Travis turned to Cornell. “Mr. Jasperson, can I ask something?”

“Can you? Yes. Of course. And call me Cornell.”

“What runs the ’frigerators?”

Cornell blinked at him. He put down the kibble and suitcase. “Umm. Runs? Well, the power company.”

“What happens after the world ends?”

“The world won’t end. Just civilization.” When the boy frowned, Cornell explained, “Just cities and stuff, not the planet. Not the planet. Not the planet.”

“So what runs the ’frigerators then?”

“A generator. A big tank of propane buried out there. It’ll run library and bunker fourteen months, or just the bunker for thirty.”

“What then?” the boy asked.

“Maybe a new civilization will start up.”

“What if nothing starts?”

“Umm. Umm. Then I’ll probably be dead.”

“Probably,” Travis agreed. “I thought you never go into town.”

“I don’t ever go to town anymore. Hardly ever did, even when I lived in the little blue house. I don’t want to scare people.”

“So where do you get chocolate milk and stuff if you never go into town?”

“Gavin comes down here once every month like clockwork. He stocks the refrigerators.”

“Maybe he will. If he’s not …”

“Umm. If he’s not dead. If he’s not dead. If he’s not dead.”

The boy closed the refrigerator and regarded Cornell solemnly, as did the dogs. “Mr. Jasperson, why do you say things three times?”

“You can call me Cornell. I don’t say everything three times.”

“But you say some things three times.”

“Umm. Things I don’t want to happen or wish weren’t true. Or sometimes things I think aren’t true but wish they were.”

“Does that work?”

“No. But I feel a little better. Do you want something to eat?”

“I’m kind of hungry.”

“I can make eggs scrambled or fried, cheese or not, or eggs all other ways. With toast. I can make baloney sandwiches. Mustard or mayonnaise or both. I can make many kinds of meals.”

“Are you hungry?” the boy asked.

“I am. I’m hungry.”

“Then I’ll have what you’re having,” the boy said.

The dogs padded to the bag of kibble, sniffing with excitement.

“I should feed the dogs.” Cornell bent to the bag. “They’re nice dogs so far. They don’t bite so far. Not so far.”

“They like you a lot,” Travis said.

Cornell froze. Hunched over the bag, he turned his head to stare at the boy. “How do you know?”

“Can’t you see? They like you.”

“I don’t see. I don’t know how to see that.”

“Well, they do. They like you.”

Cornell looked at one dog, at the other. They wagged their tails. “Umm. Maybe it’s just because I have the food.”

“No, they really like you.”

Around other people, Cornell always felt too big and awkward and strange, even around his cousin Gavin, and he felt no less so around animals. Before this, dogs barked at him. Cats hissed, bared their teeth, and fled. “Umm. Maybe, maybe not. But that would be something. That would be something. That sure would be something.”

37

IF HE BELIEVED THEY WERE REAL, Egon Gottfrey would hate Texans, and if he believed Texas was a real place rather than a concept, he would never go there again.

Chase and Alexis Longrin, with their three daughters—Laurie, Daphne, and Artemis—are being temporarily detained in the living room.

When Chris Roberts and Janis Dern attempt to interrogate the family, all five detainees act as though they are gathered here by their own choice. They pretend to be unaware of any intruders, and speak only to one another, mostly about television shows they have seen recently. They are certain that Gottfrey and his crew aren’t legitimate authorities—or at least that they aren’t loyal to either the Bureau or the country. Clearly, through her in-laws, Jane Hawk has poisoned the minds of these people.

Egon Gottfrey observes this impudence until it bores him. Then he goes to the fenced exercise yard at Stable 5, where Pedro and Alejandro have corralled all the employees, eight men and two women. Nine of those ten are day workers and can claim not to have been on the property at 2:00 A.M., when Ancel and Clare Hawk arrived on horseback—and perhaps soon thereafter left by a more comfortable form of transportation.

