By the light of the moon

likely by
the hour traveling further beyond ordinary human experience.
    Soon, when movie talk began to seem not merely insignificant but
bizarre, evidence of epic denial, Jilly started to bring them back
to their dilemma. Referring to the convoluted chain of logic with
which Dylan had gotten his brother to accept that folding out of or
into a public place was as taboo as peeing on old ladies' shoes,
she said, 'That was brilliant out there.'
    'Brilliant?' He shook his head in disagreement. 'It was
mean.'
    'No. Don't beat yourself up.'
    'In part it was mean. I hate that, but I've gotten pretty good
at it when I have to be.'
    'The point needed to be made,' she said. 'And quickly.'
    'Don't make excuses for me. I might enjoy it too much, and start
making them for myself.'
    'Grim doesn't look good on you, O'Conner. I like you better when
you're irrationally optimistic.'
    He smiled. 'I like me better that way, too.'
    After finishing the last bite of a club sandwich and washing it
down with a swallow of Coors, she sighed and said, 'Nanomachines,
nanocomputers... if all those little buggers are busy making me so
much smarter, why do I still have trouble getting my mind around
the whole concept?'
    'They aren't necessarily making us smarter. Just different. Not
all change is for the better. By the way, Proctor found it awkward
to keep talking about nanomachines controlled by nanocomputers, so
he invented a new word to describe those two things when they're
combined. Nanobots. A combination of nano and robots .'
    'A cute name doesn't make them any less scary.' She frowned,
rubbed the back of her neck as if working a chill out of it.
'Déjà vu all over again. Nanobots. That rings a bell. And
back in the room, you seemed to expect me to know more about this.
Why?'
    'The piece I called up for you to read on the laptop, the one I
condensed for you instead... it was a transcript of an hour-long
interview that Proctor did on your favorite radio program.'
    'Parish Lantern?'
    'Proctor's been on the show three times in five years, the third
time for two hours. It figures you might've heard him once,
anyway.'
    Jilly brooded about this development for a moment and clearly
didn't like the implications. 'Maybe I'd better start worrying more
about Earth's magnetic pole shifting, and about brain leeches from
an alternate reality, for that matter.'
    Outside, a vehicle pulled off the street, into the parking lot,
and raced past the restaurant at such imprudent speed that Dylan's
attention was drawn by the roar of its engine and by the flash of
its passage. A black Suburban. The rack of four spotlights fixed to
the roof above the windshield didn't come as a standard accessory
with every Suburban sold.
    Jilly saw it, too. 'No. How could they find us?'
    'Maybe we should've changed plates again after what happened at
the restaurant in Safford.'
    The SUV braked to a stop in front of the motel office, next door
to the coffee shop.
    'Maybe that little weasel, Skipper, at the service station
suspected something.'
    'Maybe a hundred things.'
    Dylan faced the motel, but Jilly was sitting with her back to
the action. Or to some of it. She pointed, tapping one index finger
against the window. 'Dylan. Across the street.'
    Through the tinted window, through the heat snakes writhing up
from the sun-baked pavement, he saw another black Suburban in front
of the motel that stood on the far side of the street.
    Finishing the last bite of his lunch, Shep said, 'Shep wants
cake.'
    From his angle of view, even with his face close to the window,
Dylan wasn't able to see the entire Suburban now that it had parked
in front of the registration office. Half the vehicle remained in
his line of sight, however, and he watched two men get out of the
driver's side. Dressed in lightweight, light-colored clothes
suitable for a desert resort, they looked like golfers headed for
an afternoon on the links: unusually big golfers; unusually big,
tough-looking golfers.
    'Please,' Shep remembered to say. 'Cake please.'

30
    Dylan was accustomed to being one of the biggest guys
in just about any room, but the two hulks who got out of the
driver's side of the Suburban looked as if they had spent the
morning in a rodeo ring, tossing cowboys in the air and goring
them. They disappeared around the car, heading toward the motel
office.
    'Let's go,' he said, sliding out of the booth, rising to his
feet.
    Jilly got up at once, but Shep didn't move. Head bowed, staring
at his clean plate, he