Free Empire of Dust by Chet Williamson Page A

own mother and father, but the crash of the Hindenburg as well. What was so difficult about believing that a Catholic girl could have a premonition of danger, especially when the results were so impressive?
    But Tony felt more than just a fascination over Miriam's psychic abilities. He had been drawn to her in a way he had always tried to avoid. In Tony's profession, women were something to be kept at arm's length, and sex was recreation rather than an expression of love, something fleeting and enjoyable to both parties. The woman had to know going in that it wasn't going to be anything lasting, and there were always a lot of women who were willing to play by those rules.
    Love and wet work didn't mix. They gummed each other up so badly that neither could thrive. You loved somebody, you started wanting to come home to them, so maybe you got a little too cautious, and that could be as dangerous as being too reckless. But the worst thing that Tony could imagine was having somebody who loved him left alone after he was killed.
    It was what had happened to his mother, and he had watched her shrivel up and lose the will to live after his father had died in an accident at work. She had lasted for seven more years, and seemed to grow more and more transparent each time he was able to visit her, which was generally two or three times a year. She had quit smoking, but started again after she lost her husband, and was up to two packs a day when the lung cancer hit her at age sixty-three. When it happened, she welcomed it, refusing chemotherapy. "I just want to be with Frank," was all she said about it. Tony wasn't with her when she died, and he never stopped wishing that he had been.
    So he had always tried to stay away from Miriam's type, the type he suspected he could feel more for than just companionship and desire. But in spite of his better judgment, in spite of what Laika had just said, he wanted to see her again. There was something about her that he couldn't shake.
    Besides, the Company didn't have any right to run his private life, as long as it didn't interfere with his current op, and neither Laika nor Joseph had the right to tell him what to do, either.

Chapter 10
     
    T hree hours later, the cultists rose with the dawn. Things had changed among those who had followed the late Ezekiel Swain. The days that had passed since they had hit the road again had been full of frustration and tension.
    Jezebel, after much concentration, had felt that they would reach the Divine by going east, so they traveled in that direction on Route 40, stopping every twenty miles or so to let her get the psychic scent again. Rodney drove and Jezebel rode shotgun, with Damon right behind her, frequently querying her as to whether or not she had it. "Yeah," she would say, "yeah, it's okay."
    But it wasn't, as it turned out, not by a long shot. God damn it, the bitch couldn't sniff out a bad container of yogurt in a heat wave. They had driven and driven and driven, and were nearly to the New Mexico line, when she had shaken her head and said, "Wait . . . wait, wait, wait, please, just stop. . . ."
    She had gotten out of the car, and Damon had been ready for her to point dramatically to one of the half dozen rusty trailers around which a bunch of Indian kids ran. But instead of making some magnificent gesture of discovery, Jezebel stood for a moment as if listening, then put her head in her hands and started to cry.
    "What?" Damon said, feeling the presence of all the others behind him, sensing their expectation and anticipation. "What's wrong?" But she only kept crying. "What the hell is wrong , Jezebel?"
    She looked up, her cheeks streaky with tears. "I don't have it anymore. . . ." she whimpered.
    "Have what ?" Damon asked, near panic. Jesus, had she lost the power to sense the Divine altogether?
    "The trail ," she said. "We went too fast . . . there were too many roads . . . I missed Him. . . ."
    "Too many roads?" Damon said. "Jesus, we were only