By the Light of the Moon

Shepherd chewed another pat of butter with enthusiasm, all the while staring at his plate from a distance of just ten inches, as though he, like Dylan, had discovered the purpose of life, and as though that purpose were meat loaf.

19

Each time the door opened and a customer entered, Dylan tensed. The SUV crowd couldn't have tracked them this fast. And yet…

The waitress brought the second round of beers, and after Jilly drew cold comfort from a swallow of Sierra Nevada, she said, 'So we hole up somewhere around the Petrified Forest and… You said what? You said think?'

'Think,' Dylan confirmed.

'Think about what, besides how to stay alive?'

'Maybe we can figure out how to track down Frankenstein.'

'You forget he's dead?' she asked.

'I mean, track down who he was before they killed him.'

'We don't even have a name, except the one we made up.'

'But he was evidently a scientist. Medical research. Developing psychotropic drugs, psychotropic stuff, psychotropic something, which gives us a key word. Scientists write papers, produce articles for journals, give lectures. They leave a trail.'

'Intellectual breadcrumbs.'

'Yeah. And if I think about it, I might remember more of what the bastard said back there in my motel room, other key words. With enough key words, we can go on the Internet and winnow through the researchers working to enhance brain function, related areas.'

'I'm no tech whiz,' she said. 'Are you?'

'No. But this search doesn't take technical expertise, just patience. Even some of those stuffy science journals run photos of their contributors, and if he was near the top of his field, which it seems he must've been, then he'll have gotten newspaper coverage. As soon as we find a photo, we have a name. Then we can read about him and find out what he's been working on.'

'Unless his research was all top secret, like the Manhattan Project, like the formula for fudge-covered Oreos.'

'There you go again.'

'Even if we get the full skinny on him,' she said, 'how does that help us?'

'Maybe there's a way to undo what he did to us. An antidote or something.'

'Antidote. What – we toss frog tongues, bat wings, and lizard eyes in a big cauldron, stew them up with some broccoli?'

'Here comes Negative Jackson, vortex of pessimism. The folks at DC Comics ought to develop a new superhero around you. They go in for brooding, depressive superheroes these days.'

'And you're a Disney book. All sugar and talking chipmunks.'

In a Wile E. Coyote T-shirt, hunched over his dinner plate, Shep snickered, either because the Disney crack rang his bell or because he found the remaining meat loaf amusing.

Shepherd wasn't always as disconnected as he appeared to be.

'What I'm saying,' Dylan continued, 'is that maybe his work was controversial. And if so, then it's possible some of his colleagues opposed his research. One of them will understand what was done to us – and might be willing to help.'

'Yeah,' she said, 'and if a lot of money is needed to finance the research to find this antidote, we can always get a few billion from your uncle Scrooge McDuck.'

'You have a better idea?'

She stared at him as she drank her beer. One swallow. Two.

'I didn't think so,' he said.

Later, when the waitress brought the check, Jilly insisted on paying for the two beers that she'd ordered.

From her attitude, Dylan deduced that paying her own way was an issue of honor with her. Further, he suspected that she would no more graciously accept a nickel for a parking meter than she would take ten bucks for two beers and a tip.

After putting the tenner on the table, she counted the contents of her wallet. The calculation didn't require much time or higher mathematics. 'I'll need to find an ATM, make a withdrawal.'

'No can do,' he said. 'Those guys who blew up your car – if they have any kind of law-enforcement connections, which they probably do, then they'll be able to follow a plastic trail. And quick.'

'You mean I can't use credit cards, either?'

'Not for a while, anyway.'

'Big trouble,' she muttered, staring glumly into her wallet.

'It's not big trouble. Not considering our other problems.'

'Money trouble,' she said solemnly, 'is never little trouble.'

In that one statement, Dylan could read whole chapters from the autobiography of her childhood.

Although he didn't know for sure that the men in pursuit of her could have connected Jilly to him and Shep, Dylan decided not to use any of his plastic, either. When the restaurant ran his card through their point-of-sale verification machine, the transaction would register in a credit-clearing center. Any legitimate law-enforcement agency or any gifted hacker with dirty money behind him, monitoring that center either with a court order or secretly, might be running software that could track selected individuals immediately upon the execution of a credit-card purchase.

Paying with cash, Dylan was surprised to feel no charge of uncanny energy on the currency, which had passed through uncountable hands before coming into his possession in a bank withdrawal a couple days ago. This suggested that unlike fingerprints, psychic spoor faded completely away with time.

He told the waitress to keep the change, and he took Shep to the men's room, while Jilly visited the ladies'.

'Pee,' Shep said as soon as they walked into the lavatory and he knew where they were. He put his book on a shelf above the sinks. 'Pee.'

'Pick a stall,' Dylan said. 'I think they're all unused.'

'Pee,' Shep said, keeping his head down, peering up from under his brow as he shuffled to the first of the four stalls. From behind the door, as he latched it, he said, 'Pee.'

A robust seventy-something man with a white mustache and white muttonchops stood at one of the sinks, washing his hands. The air smelled of orange-scented soap.

Dylan approached a urinal. Shep couldn't produce at a urinal because he feared being spoken to while indisposed.

'Pee,' Shep called out from behind his stall door. 'Pee.'

In any public restroom, Shepherd became so uncomfortable that he needed to be in continuous voice contact with his brother, to assure himself that he hadn't been abandoned.

'Pee,' Shep said, growing anxious in his stall. 'Dylan, pee. Dylan, Dylan. Pee!'

'Pee,' Dylan replied.

Shep's spoken pee served a purpose similar to that of a signal broadcast by submarine sonar apparatus, and Dylan's response was equivalent to the return ping that signified the echolocation of another vessel, in this case a known and friendly presence in the scary depths of the men's room.

'Pee,' said Shep.

'Pee,' Dylan replied…

In the mirrored wall above the urinals, Dylan observed the retiree's reaction to this verbal sonar.