“Particles! Like the highly charged particles in solar flares.”
“That’s right, Jack. All the interactions in our universe involve the creation and annihilation of particles. The Change is a perfect example.”
“So is the Change good, or evil?”
“Neither or both, Nell. I suspect it’s like power; it all depends on how it’s used.”
“And who’s using it,” Tilbury said darkly. “You have any theories about that?”
“Not yet, but if I’m right about what’s happening we may be able to find out. To track the Change to its lair,” Gerry added hopefully.
Another round of drinks was ordered.
An hour later Nell recalled, “When I was a girl I used to hear my grandparents complaining because everything was changing, and I didn’t know what they meant. To me it seemed that nothing changed. Every day was like the one before. I thought I’d give anything for a change.”
Gloria said fervently, “I’d give anything for the Change to stop.” She glanced at the baby lying beside her on the seat, snugly wrapped in blankets and sound asleep. “I want Danielle to grow up in a stable environment.”
“When were we able to guarantee that?” Jack asked. “Consider the whole span of history. There have been some quiet periods, sure, but inevitably a disaster shook everything up: revolutions, world wars, the atom bomb…”
“’Scuse me, too much beer.” Gerry got up and headed for the rest room.
“Humans were responsible for those things,” Edgar Tilbury pointed out, “but the Change is different.”
“No, we only think it’s different because we don’t know who’s behind it.”
Bill said, “So you’ll grant that someone is behind it. What happened to your other theories, Jack?”
“None of them helped.”
“Nothing’s gonna help either,” predicted Hooper Watson. “The fuckin’ Change is gonna go on and on until we fall into a giant sinkhole like the ones on the asphalt roads.”
Morris Saddlethwaite said, “You’re a li’l ray of sunshine, arncha?”
“Well, it’s true.”
“We don’t know what’s true and what isn’t,” Lila argued. “There are times when it seems like a huge magic show, with the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, pulling the strings. Any minute I expect him to pop out wearing a clown mask.”
“Make it stop,” Gloria whispered. She could feel everything piling up: all the familiar items that had disintegrated, the growing worry and uncertainty, the gradual failures of the society she depended on, the unfocused anger and onrushing fear. There was no end to it. Just growing and growing and… “Make it stop! Oh please, God, make it stop, I can’t take any more!”
Her sudden collapse stunned the others.
Evan Mulligan jumped to his feet and scooped her into his arms. “Go get her husband and somebody take the baby,” he said over his shoulder. “Hurry!” He bent his head over the sobbing woman. “It’s okay, it’ll be okay, just take deep breaths.”
The frozen tableau came to life. Jack ran to the restroom to bring Gerry back, while Nell produced a handkerchief and Bill Burdick poured a glass of brandy.
It was Edgar Tilbury who comforted the baby.
The Change continued, as inevitable as the changes that marked the passage of a day, a month, a year. On an unstable planet revolving in a finite solar system nothing remained the same. True stability, if such a thing were possible, would have broken the law of gravity and torn the space/time continuum.
Yet even the Change must change. How could it be otherwise?
Before he went to sleep Edgar Tilbury sat on the edge of his bed and looked at the photograph in its plain gold frame. A beautiful woman with finely cut features, her full lips slightly parted as if she were about to speak to him.
Hers was the only photograph in the house. He kept it in his bedside drawer, next to the old AllCom that still worked occasionally.
“We’ve got children at last, Veronica,” he told her. “Never thought it would happen. That Lila—she’s a hard case, isn’t she? Needs a lot and won’t admit it. Maybe that freckle-faced veterinarian can give it to her, if she wants him. He’s a decent guy and there aren’t many of those around. There’s room for them both here… and more.”
He raised his eyes from the face in the picture and stared into space, thinking. Lovingly tucked the photograph back in the drawer. Scratched his chest and turned out the light.
Dwayne Nyeberger knew who to blame, and it wasn’t the Change either. It was the woman he thought he killed, the woman who had stolen everything that should have been his. He could not sleep at night for thinking about her and planning ways to get even.
He needed to get her alone, and to do that he needed to find out where she lived. Where she went, what she did.
The obsession grew like a dark cloud over his head.
Evan Mulligan’s AllCom emitted a series of random clicks, then a pulsating tone muffled by the fact that it was in his jacket pocket. The jacket was hung on a hook outside Rocket’s stall.
The boy was kneeling on the straw beside a long-legged colt, trying to persuade the little creature to accept a leather halter on his head. Evan would have preferred to use a halter of woven nylon, which was softer, but most of those had disintegrated.
Rocket stood close by, nudging her little son with her muzzle to reassure him. His black baby coat would give way to gray as he grew older; he was finely bred. Evan had saved his own money to breed the mare to an Arabian stallion in Nolan’s Falls. He had been hoping for a filly, though he was delighted with the colt. Next year he would take Rocket back to Nolan’s Falls and try again.
When he recognized the ringtone of his AllCom he got to his feet carefully, so as not to startle the colt, and retrieved the device. He was surprised to see Lila Ragland’s face appear on the screen. “Evan? Is your father home?” She sounded as if she were whispering.
“He’s still in the clinic, I think. Want me to go get him?”
“That’s all right, when he comes in give him a message for me, will you? Ask him if he can come over here tomorrow and get me.”
“Tomorrow’s not Wednesday.”
“I know that, Evan. Just tell him, please. I think somebody’s stalking me.”
23
Shay Mulligan was surprised. “I didn’t know Edgar had an AllCom that still worked. Lila never mentioned it.”
“Maybe she didn’t know about it until now. She was sort of whispering, like she’d just found it or something and didn’t want him to know. I was afraid the connection would fail while we were talking, but it didn’t.”
“Do you think she’s ill? Or injured?”
Evan shrugged. “She looked okay, but I could only see her face.”
“Maybe I should head over there now.”
“She seemed to think tomorrow would be okay. The horses have been working all day and they’re tired, Dad.”
“Of course they are; what was I thinking?” It would be foolish to rush off to rescue a damsel in distress when he didn’t know if Lila was in distress. But the whole thing was decidedly odd. During the past year so many strange events had taken place that Shay’s imagination operated at fever pitch. Tilbury was an eccentric; such a person might do anything. He might even…
After he went to bed Shay tossed and turned. Karma, who shared his bed, moved onto each warm spot he vacated until at last she lost patience and went to Evan’s room to sleep with him.
When Nell Bennett was sure her children were asleep she took a flashlight and went through the house, scrutinizing every item she thought might be vulnerable to the Change. This had been her habit since they moved back in. She was alert for the slightest droop or sag—as she had once checked her mirror for the slightest sign of aging in her face.