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  Weiss stepped between them. “Grace, you’re asking a hell of a lot.”

  “Jake, you trusted me when you were a boy. I’m asking you, just one more time, be that faithful little boy again.”

  “Four unknowns have entered the city gates. And you’re—”

  “Please, Jake. I’m not senile. I’m not crazy. I’m not being forced to say this. The only reason I came out and not one of the others is because most of you still trust me. Now please.”

  With a stiff, short nod from Weiss, the selected representatives followed Grace inside and up the steps. Kendra led the way with her rifle’s safety off. The passage into the gatehouse had been made purposely narrow and dark so city defenders inside would have a fighting chance against infiltrators. Now they knew the fear they had hoped to inflict on any enemies entering these fortifications.

  The interior of the gatehouse was round like the tower itself. As they turned the corner and entered the tower’s main room, they found the twelve had lit torches. Emerging into the torchlight, Weiss could see shadows flickering across every wall and object in the room. The twelve—old faces one and all but none older than Grace’s—looked calm but determined as they surrounded the four guests who sat on the ground.

  “General Jacob Weiss is the head of our armed forces,” Grace began. “He will guarantee your safety.”

  The tallest of the four stood. He was taller than the average man but not nearly as tall as the shortest Orangeman. Lit from behind, his head appeared only as a hooded void, blacker than a moonless night. It reminded Weiss of a picture of Death he had seen in a book in the Archives.

  “General Weiss,” the stranger said. He removed his hood to reveal a ruddy face with thinning fair hair and a rust-colored beard. “I can’t believe we’ve finally found you.”

  The other three stood and pulled off their hoods as well—a woman, darker and shorter than the man, and two children, both with features similar enough to peg them as brother and sister and likely the offspring of the adults. Weiss found himself shaking hands with the man and then the woman, who clasped his hard hand in both of hers.

  “I’m William Tyler. This is my family. It’s been so long since we hoped, since we even imagined—”

  Weiss eyed the man. “You’re . . . human.”

  Kendra was shaking her head. “This isn’t possible,” she said. “No one else survived. No one—just the Remnants.”

  “It’s a miracle. A miracle.” Petra pressed her hands against her lips, tears flowing freely as she rushed to touch these newcomers. “It’s a gift from God. We must tell everyone!”

  “I don’t understand,” Kendra muttered, then turned to Grace. “New people brought by the Orangemen? What does it mean?”

  Grace’s hand found Kendra’s forearm and gave it a squeeze. “A change is coming, child. A great change.”

  Weiss, turning from the tumultuous exchange of greetings between Petra, the twelve, and the newcomers, looked at Grace. “That much is certain.”

  CHAPTER 3

  And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads . . . These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.

  —The Book of Revelation 14:1,4

  The sun rose out of the ocean, warming the streets and turning the hazy-yellow moon into a ghostly specter. People hustled out of their homes, casting long shadows on the ground in the early-morning light. Some were off to their rotating monthly work assignments in town or out in the fields. Older children ran through the streets, enjoying their last few weeks of freedom before reporting for Defense Forces training, their younger siblings either lagging behind in bunches or within their parents’ arm reach. Other than a low-level pulse of excitement in the air—not dissimilar to the way a child felt the night before a birthday or Christmas—it was hard to tell from the surface just how much their lives had changed overnight.

  John wandered down to Central Square, feeling this pulse. He didn’t have anywhere to be. Having been on duty all night in the hills, he had been given a day of R & R. He could have caught up on sleep or spent the day with friends, just talking about the Newcomers’ arrival. But there wasn’t anyone he wanted to discuss it with other than Kendra. He had only glimpsed her for a minute after she and the others had left the gatehouse.

  The Newcomers’ existence seemed to prove one thing: more than the original Remnants had survived mankind’s destruction. All his life he had been told this was impossible. John of Patmos, writing in the book of Revelation, had foretold that only 144,000 would initially survive the end times. And the first census, taken right after the Arrival, proved that exactly that number had survived. But if these additional four had lived, could other humans be out there somewhere? Yet for that to be true, it would mean that the book of Revelation—or at least the way they’d been interpreting it—wasn’t accurate.

  A terrifying idea. If the Remnants hadn’t survived to repopulate the human race and bring about the New Jerusalem, as foretold, then why were they here? Through every loss and pain, with each misery in the repetitious chore that living could sometimes be, John had never fallen into a pit of grief, because he more often than not believed it would all make sense in the end—the struggling, the trials, the messy road to survival. His grandparents and others of their generation had been spared to make the world anew. He would be a part of the creation of paradise.

  He watched the men and women in the square and the children running across the grass. In their excited murmurs and laughter, he felt anticipation building for the report the twelve would make to the Council tonight. Surely some of the people around him were feeling similar confusion and conflict. They couldn’t all be like his mother.

  His mother. She never wavered, never questioned. He couldn’t talk to her about his confusion. And talking to his grandfather’s headstone wouldn’t help much.

