By the Light of the Moon

18

Earth's magnetic pole might shift in a twink, as some scientists theorized it had done in the past, resulting in an entirely new angle of rotation, causing catastrophic changes in the surface of the planet. Current tropical zones could in an instant be plunged into an arctic freeze, leaving startled soft-body Miami retirees clawing for survival in 100-degree-below-zero cold, in blizzards so bitter that the snow came not in the form of flakes, but as spicules, needlelike crystals as hard as glass. Colossal tectonic pressures would cause continents to buckle, fracture, fold. Rising up in massive tides, oceans would slop over coastlines, crash across the Rockies and the Andes and the Alps alike. New inland oceans would form, new mountain ranges. Volcanoes would vomit forth great burning seas of Earth's essence. With civilization gone and billions dead, small scattered bands of survivors would face the daunting task of forming tribes of hunters and gatherers.

In the final hour of his program, Parish Lantern and call-ins from his nationwide radio audience discussed the likelihood of a pole-shift striking within the next fifty years. Because Dylan and Jilly were for the moment still too busy digesting their recent experiences to talk anymore about them, they listened to Lantern as they drove north on this lonely desert highway, where it was possible to believe simultaneously that civilization had already vanished in a planetary cataclysm and that the earth was timeless, unchanging.

'You listen to this guy all the time?' he asked Jilly.

'Not every night, but a lot.'

'It's a miracle you're not suicidal.'

'His show isn't usually about doom. Mostly it's time travel, alternate realities, whether we have souls, life after death…'

In the backseat, Shep continued reading Dickens, granting the novelist a form of life after death. On the radio, the planet crushed and burned and drowned and blew away human civilization and most of the animal kingdom, as though all life were pestilence.

When they reached the town of Safford, about forty minutes after they exited the interstate, Shepherd said, 'Fries not flies, fries not flies, fries not flies…'

Maybe it was time to stop and devise a plan of action, or maybe they had not yet analyzed their situation to a degree that allowed for planning, but in either case, Dylan and Shep were in want of the dinner they had missed. And Jilly expressed the need for a drink.

'First we need new license plates,' Dylan said. 'When they trace that Cadillac to you, they'll go unit to unit in the motel, looking for you. When they find you've lit out and that Shep and I didn't stay the night we'd paid for, they might link us.'

'No might about it. They will,' she said.

'The motel records have the make, model, license-plate number. At least we can change the plate number and not be so easily made.'

On a quiet residential street, Dylan parked, took screwdrivers and pliers from the Expedition tool kit, and went looking for Arizona plates. He found an easily detached pair on a pickup in the driveway of a weather-silvered cedar ranch house with a dead front lawn.

Throughout the theft, his heart pounded. The guilt he felt was out of proportion to such a minor crime, but his face burned with shame at the prospect of being caught in the act.

After he had purloined the plates, he drove around town until he found a school. The parking lot was deserted at this hour. In those shadows, he replaced his California plates with the Arizona pair.

'With luck,' he said as he got behind the wheel once more, 'the owner of that pickup won't notice the plates missing until tomorrow.'

'I hate trusting in luck,' Jilly said. 'I've never had much.'

'Fries not flies,' Shepherd reminded them.

A few minutes later, when Dylan parked in front of a restaurant adjacent to a motel, he said, 'Let me see the pin. Your toad button.'

She unpinned the smiling amphibian from her blouse but withheld it. 'What do you want it for?'

'Don't worry. It's not going to set me off like the other one did. That's over. That business is finished.'

'Yeah, but what if?' she worried.

He handed the car keys to her.

Reluctantly, she exchanged the pin for the keys.

Thumb on the toad face, forefinger against the back of the pin, Dylan felt a quiver of psychic spoor, the impression of more than one individual, perhaps Grandma Marjorie overlaid by Jillian Jackson, but neither invoked in him the compulsion to hurry-move-find-do that had harried him to the house on Eucalyptus Avenue.

Dropping the button in the little trash basket in the console, he said, 'Nothing. Or next to nothing. It wasn't the pin itself that set me off. It was… Marjorie's impending death that somehow I sensed on the first pin. Does that make sense?'

