Downtiming the Night Side

THE TWISTED CIRCLE

“In many ways, this is the most important operation of this team,” said Chung Lind, looking over maps and diagrams on a huge table. “It may also be nothing at all. Still, a chance at Eric, perhaps at their whole operation, is worth the risk.”

A number of them had studied all the material and made suggestions one way or the other, but the truth was, they were severely handicapped, as they were in almost any operation directly against the other side.

That was why it was so surprising that Earthside had been able to commit everything to the Trier operation. True, they had the savants, which Ron had called gargoyles, but they needed a smart human boss to do almost anything. Those humans suffered from the same limitations as the ones on the team. When you spent too much time in any period, you gave up some of your freedom of action forever.

In point of fact, only three Outworlders had any margin of safety in the time frame, and one of those was Dawn.

When such a situation developed, there was nothing to do but actually hire people in the frame to do most of the work. A cover, some sort of excuse, could always be manufactured, and, of course, the date of the actual action they were trying to prevent, and the specifics of it, were a matter of record.

And so a team of excellent American detectives had been hired and extremely well financed. Some were tracking down one or another members of the radical party, but the main focus was on the one on the inside, Dr. Karen Cline. At some point she had to make contact either with the radicals or with the Earthsiders directly. If not, they would have to stop it in the parking lot, and that would be pretty damned bloody.

Cline’s activities had been perfectly normal and almost robotically regular and precise until just six days before the operation. Since then, regular purchases had nearly stopped, and her routine was varied occasionally by trips to a travel agency, a car rental company in Washington, and other such odd behavior. The agents shadowing her had problems keeping out of sight of the government agents regularly assigned to follow and check on her, but those agents didn’t seem unduly alarmed. Apparently, she had a vacation coming in late May, and had indicated she was going to take it.

Outworlder agents, who already knew something was going on, had the advantage here, and one slick operative noted that Cline’s only charge card was an infrequently used American Express card, but she had not used it either at the rental agency or the travel agency, paying by check instead. Why not?

She had arranged to rent a small van, but for later pickup. That van, it was realized, could carry the radical team and its equipment. Agents were put on the car rental agency to see just who picked up that van and where it went.

Chung Lind was particularly irritated that he had to go through all this the hard way, but there really was no other way to do it. A monitor by the master computer specifically on Cline, however, had picked up one thing of vital importance.

Cline, as of six days before the incident, was not totally in phase with the time frame.

“That explains the last of it,” Doc noted. “The only reason we didn’t see it before was that she was a highly educated woman, a Ph.D., in a very important project.”

Dawn frowned. “You mean she’s one of them!”

“Most likely the woman heading the second team in Trier,” Doc replied. “If you get rid of the surface, it fits. She’s a loner, both parents dead, no romantic entanglements and, as far as can be seen, no interest in them. She’s a competent technician, but has no imagination or genius. They managed to fit her into the most perfect slot imaginable.”

Lind sighed. “So we’re dealing with a smart, extra-competent Earthside agent. She won’t have to get into direct contact with them, though. She’s done all she can to set things up; now all she has to do is settle back and wait for it to happen. Eric probably arranged for the team to be recruited and he’ll bring the elements together, probably in a period identity of his own.”

The date for the attack was Monday, May 14. On Saturday, May 12, John Bettancourt picked up the van and drove it south to the county seat of Prince Frederick, Maryland, not much of a drive from the plant, and checked into a motel under the name of Donald Hartman. He did not leave it again until the next morning, so tapping his calls was impossible, but, after eating breakfast, he drove a few miles north and turned off onto a road leading to a small summer cottage right on Chesapeake Bay. The cottage, rented by a young couple named Freeman, clearly had other visitors as well.

“That’s it, then,” Lind sighed. “There is no sign anyone left before dark, so that’s when and where we’ll hit them. It was an ideal location for them, and it makes an ideal location for us. Almost no locals in the area, few cops—quiet. Doc, I hate to ask it of you, but it’s all yours now. Be careful.”

