TCG

G0

In the middle of the school day Kim was pulled out of class by Deacon Paul Bergin and driven home, where Clara paced silently. Kim started crying again in sympathy, pleading for her Mom to speak. After a time Clara looked directly at her daughter, building up the willpower to blurt it out to her, and finally she did: “Your father is dead!”

They both cried until there was nothing more to give, and even when Kim’s eyes were bone dry she was still wracked with sobs that trailed off at length to silent grief. Finally Kim started repeatedly asking her mother why and when she was ready to speak Clara had answers. According to Prophet Jashen Shybear, Erik was killed by an ancient relic called the Golden Gift, something Kim and Clara assumed was merely an allegorical literary device to move the plot of the Green Book along, perhaps like the whale in the book of Jonah. In the scripture of the Church of Green Dome heaven was a real place with walled cities ruled by angelic kings. Michael once sent Prince Melchizedek down to Earth to set aside a people to receive the oracles of God, and the prince bore the same Golden Gift.

Jashen revealed that for ten years he had lent Erik the relioc to honeycomb Green Dome with tunnels to access isolated pockets of coal. This had allowed Headwater to prosper through the Great Depression. But overnight there was a cave-in that smashed Erik’s helmet lantern and plunged him into total darkness. He couldn’t dig his way out, even with the Golden Gift, be- cause he got turned around and bored deeper into the mountain rather than back out towards the way he came. As Erik created a greater volume of space to walk through the remaining oxygen was stretched too thin and there were also suction losses through the Golden Gift itself. It wasn’t until dawn that men with picks and spades broke through the cave-in and reached Erik’s body.

Jashen assured Clara that her husband died without any pain. He simply fell asleep and never woke up again. Also he praised the memory of Erik for never violating a sacred trust that some in the Church were saying was more than even the Prophet had the authority to grant. But Clara admitted she had a hard time taking all of this in. Jashen was asking her to accept at face value that the Golden Gift was real, and the scriptures were literally true. In this she was like Kim. Shared beliefs were for binding a faith community, not to actually…believe. “When you attend the Final Rite you will come to see see the wisdom of it,” said Jashen. “But try to be strong, Clara. In the days to come there will be those who will tell you that God punished your husband with death for misusing his holy gift to the Church.”

In the aftermath of her father’s death Kim stopped going to school. Sofie and Dory came over after a couple of days to see if their friend was well. She was not, but their visit elevated Kim from her grief a microscopic bit and her mother Clara noticed that. After Sophie’s mother came to pick her daughter up Clara asked her to wait until Dory’s mother arrived as well, because she had a request to make of all of them. When everyone was together Clara said, “I’d like Sofie and Dory to be with Kim for her father’s funeral.” Susan Krause shook her head. She said,”They are just school girls and a funeral is a very solemn thing.” Dory’s mother Leliel agreed. She said, “This should be family time for Clara and Kim.”

“But we have no family here,” Clara said. “My folks are back east.”Leliel pointed out that Clara still had in-laws in Headwater. But Clara shook her head. “They’re Bunner Incarnate. They always held me at arm’s length. Kim is taking the death of Erik very hard but when the girls came over today I saw how they were like a family to her.” G1

Leliel said, “I’m not worried about Doriel. I’m worried more about Sofie and Kim. When you are on the other side of the Final Rite, Clara, you will no longer have the child-like faith that our Lord said was more blessed than the faith of who believe because they have seen.”

It was a gentle negotiation. Clara got permission for Kim’s friends to be with her for the funeral. Leliel persuaded Clara to have Kim sit out the actual Final Rite, and rarely in history have so many future lives been so deeply affected by so trivial a choice.

It would have been unseemly to run around playing while the body of Kim’s father was sent to his long home along with three other Greendomites from around the country, so they sat around in the Temple basement. Volunteers prepared dinner for the families of the dead. Gabriel joined them after breaking away from a group of boys smoking outside. Che seemed to know a lot of secrets about the Temple. Gabriel led the girls into a supply room which wasn’t locked. Kim, Sofie, and Dory tagged along because there was nothing else to do.

