"Frank has betrayed them. All of them. He's taking them to Nassau Point to sell them as slaves."

Book was sitting on the narrow bunk, reading a Bible. River hadn't realized he was carrying one; she wondered vaguely where he kept it. Then she realized he was just a hallucination generated by the crazy part of her mind, and decided that it really made perfect sense for a hallucination to manifest whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted to. Except a voice, perhaps. But she thought maybe she liked him better as a silent partner. Maybe.

He was, at least, a polite hallucination. When she spoke, he looked up at her and lifted his eyebrows as if he were truly interested. When she finished, he frowned in disapproval. Book didn't like the idea of these innocent colonists being sold as slaves, either.

"I can't let that happen," she said.

He looked surprised. He held up a finger, indicating that she should wait, and closed his eyes briefly. Then he flipped through his Bible. When he found the passage he was looking for, he held the page where she could see it, and ran his finger under the words.

The verse was in Jeremiah. Book ran his finger under the words, what will you do when the end comes?

Well, that was obvious enough, and anyway, she had already decided what she had to do. "Take the ship," she said. The terrible shakes that she had thought were a side effect of the medication were fading, after all, and when she thought about Frank, and all of these people sold as slaves, the trembling became the taut quiver of a drawn bowstring.

Book closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and then flipped to another verse, this one in Exodus.

Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us.

River considered. The ship carried only ten crew. Ten, she thought she could handle. And surely the colonists would be on her side, if they found out what was going on. Although in a situation like that, people with no skills and no training tended to do the wrong thing -