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“Abra Stone. You know my name, don’t you? I’m the girl she’s looking for. Tell her I’ll call back in
five minutes. If she’s there, we’ll talk. If she’s not, tell her she can go fuck herself. I won’t call back
again.”
Abra hung up, then lowered her head, cupped her burning face in her palms, and took long deep
breaths.
2
Rose was drinking coffee behind the wheel of her EarthCruiser, her feet on the secret compartment
with the stored canisters of steam inside, when the knock came at her door. A knock this early could
only mean more trouble.
“Yes,” she said. “Come in.”
It was Long Paul, wearing a robe over childish pajamas with racing cars on them. “The pay phone
in the Lodge started ringing. At first I let it go, thought it was a wrong number, and besides, I was
making coffee in the kitchen. But it kept on, so I answered. It was that girl. She wanted to talk to you.
She said she’d call back in five minutes.”
Silent Sarey sat up in bed, blinking through her bangs, the covers clutched around her shoulders
like a shawl.
“Go,” Rose told her.
Sarey did so, without a word. Rose watched through the EarthCruiser’s wide windshield as Sarey
trudged barefooted back to the Bounder she had shared with Snake.
That girl.
Instead of running and hiding, the bitchgirl was making telephone calls. Talk about brassbound
nerve. Her own idea? That was a little hard to believe, wasn’t it?
“What were you doing up and bustling in the kitchen so early?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
She turned toward him. Just a tall, elderly fellow with thinning hair and bifocals sitting at the end
of his nose. A rube could pass him on the street every day for a year without seeing him, but he wasn’t
without certain abilities. Paul didn’t have Snake’s sleeper talent, or the late Grampa Flick’s locator
talent, but he was a decent persuader. If he happened to suggest that a rube slap his wife’s face—or a
stranger’s, for that matter—that face would be slapped, and briskly. Everyone in the True had their
little skills; it was how they got along.
“Let me see your arms, Paulie.”
He sighed and brushed the sleeves of his robe and pajamas up to his wrinkly elbows. The red spots
were there.
“When did they break?”
“Saw the first couple yesterday afternoon.”
“Fever?”
“Yuh. Some.”
She gazed into his honest, trusting eyes and felt like hugging him. Some had run, but Long Paul
was still here. So were most of the others. Surely enough to take care of the bitchgirl if she were really
foolish enough to show her face. And she might be. What girl of thirteen wasn’t foolish?
“You’re going to be all right,” she said.
He sighed again. “Hope so. If not, it’s been a damn good run.”
“None of that talk. Everyone who sticks is going to be all right. It’s my promise, and I keep my
promises. Now let’s see what our little friend from New Hampshire has to say for herself.”