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on the wireframe monstrosity that must have been his bed. He watched the blade burn and hiss. "Your money's worthless," he said, "and there's no going to Ecclesia. I pissed them off in order to come here."
    "You pissed them off."
    He shook his head, sighed. Cursed under his breath. The knife-light cast long shadows under his eyes. "Yuen. I hate it, and I thank you, but I think I need to stay here."
    I opened my mouth, but no sound came.
    "I know it's stupid," he said. His jaw was tight, and his hand shook slightly. "I know. Listen. I thought about what you said. How I came here without understanding the place or the people. You were right. Absolutely, awfully, irrefutably right. But now I know the mistakes I made, and I think I can make this work. If I run away--that's an admission of guilt. I lose every single scrap of credibility I ever had. Two years of preparation, one furious metnat, and all for nothing. I have to try again, Yuen."
    If Papa's eyes seemed to see everything at once, Xiao's were perpetually fixed on the very heart and core of whatever he regarded. Father and son shared in their intensity; the difference between them was a question of focus. He stared at me now, and he didn't blink.
    I exhaled slowly. "You should know," I said, "that I am thinking very seriously about knocking you out and dragging you away."
    He snorted. "Good luck. I have a thick skull."
    I sat down beside my brother, turned on my own knife once more. We'd always been the kind of kids who used dangerous industrial tools for candles. "You'll never persuade Papa," I said. My mind raced to find the words that would persuade Xiao ,but part of me already knew that those words didn't exist.
    "First and worst mistake I made," he said. "Took my message to the top. I thought I needed Father's permission, and I thought his permission would be enough. Stupid. I acted like this was some fucking hard state from the Profligate Times, some top-down institution. But that's backward, isn't it? I've got to start from the bottom . The people of Little Yunhe. I need your help, Yuen."
    I could see where this was going, and I felt what Papa must have felt as he blasted into the sky. The awful exhilaration of a physical law , a lifelong gravity falling out from underneath you. I'd come to free Xiao on a high of instinct and adrenaline. But could I really join him in active sedition? Could I make that choice and stand behind it?
    "First," I said, my voice shaking only a little, "you're going to have to explain some things. I saw your sim, and it was--it was beautiful. Really, truly beautiful. But I still don't understand your big plan. I don't understand how you could bring Yunhe back."
    Again, he frowned. "Seriously? You don't understand?"
    I shook my head. He explained the mad thing he meant to do.
    We'd never known where Xiaohao went. How could we, unless he chose to tell us? Ecclesia was borderless, global, a network-nation that lived in the interstices. He was at graduate school (and living with his professor) in Chengdu when he ran; any trails he might have left behind were lost in the city's thick skein of lives. I imagined him in Mumbai, London, São Paulo. Anywhere, everywhere.
    He did travel. From the Antarctic Settlements to the Ivory Coast. But in the years since Yunhe drowned in ash, he'd spent most of his time in one place: an Ecclesia installation in the remote heights of the Appalachian mountains. The facility had been established on the force of Xiaohao's research proposal: he wanted to invent a nanite soil that could reclaim regions flooded by coal waste. Ecclesia threw their full weight behind him, even secured secondary support from the United Nations.
    The project was called Wise Earth.
    His team experimented in coal-drowned towns with names like Prosperity and Dante . Places like Yunhe, where waste lakes had overflown or old mines had spilled out their guts. The first phase of the research was--at least according to Xiao--relatively