Excerpt Excerpt
Chapter 17
White Shoes
They had been to every booth and in every store. They'd sampled almost every food available because all the vendors were known to them. A few were neighbors. Most were friends. Janet had been pleased and surprised that Daddy had not been a pain about the food. He hadn't sniffed at it, or licked it, or done any of the things she'd imagined him doing to meet Mom's injunctions about the food.
The only thing neither of them had tried was the wines. She, of course, was too young. Besides which, she'd had a little taste of that stuff once when Emily had sneaked some out of her house one Thanksgiving a couple of years ago. She couldn't understand why anybody'd drink it. Gag city. Daddy didn't have any because he didn't drink any kind of booze. Neither did Mom. Just as well, she thought, thinking about what she'd seen it do in some of her friends' families.
They were just coming out of Banducci's, the restaurant of Madrone. The only restaurant actually, if you didn't count the tavern which served sandwiches and chili with their beer. Because it was justifiably famous for both its soda fountain and its food, people traveled from Eugene and Grant's Pass to eat there. Tour buses even stopped there for lunch. Its prices were a little high for the area, but everyone chose it for that special meal or treat.
The marble counter and iron stools bolted to the floor had been fixtures of the place since Raphael Banducci had first opened in eighteen ninety-eight. Carlo and his son, Rick, still made their own ice cream, though they had long ago been forced to give up the old, hand-crank, oaken tubs installed behind the brick building by Raphael. The disbanded army of eager young hands who had turned half a dozen wooden handles for minimum wage and a free scoop of each product they produced were immortalized in a mural on the wall opposite the gold-traced mirror behind the counter.
Janet's special treat from her father had been the sundae of her choice. Naturally, that had been the Hot Fudge Banana Supreme with her choice of flavors. A fitting cap to a most excellent day.
She looked west, towards the place they had met Billy and Nick. She'd been doing that all afternoon, though both the boy and his dog had disappeared shortly after Janet and her father had walked into the crowds.
Trying to work out whether the boy or the dog was the attraction, Ed had observed her behavior in a bemused spirit. He finally decided it was a toss-up. Boys were becoming an attraction, though she had by no means shown any signs of being ruled by her recently emancipated hormones. Yet. Dogs were a different story. She loved them all, all sizes, all shapes, all breeds. If they hadn't had a sheep ranch, and therefore had to exercise a great deal of caution in not only the number but kinds of dogs they kept; he could easily have been the owner of the largest unregistered kennel in the state.
She turned back to face him, disappointment visible around the corners of her mouth.
"I think his parents must have come by just after we left, honey."
"I know."
They turned east to return to their truck. Ed stepped out in front of her because the narrow sidewalk and oncoming foot traffic made walking abreast impossible.
Over his shoulder he said, "Unless there's somewhere else you want to go, I think we ought to be getting home. Your mother's probably going to be home soon, and I think we ought to try and be there to greet her after her long day, don't you?"
No answer.
Ed turned around. Janet was nowhere to be seen. A small clot of people, gathered a dozen feet back, grabbed his attention immediately. Stepping into the street to get around the crowd, he ran to it. White Reeboks stuck out of the clot into the street.
"Janet!" he shouted.
The clump of fair-goers opened, and he saw Janet lying in a loose-limbed sprawl on the concrete.
"Call 911!" Ed yelled, kneeling beside his daughter. "Someone call 911!"
Mission Journal
Specialist William Nichols recording.
(Translated from the original)
Mission Time Reference: 2.941
Observation site security remains intact.
Monitors have been repaired to the extent possible. The equipment tests within the ninety-ninth percentile. Reception continues to be considerably less than optimal. We can only conclude that this is due to the local topography.
NOTE: Future missions should take into account topographical interference with EM monitoring. Selection and gain must be markedly increased to overcome these conditions.
We are able to monitor audio transmissions with some degree of consistency, and we have initiated full spectrum audio monitoring. Visual monitoring is still too unreliable to be of any use. We will attempt to improve signal capture efficiency, but do not expect it will overcome the topography.
Our second excursion to the pageant proved well worth the, as it now turns out, negligible risk. As a precaution we kept our contact with the populace to a minimum and simply observed and recorded. This, with the previous incursion data record, has provided a rich database. We are projecting a two MTR unit period will be needed to properly analyze and correlate the data.