 
M. H. Tardiff

PARANORMALCY, VOL. 1

9 Tales of Imagination

M. H. Tardiff

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 by Michael H. Tardiff

ISBN: 9781301039616

Smashwords, Inc.

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To my wife, Dian

CONTENTS:

Foe

State Route

Irquart's Arrows

The Strange Martyrdom Of Abdul Faheed Al Azarri

Late Night With Marty O'Dell

Planetary Voodoo

Clock Solitaire

And The Sky Cried, Havoc!

The Index of Chawn Doe

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,  
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Hamlet, Act I, scene 5

-William Shakespeare

FOE

A stiff breeze whipped across the snow, slithered snake-like between the roughly threaded seams of Irsa's bristlefur coat.

It was her twelfth winter and she couldn't remember ever being so cold...her very bones ached from it. The thick furs and the meager warmth her flint goaded from gathered boughs every night did little more than keep her alive, a painful reminder of the comfort of the ever-blazing fire of her house.

She turned to look at the footprints trailing back to the distant tree-line, feeling a little depressed. For three turns, the world had been a mixture of wet greens and browns, glittering streams and dappled light – a familiar sight for all her life. It was a stark contrast to the infinite plane of white ahead of her. Not quite infinite: the glaciers poured down from the Barrier Peaks, a range of saw-toothed mountains a half-day's march away. The wide open plain imbued her with a relentless dread. There was no shelter against the winds. There were no berries to eat nor hava root to dig up when a hunt went bad. Like a drop of blood in a lake, that which was hot and living would be lost to the cold and inanimate, diluted by the uncaring nature of Nature.

She adjusted the strap of the hard plastic box hanging from her shoulder and tightened the grip on her spear, squeezed the fire-hardened shaft that was twice her height. The thing wasn't much good as a weapon, a tool the village furmaker had cast aside and forgotten before he had left with the others. It made a good walking stick, though. And she was sure she could keep most animals at bay...a hefty whack from the blunt, but weighty stone head would be enough to convince anything she wasn't going to be a meal tasty enough to justify the effort.

She started toward the mountains, the snow crunching beneath her fur-clad boots. For three turns of the sky she'd traveled away from the Great Star in the daytime and toward the brightest star of the Descending Eagle at night, exactly as Papa told her, toward the Green Men...

***

Papa took a big long drink of broth before collapsing back onto the bed. It was the most Irsa had seen him take in three days. She wondered for the hundredth time if he was getting better.

The old man coughed and gurgled.

"Irsa...I don't think we have much time left together."

"I know, Papa."

"You're a brave girl. You don't deny yourself the hard truths."

She desperately tried to think of something to say.

"You'll see Mama again. That makes me happy."

She thought the statement trite, especially in the special tongue, but Papa absorbed the words with as braod a smile as he could muster.

"To be young and see the world encrusted with such glitter. It's a better way to live, Irsa...don't let anyone tell you different. Especially that pompous ass Hoeckner, if he's still there."

He was being taken by fever again. She ran into the great-room to dunk her rag in the cold kettle of water, ran back in half the time. She could tell when he was getting worse whenever he started talking about the strange people who weren't really there.

She pressed the wet cloth to his forehead, rivulets trickling through his white eyebrows. He sighed with relief.

"Are you keeping up with me?"

He meant with the special tongue, the language only spoken between them, a language very different from that common to the village. Papa was so quick and natural using it, Irsa sometimes had difficulty understanding him. It wasn't the case today, though. His energy had been sapped by the sickness and his speechcraft was a shadow of its former glory. Or maybe she'd finally become fluent after many years of practice. The reason really didn't matter. Being the only two people left in the entire village meant any language was only for them anyway.

"I'm not having any trouble."

He responded with another soggy cough. She did her best to keep the cloth pressed to his skin as she worked up the courage for her question.

"Papa...are you sure you're not being punished?"

His hand went up and grasped her wrist, pushing her away from his head as he sat up and stared into her suddenly frightened eyes. A spark of life filled him for a split second, something like rage, but not directed at her. It went away as quickly as it came and he collapsed with a heavy sigh.

"Irsa, don't do this. Don't become one of those frightened sheep who left us here. I am not being punished by any force or god of the heavens. I'm sick, nothing more."

"But, why aren't I sick?"

He closed his eyes and made a humming noise. Irsa thought he might be falling asleep, or worse. She pushed the thought from her mind.

"I've wondered about that," he mumbled. "I guess I can't blame you for thinking..."

If only we could ask the box, she wished. It had been dead since the early Spring.

He rolled his head toward her, cracked his eyelids.

"I've done more than wonder. I've thought...long and hard about the matter. I'm not really surprised about the occurance, only in that it took so long. My best guess is I've contracted some sort of common virus that my body isn't able to fight off and that which yours is immune."

Her brow furrowed. Perhaps she wasn't as fluent as she had thought.

Papa read the confusion latched onto her face and beamed like he always did when teaching her a new bit of the special tongue.

"You're used to the things in the air that have made me sick, Irsa, so they don't affect you. It's called an immunity. You may have had it passed onto you in your blood, in this case from your mother."

She thought for a moment.

"Don't I have your blood too?"

He closed his eyes, the smile remained.

"Something else from your mother: a sharp mind, always ready with the next question."

He took a deep breath and slowly drained his lungs, working against an impending cough.

"I see no reason to hide the truth from you any longer. Do you remember what the Elders would call me?"

She slowly nodded. The many turns of isolation, being alone in a deserted village, hadn't softened the memory. At gatherings, the Elders always called him 'Outsider'. With every utterance, the word carried with it a hundred stone-weight of contempt on its back.

"I came about a year before you were born. My intent was to stay for only a few turns, but I grew attached to your kind, beautiful mother, and decided to stay...thought I could raise a family while continuing my work. Live a simpler life. Everyone but your mother thought me someone of great power, very dangerous. I think the...the box freightened them a little."

"What about the Fall?" She already knew the answer, but hearing it from Papa would give her confidence. Papa was not bad medicine. He was not a demon.

"I've hid nothing from anyone," he said, his words slurring. "There are things I couldn't explain...I didn't know how. Too much other knowledge is needed. Too much foundation. It could cause problems if I didn't do things right." Tears scurried down his face. "I was such a fool."

She tightened her grip on his hand. She could feel him slipping further away, his mind lost to rambling.

"The Fall, Papa. Did you cause the Fall?"

"I suspect some here were intelligent enough, but...Irsa, I've told you the truth. It wasn't an omen. I can understand the pressure you must have felt, having an entire ocean of superstition poured over you day after day. My voice was but a whisper against a gale." His voice trailed off as he began to murmer to himself. "She saw me as a only a man...a man who could love and live just as any other, with a mind and soul to set him apart from the wild beasts. I meant to tell her everything about me...I never...Irsa!"

She flinched.

"Yes, Papa?"

"I love you more than my own life. Don't concern yourself with bloodlines or pedigrees. The Chief was no more a soul than you or I."

He reached up with a trembling hand to touch her on the cheek. His eyes stared at something as far away as the Heavens.

"Take the box. Guard it with your life. Without it, the Green Men won't help you. They can't. With it. they'll know you're my daughter. They'll have to take you. The damage will have been done."

She reached under the sagging bed, probed her fingers across the dirt floor until she felt the hard shape of the box. She pulled it out by the attached strap. The dull black surface, made from what Papa called plastic, was ice-cold in her hands, further evidence of its sorry state. When it was alive, the box would constantly radiate a slight heat. She could remember warming her feet on it on cold winter nights.

"Irsa, where are you?"

"Here, Papa."

He panted, his lungs under a tremendous burden. When he spoke, the words were whispers. She leaned closer and held her ear besdie his mouth. Even then, some of the words didn't make it outside his throat.

"Take anything...dress warm to...peaks...go...North Star just as...talked...dangerous."

"Yes, Papa. I understand."

"Find...green men."

"Who are the green men, Papa?"

"You...will have time enough...to understand."

She sensed a great inevitability and furiously wiped the sudden tears from her face.

"Papa?"

"Time enough...time..."

Irsa slumped into the corner of the room and stared at the bed, the image of Papa's slackened lips and paling skin burning into her memory like the black soot baked into a hearth. A numbness coursed through her from head to toe like poison. Strangely, she was certain Papa would at any moment rise from the bed and tell her everything would be fine.

She sat quietly until the night began to leave, then silently scoured the village for anything useful. She took some thin rope and shards of flint from one of the Elder's homes. She found the discarded spear and a cracked throwing chuck, packed the last cake of salt and all the food she could carry into a small pack made of flattail skin. She calmly dressed as Papa had told her to: the thickest furs, an extra one to drape over the shoulders, leggings tied with extra cord with her feet double wrapped against the cold. At one point during the task, she even asked Papa a question. Only when he didn't answer did she realize her mistake.

Stone-faced, Irsa slung the pack over her shoulder and grabbed the box. She walked out into the village, took the spear she'd leaned against the outside of her home, found the pair of big trees Papa had told her to start toward to find her way through the forest to the Barrier Peaks-

And collapsed to her knees and wept.

***

A breeze washed across the frozen plane like misery's afterthought, carrying miniscule crystals of ice across Irsa's hands and forehead. She ignored the sudden chill and focused on the rhythm of her work: brushing snow away from the stone slab, carefully snapping a long, thin splint of wood from the spearchuck and liberally smearing one end of it with mashed berries.

Her stomach growled at the sweet, tart scent. There were too few berries left to satisfy her hunger, but there was more than enough to use for bait. Her mouth watered instead at the thought of roast rabbit.

The pile of boulders she was working behind seemed completely out of place on the great glacier. To busy her mind, she tried to reason out an explanation just as Papa would have. Maybe they had fallen from someplace higher up the mountain side, bounced and rolled into their present home many turns before. The mountain was pretty close behind her, barely an egg's throw away, as Papa used to say, so a "tumble from on high" theory made sense. Then again, Papa used to tell her how the glaciers moved like a river of ice, slowly but steadily over the span of a thousand thousand turns. Maybe the boulders came from somewhere distant and were carried to their present home.

Fingers numb, she hefted the flat stone up on one side, precariously propping it onto the baited splint of wood. Before the Fall, she'd seen some of the hunters practice making the trap with the village boys, so she knew it was effective – at least for something small like one of the rabbits she'd seen frolicing around the rocks. The hunters had warnings about eating too much rabbit meat though, something about starving with a full belly. She'd never asked Papa about it and never thought to ask the box, so she just ignored the caveat altogether. She'd rather starve on a full belly than an empty one.

Irsa held her breath and gently released the heavy slab, waited to see if her patient work would crash down in a heap. It didn't and she shuffled backward to wipe her hands on her coat and slip the chuck into the side of her boot. She blew hot air onto her numbed fingers and squinted at the Great Star as it peeked over the top of the snow-dusted rocks, well into the waning half of its arc. It would be night soon and she was beginning to think her rabbit dinner would in fact be a breakfast. Luckily, the cave entrance in which she'd pitched camp was teeming with deer's tongue, a fungus that thrived in cold, wet soil. It was edible, though it tasted of dirt (pity no one ever warned you could eat too much of it), and it had the curious property of a long, slow burn. A fire made of deer's tongue would never get very hot or very large, but it would burn unattended for a turn-and-a-half and keep the worst of the winter chill at bay. And given enough time, it could cook a rabbit.

The cave entrance was a nearly elliptical hole in the base of the nearest Barrier Peak, icy stalagtites hanging down from the upper edge like a set of gnarled, mismatched fangs. A sizable pile of deer's tongue sat on one side of the entrance, amidst a bed of frosted brown moss, the fruit of the afternoon's labor; she'd only stopped gathering the fungus when she spotted the rabbits. Her flattail sack and the box lay propped against the opposing side of the entrance, her spear a dark line in the snow just outside.

The cave went a few paces into the mountain before ending in a massive wall of blue ice that was covered with dripping indentations where rays of sunshine had begun to chew away at it. One of the indentations had become a whistling hole big enough for a man to slip through and when she'd first seen it, Irsa had poked her head in to scan the darkness beyond to no avail.

She turned and started toward the cave, feet crunching.

Very few of the men in the village had ever been to the Barrier Peaks and none had dared go beyond the forest after the Fall. Many of them said the Peaks were full of demons and angry spirits. The Elders would tell stories of the beginning of the World and how the Peaks were once alive and breathed fire. Papa told her otherwise, of ancient mountains that vomited liquid rock from the World's belly and how the mountains were long since dead.

She stopped in her tracks. The more she looked at the stalagtite fangs of the cave entrance, the less inviting it seemed. It almost seemed to growl.

From behind, the growl grew louder and wetter, dripping with saliva.

She spun, nearly tripping on her own feet. Hunger and fatigue vanished like smoke in a gale, thoughts of Papa and the rabbit-trap instantly pushed into a bottomless pit, leaving her alone with a screaming fear.

An enormous mound of rippling muscles stared at her from atop the largest of the boulders, belly pulsating slowly with each labored breath, matted and dirty yellow fur drawn tight over a washboard of ribs. Wearing the weight of several grown men, the creature's mouth was drawn into an evil sneer, its two enormous fangs jagged and broken from a battle that ended long before and which it had apparently won.

The giant cat dropped its shoulders and stepped forward, moving as slowly and smoothly as the sap of a blackbark, a bead of snow pushed over the face of the boulder by the press of a paw the size of a split melon.

Irsa shivered, but not from the cold. An unassailable sense of dread held her firm in its grasp, driving an iciness into her worse than any winter wind. The creature pounced onto her a dozen times in the span of a breath, crushed her under an avalanche of roiling flesh a dozen different ways.

There came a discontinuity in memory and, without conscious decision, her cheeks suddenly stung from the whipping air as she ran – flew \- across the snowfield, every muscle in her legs and arms pumping frantically as she ran for the spear. The pounding of her heart comingled with the thunder of paws pounding against the ground barely a body-length behind.

She locked eyes on the long dark shape in the snow just outside the cave, could sense the hard shaft in her fingers just as a blow caught her on the shoulder, the beast's outstretched forelimb slamming against her, curling around her in a deadly embrace. The wind blown from her, she collapsed, slipped beneath the massive furry frame. Accustomed to tackling much larger prey, the cat was clumsy, its momentum carrying it past her into a rolling tumble.

Irsa scurried to her feet, bounded toward the spear. She fluidly scooped it into her hands and whirled around just in time to loudly thwack the beast on the side of the head with the hefty, blunt tip. The cat staggered to the side and backed away, eyes locked on the spearhead as she jabbed it in the air menacingly.

"Ha!"

The cat flattened its ears and glared at her, disgusted.

She coughed away the last of her adrenaline rush, her mind a blizzard. She couldn't stand there forever, blunt spear against tooth and claw...either the cat's courage would grow or hers would finally die, taking her life with it.

