The Disunited States of America

Six

Lightning flashed, not far enough away. Beckie counted vampire bats. She'd barely counted two of them before thunder boomed, loud as a cannon's roar. Rain came down in buckets.

"Wow!" she said. "You hardly ever see this in California."

"This isn't anything special," Gran said. "Why, when I was a little girl. . . When was that storm, Ethel? You know the one I mean—the bad one. Was that in '36? Or was it '37?"

"It was '37,1 think," Mrs. Snodgrass answered, so of course Gran decided it must have happened in 2036. They went back and forth, back and forth. Either way, it was more than forty years before Beckie was born, so she didn't worry about it a whole lot. Another flash of lightning strobed across the sky. This time, the thunder came even sooner. The Snodgrasses' house shook.

"You don't want to see the lightning and hear the thunder at the same time. That's real bad news," Mr. Snodgrass said. He glanced at his wife and Gran. One of his gingery eyebrows rose a little. Was he thinking they were the lightning and the thunder? Beckie wouldn't have been surprised.

Water drummed on the roof. No, you didn't get rain like this in Los Angeles. It came down, and it kept on coming. Nine zillion raindrops danced on the growing puddles in the back yard.

Beckie wondered how often the Snodgrasses' house got flooded. They didn't seem antsy, so maybe it didn't happen as much as she guessed it might.

Mr. Snodgrass had other worries on his mind. "Hope we don't get tornadoes," he said.

"Bite your tongue, Ted!" his wife exclaimed. Mr. Snodgrass really did stick out his tongue and make as if to chomp down on it. Mrs. Snodgrass rolled her eyes before she went on, "We haven't had a twister tear through Elizabeth for as long as anybody can recollect. But remember the one that got Palestine? What year was that, Ted? Was it 71? Or 72?"

"Well, I reckoned it was 73 myself, but I'm not gonna get all hot and bothered about it," Mr. Snodgrass answered, a dig plainly aimed at his wife and Gran. Mrs. Snodgrass rolled her eyes again. Gran didn't even notice she'd been zinged. Beckie might have known—had known—she wouldn't. None so blind as those who will not see, Beckie thought.

More thunder boomed and rumbled, this time a little longer after the lightning that lit up the front room with a white-purple flash. Beckie could imagine funnels forming in weather like this. "What do we do if there is one?" she asked.

"We go down cellar and say our prayers," Mrs. Snodgrass answered. "If God is listening, it'll stay away from us. If He's not. . ." She screwed up her face into what was meant for a smile. "If He's not, I expect He's got somebody else He needs to save more than us. His will be done."

She sounded as if she meant it. People here took their religion more seriously than they did in California. Back home, Gran went to church but Mom and Dad didn't, or not very often. In Elizabeth, almost everybody seemed to. Beckie had gone since she came here—with the Snodgrasses and her grandmother going, staying away would have made her seem rude and weird. At seventeen, she felt the need to fit in. She didn't think she was getting much out of going—the preacher was a bore. But people smiled and nodded just to see her there. That counted, too.

Another flash of lightning lit everything up for a moment. As Beckie blinked, she counted bats again. Halfway between five and six of them, the thunder crashed. "That's more like it," she said. "A mile away, or pretty close."

"About what I figured myself," Mr. Snodgrass said. "I bet that one came down on Jephany Knob. A lot of times after a thunderstorm you'll see trees knocked down up there. It draws lightning, sure enough."

High ground did. Beckie knew that. She'd seen pictures of trees blasted during thunderstorms. She tried to imagine what they'd smell like. What was the odor of hot sap? She didn't know, but she wanted to find out. "After the rain stops—if the rain ever stops—I'd like to have a look up there," she said. Look wasn't all of what she meant, but saying something like I want to have a sniff up there would only make everybody think she was strange.

"Well, you can do that," Mr. Snodgrass said.

"I don't want you going up there by yourself," Gran said.

Beckie started to say everything would be fine. What she wanted to say was that Gran was an old foof who belonged back in the twentieth century, or maybe the nineteenth. Before she could get the words out, Mr. Snodgrass said, "Myrtle's right, Rebecca. There may be snags up there. There may be rattlers, too—there usually are."

And there may be people with guns, Beckie remembered. She swallowed whatever protest she might have made and nodded instead. "Okay, I won't," she said. "Maybe Justin will want to go up there with me."

