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He lowered his hand fro unit in the console between the seats As easily as he had penetrated the glass, he let his hand slide through the keyboard and cover plate, into the guts of the h walls, ectoplasmic

A coldness crept up his arm

The data on the screen were replaced by cryptic patterns of light

He leaned back in his seat

The coldness had reached his shoulder It flowed into his neck

He sighed

He felt so to his eyes He wasn’t sure what He could have looked at the rearview mirror He didn’t care He decided to close his eyes and let them become whatever, was necessary as part of this second and more complete conversion

This altered state was infinitely ressive Irresistible

The coldness was in his face now Hisinside his head He was becoraphy of his brain circuits and synapses as he was of the exterior world His body was not as h it, as if his nerves had been mostly abraded away; he could not tell if it ar that data His body was just a ned to protect and serve the inner hi mind

The coldness was inside his skull

It felt like scores, then hundreds, then thousands of ice-cold spiders scurrying over the surface of his brain, burrowing into it

Suddenly he rehtmare and ultimately had wanted desperately to find her way back to Kansas Alice, too, had found lass…

A million cold spiders

inside his skull

A billion

Cold, cold

Scurrying

33

Still circling through Moonlight Cove, seeking Shaddack, Loressives sprint across the street

He was on Paddock Lane, at the southern end of tohere the Properties were big enough for people to keep horses Ranch houses lay on both sides, with small private stables beside or behind them The homes set back fro, beyond deep and lushly landscaped lawns

The pair of regressives erupted froh azaleas that were still bushy but flowerless this late in the season They streaked on all fours across the roadway, leaped a ditch, and crashed through a hedgerow, vanishing behind it

Although i both sides of Paddock Lane, adding their shadows to the already darkish day, Loman was sure of what he had seen They had been le animal of the real world: part wolf, perhaps, part cat, part reptile They were swift and looked powerful One of them had turned its head toward hilowed as pink-red as those of a rat

He slowed but did not stop He no longer cared about identifying and apprehending regressives For one thing, he’d already identified them to his satisfaction: all of the converted He knew that stopping the Shaddack He was after ame

However, he was unnerved to see theht, at two-thirty in the afternoon Heretofore, they had been secretive creatures of the night, hiding the sha their altered states only well after sunset If they were prepared to venture forth before nightfall, the Moonhawk Project was disintegrating into chaos even faster than he had expected Moonlight Cove was noton the brink of hell but had already tipped over the edge and into the pit

34

They were in Harry’s third-floor bedrooain, where they passed the last hour and a half, brainstor their options No laht washed the rooreed there are te e out of town," Sam said

"But in either case," Tessa said uneasily, "you have to go out there and cover a lot of ground to get where you need to go"

Saed

Tessa and Chrissie had taken off their shoes and sat on the bed, their backs against the headboard The girl clearly intended to stay close to Tessa; she seemed to have imprinted on her the way a baby chick, freshly hatched fro, imprints on the nearest adult bird, whether it’s theto be as easy as slipping two doors to the Coltrane house Not in daylight"

"You think I ought to wait until it gets dark?" Sa will come in more heavily, too, as the afternoon fades"

She h she orried about the delay During the hours that they bided their tiht Cove would becoerous, and surprise-filled environet dark?"

Harry was in his wheelchair Moose had returned to hishis burly head under the arm of the chair and onto Harry’s lap, content to sit for long stretches in that aard posture in return for just a little petting and scratching and an occasional reassuring word

Harry said, "These days, twilight co at the telescope, though at the o he had surveyed the streets and reported seeing more activity than earlier--plenty of car and foot patrols As steadily fewer local residents rerowing bolder in their Policing actions, less concerned than they’d once been about calling attention to the at his watch, Sa three hours or et the word out, thedone to theht because you didn’t wait for nightfall, then the chances of saving anyone become a hell of a lot Sliood one," Chrissie said "Just because they’re not aliens doesn’tto be any easier to deal with"

Because even the working telephones would allow a caller to dial only approved nuiven up on hope But Sam had realized that any PC connected by modem with the supercoht provide a way out of town, an electronic high-way on which they could circumvent the current restrictions on the phone lines and the roadblocks

As Sa the VDT in the police car, Sun maintained direct contacts with scores of other co several FBI data banks, both those approved for wide access and those supposedly sealed to all but bureau agents If he could sit at a VDT, link in to Sun, and through Sun link to a Bureau computer, then he could transmit a call for help that would appear on Bureau computer screens and spew out in hard copy fro, of course, that the restrictions on outside contact that applied to all other phone lines in town did not apply to the lines by which Sun es with the broader world If Sun’s routes out of Moonlight Cove were clipped off, too, they were utterly without hope

Understandably, Sam was reluctant to enter the houses of the people orked for New Wave, afraid that he would encounter more people like the Coltranes That left only tays to attain access to a PC that could be linked to Sun

First, he could try to get into a black-and-white and use one of their ht But they were alert to his presence now,it harder to sneak into an unused patrol car Furthermore, all of the cars were probably now in use, as the cops searched diligently for him and no doubt, for Tessa as well And even if a cruiser were parked behind the , that area was at the moment, bound to be a lot busier than the last time he had been there