clear and safe all the way to Phoenix, and urged her not to miss the experience. It was an appointment she had in mind, not an experience, but she thanked them anyway.
She did, after all, have chains for the tires, as well as warm blankets and plenty of food if she got stuck, and although she would have welcomed a real excuse to bypass the local agent who was charged with keeping an eye on her, she thought a few inches of snow a coward's way out.
So she drove to Prescott and found it as pretty as advertised, although the snow in the streets was treacherous, its fresh white purity concealing frozen slush and a substratum of slick ice from an earlier melt. She negotiated a parking place and picked her cautious way into the designated place of meeting, and found a table.
Her contact arrived before her coffee did. He was even younger than she had thought when she spotted him through the steamed-up window of his car in the street outside, and she watched without enthusiasm as he came in the door and ran an elaborately casual eye over the crowded restaurant before doing a theatrical double take at the sight of her. He pasted a look of astonishment onto his fresh young face as he wound through the tables in her direction. An actor, he wasn't.
He greeted her by her new name, saying his own as if reminding her of it while he pumped her hand up and down and expressed his pleasure and surprise at seeing her in Prescott. He looked about nineteen, red-haired, jug- eared, earnest, and eager to get things right, and she hadn't the heart to tell him that probably half the people in the room knew that he was the local FBI man.
Instead, she played her part. She invited him to sit down and maintained her side of the meaningless conversation until he was satisfied that the neighboring tables had no interest in them, at which point he lowered his voice to get down to business. It did not take long to reassure him that yes, she had his phone number memorized, yes she would call for help if she needed it, yes she knew how to keep in touch with Glen, and no she did not need anything. She took a few minutes to explain to him just what she wanted: no interference, no drop-ins, no clever surveillance. His disappointment was profound, but with the authority of Glen McCarthy behind her, she was satisfied that he would not try to put together his own operation behind her back. She relaxed and thanked him nicely, and told him again that she would definitely call if she needed anything at all. Then she left him to pay the tab.
Anne shambled out of the restaurant feeling like a curmudgeon—no, like a bear: a vastly experienced, irritable, wily old bear disturbed too early from a winter's sleep. She climbed behind the wheel, and paused to tug Rocinante's stained mirror around. Same old lines on her face, same new brutal haircut on her head; she made a face into the mirror, baring her teeth and growling at her misted reflection. Where on earth did the government find so many fresh-faced youngsters? she asked herself sourly, reaching down to turn the key, waiting for Rocinante's engine to rattle into life. And why do they all have to be so damned cute?
Christ, Anne, she thought. Don't be disgusting. What the hell is wrong with you?
It was at that point that she realized that something was awry. Sardonic self-criticism and easy mild profanity should not be her response; those were straight from the voice of Anne Waverly, and Anne had no business here. Ana Wakefield was proving very tardy in taking her place behind Rocinante's wheel.
Anne sat in the bus, not aware that the engine was running, staring unseeing at the cracked plastic of the steering wheel and searching internally for the person she had once been: interested, gentle, patient, contemplative Annie, now Ana, a Seeker who believed rather than analyzed, who was open to ideas, not cynical about motivations, concerned with the individual and the immediate, not with patterns and theories.
Ana had to take over; it was as simple as that. There was no way Anne Waverly could act the part in Change without endangering herself and others, because it would be an act, and obvious, and dangerous as hell.
Gradually, imperceptibly, her fingers and toes grew colder and her breathing rate slowed, and the analytical scholar she had forged, through defense as much as inclination, took a small step back, and then another. Ana Wakefield was born in that bus in the snow, as curiosity began to awaken.
First off, she had to forget the details. She had never heard of Steven Change, never seen an aerial photograph of the Arizona compound or a photocopy of its building application, never reviewed the community's Web site or studied its tax returns. These were all thing she should not know; that would only trip her up and get in the way of her innocence.
