“More than likely something wrong at the switching facilities,” Mrs. Kingsley said. “The phone service here’s never been much to brag about.”
Candy worried a pack of cigarettes and a disposable lighter out of her disco bag and accusingly said, “Well, my mother is going to have a cow.”
Mrs. Kingsley personally thought that the girl’s mother’s outrage was a day late and a dollar short, but she kept her opinion to herself. Aloud, she said, “No, my dear, I am afraid that I do not allow smoking at the breakfast table.”
“Hah?” Candy looked down stupidly, lit the cigarette, and then hastily removed it from her mouth. “Oh—yeah, sure.” She made as if to stub out the cigarette on her plate. Mrs. Kingsley hastily reached into the cupboards for an ashtray.
“Here.” She thrust it at the young woman. It was ironic, the tyranny that smokers exercised over their betters. She herself had never picked up the disgusting habit, and yet had of necessity, over the years, acquired any number of ashtrays to accommodate friends and guests. “You can smoke in the hallway,” she said. “Though it would be nice if you were to go outside when—”
But an angry glance from Desmond told her that she had gone too far. “Well, that would be unreasonable, of course.”
“Damn straight it would,” Desmond muttered. He was at the kitchen radio now, fiddling with it. It emitted an earsplitting, see-sawing howl of static, like a dying banshee. Wincing, he turned the knob from one end of the dial to the other, finding no stations, then grimaced and turned the radio off. He started to say “Shit!”, cast a quick look at his daughter, thought better of it, and settled for an exasperated “Damn!” He came back to the table. “I’d hoped to catch the news.”
“War, and portents of war,” Mrs. Kingsley said sourly.
Desmond grinned offensively at her. “Hey, sounds good to me!” he said. “That means I don’t have to worry about being out of work, right?” He knew that she disapproved of his work for military contractors—“war work” she’d called it bitterly once, in a monumental argument a few months after Stephanie’s death, correcting his euphemistic “defense work”—and he loved to bait her about it.
“There’s a television in the living room,” she said stiffly. “We get CNN even out here in the boondocks. Just keep the volume down. I don’t care to hear it.”
He shook his head. “You’d think you’d want to know what’s going on. There’s a crisis underway! Don’t you care what happens?”
Mrs. Kingsley hesitated, and glanced toward Jennifer, but she and the roadhouse floozy were busy playing dolls together with the salt and pepper shakers; obviously Jennifer had found a companion on her own level of emotional development. “I don’t care what happens anymore,” she said, keeping her voice pitched low. “Let them have their war. Let them all kill each other. Unless they drop an H-bomb on Montpelier, I don’t intend to take any notice of it.”
Desmond made a disgusted face. “You’ve got your head in the sand! You think the real world is going to go away just because you don’t like it? You have to deal with things as they are. Do something about them! If there weren’t so many people who think like you, maybe Stephanie would still be alive.”
They glared at each other, locking gazes. He’d stepped over the line, though, and he knew it, for, after a moment, he had the grace to look faintly embarrassed. Her gaze, though, was unflinching and unforgiving.
At that moment, opportunely, there was a scratching at the door, and she had to go let the dog back in.
“O base Iago! O inhuman dog!” she declaimed as the mutt bounded in. Candy stared at her uncomprehendingly. The little chit had probably never even heard of Shakespeare.
Iago was jumping up on her, panting and enthusiastically trying to wag his entire body. She looked deliberately at Desmond. “Let slip the dogs of War, eh?” she said, and smiled sweetly. She knew he’d heard of Shakespeare.
It was weakening. Perhaps it held enough reserves for another day or so, if it husbanded its resources. But that way lay oblivion and slow death; to survive it needed to strike out, to forage away from the comforting shelter of the barn, out into the flat, horribly open countryside.
It was hesitating by the door when the sound of trudging footsteps approached, heading straight for it.
Jerking back as if struck, it rose up, mantle stiffening, ready to attack. Then caution took over, and it retreated swiftly to the shadows, hunkering down into the darkest corner, every sense on edge, waiting, observing.
The door rattled, then flew open. Two sophonts stepped into the barn, accompanied by a wild skirl of snowflakes. They slammed the door shut noisily, and stamped their boots clear of snow.
It listened carefully to words it could not comprehend. “I don’t think your mother-in-law likes me.”
“Don’t take it personally. The old bat doesn’t like anyone.”
Stealthily, slowly, it moved. Keeping to the shadows and edges, it made its way to a wide support beam beyond the direct perception of the sophonts. Swiftly, it flowed up the beam’s far side, up to the loft, and then to the rafters, just below the ridgepole. Given the choice, it was always best to strike from above.
It moved cautiously, always conscious of the gentle tickle of the fire-of-life below.
The shorter of the two produced fire. Smoke snarled through the cold air. It could not smell, of course, but it sensed the smoke as a flicker of ionized charges.
“Whew—I really needed that!” the shorter one said. She sucked in the ions again, letting them damp down within her lungs. “Here, have a toke.”
The taller one made a disgusted noise. “Is that what we came out here for? To get stoned?”
Silently it moved among the rafters, flowing from brace to joist, and across the collar beams, until it was in position, directly above its prey. It rested invisibly over them, and prepared to strike.
The shorter one laughed. “What did you expect? I hope you didn’t think I was going to screw you out in this weather!”
But they were both sophonts and sophonts were dangerous. It would have to take both of them to be safe, and it wasn’t at all certain it could do that. Its reserves of strength were perilously low.
“I thought you had something you wanted to tell me. Let’s go back inside, okay? It’s too cold to stand out here smoking that shit.”
“Damnit, I’m going to need this to get me through the afternoon. Did you see the way she was eyeing me at lunch?”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got a daughter back there in the house and I’d like to preserve a few of her illusions about her old man for a while longer, okay? So if you’ll excuse me, I don’t see any reason why I should hang around out here in the cold.”
And then, incredibly, there was only one! The other sophont slammed out through the door, and his footsteps faded away rapidly in the falling snow.
It gathered itself together to strike. The distance was not great, and it was starting from an ideal position. With effort, it suppressed a tremble of excitement in its stiffening mantle.
The woman below huddled disconsolately in her parka. She sucked in a lungful of ions, and held them.
It struck.
“Gamma, where’s Candy?”
The parlor was very quiet without the television or radio on—Alma Kingsley had tried them both (with Desmond coming right behind her and trying them again, as if she didn’t know how to turn a television set on properly), and they wouldn’t work right; sunspots or something—they had been very bad all this year, with the Northern Lights stronger and more frequent than she’d ever known them to be in all the years since she’d retired from the magazine—had scrambled all incoming signals. The phone still wasn’t working either, and Desmond had gotten quite agitated—uselessly—about not being able to get in touch with the office. The rest of the morning had, to say the least, been tense. Desmond had finally retreated into his work, getting lost in that annoying way that he had, going so deep into it that nobody, not even Jennifer, not even Stephanie when she’d been alive, could reach him.