TCJ

TDD63: When  Fort  Price  was  overrun by  the  Kuwapi  it  was witnessed only by pronghorns, badgers, coyotes and prairie dogs jumping up to check out the cacophony of  hoofbeats. Ten Kuwapi women had been used as sex slaves at the fort. While were being set upon horses Jashen began to smell something strange, as did his wife Leliel who walked beside him.

After that he grew filled with wonder when he saw the ten wagons of the pilgrims of the Five Corners  Free Congregation plodding west along the north  bank of  the Squaw  River. But they were still too far away to identify.

TDD64: "It's not  a respectable  wilderness anymore!" Jashen's wife muttered to herself in the language and idiom of the whites when she saw how exasperated her husband was over what seemed to be a  sudden  infestation  of  white  soldiers  and  now  white settlers.

The Stiffnecks saw the  Kuwapi approach  and pointed  rifles at them,  but Jashen  saw the  lead wagon  was driven  by a  man he recognized  from his  vision quest  several years  prior. Jashen smiled, dismounted, took off his headdress and he was recognized in turn. "We meet again, Pastor Mark Lange," he  said, "just as The Teacher foretold."

TDD65: And the settlers  were entirely  thrilled by  his words, even as they had been when  two other B'nei Elohim  met them in Missouri.

"Jashen! Leliel!" Mark brought his  own  wagon to  a halt  and jumped down to embrace the young man. The rifles among the wagon train were all lowered and put out of sight.

Jashen voiced well-wishes  to  Mark and  his fellow  travelers. Lange pointed to the prominent butte a few miles upriver to the west and asked her, "Is that Green Dome?"

TDD66: "Yes," he said, "but my father calls it the Island in the Sky."

"Then we have reached our destination!" Lange said triumphantly. He gave thanks to God not a single member of his flock had been. lost to disease or misadventure.

Jashen said, "The army of the whites have taken  to hunting the People,  but now  the hunters  have  become the  hunted. I  must hasten to see  if my father is  well, but I bid  you to continue upstream until Green Dome lies at your feet. When we meet again, Mark Lange, we shall make you more than welcome."

TDD67: The pilgrims  of  Five Corners  Free Congregation  first arrived at the lower slopes of  Green Dome at dusk  on the last day of August in 1866. There, with their journey finally at an end, they  saw four  fallen warriors of  the People,  Left Hand, Half Yellow Face, Kill Eagle, and Hairy Moccasin lying on a bier of branches taken from woody shrubs. And it was on this solemn occasion when the Kuwapi People and the settlers of Mark Lange's group were first gathered all together.

TDD68: In full  view of  everyone Chief  Wanica, with  words of reverence for Wakan  Tanka, struck off the Golden  Gift and made the bodies of his  dead men disappear. The Whites were struck speechless. Coming as they did from a religious background, such a display could be  nothing other  than the  power of  God made manifest.

"This is a sign!" Mark exclaimed. He recognized the Golden Gift from the translation of the White  Scroll he had made  with the help of Leliel and Jashen. It was the same weapon  wielded by rince Melchizedek when he  first encountered father Abraham. Not merely the same kind, but literally the same artifact.

TDD69: "God has brought us all together," Lange declared, "White man and Red man alike,  in this  land of His  choosing, flowing with milk  and honey." At Lange's words all the  people looked around in the  fading  light  and took  in  the barren,  mostly treeless grasslands. Lange cleared his throat. "Here at Green Dome we all shall remain, and prosper with God's blessings!"

TDD70: Lange couldn't just take the weapon outright,  as it was holy, a divine gift made by Bat-El himself, so it could never be defiled by base theft. Obviously the People led by  Wanica and the remnant of the Five Corners Free Congregation would have to be  ermanent and  equal  (but separate)  partners. The Church's doctrine of mandatory cousin-marriage  would salve the settlers' horror at any race-mixing.

TDD71: After the  funeral there  followed a  good old-fashioned mass conversion of the entire Kuwapi people,  followed by their assembly-line baptism in the  cold waters  of the  Squaw River. They were each plunged into the stream three  times using total immersion, since Lange was at  heart still  a Dunker. So a new congregation was born, the Church  of Green Dome, with  a White Wing and a Red Wing, "Two  lungs by which the  united people of the Creator draw new breath," Lange declared.

