Silence fell in the room, deep silence. Fascinated, hypnotized, Fran looked at the dying old woman who had been in their dreams before she had been in their lives.

"Look out the window, little girl."

Fran turned her face to the window, where Larry had stood and looked out at the gathered people two days before. She saw not pressing darkness but a quiet light. It was not a reflection of the room; it was morning light. She was looking at the faint, slightly distorted reflection of a bright nursery with ruffled check curtains. There was a crib-but it was empty. There was a playpen- There was a playpen-empty. A mobile of bright plastic butterflies- moved only by the wind. moved only by the wind. Dread clapped its cold hands around her heart. The others saw it on her face but did not understand it; they saw nothing through the window but a section of lawn lit by a streetlight. Dread clapped its cold hands around her heart. The others saw it on her face but did not understand it; they saw nothing through the window but a section of lawn lit by a streetlight.

"Where's the baby?" Fran asked hoarsely.

"Stuart is not the baby's father, little girl. But his life is in Stuart's hands, and in God's. This chap will have four fathers. If God lets him draw breath at all."

"If he draws-"

"God has hidden that from my eyes," she whispered.

The empty nursery was gone. Fran saw only darkness. And now dread closed its hands into fists, her heart beating between them.

Mother Abagail whispered: "The Imp has called his bride, and he means to put her with child. Will he let your child live?"

"Stop it," Frannie moaned. She put her hands over her face.

Silence, deep silence like snow in the room. Glen Bateman's face was an old dull searchlight. Lucy's right hand worked slowly up and down the neck of her bathrobe. Ralph had his hat in his hands, picking absently at the feather in the band. Stu looked at Frannie, but could not go to her. Not now. He thought fleetingly of the woman at the meeting, the one who had put her hands rapidly over her eyes, ears, and mouth at the mention of the dark man's name.

"Mother, father, wife, husband," Mother Abagail whispered. "Set against them, the Prince of High Places, the lord of dark mornings. I sinned in pride. So have you all, all sinned in pride. Ain't you heard it said, put not your faith in the lords and princes of this world?"

They watched her.

"Electric lights ain't the answer, Stu Redman. CB radio ain't it, either, Ralph Brentner. Sociology won't end it, Glen Bateman. And you doin penance for a life that's long since a closed book won't stop it from coming, Larry Underwood. And your boy-child won't stop it either, Fran Goldsmith. The bad moon has risen. You propose nothing in the sight of God."

She looked at each of them in turn. "God will dispose as He sees fit. You are not the potter but the potter's clay. Mayhap the man in the West is the wheel on which you will be broken. I am not allowed to know."

A tear, amazing in that dying desert, stole from her left eye and rolled down her cheek.

"Mother, what should we do?" Ralph asked.

"Draw near, all of you. My time is short. I'm going home to glory, and there's never been no human more ready than I am now. Get close to me".

Ralph sat on the edge of the bed. Larry and Glen stood at the foot of it. Fran got up with a grimace, and Stu dragged her chair up beside Ralph. She sat down again and took his hand with her own cold fingers.

"God didn't bring you folks together to make a committee or a community," she said. "He brought you here only to send you further, on a quest. He means for you to try and destroy this Dark Prince, this Man of Far Leagues."

Ticking silence. In it, Mother Abagail sighed.

"I thought it was Nick to lead you, but He's taken Nick-although not all of Nick is gone yet, it seems to me. No, not all. But you must lead, Stuart. And if it's His will to take Stu, then you must lead, Larry. And if He takes you, it falls to Ralph."

"Looks like I'm riding drag," Glen began. "What-"

"Lead?" Fran asked coldly. "Lead? "Lead? Lead where-?" Lead where-?"

"Why, west, little girl," Mother Abagail said. "West. You're not to go. Only these four."

"No!" She was on her feet in spite of the pain. "What are you saying? That the four of them are just supposed to deliver themselves into his hands? The heart and soul and guts of the Free Zone?" Her eyes blazed. "So he can hang them on crosses and just walk in here next summer and kill everyone? I won't see my man sacrificed to your killer God. Fuck Him." She was on her feet in spite of the pain. "What are you saying? That the four of them are just supposed to deliver themselves into his hands? The heart and soul and guts of the Free Zone?" Her eyes blazed. "So he can hang them on crosses and just walk in here next summer and kill everyone? I won't see my man sacrificed to your killer God. Fuck Him."

"Frannie!" Stu gasped.

