"How's Jan-Louise?" Martin asked.

"She's better. Quiet, you know. But better. She doesn't call herself names anymore. Does the bargain include her showing up tomorrow evening?"

"I suppose it does." Martin regretted it.

"She'll be all right," Winch said. "I'll go let the newcomers know." He took his arms off the fence. "A week and a day. Thanks for working it out, Martin."

He nodded, hoping he knew what he had done. It seemed easy enough. That was what had him worried.

Outside, on tables in front of Martin's house, they had set out bowls of huckleberries and blackberries they had gathered. The radishes, celery, lettuce, and corn came from Catrin's garden. Half a dozen fish that Rusty had caught baked on a grill, and a pot of black bean soup sat steaming beside three big loaves of bread that Jan-Louise had baked. On platters were arrayed several kinds of steamed squash seasoned with fresh garlic. Dora had scavenged a half-dozen kinds of juices from the stores in town and they sat in pitchers like colored markers among the food.

Roy had refused to have anything to do with the dinner. "I had a package of moldy weenies I was going to give you to take to Josh, with my warmest disregards, but your dog ate them. I'm sure Josh could have found a place for each and every one of them."

To the banquet, Joshua and four of his followers, Leona among them, brought a pillow-sized bundle of venison pieces, still warm, heavily wrapped in foil, which they spread across the end of one of the tables. Everyone stared at the banquet tables, awed by the amount of food in one place at one time. None of them had seen so much food since before the disaster.

"Welcome to our village," August said to Joshua. Dora was near him, her fingers clasped over her stomach, nodding and grinning.

"It is so nice to be here, with such friendly people," he said with his smile. He was dressed in clean khaki pants and shirt with a black necktie, his hair, as always, looking as though it had been styled ten minutes before. His followers were also neatly dressed, all of them wearing faded blue work shirts and baggy painters' pants, the white now grayed from being washed in cold streams.

"I understand that some of you may feel some distrust of me and my people, but know that we will not be offended if you do not eat of the food we have brought as an offering to the exchange of friendship."

While the others were talking and filling their plates, Martin noticed that Charlie was sniffing a piece of venison he'd put on his plate. Then he moved near Joshua, who circled his arm around the boy's shoulders, "You put any blood on this?" Charlie asked him.

Joshua withdrew his arm and stared at the boy. His brow furrowed with three very deep lines. "Why ever would you ask that?"

"Because I saw you do it once." Martin was impressed by the boy's honesty and nerve.

"There is no blood in this, my son," he said sternly, "except the animal's own."

Charlie looked at his piece of venison and thought for a moment. "Maybe next time," he said to Joshua, and with a fork carefully placed it back on the platter.

"You're afraid I might poison you?" Joshua looked around to see Martin watching. "You're afraid? Please, don't be. Watch." He picked up the piece Charlie had put back and bit off a piece down to the bone. "Mmm. Very good." He then turned away and circled the table with the others, generously heaping his plate with food.

The outdoor picnic was exceptionally unexceptional. It could have been straight out of the old times. Mothers told their children to stop playing with their food, the men talked about fishing and the weather and electricity - except Joshua, but he listened agreeably and politely. And Ross, Charlie and Solomon were rolling croquet balls across the driveway, trying to knock over some bottles they'd set up.

Martin tried to enjoy himself, to taste the food and breathe the air and enjoy his friends, but the worry about what he could be overlooking would not leave him. The small piece of venison he ate tasted heavy and strong, and the grease in it was more than he was accustomed to - and he noticed that Catrin and several of the others of his group were eating less of it than they had put on their plates. Joshua's people, on the other hand, were consuming great chunks.

"... harness the tides," he heard Rusty saying.

"Sure," Winch answered with a sweeping gesture of his hand, "I could do that. I could dig a canal, the water goes in, and when it runs out... sure. Half mile long, a mile, is all it'd take. Have it done by the weekend!" Martin thought he might be kidding, but he didn't seem to be. "Maybe we could get a caterpillar running, or a grader - what do you think?"

"Or windmills, power windmills," Rusty said excitedly. "Always wind coming on-shore, everyday."

Winch agreed and began talking about alternators and transformers.

In the driveway the boys had resorted to throwing the croquet balls at the bottles, and even then they were widely missing them. Ross picked up a ball, walked over to the bottles and hurled it into them breaking several. Charlie stood back, looking around to see if anyone had noticed what Ross had done.

At the moment, Joshua was speaking to Dora and April. A minute later, August seemed interested, put down his plate and wandered toward them, wiping his mouth with his white handkerchief. One by one, people gathered around Joshua and listened to his quiet, mellifluous voice until all of them were there, the ones in front sitting on the ground, others sitting on the picnic benches, with only Martin and Charlie standing in the back.

