Axis

"Lise," said a voice from behind her—loud enough to hear over the screeching of the wind, impossibly loud, but it was Turk's voice, and in her astonishment she sat up and tried to turn to face him. He was somewhere behind these concrete slabs, somehow enduring the gale-force wind. "Turk!"

"Don't look at me, Lise. It's better if you don't."

This frightened her so badly that she couldn't look. She imagined him hurt or horribly wounded. So she looked at the ground, but that was no better because she could tell by the shadows that there was a vivid light coming from the place where Turk must be standing—possibly from Turk himself. Which threatened to drive her into an even deeper chasm of terror; so she closed her eyes altogether. Closed them tight. And clenched her hands into fists. And let him speak.

"Lise?" Brian said. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," she said. There was a wineglass in front of her and Mahmud was filling it. Refilling it. She pushed it away. "Sorry."

Turk had said a few things.

Things that were private. Things she would carry with her to her grave. Words meant exclusively for her.

He had apologized in simple words for leaving her. He didn't have a choice, he said. There was only one door left to him.

When she asked where he was going, all he said was, "West."

"He went west," she told Brian.

And when she finally forced herself to raise her head and look, really look, what she had seen was not Turk but Isaac. Isaac was ragged, he was hurt, one of his arms was bent twice in the wrong direction, but he was shining like a full moon. His skin had become as luminous and shiftingly colorful as the memory globes, as if he had become one of them. And she supposed he had.

She understood this because Turk had explained it. Turk's body was back in the ruins, but his living memory was here, with this battered remnant of Isaac that had been excavated by the Hypothetical trees.

And Esh was with him, also Jason Lawton, also A

And Diane?

Diane, he said, had preferred to stay behind.

And, she had asked, Dr. Dvali?

No. Not Dr. Dvali.

Then the luminous shell of Isaac had given itself to the wind, and the wind had carried him west.

Brian was saying something about "your book."

"There was never any book."

"You learn anything about your father?"

"A few things."

"Because I did some investigation of my own. After you mentioned Tomas Gi

Lise said nothing.

"The same thing may have happened to your father."

"May have?"

"Well. No. Did, in fact."

"You have evidence of this?"

"A photograph. Not exactly evidence. It's not actionable. But that's the truth, Lise, if the truth is what you were looking for."

A photograph of her father—of his corpse, Brian seemed to be implying. She didn't want to see it. "I know what happened," she said.

"Do you?"

She knew what had happened to her blameless father, and she knew something even Brian didn't know: she knew what had killed him and she knew why. She had already sent a text message to her mother in California:

He didn't leave. He was taken away. I know this.

Her mother sent back: Then you can come home.

But that's where I am, Lise replied, and later, walking by the dockside in a morning fog, she realized it was true.

She had said goodbye to Sulean Moi at a rural bus stop on her way into the Port. Lise had asked the Martian woman whether she would be okay on her own, but of course she would be okay; she had lived for decades on her wits and the generosity of charitable Fourths. And she still had work to do, she said. Isaac had been her great failure. But there would be more battles. Whatever the Hypothetical network truly was, Sulean Moi still disapproved of its commerce with human beings. "I don't want to be an element in some creature's vast transactions," she said. "Nor do I wish my species to be."

"So where will you go?" Lise had asked, and the Martian woman smiled and said, "Maybe I'll go west. What about you? Are you all right?"

No, of course she was not all right. Lise's memories of the Rub al-Khali would generate sweat-drenched dreams for months if not years to come. But she shrugged and said, "I'll survive," and must have been sincere, because the Martian woman had taken her hand and looked into her eyes and solemnly nodded.

"I wish it had worked out better for us," Brian said, which was his way of acknowledging that the marriage was well and truly finished. "I wish a lot of things had worked out better."

Which made it easier to be grateful for everything he'd done or tried to do on her behalf. Easier to see him as blameless.

Their lunch had gone long. It was already dusk. Down in the Port lights were starting to wink on, from the illuminated billboards along the Rue de Madagascar to the strings of multicolored diodes that glorified the souks and open markets. All that polyglot beauty, Lise thought, as if the city were a single organism, following its own diurnal rhythms and steeped in its own evolving imagination. She wondered if it would still be here in a thousand years—or ten thousand years, when Turk's ghost came walking out of the temporal Arch to begin another cycle.

Any real understanding of the nature of the Hypotheticals must take this into account. They were ancient when we first encountered them, and they are more ancient now.

The introduction to her father's book.

Brian took her hand a final time, then turned and walked away. Lise sat at the table a while longer. The cooling air from the patio was pleasant. The stars were coming out. Mahmud poured coffee from a silver carafe.

What we ca