Miki Ludi woke up restless and scanned around the dark room. Nothing. It seemed to her that she'd wakened to do something, whatever that might be. Silently she got up and lit the candle on her dressing table, then assumed the lotus posture on the cushioned platform.
She was able to locus on her unseen intention more quickly than usual, and abruptly her viewpoint was above a nightbound plain, perhaps five hundred feet up. It meant nothing to her—starlit darkling emptiness with an occasional yardlight at one of the scattered farmhouses. Below was the light cone of a vehicle—a pickup truck—hurrying down a minor highway.
She found herself drawn to it, and in an instant was in its cab. She recognized the driver—a wiry bearded man; she'd seen him once before in a trance, in a room with Carol and Sigurdsson and Sergeant Connor, and others whom she hadn't known. As she looked at him, his face turned, his eyes on the spot where her viewpoint was located.
And he could see her! Afterward she would wonder, briefly, why she hadn't instantly disconnected and left. It was what she might have expected to do. But no threat flowed from him, only admiration for what she had done, and a thought: "Howdy. My name is Vic. Is it all right for you to tell me yours?"
She didn't answer. Instead, her awareness took in still another presence with them, one which she realized now had been there before her, and which, like hers, had no body with it there. Warily she examined this second one: female, she realized. Again warily, she sought an image of the person to whom it belonged.
Without any feeling of abruptness, yet with no apparent lapse of time, she was looking down again, but now on a small desert canyon, with shadowed buildings and trees below her. This she knew was where the second presence emanated from.
But that was not all of it, for now something else impinged as well: a feint sense of startled surprise that was not hers. And further, she somehow knew it was not of that moment; it was a persisting brief instant stuck in that place from sometime before.
Again the night changed. Although the desert location remained the same, there was a moon now, half a disk low in the sky, marking a different hour, a different night. Not for away she saw a softly glowing golden sphere, which transformed almost at that instant into a small oily cloud, an ugliness which flicked away, repelling her back to the moonless dark of present time.
And the other female presence was with her again, questioning wordlessly, a presence strong enough that Miki reflexively shied away from it. Instantly the desert was gone. She was in her room again, the Los Angeles night and its diffused city glow soft around her. Her body shivered once, slightly; slowly she got up and went back to her bed. She wondered what this had been about, what it meant. As she lay down, it occurred to her that when she had slept and wakened again, she might remember none of it, at least not right away, though there at least would be a vague sense of having done something.
It took no longer than a minute for her to tall asleep. And while she slept, the presence of Tory Merlin came silently to her. There was a period of psychic query, of silent communication, then her visitor was gone.
Tory returned to that place above the canyon, to view the earlier night to which Miki had drawn her attention. More skilled than Miki, stronger and more sure of herself, Tory viewed the whole event—the two ghosts drawn to the golden sphere, and their entrapment. From that time-place she shot forward with them, up their time track to the present, compressing the intervening days into scant minutes, pausing to witness their interrogation.
Then once more she was with Vic on the Texas road, and he pulled onto the shoulder. Leaving his body to nap, together they visited the holding bottle that contained the ghosts, questioning them—again, a matter of a minute or so. After that they gave each of them a session, a swift flow of subliminal thoughts, of naked concepts unencumbered with words, taking only minutes. When they separated, Vic wakened his body, getting out of the cab into the frosty blackness, walking around the truck, stretching.
The back of the camper shell opened and Frank put out his head. "Anything wrong?" he asked softly.
"No, everything's fine. I just needed a stretch."
Vic got back into the cab and restarted the engine. So that's what had happened to the two ghosts! Give them some time for their sessions to soak in, and do a little more work with them, and they'd be something else again.
He grinned, engaged the clutch, and drove on.
Ole and his riders spent six hours at a motel. It seemed perfectly safe; he was sure they were not being monitored. In midmorning he stopped at Vernon, Texas, before crossing into Oklahoma. When they left Vernon, two hours later, he was driving a sky-blue Ford van.
Vic, Frank, and Paul were deep in Oklahoma when dawn dissolved the night, and they stopped at a truck stop outside Clinton, Oklahoma for breakfast, Vic studied their highway atlas while they waited for their food.
