they drove the Volkswagen Bug Seth had lifted from the farmhouse for less than an hour before ditching it by a deserted shack. They would have to go on foot, Seth said. It was the only way past the roadblocks.
They walked slowly. Dragged was more like it. Not only did Seth lack the energy, but there was no hurry. They had to wait for darkness.
His precognition continued to expand to one hour, then two. More futures, generations of futures that added up to millions. He couldn’t see them all, of course, only those he intentionally isolated. But the constant bombardment daunted him and, more worrisome, tired him and generated a bad headache.
If he were able to see only what would happen instead of what could happen, the matter would have been simpler. He explained it to Miriam this way: “How many different words do you think I could say right now?”
“As many as you know, I suppose,” she’d responded.
“Say a thousand, for an easy number. I could say any one of a thousand words right now, and for each one, you might respond with any one of your own thousand choices. If I focused hard enough, I think I could see each word and each of your responses. That’s a million possibilities in one generation. Extend that out a few minutes and you get the idea. That’s just the possible futures of our talk.”
They skirted the first roadblock at ten o’clock, a half mile off Route 190. In fact, they could have walked within two hundred yards of the police and not been noticed, Seth informed her with a tired smile.
He led her due north, through a field and over a fence, where they would find another unlocked car, he said. If they took certain back roads, they would be safe for at least as far as he could see.
It was then, walking in the dead of night beside Seth, that Miriam finally understood the full weight of his gift. They were virtually invincible, weren’t they? As long as Seth was awake and thinking—as long as there was at least one possible avenue of escape among the thousands of possibilities—they could simply choose it and walk on, unharmed.
In this moment, she would rather be here, walking with him, than anywhere else in the world. Except in Samir’s arms, of course. A warmth rose through her chest.
She looked at Seth in his oversized shirt, hair loose, jaw firm in the moonlight, and she smiled. He smelled musty, a blend of straw and sweat—but to her it was the scent of a man, and it only reinforced her sense of security.
He looked at her, his eyes sagging. “What?”
“Nothing.”
She slipped her arm through his, as content as she could remember feeling. She could feel his skin on hers, along their arms, and that was good, because here in America you didn’t have to be a fifteen-year- old bride to be touched by a man. An image of Sita floating underwater flashed through her mind and she felt a momentary stab of pain.
You are a woman and he is a man, Miriam. What would Samir say to this display of affection, however platonic? And you know that Seth is falling for you. No, she did not know that. It was her fantasy. Miriam pulled her arm away. She was losing her mind with his.
Seth seemed too exhausted to react.
They found the car exactly as he’d predicted. An old white Cadillac with a shredded vinyl roof. It was unlocked.
“The owners are probably in the basement right now, praying someone will come along and swipe this beast,” Seth said. He looked at her. “Ready for a ride?”
“I was born ready.” It was a phrase he’d used earlier and she liked it.
He grinned wide. “Born ready, huh? I didn’t see that one coming. Let’s go.”
He was too busy considering the future of their escape to dwell on what she might say. That was a good thing. It also meant he was making mistakes. They had to rest.
They drove north to the outskirts of a town called Ridgecrest, where Seth pulled the beast, as he’d taken to calling the car, into a graveled parking lot adjacent to a large steepled building. A church. He eased the car around the back and parked behind an old shed. He simply could not go on.
“We’re past the roadblocks, and it’s dark. We should be okay. If I don’t get some rest, my body’s going to start shutting down on its own.”
“What if you don’t wake up?” she asked.
“Nothing’s happening in the next three hours. Three hours past that and the sun comes up. The sun comes up, I awake. Always been that way; always will be that way. Relax, princess. It’s time for sleep.”
He leaned against his door, and the heavy breathing of sleep took him within minutes. The window felt like a stone against her head, and Seth kept grunting in his sleep, as if fighting unseen demons. In a groggy fit of frustration she leaned toward Seth and rested her head on his arm.
She finally slept.
The heat woke her. A suffocating blanket that smelled of oil. Light streamed in through the window, hot on her thigh like a magnifying glass . . .
Miriam jerked up. It was day! The Cadillac was surrounded by a sea of cars. They’d been found!
Seth leaned against the window, mouth hanging open in a snore, dead to the world.
She hit his thigh. “Seth!” she whispered.
He didn’t budge.
She pulled her fist back and slammed it into his arm. “Seth!”
“Huh!” He jerked up, eyes wide. A trail of saliva hung from his gaping mouth. He clamped his mouth closed and swallowed. “What?”
“Look!”
He gazed around, blinking. “Cars.”
“Who . . . who are they?”
A lopsided grin split his face. “It’s Sunday.”
Sunday. Christians went to their churches on Sundays. They were in a church parking lot, swallowed up by the cars of worshippers.
Miriam exhaled and leaned back. “Do you see anything?”
She wound the window down to let some of the desert heat out. He wasn’t answering.
“Seth?” She faced him. “What is it? Do you see anything?”
“Yes. I see that in exactly twenty minutes, a cruiser’s going to roll into this parking lot.”
“Twenty minutes. We would still be sleeping if I hadn’t awakened.”
Seth had fixed his eyes on the church.
“Seth?”
“Who was the greatest prophet?”
A melody reached faintly through the walls. Children were laughing somewhere. “Muhammad,” she said.
“That’s not what your sheiks teach. Muhammad was the final prophet, but Muhammad sinned. The prophet Jesus did not sin. He was the only perfect man and as such a greater prophet than Muhammad. This is the teaching of Islam.”
It was true. But she didn’t understand his point.
“Your point?”
“Jesus was also the prophet of love.”
“Love?” What was he saying?
“Love your neighbor as yourself. Even the Rabbi Akiva called it the great principle of the Torah.”
“You’ve read the Torah too?”
“And the Talmud.” He looked at her and winked. “Time to jet.”