TCF

Gary Bergin and  his wife Marge chose the valley  of the  Squaw River due  south  of Green  Dome and  begin  pulling   up  dead stumps of burnt trees to establish a farm, aided by  their five children.

Alfred  Porter,  his  wife  Caroline established their  farm  a little to  the north  of the  river  ford. Water was  plentiful there, diverted by a ditch from higher  up the slope, and  with their three children they grew a wide  variety of  green  stuff as though they  had an  extended backyard garden.

Thomas Henry, his wife Melanie, and their four younger children choose a  spot  for  their homestead at elevation 4,400 feet, a little below the encampment of the People. At first they raised oxen, begotten from the animals that accompanied them  on   the pilgrimage, but they also planted rows of apple and pear trees. Their eldest son Lee Henry together with  his new bride  Tamara raised a few sheep  purchased from  another drive  of livestock that used the ford soon after the Stiffnecks arrived. The fol- lowing summer yet another cattle drive also used the  ford  and all the Henrys bought dairy cows. Their animals grazed in  the shade of the family's fruit trees.

David and Ann Krause, with their crowd of children  settled  to the  south of the river ford and took to raising  horses, having received back most of the animals they loaned to make the  pil- grimage.

The 6th  Cavalry Regiment came up from  Texas looking  for  the bloodthirsty warriors  who wiped out a whole company  of  their men. They found  only  a  docile  tribe  of   newly-Christian- ized converts  helping  white settlers grow some   crops. When pressed, the farmers said  they knew there was an  empty   fort nearby, but they did  not know  how it  came to  be  abandoned, and there was no evidence to give  lie to their testimony. The bodies  of the men and horses which fell along the  river  were totally gone. So the Army broke up the  fort and  left, marking the  whole thing down as one of the spookier mysteries  of  the high plains.

The white settlers who did not take up  the plow instead  plat- ted out   the town of  Headwater on  both sides of   the  river crossing. In the beginning these were Harry  and Hester Hilling with their  four children who built and ran  a  general  store. Ivar and Anna  Zinter opened a blacksmith  shop. Josef and Ha- diya Lange opened a temple.

The Green  Dome Temple was built at the  place where the  Squaw River  emerged from the base  of Green Dome hill. It was  the gathering place for all the  people, Red and White, every  Sun- day. With each homily Seer Josef Lange and Elder Jashen Shybear established the wall of Church doctrine steadily,  like  laying bricks.

The most well-known of these doctrines was really a sop to keep the White  Wing  within the bounds of the  original  church. A Greendomite was expected to marry only his or her first cousin, or second  cousin in a pinch. It was never spoken  aloud,  but quite clearly understood:  White Stiffnecks couldn't stand  the idea of a young man among the Kuwapi getting hitched to one  of "their" women.

In  1869  the rumor  of gold was  heard tell along   the  upper stretch of the Squaw  River. Headwater swelled with  a massive influx of prospectors hungry for  the shiny yellow  stuff. Some did grow rich, but most of the "Sixty-Niners"  struck out. Some of these stayed behind as converts to the Church of Green Dome. After a spur connected the growing town to the new Union Pacific line running across the country it was easy for  cousins of the fresh converts to make their way out west and get hitched.

Secondary  tabernacles  were established in the  mission  field throughout the United States and even Europe but  all  Greendo- mite  funerals,  called Last  Rites, still  took place  at  the heart of the mother Church in Headwater.

In 1906 Chief  Wanica died  at the  age of  eighty-four. He lay in  state  in  the  Temple  sanctuary  for  two   weeks. Many Greendomites scattered across the country journeyed by train or even by the new horseless  carriages to pay their last respects. The Church had grown  far beyond what  even the Seer envisioned at the  founding of  Headwater.

When  Jashen Shybear committed his father's body directly  into the hands of Bar-El it was a  sight that few  but  the   oldest members present had ever seen.

But not everything was so grim. During the fair held in honor of the Seer's  sixty-fifth birthday  a barnstormer came   to  town offering rides in his biplane. Absolutely fearless, Mark Lange stepped up to be the first  to fly, to the  delight of everyone present. Few religious leaders have been so beloved. And Lange certainly did not look to be sixty-five years of age.