There was no electric light in the temples storeroom, 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 map of Headwater and many of the usual church odds and ends. The kids found unused hymnals, stacks of old temple bulletins, empty mason jars, and dozens of stacked folding chairs. Sofie found a cane carved from gnarled wood and shifted it from hand to hand to get the feel of it. Gabriel stopped moving and went, “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 sanctuary up-stairs.

“Very funny,” Sofie said, giving Gabriel a friendly shove. One of the walls was unfinished. Gabriel moved aside a piece of plywood which had concealed another dark space beyond. It was so black inside it drank their vision like a sponge.

“I’ve never been in there,” Gabriel admitted. None of the girls wanted to go in there but Gabriel dared them to go. Naturally Sofie was the first one through. Gabriel immediately followed Sofie to show che wasn’t afraid. Dory and Kim were afraid of the dark hole and they were also unafraid to admit it, but they didn’t want to be left alone so they squeezed in too.

Gabriel burned through ten matches before Dory went to the outer room again and brought back a candle. The kids found they were in a space that was about four times larger than the first room but there was no wooden floor, just natural stone and dirt rising halfway to the ceiling. Something like a rocky igloo reached nearly to the ceiling from the center of a circle of stones. The ceiling creaked as someone walked to and fro overhead. Gabriel did a complete circuit of the space, then said to Dory, “This is part of our family history!”

Dory said, “This must be the very summit of Green Dome. Wanica built that cairn, and the altar right over it.”

When Gabriel saw the blank faces of Sofie and Kim che was astonished. “Did you forget what they taught us in Sunday school? The temple is built on the Island in the Sky where God gave Chief Wanica the Golden Gift.’

G2

Kim rolled her eyes and said, “God gave Moses the stone tablets too. Only there was no Moses, so he didn’t.” She had a point. The Green Book itself denied the existence of Moses.

Dory pointed to the ceiling. “What do you think is happening up there right now?”

Kim considered her answer, because she didn’t wish to offend her friends. She said, “It is a simple cremation of my father’s body and the bodies of three other Greendomites, spiced with ritual.’

Dory said, “Kim, you saw Gabriel when we went swimming once at Lake 13 and you still think the Green Book is just a bunch of stories they invented?”

“I went to the library and looked that up,” Kim replied. “Gabriel’s a hermaphrodite. It’s not a big deal. Birth defect. Sometimes it happens.”

Gabriel rolled up hez sleeves and approached Kim, flipping both hands over a few times to show they were empty. Che said, “Hold out your hand.” Gabriel clasped her hand, and when che took it away again there was a stack of silver half-dollars. ‘Explain that, if you can.”

Kimberly put the coins in her purse because money was money and if Gabriel wanted to give her ten bucks so be it. She said, “Magic tricks, Gabriel, just like what they’re showing Momma upstairs right now. I don’t say there’s no God, but why can’t people just be amazed at God for what he really did do?”

Dory threw up har hands in mock despair at har heathen friends and muttered something about White Wingers. Gabriel moved toward the cairn. “We’ll never have the chance to be in here again,” che said. “I want to see if it’s really there.”

Sofie warned, “If you do you’ll go to hell.” “There’s no hell in Greendomism,” Gabriel snorted, and che picked the boulder most likely to be easily moved. Sophie gave hem a hand, and the boulder slowly swung open like a hinged door, just enough that they could squeeze inside the stone igloo one at a time. Dory brought light. A plain white dome lay inside.

Kim said God didn’t look like much. Gabriel shook hez head. “This isn’t God, but God made this. And don’t say God made everything, Sofie, even you know better.”

