Chapter 9.

The air in the Rakatan ruins was cool, and very still. The robot in the middle of the room became silent and immobile after a few minutes, with only the little red light on its head and the occasional twitch to show it even had power. Onduin had decided to save questioning the droid for later, so we could all get a chance to rest without the thing gurgling and hissing for awhile. I'll admit, that robot scared me. I'd set my pack down and was sitting on that, not far from the droid, and every now and then I'd catch the robot twitching or blinking its light out the corner of my eye. I jerked the first three times, and I always had the paranoid feeling that it was watching me. Maybe it was-- who knows? But either way I didn't like it. I sat about twenty feet away from it, while the men stood in front of it, discussing history. Onduin and Dadaro did most of the talking, debating what they saw or sensed around the droid, and sometimes trying to ask it questions. Vern stood nearby, listening and offering ideas occasionally. I wondered why I had to be the only one creeped out by the robot. This went on for fifteen or twenty minutes. Vern looked over at me after awhile, with an expression of sympathy.

"Look, it's not dangerous," he said. He jerked his head towards it, gesturing for me to come have a look. I got up slowly. I didn't want to go near the robot, but at least I wouldn't be all by myself, staring at a wall, like I'd been throwing chalk at the teacher or something.

"Touch the side," he said, tapping it once I got closer. "It's warm."

I suddenly decided I really didn't want to be anywhere near the robot. "What, you mean it's radioactive?"

At first, he just looked at me like I was being stupid. Then a more serious look built on his face, and Vern, Onduin, and Dadaro started trading ever more nervous glances. Onduin was the first to start backing away, followed by Dadaro and Vern.

"Well," Onduin said, "that would explain why it's still running."

"What do you mean?" Vern asked.

"It's running on nuclear fission. The radioactive fuel is what's keeping the sides warm."

"I doubt it's dangerous," Dadaro said. "Whoever built it had to have put some kind of radiation shielding on it."

"Maybe so, but after 24,000 years of service, I wouldn't rely on it."

"Great," I said sarcastically. "You're all radioactive now from touching it."

"I agree it's not reliable, but I've spent a lot of time in this room, and I'm not dead yet. I don't think the droid is radioactive," Dadaro said.

"I wouldn't take my chances," replied Vern.

"Neither would I," said Onduin. "But we'll have to keep this place in mind for future study. Are there any other buildings nearby we could use?"

"There are other stable ruins," said Dadaro. "But if we need to run, we'll have to come here. This is the only place with a solid door."

It wasn't long before we were loading up our bags and marching back out the Rakatan ruins. "You know, I was half-kidding," I said. I didn't like the robot, sure enough, but did we really have to get up and start walking again? We'd already spent a good couple hours walking to get to the Rakatan ruins, and between hiking across Dantooine with my luggage and trying to sleep outside with big, mysterious predators called "kath hounds" running around, I was ready for a break, radiation or no. To be perfectly honest, I wanted to go back to town.

My comment was ignored, even though I was only a few feet behind Onduin. Dadaro walked beside him, and Vern trailed them, a little in front of me, and hardly looked away from Onduin's back. Dadaro seemed to ignore the seething tension that had mutated into being just a little behind him, but Onduin would occasionally turn to meet Vern's gaze with a scowl. We stopped to rest for a few minutes under what looked a bit like a cherry tree, in a shaded alcove, and the cause of the tension revealed itself as a conversation came to life.

"Look," Onduin said, directing the speech at Vern. "Have you considered going back to civilization and at least acting normal? The odds that--"

"No." Vern had a look of determination.

"The odds that someone outside Mackereyne has any chance of finding us at this point are infinitesimal," Onduin continued. "What, are you just going to stay out here forever? Until the Empire collapses?" Vern made no response other than an immobile stare. "You could be out here a long time."

"I'd rather be out here for a long time than be in an Imperial cell for a long time," he finally replied. "No repeats necessary," he muttered, barely audible.

Onduin sighed, defeated. Then he turned to Dadaro. "Dadaro. Why do you want to stay out here? We can't stay here forever."

