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on the next block. I kept volunteering for one crazy assignment after another, until I landed up here, at the
ends of the earth.
Oh, you ve gone rather farther than that, Josh. But I think you re just the type to cope with our strange
adventure. She was watching him, a hint of humor in her eyes toying with him, perhaps.
He continued doggedly, You don t seem much like the soldiers I know.
She yawned. My parents were farmers. They owned a big eco-friendly spread in Cheshire. I was an
only child. The farm was going to be mine to work and develop I loved that place. But when I was
sixteen my father sold it out from under me. I suppose he thought I was never serious about running it.
But you were.
Yes. I d even applied for a place at agricultural college. It caused a rift, or maybe showed one up. I
wanted to get away. I moved to London. Then, as soon as I was old enough, I joined up. Of course I
had no idea what the army would be like the PT, the drill, the weapons, the field craft but I took to
it.
I don t see you as a killer, he said. But that s what soldiers do.
Not in my day, she said. Not in the British army anyhow. Peacekeeping: that s what we go out in the
world for. Of course sometimes you have to kill or even wage war to keep the peace and that s a
whole other set of issues.
He lay back, staring at the stars. It s strange to hear you speak of your troubles with your family, failed
communication, lost ambitions. I tend to imagine, when I think of it, that the people of a hundred and fifty
years hence will be too wise for that tooevolved, as Professor Darwin would say!
Oh, I don t think we re very evolved, Josh. But we re getting smarter about some things. Religion, for
instance. Take Abdikadir and Casey. Devout Muslim and jock Christian, you d think they are as far
apart as can be. But they are both Oikumens.
That word is from the Greek like ecumenical?
Yes. Over the last few decades we ve been close to an all-out conflict between Christianity and Islam.
If you take a long view, it s absurd; both religions have deep common roots, and both are basically
creeds of peace. But all the high-level attempts at reconciliation, conferences of bishops and mullahs,
came to nothing. The Oikumens are a grassroots movement trying to achieve what all the top-level
contact has failed to do. They are so low-profile they are almost underground, but they re there,
burrowing away.
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This talk made him realize how remote in time her age was, and how little he could understand of it. He
said cautiously, And has God been banished in your day, as some thinkers would predict?
She hesitated. Not banished, Josh. But we understand ourselves better than we used to. We
understand why weneedgods. There are some in my time who see all religion as a psychopathology.
They point to those who are prepared to torture and kill their coreligionists, for the sake of a few percent
difference in obscure ideology. But there are others who say that for all their flaws the religions are
attempts to address the most basic questions about existence. Even if they tell us nothing about God,
they re surely telling us a great deal about what it means to be human. The Oikumens hope that by
unifying religions, the result won t be a dilution but an enrichment like the ability to study a precious gem
from many angles. And maybe these tentative steps are our best hope of a true enlightenment in the
future.
It sounds utopian. And is it working?
Slowly, like the peacekeeping. If we re building a utopia we re doing it in the dark. But we re trying, I
guess.
It s a beautiful vision, he breathed. The future must be a marvelous place. He turned to her. How
strange all this is. How exhilarating to be here with you to be castaways in time, together! . . .
She reached out and touched his lips with one fingertip. Goodnight, Josh. She rolled away, pulled her
poncho over her body, and curled up.
He lay down, his pulse thumping.
The next day the ground rose steadily, becoming broken and lifeless. The clear air thinned and grew
colder, bitterly cold when the wind from the north blew, despite the brightness of the sun. By now it was
obvious there was no threat from Pashtuns or anybody else, and Batson allowed the troops to abandon
the slow routine of picketing and march more briskly.
Though Bisesa s all-weather flight suit kept her reasonably protected, the others suffered. As they
struggled into the wind the soldiers wrapped themselves up in their blankets and groused about how they
should have brought their winter greatcoats. Both Ruddy and Josh became subdued, locked in
themselves, as if the wind was leaching the energy out of them. But nobody had expected these
conditions; even old Frontier hands said they had never known such a chill in March.
Still they marched doggedly along. Most of the time even Kipling didn t complain; he was too cold to
bother, he said.
Fourteen of the twenty troopers were Indian. It seemed to Bisesa that the Europeans kept away from
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