

Spirits of the Woods

# And Other Stories

## Randal Doering

Spirits of the Woods and Other Stories

By Randal Doering

Copyright 2014 Randal Doering

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed  
in this book are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

Cover image: Mysterious Place © Tjapa2007 | http://www.Dreamstime.com

**ISBN:** 9781310593307

### DEDICATION

This collection is dedicated to my parents.

Keep on keeping on.

### CONTENTS

Introduction

In the Murk

Spirits of the Woods

Pay Dirt

Old and Useless

The Bedbug

The Phantom Terrorist

The Smell of Success

Little Sister

Parallax

Mirror of Years

Corncob Girl

Jailbreak

Alignment

Jumper

Social Ills

Eligible

Promises

Lord of the Air

Leafy Green Vegetables

Black Scarab

About the Author

## INTRODUCTION

Every year I bring out a new collection of short stories. I comb through the stories I've written for that year and pick the ones I think are the best reads and arrange them into a collection. For this year this means a bunch of contemporary fantasies, several science fiction stories, and a horror story.

People always ask me where I get my ideas from, and I am forced to answer, "From life. I get ideas just from everyday living. And from newspaper stories, and from books I've read. Ideas are easy. It's the sitting down and writing them out that takes the sweat."

My method has changed over time. These days I suffer from a severe mental illness called schizoaffective disorder, and so I can only write for about an hour a day. This tends to be in the mornings, when I'm fresh and my illness doesn't act up as fiercely as it does in the afternoons. In that hour I usually can write about a thousand words, which is a respectable amount of verbiage, but nothing exceptional. What is amazing to me is how much you can write over the course of a year if you just stick with 1,000 words a day. In the average year I write a novel and a collection of short stories, about 170,000 to 200,000 words, which isn't bad for someone who has a head full of noise.

You're in for a wide variety of stories in this collection. There are child protagonists and grown-up antagonists herein. There are several stories about dryads and several more about space aliens come to Earth. The horror story is about a terrorist who commits a suicide bombing and then comes back from the dead to do it again, over and over, and how the terrified Americans who witness this deal with him. There is a historical fantasy set in Cairo where a sorcerer reaches the highest levels of magical power, and how he copes with becoming the city's most eligible bachelor. A couple of the stories deal with the down side of demon worship, and one absurdist fantasy deals with a young woman with strangely-shaped nipples who wants plastic surgery to cure her "defect."

There are twenty stories in this collection. I hope you find at least a few of them to be to your liking. I always write my stories to be fun to read, so here's to a good time!

## In the Murk

My mother's father was a coal miner with forty years in the mines of Eastern Kentucky. Sometimes he worked with a few close relatives in family mines and sometimes he worked for large mining companies, but it was always hard, dangerous work under extremely demanding conditions. When I was a boy he told me stories about fossils he would find in the mines and swore that he once found a fossilized rattlesnake in a coal seam, curled up and ready to strike. Thinking about my grandfather and his fossil stories inspired this tale.

The young man set down a small plastic instrument on the coffee table and said to the older man, "Do you mind if I record this conversation?"

"No, go ahead," said the old man.

"Good," said the young man. "My memory isn't so great, and I want to be sure I get everything." He pressed a button on the tape recorder, and a small red light flickered on. "Tape four, Hugh Moughram interviewing Murphy Higgins. July twenty-first at eleven thirty a.m."

"Today I want to tell you a special story," said the old man. He picked up his coffee mug and blew across the surface of the coffee, then he took a sip. "This was about fifteen years ago, when I was still workin' in the mines."

"Just for clarification, that's coal mines," said Hugh.

"That's right. We was working the coal mines just north of Kay Jay, Kentucky, following a seam deep into the mountain. It was a good seam, about ten feet high, and it was heading deeper into the mountain, and we was following it into the rock. There was only six of us working the mine, it was a small operation. We was blast mining, using dynamite to break up the coal seam and then loading the coal onto rail cars. It was a room and pillar operation, leaving some rock in place to hold up the ceiling, and we'd been at it for about a year.

"We was about a thousand feet into the mountain, and the work was hard but was going all right. We was making good money from that mine. It was soft coal, not anthracite, and it was high-quality and fetched a good price on the market. Lots of men wanted to work our mine. We called our mine the Bluebird mine, for all the bluejays on the mountain where we worked. We were all middle-aged men in the Bluebird, we wanted experienced miners and not young bucks. Fewer accidents with experienced men."

"You were about fifty at this time, is that correct?"

"Yes, I was fifty-two when this incident I'm fixing to tell you about occurred. We had just blown a couple sticks of dynamite at the far end of the seam, and we was getting something weird. Cold air was coming into the mine. Now we was way underground, mind you, and nowhere near the far side of the mountain, so we knew we hadn't punched all the way through the mountain. Besides, if we'd punched through we'd have warm air coming through, not cold. It was high summer when this was going on, and it was hot in those Kentucky hills. Hot and sticky, you know how it is."

"Yes, like today."

"Like today. Now, I was the oldest man in the crew, and I usually took point when we was going deeper into the mountain, because I had an eye for dangerously loose rock. Could just tell when the ceiling was going to come down, or the floor was unstable. That's an understanding you build up with years of experience, young men just don't have it."

"So you were in the lead."

"I was first one back there where we'd set the dynamite, and I brought a sniffer with me up to the blast area. That's a detector that tells you if there's poisonous gas in the air. Lots of different kinds of poison you can get in a coal mine. There's pockets of old gas in coal, you blast your way into them and release the gas, and you have to be ready to get your behind out there in a hurry if you get gas. Let it dissipate. We was working a high-quality seam, but there was gas pockets every few hundred feet, sometimes big ones, and we lost whole days waiting for the gas to dissipate."

"Was there gas this time?"

"There was gas, but not enough to hurt you. Enough to give you a bit of a headache, but not dangerous. But more important, there was a chamber back there. We'd blasted our way into an underground cave."

"How big was the cave?"

"It was huge, something like a hundred feet wide and two hundred feet deep. The rock was limestone, and like I said it was full of pockets. So a cave wasn't wholly unexpected. That's where the cold air was coming from. So I was standing there, with the air full of black dust from the blasting and tons of shattered rock all around me, shining my headlamp into this chamber. Lots of sounds of water coming out of that place, dripping and that sort of thing. But _lots_ of it. I went back to the other men and told them it was a cave and full of headache gas, and there was some complaining but not much. We had a good crew."

"Did you explore the cave?"

"Not at first. There was too much coal in the way to get into the chamber, at first. So we dug coal and put coal into the rail cars, and then we ate lunch and talked it over. We had four guys in the mine and two up topside, and we decided three guys would dig coal while I went into the cave. Business of the mine had to keep goin', you know? It was a mess at the entrance of the cavern. The ceiling had come down, tons of coal in the way, and it took an hour to clear the entrance enough so I could get through. I took my headlamp and a sampling pick with me, then I went into the cave."

"What was in there?"

"It was all frozen waterfalls and stalagmites and stalactites and little pools in the limestone, with what they call ribbons of bacon in formations on the walls. I walked around a while, just looking, and then I came down to the edge of the lake."

"An underground lake?"

"That's what it was, yes. The roof there was twenty feet high, and the water was so clear I could see bottom out to ten yards in the light of my headlamp. It gave me the frights, that cavern. It was like a place the good Lord had plumb forgot about, some place that was made long ago and then just went out of memory. Left to its own."

"Maybe there were some blind fish in the lake?"

"There was more than fish out there, but we didn't know it at the time. I walked along the shore of the lake for a ways, shinin' my light this way and that, and I was admirin' the rock formations and the perfection of God made manifest. It was a pretty cave, and our dynamitin' hadn't done it much harm. Coal seam didn't go into that cavern, that was limestone; coal seam went around it, and we would follow the seam.

"I walked the length of the room along the shore of the lake and saw that the water was rippling farther out, almost beyond the range of my headlamp, which I have to admit wasn't too far. I thought there must be a wicked current to make the water ripple like that. So the underground lake was connected to the surface streams in the area, and there was a current. I was wondering if there was fish in that lake when I heard something splash, way out on the lake, past the range of my light. It was a heavy splash, like a twenty pound fish had just jumped, and that got me to thinking about fishing, and snapping turtle stew, and that made me hungry. So I gave up on the lake and went back to the other miners, who was loadin' coal.

One of the men, Alvin Shaughnessy, said to me, "Well, Murph, anything interesting in there?"

"Underground lake," I said. "With some big fish in it."

"No kiddin'," he said. "Anyone mind if I go have a look?"

"Go ahead, then," said Paul Evans. "If the lake monster ets you up, I'll take to banging your wife to keep her happy."

That got laughs from all of us, and Alvin gave Paul the bird and went through the breach into the lake cavern. I ate a sandwich from my lunch pail, and the three of us loaded coal into the mine car for a while. It was heavy, sweaty, cumbersome work, and it was noisy, too. So we didn't hear anything from Alvin for a while. Then all of a sudden-like we heard several gunshots from the lake cavern entrance.

"Now that got us all standing to attention. All of us carried pistols, in case we came across rattlesnakes in the mine. Bastards come in at night and crawl into the place, and then their bodies cool down, and they fall asleep, and they're there for you to trip over in the morning. We'd shot three dozen rattlesnakes in the year we'd been in operation, and it paid to keep your eyes peeled for them when you was walking around in the mine. So we thought Alvin had come across a rattlesnake in the lake cavern.

"We waited a few minutes for Alvin to come out of the cavern room, but he didn't come. Finally I drew my pistol out and headed through the breach and into the lake room, the other men right on my heels. We found what was left of Alvin on the shore of the lake. It was some guts and his legs that was left, the rest of him was gone. There was blood everywhere, buckets of it, sprayed across the lake shore rocks and even on the stalagmites. Something had torn  
Alvin to pieces and made off with the bulk of his body.

"'Son of a bitch,' said Edward Flannigan, our fourth miner. He drew his pistol, too, and the three of us walked along the lake shore in both directions until we walked it all. There was no sign of Alvin's body. But far out on the lake there was heavy splashin', and Paul said,

"'What do we do, Murph?'

"'Keep your weapon in hand, and keep an eye out on that lake. Something came from those waters, I'm bettin'."

"Did you see what it was?" asked Hugh.

"Not just then. We retreated back to the coal seam and held a pow-wow, wondering how we were going to explain this to Alvin's wife. We'd have to call it a mine accident, explosives failure of some sort. Accidental blast. We'd have to pay survivor's benefits, which was no small thing. County mine inspector would come out to take a look at our operation, and we'd have to make it look good. Collapsed ceiling, and all that.

"'What about the remains?' said Edward. 'Sadie should have something to bury.'

"'I'm not going back in that room,' said Paul. 'Something's in there, and it can kill an armed man.'

"'We should get the remains,' I said. 'It's the decent thing to do."

"' _You_ can get his remains,' said Paul. 'Seeing's you're so excited to recover him.'

"'I'll go back in there, if you come with me,' I said to Edward. He nodded, and we set off back into the cavern room with our pistols in hand. Paul stayed behind, but he kept his pistol in his hand, too, like whatever it was in the lake was going to come after him in the coal room. I just hoped he didn't shoot Edward and myself, he was so jumpy.

"We went into the cavern chamber and shone our headlamps around, on the shore and out over the water, and there were ripples on the water, big ones, and that made me about as scared as I've ever been.

"'Look, something's in the water,' Edward said.

"'I see it,' I said. 'Don't hesitate to shoot, man, if you see something comin' out of the lake.'

"'Yeah, I hear you,' he said.

"We trotted along the lake shore until we got to the spot where Alvin's legs was layin' there on the beach. They was still there, but the guts was gone. We picked up the legs in our left hands and kept our pistols in the right hands and high-tailed it back toward the coal room. Then Edward gave a great cry and said, 'Here they come,' and I turned my head to look out over the water, and what should I see but _two_ beasts risin' out of the water. They was round of body, with flippers, and had long necks with a little bitty head on top. Necks had to be ten feet long. They had mouths just full of teeth, their mouths was open and they was making barking sounds like seals. They had great big eyes, shinin' in the light of the headlamps, and I think I pissed myself about then.

"Well, Edward didn't need no invitation, he was quicker to his wits than I was. He aimed his pistol at the closest one's head and opened fire, but its head was small, and the lamp light was feeble, and the heads was bobbing around on the end of those long necks, and Edward couldn't hit a thing. I saw all this, and I remember thinking, 'We're screwed.' It was clear we was going to be meat for those things. They was big, their bodies was ten feet long, and they struggled out of the water on their flippers, like seals, and shuffled up the beach toward us. Man, they was _movin'_. Edward threw down his pistol and turned to run, and one of the beasties just snapped its head down and bit his head clean off. His body flailed around for a moment or three, then it fell down and lay there. The other beastie came at me, and I finally got control of myself and fired half a dozen shots at its head, but my hands was shakin' so bad I missed every time.

"The second beastie raised up its head and looked at me, and I held out Alvin's leg, and it snapped the leg right out of my hand and started crunching on it. I could hear the bone snappin' and breaking as the beastie bit down on it. Oh, Good Lord preserve me! I just ran, blind, down the beach and into the breach into the coal room. Paul was standing there with his pistol held out in both hands, and he said,

"'Where's Edward?'

"'Beastie got him,' I said. 'There's two of them in there, and they's _big._ '

"He looked at me like I just grew a second head, and then he said, 'We got seventy sticks of dynamite back at the fork. What say we bring this roof down and bury this place?'

"'Yes,' I said. So we both ran back to the fork where we had the dynamite stacked, and grabbed twenty sticks. I twisted the fuses together, and he stood guard over me while I worked. Then we ran back into the coal room and set the dynamite in the breach to the cavern room. I lit the fuse, and all that while I heard the seal barkin' of the beasties as they chawed down on Edward.

"'That noise them?' Paul asked.

"'Yeah,' I said. 'Evil things, devil's work they are.'

"What color were they?" asked Hugh.

"They was light grey in color, best as I could see. 'Course, everything is light grey in the light of coal miner's headlamps. The beasties had smooth skin, but there was bite marks on them, too. Just remembered that. There was crescent-shaped rows of bite marks on their bodies, like something had bit into them at some point. Maybe it was each other that bit into them, I don't know. And they was _big_. Twenty-five feet long from tip of tail to top of head. I guess that lake was big and went on a ways, and was well stocked with fish. Wouldn't surprise me to find it connected with ponds or lakes up in those mountains, through underground streams and rivers. It's all limestone through there, porous and full of caverns.

"Anyway, I lit the fuse on the dynamite, and we got well back from it, and soon enough the dynamite went off and the ceiling collapsed, and there was a thousand tons of rock between us and the beasties. Our two guys on the surface heard the explosion and got on the walkie-talkie to ask what the hell we was doing, and we told them there had been a mining accident and two men was killed and beyond recovery. Paul and I had a hasty conversation and decided we wasn't tellin' anybody about the beasties. No one would believe us, and it would call our sanity into question. It made a better story as a dynamite accident. Paul and I went out of the mine and met up with our other two men, and the four of us left the Bluebird Mine and went into Kay Jay, where we called the county mine inspector with our story.

"That was the start of the investigation, and it was a mess. They sent a mine inspector to look at the fallen ceiling, and he could smell a rat right away. That was strong, stable rock, and he knew it had taken a lot of dynamite to bring it down, and he wanted to know why we was usin' so much blastin' powder when the seam was only ten feet high. We hummed and hawed, and came up with some bullshit story, and he attributed the deaths to 'miner error,' and we was on the hook for full restitution to the widows. Eventually we went back into the Bluebird and kept workin' that seam, but away from the lake. We didn't go anywhere near that place again.

"These hills, here in eastern Kentucky, they's old. The coal is full of fossils, you find leaves and ferns and fishes all the time. Bigger fossils than that, sometimes, too. Years went by, but we never forgot Alvin and Edward. Paul and I talked about it sometimes, but never with other men.

"One day about five years ago I went to the library and looked up marine dinosaurs, and I found our beasties right there in that book. Plesiosaurs, they's called. Terrors of the sea. Used to live in the shallow oceans a hundred million years ago. I reckon some of them got land-locked. Lot of Kentucky is no-man's land, places where human beings never been. Who knows what's livin' in those lakes and rivers, and in the underground caves? But now I'm old, and I'm half-hopin' that someone decides to dig out the old Bluebird mine and recover the bones of those men, if there's anything to recover. Or at least put those beasties to death. Ain't right for a man's remains to lay underground. Ain't a fittin' end for a Christian man.

"So I'm tellin' you this story, Hugh, in hopes that the mine people will see it, and the dinosaur guys will read it, and they'll go in there and kill those damned tools of the devil and put them on display in a museum somewhere. Stuff 'em and mount 'em, that's all they're good for. I'm old enough now that people can say I'm soft in the head, and it won't faze me. Bluebird mine is still in operation, it's the kids of the original miners down in there now, and it's still a blast mining operation, still with picks and shovels and mine cars. Alvin's son works the Bluebird now, and Edward's oldest daughter is a hard worker and digs out her share of coal. That seam just keeps on going. I warned them to keep the sniffers handy for poison gas, and told them there are underground rooms sometimes, and that's all the warnin' I felt I could give them. No stories about what happened to their daddies. Maybe after you publish this in your scientific journal I'll give copies to the Bluebird miners and tell them the truth of what happened in that place. Been lies for fifteen years, it's time the truth came out.

"It's time for the truth."

## Spirits of the Woods

Every year people disappear in the United States, gone to national parks and hiking trails and never seen again. Massive manhunts are organized, and helicopters are called in, and the dogs go out, and a serious effort is made to find the lost souls. Sober-faced sheriffs give serious sound bites, and the newspaper runs pictures of the missing parties in case they show up somewhere, safe and sound, but no one knows how these stories will end. Sometimes the missing are never found, leaving a lifelong hole in the hearts of friends and family. This is the story of such a manhunt.

Anna O'Rourke went missing one spring, on a sunny April day when the last of the snow was melting and the streams were rushing and the birds were returning from their winter in the south. She was seen by her mother packing a big lunch in a picnic basket, and her mother asked if she was going to go out into the woods for a bit of lunch.

Anna said, "More than a bit of lunch, I think."

"Well, you be careful out there," said Anna's mother. "It's easy to get turned around and lost in these woods. Take one of your father's GPS counters with you, play it safe."

Anna set out of the O'Rourke's country house with her picnic basket at around ten in the morning, the basket swinging from her right arm.

The O'Rourke family farm was at the end of Lilac Lane, fifteen miles away from town. The house was nestled in a little wooded valley right up in the mountains. Anna took her picnic basket and set out for one of the trails that lead into the mountains; her mother saw her go and thought Anna would be back by dinnertime. But she wasn't, and when dinnertime came and Anna wasn't back home yet her mother called her father, who was working on the back acreage, and told him their daughter was missing.

"She probably got turned around in the woods," he said. "Serve her right to be lost overnight. Teach her a little lesson about minding her bearings. Does she have a GPS?"

"I told her to take one," said Anna's mother, "But I don't know if she did."

"All right. I'm about to head in anyway. Does she have food?"

"She took a picnic basket loaded with food. Enough for four or five meals, by what I saw."

"Sleeping bag, blanket?"

"Not that I noticed."

"So she went out for a picnic lunch and maybe dinner, and she's not home yet. Come morning we'll call the sheriff, if she hasn't come in. Maybe get some neighbors to come help us look for her. Hopefully she has brains enough to stop walking once she realizes she's lost."

"Shouldn't we call the sheriff now?"

"No, they won't search at night. Good way to lose more people. I know the land for ten miles in every direction, there's some nice little valleys where she could have stopped for lunch. Don't fret, mother. She'll be all right. It still gets cold at night, but not killing cold. She'll have an uncomfortable night and be a bit bedraggled in the morning, but nothing serious."

"I'm worried, Hal."

"I'm coming back right now, we'll talk when I get in."

It took thirty minutes for Anna's father to walk in from the back acreage, and he found the family gathered around the table and talking about Anna.

"She made some weird comments to Teddy," said Anna's mother. Teddy was Anna's older brother, he was twenty. "Made it sound like she wasn't looking to come back."

"Maybe aliens got her, dad," said Teddy, making the big eyes he always got when talking about aliens.

"Don't start that nonsense again," said the senior O'Rourke.

"Lots of UFO's been seen around here in the last ten years, everybody knows E.T. is surveying this part of the country," said Teddy. "Maybe she's getting anally probed right now."

"You need a probe to locate your brains," said Anna's father.

"I'm worried about grizzlies," said Anna's mother. "They're all coming out of hibernation, and they'll be hungry. Anna might look good to a bear."

"She's too ornery for a bear to eat her," said Jeannie, the youngest. Jeannie was nine, a surprise baby, an example of birth control failure. The O'Rourkes had planned to have two children and then quit, but Jeannie came along, and they decided to keep her. She was devoted to her older sister, that much is established fact. Followed Anna around all the time, and always wanted her older sister to play with her. Anna was eighteen and had her boyfriend to "play" with, so little sister didn't get as much attention as she'd have liked.

Anna's mother didn't say anything else about bears, and Teddy stayed quiet about space aliens. Anna's father said, "She might come walking in here at any moment, you never know. Let's have dinner and keep our strength up. We'll see what has to be done come morning."

So the O'Rourkes had dinner, and they watched the news, and eventually they went to bed and had a sleepless night worrying about Anna. In the morning Mr. O'Rourke pushed open the door to Anna's room and found her bed unslept in. He went downstairs hoping to find her at the breakfast table, but there was no one there. As he fried up his bacon and eggs he rehearsed what he was going to say to the sheriff, and as his wife came downstairs he made the call.

Things happened fast after that. The sheriff was Paul Parker, a serious-minded, overweight fellow in his early sixties who had dealt with missing persons before and knew exactly what to do. He called out the deputies and phoned some reliable people he knew to act as searchers, and within two hours of Mr. O'Rourke's call the O'Rourke farm was the center of an ongoing manhunt. Thirty people had shown up with GPS counters and an assortment of firearms to deal with grumpy grizzlies, and Mrs. O'Rourke had gone to the store for pastries and extra coffee to keep the searchers fueled. The sheriff talked with Mr. O'Rourke about likely places Anna might have known in the mountains, places she might have been headed for to have her picnic, and he sent a prowler over to Anna's boyfriend, Thomas Hofstadter, to talk with the young man about Anna's state of mind.

"I'm with your wife, Hal," said the sheriff. "This is a bad time to be up in those mountains. Grizzlies all over the place, and not in a good mood. Hungry."

"And space aliens," said Teddy, determined to get his licks in where he could.

"I wouldn't worry about space aliens," said the sheriff. "Can you take us up to some of the prettier places in the mountains, Hal, and show us around? Might save us time stumbling around up there."

"Yeah, I planned to head up there today anyway," said Mr. O'Rourke. "I looked in the drawer at my GPS counters. Anna didn't take one with her. I'm hoping she just got turned around up there and is wandering in circles." The senior O'Rourke looked at his coffee as he said this, and tried not to think too much.

"Let's get going," said the sheriff. "We'll take you and Teddy and myself, and we'll fan out searchers on the other trails in the area, and hopefully we'll come across her in short order."

Mr. O'Rourke went and got a twelve gauge and loaded up on shells, and Teddy got a .30-06. The sheriff had a .357 pistol, and they were ready to roll. Mrs. O'Rourke made them a lunch so they would be able to stay up in the mountains all day, and they headed out.

Hal O'Rourke led the sheriff and Teddy to a place the O'Rourke family called the fairy meadow, about three miles up in the mountains from the O'Rourke farm. It took a little over an hour to get there, and when they arrived they found Anna's picnic basket under a stately elm tree. There was plenty of food left in it, enough for several meals, and the searchers fired off their weapons into the air and shouted for fifteen minutes, but Anna didn't appear.

"No blood," said the sheriff. "Bear attacks tend to be bloody affairs. So it looks like she set down the basket and wandered off and got lost. This is good, we have a known location."

The sheriff had his walkie-talkie with him, and he was in constant touch with the other search parties making their way through the mountains. No one else had a sighting or came across remains or any such. The sheriff called in one of the sharper searchers who had german shepherds, and they met up at the fairy meadow and had the dogs sniff around. The dogs snorted at the picnic basket and set off running, and the sheriff said,

"They've got her scent in this meadow, she must have walked around for a while. Roscoe, why don't you take the dogs to the edges of the meadow and see if they pick up her trail leaving the place."

"Roger that," said Roscoe Coletrain, the dogs' owner. He called the dogs to him and took them to the far end of the meadow and had them sniff around on the trails heading farther into the mountains, but the dogs weren't interested. They kept coming back to the tall elm that was just getting leaves, and sniffing at that. There were three dogs, and one of them lifted his leg and let fly at the tree, and the three dogs circled the elm and set up a baying.

"What do you make of that?" the sheriff asked Roscoe.

"Looks like she climbed this tree for a while. To escape a bear? To see the view from up there? Haven't seen any bear tracks around here, but the ground in this meadow isn't that soft, either. Dogs would be more upset if there was a bear. They think they've got this girl treed, is what they think." He patted the dogs on the head, and they wagged their tails and bayed and sniffed at the elm, and Roscoe continued, "It's going to be hard to get them off this tree. They know we want this girl, and they're doing their level best to deliver her." He grabbed the alpha male and pulled him away from the elm tree, and the other two dogs came with him. He took them to the head of the trail leaving the meadow, but the dogs ran back to the elm tree and barked. Roscoe cussed the dogs out and pulled them away again, and this time they sniffed around the trail head, but soon they were back at the elm tree and barking up a storm.

About this time the sheriff got a walkie-talkie call from the deputy he'd sent off to interview Thomas Hofstadter.

"This girl Anna and the Hofstadter guy had a fight a few days ago," said the deputy. "Something about birth control. Thomas wanted babies, and the girl didn't. According to the young man it was a rip-roaring fight that went on a while, and the girl left in a huff and hadn't called him for days. The Hofstadter boy is coming to join the search."

"Sounds good," said the sheriff. "Maybe Teddy can go back to the farm and pick him up?"

"Sure," said Teddy. "Not a problem." He took off down the trail with his .30-06 in hand. So far the searchers had come across two bears, neither one aggressive. Just out of hibernation and basically confused. The searchers chased them off, and that was the end of that.

Roscoe continued to pull the german shepherds away from the elm tree and put them on the trail, and the dogs continued to return to the elm. This happened half a dozen times, and Roscoe finally lost his temper and chewed out the dogs, who lowered their tails and made mournful barks. They gave the elm a last dirty look and then followed Roscoe to the side trails that led deeper into the mountains.

"We've got searchers down that trail," said the sheriff, "and so far they haven't come up with a thing. They say the trail gets soft near a stream half a mile up, and there's no footprints around the stream. So unless the girl is sticking deliberately to dry ground, she's not gone that way."

"Still want the dogs to get a whiff," said Roscoe. "They'll find her if she's to be found."

The sheriff went back to the picnic basket and poked through it. "Still a lot of food in here," he said. "Maybe she's on a side trip and planning to return. Though why she didn't hang the basket in a tree is a good question."

"We camped out in this meadow two years ago," said Hal O'Rourke. "Brought blankets and plenty of food and stayed overnight. My youngest, Jeannie, said the fireflies were fairies and that they were talking to her. Anna was with us then." He eyed up Roscoe talking to his dogs at the far edge of the meadow and the dogs with their noses to the ground, not getting a scent.

"Day's early," said the sheriff. "We have plenty of time to find your daughter, Hal."

"Damned bears," said the older O'Rourke.

Time passed, and the dogs and Roscoe headed down the side trails to try to pick up Anna's scent. The sheriff kept up a running conversation with the other searchers via walkie-talkie and followed as they fanned out on the trails and walked far back into the mountains.

"The ground is wet up here in the higher mountains," said one of the searchers, his voice hissing on the communications device. "If she'd come this way her footprints would have been in the ground. Don't suppose anyone knows what she was wearing for foot gear?"

"Sneakers," said Mr. O'Rourke.

"Sneakers," said the sheriff into this 'talkie, and the voice at the other end said,

"Well, we've got no signs of anyone up here. Can we get those dogs up this way?"

"He's working his way up there," said the sheriff. "Should be joining you in half an hour."

Teddy returned with Thomas Hofstadter, who was upset and worried and immediately did what the others had already done and circled the meadow looking for clues.

"No footprints?" he asked the sheriff.

"Dogs got her scent well enough, but they seem to think she didn't go down a side trail. It was like she climbed this tree and then disappeared."

"That's where the aliens got her," said Teddy. "They chased her into this meadow, and she climbed the tree to get away from them, but there weren't enough leaves to hide her, and they picked her off. She's in their ship right now, they're probing her."

The sheriff looked like he wanted to make some biting remarks, but he held himself back. Mister O'Rourke sighed and said, "Don't suppose it would be too much to ask the aliens to leave footprints behind that we could follow?"

"Aliens don't leave footprints, dad," said Teddy. "They float just above the ground. Everyone knows that."

"Well, good news is, doesn't look like a bear got her," said the sheriff. "Not unless she went _way_ up into the mountains and got hammered up there. But the dogs should have caught her scent on the trails by now, if she'd left this meadow." The sheriff squinted into the trees that surrounded the meadow, mostly pines and a few hardwoods, apparently looking for Anna crouching behind a tree and laughing at their efforts to find her.

"About two miles from here, farther back in the mountains, is a flat place at the top of a cliff that we called the overlook," said Hal O'Rourke. "Had some picnics there as well. Got a view of the mountains that must be seen to be believed. Maybe she ended up there."

"We're not getting anywhere sitting around this meadow," said the sheriff. "Maybe we should call Roscoe and have him meet up at this overlook place. Hell, we've got thirty people in these mountains, Hal. If she's within fifteen miles of your place we'll find her. Not so many trails up here for her to have wandered down, and there's no sign she's gone off-trail."

Hal nodded. "I think it's a good idea to wander up to the overlook," he said.

So the two O'Rourkes and the sheriff headed for the trail that led further into the mountains. "Coming?" the senior O'Rourke said to Thomas Hofstadter.

"No, I think I'll look around here," said Thomas.

"Suit yourself," said the sheriff. "But the dogs have already gone over this whole meadow, very thoroughly."

"I'll try my luck here," said Thomas, and the other men headed into the mountains.

Hours went by, and the search party at the overlook couldn't catch the girl's scent with the dogs, and the search moved on. Morning became afternoon, then late afternoon, and the searchers returned to the O'Rourke farm, where Mrs. O'Rourke had been cooking all afternoon and had fresh cornbread and roast chicken and cherry pie ready for everyone. Thirty people ate a lot of food, and she was busy feeding people for the next two hours as the sun slowly sank in the west.

"Don't know what to make of this one," said the sheriff to Mrs. O'Rourke, when she had the chance to catch her breath. "The dogs were all over that elm tree in your 'fairy meadow,' but they couldn't catch her scent anywhere else. We must have covered fifteen miles of terrain, and between all the searchers we must have covered something like three hundred miles of trails.

"It was a bear," Mrs. O'Rourke said fearfully. "Pulled her off the trail and killed her."

"Well, don't give up hope," said the sheriff. "Tomorrow I've got a state patrol helicopter coming in to take a look from the air. If she's wandered off the trail for some reason and is roaming the mountains, the chopper might spot her."

"Thank you, sheriff," said Mrs. O'Rourke. "It's just that I've got such a bad feeling for this, it's hard to ignore."

"At least it's not too cold at night, now," said the sheriff. "It's not like she's going to freeze to death out there."

The searchers ate the food Mrs. O'Rourke had prepared and gave the O'Rourkes their well wishes and then took off, and the O'Rourkes had an unhappy dinner of their own at the farm.

"She went up into that elm tree, and then she disappeared," said Teddy. "I _know_ it was space aliens, dad. People don't just disappear up trees."

"Speaking of people disappearing, I didn't see Thomas Hofstadter back here at the farm tonight," said Mr. O'Rourke.

"I didn't see him either," said Mrs. O'Rourke. "Wasn't he with you men?"

"He was for part of the morning, but he stayed in the fairy meadow," said Teddy. "We didn't see him the rest of the afternoon." His eyes got big. "Do you think the aliens took him too?"

"I'll call the Hofstadters," said Mr. O'Rourke, and he excused himself from the table and made the call. Thomas' parents hadn't seen him all day. Mr. O'Rourke went outside the house and then came back in. "His car is still parked way down the driveway," he said. "Damn. We may have another missing person."

"Did he have a GPS?" Mrs. O'Rourke said. "This is turning into a nightmare."

"I didn't ask him about GPS," said Teddy. "Did you, dad?"

"No," said Mr. O'Rourke. "But he's been with Anna up to the fairy meadow certainly, and I think they went to the overlook last fall. He should know the trails up that far."

"Well, hell," said Teddy. "Maybe the aliens wanted two humans, dad. One male and one female. For breeding experiments."

"That's enough nonsense, Teddy," said Mr. O'Rourke.

"It's not nonsense, dad, it's _scientific_ ," said Teddy.

"I want my sister back," said Jeannie.

"Sheriff said the searchers covered three hundred miles of trails, and no Anna," said Mr. O'Rourke. He looked heavily at his plate. "I'm afraid your mother might be right, and a bear got her. That fits best with the evidence. She sure wasn't anywhere to be found all day. Dogs couldn't even find her."

"How much trail did the dogs go over?" asked Mrs. O'Rourke.

"George Sniderman had some dachshunds, and Roscoe Coletrain had some german shepherds," said Mr. O'Rourke. "They covered maybe thirty miles of trails, between them."

"That's a lot of trails," said Jeannie. "Maybe the helicopter will see her tomorrow."

"We can hope," said Mr. O'Rourke. The family finished their meal in silence, and retired to a miserable night abed, when none of them slept much.

The next day the helicopter flew out to the farm just as the sun was coming up, and Mr. O'Rourke went outside. The chopper landed on the front lawn, and the sheriff got out. He and Mr. O'Rourke talked a while, and then Mr. O'Rourke came inside and announced he was flying in the helicopter with the sheriff and the state patrol pilots.

"Good luck," said Mrs. O'Rourke.

"Look for an alien ship," said Teddy. "It'll probably have camouflage, like the alien in _Predator._ Keep your eyes peeled, dad!"

Mr. O'Rourke made a face at this and then went back outside to the chopper and got inside. It took off, and that whole day it criss-crossed the mountains, hovering above every meadow and field they came across. As the sun went down it returned to the O'Rourke farm and let Mr. O'Rourke off, then it took off again.

"Didn't see a thing," said Mr. O'Rourke to his unhappy family. "Spent all day looking for her, and we didn't spot a trace. Sheriff said he's going to ask the searchers to come back and take another look, with more dogs, and that'll be the end of it. The weather is supposed to take a turn for the worse in a few days. Last winter snowstorm on the way. If she's out there, she'll freeze to death." He dished himself up some lasagna, and the family ate in silence.

The search continued for the next three days, searchers coming in to the O'Rourke farm and spending long days up the trails. The search was expanded to include Thomas Hofstadter, who had also now officially disappeared, and the sheriff was checking that everyone had GPS counters before heading back into the mountains. The state patrol had the chopper out all three days, and the local newspaper picked up the story and asked that if Anna or Thomas came down out of the mountains they be helped to return to their respective families.

The dogs were called back to the fairy meadow to see if they could find Thomas Hofstadter's trail, and they went crazy at a big elm tree just as they had gone crazy for a smaller elm over Anna's scent. Teddy made much of this and his space aliens theory, and the sheriff said it was weird that the two of them had both been treed in the fairy meadow, and the searchers looked for bears but didn't find any. The dogs were taken onto the farther trails, and nothing was found, and the hunt went on.

Then the temperatures dropped like a rock, and it snowed for two days, and the sheriff called off the search. It got to below freezing as winter gave it one last gasp, and everyone knew that if the young lovers were still in the mountains they had frozen to death. Friends called the O'Rourkes with condolences, and Mrs. O'Rourke cried for days. Teddy and Mr. O'Rourke went up into the mountains several more times, tromping over the snow, but they found nothing.

"Maybe Thomas found Anna, and they're together somewhere," said Jeannie, but this just seemed to upset Mrs. O'Rourke, and Jeannie didn't say anything else. The O'Rourke household became brittle in grief. Mr. O'Rourke checked the GPS counters, counting them over and over, as though he could will one into his missing daughter's hands.

The O'Rourkes and the Hofstadters held funerals for their missing members, and the two coffins were buried side by side in Green Lawn Cemetery, just outside of town. The funerals were a quiet affair. Jeannie threw dirt over her sister's coffin, and they were buried.

A little over a year passed, and the families moved on in life. Jeannie turned eleven, and she took to roaming the trails in the mountains, always with a GPS counter with fresh batteries. She returned to the fairy meadow again and again, looking behind the trees for the bones of her sister, dead of bear attack, which was the official version of the story. Her mother didn't like her going up into the mountains, but her father just made damned sure she knew how to read the GPS counter and turned her loose with that.

"We can't keep her in the house forever," said Mr. O'Rourke.

"We should keep her in the house until she's eighteen," said Mrs. O'Rourke.

"She's a sensible girl," said Mr. O'Rourke.

"Anna was a sensible girl, too," said Mrs. O'Rourke.

"She didn't take the GPS counter like you told her to, that's what did Anna in," said Mr. O'Rourke. "One moment's bad decisions is all it takes. Just make sure Jeannie has a GPS whenever she goes up into the mountains, and there won't be any trouble."

One day in June Jeannie was in the fairy meadow at dusk, when something amazing happened. There were two elm trees that the searchers had blazoned with little marks to indicate that the dogs had gone crazy at them, and Jeannie was standing near one of these when suddenly Anna and Thomas stepped out of the elm trees. Jeannie just about wet herself to see them.

"Anna!" she cried out, and the two lovers turned their heads at the same moment to look at her. They didn't look like people anymore, Jeannie noted with a chill. They looked like their skin was made of bark, and their eyes were yellow and strange. Their clothing was made of leaves, and they wore circlets of twigs on their heads.

"It's me, Jeannie!" she shouted. She ran over to the two of them, who were standing stock still and staring at her. "Don't you remember?"

The two lovers smiled at her, then they started to dance. As the sun set they bobbed and weaved and stepped, now closer and now farther, including Jeannie in the dance even though she didn't know the steps. Then the two lovers fell to the ground and made love while Jeannie turned away. Then the two of them stood up and bowed to each other and walked backward to the two elms, which they stepped into as the last light went away from the world.

Jeannie stared at the elm trees, stunned by what had just happened. She got on her walkie-talkie and called her father and told him that she had just found Anna and Thomas.

"They're the elm trees, daddy! They live in the elm trees in the fairy meadow! I just saw them dancing up here!"

"Calm down," Mr. O'Rourke said. "It's dark out, and you have three miles to go to return to the farm. Just follow the GPS and you'll be all right."

"Didn't you hear me, dad?" said Jeannie.

"I heard you," said Mr. O'Rourke. "People can't become trees, sweetie. It's just a wish you have, that's all that's troubling you. It'll go away with time."

Jeannie was annoyed by this but didn't say anything else. She pulled out the GPS counter and headed back to the farm, where her mother was upset.

"We don't want you going out at night," said Mrs. O'Rourke. "We let you run around to the fairy meadow and the overlook, that's bad enough. But you can get confused out there at night, it's easy to get turned around."

"Your mother is right, Jeannie, don't stay out in those mountains at night. That's a hard and fast rule."

"But I saw them," said Jeannie. "Right as the sun was going down. They look like tree people now, they don't look like regular people."

Mr. O'Rourke looked pityingly at his daughter. "If you want to see something bad enough, you'll see it," he said. "We buried your sister's coffin, Jeannie. Let it rest."

Jeannie looked at the expression on her dad's face and saw that it was only upsetting her parents to think about Anna, so she kept it to herself. At least Teddy didn't give her any crap about space aliens. He had taken to reading all sorts of books about alien abductions and space aliens among us and this sort of thing and maintained that alien astronauts had kidnapped Anna and Thomas to put them in an alien zoo. Sometimes he went into the mountains with his .30-06, looking for space aliens to shoot up.

They talked about Anna sometimes, wondering if she was happy in heaven, but Jeannie was impatient with this sort of talk. She went back up to the fairy meadow sometimes, right at dusk, getting a chewing out from her dad, but she didn't see Anna and Thomas again for a while. It was in September that Teddy said something about the equinox, and equal amounts of light and dark, and Jeannie realized that the day she had seen her sister and Thomas was the summer solstice. When winter came she bundled up and went up to the fairy meadow and caught Anna and Thomas dancing in the snow on the winter solstice. This time she danced with them, crudely and with clumsy steps, but she was part of their dance. She stayed with them until they returned to their trees, then she went home.

The years flew by, and Jeannie became a young woman and took lovers of her own and eventually married and settled down. Every few months, on the solstices and the equinoxes, she returned to the fairy meadow and joined in the dance between her sister and Thomas. She noticed that there were more elm trees in the meadow now, little saplings struggling for life, and she cleared the weeds away from these and helped them grow. She told her husband simply that she was going into the mountains to dance for her sister and Thomas, and that she didn't want company, and he honored this and let her go. So Jeannie was the only one to keep her sister's faith after everyone else had given her up for dead.

Eventually Jeannie's parents died, and Jeannie had children of her own, and the three of them grew up healthy and strong. Teddy became a recluse living in his parents' house, raving to anyone who would listen about the space aliens who had stolen away his sister. Jeannie tried to set him straight a few times, but he wouldn't hear it. So she was obliged to leave him to his ignorance.

In time the elm saplings grew into fine elm trees, and on the solstices and equinoxes little children came out of them and joined in their parent's dance, and it was a circle dance that they all did up there in the fairy meadow. The elm children seemed to grow up very slowly, and Jeannie wondered as she grew old who would marry them when they were of age. Jeannie herself seemed to age in slow motion, and she lived to be one hundred and nineteen years old, spry until her hundred and eleventh year, when she could no longer trek up to the fairy meadow and see her sister and Thomas. She went into the earth on summer solstice, content that she had seen a miracle, content that her sister had found a way to live with her lover in the woods.

And who knows, maybe Anna and Thomas are there still, dancing on the special days of the year, bearing elm tree children and keeping the days, for all the long lives of elm trees. As they say, stranger thing have happened.

## Pay Dirt

This is a story about a man who finds a valuable artifact in the mountains of New Mexico and tries to sell it to the government. He runs into all sorts of obstacles and time wasters, and for a while it's not certain if he will be able to profit by his discovery or not. To make matters worse, the reporter who is reporting his find to the world is cute, and he wants her, but she's giving him chilly signals. He is a man on the cusp of becoming rich, but not quite making it to that hallowed territory, and he is a man on the cusp of taking an exciting new lover, but he's not quite making it there, either. Read the story and find out what becomes of the main character, as he strives to hit Pay Dirt.

Oscar had to take a leak, and he didn't want to do it in public, so he stopped and looked around for a minute before deciding on a spot. He was walking in the woods, on Federal lands outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, and while he suspected no one would come along just when he chose to whip it out, with his luck a full meeting of the Ladies' Committee for Moral Decency would come along at that exact moment. So he had to get off the trail, and a good distance off the trail, too, because the forest was thin here and you could see a long ways into the trees. So he took off toward the north and climbed a hill and came down the other side, and there he unzipped his fly and did his business.

As he was finishing up he looked around himself, just checking out the scenery as it were, and saw something gleaming in the thick bushes off to his right. The bushes were growing on the sides of a steep ravine, and it took him a couple of minutes of struggling through the undergrowth to get to the gleaming object. Now that he was close he could see there was metal bridging the ravine, from one side to the other, twenty feet across. It was smooth, grey metal, without rivets or markings, and he wondered if it was the fuselage of a crashed plane. Had to have been here a while, though, for these bushes and saplings and brambles to grow up over it.

He carefully tromped down the underbrush and got a feel for the size of the metal object; it was at least twenty feet long and about twenty feet wide and was six or eight feet thick. It was tapered so that the west side was narrower than the east side, and the metal gleamed dully as Oscar exposed it. He scrambled up onto the object and pulled shrubbery away from it, and was rewarded by finding a round glass cockpit about eight feet in diameter and four feet high. This had to be some sort of crashed aircraft, then. But it had been here twenty or thirty years, at least. It had hit hard enough to bury it in the soil, and then the shrubbery grew up over it. If it hit that hard it should be in pieces, but it appeared to be intact. Well built, then.

There was a glare from the morning sun on the glass, and for a long time he didn't try looking into the cockpit but merely pulled undergrowth away from it. The cockpit wasn't pitted or shattered or busted up in any way, and Oscar had to wonder if the object had crashed after all. Maybe it was a controlled landing. If it hit hard enough to bury it in the ground, the impact would have broken that cockpit. Unless it wasn't glass but some space-age transparent substance, some type of plastic or see-through ceramic?

Oscar wasn't a materials science kind of guy, he was a librarian for the Santa Fe public library system, working out of the La Farge branch. Mostly he worked the desk, dealing with the general public, which was enough to give you the hives. "General public" covered a lot of territory, from the homeless to society ladies and everybody in between. He enjoyed his job, but there were days...

He put his face up against the glass and shielded his eyes from the sun. It took his eyes a moment to adjust, but was he surprised when they did! There were two pilots in some sort of black harnesses in there, but they weren't human, they were giant insects. They were beetles of some kind, as big as a man, with horns sticking out of their foreheads and big old compound eyes shaped like lozenges. Their legs were folded up against their bodies, and it looked like their exoskeletons were cracked open in places. Hard landing, then, and the pilots were killed on impact.

Shivers ran up and down Oscar's spine, and he looked carefully at the rest of the cockpit. There were control panels, and these were blinking with tiny lights, and there was a screen lit up with soft blue light that made him think of a map.

Was this something from the set of a sci-fi movie? Did they build this and then decide to leave it here after the shoot? What on God's green earth had he found?

For a while he crunched bushes and pulled vines and cleared undergrowth as best he could, until he had part of the object uncovered. It was buried about six feet in the earth, and this ravine had been dug out by the rain and exposed part of it. The spacecraft, because that's what it had to be with pilots like that, was still mostly buried in the hill.

Oscar took out his GPS and marked the coordinates carefully. He thought he could find his way back here without the GPS, but he preferred to have the numbers bookmarked. He was only thirty-five, and his memory was good, but you never knew what tricks memory could play when you really needed it.

He felt a weird elation, a touch of the strange, as he took out his camera and snapped three dozen photos of the spaceship and the cockpit and its insect occupants. He checked the quality of the photos in the little view screen on the camera, but in that tiny space you couldn't really tell how the pictures were going to turn out. If they were good he'd submit them to the _New Mexican_. Maybe they'd do a write-up on the spaceship. He'd be famous!

He walked around the vessel and saw something gleaming in the bushes; it was a tiny sliver of metal sticking out of the soil. It was about ten inches long and an inch thick and looked like part of an antenna or something like that. It was made of the same metal as the ship. He put his camera away and carried this object in one hand as he left the ship behind and went back to the hiking trail. How long had this thing been here, thirty years? A hundred years? It was uncovered by erosion, and that might have taken centuries. The growth was recent, but the trees around the ship were old growth, looked to him like. Old growth pines, might be hundreds of years old. How long did pine trees live?

Instead of continuing on the trail deeper into the woods he turned around and hiked out to the parking lot and got in his car. The piece of metal he set on the passenger seat next to him. It might be better not to tell anyone where the ship was located. A downed alien ship, for real? And with its control panels still lit up? That would be worth some serious money to NASA or even the NSA. Might have futuristic weapons on board that would interest the military. Places like Harvard and Yale would be excited by the giant insect pilots. Who knew how big the ship really was, and what was inside?

He was thinking the whole way back to Santa Fe. He needed to get a safe deposit box for his GPS, keep it in a safe place. He might misplace it in his messy apartment. Yes, he'd tell the paper about the space ship, but he wouldn't tell them where it was. Now he regretted having uncovered the ship, because the metal gleamed in the sun, and someone might see it via satellite. So the race was on. He had to get a hold of NASA and sell it before some Federal employee found it on their own and cut him out of the loop. He couldn't claim ownership of the ship, but he could charge a finder's fee for it. How much? Ten million? An alien ship was worth a lot more than a lousy ten million. Fifty million? Just answering the question, "Are we alone in the universe?" was worth fifty million. No. A hundred million. That's how much he would charge. They'd bitch, because people never wanted to pay what something was worth, but that was too bad. A hundred million, it was.

Once he got back home he downloaded the photos to his home computer, a nice little Apple, and checked them out. Not bad, but you couldn't really tell it was a spaceship. It just looked like a large metal object buried in the ground. The pictures of the cockpit came out better, you could tell it was a cockpit, and he got three really good shots of the pilots. They looked a bit like a special effect, but given that they were giant bugs he supposed that was unavoidable.

It was late in the afternoon by the time he called the _New Mexican_ and got a news editor who listened to his story.

"I've got pictures of the insect pilots, and pictures of the ship, but most of it is buried in the ground, so it doesn't really look like a space ship," he told the editor.

"Crashed alien ship, eh? And is that here in New Mexico?"

"It is, but I can't say exactly where. I plan to open negotiations with NASA for a finder's fee for the space craft."

"I like it," said the editor. "Shades of Roswell, and all that. Why don't I send a reporter over to see your pictures and hear all the details, and we'll decide if we want to run the story?"

"Sounds good. I work regular business hours, but my weekends are free. Tomorrow is open, in fact, if your reporter has time."

"I'll see if she is willing to visit you," said the editor. "Give me your number, and I'll have her call you."

The next morning, around ten, Oscar's cell phone rang, and it was the reporter, whose name was Annette. She had time that afternoon, if Oscar was still interested. He was, and they set a time, and the reporter came and interviewed him. She was young, maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven, and AmeriIndian, and quite pretty, but she had a plain gold band on her ring finger, so he figured that was going nowhere. Oscar wasn't married, himself. After Angelina left him he didn't see the point in messing around with women anymore. She had told him he was boring, and he couldn't bear to hear that from another woman. Once in a while he dated, but he always cut it off before it became serious.

The reporter asked him about fifty questions, and tape recorded his answers, and she looked at his photos and requested him to send her the eight she thought were best for the paper.

"If we run the story we'll pick two or three from these," she said.

He liked her voice; she had a husky, sexy voice that turned his crank.

"I notice you're wearing an engagement ring. Lucky guy, huh?"

"Oh, I just wear that when I'm going out to bars, to keep the wolves at bay. I'm going out with some girlfriends this evening, so I put it on. If a guy's really interested he'll ask in spite of the ring."

"I'm interested," said Oscar, and she smiled.

"Usually I date artists, not librarians. I have a thing for tortured souls."

"How about a soul who is a good cook and likes hiking in the woods?"

"Do you write short stories?" she asked. "You look like a writer."

"No, but I've written articles for library journals."

She eyed him up, and he felt a thrill of excitement as her brown eyes locked on his. "I'll think about it, Oscar. I have your number; I'll be in touch in the next week or two to let you know if we're going to do a piece."

On Monday Oscar took the morning off work, claiming a doctor's appointment, but in reality he went to his bank and rented a safe deposit box and put the GPS unit and the piece of metal from the space ship in it. Now he didn't have to worry about misplacing them. He had memorized the space ship's GPS coordinates, in case the device malfunctioned, but he didn't trust his memory with a string of numbers. Better to have the GPS stowed away.

Nothing happened for ten days. He called his parents in Tallahassee and told them about the spaceship and mentioned that he was angling for a finder's fee, which tickled his dad something fierce. His father worked for the post office and was due to retire in a few years.

"Stick it to them," his dad said. "The government has tons of money. They can pay."

As the days went on, Oscar grew restless and sent Annette a bouquet of flowers at work. Two days later she called him and said,

"We're going to run the piece on your spaceship in this Sunday's paper, with three of your photos. You realize this will bring you attention?"

"I hope so. I want to open negotiations with NASA for a finder's fee for the spaceship."

"Oh, you didn't mention that. That would be good for the piece. Mind if I quote you?"

"Go ahead. They probably have a clipping service for stories like this one, keep their ear to the ground. They'll see the story, then I'll call."

"How much are you going to ask for?"

"A lot. I'm thinking an alien spaceship is worth billions and billions of dollars, so a hundred million is a fair finder's fee."

Annette whistled. "That's a lot of money. Can I put that in my story?"

"Sure. How about dinner?"

"That's too big a commitment. You can take me out for a drink, though."

They set a date for that Sunday night and settled on a place to meet, and Oscar hung up his cell phone feeling excited and ready for action. He went to the store and bought some new aftershave, something with a strong spicy scent, and some new body rinse to go with it. It had been a while since he'd been on a date, and he was jumpy the whole day Saturday.

On Sunday morning the paper came, and there was his story, right in the main section of the newspaper, under the headline: Roswell Fulfilled? He read the article slowly and carefully and found a good quote from some expert from a search for extra-terrestrial intelligence project in Albuquerque.

"If this is real, it is the most significant find in human history," said the expert. "After Roswell it's foolish to get our hopes up, but in particular the photo of the two giant insect pilots is exciting. I hope NASA moves on this. They've been slow in the past to check out reports of alien spaceship crash sites. I guess they're afraid of getting burned."

Oscar called his parents in Tallahassee and pointed them to the article on the internet, and his dad cackled gleefully as he called up the article and read it.

"Yeah, boy, you just might hit the jackpot," he said to Oscar. "Shame it happened to you and not me, but you can always slide me five million, what do you say?"

"Dad, if I hit pay dirt on this, I'll give you at _least_ five million."

"That's more like it, son."

Over the course of the day Oscar watched readers make comments on the article, on the paper's website. By dinnertime there were more than a hundred comments on the article, most of them betting that Oscar was either a fool or a con man. A lot of people were hoping he'd con the government into a fat finder's fee and then disappear to the Bahamas. He chuckled at all this and wondered when NASA would pick up on the article. Well screw it, he wasn't waiting for them to call him. He would call them first.

That evening he met Annette at the bar they had agreed on, and he bought her a daiquiri and had a glass of whisky for himself.

"So when do you call NASA?" she asked him. He suddenly noticed that she had a dynamite figure, very sleek and graceful, and he felt momentarily tongue-tied. When he recovered himself he said,

"Tomorrow morning, before I go to work. I expect to get bounced around for a while. Might take me days just to figure out who to talk to."

"We're having a great debate at the _New Mexican_ about whether you're on the level or not," she said. She took a drink and grinned. "You sure _talk_ a good game."

"You laugh, but wait until I bring home that check for the finder's fee," he bragged.

She giggled. "We want to track the story," she said. "Call me in a week or two and let me know how the NASA angle is going. We'll do two hundred and fifty word updates every few weeks, so people can root for you. This article is going to generate a lot of excitement, I bet. It really will be shades of Roswell."

"Tell me a little about yourself," he said, and she looked right into his eyes.

"I'm from Zuni," she said. "But my parents moved to Santa Fe when I was little, and I've been raised mainstream. My dad works for a bank, as a manager, and my mother does leather and beadwork. She's very talented, and her work is on display at several galleries here in town. I went to college in Albuquerque and have been working for the _New Mexican_ for four years. I love my job, and I hope to be a senior reporter in another couple of years."

"Significant raise?"

"That and respect. You get sent after the bigger stories."

"Seems to me that mine is a big story."

She chuckled. "No offense, Oscar, but we're betting your story isn't for real. That's why it wasn't the lead piece in the paper. I did a retrospective on Roswell three years ago, which is why the editor had me do this piece."

"So you're all betting I'm a fraud? Ouch!"

"Your picture of the aliens was a little fuzzy, and they look like a special effect. The pictures of the ship just look like a large nondescript metal object that could be anything. The shot of the control panel was interesting, but it would be easy to fake it."

"Okay, miss disbeliever, we'll see who comes out on top of this one."

