“I know, darling,” she said. She stroked his cheek. “Take all the time you need.”
Her voice carried a withdrawing note compounded as she pulled back. Dasein felt the night's coldness then, the stillness of their companions.
Abruptly, there was a stirring in the people around them. They began moving toward the truck.
“It's time to go back,” Jenny said.
Back where?
Dasein asked himself.
Jenny stood up, helped him to his feet. He stumbled in a brief spasm of dizziness. Jenny steadied him.
“Do you want Uncle Larry to look at your head tonight?” she asked.
Piaget,
Dasein thought. That was the
back
at which he was
aimed. Piaget. They would continue their trade of truths. The Jaspers change was forcing it.
“I'll see him in the morning,” Dasein said.
“Not tonight?”
In my own sweet time
, Dasien thought. And he said: “Not tonight.”
The answer seemed to trouble Jenny. She sat barely touching him on the ride back to town.
W
hen they were gone, leaving Dasein standing alone behind his truck in the Inn yard, he stared up at the darkness of the sky, lost in thought. Jenny's good-night kissâstrained, tremblingâstill tingled on his lips. There was a smell of exhaust gases and oil in the air. From somewhere inside the building came the faint sound of musicâa radio. The gravel of the driveway felt hard and immediate under his feet.
Slowly, Dasein brought his right hand from his pocket, opened it to stare at the small ball of matter thereâan object indistinctly seen in the light from the Inn sign. Now, there was a strong smell of Jaspers around him.
Dasein studied the object in his handâa compressed ball of bread, cheese and ham, a bit of one of the sandwiches from the picnic.
Did they know I secreted this?
he wondered.
He debated going inside and changing his clothes. The pants and shirt he'd worn on the picnic, garments that had been soaked and allowed to dry on him, felt wrinkled and twisted against his body.
Dasein felt that his mind wandered around this decision: to change or not to change, that was the question. The object in his hand was more immediate, though. Selador. Yes, Selador had to get this and examine it.
I'm not thinking clearly
, Dasein told himself.
He felt torn between extremes, between decisions of enormous moment.
The head injury?
he wondered. But he trusted the Jaspers-induced insight that told him the injury wasn't serious. Still ⦠decisions â¦
With intense concentration, Dasein forced himself to get into his truck. He leaned against the steering wheel, put the compressed ball of the Jaspers sandwich on the seat beside him. There was warm wetness at his seat and he pulled his wallet from his hip pocket, felt the water trapped in it. The wallet went beside the bit of sandwich.
Now,
Dasein told himself.
Now, I will go.
But it was several minutes before he could muster the strength of decision to start the motor and pull out of the parking area and onto the road toward Porterville. He drove slowly, conscious of the blocking dullness inhibiting his motions.
The headlights picked out a wedge of flowing roadway and bordering treesâyellow center line, guard rails, driveways. Dasein opened his window, leaned out into the wind trying to clear his head. Now, he was on the winding road up out of the valley and the slowness of his mind grew like a deadly weight.
Headlights came toward him, passed.
Dark mass of rock beside the roadâyellow center lines, twisting scars of repair lines on the paving ⦠stars overhead ⦠He came at last to the notch that led out through the black skeletons of burned trees.
Dasein felt something was drawing him back, ordering him to turn around and return to Santaroga. He fought it. Selador had to get that bit of food and analyze it. Duty. Promises. Had to get out to Porterville.
Somewhere in his mind, Dasein sensed a looming black shape, anonymous, terrifying. It studied him.
With an inner snapping sensation, Dasein felt his mind clear. The thing was so abrupt he almost lost control of the wheel, swerved across the center line and back, tires squealing.
The road, the night, the steering wheel, his foot on the acceleratorâall slammed against his senses with a confused immediacy. Dasein hit the brakes, slowed almost to a crawl. Every nerve end yammered at him. His head whirled. Dasein
clung to the wheel, concentrated on steering. Slowly, his senses sorted themselves out. He took a deep, trembling breath.
Drug reaction,
he told himself.
Have to tell Selador.
Porterville was the same dull street he had rememberedâcars parked at the tavern, the single light beating down on the darkened gas station.
