Since Deacon Hollingshead's arrival in town last July the Dominion had been hard at work, cleansing New York City of moral corruption. "Corruption" is a popular word with the enthusiasts of the Dominion, usually uttered as a prelude to the knife, the docket, or the noose.

I understand so very little. But I am not afraid to look: I am a good observer at last. My eyes are open, and I am not afraid.

Does it strike you, Mr. Keller, that we live every day in the science fiction of our youth?

We'll do what life always does defy expectations.

For such people the consummate act of moral clarity was a lynching or a suicide bombing, a fatwa or a pogrom. And they were ascendant now, rising like dark stars over a terminal landscape .

Evolution can't be predicted, Julian used to tell me; it's a scattershot business; it fires, but it doesn't aim.

Is there any evidence to the contrary? I don't need certainty in order to act on a well-founded suspicion.