“I think he’s all right, Harold,” the girl said, but the boy she called Harold continued to stand astride his bike, looking at Stu with an expression of surprise and considering antagonism.

“I said I think—” she began again.

“How are we supposed to know that?” Harold snapped without taking his eyes off Stu.

“Well, I’m glad to see you, if that makes any difference,” Stu said.

“What if I don’t believe you?” Harold challenged, and Stu saw that he was scared green. Scared by him and by his responsibility to the girl.

“Well, then, I don’t know.” Stu climbed off the rock. Harold’s hand jittered toward his holstered pistol.

“Harold, you leave that alone,” the girl said. Then she fell silent and for a moment they all seemed helpless to proceed further—a group of three dots which, when connected, would form a triangle whose exact shape could not yet be foreseen.

“Ouuuu,” Frannie said, easing herself down on a mossy patch at the base of an elm beside the road. “I’m never going to get the calluses off my fanny, Harold.”

Harold uttered a surly grunt.

She turned to Stu. “Have you ever ridden a hundred and seventy miles on a Honda, Mr. Redman? Not recommended.”

Stu smiled. “Where are you headed?”

“What business is it of yours?” Harold asked rudely.

“And what kind of attitude is that?” Fran asked him. “Mr. Redman is the first person we’ve seen since Gus Dinsmore died! I mean, if we didn’t come looking for other people, what did we come for?”

“He’s watching out for you, is all,” Stu said quietly. He picked a piece of grass and put it between his lips.

“That’s right, I am,” Harold said, unmollified.

“I thought we were watching out for each other,” she said, and Harold flushed darkly.

Stu thought: Give me three people and they’ll form a society. But were these the right two for his one? He liked the girl, but the boy impressed him as a frightened blowhard. And a frightened blowhard could be a very dangerous man, under the right circumstances… or the wrong ones.

“Whatever you say,” Harold muttered. He shot Stu a lowering look and took a box of Marlboros from his jacket pocket. He lit one. He smoked on it like a fellow who had only recently taken up the habit. Like maybe the day before yesterday.

“We’re going to Stovington, Vermont,” Frannie said. “To the plague center there. We—what’s wrong? Mr. Redman?” He had gone pale all of a sudden. The stem of grass he had been chewing fell onto his lap.

“Why there?” Stu asked.

“Because there happens to be an installation there for the studying of communicable diseases,” Harold said loftily. “It was my thought that, if there is any order left in this country, or any persons in authority who escaped the late scourge, they would likely be at Stovington or Atlanta, where there is another such center.”

“That’s right,” Frannie said.

Stu said: “You’re wasting your time.”

Frannie looked stunned. Harold looked indignant; the red began to creep out of his collar again. “I hardly think you’re the best judge of that, my man.”

“I guess I am. I came from there.”

Now they both looked stunned. Stunned and astonished.

“You knew about it?” Frannie asked, shaken. “You checked it out?”

“No, it wasn’t like that. It—”

“You’re a liar!” Harold’s voice had gone high and squeaky.

Fran saw an alarming cold flash of anger in Redman’s eyes, then they were brown and mild again. “No. I ain’t.”

“I say you are! I say you’re nothing but a—”

“Harold, you shut up! ”

Harold looked at her, wounded. “But Frannie, how can you believe—”

“How can you be so rude and antagonistic?” she asked hotly. “Will you at least listen to what he has to say, Harold?”

“I don’t trust him.”

Fair enough, Stu thought, that makes us even.

“How can you not trust a man you just met? Really, Harold, you’re being disgusting!”

“Let me tell you how I know,” Stu said quietly. He told an abridged version of the story that began when Campion had crashed into Hap’s pumps. He sketched his escape from Stovington a week ago. Harold glared dully down at his hands, which were plucking up bits of moss and shredding them. But the girl’s face was like an unfolding map of tragic country, and Stu felt bad for her. She had set off with this boy (who, to give him credit, had had a pretty good idea), hoping against hope that there was something of the old taken-for-granted ways left. Well, she had been disappointed. Bitterly so, from her look.

“Atlanta too? The plague got both of them?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, and she burst into tears.

He wanted to comfort her, but the boy would not take to that. Harold glanced uncomfortably at Fran, then down at the litter of moss on his cuffs. Stu gave her his handkerchief. She thanked him distractedly, without looking up. Harold glared sullenly at him again, the eyes those of a piggy little boy who wants the whole cookie jar to himself. Ain’t he going to be surprised, Stu thought, when he finds out a girl isn’t a jar of cookies.

When her tears had tapered down to sniffles, she said, “I guess Harold and I owe you our thanks. At least you saved us a long trip with disappointment at the end.”

“You mean you believe him? Just like that? He tells you a big story and you just… you buy it?”

“Harold, why would he lie? For what gain?”

“Well, how do I know what he’s got on his mind?” Harold asked truculently. “Murder, could be. Or rape.”

“I don’t believe in rape myself,” Stu said mildly. “Maybe you know something about it I don’t.”

“Stop it,” Fran said. “Harold, won’t you try not to be so awful?”

“Awful? ” Harold shouted. “I’m trying to watch out for you—us—and that’s so bloodydamn awful? ”

“Look,” Stu said, and brushed his sleeve up. On the inside of his elbow were several healing needle marks and the last remains of a discolored bruise. “They injected me with all kinds of stuff.”

“Maybe you’re a junkie,” Harold said.

Stu rolled his sleeve back down without replying. It was the girl, of course. He had gotten used to the idea of owning her. Well, some girls could be owned and some could not. This one looked like the later type. She was tall and pretty and very fresh-looking. Her dark eyes and hair accentuated a look that could be taken for dewy helplessness. It would be easy to miss that faint line (the I-want line, Stu’s mother had called it) between her eyebrows that became so pronounced when she was put out, the swift capability of her hands, even the forthright way she tossed her hair from her forehead.

“So now what do we do?” she asked, ignoring Harold’s last contribution to the discussion entirely.

“Go on anyway,” Harold said, and when she looked over at him with that line furrowing her brow, he added hastily: “Well, we have to go somewhere. Sure, he’s probably telling the truth, but we could double-check. Then decide what’s next.”

Fran glanced at Stu with an I-don’t-want-to-hurt-your-feelings-but kind of expression. Stu shrugged.

“Okay?” Harold pressed.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Frannie said. She picked up a gone-to-seed dandelion and blew away the fluff.

“You didn’t see anyone at all back the way you came?” Stu asked.

“There was a dog that seemed to be all right. No people.”

“I saw a dog, too.” He told them about Bateman and Kojak. When he had finished he said, “I was going toward the coast, but you saying there aren’t any people back that way kind of takes the wind out of my sails.”

“Sorry,” Harold said, sounding anything but. He stood up. “Ready, Fran?”

She looked at Stu, hesitated, then stood up. “Back to the wonderful diet machine. Thank you for telling us what you know, Mr. Redman, even if the news wasn’t so hot.”

“Just a second,” Stu said, also standing up. He hesitated, wondering again if they were right. The girl was, but the boy surely was seventeen and afflicted with a bad case of the I-hate-most-everybodies. But were there enough people left to pick and choose? Stu thought not.