The highway patrol materialized within minutes. Even so, it was after
eight by the time Lucilla gave them her statement, agreed for the
umpteenth time with the shaken but uninjured truck driver that it was
indeed fortunate she hadn't been in the center lane, and drove slowly
the remaining miles to the office. The gray mood of early morning had
changed to black. Now there were two voices in her mind, competing for
attention. "I knew it was going to happen," the truck driver said, "I
couldn't see over the top of that hill. All I could do was fight the
wheel and pray that if anybody was coming, he'd get out of the way."
She could almost hear him repeating the words, "Get out of the way,
out of the way...." And right on the heel of his cry came Dr.
Andrews' soft query, "For no reason at all, Lucilla?"
She pulled into the company parking lot, jerked the wheel savagely to
the left, jammed on the brakes. "Shut up!" she said. "Shut up, both of
you!" She started into the building, then hesitated. She was already
late, but there was something.... (Get out of the way, the way.... For
no reason at all, at all....) She yielded to impulse and walked
hurriedly downstairs to the basement library.
"That stuff I asked you to get together for me by tomorrow, Ruthie,"
she said to the gray-haired librarian. "You wouldn't by any chance
have already done it, would you?"
"Funny you should ask." The elderly woman bobbed down behind the
counter and popped back up with an armload of magazines and
newspapers. "Just happened to have some free time last thing
yesterday. It's already charged out to you, so you just go right ahead
and take it, dearie."
* * * * *
It was 8:30 when Lucilla reached the office.
"When I need you, where are you?" G.G. asked sourly. "Learned last
night that the top dog at Karry Karton Korporation is in town today,
so they've pushed that conference up from Friday to ten this morning.
If you'd been here early--or even on time--we might at least have
gotten some of the information together."
Lucilla laid the stack of material on his desk. "I haven't had time to
flag the pages yet," she said, "but they're listed on the library
request on top. We did nineteen ads for KK last year and three of
premium offers. I stopped by Sales on my way in--Susie's digging out
figures for you now."
"Hm-m-m," said G.G. "Well. So that's where you've been. You could at
least have let me know." There was grudging approval beneath his
gruffness. "Say, how'd you know I needed this today, anyhow?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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