"I haven't made up my mind yet," she said. "You're convincing in person, but all good con men are convincing in person."

Oscar nodded. "I'll let you know how it goes with NASA."

The next day he got up early and ate a hearty breakfast and looked up numbers for NASA on the internet. NASA's office was in Washington D.C., and there was a phone number listed for this, and he called the number and talked to a young woman who gave him the number to a Ph.D. named William Gordon, who was in charge of NASA's extraterrestrials department. Oscar called William and waited until the phone was picked up, when he said:

"William Gordon?"

"Yes, that's me. Who would this be?"

"My name is Oscar Thorpe. I'm told you're the man to talk to about space aliens."

"Have you had a sighting, Oscar?"

"Better than a sighting, William. I've got the location of a crashed alien spaceship in New Mexico."

"Not Roswell, I hope."

"No, it's up in the mountains. I'm calling from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Yesterday the newspaper here ran a story on my discovery, with some photos I took of the spaceship. I'd like to send you a link and let you read the article for yourself, then we can talk again."

"All right. Next few days are busy for me, but after that I can get to it." He gave Oscar his email address, and Oscar sent him the link as they talked.

"Got it," William said as the email came through. "All right, Oscar Thorpe, I'll read about your alien space ship."

Oscar gave him his cell phone number and told him to call before he went to work, then they disconnected.

Things started going loopy right after that. All that day people showed up at the library demanding he talk to them about the crashed spaceship and wasting his time with their theories about where the aliens had come from and what they were doing when they crashed. Oscar said he couldn't talk about this at work, that there would be updates in the paper, but some of the crackpots were highly motivated, and the security guard had to run them off. By lunch the entire library staff knew about Oscar's find, and they were asking where the space ship was and if he'd talked to NASA yet. He got a kick out of the attention and wasn't surprised to find his work address choked with emails asking about the space ship.

When he got home that evening he found a voice mail from Annette on his phone, saying that the phones had been ringing all day, and the wire services wanted to do a piece on Oscar's find.

"Can I give your number to some responsible reporters we know?" she asked. "No pressure, Oscar. But if this builds into a national story, that might convince NASA to listen to you."

Over the next few days he received voice mails from a dozen reporters from national news organizations, and he set up interviews for the next few weekends, and he was a busy man for the next three weeks as the story hit the major news outlets. NBC sent a camera crew to film him in his apartment, and he gave them some exciting sound bites about the dead aliens and the thrill of finding the alien spaceship. He gave out more photos to the news services, and they ran them and sent him copies of the articles and footage.

About the time Oscar got tired of giving interviews the phone rang at seven in the morning, and he got up and answered it. It was William Gordon of NASA.

"I've been seeing stories in the media on your find," William said. "They're really running with it, aren't they?"

"Yes, the New Mexico news outlets are excited because of Roswell," Oscar said. "The national media don't have anything better to talk about right now, so this is really getting coverage."

"So how did you want to do this?" William said.

"I have a fragment of metal from the alien ship," Oscar said. "I thought you'd like to get it analyzed. With the pictures and my descriptions, that should convince you I'm on the up and up. Then I thought we could arrange payment, and when the money lands in my account I'll give you the GPS coordinates to the ship. I will accompany you to the crash site and show you to the ship."

"A hundred million is a lot of money," William said.

"It's small potatoes for an alien ship. I realize it's not in NASA's budget, and Congress will probably have to OK a special payment, but if you really want the ship you'll make it happen."

"I brought my manager in on it, and she's agreed to keep talking to you. You don't strike us as a crackpot."

"I've been getting plenty of those at work," Oscar said. "People come in out of the blue asking where's the ship."

William laughed. "I'll bet they do. You should see some of the ones we get here at NASA. America's a big country, and there are some mighty peculiar people out there."

"How do you want to receive the metal fragment?"

"For this one, I have an expense account. Why don't I fly out to Santa Fe, and you can show me your pictures and give me the piece of metal. What's your address?"

Oscar told him, and they agreed that William would come to Oscar's place at noon the following Saturday.

"A humble librarian gone intergalactic, huh?" William said. "It's a good story. I hope it works out for all of us."

Oscar was keeping Annette in the loop and told her about William coming by on Saturday.

"Should I join you?" she said, sounding curious as hell.

"You want to bear witness to my handing off the piece of metal to NASA?" Oscar said. "That sounds good to me. Let me talk to William and see if it's all right with NASA."

The next day he called William and got the okay for Annette to join them.

"NASA is on good terms with the media," said William. "It can't hurt to stoke the public's fascination with space travel and alien civilizations."

Saturday came, and Annette arrived at eleven thirty in the morning, and Oscar gave her coffee and sliced kiwi fruit.

"I've already eaten breakfast, but the kiwi looks to die for," she said as she nibbled. "Do you know this guy's face, Oscar? To make sure it's him?"

"I haven't told anyone about this meeting, so I don't know who would know to come by at noon," he said. "And he sent me a picture of himself a couple days ago, just as a precaution. Never know who's tapping my emails these days. NBC said they had word that some heavy-duty hackers were going to hack my emails, looking for evidence of where the ship was located."

"But all that's in your head, right?"

"Yeah, I keep it in my skull."

"This is an exciting story," Annette said. "I've only had one other piece get picked up by the national media, and that was the Roswell piece three years ago. It's amazing how it feeds the national imagination."

"Yeah. Listen, Annette, I want to take you out again. But to dinner this time, something nice. I really enjoyed our last meeting, now I want to do you right."

"I'm up for that," she said. "You seem like a good guy, and you're interesting."

"It's the spaceship," he said.

"That sure doesn't hurt," she said.

William showed up half an hour later. He was a portly gentlemen with a full mustache and a small beard, and he was dressed in a plain white shirt and blue jeans. They all talked for a few minutes about the flight from DC and the media attention around Oscar's find, then William said, "So, this piece of metal."

Oscar went into his bedroom and got the piece of metal, which he had retrieved from his safe deposit box the day before. He'd spent all night holed up in his apartment for fear that someone would break in and take the fragment of metal.

"Glad to hand this off to you," Oscar said.

William had a briefcase with him and took out a small piece of electronics and ran it over the fragment. "It's not radioactive," he said. "Just wanted to be sure of that before I handled it."

"Didn't even think of that angle," said Oscar.

"So what's your opinion of this find?" said Annette to William.

"Well, we are excited at the potential for this discovery," he said, pulling his beard. "We've seen some of the photos in the media and have read Oscar's descriptions of the craft and the dead pilots, and excitement is running high at NASA. We want to see the rest of the pictures and hear about anything the media might not have been told. If the analysis of this metal fragment comes back interesting enough, we'll petition Congress for Oscar's finder's fee, and pay him off. Once that's accomplished we'll take receipt of the ship."

"A lot of people think this is a grand hoax," said Annette.

"Of course that's occurred to us," said William. "I suspect that we'd arrange payment by phone call, and take receipt of the ship at the same time."

"This is certainly exciting," said Annette. "Our web site has logged over a thousand comments on this story, which is a record. People from all over the country are logging in to read the original story and see Oscar's photos. Speaking of which, I'd like to take a photo of this metal fragment, if you don't mind."

"Not at all," said William. They set the dull silver piece on Oscar's black leather couch, and Annette shot twenty-five or thirty photos of it from all angles.

"Doesn't look like much, does it?" she said.

"Looks like piece of an antenna, I was thinking," said Oscar.

"Snapped off when the vehicle crashed?" said William. "Could be."

Oscar showed the NASA man all his photos, and Annette requested two of them be forwarded to her for inclusion in the update.

"Our readers are eager to know what NASA thinks of this find," she said. "They'll want more pictures to go with the words."

They talked for another two and a half hours, with Oscar wracking his brains for anything he might have overlooked in earlier discussions of the ship. Finally William said he had to go, he was flying back to DC that same evening.

"Sorry for the short visit," he said. "But my boss wants to be expeditious about this. She's eager to get this to the lab and see what we've got on our hands here."

William took off in his rental car to the Santa Fe airport and took off, and Oscar saw Annette off as well.

"Let's meet for dinner tomorrow night, say six o'clock, at the Ore House," she said. "I always like their menu."

Oscar didn't care where he ate, so long as it was with her. "See you then," he said. He walked her out to her car, and she took off.

Dinner the following night went really, really well. Annette told him about the Roswell story she had worked on, and other interesting stories she had done, about a ghost at a local hotel and a psychic who had proven astoundingly good at reading Annette's mind.

"She really had a talent," she said. "She had me think of random stuff, and about half the time she was able to guess what I was thinking. I used to think that psychics were a bunch of charlatans, but now I'm not so sure."

"Heh," chuckled Oscar. "I've got the psychic beat for exciting stories."

"Oho, listen to who's getting full of himself," she said. She bit into her steak and chewed it, and Oscar laughed.

"I should have asked William how long it would take to analyze that piece of metal, but all I could think about was you," he said to her.

Her cheeks glowed red, and he said, "Do you think about me?"

"Yes, a lot," she admitted. "I really want to see how this story turns out."

"Do you think about me as a person?"

"I wonder about you. Are you happy with all the attention?"

"It's not so bad. They've got a betting pool at the library as to whether or not NASA will pay my finder's fee. It's up to two hundred dollars. Some people think NASA will make promises they won't keep."

"William seems like a decent sort."

"William isn't a decision-maker, he's just a front man."

"Getting paranoid?" she teased.

He smiled. "I get some very aggressive people in the grocery store, asking me where's my ship. No one has pulled a gun yet, but it's a possibility I haven't discounted."

"I won't run that. No use putting ideas into heads."

"Thanks. The attention is amusing, more than anything. Every step in this thing takes time, and I feel impatient."

"Now _that_ I can run, if it's okay with you."

"Shoot. You were saying, you love your job. Well, I like my job, but I really love Santa Fe. I never want to live anywhere else. If NASA comes through with the money, I want to stay right here. What about you, are you a Santa Fe girl?"

"I am. This is a great town. Lots of good bars and restaurants, a good community to raise children in."

"I've heard the schools are better in Albuquerque."

"People always say that about distant places," she said. "Grass is always greener."

"So you want children?" he said.

"Yes. Do you?"

"Yes, I think I'd like two children."

They ate for a while, then ordered dessert, and they talked a while longer, but the big things had been said, and it was just chatter from that point.

The next week went by on pins and needles. Oscar expected it to take several weeks for the lab to come back with its report, and he didn't know what to expect. What if the metal fragment wasn't from the ship? What is if was just a piece of junk that had fallen off a passing plane?

Then he came home on Friday night to find his front door shattered open and his apartment ransacked. His computer was smashed, and all his music CDs and movies were scattered all over the place, with their boxes open. He called the police, and they sent a patrol by to take a report, and they told him that it was the work of professionals by the looks of it.

"They were looking for something, a very thorough search," the cops told him. "Did they get anything?"

"No, my real valuables are stored elsewhere," he said.

Oscar called Annette at her home number and told her about the break-in; she was pleased. "The criminals element is taking you seriously," she said. "Let's hope NASA does as well."

Oscar had to have his door and his lock replaced, this time with a heavy-duty specimen, and he got a new computer as well. He spent the weekend putting his apartment back in order and called his parents to give them an update.

"That's organized crime for you," said his dad. "Those vermin move whenever there's money at stake. You shouldn't have run your mouth about the hundred million, son. Should have kept it between you and NASA. You'll have criminals after you for the rest of your life."

This worried Oscar, who was by now regretting some of his comments to Annette. The criminals had been looking for the location to his spaceship, he was sure of that, or any more pieces of the space ship that might just happen to be around. He was really, really relieved that he had put the GPS unit in a safe deposit box and hoped it would be safe there.

A few days after this William called to say that the lab results had come back.

"Your fragment is a mixture of titanium and ceramic, something new. The lab boys said they could tell me what it was but didn't have a clue as to how it was manufactured. It's heavy and is incredibly strong, resistant to acid and can take enormous pressure before it deforms. Congratulations, Oscar, you've made a believer out of NASA."

"So you want to buy the coordinates to the ship?" Oscar said hopefully.

"My boss will talk to you about that. Jenna, you on the line?"

"Yes, I am," said a strong female voice. "Good morning, Oscar, how are you today?"

"Not bad," said Oscar. "Glad to hear you're convinced. Pending payment, I can turn over the GPS coordinates."

"I had a discussion with NASA's director, and we'll have to petition Congress for an amount as large as you're asking," she said. "If you'd be willing to take twenty million we can pay you immediately, but a hundred million will take time."

"Time I have," Oscar said. "I'm in no rush. No, twenty million is too low for what I'm offering."

"We thought you might feel that way. Next step is to go to Congress and get the money from them. The way it would work is this: we would fly with you to the site of the crash and take receipt of the vessel. Payment would be made upon confirmation that it's an alien craft."

"You know," said Oscar, "It's occurred to me that I might be better served by hiring a major law firm to represent me, and have contracts and all that written up, and do it with full legalese. But they'd want twenty million for handling the matter, and why should NASA pay an additional twenty million when we could just do the deal ourselves?"

"We appreciate your sensitivity to this matter," Jenna said.

"One stipulation," said Oscar. "The Santa Fe _New Mexican_ has had a reporter on this story since the beginning. She and her cameraman would be part of the deal. They'd get to be with us for the handoff of the craft. I want people there I can trust to report this story. That way NASA can't say there was no ship, or I was trying to weasel out of the deal."

"NASA has a good history of business dealings with independent contractors," Jenna said.

"But I'm from Indian country, Jenna, and we remember the false treaties the U.S. government made. You guys are tricky, and I want reporters there to witness everything."

"Very well, they can break the story, but after that the major media get in on it. And, we'll be in hazmat gear when we take receipt of the ship," she said. "There could be alien viruses."

Oscar was startled by this. "I didn't think of that," he admitted.

"It's our job to think of these angles," she said. "We have protocols in place for dealing with crashed alien spaceships."

"Someone broke into my apartment, I assume looking for my GPS unit."

"We read that in the _New Mexican_ ," William said. "Things are heating up for you. I assume you have the GPS in a safe place?"

"Yes, but I don't like having my apartment trashed by criminals."

"Can't blame you," he said. "Do you want protection?"

"Like what?"

"Like I think we could get some FBI assigned to you, on the basis of national security," Jenna said. "Or maybe NSA. Or military."

Oscar thought about it. "Too disruptive," he said. "How long will it take Congress to okay payment?"

"We think a few weeks," Jenna said. "There are some senators and representatives who are friendly to NASA, and they would expedite the process. You're asking a lot of money, but it's a small amount for the American government."

"I'll do without the protective detail," said Oscar. "I guess just phone me when you're ready to take receipt."

"All right," said Jenna. "Keep an eye out, Oscar. Foreign agents will be taking an interest in this matter, and you might be in danger from them."

"All right, I'll be careful," Oscar said. He didn't like this cloak-and-dagger stuff, it wasn't his cup of tea. Couldn't Congress hurry it up and pay him, and he could hand off the space ship and be done with it? He was ready to begin his new life as a rich guy, see what that was like.

"We'll call in a few weeks with a progress update," said William. Then the NASA people hung up, and Oscar went in to work.

The next three weeks went by slowly. Oscar was frustrated. You'd think that people would be excited about an alien spaceship, but the bureaucracy moved like molasses. He supposed they all thought it was a hoax that would be exposed at the last minute, and that explained the official torpor. At work his colleagues asked for news, and he told them he was playing a waiting game with Congress. The _New Mexican_ ran an update talking about the official progress and wondering that this find wasn't exciting Congress to get a move-on.

William from NASA sent Oscar a sixteen page contract full of legalese, and Oscar had an intellectual properties attorney read it. It said that he was the sole finder of the alien spaceship and spelled out the finder's fee and what NASA expected in return, which was to take possession of an alien space ship in "unknown" condition. If the find turned out to be a hoax, the money was to be returned to NASA. Oscar signed the contract and put a copy in his safe deposit box and sent the original back to NASA.

A representative from the Santa Fe police department called Oscar and told him that following the break-in into his apartment they'd be running extra patrols past his apartment. He was glad to hear it, he didn't want another break-in. Whether it had been kids or organized crime, he didn't want his home trashed again.

People showed up at his work and at his apartment, asking for the location of the ship, and he impatiently sent them away. The insistent ones he simply shut the door on, or had security at work remove them. UFO nuts showed up to talk shop, some of whom where interesting but a lot of whom were just loony tunes. Suspicious people showed up to say they found the space ship first and demanded part of the hundred million as their cut of the finder's fee, and these he cut off angrily. In short, it was a parade of flakes.

He went out to dinner with Annette again, and this time he managed to give her a peck on the cheek, which she accepted. She talked about her girlfriends and Indian Market, and Oscar said he loved Santa Fe's many cultural events, and they made a date to go to the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

"It's sure taking Congress a long time, isn't it?" she said.

"What do I do if they say no to the money?" he fretted.

"They won't. The results on that piece of metal have them all hot and bothered. NASA wants this thing, and Congress will give them what they want."

"At least the cops are running more patrols past my place," he said. "A _lot_ more patrols. Seems like I see a black and white every few minutes."

"Good! Keep the criminals at bay."

It was a good date, but Oscar couldn't get a feeling from her that she was actually _interested_ in him. She was polite, and she shared her life with him, and she took his peck on the cheek, but did she want him? He couldn't tell.

Then Jenna called one Wednesday morning and said Congress had okayed payment and the money was with NASA.

"I've talked to my bank about accepting payment, and they've set up a special account that can handle that much money," Oscar said. He gave her the account number, and she said,

"William flew in last night, he's ready to take receipt whenever you are ready. We've got three large helicopters chartered. Our personnel are already in Santa Fe. There are military personnel to guard the space craft, and scientists to examine the craft and determine its authenticity. Once you give us the coordinates, we'll move to secure the position. Your reporter and cameraman will have to follow our protocols."

"Will you call the _New Mexican_ and coordinate with them, then?" Oscar said.

"Yes, we'll call them this morning. Sorry to be hurry up and wait, but when can you be ready to hand off the craft?"

"Tomorrow," Oscar said. He was anxious to get going with it, but he wanted Annette and her cameraman to have time to prepare. Finally, action!

"All right, why don't we say William will come by at eight o'clock tomorrow morning to drive you to the airport?" Jenna said. "If the reporters are waiting with you, you all can go together."

"Sounds good," said Oscar.

"Excited?"

"Very," he said. "I hope this is as big a find as it appears to be."

"Just don't spend that money right away, in case it turns out to be a disappointment," she warned.

The next morning Annette and a cameraman came by his apartment at seven-thirty, and at eight o'clock William showed up in a rented car.

"Let's hit it!" William said, and the four of them piled into the car along with a video camera on a tripod. They drove out to the airport and met a number of people, scientists and military men with rifles. Everyone was dressed in hazmat suits, and before they got on the helicopter, Oscar and the reporters also dressed in hazmat gear.

"So," said the helicopter pilot. "Where we flying to?"

Oscar had gone to the bank and double-checked the coordinates, and he gave them now to the pilot. The helicopters took off, and for the next half hour they flew along.

"This is so exciting!" Annette enthused. "Any comments, Oscar?"

"Only that I hope this isn't a hoax," he said nervously.

"All of America is watching," she said. "Let's hope this is on the up and up."

The choppers went on, and then they started circling. Oscar looked down and could see the hiking trail below him. From the air he couldn't tell where the spaceship was, but then he saw a flash of dull gleaming off to his left.

"I think that's it," he said. The pilot set down next to the hiking trail, and the other two choppers set down and disgorged their passengers. Oscar checked his GPS, and they were on top of the coordinates. He climbed over the hill and looked down, and there was the ravine, and there was the alien ship, glimmering in the morning light.

"That's our baby," he said. The hazmat helmet distorted his voice, but immediately William and the reporters moved up next to him. The cameraman snapped pictures of the scientists descending on the craft, and the military people setting up a perimeter.

After that it was bustle for the next hour and a half. The scientists broke out various detectors and meters and instruments and hammered and jabbed the spaceship, and after an hour they reported that there were no dangerous energies leaking from the ship, and no viruses that they could detect. Everyone kept their hazmat suits on anyway.

"The pilots are as reported," said the head scientist. "Our task now is to dig out the craft and get it to Area 51 for analysis."

"Looks like we're golden," said William. He got on a phone and okayed payment, and the bank called Oscar's cell phone and told him the payment had come through. "Congratulations," said William. "NASA is satisfied with the process so far."

Annette and the cameraman had their work cut out for them and were busy all morning, shooting pictures and interviewing the project personnel. It was the alien pilots that had everyone buzzing, and some small devices they had on their bodies which Oscar hadn't noticed.

"We're eager to see what the power source is for this vessel," said the head scientist to Annette. "It's clearly been in the ground for a long time, and it's still powered. We haven't detected any radiation, so it doesn't appear to be nuclear. A mystery."

The commander of the military detachment said, "We're interested in what weapons this ship might be carrying. This could be the most important find ever in terms of weapons technology."

When Annette asked William for a quote he said, "This certainly appears to be on the level. But we've got to get it to Area 51 and check it out carefully. I'm sorry to say, today is promising but doesn't resolve much. This process will be going on for years."

"You're not excited?" Annette asked him. She sounded excited herself and had been over to touch the spaceship half a dozen times.

"Cautiously excited, but ready for the whole thing to fall through," William said. "If it's a hoax, though, it's the most elaborate hoax I've ever heard of."

The day wore on, and more personnel arrived, and by the time they ate their military rations for dinner that night the area had half a dozen tents and about seventy-five people swarming it. There were a lot more military personnel and a lot more rifles, and about twenty diggers were flown in with picks and shovels to uncover the craft by hand. Everyone wore hazmat suits. Annette and the cameraman were busy filing reports and taking quotes, and Oscar ate with William near the craft.

"Tomorrow we start digging it out," said William. "It's a relatively small craft, so it looks more like a recon ship than a military craft. Of course, fighter planes are small, too, so we're prepared to be surprised. Are you glad to finally be rid of it?"

"I'm interested in seeing what it's like to be rich," Oscar said. "I've already drawn up a list of charities I want to donate to, and I've been house-hunting for a nice house out in the hills. Time for a new car, too, something sporty."

"We'll keep you in the loop," William said. "You're going to be famous for the rest of your life, Oscar. If you ever want to do speaking engagements, you'll be able to name your price."

"I've done some speaking engagements for the library, but nothing like this," he said.

"We can let you stay out here to watch progress, or we can take you back to Santa Fe, whatever's your pleasure," William said.

"I want to see the whole object," Oscar said. "I'll stay."

Later Annette found him and sat down next to him on his bunk. "Everyone is pretty sure it's for real," she said. "You probably didn't ask for enough money."

"No point being greedy," he said. "Say, Annette, I'd like you to come over to my place for dinner, once they move the craft to Area 51. Or is the _New Mexican_ going to send you to follow up on the story?"

"I doubt it. Tomorrow reporters from the national media will come in, and it'll be everyone's story. We got a one-day exclusive, so our story will run tomorrow morning. For a small paper like the _New Mexican_ , that's pretty good."

"Dinner?" he said.

"Sure. Congratulations on the money."

"Hey, you knew me before I became rich," he said. Then he ventured, "I like you, Annette."

"I like you too, Oscar. Enough to come to dinner. It's a little weird dating an Anglo, but you're good company."

"Hey, I have a better idea," he said. "Come over for breakfast and then we'll go to the museum like we talked about, and then come over for dinner. Let's make a day of it."

"You're on," she said. "Gotta go, they're running some tests on the cockpit material. I want to be there when they get the results."

"Good luck," he said, and she took off.

Oscar lay down on the cot and laced his fingers behind his head. He was now officially rich, and his new life would begin. First, to see this matter of the ship through. Then to see to Annette, and try to convince her he was the guy for her. Would the money matter? Of course money mattered. Was she humoring him because he was rich; she wanted to say she dated a rich guy for a while? Only time would tell.

Outside Oscar's tent the workers were setting up powerful lights and generators to run them. The scientists would be doing more tests all night long, and the next day the diggers would uncover the craft. What started off as a full bladder had become the biggest find in history, and Oscar's future was burning bright. Tomorrow he would call his parents. He could wire them some money in the next few days, so they could retire and live well for the rest of their lives. The mystery of the alien ship beckoned, so many unanswered questions. Where was it from, what was it doing here, who were the pilots? Oscar knew the answers would take years to trickle in.

There was no hurry. He was young, and there was time. The girl was of more interest to him than the dead aliens. Here was a chance to get his life together, start something important. He had never been attracted to American Indian women before, but he liked Annette. She was interesting, and they liked similar things. The more he dated her, the more he realized how lonely he really was. So, a small prayer to new beginnings, and a rush of hope that all would turn out well...

## Old and Useless

Every once in a while I like to do a traditional story with time-tested themes and well-proven plots. There have doubtless been stories of demons as long as there have been human beings, and this story follows the last days of an ardent demon worshipper facing his final reward in hell. The question he asks is, "Is my fate set in stone, or can I escape it?" The answer is not a surprise, but the cost may be...

The demon was coming for me. Any day now would be my final day upon this earth. After that, the fires of hell awaited me, as befit my choices in this life and my eternal reward after my death.

I lifted a tea cup with shaking hand and took a draught of jasmine tea, savoring the warm flavor on my tongue. On the coffee table beside my overstuffed easy chair were half a dozen books of magic, stuck full of sticky notes and sheets of paper with my annotations, giving off a low-level magical vibration that I could feel quite readily. What I needed wasn't in the books, and that was ominous. What I needed was a way out of my dilemma, a piece of magic that would let me break my ties to the demon, or destroy it, or misguide it into taking someone else in my place. But the books said my fate had been sealed years ago, when the demon had discovered my true name and thus had gained mastery over my soul. The books agreed that once a demon had your true name there was no hope of getting out of the bargain. You were the demon's to do with as it would.

I had been trying to find a solution to the problem of my lost soul for years, for the last decade actually, and with each new book of magic I purchased I would feel a flurry of hopes and confidence that I had at last found the means of breaking my bargain with Araxiel. Then I would read the tome and find in its footnotes the same forlorn message, that once a demon had your true name you were lost. So what to do now? Keep seeking new books of magic, or simply prepare myself for the end? I was seventy-eight years old, and my health was failing. I was still living on my own, still able to keep up my daily rounds, but only barely. My hands had developed tremors, and my legs shook if I walked much farther than two or three blocks, and the shiftless young men who hung out on the porches down the street from my home had taken a strong curiosity in my affairs of late, preparing to break into my home and rob me, if my mind-reading was correct. San Francisco wasn't what it used to be. There had always been crime, but as my generation grows old the young prey upon us. I hesitated to kill them on my doorstep, as that would bring the police into my life. My life has enough complications as is.

The demon's bargain was a simple one: in return for performing certain ceremonies for the benefit of hell, it would grant me magical power. When I became too old and tired for the pursuit of magic the demon would come and take my soul to hell, where I would serve Araxiel for a century before being reincarnated as a demon myself. It was, I had felt in my youth, a fair enough bargain, and the fear of the fires of hell didn't really take hold of me until my sixties. It was then that Araxiel, in a fit of temper because I refused to do something it wanted, showed me what hell was like, and fear had gripped my soul.

Hell was abuse, both physical and psychological, a torture chamber of the spirit and a mortification of the flesh. I saw in that glimpse of hell the fate of other sorcerers such as myself, their flesh burnt and slashed in great bloody wounds, sexually servicing their demonic masters in ceremonies too painful to be readily believed. I saw women with great fishhooks gouging their breasts, and men with diabolic devices piercing their penises, their bodies masses of white and red scar tissue inflicted by decades of painful toying around by the demons they served. I watched as demons caused disease in their servants, savoring the miseries of the illnesses they wrought. I watched demons implant eggs into their wretched servants, and watched as those eggs hatched and their young feasted on frail human flesh. My vision of hell stank of blood and sulfur and dirty flesh and the foul reek of sickness and decay.

"Thus is service," Araxiel said, delighted to cause me terror in this vision of my future. I didn't know if the old demon was showing me a true vision or a false one, but I knew in that moment that I didn't want to go to hell to serve Araxiel in any capacity. I wanted out of our bargain. So I began to fight the demon, to search the old books for a way out of my predicament, to look to throw our bargain back in Araxiel's face. But the demon had my true name, he had discovered it little by little over the decades, until one day he burst out with it and shook me body and spirit with the force of his naming me. I felt his power seizing utter control of me, and after that there was no question which of the two of us was in charge and which served. I was fifty-nine when this happened, when the demon got my name, and since then I have been obliged to fight a running battle with Araxiel over what I would and would not do in the service of hell.

I should clarify my position. I am writing all this down as an account to younger sorcerers, to give them a taste of their own futures. I hope these pages will be found by a representative from the guild of sorcerers, who will publish it so that all will know of my life and my death and my bargain with the demon. Mayhaps my words will give another, younger wizard the strength to break free of his own demon and thus get the better of hell. I read a few accounts like this myself in my youth, but I didn't take them to heart until too late. It is never too early to look to break one's bargain with a demon, never too early to seek freedom.

And while I'm disburdening myself, I should say that I have served hell faithfully and well for more than sixty years. I have taken lovers and afflicted them with venereal disease as per the will of my patron, and I have spread bubonic plague and typhus and scarlet fever to recent immigrants and the luckless, and I have gifted epilepsy to the frail and mental illness to the aged and leukemia to children. Araxiel delights in his diseases, and I have been faithful in giving them out to all and sundry. And I have followed the demonic conferences and made myself valuable to my demon by casting ceremonies in glory of the fiends of hell. I have kept the black Sabbath and have gloried in the destruction of innocents, and I have no regrets for what I have done, for each act has brought me power, and power, and power.

With the power of my demon behind me I grew wealthy and spoiled. In my day I was known to the upper crust of San Francisco, I was invited to all the parties and went to all the events. Now I am old, and though I still receive the invitations from those of my generation who remember me as a magician without peer, I seldom go. My heart is not in parties, any more. My heart wants to be free of demons and the fires of hell.

But wait, there is someone at the door.

A new tome has arrived, the Grimoire of the Seven Gates by Lars Lyceum. Obviously a false name. I ordered this book months ago, why is it arriving just now? I must see if it offers insight.

Bah, this book is just what I thought it was, a minor tome written by a small talent. Half of the enchantments clearly wouldn't work even if cast by a competent sorcerer. A fool of an author, thinking himself a master because he has learned a few small-time spells. If I had a nickel for every such idiot that I've come across I'd be a billionaire. In the rear of the book was the author's ravings about true names, and for a moment there I thought the imbecile had gotten onto something that might be of value to me. Listen to this:

"Once a demon has the sorcerer's true name, the game is up and the sorcerer is lost. There is no way to make the demon forget, no way to reclaim the lost name, no way to avoid the clutches of the demon. Destroying the demon's body will do the sorcerer no good, for the demon's real body resides in hell, and from there it will reach out and snag its prize. The only solution to this dilemma is to not lose control of one's true name to begin with. For the sorcerer who has lost his name, there is nothing but hell fire and brimstone."

The same thing all the others say, and much better magicians than "Lars Lyceum." He actually goes on with this little gem:

"For the sorcerer whose true name is known to demonkind, there is but one hope, and that is to throw oneself on the mercy of heaven. Summon a greater angel and appeal to it for mercy, and mayhaps it will wipe clear your slate of sins and take you on to heaven as a saved soul. There is nothing else to be done." I like the 'mayhaps,' certainly that lends this babbling some authority!

As I said, for a moment there I thought the cretin was going to offer something substantive, but there is only this gibbering about angels and saved souls. I have summoned angels in the past, but only to torment them as per my demon's wishes. Araxiel does not like to kill his victims. I have never been called upon to murder anyone. He prefers extended suffering and misery, the hellish twilight of lifelong physical and mental conditions that have no cure. I have handed out AIDS like candy on Halloween, and schizophrenia like birthday gifts. Debilitating conditions are what Araxiel savors, ongoing suffering and pain. I have done my part.

But now for tea, and then back to the serious books, to look for some nugget I missed the first time through. There is no such thing as a hopeless situation. You can win through anything if you just find the right magic for it. I will not be fodder for Araxiel. I will free myself one way or the other.

Stumbling stupidity, spells of dizziness, slurred speech and stars before the eyes... I have had an attack. I found myself in the kitchen, on the floor, gibbering. My lamb chop dinner was lying on the floor next to me, blood oozing from the meat. Into the garbage with that! I have suffered a mild stroke, or some such. My hands shake violently, and I see spots. There is a sign burned onto the back of my right hand, the flesh charred and cooked, and it hurts fiercely. It is the sign of Araxiel; he has been to my home, outside the summoning circle! I am growing old, and weak. He is laughing at me, savoring my infirmity, enjoying my fragility. I see his plan now. I thought that he would be eager to see me dead and serving him in hell, but that is not Araxiel's way. The patience of a demon is infinite, it has all the time in the world. He wishes to see me fall apart over the years, little strokes and minor heart attacks and the constant fear of an aneurysm. He wishes to see me fail by inches.

How much longer do I have in this world? Araxiel will linger me along in my sorry state as long as he can. I might last twenty more years, or thirty, but they will be years of crippling sorriness. I will lose the ability to read, and write, and finally will be a drooling wreck who can't remember his own name, called home to hell by Araxiel.

I have just re-read this latest bit and find it to be lucid. Only a minor stroke, then. I should recover in a few days.

I am thinking of Jesus Christ now, and of God and His angels. Five days have passed since my stroke, and I am much improved. Angels can lengthen the lifespan by quite a bit, if you choose to offer them obeisance. I have a demon for a patron, so I have had nothing to do with angels. They would come only unwillingly and would be my enemies afterward, and I do not need Heaven nipping at my heels!

I do not know Araxiel's plan for me. I told him once that when I was old and useless he could come for me and take me away to hell, and back then I was young and meant what I said.

"Never let me grow old and frail, Araxiel," I charged him. "The miseries of old age are not for me."

"As you wish, young master Lucas," he said with that smirk of his, and drooling his acidic spit. "I will spare you the humiliations of the aging process."

So, will Araxiel now come to collect my soul and take me direct to hell, or will he let me fall apart first? Which aspect of the demon will win out?

There is within me no desire at all at a jabbering senescence. Whether Araxiel intends to take me to hell tomorrow or intends to inflict increasing decrepitude on me for thirty more years, I don't want to go through it. I have gathered three powerful books of magic to my summoning chamber, and I will try to summon an angel. I have overheard a few of their names over the years, while reading of other matters. I will try the angel Zadkiel, the angel of mercy and memory. "Mayhaps" I can appeal to this angel for a turn toward the light of Christianity, and a breaking of my demon's bargain.

There, I have done it. I have summoned Zadkiel, and it has heard my complaint and has granted me my wish. All that is left to do is to embrace the light of the Christian God, and all is forgiven. The angel says all my sins will be washed away, and I will begin anew in heaven. I think it intends to see me dead right away, but in that I am not afraid. I have lived a long and potent life, and death does not affright me. It would be better to be safely ensconced in heaven than to be at risk here in the world.

Here comes the angel with flaming sword upraised. It is time I said my goodbyes, short as they are. There is no one here on earth to whom I would say farewell, my peers are all fools who will get their come-uppance in due time. Just Araxiel, then: good-bye old demon, may you find all the misery your wretched soul can hold.

And somewhere far off I hear a thin wailing and know the demon has realized my plan for escape. Good-bye, this tired old body of mine, and farewell.

The angel bids me write this final paragraph before it brings down the sword upon my neck. It has given me a ceremony to wash away my sins, and I feel as fresh as a teenager and cannot remember much of my past. I am arrived again under the love of heaven, as it was when I was a child, and I recall my demonic patron with loathing and disgust. I was confused my entire life, and now I have seen the light and the way and the redemption. Heaven calls out to me, and I am longing to go there and see who I know among the host. Turn aside from sorcery and wicked magic, you young fools, and save yourself a lifetime of foul living.

The angel says it is time, and I will put down this pen and go, and be reborn.

## The Bedbug

When I was a child I used to love tall tales. The hokum and nonsense of my elders made me laugh, and always brought a smile to my lips. Tales from the American Southwest, tales from the north woods, stories of the American Indians; tall tales come in a hundred forms and are timeless. The following tall tale follows the traditional story arc for such a story but has a twist at the ending, just when you thought it was all sorted out. As the story says, this could only take place in the great state of Texas.

YOU'VE NO DOUBT HEARD that there's an epidemic of bedbugs in the United States. When you hear that you think of an ordinary bedbug, which is a little fellow smaller than the fingernail of your pinky, but that's not the kind of bedbug we're talking about here. The one we're talking about here is a Texas bedbug, which is to say _big_.

This bedbug started out like any other, as a little fellow that lived in the blankets and sheets of a married couple called the Armisteads. At night it crawled with its compatriots up the bed and sucked the blood of the man and his wife, and when morning arrived it crawled back to its nest and digested the blood it had eaten. Life was good for the bedbug. The Armisteads were a slovenly couple who couldn't be bothered to clean their room and eradicate the bedbug infestation, and so the bedbug had a comfortable, secure life. It sucked blood every night, and slowly it grew bigger. First it was the size of a mouse, then the size of a rat, then it was as big as a guinea pig. All the while it lived between the mattress and the box springs, and each night it sucked ever more blood. The Armisteads began to look pale and waxy from loss of their vital fluids, and the bed-bug grew to the size of a small dog and lived under the bed.

None of the other bedbugs in the nest grew to this size, only the one, but that one was more than enough. It came out and sucked up a pint of blood every night, and the man and his wife grew sickly, and they took to coughing all the time. The bedbug grew to the size of a large dog and could hardly fit under the bed anymore.

Then came the terrible night when the bedbug sucked all the wife's blood in one slurping gulp, and she died. Mister Armistead was so sick and miserable that he didn't even notice his wife had passed on. He just covered her up with the sheets, thinking she was sleeping in, and he went about his routine. The bedbug, meanwhile, grew to the size of a small pony. It could no longer hide under the bed and stood in the corner of the bedroom, where it planned evil things for Mr. Armistead.

The next night the bedbug fastened onto Mr. Armistead and sucked him dry, sluuuuurp! He made one last gasping sound and curled up and died. The bedbug grew to the size of an elephant, and it smashed out of the walls of the bedroom and ran amok in the streets of the town. People were terrified of the giant bedbug and hit it with sticks, but it just shrugged that off. The sheriff came to see what the fuss was about, and he shot the bedbug with his pistol, but the bedbug was humongous, and the bullets had no effect.

"Run to your homes and get your rifles!" the sheriff shouted to the citizens. "We'll gang up on this critter and take it down!" So the men folk ran to their homes and got their guns, and they surrounded that bedbug and shot it again and again. The bedbug put up quite a fight. It would plunge its proboscis into the men and suck their blood, and half the men in town took sick from blood loss. It was only a miracle that no one was killed.

It took three thousand rounds of ammunition to kill that thing, swear to the good Lord up above that's not an exaggeration. They were firing at that critter for hours. Its body was armor-plated, and most of the bullets just bounced off into the street. When they were done the bedbug was laying there in a pool of sucked blood, and it was dead.

The sheriff directed the tanning and curing of that bedbug's armor plating, and he had breastplates made out of that stuff for all the men of the town, in case they ever needed to take on another bedbug.

"This bedbug menace is stopped for the moment, but you never know when there will be more," said the sheriff. "Take this body armor and buy more bullets, and stand ready!"

That left the eyes of the bedbug, which were gigantic. The sheriff took out his hunting knife and removed the eyes and used them for streetlamp covers, they were so big, and from that day on the town was lit by the fell light of bedbug eyes. Those compound eyes broke up the light and shone it in all directions, making illumination as bright as day. Well, criminals were afraid to go out at night and rob people, for fear of being seen, and the crime rate dropped to zero. It was just one good thing to come out of all that hullabaloo.

So now the good citizens have a hot line you can call if you have a giant bedbug, and all the men come running, armed to the gills, ready to eradicate those pests. Last week someone reported seeing a giant mosquito out at the edge of town, and now everyone is on watch for that unholy creature. It's something that could happen only in Texas, and pray it never happens to YOU!

## The Phantom Terrorist

There have been terrorists as long as there has been civilization, and no doubt they will continue to be a pox on society far into the future. Their grievances vary, and their style differs according to nationality, but the methods of terrorists are depressingly straightforward: attack and kill civilians in order to draw attention to the cause. In this story a Middle Eastern terrorist has found a way to ultimate terrorist victory, to be able to attack again and again without ever being caught or brought to accounting. An American father and his young daughter bear witness to his acts of mayhem; can they bring an end to the suicide bombings and save lives, or will they become his latest victims?

The Khan el Khalili is Cairo's big tourist bazaar, about ten square blocks of medieval storefronts and narrow alleyways and constricted streets navigated by miniature trucks and little European cars and the ubiquitous black and white taxi cabs that define Cairo's downtown. My daughter and I were there to shop for gifts for the folks back in America, and it was around noon when we stopped outside a little shop that sold replicas of ancient Egyptian sculptural art. There were little figurines made of plaster and stone that depicted kneeling pharaohs making sacrifices of flowers and pots of perfume, and these appealed to my daughter, so we were talking with the shop owner, who spoke fluent English, and trying to strike a deal, when the terrorist struck.

There was a group of European tourists not a hundred feet away from us. They looked like a tour group by the way they all clung to each other and didn't fan out but stayed in a tight pack. My daughter talked with the store owner, trying to bargain for one of the stone statuettes, and I watched the tourists as they bantered with a shop owner and opened their wallets and purses to make purchases. I saw a young Arab man with a small goatee and large mirrored sunglasses sidle up to the group and talk to one of the tourists, and then he nodded and worked his way into the heart of the group. I wondered what he was doing, but this came clear a few moments later when there was a great burst of light and a clap of thunder, and all the tourists were knocked over by the force of the explosion.

There were screams then, and moans and groans, and the shopkeepers made a great cry and began shouting, and the one my daughter had been talking to pulled out a cell phone and made a rapid call in Arabic. Within a minute several uniformed police officers converged on the stricken group of tourists, and I ran over to them to bandage up wounds. I did a tour in the Gulf War as a medic, back when I was a young buck, and those skills came in handy as I applied tourniquets to missing limbs and bound gaping holes in torsos and arms and legs. There was blood everywhere, and pieces of limbs, and I called to my daughter to stay with the shopkeeper, who seemed justifiably upset. I didn't want her seeing the carnage. There was a woman of about thirty years whose guts had been torn out by the blast, and an old man who had lost both arms, and a child whose head had been blown off. My daughter didn't need to see all that. She was seventeen and itching to finish high school and get on to college, but she was still a young person, and there's such thing as too big a dose of reality.

I worked like a demon, using scarves and strips of dresses to bind up the worst of the punishment until the ambulances arrived to take people to the hospital. There were seven or eight tourists from the group who had been knocked down by the blast but not seriously injured, and these were taken away by the police for questioning. The police also took me and my daughter in, and we spent about three hours in the police station while they found someone who could speak English. While we were waiting my daughter said,

"You're covered in blood, dad. Those clothes are shot."

"I hope none of those tourists had AIDS or something," I frowned. I went to the bathroom and washed the blood off my hands, but my daughter was right, I had gotten blood all over me while tending to the stricken, and I needed to change and take a shower. I went back out to my daughter, and a policeman came who spoke good English, and I told him about the Arab with the goatee and sunglasses who had blown himself up. The cop took the report without comment and said,

"I'm glad for you that you weren't injured in the attack. These terrorists are a social evil that we can't seem to put an end to."

"We have them in America, too," I said. "Crazed shooters who go to public places and kill people."

"Yes, the world is a troubled place," he said. Then he closed his notebook and thanked me for my report, and my daughter and I were released. We went back to the hotel, and I got cleaned up and threw away my clothes, and we went out to dinner at a Thai restaurant.

"It's been years since terrorists targeted the Khan el Khalili," my daughter said between bites of pad Thai. "It goes in cycles. Back in 2009 they blew away a European girl my age and injured a bunch of other people. Usually the terrorists try to take out the shopkeepers as well. I read up on all this before we left the States, but I really hoped I wouldn't need this knowledge."

"I'm just glad it wasn't us who were targeted." I was thinking of the man who had lost both arms, and what he would do once he got home, and whether or not his wife had been killed in the attack. For those twenty-five people life had changed completely in a few seconds. I knew I would have bad dreams about the dead and wounded for weeks, and I wondered if I could find a pharmacist who could give me sleeping pills. Anything to take away the memories of the torn flesh and shattered bodies of the tourists. But I was tough; I could handle it. I wasn't backing out now.

My daughter looked at me, and then her face changed to something else, and I knew what was coming; I had seen that look of religious fervor before.

"Gerald," she said, addressing me by first name because she wanted to be taken seriously, "That man is going to burn in hell. He's going to the roasting pits, and they'll torture him for years."

About a year ago my daughter decided she was a Christian, and she started attending church and came home enthused about the sermons of her pastor and eager to share her experiences with her old dad. She would skip perfunctorily over descriptions of the pleasant life of heaven and would focus intensely on the fires of hell, and punishment, and eternal damnation.

"I don' t know if the Muslims believe in heaven and hell," I said.

"They believe in a Paradise, so they must believe in hell," she said fervently. "I _know_ that son-of-a-bitch is going to burn."

I munched on my beef with broccoli and then said, "I agree that he should be punished for what he did, I just think his punishment was dying on the spot."

"That's just the _beginning_ of his punishment," she spat. "He's going to _fry._ "

This was the topic of conversation for the next twenty minutes, how the terrorist was going to burn in hell for his crimes, and my daughter relayed with relish the torments that awaited him. To me it seemed annoying that I didn't know about Muslim heaven and hell when I was surrounded by a hundred million Muslims who could have answered my questions in a heartbeat.

Eventually talk turned to our travels in Egypt, and my daughter said, "I'm kind of burned out on Cairo, dad. We've been here for three weeks, and if I see another old mosque I'm going to barf."

"Tomorrow we'll head south to Aswan. We can ride the train. I don't think you've ever been on a train before, have you?"

"Not that I can remember," she said. "Mom said I was on the Southwest Chief when I was a baby, but I don't remember that."

"This will be fun," I promised. "We can't let this incident get us down. We did everything we could do for those poor tourists. Or do you want to leave Egypt and go home now?"

"Well, you were closer to this incident than I was, daddy. What do _you_ want to do?"

"My medic training kicked right in, and I did everything on automatic pilot. I think I'm tough enough to go on."

"Let's head to Aswan, then."

We returned to our hotel and showered and turned in to our separate rooms, and in the morning we ate breakfast in a nice restaurant and then took a cab to the train station and bought first class tickets for the mid-morning train to Aswan. We got on the train and headed south.

It was a fun journey. The train lurched down the tracks and stopped in half the little villages along the way, and Egyptians got on and off the train, and a few first class passengers embarked and got settled, and the landscape rolled past. Egypt is a land of startling contrasts, there is the lush green agricultural zone along the Nile and then the train tracks and then the yellow desert sands. The little villages and hamlets spread out around us every ten miles, and minivans and trucks putted along the roads. Farmers walked to and from their fields with hoes and rakes and other implements slung over their shoulders, and kids played with balls near the train tracks, which made me tut-tut to my daughter about careless parenting. All the while we rode down the rails I was thinking of that man, inserting himself into the tourists and blowing himself up. The one my daughter insisted was going to burn in hell. I kept visualizing the wounded and maimed and dead, and I felt the horror over and over again and knew I was experiencing some sort of PTSD.

The next morning we arrived in Aswan and took a cab to a two-star hotel, which was basic but clean, and we checked in and stowed our luggage. We slept for a few hours and then went out and got a nice lunch. Aswan is a small city, and it was already bustling by the time we got going. First stop was a pharmacy, where I bought sleeping pills, and then we started our Aswan adventure.

Over the next few days we saw the cracked obelisk and the Mausoleum of Aga Khan and the rock-cut tombs across the Nile. We went out to Kitchener's Island botanical gardens and saw all the flowers and met plenty of other tourists. We ate well and drank hearty and did our touring in the mornings before it got hot, and we spent an hour and a half every afternoon in the cafes, smoking the hookah and drinking lemon juice. My daughter berated me for the hookah, and I was forced to smoke alone.

"You don't smoke at home," she said. "Don't get cancer now."

"Smoking a little tobacco each day for two months isn't going to give me cancer," I said. At least she didn't tell me I was going to hell.

We got on the five a.m. minivan to Abu Simbel and saw the temple of Ramses II and made a full day of it, which was exciting, even though there were ten million tourists there and the facilities were packed. I was jumpy all day because there were large crowds, and I kept remembering the terrorist blowing himself up, and the screams, and I was afraid it might happen again. But the day passed without incident, and we came back to Aswan feeling awe at the works of Ramses II and pleasure at our Egyptian experience.

After a week in Aswan we arranged through our hotel for a sailboat ride down the Nile for several days. There were eight other tourists on the sailboat, and they were from all over the world, and our three days excursion down the Nile was a pleasure. It was so relaxing to just float on the water after weeks of running around seeing the sights, and I even got relief from the traumatic visions. I was using the sleeping pills to go to sleep each night, and it looked like things were getting better.

We saw the temple at Kom Ombo and then took a minivan up to Luxor, where we checked into a tidy little two-star hotel and then started our tourist wanderings. We saw Luxor Temple and Karnak and took a sailboat on the Nile for a few hours just for fun. We explored Luxor and ate some truly fabulous food at some very nice restaurants, and I continued my afternoon hookah smoking junkets. My daughter bought a book of Egyptian folktales at one of the museum gift shops, and while I smoked she read this, and we passed the afternoons in companionable quiet. We went to the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens and rode across the Nile on a tourist ferry, and then we saw the Tombs of the Nobles, which were wonderful; if you go to Egypt you must see these, they're small and compact and fabulously painted with scenes of life in ancient Egypt.

As we tooled around Luxor I thought of Margaret's mother, back in America. She and I were separated; after twenty years of marriage we just weren't sure we were right for each other anymore. I was grieving, but Margaret told me her mother was seeing other men. We'd been separated for six months now, and I didn't know if we would ever get back together.

Finally we decided to take a day over at Deir el Bahari, the Temple of Hatshepsut, and we rode a crowded minivan over to the ruin and wandered around for much of the morning. There were large packs of tourists there, but I was getting over the bombing, which had been two weeks ago, and I wasn't so nervous. My daughter kept up a patter of conversation based on comments in her guidebook, and she talked about Hatshepsut's expedition to Punt and discussed the restoration of the temple by archaeologists, and the Egyptian government's plans to expand the restoration. We were standing in front of the temple, looking up at it, and there was a large group of tourists about fifty feet away. These were black people, and they stayed in a tight group with a chattering tour guide talking to them in what sounded like Arabic.

Suddenly I saw something that made my hair stand on end. A young Arab man wearing a puffy vest sidled up the group and started working his way deeper into the crowd. He had a small black goatee and close-cut hair and large mirrored sunglasses. He looked exactly like the terrorist from Cairo, and I found myself making odd noises as my daughter read from her guidebook and missed the whole thing.

There was a thunderous explosion, and a flash of light, and the group of tourists was torn apart by the force of the blast. Something hit the ground near me, and I turned and saw that it was the head of a child, torn off the body. My daughter made a startled cry and looked over at the stricken tourists, and I shouted, "Stay here!" and ran to help.

The next twenty minutes were a nightmare of fear and adrenaline and raw bloody wounds. There were many dead tourists, torn to pieces by the blast, and there were parts of bodies all over the place and more blood than I had ever seen before in my life. There was a chubby black woman whose guts had been torn out by the force of the blast, and a white-haired man who had lost both arms to the explosion. There was the body of a child with no head. I tore strips of cloth off the dead and used them to tie tourniquets on the living, and I bandaged the wounds as best I could while the tour guide called in the incident on his cell phone.

Ambulances came, and the police came, and my daughter and I were rounded up and taken to a police station in Luxor, where a middle-aged detective came to question us. I told him what I had seen, and he dutifully noted it all down in his notebook.

"It was creepy," I concluded. "I swear—"

"Yes?" he prompted.

I told him about the terrorist in Cairo and then described how both men had looked exactly the same. The cop listened to this and then swore in Arabic.

"You have seen him, then," he said.

"Seen who?" I asked.

"Mahmoud Abdurahman," he said. "The phantom terrorist. Every few months someone sees him again, exploding himself amongst the tourists. Every policeman in Egypt has heard of him, we all know his face. No one knows if he is a ghost or if the terrorists make themselves look alike to spread fear of evil. You have seen him twice, that is unusual. Take care to watch for him again, he might appear to you another time." He closed his notebook and cut us loose, and we went out to dinner feeling very subdued.

"A ghost!" my daughter barked, over her lamb kabob. "A phantom terrorist! And now you've seen him twice, daddy. It's like the Flying Dutchman. This guy really is burning in hell, and they let him out every few weeks to torment the living with another terror incident."

I felt tired, and the day's bloodbath had imprinted itself on my mind's eye so that I was seeing the armless man over and over again, and I knew I was on my way to full-blown PTSD with its attendant problems. I would really need those sleeping pills now. I knew that whenever I closed my eyes I would see the injured and dying and hear the cries. The head of the child seemed to wink at me in my memories; I kept seeing her headless body laying there leaking blood.

"This kind of puts a damper on our trip," I mumbled to Margaret, and she nodded and said,

"Poor dad. All that blood, and all those injured people. Mahmoud Abdurahman is one evil son-of-a-bitch."

I didn't get on her for the swearing. Call it lax parenting, but she had been swearing more and more over the last year, and I only corrected her when it got really bad. My baby was growing up, and she had the right to adult language. She didn't seem to think of swearing as anti-Christian; her spiritual beliefs and her cussing were developing at the same time.

We returned to the hotel and showered down and went to bed, and I took three sleeping pills and slept like the dead. The next morning I was seeing the bombing like an overlay on reality. All morning at breakfast I saw the dead and wounded. I felt my grip on reality slipping, and I didn't say much in response to my daughter's chit-chat. I was pleased that the bombings didn't seem to affect her much, but then, I had kept her away from the worst of it. She'd heard the screams, but she hadn't come close to see the wreckage.

Over the next few days we visited museums and went to the sound and light show at Karnak and returned to the Valley of the Kings to visit King Tut's tomb. The Valley of the Kings was loaded with tourists, and I was having anxiety attacks all day as we avoided the larger crowds and went to the farther outlying parts of the valley. I kept hearing the screams of the wounded and their moans as I bound their injuries, and I kept looking for fresh blood on my hands. My daughter asked me what was wrong, and I said,

"I'm having PTSD."

"Will it get better?" she said.

"Eventually," I said. "But for right now it's pretty bad."

"Maybe we should go home."

"We've only got three weeks left in our trip," I said. "We'll probably never get another chance to travel together like this. Next year you'll start college, and your life with me will be over. Let's try to enjoy the time we get." I am a middle school teacher, and we had these two months to travel, in June and July. It was the end of the first week in July, and I was fearful of other terrorist attacks. I began paying closer attention to the mutterings of other tourists, who said the Arab Spring drama was ongoing, that there were terror incidents all over Egypt these days. Al-Queda and other terror groups were taking advantage of the unrest to blow up policemen and government officials, and tourists were being targeted as well. No one said anything about a Mahmoud Abdurahman, but I thought of him all the time and what the cop had said. Same man at two terror incidents, same man blowing himself up twice. It gave me shivers.

We stayed another week in Luxor, relaxing at the cafes, while my daughter read her books and I smoked the hookah. The Egyptians we met in the tourist zones were friendly, and they regaled us with tales of ancient Egypt and reports about the Arab Spring uprisings. Egypt was still uneasy, and though the tourists were slowly returning, the volume of tourists was much less than it had been in the past. Egypt was hurting big time from lack of tourist dollars.