Kahwalini nodded and turned to Dawn. “Come. Let’s go back and talk this over.” They went back to her office.

“Dawn,” Doc said carefully, “now is the time to think a little about not only this but what comes next. Louis is already uptime with the agents, as Jerry Brune, a laid-off steelworker. I’ll be going up just before the raid, to handle the stakeout on Cline’s apartment. If she gets spooked, we hope she’ll make for her belt, and that will turn the tables.”

“You think Eric is in that house, as somebody else?”

She nodded. “We think so. We’ve accounted for all four radicals, and there is a fifth person in the house, a middle-aged man with one leg who walks on crutches but never comes outside. We think that’s Eric.”

“So I’m not really needed.”

“Except as an observer, somebody there at the start who should be there at the end, no. I was thinking, though, that for better or worse this would be an ideal place for you to go trip. No use putting it off, and you’re more use to everyone, including yourself, in one whole piece.”

There was really no reason not to, but she resisted the idea. “You know what I’ll become there.”

Doc nodded. “It’s too set a pattern to really change. Why does it bother you now?”

“Because I was out of it for so long. I’ve been a person now for a long time, and now you want me to go back to being… merchandise.”

“I don’t want it. But it’s that, over which we have at least some control, or one of the others, or the edge. That’s it. What can it do except give you a new and better body?”

And a new mind, she thought sourly. “You said you could control it. What do you mean?”

“I mean we can at least select as optimal a situation as events allow. You can be young and attractive. There will be tradeoffs, but it won’t be Hell.”

“I guess the Almighty computer has already run it through.”

She nodded. “It isn’t possible to get specifics, because you’ve had too many wild card jumps, but we do our best. That’ll mean putting you away from the action, to start; so we’ll insert you early. Once you’re inserted, we’ll know who and where you are. One of us, either Louis or I, will get you before it all blows open and bring you down, so keep your belt where you can grab it in a hurry. If we catch anybody, we’ll bring them back here. Even if we don’t, I’ll have to stay around a couple of days to cover up the situation and pay off the agents. You trip at approximately seventeen days, four hours. We’re going to insert to trip you on the fourteenth, so it’ll be over by then. Then we can come back here and talk about what happens next.”

“I wish I could see the children one last time.”

“I wish so, too, but it’s not working out. At least, after, you’ll have two good eyes to see them.”

Yeah, she thought—but will they still be my children?

Probably not, she knew, even if they were now. She felt suddenly very old, very used up. There was no more use righting, because the decisions really had already been made. “O.K.,” she said, “let’s get the belt and do it.”

“Now?” Even Doc was surprised by that.

“Now—or never. If I have to think about it, I’ll go nuts, and if I start dwelling on it, I might commit suicide. Let’s go. Let’s get it over and done with.”

“All right,” Doc said, went out for a moment and then came back with a belt. She handed it to Dawn, who put it on. “Now, a few things you should know in advance and remember. First, the ‘Home’ key is keyed to the old location, as before. Use plus eighteen hundred for the period, use one hundred eighty for the latitude and three hundred sixty for the longitude. If you forget, I’ll remind you.”

“I won’t forget. I don’t think so, anyway. Anything else?”

“You’ll come out in Washington, so don’t panic. As I say, we’ll make sure you’re picked up in time. There are more choices in D.C. than in the southern Maryland sticks. Also, it’s less likely for the enemy to pick you up if you’re outside the area. They’ll be concentrating there, and so we all are coming out elsewhere and getting down the hard way. And don’t worry so much. You have my personal promise—you haven’t run out of choices yet;”

“O.K., Doc. Here goes.” She pressed the activation button and fell uptime. The circle was becoming completed.

Her name was Holly Feathers, and she was seventeen years old, but while most girls her age were preparing to graduate from high school and going on heavy dates, Holly was a very experienced seventeen.

