He snorted faintly. Janie wasn’t a corporal,’ Reality isn’t the most pleasant of atmospheres, Lieutenant. But we like to think we’re engineered for it. It’s a pretty fine piece of engineering, the kind an engineer can respect. Drag in an obsession and reality can’t tolerate it. Something has to give; if reality goes, your fine piece of engineering is left with nothing to operate on. Nothing it was designed to operate on. So it operates badly. So kick the obsession out; start functioning the way you were designed to function.’
Who said that? Oh—Bromfield. The jerk! He should know better than to try to talk engineering to an engineer. ‘Cap’n Bromfield’ (tiredly, the twenty damn thousandth time), ‘if I wasn’t an engineer I wouldn’t’ve found it, I wouldn’t’ve recognized it, and I wouldn’t give a damn now.’ Ah, it doesn’t matter.
It doesn ’ t matter. Just curl up and as long as Thompson don’t show his face. Just curl up and … ‘No, by God,’ roared Hip Barrows. He sprang off the bed, stood quaking in the middle of the room. He clapped his hands over his eyes and rocked like a storm-blown sapling. He might be all mixed up, Bromfield’s voice, Thompson’s face, a cave full of children’s clothes, Janie who wanted him killed; but there was one thing he was sure of, one thing he knew. Thompson wasn’t going to make him curl up and die. Janie had rid him of that one!
He whimpered as he rocked, ‘Janie…?’
Janie didn’t want him to die.
Janie didn’t want him killed; what’s the matter here? Janie just wants… go back. Take time.
He looked at the brightening window.
Take time? Why, maybe today he could get that address and see those children and find the half-wit and… well, find him anyway; that’s what he wanted, wasn’t it? Today. Then by God he’d show Bromfield who had an obsession!
If he lived, he’d show Bromfield.
But no; what Janie wanted was to go the other way, go back. For how long? More hungry years, nobody believes you, no one helps, you hunt and hunt, starve and freeze, for a little clue and another to fit it: the address that came from the house with the porte-cochere which came from the piece of paper in the children’s clothes which were… in the…