She frowned, confused. The clarity of the touch told her that he was nearby, probably inside the house. She shrank against the head of the bed, looking desperately around the room. But it was empty. His happiness apparently wasn’t because he had managed to defeat her defenses and get into the house. She checked the control panel in the footboard of the bed. All the alarm indicator lights were green. He hadn’t used any conventional mode of entry. And the electrostatic barrier hadn’t been activated. The motion sensors told a different story. There were indications of movement in the basement at 3:52 A.M., in the front hall two minutes later, in the attic at 4:00. They revealed a slow progress from the bottom to the top of the house. And from 3:59 to 5:59 the steel shutters that protected her bed had been closed, responding automatically to the unexplained motion in the house.

So he was in the attic. As well that she had abandoned sleeping there. When the time came she wouldn’t have the difficulty of hunting him down. But why did he exult so?

She decided to touch again, hoping to catch some emotional clue to what he was doing. Of course, care would have to be taken. John was sensitive to touch. She didn’t want to alert him to the fact that she was awake.

She cleared her mind, closed her eyes, opened her inner eye wide. Then she sought John’s place in her heart. The touchsprang out of her, connecting with powerful and complex emotions. John was overwhelmingly sad, angry, but most of all he was filled with wild glee.

He was savoring the fruits of victory.

Why?

She inventoried the possible reasons for his happiness. He had successfully entered the house against her will. Not sufficient cause. He had gotten to the attic, perhaps to the room where the chests were kept.

She almost laughed aloud when she realized what he must be planning. Let him do his worst. How ironic that what he must perceive as a great threat was actually going to be helpful to her. John, waiting for his big moment in the attic, could safely be forgotten. And that was well. She had much more pressing matters to attend to.

It was going to be a difficult day.

She set about turning off the various devices that protected her during Sleep. In the past, finding safe places to Sleep had been an obsession with all of her race. During the greatest period of persecution, when they were being hunted down by experts, burnt, garrotted, walled up in tombs, they took to hiding in graves, lying among corpses to avoid detection. As often as not, they were followed even there, dragged from their hiding places, and destroyed by having wooden stakes hammered into their hearts.