'Only here in Nutburg, USA, where we seem to live now.'

'Let's get you that drink,' he said.

'Two.'

Crossing the parking lot to the front door of the restaurant, Shep walked between them. He carried Great Expectations with the little battery-powered light attached, reading intently as he walked.

Dylan had considered taking the book away from him, but Shepherd had been through a lot this evening. His routines had been disrupted, which usually filled him with anxiety. Worse, he had endured more excitement in a couple hours than he had experienced in the previous ten years, and Shepherd O'Conner usually had no ability to cope with excitement.

Being directly addressed by too many strangers at an art show could tax his tolerance for conversational stimulation even though he never replied to any of them. Too much lightning in a thunderstorm or too much thunder, or too much roaring rain, for that matter, could fill his capacity for commotion to overflowing, whereupon he would succumb to a panic attack.

Indeed, that Shep had not panicked at the motel, that he had not curled up like a defensive pill bug and had not shaken with spasms of apprehension when he'd seen the burning Coupe DeVille, that he hadn't squealed and pulled his hair at some point during Dylan's reckless drive to Marjorie's house – these were great wonders if not miracles of self-control compared to his customary behavior when confronted by the more mundane agitations of daily life.

Right now, Great Expectations was his life raft in an evening swamped by turmoil. Clinging to the book, he was able to convince himself that he was safe, and he could push from his awareness all the violations of comforting routine, also blind and deafen himself to the otherwise drowning tides of stimulation.

Awkward movements and poor physical coordination were symptoms of Shep's condition, but walking while reading didn't lead to either a stiffer gait or a more pronounced shuffle. Dylan had the feeling that if confronted by a flight of steps, his brother might negotiate every riser without putting Mr. Dickens on hold for a moment.

No steps awaited them at the restaurant entrance, but when Dylan touched the door, a fizz of latent psychic energy effervesced against his palm, the pads of his fingers, and he almost released the handle.

'What?' Jilly asked, always alert.

'Something I'm going to have to get used to.' Vaguely he sensed numerous personalities expressed by the preternatural residue on the door handle, like layers of dried sweat from many hands.

The restaurant presented a split personality, as though against the laws of physics, a diner and a steakhouse had occupied the same place at the same time without triggering a catastrophic explosion. Plastic-looking red leatherette booths and red-leatherette chairs with chrome legs were mismatched with real mahogany tables. Expensive cut-glass ceiling fixtures cast rich prismatic light not on carpet, but on an easy-to-clean, wood-pattern vinyl floor. Waiters and waitresses wore black suits, crisp white shirts, and natty black string ties; but the busboys shambled among the tables in their street clothes, coordinated only by the same stupid-looking pointy paper hats and by similar surly expressions.

With the dinner rush far behind, only a third of the restaurant tables were occupied. Customers lingering over dessert, liqueurs, and coffee were engaged in low, pleasantly boozy conversations. Only a few took notice of Shep as – preceded by Jilly, followed by Dylan – he allowed the hostess to lead him to a booth, remaining absorbed in his book every step of the way.

Shep would rarely sit next to a window in a restaurant because he didn't want 'to be looked at by people inside and people out.' Dylan requested a booth distant from the windows, and he sat on one side of the table with his brother, across from Jilly.

She looked uncommonly fresh, considering what she'd been through – and remarkably calm for a woman whose life had been upended and whose future was as difficult to read as a wad of tea leaves in a dark room. Hers was not a cheap beauty, but one that would wear well with time, that would take many hard washings and keep its color in more than one sense.

When he picked up the menu that the hostess had placed on the table before him, Dylan shuddered as if he'd touched ice, and he put it down at once. Deposited by previous patrons, a lively patina of emotions, wants, needs, hungers squirmed on the plastic menu cover and seemed to crackle against his skin, like a charge of static electricity, much stronger than what he'd felt on the door handle.

During their drive north from the interstate, he'd told Jilly about the psychic spoor. Now she understood at once why he had put down the menu. 'I'll read mine to you,' she said.

