“Hey, the camera!” exclaimed a voice from the back. Glancing rearward, Ross Ed watched as the woman withdrew an exceedingly compact Nikon from her brassiere. She checked one of the windows on top and beamed excitedly. “Twenty shots! I’ve got twenty shots. Wait till the skeptics at PSYCOP see these!”

“Way to go. Sues.” Her hubby beamed.

Ross Ed didn’t join in the celebration. Something told him the woman was the proud posscssor of twenty clear, sharp-toned pictures of a grayish-blue fog bank. So were all the others who’d escaped with their equipment intact, including the videographers. Hours and hours of tape of dense, impenetrable, unremarkable, and decidedly unalienistic fog. Not all the illumination propagaied by aliens dead and alive was as straightforward as streetlights. Several emited on wavelengths that were more than a little unkind to photographic enterprises.

How he knew that he cou1dn’t have said. It just sort of seemed to make sense.

One conclusion anyone could have made: whatever he was. Jed was not a Ceryutian. Not even a distant cousin. He was no more related to the long-armed stompers than Ross was to the longhom on his uncle BuckJin’s ranch. Probably less so. Having witnessed a demonstration of Ceryutian manners, Ross Ed felt good about that.

It just went to show that if you insisted on phoning home, you damn well better make sure you didn’t get a wrong number and inadvertently agitate some perfidity. Evidently there were some badass beings out there.

THIRTEEN

The sun was showing itself through the trees when they finally dropped their passengers off outside the main market in Show Low. As they disembarked, the couple was arguing about whether to make the first call to his parents, her parents, or their swami.

From Show Low, Ross and Caroline continued north on the highway toward Interstate 40. There’d been no sign in town of inquisitive army types, but having been cornered once, Ross didn’t want to take any chances by lingering over breakfast. With Caroline in agreement, they whizzed through the local McDonald’s and McBreakfasted their McButts out of town as quickly as possible.

When they finally reached the interstate without incident, Caroline broached the idea of sticking to the back roads, just to add some insurance. Impatient as he was to reach the coast, Ross Ed reluctantly conceded the efficacy of her suggestion (though he didn’t phrase it quite that way … as he readily conceded, she was the smart one).

Passing through Holbrook, they disdained the interstate in favor of State Route 77 north.

“We can swing west through the Navajo-Hopi reservation.” With little traffic and a straight road ahead Caroline was able to relax behind the wheel. Outside, the last pines had given way to spacious vistas of ruddy sandstone and distant mountains. “There’s nothing up here but tiny towns and local police. We’ll take two-eighty-four over to one-sixty and swing down by the Canyon. That way we can lose ourselves in the tourist traffic and not have to take 1-40 until we’re well past Flagstaff. If they were going to establish a checkpoint on the interstate, that’s where it would be: this side of Flag or the other. Either way we’ll bypass it.” She looked over at him.

“It’s either that or keep heading north.”

“here ain’t no ocean in Utah.”

“I know.” Reaching over, she placed her right hand on his left. “Salt Lake City’s a long way from San Diego.”

Reacting to the van’s approach, a cottontail leaped off the road and into a culvert. Red-tailed and Swainson’s hawks patrolled the pavement in search of fresh roadkill.

“This country makes west Texas look lush,” he observed.

“Pretty, though.” Raising her hand, she pointed to her right. “The Painted Desert is off that way somewhere.”

As they drove they were confronted by a living history of the American pickup truck, either hurrying in the opposite direction or speeding up to pass them from behind. From time to time isolated homes and house trailers poked satellite dishes above the rugged hills, spying on ESPN. CNN, HBO, and their fellow entertainment acronyms from sites in gullies, washes, and miniature plateaus. Many of the new homes were partnered with a stumpy hogan, their entrances facing the rising sun in the traditional manner.

The deeper they traveled into the reservation, the more isolated they felt. For the first time since he’d fled El Paso, Ross Ed began to feel at ease. This was one place where he didn’t expect the army to come looking for him. With luck, the military’s neatly dressed, excessively polite representatives would be hunting for him in the vicinity of Tucson, hundreds of miles to the south.

He was anxious to head west again. Continuing in the direction they were going would take them to the ocean, all right: the Arctic Ocean. He didn’t much care for cold country.