  Which left Kendra. He took a step or two in the direction of the barracks, wondering if she’d be in her dormitory this time of day. He didn’t know what he’d say to her or how he’d say it. He didn’t have anything that would help either of them make sense of it all. Yet he knew whatever would come next, he would be with her. They were fellow travelers and had been since the day they met.

  His mother was another matter. The joy she felt, the miracle she believed she’d witnessed in the gatehouse last night—he couldn’t understand how she felt so certain considering all the uncertainty before them. And her quoting the book of Sirach to him—“What is too sublime for you, do not seek; do not reach into things that are hidden from you. What is committed to you, pay heed to; what is hidden is not your concern”—was just too much. Didn’t she think secrets should ever be revealed? Shouldn’t faith someday be rewarded with confirmed fact?

  Still, wasn’t what she felt about the Newcomers’ appearance the very definition of faith, that everything was going according to plan? And what he felt the exact opposite?

  He wanted to believe. Just not on the simple terms of the contract his mother had signed with her conscience.

  Maybe that’s why they had never really seen eye to eye since his father and Christian disappeared. His mother didn’t want to consider anything that couldn’t fit into the patterns she’d woven in her head long ago. Her idea of free will was drifting with the current and accepting where you wound up. And Ecclesiastes seemed to back her up: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” Her passivity was all over that one.

  But she’s wrong. Free will isn’t passive. It’s an active choice. Faith is accepting that you have no control over events but only how you choose to deal with those events—and that’s where free will comes in.

  A thought stopped John in his tracks as the wind filled his ears. If free will isn’t passive, then what is it? Maybe free will is an extension of the evolutionary process, an organic trial-and-error method to make us all the more enlightened, more
evolved beings. Maybe it’s actually the fulfillment of evolution—a point where we take charge of random actions and reactions and give moral weight to them.

  His head spun. He needed sleep. He needed to see his friend Kendra. And he also needed more hours than he had before tonight’s meeting to make sense of things, more than just the howl of the sea breeze to answer his questions.

  Maybe New Jerusalem won’t come as we expect it, fully formed from heaven. Maybe the Remnants, in building this city, were right all along. We have to make it and earn it piece by piece.

  Just as he was about to leave, he saw Sofie Lee crossing the lawn of the square with her three daughters. Irene, the eldest, was probably close to the age he’d been when he and Sofie, two years older, had shared their first kiss. Seeing her with Gordon Lee’s children, that voice in his head that was not his own asked: Don’t you know all this is a dream? When we die is when we wake up. Ain’t that something?

  Sofie held a hand aloft as the girls raced ahead of her. He waved in response and watched her as she approached him, her hands in her pants pockets, her figure still slim and girlish despite her years in the Defense Forces and three childbirths. It was strange to think of her as thirty-two. She still had those freckles on that upturned nose. She still smiled that smile. Ever and always she’d be Sofie Weiss, the ruddy fifteen-year-old he’d had the guts to kiss on her roof the night of the lunar eclipse, the one he sipped unblessed wine from a canteen with in the pouring rain the next summer, the girl so full of terrifying brains and energy. She couldn’t be a mother. And he couldn’t be so different from what he was all those summers ago. It all had to be a dream.

  The girls yelled “Hi John” at him as they ran past. Sofie barked out orders to the eldest, something about keeping an eye on the younger ones. The girl, freckled and pointy chinned, a mirror image of Sofie at the same age despite the black hair she had inherited from her father, grumbled something juvenile in response. Communication delivered, Sofie turned to him, her face warm and bright and friendly.

  “Hello John. Long time no see.”

  “It is at that.” He leaned against the tree behind him. “Funny we don’t run into each other more.”

  “Yeah, funny that. Almost think you were trying to avoid me.”

  “What I mean is, it’s not like we live in a big city of old, like New York or something, where most people didn’t even know the neighbors who lived on their block.”

  “True enough. What do you think about the news?”

  “What news?”

  Sofie laughed as she slipped a renegade strawberry-blond lock back into its bun. “Where have you been, fella? The Council’s agreed to have three representatives from each generation at the meeting tonight when the twelve give their report.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s all you’ve got to say? It’s unprecedented! They’ve never done that before. And what’s more, the Newcomers are going to be there too. So we’ll get reports of what happened on the beach right from our own people, none of the usual Council filter.”

  “It’s good—I guess. A lot to process, you know?”

  “Tell me about it. What do you know about them?”

  “I wasn’t in the gatehouse. But they’re human, four of them, a family. I think.”

  “I wish we knew more. Well, we’ll find out soon enough. And with Gordon being there—”

  “Gordon’s one of the reps?”

  “They wanted his scientific and engineering knowledge to help them evaluate the Newcomers’ testimony. Hopefully whatever he can glean from them will help us convince the Remnants not to be so scared of technology. The more our generation gets from the Newcomers, the more leverage we’ll have.”

  “I guess. Yeah. Hopefully.”

  She leaned in conspiratorially. “You think he’ll be safe there, John? You on security?”

  Now we come to the point of things. “I haven’t seen the roster, but at a Council meeting, Sofie? I can’t think of a safer place.”

