CHAPTER 4

As Herb Asher descended the slope the meter in his hand showed the homing signal growing in strength. She ascended this hill to get to my dome, he realized. I made her walk uphill, since I wouldn't go to her. I made a sick girl toil her way up step by step, carrying an armload of supplies. I will fry in hell.

But, he realized, it's not too late.

He made me take her seriously, Asher realized. I simply was not taking her seriously. It was as if I imagined that she was making up her illness. Telling a tale to get attention. What does that say about me? he asked himself. Because in point of fact I really knew she was sick, truly sick, not faking it. I have been asleep, he said to himself. And, while I slept, a girl has been dying.

And then he thought about Yah, and he trembled. I can get my rig repaired, he thought. The gear that Yah burned down. That won't be hard; all I have to do is notify the mother ship and inform them that I suffered a meltdown. And Yah promised to restore to me my Fox tapes-which undoubtedly he can do. But I've got to go back to that dome and live there. How can I live there? I can't live there. It's impossible.

Yah has plans for me, he thought. And he felt fear, realizing this. He can make me do anything.

Rybys greeted him impassively. She did have on a blue robe and she did hold a wadded-up handkerchief, and, he saw, her eyes were red from crying. "Come in," she said, although he was already in the dome; she seemed a little dazed. "I was thinking about you," she said. "Sitting and thinking."

On the kitchen table stood a medicine bottle. Full.

"Oh, that," she said. "I was having trouble sleeping and I was thinking about taking a sleeping pill."

"Put it away," he said.

Obediently, she returned the bottle to her bathroom cabinet.

"I owe you an apology," he said.