That didn't make Gran any happier—but then, what did? "I don't know what that boy has in mind," she said, but that wasn't what she meant. She meant she knew just what Justin had in mind, and she didn't like it one bit.

"Don't be silly, Gran," Beckie said.

"I'm not being silly. Don't you wish you could say the same?" The look Gran gave her meant her grandmother thought she had the same thing in mind as Justin did. The only thing Beckie had in mind right then was picking up a lamp and bashing Gran over the head with it. She didn't, but it sure was tempting.

"Justin's a nice enough fella," Mr. Snodgrass said.

"Yes, and a whole lot you know about it," Gran said.

"Oh, I recollect, I do," he answered. "I may not be young any more, but I'm not dead yet, either, not by a long chalk. Isn't that right, sweetie?" He turned to his wife for support.

"Men," Mrs. Snodgrass sniffed. By the way she made it sound, half the human race was in big trouble if she had anything to say about it. Mr. Snodgrass mimed being cut to the quick. His wife laughed, but she wasn't kidding—or not much, anyhow.

The high-topped running shoes Justin had worn when he came up to Elizabeth were good enough for almost anything. Oh, he'd get stares if he went to a fancy dinner in them, but he doubted anybody in Elizabeth had ever set out that fancy a dinner. They weren't hiking boots or anything, but he felt more than surefooted enough in them to climb Jephany Knob.

"How you doing?" he asked Beckie.

"I'm fine," she answered. Just then, her foot came down on some slick mud. She almost took a pratfall, but a wild flail of her arms and a helping hand from Justin kept her upright. "Thanks," she said.

"Sure," he said. "You helped keep me from landing on my can a couple of minutes ago." He didn't much want to let go of her hand, but he did. Right now, she was a girl he knew, not a girlfriend. He knew Mr. Brooks wouldn't want her to turn into a girlfriend. Romances between Crosstime Traffic people and locals almost always turned out badly.

"It's nice, isn't it?" she said. "The air feels . . . washed clean."

Justin nodded. Now that the rain had moved through, the nasty humidity was down. Everything smelled green—almost like spring but not quite so sweet, because fewer flowers were in bloom.

No sooner had that thought crossed Justin's mind than a wisp of breeze brought a new odor with it. His nose wrinkled. So did Beckie's. That sickly-sweet smell was unmistakable. They both said the same thing at the same time: "Something's dead!"

It had to be something good-sized, too, or the stink wouldn't have been so obvious. Feeling a little—a very little—like Daniel Boone, Justin followed the breeze up the knob.

"Look!" Beckie pointed. "There's a tree down." Her laugh sounded shaky. "When the storm was bad a couple of days ago, I wondered if a tree would get hit, and what hot sap smelled like. But that's not sap."

"No." Now Justin shook his head. "It's a dead bear or . . ." His voice trailed away. He saw what he'd hoped he wouldn't see. "Are you sure you want to look? It's a dead man."

"It's Charlie!" Beckie said. In and around Elizabeth, the black man stood out, all right. "He must have run over by the tree when the lightning started coming close, and. . . ."

"That's the worst thing you can do," Justin said. "People are supposed to know it is, too, but they do it anyway."

"What's that by him?" Beckie asked.

Justin took a closer look. However much he wished it would, that didn't change a thing. "It's a gun," he answered.

"It's not just an ordinary gun, is it?" Like him, Beckie seemed to be doing her best not to say what desperately needed saying. She went on, "I mean, it's not a squirrel gun or a deer gun on. ..."

"No, it's not any of those." Then, because he had no choice, Justin said the thing he had to say: "It's an assault rifle." Guns made for shooting game could be works of art in their own right. Guns made for shooting people were ugly and functional. This one, of metal and plastic with a big, fat magazine, was no exception. It was an infantryman's weapon, not the kind a janitor out hunting had any business carrying.

And why would Charlie have gone hunting in the middle of a thunderstorm that had everything in it but the crack of doom? Justin couldn't think of any good reason. He had no trouble coming up with piles of bad ones, though.

"What are we going to do?" Beckie said in a small voice.

"Why are you asking me?" Justin snapped. He wasn't angry at Beckie—he was angry at himself. The question had several obvious answers, and he didn't want to think about any of them.

