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I don t understand, Josh confessed.
Suppose I told you where my great-great-great-grandmother lives, right now, in 1885. Then you go
out, find her, and shoot her.
Why would I do that?
Never mind! But if you did, I would never be born and so I could never come back to tell you about
my grandmother and you d never shoot her. In which case
It s a paradox of logic, Ruddy breathed. How delightful! But if we promise not to molest your
grandmother, can you tell usnothingof ourselves?
Josh scoffed. How would she ever have heard ofus, Ruddy?
Ruddy looked thoughtful. I have the feeling that shehas, you know heard ofmeat any rate. A chap
knows when he s been recognized!
But Bisesa would say no more.
As the last daylight seeped away, and the stars receded to infinity above them, the little party grew
closer together, the soldiers bantering talk subdued, their lanterns held high. They were walking into
strangeness, thought Josh. It wasn t just that they couldn t knowwholay out there, orwherethey were
going. They couldn t even be surewhenthey would find themselves . . . He thought they all seemed
relieved when they passed a low hill and the rising Moon, a quarter full, shed a cold light on the rocky
plain. But the air was strange, turbulent, and the Moon s face an odd yellow-orange.
Here, said Bisesa suddenly. She had stopped before a scraping in the ground. Stepping closer, Josh
saw that the earth was fresh and moist, as if recently dug.
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It s a foxhole, Ruddy said. He hopped down into the hole, and brandished a length of pipe, like a bit
of drainpipe. And is this the fearsome weapon that shot you out of the sky?
That s the RPG launcher, yes. She peered east. There was a village just over there. A hundred
meters, no more. The soldiers held up their lanterns. There was no village to be seen, nothing but the
rocky plain that seemed to stretch to the horizon. Perhaps there is a boundary near here, Bisesa
breathed. A boundary in time. What a strange thought. What is happening to us? . . . She lifted her face
to the Moon. Oh. Clavius is gone.
Josh was at her side. Clavius?
Clavius Base. She pointed. Built into a big old crater in the southern highlands.
Josh stared. You have citieson the Moon?
She smiled. I wouldn t call it a city. But you can see its light, like a captured star, the only one in the
circle of the crescent Moon. Now it s gone. That isn t even myMoon.There is a crew on Mars, and a
second on the way or there was. I wonder what s become of them . . .
There was a grunt of disgust. One of the soldiers had been rooting at the bottom of the foxhole, and now
emerged with what looked like a piece of meat, still dripping blood. The stink was sharp.
A human arm, Ruddy said flatly. He turned away and vomited.
Josh said, It looks to me like the work of a great cat . . . It seems that whoever attacked you did not
live long to enjoy his triumph.
I suppose he was as lost as I am.
Yes. I apologize for Ruddy. He doesn t have a very strong stomach for such sights.
No. And he never will.
Josh looked at her; her eyes were full of moonlight, her expression empty. What do you mean?
He was right. I do know who he is. You re Rudyard Kipling, aren t you? Rudyard bloody Kipling. My
God, what a day.
Ruddy didn t respond. He was hunched over, still retching, and bile stained his chin.
At that moment the ground trembled, hard enough to raise little clouds of dust everywhere, like invisible
footfalls. And rain began to fall, from thick black clouds that came racing across the Moon s empty face.
10: GEOMETRY
For Bisesa the first morning was the worst.
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She suspected that some combination of adrenaline and shock had kept her going through the day of
what they were starting to call the Discontinuity. But that night, in the room given to them by Grove, a
hastily converted storeroom, she had slept badly on her thin down-stuffed mattress. By the next morning,
when she had reluctantly woken up to find herselfstill here, she had come crashing down from her
adrenaline high, and felt inconsolable. The second night, at Abdi s insistence, desperate for sleep, she
cracked her survival gear. She donned earplugs and eye shades, swallowed a Halcyon tablet what
Casey called a Blue Bomber and slept for ten hours.
But as the days passed, Bisesa, Abdikadir and Casey were still stuck here in the Jamrud fort. They had
no contact on any of their military wavelengths, Bisesa s phone muttered about its continuing
cauterization, no SAR teams came flapping out of the UN base in response to their patiently bleeping
beacons there was no medevac for Casey. And there was not a single contrail to be seen in the sky,
not one.
She spent most of her time missing Myra, her daughter. She didn t even want to confront those feelings,
as if acknowledging them would make her separation from Myra real. She longed to have something to
do anything to stop her thinking.
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