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They were so stupid Like everything in nature, they were really stupid, poorly designed, requiring tooall the time, so stupid that they would just stand and watch, hour after hour, as she swept, just stand and watch, too stupid to understand that she orking for the total destruction of them and of the natural world that sustained theh at them, but she couldn’t In theory, she quite understood the psychological and es, one more indication of their lack of seriousness, of how easily they were distracted Cohter to pass for the people they replaced, but laughter never distracted the or not laughing, humans were inattentive, heedless, preoccupied, oblivious fools, no better than horses
For a while, she pretended laughter, practiced it diligently, so that if at some point she needed to masquerade as an a The swish of the broom, the squeak of the wheels, the creak of the chair seat, the sough and snuffle of the wind, and her laughter, and the snow fluttering down and vanishing in , the stupid horses, so easily entertained
Chapter 44
A lover of history and tradition, Addison Hawk had never been afraid of change Occasionally suspicious of the reasons behind some of it, often unconvinced about its value, but not afraid Until now Replications of people being pu their ene video made by one of the Riders seemed to support the fear that if the end of huun in Rainbow Falls, if this battle could be won, the victory would be brief, and the end would begin elsewhere, the ene else equally posthuman but even worse
He didn’t knohat to make of Deucalion The name Frankenstein had been shared with him, as it had not been shared with either the people at the Samples house or with the staff at KBOW As an editor and a publisher, knowledge was his business, his life, but he was in danger of infor a dozen of the Riders’ youngest children--between four and eleven years of age--to Erika’s house, he knew this must be the beautiful and self-possessed woman whom he had encountered earlier in the day outside of Jim James Bakery He didn’t know of another Erika in Rainbow Falls He volunteered to go with Deucalion and to stay with Erika, to help her ht later
With the children on benches in the back of the truck, Addison rode up front with Deucalion He was given to understand that the giant knew a shortcut, a way around the roadblocks, but this mode of travel--teleportation?--was just as unprecedented as all else on this day As Deucalion drove along the Sa about the arrow of ti indeterminate on the quantum level, that every moment contained both all the past and all the future And when they turned left into the street, they also and instantly turned into Erika’s driveway, four miles north of town, and parked near the front porch of the house
Evidently aware that Addison had been stunned into ian from an inexpressibly dense speck of ht--a concept--as it wasoutward in all directions through these billions of years, that speck of matter has become the universe as we know it But on a fundamental level, because all of time is present in every moment of time, the universe is still that dense speck, it’s si that it has since expanded to become So while the universe is vast, it is also very tiny, a speck, and in that speck, all places are the same place The Samples house is one step fro, which is one step from Mars You just have to kno to live in the reality of the universe in both of the states that it exists"
Although he was ato say Then he said, "I’ll get the kids out of the back"
Erika waited for them on the porch As Addison followed the children up the front steps, she appeared surprised--and he thought perhaps pleased--to see hih the cold wind chapped lips and pinched cheeks, Erika kept the Riders’ children on the porch long enough to explain to theirl like them, but also a special little boy This wonderful little boy, she said, had suffered much in his life, mostly because he looked so different from other children She said he was self-conscious about his appearance, his feelings were easily hurt, and all he wanted was to have friends and be a friend to others She are that all the Rider children knew about Jesus, and she reoodness, not appearances He valued goodness even ot to know this special little boy, they would love hiot to know him, if suddenly he seemed very scary, that would only be because he had smiled He had a very unfortunate smile He would try not to smile, because he didn’t want to scare people, but sometimes he just couldn’t help hi to eat you alive, that was just silly, because he was only s this wonderful little boy and shared their anticipation with one another, Addison wasn’t sure that he was as eager for the encounter as they were Laboratory-made people, voracious nanoanimals, Frankenstein and his two-hundred-year-old creation, teleportation or soht
Erika smiled at him as she waited for the children to take off their snow-caked boots, and he decided to accept her invitation She ushered the rooirl stood beside the special little boy whom apparently Jesus wanted them to love The boy was immeasurably more special than Addison Hawk had expected, and if the word boy actually applied, Addison’s dictionaries were so out of date that he ht as well burn them
Not one of the kids screafor a bucket Or a stick Or an oven to bake hiasped twice, and a few smiled, sort of, smiled funny-like None of the as Jocko’s eyes They seeet it Then he did They weren’t interested in hinized royalty when they saw it
Sweeping one hand toward his teatireat honor to present her royal highness, Princess Chrissy, daughter of the king of Montana"
Chapter 45
Listening to Grace Ahern, Sully York aspired to be the pulp-fiction hero that he’d been often before, in the best moments of his eventful life He had been shaped by the boy’s-adventure novels he began reading when he was eight years old He’d read hundreds As a young ures in those books, and when he had realized he was doing so, he decided that he would have more fun if he consciously styled himself after them He are that some people could not abide him But he knew at least a thousand men who modeled themselves after Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, and ere all the very self-satisfied phonies they supposedly despised, so he reckoned that he had done well enough Now, as Grace Ahern told her tale, Sully York reacted in the finest pulp tradition: He felt his blood boil with outrage, his heart pound with a sense of adventure, his spleen sith righteous anger, his spine stiffen with courage, and his gut clench with the right kind of healthy fear, the kind that wouldn’t loosen the bowels
Just outside of the walk-in pantry, Grace, a da desperately to her son, Travis, as proving hiet her out of there, away fro instead that they had to understand--and act
This display of fortitude and commitment made hershadows created by the upwash of flashlight beams, she could quicken a stout heart, and he knew she would be lovelier in any other a Bryce Walker asto read whether the writer was smitten by her Well, it didn’t matter if they were both charmed by Grace Ahern, because they were both too old for her, and it would be absurd to think otherwise Of course, there were men in Sully’s family who had lived well past a hundred, still physically fit, active, and mentally sharp Some of them even held jobs past the century mark But that was neither here nor there They were both too old to charm her as she charmed them, and that was the end of it
Grace recounted how the culinary and janitorial staffs finished serving lunch the previous afternoon and were cleaning up the kitchen and the cafeteria when they were assaulted by police officers and by the principal, the assistant principal, the school nurse, and other people hounlike stainless-steel device was pressed to their heads, the trigger pulled