drawn--and his appetite for it had become voracious.
Indeed, he found that he no longer had the patience to read the realist
writers who had been his lifelong favorites. Their work simply wasn't
as realistic as it had seemed before. Hell, it wasn't realistic at all
to him any longer. Now, when he was just a few pages into a book or
story by one of them, Eduardo got the distinct feeling that their point
of view consisted of an extremely narrow slice of reality, as if they
looked at life through the slit of a welder's hood. They wrote well,
certainly, but they were writing about only the tiniest sliver of the
human experience in a big world and an infinite universe.
He now preferred writers who could look beyond this horizon, who knew
that humanity would one day reach childhood's end, who believed
intellect could triumph over superstition and ignorance, and who dared
to dream.
He was also thinking about buying a second Discman and giving Wormheart
another try.
He finished a beer, put the bottle on the porch beside the rocker, and
wished he could believe the thing that had come through the doorway was
just a person from the distant future, or at least something benign.
But it had gone into hiding for more than five weeks, and its
secretiveness did not seem to indicate benevolent intentions. He was
trying not to be xenophobic. But instinct told him that he'd had a
brush with something not merely different from humanity but inherently
hostile to it.
Although his attention was focused, more often than not, on the lower
woods to the east, at the edge of which the doorway had opened, Eduardo
wasn't comfortable venturing near the northern and western woods,
either, because the evergreen wilderness on three sides of the ranch
house was contiguous, broken only by the fields to the south. Whatever
had entered the lower woods could easily make its way under the cover
of the trees into any arm of the forest.
He supposed it was possible that the traveler had not chosen to hide
anywhere nearby but had circled into the pines on the western foothills
and from there into the mountains. It might long ago have retreated
into some high redoubt, secluded ravine, or cavern in the remote
reaches of the Rocky Mountains, many miles from Quartermass Ranch.
But he didn't think that was the case.
Sometimes, when he was walking near the forest, studying the shadows
under the trees, looking for anything out of the ordinary, he was aware
of ... a presence. Simple as that. Inexplicable as that. A
presence.
On those occasions, though he neither saw nor heard anything unusual,
he was aware that he was no longer alone. So he waited.
Sooner or later something new would happen.
On those days when he grew impatient, he reminded himself of two
things.
First, he was well accustomed to waiting, since Margaret had died
three years ago, he hadn't been doing anything but waiting for the time
to come when he could join her again. Second, when at last something
