Alan stared blankly as the brothers tidied up the cave and made piles of their belongings. The little ones looked scared, without any of the hardness he remembered from that day when they'd fought it out on the hillside. Benny retreated to his perch, but before the sun set and the cave darkened, he brought a couple blankets down and dropped them beside the nook where Alan slept. He had his baseball bat with him, and it made a good, solid aluminum sound when he leaned it against the wall. Silently, the small ones crossed the cave with a pile of their own blankets, George bringing up the rear with a torn T-shirt stuffed with sharp stones. Alan looked at them and listened to the mountain breathe around them. It had been years since his father had had anything to say to them. It had been years since their mother had done anything except wash the clothes. Was there a voice in the cave now? A wind? A smell? He couldn't smell anything. He couldn't hear anything. Benny propped himself up against the cave wall with a blanket around his shoulders and the baseball bat held loose and ready between his knees. A smell then, on the wind. Sewage and sulfur. A stink of fear. Alan looked to his brothers, then he got up and left the cave without a look back. He wasn't going to wait for Davey to come to him. The night had come up warm, and the highway sounds down at the bottom of the hill mingled with the spring breeze in the new buds on the trees and the new needles on the pines, the small sounds of birds and bugs foraging in the new year. Alan slipped out the cave mouth and looked around into the twilight, hoping for a glimpse of something out of the ordinary, but apart from an early owl and a handful of fireflies sparking off like distant stars, he saw nothing amiss. He padded around the mountainside, stooped down low, stopping every few steps to listen for footfalls. At the high, small entrance to the golems' cave, he paused, lay on his belly, and slowly peered around the fissure. It had been years since Alvin had come up to the golems' cave, years since one had appeared in their father's cave. They had long ago ceased bringing their kills to the threshold of the boys' cave, ceased leaving pelts in neat piles on the eve of the waning moon. The view from the outcropping was stunning. The village had grown to a town, fast on its way to being a city. A million lights twinkled. The highway cut a glistening ribbon of streetlamps through the night, a straight line slicing the hills and curves. There were thousands of people down there, all connected by a humming net-work -- a work of nets, cunning knots tied in a cunning grid -- of wire and radio and civilization.