How that echoed in his mind! How that intoxicated him!

He opened his mouth, and the voice that emerged was as tuneless as the chiming of a cracked bell. "But for a price. Isn't that right? For a price. Because nothing is for free. Not even now, when everything is lying around, waiting to be picked up."

"I want what you want," she said. "I know what's in your heart."

"No one knows that."

"What's in your heart is in your ledger. I could read it there-I know where it is-but I don't need to."

He started and looked at her with a wild guilt.

"It used to be under that loose stone there," she said, pointing to the hearth, "but you moved it. Now it's behind the insulation in the attic."

"How do you know that? How do you know?" How do you know?"

"I know because he told me. He ... you could say that he wrote me a letter. And what's more important, he told me about you, you, Harold. How the cowboy took your woman and then kept you off the Free Zone Committee. He Harold. How the cowboy took your woman and then kept you off the Free Zone Committee. He wants wants us to be together, Harold. And he's generous. From now until when we leave here, it's recess for you and me." us to be together, Harold. And he's generous. From now until when we leave here, it's recess for you and me."

She touched him and smiled.

"From now until then it's playtime. Do you understand?"

"I- "

"No," she answered, "you don't. Not yet. But you will, Harold. You will."

Insanely, it came to his mind to tell her to call him Hawk.

"And later, Nadine? What does he want later?"

"What you want. And what I want. What you almost did to Redman on the first night you went out hunting for the old woman ... but on a much larger scale. And when that's done, we can go to him, Harold. We can be with him. We can stay with him." Her eyes slipped half-closed in a kind of rapture. Perhaps paradoxically, the fact that she loved the other but would give herself to him-might actually enjoy it-brought his desire up again, hot and close.

"What if I say no?" His lips felt cold, ashy.

She shrugged, and the movement made her breasts sway prettily. "Life will go on, won't it, Harold? I'll try to find some way of doing the thing I have to do. You'll go on. Sooner or later you'll find a girl who will do that ... one little thing for you. But that one little thing is very tiresome after a while. Very tiresome."

"How would you know?" he asked, and grinned crookedly at her.

"I know because sex is life in small, and life is tiresome-time spent in a variety of waiting rooms. You might have your little glories here, Harold, but to what end? On the whole it will be a humdrum, slipping-down life, and you'll always remember me with my shirt off, and you'll always wonder what I would have looked like with everything off. You'll wonder what it would have been like to hear me talking dirty to you ... or to have me spill honey all over your ... body ... and then lick it off ... and you'll wonder-"

"Stop it," he said. He was trembling all over.

But she wouldn't.

"I think you'll also wonder what it would have been like on his his side of the world," she said. "That more than anything and everything else, maybe." side of the world," she said. "That more than anything and everything else, maybe."

"I- "

"Decide, Harold. Do I put my shirt back on or take everything else off?"

How long did he think? He didn't know. Later, he wasn't even sure he had struggled with the question. But when he spoke, the words tasted like death in his mouth: "In the bedroom. Let's go in the bedroom."

She smiled at him, such a smile of triumph and sensual promise that he shuddered from it, and his own eager response to it.

She took his hand.

And Harold Lauder succumbed to his destiny.

CHAPTER 55.

The Judge's house overlooked a cemetery.

He and Larry sat on the back porch after dinner, smoking Roi-Tan cigars and watching sunset fade to pale orange around the mountains.

"When I was a boy," the Judge said, "we lived within walking distance of the finest cemetery in Illinois. Its name was Mount Hope. Every night after supper, my father, who was then in his early sixties, would take a walk. Sometimes I would walk with him. And if the walk took us past this perfectly maintained necropolis, he would say, 'What do you think, Teddy? Is there any hope?' And I would answer, 'There's Mount Hope,' and each time he'd roar with laughter as if it had been the first time. I sometimes think we walked past that boneyard just so he could share that joke with me. He was a wealthy man, but it was the funniest joke he seemed to know."

The Judge smoked, his chin low, his shoulders hunched high.

"He died in 1937, when I was still in my teens," he said. "I have missed him ever since. A boy does not need a father unless he is a good father, but a good father is indispensable. No hope but Mount Hope. How he enjoyed that! He was seventy-eight years old when he passed on. He died like a king, Larry. He was seated upon the throne in our home's smallest room, with the newspaper in his lap."

Larry, not sure how to respond to this rather bizarre bit of nostalgia, said nothing.

The Judge sighed. "This is going to be quite a little operation here before long," he said. "If you can get the power on again, that is. If you can't, people are going to get nervous and start heading south before the bad weather can come and hem them in."

"Ralph and Brad say it's going to happen. I trust them."

