricked up.”

“Are they?”

“They’re trying.” He shook his head. “But this conversation is private. You knew I’d be jamming our personal space, didn’t you.”

“No. I hoped…” He had to smile, though; Jaysir was clever about these things.

Jay had perked up, positively enthusiastic for a change. He said to Shylif, “Toby wanted me and the makers to look at the code from that data block I told you about. He thought we might find something useful.”

“And did you?” asked Toby.

Jay made a noncommittal gesture. “Well, we found something, but I don’t know if it’s useful. It’s about your biocryptographics.”

“How easily that word rolls off your tongue,” observed Shylif.

“What did you find?”

“We know how it works for everybody else who uses Cicada Corp devices. We all have user accounts and we sign in biocryptographically. But that’s not how your commands seem to work. You don’t have an account—you don’t need one.”

Toby was puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Back on Wallop, I just assumed you were a superuser—that you had an administrative account on the Cicada Corp system that let you change major settings and stuff in the system. But that’s not what you’ve got. There is no superuser, as far as we can tell. The Cicada Corp system is self-administering and can’t be accessed by anyone from outside. That’s what the code on the block seemed to say, anyway. If you’d given us access to the data itself…” But Toby was shaking his head. “Yeah, I thought not. Toby’s data is encrypted with the same biocrypto,” he told Shylif. “I copied it, but without the same combination of DNA, voice, iris, fingerprint, and brainwaves I can’t get at it. Anyway, you’ve got major power over the Cicada system, but not as an administrator.”

Toby shook his head. “If I’m not a superuser, then how am I able to command the system?”

“It turns out you’re not commanding it at all. You’re voting.”

“I’m what?”

“You’re voting because, Toby, you’re not an administrator of Cicada Corp’s systems.

“You’re a shareholder.”

TOBY NEVER GOT USED to how noisy it was at night. The crickets brr’d at one frequency, other bugs at others, and night birds called, this species a high note, that one a low. The wind in the trees roared intermittently but deafened everything when it did. Daytime was even worse: cicadas boomed, monkeys and birds exchanged insults in the treetops. The frequency spread of animal calls widened until every band that could take a signal was filled. Any given morning, sitting listening to this vast symphony was a lesson in just how impoverished the Earth had been when he’d been growing up. Only on a world with a fully recovered ecosystem, or a terraformed lockstep world wintering over, could you hear the world as it had sounded before the advent of Man.

Tonight the familiar constellations were out. Thisbe had no moon, and on cloudless nights like this it could get pretty cold. Toby was used to that now, just as he was used to walking in the dark while Orpheus prowled ahead. Sometimes they’d scare up tomorrow’s dinner. Sometimes they encountered the sleepy, slow-moving harvester and repair bots that were the only part of Thisbe’s industrial system awake right now. He did his best to avoid such encounters, because you never knew whether their industrial Internet had been hacked by Evayne’s people. Any of those boxy grain tenders or flood watch spiders could be spies for the enemy.

There was no sign that any had been in this area, though. He moved cautiously but confidently through tall grass and between young trees. As he went he counted the low blocky shapes of the houses lining what had been, and someday would again be, a street.

He hadn’t known that the bots shrink-wrapped the houses after everyone was asleep. All that neon-pink plastic was torn away and recycled by the time the humans inside awoke. Right now, any tears or punctures in the material would be instantly visible to the monitors that overflew the houses on a weekly basis. If anything were seen, investigation and repair bots would be sent out right away. That meant Toby had to be careful when he broke in.

“Seven … and eight.” He whistled for Orpheus, then moved around the abstracted house shape, searching for an overhang or tree-shadowed spot where he could cut through. “Over here!” Orpheus bounded into view as Toby was rummaging in his backpack for his shears. He’d found an indent beneath what was probably a dormer window, where a cut wouldn’t be visible from the air. Orpheus watched with his usual attentive curiosity as Toby stabbed at the hard plastic again and again, until finally the blade of the shears went through.

