the world, as far as Lucy was concerned. A sane sound. And the room was brightening all the time. Soon the first birds would begin to sing.
“Mommy, that tickles!”
“Mommies like to tickle. It’s part of their charm. Now, what about Tony?”
“He said he’d come any time I needed him,” Abra said, settling back under the sheet. She patted the bed beside her, and Lucy lay down, sharing the pillow. “That was a bad dream and I needed him. I think he came, but I can’t really remember. His daddy works in a hot spice.”
This was new. “Is that like a chili factory?”
“No, silly, it’s for people who are going to die.” Abra sounded indulgent, almost teacherly, but a shiver went up Lucy’s back.
“Tony says that when people get so sick they can’t get well, they go to the hot spice and his daddy tries to make them feel better. Tony’s daddy has a cat with a name like mine. I’m Abra and the cat is Azzie. Isn’t that weird, but in a funny way?”
“Yes. Weird but funny.”
John and David would both probably say, based on the similarity of the names, that the stuff about the cat was the confabulation of a very bright little ten-year-old girl. But they would only half believe it, and Lucy hardly believed it at all. How many ten-year-olds knew what a hospice was, even if they mispronounced it?
“Tell me about the boy in your dream.” Now that Abra was calmed down, this conversation seemed safer. “Tell me who was hurting him, Abba-Doo.”
“I don’t remember, except he thought Barney was supposed to be his friend. Or maybe it was Barry. Momma, can I have Hoppy?”
Her stuffed rabbit, now sitting in lop-eared exile on the highest shelf in her room. Abra hadn’t slept with him in at least two years. Lucy got the Hopster and put him in her daughter’s arms. Abra hugged the rabbit to her pink pajama top and was asleep almost at once. With luck, she’d be out for another hour, maybe even two. Lucy sat beside her, looking down.
Let this stop for good in another few years, just like John said it would. Better yet, let it stop today, this very morning. No more, please. No more hunting through the local papers to see if some little boy was killed by his stepfather or beaten to death by bullies who were high on glue, or something. Let it end.
“God,” she said in a very low voice, “if you’re there, would you do something for me? Would you break the radio in my little girl’s head?”
2
When the True headed west again along I-80, rolling toward the town in the Colorado high country where they would spend the summer (always assuming the opportunity to collect some nearby big steam did not come up), Crow Daddy was riding in the shotgun seat of Rose’s EarthCruiser. Jimmy Numbers, the True’s whizbang accountant, was piloting Crow’s Affinity Country Coach for the time being. Rose’s satellite radio was tuned to Outlaw Country and currently playing Hank Jr.’s “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound.” It was a good tune, and Crow let it run its course before pushing the OFF button.
“You said we’d talk later. This is later. What happened back there?”
“We had a looker,” Rose said.
“Really?” Crow raised his eyebrows. He had taken as much of the Trevor kid’s steam as any of them, but he looked no younger. He rarely did after eating. On the other hand, he rarely looked older between meals, unless the gap was very long. Rose thought it was a good trade-off. Probably something in his genes. Assuming they still had genes. Nut said they almost certainly did. “A steamhead, you mean.”
She nodded. Ahead of them, I-80 unrolled under a faded blue denim sky dotted with drifting cumulus clouds.
“Big steam?”
“Oh yeah. Huge.”
“How far away?”
“East Coast. I think.”
“You’re saying someone looked in from what, almost fifteen hundred miles away?”
“Could have been even further. Could have been way the hell and gone up in Canada.”
“Boy or girl?”
“Probably a girl, but it was only a flash. Three seconds at most. Does it matter?”
It didn’t. “How many canisters could you fill from a kid with that much steam in the boiler?”
“Hard to say. Three, at least.” This time it was Rose who was lowballing. She guessed the unknown looker might fill ten canisters, maybe even a dozen. The presence had been brief but muscular. The looker had seen what they were doing, and her horror (if it was a