As if aware of her doubts, the great beast let out a curt, forceful roar that hurt her ears and made her wince. It lowered the front half of its body to build energy. Irsa took a step backward into the cave, her foot sinking into the carpet of brown moss. The cat snorted at the spear, slid its tongue across its teeth as it slinked to the side with supernatural grace and waited for an opportunity.

Bracing the spear beneath her arm, Irsa bent to the side, blindly stretched her hand toward the box and flattail sack, flailed around until her fingers found their mark. She quickly yanked the straps up and over her head, steadied both of her quivering hands around the spear once more. The cat would take her if she tried to run from the cave. She couldn't outrun it. She couldn't outfight it.

With her last drop of courage, Irsa snapped the spear back and rammed it forward, letting it fly from her hands. The cat leaped away, landing on its hind end only to scramble upright an instant later and charge. She dashed deeper into the cave, toward the wall of ice, slipping on a patch of exposed stone. The cat clambered after her, roaring and snapping its jaws. With a mighty heave, she dove into the hole in the wall, the box bouncing against her head as she slid through to the other side, the strap of her flattail sack cinching painfully against her neck just before it broke and she dropped into an coal-black void, the contents of her sack spilling out as her body and the plastic box crashed hard onto something wet and spongy that smelled of unwashed feet.

***

She sat in the mound of decay until the light streaming in from the front end of the cave turned red. The cat had made a few attempts to reach her through the opening, even so much as pressing its head and paw through, but it eventually gave up.

For a long while, she debated whether to climb back through, at last realizing it a fruitless use of time. The ground was much lower on her side of the opening and the walls were covered with farr too much ice to give purchase. Though still a long way from starving, she was too weary to claw her way up. And even if she did, the cat might still be lurking around near the entrance, hoping to outwait her.

She had to find another way out.

While she still had barely enough light to see by, Irsa probed the pile of moss for the scattered contents of the sack. She unraveled one end of a piece of rope and lit it with a few clacks of flint, then carefully coiled the rope around the one end of the spear chuck, wrapping it with a few small pieces of deer's tongue she managed to find near her feet. For several minutes she coaxed the ember with her breath, turning the impromptu torch over and over in her hands like meat on a spit.

At last, a small flame licked the air and the cave air began to glow softly.

With one hand, she hastily gathered up her items into the pack and got her bearings. She was in a small sphereical hollow, the bottom half carved from rock and frozen dirt, the top from crystalline ice that glistened even in the weak light. Ahead of her was a roughly elliptical opening and beyond: void.

She moved slowly into the darkness, her feet unsteady on a continuous carpet of permafrosted flora. The walls splayed away from her path suddenly and she found it necessary to continuously probe the space to her left to feel something solid. All the while, she watched the glint from over her head, the ice twinkling beneath her torch. She walked for what seemed like half a turn, twice stooping low as the roof dropped to less than shoulder-height. The passage soon became a twisting, winding pathway, forcing her to slide through a fissure in a huge block of ice, at least ten paces thick.

Eventually, the way opened into a great black maw, the air growing noticably warmer, dripping with dampness. She paused to coddle the torch, carefully loosen the rope to give it breath. The flames licked a little higher, but revealed nothing more. She continued, her mind fogged by an increasing sense of disorientation. Was this the direction she had walked a moment before? Was she going uphill or down? Her right foot splashed through something and she jerked her head aside, her eye nearly gouged out by the end of stalagtite that leapt from the dark, although being blinded wouldn't have done her much harm. Her torch was little more than a disambodied flame floating beside her in the dark, its light unable to reach anything beyond her outstretched hand. Every step she took took her further into a damp maw, infinite and deep, like the dwelling place of the Great Circle of the Night, but without the company of stars to ease the stark emptiness.

With each step, her mind wandered down more dangerous paths than her feet. She half expected a dessicated hand to plunge from the darkness and clasp her face or to hear some indescribably odd sound, the herald of a nightmarish monster a hundred fold worse than any hungry long-toothed cat. But there was only the torch and the woosh of blood pulsing through her ears.

She almost wished the cat were there for company.

The ground rose slightly. She waved the torch low, barely made out the glint of cystal blue under her feet. She cautiously walked up the ice-covered incline, probing her hand out to her left side in a vain attempt to touch something...anything to steady her way. The path leveled out and began to descend, gently at first, then not so gentle. She leaned back as she went, tried to keep herself from-

Her right foot slipped first, catapulted out from under her. She slid for a couple of body-lengths, the box clattering on the frozen ground, until she abruptly hit bottom. The torch slipped out of her fingers and she heard a splash and sizzle off to her right.

The darkness swallowed her completely.

***

She awoke to the sight of stars, countless thousands of glittering golden points, happy to not have to share their glory with the envious Great Circle. The patterns were different and seemed to change slowly before her eyes, as if the Celestial House were made of slowly swirling tar, the stars adhered to the whole morass and gently taken along for the ride.

The feeling of supreme confusion that had overcome her before she fell asleep had been replaced by pure euphoria. She was floating...flying through Heaven, her body suspended in a sea of infinity. She raised her head and smiled like a baby freshly suckled and swaddled in a pair of loving arms.

And then she dropped her head and cringed as it clunked against the hard stone.

For a long moment, she watched the sky flow lazily, ideas and memories forming in her mind like the bubbles atop boiling stew, mingling and transforming from the cookfire's heat until their whole was greater than all the individual ingredients. Thoughts came together on their own power, a great picture of reality taking shape.

Irsa bolted upright, ignoring the fresh ache in her skull.

Those weren't stars.

As if to confirm the realization, one of the bright specks spiraled down through the darkness and landed on her hand, six tiny legs tickling her skin. The air was thick with them, each emitting a faint, ghostly glow that hardly cut the darkness by itself, but all together electrified the whole cavern. She concentrated until she could see the contours of the cavern above her head and the smooth, gently pillowed floor stretched out in front of her, interspersed with small pools of blackness.

She reached out, grit her teeth against the shock of near-freezing water as she probed the closest of the shallow pools to retrieve her soaked torch. The thing wasn't useful to her now, but it didn't seem right to leave it to spend eternity in the dark, all alone. She had given it life and in turn it used its life to help her. She would see it die properly, consumed by fire.

A radiant, living swarm of stars amassed around her as she climbed to her feet and cautiously stepped toward a long verticle fissure in the opposing side of the cavern. A host more of the insects were down the next passage, an endless turning spiral of tiny creatures living their lives between the ice and stone without the slightest notion of a grander purpose. She moved quickly into the passage, waded through the glittering sea until a shaft of light called to her and the fresh air of the morning at last spilled onto her face.

***

She chewed on a mouthful of snow, doing little to alleviate her thirst and even less her gnawing hunger, but it helped keep her legs moving in the tired rythmn they'd adopted since the cave. Her fingers were growing numb and her feet felt as if bitten by an army of angry ants...both bad signs in such cold weather, Papa had told her. Soon, the stiffness of flesh would come. Then the clouds would fill her eyes as they froze. And a shroud would fall over her mind as pain gave way to sleep.

And finally she'd be with Mama and Papa again.

A constant, icy wind poured over her as she trudged along, stepped over another tree's corpse. Dead trees, a thousand thousand of them, lay across the vast wasteland of the Fall, all half buried in snow compacted by several days' warmth. They were all stripped of branches in every direction as far as she could see. Some were faintly singed. Others looked as if used to stoke a bonfire and cast aside, the exposed sides charred and cracked. Even more strangely, they were all laying in the same direction, as if a once-thriving forest were making a great exodus toward the mountains behind her and found itself suddenly struck down all by some malevolent force. The desolation was magnificent and terrifying all at once, her heart thundering at the sight. She'd half-expected to be obliterated by the same invisible evil, caught in the residue of the fowl curse that had visited this part of the world only forty turns ago. The irony of her being here wasn't lost on her. The entire village had left because of the Fall, but they had gone in the opposite direction, hoping to put some distance between them and the worst omen ever seen. And here she was, in the midst of that mystery event, awash in whatever corruption the gods had decided to spread.

A nagging curiosity infected her. What could the Fall have been? A giant ball of flame? A star that broke loose from its house? Perhaps the Elders were right after all and the Great Star had cast down a piece of itself at them in anger for Papa's blasphemy. She wished she could ask the box, ask it a question in the special tongue and hear the answer in its soft feminine voice that reminded her of her mother. Papa rarely asked questions of the box and was stern about its overuse, lecturing her on several occasions about the need to rely on her own mind.

Whatever had come from the sky had crashed down somewhere ahead. Like the ripple on a pond from a dropped stone, the impact had created a great wave of air and dust, knocking down the trees as if they were little more than dried needles trampled under foot. If she were doomed to die out here, she would first like to see what magic the sky had brought, whether godly wrath or dancing demon.

She stepped over another tree, buried her hands under her armpits, focused on the rythmic bumping of the box against her thigh. Her fingers began to throb. A miniscule amount of sensation was returning with the pulse of living blood. Her feet wouldn't improve without a fire. At least there was plenty of unburned wood to build one, a mountain of dead husks desiccated and easy to ignite. And she still had her flint. If she could just find some shelter, she could build a fire to make the Great Star envious and stuff herself with roasted meat.

All she needed was the shelter and meat.

Her belly growled, tightened into a knot. It was hard to think clearly.

She stopped to sit down on a thick black line that was once a tree. She scraped away some snow and snatched at a carpet of greenish-brown moss, tearing off a fluffy, frozen cluster. She tasted it and quickly spat it out, grimacing.

Something in the distance caught her eye.

She rose to her feet to get a better look. A dozen arrowflights away, a compact form was moving in her direction...a steady trot on four legs. The wind whipped across the flattened forest with renewed vigor, slapping her on the back as she stared, her heart beating to the music of raw fear.

It had followed her.

Somehow, the cat had made its way over the Peaks and picked up her scent, followed her. How long had the thing waited outside the cave? She wondered if it knew about the other end of the cave and reasoned out her emergence, dashed across the glacier to a low pass in hopes to catch her for a meal. The idea made some sense: there wasn't anything more to eat out here for the cat than there was for her. It wasn't going to let a pile of fresh meat slip away that easily.

She scanned the nearby ground. The felled trees that were small enough to easily wield as clubs would crumble at the first blow. And she hardly had time to dig through the snow for a sizable rock. The hungry beast was following her and there was simply nothing she could do about it.

Ignoring the searing pain in her feet, she started moving once again, toward the epicenter of the destruction. Every few paces, she would turn her head, each time expecting to be slammed onto the ground by the hungry beast. Whenever she glimpsed it, it was far off, but gaining.

Relentlessly gaining.

Moments later, the contour of the land changed and she found herself scampering down into a broad depression that was like a huge shallow bowl stretching across half the world. Far ahead she could see a grove of trees standing amidst the white wasteland, a group of survivors left to testify the death laid in every direction. The Great Star was low in the sky, hovering just above and to the right of the grove of uprights, casting long eerie shadows.

Her foot suddenly caught against a buried branch and she stumbled. She landed on top of a mostly-snow-covered trunk, the blunt stump of a branch spearing her in the gut. She gasped in agony and rolled away, clutching at herself as tears poured down the sides of her head., still ringing from the explosion of pain. She yanked the box aside and tore at her coat, probed within the seams and around the warmth of her skin to search for something wet. There was only a tender lump, an angry bruise confirmed by a quick peek under her clothing. Her lungs snatched for air as she rolled over and climbed to her knees, searing waves of pain sending her into a coughing fit. At last, she drew fully upright and took several wavering steps to keep from flopping back into the snow. A pressed hand seemed to help until she doubled over and retched, the taste of blood coating her tongue.

The wind shifted, stirred from the opposite direction, carrying on it the scent of musty fur and long-dried blood. She turned her head, stared back up to the top of the rise. The cat emerged over the edge and stared at her for an eternity, then craned its neck and let out the most terrible roar Irsa had ever heard: a sound full of victory and hunger, without empathy.

Her chest thrumming, Irsa flung her body forward, asymmetrically clambered toward the grove, the goal all-consuming. The rumble of massive paws galloped closer. Fifty lurching paces later, she stumbled through the outermost of the standing trees, the space between them hardly enough to allow her shoulders to slip by. As blackened and dead as their knocked down counterparts, the trunks were thick, the remains of a once wildly dense forest. They would force the cat to slow its final attack. A carpet of long-dried twigs snapped beneath her footsteps, almost drowning out the heavy panting just beyond the grove's edge.

There's nothing you can do. Just let it take you.

The box knocked against her knees as she pushed the random thought from her mind with tears and bared teeth, but it seemed to seed and bloom into a field of pessimism just as she crossed into the trees. Part of her wanted to embrace the finality of death. She was so tired. She hurt so much.

Her right foot dropped into a hole about the shape and depth of a well bucket, full with a slush of ice and water and rocks among spongy moss. She tore free of the sloppy mess and continued, seeing more holes among the carpet, all of them roughly the same size and all roughly circular. Warm decay had melted nearly all the snow further in, the surface becoming a thick blanket of stone chips and glittering specks of black glass and charcoal-bark that had sloughed from the trees ages ago.

Behind her, twigs snapped.

She cried out and grabbed at the trees to pull herself along, the burning stitch in her belly threatening to rip wide. Mummified bark crumbled beneath her grip, staining her hands. When her foot found another hole, she couldn't catch her body in time, the force of her forward momentum pushing all her weight onto an awkwardly twisted ankle. The joint grew cook-stone hot as the bones gave way. She pulled free and collapsed into a bed of stone chips, her face contorted in pain. She rolled over and raised her head to look down the length of her body. The cat was only a few steps away, slinking through the last trees serpent-like, a stride slow and deliberate enough to be branded sadistic. She could smell its tarry breath, the damp warmth projected through the air and pour over her.

The thunder of her heart carried into her skull and she laid her head down, let the throbbing, punishing pains all over her melt away into the frozen ground until they were almost forgotten. She gazed up at the tree nearest her head to see a tiny patch of green, a newborn branch. The forest was not dead.

The Fall had not killed everything.

The cat stood over her, warm, foamy saliva dripping down. She closed her eyes and imagined her Papa and Mama, depthless love in their eyes. Like treading clouds during a dream, her right hand swept over the chips of rocks surrounding her and the living tree, plowed through it as through a puddle formed from a spring rain. Within the mass of flecks and pebbles, her fingers brushed the smooth surface and glassy edges of a shard as big as her hand.

The cat brought its head closer and opened its jaws, prepared to finish her with a bite to the neck.

Irsa closed her fingers around the shard and with the rage born of anger and fear, drove the glistening obsidian up and into the cat's side. Her hand slipped and the long razor edge sliced her palm, but the deed was done: the beast howled and leapt away, blood seeping from the deep wound around the imbedded black glass.

