“Well, that’s the agenda,” Stu said. He looked out over the gathered people. “I want Sandy DuChiens to come up here again and tell us how many we are, but before I do that, is there other business we should take up tonight?”

He waited. He could see Glen’s face in the crowd, and Sue Stern’s, Larry’s, Nick’s, and of course, Frannie’s. They all looked a bit strained. If someone was going to bring up Flagg, ask what the committee was doing about him, this would be the time. But there was silence. After fifteen seconds of it, Stu turned the meeting over to Sandy, who ended things in style. As people began to file out, Stu thought: Well, we got by it again.

Several people came up to congratulate him after the meeting, one of them the new doctor. “You handled that very well, Marshal,” Richardson said, and for a moment Stu almost looked over his shoulder to see who Richardson was talking to. Then he remembered, and suddenly felt scared. Lawman? He was an imposter.

A year, he told himself. A year and no more. But he still felt scared.

Stu, Fran, Sue Stern, and Nick walked back toward the center of town together, their feet clicking hollowly on the cement sidewalk as they crossed the C.U. campus toward Broadway. Around them, other people were streaming away, talking quietly, headed home. It was nearly eleven-thirty.

“It’s chilly,” Fran said. “I wish I’d worn my jacket as well as this sweater.”

Nick nodded. He also felt the chill. The Boulder evenings were always cool, but tonight it could be no more than fifty degrees. It served to remind that this strange and terrible summer was nearing its end. Not for the first time he wished that Mother Abagail’s God or Muse or whatever It was had been more in favor of Miami or New Orleans. But that might not have been so great, now that he stopped to think about it. High humidity, lots of rain… and lots of bodies. At least Boulder was dry.

“They jumped the shit out of me, wanting the Judge for the Law Committee,” Stu said. “We should have expected that.”

Frannie nodded, and Nick jotted quickly on his pad: “Sure. People will miss Tom & Dayna, 2. Fax of life.”

“Think people will be suspicious, Nick?” Stu asked.

Nick nodded. “They’ll wonder if they did go west. For real.”

They all considered this as Nick took out his butane match and burned the scrap of paper.

“That’s tough,” Stu said finally. “You really think so?”

“Sure, he’s right,” Sue said glumly. “What else have they got to think? That Judge Farris went to Far Rockaway to ride the Monster Coaster?”

“We were lucky to get away tonight without a big discussion of what’s going on in the West,” Fran said.

Nick wrote: “Sure were. Next time we’ll have to tackle it head on, I think. That’s why I want to postpone another big meeting as long as possible. Three weeks, maybe. September 15?”

Sue said, “We can hold off that long if Brad gets the power on.”

“I think he will,” Stu said.

“I’m going home,” Sue told them. “Big day tomorrow. Dayna’s off. I’m going with her as far as Colorado Springs.”

“Do you think that’s safe, Sue?” Fran asked.

She shrugged. “Safer for her than for me.”

“How did she take it?” Fran asked her.

“Well, she’s a funny sort of girl. She was a jock in college, you know. Tennis and swimming were her biggies, although she played them all. She went to some small community college down in Georgia, but for the first two years she kept on going with her high school boyfriend. He was a big leather jacket type, me Tarzan, you Jane, so get out in the kitchen and rattle those pots and pans. Then she got dragged along to a couple of female consciousness meetings by her roomie, who was this big libber type.”

“And as an upshot, she got to be an even bigger libber than the roomie,” Fran guessed.

“First a libber, then a lesbian,” Sue said.

Stu stopped as if thunderstruck. Frannie looked at him with guarded amusement. “Come on, splendor in the grass,” she said. “See if you can’t fix the hinge on your mouth.”

Stu shut his mouth with a snap.

Sue went on: “She dropped both rocks on the caveman boyfriend at the same time. It blew his wheels, and he came after her with a gun. She disarmed him. She says it was the major turning point of her life. She told me she always knew she was stronger and more agile than he was—she knew it intellectually. But it took doing it to put it in her guts.”

“You sayin she hates men?” Stu asked, looking at Sue closely.

Susan shook her head. “She’s bi now.”

“Bye now?” Stu said doubtfully.

“She’s happy with either sex, Stuart. And I hope you’re not going to start leaning on the committee to institute the blue laws along with ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”

“I got enough to worry about without gettin into who sleeps with who,” he mumbled, and they all laughed. “I only asked because I don’t want anyone goin into this thing as a crusade. We need eyes over there, not guerrilla fighters. This is a job for a weasel, not a lion.”

“She knows that,” Susan said. “Fran asked me how she took it when I asked her if she’d go over there for us. She took it very well. For one thing, she reminded me that if we’d stayed with those men… remember how you found us, Stu?”

He nodded.

“If we’d stayed with them, we would have either wound up dead or in the West anyway, because that’s the direction they were going in… at least when they were sober enough to read the road-signs. She said she’d been wondering what her place in the Zone was, and guessed that her place in the Zone was out of it. And she said…”

“What?” Fran asked.

“That she’d try to come back,” Sue said, rather abruptly, and said no more. What else Dayna Jurgens had said was between the two of them, something not even the other members of the committee were to know. Dayna was going west with a ten-inch switchblade strapped to her arm in a spring-loaded clip. When she bent her wrist sharply, the spring unloaded and hey, presto, she had suddenly grown a sixth finger, one which was ten inches long and double-bladed. She felt that most of them—the men—would not have understood.

If he’s a big enough dictator, then maybe he’s all that’s holding them together. If he was gone, maybe they’d start fighting and squabbling among themselves. It might be the end of them, if he dies. And if I get close to him, Susie, he better have his guardian devil with him.

They’ll kill you, Dayna.

Maybe. Maybe not. It might be worth it just to have the pleasure of watching his guts fall out on the floor.

Susan could have stopped her, maybe, but she hadn’t tried. She had contented herself with extracting a promise from Dayna that she would stick to the original script unless a near-perfect opportunity came up. To that, Dayna had agreed and Sue didn’t think her friend would get that chance. Flagg would be well guarded. Still, in the three days since she had broached the idea of going west as a spy to her friend, Sue Stern had found it very difficult to sleep.

“Well,” she said to the rest of them now, “I’m home to bed. Night, folks.”

She walked off, hands in the pockets of her fatigue jacket.

“She looks older,” Stu said.

Nick wrote and offered the open pad to both of them.

We all do was written there.

Stu was on his way up to the power station the next morning when he saw Susan and Dayna headed down Canyon Boulevard on a pair of cycles. He waved and they pulled over. He thought he had never seen Dayna looking prettier. Her hair was tied behind her with a bright green silk scarf, and she was wearing a rawhide coat open over jeans and a chambray shirt. A bedroll was strapped on behind her.

“Stuart!” she cried, and waved to him, smiling.

Lesbian? he thought doubtfully.

“I understand you’re off on a little trip,” he said.