ROMELAS, ca. 3000 CE

“WHAT HAPPENED HERE?” TUCKER ASKED.

He felt Lahlia’s shoulders move beneath his arm, a faint shrug.

They were sitting on the edge of the frustum, pressed together, looking out over the ruins of the city. The partial moon had broken free of the clouds, risen high, and now cast a ladder of shadows down the sides of the stepped pyramid. Below, a carpet of treetops tufted through the pale shapes of low stone buildings, spreading in all directions to a dark horizon.

“This was Romelas, the city where I was born as Lah Lia. Later, I returned and became the Yar Lia. Now I am simply Lia.”

Tucker tasted the name with his mind. Lia. It seemed too short, too small, too slight for this hard-faced girl in her shiny black vest and thick-soled boots. He thought of the last time he had seen her, striding confidently into the tent in Hopewell Park, where his father and Master Gheen had planned to sacrifice him on their makeshift altar.

“The Romelas I knew is gone.” Lia broke a chunk of limestone from the edge of the frustum with her fingers. “This stone is crumbling. The streets have become forests. How long does it take for a tree to grow taller than a building?”

Tucker did not know.

“I’ve seen no lights,” she said, tossing the broken stone down the steps of the pyramid. “No people.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Not long. The sun was low when I arrived. For me, it’s been only a few hours since I last saw you. In Hopewell.” She turned her face toward him. “I knew you would come.”

In the light of the half moon, he could see the faint scar inscribing her cheek from the corner of her eye to her jaw. Tentatively, he reached out. She flinched slightly, then held still as he traced the scar with his forefinger. “How did this happen?” he asked.

She touched his chest. “It was the same blade that left that scar over your heart.”

“The priest?”

Lia nodded.

Tucker looked into her dark eyes. He wanted to kiss her, but he was afraid she would pull back. He did not want to risk driving her away. She was all he had.

“I jumped into the maggot right after you,” he said. “But I ended up back in Hopewell, before I was born. I saw my dad. And Kosh. When they were younger. Tom Krause was there, too. Then these Boggsians came after us and sent us through another disko. I don’t know where Tom ended up. I landed at the Terminus, and I saw Awn, and she said you’d just been there.”

Lia frowned. “That was before I returned to Hopewell to save you.”

“Yeah, that’s what I finally figured out. She told me you walked to Harmony to see the Boggsians. I went after you.”

“It’s good you didn’t catch up with me,” Lia said. “If you had, I might not have stopped your father from killing you.”

Tucker sat with his mouth open for a few seconds, trying to wrap his head around that.

“How did you get here?” Lia asked.

“Well, it’s kind of a long story. For a while I was stuck at the North Pole, but eventually I made it to Harmony. The Boggsians were gone, but there was a disko. A Klaatu sent me into it, and I came out here.”

Lia nodded slowly. “A Klaatu sent me through a disko as well. There was a Boggsian in Harmony. He had a device for communicating with the Klaatu.”

“I wonder what the Boggsians have to do with the Klaatu.”

“The Boggsians made the Klaatu. They call it transcendence. They once tried to make me into a Klaatu.”

Tucker did not speak for a few moments. He was thinking about how little he really knew about Lahlia. Lia. He had once thought her a young girl with a small but mysterious past. Now both she and her past seemed larger.

“The Klaatu knew I was looking for you,” Lia said.

“I bet it was the same one. But why did we end up here?”

Before Lia could answer, an animal sound rippled up the tiers — something between a snarl and a roar — raising the hairs on the back of Tucker’s neck.

“What was that?”

“That,” said Lia, “was a jaguar.”

“There are jaguars here?”

“When I lived in Romelas, there were jaguars in the forests south and east of the city. They ate wild pigs, and sometimes people. The woodcutters would venture into the forests only in pairs.”

“But aren’t jaguars from South America? I thought this place, Romelas, was the same as Hopewell. In Minnesota. Just a different time.”

“In Romelas we grew limes and mangos. I never saw snow until I came to Hopewell in your time. Everything changes. The jaguars migrated north.”

She turned again to face him. “As for why the Klaatu sent us here, I don’t know. I expect we will find out.”

The cry of the jaguar came again. It sounded closer.

“I suppose we should stay up here until it gets light,” Tucker said.

“I think that would be a good idea.”

They listened to the night sounds drifting up from below.

Lia leaned her head on his shoulder. “In this time, everybody we ever knew is dead.”

Tucker thought for a moment, then said, “Kosh was alive when I left him. He’s alive in Hopewell.”

“I liked Kosh.”

“I have to go back,” Tucker said. “He’s the only family I have left.”

Lia gestured to where the disko had been, now an empty place in the air. “The Gate is gone.”

“There must be others.”

Lia searched his face. Her eyes were enormous.

“I will go with you,” she said.

A shadow detached itself from the wooded margin of the zocalo. A mottled silhouette, stealing from shadow to shadow, wove its way across the sapling-studded cobblestones. The jaguar paused at the base of the pyramid and looked up. Tucker could see glints of moonlight reflected in its eyes.

“It knows we are here,” Lia whispered.

Tucker exhaled — he had been holding his breath.

“Can jaguars climb pyramids?” he asked.

“They climb trees.”

“Oh.”