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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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“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 great still 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 ...
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 gro...
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 ove...
But it was the morning the two of them left Boulder that Stu remembered, watching them ride off toward the Denver-Boulder 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.
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 t...
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.”