The woman paid no attention. She went by him without a word. The boy looked at Underwood in a beseeching way, but the woman was in charge, at least for the time being, and the little boy let her bear him along, bear him away.

There was a moment of silence, and she suddenly felt at a loss to fill it, although it needed to be filled- - didn't it?

Wasn't it her job job to fill it? to fill it?

And a voice asked softly, Is it? Is that your job? Is that why God brought you here, woman? To be the Official Greeter at the gates of the Free Zone? Is it? Is that your job? Is that why God brought you here, woman? To be the Official Greeter at the gates of the Free Zone?

I can't think, she protested. The woman was right: I AM tired.

He comes in more shapes than his own, the small interior voice persisted. the small interior voice persisted. Wolf, crow, snake... woman. Wolf, crow, snake... woman.

What did it mean? What had happened here? What, in God's name?

I was sitting here complacently, waiting to be kowtowed to-yes, that's what I was doing, no use denying it - - and now that woman has come and something has happened and I'm losing what it was. But there was something about that woman... wasn't there? Are you sure? Are you sure? and now that woman has come and something has happened and I'm losing what it was. But there was something about that woman... wasn't there? Are you sure? Are you sure?

There was an instant of silence, and in it they all seemed to be looking at her, waiting for her to prove herself. And she wasn't doing it. The woman and the boy were gone from sight; they had left as if they were the true believers and she nothing but a shoddy, grinning Sanhedrin they had seen through immediately.

Oh, but I'm old! It's not fair !

And on the heels of that came another voice, small and low and rational, a voice that was not her own: Not too old to know the woman is- Not too old to know the woman is- Now another man had approached her in hesitant, deferential fashion. "Hi, Mother Abagail," he said. "The name's Zellman. Mark Zellman. From Lowville, New York. I dreamed about you."

And she was faced with a sudden choice that was clear-cut for only an instant in her groping mind. She could acknowledge this man's hello, banter with him a little to set him at his ease (but not too much at ease; that was not precisely what she wanted), and then go on to the next and the next and the next, receiving their homage like new palm leaves, or she could ignore him and the rest. She could follow the thread of her thought down into the depths of herself, searching for whatever it was that the Lord meant her to know.

The woman is - - what? what?

Did it matter? The woman was gone.

"I had me a great-nephew lived in upstate New York one time," she said easily to Mark Zellman. "Town named Rouse's Point. Backed right up against Vermont on Lake Champlain, it is. Probably never heard of it, have you?"

Mark Zellman said he sure had heard of it; just about everyone in New York State knew that town. Had he ever been there? His face broke tragically. No, never had. Always meant to.

"From what Ronnie wrote in his letters, you didn't miss much," she said, and Zellman went away beaming broadly.

The others came up to make their manners as the other parties had done before them, as still others would do in the days and weeks to come. A teenage boy named Tony Donahue. A fellow named Jack Jackson, who was a car mechanic. A young R.N. named Laurie Constable - she would come in handy. An old man named Richard Farris whom everyone called the Judge; he looked at her keenly and almost made her feel uncomfortable again. Dick Vollman. Sandy DuChiens - pretty name, that, French. Harry Dunbarton, a man who had sold spectacles for a living only three months ago. Andrea Terminello. A Smith. A Rennett. And a great many others. She spoke to them all, nodded, smiled, and put them at their ease, but the pleasure she had felt on other days was gone today and she felt only the aches in her wrists and fingers and knees, plus the gnawing suspicion that she had to go use the Port-O-San and if she didn't get there soon she was going to stain her dress.

All of that and the feeling, fading now (and it would be entirely gone by nightfall), that she had missed something of great significance and might later be very sorry.

He thought better when he wrote, and so he jotted down everything which might be of importance in outline, using two felt-tip pens: a blue and a black. Nick Andros sat in the study of the house on Baseline Drive that he shared with Ralph Brentner and Ralph's woman, Elise. It was almost dark. The house was a beauty, sitting below the bulk of Flagstaff Mountain but quite a bit above the town of Boulder proper, so that from the wide living room window the streets and roads of the municipality appeared spread out like a gigantic gameboard. That window was treated on the outside with some sort of silvery reflective stuff, so that the squire could look out but passersby could not look in. Nick guessed that the house was in the $450,000$500,000 range ... and the owner and his family were mysteriously absent.