She’d been born last in a three-child family, the first two of which were boys. Her dad used to be a steelworker in Pittsburgh, but he’d lost his job both to the cuts in the industry and to heavy drinking, and after that they just sort of drifted around, with him going from one part of the country to another in search of work, hauling them along because he’d long ago lost the house and run the bank account dry.

All this was while she was very small, so she had no memory of the better times in the past. All she knew was that they seemed to be constantly moving around, almost living in an antique Chevy, her old man grabbing a job here, a job there, but never the kind you could hold for a while. Her mother just seemed to tune out the world, doing a lot of Bible reading and pretending like nothing else was wrong.

Often, after she’d grown into womanhood, her father would get drunk and take her off somewhere and undress her and, well, do things. When she didn’t want to, he would often beat her or slap her around. Her brothers were wild, and no protection at all. One of them wound up doing five to twenty in Kansas or somewhere for robbery.

She had some schooling, but because of the situation and the constant moving around, it hadn’t done much good. Oh, she could write her name in a childish block-print way, and get through a basic menu or maybe Dr. Seuss, but that was about all. She had no real skills, either, and except for helping out on some picking jobs in harvest seasons, she’d never really done much of anything.

What she was was pretty, almost classically so, even dressed in worn-out sandals, dirty tee shin, and over-patched jeans. At five foot two with big green eyes and long reddish-brown hair, a nearly perfect figure with an almost impossibly narrow waist, olive skin, and a big, wide, but sensuous mouth, she was, as her father said, “something else.”

When she was fifteen, she got pregnant—and got a bad whipping from her father, as if it was her fault instead of his. Panicky, he’d taken her to a back alley abortionist who almost killed her. When she wound up hemorrhaging and got rushed to an emergency room, they determined that the fetus was gone all right, but it was no longer possible after they repaired the damage for her to have children ever again.

To her surprise, her mother visited her in the hospital, looking ancient and terrible. She gave her some money, more money than she thought they had. “Take it and go,” her mother told her. “He’s already scarred you, child. Don’t make me bury you.”

So she found her shirt and jeans and dirty, worn sandals, the first two cleaned by the hospital, and she sneaked out of the place, got down to the bus station, and bought a ticket to Washington, not because it was anyplace she knew but because it was the nearest big city to West Virginia she knew on the destination list.

Once in the dirty, midtown bus terminal, though, she found she had no place to go and nothing more to do, and money that wouldn’t last long.

She found no end of young men in and around the bus station willing to help her out, but soft-spoken Johnny Wenzel seemed the nicest and the least frightening. He bought her meals, took her to his very nice apartment, got her some clothes, and never tried to take advantage of her—not then.

But, eventually, he got around to the subject of her future plans. She had always wanted to be a dancer—not some cheap dancer, but one like on the television specials— but she had no training and no way to get it. That’s when he told her how she could get the money for her future.

She didn’t really like the idea, but he was pretty blunt, if nice. She had no education in a town where a high school diploma was needed to collect garbage. It was quickly clear that her reading and writing skills were on the level of a first or second grader at best, and unemployment was high and demand even for the most menial of jobs was low. She really had nothing marketable except her body, he pointed out, and she knew he was right.

He introduced her to some of his other “girls,” many of whom had stories similar to hers. They weren’t living high on the hog, but they had nice clothes and shared a small block of apartments that weren’t in the slums. All of them, of course, had plans to be something more someday— singers, dancers, actresses, all that. For now, they had a decent place to live, decent clothes, steady good food, and a percentage of their income in a savings account which Johnny managed for them. They assured her that it was easy, that Johnny wasn’t like those other pimps who beat and brutalized their girls, and that as long as she made her quota, she would never have to worry about the basics.