"Because I know the land. I don't mind Mackereyne, but if you go back with me in tow, word'll spread." He smiled a little. "Schultze might be absurdly stubborn, but he still has a point. Security put a tracking chip on him, and when they find out it's not on him anymore, they'll want to find him. Going back anywhere people are in touch with the Empire at this point is foolhardy."

"Then how long are we supposed to bushwhack?"

"I don't know. But the universe just hit a tipping point. You've pushed it over the edge by coming here with Andrea. It won't be long before everything is thrown into such cosmic disarray that every spaceport will be safe, from here to Coruscant. We won't have to wait here long."

"Dadaro... how much have you thought this through?"

"Very little," he admitted. "I just have faith that things will work out if we do what we're meant to do."

Onduin's face lost most of its expression, becoming glazed over with a blank hopelessness. He looked over at me with a sigh. After a few minutes, we picked up our bags and started walking again, and I left my hopes of turning back to civilization under the stunted tree.

In another twenty minutes, we reached the crumbling remains of another stone building. This one was built out of light brown blocks, and had a roughly rectangular structure. Half the building was completely collapsed, with the stones spilling over each other, and tufts of grass weaving up between them where dirt had collected in the pits and crevasses. The other half was in the midst of gradual collapse, with the stainless roof angling and crumpling down towards the ground where the rest of the building lay. There, at the tip of what was left standing, with a single doorway facing out to the ravines, was a full, structurally sound room. This set of ruins was almost as big as the enclave ruins, and the room left standing was about 3/4 the size of the room in the Rakatan ruins. Inside it was relatively dark, since there were no windows, but the stainless steel remains of what were once light fixtures were still attached to the ceiling here and there. The floor was covered in several inches of dirt and had a thin patch of grass growing around the door, plus clumps of withered dead grass that had been blown and compacted into the corners over time. As we walked in, something like a bright green lizard scurried out. Dadaro said this building had once been the mansion home of a rich family, but had been abandoned not long after the enclave was destroyed. A similar mansion a couple miles away was also abandoned, and converted into the town center for what later became Mackereyne.

We set up a little camp in the mansion ruins, with a small stove for cooking and assorted bedrolls tossed down on the floor wherever they landed first. This time, we actually stayed put. A small stream ran near the mansion and burrowed into a nearby mesa, likely emptying in some subterranean lake. We got all our water from that while we stayed in the mansion. Vern and Dadaro became our primary hunter-gatherers after our food supplies started running low, and between the two of them we rarely had to eat the packaged food we'd brought. Onduin took up what was left of Dadaro's time walking around the area and looking at old excavations and artifacts. I spent a lot of time reading news feeds on my datapad. Dadaro and Onduin did most of the cooking, unless meat was involved-- then Vern pitched in. I would usually help, since I wasn't interested in helping Vern and Dadaro actually find the food. I don't think I could have stood being stuck with both of them at once. Sometimes I would follow Onduin and Dadaro as they went looking at ruins, just for a break in the routine. Other times, when I got bored enough, I'd throw rocks at trees, or draw pictures in the dirt with sticks. We all had a lot of spare time. Every now and then, I'd find myself back at the set of ruins where I'd seen the black-robed woman and the weeping Cathar, watching the scene flicker in and out of view. Sometimes I could almost see them both at once, and I thought I'd hear the Cathar sigh, or hear faintly the other woman saying something. Other times all I could make out was the glint of the sun off the standing woman's boot. Once I followed Onduin and Dadaro back to the cave, and went inside. At first it wasn't much more than a dark tunnel, but it opened up gradually to a huge cavern. Towards the back, across a wide chasm, we could just make out the ribcage of some giant animal. Onduin and Dadaro speculated it might have been there for hundreds of years, if not more. Everywhere I went in the cave, I would feel sudden, strange emotions, like wild fear followed by sudden peace and then brooding fury. It was like the ruins where I'd seen the vision, but on a massive scale. I didn't see anything, but now and then I thought I could hear someone talking next to me, or hear grumbling voices discussing something in the distance. Onduin and Dadaro would occasionally mention hearing similar things, but they didn't seem fazed by it. I had a lot to get used to.

