inside Rocinante were hidden beyond the reach of the average delinquent. She did debate with herself whether she needed to pursue Carla's provocative statement 'not once they come here', but she decided that she was too tired, and that Carla was insensitive enough not to notice her guest's lack of curiosity.
Besides which, they had reached their destination, and Carla was holding open a door, turning on a light, and leading her into a building considerably less imaginative and carefully built than the communal hall had been. The walls were simple painted sheetrock, the decorations desultory and mass-produced. Her bedroom, the third and last one to the right, was cold and sparsely furnished. It could have used Dulcie's brilliant rug on the floor, Ana thought. She was pleased, though, that when Carla went over to a motel-style heater under the window and turned a dial, warm air billowed out. Carla drew the curtains against the night, checked that the two narrow beds had sheets and that there were extra blankets in the closet, pointed out the towel hanging openly on the wall, and showed Ana the shared bathroom across the hallway.
'There's no one else here tonight, though,' she said. 'It's kind of early for casual visitors, and with Steven away, there aren't any retreats scheduled. Anyway, I hope you're comfortable, and I'll see you in the morning. Oh yes, let's see. We don't have a lot of rules, except basic things like no loud music and no drugs, but we appreciate it if you don't wander into the buildings, since most of them have people living in them, and I should warn you that the outside lights go out at midnight, so take a flashlight if you're going to be out after that. And there is a community rule that we don't wear any jewelry except wedding rings, and no extreme dress, and only small amounts of makeup, which don't look like they're going to be a problem for you. Okay? Good night, then.'
Ana listened to Carla's retreat, easily followed through the flimsy walls, and fingered the hammered surface of her new necklace thoughtfully. In a moment she was alone, left in sole possession of the two-story building reserved, she thought, for unimportant guests and people outside the Change community—quite literally outside, in truth, perhaps half a mile down the road from the central compound.
The fan blew out its warm air; there was no other sound in the guest house. After a while she put her jacket back on and went to explore, but she found nothing unexpected, nothing of interest, just sixteen bedrooms, most of them with two beds, one desk, two chairs, a shared bedside table, and a rug or two on the floor. There were also six communal bathrooms, one tiny kitchen with stove and empty refrigerator, and two storage closets for bedding and cleaning materials. Only two other rooms were made up, ready for occupancy; the others had bare mattresses with folded blankets and pillows neatly stacked at their feet.
She found a heater in the bathroom nearest her room and turned it on to thaw out the chilly space, then went back to her room and sat for half an hour or so with her light out and the curtains drawn back, vague thoughts chasing themselves around her brain while her hands massaged her knee and her eyes watched the young moon. When she judged the bathroom warm enough, she took her towel and the sweatshirt and sweat pants she used as nightwear and crossed over the cold, empty hall to take the first shower she'd had since leaving Oregon.
She used a lot of lovely hot water.
She was wakened in the morning by the brisk crunch, crunch, crunch of a single person walking past her window on a gravel path. Although she lay waiting for something else, there came no other noise, and no one entered her building.
A look at the clock told her that breakfast would soon be starting in the main hall; she wondered if the members of Change drank coffee, and decided she should resign herself to something herbal or, at best, black tea. The things we do for our country, she thought, and then abruptly recalled the last time she had heard that phrase. She felt her face go red and then laughed quietly to herself, and threw back her blankets to face the new day.
Chapter Ten
From the journal of Anne Waverly (aka Ana Wakefield)
The desert was still and clear, a morning so filled with promise that one could almost believe the internal combustion engine would never be invented. Ana knew she should wander up to the communal dining hall and begin the process, but the surrounding hills called to her, and she turned her back on breakfast. After all, she did need to get the lay of the land, didn't she? She dropped her compact bird-watching binoculars into her pocket and set out for the nearest hill.
The hill was farther than it looked, and there was no easy path leading to its top. Ana scrambled and panted and prayed that her knee and her bones would stand up to the demands she was making on them.
Finally she stopped, and if it was not exactly the top, it was close. She eased herself down on to a flat boulder, and looked out upon the Change compound.
It was bigger than Glen's aerial photograph had indicated. The seven round buildings of the central compound had looked like African huts in the picture, which threw off the rest of the perspective, but in fact each circular building was much larger than the guest quarters where she had been lodged. She wouldn't be surprised if sixty or eighty people could live in each one, given a propensity for cheek-by-jowl, monastic-style housing. Four of the outside buildings seemed to be complete as well as the even larger building at the hub. The remaining two were still under construction, one of them little more than a circle of foundation blocks.
It was also more beautiful. Seen from overhead, the layout had been flat, two-dimensional. From her angle, the buildings and gardens came alive and took on a relationship to the outlying fields and the hollow of red stone in which they were laid. It still looked somewhat otherworldly, did the compound, like something inspired by space aliens, but it was at the same time clearly of this earth.
She sat in her godlike perch and watched people come and go along the red gravel paths, into the hub building and out again to one or another of the outlying sheds and barns. A group of children accompanied by a couple of taller escorts burst out of a building and swirled along one of the pathways, bright and lively dots of motion, before disappearing into the doors of the building that held the communal dining hall, their adults following sedately behind.
She lowered the small binoculars and surveyed the whole. She was satisfied with how her introduction to Change was proceeding, the familiar patterns of Anne Waverly remaining in suspension, keeping her fears and her doubts locked away to herself while her alter ago and former self Ana Wakefield walked, wide-eyed and eager, into her new and exciting experience. It was not, as she had feared, proving difficult to usher Anne behind her door. Anne was no more real than Ana Wakefield was, and now that she was in place, she remembered how restful it had been each of the earlier times, to immerse herself in a passive role, knowing there was nothing she could do except absorb it all like a sponge. And when she was saturated, Glen would reach in, pull her out, and wring her dry, and she would put on Anne Waverly again and go back to the university and the trees and her dogs.
The only thing wrong with the comfortable playacting she was wrapping herself in was that child with the frizzy black hair. She always had an uncomfortable few moments when she first met the children of her newest community. The children were always the hardest part, a strong emotional tug reaching out from her past to threaten her equilibrium. She had occasionally wondered if this was why she had ended up teaching at a university, a community that contained very few small children—her way of touching young lives while avoiding the dangerous maternal responses set off by the very young. The surprise of Dulcie, her distressing resemblance to Abby, would no doubt fade with familiarity, but the thought of the child was a bothersome little itch in the back of her mind, an irritation that kept Ana's new skin from a complete and comfortable fit.
Speaking of children, where was Dulcie now? she wondered idly, and then, What time is it, anyway? She did have a supply of food in Rocinante, but a solitary meal was hardly the best way to begin her relationship with Change. Taking a last glance at the view, she set about climbing down to the valley, and gained the bottom unscathed by dint of never raising her gaze from her feet.
Hurrying up the road, she exchanged waves and smiles with the occupants of several exiting cars. Once past the parking area, she greeted Change members with words instead of a wave: Good morning. Beautiful morning, isn't it? How are you? and nearing the main building, Is there any breakfast left?
When she got to the main hall and pulled open the heavy door, she had to step back briskly and give way to a dozen or more waist-high members of the Change community, all of them chattering away at the tops of their voices and pulling on brightly colored jackets and sweaters. They took the opening door as permission, or opportunity, and washed past her as a unit, breaking into a run and sweeping out of sight around the building toward the playground noises coming from a distance. One of the lagging adults, a woman in her early twenties busily trying to fasten a buckle on a soft baby pack worn on her chest, gave Ana a quick and apologetic smile as
