Shortly after cleanup, which Swan volunteered to handle, it was time for Will to go to bed.

Wearing one piece pajamas, Will emerged from his bedroom. A different mask hid his features, this one of a Disney character, some kind of animal prince or hero, Swan guessed.

Emma herded the boy up to where Swan sat.

"Say goodnight to your father."

Will had adopted a chirpy new voice to go with the mask. "Good-eek-eek-night."

Mother and son went into the bedroom. Swan did not follow. He could hear Emma reading a book aloud. Then the lights were extinguished, and she came out, closing the door softly behind herself.

Swan's wife took a scat on the couch. She looked at Swan directly for the first time that day, as if perhaps the ritual in the bedroom had given her strength or firmed up a decision.

"Do you want to watch some TV?"

"Sure."

Watching TV, Swan knew, meant they didn't have to talk.

Right now, this first night, that was just as well.

But he knew they couldn't watch TV for the rest of their lives.

Hours passed. Once, Emma laughed at a sitcom. Swan enjoyed hearing her laughter.

Shortly before midnight, Emma clicked off the television, She stood and stretched.

"You have to be at work by eight. Me too."

"Right, right," Swan agreed readily. "And Will--?"

"I'll drop him off at the daycare on the way to the Wal-Mart."

The couch seemed to be a sofabed. Swan looked around for signs of bedding. But Emma's next words informed him differently.

"When Glen--When the sickness hit us, I got twin beds in. It made things easier for everyone. Anyway, I've thought about this a lot. We can't act like complete strangers, hiding things from each other. We have to share this small house. Bathroom, whatever. Getting dressed. So we have to be at least as close as roommates. Like in a dorm. Anything else--I don't know yet. It's too soon. Is that okay with you? Am I making any sense?"

Swan considered how best to answer. "Roommates. That's fine."

Emma slumped in relief. "Okay. That's settled. Good. Let's get to sleep. I'm completely wiped out."

Lying in the dark, Swan listened to Emma's breathing, only a few feet away. The rhythm of her breath gradually smoothed out and softened, till he knew she was asleep.

He had expected her to sob. But after some thought, he realized that her tears must have been drained long ago, the very last ones shed in the death chamber.

And certainly not for him.

His boss was a big man with the startling, abnormally delicate hands of a woman. His name was Tony Eubanks. Tony was the supervisor for a crew of ten men, split between five trucks. Normally Tony stayed put in the office, dispatching his fleet, scheduling assignments, handling paperwork. But for the duration of Swan's training period he would go on the road with Swan, functioning as Swan's partner and teacher.

Swan knew that this was special attention, for his special case. So, of course, did everyone else. The people in charge of his future, while not actively monitoring him, had nonetheless seeded his path with mentors.

Swan tried not to think of Tony as a jailer or warden. Luckily, as Swan soon discovered to his relief, Tony's attitude made it easy to regard him as simply a more knowledgeable co-worker, perhaps even a friend.

The attitudes of the other linemen, however, were less easy to pin down.

For the first few weeks, busy learning and doing, Swan was able simply to ignore them.

He and Tony were stringing cable. Lots of new cable. It was some kind of special new cable meant to treble the bandwidth of the net. Swan never got a really firm grip on the physics behind the wire. But then again, he didn't need to. All he needed to master was the practical stuff. The tools, the junction boxes, the repeaters, the debugging tricks, the protocols. He concentrated on these with his full attention, and was proud to realize that he could learn such things, mastering them fairly easily.

The physical side of his job was enjoyable too. Up and down poles, into ditches and tunnels, popping manhole covers, manhandling big reels, driving the truck. All of these actions appealed to him.

Tony, however, was not so enthralled. In the truck, with one of their endless cups of coffee in hand, he would frequently say, in a kindly way, "Jesus, kid, I'm getting too old for this kind of workout. I can hardly get to sleep at night for the fucking aches and pains. I'm glad you're picking up on things quick. I never thought I'd say it, but I can't wait to see my fucking desk again."

The hard work had the opposite effect on Swan's sleep patterns. Each night, after the repeated rituals of meal, television, and brief, safely shallow conversation with. Emma, he dropped off into dreamless slumbers.

Part of the job involved dealing with customers. It was the hardest part for Swan to adapt to. Entering offices and homes, he encountered a spectrum of people utterly foreign to him. At first, he would stammer and perform clumsily. Forms that had to be filled out confused him, and Tony would have to intervene.

But after a time, he found himself warming to even this aspect of his job. One day he was surprised to find himself actually looking forward to dealing with a complex installation that required him to speak frequently with a pretty woman manager in charge of the project.

Tony approved of Swan's new interpersonal skills. One day when they had just left the job site, he said, "You handled her nice, kid. And she really had a bug up her ass about those delays. Couldn't have done it any better myself. In fact, you'd better watch it or the suits are gonna catch wind of how slick you've gotten and the next thing you know you'll be locked up behind a desk all day like me.

Swan beamed. He felt close to Tony. Close enough to ask him the next day a long-held question about his hands.

Tony held up his small hands without embarrassment. "These mitts? Replacements. Lost my original ones in an accident on my old job. Got a little too careless around an industrial robot. I was one of the first patients where the graft took. Back then, they had to do it within the first twenty-fours hours, the donor had to match nine ways from Sunday, a lot of shit they don't have to worry about nowadays, Anyhow, everything came together so's I had to take these or nothing." Tony was quiet a moment. "She died in a car crash while I was lying in the hospital. Head crushed, but hands fine, I still see her parents now and then."

Swan was silent, as was Tony. Then the older man shrugged. "No big deal, I guess. They can replace anything nowadays."