On his own long journey from Shoyo to Boulder, first by himself, then with Tom Cullen and the others, he had passed through tens of dozens of towns and cities, and all of them had been stinking charnel houses. Boulder had no business being any different... but it was. There were corpses here, yes, thousands of them, and something was going to have to be done about them before the hot, dry days ended and the fall rains began, causing quicker decomposition and possible disease ... but there were not enough enough corpses. Nick wondered if anyone other than he and Stu Redman had noticed it ... Lauder, maybe. Lauder noticed almost everything. corpses. Nick wondered if anyone other than he and Stu Redman had noticed it ... Lauder, maybe. Lauder noticed almost everything.

For every house or public building you found littered with corpses, there were ten others completely empty. Sometime, during the last spasm of the plague, most of Boulder's citizens, sick or well, had blown town. Why? Well, he supposed it really didn't matter, and maybe they would never know. The awesome fact remained that Mother Abagail, sight unseen, had managed to lead them to maybe the one small city in the United States that had been cleared of plague victims. It was enough to make even an agnostic like himself wonder where she was getting her information.

Nick had taken three rooms on the basement level of the house, and nice rooms they were, furnished in knotty pine. No urging on Ralph's part had moved him to enlarge his living space - he felt like an interloper already, but he liked them... and until his trip from Shoyo to Hemingford Home, he hadn't realized how much he had come to miss other faces. He hadn't gotten his fill yet.

And the place was the finest one he'd ever lived in, just as it was. He had his own entrance by the back door, and he kept his ten-speed parked under the door's low, overhanging eave, where it stood axle-deep in generations of fragrantly rotting aspen leaves. He had the beginnings of a book collection, something he had always wanted and never been able to have in his years of wandering. He had been a great reader in those days (during these new days, there rarely seemed to be time to sit and have a good long conversation with a book), and some of the books on the shelves - shelves which were still largely empty-were old friends, most of them originally borrowed from lending libraries at two cents a day; in the last few years he had never spent enough time in one town to get a regular library card. Others were books he hadn't yet read, books the lending library books had led him to look for. As he sat here with his felt-tip pens and paper, one of these books sat on the desk beside his right hand-Set This House on Fire, by William Styron. He had marked his place with a ten-dollar bill he had found on the street. There was a lot of money in the streets, blowing along the gutters in the wind, and he was still surprised and amused at how many people - himself among them- still stopped to pick them up. And why? The books were free now. The ideas were free. Sometimes that thought exhilarated him. Sometimes it frightened him. by William Styron. He had marked his place with a ten-dollar bill he had found on the street. There was a lot of money in the streets, blowing along the gutters in the wind, and he was still surprised and amused at how many people - himself among them- still stopped to pick them up. And why? The books were free now. The ideas were free. Sometimes that thought exhilarated him. Sometimes it frightened him.

The paper he was writing on came from a ring binder in which he kept all his thoughts - the contents of the binder were half diary, half shopping list. He had discovered a deep fondness in himself for making lists; he thought one of his forebears must have been an accountant. When your mind was troubled, he had discovered that making a list often set it at ease again.

He went back to the fresh page before him, doodling formlessly in the margin.

It seemed to him that all the things they wanted or needed from the old life were stored in the silent East Boulder power plant, like dusty treasure in a dark cupboard. An unpleasant feeling seemed to run through the people who had gathered in Boulder, a feeling just submerged below the surface - they were like a scared bunch of kids knocking around in the local haunted house after dark. In some ways, the place was like a rancid ghost town. There was a sense that being here was a strictly temporary thing. There was one man, a fellow named Impening, who had once lived in Boulder and worked on one of the custodial crews at the IBM plant out on the Boulder-Longmont Diagonal. Impening seemed determined to stir up unrest. He was going around telling people that in 1984 there had been an inch and a half of snow in Boulder by September 14, and that by November it would be cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. That was the kind of talk Nick would like to put a quick stop to. Never mind that if Impening had been in the army he would have been cashiered for such talk; that was an empty logic, if it was logic at all. The important thing was that Impening's words would have no power if people could move into houses where the lights worked and where the furnaces blew hot air up through grates at the touch of a finger on a button. If that didn't happen by the time the first coldsnap arrived, Nick was afraid that people would begin simply to slip away, and all the meetings, representatives, and ratifications in the world wouldn't stop that.