Slowly, she was broken into the business, and she picked it up really fast—the makeup, jewelry, the “uniform,” usually very skimpy and very revealing, and the techniques of the bed itself. Once she started in earnest, she became insatiable, something psychiatrists might explain from her background but something she barely understood at all. She worked the streets, mostly, getting a whole range of men, and was soon turning two tricks a night, three or four on the weekends. By seventeen she had the look and the moves down so pat that she never even thought of them anymore, and she seemed to be always turned on. To the other girls it was just a job, just a routine, but to her it was life itself. Even Wenzel was impressed, and started lining her up with high-powered clients.

The merging of Holly and Dawn was dramatic. How much of Holly’s near nymphomania was Holly’s own psyche and how much was Dawn’s desperate need to cure her depression and loneliness, it was impossible to say, but the more Dawn stopped thinking and let the Holly part of her take over, the easier it was for her. Holly was not very bright, but she was supercharged with emotion and a desperate need to be loved. If self-worth had to be measured in dollars, well, so be it. It was better than many girls ever had, and it was concrete.

It was getting dark on Saturday, May 12, and she was almost ready for work. It was a warm night, so she had on very short shorts over pantyhose, an overly small halter top, some nice perfume, and some little gold earrings and a matching bracelet and necklace. She was just putting on the sandals whose extra high heels gave exaggeration to her walk when Johnny came in, kissed her, and told her how beautiful she was. Then he added, “Easy work this time, but I’d grab jeans and a blouse and your toothbrush.”

She looked puzzled. “Why? ’Specially, why the toothbrush?” She had a pleasing high soprano, although with a trace of a lisp, but she’d gotten so used to using her lower sexy voice that she did it automatically now.

“Big bucks client, but he wants you for the weekend, back Monday morning.”

That was unusual. “Must be really big bucks. Should I pack a case?” She did not hesitate to go along with the assignment, even though she’d never had a long-term gig before.

“Yeah, maybe a little one. He’s a lonely lawyer with a summer cottage who wants to get away for the weekend.”

A little alarm went off in her mind, and for the first time she realized what date it was. “Be a minute, O.K.? I think I know the guy.”

She didn’t, at least not when she got into the big black car. He was middle-aged and flabby, with graying hair and a small gray-white beard. She slid in beside him with her usual “Hi!” and threw the case in the back seat, and only when she scooted over close to him did she see from the key ring that the car was obviously rented, as she suspected it might be. She had the belt in the case.

He nodded and pulled away, leaving Johnny to count his money. As they headed through traffic towards the D.C. beltway, he said, “You know who I am.” His voice was thin, reedy, and not very pleasant.

She had backed off from him by now. “I guess so. Louis?”

“No. Doc.”

It was a shock. Even though both Ron and Sandoval had gone female, she just never thought of it working both ways. “Doc?”

“Don’t get funny. I needed some money and a good cover, and this is the best. I’ve been here before, for a few days, so I knew what it was going to be like.”

She couldn’t get over the change. There was no trace of the gentleness and femininity of the Kahwalini she had known.’ He was a little wimp of a guy and he stayed that way.

“So this is it, huh?”

“Tomorrow is it, anyway. I must say you don’t seem to be suffering.”

She chuckled. “I had enough sufferin’ in my lives. This is dif rent. I ain’t got no worries, and I don’t got to think much. Seems like every time I had to think lately, it’s been b’tween drownin’ or hangin’.”

Doc said nothing to that.

She’d changed into a tight white tee shirt that left nothing to the imagination and jeans so tight they seemed painted on and were held up provocatively only by her hips, but that was her only change. The immediate excitement had given way quickly to boredom—her attention span was no longer very great and the complexity of her thoughts was very low—and she felt horny, even for Doc. All she could do was drown herself in the radio and go along for the ride.

Finally, she asked, “Doc? How much did you pay for the weekend?”

“A grand. That guy is a stickup artist.”

A grand, she thought. Now that was moving up. …

.

Thirty armed men staked out and surrounded the tiny beach cottage, all armed to the teeth, some with futuristic weapons imported at the last moment for the occasion. They were facing such weapons, they knew, and the game was capture if possible, kill if necessary.

