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He had eaten no cactus candy since the day he had killed his mother, father, and the Indian, but over the years he had been subject to vivid flashbacks They came upon him unexpectedly One moment he would be in this world, and the next instant he would be in that other place, the eerie world parallel to this one, where the cactus candy had always conveyed him, a reality in which colors were simultaneously more vivid and les and dimensions than in the ordinary world, where he seehtless--buoyant as a helium-filled balloon--and where the voices of spirits spoke to hi the radually declined in nue years Those dreauelike spells, which usually lasted an hour or two but could occasionally last half a day, were responsible in part for his reputation, with fa a somewhat detached child They all had sympathy for him, naturally, because they assumed that whatever detach trau in his van, he was phasing slowly into that cactus-candy condition This flashback was unexpected, too, but it didn’t snap upon him as all the others had He sort ofdrifted into it, deeper, deeper And the further he went, the more he suspected that this tiher consciousness From now on he would be a resident of both worlds, which was how the great spirits theher and the lower states of existence He even began to think that what he was undergoing now, spiritually, was a conversion of his own, a thousand tiht Cove had undergone
In this exalted state, everything was special and wondrous to Shaddack The twinkling lights of the rainswept town see darkness The molten, silvery beauty of the rain itself astonished hiray sky
As he braked at the intersection of Paddock Lane and Saddleback Drive, he touched his breast, feeling the telemetry device he wore from a chain around his neck, unable for a moment to remember what it was, and that seemed mysterious and wonderful, as well Then he recalled that the device monitored and broadcast his heartbeat, which was received by a unit at New Wave It was effective over a distance of five miles, and worked even when he was indoors If the reception of his heartbeat was interrupted for rammed to feed a destruct order, via microwave, to the microsphere computers in all of the New People
A few minutes later, on Bastenchurry Road, when he touched the device, the ain proved elusive He sensed that it was a powerful object, that whoever wore it held the lives of others in his hands, and the fantasy-tripping child in him decided that it reat spirits, one n that he stood astride the torlds, one foot in the ordinary plane of ordinary reat spirits, the gods of the cactus candy
His slowly phased-in flashback, like time-released medication, had carried him back into the condition of his youth, at least to those seven years when he’d been in the thrall of Runningdeer He was a child And he was a deod He was the favored child of thehe wanted to anyone, anyone, and as he continued to drive, he fantasized about just what he hed softly and slightly shrilly, and his eyes glea the effects of fire on captive ants
4
As Moose padded around the off, Chrissie waited in the kitchen with Tessa and Sa day
At last Saht Stay close Do what I say every step of the way"
He looked at Chrissie and Tessa for a longthe door; without any of theed one another Tessa kissed Chrissie on the cheek, then Sam kissed her, and Chrissie returned their kisses She didn’t have to be told why they all suddenly felt so affectionate They were people, real people, and expressing their feelings was iht not be real people any ain feel the kinds of things real people felt, so those feelings were more precious by the second
Who knehat those weird shape-changers felt? Who would want to know?
Besides, if they didn’t reach Central, it would be because one of the search parties or a couple of the Boogeyht be their last chance to say goodbye to one another
Finally Sam led them onto the porch
Carefully, Chrissie closed the door behind theood and noble a dog for such cheap stunts But he did stick his snout in the narrowing crack, sniffing at her and trying to lick her hand, so she was afraid she was going to pinch his nose He pulled back at the last moment, and the door clicked shut
Sam led them down the steps and across the yard toward the house to the south of Harry’s No lights were on there Chrissie hoped no one was houred soht now, peering out at the its chops
The rain seeht, but that ht have been because she had just colow still illu droplets seeht out of the clouds and driving it into the earth, pulling down a deep, da Harry’s property frorateful for the hooded nylon windbreaker, even though it was so big on her that itdress-up in her parents’ clothes
It was a picket fence, easy to clahbor’s backyard to another fence Chrissie was over that one, too, and into yet another yard, with Tessa close behind her, before she realized they had reached the Coltranes’ place
She looked at the blank s No lights on here, either, which was a good thing, because if there had been lights, that would mean someone had found as left of the Coltranes after their battle with Sa the yard toward the next fence, Chrissie was overcome by the fear that the Coltranes had somehow reanimated themselves after Sam had fired all of those bullets into the out the s right this minute, that they had seen their nemesis and his two co the back door She expected two robot-things to codead in old zo around and around on their heads, stea from body vents
Her fear must have slowed her, because Tessa alentle push to urge her along Chrissie crouched and hurried to the south side of the yard
Saht-iron fence with spearlike points on the staves She would probably have gored herself if she’d had to scale it alone Chrissie shishkebab
People were hoe behind so Chrissie and Tessa quickly joined hi over the last fence, she’d rubbed the abraded paled It hurt, but she gritted her teeth andthe branches of what appeared to be a mulberry bush, Chrissie peered at the house, which was only twenty feet away She saw four people through the kitchen s They were preparing dinner together A irl
She wondered if they had been converted yet She suspected not, but there was no way to be sure And since the robots and Boogeyuises, you couldn’t trust anyone, not even your best friendor your parents Prettyover
"Even if they look out, they won’t see us," Sam said "Come on"
Chrissie followed him from the cover of the mulberry bush and across the open laard the next property line, thanking God for the fog, which was getting denser by the minute
Eventually they reached the house at the end of the block The south side of that lawn fronted the cross street, Bergenwood Way, which led down to Conquistador
When they were two-thirds of the way across the lawn, less than twenty feet from the street, a car turned the corner a block and a half uphill and started down Following Say lawn because there was no nearby shrubbery behind which to take refuge If they tried to scraet close enough to spot the for cover
No streetlaenwood, which was in their favor The last of the ashen light was gone from the western sky--another boon
As the car drew nearer,slowly either because of the bad weather or because its occupants were part of a patrol, its headlights were diffused by the fog, which see with a radiance of its own Objects in the night for yards on both sides of the car were half revealed and weirdly distorted by those slowly churning, ground-hugging, luminous clouds