“Will you relax?” She gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder. “We’ve lost them. Can’t you tell? They don’t even know what kind of vehicle you’re traveling in, or if you’re on a bus, or a plane, much less where you are.”

He divided his attention between her and the relentlessly spectacular scenery. “You didn’t meet these people. I did. They’re not going to give up. If any military base managed to track or record what happened up in the mountains last night, sooner or later connections are going to be made with Jed. Right now they’re trying to keep it quiet, but if the story breaks wide, my face will be in every paper and on every evening newscast within an hour.”

“And a very nice face it is, too.” Her trivializing of the situation was disarming. “You really think anyone’s going to take those saucer people seriously?”

“I suppose not.”

“ten calm down, Ross Ed. Enjoy the ride.” She grinned and nodded toward the back. “Take a lesson from your friend.”

Indeed, there was no disputing that of the three occupants of the van, the alien was by far the most relaxed. An unfair comparison, Ross knew, because in Jed’s case it was a permanent condition.

An hour later they pulled over so Ross could take the wheel for a while. He flinched when she picked the body up and set him in her lap, arranging the three arms in a kind of tripartite fold. Crossing the three legs was more difficult; left over center, center over right. The result left Jed looking like a spurious fugitive from Sesame Street. The intimate, repeated physical contact had no visible effect on her.

“Don’t you think you should put him back on the floor? What if somebody seems him?”

“What if they do?” Raising one alien arm, she let it flap loosely at a passing car. “What do they see? A man and a woman cruising along in their van, enjoying the scenery. If they look real close they might see that the woman has a very strange doll or a real ugly baby in her lap. I feel sorry for poor Jed. How’d you like to ride all the way to California lying on the floor? Just drive, Ross Ed. We’re not going to stop any traffic up here.”

By unspoken mutual agreement they let the radio occupy the conversational space for a while. Eventually Ross turned back to her. “You know, Caroline, you’ve been awfully good to me throughout this whole crazy business.”

“Don’t think I don’t know it. I told you why.”

“I’m not looking for any kind of long-term relationship.”

“Ever had one?”

He told her about his own two marriages.

“Naw,” she decided when he’d finished the distressing recitation, “you never have. You can be married to someone without having a real relationship. I know; I’ve done both.”

“Just the same, don’t get any ideas. I like you, Caroline, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“What, moi, get ideas?” Her eyes widened as she placed her fingers over her cleavage. “Why, Ross Ed, I would never think of such a thing. I’m just helping you make it to California.”

“Just so long as we understand each other.”

“Right.” The van banged as they hit a pothole. “You know, you give me a funny look every time I touch Jed.” Holding the alien by the shoulders, she turned it toward her. “Doesn’t he?” Shaking it back and forth, she managed to induce in the head and neck a passable imitation of a nod.

Ross clenched his teeth. “Don’t do that.”

“Why not?” She was honestly bemused. “What’s the problem?”

He couldn’t forget the night in Lordsburg: the gun and the addlepated bullets. “When people … touch … Jed, they sometimes see things. Other times, stuff happens.”

“Is that all? Look what happened last night.”

“No, not like that. I mean, personal things. Your surroundings don’t act natural. Pictures form in the mind.”

“Are you talking about telekinesis and telepathy? That’s fantasy. Besides, he’s dead.” Her eyes were inches from the alien’s own. They didn’t stare back.

“I don’t reckon it has anything to do with Jed. Obviously, he can’t do anything. But the suit’s another matter.”

“Well, I’ve picked him up, turned him around, bounced him in my lap, played with his limbs, tossed him in back, and I haven’t felt or seen a single thing out of the ordinary.”

“I guess he, or his suit, likes you. Or at least doesn’t see you as a threat. Or maybe, just maybe, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Maybe sometimes the suit reacts to contact and sometimes it doesn’t.” He told her about Lordsburg.

“That’s quite a story.” Her attitude had become less flippant and she regarded the alien in her lap with new respect. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it only reacts to certain people. Something in their brain waves, or their movements. Personally, I think both Jed and his suit are comfortable with us. Can’t you see how he’s enjoying the scenery? He’s hardly taken his eyes off the road.” Her cheeks dimpled.