Lightning

swiftly to the counter beside the refrigerator. She pulled open a drawer and brought out another.38 Chiefs Special. Thelma said, 'What — am I sitting in the middle of an arsenal?' Laura put the second revolver back in the drawer. 'Come on. I'll give you a tour.'

Thelma followed her to the pantry. Hung on the back of the pantry door was an Uzi semiautomatic carbine.

'That's a machine gun. Is it legal to have one?'

'With federal approval, you can buy them at gunshops, though you can only get a semiautomatic; it's illegal to have them modified for full automatic fire.'

Thelma studied her, then sighed. 'Has this one been modified?'

'Yes. It's fully automatic. But I bought it that way from an illegal dealer, not a gunshop.'

'This is too spooky, Shane. Really.'

She led Thelma into the dining room and showed her the revolver that was clipped to the bottom of the sideboard. In the living room a fourth revolver was clipped under an end table next to one of the sofas. A second modified Uzi was hung on the back of the foyer door at the front of the house. Revolvers were also hidden in the desk drawer in the den, in her office upstairs, in the master bathroom, and in the nightstand in her bedroom. Finally, she kept a third Uzi in the master bedroom.

Staring at the Uzi that Laura pulled from under the bed, Thelma said, 'Spookier and spookier. If I didn't know you better, Shane, I'd think you'd gone mad, a raving paranoid gun nut. But knowing you, if you're really this scared, you've got to have some reason. But what about Chris around all these guns?'

'He knows not to touch them, and I know he can be trusted. Most Swiss families have members in the militia — nearly every male citizen there is prepared to defend his country, did you know that? — with guns in almost every house, but they have the lowest rate of accidental shootings in the world. Because guns are a way of life. Children are taught to respect them from an early age. Chris'll be okay.'

As Laura put the Uzi under the bed again, Thelma said, 'How on earth do you find an illegal gun dealer?'

'I'm rich, remember?'

'And money can buy anything? Okay, maybe that's true. But, come on, how does a gal like you find an arms dealer? They don't advertise on Laundromat bulletin boards, I presume.'

'I've researched the backgrounds to several complicated novels, Thelma. I've learned how to find anyone or anything I need.'

Thelma was silent as they returned to the kitchen. From the family room came the heroic music that accompanied Indiana Jones on all of his exploits. While Laura sat at the table and continued cleaning the revolver, Thelma poured fresh coffee for both of them.

'Straight talk now, kiddo. If there's really some threat out there that justifies all this armament, then it's bigger than you can handle yourself. Why not bodyguards?'

'I don't trust anyone. Anyone but you and Chris, that is. And Danny's father, except he's in Florida.'

'But you can't go on like this, alone, afraid…'

Working a spiral brush into the barrel of the revolver, Laura said, 'I'm afraid, yeah, but I feel good about being prepared. All my life I've stood by while people I love have been taken from me. I've done nothing about it but endure. Well, to hell with that. From now on, I fight. If anyone wants to take Chris from me, they're going to have to go through me to get him, they'll have to fight a war.'

'Laura, I know what you're going through. But listen, let me play psychoanalyst here and tell you that you're reacting less to any real threat than you are overreacting to a sense of helplessness in the face of fate. You can't thwart Providence, kid. You can't play poker with God and expect to win because you've got a.38 in your purse. I mean, you lost Danny to violence, yeah, and maybe you could say that Nina Dockweiler would have lived if someone had put a bullet in the Eel when he first deserved it, but those are the only cases where lives of people you loved might've been saved with guns. Your mother died in childbirth. Your father died of a heart attack. We lost Ruthie to fire. Learning to defend yourself with guns is fine, but you've got to keep perspective, you've got to have a sense of humor about our vulnerability as a species, or you'll wind up in an institution with people who talk to tree stumps and eat their belly-button lint. God forbid, but what if Chris got cancer? You're all prepared to blow away anyone who touches him, but you can't kill cancer with a revolver, and I'm afraid you're so crazy determined to protect him that you'll fall to pieces if something like that happens, something you can't deal with, that no one can deal with. I worry about you, kid.'

Laura nodded and felt a rush of warmth for her friend. 'I know you do, Thelma. And you can put your mind at ease. For thirty-three years I just endured; now I'm fighting back as best I can. If cancer were to strike me or Chris, I'd hire all the best specialists, seek the finest possible treatment. But if all failed, if for example Chris died of cancer, then I'd accept defeat. Fighting doesn't preclude enduring. I can fight, and if fighting fails, I can still endure.'

For a long time Thelma stared at her across the table. At last she nodded. 'That's what I hoped to hear. Okay. End of discussion. On to other things. When do you plan to buy a tank, Shane?'

'They're delivering it Monday.'

'Howitzers, grenades, bazookas?'

'Tuesday. What about the Eddie Murphy movie?'

'We closed the deal two days ago,' Thelma said.

'Really. My Thelma is going to star in a movie with Eddie Murphy?'

'Your Thelma is going to appear in a movie with Eddie Murphy. I don't think I qualify as a star yet.'

'You had fourth lead in that picture with Steve Martin, third lead in the picture with Chevy Chase. And this is second lead, right? And how many times have you hosted the Tonight show? Eight times, isn't it? Face it, you're a star.'

'Low magnitude, maybe. Isn't it weird, Shane? Two of us come from nothing, Mcllroy Home, and we make it to the top. Strange?'

'Not so strange,' Laura said. 'Adversity breeds toughness, and the tough succeed. And survive.'

2

Stefan left the snow-filled night in the San Bernardino Mountains and an instant later was inside the gate at the other end of Lightning Road. The gate resembled a large barrel, not unlike one of those that were popular in carnival funhouses, except that its inner surface was of highly polished copper rather than wood, and it did not turn under his feet. The barrel was eight feet in diameter and twelve feet long, and in a few steps he walked out of it, into the main, ground-floor lab of the institute, where he was certain that he'd be met by armed men.

The lab was deserted.

Astonished, he stood for a moment in his snow-flecked peacoat and looked around in disbelief. Three walls of the thirty-by-forty-foot room were lined floor to ceiling with machinery that hummed and clicked unattended. Most of the overhead lamps were off, so the room was softly, eerily lit. The machinery supported the gate, and it featured scores of dials and gauges that glowed pale green or orange, for the gate — which was a breach in time, a tunnel to any when — was never shut down; once closed, it could be reopened only with great difficulty and a tremendous expenditure of energy, but once open it could be maintained with comparatively little effort. These days, because the primary research work was no longer focused on developing the gate itself, the main lab was attended by institute personnel only for routine maintenance of the machinery and, of course, when a jaunt was in progress. If different circumstance had pertained, Stefan would never have been able to make the scores of secret, unauthorized trips that he had taken to monitor — and sometimes correct — the events of Laura's life.

But though it was not unusual to find the lab deserted most times of the day, it was singularly strange now, for they had sent Kokoschka to stop him, and surely they would be waiting anxiously to learn how Kokoschka had fared in those wintry California mountains. They had to have entertained the possibility that Kokoschka would fail, that the wrong man would return from 1988, and that the gate would have to be guarded until the situation was