Strangers

an unfaltering optimist like Stefan Wycazik felt a tingle of fear.
        

        
        After using a pay phone at a Shell service station in Elko to get in touch with Alexander Christophson in Boston, Ginger accompanied Faye to Elroy and Nancy Jamison's ranch in the Lemoille Valley, twenty miles from Elko. The Jamisons were the Blocks' friends who had been visiting on the evening of July 6, the summer before last. They had surely been caught up in the unknown events of that night and had been detained at the motel for brainwashing, with everyone else, though they remembered differently, of course. According to their program of false memories, they had been allowed to evacuate the danger zone, taking Ernie and Faye with them. They believed they had returned to their small ranch, where they and the Blocks had passed the next few days. That was also what Faye and Ernie had believed - until recently.
        Ginger and Faye were paying a visit to the Jamisons not to inform them of what had actually happened but to determine, as indirectly as possible, if the Jamisons were having troubles of the kind afflicting Ginger, Ernie, Dom, and some of the others. If they were suffering, they would be brought into the mutually supportive community at the motel-the members of which had come to think of themselves as the "Tranquility family" - and would join the search for answers.
        But if the brainwashing had been effective, the Jamisons would not be told anything. To tell the Jamisons would be to endanger them.
        Besides, given the urgent strategy developed last night with Jack Twist, if the Jamisons were not already suffering, there was no point wasting a lot of time convincing them that they'd' been brainwashed. Time was precious, and every passing hour carried the Tranquility family deeper into danger. Jack believed - and convinced Ginger - that their enemies would soon move against them.
        The drive from Elko in the motel's van was quick and scenic. The picturesque Lemoille Valley - fifteen miles long, four miles wide - began at the foot of the Ruby Mountains. Wheat, barley, and potato farms occupied the lowlands, though the fields were unplanted now, slumbering under scattered patches of snow.
        Between the valley floor and the mountains, the higher lands and foothills offered lush pasturage, and that was where the Jamisons had their ranch. At one time, they owned hundreds of acres on which they raised cattle, but eventually they sold off much of their property, which had risen substantially in value, and got out of the livestock business. Now, in their early sixties and retired, they owned about fifty acres in the foothills, employed no ranch hands, and kept only three horses and a few chickens.
        As Faye turned off the main valley road onto a lane leading into the highlands, she said, "I think someone's following US.
        The back doors of the van had no windows, so Ginger looked at the side-mounted mirror. A nondescript sedan was about a hundred feet behind them. "How do you know?"
        "Same car's been back there since the Union 76 in town."
        "Maybe it's coincidence," Ginger said.
        When they had followed the lane over halfway up the valley wall, they reached the long narrow driveway to the Jamisons' ranch, which led half a mile back through deep shadows thrown by flanking rows of big pines. Faye pulled into the driveway and slowed to see what the other car would do. Instead of going past, farther up into the hills, it pulled to a stop and parked along the outer lane, directly across from the entrance to the Jamisons' property.
        In the sideview mirror, Ginger could see that the car was a late-model Plymouth, painted a flat ugly brown-green.
        "Obviously a government heap," Faye said.
        "Pretty bold, aren't they?"
        "Well, if they've been eavesdropping on us the way Jack says, through our own telephones, then they know we're on to them, so maybe they figure there's no point in playing coy with us." Faye took her foot off the brake and headed up the driveway.
        Watching the unmarked Plymouth dwindle in the side mirror, Ginger said, "Or maybe they're getting in position to take us into custody. Maybe they've put tails on all of us, and maybe they're just waiting for the order to snatch us all at the same time."
        On the narrow, gravel driveway, the interlacing shadows of the overarching pines wove a darkness nearly