hostile, and violent, something that would slaughter the innocent
without remorse but preferred to subvert and dominate. A greasy nausea
made Jack gag. He felt cold and dirty inside. Corrupted by the
Giver’s attempt to seize control and nest within him, even though it
had not been successful. He knew as surely as he had ever known
anything in his life that this enemy was real: not a ghost, not a
demon, not just the paranoid-schizophrenic delusion of a troubled mind,
but a creature of flesh and blood. No doubt infinitely strange
flesh.
And blood that might not be recognized as such by any physician yet
born. But flesh and blood nonetheless.
He didn’t know what the thing was, where it had come from, or out of
what it had been born, he knew only that it existed. And that it was
somewhere on Quartermass Ranch.
Jack was lying on his side, but Heather was no longer pressed against
him. She had turned over during the night. Crystals of snow
tick-tick-ticked against the window, like a finely calibrated
astronomical clock counting off every hundredth of a second. The wind
that harried the snow made a low whirring sound. Jack felt as if he
was listening to the heretofore silent and secret cosmic machinery that
drove the universe through its unending cycles. Shakily, he pushed
back the covers, sat up, stood. Heather didn’t wake.
Night still reigned, but a faint gray light in the east hinted at the
pending coronation of a new day. Striving to quell his nausea, Jack
stood in just his underwear until his shivering was a greater concern
than his queasiness. The bedroom was warm. The chill was internal.
Nevertheless, he went to his closet, quietly slid the door open,
slipped a pair of jeans from a hanger, pulled them on, then a shirt.
Awake, he could not sustain the explosive terror that had blown him out
of the dream, but he was still shaky, fearful–and worried about
Toby.
He left the master bedroom, intending to check on his son. Falstaff
was in the shadowy upstairs hall, staring intently through the open
door of the bedroom next to Toby’s, where Heather had set up her
computers. An odd, faint light fell through the doorway and glimmered
on the dog’s coat. He was statue-still and tense. His blocky head was
held low and thrust forward. His tail wasn’t wagging. As Jack
approached, the retriever looked at him and issued a muted, anxious
whine.
The soft clicking of a computer keyboard came from the room. Rapid
typing.
Silence. Then another burst of typing.
In Heather’s makeshift office, Toby was sitting in front of one of the
computers. The glow from the monitor, which faced away from Jack, was
the only source of light in the former bedroom, far brighter than the
reflection that reached the hallway, it bathed the boy swiftly changing
shades of blue and green and purple, a sudden splash of red, orange,
then blue and green.
At the window behind Toby, the night remained deep because the gray
insistence of dawn could not yet be seen from that side of the house.
Barrages of fine snow flakes tapped the glass and were briefly
transformed into blue and green sequins by the monitor light.
Stepping across the threshold, Jack said, “Toby?” The boy didn’t
glance up from the screen. His small hands flew across the keyboard,
eliciting a furious spate of muffled clicking. No other sound issued
from the machine none of the usual beeps or burbles. Could Toby
type?
No. At least, not like this, not with such ease and speed. The boy’s
eyes glimmered with distorted images of the display on the screen
before him: violet, emerald, a flicker of red.
“Hey, kiddo, what’re you doing?”
He didn’t respond to the question.
Yellow, gold, yellow, orange, gold, yellow–the light .. shimmered not
as if it radiated from a computer screen but as if it was the
glittering reflection of summer sunlight bouncing off the rippled
surface of a pond, spangling his face.
Yellow, orange, umber, amber, yellow . . .
At the window, spinning snowflakes glimmered like gold dust, hot
sparks, fireflies. Jack crossed the room with trepidation, sensing