All of them thought they were working for an international anti-terrorist organization founded and financed by a right-wing billionaire. They didn’t question the weapons or the information on who and what they were facing.

There was an uneasy moment when Stillman drove out in the van earlier in the day on Sunday, but he’d merely been tracing the route. He did, however, stop and make one telephone call at a booth. By no coincidence, Karen Cline picked up a phone in a Texaco station about the same time. The conversation was brief.

Stillman and Bettancourt had timed and retimed their route in different vehicles until they almost had clocks in their heads. They knew, though, that there was no margin for error. Their special weaponry and gadgets, along with the passwords they had just received from Cline, would be needed to get through a security system that was among the toughest in the world.

Louis, now a big, beefy black man with a thick, white moustache and balding head, listened to those shadowing Stillman. It was nearly dark, and he made his decision.

“As soon as you get a stretch with no cars or people, take the man out. I repeat, take the man out. Cancel him if you have to. Without him they can’t get past the front door, but Cline’ll go to work tomorrow as usual.”

More than two miles south of the plant, Clarence Stillman swerved to miss a car that suddenly pulled out from a side road. The car kept coming, ramming into the side of the van. Before Stillman could recover, two men popped up on both sides of the truck and one grabbed him. He roared and rolled, breaking loose, but the door wouldn’t open and the other man pointed a strange-looking device like a rifle at him and fired. There was a bluish glow, and he slumped down.

Gasoline was poured inside, and the van was set afire. The two men jumped into the other car, which had backed off, and it roared away before the gas tank exploded on the van. Their own car was in lousy shape, but they were able to dump it in the lot of an auto repair company before it gave up the ghost.

Holly/Dawn heard this over the communications system, and knew that these men were getting ready to go in. Doc was supervising the Cline stakeout, but if all went well, Cline would not know of this. Whoever she was, she would go to work and wait for the attack that never came.

The men moved in. All vehicles were covered, and then they moved silently up to the house itself. On Louis’ signal, and with no warning to the occupants, they tossed in concussion grenades in every window and then black-clad shapes crashed through doors and windows.

To say that the occupants were surprised was an understatement. Rays and conventional weapons went off all through the house. She could only sit back in Doc’s car, parked well out on the road, and imagine what was going on in there.

The house was secured in less than forty seconds. Louis was immediately inside with a small device, checking each and every one of the limp forms. Bettancourt was dead, having begun firing blindly. Sandoval had tried to jump out the second story window in the back, and he made it. His neck was broken. The mysterious man with one leg had been stunned to unconsciousness, while the terrified Austin-Venneman was in so much shock that she couldn’t even surrender. Louis went first to the mysterious one-legged man and took a reading; then he frowned. “Nothin’!” he snarled. “This ain’t Eric, it’s just their set-up man!”

Back along the road, the passenger’s door opened in her car and a dark figure got in. She turned, expecting to see one of the others or maybe Louis, and gasped.

“Don’t panic,” said Eric Benoni calmly. “Can you drive?”

She shook her head, suddenly too fearful to speak.

“All right, then I will. Don’t yell or make any foolish moves, please. I really don’t intend any harm, but such beauty can be so easily… marked.” He slid back out the door and walked around in back of the car to the driver’s side. She was frozen in panic, unable to do a thing.

He got in, looked down and saw that the keys were in the ignition, then started the car and drove off a little ways before turning on the headlights. “Damned uncomfortable, driving with the belt. One cannot lean back and relax.”

“W-what do you want with me?” she asked him, edging as far away from him as she could. She wished she had the nerve to open the door and jump, but she knew she didn’t. She felt suddenly cold and started shivering, although it was a warm night. Her head felt funny.

He noticed her discomfort. “It will pass. Thanks to your friends, all of you that still was partly Moosic, and Alfie, and Neumann, has gone. Your friends just saw to that. You won’t miss it. It will just make you more… passive, more gentle, more dependent, and, come your trip point, no brighter than the girl you now are. There—it’s passed already.”