She grabbed a handful of gravel and flung it as hard as she could, most of it bouncing noisily off the trees.

The cat backed away as if drunk, its hind leg slipping into a slush-filled hole. It lost its balance for an instant, the weight of its frame buckled to the ground atop the shard, driving it deeper. After a long sigh, it snorted and licked its nose. And stopped moving altogether.

***

The carcass stayed warm throughout the night. Irsa laid on top of it until the Great Circle was high in its house and sleep had finally taken her. As she drifted off, she felt sadness. The cat was a beautiful creature, almost gentle-looking in its lifeless state. To kill it seemed a bad thing...but only for a little while. Papa would have agreed.

In the morning, she managed to gather some kindling and make a small fire to cook some meat she'd carved away from the cat's ribs and washed with snow. It was as tough as leather, tasted and smelled like burning dust.

She had three helpings as she watched the spear-chuck turn to ash.

The visitors arrived just as she was finishing her meal. There were two men and a pretty woman about as old as Mama had been before she died. They each wore strange clothing, not furs as she knew them, but something much thinner and without any visible seams. And it was green.

"Where do you think she's from?" the younger of the men asked the others. His hair was the color of sand and his face was very handsome.

"A straggler lost from her tribe, no doubt," the old man said, his voice harsh and scratchy. On his chest, his clothing was labeled with letters of the special tongue: HOECKNER.

The woman drew closer and squated in front of Irsa, gently brushing a hand across the dead cat. She smiled.

"If she's lost, we can't leave her out here," she said. Irsa listened quietly. She understood their words, but thought it wise not to give away that fact just yet. She stirred the fire next to her with a stick and threw the stick into the flames.

The young man scanned the cat's body.

"She looks like she can handle herself...this is some Special Forces shit...I mean, that thing's a monster. I guess they made 'em bigger back in the day, huh?"

Hoeckner slipped a small object from a pocket on his chest. He stared at it intently, began tapping it furiously.

"Ms. Gafferty. You know as well as I do that medling in the affairs of the past could cause irreprible harm to the continuum."

The young man scratched his head, confused.

"Hell, doc. I don't see how helpin' this girl will do any harm."

Hoeckner continued tapping.

"She may be your great-great-great-great-great grandmother, or something like it with a great many more 'greats', of course. Now, shall we continue to search for indigenous flora? We do have a graduate course to prepare for."

Ms. Gafferty stared at her.

"Do you understand me? We saw the smoke from your fire. Are you alone out here?"

"Oh, please," Hoeckner laughed. "The poor thing's probably one intellectual level about the thing she's eating."

"Do you understand me?" The woman Gafferty looked deeply into her eyes. Her voice was so gentle and calm...

Irsa nodded slowly, mimicing Papa's habit whenever he answered in the affirmative. The gesture was too subtle. The woman didn't notice.

"You're wasting your time."

"It's my time to waste. And what do we have here?" Gafferty reached on and grabbed the box. Irsa reached for it to take it back, but stopped. These were the Green Men. The box was ultimately for them. "This looks like a field terminal."

The woman Gafferty stood tall, squeezed the box in just the right way to make it open up. She was instantly astonished.

"Oh, my God...this is Professor Reyford's terminal."

"What?" Hoeckner snatched the box from her hand.

The young man peered over his shoulder to get a better look.

"How'd she get hold of it?"

"It belonged to Papa," Irsa said, digging a bit of meat from between her teeth with her tongue.

The three Green visitors stared at her, mouths agape. At last, Gafferty smiled.

"Well, I guess the Professor's been busy these past few ye-"

"Papa is dead."

Gafferty's smile faded.

"Oh, I...I'm sorry...what's your name?"

"Irsa."

Hoeckner passed the open box to the young man and pocketed his small device.

"Well, then. Say goodbye to Irsa. We need to leave here at once."

"We're taking her."

"Absolutely not. It's against all Departmental regulations. The Board would have my neck."

"If she is the Professor's child, there's already been a great deal of meddling with the timeline. I'm not going to be a party to a compounded mistake. We're taking her. I'm taking her."

The woman held out an inviting hand. Irsa took it and unsteadily rose.

"My name is Margaret. I knew your father a long time ago. He was one of my teachers."

Irsa looked into the woman's eyes. She did indeed look like Mama.

"We're from the future. Do you know what that is?"

She shook her head.

Margaret smiled.

"Well, it doesn't matter. You'll have time enough to understand. Time enough."

STATE ROUTE

The sun glared over the field of corn like a lighthouse watching the resonant waves of an angry golden sea.

Deputy Sykes heard the tear of a ticket book and glanced over in time to see the sheriff touch the brim of his hat and say goodbye to the driver of the old Chevy. The pickup rolled forward, then kicked up a cloud of dust as it merged onto the lonely SR and rumbled into the distance. With it went the last hope of any excitement, even if by now it could only come in the form of a smoking .38 in the hand of a lead-footed psycho.

But the guy in the truck was as normal and placid as all the rest of the yokels in the county.

All smiles. Practically thankful to get a ticket.

The sheriff sniffed and rubbed an itch away from his nose as he crunched across the dirt and gravel roadside toward the cruiser. Similar in height, he outweighed Sykes by a good fifty pounds, mostly the result of the raspberry Danishes he seemed to vacuum up every morning. He was a tolerant man, though you'd never know it from looking at him. The whole week, when he wasn't smiling at someone at the station, he wore a perpetual, bullet-chewing frown, a sort of facial holding pattern meant to instill intimidation. By Tuesday, Sykes had determined it was an act, honed over twenty-years of daily tedium, a kind of unrelenting expectancy.

There was no such thing as a routine stop, except among the towns and crops of Cutter County.

The sheriff slipped his pen back into his breast pocket.

"Well Greenpea, what do you say we head back home?"

Sykes hated the nickname and hoped it would've died from disuse by week's end. Not much chance of that, now. The frown cracked a bit every time the sheriff used it. And the other deputies had started using it too.

"So, how was your first week out of the gate?" he said.

Sykes sloughed off his hat and plowed a hand through his hair.

"Alright, chief."

Chief. Not 'Sheriff' or 'Sir'. Or even 'Boss'. Everyone at the station spoke that way, like they were addressing some cocked-hat protagonist from an old Bogart picture.

The dispatcher's cigarette-grated voice crackled over the car radio.

"Central to car six. Come in, Chief."

The sheriff tossed his hat and ticket book onto the dash and leaned in through the driver's window, took the microphone with no particular urgency.

"Go ahead, Bea."

"Hey, I know it's the end of your shift and all-"

He looked over the top of the car at Sykes, shook his head sardonically.

"What is it?"

He released the transmitter button and they both waited a long moment for the dead air to clear.

"Misses Sutton called in."

The sheriff groaned as if shying under an invisible ton of fertilizer heaped onto his back. He smeared a hand across his face and ground his teeth, looked like he was about to take a bite out of the mike.

"Can't someone else do it?"

Dispatcher Beatrice Love started to respond, then coughed. Sykes pictured the fifty-something woman at the base transmitter, well into her third pack as she filed her nails.

"Garrity's on his way to Bishop. Jimbo ain't responding and Ned went last time. After what happened last time he's liable to shoot her if he goes out there again. You want me to call him anyway?"

He sighed and looked down the SR behind them. He pointed to Sykes and tapped the car's roof. The deputy climbed into his seat, buckled and watched the sheriff do likewise, then start the engine.

"We've got it," he jammed the mike back onto its holder as if mashing a big bug. "Well, Greenpea," he said as he put the car into gear. "It looks like you're in for some overtime."

***

Twenty minutes later, they pulled off onto a dirt road.

Sykes played with his hat, spun it around in his hands the entire trip as he stared out the window. The cornfields were endless, ever-more golden in the fading day. The harvest season would begin soon, maybe next week. He wondered how many things he'd see once the tall stalks were mowed down: barns, houses, forgotten farm equipment and piles of rotting lumber.

The sheriff wore a sour expression the whole way, like he'd just sucked on a blue-ribbon lemon. He spoke only once, just after the cutoff to Kecksville, and that was only to ask him for a piece of chewing gum. He was pretty adamant against eating in the car, but gum was fine, provided you didn't spit it out somewhere where he'd step in it.

The dirt road snaked through an ocean of weeds as it meandered between ancient outcroppings of granite, stuff too big to move with anything other than dynamite. The cruiser bounced through a washboard of ruts and nearly knocked over a road-side sign, paint-faded and streaked grey from countless years of rain and sun.

MIND YOUR DUST

"One of these times, I'm just gonna plow that damned thing into the ground," the sheriff growled.

Sykes steadied himself as the car bumped, then cleared the cobwebs from his throat.

"So, chief...who exactly are we paying a visit to?"

"Old lady Sutton, the local lunatic. She's always calling in, gives all of us ulcers about once a month."

"Some kind of domestic trouble?" the deputy was almost ashamed at the enthusiasm he felt.

"No, nothing like that. She's a widow. Her husband was some kind of writer, got killed a few years ago when some naval weather balloon dropped out of the sky on top of him. Poor bastard was just walkin' down the SR when three-hundred pounds of instruments from eighty-thousand feet laid him flatter than a dime steak."

Sykes had a surprisingly sharp recollection of the story in a paper. He was eating frosted flakes at the time. He and his dad had laughed about it. His mom had called them morbid.

The sheriff continued. "Theory at the station is when Misses Sutton got the news, she went bat crazy. Understandable I guess."

"Sure, I get it." He still had to fight not to smile about the incident. The idea of some guy just plodding along, whistling as he watched the crows fly, smiling at the rays of warm sun, then SPLAT!

Things like that just didn't happen in the city.

They passed an open-sided shed, cluttered with sheets of corrugated metal and a big ripper attachment, all of which looked hopelessly rusty in the growing shadow. The road turned toward a small house about a thousand feet away, the weeds beginning to yield to a long dead field of corn.

"So, what'd she call in about?"

The sheriff snickered as he jinked around a pothole.

"Spacemen."

Sykes rumpled his brow, not sure he'd heard correctly.

"Huh?"

"Spacemen. Or skunk apes. Or werewolves. Or goblins peeking in her windows. We never know until we talk to her in person. She doesn't like to tell us on the phone. 'cause the government may be listening in."

"Wait a minute...she's suspicious of the government and she calls the sheriff's office?"

"Hell, don't ask me to explain. Most of my sympathy for the gal went down the crapper years ago. Too much time and tax money."

He braked about dozen yards from the front porch and they both climbed out into the twilight air. It was graveyard calm, not a rustle of cornstalk or chirping cricket within earshot. Sykes slipped on his lid and shut the door, remembering the tales his aunt told him about living in 'tornado alley'. That was how it was just before a twister touched down and relocated your house: intensely, nerve-fraying quiet. The idea was silly, of course. There wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Deputy Sykes shrugged off a fresh crop of goose pimples and followed the chief to the house. It used to be baby blue, he decided, though so much of the paint had chipped away from the clapboard it was hard to be sure. The pair of sash windows on the front of the small rectangular building was typically grimy for the area, but looked unusually reflective. A few steps from the porch he realized they were back-coated with tin foil, as was the top-light over the front door. The short set of stairs groaned under the mens' weight, as did the roughly weathered landing.

The sheriff hesitated only long enough to send his gum into a patch of weeds with a mighty blow, then curtly rapped his knuckles on the door. Seconds ticked by as they waited. Dirt ground under Sykes' shoe as he pivoted, watched the waning golden light glint off the car windshield. He tasted the rye and mustard he'd had for lunch as his eyes followed a white moth silently fluttering over the hood.

The porch echoed with clicks and clacks, locks being undone. Sykes turned just in time to see the door crack open a few inches – though not enough for him to see into the house from his angle. The sheriff stared at something through the crack and smiled. It wasn't a pleasant expression, like he was trying to maintain proper public etiquette after downing a quart of pickle juice.

"What seems to be the problem today, Misses Sutton?"

A voice muttered. Sykes strained to hear. The sheriff leaned closer in.

"No, I'm not alone. I've got a deputy with-"

More muttering, then the door creaked open wide.

Sykes followed his boss into a sparsely furnished front room, lit only by on a sickly electric floor lamp in a far corner beside a wingback chair that had seen a better century. A cluttered kitchen lay beyond the room's only other doorway, pots strewn across the linoleum floor.

The front door clacked shut,

"Thank you for coming so quickly," a honey-sweet voice said.

The deputy glanced over his shoulder, then stared hard at the intensely beautiful young woman across the room. She smiled, impishly delighted as he noticed his chin dangling loosely.

"Can I offer the both of you some iced tea?" Her voice was like sex incarnate, every word punctuated with a double entendre meant only for him. Strangely, it wasn't the typically easy country drawl like everyone else in the county. It was something faintly European, like Tom Finney's mom, and made him suddenly remember his pubescent obsession with Misses Finney's sweater-clad breasts.

The sheriff's tone was deadly serious.

"This isn't a social visit, Misses Sutton."

"Oh," she said, looking as though she were about to start sobbing. She tugged at the hem of her short, flower-print dress, bit her bottom lip.

The sheriff seemed unaffected.

"Look, Misses Sutton, every other week we're out here, half the time sending one of my men into overtime and the other time diverting us from more important duties."

She hung her head, held herself. Sykes wanted so much to embrace her, shield her from the verbal hammerblows. He stared at the chief, wondered what kind of an ogre he must be when he was off duty.

"It's lonely way out here," she said softly.

"Then get a dog." His voice grew louder, the mental bulwark against years of mounting rage crumbling. "I've got ten thousand people and five-hundred square miles to worry about and I can't commit the kind of resources-"

"But it came back," she said.

"What? What do you mean? What came back?"

Lovely Misses Sutton approached, reached out to touch the older man as her face was gripped with a deep terror. The sudden change in expression was un-nerving...unnatural, but Sykes guessed it was par for a crazy-lady's course. Still, she was never less than positively stunning. A cornfield Aphrodite.

"The thing."

The sheriff sighed, plucked her hands away from his shoulders.

"Could you be a little more vague, maybe?"

"The thing I called about last month. The thing from another world."

The sheriff rolled his eyes at the drama clouding the air.

"Yeah, I saw the movie."

"It suddenly appeared out in the field, green all over...scared my pig half to death." She drew closer to Sykes, her eyes tearing in the yellow light. Her gaze darted back and forth, pleading as she leaned in. She smelled like fresh-cut roses, sweet and delicious. "It tried to get me."

Sykes swallowed hard, his mouth watering like a Pavlovian pet.

"Pardon me for asking, ma'am," he said at last. "What did it want with you?"

"Jesus, Greenpea..."

"It wanted to get inside me."

Sykes gulped down a baseball, felt beads of sweat form on his forehead as he found himself sympathizing with the thing from another world.

