McClune could not help himself He groaned aloud, causing the newswoman to turn to him irritably. "What's the matter with you, McClune?" she demanded. "Can't you hold it down? I'm trying to do an interview here."
And she turned her palm camera back to the Heechee, leaving Orbis McClune to stare gloomily out at the passing scene.
It was full dark when they reached Barstow. Hardly even spray from the tsunami had managed to get that far inland, so there were no destroyed buildings lining Barstow's streets. There were refugees, though. They filled the streets, ambling aimlessly or sitting wherever there was a flat place to put a weary bottom on—steps, curbs, flat-topped fire hydrants. They clogged the streets, where panel trucks and flatbeds and buses were inching along as they brought help to the refugees—or brought more refugees. The people swamped the little parkland spaces, a lot of them with sleeping bags or bundles of blankets, jealously guarding a place to stretch out. They lined up before the few open restaurants and motels, not in the hope of food or shelter but simply waiting for a turn at the toilets. They lined up, too, before the trucks that had stopped to dispense flat, heavy packets of CHON-food, flown in from some surviving Food Factory. Some of the people looked despairing, some simply bewildered. But the expression on most of the faces was outrage. The better dressed the refugees, the more furious they were. You could see that they were both stunned and angry. In this world, at this time, for these people, this sort of thing was simply not meant to happen.
McClune looked out at the horde with sober gratification. These were the souls he had come to save. They had been chastised, and it was his duty to tell them why. "Stop the car," he ordered, already beginning to rehearse the catalogue of their sins.
But that didn't happen. "Not a chance," gritted Judy, peering at him through the rearview mirror, and Ella backed her up.
"Can't do it, old-timer," she said firmly. "There's a vehicle curfew here in about twenty minutes, and there's cops here that would take this car right away from us if they caught us breaking it."
"And shut up, too," Judy added, "because I need to concentrate on my driving. Want me to run over one of these creeps?"
The "accommodations" the two girls had provided for them weren't lavish. They amounted to a large and oily smelling shack that apparently had once been some kind of repair shop before suffering some kind of fire. Judy immediately rolled the jalopy inside when they arrived—for fear of its being stolen, she said, although McClune could not imagine who would steal it. The old rustbucket took up a lot of the shed's available space, too. The remaining space was mostly filled by their beds—well, by the canvas cots that were all Ella and Judy had to offer. ("Hey," Judy snarled when le Brun complained, "you can sleep on the sidewalk if you like that better.") At least the cots were brand-new. They had come straight from the trucks that were handing out emergency supplies. So had the blankets.
The two Heechee were having none of either. They chirped and hissed worriedly to each other, and then to Ella, who frowned thoughtfully and then went away for a moment, returning with a huge bag of old rags. That seemed to satisfy the Heechee, sort of, but the space she offered them to sleep in did not. They twittered to each other again, gazing at the walls and roof of the old building, then politely excused themselves. They carried their rags out of doors and patted them into a pair of heaps in the alley, away from the building.
When Judy made an inquiring noise, Cara le Brun was quick with an explanation. "I did a show on it once. That's how they sleep, dug into a mass of stuff."
"Yeah, sure," Judy said, "but why are they out in the alley?"
That le Brun couldn't explain. Nor did she really want to, because her attention was abruptly taken up with the discovery of the lacks in their accommodations. She reacted with displeasure when she found out that they had no running water, then with horror when she realized what that implied. The only available "toilet" was a slit trench just off the driveway, with canvas walls for "privacy." And then, when she discovered what the two girls were offering for a meal, her reaction became simple fury. "That stuff is just goddam CHON-food!" she snapped. "They're giving that crap away downtown! How've you got the nerve to charge us for it?"
Ella gave her a cold shrug. "Rather stand in line? Eat or don't eat. I don't care."
While they were talking, the Heechee pair had put the finishing touches on their bedding and were now placidly unwrapping round patties of something that smelled of raspberries and roasted garlic. That was one provocation too many for Orbis McClune. God might have chosen to punish him by putting him in the company of these foul creatures—unfairly, of course, but McClune believed that being unfair from time to time was one of God's perquisites. However, He surely didn't demand that His servant McClune eat with them. Orbis took an arbitrary handful of the rations and retired with them to the edge of his cot, as far from the Heechee as possible.
The wrappings of the food packets came in a rainbow of color. Although they were textured like silk, they split wide as he ran a thumbnail over them. McClune ate them in alternating bites, unconcerned that one packet was doughy and tediously bland, while another crackled like peanut brittle in his teeth and tasted like some sort of meat broth. After a brief and silent grace he chewed stolidly away. Food had never been important for Orbis McClune. Eating was just something you had to do to keep life going, no more pleasurable than moving your bowels, and worth no more thought.
When he finished eating he visited the slit trench. He paused on the way back, gazing at the great starfield overhead. Then he went back indoors. Cara le Brun was having a desultory conversation with the two girls, apparently mostly to exchange complaints, but as Orbis McClune had no wish to talk to any of them he stretched out on his cot and closed his eyes.
He was no more than halfway through his bedtime prayer when a shuddery, dizzying feeling let him know that something unwelcome was going on. The room seemed to be rocking. He felt an urgent need to sit up, and managed to do it on the second or third try.
It wasn't just him. Noises from across the room let him know that the women shared the experience. When they became articulate, the loudest voice was Cara le Brun's: "Jesus! What was that, an earthquake?" And when Ella confirmed her guess, "Well, I never signed up for any goddam earthquakes. Cripes! Next thing, the goddam wave'll be coming back, only this time it'll take the whole damn state with it!"
That was as far as McClune cared to listen. It had been nothing but an act of God, and he had never feared those. He closed his eyes. The last thing he heard was Ella's complaining voice: "Give it a rest, will you, lady? It's just like leftover shocks after the tidal wave. Happens all the time, for God's sake. Get used to it."
IV
The next morning Orbis McClune was up with the sun and ready to begin the work that had brought him to this place. Even so, the Heechee were up before him and already gone—to do what, McClune had no idea. He left Cara le Brun squabbling with the two young girls about the lack of a shower and their refusal to drive the old wreck downtown in broad daylight, so that she had to walk. It wasn't really far. In less than twenty minutes McClune was where the people who were his targets were stirring.
Barstow's downtown was like every other in the world, with all the same familiar logos over the same storefronts—the same yogurt and icecream shops, last-food restaurants, travel agents, p-vid repairers and tax preparers. He passed a workout gym and a VR total-immersion entertainment center, a Tae Kwan Do studio and half a dozen hair stylists and dental cosmeticians—clearly, the people of Barstow were as interested as those of any other community in looking as good as modern technology could make them. McClune not only passed them all by, he hardly noticed they were there. What he was looking for was a corner with a lot of people—but that described every corner in Barstow—and a convenient bench, porch or picnic table he could stand on to address the throng.