“She knows that,” Susan said. “Fran asked me how she took it when I asked her if she’d go over there for us. She took it very well. For one thing, she reminded me that if we’d stayed with those men… remember how you found us, Stu?”
He nodded.
“If we’d stayed with them, we would have either wound up dead or in the West anyway, because that’s the direction they were going in… at least when they were sober enough to read the road-signs. She said she’d been wondering what her place in the Zone was, and guessed that her place in the Zone was out of it. And she said…”
“What?” Fran asked.
“That she’d try to come back,” Sue said, rather abruptly, and said no more. What else Dayna Jurgens had said was between the two of them, something not even the other members of the committee were to know. Dayna was going west with a ten-inch switchblade strapped to her arm in a spring-loaded clip. When she bent her wrist sharply, the spring unloaded and hey, presto, she had suddenly grown a sixth finger, one which was ten inches long and double-bladed. She felt that most of them—the men—would not have understood.
Susan could have stopped her, maybe, but she hadn’t tried. She had contented herself with extracting a promise from Dayna that she would stick to the original script unless a near-perfect opportunity came up. To that, Dayna had agreed and Sue didn’t think her friend would get that chance. Flagg would be well guarded. Still, in the three days since she had broached the idea of going west as a spy to her friend, Sue Stern had found it very difficult to sleep.
“Well,” she said to the rest of them now, “I’m home to bed. Night, folks.”
She walked off, hands in the pockets of her fatigue jacket.
“She looks older,” Stu said.
Nick wrote and offered the open pad to both of them.
Stu was on his way up to the power station the next morning when he saw Susan and Dayna headed down Canyon Boulevard on a pair of cycles. He waved and they pulled over. He thought he had never seen Dayna looking prettier. Her hair was tied behind her with a bright green silk scarf, and she was wearing a rawhide coat open over jeans and a chambray shirt. A bedroll was strapped on behind her.
“Stuart!” she cried, and waved to him, smiling.
“I understand you’re off on a little trip,” he said.
“For sure. And you never saw me.”
“Nope,” Stu said. “Never did. Smoke?”
Dayna took a Marlboro and cupped her hands over his match.
“You be careful, girl.”
“I will.”
“And get back.”
“I hope to.”
They looked at each other in the bright late-summer morning.
“You take care of Frannie, big fella.”
“I will.”
“And go easy on the marshaling.”
“That I know I can do.”
She cast the cigarette away. “What do you say, Suze?”
Susan nodded and put her bike in gear, smiling a strained smile.
“Dayna?”
She looked at him, and Stu planted a soft kiss on her mouth.
“Good luck.”
She smiled. “You have to do it twice for really good luck. Didn’t you know that?”
He kissed her again, more slowly and thoroughly this time.
“Frannie’s a lucky woman,” Dayna said. “And you can quote me.”
Smiling, not really knowing what to say, Stu stepped back and said nothing at all. Two blocks up, one of the lumbering orange Burial Committee trucks rumbled through the intersection like an omen and the moment was broken.
“Let’s go, kid,” Dayna said. “Get-em-up-Scout.”
They drove off, and Stu stood on the curbing and watched them.
Sue Stern was back two days later. She had watched Dayna moving west from Colorado Springs, she said, had watched her until she was nothing but a speck that merged with the great still landscape. Then she had cried a little. The first night Sue had made camp at Monument, and had awakened in the small hours, chilled by a low whining sound that seemed to be coming from a culvert that traveled beneath the farm road she had camped by.
Finally summoning up her courage, she had shined her flash into the corrugated pipe and had discovered a gaunt and shivering puppy. It looked to be about six months old. It shied from her touch and she was too big to crawl into the pipe. At last she had gone into the town of Monument, smashed her way into the local grocery, and had come back in the first cold light of false dawn with a knapsack full of Alpo and Cycle One. That did the trick. The puppy rode back with her, neatly tucked into one of the BSA saddlebags.
Dick Ellis went into raptures over the puppy. It was an Irish setter bitch, either purebred or so close as to make no difference. When she got older, he was sure Kojak would be glad to make her acquaintance. The news swept the Free Zone, and for that day the subject of Mother Abagail was forgotten in the excitement over the canine Adam and Eve. Susan Stern became something of a heroine, and as far as any of the committee ever knew, no one even thought to wonder what she had been doing in Monument that night, far south of Boulder.
But it was the morning the two of them left Boulder that Stu remembered, watching them ride off toward the Denver-Boulder Turnpike. Because no one in the Zone ever saw Dayna Jurgens again.
August 27; nearly dusk; Venus shining against the sky.
Nick, Ralph, Larry, and Stu sat on the steps of Tom Cullen’s house. Tom was on the lawn, whooping and knocking croquet balls through a set of wickets.
Speaking low, Stu asked if they would have to hypnotize him again, and Nick shook his head.
“Good,” Ralph said. “I don’t think I could take that action.” Raising his voice, he called: “Tom! Hey, Tommy! Come on over here!”
Tom came running over, grinning.
“Tommy, it’s time to go,” Ralph said.
Tom’s smile faltered. For the first time he seemed to notice that it was getting dark.
“Go? Now? Laws, no! When it gets dark, Tom goes to bed. M-O-O-N, that spells bed. Tom doesn’t like to be out after dark. Because of the boogies. Tom… Tom…”
He fell silent, and the others looked at him uneasily. Tom had lapsed into dull silence. He came out of it… but not in the usual way. It was not a sudden reanimation, life flooding back in a rush, but a slow thing, reluctant, almost sad.
“Go west?” he said. “Do you mean it’s
Stu laid a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, Tom. If you can.”
“On the road.”
Ralph made a choked, muttering sound and walked around the house. Tom did not seem to notice. His gaze