"Killer God! Killer God Killer God!" she spat. "Millions-maybe billions billions-dead in the plague. Millions more afterward. We don't even know if the children will live. Isn't He done yet? Does it just have to go on and on until the earth belongs to the rats and the roaches? He's no God. He's a daemon, and you're His witch."

"Stop it, Frannie."

"No problem. I'm done. I want to leave. Take me home, Stu. Not to the hospital but back home."

"We'll listen to what she has to say."

"Fine. You listen for both of us. I'm leaving."

"Little girl."

"Don't call me that!"

Her hand shot out and closed around Frannie's wrist. Fran went rigid. Her eyes closed. Her head snapped back.

"Don't D-D-Don't ... OH OH MY MY GOD- STU- GOD- STU- " "

"Here! Here!" Stu roared. "What are you doing to her?"

Mother Abagail didn't answer. The moment spun out, seemed to stretch into a pocket of eternity, and then the old woman let go.

Slowly, dazedly, Fran began to massage the wrist Mother Abagail had taken, although there was no red ring or dent in the flesh to show that pressure had been applied. Frannie's eyes suddenly widened.

"Hon?" Stu asked anxiously.

"Gone," Fran muttered.

"What ... what's she talking about?" Stu looked around at the others in shaken appeal. Glen only shook his head. His face was white and strained but not disbelieving.

"The pain ... the whiplash. The pain in my back. It's gone." She looked at Stu, dazed. "It's all gone all gone. Look." She bent and touched her toes lightly: once, then twice. Then she bent a third time and placed her palms flat on the floor without unlocking her knees.

She stood up again and met Mother Abagail's eyes.

"Is this a bribe from your God? Because if it is, He can take His cure back. I'd rather have the pain if Stu comes with it."

"God don't lay on no bribes, child," Mother Abagail whispered. "He just makes a sign and lets people take it as they will."

"Stu isn't going west," Fran said, but now she seemed bewildered as well as frightened.

"Sit down," Stu said. "We'll listen to what she has to say."

Fran sat down, shocked, unbelieving, lost at sea. Her hands kept stealing around to the small of her back.

"You are to go west," Mother Abagail whispered. "You are to take no food, no water. You are to go this very day, and in the clothes you stand up in. You are to go on foot. I am in the way of knowing that one of you will not reach your destination, but I don't know which will be the one to fall. I am in the way of knowing that the rest will be taken before this man Flagg, who is not a man at all but a supernatural being. I don't know if it's God's will for you to defeat him. I don't know if it's God's will for you to ever see Boulder again. Those things are not for me to see. But he is in Las Vegas, and you must go there, and it is there that you will make your stand. You will go, and you will not falter, because you will have the Everlasting Arm of the Lord God of Hosts to lean on. Yes. With God's help you will stand."

She nodded.

"That's all. I've said m'piece."

"No," Fran whispered. "It can't be."

"Mother," Glen said in a kind of croak. He cleared his throat. "Mother, we're not 'in the way of understanding,' if you see what I mean. We're ... we're not blessed with your closeness to whatever is controlling this. It just isn't our way. Fran's right. If we go over there we'll be slaughtered, probably by the first pickets we come to."

"Have you no eyes? You've just seen Fran healed of her affliction by God, through me. Do you think His plan for you is to let you be shot and killed by the Dark Prince's least minion?"

"But, Mother-"

"No." She raised her hand and waved his words away. "It's not my place to argue with you, or convince, but only to put you in the way of understanding God's plan for you. Listen, Glen."

And suddenly, from Mother Abagail's mouth, the voice of Glen Bateman issued, frightening them all and making Fran shrink back against Stu with a little cry.

"Mother Abagail calls him the devil's pawn," this strong, masculine voice said, originating somehow in the old woman's wasted chest and emerging from her toothless mouth. "Maybe he's just the last magician of rational thought, gathering the tools of technology against us. Maybe he's something more, something darker. I only know that he is. is. And I no longer think that sociology or psychology or any other ology will put a stop to him. I think only white magic will do that." And I no longer think that sociology or psychology or any other ology will put a stop to him. I think only white magic will do that."

Glen's mouth hung open.

"Is that a true thing, or are those the words of a liar?" Mother Abagail said.

"I don't know if it's true or not, but they're my words," Glen said shakily.

"Trust. All of you, trust trust. Larry ... Ralph ... Stu ... Glen ... Frannie. You most patic'ly, Frannie. Trust ... and obey the word of God."

"Do we have a choice?" Larry asked bitterly.

