Book 1: Revelation at Tikal — Ch 24: The Detour She Chose

Panama, early 1978. The engine note has changed. Less climb, more cruise, and salt in the air through the vents. Four of them now instead of five. At a Canal Zone checkpoint the Californians who carried Floey out of Guatemala discover they are couriers rather than custodians, and Carlos, who held the checkpoint money and the say over every road they took while they were in his birth country, learns what the Foundation does with a man once his usefulness ends at a border. Manuel has a house in the city. Secure, he says. Rest, he says. Then the Board will decide how to present her. But behind his shoulder there is a strip of grey-green water and a chain of low green islands, and Floey knows something about people who need an audience in order to believe their own story. She hands them her own destination wrapped in their language, and not one of them notices the exchange. It buys her a boat, two weeks, and chaperones. It does not buy her freedom, and she knows exactly what the collateral is: a monthly deposit that changes banks every time she is moved, and a California lawyer who will file for her children the moment she stands in front of the Board. The most dangerous thing on the water with her is not Manuel. It is a warm coal Sara placed in her chest weeks ago, and how easy it would be to believe it again. To embrace the thought of the ancient astronauts.