Sergeant Jerry Connor had gone to scores of accidents in four years on the California Highway Patrol, but it was the first serious accident he'd seen in the process of happening. The silver Fiat just seemed to take off—it left the ground on a divergent flight path and impacted the powder-dry hillside with a burst of dust. Connor hit the siren and flasher, and the traffic dropped back as the patrol car elbowed its way into the right-hand lane and onto the shoulder.
At the time it seemed like just another freeway accident—worse than most, but nothing strange. Connor jumped out with the first-aid chest while his partner reported the accident over the radio. Traffic was returning to its regular flow, more or less. Four or five civilian cars had pulled off onto the shoulder; now all but one slipped back into traffic.
Someone had gotten out of that one, ahead of Connor. She was running, pretty white dress, long blonde hair, a flower skittering through the coarse drought-bleached grass toward the wreckage. Connor broke into a gallop but she reached the wreckage well ahead of him.
Telescoped and flattened, the Fiat lay upside down on almost the same spot as a wreck he'd been to a few months earlier, and maybe sixty yards from one the year before. And he knew that someone in it was just as dead as someone had been in each of the other two. The girl verified it for him before he got there, not by screaming, or even crying yet, but her face was white, wide-eyed, shocked, her knuckles shoved between her teeth. For a moment he felt her gathering grief.
The driver was very conspicuously dead, but Connor knelt for a moment as a matter of form, checking him out. That's when she began to cry, big wracking sobs. Connor got up and stood by uncomfortably, letting her get through the worst of it. His partner, who'd followed him, started filling out the accident report. After a minute or so she began to come out of it, her head bowed, her face wet and miserable.
Her name was Carol Ludi. She had just driven from Chicago by way of San Francisco, and her brother had met her at Castaic to guide her to his place in L.A. She didn't know how fast they'd been going, but she was sure they hadn't been speeding; he'd been taking it easy so he wouldn't lose her.
In most respects it was a routine sort of thing for Connor, but when he'd left, the accident hadn't dropped out of his attention the way they usually did. And it wasn't because the girl was pretty or because he'd actually seen the accident occur. It was because it had struck him that there was something strange about the accidents on the pass. He'd never looked at it before; probably, he decided, because people don't like to think about things that don't make any sense.
Fatalities are rare on the freeways, when you consider the immense volume of commuter traffic they carry. But on this freeway there were two short stretches that got more than their share. On just about any road there are places where accidents tend to happen, and these can usually be explained by something about the road or the terrain: places where fog tends to form or move in or there's a sun problem—something like that. But where Kevin Ludi had gone airborne, and on another stretch on the other side of the pass, there was no apparent reason for the unusual number of fatalities.
Connor brought it up with Benny Benitez, the oldest guy in the division. Benitez said it had been like that back before the freeway was built, when it was just an ordinary highway. Then it was mostly head-on collisions, and they blamed it on people passing slow-moving vehicles.
That wasn't the case anymore.
Next, on his own time, Connor graphed the accident frequency, starting with data about eight years old. The number of cars over the pass each day hadn't increased much, and for several years the average had been about one fatal accident every forty days.
But there was something odd about that average. With an average of one every forty days, you'd expect maybe two in two days sometimes, then none for maybe two or three months, and then another twenty days later—something irregular like that. But for five years of data there had always been one on the sixty-third day, give or take a day, with unbroken regularity. This regularity had been obscured by scattered random fatalities that might occur anywhere on the pass.
Then, about three years before the Ludi accident, the sixty-three day intervals had begun to narrow. After two years they had closed to one every forty-eighth day. In the last twelve months they had closed to one every thirty-sixth day.
Connor looked at the strip of taped-together graph paper and got a rush of goose bumps. He had no idea what all this meant, but somehow it scared him. He showed what he'd found to the lieutenant, who looked annoyed and said something about coincidence—"one of those little peculiarities."
Although it was an asinine response, Connor didn't argue; for one thing, he had no explanation of his own to push, and for another, he had no idea what to do next. Other matters crowded it from his attention, and for the next four months he thought of it less and less often. He might have effectively forgotten about it except for what happened next.
He was driving up the pass on a rainy winter day when he saw someone standing at the site where Kevin Ludi had been greased, and he had his partner pull off on the shoulder. There was nothing actually wrong with someone standing out there in the rain and mud, but it was odd. And he knew who it was, even at a hundred-plus feet, though her back was to him and she wore a hooded raincoat. He'd assumed Carol Ludi would have been back in Chicago months ago. He was tempted to go over and speak to her, but he was on duty and couldn't think of any logical reason to, besides which it was genuinely pouring just then. So they drove on.
