Loman increased the patrols in the immediate area, but there was no sign of the girl. She had gone to ground. Still, if she had come into town instead of heading out to the freeway, they were more likely to catch her and convert her before the day was done.
At nine o’clock he returned to his house on Iceberry Way to get breakfast. Since he’d nearly degenerated in Peyser’s bloodspattered bedroom, his clothes had felt loose on him. He had lost a few pounds as his metabolic processes had consumed his own flesh to generate the tremendous energy needed to regress and to resist regression.
The house was dark and silent. Denny was no doubt upstairs, in front of his computer, where he had been last night. Grace had left for work at Thomas Jefferson, where she was a teacher; she had to keep up the pretense of an ordinary life until everyone in Moonlight Cove had been converted.
At the moment no children under twelve had been put through the Change, partly because of difficulties New Wave technicians had had in determining the correct dosage for younger converts, Those problems had been solved, and tonight the kids would be brought into the fold.
In the kitchen Loman stood for a moment, listening to the rain on the windows and the ticking of the clock.
At the sink he drew a glass of water. He drank it, another, then two more. He was dehydrated after the ordeal at Peyser’s.
The refrigerator was chock full of five-pound hams, roast beef, a half-eaten turkey, a plate of porkchops, chicken breasts, sausages, and packages of bologna and dried beef. The accelerated metabolisms of the New People required a diet high in protein. Besides, they had a craving for meat.
He took a loaf of pumpernickel from the breadbox and sat down with that, the roast beef, the ham, and a jar of mustard. He stayed at the table for a while, cutting or ripping thick hunks of meat, wrapping them in mustard-slathered bread, and tearing off large bites with his teeth. Food offered him less subtle pleasure than when he’d been an Old Person; now the smell and taste of it raised in him an animal excitement, a thrill of greed and gluttony. He was to some degree repelled by the way he tore at his food and swallowed before he’d finished chewing it properly, but every effort that he made to restrain himself soon gave way to even more feverish consumption. He slipped into a half-trance, hypnotized by the rhythm of chewing and swallowing. At one point he became clearheaded enough to realize he had gotten the chicken breasts from the refrigerator and was eating them with enthusiasm, though they were uncooked. He let himself slip mercifully back into the half-trance again.
Finished eating, he went upstairs to look in on Denny.
When he opened the door to the boy’s room, everything at first seemed to be just as it had been the last time he’d seen it, during the previous night. The shades were lowered, the curtains drawn, the room dark except for the greenish light from the VDT. Denny sat in front of the computer, engrossed in the data that flickered across the screen.
Then Loman saw something that made his skin prickle.
He closed his eyes.
Waited.
Opened them.
It was not an illusion.
He felt sick. He wanted to step back into the hall and close the door, forget what he’d seen, go away. But he could not move and could not avert his eyes.
Denny had unplugged the computer keyboard and put it on the floor beside his chair. He’d unscrewed the front cover plate from the data-processing unit. His hands were in his lap, but they weren’t exactly hands any more. His fingers were wildly elongated, tapering not to points and fingernails but to metallic-looking wires, as thick as lamp cords, that snaked into the guts of the computer, vanishing there.
Denny no longer needed the keyboard.
He had become part of the system. Through the computer and its modem link to New Wave, Denny had become one with Sun.
“Denny …” He had assumed an altered state, but nothing like that sought by the regressives.