The sheriff noticeably fought against laughter.

"You mean, like, possess you?"

She nodded.

"In that case, Misses Sutton, I think you'd better call Preacher Hickam. Cutter County Sheriff's Department deals strictly in matters of the flesh." He turned and snatched the door knob. "I'd give you a card, but I'm sure you've got plenty around here already."

"He was a scout."

A puff of autumn air blew through the room as the sheriff opened the front door.

"I'm sure he was."

She gazed at Sykes as she played with the top button of her dress, frolicked in his thirsty stare. Her voice grew quieter, as if she was reciting a blush-inducing fantasy to a new lover.

"They want to learn more about us before they invade. Test us. Taste us..."

"Let's go, Greenpea."

She lunged at the sheriff, desperately clasping his arm, ready to burst into tears.

"But, he's still here!"

The older man jerked his arm free.

"Chief, shouldn't we check things out?"

"Don't tell me you're getting loopy too."

He leaned closer, kept his voice low. No sense in scaring the poor lady.

"Remember that peeper a couple months ago? The one looking in on that teenage girl on Barker?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, we never caught him."

His face pinched as the dots connected in his brain. He looked contemptuously at young Misses Sutton, then at Sykes.

"Are you kidding?"

"I...well, we don't know. I mean it could be, right?"

The sheriff started at the cruiser. He sighed, the will draining from him.

"Pervert or not, it's a long way to walk for a hard-on. Although I guess it's possible. Alright, Greenpea." He raised his voice as he stepped out onto the porch. "We'll check things out."

Sykes followed him, sharing an entranced smile with the beautiful sex kitten as the door closed between them. The trance wore off the instant the sheriff's finger jabbed him in the sternum.

"Ten minutes."

***

Six minutes had already gone by the time Sykes rounded the back of the house and stopped at an old water pump to scratch his head. The sheriff had gone off in the other direction to check around a rocky outcropping nearby, in case someone was hiding, waiting for them to leave.

Sykes thought about searching the open-sided shed, but that was maybe a quarter-mile back up the dirt road and would have taken too much time. When the sheriff said ten minutes, he'd be checking his watch regularly. He might be agreeable to search the shed on the way out, though.

He slid his hat back onto his head and surveyed the dead field of corn, then the parched ground. In the fading light, he could just make out a few footprints going toward the house. They weren't his. And they sure didn't belong to Misses Sutton, being in the neighborhood of size thirteen and extra wide.

He looked up just in time to see a beam of light slice the thickening twilight air and the sheriff thread his way through knee-high weeds between an old, empty animal pen and the rusted front half of an early-model Ford pickup .

"No one's out here, Greenpea." He shone his flashlight at the back of the house. "Are we done playing 'humor the lunatic'?"

Sykes pointed to the footprints.

"What do you think?"

The chief aimed his light, traced the tracks to the house, followed them back toward the line of dry ten-foot stalks rustling in the gentle breeze. They wordlessly moved along until, three yards shy of the shadow-mangled corn, the sheriff thrust a hand out to block Sykes' path and shushed him.

"You hear that?" he whispered.

The deputy concentrated. Among the constant to-and-fro shuffling of the breeze, something was moving. Something big.

Up snapped the light.

"Who's out there?" the chief shouted as he pulled another flashlight out of his back pocket, handed it over. "I got yours out of the car. Wait here while I flush him out. Don't shoot me."

As he stepped up to the corn, Sykes half expected it to spontaneously part like some kind of biblical event, cowering under two-hundred-plus pounds of intimidation. The sheriff unbuttoned his holster and pushed his shoulder into the once-living wall, his flashlight beam growing dimmer as he plunged further ahead, like a diver's lamp receding into murky water.

Sykes switched on his light and listened to the sheriff's movements and heard him shout demands for identification, submission, a response...anything. The noises faded and he wondered if the sheriff would get lost, adrift in an ocean of crispy cornstalks roofed over with stars.

There'd be worse places to get lost. The stars above were beautiful, the ever-blackening sky already teeming with glitter. Misses Sutton would be getting anxious about what's going on. Maybe he should go check on her. Have a glass of iced tea...or maybe-

"Greenpea!"

The outcry sucked him back into the present. He charged into the corn like a crazed bull, heading toward what he thought was-

"Greenpea!"

It came from the left. He turned, following the furrows for a few yards. He stopped, strained to hear the Chief's voice again. Something was coming at him, crashing through the stalks. He fumbled with his holster and managed to slip the piece from its home just as a hulking black form burst into the furrow in front of him and rammed against him to send him backward. Reflexively, he squeezed his .38, sending a bullet into the night sky.

The pig squealed in terror as it disappeared into the stalks.

"Stop shooting, dammit!" the sheriff barked from somewhere nearby.

Sykes climbed to his feet and retrieved his flashlight, put his weapon to bed. The older man was just a stone's throw away, sitting on his haunches in a small , roughly circular clearing carved from the crops, examining the dead flashlight in his hands.

"Damned pork belly," he grumbled. "Dropped my damned light."

Something glinted across the clearing. Sykes approached it and stopped to stare at a polished streak of metal emerging from a pile of roughly plowed earth.

"Hey, take a look at this."

The sheriff joined him, snatched the only functioning light from his deputy's hands.

"Probably an old drainage pipe or well."

"It's pretty shiny."

"Well, Greenpea, maybe you'd like to dig it up and take it home," the sheriff snarled as he secured his holster and started into the corn. "I've had it. I'm going to tell that old bat what she can go do with herself."

Sykes tried to keep up, like a little kid chasing his daddy down the sidewalk.

"Oh, I don't know, Chief. She's not that old. I mean, she's...well, pretty nice."

"Uh, huh. She's old, nice and crazy."

"That's not what...I mean she's really attractive." They tore through the last of the corn, almost exactly where they had first entered. "Don't you think she's, well, hot?"

A few feet from the water pump, the sheriff stopped in his tracks. He turned and stared at Sykes with a look of cavernous disbelief, as if he just stepped onto the bullet-pounded beach of Iwo Jima wearing a pink tutu.

"You got a thing for old ladies?"

"Old lady? Chief, that girl was maybe twenty-five at most. Wasn't she?"

He just shook his head and smiled as he went to the front of the house.

"Whatever you say, Greenpea."

***

Moths orbited the single flood hanging from the corner of the house like electrons fighting for their place in an atom.

Sykes rolled down the window and dug a stick of gum from his pocket; put every effort into grinding away his embarrassment as he chewed on the sweet mint. The lighting in the front room had been bad, too dim to see anything clearly. Misses Sutton was an old lady, probably hideous. It wasn't as bad as a too-long stare at an overly developed twelve year old, but he still felt disgusted with himself.

It would get around the station. By Monday, 'Greenpea' would turn into 'Granny Groper' or 'Geezerbait' or something else designed to crush him into the Midwest dirt.

He buckled himself in, smacked his gum.

"Space aliens," he grumbled to the dashboard. The woman was a loon. He should've walked out the door the moment she opened her mouth.

He heard footsteps and creaking wood, looked out just in time to see the sheriff close Mrs. Sutton's front door. He came down the porch stairs, his gait livelier than Sykes had seen all week, practically skipping around the front of the cruiser, gliding into his seat. He started the engine and put the car into gear without clicking his belt, pressed the accelerator as he glanced over to him with a genuinely happy smile.

It was a side of the man Sykes had never seen before.

Almost like he was a different person.

The car bounced along.

"Aren't you gonna buckle up, chief?"

"No, Sykes. I'm going to live dangerously this evening."

Sykes? His own name sounded strange coming from the older man's mouth. He'd almost gotten used to 'Greenpea'.

They passed the faded sign and sped along through the weeds until they reached the SR. They turned south.

"This was some kind of test, wasn't it?" Sykes finally asked.

"Huh?"

"Y'know...like a hazing at a college fraternity. All this space monster stuff and the crazy lady."

The sheriff smirked knowlingly and all the way down the state route, never said another word.

IRQUART'S ARROWS

Men shuffled into the ornately-paneled meeting room, chattering and laughing in island conversations around the polished oak table as they lit cigars.

Professor Henry Irquart opened the window nearest and sat in one of two chairs in the back corner, without cigar nor fellow with which to chuckle over the day's events. He had arrived nearly a full hour earlier, having taken the opportunity to skulk around the Royal Anthropological Society's Hall of Antiquities, an enormous red-brick building at the north end of the campus that he'd never gotten closer to than the sight out his office window. The place was vast, but not nearly as impressive as he'd first expected, at least two-thirds of the ubiquitous display cases were filled with nothing but air and dust, hungry for unearthed treasures from far flung lands. The wax museum on the ground floor was a rather unique touch, though. He found it somewhat macabre, a violent fantasy made real: half-naked savages with bad tempers clubbing each other or a host of antediluvian animals that had wandered into the wrong place to fall beneath a Neanderthal's obsidian knife.

Henry glanced at his watch. Two minutes before his first meeting at the RAS and he still wasn't sure he wanted to be a member. 'Be a part or be apart', Professor Finch had told him at the beginning of the week. The advice was sound to his as-yet-jaded ears, but perhaps he wouldn't have been so enthused had he been in his position at the University for more than a week. The new, young professor of paleoastronomy was a lonely thing to be.

Nevertheless, exciting things were happening in related circles and he hated the idea of missing out. The Piltdown find had shaken the anthropologic world just two years earlier, the Dörpfeld excavations of Troy were still a hot topic for archeologists as was the current work being done along the Nile. Of course, his specialty dealt with Mankind's ancient relationship with the heavens rather than each other, but Finch had assured him the Society would be a place to stretch his mental mettle.

The chattering around him reached a crescendo by the time a snowy-bearded gentleman excused himself as he shuffled into the room between a pair of mustachioed smokers. He looked like he belonged somewhere else...somewhen else. His suit appeared to be designed during the regency of Victoria, cut for a man of far greater girth than was the current fashion. The man smiled and greeted anyone who returned his glance in as jolly a manner as Henry had ever seen: the academic equivalent of Father Christmas.

The faint whiff of roof tar tickled Irquart's nose as the man plopped into the chair beside him.

"You're the new man, aren't you? Grover told me you'd be here."

He checked his watch again and carefully scanned the room. Professor Grover Finch wasn't there. He wondered if that meant something...

"Mint?" the man asked as he pulled a little round ball from his coat pocket, popped it into his mouth.

Henry shook his head.

"I like a good cigar as much as the next man, but most of these 'next men' like nothing else. Sweet mints are simply too base for their tastes, I suspect."

Henry tried to ignore him, but felt compelled to continue some sort of conversation.

"How long have you been a member?"

The mint clattered around his teeth. Henry half listened as he observed the others take their seats and wondered if his watch was fast.

"Oh, I've been coming here every week for the better part of a year now. I observe, mostly. Don't suppose I can offer much to propel the conversation and debates, such that there are...that is an interesting article you have."

Henry turned his head.

"Beg pardon?"

He pointed to his wrist.

"Your watch. I didn't know they made that style for men. It's very handsome."

Henry was about to thank him for the complement, but their attentions were drawn away as the room suddenly fell silent as a wiry little balding fellow near fifty years old in a beautifully made suit carried something in on a large silver tray covered with a drape of white linen. Murmuring erupted amongst the members. Everyone but Henry seemed to know the tray-carrier and all the room became charged with anticipation as if Christmas Eve gifts were about to be distributed.

Professor Llewellyn, a boorish faculty member Henry had met at breakfast that morning, enthusiastically bounced from his seat to shut the door.

The meeting had officially begun.

"Gentlemen," the man said in a nasally voice as he dramatically placed the tray on the table before him. "I give you," he snatched the top of the linen and whisked it away as a magician would a silk kerchief, "the Somerset Cache."

The handful of men around the table gasped, the dozen or so in seats further back stood and closed in to block Henry's view. He began to rise from his chair, but stopped when he felt a hand on his arm.

"Don't be so eager," Father Christmas said softly with a smile. "It's bad form."

Reluctantly, Henry sat down and waited for the rest of the Society to do the same. All except the man with the tray of wonders, who stayed on his feet and whom, though somewhat short in stature, now practically towered over everyone else.

The snowy-bearded man leaned close to Henry's ear, wispered.

"Doctor Archibald Hornsby. Holds two doctorates. Speaks four languages. Has published more than thirty papers of note. Currently holds the Ives Glaston Chair at Landsberg as well as the Grand Siège de Scientific Connaissances at the Paris Ecole d'anthropologie. You should find him...stimulating."

Henry nodded an acknowledgement as he craned his neck to get a glimpse of the uncovered tray. There looked to be a great mound of small fragments of something. Rocks perhaps or pottery...

Visibly satisfied by the room's reaction, Doctor Hornsby continued: "Over the past several weeks, I have been fortunate enough to acquire these artifacts from a dig directed by a colleague from Landsberg. Without conclusive evidence as to the origin or purpose of these artifacts, I have been reluctant to offer them for your scrutiny. Now, I am pleased to announce that after painstaking analysis, we can be very certain we now have the earliest example of stone-age warfare."

The room broke into astonished chatter. Henry cocked an eyebrow, incredulous. The old man beside him seemed utterly unmoved, his smile faint but still alive.

Hornsby held up a hand. Everyone quieted.

"A sample will be passed around so that you may all touch a piece of history. Mister Llewellyn, if you please..."

The little man handed off a shard about the size of a large coin. Llewellyn examined it with slack jaw, lovingly turned it over in his hands and gave it to the next man at the table.

"These shards are from a cache estimated to be thirty-thousand years old," Hornsby continued. "They appear to be made of a sedimentary rock known as black chert, which is more common in the Highlands, but certainly not unobtainable in Somerset. The material is such that aggressive tooling will produce a crisp edge, making these heads nearly as sharp as their obsidian counterparts across the pond. Many of the pieces, including the one now held by Professor Nolan, appear to have a somewhat asymmetrical construction. You will notice a degree of staining along the longer edge, a common feature among these samples and among the entire body of found artifacts, perhaps thousands, as related to me by my colleague in this letter." He held up a thrice-folded piece of paper. "The stains are without a doubt traces of blood. Analysis strongly suggests the blood is human in origin."

"Astounding!" someone remarked.

"My God," muttered Professor Nolan.

Christmas took the arrowhead from a red-headed man and passed it to Henry without even a cursory glance.

"Warfare, gentlemen," Hornsby said. "We have here irrefutable proof of mans' aggression against his brothers. Ancient savagery on a grand scale, pre-civilization bloodlust. We must of course ask why..."

Henry's attention faded as he turned the object around in his fingers. It looked like a slightly lop-sided arrowhead made from a hard, coal-black rock. He scraped an index finger across the longer of the two edges. It was fairly sharp, could assuredly pierce human flesh if imparted with enough force.

