Chapter 2 Chapter 1 Albany, New York 2

Charlie went back to her father.She cried again. "What's the matter, baby?" "I got the money. But it came out again, Dad, there's a soldier . . . I can't help it." Fear welled up in Andy's heart.Although the pain in the head and the back of the neck is unbearable and the fear is felt. "Is...is it a fire, Charlie?" She couldn't speak, but just nodded.Tears rolled down the cheeks. "Oh, God," Andy whispered, struggling to his feet. Charlie couldn't hold on any longer.She covered her face with her hands and wept helplessly.

A group of people gathered in front of the women's toilet.For a while the door had been pushed open, but Andy couldn't see anything, and now he could.The two security guards who ran past were leading a rude-looking young man in military uniform towards the sheriff's office.Young workers are yelling at them, full of obscene language, which is unbearable.Most of his army trousers were gone below the knees, and he was carrying two dripping black things that looked like his shoes.Three people walked into the office and the door slammed shut.There was an excited din in the hall. Andy sat down, holding Charlie in his arms, and he was having a hard time concentrating on thinking now; thoughts were like little silver fish darting left and right in a sea of ​​throbbing black.But he had to insist that to get out of trouble, he needed Charlie.

"He's all right, Charlie, he's not hurt. He's been taken to the sheriff's office, come on. tell me what happened " Charlie gradually calmed down, and told him what happened through her tearful eyes.She overheard the young man on the phone and made some random guesses that he was cheating on the woman on the other end of the line. "Then I came back and saw him, and before I knew what was going on, it happened. It just ran out. I almost hurt him, Dad.Nearly hurt him so bad I set him on fire! " "Keep your voice down," Andy said. "Listen to me, Charlie. I think this is the happiest thing I've been doing these days."

"Really?" Charlie stared at him in surprise. "You said it came out of you." Andy struggled. "It did. But it's not the same as before. It's only a little bit this time. It was really dangerous, dear, but... You could have set his face or his hair on fire." The thought made her shudder, and Andy gently turned her face away. "It's subconscious. It's always aimed at someone you don't like," he said, "but you didn't mean to hurt that young man, Charlie. You..." Andy didn't know what to say, just got a headache Bursts, for a while he didn't know if he was still talking.

Charlie could still feel the bad thing running wild in her head, like a wicked, stupid little animal trying to get out and do something.If you're going to do something - like get money from a phone booth - you have to let it out...but it does other things, pretty horrible things. (Like that time in the kitchen, oh sorry mom.) It's too late for you to take it back, but it doesn't matter now.Now she doesn't want to think about it anymore, doesn't want to (bandages, Mommy has to wear bandages because I hurt her) to think about it anymore.What matters now is the father. He is slumped in a chair, his face is full of pain, his face is pale, and his eyes are bloodshot.

Oh Dad, she thought, I'd really like to trade our powers with you if possible.You hurt but you can control it.I'm bigger than you and it doesn't hurt at all, but sometimes when I'm scared— "I got the money," she said. "I didn't open all the phone booths because the bag was already too heavy and I was afraid it would leak." She looked at him eagerly. "Where are we going, Dad? You have to lie down." Go down and rest." An Po reached into the paper bag and slowly put a handful of coins into the pocket of his jacket.He didn't know when the end of the long night would end, he just wanted to get another taxi into the city and enter the first hotel he saw.But he was worried that the taxi would be followed, and he had a strange feeling that the people in the green car were still on their heels.

Andy tried to recall what he knew about the Albany Airfield. First of all, it was the Albany County Airfield, which was not in Albany but in Conleney.The Shakers (a sect of American Protestantism) area-didn't his grandfather tell him that this was the Shakers area?Are these people still there?What about the highway?What about toll roads?The answer finally appeared: there is a road, what is it called the avenue?North Road or South Road? Andy opened his eyes and looked at Charlie. "Can you still walk, honey? About two miles. Of course." She slept relatively well, "Can you?"

Herein lies the problem.He doesn't know either. "I'll do my best," he said. "I think we'll go out to the main road and get a cab, my dear." "Hitchhiking?" she asked. Andy nodded. "It's not easy to follow a hitchhiker, Charlie. If we're lucky, we'll be in Buffalo in the morning." But if we're unlucky, we'll be standing on the fork and waving to passing cars, Until the green car came over. As long as you think you can do it. ’ Charlie said worriedly. "Come on," he said, "help me." When he stood up, a sudden burst of pain hit him.He swayed and closed his eyes.When I opened my eyes again, the people looked so unreal, and the colors seemed too dazzling.A woman walked by, her high-heeled shoes rattling on the airport floor tiles, as if someone was banging on the basement door.

