The Crystal City

8

Plans

Nueva Barcelona finally had something to take the people's minds off the yellow fever. Folks were still dying from it, and you can bet their families weren't losing track of the fever's vicious progress through the city, but a whole bunch of men who had felt completely helpless in the face of the epidemic were now given a task that would cover them with honor for doing what they'd been longing to do since the first outbreak of the plague:

Get out of town.

It was the first move that the rich made, whenever the fever struck-they packed up their families and went to the plantation in the country. But regular folks didn't have that option, and rather despised the rich because they did. No, real men stuck around. They couldn't afford to get their families out of the city, so they had to stay with them and risk watching their wives and children get sick and die. Not to mention the risk of dying themselves. Not much of a way to die, moaning with fever till you became one of those corpses the body wagons picked up on their sad passage through the streets.

So when word spread that Gobernador Anselmo Arellano was calling for volunteers to go upriver and bring home all the runaway slaves-and kill the white renegades who had helped them-well, there was no shortage of volunteers. Especially among that element of the city that was commonly known as "drunk and disorderly."

Not everybody thought them particularly brave or honorable. Few whores, for instance, gave them their fifteen minutes free just because "I'm a soldier and I might die." Nobody knew better than prostitutes just how few men were more than talk. This wasn't an army that was likely to stand up long if they got any resistance. Hanging helpless, unarmed French folk, that was all they'd be good for, and then only if the French didn't do anything dangerous, like slapping them or throwing rocks.

That's what Calvin was hearing in the taverns along the dock as the "soldiers" assembled for shipment upriver. The commander was the governor's son, Colonel Adan, who, as longtime head of the Nueva Barcelona garrison, was grudgingly appreciated for being less brutal than he could have been. But Calvin could easily imagine the despair the poor colonel must have felt upon seeing this sorry lot that had assembled to take ship.

Yet maybe they weren't so sorry. Most of them were drunk-but tomorrow they wouldn't be, and they might look like better soldiers by then. And it wasn't as if the enemy would be hard to find. Five thousand slaves and French people, moving at the pace of the slowest child-it wasn't going to be hard to locate them, was it? And what kind of fight could they put up? Oh, Colonel Adan probably felt just fine about things.

He might feel differently if he actually believed those ludicrous reports about a bridge made out of clear water that disappeared when his soldiers were out on it, causing a score of deaths and a lot of splashing and spluttering. Perhaps he was so used to pathetic excuses from his men for their failures that it never occurred to him that this one might be true.

What will Alvin do, Calvin wondered. Probably not fight. He puts far too high a value on human life, poor fellow. It's not as if half these oafs won't get themselves killed in some meaningless fight or just by falling into the river one drunken night.

Well, whatever he does, I won't be there to help.

Though Calvin was not against helping if it didn't put him out of his way. That's why he had searched out Jim Bowie this morning and arranged with him to lead Calvin to Steve Austin. They met in a saloon two streets back from the water, which meant it was relatively quiet, with no jostling. There were a few other men there, though none that Calvin cared much about. Either he'd get to know them later or he wouldn't. Right now all that mattered was Austin and his Mexican adventure.

Austin was going on about how he owed it to help the governor return the slaves to their place before going on his expedition. "It won't take long," said Austin. "How far can a bunch of runaways get? We'll probably find them crying on the north shore of Pontchartrain. Hang a few, whip a lot, and drag 'em on home. Then it's on to Mexico."

Calvin only shook his head.

Austin looked from him to Bowie. "I need fighters," he said, "not advisers."

"I'd give him a listen, Steve," said Bowie.

"Colonel Adan's little slave-catching venture is doomed," said Calvin. "Don't be with them when they go down in flames."

"Doomed? By what army?"

In answer, Calvin simply softened the metal in their mugs until they collapsed, covering the table with ale and cold soft metal. With not a little of it flowing onto their laps.

All the men sprang up from the table and began brushing ale off their laps. Calvin avoided smiling, even though they all looked like they'd peed in their trousers. He waited while Austin realized that the metal pools on the table were the former mugs.

"What did you do?"

"Not much," said Calvin. "For a maker, anyway."

Austin squinted at him. "You telling me you're a maker?"

Another man muttered, "Ain't no makers."

"And your ale is still in your cup," said Calvin cheerfully. "I ain't much of a maker. But my brother Alvin, he's a first-rater."