After our time in Luxor we returned to Cairo for a few days, to see the Islamic Art Museum and some more medieval mosques, and then we went up to Alexandria, on the coast, where we had the most exquisite seafood I have ever eaten. We were there for a few days, and then we decided to go visit the famous library, which was just a few years old and was supposed to be a wonder of the modern world.

We got going in the early morning, after a seafood breakfast of grilled prawns and pancakes, and walked down the cornice to the library. The shell of the library has carved into it writing from every major writing system in the world, and the front of the building is surrounded by a reflecting pool that makes for a peaceful and contemplative setting. As we approached I saw a group of tourists waiting in front of the entrance, with their tour guide chatting away. Then we were close enough to hear the language, and I realized it was English; these were fellow Americans in this group. I started to call out a greeting, being only twenty feet away from the group, but then I saw something that made my heart freeze. At the edge of the group was a young Arab man of about twenty five years of age, with a small black goatee and a pair of large mirrored sunglasses. He wore a heavy vest and inserted himself into the tourists. There was a little girl, I saw this clearly, about three or four years old, holding a man's hand and smiling up at him, and I _knew_ what was about to happen.

"It's him," I hissed at my daughter, clutching her arm and interrupting her reading from her guidebook about the library.

"Him who?" she said.

"Mahmoud Abdurahman. The phantom terrorist. In that group of people up ahead, see his sunglasses?"

She looked, and then she sucked in her breath as he reached the center of the group.

I let go of Margaret's arm and started to run toward the group, not knowing what to do but try to stop him. Then I heard my daughter shout,

"Mahmoud Abdurahman, you evil bastard! Leave those people alone and go back to hell! KNOCK IT OFF!"

And the terrorist's face was startled, but my daughter's words weren't powerful enough to keep him from his purpose. There was a peal of thunder, and people were knocked down everywhere, and something hit me in the chest very hard and knocked me straight back on my backside. I fell heavily to the sidewalk, unable to breathe, unable to move, and lay there gasping. My daughter ran up and shouted at me, but I couldn't hear a word she said for the ringing in my ears.

My daughter put her hands on my chest and compressed my muscles and then let them go, and air was sucked into my lungs, and she kept doing this and thus prevented me from passing out. Time passed in a haze, and then the police rounded Margaret and me up for questioning. As they took us away I saw a white-haired old man whose arms had both been blown off by the force of the blast, and I saw the little girl lying dead with her head missing. There was a woman whose guts had been blown out by the blast, and there was blood everywhere. I immediately had flashbacks to the other incidents, and all those dead and dying people, and the oceans of blood I had already seen. The phantom terrorist was winning in his personal war against the tourists.

At the police station we waited several hours for a cop who spoke English to come to talk to us. The one we got was an old man, had to be seventy if he was a day, but spry and businesslike and efficient. He took out his notebook and asked the questions, and my daughter and I told him about Mahmoud Abdurahman. He listened and shook his head and said,

"These terrorists do this to frighten people. They all grow goatees and wear the same mirrored sunglasses, to look alike. To start rumors about a ghostly terrorist. Depraved people, the fanatics. This has been happening since the 1950's, when this legend began. How much longer do you have in Egypt?"

"Just a few days," I managed to say. "We go home in a week."

"I'm sorry your experience in Egypt has been so miserable," he said. "These fanatics are very bad men, very bad. They do not represent the true Egyptian people."

"It's been a strange trip," I said weakly, and he nodded. Then he let us go, and we went back to our hotel and cleaned up. The police had determined that the object that hit me in the chest in front of the library was the head of the little girl I had seen, and I couldn't get her out of my mind. Little babies shouldn't be pawns in wars of terror. Suddenly I started to cry, thinking of all the people I had seen die during our two months in Egypt.

"What's wrong?" my daughter said, full of anxiety and concern, and I told her about the little girl talking with her daddy and how she was dead now, and it was all because of the phantom terrorist. She hugged me and heard me out as I choked out my words between sobs, and she said, "Let's go to a café where you can have a nice relaxing smoke."

So we went out to a café with a view of the Mediterranean, and I ordered a wad of tobacco and an orange juice, and my daughter had a lemon juice and talked with me. The tobacco was soothing and pleasant and calmed my raging thoughts, though it did nothing to stop the flow of images through my mind. Always there was a white-haired man whose arms had been blown off, and a woman whose guts had been blown out, and a dead child. Only the nationalities of the victims changed.

"This vicious son-of-a-bitch has to be stopped," my daughter said.

"He was startled when you yelled at him this morning," I said between puffs on the hookah.

"That isn't good enough. He's in hell right now, they're having a big party to celebrate his success," she said. "And all those dead Americans are going on to heaven, but that doesn't do their families and friends any good, does it?"

"We'll leave here, and that'll be the end of it," I said. "There's been an incident every two weeks, so we should be good for our last week in Egypt. This trip has soured for me, Margaret. I can't think straight anymore."

"Poor daddy," she said. "And you have been right in the thick of it."

"Why has he appeared to us three times? Why us?" I groaned.

"Maybe the old cop was right, and it's different men. We weren't close enough to see them very well. They could have been three different terrorists," she said.

"I don't believe that," I said. "It's the same man each time. A suicide bomber who keeps coming back to life, over and over again."

That was the end of our conversation, and we sat in the café for several quiet hours while I smoked the hookah and Margaret read her book. Egyptians came and went, speaking in Arabic, and once in a while the waiter came to refresh our drinks or bring me more tobacco. It was a wretched day, with me constantly envisioning the flashes of light from the various explosions I had seen. It was the screams of the dead and dying that really tore me up, and the dead children. What kind of terrorist targeted little children? What was happening to Egypt, that this sort of incident should be wide-spread?

Our last week in Egypt was a nightmare of flashbacks and hallucinations. We didn't feel much like seeing the sights and barely left our hotel, only to eat and do laundry. Finally we took the train back to Cairo and went out to the airport and got on our plane.

I thought it was all over with. I thought we were going to get a reprieve from terrorist violence. About two hours out on our flight I got bored and walked up and down the aisles of the plane, all around the coach section and up into first class, where I got a terrible fright. Sitting in first class was the phantom terrorist, with his goatee and big sunglasses, leering at me as I spotted him. He gave me an ugly grin and a thumbs-up sign and kept watching me until I left first class and returned to my seat in coach. For a long time I didn't say anything. Could I go to the stewards and tell them about the terrorist, let them handle it? What the hell would I say, that we'd witnessed the same terrorist blow himself up three times? Or would I insist that this man was a look-alike killer in a series of men who all went by the same name? I'd sound absolutely bonkers with either of those stories. And if I did somehow sic the stewards on him, he'd just blow himself up in mid-air, and we'd all be dead.

Finally I turned to my daughter and said, "He's here."

She looked up from her book and said, "Where?"

"First class, seat 3b. It's him. He's on board. He's going to blow up this plane."

"This dirtball isn't going to blow up anything," she said. Then, so fast I couldn't even speak to her, she stood up and dropped her book onto her seat and took off up the aisle. I watched her go, images of armless old men dancing around me. I sat in my seat for long moments, miserable and hurting, and then I staggered to my feet and took off down the aisle to first class, where I saw my daughter confronting Mahmoud Abdurahman.

"Jesus has a plan for you," she said. "If you don't believe that, you'd better believe in your own prophet Mohammed and your own Allah. This has to stop."

His large sunglasses stared straight at her. He had a look of horror on his face, and his mouth was working as though he was trying to speak. Finally he whispered,

"I can't...get off...the wheel..."

"Then you'd better pray to God for help," she said. "I can lead you in prayer, if you like."

"Is all...flames...now," he said in broken English.

"You didn't go to Paradise, did you?" she said. "You went to hell. They were lying to you all along, Mahmoud. You're stuck on the wheel of fate, and you're burning."

"Help me," he said, and swear to God I saw tears stream from beneath the sunglasses. But it was his left hand I was watching, the one inside his vest pocket, the one I was sure held a detonator. A headless child sat in the empty seat next to Mahmoud; now it was a black child and now white, but always its head was missing.

"Say a prayer with me," said my daughter, and she intoned, "'Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.' That's from the words of John, who was a great man." She said this slowly and crisply, and heads turned in the first class section as people moved around in their seats to look at her, and I felt profoundly uncomfortable with my Christian daughter leading a Muslim man in prayer, but I didn't know what to do. There were these dead children in the seat next to him, every few seconds it was another one, his victims were trying to be heard. I was terrified that a stewardess would come along just then and ask Mahmoud if my daughter was bothering him, but the stewardesses must have been busy elsewhere, because none showed up.

Mahmoud Abdurahman followed my daughter in prayer, now mumbling and now murmuring, spitting out the shattered English as my daughter repeated the prayer. He spoke with great conviction, his right hand shaking and tears flowing, and then he let go of whatever it was he had in his left pocket and brought his hand out and clasped her hand in his.

"Peace...with Allah...the compassionate...the merciful," he said.

My daughter leaned down and hugged him then and muttered something in his ear that I couldn't hear. Then she straightened up and said, "No more bombings, Mahmoud. Rest in peace."

Satisfied, she turned to me and said, "Let's go, Gerald. Everything's been done that can be done, here." And she headed back to her seat, me following behind, seeing the armless old man.

An hour later there was an announcement over the speakers:

"Will Mahmoud Abdurahman please return to his seat? We're beginning our descent into Frankfurt. Mahmoud Abdurahman, please return to your seat. Thank you."

My daughter looked up from her book to me and said smoothly, "Now we'll see if he found peace." I marveled at her calm in the face of the plane being blown to smithereens; personally I was suffering terrible anxiety attacks and great amounts of fear. I guess that's the power of religious conviction for you. My daughter believed in the power of God and Jesus to heal all hurts and soothe all troubled waters. I didn't have that faith, and I was afraid.

The plane began to descend, and even more anxiety came over me, and the many victims of the phantom terrorist danced around my seat with missing limbs and torn flesh and gallons of blood. I knew I had spent too long in Egypt and that we should have come home after the first terror incident. I was too stubborn in wanting time with my daughter in Egypt; we should never have stayed.

As the airplane rolled down the runway I breathed a sigh of relief. Terrorists typically blow themselves up as the plane comes in for a landing, so we were safe. My daughter and I got off the plane and onto a connecting flight, and there were no further incidents.

It's been a month since my daughter confronted the terrorist and led him in prayer. I am going to the VA for therapy, and in two weeks school starts, and I will be a busy man. They've got me on drugs for the visions (I still see the victims of the bombings), and I take sleeping pills at night. My daughter told everyone at her church about what happened, and her pastor didn't know what to make of it but commended her for leading a prayer, and Margaret seems pleased at the way things turned out. She's changed a bit since leading Mahmoud in prayer. She's not so punishment focused anymore, and she discusses visions of heaven as well as visions of hell. I think helping Mahmoud made a deep impression on her, and she appreciates a broader vista now than she did before.

I asked her at one point, why us? Why was the phantom terrorist appearing to us? Maybe because he sensed that my daughter could set him free, get him off the wheel of fate and on to whatever comes next. Maybe he's been trying to get attention to his plight for years, and he's only now found peace.

Personally, I will never forget the name Mahmoud Abdurahman, and in my dreams I see him inserting himself into the crowds of tourists and then blowing himself up. Here was a man cursed to repeat his own death over and over again for sixty years; this unfortunate soul might have finally found rest at the hands of my daughter. But what of his victims, all those he killed over those six decades? Mahmoud may have found rest, but terrorism continues and will always be a plague on society. I guess you do what you can do, one incident at a time, and pray for the best. After that, it's in the hands of the Almighty, and good luck!

## The Smell of Success

I don't write a lot of science fiction, but I always enjoy toying with ideas of the future, and space aliens. In this story the space aliens have arrived, but not in the way you might think. And they are causing changes, but maybe for the better? It's up to our protagonist to puzzle it out, all while trying to land the girl and keep his job. He's got his hands full, so kick back and enjoy his story!

I've always hated summer, because in summer you sweat, and to be blunt my sweat has a nasty odor to it, which people don't like. I'm a salesman at a software company, Scissors and Pin Software, and when you're a salesman a pungent body odor is the kiss of death. So in summer I'm mighty careful about going out in the hot air. I dash to my car and then into the office, from AC to AC, and I use plenty of deodorant in case I get too much heat. Sometimes I think I landed in the wrong job, but you have to make a living, and my little handicap is manageable.

It probably doesn't help my sweat situation any that I like exotic foods, with exotic spices, and so my sweat takes on a strange edge to it as I try new victuals. Once in a while this works out to my favor—curry actually makes my sweat smell tolerable, and so I tend to suggest Indian joints whenever the sales gang is going out to lunch. At home I like to buy cookbooks of foreign dishes and try those. So the summer my luck changed I was on a Japanese food kick, and I found this little Japanese market a few miles from my place. The Japanese are big on seafoods, and this little place I found, called the Gaijin Market, had a huge seafood section with seaweeds of all sorts and fresh fish and shellfish. I'm indifferent to seafood, but I wanted something different, so I was browsing the selection when I saw something really, really weird.

Laying on the ice was this deep red cuttlefish that had like a hundred tentacles and was two feet in length, and it had a long, triangular body and six eyes in two rows of three. At first I thought it was a joke that someone had put in the meat section to mess with the shoppers' heads, so I asked the grizzled old Japanese guy behind the meat counter about it.

"Called _thomigen,_ " he said. "Space alien food. New supplier, we're just trying them out."

I grinned at his joke and said, "Sure," and he smiled.

"Special introductory price, three dollars a pound. Cook it like cuttlefish or octopus. Make many wonderful dishes."

I stared at the bunches of tentacles and the six eyes and wondered if it had come from a nuclear power plant. Still, three bucks a pound was pretty good for seafood, and I found myself staring hard at this animal.

"Buy seaweed to go with it, make rice balls," the meat counter guy said. "Seaweed is cheap, get some today!"

I had just bought a book of Japanese foods, and I remembered the seaweed rice balls, it's called O-nigiri, and it sounded tasty. I was willing to try it. So I bought half the _thomigen_ , the part with tentacles, and got the makings for O-nigiri rice balls and took my purchases home.

I was between girlfriends at this time, but there was a new secretary at work who was about my age and cute, and I was eyeing her up with a thought toward inviting her over for dinner one night. Not with a new food, though, that was too risky. So I fried up the _thomigen_ tentacles in a light batter and made half a dozen O-nigiri rice balls to go with it, and then I sat down to eat.

The _thomigen_ was different. It had the consistency of cuttlefish, that sort of rubbery take, but it didn't taste like cuttlefish. It tasted like prawns, those big juicy tiger prawns that you used to be able to buy at any grocery store but now are only found at high-end grocers for eighteen bucks a pound. I like prawns, so I was pleased with the taste. But there was a side taste, a sort of oiliness that made the meat slide down my throat in a strange way. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was different, and it took half the dish to get used to it. I decided this wasn't a food I could serve up to the cute secretary. But it was delicious enough that I finished the whole meal, and then I watched the news and took a shower and hit the sack.

The next day the sun came up hot and strong, and I went down to my car in the garage and turned on the AC. It crapped out, and I was suddenly afraid for my day. I had a sales meeting early in the morning, potential new clients were coming in to Scissors and Pin to get the pitch, and I really didn't need the AC breaking down. I would have taken my car in to the shop, but the sales meeting was at nine, and there wasn't time. I turned the blower up to full and let it play warm air over me, and I wasn't halfway to work when I started to perspire. I can't tell you how fearful I was as the first drips started flowing down my body. Maybe I could stay in front of the meeting room all morning, not mingle with the clients? My partner for the pitch was Shirley, a dependable junior sales rep who knew her patter and was familiar with the software and its features. Scissors and Pin sells software to clothing stores and dress makers, and last year we came out with a "design your own clothing line" game for young girls. It was a success, and now we peddle it to clothing manufacturers who want their workers to play the game and get a feel for designing clothing.

This morning's client was a matron from a small clothing boutique in the downtown. She wanted a custom version of the game, that taught manufacturing with silk, and she was willing to pay good money for twelve copies of the game. It was a small client and a small order, but the matron knew a lot of other clothiers, and if we did a good job for her there would be more orders in it for us. Get enough small clients and you're doing good volume.

I went to the meeting room and set up for the presentation, and Patricia the administrative assistant brought in the pastries and orange juice and coffee, and Shirley came in with the laptop with the presentation loaded on it. We got everything set up for the presentation, and at one point Shirley said to me,

"You laid on the aftershave a bit thick this morning, didn't you?"

It took me a moment to figure out what she was talking about, and I felt the heat rise in my cheeks as I said, "The AC in my car crapped out. I sweated."

"Ah," she said. "Well, maybe I should deal with the clients close-up, then. You might overpower them. Nice smell, but strong."

Nice smell? Was she being sarcastic?

The clients came in, and Shirley and I did the presentation, which was a rocky affair. I was really nervous about my scent, and when I get nervous I get cramps and gas, and as I did my presentation I had to pass gas like four times. I was in front of everyone, so I hoped the gas wouldn't spread around the room, that it would stay up front with me. The room had AC, so maybe everything would be OK?

The matron liked what we had to say. We would be able to accommodate what she wanted, given a little lead time. At the end of the slide show I sat down at the far end of the table, and the matron got up and came and sat down right next to me. On the way over there she passed through my gas cloud and paused a moment to sniff the air. Then she said, "Your cologne is nice enough, Mr. Lambert, but strong. Who ever heard of a rose-scented cologne for men?"

I didn't know what the hell she was talking about. I can't smell my own scents, they just don't register, and as I had with Shirley I took her comment to be sarcasm. I felt intensely embarrassed, and she said,

"Oh my, you're really red in the cheeks. Never mind my comments on your cologne. Some men like it strong, I understand." She smiled, and I smiled back at her, and then she said, "Working with silk isn't the same as working with cotton or wool. You'll need to take what is a small module in your current software and make it the core of my software package. And expand it a good bit. Is our order enough to do all that work?"

"We'll be able to re-sell the package to other silk shops," I said breezily. "We'll come out ahead in the long run."

"I'm glad to hear it'll work out," she said.

Next she asked me several tough questions about our software and the silk trade, and I answered them without a problem. Scissors and Pin dealt more in software for cotton clothing rather than silk, but we'd go where the business was, and silk was popular that year. It was a high-end market, with lots of competition, but we had a unique concept with the video game and were eager to capitalize on our market advantage.

The matron and I talked for about twenty minutes, and I met her two senior assistants, and one of them said she had played the basic version of our game and had enjoyed it.

"It's aimed at a much younger audience than us, but it's an enjoyable game, and appealing," the assistant said. "It makes designing clothes fun. I'm looking forward to playing our custom version of the game." She smiled at me a sheepish smile as I cut another silent fart, just to test this out, and she said, "Your aftershave is strong, Mr. Lambert. I like the scent—is it roses?—but you might use a little less of it!"

"I can't smell it myself, so it's hard to judge," I said. Farts that smelled like roses? What was up with _that_? And what did my sweat smell like, that Shirley liked it? Something peculiar was happening, that was for sure.

The matron and her assistants paused to eat the pastries and drink some coffee, then Shirley and I saw them out the door and congratulated ourselves on the sale.

"Did anyone say anything about your scent?" Shirley asked, giving me a look of pure curiosity.

"They did," I said. "But they said it was nice, just too strong. I'm curious, I can't smell it myself, and I can't remember which scent I used this morning. What do you smell?"

"It smells of lilacs. I think it's supposed to be a subtle scent, Robert, but you've really splashed it on."

"I'll try to remember that for next time," I said. It was embarrassing to smell of flowers, but it beat hell out of my usual odor. Farts that smelled like roses, seriously?

Shirley and I parted ways, and I went to write up the report on our sales meeting, and people came and went from my cubicle all day. Some commented on my nice lilac scent, and I wracked my brains to figure out what had happened. Finally I came up with an answer: it was the strange cuttlefish I had eaten the night before that was changing my scent. Had to be. I wasn't using aftershave or cologne, and I hadn't changed anything else. The squid was the only new element. If curry could change my scent, then this cuttlefish could change it, too. I decided to push my luck.

At the end of the day I went to the new secretary, the cute one, and hovered a while, just chatting her up. Finally she said, "Robert, that's some cologne you're wearing. Who ever heard of a man wearing lilac cologne?"

"Do you like it?" I asked her.

"It's a nice scent, maybe a little strong," she said. Same thing the others had said.

"You might not believe this, but it's not a cologne," I said. "It's my natural scent."

"Ha! You mean you just naturally smell of lilacs?"

"That's what I mean," I said.

"Sure," she grinned, as though I was telling her a good one.

"Say," I said. "Do you want to go out for a coffee some time? There's a café not far from here."

She eyed me up cautiously and said, "I might like that."

I wished her well and went back to my cubicle, and Shirley came by to talk about the matron and her assistants, and the day passed quickly. I called the shop and scheduled my car for repairs to the AC, and after work I dropped it off and picked up the loaner. I went home feeling out of sorts, wondering about the day's adventures in odors. I still had several pounds of the cuttlefish left, but I didn't want to eat it right away. I wanted to test this, and see how long the scent change lasted. So for dinner I had spaghetti with meat sauce, because usually red meat makes my sweat smell really bad, and I wanted to put the cuttlefish to the test.

A few days went by, and I got my car back with the AC working again, but I decided to push it and went for walks outside in the hot mornings, to get a lather up. Then I went in to work. I visited Shirley and my boss and the new secretary, and they all made little comments on my pleasant scent.

"You've got the dose right," said the cute secretary, whose name was Calliope. "It's subtle now." The two of us went out for a coffee and hit it off, and I asked her out to dinner, and she accepted. I ate a helping of the cuttlefish two days before our dinner date, and upon prompting Shirley told me the scent was strong again the next day, but after that she said it was just right. I felt vaguely guilty using my colleagues as sniff testers, but it wasn't hurting anyone, and it was for a good cause.

I took Calliope out to an Indian place and had the curry, just to see what would happen to my scent with the cuttlefish still in my system. It was a good dinner, with good company, but not good enough for her to come home with me, so I was disappointed in that regard. I walked her to her car and gave her a good-night kiss, which she accepted, and then she said,

"The lilac thing works for you, Robert. I'd laugh at any other man who smelled of flowers, but for you it's good."

"Gotta try new things once in a while," I said, and I kissed her again. She turned her cheek to me, and I pecked her and then let her go. She drove off, and I went home.

The curry hadn't changed my scent, apparently, or Calliope didn't mention if it did. The 'space alien' cuttlefish won out in the battle of the scents. Food is like that, you never know what's going to happen until you try it.

The next day was Saturday, and I puttered around the house all morning playing video games and in the afternoon went to the Gaijin Japanese market and the seafood counter. The grizzled Japanese man was there again, and I said to him, "Have you noticed anything strange about the red cuttlefish? It makes my sweat smell like lilacs."

He laughed. "Yes, makes farts smell like roses, too. And makes breath smell like spearmint. Expect it to become a popular food." He had a Japanese accent, which has always struck me as vaguely humorous because it reminds me of the Godzilla movies I used to watch when I was a kid.

Breath smell like spearmint? No one had mentioned that one, so far. "So where is this thing from?" I tapped the glass and indicated the _thomigen_ laying on the ice. "Indonesia?"

"Ganymede," he said. "We get from space alien suppliers. Hush, hush, they just start selling to us. No tell the Feds yet!" He nodded as though he was telling me a secret, and what the hell, maybe he was. I didn't know where Ganymede was, maybe in the South Pacific somewhere? Sounded exotic.

"Well, it's tasty, and I like what it does for my body odor," I said. "I'll take another set of tentacles."

He pulled the cuttlefish off the display shelf and cut away the tentacles and wrapped them in butcher paper and handed them over to me. There was enough there for five or six days if I was modest with them.

"Light batter, and fry it up like squid," I said. "Delicious."

"Hard to get people to try a squid with six eyeballs," said the Japanese man. "No one wants it. Maybe give it a couple months, see if it sells."

"Sell it as a medicinal," I said. "For people with bad body odor." I was planning to eat a lot of alien squid, and I wanted him to keep it in stock.

"Oh, maybe do that," he said. Then he waited to see if I needed anything else.

"Do you have any other foods from these suppliers?" I said, feeling foolish for asking such a question. Suddenly I wondered if Ganymede was farther away than the South Pacific.

"We have space alien chocolate, coming soon," he said. "Gives you serious orgasms. You like that, I think."

"If it works out with the new girlfriend I'll be needing that," I said, mock-serious.

"Girlfriend love you big time," he proclaimed. "Be very, very happy with you in bed! Coming in one week, heh heh heh."

"I won't forget," I said, and I left the Japanese market with my purchase. The 'space alien' line was an artifact of his strange sense of humor, I supposed, but I looked forward to the special chocolate. People always claimed chocolate did the most outrageous things for you in bed. I wondered what made this chocolate 'space alien' and decided I'd have to try it and see if it was half as good as the old man said.

I went home and called Calliope and invited her over to dinner in a week. I told her we were having special battered squid and that she'd really like it.

"I'll try anything once," she said.

"With rice balls wrapped in seaweed," I offered.

"That sounds like enough to entice me over to your place." She chuckled and said, "Should I bring soy sauce?"

"I've got you covered," I said. "For dessert good old fashioned American cheesecake, I think."

"And you'll be a gentleman?" she teased.

"Just don't ask me about the chocolate," I said.

"Oooh, the old aphrodisiac. Not chocolate cheesecake, is it?"

"No, no, just chocolate drops to go with dessert. Special Japanese chocolate."

"I hope it's good," she said.

"It comes highly recommended. In from an exotic supplier."

I got off the phone and went to my computer and looked up Ganymede and found it was a moon of Jupiter. Yes, that old man was far out there, all right. Probably a reader of science fiction, or some such. Ganymede, indeed. I looked up _thomigen_ and found nothing and looked up six-eyed squid and found nothing, and I looked up the Gaijin Market and found their web site with their weekly specials listed. The red cuttlefish wasn't part of their web site, and I wondered why they weren't promoting it more heavily, if they wanted it to sell. Maybe it really didn't have FDA approval?

The week went past like a shot, and I stopped at the Gaijin Market and got the chocolate, and I went home and cooked up dinner. Calliope showed up at six-thirty sharp, and we talked while I finished dinner, and she allowed me to feed her little bits of tentacle as she licked my fingers. That seemed promising, and we moved through the O-nigiri and the _thomigen_ and on to the cheesecake. Finally, I took out the droplets of rich, black chocolate and set them on the table.

"Ready to try something _really_ different?" I said.

And as to how all that went, well...it all came up roses ;-)

## Little Sister

When I did my master's degree in anthropology one of my instructors had just brought out a book of mythology of the Hawaiian Islands, in particular of the goddess Pele. I read the book and fell in love with the charming stories about this temperamental and vicious goddess, who never fails to fascinate. The old Hawaiians were afraid of Pele, and with good reason, as volcanic eruptions killed people and destroyed property. There are some very enjoyable collections of Pele stories on the market, and if you like my story I urge you to find them in your local library or bookstore and read them. Much fun to be had.

"We're learning about the gods of old Hawaii, in Miss Hofstadter's class," said Leilani.

Leilani's mother was concentrating on the road, but she said, "Then you must be learning about Pele."

"Yea!" said Leilani. "She's the goddess of the volcano. She makes the volcano erupt and kills all kinds of people. She's really evil. Nobody likes Pele."

"But they respect her," said Leilani's mother. "Anybody with sense respects the power of the volcano."

"Uh-huh," said Leilani. She wasn't so sure about respect. She didn't feel respect toward Pele, only disgust. "It's no good being the evil volcano goddess. She should be a good guy and make the volcano beautiful, but instead her lava kills everybody."

"The old Hawaiians were afraid of Pele and her priestesses," said Leilani's mother. "They were afraid of the power of the volcanoes. In the old days the volcano would erupt and burn people up. It's better now. Now they can usually tell when there's going to be an eruption, and warn people to seek safety."

"You'd have to run fast to get away from lava," said Leilani. "Or drive away, maybe. Is lava going to burn up our house, mom?"

"Let's hope not," said Leilani's mother. "I've lived there for ten years, and lava's never come close to our community."

"Yeah," said Leilani. Her parents had an SUV, and it could go pretty fast when her mother wanted it to. They could probably drive away from lava. Leilani had seen lava before, at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The lava flowed down the mountainside and into the ocean, and it burned up everything along the way. She and her parents and her little sister couldn't go too close, but they could see it burning all bright yellow and hot and runny like egg yolk. Leilani was impressed with lava and how hot it was. Lava belonged to Pele, and Pele was wicked like the witches in the stories her mom and dad read to her at night. Except Pele was a goddess, which meant she was a lot stronger than any witch. You might have to call out the army on Pele, if she became troublesome. Let the soldiers handle her.

The SUV topped a hill, and Leilani could see the houses of Captain Cook below.

"Well, what's this?" said Leilani's mother.

Leilani looked around and saw a young woman on the side of the road, dressed in a grass hula skirt. She had grass to cover her boobs, too.

"A hitchhiker," said Leilani's mother. "Should we stop and pick her up, kids?"

"Sure," said Leilani.

"Let's get her," said Alamea, Leilani's little sister, who was strapped into the kid's seat next to Leilani. Alamea was four years old, just a baby. Leilani was seven and in first grade, which meant she was a big kid, compared to her sister.

"Okay, we'll pick her up and take her with us," said Leilani's mother. She pulled the SUV over to the side of the road and waved at the young woman, who waved back and came and opened the door to the passenger side. She slid onto the seat.

"Hello," said the young woman, who Leilani thought was very, very pretty. She was a Native Hawaiian. She had brown skin and a beautiful face. Leilani hoped she was that pretty when she grew up.

"Where you headed?" said Leilani's mother.

"Back the way you came. You're heading in the wrong direction. There's going to be an eruption soon, and they think Captain Cook will get hit."

Leilani's mother turned her head to look at the young woman. "I haven't heard anything on the radio about an eruption," she said.

"My sister is a volcanologist, and she gave me the scuttlebutt," said the island girl. Leilani wondered how old she was. Maybe twenty, really old. A lot older than Leilani.

"We aren't really heading south," said Leilani's mother. "We're just going down into Captain Cook. This is where we live."

"I'm going to Ocean View. Can I trouble you to take me there?" said the island girl.

"I like Ocean View," said Leilani. "They have good shopping malls." They had just come from a morning of shopping in Ocean View, but Leilani always liked more shopping.

"Kids, do you feel up for a little drive?" said Leilani's mother.

"I do," said Leilani.

"Okay," said Alamea.

"I guess we can take you back to Ocean View," said Leilani's mother to the island girl. She turned the SUV around and headed south. Leilani always enjoyed going places in their car, because it had the sound of power. It sounded like an airplane taking off when you gunned it. Her dad liked gunning the SUV and often got it to roar, but her mom didn't do that so much. Her mom was kind of a boring driver.

"My name is Leilani," she said to the island girl. "What's your name?"

"My name is Hiiaka."

"Ooo, like the goddess?"

"Exactly. My older sister is named Pele."

"Huh," said Leilani. "That's two goddess names in one family. How many sisters do you have?"

"Half a dozen. But I don't stay in touch with most of them."

"I just have Alamea, here," said Leilani. In truth one sister was handful enough, Leilani didn't really want another one.

"My older sister is difficult," said the island girl. "She doesn't like people very much."

"My younger brother is like that. He's a recluse," said Leilani's mother. She meant Uncle Bud. Leilani liked Uncle Bud, he always brought her little presents when he came to visit.

"My sister isn't a recluse. She gets out and about. She just doesn't like people."

"Is there really going to be an eruption?" asked Leilani.

"My sister says there is, and she's never wrong," said the island girl.

"Are you going to dance the hula?" asked Leilani. "You're wearing a hula skirt."

"I love to dance," said Hiiaka. "I might do some dancing today, if I can find some other girls to dance with me."

"I'll dance with you. I like to dance," said Leilani.

"And you're saying Captain Cook is in the path of the lava?" said Leilani's mother. She sounded troubled, Leilani thought.

"That's the word from my sister," said Hiiaka. "She didn't want me to tell anybody else, but now I'm telling you."

Leilani's mother reached over and turned on the radio and tuned it into the news station. There was something boring on about the governor of Hawaii.

"Have you been dancing the hula this morning?" said Leilani.

"I've been warning people to get away from Captain Cook," said Hiiaka. "I've been at it all morning, hours already. Most people don't listen to me, but a few have. I'm really glad you're giving me a ride to Ocean View. The eruption will be over by the time you get back home."

"Pele is evil," said Leilani.

"You should be careful," said Hiiaka. "She'll hear you."

"You're named after the good goddess, Hiiaka," said Leilani. "She helps people. She's not wicked like Pele is."

"She's the little sister," said the island girl. "Little sisters have to make up for their big sister's bad behavior sometimes."

"My little sister is the one with bad behavior," said Leilani. "She gets into all kinds of trouble."

"You're the one who gets me in trouble," said Alamea. "You tell lies about me."

"I make up stories because you're so bad the truth doesn't tell everything," said Leilani.

They drove along the highway for a while, as the radio played more news. There was something about an impending eruption on Mauna Loa, but the scientists didn't know where the lava was going to flow.

"They're not warning Captain Cook residents to seek safety," said Leilani's mother.

"Take it from me, Captain Cook is going to get hit," said Hiiaka. "My sister knows."

"A Native Hawaiian volcanologist? That sounds like a great job," said Leilani's mother.

"She's good at it, the very best. No one can predict them like my sister."

For a while they listened to the warnings on the radio, and the miles flew by. It was thirty-one miles to Ocean View from Captain Cook, but it was going by fast.

"How is it you girls have Native Hawaiian names?" asked Hiiaka. "Not so many white people are named that way."

"My mom said the native names are beautiful, so she talked my dad into it," said Leilani. "My name means 'heavenly flower.' Like a lei. Alamea means 'precious.'"

"We have a small shrine at home devoted to the Hawaiian gods," said Leilani's mother. "We're a spiritual family."

"Not Christians, then?" said Hiiaka.

"We're a little of both, though we don't attend church much," said Leilani's mother.

"We even have a little carving of the shark god," said Leilani. "He's evil, too. Pele's whole family was evil, everyone but Hiiaka. She was a good guy all by herself. That's tough."

"Where do you want to be dropped off in Ocean View?" said Leilani's mother.

"Either shopping mall is fine. I'll go home after the eruption," said Hiiaka.

"Hiiaka was a good goddess," said Leilani, returning to her thoughts of a moment ago. "She helped people against her sister Pele. But Pele killed her friend Hopoe. Pele was really mean."

The young woman was silent at this, and Leilani barreled on. "I think the government should send the soldiers to shoot Pele. That would teach her not to be so mean."

Hiiaka laughed. "It would be a rare soldier who could accomplish that," she said.

They were going down the road really fast, and Leilani enjoyed talking with the island girl. It must be something to be named after Hiiaka. It was a good name, a lucky name.

"Can you do magic, like the goddess Hiiaka?" said Leilani.

"I know a few neat tricks," said the young woman.

"Can you show them to us now?" said Leilani, who always enjoyed magic tricks.

"What about snow in April?" said Hiiaka.

"Yeah, make it snow," said Leilani, amused.

Hiiaka said a long sentence in Native Hawaiian, and Leilani recognized the name Poliahu, who was a goddess of snow. Then the SUV suddenly was hit by millions of snow flakes, falling from nowhere. Leilani had seen snow on top of the volcano, but she'd never seen it down here along the coast.

"Whoo!" howled Leilani. "That's a good trick. Tell me how you did it?"

"I am friends with someone who knows snow very, very well," said Hiiaka.

"That's some trick," said Leilani's mother, who sounded impressed. "Is that really snow, or is it ash from the volcano?" She turned on the wipers, and the stuff was knocked off the windshield.

"It's really snow," said Hiiaka.

"But that's impossible," said Leilani's mother. She turned her head to look at Hiiaka. "How would you make it snow in Hawaii?" she said.

"You have to know the right people, and be open to new things," said Hiiaka.

"Whooo-hoo, it's snowing!" howled Leilani.

Alamea said, "That's not real snow, that's just dust from the volcano. Real snow is white, and this is grey."

"It's got ash in it from the eruption," said Hiiaka. "But see, it's melting against the windshield, that's how you can tell it's real snow."

"That seems like a super magic trick," said Leilani's mother. "I've heard of rainmakers, but I've never heard of anyone making it snow, before." Leilani thought her mom sounded nervous, but she couldn't understand why that would be so. It was a pretty slick trick, to make it snow. Hiiaka had good magic, she was a good person. And she was pretty, like Cinderella.

The island girl turned her head and peered out the driver's side window. "Look, you can see the eruption on the volcano," she said.

Leilani turned her head and saw flashes of red light way up the volcano. "Do you think lava will really come to Captain Cook?" she asked.

"I think it will," said Hiiaka. "Hopefully your home won't be burned up, but there's no way of telling who Pele will hit. She's pretty violent."

"Wicked evil person," Leilani muttered.

"Drive faster," Hiiaka said. "There will be pyroclastic bombs today. They'll reach down this far onto the highway."

"That's got to be forty miles," Leilani's mother said. "The bombs won't reach us here."

"They will, trust me," said Hiiaka. "Your daughter is taking Pele's name in vain, and she'll throw bombs at your SUV."

Just then something exploded with a loud blast of thunder not fifty feet ahead of the SUV. Chips of stone flew out all over the highway, and the SUV crunched over them.

"Go faster," said Hiiaka.

Leilani's mother gunned the SUV, and it made the satisfying roaring sound. Leilani thought there was a good spirit in the SUV that made that noise, but her dad said it was just the gasoline exploding in the engine. Her dad had opened the hood and showed Leilani the engine, but all Leilani saw was a bunch of rubber and metal parts. It didn't look very impressive, but it sure sounded great!

Hiiaka said something in Native Hawaiian, this time something quite long, and then she said in English, "I've just said a prayer for your SUV. This is going to be dicey. Leilani, you really mustn't say anything else about Pele."

"Okay, I'm about done with her anyway," said Leilani. Then she switched gears and said, "Are you a good person, Hiiaka, like the goddess you're named after? Do you help people?"

"I love people," said Hiiaka. "All my sisters are like Pele, their hearts are turned away from humanity. I'm the only people person in my family."

"Do you get along with your sisters, then?" asked Leilani's mother.

"I don't see them very often. The less often the better. I'm Pele's favorite, but she's still cruel. She can't help it, that's just the way she is."

"I'm mean to my little sister sometimes," admitted Leilani. "But I don't mean it."

"You're mean _all_ the time," said Alamea. "You're not like princess Ariel at all. You're a witch."

"That's not true," said Leilani. "Who gave you part of her dessert just last night?"

"That's because you ripped the head off my doll," said Alamea.

"You must treat your little sister like a precious gift," said Hiiaka, chuckling at this exchange.

"No one treats _me_ like a precious gift," grumbled Leilani.

Leilani's mother gunned the SUV again as more rocks fell near the car.

"How fast are we going now, mom?" asked Leilani.

"We're going eighty-eight miles an hour," said Leilani's mother. "I sure hope there are no cops along this stretch of highway."

"The police have other concerns right now," said Hiiaka. "I wouldn't worry about them."

The snow that had been falling on the SUV suddenly stopped, and they could see red-hot rocks falling from the sky all around them. The rocks burst on the ground and on the road, and the SUV crunched over the shards of stone that fell onto the highway.

"Bad business to take the name of Pele in vain, during an eruption," said Hiiaka. "She doesn't like it."

"How can the volcano spit out pieces of rock forty miles away?" asked Leilani's mother. "I've never heard of that before." She sounded scared. Leilani watched the little red bombs fall from the sky and get bigger and bigger, and then they hit the road or the wilderness around the road and blew up. So far they were all far away, so why worry about it?

"Lady Pele is upset," said Hiiaka. "She's strong today, and she's not in the mood for blasphemies."

"All right," said Leilani's mother. "We get the message. I forgot to ask, are you girls buckled up?"

"I am," said Leilani.

"Me, too," said Alamea.

"So am I," said Hiiaka. "Curious things, cars. The whites are full of clever ideas."

"Thank Henry Ford for that concept," said Leilani's mother. "You islanders have such wonderful stories, that's your contribution. Right now Leilani is learning the stories of the gods and goddesses of old Hawaii—"

"Let _me_ tell it!" yelled Leilani. "In school right now Miss Hofstadter is teaching us the legends of old Hawaii. All the gods and goddesses, and the evil shark god, and Poliahu the snow goddess who is the most beautiful of all the goddesses but is cold in her heart. Do you have a sister named Poliahu?"

"No, Poliahu isn't one of my sisters. I think Poliahu was here before my sisters and I came to Hawaii."

"Oh, you're not Hawaiian?" said Leilani's mother. "I was assuming you're an island girl."

"I meant, my ancestors came to Hawaii from Tahiti," said Hiiaka. "Poliahu was already here when they came."

"I don't follow you," said Leilani's mother.

"The shark god is bad because he eats people," said Leilani. "He can turn into a giant shark and swallow people whole. He even eats children like me and Alamea. Poor Hiiaka has two evil people in her family, and the rest of her sisters don't care. I don't like to swim in the ocean because of sharks."

"Most of the time sharks don't bother people," said Hiiaka. "But some sharks are wicked, and they go after people."

"Yeah, I don't want to meet one of those," said Leilani.

One of the bombs fell fifteen feet from the SUV, exploding in a thunderclap that rocked their vehicle. Shrapnel pocked the driver's side, and Leilani's mother gave a squeal.

"That was close!" Leilani exclaimed. "The bombs are everywhere! It's really exciting."

"I can't take much more of these bombs falling," moaned Leilani's mother. "This day is turning too strange for me. That last one nearly got us."

Leilani didn't understand why her mother was so upset by the bombs. Hiiaka put a magic spell on the SUV, didn't her mother hear that? The bombs weren't going to hit the SUV, Leilani was sure of it.

The tires screeched as they hit loose flakes of rock, and Hiiaka said, "There, the lava flow has started. How far from Ocean View are we?"

"Only about five miles away now," said Leilani's mother. "I'm going to have to slow down, there are definitely cops this close to town."

"I wasn't sure if Ocean View was going to get bombed or not," said Hiiaka. "Looks like they might be getting hit. Pele is really riled up today."

"I wish her sister would go and talk to her and get her to calm down," said Leilani.

"Her little sister doesn't have much influence with her, I'm afraid," said Hiiaka. "When she's angry she doesn't listen to anyone."

"Why is she angry?" said Leilani.

"The whites want to put geothermal power plants on the island. They would tap into her volcano. That makes her mad. But to be fair, everything makes Lady Pele mad."

"I get mad at Alamea sometimes," said Leilani. "But I don't stay mad. It just blows over."

"I get mad at you, too," said Alamea. "Sometimes I wish the lava would burn you up."

"Maybe the volcano is erupting because of _you_ ," said Leilani.

"Uh-uh. It's erupting because of _you,_ " said Alamea.

The SUV rolled along at a normal speed for a few miles, then they came to one of Ocean View's shopping centers. Leilani's mother said, "Where to?"

"Anywhere in here is fine. I really appreciate the ride."

"It's been more exciting than I'd like," said Leilani's mother. "Those bombs were bad."

"I think some of the smaller ones are falling here, too, so head indoors," said Hiiaka.

"Thanks for the conversation," said Leilani's mother. "Sounds like you have quite the family."

"They're a traditional family, and neurotic," said Hiiaka. "I often wish to have been born to another family, but you take what you get."

"Mom, can we watch Hiiaka dance?" said Leilani.

"Are you still going to dance?" said Leilani's mother.

"Planning to," said Hiiaka. "Maybe I'll just dance with my sisters today. See if they're up for a hula. Or maybe some of these women here at the mall will want to dance."

"But they're not wearing hula skirts," said Leilani, who was looking around the mall and seeing only women in jeans or dresses.

"That's all right, you don't have to wear the skirt to dance," said Hiiaka. She unbuckled her seat belt as Leilani's mother pulled into the mall parking lot.

"Do you girls want lunch?" said Leilani's mother, who was eyeing up a fast food outlet.

"Yeah!" said Leilani.

"Me, too!" said Alamea.

"I'll get out here," said Hiiaka. "Leilani, you have a special responsibility as the oldest, to be nice to your little sister."

"I will, I promise," said Leilani. "Except when she bugs me."

" _You're_ a bug," said Alamea. "I saw a spider yesterday, in the garden. It was yellow."

A small pyroclastic bomb fell in the parking lot, about fifty feet away, exploding and sending sharp fragments of rock in all directions. Fortunately no one was hit.

"Maybe you should put off dancing until the bombs stop falling," Leilani's mother said to Hiiaka. "Might be best to take cover."

"Oh, they won't hit _me_ ," said Hiiaka. "I'm on good terms with Pele. The bombs are going to stop falling pretty soon, and I've put protection on you, so you should be safe."

"Pele is evil," said Leilani. "The soldiers should shoot her."

"Enough of that," said Leilani's mother. "You need to be respectful of the old gods."

"They need to be respectful of _people_ ," growled Leilani.

"I have something for you girls," said Hiiaka. "A good luck charm." She reached into her grass skirt and opened a small pouch and removed some tiny items which she handed to Leilani and Alamea. They were pearls, blue-white and glistening.

"Oh, you shouldn't spoil them," said Leilani's mother.

"Don't worry, I have more," said Hiiaka. "Your daughters are charming. I've really enjoyed talking with all of you today. As I said, the bombs are about to stop falling. But don't go home for at least an hour, the lava will be gushing down the mountainside. I hope your house survives. Farewell!"

Leilani's mother turned around in her seat to contemplate the pearls that her daughters were checking out. Leilani liked her pearl, it was shiny. It was a nice gift.

"Thank you," she said, looking up to Hiiaka, but there was nobody in the passenger seat. "Where did she go?" she said.

"Really, Hiiaka, you shouldn't give such valuable gifts," said Leilani's mother, turning to the passenger seat. She gave a startled exclamation and said, "Hiiaka?"

"I didn't hear her get out," said Leilani.

"She just disappeared," said Alamea. "I was watching her. She just went poof, like a dragon. There were little sparklies in the air, and then she was gone."

"Well, let's go get something to eat," said Leilani's mother. "Then I guess we can go shopping again for a little while. Your father won't be coming home from Hilo for hours yet. I hope we still have a home to return to, when the lava is finished."

"How did Hiiaka just disappear?" said Leilani. "Do you think she was the goddess Hiiaka?"

"I think she was a very special island girl," said Leilani's mother. Leilani saw that her mother's face was covered in sweat, and there were dark patches on the underarms of her blouse.

"Maybe she's dancing right now," said Alamea. "But not in the lava."

"Put your pearls away, and don't lose them. When we get home we'll put them in a special box," said Leilani's mother.

"Maybe we'll see Hiiaka again in the future," said Leilani. "Maybe we'll all go dancing."

"We didn't hear her get out," murmured Leilani's mother. "She made it snow in Hawaii."

"Maybe she's Lady Pele's little sister Hiiaka," Leilani tried again.

"The bombs were falling all around our car, and we didn't get hit," mused Leilani's mother.

"Lady Pele was mad at us," said Leilani. "But Hiiaka made the bombs miss us."

"I wonder what the old Hawaiians would say, if we told them about today?" said Leilani's mother. "I'll bet they would say the island girl was actually Pele's baby sister." Leilani's mother pulled the SUV up at the fast food joint and drove into a parking space. She killed the engine, and she and her daughters got out of the vehicle. She inspected the driver's side for damage from the falling bombs and found pieces of stone embedded in the door.

"Those bombs almost shredded our SUV," she said to the girls.

"Maybe if you rub the pearl and say Hiiaka's name, she'll come to you," said Leilani. "That's good magic."

Leilani's mother sighed. "Maybe. When you get into trouble you can try it out and see if it works. She said it was a good luck charm."

Leilani looked up at the volcano, and she was startled to see a woman in the sky there, made of white cloud-stuff. The woman wore a Hawaiian dress and was dancing. Her face was indistinct, but she looked like a middle-age woman with an angry look. Then Leilani saw a second cloud-figure, much smaller, who was dressed in a hula skirt. She was shaking her hips, and Leilani said,

"Look, mom, it's Pele and Hiiaka, in the clouds." But her mother was fussing with Alamea, and she didn't turn to look. Leilani alone saw the goddesses in the sky.

Then the three of them went in and ate, and they talked about Hiiaka and Pele and Poliahu for the rest of the afternoon, until they headed back up the road to see if they still had a home.

## Parallax

This looks like it might be a science fiction story, but it's actually a fantasy acting like a sci-fi. At its heart it's about gun violence, which we hear a lot about in America. There is a constant string of gun murders in the United States, and sometimes the perpetrators are caught and sometimes they aren't. In this story a random gunman gets away with the ultimate crime, leaving a shattered man clinging to a last desperate hope for redress. The old magic he summons works, but there is a price to pay, and he might not be able to shoulder the burden.

Parallax: the apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the observer. – dictionary.com

Random gun violence. Every day in America we go about our chores and to and from work on a wing and a prayer, never suspecting that the shooters of the world are targeting us. You can be happy as a lark with your beautiful wife at hand and your baby boy in the backseat, and in an instant it can all go bad as the random gunmen draw a bead and fire.

But to tell this story I have to start at the start, not with the gunman but with the ring I bought in Morocco fifteen years ago, when I was a young man of twenty travelling with the cute girlfriend who would just a year later become my wife. We had a month in Morocco, part of a summer in the Middle East that we were taking during our college studies. Janice and I had been in Morocco for two weeks already and had headed to Marrakech, an exciting, exotic city of a million souls with a long history and ten thousand hand crafts for sale. We were in one of the big bazaars and had wandered away from the other tourists and found a little junk shop that sold all sorts of strange knick-knacks. There were the stuffed heads of African animals and boxes and chests of all sizes, and an assortment of rugs and carpets, and several bicycles, and racks and racks of clothing, and bird eggs of various sizes and colors, and even a trio of dream catchers. Janice was looking for Moroccan robes of honor, and I was looking for a ring. We both found what we wanted in the junk shop.

"Ah, you are looking at a magic ring," the shopkeeper said to me. He was a runty little fellow, wearing a red fez with a pink tassel in the center, and he had a mustache and small beard that were both black. I thought he was about thirty-five years old, with a dry, dusty voice that seemed to crack like parchment whenever he spoke. It gave him an air of mystery, which seemed perfect for a junk shop dealer.

I contemplated the silvery ring in a small display case in front of me. It was beautifully engraved with a dragon motif and Arabic writing and reminded me of Tolkien's One Ring because the writing ran right down the middle of the band.

"What does it say?" I asked him.

"It says, 'Speak your desire and pay your price, and may all your needs be fulfilled.'"

"It's a ring of wishes?" I asked him.

"It's a ring of second chances," said the proprietor. "When fate has dealt you an unfortunate hand, you turn to the ring and seek better fortune."

"Why then do you have to 'pay your price'?"

"The ring will bring a reversal of ill luck, but it then causes calamities for the next six months, by way of payment," he said. "So only use it when something truly terrible happens, something enormous."

"How much do you want for it?" I asked him. I knew I'd pay whatever he wanted. The ring had me. It was gorgeous craftsmanship like everything in Marrakech, and it was easily worth several hundred dollars just on the strength of the engraving alone.

"This ring is not just any ring," he said fervently. "It is a magic ring. It was crafted by a djinni named Abu al-Farrakat more than a thousand years ago, when Marrakech was just a little fortress town on the caravan road. A sorcerer commanded the djinni to create the ring, and the djinni did so, and it has survived a hundred owners and ten centuries to end up in my shop. Plus, it is white gold, mined from the High Atlas Mountains, which is not cheap."

"Name your price," I said. I glanced at Janice, who was looking at some robes, and she looked up at me and smiled.

"You're hooked," she said.

"Gotta have this ring," I said. It was bad bargaining style, but I've never been a bargainer anyway.

"Five hundred dollars American," he said. "With a forty dollar discount because it's Tuesday, which is the day the ring was crafted."

"Four hundred," I said, trying to get into the spirit of it. Janice loved to haggle, and she and the shopkeepers went round and round, but I generally made a little show of it and then paid the exorbitant price. These people were poor, and I wanted to do my bit to support them. Their crafts were heading back to America for my friends and family, and would become family keepsakes for generations. I could at least pay a good price for them.

"Four hundred twenty-five," he said.

"Sold." I took the money out of my wallet and handed it over, and he fetched the ring out of its display case.

"To summon the magic of the ring, say 'Waken, ring of Abu al-Farrakat, and attend me.' Then name your misfortune, and the ring will correct it. Remember, you will have a string of misfortunes for six months after using the ring, so only use it when you truly must."

"Why aren't you wearing the ring, if it's so valuable?" I had to ask.

"I used to use it when I had had a bad week at work," he said. "Or when my wife and I were quarrelling. But the six months of ill fortune is a serious price to pay, and I quickly wore out on the ring. That, and you're only supposed to keep the ring for twenty years, then pass it on. I've had it for ten years now, and I've decided it's time for a new owner."

"I don't believe in that superstitious stuff," I said, and he grinned.

"As you wish, my young friend."

Janice had found some robes she liked and bought half a dozen of them, and some vests and pantaloons, and a red fez for her father that had a black tassel in the center. "Are any of these robes magic?" she asked, by way of having fun, and the shopkeeper smiled.

"Only two other rings here have magic in them, and one carpet," he said. "But they're all more expensive than this ring. I have to give a discount because of the ill fortune."

"Of course," she said.

"Is it a flying carpet?" I asked.

"It is, but it is woven so that only a devout Muslim can make it fly," he said. "No good to an American."

"Too bad, I might have bought it if you could demonstrate it flying," I told him.

"One white gold ring is enough for one day. It has strong magic, young man; you think I'm teasing you, but it is a true djinn ring, almost as good as a ring of three wishes."

"Sure," I said, placing the ring on my right hand and admiring the play of light on the engraving.

We puttered in the junk shop for a little while and then said our good-byes and departed. So I bought a 'magic' ring for four hundred twenty-five dollars. It stayed on my right hand for years, then a decade, then fifteen years, before I ever needed it. I was tempted to try it out before then, but no serious disasters ever occurred that would make me give it a whirl.

Then came the Saturday when Janice and my six-year-old son Jake and I drove to the grocery store, where I was picking up some wine for a dinner with friends that evening. It was early morning, around ten o'clock, and my wife decided to stay in the car with Jake and avoid the crowds in the store.

"Don't forget bananas," she said. "I want to bake banana bread for our guests. Preferably really ripe ones."

"I've got it," I said.

I cracked the windows of the car to give them air and headed inside. I found a bunch of bananas and a nice Foxmoor cabernet, which I had tried before and really liked, and went through the checkout line and headed back to the car. The entire shopping trip took less than ten minutes, and I was thinking about dinner with our friends, and maybe playing catch with my son before it got too hot. That was a sunny July day, and by noon it would be blistering out. The last thing I was thinking about was random gun violence.

When I got back to the car I saw my wife slumped down in her car seat, and I laughed because I thought she was trying to catch some Z's while I was inside. Silly goose, I was only gone ten minutes. I opened the driver's side door, and when the door opened the smell of feces flooded out of the car. And the stink of blood. It was then that I saw the blood all over the seats and dashboard, more blood than I had ever thought possible. I looked again at my wife and saw that there was a gaping hole in her head, and her brains were exposed, and blood soaked her summer dress.

All thoughts fled me then, and all feelings died. My world zeroed down to just my wife, whose eyes were open and staring and dead.

"Jake? Buddy?" I said then, and I looked in the back seat and saw that he was laying on his side, and his head too was blown out with a bullet hole. In the windows on their side of the car were two little round holes, about the size of a dime. I lifted my head and looked around the parking lot, but there was no one watching, no one getting off on the discovery of the victims. There were just people putting their groceries in their cars.

