The slithergadee was gone. But a mangled pile of flesh and clothing remained, slowly reddening the street.
Ralph stepped through the window glass and slowly walked towards the corpse. Every organ in his own body knotted in hysteria as he looked at what was left of Stimmitz. A small moan of fear slid from Ralph’s lips.
“Hey,” he said, barely making a sound from his constricted throat.
Then he shouted it. “Hey! Anybody! Come here! Quick!” His voice rang through the empty streets, and he kept shouting until the other watchers came.
First was Goodell and his observation partner. “What’s all the shouting about?” said Goodell. He paled when he saw what Ralph was standing near.
The rest came from all different directions. They listened to Ralph’s few words of explanation. Without speaking, they drew away and huddled together a few yards from the body, and waited for the shift to end. It seemed like a long time until the line dropped out of the sky for them.
Chapter 3
I am amazed at how fast my hands can move. Really amazed. Ralph clung to that thought desperately, knowing that if his mind wandered, he would see Stimmitz’s crumpled body again. His hands continued their work, rapidly extracting the clothing from his closet and filling the suitcase laid open on the bed.
The last of the civilian shirts was wadded up and thrown in with the pants, underwear, and socks. The Opwatch base uniforms were left hanging or scattered on the floor where he had dropped them; he had been unbuttoning his shirt and pulling off the clothing as soon as he had made it inside the door of his apartment.
His hands brought the suitcase lid down and his thumbs pressed the latches into place. Carrying the suitcase into the front room of the apartment, he set it by the door, then turned around, scanning the apartment for anything else he wanted to take with him. There wasn’t much. Objects had never seemed to accumulate around him here. Only trash remained—brown paper grocery bags in the kitchen and empty beer cans that had rolled too far under the bed to reach. After pausing for a few seconds, he went into the bathroom and slipped his toothbrush into his pants’ pocket.
Is that it? he thought as he strode back into the front room. Somewhere he had a bus schedule, if he could find it. Greyhounds passed through Norden, the little town within walking distance of the base. He bent down to look through the old newspapers stacked beside the couch. When someone knocked at the door, his hand clenched, crumpling a page of outdated headlines.
He stood up and stepped towards the door, then stopped as his hand touched the knob. “Who it is?” he said.
“It’s me—Fred,” came Goodell’s voice.
“What do you want?” Ralph still did not open the door.
“What? Hey, are you okay?” Goodell rattled the knob.
“Just tell me what you want.”
“Hey, man, are you all right?”
He snatched the door open. “What do you mean, all right?” he shouted into Goodell’s startled face. “You stupid schmuck, you saw what happened on the field. I’m supposed to be all right after that?”
Goodell hastily backed up a few feet into the building’s hallway. “That’s what I came to tell you.” He spread his hands as though to fend off an attack. “The base commander wants to see you. Stiles told the rest of us something about what happened to Stimmitz.”
“Yeah? Like what?” Ralph’s anger was simmering just below its peak.
He felt as if his veins were taut with pressure after months of being half-empty.
“Go get it from him,” said Goodell. “He’s the one who should tell you.”
He turned and hurried down the hallway, glancing nervously over his shoulder at Ralph.
Stiles wants to see me, thought Ralph as he closed the door and turned to face the silent room. What did he tell the others? His watch read seven-thirty. He had walked out of the line shack as soon as they were all back from the dream field, leaving the others to relate second-hand what had happened to Stimmitz. His own words, he had decided, were going to be saved for the police back in L.A., or the FBI or something.
Outside his apartment window, the base and the desert beyond it were starting to wash gold with the morning light. Ralph picked up his suitcase, then dropped it and chewed the edge of his thumbnail. If I try to leave now, he thought, they’ll catch me. And then what? He took his hand away from his mouth and wiped his suddenly sweaty palms on his pants. Maybe Stiles told the other watchers that I killed Stimmitz. The conjecture took root in Ralph’s mind and blossomed like an explosion. Maybe that’s what he told them, and he’ll have me shot when I go to his office, and then tell everybody that I tried to escape. And that it’s okay because I was a homicidal maniac anyway.
He sat down on the couch and leaned forward, concentrating. It seemed as if he had inherited Stimmitz’s universe upon the other’s death. Except, thought Ralph grimly, that he knew something about what was going on around here.
Suddenly, another thought entered his head, like a ray of light. They might not kill me if they didn’t think they had to. If they thought I didn’t suspect anything. He stood up and paced the length of the small room. If Commander Stiles’s suspicions could be put off for a while, there might be a chance of getting away later—even today, possibly. It was just a matter of playing dumb for now.
All right, thought Ralph, halting in the middle of the room. If they—Stiles and whoever’s above him somewhere—haven’t already decided to get rid of me, then that’s my only chance. He resisted a powerful urge to curl up into a ball in the corner of the room and close his eyes until they came for him. After several deep breaths, he opened the apartment door and started down the hallway.
“Just close the door behind you, won’t you, Metric?” Commander Stiles waved vaguely with one hand, scattering ashes from his cigarette on his desk. “Have a seat.”
Ralph sat down. A wad of saliva had formed in his mouth but he didn’t swallow, trying to conceal his nervousness.
Behind the desk, the gray-haired base commander swivelled from side to side in his imitation leather chair. “I see you’re out of base uniform,” he remarked mildly.
Hell, thought Ralph, forgot about that. The ball in his mouth grew bigger, and he had to swallow before he could speak. “Uh . . . yeah. I guess I am.”
“That’s all right.” The cigarette described a figure in the air. “I understand how you feel.” He exhaled a small cloud between them.
“Thinking about cutting out of here, weren’t you?”
“That’s right.” Ralph felt as though his mind were racing completely free of all connections. “Actually I’ve been, uh, thinking about it for some time now. Before today, I mean.”
“Nonsense.” Stiles took a fresh cigarette from the box on his desk and lit it from the stub of his old one. “You’re scared because of what you saw last night. This morning, I mean—about five a.m. or so, wasn’t it?”
Ralph silently studied the older man’s heavily grained face. “Scared?” he asked finally.
“Come on. Don’t diddle with me, Metric. I imagine what you saw on the field was pretty upsetting. You must’ve thought something pretty big had gone wrong someplace, for something like that to happen. With Stimmitz, I mean, and the—what do you men call it?—slithergadee.”