"Meet me at my office," Besser instructed. "In twenty minutes. We'll be waiting. And, Wade, no tricks, please. Or else-"

Wade hung up. I'm neck deep in it now, he thought. "Why me?" he asked of Tom's head. "Why does the Supremate want me?"

"Because you're the healthiest able bodied male on campus. We couldn't take just anyone, not for something this important. That's why Besser had me swipe the medical records from the clinic. He wanted to check the medical histories of as many students as possible within the time frame, and that's what he and Winnie did. They selected the healthiest candidates of the bunch. The Supremate needs five girls and one guy. You're the lucky guy."

Wade got another beer. He sat glumly on the bed and drank.

"Don't look so b.u.mmed," Tom offered. "You get to live forever, man. We're talking eternal f.u.c.king life."

"Thanks for the input." Wade checked his watch. Twenty minutes to eternity. s.h.i.t.

"Destiny is calling, Wade. It's time for you to go."

"It's time for you to go too," Wade said. "Into the trash compactor."

Tom sighed a commendable resignation. "I understand."

Wade honestly found it difficult to hold Tom's head over the open Kenmore compactor. If only in part, this gray smiling severed head was still his friend.

"Good luck, dude," Tom's head bid.

"'Bye, Tom."

"Wait, wait! Before I go, here's an old one."

Wade rolled his eyes. "I'm about to drop you into a trash compactor and you want to tell jokes?"

"Just one more, for old times' sake."

"All right."

"What did Lincoln say after his five day drunk?"

"What?" Wade groaned.

"'I freed WHO?'"

Wade dropped the head in the compactor and hit the power b.u.t.ton. Tom's laughter could be heard over the machine's descending hum. The motor whined. Tom's skull folded up, crunching. Then the motor cut off.

What did you do today, son? he could almost hear his father asking. Well, Dad, I got chased by a dead man, I found Dean Saltenstall's body in a closet, I watched three police officers get killed, I drove a Buick LeSabre over several dozen women, and last but not least, I put Tom McGuire's head into a trash compactor. Pretty interesting day, don't you think?

But not nearly interesting enough, not yet. He stuck Lydia's .357 in his pants and rechecked his watch.

Indeed, destiny was calling. It was time to go.

CHAPTER 32.

Tom's black pendant, which Lydia had found on the Route, lay in the console. Wade didn't know what it was, so he left it, and he left the thing that looked like a portable tensor lamp, not knowing what that was either. There was very little he did know just then, except that his life was either about to end or take a dramatic change. He drove the Vette in stoic grace.

His mind seemed to float, vacant as s.p.a.ce, as he entered the sciences center and went up the steps. We'll be waiting, Besser had told him, yet no one waited in the dim, lamplit office. Preparations had been made, though: Blackout curtains hung over the windows. The only sunlight came in through the open door behind him.

Then: "Close the door, please, Wade."

Wade closed the door. When he turned, Professor Besser stood by the wall, fat as ever and all smiles.

"Our central extromitter is here, a marvelous invention. You wouldn't believe the time they save."

Wade saw the black dot on the wall, like the one at the shop. Not a dot, he reminded himself. A hole.

"Say h.e.l.lo to my birds of prey."

A suboctave hum filled Wade's head. The black dot ran down the wall, like a bead of ink, forming a line to the floor...

...and through that line, one by one, four sisters emerged. The line was a doorway, he realized, to the place he'd seen through the hole in the shop wall. A doorway to the labyrinth.

The sisters had squeezed through the line, like cutouts pushed through a slit. Yet an instant later they stood in the flesh, black cloaked, hooded. Fresh white faces grinned at him, eight lenses of four pairs of sungla.s.ses reflecting the tiny dot that was Wade's face.

The four sisters stood identically, grinning identical grins.

"We're taking you home now, Wade," Besser informed him.

"You're not taking s.h.i.t till you let Lydia go. That's the deal."

"Yes, but one that I'm not prepared to honor. The sisters would catch you before you reached the door."

Wade drew the .357 from behind his back. He pointed it at the biggest sister.

Besser laughed. "You already know that's futile."

Wade fired one bullet. The sister batted it down with her palm.

"So you see, you can't shoot them, Wade."

Wade turned the gun on Besser. "But I can shoot your fat a.s.s."

"If you like."

"I like," Wade said, and fired another.

The sister beside Besser plucked the 900 feet per second slug out of the air, like catching a thrown pea. She looked at it curiously, then ate it.

"You can't hurt them and they won't let you hurt me."

But Wade had one more trick. "You need me, right? For some reason, I'm important to you?"

"Yes, very," Besser said.

The sisters advanced, reaching out with white hands. But then Besser, in a flash of panic, shouted, "Stop!"