TDD72: That night Wanica's people returned  to their encampment at the 4,650 foot level of Green  Dome, on a wide  bench on the eastern side of the hill. In the morning, aided by the Whites, they began to turn it into a permanent village.

Gary Bergin and his wife Marge chose the valley  of Squaw River due south of Green  Dome and  begin pulling  up dead  stumps of burnt trees to  establish a farm, aided by  their children Dale, Owen, Linda, Grace. Baby Megan was still far too young.

TDD73: Alfred  Porter,  his  wife  Caroline,  and  their  three children George, Ida, and Rachel 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  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 Kenneth, Jane,  Faith,  and  Susan  choose  a  spot  for  their homestead at elevation 4,400 feet, a little below the village of the People. At first they grew oxen, taken from the animals that accompanied them on the pilgrimage, but they  also planted rows of apple and pear trees.

TDD74: 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 following summer a cattle drive also used the  ford and the Henrys bought dairy cows. Their animals grazed in the shade of their family's fruit trees.

David and Ann Krause, with their crowd of children Edwin, Linda, Gail, Robert, Carl, Helen, and Tom settled to the  south of the river ford took to raising horses, having received back most of the horses they loaned to make the pilgrimage.

TDD75: The 6th Cavalry Regiment came up from  Texas looking for the bloodthirsty warriors who wiped out a whole company of their men and  found  only  a  docile  tribe  of  newly-Christianized converts helping white settlers grow some  crops. When pressed, the farmers said they knew there was an empty  fort nearby, but 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 now 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.

TDD76: The white settlers who did not take up  the plow instead platted 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, Brandon,  Oscar, Roy, and  Nancy, who built and ran a general store. Ivar and Anna Zinter operated a blacksmith  shop. Like the  Zinters, Mark  Lange  and his  wife Joanna were childless, but not for much longer. In a few years a boy named Clark  was born  to the  Langes, closely  followed by David, who was born to the Zinters.

TDD77: The Green Dome Tabernacle, built at the  place where the Squaw River emerged from the base  of Green Dome hill,  was the gathering place for all the eople, Red and White, every Sunday. With each homily Prophet Lang and Apostle Wanica established the wall of Church doctrine steadily, like laying bricks. One of the doctrines, which was really a concession to  the Kuwapi people, was that everyone, both male  and female, must wear  their hair long and tied into a ony tail.

TDD78: After a time, the members of the Green  Dome Church were called Ponies by outsiders, and later even the Stiffnecks called themselves that. The Kuwapi were also introduced to the Western concept of surnames. Jashen remembered his original given name of Shy Bear and chose the last name of Shybear.

00: 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.

01: The tabernacle on the western flank of Green Dome mountain, at the debouchment of the Squaw River, steadily expanded into a much larger wooden and whitewashed edifice called the Green Dome Temple. When it was complete Prophet Mark Lange was fifty-three years of age. Smaller secondary tabernacles were established in the "mission field" throughout the United States and even Europe but all Greendomite  funerals,  called Last  Rites, still  took place at the heart of the mother Church in Headwater.

02: 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 Prophet  Mark Lange envisioned at the  founding of  Headwater. When Jashen Shybear committed his father's body directly into the hands of Bat-El it was a sight that few  but the  oldest members present  had ever seen.

03: Not everything was so grim. During the fair held in honor of the Prophet'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.

TC185: 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.

TC186: Erik took  two rounds  from a  Bergmann Maschinenpistole 18/1 that shattered  the bone  in his  upper left  arm. Doctors removed  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.

TC187: Erik met a Red Cross nurse with a surname he recognized. While she  changed  his  dressings Erik  learned  that  Clara's family, 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.

TC188: They could not talk  for long but  after he told  her he wanted to  stay in touch Clara  passed along the address  of her parents 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. Finally, in 1922, Erik took to the Yellowstone Auto Trail  in a  Model T and  drove halfway across the country.

TC189: In Pennsylvania only first cousins couldn't get hitched. Second 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!"

