Dean Koontz - One Door Away From Heaven

"Deal?"

"But I expect honesty from anyone I do business with. You should have driven up in your real Mercedes, wearin' your real clothes, and straight out told me what studio or network you're with. You haven't even told me your own name."

Now she understood. He believed his UFO experience would be the next Spielberg epic, with Mel Gibson in the Leonard Teelroy role.

She didn't have any interest in his close encounter; however, she saw a way to use his misapprehension to get the information that she really needed. "You're a shrewd man, Mr. Teelroy."

He beamed and seemed to swell in response to this compliment. His unnaturally red complexion brightened further, as boilers always brighten in cartoons just prior to exploding. "I know what's fair. That's all I'm asking — just what's fair for a story this big."

"I can't reach my boss on a Sunday. Tomorrow, I'll call him at the studio, discuss the situation, and come back with an offer in an entirely professional manner."

He nodded slowly twice, as a courtly gentleman might acknowledge agreement with a lady's kind proposal. "I'd be gratified."

"One question, Mr. Teelroy. Do we have competition?" When he raised one eyebrow, she said, "Has a representative from another studio been here already this morning?"

"No one's been here till you." Suddenly and visibly, he realized that he ought to leave her with the impression that enormous sums had already been dangled before him. "One fella visited yesterday" — he hesitated—"from one of the big studios." Poor Leonard didn't lie well; his boyish voice thickened with embarrassment at his boldness.

Even if someone had been here on Saturday, inquiring about the UFO, he couldn't have been Maddoc. At most, the Prevost might have rolled into Nun's Lake a few hours ahead of Micky.

"I won't say which studio," Teelroy added.

"I understand."

"And not thirty minutes ago I had a call about all this. Man says he came here from California to see me, so I'm sure he's one of you people." The hesitancy and the thickness had gone out of his voice. This was no lie. "We have an appointment shortly."

"Well, Mr. Teelroy, I'm sure you've heard of Paramount Pictures — haven't you?"

"They're big-time,"

"Way big-time. My name's Janet Hitchcock — no relation — and I'm an executive with Paramount Pictures."

If Maddoc proved to be the man with an appointment, she hoped to prevent Teelroy from mentioning her in such a way that the doom doctor would realize who'd been here before him. Now there would be no reference to a nameless "actress-pretty" woman in a dusty old Camaro. Teelroy would instead be eager to drop the name Janet Hitchcock of Paramount Pictures.

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Hitchcock."

He held out his hand, and she shook it before she had time to think about where it might have been recently. "I'll give you a call tomorrow," she lied. "We'll set up a meeting for the afternoon."

Although the man was a grotesque, though he was trying to work a scam, though he might be delusional, possibly dangerous, Micky regretted lying to him. He'd shed all suspicion, but his eyes still brimmed with misery and need. He was more pathetic than offensive.

The world held too many people who couldn't wait to shoot the wounded. She didn't want to be one of them.

CURT IS SITS in the co-pilot's chair of the parked Fleetwood, gazing through the windshield, wondering if the nuns will risk water-skiing with a storm soon to break.

He had arrived here in Nun's Lake Saturday afternoon, in the protection of the Spelkenfelter sisters. They settled in a campground on a site that offered them a view of the lake through framing trees.

During the past twenty-four hours, Curtis has spotted no nuns either on the lake or engaged in activities on its shores. This disappoints him because he has seen so many wonderful caring nuns in movies — Ingrid Bergman! Audrey Hepburn! — but has yet to glimpse a real live one since his arrival on this world.

The twins have assured him that if he is patient and watchful, he will see scores of fully habited nuns water-skiing, parasailing, and jet-boat racing. They have made these assurances with such delightful giggles that he infers that nuns at play must be one of the most charming sights this planet offers.

After Curtis revealed his true nature on Friday evening in Twin Falls, Cass and Polly volunteered to be his royal guard. He had tried to explain that he descended from no imperial lineage, that he was an ordinary person just like them. Well, not just like them, considering that he possesses the ability to control his biological structure and to change shape to imitate any organism that has a reasonably high level of intelligence, but otherwise pretty much like them, except that he has no talent as a juggler and would be paralyzingly self-conscious if he had to perform nude on a Las Vegas stage.

They, however, apply a Star Wars template to the situation. They insist on seeing him as Princess Leia without either ample breasts or elaborate hairdo. The transmission for their sense of wonder has been engaged, shifted into high gear, and set racing. They say that they have long dreamed of this moment, and they are ready to dedicate the rest of their lives to helping him perform the work that his mother and her followers came here to do.

He has explained his mission to them, and they understand what he can do for humanity. He has not yet given them the Gift, but soon he will, and they are excited by the prospect of receiving it.

Because they have been so kind to him and because he has come to think of them as his sisters, Curtis was at first reluctant to remain with them and thus put them at risk. Since his lapse on Thursday, he has been Curtis Hammond without fail, in full and fine detail. He is less easily detected by his enemies now than he has been at any time since he arrived on this world, and hour by hour he blends better with the human population. Yet even when he can no longer be detected at all by the biological scanners that he has spent so much time and effort dodging, both human and extraterrestrial hunters will continue to search for him. And if the wrong scalawags ever find him, those who are aligned with him in his work — like Cass and Polly — will be marked for death as certainly as he himself is.

During his six frantic days on Earth, however, he has grown up; his terrible losses and his isolation from his own kind have forced him to the understanding that he must not merely survive, must not simply hope to advance his mother's mission, but must seize the day and do the work. Do the work. This requires the strong assistance of a circle of friends, a reliable cadre of committed souls who are good of heart, quick of mind, and courageous. Much as he dreads having to assume responsibility for putting the lives of others at risk, he has no choice if he is to prove himself worthy of being his mother's son.

Changing a world, as he must change this one to save it, comes at a cost, sometimes a terrible price.

If he must assemble a force for change, then Cass and Polly are the ideal recruits. The goodness of their hearts cannot be doubted, nor the quickness of their minds, and between them, they have enough courage to sustain a platoon of marines. Furthermore, their years in Hollywood have sharpened their survival skills and motivated them to become masters of weaponry, which has already proved useful.

They have brought Curtis to Nun's Lake because they would have come here anyway if they'd never met him. It had been the next stop on their UFO pilgrimage, and they'd taken a detour to the Neary Ranch when the government cordoned off part of Utah in search of the crazed drug lords that all clear-thinking people knew must actually be ETs.