CHAPTER 56 Stu spent the next day at the power station, wrapping motors, and was cycling home at the end

CHAPTER 56

Stu spent the next day at the power station, wrapping motors, and was cycling home at the end of the workday. He had reached the small park opposite the First National Bank when Ralph hailed him over. He parked his cycle and walked over to the bandshell where Ralph was sitting. "I've kind of been looking for you, Stu. You got a minute?" "Just one. I'm late for supper. Frannie'll be worried." "Yeah. Been up to the power station wrapping copper, from the look of your hands." Ralph looked absent and worried. "Yeah. Not even workmen's gloves do much good. My hands are wrecked." Ralph nodded. There were maybe half a dozen other people in the park, some of them looking at the narrowgauge railway train that had once gone between Boulder and Denver. A trio of young women had spread out a picnic supper. Stu found it very pleasant just to sit here with his wounded hands in his lap. Maybe marshaling won't be so bad, he thought. At least it'll get me off that goddam assembly line in East Boulder. "How's it going out there?" Ralph asked. "Me, I wouldn't know-I'm just hired help, like the rest. Brad Kitchner says it's going like a house afire. He says the lights will be back on by the end of the first week of September, maybe sooner, and that we'll have heat by the middle of the month. Of course, he's pretty young to be making with the predictions..." "I'll put my money on Brad," Ralph said. "I trust im. He's been gettin a lot of what you call on- the-job training." Ralph tried to laugh; the laugh turned into a sigh which seemed fetched up from the big man's bootheels. "Why you so down at the mouth, Ralph?" "I got some news on my radio," Ralph said. "Some of it's good, some of it... well, some of its not so good, Stu. I want you to know, because there's no way to keep it secret. Lots of people in the Zone with CBs. I imagine some were listening when I was talking to these new folks coming in." "How many?" "Over forty. One of them's a doctor, name of George Richardson. He sounds like a fine man. Level-headed." "Well, that's great news!" "He's from Derbyshire, Tennessee. Most of the people in this group are sort of mid-Southern. Well, it seems they had a pregnant woman with them, and her time come up ten days ago, on the thirteenth. This doctor delivered her of themtwins, she had-and they were fine. At first they were fine." Ralph lapsed back into silence, his mouth working. Stu grabbed him. "They died? The babies died? That what you're trying to tell me? That they died? Talk to me, dammit!" "They died," Ralph said in a low voice. "One of them went in twelve hours. Appeared to just choke to death. The other went two days later. Nothing Richardson could do to save them. The woman went loony. Raving about death and destruction and no more babies. You want to make sure Fran isn't around when they come in, Stu. That's what I wanted to tell you. And that you should let her know about this right away. Because if you don't, someone else will." Stu let go of Ralph's shirt slowly. "This Richardson, he wanted to know how many pregnant women we had, and I said only one that we know of right now. He asked how far along she was and I said four months. Is that right?" "She's five months now. But Ralph, is he sure those babies died of the superflu? Is he sure?" "No, he's not, and you gotta tell Frannie that, too, so she understands it. He said it could have been any number of things... the mother's diet... something hereditary... a respiratory infection... or maybe they were just, you know, defective babies. He said it could have been the Rh factor, whatever, that is. He just couldn't tell, them being born in the middle of a field beside the doggone Interstate 70. He said that him and about three others who were in charge of their group sat up late at night and talked it over. Richardson, he told them what it might mean if it was the Captain Trips

391 that killed those babies, and how important it was for them to find out one way or the other for sure." "Glen and I talked about that," Stu said bleakly, "the day I met him. July Fourth, that was. It seems so long ago... anyway, if it was the superflu that killed those babies it probably means that in forty or fifty years we can leave the whole shebang to the rats and the houseflies and the sparrows." "I guess that's pretty much what Richardson told them. Anyway, they were some forty miles west of Chicago, and he persuaded them to turn around the next day so they could take the bodies back to a big hospital where he could do an autopsy. He said he could find out for sure if it was the superflu. He saw enough of it at the end of June. I guess all doctors did." "Yeah." "But when the morning came, the babies were gone. That woman had buried them, and she wouldn't say where. They spent two days digging, thinking that she couldn't have gone too far away from the camp or buried them too deep, being just over her delivery and all. But they didn't find them, and she wouldn't say where no matter how much they tried to explain how important it was. Poor woman was just all the way off'n her chump." "I can understand that," Stu said, thinking of how much Fran wanted her baby. "The doctor said even if it was the superflu, maybe two immune people could make an immune baby," Ralph said hopefully. "The chances that the natural father of Fran's baby was immune are about one in a billion, I guess," Stu said. "He sure isn't here." "Yeah, I guess it couldn't hardly be, could it? I'm sorry to have to put this on you, Stu. But I thought you'd better know. So you could tell her." "I don't look forward to that," Stu said. But when he got home he found that someone else had already done it.

Nadine Cross had been in the living room of her old place for almost five minutes, gathering things up, before she saw him sitting in the chair in the corner, naked except for his underpants, his thumb in his mouth, his strange gray-green Chinese eyes watching her. She was so startled-as much by the knowledge that he had been sitting there all the time as by the actual sudden sight of him-that her heart took a high, frightened leap in her chest and she screamed. The paperbacks she had been about to stuff into her packsack tumbled to the floor in a flutter of pages. "Joe... I mean Leo..."

