T he next morning’s race to Sugar Land ended up being the most benign sort of competition in that everyone had a good time and came away somewhat vindicated. In the early going it seemed to those on the boat that they were going to destroy Rufus. The Brazos was wide open—even wider, today, than normal—all the way down to Sugar Land. Their skipper, one Mitch, was uxoriously proud of his boat and the speed at which it could travel and completely unconcerned about the rate at which he was consuming gasoline. Even in these hot and humid conditions the wind blast was more than sufficient to keep them cool, and on the long straightaways between meanders, they all had to retreat behind the shelter of the windscreen—all, that is, except Alastair, who seemed fully alive for the first time since the jet crash. His hairstyle—tawny stubble with sparks of gray and scalp gleaming through—had nothing to fear from wind, and bugs could easily be picked out of it before gaining purchase and tapping into a vein. With the exception of those rare places where the river was bridged, it looked like a subtropical stream rambling free across a landscape that had never been visited or altered by humans.