But after his shift, he found the Ludis' address and phone number in the files, and when he got home, he called. While he was dialing, it occurred to him that he had no idea what he was going to say.
"Ludi residence. This is Carol."
"Hi, Miss Ludi. I'm Jerry Connor of the California Highway Patrol. You may remember me from, uh, your brother's accident. But this is not an official call. It's ... personal."
There were several seconds of silence. "Yes?" she said warily.
"I saw you today," he said. "At the accident site. I'd like to meet you somewhere this evening and talk about it." There were several more seconds of silence, and he was starting to feel like a fool. What was there, in fact, to talk about? Maybe she'd say no, he thought, and save him further embarrassment.
She did say no. Actually, she said she already had an appointment for the evening, but the way she said it—very flatly—was like a no. And to Connor's surprise, he found himself digging in.
"How about before your appointment? Or afterward?"
Her next lag was even longer, but when she answered, it was thoughtfully. "Well ... actually, there's no firm time set for it. This person is going to stop by when she can. Do you know where I live?"
"You're on your sister-in-law's phone, and I've got her address from the accident report."
"All right, you can come over. But you may be interrupted or have to wait."
"I'm on my way," he said, "and thanks!" He hung up, grabbed a banana, took a big swig from the milk jug—supper—and left.
The address was in the Hollywood Hills, and the storm had turned the narrow, winding street into a mountain stream. The house was one of the more modest in its neighborhood, worth perhaps half a million: Real estate costs are out of sight in the Hills. He turned his '82 Rabbit into the manicured jungle that was the yard and parked behind someone's BMW. Probably a visitor, he decided; on a day like this, the residents would have pulled into the garage. Jumping out, he sprinted through the downpour, pursued by a clap of thunder.
The entryway was roofed, and after he pushed the door chimes, he turned and watched the wind thrash the tall eucalyptus trees in the darkness while the rain splashed. Ludi's widow answered the door, and if Carol was pretty, this woman was stunning, the visual effect sharpened by a light German-Swiss accent. She had a dark tan that had not dried her skin, her hair was shiny black, and by the entry light, her slightly slanted eyes looked violet-blue. She looked like an athlete—a dancer or skater.
"You must be Sergeant Connor," she said.
"During duty hours I'm Sergeant Connor. Right now I'm Jerry Connor."
She smiled. "Come in, Jerry Connor. I'm Miki Ludi. Carol already has a visitor." She led him through a house decorated with plants. "I'm curious about your interest," she said. "Was there something peculiar about my husband's death? Or is it my sister-in-law you find interesting?"
He ignored the second question. "Nothing legally peculiar," he said, "but it has peculiar aspects." It didn't seem like the greatest thing in the world to say to a widow, but she'd asked.
She pushed open a door without knocking and ushered him through. The room was enclosed and snug, with built-in bookcases, a fire in the fireplace, thick throw rugs, and drapes that hid the dark stormy evening outside the sundeck door. Inside, two women sat opposite each other, both looking up at him as if in stop-action.
"Sergeant Connor is here," said Miki Ludi. Then she stepped back out, closing the door behind her, leaving him standing there awkwardly. Carol was staring, perplexed; it was her visitor who picked up the ball, standing and extending her hand. Carol stood up after her.
"I'm Laura Sigurdsson," said the guest.
Connor decided it was definitely pretty-lady night. Not only were Carol and the remarkable Miki lovely; Laura Sigurdsson was exceptionally good-looking, in her mid- to late thirties, with honey-blonde hair, greenish hazel eyes, and a delicate, symmetrical face. But he also got a sense of decisive and confident ability. She could easily be an executive somewhere; maybe, he thought, she was.
"Sergeant Connor," she said, "Carol and I were discussing something personal. Would you care to wait in another room?"
The way she said it wasn't cold or unfriendly, simply direct.
Carol spoke then. "Sergeant Connor came to talk about the accident I ... Maybe he has something we..." She didn't know where to take it from there.
Neither did Connor, but he started, trusting the ideas to come to him. "Call me Jerry," he said, "not sergeant. Like I said on the phone, this is strictly unofficial."
