"My wife needs a doctor's okay for a long rest. I can't take a chance on going clear to Salt Lake City."
"But this is only an hour stop."
Stan got out and shoved past the old man. Heat waves shivered up out of the concrete and through the soles of his shoes. The heat seared his dry throat and burned his lungs.
Anna wasn't even looking. She seemed to have forgotten him. Almost everyone had forgotten him by now, he thought, forgotten Doctor Stanley Morrison the man who had never been afraid to speak out and say what he thought, and think what he wanted to think. Fifteen months with never more than an eight hour stopover. Thought and self-regard frozen by perpetual motion, and shriveled by consequent neglect. Only the old man remembered. That was odd.
A man stepped into the doorway. He was lean and powerful with a long gaunt chewing jaw like that of a horse. His eyes were small and black, and he was grinning with anticipation. Stan felt his stomach muscles tighten.
Behind the man, Stan saw the kid. Almost as tall as the man who was obviously his father, but rail-thin, like an emaciated duplicate of the man, a starved, frustrated shadow, grinning and feverishly picking at a pimple under his left ear. He carried a grease-gun cradled in his left arm as though it were a machine gun.
"I'd like to use your phone, please," Stan said. "My wife's ill. I want to phone the Government Project and see if I can get a doctor over here to look at her."
"What seems to be troubling the missus?"
"I don't know!"
"Then how do you know it's a serious sickness, Crackpot?"