"You know all about this?"

"Miss," said Button, "I'd be downright simple if I didn't have my pipelines into Forever Center."

And this was it, she thought. No ordinary band of religious fanatics, no simple slogan painters, but a well-organized and efficient band of rebels who through the years, working quietly, and no doubt with daring, had caused Forever Center more trouble than anyone realized.

But doomed to failure. For no one could stand against the force and strength of a structure that, in effect, was owner of the world and that, furthermore, held out the promise of eternal life.

Into a structure such as this, there surely would be pipelines. Not only by the Holies but by anyone who might stand to gain. And with the greed occasioned by the driving need to establish an estate against the second life, there always would be those who would provide the pipelines.

"I suppose that I should thank you," said Ann.

"No thanks are necessary."

"Where can I drop you?"

"Miss Harrison," Sutton said, "I have more to say to you and I hope you'll listen to me."

"Why, of course, I'll listen."

"This paper that you have…"

"So you want it, too."

"If something should happen to you, if…"

"No," said Ann. "It isn't mine. It belongs to Daniel Frost."

"But if it should be lost. It's a weapon, don't you see? I don't know what is in it, but we…"

"I know. You'd use anything that you could get. Anything at all. No matter how you got it. No matter what it was."

"You're not very complimentary, but I suppose that is the case."

"Mr. Sutton," Ann said, "I'm going to pull over to the curb. I'll slow up, but I won't stop. And I want you to get out."

"If you wish, miss."

"I do wish," she said. "And leave me alone. One is enough, trailing me and spying. I don't need two of you."

It had been a mistake going to see Marcus Apple-ton, she told herself. No matter what she might have thought or said, this was not something that could be resolved in a court of law. And a bluff, no matter how well managed, was no good at all. There was, it seemed, too much at stake and too many people who had an interest in what was going on. You could not dodge them all.

There was just one answer for this moment. She could not go back, not to her office, nor to her apartment. For now the squeeze was on and if she had her way about it, she would not be caught.

She slowed the car and Sutton stepped heavily to the curb.

"Thanks for the ride," he said.

"Don't mention it," she told him, and gunned the car back into the flowing traffic.

She had some money in her bag and her credit cards and there was no reason why she should go back.

On the lam, she thought. But not really on the lam. Going to someone, not running from someone.

God grant, she thought, that he's still all right!

He had swung far south of Chicago. Once, from far off, he had seen the distance-misted towers and blocks of masonry that rose beside the lower end of the lake. Now he was west of it and heading north, still following the tiny, twisting, oldtime roads. At times they dwindled out or became impassable and he would be forced to turn around and retrace his way, looking for another of the primitive, grass-grown highways that trended in the right direction.

It had been like that all the way from the East Coast and he had not made good progress. Although there was no reason now that he should make good progress. There was no reason, he told himself time and time again, that he go anywhere. He had no actual destination; the destination that he did have was an emotion-charged fantasy in which there could be no real meaning and no purpose. The comfort and identity which it seemed to hold was no more than delusion; when he arrived it would be as empty and as barren as any mile along the road he took to reach it. But knowing this, he still made his way toward it, driven by an inner urge which he failed to understand.

He met few people. Through the areas he traveled there were few inhabitants. Occasionally there would be a down-at-heels family living—camping might be a better word—at one of the many abandoned sets of farm buildings. Occasionally there were tiny villages still inhabited, a few families still lived there in a stubborn refusal to join the now all but completed movement to the vast urban centers, existing in a small nucleus of humanity surrounded by the empty and decaying structures which at one time had housed a healthy community.

At times he drove past monitor-and-rescue stations, with the rescue cars and helicopters standing on the ramp, ready at an instant to dash out to retrieve a body when the monitor housed within the building detected the cessation of a transmitter signal, indicating that a heart had stopped its beating, pegging with exactitude the geographic coordinates where the stoppage had occurred.

There could not, Frost imagined, be much work to do at stations such as these, for due to the thinly scattered population months might go by without a single death within the quadrant covered by a station. And yet, even in those areas where, for long periods of time, there might be no signal except for some transient passing through, the stations still were maintained against the chance that within the area some life might flicker out.

For, despite what might be said of it, despite the rumors and the watchful critics, Forever Center still kept the ancient faith, still carried on the tradition of service which was implicit in the purpose for which it had been founded. And that, Frost told himself, with a surge of pride, was the way it had to be. For faith was the one solid foundation upon which such a social structure could be built.

The roads he traveled did not allow the piling up of any great amount of mileage in any single day. The necessity of finding food delayed the progress further. He foraged for berries and from scraggly trees still surviving in old orchards he gathered early-ripened fruit. He fished with fair success in many tiny streams, in some larger rivers. From a strong hickory sapling he fashioned a bow and trimmed arrows from ash sprouts, spent hours in trying to learn how to handle the weapon he'd devised. But the bow and arrows did not pay for the time expended in the making of them. Inexpertly fashioned, the bow admitted of little accuracy. The only game he gathered with it was an ancient wood-chuck, tough and stringy, but at least red meat, the first that he had tasted in many weeks.

In an abandoned farmhouse he found a kettle, with some rusty spots, but still intact. A few days later, on the edge of a scummy pond, he captured a snapping turtle that had strayed too far from water, butchered it, and put it in the kettle to boil. He was not entirely sure that he liked the soup, but it was food and that was the thing that counted.

He began to have a sense of leisure. No longer hiding, no longer running, he moved down a long and twisting avenue of contented time. Finding a camping place that appealed to him, he'd stay for several days, resting, fishing, swimming, foraging, and eating. He attempted to smoke some of the fish he caught, to build up a food supply against a future day. The experiment did not work out.

He no longer watched the road behind him. Marcus Appleton undoubtedly still was hunting for him, but the chances were, he told himself, that he had not learned as yet his prey had left the city. The theft of the car

would have been long since reported, the car to which he'd switched the plates might have been discovered, but there was no way, he felt sure, that the theft could be traced to him. The recognition and recovery of a stolen car was not an easy thing, for all cars were alike, all turned out by one company, which no longer bothered, since there was no competition and no customer demand, to change the models every year—or every ten or twenty years.