  “I mean, with them there.”

  “I’m a hundred percent certain they’re not a threat to Gordon Lee.”

  “That’ll be a load off his mind.”

  He grinned. “Don’t you mean your mind?”

  She laughed and shook her head. “Better run, Johnny. Don’t be a stranger. You’re always welcome.”

  Good old Sofie, he thought. Always knew the right ways to motivate people into giving her what she wanted. Well, almost always.

  Grace couldn’t recall how many Council meetings she had offered testimony to or how many times she had sat on the Council of Twelve to hear it. She couldn’t even remember the more personal parts of these meetings—for example, which of her fellow Remnants she had reported to. It had nothing to do with senility. Procedural matters always tended to blur together in her mind. But she knew she would remember this meeting and this report for the time she had left. Even if fate took all memory from her before her physical life was claimed, it would never be able to erase this.

  Grace was ninety-six years old, as they measured years on this planet. She might well be older in Earth years, but much had been lost before the Arrival and forgotten since, including the way time had been measured on the home world. It had been a long time since she or anyone else had thought in old-style time increments. She didn’t find it so great a loss, even for such personal matters as determining her exact age. She had been forty-four Earth years old when she and the others walked out of the cargo containers on the beach; since that time this planet had moved around its sun fifty-two times. So she was ninety-six and would tell anyone that number with a straight face should they dare ask.

  Of course, when the Orangemen deposited them on this planet, there were others who were older than she and a few her age. But all of them had now crossed over to await New Jerusalem’s appearance in the sky, when all would live with the Lord. Only she, of the adults who arrived here, still lived. Why, she had no idea. Perhaps to guide the descendants of those who’d struggled alongside her in those early days. But she tended to doubt that.

  People like Jake and Andy Weiss were just boys then. But neither they nor any of these children who call themselves Remnants really remember how it was, either in the last days or right after the Arrival.

  The murmuring and muttering of the other eleven representatives sitting with her in the anteroom outside the Council chamber drew her out of her memories. In a few minutes, she would testify before the Council—and this select number of representatives of their children and grandchildren—that she believed a miracle had come with the four foundlings from the beach. And that, together, they would bring about the New Heavens and the New Earth—praise God.

  Grace closed her eyes to the chatter. The room was warm and dry with the heat from the fireplace. She opened her eyes and looked around once more before shutting them again. Let them believe the old woman had gone to sleep. She wanted to think in peace. Against the speckled darkness of her closed eyelids, she never saw anything other than what she had been that first morning on the beach: an angry woman searching frantically. Scattered across the sand were the twelve massive cargo containers they had just emerged from. Her son and daughter were missing. Ernest had been fourteen then, stocky with baby fat and awkward with adolescence. Nancy was just twelve, hanging on to childhood with long arms and coltish legs. Her children had been in the White Place with her, but somehow—she couldn’t remember how it happened now—they’d been brought to the planet on different transports. Her husband was dead, killed in the last days. Everyone she ever knew was dead except for her children. She had to find them. The terror she’d known then still made her wince, still wanted to squeeze her heart silent.

  What must they have looked like on the beach that morning, all 144,000 of them, flailing around like ants in fear that a heedless child’s heel would return to crush them even now?

  She remembered it all. Their squinting faces as they shielded their eyes and emerged from the artificial ligh
t onto that sun-bright beach. The air shimmering with heat. The ocean waves flashing with glaring sunlight, more heard than seen in those first few chaotic minutes. The pure smell of the salty sea air. Wherever they were, the light was real and the air was fresh. After all that time—how long was it?—cooped up in the antiseptic artificial environment of the White Place, it was almost overwhelming to be in a living world again. From what she could tell just by the accents around her, the Remnants had been scooped up from every human colony across the Sol system, but she couldn’t imagine any of them—even the ones like her who had come from Earth—had ever experienced an environment so pure as that beach.

  The sensations—warm and inviting as they were—almost made her want to give up the search for her children. She was alive and in a living place. Was it wrong to want to feel like a human being for just a single moment after what they had endured for so long? But then she heard the hysterical screams of other parents calling for other children, other spouses calling for their mates, and wondered if they were calling for people still alive, like she hoped she was doing, or for the dead. She had to find Ernest and Nancy. They had come too far together to be separated or to die alone. Even as angry as she was then, she couldn’t imagine a universe that cruel.

  Hands pushing and shoving, voices buried by other voices, the thudding of rocks and sticks on unfamiliar metals, clothes tearing, random scents of food, a human smell of sweat and fear turning animal—all of this and more was the last of humanity herded together onto a single beach on a planet who knew where. A moment more and these people, hungry for their loved ones, wearied by a journey from death and destruction, eager for some understanding of what was happening, these remnants would become a mob, animals. And that moment was upon them. If it came, it would show that they didn’t deserve to live as individuals or to continue as a race. She felt the moment coming, building and building, ready to burst its hot death upon them all. She didn’t want to die like that, so alone, so seemingly undeserving of life. And then—