Tom nodded and began to walk toward Ralph's cycle. After a moment Ralph followed him, his big shoulders slumped. Even the feather in his hatband seemed dejected. He climbed on the bike and kicked it alive. A moment later it pulled out onto Broadway and turned east. They stood together, watching the motorcycle dwindle to a moving silhouette in the purple dusk marked by a moving headlight. Then the light disappeared behind the bulk of the Holiday Twin Drive-in and was gone.

Nick walked away, head down, hands in pockets. Stu tried to join him, but Nick shook his head almost angrily and motioned him away. Stu went back to Larry.

"That's that," Larry said, and Stu nodded gloomily.

"You think we'll ever see him again, Larry?"

"If we don't, the seven of us-well, maybe not Fran, she was never for sending him-the rest of us are going to be eating and sleeping with the decision to send him for the rest of our lives."

"Nick more than anyone else," Stu said.

"Yeah. Nick more than anyone else."

They watched Nick walking slowly down Broadway, losing himself in the shadows which grew around him. Then they looked at Tom's darkened house in silence for a minute.

"Let's get out of here," Larry said suddenly. "The thought of all those stuffed animals ... all of a sudden I got a grade-A case of the creeps."

When they left, Nick was still standing on the side lawn of Tom Cullen's house, his hands in his pockets, his head down.

George Richardson, the new doctor, had set up in the Dakota Ridge Medical Center, because it was close to Boulder City Hospital with its medical equipment, its large supplies of drugs, and its operating rooms.

By August 28 he was pretty much in business, assisted by Laurie Constable and Dick Ellis. Dick had asked leave to quit the world of medicine and had been refused permission to do so. "You're doing a fine job here," Richardson said. "You've learned a lot and you're going to learn more. Besides, there's just too much for me to do by myself. We're going to be out of our minds as it is if we don't get another doctor in a month or two. So congratulations, Dick, you're the Zone's first paramedic. Give him a kiss, Laurie."

Laurie did.

Around eleven o'clock on that late August morning, Fran let herself into the waiting room and looked around curiously and a little nervously. Laurie was behind the counter, reading an old copy of the Ladies' Ladies' Home Journal. Home Journal.

"Hi, Fran," she said, jumping up. "I thought we'd see you sooner or later. George is with Candy Jones right now, but he'll be right with you. How are you feeling?"

"Pretty well, thanks," Fran said. "I guess-"

The door to one of the examining rooms opened and Candy Jones came out, following a tall, stooped man in corduroy slacks and a sport shirt with the Izod alligator on the breast. Candy was looking doubtfully at a bottle of pink stuff which she held in one hand.

"Are you sure that's what it is?" she asked Richardson doubtfully. "I never got it before. I thought I was immune."

"Well, you're not and you have it now," George said with a grin. "Don't forget the starch baths, and stay out of the tall grass after this."

She smiled ruefully. "Jack's got it too. Should he come in?"

"No, but you can make the starch baths a family affair."

Candy nodded dolefully and then spotted Fran. "Hi, Frannie, how's the girl?"

"Okay. How's by you?"

"Terrible." Candy held up the bottle so Fran could read the word CALADRYL CALADRYL on the label. "Poison ivy. And you couldn't on the label. "Poison ivy. And you couldn't guess guess where I got it." She brightened. "But I bet you can guess where where I got it." She brightened. "But I bet you can guess where Jack's Jack's got it." got it."

They watched her go with some amusement. Then George said, "Miss Goldsmith, isn't it? Free Zone Committee. A pleasure."

She held out her hand to be shaken. "Just Fran, please. Or Frannie."

"Okay, Frannie. What's the problem?"

"I'm pregnant," Fran said. "And pretty damn scared." And then, with no warning at all, she was in tears.

George put an arm around her shoulders. "Laurie, I'll want you in about five minutes."

"All right, Doctor."

He led her into the examining room and had her sit on the black-upholstered table.

"Now. Why the tears? Is it Mrs. Wentworth's twins?"

Frannie nodded miserably.

"It was a difficult delivery, Fran. The mother was a heavy smoker. The babies were lightweights, even for twins. They came in the late evening, very suddenly. I had no opportunity to make a postmortem. Regina Wentworth is being cared for by some of the women who were in our party. I believe-I hope hope-that she's going to come out of the mental fugue-state she's currently in. But for now all I can say is that those babies had two strikes against them from the start. The cause of death could have been anything." anything."