And the ideas came, surging out unforeseen. "When the accident occurred," said Jerry, "traffic was moving about forty-five to fifty miles an hour. I recall thinking at the time that it was slow for the conditions. And if Mr. Ludi had been going much faster, we'd have noticed. But he went airborne as if he was doing seventy, and the wreck looked like it."
Connor surprised himself with the statement. He hadn't even thought about that before, but it was right, without question. From there he went into the fatality frequency statistics, wondering where all this was leading. "And while I haven't checked the records, from the instances I know of personally, I think we'd find that the sixty-third-day wrecks—thirty-sixth-day wrecks now, or closer—we'd find that they're all cars that had just crossed the summit of the pass, within a mile."
Then the inspiration ran out as suddenly as it had turned on, and he stood there like a lump, waiting for someone to ask "so what?" and "why are you telling us these things?"
Instead, they looked at each other meaningfully before turning back to him. "Thank you, Jerry," said Laura Sigurdsson, and stood again. "Miss Ludi, I'll recommend to my husband that he get together with you. What Mr. Connor told us makes it look very ... interesting."
Carol excused herself to see Mrs. Sigurdsson to the door. Connor's attention stuck on the name Sigurdsson. It was familiar, but he couldn't place it. Sigurdsson was an unusual name in L.A.—not like Garcia or Wong or Miyake or Rosenbloom, or even Jones. He walked over to the bookcase and examined the exposed spines on the ranks of hardcover books. The books were mostly things like the classics and Brittanica, perhaps more for decoration than for reading.
A paperback lay on the coffee table, and when he glanced at it, he knew why the name had been familiar. The cover announced:
OLAF SIGURDSSON
MASTER PSYCHIC
By
Laura Wayne Walker
He picked it up. For Laura Wayne Walker, read Laura Sigurdsson, he thought; apparently the interviews had resulted in a marriage as well as a book. On the cover, Olaf Sigurdsson appeared to be in his mid-fifties and a bit unkempt, with a craggy grinning face and a thatch of gray hair. He wore a checkered lumberjack shirt and looked more like a good-natured North Dakota farmer than someone a beautiful, still-young authoress would marry, particularly since the book had been printed several years earlier. Sigurdsson would probably be sixty or more by now.
Carol Ludi came back in.
"I was looking at your book," said Connor, holding it up. "Why are you interested in a psychic?"
She sat down before she answered; Connor sat down opposite her in the chair that Laura Sigurdsson had occupied. "I want to get in touch with my brother, Kevin," Carol said. "And a mutual friend recommended Mr. Sigurdsson to me."
"Is that why your sister-in-law interrupted you by ushering me in? She doesn't approve of psychics?"
"It's not that. She just tends to be direct. Actually, she and Kevin were both very interested in psychic phenomena and things like that. That's one of the things they had in common."
"How do you feel about psychics?"
"I suppose some of them are phonies; maybe most of them. But that doesn't mean Ole is."
Sigurdsson had been dubbed "the psychic of the stars" for his work, probably very lucrative, with entertainment personalities. Connor knew of him more for his work with police: describing criminals, reconstructing crimes, and locating missing persons.
"Why do you want to get in touch with your brother?"
She didn't answer at once, nor did she meet Connor's gaze. "That's what Laura asked me," Carol said. "She told me that dead people don't usually hang around as ghosts very long. They go and reincarnate somewhere."
"Umm."
"But I'm sure that Kevin hasn't. You see, sergeant—Mr. Connor—"
"Jerry," he said.
"Jerry, Kevin and I were very close. We were twins, and closer even than most identical twins. We didn't even have the usual childhood spats or jealousies. And since he ... died out there, I've felt that he's been hanging around me, trying to tell me something. Something important."
She got up and started pacing. "I know that sounds crazy. But as I said, Kevin had been interested in psychic phenomena since we were kids. He believed in them. That was one thing we didn't share; I didn't have much of an opinion one way or another."
She stopped and faced Connor. "Well, I believe now. I'm positive he's been trying to speak to me, to tell me something. And I think it has to do with the accident."
"I see."
"You think all this is crazy, don't you?" she said quietly.
"Nope. I've heard about some interesting things Sigurdsson's done. But even if he's genuine, he still could rip people off. I mean, here's someone that feels a terrible loss, and convinces themself that their husband or mother or brother is still around. Someone with money..."
"But I approached him!"
"Of course you did."
"And I had to really talk to Laura over the phone just to get her to come out here!"
"Okay," said Connor gently. "But a little reluctance can help set the mark up. And she did come over."
