Colleen had a roaring fire going in the fireplace, and was sitting at the far end of the couch staring at it, when I returned from my reconnoiter and long-range discussion group. "Well?" she asked, not turning as I closed the door behind me.
"They're not exactly turning cartwheels," I admitted, shrugging off my coat and draping it over the nearest chair. "But they don't see what else we could have done."
"Except maybe telling Dr. DuBois the truth in the first place."
I winced. I'd defended my decision to lie about the shield-defended it successfully, too-in front of Calvin and Gordy. But defending it in front of Colleen was another matter entirely. "I'm sorry," I said. "I really think things would have been worse if we'd told her about the shield, but-well, I know it stepped on your sensibilities, and I'm sorry for that."
I winced. I'd defended my decision to lie about the shield-defended it successfully, too-in front of Calvin and Gordy. But defending it in front of Colleen was another matter entirely. "I'm sorry," I said. "I really think things would have been worse if we'd told her about the shield, but-well, I know it stepped on your sensibilities, and I'm sorry for that."
She still didn't look up... but from my new perspective I could now see the tear stains on her cheeks.
"Colleen?"
"It's so lonely," she whispered. "So lonely, Dale. When you left to talk with the others... I've never been alone before. Not like this."
I sat down beside her and slid my arm around her shoulders. Her body trembled against mine. "It'll be okay," I said soothingly. Even I could hear how fatuous the words sounded. "It'll be okay. I'll stay with you as long as you want me to."
She sighed; a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm not going to make it, Dale. Not eight whole months-not like this.
"You'll make it, Colleen." More fatuous words. "You'll make it because you're not the type to give up.
And because it has to be done."
"Does it? Does it really?"
I felt an icy shiver run up my back. "What alternative is there?"
She didn't answer... but then, she didn't have to. DuBois had already talked about the alternative. "Do you want to have an abortion?" I asked her in a low voice.
"What, kill the only child ever conceived by two telepaths?" A sound that was half laugh, half sob, escaped her lips. "What would the group say?"
"They'd understand," I told her. "Besides, now that we've got the telepath shield this can be done again. If anyone wants it done."
For a long minute the only sound in the room was the crackling of the fire. "What happens after the baby is born?" Colleen asked at last. "I can't stay in the shield for eighteen years."
"I know." That much, at least, was obvious. "We'd have to put him up for adoption. Scott's got a lot of connections with lawyers in the New Orleans area, and Lisa knows everyone important from Philadelphia to the Canadian border. We'll have them quietly get the wheels grinding."
She didn't say anything, just shifted beside me and brought her hand up to rest on her abdomen. "I don't know. None of the options... I just don't know."
"Me, too," I told her. "Look, we don't have to make any major decisions tonight. Let's just get you through DuBois's marathon of tests tomorrow and see how you feel then. All right?"
"Sure." She stared at the fire for a minute, then sighed. "It's funny, you know. When I was a little girl I dreamed about being a mother-played house with my dolls for hours at a time. Then I hit puberty, and all the strange sounds I'd been hearing all my life sharpened into words, and I found out what I was... and I knew I'd never be able to have children. The dream died slowly, kicking and screaming all the way. But finally I had to accept it." dreamed about being a mother-played house with my dolls for hours at a time. Then I hit puberty, and all the strange sounds I'd been hearing all my life sharpened into words, and I found out what I was... and I knew I'd never be able to have children. The dream died slowly, kicking and screaming all the way. But finally I had to accept it."
She sniffed, twice, and abruptly I realized she was crying again. "I'm scared, Dale," she said between silent sobs. "I'm scared that I'll hate the baby for what I'll have to go through for her. Or else that I...
won't be able to give her up."
There were things I could have said. Soothing things, words of comfort and assurance and trust, none of which would have done the slightest good whatsoever. And so I did the only other thing I could think of to do.
I wrapped my arms around her and held her tightly against me, and listened helplessly as she cried.
Along with Nelson's paranoia and general lack of honesty, I had also picked up some of his boundless confidence; but by morning my own natural caution had reasserted itself, and we wound up fudging a bit on my original plans. Instead of both of us driving together to the hospital, we took separate vehicles: Colleen in her own car with the portable telepath shield in the trunk, me in the van with the larger line-current model and gasoline generator chugging away in back. It meant I had to stay with the van most of the day, lest the generator's puffing exhaust line poking out the back doors attracted unwelcome attention, but even that was probably a blessing in disguise. Much as I hated abandoning Colleen to DuBois's gauntlet of tests without being there to hold her hand, I'd begun to wonder if it would perhaps be more than a little foolhardy to parade together all day among dozens of hospital staff and patients. As long as DuBois was the only one who knew about Colleen's "lost" telepathic powers-and as long as she didn't break her promise to keep that knowledge confidential-there was a chance of stuffing the lie back into its bottle with a minimum of embarrassment. The minute someone else recognized me, that chance would be gone.
The middle of December in Regina is hardly the time or the place to be sitting outside in a van for hours on end, but it turned out not to be as bad as I'd feared. The weather, I gathered, had been somewhat warmer than usual for that time of year, and with the generator churning out a modicum of heat behind me and the blazing sunlight turning the van's dark-blue interior into a wraparound radiator, the temperature stayed reasonably tolerable.
Reasonably tolerable is still considerably short of warm, though, and my teeth were beginning to chatter when, six hours after our arrival, Colleen finally drove her car up beside me and gave me a tired nod. I nodded back and started the van, and twenty minutes later we were home.
"How'd it go?" I asked her, taking off my heavy boots and standing on one of the floor heating grates.
My toes tingled unpleasantly with returning sensation.
"Nothing I haven't had before," she sighed, dropping into a chair at the kitchen table and closing her eyes.
"Sort of a repeat performance of all the tests we went through when we were first identified as telepaths.
Plus a couple of encores they've dreamed up since then."
Those tests were nearly a decade in the past, but I still remembered them. Vividly. "The full spin cycle, in other words."
"Tolerable," I told her, "but all my best meals take at least an hour from scratch to fork. You up to waiting that long?"
She made a face. "Not really."
I nodded and reached for my boots. "Me, neither. What's your preference in fast food?"
She gave me directions to a chicken place and I headed back out to the van... and it was as I was preparing to pull out of the driveway that I first noticed the man sitting in the parked car down the street.
Waiting for someone to join him from one of the houses, I decided; but even so, I watched in the mirror as I headed down the street, half expecting him to pull out behind me. He didn't, and after the first wave of foolishness passed I forgot about him.
Until, that is, fifteen minutes later when I returned with the chicken and saw him still sitting there.
Perhaps if I hadn't just spent six hours sitting in a van in the middle of a Saskatchewan winter that wouldn't have struck me as quite so odd. But I had; and it did. Enough so that I made sure to lock up the van before I went inside, and immediately after eating went back out to bring the line-current telepath shield into the house. The sun was starting to go down by then, its heating effects long gone, but the man was still sitting in the car, a black silhouette against the pink clouds to the west.