Wade now held the gun to his head, hammer c.o.c.ked. "Get Lydia out here, or I blow my own head off."

Besser jittered, dread in his face. "Wade, please. You can't-"

"Sure I can. I don't give a s.h.i.t." It felt good to be the one with the power for a change: "I got a hunch that this Supremate dude wouldn't be too happy if you brought me in dead."

"No," Besser croaked. "He wouldn't.'

"Then bring Lydia out here right now, or you get to watch my brains take a one way flight across the room."

Besser backed the women off. Their eager heads listed. "Be calm, Wade," Besser said. Again, the black dot ran down the wall.

Lydia unfolded from the line.

"Wade! You came to rescue me! I don't believe it!"

"Neither do I," he said. "And don't bother asking me why I've got a gun to my head. Are you all right?"

"Yes, but-"

"Then get out of here."

"But-"

"Just shut up and get out!" he shouted. There could be no dramatic goodbyes, no final professions of love, none of that corny s.h.i.t. "The Vette's outside. Fill it with gas and don't stop driving till you get to Alaska."

"But what about you?"

Wade's mouth twisted. "I have to go with them." He didn't want to see her anymore; that just made it worse. "It's the only way, so just...leave."

This would be her goodbye: silent acknowledgment. She looked at him, blinked, then walked out of the office.

"There," Besser said. "So what's it going to be?"

Wade knew what he meant. There was still one ultimate decision to be made. He heard the Vette start up outside and drive away.

Somehow, Wade smiled. "I could screw you bad, couldn't I?"

"Yes, but what a waste," Besser said with emphasis. "Why not come and see what we have to offer?"

The sisters' faces seemed radiant. They looked like angels.

Wade dropped the gun.

Besser opened the extromitter with his pendant. Two sisters took Wade by the hand and led him into the wall, into infinity.

"Are you okay?" asked the 7 Eleven cashier.

Lydia realized how she must look. Uniform in tatters, hair in her face, no gun in her holster. She'd look a lot worse, though, if the holotype in the next hold had had its way with her. Wade had sacrificed himself, for her.

She bought cigarettes and a six pack of c.o.ke. She sat in the Vette, thinking. During her stay in the labyrinth, she'd overheard enough to know what was going on. She knew what they were, yes, and what they were doing.

She also knew that they were leaving at midnight tonight, and they were taking Wade with them.

The UV spotter was still in the Vette, and thank G.o.d so was the black pendant she'd found where Wade had wrecked Tom's car. Winnifred had called it a key, and the extromitters-the dots-were the doors they unlocked.

A piece of paper was stuck in the visor, a note in Wade's yuppie scrawl.

Lydia, White, Peerce, and Porker are dead. So is the dean. I still don't know what any of this is about. Don't go back to the grove-it's getting worse by the minute. Leave town right away, Jervis is planting a bomb, but I don't know where. Just leave town and forget about me. Doesn't that sound corny?

Wade P.S. -Take good care of the Vette!

The dolt could've at least signed off saying he loved her. Men could be such a.s.sholes. So what else was new?

She didn't know what to make of this business with the bomb, or all the people Wade said were dead. But none of that mattered. For now she had to work on her plan, and she only had half a day to do it.

-WE HAVE WADE NOW. WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED.

"Great!" Jervis exclaimed, shovel in midstroke. "We did it!"

-YES, the Supremate said. -AND SOON YOU WILL JOIN ME IN ETERNAL GRACE. BUT TAKE CARE IN YOUR FINAL TASKS, JERVIS. SIGNS AND WONDERS, MY SON. YOU ARE MY SCRIBE.

Jervis fell to his knees in the dirt. Dead face turned to the sun, he raised his hands in obeisance to his invisible lord.

-THINK NOT OF THE LIVES OF CATTLE. THEY SERVE AS SACRIFICE TO MY HOLY WILL, A PORTENT TO THIS WORLD THAT I WILL ONE DAY RETURN AS DELIVERER. TODAY SHALL BE A GREAT AND HOLY REMEMBRANCE. I MUST BE REMEMBERED. LIKE A PROMISE IN THE WIND.

"Yes, my lord!" Jervis cried up.

-SIGNS AND WONDERS, JERVIS. THE GHOST OF FUTURE TIDINGS.

"You are my life! My redeemer!"

-LIKE A PROMISE IN THE WIND.

The Supremate left his head, and left Jervis shuddering in the graveyard. His lord's commandment was clear; this old life was fading, racing toward a new wondrous eternal life. Jervis drank Kirins and smoked as he buried the remaining bodies. It was refreshing work, burying the dead. The corpses were part of the promise too, and Jervis the very arm of the ghost of future tidings. He was nearly done now, like an apostle nearing heaven.

"You lurp lurpfffeeeevii p.r.i.c.k ick ick!"