It was an arrowhead. But that was all.

He leaned toward the old man with a smirk.

"I'm certainly convinced."

"I beg your pardon?"

Henry looked across the table. Hornsby was staring daggers at him, as was everyone else. He cleared the sudden mass of cobwebs from his throat.

"I was...uh...voicing a bit of healthy skepticism."

"Oh, I see. Well, I am certain you are more than qualified to offer an opinion on this subject Mister..."

Everyone was still staring at him. Everyone except the white-bearded man, who busied himself with a notepad and pencil pulled from his coat pocket.

"Henry Irquart. Professor."

"Professor?" Hornsby snapped. "Surely not a full professor...how old are you?"

"Twenty-Nine."

Some of the men began to whisper to one another.

"Have you been a member of this campus faculty long?"

"This is my fourth day."

The room erupted in raucous laughter. Henry felt his cheeks grow hot.

"Gentlemen," Hornsby shouted over the mirth. "I offer you a font of wisdom and experience in the form of Mister Henry Irquart. A fresh-from-Eton, four day tenured professor of...what subject did you say?"

"I didn't."

Professor Llewellyn wiped a tear from his eye.

"Political sciences, considering that retort."

More laughter punctuated the comment, along with some clapping.

"Paleoastronomy," Henry said, suddenly taciturn.

The revelry died as quickly as it came, replaced by a forest of confused looks. Hornsby leaned toward Llewellyn, exchanged whispers, then nodded and stood tall with renewed confidence.

"Perhaps you think the arrowheads are some form of ancient calendar?"

Henry straightened in his seat. If this pompous ass wanted a sparring partner, he'd oblige.

"My skepticism has nothing to do with my academic specialty."

"Then why are you skeptical?"

"Because as a man of science I find myself at odds with your conclusions, considering the tissue-thin evidence at hand."

Hornsby's face turned sour.

"Is that not an arrowhead?"

Henry looked at the artifact once more.

"It certainly appears so, although not as symmetrical as I'd expect."

"Do you see the staining?"

"I see a discoloration, yes."

The little man's voice grew louder, tinged with a mounting disgust.

"Men far more capable than yourself, many men, have testified that those 'discolorations' are remnants of human blood."

"If you say so. I've no reason to doubt."

"Yet you doubt your own senses of sight and touch. An arrow is a weapon, Mister Irquart. A tool with one purpose in mind: death. I'd join you in your skepticism if the blood was not human or if it were nonexistent, but it is not. We aren't dealing with the last vestiges of a large game hunt. We are dealing with primitive murder."

"And I submit it is irresponsible to draw such a conclusion."

Many in the room gasped, others shook their heads. Hornsby scowled.

"Go on, Professor," the old man beside him said as he scribbled. "I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter."

Henry turned the thing over in his fingers, considered.

"Perhaps you're misinterpreting the evidence. You've already conceded these are oddly shaped for arrowheads. Maybe they're not arrowheads."

"Mister Irquart!" the red-headed fellow exclaimed.

"For all we know they could be some sort of grooming implement."

Hornsby plucked another of the heads from the tray and wrinkled his nose.

"Grooming?"

"Yes, of course. Perhaps they're some primitive razor blade. The size would be about right. And it could account for the blood."

"Clean shaven savages?" Llewellyn sneered. "The very thought..."

"Why is it so hard to believe? Half of us in this room shave on a daily basis and fashion is hardly the only reason."

"How would you explain the concentration?" the old man asked. "There are thousands of these things, at least according to Doctor Hornsby."

"Perhaps the locals maintained a sort of barber shop. When the blades dulled sufficiently, they were discarded." He pointed to the tray. "That could quite literally be a pile of trash."

The air rang with outbursts of disbelief and offence. Hornsby stared, white-hot hatred in his eyes.

Henry passed the arrowhead to the next member to his right and quickly removed his watch.

"Just a moment!" he shouted above the din, finally tossing the watch onto the table. "Just a moment, please!"

Everyone quieted.

"Take my watch and break it into its component parts: band, bezel, crystal, internal mechanism. Scatter them around the campus and bury them in the ground for three-hundred centuries. Whoever discovers one of the components would be hard pressed to discern its actual value and use in our civilization without the benefit of the rest. How do you know you're not practicing the same folly?"

"An arrow is not a modern timepiece," Hornsby said. "Your analogy is absurd and flies in the face of common sense. You are suggesting that a modern scientific study of a vastly primitive and savage culture could somehow misinterpret the obvious. Yours is nothing more than a distraction from actual scientific inquiry via cheap theater and vulgar fiction."

He snapped his fingers and Llewellyn went for the door, opened it wide.

"Thank you for your interest in the Society, but I think it best you find other interests to pursue."

With the weight of two dozen eyes staring him down, Henry stood and calmly walked out the door. Only after it clacked shut behind him did he remember his watch.

***

Thankfully, the Antiquities Hall was still unlocked when Henry returned at close to midnight. The lights were extinguished in the second floor meeting room and he was confident he wouldn't bump into anyone from earlier, all of them having finished their cigars and brandy and long-since gone home.

He just hoped no one had made off with his watch.

The entryway and wax museum still had a few electric lamps lit, allowing him to make his way quickly to the back staircase, which was much closer to the meeting room. At some point he took a wrong turn, though. A particular corridor didn't seem familiar, connecting to several darkened offices, terminating at a strip of light bleeding from an ajar door. He stopped just long enough to hear music and then moved slowly forward as curiosity got the best of him.

He gently pushed on the door and leaned into the room. The place was filled with cluttered shelves, stuffed with crates and canisters and loose excelsior. Tinny music was emanating from further back, some recording of a Mozart piece. He quietly slipped inside and made his way through the shelves to a stout counter in the back. Father Christmas sat on a stool, hunched over something small and delicate as a tabletop Victrola warbled out Confutatis.

"You forgot that," the man said without so much as lifting his head as he pointed to the end of the counter at a watch.

Henry took it, fastened it to his wrist.

"You have my thanks."

"No," he said. "The thanks are all mine. You gave me a great deal of useful data this evening." As if sensing Henry's baffled expression, he spun around and snapped a rubber medical glove from his right hand, offering a shake. "Roger Furgeson, Professor of Psychology, Landsberg University."

Henry shook his hand, noticed the small mound of lopsided arrowheads on the counter top.

"You won't be going back, so I may as well let you in one my little ruse. The 'artifacts' passed around during the meeting tonight were invented whole cloth."

"You mean they're modern?"

He nodded.

"Yes, made within this month, in fact. I concocted this whole scheme to study the effects of authority in close-knit groups. A little bit of blood from Landsburg's medical department, a little curare and silver nitrate to age it properly. Leave just enough doubt and give just enough proof to whet anyone's ego. It was a stroke of genius on Grover's part to introduce you, though. Like watching elephants scatter from a mouse."

"Won't Hornsby be upset when he finds out he's been taken in?"

"You've anticipated the next level of my experiment, Professor Irquart. How far will hubris carry a man? How blind does pride make him? I suspect the answers will make for an interesting journal."

Henry shook the man's hand once more and turned to leave.

"Goodnight, Professor Furgeson."

"Irquart..."

He stopped to glance over his shoulder.

"Some might consider this a bit unethical. You won't tell anyone will you?"

Henry smiled, feeling like a child on Christmas Eve as he started back through the shelves.

"Goodnight, Professor."

THE STRANGE MARTYRDOM

OF ABDUL FAHEED AL-AZARRI

The day was exceptionaly hot, the air electric. Judean sun and dust leaked in through the little viewing slit in the back door as Abdul Faheed al-Azarri watched the houses and shops on the outskirts of town recede.

He closed the slit and shuddered as adrhenaline channeled through his bloodstream, tingled his hand. The anticipation of glories soon to be revealed seduced him like a silk-veiled lover. He hated the feeling. It was too damned comfortable. The desert heat should be blasting them, hammering the iron of their wills into unstoppable steel.

He snorted contemptuously at the softly humming airconditioner mounted to the rental truck's roof, barely noticable through the road-noise and squeaks. As were the snores of the other three men.

"Get up!" he shouted, punctuating the command with a swift kick to the fifteen-year-old's thigh.

Mahmoud scrambled to his feet and straightened his keffiyeh, which he insisted on wearing around his neck in the fashion of a stupid American kid.

"We will be at the target soon. Wake the others. Be ready."

He went back to the slit, opened it.

"Give me the glasses," he barked, holding his hand out behind him as he watched them turn a corner into a residential neighborhood, felt the truck slow to a crawl. The instant the hard casing touched his fingers he lifted the Fujinon binoculars to his eyes and began to count each rat he saw, worked out how to extinguish each of their sub-human lives in a sort of mental game. A block behind them, a rat-child whinged across the street on a bicycle: his exposed head a perfect target for a sniper's bullet. At a corner market, a whole gang of them conspired in the way they always did, old men with the classic sneers and hook noses of all sons of Issac.

All rats.

"It's nice in here," Ibrihim said as he grunted through a stretch, the grenades on his harness clacking.

Abdul lowered the binoculars and scowled over his shoulder.

"Perhaps you wish to cancel the mission and go for a Sunday drive through the Arad?"

"Kiss my shoe." Ibrihim scrubbed fingers through his curly black beard and laughed. "You always get this way. You need to relax, cousin. Allah will see us through as he has always."

Abdul let the insubordination wither on the vine. The corpulent and ever-joking Egyptian wasn't really his cousin, but he might as well have been more. He was a man on equal footing, a sword of equal snarpness in the Great Jihad who had been working for Farouk al-Mihdhar as long as anyone. And if anyone could be a positive influence on someone as green and naïve as Mahmoud, it was Ibrihim.

There was no sense in quibbling over stupid insults.

Mahmoud leaned over and patted the fourth man, the one they called the Russian, on the ankle, nearly tumbling into his lap as the truck hit a bump. The Russian leaned onto his Chinese-made SKS and rose to his feet. As he adjusted the front of his balaklava, his piercing blue eyes launched daggers at the teenager.

Abdul didn't like the Russian. He was a newcomer to the cause and many rumors had been floating around that he was little more than a mercenary and could not be trusted past Farouk's pursestrings. If true, that fact didn't really bother Abdul – stamping out vermin, be it rats or cockroaches or Jews, only required the act to be of consequence...a burning hatred brought about by Jihad or the cold neutrality of professionalism made little difference in the end.

But the Russian was a mystery and could on some level not be trusted. He could be a spy sent by the CIA, not Russian at all, or perhaps something more dangerous. Russia had plenty of Jews left within its borders. He could be an agent answering the Satanic call of his brethren, waiting for the moment to strike.

For now, as long as the Russian pointed his gun in the right direction, Abdul didn't care. He was not afraid. Treachery would be dealt with by his own hand. He was sure the Russian knew that.

The truck's motor wound down as they slowed to a stop. The air conditioner sputtered and died.

"Oh, good," Ibrihim muttered as he pulled a cell phone from his vest pocket. "My balls weren't sweaty enough."

Mahmoud snickered as the fat man flipped open the phone and tapped away with his thumb.

"Silence," Abdul barked. "We can be heard now. Focus on the mission."

The cab door opened and closed. The driver would walk across town to join Farouk.

"We've arrived," Ibrihim said into the phone. "Uh, huh. Yes...understood. Praise be to Allah." He closed the phone, looked at Abdul. "Five minutes and we go. Mahmoud is to stay with you." He turned to the Russian. "Cover the entrance. If any reinforcements show up, blow the truck."

Mahmoud clumsily secured the magazine onto his AK.

"How will we get back then?"

Ibrihim patted him on the shoulder.

"Allah will provide."

"Or else you will find Paradise," Abdul growled. "Be quiet, you asses."

He looked through the Fujinons once more, studied the police station visible down the street. It was perfectly quiet, exactly as they calculated for the noon hour. The station would be an easy target, the officers busy stuffing their faces, conversing on the phone with their rat-families.

They would strike a blow for jihad. A victory for the cause of freedom and the eradication of the unclean and unsubmissive. Calmly enter the station, bar the doors and quickly disable their communications, all the while shooting anyone in sight. Once through, Ibrihim would plant explosives around the building interior as a booby trap for any officers returning from duty. The rat would be heavily armed, no doubt. But the four of them had enough firepower to take on a small army: the Russian with his SKS and SARPAC rocket...he with his pistol and Mahmoud with his AK-47 and fistfulls of ammunition...Ibrihim with a host of explosives. They also had the element of surprise. They could kill fifty before so much as a gun was turned against them.

"Three minutes," Ibrihim said, glancing at his watch.

Abdul closed the slit, set the binoculars down and picked up his rifle from the corner, racking the bolt curtly. He looked at Ibrihim as he checked and cinched his harness. They exchanged a nod. He looked at the Russian who slung the SARPAC over his shoulder. They exchanged a nod.

Then he looked at Mahmoud. He stared blankly at the side of the truck.

"Are you ready?"

"I...I...don't know..."

"What?" Abdul snapped. "You don't know what?"

The kid looked into the older man's eyes, belying stark terror.

"Sahib...forgive me, but is it not wrong to kill?"

The question was so unexpected, Abdul found his mouth unable to form a response. Was this a teenager's weak attempt at humor? Was he spouting off something he heard during some unsupervised moment, vile untruths and heresies spoken on American radio or by a rat having escaped the confines of a moshav?

"Bad time to get conscience," the Russian said.

Ibrihim saw the look on Abdul's face and quickly stepped between them.

"Mahmoud, listen to me. You are right to question this. Know that what we are about to do is a holy act. Know that we are the hand of Allah and are doing his work. This is a just and good act."

"But...they are people. Will not Allah judge them in his own way?"

The Russian groaned as he pinched the bridge of his nose and mumbled.

"Kakóvo xúja..."

"Quiet," Ibrihim barked. "We are Allah's judgement, Mahmoud. If you had an infestation of scorpions in your house, would you not wish to eradicate them?"

"Yes. If I didn't, I could get stung."

"Exactly. See, you already understand what Allah and his Prophet commands us to do. Those out there, in the police station, on the street, they are as deadly to us and the righteous as scorpions. This whole unclean stain of a nation must be wiped from the Earth."

"This is stupid shit. We should leave him here."

Abdul stabbed a finger at the Russian.

"You were told to be quiet, donkey."

"Screw you. I will do job I am paid for, but I will not become martyr."

Ibrihim continued, ignoring the comments.

"Think of the news you have heard. Think of what atrocities they are committing every day. Think of the innocent babies boiled alive during their Sabbaths. Think of our brothers' blood they drink and all the perversions they practice between themselves."

"I am telling you he will get us killed."

"I'll be fine," Mahmoud said, glaring at the Russian.

"Sure?"

"Yes." The kid took a deep breath and held his nose high and proud. "I am ready to kill the scorpions."