Beckie sent him a hurt look. "You're the Virginian. You know what you're supposed to do when something like this happens."

"Something like this?" He laughed harshly. "Nobody ever wants to run into something like this."

That was true. It was also one of the biggest understatements of all time. He especially didn't want to have to deal with this mess, because he wasn't a real Virginian—not from this alternate, anyhow. If he were, he would have reacted without even thinking. He was sure of that. A black man with an assault rifle? What could that mean but an uprising against the whites who'd ruled this Virginia as long as there'd been a Virginia here? And what else could you do about it but report it to the authorities and turn them loose on all the African Americans for kilometers—no, for miles—around?

Because he was from the home timeline, Justin didn't see things the way a local would have. He knew the blacks here were oppressed. He sympathized with them for wanting to do something about it. He didn't want to get shot himself, though, any more than an ordinary white Virginian here would have.

"We need to call the police, don't we?" Beckie said.

"The sheriff, you mean," Justin said. Elizabeth wasn't big enough to have a police department. But it was a county seat, and the sheriffs office and the county jail were in the same building as the county courthouse.

"That's right. I've talked with him before," Beckie said. She took her phone off her belt. "Do you want to call, or shall I?"

"I'll do it," he said. "We're both strangers, but at least I come from Virginia." One more lie he had to tell.

He didn't have the Wirt County sheriff's number, but a call to information took care of that. "This here is Sheriff Cochrane," said a deep voice on the other end of the line. "Who am I talking to?" Justin gave his name. He told Sheriff Cochrane where he was, and what he and Beckie had found there. "Good God in the foothills!" the sheriff burst out. "Charlie? Are you sure?"

Before Justin answered, he breathed in another lungful of that foul odor. "I'm sure, all right," he answered grimly.

"Okay. I'm on my way—top of Jephany Knob, you said? Don't touch anything before I get there, you hear?" Without waiting for an answer, Cochrane hung up.

"Well?" Beckie asked when Justin gave her phone back.

"He's coming," Justin said. "He says not to touch anything."

That made her mad, which Justin thought was funny. "How dumb does he think we are?" she demanded.

"He probably doesn't think we are. He probably said it just in case," Justin answered. "He probably says it every time anything happens." How often did things happen in Wirt County? Justin had no idea.

Sheriff Cochrane wasted no time. Red lights flashing, his car pulled to a stop at the bottom of the knob inside of five minutes. He wore brown boots, a khaki uniform, and what Justin thought of as a Smokey the Bear hat, though nobody in this alternate had ever dreamed up Smokey. He climbed Jephany Knob with the air of a man who knew the ground as well as he knew his own office—and with a pistol in his right hand.

"You two," he muttered when he saw Justin and Beckie. "Strangers." By the way he said it, that was almost a crime in itself. He didn't quite aim the pistol at them, but he sure had it ready.

Justin pointed to the lightning-blasted tree. "There's the body."

"Uh-huh." As soon as Cochrane turned towards it, his long face got even longer. "Yeah, that's Charlie, sure as the devil." His nostrils twitched. He grimaced. "And he's been here a couple days, hasn't he?" He did some more muttering, then walked over and crouched next to the dead man—and next to the assault rifle by his right hand. Cochrane pointed to it. "You kids touch this piece? At all? I won't get mad—well, 1 won't get real mad—if you tell me yes. But if you tell me no and your prints show up, you don't even want to think about how much trouble you're in, not in wartime you don't. So—did you?"

"No, sir," Justin and Beckie said together.

"Okay." The sheriff put on rubber gloves. He picked up the assault rifle, holding it by the barrel, and put it in a plastic evidence bag. Then he looked down at Charlie and shook his head. "I hadn't seen him around, but I didn't think anything of it, you know? His wife didn't call him in missing, either. I don't like that a bit. I don't want to believe any of this. If Charlie's not to be trusted, there's not a colored fellow in the whole blamed state who is."

He was likely to be right. Why would blacks in Virginia stay loyal to the government that didn't give them the rights whites took for granted? The only reason Justin could see for their staying quiet was that they were afraid to rise up. If they lost that fear . . . Well, there Charlie lay.

"Strangers," Sheriff Cochrane muttered again. He eyed Justin and Beckie. "What were you two doing up here, anyway?"