Within one human generation of its founding the Mystery  of Iniquity  was already evident  in  the  Church. In ancient days Shemhazai correctly discerned it, but that would not be enough to save him when the end came.

04: 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. A legal objection on First Amendment grounds quickly got bogged down in the  Federal court  system while  other Christians  rejected the Church wholesale for rejecting the Bible and introducing another one.

05: At  Mark  Lange's  death  in  1922  Jashen  Shybear  became the second Prophet. For years Jashen could  find no  suitable candidate to replace him as Apostle. Something was lost with the passing of Lange, a principle of unity that bound the two sides.

The white parishioners began to tie their ponytails up into buns as a subtle act of separation from the  native side. Ultimately they refused to worship with the  Red Wing at all. They met in the Temple on Wednesday nights rather than Sunday mornings.

06: Klaus Hansen oozed up  out of the  swamp to lead  them, and Jashen was compelled  to make  him Apostle. But by early 1943 Hansen, more  than  anyone  else,  brought  the  Church  to  an irretrievably fallen state.

TC190: Before Robyn was Robyn she was Kimberly, born to Erik and Clara Zinter in 1925. She knew her two best friends Sophia and Doriel from when they shared the same nursery  while even their mothers found work in that frothy decade. But by 1932 they were all 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.

TC191: 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.

TC192: In   the  heart   of  the  Great   Depression  Headwater experienced a boom. Great heaps of black  gold from  the mines piled up  on docks  in  Chicago  and  San Francisco. Soon the unemployed, unemployable Erik Zinter had a brand  new brick red Ford Model B and he also  completely paid off his  modest home. There was enough money left over to send Kimberly to the Academy to be with  her friends  Doriel  Shybear, the  daughter of  the prophet of the Church, and Sophia Krause, the only  girl on the football team.

TC193: Doriel Shybear wore her black hair just long enough for a pinch of it  to be  tied in  the obligatory  Church pony  tail. Members of the Shybear family always sported what was assumed to be a decorative head dress particular to the Kuwapi people. The item had white horns that curved over the head in such a way as to resemble  the halo of  a cartoon angel. This bifurcated halo tapered to points over the forehead and anchored a  net of gold or silver chain with semi-precious stones at the nodes.

TC194: Sophia Krause kept her ash-blond hair  even shorter than Doriel did, with  no Church-mandated  pony tail. Like Kim and Dory, Sophia was required to wear woolen skirts to class rather than trousers with  pockets, which  annoyed her. One Halloween morning Dory came 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.

TC195: Kimberly  had long  hair  halfway  between mahogany  and carrot-top which she wore in a ponytail all the time like every good little Greendomite, male and  female. Kim was an infidel. She didn't believe a  word of  the Green  Book. But she wasn't ready to  disappoint her father  so she gritted her  teeth, wore the damned ponytail in a 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!"

TC196: At the Academy Kim  drew Sophia  as a lab  partner while Dory ended up with her  sibling Gabriel. Sophia kicked Gabriel out of his seat with "no offense pally" and  sent him shambling towards 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.

"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."

TC197: 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 fifteen years and verged on being too sultry for Sundays. Listeners compared her favorably to Peggy Lee. In band class she started dabbling with the piano and found she also had the chops for keyboard. Gabriel had no inborn talent  but this was the  Academy after  all. After learning scales  he  tried several brass instruments before settling on the saxophone.

TC198: 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 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.

TC199: 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 attended 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 Kimberly soloing on vocals and Gabriel on sax. For Kim the only downside was her  father Erik  wasn't there  as he  promised he would be.

TC200: Kim saw how her 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 was pulled out of class and driven home by Deacon Paul. She started crying then, fearing the worst. At home when she saw her mother pacing Kim tearfully pleaded for  her to  speak. It took a  long time before Clara had the willpower to look directly at her daughter and blurt it out, sobbing, “Your father is dead!”

TC201: 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. When Clara finally gave Kim answers they seemed hard to believe.

The Green Book  described something  called the  Killing Relic. Clara and Kim 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 insisted it was real and  he had lent it to Erik.

TC202: For years Jashen honeycombed Green Dome  with tunnels to access 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.