In the  1920s the  first serious persecutions  of  Greendomites began. Nebraska and South Dakota joined a dozen other states in banning  marriages  between first  cousins  and  the Church  was obliged to perform  its weddings  on  the Wyoming  side of  the Tri-State  marker, nigh  at hand  to make  them  legal. Their objection on First Amendment grounds quickly got bogged down in the   Federal  court   system. Other Christians   rejected  the Church wholesale for rejecting the Bible and introducing an en- tirely new one called the Green Book.

When Joshua  Lange resigned in  1930  Jashen   Shybear   became the second Seer. For many months Jashen could find no   suit- able candidate to replace him as Elder. Something was lost with the passing of Lange, a principle of unity that seemed to  bind the two  sides. The white parishioners began  to  tie  their Church-mandated ponytails up into buns as a subtle act of sepa- ration from the  native side. Ultimately they refused to  wor- ship with  the   Red Wing at all. They met in the  Temple  on Wednesday nights rather than Sunday mornings.

Earl Warner oozed up out of the  swamp to lead  them, and Jash- en was compelled  to make  him Elder. But by early 1943 Warn- er,  more   than  anyone  else,  brought  the  Church   to   an irretrievably fallen state.

Erik Zinter  was one of the merry  but homesick  doughboys  who went  into  battle  in September 1918  whooping with   all  the enthusiasm of a football team  pouring out onto the  field just before kickoff. Joining his team was six hundred  aircraft and one hundred forty-four tanks led by Col. George  S. Patton Jr.. Three thousand  pieces  of  field artillery  unleashed  by  the Entente side and countless bombs dropped from the  air tore the landscape at St.-Mihiel into  a pock-marked pigsty  filled with mud.

Erik took  two rounds  from a  Bergmann  Maschinenpistole  18/1 that shattered  the bone  in his  upper left  arm. Doctors re- moved   the  bullets   but  the   surgery  was   performed   in less-than-ideal  conditions. He developed gas  gangrene  while recuperating in the field hospital so his arm had  to come off. Afterward Erik rode a train to Paris with a  hundred other men. The same train  carried fresh  soldiers to  the Western  Front, which over four  years  had become  an  efficient mangling  and killing machine.

Erik met a Red Cross nurse with a surname he recognized. While she changed  his  dressings Erik  learned  that  Clara's  fami- ly, the Hursts, had stayed behind in Pennsylvania while his own Zinters went  west. But after talking about  their  respective family trees for a while  they discovered they shared  the same great-grandmother. So they were second  cousins. That and her all American girl-next-door  good  looks  interested Erik. His unrelenting good  cheer even  after  losing  an arm  interested Clara.

They could not talk  for long but  after he told  her he wanted to  stay in touch Clara  passed along the address  of her  par- ents in  Pennsylvania. Their pen pal   relationship  blossomed into something they both thought was love.

Erik came home from the war  with a bonus of  sixty dollars and took a job in Headwater painting houses using his remaining arm. He laid money  aside for a wedding. In 1920 Erik took  to  the Yellowstone Auto Trail in a  Model T and  drove halfway  across the country.

In Pennsylvania only first cousins couldn't get hitched. Sec- ond ones were fine. Both of Clara's parents thought Erik was  a  great  kid  so they  wholeheartedly gave  their  blessing. But Erik's own parents in Headwater  were a much harder  sell. Back home Erik instantly  became  the black  sheep  of the  extended Zinter family for passing over a perfectly good (but horsefaced) local first cousin for a beautiful second cousin from back east. One of his aunts said, "Why, any heathen could do as much!"

Even Clara found work in the frothy  decade that followed. But by 1932 most of the women in town were without jobs and so  was Erik. What builders there still remained found applicants with two good arms suddenly willing to paint. Still, Erik  retained the good spirits  that had endeared him to Clara in that  Paris hospital during the Great War. But inhis worsening poverty, Erik secretly counted himself fortunate that he had not become a fa- ther in the first twelve years of his marriage.

There are rich seams of bituminous coal inside Green Dome  hill and under the town of Headwater itself but  the geology of  the area is  so jumbled there's  no economical way to reach  it  by drilling a  straight shaft. The coal is exposed only  here and there. During the Depression Erik made twisting tunnels through the bulk of Green Dome. At the time no one knew how he managed the feat, and he refused to  say. By day other men followed in his wake to reinforce the tunnels and remove the coal.

In  the  heart   of  the  Great   Depression  Headwater experi- enced a boom. Great heaps of black  gold from  the mines piled up on docks  in  Chicago  and  San Francisco. Soon the  unem- ployed, unemployable  Erik  Zinter had a brand  new  brick  red Ford Model B and he also  completely paid off his  modest home.

