…Minus 044 and COUNTING… They traveled north through autumn b

Richards and Amelia Williams drive north through autumn countryside untouched by the poisonous smokes of the larger cities. The beauty of the trees makes Richards unexpectedly melancholy, and Amelia senses the mood enough to stay silent.

Near Freeport, Amelia tenses when Amelia Williams sees three police cruisers gathered outside town. The police do not stop them, and Richards concludes that the cruisers were not actively monitoring traffic, because Amelia’s identity and car would otherwise make the trap obvious.

Amelia Williams asks why Richards will not let Amelia Williams go, then asks for a jay and lashes out at Richards as a cowardly murderer. Amelia Williams repeats the Network’s view of Richards as a paid killer and enemy of decency, while Richards answers that the men in Boston were hunters sent to kill Richards.

The argument becomes a class confrontation. Richards challenges Amelia Williams’s idea of decency by contrasting Amelia Williams’s expensive car with Richards’s sick daughter, then describes blacklisting, dangerous factory work, Richards’s wife supporting the family through prostitution, and the Network’s suppression of cheap filters that could reduce deaths from polluted air.

Amelia Williams rejects Richards’s claims as lies and demands that Richards stop speaking so bluntly. Richards realizes that Amelia Williams cannot understand the world Richards comes from; anger and hopelessness fill Richards, but the chapter ends with Richards only muttering bitterly to himself.