She sat down again, shaking her head. "Oh, I understand why you look at it that way. But this friend of Kevin's that I was talking to, who told me about Ole Sigurdsson, has known him for years and years, and swears by him—both his honesty and ability. And she's a hardheaded business woman—a lawyer in the film industry."
"Right. Well, whatever." Connor got up. "Look, Carol—okay if I call you Carol? I'm interested in this too, so I hope we can keep in touch. Because whether there are ghosts or not, and whether your brother is hanging around or not, something is strange about the accidents on the pass.
"And I'd like to borrow your book, if you're done with it."
Driving down the canyon, his windshield wipers beating and splashing, it occurred to Connor that Laura Sigurdsson apparently had become interested only after he'd told what he'd found, even though he was the law.
At seven-thirty the next morning, he called in sick for only the second time since he'd been on the Patrol. It was the first time he'd faked it. He'd gone to bed about four o'clock, having finished the book, and was in no shape to stand a shift if he didn't absolutely have to. Then he went back to sleep until almost noon, to wake up with Olaf Sigurdsson on his mind.
You couldn't be sure what was true in a book like that, he told himself, but it had certainly been interesting. He found himself inclined to believe a lot of it. Sigurdsson had been born in 1928 and grown up on the storm-swept coast of Iceland, in a stone house with a roof of living sod. The family had a farm of sorts, and a little fishing boat with sails as well as an engine, for harvesting fish from the rough and dangerous North Atlantic. Until age eight he'd been a normal farm boy, apparently; then he'd been kicked in the head by a horse. He'd almost died, and when he recovered, two things had changed. One, he'd become feeble-minded, and two, he'd become psychic. He'd still been functional enough to do the more routine farm work, with some supervision, but they didn't take him to sea with them when they went out for cod or herring.
Also, he claimed to remember being a notorious tenth-century Icelandic outlaw named Grettir the Strong. Grettir was famous partly for ridding a ranch of a dangerous and destructive ghost: the book told the story in brief, taken from an ancient Icelandic saga. And considering what happened to Grettir in his battle with the ghost, which was actually more of a zombie, it was surprising that Sigurdsson would have anything to do with ghosts, even if he only imagined having been Grettir.
When Sigurdsson was twenty-seven, his sister and her husband had migrated to the Scandinavian-American fishing settlement of Kitliat, Washington, and brought Olaf with them. And the farther they got from Iceland, so the book said, the brighter Olaf Sigurdsson became. By the time they arrived in New York, his intelligence seemed normal, but he was still psychic.
A good story, Connor told himself, whether it was true or not. He realized he wanted it to be, and looked forward to meeting the old man.
After brunch he went to the supermarket, and when he got home, there was a message on the phone machine. Carol Ludi had called: she had a 3 P.M. appointment with Ole Sigurdsson. She didn't mention where, nor had she invited Connor, but Connor wanted in.
His clock said two-forty. A phone call got only her answering service. It occurred to him to check the accident site and see if they were there, but that didn't make much sense: there was no reason to think they'd go there. So instead he made a cup of instant coffee and got out the TV Guide. After scanning the midday programming in disbelief, he left his coffee on the counter, went out to his car, and drove to the crash site anyway.
It was the sort of bright, fresh glinting day that can bless Los Angeles in winter. Carol and someone he assumed was Sigurdsson were standing in the breezy sunshine where the wreck had been, but Connor didn't get out and go over at once. He felt as if he'd be intruding just now, so he watched from the car. The old man looked bigger than he'd expected. The two were standing side by side, and it seemed to Connor that he could feel something heavy in the air, not good at all—something powerful and hostile.
When they turned and started back to the freeway, Connor got out and met them partway. Carol was clearly surprised to see him. Ole Sigurdsson looked calm and strong. There was a small stain on his shirt, perhaps of coffee, but no sense of the slob about him—just someone who didn't always notice things like that. Carol introduced them, and Connor shook the old man's big hand. It was like gripping a two-by-four, its hard beefiness inconsistent with Sigurdsson's rawboned frame.
"I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Sigurdsson," Connor said, then added inanely, "I never met a psychic before."
"O-oh?" The blue eyes penetrated. Suddenly the old man laughed. "You never did, eh? And v'at the hell you think you are?"
For a moment Connor didn't understand what Sigurdsson meant, thought perhaps it was some obscure insult or challenge. Then it hit him, and he got cold rushes from his scalp to his calves.
