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bee.
    Maybe you just want to sleep for a while, she says. Don’t worry about it – we’ve got all night.
    He is silent, lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling.
    We don’t get realmen around here much, the woman says, winding herself around the poster at the foot of the bed like a snake.
    You can quit that talk, he says. I ain’t a man in need of being built tall.
    As you wish, she says and sits down in the chair in the corner near the foot of the bed. My apologies. You’re not like your brother. What would you like to talk about?
    You had a name for the thing aroundmy brother’s neck. A yewess bee. A computer gadget.
    That’s right. You should have the same name for it. You look to be about my age.
    I never was much of a computer person – neither before nor after. What does it do?
    She shrugs.
    It could do lots of things, she says. It stores data. Who knows what the data does. Probably nothing.
    How come you know so much? What were you before?

    I was a secretary for a real estate attorney. I was just getting started.
    And now you’re here doin this.
    Moses shakes his head, commiserating.
    The woman recoils a bit in her expression, as if bitten. She moves to the window of the room and puts her back against it, folds her arms over her front.
    You think I regret it? she says. Living didn’t used to amount to much. Now it counts.I used to be a secretary for a real estate attorney. Now I’m a survivor of the apocalypse and a
whore. I endure where others don’t. It matters. Just breathing means something now. Have you got a problem with whores?
    Moses cringes, chastened. He looks down at his dirty, brutish hands.
    Not as a general rule, he says.
    Then the woman softens a bit. She comes and sits on the edge of thebed, where Moses lies on his back looking at the ceiling.
    You and that redhead, she says. You two are together somehow?
    Me and the Vestal? Huh-uh. She’s just my charge is all.
    You’re a hired gun?
    Somethin like that.
    So what are you being paid?
    Moses goes silent. He gazes at the ceiling. He ponders when was the last time he laid beneath a roof and called it home. The world,for him, just keeps going on and on and on, long after he
thought it ever would.
    Come on, he says and reaches for the woman. Lay here and just let me get some shut-eye for a bit. Then we’ll get down to business.
    *
    When he wakes in the morning, there is a tumult downstairs. He rushes down thinking that his brother has got into trouble again – but this time it’s not the riotof
threat but rather the riot of laughter.
    In the sitting room, on a burgundy couch, he finds the Vestal Amata making merry with a passel of men. Townsmen – a number of the faces Moses recognizes as those of the men who were
holding their rifles at the ready when they rolled into town. The redhead herself is lying across two of their laps, her bare feet resting on the arm of the couch,her toes wiggling playfully.
    Here he is, she says of Moses to the men. My Rock of Gibraltar. Come on in, Gibraltar. The boys and I have had quite a night.
    A couple of the other girls sit in the room also, but Moses sees that they are distinctly unhappy with this redheaded interloper.
    Brucie there gave my feet a nice hot salt bath, says the Vestal and points to a tough-looking man whononetheless flushes when she says his name. Men are lovely, she continues. You try to pay
them back in kindness, but they just give so much it’s difficult to keep up.
    She wiggles her toes again, and Moses wants to chop them off and put them in a jar like bloody fireflies.
    He goes over to the Vestal, takes her by the arm and lifts her from the laps of the men.
    Hey, there, mister,says one of the men, a note of warning in his voice. They have already become possessive of her.
    Moses gets ready for a fight, but the Vestal defuses it.
    It’s okay, boys, she says. He is my saviour, after all.
    I’ll save you, one man says.
    Yeah, me too, says another.
    The men laugh, and the Vestal laughs with them.
    You know the rule, boys, she says. Only one saviour per girl.Let me talk to my Gibraltar in private for just a little sec.
    He takes her into a small parlour down the hall and shuts the door behind them.
    What the hell was that? he says.
    It’s the boys, she says and smiles slyly. Her eyelids are heavy, and she steadies herself against him.
    You been drinking, he says.
    Only all night.
    You were locked in the room.
    I pinky promisednot to bolt. They gave me my freedom. Said