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little bloke was watching the picnicking family with a peculiar interest. Hale noticed that the boy was holding, of all things, a water thermometer—and also that he had a longing expression on his face. Hale wondered what had brought that on.
    Stop trying to figure out other people’s lives, he admonished himself, shaking his head, and get on with the work.
    Ralph Hale had a phenomenal memory, and so moved unerringly to the very spot where he had buried the seismograph twenty-four hours earlier. Kneeling down into the sand, he started digging with the shovel until he found the latest toy from his techies at the Institute. Once the shovel struck the metal of the seismograph’s container, he set it aside and pushed the remaining sand away with his hands.
    Inevitably, his action caught someone’s eye—a young man approached just as Hale finished unearthing the device.
    “Is that some kind of seismograph?” the man asked.
    Hale looked up sharply at the man. He had spoken with an American accent, and Hale saw that he held a couple of sample jars. “Yeah,” he said. “Excellent guess. It’s just a prototype, mind you.”
    “Great toy. Doctor Hale, I presume?”
    Hale stood up. “Another good guess,” he said. This time he wasn’t surprised; anyone bright enough to recognize the seismograph for what it was would probably know Hale was on the island.
    “I’ve read your articles, and your column in Scientific American. I’m a marine biologist—Jack Ellway.”
    “Ralph Hale,” he replied automatically, then shook the man’s hand. “You know that, of course. Never mind.” A marine biologist, he thought, remembering several unanswered e-mails from Angelopoulos. Well, the hell with you, old friend, I’ve got someone close to home now. “I’m glad you’re here, actually—I’ve been wanting to get a perspective from someone on your end of things about all this seismic activity.”
    “Well, the water temperature’s changing, for one thing, which could affect migratory patterns. I’ve got my son checking some of that now.”
    Hale remembered the little bloke with the water thermometer. “That’s your son?”
    Ellway smiled. “Yeah, and my intern—well, he prefers ‘assistant.’ Either way, he’s very bright. A lot better than most of the other losers I’ve had as interns, believe me.”
    “Yeah, well, I had enough of that when I was teaching undergraduates. That’s why I usually work alone now. Besides, I like to get my own hands dirty.” Realizing they were getting off track, Hale steered the conversation back to migratory patterns. “Have you noticed any particular shifts?”
    “I only just arrived today, so I haven’t had time to do any kind of serious projections, but I think we can expect certain . . .”
    Brandon looked wistfully as a woman wiped her son’s face with a napkin. At least, Brandon figured they were a family. They certainly looked like a family.
    They look like us.
    He remembered the Key West trip. On their last day there, after Mom and Dad had completed their work (days ahead of schedule, as it happened), they had thrown together a picnic on the beach. Brandon hadn’t much liked the Key West beach—not wide enough, and the waves were all wimpy—but they had had a great time. They hadn’t had sandwiches, though—Mom had put together a bunch of different fish plates.
    Aside from that, though, these three people were dead ringers for the Ellway family in Key West.
    We’ll never have that kind of picnic again.
    Then: Stop it! They’re probably not even a real family. Probably just some lady and her nephew and some guy she met at a bar somewhere or something like that. You don’t know that they’re a real family.
    Having convinced himself of that, Brandon went on toward the rocks where Dad had asked him to take the water temperature. He looked back to see Dad talking to some older guy. Whatever they were talking about, Dad was really into it. The old dude’s gotta be a