Only one of them, Bodie Houston, a lean-muscled sun-seared thirtysomething guy with jet-black hair, has been here all night, in a small ranch-manager’s house. He claims to so admire the FBI, its history and its high standards and its incorruptible agents, that he bitterly regrets having slept too soundly to have seen anything. Bitterly regrets it. “As a kid, see, all I ever did want to be was FBI. What an honor if I could help you fellas. Damn, but don’t I feel as useless as a fifth leg on a horse.”

Gottfrey regards him in silence after that speech, trying to decide whether the Unknown Playwright wants him to handcuff Bodie Houston, drive him to a remote location, and throw him off a cliff—or walk away.

He chooses to walk away.

38

CORNELL’S LIBRARY FOR THE END OF THE WORLD. Windowless. Quiet. A fortress of books. In one of the reading areas, four mismatched—but beautiful—armchairs faced one another in a circle. Between the chairs were antique tables, each of a different period. Stained-glass lamps on the tables. The colored light so soft and pretty. Chairs and everything standing on a late-nineteenth-century Tabriz carpet in shades of red and gold.

Cornell had tried to make the library match his idea of what Heaven would be like, except he hoped that he wouldn’t be alone in Heaven and that he wouldn’t look scary to people there and that he would know what to say to the other people he met.

Now he had company, and it seemed like this was a test to see if he might be ready for an afterlife in which he wouldn’t be alone.

The two big dogs were lying on the carpet, each with its tail tucked between its legs, one of them snoring. Cornell had quickly grown more comfortable with the dogs than he’d thought possible on first encountering them. For one thing, there was no need to carry on a conversation with the dogs.

Cornell sat in a wingback chair. The boy was lost in a big club chair. By contrast with the child, Cornell felt like a pterodactyl folded onto a perch meant for a sparrow. Feet on footstools, they faced each other from the north and south points of the reading circle. The dining trays were hooked over their chair arms.

“Sandwiches are real good,” the boy said.

Cornell wasn’t sure what to say, though it seemed safe just to describe the sandwich. “Buttered bread, two slices of baloney, two slices of cheese, one Velveeta and one provolone, sliced tomatoes, a little mayonnaise, put in a sandwich press and toasted.” That seemed to go over well, so he added, “Two sweet pickles on the side and a little bag of potato chips for each of us.”

“The cola is good with the sandwiches,” the boy said.

Having read everything on the soda can, having an eidetic memory, Cornell decided not to list the contents of the beverage, but he did quote a fact he found interesting: “ ‘Canned under the authority of the Coca-Cola Company, Atlanta, Georgia, 30313, by a member of the Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 30327.’ ”

The boy said, “I’ve never been to Atlanta.”

“Neither have I,” said Cornell.

“We should go someday.”

“No, that’s a scaryidea.”

“Scary why?”

“Too far. Too big,” Cornell said.

“I guess it is if you say so.”

This conversation thing with a new person was easier for Cornell than it had often been before.

After a silence, the boy said, “You’re Uncle Gavin’s cousin.”

“My mother, Shamira, was his mother’s sister. But the family disowned her and she disowned them when she was sixteen, before I was born. The family never knew about me.”

“How do you … disown somebody?”

“You push them out, close the door, and never see them again.”

“Wow. That’s mean. Why’d they do that?”

“My mother was a terrible angry drug addict and a prostitute.”

“What’s a prositoot?”

“She sold sex. Oh. You didn’t hear that. You didn’t hear it. You didn’t hear. She … she … she made love for money.”

This conversation thing had broken Cornell into a sweat.

The boy said, “Making love is making babies. She made babies?”

“Just me. I was a baby once.”

“So who’s your dad?”

“Nobody knows. It’s a big mystery.”

“Doesn’t your mom remember? You should ask her.”

“My mother died when I was eighteen.”

The boy put down his sandwich. “That’s really sad.”

“It was a long time ago. Go ahead and eat. See, I’m eating. She died of a drug overdose, she couldn’t help herself. We have to eat, we can’t help ourselves.”

The boy sat looking at his sandwich. Then he said, “It isn’t right, people having to die.”

“No. No, it isn’t. It isn’t right. It isn’t right. But that’s the way it is. And we have to eat.”