file:J|sci-fiNieuwe%20mapKage%20Baker%20-%20Pueblo,%20Colorado%20Has%20the%20Answers.txt by Baker Kage

Author:Baker, Kage
Language: eng
Format: epub

* * * *

She did not see Mr. Lynch for a week after that. One morning she had just arrived and was unlocking the door when a local customer approached, being tugged along by a Pomeranian in a hurry.

"'Morning, Marybeth!"

"Good morning, Mrs. Foster."

"Say, if those movie people aren't done shooting in your store, do you think they might want to hire any extras? I used to work at RKO back before the war, you know."

She just stared, her hand motionless on the key. "Excuse me?"

"I tell you, it looked just like old times in there! All those beautiful old cars parked along the street outside, too. I saw a De Soto and a Packard just like Jerry used to have. Good-looking kid they had behind the counter -- was that Jason Scott Lee?"

"Yes," she said, for no reason she understood.

"I thought so, but I didn't want to get too close. Will they be shooting again tonight?"

She shook her head. Mrs. Foster looked rueful. "Darn. I knew I should have gone home and gotten my autograph book. Well, she who hesitates is lost. Can I get in there and buy an air mail stamp, honey?"

"Certainly, Mrs. Foster." She woke from her trance and pushed the door open, and reversed the hanging sign to let the town know everything was business as usual. It clearly wasn't, but she didn't know what else to do.

After Mrs. Foster had gone, Marybeth did a quick check of the store. Nothing out of the ordinary; file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Kage%20Baker%20-%20Pueblo,%20Colorado%20Has%20the%20Answers.txt (7 of 10)16-2-2006 21:28:00

no copies of _Look _or _The Saturday Evening Post_ on the racks. A succession of octogenarians came in for crossword books, laxatives and cigars. A man in a dark suit and sunglasses came in and bought a souvenir: a plastic snow-globe with sparkles instead of snow, swirling around a tiny plastic treasure chest full of clams.

Shortly before noon Mr. Lynch looked hesitantly around the door. His expression was most odd: scared and elated together. He was carrying a small suitcase.

"Why, Mr. Lynch, what's happened?" She stood up.

"Oh, just having my place exterminated," he said casually. "Got to take a hotel room for a couple of days, that's all." He set the suitcase inside the doorway and looked up and down the street before coming the rest of the way in. "You know that trap I sent off for? I got it to work, finally. Got the little bastard, too. It didn't look like any animal to me -- hell, at first I thought it was a circus dwarf or something, but that nice boy from the Government said it was a Giant Rat of Sumatra. It's all froze solid inside one of them glow-balls, only this is a real big one. Took a lot of my corn with it, but I about decided I wasn't going to eat that stuff anyway, not with whatever's wrong with it."

"You mean the -- the whatever it is -- the trap generated a _big_ white sphere." Marybeth glanced involuntarily at the piece of plywood set in the floor.

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