I erased the line with my boots and I waited, then I turned around
for a long time and didn't look back at them. When I did, they were
two tiny figures on the twisted, broken landscape, walking toward the
second dome.
* * * * *
For a while I waited, and then I swarmed all over my pinnacle again,
like George and Harry and anyone else who might have been around. They
could come and get me, of course, but I figured they wouldn't. Then
they might never find the weapon. That was their dilemma, not mine.
Mine was to do something along the lines of Gramps' war of nerves, and
do something good, before my air ran out.
I said, "Watch it, George. Take it easy. Don't you think the chief
ought to be around before you try anything?"
I climbed off the pinnacle so no one could see me. "Naw," I made George
say. "I know what I'm doing. F'r gosh sakes, what could happen? I got
the charts right here. I wanta hurry and get back to the wife in Canal
City. Some damn bus driver...." I'd make it sound like their own story,
and maybe they'd believe.
"Well, okay," my Harry said dubiously.