They all stood there silently for a time, each one of them buried in thoughts about the artifact. No one dared to touch it. After that, by unspoken agreement, they began to slide back out of the cairn, but they heard footsteps in the storage room next door. Dory put out the candle as everyone held their breath and tried not to make a sound. Deacon Paul looked into the dark gap and could just make out two silhouettes. Bergin screamed at them to get out. Blushing, Gabriel, Kim, Sofie and Dory scrambled out from beneath the altar, then out of the supply room. They sat together in the basement lunchroom. The deacon locked the supply room, and true to Gabriel’s words they never returned.

Dory said, “Thanks for that little adventure, brother. I always knew the avatar of Chokhmah was real, but actually seeing it was something I’ll never forget.”

G3

Just then the attendees began to filter in from upstairs. During the shared meal after the Final Rite Kim thought her mother seemed very different. The grief was gone. Clara said, “It’s all true, Kim. Everything in the Green Book is really true!” She no longer needed faith for the things taught by the Church. Kim knew her mother had been a nurse in the First World War and had seen things in France so terrible she refused to even talk about them, things which would crush the faith of anyone who believed in a good God. It was good to see some semblance of joy restored in her. But Kim and Sophie needed more convincing.

A few weeks following the death of Erik Zinter, Kim and Sofie grew bumps on the front of their heads. Dr. Wahkan said not to worry about them, they were benign and some of the Kuwapi also had the condition, but that only startled Clara to the point of quitting her job at the little hospital and taking Kim to Lusk. Two days later Sofie’s parents brought her to Lusk also but the doctors there could do little more than watch the girls get worse. Soon after that the girls were under federal quarantine in parts unknown.

Kim and Sofie had no idea where they had been taken, but it seemed to be a prison that doubled as a clinic. Doctors and nurses came to visit them, and they punched a code on a keypad to get back out. It was an odd combination of almost magical science and shabby construction with nails sticking through the walls. There were no windows in the clinic where they were held, but the girls could hear construction outside that only ceased at night.

For months their captor, Dr. Ian Trochmann, learned maddeningly few things about their condition. The white horns emerging from their scalp was made of bone and were not merely skin tumors. There were other symptoms, but the doctor said nothing of them to the girls.

One time Kim and Sofie were playing Eights, and Kim heard a silent shout in her head that, despite its silence, sounded exactly like Dory. She said, DISCARD THE QUEEN!

Kim replied to the voice with a mental shout of her own. “It’s not even the right suit!”

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. Dory’s voice now told Kim, SOFIE WILL DISCARD A SIX OF HEARTS, WATCH! And that’s exactly what she did. After that they both knew their friend’s voice was real.

Lest watchers suspect something meaningful in their mutual glances (and they were being watched) Sofie covered by saying, “You don’t even know how to play this stupid game.” She retreated to one corner of the clinic, Kim to another, and they conversed through Dory.

First their friend had to smooth over some hard feelings about keeping this strange talent a secret. She did this by calmly pointing out that both Kim and Sofie would have thought her nuts if she said she could hear voices, plant voices, and ride behind another person’s eyes. When Sofie asked about Jerry, and what his talent was, Dory replied, DO YOU REMEMBER THAT TRICK YESHUA DID WITH LOAVES AND FISH- ES? JERRY COULD PULL THAT OFF! Kim remembered the coin trick then. She didn’t think it sounded like something that would help them get out of the windowless clinic that was their prison. G4

Kim suggested punching every number on the lock until the door opened. Dory relayed that to Sofie, who shook her head. They were being watched. One time she killed the lights in their space and saw a faint glow coming from the ‘mirror’ that stopped soon after. It was really a window. Kim came up with an idea to end the surveillance. They had to embar-rass Doc Troch by making him think that two girls, ages seventeen and confined together for months in a small space, had fallen in love with each other. Sofie thought she could swing it. Dory said BEHAVE.

Kim and Sofie went on strike and did not cooperate with their captors at all. They said no words, but 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 appear, to her, to race and let her heartbeats seem, to her, to become a low hum. Kim sped up, cruised for a while, then slowed back down. Her muscles got sore from staying in one position but four hours were burned up in as many minutes. Sofie tried that too, but she thought the time-lapse method was gross because she could feel her bladder fill up and food moving inside. She preferred to take a series of hour-long jumps in time with her consciousness simply turned off. This was the cat nap method. After four meals, two showers, and many other stops to use the restroom or drink some water Kim and Sofie had a rather busy day that compressed a full week of real time. Another three weeks passed and the lunatics won.