"And he's with them," said Jim Bowie. "Tried to get him to join up with us, but he wouldn't do it."

"When Colonel Adan's army finds those runaways," said Calvin, "if he finds them, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if all their weapons turn into pools of metal on the ground."

"Or plumb disappear," said Bowie. "I seen him do it. Hard and heavy steel, and it was gone, like that." He snapped his fingers.

Austin moved to a dry table and called for more ale. Then paused a moment to inquire, "I trust we'll be allowed to finish these drinks?"

Calvin grinned.

Soon they were all seated at the new table-except for a couple of Austin's men who found urgent business to attend to in some place where somebody wasn't melting metal cups just by thinking about it.

"Mr. Austin, do you think I could be useful on your expedition to Mexico?" asked Calvin.

"I do," said Austin. "Boy, howdy."

"And I've got me a hankering to see what that tribe is like. My brother, see, he thinks he knows all about reds. But his reds is all peaceful like. I want to meet some of them Mexica, the ones who tear the beating heart out of their sacrifices."

"Will it satisfy you if you see some of them dead? 'Cause we ain't going there to meet them, we're going there to kill them."

"All of them?" said Calvin. "Oh my."

"Well, no," said Austin. "But I reckon the common folk'll be glad enough to be shut of these human-sacrificing heathens."

"I'll tell you what," said Calvin. "I'll go with you to the end of your expedition, and help you all I can. Provided that you leave for Mexico by tomorrow morning."

Austin leaned back and laughed. "So you think you can come here and start dictating when we'll leave."

"Not dictating a thing," said Calvin. "Just telling you that any expedition to Mexico that sets out tomorrow, with all its men, I'll join. And any that doesn't, I won't. You didn't make your plans with me in mind, and you're free to go on and carry them out without me."

"Why are you so all-fired eager to keep us from helping catch them runaways?"

"Well, first, my brother's with them, like I said. Since your men are probably the most dangerous in Barcy right now, I'm making my brother a little bit safer by keeping you all out of it."

"That's what I figured," said Austin. "So what's to say that as soon as Colonel Adan is gone upriver, you won't just disappear?"

"Second reason is more important," said Calvin. "If you go upriver with Colonel Adan, your men will get just as messed up as anybody else. My guess is that once Alvin's through with them, you'll never get them to invade their grandma's privy, let alone Mexico."

"I don't know if your brother's all that dangerous."

Calvin got up, leaned over to their first table, and brought back a congealed swatch of metal that had once been a mug. "Can you just keep this in mind for a little while, so I don't have to melt any more of them?"

"All right," said Austin, "of course he's dangerous, and I'm obliged to you for warning us."

"And the third reason is, I don't like sitting around waiting. If the expedition starts tomorrow, I'll be with it. If it doesn't, I'll get bored and go off and find something entertaining to do."

Austin nodded. "Well, I'll think about it."

"Good," said Calvin.

"But you still didn't answer my question about how do we know you'll actually be there tomorrow."

"I gave you my word," said Calvin. "You can't make me go if I don't want to, but I tell you that I want to, and so I will. You get no better guarantee than that. You don't have to trust me. You can do what you want."

"How do I know I won't have nothing but trouble from you along the way, trying to run everything? The way you're bossing me around now?"

Calvin rose from his chair. "I can see, gentlemen, that some of you are more interested in being the big boss than in overcoming whatever powers these Mexica get from all the blood they spill. I apologize for wasting your time. I hear that the Mexica castrate the big boss before they cut out his heart. It's an honor you're welcome to."

He started for the door.

Austin didn't call him back. No one ran after him.

Calvin didn't hesitate. He just kept on walking. Out into the street. And still no one ran after him. Well, doggone it.

No, there was somebody. Jim Bowie-Calvin recognized his heartfire. And he was stopping and throwing a-

Calvin ducked down and to the left.

A big heavy knife quivered from the wooden wall right where Calvin's head used to be.

Calvin leapt up, furious. In a moment, Jim Bowie was there, grinning. Calvin ripped out a long string of French profanities-eloquent enough that a couple of people nearby, who spoke French, looked at him with candid admiration.

"What's got your dander up, Mr. Maker?" said Jim Bowie. "Of course I aimed right at your head. Your brother would have made my knife vanish in midair."