TC203: Jashen praised the memory of Erik for  never violating 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. “When you attend the Final Rite you will come to see the wisdom of it,”  Jashen told  her. “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.”

TC204: Kim stopped going to school. After a few days Dory and Sophia came around. Their visit elevated Kim from her  grief a tiny bit  and her  mother noticed  this. When Sophia’s mother came to pick  up her  daughter 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 Sophia and Dory to be with Kim for Erik's Last Rite.”

Susan Krause shook her  head. "Last Rite? They're  just school girls!"

TC205: Dory's mother Leliel  was with Susan  on this. She said with her unplaceable accent, "My husband told 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?"

Susan said, "This should be family time for you and Kim, Clara."

"But I have no family here," Clara objected. "All my people are back east."

"You have your in-laws," Leliel pointed out.

TC206: But here Clara firmly shook her head. “The Zinters are Bunner Incarnate. They've always held me at arm’s length. Now Kimberly is taking the  death of  Erik very  hard but  when the girls came over today she brightened  just a little. I saw how they were like a family to her. This is all about Kim.”

After that it  became a  gentle negotiation. Susan and Leliel agreed that Kim’s friends could be with  her, downstairs, but Leliel persuaded Clara to  have them sit  out the  actual Final Rite upstairs.

TC330: The town of Headwater,. true to its name, is  where the Squaw River 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 Kuwapi  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.

TC331: 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 underground 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.

TC332: 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.

TC333: 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 Kim and her friends sat in the Temple basement, very bored, while volunteers prepared dinner for the families of the dead.

Gabriel joined them after breaking away from a  group of Kuwapi boys smoking outside and pulled out a set of keys. "Benefits of being the preacher's  kid." He unlocked the  door to  a supply room.

TC334: Kim, Sophia, and Dory tagged along  with Gabriel 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 hymnals, stacks of old temple bulletins, empty  mason jars, and dozens of stacked folding chairs.

TC335: 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 upstairs. "Very funny," Sophia said, giving Gabriel a friendly shove.

One of the walls was unfinished. Gabriel 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. Gabriel asked Dory, "Do we show them now, sis?"

TC336: "They had to find out sooner or later," said Dory with a shrug. "Might as well be now." So Gabriel 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. As they went  along  Gabriel  said,  "We're crossing under the road here, and after that we'll be inside the mountain."

TC337: 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. Gabriel stood on a ledge over the pool and said, "Here, exactly here, is where Adamu and Chava went to Kemen. Straight out of the Green Book."

Robyn was incredulous. "That's what you wanted to show us?"

"Isn't it enough?"

"In a museum in Havana are two skulls  of Christopher Columbus, one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."

TC338: Dory said, "Gabe, we have an unbeliever on our hands."

Gabriel rolled up his sleeves and approached Kim, flipping both hands over a few times to show they were  empty. He said, "Hold out your hand." She did. Gabriel clasped her hand and left there 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, just like they're showing Momma right now."

TC339: Sophia chimed in, obviously sympathizing  with Kim. "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 two  heathen friends and muttered something about White Wingers.

Gabriel 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 Kim couldn't believe it.

TC340: Kim said,  "Am  I  really seeing  this,  Sophia? Are  my friends actually skinny-dipping during my father's funeral?"

Dory was exasperated. "Would you shut up and look?"

The boy part of Gabriel was  doing what boy parts  typically do around girls, no surprise there. But he only had one ball. "The other one is inside  me, Kim.  It's a real  ovary. I  could get pregnant." He moved his  scrotum aside  to  display the  labia hidden behind it. And his breasts and nipples didn't look like they were for show.

TC341: "Gabriel is what we call  a jen," Dory said. "A nephil. I'm a nephil too, except I'm an ambi."

Kim and Sofie could see  the bits dangling below  Dory's labia. She had the  same  two  organs as  her  sibling  but they  were reversed in position. That seemed to make all  the difference. Dory thought of herself as female.

Both Kim and Sophia were stunned to silence.

Gabriel said, "It's an old Kemenese joke that if ambis like Dory put their mind to it they could fuck themselves."

No one laughed.

