“The service was announced in the Observer”

She knew that; she had clipped the announcement. “But why are they here? What for?”

“To mark a solemn occasion. Miriam, your father was the last man in Buchanan to die before Contact. Do you know what that means? His was the last involuntary death in this town.”

But it was a reasoning that made Miriam hostile, for reasons she didn’t wholly understand.

“I don’t want strangers here.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way. But it’s not a joke. They’re sincere—their feelings are genuine.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“I know,” the Rector said simply.

Miriam frowned but acquiesced. She was beginning to feel numbed by the morning’s events. Rector Ackroyd read the service and Miriam listened distantly, unable to associate this ceremony with her father; he had become intangible, a fading memory of a pleasanter time. I’m here to mourn, she reminded herself sternly. But what about all these other people?

The hillside was covered with people, all silent and attentive, even those who must be too far away to hear the service.

Half the population of Buchanan must have come here, Miriam thought.

Maybe they had also come to mourn.

Not for her father. For something they had lost or given up. For what they couldn’t have back. For a way of life.

For the town, the country—for the planet, Miriam thought.

Chapter 13

Arguments and Unwindings

When Lillian refused to see him for a physical exam—despite his nudging, his cajoling, and at last his ill-concealed anger—Matt decided enough was enough. Extraterrestrial mysticism was one thing; jeopardizing her health and the health of her unborn child was quite another.

He arranged to have lunch with Jim, see if he could attack the problem from that angle.

A few weeks ago, it might have been hard to fit lunch into his schedule. Today, free time was easy to come by. His office consultations had dropped to a trickle. He spent most of his time at the hospital doing shifts for absentee residents, and much of that time convincing Tom Kindle to submit to physical therapy. He had not seen a new patient, nor more than a handful of his reliables, since what they were starting to call “Contact.”

Nor, despite the hours at Buchanan General, had he seen much of Jim Bix. Jim—like Lillian, like Annie Gates, like so many others—had accepted the promise of immortality that night in August.

Matt had still not developed a strategy for talking to such people.

Jim had been his closest friend. Contact had turned him into a stranger.

They met in the cafeteria. The staff cafeteria was a basement room the size of a basketball court, and today it was almost deserted. The ventilators hummed like meditating monks and the air smelled faintly of cabbage.

Jim sat at a corner table picking at salad and rice pilaf. Matt pulled up another chair and regarded his friend. Same old ugly son of a bitch he ever was, Matt thought.

But the conversation was like an old car on a cold day, hard to start and hard to keep running.

“You don’t look like you’re sleeping much,” Jim said.

In fact he hadn’t been. Too much to think about. Too many things he didn’t want to think about. His days were either empty or surrealistic and his nights were often sleepless. But he didn’t want to say that. “I didn’t come to complain. Actually, I wanted to talk about Lillian. She refused to come in for monitoring. I wondered if you knew that. I don’t anticipate any problems with the pregnancy, but it seems like a bad precedent.”

Jim listened carefully. Then he wiped his chin with a paper napkin and shrugged. “If she says she doesn’t need to see you, and there’s no pressing problem, maybe we ought to leave it at that.”

“There isn’t currently a problem. But she’s pregnant and forty, and that’s hardly a risk-free scenario. And you know it, Jim. If she wants to change doctors—for whatever reason—okay. Fine. We’ll set her up with a specialist. But she has to see somebody.”

“Does she?”

“Christ’s sake, Jim!”

His exclamation echoed around the empty room.

“All I’m saying, Matt, is that she has more access to her internal condition than she used to. It sounds strange, but it’s true. She knows things you might not expect her to know.”

“I’m skeptical of that.”

“I guess I would be too, in your position. I don’t know what I can say to convince you. If it means anything, Tm convinced.”

“Convinced of what? That Lillian doesn’t need medical care?”

“That she knows whether she needs it or not. If she did, Matt, I’m sure she’d come to you.” He folded the napkin. “We miss seeing you. Why don’t you stop by the house sometime? Talk to her yourself. She’d be happy to talk.”

“Can she perform an ultrasound on herself? Can she diagnose an ectopic pregnancy?”

“I believe she can.”

“Jesus!”

“Matt, would you calm down? I can explain it… but not if you’re raving.”

He wondered if he ought to simply leave the table. But Jim was his friend, or had been his friend; maybe he was obliged to listen a while longer.

“It feels like a century since we talked about this. That night at your house. Less than a month ago. Remember that? Just before Contact. We got drunk.”

“You were talking about machines in the blood.”

“Neocytes.”

“Is that what you call them?”

“It’s the consensus name.” Matt let this pass.

“The point is,” Jim said, “they’re still here. Not in you. You sent ’em packing. Your blood is original stock—and I guess you know that, since I haven’t seen you down in the path lab doing your own smears.”

True. The Travellers, as Annie called them, had told Matt they would leave his body, and he had believed it—he had never questioned the matter.

“But the rest of us are still carrying neocytes,” Jim said, “and they’re doing some work. Nothing too obvious yet. But take Lillian. If she was ectopic, or preeclamptic, or anything like that, the neocytes would deal with it. Or they would let her know so she could take the appropriate steps. I’m not sitting here telling you Lillian should go through this pregnancy unmonitored. The point is, she is monitored. She’s getting better attention than you or I could give her, and she’s getting it twenty-four hours a day.”

“And that’s…” He couldn’t contain his horror. “That’s okay with you?”

“It’s a benevolent process, Matt. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“My God. My God. What about the fetus? We’re talking about your child. Are they working on it, too? Is the child full of… neocytes?”

“Yes, it is.”

Matt stood up too quickly. The table rocked and an empty cafeteria glass dropped and shattered on the floor.

Jim bent to pick up the pieces. He put two daggerlike shards on the table, out of harm’s way. He said, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You’re bleeding,” Matt said.

He’d cut his hand. The blood that oozed out was thick. It was the color and consistency, Matt thought, of hot blackstrap molasses.

Later in the afternoon, he stopped by Tom Kindle’s room.

The floor nurse called Kindle “a handful,” her code word for a patient who was uncooperative but good-humored about it. Kindle, who had lived alone on the slopes of Mt. Buchanan for some years, seemed to be adjusting fairly well to the new situation—his injury, Contact. Matt guessed he had the advantage of not feeling suddenly like an outsider… he had been an outsider all along.

When Matt entered the room, Kindle was watching TV; when he noticed Matt, he hit the mute button on the remote control.