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Trott found it wedged between the bed and one of the nightstands

Loman emptied the contents onto the h the plastic s full of credit cards and photographs, until he found her driver’s license According to the license data, she was five-four, one hundred and four pounds, blond, blue-eyed Loraph

"She’s a looker," Aet a bite of that," Trott said

His officer’s choice of words gave Lo whether Trott meant "bite" as a euphe a very real subconscious desire to savage the woressives had torn apart the couple from Portland

"We knohat she looks like," Loman said "That helps"

Trott’s hard, sharp features were inadequate for the expression of gentler eht, but they perfectly conveyed the anie to violence that seethed deep within hi her in?"

"Yes She doesn’t know anything, really, but on the other hand she knows too much She knows the couple down the hall were killed, and she probably saw a regressive"

"Maybe the regressives followed her through theand got her," Aht find her body soe"

"Could be," Lo her in You called Callan?"

"Yeah," Aet this place cleaned up," Loht, until everyone in town’s been put through the Change Then, when Moonlight Cove’s secure, we can concentrate on finding the regressives and eli them"

Trott and Amberlay lances they exchanged, Loressives, that they, too, felt the call toward that unburdened, primitive state It was an awareness of which none of theive it voice was to admit that Moonhaas a deeply flawed project and that they ht all be damned

41

Mike Peyser heard the dial tone and fumbled with the buttons, which were too sers Abruptly he realized that he could not call Shaddack, dared not call Shaddack, though they had known each other for ether at Stanford, could not call Shaddack even though it was Shaddack who had made him what he was, because Shaddack would consider hiressive, and Shaddack would have him restrained in a laboratory and either treat him with all the tenderness that a vivisectionist bestowed upon a white rat or destroy hi conversion of Moonlight Cove Peyser shrieked in frustration He tore the telephone out of the wall and threw it across the bedroolass

His sudden perception of Shaddack as a powerful enemy rather than a friend and ht that Peyser had for a while His fear was a trapdoor that opened under hi him down into the darkness of the priht hunt He h the house, sometimes in a frenzy, sometimes in a sullen slouch, not sure why he was alternately excited, depressed, or ss than intellect

He relieved hi room, sniffed his own urine, then went into the kitchen in search of more food Now and then his mind cleared, and he tried to call his body back to its more civilized form, but when his tissues would not respond to his will, he cycled down into the darkness of anih to appreciate the irony of having been reduced to savagery by a process--the Change--meant to elevate hiht was too bleak to be endured, and a new descent into the savage rip of a primitive consciousness and when the clouds lifted froht of the boy, Eddie Valdoski, the boy, the tender boy, and he thrilled to thein the cold night air

42

Physically and mentally exhausted, Chrissie nevertheless was not able to sleep In the burlap tarps in the back of Mr Eulane’s truck, she hung fro o and fall into unconsciousness

She felt inco had been left undone--and suddenly she was crying Burying her face in the fragrant and slightly scratchy burlap, she bawled as she’d not done in years, with the abandon of a baby She wept for her mother and father, perhaps lost forever, not taken cleanly by death but by so foul, dirty, inhuman, satanic She wept for the adolescence that would have been hers--horses and seaside pastures and books read on the beach--but that had been shattered beyond repair She wept, as well, over soh she suspected it was innocence or ood over evil

None of the fictional heroines she ad, and Chrissie was embarrassed by her torrent of tears But to as as human as to err, and perhaps she needed to cry, in part, to prove to herself that no er, she was still Chrissie Crying was proof that no one had stolen her soul

She slept

43

Sam had seen another pay phone at a Union 76 service station one block north of Ocean The station was out of business The ere fil in one of them, as if the owner actually didn’t care whether the place was sold or not and had n only because it was expected of hi trees had blown against the gasoline puainst the south wall of the building and visible froh the open door but did not pull it shut, for fear of co a circuit that would turn on the overhead bulb and draw him to the attention of any cops who happened by

The line was dead He deposited a coin, hoping that would activate the dial tone The line was still dead

He jiggled the hook froain but to no avail

He believed that pay phones in or adjacent to a service station or privately owned store were sometimes joint operations, the income shared between the telephone company and the businessman who allowed the phone to be installed Perhaps they had turned off the phone when the Union 76 had closed up

However, he suspected the police had used their access to the telephone-company’s coht Cove The ent was in town, they could have taken extre the world outside

Of course hetheir capabilities He had to try another phone before giving up hope of contacting the Bureau

On his walk after dinner, he had passed a coin laundry half a block north of Ocean Avenue and two blocks west of this Union 76 He was pretty sure that when glancing through the plate glass , he had seen a telephone on the rear wall, at the end of a row of industrial-size dryers with stainless-steel fronts

He left the Union 76 Asaway from the streetlamps--which illuminated side streets only in the first block north and south of Ocean--using alleyhere he could, he slipped through the silent town, tohere he re seen the laundry He wished the ould die and leave so

At an intersection one block north of Ocean and half a block froht of a cop driving south toward the center of town The patrol slowly, surveying both sides of the street Fortunately he was looking the other hen Saht at the corner

Sam scrambled backward and pressed into a deep entrance way on the side of a three-story brick building that housed some of the town’s professionals A plaque in the recess, to the left of the door, listed a dentist, tyers, a doctor, and a chiropractor If the patrol turned left at the corner and came past hiht on toward Ocean or turned right and headed west, he would not be seen