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people from the era in which they were born had all died one morning, except for those who were already dead or those who hid within the ground to die and raise another generation to die, and so on for centuries.
    Normal people died… .
    Michael Rourke listened. Gunther Hong talked.
    “We can turn this thing with Rourke to our advantage, Martin. You should see what the Herr Doctor thinks about it.”
    “How do you mean?” Michael asked noncommittally.
    “Well, I mean, Babinski and his lieutenants know about Rourke, and of course the women taken from the Babinski’s people. And I’m sure there are some others, but once he’s taken care of … well—”
    “Well?”
    “Well, I mean, I don’t see it as detracting at all from the messianic thing you and Dr. Zimmer are planning. I mean, anyone who has seen him will think he’s seen you, except those few who know. And we can always liquidate Babinski. Like we talked about, if he becomes bothersome, we test a warhead out there. There’d be litde to lose in country like that. Wait until the winds are right.”
    “Messiah,” Michael Rourke repeated.
    Gunther Hong laughed. “It is interesting, Martin. You’ve got to admit that. I mean, maybe this will push up the timetable a litde bit, but, hey … He couldn’t possibly realize it, of course, but John Rourke is almost helping you out. And the son, too. There’s the body you need.”
    Michael didn’t say anything.
    He shifted in his seat to cover the effect of the chill, which ran along his spine.

8
    Deitrich Zimmer’s right eye moved over the computer screen.
    On the hard disc, he had every bit of data that he felt was extant concerning the life of Dr. John Thomas Rourke. Like he himself, John Rourke’s doctorate was in medicine. But Deitrich Zimmer doubted that their skills could at all be compared. In the Twentieth Century, when Rourke had learned the trade, medicine had been little better than sophisticated witch-doctoring.
    And John Rourke had once been a case officer with the American Central Intelligence Agency. There was no telling how good Rourke was at that, but that he lived to leave the occupation at least said something for him. Rourke was a survivalist, prior to what was universally called The Night Of The War. He wrote and taught survival skills to military and police personnel around the globe. And he was a weapons expert.
    Rourke was a peculiar man, his apparent tastes hardly describable as merely eclectic. The music in The Retreat ranged quite literally from Beethoven to the Beatles. One of the books Rourke liberated from The Retreat upon his return to the land of the living was Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The book was banned in Eden, of course. Martin should have pulled that copy as well.
    Deitrich Zimmer had met John Rourke once, more than a century and a quarter ago. Their meeting had been very brief, taking place in a hospital corridor. And their meeting had been very violent. At the time, he had wanted John Rourke dead and thought that goal had been achieved. It turned out otherwise. Zimmer still wanted Rourke dead, and he would correct past errors in due course in order to achieve that goal now, one hundred twenty-five years later.
    But in those intervening years, John Thomas Rourke had slept.
    John Rourke had sustained injuries in that corridor, which had nearly claimed his life. Had it not been for cryogenic sleep, those injuries would have ended Rourke’s life.
    Cryogenic sleep’s peculiar side effect, Zimmer himself discovered through his own experience, was physical rejuvenation. Even though cryogenic sleep was not some mythlike fountain of youth, which would have been wonderful, it did erase much of the toll of the years, strengthening the body and the mind to go on even stronger than before.
    At the time of that encounter in the hospital corridor, a few moments before Martin was born to Sarah Rourke and Deitrich Zimmer shot her in the head, Zimmer had been thirty-four. He took