According to Ralph, there wasn't that much wrong at the power plant, at least not that much visible. The crews who ran it had shut some of the machinery down; other machinery had shut itself down. Two or three of the big turbine engines had blown, perhaps as the result of some final power surge. Ralph said that some of the wiring would have to be replaced, but he thought that he and Brad Kitchner and a crew of a dozen warm bodies could do that. A much bigger work crew was needed to remove fused and blackened copper wire from the blown turbine generators and then install new copper wire by the yard. There was plenty of copper wire in the Denver supply houses for the taking; Ralph and Brad had gone one day last week to check for themselves. With the manpower, they thought they could have the lights on again by Labor Day.

"And then we'll throw the biggest fucking party this town ever saw," Brad said.

Law and Order. That was something else that troubled him. Could Stu Redman be handed that particular package? He wouldn't want the job, but Nick thought he could perhaps persuade Stu to take it ... and if push came to shove, he could get Stu's friend Glen to back him up. What really bothered him was the memory, still too fresh and hurtful to look at more than briefly, of his own brief and terrible tour as Shoyo's jailkeeper. Vince and Billy dying, Mike Childress jumping up and down on his supper and crying out in wretched defiance: Hunger strike! I'm on a fuckin hunger strike! Hunger strike! I'm on a fuckin hunger strike!

It made him ache inside to think they might need courts and jails ... maybe even an executioner. Christ, these were Mother Abagail's people, not the dark man's! But he supposed the dark man would not bother with such trivialities as courts and jails. His punishment would be swift and sure and heavy. He would not need the threat of jail when the corpses hung on the telephone pole crosses along I-15 for the birds to pick.

Nick hoped most of the infractions would be small ones. There had been several cases of drunk and disorderly already. One kid, really too young to drive, had been rodding a big dragging machine up and down Broadway, scaring people out of the street. He had finally driven into a stalled bread truck and had gashed his forehead - and lucky to get off so cheaply, in Nick's opinion. The people who had seen him knew he was too young, but no one had felt he or she had the authority to put a stop to it.

Authority. Organization. He wrote the words on his pad and put them inside a double circle. Being Mother Abagail's people gave them no immunity to weakness, stupidity, or bad companions. Nick didn't know if they were the children of God or not, but when Moses had come down from the mountain, those not busy worshipping the golden calf had been busy shooting craps, he knew that. And they had to face the possibility that someone might get cut over a card game or decide to shoot someone else over a woman. He wrote the words on his pad and put them inside a double circle. Being Mother Abagail's people gave them no immunity to weakness, stupidity, or bad companions. Nick didn't know if they were the children of God or not, but when Moses had come down from the mountain, those not busy worshipping the golden calf had been busy shooting craps, he knew that. And they had to face the possibility that someone might get cut over a card game or decide to shoot someone else over a woman.

Authority. Organization. He circled the words again and now they were like prisoners behind a triple stockade. How well they went together ... and what a sorry sound they made. He circled the words again and now they were like prisoners behind a triple stockade. How well they went together ... and what a sorry sound they made.

Not long after, Ralph came in. "We got some more folks coming in tomorrow, Nicky, and a whole parade the day after. Over thirty in that second one."

"Good," Nick wrote. "We'll get a doc before long, I bet. Law of averages says so."

"Yeah," Ralph said. "We're turnin into a regular by-God city."

Nick nodded.

"I had a talk with the fella leadin the party that came in today. His name's Larry Underwood. Smart man, Nick. Sharp as a tack."

Nick raised his eyebrows and drew a ? in the air.

"Well, let's see," Ralph said. He knew what the question mark meant: give more information, if you can. "He's six or seven years older'n you, I think, and maybe eight or nine younger than Redman. But he's the kind of man you said we ought to be on the lookout for. He asks the right questions."

"Who's in charge, for one," Ralph said. "What comes next, for another. Who does it, for a third."

Nick nodded. Yes - the right questions. But was he the right man? Ralph might be right. He also might not be.

"I'll try to meet up with him tomorrow & say hello," he wrote on a fresh sheet of paper.

"Yeah, you oughtta. He's all right." Ralph shuffled his feet. "And I talked to Mother a little bit before this Underwood and his folks came up to be innerduced. Talked to her like you wanted me to."

"She says we ought to go ahead. Get moving. She says there's people lollygaggin, and they need some folks to be in charge and tell em where to squat and lean."

Nick leaned back in his chair and laughed silently. Then he wrote, "I was pretty sure she'd feel that way. I'll talk to Stu & Glen tomorrow. Did you print the handbills?"

"Oh! Those! Shit, yeah," Ralph said. "That's where I been most of the afternoon, for Christ's sake." He showed Nick a sample poster. Still smelling strongly of mimeograph ink, the print was large and eyecatching. Ralph had done the graphics himself: MASS MEETING!!!.