The asylum-keepers brought in their biggest gun. This was the self-styled Controller of what he styled DECON. It was the only time Clyde Tolson ever spoke to Kim Zinter and Sofie Krause in person. He told them it was time for a heart-to-heart. “Fine,” said Sofie. “Start by telling us who you are.”

“I am FBI Special Agent-in- Charge Clyde Tolson. You and Kim are under the jurisdiction of a branch of the US Department of Justice called DECON, which I head up. DECON is short for Domestic Enemies Containment, Observation, and Neutralization.”

Kim was pissed off. ‘Domestic enemies? You must be joking. My father lost an arm fighting the Hun in Double-You Double-You One. My mother was a Red Cross nurse Over There. Every Wednesday morning after Temple I lead the White Wing of my church in a rip-roaring rendition of God Bless America.”

“You and Sofie have contracted an unknown contagion in a time before there is a proper federal response for that, which is bad luck for you and bad luck for everyone. But there are Presidential executive orders which could be read, very loosely, as offering such a response.”

“You don’t seem afraid to talk to us face-to-face,” Kim pointed out. “Doc Troch and Nurse Ramsey ain’t scared either.”

Tolson said, “If it was transmitted by sneezing you girls would be totally isolated. But revealing how you got sick would do much toward getting you home.”

Kim and Sofie both suspected they got the condition after sleeping with their Kuwapi friends but they said nothing about that. Instead, Sofie said, “Okay, you’ve explained why you won’t unlock the door, but we don’t even know where we are.”

G5

“You’re not very far from Headwater,” Tolson said. “Just one state over, in fact, near Cody. This is called the Heart Mountain Relocation Center.”

Sofie said, “I don’t understand. Who is being relocated, and why?”

“It’s easy to understand, Sofie. Last December after Pearl Harbor FDR authorized the incarceration of Nips living on the West Coast. Last February the first camps were built.”

Kim said, “By Nips I presume you really mean American citizens with a Japanese ethnic background.”

When Tolson had nothing to say to that Sofie said, ‘Hey Kimmie, I think I’m in the wrong camp. My great-great-granddaddy was a German.”

Tolson wagged a finger. “This camp is the third biggest city in Wyoming but only seven undesirables out of every ten are Nips. The President’s executive order was the kind of gift that comes around only once in a generation, but strike while the iron is hot, they always say.”

Sofie said, “So I’m one of your ‘undesirables’ but I don’t even feel sick.” Tolson said, “Sofie, your brain isn’t even alive anymore.”

“Then how could we be having this conversation?” Tolson turned to Dr. Trochmann and asked him to tell the young ladies what they’ve learned so far.

“It spreads like a virus,” the doctor said, “but I’ve never seen anything like it before. It literally remodels nerve and brain cells. No more potassium and sodium ions pumped by ATP through a membrane. Your neurons are now little gadgets with sliding levers and the like. Both of you girls have been hooked up to an Offner Dynograph and it shows nothing. You’re literally brain dead. Special Agent Tolson thinks you may be the first victims of a nasty Nazi weapon we’ve never seen before.”

“I don’t like you very much,” Sofie said, directing her glance at both men in turn, “But I can see you want something. Well, we want something first. We want the windows disguised as mirrors removed from our living space.”

Dr. Trochmann tried to play dumb. “Mirrors?”

“Come now, Doctor,” said Sofie, “you must think we’re just stupid girls. But we’ve had a lot of time on our hands locked up in here. Naturally we found your two filthy peeping-Tom mirrors and people looking in on us.”

Tolson said, “I can see there is no fooling you.”

