Cody squinted toward Inferno. The long fall of the sun had started, and though it wouldn't be dark until after eight, he could already feel the shadows creeping up behind him. "Maybe I can, maybe I can't."

"I've seen the work you do here. It's tight. You're a natural, and you shouldn't throw away a G.o.d-given talent on junkers, should you?"

"I don't know."

"What's to know?" Cade took a solid gold toothpick from his shirt pocket and dug at a lower molar.

"If it's the law you're skittish of... well, that's under control. This is a business, Cody. Everybody understands the language."

The boy didn't reply. He was thinking of what six hundred dollars a month could buy him, and how far away from Inferno he could get in a red Porsche. To h.e.l.l with the old man; he could rot and turn into a maggot farm as far as Cody cared. Of course he knew what Mack Cade's business was. He'd seen the tractor-trailer trucks turn off Highway 67 and pull into Cade's autoyard in the middle of the night, and he knew they were hauling stolen cars. He knew, as well, that when the big trucks headed north again they were carrying vehicles without histories. After Cade's workmen had finished, the engines, radiators, exhaust systems, most of the body parts, even the hubcaps and paint jobs would have been changed, swapped around, made to look like cars sweet from the showroom floor. Where those finished chopshop specials went, Cody didn't know, but he figured they were resold by crooked dealers or used as company cars by organized gangs. Whoever used them paid heavy money to Cade, who'd found Inferno the perfect place to stash such an operation.

"You don't want to wind up like your old man, Cody." The boy saw his face reflected in Cade's sungla.s.ses. "You want to do something with your life, don't you?"

Cody hesitated. He didn't know what he wanted. Though he didn't give a s.h.i.t about the law, he'd never really done anything criminal, either. Maybe he did smash a few windows and raise some h.e.l.l, but what Cade offered was different. A whole lot different. It was like taking a step beyond a line that Cody had balanced on for a long time-yet to cross that line meant he couldn't come back. Not ever.

"Offer's open for one week. You know where to find me." Cade's smile had clicked back on, full wattage. "How much do I owe you?"

Cody checked the numbers. "Twelve seventy-three."

The man popped open his glove compartment, and Typhoid licked his hand. In the glove box there was a.45 automatic and an extra clip. His hand came out holding a rolled-up twenty; he snapped the glove compartment shut. "Here you go, man. Keep the change. And there's a little something extra in there for you too." He started the engine, the Mercedes giving a clean, throaty growl. Agitated, Lockjaw stood stiff-legged on the backseat and barked in Cody's face. He smelled raw meat.

"Think on these things," Cade said, and accelerated out of the station with a shriek of flayed rubber. Cody watched him speed away, heading south. He unrolled the twenty. Inside it was a small, capped gla.s.s vial holding three yellowish crystals. Though he'd never cooked the stuff before, Cody knew what crack looked like.

"You okay?"

Startled, Cody slipped the vial into his breast pocket, nestling the cocaine crystals under the Texaco star. Mendoza was standing about six feet behind him. "Yeah." Cody gave him the twenty. "He said to keep the change."

"And what else did he say?"

"Just chewin' air." Cody walked past Mendoza toward the garage stalls, trying to sort things out in his mind. He felt the pull of six hundred dollars a month on his soul, like a cold hand from the midst of a blast furnace. What's the problem? he asked himself. A few hours of work a night, the cops already paid off, a chance to move up in Cade's operation if I wanted. Why didn't I say yes right then and there?

"You know where his cars go, don't you?" Mendoza had followed Cody, and now leaned against the stall's cinder-block wall.

"Nope."

"Sure you do. About two or three years ago, a DA up in Fort Worth was found in the trunk of a car with his throat cut and a bullet between his eyes. The car was parked in front of City Hall. Of course it had no ID numbers. Where do you think it came from?"

Cody shrugged, but he knew.

"Before that," Mendoza continued, his burly brown arms folded over his chest, "a bomb went off in a pickup truck in Houston. The cops figured it was supposed to kill a lawyer who was workin' on a drug bust-but it blew a woman and her kid to pieces instead. Where do you think that truck came from?"

Cody picked up the lug-nut gun. "You don't have to lecture me."

"I don't mean to sound like I am. But don't you believe for one minute that Cade doesn't know how his cars are used. And that's just in Texas-he sends them all over the country!"

"I was just talkin' to him. No law against that."

"I know what he wants from you," Mendoza said firmly. "You're a man now, and you can do as you please. But I have to tell you something my father told me a long, long time ago: a man is responsible for his actions."

"You're not my father."