Erik's happiness was complete when the Church arranged  for  he and Clara to adopt a pair of sisters, twins actually, both  nine years of age. There was even sufficient money left over to send these girls, named Kimberly and Sophia, to the  B'nei  Hannebim Academy operated  by the Church rather than  the  local  public school.

Sophia Zinter's dark mohagany-red hair was shorter than that of her  sister, and even shorter than the hair of her friend  Ruman Shybear, yet  she never came near it with shears. The strands just seemed to fall out one-by-one when they grew too long.

Kim and Sophia were both  complete infidels. They didn't  be- lieve a  word of  the Green  Book. But they weren't  ready  to  disappoint  their adoptive father  so they gritted their   teeth and attended Academy dutifully.

Kim wore her hair in the obligatory bun, and when she  ventured outside of Headwater she  tried to ignore the  comments at  the edge  of her hearing  like, "Hey,  there  goes another  Bunner,  look at her hair!"

Like Kim and Ruman's own twin sister Dory, Sophia was  required to  wear  woolen  skirts to class rather  than   trousers  with pockets like she wanted to wear, which  annoyed her to no  end.

One Halloween morning Dory  came to the Academy dressed  as   a pirate's wench. She had ripped her dress  into long strips   so her  pinup-model  legs  could poke out  when she   walked. When Sophia saw  that she  felt a  sweet electric  shock  and   knew she had graduated  from  tomboy  to something much more.

At  the Academy Kim  drew Sophia  as a lab  partner while  Dory ended  up with her  sibling Ruman. Sophia kicked Ruman out  of hyz   seat with "no offense pally" and  sent hym  shambling  to- wards Kim,  a slight adjustment  in the teacher's  choice  that eventually led to hand holding while skating at Lake 13 and much pitching of woo. The girls ordered Kim to make a report.

KIM: [He feels like a rubber wet suit stretched over a suit  of armor,  Soft on the surface but with a hard core  underneath. I like it]

Kim was the darling of the Green Dome Temple Girls Choir. She was an expressive mezzo-soprano  with a  come-hither voice that belied her sixteen years and verged on being too sultry for Sun- days. Listeners compared her favorably to Peggy Lee. In band class she started dabbling with the piano and found she also had the chops for playing keyboard.

Ruman  had no inborn talent  but this was  the   Academy  after all. After learning scales  he  tried several  brass  instru- ments before settling on the saxophone.

Dory  played a double-bass  standing on an  end-pin  which  she had  lengthened  to  be more  comfortable. Sometimes  she  set down her bow and plucked the strings  pizzicato with meandering bass lines while daydreaming she was a black cat slinking around at night.

Sophia pounded the skins  with all the  power of  the offensive guard she also happened  to  be,  yet she  ran  effortlessly in  and  around Dory's rock  steady bass and punctuated   her  licks with improvised drum fills as endlessly unique as snowflakes.

Word arrived of the Doolittle raid after  five months of steady bad news following  Pearl Harbor. In celebration, the Academy held a recital of  patriotic John Philip  Sousa marches attend- ed by half of the  town of  Headwater. For an encore the class tore into  a cover of the classic  Duke Ellington standard  'It Don't  Mean A Thing (If  It Ain't Got That  Swing)' with Kimber- ly soloing on vocals and Ruman on sax.

For Kim  and Sophia the only downside  was their   father  Erik wasn't there  as he  promised he would be. The girls saw  how their mother kept a seat saved for Dad that was  never  filled. Erik did  not come home all that night and not  even  the  next morning.

In the middle of the school day Kim and Sophia were pulled  out of class and driven home by Deacon Paul. They both started cry- ing then, fearing the worst. At home when they saw her  mother pacing Sophia tearfully pleaded for  her to  speak. It took  a  long  time before Clara had the willpower  to look  directly  at her daughters and blurt it out, sobbing, "Your father is dead!"

The three of them cried until there was nothing more  to  give, and even  when their eyes were bone  dry they  were  was  still wracked with  sobs   that trailed  off at   length  to   silent grief. When Clara finally gave the girls answers it seemed hard to believe.

The Green Book  described a weapon  called the  Killing  Relic. Kim and Sophia had both assumed  it was just a literary  device to move the plot  along, perhaps  like the  whale in  the  book of Jonah. But Prophet Jashen Shybear, the head of the Church of Green  Dome,  insisted it was real. In fact, he had lent it  to Erik.

