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"What the hell is this all about?" Deputy Bockner asked, finally unable to repress his curiosity

"Believe me," Lem said, "you don’t want to know"

"What was in this cave?" Bockner asked

Lem only shook his head If two ood fortune that they had been murdered in a national forest This was federal land, which meant much simpler procedures by which the NSA could assuation

Cliff Soahtfully

Looking around the eerie chamber one last tierous quarry: When I find you, I won’t consider trying to take you alive; no net or tranquilizer guns, as the scientists and the military types would prefer; instead, I’ll shoot you quick and clean, take you down fast

That was not only the safest plan It would also be an act of coust, Nora sold all of Aunt Violet’s furniture and other possessions She had phoned a man who dealt in antiques and secondhand furniture, and he had given her one price for everything, and she had accepted it happily Now-except for dishes, silverware, and the furniture in the bedroom that she had made her own-the rooms were empty from wall to wall The house seemed cleansed, purified, exorcised All evil spirits had been driven out, and she knew she now had the will to redecorate entirely But she no longer wanted the place, so she telephoned a real-estate agent and put it on the market

Her old clothes were gone, too, all of them, and she had an entirely neardrobe with slacks and skirts and blouses and jeans and dresses like any woht colors, but she always resisted the urge to change into soe to put her artistic talent on the ed her about it now and then, in ways he thought were subtle, but she was not ready to lay her fragile ego on the anvil and give just anyone a chance to swing a hammer at it Soon, but not yet

Sometimes, when she looked at herself in a mirror or noticed her reflection in a sun-silvered store , she realized that, indeed, she was pretty Not beautiful, perhaps, not gorgeous like some movie star, but moderately pretty However, she did not seeh perception of her appearance, at least not for long, because every few days she would be surprised anew by the co back at her froust, late in the afternoon, she and Travis were sitting at the table in his kitchen, playing Scrabble, and she was feeling pretty A few o, in the bathroom, she’d had another of those revelations when she had looked in the mirror, and in fact she had liked her looks more than ever before Now, back at the Scrabble board, she felt buoyant, happier than she would have once believed possible-andher tiles to spell nonsense words and then vociferously defended theiti at the board "There’s no such word as ’dofnup’"

"It’s a triangular cap that loggers wear," she said

"Loggers?"

"Like Paul Bunyan"

"Loggers wear knit caps, what you call toboggan caps, or round leather caps with earflaps"

"I’ about what they wear to work in the woods," she explained patiently " ’Dofnup’ That’s the nahed and shook his head "Are you putting ht face "No It’s true"

"Loggers wear a special cap to bed?"

"Yes The dofnup"

He was unaccustomed to the very idea that Nora would play a joke on him, so he fell for it "Dofnup? Why do they call it that?"

"Beats me," she said

Einstein was on the floor, on his belly, reading a novel Since graduating with startling swiftness from picture books to children’s literature like The Wind in the Willows, he had been reading eight and ten hours a day, every day He couldn’t get enough books He’d beco’s obsession with reading had finally outstripped Nora’s patience for holding books and turning pages, they had tried to puzzle out an arrangement that would make it possible for Einstein to keep a volues himself At a hospital-supply coned for patients who had the use of neither ars It was a metal stand onto which the boards of the book were clamped; electrically powered mechanical ares and held theic could operate it with a stylus held in his teeth; Einstein used his nose The dog seee he had just read, pushed one of the buttons, and turned another page

Travis spelled "wicked" and picked up a lot of points by using a doublescore square, so Nora used her tiles to spell "hurkey," which orth even more points

"’Hurkey’?" Travis said doubtfully

"It’s a favorite Yugoslavian meal," she said

"It is?"

"Yes The recipe includes both ham and turkey, which is why they call it-" She couldn’t finish She broke into laughter

He gaped at her in astonish me on! Nora Devon, what’s become of you? When I first ri woman I’ve ever seen’"

"And squirrelly"

"Well, not squirrelly"

"Yes, squirrelly," she insisted "You thought I was squirrelly"

"All right, yeah, I thought you were so squirrelly you probably had the attic of that house packed full of walnuts"

Grinning, she said, "If Violet and I had lived in the south, we’d have been straight out of Faulkner, wouldn’t we?"

"Too weird even for Faulkner But now just look at you! Making up du them ’cause I’d never expect Nora Devon, of all people, to do any such thing You’ve sure changed in these few months"