She did feel different, somehow. On the one hand, she was terrified of him; on the other, she actually wanted him. “Wh—where are we goin’?” she managed at last.

“You tell me. Where is the belt?”

She didn’t answer, and he pulled the car over by the side of the road, turned, and pulled her violently to him. He had a knife in his hand, and his face was absolutely cold, his eyes terrifying to look into, although she could not avoid his gaze.

“I will ask once more. Then I will put a mark on that pretty face of yours. Not deep, but it will leave a permanent scar. Then, if you still don’t cooperate, we will start on other parts of your anatomy.”

She felt totally helpless. “No, please—all right! It’s in my bag in the back seat of the car.”

He let go of her and flung her back. “Get it. Take it out, turn it off, and hand it to me.”

She didn’t hesitate to do what he said. He grabbed the belt and a look of satisfied triumph came over him.

“There—see? I can be a nice fellow when folks are nice to me. At least I salvage something out of this miserable debacle of an operation.”

She stared at him. “Who are you?”

Eric smiled. “Do you know what Benoni means? No? It’s a Hebrew name, very seldom used, that means ‘son of my sorrow.’ I chose it because it was appropriate. A better way is to turn the tables a bit. I think I know who you are, or were. Was your name once Dawn?”

She nodded nervously.

He grinned and spread his hands. “Behold thy unfaithful son, Joseph.”

Her jaw dropped, and her mind reeled, unable to accept it.

“It really is, you know, Mother. And that girl playing Karen Cline is Ginny.”

“That ain’t possible!” she protested.

“In this crazy universe? Let me tell you what happened to us, Mother. They kept us back there in that Safe Zone of theirs for five years. Five lousy years, undergoing dozens of lives, growing very old very fast, while you never came back. And then, finally, they tired of us when we didn’t do their bidding, become their version of the savants, doing things just so, and they ordered us to the edge. Well, we went, of course, but not without a plan. We no sooner caught sight of the monstrosities that we were supposed to join than we acted. Two of us, Ginny and I, were in time. The other three are up there now, probably monsters.

“We kept the belts on the edge and simply changed the location on arrival. They were delighted to see us, since they had lost much of the knowledge of time travel and were afraid to try it. We were delighted to show them. They cut the power to our belts, of course, but we were there and we were in charge.”

He put the car back in gear and continued on down the road.

“Them and their plans. The Outworlders killed our father, turned our mother into a common whore, and meant to turn us into monsters. Compared to that, Earthside was downright refreshing.”

She shook her head. “But—you caused all of it. I borned you, and you made Ron into Dawn and Dawn into me. You’re lyin’. You’re just torturin’ me for fun.”

“No, Mother, you’re thinking wrong. You’re thinking that because I couldn’t have existed without the rest, I couldn’t have caused it. But, you see, it all did happen. It really did. History is simply the evidence we leave. Time doesn’t undo anything, it just cleans it up so there’s no trace left that it happened. Everything Ron, and you, lived through happened, and since it was made not to happen after it happened, we exist, but we exist with no roots. We are nightsiders. Unpeople, no more real in the historical sense than the savants are in the human sense. And since we, even now, are in the past—only the edge is real—this is merely acting out what was, not what is. There really isn’t any free choice in the downtime—we choose as we must.” He chuckled. “You don’t understand a word of this, do you?”

“No, and I ain’t sure I want to. But if what you say is true, then why I never came back is because you stole my belt and took me away.”

It was his turn to be surprised and a little shocked. For the first time, a trace of doubt came over Eric Benoni’s face—self-doubt. Finally, he sighed. “You’re right, of course. But what if you had? You would simply wind up on the edge with the monsters just like we did. Being made over into a monster but with all the memories, all the knowledge. I’m saving you from that.”

She looked out at the dark night. “Where are we goin’?”