"Just taking a walk," Justin answered.

"We were glad to get out after the rain cooped us up," Beckie added.

"Uh-Huh" the sheriff said. That might have meant he wondered if they'd come up here to fool around. Rules or no rules, Justin wouldn't have minded. But Cochrane was also thinking of something else. "You weren't by any chance up here while it was raining, were you?"

They were white. He had to be careful how he questioned them. But Justin knew what he meant. He wanted to know if they had anything to do with the Negro and the assault rifle. That was what they got for being strangers. They both shook their heads at the same time. "You can ask my grandmother and Mr. and Mrs. Snodgrass," Beckie said. "Besides, I would have drowned if I went out in that."

"My uncle will tell you I was with him all the time," Justin said.

"Another stranger," Sheriff Cochrane said. But he went on, "Well, I've known the Snodgrasses since dirt. They wouldn't have any truck with a thing like this, that's a fact." He got to his feet. "You kids come on back to the car with me. I'll take you into town."

"What about Charlie?" Justin asked.

Sheriff Cochrane looked back at the janitor's body. "He's not going anywhere," he said, and Justin couldn't very well argue with that. The sheriffs voice took on the snap of command: "Come on, I told you."

Down Jephany Knob they went, all of them skidding when they hit slick patches of mud. Nobody fell, which Justin took for a minor miracle. The sheriff started to open the back door to the bright red car, then changed his mind and opened the front door instead.

"Crowd in beside me," he said. "If I put you in back, everybody who sees you in there'll figure I've jugged you, and I've got no call to do that." As with most police cars, this one had a fine metal grill between front seat and back to make sure prisoners didn't kick up any trouble.

The front seat was crowded with three people in it. Justin, in the middle, didn't mind getting squeezed against Beckie.

Sheriff Cochrane was a different story. He smelled of tobacco, and the pistol on his right hip was an uncomfortable lump. Justin was glad it wasn't more than a couple of minutes' ride back to Elizabeth.

Cochrane stopped the car at the corner of Route 14 and Prunty. "Guess I'll let the two of you out right here, if that's okay," he said.

"Sure," Beckie said, and got out in a hurry. Justin slid out after her. The sheriffs car headed on up toward the courthouse. "Shall we go back to the Snodgrasses'?" Beckie asked.

Justin shook his head. "Let's just wait here for a little bit." She looked puzzled, but she didn't say no.

Inside of ten minutes, the sheriffs car raced down Route 14 toward Jephany Knob again. This time, Sheriff Cochrane had his deputy along with him. "Oh," Beckie said. "Is that what you were looking for?"

"Yeah," he answered. "Weren't you?"

"I guess," she said. "I'm not from here, so I don't know for sure—how much trouble is what we found going to cause?"

Even though Justin wasn't really from this alternate's Virginia, either, answering that was easy as pie. "Lots," he said.

"Charlie?" Mrs. Snodgrass said. "Charlie up there on the knob with a rifle? I don't believe it."

"I don't want to believe it," Mr. Snodgrass said, which wasn't the same thing at all. "If Charlie could do a thing like that. . ."

"Ungrateful, is what it is," his wife said. "Everybody in town treated him almost like he was one of us."

That almost was the problem. Beckie could hear it, and could hear that it was wrong. By all the signs, nobody born and raised in Virginia could. She thought about saying something, but she was sure nobody would listen to her. She'd hoped her grandmother might, but Gran was nodding along with what Mrs. Snodgrass said—for once, she'd found something she agreed with. You could take the young woman out of Virginia, but taking Virginia out of the young woman was much harder. Virginia's attitudes stayed in Gran even though she wasn't young any more.

"If things are like that here," Mr. Snodgrass said, "what's it like places where they have lots of colored people?"

"The TV hasn't talked about anything bad," his wife said.

"It wouldn't, not unless things are so bad it can't pretend they're good," he said darkly.

"Maybe the sickness has something to do with keeping everything else quiet," Beckie said.

"Maybe it does. I wouldn't be surprised," Mr. Snodgrass said. "And when you've got to go and thank a disease for something, you know you're in a pile of trouble." Beckie wished she could think that was wrong, too, but she feared it was much too right.