It took awhile to cut a hole big enough for Orpheus to slither in. Though it was completely dark inside, the denner moved quickly between the taut pink material and the walls of the house, and called back when he’d found a path for Toby to worm through. That was the claustrophobic part; he always had one or two moments when he was sure he’d become stuck. He’d be found, years from now, mummified against the side of the house like a squashed cockroach. Tonight was okay: he reached a window in a couple of minutes, and with a little prying got the old-fashioned thing open. Orpheus flowed inside; Toby got in by falling noisily.

After cursing and dusting himself off, he finally lit his windup flashlight and took a look around. The silence in here was disturbing, especially after the cacophony of the night. The air was stale but breathable. The rooms on the main floor were empty except for a few big heavy crates that were also plastic wrapped. Lifeless bots were chained together in places. He barely glanced at them. As soon as he found the stairs to the house’s lower core, he put on his glasses and went down.

The hibernation chamber was a concrete bunker with a vaultlike door. The edges of that door were sealed with rubber caulking, which he peeled away with a knife. While he did that, he pinged the chamber’s systems through the glasses.

After the third ping, a wire-frame diagram of the vault’s interior blossomed in his glasses’ display. It showed three cicada beds. All were occupied; all stasis indicators were green.

He read the names. The first he didn’t know; the second, he frowned at. He sighed with relief when he saw the third.

With a command through his McGonigal account, he ordered this bed to wake its occupant. Then he slid down the wall to sit on the floor. Orpheus came up, and Toby scrunched his ears and playfully wobbled his head.

“Okay, Orph. This is home for a couple days. Might as well make ourselves comfortable.”

He got up again, leaving the backpack by the door, and went to see if he could unwrap a couch to sleep on.

“AM I THE FIRST one up? Where is everybody?” Corva stumbled into the living room, wearing a long ratty housecoat, her hair a tangled nest.

She froze when she saw Toby.

He’d cleared a couch and was sitting with Orpheus in the light of his flashlight. Now that she’d seen them, Toby let Orpheus go and the denner ran to her. Corva knelt, opening her arms to him. Wrecks was still asleep in her bed.

“They were watching us,” he said. The words just hung in the air between them; her expression didn’t change.

“Watching us and listening. You didn’t seriously think we could talk about anything at the lake without the government and your brother’s friends hearing every word?”

Corva stood up and went to the blank window. “We’re off frequency. You woke me up … Halen’s still downstairs. Are you going to wake him up, too?”

“That’s up to you.” He sat forward, clasping his hands between his knees. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you what I was planning. I had to make it seem like I was going along with them, and I knew that Halen, at least, would be watching you to see if I was faking. You couldn’t know that I was. I did it because I … I was afraid they’d neuroshackle me and turn me into their puppet if I refused. Or worse—do that to you to force my compliance.”

She sucked in a quick breath. “Halen would never—”

“Are you sure about that? You know I got a message from Shy at turn’s end. Shy said he’d tried to get to you, he was going to ask you to winter over with him instead of with your family. He couldn’t get near you, but he did talk to Halen. You brother said he’d pass the message along. Did he?”

She started to protest, but the words didn’t seem to be coming. The certain fury that had been on her face a moment ago had disappeared. She turned away.

“Neither of us knows Halen.” He glared at her; he wasn’t going to relent now. “Time stole the brother you knew, just like it stole mine. Who can we trust? Certainly not those scheming, spoiled brats I apparently have to call my family. If I can’t trust my own brother and sister not to try and kill me, why should I trust yours? Why should you, when he’s years away from the person you knew? And anyway, there’s the government. They claim to be all democratic and rights respecting, but what do I know? You said it yourself when we met. I don’t even know what I don’t know.”

She traced her fingers down the blank glass of the window. “What have you done?”

“Nothing. Not yet. I’m going to take care of Evayne, but I’m going to do it my way, not theirs. Not as the … the messiah of the locksteps, or whatever they’re trying to call me. Not as some god returned from an eternal sleep.