I tried to speak then, to will them back to life by sheer force of need, but only stupid noises came out of my mouth. Ten minutes, I was gone. Just ten lousy minutes.

My breast shattered, and in my heart I was weeping but in the world I was silent and still. As I stood there several people walked past my car, a mother and father and two little girls, and then they went on to their own car and got in and drove away.

"Janice?" I managed to say. My cute wife didn't say a thing.

I sat down on the driver's side seat and closed the door and breathed the stinking air. I was in shock, completely numb, unable to think or respond.

It was then that the white gold ring from Morocco spoke to me. A little boy's voice rose from the ring, saying, "Speak your need, and pay your price."

I stared at the ring and wondered what trick was being played on me, the murderer was trying to fool me with tricks. The dragon engraving was flying around the center of the band, and the lettering sparkled in the mid-morning sun. The ring had never done anything like this before, this was all new.

"What is your need?" spoke the ring in the little boy voice.

For long moments I just stared at it, unthinking, unable to figure out what the ring was or what it wanted from me. Then I remembered the junk shop in Morocco, fifteen years before, and the shopkeeper's talk of magic, and I rubbed the ring. The words rose in my mind as though the shopkeeper had just spoken them to me.

"Waken, ring of Abu al-Farrakat, and attend me."

A little boy became visible, a chubby little fellow of about ten years old floating in the air over my wife. He wore a turban and white gloves and was dressed like a Middle Eastern kid from a long, long time ago, with pantaloons and a red and gold vest.

"I am the ring djinni," said the boy. "I am here to serve your need."

"I need my wife and son back," I blurted. "I need them alive and whole again."

"That is a worthy desire," said the little boy. "Have them, then." He stretched out his hands and touched my wife on the forehead, and then he leaned over the passenger's side seat and touched my son on the forehead as well.

The two of them turned pale, and I could see through them, like they were ghosts. They sat up, but they were still lying down as well; there were two of each of them, one dead and one alive. The live ones were also ghostly, and they had angel's wings sprouting out of their backs and haloes on top of their crowns. Janice looked at me and smiled, and she tried to speak, but nothing came out.

"What did you do?" I said to the djinni.

"I restored them to life. There will be a struggle between what happened and what is happening, but the outcome is not in question. Your loved ones will return to you. Be patient."

A burst of rage filled me, and I said, "We're not done here yet, djinni. I want the killer destroyed. I want him to put his gun to his head and squeeze the trigger. I want him dead."

"This is a ring of reversal of ill fortune, not a wish ring. I cannot grant wishes, I am not old enough."

Horror gripped me then, that this sick son-of-a-bitch was going to get away with it, that he was going to kill again.

"You can't just leave him on the loose," I gasped. "He'll kill others, people without fancy rings who can't get their loved ones back. You can't desire that. Kill him, already!"

The boy regarded me coolly. "That is beyond the range of this ring," he said.

"Well, _try_ a little," I snarled at him. "Give it an effort! Reach out and murder this cocksucker!" I was shaking all over, my hands were jumping like June bugs.

"I'm sorry, but that is beyond my range," said the little boy. "Rejoice in the return of your loved ones, and keep them away from others for a few days, until they heal." Then he disappeared, and I was left with my ghostly family.

I glanced over at my wife, who was silently singing. My son was also singing, and their haloes glowed in the strong sun.

I put the key in the car and started it up and drove the three of us home. It was a short drive, a few minutes, and then I pulled into the garage and got out of the car.

"Can you two open the doors?" I said, and my wife tried to open her door but couldn't budge it. I went around the car and opened their doors, and they looked up at me and tried to speak, but nothing came out. They got out of the car, and I let them into the house and then fetched the wine and the bananas.

"Honey, where are you?" I said, and I put the groceries down in the kitchen and went to the bedroom to find my wife lying down on the bed. On a hunch I went to my son's room and found him also lying down.

"Rest, Buddy, the djinni says you'll get better," I said to my precious boy.

I called our friends and said that Janice and Jake had come down with a bad cold and that I had to cancel our dinner. After that I summoned the ring djinni and tried again to get him to kill the murderer, but he repeated that he didn't have the ability to do that, and I was forced to let it go. It make me crazy knowing the killer was still out there, able to kill again. I went to the computer and found several news articles on random killings in the community, and I thought that two of them sounded like my guy's MO.

After this I went back out to the car, where the bodies of my wife and son lay on the seats, soaked in blood. They were still ghostly, still dead. I looked at my own clothes but didn't find any blood on them. Localized event, then.

There was nothing for me to do except go and talk to my wife: "Babe, how are you feeling?"

She turned to me and sang something, I could see her lips moving, but there was no sound, and I gave up. I wished I knew sign language, but I didn't so that was that.

Then I got a piece of paper and pencil and indicated she could write, but the pencil was too heavy for her, and she couldn't manage it. She was more like a spirit than a person. She sang to me for a while, then she lay back down on the bed and went to sleep.

I was starving and went and made myself a ham sandwich and devoured it. When I went to look in on my son; he too was asleep. I lay down next to my wife and tried to touch her hand, but my flesh went right through her. The djinni said the outcome was not in question, but I was deeply frightened and hardly slept that night.

Over the next day and a half my son and my wife became more solid, and their wings and haloes faded a bit. I could now hear them as they sang to each other, with giggles after each burst of song, and I felt the worst of it had been left behind. Sometimes I went out to the car and found the bodies there were fading away, slowly but surely. The stink of blood and feces disappeared, and the blood splatters turned light pink and then were gone.

On Monday morning I phoned Jake's summer school and told them that he was deeply ill and that we were keeping him home from school for a few days. I phoned my wife's work and told them the same thing, that it looked like she was going to be out all week. Her boss said she'd be missed but that it was a slow time at work anyway, and good luck with the recuperation. I hung up the phone and listened to my loved ones singing.

I had to go to work, and I was anxious all day as I went about my tasks. I called my wife from the office, but she didn't pick up; I guess the phone was too heavy for her. I was worried because though the two of them sang to each other often, they didn't speak to me. They hadn't spoken to me in days, and this was upsetting, and I wondered if the djinni magic had somehow changed them.

Then there were the bursts of rage I felt at the killer, and impotence at being unable to stop him from killing again. I was certain that this was an experienced shooter, someone who would murder other people's loved ones as he had mine, and I wracked my brains for some way to get the djinni to stop him from killing again. I was still wearing the djinni ring, hadn't taken it off in fifteen years. Finally as the workday ended I got an idea which I mulled over on the way home.

After I parked the car in the garage I looked over at the bodies of my wife and son, slowly fading away. I owed it to them to stop this killer. I sat there in the car for long moments, breathing deeply, then I rubbed the ring and summoned the boy djinni.

"I want to stop the murderer from killing again," I said.

"We have already talked about this," he said. "There is nothing the ring can do to help you."

"Forget the ring. What about _you_ , djinni? What can _you_ do to help me?"

The boy looked distinctly uncomfortable, and I knew I had had a good idea.

"You said you're not old enough to grant wishes, but can you do other magic instead?" I asked.

"Lesser magics, maybe," he said slowly.

"I want you to use magic to make the police suspicious of this killer. Make it so whenever he's around law enforcement, they get the overwhelming desire to search him. They'll find his gun, and maybe that'll bust him."

"That is weak," the boy said.

"That's the best idea I've got," I said.

"I can do better," said the boy. "I can make it so the police will be there the next time he goes to kill. They'll catch him in the act."

"But _before_ he kills anyone, right?"

"Yes, before he kills."

"Do it," I said, and the boy closed his eyes and muttered in a language I had never heard before, the language of the djinn?

"It is done," he said. "The police will catch him the next time he tries to kill someone."

"It's not as good as killing the bastard, but it'll have to do," I said.

The boy disappeared, and I went into the house. My wife was in the kitchen, and I saw that some dishes were laid out on the counter top, and there were some bananas there as well. She was getting into heavier objects, then, that was a good sign.

She sang to me, something I couldn't understand, but it sounded like the language the boy djinni had been using just a moment before.

"I'll make dinner," I said. "Will you and Jake eat?" They hadn't eaten anything since their murders, but they didn't seem to be suffering for it.

Jake came into the room in a burst of song, and he and his mother sang back and forth for a while, and I listened and said, "That's beautiful. It sounds like the djinni's language."

They looked up at me, startled, and then sang intensely at each other for a while.

"Djinni?" asked my wife, and I felt a burst of hope, that she was remembering English again.

"My ring," I said, and I shook the ring at her.

She looked disconcerted, and I asked her what was the matter, and she said, "We have to come back."

"I would appreciate that, yes," I said. "Don't you _want_ to come back?"

"It's very beautiful here," she said, and her halo took on in intense yellow shine. Their wings were just outlines now, barely visible, but the symbolism was stark and obvious, and I suddenly felt a burst of grief, that they might slip away.

"Please don't leave me," I managed to choke out, and she came to me and put her arms around me. My son came up and circled my waist with his arms, and the three of us stood that way for a long time, my two angels and me.

Over the next few days the haloes and the wings faded away completely, and their bodies became solid, and they were able to move objects around. My wife and Jake spoke in English most of the time. They still sang to each other in the other language, frequently, but it didn't feel so alien as it had before. Sometimes I improvised bits of song to sing with them, which they seemed to enjoy, especially my son. They started eating again, just a little at first and then full meals, and my wife could now open the refrigerator and get food.

The bad luck that had been promised as a result of using the ring kicked in about then. I was called into my boss's office and was let go, laid off, and I was in shock as I walked out of the building where I had worked for the last twelve years. On the way home I got into a fender-bender with an SUV, just a minor accident but alarming, a harbinger of things to come.

At home I gave the news to my wife, and she said, "What the junk man said is coming true."

"I guess we should expect a lot more ill fortune for the next half year," I said. "Maybe you should do the driving for a while."

So Janice did the driving to the grocery store, and took Jake on to summer school, and I tried to avoid the car. I didn't want to be in a fender-bender every few days.

A few more days passed, and my wife and son became solid, and the bodies in the car faded away entirely except when you looked directly at them. Then you could see just the outlines of the corpses, and hints of blood. Our little family had survived, and I summoned the djinni of the ring and asked him about the killer.

"Watch the newspapers," he said. "It's coming soon."

So I read the newspaper, and after a few days an article appeared saying the police had nabbed one Oscar Lewellyn, who was caught about to kill a family of four on the street not six blocks from my house. Ballistics had linked his gun to at least four other killings in our community over the past six years, and his trial was set to begin in a few months. I let out a huge sigh of relief. It wasn't as good as killing him, but he wouldn't be murdering anyone else.

So now three months have passed since my wife and son were murdered, and the run of bad luck has been constant. I have interviewed for six jobs and haven't gotten close. I have had to drive a few times, and I've gotten into fender-benders each time, and our insurance premiums have gone up, and we've been threatened with lawsuits several times, but they haven't actually taken us to court. Apparently there's a limit to how sour your luck will go.

I lose things constantly, my car keys and my wallet and my cell phone, but Jake and Janice help me out and keep me sane. They still sing to each other in that strange language, and I sing with them, but sometimes I miss my wife and son from before they were changed by the ring. Their singing is beautiful, and I join in as I can, but really I don't fit in.

Maybe that's why Janice has been saying maybe she needs a break from our relationship, just a six-month separation to see if we still work for her. This kind of talk sends my blood pressure through the roof, I'm terrified the bad luck of the ring will tear her from me. My son doesn't want to play catch anymore and says his old man isn't "cool," and I can't get my wife to take an interest in this and am forced to just listen to them sing in their secret language and share an intimacy I'm not part of. I know that all of this falls under the heading of the bad luck of the ring, but it's hard on me, you know? I feel like my family isn't my family anymore, they're the djinni's family now. Ever since they came back from the dead they're full of mystery and light.

So each day is an ordeal as I listen to my wife saying how maybe it would be better if she gets her own place with Jake, and I listen to my son complain that dad is a dud, and I search for jobs that are always just out of reach, and I fear getting behind the wheel for a serious accident that is just around the corner. I was stopped on the street by the police a few days ago, they were looking for a burglary suspect and asked to see my ID, and I had lost my wallet again, and it was a dicey time of it while I got my wife on the phone to talk to the cops and calm them down. We went to a parent-teacher conference at Jake's summer school, and the teacher seemed to take an instant dislike to me and told us that Jake is a daydreamer, which is a complaint we've never heard before. His grades are adequate, but has anything happened which would have him brooding, she wanted to know?

I didn't know where to begin with that, so we trotted out our story that Jake had had a serious illness a few months back, and maybe that's what was troubling him? The teacher seemed satisfied, but she was still sharp with me, and it gets tiring.

I've asked my wife and son what they remember about that day in the grocery store parking lot, of being murdered, and they get this dreamy look and say they remember Paradise, and singing, and hosts of angels. My son says,

"I wish I could go back there, dad, just for a little while. It was better than here."

"I think Paradise is just a place to visit, when you're young," I said.

"Maybe," he said, and this just gives me one more thing to worry about, my son looking for ways to return to Paradise.

So if you asked me if using the ring was worth it, I don't know what I would tell you. Maybe in three months, when the run of ill luck is over with and things have normalized, it will all seem worth it. Certainly it's better to have my loved ones back than dead, but if they're not happy here on earth anymore, is it a real victory? Only time will tell if I get to keep them or not, or if the run of bad luck will take them from me. Sometimes I summon the ring djinni and ask him for help, but he just says,

"The ring brings ill fortune for each boon, you must be strong."

That doesn't help much. So for now it's grit and grin, and muddle through, and a lot of silent prayers. I only hope I never have to use this ring again! The shopkeeper said you're supposed to pass it on after so many years, but it's too valuable to let go. Bad luck and all, it was there when I needed it, and I can't seriously contemplate getting rid of it. Just three more months of ill fortune, and then this will all be over with. I'll find a job, and we'll be a family again. Just three more months, right?

## Mirror of Years

I got on a kick about dryads this year and wrote several stories that brought into play these woodland spirits. The ancient Greeks had a wonderful mythology which gave pride of place to nature spirits of all sorts, and one of these shows up here, sort of. Mostly I was wondering how on earth you would deal with it if you were getting younger at a rapid rate, and it looked like you were soon going to be an infant again. The dryad is just there to explain the kiss of magic in this contemporary fantasy.

"So the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City just placed an order for twenty Olmec babies," Sharon said, taking a sip of her hot chocolate. "It's the biggest order I've ever received, and they're willing to pay, without whining."

"How long would it take you to make that many figurines?" asked Meredith, who was warming her hands around her own cup of steaming coffee. The two women were sitting inside Doug's Café, glancing out the window at the deep snow outside. It was the end of January, and their part of America was in the deep freeze of winter. It was nice and toasty in Doug's, though.

"Twenty statuettes? About five weeks. Maybe a bit longer. It's the faces that are hardest. They want a mix of 'pure' baby faces and were-jaguar faces. It takes days to get the face right."

"Is that Mexican woman still producing? Rosita or whatever her name was?"

"Rosita Arguello, yes. From what I understand the museum ordered some statuettes from her as well and will be displaying both our work at the same time. I wonder what she charges for hers? I'm probably not charging enough."

"Three grand for a figurine seems like enough to me," said Meredith.

"If I left the financials up to you, dearheart, I'd starve to death," said Sharon. She took another sip of hot chocolate and then brushed her white hair back over her ears. She'd had it cut about a month ago and was still getting used to the shorter length.

"I've never had a head for financials, that's true," said Meredith. "I didn't have to do the books in the dentist's office, just run the office. Ah, it's nice to be retired, though."

Sharon set down her drink and rubbed her face with her hot hands, which felt good. "I'm missing Brian something fierce today," she confided.

Meredith nodded and looked concerned. "That's to be expected. Didn't he die in the winter?"

"Yes, he held on until after Christmas and then died in early January. Eight years ago."

"I suspect you'll never stop missing your husband," said Meredith. "But you can honor his memory without getting gloomy about it."

"I feel gloomy today," said Sharon. "It's like a physical pain some days. It's been bad the last few days."

"Poor thing. I guess I'm lucky to still have Robert. He says hi, by the way."

"Tell him I said hi back at him. I'll have the two of you over for dinner in a few weeks. I just haven't felt like entertaining lately."

"Is it serious enough to see a shrink? That sort of longing?"

"No! No shrinks! Grief is a natural part of the aging process. Your friends die, and your lovers die, and your siblings die, and all that brings grief. I don't need someone telling me I'm maladjusted."

"I don't think the good shrinks do that," said Meredith. "Anyway, that's what friends are for, hearing out your aches."

"Exactly. It's more that I'm missing him and wondering how he's doing in Heaven and if he's got someone else by now."

"I've never been clear on how things work in Heaven," said Meredith. "If your loved ones wait for you or if they get on with their lives up there."

"I sure wouldn't want to hold him back," said Sharon. "Brian needed someone in his life, I can't see him waiting years for me to come along. He's got another girlfriend by now."

"Does that have you down, thinking like that?"

"Well, it sure doesn't help!" said Sharon.

She became aware then that someone was staring at her and turned her head to see who it was. She knew quite a few people in town and suspected it was someone of her acquaintance, but when she looked at him she saw a young man she didn't know.

The young man lifted his glass of apple cider to her in a cheer and said, "Sharon Helleridge? The artist? The weird baby figurines?"

"Yes," said Sharon.

"Brandt Woodclift. You're cuter than your pictures."

Sharon's lip curled down in a smirk as Meredith let out a giggle.

"What can I do for you, Mister Woodclift?" Sharon said. She put on a brisk and businesslike tone, blowing off the compliment. This young buck was about twenty-five years old, what on earth was he doing calling her cute, at sixty years of age?

"Let me buy you a hot chocolate next time you come to Doug's," the young man said. "I want to monopolize some of your time, hear about your art."

"I'm not taking on apprentices at this time," said Sharon.

"I thought we'd talk about more personal matters if we hit it off," said Brandt. He kissed his palm and blew it toward Sharon, who was now nonplussed.

"Go for it," whispered Meredith, who was shaking with mirth. Sharon shot her a look and then turned back to Brandt.

"I'm a widow," said Sharon, who hadn't intended to give up that much personal information.

"I can totally get behind that," said Brandt. "I'm not here to take you away from past loves. I just thought you were cute, and it seemed like a good idea to chat you up."

"See, all the exercising three times a week pays off," said Meredith, gleefully. Sharon knew her friend would be ribbing her something fierce in the near future.

"In fact, why don't you join us now?" said Meredith. She got up and snagged another chair from an unused table.

Brandt smiled and said, "What do you think, Sharon? Your call."

Sharon spun dark thoughts toward Meredith and darker thoughts toward her husband, who was getting a piece of ass in Heaven right now, and said, "Sure, why not?" without meaning it. Brandt abandoned his table and joined the two women.

"First things first," said Meredith. "How old are you, Brandt?"

"I'm twenty-four," said the young man.

"Are you a local?" Meredith said. "I don't remember ever seeing you around town."

"Just moved here about a week ago."

"Did you move here for Sharon?"

Sharon pulled an annoyed face, and Brandt said, "I was living in New York City for the last couple of years, but I didn't like the big city and decided to move out to the country side. I just noticed the two of you ladies here today and decided to chat you up."

"Twenty-four is a wonderful age," said Meredith. "You have so much energy at twenty-four."

"Why would you move here?" said Sharon, who was feeling churlish. "It's a small town without many services, the economy isn't that good, and people will consider you an outsider."

"I grew up in a small town. My parents have passed on, and so I had no reason to go back to their town. I thought I'd come here and try it. I already found a job at the lumber yard, one of their guys retired first of the year. I don't mind living simply. I like the trees here, the forest is great. I grew up in the forest."

"More forests up north," said Sharon. "Lots of trees in Canada."

"Oh, hush," said Meredith to Sharon. "Now, Brandt, are you college educated? What did you study?"

"I studied forestry at Stevens Point in Wisconsin. My family has a lot of foresters and lumberjacks and wood artists in it. We're forest people, have been for a long, long time."

"And you're all centered around some small town?"

"No, we're spread all over the place." He leaned over the table and locked eyes with Sharon. "Sharon, _I can see you_ ," he said.

"I can see you, too, Brandt, so what?" said Sharon.

He laughed and reached out and took her hands away from her hot cocoa. His fingers were cool, and she shivered in spite of herself.

"And I see your nipples," said Brandt, looking into Sharon's eyes.

"Oh, my, it looks like you two have things to discuss," said Meredith. "I'll call later, Shar, and see what you're up to. Or maybe I should wait until tomorrow, who knows how you'll be spending your afternoon?" Meredith got up and put on her coat and scarf and waved good-bye to the two of them and left her half-full mug of coffee on the table.

"Yes, good-bye," growled Sharon as her friend abandoned her to Brandt's advances. The young man rubbed his thumbs on the top of Sharon's hands and said,

"I meant what I said. I can see you."

"What is that supposed to _mean_?" said Sharon, who no longer knew what to think of Brandt. He was a forward little bastard, that was for sure. Was he seriously suggesting they be lovers? There were thirty-five years between them, it was a scandal! Sharon had a son and a daughter who were both older than this young man.

Brandt lifted Sharon's right hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. The kiss was warm and spread through Sharon's body, making her tingle. She hadn't felt this way in ten years. She felt playful, and sexy, and all thoughts of her feckless husband washed away from her mind. "You're such a pretty thing," murmured Brandt. "You must have been a terror among the men."

"I was shy when I was young," said Sharon. "I got over that when I met my _husband_." She stood on _husband_ and waited to see if he would get the hint.

"He must have appreciated you," said Brandt. He kissed her hand again and sucked at her fingers. She pulled her hands back, but he held onto them. "The question is, Sharon, what will you do _now_? Now that you're on your own again? How long has it been?"

"You can't be serious about a tryst," said Sharon. How had that slipped out? Why was she thinking this way? What was this little shit doing to her?

"I'm a creature of impulse," said Brandt. "I figure out what I want as I go along. I like you, Sharon. I admire your art, and I think you're adorable."

"Based on _what?_ " Sharon said sharply.

"I admire your art based on the book you put out a few years ago. I saw it at the bookstore the same day I moved here. The author photo is how I knew you. And I think you're adorable based on what I see with my own eyes."

"There's more to a woman than how she looks," Sharon growled.

"Got to start somewhere. Tell me one thing about yourself that only your friend knows."

"I refuse to play silly games."

"All right, I'll go first. My family genealogy goes back over a thousand years. One of my aunts has a book of lineages for the Woodclift family that goes back fifty-three generations. Way back to southern Germany, where my ancestors are from."

"Brandt, why are you telling me all this? I'm not ready for someone like you in my life. I still haven't gotten over my husband."

"There's always room in the world for warm kisses," said the young man, and he leaned forward and kissed Sharon on the mouth, before she could even think of pulling away. Heat tingles rippled through her, and she felt her nipples standing erect and knew he could see, too. This silly man, what did he want from her?

But already he was winning, wasn't he? Already her heart was insisting, 'Give this fool a chance.' The burst of emotions confused her. She was complaining to Meredith about Brian being unfaithful in Heaven, and here she was falling into...this thing...here on Earth. Would Brian wait for her in Heaven? Was he already banging some bimbo up there? Or was there no Heaven at all, and Brian was just dead of cancer and gone, and her life was going by, and here was the chance for something new, however crazy it might be?

"It's a good season for the kitchen," said Brandt. "We should go back to your place and bake something nice, like a pie. Stop at the store and pick up apple pie makings, and bake a hot one. With vanilla ice cream on top, what do you say? You can show me your art, and I can tell you about my family, the forest people. Or if your place is too intimidating, we can go to mine. It's a bit cozy, but maybe you'd be more comfortable with that?"

Sharon just stared at him and felt his cool hands over hers and felt the warm kiss sparkling on her lips. She glanced over at Jill behind the counter, who didn't seem to have seen any of this exchange: thank God for the rack of greeting cards that was between them! She wondered if anyone else she knew was in Doug's right now, to tell tales.

What if Brian was just dead and gone, and there was no Heaven, and she was waiting for nothing? This young man might be the last love of her life, a winter romance to burn away the snow and frost. That idiot Meredith was hoping she would take a lover. Meredith could be awfully silly. She was four years older than Sharon, but she acted like a kid sometimes.

"Back to your place to bake a hot apple pie. Vanilla ice cream. What say?" said Brandt, stroking her fingers.

A week later and she had seen Brandt three more times since the day she met him. Half the time she felt like a fool, carrying on with a young man like this. So far they were just dating, if she could call it that, seeing each other socially and going out for a latte at Doug's and lunch at Ernie's and once a dinner at Buenos Villa. They hadn't yet gone back to Sharon's place to bake apple pie, but they were having fun. Brandt was full of stories about his woodworking relatives, and the furniture and building frames and works of art they'd created. She'd told him about her clay babies, patterned after the art works of the Olmec Indians from three thousand years ago. Today she was taking him to her workshop to show him her progress on the baby statuettes ordered by the Mexican museum.

She met him outside the lumber yard, Falling Oak Lumber, and drove him in her SUV up to her country house. Her home was a refurbished farm house, with the workshop in the old barn that had been completely made over and weather-proofed. She parked in the driveway, and the two of them got out and walked to the barn, where she let him in and turned on the lights. Her workshop was neat and tidy, and three clay babies were on the worktable, two in crawling positions and one sitting up. Their heads were a bit too large, and they had strange leers that Sharon had stylized to make slightly creepy. One of them had an odd, square mouth with protruding fangs and fat lips.

"Behold, the Olmec babies," she said.

"And these come from a three thousand year old tribe of Indians?" said Brandt.

"The Olmecs. There aren't any Olmecs left today. Most people think their civilization had its heyday and then petered out, and their descendents moved south and became Maya Indians. They were the first city-building civilization of the New World and were the first ones to invent writing, temple building, monumental architecture and religious sculpture. They were the mother culture for all Central America; they gave rise to the Maya and the Mixtecs and the Zapotecs and the Toltecs and eventually the Aztecs. They made these very life-like figurines of babies, thousands of years ago, and gave some of them supernatural features, like this one." She indicated the baby with the fangs. "It's a were-jaguar, a human that can turn into a jaguar, or maybe the other way around. We don't know the stories the Olmecs told for their were-babies. The Maya later picked up on some of these stories and carried them onward, but they made changes to them."

"Were-jaguars, huh? Magic runs in the Woodclift family, too, did I mention that?"

"No, you didn't," said Sharon. She always got a slight rush talking about her work and was trying to stay away from him, in case he decided to kiss her again. She wasn't at all sure she wanted more kisses.

"I've told you the family goes back over a thousand years, but that's just the recorded history. There's an old legend among my family that says we have a dryad in the family tree. You know, the Greek wood spirits?"

"Your family takes the woodworking thing to a bit of an extreme," Sharon said drily.

"Hard to say what came first, the legends or the woodworkers," said Brandt. "There are stories in the family about magical statues of finest oak that come alive and talk, and a story about a great-ancestor who turned into a tree nymph, and a tale told by my mother about wooden chairs that could heal you if you sat in them."

"Well, my family doesn't have any magic traditions," said Sharon. "I'm the first artist in an average, middle-class family that comes from all sorts of occupations. I've done all right for myself, but it took fifteen years for my work to gain acceptance. Everyone wanted to underprice me in the early days. It was a struggle to make ends meet, for a long time."

"That's the story for artists in general, I think," said Brandt. "One of my uncles is a construction worker who carves little toy animals out of maple. They're really astonishing figures, but no one wants to pay fifty bucks for one of them, amazing as they are."

"I like this little fellow the best," said Sharon, gesturing to a statuette of a baby sitting up and clapping its hands together. It had the fat, snarling lips and protruding fangs of a were-jaguar and had big ears and a few wisps of carved hair. The statuette was white and shiny. "He brings me luck," she said, "So I've never tried to sell him."

"Excellent," said Brandt. He leaned down and examined the statuette and said, "The hands look so real, you expect to hear them clapping. Nice."

"Thank you. I've made several thousand of these statuettes over the last forty years. I guess I'd cluster them by similarities, like I did in the book. I design them from the original Olmec babies in general appearance, and some of the poses are direct lifts."

"That was a great book, by the way," said Brandt, still looking over the were-jaguar.

"It sold all right. Mine is a specialized market, very refined and sophisticated, and as such it doesn't have many followers. Mostly it's museums buying my work, or specialized galleries in the U.S. and Mexico. The price tag puts them out of reach of most consumers."

"I sure couldn't afford three grand for a statuette of an Indian baby," said Brandt.

"I've been lucky in New York," said Sharon. "There are a number of collectors there who like the work, go figure. Some of them have even come all the way out here to visit me and see this workshop for themselves."

Brandt smiled and walked up to her and took her by the shoulders. "When you talk about your art, you come to life," he said. He stepped close to her, and she leaned back a little, wondering if he was going to kiss her. He looked into her eyes, and she could see herself reflected in his brown orbs. "I can see you," he said.

"You've said that before. I can see you, too," she said. "What's your point?"

"I see you, blondie."

"I haven't been blonde in fifteen years," Sharon said.

Then he did it, he leaned into her and kissed her, right on the mouth, and this time it wasn't little tingles but full-fledged fire. Her whole body burned at the kiss, and she kissed him back almost without thinking about it. He put one hand on her rear end and one hand behind her back and leaned her back and gave her a powerful smooch that lit her fully up. Her doubts burned away, and she returned the kiss and felt him there, holding her, and she put her arms around him and kissed him back. She was smaller than he was, and he had her completely in his grip. For the first time she really _saw_ him. He was a handsome young man, with black wavy hair and beard stubble that he never seemed to shave and a good jaw. His eyes were dark brown but tended to amber in bright light like Sharon's workshop. There was something wild about him, something unkempt about his hair and his beard stubble. He reminded her of a fox, or a coyote, or a bear. A forest animal of some sort. She almost expected him to begin barking.

"Let's go to the main house," she managed to gasp, and he set her upright and let go of her, and she led him back through the snowy trail to the main house. She let them in and led him to the kitchen, and they baked an apple pie as he'd been pushing her to do.

"Apples grow on trees, apple pie is a Woodclift specialty," he said as the pie cooled down. They broke out the vanilla ice cream and had big slices of the pie; it was utterly delicious. The ice cream melted on top of the hot pie and ran down onto it, and they sucked it up and savored its creamy smoothness. The apples were from California, where they could apparently grow in the winter, and were just a bit tart. Sharon insisted they not use much sugar.

"I want to taste apples, not C&H," she said, and Brandt went along with it. They savored the steaming pie and munched happily away. Sharon still felt the heat in her body from his kiss, he was quite the spectacular kisser, and she found herself wanting more.

They finished the pie, and Brandt said, "You've got a bit of ice cream on your lip," and before she could wipe it off he laid one on her and smooched it away. This time the heat started around her heart and spread out through her body, in slow waves.

"You're quite the kisser," she gasped.

"You're so pretty, how can I not?" he said. He laid another one on her, this one a slow kiss with his lips quivering and making tingles among the heat.

"Let's go upstairs," she said, and he took her firmly.

After that they were lovers. He was like a force of nature, fierce and hard and sometimes ferocious, claiming her as she thrashed beneath him, holding him close. His dark eyes were like a mirror, and she could see herself in them, outlines of a white-haired woman in the dark brown. They made love that afternoon and then again that evening, and he left promising a swift return.

She was impatient over the next few days, botching the Olmec baby statuettes several times and having to re-do them in her eagerness to have him back. She hadn't forgotten Brian, but it seemed to her that he was happy in Heaven and would keep while she carried on down here on Earth. Suddenly sixty didn't seem so old anymore, she felt young in her heart. It was scandalous, of course, taking a twenty-four year old lover at her age, and she didn't tell anyone about it. It was just between her and Brandt.

And Meredith, of course. She called Sharon almost daily, and Sharon found it impossible to lie to her or even just evade her questions.

"So, how are things?" Meredith asked.

"Exciting," Sharon said.

"Are the two of you doing it yet?"

"We're having relations, yes," Sharon said.

Meredith squealed. "I _knew_ it. I _knew_ he'd win you over. Those big puppy dog eyes got you, didn't they?"

"It was the kisses, actually. He kisses like a force of nature. A volcano. With heat."

"A _volcano_! Your volcanic lover! What must Brian be thinking?"

"He's thinking about his Heavenly tarts," Sharon said, miffed.

"Have you told your kids yet?" asked Meredith.

"No, I haven't told anyone yet. This is early days."

"So what's he like, this volcano?"

"You mean in bed? I'm not telling. But he kisses to beat the devil."

Meredith squealed again. "Tomorrow you've got to meet me at Doug's, and we'll talk."

"I can do that," said Sharon. "He keeps telling me how cute I am. He says he can see my blonde hair."

"Tomorrow you can give me all the details. I have to run, my hubby's calling me. Ta-ta!"

"Yes, tomorrow at one, all right? At Doug's. And don't tell Robert yet, okay?"

"One at Doug's. Can do." Meredith hung up the phone, and Sharon went back to work.

The next day at one Sharon met her friend at Doug's, and they got hot drinks and sat by the double-paned window and looked out at the snow. Meredith looked at Sharon for a long time and said, "This relationship is really doing something for you. I swear, you look ten years younger. The lines are gone from your face; you don't look a day over fifty."

"Well, that's flattering. Maybe it's his kisses. They make the heat rise, that's for sure."

"When are you going to tell everyone?"

"Not for a month or two yet. Seriously, this could just be a fling. He's all hot and bothered right now, but it could go away as fast as it blew in. You know the fancies of young men."

"Has he said anything serious yet?"

"No. He tells me about his people, the woodworkers, and about their family stories. Do you know what a dryad is?"

"Never heard of it."

"I looked it up. He says there's one in his family, two thousand years back. It's a woodland spirit that lives in a tree and looks like a beautiful woman. She lures men to be her lovers, and has little baby trees by them. It's Greek."

"Sounds fanciful. Does he believe it?"

"I think he just thinks of it as a fun family story. His family apparently has a lot of stories of magic running through their lore."

"God, when you think about it, how can this possibly work? He's half your age, and you've been married, and your kids are older than he is! What does he want, to get married?"

"I don't think he's thought that far ahead," said Sharon. "He's still at the grunting stage."

" _Grunting_ ," Meredith tittered. "Nothing wrong with that."

"We baked an apple pie a week ago. It goes back to woodworking, apples grow on trees."

"Not so many families any more have family trades."

"He has enough family pride for three people," said Sharon. "He said his parents died young, in a car accident. Otherwise his family is long-lived."

Meredith stirred her apple cider with the cinnamon stick. "Enjoy it while you've got it. Like you said, his passion could blow over."

"This feels so...wicked, like I'm doing something naughty. He's great in bed, very passionate and all-consuming. He looks me right in the eye when he's talking to me, it gives me shivers."

"Maybe he's falling for you."

"Huh. I'm happy to spend time with him, but I wouldn't call it love. Not yet, anyway. It's more like an infatuation. I'm impatient to see him, though. I want more."

"That seems like a good sign."

"I just don't know what to make of all this, Mer. This young man just blows into my life and makes himself at home. I feel younger, like I'm in my twenties again. It seems surreal."

"With time it'll feel more real."

"I hope so."

They sipped their drinks, and the conversation went on, talking about Sharon's order of Olmec babies for the Mexican museum and how that was going. They talked more about Brandt, and Sharon admitted she wanted to tell her friends about him but wasn't sure what people would think.

"They'll say there's no fool like an old fool," she fretted.

"They'll be happy for you, your real friends will anyway. Who cares what the others think?"

They talked about Meredith's husband for a while, and the retired life, and wondered when the cold snap was going to be over. Finally they were finished and went their separate ways.

A week passed. Brandt came over to Sharon's place every night after work, and they had wild sex and did more baking. It was now the second week in February, and winter had the countryside in a deep grip. It was freezing cold every day, and sometimes there were snow flurries. Brandt brought winter cherries, from Mexico, and they baked a cherry pie. For this entire week Sharon didn't see Meredith, she was too busy with her museum babies. Once she was lying in bed, with Brandt next to her, looking into his eyes. She was reflected there, as always, and this time she could see details of herself in his eyes. Her hair was bright honey blonde, and her eyes were bright blue. Like she'd been when she was young. She blinked, and the woman reflected there was white-haired with washed-out blue eyes, her true self. It was a strange thing to see, and she didn't talk to anyone about it, not even Meredith. She hoped she wasn't going dotty in her old age.

She talked to her children on the phone and wished them well but didn't tell them about Brandt. Her daughter said,

"Is something up, mother? You've got a lot of energy about you. Sounds like relationship energy, to me."

"I'm busy as hell with the museum order," Sharon told her. "And I have Meredith to keep me company."

"Maybe that's it," said her daughter. "Take care, mom, and stay out of the wind."

"I will," Sharon said, and hung up the phone.

The next day she went to see Meredith at Doug's, and they got hot chocolate and sat at their favorite table. Doug's wasn't crowded during the middle of the work day, it was just a handful of the regulars. In the summer, tourists crowded the place, but now in winter it was almost all theirs. Meredith seemed out of sorts.

"You've been having a wild fling with this man for two weeks now, and it's definitely affecting you," she said carefully.

"Affecting me how?" said Sharon. "More energy, you mean?"

"I mean, when did you start dyeing your hair to blonde? I didn't have you pegged for vain, my dear."

"Whatever do you mean?" said Sharon. She reached up and fiddled with her hair.

"I mean, your hair is every so faintly honey blonde. And the lines have gone out of your face. He's doing something to you, Sharon. Maybe there really is a touch of magic in his family. I almost didn't recognize you when I came into Doug's today, you look so young."

"Oh, hush. It's just the way I'm carrying myself, he's got me all bothered."

"It's more than the way you're carrying yourself. He's making you younger. Physically younger. If this keeps up you're going to be in trouble. No one's going to recognize you. If it wasn't for your haircut _I_ wouldn't have recognized you today."

Sharon felt goose prickles run up her spine. She had noticed the blonde hair, but she didn't know what to think of it, so she blew it off. Well, she wasn't blowing it off now. "I wonder if he's aware he's doing this to me?" she mused.

"How could he not be? You said there are stories of magic in his family. He must be aware of what he's doing. Isn't he?"

"I'll have to ask him." Sharon fished out a compact from her purse and looked into the little mirror. She didn't merely look energetic, she looked like she was about forty years old. Her face was changed, and her hair was indeed honey blonde. It wasn't bright, but it was there. She hadn't looked this young in twenty years. More goose prickles ran up her spine. "This has to come to a stop, while I can still explain it away."

"Better hope he has control over it," said Meredith. "Maybe you should stop having sex with him. You weren't changing when the two of you were just going out."

Sharon stared at herself in the mirror and said, "It's kind of creepy. If this keeps up for another week I'll be in my thirties. I've been secluded while I work on the Mexico museum exhibit, but my other friends will expect me to see them eventually. You're right, they'll have a hard time recognizing me. Everyone will want to know what's going on. What will I do?"

"You'd better have a talk with your lover ASAP," said Meredith, who reached out and gingerly touched Sharon's hair. "You'll be full-on blonde again in a few days, at this rate. That you can explain away, but your face is going to be a tough sell. Everyone is going to want to know what you're using, so they can get some. You can hardly tell them the truth."

"Let's give it another week and see if there are more changes."

"In another week you'll be thirty, and no one will know you," said Meredith. "You'd better have a talk with Brandt, I mean it. Don't put this off. Jill was giving you the eye today when you ordered your hot cocoa. She's noticing something's up, too. Everyone who knows you is going to see the changes. If this continues you're going to be a in a dangerous situation."

"Then it can't continue, it's simple as that," said Sharon.

They talked about the Mexico museum order and about Meredith's husband, and they longed for spring, which was still months away, and the afternoon passed under a pall of worry. Meredith kept mentioning having a talk with Brandt, and Sharon realized that she was going to have to bring this up without delay.

"I'll have a chat with him tomorrow, when he comes by again," she said. "He's bringing peaches over, for another pie. He's big on pies. Good thing California grows crops year-round."

"Good luck with your conversation. I won't mention any of this to Robert until you get it worked out. This is really going to cause disruption in your life, dearheart. You'll end up as a lab rat if you're not careful. Everyone will want to dissect you to see what's happening."

"Don't talk like that," Sharon trilled, alarmed. "Surely this can't continue? It's just a flush of hormones due to the relationship. What else could it be? Dryad magic? That's just an old story, no one believes in such things."

The next day Sharon girded herself, and as Brandt revealed his basket of peaches she said to him, "I'm getting younger, Brandt. You're making me younger. Meredith noticed it right away, and Jill at Doug's also noticed it. My hair is turning blonde again, and my eyes are bluer blue. Do you have any stories in your family about lovers getting younger?"

Brandt set the peaches down on the countertop, and Sharon saw that he looked nervous. "There are all sorts of stories about magic in my family, it's an old family," he said. "The stories say the Woodclift family is long-lived and has always been prosperous, but I don't remember anything about our lovers getting younger." He leaned close to Sharon and said, "Your face doesn't seem to have as many lines as it did a few weeks ago."

"That's what I mean, love," she said. "I'm about forty now. I still look like my older self, but that's going to change in a hurry if this continues. You have to stop it, Brandt. I can't get younger."

"How do you know it's me?"

"Nothing else in my life has changed. I wasn't getting younger when we were first dating. It's the sex that's doing it. Maybe it's your bodily fluids, I don't know. You'd better come up with a solution, or it's no more sex for us."

"That seems drastic," he said. "Wouldn't it be nice to be twenty again? Imagine all the living you could do?"

"Imagine what it would be like as all my friends died and left me alone."

"You could make new friends," he said. "You could have the best of all worlds, babe. Have your old friends and new friends and gain another forty years. Most women would love to get more time."

"You _do_ know something, don't you?"

"I haven't had good luck with lovers," Brandt said evasively. "They flake out and run away. Young women are feckless. I thought this time I'd try an older woman, someone steadier."

"Who will turn into a young woman for you," she said. "What happened to them, love? Did all the women your age turn ten years old, and you had to let them go?"

A frightened look came over his face, and he said, "Can't you, can't you just be excited for the change? Think about it, Sharon, prolonged youth. What is that worth?"

She stared at him. "That would mean serious adjustments, and soon. Right now I can still pass for my old self, but one more week of sex with you and that'll be gone. I'll have to introduce myself as a new friend of Meredith's, and none of my clients will know me anymore. I think you've done enough already. Stop doing whatever it is you're doing."

"I get so lonely," he said. "I don't dare have sex with young women, because they might turn back into children. I've never pushed it to find out. I noticed the women were getting younger, and I cut it off before anything bad happened. It was worst when I was a teenager and first getting girlfriends. Kisses don't do it, but sex does. The more sex, the faster the change. My first few girlfriends got four or five years younger, and it was really noticeable. That's when I figured out what was happening, and I cut it off. I tried again in my twenties, but it was still happening. I tried older women, in their mid-twenties, and they were suddenly twenty again. Most of them didn't seem to notice what was happening, but I did. You don't know what it's like, having to be alone all the time, not able to have sex with your girlfriends."

She put one hand on her forehead. "Let's try it without sex for a week and see if we get a reprieve. We can figure out what to do after that based on what happens."

"Well, can I still see you?"

"I don't see why not," she said. "It's just the sex that's dangerous. We can still get together and bake and talk."

"I don't want to just bake and talk. I want a full relationship," he said. "Maybe it'll stop at a certain point. I've never pushed it to see. Maybe we just need to keep going with it, and see where it'll stop."

"I'm not telling anyone about our relationship," she said. "This is too freaky. People are already asking me, my daughter suspects something's up, but I'm going to keep evading for a while longer. I can't afford to get any younger!"

"You've got to have courage," he said. "Be brave, Sharon. Maybe I can use a condom, and that'll do it."

"I guess we can try that, but in small doses. If I keep getting younger, I'm in deep trouble."

"Then let's bake a peach pie, and not worry so much about this. It'll work out, we'll make it work out." He looked anxious and stressed-out, and she felt sorry for him. But she couldn't afford to go backward any more. Sharon at forty looked different than Sharon at sixty, it was only her voice that was the same. And her hair style. Could she pull off being forty again? This was going to take effort, she would have to think about her appearance. Her hair wasn't glowing blonde yet, but it soon would be, if this kept up.

"Yes, let's bake a pie," she said, and she came to the counter and helped him pit and slice the peaches and prepare the pie crust. They worked in an agreeable quiet, their utensils scraping and thunking and slashing away, and in due time they were eating hot peach pie with vanilla ice cream melting on top.

"How often does this magic run in your family?" she asked.

"Every few generations someone is born with a gift. We never know what it's going to be, or who it will be, but it's fairly predictable. We keep watch for it, and help the gifted Woodclift adjust. My parents should have been there for me, to help me along, but they died. My aunts and uncles have done the best they can by me, but no one really knows what to do. The lion's share of the responsibility falls on me."

"And there are no stories about people going backward in time?"

"No one has remembered anything like this before. I've been forced to figure it out as I go. I wish I knew what did it, the fluids or miasma or whatever. I mean, specifically."

They sat at Sharon's table and helped themselves to more pie and ice cream.

"Does this make you nervous?" Brandt asked.

"Of course it makes me nervous."

"I'll use condoms from now on, and that'll do it," he said. "You'll see."

Sharon said nothing to this. They finished their second pieces of pie and had protected sex, and Brandt took off. Sharon sat in her living room, watching the flames of a small fire she had lit in the fireplace. She would have to keep a close eye on her hair, that was going to be the most visible way to tell what was happening. Amazing, what most people would welcome as a gift seemed like a mixed blessing at best. So many complications...

Several days passed. Brandt came over, and they used condoms, and Sharon kept a close watch on herself. It didn't surprise her much that her hair began to shine and glow honey blonde, and her face changed to that of a thirty-five year old. She didn't look hardly at all like sixty-year-old Sharon any more, and she knew she was going to have to start introducing herself as someone else when she went to Doug's with Meredith.

"The condoms aren't working," she told Brandt. "I'm still getting younger."

"I can see it," said Brandt. He had brought pecans over to make a pecan pie, and he examined her face in the bright light of the kitchen. "What do you want to do?"

"I hate to say it, but we need to stop having sex entirely."

"That's no good," he said immediately. "We can't even be sure it's the sex that's doing it. Maybe it's just my being near you." Then he thought the better of this statement and said, "We don't know what it is."

"Well, it's you somehow. No more sex for you, young man."

He leaned in close to her, and she could see herself reflected in his eyes, with blonde hair and bright blue eyes. She hadn't looked like this in twenty-five years. It was frightening, and she wondered where it would all end.

After Brandt left she called Meredith and told her she'd continued getting younger.

"How old do you look now?" Meredith said.

"I'm about thirty-five now. My hair is startling blonde, and my face has no wrinkles at all. I don't look anything like my old self. It's scary, Mer. We're not having sex at all anymore, and I'm still getting younger. I'm going to have to cut him off completely pretty soon."

"Can you pass as yourself at all?"

"No, I look too young. Even if we said I was giving myself facials and dying my hair, it would be a stretch. People might believe it because my voice is basically the same, and I haven't changed my hairstyle, but they'd know something was up."

"What can we do?"

"We can't go back to Doug's until this all works out. You'll have to come over here next time you want coffee. We can talk here."

"Now you've got me intrigued."

"Brandt says maybe it's not the sex. The little shit. Of course it's the sex, what else would it be? He said this has happened to other girlfriends, their getting younger, and he's always pulled the plug before it went very far. He's frustrated and lonely, that's a fact, but I think we're going to have to stop having sex entirely."

"What if it doesn't stop? What if you become a kid again?"

"Don't even go there, Mer. We'll stop having sex, and see if that does it. That has to do it, there's nothing else to try."

"Keep me posted, I don't want to miss a thing."

"My other friends haven't seen me in a month. Thank God for this exhibit for the Mexican museum, it gives me an excuse to stay away from everyone."

"You're going to have to stage your disappearance somehow, Sharon, if this continues."

"Not yet. Maybe if we stop having sex, it'll come to a stop."

"Maybe."

They chatted for a few more minutes and then got off the phone. Sharon was anxious, and puttering around the house didn't make her feel any better. What was she going to do? This was a crisis, and she was mostly on her own. Meredith was a sympathetic ear, but she couldn't actually do much to help. And Brandt was clueless; he was making it up as he went along. Everything hinged on whether or not the process continued. She supposed it would only take a few days to tell, and she could make up her mind what to do then. She went to bed that night feeling unhappy and at odds with herself. She couldn't tell anyone what was going on, they'd cut her up for a lab rat. God only knew what kind of people would be attracted to her situation. That was big pharma, nasty players if ever there were any. If they could bottle whatever Brandt was doing, they'd make a fortune. But what if it was dryad magic, there was no way to bottle that, was there? And he'd end up as a lab rat as well.

This was bad, very bad. A pair of lab rats, poked and squeezed and bled out and vivisected. And Brandt's family would come under scrutiny as well, none of them would be safe. So no, no telling anyone what was going on. That left it all up to her.

For the next few days Sharon watched her hair and her eyes and her face, but if there were changes they were too subtle to see on a day to day basis. Then, several days later, it was unmistakable, her hair had become rich blonde with golden highlights, just like in the lost days of her youth. It wasn't her imagination; she was still getting younger. They were having no sex, and the process was continuing.

She called Brandt and told him, and he said, "Are you absolutely sure? I don't see how it could be happening now. There's no contact between us at all."

"I don't know, but I want you to stop coming over here, too. Stop entirely. We have to see what works, damn it."

"Stop _completely?_ " he whined. "Well, I can call you, can't I?"

"No. Break all contact, immediately. I can't go any further! This has to stop! We'll try it without any contact at all. In a week I'm done with the Mexico museum exhibit, and I'll have to come up with excuses for why I look so young. If I need you for something, or just to let you know what's going on, call Meredith. Here's her number. She can give you updates."

"This sucks," he complained. "You can't even be sure you're still getting younger, it's just been a couple of days."

"I'm sure enough. Call Meredith in a few days, Saturday afternoon. This is really making me tense, Brandt. I don't want to go back to infancy."

"You won't! That's never happened before. Why would it start happening now?"

"Take care of yourself, and call Meredith on Saturday."

"This sucks," he said again, but she was already hanging up.

The day to day changes were indeed too minute to follow, but over the next four days her face grew younger and softer and began to glow with health, and her hair became brighter blonde. She was now in her twenties somewhere. She rummaged through old photo albums and got out pictures of herself in her twenties and guessed she was around twenty-seven years old. The process was driving on, even with no contact whatsoever with Brandt. There was a long call with Meredith, and a plea for Brandt to scrape his memory for family stories that covered circumstances like this one, and he got back to her through Meredith that there was nothing like this in his family's memory. He called his relatives and tossed the situation to them, and they came up with nothing.

More days passed, and Sharon got younger still. She was in her mid-twenties, and she no longer ventured out except to buy groceries. Terror filled her for the day a friend would decide to drop in unannounced, and for the first time she wept on the phone to Meredith.

"I'm about twenty-two years old, and I'm screwed. There's no way I can pass for myself now. It was questionable before, but it's impossible now. I need a change of identity, and I have no idea how to go about doing that."

"I have an idea," said Meredith. "Give me a couple of days, and let me check into something."

"In a couple of days I'll be 19," wailed Sharon.

"Well, I'll try to expedite things, just hang on!"

Sharon hung up the phone and moped around the house, going to the mirror every few minutes and looking at her face. She looked really, really young. Her hair had recovered its bounce and shine, and her eyes were sapphire blue. She cursed Brandt a thousand times and cursed his family and the dryad in his family tree. She wrote a long and detailed letter to Meredith about what to do with her if she became a child again. For these three or four days she was almost too frightened to work, and was only able to finish the Mexican museum order because she was so far along. She packed up the statuettes and shipped them off to Mexico, and then she had nothing at all to occupy her mind as youth crept over her.

Then it stopped. She was about twenty years old, and four days went by, and she stayed twenty years old. Her face didn't change any more. She let several more very tense days go by before calling Meredith and relaying to Brandt that the process had stopped.

"I don't know what did it, but it seems to have stopped at twenty," she said to Meredith. "Maybe it took that long for his fluids to leave my system."

"I think that would only take a couple of days, not two weeks," said Meredith.

"There's nothing left of him at all. I ate the last piece of pie a week ago," Sharon said.

"Do you think it's the pie?"

"How? I've eaten hundreds of pies over the course of my life. He didn't spit into them, or jerk off in them, or anything like that. I was there during the whole baking process, he didn't do anything weird to the pies."

"Remember I asked you to hang on for a few days while I looked into something? Well, I got hold of a guy I dated back in college. I found him on Facebook, and got in touch with him. He was this shady computer programmer who claimed to know all kinds of criminals. Used to brag about it. He says for five grand he can hook you up with someone who will give you a new identity. It'll run you about twenty grand."

"That's good news," she said, feeling deeply conflicted. She didn't want to be anyone but Sharon Helleridge, but clearly that was no longer an option. Even if the process had stopped, it had gone too far to go back to her old self. She felt boggled by all the things she needed to do to get her life straightened out. And she'd have to do it quickly, because her Mexico museum order was fulfilled, and her friends would be expecting to see her again. And what if the process started up again, and she became a child? Not knowing what did it just made it worse.

Sharon did several things in rapid succession, over the next few days. She contacted the guy Meredith had found and became Helen Stemsmith and had her will changed to include Helen in the disposal of her worldly goods. She still left the lion's share to her children, but now the farm was left to Helen.

She called her children and told them she had taken on a new apprentice, named Helen Stemsmith, whom she had been training "for several months."

"I love her dearly," Sharon told her kids. "In the event of my untimely death I want the farm to go to her, so she has a place in the world."

"Mom, has something happened to your voice? You don't sound the same," said her daughter.

"Slight cold, nothing to worry about. I'll be all right in a week or two."

"You take care of yourself, colds can turn bad at your age."

Sharon hated what had to be done, but there was nothing to do for it but get on with it. She booked one-way airline tickets to Paris and bought new luggage. It was the beginning of March, and Paris would still be in winter, so she bought warm clothes and practiced with make-up until she looked much older. This was going to be squirrely. It would take luck to pass for her older self, and Sharon didn't much trust her luck. Her make-up job better do the trick...

She kept Meredith in the loop during all this, and through her Brandt, who wanted to see her before she took off to Europe. She said no, but she consented to talk to him on the phone.

"See, it's all working out," he said in a heated rush.

"Nothing has worked out yet," she said. "This is all very risky. I have to pull off my disappearance without making anyone suspicious. There's nothing you can do to help, so stay put."

"We should meet before you take off for Paris."

"Absolutely not."

"Sharon—"

"It's Helen now, and don't slip up. One screw-up, and questions will be raised."

"This is going to take some getting used to, but I can do it," he said gamely.

"Helen Stemsmith."

"I hear you," he said.

Meredith drove her to the airport, where she got on the plane to Paris as Sharon Helleridge. She stayed in Paris for a week, using her credit cards in order to leave a paper trail, seeing the museums and eating at the nice restaurants and frequenting the cafes. After five days she burned Sharon's passport and destroyed all her identity papers. She took up a false passport as someone else and caught a plane back to America. Sharon Helleridge had officially disappeared somewhere in France. She was sure to send one last email to Meredith, saying she was going to Le Mont Saint-Michel on the train. That was where her trail ended and where the police would pick it up.

As Anita Smith she flew back to the States, and when she arrived she took up her new identity as Helen Stemsmith. Meredith drove her back to the farm.

After a few weeks Meredith notified the police that her friend Sharon Helleridge had mysteriously stopped sending her emails from France, and had not returned home. She was only supposed to be gone two weeks. The police interviewed everyone close to Sharon and contacted Interpol, and Interpol found Sharon's trail in France and then lost it on the way to Le Mont Saint-Michel. The investigation went on for a couple of weeks, and then Sharon was listed as a missing person.