"I have more respect for cutlery," said Calvin. Though truth to tell, he could no more make a knife disappear in mid flight than he could stop the world from spinning. He could work with mugs because they mostly sat on the table, very very still.

"The way I see it," said Bowie, "you ain't half the maker your brother is, but you want us to think that whatever he can do, you can do. And if that makes you mad to hear me say it, as it seems to be doing-"

"I'm not mad," said Calvin.

"Glad to hear it," said Bowie. "I'm laying it out the way I laid it out to Steve Austin. I wanted your brother because he would have guaranteed our success. He wouldn't do it, and instead he got himself five thousand runaways to feed and no place to take them. Fine with me. But you, you want to come with us, and I think it's because you want a chance to show off you're just as good as your brother, only you're not, and when that fact becomes plain and evident, I think a lot of good boys from this expedition are gonna be dead because they counted on you."

Calvin wanted to blast him into pieces on the spot. But he had his own rules, even if they weren't Alvin's. You don't kill a man just for saying something you don't want to hear, even if it is a pack of lies.

So Calvin only nodded and walked on toward the dock. "Well," said Calvin, "I reckon that's a wise choice. You run on back to Steve Austin and tell him I said good luck."

Bowie, however, did not turn and go back. A good sign. "Look, Mr. Calvin, I'm here to ask you to come back. We just got to know-what can you do? Turning a bunch of pewter mugs into mush is thrilling, of course, but we need to know what you can do. You saw my knife coining early enough to dodge it, but you couldn't destroy it in flight, which suggests that Mexica bullets aren't gonna disappear in midair either. So before we take you along with your brag and your bossiness-and I mean that in the nicest possible way, those being traits I'm proud of in myself-before we take you along, we got to know: What exactly can you do that'll be of practical help in our fighting?"

"That fog yesterday," said Calvin. "That was mine."

"Easy enough to claim you caused the weather. Me, I've been running winter ever since my old pap left me the job in his will."

In reply, Calvin cooled the air right around them. "I think we got us a fog starting up right here, right now."

And sure enough, the moisture in the air began to condense until Bowie couldn't see anything else in all the world but Calvin's face.

"All right," said Bowie. "That's a useful knack."

"My knack isn't fog-making," said Calvin. "Or weather, or any other one thing."

A fish flopped up out of the water onto the dock. And another. And a couple more. And pretty soon there were scores of fish flopping around on the wooden planks right among the passersby. Naturally, some of the fishermen on the dock started picking them up-some to throw the fish back, others to try to keep them to sell. An argument immediately sprang up. "Those fish must be sick, you can't sell them!" To which the reply came, "He don't feel sick to me, a fish this strong!" Whereupon the fish flapped out of the man's arms and back into the water.

"If you ever need fish," said Calvin.

"Oh, yeah, sure," said Bowie. "But can you do it if there ain't no river?"

For a moment Calvin wanted to slap him. Couldn't he recognize a miracle when he saw one? He would have made a perfect Israelite, complaining at Moses because all they had was manna and no meat.

Then Bowie grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. "Can't you tell when you're being joshed, man? Of course you can come. Nobody has a dodge-the-knife-from-behind knack and the fog-making knack and the knack of making fish jump out of the water right up onto the dock."

"So I pass your test?" said Calvin, letting a little pissed-offedness seep into his voice.

"Sure enough," said Bowie.

"But do you pass mine?"

No sooner had Calvin said this than he felt a knife blade poking into his belly. He hadn't seen it coming, not in Bowie's heartfire and not in his body. All of a sudden there was a knife in his hand.

"If I wanted you dead," said Bowie, "would you have had time to stop me?"

"I reckon you got a knack a man can respect," said Calvin.

"Oh, that ain't my knack," said Bowie. "I'm just dang good with a knife, that's all."

Alvin woke only because he had to pee. Otherwise he could have slept for another ten hours, he was sure of it. There wasn't a deep enough sleep in the world to give him back his strength.

But when he got up, he found that he was surrounded by duties impossible to avoid. Things he had to do before he could even void his bladder. Only his mind wasn't clear, and his eyes were still bleary with sleep, and as people bombarded him with questions he found that he couldn't bring himself to care about the answers.

"I don't know," he said to the woman demanding to know where they were supposed to find breakfast in this godforsaken place.

"I don't know," he said to the man who tremulously asked, in broken English, whether more soldiers would come in boats.

