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was away, mapped and monied, before the source of the car alarms had been traced by security.
    The rain washed his face; his bloodied tee-shirt he dumped, happy to have his beloved jacket next to his skin. Then he found himself a ride to Edmonton, and another which took him through Athabasca to High Prairie. It was easy.
2
    Easy? To go in search of a place he’d only heard rumour of amongst lunatics? Perhaps not easy. But it was necessary; even inevitable. From the moment the truck he’d chosen to die beneath had cast him aside this journey had been beckoning. Perhaps from long before that, only he’d never seen the invitation. The sense he had of its
rightness
might almost have made a fatalist of him. If Midian existed, and was willing to embrace him, then he was travelling to a place where he would finally find some self-comprehension and peace. If not – if it existed only as a talisman for the frightened and the lost – then that too was
right
, and he would meet whatever extinction awaited him searching for a nowhere. Better that than the pills, better that than Decker’s fruitless pursuit of rhymes and reasons.
    The doctor’s quest to root out the monster in Boone had been bound to fail. That much was clear as the skies overhead. Boone the man and Boone the monster could not be divided. They were one; they travelled the same road in the same mind and body. And whatever lay at the end of that road, death or glory, would be the fate of both.
3
    East of Peace River, Narcisse had said, near the town of Shere Neck; north of Dwyer.
    He had to sleep rough in High Prairie, until the following morning when he found a ride to Peace River. The driver was a woman in her late fifties, proud of the region she’d known since childhood and happy to give him a quick geography lesson. He made no mention of Midian, but Dwyer and Shere Neck she knew – the latter a town of five thousand souls away to the east of Highway 67. He’d have saved himself a good two hundred miles if he’d not travelled as far as High Prairie, he was told, but taken himself north earlier. No matter, she said; she knew a place in Peace River where the farmers stopped off to eat before heading back to their homesteads. He’d find a ride there, to take him where he wanted to go.
    Got people there? she asked. He said he had.
    It was close to dusk by the time the last of his rides dropped him a mile or so shy of Dwyer. He watched the truck take a gravel road off into the deepening blue, then began to walk the short distance to the town. A night of sleeping rough, and travelling in farm vehicles on roads that had seen better days, had taken its toll on his already battered system. It took him an hour to come within sight of the outskirts of Dwyer, by which time night had fallen completely. Fate was once again on his side. Without the darkness he might not have seen the lights flashing ahead; not in welcome but in warning.
    The police were here before him; three or four cars he judged. It was possible they were in pursuit of someone else entirely but he doubted it. More likely Narcisse, lost to himself, had told the law what he’d told Boone. In which case this was a reception committee. They were probably already searching for him, house to house. And if here, in Shere Neck too. He was expected.
    Thankful for the cover of the night, he made his way off the road and into the middle of a rape seed field, where he could lie and think through his next move. There was certainly no wisdom in trying to go into Dwyer. Better he set off for Midian now, putting his hunger and weariness aside and trusting to the stars and his instinct to give him directions.
    He got up, smelling of earth, and headed off in what he judged to be a northerly direction. He knew very well he might miss his destination by miles with such rough bearings to travel by, or just as easily fail to see it in the darkness. No matter; he had no other choice, which was a kind of comfort to him.
    In