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shrouding murk.
    During the moment of boarding, Carson was especially vulnerable, with a one-hand grip on her pistol, left hand on the cold stainless-steel railing, body in motion and off balance. She swung aboard silently, however, and without incident.
    The narrow starboard deck led forward past a few portholes but only as far as a door. The elevated foredeck lacked gunwales.
    Carson moved quietly aft to the spacious stern deck.
    Even in the purling mist, she could discern two doors in the after bulkhead. She supposed that one must lead to a lounge and other quarters, while the second probably opened on a companionway that led down to the galley and staterooms.
    Chang would not have gone below or forward from here. He would have wanted to get quickly to the helm and must already be up there, at the controls.
    Between the bulkhead doors, a steep slope of stairs led up to the open deck behind the helm station. Embedded low-voltage LEDs, probably controlled by a light sensor that activated them at darkfall, defined the edge of each step.
    Standing at the foot of the stairs, she could see nothing above except dense, slowly eddying fog.
    Expecting to hear the engines turn over at any second, Carson decided to go up fast, without using the handrail, gun in both hands, leaning forward from the waist for balance.
    Before she could put a foot on the first tread, she felt the muzzle of a gun against the nape of her neck, and an involuntary vulgarity hissed between her clenched teeth.

    
chapter
8

    Nummy was okay with jail. He felt cozy and safe in jail. Four walls, ceiling, floor. Nothing about jail was too big.
    He liked the woods, too. Behind his little house, the woods came right up to his backyard. He sat on the porch sometimes, watching the woods come up to his yard, birds flying in and out of the trees, and sometimes a deer sneaking out onto the lawn to eat grass. Watching birds and deer, Nummy felt nice.
    But he wasn’t okay with the woods the way that he was okay with jail. He tried going into the woods a few times. They were too much. Too much trees, standing trees and fallen trees, dead trees and live trees, too much bushes and moss and green things in general, too much rocks. Too many ways to go, and all of it going on and on, woods and more woods with no end. From a distance, woods were pretty. Close up, they scared Nummy.
    Memorial Park, in town, had lots of trees but not too much. If he stayed on the brick paths, there weren’t too many ways to go, and he always came back to one street or another that he knew.
    His little house, where he grew up and where he now lived alone—it had no rooms too big. The smallest was the kitchen, where he spent the most time.
    The jail cell was smaller than his kitchen, and there were fewer things in it. No refrigerator. No oven. No table and chairs. The cell was a calm place, cozy.
    The only thing wrong with the cell was Mr. Lyss. For one thing, Mr. Lyss was stinky.
    Grandmama, who raised Nummy, always said he would do best if he pretended not to notice people’s faults. Folks didn’t like you talking about their faults, especially if you were a dumb person.
    Nummy was dumb. He knew he was dumb because so many people had told him he was, and because the powers that be had long ago said there was no point in him going to school.
    Sometimes he wished he wasn’t dumb, but mostly he was happy being who he was. Grandmama said he wasn’t dumb, he was blessed. She said, too much thinking led to too much worrying. She said, too much thinking could puff up a person with pride, and pride was a lot worse than dumbness.
    As for the powers that be, Grandmama said they were ignorant, and ignorant was also worse than dumb. A dumb person couldn’t learn some things no matter how hard he tried. An ignorant person was smart enough but was too lazy or too mean to learn, or too satisfied with himself. Being truly dumb is a condition, just like being tall or short, or beautiful. Being