Psychlone

CHAPTER ONE Evening was coming with autumn leisure to the White Mountains. Clouds hooked onto the distant peaks and fanned to the East in layered saucers. Their tops were gray-violet, but a single billow of white still rose above Earth's shadow. The air was cool, and gray shadows fell across the sinuous road. A light mist slipped between the trees and collided silently with the truck's windshield. "You'll enjoy my dad," Henry Taggart said. "He's cut loose quite a few ties since Mom died." "How do you mean?" Larry Fowler asked. His foot pressed hard against the bare floorboard as they banked into a curve. "He's not crazy," Taggart said. He shot Fowler a worried glance. "I don't want you to get that impression." "You mean he acts crazy?" "No, his...philosophy is a bit strong for most people. He's been looking hard at death and making over his thoughts. Some of his talk gets pretty mystical." Fowler nodded. He had known Henry Taggart for thirteen years, since high school. Taggart's father had always seemed a pragmatist. "He sold real estate, didn't he?" "Best in his city for six years running," Taggart said. "I used to think that was a meaningless accomplishment. I respect him for it now." "You've mellowed a lot." "Me? How about yourself?" "Both of us." They had been heavily involved in the counterculture of the late sixties, up and down the scales of drug experimentation, subdued political radicalism, acidrock music. Fowler had been drafted in 1970 and had served in Vietnam. Taggart had escaped the draft by giving up his student exemption for a three-month period when no one was inducted. They had gone their own ways since, communicating three or four times a year, finding pleasure in each other's company, but never the strong ties that had united them in youth. Even now, however, they would react in the same way to a given stimulus, or think up the same joke or pun and say it simultaneously, as though there were an invisible link between them. Taggart had gone on to business school after college and now managed a chain of bookstores in Los Angeles and San Diego. Fowler had followed up on electronics training in the Army and gone into computer design. That they had succeeded was evident by their dress. Taggart looked affluently woodsyupper-class Sierra Clubin a fake-fur-collar mackinaw and twin-zipper Eurpoean blue jeans. Fowler was wearing a rust leisure suit and a pair of Taggart's hiking boots, a spare set unused until now. "The world has us by the nose, I think," Folwer said. "Oh, for the good old adolescent funk." Taggart smiled and offered him a cigarette, which he declined. The truck's headlights suddenly shot out above a broad green valley and Taggart pulled over to a clearing by the highway. They got out and looked at the last of the daylight. "Dad's cabin is on that low hill," Taggart said, pointing. Fowler saw a faint black speck in the general gray-green. "No lights," he said. "He should have them on soon," Taggart said. He sounded apprehensive. "Where will the river be?" "When the floodgates are opened next month, two little creeks will dribble around either side of the hill. The cabin's already been cleared by inspectorsno drainage or erosion problems. So he's planning to build a little log bridge to the road and stick it out.&Bear, Greg is the author of 'Psychlone' with ISBN 9780812531657 and ISBN 0812531655.