Standing there, looking out, was the shape of a man.
He continued to look out long after she had entered, indifferently presenting her his back, before he turned. How long does it take a man to turn around? Two, maybe three seconds at the most. But to Dayna it seemed that the dark man went on turning forever, showing more and more of himself, like the very moon he had been watching. She became a child again, struck dumb by the dreadful curiosity of great fear. For a moment she was caught entirely in the web of his attraction, his glamour, and she was sure that when the turn was completed, unknown eons from now, she would be staring into the face of her dreams: a Gothic cowled monk, his hood shaped around total darkness. A negative man with no face. She would see and then go mad.
Then he was looking at her, walking forward, smiling warmly, and her first shocked thought was: Why, he's my age!
Randy Flagg's hair was dark, tousled. His face was handsome and ruddy, as if he spent much time out in the desert wind. His features were mobile and sensitive, and his eyes danced with high glee, the eyes of a small child with a momentous and wonderful secret surprise.
"Dayna!" he said. "Hi!"
"H-H-Hello." She could say no more. She had thought she was prepared for anything, but she hadn't been prepared for this. Her mind had been knocked, reeling, to the mat. He was smiling at her confusion. Then he spread his hands, as if in apology. He was wearing a faded paisley shirt with a frayed collar, pegged jeans, and a very old pair of cowboy boots with rundown heels.
"What did you expect? A vampire?" His smile broadened, almost demanding that she smile back. "A skin-turner? What have they been telling you about me?"
"They're afraid," she said. "Lloyd was... sweating like a pig." His smile was still demanding an answering smile, and it took all her effort of will to deny him that. She had been kicked out of bed on his orders. Brought here to... what? Confess? Tell everything she knew about the Free Zone? She couldn't believe there was that much he didn't already know.
"Lloyd," Flagg said, and laughed ruefully. "Lloyd went through a rather bitter experience in Phoenix when the flu was raging. He doesn't like to talk about it. I rescued him from death and" - his smile grew even more disarming, if that was possible - "and from a fate worse than death is the popular idiom, I believe. He's associated me with that experience to a great degree, although his situation was not of my doing. Do you believe me?"
She nodded slowly. She did believe him, and found herself wondering if Lloyd's constant showering had something to do with his "rather bitter experience in Phoenix." She also found herself feeling an emotion she never would have expected in connection with Lloyd Henreid: pity.
"Good. Sit down, dear."
She looked around doubtfully.
"On the floor. The floor will be fine. We have to talk, and talk truth. Liars sit in chairs, so we'll eschew them. We'll sit as though we were friends on opposite sides of a campfire. Sit, girl." His eyes positively sparkled with suppressed mirth, and his sides seemed to bellow with laughter barely held in. He sat down and crossed his legs and then looked up at her appealingly, his expression seeming to say: You're not going to let me sit all alone on the floor of this ridiculous office, are you?
After a moment's debate she did sit down. She crossed her legs and put her hands lightly on her knees. She could feel the comforting weight of the knife in its spring clip.
"You were sent over here to spy out the land, dear," he said. "Is that an accurate description of the situation?"
"Yes." There was no use denying it.
"And you know what usually befalls spies in time of war?"
"Yes."
His smile broadened like sunshine. "Then isn't it lucky we're not at war, your people and mine?"
She looked at him, totally surprised.
"But we're not, you know," he said with quiet sincerity.
"But... you..." A thousand confused thoughts spun in her head. Indian Springs. The Shrikes. Trashcan Man with his defoliant and his Zippos. The way the conversation always veered when this man's name - or presence - came into the conversation. And that lawyer, Eric Strellerton. Wandering in the Mojave with his brains burned out.
All he did was look at him.
"Have we attacked your Free Zone, so-called? Made any warlike move at all against you over there?"
"No... but - "
"And have you attacked us?"
"Of course not!"