For years Erik honeycombed the small mountain called Green Dome that loomed over Headwater with tunnels to allow access to seams of coal. But overnight a cave-in smashed Erik's helmet lantern and plunged him into total darkness. He tried to bore his  way out but the Killing Relic consumed  the remaining oxygen faster than he did. At dawn men with picks  and spades broke  through the  cave-in  and reached Erik's  body. They also  found   the artifact. Prophet Jashen assured  Clara  that  her husband did not suffer, he simply fell  asleep and  never woke again.

Jashen went on to praise the memory of Erik for  never  violat- ing a  sacred trust that  some in the Church were  saying   was more than he had the authority to grant. Jashen asked Clara to accept that the Killing Relic  was real and the Green  Book  was historically true.

JASHEN: [When you attend the Final Rite you will come to see the wisdom  of it. But try to be  strong, Clara. In the  days  to  follow  some   will tell you  God punished  your   husband  with death for  misusing his  holy  gift to  the Church.]

Kim and Sophia stopped going to school. After a few days  Dory and Ruman came  around. Their visit elevated the sisters  from their  grief a tiny bit  and their  mother noticed  this. When Mrs. Shybear came around to pick up her kids Clara had a request to make.

CLARA: [I'd like Ruman and Dory to be with the girls for Erik's Last Rite]

LAYLAH: [My husband tells me  the Last Rite  actually  destroys faith. You believe because you have seen. Do you not remember how Lord Yeshua  told us more blessed are those with the  faith of a child, who believe without having seen?]

RUMAN (nodding in agreement): [This should be family  time  for you and Kim and Sophia, Mrs. Zinter]

CLARA: [But I have no family here. All my people are back east]

LAYLAH: [You have your in-laws]

CLARA: [The Zinters are Bunner Incarnate. They've always  held me at  arm's length. Kim and Sophia are taking the   death  of  Erik  very  hard but  when your kids came  over today they  both brightened just a little. I saw how they are like a family  to them. This is all about the girls]

After  that  it  became a  gentle negotiation. Laylah agreed that her children could be with  the twins downstairs, but Lay- lah persuaded  Clara to  have them sit  out the   actual  Final Rite as it was carried out upstairs]

The town of Headwater, true to its name, is where the Squaw Riv- er begins, but it's also where the railroad and  pavement  end. Other than a few dirt roads and old wagon tracks the land north, west and south of town is the biggest void in the lower  forty- eight United States. Lone Mountain, as it was known to the Kuwa- pi people (Green Dome to white trappers who first rode  through here)  lay just west of the town. The view from the top of  the high hill was out over thirty-five miles of nothing.

A little  to  the northeast of Headwater is a  pillar  of  rock carved by wind to look like an Indian woman carrying a  papoose in her  papoose, hence the name Squaw River. West of town  the river, really just a big creek at that point, bent  around  the south and west flanks of Green Dome and poured out from an  un- derground cistern of warm water. Vapor was visible in  winter. The spring was an anomalous thermal feature of the high  plains that properly belonged, perhaps, one state over in Wyoming.

The upper vale of the Squaw River was a steep gorge that flared out into a four acre flat piece of land near the  source. This had been the bed of a lake in ages past. The river road skirted the periphery of this lake bed and rejoined itself after making a complete  circuit. Inside the ring road, which doubled as  a parking  lot, was the whitewashed temple of the Church of  Green Dome.

Headwater was a one-church town. Services on Sunday as  usual. Wednesdays were given over to the Last Rite. But it would have been unseemly to run around playing while the body of the twins' father was sent to his long home along with three other Greendo- mites from around the country, so Kim and Sophia and Dory sat in the Temple basement, very bored, while volunteers prepared din- ner for the families of the dead.

Ruman joined  them after breaking away from a group  of  Kuwapi boys smoking outside and pulled out a set of keys.

RUMAN: [Benefits of being the preacher's kid]

He unlocked the door to a supply room.

Kim, Sophia, and Dory tagged along with Ruman because there was nothing else to do.

There was  no electric light in the room, only  a  window  with blinds and it was a gloomy January day outside. There was an old piano which was probably broken. Kim avoided the urge to  play it. There was a street map of Headwater posted on a wall. There were the usual church odds and ends. The kids found unused hym- nals, stacks of old temple bulletins, empty mason jars, and doz- ens of stacked folding chairs.