“I’ll do it as her brother.”

She turned to look at him now, but with less suspicion in her eyes. “How?”

“I know her.” He stood up and came to her hesitantly. She didn’t back away. Encouraged, he said, “I read the histories and I saw the strategies and tactics she’s used. It’s exactly how she played Consensus, and how she was with Peter and me. The thing is, nobody’s ever provoked her in the right way. But I know how. I know how to push her buttons.”

“Why?” Corva shook her head. “Why make her mad? Won’t she just retaliate?”

“That’s the thing. We’re not going to give her anything to retaliate against. She’ll hate that.”

“But she’s threatened the whole population!”

Toby snorted. “Bluff. She’s never followed through on a threat like that. If you check the histories, you’ll see. She’s got some sense of justice, though she tries to hide it. She only strikes against those who are directly responsible for stuff. And in this case, that’s just me.”

“Just you? What are you—are you alone?”

“Except for a few defense force pickets, you and I are the only people in the world who’re awake right now. Maybe the only people in the whole lockstep. Unless you tell me you want me to wake Halen now. If you do, I will.”

Now she did back away. “But why did you even wake me? After everything—”

“Same reason I’ll wake your brother if you tell me to. Because I trust you. You’re the only one I trust.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yeah, I know. But this’ll probably help.” He held out his glasses. Corva looked at them dubiously.

“What’s in there?”

“The recording I made of the talk I had with Evayne when she first got here. I think you should see it … if you want to understand what it means to be a McGonigal.”

Corva was staring at the glasses as if they were some sort of poisonous snake. Then, reluctantly, she took them from Toby and put them on.

SHE WORE WHITE THIS time. The resemblance to Mom was still uncanny, and Toby’s stomach had knotted the instant he saw her, but he’d been determined to not let his anxiety show. “Hey, sis. Welcome to Thisbe. I guess you’re coming in to land?”

It was a warm evening and he was sitting under a giant oak tree on the edge of the capital city. Thisbe’s Internet was awake, so it had been easy for Toby to route the call from his glasses to a transmitter halfway around the planet. Before he’d donned the glasses to make the call, he’d watched as one after another, reentry trails from his sister’s ships had scored bright lines across the dimming sky.

She nodded cautiously. “Hello.”

Toby sighed. “You’re thinking that I’m surely recording this, and that you’d better mind what you say in case I spread it all over the galaxy. Does that mean we can’t have a real conversation?”

She half smiled. “We wouldn’t have that problem if you’d just meet me face-to-face.”

“Not going to happen.”

She shrugged dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. Anything we said to each other would be taken as a Sign. I’ve been playing this game a lot longer than you have. I know what would happen if you broadcast this conversation. Half the lockstep would believe it, half would think it’s a fake—and that you’re a fake. Can you tell me that you know which half would get to you first?”

For all her brave words, Evayne didn’t look as confident as she had in her first message to Thisbe. She must have accessed the planet’s lockstep system and seen that he’d reset the frequency of all the McGonigal cicada beds on the planet. It was now twelve years until Thisbe was due to awake.

“Peter and I are so sorry about the whole Lowdown thing,” she said now. “We didn’t think it was you. Why would we? There have been so many pretenders over the years…”

The knot in his stomach tightened even more. He wanted to believe her so much, but— “Ammond and Persea had my ship. If that wasn’t enough, all they had to do to prove that it was me was ask me to command any piece of Cicada Corp equipment. I’ve wondered why they waited until we went to Little Auriga to do it. It must be because somebody ordered them not to try it. Somebody … didn’t want them to know.” He shook his head. “That would have been Peter or you. And I’m sure you talked about it.”

“But they tried to kidnap you—”

“They ran because Peter ordered me killed!” The knot was unraveling and in its place he felt a rushing fury that made him careless of what he said now. “And you went along with it just as casually as if this were still Consensus and it was just another move!”

She shook her head quickly. “No no, he didn’t tell me—”

“Evayne. I know you knew.”