"Very good." Ibrihim smiled and patted his new pupil on the shoulder. He winked at Abdul and glanced at his watch. "And we have about one minute to go."

They all flinched as a tinny, American pop song started blaring from Ibrihim's vest pocket.

"It's Farouk. My damned kid was playing with this thing last night." He pulled out and flipped open the phone. "Hadher sayyidi?...Yes...yes...understood." Away went the phone. "He wants us to wait a few more minutes. He says he just learned a school bus will be coming our way, a bunch of kids taking a field trip. He wants one of us to stop the bus before we hit the station."

"Why?" Abdul asked, watching the quiet street once more, shaking a tingle from his left hand.

"He didn't say. I assume for hostages."

***

Abdul didn't like last-minute changes, but this was one he could go along with. The score for the day's activities would be all the sweeter, the insurance against failure all the more great. Jihad would come to this city street soon enough.

Not soon enough.

Ten minutes had passed and the truck was starting to become an oven. The Russian kept to his corner, holding the bottom of his balaklava away from his face to allow air to ciculate. Mahmoud had sat down against the truck wall, heaped onto the floor like sweaty na'an dough. Ibrihim, skin dry and seemingly unaffected by the mounting heat, bit at his fingernails like he always did when want for something to do with his hands as he leaned up against the back doors beside his 'cousin'. Abdul considered letting him hold vigil at the viewing slit, but couldn't drag himself away from the heavenly cool breeze that trickled in onto his face.

"I see something," Abdul said. A long white vehicle, a large school bus, turned a distant street corner and headed toward them. It would pass by them in less than a minute. "Get ready!"

The Russian kicked Mahmoud's feet. The kid stood and gripped his assault rifle in his slickened hands, taking a deep breath.

Ibrihim took a step back from the doors, giving Abdul more room as he readied to fling them open.

"Mahmoud," Abdul barked as he snatched the hasp on the door with his right hand and slipped his Browning '35 from its holster with his left. "Once we have stopped the bus, you are to board it and kill the driver. Wait inside until we finish our job. Kill anyone who tries to escape."

"Make us proud," Ibrihim said.

The sound of the bus engine drew near, followed by the grinding of desert sands and pebbles beneath massive tires. On the air came voices of children, happy and singing.

And for the briefest of moments, Abdul thought of his son, the purity in his face.

Suddenly, Abdul's left hand dropped his pistol and snatched his right wrist, twisting and digging into the flesh. He yowled in pain at the resounding crunch of bones and quickly released the door as if it were fresh from a foundry kiln.

The bus chuttered by, accelerated past. The signing faded.

"My hand!"

"What's wrong?" Ibrihim asked.

Under an unseen power, the left hand swung through the air in a wide arc, barely missing Ibrihim's face. It shot toward Mahmoud, yanking Abdul along with it like a mastiff chasing a gravy-covered cat.

"My hand!" he shouted. "I cannot control it!"

Mahmoud raised his AK, but the hand suddenly shot down and clasped the end of the barrel-

"Help me, damn you!"

Ibrihim locked his arms around him in a bear-hug, pulling against a seemingly greater force, a tug-of-war between a man's torso and an invisible demon of hellish strength.

"We've no time for this," the Russian snapped.

"Abhal! " Abdul screamed, the insult awash with pain. "This is not a game! Help me!"

Mahmoud strained mightily to lift his weapon, the possessed hand's digits wrapped around the end in a vice-like grip. A sickening noise mingled among the screams and shouts, like the crackle of breaking bamboo with the pluck of an overly tight violin string. The hand turned sun-stroke red, two-dozen muscles flexing until they threatened to split the skin containing them as it twisted against the Kalashnikov's barrel, bending it like a wrought-iron decoration.

"Ya Allah! Ya Allah!" Mahmoud shouted.

The hand jerked backward, tearing the gun from the teenager's grasp. The wind was blasted from Ibrihim's lungs as he fell back and Abdul fell on top of him. The older man howled in agony and he rolled onto the deck, right-hand clutching at his left, which still held the deformed weapon tightly in its fingers.

The Russian cautiously stepped closer, unsure-

"No!" Abdul shouted, his face pressed against the deck. "Get back!"

The hand tore clear of Abdul's grasp and flung the AK through the air, the stock connecting with the Russian's face with a resonant crunch. As he fell away, Ibrihim scrambled to his feet and grabbed Abdul by the shoulder. Mahmoud cowered as the hand sent the twisted gun bouncing off the wall beside him, rabidly clawing at the empty air. Ibrihim quickly pinned the hand between Abdul's shoulder blades and pulled him up onto his feet.

They both panted.

"Why are...are you d...doing this, cousin?"

The hand flexed violently, becoming a talon carved from rock. Blood began to seep from the pores, the white bone of the knuckles ready to burst from the leathery, sweat-slickened tissue.

"Cut it off!" Abdul shouted. "The pain is too great!"

The Russian climbed to his feet and tore off his balaklava, his face plastered with smeared mucus and blood. He spat a broken tooth onto the deck and scowled as he slipped a bayonet from his belt.

"Allow me to help."

The hand thrashed against Ibrihim's chest, forcing him away. It twisted on its wrist in nearly a complete circle, sinews snapping like rubber bands. Ibrihim strained against the action, unable to hold on.

The Russian snatched Abdul by the lapel and brought the bayonet up to his throat.

"Stop! What are you doing?!"

Finally, the hand broke loose from Ibrihim's grasp. There was a sharp, low 'clink' and for the span of a heartbeat, the men all watched a dull metal object lazily whinge through the air and bounce at Mahmoud's feet. Ibrihim's eyes became as large as saucers as he felt for the missing grenade of his harness. The Russian dropped his knife and clawed at the hand's fingers, desperate to release the little ball of imminent death. Abdul closed his eyes as he collapsed beneath Ibrihim's body, the truck filled with a tornado of heat and light, razors slicing through the air as grains of sand in a hellish haboob.

***

Abdul emerged from a fog and opened his eyes to see the blue sky. The air sighed softly as in poured into the peeled and torn metal of the truck's body. After a time, he managed to raise his head and see past his feet.

Ibrihim and the Russian were mangled mounds of once-human bodies, the face of the man who once called him cousin turned toward him, burnt as black as his beard and his beard burnt away. Mahmoud was still visible in the corner, slumped and lifeless, skewered with a dozen pieces of shrapnel.

He raised his arms and bent his knees to test them. All were intact except his left arm: it ended in a rough stump, cauterized by the grenade's blast. He suddenly remembered his hand. Possessed by some evil force, some magic committed against him, a puppet driven by Iblis himself, perhaps. The target of a new rat weapon.

He laughed at the crime and fortune of it all. For Mahmoud and Ibrihim, Jihad was over, but he would live to fight again. His holy warriors, the men charged to his care and command, were dead. Yet aside from his hand, he was little more than bruised.

It was a miracle...one that proved his righteousness. He was the chosen of Allah, indestrucible and ready to purge the world of vermin. His left hand was a small price to pay to receive the Spirit within him. He only needed one hand to pull a trigger, one hand to wield a blade. Perhaps he could claim he was a hostage, fool the rats long enough to allow his escape. They would be fooled, of course...Jews were a stupid lot.

Something moved atop Ibrihim.

Abdul stared, wondering, waiting to see it again. Like a fleshy desert spider, a charred hand crawled over the dead man's head and tumbled down his face to land on the deck. His heart raced as he felt bony fingers climb his leg and crawl up his torso. Paralysis overcame him as he tried to reach up with his right hand and bat the monstrosity away.

***

Police Corporal Ananiah Har-Zahav was the first to the truck, having spent the last few minutes of his lunch to speak with his wife on his phone. It had happened just after the school bus carrying his son passed by, leaving town for a half-day trip at Masada. He'd come outside to wave to him, just as they'd talked about that morning at breakfast.

All around it had been a happy day. One of sun and pleasant dispositions. His wife was making honey cakes when he called to tell her he loved her.

The truck looked like a blown trick cigar, the sheet metal having been peeled from inside out by some explosive force. The other men with him had speculated fanatics, but he wanted to be sure it wasn't something more innocent and refused to wait for the Yasam to arrive.

It took all three of them to pry open the doors, the locking mechanism holding them in place was, strangely, affixed to the inside and nearly impossible to open.

The sight inside stunned them.

Two men were in the middle of the truck in a heap, their bodies mutilated nearly beyond recognition. A third man, hardly a boy by the looks of him, lay dead in the far corner, cradleing what Ananiah immidiately recognized as a Kalashnikov, the barrel bent at an odd angle by whatever force tore apart the truck.

Strangest of all, a fourth body was just inside the door, a man with his eyes rolled up into his head, cheeks sunken...the final look of a man fighting for air to breathe. A charred severed hand lay across his face, the palm covering his mouth, the thumb and forefinger clamped onto his nose.

LATE NIGHT WITH MARTY O'DELL

Martin Winston O'Dell III took one last drag before dropping his cigarette into the Diet Coke can, letting it sizzle in the half-inch of liquid left in the bottom. He drew close the microphone and let the smoke drain from the side of his mouth as the clock ticked away the last moments of the commercial break.

He glanced up to see Wayne through the window of the engineer's booth, busy stabbing buttons and tapping keys, preparing for the show's final segment, the last dump of advertising and sponsor plugs before the weekend. With the turn of a knob on the Byzantine control board, the bumper music swelled in Marty's ears: tinkling notes over a weird electronic attempt to mimic breaking waves.

Wayne was wrong. The jazz theme they used two years ago was better.

This one always made him want to take a piss.

He watched Wayne hold up a hand and countdown from five, finally point at him.

"Welcome back to 'The Oz Factor'." The meter and pitch were long practiced, a mix of authority and inquisitor...a man who'd ask the tough questions, then reveal the answer all in the same breath.

"We've time for just a couple more calls. On the Roulette line, we have Nina from Seattle, Washington. How are you Nina?"

He quickly adjusted the volume.

"Hi, Marty. I was calling about the abduction story you had earlier."

"Yes, the Kingman encounter."

"Yeah...you said the entities that took that guy from the forest were blue skinned?"

"Well, he said they were blue. I can only go by what I'm told."

He glanced up to see Wayne screening the next call. He started laughing. Hard.

"Well," Nina said. "I've met them too. I was sitting up in bed one night last October and three of these blue creatures just came right into the room."

Wayne put his phone receiver down and wiped his eyes, waved at him.

"They just walked right in?"

"Yup. I became paralyzed and then felt myself lifted off the mattress..."

Marty waved back, tapped his headphones.

Wayne's voice rang in his right ear.

"You gotta take this call."

"...and then I was brought into the room with things that looked like giant eyeballs..."

He tapped the mute button on his console and scanned the monitor screen to read Wayne's notes about the next caller in the queue. When he saw there were none he flipped on the booth speaker.

"Who is it?"

Wayne sniggered.

"A space alien."

Marty sighed, scrubbed his hands against his face. It'd been a long night. Having someone call and claim they were an alien or vampire or long lost spirit of Amelia Earhart wasn't that unusual, but it was definitely undesirable, especially at five minutes to 1:00 am. You couldn't get them to shut up. Telling them the show was over or you had to take a hard commercial break sometimes sent them into fits. And any hint that their strained stories were not totally accepted at face value would culminate in several seconds of verbal abuse or violent threats, although the threats were always hollow. The genuine crackpots tended to be lazy and never took the time to drive the thirty minutes into the desert to find the station.

"I thought you were supposed to screen the calls?"

"Yeah, boss, I know. But this guy is really funny."

He took the last cigarette from the pack on the desk, crumpled the pack in disgust. He tapped the mute button. Nina from Seattle was still talking.

"-an I was walking around the room all naked-"

"Nina, let me stop you right there. Give my screener a call on Monday right as the show starts and we'll give you some more time to talk."

"Oh, but-"

He cut the line.

"We've just about enough time for one last quick call. From...uh..." he glanced up to see Wayne shrug, "...somewhere, we now have on the line..." he glanced up again as he lit his Pall Mall.

Wayne quickly flipped a switch: "Orthon."

"Orthon," Marty quickly repeated, almost embarrassed to say it aloud.

"Hello?" a nasally voice snapped. "Is this...who is this?"

He watched the seconds tick away on the console clock, tapped his cigarette against the rim of his soda can.

"This is Marty O'Dell and you're on the air."

"I don't know what you think you're trying to accomplish, but we're getting pretty fed up with the kind of misinformation you're spewing."

Marty choked on some smoke.

"Beg pardon-?"

"Grabbing people from their beds? Scaring some doofus in the woods? How would you like your species branded as kidnappers and terrorists?"

"There's a lot of evidence to support those claims, Orthon."

"Says who?"

"The thousands of people who've reported strange events and encounters over the past fifty years, that's who."

"They're just repeating things they've heard. Or making things up."

"Oh, come on, Orthon. Haven't you ever heard of Betty and Barney Hill?"

"Oh, please, not that again."

"So, you have heard of them?"

"My cousin goes around playing 'scare the natives' four-hundred cycles ago and I never hear the end of it. I'll give you that one. That one was real, but it wasn't at all what you think."

Wayne's voice broke in.

"I told you. Funny."

Marty dismissed the engineer with a wave. Three minutes left on the clock.

"How about Roswell?"

"What about it? Do you really think somebody from the fleet is going to fly a hundred trillion sistassarees and then just crash land on some hick's ranch? Give us a little credit."

"Falcon Lake?"

"A booze-induced fantasy."

"I've gotta tell you, Orthon...you sound like a typical close-minded skeptic. No matter how much evidence is dropped into your lap, you just demand more."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"On the contrary. You want to talk about misinformation? How about the mountains of government-suppressed documents and the intimidation of witnesses?"

There was a sudden shuffling noise on the phone line, as if the receiver was being handed off to someone else.

"Hello? To whom am I speaking?" a posh-British voice asked.

"This is Marty O'Dell and-"

"Yeah, yeah," Orthon shouted in the background. "We're on the air. We know."

"Mister O'Dell, this is Ashtar Annunki, Orthon's legal representative appointed by the Seventh Council of Clarion. I'm afraid I am going to have to insist you cease and desist all transmissions regarding my client and his occupational activities."

In the booth, Wayne burst out laughing. Marty smiled, fought the urge to follow suit.

"Is that so? Listen, Ashtar. I think you and your friend ought to return to the Seventh Council and tell them they're barking up the wrong tree. If you think you can keep me from speaking the truth by issuing an empty threat-"

"I assure you, Mister O'Dell, this isn't empty. You are jeopardizing Earth's good standing in the Council as well as my client's reputation among his peers. I would hate to resort to further action, but resort I will if you continue this malfeasance."