392 She put a hand on her chest above the swell of her breasts as if to quell the crazy beating of her heart. But her heart was not ready to slow yet, hand or no hand. Catching sudden sight of him was bad; catching sight of him dressed and acting the way he had been when she had first made his acquaintance in New Hampshire was even worse. It was too much of a return, as if some irrational god had suddenly bundled her viciously through a time-warp and condemned her to live the last six weeks all over again. "You scared the dickins out of me," she finished weakly. She walked slowly over to him, half expecting to see a long kitchen knife in one of his hands, as in days of yore, but the hand which was not at his mouth was curled blamelessly in his lap. She saw that his body had been milked of its tan. The old scars and bramble-scratches were gone. But the eyes were the same... eyes that could haunt you. Whatever had been in them, a little more each day, since he had come to the fire to listen to Larry play the guitar, was now utterly gone. His eyes were as they had been when she first met him, and this filled her with a creeping sort of terror. "What are you doing here?" "Why aren't you with Larry and Lucy-mom?" No reply. "You can't stay here," she said, trying to reason with him, but before she could go on, she found herself wondering how long he had already been here. This was the morning of August 24. She had spent the previous two nights at Harold's. The thought that he might have been sitting in that chair with his thumb corked securely in his mouth for the last forty hours came to her. It was a ridiculous idea, of course, he would have to eat and drink (wouldn't he?), but once the thought/image had come, it would not leave. That sense of creepiness came over her again, and she realized with something like despair how much she herself had changed: once she had slept fearlessly next to this little savage, at a time when he had been armed and dangerous. Now he was without weapons, but she found herself in terror of him. She had thought (Joe? Leo?) his previous self had been neatly and completely disposed of. Now he was back. And he was here. "You can't stay here," she said. "I just came back to get some things. I'm moving out. I'm moving in with a... with a man." Oh, is that what Harold is? some interior voice mocked. I thought he was just a tool, a means to an end. "Leo, listen—" His head shook, faintly but visibly. His eyes, stern and glittering, fixed upon her face. "You're not Leo?" That faint shake came again. "Are you Joe?" A nod, just as faint. "Well, all right. But you have to understand that it really doesn't matter who you are," she said, trying to be patient. That crazy feeling that she was in a time-warp, that she was back to square one, persisted. It made her feel unreal and frightened. "That part of our lives-the part where we were together and on our own-that part is gone. You've changed, I've changed, and we can't change back." But his strange eyes remained fixed upon hers, seeming to deny this. "And stop staring at me," she snapped. "It's very impolite to stare at people." Now his eyes seemed to become faintly accusatory. They seemed to suggest that it was also impolite to leave people on their own, and more impolite still to withdraw one's love from people who still needed and depended on it. "It's not as if you're on your own," she said, turning and beginning to pick up the books she had dropped. She knelt clumsily and without grace, her knees popping like firecrackers as she did so. She began to stuff the books into the packsack willy-nilly, on top of her sanitary napkins and her aspirin and her underthings—plain cotton underthings, quite different from the ones she wore for Harold's frantic amusement. "You have Larry and Lucy. You want them, and they want you. Well, Larry wants you, and that's all that matters, because she wants all the things he does. She's like a piece of carbon paper. Things are different for me now, Joe, and that's not my fault. That's not my fault at all. So you can just stop trying to guilt-trip me." She began trying to buckle the packsack's clasps but her fingers were trembling uncontrollably and it was hard work. The silence grew heavier and heavier around them. At last she stood up, shrugging the packsack onto her shoulders.

393 "Leo." She tried to speak calmly and reasonably, the way she used to speak to difficult children in her classes when they had tantrums. It just wasn't possible. Her voice was all in jigs and jags, and the little shake of his head which greeted her use of the word Leo made it even worse. "It wasn't Larry and Lucy," Nadine said viciously. "I could have understood that, if that was all it was. But it was really that old bag you gave me up for, wasn't it? That stupid old woman in her rocking chair, grinning at the world with her false teeth. But now she's gone, and so you come running back to me. But it won't play, do you hear me? It won't play!" "And when I begged Larry... got down on my knees and begged him... he couldn't be bothered. He was too busy playing big man. So you see, none of this is my fault. None of it!" The boy only stared at her impassively. Her terror began to return, burying her incoherent rage. She backed away from him to the door and fumbled behind her for the knob. She found it at last, turned it, and jerked the door open. The rush of cool outside air against her shoulders was very welcome. "Go to Larry," she muttered. "Goodbye, kiddo." She backed out awkwardly and stood on the top step for a moment, trying to gather her wits. It suddenly occurred to her that the whole thing might have been a hallucination, brought on by her own guilt feelings... guilt at abandoning the boy, guilt at making Larry wait too long, guilt at the things she and Harold had done, and the much worse things which were waiting. Perhaps there had been no real boy in that house at all. No more real than the phantasms of Poe-the beating of the old man's heart, sounding like a watch wrapped in cotton, or the raven perched on the bust of Pallas. "Tapping, ever tapping at my chamber door," she whispered aloud without thinking, and that made her utter a horrid, croaking little giggle, probably not much different from the sounds ravens actually made. Still, she had to know. She went to the window beside the front steps and looked into the living room of what had once been her house. Not that it had ever been hers, not really. When you lived in a place and all you wanted to take out of it when you left would fit in one packsack, it had never really been yours to begin with. Looking in, she saw some dead wife's rug and curtains and wallpaper, some dead husband's pipe-stand and issues of Sports Illustrated scattered carelessly on the coffee table. Pictures of dead children on the mantel. And sitting in the corner chair, some dead woman's little boy, clad only in his underpants, sitting, still sitting, sitting as he had sat before Nadine fled, stumbling, almost falling over the low wire wickets which protected the flower-bed to the left of the window where she had looked in. She flung herself onto her Vespa and got it started. She drove with reckless speed for the first few blocks, slaloming in and out of the stalled cars which still littered these side-streets, but a little at a time she calmed down. By the time she reached Harold's, she had gotten herself under some kind of control. But she knew it had to end quickly for her here in the Zone. If she wanted to keep her sanity, she must soon be away.

