I turned about, disgusted, and went stalking back to the fire. I took a stick of wood off the stack of fuel and pushed the burning embers together, found three or four small sticks of wood and laid them upon the coals. Flames immediately began to lick up about them.
Squatting by the fire, I watched Sara and Tuck walking back toward me. I waited for them to come up and stayed there, squatting, looking up at them.
They stopped and stood there, looking at me. Finally Sara spoke.
“Are we going to look for George?”
“Where do we look?” I asked.
“Why, here,” she said, with a wave of her arm indicating the dark interior of the building.
“You didn’t hear him leave,” I said. “You saw him, just as he had been all night, then a moment later when you looked back, he wasn’t there. You didn’t hear him move. If he had moved, you would have heard him. He couldn’t just get up and tiptoe away. He didn’t have the time to do it and he was blind and he couldn’t have known where he was. If he had awakened, he would have been confused and called out.”
I said to Tuck, “What do you know about this? What was it you tried to tell me?”
He shook his head, like a sulky child.
“You must believe me,” Sara said. “I didn’t go to sleep. I didn’t doze. After you woke me to get some sleep yourself, I kept faithful watch. It was exactly as I told you.”
“I believe you,” I said. “I never doubted you. That leaves it up to Tuck. If he knows something, let us hear it now before we go rushing off.”
Neither Sara nor I said a word. We waited for him and finally he spoke. “You know about the voice. The voice of the person George thought of as a friend. And here he found his friend. Right here. In this very place.”
“And you think,” I said, “he was taken by this friend of his?”
Tuck nodded. “I don’t know how,” he said, “but I hope that I am right. George deserved it. He had something good coming after all the years. You never liked him. There were a lot of people who never liked him. He grated on them. But he had a beautiful soul. He was a gentle sort of person.”
Christ, yes, I thought, a gentle sort of person. Lord save me from all these gentle, whining people.
Sara said to me, “You buy any of this, captain?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Something happened to him. I don’t know if this is it. He didn’t walk away. He didn’t make it under his own power.”
“Who is this friend of his?” asked Sara.
“Not a who,” I said. “A what.”
And, squatting there by the fire, I remembered the rush of beating wings I’d heard, flying through the upper darkness of this great abandoned building.
“There is something here,” said Tuck. “Certainly you must feel it.”
Faintly out of the darkness came a sound of ticking, a regular, orderly, rapid ticking that grew louder, seeming to draw closer. We faced around into the darkness from which the ticking came, Sara with the rifle at the ready, Tuck clutching the doll desperately against him, as if it might be some sort of fetish that would protect him from all harm.
I saw the shape that went with the ticking before the others did.
“Don’t shoot!” I yelled. “It’s Hoot.”
He came toward us, his many little feet twinkling in the firelight, ticking on the floor. He stopped when he saw all of us facing him, then came slowly in.
“Informed I am,” he said. “I knew him go and hurried back.”
“You what?” I yelled.
“Your friend is go. He disappear from sense.”
“You mean you knew the instant he was gone? How could you?”
“All of you,” he said, “I carry in my mind. Even when I cannot see. And one is gone from out my mind and I think great tragedy, so I hurry back.”
“You say you heard him go,” said Sara. “You mean just now?”
“Just short ago,”said Hoot.
“Can you tell us where? Do you know what happened to him?”
Hoot waved a tentacle wearily. “Cannot tell. Only know is gone. No use to seek for him.”
“You mean he isn’t here. Not in this building?”
“Not this edifice,” said Hoot. “Not outside. Not on this planet, maybe. He is gone entire.”
Sara glanced at me. I shrugged.
Tuck said, “Why is it so hard for you to believe a fact that you can’t touch or see? Why must all mysteries have possible solutions? Why must you think only in their terms of physical laws? Is there no room outside your little minds for something more than that?”
I should have clobbered him, I suppose, but right at that moment it didn’t seem important to pay attention to a pipsqueak such as him.