Late that afternoon, somebody rang the doorbell. When Mrs. Snodgrass opened the door, she exclaimed in surprise—it wasn't Mr. Brooks and Justin, and it wasn't any of her neighbors, either. "Who are you?" she asked, her voice a startled squeak.

"We're from the Virginia Bureau of Investigation," one of the men at the door said in a hard, flat voice. "Here is my identification."

"And mine," another man said.

"We're here to see a Miss, uh, Rebecca Royer. Is she staying at this address?" yet another man added.

"Yes, she is," Mrs. Snodgrass answered. She turned and raised her voice: "Beckie! Three men from the VBI to see you!"

Beckie wanted to see men from the VBI, or even one man from the VBI, about as much as she wanted to lose her appendix without anesthetics. Nobody cared what she wanted, though. She was just a foreigner here, and Virginia, as Sheriff Cochrane had reminded her and Justin, was at war. If she gave these people trouble, they could give her more and worse. "Here I am," she said.

In came the men from the Virginia Bureau of Investigation. They weren't quite so alike as three peas in a pod, but they came close. They wore sober suits, two of gray, one of navy. Their hair was cut short, military style. They were about the same size, and they all had serious expressions. The one in the blue suit said, "Miss Royer, I am Senior Agent Jefferson. With me are Agent Madison and Agent Tyler." They all flashed badges. Jefferson's was gold, the other two silver. The senior agent went on, "May I see your passport, please?"

"Here." Beckie pulled it out of her purse. When you were in a foreign state, you always had to have it with you. She knew that.

Senior Agent Jefferson didn't just examine the passport. He took a jeweler's loupe from his pocket and stuck the magnifier in front of his eye. Even that didn't satisfy him. He used some kind of handheld electronic sniffer on the passport, too. Only after a green light came on did he grudgingly hand the booklet back. "This does appear to be genuine," he said. "What is the purpose of your visit to Virginia?"

"My grandmother grew up in Elizabeth," Beckie answered. "She and Mrs. Snodgrass are cousins."

"That checks out," Agent Tyler said—Beckie thought the one on Jefferson's left was Tyler, anyhow.

"Well, it would, whether or not. The other side isn't about to miss that kind of trick," the senior agent said.

"What other side?" Beckie asked.

Jefferson didn't answer her, or maybe he did: "What was the purpose of your stops in Ohio prior to entering Virginia?"

They think Fm a spy. The certainty she was right filled Beckie with fear. They even think Gran's a spy. If that didn't prove they'd never had thing one to do with Beckie's grandmother, nothing ever would. "Two of Gran's sisters live in Ohio," she said, as calmly as she could. "We stayed with them before we came here."

"That also checks," Agent Madison said.

"I told you—it would." Senior Agent Jefferson seemed to make a career out of not letting anything impress him. He turned back to Beckie. "And by chance you were one of the people involved in the discovery of Charles Clark's body?"

"If that's what his last name was. I never knew. Nobody here ever used it." Beckie couldn't resist the little sarcastic dig.

She might have done better to let it go. Jefferson looked at her with no expression at all on his face. "What is your opinion of Virginia's social structure, Miss Royer?"

That one had teeth and claws and spines. She didn't need to be a secret agent to see as much. "In California, we treat everybody pretty much the same way," she said carefully. "We try to, anyhow. It seems to work for us."

"And so you would be opposed to our forms of social control?" Senior Agent Jefferson pounced.

If she said no, he'd think she was lying. He'd be right, too. If she said yes, he'd think she was some kind of subversive. What to do? What to do? "Well, if I were black, I sure wouldn't want to live under them," she answered. "But that doesn't mean I want to pick up a gun and start shooting people."

"Would you give other people guns so they could pick them up and start shooting with them?" the VBI man asked.

"No!" There was real horror in her voice, horror and terror enough to make all three agents blink. Tyler stepped back a pace. They didn't know—she hoped to heaven they didn't know—about Uncle Luke and about the rifles she'd helped smuggle into Virginia.

The agents put their heads together. They plainly believed her. How could they not believe her after she let out a yelp like that? If they did believe her, they also had to believe she had nothing to do with the assault rifle poor Charlie Clark was carrying when lightning and the toppling tree did him in.

"Why were you up on Jephany Knob when you discovered the dead man's body?" Agent Madison asked.