"Then we'll hope that your trust is well founded, won't we? Maybe it is a good thing that the old woman is gone. Perhaps she knew it would be better that way. Maybe people should be free to judge for themselves what the lights in the sky are, and if one tree has a face or if the face was only a trick of the light and shadow. Do you understand me, Larry?"

"No, sir," Larry said truthfully. "I'm not sure I do."

"I wonder if we need to reinvent that whole tiresome business of gods and saviors and ever-afters before we reinvent the flushing toilet. That's what I'm saying. I wonder if this is the right time for gods."

"Do you think she's dead?"

"She's been gone six days now. The Search Committee hasn't found a trace of her. Yes, I think she's dead, but even now I am not completely sure. She was an amazing woman, completely outside any rational frame of reference. Perhaps one of the reasons I'm almost glad to have her gone is because I'm such a rational old curmudgeon. I like to creep through my daily round, to water my garden-did you see the way I've brought the begonias back? I'm quite proud of that-to read my books, to write my notes for my own book about the plague. I like to do all those things and then have a glass of wine at bedtime and fall asleep with an untroubled mind. Yes. None of us want to see portents and omens, no matter how much we like our ghost stories and the spooky films. None of us want to really see really see a Star in the East or a pillar of fire by night. We want peace and rationality and routine. If we have to see God in the black face of an old woman, it's bound to remind us that there's a devil for every god-and our devil may be closer than we like to think." a Star in the East or a pillar of fire by night. We want peace and rationality and routine. If we have to see God in the black face of an old woman, it's bound to remind us that there's a devil for every god-and our devil may be closer than we like to think."

"That's why I'm here," Larry said awkwardly. He wished mightily that the Judge hadn't just mentioned his garden, his books, his notes, and his glass of wine before bedtime. He had had a two-bit bright idea at a meeting of friends and had made a blithe suggestion. Now he wondered if there was any possible way of going on without sounding like a cruel and opportunistic halfwit.

"I know why you're here. I accept."

Larry jerked, making the wicker of his chair strain and whisper. "Who told you? This is supposed to be very quiet, Judge. If someone on the committee has been leaking, we're in a hell of a jam."

The Judge raised one liverspotted hand, cutting him off. His eyes twinkled in his time-beaten face. "Softly, my boy-softly. No one on your committee has been leaking, not that I know of, and I keep my ear close to the ground. No, I whispered the secret to myself. Why did you come here tonight? Your face is an education in itself, Larry. I hope you don't play poker. When I was talking about my few simple pleasures, I could see your face sag and droop ... a rather comic stricken expression appeared on it - "

"Is that so funny? What should I do, look happy about ... about ..."

"Sending me west," the Judge said quietly. "To spy out the land. Isn't that about it?"

"That's exactly it."

"I wondered how long it would be before the idea would surface. It is tremendously important, of course, tremendously necessary if the Free Zone is to be assured its full chance to survive. We have no real idea what he's up to over there. He might as well be on the dark side of the moon."

"If he's really there."

"Oh, he's there. In one form or another, he is there. Never doubt it." He took a nail-clipper from his pants pocket and went to work on his fingernails, the little snipping sound punctuating his speech. "Tell me, has the committee discussed what might happen if we decided we liked it better over there? If we decided to stay?"

Larry was flabbergasted by the idea. He told the Judge that, to the best of his knowledge, it hadn't occurred to anybody.

"I imagine he's got the lights on," the Judge said with deceptive idleness. "There's an attraction in that, you know. Obviously this man Impening felt it."

"Good riddance to bad rubbish," Larry said grimly, and the Judge laughed long and heartily.

When he sobered he said, "I'll go tomorrow. In a Land-Rover, I think. North to Wyoming, and then west. Thank God I can still drive well enough! I'll travel straight across Idaho and toward Northern California. It may take two weeks going, longer coming back. Coming back, there may be snow."

"Yes. We've discussed that possibility."

"And I'm old. The old are prone to attacks of heart trouble and stupidity. I presume you are sending backups?"

"Well ..."

"No, you're not supposed to talk about that. I withdraw the question. "

"Look, you can refuse this," Larry blurted. "No one is holding a gun to your hea-"

"Are you trying to absolve yourself of your responsibility to me?" the Judge asked sharply.

"Maybe. Maybe I am. Maybe I think your chances of getting back are one in ten and your chances of getting back with information we can actually base decisions on are one in twenty. Maybe I'm just trying to say in a nice way that I could have made a mistake. You could be too old."

"I am too old for adventure," the Judge said, putting his clippers away, "but I hope I am not too old to do what I feel is right. There is an old woman out there someplace who has probably gone to a miserable death because she felt it was right. Prompted by religious mania, I have no doubt. But people who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad. I'll go. I'll be cold. My bowels will not work properly. I'll be lonely. I'll miss my begonias. But ..." He looked up at Larry, and his eyes gleamed in the dark. "I'll also be clever."