Dasein pulled to a stop beside the telephone booth, remembering the deputies who'd questioned him there, mistaking him for a Santarogan. Had they been premature? he wondered.
He gave the operator Selador's number, waited impatiently, tapping his finger against the wall. A faint and reedy woman's voice came on the lineâ“Selador residence.”
Dasein leaned into the phone. “This is Gilbert Dasein. Let me speak to Dr. Selador.”
“I'm sorry. The Seladors are out for the evening. Is there a message?”
“Damn!” Dasein stared at the phone. He felt an irrational anger at Selador. It took a conscious effort of logic for Dasein to tell himself Selador had no real reason to hang around the telephone. Life went on its normal way back in Berkeley.
“Is there a message, sir?” the reedy voice repeated.
“Tell him Gilbert Dasein called,” Dasein said. “Tell him I'm sending him a package for chemical analysis.”
“A package for chemical analysis. Yes sir. Is that all?”
“That's all.”
Dasein replaced the receiver on its hook with a feeling of reluctance. He felt abandoned suddenlyâalone up here with no one outside really caring whether he lived or died.
Why not chuck them all?
he asked himself.
Why not marry Jenny, tell the rest of the world to go to hell?
It was an intensely inviting prospect. He could feel himself sinking into quiet security back in the valley. Santaroga beckoned to him with that security. It was
safe
there.
That very sense of safety, though, was edged with danger. Dasein sensed it ⦠a lurking something in the outer darkness. He shook his head, annoyed at the tricks his mind was playing. The
vapors,
again!
He returned to the truck, found a jar in the back where he'd kept a store of matches. He dumped out the matches, put in
the remains of the sandwich, sealed the jar, packaged it with the remnants of a cardboard grocery box and a scrap of wrapping paper, tied the whole thing with a length of fishline and addressed it to Selador. When it was done, he wrote a covering letter on a page from his notebook, listed his reactions there painstakinglyâthe drug effect, the
accident
at the lake and his own impressions of the group ⦠the wall they threw up to keep him at a distance ⦠Jenny's terror â¦
It all went into the letter.
The effort of recalling the incidents made his head ache where he'd hit the edge of the boat. He found an envelope in his case, addressed the letter and sealed it.
With a sense of satisfaction, Dasein started up the truck, found a dark side street and parked. He locked the cab, climbed into the back and lay down to wait for morning when the Porterville post office would open.
They won't control the mail over here,
he told himself.
Let Selador get the sample of Jaspers ⦠we'll soon know what it is.
He closed his eyes and his lids became like a movie screen for a fantasyâJenny cringing, crying out, pleading with him. Selador laughing. A gigantic Dasein figure stood bound like Prometheus, the eyes glazed ⦠panting with exertion â¦
Dasein's eyes popped open.
Waking fantasy!
He was over the hillâaround the bend!
Hesitantly, he closed his eyes. Only darkness ⦠but there was sound in this darknessâSelador laughing.
Dasein pressed his hands over his ears. The sound changed to tolling bells, slow cadence ⦠mournful. He opened his eyes. The sound stopped.
He sat up, pushed himself back into a corner, eyes open. It was cold in the camper and there was a musty smell. He found his sleeping bag, wrapped it around him, sat there with his eyes open. There were cricket sounds outside, faint creakings in the truck's metal.
Slowly, sleep crept up on him. His eyelids drooped, popped open.
How long would it take for the Jaspers effect to wear off? he wondered. Surely, this was drug effect.
His eyes closed.
Somewhere in an echoing box, Jenny whispered: “Oh, GilâI love you. Gil, I love you ⦔
He went to sleep with her voice whispering to him.
D
aylight found Dasein staring up at the camper's metal ceiling with a sense of disorientation. He recognized the ceiling, but couldn't locate it in space. His head and shoulder throbbed. Ceiling ⦠familiar ceiling.
A car horn honked. It brought him to the present and awareness. He threw off the twisted folds of his sleeping bag, climbed out into a gray, overcast day. His chin felt rough and stubbly. There was a sour taste in his mouth.
Two passing schoolboys stared at him, whispering.
I must look a sight
, Dasein thought. He looked down at his clothes. They were twisted and wrinkled as though he had gone swimming in them and then slept in them until they dried. Dasein smiled to himself, thinking that was exactly what had happened.