"It's time for us to zig again," he said. "If we go east on the interstate about six miles, there's an exit that'll put us on a country road north." The others followed his finger on the map. "Then we can either jog west to 183 or go northeast on this road and cross the Canadian River here." He looked up at Paul. "How does that seem to you? You're familiar with this country."
Paul nodded. "Looks okay."
"And you feel as if someone is really following us around with some kind of monitor?" Frank asked.
"How does it seem to you?"
"Well... That would account for our friend the sheriff. And it's no stranger than Sipapu and Gandy, or lightning hitting that fallen tree in the road. Can you actually feel someone watching us?"
"In a way. But it's not like he's watching us directly. It seems like he's watching us through something—some sort of viewer."
"He. It's a man, then?"
"That's how it feels."
Something had been bothering Frank about this; now he spotted it. "Well, if he can see us, can't he hear us, too? Or read our minds?"
"Seems like he ought to, but it feels like he can't. What I get is that he's monitoring us with some kind of device that only picks up sight." Vic shrugged. "Anyway, that's how it seems to work; our jackrabbiting seems to be keeping them off us."
"He's fat," Paul put in, surprising both of the others, who turned to him. "Short and fat," he added. "And he sits in a seat something like a school desk, looking at something like a big television."
"You can see him?" Vic asked.
"I don't really see him. I just got a sort of picture while you were talking."
"Great! What else do you get on him?"
"Nothing. Except he talks to certain people with his mind."
"Can you get what he tells them? Or what they tell him?"
"No, I don't get anything on that. I don't even have the picture anymore."
With a wicked grin, Frank looked off to one side toward the ceiling and made twisting movements with his big fists, as if wringing water out of something. The other two looked curiously at him.
"Just showing him what I'll do if I ever get hold of him."
Vic grinned. "That's neat. I'll bet he got it, too."
"What good does it do him to watch us?" Frank asked. "Do you think he'll set us up for some crooked sheriff again, or what?"
"I guess he might," Vic said, "if we get into the right county. Or the wrong county, from our point of view. I think probably he's one of 'The Four' that Gandy mentioned, and they've probably got connections to the Mafia; that's probably how they'd find out what sheriffs might do something like that. But it really doesn't feel important to know, as long as we keep doing the right things."
It wasn't until the outskirts of Wichita, Kansas that they stopped again. They were sitting in a Benny's, by a window; from there they could see the pickup. A gray van drove into the parking lot, and paused briefly behind the pickup as if examining it. Two men were visible in the van, which had a mobile phone antenna. Then it drove on and parked, backing into a slot on the opposite side of the driveway. From there the two men could see anyone leaving the restaurant or approaching the pickup. Neither got out; they sat as if waiting.
"What do you think?" Frank asked.
"Either of you guys got a knife?" Vic asked. Frank's eyebrows raised at the question; Paul reached into a pocket and brought out a stout-bladed Buck folding knife.
"Good. Paul, what I'd like for you to do is go over behind that old Dodge sedan over there, as if you were going to look in the trunk. They probably won't pay much attention to you after they see you crossing to that side of the parking lot, and they're less likely to have a description of you than of Frank or me.
"Frank and I will be just inside the door. When you get to the back of the sedan, I'll go out, walk over to the pickup, and get in. If they get out and come over my way, you slip over behind their van and slash their rear tires. Then, if you have a chance, take their ignition key.
"Frank, if they don't come over when I go out, I'm going to start the pickup and drive away. If they don't come after me then, they probably aren't what we think they are. If they follow me out, they probably are. I'll try to come back and get you guys, but if I don't make it, you'll be on your own.
"Is that all right with both of you?"
Paul nodded. Frank frowned.
"Don't you know if they're after us?" Frank asked.
"Not in this universe I don't," Vic said. "Not with any certainty. But it kind of feels like it."
"What do I do while you and Paul are putting your asses on the line?"
"Whatever seems right to you, Frank. I hope they turn out to be innocent."
"They can see this window from there," Frank said. "They can see us sitting here together and see us get up to leave."
Vic shook his head. "It's dark in here, and the window's in the shade, while the parking lot's in the sun. They don't see much but the reflections of cars."
