If so, she wasn't.

She settled back, opening her book-a master's thesis from the University of Nebraska, the most exciting thing about it the title: Range War and Civil War. She remembered thinking a couple of nights ago as her sister Anne would think: You're getting as funny in the head as Uncle Frank, Bobbi. Well… maybe.

Shortly she was deep into the thesis, making an occasional note on the legal pad she kept near. Outside, the rain continued to fall.

The following day dawned clear and bright and flawless: a postcard summer day with just enough breeze to make the bugs keep their distance. Anderson pottered around the house until almost ten o'clock, conscious of the growing pressure her mind was putting on her to get out there and dig it up, already. She could feel herself consciously pushing back against that urge (Orson Welles again We will dig up no body before its… oh, shut up, Orson). Her days of simply following the urge of the moment, a lifestyle that had once been catechized by the bald motto “If it feels good, do it,” were over. It had never worked well for her, that philosophy-in fact, almost every bad thing that had happened to her had its roots in some impulsive action. She attached no moral stigma to people who did live their lives according to impulse; maybe her intuitions just hadn't been that good.

She ate a big breakfast, added a scrambled egg to Peter's Gravy Train (Peter ate with more appetite than usual, and Anderson put it down to the end of the rainy spell), and then did the washing-up.

If her dribbles would just stop, everything would be fine. Forget it; we will stop no period before its time. Right, Orson? You're fucking-A.

Bobbi went outside, clapped an old straw cowboy hat on her head, and spent the next hour in the garden. Things out there were looking better than they had any right to, given the rain. The peas were coming on and the corn was rearing up good, as Uncle Frank would have said.

She quit at eleven. Fuck it. She went around the house to the barn, got the spade and shovel, paused, and added a crowbar. She started out of the shed, went back, and took a screwdriver and an adjustable wrench from the toolbox.

Peter started out with her as he always did, but this time Anderson said, “No, Peter,” and pointed back at the house. Peter stopped, looking wounded. He whined and took a tentative step toward Anderson.

“No, Peter.”

Peter gave in and headed back, head down, tail drooping dispiritedly. Anderson was sorry to see him go that way, but Peter's previous reaction to the plate in the ground had been bad. She stood a moment longer on the path which would lead her to the woods road, spade in one hand, shovel and crowbar in the other, watching as Peter mounted the back steps, nosed open the back door, and went into the house.

She thought: Something was different about him… is different about him. What is it? She didn't know. But for a moment, almost subliminally, her dream flickered back to her-that arrow of poisonous green light… and her teeth all falling painlessly out of her gums.

Then it was gone and she set off toward the place where it was, that odd thing in the ground, listening to the crickets make their steady ree-ree-ree sounds in this small back field which would soon be ready for its first cutting.

At three that afternoon it was Peter who raised her from the semi-daze in which she had been working, making her aware she was two damn-nears: damn-near starving and damn-near exhausted.

Peter was howling.

The sound raised gooseflesh on Anderson's back and arms. She dropped the shovel she had been using and backed away from the thing in the earth-the thing that was no plate, no box, not anything she could understand. All she knew for sure was that she knew she had fallen into a strange, thoughtless state she didn't like at all. This time she had done more than lose track of time; she felt as if she had lost track of herself as well. It was as if someone else had stepped into her head the way a man would step into a bulldozer or a payloader, simply firing her up and starting to yank the right levers.

Peter howled, nose pointing toward the sky-long, chilling, mournful sounds.

“Stop it, Peter!” Anderson yelled, and thankfully, Peter did. Any more of that and she might simply have turned and run.

Instead, she fought for control and got it. She backed up another step and cried out when something flapped loosely against her back. At her cry, Peter uttered one more short, yipping sound and fell silent again.

Anderson grabbed for whatever had touched her, thinking it might be-well, she didn't know what she thought it might be, but even before her hand closed on it, she remembered what it was. She had a hazy memory of stopping just long enough to hang her blouse on a bush; here it was.

She took it and put it on, getting the buttons wrong on the first try so that one tail hung down below the other. She rebuttoned it, looking at the dig she had begun-and now that archaeological word seemed to fit what she was doing exactly. Her memories of the four hours she'd spent digging were like her memory of hanging her blouse on the bush-hazy and fragmented. They were not memories; they were fragments.

But now, looking at what she had done, she felt awe as well as fear… and a mounting sense of excitement.

Whatever it was, it was huge. Not just big, but huge.

The spade, shovel, and crowbar lay at intervals along a fifteen-foot trench in the forest floor. She had made neat piles of black earth and chunks of rock at regular intervals. Sticking up from this trench, which was about four feet deep at the point where Anderson had originally stumbled over three inches of protruding gray metal, was the leading edge of some titanic object. Gray metal… some object…

You'd ordinarily have a right to expect something better, more specific, from a writer, she thought, arming sweat from her forehead, but she was no longer sure the metal was steel. She thought now it might be a more exotic alloy, beryllium, magnesium, perhaps-and composition aside, she had absolutely no idea what it was.

She began to unbutton her jeans so she could tuck in her blouse, then paused.

The crotch of the faded Levis was soaked with blood.

Jesus. Jesus Christ. This isn't a period. This is Niagara Falls.

She was momentarily frightened, really frightened, then told herself to quit being a ninny. She had gone into some sort of daze and done digging a crew of four husky men could have been proud of… her, a woman who went one-twenty-five, maybe one-thirty, tops. Of course she was flowing heavily. She was fine-in fact, should be grateful she wasn't cramping as well as gushing.

My, how poetic we are today, Bobbi, she thought, and uttered a harsh little laugh.

All she really needed was to clean herself up: a shower and a change would do fine. The jeans had been ready for either the trash or the rag-bag anyway. Now there was one less choice in a troubled, confusing world, right? Right. No big deal.

She buttoned her pants again, not tucking the blouse in-no sense ruining that as well, although God knew it wasn't exactly a Dior original. The feel of the sticky wetness down there when she moved made her grimace. God, she wanted to get cleaned up. In a hurry.

But instead of starting up the slope to the path, she walked back toward the thing in the earth again, drawn to it. Peter howled, and the gooseflesh reappeared again. “Peter, will you for Christ's sake shut up!” She hardly ever shouted at Pete really shouted at him-but the goddam mutt was starting to make her feel like a behavioral psychology subject. Gooseflesh when the dog howled instead of saliva at the sound of the bell, but the same principle.