Nick wrote and offered the open pad to both of them.
We all do was written there.
Stu was on his way up to the power station the next morning when he saw Susan and Dayna headed down Canyon Boulevard on a pair of cycles. He waved and they pulled over. He thought he had never seen Dayna looking prettier. Her hair was tied behind her with a bright green silk scarf, and she was wearing a rawhide coat open over jeans and a chambray shirt. A bedroll was strapped on behind her.
"Stuart!" she cried, and waved to him, smiling.
Lesbian? he thought doubtfully.
"I understand you're off on a little trip," he said.
"For sure. And you never saw me."
"Nope," Stu said. "Never did. Smoke?"
Dayna took a Marlboro and cupped her hands over his match.
"You be careful, girl."
"I will."
"And get back."
"I hope to."
They looked at each other in the bright late-summer morning.
"You take care of Frannie, big fella."
"I will."
"And go easy on the marshaling."
"That I know I can do."
She cast the cigarette away. "What do you say, Suze?"
Susan nodded and put her bike in gear, smiling a strained smile.
"Dayna?"
She looked at him, and Stu planted a soft kiss on her mouth.
"Good luck."
She smiled. "You have to do it twice for really good luck. Didn't you know that?"
He kissed her again, more slowly and thoroughly this time. Lesbian? he wondered again.
"Frannie's a lucky woman," Dayna said. "And you can quote me."
Smiling, not really knowing what to say, Stu stepped back and said nothing at all. Two blocks up, one of the lumbering orange Burial Committee trucks rumbled through the intersection like an omen and the moment was broken.
"Let's go, kid," Dayna said. "Get-em-up-Scout."
They drove off, and Stu stood on the curbing and watched them.
Sue Stern was back two days later. She had watched Dayna moving west from Colorado Springs, she said, had watched her until she was nothing but a speck that merged with the great still landscape. Then she had cried a little. The first night Sue had made camp at Monument, and had awakened in the small hours, chilled by a low whining sound that seemed to be coming from a culvert that traveled beneath the farm road she had camped by.
Finally summoning up her courage, she had shined her flash into the corrugated pipe and had discovered a gaunt and shivering puppy. It looked to be about six months old. It shied from her touch and she was too big to crawl into the pipe. At last she had gone into the town of Monument, smashed her way into the local grocery, and had come back in the first cold light of false dawn with a knapsack full of Alpo and Cycle One. That did the trick. The puppy rode back with her, neatly tucked into one of the BSA saddlebags.
Dick Ellis went into raptures over the puppy. It was an Irish setter bitch, either purebred or so close as to make no difference. When she got older, he was sure Kojak would be glad to make her acquaintance. The news swept the Free Zone, and for that day the subject of Mother Abagail was forgotten in the excitement over the canine Adam and Eve. Susan Stern became something of a heroine, and as far as any of the committee ever knew, no one even thought to wonder what she had been doing in Monument that night, far south of Boulder.
But it was the morning the two of them left Boulder that Stu remembered, watching them ride off toward the Denver-Boulder Turnpike. Because no one in the Zone ever saw Dayna Jurgens again.
August 27; nearly dusk; Venus shining against the sky.
Nick, Ralph, Larry, and Stu sat on the steps of Tom Cullen's house. Tom was on the lawn, whooping and knocking croquet balls through a set of wickets.
It's time, Nick wrote.
Speaking low, Stu asked if they would have to hypnotize him again, and Nick shook his head.
"Good," Ralph said. "I don't think I could take that action." Raising his voice, he called: "Tom! Hey, Tommy! Come on over here!"
Tom came running over, grinning.
"Tommy, it's time to go," Ralph said.
Tom's smile faltered. For the first time he seemed to notice that it was getting dark.
"Go? Now? Laws, no! When it gets dark, Tom goes to bed. M-O-O-N, that spells bed. Tom doesn't like to be out after dark. Because of the boogies. Tom... Tom..."
He fell silent, and the others looked at him uneasily. Tom had lapsed into dull silence. He came out of it... but not in the usual way. It was not a sudden reanimation, life flooding back in a rush, but a slow thing, reluctant, almost sad.
"Go west?" he said. "Do you mean it's that time?"
Stu laid a hand on his shoulder. "Yes, Tom. If you can."
"On the road."
Ralph made a choked, muttering sound and walked around the house. Tom did not seem to notice. His gaze alternated between Stu and Nick.
"Travel at night. Sleep in the day." Very slowly, in the dusk, Tom added: "And see the elephant."
Nick nodded.
Larry brought Tom's pack up from where it had rested beside the steps. Tom put it on slowly, dreamily.
"You want to be careful, Tom," Larry said thickly.