 The bed is empty. Louise, the counselor, 23, short-limbed, rasp-voiced, jolly, stands barefoot on the warm, rough planks of the cabin called Balsam and processes the absence of a body in the lower bunk by the door. Later on, the ten seconds that pass between sight and inference will serve to her as evidence that time is a human construct, that it can slow or accelerate in the presence of emotion, of chemicals in the blood.