And when Papa Moose came to him and asked if he thought there was fever on this side of the lake, Alvin barked his "I don't know" so loudly that Papa Moose visibly recoiled.

Arthur Stuart was lying nearby, looking like a gator sunning itself on the shore of the lake. Or a dead man. Alvin went and knelt by him. Touched him, because that way he could see his heartfire without exerting himself. He had never been so tired before that merely looking into somebody's heartfire felt like an impossible burden to him.

Arthur was all right. Just tired. At least as worn out as Alvin. The difference being that nobody was pestering Arthur Stuart with questions.

"Let this man be," said La Tia. "You see he bone tired, him?"

Alvin felt hands on his arm-small hands, thick arm- trying to raise him up. His first impulse was to shrug them off. But then a soft voice said, "You hungry? You thirsty?" It was Dead Mary, and Alvin turned to her and let her help him rise to his feet.

"I got to pee," he said softly.

"We set folks to digging latrines," she said. "We got one not far off, you just lean on me."

"Thank you," he said.

She led him along a short path through the underbrush till he came to a reeking pit with a plank across it. "I think this wouldn't be hard to find in the dark," he said.

"Bodies got to do what bodies got to do," she said. "I leave you alone now."

She did, and he did all his business. A lot of leaves had been piled up for wiping, and a couple of buckets of water for washing, and he had to admit he felt better. A little more awake. A little more vigorous. And hungry.

When he came back to the shore, he saw that La Tia was doing a good job of keeping folks calm. She had a line of people waiting to talk to her, but she answered them all with patience. But it's not like she had a plan, nor was she organizing things for the journey ahead. Nor did it seem that anybody was working on the problem of food.

Alvin looked along the shore, which was teeming with people for half a mile in either direction. He also scanned for gators, which would have no qualms about snatching any child who strayed too close to shore. None here so far; and now he felt strong enough that scanning for heartfires took no noticeable effort.

Mama Squirrel and Papa Moose were not too far off. Alvin started to make his way over to them. At once he found Dead Mary at his side, offering her arm.

"I'm too big to be leaning on you," said Alvin.

"You already did, and I was strong enough," she said.

"I'm feeling better." But then he did lean on her, because his balance wasn't all that good yet, and the sand on the shore was irregular and treacherous, the damp grass just inland of it slippery and creased with ditches and rivulets. "Thank you," he told her again. Though he still tried not to put any weight on her.

Papa Moose strode up to him-strode, his legs showing no sign of his old limp. "I'm sorry I plagued you the moment you woke up," said Papa Moose.

"I'm glad to see you're doing better your own self," said Alvin. "And walking well."

Papa Moose embraced him. "It's a blessing from God, but I still thank the hands that did God's work on me."

Alvin hugged him back, but only briefly, because he had work to do. "Mama Squirrel," he said, "you packed up a lot of bags of food."

"For the children," she said defensively.

"I know it's for the children," said Alvin. "But I want you to consider-if folks get desperate enough, how long do you think you can keep those bags from getting hauled away? There's farms with plenty of food not too far inland, but we need to travel together. Share this food now, at least with all the children who aren't from your house, and I can promise you more food by nightfall-for everybody."

Mama Squirrel weighed this. He could see that it plain hurt her even to think of sharing away what her children would need. But she also knew that it would hurt to see other children starve, when hers had plenty. "All right, we'll share it out with children. Bread and cheese, anyway. Nothing we can do with raw potatoes and uncooked grain right now."

"Good thinking," said Alvin. He turned to Dead Mary. "Do you think you can get La Tia to spread the word among the blacks, and you and your mother among the French, that children should be brought here to line up quietly for food?"

"You dreaming, you think they all line up quietly," said Dead Mary.

"But if we ask, some will," said Alvin.

"Asking is easy," said Dead Mary. She took off at a trot, holding up her skirt to hop over obstructions on the way.

People were pretty orderly in line, after all-but those adults that had no children were getting loud and angry. As Alvin walked against the flow of children and their parents queuing up for the food, one of the men with no children called out to him from the trees. "You think we don't got hungry, mon?"

"Thank you for your patience," Alvin answered.

A stout black woman called out, "Starving to death don't look like freedom to me!"

"You got a few good hours of life left in you," called Alvin. That won him some laughter from others, and a huffy retreat from her.