REPRESENTATIVE BOARD.

TO BE NOMINATED AND ELECTED!.

8:30 P.M., August 18, 1990 Place: Canyon Boulevard Park & Bandshell if FINEChautauqua Hall in Chautauqua Park if FOUL

REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED.

FOLLOWING THE MEETING.

Below this were two rudimentary street maps for newcomers and those who hadn't spent much time exploring Boulder. Below, in rather fine print, were the names he and Stu and Glen had agreed upon after some discussion earlier in the day:

Ad Hoc Committee

Nick AndrosGlen BatemanRalph BrentnerRichard EllisFran GoldsmithStuart RedmanSusan Stern

Nick pointed to the line on the flier about refreshments and raised his eyebrows.

"Oh yeah, well, Frannie came by and said we'd be more apt to get everybody if we had something. She and her friend there, Patty Kroger, they're going to see to it. Cookies and Za-Rex." Ralph made a face. "If it came down to a choice between drinking Za-Rex and bullpiss, I'd have to sit down and think her over. You c'n have mine, Nicky."

Nick grinned.

"The only thing about this," Ralph went on more seriously, "is you guys putting me on this committee. I know what that word means. It means 'Congratulations, you get to do all the hard work.' Well, I don't really mind that, I been workin hard all my life. But committees are supposed to have idears, and I ain't much of an idear man."

On his pad, Nick quickly sketched a big CB setup, and in the background a radio tower with bolts of electricity coming from its top.

"Yeah, but that's a lot different," Ralph said glumly.

"You'll be fine," Nick wrote. "Believe it."

"If you say so, Nicky. I'll give her a try. I still think you'd be better off with this Underwood fella, though."

Nick shook his head and clapped Ralph on the shoulder. Ralph bid him goodnight and went upstairs. When he was gone, Nick looked thoughtfully at the handbill for a long time. If Stu and Glen had seen copies - and he was sure they had by now - they knew that he had unilaterally stricken Harold Lauder's name from their list of ad hoc committee members. He didn't know how they might be taking it, but the fact that they hadn't shown up at his door yet was probably a good sign. They might want him to do some horsetrading of his own, and if he had to, he would do it, just to keep Harold out at the top. If he had to, he would give them Ralph. Ralph didn't really want the position anyway, although, goddammit, Ralph had great native wit and the nearly priceless ability to think around the corners of problems. He would be a good man to have on the permanent committee, and he felt that Stu and Glen had already packed the committee with their friends. If he, Nick, wanted Lauder out, they would just have to go along. To pull off this leadership coup smoothly, there had to be no dissension at all among them. Say, Ma, how did that man get a rabbit to come out of that hat? Well, son, I'm not sure, but I think he might might have used the old "misdirect 'em with cookies and Za-Rex" trick. It works just about every time. have used the old "misdirect 'em with cookies and Za-Rex" trick. It works just about every time.

He turned back to the page he had been doodling on when Ralph came in. He stared at the words he had circled not just once but three times, as if to keep them in. Authority. Organization. Authority. Organization. He suddenly wrote another one below them - there was just room. Now the words in the triple circle read: He suddenly wrote another one below them - there was just room. Now the words in the triple circle read: Authority. Organization. Politics.

But he wasn't trying to knock Lauder out of the picture just because he felt Stu and Glen Bateman were trying to hog what was really his football. He felt a certain amount of pique, sure. It would have been odd if he hadn't. In a way, he, Ralph, and Mother Abagail had founded the Boulder Free Zone.

There's hundreds of people here now and thousands more on their way if Bateman's right, he thought, tapping his pencil against the circled words. The longer he looked at them, the uglier they seemed. he thought, tapping his pencil against the circled words. The longer he looked at them, the uglier they seemed. But when Ralph and I and Mother and Tom Cullen and the rest in our party got here, the only living things in Boulder were the cats and the deer that had come down here from the state park to forage in people's gardens... and even in the stores. Remember that one that got into the Table Mesa Supermarket somehow and But when Ralph and I and Mother and Tom Cullen and the rest in our party got here, the only living things in Boulder were the cats and the deer that had come down here from the state park to forage in people's gardens... and even in the stores. Remember that one that got into the Table Mesa Supermarket somehow and then couldn't get out? It was crazy, running up and down the aisles, knocking things over, falling down, then getting up and running again. then couldn't get out? It was crazy, running up and down the aisles, knocking things over, falling down, then getting up and running again.