The meeting at Munzinger Auditorium went well. They began by singing the National Anthem again, but this time most of them remained dry-eyed; it was simply a part of what would soon become ritual. A Census Committee was voted routinely with Sandy DuChiens in charge. She and her four helpers immediately began going through the audience, counting heads, taking names. At the end of the meeting, to the accompaniment of tremendous cheers, she announced that there were now 814 souls in the Free Zone, and promised (rashly, as it turned out) to have a complete "directory" by the time the next Zone meeting was called-a directory she hoped to update week by week, containing names in alphabetical order, ages, Boulder addresses, previous addresses, and previous occupations. As it turned out, the flow into the Zone was so heavy and yet so erratic that she was always two or three weeks behind. The elective period of the Free Zone Committee was brought up, and after some extravagant suggestions (ten years was one, life another, and Larry brought down the house by saying they sounded more like prison terms than those of elective office), the yearly term was voted in. Harry Dunbarton's hand waved near the back of the hall, and Stu recognized him. Bellowing to make himself heard, Harry said: "Even a year may be too much. I have nothing at all against the ladies and gentlemen of the committee, I think you're doing a helluva job"—cheers and whistles—"but this is gonna get out of hand before long if we keep gettin bigger." Glen raised his hand, and Stu acknowledged him. "Mr. Chairman, this isn't on the agenda, but I think Mr. Dunbarton there has an excellent point." I just bet you think he does, baldy, Stu thought, since you bought it up a week ago. "I'd like to make a motion that we have a Representative

394 Government Committee so we can really put the Constitution back to work. I think Harry Dunbarton should head that committee, and I'll serve on it myself, unless someone thinks I've got a conflict of interest." More cheers. In the last row, Harold turned to Nadine and whispered in her ear: "Ladies and gentlemen, the public love feast is now in session." She gave him a slow, dark smile, and he felt giddy. Stu was elected Free Zone Marshal by roaring acclamation. "I'll do the best I can by you," he said. "Some of you cheerin me now may have cause to change your tunes later if I catch you doin somethin you shouldn't be doin. You hear me, Rich Moffat?" A large roar of laughter. Rich, who was as drunk as a hootowl, joined in agreeably. "But I don't see any reason why we should have any real trouble here. The main job of a marshal as I see it is stoppin people from hurtin each other. And there aren't any of us who want to do that. Enough people have been hurt already. And I guess that's all I've got to say." The crowd gave him a long ovation. "Now this next item," Stu said, "kind of goes along with the marshaling. We need about five people to serve on a Law Committee, or I'm not going to feel right about locking anyone up, should it come to that. Do I hear any nominations?" "How about the Judge?" someone shouted. "Yeah, the Judge, damn right!" someone else yelled. Heads craned expectantly as people waited for the Judge to stand up and accept the responsibility in his usual rococo style; a whisper ran around the hall as people retold the story of how he had put a pin in the flying saucer nut's balloon. Agendas were put down as people prepared to clap. Stu's eyes met Glen's with mutual chagrin: someone on the committee should have foreseen this. "Ain't here," someone said. "Who's seen him?" Lucy Swann asked, upset. Larry glanced at her uncomfortably, but she was still looking around the hall for the Judge. "I seen him." A mutter of interest as Teddy Weizak stood up about three quarters of the way back in the auditorium, looking nervous and polishing his steel-rimmed spectacles compulsively with his bandanna. "Where?" "Where was he, Teddy?" "Was it in town?" "What was he doing?" Teddy Weizak flinched visibly from this barrage of questions. Stu pounded his gavel. "Come on, folks. Order." "I seen him two days ago," Teddy said. "He had himself a LandRover. Said he was going to Denver for the day. Didn't say why. We had a joke or two about it. He seemed in real good spirits. That's all I know." He sat down, still polishing his spectacles and blushing furiously. Stu rapped for order again. "I'm sorry the Judge isn't here. I think he would have been just the man for the job, but since he isn't, could we have another nomination-?" "No, let's not leave it at that!" Lucy protested, getting to her feet. She was wearing a snug denim jumpsuit that brought interested looks to the faces of most of the males in the audience. "Judge Farris is an old man. What if he got sick in Denver and can't get back?" "Lucy," Stu said, "Denver's a big place." An odd silence fell over the meeting hall as people considered this. Lucy sat down, looking pale, and Larry put his arm around her. His eyes met Stu's, and Stu looked away. A half-hearted motion was made to table the Law Committee until the Judge got back and was voted down after twenty minutes of discussion. They had another lawyer, a young man of about twenty-six named Al Bundell, who had come in late that afternoon with the Dr. Richardson party, and he accepted the chairmanship when it was offered, saying only that he hoped no one would do anything too terrible in the next month or so, because it would take at least that long to work out some sort of rotating tribunal system. Judge Farris was voted a place on the committee in absentia. Brad Kitchner, looking pale, fidgety, and a little ridiculous in a suit and tie, approached the podium, dropped his prepared remarks, picked them up in the wrong order, and contented himself by saying they hoped and expected to have the electricity back on by the second or third of September. This remark was greeted with such a storm of cheering that he gained enough confidence to finish in style and actually strut a little as he left the podium. Chad Norris was next, and Stu told Frannie later that he had approached the thing in just the right way: They were burying the dead out of common decency, none of them would feel really good

