“And you know all this because you have one living inside you?” There was no revulsion in Underhill’s voice, but Henry felt it clearly in the man’s mind, pulsing like a tentacle. “One of the quote-unquote normal weasels?”

“No.” At least, he thought, I don’t think so. “Then how do you know what you know? Or are you maybe just making it up as you go along? Trying to write yourself a pass out of here?” “How I know is the least important thing of all, Owen-but you know I’m not lying. You can read me.” “I know you think you’re not lying. How much more of this mind-reading shit can I expect to get?”

“I don’t know. More if the byrus spreads, probably, but not in my league.”

“Because you’re different.” Skepticism, both in Underhill’s voice and in Underhill’s thoughts.

“Pal, I didn’t know how different until today. But never mind that for a minute. For now, I just want you to understand that the grays are in a shitpull here. For maybe the first time in their history, they’re in an actual battle for control. First, because when they get inside people, the weasels aren’t saprophytic but violently parasitic.

They don’t stop eating and they don’t stop growing. They’re cancer, Underhill.

“Second, the byrus. It grows well on other worlds but poorly on ours, at least so far. The scientists and the medical experts who are running this rodeo think the cold is slowing it down, but I don’t think that’s it, or not all of it. I can’t be positive because they don’t know, but-”

“Whoa, whoa.” There was a brief cupped flame as Underhill lit another cigarette for the wind to smoke. “You’re not talking about the medical guys, are you?”

“No.”

“You think you’re in touch with the grayboys. Telepathically in touch.”

“I think… with one of them. Through a link.”

“This Jonesy you spoke of?”

“Owen, I don’t know. Not for sure. The point is, they’re losing. Me, you, the men who went out there to the Blue Boy with you today, we might not be around to celebrate Christmas. I won’t kid you about that. We got high, concentrated doses. But-”

“I’ve got it, all right,” Underhill said. “Edwards, too-it showed up on him like magic.” “But even if it really takes hold on you, I don’t think you can spread it very far. It’s not just that catchable. There are people in that barn who’ll never get it, no matter how many byrus-infected

people they mingle with. And the people who do catch it like a cold come down with Byrus

Secondary… or Ripley, if you like that better.”

“Let’s stick to byrus.”

“Okay. They might be able to pass it on to a few people, who would have a very weak version we could call Byrus Three. It might even be communicable beyond that, but I think once you got to Byrus Four you’d need a microscope or a blood-test to pick it up. Then it’s gone.

“Here’s the instant replay, so pay attention.

“Point one. The grays-probably no more than delivery-systems for the byrus-are gone already. The ones the environment didn’t kill, like the microbes finally killed the Martians in War of the Worlds, were wiped out by your gunships. All but one, that is, the one-yeah, must be-that I got my information from. And in a physical sense, he’s gone, too.

“Point two. The weasels don’t work. Like all cancers, they ultimately eat themselves to death. The weasels that escape from the lower intestine or the bowel quickly die in an environment they find hostile.

“Point three. The byrus doesn’t work, either, not very well, but given a chance, given time to hide and grow, it could mutate. Learn to fit in. Maybe to rule.”

“We’re going to wipe it out,” Underhill said. “We’re going to turn the entire Jefferson Tract into a burn-scar.”

Henry could have screamed with frustration, and some of that must have gotten through. There was a thud as Underhill jerked, striking the flimsy shed wall with his back.

“What you do up here doesn’t matter,” Henry said. “The people you’ve got interned can’t spread it, the weasels can’t spread it, and the byrus can’t spread itself. If your guys folded their tents and just walked away right now, the environment would take care of itself and erase all this nonsense like a bad equation. I think the grays showed up the way they did because they just can’t fucking believe it. I think it was a suicide mission with some gray version of your Mistuh Kurtz in charge. They simply cannot conceptualize failure. “We always win," they think.”

“How do you-”

“Then, at the last minute, Underhill-maybe at the last second one of them found a man who was remarkably different from all the others with whom the grays, the weasels, and the byrus had come in contact. He’s your Typhoid Mary. And he’s already out of the q-zone, rendering anything you do here meaningless.”

“Gary Jones.”

“Jonesy, right.”

“What makes him different?”

Little as he wanted to go into this part of it, Henry realized he had to give Underhill something.

“He and I and our two other friends-the ones who are dead-once knew someone who was very different. A natural telepath, no byrus needed. He did something to us. If we’d gotten to know him when we were a little older, I don’t think that would have been possible, but we met him when we were particularly… vulnerable, I suppose you’d say… to what he had. And then, years later, something else happened to Jonesy, something that had nothing to do with… with this remarkable boy.”

But that wasn’t the truth, Henry suspected; although Jonesy had been hit and almost killed in Cambridge find Duddits had never to Henry’s knowledge been south of Derry in his life, Duds had somehow been a part of Jonesy’s final, crucial change. A part of that, too. He knew it.

“And I’m supposed to what? Just believe all this? Swallow it like cough-syrup?”

In the sweet-smelling darkness of the shed, Henry’s lips spread in a humorless grin. “Owen,” he said, “you do believe it. I’m a telepath, remember? The baddest one in the jungle. The question, though… the question is…”

Henry asked the question with his mind.

Standing outside the compound fence by the back wall of the old storage shed, freezing his balls off, filter-mask pulled down around his neck so he could smoke a series of cigarettes he did not want (he’d gotten a fresh pack in the PX), Owen would have said he never felt less like laughing in his life… but when the man in the shed responded to his eminently reasonable question with such impatient directness-you do believe it…I’m a telepath, remember?-a laugh was surprised out of him, nevertheless. Kurtz had said that if the telepathy became permanent and were to spread, society as they knew it would fall down. Owen had grasped the concept, but now he understood it on a gut level, too.

“The question, though… the question is…”

What are we going to do about it?

Tired as he was, Owen could see only one answer to that question. “We have to go after Jones, I suppose. Will it do any good? Do we have time?” “I think we might. Just.”

Owen tried to read what was behind Henry’s response with his own lesser powers and could not. Yet he was positive that most of what the man had told him was true. Either that or he believes it’s true, Owen thought. God knows I want to believe it’s true. Any excuse to get out of here before the butchery starts.

“No,” Henry said, and for the first time Owen thought he sounded upset, not entirely sure of himself. “No butchery. Kurtz isn’t going to kill somewhere between two hundred and eight hundred people. People who ultimately can’t influence this business one way or the other. They’re just-Christ, they’re just innocent bystanders!”