SPIN

"That was E.D.'s idea. I just wanted Belinda close by. My marriage wasn't as successful as hers had been. Quite the opposite. By that time Belinda was more or less the only friend I had. Almost a confidante." Carol smiled. "Almost."

"That's why you want to keep the letters? Because they're part of your history with her?"

She smiled as if at a slow-witted child. "No, Tyler. I told you. They're mine." Her smile thi

I didn't know what to say. Carol saw my expression and shook her head sadly. She put her fragile hands on my shoulders. "Don't be upset. The world is full of surprises. We're all born strangers to ourselves and each other, and we're seldom formally introduced."

* * * * *

So I spent four weeks in a motel room in Vermont nursing Diane through her recovery.

Her physical recovery, I should say. The emotional trauma she'd suffered at the Condon ranch and after had left her exhausted and withdrawn. Diane had closed her eyes on a world that seemed to be ending and opened them on a world without compass points. It was not in my power to make this right for her.

So I was cautiously helpful. I explained what needed to be explained. I made no demands and I made it clear that I expected no reward.

Her interest in the changed world awoke gradually. She asked about the sun, restored to its benevolent aspect, and I told her what Jason had told me: the Spin membrane was still in place even though the temporal enclosure had ended; it was protecting the Earth the way it always had, editing lethal radiation into a simulacrum of sunlight acceptable to the planet's ecosystem.

"So why did they turn it off for seven days?"

"They turned it down, not entirely off. And they did it so something could pass through the membrane."

"That thing in the Indian Ocean."

"Yes."

She asked me to play the recording of Jason's last hours, and she wept as she listened. She asked about his ashes. Had E.D. taken them away or had Carol kept them? (Neither. Carol had pressed the urn into my hands and told me to dispose of them any way I deemed appropriate. "The awful truth, Tyler, is that you knew him better than I did. Jason was a cipher to me. His father's son. But you were his friend.")

We watched the world rediscover itself. The mass burials finally ended; the bereaved and frightened survivors began to understand that the planet had reacquired a future, however strange that future might turn out to be. For our generation it was a stu

We saw the video footage from the Indian Ocean of the monstrous structure that had embedded itself in the skin of the planet, seawater still boiling to steam where it came into contact with the enormous pillars. The Arch, people began to call it, or the Archway, not only because of its shape but. because ships at sea had returned to port with stories of lost navigational beacons, peculiar weather, spi

She began to exercise a little every day, jogging a dirt path behind the motel as the weather cooled, coming back with the scent of fallen leaves and woodsmoke in her hair. Her appetite improved, and so did the menu in the coffee shop. Food delivery had been restored; the domestic economy was creaking back into motion.

We learned that Mars, too, had been un-Spun. Signals had passed between the two planets; President Lomax, in one of his rally-'round-the-flag speeches, even hinted that the ma

We talked about the past. We talked about the future.

What we did not do was fall into each other's arms.

We knew each other too well, or not well enough. We had a past but no present. And Diane was wracked with anxiety by Simon's disappearance outside Manassas.

"He very nearly let you die," I reminded her.

"Not intentionally. He's not vicious. You know that."

"Then he's dangerously naive."

Diane closed her eyes meditatively. Then she said, "There's a phrase Pastor Bob Kobel liked to use back at Jordan Tabernacle. 'His heart cried out to God.' If it describes anyone, it describes Simon. But you have to parse the sentence. 'His heart cried out'—I think that's all of us, it's universal. You, Simon, me, Jason. Even Carol. Even E.D. When people come to understand how big the universe is and how short a human life is, their hearts cry out. Sometimes it's a shout of joy: I think that's what it was for Jason; I think that's what I didn't understand about him. He had the gift of awe. But for most of us it's a cry of terror. The terror of extinction, the terror of meaninglessness. Our hearts cry out. Maybe to God, or maybe just to break the silence." She brushed her hair away from her forehead and I saw that her arm, which had been so perilously thin, was round and strong once more. "I think the cry that rose up from Simon's heart was the purest human sound in the world. But no, he's not a good judge of character; yes, he's naive; which is why he cycled through so many styles of faith, New Kingdom, Jordan Tabernacle, the Condon ranch… anything, as long as it was plainspoken and addressed the need for human significance."

"Even if it killed you?"

"I didn't say he's wise. I'm saying he's not wicked." Later I came to recognize this kind of discourse: she was talking like a Fourth. Detached but engaged. Intimate but objective. I didn't dislike it, but it made the hair on my neck stand up from time to time.

* * * * *

Not long after I declared her completely healthy Diane told me she wanted to leave. I asked her where she meant to go.

She had to find Simon, she said. She had to "settle things," one way or another. They were, after all, still married. It mattered to her whether he had lived or died.

I reminded her she didn't have money to spend or a place of her own to stay. She said she'd get by somehow. So I gave her one of the credit cards Jason had supplied me, along with a warning that I couldn't guarantee it—I had no idea who was paying the premium, what the credit limit might be, or whether someone might eventually track it to her.

She asked how she could get in touch with me.

"Just call," I said. She had my number, the number I had paid for and preserved these many years, attached to a phone I had carried even though it seldom rang.

Then I drove her to the local bus depot, where she vanished into a crowd of displaced tourists who had been stranded by the end of the Spin.