Ruman stopped moving.

RUMAN: [Shhh! What's that?]

The children froze but the only thing they heard was organ music and the choir bleeding through the ceiling from the main sanctu- ary upstairs.

SOPHIA: [Very funny]

She gave Ruman a friendly shove.

One of the walls was unfinished. Ruman moved aside a piece  of plywood. The plywood had concealed another dark space beyond. It was so black inside it drank their vision like a sponge. Ruman asked Dory, "Do we show them now, sis?"

DORY: [They had to find out sooner or later. It might as well be now]

So Ruman led the way.

After ducking  to enter the hole that had been covered  by  the pine board  Kim and Sophia found they could stand. Dory hit  a switch  and  a number of lights came on in  a  twisting  passage roughly carved in solid rock. It was tall enough to walk upright but very narrow.

RUMAN: [We're crossing under the road here, and after that we'll actually be inside the mountain]

They walked until he tunnel flared out into a cave with a  pool of water that was the very source of the Squaw River. It poured out through a daylit hole. Ruman stood on a ledge over the pool.

RUMAN: [Here, exactly here, is where Adamu and Chava went to Ke- men. Straight out of the Green Book]

SOPHIA: [That's what you wanted to show us?]

RUMAN: [Isn't it enough?]

KIM: [In a museum in Havana are two skulls of Christopher Colum- bus, one when he was a boy and one when he was a man]

DORY: [Brother mine, we have a pair of unbelievers on our hands]

Ruman rolled up his sleeves and approached Sophia, flipping both hands over a few times to show they were empty.

RUMAN: [Hold out your hand]

She did. Ruman clasped her hand and left there a stack of silver half-dollars.

RUMAN: [Explain that, if you can]

Sophia put the coins in her purse because money was money and if Ruman wanted to give her ten bucks so be it.

SOPHIA: [Magic  tricks, just like they're showing  Momma  right now. Why can't people just be amazed at God for what he really did do?]

Dory threw up her hands in mock despair at her heathen  friends and muttered something about White Wingers.

Ruman decided it was time for extreme measures, so he  stripped out of his clothes and waded out into the pool. Dory took  his cue and did the same, with no body modesty at all. They were all good friends  and nobody else was there, but  the  twins  could hardly believe it.

KIM: [Am I really seeing this, Sofie? Are my friends  actually skinny-dipping during our father's funeral?]

DORY: [We're about to prove to you that the Green Book is true]

SOPHIA: "I believe all that stuff in the Green Book and the Bi- ble.  Kemen,  miracles, the resurrection, everyone  believes  it happened, back then. But nobody believes it happens now]

KIM: [And nobody is willing to admit they don't believe it]

RUMAN: [If you were just talking about the Bible you'd  have  a point. But the Green Book is like no other holy text]

Kim and Sophia both remained silent, unprepared to  call  their friends liars.

DORY: [We are cousins, you know]

SOPHIA: [What do you mean?]

DORY: [The four of us. We all have the same grandmother, Lilith. And before you ask, yes, she is the same Lilith from the  Green Book]

KIM: [I know we're adopted, but Lilith? That was thousands of years ago]

DORY: "Sibling mine, I think they need one more push."

She jumped into the source of the Squaw River and dove  out  of view. Ruman took her cue and followed.

SOPHIA: [I'll give them less than one minute]

But when  that minute passed she started to worry and  at  four minutes she  was stripping their own clothes off  to  go  after them. Kim decided to stay behind and remained dry. If there was anything to it Sophia would give a full report.

The three  of them rose to the surface together. Sophia would never be  the same again. She had seen the Pool of Shalom  and possibly, just possibly, her real father.

Kim didn't get the report she expected. Sophia couldn't  find the words to begin.

Ruman directed her attention to a rack of linen towels that was kept fully stocked for any travelers between the worlds. It was, after all, the reason his father had given him the key.

After the  kids were dressed they scrambled out of  the  supply room and sat together in the temple basement speaking no words.

Just then the attendees began to filter in from upstairs. During the shared meal after the Final Rite Sophia thought her  mother seemed very different. Her grief was gone, but something  else was too.

CLARA: [Kim! Sophia! It's all true. Everything in the  Green Book is really true!]

SOPHIA [I know]

She had come to the same place by a very different  route. But there was a feeling of melancholy behind everything now. Laylah had justifiably warned of this. Belief was no longer any part of it.