"Dad, do you really think it's okay?" Charlie's voice was thin and frightened. Charlie, only Charlie seems to be all right. "I think I can," he said. "Let's go." They left the hall by the door they had entered through.The porter who had seen them in was busy unloading suitcases from the trunk of a car.He didn't see him go out the door. "Which way, Dad?" asked Charlie. He looked to both sides and saw North Avenue below, turning to the right of the terminal building.But the problem is how to get there: there are passages everywhere-crossing bridges, underpasses; road signs everywhere-no right turn, stop, keep left, no parking.In the early morning night, the traffic signals danced up and down like restless elves, flickering non-stop.

"I think it's this one," he said, and they walked past the terminal building along a path covered in "LOADING ONLY" signs. A silver Mercedes whizzed past them with the sodium lights on it. The reflection made Anzu shiver. Charlie looked at him questioningly. Andy nodded. "Stay as far as you can. Are you cold?" "It's not cold, Dad." "Thank God it's warm tonight. Your mother will—" His mouth snapped shut. The two gradually disappeared in the darkness, the tall, broad-shouldered man; the little girl in green trousers was holding his hand, almost as if guiding him.

About fifteen minutes later, the green car showed up, and it was parked beside Yellow Hall Drive: two men got out, the same two men who had chased Andy and Charlie all over Manhattan to the taxi, the driver The door sits behind the steering wheel. An airport policeman came up, "No parking here, sir." He said: "Please take the car - a" 'I can. The driver said and showed his ID to the policeman. The policeman looked at the ID and then at the driver, and then looked down at the photo on the ID again. 'Oh. ' said he. 'Excuse me, sir.What's the matter?can we know " "Nothing to do with airport security," the driver said, "but maybe you can help, have you seen these two tonight?" He handed the airport police a picture of Andy first, then a very blurry one of Charlie In the photo, her hair is longer than it is now, braided into two small braids, when her mother was still alive, "The girl is now more than a year older than the photo." The driver said, "The hair is also shorter, probably to the shoulder." The police looked over the two photos carefully over and over again. "I think I've seen this girl," he said. "Yellow hair, haven't you? You can't tell from the picture." "Yes, yellow hair." "That man is her father" "As the saying goes, if you don't ask questions, no one will tell you a lie." The police had a sudden distaste for the expressionless young man sitting in the nondescript sedan.He's worked with the FBI before.The CIA, and that group called Ita.All of their agents are like this: arrogant, unreasonable, and arrogant.They thought the blue uniforms were little cops, but when the hijacking happened here five years ago, it was these little cops who caught the motive culprit covered in hand grenades, and it was you "real" cops Look, the hijacker cut his own carotid artery and died. Good job, man. "That's right, sir. I asked if this person was her father. I wanted to see the similarities between the two. It's hard to tell from the photos." "They're kind of alike. Different hair color." I can see that myself, bastard, the policeman cursed to himself. "I've seen these two men," he said to the driver of the green car. "He's very big, bigger than the picture. He looks sick." "Really, the driver looked very excited. "We're busy tonight. And some idiot set his shoes on fire." The driver stood up straight behind the steering wheel: "What did you say?" The cop nodded, proud of himself for tearing off the driver's mask of impatience, but he wouldn't be happy if the driver told him he was going to be questioned in Ita's Manhattan office.And Eddie Delgado would probably beat him to the punch because he wasn't able to hang out at bachelor bars in New York during his vacation; The situation before and after his shoes suddenly became hot. The two men who got out of the car were talking to airport staff.One of them found the man who had seen Andy and Charlie get out of the taxi.Walk into the airport porter in the lobby. "Yes, I've seen them. I think it's a real sin, a man drunk enough to keep a little girl out so late." "Maybe they're flying," one guessed. "Perhaps," agreed the porter. "Wonder what the girl's mother would