TWO HUNDRED MILLION YEARS AGO, a few geologic ticks after trilobites went extinct, the old North American continent began creeping westward at three inches per year, chomping up oceanic crust and forcing it down into the mantle to be remelted. Several thousand miles away was a Pacific island the size of California--the Okanogan micro-continent; a hundred million years ago came the collision that made it the Okanogan sub-continent, a new part of North America. Experiencing this land is like peeking behind the veils of time and finding the definition of intriguing. Sprinkled all over are lakes from fresh to soapy, with many puzzlers in between . . . even lakes with forests of crystal in their beds. Anomalous boulders the size of houses are common, erratics delivered from far away by glaciers whose layered footprints promise they'll be back. Sizzling summers and frigid winters are introduced to each other by the angels of spring and autumn in this main artery for waterfowl migrating between the arctic and tropics.

Whizzer was driving us along the southern edge of the Okanogan sub-continent in the moving van. On our left, ancient granite bluffs loomed over massive slabs they'd calved like glaciers surrendering bergs. The Columbia River glistened by on our right, still perturbed from writhing through the giant turbines of Grand Coulee Dam, slowing in the approach to turbines of Chief Joseph Dam. Beyond the river, the vast expanse of young loess and basalt of the Columbia plateau undulated in mostly browns and tans, and grays.

At about two-thirty, Whizzer said, "Tell me about the trilobites." We hoped to make it to the Castle by five.

"They blew everything to hell, freaked out the feds. Those two Lew came back with were both about the size of my hand, a male and a female. Lew called his . . . called the aliens 'Trans'. Ever hear him use that term?"

"Nope, always just 'them', or 'they', as I recall."

"Maybe it's short for transcendent."

"Or maybe they drive Trans Ams," he said without a smile, settling into serious mode. "Lew went out of his way not to talk about 'em, and you know me, I never pushed."

"No, never," I said, "not you."

He gave me a right on bro look.

"Trans were here during the Silurian. The ozone layer was blocking enough of the sun's hard ultraviolet for life to start colonizing the land. Coral reefs were booming, and trilobites were dying out. Lew called the ship a galactic menagerie, said the Trans had all kinds of life from the Silurian . . . lots of other things I couldn't imagine. I took the trilobites to Marilyn's big salt water aquarium. In a few weeks there were dozens of babies.We got another tank, and kept the breeders and babies separate. I hadn't told Paul, hadn't even met him yet, but I'd gotten Lew's predictions to him right away, four months worth, mostly earthquakes, a few eruptions. I mailed 'em to a post office box. Paul had gone underground right after he did that last Thrush show at KTOK, the Postscript edition he finished with, 'goodbye'. He was disguised and using an alias, so everything was secret agent. He faxed the first six weeks of predictions to Raymond Landers. Remember him?"

"Name rings a bell . . . or maybe it's just my tinnitus. Seems every itus in the book is after me." So obliquely bringing up his dying while still hurting me with it seemed to please him--not that he ever intended to really hurt me, he'd call it something else. Or, maybe it was all just me getting too sensitized?

"Landers was the geologist theorizing that Lew, Thrush, was somehow intercepting and interpreting data from infrared satellites to make his predictions. Landers was on Postscript quite a few times, a rare voice of reason in the whole Thrush affair. Don't you remember that one morning over breakfast in the Castle when we all listened to Landers explain why volcanic eruptions would be harder to predict than earthquakes?"

"My memory is dying."

"Landers was a renowned authority on plate tectonics. He got the predictions to the US Geological Survey, and the media. The accuracy was as good as before. Unfortunately, all the shaking and blowing was in far-off lands, again. Mainstream news coverage was zero. Some Internet sites were covering it, but the Net was still a baby, and the feds no doubt had enough tentacles out to pinch off most any coverage of anything Thrush Limburger. The concept of Thrush genuinely predicting the events was subordinated to whether or not they really happened, then skillfully and systematically suppressed into nothing. Besides, Bill and Monica were hot right then . . . or was it O.J.? Wasn't much room for real news, such as Landers mysteriously dropping dead. Right in there was when I talked Paul into meeting me at Marilyn's. He was close to finishing a book about hemp from the angle of cash-and-carry government outrageously protecting entrenched profits by quashing hemp. Totally screwing The People. And he had educational mailings, signature gathering . . . Lew left him a fortune to illuminate hemp, and Paul was brilliant by proxy. Talk about guts, you should've seen the look on his face when he saw the trilobites. They were pure nitroglycerin, and he never flinched. I promised to tell him all about Thrush. That'd explain the trilobites, but top priority was getting some into the right hands. He was the man for that, equipped his hideout with saltwater tanks, one for the breeders, one for eggs, one for the young. That fuckin' white fuzz killed all but a couple egg clusters and some young ones before we got fungicide.Last I talked to Paul he was mailing dead ones to some universities, promising live ones to come. Obviously, somebody fed the feds enough information to track Paul down. They nailed Marilyn. Her house had no evidence of the saltwater tanks ever even being there, though her freshwater tank was untouched. They got the frozen trilobites. Her African grays, Black and White, they still say things like 'trilobites', 'that did her', 'lay her on the couch'. So does Zach, the Amazon. I haven't heard Pops say a word since. And I betcha anything, in some top secret lab the government's got live trilobites right now."

Whizzer said, "I can't believe they didn't nail you."

"Sure seems incredibly inept of them."

Whizzer got an analytical look. "Actually, maybe not. You've probably been under surveillance all this time. They can do amazing stuff with satellites, might be tracking you right now, hoping you'll lead them to more pay dirt."

"That seems pretty far-fetched. And that'd mean they know about what happened at the mine."

Whizzer shrugged. "Far-fetched is funland for the feds. . . . "

We rolled into Nespelem. Or more precisely, we came to the intersection near the entrance to the Colville Agency, and headed east--the old town with Chief Joseph's grave is a mile north. Whether his body is actually in Nespelem or not I don't know; from what I've read it's either there, or near Wallowa lake. His head is a different story. Apparently it's missing, rumored to have once been on display "somewhere".