"Okay," Frank said after a moment, and slid out of the booth. "Let's do it, then."
The two men in the van waited restlessly, the engine idling. The driver sat with the phone to his ear, listening to nothing. The other reached for the radio. "Let it be," said the driver. "The last thing I need now is fucking noise."
The hand drew back.
A man came out of the restaurant, large and burly. Two of their targets fitted that description. But instead of heading for the pickup, he turned in their direction, walking around to the rear of a sedan three cars down, and their attention left him.
The phone spoke into the driver's ear. "They're getting out of the booth! They're heading for the door!"
Fleetingly, the driver felt spooky. How in the hell did Bobby know that? "Heads up!" he said to his partner, "They're coming!" He put down the phone and reached inside his jacket.
At that moment, Vic came out and walked briskly toward the pickup. The driver's left hand touched the door handle nervously, his right closing on the butt of his .38 special. His partner's, suddenly clammy, tightened on the old M-1 automatic carbine. Their eyes stayed on Vic until he got into the truck, then moved to the restaurant entrance. "Where's the other two?" the driver muttered.
They saw condensation eject from the pickup's tailpipe. "Let's get him," said the rifleman urgently.
"No!" the driver said sharply. "Wait for the other two; they're probably taking a leak. He's just warming up the motor."
Even as he said it, they saw the pickup move, begin to back out. His foot touched the gas pedal, his hand moving to the shift lever. In their intensity, they didn't notice the angry hiss as a knife slammed into the sidewall of their right rear tire, nor feel the sag at that corner as they started out of their slot.
The pickup backed sharply right, then jerked forward toward the far exit of the parking lot, the van jumping after it. As the van went by the restaurant entrance, Frank darted out, intending to grab the rear door handles and ride the bumper, but it moved too quickly, and as he watched, there was Paul clinging to the perch he'd intended for himself. Diacono stood futilely, watching first one vehicle and then the other turn left out of the lot and speed away.
Vic sped toward one of the service stations nearby, circled it with the van close behind, and headed back for the restaurant lot. The chase vehicle was followed by a stink of flapping, burning rubber, its driver cursing but otherwise ignoring it. The van's sharp left turn back into the restaurant lot dismounted the flat and fuming tire, and he skidded, the right rear side of the van hitting a decorative entry post.
Somehow, Paul held too tightly to be thrown off. Ahead, Vic slammed on the brakes; Frank darted out to him, jerked open the door, and jumped in. Quickly then, the pickup shot out again as the driver of the van straightened his vehicle and started after them once more, the bare wheel rim singing on the pavement. As the van passed the restaurant entrance, Paul dropped off, rolled, and watched it as far as the other lot exit, then moved quickly to the restaurant entrance as the driver made the turn.
Blowing a gusty sigh of release, he waited. Either they'd swing around again and pick him up, or he'd have to hitchhike home. Without examining his reasons, he hoped they'd pick him up.
Hardly a minute passed before he knew. Across a weedy field, he saw the pickup turn left at the corner, left again at the next, then back toward the lot once more. The van, giving up the chase, limped into one of the service stations. Frank pushed open the door and Paul clambered in. This time they turned right when they left the lot, and sped away.
Frank looked sober as they tooled east on US 54. Vic, on the other hand, was grinning broadly. "That was a mighty good job you did back there, Paul," he said. "It sure slowed them down. I'll admit I got a little worried when Frank told me you were riding on their rear bumper, but I figured you'd get off so we could pick you up."
"I hope to hell we don't have to go through bullshit like that all the way to Duluth," Frank said.
Vic nodded agreement. "We're about halfway now, and they've already made three tries that we know about. We'll just have to keep going and figure we'll make it."
"What do we do if our luck runs out?"
"If luck is a flow instead of a pool, it doesn't have to run out—like the magic pitcher in the fairy story."
Frank didn't answer immediately; he was looking at Vic's words. Magic. Fairy story. I've been living them the last week, he told himself.
"I just hope no one cuts off the flow, then," he said.
"Where does the luck flow come from?" Vic asked.
"Right," Frank said, seeing where Vic was leading him. "I guess we'll just have to keep on creating it."