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"It’s been quite an adventure," the girl said

"Yes, you look as if you’ve been through a lot"

"It’d reat book"

"You like books?"

"Oh, yes, I love books"

Blushing but evidently determined to be sophisticated Chrissie threw back the blanket and stood and allowed Tessa to drape the sheet around her Tessa pinned it in place, fashioning a toga of sorts

As Tessa worked, Chrissie said, "I think I’ll write a book about all of this one day I’ll call it The Alien Scourge or h naturally I won’t title it Nest Queen unless it turns out there really is a nest queen somewhere Maybe they don’t reproduce like insects or even like anietable lifeforetable lifefor like Space Seeds or Vegetables of the Void or ood to use alliteration in titles Alliteration Don’t you like that word? It sounds so nice I like words Of course, you could always go with a , like Alien Roots, Alien Leaves Hey, if they’re vegetables, we may be in luck, because maybe they’ll eventually be killed off by aphids or toainst earth pests, just like a few tiny gerhty Martians in War of the Worlds"

Tessa was reluctant to disclose that their eneirl’s precocious chatter Then she noticed that Chrissie’s left hand was injured The palm had been badly abraded; the center of it looked raw

"I did that when I fell off the porch roof at the rectory," the girl said

"You fell off a roof?"

"Yeah Boy, that was exciting See, the wolf-thing was coh theafter o Twisted my ankle in the saate before he caught me You know, Miss Lockland--"

"Please call me Tessa"

Apparently Chrissie was unaccusto adults by their Christian naling with the invitation to informality She decided it would be rude not to use first names when asked to do so "Okay … Tessa Well, anyway, I can’t decide what the aliens are most likely to do if they catch us Maybe eat our kidneys? Or don’t they eat us at all? Maybe they just shove alien bugs in our ears, and the bugs crawl into our brains and take over Either way, I figure it’s worth falling off a roof to avoid thea, Tessa led Chrissie down the hall to the bathroo hich to treat the scraped palm She found a bottle of iodine with a faded label, a half-eauze pads so old that the paper wrapper around each bandage square was yelloith age The gauze itself looked fresh and white, and the iodine was undiluted by tia-clad, with her blond hair frizzing and curling as it dried, Chrissie sat on the lowered lid of the toilet seat and submitted stoically to the treatment of her wound She didn’t protest in any way, didn’t cry out--or even hiss--in pain

But she did talk: "That’s the second tiuardian angel looking over , I think these birds--starlings I think they were--built a nest on the roof of one of our stables at home, and I just had to see what baby birds looked like in the nest, so when ot a ladder and waited for the mama bird to fly off for more food, and then I real quick cliet their feathers, baby birds are just about the ugliest things you’d want to see--except for aliens, of course They’re withered little wrinkled things, all beaks and eyes, and stus like deformed arms If human babies looked that bad when they were born, the first people back a few o would’ve flushed their newborns down the toilet--if they’d had toilets--and wouldn’t have dared have any more of them, and the whole race would’ve died out before it even really got started"

Still painting the wound with iodine, trying without success to repress a grin, Tessa looked up and saw that Chrissie was squeezing her eyes tightly shut, wrinkling her nose, struggling very hard to be brave

"Then the irl said, "and sawI was so startled that I slipped and fell off the roof Didn’t hurt h I did land in some horse manure Which isn’t a thrill, let me tell you I love horses, but they’d be ever so much more lovable if you could teach them to use a litterbox like a cat"

Tessa was crazy about this kid

20

Sam leaned forith his elbows on the kitchen table and listened attentively to Chrissie Foster Though Tessa had heard the Boogeylih Harry had watched theh Sah ain Harry’s living rooirl was the only one present who had seen them close up and ular experience that held Sahtly ood humor, and articulateness She obviously had considerable inner strength, real toughness, for otherwise she would not have survived the previous night and the events of this h but not hard She was one of those kids who gave you hope for the whole damn human race

A kid like Scott used to be

And that hy Sam was fascinated by Chrissie Foster He saw in her the child that Scott had been Before he … changed With regret so poignant that it htness in his throat, he watched the girl and listened to her, not only to hear what information she had to i her he would at last understand why his own son had lost both innocence and hope

21

Down in the darkness of the Icarus Colony cellar, Tucker and his pack did not sleep, for they did not require it They lay curled in the deep blackness From time to time, he and the other male coupled with the fe flesh that began to heal at once, drawing one another’s blood simply for the pleasure of the scent--immortal freaks at play

The darkness and the barren confines of their concrete-walled burrow contributed to Tucker’s growing disorientation By the hour he reht’s exciting hunt He ceased to have ed in the pack when hunting, and in the burroas even a less desirable trait; harmony in that less, claustrophobic space required the relinquish drea through night-clad forests and across moonwashed meadows When occasionally a ins were a htened by it and quickly shifted his fantasies back to running-hunting-killing-coupling scenes in which he was just a part of the pack, one aspect of a single shadow, one extension of a larger organis no desire but to be

At one point he became aware that he had slipped out of his wolflike forer wanted to be the leader of a pack, for that position carried with it too much responsibility He didn’t want to think at all Just be Be The liid physical forms seemed insufferable

He sensed that the other eneration and were following his exaans and vessels surrendering form and function He devolved beyond the pri that laboriously had crawled out of the ancient sea o, beyond, beyond, until he was but ain the darkness of the Icarus Colony cellar

22

Lo the doorbell at Shaddack’s house on the north point, and Evan, the manservant, answered

"I’m sorry, Chief Watkins, but Mr Shaddack isn’t here"

"Where’s he gone?"

"I don’t know"

Evan was one of the New People To be sure of dispatching him, Loman shot him twice in the head and then twice in the chest while he lay on the foyer floor, shattering both brain and heart Or data-processor and puy? How far had they progressed toward beco machines?

Loman closed the door behind hi the expended rounds in the revolver’s, cylinder, he searched the huge house rooh he wished that he could be driven by a hunger for revenge, could be consu Shaddack to death, that depth of feeling was denied him His son’s death had not e

Instead he was driven by fear He wanted to kill Shaddack before theworse than they’d already beco Shaddack--as always linked to the supercomputer at New Wave by a siram in Sun that would broadcast a microwave death order That transmission would be received by all the microsphere computers wedded to the inner the death order, each biologically interactive computer in each New Person would instantly still the heart of its host Every one of the converted in Moonlight Cove would die He too would die