Winter Moon

house," Jack warned him. "Break a window, and we'll show no mercy.

We'll call the police, have you committed to the Montana Prison for the

Criminally Insane."

As she gave Toby two raisin cookies, Heather said, "And don't go into

the woods."

"All right."

"Stay in the yard."

"I will."

"I mean it." The woods worried her. This was different from her

recent irrational spells of paranoia.

There were good reasons to be cautious of the forest. Wild animals,

for one thing. And city people, like them, could get disoriented and

lost only a few hundred feet into the trees.

"The Montana Prison for the Criminally Insane has no TV, chocolate

milk, or cookies."

"Okay, okay. Sheeeesh, I'm not a baby."

"No," Jack said, as he fished cans out of a shopping bag. "But to a

bear, you are a tasty-looking lunch."

"There's bears in the woods?" Toby asked. "Are there birds in the

sky?" Jack asked. "Fish in the sea so stay in the yard," Heather

reminded him. "Where I can find you easy, where I can see you." As he

opened the back door, Toby turned to his father and said, "You better

be careful too."

"Me?"

"That bird might come back and knock you on your 6s again." Jack

pretended he was going to throw the can of beans that he was holding,

and Toby ran from the house, giggling. The door banged shut behind

him.

Later, after their purchases had been put away, Jack went into the

study to examine Eduardo's book collection and select a novel to read,

while Heather went upstairs to the guest bedroom where she was setting

up -her array of computers.

They had taken the spare bed out and moved it to the cellar. The two

six-foot folding tables, which had been among the goods delivered by

the movers, now stood in place of the bed and formed an L-shaped work

area. She'd unpacked her three computers, two printers, laser scanner,

and associated equipment, but until now she'd had no chance to make

connections and plug them in. As of that moment, she really had no use

for such a high-tech array of computing power. She had worked on

software and program design virtually all of her adult life, however,

and she didn't feel complete with her machines disconnected and boxed

up, regardless of whether or not she had an immediate project that

required them.

She set to work, positioning the equipment, linking monitors to logic

units, logic units to printers, one of the printers and logic units to

the scanner, all the while happily humming old Elton John songs.

Eventually she and Jack would investigate business opportunities and

decide what to do with the rest of their lives. By then the phone

company would have installed another line, and the modem would be in

operation. She could use data networks to research what population

base and capitalization any given business required for success, as

well as find answers to hundreds if not thousands of other questions

that would influence their decisions and improve their chances for

success in whatever enterprise they chose.

Rural Montana enjoyed as much access to knowledge as Los Angeles or

Manhattan or Oxford University. The only things needed were a

telephone line, a modem, and a couple of good database subscriptions.

At three o'clock, after she'd been working about an hour--the equipment

connected, everything working-- Heather got up from her chair and

stretched.

Flexing the muscles in her back, she went to the window to see if

flurries had begun to fall ahead of schedule.

The November sky was low, a uniform shade of lead gray, like an immense

plastic panel behind which glowed arrays of dull fluorescent tubes.

She fancied that she would have recognized it as a snow sky even if she

hadn't heard the forecast. It looked as cold as ice. In that bleak

light, the higher woods appeared to be more gray than green.

The backyard and, to the south, the brown fields seemed barren rather

than merely dormant in anticipation of the spring.

Although the landscape was nearly as monochromatic as a charcoal

drawing, it was beautiful. A different beauty from that which it

offered under the warm caress of the sun. Stark, somber, broodingly

majestic. She saw a small spot of color to the south, on the cemetery

knoll not far from the perimeter of the western rest. Bright red. It

was Toby in his new ski suit.

He was standing inside the foot-high fieldstone wall. I should have

told him to stay away from there, Heather thought with a twinge of

apprehension. Then she wondered at her uneasiness. Why should the

cemetery seem any more dangerous to her than the yard immediately

outside its boundaries? She didn't believe in ghosts or haunted

places.

The boy stood at the grave markers, utterly still. She watched him for

a minute, a minute and a half, but he didn't move. For an

eight-year-old, who usually had more energy than a nuclear plant, that

was an extraordinary period of inactivity. The gray sky settled lower

while she watched. The land darkened subtly. Toby stood unmoving.

The arctic air didn't bother Jack--invigorated him, in fact--except

that it penetrated especially deeply into the thighbones and scar