"It felt nice to get out and about. It felt nice to be able to get out and about," Beckie said. "We'd had two days of thunderstorms like you wouldn't believe—like I wouldn't believe, anyway. We don't get that kind of weather in Los Angeles."

"You were with"—Madison paused to check his notes— "Justin Monroe on the knob. What is your relationship with Justin Monroe?"

"We're friends," Beckie said.

"Are you . . . more than friends?"

"No," she said. "We both got stuck here in Elizabeth. Gran and I couldn't get out after the war started, and he and his uncle couldn't leave after the disease broke out." Justin and Mr. Brooks had been exposed to it, too. She tried not to think about that, because it might mean she'd also been exposed.

"Why did you make friends with him and not with some of the young men from Elizabeth?" Madison asked. "And how did it happen that two strangers found the body, not any of the locals?"

"He's been over here a lot because his uncle does business with Mr. Snodgrass," Beckie answered. "He's nice enough, and he's from a city, too. We have more in common than I do with people in Elizabeth." She had less in common with people from Elizabeth than she did with anyone this side of men from the moon, but she didn't want to say that.

Agent Madison was stubborn. "You only answered the first half of my question," he reminded her.

"Oh. Why were we the ones who found the body? I don't know what to tell you. Dumb luck is the only thing I can think of. It wasn't good luck, either."

"We think it was," Senior Agent Jefferson said. "It shows that treason has reached even out-of-the-way places like this. Treason is a disease worse than the one Ohio turned loose on us, but we'll fix it." He sounded grim and determined. But then he eased—just a little. "I don't believe you were personally involved in it, even if you are from California. Thank you for your time." He and the other two agents left.

Even if you are from California. They assumed she was a radical just because she'd grown up in L.A. By their standards, they were right, too. California and Virginia weren't only two different states. They were two different worlds. But she was stuck in this one now, no matter how much she wished she weren't. She'd got through this first grilling. What was coming up next?

In movies and on TV, the knock on the door always came in the middle of the night. Justin and Mr. Brooks were getting ready to go the the grocery when it came in Elizabeth. They both jumped. They weren't used to company in their motel room.

Justin was closer to the door, so he opened it. He didn't expect to see three somber men in this alternate's somber business suits. "Who are you?" he said foolishly.

"Senior Agent Jefferson, VBI." The one in the middle flashed a gold badge. "With me are Agents Tyler and Madison." The other two men showed silver badges. Jefferson went on, "You would be Justin Monroe, correct?"

"That's right."

"And your uncle is Randolph Brooks? Is he here now?"

"I'm here," Mr. Brooks said from behind Justin. "What's this all about?"

"We have some questions for your nephew, Mr. Brooks, regarding his discovery of the body of Charles Clark," Jefferson answered. He gave his attention back to Justin. "May I see your identification, please?"

They were in a state called Virginia. It was a democracy of sorts. They spoke an English not much different from that of the home timeline. Even so, Justin couldn't tell them to get lost, not unless he wanted to see the inside of a cell in nothing flat. He'd already found that his forged documents were good enough to pass muster. All the same, his heart thumped as he handed them over. Senior Agent Jefferson examined them with a lens and with an electronic gadget, then nodded and passed them back. Justin tried not to show how relieved he was as he stuck them in his wallet and put the wallet in his pocket.

"Thank you," Jefferson said, plainly not meaning it in the least. "Please describe how you found Charles Clark's body. You were not alone on Jephany Knob when you did—is that correct?"

"Yes, uh, sir," Justin answered. Jefferson had to know that. He would have talked with Sheriff Cochrane. If he hadn't, he wouldn't be in Elizabeth at all. Had he already talked to Beckie? Justin wouldn't have been surprised. He said, "Do you people want to come in instead of standing in the doorway?"

"Thank you," the senior agent said again, this time with a little more warmth in his voice. The three VBI men walked into the motel room and sat down on the ratty couch. Without missing a beat, Jefferson continued, "Who was with you?"

"Beckie Royer," Justin said.

"From California." That was Agent Tyler. In the home timeline, people from states like Virginia sometimes looked down their noses at Californians—and vice versa. It seemed all the more true here, where the two states really were separate countries instead of just acting that way.

