He looked around, encouraging his sycophants’ laughter. They laughed, obediently, but didn’t look very happy about it. Sam waited.
“Yeah, you used to pretend you were part Indian when you were in the second grade,” Bethica pointed out. “Remember? You did a lot of sneaking then. Now all you can do is beat people up. And he’s never done anything to you.”
“Like hell he didn’t,” Kevin said with sudden fury. “He tried to make a fool of me. I don’t take that from anybody, especially not some damn bartender.”
“I don’t think it’s last Friday that’s bothering you at all, is it? It’s Wickie. Last Friday was just—”
One of the girls in the group laughed. “Bethie has a crush on Wickie!”
“I do not!”
It was amazing, Sam thought, how quickly a teenager— or a group of teenagers—could regress to acting like six- year-olds. They crowded around Bethica making verbal jabs about her supposed relationship with Wickie, and she denied them all, getting more and more red in the face and finally crying. If he walked out in that clearing now, he realized, he’d probably completely ruin her reputation for good. He had to let her battle it out by herself, and as long as she wasn’t suffering any physical harm, he would.
He started moving back, to go around the clearing and find out where she’d parked, to keep her from getting in her car and driving off. In the state of mind she was in at the moment, he could well imagine she wouldn’t be paying too much attention to her driving.
He could still hear the laughter from the clearing as he worked his way around; it didn’t yet have the particular ugly undertone of violence. Bethica was still protesting, from the sound of it, perhaps too much.
“Bethie’s got it bad for Wickie!”
“How is he, Bethica?”
“What’s Rimae gonna say? I hear she kinda likes him too.”
“She’s gonna run away to the reservation with Wickie!”
“She’s gonna raise papooses!”
That one was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Bethica pushed her way out of her circle of tormentors and began running up the dirt road. She went past just as Sam fought his way out from the brush.
“Bethica?” he called, trying to pitch his voice to reach the weeping girl without attracting the attention of the occu-pants of the clearing. He didn’t think much of anything would get their attention now, though; they were celebrating Bethica’s rout, not pursuing her.
“Bethica!” Unfortunately, Bethica didn’t know that; what she must have seen with her blurred vision was something dark, terrifying, looming at her from the direction of the clearing. She screamed and bolted.
Sam found himself chasing her down the dirt road, past the vehicles parked at random angles. Wickie was in good shape; Sam had had occasion to test that over the past three days; but Bethica was frightened, running like a gazelle, and Sam had to push himself to catch her.
“Beth-i-ca—it’s me, Wickie!”
Bethica wasn’t listening. They were past the turnoff to the paved road now, and the “road” had dwindled to no more than a rapidly narrowing path. He tried to catch at the fringes of her vest.
She gasped and veered away, toward the tall brush and trees at the side of the road.
And vanished.
Sam tried to skid to a halt. As a result, he was completely off balance when he toppled through the hole in the brush Bethica had made.
He expected to hit the ground hard, and tried to relax into the fall. This would have worked, had there been any ground to hit.
Instead he toppled down a small cliff and landed on top of Bethica, who screamed again and beat at him.
“Hey, wait a minute!” He managed to catch hold of her flailing fists in the dark. “Bethica, calm down! It’s Wickie! Come on, Bethica!”
Her frantic efforts to defend herself against the monster from the dark froze. Sam managed to get himself untangled from her, then froze himself as rocks slipped and his right foot pawed for purchase on thin air. “Ohboy.”
Bethica deflated back into tears.
Sam cautiously brought himself back onto solid ground. “Are you okay?” he asked, wedging the two of them closer to the slope they’d fallen down. He could barely see the glimmer of moonlight reflected off the skin of her face, and it was marred by shadows.
He twisted around to sit beside her and brushed at those shadows, relieved to find only dirt and the dampness of tears instead of blood. “Are you okay?” he asked again.
“I’m fine. Ow.”
“There’s an inherent contradiction in that,” Al observed.
Sam jumped, not least because Al looked like a ghost, standing in the light of the Imaging Chamber. That light didn’t illuminate the ledge Sam and Bethica were sitting on; Al stood in a shimmer all his own. If it weren’t for the cigar stuck in the middle of his mouth, he might have been mistaken for a heavenly apparition.
Sam knew better. He grimaced, unable to respond to the hologrammic image, and went back to Bethica. “Where does it hurt?” he asked, shifting around carefully. He was sitting on rocks and branches, and it was damned uncomfortable. “Is everything okay?” The question didn’t make much sense for Bethica, but it wasn’t intended for the girl anyway.
Al surveyed the man and girl before him and shook his head. “Not exactly.”
At the same time, Bethica sniffled, “My ankle—”
Sam leaned forward cautiously. “Which one?”
As he unwound Bethica’s leg out from under her and probed gingerly at her ankle, Al provided a summary of the situation. “—So we’re kind of back where we started, Sam,” he finished, just as Bethica yelped in affirmation.
“That’s it?” Sam asked his patient. “Or is there more?”
She wiped at her nose, nearly elbowing him in the eye in the process.
Al assumed the question was for him. “Ziggy