Soon he was with La Tia again, and Dead Mary and her mother. "We need to organize," he said. "Divide people up into groups and pick leaders."

"Good idea," said La Tia. Then she waited for more.

"But I don't know any of these folks," said Alvin. "You got to do the dividing of the folks as speak English." He turned to Dead Mary and her mother. "And you have to divide up the French. And each group of ten households, tell them to choose a leader, and if they can't choose one without bickering, I'll pick one for them."

"They don't like me," said Dead Mary.

"But they know you," said Alvin. "And they fear you. And for right now, that's good enough. Tell them I asked you to do it. And tell them that the sooner we get organized, the sooner we'll all get away from Pontchartrain and get fresh water and good food. Tell them I won't eat till they all eat."

"You get mighty hungry, maybe, you," said La Tia.

It took longer than Alvin expected. It seemed such a simple task, but the sun was well past noon when La Tia and Dead Mary reported that everyone was organized. They had their groups of ten, and then out of each five leaders, one was chosen to head a group of fifty, and out of every two leaders of fifty, one was designated the leader of a hundred.

The way things worked out, that gave them ten leaders of a hundred households that sat down on the shore of Pontchartrain as the Council, to plan the trek with Alvin, La Tia, Dead Mary, and Arthur Stuart, who was finally awake. Rien, Mary's mother, was one of the leaders of a hundred-chosen by the people, to her surprise-and Papa Moose and Mama Squirrel weren't counted in anybody's group, since their household was so extravagantly large.

People fancied titles, Alvin knew, so he designated the leaders of hundred as "colonels," the leaders of fifty as "majors," and the leaders of ten as "captains."

"Reckon that makes you 'general,' " said Arthur Stuart.

"It makes me 'Alvin,' " said Alvin. "You can be general."

"I be general," said La Tia. "Not this boy. Who gonna follow this boy, him?"

"You will," said Alvin, "when I leave."

La Tia wanted to answer him sharply, but she held her tongue and listened while Alvin explained to the Council.

"We got no place to go," said Alvin. "I can get us north into farm country, and we'll work out a way to get food without leaving any farmers' families to starve. But the longer we keep marching around the countryside, the bigger the armies they can raise up to destroy us. We've got to get out of slave-owning country, and there's only one way to do that."

"By sea," said Dead Mary. "We need boats."

"Boats do us no good without willing crews," said Alvin. "Anybody here know how to navigate?" No one did. "But that was a good idea, all the same," said Alvin. "And I appreciate you making suggestions. That goes for everybody. No such thing as an idea that shouldn't be suggested, at the right time and place."

"Where we go, then?" asked La Tia.

"Well, General La Tia," said Alvin-not smiling at the title, which made her preen just a little, "only one place we can go, where white men won't follow."

"Don't take us to red land!" said Rien.

"We can't stay there," said Alvin, "but maybe Tenskwa-Tawa will let us pass through. Maybe them red folks'll help us with food and shelter. But my point is, I know Tenskwa-Tawa, and so I'm the one that's got to go and talk to him and see whether we can use his land as our road north. Can't send nobody else. So you folks is gonna have to follow General La Tia."

"But I don't know the way."

"Go north for a while, and then find a road that leads west to the Mizzippy," said Alvin. "Be resourceful. What white folks along the way won't tell you, black folks will."

"But what if an army comes?" said Dead Mary. "We got no fighters here, except maybe a few of the French men. We got no guns."

"That's why General La Tia has to consult with Arthur Stuart here."

"I don't got any guns," said Arthur.

"But you know what to do with any guns that are raised against us," said Alvin. "Every plantation you come to, you got to be there, Arthur, to make sure no guns get fired. At night, you got to make sure there's fog keeping bad folks from finding us. You got to follow the heartfires to make sure no one strays."

"No," said La Tia. "I can do that. I know how to do that, you can't lay so much on that boy, him."

Arthur nodded gratefully. "Watching heartfires ain't as easy for me as for you, Alvin. And making fog-that's what Calvin done, not me."

"But it's not hard," said Alvin. "I'll teach you today. And there's another thing. You're the only one speaks all the languages, Arthur. You got to make sure everybody's understanding everybody else."

"Heck, Alvin, half the time I don't even understand you."

Everybody laughed at that, but in truth they were all frightened-of the dangers on the road, but, even more, of their own inexperience. It wasn't the blind leading the blind, really. More like the clumsy leading the clumsy.