Marty drummed his fingers, felt what little humor he had left in him evaporate into the polluted air. He didn't like being interrupted, especially by an ignorant crank. He sucked long and hard on his cigarette, chewing the thick smoke as he exhaled. He tapped the mute button, flipped on the booth speaker.

"I'm going long in this segment."

Wayne nodded hesitantly. Marty knew what a pain in the ass in was to muck up the commercial schedule, but Wayne would have to understand this was more important. These clowns needed to be taught a lesson.

Off went the mute.

"Okay, buddy. You and your friend have had your little fun at my audience's expense. Now let me educate you a little bit in the moment or two I have left. I've been in this business for over fifteen years, doing this show for nearly that entire time. I'm on over one-hundred stations in this country alone and have millions of dedicated and intelligent listeners who tune in every single night. I have one of the largest personal archives of the paranormal in the western hemisphere including books, videos and artifacts. I've been on the cover of Fort and have been featured on three separate occasions in the prestigious International Ufological Times. I've been a guest on Piers, interviewed on ET and headlined six UFO conferences. Most would say I'm an authority on the topics covered on this program. I would say I'm an authority. This shows deals in the facts, Ashter and Orthon, if those are really your names, which I doubt."

"Mister O'Dell, please-"

"No, you listen to me. I'm not sure whether this is some kind of pot-fueled joke or you're just a couple of sincere lunatics who got bored because they can't find a lay on Friday night. You could very well be agents of the government. Whatever the case, I can tell you I'm not going to go quietly into the night. The people of this nation...the people of this world are going to hear the truth. They are all going to know what I know. And I know a great deal."

"I'm afraid you don't."

Marty made a quick motion of his thumb across his neck as breaking waves filled his earphones. He tore them from his head and slammed them onto the console.

***

It was almost 2:30 by the time Marty got home. Janet wouldn't really care about him being late; she was always in bed asleep before he normally got home anyway.

The parking lot of Zamora's 24-Hour Charburgers had been strangely empty. Even in the early morning, a few long-haul truckers were usually milling around, stretching their legs after the trip from Needles, but not today. Once he had gotten his customary Saturday-morning dinner from the window and returned to his car to eat, the place seemed to become a graveyard on the moon. Not a soul nor sound to see or hear while parked under the orange glow of the flood light.

As he walked up the front walk to his house, he couldn't shake the sensation of eyes on his back and he rotated his head every few paces to make sure he wasn't being followed.

He fumbled the keys in his hand as he stepped onto the porch, cursing at the burnt-out lightbulb above the front door and the ineffectual lamp behind him, masked by the shoots of an overgrown privet.

"Mister O'Dell?"

Heart launching into his throat, he whipped around, stared at a pair of shadowy figures a few feet away.

"Wha...? Who...who are you?"

"Why, Mister O'Dell," the shadow on the left said in a very refined British voice. "I am Ashtar Annunki." He took a step closer and the lightbulb above the front door mysteriously came to life, illuminating a stocky man in a black suit and homburg hat. His skin was flawless and white like plumbers' putty, his face drawn with a faint but somehow menacing smile.

Ashtar continued: "It is fortunate you didn't arrive here until now. I was afraid we wouldn't have enough time to fabricate your simulacra."

When the other figure stepped into the light, Marty dropped his keys and his jaw. He was looking at his very own face!

Ashtar cleared his throat.

"I assure you your wife will be quite safe in TK 224's presence. In fact, she will find him most, shall we say, stimulating while you are away. Saturday morning is your customary time for marital conjugation, isn't it?"

Later in his life, Marty would often wonder how his wife and the rest of the neighborhood ever managed to sleep through his screams as his doppleganger bent down, picked up his keys and, smiling innocently, let himself into his house.

"Now, now, Mister O'Dell. Please try to relax. You'll be back home in time for first meal."

Ashtar put a hand on his shoulder. The porch light began to flash off and on and he was overcome with a sudden mental discontinuity, like stepping from a hot day into an air-conditioned house during an attack of the flu.

Marty slowly blinked: they were no longer standing at the entry of 495 Palm Terrace Lane, but were in a small room lit by some unseen power, the very air electrified.

Ashtar waved a putty-colored hand at the wall to his right and a rectangular section dissolved. He stepped through into a brightly lit room, turned and waited for Marty to follow.

"I'm having a breakdown of some sort, aren't I? You're a hallucination."

"I beg your pardon?"

Marty gasped, let out a long, lung-burning laugh. He clapped to a non-existent audience.

"A psychotic episode. I'm probably sitting in my car right now, my bacon cheeseburger laying all over my lap."

"Nonsense, Mister O'Dell," the hallucination said. "Don't you remember our conversation on the telephone?"

He held his hands in the glowing air, watched them tremble maniacally.

"I know...it's the paint. Wayne had the studio painted a couple weeks ago. Must be the fumes or something. Gotten to me."

"Mister O'Dell...may I call you Martin?"

He wiped his shaking fingers down his cheeks, his facial muscles cycling between a Cheshire grin and stark terror.

"Martin, Marty, Martian, Moonbat Mango Meatballs. You can call me whatever you want. It's just my own imaginative figment calling myself something anyway, isn't it?"

"Well, I think Martin will do. I'm terribly sorry, but our time is limited...if you please."

"Huh?" Marty absently looked at the man not really there, then beamed with delight. "Oh, of course. Don't let me keep you, my little fragment of underdone potato. Lead the way into Martyland!"

The little room opened into a gigantic indoor space, something akin to a bloated version of an enclosed football stadium, massive, sweeping support beams gracefully curving up to the a point in the ceiling a thousand feet high. All around there were small structures Marty equated with the tops of giant metal mushrooms. When they reached the bottom of the entrance stairs, he noticed the mushrooms were sitting on stilts.

Or rather...landing gear.

"Marty, you're a more imaginative fellow than I thought," Marty said. "Flying saucers are passé. Flying fungi in where it's at."

"I'm sorry," Not-Really-There-Ashtar said as he continued quickly along the smooth floor to the far side. "Did you say something about fungi?"

"Naw." He walked more briskly to catch up. "I said you were a fun guy."

Passing between the cluster of 'shrooms (Marty counted a total of seven), they approached a set of double-doors set into the arena's wall. The albino mirage-man held a hand up in front of the doors. They split apart with a swish, revealing another small room, similar to the first.

"Oh, I get it now. I ordered mushrooms on my burger. And now here's that episode of Star Trek I watched before bed on Wednesday. This way to the Enterprise shuttle bay, right Ashy?"

Ashtar turned and glared at him, his smile turning a bit less menacing.

"You are a very curious man."

They stepped through and the doors swished closed. Marty felt his stomach lurch toward his feet, as if in a blindingly fast elevator. A second later, the doors reopened onto a ornately decorated room, covered from floor to ceiling in burled walnut paneling with golden trim, a polished chrome elliptical table and chairs the centerpiece, the support legs flowing down into the floor as if half-melted. There wasn't a single right-angle or straight edge to be found.

"Oh, dear," Ashtar mumbled. "It seems we're a bit early afterall. Do wait here, Martin. I'll return shortly and then we can get this over with."

Fantasy or not, Marty didn't like the idea of being alone. This Ashtar figment was probably a way for his mind to stay grounded to some semblence of reality. He was having a psychotic fit, but it was only temporary. If Ashtar left, would it signify a more permenant problem?

"You mean I've got to wait here by myself?"

Ashtar smiled. It seemed more genuinely friendly this time.

"It's only for a moment. Mister Yowiepooka will be here shortly, I'm certain."

"Who?"

"Your legal representative. This is an arbitration between you and Orthon to see if we can come to some sort of...mutual understanding."

"But I thought you-"

"I'm not here for your sake, Martin. Remember, I am Orthon's legal representative." He stepped back through the swishing doors. "You needn't worry...Mister Yowiepooka is quite skilled in these matters."

Swish.

"Okay. He's gone. I don't feel any different."

He slowly paced around the outside of the room, sliding his hand along the subtle concave curve of the wall.

"Would I feel any different? If I'm already crazy, how would I know if I was suddenly extra crazy?"

He stopped at the far end of the room, turned to face the wall, his nose nearly touching the polished surface.

Swish.

"Wake up, Marty." He patted himself on the cheek, pinched his face until it hurt. "Wakey, wakey."

"You Marvin Odil?" The voice was much lower than Ashtar's.

"Oh, great. Here comes another ten sessions with a shrin-whooah!"

He pressed his back against the wall the instant he turned around, clutched his chest to keep his jabbering heart from popping loose. Next to the table stood an eight-foot-tall ape-man-thing, intensely ugly in the face and as hairy as a Turkish mohair rug soaked in Rogaine. In his hand was some kind of briefcase.

"You're a Sa...Sa..."

"The name's Yowiepooka. 'Yowie' will do."

"Sasquatch!" Marty finally blurted.

"Gesundheit."

The massive creature sat down, snapped open his case. The chair looked like a toy beneath his huge frame, like a kindergartener's seat used by a parent while meeting the teacher afterhours.

Stiff-legged, Marty hobbled over to the seat beside the monster, where he was nearly blown over by an intense stink. He suddenly imagined opening his niece's diaper bin and taking a stiff snort of the foul air within. The stench was emanating...oozing from the creature's every hair. It hit him with all the force of a bowl of crushed ice, sending his mind careening down the shortest path toward reality. Or away from it.

"Way to go, Marty my man," he laughed. "You've lost all control! It's definitely a stroke! Countless weekend jaunts to Zamora's greasy spoon, plugging up the brain with cholesterol." He plopped hard into the seat beside the smelly Sasquatch named Yowiepoopoo, suddenly feeling sapped of all energy. "I'm in the car, pants covered in all-beef patties and special sauce, sitting in the remains of an uncontrolled bowel-movement."

Swish.

They both looked up in time to see Ashtar stride in through the doors, followed closely by a short frail little man with grayish green skin and head the size and shape of an upright, misshapen watermelon. Without a word, they took seats at the table opposite Marty and Yowie. The green man glared at Marty with what he thought were two enormous, wraparound black eyes. He realized his mistake when the man tore off something like sunglasses to reveal little beads.

"I'm glad to see you showed up," Orthon nasaled. "I can't say I'm not surprised."

"How many times are you going to go through this?" Yowie grumbled. "What is this? The fifth time this cycle I've been forced to waste my time defending some talentless Earthling?"

Marty glowered at the smelly hallucination. Why would he call himself talentless? It must have been some lingering self-doubt, probably brought on by losing last year's Marconi Award.

Self-doubt. That had to be the cause of all this. Doubts about himself, about his future. Doubts about his marriage. Dozens of pressing concerns weighed him down, smashed his mind so thoroughly his psyche could only find one distorted avenue to wriggle free. Janet had pestered him for months to start a family. Wayne had asked for a raise which he could ill afford. His ratings had dropped precipitously for months.

Ashtar calmly folded his hands together on the table.

"My client has every right to file as many complaints as required to defend his reputation."

"Oh, come on, Ash. If Orty thinks Earth is so bad, why doesn't he just steer clear?"

"You know as well as I do this isn't about any particular planet along my client's itinerary. Mister O'Dell's transmissions are at issue. The damage these transmissions can do over time is enormous."

"They only propagate at the speed of light. Considering the amount of time that'll pass before anyone will hear them, I think the impact of his messages will be pretty small."

"That is the same sort of speculation you indulge in every time. Neither you nor Martin is prescient in this matter. I'd dare say that the possibility the transmission will fall on unreceptive or temporally non-contextual ears is open for debate. Indeed, Mister O'Dell's motivation in broadcasting is to be heard. I would say that the result of his activities are far less important than the intent."

Marty stared at Orthon, studied the curves of his vaguely light-bulb-shaped head.

This was insane. He was insane. Beady-eyed spacemen, Bigfeet, Men in Black, duplicate clones, flying mushrooms. He was sounding as bad as one of his callers. He'd be donning a bowler hat and long-johns, belting out 'Singing in the Rain' before this was all over.

There had to be some way to snap out of this fantasy, even if it meant waking up to find himself a drooling vegetable.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked dryly. If anything, he was curious to hear the answer he'd give himself.

Ashtar's cold eyes flicked toward him.

"Do you mean to say you are now willing to cooperate?"

Marty hesitated, though he wasn't sure why. He was basically asking himself to help himself. These were all psychological manifestations of his own mindscape after all. He could just let himself drift on the ebbs and flows of the dream. Nothing to be worried about.

Nothing at all.

He nodded confidently.

The Sasquatch sighed heavily as he snapped shut his briefcase and stood.

"Good. You guys and Marvin can work this out without me. With any luck I can make my next appointment on time for once."

Ashtar watched the thing march into the elevator.

"Anyone I know?"

"A one-armed guy in the Alps. Keeps trying to pass off fake photos. Causing all kinds of consternation at the Tourism Board. Orty, Say hi to your cousin Orfeo for me."

Swish.

***

Wayne sat in the hot-seat, doing his best to drown the butterflies in his stomach with microwaved coffee as he watched the clock.

Three minutes to air time.

He'd sat in for Marty once before and it had been an unmitigated travesty of the broadcast arts. He was lucky to hold onto his job the next day, as angry as Marty had been. He just wasn't good at communicating on the fly, asking questions to keep the conversation going, probing for salacious details to make listeners' mouths water. Screening calls required an entirely different sort of talent: being able to sniff out a kook or anyone hypnotically boring within five seconds and move on.

He just wasn't cut out to be a host.

Janet should've had called him a few hours earlier or even on Saturday. He could've lined up a guest host to fill in while Marty was out of commission. It'd cost a little extra, but at least the show wouldn't suffer. Things were getting bad enough as it was.

It was hard to believe Marty was in the hospital. It was lucky Janet found him on the porch when she did...there was no telling how long he'd have laid there. She said he was so full of life Saturday morning, but he left just before breakfast, which was odd because he always liked to sleep in. Stress, the doctors had told her. That and two packs a day and a greasy dinner-in-a-bag three or four times a week.

He checked the monitor screen and made a mental calculation as he downed the contents of his mug in one cheek-bulging swig. Ten minutes for an opening monologue, a few more minutes for sponsors, maybe a quick explanation of what happened to Marty. First caller was still patiently waiting: Nina from Seattle.

After that, he was screwed.

Two minutes to go.

Wayne leapt from the cushy chair and dashed out into the front receptionist room to pour another cup of Friday-night leftovers.

And flinched at a stiff knock on the front door.

He shoved the pot back under the Mister Coffee and rounded the disused, paper-cluttered desk to the entrance to snatch the knob.

A tall, pasty-faced man in a homburg hat stared back at him from the other side.

"Mister Wayne Piladichuk?"

"Yeah?"

"My name is Ashtar Annunki. I believe we spoke on the telephone recently?"

Wayne nodded dumbly as he opened the door wide to inspect an intense light glowing in the desert far behind the visitor. Holding up a hand to shield his eyes, he could just make out the silhouette of a distant figure walking toward them. A small figure, in fact...maybe a kid?