“Sometimes I call Sofie a scrub,” Kim said, “and she knows I’m only kidding. But Mr. Tolson, I’ll match a scrub at Green Dome against any B student among the publics anywhere.” G6

Sofie said, “It better be that way, the amount of money my daddy shells out for tuition.”

Tolson tried to defend the arrangement, “The mirrors are not used for what you think.”

Kim said, “Look, maybe we’re infected and you have some order that says you can hold us in this quarantine of yours, but we still have one fundamental right: plain old-fashioned privacy!” For the first time Tolson and Trochmann became aware that Kim and Sofie were holding hands. The doctor blushed.

Sofie saw the opening and moved tighter up against Kim. “What did you expect? We’re seventeen and cooped up together. I hope you get what we’re trying to say here. I hope we don’t have to spell it out.

Tolson apologized for starting out on the wrong foot, and it actually sounded sincere.

“Then let’s begin once more,” offered Kim. The mood of the men brightened visibly at this breakthrough.

Tolson said, “I need to tighten up security a bit but I’ll let you have your privacy. Curtains on your side of the mirrors.”

Jashen had his head over his desk in silent prayer. Gabriel and Dory came him for a hug, one at each side, and at his invitation they took a seat. “Be at peace,” he said. “Do you think Kimberly and Sofia experienced the Change contrary to the will of Elyon?”

His children both shook their heads, and Dory stood up to approach a map posted on one wall of his office. “Kim and Sofie are being held here, father,” she said, pointing to a place northeast of Cody. “Not tonight, but on the following night, they will escape. They will hide on a freight train. By the time that train makes its first stop here, in Powell, they will be unconscious from exposure. We must be waiting for them with a warm station wagon filled with warm blankets and warm broth in a Thermos, not to mention the bodies of two warm friends. Otherwise Kim and Sofie will die somewhere in the mountains south of Billings.”

Jashen did not doubt his daughter, but he asked, “How do you know all that, Dory?”

“Kim knows it. That’s her new talent. She’s the Seer. And I know it because she told me.”

Jashen turned to Gabriel and said, “Put the coin on Peter’s desk. No, not a copy, son, the original.” He reached behind some books on a shelf, then set a golden bladeless knife hilt on his desk. He said, “The time is approaching when only you can keep it safe, Gabriel.”

His son took that as a cue to lift the Golden Gift from the desk and place it securely in the little hidden space-time pocket that was always next to him. Jashen said, “Elyon gave this to my father and I now give it to you. But use it only at need. That makes you solely responsible for the Last Rite, Gabriel, but only for as long as the Temple is firmly in the hands of the Church.” When Dory wondered aloud where she fit in Jashen said, “You are a driver now, so you will share the wheel with me. And gas money is not an issue.” He dropped a thousand in twenties on the desk. Dory picked up two of the bills and looked at them closely. She noted G7

that they all had different serial numbers. These bills were not copies like Jerry’s fifty cent pieces. “That money is from Michael. He could drop a hundred million dollars on our little town, but then a cup of coffee would run fifty bucks. The country is at war so there’s strict gasoline rationing, but I’m a member of the clergy. The X sticker on my woodie gives me permission to buy unlimited supplies just like any fireman or cop or congressman in Washington DC. Now let’s go to Wyoming and save your friends.”

The girls were attentive to the tighter security arrangements Tolson mentioned, but the only real change seemed to be how their tormentors would look at a scrap of paper from their pocket before punching the buttons that would let them out, which meant a daily code change. Sofie almost despaired but Kim explained (via Dory to maintain secrecy) that the change did not make their task any harder at all. They just had to pick a range and try all the combos in it night after night until the daily shifting combo happened to fall into that range.

Next to the door leaving the clinic was a square keypad with the digits 0 through 9, and the letters A through F, and Kim knew from listening that the combo was only four keystrokes. But as soon as she started trying a very vivid daydream of time appeared in her mind. To Kim her future was like a self-assembling house of cards. She could see the top, ten nights later, when doing the range from 7000 to 7FFF she punched 7BC6 and the door clicked open. But Kim wanted out that very night, so she started trying the range from 1000 to 1FFF. The house of cards collapsed and assembled itself again. This time the answer was four days away. Kim began trying higher ranges, and got jackpots ranging from two days to two weeks. Then in her mind she saw the number that was their ticket home that very night: D1FC.