395 until that was done and life could go on, and if it was finished by the fall rainy season they would all feel so much the better. He asked for a couple of volunteers and could have had three dozen if he wanted them. He finished by asking each member of the current Spade Squad (as he called them) to stand and take a bow. Harold Lauder barely popped up and then sat back down again, and there were those who left the meeting remarking on what a smart but very modest fellow he was. Actually, Nadine had been whispering things in his ear and he was afraid to do much more than bob and nod. A fairly large pup-tent appeared to have been erected in the crotch of his pants. When Norris left the podium, Ralph Brentner took his place. He told them that they at last had a doctor. George Richardson stood up (to loud applause; Richardson flipped the peace sign with both hands, and the applause turned to cheers), and then told them that, as far as he could tell, they had another sixty people joining them over the next couple of days. "Well, that's the agenda," Stu said. He looked out over the gathered people. "I want Sandy DuChiens to come up here again and tell us how many we are, but before I do that, is there other business we should take up tonight?" He waited. He could see Glen's face in the crowd, and Sue Stern's, Larry's, Nick's, and of course, Frannie's. They all looked a bit strained. If someone was going to bring up Flagg, ask what the committee was doing about him, this would be the time. But there was silence. After fifteen seconds of it, Stu turned the meeting over to Sandy, who ended things in style. As people began to file out, Stu thought: Well, we got by it again. Several people came up to congratulate him after the meeting, one of them the new doctor. "You handled that very well, Marshal," Richardson said, and for a moment Stu almost looked over his shoulder to see who Richardson was talking to. Then he remembered, and suddenly felt scared. Lawman? He was an imposter. A year, he told himself. A year and no more. But he still felt scared.

Stu, Fran, Sue Stern, and Nick walked back toward the center of town together, their feet clicking hollowly on the cement sidewalk as they crossed the C. U. campus toward Broadway. Around them, other people were streaming away, talking quietly, headed home. It was nearly eleven-thirty. "It's chilly," Fran said. "I wish I'd worn my jacket as well as this sweater." Nick nodded. He also felt the chill. The Boulder evenings were always cool, but tonight it could be no more than fifty degrees. It served to remind that this strange and terrible summer was nearing its end. Not for the first time he wished that Mother Abagail's God or Muse or whatever It was had been more in favor of Miami or New Orleans. But that might not have been so great, now that he stopped to think about it. High humidity, lots of rain... and lots of bodies. At least Boulder was dry. "They jumped the shit out of me, wanting the Judge for the Law Committee," Stu said. "We should have expected that." Frannie nodded, and Nick jotted quickly on his pad: "Sure. People will miss Tom & Dayna, 2. Fax of life." "Think people will be suspicious, Nick?" Stu asked. Nick nodded. "They'll wonder if they did go west. For real." They all considered this as Nick took out his butane match and burned the scrap of paper. "That's tough," Stu said finally. "You really think so?" "Sure, he's right," Sue said glumly. "What else have they got to think? That Judge Farris went to Far Rockaway to ride the Monster Coaster?" "We were lucky to get away tonight without a big discussion of what's going on in the West," Fran said. Nick wrote: "Sure were. Next time we'll have to tackle it head on, I think. That's why I want to postpone another big meeting as long as possible. Three weeks, maybe. September 15?" Sue said, "We can hold off that long if Brad gets the power on." "I think he will," Stu said. "I'm going home," Sue told them. "Big day tomorrow. Dayna's off. I'm going with her as far as Colorado Springs." "Do you think that's safe, Sue?" Fran asked. She shrugged. "Safer for her than for me." "How did she take it?" Fran asked her. "Well, she's a funny sort of girl. She was a jock in college, you know. Tennis and swimming were her biggies, although she played them all. She went to some small community college down in Georgia, but for the first two years she kept on going with her high school boyfriend. He was a big leather jacket type, me Tarzan, you Jane, so get out in the kitchen and rattle those pots and pans. Then she got dragged along to a couple of female consciousness meetings by her roomie, who was this big libber type." "And as an upshot, she got to be an even bigger libber than the roomie," Fran guessed.

