"No. And we have no plans in that direction. Look!" He suddenly held up his right hand and curled it into a tube. Looking through it, she could see the desert beyond the window-wall.
"The Great Western Desert!" he cried. "The Big Piss-All! Nevada! Arizona! New Mexico! California! A smattering of my people are in Washington, around the Seattle area, and in Portland, Oregon. A fistful each in Idaho and New Mexico. We're too scattered to even think about taking a census for a year or more. We're much more vulnerable than your Zone. The Free Zone is like a highly organized hive or commune. We are nothing but a confederacy, with me as the titular head. There's room for both of us. There will still be room for both of us in 2190. That's if the babies live, something we won't know about here for at least another five months. If they do, and humanity continues, let our grandfathers fight it out, if they have a bone to pick. Or their grandfathers. But what in God's name do we have to fight about? "
"Nothing," she muttered. Her throat was dry. She felt dazed. And something else... was it hope? She was looking into his eyes. She could not seem to tear her gaze away, and she didn't want to. She wasn't going mad. He wasn't driving her mad at all. He was... a very reasonable man.
"There are no economic reasons for us to fight, no technological ones either. Our politics are a bit different, but that is a very minor thing, with the Rockies between us..."
He's hypnotizing me.
With a huge effort she dragged her eyes away from his and looked out over his shoulder at the moon. Flagg's smile faded a bit, and a shadow of irritation seemed to cross his features. Or had she imagined it? When she looked back (more warily this time), he was smiling gently at her again.
"You had the Judge killed," she said harshly. "You want something from me, and when you get it, you'll have me killed, too."
He looked at her patiently. "There were pickets all along the Idaho-Oregon border, and they were looking for Judge Farris, that is true. But not to kill him! Their orders were to bring him to me. I was in Portland until yesterday. I wanted to talk to him as I'm now talking to you, dear: calmly, reasonably, and sanely. Two of my pickets spotted him in Copperfield, Oregon. He came out shooting, mortally wounding one of my men and killing the other outright. The wounded man killed the Judge before he himself died. I'm sorry about the way it came out. More sorry than you can know or understand." His eyes darkened, and about that she believed him... but probably not in the way he wanted her to believe him. And she felt that coldness again.
"That's not the way they tell it here."
"Believe them or believe me, dear. But remember I give them their orders."
He was persuasive... goddamned persuasive. He seemed nearly harmless - but that wasn't exactly true, was it? That feeling only came from seeing that he was a man... or something that looked like a man. There was enough relief in just that to turn her into something like Silly Putty. He had a presence, and a politician's knack of knocking all your best arguments into a cocked hat... but he did it in a way she found very disturbing.
"If you don't mean war, why the jets and all the other stuff you've got out at Indian Springs?"
"Defensive measures," he said promptly. "We're doing similar things at Searles Lake in California, and at Edwards Air Force Base. There's another group at the atomic reactor on Yakima Ridge in Washington. Your folks will be doing the same thing... if they're not already."
Dayna shook her head, very slowly. "When I left the Zone, they were still trying to get the electric lights working again."
"And I'd be happy to send them two or three technicians, except I happen to know that your Brad Kitchner already has things going nicely. They had a brief outage yesterday, but he solved the problem very quickly. It was a power overload out on Arapahoe."
"How do you know all that?"
"Oh, I have my ways," Flagg said genially. "The old woman came back, by the way. Sweet old woman."
"Mother Abagail?"
"Yes." His eyes were distant and murky; sad, perhaps. "She's dead. A pity. I really had hoped to meet her in person."
"Dead? Mother Abagail is dead?"
The murky look cleared, and he smiled at her. "Does that really surprise you so much?"
"No. But it surprises me that she came back. And it surprises me even more that you know."
"She came back to die."
"Did she say anything?"
For just a moment Flagg's mask of genial composure slipped, showing black and angry bafflement.
"No," he said. "I thought she might... might speak. But she died in a coma."
"Are you sure?"