Justin only nodded. He couldn't very well deny that Beckie was from California. "Nice-looking girl," Agent Madison remarked, as if cutting him some slack. He nodded again. Madison asked, "Why did you go up onto the knob?"

"Just to have something to do. It was nice to get out after the rain." Justin made a face. "If I knew we'd find a body up there, we would have gone somewhere else, believe me."

He got a thin smile from Madison, a stony stare from Jefferson, and a dirty look from Tyler. "How did you find the body?"

"We smelled it." Justin would never forget that odor for the rest of his life. "He must have been dead a couple of days by then. The smell led me to the body, and I saw the gun by it. That's when I called the sheriff." They couldn't think there was anything wrong with that. . . could they?

"You were not on Jephany Knob while the thunderstorm was at its peak?" Senior Agent Jefferson asked.

"You'd have to be nuts to go up there then," Justin said. "It wasn't just raining cats and dogs—it was raining cougars and wolves."

That got him another smile from Agent Madison. But Agent Tyler said, "Clark didn't care about the weather."

"No, sir," Justin agreed, "but he should have, shouldn't he?"

The VBI men only grunted. In the background, Mr. Brooks coughed once or twice. Justin supposed that meant he shouldn't rattle the agents' cages. Part of him knew the coin and stamp dealer was giving him good advice. Part of him insisted their cages needed rattling—after all, they were trying to rattle his.

"How do you feel about Virginia's social system?" Senior Agent Jefferson asked.

I hate it. I think you deserve every pound's worth of trouble you've brought on yourselves, Justin thought. Sometimes the truth wasn't the best answer. If he told the truth here, they would haul him off to an unpleasant jail and do even more unpleasant things to him. He didn't like being a hypocrite, now or any other time. But the question rubbed his nose in the fact that you couldn't always say what you thought.

And so he gave what he thought was a casual response: "The same as anybody else does, I guess." It wasn't even completely a lie. Anybody else from the home timeline was likely to feel the same way he did.

Jefferson's face showed none of what he thought. He probably made a dangerous poker player. "Doesn't it bother you that Rebecca Royer plainly believes in the pernicious doctrine of Negro equality?" he asked.

No, it doesn't bother me, because I do, too. Again, Justin didn't say what he thought. Instead, he just shrugged. "She's from California. What can you expect?"

That was the right answer. All three VBI agents nodded. "Kid's got some sense," Agent Madison muttered.

"Why do you hang around with her, then?" Agent Tyler asked.

Now Justin looked at him as if he wasn't very bright. "We don't spend a whole lot of time talking about politics," he said. Let them use their imagination to figure out what he and Beckie did talk about.

Agent Madison snickered, then tried to pretend he hadn't. Agent Tyler turned a dull red. Senior Agent Jefferson, grinding as a glacier, said, "Miss Royer states that the two of you are just friends."

"Well, yeah," Justin admitted, and his sorrowful tone of voice made Madison snicker again. Justin went on, "But there's no law that says I can't keep trying, is there?"

"Maybe California has one—I don't know." Jefferson tried a smile himself. It didn't look quite natural on his face. He changed the subject: "Are you acquainted with Irma Davis?"

"Not any more—she's dead," Justin blurted.

"Well, yes. But were you acquainted with her?"

"Sure. She was the waitress at the diner across the street. Uncle Randy and I would eat breakfast over there all the time till she, uh, got sick."

"So you have been exposed to the biological agent Ohio wickedly unleashed on our innocent population?" Jefferson sounded as if he'd listened to too many Virginia newscasts.

"We hope we haven't," Mr. Brooks said before Justin could reply. No matter which of them said it, that was no lie.

"So do we," Agent Madison said. They weren't wearing gas masks and protective gear, the way the paramedics who put Irma in the ambulance had been. Maybe they had nostril filters that didn't show, but those could do only so much. Getting ordered to Elizabeth wouldn't have made the agents jump up and down with glee. Justin wondered if they'd have to get decontaminated after they drove away. He also wondered if that would help.

"What will you do in case of Negro unrest?" Jefferson asked.

"Hope things settle down before too many people get hurt," Justin answered. That seemed to satisfy the VBI men. Justin was afraid he knew why: when they thought about people, they didn't include African Americans. And the blacks in Virginia were as ready to hate him because he was white as whites would have been if he were black. Did that have any good answers? If it did, he couldn't see them.