Haggerty
was not quite exasperated. Elaine's fingers
were bruising her shoulder.
"If
there was more of it, they wouldn't," Elaine snapped.
That
was ridiculous, of course, but Haggerty knew
why she said it. Fear looses.
"We'll
board a train. We'll go to Istanbul, we'll go to Vladivostok, but
we won't get off we'll keep on going
as long as we're going we're
not anywhere really. We're
just going. If we're not anywhere
really then fate
is nothing."
Haggerty
was not afraid. "Fate," she said and dismissed it like
a minor bruise, faced it like diphtheria.
Time,
time cracked like an egg.
Time
resounded like the bells and horns from
high lion temples sustaining the farthest mountain pass on
Earth where the sun in thin bleached air
oscillated minutely counting
time
precisely.
Every
night for 34 years the Doctress, little
Dr. Haggerty, was escorted home by
a slender blond companion whom no 1 knew, and
who was never introduced.
"You
can't ask for more than that," was what Haggerty
said.