Sigurdsson's grin got bigger. "Ve vas yust going to my place," he said. "You can follow us if you vant to. I'll give you some real coffee, not that instant stuff."
Then, with abrupt vigor, the old man strode toward his car, Carol hurrying behind. Connor slanted off toward his own, preoccupied with what Sigurdsson had said to him—"V'at the hell you think you are?"
That one simple sentence explained a multitude of things for Jerry Connor, who thought he must have been feeble-minded himself all those years, never to have twigged on it.
It was because he didn't hear thoughts as such, whispering inside his head like voices; never, or seldom anyway, saw anything like a vision. He'd never had a precognition with subtitles or fanfares, had never seen in his mind a picture of something happening, only to read about it later or see it on the news. But there were all the times he'd gotten a notion to call Arnie or someone, to be told they were just getting ready to call him; the knack he had, sometimes commented on by others, of doing the right thing at the right time, like going to Ludi's just when Laura was there, or driving out here just now.
He cleared his mind of this as he buckled his seat belt, because Sigurdsson was already pulling his big white Caddy into traffic. Connor hurried to keep up; the old man drove like an Indy racer. Someone, Jerry thought, ought to give the Icelander a ticket.
Unlike his car, Sigurdsson's home was not large. It perched on the top of a very steep, very expensive ridge, with trees, shrubs, and shiny green ivy thick on three sides and a magnificent view across a canyon on the fourth. The psychic business must pay well, Connor decided, at least for Ole Sigurdsson.
Considering that Sigurdsson was a married man, the living room was a lot like bachelor's quarters—an old-timey, orderly, well-to-do bachelor. Glass doors stood open to twittering birds, the canyon view, and the smell of something or other in bloom; in southern California there was always something in bloom, even in winter. In one end of the room was a small brick box of a wood-burning stove, with a metal plate on top. Sigurdsson put two pieces of wood in it and an old-fashioned orange-red enameled coffee pot on top, and they sat down.
It was Carol that Sigurdsson spoke to. "Okay," he said, "let's see v'ere ve stand. V'at Kevin vanted to tell us is, there is something out there that kills people, makes them have wrecks, but he can't tell us no more because he don't know. So now it's up to us to find out.
"So he don't need to hang around no more, but he's still here. Right?"
She nodded soberly. It seemed to Connor that he could feel Kevin Ludi, too; he just hadn't realized before what it was that he felt. The sadness, the touch of forlornness he'd felt before around Carol wasn't his own and maybe wasn't all Carol's, either.
"Veil, v'y don't ve let him go then?" Sigurdsson said. "Let him go hang around a delivery room somev'ere and pick up a new body?"
Her face got a stricken look, and Connor felt himself—or felt someone—wanting to comfort her. Sigurdsson's face was calm, his eyes steady. "He ain't stuck here from getting killed, you know," he said. "He's stuck to you."
She nodded.
"Is there something you can tell me about that?" he asked.
"I don't want to lose him." Her voice was small, face pinched, eyes haunted. She repeated a little more strongly: "I just don't want to lose him."
"Right. Did you ever feel like that before?"
She nodded.
"V'en is the earliest time you can remember not vanting to lose Kevin?"
She thought for a moment. "When we were ten. Dad and mom sent us each to camp—two different camps, one for boys and one for girls. We both cried." She looked at Sigurdsson and half smiled, ruefully. "It was really pretty silly, when I stop to think about it, but we were just devastated. And it didn't blow over in a day or two. We both got sick—bad colds—and both camps called our parents and they had to come and get us."
"Okay. Vas there an earlier time v'en you didn't vant to lose Kevin?"
"I don't remember. Probably not, or I would."
"Okay. Vell, yust close your eyes and see if you can spot vun."
She closed her eyes, her expression wary. "That's it," said Sigurdsson. "There ... that vun." His voice was quiet, but held certainty and power. Conner wondered what the old Icelander saw that he didn't.
And then he felt it, and got a powerful cold rush again, his skin like a plucked chicken, his hair like electric wires. What, he wondered, is happening? What does this old guy have going?
Her mouth opened slightly.
"Tell me v'at you see."
"I see—two people. In a car, in the blowing snow. Everything is white and blurry, and I can't see very far. Their car is stuck. Or stalled. No, it's stuck."
She fell silent then, her face intent, seeing with her eyes closed, and after a few seconds Sigurdsson's voice nudged her gently.
"Um-hm?"
"I'm trying to figure out who they are. And where."