Sharon's will was unsealed and read, and most of her worldly possessions passed on to her children, who came down to Sharon's farm to take her things. The furniture and the farm itself was left to Helen Stemsmith, who was as nice a young lady as Sharon's children could hope for. Helen seemed devastated at the loss of Sharon and said several times that she hoped Sharon would show up none the worse for wear.

Helen wasted no time introducing herself to Sharon's old clients as Sharon's apprentice, and soon she had several orders on her plate. With any luck she would be able to pick up where Sharon had left off, and have a pretty nice life.

Brandt couldn't contain himself and came out to visit Helen at the farm, and the two of them had intense discussions about the aging process and what had happened. They held off the sex and were discontented with little kisses and petting for the time being. Helen waited anxiously for the rejuvenation to begin again, but it didn't. It had to be the sex, then, or the pies, as Meredith had suggested.

Winter turned into spring, and the police failed to find Sharon Helleridge. She was officially listed as deceased. Sharon's children received a letter from a minor official in France giving his condolences for the loss of their mother, and a funeral was held. Helen Stemsmith attended, as did Meredith and Sharon's kids. There were a lot of older people at the funeral, all Sharon's friends, and it rent Helen's heart to see them all there, thinking she was dead. She even managed tears at her own passing and was one of the people to drop a clod of dirt onto the empty coffin.

"Well, Helen, you made out all right," said Sharon's son. "Ended up with the farm and a little money, not too shabby for someone who was mother's apprentice for just a couple of months."

"Your mother and I got on well," said Helen. "I was surprised she cut me into her will, she must have felt really good about our relationship. I'm sorry you've lost your mother, but there's no reason why we can't stay in touch."

"I'll think about it," said Sharon's son, and he went to talk to his sister and Meredith.

Then the funeral was over, and life went on. Around the end of May something happened, one of Brandt's great-aunts came across an old family story about a Woodclift whose lovers became younger, in an ancient diary. "She fed her lovers fruit pies from tree fruits, and they became younger," she said to Brandt, on the phone. "All she had to do was stop feeding them the pies, and they didn't get younger any more. Does that help?"

Helen laughed when Brandt told her this. "All this worry, and your aunt had the key to this thing all the while," she said. "Why didn't she say something earlier?"

"She was travelling in India for the last few months, so she was out of touch. Besides, she just came across this story in the old diary, she didn't know it before this."

"Saved by the great-aunt. Now we know what _not_ to do."

Brandt said, "I've always loved baking, even when I was a teen. I've been feeding my lovers baked goods ever since I was old enough to take lovers. Who knew it was the cherry tarts and apple pies and apricot turnovers?"

"So we'll have to try sex again, and make sure we've nailed the cause," she said. And they did, and they cut out the baked goods, and Helen's age remained around twenty. Brandt and Helen married the following spring, and Brandt moved into the farm, and the two of them lived in love and happiness for a long, long time, until Brandt was finally carried off at the ripe old age of one hundred and fifteen and Helen...well, who can say whether or not Brandt rejuvenated Helen one more time before his passing, and gave her a new life as a twenty year old once again?

## Corncob Girl

One man's disfigurement is another man's fetish. In this tale, a young woman is horrified by her own body and is determined to have plastic surgery to cure what she sees as a deformity. But a boy she knows likes what he sees, and he has plans for her that don't include the surgeon's scalpel. Who will win, who will lose, in this story of what constitutes freakishness and a positive body image?

Once Upon a Time there was this girl, she had these strange tits. Her nipples were shaped like corn cobs. You know those miniature corn cobs you get with Chinese food sometimes? They were like that. They stuck out about two inches, and whenever she wore a shirt or blouse they would stick way out and call attention to the girl. She was pretty embarrassed at it all, but the boys liked it. She was in high school when this story I'm about to tell you took place, and she was a popular girl. All the boys liked to think about getting their hands on those corn cobs, you know what I mean? So she was getting pestered all day by the boys.

This story takes place in the high mountains of Colorado, exactly where who knows? It was winter time, that much was clear, and there was three feet of snow on the ground, and all the kids were skiing on the weekends and building snowmen on the weeknights. The little kids were making snow angels and having snowball fights, and everyone was having a good time except the corn cob girl, who was tired of her celebrity status and just wanted to be anonymous. She was toying with having her nipples removed by a cosmetic surgeon, but she didn't think she had enough money for it. She was just a seventeen year old girl who did babysitting and odd jobs for income, and cosmetic surgery was expensive, even for something as simple as nipple removal. Maybe she'd have to go to her parents for the money, but she didn't know how they'd react to surgery. She didn't think they'd like it.

So this girl was all tied up with these thoughts of surgery and changing her appearance, and worrying about where she'd get the money, and not wanting to change just because people stared at her but at the same time feeling awfully tired of being the school freak. Maybe it would have been better for her if she just let one of the boys get hold of her, then their curiosity would be assuaged and she would be left alone. Maybe. On the other hand, it might just encourage them, and she'd be pestered endlessly as they all wanted to take turns on her boobs. It could go either way.

So Dahlia, as the girl was called, said to her mom one night, "Mom, I'm thinking of having surgery on my nipples, to have them removed. But I don't have enough money."

"Oh, honey, don't let those boys get to you!" said Dahlia's mom. "You're perfect the way you are."

"Yeah, a perfect _freak_ ," Dahlia said.

"Whenever I'm wrestling with major decisions, I like to sit on it a while and think it over. Give it a couple of months. Don't rush into this. A move like this lasts a lifetime. High school will be over in another year, and you might change your mind by then."

"I don't think so," said Dahlia, who was pretty much making up her mind as they spoke. "If you were surrounded by horny boys who just wanted to get their hands on your boobs, you'd be thinking of the same thing I am."

"How much is the surgery?" said her mother.

"I'm not sure. Let me go down to the clinic after school tomorrow, and find out. I'll let you know."

So the next day was Friday, and after school she took her car down to the clinic and walked in and told them what she wanted. The front desk girl, who was only a few years older than her, said, "I'm totally with you, Dahlia. You have a bummer birth defect, and it's better to have it removed than let it be a source of misery. Are you going on to college?"

"Planning to," said Dahlia.

"Yeah, the boys there will be even worse than high school boys. College boys are totally horny, take it from me. Get this taken care of before then, for sure."

So Dahlia asked how much the surgery would be, and the girl quoted her a price which seemed pretty high to Dahlia, who left the clinic in a funk.

"How'd it go at the clinic?" asked her mom, and Dahlia told her the cost of the operation. Her mother's eyebrows shot up.

"My, they don't price their services cheap, do they?" she said.

"Mom, can I borrow the money and pay you back later?"

"Remember what I said about sitting on this a while?"

"Mom, I've _sat_ on this for three years now, ever since I started developing. I know what I want, I want them gone."

"Sit on it anyway, dear heart, and see what you think in three months. All right? Then we'll talk about it again."

So Dahlia was forced to shelve her plans for surgery. In the meantime, school continued to be trying for her, and for the most part she spent her days wishing she was somewhere else. One day she was standing at her locker, digging out the books for her next class, when a boy named Henry Roquefort walked over to her. Henry was the closest thing to a boyfriend that Dahlia had ever had. He talked with her just about every day, and she had given him her twitter address and even her phone number, but she played it cool with him, which seemed to aggravate him. He was a nice enough boy as far as boys went, but whenever they were talking his eyes would go to her nipples, and she knew he was just as eager to get hold of her as the other boys.

"Heya, Dahlia, let's go skiing this weekend," said Henry. He was a good-looking boy, lean and athletic, with a mop of black hair that always seemed poised on the brink of becoming messy but never did. He had dark green eyes and a square jaw that Dahlia thought was handsome.

"Where did you have in mind?" she said.

"I thought we could go out to Angel Fire and try the snow there," he said. "It's an hour's drive, and we can talk on the way."

Dahlia had done a few things like this with Henry in the past, and everything had gone all right. So she was inclined to take it on faith that they'd have a good time.

"Saturday?" she said.

"I was thinking all weekend. We could stay at the lodge overnight and ski both days."

Dahlia was immediately suspicious of this plan, it was different from what they had done in the past. "Why both days?" she asked.

"More fun that way, than driving an hour each way each day."

"That'll cost money," she said. "That lodge isn't cheap."

"Hit your parents up for the money, that's what I'm going to do."

"My parents will say no, but I guess I can pay for it myself," she mused. "It sounds like fun, Henry. You're on. Let's go skiing."

"Sweet. I'll pick you up Saturday morning, say nine o'clock?"

"Sounds good."

The next few days went by slowly for Dahlia. She was excited for the skiing expedition and wondered if Henry had invited anyone else along but decided she wouldn't ask him and would just let it be a surprise. She hit her parents up for the money for a ski trip and was shocked when they shelled out for it, the lodge and the meals and the ski lifts all. She nearly asked them what the occasion was but decided not to push her luck.

It snowed during the week, about a foot in town but several feet up in the mountains, and it looked like it was going to be an exciting weekend of fresh powder and clean slopes. Saturday eventually came, and Dahlia packed up a small suitcase full of clothes and put on her ski suit and waited for Henry, who was a few minutes early.

"Hiya, Dahlia, ready for winter fun?" called Henry as she came out of her house, lugging her suitcase. Henry popped the trunk, and she threw the suitcase inside and closed the lid. She got into his car and buckled up, and Henry leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, which she was used to with him and tolerated. There was no one else in the car, and Dahlia said,

"Just the two of us?"

"I wanted to spend a weekend with you, not a weekend with everyone," Henry said.

"As long as you don't think you're spending the weekend in my room," she said.

"Hey, let's just have fun on the slopes, okay?"

Dahlia smiled at this. Henry was pretty well-mannered, and she didn't have to be really bitchy with him. Just lay down a few ground rules, and he didn't get out of line. She frowned. Really, maybe she should be nicer to him than she was. He respected her, and shouldn't that be rewarded somehow? She'd think about it, see if there was something she could do to show him he was appreciated.

They drove up the canyon for an hour, chatting about school and what a dork Mr. Evans was. He was the art teacher, and he had issues with the naked human body and wouldn't let his students draw nudes of any sort. A girl named Helen Myers drew Dahlia in one of his classes, in colored pencils, with her nipples erect and sticking out about two inches. Mr. Evans threatened her with expulsion from his class if she ever did it again. Dahlia recognized in this conversation Henry's wish to get to know her nipples, but there wasn't much she could do to help him out. She was a freak, and she wasn't going to let him convince her otherwise.

So Dahlia and Henry savaged Mr. Evans on the drive up, and eventually they came to the Angel Fire turnoff, and Henry said, "Weekend of fun, here we come."

"Woo-hoo!" exclaimed Dahlia, and they drove up to the lodge and checked in. The rooms at Angel Fire were big and had fireplaces in them, and the two of them got firewood sent up to their rooms and stowed their suitcases. They hit the slopes around eleven and skied until dinnertime, when they came in and had a delicious meal of venison medallions and asparagus and cranberry cobbler. They had glasses of wine, too; the staff didn't card them or anything, and they drank perhaps a little more than they should have and got a bit tipsy. Dahlia was feeling pretty good as Henry led her back to her room and stopped outside her door.

"Dahlia," he started, and she turned toward him. It was chilly in the hallway, and Dahlia was only wearing a thin sweater, and her nipples were sticking out and firm. "We've been seeing each other for a year and a half," Henry said. "High school isn't going to go on that much longer. Let me do this, and see if you like it."

"Do what?" Dahlia said. She was a bit tipsy and not thinking real quick.

Henry reached out and brushed her left breast with his hand, and Dahlia had an explosion of tingles through her whole body, and a burst of heat, and a peculiar cramping in her stomach muscles that felt just great. She let out a loud gasp, and Henry said,

"Yeah, that's the bomb, isn't it? How do you like _them_ apples?"

Dahlia felt color rise to her cheeks, and she wanted to chew Henry out, but the fact of the matter was, that felt pretty damned good!

"Henry," she said, confused and not sure what to do.

"Now the other one," Henry said, and before Dahlia could say anything Henry brushed her right nipple and caused her another explosion of tingles. Her nipples were standing up proud and erect, and Dahlia's complaints of being a freak blew away on the chill wind.

"Now let's do both at once," Henry said. He lifted his hands toward her chest.

"Wait! Wait, don't do that!" she gasped.

But it was too late. Henry already had his hands on her breasts, massaging gently, and was manipulating her nipples with his thumbs. Now her whole body tingled so hard she felt she was practically vibrating, and she felt fire between her legs and marveled that a little boob massage could do this to her.

"Henry! Wait!" she mumbled feebly.

"There you go, that's the good stuff," said Henry. He gently squeezed her breasts and diddled her nipples, and she just stood there, taking it, until he stopped and withdrew his hands.

"Thought you might like that," he said. He leaned forward and put his lips to hers, something she never used to let him get away with, and he kissed her roundly on the mouth. She found herself kissing him back, and he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her into him and kissed her harder. It was a good kiss, a very refreshing kiss that make Dahlia feel like she's just woken up after a long sleep, and she was sorry when he let go of her and leaned back again.

"Eighteen months I waited to do that," he said. "If I waited on you, Dahlia, we'd never kiss, and you'd never let me get my hands on you." His face was flushed, and he was breathing hard, and his dark green eyes were locked onto Dahlia's. She wanted more than this, it was exciting, but she didn't want to be taken for an easy girl.

"That's enough," she said primly.

He put his hands on her arms and stroked, from her elbows down to the wrists, and the fire that had been burning in Dahlia seemed to go up another notch.

"You're going to be a good girlfriend," he said. He leaned toward her again, mouth reaching, but this time she leaned away.

"Enough!" she said, more firmly this time.

He laughed and saluted her, then he said, "I can make it even better than that." Now he headed down the hall, somewhat unevenly, laughing softly. Dahlia watched him go, then she let herself into her room and flopped down on the bed. Room service had come in and lit the fire, which was a nice touch, and she watched the flames dance as she listened to her body's excitement over Henry's handling. No wonder Henry wanted to spend the whole weekend at Angel Fire, if this was what he had in mind. Devious little bastard, is what he was... Had he planned this in advance, or was it the wine and the dinner and the exercise talking? Especially the wine? Suddenly he was putting the moves on her; had he really waited all this time for this?

She felt the tingling all over again, and the fire, and the firm pressure of his kiss on her mouth. She shivered as she thought of his thumbs on her nipples, pressing and stroking, firing her up. Now she felt an about-face coming on, why should she have her nipples removed when they could do this for her? Maybe she should have let Henry do this for her a year ago, it would have saved her a lot of unhappiness. She wasn't sure how far she would let Henry Roquefort go in the days ahead, but she knew she would never forget this night. She would be eighteen pretty soon, and maybe she'd let Henry take her all the way. He seemed to have a plan, anyway, or at least a nasty little collection of desires.

The fire popped, and she reflected that this was turning into a good weekend. Life was a voyage of discovery, and she had learned something about the power of good clean sexuality. She didn't know whether or not it could get better than this, but she was curious to try it and see. This was better than a movie or even a good book about lovers, it was the real thing, and she would be more ready for Henry next time. Maybe he was an exceptional boyfriend after all, someone with something to teach her. Right now she felt good things toward him, and thus she made the decision to forget the clinic and the surgeon. Her freakish boobs had turned into a positive, and she was interested in seeing how far the pleasure could go.

And so this young woman came to peace with her own body, and we can only wish her well in the days ahead, with all there was yet to learn and explore. Eventually their ski weekend would be over, and after that spring would come, with its promise of new life and a brand new year. Dahlia faced the future with courage and hope, and the world opened to her, in all its beauty and fearfulness. She embraced her fate and made the most of it, which is the best any of us can do on this journey that is life.

## Jailbreak

Sometimes the bonds of simple affection are stronger even than the bonds of family. In this story a man's goddaughter goes to prison for a willful mistake, and it looks like she's not going to survive her time in jail. Desperate, the man turns to unlikely allies for help and finds them cooperative, but can he trust them? And during all this the air force is nosing around, asking a lot of questions and running their instruments, looking for a story of their own. This time, things may not turn out so well...

The sight of my goddaughter in the orange prison jumpsuit broke my heart, but the look on her face shattered it completely. Her eyes kept going back and forth, back and forth across my face, and the corners of her mouth kept turning downward in nervous twitching, and there were hollows in her cheeks that weren't there six months ago. She looked haunted, and I could hardly reconcile the seventeen-year-old I knew with this older-looking, unhappier version of herself.

"Uncle Ray," she said through the phone, and I swallowed and nodded my head.

"Good to see you, Hannah," I said. And it _was_ good to see her, it had been four weeks since her trial and I'd given her time to get settled into her new digs before coming to see her. Black Falls Women's Correction Facility was about fifteen miles out of Portland, and it was an easy drive. Now that I'd found my way there once I knew I'd be back this way again soon.

My goddaughter sat in a steel chair on the other side of a glass wall and talked to me through a white telephone. She looked terribly subdued and listless, and I longed to give her a hug or a peck on the cheek, something to cheer her up. I guess where she was there's no such thing as cheering up.

"My parents came about a week ago. I expected you sooner." Was that a hint of reproach?

"Wanted to give you time to settle in," I said. "Maybe not so good to see familiar faces until you are used to the new place."

"New place. Yeah. Like a new apartment, huh?"

"The jury was hard on you," I allowed.

"They didn't like it that I ran away from the scene."

"Time will go fast, sweetheart. You'll be thirty three when you're released, that's still young."

"My youth will go to waste in this place, Uncle Ray. I'm going to lose my best years to this shithole."

"How bad is it?" I asked, nervously. There was nothing I could do to help her beyond talk. I could come to see her, but that was about all.

"There are a lot of really screwed up women here. Criminals. I have two cell mates, and they're both hard core offenders. One's in for repeated selling of drugs, the other's in for cutting her boyfriend's balls off with a X-acto knife."

"Does the prison have a library?" I asked.

"Yeah, it has a library," she said wearily. "And a gym. And a tv room. I hate the structure here, Uncle Ray. Everything is regimented and doled out in little doses. The food sucks. I've already found a few friends, people like me who got a bum deal, but I don't see them much. Our free time is strictly regulated."

"That's to be expected, I guess," I said. "At least you can read."

"The drug dealer doesn't like me much, says I'm a fancy girl. She's low class and resents my good schooling. I was planning to go to college, you know? Next year was my last year of high school. I was planning to go to college."

"Get your GED in here, I'm sure it can be done through the library," I said. "Or maybe some sort of extension program."

"The X-acto woman says she wants to cut my throat one of these days when I'm asleep."

"Report her to the guards. That kind of thing should be halted right away."

"It's hard to get sharp objects here, but not impossible," she said. "There was a knifing just last week."

"Honey, I'm sorry this happened to you," I said. And I was sorry for it, sorrier than you'll ever know. My beautiful goddaughter, sentenced to sixteen years in prison. When she was a baby her parents and I would envision futures for her, as a corporate CEO or an architect or the presidency or a CPA. We never envisioned her as a prisoner.

"I'm sorry for what happened, but it was an accident," she said, and tears started rolling down out of her eyes. My heart couldn't take much of this, it was ripping me to pieces to see her so unhappy. "I shouldn't have gotten that much time."

"It'll go fast," I repeated. "You should find out if you can take classes here, go for your college degree. Something online. There are programs for prisoners, make use of your time."

She rubbed her eyes and brushed away the tears, got control of herself. "I mean, that baby. It wasn't her fault I ran over her. It wasn't the mother's fault. It wasn't my fault, either. Just a stupid accident."

My goddaughter ran over a woman and her baby in a stroller, in a crosswalk. The baby was killed, the woman escaped with light injuries. My goddaughter freaked out and didn't report it for four days, and the jury really didn't like that. They recommended harsh sentencing because of that. The judge gave her ten years for the baby's death and six years for fleeing the scene. It was lauded in the papers as a "feat of justice," getting tough on crime. No one seemed to realize it was an accident.

There was a little more to it than that, though. My goddaughter had had her learner's permit for a year at that point, on her way to getting a license, and the secret variable which came out during the trial was that she had a lead foot. She loved to drive fast. The mother of the baby said she heard Hannah's tires scream as she ripped into the intersection, trying to cut the mother and baby off as they walked. There was a traffic cam on that street corner, and it clearly showed the mother and her baby had the light. My goddaughter got impatient and floored it and tried to beat them across the street, and she ended up killing the baby. Sixteen years in prison.

Sixteen years is a long, long time.

"You still looking for aliens, Uncle Ray?" she asked me.

"Always," I said. "They're out there, we just have to find them."

She smiled a brave smile. "How long have you been looking now?"

"It's the search, not the time," I said.

"Of course," she smirked. "Any luck?"

"Some small noise, nothing substantive," I said. "If they're in a ship close to earth, you could have fooled me." My hobby is looking for extraterrestrial signals with a small satellite dish. I live in the countryside about twenty miles outside Portland, not far from my goddaughter's prison, and I have the satellite dish mounted on a skyfinder that I built myself from a diagram I found on the internet. It's a crude set-up, but it brings me pleasure, looking for a signal from aliens. It's how I spend my free time, now that my wife has passed on.

"You'll have to tell me if you find anything," she said. She was smiling now and looked so much better that way than the hopeless look she'd been wearing for most of our conversation.

"You'll be the first to know," I promised her, and she nodded.

We talked about my job as a radio and television repair man with my own little shop, and how dicey a way it was to make a living, but I wasn't in a mood to complain. My goddaughter had it much worse than I did.

"I'm serious about the degree," I told her. "Look into it, see if it'll keep you busy. You might not get the full college experience, but you can get the education."

She nodded again but looked tired. "Visiting hour is almost up," she said.

"Love you," I said, and she mouthed the words back at me, and then the guards came to take her back to her cell. She hung up the white telephone and went with them. As she walked away from me her shoulders seemed hunched up and thin, and I felt tears at the corners of my eyes. My poor goddaughter, in this terrible situation. I left feeling wretched, knowing that the weekly drive to the prison was going to be a ghastly chore that would never get easier. I hoped her parents would remain faithful over the years; I read somewhere that prisoners are often forgotten by their families as the years wear on. Fifteen years and eleven months to go. I should have told my goddaughter to get some paper and count off the months.

I drove home and made myself a spot of dinner, salmon and asparagus and a baked potato with cheese and sour cream and bacon bits and diced chives. For the next hour and a half I brooded over my goddaughter's situation, wondering if there was someone who could retry her case, present new evidence, get some years knocked off her sentence. If things went well she might get as much as two years reduced sentencing for good behavior. It wasn't much, but it was something. I figured she could do a college degree halftime, take eight years to do it, that was half her sentence. Go for a master's as well, that was another four. She'd get out at thirty-three with a master's degree, ready for the job market. I didn't know if society would forgive her mistake, but I could hope, couldn't I?

Night fell, and I fired up the skyfinder and picked a little patch of space and tuned in my satellite dish. There were no major SETI projects in the Portland area, so I didn't feel like my efforts were redundant with anyone else's. Every night I listened in to a piece of the sky and ran my scans, and every night I got tons of junk signals from passing airplanes, trucker's radios, cell phones and kids with walkie-talkies. I wasn't looking for communications from distant stars, I was looking for noise from close to earth, aliens in a starship sending signals back home. It was a small chance, vanishingly small, but someone had to keep their ear on the near-earth signals. It was me and a couple hundred other enthusiasts in the U.S. and around the world. We even had our own newsletter, _Laser Light_ , and message boards on the internet.

A few years ago a pyramid-shaped object was spotted over Portland, all lit up with amber and gold lights. It was big, and it was seen by a lot of people, and the Air Force said it wasn't one of theirs. I was still going off the enthusiasm of that sighting, feeling jazzed as I started the software that did the scanning.

Around midnight I turned in, letting the computer handle the data collection and sifting. The software program was pretty sophisticated; some professor in San Francisco wrote it about thirty years ago and kept it updated. I've searched for aliens for decades now. At sixty-two years of age I was still excited by the search for the signal, still enthused about the hope of finding aliens right here in my own backyard.

The next morning I got up and checked the computer. Twenty-three signals, all Earth-based. There were some kids at a country house down the road who had new walkie-talkies, they were putting out a lot of noise. I moved to the country to get away from the crime in Portland, but you never escaped the noise of civilization. It was everywhere, these days.

Fast forward three years. My goddaughter did her GED and then signed on for a B.A. in anthropology through a distance learning program, and she was diligent in her studies. I went to see her every week for visiting hours and listened to her reports of her mean girl cell mates and the bad food, and I encouraged her to take advantage of the gym and keep herself in good shape. She always seemed glad to see me and said I visited much more often than her parents, who came out once a month.

"You're my steady guy, Uncle Ray," she said. "How's the search for aliens going?"

"Lousy as your food," I said. "That pyramid-shaped light in the sky is back, and other SETI types say they're getting signal from it, but I haven't seen or heard a thing."

"Maybe they just want to speak to the mayor," she smiled.

"I'm not so sure I believe the other SETI people," I said. "There are a lot of braggarts in the field, and a lot of outright liars. As long as it can't be verified they talk a big game, but they don't share their data. Or when they do, it's obviously faked."

"Poor guy. Well, you have to stick with it. Rome wasn't built in a day!"

"Oh, I'll stick with it, just for love if nothing else."

"Isn't your birthday coming up?" she asked me.

"Yeah, big sixty five. I'll retire this year, I think. The electronic repair business is a thankless industry, and business isn't what it could be." I'd been saying that for twenty years now, and it was true. I just made enough to keep me going, there were never fat years. I drove a twenty year old car and had a six year old computer, and my skyfinder was ancient technology. There were some new SETI programs that I'd have loved to have bought, but they cost several thousand dollars, so that was out. My old beater was reliable enough, but I put forty miles a day on it driving to and from my shop in Portland, and it added up. Then there were the weekly miles to and from the prison, which added more wear and tear. Not that I'd ever complain about that, of course.

"I'm taking hard-core anthropology classes now," she said. "And still lots of general electives. I have a folklore class that's pretty interesting. I'm going to do a project with prison folklore, collect inmate tall tales. There are some stories about the prison doctor that would make for a good paper. That sounds like fun, but I don't know, Uncle Ray. Sometimes I wonder if this really is a good use of my time. I mean, what will I do with this when I get out?" As she talked I saw how weary she looked, how worn down and tired. Prison life wasn't agreeing with her. It was wearing on her in an ugly way, and I worried about her constantly.

"Stick with it," I advised her. "It's useful to have a college education. Are there other prisoners who are getting their degrees?"

"Yeah, there's a handful of us. Marcy is studying sales and marketing. She's interested in working for a corporation. She gets out in five more years, way before me. She says she'll stay in touch."

I'd learned not to ask what the other women were in for, this disturbed my goddaughter. She tended to pick her friends based on whether she thought they had gotten a bad rap, like she considered her own case. Sometimes I wished she would take full responsibility for killing baby Rebekka, but I knew she never would. I was afraid she'd get out of prison and go right back to being a lead foot, right back to rushing the lights and racing through intersections and all the behaviors that landed her in prison to begin with. Something about my goddaughter's comments made me think she wasn't going to learn any lessons from her time in prison.

"It's good to have friends," I said in what I hoped was a neutral tone. "If you meet a few good people, you're that much ahead."

"I guess so," she said. "Most of the people in here are criminals. I don't want to know them. Criminals don't think like normal people, Uncle Ray. They have brutish thoughts and brutish emotions and are looking to hurt people. That's one thing I've definitely learned in here, criminals aren't like the rest of us."

We talked for a little while longer, and then visiting hour was over, and it was time to go. I was depressed on the way back to my country house. Lines were appearing on my goddaughter's face. She was only twenty years old, but she looked thirty-five. She'd started smoking, despite my exhortations not to, and she didn't work out at the gym like I'd hoped she should. Her health was going to suffer, and if she came out of prison with broken health, she would be behind the eight ball from the word go. I thought of her time in prison as a time out, waiting to be released and get going in life again. I was glad she was doing the degree, it gave her a positive focus for her youthful energy. And useful skills for when she got out. All my thoughts about my goddaughter were based on her getting out one day and resuming normal life.

On April twelfth of that year there was a big snowstorm, a late season storm, and it dumped five inches of snow on the Portland area. I was safe and comfortable in my house, and I fired up the skyfinder and searched the sky for signals from aliens. And, God help me, I got one. There was a bright light in the sky, an amber and gold light, and I saw the pyramid shape and knew it was them. I immediately sicced the skyfinder on it, when a signal came in on my computer.

A little screen opened up on my monitor. "Hello?" it said.

"Who are you?" I typed into the screen.

"We are in the ship above," it said.

"You mean an airplane," I said, excited despite myself.

"The interdimensional research vessel _Yotomacis_ ," came the reply.

"Are you little grey men?" I typed.

"No. We are not like you. We are different. Very different."

"Why are you talking to me?" I asked.

"Your device is set for searching for us, is it not?" came the reply.

"Yes," I said, and the excitement grew.

"We can't stay long," said the screen. "They'll come hunting us. What can we do to prove our good intentions?"

"Why aren't you talking to our president?" I asked.

"No. Research first, then contact," said the screen. "You have to build a starship before we will speak to your leaders."

"That's going to be a long time," I said.

"Time goes by swiftly, in the world," said the screen.

"You want to prove your good intentions. I should ask you to perform a service for the human race, but I'm selfish," I typed. "I want you to perform a service for my goddaughter instead. Bust her out of prison and take her with you. Her and some of her friends. She's studying to be an anthropologist. Let her learn about your civilization."

"We're not supposed to bring anyone back with us."

"Only three or four people, what can that hurt?" I said.

"We'll discuss it."

Then the amber and gold lights blinked off, and the pyramid ship disappeared from the sky. I looked out the window and couldn't catch a sign of it anywhere. I went to bed that night feeling apprehensive. I had asked for a big favor, and there was no sign they'd carry it out. Had I asked for too much? I should have asked for the designs for a starship, so we could build our own and have first contact. But technically speaking the aliens had been having first contact with us for years. If they talked to me, they were probably talking to others. Just not the big boys, not yet. Nothing official. Research, they said.

If it was really aliens. If it wasn't the kids down the road screwing with me. Or someone else, the NSA having a little fun with the SETI nerd. But the pyramid-shaped ship was hard to fake, and it had been seen before. Other SETI nerds were saying they'd spoken to it, which I had to now take seriously. Prove our good intentions, they said. What if I could make my goddaughter from a criminal into a heroine? She could go with the aliens and study their culture, and she could bring back that knowledge for the benefit of humanity. NASA already had blueprints for starships on the books. It was all experimental, but they were there. We might get there faster than anyone thought.

My goddaughter was only twenty years old, and she had thirteen more years in the can. It was going to kill her, thirteen more years of prison. The smoking, the bad food, the dangerous cell mates, the despair. It was a toss-up which would take her first, but I was betting on the despair. That's what fueled the smoking and the general misery I saw in her every time I went to visiting hours. She was earning her degree, but that wasn't enough to hold it back. She needed normalcy, and she wouldn't get it in prison. But would it really be an improvement, being the anthropologist to space aliens? Isolation and separation from the normal world were killing my poor goddaughter, and she'd be in the same situation with aliens: isolated and separated from normalcy. Damn. It was just a passing thought I'd had, to bust Hannah out of the slam and get her a stellar career. But was it really better than her current situation?

I tossed and turned all night, and I sleep-walked through the next few days, and then on the seventeenth of April, as the snow all melted away and spring made its presence felt, the aliens came back. I fired up the skyfinder and started hunting for signals, and then the gold and amber lights were back, and I looked out my window and saw the pyramid-ship in the sky. I waited at the computer, and within a minute a little screen opened up on my monitor.

"Air Force is frisky tonight. We can't stay long."

"About my goddaughter," I said, planning to take it all back. I didn't want Hannah to be lonely studying aliens. She'd just have to take her chances and do her time.

"We are willing to spring her from prison," said the aliens. "But only her. No others."

"She'll be lonely," I said.

"We have thousands of humans back home. There was a phase when we were collecting your species for study. Your goddaughter would have a lot of company, and some very knowledgeable about us, who could help her in her research."

Now I felt a burst of excitement. That changed everything. If she had thousands of people to choose from, surely she could find some friends and have normal relationships again?

"This would be an anthropologist's dream job," I enthused. "And it would be of benefit to the whole human race."

"We agree," said the screen. "Where is your goddaughter?"

"Black Falls Women's Correctional Facility," I said.

"Very well. What is her name?"

"Hannah Wilson," I said.

"We will offer her the chance to leave," said the screen. "Say in one week."

"I'll let her know," I said.

"We must go. The Air Force is scrambling fighters to come after us. Stay well."

"You too."

Then the lights blinked out, and about five minutes later I heard the scream of jet engines over my house. I went to bed wondering if Hannah would be into the opportunity I'd just engineered for her, or if she'd turn it down. I wondered if I was being jerked around by other SETI nerds or if the opportunity was real. Needless to say, I slept pretty badly that night.

I wasn't surprised the next day when two men and a woman in Air Force dress clothes showed up at my doorstep, asking questions about the pyramid-ship. I didn't tell them I'd been talking with aliens, but I did tell them I'd seen the lights and thought it was an Air Force craft.

"I mean, it's you guys, right?" I said. "Who else could it be?"

They'd already been over the back yard with a Geiger counter and some other hand-held instruments, looking for traces of aliens. So they'd seen the skyfinder, and I was betting they knew what it was.

"We have reports from other members of the SETI community that the aliens have been talking to them," said the woman, who so far had done most of the talking.

"They haven't been talking to me," I lied, and I saw from their expressions that they didn't believe me. So aliens _had_ been chatting with others. All those stories in _Laser Lights_ weren't just bullshit.

"If they get in touch, who should I call?" I asked, and the woman gave me a card.

"Mister Crandall, it's important that you share your information with us," said the woman, who was apparently a major in rank. "You can call that number during regular business hours or email me 24/7. We think this is a genuine alien contact situation, and we need to know what they're talking about."

"I understand," I said. Damned if I was going to tell them I was arranging for the aliens to spring my goddaughter!

A few days after this conversation I went to visit my goddaughter in prison. She looked ragged, and I asked her how she was doing, and she said,

"I love my classes, but I hate prison, Uncle Ray. Nothing has changed in that respect."

"I may have some good news for you, it depends on you," I said. Then another concern occurred to me, and I said, "I suppose this conversation is being monitored."

"In a half-assed sort of way," she said. "They don't tend to monitor ongoing conversations like ours."

Looked like I was just going to have to go for it. "Well, I have an opportunity for you. My SETI project has hit pay dirt. I've been talking to aliens for the past few days."

She gave me the strangest look, partly startled and partly incredulous and partly indulgent, like she was humoring a little kid. "What do they have to say?" she asked.

"They say they'll bust you out of here and take you to their home world, if you want to go. Be an anthropologist to a space-faring culture."

"All alone?"

"No. They've kidnapped thousands of other humans, so you'll have lots of company."

"What are they doing with these humans?"

"Research, they said."

"Vivisections?"

"Not like that," I said, but what did I know? I hadn't specifically asked. There was this matter of the anal probes that had been reported for decades, and medical examinations. "They say they'll work with you to study their civilization."

"That would be any anthropologist's wet dream," she said.

"They say they're coming in a few days, and they'll offer you the chance to go with them. Beats rotting in prison, Hannah."

She studied my face through the bulletproof glass for a long, long time. "Uncle Ray, you realize this is probably someone jerking your chain, right?" she said.

"Yes," I said. "I've already thought of that. But what if it's on the up and up?"

"So they just asked you, how would you like us to spring your goddaughter from prison?" she said.

"They asked me if there was something they could do to prove their good intentions," I said. "This is what I thought of."

To my surprise she started to cry then. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and her eyes turned red. "This tells me so much about you, not so much about aliens," she said. "I'm flattered you're thinking about me out there. None of my old friends have stayed in touch. Not one. And my parents only come out every couple of months to visit me. I love you, Uncle Ray."

"Love you too, kiddo." And I saw her so clearly then, the lines on her face and the cigarette ashes on her jump suit, and I saw her two-year-old self toddling around her parents' house, and I saw her at twelve quarrelling with her mother, and at sixteen when I was teaching her how to drive, and at seventeen when her world came crashing down. She was my goddaughter, and I loved her to pieces and always would.

"So how are the aliens going to pull this off?" she asked.

"They didn't say. They asked your name and said they'd give you the choice of going with them. If they spring you, I'll give your good-byes to your mother and father."

"That, or thirteen more years of this. I don't think I'm going to last thirteen more years in here," she said. "Tell your aliens that my answer is yes, I'll go with them. Nothing is holding me back here."

"Tell them yourself, when they come for you," I said. A buzzer sounded, signaling the end of visitors' hours, and she shrugged.

"Good-bye, then," she said.

"Take care," I said in return, then I left the prison and returned to my house. There was a message on my answering machine, from the Air Force major, asking if I'd remembered anything from the visits that I hadn't disclosed at the time.

"No," I said to the answering machine, "But you'll be the first to know if I have something to report."

I puttered around the next few days, repairing televisions and cell phones and radios, and then came the excited news on the radio that there had been a jail break from Black Falls Women's Correctional Facility outside Portland. One Hannah Wilson had somehow escaped her cell and managed to get out of the prison. Speculation was running rampant in the wake of sightings of a UFO over the prison that same day, that maybe aliens had taken Hannah away.

I called the Air Force major and told her my story, because it seemed cruel to keep the Feds in the dark, and because the aliens might not be all sweetness and light after all. It bothered me that the aliens might be vivisecting my goddaughter even as I spoke to the Feds, and I mentioned that to them.

"Mister Crandall, that was an irresponsible thing you did," said the major, whose name was Adrienne Shattuck. "We have nothing but their own reports as to what they want. Five other people have gone missing in relation to the pyramid-ship you mentioned, all associated with the SETI community. Apparently people are asking to be taken to the aliens' world, and they're being spirited away. These aliens could be doing anything with these people, anything at all. I hope for your sake that your goddaughter is safe and sound and practicing anthropology."

"Me, too," I said, then I hung up the phone. For years I'd been searching the heavens, looking for signs of extraterrestrial life. Some people believed aliens were hostile, planning an attack or invasion. Others believe aliens were unknowable, a mystery wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in an enigma. My own bet was that aliens were friendly and just wanted someone to talk with. As Hannah said, it tells you more about me than about the aliens.

I called Hannah's parents and told them the story, and they were furious with me, and we haven't talked in six months now. The Air Force has called a dozen times with follow-up questions and to ask if I've received any messages from the aliens or my goddaughter.

"Like what?" I said.

"We don't want this getting around, but there have been letters to family members of some of the other disappeared, supposedly from the missing persons. In one case it was emails. The pyramid-ship has been seen in Brazil in the last two weeks. They may be passing along communications to loved ones. You should keep an eye on your mail, Mister Crandall. As always, we'd appreciate being kept in the loop."

"Will do," I said to her, and that ended our conversation.

So now I wait. Every few hours I check my email, and every day I watch anxiously for Earl, the mailman, who seems to come later each afternoon. Damned postal service, they're so slow! I hope for anything, even a lousy postcard, from my goddaughter, just something to let me know how she's doing. On the bad days I see her on an operating table, being taken to pieces by cold-blooded aliens. On the good days I see her surrounded by new friends, her past wiped clean, doing valuable work for the human race. I don't know if I should have got her sprung or not. There's just no way to know what's happened to her. Postcards can be faked, and emails can come from criminals. The one thing that's steady is that I still love my goddaughter and always will. For now, that has to be enough.

## Alignment

I have known half a dozen Buddhists in my time on Earth, and I've met a few Hindus, but I haven't met anyone who employs the India system of chakras in their spiritual practice. All my experience with chakras is from books which talk about them and give exercises designed to increase your connection with your body's natural energy centers. Here we have a mature woman who has progressed far indeed with her chakra studies, and on the day in question she will need everything she has learned, for a maniac is on the freeway and has his eye on her, and her very survival is in question.

Suzie is sitting on a blue foam mat in her living room, with her legs straight out and flat on the floor in front of her and her eyes closed. She's breathing deeply and visualizing the flow of energy through her body, from her butt up to the crown of her head, along her seven chakras. She's been at it for half an hour now, and she's worked her way through the lower chakras up to the crown chakra, which today is stubbornly resisting her attempts to generate flow among all the power centers of her body. She twists her neck this way and that, seeking to clear her spirit chakra, but it is still blocked. She has to leave for work pretty soon, and so she breathes deeply and releases, stretches her neck and visualizes a positive flow of energy through her crown. The chakra remains blocked. For the next five minutes she repeats her exercises, now gently and now hard, trying to use different rhythms to release a flow of energy. She might as well be herding cats. The crown chakra remains blocked, and finally Suzie has to get up and go take a shower and dress for work.

This has been a tough week for her. Her job is human resources director for a mid-sized nonprofit which rescues dogs and cats from life on the streets, and there have been a number of sticky personnel issues over the last month, one of which centered around Suzie herself. One of her colleagues found out she does bodywork and energy work and claimed Suzie was trying to push Eastern religion on her colleagues, which patently wasn't true. Upper management had to get involved, which is always a crapshoot, and Suzie is currently under investigation for religious proselytizing in the workplace. That's ongoing, and stressful. So far her (male) colleague's allegations haven't found traction, and Suzie is thinking of suing him for defamation because he sent out an email to everyone in the company with his allegations in it. So he's embarrassed her, and she's thinking of embarrassing him with a twenty thousand dollar lawsuit if upper management finds his allegations to be baseless. Suzie doesn't feel missionary about her spiritual practices, but she's not going to be pushed around, either.

She dresses in the light grey suit, even though she'd like to be wearing something more cheerful, because today the senior manager assigned to investigating her colleague's claims gives her the results of the investigation. So she'll dress conservatively and see what happens. She's bothered that she hasn't cleared her crown chakra today, because it's a day that's all about the spirit, and she wants her chakras to be aligned perfectly. Fat chance. Some days are just a poor alignment, and this appears to be one of those days.

The mirror shows a smartly-dressed Suzie in her light grey suit, and she heads into the kitchen and opens the fridge. She should eat a good, balanced meal, but she took extra time with her exercises this morning, and the clock is running. She wants to get into work a few minutes early today and make a good impression; upper management is always watching.

Suzie is somewhere between middle management and upper management in her organization. At most non-profits hers would be an upper management function, but at her organization it's a more ambiguous position. Basically, upper management is jealous of their prerogatives and doesn't want to promote the HR director to an upper management position. They want to keep it a middle management slot. But they're frequently embarrassed when meeting with other non-profits, whose HR directors are upper management. So Suzie makes these little pushes for making her job an upper management position. This hasn't endeared her to upper management, but they can't really complain. They're the ones who are out of sync with their industry.

The eggs catch her eye, and she takes three eggs out of the fridge and some links of sausage and spends a few minutes frying them up. As the sausage spatters grease she hopes none gets on her jacket; that would be a disaster. Maybe she should have skipped breakfast today, but she does that a lot, and it's murder on the survival chakra. You need to eat full, balanced meals. She knows this, but she's used to starving herself. She _has_ to treat her survival chakra better; if she lets it down, it will let her down. She finishes frying up the eggs and sausage and puts them on a plate. A few moments with a knife frees up a couple slices of cantaloupe, and she adds these to her plate. There's grapefruit juice in the fridge, and she pours herself a glass of this and takes it all to the dining room table to eat.

She could have forgiven her colleague his attack on her spirituality if he hadn't gone after her in a public way. What possessed him to write an email to the entire company accusing her of forcing her religion on everyone isn't clear to Suzie, but he's already been reprimanded for it. He had to put up a public retraction saying he should have taken it straight to senior management and not made personal attacks on Suzie, but she's not satisfied with this. The cat is out of the bag, and she wants some payback. It's not very spiritual of her, but she wants to make an example of this man, so others won't get the idea that she can be pushed around.

She sprinkles salt and pepper on the eggs and slices them up and eats them, adding sections of sausage every few moments and the occasional piece of cantaloupe. The food tastes delicious, and Suzie thanks her survival chakra for allowing her to appreciate good food. Many of Suzie's friends are dedicated vegetarians, but Suzie likes her meats. Sometimes this seems like a weakness, but she figures if she's attracted to meat, she should eat meat. She won't eat baby animals, no veal or kid or lamb, but adult animals are fair game. Mostly she eats seafood, which doesn't trouble her. Fish and shellfish are alien enough not to arouse her sympathies.

Breakfast finished, Suzie cleans her dishes and puts them in the drainer and then fills Mr. Boots' food dish and wonders where he's gone off to. Usually he's all over her when she's doing her morning exercises, but today he has been absent. She got her cat companion through her non-profit, and so far he's been a treasure. Sometimes she imagines him going through chakra exercises along with her, aligning himself with the world.

She locks up the house and heads out to the carport and her Honda Civic, which starts up right away, as always. Suzie doesn't have a flair for things mechanical, so it's always a pleasure to have the machines in her life acting properly. It's a low-maintenance, highly dependable car, and though she thinks of replacing it with a Prius sometimes, so far she hasn't make good on this threat. There's no traffic on her street, and she backs out of the driveway and heads off to work. In a few minutes she's on the freeway, heading south, and with plenty of time to spare. The food is sitting pleasantly in her belly, and she feels contrite that she so often abuses her survival chakra. The aftertaste of the sausage still fills her mouth, and it's a delightful taste that makes her salivate.

For ten minutes she navigates the heavy traffic southward, worrying about being late, weaving in and out of the lanes and keeping one eye out for cops. But the police seem to be otherwise occupied today, and she makes good time. It's about a half hour drive to her office, and so far she's doing fine.

Then something alarming happens. There's a big silver tanker truck in the far right lane, the slow lane, chugging up a hill with Suzie and about a thousand other people. It's amazing how many cars there are on the freeway in the morning; San Diego has about three million inhabitants and it seems like they're all on Suzie's stretch of freeway. This silver tanker suddenly pulls into the left lane, tires screeching as it accelerates, and now it's right next to Suzie.

She taps the brakes to let it get in front of her, but she's too slow, and now the tanker lurches into Suzie's lane. It's moving really fast to the left, and suddenly the rear end of the tanker slams into the front end of Suzie's Civic, and sparks fly. A spray of some brownish liquid splashes over the hood and windshield of the Civic, and the sparks ignite it. The front end of Suzie's car are covered with flames and thick, grey smoke. Heat begins blasting inside the car, and Suzie, who is terrified, has enough presence of mind to turn off the vents to the outside air. The blast of heat stops.

Everything starts happening very, very quickly.

She punches the brakes, but the front end of the Civic is trapped under the rear bumper of the tanker, and the Civic is dragged along the freeway. Flames boil and flare on the hood of Suzie's car, and the windshield suddenly crazes with cracks. It's getting hot inside the Civic, roasty toasty warm, and Suzie's heart is beating fast and wild as she desperately turns the steering wheel hard to left and right in an effort to free her car from the tanker. Flames are covering the rear end of the tanker now, and dully Suzie wonders if it is going to explode. Her heart is beating so hard her whole body is moving to its rhythm. She's going to be roasted alive, here inside her car, and she gets the image of a crab in a pot of hot water.

With a great jerk the tanker truck scoots over into the right lane, dragging Suzie's Civic with it. More brown fluid sluices over Suzie's hood and up the windshield, and she can hear the roar of the flames. It's now quite hot inside the Civic, and Suzie is sweating like a pig. She can't think straight, and she taps the brakes a few times and is rewarded with screeching from the front wheels, and more sparks between the Civic and the tanker truck. She is scared out of her mind. The fire is burning and the front end of the Civic is trapped and more brown fluid is spattering onto the hood of her car and catching fire.

_This asshole is going to blame me for this_ , she thinks. _He's going to say I rear-ended him._

The tanker shudders back to the right again, taking Suzie's car along for the ride, and now they're in the slow lane and moving about twenty miles an hour. The flames on Suzie's car are roiling and leaping and burning deep orange. Suzie screams and twists the steering wheel back and forth, and she dimly notes other cars scooting out of the way all around her. The brown fluid is gushing out of the tanker truck now, all over the highway, and flames surround Suzie's car. Her tires must be on fire, which means they'll burst soon. This is a nightmare. Her world has reduced to flames and the oven that is the inside of the Civic.

She yanks the steering wheel to the right, and suddenly the Civic wrenches free of the tanker truck and leaps down the highway under its own power.

"Son-of-a-bitch!" Suzie howls, and she pulls over to the shoulder of the highway and slams the brakes. The Civic's tires squeal, and the car comes to a halt. Suzie lowers her head to the steering wheel and just breathes, trying to control her thundering heart. The stink of gasoline fills her nose, and she sees that she is sitting in a sea of fire. The tanker truck continues to roll down the highway, spraying burning liquid all over the asphalt, and when it's about a hundred yards down the road it, too, pulls off onto the shoulder. Suzie can't see it very clearly through the flames enveloping the front end of her car, but it looks like the tanker comes to a halt, and the driver jumps down from his cab and flees.

_It's going to explode,_ she thinks. _It's going to take me out._

The inside of the Civic is hotter than hell, and Suzie realizes she is most likely going to die. It's super-hot in the car, and she's going to die of the heat, if the fire itself doesn't get her first. So far the windshield is holding, but how long can that continue? She turns her head toward the highway and sees flames everywhere.

Well, it's been a good run. I got fifty-one years. I hope it's not too painful, to burn up.

Suzie leans the seat all the way back and just lays there, breathing the heated air. Sweat is pouring down her skin, and she wonders how much sweat her body can generate before it runs out of water. She takes one last look around at the reddish-orange flames and the black smoke and then puts her head down and closes her eyes. She's scared now, scared of how much it's going to hurt to burn, scared at this miserable way of leaving the world behind. Her heart is still pounding like a fury, and she starts to cry. _I don't want to die this way, like a turkey in an oven. I always thought I'd die peacefully in bed._ The unfairness of it strikes her like a blow, and she sobs now, all out, and more water runs down her cheeks.

There is a dull popping sound from the front of the car, and the whole Civic jerks a little, and she thinks, _There goes one of the front tires. In a minute it's going to be my flesh bursting from this heat._

The roar of the fire all around her sounds like rain on a tin roof, and she feels herself calm down as she listens to the steady noise. The heat inside the car is becoming downright painful, and she knows this will be the worst of it, when the heat first gets to her and starts killing her. _This is going to be bad. Please, let me be strong enough to die with dignity._ The stink of gasoline is very strong now, and it makes her a bit dizzy. She keeps her eyes closed and takes shallower breaths, but she gets even dizzier, and she thinks, _This is mercy. I'll pass out from these fumes before I burn up._

Then something happens, there is a tiny spark of energy from her survival chakra and a little burst of hope. It is so small that she doesn't notice it at first, until it happens a second time and gets her attention. For several hot and sweaty seconds she lays still, marveling at the signal. Her survival chakra is talking to her, it is communicating in the pure language of the chakras. It wants her to listen up.

"What do you want?" she says aloud, but in the blast of the flames she can't hear herself speak.

The chakra spins, as chakras do, and it releases energy, and the other six chakras in Suzie's body are energized by the survival chakra and also spin. The heat and gasoline stink recede a little bit. There is a satisfied feeling centered on Suzie's butt, where the survival chakra is based. Suzie opens her eyes and sees a nightmare of red flames burning all over the hood and windshield of her car. Clouds of black smoke rise from the flames into the sky, and the windshield is slowly but surely caving in as it melts. Suzie doesn't have long to figure out what the chakras want with her. Her heart has slowed down a good bit, but her system is still flooded with fight or flight chemicals, and she wants to get up and run, anywhere, but she knows that to open the door of the car would be suicide.

"Can I use you guys to survive the fire?" she asks, and her survival chakra sparkles a little, which she takes to be an affirmative.

She rolls over onto her back and closes her eyes. She starts breathing, centering herself in her body, willing the chakras to listen to her. Her crown chakra is still trying to do its own thing, but the others are listening to her need. That isn't good enough. She coos to her crown chakra, trying to bring it into alignment, stretching her neck from side to side to center it.

Her survival chakra glitters, throwing off energy, and her sex chakra, her power chakra, her heart chakra, her communications chakra and her mind's eye all line up and begin to hum. Her crown chakra stubbornly refuses to join the party. It is blocked, obstinate and not at all subtle, and she squeezes her other chakras and gets them to send energy upward. She has to be so careful here. She is poorly connected at the survival and heart chakras, that's where she's weakest, and she can't afford to overwork these two energy centers. She can try to overwhelm her crown chakra, but that's dangerous. It could block completely and be out for days, and in her current circumstances that means death.

The whiff of gasoline comes back, hard and strong, and Suzie's head spins. She forgets what she's doing, and her survival chakra sends up a flare of energy that gets the other chakras to send up their own flares. Even the crown chakra sends up a feeble spark. The gasoline stench recedes, and Suzie's head clears.

She opens her eyes to center herself in the world, and flames swirl around as a breeze blows over the Civic. Her poor, reliable car, it's trashed! It's a total loss, all because of this jerk-off driving the tanker truck. She wonders if he was drunk or something and then forgets about him as her survival chakra sends out a slow, steady pulse. Her other chakras start pulsing as well, all except her crown chakra, which has decided to quit again.

"Without your energy, I'll die," Suzie says to the crown chakra, but that doesn't seem to convince it. It is still blocked, still refusing to put out energy. Her face feels blistering hot from the flames burning just three feet away, on the other side of the windshield.

She is still sweating heavily, so her body hasn't run out of water yet, and she sees that the car is filling up with grey smoke, which makes her cough. Smoke inhalation. Killer. She is wearing a pullover silk blouse, and she yanks this up over her mouth to protect her from the smoke, but it doesn't help much.

"This smoke is murder," she says to her survival chakra, and it glitters a little. She puts the seat down as low as it will go, and the heat recedes a little. This will buy her some time, but only a little. The windshield is making pinging noises as the glass cracks into smaller and smaller blocks. Suzie isn't scared anymore, she's fighting now and going with the only thing she has, which is her spiritual practice. There are stories they tell at the ashram, tales of chakra miracles. That's what she needs now, a miracle. Nothing less will do. If she can't get her crown chakra to send energy, she'll fry.

"Please," she says to her crown center. "You must pull with the others." She closes her eyes again and visualizes her crown center, glowing pale violet in the light of the burning car, its own light dim and dull because it is blocked.

Then all of a sudden she remembers fighting with Ken, her boyfriend, and the harsh words that were thrown back and forth. She feels her heart chakra shutting down, and her crown chakra, because they were arguing about Suzie's spiritual practices. Ken said,

"It's weird, talking to energy centers in your own body. Like hearing voices or something."

"It's creative, and it's fulfilling," Suzie shot back. It's California, ferchrissakes, what is his problem with Eastern religious practice?

"All I'm saying is, can't you accept a more modern religion? Scientology or something?"

This opens a whole other can of worms, religious proselytizing, and Suzie wasn't having it. "I'm not _interested_ in Scientology. Is that what you are, Ken, a Scientologist? Have you been holding back on me?"

"I've listened to some of the DVDs, read some of the books. It's a modern religion, up-to-date and thoroughly American. Not some weirdo crap from ancient India that's probably outdated by now."

The argument went on, but Suzie in her burning car isn't listening to the word-by-word recounting of the fight. She's feeling her crown chakra shutting down, and her heart chakra, and she knows this is the source of her current troubles. Her heart chakra is used to her having troubles with men, Suzie isn't a natural bonder like some women she knows, and it soon forgave Ken his trespasses. But her crown chakra is still grieving, and that's the source of blockage.

"Ken can be such an asshole," she says to her crown chakra. "He's probably on his way out anyway, after his comments on my spirituality. It's not important what others think of my religion, it's important what _I_ think of it." She visualizes energy moving from her survival chakra up the line of energy centers, to her crown chakra, which glows just a little brighter. Suzie gets the overwhelming desire to just blast her crown chakra with energy and _force_ it open, but she manages to resist this impulse. Coercion is dangerous under any circumstances, and blasting an energy center can open the door to all sorts of imbalances.