"No, I'm not. But I've watched you grow up, Cody. Oh, I know all about that Renegade s.h.i.t, but that's small compared to what Cade could drag you in-"

Cody pressed the gun's trigger, and its high squeal echoed between the walls. He turned his back on Mendoza and went to work.

Mendoza grunted, his gaze black and brooding. He liked Cody, knew he was a smart young man and could be somebody if he put his mind to it. But Cody had been crippled by that b.a.s.t.a.r.d father of his, and he'd let his old man's poison seep into his veins. Mendoza didn't know what was ahead for Cody, but he feared for the young man. He'd seen too many lives tossed away for the glint of Cade's fool's gold. He returned to the office and switched on the radio to the Spanish music station in El Paso. Around nine o'clock the Trailways bus from Odessa would come through on its way south to Chihauhau. The driver always stopped at Mendoza's station to let the pa.s.sengers buy soft drinks and candy from the machines. Then, except for an occasional truck, Highway 67 would lie empty, its concrete cooling under the expanse of stars, and Mendoza would shut down for the night. He would go home in time for a late dinner and a couple of games of checkers with his uncle Lazaro, who lived with him and his wife on Bordertown's First Street, until the ticking of the clock eventually urged the time for bed. Tonight he might dream of being a racecar driver, roaring around the dirt tracks of his youth. But, most likely, he would not dream.

And that would be another night gone, and another day approaching, and Mendoza knew that was the way a man's life ran out.

He turned the radio up louder, listening to the strident trumpets of a mariachi band, and he tried very hard not to let himself think about the boy in the garage, who stood at a crossroads that no one on earth could help him travel.

16 Inferno's Pulse

The shadows grew.

In front of the Ice House, the old-timers sat on benches smoking their cigars and corncob pipes and talking about the meteor. Heard it from Jimmy Rice, one of them said. Jimmy got it straight from the sheriff's mouth. h.e.l.l, I didn't get to be seventy-four years old to be kilt by no d.a.m.ned rock from out yonder in s.p.a.ce, I'm tellin' you! d.a.m.n thing just about fell right on our heads!

They all agreed it had been a near miss. They talked about the helicopter, still sitting in the middle of Preston Park, wondering how such a thing could fly, and would you get up in one? h.e.l.l no, I ain't crazy! was the unanimous answer. Then their talk drifted to the new baseball season, and when was a southern team going to win a series? When time runs back-a.s.sward and horses stand on two legs! one of them growled, and kept chewing on his cigar b.u.t.t.

In the House of Beauty on Celeste Street, Ida Younger frosted Tammy Bryant's mouse-brown hair and talked not about the meteor or the helicopter but about the two handsome men who had gotten out of it. The pilot's a hunk too, Tammy said. She'd seen him when he went into the Brandin' Iron for a hamburger and coffee-and, of course, she and May Davis just had to go in there for a bite of lunch too. And you should've seen the way that d.a.m.n Sue Mullinax flounced herself all over the cafe! Tammy confided. I mean, it was a disgrace!

Ida agreed that Sue was the nerviest b.i.t.c.h who ever tied a mattress to her back, and Sue's b.u.t.t just kept getting bigger and bigger and that's what so much s.e.x'll do to you too. She's a nymphomaniac, Tammy said. A nympho, plain and simple. Yeah, Ida said. Plain-lookin' and simpleminded.

And they both laughed.

On Cobre Road, past the Smart Dollar clothing store, the post office, the bake shop, and the Paperback Kastle, a middle-aged man squinted through his wire-rimmed spectacles and concentrated on inserting a pin through the abdomen of a small brown scorpion, found dead of Raid inhalation in the kitchen this morning. His name was Noah Twilley, and he was slender and pale, his straight black hair lank and going gray. His skinny fingers got the pin through, and he added the scorpion to his collection of other "ladies and gentlemen"-beetles, wasps, flies, and more scorpions, all pinned to black velvet and kept under gla.s.s. He was in the study of his white stone house, thirty yards behind the brick building with a stained-gla.s.s front window, a stucco statue of Jesus standing between two stucco cacti, and a sign that read INFERNO FUNERAL HOME.

His father had died six years ago and left the business to him-a dubious honor, since Noah had always wanted to be an entomologist. He had made sure his father was buried in the hottest plot on Joshua Tree Hill.

"Nooooaaaahhh! Noah! " The screech made his backbone stiffen. "Go get me a Co-Cola!"

"Just a minute, Mother," he answered.

"Noah! My show's on!"