We're Johnny-come-latelies, sure, we haven't even been here a month yet, but we were first! So there's a little pique, but pique isn't the reason I want Harold out. I want him out because I don't trust him. He smiles all the time, but there's a watertight (smiletight?) compartment between his mouth and his eyes. There was some friction between him and Stu at one time, over Frannie, and all three of them say it's over, but I wonder if it really is over. Sometimes I see Frannie looking at Harold, and she looks uneasy. She looks as if she's trying to figure out how "over" this over really is. He's bright enough, but he strikes me as unstable.

Nick shook his head. That wasn't all. On more than one occasion he had wondered if Harold Lauder might not be crazy.

Mostly it's that grin. I don't want to have to share secrets with anyone who grins like that and looks as if he isn't sleeping well at night.

No Lauder. They'll have to go along with that.

Nick closed his ring-binder and put it away in the bottom drawer of his desk. Then he stood up and began taking off his clothes. He wanted a shower. He felt obscurely dirty.

The world, he thought, not according to Garp but according to the superflu. This brave new world. But it didn't seem particularly brave to him, or particularly new. It was as if someone had put a large cherry bomb into a child's toybox. There had been a big bang and everything had gone everywhere. Toys had scattered from one end of the playroom to the other. Some things were shattered beyond repair, other things would be fixable, but most of the stuff had just been scattered. Those things were still a little too hot to handle, but they would be fine once they had cooled off.

Meanwhile, the job was to sort things out. Throw away the things which were no longer good. Set aside the toys which could be fixed. List everything which was still okay. Get a new toybox to put the things in, a nice new toybox. A strong strong toybox. There is a frightening, sickening ease - and a clear attraction - to the way in which things can be blown apart. The hard job is bringing things together again. The sorting. The fixing. The listing. And discarding the things which are no good, of course. toybox. There is a frightening, sickening ease - and a clear attraction - to the way in which things can be blown apart. The hard job is bringing things together again. The sorting. The fixing. The listing. And discarding the things which are no good, of course.

Except... can you ever bring yourself to throw away the things which are no good?

Nick paused halfway to the bathroom, naked, his clothes held in his arms.

Oh, the night was so silent... but weren't all his nights symphonies of silence? Why had his body suddenly broke out in gooseflesh?

Why, because he suddenly felt that it was not toys the Free Zone Committee would be in charge of picking up, not toys at all. He suddenly felt that he had joined some bizarre sewing circle of the human spirit - he and Redman and Bateman and Mother Abagail, yes, even Ralph with his big radio and his boosting equipment that sent the Free Zone signal flying far and wide across the dead continent. They each had a needle and perhaps they were working together to make a warm blanket to keep off the winter chill... or perhaps they had only, after a brief pause, begun once again to make a large shroud for the human race, beginning their work at the toes and working their way up.

After love, Stu had gone to sleep. He had been on short sleep rations lately, and the night before he had been up all night with Glen Bateman, getting drunk and planning for the future. Frannie had put on her robe and come out here on the balcony.

The building they lived in was downtown, on the corner of Pearl Street and Broadway. Their apartment was on the third floor, and below her she could see the intersection, Pearl running east-west, Broadway running north-south. She liked it here. They had the compass boxed. The night was warm and windless, the black stone of the sky flawed with a million stars. In their faint and frosty glow, Fran could see the slabs of the Flatirons rising in the west.

She passed a hand down from her neck to her thighs. The dressing gown she wore was silk, and she was naked underneath. Her hand passed smoothly over her breasts and then, instead of continuing on flat and straight to the mild rise of her pubis, her hand traced an arc of belly, following a curve that had not been this pronounced even two weeks ago.

She was beginning to show, not a lot yet, but Stu had commented on it this evening. His question had been casual enough, even comic: How long can we do it without me, uh, squeezing him? How long can we do it without me, uh, squeezing him?

Or her, she had answered, amused. How does four months sound, Chief?

Fine, he had answered, and slipped deliciously into her. he had answered, and slipped deliciously into her.

Earlier talk had been much more serious. Not long after they got to Boulder, Stu had told her he had discussed the baby with Glen and Glen had advanced the idea, very cautiously, that the superflu germ or virus might still be around. If so, the baby might die. It was an unsettling thought (you could always, she thought, count on Glen Bateman for an Unsettling Thought or two), but surely if the mother was immune, the baby... ?

Yet there were plenty of people here who had lost children to the plague.

Yes, but that would mean- Would mean what?