By the second week after Erik's funeral  Sophia with her peren- nially short hair couldn't hide the  bump on the back her  head anymore, and when her mother checked Kim, she saw the same bump.

Dr. Wahkan assured Clara it was harmless  but when they   broke through the girls' scalp and turned  into a bone cup Clara took them  to  the town of Lusk some sixty miles away for  a  second opinion. But Lusk was not much more of a beacon of civilization than Headwater. The doctors there could do almost nothing  but report it back east. A week later the twins were under federal quarantine in parts unknown.

They had no idea where they had  been taken, but it  seemed  to  be  a  combination of  a medical  clinic and  a  shabby  prison. The doctors and nurses who  came to visit them punched  a  code on a  keypad  to  get  back  out. The construction  was  sub- standard. Nails stuck  through  the walls. There  were   no windows but the girls could  hear construction outside that only ceased at night.

One time  Kim  and Sophia  were playing  Eights. Kim heard  a strange  silent shout in her head that somehow sounded like  Ru- man:

RUMAN: [Discard the queen!]

KIM: [It's not even the right suit!]

RUMAN: [Do it!]

Kim obeyed the voice, dropped the queen, and  Sofie's eyes went much wider than it should have done from a bad play. She had the voice of Dory talking to her.

RUMAN: [Sophia will discard a six of hearts, watch!]

And that's exactly what she did. They had both came to belief. Their cousins were really talking to them somehow.

Lest watchers  suspect something  meaningful  in  their  mutual glances  (and they  were  indeed  being watched)  Sophia did  a ruse for cover.

SOPHIA: [You don't even know how to play this stupid game!]

She retreated to one corner  of the  room, Kim to  another, and they conversed on Doryphone. Sofie was a little hurt Dory never revealed this talent before. She made this thought clear.

DORY: [It's in the standard B'nei Elohim toolkit but I find  it annoying. Emergency use only]

KIM: [I feel like I have enough patience to punch every  number on the door until it opens]

Sophia  she  shook her head.

SOPHIA: [We're being watched day and night. One time I  killed the lights in here and there was a faint  glow coming  from the "mirror" that quickly went out]

DORY: [All you need to do is start punching. Then I'll just read back the lucky number from when you tell me in the future]

SOPHIA: [I don't think they'll give us enough time to  even  do that]

After giving it some  thought Kimberly concocted  a plan to end the surveillance. They needed to talk to whoever was in charge of the shit show. To do that they would go on strike and   of- fer no  cooperation with their captors  whatsoever  until  they cried Uncle.

So they   said no words  and just sat  in the clinic   all  day doing nothing. There were two ways of dealing with all the dead time that were newly available to them after the  Change. Kim let  the  clock seem to  race and let her  heartbeats  seem  to hum. She sped up, cruised for  a while, then slowed  back down. Four hours  were burned up in as many minutes. Sophia didn't  like the feeling  of her heart buzzing. She just took a series of hour-long   naps with her  consciousness  turned  completely off.

After  four meals, two  showers, and many other  stops  to  use the restroom or drink water Kim and Sophia had a rather busy day that compressed a full week  of real time. The lunatics in the asylum won.

Dr. Trochmann  called  in  FBI  Special  Agent-in-Charge  Clyde Tolson,  who  identified   himself   and  said   he  wanted   a heart-to-heart talk.

SOPHIA: [Fine, start by telling us about this place]

TOLSON: [You   and  Kim  are  under  the   jurisdiction  of   a  branch  of  the Department of Justice called DECON, which  means Domestic  Enemies Containment,  Observation,   and  Neutraliza- tion]

Kim grew angry.

KIM: [Domestic enemies? You must be joking. My father lost  an arm   fighting  the Hun in  the last war. My mother was  a  Red Cross nurse  Over There. Every Sunday morning after Temple  I lead the Church of Green Dome  in a rip-roaring rendition of God Bless America]

TOLSON: [There is an Executive Order that could be  read,  very loosely, as offering a response to your strange contagion]

KIM: [You don't  seem afraid to talk to  us face-to-face,"  Kim pointed out.  "And for a  contagion, Doc Troch and  Nurse Ramsey ain't so scared either."

