dark room with its crowded bookcases. The fire had gone out. He felt anxious, as though he had to move, had to get out, had to be somewhere.
He could hear the soft murmuring sounds of the forest, the lisping of the rain falling through the dense branches. He could not hear a large animal. If there was a mountain lion out there, perhaps she was fast asleep with her cubs. Whatever the case she was a wild thing, and he was a human being waiting, waiting in a house with glass walls.
He e-mailed Galton a list of things to buy for the house, though probably most of the stuff was there. He wanted a lot of new plants for the conservatory - orange trees, ferns, and bougainvillea - could Galton handle that? What else? There had to be something else. The restlessness was driving him crazy.
He went online and ordered a laser printer for this library, and a desktop Mac to be delivered as soon as possible, and a number of Bose CD players, and a whole slew of Blu-ray. Bose CD players were the only obsolete technology he loved.
He unpacked the Bose players he,d brought - both of which were also radios - and put one in the kitchen and the other in the library on the desk.
He was not hearing any voices. The night was empty around him.
And the change was not happening to him.
For a while he drifted about the house, pondering, talking aloud to himself, thinking. He had to keep moving. He put signs where the televisions should be installed. He,d sit down, get up, pace, climb the stairs, roam the attics, come down.
He went outside into the rain, roaming the back part of the house. Under the overhang he looked into the various lower bedrooms of the servants, quarters, each of which had a door and a window on the stone walkway. All seemed in order, with simple somewhat rustic furnishings.
At the end of the wing he found the shed, stacked with a huge amount of firewood. A worktable ran along one side, with axes and saws hung on hooks on the wall. There were other tools, anything a man might need for repairs large and small.
Reuben had never held an ax in his hands. He took down the largest of the axes - it had a three-foot wooden handle - and felt the edge of the blade. The blade itself must have weighed about five pounds and was a good five inches long. And sharp. Very sharp. All his life he,d seen men in movies and television programs splitting logs with an ax like this. He wondered how he might like doing that out here himself. The handle itself didn,t weigh much at all; and surely the weight of the blade gave the ax its force. If it hadn,t been raining, he would have looked for the place where the wood had been split.
But something else occurred to him - that this was the only weapon he had.
He carried the ax back into the house with him and set it down beside the fireplace in the big room. It looked simple enough there - the paint had long ago peeled from the wooden handle - between the pile of firewood and the fire, almost out of sight.
He felt he could get to that quickly enough if he ever had a need. Of course - before some two weeks ago, it had never occurred to him that he could defend himself with any weapon, but he had not the slightest qualm now.
The restlessness was almost unsupportable.
Was he resisting the change? Or was it just too damned early? It had never come on him this early. He had to wait.
But he couldn,t wait.
His hands and feet were tingling. The rain was acutely loud now, and he thought he could hear the surf again, but he wasn,t sure.
He couldn,t bear it here any longer. He made a decision. He had no choice.
He took off his clothes, hung them up neatly in the closet, and put on the big loose clothing he,d bought in Santa Rosa.
He was swallowed by the giant hooded sweatshirt and oversized pants, but it didn,t matter. The brown trench coat was simply too big to wear, but he,d take it with him.
He took off his shoes and slipped into the huge rain boots. He put the scarf around his neck, tucked it in, and put the sunglasses in the coat pocket along with his