Carter hesitated, then said: 'A little dry at first, but she oiled up a-country fair.'

Big Jim laughed. The sound was metallic, like the sound of coins dropping into the tray of a slot machine.

14

Midnight, and the pink moon descending toward the Tarker's Mills horizon, where it might linger until daylight, turning into a ghost before finally disappearing.

Julia picked her way through the orchard to where the McCoy land sloped down the western side of Black Ridge, and was not surprised to see a darker shadow sitting against one of the trees. Off to her right, the box with the alien symbol engraved on its top sent out a flash every fifteen seconds: the world's smallest, strangest lighthouse.

'Barbie?' she asked, keeping her voice low. 'How's Ken?'

'Gone to San Francisco to march in the Gay Pride parade. I always knew that boy wasn't straight.'

Julia laughed, then took his hand and kissed it. 'My friend, I'm awfully glad you're safe.'

He took her in his arms, and kissed her on both cheeks before letting her go. Lingering kisses. Real ones. 'My friend, so am I.'

She laughed, but a thrill went straight through her, from neck to knees. It was one she recognized but hadn't felt in a long time. Easy, girl, she thought. He's young enough to be your son.

Well, yes… if she'd gotten pregnant at thirteen.

'Everyone else is asleep,' Julia said. 'Even Horace. He's in with the kids. They had him chasing sticks until his tongue was practically dragging on the ground. Thinks he died and went to heaven, I bet.'

'I tried sleeping. Couldn't.'

Twice he'd come close to drifting off, and both times he found himself back in the Coop, facing Junior Rennie.The first time Barbie had tripped instead of jigging to the right and had gone sprawling to the bunk, presenting a perfect target. The second time, Junior had reached through the bars with an impossibly long plastic arm and had seized him to make him hold still long enough to give up his life. After that one, Barbie had left the barn where the men were sleeping and had come out here. The air still smelled like a room where a lifelong smoker had died six months ago, but it was better than the air in town.

'So few lights down there,' she said.'On an ordinary night there'd be nine times as many, even at this hour. The streetlights would look like a double strand of pearls.'

'There's that, though.' Barbie had left one arm around her, but he lifted his free hand and pointed at the glow-belt. But for the Dome, where it ended abruptly, she thought it would have been a perfect circle. As it was, it looked like a horseshoe.

'Yes. Why do you suppose Cox hasn't mentioned it? They must see it on their satellite photos.' She considered. 'At least he hasn't said anything to me. Maybe he did to you.'

'Nope, and he would've. Which means they don't see it.'

'You think the Dome… what? Filters it out?'

'Something like that. Cox, the news networks, the outside world—they don't see it because they don't need to see it. I guess we do.'

'Is Rusty right, do you think? Are we just ants being victimized by cruel children with a magnifying glass? What kind of intelligent race would allow their children to do such a thing to another intelligent race?'

' We think we're intelligent, but do they? We know that ants are social insects—home builders, colony builders, amazing architects. They work hard, as we do. They bury their dead, as we do. They even have race wars, the blacks against the reds. We know all this, but we don't assume ants are intelligent.'

She pulled his arm tighter around her, although it wasn't cold. 'Intelligent or not, it's wrong.'

'I agree. Most people would. Rusty knew it even as a child. But most kids don't have a moral fix on the world. That takes years to develop. By the time we're adults, most of us have put away childish things, which would include burning ants with a magnifying glass or pulling the wings off flies. Probably their adults have done the same. If they notice the likes of us at all, that is. When's the last time you bent over and really examined an anthill?'

'But still… if we found ants on Mars, or even microbes, we wouldn't destroy them. Because life in the universe is such a precious commodity. Every other planet in our system is a wasteland, for God's sake.'

Barbie thought if NASA found life on Mars, they would have no compunctions whatever about destroying it in order to put it on a microscope slide and study it, but he didn't say so. 'If we were more scientifically advanced—or more spiritually advanced, maybe that's what it actually takes to go voyaging around in the great what's-out-there—we might see that there's life everywhere. As many inhabited worlds and intelligent life-forms as there are anthills in this town.'

Was his hand now resting on the sideswell of her breast? She believed it was. It had been a long time since there had been a man's hand there, and it felt very good.

'The one thing I'm sure of is that there are other worlds than the ones we can see with our puny telescopes here on Earth. Or even with the Hubble. And… they're not here, you know. It's not an invasion. They're just looking. And… maybe… playing.'

'I know what that's like,' she said. 'To be played with.'

He was looking at her. Kissing distance. She wouldn't mind being kissed; no, not at all.

'What do you mean? Rennie?'

'Do you believe there are certain defining moments in a person's life? Watershed events that actually do change us?'

'Yes,' he said, thinking of the red smile his boot had left on the Abdul's buttock. Just the ordinary asscheek of a man living his ordinary little life. 'Absolutely'

'Mine happened in fourth grade. At Main Street Grammar.'

'Tell me.'

'It won't take long. That was the longest afternoon of my life, but it's a short story'

He waited.

'I was an only child. My father owned the local newspaper—he had a couple of reporters and one ad salesman, but otherwise he was pretty much a one-man band, and that was just how he liked it. There was never any question that I'd take over when he retired. He believed it, my mother believed it, my teachers believed it, and of course I believed it. My college education was all planned out. Nothing so bush-league as the University of Maine, either, not for Al Shumway's girl. Al Shumway's girl was going to Princeton. By the time I was in the fourth grade, there was a Princeton pennant over my bed and I practically had my bags packed.