Lightholler reached out to touch Malcolm's arm. His fluttering fingers were ice. "It's okay," he told her. "It doesn't hurt."

Kennedy lurched with Lightholler in his arms, making for the hatch.

Lightholler's hand fell away from her. His voice was a sigh. "It's 1911. No one can help me here. Go."

"Sixty seconds."

Kennedy's face was a contorted knot.

"Get my ship to safe harbour, Joseph."

"He doesn't want to be here," Doc said. "He doesn't want to rest here."

Kennedy turned to Morgan. "You heard the man. Help Doc with Martin."

Morgan reached out, touching Lightholler's arm.

Lightholler's face rippled a weak smile.

Doc mumbled something under his breath. Lightholler nodded back feebly. Then Doc helped Morgan shift Shine's body out of the hatch.

Kennedy leaned close now. "I can carry you. Across the fucking desert if needs be."

"There's a cigarette in my pocket. Pop it in my mouth and get the fuck out of here."

Kennedy fumbled with the flap before retrieving the cigarette. He slipped it between Lightholler's pale lips and lit the tip.

Lightholler drew a shallow breath. He smiled and looked up at Kennedy. "You still here?"

Kennedy ran a hand over the stubble of Lightholler's head. "God speed you, John."

Lightholler nodded, still smiling.

Kennedy drew Patricia to the hatch's mouth. Hands reached up from below, guiding her down to the soft sand. They all stood up, staring at the murky underbelly of the carapace. Kennedy landed on the ground beside them. Soft plates of fused sand cracked beneath his feet.

The hatch closed. Doc was leading them away, back from the machine's struts.

Something gathered beneath the carapace. The struts became translucent. It floated on a cushion of swirling sand as all around them a sudden wind rose. Licks of ruby-tinged flame danced beneath the machine. Vapours, twining where the struts had stood, were tangible moments of time laid bare. He was sure of it. Kennedy took a step towards the machine.

The roaring gust climaxed in a great implosion, as if nature itself sought recompense for this outrageous intrusion. Then the carapace was gone.

Her hand reached out and found his. He returned her gentle squeeze. No one said a word.

VIII.

March 11, 1911.

Red Rock, Nevada.

They buried Shine beside Gershon's fresh grave.

They made camp on the far side of the rock, well away from the burial site. Wells' footprints, at least three days old by Kennedy's reckoning, were a faint trace that died two miles out of the camp, where they'd struck stone.

The sun was waning beyond distant purple-topped hills.

Morgan laid out the meal. There were slices of cold meat, crumbling rolls of bread and a container of vegetables. He reached for the container, removed the tomatoes and started to slice them. He cored out the stem and applied the blade to the centre, dividing the tomato first before working from the edges. He bit his lower lip. A cool breeze swept the sands.

"I keep thinking I'm going to wake up."

"I keep wishing I would," Doc replied.

"Hell of a thing." Morgan grabbed another tomato. He fashioned a windbreak, using the container, to keep the sand off the slices.

Doc said, "I couldn't hold the carapace in place."

"You got us here."

"We missed Wells."

"We'll take him on the boat."

"Without Lightholler?"

"We might find him before then," Morgan offered. "She doesn't sail for a year."

"Without Shine? Needle in a fucking haystack."

"We have the journal. We know where he goes."

"He hasn't written yet. What if things play out differently?" Doc was staring beyond the rock.

"That's not you buried out there," Morgan said softly.

"I know."

"And maybe Martin gets another chance in this world."

"Or maybe he ain't born at all." Doc caught Morgan's expression. "Who knows?"

"Hell of a thing."

IX.

"Do you prefer sunrise or sunset?"

Kennedy held the middle distance in his vacant eyes. He mightn't have heard her.

They sat closer now, almost touching. A chill had taken the air, seeming to issue from the desert floor below them rather than the darkening skies above.

After a while he said, "You've asked me that before, Patricia."

"I know. I remember. Things change."

"What did Tecumseh say to you? Why did you decide to come?"

She recalled the medicine man's pronouncement. Your sense of being here before will fade.

"Everyone saw something different in that thing," she replied. "You knew that, didn't you."

Kennedy nodded.

"Tecumseh told me that for some reason, I'd shared the same experience as some of the ghost dancers."

"Does that bother you?" His question was distant but not indifferent.

"Not for the reasons you might have suspected."

His smile flitted across his face, like it had business elsewhere.

"This is your last chance," she said. She realised she might have been talking about any number of things.

"I know that." His reply suggested a similar understanding, but she was pretty sure he was missing the point.

"Joseph, you've done this before. You've ... been here before."

"Down this road? I'm tired, Patricia, so very tired."

"You've sat here before."

He turned to her now, his face wounded beyond any physical injury.

"Sometimes Lightholler is with you, sometimes it's Hardas. Once, I think, Tecumseh. That's what he told me anyway."

He was staring.

"This is my first time. You always left me back there."

"How many times?" His words were breathed rather than uttered. "How many times have I done this?"

"You can't measure something like this. It's too big." She grappled with the concepts. "Our world, our reality, has swung round and round in this loop, back and forth, bouncing between you and Wells. He sends it skewing off kilter, you make it right again, and then he bounces on back. Over and over and over. He's not the problem, Joseph, you both are, and Tecumseh believes that reality won't tolerate another joyride."

"But you're here now," he said. He spoke like a child.

"I'm the messenger." She reached out to touch his cold face.

He kept still, letting her hand complete the caress.

"Is it because I forget everything?" he asked. "Like Wells? Is that why I get it wrong?"

"I don't know."

"I'll keep a journal myself. I won't forget any of them. Martin, John, David." His look was intense. A fire had returned to those damaged eyes.

She said nothing.

"I like this part of the day," he said after a time. "The sky changing colour with each passing moment. It's all just fluid. Look up, look away, look up again and it's a whole new world."

She brought her lips to his and imparted a soft kiss. He looked confused. She ran a hand through the thick knots of his hair and said, "That's a sunset, Joseph."

DEATH BY WATER.

I.

April 10, 1912, 1300 hours.

RMS Titanic, out of Southampton.

"Patricia will be alright, Joseph. It'll only be a couple of weeks."

"I know," Kennedy replied. "I've booked return passage from New York. We plan on staying in London for a while when this is over."

London was grey, cold and dirty. More like the squalid descendant of the city Morgan had known, rather than its ancestor. He nodded in what he hoped was a heartening manner.

Kennedy was no longer paying attention anyway. He was already out of his chair and pacing. Passing the porthole, he tossed an appraising glance at the white froth of the Channel's waters. Three hours would bring them to Cherbourg. They'd make Queenstown by tomorrow morning. After that, it was all open seas and it looked like he was already counting the hours.

"That was Wells, wasn't it?" Doc said. He'd removed his necktie and collar and wore his shirt open, but still looked ill at ease. He squirmed in his chair, finding no comfort in its plush grandeur.

Kennedy said, "I'm pretty sure of it."

"He walked straight past us."

"What did you want me to do, Dean?" Kennedy asked. "Shove him overboard?"

They'd taken to abandoning the titles and ranks they'd been so familiar with. Morgan was still coming to grips with the false intimacy that step entailed. Standing idly by as Wells had boarded ship had been a good deal more difficult. A year's interaction with this era had affected them all.