think. Wonder if she knew about it." "I don't think she knows," said the man in the dark blue Botney 500 woolen suit with all sincerity. "You didn't see them leave?" "No, sir. They're still around, as far as I know. Not until their plane takes off, of course." The two people quickly turned around in the lobby and boarding area, and kept showing their IDs to the security police at the airport.The two ended up meeting at the United Airlines ticket office. "Nothing," said the first man. "Do you think they got on the plane?" the second person asked.He's the guy in the Botney 500 haute suit. "I think the bastard's got fifty bucks at most, maybe a lot less." "Better look it up." "Yes. But hurry up." United, Allegheny, Braniff, Commuter, all checked.Not a single sickly-looking, broad-shouldered man ever bought a plane ticket.However, an Air Albany baggage handler said he had seen a girl in a green dress and red trousers with beautiful shoulder-length blond hair. The two meet again next to the TV chair.Andy and Charlie were sitting here not so long ago. The first person asked, "What do you think?" The agent in the Botney 500 suit looked excited. "I think we should surround and search the area," he said. "They left on foot." The two walked back to the car almost at a trot. Andy and Charlie walked in the dark along the soft shoulder of the airport fork.Occasionally a car sped past them, and it was almost one o'clock.They had gone a mile; at the terminal the two had joined their companions in the car.Andy and Charlie are now walking parallel to North Avenue.Below and to their right stretched North Avenue, illuminated by the blinding lights of sodium lamps.Maybe they could climb down the embankment and try to stop a car; but if they ran into a policeman, all their last hope of escape would be wiped out.I don't know how long it will take before we hit a downhill ramp, Andy thought.Every time the footsteps fell, there was a pang of pain in his brain. "Dad? Are you okay?" "So far so good," he replied, but it wasn't all that great. He wasn't kidding himself, or trying to fool Charlie. "How far do we have to go?" "Are you tired?" "Not yet...but Dad... Andy stopped and looked down at her seriously: "What's going on, Charlie?" "I think the bad guys are on their way again," she whispered. "Well," he said, "I'd better take a short cut, my dear. Can you climb down? Don't fall." She looked at the slope, covered with dead November grass. "I think so." She said hesitantly. He climbed over the safety net and helped Charlie crawl over, and sometimes, in the excruciating pain and stress, his mind would escape from the pressure in front of him and drift into the past.They had had good times in the past; but then shadows began to creep over their lives—first him and Vicky, then the three of them, consuming their joy like an eclipse."Daddy!" Charlie yelled, and she slipped and fell.The November dry grass was slippery and dangerous, and Andy tried to grab her hand, but couldn't, and lost his balance. He screamed out from the pain in his head as he fell to the ground, and he and Charlie rolled down the embankment toward North Avenue.Cars drive by on the avenue.If either of them rolled onto the road, it would be too late to brake. The professor's assistant tied a tourniquet around Andy's arm above his elbow, and said to him, "Please make a fist." Andy clenched his fist, and the blood vessels were obviously bulging.He turned his face away, feeling a little sick. Vicky Tomlinson lay next to him on the bed, in a sleeveless white shirt and gray trousers, and she smiled nervously at Andy as he thought again how beautiful her brown hair was, matching her clear Blue eyes to match... Then there was a sharp pain in the arm, followed by a dull, burning sensation. "Okay, it's over." The assistant professor reassured him. "You're done too," said Andy, not feeling well. They were in room 70 upstairs in Jason Gilney Hall, where twelve beds provided by the school hospital were placed, and twelve volunteers lay on the beds with soft pillows under their heads, waiting For their $200, instead of giving these people IVs, Dr. Varys walks up and down the hospital bed with a cold smile on his face, telling everyone that we can do it any minute now. Withering, Andy was a little nervous when he wanted them to gather, Varys had made a short speech, and the content of the speech could be summarized as follows: Don't be afraid, you are in the warm embrace of