"And one more thing," said Alvin. "There's gonna be lots of complaining. That's fine, you just keep your patience, you leaders-all of you, make sure they know. Listen to everything, don't get angry. But if somebody raises a hand of violence against a leader-you can't stand for that. You understand me? Person raises a hand against a leader, he's out of the company. He's not one of us any more. Because we can't be afraid of our own people. We have to know we can trust everybody to be gentle with each other."

"How we gonna throw out this angry hitting man?" said La Tia. "Who gonna do that?"

"The general will ask some strong men to put the offender out of the camp," said Alvin. "And then Arthur will see to it he doesn't find his way back."

"What if he got family, him?"

Alvin sighed. "General La Tia, you'll always find a good reason not to punish a man. But sometimes you got to punish a man to save a dozen other men from needing punishment. And sometimes you have to have a hard heart to do what needs doing."

Arthur snorted softly.

"Arthur knows," said Alvin. "But when I'm not here, it's not my job. The decisions are yours. You make them, you make them stick, or you don't, and then you live with the consequences. Either way, you live with them."

"That why you going?" asked La Tia.

"That's right," said Alvin. "Just when things get hard, I leave."

He stared her down. When she looked away, it occurred to him that maybe that didn't happen to her very often. Giving way like that.

"When you leaving?" asked one of the colonels.

"Not till we've had our first meal," said Alvin. "Not till we're all bedded down for the night. Inland. Dry and away from these skeeters."

Margaret walked up the stairs into the attic room where she had slept as a child. It was a storeroom now. Father kept a room on the main floor for her, when she visited. She had tried to get him to rent it out like any other room in the roadhouse, but he wouldn't do it. "If other people pay to sleep in it," he said, "it ain't your room."

It was the room where Alvin had been born twenty-five years ago. Father probably didn't remember that. But every time she walked into that room on the main floor, she saw that scene. Alvin's mother lying on the bed, in desperate pain but even more desperate grief, for her firstborn son, Vigor, had been swept away by the Hatrack River scarcely an hour before.

Peggy-"Little Peggy" then, since her mother was alive, and doing the midwifery-had a job to do. She rushed to the woman lying on the bed and laid hands on her womb. She saw so many things in that moment. How the child was lying in the womb. How the mother was clamped down and couldn't open up to let the child out. Her mother had done a spell with a ring of keys then, and the womb opened, and out came the baby.

She had never seen a baby whose heartfire told such a dire story. The brightest heartfire she had ever seen-but when she cast her eyes into the paths of his future, there were none at all. No paths. No future. This child was going to die, and before he ever made a single choice.

Except... there was one thing she could do. One tiny dim pathway leading out of all the dark futures, but that one opened out into hundreds, into thousands of glorious futures. And in that one narrow gate, the one that led to everything for this child, she saw herself, Little Peggy Guester, five years old, reach out and take a caul of flesh from the baby's face. So she did it, and all the deaths fell away, and all the lives became possible.

I gave him life. In that room.

But just the once. She took the caul and saved it, and later brought it up here into the attic, to her room, and hid it in a box. And as the baby grew up into a little boy, and then a bigger boy, she used tiny pinches of the caul to access his own knack, which he was too young and inexperienced to understand.

Not that Peggy knew much better. She learned as she went. Learned to do her work of saving his life. For when she removed the caul from his face, thousands of bright futures opened up for him. But on every one of those paths, he died young. And each time she saved him from one of those deaths, another death opened up for him farther down the road.

Alvin the miller's son had an enemy.

But he also had a friend who watched over him. And gradually, as more and more paths showed him reaching adulthood, she began to see something else. A prim and austere woman, a schoolteacher, who loved him and married him and kept him safe.

There in that attic room, holding one of the last shreds of the caul in her hand, she realized that the prim, austere schoolteacher was herself.

I do love him, she thought. And I'm his wife. I have his baby inside me.

But I can't keep him safe.

In fact, I harm him as much as anyone now. I have no more of his caul. And it wouldn't matter if I did. He deeply understands his knack. He knows more about the way the whole universe works than I ever will; even when I look inside him, I can't understand what and how he sees.

So instead of watching over him, I use him. I found my own purpose in life, to fight slavery but also prevent the terrible war that I see in everyone's heartfire. I have gone everywhere and done everything, while he floundered, unsure of what he ought to do.