He hadn’t known, not for sure, but her silence now told him the truth. She didn’t reply, but she didn’t look away either. He remembered that defiance from when they were kids. He’d always known how to wear it down—but would the old ways work now?

“Why?” Damn it, his voice had cracked saying that. He bit his lip and sat tensely, scared of saying even one more word.

She crossed her arms and—a small triumph for him—broke eye contact with him. “You said it yourself,” she murmured. “We’re not playing a game here.”

“What do you mean?”

“You think you can just reset Thisbe’s frequency, and there’ll be no consequences?” She shook her head and laughed bitterly. “That wouldn’t work even in Consensus! The ripples would spread. Other worlds would be emboldened, they’d flout the lockstep rules, too. Toby, you don’t know how close it all is to breaking up as it is!”

“You called me Toby,” he said bitterly. “That’s something, I guess.”

“You think you can just come back? If you did, you’d always be a pawn. I’m sorry I set it up that way—we really did think you were dead. It is what it is: if the world finds out you’re back.”

“Evie! You tried to kill me before I’d done anything!”

She opened her mouth, closed it.

Toby hurried on: “The solution to this whole ‘Toby the messiah’ thing was obvious all along. All you had to do was bring me in and declare me as your son. Raised in secret in another lockstep, so you could say you only had me like a month ago. So I’m a McGonigal, well, it’s still a big deal, but I’m not the McGonigal. Why the hell didn’t you do that?”

She started to answer, but he cut her off. “Why not just come to me? Take me home? Didn’t you know that all I want to do is come home?” His voice was cracking again. He was on the edge of tears.

“Toby.” He was startled at the huskiness in her own voice. “Toby, do you know why I never had kids?”

He shook his head. “You used to talk about having a family when you grew up.”

“I would have, too, but we got too busy, Peter and I. First it was running Sedna with Mom. Then, when her lockstep scheme was so successful, it was all about keeping that going. It wasn’t easy. People flooded in from everywhere—at least that’s how it seemed to us, sleeping for thirty years at a time. Whole cities would spring up overnight, new colonies of people speaking new languages, even biologically different! Posthuman, or barely human. We had to wrangle it all, find a way to make them fit, or the whole thing would collapse.”

She laughed drily. “There were already legends about us. People were starry-eyed when they met Peter and me. They stammered, practically wet themselves. And they always—always—asked about you.”

“Why?”

“’Cause you’d disappeared mysteriously, and Mom had spent so much time and energy trying to find you. Understand, by that time she’d been searching for centuries, realtime. Word got around. You were the big secret at the heart of the lockstep. And it started to get out of control.”

“So you decided to steer it.”

“Toby, I was way too late.” Her expression was fierce and unrepentant. “By the time I knew what was happening, I couldn’t be seen in public with any man other than Peter without the rumors flying that it was you, secretly returned. There were no men who didn’t treat me like some unattainable goddess anyway, except for the original Sedna settlers. They all had similar problems, and what, was I going to marry one of them? They were all like uncles … it was never an option.”

“But you could have rewritten the legends,” he insisted. “Could have said I’d been found, dead or something…” But she was shaking her head again.

“By the time I realized I had to act, there were these cults, sects, which had developed their own stories. There was one that prophesied that the great sign of your return was going to be me announcing that you’d been found dead! And there was another one …

“Toby, there’s a whole branch of the religion that believes I’m going to announce I’ve got a son, and I’ll reveal him and he’ll be already grown up. And I’ll say … I’ll say”—there were tears in her eyes now—“I’ll say I only just had him but hid him away in another lockstep where he’s grown up. But I’ll be lying, because it’ll really be you. You returned!