TOLSON: [If  it was  transmitted by coughing  or  sneezing  you girls would be totally isolated]

SOPHIA: [Okay, so we  know why you won't unlock the  door,  but we don't even know where we are]

TOLSON: [You're  not  all that  far from  Headwater. Just one state over,  in fact,  near  Cody. This is called  the  Heart Mountain Relocation Center]

DORY: [Excellent. We're on our way to come get you]

KIM: [What  are  the odds? Beleth gave a lecture  about  these places right before we came here]

SOPHIA: [Kimmie, I think   I'm in the wrong   camp. My great- great-granddaddy was German!]

Tolson wagged a finger.

TOLSON: [You're not here for your ethnicity, its your condition that makes you an undesirable. But the  President's  executive order is the  kind of gift that  comes around  only once in   a generation. Strike while the iron is hot, they always say."

SOPHIA: [Maybe I'm one of your  undesirables but  I don't  feel very sick]

TOLSON: [Sophia, your brain isn't even alive anymore!]

SOPHIA: [Then how could we be having this conversation?]

TOLSON: [Dr. Trochmann, would you  tell the   young   ladies what we've already learned?]

TROCHMANN: [Yes sir. Somehow it seems to  remodel nerve  cells. No more ions crossing the cell membrane. Your neurons are  now little gadgets with sliding levers and such. Both of you girls have been hooked up to a Dynograph and it shows nothing:   you- 're literally brain dead! We think it was probably caused by a new Nazi weapon]

KIM: I don't like you very much, but I can tell you want  some- thing. OK! We want something first. The windows disguised as mirrors must be removed from our living space]

TROCHMANN (playing dumb): [Mirrors?]

SOPHIA: [Come  now,  doctor, you  probably think  we're  pretty stupid, but we've had a lot of time  on our hands locked up  in here. Naturally we found your filthy one-way peeping Tom  mir- rors for people to look in on us]

TOLSON: [I can see there is no fooling you]

KIM: [Sometimes I call  Sofie a scrub, and  she knows I'm  only kidding. But Agent  Tolson,  I'll match  a  scrub at  the Acad- emy against any B student among the publics anywhere]

Tolson tried  to defend  the  arrangements  he had  made.

TOLSON: The mirrors  are not  used for  what you   think. This is a medical facility. No one is overly interested to see  you in a state of undress."

KIM: [Look, maybe you have an order  to hold us  in this  quar- antine of  yours, fine,  but we  still have a fundamental  Con- stitutional right to plain old-fashioned privacy!]

TOLSON: [I want to apologize for starting out on the wrong foot]

He sounded sincere. Perhaps he even was sincere.

KIM: [Then let's begin once more. Address our privacy concerns and we might be more forthcoming with what you want to know]

Sophia and Kim saw  how the  mood of the  men brightened  visi- bly at this apparent breakthrough.

TOLSON: [OK! I'll need to tighten up security to compensate but I'll let  you have your privacy. Curtains on your side of  the mirrors]

The next  day  Kimberly and Sophia  noticed   their  tormentors looked at a scrap of paper from their  pocket  before  punching the buttons to let them out. That seemed to be the only change. It meant Tolson was shuffling codes daily.

Sophia almost despaired but Kim realized there was an easier way than to bring Dory into it. Without knowing precisely how, she knew she could send a small electric current through part of the circuit as though she had punched the correct combination. The door popped open. Green. Go. They were out of the building.

Still, it was November and they were wearing nothing but  slip- pers and   hospital gowns. That itself was part   of  Tolson's security arrangements. Kim told Sophia to gather  blankets and towels and whatever else she could find to shield them from the cold.

KIM: [This is going to frighten Agent Tolson to no end]

They stepped  out into Wyoming on a  cold November  night. The girls  could  see their clinic  was one of maybe   hundreds  of long single-story buildings with  tar paper walls, surrounded by drainage ditches and crossed by gangplanks.

Sophia wanted to beg for help but Kim told  her no. Instead she chose a greenhouse  that  was  empty but  locked.

KIM: [We have special talents now, just like Gabriel  and  Dory do, and  I don't think they're accidental. I think  they  are meant to give us precisely the help we need right now.

DORY: [It's almost as though that camp is just an Academy field trip. Sofie, I'm betting you can break anything you  touch  if you want  to now. So break that padlock]

Sophia didn't  believe her,  but the  lock broke  in her  hands anyway.

SOPHIA: [How  do you  like them apples? If I knew I  could  do  that we'd a left  that hellhole any  time we wanted]

Kim shook her head again.

KIM: [It was an electric lock,  so if you broke it, we'd  still be in the hellhole]