396 "First a libber, then a lesbian," Sue said. Stu stopped as if thunderstruck. Frannie looked at him with guarded amusement. "Come on, splendor in the grass," she said. "See if you can't fix the hinge on your mouth." Stu shut his mouth with a snap. Sue went on: "She dropped both rocks on the caveman boyfriend at the same time. It blew his wheels, and he came after her with a gun. She disarmed him. She says it was the major turning point of her life: She told me she always knew she was stronger and more agile than he was—she knew it intellectually. But it took doing it to put it in her guts." "You sayin she hates men?" Stu asked, looking at Sue closely. Susan shook her head. "She's bi now." "Bye now?" Stu said doubtfully. "She's happy with either sex, Stuart. And I hope you're not going to start leaning on the committee to institute the blue laws along with 'Thou shalt not kill. '" "I got enough to worry about without gettin into who sleeps with who," he mumbled, and they all laughed. "I only asked because I don't want anyone goin into this thing as a crusade. We need eyes over there, not guerrilla fighters. This is a job for a weasel, not a lion." "She knows that," Susan said. "Fran asked me how she took it when I asked her if she'd go over there for us. She took it very well. For one thing, she reminded me that if we'd stayed with those men... remember how you found us, Stu?" He nodded. "If we'd stayed with them, we would have either wound up dead or in the West anyway, because that's the direction they were going in... at least when they were sober enough to read the road- signs. She said she'd been wondering what. her place in the Zone was, and guessed that her place in the Zone was out of it. And she said..." "What?" Fran asked. "That she'd try to come back," Sue said, rather abruptly, and said no more. What else Dayna Jurgens had said was between the two of them, something not even the other members of the committee were to know. Dayna was going west with a ten-inch switchblade strapped to her arm in a spring-loaded clip. When she bent her wrist sharply, the spring unloaded and hey, presto, she had suddenly grown a sixth finger, one which was ten inches long and doublebladed. She felt that most of them-the men-would not have understood. If he's a big enough dictator, then maybe he's all that's holding them together. If he was gone, maybe they'd start fighting and squabbling among themselves. It might be the end of them, if he dies. And if I get close to him, Susie, he better have his guardian devil with him. They'll kill you, Dayna. Maybe. Maybe not. It might be worth it just to have the pleasure of watching his guts fall out on the floor. Susan could have stopped her, maybe, but she hadn't tried. She had contented herself with extracting a promise from Dayna that she would stick to the original script unless a near-perfect opportunity came up. To that, Dayna had agreed and Sue didn't think her friend would get that chance. Flagg would be well guarded. Still, in the three days since she had broached the idea of going west as a spy to her friend, Sue Stern had found it very difficult to sleep. "Well," she said to the rest of them now, "I'm home to bed. Night, folks." She walked off, hands in the pockets of her fatigue jacket. "She looks older," Stu said. Nick wrote and offered the open pad to both of them. We all do was written there.

Stu was on his way up to the power station the next morning when he saw Susan and Dayna headed down Canyon Boulevard on a pair of cycles. He waved and they pulled over. He thought he had never seen Dayna looking prettier. Her hair was tied behind her with a bright green silk scarf, and she was wearing a rawhide coat open over jeans and a chambray shirt. A bedroll was strapped on behind her. "Stuart!" she cried, and waved to him, smiling. Lesbian? he thought doubtfully. "I understand you're off on a little trip," he said. "For sure. And you never saw me." "Nope," Stu said. "Never did. Smoke?" Dayna took a Marlboro and cupped her hands over his match. "You be careful, girl." "I will." "And get back." "I hope to."

397 They looked at each other in the bright late-summer morning. "You take care of Frannie, big fella." "I will." "And go easy on the marshaling." "That I know I can do." She cast the cigarette away. "What do you say, Suze?" Susan nodded and put her bike in gear, smiling a strained smile. "Dayna?" She looked at him, and Stu planted a soft kiss on her mouth. "Good luck." She smiled. "You have to do it twice for really good luck. Didn't you know that?" He kissed her again, more slowly and thoroughly this time. Lesbian? he wondered again. "Frannie's a lucky woman," Dayna said. "And you can quote me." Smiling, not really knowing what to say, Stu stepped back and said nothing at all. Two blocks up, one of the lumbering orange Burial Committee trucks rumbled through the intersection like an omen and the moment was broken. "Let's go, kid," Dayna said. "Get-em-up-Scout." They drove off, and Stu stood on the curbing and watched them.

Sue Stern was back two days later. She had watched Dayna moving west from Colorado Springs, she said, had watched her until she was nothing but a speck that merged with the greatstill landscape. Then she had cried a little. The first night Sue had made camp at Monument, and had awakened in the small hours, chilled by a low whining sound that seemed to be coming from a culvert that traveled beneath the farm road she had camped by. Finally summoning up her courage, she had shined her flash into the corrugated pipe and had discovered a gaunt and shivering puppy. It looked to be about six months old. It shied from her touch and she was too big to crawl into the pipe. At last she had gone into the town of Monument, smashed her way into the local grocery, and had come back in the first cold light of false dawn with a knapsack full of Alpo and Cycle One. That did the trick. The puppy rode back with her, neatly tucked into one of the BSA saddlebags.

