She was the closest thing to a medical doctor in the room, so Mrs. Rebka reluctantly allowed Diane to sit with the boy, measuring his pulse and thumping his chest, doing these things, Lise suspected, more to reassure Isaac than to diagnose him. She did look closely at his left cheek and forehead where the creature had touched him, but there was no obvious rash or irritation. Lastly she looked into Isaac's eyes—those strange eyes—and seemed to find nothing extraordinary there.

Isaac mustered enough courage to ask, "Are you a doctor?"

"Just a nurse. And you can call me Diane."

"Am I all right, Diane?"

"You seem all right to me."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. A lot of strange things are happening right now. That was just one of them. How do you feel?"

The boy paused as if taking inventory. "Better," he said finally.

"Not scared?"

"No. Well. Not as much."

In fact he was speaking more coherently than he had for a couple of days. "May I ask you a question?"

The boy nodded.

"Last night you said you could see through the walls. You said there was a light only you could see. Do you still see it?"

He nodded again.

"Where? Can you point at it?"

Haltingly, Isaac did so.

"Turk," Diane said. "Do you have your compass?"

Turk carried a brass-encased compass in his pocket—he had refused to abandon it back in the Minang village, much to Ibu Diane's annoyance. He took it out and sighted along Isaac's arm toward his extended index finger.

"This is nothing new," Mrs. Rebka said impatiently. "He always points the same way. A little north of west."

"Just about due west now. Tending to the south, if anything." Turk looked up and registered their expressions. "Why? Is that important?"

* * * * *

By mid-afternoon the street was more nearly normal. Nothing had grown out of the ashfall for a couple of hours. There were occasional eddies in the dust, but that could have been the wind—a gusty wind had come up, clouding the air and piling gray windrows against exposed vertical surfaces. But it swept away some of the ashfall and even exposed the asphalt in places.

Only a few of the bizarre growths had lasted out the morning. Most, like the flower with an eye in its bloom, were attacked (eaten, Lise thought, might as well use the word) by smaller and more mobile entities, which then faded and vanished. Some of the larger growths were still more or less intact. She had seen a sort of technicolor tumbleweed blowing down the street, obviously the husk of something no longer vital. And there was a fretwork of brittle white tubules clinging to one of the buildings opposite the motel, obscuring a sign that had once announced auto parts but was no longer legible under the pale fretwork.