She could have used her bicycle here. But that had been lost to the despots, who had surely been much perplexed by it, and anyway Provos didn’t have one. So they plodded on along beside the increasingly stable highway.
They found Colene’s town, and walked the street toward it. Cars blinked in and out on the road as the two of them continued to cross realities. Colene had left this place at dawn, with little traffic, so it had been some time before she had realized exactly how strange the Virtual Mode was. Now it was afternoon, with plenty of traffic, and the way the cars popped in and out of existence was startling. Trees were stationary, and animals generally slow-moving, so the eye could reorient on them. But the cars were traveling, some of them at high speed—if there was any driver in Oklahoma who even knew what the speed limit was, he concealed that information—so that they shot through the ten-foot section of whatever reality Colene stood in like the proverbial bats out of hell. Provos was alarmed, but adjusted as Colene reassured her; they were reasonably safe on the sidewalk.
Then they reached Colene’s house. It was the wrong design and color and had the wrong trees in the yard. But these details kept shifting as they approached, until everything was pretty close.
Colene led the way around to Bumshed, which was where the anchor actually was. Until they passed through it, nothing really counted; even if they saw people, they would not be in the same reality, and a miss by even one thin reality would be a whole lot more significant than a miss by a mile.
They entered the shed and passed through the anchor. Suddenly the things Colene had left behind appeared: crumpled blankets, a covered privy pot, her teddy bear, Raggedy Ann doll, books, and her guitar. And the knife. All the things she had gathered together here when she planned to kill herself. Only she hadn’t had the guts to do it—and then the Virtual Mode had come, and she had grabbed the anchor and gone off to seek Darius.
She stood looking at it all. There was her locked box, containing her instruments of death and her diary addressed to Maresy Doats. There was her picture of Maresy, grazing in a nice field. There was the artificial carnation flower saved from the prom. And there, tucked in between the pot and its cover, was her farewell note for her family.
Hadn’t they checked here? Hadn’t they seen that note? It couldn’t be that they had never even missed her!
She stooped to pull it out. She read it. DEAR FOLKS: DONT WORRY; I AM FINE. I JUST HAVE SOMEWHERE TO GO. COLENE.
The sheet blurred. She was crying.
Provos put her arms around Colene and held her close. It was a comfort Colene needed. Somehow she had hardly thought of this, of what she had left here. It was as if she really had sliced her arms and bled into the pot until she died, leaving all her precious things around her body. Now she had returned from that death, and they had faithfully waited for her.
But she couldn’t afford to waste time moping. She had a job to do, so she could rescue Darius and Seqiro.
Even as she came to that conclusion, Provos was letting her go. The woman began to put the shed in order, making room in the center and fashioning a kind of cushion by a wall. She knew she would have to stay here while Colene went out, because there was no way Provos could get by in this reality.
But Colene had to do some organizing of her own. This was afternoon and her folks should not yet be home from their jobs; she had time to get inside and change to local clothing. It would never do to parade around here in a tunic and giant diaper!
She opened the door and looked out. All was clear. Nothing in sight but the house and the little dogwood tree. Was she really in her home reality? To make sure, Colene went out and walked ten feet: nothing changed. But of course it could be a very similar reality. So she picked up a pebble and walked back. The pebble didn’t disappear. She might look like an idiot doing this, but she needed to be sure. This was her home, all right.
Everything in the yard looked just about the same as it had been when she had left it. The grass needed mowing, but it always did. Things looked a little browner, but that was because the fall season was another month along.
Provos emerged from the shed. “But you mustn’t be seen!” Colene protested.
The woman walked toward the house. Colene realized that Provos’ future memory had taken good hold; she remembered that no one was home at this hour, and she wanted to see the house.
Colene ran to catch up. She went to the back door. It was locked, but Provos was already fetching the key from under the mat. She gave it to Colene, who used it to open the door. Then Provos put it back under the mat. Obviously they had done this in the future.
“Well, this is my old house,” Colene said, showing off the cluttered kitchen and living room. It didn’t seem to have changed an iota. Hadn’t her absence made any difference at all? This was weird!
They went upstairs to her room. This too was unchanged. It was as if she had gone out this same morning, and returned routinely this afternoon. As if the entire month she had been away was only a day here, so she hadn’t even been missed yet.
Could that be? Could time on the Virtual Mode be different? No, because it had evidently passed in normal fashion for the folk of Darius’ reality. Probably for Provos’ reality too; the woman had shut up her house for the duration, being well organized, so it didn’t much matter.
And there was a signal of her absence: a little pile of letters on the stool near the door. Her parents did not open her mail; they left it in her room for her to handle when she returned from school. None of it was personal; she had learned the hard way not to trust others, and never to put into writing what she did not want widely known. Maresy Doats was her only truly personal correspondent, and those diary entries were kept locked up, and sometimes written in oblique fashion to confuse any possible snooper. So it was all junk mail, both with her name and without, because anything that related to books, records, or novelty catalogs was in her bailiwick.
Provos was looking. “This is mostly Carrot Sort,” Colene told her. “ ‘Cause that’s what it looks like: CAR RT SORT. Means they parcel it out to every house on the route. Maresy says maybe they figure there’s a big rabbit here. I say that if they drop any more of this junk on me, I’ll drop my Bomb of Gilead on them.” She touched the little jar of ointment nearby, marked GILEAD. “That’s really ‘balm,’ but I go for the violence.”
Provos smiled, but probably not at anything Colene had said, as she wouldn’t remember it even if she understood it. The woman was merely curious about Colene’s strange residence. She walked here and there, examining without touching, perhaps getting her upcoming memories straight.
“I gotta change,” Colene told Provos. She went to her closet and rummaged until she found blue jeans and a dark blouse. Also regular panties and sneakers.
She pulled off her tunic and undid her diaper, while Provos continued to look around, evidently intrigued by this strange house. Colene went to the bathroom and had a quick washcloth and dab cleanup. She got into her home-reality clothes, which fit her perfectly. Somehow she had almost thought they wouldn’t. Maybe she had just hoped that her bra would be a little tight, indicating that her breasts had grown. No such luck. It would be a long time, if ever, before she had a tape measurement like Nona’s.
Then she had another thought. Provos should change too. Then the woman wouldn’t have to hide; she would look like a local visitor. She turned—to find Provos already picking out suitable clothing.
Colene’s jeans and blouses didn’t fit Provos. Both were too short and loose. When it came to tape measurements, Provos wasn’t in it. But a long dress and sleeved shirt adjusted nicely enough.