He stood up wearily and walked down the corridor to her room. She was wearing a white silk gown, sitting up against white silk pillows in a bed with a white canopy. Her face was a mask of white powder, her hair dyed flame red. On the color TV, the Wheel of Fortune was spinning. "Get me a Co-Cola!"

Ruth Twilley ordered. "My throat's as dry as dust!"

"Yes, Mother," he answered, and trudged toward the staircase. Better to do what she wanted and get it over with, he knew.

"That meteor's doin' somethin' to the air!" she hollered after him, her voice as high as a wasp's whine. "Makin' my throat clog up!" He was on his way down the steps, but that voice followed him: "I'll bet old Celeste heard it hit! Bet it made her s.h.i.t pickles!"

Here we go, he thought.

"That prissy-pants b.i.t.c.h livin' out there high and mighty, not carin' a d.a.m.n about anybody else, just suckin' the guts out of this town. She did it, y'know! Prob'ly killed poor Wint, but he was too smart for her! Yessir! He hid all his money so she couldn't get none of it! Foxed her, he did! Well, when she comes to Ruth Twilley askin' for money and down on her hands and knees, I'm gonna snub her like she's a snail! You listenin' to me, Noah? Noah! "

"Yes," he answered, down in the depths of the house. "I'm listening."

She kept babbling on, and Noah let himself ponder what life might be like if that meteor had struck smack dab over the ceiling of her bedroom. There was not a plot on Joshua Tree Hill that was hot enough.

Across Inferno and Bordertown, other lives drifted on: Father Manuel LaPrado listened to confessions at the Sacrifice of Christ Catholic Church, while Reverend Hale Jennings put a pencil to paper at the Inferno Baptist Church and worked on his Sunday sermon. On his porch, Sarge Dennison napped in a lawn chair, his face occasionally flinching at unwelcome memories, his right arm hanging down and his hand patting the head of the invisible Scooter. Rick Jurado stacked boxes in the stockroom of the hardware store on Cobre Road, the Fang of Jesus heavy in his jeans pocket and his mind circling what Mr. Hammond had said today. Heavy-metal music blared from a ghetto blaster through the corridors of the 'Gades' fortress at the end of Travis Street, and while Bobby Clay Clemmons and a few other 'Gades smoked reefers and shot the s.h.i.t, Nasty and Tank lay on a bare mattress in another room, their bodies damp and intertwined in the aftermath of s.e.x-the one activity for which Tank removed his football helmet.

The day was winding down. A postal truck left town, heading north to Odessa with its cargo of letters-among which were a high percentage of job applications, inquiries for employment, and supplications to relatives for extended visiting privileges. Of all people, the postman knew the pulse of Inferno, and he could see death scrawled on the envelopes.

The sun was sinking, and on the First Texas Bank the electric-bulb sign read 93F. at 5:49.

17 The Baseball Fan

"I know this is an open line," Rhodes said to the duty officer at Webb Air Force Base. "I don't have closed comm equipment, and I don't have time, either. My ID is Bluebooker. Look it up." He held on to the phone as the duty officer verified his code. From the den he heard the television channel being changed again: the canned laughter of a sit-com. About six seconds pa.s.sed, and the channel was changed once more: a baseball-game commentator, and this time the TV was left alone for a little longer.

"Yes sir. I copy you, Bluebooker." The duty officer sounded young and nervous. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"I need a transport aircraft waiting with a number one priority. I need it fueled for cross-country, and I'll be giving the destination in the air. Alert Colonel Buckner that I'm coming in with a package from our incident site. I need videotape equipment on board too. My ETA into Webb will be between two and three hundred hours. Got that?"

"Yes sir."

"Read it back to me." He heard the channel change: a news broadcast, something about hostages in the Middle East. The duty officer read everything back correctly, and Rhodes said, "Fine. I'm signing off." He hung up the phone and strode into the den.

Daufin sat on the floor-cross-legged this time, as if it had figured out that its crouching posture put strain on a human's knee joints. The creature's face was about twelve inches from the TV screen, watching a news story about floods in Arkansas.

"I wish we'd get some of that rain," Gunniston said, drinking from a can of Pepsi. Daufin reached out and touched the TV screen. The entire picture warped out of shape; there was a crack! and the channels changed: Woody Woodp.e.c.k.e.r cartoons.

"Neat-o!" Ray was sitting on the floor, not too close to Daufin but not so far away, either. "She's got a remote control in her fingers!"

"Probably some kind of electromagnetic pulse," Rhodes told him. "It may be using the electricity in Stevie's body, or maybe it's generating its own."

