Specimen Days

"No, twenty is more than reasonable," Luke answered. "Simon, have you got it?"

Simon produced a twenty from his pocket. The boy snatched it out of his hand. He said, "So. Could you give us directions to Emory Lowell's?"

Gay a answered, "Straight for ten or eleven blocks, then right for about five miles. Turn left at the Gentle Giant Mall. Drive until you see a pair of blue spruce trees, one on each side of the road. Then park your truck and walk to the west."

"Thanks. Here's the twenty."

Gay a took the money and handed Luke the bowl. She said wanly, "How's your mother?"

"Couldn't tell you. If she passes through here, tell her you saw me. Tell her I'm all right."

"I'll do that."

Simon pulled away from the curb and accelerated. Luke sat with the bowl in his lap. "Junk," he said.

"It looks old," Simon said.

"If it got down to Gaya's level, it's junk. Believe me."

"What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me," Simon said.

* * *

Simon followed Gaya's directions. They drove out of the densely settled area, past ever-diminishing outcroppings of empty houses, which gave way to a dun-colored emptiness that had once been farmland. Presently they saw the twin spruces ahead, as Gay a had described them. In front of the trees, a band of children and a horse stood in the road, unsteady in the heat shimmer that rose off the concrete.

Luke had by then fallen ill again. He was half asleep, his tureen-shaped head slumped in the place where his chest would have been. He roused sufficiently to see the children and horse in the road.

"You should probably just run them over," he murmured.

"Aren't you supposed to be a Christian?" Simon asked.

"I am a Christian. But I'm not a fool." He fell back into his feverish doze.

As they drew closer, Simon could see that there were five children: two girls on the back of a shaggy brown horse, with a girl and two boys standing alongside.

Of the two girls on horseback, one was human and one Nadian. Of the other three, two were Nadian and one human. The oldest, a girl, human, was probably twelve or thirteen. The youngest, a Nadian, could not have been more than four.

Simon stopped the Winnebago. The children stood in modest expectation, as if waiting for a train. Simon leaned out of the window and called hello to them.

The Nadian girl on horseback wore a pair of dingy cardboard wings held to her narrow back by two dirty elastic straps. The human girl behind her sat with her scrawny white legs akimbo and her thin arms clasped around the Nadian girl's waist.

The winged Nadian girl said, "You're late."

They were all more or less naked. One of the Nadian boys had somehow attached two plastic roses to his little-boy chest and wore a skirt made of grass. The human girl standing alongside the horse carried a spear that appeared to involve a knife blade affixed to the end of a pool cue.

The girl with the spear said, "You almost missed it."

The horse stood stoically, shaking its enormous head. Its eyes were bright black, liquid circles.

"We're looking for Emory Lowell," Simon said. "We know that," the Nadian on horseback answered.

"Why else would you have come?" the human girl said.

Luke roused enough to say, "This seems very peculiar to me."

Simon said, "Can you take us to him?"

"Of course we can," the Nadian girl answered.

'You'll have to leave your vehicle," said the human.

"I don't know if we should leave the vehicle," Luke said.

"Be quiet," Simon told him.

Simon, Catareen, and Luke got out of the Winnebago and advanced to meet the party of children. The horse snorted, nodding its head as if in agreement with its own waking dream.

"What exactly are we late for?" Simon asked. "Don't be silly. Come on."

The children led them down the road for a distance, then cut across a field. Simon carried Luke, who awoke periodically and whispered, "I'm really not so sure about this."

They passed through a stand of trees and came upon a cluster of buildings at the base of a low, grassy hill. It had been a farm. There was a barn and an austere white clapboard house and a gathering of small white domes that appeared to be dwellings. Beyond them all, a range of lavender mountains cut into the pallid sky.

A spaceship stood between the house and the barn. It was an early one, a silver ellipse just more than fifty yards across, balanced on the three spidery legs that had proved unreliable and been superseded by a hydraulic central shaft. It was at least thirty years old. It gleamed dully in the sun.

"Where did that come from?" Simon asked.

"It's always been here," one of the boys told him. "It's almost ready."

It's ready for the junkyard, Simon thought.

"We're going to take you straight to Emory," the winged Nadian girl announced.

She led them to the barn, a matronly, cigar-colored hulk of a building with brilliant white light leaking out through its prim little windows. The girls dismounted and slid the big wooden door open.