"Fine. Yust tell me v'at you see."
"Well, it must be really cold, because the snow is dry and blowing like dust. And I can only see a few yards.... Everything's white except the car. It's an old car, and they're sitting in it." She said the last with a note of finality, and sitting back, opened her eyes.
"All right. Is there anything else?" Sigurdsson asked.
"I don't think so."
"Okay. Vell, close your eyes and give a little look."
She frowned, peering with closed lids. "They're just sitting there," she said.
"Ya-ah?"
"With... The man has his arms around the woman. And there are..." Her voice faltered. "There are tears frozen on his cheeks and eyelashes. Little globules of ice... His lips are moving." Her face twisted, her own tears starting, and she began to cry silently. Connor got a sense of crushing grief that he knew wasn't his but that almost suffocated him. Sigurdsson just sat there, completely calm, eyes steady on her.
"She's dying," Carol said brokenly. "The woman ... freezing to death." She kept crying for what seemed to Connor like a long time—perhaps half a minute. Then Sigurdsson spoke again.
"Okay," he said quietly, "you're doing good. V'at else do you see?"
"That's all," she said. She gave a quavery sigh and opened her eyes. "That's all there is."
Sigurdsson's eyes were direct but mild. "Good. Now go back to the beginning and run through it again for me."
Her focus went off as if to an upper corner of the room, and she closed her eyes again. After what must have been another minute, she hugged her arms around herself and began to shiver. Her skin began to look waxy white to Connor's worried eyes.
Sigurdsson's words continued almost conversationally: "Tell me v'at you see."
"The same as before." Her voice was low, faint. "He's holding her to him, and she's dying, and his lips are moving.... And that's all I see."
"Fine." And then his matter-of-fact voice lit the fuse. "How do you know she's dying?"
After a pause, she started to really shake. Not shiver, but really shake—great big shakes, as if she would come apart there in the chair. Her skin pulled tight on her face and she started to moan loudly, almost a wail. The shaking became a rocking: tilting back, rocking forward. She did this for perhaps half a minute while Sigurdsson said nothing, watching calmly, alert, seeing God knows what, Connor thought—maybe seeing what she was seeing.
"Because," she choked out, "because she's me. I'm her. And he's, he's Stevie. Kevin, I mean."
That was the end of the moaning: the dam burst. The grief and the crying were so powerful that Connor half rose in consternation. Her tears gushed and splashed. Her nose ran. She blubbered. After about a minute the whole thing changed: The tears continued for a bit but the terrible grief was gone. Her eyes turned first to Sigurdsson and then to Connor, and she half giggled through her tears. Fumbling out a tissue, she blew so strongly that it came apart in her hand; she held it up to show them.
"And do you know what he was saying?" She was smiling in genuine soggy-eyed amusement. "He was saying, 'I'll never leave you, no matter what. I'll never, never leave you.' " She hiccupped, then giggled again. "So what else would you expect? I died hearing those words, and he died a few minutes later, in a Saskatchewan blizzard. And we showed up twins in Madison, Wisconsin."
She looked down at the front of her dress, and her voice was firm and clear. "Ye gods! I look like I went three rounds with an open fire hydrant!"
Connor sat dumbfounded. How in the name of God had Sigurdsson pulled that off? He hadn't hypnotized her. What kind of power did he have?
"Maybe you better borrow vun of Laura's sveaters then," Sigurdsson was saying. "Ve don't vant you to catch cold." And before she could get up, he added, "You notice anything different around here?"
She paused, looked thoughtful, then brightened. "Kevin's gone!" she said.
"By golly, you're right!" Ole said. "You did good on that!"
She got up and kissed his cheek. "He's free and I'm free! And hungry! I'm going to raid your refrigerator before I go home."
She went into the kitchen and puttered around. They could hear humming, water running, drawers pulled; the refrigerator opened and closed. There was an occasional cheerful comment directed at them through the door. Sigurdsson was grinning broadly.
"How the heck did you do that?" Connor asked in an undertone.
"I didn't. She did. I yust prodded her along a little bit."
"Bullshit!" said Connor. "I feel like I've been a witness to sorcery."
"Not here you ain't. Maybe on the pass you saw some, v'en her brother wrecked."
When Carol came back in, her face was washed and she carried a baloney, pickle, and mayonnaise sandwich with tomato and lettuce. "Mr. Sigurdsson," she said, "you haven't offered us any of that coffee yet."
