I turned my head and saw Sunny, her head raised a little by the pillow and one hand, watching me, her expression detached and a little speculative. I remembered, all in a rush, where I’d seen the expression before: when she’d collected me from the Hard Luck, when she’d asked about Richard Weineman, when she’d wanted to know the story of my last great disaster out in the World, the last major roadmark on my trip to Bordertown. And I wouldn’t tell her. I wouldn’t even tell Tick-Tick, that hungover morning over waffles and strawberries, which was—oh, God, only days ago. Only days. And I’d said to the Ticker that if I told anybody about it, I’d tell her. Already, in a few days, it was too late.

I rolled over abruptly, but in the opposite direction from the one I’d thought about a minute before. Sunny said, “It’s all right. Go to sleep.”

I didn’t think I could anymore. But as I waited for sleep, I heard myself say, “I didn’t even think I was on my way here. I was just getting away. I didn’t know I was getting away to Bordertown. I was hitchhiking—I got one of those rides that your parents tell you about to try to scare you off hitching. God, if anybody ever got one, of course I would.”

She didn’t say anything at first; then she said, “You don’t have to tell me this.”

“I know I don’t have to,” I said, and sucked in my breath against the pain. “That’s why I can.” If I had to, I’d fight it like death itself. But with you, I don’t have to. That was what I was echoing: Tick-Tick’s words.

I pressed on. “I’d taken some recreational drug, I don’t remember what. I was almost always on something back then. I thought I could turn off the finding ability with it, if I just found the right thing to take. And this guy stopped for me in his big damned boat of a car, and he had some hash, and some pills of some kind, and the next thing I knew it was night, and he’d pulled off the highway down a dirt road by a creek.

“I can’t remember it all. I know I woke up and looked out the car window, and saw him setting up a camp under the trees. I got the door open and tried to walk away, back up the dirt road, but walking was… I couldn’t coordinate. And the driver spotted me, ran up and grabbed me by the collar and threw me out of the road, into the grass. I kept trying to get up and he kept hitting me. Then I was further off the road, where he was pitching camp, and he had something in his hand, and I was so scared. I felt something under me, in the grass. I picked it up and swung it at him. I didn’t know until it hit him that it was his camp hatchet.”