Strangers

Brendan two adults to back up his story. Jorja and Marcie could go with Faye and Ernie to the Hannabys in Boston, with a note from me. George and Rita will take them seriously, get them an audience. My note alone will assure they're welcome and listened to. But their reception is doubly assured because in ten minutes Rita will recognize herself in Faye, and they'll be like sisters, and Rita will go to the mat for her. My presence is not essential there. I'm needed more here. For one thing, the infiltration of the Depository will be a dangerous undertaking. Either of you - Dom, Jack - might be hurt and need emergency medical attention. We don't know for sure that Dom has the same healing power as Brendan, and even if he has it, he might not be able to control it. So a doctor might come in handy, huh? Second, if it'll help having a famous author - all right, Dom, moderately famous - as a hostage, then we'll get even more press attention if a woman's held in Thunder Hill. God damn it, you really need me, Jack!"
        "You're right," he said, startling her by his quick agreement. But what she said made sense, and there was no point wasting time debating it. "Ned, you'll go with Sandy and Brendan to Chicago."
        "I don't mind going to the Depository with you, if that's what you think's best," Ned told him.
        "I know," Jack said. "I did think it was best, but now I don't. Jorja, you and Marcie will go to Boston with Ernie and Faye. Now, if we don't get the hell out of here soon, the whole question of who goes where won't matter anyway, because we'll be back in the hands of the people who had us drugged senseless the summer before last."
        Ned pulled the table away from the door. Ernie removed the panel of plywood standing there, and beyond the glass the world was a whirling white wall of wind and snow.
        "Terrific," Jack said. "Good cover."
        As they stepped out into the driving snow, they could see only as far as the place where the green-brown, government Plymouth had been parked out by the county road. It was gone. That made Jack uneasy. He preferred the watchers out in the open - where he could also watch them.
        

        
        The conference call did not progress as Colonel Leland Falkirk had foreseen. He intended to seek agreement that the witnesses at the motel must be rounded up at once and conveyed to the Thunder Hill Depository. He expected that he and General Riddenhour would be able to convince the others that the threat of a spreading infection was both real and acute, and that he should be permitted to destroy everyone in the Tranquility group as well as the entire staff of Thunder Hill the moment he put his hands on proof that those individuals were no longer human, proof he fully expected to obtain. But from the moment he picked up the phone, nothing went his way. The situation deteriorated.
        Emil Foxworth, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had news of yet another disastrous development. The team making new memory modifications in the Salcoe family in Monterey, California, had been visited by a persistent intruder. They had thought they'd cornered him - a burly, bearded man - but he had made a spectacular escape. The four Salcoes were quickly transferred to a medical van and moved to a safe-house for continuation of memory modifications. A registration check on the bearded intruder's abandoned car identified it as a rental from the local airport agency, and the lessee was not merely a burglar but Parker Faine, Corvaisis' friend. "Subsequently," the Director said, "we traced Faine on a flight out of Monterey to San Francisco, but there we've lost him. We have no idea where he's been or what he's been up to since his West Air flight landed at SFX."
        Foster Polnichev, in the FBI's Chicago office, was already of the view that maintaining the cover-up was impossible, and news of Faine's escape confirmed that opinion. The two political appointees - Foxworth of the FBI, and James Herton, National Security Adviser to the President - were in agreement with him.
        Furthermore, with oily skill, Foster Polnichev argued that every development-the miraculous cures effected by Cronin and Tolk; the wondrous telekinetic powers of Corvaisis and Emmy Halbourg - indicated that the ultimate effects of the events of July 6 were going to be beneficial to mankind, not detrimental. "And we know that Doctor Bennell and most of the people