A strange pattern emerged after about a standard week-- about a day and a half on Dantooine. Vern and Dadaro would go out for several hours, and return with food. Then, while Dadaro and Onduin cooked, wherever I sat, Vern would position himself nearby. He would rarely sit next to me, and he wasn't giving me any funny looks, like creepers and bashful people with crushes do. But, I realized after awhile, he would always put himself between me and Dadaro. I wasn't sure what it meant. It didn't seem like a crush, thankfully; but I couldn't figure out what it was. I was reminded of that moment at the ruins where I'd seen the visions, where I'd turned around to find Vern glaring at Dadaro. Maybe there was a connection between that incident and the behavior I saw now.

Time has a funny way of slurring together in the Dantooine bush. Without the ticking and humming of civilization, each day seems no more pressing than the last. With the slow day-night cycles, the time of day loses its meaning, like it does in space. When the kath hounds weren't growling and hooting in the distance, everything was very quiet; and if you ever spend a long time in a quiet wilderness, you'll likely find that, when you come back, human speech sounds strange-- unnatural, almost. Conversations become more forced, as the sentences used to make them sound more and more like the warbling of a bird, and less like expressions of intelligent thought. You might even catch yourself thinking that speech isn't worth listening to, because it doesn't mean anything; the only way to really hear people is to listen to their intonations and watch their body language. I think this is what it's like to be an animal. It's not that human speech is too advanced for them to understand; it's just that it's too alien, too unnatural. In a funny way, it doesn't make sense. I spent a lot of time in quiet places, especially when I followed Onduin and Dadaro to look at ruins. So did everyone else. As the days went by, we all became progressively less talkative; there wasn't much to talk about, unless Onduin and Dadaro found something really interesting at the enclave. Everything became more quiet.

I started noticing more about what the people around me were like. Dadaro spent a lot of time sitting quietly, just watching the world go by-- he seemed very content there, sitting on some rock or up in some tree like a resting cheetah. Onduin wanted to talk more; Dadaro seemed happy to talk to him about the local history, but left to his own devices, he turned quiet again. Dadaro was like a golden retriever-- not very talkative, but obedient and faithful. Really, he always seemed content. Onduin was the rational person in the group, there to balance out Dadaro's nuttiness and Vern's obstinacy. He was basically the adult. If there was a problem, he'd try to find a rational solution; and if there was an argument, he'd hover nearby and try to moderate things so they didn't escalate. He'd spent years moderating conflicts, and he was good at it. Watching Vern, it was hard to believe this was the Nazi soldier I'd run into in Agonis. He'd turned into a decent guy. My leftover resentment from that incident melted as the days went by, and we finally started getting along. I was left to wonder how much of our fighting in the previous weeks was really his fault, and how much was mine. It was after spending about a month on Dantooine that I started seeing who Vern really was.

I was fumbling with some hunks of motherboards and little components that I'd set out on a fallen stone block, and was trying to reassemble them into a functional datapad. I wouldn't have had to take it apart to begin with, but a rock had somehow gotten inside and was rattling around there. Onduin told me how to take it apart carefully, laying out all the pieces so I could get it back together. It was still beyond me how the pebble, which now sat innocently near the edge of the stone block, could've made it inside the datapad. There were no holes in the case big enough for a rock that size to slip through. I gave up thinking about it for awhile, trying to attach a little green panel to the screen with a clip that clearly didn't belong there. A human-shaped shadow suddenly emerged next to me.

"Hey," Vern said. "You want some help?"

I was surprised. He wasn't usually openly helpful. "Um... okay," I said, looking helplessly at the remains of my datapad.

"Okay." He knelt down next to me and started telling me which parts went where. He made a couple mistakes, but he was doing better than me. After a few minutes, the scattered electric boards and other pieces started becoming roughly rectangular. That was all well and good, and I was grateful, but the absolute precision of every single instruction was starting to reek of micromanagement. I started feeling irritated. My emotion must have been contagious, because he was getting irritated with my inability to follow direct instructions.