She turned to look at him, surprised. "A choice? There's always a choice. That's God's way, always will be. Your will is still free. Do as you will. There's no set of leg-irons on you. But ... this is what God this is what God wants of wants of you." you."

That silence again, like deep snow. At last, Ralph broke it. "Says in the Bible that David did the job on Goliath," he said. "I'll be going along if you say it's right, Mother."

She took his hand.

"Me," Larry said. "Me too. Okay." He sighed and put his hands on his forehead as if it ached. Glen opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, there was a heavy, tired sigh from the comer and a thud.

It was Lucy, whom they had all forgotten. She had fainted.

Dawn touched the edge of the world.

They sat around Larry's kitchen table, drinking coffee. It was ten to five when Fran came up the hall and stood in the doorway. Her face was puffy from crying, but there was no limp as she walked. She was, indeed, cured. "She's going, I think," Fran said.

They went in, Larry with his arm around Lucy.

Mother Abagail's breathing had taken on a heavy, hollow rattle that was horribly reminiscent of the superflu. They gathered around the bed without speaking, deep in awe and afraid. Ralph was sure that something would happen at the end that would cause the wonder of God to stand before all of them, naked and revealed. She would be gone in a flash of light, taken. Or they would see her spirit, transfigured in radiance, leaving by the window and going up into the sky.

But in the end, she simply died.

There was a single final breath, the last of millions. It was drawn in, held, and finally let out. Her chest just didn't rise again.

"She's done," Stu muttered.

"God have mercy on her soul," Ralph said, no longer afraid. He crossed her hands on her thin bosom, and his tears fell on them.

"I'll go," Glen said suddenly. "She was right. White magic. That's all that's left."

"Stu," Frannie whispered. "Please, Stu, say no."

They looked at him-all of them.

Now you must lead, Stuart.

He thought of Arnette, of the old car carrying Charles D. Campion and his load of death, crashing into Bill Hapscomb's pumps like some wicked Pandora. He thought of Denninger and Deitz, and how he had begun to associate them in his mind with the smiling doctors who had lied and lied and lied to him and to his wife about her condition-and maybe they had lied to themselves, as well. Most of all, he thought of Frannie. And of Mother Abagail saying, This is what God wants of you. This is what God wants of you.

"Frannie," he said. "I have to go."

"And die." She looked at him bitterly, almost hatefully, and then to Lucy, as if for support. But Lucy was stunned and far-off, no help.

"If we don't go, we'll die," Stu said, feeling his way along the words. "She was right. If we wait, then spring comes. Then what? How are we going to stop him? We don't know. We don't have a clue. We never did. We had our heads in the sand, too. We can't stop him except like Glen says. White magic. Or the power of God."

She began to weep bitterly.

"Frannie, don't do that," he said, and tried to take her hand.

"Don't touch me!" she cried at him. "You're a dead man, you're a corpse, so don't touch me don't touch me!"

They stood around the bed in tableau as the sun came up.

Stu and Frannie went to Flagstaff Mountain around eleven o'clock. They parked halfway up, and Stu brought the hamper while Fran carried the tablecloth and a bottle of Blue Nun. The picnic had been her idea, but a strange and awkward silence held between them.

"Help me spread it," she said. "And watch out for those spiny things."

They were in a small, slanting meadow a thousand feet below Sunrise Amphitheater. Boulder was spread out below them in a blue haze. Today it was wholly summer again. The sun shone down with power and authority. Crickets buzzed in the grass. A grasshopper leaped up and Stu caught it with a quick lunge of his right hand. He could feel it inside his fingers, tickling and frightened.

"Spit n I'll let you go," he said, the old childhood formula, and looked up to see Fran smiling sadly at him. With quick, ladylike precision, she turned her head and spat. It hurt his heart, seeing her do that. "Fran-"

"No, Stu. Don't talk about it. Not now."

They spread the white lawn tablecloth, which Fran had glommed from the Hotel Boulderado, and moving with quick economy (it made him feel strange to watch her supple grace as she bent and moved, as if there had never been a whiplash injury and sprained back at all), she set out their early lunch: a cucumber and lettuce salad dressed with vinegar; cold ham sandwiches; the wine; an apple pie for dessert.

"Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat," she said. He sat down beside her and took a sandwich and some salad. He wasn't hungry. He hurt inside. But he ate.

When they had both finished a token sandwich and most of the salad-the fresh greens had been delicious-and a small sliver of apple pie each, she said: "When are you going?"

"Noon," he said. He lit a cigarette, cupping the flame in his hands.