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"Audiotape cassette," I told Bobby

"A little death music?"

"Probably his last testaeddon was unleashed in Wyvern’s labs, I would have called the cops to report finding a dead body I would not have reh the death had every appearance of being a suicide rather than a homicide

These are not ordinary times

As I rose to my feet, I slipped the envelope--and tape--into an inside jacket pocket

Bobby’s attention snapped to the ceiling, and he took a two-hand grip on the shotgun

I followed his gaze with the flashlight

The cocoons appeared unchanged, so I said, "What?"

"Did you hear so?"

"Like?"

He listened Finally he said, "Must’ve been in my head"

"What did you hear?"

"Me," he said cryptically, and without further explanation, hethe late Leland Delacroix here, especially as I wasn’t sure that I would report his suicide to the authorities even anonymously On the other hand, this here he had wanted to be

On the way across the dining roo"

Overhead, the clustered cocoons remained quiescent

"What baby?" I asked

"My new surfboard"

Even a longboard is rarely more than nine feet An eleven-foot er, produced to lend atmosphere to a theme restaurant

"Decor?" I asked

"No It’s a tande room, the cocoons were as we had last seen thelances upward as he went to the front door

"Twenty-five inches wide, five inches thick," he said

Maneuvering a surfboard that size, even with two hundred fifty or three hundred pounds aboard, required talent, coordination, and belief in a benign, ordered universe

"Tandeht as we crossed the front porch "Since when have you traded wave thrashing for cab driving?"

"Since never But a little tande, he must have a partner in mind, a particular wahine Yet the only woman he loves is a surfer and painter na in Wai to find herself, for alht for a walk on the beach Bobby didn’t know she was lost until she called from an airliner on her way to Waientle, and intelligent as anyone I have ever known, a talented and successful artist Yet she believes that Waimea Bay is her spiritual home--not Oskaloosa, Kansas, where she was born and raised; not Moonlight Bay, where she fell in love with Bobby--and lately she claioddess of surfing

These were strange times even before the catastrophe in the Wyvern labs

We stopped at the foot of the porch steps and took slow deep breaths to purge ourselves of the reek of death, which seeh it were a e of thefarther into it, looking for Big Head, the troop, or a new threat that even I, in full hyperdrive of the i off the loom of the Pacific, two strata of cross-woven clouds, as twilled as gabardine, now dressed et a boat," Bobby said

"What kind of boat?"

"We could afford whatever"

"And?"

"Stay at sea"

"Extreht Drop anchor off deserted beaches, catch some tasty tropical waves"

"You, me, Sasha, and Orson?"

"Pick up Pia at Waioddess aboard," he said

"Fuel?"

"Sail"

"Food?"

"Fish"

"Fish can carry the retrovirus, too"

"Then find a remote island"

"How remote?"

"The sphincter of nowhere"

"And?"

"Grow our own food"

"Farmer Bob"

"Minus the bib overalls"

"Shitkicker chic"

"Self-sufficiency It’s possible," he insisted

"So is killing a grizzly bear with a spear But you get in a pit with a spear, put the bear in there with so to have Bobby tacos for dinner"