And why was he unsure?

Because I have never told him.

I know the great work he is supposed to do. But I can't tell him, because once he sets his foot on that road, there is no saving him. He will die, and die brutally, at the hands of men who hate him, betrayed by some that he loved. A bitter, sad death, with his great work unfinished. And without her even there beside him. In some paths he is alone; in others, he has friends with him. Some of those friends die, some live. But none can save him. In fact, it's his death that saves them.

But why? Why should he die? This is a man who could stop bullets by melting them in the air. He could simply walk through a wall and leave the room where they corner him. He could drop them all through the floor. He could blind them all, or fill them with unreasoning panic to make them run away.

And yet on every path, he does none of those things. He accepts the death they bring him. And I can't bear it. How could Alvin, so full of life and joy, ever choose to embrace death when he always has it in his power to live?

She knelt in the little attic window where, as a five-year old, she had stood to watch Alvin's family ride away into the west, to the place where they built a mill that became the foundation of the town of Vigor Church. And she realized: If Alvin wishes he could die, I can't pretend that it has nothing to do with me.

A man with a wife and children doesn't want to die. Not if he loves them, and they love him. Not if he has hope for the future. If I just love him enough, I could save him. I've always known that.

Yet what have I done? I sent him to Nueva Barcelona. Knowing that if he went, he would indirectly cause the deaths of hundreds of people. Save thousands, yes, but hundreds would still be felled, and it won't help that it was my responsibility. In fact, it will hurt. Because he'll cease to trust me. He'll think I love something else more than him. That I will expend his trust in a greater cause.

But it isn't true, Alvin. I love you more than anything.

I just didn't love you the way you wanted to be loved. I loved you like that little five-year-old girl, keeping you safe. Helping turn you away from terrible futures. Giving you the freedom to make all the good choices you've made as a grown man.

And then taking away your freedom by not telling you all that I knew about the consequences of your actions. She could hear him telling her: A man isn't free if he doesn't know all that could be known about his choice.

But if I told you, Alvin, you wouldn't have done the things that had to be done. You would have tried to intervene and save everybody. And I saw those paths. It wouldn't have worked. You would have failed, and quite probably would have died right then, with your great work undone.

Instead you've turned it into something wonderful. I didn't see these paths. When you use your power you always open doors into the future that didn't exist before. So I didn't see that bridge you made across the water, I didn't see these five thousand heartfires you brought with you out of the city and into the wilderness. So it worked out well, don't you see?

Except that he'll say, "If my power opens doors to paths you didn't see, why didn't you trust me to find my own way in Barcy?"

Or maybe he won't say it. There are paths where he doesn't say that.

She reached down and laid her hands on her own belly, above the womb where her baby's heart was beating. A healthy baby, with a heartfire as bright and strong as she could have reasonably hoped for.

But nothing like Alvin's heartfire had been. An ordinary child.

Which is all she could have hoped for. An ordinary child- talented in this, having a knack with that, but all within the realms of the expected. This little boy will have no enemy pursuing him every day of his life. And instead of watching him every waking minute as I watched Alvin for so many years, I can be a natural mother to him. And to his brothers and sisters, God willing.

God and Alvin willing, that is. Because he may never come to me again. When he knows how I used him, how I deceived him, what I caused him, unknowingly, to do. How I did not trust him to make his own choices.

She sat down with her back to the window and cried softly into her apron.

And as she wept, she wondered: Did my mother weep like this, when my two older sisters died, each one just a baby? No, I know what those tears are like. Even though my first baby didn't live long enough for me to get to know him, I laid that little body in the ground and I know at least something of what she went through, laying her babies in their graves.

Nor do I weep the way my mother would have wept, if she had known about my father and his love for Mistress Modesty. I kept that secret from her because I saw the terrible consequences of her learning the truth, how it would destroy them both.

No, the way I weep now is the way my father would have wept, if he had known that his betrayal of my mother was sure to be discovered, and he could do nothing to prevent it. My sin was not adultery, to be sure. I've been faithful to Alvin that way. But it was a betrayal nonetheless, a violation of the deep trust between a man and the woman he has taken to be half his soul, and to be half of hers.

Bitter tears of anticipated shame.

And with that thought, the tears dried up. I weep for myself. It's myself I'm pitying here.