TC342: Gabriel  cleared  his  throat  and  said,  "Recall  your scripture. Genesis six  four. There were giants in  the earth in those days. When  the sons of God came in  unto the daughters of men they bore  children to them. The same became  the mighty men of old, men of renown."

Dory chimed in. "All we're saying we both have a copy of Mom's Z chromosome."

When Hunky found her voice she said, "You've got a dangler like your brother.  Why aren't you  running around with  those Kuwapi boys he smokes with?"

TC343: Dory said, "Now, right there, that's the best part about being one of the nephilim. It's  only you humans and elyonim who have to be one thing or the other. We get to choose! Dresses and makeup is how  I want to fit in and  Gabriel's stupid club where they camp  out on the plains  and whip each other  raw works for him. Certainly  cousin Remy  doesn't have any  complaints, right Gabe?" Dory winked at him.

"None of this should be new  to you and Sophia,"  said Gabriel. "It's all in the Green Book."

TC344: "I believe  all that  stuff in  the Green  Book and  the Bible,"  Kim answered,  annoyed at  the insinuation  she was  an apostate. "Kemen, miracles, the resurrection, everyone believes it happened, back then. But nobody believes it happens now."

Sophia nodded and  said,  "Everybody knows  that stuff  doesn't happen anymore, but nobody is willing to admit they know it."

"If you were just talking about the Bible you'd  have a point," Gabriel answered. "But the Green  Book is  like no  other holy text."

TC345: Kim and  Sophia fell  silent, unprepared  to call  their friends liars  while  hard  evidence  they  were  nephilim  was standing between  their  legs,  literally. But Dory  felt  her friends needed one final push. She jumped into the source of the Squaw River and  dove out  of view. Gabriel took her cue  and followed.

"I'll give them less  than one minute,"  Sophia said,  but when that minute passed she started to worry and at four minutes she and Kim were stripping their own clothes off to go after them.

TC346: The four of them rose  to the surface together. Kim and Sophia would never be the same again. They had seen the purple sky of Kemen and possibly, just possibly, Yeshua himself.

Gabriel directed their 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.

TC347: 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. Her grief was gone, but something else was too.

Clara said, "It's all true, Kim. Everything in the Green Book is really true!"

"I know," said Kim, though she had come to the  same place by a very different  route.There was  a feeling of  melancholy behind everything now. Leliel had justifiably warned of  this. Belief was no longer any part of it.

TC403: By the second week after Erik's funeral  neither Kim nor Sophia could hide the  twin bumps on  their heads  anymore. Dr. Wahkan assured their parents the  bumps were harmless  but when they broke through  Kimberly's scalp  and turned  into outright horns Clara took her to the town of Lusk over  in Wyoming for a second opinion. Sofie's parents followed suit. But the doctors there could do nothing more than  watch the girls get  worse. A week later they were under federal quarantine in parts unknown.

TC404: The girls 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 substandard. Nails stuck  through  the walls. There were  no windows but the girls could  hear construction outside that only ceased at night.

TC405: One time Kim and Sophia were playing Eights. Kim heard a strange silent shout in her head that somehow sounded like Dory:

DISCARD THE QUEEN!

Kim said., "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 them told Kim, SOFIE WILL DISCARD A SIX OF HEARTS, WATCH!

And that's exactly what she did. They had both came to belief. Dory was really talking to them somehow.

TC406: Lest  watchers  suspect something  meaningful  in  their mutual glances  (and they  were  indeed  being watched)  Sophia covered by saying, "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.

I FIND IT ANNOYING, Dory told her. EMERGENCY USE ONLY.

"I wonder what your  brother can  do for  us," said  Robyn, out loud.

TC407: Dory replied, DO YOU REMEMBER THE TRICK  YESHUA DID WITH LOAVES AND FISHES? GABE COULD PULL THAT OFF!

Kim remembered Gabriel's coin trick. Sophia said, out loud, "I don't think he can help us, given the circumstances."

Kim suggested punching every number until the  door opened. But when Dory relayed that to Sophia she shook her head. Sofie knew they were being watched. One time she killed the lights in their space and saw a faint  glow coming  from the "mirror"  that was quickly put out.