"My group, your group, we're all ordinary people," he was saying. "We survived the disease, for whatever reasons, and we have survived until now, and we meet here, between the ocean and the mountains, and-" (He opened his arms and lifted his eyes to the darkening sky where stars now were beginning to come out.) "-and this place must be almost as beautiful as Eden was."

He looked into their eyes, one by one, as he talked about the beauty that surrounded them, the ease of their lives, and the closeness of friends. He painted an image of their world as lovely as Martin himself knew it could be... the smell that blew off the pasture of the yellow-flowered weeds and wet grass, the hot-backed horses, the line of white surf in the distance and at night its sound, like rhythmic wind, lulling him to sleep as clouds of stars rose out of the Coast Range in the east and wheeled across the sky to sink in the sea.... Joshua knew these things as well as Martin did, but they meant different things to him.

"And now," Joshua was saying, "now that we are here, now that we have survived, what next? What do we do now? Do we imitate the beasts of the field and feed and sleep and let our lives drift by, day by day, until that lonely night of suffering arrives, as we know it certainly will, and we ask from our deathbeds, 'What has become of my life? Where have I been?'" He paused and looked at Martin. "Now is the time to decide what our purposes are. Do we choose the ways of the beasts of the field, or do we choose the ways that were intended for us, ways that were meant for us?"

"Presenting a false choice, the animal way or his way," Charlie whispered to Martin. "I learned that in high school."

Martin put his arm across the boy's shoulders. All of those sitting in front of them seemed entranced by Joshua's words.

As Joshua explained how humans were flawed, Martin saw that heads were beginning to nod in agreement... Dora and August, of course, but also Jan-Louise, one of April's girls, and Ross. And since we are flawed, Joshua went on, we need help that can come only from outside ourselves, we need divine help, and it can only come from one source, which he could offer them and which they could accept if they only asked. "No money down, no money required," he said, lowering his voice to a hushed whisper. "It's the greatest bargain in the universe, and all you have to do is want it, and it's yours. Nothing lost and everything gained." His voice took on more of an edge as he spoke further, and his gestures became quicker, made with a slash of his hand or with his fist smacking into his other hand.

"Yes," someone was saying, "yes."

"You may think your world is beautiful now," he said, "and it is - it truly is - but after you see the power and the glory that I see, the power and the glory that is hidden from you, after you see that, my friends, you will wonder how you ever managed to live as you are now, and the world around you, grand as it seems, will then appear as only a faded shadow of glories to come."

"I don't want to have to die to win," Charlie muttered.

"When you lie in bed in the dark, if your life seems empty, void, or pointless, then it is empty, void, and pointless, and I pray you will not wait until your final breaths on that day of death to find out how empty, void, and pointless your life is."

More people said their yeses and their amens and more heads were nodding hard. Martin heard someone weeping.

"They're believing him?" Charlie murmured.

In great detail Joshua described the pain of fire, how the flesh would sear and blood would foam through the skin, how eyeballs would boil and spill down the cheeks of the damned, and one's heart would cook inside the chest. And this would go on eternally, one day after another forever. There were moans from his listeners.

"This guy really likes the torture part. Even Nazis just killed people once," Charlie whispered.

After more details of torture by fire, he explained his solution. "Come with me," he said. "Just come with me! Follow me into the knowledge that transcends reason! Follow me into the light and the way, or suffer the consequences!" He looked across their heads at Martin. "And now it is time for me to leave you," he said. "But my message will remain, even as the heart within your breast stays with you. You can follow now, yet I will return soon. Prepare for the day when your heart is dark! Prepare, and I'll help you find the way."

He drew himself up to his full height and his followers rose from where they were sitting, and together they left, gone into the night, the sound of their footsteps fading as soon as their ghostly shapes vanished in the darkness.

The remaining people stirred slowly, none of them uttering a sound. Only Land gurgled softly. Catrin stood and half turned, lifting the baby. Martin caught a glimpse of her disquieted face in the lantern light. She had been weeping. What had happened?

Others stood and wordlessly began to depart. Martin took Winch's arm. His mouth was down-turned and his eyes troubled.

"Winch," Martin said, looking into his face. "Winch, what is it?"

He shook his head. "Don't know." He looked up at the sky. "Honest to god, Martin... I don't know. Joshua may be right." He walked away, pulling his arm loose and went with Xeng and Jan-Louise back toward their house.

"What's everybody so glum about?" Charlie asked Martin.

"I don't know. Goodnight, Charlie. I need to be with Catrin."

Inside their cabin, for twenty minutes, she didn't say a word and Martin let her have her silence.

"Tell me," he said to her, once Land was in his bed, "tell me what happened to you when he talked."

Catrin sat in candlelight on the edge of their bed. Her shadow on the opposite wall wavered though she sat without moving, her hands clasped between her knees.

"I understood something," she said in a small voice. "How insignificant and helpless we are. How alone we are here, perched on the edge of the ocean... a few people in the dark, around the light of a few candles." She turned her tear-glistened face up to him. "What hope do we have? We're alone!"

