The boy had never seen so many maps in one place. And, while the room gave an appearance of clutter, even chaos, somehow he sensed Swift would have no problem finding whichever map he wanted to study on a given day. What Tyler saw before him was a lifetime of map collecting. Many were stuffed into cardboard tubes and piled like firewood around the room; some were held in a roll by rubber bands; and a few more lay open on the great oak desk by the room’s single window, as if Swift had recently pored over them. Several very fine specimens were framed and hung on the walls, while other, cheaper ones had been taped or tacked. The subjects of these maps ran the gamut: from counties to states; from nations to continents; from the bottom of the sea to the poles of the Earth; from the near solar system to the outer reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy.

George Swift, it seemed, was out to chart the whole of Creation.