Late that afternoon, Dayna was up in the cherry-picker, removing the Plexiglas hood from one of the streetlamps and musing on how much she liked the people she was working with, particularly Jenny Engstrom, a tough and beautiful ex-nightclub dancer who was now running the cherry-picker's controls. She was the type of girl Dayna would have wanted for her best friend, and it confused her that Jenny was over here, on the dark man's side. It confused her so much that she didn't dare ask Jenny for an explanation.
The others were also okay. She thought that Vegas had a rather larger proportion of stupids than the Zone, but none of them wore fangs, and they didn't turn into bats at moonrise. They were also people who worked much harder than she remembered the people in the Zone working. In the Free Zone you saw people idling in the parks at all hours of the day, and there were people who decided to break for lunch from noon until two. That sort of thing didn't happen over here. From 8 A.M. to 5 P.M., everybody was working, either at Indian Springs or on the maintenance crews here in town. And school had started again. There were about twenty kids in Vegas, ages ranging from four (that was Daniel McCarthy, the pet of everyone in town, known as Dinny) up to fifteen. They had found two people with teaching certificates, and classes went on five days a week. Lloyd, who had quit school after repeating his junior year for the third time, was very proud of the educational opportunities that were being provided. The pharmacies were open and unguarded. People came and went all the time... but they took away nothing heavier than a bottle of aspirin or Gelusil. There was no drug problem in the West. Anyone who had seen what had happened to Hector Drogan knew what the penalty for a habit was. There were no Rich Moffats, either. Everyone was friendly and straight. And it was wise to drink nothing stronger than bottled beer.
Germany in 1938, she thought. The Nazis? Oh, they're charming people. Very athletic. They don't go to the nightclubs, the nightclubs are for the tourists. What do they do? They make clocks.
Was it a fair comparison? Dayna wondered uneasily, thinking of Jenny Engstrom, who she liked so much. She didn't know... but she thought that maybe it was.
She tested the bulb in the hood of the light standard. It was bad. She removed it, set it carefully between her feet, and got the last fresh one. Good, it was near the end of the day. It was -
She glanced down and froze.
People were coming back from the bus stop, headed home from Indian Springs. All of them were glancing up casually, the way a group of people always glance up at someone high in the air. The circus-for-free syndrome.
That face, looking up at her.
That wide, smiling, wondering face.
Dear sweet Jesus in heaven, is that Tom Cullen?
A dribble of salt-stinging sweat ran into her eye, doubling her vision. When she wiped it away, the face was gone. The people from the bus stop were halfway down the street, swinging their lunch buckets, talking and joking. Dayna gazed at the one she thought might be Tom, but from the rear it was so hard to tell -
Tom? Would they send Tom?
Surely not. That was so crazy it was almost -
Almost sane.
But she just couldn't believe it.
"Hey, Jurgens!" Jenny called up brassily. "Did you fall asleep up there, or are you just playing with yourself?"
Dayna leaned over the cherry-picker's low railing and looked down at Jenny's upturned face. Gave her the finger. Jenny laughed. Dayna went back to her streetlamp bulb, struggling to snap it in, and by the time she had it right, it was time to knock off for the day. On the ride back to the garage, she was quiet and preoccupied... quiet enough for Jenny to comment on it.
"Just got nothing to say, I guess," Dayna told her with a half-smile.
It couldn't have been Tom.
Could it?
"Wake up! Wake up! Goddammit, wake up, you bitch!"
She was coming out of murky sleep when a foot caught her in the small of the back, knocking her out of the big round bed and onto the floor. She came awake at once, blinking and confused.
Lloyd was there, looking down at her with cold anger. Whitney Horgan. Ken DeMott. Ace High. Jenny. Only Jenny's usually open face was also blank and cold.
"Jen - ?"
No answer. Dayna got up on her knees, dimly aware of her nakedness, more aware of the cold circle of faces looking down at her. The expression on Lloyd's face was that of a man who has been betrayed and has discovered the betrayal.
Am I dreaming this?
"Get the f**k dressed, you lying, spying bitch!"
Okay, so it was no dream. She felt a sinking terror in her stomach that seemed almost preordained. They had known about the Judge, and now they knew about her. He had told them. She glanced at the clock on the night table. It was quarter of four in the morning. The Hour of the Secret Police, she thought.
"Where is he?" she asked.
"Around," Lloyd said grimly. His face was pale and shiny. His amulet lay in the open V of his shirt. "You'll wish he wasn't before long."
"Lloyd?"
"What."
"I gave you VD, Lloyd. I hope it rots off."
He kicked her just below the breastbone, knocking her on her back.
"I hope it rots off, Lloyd."
"Shut up and get dressed."
"Get out of here. I don't dress in front of any man."