"I suppose you will," Larry said, and felt the sting of tears at the corners of his eyes.

"How is Lucy?" the Judge asked, apparently closing the subject of his departure.

"Fine," Larry said. "We're both fine."

"No problems?"

"No," he said, and thought about Nadine. Something about her desperation the last time he had seen her still troubled him deeply. You're my last chance, You're my last chance, she had said. Strange talk, almost suicidal. And what help was there for her? Psychiatry? That was a laugh, when the best they could do for a GP was a horse doctor. Even Dial-A-Prayer was gone now. she had said. Strange talk, almost suicidal. And what help was there for her? Psychiatry? That was a laugh, when the best they could do for a GP was a horse doctor. Even Dial-A-Prayer was gone now.

"It's good that you are with Lucy," the Judge said, "but you're worried about the other woman, I suspect."

"Yes, I am." What followed was extremely difficult to say, but having it out and confessed to another person made him feel much better. "I think she might be considering, well, suicide." He rushed on: "It's not just me, don't get the idea I think any girl would kill herself just because she can't have sexy old Larry Underwood. But the boy she was taking care of has come out of his shell, and I think she feels alone, with no one to depend on her."

"If her depression deepens into a chronic, cyclic thing, she may indeed kill herself," the Judge said with chilling indifference.

Larry looked at him, shocked.

"But you can only be one man," the Judge said. "Isn't that true?"

"Yes."

"And your choice is made?"

"Yes."

"For good?"

"Yes, it is."

"Then live with it," the Judge said with great relish. "For God's sake, Larry, grow up. Develop a little self-righteousness. A lot of that is an ugly thing, God knows, but a little applied over all your scruples is an absolute necessity! It is to the soul what a good sun-block is to the skin during the heat of the summer. You can only captain your own soul, and from time to time some smart-ass psychologist will question your ability to even do that. Grow up! Your Lucy is a fine woman. To take responsibility for more than her and your own soul is to ask for too much, and asking for too much is one of humanity's more popular ways of courting disaster."

"I like talking to you," Larry said, and was both startled and amused by the open ingenuousness of the comment.

"Probably because I am telling you exactly what you want to hear," the Judge said serenely. And then he added: "There are a great many ways to commit suicide, you know."

And before too much time had passed, Larry had occasion to recall that remark in bitter circumstances.

At quarter past eight the next morning, Harold's truck was leaving the Greyhound depot to go back to the Table Mesa area. Harold, Weizak, and two others were sitting in the back of the truck. Norman Kellogg and another man were in the cab. They were at the intersection of Arapahoe and Broadway when a brand-new Land-Rover drove slowly toward them.

Weizak waved and shouted, "Where ya headed, Judge?"

The Judge, looking rather comic in a woolen shirt and a vest, pulled over. "I believe I might go to Denver for the day," he said blandly.

"Will that thing get you there?" Weizak asked.

"Oh, I believe so, if I steer clear of the main-traveled roads."

"Well, if you go by one of those X-rated bookstores, why don't you bring back a trunkful?"

This sally was greeted with a burst of laughter from everyone-the Judge included-but Harold. He looked sallow and haggard this morning, as if he had rested ill. In fact, he had hardly slept at all. Nadine had been as good as her word; he had fulfilled quite a few dreams the night before. Dreams of the damp variety, let us say. He was already looking forward to tonight, and Weizak's sally about pornography was only good for a ghost of a smile now that he had had a little first-hand experience. Nadine had been sleeping when he left. Before they dropped off around two, she had told him she wanted to read his ledger. He had told her to go ahead if she wanted to. Perhaps he was putting himself at her mercy, but he was too confused to know for sure. But it was the best writing he had ever done in his life and the deciding factor was his want-no, his need. need. His need to have someone else read, experience, his good work. His need to have someone else read, experience, his good work.

Now Kellogg was leaning out of the dump truck's cab toward the Judge. "You be careful, Pop. Okay? There's funny folks on the roads these days."

"Indeed there are," the Judge said with a strange smile. "And indeed I will. A good day to you, gentlemen. And you too, Mr. Weizak."

That brought another burst of laughter, and they parted.

The Judge did not head toward Denver. When he reached Route 36, he proceeded directly across it and out along Route 7. The morning sun was bright and mellow, and on this secondary route, there was not enough stalled traffic to block the road. The town of Brighton was worse; at one point he had to leave the highway and drive across the local high school football field to avoid a colossal traffic jam. He continued east until he reached I-25. A right turn here would have taken him into Denver. Instead he turned left-north-and nosed onto the feeder ramp. Halfway down he put the transmission in neutral and looked left again, west, to where the Rockies rose serenely into the blue sky with Boulder lying at their base.