Her lips feel dry and cracked, and her face feels like it's blistering from the heat, and the windshield crackles and pops. The air stinks of melting rubber from her car's burning engine, and she knows without opening her eyes that the car has filled with smoke. She starts taking shallow breaths, and a dry, burnt stink enters her nostrils. It almost makes her choke. She doesn't have long now, maybe a minute, and then she'll be hacking and dying of smoke inhalation.

She massages her energy centers and then squeezes them, and energy surges upward toward the blocked center. The positive energy surrounds her crown chakra and sparks it like a defibrillator on a stopped heart. Suzie visualizes the Milky Way galaxy spreading out before her, vast and unknown, home to who knows what civilizations and miracles.

This image works. Her crown chakra opens and begins releasing violet energy, and her seven power centers reach alignment. There is a flood of positive emotion throughout Suzie's body, mind and spirit as the energy centers link up and all begin radiating at the same frequency. The gasoline stench fades away entirely, and Suzie can no longer smell burning rubber. The heat on her face recedes further, and becomes a distant source of warmth.

Her heart chakra falters, and heat soaks Suzie's breasts and torso.

Please don't burn my tits off. Men like my tits.

Suzie massages the heart chakra, gets it going again, and in moments it is radiating like the others and is pushing the heat away.

Then something horrifying happens, there is a great thundering explosion from somewhere ahead of the Civic. A shockwave blasts over the car and hurls it down the road, literally picks it up and throws it like a child's toy. The windshield implodes, and tiny splinters of glass bite into Suzie's suit. She hurls her arms over her face, and the glass shreds the business suit and bites into her flesh in a hundred places. The roar of the shockwave knocks all thoughts out of Suzie's head and all emotions from her heart, and she is simply slammed down the highway.

The Civic scootches along the ground and nearly tips over, knocking Suzie all over the place as her chakras radiate alarm and fear. Her survival chakra is shimmering bright red and is leading the other energy centers, rallying as Suzie moans and groans. Her car settles heavily to the ground, and Suzie dares to open her eyes.

The fires are out. Thin black smoke rises from the hood of the car, and the highway is no longer on fire. It must have been the tanker truck, exploding. She doesn't want to sit up and see how many other cars were taken out by the explosion. Hundreds, probably. God help these poor people.

Heat ripples across the hood of Suzie's Civic. The car itself is filled with grey smoke, thick and choking, but in the radiation from Suzie's seven chakras she doesn't smell it. It's being barred from entering her lungs by the energy work of the chakras. The sounds of superheated metal assault Suzie's ear, popping and pinging noises and a grinding sound from somewhere in her car's engine compartment. Poor Civic, it's totaled! She wonders if they'll bill her when they come to take it away, or if the county will simply remove it to the junk yard. She'll need a new car; it's time for a Prius.

Her whole body hurts. Her energy centers are all lit up and blazing away, and she turns her head to look at her car door and sees that the interior detailing has all melted away. She holds up her left hand and sees hundreds of tiny blisters on her skin and scores of lacerations, some of them two or three inches long. She tries to look at her face in the rearview mirror, but the mirror casing has melted, and the mirror is nowhere to be seen. The energy from Suzie's chakras burns inside her, protecting her from the smoke and the heated metal of the dead car. The inside of the vehicle looks like a nuke site. Everything is blackened and burnt. The passenger seat is completely melted and burned up. There is still a little windshield over Suzie's head, but most of it has blown apart. Only the driver's side seat is still intact, under Suzie's body, where her chakras have protected it.

In her suit coat pocket her cell phone rings, and she reaches into the pocket and fishes it out and hits the button.

"Suzie, this is Cheryl Ann. You're late for your review. Were you going to call us with an update, or what?"

Suzie listens to the voice babbling away and feels for a moment a feeling of severe disconnection from reality. Cheryl Ann is someone from another life time, a million miles away. She's Suzie's boss, senior management, and in the world that Suzie has entered, bosses have no place.

"This is Suzie," she mumbles. "I've been in a bad accident. People were killed. It'll be on the news tonight, the tanker truck exploding on the freeway. I won't be in to work today, I have to go to the hospital to be treated for burns."

"What? Burns?! Are you okay?"

"No, I'm burned over much of my body. I have to go now. I'll call when I can."

"Well, gosh, take care of yourself," Cheryl Ann gushes, but Suzie is already hanging up. She puts the cell phone away and takes a deep breath and immediately begins to hack and cough. She concentrates on her breathing and takes several quick, shallow breaths and allows the chakras to guide her. Her eyes water, and the inside of her lungs feels like char and ash, but she gets her breathing under control, and her sizzling chakras block out the smoke once more.

Suzie is exhausted. Her body feels limp and worn out, and her skin aches. There is nothing in her mind at all, just a blank. She feels blasted and etched clean. She settles back into the melted seat and closes her eyes once more, and breathes, and lets the chakras take her along. In the distance she hears lots of sirens, and she knows they're coming for her.

She's still meditating when the fire engine sprays her heated car with cold water and cools it enough for the firefighters to get in close. The water bursts into the car through the melted driver's side window and soaks Suzie, who is now lamenting the loss of her nice grey suit.

"This'll be a bad one," she hears one of the firemen say as he pulls the driver's side door open.

Then the firemen see Suzie's open eyes, focused on them, and see the countless tiny blisters on her face and hands, and see the blood all over her from the exploded windshield.

"What the hell?" says one of the firemen, and then they're all shouting, and a pleasantly big, strong man gingerly lifts her from the ruined driver's seat and takes her to a waiting ambulance. She manages to remain conscious as the ambulance makes its way through the city streets to the hospital, but she's suddenly bone weary and can't respond to the hospital staff when they try talking to her.

"Well, she's burned, and it looks like glass splinters in her arms and torso, but she's come through all this in amazingly good shape," says a nurse, as she shines a light into Suzie's eyes.

Suzie smiles, and that's when her energy centers stop spinning, stop radiating, stop saving her life. She goes unconscious, and she stays that way for seven days.

When she comes to the doctor tells her it's a miracle she survived. Thirty-four people died in the explosion of the chemical tanker, and nearly a hundred more were seriously wounded. There was a traffic cam on the freeway that caught footage of the tanker pulling into Suzie's Civic, and they caught the driver, who was stoned on PCP, as he tried to escape over the border into Mexico. The public is howling for blood, and he's going to prison for the rest of his life.

"Rest now," the doctor, a tiny Asian woman, says to Suzie. "You've got first-degree burns over fifty percent of your body and glass cuts all over. We don't suspect you'll be disfigured, other than a lot of small scars, but you'll be in pain for the next couple of weeks. You can tell us your story later, when you've got your strength back."

So Suzie recuperates for the next week in the hospital, and Cheryl Ann comes to visit her and tells her that senior management found her blameless in this matter of her colleague's accusations. So now Suzie will sue him. But all that is for later. She is given time off from work to rest and heal, and she lays in bed and practices her meditations.

It was just as she thought that fateful morning, as she made a healthy breakfast for herself and took the time to eat it. Take care of your survival chakra, and it will take care of you.

And when Suzie gets out of the hospital she writes out her story and sends it to her favorite consciousness magazine, which prints her account of her miraculous alignment, and how it saved her life.

## Jumper

When I was a young man I moved to San Francisco to go to college. I liked the Bay Area and stayed on after school, for more than twenty years. San Francisco was good to me, but it's a very expensive city that can be hard on its inhabitants. Every year more than a hundred people commit suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, and the other Bay Area bridges as well. In the story that follows a young woman leaps off the Golden Gate and survives the fall, to be picked up by some young men in a yacht who aren't what they appear to be. The young woman will be drawn into a web of magic and divine judgment, and it's anyone's guess how it will all end.

Halfway down to the water I rediscovered my desire to live. The wind was rushing up past me, blowing my spring dress in all directions, and I could see the water coming, black and frothy, choppy with the stiff breeze. It was ten in the evening and dark enough that it was hard to see, but the lights of the city reflected off the water, and I could tell it was coming up at me. And I didn't want to die any more, I wanted another chance. Another boyfriend, another life. More time.

Instead, I fell. They say that in the last few moments your life flashes before your eyes, but for me there was nothing at all in that time. I didn't think about Ken or his new girlfriend, I didn't think of my parents, I didn't think about my little brother. I saw the wave tops getting closer and closer, and I screamed, and that noise was in my ears when I slammed into the water.

I expected to die right there, because when you fall several hundred feet into water it's supposed to be like hitting a brick wall at seventy miles an hour. I expected to go *splat*. Instead I plunged deep into the drink and was momentarily confused as to who I was and what I was doing. All I knew was, I couldn't breathe.

It wasn't possible to tell up from down for a long time, and by then my lungs were beginning to burn. I began floating upward, and I took long strokes of the arms and burst out of the water to the sweet, chilly air of San Francisco in spring time. There was a white boat not ten feet away from me, a sailboat with a long blue sail extended heavenward. There were men on the deck, calling out to me, and I shouted out and swam for their boat, and they dropped a life preserver in the water. I put it on, and held onto it, and they hauled me up.

"Are you all right?" one of the men asked. There were three of them on deck. I could barely make them out in the darkness. There were small lights on the boat, in front and in back, and a slightly bigger light above the wheel house, but the three men were shadowed and dark.

"I'm better now," I said. "I don't want to die anymore."

"Here," said a second man. "Put this on. You're wet." I noticed a thick accent to his words, same as the first man, and wondered where they were from. He handed me a blanket, and I pulled it around me. It felt good to keep out the chill, it really was a cool night. The Bay Area doesn't get snow, but it does get cold in the winter, and on into spring. There's Mark Twain's famous line about the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco, and I find that to be true. Parts of the city warm up nicely, but out in the Avenues, and in the Presidio by the Golden Gate Bridge I'd just jumped off of, the fog and wind off the ocean keep it cold.

"Glad you guys came along," I said. "I don't think I could have swam ashore from here."

"Water's too cold for swimming," said the third man, and there was that accent again.

"Where you guys from?" I asked.

"Iraq," said the first speaker. "I'm Hamdi. This is Jamal, and here is Khalil. Abdul is on the wheel. We're all from Iraq. Bloody mess over there these days, so we immigrated here. We live on the boat. Do you want us to drop you off on the piers?"

"I don't know what I want," I said. "I just wanted to die, but now I don't. But I don't want to return to my old life, either. That's done with. I'm Katarina, by the way."

"We sometimes have a female on board the boat, it raises the tone a bit," said Hamdi. "We get a bit raunchy, four guys alone on a boat. Blow a lot of dope, too, if you're interested."

"What kind of dope?" I asked.

"Hashish, marijuana, opium!" said Jamal. "Smoking in the hookah pipe. Very civilized. Get your buzz on!" He sounded pleased with himself.

Khalil, the smallest of the three men, took off into the cabin and came back a few moments later with a water pipe. He put it down next to me and set it up with hot coals and a hit of hashish; I had smelled that sweet tang before. Hashish was still illegal, but probably not for much longer. First marijuana had been legalized, next they said it was hash. The legalization fad was catching fire, and no one knew where it would stop.

I took the pipe Khalil offered and put it to my lips, sucked in some sweet smoke. I liked the taste of the hash in my mouth and liked the tickle it put into my lungs. Within seconds I felt the gentle rush in my veins. My head grew softer, and sounds became muffled. I loved the men on the boat, they had rescued me. I felt like fucking all of them, and giving them hashish kisses. Hash just effects me that way, it makes me horny. Ken had me try hash, and he liked the effects, so we smoked a lot of it. It was expensive, but he was from a family with money, and we always had plenty of dope.

"Better?" asked Hamdi.

"Much," I said.

"I was saying, sometimes we take on a female crew member. Keeps things more sane. Would you like to come along with us?"

"I'd like to fuck all of you," I said. No point keeping it to yourself, right?

All three of them laughed. "We like the way you think," said Khalil. "But we don't have sex with humans. Strictly forbidden."

"Humans," I laughed. "What are you guys, then?"

"Something else," said Jamal. "Something older."

"Sure," I chuckled. Now I knew what they'd been doing before they brought me on board—they'd been getting hammered, too.

"Do you want to help us make the night runs?" asked Hamdi.

"Where do you go?"

"Mostly we hang out by the bridges. Lots of jumpers, off the bridges."

"Jumpers," I repeated. The hash was making me a little stupid. Horny and stupid. Like I said, my former boyfriend really liked what it did to me.

"We're a special boat," said Jamal. "We're rescuers."

"Carquinez Bridge, in three and a half hours," called a voice from the cabin. Abdul, then, sounding off. I wanted to fuck him, too; mustn't forget the boat's pilot in all the frivolities.

"All right, blondie, we're on," said Hamdi. "Do you want off the boat, or stay on as crew?"

"Crew," I said. It was pure desperation talking, a lack of direction and need to do _something_ with myself. "What's the pay like on board this tub?"

"Pay is in food, water, lodging and dope," said Jamal. I really liked the men's accent, it made me even friskier. I reached over and stroked Khalil's cheek, and he laughed good-naturedly.

"Kisses are always good," he said and kissed me roundly on the mouth. This made me happy, and I sat there, smooching him, until Hamdi cleared his throat and said,

"Positions." The three of them took to messing with the sail, and Abdul turned the boat, and we shot through the waves. Spray flew up and spattered on my face, and the wind grew downright freezing. I pulled the blanket tighter around me and puffed on the hookah, which stayed even on the deck in spite of our plowing through the water at crazy angles.

"We have time," said Hamdi half an hour later. "But we always like to arrive early."

"Are you on a police scanner?" I asked, and then I took another hit of the hashish. I had no idea at all where we were. It was dark, the lights of San Francisco were shining behind us, and there seemed to be a lot of other boats out on the water. We skated right past these, sometimes close enough to see people on their decks, and I hoped we wouldn't hit them.

"No, this is special to this boat, the jumper alerts. Abdul knows. He always knows."

"How does he know?" I asked.

"He was a jumper himself, a long time ago. From the minaret of a mosque. He dove headfirst into the stone court below but survived. We're tough to kill. Ever since his failed attempt, he just knows where the jumpers will be."

"A lot of people jump off the bridge," I said.

"The official estimates are a jumper every three days, but it's more like two jumpers a day," said Hamdi. "Most of the bodies sink or are eaten by great whites. Most jumpers leap off at night. Why did you jump, Katarina?"

Now I looked down at the deck, not really wanting to go there. "No point anymore," I said. "My boyfriend cozied up to another woman, and he dumped me. Seemed like it was all over."

"Stay with us a while," said Hamdi. "You'll get your enthusiasm for life back."

I smiled at him, and he nodded and then went back to talk with the other guys.

Two hours later we were beneath the Carquinez Bridge, sailing back and forth in the water. I didn't know if the bridge had a pedestrian walkway like the Golden Gate, but according to Abdul someone had worked their way out onto the span and was going to jump.

"A man this time," called out Abdul.

"One hundred fifty six feet to the water, he might survive," said Jamal.

"Abdul doesn't know who will survive?" I teased.

"We only know that there will be a jumper, we don't know their fate until we see it," said Jamal. "Alas, we cannot save them all."

"Here he comes," shouted Abdul. There was something big rushing down out of the night sky, and then a heavy splash twenty feet off the left side of the boat. We slowly approached, and Khalil said,

"No good, he went head-first. He's pulp. Let's go."

"We're not going to reel him in?" I asked. "Maybe his family would like a body to bury."

"The dead are beyond us," said Jamal. "They are not our concern."

The boat pulled away from the floating corpse, and I saw in the lights of the back of the boat that the body sank and was lost. I felt depressed that we'd waited for hours for this guy, and he was dead on arrival.

"Can't you guys phone the bridge authorities and warn them there's a jumper?" I said. "Cut it off before it starts?"

"We are governed by strict rules," said Hamdi. "We have foreknowledge of the jumpers, but we can't intervene in their attempt, only in the aftermath."

"Whose rules are those?" I growled at him.

"A higher authority than us," he replied mildly.

That was the only jumper that night, and we went back to San Francisco and docked at some pier, and the guys said to rest, and have something to eat. Khalil was the cook, and he served up spicy chicken and hummus and grilled tomatoes and green peppers, and it was delicious. I discovered I was starving and ate every bite and had seconds. Khalil laughed. "It seems your appetite has returned," he said.

"It's the hash. Makes me hungry."

"Oh, yes. The hash." He grinned and gave me a plate full of seconds, then he spirited away the dirty dishes and brought me a fresh blanket.

"You have a cabin downstairs," he said. "We guys sleep on the deck. That way we can watch for trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

"People coming to steal from the boat. They'll make off with anything that's not nailed down."

Hamdi took me down the short stairway and showed me a tiny room with a microscopic bunk in it. It was cramped, but I was exhausted, and the hash was knocking me out, and I fell asleep.

The next day I properly met my rescuers, in the clear light. Hamdi was the oldest, about thirty years old, and then there was Abdul, who was one ugly cuss, at about twenty-eight. Jamal was about twenty-five, and Khalil was the youngest; I guessed him to be about twenty, about my age. He was black, and he carried himself with pride, and I took an immediate liking to him. He fed us breakfast, and we pushed off from the pier and sailed around the bay for a while, just chilling and smoking dope. Khalil and I smooched some more, despite some mild scolding from Hamdi, who seemed to find it shocking that Khalil was cozying up to me.

Over the next few days we developed a routine. By day we slept, and in the evenings we went to San Francisco's restaurants for dinner, where the guys insisted on picking up my tab.

"Remember," said Hamdi. "You get no pay with us, just food and lodging."

"Pay is forbidden," grumbled Khalil.

"By the same authorities you were telling me about?" I asked.

"Yes," said Jamal, resentfully. "We have to be respectful."

I decided to keep my own counsel about the authorities. I didn't see why the guys couldn't intervene in suicide attempts, if they knew they were going to happen. It seemed cruel, or at least negligent. Who handled suicides, Health and Human Services? I couldn't believe the guys couldn't phone in suicide attempts.

At night we trolled the bay, trying to rescue jumpers. There are half a dozen major bridges in the Bay Area, and a number of small ones where people jump in hoping to drown. The guys explained that ninety percent of the time the fall killed the jumpers, and that first week we didn't have a single live rescue. They said my job was to comfort the living, and they promised they'd show me the ropes, if we ever got a live jumper.

Hamdi suggested I contact my family and let them know I was all right, but I didn't feel like it. My old life, where I lived with my parents and partied a lot, was over, and my new life hadn't yet begun. My parents were going to call the cops and have them look for me, and they'd suspect foul play, but that was better than admitting I had jumped off the Golden Gate. That would just freak them out, and after that it would be shrinks, hospitals, therapists. Besides, I liked the guys and really liked Khalil. Things had started out bad with the fall but were getting better. I just had to stick with it for a while, try again.

During my second week on the boat, we had a jumper survive. This was off the Dumbarton Bridge, only an eighty-five foot fall. He dropped down in the night, screaming as he came, and hit the water feet-first and at a slight angle. For a while he didn't come up, and I wondered if he had drowned, but then his head broke the surface, and he looked around in confusion as we pulled up and Jamal threw him a life preserver.

"Now we see if we can help," Hamdi said to me. "If he comes aboard, just draw him out. Get him talking about why he jumped."

"Hold on!" I called down, and he clutched the life preserver. The guys hauled him up, and I said, "Welcome to the _Second Chance_. Get your breath. Here's a blanket, it's cold out." He was a white guy, about thirty years old, with short brown hair and looking like a drowned rat. I handed him the blanket, and he stared at it a while and then accepted it and wrapped it around himself.

I talked with him for a few minutes, but he was pretty uncommunicative. Just kept staring at me like he'd never seen a woman before. Finally Hamdi came over and said,

"Must have been a woman, huh?"

He lowered his head and stared at the deck for a long time, then he said, "Lost my job. Couldn't find another one. I'm deep in debt, and there's no one to help me."

"What do you do for a living?" Hamdi asked. Something was wrong with Hamdi's eyes, they were glowing in the dark. Glowing amber, like a ghost or something.

"Auto mechanic."

"Where do you live?"

"Hayward."

"You're in luck. Trujillo's Wrecking Yard in Hayward is looking for a skilled mechanic. Pay would start off kind of low, but he'll scale you up fast if you do a good job."

"What's your name?" I asked.

He gave me that vacant stare again, and it made me shiver. But this time he said, "Brian. Brian Petraeus."

"We're going to put in on that side of the Bay," Hamdi said. "We can drop you off."

"What's that fucked-up accent?" Brian said.

"Iraq," said Hamdi. "We're immigrants here. Just the latest, I guess."

"Fuck. Trujillo's Wrecking Yard huh? I've been to every auto garage in Hayward, but I didn't think of the wrecking yards. I guess I can go talk to him."

Hamdi called out in Arabic to Abdul, who changed the boat's direction. Brian didn't say anything else, and Khalil offered him hot tea, which he declined. We pulled up at some low piers, and the guys tied off the boat and got Brian ashore.

"Thanks. Thanks for listening to my whining," he said. "Good luck in America."

"So far it's all working out," Hamdi said. Then Brian took off down the pier, and that was the last we saw of him.

Several months passed, and summer arrived. We got to the scene of a lot of dead jumpers, and we pulled some live rescues in from the drink. I talked to the live ones and got them to tell me their names and why they jumped, and Hamdi pitched them a job if they were unemployed and the name of a potential lover if they were lovelorn. Each time he gave out this kind of information his eyes glowed amber. I thought it was really noticeable, but it was like the other jumpers couldn't see it or something. At least, no one ever commented on it.

Finally, about three months after I was rescued, Hamdi was at the wheel with Abdul, and it was just me and Jamal on deck. Khalil was off cooking for all of us.

"Hamdi's eyes glow in the dark," I said to Jamal. "That information he comes up with, about who the jumpers should go talk to, it makes his eyes glow amber."

"Yes. Abdul's eyes glow when he's foretelling a jumper, too. You should see Khalil's eyes when he's cooking. Each of us is specialized. My job is the sail. You've noticed how this yacht takes the waves at such a sharp angle but never capsizes? That's my specialty."

"Why do your eyes glow in the dark?" I asked.

"We told you, we're not human. We're the old people, before the children of Adam."

I thought he was jerking my chain, so I didn't say anything to that. We continued to rescue jumpers, half a dozen of them over the next month, then something unusual happened.

It was the middle of the day this time, and we were out by the Golden Gate Bridge because Abdul said there was going to be a daylight jumper. We had been cutting back and forth under the bridge for an hour and a half, and then Abdul cried out something in Arabic, and Khalil, who was sitting near me, looked quite upset.

"That's not right," he groaned to me.

"What's not right?"

"Abdul says it's a young mother on the bridge, and she's going to jump with her infant baby. They'll almost certainly both die. The baby for sure will."

This upset me, too, and I said, "Goddamnit, call it in. Call the bridge authorities and stop her, Khalil! Intervene, damn it."

He turned and called out in Arabic, and there was excitement from the other men and a flurry of comments in Arabic. Khalil said something decisive and stood up and began pacing back and forth in the boat. "If we call it in she'll just say she wasn't going to jump, and the moment the authorities turn their back she'll be over the side. No. We have to do this the old way, our way. Damn the authorities."

He shouted in Arabic again, and Hamdi came to talk to him. When the guys were around me they tended to speak English, but this conversation took place in Arabic and was quite heated. I had never seen Hamdi so worked up. He made short chopping motions as he spoke, but Khalil stood firm. He said to me, "I'm going to intervene. If the authorities come, we'll handle them."

"The authorities _will_ come," snapped Hamdi. "They'll be quite angry with us."

"Fuck them," said Khalil.

"Right on!" I said. "It's about time we did something to stop these people from jumping in the first place. Fuck their stupid rules."

Khalil smiled at me. "We're not going to stop her from jumping. We'll follow the rules that far. But I'm going to stop her from hitting the water."

"What do you mean?" I said, but he wouldn't say anything more on the matter. We stopped in the water at the spot Abdul identified as the best place to wait, and we watched the other boats all skimming the waves around us. There were a lot of boats out on the bay that day, and I thought about the strange mission of the _Second Chance_ , and the guys, and the way we helped people. I was proud to be part of all that; it was a good job even if they didn't pay me. The food was good, and the cabin was clean and adequate to my needs. The guys even bought me clothes and some jewelry from a Middle Eastern thrift store in Berkeley. All I did was talk to jumpers and smoke dope and smooch with Khalil, which seemed to make Hamdi nervous but pleased me. But even Khalil wouldn't have sex with me.

"It's forbidden," he would say, apologetically. But the smooching was pretty satisfying, and so I didn't complain. Khalil was a great kisser.

So we sat there in the water, and then I saw someone come over the railing way the hell above me. It had to be our jumper. She was too far away to make out anything, just a body falling over the railing, and plummeting downward. Khalil raised his right hand and said something in a language I heard the guys use only rarely, something raw and powerful. The jumper slowed down and began to drift down to the water.

"What's happening?" I gasped, and Khalil grinned.

"Old people, remember?" he said. "Magic."

"Sure," I puffed. Of course it was nonsense, but there she was, just dropping gently down, her dress rippling in the wind, her arms crossed over her chest, clutching a little bundle. She cried out then and shouted,

"Oh, God!" and began to cry, and I called up to her, forty feet over my head,

"Hang on, you're almost here!"

Abdul moved the boat a little, and it got right under her, and she descended to the deck and landed lightly on both feet. She was a white girl, about my age, who was probably pretty when her mascara wasn't running from tears and she didn't look like hell. She looked around in confusion, and I said,

"Welcome on board the _Second Chance._ I'm Katarina, and this is Khalil. We rescue jumpers and get them going again in life. We're glad to see you're okay."

"Why didn't I die?" she moaned, and squeezed the bundle in her hands, which was an infant in a pink blanket. The baby was asleep.

"Are you hungry?" I asked. "We have excellent food on board this boat. Roast chicken, or maybe grilled salmon." Khalil could really work wonders with the food, and I knew he'd have something whipped up in ten minutes.

"Now I have to jump again," she sniveled.

That startled me, and I wanted to slap her hard across the face. "For most people, surviving the jump means a chance to try again," I said fiercely.

She looked terribly desperate as she said, "Life is just one misery after the next. You never get your head above water, it's always horrible! I can't go back to my old life, it's gone, and I don't have the strength to carve out a new life. I just wish I was dead."

Khalil said something soft in that other language of theirs, and then he whistled between his teeth. "She's injured. She's missing part of her soul," he said. "This is an old wound. Probably a demon took it when she was just a baby. She's been suicidal her whole life, this is just her latest attempt. Here we can intervene without pissing off the authorities. Fucking demons." He went downstairs and was gone a while, and I talked with the young woman, but she was uncommunicative.

Finally Khalil came back with a little bit of clay, which he shaped into a star, and handed to the woman. She stared dumbly at it and said, "What's this?"

"Just take it. You'll feel better."

She shifted the baby in her arms and took the little bit of clay, and then she swooned and nearly dropped the infant. I reached out to balance her and saw that the bit of clay was gone from her hand, disappeared.

The girl began to cry then, loud, wracking sobs, and she said, "He came and pinched me, the fiery man, and I was hurt, and I've tried to kill myself six times, and it never works out." Tears leaked down from her eyes, and Khalil said,

"Here, sit down and relax. All that is over now." He called out in Arabic, and Hamdi came over to us.

"What is your name?" Hamdi said.

"Alice." Her baby was blissfully asleep, all the shifting around hadn't woken it up.

"Well, Alice, what about the baby's father?"

"He abandoned us. He decided he wasn't a family man. He fled California entirely, and he left us with nothing. I have no job and no way of paying the bills. My parents won't help me, and my brother is two thousand miles away."

"What are your skills?" he asked.

"I used to be a house cleaner, through an agency. It paid all right. Then I got married, and the baby's father insisted I didn't work any more. That was a year and a half ago. I don't know if I can go back to that."

"You're in luck," he said, and his eyes began to glow. "There's a man named Adrian Cane who is looking for a wife. This is in San Francisco, just look him up on the internet. The two of you should get along well, you're quite compatible. He is impotent but wants children. He would be glad to see to you and your baby. He's not wealthy, but he would be a loving husband and an excellent father to your baby."

Alice looked startled at this. She said, "How do you know this?"

"Ancient magic," Hamdi smiled, an answer that had always made me laugh, but I wasn't laughing any more. I wanted some answers, and I was impatient as we docked in San Francisco and got Alice settled. Hamdi took her down the piers and disappeared with her, and half an hour later he returned, looking tired.

"Khalil, the authorities are really going to be angry with you," he said. "That was two expected in heaven today, and they didn't arrive."

"I don't care," said a defiant Khalil. "Katarina is right, we have to do more for these poor people. We can do so much more, and we're hobbled by all these stupid rules."

Hamdi didn't say anything else, he just went into the wheel house with Abdul. That afternoon I smoked hash and smooched with Khalil, and that evening we went to a rescue off the Bay Bridge, but the jumper landed on his belly in the water and burst like a balloon. We left the corpse to the mercies of the currents and went on our way.

It was the next afternoon that everything went to hell. We were on our way to the Dumbarton Bridge, when Abdul let out a loud curse and a burst of Arabic. Hamdi was on deck with me and immediately said,

"Trouble. The authorities have arrived."

I was sitting cross-legged on deck and stood up to see what Abdul was cursing about. In front of the _Second Chance_ was a person, standing on the water. Not on an island, not in a boat, but on the water.

"What kind of person is that, an old person like you guys?"

"No. One of God's people."

Our boat pulled up alongside the standing person, who was a tall figure wearing a white robe that went down to his ankles. The robe had long sleeves and a hood, and the figure's face was hidden in this. I could see immediately that this person wasn't like you and me. He glowed with a soft white light, and his hands were milky white. As the boat came to him he walked up the air like it was a stairway and stepped onto the deck.

It was then that I noticed his wings. Coming out the back of the robe were two wings, feathery and glowing pale white. A golden halo floated above his head. I felt a deep, resonating spiritual feeling like I've only felt a couple of times in my life, and I found myself on bended knee before him.

"You have interfered," he said in a surprisingly lilting voice. I expected a deep bass boom, but it was like the voice of a boy just going into puberty, high-pitched and kind of squeaky.

"There were special circumstances," said Hamdi. Jamal and Khalil came up on deck to stand next to Hamdi, their arms crossed and defiant looks on their faces.

"You know the rules. This is the second time you have interfered in the deep works. This cannot be tolerated."

"The jumper had an infant with her," said Hamdi. "This was not a suicide. It was a murder."

The glowing figure's hand moved faster than I could see, and an instant later there was a sword flashing in the light, and blood was everywhere. Blood sprayed out in an arc from Khalil's chest, and he fell to the deck, his eyes rolled up.

"The fate is deportation," cried Hamdi. "Not death!"

"Second offense," said the glowing man. "Death of the offender."

Hamdi's eyes began to glow, and so did Jamal's, and they lifted their arms, and the glowing man staggered backwards and fell off the boat into the bay.

"We'll complain to God," snarled Hamdi. I didn't hear a response from the glowing man, and Abdul did something in the wheel house, and the boat took off through the water. I turned to Khalil, who was fading away even as I watched. His body turned to smoke and drifted off, and the blood that was all over the deck became mist.

Hamdi made a sound of grief and picked up a large red gemstone that was left where Khalil had been. He put this in a pocket and said something to Jamal, and the two of them spoke in Arabic for a while.

I couldn't believe Khalil was dead. It happened so fast, it was just a shock. I could feel his lips on mine, the expert kisser, and could hear his anger at the authorities.

"Who was that glowing man?" I said at last.

Hamdi turned to me. "That was one of God's own angels," he said. "Even our kind must answer to the angels. They are greater than ourselves."

"He should have deported Khalil," said Jamal. "Sent him back to our kind in Iraq."

"We'll take it to God," said Hamdi, but he didn't sound too hopeful.

We went on to the Dumbarton Bridge and rescued an elderly woman who jumped from the middle of the span, way out in the bay.

"I have cancer, I'm rotting to death," she said to my questions. "The chemo isn't doing anything to help. I don't want to die like that."

Hamdi's eyes glowed. "You're in luck. There's an herbalist in Palo Alto, Martinette Chiraque. A French woman. She can successfully treat your cancer with natural remedies. She can give you a few more years, anyway."

The old woman looked at Hamdi suspiciously as he jotted down the information onto a green sticky note. "How much would she charge?" she said. "I'm not made of money, you know."

"If you can ask, you can afford her," Hamdi growled.

The _Second Chance_ landed at a long pier, and we hustled the old woman off the boat and into a taxi cab. Hamdi paid her fare back to her home in Palo Alto and then came back to the boat.

"She didn't really want to die," he said to me. "She was hoping to be rescued. She just wanted attention to her plight."

I was crying by this time, crying for Khalil and wondering why his body had just disappeared.

"I can't do this anymore," I said. "You guys are too weird, and I miss Khalil. I don't like the crazy rules that say we can't phone in the jumpers and that we have to leave their bodies in the water if they die. We're too restricted. Khalil was right to rebel. The rules are fucked."

"Give us a little longer," Hamdi begged. "Would you be willing to cook for us for a few weeks?"

So I became the new cook on board, and I cooked what Khalil had made and did a decent job of it, I suppose, though my heart wasn't in it. The guys really liked chicken dishes, and I served up roast chicken and fried chicken and chicken steaks and grilled chicken and chicken dumplings and shredded chicken and blackened chicken and chicken cooked in a dozen other ways. There was a book of Middle Eastern recipes in the kitchen, with Khalil's handwritten notes in the margins, and I prepared my dishes out of that. The kitchen was small but complete, with a propane stove and microwave. There was even an oven which I used to bake and roast.

The guys talked about Khalil a lot in the days after his death. They said he came from a desert tribe in western Iraq and had wanted to come to America and see San Francisco, which he'd heard of from an old sailor he met with a caravan somewhere. Their voices were heavy with sorrow, and I cried sometimes when thinking about him. It wasn't just the kissing, it was the fact that he was one of us, part of the team.

"That angel was an asshole," I said. "Are you really going to take it to God, Hamdi? Can you do that?"

"I already did. He said Khalil was flouting the rules and was duly punished. That was all He said. There are no appeals."

I wondered what it was like to make a request of God and get an actual answer.

"Who are you guys, really?" I asked them. This was at the end of a long night when we had gotten to three dead jumpers, no rescues that evening. The work had wrung me out, and I was feeling low. "What do they call you?"

"Really?" said Jamal. "You know we're made of smoke and fire, just as the children of Adam are made of clay, and you don't know our name?"

"That is shocking ignorance," said Abdul, who hardly ever spoke.

"Come on, don't scold me. You're not angels, but you've got magic in you, I know that much. What are you?"

"We are the djinn folk," said Hamdi. "We were the first children of God. We are less than angels and greater than mortals."

"Djinn are genies?" I said.

"That is correct," said Jamal.

"Can you grant wishes?"

"Those are the princes of our kind. We're the more humble of our folk," said Hamdi. "Ours are lesser magics."

"Why are there so many stupid rules?"

"They're meant to keep us from growing arrogant and asserting ourselves over mortals," said Jamal. "Our kind typically have little to do with the children of Adam, and that's the way the authorities like it. They tolerate our little boat and its mission so long as we don't do too much. We have petitioned a number of times for expanded powers, but the angels feel we already interfere too much. We rescue something like seventy-five people a year. The angels become annoyed because those people were expected in heaven, so we've thrown off the divine plan."

"As if," grumbled Hamdi.

Abdul laughed. "God sees all things," he said. "But it's the angels who are the enforcers for His laws. They're the ones who deal with everyday matters like rescuing mothers with infants."

"What about that crystal that was left of Khalil?" I said.

"His heartstone," said Hamdi. "Now we send it back to his people, and in a few centuries another Khalil will be born from it. Reincarnation, of a sort. But he will be raised by different parents and won't be the same Khalil as the one we knew. Someone entirely new."

No more questions occurred to me from then on. I got stoned a lot on the hookah pipe, and the guys didn't cut me off. We sailed the bridges and rescued jumpers and gave them a new start in life, and months went by, and winter came around.

It was Christmas day when Abdul said there would be a jumper on the Bay Bridge.

"It's a man," said Abdul. "That's all I know."

"Wow, it never stops, does it?" I said, setting aside the hookah pipe and its load of hashish. "Christmas day."

"There are usually a lot of jumpers between Christmas and New Year's Day," said Jamal.

We skimmed the waves under the Bay Bridge, and right around midnight a body came sailing through space and hit the water. We pulled up, and a man's head broke the surface. I threw the life preserver and shouted out, "Hold on, and we'll pull you up!" and in a few minutes he was in the boat with a blanket wrapped around him.

"I'm Katarina," I said. "What's your name?"

"John. John Arpeggio," he said. He was a young man, only a few years older than myself by the looks of it. Water ran out of his thick black hair and down his face, but I could tell he was a handsome man.

"Are you hungry?" I asked him. "We've got some fried chicken drumsticks, and hummus."

"No, thanks," he said. "I had a last meal before I came to the bridge."

"Where do you live, John?" I asked.

"Berkeley, near the university. I finished my degree a year ago, and I'd hoped to be married by now."

"Why did you jump?" Sometimes I never got around to asking this question; it all depended on the jumper and how the conversation was going. Some people are eager to talk about their jump and other will never discuss it. I had gotten good at figuring out who wanted to talk. John was a talker.

"My girlfriend ran off with another man, and I haven't been able to get over it. It wasn't until I was halfway down to the water that I let her go."

"Yeah, the fall will do that to you," I said.

He looked at me for a while and said, "Were you a jumper, too?"

"Golden Gate," I said.

"Hard core," he said.

Hamdi sort of sidled over to the two of us and said, "Do you still have a job, John?"

"Yeah, I never gave notice. Just disappeared. I don't know if I want to go back to it, though. Maybe I'll just start fresh."

"You're in luck," he said, as his eyes began to glow. "I know an exciting woman who is looking for a man. Her name is Katarina Cross, and she's standing before you."

John looked startled and eyed me up for a minute, then he grinned. "Two jumpers, that would be something. The family that jumps together, stays together."

I felt vague alarm, it was like Hamdi was trying to get rid of me or something, but I knew I couldn't stay on the boat without Khalil. It was time to move on, and maybe a new man was the way to go.

"I don't have a place any more," I said. "I've been with these guys for months now, since my own jump. I've lost everything. My family has had me declared missing." I'd seen the article in the paper.

John stretched and laughed. "That can be remedied with a few phone calls," he said. "Let's go out to a café I know in Berkeley and talk, Katarina. Can't hurt to just talk a little."

Hamdi called out in Arabic, and Abdul turned the boat and headed for Berkeley. John and I chattered a little, but it was subdued, with Hamdi there. Suddenly I felt ready to get off the boat and try something new. If not John, then something. But I hoped things might work with John. I felt like I understood him, a fellow jumper. Plus, he was good looking, and that never hurts. Maybe he smoked hash, who knew? Horny and stupid, some men like that.

The boat pulled up to the piers, and Hamdi dug in a pocket and brought out a sheaf of twenties and fifties. He handed them to me.

"We don't pay wages, but we always help get you started again in life," he said. He peeled about twenty bills off his wad and handed them over, and I accepted them.

"What will you guys do for a cook?" I said. "And greeter?"

"We have a new crewmember coming aboard in a few days, one of our people," he said. "It's all settled. He's young but not so impetuous as Khalil was. We'll make do until he arrives. It's still a ship of fools, but cautious fools." He smiled, and I felt pain at parting.

He leaned forward and hugged me, then he pulled back and called out in Arabic. Abdul and Jamal came over and shook my hand, and Jamal said,

"You were good crew. Now you're tasted a little magic, maybe you'll see the world differently. Remember this time in your life, and never return to it."

"I don't intend to," I said. I didn't see myself ever jumping again; once was enough.

John stood up and dropped the blanket, and Adbul said,

"Faith and good fortune, Katarina. It's been a pleasure. We'll miss you."

And then I was weeping, because the guys had been good to me and shared their boat and their lives with me. It was a strange job but a good one, and I knew I would never forget.

"What was Khalil's first offense, with the angel?" I asked Hamdi. "That woman and her baby were his second offense." I had been thinking about this off and on, Khalil's defiance of the heavenly authorities, his offences to the rules.

"That would be you," said Hamdi, off-handedly.

"What do you mean?" I said. "He didn't soften my landing."

"No, but you hit the water badly and broke half a dozen ribs and punctured your lungs and ruptured your internal organs. You were supposed to die. Khalil took pity on you, because you were still alive, and he healed your wounds. That was why you were underwater so long; you were coming back to life."

"Your 'authorities' are fucked-up," I said.

"They do the best they can," said Hamdi. "We live at the edge of three worlds, the mortal world and the world of the djinn and the world of the angels. Lots of things to go wrong."

I stood there, contemplating my jump, remembering the shock of hitting the water, feeling a debt of gratitude to Khalil for taking care of me. My personal genie, my smooching lover.

But that was the past, and John was there now, and maybe I had another chance.

"Take care," I said to the three of them, and Hamdi nodded, and then John and I got off the boat and walked down the pier. When I looked back, the _Second Chance_ was already heading back out into the bay. My time with the djinn was really over.

"With that load of cash he gave you, we can catch a cab," John said. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket, but it was ruined by the water from his jump. We walked among the forklifts moving cargo and left the piers behind and found a taxi cab that took us to John's favorite café, on Telegraph Avenue. There was a lot to do in the next few days, but that could wait. For now John and I ordered drinks and took a seat.

"Those were strange guys," said John. "Where were they from?"

"Iraq," I said. "The violence over there drove them over here."

"They must have money, to afford that yacht," he said. "Is that what you guys did, went around looking for jumpers?"

I said, "Something like that." He could tell I wasn't ready to talk about it, and he started talking about trying again.

"I'm really looking for a wife," he said. "Someone faithful."

"I like smoking hash," I said. "Just to feel good."

"That'll work for me, though I may not join you much. I'm pretty straight. That works until the babies start coming, then you have to stop."

I looked at him then, really looked, at talk like that. "Ready to start a family, already?"

"If it works out," he said. And then we talked about our hopes and dreams, and things went well. Maybe Hamdi's magic could pick 'em after all. After a while we got up and walked to John's place, where we fucked and got to know each other better.

After that, it was just life, and new beginnings for two lost souls, and strange memories. Lots of strange memories, and dreams sometimes of a white yacht named _Second Chance,_ and a crew of genies who have made a home for themselves in America, helping damaged souls recuperate. To all things and all peoples their place, and now I go to mine. Farewell.

## Social Ills

Not all stories are about nice, pleasant people. Some stories are about bastards. This is such a tale. Here we have demon worship again, and radical politics, and designs for mass murder. One editor who read this said the character made her uncomfortable, like she was trapped in a small room with a vile man who was shouting at her at the top of his lungs. Since that's what I intended when I wrote the story, I consider it a success, even if she decided not to publish it in her magazine. If you can stomach a lot of people dying in a bad way, for the jollies of some rather disgusting politicians, this is the story for you.

"Spare some change for food?" whined the young woman sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk. She had matted blonde hair and a dirt-smeared face and a filthy blouse that had once been blue and gold checkered. Nestled in her lap was a cardboard sign that read: "Hungry, Anything Helps." A black Labrador puppy was snuggled against her leg, curled up and sleeping.

Peter resisted the urge to kick her and instead shook his head and continued on his way. He hated the beggars who infested downtown San Diego, hated their asking for money and for food and for work. He hated it when they came into his favorite café for a coffee and stank the place up with their unwashed bodies and hated seeing their dirty faces everywhere he went. Abandoned buildings became squatter encampments, sidewalks were pooled with urine and piles of feces from homeless who didn't have anywhere else to evacuate their bladder and bowels. Homeless slept in the doorways and put their tents up on vacant lots and begged outside the grocery stores.

When he was a young man Peter felt sorry for the homeless, felt sympathy for their plight, knew they lived in perpetual fear of the cops and society's better-off classes. It had to be rough to have no home and nowhere to keep your stuff. People preyed on the homeless, punks and street gangs and serial killers. He used to give them quarters or even dollar bills, eliciting their "God bless you" comments and other pseudo-gratitude.

But that was thirty years ago. These days Peter was fifty-four years old and long since burned out on the less fortunate. Now he hated them with a passion, a revulsion that was re-fueled every time they hit him up. He lived in the downtown area, in a pricey apartment, and he was sickened when he came out to go to the grocery store and they were waiting for him outside his building: a homeless ambush. He just shook his head and went on his way, leaving them cursing him out behind his back. He could give a damn what they thought of him. A social ill, homelessness. He read somewhere that Germany had no homeless people, that the state provided homes to every member of society. Basic, but functional, homes. He wondered if that was really the way to go about it. Maybe something more radical was required.

So he thought about the problem from time to time, usually right after encountering a particularly aggressive homeless bastard, and he ground away on it, and once he wrote a letter to his congressman asking for the fines and penalties for homelessness to be increased. The congressman (a woman, actually) wrote back to say that homeless outreach was a priority with her office, and solutions were being considered to address the myriad of problems that the situation represented. In other words, blah blah blah.

This particular May Sunday Peter was heading for his favorite café to read a book on ancient Egyptian magic that he'd checked out of the new downtown library. For several years now he'd been interested in magic and had been reading up on American Indian religion, ancient Mesopotamian sorcery, and other magic systems. He tried some of the spells in the privacy of his own apartment, procuring the exotic ingredients for the magic through online suppliers and flea markets. So far he'd gotten a few strange things to happen but only a few hits of what he'd call magic. Just flashing lights, strange smells and objects moving around on their own in the wake of his attempted spells. He knew there were other people out there messing around with these old spells, they had a website with a message board. Most people, though, didn't have the self-discipline to stick with it when the results were so poor. Peter had self-discipline to spare. He continued working the magic, year after year, taking note of interesting results and trying them again and again, changing his pronunciations and modifying the ingredients of the spells.

He now had six spells which seemed to do what they promised. Two of these were for cursing people, two of them were for curing, one was a spell to kill cockroaches and other household pests, and one supposedly summoned a demon. With the latter spell he sometimes heard a disembodied voice coming from the summoning circle, but no demon had yet become visible. The voice was a nasty affair that said things like, "Who do you want me to kill?" and "Where can I do harm?" Peter kept his comments to the voice small and neutral. He'd read many times of the danger of giving yourself away to demonic possession and didn't want to suffer that fate.

Peter walked down the street, minding his own business as was his habit, when a large black man blocked his path. This fellow wore a dirty vest, unzipped so his chest was showing through, and filthy pants, and stank to high heaven even from six feet away. His hair was in dirty dreadlocks, and his face was covered with sweat. He smelled of urine.

"Spare five dollars?" this guy said to Peter.

"No," said Peter.

"Fuck you," the man said. "Give me five dollars." He stepped toward Peter with his hands held out, and Peter walked around him. The guy grabbed Peter's shirt in one hand and pulled Peter around on the sidewalk, and Peter slammed the guy's arm with his hands and knocked him away.

"That's a good way to get the cops sicced on you, asshole," said Peter.

The guy's face turned to rage. "Fuck the cops, and fuck you," he said. "I know you've got money."

"None of your business," said Peter, and he headed down the sidewalk.

"One of these days the homeless will rise up and take what's theirs!" shouted the man, at Peter's retreating back.

About that time Peter had an idea, and he stopped on the sidewalk and turned around and muttered the spell to kill cockroaches and household pests. Maybe it would kill this guy. Weren't the homeless like cockroaches? The spell was brief, and he finished it in fifteen seconds, but it didn't do anything visible to the man, who was hitting up two women for five dollars. Peter was disappointed. He hated the aggressive homeless most of all, and today he wished to do them ill.

In the wake of the spell's failure, he went to the café and got a latte and a sandwich and sat down at a table to read his book. The café was full of nice, normal people, working people like Peter, people with jobs and lives and loves. No homeless losers today. He opened the book on Egyptian magic to page one thirty-five and started to read. It was an interesting book, and the time went quickly, but there were no spells in this book that looked functional. He was developing a sense for spells that actually would work. There was a feeling you got when you read them, a tingling in the little hairs on the back of your neck. One in a hundred spells gave him this feeling, and those were the ones that produced results.

Sometimes Peter wondered why absolutely everyone wasn't casting spells and making magic, but he already knew the answer to that one. If one in a hundred spells achieved results, that meant you had ninety-nine failures to every success. Most people were too lazy to stick with the search. They'd try half a dozen spells, fail, and give up. And really, who wanted to do months of research only to find a spell that killed cockroaches? Just buy a can of Raid.

His coffee grew cold, and he drained the cup and put it in the dirty dishes bin and headed home. He was worried that the homeless guy would be in his way again, but the man was gone when Peter walked by his place on the sidewalk. Moved along by the cops, no doubt. Peter hated aggressive panhandlers, and that scumbag putting hands on him still made him angry. Something needed to be done about the homeless. The cockroach spell didn't work, but what about the demon? Maybe the demon could be put to work on the homeless problem?

At his apartment building Peter slid his key card into its slot and heard the door click open, and he let himself into the building and took the stairs up to the third floor. Once in his apartment he went and found the spell for summoning the demon. He preferred to be calm when summoning the demon, not angry, because the damned thing could tell his emotional state and constantly tried to take advantage of him. But today he was hacked off at the homeless, and he wanted the demon to know it.

He drew a summoning circle with colored chalk on the kitchen linoleum floor and read the spell out loud. It was in Latin, and he'd taken three Latin classes at the university through the extended education program just to learn enough of the language to be able to properly pronounce the words. As he made his way through the spell the summoning circle seemed to dance and buck, and a thin grey smoke puffed up in the center. There was a chiming sound, and then the disembodied voice said,

"Yes, master? What do you crave, bitch?"

"I have a problem, and I want you to solve it," said Peter.

"What can I do for you, you sodden turd?"

"I'm sick of the homeless nagging me for spare change, or a job, or clothes, or a five-spot. I want all the homeless to disappear. I don't care where the go to, just so long as they're not here anymore."

"You want them killed, don't you, douchebag?" said the demon. "Just tell us your name, and we can see to it."

"My name is 'sorcerer,'" said Peter. "I don't care if you kill them or just disappear them, so long as they're gone."

"We've been talking, me and the other demons. We have ideas for changing things, fuckwad. But it takes interest from the magicians to carry it out. Twenty-five years our plans have been in the making. We can disappear the homeless for you, _sorcerer_. We are going to disappear a lot of people, soon."

"What can I do to help?" said Peter.

"Vote! Convince your friends to vote! Vote for the American Revival Party. Write their names in on the ballot, asshole. Educate yourself."

"What good will that do?" asked Peter.

"They will bring changes. City election is in six months. For every magician who votes, a thousand regular people will vote. So get out and vote, scumfuck! You carry the fate of the homeless in your hands!"

Peter didn't normally vote. He thought it was a waste of time, because for every intelligent voter like himself there were ten thousand fools, and their votes drowned his out.

"I'll see what I can do," he said to the demon.

"And tell us your name, we want to call you properly, butt munch," said the demon.

"How long will it take to do something about this problem?" asked Peter.

"A couple of years. Great things start off small and grow large."

Peter sighed. Did he really have it in him to pursue this problem for several years? He wanted something done about the homeless, but couldn't the demon expedite things?

"That's a long time," he said.

"Short, in the lives of men," said the demon. "There are a million homeless in America. Many are families. It will take political will to kill them all off."

Peter remembered the homeless guy grabbing him and felt the burst of rage gush up. Something needed to be done. He read in the paper, the homeless were attacking regular people more and more often. Homeless guy up in San Francisco jumped onto the back of a father of three and slashed his throat right in front of his wife and children. In Salt Lake City three homeless men armed with clubs beat a young woman to death on her way to work. The cops caught them, and they said they were doing it because she didn't give them any money or food. In New York City there was a homeless man who was pushing people in front of the subway trains. He'd done it three times now. Two of his victims were killed, one lost both legs. The homeless were out of control, and it was time they paid the price. Peter didn't know about homeless families, but let the hammer fall where it may.

"Let's do it," he said to the demon, and it cackled gleefully.

"Vote!" it said.

A few days passed, and Peter looked up the American Revival Party's website and read their blurb about truth, justice, and a "great cleansing" that needed to be performed.

Too long now we have been held captive to the politics of the homeless, the mentally ill, the disabled. Society needs to be cleansed of these elements and made pure again. America needs a great cleansing of its undesirables and a return to core values, so vote American Revival Party!

The rest of the website read in a similar vein. Peter was uncomfortable with the language of getting rid of undesirables until he thought of the homeless beggars he kept running into, then he was behind it all the way. America _did_ need to get rid of the undesirables. They were a pox upon society and disgusting to boot.

There was a section on the website that dealt with politics; the Party was fielding candidates in the upcoming elections, and Peter found the names of his local candidates and marked them down on a slip of paper. The newspaper didn't mention the Party in its forecasts for the election, but Peter knew the demons were going to throw this election. The demon said it took interest from the sorcerers to win the election, and he intended to vote!

With the remaining six months before elections Peter got in touch with other sorcerers and urged them to vote for the American Revival Party. There was a website for American magicians, www.burnthesoul.com, and he went into the chat room and approached the other practitioners of magic and preached the politics of the great cleansing. He told of his experiences with the homeless and declared it was time for a new day in America. For the most part the response was tepid. A number of magicians went to the Party's website but found it to be "too fascist," and others were apathetic about voting, and some said the Party was too narrow in its focus. But there were ten or fifteen other sorcerers across the country who said they'd vote for the Party in the elections and see if they could get candidates into office.

"How did you find out about these guys?" asked Fontaine242.

"Been talking to a demon. He said the elections were going to be rigged in favor of the sorcerers and their votes. The demons have been working on this for three decades now. Their candidates are in place and ready to go. It's time to get rid of these aggressive panhandlers and their friends!"

"Cool," said Fontaine242. "Here in New York City the mentally ill have more rights than regular people. It's time they got taken down a peg."

"Yeah," said CabooseTurd. "The disabled are on SSI and having a free lunch at my expense. I work for a living, man. I do the nine to five things five days a week, and these people are taking all my money. Time to body slam these lazy bastards!"

"The Party is right," said WorldsGreatestWizard. "All these people are a drag on society, it's time we got rid of them. Put them in concentration camps, like the Nazis did. It's too bad if you're disabled, but that's the luck of the draw, man. Time to get that money back into the economy."

Peter was vaguely discomforted by some of these comments, but he had only to summon his memory of the aggressive panhandlers to get through his concerns. He was going to do something about this problem, once and for all. The Party would see to it that the homeless were taken away, to where he didn't care. No more filthy homeless grabbing hold of him on the sidewalk! He estimated that there were three other magicians in the San Diego area who were willing to vote for the Party, that seemed like a lot. If the demon was right and each brought a thousand regular people with them, that was a substantial number of voters. Might be enough to get a candidate in office, anyway.

The elections came, and Peter went for the first time in years to his polling place and cast a write-in vote for the American Revival Party candidates. The next day he checked the paper, and sure as hell, his candidate had won a city council seat. Barely, but he won.

He summoned the demon, who was ebullient. "Our guy won, when will the homeless be warehoused?" he asked.

"Oh, master, all good things take time," said the demon. "First, studies. Then neutering the political action groups that help the homeless. Then the great cleansing." The demon sounded positively giddy, and Peter shared its enthusiasm.

Time passed, a year went by, and the new city councilman was busy. He commissioned studies to see how much the homeless and the mentally ill and the disabled were costing the city and the country. He proposed ordinances to make panhandling illegal and punishable by fines and jail time. He commissioned interest groups to collect the names and addresses of the mentally ill and the disabled, "in the interests of serving them better." He proposed stricter rules for getting on benefits and sponsored ordinances to cut back on aid.