Dick Ellis went into raptures over the puppy. It was an Irish setter bitch, either purebred or so close as to make no difference. When she got older, he was sure Kojak would be glad to make her acquaintance. The news swept the Free Zone, and for that day the subject of Mother Abagail was forgotten in the excitement over the canine Adam and Eve. Susan Stern became something of a heroine, and as far as any of the committee ever knew, no one even thought to wonder what she had been doing in Monument that night, far south of Boulder. But it was the morning the two of them left Boulder that Stu remembered, watching them ride off toward the DenverBoulder Turnpike. Because no one in the Zone ever saw Dayna Jurgens again.

August 27; nearly dusk; Venus shining against the sky. Nick, Ralph, Larry, and Stu sat on the steps of Tom Cullen's house. Tom was on the lawn, whooping and knocking croquet balls through a set of wickets. It's time, Nick wrote. Speaking low, Stu asked if they would have to hypnotize him again, and Nick shook his head. "Good," Ralph said. "I don't think I could take that action." Raising his voice, he called: "Tom! Hey, Tommy! Come on over here!" Tom came running over, grinning. "Tommy, it's time to go," Ralph said. Tom's smile faltered. For the first time he seemed to notice that it was getting dark. "Go? Now? Laws, no! When it gets dark, Tom goes to bed. M-O-O-N, that spells bed. Tom doesn't like to be out after dark. Because of the boogies. Tom... Tom..." He fell silent, and the others looked at him uneasily. Tom had lapsed into dull silence. He came out of it... but not in the usual way. It was not a sudden reanimation, life flooding back in a rush, but a slow thing, reluctant, almost sad. "Go west?" he said. "Do you mean it's that time?" Stu laid a hand on his shoulder. "Yes, Tom. If you can." "On the road." Ralph made a choked, muttering sound and walked around the house. Tom did not seem to notice. His gaze alternated between Stu and Nick. "Travel at night. Sleep in the day." Very slowly, in the dusk, Tom added: "And see the elephant." Nick nodded.

398 Larry brought Tom's pack up from where it had rested beside the steps. Tom put it on slowly, dreamily. "You want to be careful, Tom," Larry said thickly. "Careful. Laws, yes." Stu wondered belatedly if they should have given Tom a one-man tent as well, and rejected it. Tom would get all bollixed up trying to set up even a little tent. "Nick," Tom whispered. "Do I really have to do this?" Nick put an arm around Tom and nodded slowly. "All right." "Just stay on the big four-lane highway, Tom," Larry said. "The one that says 70. Ralph is going to drive you down to the start of it on his motorcycle." "Yes, Ralph." He paused. Ralph had come back around the house. He was swabbing at his eyes with his bandanna. "You ready, Tom?" he asked gruffly. "Nick? Will it still be my house when I get back?" Nick nodded vigorously. "Tom loves his house. Laws, yes." "We know you do, Tommy." Stu could feel warm tears in the back of his own throat now. "All right. I'm ready. Who am I riding with?" "Me, Tom," Ralph said. "Down to Route 70, remember?" Tom nodded and began to walk toward Ralph's cycle. After a moment Ralph followed him, his big shoulders slumped. Even the feather in his hatband seemed dejected. He climbed on the bike and kicked it alive. A moment later it pulled out onto Broadway and turned east. They stood together, watching the motorcycle dwindle to a moving silhouette in the purple dusk marked by a moving headlight. Then the light disappeared behind the bulk of the Holiday . Twin Drive-in and was gone. Nick walked away, head down, hands in pockets. Stu tried to join him, but Nick shook his head almost angrily and motioned him away. Stu went back to Larry. "That's that," Larry said, and Stu nodded gloomily. "You think we'll ever see him again, Larry?" "If we don't, the seven of us-well, maybe not Fran, she was never for sending him—the rest of us are going to be eating and sleeping with the decision to send him for the rest of our lives." "Nick more than anyone else," Stu said. "Yeah. Nick more than anyone else." They watched Nick walking slowly down Broadway, losing himself in the shadows which grew around him. Then they looked at Tom's darkened house in silence for a minute. "Let's get out of here," Larry said suddenly. "The thought of all those stuffed animals... all of a sudden I got a grade-A case of the creeps." When they left, Nick was still standing on the side lawn of Tom Cullen's house, his hands in his pockets, his head down.

George Richardson, the new doctor, had set up in the Dakota Ridge Medical Center, because it was close to Boulder City Hospital with its medical equipment, its large supplies of drugs, and its operating rooms. By August 28 he was pretty much in business, assisted by Laurie Constable and Dick Ellis. Dick had asked leave to quit the world of medicine and had been refused permission to do so. "You're doing a fine job here," Richardson said. "You've learned a lot and you're going to learn more. Besides, there's just too much for me to do by myself. We're going to be out of our minds as it is if we don't get another doctor in a month or two. So congratulations, Dick, you're the Zone's first paramedic. Give him a kiss, Laurie." Laurie did. Around eleven o'clock on that late August morning, Fran let herself into the waiting room and looked around curiously and a little nervously. Laurie was behind the counter, reading an old copy of the Ladies' Home Journal. "Hi, Fran," she said, jumping up. "I thought we'd see you sooner or later. George is with Candy Jones right now, but he'll be right with you. How are you feeling?" "Pretty well, thanks," Fran said. "I guess—" The door to one of the examining rooms opened and Candy Jones came out following a tall, stooped man in corduroy slacks and a sport shirt with the Izod alligator on the breast. Candy was looking doubtfully at a bottle of pink stuff which she held in one hand. "Are you sure that's what it is?" she asked Richardson doubtfully. "I never got it before. I thought I was immune." "Well, you're not and you have it now," George said with a grin. "Don't forget the starch baths, and stay out of the tall grass after this."