"No!" he said, as I started trying to attach something to something else. "It goes the other way. No, you have to push that in, and then clip that on--" He leaned back, rubbing his temples with his thumb and forefingers. He sighed. "Okay, look. That does not go with this--"

I finally lost control. "Stop. Micromanaging. Me!" I growled.

His eyebrows shot up. He looked at me with true surprise. "But..." He let the word hang in the air, glancing over at the half-assembled datapad. "I'm not trying to," he said. "You wanted help."

I felt bad for blowing up at him, but I was irritated too. Caught between apologizing and not really wanting to, I watched him awkwardly.

"Okay," he finally said. "What do you want?"

"Um..." I hadn't thought that far ahead. "I'm sorry... just please stop micromanaging me."

He huffed, looking away. "Er... Fine. How about... you ask for help when you need it?"

I nodded quietly, mouthing the word "okay." I'd planned on saying it out loud, but my voice wasn't working for some reason. I turned back to fitting bits of the datapad together. Vern turned around and leaned back against the stone block, which was probably four feet long and a little over two feet high. He stared off at space at first, then looked back over to watch me putting the datapad back together. He looked irritated, but happily gave advice when I asked for it. Was he just dying to micromanage something?

Onduin walked past this scene right about then, with a load of sticks in his arms. He paused, and took one look. He pursed his lips, shook his head a little, and then kept walking. Vern and I watched him go. At first I was just baffled, but then I remembered a moment almost two months ago where Onduin had said something irritatingly true about us. We'd been arguing for about half an hour, and were on the point of a fistfight.

You two fight like a married couple.

I could almost see the words forming again in his head now. That had to be what he was thinking as he walked past us. I started smiling despite myself. Watching the two of us argue was probably worth sitting down with a bowl of popcorn for.

This was by no means the only scene like this. Only a few days later, I found myself snapping at Vern again for micromanaging me. He wouldn't try that with Onduin or Dadaro-- he respected Onduin more, and Dadaro he just didn't try to control at all. But the tendency would come out when he was around me. It seemed like the less hostile we were to each other in general, the more he'd do irritating little things like this. Still, he was better in some ways. He was usually nice to me; he'd offer help or actually have a friendly conversation with me. I finally laid down the law and told him that from now on, he only gives advice when I ask for it. He argued about that for fifteen minutes. We were both fuming at each other by the end, but he went along with it. I felt very victorious. I didn't usually win arguments with him, because half the time, he was right. He also had an uncanny ability to read my face, along with everyone else's, so he knew right away when I hadn't thought something through. Then he would shred whatever hasty theorems I'd come up with to explain my point of view. It was incredibly aggravating.

A few weeks-- I think about a month-- passed, and the weather got progressively nastier. Warm, sunny days turned into cold, sunny days, and then cold, cloudy, windy days. Cool fall nights turned into bitter sunless stretches that got progressively longer. Days would begin with a heavy fog in the morning, and sometimes even a cold rain. We set to moving branches and leaves into the mansion ruins and packing them into corners and over windows, trying to make it a better shelter. Onduin and Dadaro spent a lot less time looking at artifacts now, and more time discussing their finds in the shelter of the mansion. There was almost always a fire going inside, and I could hear Vern muttering to himself that someone was going to see the smoke, and they were going check us out. When push came to shove, we were better off taking our chances with the smoke than the cold. The little stream we relied on for water started freezing over every night, and the ice got thicker as the days went by. Before long the ice was too thick to break through for water, so we had to knock chunks of ice loose every afternoon with makeshift sledgehammers and melt them down over the fire. Going back to civilization was looking more and more appealing, and more and more impossible. If we went back now, people would ask questions, and word would spread. Dadaro started reminding us daily that the temperature in the caverns never changed, and the same for the Rakatan ruins-- eventually it would be more practical to move to either of those places. No one really wanted to spend their days around the potentially radioactive droid, though, so the cave was starting to look like a better option. Dadaro was the only one comfortable staying there, however. Even Onduin told me once that he wasn't going to sleep well with all the voices and flitting memories in that cave.

