"I'm a dead man," he said, and realized the truth of that. He was a dead soldier already. There was no escape, no way out between his convictions and his duty. That thought calmed him considerably, and he sat on the lip of the antechamber, as he had sat once before, legs dangling out over the darkness. "So where's your light?" he asked. "Show me your little red light."

He wouldn't even know when it had happened. He wouldn't hear anything, see anything.

One minute.

Frozen men become warm again

And rabbits drug themselves in the wolfs jaws

God gives us ways out

I'm still thinking

But it doesn't hurt now.

I know how very small and inconsequential

I

From six miles away, Senator Gilmonn put on the smoky gray glasses the lieutenant gave to him and looked across the desert at the distant black hump that was the bogey. The cultists had scattered all across the desert floor, most out of the area, farther away than his small group, but some hiding behind piles of rock and other cinder cones. He had no idea how many of the diehards would survive.

"He's not out of there," the lieutenant said, removing a pair of radio headphones. Observers in the mountains had not seen Rogers leave the bogey.

"I wonder what happened?" Gilmonn asked. "Did he plant the . . . it?"

Beams of brilliant red light shot up from the false cinder cone, and the desert floor was illuminated by a small sun. Huge black fragments twisted upward in silhouette against the fireball, disintegrating, the smaller fragments falling back in smoking arcs. The sound was a palpable wall, more solid and painful than loud, and a violent blast of dusty wind progressed visibly over the scrub and sand and rock. When it hit, they had a hard time staying on their feet.

The dust cleared momentarily and they saw a tall, lean pillar of cloud rising, a fascinating ugly yellow-green, shot through with pastel pinks and purples and reds.

The lieutenant was weeping. "My god, he didn't get out. Dear Jesus. What a blast! Like a goddamned pipe bomb."

Senator Gilmonn, too stunned to react, decided he simply did not understand. The lieutenant understood, and his face was shiny with tears.

Fragments of rock and glass and metal fell for ten miles around for the next ten minutes. At six miles, none of the fragments exceeded half an inch in diameter.

They took refuge in the trucks and waited out the shower, and then drove away from the site to the decontamination center in Shoshone.

Chapter 49

49

January 6

The network between the Possessed was beginning to knit and connect. Arthur could feel its progress. This both excited and saddened him; the time he was spending with Francine and Marty might be coming to a close.

If she could not accept what had happened, he would have to continue without them.