TC408: After giving it some  thought Kimberly concocted  a plan end the surveillance. They had to  embarrass Dr.  Trochmann by convincing  him  that two  girls,  ages  seventeen and  confined together for months in a small  space, had fallen in  love with one other.

Sophia thought she could manage it, but they would  have to put in a little extra effort to make it believable.

Dory said BEHAVE.

The first part of  the plan was  to go on  strike and  offer no cooperation with their captors whatsoever.

TC409: 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.

TC410: 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.

"Fine," said Sophia, "start by telling us about this place."

You and Kim  are  under the  jurisdiction of  a  branch of  the Department of Justice called DECON."

TC411: "I never heard of it."

"DECON means  Domestic  Enemies Containment,  Observation,  and Neutralization."

Kim grew angry. "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."

"There is an Executive Order that could be  read, very loosely, as offering a response to your strange contagion."

TC412: "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 said, "If it was transmitted by coughing or sneezing you girls would be totally isolated."

"Okay, so we know why you won't unlock the  door," Sophia said, "but we don't know where we are."

"You're not all that  far from Headwater,"  he said. "Just one state over,  in fact,  near  Cody.  This  is called  the  Heart Mountain Relocation Center."

TC413: "What are the odds?" Kim asked her friend. "Beleth gave a lecture about these places right we came here."

"Kimmie,   I    think   I'm    in    the    wrong   camp.    My great-great-granddaddy was German!"

Tolson wagged a finger. "Only seven undesirables out  of every ten are  nips. The  President's executive order  is the  kind of gift that  comes around  only once in  a generation.  But strike while the iron is hot, they always say."

Sophia said, "Maybe I'm  one of your  undesirables but  I don't feel very sick."

TC414: "Sophia, your brain isn't even alive anymore!"

"Then how could we be having this conversation?"

"Dr. Trochmann, would  you  tell the  young  ladies what  we've already learned?"

"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 Nazi weapon."

TC415: "I don't like you very much," Sophia said, directing her glance at both men in turn, "but I can tell you want something. OK! We  want something first.  The windows disguised  as mirrors must be removed from our living space."

Trochmann tried to play dumb. "Mirrors?"

"Come now,  doctor," said  Sophia,  "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 mirrors for people to look in on us."

TC416: Tolson sighed. "I can see there is no fooling you."

"Sometimes I call Sofie a scrub," Kim said, "and  she knows I'm only  kidding. But  Agent  Tolson,  I'll match  a  scrub at  the Academy against any B student among the publics anywhere."

Tolson tried  to defend  the  arrangements  he had  made. "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."

"And we're not talking about simple modesty," said Sophia.

TC417: Kim said, "Maybe you  have an order  to hold us  in this quarantine of  yours, fine,  but we  still have  one fundamental Constitutional right: plain old-fashioned privacy!"

For the first time Tolson  and Trochmann became aware  that Kim and Sophia were holding hands. Both men blushed. Sophia saw that and slid tighter  against Kim. "What did you expect,  fellas? We're  seventeen and  cooped up  in  here together.  I hope  you understand what  we're trying to  say. I  hope we don't  have to spell it out."

TC418: Tolson said, "I want to apologize for starting out on the wrong foot." He sounded sincere. Perhaps he even was sincere.

"Then let's begin once more," offered Kim. "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 visibly at this apparent breakthrough.

Tolson said, "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."

TC419: 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  explained  (by Doryphone  to maintain secrecy) that  it didn't make their task  any harder at all. They just had to pick a range and try all the combos in it every  night until  the daily  shifting combination  happened to fall into into that window.

TC420: The  keypad had  sixteen  buttons  with the  numerals  0 through 9 and also A through F. Kim chose to use 0 for the first digit and  she started  punching  the  other three  numbers  in sequence, That seemed to be a dead end. Then she chose 1 for the first digit and started punching  again. The winning ticket of 1DFC, which  she would  have landed upon  later in  the evening, somehow presented itself in her mind. She punched that and the door popped open. Green. Go. They were out of the building.

TC421: Still, they were wearing nothing but slippers 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.

"This is going to frighten Agent Tolson to no end," she said 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 up like the numbers for the lock.

TC422: They stepped out into Wyoming on a  cold November night.