Vern and Dadaro suddenly started having poor luck finding game and edible plants, and we were running out of food. We still had a little left from the supplies Onduin had bought in town ages ago, but it wouldn't last long. One day, in the early afternoon, Vern and Dadaro came back successful from one of their last hunting expeditions. It was the first time they'd caught anything in almost two standard weeks. I watched Vern scramble triumphantly down from a big mesa, with a big jackrabbit-like animal dangling by the back legs from one of his hands. Dadaro said it was called a chorro. Vern slapped the carcass across a big stone block-- the same one I'd been reassembling my datapad at a month before-- and started butchering and cleaning it gleefully.

"Someone's coming," Onduin suddenly said, pointing at something in the distance. Vern stopped in the middle of a cut and stood up to see, the bloody knife still in his hand. He'd nearly finished, but he'd still left the skin on the feet. In the distance, someone was walking towards us. He looked to be dressed in tattered gray clothing, echoing the ragged gray clouds overhead. He stumbled every now and then as the wind beat against his face. When he got closer, I could see he was an old man, very thin, with a gray beard and old, deep scars mixed with the wrinkles on his face. It looked like the coat he was wearing had once been red.

"Please," he said, with a soft voice. "Can I have something to eat?"

Vern shot a wary glance at the bloody chorro.

"I have a place to cook," the old man said, "but I haven't found anything to eat in a day." Remember, if you will, that one day on Dantooine was worth about three and a half standard days.

"We should let him have the chorro," Dadaro said.

Vern bit his lip. "Maybe we should split it with him," he said.

"There wouldn't be enough for us, then," Dadaro replied. "We should just let him have it."

"I think Dadaro's right," Onduin said. "We should give him the whole thing." He didn't look happy with the coming loss, though.

I nodded. "We should let him have it," I said.

Vern nodded in acquiescence. He picked up what was left of the chorro by the back legs, and handed it to the old man, who took it with a feeble-looking arm.

"Thank you," he said very quietly, smiling at Vern. He looked around at all of us, then slowly began trudging back to wherever he'd come from.

"Can I help you carry it?" Dadaro suddenly asked.

The old man turned to look at him while Dadaro walked forward. "You'll help me carry it? But I live four miles away. I didn't ask for that. You're such a kind person." He turned to look at us. "What wonderful, blessed people." With that, Dadaro took the chorro from the old man, and they walked off into the wilderness, the way the old man had come.

"We only have enough food left for three days," Vern said calmly, once they were out of sight.

Dadaro didn't come back until it was almost dark. The old man must have lived a long way out. Onduin joked that if Dadaro stayed out much longer he'd turn feral again, and we'd have to catch him with a net and a tranquilizer. When Dadaro got back, Vern insisted that we discuss what to do now, because we were almost out of food. We all sat down in the mansion ruins and talked for a few minutes, and Onduin finally proposed that we move to the cave. Vern didn't like the idea of packing up and moving when there might not be food there either, but at least it would be warmer. The next day, in the early morning, we started packing our bags and scattering the ashes from our fires. We broke down the makeshift shutters and scattered most of the sticks and dried grass we'd gathered for insulation, packing some of it with our things so we could use it in the cave. We brought a little firewood too, since Dadaro said lighting campfires in the caverns had never made a problem for him, as long as he did it near the chasm. The rest of us were skeptical, but it was worth a shot.

