while. The researchers and technicians had arrived for the day and had
been sent home with orders not to report back until notified. Defense
Security Agency computer mavens were seeking the Wildcard files hidden
in the Geneplan data banks, but their work was so highly specialized
that Sharp could neither supervise nor understand it.
He made a few telephone calls to several federal agencies in Washington,
seeking-and obtaining-information about Desert General Hospital and Dr.
Hans Werfell that might give him leverage with them, then boarded his
waiting chopper and flew back across the desert to Palm Springs, pleased
to be on the move again.
Rachael and Benny taxied to the Palm Springs airport, rented a clean new
Ford from Hertz, and drove back into town in time to be the first
customers at a clothing store that opened at nine-thirty. She bought
tan jeans, a pale yellow blouse, thick white tube socks, and Adidas
jogging shoes. Benny chose blue jeans, a white shirt, tube socks, and
similar shoes, and they changed out of their badly rumpled clothes in
the public rest rooms of a service station at the north end of Palm
Canyon Drive.
Unwilling to waste time stopping for breakfast, partly because they were
afraid of being spotted, they grabbed Egg McMuffins and coffee at
McDonald’s, and ate as they drove.
Rachael had infected Benny with her premonition of oncoming death and
her sudden-almost clairvoyantsense that time was running out, which had
first struck her at the motel, just after they had made love for the
second time. Benny had attempted to reassure her, calm her, but instead
he had grown more uneasy by the minute. They were like two animals
independently and instinctively perceiving the advance of a terrible
storm.
Wishing they could have gone back for her red Mercedes, which would have
made better time than the rental Ford, Rachael slumped in the
passenger’s seat and nibbled at her take-out breakfast without
enthusiasm, while Benny drove north on State Route 111, then west on
Interstate 10. Although he squeezed as much speed out of the Ford as
anyone could have, handling it with that startling combination of
recklessness and ease that was so out of character for a real-estate
salesman, they would not reach Eric’s cabin, above Lake Arrowhead, until
almost one o’clock in the afternoon.
She hoped to God that would be soon enough.
And she tried not to think about what Eric might be like when-and
if-they found him.
better future. His condition was eerie, unpleasant, even frightening,
he felt that he was not in control of his destiny and that, in fact, he
was trapped within his own body, chained to this now-imperfect,
half-dead flesh.
He staggered into the bathroom, slowly showered, brushed his teeth. He
kept a complete wardrobe at the cabin, just as he did at the house in
Palm Springs, so he would never need to pack a suitcase when visiting
either place, and now he changed into khaki pants, a red plaid shirt,
wool socks, and a pair of woodsman’s boots.
In his strange gray haze, that morning routine required more time than
it should have, He had trouble adjusting the shower controls to get the
right temperature, he kept dropping the toothbrush into the sink, he
cursed his stiff fingers as they fumbled with the buttons on his shirt,
when he tried to roll up his long sleeves, the material resisted him as
if it possessed a will of its own, and he succeeded in lacing the boots
only with monumental effort.
Eric was further distracted by the shadowfires.
Several times, at the periphery of his vision, ordinary shadows burst
into flames. Just short-circuiting electrical impulses in his badly
damaged-but healing-brain.
Illusions born in sputtering cerebral synapses between neurons.
Nothing more. However, when he turned to look directly at the fires,
they never faded or winked out as mere mirages might have done, but grew
even brighter.
Although they produced no smoke or heat, consumed no fuel, and had no
real substance, he stared at those nonexistent flames with greater fear
each time they appeared, partly because within them-or perhaps beyond
them-he saw something mysterious, frightening, darkly shrouded and
monstrous figures that beckoned through the leaping brightness.