"Including the superflu."

"Yes. Including that."

"So we just wait and see."

"Hell no. I'm going to give you a complete prenatal right now. I'm going to monitor you and any other woman that gets pregnant or is pregnant now every step of the way. General Electric used to have a slogan, 'Progress Is Our Most Important Product.' In the Zone, babies are our most important product, and they are going to be treated accordingly. "

"But we really don't know."

"No, we don't. But be of good cheer, Fran."

"Yes, all right. I'll try."

There was a brief rap at the door and Laurie came in. She handed George a form on a clipboard, and George began to ask Fran questions about her medical history.

When the exam was over, George left her for a while to do something in the next room. Laurie stayed with her while Fran dressed.

As she was buttoning her blouse, Laurie said quietly: "I envy you, you know. Uncertainty and all. Dick and I had been trying to make a baby like mad. It's really funny-I was the one who used to wear a ZERO POPULATION ZERO POPULATION button to work. It meant zero population button to work. It meant zero population growth, growth, of course, but when I think about that button now, it gives me a really creepy feeling. Oh, Frannie, yours is going to be the of course, but when I think about that button now, it gives me a really creepy feeling. Oh, Frannie, yours is going to be the first. first. And I know it will be all right. It And I know it will be all right. It has has to be." to be."

Fran only smiled and nodded, not wanting to remind Laurie that hers would not not be the first. be the first.

Mrs. Wentworth's twins had been the first.

And Mrs. Wentworth's twins had died.

"Fine," George said half an hour later.

Fran raised her eyebrows, thinking for a moment he had mispronounced her name. For no good reason she remembered that until the third grade little Mikey Post from down the street had called her Fan.

"The baby. It's fine."

Fran found a Kleenex and held it tightly. "I felt it move ... but that was some time ago. Nothing since then. I was afraid ..."

"It's alive, all right, but I really doubt if you felt it move, you know. More likely a little intestinal gas."

"It was the baby," Fran said quietly.

"Well, whether it did or not, it's going to move a lot in the future. I've got you pegged for early to mid-January. How does that sound?"

"Fine."

"Are you eating right?"

"Yes, I think so-trying hard, anyway."

"Good. No nausea now?"

"A little at first, but it's passed."

"Lovely. Getting plenty of exercise?"

For a nightmare instant she saw herself digging her father's grave. She blinked the vision away. That had been another life. "Yes, plenty."

"Have you gained any weight?"

"About five pounds."

"That's all right. You can have another twelve; I'm feeling generous today."

She grinned. "You're the doctor."

"Yes, and I used to be an OB man, so you're in the right place. Take your doctor's advice and you'll go far. Now, concerning bicycles, motorbikes, and mopeds. All of them a no-no after November fifteenth, let's say. No one's going to be riding them by then anyway. Too damn cold. Don't smoke or drink to excess, do you?"

"No."

"If you want a nightcap once in a while, I think that's perfectly okay. I'm going to put you on a vitamin supplement; you can pick it up at any drugstore in town-"

Frannie burst into laughter, and George smiled uncertainly.

"Did I say something funny?"

"No. It just came out funny under the circumstances."

"Oh! Yes, I see. Well, at least there won't be any more complaining about high drug prices, will there? One last thing, Fran. Have you ever been fitted with an intrauterine device ... an IUD?"

"No, why?" Fran asked, and then she happened to think of her dream: the dark man with his coathanger. She shuddered. "No," she said again.

"Good. That's it." He stood up. "I won't tell you not to worry-"

"No," she agreed. The laughter was gone from her eyes. "Don't do that."

"But I will ask you to keep it to a minimum. Excess anxiety in the mother can lead to glandular imbalance. And that's not good for the baby. I don't like to prescribe tranquilizers for pregnant women, but if you think-"

"No, that won't be necessary," Fran said, but going out into the hot midday sunshine, she knew that the entire second half of her pregnancy was going to be haunted by thoughts of Mrs. Wentworth's vanished twins.

On the twenty-ninth of August three groups came in, one with twenty-two members, one with sixteen, and one with twenty-five. Sandy DuChiens got around to see all seven members of the committee and tell them that the Free Zone now had over one thousand residents.