modern science. Andy doesn't have much confidence in modern science, which not only discovered the Salk vaccine, but also brought the world hydrogen bombs, gelled gasoline, and laser guns. The professor's assistant was marking Andy's arm. Varys said that the concentration of the injection is five percent...he called it D5W solvent, and there is a small protrusion under the mark on the arm. If Andy wants to inject Destiny Six, the liquid will be injected from here. If He is in the control group, and the injection will be normal saline, either heaven or hell. He looked at Vicky again: "How are you, dear?" "fine." Then Varys came, standing between them, looking first at Vicky and then at Andy. "It hurts a little, doesn't it?" He didn't have any accent, but the way he said it made Andy think it was a foreigner speaking English. "Nervous," Vicky said. "A little nervous." "Really? It will pass." He looked down at Andy and smiled kindly. His white coat made him look very tall, but his glasses looked very small.Funny contrast. Andy asked, "When did we start shrinking?" Varys was still smiling. "Do you think you're shrinking?" "Yes, yes." Andy said with a silly grin, something was wrong.God, he suddenly felt a little buoyant, and his head began to dizzy. "It's going to be all right," Varys said, smiling wider.As he walked forward, Anzi thought happily: Like a clown on a horse, he turned to look at Vicki, her hair is so shiny!Made him think a little absurdly of burning copper. He laughed out loud. The experimenter seemed to know what was going on in Andy's mind, and smiled too.She came over and injected some more liquid into Andy's arm, then walked away slowly.Andy now had the courage to look at the arm.He is no longer afraid.I am a pine tree, he thought.Looking at my beautiful pine needles, he is happy again. Vicky was smiling at him, God, she was charming, Andy wanted to tell her, she was beautiful, her hair was like brass on fire. "Thanks," she said, "that's a wonderful compliment." Did she really say that? Or his imagination? Andy, struggling to catch his last thoughts, said, "Vicki, I think I injected distilled water." She said quietly, "Me too." "Lucky, isn't it?" "Yes." She said dreamily. Someone was yelling somewhere.Inaudible hysteria.The sound climbs up and down amusingly.Andy, who seemed to have thought it through, turned his head to see what had happened.really interesting.Everything becomes very interesting.Everything seemed to be moving slowly.easing.The avant-garde film critic at school always called it easing in his articles: In the film, Antonioni achieved extremely good performances through his easing steps.How clever.Interesting words, like a snake slipping out of the refrigerator: easing. Several assistants rushed to a bed next to the blackboard in room 70 in slow motion.The young man lying on the bed seemed to be doing something with his hands on his eyes. Yes, he was indeed begging for his own eyes, because he inserted his fingers into the eye sockets, as if he wanted to pull out the eyeballs.His hands were scratching like sharp claws, blood gushed out of his eye sockets slowly; needles flew out of his arms slowly; Varys ran towards him slowly, Anji thought in a daze, The human eye is like a crushed egg.Yes, too much alike. The white coats gathered around the bed, covering it airtightly, and he could no longer see the young man.Behind that bed, there is a picture hanging, which shows the structure of the human brain.So Andy admired the picture with great interest. Suddenly, a bloody hand protruded from a group of white coats, and the five fingers were dripping with tissue and fluid in the human eye, like a hand that was about to drown. This hand hit the human brain structure map, leaving a huge Comma-shaped blood stains, the picture rolled up with a swish. The bed was raised, he still couldn't see the student who had gouged out his eyes), and was quickly lifted out of the room. Minutes (hours? Days? Years?) later, an assistant came to Andy's bed, checked the drip, and injected him with some more Destiny-6. "How do you feel, buddy?" asked the assistant professor. No, he's not an assistant, he's not even a student. First, the man looked about thirty-five, too old for a graduate student. Second, This man is an employee of "Ita". Suddenly Andy knows. It's ridiculous, but he knows that this man is an employee of "Ita": His name is... Andy thought hard, ah, I remembered.His name was