6:30 A.M.
   
  The storm clouds had begun to break up two hours ago. Dawn brought welcome shafts of 
autumn sunlight.
  In the dense pine forest, half a mile above Black River, three men lowered the remains 
of Dawson, and the bodies of Salsbury and Klinger into a common grave.
  "All right," Jenny told them. "Fill it in."
  With each shovelful of dirt that struck the corpses, she felt more alive.
   
  9:30 A.M.
   
   
  After a refueling stop in Augusta, the hornetlike helicopter put down on the landing 
pad behind the Greenwich house at nine thirty in the morning.
  "Get it gassed up and serviced for a trip back to Black River this evening," Paul said.
  "Yes, sir," Malcolm Spencer said.
  "Then go home and get some sleep. Be back here by seven o'clock this evening. That 
should give us both time to rest."
  "I can use it," Spencer said.
  Paul got out of the helicopter and stretched. He had showered and shaved and changed 
clothes before leaving Maine, but that had refreshed him only temporarily. He was stiff, 
sore, and tired deep in his bones.
  He went to the rear door of the stone house and knocked. A servant answered. She was a 
plump, pleasant-faced woman in her fifties. Her hair was tied back in a bun. Her hands 
were white with flour. "Yes, sir?"
  "I am the key."
  "I am the lock." -
  "Let me in."
  She stepped out of his way.
  Inside, he said, "Where's the computer?"
  "The what, sir?" she asked.
  "The computer. Dawson's computer."
  "I haven't any idea, sir."
  He nodded. "Okay. Forget about me. Go back to whatever you were doing." He looked 
around the elaborately equipped kitchen. "Doing a bit of baking, I see. Go ahead with it 
Forget that I was ever here."
  Humming to herself, she returned to the counter beside the oven.
  He poked about on his own until he located the computer room. When he found it, he sat 
before one of the programming consoles and typed out the access code that he had gotten 
from Salsbury.
  The computer responded on all of its read-out screens:
  PROCEED
  Pecking at the typewriter keys with one finger, doing precisely what Salsbury had told 
him to do, he ordered it to:
  ERASE ALL STORED DATA
  Five seconds later the read-out screen flickered:
  ALL STORED DATA ERASED
  That message disappeared from the tubes, and his second order was displayed for a few 
seconds:
  ERASE ALL PROGRAMS
  It said:
  REQUEST CONFIRMATION
  OF LAST DIRECTIVE
  So weary that the letters on the keys blurred before him, Paul again typed:
  ERASE ALL PROGRAM!
  Those three words shimmered on the green background for perhaps half a minute. Then 
they blinked several times, vanished.
  He typed the words "Black River" and asked for a read-out and a full print-out of 
associated data.
  The computer did nothing.
  Next, he typed the words "key-lock" and asked for a read-out and a full print-out of 
all information in that file.
  Nothing.
  He requested that the computer run a systems check on itself and display its circuitry 
on the cathode-ray tubes.
  The tubes showed nothing.
  He leaned back in the programmer's chair and closed his eyes.
  Years ago, when he had been in high school, he had seen a boy lose a finger in 
woodworking shop. The boy had sliced it off on the band saw, a very even cut between the 
second and third knuckles. For two or three minutes, while everyone around him babbled in 
panic, the boy had treated the bloody stump as little more than a curiosity. He had even 
joked about it. And then, when his composure had infected those who were giving him first 
aid, he suddenly came to terms with what had happened, suddenly recognized the loss and 
the pain, began to scream and wail.
  In much the same fashion, the meaning of Mark's death exploded in Paul, hit him with 
the emotional equivalent of a truck plowing through a stone wall. He doubled over in the 
chair and, for the first time since he'd come across the pathetic body in the freezer, he 
wept.
   
  6:00 P.M.
  When he got out of the car, Sam stood for a while, looking at the general store.
  Jenny said, "What's the matter, Dad?"
  "Just deciding how much I can get for it."
  "For the store? You're selling?"
  "I'm selling."
  "But . . . it's your life."
  "I'm getting out of Black River," he said. "I can't stay here knowing that any time I 
want. - . I can just open these
  people with the phrase. . . use them . .
  "You wouldn't use them," she said, taking him by the arm as Rya took his other arm.
  "But knowing that I could. . . That sort of thing can eat at the soul, rot a man up 
inside.. ." Flanked by them, he went up the porch steps. For the first time in his life, 
he felt like an old man.
   
  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1977
   
   
  The following headline appeared at the bottom of the front page of The New York Times:
  MRS. DAWSON HIRES INVESTIGATORS;
  DISSATISFIED WITH F.B.I.'S WORE