399 She smiled ruefully. "Jack's got it too. Should he come in?" "No, but you can make the starch baths a family affair." Candy nodded dolefully and then spotted Fran. "Hi, Frannie, how's the girl?" "Okay. How's by you?" "Terrible." Candy held up the bottle so Fran could read the word CALADRYL on the label. "Poison ivy. And you couldn't guess where I got it." She brightened. "But I bet you can guess where Jack's got it." They watched her go with some amusement. Then George said, "Miss Goldsmith, isn't it? Free Zone Committee. A pleasure." She held out her hand to be shaken. "Just Fran, please. Or Frannie." "Okay, Frannie. What's the problem?" "I'm pregnant," Fran said. "And pretty damn scared." And then, with no warning at all, she was in tears. George put an arm around her shoulders. "Laurie, I'll want you in about five minutes." "All right, Doctor." He led her into the examining room and had her sit on the black-upholstered table. "Now. Why the tears? Is it Mrs. Wentworth's twins?" Frannie nodded miserably. "It was a difficult delivery, Fran. The mother was a heavy smoker. The babies were lightweights, even for twins. They came in the late evening, very suddenly. I had no opportunity to make a postmortem. Regina Wentworth is being cared for by some of the women who were in our party. I believe-I hope-that she's going to come out of the mental fugue-state she's currently in. But for now all I can say is that those babies had two strikes against them from the start. The cause of death could have been anything." "Including the superflu." "Yes. Including that." "So we just wait and see." "Hell no. I'm going to give you a complete prenatal right now. I'm going to monitor you and any other woman that gets pregnant or is pregnant now every step of the way. General Electric used to have a slogan, `Progress Is Our Most Important Product. ' In the Zone, babies are our most important product, and they are going to be treated accordingly. "But we really don't know." "No, we don't. But be of good cheer, Fran." "Yes, all right. I'll try." There was a brief rap at the door and Laurie came in. She handed George a form on a clipboard, and George began to ask Fran questions about her medical history.

When the exam was over, George left her for a while to do something in the next room. Laurie stayed with her while Fran dressed. As she was buttoning her blouse, Laurie said quietly: "I envy you, you know. Uncertainty and all. Dick and I had been trying to make a baby like mad. It's really funny-I was the one who used to wear a ZERO POPULATI0N button to work. It meant zero population growth, of course, but when I think about that button now, it gives me a really creepy feeling. Oh, Frannie, yours is going to be the first. And I know it will be all right. It has to be." Fran only smiled and nodded, not wanting to remind Laurie that hers would not be the first. Mrs. Wentworth's twins had been the first. And Mrs. Wentworth's twins had died.

400 "Good. No nausea now?" "A little at first, but it's passed." "Lovely. Getting plenty of exercise?" For a nightmare instant she saw herself digging her father's grave. She blinked the vision away. That had beer. another life. "Yes, plenty." "Have you gained any weight?" "About five pounds." "That's all right. You can have another twelve; I'm feeling generous today." She grinned. "You're the doctor." "Yes, and I used to be an OB man, so you're in the right place. Take your doctor's advice and you'll go far. Now, concerning bicycles, motorbikes, and mopeds. All of them a no-no after November fifteenth, let's say. No one's going to be riding them by then anyway. Too damn cold. Don't smoke or drink to excess, do you?" "No." "If you want a nightcap once in a while, I think that's perfectly okay. I'm going to put you on a vitamin supplement; you can pick it up at any drugstore in town—" Frannie burst into laughter, and George smiled uncertainly. "Did I say something funny?" "No. It just came out funny under the circumstances." "Oh! Yes, I see. Well, at least there won't be any more complaining about high drug prices, will there? One last thing, Fran. Have you ever been fitted with an intrauterine device... an IUD?" "No, why?" Fran asked, and then she happened to think of her dream: the dark man with his coathanger. She shuddered. "No," she said again. "Good. That's it." He stood up. "I won't tell you not to worry—" "No," she agreed. The laughter was gone from her eyes. "Don't do that." "But I will ask you to keep it to a minimum. Excess anxiety in the mother can lead to glandular imbalance. And that's not good for the baby. I don't like to prescribe tranquilizers for pregnant women, but if you think—" "No, that won't be necessary," Fran said, but going out into the hot midday sunshine, she knew that the entire second half of her pregnancy was going to be haunted by thoughts of Mrs. Wentworth's vanished twins.

On the twenty-ninth of August three groups came in, one with twenty-two members, one with sixteen, and one with twenty-five. Sandy DuChiens got around to see all seven members of the committee and tell them that the Free Zone now had over one thousand residents. Boulder no longer seemed such a ghost town.