But it was November and they were wearing nothing but slippers and hospital gowns. That itself was part of Tolson’s security. Kim told Sofie to gather blankets and towels and whatever else she could find to create makeshift extra clothing to shield them from the cold. “This is going to frighten Agent Tolson to no end,” said Kim as they both bundled up. “This, and especially what we do after this.” She could see the events leading to their escape from the camp stacking in her mind.

Sofie said she was fine with Tolson being scared shitless. They stepped out into Wyoming on a cold November night. The girls could see the clinic was one of hundreds of long single-story sixplexes with tarpaper walls, each one surrounded by drainage ditches crossed by gangplanks. Some had their interiors lit. Sofie wanted to knock on a door begging for help but Kim shook her head. Instead Kim chose a greenhouse that was empty but locked. She quietly told her friend, “We have special talents now just like Gabriel and Dory do. I know you can break anything you touch. So break that padlock.”

Sofie didn’t believe her, but the lock broke in her hands anyway. “How do you like them apples?” Sofie husked. “If I knew I could do that we’d a left that hellhole any time we wanted.” Kim shook her head again and explained it was an electric lock, so if Sofie broke it, they’d still be in the clinic. “So how did you get us out of there?”

“I’ll explain when we get inside,” Kim said.

Sofie was disappointed that the greenhouse was cold. There was a vegetable garden inside, but the glass only kept away the snow and wind. In just one half hour they were discovered G8

by the fellow who maintained this greenhouse, one George Kaneko. Mr. Kaneko’s initial anger at finding Kim and Sofie hiding in his garden faded to pity when they told him that they had been held prisoner in the clinic since June. Not even the first wartime internees arrived until August. The family of George Kaneko, through simple hard work, had made a good life on their Washington State strawberry farm. But in the confusing legal tangle after the internment was announced they were tricked into selling their land for pennies on the dollar. Now the entire Kaneko family, American citizens every one of them, was forced to crowd into a single-room in barracks, lit by a single bulb. They had to shit, shower and shave with other families in community facilities with no partitions for privacy, and eat in a common mess hall that served the whole block. This happened out of fear in the wake of Pearl Harbor, and Kim reminded Sofie how Tolson bragged of making it come to be.

Sofie asked Mr. Kaneko if his daughters had any clothing to spare, but he said they were too young to have anything that would fit her. Instead Mr. Kaneko would give them spare garments of his own, even shoes and jackets, and when they were captured, as he was certain they would be, they could simply claim they stole them from the greenhouse.

The only gap in the fence was along the west side of the camp away from the train station. It was guarded by two towers with high-power searchlights while seven lesser-equipped towers guard- ed the rest. Kim and Sofie made for the fence along the train tracks, choosing a section equidistant between two guard towers. They were spotted but none of the guards shot right away. Sofie, by simply touching a lamp post, took out the light overhead by remotely pulling the wires. After that, she merely touched a fence post to snap it off at the base. The fence dangled suspended by the two nearest posts, permitting the girls to roll under. The guards began firing, but none scored hits in the darkness as the girls ran for the tracks. The guards couldn’t leave their posts and reported the fence breach by telephone.

There they found the manual turnout switch used to move trains onto the siding to unload new internees for the camp and Sofie broke the metal left/right sign. With the reflective sign no longer indicating the position of the switch Sofie threw a lever to divert traffic to the siding just before the next train arrived in a ridiculously opportune coincidence that would said more about Kim’s new sense of timing than luck. The train veered onto the side track as expected, and the engineer applied the brakes with a will, causing an empty gondola car to stop right in front of the girls just long enough for them to climb inside and get out of sight. Then the train went into reverse.