Crack! Now there was a western movie on TV: Steve McQueen in The Magnificent Seven.

"Man, that's about the coolest thing I've ever-"

"Shut up!" Jessie's control had finally snapped, and she could stand it no longer. "You shut up!" Her eyes were bright with tears and anger, and Ray looked stunned. "There's nothing 'cool' about this! Your sister's gone! Don't you understand that?"

"I... didn't mean to-"

"She's gone! " Jessie advanced on Ray, but Tom quickly stood up from his chair and grasped her arm. She pulled free, her face strained and agonized. "She's gone, and there's just that left!" She pointed at Daufin; the creature still stared at the TV screen, oblivious to what Jessie was saying. "Jesus Christ..."

Jessie's voice faltered. She put her hands to her face. "Oh my G.o.d... oh G.o.d..." She began to sob, and Tom could do nothing but hold her while she wept bitter tears. Crack! A surfing compet.i.tion appeared, and Daufin's eyes widened slightly, following the rolling blue waves.

Rhodes turned toward his aide. "Gunny, I want you to get out to the crash site and hurry them up. We need to get out of here as soon as we can."

"Right." He finished his drink, dropped the can into the trash, and put on his cap as he went out the door, heading for the helicopter.

Rhodes wished he were anywhere else but here, and his mind drifted to the farm where he lived with his wife and two daughters, near Chamberlain, South Dakota. On clear nights he studied the stars in his small observatory, or made notes for the book he was planning on life beyond earth; he wished he was doing either, right now, because he had no recourse but to take the creature to a research lab, no matter that it wore a little girl's face. "Mrs. Hammond, I know this is tough on you," he said. "I want you to know th-"

"Know what? " She was still enraged, her face streaked with tears. "That our daughter's still alive?

That she's dead? Know what? "

Crack: a "Mork and Mindy" rerun. Crack: a financial news show. Crack: another baseball game.

"That I'm sorry," he went on resolutely. "For what it's worth, I've got two daughters myself. I can imagine what you must be feeling. If anything happened to either of them... well, I don't know what Kelly and I would do. Kelly's my wife. But at least you understand now that she-it-isn't your daughter. When the crew finishes up at the crash site, we'll be leaving. I'll take her-it-Daufin-to Webb, and from there to Virginia. I'm going to ask Gunny to stay with you."

"Stay with us? Why?" Tom asked.

"Just for a short while. A debriefing, I guess you'd call it. We'll want to get statements from all of you, go through the house with a Geiger counter, try to find that black sphere again. And we don't want this information leaking out. We want to control-"

"You don't want it leaking out," Tom repeated incredulously. "That's just great!" He gave a short, harsh laugh. "Our daughter's been taken away by some kind of d.a.m.ned alien thing, and you don't want the information leaking out." He felt the blood charge into his face. "What are we supposed to do? Just go on like it never happened?"

Crack: not a channel changing this time, but a bat connecting with a baseball. The crowd roared.

"I know you can't do that, but we're going to try to ease you away from this situation as best we can, with counseling, hypnosis-"

"We don't need that!" Jessie snapped. "We need to know where Stevie is! Is she dead, or is she-"

"Safe," Daufin interrupted.

Jessie's throat seized up. She looked at the creature. Daufin was staring at the baseball game, where a runner had slid into home plate. The ball was thrown back to the pitcher, and Daufin's eyes followed its trajectory with intense interest.

And then Daufin's head racheted toward Jessie: a slow, halting motion, as if she was still unsure of how the bones fit together. "Safe," she repeated. Her gaze locked on to the woman. "Ste-vie is safe, Jes-sie."

She managed a soft exhalation of breath: "What? "

"Safe. Freed from in-ju-ry or risk, al-so se-cure from dan-ger or loss. Is that not a cor-rect in-ter..."

Daufin paused, scanning dictionary pages in the ma.s.sive, perfectly organized library of her memory banks. "In-ter-pre-ta-tion?"

"Yes," Rhodes replied quickly. His heart had jumped; this was the first time the creature had spoken for over an hour, since that stuff about "oscillating tympanum." The TV channels had occupied her, and she'd been going through them again and again like a child with a new toy. "That's correct. How is she safe? Where is she?"

Daufin stood up awkwardly. She touched her chest. "Here." Touched her head. "Somewhere else."

Her fingers fluttered in a gesture of distance.

No one spoke. Jessie took a step forward; her little girl's face watched her, eyes shining. "Where?"

Jessie asked. "Please... I've got to know."

"Not far. A safe place. Trust me?"

"How... can I?"