…Where am I? thought Laird. The truck barely moved now. His heater worked better at seventy miles an hour. At this speed he had to wipe frost off the windshield with his coat’s sleeve. It would be so easy to stop, but he had another vision: his truck parked not at the side of the highway, but in the middle. What if another truck, later in the night when things had cleared a little, came barreling down the road? It wouldn’t have time to swerve when the bulk of his truck loomed up through the snow. But I want to stop. He was so tired that he didn’t trust what he saw in the headlights. Fantastic shapes forming in the drifting flakes. Faces. He tried to think of his family, his wife, his son, his daughter, but they seemed so far away. They were the dream. Endless snow, a cold that bit through his coat, that numbed the backs of his legs, that was reality. He thought about hypothermia, dementia, the end of reason. There’s rest, he thought, in a bag full of blue pills with pink logos.
Laird punched his leg hard with a closed fist. The pain, for an instant, felt good. Cleared his head. What was that thought about pills? He could see them, resting in a desk drawer, Christmas piano playing in the background. I’m in trouble, he thought. She’s in trouble too. She’s stopped, parked in the middle, waiting to freeze.
He punched his leg hard, twice, twisting his fist when he did to sharpen the sting. It’s just a road, and I’m a few miles from somewhere, if I can keep going, but within minutes the snow ceased to be snow again: it fashioned itself into hands reaching to get him, into the backs of monsters blocking the road. Vertigo gripped him, and an impression that he was falling straight down instead of driving forward surprised a scream out of him. The storm was a mouth; he saw it open, teeth at the edges, swallowing him and the truck whole, but he couldn’t stop. He drove on. I saw it! He wept in fear. Hallucination or not, I saw it…
…Tremaine closed his eyes and opened them again. What had he seen? For an instant, it was there, a schematic of the galaxy, an arrow pointed on one spiral arm. The girl had thought, “You are here,” and then he’d seen a photograph of the stars. If he could align what he’d seen, just an approximation, the computer might be able to do the rest. He concentrated on the memory, the gauzy middle of the galaxy, the arrow, the long strands circling away, and the computer watched what he watched. The diagram was such a rough location, but the computer hummed contentedly while it worked, because even a rough guess eliminated the near infinite number of wrong choices.
For the first time since Tremaine had realized the ship was off course, he relaxed. The stars in the viewvid weren’t moving now, and he wondered which star held the girl with the diagram. In answer to his question, without breaking its rhythm, the computer brightened one dot on the display. Tremaine enhanced the image. A plain star, unremarkable to look at. On further magnification he noticed an unusual ringed planet in the system. That wasn’t where she was. Third planet from the sun, almost a double planet, its moon was so large. Maybe if he concentrated, he could send her a thank you, although she’d never know for what. When he tried to see what she saw again, he only saw stars moving, and beneath the stars, a bag full of blue pills with pink logos. No galaxy. No arrow saying, “You are here.” On the viewvid he studied the planet’s blue face until the computer whistled happily. It had located them. Reluctantly, Tremaine clicked off the display while the computer recalibrated their course. I’m going home, he thought. They would be on their way soon, and he had duties…
…What duties? thought Laird. Where did that thought come from? All that kept him going was habit, now. Nothing he saw could be trusted. The reflectors, when they came seemed too far or too near (or too high or the wrong color). Was this hypothermia? He imagined his brain settling into a solidifying jelly, growing colder by the minute. For a second he thought the snow was stars, and he thought he could set a course by them, but now it was just snow again, flying through his headlights.
I could pull off, let the snow pile up. It would be so easy. His hands barely held the wheel, and his eyelids slid closed on their own accord. It’s dark in here. So comfortable to fade away into sleep, into dreams where a piano played “Angels We Have Heard on High” and a Christmas tree beyond a closed door smelled of pine resin and popcorn strings and people laughed at a joke he didn’t hear.
The truck can recalibrate itself, he thought. But if I keep moving, it will find my way home…
…I’m already home, thought Brianna, aren’t I? The sense of home formed within her, a longing for it. A vision of a forest with a woman someone loved; a Christmas morning so far away, and so wished for. Home, like she’d never thought of it before. She reached around her. There were the office chair arms; there was the desk, although they seemed vague, and she was so cold. She wrapped her hands around her arms, the skin stiff as marble.
How could this be? She gasped. The pills were working. She could barely move. After a long struggle, she put her feet on the floor. If she could get out of the office, maybe, and into the other room where it was warm, they could save her.
I’m alone, she thought, and I’m lost. The highway will never end. I’m in snowy hell. Her hands rested on the steering wheel. There was no place to go, only the truck cab stuck in front of clouds of dancing snow. (I’m not in a truck—I’m in my dad’s office) The steering wheel’s solidity seemed more real than the computer monitor. Frost on the window. The low rumble of the geared-down diesel engine. The accelerator and the clutch, more real than the office carpet beneath her feet. I’m going to sleep, she thought, but I have to get to my family…
…my family. Laird forced his eyes open. If he slept, he’d never get home. He imagined opening the front door on Christmas morning. “I’m home,” he’d say into the empty room, and there would be a giggle: his son behind the couch, his daughter behind the chair, waiting to surprise him. His wife smiling in the hall, just out of sight.
I’ve got to get home, he thought…
Yes, said Brianna in the darkness of her dad’s office. I’ve got to wake up…
They both hunched forward. Stay focused, they thought. Keep moving…
Brianna staggered out of the chair. Braced herself on the desk’s edge. She wept with fatigue…
Laird waited for the next reflector. There it was. The speedometer hardly twitched, but he was still going forward. The road ended somewhere, as long as he didn’t stop…
How far away was the office door? Brianna couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see anything now. Why not? The headlights were on. The reflectors marked the road, if she just kept them to her right. (Don’t stop now, came the thought through the diesel noise—there’s a light ahead).
There’s a light ahead; it came from under the door, where the piano played…
There’s a light ahead, beyond the headlights and the crashing snowflakes; it’s a gas station next to the highway…