On the evening of the thirtieth, Nadine Cross stood in the basement of Harold's house, watching him and feeling uneasy. When Harold was doing something that didn't involve having some sort of strange sex with her, he seemed to go away to his own private place where she had no control over him. When he was in that place he seemed cold; more than that, he seemed contemptuous of her and even of himself. The only thing that didn't change was his hate of Stuart Redman and the others on the committee. There was a dead air hockey game in the basement and Harold was working on its pinholed surface. There was an open book beside him. On the facing page was a diagram. He would look at the diagram for a while, then look at the apparatus he was working on, and then he would do something to it. Spread out neatly by his right hand were the tools from his Triumph motorcycle kit. Little snips of wire littered the air hockey table. "You know," he said absently, "you ought to take a walk." "Why?" She felt a trifle hurt. Harold's face was tense and unsmiling. Nadine could understand why Harold smiled as much as he did: because when he stopped, he looked insane. She suspected that he was insane, or very nearly. "Because I don't know how old this dynamite is," Harold said. "What do you mean?" "Old dynamite sweats, dear heart," he said, and looked up at her. She saw that his entire face was running with sweat, as if to prove his point. "It perspires, to be perfectly couth. And what it perspires is pure nitroglycerin, one of the world's great unstable substances. So if it's old, there's a very good chance that this little Science Fair project could blow us right over the top of Flagstaff Mountain and all the way to the Land of Oz." "Well, you don't have to sound so snotty about it," Nadine said. "Nadine? Ma chere?" "What?" Harold looked at her calmly and without smiling. "Shut your fucking trap."

401 She did, but she didn't take a walk, although she wanted to. Surely if this was Flagg's will (and the planchette had told her that Harold was Flagg's way of taking care of the committee), the dynamite wouldn't be old. And even if it was old, it wouldn't explode until it was supposed to... would it? Just how much control over events did Flagg have? Enough, she told herself, he has enough. But she wasn't sure, and she was increasingly uneasy. She had been back to her house and Joe was gone-gone for good this time. She had gone to see Lucy, and had borne the cold reception long enough to learn that since she had moved in with Harold, Joe (Lucy, of course, called him Leo) had "slipped back some." Lucy obviously blamed her for that, too... but if an avalanche came rumbling down from Flagstaff Mountain or an earthquake ripped Pearl Street apart, Lucy would probably blame her for those things, too. Not that there wouldn't—be enough to blame on her and Harold very soon. Still, she had been bitterly disappointed not to have seen Joe once more... to kiss him goodbye. She and Harold were not going to be in the Boulder Free Zone much longer. Never mind, best you let him go completely now that you're embarked on this obscenity. You'd only be doing him harm... and possibly harm to yourself as well, because Joe... sees things, knows things. Let him stop being Joe, let me stop being Nadine-mom. Let him go back to being Leo, forever. — But the paradox in that was inexorable. She could not believe that any of these Zone people had more than a year's life left in them, and that included the boy. It was not his will that they should live... ... so tell the truth, it isn't just Harold who is his instrument. It's you too. You, who once defined the single unforgivable sin in the postplague world as murder, as the taking of a single life... Suddenly she found herself wishing that the dynamite was old, that it would blow up and put an end to both of them. A merciful end. And then she found herself thinking about what would happen afterward, after they had gotten over the mountains, and felt the old slippery warmth kindle in her belly. "There," Harold said gently. He had lowered his apparatus into a Hush Puppies shoebox and set it aside. "It's done?" "Yes. Done." "Will it work?" "Would you like to try it and find out?" His words were bitterly sarcastic, but she didn't mind. His eyes were working her over in that greedy, crawling little boy's way that she had come to recognize. He had returned from that distant place-the place from which he had written what was in the ledger that she had read and then replaced carelessly under the loose hearthstone where it had originally been. Now she could handle him. Now his talk was just talk. "Would you like to watch me play with myself first?" she asked. "Like last night?" "Yeah," he said. "Okay. Good." "Let's go upstairs then." She batted her eyelashes at him. "I'll go first." "Yeah," he said hoarsely. Little dots of sweat stood out on his brow, but fear hadn't put them there this time. "Go first." So she went up first, and she could feel him looking up the short skirt of the little-girl sailor dress she was wearing. She was bare beneath it. The door closed, and the thing that Harold had made sat in the open shoebox in the gloom. There was a batterypowered Realistic walkie-talkie handset from Radio Shack. Its back was off. Wired to it were eight sticks of dynamite. The book was still open. It was from the Boulder Public Library, and the title was 65 National Science Fair Prize Winners. The diagram showed a doorbell wired up to a walkie-talkie similar to the one in the shoebox. The caption beneath said: Third Prize, 1977 National Science Fair, Constructed by Brian Ball, Rutland, Vermont. Say the word and ring the bell up to twelve miles away! Some hours later that evening, Harold came back downstairs, put the cover on the shoebox, and carried it carefully upstairs. He put it on the top shelf of a kitchen cupboard. Ralph Brentner had told him that afternoon that the Free Zone Committee was inviting Chad Norris to speak at their next meeting. When was that going to be? Harold had inquired casually. September 2, Ralph had said. September 2.