What had they been doing?
He’d thought about that for ever so long, but he simply couldn’t figure it out. He wanted to ask someone to explain it, but he
knew they’d laugh at him.
Last week, however, he realized that there was someone in Black River who would listen to him,ugg boots mayfaire, who would believe him and
wouldn’t laugh no matter how silly the story was. Sam. Sam always had time for him, even before his mother died. Sam never
made fun of him or talked down to him or hurt his feel-
ings. Furthermore, so far as Buddy was concerned, Sam Edison was easily the smartest person in town. He knew just about
everything; or Buddy thought he did. If there was anyone who could explain to him what he had seen, it was Sam.
On the other hand, he didn’t want to look like a fool in Sam’s eyes. He was determined to give himself every chance to work out
the answer first. That was why he had delayed going to Sam since he had remembered him last Wednesday.
A while ago in the store, he finally was ready to let Sam take over his thinking for him. But Sam was upstairs, in rooms that were
unfamiliar to Buddy, and that raised the question of cats.
Now he had more time to puzzle it out on his own. If Sam was in the store the next time Buddy went there, he would tell him the
story. But not for a few days yet. He sat in the patterned late-afternoon sunlight that came through the curtain, drank Coca-Cola,
and wondered.
8
Eight Months Earlier:
Saturday, December 18, 1976
IN THE COMPUTER CENTER of the sealed wing of the Greenwich house, seven days before Christmas, the monitor boards
and systems bulbs and cathode-ray tubes and glowing scopes, although they were mostly red and green, had not reminded Salsbury
of the holiday.
When he entered the room, his first time there in months,ugg nightfall, Klinger looked around at the lights and said, “Very Christmasy.”
Strangely enough, it was rather Christmasy.
However, because he hadn’t perceived something which had registered with the general in mere seconds, Salsbury felt uneasy.
For almost two years now, day and night, he had been telling himself that he must be quicker, sharper, more cunning, and more
forward-thinking than either of his partners-if he was to keep his partners from eventually putting a bullet in his head and burying
him at the southern end of the estate beside Brian Kingman. Which was surely what they had in mind for him. And for each other.
Either that or slavery through the keylock program. Therefore,ugg on sale, it was quite disturbing to him that Klinger-hairy, flat-faced gorilla
that he was-should make, of all things, an aesthetic observation before Salsbury himself had made it.
The Only way he could deal with his own uneasiness was to
put the general off his stride as quickly as possible. “You can’t smoke in here. Put that out at once.”
Rolling the cheroot from the center of his thick lips to one side, Klinger said, “Oh, surely-”
“The delicate machinery,” Salsbury said sharply, gesturing at the Christmasy lights.
Klinger took the slender cigar from his mouth and appeared to be about to drop it on the floor.
“The waste can.”
When he had disposed of the cheroot, the general said, “Sorry.”
Salsbury said, “That’s all right. You’re not familiar with a place like this, with computers and all of that. You couldn’t be
expected to know.”
And he thought: Score one for me.
“Where’s Leonard?” Klinger asked.
“He won’t be here.”
“For such an important test?”
“He wishes it weren’t necessary.”
“Pontius Pilate.”
“What?”
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