It took a long time to get to the cave. From the entrance, we could just make out a little of the enclave ruins in the distance. Inside, the warmth was a relief. The days on Dantooine had dropped to about 40 degrees outside, and the nights probably got to almost zero. In the cave, it was always about 65 degrees. Dadaro had been right about the chasm-- it seemed to suck the smoke from the fires we built towards it, so we were able to keep a fire going when we wanted one. We didn't need it as often, however, since it was always warm, so we weren't collecting twigs and scraps of wood as often. A small pool of clear water in one of the tunnels meant that we didn't have to keep a fire going to melt ice anymore, either. It was awhile before anyone besides Dadaro could sleep comfortably there, though. The cave was definitely haunted. Apart from flickers of voices and feelings, there were at least two actual ghosts that showed up in our flashlight beams and lamp lights now and then-- one was someone in red armor, who Onduin said looked like an ancient Mandalorian. The other was a Jedi knight in bluish robes. They would appear for a split second when we shone a light somewhere, and then they'd walk away. Sometimes we could hear them walking around, and I thought I heard them talking to each other once, though I couldn't make out what was said. They seemed to stay away from the chasm, though, so we were usually left alone. Once in awhile we heard high-pitched noises or lower-pitched humming coming from the tunnels, and Dadaro said the former belonged to a blaster fight, while the latter came from a lightsaber. Occasionally they'd both happen at the same time. With all this activity, it was almost impossible to sleep at first. Dadaro advised us to think of them more as noisy neighbors than local ghosts. I tried to do that very hard, and it helped a little, but I almost slept outside a few times. At least none of them were hostile.

At first, Vern and Dadaro had a little more luck finding food. The first day, they brought back a lot of leafy vegetables and a couple small animals. But, once the plants got depleted, there was little left. Most of the animals had moved on, seeking warmer weather. Onduin decided to take over Vern's job of hunting with Dadaro. Onduin's physiology was a lot better at dealing with the harsh weather than a human's, and he could hunt at night. The first day they traded out, Vern spent almost a standard day sleeping. Even the ghosts couldn't wake him. He must have been exhausted. After that, he spent a little time organizing things in the cave and building a makeshift oven out of rocks so we wouldn't have to burn as much wood to cook. I pitched in and helped set things up and hold them in place. It wasn't much more than a cone made out of pieces of slate, with one open side, but it worked pretty well when we had something to cook in it. We modified it and expanded it over time, trying to focus the heat more and add shelves so several things could be cooked at once. Part of my job became helping with little inventions like this. Since most of the helpful creations we came up with were Vern's designs, I found myself working with him a lot. He actually started to become a friend then. Onduin and Dadaro worked very well together, especially when food was the objective. They didn't bring back very much, but they almost always brought back something. Vern was suddenly a lot less irritable than he had been, and I wondered if it was because Dadaro wasn't around as much. I still couldn't figure out why that would be a problem to begin with. Our group was more functional with this arrangement, I think, and a lot of subtle tension I hadn't even noticed before disappeared.

After about three standard weeks, even Onduin and Dadaro ran out of luck when it came to food. Finally, they went out three times in a row, and came back with nothing. We used up our last reserves of food, and were left with nothing. It now looked like we had no choice but to go back to town. Vern was intent on holding out. His instincts turned out to be right-- I ran across a direct mention of his name plus a description and photograph while reading news feeds on my datapad. The Empire was looking for him, along with anyone who may have helped him lose the tracking chip. Not only that, but they'd traced him to Dantooine, and were already asking around. We were trapped.

We were on the point of giving up. There were four inches of snow on the ground plus an icy crust, it was windy, and we hadn't eaten in two standard days. Even the cave felt cold, and we'd started huddling near each other to keep warm, except Onduin, who didn't have much heat to give. We were all very quiet most of the day. Our group was split down the middle. Onduin and I wanted to go back to town, at least to get supplies, Imperials or no. Vern was just as worried as the rest of us, but he wanted to stay put. Dadaro had cast his vote in Vern's favor yet again.

"We need to hold out a little longer," he said. Onduin asked why, but Dadaro just repeated himself. Vern's stubbornness and Dadaro's certainty were the only strength our group had left, so we went along with their verdict again. I just wanted to curl up and sleep until food showed up. I found I didn't mind being in the cave; I just wanted food. When I stood up, which was rare by that point, I felt shaky and cold. We didn't have much strength left for anything. I thought I was hallucinating when I heard an unfamiliar voice echoing through the tunnels. It was a strained voice, and it didn't sound like one of the ghosts, which we were actually used to by then.

