me.
I make up my mind and hurry after them.
“Excuse me,” I call.
They stop and turn. One is red-haired and clean-shaven, with an abundance of freckles covering his face and bare arms. The other is bigger and a dark bushy beard covers his face. One of his bottom teeth is missing.
“Could you give me a ride?”
“No problem, honey,” the redhead says.
Needing more than a ride, I reach out to touch them both.
* * * *
I am a fragmental, a complete duplicate of my core self. I have my own memories and think my own thoughts. When I reintegrate with my core, our memories resynchronize and we know all that has happened to each other. My core remains behind in Joanna.
The redhead is named Greg. His thoughts about Joanna are unimportant. The sight of a vulnerable pretty woman so often resonates with the most basic desires to procreate. Taking absolute control of his body, I push his self deep down into his brain. He is vaguely aware of my presence, experiencing me as a irritating headache pounding at his temples. Greg has just finished two beers with a dinner of chicken-fried steak. The beer is a good idea, so I reach back to touch Joanna and the other man. A rapid conference and Willard, the other man, goes to the store to buy a case of beer.
The truck has a large toolbox in the bed up against the cab. Greg keeps various odds and ends in there and a quick examination reveals that there is room for the woman to hide in there. I do not want my core exposed if we are stopped by another roadblock.
Five minutes later, I am behind the wheel heading south. Greg was born in Copley twenty-two years ago and still lives with his widowed mother. He is a good man who supports his mother and younger sister in spite of a weakness for drunken parties. Trolling his memories for possible escape routes reveals a pond on a large farm that a friend’s father owns. He and his friends often fish there while drinking. A road through that farm passes near the freeway that circles past Akron.
A quick touch and the fragmental in Willard agrees with my plan. We find the entrance to the farm road a bit later, and Willard climbs out to open the gate. It is unlocked, since there is not anything of great value beyond. Moments later we are bumping down the farm road past fields of corn and soybeans. The scale of modern agriculture never ceases to amaze me. Hundreds of acres farmed by a handful of men, not like the life that I knew for so many centuries when nine out of every ten people served the needs of the land.
Willard touches me and I slow to a stop. We open the toolbox and help Joanna out. The bumpy road has already bruised her forehead. A pang of guilt at my own thoughtlessness. To some it might seem curious, to feel guilty of what one has done to oneself.
Joanna sits with us as we creep along the road with the lights turned off. We approach a copse of trees that surrounds the pond of Greg’s memory. Coming around it, we see the lights of passing cars on the freeway. A rig pulling three trailers rumbles past. Leaving the road, we jolt across rows of half-grown corn.
At the end of the corn, we stop. A small forest obscures the freeway. The trees are placed by the chaotic logic of nature, not the linear logic of man who thinks in straight rows. Willard takes some wire cutters from the toolbox and clips a path for us while I help Joanna back into hiding. Her body is so exhausted that we are concerned that she might collapse.
After waiting for a moment, there is no oncoming traffic. We crawl up onto the freeway and then race south, having successfully circumvented any possible police roadblocks around Akron.
The radio is tuned to a country-western station. Personally, I normally listen to a classical station, but now was not the time for relaxation and contemplation. I scan for an all-news source and find WNES on the AM band. The various reports cover sports, the economy, the infidelity of an Akron councilwoman, and then comes the top story.
After a brief introduction, a recording of a police spokesperson is played. “At six forty-five p. m. today, Senator William Handlin was found dead at the Euclid office of Dr. James Barash, a psychiatrist. He was bludgeoned to death and Dr. Barash is being sought for questioning.” The recording ended and the announcer continued, “Senator Handlin was the junior Senator from Ohio, serving his second term after winning re-election two years ago.”
We leave the radio on as the dim ghosts of the night flicker by.
Later comes an update. “Further information is becoming available about the mysterious Dr. Barash, who is being sought in the death of Senator Handlin. An anonymous source within the Federal Bureau of Investigation has informed UPI Radio that a search of the doctor’s home found child pornography. He said, quote, ‘boxes full of videos and still photos.’ Another source reports that there were also negatives, which would mean that Dr. Barash produced this material himself.”
A search of my home? Child pornography? How had the other one got hold of such vile filth in so short a time? After a while, I begin to think about the radio broadcast, what was said and what was not. It had been unusually well informed, as if the police were freely releasing information to the press. They did not even bother to use the word alleged when referring to me. None of this was normal. The enemy must be manipulating the release in order to increase the frenzy of the search for me.
CHAPTER SIX
I am now fully integrated, with no fragmentals. Greg and Willard lie sleeping in the cab of the truck, empty beer cans piled at their feet. My body trudges away from the road, the darkness of unconsciousness gnawing at the edges of my vision. My head feels like the anvil of a blacksmith and he is busy at work. The pain throbs so intensely that I find my gait is in sync with its cresting and ebbing. The cabin is only a quarter of a mile away through the woods.
Dawn is three hours away. When the two men awake from their drunken stupor I expect a blackout to obscure the past several hours. They might remember a blonde woman, but hopefully confusion and embarrassment will stifle their questions.
A dog starts to bark nearby and I freeze. There are other cabins up here, weekend getaways for the more exclusive sort. I last visited two years ago. Sinking to my knees and pressing my fingers against my temples, I will my tired brain to function and draw out the memories of that visit.
It was spring then. Green leaves everywhere. Bright flowers among the underbrush. The gravel road twists and turns, going from cabin to cabin. Each owner has five acres. There was a pond, three or so acres. A houseboat on it. That should be off to my right. The gravel road to my left.
Another dog joins the first in frenzied barking. Are they agitated over me? Sometimes dogs just like to bark. Standing, I move to the left. One hundred yards. Two hundred. The crunch of gravel under my feet.
I am so tempted to stay on the road and just follow it to my cabin. But the chances of being seen are too great. Across and into the trees on the far side, up a slight rise and then the glow of a lamp through the trees. The Saunders lived there. They keep that lamp on year-round, even when not here, a habit born of suburbia. My cabin is the next one.
A whiff of skunk jerks my head up. Faint, yet pungent. So that is what the dogs are complaining about. I turn about a bit, sniffing. Running into that frightened critter would be a complete disaster. I do not have any way of cleaning myself if it marks me. It is to the left, deeper in the woods, where I had wanted to go.
I move back to the road and travel on its edge, pushing branches aside. Past the Saunders’. There is the cabin. A key is hidden in the bole of a tree around back.
