ANTICIPATING THAT CAMILA MIGHT BE ON HER TOES—SHE HAD ALREADY survived one attempt—the gunman had crouched behind the rear of her school bus, sawed-off shotgun at the ready, and waited for her to emerge. A narrow stretch of pavement separated the vehicle’s side door from the entrance of her school, so he didn’t have much margin for error. He jumped the gun, as it were, springing out into the open while Camila was still negotiating the descent to the street; the long hem of her burqa was apt to get caught on her foot as it probed for the running board, so she had to take it slowly. The delay saved her life. Alerted by a schoolteacher standing in the building’s doorway, Camila turned back into the bus. Rather than hitting her full in the face, the shotgun blast raked the left side of her jaw, removing eleven teeth, tearing away much of her cheek, and causing massive structural damage to her jaw. Surgeons in Karachi and, later, London had saved most of the functions of her tongue, rebuilt her mandible from pieces of bone carved from her pelvis, and fitted her with a set of artificial teeth. After a world tour raising money for girls’ education in Afghanistan and the tribal regions of Pakistan, Camila had been granted permanent asylum in Holland. Dutch plastic surgeons, funded by charitable donations from all over the world, had gotten to work repairing the cosmetic damage. This was a long-term project that had been interrupted by Camila’s selection as one of the Dutch candidates for the Cloud Ark. No one believed that this was a random outcome of the Casting of Lots. Clearly the Dutch authorities had placed their thumb on the scale and seen to it that she was chosen, as a rebuke to some conservative Muslim countries who had refused to nominate female Arkers unless given assurance that arrangements would be made for them to live in orbital purdah. Camila was well suited to serve that symbolic purpose, since she had not adopted Western ways. She dressed conservatively and wore the head scarf and the face veil. She was coy, however, as to whether the purpose of the face veil was submission to the demands of religion or to hide her disfigurement. She had pulled it down several times to display the scars to television cameras, and when she had dined at the White House she had gone uncovered in the dining room, by prearrangement with her hostess, the president of the United States.