He sat next to her and pulled her against him. "We could have died a hundred ways in the last year," he said. "We could still be in Santa Miranda, waiting for rain, but we're here, we have a home. And we have hope today will be a good day - we have Land, Solomon, Missa, Ross, our friends, and we have each other. That's our hope. Every time the sun comes up, there's hope."

Catrin held her face in her hands and wept. After several minutes, Martin began undressing her, turned back the covers and helped her in. When he blew out the candle he realized that her breathing was suddenly inaudible. He quickly relit the candle and saw that she was already asleep.

He held her until late into the night, until finally he could think no more. He could come to no conclusion about what he might have missed - but he missed something... something... and finally, with the far away ocean's slow crawl along the shore, blending with his own breathing, he slept.

Chapter 74.

Martin got up just after sunrise, made himself a pot of tea and sat outside drinking it out of a glass, waiting for others to appear. The sun grew warm before he saw Rusty come out of his house down the road stand on his porch. Rusty rubbed his head and then looked sleepily around. Martin waved at him and Rusty half-heartedly lifted his hand and went back inside.

Half an hour later, Charlie walked up and sat down next to him. "Where is everybody?"

"Sleeping, I guess," Martin said.

"Did something weird happen last night?" Charlie asked.

"Something weird happened," Martin said. "But I'm really not sure what it was. Aside from being told that we'll be tortured for eternity if we don't share his supernatural beliefs, I don't think there was much else in the message."

"Maybe the weird part wasn't in his message," Charlie said. "Like maybe it was in that fruit juice Dora was so generous with. I was watching them. Dora and her pal Josh only drank the red stuff."

"After everyone was gone, I collected this." Charlie reached inside his shirt and took out a flat plastic bottle filled with the yellow juice.

Martin held it in his hand, watching the bubble run from end to end. "You're an amazing kid, Charlie. I'm glad you're on my side."

"Well, now that we've got it, what do you think we should do with it?"

"I suppose someone should drink it and see what happens."

"That's what I was thinking. And who might you think of?"

Martin considered the possibilities. If he drank it and found it had some kind of psychotropic effect, he would know, but why should any of the others take his word for it? On the other hand.... "Dora," he said finally. "The starchiest person here."

"Dora? What if it's just fruit juice? Or what if she gets loaded and manages to fake being normal?"

"The worst thing that'll happen is that I'll look stupid and everyone but you and I will run off with Joshua."

"Are you going to hold her down, while I pour it down her throat?"

Martin wished he had a good answer. "I'm thinking," he said.

Winch had just got up and was still foggy-headed, but he came along with them. Jan-Louise said she would follow them over to Rusty's as soon as she dressed and washed her face. August refused to let Martin speak to April and demanded to know what was going on. Martin left without answering.

"Yeah, Martin," Winch said as they walked up the street, "what is going on?"

"It'd be better if you just watched. You may just get to see me do the dumbest thing in my life."

"Well, that would wake me up," Winch said as they turned up Rusty's driveway.

Rusty let Martin and Winch in with a brief "Morn'." Dora stood in the kitchen folding towels at the counter and they saw Christie cross the hallway in a nightshirt, her hair in tangles.

"What's up?" Rusty asked.

"Everyone seems pretty bleary-eyed this morning," Martin said.

"I guess. Long night. A lotta food. That venison gave me a heartburn like a son of a bitch."

Dora stopped her folding and shot a disapproving look toward the men.

"Don't care if I never see red meat again," Rusty said. "What's up?"

"We came to ask you about the fishing."

"Oh." Rusty let himself half-fall into an armchair that creaked loudly. "I don't know if I'm going to get out there today."

"And while we're here," Martin said as an afterthought, "Dora?" He took a folded sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket.

Dora came to the kitchen door, holding a folded towel against her full bosom.

Martin took the paper to her. "Rusty mentioned one time that you did some accounting."

Charlie and Winch barely managed to hide their puzzlement.

"I kept books for a wallpaper store once."

"Well," Martin explained, showing her several columns of numbers, "this is a little beyond me, but I was interested in our winter food situation. This is how many pounds of dried pasta we have, this is how many cans of food we have, and this is how much flour Jan-Louise has."

She pointed to an unlabeled column. "What's this over here?"

"Well, not everyone eats the same amount. I mean we have kids of various sizes and adults." Martin explained that the numbers or fraction beside each person's name represented his guess of the proportional amount each might be expected to eat. "Now if we figure each adult ate two pounds of food a day and one can of food represents a pound, could you figure how many days we can last on what we have now?"

Dora looked over the page and up at Martin. "Is this really necessary?"

"It would be helpful for our winter months," Martin said.

Dora sighed and took the paper.

"Multiply the pasta weight by three, flour by two."