Instead of facts, she had to concentrate on how she felt about Change, to open herself up and make her mind receptive to its nuances. She already had the impression of Change as a growing, energetic, interesting group of people with a strong leader filled with original ideas. Yes, she knew that Glen had reservations, and yes, an ex- member had complained at great length about the secrecy and limitations he had encountered, but that did not explain the almost excessive openness the community displayed when it came to the school or to visitors to its frequent retreat sessions, nor did it account for the presence of a number of educated, intelligent people—a professor of economics, a doctor, several schoolteachers, and a rabbi—who had dropped out of their former lives to join the community. Granted, even the most critical of minds could become gullible, open to the point of emptiness when confronted by the mumbo jumbo of another discipline. And she could not forget that boy's odd and disturbing nightmare drawing of the man in the giant pear surrounded by monsters. Still, Change promised to be sufficiently complex to be interesting.
Who knew? Ana might even learn something there.
Ana became aware that she was sitting in Rocinante staring out at the plowed drifts of snow, and had been for some time. She shook herself mentally and reached for wheel and gearshift, then hastily drew back her bare hands and patted her pockets until she found her gloves. Once they were on, she put Rocinante into first gear, drove out of the parking lot, and turned toward Jerome.
It began to snow along the narrow, mountainous road, but the fat flakes seemed to be blowing about rather than sticking, so she pressed on. The flurries dove toward her hypnotically, a moving tunnel she was driving into. Oncoming cars startled her with their nonchalant speed, but she was also encouraged by their presence—if they contained irritated drivers forced to return by a road closure ahead, one of them anyway would surely give her some sign as to the hopelessness of her progress.
Trees and sheer cliffs and the infinitely reassuring white lines of the road made up Ana's world, and she started singing to herself as a means of keeping alert, and talking aloud to Rocinante about the camber and slope of the surface, the unseen depths off to their right, the speed of the oncoming madmen, and the weather.
Coming around one sharp and completely blind turn, she was plunged into icy horror when her entire windshield was suddenly filled with a Winnebago out of Minnesota, its driver trying to avoid the overhanging cliffs by driving along the center line. She slapped her hand onto the horn and her foot gingerly on the brakes, bracing for the impact. The driver of the tin box seemed to think her panic unjustified; he clamped his hand onto his own horn in reply, drowning out Rocinante's thin wail, and pulled his vehicle just enough to the right that they passed each other with nothing more than a tap on the back of Rocinante's side mirror and a certain momentary insecurity of the right-hand tires.
Ana furiously rolled down the window and shook her fist at the behemoth, but he was already around a corner, gone from sight, and the only recipients of her indignation were the equally frustrated drivers of the mud- stained pickups and four-wheel-drive vehicles caught behind the man from Minnesota. Ana rolled up the window, shivering from the combination of cold and adrenaline, and deliberately forced her mind back to the road ahead.
With her eyes on the pavement, fighting to separate what she needed to see from the constant distraction of the swirling snowflakes, she noticed nothing else of interest the rest of the way down from the mountains aside from a handful of small waterfalls and one valiantly blooming shrub, its pink blossoms looking a bit stunned against the gray stone and white snow.
The small town of Jerome, perched on a steep hill above the mines that had given birth to it, was a welcome interruption as well as being a sign that the worst of the drive was over—and indeed, by the time she was actually in town, the snow had turned to a dull rain. Her target was Sedona, just a few miles away, but she decided to stop here and piece her nerves back together. She parked alongside the road, careful to turn the wheels into the curb, pulled her knit hat down across her ears, and got out.
The air was magnificent, clean and cold and damp and fragrant. She could smell smoke from well-seasoned firewood, and wet dog from the recesses of the porch behind her, and a faint waft of pipe tobacco. A symphony of odors, but standing out, clear as two instruments in a duet, came the fragrances of fresh coffee and hot chili peppers. She turned, smiling, and went into the cafe.
