Page 22 (1/2)

As Laura put the Uzi under the bed again, Thelun dealer?"

"I’? Okay, al like you find an arms dealer? They don’t advertise on Laundromat bulletin boards, I presurounds to several complicated novels, Thel I need"

Thelma was silent as they returned to the kitchen From the family room came the heroic music that accompanied Indiana Jones on all of his exploits While Laura sat at the table and continued cleaning the revolver, Thelht talk now, kiddo If there’s really some threat out there that justifies all this arer than you can handle yourself Why not bodyguards?"

"I don’t trust anyone Anyone but you and Chris, that is And Danny’s father, except he’s in Florida"

"But you can’t go on like this, alone, afraid "

Working a spiral brush into the barrel of the revolver, Laura said, "I’ prepared All my life I’ve stood by while people I love have been taken fro about it but endure Well, to hell with that Froht If anyone wants to take Chris froet hiht a war"

"Laura, I knohat you’re going through But listen, let me play psychoanalyst here and tell you that you’re reacting less to any real threat than you are overreacting to a sense of helplessness in the face of fate You can’t thwart Providence, kid You can’t play poker with God and expect to win because you’ve got a 38 in your purse I mean, you lost Danny to violence, yeah, and maybe you could say that Nina Dockweiler would have lived if someone had put a bullet in the Eel when he first deserved it, but those are the only cases where lives of people you loved uns Your mother died in childbirth Your father died of a heart attack We lost Ruthie to fire Learning to defend yourself with guns is fine, but you’ve got to keep perspective, you’ve got to have a sense of humor about our vulnerability as a species, or you’ll wind up in an institution with people who talk to tree stumps and eat their belly-button lint God forbid, but what if Chris got cancer? You’re all prepared to bloay anyone who touches him, but you can’t kill cancer with a revolver, and I’m afraid you’re so crazy determined to protect hi like that happens, so you can’t deal with, that no one can deal with I worry about you, kid"

Laura nodded and felt a rush of warmth for her friend "I know you do, Thelma And you can put your mind at ease For thirty-three years I just endured; now I’ back as best I can If cancer were to strike me or Chris, I’d hire all the best specialists, seek the finest possible treatment But if all failed, if for exahting doesn’t preclude enduring I can fight, and if fighting fails, I can still endure"

For a long time Thelma stared at her across the table At last she nodded "That’s what I hoped to hear Okay End of discussion On to other things When do you plan to buy a tank, Shane?"

"They’re delivering it Monday"

"Howitzers, grenades, bazookas?"

"Tuesday What about the Eddie Murphy o," Thel to star in ato appear in a movie with Eddie Murphy I don’t think I qualify as a star yet"

"You had fourth lead in that picture with Steve Martin, third lead in the picture with Chevy Chase And this is second lead, right? And how ht tinitude, , McIlroy Hoe," Laura said "Adversity breeds toughness, and the tough succeed And survive"

Stefan left the snow-filled night in the San Bernardino Mountains and an instant later was inside the gate at the other end of Lightning Road The gate resee barrel, not unlike one of those that were popular in carnival funhouses, except that its inner surface was of highly polished copper rather than wood, and it did not turn under his feet The barrel was eight feet in dia, and in a few steps he walked out of it, into the round-floor lab of the institute, where he was certain that he’d be met by armed men

The lab was deserted

Astonished, he stood for a moment in his snow-flecked peacoat and looked around in disbelief Three walls of the thirty-by-forty-foot roo with machinery that hummed and clicked unattended Most of the overhead lamps were off, so the rooate, and it featured scores of dials and gauges that glowed pale green or orange, for the gate-which was a breach in time, a tunnel to any as never shut down; once closed, it could be reopened only with great difficulty and a trey, but once open it could be maintained with comparatively little effort These days, because the priate itself, the main lab was attended by institute personnel only for routine maintenance of the ress If different circumstance had pertained, Stefan would never have been able to make the scores of secret, unauthorized trips that he had taken to monitor-and soh it was not unusual to find the lab deserted e now, for they had sent Kokoschka to stop hi anxiously to learn how Kokoschka had fared in those wintry California mountains They had to have entertained the possibility that Kokoschka would fail, that the wrong ate would have to be guarded until the situation was resolved Where were the secret police in their black trenchcoats with padded shoulders? Where were the guns hich he had expected to be greeted?

He looked at the large clock on the wall and saw that it was six minutes past eleven o’clock, local tiun the jaunt at five , and every jaunt ended exactly eleven an No one knehy, but noa time traveler spent at the other end of his journey, only eleven minutes passed at home base He had been in the San Bernardinos for nearly an hour and a half, but only eleven minutes had transpired in his own life, in his own ti the yellow button on his belt, activating the beacon, he would still have returned to the institute only-and precisely-eleven minutes after he had left it

But where were the authorities, the guns, his angry colleagues expressing their outrage? After discovering hisKokoschka to get hiate when they had to wait only eleven minutes to learn the outcome of the confrontation?

Stefan took off his boots, peacoat, and shoulder holster, and tucked theht in a corner behind some equipment He had left his white lab coat in the same place when he had departed on the jaunt, and now he slipped into it again Baffled, still worried in spite of the lack of a hostile greeting coround-floor corridor and went looking for trouble

At two-thirty SundayLaura was at her word processor in the office adjacent to theapple juice, and working on a new book The only light in the rooreen letters on the cohtly focused on a printout of yesterday’s pages A revolver lay on the desk beside the script

The door to the dark hallas open She never closed any but the bathrooht prevent her froress of an intruder in another part of the house The house had a sophisticated alarm system, but she kept interior doors open just in case

She heard Thel down the hallway, and she turned just as her friend looked through the door "Sorry if I’ve htclub types work late But I sleep till noon What about you? You usually up at this hour?"