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seemed to be few thieves anywhere—she didn’t take this seriously either, but it was a promise she could easily keep. Or promise to keep, at least.
    He also brought cuttings of the vine that produced the vaccine and planted them in the shaded garden behind the villa. Neither the soil nor the weather was a close match for the plant’s rain-forest home, but the vine was hardy, and it did seem to be growing well, and even producing flowers before it was time for him to leave.
    Again Malcolm insisted, pleaded, this time that she tend to the plants. Make the vaccine. Keep herself safe, and others as well.
    Chloe had laughed.
    â€œFuck it all,” he said finally. “Tell me you will, or I’m never going to shut up.”
    She’d thrown her hands in the air in mock horror. “Heaven forbid,” she’d said. “I will!”
    *   *   *
    CHLOE. TALL AND angular, with dark-blond hair and a strong jaw and fierce blue eyes, and freckles and an abrupt way of speaking that brooked no disagreement.
    Chloe. Twenty-three years old the last time Malcolm had seen her. Twenty-three still, in his dreams.
    Chloe. His daughter.

FOUR
    KAIT STOOD ON the deck of the
Trey Gilliard
, looking back toward shore. The ship was ready to go—
she
was ready to go—but about half of the crew still lingered on the beach, unwilling to tear themselves away.
    Half of the crew of twenty-eight. That meant almost exactly one in every ten residents of Refugia would soon be sailing over the horizon and out of reach. Kait didn’t share the reluctance of those exchanging last words, last hugs, but she understood it.
    Malcolm had told her that back during what they called the Age of Sail in the Last World, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such partings were routine. Hundreds of ships like this one crisscrossed the oceans, some carrying goods, other seeking to explore—and exploit—unknown lands, still others seeking scientific knowledge.
    And always some were left behind. It was hardest forthem, Kait thought. You stood onshore, waving good-bye, and you knew it would likely be years before you saw your friends, your family, again.
    Years or never . . . and you had to live each day without ever being certain which it was. For all you knew, and it must have happened often enough in reality, the ship whose return you were awaiting had sunk a week out of port, with the loss of all hands.
    Only when a certain amount of time had passed—how long was that? Two years? Five?—would the likely truth begin to sink in. But even then, you would have always wondered, and there must have been a few times at least when people returned years and years after they’d been given up for dead.
    During the ten years that Kait had lived in the Last World, the idea of anyone’s being out of touch for more than about an hour was the sheerest fantasy. (Her school friends with cell phones had hated to let ten minutes pass without saying, “I’m here!” to
somebody
.)
    But now they were back in the past again, everyone, with the old rules in force. Back in force for good, Kait guessed, and soon enough there would be no one left who remembered that it had ever been any different.
    It was a beautiful morning, the high blue sky above, a fresh breeze snapping at the canvas. A beautiful day to sail, and Kait felt like she’d been waiting forever. But if others wanted to delay a little longer, she guessed she could, too.
    Still, she didn’t have to watch. So she turned away, walked past Dylan Connell—the first mate—and a few other crew members, and headed belowdecks to her cabin.
    *   *   *
    KAIT THOUGHT THERE had been plenty of time for farewells the night before.
    Ceremonies and speeches and a party that had gone on almost all night. Scheduled events and casual interactions spreading everywhere but centered around the main plaza, where someone had