Shadowfires

the yellow Formica counter with Rachael, completing the form, the clerk—'Call me Sam,” he'd said, when he had shown them the shop's gun selection — excused himself and went to the north end of the room to assist a group of fishermen who had questions about several fly rods.

The second clerk was with another customer at the south end of the long room, carefully explaining the differences among types of sleeping bags.

Behind the counter, on a wall shelf, beside a large display of cellophane-wrapped packages of beef jerky, stood a radio tuned to a Los Angeles AM station. While Ben and Rachael had selected a shotgun and ammunition, only pop music and commercials had issued from the radio. But now the twelve-thirty news report was under way, and suddenly Ben heard his own name, and Rachael's, coming over the airwaves.

“… Shadway and Rachael Leben on a federal warrant. Mrs. Leben is the wife of the wealthy entrepreneur Eric Leben, who was killed in a traffic accident yesterday. According to a Justice Department spokesman, Shadway and Mrs. Leben are wanted in connection with the theft of highly sensitive, top-secret research files from several Geneplan Corporation projects funded by the Department of Defense, as well as for suspicion of murder in the case of two Palm Springs police officers killed last night in a brutal machine-gun attack.”

Rachael heard it too. “That's crazy!”

Putting one hand on her arm to quiet her, Ben glanced nervously at the two clerks, who were still busy elsewhere in the store, talking to other customers. The last thing Ben wanted was to draw their attention to the news report. The clerk named Sam had already seen Ben's driver's license before pulling a firearms information form from the file. He knew Ben's name, and if he heard it on the radio, he was almost certain to react to it.

Protestations of innocence would be of no use. Sam would call the cops. He might even have a gun behind the counter, under the cash register, and might try to use it to keep Ben and Rachael there until the police arrived, and Ben did not want to have to take a gun away from him and maybe hurt him in the process.

“Jarrod McClain, director of the Defense Security Agency, who is coordinating the investigation and the manhunt for Shadway and Mrs. Leben, issued a statement to the press in Washington within the past hour, calling the case 'a matter of grave concern that can reasonably be described as a national security crisis.' ”

Sam, over in the fishing-gear department, laughed at something a customer said — and started back toward the cash register. One of the fishermen was coming with him. They were talking animatedly, so if the news report was registering with them, it was getting through, at best, on only a subconscious level. But if they stopped talking before the report concluded…

“Though asserting that Shadway and Mrs. Leben have seriously damaged their country's security, neither McClain nor the Justice Department spokesman would specify the nature of the research being done by Geneplan for the Pentagon.” ”

The two approaching men were twenty feet away, still discussing the merits of various brands of fly rods and spinning reels.

Rachael was staring at them apprehensively, and Ben bumped lightly against her to distract her, lest her expression alert them to the significance of the news on the radio.

“… recombinant' DNA as Geneplan's sole business …”

Sam rounded the end of the sales counter. The customer's course paralleled that of the clerk, and they continued talking across the yellow Formica as they approached Rachael and Ben.

“Photographs and descriptions of Benjamin Shadway and Rachael Leben have gone out to all police agencies in California and most of the Southwest, along with a federal advisory that the fugitives are armed and dangerous.”

Sam and the fisherman reached the cash register, where Ben turned his attention back to the government form.

The newscaster had moved on to another story.

Ben was startled and delighted to hear Rachael launch smoothly into a line of bubbly patter, engaging the fisherman's attention. The guy was tall, burly, in his fifties, wearing a black T-shirt that exposed his beefy arms, both of which featured elaborate blue-and-red tattoos. Rachael professed to be simply fascinated by tattoos, and the angler, like most men, was flattered and pleased by the gushy attention of a beautiful young woman. Anyone listening to Rachael's charming and slightly witless chatter — for she assumed the attitude of a California beach girl airhead — would never have suspected that she had just listened to a radio reporter describe her as a fugitive wanted for murder.

The same slightly pompous-sounding reporter was currently talking about a terrorist bombing in the Mideast, and Sam, the clerk, clicked a knob on the radio, cutting him off in midsentence. “I'm plain sick of hearing about those damn A-rabs,” he said to Ben.

“Who isn't?” Ben said, completing the last line of the form.

“Far as I'm concerned,” Sam said, “if they give us any more grief, we should just nuke 'em and be done with it.”

“Nuke 'em,” Ben agreed. “Back to the Stone Age.”

The radio was part of the tape deck, and Sam switched that on, popped in a cassette. “Have to be farther back than the Stone Age. They're already living in the damn Stone Age.”

“Nuke 'em back to the Age of Dinosaurs,” Ben said as a song by the Oak Ridge Boys issued from the cassette player.

Rachael was making astonished and squeamish sounds as the fisherman told her how the tattoo needles embedded the ink way down beneath all three layers of skin.

“Age of the Dinosaurs,” Sam agreed. “Let 'em try their terrorist crap on a tyrannosaurus, huh?”

Ben laughed and handed over the completed form.

The purchases had already been charged to Ben's Visa card, so all Sam had to do was staple the charge slip and the cash-register tape to one copy of the firearms information form and put the paperwork in the bag that held the four boxes of ammunition. “Come see us again.”

“I'll sure do that,” Ben said.

Rachael said good-bye to the tattooed fisherman, and Ben said hello and good-bye to him, and they both said good-bye to Sam. Ben carried the box containing the shotgun, and Rachael carried the plastic sack that contained the boxes of ammunition, and they moved nonchalantly across the room toward the front door, past stacks of aluminum bait buckets with perforated Styrofoam liners, past furled minnow-seining nets and small landing nets that looked like tennis rackets with badly stretched strings, past ice chests and thermos bottles and colorful fishing hats.

Behind them, in a voice that he believed to be softer than it actually was, the tattooed fisherman said to Sam: “Quite a woman.”

You don' t know the half of it, Ben thought as he pushed open the door for Rachael and followed her outside.

Less than ten feet away, a San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy was getting out of a patrol car.

* * *

Fluorescent light bounced off the green and white ceramic tile, bright enough to reveal every hideous detail, too bright.

The bathroom mirror, framed in brass, was unmarred by spots or yellow streaks of age, and the reflections it presented were crisp and sharp and clear in every detail, too clear.

Eric Leben was not surprised by what he saw, for while sitting in the living-room armchair, he had already hesitantly used his hands to explore the startling changes in the upper portions of his face. But visual confirmation of what his disbelieving hands had told him was shocking, frightening, depressing — and more fascinating than anything else he'd seen in his entire life.

A year ago, he had subjected himself to the imperfect Wildcard program of genetic editing and augmentation. Since then, he had caught no colds, no flu, had been plagued by no mouth ulcers or headaches, not even acid indigestion. Week by week, he had gathered evidence supporting the contention that the treatment had wrought a desirable change in him without negative side effects.

Side effects.

He almost laughed. Almost.