Ralph Bucks. Andy smiled.Ralph Baxter, a good deal. "I feel good," he said. "What happened to that man?" "Who is that, Andy?" "The one with the eye out," Andy said quietly. Ralph, Baxter laughed, and he patted Andy's hand. "Lovely hallucinating, isn't it, man?" "No, it's true," said Vicky. "I saw it too." "You thought you saw it," said the fake assistant, "you guys had the same hallucination? Someone over the blackboard had a muscular reaction just now... like a muscle spasm, no one had their eyes gouged out, no one was bleeding. " He was going to walk away. Andy said, "Man, you can't have the same hallucination without prior agreement." He thought he was so clever that the logic was absolutely irrefutable, and let's see what Ralph Baxter had to say. Ralph smiled back, and said without flinching: "Take this medicine, it's very possible. I'll be right back, okay?" "Okay, Ralph," Andy answered. Ralph was stunned for a moment, and walked towards Andy's bed, walking slowly like a slow motion. He looked down at Andy thoughtfully, and Andy gave him a big smile, a silly smile caused by medicine.I've got you, old Ralph boy: Suddenly, a flood of information about Ralph came flooding into Andy's head: he was thirty-five years old, he had worked for "Ita" for six years, he had worked for the FBI for two years before that, he Zeng Yiyi killed 4 people at work, three men and one woman.And he raped the woman after she died, and she was a special correspondent for the Associated Press, and she knew it well—this part is not very clear, but it doesn't matter.Suddenly, Andy didn't want to know anything more, the smile gradually receded from his face, Ralph, Baxter was still looking down at him, the paranoia caused by taking LSD twice before grabbed Andy again ... But this time it was stronger and more terrifying.He had no idea how he knew about Ralph--how he knew his name--but if he told Ralph all he knew he feared he'd be like the guy who gouged out his eyes Like the students, quickly disappearing from room 70 of the Jason Gilney Building, maybe it's all just hallucinations; they seem so unreal now. Ralph was still staring at him. Gradually, his face softened, "Do you understand?" He said softly, "After taking Destiny Six, anything ridiculous can happen." He walks away: Andy breathes a long sigh of relief.He looked back at Vicky, who was watching him too, eyes wide open with terror.She is experiencing my feelings, An Shi thought: It's like radio waves, don't worry!Whatever the hell drug it is. Don't forget she's hallucinating! He smiled at Vicky, and after a moment she smiled hesitantly, too.She asked him what happened: he said he didn't know, maybe nothing happened. (But we didn't talk—her lips didn't move.) (No talking?) (Vicky? Is that you?) (Is it telepathy, Andy? Is it) He doesn't know.But it was really weird, and Andy closed his eyes. Are those people really the professor's assistants, she asked, puzzled, they all looked different: Is it because of the drug?Andy?I don't know, he answered, eyes still closed I don't know who they are.What happened to that student, the one they carried away?Andy opened her eyes again and looked at Vicky, but she shook her head and said she couldn't remember.Andy was surprised and dismayed to find that he couldn't remember much himself.Like it happened many years ago.Is it a muscle spasm?Cramp, that's all.he-- Gouged out his own eyes. But so what? Stretching out a group of bloody hands in white coats.The hand of a drowning man. But that was a long time ago.Like it happened in the twelfth century. The bloody hand hit the map.The picture rolled up with a swish. It's better to drift with your thoughts, Vicky looks preoccupied again. Suddenly, there was a burst of music from the speakers on the roof; beautiful music...much more comfortable than thinking about muscle spasms and gouged out eyes, the music was soft and solemn.After listening for a while, Andy decided (after consulting Vicky) that it was Lakhmajoff. From then on, whenever he heard Rachmaninoff, erratic, dreamy memories would take him to the endless waiting in Room 70 of Jason Gilner Hall. How many memories are real?How much is hallucination?Twelve years of on-and-off thinking did not answer Andy McGee's questions.Sometimes I just remember that there was an invisible wind blowing through the house, and everything in it flew up—paper cups, towels, blood pressure monitors.Lots of pencils and pens, and sometimes, after this (perhaps how long ago? The chronology seems to be gone), one of the test students suddenly had a seizure and then had a heart attack—or so it seemed, There was chaos in the house, as people desperately tried to revive him with artificial respiration, then chest injections, and finally a roaring machine with two small black bowls connected by thick wires. An Ju seemed to remember a fake assistant yelling, "Shock the heart! Shock the heart! Sniff, give them to me, you idiot!" At other times, he seemed to be sleeping, half asleep and half awake, sometimes awake, sometimes confused, he and Vicky chatted and talked about each other's situation, and Andy told her that his mother died in a car accident; Living with my aunt, my heart is full of nostalgia for my mother.Vicky told him that a teenage babysitter had raped her when she was seven; that now she was terrified of having sex, especially of being frigid;He's always... forcing her. They talk heart-to-heart; usually a man and a woman don't have such conversations until they've known each other for many years—perhaps never, even when they've been married for ten years. But did they really speak? Andy will never know this. Time was condensed then, but it flew by afterwards. Gradually he awoke from his stupor, and Rachmaninoff had disappeared.Did he really hear the tune just now?Vicki lay in the bed next to him, fast asleep, with his hands folded across his chest like a child falling asleep during a bedtime prayer. Andy watched her, suddenly realizing that he had somehow fallen in love with I fell in love with her deeply, with all my heart. After a moment, he looked around.Some of the beds were empty, there were about five subjects left in the room, a few were asleep, a subject was sitting on the bed, a professor's assistant—a real assistant of about twenty-five years old —was asking him questions and taking notes on the clipboard, the subject obviously said something ridiculous because both of them laughed—the kind of thing that comes up when you realize someone is sleeping next to you muffled laughter. Andy sat up, checked himself up and down, felt good, he tried to smile - it was normal, the muscles of the whole body were relaxed, full of vitality, and all kinds of senses became extremely sharp and frank.He remembers feeling this way as a kid: waking up on a Saturday morning thinking about the bikes in the garage and thinking about the weekend he could ride to his heart's content. "A professor's assistant came up and asked, "How does it feel, Andy," Andy looked at him. This was the guy who gave him the shot first—when was it? A year ago? He touched his cheek and listened. To the hiss of Stubble, "I feel like Rip Fan.Like Wen Ke (the protagonist in the novel of the same name by American writer Washington Irving, who slept in the mountains for eighteen years). "He said. The assistant smiled: "It's only been 48 hours, not 20 years, how do you feel?" "normal?" "Yes, normal, whatever you mean by normal. Where's Ralph?" "Ralph?" The assistant raised his eyebrows. "Yes. Ralph Baxter, about thirty-five, tall, fair-haired. The assistant smiled: "You saw him in a dream." Andy looked at him suspiciously: "What am I?" "You saw him in a dream. It was a hallucination. As far as I know, the only Ralph involved in the Destiny Six experiment is a representative of the Darden Apothecary Society, called Ralph Stenheim, who probably has Fifty-five." Andy stared at the assistant silently for a long time. Is Ralph a phantom?Or maybe it was, totally like a drugged hallucination; Andy seemed to remember thinking that Ralph was a murderous secret agent, and he smiled, and the assistant smiled, too quickly, Andy thought, is this also an illusion?Even if Andy woke up midway and saw the student sitting on the bed talking was being escorted out the door, drinking orange juice from a paper cup as he walked. Andy asked alertly, "Is no one hurt?" "Injuried?" "Well—no one had a fit, or..." The assistant leaned down and looked worried: "Hey, Andy, I hope you don't spread such remarks on campus. This will ruin Dr. Varys' research project, and we have Destiny Seven next semester. and……" "What happened?" "A student had a muscle reaction, which was not serious but very painful," the assistant said. "It lasted less than fifteen minutes and did not cause any harm. But now the whole country is enveloped in an atmosphere of political persecution. Conscription is stopped. Withdrawing