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overhang of a thick beech tree. He ought to pay attention if he was going to gather enough kindling, but his mind kept drifting as he mulled over possible scenarios.
    He’d never been able to work things like this out on the computer. He needed a hard copy, something he could flip through, jotting ideas in the margins. Denby wanted it the otherway around, all of it on the computer. Marcus had argued with him. “We can’t use the system here at work. What if somebody stumbles onto it?”
    â€œPasswords,” Denby purred. “Unbreakable passwords.”
    â€œNo such thing,” Marcus had insisted.
    â€œDon’t worry.” Denby even smiled. “I’ve got it covered.”
    Marcus hadn’t liked it, but so far the system seemed to have worked.
    Denby took odd moments during what little free time he had at work to add a bit here, a bit there. Marcus couldn’t do that. He’d printed out this latest version from his laptop at home, and it was a good thing he had. As he’d left his office at the University of Vermont on Friday—was today really only Sunday?—one of his graduate assistants had complained of a computer glitch. It seemed to have eaten a large number of documents. He’d shown Marcus the directory. Denby’s whole password-protected folder was gone, as were several folders of older reports and data from failed experiments. “No great loss,” Dr. Wantstring had assured the student. “I have a printout of everything I need.”
    He had his backups, too. That was what thumb drives were for.
    He lopped off another dead branch that hung from a few threads of wood. Live wood was no good for kindling, but with the snow piled up the way it was, most of the fallen branches were covered completely, unless they were tucked under a thick pine. Thank goodness the forest constantly renewed itself, with trees that grew where older ones had died.
    He looked around the clearing. This whole area was a well-managed woodlot. The trees weren’t crowded by any means, but they were close enough to offer protection to one another from windstorms and the like.
    He paused, leaned the ax against the tree trunk, and placedhis right hand, made into a fist, against the center of his spine at waist level. He arched his back against the pressure. He never used to get stiff like this. He held the pose for a couple of seconds and listened to the birds. Behind him, across the small clearing, a blue jay—he was pretty sure that was what it was—began to scold something, probably a squirrel bedeviling the bird. He would have turned to look at it, to see what the bird was upset about, but his back needed about five more seconds to ease out those muscles.
    For a moment, he thought he heard a voice. A man’s voice. Someone calling for help? He glanced around him, back across the clearing, which seemed to be where the voice originated, but the sound wasn’t repeated. He thought he saw a movement under a copse at the top of the small rise on the far side of the clearing, but then that noisy blue jay burst from the trees, squawking. That was what he’d heard. Not a voice. An irritated bird.
    He forgot about the jay when he noticed a fallen tree a few yards farther on. It looked like it had been dead at least a year. There was a deep, blackened scar along the upper side of the fallen trunk, leading Marcus to assume that a lightning strike had caused the tree’s demise. The way of nature. He set to work on the upper branches with gusto. Long-dead wood burned easily as long as it hadn’t been in contact with the ground. He’d leave extra kindling for the next poor soul who came along.
    Dr. Wantstring picked up the pile of kindling he’d harvested. He’d break it—or chop it if he had to; some of these branches were fairly thick—once he got inside. He turned at a sound behind him. The figure skiing toward him over the clearing was the