Boulder no longer seemed such a ghost town.

On the evening of the thirtieth, Nadine Cross stood in the basement of Harold's house, watching him and feeling uneasy.

When Harold was doing something that didn't involve having some sort of strange sex with her, he seemed to go away to his own private place where she had no control over him. When he was in that place he seemed cold; more than that, he seemed contemptuous of her and even of himself. The only thing that didn't change was his hate of Stuart Redman and the others on the committee.

There was a dead air hockey game in the basement and Harold was working on its pinholed surface. There was an open book beside him. On the facing page was a diagram. He would look at the diagram for a while, then look at the apparatus he was working on, and then he would do something to it. Spread out neatly by his right hand were the tools from his Triumph motorcycle kit. Little snips of wire littered the air hockey table.

"You know," he said absently, "you ought to take a walk."

"Why?" She felt a trifle hurt. Harold's face was tense and unsmiling. Nadine could understand why Harold smiled as much as he did: because when he stopped, he looked insane. She suspected that he was was insane, or very nearly. insane, or very nearly.

"Because I don't know how old this dynamite is," Harold said.

"What do you mean?"

"Old dynamite sweats, dear heart," he said, and looked up at her. She saw that his entire face was running with sweat, as if to prove his point. "It perspires, perspires, to be perfectly couth. And what it perspires is pure nitroglycerin, one of the world's great unstable substances. So if it's old, there's a very good chance that this little Science Fair project could blow us right over the top of Flagstaff Mountain and all the way to the Land of Oz. " to be perfectly couth. And what it perspires is pure nitroglycerin, one of the world's great unstable substances. So if it's old, there's a very good chance that this little Science Fair project could blow us right over the top of Flagstaff Mountain and all the way to the Land of Oz. "

"Well, you don't have to sound so snotty about it," Nadine said.

"Nadine? Ma chere?" Ma chere?"

"What?"

Harold looked at her calmly and without smiling. "Shut your fucking trap."

She did, but she didn't take a walk, although she wanted to. Surely if this was Flagg's will (and the planchette had told her that Harold was Flagg's way of taking care of the committee), the dynamite wouldn't be old. And even if it was was old, it wouldn't explode until it was supposed to ... would it? Just how much control over events did Flagg have? old, it wouldn't explode until it was supposed to ... would it? Just how much control over events did Flagg have?

Enough, she told herself, she told herself, he has enough. he has enough. But she wasn't sure, and she was increasingly uneasy. She had been back to her house and Joe was gone-gone for good this time. She had gone to see Lucy, and had borne the cold reception long enough to learn that since she had moved in with Harold, Joe (Lucy, of course, called him Leo) had "slipped back some." Lucy obviously blamed her for that, too ... but if an avalanche came rumbling down from Flagstaff Mountain or an earthquake ripped Pearl Street apart, Lucy would probably blame her for those things, too. Not that there wouldn't be enough to blame on her and Harold very soon. Still, she had been bitterly disappointed not to have seen Joe once more ... to kiss him goodbye. She and Harold were not going to be in the Boulder Free Zone much longer. But she wasn't sure, and she was increasingly uneasy. She had been back to her house and Joe was gone-gone for good this time. She had gone to see Lucy, and had borne the cold reception long enough to learn that since she had moved in with Harold, Joe (Lucy, of course, called him Leo) had "slipped back some." Lucy obviously blamed her for that, too ... but if an avalanche came rumbling down from Flagstaff Mountain or an earthquake ripped Pearl Street apart, Lucy would probably blame her for those things, too. Not that there wouldn't be enough to blame on her and Harold very soon. Still, she had been bitterly disappointed not to have seen Joe once more ... to kiss him goodbye. She and Harold were not going to be in the Boulder Free Zone much longer.

Never mind, best you let him go completely now that you're embarked on this obscenity. You'd only be doing him harm ... and possibly harm to yourself as well, because Joe ... sees things, knows things. Let him stop being Joe, let me stop being Nadine-mom. Let him go back to being Leo, forever.

But the paradox in that was inexorable. She could not believe that any of these Zone people had more than a year's life left in them, and that included the boy. It was not his his will that they should live ... will that they should live ...