When it was was entirely on the main line the engineer manually moved the shunt from left to right. The train resumed operation before anyone running the camp knew it had stopped.

The freight run between Cody and Billings was not scheduled to make a stop in Powell but on this occasion the engineer stopped to phone in the broken light at the Heart Mountain internment camp. That gave the friends of Kim and Sofie a very brief window to save them. The train was a half mile long and nobody knew exactly which car the girls had chosen to stow away on. The stowaways were unconscious from exposure but the last image Dory received from Kim was of rolling stock with an open top, about half the height of a box car. Jashen drove beside the motionless train for a quarter mile before reaching the first run of gondola cars. Everyone got out of the station wagon and began calling Sofie and Kim by name but no heads poked over the sides of the cars. G9

Gabriel used handrails to climb one of them. Che didn’t see the girls, only a railcar filled with inch-=thick sheets of steel stacked to within a foot and a half of the top. Same with the next car back. But the car after that had two piles of rags huddled against the front wall that must have been Kim and Sofie. Gabriel climbed back down and pointed at the correct gondola car. “They’re in that one!” he told Dory, sprinting toward it. He hoped he was right. There was only the light of a waxing gibbous moon for him to see.

Then disaster struck: the train began to move once again. Instantly Gabriel had the relic that Michael called the Macro in his hand. He squeezed it until the hissing shaft, pitch black on near black in the night, reached its maximum extension of about ten feet. If he squeezed harder it would begin to retract as a shield or dome. When the railcar containing the girls approached, Gabriel swiped the active Macro effect through the coupling. This caused an inch-wide swath of steel to disappear. The half of the train with a locomotive continued to accelerate, while the rear half began to slow to a halt. Jashen moved his vehicle in reverse to follow the part of the train that was left behind, while Gabriel and Dory followed on foot.

Dory felt a great sense of relief. No matter what happened now, Kim and Sofie were not on a one-way trip into eternity by way of the Rockies. She climbed to the top of the gondola car, saw it was indeed Kim and Sofie, and burst into tears from the emotion of seeing them again after so long. Gabriel let the Macro bite into the lip of the open gondola car. A heavy half-circle of steel dropped away. “You’re too close,” Dory warned hem. “You’ll slice their feet.”

The front half of the train was slowing to a stop because the engineer now realized something was wrong. Gabriel put another nick about two feet aft of the first one and Dory told him that was better. So he made a cut about three feet wide and danced out of the way as the wall of the gondola car and tons of steel spilled to the ground. The chute che had made was as smooth as a mirror. Not a single atom of iron stuck up to impede the girls.

Jashen joined Gabriel, ready to catch the girls when they came down the slide. Dory dragged Kim to the cut first and let her go. Kim was wrapped in blankets and a man’s clothing. Dory waited for Jashen and Gabriel to pile Kim into the station wagon before dragging Sofie to the slide. She could see two flashlights dancing a thousand feet away, crewmen from the caboose investigating why the train snapped in two. When Jashen and Gabriel were ready Dory pushed Sofie off the railcar into their waiting arms, then Dory slid down after her.

In the station wagon Gabriel saw that Kim was wearing some short fellow’s clothes and a flannel coat under a blanket. She looked for all the world like a homeless bum, but everything smelled clean. The vehicle stank worse than Kimberly did. Gabriel dug through fabric to reach skin and found Kim was dangerously cold. Dory said. “There was only a foot of steel between them and sixty miles an hour of November wind, at two in the AM, in Wyoming. Poor Kim. Poor Sofie.” Even as she spoke Sofie stirred awake under Dory’s ministrations, but Gabriel still had Kim to revive. “Skin to skin,” Dory told him, “that’s the secret to it.” Gabriel didn’t need much convincing of that.

The way home doubled back southwest parallel to the tracks. As Jashen was driving past the Heart Mountain camp Kim stirred to life, as if sensitive to the mere proximity of her former prison. Luxuriating in the attention Gabriel lavished on her she purred, “I like this afterlife.”