“Don’t you get it?” She was leaning forward, very close to the camera. He felt he could almost reach out and touch her, and the stricken look on her face made him want to hug her to him. “You can never be seen with me, except as a prisoner, an official impostor. Any hint that you’re not that will be taken by someone as proof that you’re the Emperor of Time returned to end the locksteps. Toby, you can’t return. You can’t abdicate. You can’t keep a low profile, you can’t adopt an alias and try to disappear. It’s all been anticipated, it’s all expected and watched for, and any hint of this or that prophecy coming true will spark revolutions and pogroms. Peter and I aren’t just the most famous people in the local universe. We’re the most watched, most spied upon. You can’t just come home.

“You can’t be here at all.”

The idea echoed around in his mind for long seconds: trapped, we’re both trapped in this, but then … Something about Evayne’s expression sparked a memory. He could picture her so clearly standing with her hands behind her back, solemnly swearing to him that she hadn’t taken his favorite hall flyer. Yeah, he remembered that look, and he’d seen it other times, too. Toby laughed.

“I almost fell for that. You’ve gotten good.”

Her eyes widened. “Wh-what—”

“You’re trying to weasel out of something, just like that last time when you and Peter were planning to wipe out my colony on Jaspex—remember, in Consensus? You gave me the same kind of bullshit speech that time.” He scrunched up his mouth and tapped his chin. “Now, what would it be that you’re avoiding this time…?

“Mom.” He could see from her expression that he’d hit the mark. “I’m not Toby the Messiah until I go to Destrier and wake her up. All this stuff about pogroms and revolutions—that’s all theoretical, isn’t it? There’s something else going on here.”

Evayne glared at him. “Oh yes? Well, tell me you weren’t on your way to Destrier next.”

She had him with that one. He ducked his head. “With nobody around to tell me the rules of the game, what else would I do? You stacked the deck against me, Evie. I want to know why.”

Now this older woman, who looked so much like some long-lost aunt, looked away and said, with real sadness, “It’s far too late for that, Toby. I wish we’d had a chance to finish growing up together, I really do. But that chance is gone. This has to be good-bye.” She made a throat-cutting gesture and her image vanished.

“I CAN’T BELIEVE IT,” muttered Corva as she took off the glasses. “She’s … Toby, she’s awful.”

He sighed heavily. “Family, huh? Seriously, I’m starting to get over the shock of it all. That Evayne … is not my Evayne. My sister’s gone, Corva.”

Then—because he couldn’t put it off any longer—he said, “So what about it? Do we stay here an extra day while we wake Halen? Or do we leave him safe where he is, for now at least?”

He held his breath. The look on Corva’s face was heartrending. She bit a fingernail and stared for a long time back at the stairs to the underground vault.

“We go,” she said, almost inaudibly; and in that moment it was as if she’d taken a giant step, over countless choices and possibilities, to a place from which there was no going back. She hung her head and without another word followed Toby out of the house.

They climbed out of the plastic-wrapping into bright sunlight, hot air, and the buzzing of cicadas. Corva hugged herself and looked around. “Whoa. They did a bad job on the street.” She’d noticed the unkempt wilderness that had sprung up around the pink house shapes. Wrecks had, too—he sat up on his haunches, whiskers twitching, almost quivering with alertness. Orpheus sat nearby, watching Toby with the air of a worldly-wise traveler observing a tourist.

“This way,” Toby said. “I’ve got a pack and supplies for you.” He began walking through the tall grass. Corva hurried to catch up.

“When are we?”

“Not far from where we left things.” He watched the denners scout ahead. “It’s funny, I have to do the math every now and then to keep it straight.” He counted it out on his fingers for her: “The main lockstep hasn’t started its next turn yet. Kenani’s been asleep on Wallop for eighteen years realtime, so he’s still waiting for Evayne to arrive so he can turn us over to her. One more week has passed in the Weekly since we left there. And two years, realtime, have passed since you went to sleep.”

She grinned. “Yeah, it can be confusing. You’ll get used to it.” Then she lost the smile. “How long have you been awake?”

“A few months. Long enough, like I said, to get over certain things.”

“And in all this time you’ve done … what?”

It was his turn to grin. “I’ve been driving Evayne out of her mind.

“Do you want to help?”