He found that he liked looking at her while she read, liked it so much that repeatedly he had to remind himself to listen to her recitation of salads, soups, sandwiches, and entrees. Her face soothed him perhaps as much as Great Expectations soothed Shep.

While he watched Jilly read aloud, Dylan placed his hands flat on his menu again. As he expected based on his experience at the restaurant door, the initial boiling rush of strange impressions quickly subsided to a quiet simmer. And now he learned that with a conscious effort, he could entirely quell these uncanny sensations.

As she informed him of the last of the dinner selections, Jilly looked up, saw Dylan's hands on his menu, and clearly realized that he had allowed her to read to him only to have an excuse to gaze at her openly, without the challenge of a direct return stare. Judging by her complex expression, she had mixed feelings about the various implications of his scrutiny, but at least part of her response was a lovely, even though uncertain, smile.

Before either of them could speak, the waitress returned. Jilly asked for a bottle of Sierra Nevada. Dylan ordered dinner for Shep and for himself, and requested that Shep's plate be served five minutes before his own.

Shepherd continued to read: Great Expectations flat on the table in front of him, the book light switched off. Hunching forward, he lowered his face within eight or ten inches of the page, although he had no vision problems. While the waitress was present, Shep moved his lips as he scanned the lines of type, which was his way of subtly establishing that he was occupied and that she would be rude if she was to address him.

Because no other diners were near them, Dylan felt comfortable discussing their situation. 'Jilly, words are your business, right?'

'I guess maybe you could say that.'

'What's this one mean – psychotropic?'

'Why's it important?' she asked.

'Frankenstein used it. He said the stuff, the stuff in the syringe, was psychotropic.'

Without looking up from his book, Shep said, 'Psychotropic. Affecting mental activity, behavior, or perception. Psychotropic.'

'Thank you, Shep.'

'Psychotropic drugs. Tranquilizers, sedatives, antidepressants. Psychotropic drugs.'

Jilly shook her head. 'I don't think that weird juice was any of those things.'

'Psychotropic drugs,' Shep elucidated. 'Opium, morphine, heroin, methadone. Barbiturates, meprobamate. Amphetamines, cocaine. Peyote, marijuana, LSD, Sierra Nevada beer. Pscyhotropic drugs.'

'Beer isn't a drug,' Jilly corrected. 'Is it?'

Eyes still tracking Dickens's words back and forth across the page, Shep seemed to be reading aloud: 'Psychotropic intoxicants and stimulants. Beer, wine, whiskey. Caffeine. Nicotine. Psychotropic intoxicants and stimulants.'

She stared at Shep, not sure what to make of his contributions.

'Forgot,' Shepherd said in a chagrined tone. 'Psychotropic inhalable-fume intoxicants. Glue, solvents, transmission fluid. Psychotropic inhalable-fume intoxicants. Forgot. Sorry.'

'If it had been a drug in any traditional sense,' Dylan said, 'I think Frankenstein would have used that word. He wouldn't have called it stuff so consistently, as if there wasn't an existing word for it. Besides, drugs have a limited effect. They wear off. He sure gave me the impression that whatever this crap does to you is permanent.'

The waitress arrived with bottles of Sierra Nevada for Jilly and Dylan, and with a glass of Coca-Cola, no ice. Dylan unwrapped the straw and put it in the soda for his brother.

Shepherd would drink only through a straw, though he didn't care if it was paper or plastic. He liked cola cold, but wouldn't tolerate ice with it. Cola, a straw, and ice in a glass at the same time offended him for reasons unknown to everyone except Shepherd himself.

Raising a frosty glass of Sierra Nevada, Dylan said, 'Here's to psychotropic intoxicants.'

'But not to the inhalable-fume variety,' Jilly qualified.

He detected faint quivering energy signatures on the cold glass: perhaps the psychic trace of a member of the kitchen staff, certainly the trace of their waitress. When he willed himself not to feel these imprints, the sensation passed. He was gaining control.

Jilly clinked her bottle against his glass, and drank thirstily. Then: 'There's nowhere to go from here, is there?'

