Robert Charles Wilson - SPIN

"Jordan Tabernacle," I said.

"It's easy to set prophecy against the Spin. Signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars, it says in Luke. Well, here we are. The powers of heaven shaken. But it isn't—it isn't—"

He seemed to lose the thought.

"How's her breathing back there?" But I didn't really need to ask. I could hear every breath she took, labored but regular. I just wanted to distract him.

"She's not in distress," Simon said. Then he said, "Please, Tyler. Stop and let me out."

We were traveling east. There was surprisingly little traffic on the interstate. Colin Hinz had warned me about congestion around Sky Harbor airport, but we'd bypassed that. Out here we'd encountered only a few passenger cars, though there were a good many vehicles abandoned on the shoulder. "That's not a good idea," I said.

I looked in the mirror and saw Simon knuckling tears out of his eyes. At that moment he looked as vulnerable and bewildered as a ten-year-old at a funeral.

"I only ever had two signposts in my life," he said. "God and Diane. And I betrayed them both. I waited too long. You're kind to deny it, but she's dying."

"Not necessarily."

"I don't want to be with her and know I could have prevented this. I would as soon die in the desert. I mean it, Tyler. I want to get out."

The sky was growing light again, an ugly violet glow more like the arc in a malfunctioning fluorescent lamp than anything wholesome or natural.

"I don't care," I said.

Simon gave me a startled look. "What?"

"I don't care how you feel. The reason you should stay with Diane is that we have a difficult drive ahead of us and I can't take care of her and steer at the same time. And I'm going to have to sleep sooner or later. If you take the wheel once in a while we won't have to stop except for food and fuel." If we could find any. "If you drop out it'll double the travel time."

"Does it matter?"

"She may not be dying, Simon, but she's exactly as sick as you think she is, and she will die if she doesn't get help. And the only help I know about is a couple of thousand miles from here."

"Heaven and earth are passing away. We're all going to die."

"I can't speak for heaven and earth. I refuse to let her die as long as I have a choice."

"I envy you that," Simon said quietly.

"What? What could you possibly envy?"

"Your faith," he said.

* * * * *

A certain kind of optimism was still possible, but only at night. It wilted by daylight.

I drove into the Hiroshima of the rising sun. I had stopped worrying that the light itself would kill me, though it probably wasn't doing me any good. That any of us had survived the first day was a mystery—a miracle, Simon might have said. It encouraged a certain rough practicality: I pulled a pair of sunglasses out of the glove compartment and tried to keep my eyes on the road instead of on the hemisphere of orange fire levitating out of the horizon.

The day grew hotter. So did the interior of the car, despite the overworked air-conditioning. (I was running it hard in an effort to keep Diane's body temperature under control.) Somewhere between Albuquerque and Tucumcari a great wave of fatigue washed over me. My eyelids drifted closed and I nearly ran the car into a mile marker. At which point I pulled over and turned off the engine. I told Simon to fill the tank from the jericans and get ready to take the wheel. He nodded reluctantly.

We were making better time than I'd anticipated. Traffic had been light to nearly nonexistent, maybe because people were afraid of being on the road by themselves. While Simon put gas in the car I said, "What did you bring for food?"

"Only what I could grab from the kitchen. I had to hurry. See for yourself."

I found a cardboard box among the dented jericans and packaged medical supplies and loose bottles of mineral water in the trunk. It contained three boxes of Cheerios, two cans of corned beef, and a bottle of Diet Pepsi. "Jesus, Simon."

He winced at what I had to remind myself he considered a blasphemy. "That was all I could find."

And no bowls or spoons. But I was as hungry as I was sleep deprived. I told Simon we ought to let the engine cool off, and while it did we sat in the shade of the car, windows rolled down, a gritty breeze coming off the desert, the sun suspended in the sky like high noon on the surface of Mercury. We used the torn-off bottoms of empty plastic bottles as makeshift cups and ate Cheerios moistened with tepid water. It looked and tasted like mucilage.

I briefed Simon on the next leg of the trip, reminded him to turn on the air-conditioning once we were underway, told him to wake me if there seemed to be trouble on the road ahead.

Then I tended to Diane. The IV drip and the antibiotics seemed to have bolstered her strength, but only marginally. She opened her eyes and said, "Tyler," after I helped her drink a little water. She accepted a few spoonfuls of Cheerios but turned her head away after that. Her cheeks were sunken, her eyes listless and inattentive.

"Bear with me," I said. "Just a little longer, Diane." I adjusted her drip. I helped her sit up, legs splayed out of the car, while she passed a little brownish urine. Then I sponged her off and switched her soiled panties for a pair of clean cotton briefs from my own suitcase.

When she was comfortable again I stuffed a blanket into the narrow gap between the front and back seats to make a space where I could stretch out without displacing her. Simon had napped only briefly during the first leg of the trip and must have been as exhausted as I was… but he hadn't been beaten with a rifle butt. The place where Brother Aaron had clubbed me was swollen and rang like a bell when I put my fingers anywhere near it.

Simon watched all this from a couple of yards away, his expression sullen or possibly jealous. When I called him he hesitated and looked longingly across the salt-pan desert, deep into the heart of nothing at all.

Then he loped back to the car, downcast, and slid behind the wheel.

I compressed myself into my niche behind the front seat. Diane seemed to be unconscious, but before I slept I felt her press her hand against mine.

* * * * *

When I woke it was night again, and Simon had pulled over to trade places.

I climbed out of the car and stretched. My head still throbbed, my spine felt as if it had cramped into a permanent geriatric gnarl, but I was more alert than Simon, who crawled into the back and was instantly asleep.

I didn't know where we were except that we were on 1-40 heading east and the land was less arid here, irrigated fields stretching out on either side of the road under crimson moonlight. I made sure Diane was comfortable and breathing without distress and I left the front and rear doors open for a couple of minutes to air out the stink, a sickroom smell overlaid with hints of blood and gasoline. Then I took the driver's seat.

The stars above the road were distressingly few and impossible to recognize. I wondered about Mars. Was it still under a Spin membrane or had it been cut loose like the Earth? But I didn't know where in the sky to look and I doubted I'd know it if I saw it. I did see—couldn't help seeing—the enigmatic silvery line Simon had pointed out back in Arizona, the one I had mistaken for a contrail. It was even more prominent tonight. It had moved from the western horizon almost to the zenith, and the gentle curve had become an oval, a flattened letter O.

The sky I was looking at was three billion years older than the one I had last seen from the lawn of the Big House. I supposed it could harbor all kinds of mysteries.

Once we were in motion I tried the dashboard radio, which had been silent the night before. Nothing digital was coming in, but I did eventually locate a local station on the FM band—the kind of small-town station usually devoted to country music and Christianity, but tonight it was all talk. I learned a lot before the signal finally faded into noise.