"The system is inefficient and filled with redundancies," he said to the media. "The homeless are costing this city a fortune. Because of San Diego's nice weather we have more than our fair share of homeless here. They come from all over the country to soak up the sun. Why should we pay for all of America's homeless? And why isn't anything being done at the federal level to reduce payments to the mentally ill and disabled? There are millions of these people, they are costing the system a hundred billion dollars a year, and more. That's coming out of _your_ pocket, San Diego! It's time these freeloaders were shipped off to confinement facilities out in the desert, where they won't be a drain on the taxpayers. They can be housed in low-cost facilities at a fraction of the current costs. Sound good? You better believe it!"

The Party website was changed. The mentions of the "great cleansing" disappeared, and the site now read: _It is possible to find low-cost alternatives to the current benefits gravy train enjoyed by the homeless and the mentally ill and the disabled. All it takes is political will, and the Party has that in spades! We've won over a hundred positions across America in the last election. We will have more candidates in the federal election coming up in a year. Tell your friends to vote, and make sure you get out and vote yourself! We are on the way to reducing the gravy train and making sure these constituencies pull their own weight. No more free ride!_

Peter summoned the demon and asked it what the Party had in mind for the upcoming federal elections, and the demon cackled. "Big surprise coming, ass munch," it said. "Time for the Party to dominate. Scared America is voting America." Peter asked what all that was supposed to mean, but the demon only giggled. "Sorry jerk-off, don't go to Washington D.C. for the elections."

The next year went by swiftly. Then, just a month before the election, something horrific happened. A nuclear warhead went off in Washington D.C., and a second nuke went off in Los Angeles, both on the same day. Eight million Americans were killed in a flash. Al-Queda took responsibility for the attack, and America roared. The people were enraged and demanding action, but the Republicans and the Democrats had been effectively shut down by the DC attack. The American Revival Party sounded the drums of war and promised "swift, brutal retaliation" and an end to terrorism.

"Someone gave al-Queda the nukes," said a Party representative. "Someone is going to be punished. America needs the assistance of every able-bodied person in rebuilding and in looking to the future. It's time we got all these deadbeats off the rolls and put them to work, like the rest of us have to do. God bless America, and God bless the American future!"

The Party was organized and effective and sounded an urgent call for war and rebuilding. America did its research and found out the nukes came from Pakistan, and the United States declared war on Pakistan and moved to strip it of its nuclear stockpile and destroy its reactors.

The demon was gleeful. "Motherfucker, please!" it said to Peter. "Told you there would be action. Now see about the homeless."

The elections were held, and the Party swept the house. Fifty representatives and twenty-eight senators were elected from among the Party's ranks, and they were ready for power. Laws were passed outlawing all forms of panhandling, nationwide, then work camps were built in the desert, supposedly to give the homeless and the mentally ill and the disabled useful job skills. These constituencies disappeared into the camps, and nothing was seen or heard of them. The media showed footage of homeless families being taken away by the police, and Peter felt nothing but excitement as the homeless disappeared from the streets and alleyways of San Diego. There was no one left asking for change, no one bumming for five dollars, no one grabbing hold of him to accuse him of holding onto his money.

The great social ill that was homelessness was resolved in a few months, as millions of homeless and mentally ill and disabled were sent off to the camps. While the Party was busy with this they were also prosecuting a war on Pakistan, and five million able-bodied men were drafted and sent to strip Pakistan of its nuclear weapons. Seeing the writing on the wall, India joined forces with the U.S. and also attacked Pakistan, and within a year Pakistan was reduced to a non-nuclear power. The Pakistanis fought hard to defend their membership in the nuclear club, but they were not prepared for American rage. The American troops in Pakistan were on a burn cycle, and civilian casualties were very, very high.

Peter was excited about all this. America was re-establishing its global dominance, and talk of China usurping America's place fell by the wayside. There was a flood of patriotism and nationalism, and it was considered vulgar to criticize the United States for anything. Advocates for the disappeared constituencies tried to point out that no one had been seen to come back from the work camps, but their voices were drowned out in the hubbub. Peter didn't care about the mentally ill or the disabled, he figured good riddance to all of them. America was being returned to strength and power, and it was his Party that was doing it.

Then the purges began. On April 1st prominent Democrat and Republican lawmakers were arrested and carted off to jail. The Party had orchestrated a coup, and they had the support of the military to do it. There was turmoil in the armed forces as different units fought it out, but the Party was going for a complete takeover of the country.

"The Democrats and the Republicans are weak and ineffective," said a Party representative. "Their sloppiness allowed the terrorists to bring nuclear weapons into America to begin with, they're traitors to the state. The people we've arrested will be tried for treason and hanged. The Party has returned America to greatness, and we now expect the American people to pull with us for the long haul."

Peter was ready to pull for the long haul, but the purges were worrisome. Mainstream voters didn't have too much to worry about, but the far right and the far left were being singled out for abuse. People were arrested and hauled off to the work camps, and soldiers took to the streets to keep the peace. The media cried foul, and prominent members of the media were arrested and disappeared. Peter was a computer programmer, and his job was relatively secure. He was identified as essential personnel for keeping America's economy pumped, and so he wasn't drafted for the war or purged.

The coup was a success. Judges friendly to the Party were located, and the arrested Republicans and Democrats were tried and executed for treason. Thousands of people were killed. There were uprisings and riots, and the military put these down with brutal efficiency. The Party had given the military significant pay raises and expanded their benefits package from monies that had once gone to the homeless and the mentally ill and the disabled, and the military in return showed its loyalty by leaning hard on the American people. Former advocates for the disappeared constituencies were arrested and kept in prison, and hundreds of priests were tried for treason for appealing to Christian charity in the face of Party politics. The Party wasn't tolerating dissent.

Peter's demon grew more and more cheerful as the purges went on and the riots grew more intense and the military became more brutal in putting them down. "What do you think now, cocksucker?" it said to Peter. "Twenty-seven years of planning and perfect execution on the part of demonkind and a handful of bright sorcerers. Millions dead, and millions more on the way. These purges are only the beginning of the fun. America has got its war on, and there's no stopping it now."

"The homeless problem is solved," said Peter. "So I'm happy. When do the Democrats and the Republicans start running the show again?"

"Dumb fuck, you clearly don't have a grasp on the situation," said the demon. "The Party is running America now, and forever more. It's the beginning of the Pax Americana! Enjoy, the bloodletting is just beginning!"

Peter didn't know what to make of this. He was happy with what the Party had wrought, but it felt weird not to have Republicans and Democrats in charge of things. What was the Party going to do, now that the disabled and the homeless and the mentally ill had been taken care of?

He didn't have long to worry about it, though. A minor Party official got hold of some of Peter's letters to his sister from twenty-five years ago, when Peter was a young and idealistic liberal, and he got Peter sent off to the work camps. Where he was dismayed to find out that the work camps were really death camps, and they were a one-way ticket to the afterlife. He started thinking about how to escape the camp and get back into society, and he summoned the demon right into his barracks, which had only a handful of sleeping people in them. He worked in the dark, all alone, and was pleased to hear the demon say:

"Well, snatch biter, here you are."

"I need some help getting out of this death camp," said Peter.

"Ha! You're right where we want you, dumbass. You've helped us plenty, and your reward will be eternity in hell with us, once you're killed. We're rounding up all the sorcerers and having them shipped off to the camps. Can't have too many people around who remember how we rose to power, now can we? Thanks for all the help, we couldn't have done it without you. So long!"

Peter shrieked at the betrayal, which woke up the other inmates and brought the guards running. They beat Peter to death with their billy clubs, and his soul went to hell. As for America, the military came home from Pakistan about eight months after Peter was sent to the death camp and decided they liked the old system better. They shot the Party leaders and reinstated the Democrats and the Republicans and emptied out the survivors of the death camps. So the demons won a great, if temporary victory, and Peter lived long enough to see his ambitions made real. Thus was his reward for flirting with demons, and thus always the reward of black magic!

## Eligible

_This story comes from old D &D games I used to play, and from Middle Eastern folk tales, and from my own secret desires, which I have elaborated in the story itself and won't do so again in this introduction. What's the first thing you want when you have achieved ultimate power? Money, immortality, beauty? The main character of this story has his own answer to this timeless question, so give this short tale a try and spend some time in 12_th _century Egypt, a land in decline even as the fortunes of one man rise out of sight._

Jalil Ghanem stood in the stone ring all by himself, with a member of the Magician's Guild at the edge of the ring, calling out to the 200 spectators in the auditorium: "Jalil Ghanem will now perform the miracle of the _wish_ spell, changing this base gold coin into two hundred fifty pounds of solid gold!" The guildsman pulled a gold coin from his pocket and held it up for the crowd to see, then he set it on a table in the center of the ring, next to Jalil.

"Good luck," he said to Jalil, then he stood well back in case there was backlash from Jalil's magic. The _wish_ magic was a clean spell, but occasionally with the higher-powered spells there was backwash that would, say, turn spectators into newts or erupt in a wall of fire or some other negative side effect. Since the guildsman didn't want to be vaporized, he got out of the way.

Jalil stepped up to the table and picked up the coin, weighed it in his hand, and set it down again in the center of the table. "Ladies and gentlemen of the Magician's Guild," he called out. "For ten years now I have been friends with the djinn folk. I have spent many enjoyable hours in conversation with them and have learned many secrets of magic from them. They have entrusted me with this powerful spell, the _wish_ magic, which is known to djinn kind alone. Every human sorcerer who has ever cast a _wish_ has learned it from the djinn, by coercion or friendship. It is the highest pinnacle of magic, the most powerful spell known to man. I have practiced this spell at home, and now I will cast it here today for your pleasure. With this spell I hope to gain entrance to the guild as a member of highest ranking, and take my place amongst the city's nobility. Prepare yourselves, for the _wish_!"

There was clapping, some of it polite and some of it enthusiastic, and catcalls, and whistles that reverberated in the guild hall auditorium. In addition to the two hundred magicians there were about twenty-five nobles present, ready to welcome him to their ranks should he succeed. Jalil couldn't imagine coming unprepared to such a show of skill, but people did. Every few years there was some fool who claimed to have the power of the _wish_ magic in his possession, and he flubbed the spell and made a fool of himself in front of hundreds of witnesses. Or he used an illusion to try to fool the spectators into thinking he had performed the miracle of the increasing gold. The guildsman who was serving as announcer of today's event was a twenty-fourth circle magician and was in possession of the _wish_ magic himself. He knew fakes from the real thing.

Jalil contemplated the coin in front of him. There were five hundred members of the magician's guild, more or less, and of these only eleven could use _wish_ magic. The djinn did not give their magic away to fools or the grasping or the unprepared. It took decades to learn the fundamentals of the spell and years to learn the specifics of the potent magic that framed the simple words of the _wish._ Like all the more powerful spells, most of it took place in the mind of the caster, and the spoken words were only the barest part of the magic.

He cleared his throat and raised his arms. He summoned the background magic and felt it play out in his mind, as it linked to the words of the spell. "I wish for this gold coin to transmute into a mountain of gold," he said. On the table in front of him, the gold coin bounced off the table and jumped up, and there was a brief burst of warm air through the room. The gold coin transformed into a stack of gold bars that covered the table, two hundred and fifty pounds of gold from a single coin.

The audience grew silent as the guildsman came and cast several spells on the stack of gold bars, seeking illusions and fakes and clever forgeries. After about five minutes of this he called out,

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have gold!"

The room exploded into excited clapping and oohs and aahs. Several strong slaves came and bore the gold bars away to the guild's coffers, the price of admission to the highest circles of magic, and Jalil made himself available to all who wanted to speak with him. The next several hours were spent in conversations with the other high-ranking members of the guild, who welcomed him to the club and congratulated him on his accomplishments.

The nobles came up and introduced themselves; they were from families with a background in magic, who would be valuable allies in the years ahead. Jalil shook their hands and learned their names and accepted their invitations to dinner and drinks. Many of these would prove unsuitable in temperament, or were hoping to get him to use his _wish_ spell to enrich their houses, or were otherwise hoping he was malleable to their ambitions, but a few would doubtless become true friends, and a man never had enough friends in Cairo these days.

Some of the nobles were of a more dangerous cast, attaches to the military who were taking sides in the ongoing power struggles within the armed forces. Some represented the Turks, and others the Fatimids, and yet others the Berbers, and still others the Black Africans. Jalil had always stayed out of politics, and he intended to keep himself out now. No alliances with the power-mad families!

After the audience thinned out and everyone went on their way, Jalil returned to the tower that was his home. He decided to walk there instead of using a _teleport_ spell, because he loved the city and its people and he wanted to feel the energy of Cairo at work. This was the year 488 of the Arab calendar, and the city was full of people, half a million of them, and was one of the marvels of the world. The guild hall was in the craftsman's quarter, so Jalil was surrounded by the thundering of hammers and the hissing of hot metal as it was doused in water and the delicate tink-tink-tinking of small hammers making keys and other fragile items. It was late in the afternoon, and Jalil went to a favorite restaurant and had an early dinner of Nile perch and grilled vegetables on a bed of fluffy rice, which was delicious and put him in a good mood for the evening. The waiter, who knew Jalil, asked him,

"How went the miracle of the gold?"

"Everything went as expected, no magical backwash or other disasters," said Jalil. "I'm officially the twelfth member of the guild to employ _wish_ magic in the city of Cairo."

"Congratulations!" said the waiter. "Your star will rise, Jalil!"

"I expect it will," he said, pleased. He ordered berry pie for dessert and drank hot coffee with it, and all in all it was a very pleasant outing. On the way back to his tower he stopped at the local café he frequented, to tell his friends the news and accept more congratulations, and he smoked his pipe for a while with some lesser magicians who expressed their envy and hopes that Jalil wouldn't forget them. These were a trio of men that Jalil had known since getting into the guild at the tender age of fifteen. They had risen a little ways in the rankings but didn't have it in them to become great. They were satisfied with small accomplishments and small lives, but Jalil felt in them his own beginnings. He didn't intend to abandon them, but it might happen anyway, he knew. New friends, new possibilities, might edge out the old.

Jalil lived in the old quarter, like many magicians did, in a tower that had been bought and paid for by the time he was thirty. There were too many magicians in Cairo, about forty or fifty too many, and the competition was cut-throat and intense. The lack of opportunities had many sorcerers out adventuring, which appealed to Jalil on occasion but not as a lifestyle. Adventurers had short life spans and painful deaths. However, one couldn't argue with the rewards of adventuring. Of the twelve sorcerers who knew _wish_ magic, all twelve went adventuring on occasion, and nine were full-time adventurers. If you were lucky and could survive the many hazards of the lifestyle you could do quite well for yourself. Jalil had made a reputation as a caster of difficult spells who was honest and bent over backwards for his clients. He worked for the petty nobility and the wealthy merchants and was now successful, though this latest bit with the gold was going to bring him into a whole new class of people. It would not be too much to think he might find himself called to the caliph's palace soon, to undertake magic for the highest authorities.

There seemed to be a lot of donkeys and camels on the streets tonight, and boys with sticks keeping them moving. Piles of donkey dung were everywhere, and Jalil cast a cantrip designed to ward off the feces from his sandals. It was summer, and hot, and most people were inside taking naps, but there were still plenty of people on the streets. Cairo these days was in decline, and the populace was restive. The Fatimid caliphate was making foolish decisions, and their armies were wrapped up in internal power struggles, and outside powers were looking to move against them. How many of these people were spies, Jalil wondered. How long did Cairo have before it found an army camped out at its gates?

Merchants passed by, and laborers dripping with sweat, and foreigners with fat purses who were on the lookout for thieves. Jalil was identified by his clothing as a magician of the highest circles, and passers-by made little gestures of respect as he passed. This was satisfying. Jalil had spent many years learning his magic and working his acquaintances, and now, at the young age of thirty-five, it was all paying off. As his friend the waiter said, his star was rising.

At last he reached his home tower, where he said his name to the front door and heard the magical lock go click. He opened the door and entered. The tower was very old, and when he had bought it, it had been dilapidated and a danger to live in, but as he found work and earned money he had it fixed up until it was now quite a fashionable place. He occasionally held parties in the tower, and often had his friends over for dinner and tea. He was a driven man who worked very hard, but he knew the value of good friends and made sure to make time for them.

He stood on the _teleport_ pad and was transported to the top room of the tower, where he contemplated the sunset with a feeling of joy spreading through him. He was used to success, but he had now reached the headiest heights of the guild's hierarchy, and it was a day to celebrate. Tomorrow he was having dinner with friends, who were throwing him a party to celebrate the miracle of the gold, but tonight was his own.

There was a task awaiting Jalil that he had wanted to put off for a few days, but it intrigued him, and he went now to his writing desk and sat down on an expensive cedar chair and prepared his writing utensils. He set out the finest papyrus and quills, with black ink, and wrote a header on a piece of paper: _Potential Wives._ This was the quill he used for writing magic, and it had picked up a bit of magic of its own over the years, and though he'd sharpened it again and again, it was as long as the day he bought it.

He jotted some notes on the paper, thought about it, crossed out some words and substituted other words, gave it all some thought. He wanted to move on this now, before the siege began. He was, as of this day, one of the most eligible bachelors in all Cairo. There would be endless requests to meet women, and women throwing themselves at him, and all sorts of annoying introductions, from this day forth. He wanted to go about this in a different way. He toyed with the words on the paper for about an hour and then made up his mind how to approach the situation. That decided, he set aside the writing implements and went to bed. He was excited, and sleep did not come easy, but eventually he fell asleep.

The next morning he _teleport_ ed down to the first floor, where his housekeeper was cleaning up. The tower was not large in physical space, but it had been magically expanded so that the interior was much bigger than the exterior, and there was plenty of work to keep the housekeeper occupied all day. She indicated his breakfast, waiting for him on the kitchen table.

"I trust the miracle of the gold went as you anticipated?" she sniffed. Sajidah Dervish was middle-aged and in good health and had been working for Jalil for ten years now, ever since he could afford a servant. She was focused and detail-oriented and was an excellent cook, which was why Jalil had hired her. Dust in the tower he could tolerate; bad food he could not.

"I am now of the twentieth circle, and anticipate being bothered to no end by the nobility," Jalil complained.

"You'll be making real money, now," Sajidah predicted, sounding pleased. Surely she sensed a raise for herself in there somewhere?

Breakfast was fried eggs and chicken breast served up with a pile of pomegranate seeds, and Jalil made little grunts of pleasure as he devoured this meal. The bones and refuse went into a small garbage bin that magically emptied out in the desert, far away. Just as he finished came the call to prayer, and he prostrated himself on a rug in the living room and said the morning prayers. He was too busy yesterday afternoon to mind the afternoon call to prayer, and so this morning he was unusually devoted to the words of the Prophet. He finished up and said to the housekeeper;

"I'll be busy all morning. If anyone comes by inquiring, tell them the miracle of the gold went well and that I will be at the party this evening."

"Very well, I'll inform everyone," she said.

Jalil returned to the _teleport_ pad and bounced back up to the highest floor of the tower, where he went to his book of spells and spent the next hour and a half revitalizing the _wish_ magic. The symbols impressed themselves in his mind, and he felt himself fill with powerful magic. In a few years, with more practice and training, he would be able to carry several _wish_ spells at a time, but for now he could only carry one. His mind must get used to possessing such awesome power, and he knew better than to rush the process and risk killing himself by mis-cast magic.

After he had the _wish_ spell safely refreshed, he returned to his writing desk and began toying with the paper with the _Prospective Wives_ header on it. He took a deep breath and steadied himself, then he said, "I _wish_ for a good wife, with the following attributes..." He paused, and the quill lifted itself up into the air over the piece of paper and dipped itself into the pot of ink.

"She has to be from a poor family that earns less than a hundred gold pieces a year."

The quill scratched on the paper and wrote a number on the piece of paper; Jalil ignored this. At this point it was going to be a huge number, not worth worrying about.

"She has to be between the ages of twenty-five and thirty years old."

The quill scratched a new number on the paper, and Jalil glanced at this. It read 32,000. He groaned and rubbed his forehead with his hand. This was going to take some whittling down.

"She has to be unmarried, and not being seriously courted."

The quill jotted down the number 11,000.

"She has to be cute, and will stay cute as she ages."

The quill wrote, _Not a beauty?_ and Jalil said, "No. I don't trust beauties."

The quill wrote 3,481 on the paper.

"With whom I am highly compatible," said Jalil, and the quill scratched down, 2,043.

"Who will be loyal all her life," said Jalil.

The quill dipped in the ink and then scrawled, 1,635.

"Who is good with money, and not a wastrel."

The quill jotted down 1,150.

"Who enjoys good sex, a _lot._ "

962

"Who wants children."

904

"Who will get along well with my friends and not merely tolerate them."

649

"And who will get along with my professional associates."

517

Now Jalil was stumped. Five hundred eligible women. That was too many to interview, and too many even to list. He needed some way of further narrowing the field.

He reviewed his criteria and realized there was one area where he could make a change.

"Change that to families who make less than fifty gold pieces a year." Like many men who made good money, Jalil felt a wife from a poor family would be more loyal than a wife from a rich family, who was used to wealth. There was always the chance the girl was in it for his money, but that was what the criterion about compatibility was about.

The quill jotted down: 367.

"With the possibility of a love match."

92

Jalil blinked at that one. Was it so difficult to find love that it so narrowed the choices?

"With a lifelong love that would be highly satisfying."

40

Jalil referred to his notes. "Who is sexy and playful."

13

"Who can be taught at least basic magic, to defend herself."

1

"List this person."

The quill dipped in the ink and jotted down, "Nuur Abderhamen, tinsmith's district."

"What is this person's age?"

27

Jalil leaned back in the chair and felt a burst of excitement. The spirits that adjudicated the _wish_ spell wouldn't be wrong about this. By approaching the situation carefully and methodically, Jalil had found himself the perfect woman. But would she be difficult about it? What was she like, this Nuur Abderhamen? Cute, and sexy, and playful. Good in bed. Intelligent and fun. Would get along with his friends and business associates. Could be taught basic magic to defend herself.

Now there was only the hope that she would be taken with him. He needed to meet this woman, right away. Today. This morning, even. He _teleport_ ed down to the fourth floor and changed into his most impressive wizard's clothes and selected a powerful _staff of baffling_ to go with the costume. He would need to buy a gift, something pricey without being ostentatious. Something subtle and beautiful. What would a tinsmith's daughter like? Jewelry, metal, some kind of fine craftsmanship. Something permanent, to symbolize the hope of love. The spell identified a good match, but it didn't guarantee love. Even Allah couldn't guarantee love. The hearts of women were special territory, and you just had to take your chances.

It had been eight years since Jalil had taken a lover. He had a disastrous fling with a nobleman's daughter, but she was a wastrel who spent money like a fool, and after a few months he couldn't stand her. Now this nobleman was his enemy, and his daughter ran him down in public. Would Nuur have heard about this failed romance? Would his reputation haunt him even today?

He _teleport_ ed down to the first floor and told Sajidah that he was going out for a while and might not be back for lunch.

"Plan something simple," he said. "So you can make it in a hurry."

"Very well," she said. "What should I tell callers?"

"Tell them I'm out on personal business and might not return until this evening's party," he said.

Then Jalil opened the front door and entered the streets of the Cairo, where he quickly made for the jeweler's district. It was time to take a wife, and what better wife than one selected by djinn magic? By Allah, he hoped this young woman would be amenable to his words. It was all about best behavior and charm, it was all about the love. Could this be a lifelong match, and the start of a joyful life? He tread lightly on the streets of Cairo and swiftly crossed out of the old quarter to the jeweler's district, where he began shopping in earnest. It was the beginning of new things, and the start of what he hoped would be a hot romance, and in his burning heart Jalil Ghanem prayed for love to find him on this finest of all possible days. Tonight was a party with friends, and if fate was kind he would bring his bride-to-be on his arm to the event. Pray heavens, and pray earth, bless Allah and the magician's guild, it was time to take a wife!

## Promises

Some science fiction is set just around the corner, not in the distant future, and here we have just such a work. In this story America has grown sick of mass shootings by the mentally ill and has responded with a bloody crackdown. Roving patrols monitor the mentally ill, waiting for them to snap and deliver themselves into the hands of their executioners. For the America of this tale, the answer to violence is much more violence, until all the perpetrators are dead and their killers can finally declare victory.

Randall is sitting on the outdoor patio of the Pasha hookah lounge, puffing away at a light, smooth tobacco called "Sex on the Beach." The last two years flow through his mind like smoke—the arrival of the voices in his head and his subsequent unemployment and over a year of living on the streets. It's a miracle he's still alive. He's been cornered by Sickos with broken bottles and beaten up by thugs looking to take his stuff and harassed by the cops. Things are better now, but he can't help but think it could all go sour any moment.

The hookah lounge is on Market Street in San Diego. It's currently January and about sixty degrees here at three in the afternoon, which has the rest of the country beat. Randall's brother lives in Wisconsin, and he just sent Randall an email saying that with wind chill it was expected to hover around fifty degrees below zero for the next six days. Randall congratulates himself on moving to San Diego and escaping all that, but he misses his family. He only visits for a week or two each year, and none of them are getting any younger. Randall is pushing forty, and his parents are in their seventies.

Minus fifty degrees, that was surreal. One thing is for sure, Randall will never move back to Wisconsin. Minus fifty degrees, hell!

He huffs his hookah pipe and blows the smoke out his nose; it bursts into clouds of white that curl around his legs and then dissipate. He comes to the hookah lounge about every three months, for a tea and a smoke. This must be what it's like in the Middle East, all these guys in fezes hanging out on the patios of the cafes over there and puffing away at hookahs and drinking tea and doing business deals. Talking about women and politics and genies. It might be a better experience if he could talk a friend into coming to the hookah lounge with him, but all his friends think it's pretty sketchy, smoking tobacco for an hour.

His friend Robert says, "Aren't you afraid of getting lung cancer?" and Randall says no, it's one hit of tobacco every three months, it's not like a pack a day or something. All his friends seem to worry about the lung cancer angle, and so when he gets the urge to go to the hookah lounge he has to go alone.

There are people walking past the patio; mostly they look straight ahead and ignore Randall and the clouds of smoke coming out of his nose, but every once in a while someone will look at him and smile, and he waves and says "hello," and everything is golden. It's Saturday, so people are dressed casually, and Randall takes in the jeans and skirts and long dresses and again thinks of what it's like at minus fifty degrees, in Wisconsin.

A young woman walks by, heading away from Randall, and he is immediately attracted to her butt. She is wearing black jeans, tight-fitting and looking like corduroy, and as she walks her hips sashay from side to side in the sauciest manner possible. She's about twenty feet away now and sauntering down the sidewalk, talking into a cell phone, but her voice is quiet, and he can't hear what she's saying.

"Hey, pretty girl!" Randall calls out, giving a wolf whistle. The girl doesn't even turn around to look, she's so wrapped up in her cell conversation. For a moment he contemplates dropping the hookah pipe and chasing after her, but that seems too extreme for a momentary glimpse of a girl's behind, no matter how fine it is. The girl is fifty feet away now and crossing the street, and Randall feels a twinge of regret as she goes. You don't see butts like that every day. That's a rare occurrence, rare and wonderful. He's going to really regret not having chased her down, he is pretty sure of that, but for now he takes a puff of the hookah pipe and blows the smoke out his mouth in a long stream. The wisps of smoke curl around themselves and drift across the table, and finally they fade away.

There is a railing surrounding the patio area at the hookah lounge, and he is seated right next to this, and he has his left arm thrown up on the railing, just chilling. That means his bracelet is exposed to view. It's just the way the universe works, but here come two cops, eyeing up the green, stamped-metal bracelet. Randall hears their boots on the sidewalk before he sees them; cop boots make a specific sound he's gotten used to hearing.

"Hey, guy, let's see that bracelet," said the taller of the two cops. One is short and built like a fireplug, the other is tall and gangly. They look more bored than anything.

Randall turns his wrist to bring the bracelet right-side up, exposing its scan code. It galls him to be given orders, like he's their bitch or something, but that's the way cops are. You got used to it after a while. Fireplug brings up a scanner and scans the bracelet, and after a moment the instrument chirps.

Fireplug looks at the screen of the scanner and reads off Randall's address. "You still there?"

"Yeah," Randall says. "Not planning to move anytime soon."

Fireplug squints at the little screen. "You still taking your...risperidone?" he says.

"Every day," Randall says.

"What's that do, risperidone?" asks Fireplug. Gangly is giving Randall a pinched look, semi-hostile, but Fireplug seems to be up for a chat.

"Anti-psychotic," Randall says. "It controls the voices and the hallucinations and the delusions."

"Bad deal, huh?" says Fireplug.

"You know, gentlemen, I used to be a freelance web designer. I designed web sites for corporations and small businesses. Won't become a millionaire at that job, but it's a nice living. Then I got a series of headaches, lasted about a month; every day with the migraines. One morning I woke up, and there was a voice in my head. Friendly-like, giving me instructions."

"What, like 'Kill this guy?' Stuff like that?"

"More like, 'Talk to that woman about fresh fish.' 'Ask that kid if he'd like a dollar, and give it to him if he says yes.' Weird crap like that, and lots of it. Then a week went by, and a second voice appeared. Then a third voice, and so on, until there were dozens of different voices all talking over each other and yammering away. I couldn't work anymore, and I became homeless. I stayed that way for about a year and a half. Then an outreach team found me and convinced me that I was mentally ill. They got me on the risperidone, and the voices went away. The hallucinations ground to a halt, and I didn't think McDonald's was out to get me anymore. The outreach center got me on SSI, and I've started doing web design again. It's been a harsh couple of years, but I think the worst of it is over."

Fireplug makes a clucking sound; Gangly just scowls. "So you're on SSI now," he says. The man seems annoyed, and Randall can't figure out what his problem is. Unless it is just that he doesn't like Randall being on SSI.

"Yeah, until I can get back up to speed as a web designer," Randall says. "That's probably going to take a while. The medication slows down the symptoms, but it doesn't stop them entirely. I can only work part-time. So for now, it's SSI to survive."

Fireplug says, "Pick a finger."

Randall holds out his left index finger, and Fireplug sticks it with a needle. It is an expert prick, and a drop of blood forms, and Fireplug touches a little detection strip to the blood droplet. The detection strip turns bright pink, and Fireplug grunts.

"You're good to go, sir," he says. "You're up on your dosage."

"Told you," says Randall.

"Have a good day," says Fireplug, and Gangly gives Randall a peeved look, and then Fireplug gives Randall a printout from the scanner. It is a small piece of paper, and Randall puts it in his shirt pocket in case any other cops come by. Fireplug and Gangly take off down the sidewalk, no doubt looking for other mentally ill to annoy.

Randall puffs on the hookah and blows smoke out his nose. One of the waitstaff from the Pasha comes out, this is a young guy with his hair in dreadlocks, and changes the coals that burn on top of the hookah.

"Enjoy," he says, and Randall smiles. The young guy goes back inside, and Randall smokes. He wonders if somewhere in Egypt right now a genie is smoking the hookah pipe and plotting miseries for mortal men. It has been a long time since he's read a good genie story, maybe Naguib Mahfouz has a collection of them on the market? Every once in a while Randall likes to read foreign literature; Gabriel Garcia Marquez is good, and so is Tahar Ben Jelloun. Yeah, now he wishes he had a book of genie stories right here with him, to read while he smokes. Something so right about reading genie stories while you smoke a hookah.

Mental illness. Randall's bracelet is green, which means he is low-risk mentally ill. Not prone to violence, not prone to attacking people. Yellow bracelets have periodic outbursts of violence, watch with care. Red bracelets mean frequent attacks and acts of violence. Most red bracelets are rounded up by the Sicko patrols and put into mental institutions, or they are sorted out by law enforcement, usually by being shot. Randall has met a few red bracelets during his journey through the mental health care system. They are strange buggers, babbling to themselves and making frequent angry outbursts, threatening people and doing weird stuff like singing at the top of their lungs, cursing passersby, screaming at passing cars, and so forth. Randall doesn't like being around red bracelets. Most people don't, which of course was why they tend to be institutionalized.

He puffs at the hookah pipe and blows smoke rings, which is a neat trick he learned from a yellow bracelet about a year ago. Guy's name was Peter, and he was a good guy when he wasn't angry, which unfortunately was often. Randall had wondered if Peter shouldn't be a red bracelet, but his attacks were confined to verbal assaults. Randall had never heard of him physically attacking anyone. Verbal attacks are scary enough. When someone comes up to you and starts cussing you out, you always wonder if they're going to attack you next. That's how a lot of red bracelets do it, they cuss you out and then pull a knife or a pistol and kill you.

Randall's thoughts return to the girl in the black jeans. He pictures her hips gently swaying back and forth, the delicious movement of her cheeks as she walks. That girl had the finest behind Randall had seen in a long time. Hadn't he whistled loud enough? She must have been in the middle of talking with her boyfriend, or something. On the other hand, maybe she was a single girl, available, and hadn't heard him. Maybe she was just talking to a girlfriend. He wondered if she had learned to walk like that or if it just came naturally to her. She had long black hair, too, with ringlets in it. Nice hair, sexy hair. This girl was an all-around winner.

Four young women come bicycling along the sidewalk, going slow in order to move around the pedestrians. He checks out the girls in a good-natured way, but all four are flat-chested, and his attention isn't engaged. There are men who like flat-chested girls, he's met a few of them, but he personally likes a nice C-cup. He figures that for every man there are appropriate women, and you just have to look around to find yours. The girl in the black jeans intrigues him. A saucy girl. She had been moving away from him, so he hadn't seen her from the front. He wonders if she has a nice rack and a pretty face. He hopes so. He hopes that the city of San Diego is graced by one more really pretty girl walking around.

Every day in America there are a dozen attacks by the mentally ill on regular people. Since the passing of the Sicko laws there are newsletters that collect these reports. Some of these newsletters are online, and occasionally Randall goes out to the websites and reads about the latest attacks. They are depressingly similar. Red bracelet is verbally threatening people when something in him just snaps and he snatches the baby out of the young mother's arms and smashes it to the floor. Or, red bracelet is standing on the subway platform and giving everyone the evil eye, when the train pulls into the station. In a fit of energy the red bracelet rushes forward and shoves another commuter in front of the train. Or, yellow bracelet is in the library, shouting at other patrons to stop worshipping the devil and stop putting voices into his head. When the library guard comes up to ask this person to quiet down, he attacks the guard.

The newsletters cull these stories from the news media. Sometimes there are videos you can watch, which always freak him out. People see red bracelets and make cell phone videos of them talking to themselves and threatening people. Every once in a while a red bracelet, or yellow bracelet, is caught on video attacking someone. It's frightening, the way they suddenly burst into action to go after people. They are caught up with the voices in their head, listening to the voices, and when the voices urge them to attack they go for it.

Most red bracelets are schizophrenics, or seriously bipolar. A rare smattering are schizoaffective, like Randall. Schizoaffective disorder is a very rare disorder, it affects less than 1% of the population. It has the voices and hallucinations and delusions of schizophrenia, and it has the major mood swings of bipolar. Randall sometimes wonders why people with his disorder aren't more violent, given they are suffering two disorders at once, but he supposes it is because they are so miserable with their illness that they can't focus on anyone else. Self-absorption has its benefits, he supposes.

Randall huffs his hookah pipe and blows out smoke in a long plume that reaches all the way across his table. American society decided by 2020 that it had had enough mentally ill violence, all the damned mass shootings, and the bracelet system was devised. The penalties for cutting off your bracelet are severe, so even though Randall sometimes fantasizes about taking his off, he leaves it on. He thinks greenies shouldn't have to wear a bracelet at all, they were practically normal, but society doesn't agree. Once a nutter, always a nutter.

The only good thing to come out of America's disgust for the Sickos is that funding for institutions and community care centers has been increased on both state and federal level. There is still a fierce stigma attached to mental illness, but at least now people are more aware of the issues. The entire mentally ill situation is treated as a war, on ongoing struggle against an implacable enemy who kills people with impunity. People don't like the mentally ill, is the short version of it. They want the mentally ill to go away.

Randall's greatest fear is that all mentally ill will be rounded up and institutionalized in facilities that are part prison, part concentration camp. The ACLU has taken several states to court over their harsh treatment of the mentally ill, and they've won a few cases and lost a few. People prefer to err on the side of being too harsh rather than too lenient.

People stroll down the sidewalk alongside Randall. One guy, a chubby fellow wearing jeans and a t-shirt, stops at Randall's elbow, which is up on the railing. He is dark-skinned, and something about his face makes Randall think he's from India.

"Hey, man, don't you worry about lung cancer?" he asks Randall. If he's from India, his English is good.

"I have a smoke a few times a year," Randall says. "No, I don't worry about lung cancer." Always the same tedious question.

"Tobacco's nasty crap. Rots you from the inside out. I had an uncle who was a three pack a day smoker. Couldn't get his breath, had to be on oxygen. Eventually he suffocated to death."

"Smoking three packs a day will do that to you," Randall says.

Then the guy sees Randall's green bracelet and looks startled. He stares at the bracelet for several moments, then at Randall's face. "They should lock all you crazies away," he blurts.

"Love you, too," Randall says.

"Fuck you," says Chubbs. He takes off, throwing glances over his shoulder at Randall as he goes. Another secret admirer. There are a lot of these, and it is an even bet they'll sway the politicians enough to get their way. Concentration camps. It is Randall's greatest fear, and one that he knows a lot of greenies share. He agrees with locking up the red bracelets, and yellow bracelets when they are violent, but why pick on the greenies? They are practically normal.

America promises free health care to the mentally ill, and America bears the costs of institutionalization of the red bracelets, and America bears the cost of keeping tabs on the mentally ill through the Sicko patrols. Politicians promise that help will be available to those who need it, no Sicko left behind.

The girl in the black pants was making promises, too, by wiggling her hips in that wonderful way. She was promising sexual excitement, and intense pleasure, and good bonding. She must have had a hot rack, and a pretty face. It would be criminal for a girl who could walk like that to be a Plain Jane.

And now the nice, even mood that he has enjoyed while he smokes begins to tilt sideways, and the affective aspect of his disorder strikes. He misses the girl in the black jeans, she should have been his girl. He feels intense longing for her, and he wonders if she is still talking to her friend on the phone. He wonders where she lives, if she is happy, what kind of flowers she likes. He wonders what her name is, and again if she is a single girl, looking for a boyfriend.

He puffs the hookah and blows smoke and notices that the volume of smoke is greatly decreased. The coals are burned down to nubs. This is the third set of coals, the wait staff won't bring more.

The waitress, as if on cue, brings him his check, and he pays it with cash, and she says, "Thanks," and smiles at him. She is a pretty girl, with bright white teeth and a wide smile, and his mood plunges sharply downward. Black Jeans is probably at least this pretty, if not even better-looking, and now she's gone. He'd done his best to attract her attention, but it had been for naught. He stands up and leaves the table and heads for home. He is racing toward an emotional crash; by this evening the girl in the black jeans will be the most beautiful woman in the world, and his longing for her will turn suicidal. He knows the shape of his disorder and can predict with a high degree of accuracy the jerking needle of his moods.

Thing of it is, Randall hasn't talked to a woman since he took sick. He is pretty sure any woman who sees his bracelet will walk the other way. Black Jeans might as well be a supermodel, for all he can hope to hold her. His bad mood takes a sharp turn downward, feeding on itself, feeding on the girl and the green bracelet, wrapped around each other.

There are pills he can take to counter the mood swings, and he'll take them, and he'll hope for the best, but he knows the next 72 hours are going to be bad. Greenies aren't violent because they are too miserable to be violent. He reaches the corner of the street and waits for the light to change, and the last thing he is able to think of before the incipient bad mood sweeps over him is that girl's behind as she walked away from him.

Good-bye, pretty girl. So long.

## Lord of the Air

We're back for more Greek mythology in this tale of eldritch scholars and small-town farmers in over their heads. If you want magic, the tiny town of Zephyr Grove can scratch your itch, but you'd better believe you'll be in the hands of higher powers if you go messing where you don't belong. Who will get what they want, and who will be left in the cold in this story of ambition and ruthlessness played out against mighty forces of nature at their most potent?

I found the three of them sitting around a small table in Betty's Café, right in the downtown area of Zephyr's Grove, Nebraska. They were dressed in farmer's overalls and were all old, with lined faces and varying amounts of white hair, and they were engaged in animated conversation and drinking coffees that steamed in the April chill. Winter was hanging on late, and it was still cool, but spring was breaking through, and severe storm season had started early. Lots of warm and cold air masses colliding, in Zephyr Grove. Coming into town to the café, I had seen half a dozen dust devils throwing dirt in all directions, and when I checked the National Weather Service it said that there were thunderstorms likely that afternoon, with tornadoes a distinct possibility.

"Gentlemen, would one of you be Ephraim Goldsmith?" I asked, striding up to their table like I owned it. When introducing yourself to strangers it was always better to act like you belonged, rather than hanging back like a shrinking violet and hoping for the best. Eight years as a reporter had taught me that much, as least.

"That's me," said the biggest of the old men. Now that I was close to them I saw they weren't that old, mid-sixties maybe. Freshly retired. Ephraim was a tall, beefy fellow with Popeye forearms and a crude leer etched across his face. He looked vaguely dangerous, like someone you didn't want to screw with.

"I'm Regan Angstrom, reporter for the Sentinel-Journal," I said. "I'm told you have a good story about a professor named Dale Hajerrian, who came by this way about ten years ago. My editor heard something from a drinking buddy, and here I am looking for a human interest story."

Ephraim stared at me for a moment and then said, "That was a long time ago, mister Angstrom. Don't know that I still remember that old story."

I took this as the purest bullshit. Zephyr Grove was about a thousand people, and I was willing to bet that professor Hajerrian's story was part of the local lore by now. Ephraim was just pretending not to remember, so as not to cozy up to the stranger. "Maybe your associates can help me out?" I said with my most winning smile. "Buy all of you another round of drinks, and listen to your story?"

"I remember Doctor Hajerrian," said the smallest of the men. This one looked older than the other two, pushing seventy, and he had a tattoo of a tornado on his left cheek. "He came here to capture a dust devil with some strange contraption of his."

"Yeah, I remember him," said the third man, who had a nasty scar on his neck. Looked like something had tried taking his head off at one point, and I was amazed that with that much damage he'd even lived. He had dark blue eyes, but they were unfocused somehow, like a daydreamer. "Had a mighty high opinion of himself, he did."

"Yeah," said Ephraim. "Now that they refresh my memory, I recall the good doctor. Sad fate, that one. A Zephyr Grove ending."

"Did you see any dust devils, comin' into town?" said the blue-eyed man with the scar.

"Saw half a dozen of them," I said. "Big ones, too, one of them rocked my car back and forth when it hit me."

"Yeah," said Ephraim. "They'll do that." The three men looked at each other and grinned, and I wondered what they were sharing that I wasn't privy to.

"I'll tell you the story," said the smallest man. "Robert. Robert Frost, like the poet but without the talent."

"We'll all tell him the story," grumbled Ephraim. "You're not leaving me out of this."

"Who starts, then?" said blue eyes. "Oh, I'm Jedidiah Steele. Put that in your story."

I took out a small tape recorder and set it on the table, pulled up a chair, and said, "Anyone mind if I tape record? I find that jotting notes is distracting."

"On the record, huh?" grunted Ephraim. "Well, I've got nothing to be afraid of. Record away." The other two men nodded permission, and I sat down and hit the record button.

"I'll go first," said Ephraim. "Professor Dale Hajerrian came from some college back east, but it wasn't an Ivy League school. I can't remember now which one it was. Somewhere in Connecticut, I think it was."

"New York," I said, and they all three gave me the eye, and I knew I'd made a mistake. Okay, my job was to sit and be quiet and listen, and let them do the work. "Sorry to interrupt."

Ephraim nodded. "He came into town in a big four by four truck with a wide flatbed with a camper top on it. Drove right up to this café and parked out front, and came inside and introduced himself to Betty, over there." He pointed vaguely in the direction of a middle-aged woman who was chatting with some men at another table. "He said he was a tenured professor from some school back east, here to study the weird weather we get in Zephyr Grove.

'You mean you're a meteorologist?' said Betty.

'No, I'm a scientist, a scholar in ancient Greek magic,' he said.

'Why are you studying weather, if you're a magician?' said Betty. Bless her, she's not the quickest on the uptake, our Bets.

'I'm interested in your dust devils,' he said. 'And of course the big boys, the tornadoes.'

'Well, you've come to the right place, then,' said Betty. 'Zephyr Grove is the second wildest weather town in the whole United States. Someplace in Oklahoma is first.'

'Yes, but your weather is different,' said the good professor. 'More lively. More...alive.'

'Well, I'd like to stand here jawjacking all day, but I need to take care of my other customers,' said Betty. 'How about you order a bite to eat and a drink, and we can talk.'

"So he ordered up lunch and a diet soda, and they talked about dust devils for a while, and Betty told him, 'Out west of town is a patch of dirt that the dust devils really like. Seems like they get their start right there.'"

Ephraim picked up his mug and lifted it up and gave it a shake, and the middle aged woman, Betty apparently, said, "Can I get you boys more coffee?"

"All four of us, I think," said Jedidiah, with the scar. "Start a new tab for Mister Angstrom here, with all of us on it."

"Okay, big spender," said Betty, opening a fresh tab. "How about something to eat?"

"BLT," I said, and she nodded and jotted it down. No one else ordered anything, and Betty took off toward the kitchen.

"Now it's my turn," said Robert Frost like the poet. He smoothed his hair down with one hand and said, "That patch of earth where the dust devils begin is on my farm. Tried plowing it for crops ten times, and it remains barren as can be, fertilizer and water and rain and good black earth all to the contrary. It's just not farm land; some places are like that. So I was driving the tractor in my fields, planting, because that was in late April, and it was sowing time. Doctor Hajerrian came out onto my farm house in that huge truck of his and introduced himself, then he said,

'Betty at Betty's Café told me about your dust devils, Robert. Mind if I take a look around out there? I'm mighty curious about the place where the dust devils come to life.'

'Not much to see, just a patch of barren earth,' I said. 'But suit yourself. See that dirt track right there? You can drive out to the dust devils if you follow that track. Ground's soft, it rained a week ago, so watch yourself. Don't get stuck.'

"So he went back out to his truck and followed the dirt trail out to the dust devil patch, and I lost track of him for a while. When he came back a couple hours later he was positively gleeful.

'This is what I'm looking for, it's a spawning ground,' he said. 'They have them in Greece, too, in the old places. Robert, can I park my truck out there and camp out on your land for a few days, until some dust devils are formed? I'll pay you for the privilege.'

"Now, never let it be said that I turned down easy money. So I said, 'How much did you have in mind?'

'Say a hundred dollars a day,' he said. 'But that includes meals and a place to sleep.'

'You're welcome to come out to the farmhouse and stay with us,' I told him.

"So that's how it happened. All day long he stayed parked at the edge of the barren patch on my land, and at night he'd come in and eat dinner with the missus and me and sleep in the spare guest room. I have children, Regan, but they're all grown up and on their own now. This was ten years ago, but as you can tell I'm the oldest one of this mangy crew, and my kids were long out the door when Doctor Hajerrian came to visit.

"Now, the good doctor, he told us all sorts of stories about Greece, and dust devils out there, and something called 'air elementals,' which are spirits that the ancient Greeks believed in.

'They were dust devils, Robert,' he said to me between helpings of my wife's cooking. 'But not any dust devils. They were magical dust devils, and they were alive. The magicians of ancient Greece swore up and down you could get them to work for you, if you knew the right spells to cast on them. Use them to destroy enemy ships and stuff like that.'

'Dust devils aren't that powerful,' I said to him.

'But tornadoes are,' he said, nodding at me. 'And dust devils grow up to become tornadoes.'

'The ancient Greeks believed some mighty peculiar things,' I allowed, and he laughed.

'They did, indeed, Robert,' he said. 'So I'm interested in dust devil behavior, just to see what the ancient Greeks saw in them.'

'But you don't believe they're alive, right?' I said to him.

'I believe it's worth trying to sort out dust devils from air elementals and see if the ancient Greeks were on to something,' he replied. 'Your dust devil spawning patch is just what I'm looking for. And in a few days it's supposed to storm, which means tornadoes. I just might find what I'm looking for after all.'

"Well, I didn't say anything to all that. I'm a god-fearing man, Regan, and all this talk of spirits of the air sounded like pagan witchcraft to me. I couldn't tell if he was serious or not, but he continued going out to the barren patch every day and came the next night with a wild story:

'Robert, I've found an air elemental,' he said in great excitement. 'It was acting differently from the dust devils, jumping over them and going against the wind. I didn't have time to prepare the trap before it got away, but where there's one there'll be more. It's the approaching storm that brought it out, I'm sure of it.'

'Maybe it's better you didn't fool with the dust devils,' I said. 'Seems you're likely to piss off the Almighty, stirring up His creation.'

'God gave us minds to understand the world,' he said in a breezy way that I instantly detested. Smart-ass college professors, sticking their noses in where they don't belong!

"He made me so mad I didn't think to ask him what he meant by a trap; I just wasn't thinking. The next day he took the camper top off the back of his truck, and I saw what he was up to. There were symbols painted in the bed of the truck, magic symbols by the looks of them, and I wondered if they were from ancient Greece. In the middle of the bed of the truck, in a metal mount, was a two foot tall steel jug, with more symbols etched in its sides. It was a right pretty piece of craftsmanship, and I asked him about it.

'It's for catching air elementals,' he said. 'There won't be time to take the camper top off when the elementals come by, so it's better this way. The amphora—that's that steel jug—is where the elemental is captured. Then I just take it home and learn to control it!'

Jedidiah was listening to all this with the keenest of interest, and he said, "Now let me tell it."

"No, it's still my turn, I have more to tell," said Robert Frost. "I realize I'm talking more than you fellas, but that's because most of it took place on my land. That gives me the right to tell those parts of the tale."

"Oh, all right," said Jedidiah. "Hurry up and finish your part, I want to tell mine."

I checked the tape and found it was almost at the end, so I flipped it over and hit the record button again. Robert took a drink of his coffee, and Betty brought my BLT, and I crunched away on this while Robert went on with his tale.

"So the next day Doctor Hajerrian went out to the barren patch with his trap ready to spring. I have to admit, I was mighty curious to see what he was up to and decided to plow the area around the barren patch that morning, just to see if something happened. And it did. He was sitting in the back of the truck, right next to the steel jug, and around eleven thirty in the morning he suddenly began shouting. What he was saying I couldn't quite hear, but it was loud. Then he lifted up the steel jug into the air and shook it, and I saw a dust devil start to swirl on the barren patch. It was a strong one, really whipping up the dead grass and dust, and suddenly it leapt up into the air and jumped right into that steel jug! The good doctor slammed a rubber stopper into the jug and shouted at me on the tractor, and then he put the jug in the back of the truck and got in and drove back to the farm.

I just watched him go. I was in a rush to finish planting my seeds before the storm, and I could see I was in a race against time. It was fixing to storm any minute now, and once that broke loose I was done planting for a few days. I finished sowing, then I came in to eat lunch and see to the professor.

"Well, he was about as excited as a fella can be and was babbling on about air elementals and captures, and how he was going to be famous and how the ancient Greeks were right and all this sort of thing. He was really cranked up. He thanked me for letting him stay on my land these past ten days, and he paid me as we had agreed, and then he said he had to get back East as soon as possible. He stayed long enough to stuff his gullet with my wife's excellent cooking, and then he took off in his truck. And then I called Jedidiah here to tell him about this crazy professor's latest ramblings, and that ends my part in this. Jedidiah, it's your turn."

"Finally!" said the blue-eyed man with the vicious scar. "Now, my family has lived in Zephyr Grove since the beginnin', all the way back ta the original families that moved here in 1818 in response ta a government land grant. Originally we were Greeks, but we've intermarried with Americans, and the family named changed over time ta Steele. But we carried stories from the old country with us and told them around the living room on long winter days, and we knew about the air elementals and what a special place Zephyr Grove is. It's a birth place for the lords of the air, and they have a soft spot for the town, which is why Zephyr Grove sees a lot of tornadoes but is never destroyed by them. The elementals get along with the people here, it's what you could call a symbiosis.

"So when Robert called me ta tell me that that professor fellow caught an air elemental, I got off the phone with him lickety-split and got in my SUV and headed for the freeway. I was tryin' ta cut the professor off before he got on the highway. He had the facts of the matter straight but wasn't seeing the whole picture, and I was afeared for what was going to happen ta all of us if he was allowed to make off with that elemental pup in the back of his truck."

Ephraim was bouncing up and down with impatience and said, "Tell Regan here about the tornado. That's the best part."

"Will you wait a minute?" growled Jedidiah. "You got ta tell your parts, let me tell mine."

Ephraim nodded and took a big hit of his coffee, then he let Jedidiah have the floor again. The blue-eyed man glared at everyone for a minute, then he said, "The professor already mentioned that there was a big storm brewin' for Zephyr Grove, it was a spring thunderstorm and was going ta be a real event. It had been getting blustery in the area over several days, and the day the professor caught his elemental the clouds were black and low and rippled with lightnin'.

"I drove like a maniac down the little road that led to the freeway. Zephyr Grove is about six miles from the freeway, and for three and a half minutes I didn't see a thing, then I saw, way up ahead of me, the professor's truck. I floored it, and before you can say 'jackrabbit' I had caught up to him and pulled alongside him, motionin' for him to pull over to the side of the road. I don't know if he really didn't understand me or was just shinin' me on, but he didn't stop. I tried to cut him off and saw the surprise on his face, and suddenly he floored it, and in a minute he had hit the exit onto the freeway and was headin' for Oklahoma City. I followed him, wondering what ta do to get him to stop.

"Then the rain hit, big ol' drops that smacked the windshield. And the wind hit, and I saw the trees alongside the freeway bendin' crazy in the blasts. I looked up and saw the swirlin' clouds just ahead of us, the beginnin's of a funnel forming. I leaned on my horn, over and over again, and tried ta bump into his truck, but he drove like a man possessed and was doin' over a hundred miles an hour. There wasn't much traffic on the freeway, just a few crazy people out drivin' in that storm, and he took off down the road like a shot. I followed him, horn blaring, when the tornado hit.

"The funnel cloud came straight down out of the sky and slammed into his truck and threw it off the road, and he bounced over the shoulder of the highway for a minute and then wiped out. Dirt went flying in all directions as he hit the embankment. The tornado followed him and ripped the camper top right off his truck and hurled it across the freeway. I slowed way down and pulled over on the shoulder and got out of my truck and ran toward him, hollerin' at him ta get rid of that elemental pup. The rain was strikin' like knives, it really hurt to be out in it, and the wind was howlin' like the livin' dead.

"He got out and jumped into the back of the truck, and he was doin' some hollerin' of his own, but I couldn't understand what he was saying. Maybe he was shoutin' out magic spells, maybe he was just cursin'. I guess we'll never know. I saw him lift up the steel jug and jump out of the back of the truck, headin' into the cab with it.

"That's when the tornado struck again. That black spinning cloud just reached straight down and grabbed at the professor and the steel jug, and I saw the jug get lifted up, and the professor held on and got carried up and up and up, ten feet and then fifteen feet off the ground.

"I got there at last and shouted for the professor to let go, but I knew he couldn't hear me. The wind was roarin' and moanin', and he wouldn't have heard me if he was standin' right next to me.

"Then the tornado got mad, and it sucked the jug and the professor up into the sky and wrenched the jug away from him. The professor was fifty or sixty feet up in the air when the tornado let him drop. He plummeted straight down onto the shoulder of the highway, fifty feet away from me, and landed headfirst on the asphalt.

