Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) Read Online Free PDF Page B

who shot his wife, three daughters, and his aunt, because God told him to clean the place up.
Barney’s such an old dear, he’s coming over Sunday to help me take off the downspout and see what’s blocking it. He’s dancing on air right now; since you left, his spruce budworm-moth antipheromone program finally paid off. You know he tested over 2,000 compounds? Well, it seems that good old 2,097 really works. When I asked him what it does he just giggles, you know how shy he is with women. Anyway, it seems that a oneshot spray program will save the forests, without harming a single other thing. Birds and people can eat it all day, he says.
Well, sweetheart, that’s all the news except Amy goes back to Chicago to school Sunday. The place will be a tomb, I’ll miss her frightfully in spite of her being at the stage where I’m her worst enemy. The sullen sexy subteens, Angie says. Amy sends love to her daddy. I send you my whole heart, all that words can’t say.
Your Anne
    Alan put the letter safely in his note file and glanced over the rest of the thin packet of mail, refusing to let himself dream of home and Anne. Barney’s “fat envelope” wasn’t there. He threw himself on the rumpled bed, yanking off the light cord a minute before the town generator went off for the night. In the darkness the list of places Barney had mentioned spread themselves around a misty globe that turned, troublingly, in his mind. Something . . .
    But then the memory of the hideously parasitized children he had worked with at the clinic that day took possession of his thoughts. He set himself to considering the data he must collect.
    Look for the vulnerable link in the behavioral chain —how often Barney—Dr. Barnhard Braithwaite—had pounded it into his skull. Where was it, where? In the morning he would start work on bigger canefly cages. . . .
    At that moment, five thousand miles north, Anne was writing.
Oh, darling, darling, your first three letters are here, they all came together. I knew you were writing. Forget what I said about swarthy heiresses, that was all a joke. My darling, I know, I know . . . us. Those dreadful canefly larvae, those poor little kids. If you weren’t my husband I’d think you were a saint or something. (I do anyway.)
I have your letters pinned up all over the house, makes it a lot less lonely. No real news here except things feel kind of quiet and spooky. Barney and I got the downspout out, it was full of a big rotted hoard of squirrel nuts. They must have been dropping them down the top, I’ll put a wire over it. (Don’t worry, I’ll use a ladder this time.)
Barney’s in an odd, grim mood. He’s taking this Sons of Adam thing very seriously, it seems he’s going to be on the investigation committee if that ever gets off the ground. The weird part is that nobody seems to be doing anything, as if it’s just too big. Selina Peters has been printing some acid comments, like: When one man kills his wife you call it murder, but when enough do it we call it a life-style. I think it’s spreading, but nobody knows because the media have been asked to downplay it. Barney says it’s being viewed as a form of contagious hysteria. He insisted I send you this ghastly interview, printed on thin paper. It’s not going to be published, of course. The quietness is worse, though, it’s like something terrible was going on just out of sight. After reading Barney’s thing I called up Pauline in San Diego to make sure she was all right. She sounded funny, as if she wasn’t saying everything . . . my own sister. Just after she said things were great she suddenly asked if she could come and stay here awhile next month. I said come right away, but she wants to sell her house first. I wish she’d hurry.
The diesel car is okay now, it just needed its filter changed. I had to go out to Springfield to get one, but Eddie installed it for only $2.50. He’s going to bankrupt his garage.
In case you didn’t guess, those