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What were these dreams? Where did they come from? Were they the product of his own mind, or was it possible that they derived from an outside source--even froht of the evacuation from Iohen Amy had come to him His reasons werehad actually happened He had entered the hter out cold on his lap, the two of them bundled up in the Iowa cold beneath a sky so drunk with stars he had felt hi them, and there she was They had not spoken, but they didn’t need to The touch of their hands was enough The moment had lasted forever and was over in a flash; the next thing Peter knew, Aone

Had he dreamed that, too? The evidence said so Everyone believed that Amy had died in the stadium, killed in the blast that had killed the Twelve No trace of her had been found And yet the moment had felt so real Sometimes he was convinced that Amy was still out there; then the doubts would creep in In the end, he kept these questions to hiht over the Texas hills Below him, the face of the impoundment was as still and reflective as a over, but he needed to fetch Caleb and take hi to the jobsite He wasn’t much of a carpenter--he’d really only ever learned to do one thing, which was be a soldier--but the as regular and kept hi on, the Housing Authority needed all the war at the seams; fifty thousand souls hadthe population in just a couple of years Absorbing so many hadn’t been easy and still wasn’t Kerrville had been built on the principle of zero population growth; couples weren’t allowed to havea hefty fine If one did not survive to adulthood, they could have a third, but only if the child died before the age of ten

With the arrival of the Iowans, the whole concept had gone out theThere had been food shortages, runs on fuel and medicine, sanitation probleed into too little space, with o around A hastily erected tent city had absorbed the first feaves, but as more arrived, this temporary encampment had quickly descended into squalor While many of the Iowans, after a lifetiled to adjust to a life in which not every decision was made for them--a coone in the opposite direction: violating curfew, filling Dunk’s whorehouses and gaenerally running amok The only part of the population that seefroun to openly talk aboutoutside the wall Peter supposed this to be just ain three years, drac or dopey, the pressure wasthe populace, the events in the stadiuends, no two exactly the saun to accept the idea that the threat was really over Peter, of all people, should have been the first to agree

He turned to look out over the city Nearly a hundred thousand souls: there was a tirown up in a town--a world--of fewer than a hundred people At the gate, the transports had gathered to take workers down to the agricultural co air; from everywhere ca its limbs The problems were real but se of the viral was over; hu A continent stood for the taking, and Kerrville was the place where this new age would begin So why did it see on the da, did he feel this inward shiver ofa parent taught you one thing, it was that you could worry all you wanted, but it wouldn’t change a thing He had a lunch to pack and "be good"s to say and a day of honest, siround, and twenty-four hours froain Thirty, he mused Today, I turn thirty years old If anyone had asked hi a son, he would have thought they were crazy Soalive, and having soh