Page 49 (1/2)

Tessa wanted to comfort her

She wanted to comfort Harry too

More, than that … she wanted to ht

As writer-producer-director, she was a s happen She always kne to solve a proble once a project had begun But now she was at a loss She could not always script reality with the assurance she brought to the writing of her fil to her demands Maybe that hy she had chosen a career over a fa enjoyed a wonderful family atle was sloppy, unpredictable, full of loose ends; she couldn’t count on being able to tie it all up the way she could when she took aspects of it and reduced them to a neatly structured film Life was life, broad and rich … but film was only essences Maybe she dealt better with essences than with life all its gaudy detail

Her genetically received Lockland optiht, had not deserted her, though it definitely had di to be all right"

"How?" Sam asked

"I’m probably last on their list," Harry said "They wouldn’t be worried about cripples and blind people Even if we learn soet help Mrs Sagerian--she lives over on Pinecrest--she’s blind, and I’ll bet she and I are the last two on the schedule They’ll wait to do us until near ht You see if they don’t Bet on it So what you’ve got to do is go to the high school and get through to the Bureau, bring help in here pronto, before ht"

Chrissie turned away from the , her cheeks ith tears "You really think so, Mr Talbot? You really, honestly think they won’t coht?"

With his head tilted to one side in a perpetual twist that was, depending on how you looked at it, either jaunty or heartwrenching, Harry winked at the girl, though she was farther away from him than Tessa and probably didn’t see the wink "If I’ this instant"

Rain fell but no lightning struck

"See?" Harry said, grinning

Though the girl clearly wanted to believe the scenario that Harry had painted for her, Tessa knew that they could not count on his being the last or next to last on the final conversion schedule What he’d said made a little sense, actually, but it was just too neat Like a narrative development in a film script Real life, Tessa had just reminded herself, was sloppy, unpredictable She desperately wanted to believe that Harry would be safe until a few ht, but the reality was that he would be at risk as soon as the clock struck six and the final series of conversions was under way

35

Shaddack rehdoor, switched on the van’s engine, and pulled into the driveway to better ress on the VDT Both tie and lowered the door again

The ned it, built it, wound it up, and pushed the start button Now it could go through its paces without hi about the tie of Moonhaould be coht into the fold When no Old People existed, he would have redefined the word "power," for no man before him in all of history would have known such total control Having reram its destiny to his own desires All of hu industriously, serving his vision As he daydreaan to ache dully

Shaddack knew enuinely seeress was to improve the lot of humanity, lift the species up from the s differently To his way Of thinking, the sole purpose of technology was to concentrate Power in his hands Previous would-be remakers of the world had relied on political pohich always ultiun Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others had sought power through intih lakes of blood, and all of them had ultimately failed to achieve what silicon circuitry was in the process of bestowing upon Shaddack The pen was not htier than vast armies

If they knehat he had undertaken and what dreams of conquest still preoccupied him, virtually all other ed He didn’t care They rong, of course Because they didn’t realize who he was The child of the moonhawk He had destroyed those who had posed as his parents, and he had not been discovered or punished, which was proof that the rules and laws governing other men were not meant to apply to him His true mother and father were spirit forces, disembodied, powerful They had protected him from punishment because the o were a sacred offering to his real progenitors, a statement of his faith and trust in them Other scientists would misunderstand him because they could not know that all of existence centered around him, that the universe itself existed only because he existed, and that if he ever died--which was unlikely--then the universe would simultaneously cease to exist He was the center of creation He was the only reat spirits had whispered these truths in his ear, waking and sleeping, for more than thirty years

Child of the moonhawk …

As the afternoon waned, he beca coe of the project, and he could no longer endure teh it had seemed wise to absent hiht find hi the need to hide out Events at Mike Peyser’s house last night no longer seemed so catastrophic to him, merely, a ressives would eventually be solved His genius resulted froher spiritual forces, and no difficulty was beyond resolution when the great spirits desired his success The threat he’d felt from Watkins steadily diminnished in his memory, too, until the police chief’s promise to find him seemed empty, even pathetic

He was the child of the otten such an important truth and had run scared Of course, even Jesus had spent his tihtened, and had wrestled with his dee was, Shaddack saw, his own Gethsee to cast out those last doubts that plagued him

He was the child of the e door

He started the van and pulled down the driveway

He was the child of the moonhawk

He turned onto the county road and headed toward town

He was the child of the ht he would ascend the throne

36

Pack Martin--his name was actually Packard because his mother named him after a car that had been her father’s pride--lived in a house trailer on the southeast edge of town It was an old trailer, its enalaze on an ancient vase It was rusted in a few spots, dented, and set on a concrete-block foundation in a lot that was ht Cove thought his place was an eyesore, but he just plain did not give a damn