He looked steadily at Murdoch as he pulled the trigger. Click!

He spun the chamber again.

“That’s the advantage I have over you, you lame little fuck. That I’m capable of this.”

Perhaps Murdoch, the weapons specialist, was visualizing the internal working of the pistol, the firing pin as it came down on empty air—or not. Click!

“I can do this without flinching. Now. Can you?”

Murdoch huddled away from the barrel of the pistol. He looked pinned in his chair by an invisible wind. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, a motion Tyler watched with fascination. It looked like there was something inside him trying to get out, something more substantial than a word.

“Christ,” Murdoch said in a strangled voice, “please, Christ Jesus, don’t!”

“This is why you call me sir. You understand?”

“Yes! Yes, sir!”

“I doubt it.” Click!

“Christ, Christ, put the gun away, Jesus, don’t do this to me!” Murdoch was rigid with terror. His hands were clamped on the arms of the chair. In the sterile light of the hotel room, Murdoch’s wristwatch was clearly visible. Tyler watched the numerals blink. He counted thirty seconds, then he lowered the pistol.

He looked at Murdoch and smiled. “We’ll leave in the morning,” he said.

Murdoch opened his mouth but no sound came out.

Tyler put the pistol back on the table. “Maybe you should get your things together, Mr. Murdoch.”

Murdoch blinked until he realized he had been excused, the ordeal was over. Then he stood up on shaky legs, walked to the door, turned, and took a last bewildered look at Tyler before he left and closed the door behind him.

Tyler’s headache was much worse.

Later, it occurred to him to look for the bullet he’d palmed; but it wasn’t beside the chair, nor in his pocket, nor on the tabletop. Finally he opened the pistol and found the bullet resting in the chamber—exactly where he had led Murdoch to believe it was. Which worried him a little. It was a strange sort of mistake to have made.

Murdoch lay awake for what remained of the night with the door of his hotel room locked and chained—eyes open, because when he closed them he saw the barrel of Tyler’s service revolver pointed at him.

Or Soo Constantine, pale and naked in a darkened room.

Or an empty human skin littering the doorway of an old house.

Dear God, he thought, what if Tyler had shot him? He wouldn’t be a skin. He’d be a corpse. A messier object, as Soo had pointed out.

She’d talked about the missing people as if they had really gone somewhere. Had they? True, the Travellers had promised that. The memory of Contact was vague in Murdoch’s mind, a dream that paled by daylight. But he remembered the promise of a new kind of life, both physical and bodiless… an idea that had made sense, somehow, in the intensity of Contact.

It’s not too late, Soo had said.

And why did the words linger on?

Was he actually tempted by the offer? Was such a thing possible? But that’s terrible, Murdoch thought: I don’t want to be an empty skin on some empty street, like a bottle somebody drained and threw away. It’s something they choose. No. Bullshit, Murdoch thought. But she hadn’t seemed like a liar.

He tried to imagine himself travelling on with Tyler, watching the old man sink into outright lunacy, firing missiles at something, anything—trying to make sense of the world by dismantling it.

Christ, Murdoch thought miserably, I don’t even know where I am! I couldn’t find this town on a map. Loftus? Where is it?

I’m lost, Murdoch thought.

Rain tapped on the window.

He tossed and slept a little in the last hour before dawn.

Tyler woke regretting the incident of the night before and tried to act as if it hadn’t happened. He knocked on Murdoch’s door and asked for some help loading up the Hummer. Murdoch nodded—both of them a little sheepish, Tyler thought, in the sober light of morning—and began to assemble the cooking gear.

They carried their personal items to the street, around the corner to the Exxon station where the Hummer was parked under cover. Tyler arranged the baggage in the rear of the vehicle and made sure everything was strapped down. Murdoch, looking baleful and confused, watched from a few feet away.

Then Tyler took the passenger seat and waited for Murdoch to climb in behind the wheel. It was a conciliatory gesture, giving Murdoch the reins, a small apology for the night before.

But Murdoch didn’t move. “Sir,” he said, “I think I left something in the room.”

Tyler took a pair of sunglasses from his breast pocket and polished them on a handkerchief. “What sort of thing, Sergeant?”

“Compass,” Murdoch mumbled.

“Isn’t that with the mess kit? I thought I saw it there.”

“Sir, I don’t think so.” He made no move to look.

The air in the garage was thick. It smelled of gasoline and old solvents. This is a dark place, Tyler thought, an oppressive place.

“It was a cheap compass,” he said. “We can find one like it anywhere.”

“It’s easier if I just go back, sir.”

“Back to the hotel room?”

“Yes, sir.”

Tyler understood the lie and the significance of the lie. It made him feel enormously sad—this shabby little betrayal.

“Well,” Tyler said. “You’d better hurry, then, Sergeant.” Embarrassingly, Murdoch couldn’t hide his relief. “Yes, sir.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

“Yes, sir.”

Colonel Tyler watched his young blond-haired friend leave the Exxon garage. Murdoch was haloed for a moment in the morning light—the rain had finally stopped—then he turned into the shadow of a taller building and was gone.

Soo was in the manager’s office of the Roxy, only just awake, wearing a gray sweatshirt that reached nearly to her knees. She looked up as Murdoch came through the door.

The room was different in the morning light, Murdoch thought. Sunlight came through the small, high window. The floorboards were lustrous and ancient. The mattress looked disheveled, as if the girl hadn’t slept much herself.

“Soo—” he began.

“You don’t have to explain, A.W. I understand.” She stood up. “I know why you’re here. It’s okay.”

He was as scared as he had ever been. More frightened than when Tyler was pointing his pistol at him. The impulse that had brought him here seemed reckless, foolish.

She moved closer.

“I don’t know,” he said, “I mean I’m still not sure if I—”

“It doesn’t hurt or anything.”

That’s what they tell you about vaccinations, Murdoch thought. About dentists.

“It’s just life.” She touched him. She put her hands on his shoulders and tilted up her head. “A new kind of life.”

And Murdoch closed his eyes and kissed her.

He guessed the neocytes entered his body at that moment. There was no sensation, nothing more ominous than the touch of her lips. It reassured him that she still smelled like Soo, still tasted like Soo. The fear began to subside.

She stepped back and smiled at him. “Now we can be together, A.W. Together as long as we want.”

He was about to frame a reply when three things happened almost simultaneously:

The door flew open, striking Murdoch across the ribs and throwing him aside…

And John Tyler strode into the room, his pistol at arm’s length…

And there was a sound like the snapping of an immense tree limb, as Tyler’s weapon kicked and Soo Constantine’s head shuddered in an explosion of blood and tissue.