“Not much further. My time is running out in this frame. A pity, for I wish I could find a way to save Ginny.” There was a small dirt turnout that overlooked the bay on the left, and he pulled into it and stopped. He turned off the ignition and removed and pocketed the keys. Then he got out, and after a moment she did, too. There was a warm breeze blowing, and off in the distance could be seen the lights of big ships in the center channel.

“Joseph—if you are Joseph—why? You can’t win. They’ll just blow up the world.”

“Why? You stand there, like that, and ask why? As for losing, well, one side always claims it is the ultimate victor, doesn’t it? Particularly when it wants you on its side. They lie, or tell half-truths, just as we must sometime. It’s another part of war. But I’ve seen both sides, and I know death is preferable to what they offer.” He paused a moment. “Good-bye, Mother. Remain here tonight and with your looks you’re sure to get a ride and almost anything else you want.” He pressed his “Home” stud and vanished into the night.

She stood there, looking out at the bay, not really thinking, just crying in the wind. Finally she went back to the car, got in, locked all the doors, curled up, and continued crying in the damp and the dark. Finally, she felt all cried out and just sat there for a while, not really thinking at all, yet the thoughts came anyway.

Who are you?

I—I don’t know.

Why don’t you know?

’Cause I’ve downtimed the night side once too much.

Who were you?

I—I was a small child of the streets, and a nun, and a crucified rebel slave, and countless whores, but mostly I was Ron and Dawn.

But Ron and Dawn were lovers. They were two, not one. Were you truly both of them, or perhaps neither one?

Something seemed to snap inside her. All this shit—it was crazy. It didn’t make no sense at all. It was stupid, like dreams were stupid when you stopped to think on them a little.

She suddenly sat up in the car. “Oh my god!” she said aloud. She’d seen it in others, but never thought about it in herself. Crazy. Around the bend. Looped. She’d seen it before, in Gloria, among others. Girls who just got sick and tired of this kind of life and knew they’d never be anything else. She thought maybe it happened when you got real old, like Gloria—she was almost forty. Not to her.

But it had. It must be. Jesus! She’d really flipped out, and gone to live in cuckoo-land for a while. No use figuring out how she really came to be down here in this car. She looked in the back seat and saw her overnight case, then crawled in back, opened it, and pulled out her makeup case. Switching on the overhead light, she opened the case and looked at the face in the little round mirror.

That’s who I am, she told herself. I’m Holly. I never been nobody else but Holly and I ain’t ever gonna be nobody else neither.

She wiped away the remnants of the tears and made herself presentable once more. When she was satisfied, she packed up the case, unlocked the car door, and got out, taking it with her. It was still quite dark, but she began to walk up the road. There wasn’t any traffic this time of night, but if a car didn’t come along, she’d eventually reach a phone, she was sure—or maybe wait until morning. She no longer felt tired, just anxious to get back to town and pick up her life.

A very old Volkswagen came rattling down the road going in the opposite direction, and she paid it no heed. The driver, however, spotted her in his headlights and slowed, then made a U-turn and came back up to her. She grew suddenly frightened, aware of just how much in the middle of nowhere she was and just how alone and unprotected she was as well.

The VW pulled in just ahead of her, and the right door opened. She approached it nervously, knowing there really was no place to run and just hoping this was someone who was just trying to be helpful—or on the make. She bent down and looked in at the driver.

“Get in, Holly,” said Doc.

“No! You’re not real! You’re part of the dream!” She backed away from the car gingerly.

“I won’t hurt you, Holly, but I’m afraid I must insist. Don’t worry. If nothing else, I’ll take you as far as the bus station in Waldorf.”

“I—I don’t trust you!”

“You shouldn’t. But you don’t have any choice. Now— get in! I have other appointments before this is over, and, as funny as it sounds, I don’t have the time for foolishness.”

Holly sighed. “What the hell,” she muttered, and pushed her case into the cramped back seat and slid into the front passenger side.

As soon as she closed the door, Doc was off into the night.