Well, I won't do it. I'll bear the consequences of what I did. And I'll try to make the best of what is left between us. And maybe this baby will heal us.

Maybe.

She hated all the maybes. For on this matter, as so many others, the fog that blocked so many of Alvin's futures from her view obscured what would happen. She could know exactly what would happen in the whole life of some shepherd she passed in her carriage, but her husband, the person whose future mattered most to her, remained so dangerously exposed and yet tantalizingly hidden.

All her hopes were in the hidden parts of his heartfire. Because the paths that were not hidden gave her no cause for hope. There'd be no happiness for her on any of those roads. Because a life without Alvin in it held no hope of joy for her.

Calvin stood on the dock and watched the riverboats pull out, one by one. Colonel Adan had done his planning well. The steamboats pulled out on schedule, and there was no danger of collision.

Unfortunately, there were also men determined to get out of this city whether they were part of the official expedition or not. So in the midst of the attempt to order the steamboats into a convoy for the passage upstream, two big rowboats swung out into the river, with six men pulling at the oars of each and another dozen or so under arms, many of them foolishly standing up and huzzahing their own bravado.

Calvin laughed aloud to see them. What fools. So eager for death, and so sure to find it.

Sooner, in fact, than Calvin himself anticipated. Though in retrospect, it seemed almost inevitable. Too much order always seemed to bore God or Fate or Providence or whoever decided such things. There was always a little chaos just to liven things up.

Sure enough, one of the rowboats, with its pilot yelling for a steamboat to get out of the way, tried to insert itself between the big riverboats. But steamboats don't stop quickly, and half-drunken rowers don't maneuver well when they try to cross the wake of a steamboat. The captain of the steamboat saw the danger, and some of the Spanish soldiers on board fired at the rowers.

That provoked the armed men in the other rowboat to stand up and fire a volley at the Spanish soldiers. Not a shot hit home, for the obvious reason that so many muskets firing in the same direction at once had such a recoil that the boat rocked over and capsized. Some of the men came up sputtering. Some came up screaming. Some didn't come up-apparently unable to remove their boots in the water or get rid of all the lead balls they carried in their ammunition pouches.

How short life is for fools, thought Calvin. They go out on the water with no thought about how to get ashore if the boat should fail them.

Meanwhile, panicked at the warning shots the Spanish had fired, and some of them thinking that a Spanish cannonball had sunk the other rowboat, the rowers on the first boat tried to change direction. Trouble was, they hadn't agreed on which direction to change to, and so the oars interfered with each other and the rowboat was swept by the current right back into the bows of the big riverboat.

The collision broke half the oars and turned some of them into spears that pierced the bodies of their erstwhile masters. Some of the men jumped into the water; those that didn't were borne under when the steamboat pushed the rowboat over.

It was bedlam on the docks, with some people trying to help the swimmers ashore, and a couple even diving in to help save some of the drowning men. Smaller rowboats quickly put out to help with the rescue. But most of the people were laughing and hooting and catcalling, having a grand old time at the expense of those fools. And while he didn't do any of the catcalling, Calvin had to admit he was one of the laughers.

Alvin would probably have tried to use his knack somehow to save the fools who couldn't swim. Maybe dissolve their boots or something. Or grow them gills-he could probably do it, just to show off.

But even if Calvin had been able to think of something like that quick enough, and even if he had enough control to do anything useful at such a distance, he wouldn't have tried. The world was no poorer for the loss of a few such fools. Indeed, it was downright generous of these "brave" drunk nitwits to improve the breeding population of Barcy by removing themselves from it.

All fools on the river today, thought Calvin. Because the ones following such careful plans were going to end up looking just as stupid as these clowns, when Alvin was done with them. They probably wouldn't be dead-it was Alvin, after all-but what they most certainly would not be was successful.

Which was probably about how the expedition to Mexico would turn out, too, Calvin cheerfully recognized. These arrogant men, thinking that because they were white they could easily defeat the Mexica. They would probably fail, too. And because it was the Mexica they were facing, and not Alvin Maker, a good number of Steve Austin's boys would probably end up dead.

But not Calvin. He might go along with the plans of fools as long as they looked useful, or at least entertaining. But he would never turn his life over to someone else's plan. His own plans were the only plans he ever followed.

Not like Alvin, letting his wife tell him what to do. Speaking of fools.