He climbed into the cab, turned around and found the main street, drove down it until he saw the Post Office sign over the porch of a general store.
The postmaster had to finish selling candy to a girl before he could come around behind his caged counter to weigh Dasein's package and letter. The man was tall, pale with thinning black hair, darting, wary blue eyes. He sniffed once at Dasein, said: “That'll be eighty-four for the package and five for the letter.”
Dasein pushed a dollar bill under the cage.
The man made change, looked once more at the package. “What's in the package, mister?”
“Specimens for analysis at our laboratory,” Dasein said.
“Oh.”
The man didn't appear curious about specimens of what. Any return address?” he asked.
“Dr. Gilbert Dasein, general delivery, Santaroga,” he said.
“Dasein,” the man said with sudden interest. “Dasein ⦠seems I got a package for a Dasein. Just a minute.”
He disappeared into the back, returned in a moment with a box about a foot square wrapped neatly and tied with heavy twine. Even from a distance, Dasein recognized Selador's precise script on the address.
Selador writing me here?
Dasein wondered.
The air of conspiracy in this gave Dasein the abrupt sensation of being completely transparent to Selador. The man could send a package here and
know
it would be picked up. Immediately, Dasein told himself this was the simplest thing to figureâgiven the Santaroga Post Office situation as he'd described it to Selador.
There remained, though, the feeling he was a pawn and his every move was known to the masters of the game.
“Let's see your identification,” the postmaster said.
Dasein showed it.
“Sign here,” the man said.
Dasein signed, took the package. It felt heavy.
“Funny thing you Santarogans using my Post Office,” the postmaster said. “Something wrong with your own?”
Santarogans ⦠plural
, Dasein thought. He said: “Is some other ⦠Santarogan using your Post Office?”
“Wellâused to be,” the man said. “Negro fellow over there ⦠Burdeaux, as I recollect. He used to send some mail from here. Got a package here once from Louisiana. Long time ago that was.”
“Oh, yes,” Dasein said, not knowing how else to acknowledge this information.
“Haven't seen Burdeaux in quite a spell,” the postmaster mused. “Nice fellow. Hope he's all right.”
“Quite all right,” Dasein said. “Wellâthank you.” He took his package, went out to the truck.
With a feeling of caution he couldn't explain, Dasein left the package unopened on the seat beside him when he drove east on the road to Santaroga until he found a shady spot in which to pull off.
The box contained a .32 caliber automatic pistol with an extra clip and box of cartridges. Wired to the trigger guard was a note from Selador: “GilbertâThis has been gathering dust in my bureau drawer for many years and I'm probably an old woman for sending it to you, but here it is. I think I'm sending it in the hope you won't have to use it. The situation you describe, however, has filled me with the oddest sensations of disquiet that I can remember. I hope you're being extremely cautious.”
On the reverse side of the note was a scrawled postscript: “No news yet on the investigations you requested. These things move slowly. You give me hope, though, that we'll get the goods on these people.” It was signed:“S.”
Dasein hefted the automatic, fought down an impulse to heave it out the window. The thing embodied ultimate menace. What had he said to prompt Selador to send it? Or was this part of some obscure motivational gambit Selador was setting up?
Could it be a reminder of duty? His bruised head ached with thought.
A line in Selador's note came back to him and he reread it: “ â¦
get the goods on these people
.”
Is that what I'm supposed to do?
Dasein wondered.
Am I to set them up for prosecution?
He remembered Marden alluding to the reasons an investigator had been sent.
Dasein swallowed. Selador's line, read once more, looked like a slip. Had the good doctor tipped his hand? Sending a gun wasn't like the man. In fact, Dasein realized if he'd been asked, he would've said Selador wasn't even the type to
own
a gun.
What to do with the damn' thing now that he had it?
Dasein checked it, found the clip full, no cartridge in the chamber. He resisted the impulse to shove it in the glove compartment and forget it. If the truck were searched ⦠.
Damn Selador!
Feeling foolish as he did it, Dasein slipped the gun into a hip pocket, pulled his coat over it. He'd settle with Selador later. Right now there was Piaget ⦠and Piaget had some answers to give.