'Of course there is.'

'Yeah? Where?'

'Well, not to Phoenix. That wouldn't be smart. You have that gig in Phoenix, so they're sure to go looking for you there, wanting to know why Frankenstein had your Cadillac, wanting to test your blood.'

'The guys in the Suburbans.'

'They might be different guys in different vehicles, but they'll be related.'

'Who were those phony duffers, anyway? Cloak-and-dagger types, you think? Or some secret police agency? Aggressive door-to-door magazine salesmen?'

'Any of that, I guess. But not necessarily bad guys.'

'They blew up my car.'

'As if I could forget. But they blew it up only because Frankenstein was in it. We can be pretty sure he was a bad guy.'

'Just because they blew up a bad guy doesn't mean they're good guys,' she noted. 'Bad guys blow up bad guys sometimes.'

'Lots of times,' he agreed. 'But to avoid all the blowing up, we'll go around Phoenix.'

'Around Phoenix to what?'

'Maybe stay on secondary highways, go north somewhere big and empty where they wouldn't think to look first, maybe up near the Petrified Forest National Park. We could be there in a few hours.'

'You make this sound like a vacation. I'm talking about – where do I go with my life.'

'You're focusing on the big picture. Don't do that,' he advised. 'Until we know more about this situation, it's pointless to focus on the big picture – and it's depressing.'

'Then what should I focus on? The little picture?'

'Exactly.'

She drank some beer. 'And what is the little picture?'

'Getting through the night alive.'

'The little picture sounds as depressing as the big picture.'

'Not at all. We just have to find a place to hole up and think.'

The waitress brought Shepherd's dinner.

Dylan had ordered for his brother based on the kid's taste and on the ease with which this particular meal could be customized to conform to Shep's culinary requirements.

'From Shep's viewpoint,' Dylan said, 'shape is more important than flavor. He likes squares and rectangles, dislikes roundness.'

Two oval slices of meat loaf in gravy formed the centerpiece of this platter. Using Shep's knife and fork, Dylan trimmed the edges off each slice, forming rectangles. After setting the trimmings aside on Shep's bread plate, he cut each slice into bite-size squares.

When he first picked up the utensils, he'd felt a psychic buzz but again he'd been able to dial it below his threshold of awareness.

The steak fries featured beveled rather than blunt ends. Dylan quickly cut the points from each crisp piece of potato, forming them into simple rectangles.

'Shep'll eat the points,' he explained, stacking those small golden nibs beside the altered fries, 'but only if they're separate.'

Already cubed, the carrots posed no problem. He had to separate the peas, however, mash them, and form them into square forkfuls.

Dylan had ordered bread in place of a roll. Three sides of each slice were straight; the fourth was curved. He cut off the arcs of crust and put them with the meat-loaf trimmings.

'Fortunately, the butter isn't whipped or formed into a ball.' He stripped three foil-wrapped pats of butter and stood them on end beside the bread. 'Ready.'

Shepherd put aside the book as Dylan slid the plate in front of him. He accepted the utensils and ate his geometric meal with the blinkered attention he exhibited when reading Dickens.

'This happens every time he eats?' Jilly asked.

'This or something like it. Some foods have different rules.'

'What if you don't go through this rigmarole?'

'This isn't rigmarole to him. It's… bringing order to chaos. Shep likes things orderly.'

'But what if you just shove it in front of him the way it comes and say "Eat"?'

'He won't touch it,' Dylan assured her.

'He will when he gets hungry enough.'

'Nope. Meal after meal, day after day, he'll turn away from it until he passes out from low blood sugar.'

Regarding him with what he chose to read as sympathy rather than pity, she said, 'You don't date much, do you?'

He answered with a shrug.

'I need another beer,' Jilly said as the waitress arrived with Dylan's dinner.

'I'm driving,' he said, declining a second round.

'Yeah, but the way you've been driving tonight, another beer could only help.'

Maybe she had a point, maybe she didn't, but he decided to live with uncharacteristic abandon. 'Two,' he told the waitress.

