"Don't send a charge up there! It's called a tickle circuit... Stop it!" ;

Red halted.

"Huh?"

"Sorry. Didn't realize I was vocalizing. Flowers was curious about one of my subunits."

"Oh."

They crossed the veranda and entered the building.

Two

It was over. Randy had driven Julie to the bus station that morning, helped her with her bags, said good-bye. By now she was well on her way to her parents' home in Virginia. There was nothing of hers in sight in the apartment's small living room or kitchen, between which he wandered, preparing fresh glasses of iced tea and drinking them. He had taken the last of his final exams the previous day and gone with Julie to a good restaurant for a late dinner. He had even gotten a bottle of fine wine to go with it. Neither of them had said it was over, but the feeling was there. Now she was on her way back to Virginia, and he had to line something up for the summer. She had wanted him to go home with her; she'd said that her father could find him a summer job. But Randy had smelled a trap in this. He did not want any strings on him yet. The arrangement they had had was fine, with an agreement as to its temporary nature from the beginning. But she had tried to change the rules with her offer, and he was not ready for anything like that. In the back of his mind, thoughts of the search still lurked, though postponement had weakened that childhood resolution. And there was school. And all the things he wanted to do before he even thought about settling down. No. She

had offered. He had refused. Something had changed A different feeling was there. It was over.

He moved to the window and looked three blocks through the evening in the direction of the campus. He wore a T-shirt, Bermuda shorts and thong sandals. People on the street below were similarly clad. It had been a bright-skied, humid day with more such days forecast to follow. His arms and legs were coppery beneath scribblings of reddish hair. He drew the back of his hand across his broad forehead and it came away wet. He held the glass against his cheek and regarded the storefronts, parked cars, passing cars, bicycles. Insects still hummed within the trees. An orange cat licked at a melting ice cream cone on the sidewalk below.

Over ... He could work in construction again if he wanted to return to Cleveland. But that was bad too, He might have to live at home—Mr. Schelling had even gone out of his way to say how much they wanted him to—and that was no damn good. Even if he managed to get a place of his own, they would be after him. He had only met the man twice and could not bring himself to call him anything but "Mr. Schelling," even though he had been married to Randy's mother for almost six months now. It was not that he disliked him. It was just that he did not know him and did not care to. No, not back there. That was over too.

He sipped his tea and turned toward the bedroom. Too hot to think. They had been out late the night before and up early this morning. Sprawl on the bed and hope for a breeze, and maybe an idea would come for a summer job for a classics major. Or would it be linguistics in the fall? Or Romance languages? It would be neat to travel abroad as a secretary, an interpreter ...

As he passed the bookcase, his hand moved without premeditation and drew out the copy of Leaves of Grass.

Then it had been in the back of his mind—the search,

the promise...

He carried the book with him into the bedroom. He needed something to fill his mind in there. Maybe that was all there was to it.

He propped himself up with pillows, turned the pages and read. It was strange, though, the fascination the book held for him. He had consciously had to avoid it this past quarter, for it had attracted him each time he'd passed the bookcase. It was the only thing he owned that had belonged to his father.

It was dark when he finished reading, and the bedside lamp burned beside him. The moist rings from his glass had not evaporated, but lay like Venn diagrams upon the nightstand. He thought about his father, whom he had never seen. Paul Carthage had lived with his mother briefly and departed before Nora even knew she was pregnant. Where was he now? He could be dead. He could be anywhere. Randy turned to the back of the book, where he kept the only photo he had of him. A monochrome, it showed a wide-shouldered, large-handed man with a mass of curly hair; he had a heavy brow over rough but regular features, and he was smiling despite the fact that he looked uncomfortable in the light suit and tie. Transportation ... He had told Nora he was in transportation. That could mean anything from a cab dispatcher to an airline pilot. Randy sought himself in that face, looked away with recognition. He had to find him. He wanted to see him and talk with him and learn what he was, where he had come from, what he did, whether he had sired others and what they were like. Paul Carthage ... He wondered whether that was even his real name. But there were no clues Randy had ever been able to uncover. When he had departed that night in his blue Dodge pickup truck, the only things he had left behind were his marked-up copy of Leaves of Grass and an embryonic Randy.

He replaced the photo and closed the book, hefting it. It was heavier than it looked. In one place where the green binding had worn, it appeared that the cover board was of a light metal. He opened it and paged through again. There was no apparent pattern to the underlinings at first glance. But he began with the first. that he found and moved through the book, reading them aloud, a thing he had not done before. Odd that he had never thought to trace, in these sections, some aspect of his father's sensibilities. What was it that had moved him to mark the passages that he had? Of course, there was always the possibility that it was a used book, purchased in this condition. Still... Something in the sections appealed to Randy beyond the mere tingle of familiarity. There was a wildness, a freedom, a restlessness that seemed to speak to him personally, to reach after some similar place in his own spirit... "Is it only because I am twenty years old?" he wondered. "Would I feel this way if I came across this book ten years from now?" He shrugged and continued reading.

A tiny breeze stirred the curtain. He paused and drew in a deep breath. A small wave of coolness passed him. What was he doing? Reading to forget Julie, or to reopen the case on his father? Both, actually, he decided... Both. But now that he had begun thinking of the search, he wanted to go on with it.

The breeze was the first bit of coolness in two days. He lay there with his finger marking his place, trying to breathe it all in before it was used up. It was a relief and ...

He raised his left hand and regarded his fingertips. He rubbed them against his palm. He touched the book's cover once again.

Warm.

He touched the bedding at his side. Perhaps it was just his body heat that had done it...

He reached out and pressed his fingers against the glass on the nightstand. Cooler there. Yes ... After about half a minute, he touched the book's cover.

It did seem warmer than it should be. He held it close to his face. The faintest of vibrations seemed to be coming from the volume. He pressed his ear against the back cover. It seemed to be present there, too. It was such a gentle, subaural thing, however, that it could almost be his tired nerves playing games with background sensations.

He reopened the book to the point where he had stopped and sought the next marked passage. It was from "Song of the Open Road":

You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here, I believe that much unseen is also here.

As he read this, the book vibrated in his hand and emitted a definite, audible, humming sound. It was as though the cover were some sort of resonator.