"Vell, I better do that then." He got up and took mugs from pegs on the wall, got cream and sugar from the kitchen, then poured three cups.
"What are we going to do about whatever is killing people out on the pass?" Carol asked.
"That's a good qvestion," Sigurdsson replied. "I vish I knew the answer to it."
Connor commented facetiously: "It sounds as if we're up against some kind of murderous computer that counts cars and trashes one out of every so many. That's it! It's a sort of computerized tollgate!"
He looked around and inwardly collapsed. Carol was looking at him as if she didn't think the subject was suitable for flippancy. Sigurdsson was eyeing him intently. "Not too funny, huh?" Connor said lamely.
"Maybe not too funny," said Sigurdsson, "but interesting. Keep going; you're doing fine."
Connor stared. "Are you kidding? You can't be taking me seriously!"
"Can you think of anything else that explains it so good?" Ole asked. "I think you put your finger on yust v'at it is."
Carol frowned. "But Ole, who could have put such a thing there? Even our most advanced science falls way short of anything like that, doesn't it? And what would the purpose be?"
"Carol," said Sigurdsson gently, "in my business you run into some things that don't fit very good vith history books or archaeology. I don't pretend to know much about it—yust glimpses, isolated incidents—but there vas some heavy games in the past—the vay past. And after v'ile the games ran down and people forgot about them, but maybe sometimes some of the machinery kept going."
Connor didn't know how to react to that; the whole concept was too strange and freaky. "Well," he said, "what do we do then?"
"Ve'll yust have to give that more thought." Sigurdsson got up. "Carol, I'm going to take you home. Or Yerry can if it ain't too much out of his vay."
"Not at all," said Connor. "I'd love to."
"Okay?" said Sigurdsson, looking at Carol. Then to Connor he said, "But give me your address and phone number so I can get hold of you v'en I need to."
It was beginning to get dark when Jerry Connor let Carol out. As he drove home, he realized he wasn't feeling well. He had an uneasy feeling that he identified as vague, unfocused fear. As if, he decided, there really was a game put into operation a very long time ago—a game that killed people, even now. It didn't feel like anything to mess around with, he thought. The smart thing to do was back off and leave it alone. One fatal accident in tens of millions of cars over the pass wasn't all that serious.
As he pulled up to his apartment house, he saw Ole Sigurdsson's big white Caddy at the curb across the street. When Connor had parked, they met in front of the building in the half darkness, and in mutual silence walked together through the planted courtyard. When Connor opened his door, the tiny red light of his telephone answering machine was flashing at them in the gloom. He went to it and started the playback.
"Jerry," it said, "this is Carol. I'm scared. Miki's out of town, her dog is growling, which he's never done before, the cat won't even come in the house, and no one answers the phone at Sigurdsson's. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I feel as if my life is in danger. Please call me as soon as you get home. Thanks."
"What'll I tell her?" asked Connor.
"Tell her I'm vith you and ve feel it, too. Tell her you and me are going out and handle it."
Connor knew what the answer would be, but he asked anyway: "Handle what?"
The tall old Icelander looked at him calmly in the dimness. "The tollgate," Ole said.
"Is that safe?"
"Hell, no! But it ain't safe not to, either. Your computerized tollgate got a security system vired in, and ve started it ticking today v'en ve put so much attention on it. That's v'at the hell ve're feeling. I think now ve better take the fuse out—either that or leave town av'ile."
Connor picked up the phone and got Carol. She wanted to go with them, but Sigurdsson told her he didn't want the delay, that he wanted to act immediately. Then Connor got his service revolver from the closet, feeling foolish as he strapped it on. You don't even have any silver bullets for it, he told himself.
They went in Sigurdsson's car, and things felt a little less oppressive as they drove. Traffic was moderate on the boulevard, and Sigurdsson had the signals perfectly: nothing but green all the way, and traffic just seemed to open for them. It was Ole, Connor decided; he felt the man's intention like sharp steel. Shortly he could see lights on the freeway overpass ahead; they'd be on it soon.
The car windows were open, and the January air was mild and sweet. Connor's earlier fears began to feel unreal, even silly. Then something small, triangular, and shiny came bouncing and clinking out into the street ahead, and with abrupt violence, Sigurdsson hit the brakes and jerked the wheel hard left. They careened sharply across the oncoming traffic and through it into a parking lot, accompanied by angry horns and squealing tires. There were loud crashes behind them, metal into metal, and then a different kind of crash.