As Dylan began to eat chicken and waffles in anarchic disregard for the shape and size of each bite, Jilly said, 'So let's say we go north a couple hundred miles, find a place to hole up and think. What exactly do we think about – other than how totally screwed we are?'

'Don't be so negative all the time.'

She bristled better than a wire brush. 'I'm not negative.'

'You aren't exactly as cheerful as the Dalai Lama.'

'For your information, I was a nothing once, a wadded-up-thrown-away-Kleenex of a kid. Shy, shaky shy, rubbed so thin by life I half believed sunlight passed through me. Could've given timid lessons to a mouse.'

'Must've been a long time ago.'

'You wouldn't have bet a dollar against a million bucks I'd ever get up on a stage, or join a choir before that. But I had hope, great hope, had this dream of me as a something, a somebody, this positive dream of me as a performer, for God's sake, and I dragged myself up out of shaky-shy nothing until I started to live that dream.'

As she drained the last of the beer, she glared at Dylan over the upturned bottle.

He said, 'No argument – you've got good self-esteem. I never said different. It's not you that you're negative about. It's the rest of the world.'

She looked as if she might hit him with the empty bottle, but then she put it down, slid it aside, and surprised him: 'That's fair enough. It's a hard world. And most people are hard, too. If you call that negative thinking, I call it realism.'

'Lots of people are hard, but not most. Most are just scared or lonely, or lost. They don't know why they're here or what's the purpose, the reason, so they wind up half dead inside.'

'I suppose you know the purpose, the reason,' she said.

'You make me sound smug.'

'Don't mean to. Just curious what you think it is.'

'Everyone has to figure it out for himself,' he said, which was in truth how he felt. 'And you're one who will because you want to.'

'Now you sound smug.' She looked as if she might whack him with the bottle, after all.

Shepherd picked up one of the three pats of unwrapped butter and popped it in his mouth.

When Jilly grimaced, Dylan said, 'Shep likes bread and butter, but not in the same bite. You don't want to see him eat a mayonnaise-and-bologna sandwich.'

'We're doomed,' she said.

Dylan sighed, shook his head, said nothing.

'Get real, okay? They start shooting at us, what rules will Shep have about how we're allowed to dodge the bullets? Always dodge left, never right. You can weave but you can't duck – unless it's a day of the week that has the letter u in it, in which case you can duck, but you can't weave. How fast can he run while reading, and what happens when you try to take the book away from him?'

'It won't be that way,' Dylan said, but he knew she was right.

Jilly leaned toward him, her voice lowering, but gaining in intensity what it lost in volume: 'Why won't it? Listen, you've got to admit, even if it were just you and me in this mess together, we'd be on a greased slope in glass shoes. So then hang a hundred-sixty-pound, butter-munching millstone around our necks, and what chance do we have?'

'He's not a millstone,' Dylan said stubbornly.

To Shep, she said, 'Sweetie, no offense, but if we have any hope of getting through this, the three of us, we've got to face facts, speak the truth. We lie to ourselves, we're dead. Maybe you can't help being a millstone, but maybe you can, and if you can, then you've got to work with us.'

Dylan said, 'We've always been a great team, me and Shep.'

'Team? Some team. You two couldn't run a three-legged sack race without the sack ending up on somebody's head.'

'He ain't heavy-'

'Oh, don't say it,' she interrupted. 'Don't you dare say it, O'Conner. don't you dare, you hope-drunk lunatic, you power-of-positive-thinking nutball.'

'He ain't heavy, he's my-'

'-idiot-savant brother,' she finished for him.

Patiently, quietly, Dylan explained: 'No. An idiot savant is mentally defective with a low IQ, but with an exceptional talent in one special field, such as the ability to solve complex mathematical problems at lightning speed or to play any musical instrument upon first picking it up. Shep's got a high IQ, and he's exceptional in more ways than one. He's just… some kind of autistic.'

'We're doomed,' she repeated.

Shepherd chewed another pat of butter with enthusiasm, all the while staring at his plate from a distance of just ten inches, as though he, like Dylan, had discovered the purpose of life, and as though that purpose were meat loaf.