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No one believed him, and soon he would grow old, die. She looked at the sea, wishing for a sign, for a
rainbow, a streak of gold at the horizon, anything to take the decision away from her. There was only the
gray water rising and falling in slow swells, and the steady rain.
I don't know any science, she said finally. What could I possibly do?
First, write your eagle book. We'll stay here and go on just as we've been doing. You'll become a rich
reclusive woman. You'll travel around the world, taking pictures, talking to people. We need others,
Lyle. You'll have to help me find the right ones, recruit them, sometimes bury them.
Reclusive, she thought. Of course. Talk with many others, friends of none of them. No one could bear
watching children age and die, watching friends suffer, grow old, die... Others to do what? she asked
dully.
At first we thought no one could ever have it, no one at all. It doesn't change you, you know. You don't
gain wisdom. or courage, or anything else. You just keep living, exactly the way you are. But more
recently we decided that if the world could change, if enough people could change ... I don't know if it
will work. Sometimes I know it can't. But we have to try. A few people here and there, people like you
who don't want power or glory, who don't want to drive others to do their bidding. Unwilling recruits
every one, the most reluctant elite the world has ever seen.
It was starting to get dark now; the clouds pressed closer against the ocean as if waiting for darkness to
hide their possession of it. Lyle turned on the key. We should get back before the fog comes in. She
did not engage the gears yet, but sat with the motor idling. Why are you here, at this place?
There was a long pause before he answered. Sometimes we have to go somewhere far away from
people, where there are things that haven't been changed much, where no one talks to us very much.
There are a few mountains, places in the desert, upper Maine, here. We need a place where we can just
live without having to think for a while.
Lyle nodded. When the pain gets too great to bear, you try to escape, she thought: the bottle, pills, sex;
and when none of them gives more than a momentary surcease, you go to the woods, or to the winter
beach.
Saul is well then. It was a trick to get him out of here.
Yes. I had to wait to make certain you were with us. If your fever had gone too high, you might have
killed off the genetic material we gave you. We couldn't know right away. Tomorrow I'll send a message
to theTimes personal column to let him know you're okay.
Now she shifted gears and started to back up. I know what the message should say. Blue float has
come ashore safely.'
Welcome home, Carmen said in his most gentle voice. She thought of the eagles, beyond good and
evil, the winter beach entering a transition now, going into spring, and then summer when the ocean
would bring back the scrubbed sand, make amends. All ordered, necessary, unavoidable. She started
the drive home.
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