"I didn't really want to see what was left of the professor after that headfirst dive from the sky. I shouted my apologies to the tornado, and then it hurled the steel jug at me and grazed me on the throat, givin' me the scar you see here today.

"After that, there isn't much ta tell. I fell down senseless, and it was a passerby who called it in, two vehicles off to the side of the road and two men down on the shoulder. Eddy Prast, the local sheriff, came ta investigate and got me to the hospital, where they managed ta save my life. For six weeks I couldn't talk at all, then my voice slowly came back. It was the trauma, the doctors said, that kept me from speakin'.

"I found out that the professor was dead, and his steel jug was all mutilated. The rubber stopper was gone. The sheriff showed it to me as a curiosity, and I knew the elemental pup was escaped. Its papa let it out, and it went up into the sky with its folk, where it belongs. The good Lord provides for all His creatures, and elementals have their place."

"Yeah," said Robert. "That professor never should have tried to make off with an elemental pup. Something like that could only make the elemental daddies madder than hornets."

Ephraim nodded. "About a week later some men came from that school back East and picked up the professor's remains, and his truck, and the steel jug. They didn't talk to no one but the sheriff, and they weren't in town three hours. Guess they weren't very interested in the lords of the air."

The three men fell silent, and I finished my BLT and inserted a fresh tape in the tape recorder, but as it turned out they were about done.

Robert said, "So there's your story, Regan. A tale of the air elementals, and the ancient Greeks, and what happens when you mess with things the good Lord keeps as secrets. I guess Doctor Hajerrian wanted to be a magician of some sort, but in the end his ambitions didn't serve him well."

"He wasn't a bad fella, he just didn't think it through," said Jedidiah. "He knew that full-grown tornadoes were adult elementals, but he didn't count on there being nurturin' feelin's between adult and baby elementals. He didn't count on parentin' instinct."

The men fell silent again, and Betty brought more coffee, and we drank and chatted a while, but the story was over. Eventually the men had to get back to their farms, and they gave me their numbers in case I had any questions, and I took off back to the big city. I wrote up their story, but my editor didn't like it.

"Regan, we're a serious reporting paper, not a tabloid," he said. "We're not about two-headed alien Elvis babies."

"Well, what should I do with this story?" I said. "It's certainly interesting enough to print."

"Why don't you write it up as a short story, and sell it to a fiction magazine?" he said, with humor. "Try the sci-fi mags, they might go for it."

So that's what I did.

The town of Zephyr Grove hasn't changed, the air elementals haven't destroyed the place (yet), and I called Robert a few days ago and confirmed that the elemental spawning ground is still there.

"It's still here, still giving birth to dust devils," he said. "Did you print up your story?"

I told him what my editor said, and told him that I was typing it up as a short story.

He chuckled. "When life hands you lemons, huh?" he said.

"Exactly," I said.

He was silent a moment, and then he said, "Has our story put thoughts in your head?"

Now I was the quiet one. Finally I said, "I got some books on ancient Greek magic out of the library, and they're full of interesting ideas, Robert. I'd like to come back to the Grove in a few weeks and poke around that patch of barren land."

"You're welcome to come, but I'd recommend against trying to catch a pup. It can be hazardous to your health."

"Yeah, but how about capturing a full-on adult?" I said.

"Now, _that_ would be something," he allowed. "Call me when you're ready to come, and you can show me your trap. This I've got to see for myself."

So you see, the professor didn't die in vain. He excited a whole new generation of fools to come to Zephyr Grove and continue his work, trying to be the first man in two thousand years to chain an air elemental. _When_ it happens, dear reader, I'll let you know...

## Leafy Green Vegetables

What do you do if you're a simple civil servant who is caught up in miraculous events, and there is no one to tell you what's going on? Do you trust your own senses, do you turn to your friends, or do you simply wing it and hope for the best? The people in this story are mucking about in matters of life and death, and there's someone who seems to have the answers, but he's an unknown quantity. This is a story for all the tillers of the soil who have, by their own sweat and blood, brought forth goodness from the stubborn earth.

My name is Maybelle Tong, and yes, I'm Asian-American. The Tongs have been in the United States for a hundred and fifty years, so we're old growth Americans. You can take the people out of China, but you can't take China out of the people, and the Tongs have been in government service since we came to San Francisco. I continue the family tradition by working in the Parks and Recreation Department, as one of three employees at an urban community garden in the city's Mission District. I'm responsible for plots 34-66, out of a hundred plots total. Every plot has a tenant, and there's a waiting list as long as my arm. And it's not just the well-to-do and the middle class who have plots. The urban poor do their share of gardening, too. I treat them all the same, like my good friends.

I'm sending this story to your magazine because your contest asked for true stories of San Francisco, and this is as factual a piece as any I've ever written about urban gardening. Even though it's going to seem like a fantasy, I swear on my ancestors' graves that it's true.

Now, my job is to help the tenants of plots 34-66 with their gardening needs, and looking after thirty-three tenants is definitely a full-time gig. The plots are open every day except Mondays and Tuesdays, so I work an odd schedule to accommodate all the weekend gardeners. It's open from eleven in the morning until seven at night, to let people come in after work if they don't want to take time on the weekends. I know all of my tenants by name and take the time to chat with them whenever they drop by. Mostly we talk about gardening, and the weather we're expecting over the next couple of weeks, and what's growing well this year and what's not, and that sort of thing, but there's a good bit of gossip that's exchanged as well. And at the center of that gossip, for patches 34-66, was Hector Patli, the leafy greens man.

Hector wasn't much to look at, a nondescript Mexican man with a brown face that looked Amerindian. His eyes got you though; they were a stormy blue-grey. He was always smiling, and he fidgeted a lot, and when he spoke he gestured wildly like his words weren't adequate to tell the story but needed help from his hands. In dress Hector was conservative: a cowboy shirt, jeans that looked new, and a black bolo tie with an onyx headpiece. He wore cowboy boots and seemed to have several pairs in different styles. Hector's speech was peppered by a spicy Spanish accent that suggested his first language wasn't English, but he spoke English just fine. Hector joined the garden just this year, and he planted in the first week of April despite my warnings that it might be too soon.

"This is going to be a warm year," he said to me. "Global warming. Get your crops in the ground early, this year."

"National Weather Service says there's going to be a cold snap next week," I warned, but he waved this off.

"Little puff of cold won't kill _my_ hardy crops," he proclaimed. "Special seeds."

That piqued my curiosity. It was planting time in two weeks, and everyone was talking about their seeds. Some tenants swore you wanted Central Valley seeds, and some got theirs from back East, and others swore by genetically engineered seeds from Monsanto and the other big biotech firms. "Where do you get your seeds from?" I asked him.

"Family farms in Mexico," he said with pride. "Best seeds in all God's creation. Hardy, easy to care for, high-yield. Bred by the Indians for two thousand years."

"I'm interested in seeing how they do," I said. "What are you planting?"

"Leafy green vegetables," he said. "People don't like to eat them, but they're rich in vitamins and minerals. They're loaded with nutrients. Fry them up with pork fat and bits of bacon, and they're delicious. I have a thousand recipes. I'll bring some for you."

"Yes, if you would," I said, pleased. Our little community loved trading recipes, men and women both brought in their best. Hector was right, people didn't appreciate the leafy greens. Most people wanted to grow corn, carrots, peas, radishes: the popular crops. So Hector was the first one that year to put in his garden, planting the long rows of tiny seeds and watering them with care. The cold snap came, even worse than anticipated; it was really freezing that April. Hector swore his greens would come up as expected.

They did, too. About three weeks after the cold snap passed, his little seedlings popped out of the ground, and he acted like a proud papa with a new baby. He always came to the garden early in the day, eleven to one, to weed and water, and he would corral other tenants and take them to his plot and show them the sprouts.

"Already?" was the common comment. "When did you plant?"

"Fifth of April," he would say, fussing with his bolo tie.

"Before the cold snap? You were really taking your chances, weren't you?"

"Mexican seeds are the hardiest in the world. Aztec seeds."

Pretty soon everyone in our area knew Hector. As his sprouts came up he became obsessive about killing every little weed. I found him on hands and knees in his bright blue jeans, crawling up and down the rows of his plot, saying, "Aha," and yanking the weeds out and throwing them in a pile for compost. The dandelions really sprang up. I don't know where they came from, but they infested every plot, and they took a lot of work to clear. Hector plucked the leaves, which he said he would eat, then he dug up those deep roots.

By July his leafy greens were in full ripeness, and he was cutting them with a little hooked knife he kept in his locker. Our garden has lockers for each plot, where you can store your gardening tools. Hector had his hooked knife in his locker, and a trowel for weeding and lots of large plastic freezer bags for leafy green leaves. He would pick twenty or thirty leaves and offer them to various other tenants, some of whom accepted his gifts and some of whom said they'd wait for their own plots to come to ripeness, thanks.

Hector was wrong about it being a warm summer. The weather stayed cool, and most of the crops didn't do so well. Lots of stunted plants that year. But not Hector's plot. It was full of growth. He was at the center of our gossip because he was growing the most spectacular cluster of leafy green vegetables that we'd ever seen. It put every other patch to shame. Kale, collards, turnip greens, Swiss chard; all were amazing. His spinach practically burst from the soil, his broccoli was the envy of the other tenants, and his lettuce and cabbage were humungous.

Around that time someone new came to the garden, a young woman whose plot had lain empty while everyone else got their seeds in the ground. Technically she was still the tenant, so I couldn't kick her out, but it was sure tough seeing that patch of dirt going unused when there were two hundred more people on the list who wanted in. So this woman came to the garden in a bright summer dress and had a little girl in tow who I guessed was about four years old. The girl was bald and looked tired. In fact, she looked positively ragged.

"Are you Maybelle?" the woman asked. "I'm Karen Smathers, and my daughter is Kaylee. We're here to see to patch fifty."

"Yes, I'm Maybelle," I said. "Glad to meet you, Karen. Hi, Kaylee. Good to see you coming in to use your plot. Everyone else already got their seeds in the ground."

"We've been busy with chemotherapy," said Karen. "My daughter has leukemia."

"It sucks," said Kaylee. "The chemo hurts."

"It's a bit late in the year for putting in corn or peas, but you might get some root crops to grow," I said. I looked at Kaylee and said, "But maybe the chemo is helping?"

She shook her head slowly, and I wondered what her story was.

"Oh, we weren't thinking food crops. We were thinking roses," said Karen.

"Well, plot forty-four grows wildflowers for the restaurant industry. They're doing just fine this year," I said. "So roses would be a nice change of pace. The rules say you have to grow food crops, but we can bend those rules a bit."

"For today I just want to get an idea how big the plot is, then we can plant over the next couple of weeks," Karen said.

"All the plots are the same size," I said. "Five by twenty feet. Big, but not unmanageable."

"We'll go take a look," she said.

Kaylee looked around the garden at all the growing plants and said, "Lots of gardeners."

"Our tenants have been busy this year, Kaylee," I said. "Especially Hector, who has the pride of place. He's got a bumper crop this year. Come on, why don't I introduce you?" I led them to plot fifty, their plot, which was right alongside plot fifty-one, which belonged to Hector.

"Good morning," Hector said when I had introduced them. "You look like you could use some leafy greens, young lady."

"She's on vitamins and mineral supplements as is," Karen said quickly. "She doesn't need _your_ greens." I caught the _your_ and wondered what that was about, but Hector shined it on.

"These are special plants," he said. "They're Aztec leafy greens."

"No thanks," Karen said.

Kaylee said, "What's an Aztec?"

"They're the Indians of Mexico," said Hector. "Great fierce warriors. And great agriculturists, too."

"We'll stick with the supplements," Karen said. Hector seemed disappointed, but he didn't say anything else. Karen and Kaylee walked around plot fifty, then they left.

Hector continued giving out leafy greens to the other tenants, and people began commenting on how his greens cured their bad health. I'm thinking of Mrs. Fernandez in particular here, plot sixty-four. She had macular degeneration in her eyes, and Hector gave her kale and spinach. She came by two weeks later and said it was a miracle of Jesus, her eyesight was restored.

"It's like I'm twenty years younger, before my eyes went bad," she told me. "It's Hector's leafy greens. I guess all that clabbertrap about Aztecs is right after all."

Old George Apser from plot thirty-six took some broccoli from Hector and said his heart was no longer murmuring. "That damned broccoli fixed my ticker," he wheezed. "Hector should get an award for those greens of his, you hear me? Give the man a medal!"

That wasn't the end of it, either. Sammy Lussard, plot fifty-eight, took some of Hector's Swiss chard and raved that it helped him with his diabetes. Sammy, who was thirty-four, said, "No insulin shots for three weeks now, just leafy greens. My doctor doesn't know what to make of it. I told him about Hector's Swiss chard, and he was all for it. Diet and exercise is his mantra. Hell, I've even started exercising to go along with it. Swiss Chard stir-fried with shiitake mushrooms and tofu. It's heaven."

And finally there was Jenny Stoner, an unfortunate name for a friendly young woman who was growing the usual root crops in plot forty-one. She took Hector's plants and told me, "I've felt revitalized ever since I started eating Hector's turnip greens. I used to be so run down and tired after work, but now I have energy and feel good. I'm going to order Mexican seeds next year, myself, and try them out. I always thought leafy greens were boring, but not anymore."

Hector's patch thrived. He continued to eradicate dandelions and other weeds, and he brought out the powders to defeat an infestation of weevils, but through it all he smiled and bagged up his greens for everyone who wanted them. "The birth control pill was an Aztec invention," he told me. "They know their plants. Can never go wrong with the Aztecs."

I have to admit to being curious. I got some of his lettuce, because I'm a salad freak. I just chopped it up and mixed it with cherry tomatoes and diced potatoes and sliced onions, with a tangy ranch dressing over it all. I tried it with diced chicken breast, too, and that was superb. I had a spare tire around my belly, but in four weeks of eating Hector's romaine lettuce with every dinner I dropped fifteen pounds and got a flat tummy out of it.

"It's nice of you to give away your greens," I said to Hector one morning. "You could sell them at the farmer's market..."

"I have to make up for my ancestor," said Hector, wiping sweat off his forehead with a blue patterned handkerchief. "He was an Aztec priest. He cut the hearts out of women and children. We Patlis owe a debt, and I give away my leafy greens to make up for all the people he killed."

It was a strange statement, but we Asians also revere our ancestors, so I know all about making up for past evil deeds. Hector took his ancestors seriously. I thought about this priest sometimes, cutting hearts out of little children, and reflected on how times change. Now Hector was curing the ill and getting rid of chronic conditions. So the wheel of fortune turns.

July gave way to August, and everything ripened very nicely. Hector's patch grew dense and bushy. I complimented Hector on his healthy plants, and he just grinned. Then he looked at Karen and Kaylee, who were putting purple roses in plot fifty. Karen carefully planted her adult plants. God knows how much they cost her, but she brought a carload of them one day, and she and Kaylee put them in. Hector watched them fuss with their roses, and he turned to me, and it was the first time I ever saw him without a smile.

"That little girl needs Aztec vegetables more than anyone, and her mother won't hear it. They're trusting the vitamin supplements and chemotherapy to heal Kaylee, and that's not going to do it; I can feel it in my bones. She needs the strength of the Aztecs!"

I said, "Don't give up on Karen, Hector. Keep at her to try your plants. Have her talk to some of the other people here, so she hears about your greens. Let them convince her."

So Hector had Mrs. Fernandez and George Apser and Sammy Lussard talk to Karen, but it was all to no avail.

"She's in chemotherapy, and the doctor has her on all sorts of nutrition supplements," Karen told them. "Her leukemia hasn't responded to any of it. She's got six months, maybe less, and the last three months of it will be bed-ridden. So we're planting this garden as a mother-daughter project, while we still can."

I decided to try my hand at this and came to Karen one day as they put in red roses. I know my food crops, but I don't know my roses, so I asked her what kind they were.

"These are called Hybrid Musk," she said. "They're noted for their scent, more than the wild roses. I want Kaylee to be surrounded by the scent of beautiful roses for her last months."

"Leukemia sucks," said Kaylee. "I'm going to _die_."

"Maybe you need to change up your therapies, if the same old isn't working," I said.

"She's resistant to the chemo, it's not working for her," said Karen. "They want to try an experimental therapy, but it's a new kind of poison that'll make her last months miserable. I want her to have a good time with her final days, not be sick as a dog." I saw in Karen's eyes a desperate sadness. Kaylee looked more tired than usual. Her movements were listless, and her voice was exhausted.

"I'm not thinking of more poison," I said. "I'm thinking the king of the vegetables, kale. And collard greens are supposed to be good for leukemia. Try something natural and holistic. I'm sure some of our gardeners would give you kale and collard greens. Try Hector Patli, he's always trying to give away his plants."

"Hector is a pest," Karen said. "He's always over here, foisting his greens off on us. All that nonsense about the Aztecs, it gets tiresome. Besides, he's Mexican, what do they know about leafy crops? All they grow is maize and squash and beans."

That made me mad, and I burst out, "Hector's family has been in America for two hundred years. His plot is the most outstanding garden in our patches. Don't you look down on our finest gardener!"

"If American doctors can't do anything for Kaylee, what's some Mexican farmer going to do?" Karen said.

"Maybe more than your doctors," I said, indignant. "Seriously, Karen, if the doctors aren't working, what can it hurt to try some of Hector's kale? His lettuce helped me lose fifteen pounds in a month, which was more than any diet supplement I've ever tried."

She eyed me suspiciously. "Lettuce isn't good for cancer."

"But kale is," I said. "It's the strongest of the leafy greens, give it a chance. You _owe_ it to Kaylee to try everything. Other people in these gardens swear by Hector's crop. You have to try it, Karen, don't let your daughter pass away when this might help." I was really worked up. This stubborn woman was refusing to help her daughter in her time of crisis, and it wasn't right. Kale wasn't an exciting vegetable like carrots, but what if it could help with the cancer?

"The sooner you have her try the kale, the better," I said forcefully. "Fry it up with pork fat and bacon bits, or put it in a soup with beef or chicken. I must have fifty recipes for kale. For God's sake, Karen, are you really going to just let her die?"

"I don't want to die," said Kaylee. "I don't care about God and the angels. They're not my mom and dad. I'll try kale, whatever it is. I like bacon. I don't want to die," she repeated.

Karen began to cry, then, and I realized I'd overdone it, but the woman made me so angry that I forgot myself. I went to the gardener's shack and got some plastic bags and went to Hector's plot and tore off twenty pieces of kale, and an equal number of collard greens. Hector wasn't around, but I knew he wouldn't mind me taking the greens. I bagged them up and carried them to Karen, who wiped her eyes and accepted the bags.

"Soup, huh?" she said, and I nodded.

"Just chop them up and drop them right in, and make sure she eats them. Little girls don't usually like leafy greens."

"Looks boring," said Kaylee. "I like carrots."

"Everyone likes carrots," I said. "They're popular. It's the kale, Karen. The collard greens can't hurt, but it's the kale that's doing the heavy lifting. Freeze the leaves you're not using, and come for more when you run out. Hector would be glad to give you all you need. Thank you for agreeing to try."

Karen and Kaylee didn't come around for three weeks. August gave way to September, and Hector's plot continued to burst with life. All of us in plots thirty-four to sixty-six discussed the sick little girl, and we agreed that we'd done everything we could. It was up to Karen now, with her racist nonsense.

"That poor little girl," said Mrs. Fernandez. "I can't imagine being that sick. Even her eyebrows are gone, did you notice? It's that poison they're giving her, no wonder she's weak."

Sammy Lussard clucked his tongue. "Well, they've got Hector's greens now. If that doesn't help, nothing will."

"Amen," said Jenny Stoner. "His plants restored my energy; they can't hurt Kaylee. But Karen might have waited too long. Even Hector's plants have to have time to work."

It was about this time, in mid-September, that it happened, the thing that has me writing all of this to begin with. Karen and Kaylee had been gone from their plot for weeks, and it had gone to weeds, and the roses were being choked to death by dandelions. The rose bushes were heavy with buds, but I knew most of them would never blossom, with all the weeds sucking away the moisture. I mentioned this to several people, and somebody said, "Karen's busy with chemo for Kaylee. I guess she doesn't have time for her plot."

Word circulated in our part of the gardens, and one afternoon I saw Hector on his hands and knees in plot number fifty, weeding the roses. He had his trowel with him and was giving the dandelions hell, and he was at it all morning and all afternoon. When he was done it was after four, and the patch was weeded. I was going to say something to him about the value of helping out one's neighbors, but Jenny Stoner was gossiping at me, and by the time I got around to visiting Hector, he had gone for the day.

I went over to check out his weeding work around five that afternoon, and I was stunned by what I saw. All the roses in patch fifty were blossoming. The Hybrid Musk flowers filled the air with a wonderful scent. That morning the buds hung heavy on the rose bushes, and that evening they were all in bloom. I walked around the patch, stopping here and there to sniff the roses and marvel at Hector's work. How on earth had he gotten those roses to bloom in one day? It seemed they had just been waiting for the weeds to be destroyed so they could come to fruition. Green touch, indeed!

A day or two after the roses bloomed, Karen came back by herself, just stopping in for a minute. She went to Hector's plot, where he was fussing with his plants.

"More kale?" he asked her.

"Yes, we need more. I've made kale quiche and kale soup and kale and pork dumplings and fried kale and stir-fried kale and God knows what all. Her energy is better, and the cancer has stopped spreading. Her doctors have increased the chemo, to force the leukemia into remission. Kaylee's bedridden. But she's eating her leafy greens, and that's a minor miracle by itself."

Hector took the hooked knife from his pocket and got some plastic bags and sliced her some greens. He filled the bags and said, "Go see Maybelle. She'll give you more recipes."

Karen took the bags of vegetables and came to see me, and I gave her about thirty recipes for her greens. "Don't forget plain old salads," I said. "The raw greens are very powerful. They're fine cooked, but that breaks down the nutrients, too. I'm so glad to hear that Kaylee is doing better, Karen."

"Thanks," she said. "I don't know when I'll be back. Probably when the kale runs out."

She left then and got in her SUV and took off, and I went to talk to Hector. "Karen's too proud to say it, but she appreciates the greens," I said to him.

"Hmmph. Even if they come from a Mexican, huh?"

"She's right, Mexicans aren't known for leafy vegetables. Everyone thinks of maize."

"But _I_ am known for my leaves," he said. "Her arrogance nearly killed her daughter."

"Hector, is there something special you're doing to your greens? Something I should know about? Some kind of fertilizer?"

"Patlis have always been gardeners," he fussed, making motions of hoeing and raking. "We have the green thumb. It goes back five hundred years. My ancestors were chinampas farmers in Tenochtitlan. We've been gardening ever since."

"Got the Saint Fiacre touch, eh?" I asked.

"Any fool can grow kale," he said. "Grocery stores are full of kale. But Aztec kale is different; it is powerful. It is full of good spirits, and they fight for you."

"All right, I'll take your word," I said. "At least she's trying it."

"Yes, she isn't totally crazy," he agreed. "Give Kaylee a chance."

The moment drew long, and I said, "Hector, I saw what happened to Karen and Kaylee's roses after you weeded them. They bloomed the same day. There's only one kind of person who makes roses blossom just by touching them, and that's a saint. Is that you, Hector? Are you the patron saint of leafy green vegetables?"

He looked uncomfortable, and his smile faltered. "The Aztecs had their own priests and saints," he said carefully. "I'm descended from them. I'm a good Catholic, but I'm an Aztec first. Always."

I gave him a hard stare. There was a touch of magic to Hector, no doubt about it. He had the green touch. I didn't know if he was a saint or not, but I knew what I had seen. I'm just a civil servant working for my city, but even I know when miracles are happening.

Weeks went by, and Hector continued to give away his plants. Sherry Brockmeyer, plot fifty-seven, took some of his red cabbages and lowered her high cholesterol. Marvin Pierce, plot thirty-nine, took some spinach and cured his asthma. I got Hector to give me an address in Mexico where I could get some of his special seeds.

He said, "Those seeds will give you better plants, no doubt about it. I was afraid the plants wouldn't take in this colder climate, but that hasn't happened."

Then Karen came by, and she didn't look as strung-out as she usually did. She came straight to Hector's patch while he and I were talking. She said, "Kaylee's in remission. They don't know if it will last, but they're crediting the chemo."

"Could be," said Hector, pulling his chin. "Or maybe the kale."

"I'll bring her by in a couple weeks, after she gets her strength back," Karen said. "I just came today to give you the news and get more kale."

"And collard greens," said a smiling Hector. He cut the leaves and gave them to Karen, and she said her good-byes and took off.

Three weeks after this, in early October, the growing season was over, and Hector's patch was farmed out. All that was left were sliced-off stalks, which he composted for next year. Karen and Kaylee came back. Kaylee had brown stubble on her head, and her eyebrows had grown in. She had energy and was jumping and running around the garden and helped her mom with their rose bushes, which badly needed weeding again. They attended to this for a while, then they turned to the plot next door and talked with Hector. I drifted by and joined in.

"Are you going to keep a plot next year?" Karen asked Hector.

"Every year," Hector said, gesticulating wildly to suggest growing things. "Lots of people need leafy greens, and leafy greens need the Patli touch."

"Thank you for the kale and collard greens," Karen said.

"I guess Hector does know something about leafy greens," I couldn't resist saying.

"Maybe you should try your hand at maize, and really power up," Karen teased.

"Good for high blood pressure, and heart problems," Hector offered. "But I'll stick to the leafy greens. Plenty to do with them."

"Kale is okay, but carrots are better," Kaylee said.

"Good for eyesight," I said.

Hector shook his head. "Not a root man, myself," he said. "Keep a little patch free of roses, and grow carrots."

"Maybe we will," said Karen, and Kaylee nodded. Then they went back to their garden, and that left Hector and me.

"You probably saved that little girl's life," I said in all seriousness. "Karen said the chemo wasn't helping. Do you really think it suddenly put her cancer in remission?"

"Don't underestimate the Aztecs," said Hector, and that was the final word on this matter.

So I've written up this story for your magazine, and though it seems like a story about leafy green vegetables, I believe it's really a story about a modest Mexican man who has a notable green thumb and a deep understanding of food crops. I hope your magazine can use the story and that you'll publish it and spread the word about the health benefits of garden-grown foods. America has ten thousand community gardens, all full of delicious crops. Give them a chance with your health concerns, and maybe they'll help you, too!

## Black Scarab

Over the past 20 years I have travelled to Egypt several times, each time travelling all over the country and taking in its ancient history and sights. There is a lot to see and do in this most Muslim of countries, and I never get tired of Egyptian hospitality and adventure. This story is about a bleeding heart liberal who has a soft spot for the homeless and gets caught up in a quest for ancient Egyptian treasures. She is a little confused as to what exactly is going on, but she's game for an unusual experience or two, with a touch of magic thrown in for good measure. In the end, though, it comes back to her passion for the homeless, and doing good by doing for others. This story more than any other in this collection contains adult situations and sexuality. Not meant for minors!

Audrey was at the homeless encampment, handing out money to her favorites. There were about fifty shopping carts parked on the vacant lot, loaded with blankets and food containers and make-up cases and spare clothes and pet carriers and other assorted stuff, and milling around these were about twenty homeless men and women. Most of these were under cover of makeshift tarps or were in tents, because the sun was fierce. It was only May, but with global warming the spring weather was hot, and the San Diego air was humid today. Audrey wore a spring sun dress in shades of gold and yellow, which she hoped was neutral in tone.

Of the twenty homeless who were about, Audrey knew half a dozen by name. People came and went in the encampment, in a never-ending profusion, and she had learned to ask their names only if she had seen them several times. For some reason the San Diego homeless liked to summer in L.A., so in a month a lot of them would be migrating north. Then her favorites would be gone, too. So she had to visit when it was possible and do whatever she could for the uplift of these poor people.

Her core favorites all knew each other and hung out together, and she found them easily enough by the booming voice of Michael, who could be heard from all the way out on the street.

"Hey, Audrey!" Sheila called out, and waved. Audrey waved back and came over to them, all seated under a sea-blue tarp that stretched between four shopping carts, one at each corner of the tarp. They were playing cards, but they interrupted their game for Audrey's arrival.

"Give me money, bitch," said Michael in a menacing tone. He reached out from under the tarp and fondled Audrey's leg, and Audrey kicked and knocked his hand loose. "I said give me money, cunt!" he shouted. He was in his early forties and would have been handsome except that he didn't wash that often. His hair was dank, and he smelled awful.

"You'll not get a penny out of me with that language," said Audrey. "Have you been taking your meds, Michael?"

"I don't need no fucking meds!" he boomed. "I'm not sick!"

Michael had mental illness issues. He was schizophrenic, and he was aggressive to the point of scary sometimes. He insisted on fondling and groping and cursing like a soldier, and sometimes he grabbed for money meant for other homeless. Once he had tackled Audrey and dislocated her shoulder, and after that incident he had disappeared for several months before coming back to his old tricks. Audrey didn't much like him, but he watched out for her favorites, and they swore by him, so she tolerated his crap.

"Sheila, how are you doing?" Audrey said to a heavy-set woman under the tarp.

"I'm hanging in there, Audrey," Sheila said. She was in her mid-thirties and had diabetes which was sometimes treated and sometimes wasn't. She had all sorts of health issues due to the diabetes and needed a lot more help than Audrey could give her. Audrey had once done some research and found her a free program to provide her with insulin, but she said she wasn't that sick and didn't need the help, thanks. Just money.

"Bettina, why are you wearing a jacket on this blistering day?" Audrey said to a little Filipina woman in her late fifties. Bettina had an on-again, off-again sadistic affair with a man named Juan, who once attacked her in front of Michael and was soundly beaten for his pains. Michael was protective of his gals.

"Got the cold in my bones," said Bettina. "It was a cold winter, and it's still hanging on."

"Well, you're going to get hives, or some such," said Audrey. "Maybe you should take off the coat and sit in the sun for a while."

"She said she's cold!" Michael thundered, pushing at Audrey's legs. Audrey staggered and then caught her balance. "Leave it alone, you fucking whore!"

"And Jacquie, how is life treating you?" Audrey said. It was best to ignore Michael's outbursts and see if he could regain control of himself. But sometimes he was simply in a mood, and there was nothing to be done for it.

Jacquie was an early twenties girl, a rather pretty blonde, but for some reason Michael didn't pester her. Audrey wondered sometimes if Michael was gay; he never seemed interested in his gals sexually. He groped Audrey, but that was aggressive, not sexual, behavior, as far as Audrey could tell. Every once in a while he made a sexual comment, but not often. Maybe he was getting off on the threat of violence.

"One of these days I'm moving to the Bay Area," said Jacquie. "It's a lot cooler up there, and their homeless shelters beat the ones in San Diego hands down."

"Summer is nice in San Francisco," said Audrey. "I visited up there a few years ago, and it was warm but not hot in the summer."

"Fuck San Francisco," said Jacquie. "I'm thinking San Jose. Much cheaper to live in San Jose than San Francisco."

"Did you bring money?" said Michael, fondling Audrey's kneecap.

"For fuck's sake, Michael, we're having a conversation," snapped Jacquie.

"Don't cuss me out, whore!" snarled Michael.

"You're too intense, Michael," said Bettina, shaking her head.

"I like San Francisco, personally. But she's right, it's really expensive," said Sheila.

"Give me money!" howled Michael, thumping on his chest like an ape.

"Ignore him," said Bettina.

Michael grabbed Bettina's leg and squeezed, hard, and Bettina grunted.

"Well, I don't want to interrupt your game," said Audrey. Michael was really a handful today, this wasn't one of his calm days. Sometimes he was worked up like this, and the longer Audrey stayed around the worse he would get. For all their sakes she should get on with her business and go home as fast as possible.

"I thought you all could do with some cash," she said.

"Honey, we are always hard up for the legal tender," said Sheila. "Cops are busting down on beggars, it's getting expensive to panhandle. We sit on this fucking lot all day and play cards or jerk off telling stories about better days, but we've heard all the stories already. When it gets hot here I'm going to L.A., take some time away from San Dee-fucking-eggo."

"You're a sweetheart," said Bettina, who slapped Michael's hand. He let go of her leg and grabbed his crotch.

"You always come her giving us stuff," he said to Audrey. "Let me give you something this time, some nice _cock._ "

"Hey, that's out of bounds," said Jacquie, sharply.

"You should take your fucking meds, Michael, so you're not such a dick," said Sheila.

"What's your problem today, man?" said Bettina.

"Just want to give her something nice. Nice and _juicy_ ," said Michael, stroking his crotch with one hand.

Audrey sighed. She had been looking forward to coming down and talking for an hour with her homeless friends, but it wasn't going to work out today, no way. She reached into her little purse and pulled out a wad of twenties.

"About fucking time, you stupid slut," said Michael.

"Michael!" barked Sheila. " _Not okay!_ "

Michael took his hand away from his crotch and turned red in the face. "Just sayin'," he mumbled. "Nobody else comes here to give us money."

"She won't keep coming back if you treat her so badly," said Bettina. "I sure as hell wouldn't come back again."

"Whatever," Michael groaned. He put his hands on his temples and moaned loudly, then shook his head as though clearing it.

"He's having a bad day. Started early, been going on all day," said Sheila. "But he won't let us talk him into taking his meds. Never with the meds. It's almost noon already, and he's been moaning and carrying on for about four hours already."

"Shut up, you miserable cunt!" Michael said and slapped Sheila's leg. Sheila kicked him in the gut, hard, and he gave out a shriek that chilled Audrey's spine. How the gals put up with him like this she didn't know. He needed to be institutionalized, but in this day and age that would never happen. Everyone was dead set against institutionalizing the mentally ill; it took away their personal freedom. So Michael was "free" to abuse his gals and abuse himself by refusing to take his meds, and his condition got slowly worse.

Audrey peeled two twenties off her wad of bills and gave them to Bettina, because she was oldest, and age counted with Audrey.

"Thanks, Audrey. You know I'll never repay your kindness," said Bettina. "Maybe on a better day we can all sit around and talk again. That's a good time. Something different."

Audrey took two more twenties off the wad and gave them to Michael, who snatched them out of her hand and licked them with long, wet applications of the tongue.

"You're my favorite bitch," said Michael. He stuffed the bills into his mouth and chewed on them, and Audrey reflected that at least this kept him from talking.

She gave forty dollars to Sheila next, who took them gingerly and thanked her. Finally she gave forty bucks to Jacquie, who tucked them into her pocket and said,

"You're good people, Audrey. If generosity was repaid with karma, you'd find a good man any day now."

Michael dug the wet bills out of his mouth and stuffed them into a pocket and said, "I'm a good man. With a nice fat _dick._ You should stuff it in your mouth and give me pleasure."

"Buy yourselves some ice cream, it's going to be horribly hot by two in the afternoon," Audrey said.

"Fuck ice cream," said Michael. "This is enough to buy a joint, get wasted. Improve my mental health."

"Yeah, getting stoned will do wonders for _your_ brain," muttered Sheila. Michael showed no signs of having heard her. Instead he fondled Audrey's kneecap again and leaned over like he was going to lick her leg. Audrey shook him loose and stepped back from the tarp.

"I'm sorry I can't help you out more than this," she said. "I'm just not wealthy enough."

Bettina held her hand up over her head and said, "Wait a minute, Audrey. I have something for you." She reached to a yellow cord around her neck and pulled it up over her head. She started to hand it to Audrey, and Michael grabbed at it, and Bettina jerked it back and said, "Hey, _asshole._ Did I say it was for you?"

Michael hid his face behind his hands and said, "Don't have to be a cunt about it, Bettina. I was just _teasing._ "

" _Tease_ somebody else," Bettina said and handed the cord to Audrey, who accepted it. On the end of the cord was an amulet of black stone, shaped like a beetle. "I'm going to die soon," said Bettina. "That psychic I've been seeing said I would die alone and nobody would know what happened to me. So I want you to have this. It's a scarab beetle, from ancient Egypt. Don't know how it got into my family, but we've had it for three hundred years. I'm sure as hell not giving it to _Juan._ It gives you dreams. Good luck with it."

"Give it here, whore!" boomed Michael. He grabbed for the amulet, and Audrey put it in her purse to examine later.

"Thanks, Bettina," she said. "But maybe you should send it back to your family."

"These people are my family now," said Bettina, indicating the homeless. "My biological family hasn't cared about my fate in thirty years. To hell with them."

Michael stroked Audrey's leg, and Audrey kicked him loose again. He threw his head back and shrieked and clutched his head and then put his hands down on the ground and slapped the earth.

"Come back in a few days and see us again, Audrey, let's talk," said Jacquie. "Bring ice cream bars, and we'll all sit around and shoot the shit."

"Gonna buy dope, and get high," Michael muttered.

"I've brought money for these other people, too," said Audrey, but the gals and Michael were already returning to their interrupted card game. Audrey walked through the encampment, handing out five dollar bills to everyone there. This didn't take long. Some people thanked her, some threatened to hurt her if she didn't give them more money, but some of the men put an end to that with ugly glares at the threatening parties. In a few minutes Audrey was out of money and took her leave of the encampment and walked back home to her apartment a few blocks away. Visiting the encampment always depressed her. She didn't have enough money to really help anyone out, it was all triage. Once she had been married to a kind and hard-working man, but he was hit by a drunk driver and killed, three years ago. There was life insurance money, about half a million dollars, and Audrey lived very frugally on that. Her biggest expense was her donations to the homeless. They were so much worse off than she was, it tore her heart to see how miserably they lived. America was a rich country, but you'd never know it if you saw human beings living out of shopping carts and reduced to begging. The smarter ones, or maybe it was just better connected ones, had food stamp cards, so they had regular meals, but a lot of the homeless were too proud to accept social services.

Then there were people like Michael, who were untreated mentally ill, who were a constant handful. There were a lot of mentally ill among the homeless. Criminals, too, on the run from the law. Audrey didn't ask questions when she gave out money. Money was easy. She wished she could do something substantive for these people, but the best she could do was hand out pocket money and urge them to get on social services. Michael should be on SSI, with his mental illness. He could have an apartment and get on meds and get his illness under control, but he refused to do it. He just said he wasn't sick.

Audrey went home and cooked lunch, a simple cabbage soup with fresh ingredients, and ate it in her dining room. She had a nice apartment. Nothing fancy, but all the essentials. Sometimes she invited Bettina or Sheila or Jacquie to come for dinner, but they always refused.

"No good putting on airs," said Sheila. "We appreciate the thought, Audrey, but we'd rather not see what we're missing out on."

Audrey puttered around the house for a while, knitting on a baby blanket for her baby sister, who was about to have kid number three. Audrey and her husband had been talking about children, but his death put an end to all that. She missed him terribly sometimes, and she didn't really want another man. Someday, maybe, she'd date again, but not now. So she was thirty-three and single, no kids to keep her busy. She read a lot of chick lit because the good ones made her laugh, and she knitted things for family, and she visited her homeless friends and gave out money. Her friends from the old days had drifted away, and she hadn't been sorry to see them go. They were unwelcome reminders of happier times.

After a few hours the heat knocked Audrey out, and she surrendered to exhaustion and lay down for a nap. She had put the black beetle around her neck and slept with it on, and Bettina was right, she had dreams. In the dream she was standing in her summer dress in a bone-dry, rocky valley somewhere. The sun was low in the sky, and it wasn't yet hot out; apparently it was early morning. Everything was dun brown. There were square holes cut into the sides of the valley, and there were hundreds of people milling around, entering and exiting the holes. They wore shorts and short-sleeve shirts and had cameras, and they were all babbling in a profusion of languages. There were signs on posts here and there, and she read one of these, and it said, "Tomb of Tutankhamen, KV62." Was this dream set in Egypt, then?

She roamed around the valley and peered into tombs and saw ancient Egyptian paintings of gods and pharaohs. She had read a book on the art of ancient Egypt once, a long time ago, and this dream looked familiar from that book. She was aware that she was dreaming, but it seemed so real that she tried talking to some of the other people.

"Excuse me, but I'm carrying something that may have come from this place," she said to a broad-shouldered, good-looking man in a sun hat. He had an attractive woman on his arm and was Caucasian, but when he spoke to Audrey it was in some language she didn't know. She shrugged, and he laughed, and then he and the woman took off. She approached several other people before she found a young Indian man who was uglier than sin but spoke English.

"Excuse me," she said to him. "Do you speak English?"

"Yes, of course," he said. "I'm from London. What can I do for you?"

"I have this amulet, and I'm wondering if it came from this place," she said. She pulled on the cord and brought the amulet out of her dress, and he looked at it dubiously. The front of the amulet was the beetle, and the back was a cartouche with hieroglyphics inside it.

"I can't read this," he said. "You need an archaeologist. I saw one earlier this morning, working in one of the tombs. Come, I'll show you." He led Audrey to the mouth of one of the tombs, where workmen were carrying out baskets of dirt and dumping them into wheelbarrows.

"He's in there. He just went in there not half an hour ago, so it may be a while before he's ready to come out," said the young man. "Good luck."

"Thank you," said Audrey, and he shrugged and left her there.

She began to walk past the workmen into the tomb when an Egyptian man dressed in khakis came out of it and held up his hand for her to stop. She did, and he said something in a foreign language, which she guessed was Arabic.

"I speak English," she said.

"Of course," he said with a slight accent. "This tomb is still being excavated, it's not open yet for tourists."

"I'm not a tourist," she said. She pulled the amulet out of her dress and waved it in front of him, on its cord. "I got this from a woman in San Diego; she said it's been in her family for three hundred years. I wonder if it came from this valley."

The Egyptian tried to take the amulet to take a look at it, but it went right through his fingers. "What is this?" he said in confusion. Audrey held up the amulet in front of his face, and he gazed at the hieroglyphs on the back. "Amazing," he said. "This is from Ramses the VIII. We have been seeking his tomb here in the Valley of the Kings for centuries, but no one has found it yet. He was only pharaoh for one year, but his tomb should be a rich one."

He reached out now and tried to touch Audrey on the shoulder, but his hand went right through her. "You are like a ghost," he said to her in surprise.

"I'm dreaming," she said, and the Egyptian frowned.

"Well, I am _not_ dreaming," he said. "I am wide awake. To answer your question, yes, I think this scarab came from the Valley of the Kings. From the undiscovered tomb of Ramses VIII. This tomb would be worth a great deal to Egyptologists, if we could find it."

"Good luck with that," Audrey murmured, and then she found herself fading away. The Valley of the Kings grew dark and indistinct, and she found herself waking up in her bed. It was night out, and she turned on the lamp on her nightstand and looked at her clock.

"Goodness!" she blurted. "I went to sleep at three in the afternoon and woke up at one in the morning!" She quickly dressed in her nightgown and brought her black stone amulet up in front of her eyes, to examine the back. The hieroglyphics were gibberish to her, but the Egyptian could read them. Ramses VIII. Now who could that be? She took the amulet off and laid it beside her bed, and she quickly fell asleep without dreams.

She awoke the next morning feeling energetic and refreshed. She knitted on her baby blanket all morning and took a long walk that afternoon, and in this way several days passed by almost without her noticing. The days had a way of slipping past like this, ever since her husband died. Whole years just shot by.

Eventually she thought to look up Ramses VIII on Google and found that he was a pharaoh of Egypt in 1130 B.C. He reigned for one year and then died young. Almost nothing was known about him except that he should be buried in the Valley of the Kings. Audrey found a map of the Valley and looked at all the burials and wondered where his tomb was.

Several more days passed, and Audrey went to the homeless encampment to say hi to her friends, but the whole gang was gone away. An old man was watching their stuff.

"Oh, hi, Audrey," said the old man, who Audrey didn't recognize. "They're off to a soup kitchen to have lunch today. Decided to take a break from canned food."

"Thanks for letting me know," said Audrey, and she walked back home. She got on the internet and read up on ancient Egypt for a while, stuff about the gods and the art and the pharaohs. Egypt had a hella long history, that was a fact. Something like six thousand years long. The art was beautiful, very naturalistic and graceful. She felt proud to own the amulet but wanted the chance to give it back. It wasn't really hers, it felt like something she had stolen from Bettina, and it made her vaguely uncomfortable to keep it. So she'd give it back at first opportunity.

That night she slipped the amulet's cord back around her neck before she went to sleep, and sure enough, she had another dream of the Valley of the Kings. This time the Valley was different. It was morning time again, shortly after sun-up, and she was standing near a cliff wall. She looked around and saw that she was deep in the Valley. The tomb entrances that were here last time were gone now, and there were merely smooth walls of plaster where they had been. Large men with swords and spears stood guard on the tombs. Not thirty feet away from Audrey a group of a dozen bald-headed men were bringing artifacts into a tomb mouth that was open. These men were coming from a cart that was parked on the floor of the Valley and was chained to two oxen; apparently the cart was full of the artifacts that were being loaded into the tomb by the bald-headed men.

Audrey walked closer to the men and was surprised that none of them said anything to her. They just continued taking items into the tomb. They brought a disassembled bed, and what looked like a disassembled chariot, and chairs, and several small end tables, and statues of black-skinned guardsmen, and chests of very fine workmanship. There were small urns of stone and folded-up clothing and large urns with wooden lids on them. One man brought a dozen pairs of sandals, some made of what looked like leopard hide, and another man brought a fancy headdress of bright yellow and red and green feathers. She wondered whose tomb this was.

The loading of items into the tomb went on and on, and the sun rose higher, and Audrey grew bored and walked around the Valley of the Kings. The guards were stolid-looking men, but they talked sometimes in a language she had never heard before. She walked all the way down to the entrance of the valley, looking at the sealed-up tomb entrances as she went. Why were the tombs all closed? Was this the future, and there were no more tourists? But that didn't make sense. The clothing of the guards looked like clothing in the ancient art, so maybe this was the past, when the Valley was still in use by the pharaohs. That seemed like a better bet.

As the sun grew high in the sky she walked back toward the open tomb where she had started. She paused at the cart which had been full of grave goods but was now empty. A single workman in a grey robe stood at the back of the cart, looking at something on the floor of the cart. Audrey walked right up to this man and said, "Boo!" but he didn't respond at all. The people in this time period couldn't hear her or see her. She looked at the cart and saw her amulet lying on the floor. She reached out for it, but her hand went right through it. The workman reached slowly out and picked up the amulet, then he slipped it into his robe and took off up the Valley, until he came to the tomb mouth, where he reported to a roly-poly man who was fanning himself with a small hand fan. What language they were speaking Audrey didn't know, but she assumed it was ancient Egyptian.

Beyond these two, the bald-headed men were sealing up the tomb mouth with plaster. One man smoothed out the plaster with a board, and another took a reed and made a cartouche in the wet plaster and wrote hieroglyphics on it. She took her amulet out of her nightgown to compare the hieroglyphs and was startled to find that they were identical. This tomb, then, was the lost tomb of Ramses VIII! She looked around carefully at the Valley, noting the locations of the other tomb entrances, so she could find her way back to this one. Maybe she could go back to the Egyptian she had met before and tell him where this tomb was, so they could dig it up?

As she stood there staring at the cartouche and its hieroglyphics, the Valley of the Kings faded to black, and she found herself in her bed, just waking up. It was seven in the morning, and light was coming in the windows. She got up and dressed and fried up some eggs and bacon and steamed some asparagus for breakfast, and ate. It looked like she had to wear the amulet for it to bring her dreams. Just having it on the nightstand wasn't enough. Bettina said it brought her dreams as well.

Over the next few days Audrey went to the library and checked out books on Egyptian magic, but there was nothing in them about time travel. There were some passages about dreaming, but these just said the ancient Egyptians were big believers in dreams being messages from the gods. Well, no gods were trying to contact Audrey that she could tell. It was just the tomb of Ramses VIII, in ancient and modern times.

She returned to the homeless encampment to talk to Bettina about the dreams, but her favorites were gone to Old Town for the day, seeing the free museums and window shopping. She was disappointed but glad they were getting an outing. It had to be horrible to have no money at all. Audrey didn't have the courage to be homeless. She knew that placed in that situation she would just curl up and die. Trying to live in an encampment, with men like Michael for friends and everyone looking to steal what little you had; it would be a nightmare. Again she felt bad because she couldn't do more for her homeless friends. They already had food stamp cards, and they were on general assistance, which was about two hundred dollars a month. They showered at homeless shelters and went to the toilet in porta-potties on construction sites around the city. It was a grim way to live. She knew the stories of her friends, the hard luck tales that made up their personal histories. Audrey was a hard luck tale herself, but she was luckier than her friends. At least she had a home to go to every day.

She left the homeless encampment and returned the library books and went home, where she made sure she was wearing the amulet and lay down for an afternoon nap.

Again she dreamed. She was back in the Valley of the Kings in modern times, with tourists carrying cameras and guidebooks. She walked through the Valley and found the tomb where she had met the Egyptian man. This time there were only workmen carrying out baskets of dirt and loading them into wheelbarrows, which were taken down to the mouth of the Valley and dumped. She waited for half an hour outside the tomb, but the Egyptian didn't come out. It was late morning, judging by the position of the sun, and finally Audrey took the plunge and went into the tomb. The entryway was about fifteen feet wide, and the tunnel went way back into the cliff. The workmen stayed alongside the right-hand wall. There were a lot of them, dozens, and she asked one,

"Where is your foreman?"

He just shook his head and continued on his way with his full basket. This part of the tomb had already been cleared out, and walking was easy. The walls were bare rock in here, no nifty paintings of pharaohs and gods to look at. The ceiling was about eight feet high. She followed the tunnel for about fifty feet, and then it became a wide room where the ceiling had partly collapsed. The workmen were coming from another tunnel at the back of this room. How deep was this tomb?

She looked around the room, where there were lights strung up on the walls. At the far end of the room, thirty feet away, was the Egyptian man in his khakis, talking to some workmen in Arabic. She ambled up and waited until he noticed her, when he said something to the workers, and they picked up their baskets and returned to their labors.

"You really shouldn't be here," said the Egyptian. He was frowning, but Audrey pressed on.

"I know where the tomb of Ramses VIII is," she said. "I can show you right where to dig."

"And how would you know that?" he said doubtfully. "Generations of archeologists have looked for that tomb."

"I'm a psychic," she said. "I saw it in a dream." Half the truth was better than none...

"That is not very good evidence," he said. He reached out and touched her on the shoulder, and his hand went through her, and he shook his head. "Are you dreaming again?" he asked.

"Yes. I'm in San Diego, in the United States, and I'm dreaming of the Valley of the Kings. But a few days ago I dreamed of the burial of Ramses VIII, and I know where he is located."

The Egyptian frowned. "I can't go to my colleagues with a story like that," he said.

"Then tell them that a digger gave me this information, and I'm passing it on to you."

"That would be better," he said. "You're an attractive woman, and there are plenty of Egyptian men whose head is turned by a pretty lady. A tomb robber could have told you something while the two of you were drinking in Luxor."

Audrey said, "I don't know how long I have here. Why don't I take you up the Valley and show you where the tomb is at? I'm Audrey, by the way."

"Ahmed. All right, I will go along with this foolishness because I am eager to be the one who finds Ramses VIII. No Egyptian has ever found a major tomb here in the Valley of the Kings. It would bring a lot of respect to Egypt if I was the first."

Audrey led the way back out the tunnel into the harsh sunlight and up the Valley. She looked around at other tomb entrances and after a few minutes found her way to where the tomb lay. "You have to dig in this area," she said, indicating with her hands. "The tomb mouth is right in the cliff face, no stairs. I suppose it's been covered with debris over the years."

The Egyptian looked around and then built a small cairn of stones in the spot Audrey had pointed out. "I will send five diggers to work here for a couple days," he said. "If they find the tomb, wonderful! If not, well, we tried."

"Dig near the cliff," she said. "The tomb goes straight in from there."

"As you like it," he said. "What is your full name?"

"Audrey Lykwell," she said.

"An American name, certainly," he said. "If I find the tomb I will give you credit. This will perturb my colleagues in an amusing way and make the discovery of the tomb even more remarkable. I must get back to my dig, Audrey Lykwell."

"Are you the lead archaeologist for that tomb?" she blurted.

"You expected a Caucasian?" he said.

"Well, I guess I did," she said.

"Most people do," he sighed. "No one expects to see Egyptians excavating their own."

Then the Valley became dark, and the Egyptian's eyes grew wide, and Audrey woke up in her own bedroom. It was two in the morning, and she was covered in sweat. She got up and took a shower and turned in for the night.

A few days passed. Audrey wore the amulet to bed at night, but she had no more dreams. Then something marvelous occurred: the news was full of the discovery of the tomb of Ramses VIII in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. An archaeologist named Ahmed Ayata had uncovered the tomb on a tip from an American psychic named Audrey Lykwell. She was in all the papers, and on the internet, and everywhere. The news was full of Dr. Ayata and the tomb of Ramses VIII. He was shown posing at the plastered-over entrance of the tomb, and faintly visible on the plaster were the hieroglyphs off Audrey's amulet, just like the day they were imprinted.

Excited, Audrey made her way first to the bank to withdraw some cash and then back to the homeless encampment, where her favorites were in at last. Michael's loud voice was audible a hundred feet away, and she felt on pins and needles as she approached the four shopping carts with their blue tarp stretched between them.

"Did you bring money?" boomed Michael.

"Hello, Michael. Girls. Have you seen the news out of Egypt?" Audrey said.

"Jacquie saw it," said Sheila. "You know she reads the paper sometimes. You're a famous girl now, Audrey. Is the government of Egypt going to give you a reward?"

"I haven't asked for anything," said Audrey. "Recognition is good enough."

"Nope, you're no businesswoman," said Jacquie.

"Bettina, it was your amulet that led me to the tomb," Audrey said, in a flurry of words. "The dreams it sent were directions to the tomb of Ramses VIII."

"That amulet has been puzzling my ancestors for centuries," said Bettina. "We had no idea where that dry valley was, and sometimes the guards there tried to kill the dreamers, so we didn't wear the amulet much," said Bettina.

"I met a very nice archeologist named Ahmed Ayata, and he uncovered the tomb!"

"Yes, but did you bring money for Michael?" said Michael. Audrey noted that he wasn't calling her "whore" and "cunt" today; he was having a good day. Maybe she could stay and talk today.

"Michael, that can wait," snapped Sheila. "Have a seat, Audrey, and let's talk."

Audrey sat on the dusty ground, and Bettina passed her a small bottle of cold water. "It's going to be a scorcher today," she said.

Audrey opened the bottle and took a sip. Then she launched into her story, and for a while time stood still, and she was the amazement of her friends as she told of the dreams and the Egyptian and the closing of the tomb. None of the problems of her life had been solved, but she hoped the tomb was a rich find for Ahmed and that it brought attention to Egyptian archaeologists. She could get hold of the San Diego _Union-Tribune_ and let them know it was her who was in the news from Egypt, and she could tell them the same story she was telling her favorites, and maybe the media attention would lead to a new chapter in her life. Maybe she could bring some focus on the problems of the city's homeless people. It was time for new beginnings, and maybe better times for herself and her favorites. She could hope, couldn't she?

### ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Randal Doering has a BA in creative writing from San Francisco State University and an MA in anthropology from Cal State East Bay. He has published 19 short stories in the small press and semi-pro magazines and has won honorable mention in the _Writers of the Future_ contest. He believes travel is a great teacher and travels as much as possible, both in the U.S. and abroad. His work tends to highlight the Middle East and American Indian cultures and mostly falls into the realm of contemporary fantasy, with a smattering of science fiction and horror just to keep things interesting.

Randal has a website at http://www.randaldoering.com. There you can download two free novels and a selection of short stories as samplers for his short story collections. There are also links to his for-sale books on Amazon, which include a memoir and about a dozen novel-length works of fiction. His email address is on this website, so you can send him a message if you wish. He loves to hear from his readers and wants your feedback!