"Are you here?" it called. Suddenly all of us were on our feet at once, and Dadaro lurched towards the sound, breaking into a light run. The rest of us followed suit.

We made it almost to the mouth of the cave, and I saw to my near shock that the person calling for us was the same old man who had come asking for food weeks before. He was pulling a wooden wagon behind him, with a canvas cloth thrown over it.

"Look!" he said. "I laid a trap for a chorro, and when I went to check it, I found three! And all these plants grew up around my house on the same night. I knew there must be a reason, and I remembered that you were living on the land like me, so I came to find you. You gave me everything when you had it, so I knew I should give you everything. Here, take it." He pushed the wagon towards us, unveiling its contents. There were indeed three chorros lined up on one side, and packed in with them were a wagonload of roots and vegetables. It was enough food for two full Dantooine days at a stretch, or longer if necessary.

"Thank you," Vern said, stuttering a little. The rest of us followed suit, but there was a long silence after that. I don't think anyone was sure what to say when a miracle happened.

"You should stay with us for awhile, and have something to eat," Dadaro said. Vern and Onduin nodded.

The old man smiled. "You'd like me to stay? You're such kind people. Most people just want me to go away." Dadaro beckoned for the old man to follow us towards our camp beside the chasm, while Vern started pulling the wagon. The old man followed, smiling broadly. "Such kind, wonderful people. I'm so blessed to be with you," he said.

The old man stayed with us for a few hours while Vern dressed one of the chorros, and we set to cooking the chorro and some of the vegetables. He didn't say much, but he smiled a lot at all of us, and ate everything we gave him. He had an air of real joy about him that I rarely see in people. To this day I can count the number of people who put off that vibe on one hand. The feeling was contagious. Everyone sitting around our little oven smiled more than usual, and having food made things infinitely better.

"Vern, where did you put my datapad?" I asked (though I don't remember what brought it to mind). It was the second time I'd asked him, and I was getting impatient. He didn't even look up at me. "Vern!"

He finally looked up at me from under a pair of raised eyebrows, grunting questioningly. His mouth was full of chorro meat.

"Didn't you hear me?" I said.

He chewed the last of his food. "I haven't eaten meat in two weeks," he grumbled. "What do you expect?"

I was about to snap at him, but I realized he was smirking. I couldn't think of a good retort, so I threw a pebble at him. It bounced off his shoulder. He picked it up and threw it lamely back at me, not even watching where it went. He was already focusing on the hunk of chorro leg in front of him again. I had to repeat my original question a third time before I got my answer, but at least he apologized for being distracted.

The old man stayed a little while after we'd finished eating, and talked a little about where he lived. He said it was five miles from the cave, in a small wooden building up on one of the mesas. It was more exposed to the elements than a place in the ravines would be, but the view was better, and on a clear day he could look out and see the enclave ruins in the distance. He didn't have much to talk about, though, so after a little conversation he left for his home. Dadaro offered to pull the wagon for him, and the two vanished into the fields for several hours. It was a five-mile walk, so Dadaro was late coming back. He was happy to help the old man, though.

Dadaro taught us how to preserve our food by smoking it, so we smoked and dried most of the remaining charro meat and vegetables. It held out for a long time. We ate our way through it slowly, trying to ration it out for as long as possible. We were down to about one meal's worth of food, when we were once again granted an extraordinary blessing.

Dadaro had been jittery all day, but he'd been smiling all the while. I was standing outside the cave mouth where my datapad could get reception. It was cold outside, but it was sunny, and there was no wind. I turned it on, and for the first time in months, it beeped at me, telling me there was important news. I nearly fell over when I read it.

There were five or six headlines popping up on the screen, competing for first place. I hardly read them before I yelled for everyone else to come have a look. Vern's eyes went wide, Dadaro grinned, and Onduin read very quietly in stunned silence. You see, several different astonishing things had all happened at once. Since I have both a copy of each article here and the personal accounts of various people at my disposal, I think this deserves a separate chapter. It probably won't be a long chapter, but length was never a requisite for importance.