ROTC, banning Dolby Sciences from recruiting because they make gelled gasoline . "Who is that student?" "You know I'm the only one who can tell you. All I'm saying is please remember that you're under mild hallucinogenic control right now. Don't confuse hallucinations with reality and spread them around." "Can you allow me to do that?" Andy asked. The assistant looked confused. "How can we stop you? The fate of all experimental projects at the university rests in the hands of volunteers. We can't expect you to sign a pledge for two hundred dollars, can we?" Andy breathed a sigh of relief.If the man was lying, he was doing it very well.Then it was indeed some hallucination just now, and Vicky also began to wake up on the bed next to him. "How is it now?" the assistant asked with a smile, "I think I should be the one to ask the question. So he started asking questions, and when Andy finished answering these questions, Vicki was fully awake, she looked peaceful and radiant, and she smiled at Andy, the questions were very detailed, many of which Andy himself wanted to ask of. Then why does he think these people are acting? That night, Andy and Vicky sat on a bench in a small hall of the Union Building discussing their hallucinations. She didn't remember the thing that disturbed him the most: the bloody hand waved limply over a group of white coats, hit the picture on the wall, and then disappeared.And Andy had no recollection of what she remembered most vividly: a man with long blond hair had set up a stacking table at eye level by her bed; The huge dominoes lay on the table and said to her, "Tumble them down, Vicki, knock them all down." She obediently raised her hand to knock them down, but the man gently but firmly pushed her hand away. Pushing back to her chest: "You don't need to use your hands, Vicky," he said, "Push them down." So she looked at the dominoes.They literally fell, one after the other.There are about a dozen of them. "It makes me tired," she said to Andy, with her characteristic upturned smile, "and I think I talked to him about the Vietnam War. So I said to him:' Yeah, that's the proof, if South Vietnam's gone, they're all gone." He laughed, patted my hand and said, "Why don't you get some sleep, Vicki? You must be tired." And I fell asleep. "Speaking of which, she shook her head, "But all of this doesn't look real now, I think it must be all my imagination, or a hallucination after an ordinary experiment, you don't remember seeing Ever seen him? Tall, shoulder-length blond hair, with a scar right down the chin. Andy shook his head. "But I still don't understand how we can have the same hallucinations," he said, "unless they come up with a drug that not only hallucinates but also sharpens one's senses." He shrugged, then grinned amusedly. "Could it be that we talked about the hallucinations and then forgot we ever talked about them?" Vicki asked. He admits it's very likely, but he's still uneasy about the whole experience.Like what people say about the discomfort of taking hallucinogens. Andy plucked up the courage to say to Vicky, "The only thing I know for sure is that I seem to be in love with you, Vicky." 她不安地笑笑，在他的嘴角上亲吻了一下：“这真好，安迪，但是——”“但是你有点怕我。也许是怕所有男人。” “也许是的。”她说。 “我只是想让你给我一次机会。” “我会给你机会的。”她说，“我喜欢你，安迪。非常喜欢。 可别忘了我很害怕。有时我会……非常害怕。”她想故作轻松地耸耸肩，结果却战栗了。 “我会记住的。”安迪说着将她搂入怀中亲吻起来，她迟疑了一下，然后报他以回吻，双手紧紧握着安迪的手。 “爸爸！”恰莉尖叫着。 安迪只觉眼前大旋地转，钠灯照耀着的北大道在他身下，而地面却在他头上，五脏六腑几乎颠荡出来，接着他坐了起来，像个坐滑梯的小孩一洋顺着路基下半部分往下滑去，恰莉在他前面无助地翻滚着，翻滚着。 噢不，她会一直冲到车流中去的—— “恰莉！”他不颐自己的头痛和嗓子痛大声嘶叫着，“当心！” 她一直滚到路基底部，蜷缩在旁边的小道上．一辆过路汽车的刺眼灯光扫过恰莉——她在哭，转眼间安迪“彭地一声落在她身边，疼痛顺着脊梁涌向头部：眼前景物狂飞乱舞一阵，才渐渐平定下来。 恰莉坐在地上，把头深埋在两臂间“恰莉。”他碰碰她的胳膊，“没事了，亲爱的。” “我真希望自己刚才就滚到汽车前面！”她大声哭叫着，声音绝望充满对自己的厌恶。这使安迪一阵心痛，“这是我活该！谁让我把那个人给点着了呢！” “嘘。”安迪说，”恰莉，你不用再去想那件事了。” 他搂住女儿。汽车从他们身旁飞驰而过。其中任何一辆都可能是警车，那他们的逃亡也就结束了。现在这看起来几乎已是一种解脱。 她的呜咽声逐渐平息下去。安迪意识到她的绝望有一部分是因为疲惫。也正是疲惫使他刚才疼得叫出了声，将不堪回首的往事带到眼前。要是能找个地方躺下— — “你能站起来吗？恰莉？” 她慢慢站起身，擦去残留的泪痕。黑暗中她的脸看上去像个苍白的小月亮。端详着她的脸，一阵负疚感涌上安迪心头。她现在本该舒适地躺在一所贷款即将付清的房子里；一只胳膊下压着一只玩具熊，准备第二大早上就要去上学，为上帝。为祖国。为二年级而奋斗。然而现在她却是在凌晨一点十五分站在纽约州的一条大路上，正在逃亡途中，心中满怀负罪感，只因为她从父母身上继承了一些东西——一些她自己无法拒绝的东西，就像她无法拒绝那双坦诚的蓝眼睛，你怎么对一个六岁的小女孩解释呢？ 爸爸，妈妈那时需要二百美元，那些人告诉他们不会有什么事，可他们撒了谎——这样说行吗？ “我们得搭一辆车。”安迪说着把手搭在恰莉肩上，他不知道这是为了抚慰她还是为了使自己不至摔倒，“找一家酒店或者汽车旅馆先睡一觉，然后再想想下一步怎么办。你觉得可以吗？” 恰莉没精打采地点点头。 “那就这样吧。”他说着开始伸手拦车，汽车飞驰而过，对他们毫不理会，不到两英里以外的地方，那辆绿色轿车已经再次上路。安迪对此毫无所知，他倍受折磨的思绪已飘向他和维奇在联合大楼那晚的约会，她那时在学校往宿，安迪把她送回宿舍，在大门外的楼梯上再次吻了她的双唇；而她，仍是个处女的她，迟疑地用双臂搂着他的脖子。他们还年轻，上帝，他们那时还年轻汽车呼啸而过，恰莉的头发在汽车过后掀起的气流中上下飘飞。 在十二年后，安迪又记起了那晚发生的其它事情。