She smiled as these thoughts came to her; as far as she was concerned, all of her boyfriends had been losers. She pursed her lips. No, they weren't losers-they had turned out, merely, to be right for someone else, not her.
She dismissed her succession of boyfriends with a self-critical smile and a shake of the head.
Like Ryerson Biergarten, she enjoyed the very early morning-it was just past 2:00- when the psychic atmosphere had only a light breeze in it, a breeze stirred up, mostly, by night creatures on the prowl-tomcats, owls, the occasional raccoon or opossum, both of which had, in the past decade or so, grown bold enough to make regular forays this far into the outskirts of the city. Most of the occasional psychic drifts she got from these creatures were pleasant because they were so simple and guileless, and-like Creosote-often an open and tingling expression of joy at the mere fact of being alive. At other times, and for blessedly brief moments, she got a whiff of naked and screeching terror; she'd see the ground moving rapidly away from her, she'd feel a heavy wind on her back, then an instant of tremendous, scorching pain. She knew what caused this. In the thirty acres of open fields behind her house there were probably ten thousand field mice and a hundred cottontail rabbits. And in the maple trees ringing the fields there were probably a half-dozen owls who nightly swooped silently down, grabbed one of the hapless mice or one of the baby cottontails in its talons, and just as silently carried it off to be swallowed whole at the nest.
It was only when a car passed by on the road fifty feet in front of the house or when one of her neighbors got up because of insomnia that her good feeling, her sense of peace and aloneness, was dulled. Because the input she sometimes received then-though most of the time, because her powers were in their infancy, she received nothing at all-was the same sort of complex worrying, and yearning, and questioning that she got randomly when she went into the city.
~ * ~
Ryerson Biergarten, Creosote cradled lovingly in his arms, knocked loudly for the fifth time on the massive oak door. On the doorjamb there was a six inch by three inch brass plate which read "Craig Gibson, D.V.M." Below that there was a doorbell, and just below the doorbell there was a piece of notepaper taped to the wood with the words "Please Knock Loud" written on it in a childish hand.
Creosote was not doing at all well. His shallow breathing had grown even shallower, and his respiration had doubled.
Ryerson knocked loudly again. Then he yelled, "C'mon, for Lord's sake! Get out of bed!" He knew-he could sense it-that the big Victorian house was occupied. Three people, he guessed. A man, two women; one of the women was young, maybe a teenager.
He saw a light go on in a second floor window. Then the window was pushed open and a male head appeared. "What the hell do you want? Do you have any idea what time it is?"
Ryerson called back, "My dog's very sick. Can you help him?"
The man, whose head was backlit so Ryerson could not see his features well, hesitated, then called, "Is it urgent?"
Ryerson thought, No, I do this sort of thing as a hobby! "Yes," he called, "it's very urgent. Please help him!"
The man was opening the front door a minute later.
~ * ~
In Buffalo, at 98 Delaware Avenue, in a three-room, second floor apartment, in a house that had four similar apartments, Gail Newman was awakened from sleep by what she thought at first was a cat fight. Since she'd brought Laurie Drake's cat, Magic, home two days earlier (it didn't matter that Laurie, still missing, was technically a fugitive-a promise was a promise after all, and, as Laurie had said, the cat couldn't feed itself) it and her own cat, Thomas, had fought at least a dozen times. Thomas was usually the instigator, since the apartment was his home turf, but Magic always made a good showing of himself, although Thomas was nearly twice his size.
Gail sat up in the twin bed, turned on the bedside lamp, and scanned the small room. "Okay, you two!" she hissed. "Can it or you're both going outside." Then she saw that Thomas was asleep in his usual spot, on a small upholstered club chair in one corner of the room. As she watched, he lifted his head and squinted sleepily at her.
Then she heard the high, squeaky, extended ring of the doorbell (which, from the vantage point of sleep, she realized, could easily sound like a cat fight).
"Damn," she whispered, swung her feet off the bed, stood unsteadily, got her yellow robe from the back of the door, and went grumbling into the living room. The doorbell sounded again just as she put her finger on the intercom button. "Yes?" she said.
"Miss Newman?"
A woman's voice, she thought, and said again, "Yes?"
"Miss Newman?" the voice repeated.
No, Gail corrected herself; the voice sounded more like the voice of a young girl-it was hard to be sure over the intercom. "Who is this, please?" she asked.
"Are you there?"
"Who is this?" Gail insisted. Yes, she thought, it is the voice of a young girl. Maybe some local kid trying to be funny; within the next few moments the girl might quip, Is your refrigerator running?
"Can I come up?" asked the voice.
"Not until you tell me who you are and what you want," Gail answered.
A short pause, then, "I'm hurt, Miss Newman. Can you help me? I'm hurt," and Gail heard what she supposed was a twinge of pain in the girl's tone, although, again, the squawk of the intercom made it difficult to be sure of anything.
Gail said, "What happened to you?"
Silence.
"What happened to you?" Gail repeated. "How are you hurt?"
She heard a soft, quick giggle, then, "I've been raped, Miss Newman."
Gail hesitated, uncertain. Then she said, "That's nothing to joke about, young lady-"
"It's true," the girl insisted, "it's true! I've been raped, my boyfriend raped me!"
And Gail, convinced, said, "Open the door when you hear the buzzer."
~ * ~
Dr. Craig Gibson, D.V.M., said, looking very confused, "As close as I can tell, Mr. Biergarten, your dog has suffered a severe asthmatic attack."
They were in the doctor's examination moth, in the east wing of the big Victorian house. Creosote, breathing normally, lay asleep and heavily sedated on, a stainless steel examining table between them.
Ryerson said, "Pardon me, Doctor, but I know when he's having an asthma attack-"
"Yes, I'm sure you do, Mr. Biergarten. I'm just giving you what I'll admit is profes-sional guesswork. If you'd like to leave the dog with me for a day or so, I can do some workups on him and then give you something a bit more definitive."
Ryerson considered the proposal for a moment, then shook his head. "No," he said, "thank you. He seems to be all right now."
"The symptoms could recur at any time," Gibson warned, "so I really think that for the dog's own good-"
Ryerson shook his head, lifted Creosote from the examining table. Moments earlier he'd read something very unpleasant from Dr. Craig Gibson, D.V.M. He'd read that the man hated dogs. "No, thanks," Ryerson said, trying hard for a tone of cordial apology. "I appreciate your efforts, though." He shifted Creosote carefully to one arm, reached into the inside breast pocket of his gray tweed sport coat. "Will you take a check?"