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are you?"
"No. Why do you ask?"
He shuffled his feet in the loose pebbles. "Something I want to talk about
before you go."
"Before 'you' go? That sounds different from saying before 'we' go, Michael."
"Yeah."
Krysty watched the teenager carefully. He was looking toward the setting sun,
and she saw that his dark eyes were completely veiled, showing no more emotion
than a piece of fresh-quarried slate.
His mouth was a thin, etched line, and he wouldn't actually look either Ryan
or herself full in the face.
At that moment she was certain that Ryan had been right in his guess. Michael
and Dorothy wouldn't be separated. Unless something very unexpected happened
in the next twenty-four hours, the six of them would be making the next jump
without the curly headed teenager.
THEY WALKED a little farther along the coast of the enormous lake, but the sun
was sinking fast and they only had their handblasters with them.
"Best get back," Krysty said.
"Sure."
"Lover? What do you think that Michael was talking about? What does he want to
say to us?"
"Goodbye."
Chapter Thirty-One
The tiny sliver of a new moon showed in the night sky, hardly enough to cast
the weakest shadow.
Far over the lake, to the west, hung a dense bank of cloud, and a few thin
tatters of gray-white floated across the silent forest that surrounded the
ville.
Within the pools of blackness beneath the larches, firs, pines and aspens, the
creatures of the night moved and hunted. Some crawled on their scaled bellies
and some flew silently among the stark branches. Many did their work on four
legs.
Some did it on two legs.
SUPPER HAD BEEN a hasty and cursory affair: a stew of apples that was so thick
you could have cut it into slices, providing you had a sharp enough knife;
some sourdough rolls with cherry jelly, and a large bowl of cold boiled
potatoes and carrots.
None of them felt all that hungry, though Ryan insisted that everyone eat as
much as they could handle. "Might be the last food for some time," he said.
"Depending on when we make the jump and where it takes us."
Outside, they had been able to hear the noise of the preparations for the two
sacrifices, though
Jehu had politely insisted that they shouldn't leave their quarters until they
were sent for.
After the brief meeting on the shore of the lake, there had been no further
sign of Michael. The tall blond leader of Quindley had told Ryan that the
teenager was with Dorothy. "Which means that he is also with us."
"Not an outlander, Jehu?"
"No, Ryan. Michael is neither one thing nor the other. But within a day or so
he may have
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and will speak with Moses."
That was all they knew.
"Now," JEHU ANNOUNCED.
The ville was in semidarkness, with only an occasional torch burning smokily
in wall brackets.
They followed the blond figure through the narrow, twisting lanes, until they
reached the larger open area directly in front of the conical thatch of
Moses's own dwelling.
It seemed that everyone was there, standing in solid blocks: the little
children, shepherded by a few of the teenage girls, then the older children,
all silent, as though they were overawed by the occasion, and around three
sides stood the rest of the young people.
Though there were ripples of movement, Ryan wasn't aware of anyone actually
speaking. He looked around, his eye turning to the roof of the temple of
Moses. At first, because of the shifting orange glow from the torches, he
wasn't entirely sure of what he seemed to be seeing. Then he concentrated, his
sight accommodating to the gloom.
There was an opening in the dense thatch of reeds, square, with light glinting
off glass. Behind it there was the pale blur of a figure, though it was quite
impossible to make out any details.
But Ryan realized that Moses was present, watching the proceedings through his
own window.
"Over here," Jehu said, pointing to a space in the front row, to the left of
the square. "Then you can both see and be seen. Watch and be watched."
"Where's Michael?" Dean asked.
"There." Jehu pointed with one hand toward the mass of people on the opposite
side.
Ryan looked as well, thinking he saw the tentative wave of a hand among the
crowd, but it wasn't easy to be certain. He half waved back, then thought
better of it.
"Wait," Jehu said. "You see that some of us carry our blasters with us. You
must not interfere with what must happen. You understand?"
Ryan nodded. "Sure. It's your party."
"And you can cry if you want to," Mildred whispered mysteriously.
"No talking, please." Jehu lifted his right hand over his head in a signal to
someone standing on the opposite side of the square.
Immediately there was the sonorous, slow beating of a slack-skinned drum, so
deep and resonant that it seemed to echo through the marrow of the bones.
The shuffling stopped, and there was a total silence from the young people, a
quiet so intense that everyone heard the far-off, mournful cry of a hunting
wolf.
Krysty slipped her hand through the crook of Ryan*s arm, and he could feel
that she was trembling with the growing tension of the ritual.
Jehu was still by them, his face turned upward, staring with wide eyes at the
inconspicuous window in the roof of Moses's stone-built home.
Ryan looked up and saw a tiny flicker of light, no brighter than a firefly.
And then they all heard the familiar voice, echoing around the ville.
" Welcome to the time of pleasure, a time for which there is a season. A time
to be birthed and a time to take the long road that winds not."
"Sounds to me uncommonly like a nickel-and-dime TV evangelist preacher who has
unfortunately swallowed a compendium of quotes."
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Jehu turned and hissed angrily at Doc. "You live on borrowed time, oldie! Hold
your words!"
Moses was still talking. "Each of you dwells well here in our home of
Quindley. Outside is plague and the dark angel of death, escorted by the pale
riders. To live outside the ville is only a worse, longer way. Do you want
that way, brothers and sisters of the ville?"
There was a great roar of "No!" from all around.
"Five and twenty is the number and five times five shall be the sacred
counting."
Mildred was beside Ryan, her voice so quiet that it didn't reach the ears of
Jehu. "Four and twenty shall be too little and six and twenty too much and
seven and twenty shall be right out,"
she breathed.
"As the day has its measure and the year its turning, so shall each of us have
a span allotted.
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