They sat limply in the front seat, untouched, hearts racing. "A v'eel chock," said Sigurdsson. Connor stared at him uncomprehendingly till the Icelander elaborated. "That was a v'eel chock that come out in the street, from something parked on the hill."
They got out. It had been a wheel chock, all right, that had somehow slipped out and released an unattended moving van. The van had rolled down the slope then, out of the side street and into the boulevard, had hit a car broadside, been hit by two others, and crashed into a restaurant. Meanwhile, several other cars had run into one another.
Connor pursed his lips in a silent whistle as they looked at the devastation. If Sigurdsson hadn't been quick at the wheel, they'd have been demolished. "What do you suppose made that chock slip out?" he asked. Sigurdsson glanced at him without saying anything.
The boulevard was now blocked with wreckage, so they detoured. Once on the freeway, the Caddy moved out of the heavily built-up area into lightly developed hills. Whatever they were up against out here, thought Jerry Connor, it was more than a "simple" tollgate. It seemed to be a telepathic, telekinetic killer robot. He wondered just how far its abilities reached, and what its limitations might be.
"What do you think will happen next?" he asked.
"I ain't thinking," said Sigurdsson curtly. "I'm driving."
"What'll we do when we get to the pass?"
The words were hardly out when the car jerked sideways, seeming to rise above the pavement. Sigurdsson cursed in Icelandic and fought with wheel and will. The tires hit the pavement again and they bounced on the shocks. Sigurdsson's breath hissed out; Connor's guts were a hard knot.
Briefly, nothing more seemed to happen as they continued on. Then Connor became aware that the headlights of the northbound cars were paling; the traffic noise softened despite his open window, and the sense of menace was almost overpowering. He stared, his hair feeling as if it were standing on end.
"What's happening?" he murmured. Sigurdsson didn't answer, just shook his head. Two or three minutes later he pulled off on the shoulder at the head of the pass and they got out.
It felt somehow different outside, not like southern California at all. Ghost cars whispered by them on the freeway, and Connor thought that if the sound should fade out entirely, something terrible would happen. Overhead the sky glow of Los Angeles was gone, replaced by a blackness swashed with stars. It occurred to him that if he knew the constellations of 20th-century California, he wouldn't find them up there.
The lining of his mouth felt like flannel.
Beside him, Sigurdsson stood tall and doughty, scanning the hills around them. To Connor the hills seemed black and featureless, without lights, visible only in cutting off the sky, but Sigurdsson stopped panning, as if his eyes had found something. Jerry stared hard but saw nothing. They stood like that for a long minute, and it seemed to Connor that something was going on, but he had no idea what. The sense of menace eased notably, and the sound and headlights were returning toward normal.
"Let's go," Sigurdsson muttered.
They got back in the car and left. This time it behaved itself, and Connor decided that Sigurdsson's driving had definitely become more conservative.
"Ole," he said after a minute, "did people in the other cars out there feel what we did?"
Sigurdsson shook his head. "Not enough to notice," he said. "Maybe a few noticed it a little bit, but its attention vas on us."
"Whose attention?"
"V'atever it vas in the vatchtower back there."
Watchtower. Conner chewed on that briefly; he'd seen no watchtower. They sat for a while in mutual silence again. After Sigurdsson had turned onto Sunset Boulevard eastbound, Jerry broke the silence. "I felt the danger ease up just before we left. Do you know what caused that?"
"Sure. Somevun else come in out there—at least a couple of somevuns—vith power, and give us a hand. And no, I don't know who, or even v'at happened. V'atever ve did, ve did it cloaked off from ourselves, or cloaked off from me, anyvay. But the thing backed off; that's v'at's important."
Cloaked from ourselves. Connor decided this wasn't the time to ask what that meant. He did almost ask if everything was all right now, but realized it wasn't. Instead he said, "What do we do next?"
"You got any vacation time you can use?"
"More than three weeks. But it'll take at least a week before I can get off. Maybe two."
"Put in for it. Ve need to take a trip."
"A trip? Where to?"
"I don't know yet. Ve're going to find whoever it vas that helped save our ass out there."
"What are we going to do that for?"
Ole turned and looked at him. "I ain't got no idea. That's part of being an operating psychic: You got to go vith your knowingness, your hunches, even if you don't know v'at the hell it is you know.
"But I can tell you this: Somehow or other ve're up against more than yust the thing at the pass. That's yust a little shirttail of it—sort of a symptom."