"My client and Mister O'Dell have made an arrangement as of late. During Mister O'Dell's absence, my client will be taking over his communication duties."

The broadcast engineer blinked hard and watched the afterimage smear across his retinae, unsure he heard correctly.

"You mean, like...a guest host?"

"In a manner of speaking...yes."

Wayne's face practically split from the broad smile that appeared.

At last, his problems were over.

PLANETARY VOODOO

"What's this thing?"

Eddie Pinobscott jammed the stick of gum in his mouth and tossed the crumpled wrapper on the floor. He stood next to Kandi and glowered into the old, dusty curio cabinet, hardly impressed.

"Looks like some kind of preserved fetus. Stuffed in a jar of formaldehyde."

His girlfriend grimaced.

"Gross. Your uncle was like a real sicko."

"Money does that to some people, babe." Eddie gave her a stiff slap on the butt before continuing to wander around the huge, cluttered room. "I tell ya, though...it's a sickness I'm happy to come down with."

Kandi shuddered, quickly found a free-standing mirror tucked into a corner. She leaned close to the glass to examine her lipstick, tidy her hair.

"How much longer do we have to be here?"

Eddie glanced at his watch as he snapped his gum.

"I gotta sign some papers still, babe. I can have Carlos give you a ride back to the lot, if you want." He hoped to God she'd accept. He could only stand her outside of the sack for about ten or fifteen minutes. After that, the vacuum inside her skull started to suck the air out of any room.

"I don't want to go back to the lot. It's too hot and it smells like gasoline."

He ignored the comment, did his best to ignore her as well.

Uncle Herman or Harvey or whatever his name was had not just been rich. He'd been stinking rich. His house was a veritable museum of the freakish and weird...things that cost thousands and tens of thousands of dollars because of their scarcity. Eddie had almost dutched himself at the sight of the Tyrannosaur skeleton in the great room downstairs. It was absolutely genuine, the lawyer told him, like something from Jurrasic Park, and worth a cool million.

And there'd be plenty of buyers for it, just like every other bizarre little trinket on display. There was always some freak who wanted this kind of stuff and as far as Eddie was concerned, they could have it...for the right price. Three hours pawing through his massive, dusty inheritance and he could no longer see jars of preserved fetuses, fossils, meteorites and tribal masks. In his mind, they'd all been replaced by neat little stacks of hard cash: banded and crisp, right out of the U.S mint.

He scanned a case full of old books, most of which looked as exciting as a fat nun with the mumps. He ran a finger across the grimy surface, wiped the disgusting smudge onto his sport coat. A large, cube-shaped form caught his eye from the other end of the room.

Imagine, a guy like him, one day schleppin' cars at his some rinky-dink lot he could never make pay and the next, strollin' through the upper floor of a mansion once owned by his long-lost uncle, whats-his-name, dreaming about the best way to spend a massive inheritance. Seriously, it was like winning the multi-state lotto. Better, in fact. He'd plunked down five bucks every week on that scam game for the better part of twenty years and never won so much as the price of a ticket. At least the inheritence wasn't a pipe-dream.

He stood in front of the cube, outstretched his arms to better gauge the size. Maybe it was a box of gold-bars? It'd be a welcome change from all the 'valuated merchandise'. Sure, the knick-knaks were all worth something, but they'd have to be monetized somehow. That would take time and resources, neither of which a forty-year old struggling car salesman had much of. Uncle had left him a lot of stuff, but little in the way of liquid assets.

The thing was a good five feet on a side, covered in a heavy blanket, like most of the furniture downstairs. He bent down and snatched a handful of the blanket near the bottom corner. It was intricately made, trimmed around the edges with some sort of golden thread, scribbled in a pattern of some type of script, like Arabic or Sanskrit.

"God, this stuff is so creepy," Kandi said, her heels clacking up to him from behind.

With a mighty grunt and heave, Eddie flung the blanket up and away, creating a tornado of dust in the air above.

She sneezed, then gasped.

Beneath the blanket was an enormous display box of glass and ivory, enclosing a multi-colored sphere that glittered in the light from a nearby window. Eddie sat down on his haunches to garner a closer look.

Kandi drew closer, almost put her nose to the glass.

"That's beautiful. What is it?"

"It's a globe," an Englishman's voice said from across the room.

Eddie stood tall and turned to see Jarvis, his uncle's lawyer, close the huge double doors.

"Some globe. This thing looks like it's made out of jewelry."

"In a manner of speaking." Jarvis started toward them, tapping his smart phone furiously. "Your uncle told me it was made from over three-hundred different rare minerals and gemstones, including rubies, sapphires, emeralds and topaz."

Eddie's eyes nearly bugged from their sockets. His mouth began to water like Pavlov's pet.

"How much is it worth?"

Jarvis locked his phone and slipped it into his coat.

"If the term priceless could be physically manifested, that would be it. I had three appraisers assess the value and the closest I came to a dollar amount is a reference to Bill Gates having to make payments."

"Do you mean Bill Gates wants to buy this?" Kandi gushed.

"He means Bill Gates couldn't afford it," Eddie snapped. "Look, why don't you run off and play with a light socket or somethin'?"

Pouting, the girl clacked off toward a distant display rack.

Jarvis cleared his throat, watched Eddie as he slowly slinked around the glass box and scrutinized.

"Frankly, with respect to the globe's value I think everyone's a little afraid, though I'm at a loss to say why, considering it's a rather difficult thing to steal. I'm told it's been in your family for a number of years. No one seems to know its origin, though. And your uncle was never very forthcoming on the subject."

Eddie passed in front of the United States, continued around westward, as if his head was a model of the sun transitting the day for three-hundred-million atom-sized people. He marveled at the motley assortment of colors making up his own country, forty-eight continental miniatures more precious than the real ones. Blues and greens and golds. Ambers and emeralds and corundums placed perfectly in a rock quilt to dazzle the eye and boggle the mind. Canada was a sea of polished ruby, blood-dark in precise locations to indicate mountain ranges, lighter in shade to blend smoothly into, what Eddie guessed, was the diamond-encrusted Northern ice pack. Alaska was a brilliant deep green, a gem the size of Kandi's wide-open mouth cut from one solid piece.

"What do ya think it weighs?"

"As I said, a rather difficult thing to steal. I'd venture around two or three hundred kilos, assuming it's hollow, of course."

He continued to scan and move, his eyes skimming over the enormity of Russia-

"Hey," he snapped. "What the hell?"

Jarvis finished digging out his smart-phone.

"Is there a problem?"

He pointed to the great emerald and milky jade expanse across the north of Asia.

"Take a look at this."

Jarvis rounded the box and followed Eddie's finger to a small, circular fracture right below the 'S' in SIBERIA. Cracks radiated out from the impact site like a tiny, gem-encrusted spider's web.

"Oh, dear...I wasn't informed of any damage. It looks like an impact of some sort. Perhaps someone took a hammer and chisel to it to remove some of the insets."

"Yeah, maybe. Think that'll affect the value much?"

The lawyer tapped away on his phone as he obliviously wandered away over to the enormous bank of southerly-facing windows that looked out over twenty acres of green geometry.

"It's hard to say. The piece is so unique and of such extraordinary craftsmanship, the affect on its value could be trivial or catastrophic. I'd venture the former, myself and I'm not a betting man. The University should get its money's worth."

Eddie's gaze had just passed over the Azores when he stopped and looked up, nearly choking on his gum as he swallowed it accidentally.

"U...University?"

"Yes, what about it?"

"Didn't you say Vince and I were the only beneficiaries in the will?"

"No...I said you were the only individual beneficiaries, as in 'individuals' or 'persons'. Your uncle bequeathed several pieces to his alma mater, including that bit of spherical bric-a-brac."

"What a shame," Kandi said, having wandered back over to the cube-shaped case to touch up her makeup with a small compact. "It's too pretty to have it cooped up in some stinky warehouse."

Eddie grimaced from the sudden wellspring of acid burbling into his esophagus; lunch at Jorge's Bargin Tacos and his mountain of debts at last catching up with him for the day. He wanted the globe. He needed the thing. Hell, he could sell the thing for five percent of its value and get the dealership out of hock. Nothing else in the place would bring that kind of money. Fetus in a jar? Moth eaten bear skin rugs? Sure, there were a ton of books and the odd antique that he could get a good price for, but all that would take time to collect, catalogue and find buyers. And time was something he didn't have.

His ass was grass and J.J. Dagostino Collections was a mafia mower hungry for some green. By the end of next week, J.J. would send his goon squad to turn him and Vince into a couple of cubed steaks.

"Y'know," Kandi said as she daubed a finger across her ruby lips, "this thing would look real nice in the showroom."

"Out of the question. During the probate process, no item belonging to Mister Pinobscott's Uncle may leave these premises. Not to mention that the globe in not due to be bequeathed in any case."

"Aw, c'mon Jarvis, Kandi's right. This thing would be a real crowd pleaser. I bet I could double my customer base if this thing was on display. It'd suck in tourists from all up and down the Parkway."

"I'm afraid the answer is no."

"Come on...we could charge admission for Crissakes! I'll give you a cut!"

The lawyer sighed, glowered at him from the corner of his glasses.

"Not all lawyers are unethical, Mister Pinobscott."

Eddie slumped, deflated. He wheedled around, tried to think of some reason...some excuse to get his hands on the globe. Kandi was milling around the other side of the room, leaning over some display cases filled with antique pistols. A flash of memory made Eddie imagine his brother, Vince, doing the same thing. If he were here instead of back at the lot, he'd be pocketing anything he could fit within his fingers.

Eddie suddenly smiled, warmed by inspiration.

"Okay, then. How about we do it for a matter of security?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Security. We don't want anyone traipsing in here now that dear old Uncle Howard-"

"Horatio."

"Whatever. Dear old Uncle Horatio has passed on. Someone could make off with this priceless artifact."

"It weighs at least a quarter ton. Hollow."

"Well, I don't mean someone would shove it in their pocket, but come on...where there's a will, y'know. Times are tough. There's a lot of shady characters out there who'd try anything."

Eddie stood posed, arms out dramatically beside Jarvis for what seemed an endless, brow-sweat-soaked eternity, until the whiff of failing deodorant tickled his nose. And then, finally:

"I suppose you have a point. Something that priceless shouldn't be here alone and out of arm's reach. I'll obtain a special dispensation from the court this evening, afterwhich you may relocate the globe to a more secure environment. But I caution you that the globe must not be harmed in any way. You will be responsible for any incurred damages and expected to pay out-of-pocket for any repairs. Clear?"

"Absolutely." He suddenly remembered Siberia. "But don't count that crack in it against me, okay?"

The lawyer smiled thinly.

"Of course." His phone chimed. He read the screen. "Well, if you'll excuse me for a moment, I have to speak with the University departmental liason downstairs, acquaint him with the property. My secretary will arrive with your paperwork before the bottom of the hour. With any luck, you'll be out of here by two o'clock."

Eddie laughed, smacked Jarvis on the back as he started for the exit.

"Sure thing, buddy-boy. We'll just wait right here."

He trotted back to the globe, stared at it lustfully.

"It was nice to meet you," he heard Kandi say.

Jarvis opened the door to leave.

"Mister Pinobscott..."

Eddie looked up.

"Huh?"

"Dispensation or not, the globe is not your property. Do remember that."

***

Eddie hated the smell of hotdogs cooking on the grill almost as much as the smell of them lingering on someone's belches.

"Sorry, bro," Vince said, waving a hand in front of his face.

Eddie opened the bottom drawer on his desk and took out the nearly-empty can of Fresh'n It, sprayed the air around him curtly.

"Those things are for the custo...Jesus, how many did you eat?"

Vince jabbed a fist in front of his mouth to stiffle another oral emission, then stroked his oversized sideburns.

"Who's counting? You expect me to pass up a free lunch?"

Eddie looked at the hemisphere of his brother's gut.

"It all costs money, Vince. Money we don't have."

Genie Jacoby's shrill voice warbled over the showroom loudspeaker: "Mister Pinobscott, you have a call on line one."

He reached for the phone. Vince's hand cut him off and snatched the reciever, his finger stabbing the lit button.

"Mister Pinobscott is in a meeting right now," he said as he gave Eddie a wink. "May I take a message?" A voice chattered. "No, I don't think he'll be able to..." more chattering, "look, why don't you stop by after the rush, say about half past six?" There was an extended pause, then the voice shot back something abrupt. "Buh bye, now."

Disgusted, Eddie stared at him as he plunked the handset down.

"We close at six."

Vince shrugged.

"Then I guess the limey on the phone will be disappointed. Look, why are you busting my chops? We ain't got a care in the world now thanks to you."

Eddie slammed the Fresh'n It back into the drawer and stood. He grabbed his blazer that was draped over the small television in the back corner and marched out the door, past his brother

His office was the furthest back in a series of glass cages, little rooms for the signing of contracts and the gnashing of teeth that only gave the illusion of privacy. The Sharks, as Eddie liked to call the sales team, could circle the rooms in the short criss-crossing hallways and always pick out a facial expression or bit of body language that spoke louder than words any day of the week. Of course, the Sharks were a little scarce these days. Salaries and commissions ate into profit, which added to debts, which gave him the sweats every waking moment of the day.

Vince caught up to him just as he rounded the partition wall into the main showroom.

"Hey, I originally came in to tell you I called Raoul about the case. He said he knows a guy down in A.C. who can do custom work for cheap and he may know another guy who knows someone who might be interested in making us an offer. Some old geezer with a ton of dough."

"Coming from Raoul? That's a comfort."

The spacious showroom room was bustling with people, most of them probably deadbeats, folks who couldn't afford a car or get a loan without an act of congress. Wives led their husbands around to gawk at the various indoor displays, marvel over the plush interiors and electronic wizardry. Husbands tried their best to ignore their wives as they strolled through the rows of parked cars in the lot visible through the giant bank of windows, nodding or shaking their heads every time they scanned a pricelist. There were a lot of kids, Eddie noticed. There were always a lot of kids whenever you gave away free food, especially something artery clogging like hotdogs and ice cream.

Eddie stopped to adjust his tie, a ritual he performed every time he walked out onto the floor. It was putting on his face...an actor getting into character. He would become whatever the customer...guest... needed to get them to sign on the dotted line.

Beside him, Vince surveyed the busy scene.

"Looks like Kandi's havin' fun," he said, chuckling.

Kandi was outside the front door in her sexy Uncle Sam getup, holding the sign he had made for the event:

THIS WAY TO THE WORLD FAMOUS

HORATIO HYDE-WHITE GLOBE!

Sure, the name was half baloney, but something classy and British sounded a lot better than 'Pinobschott'...it would get more people in the door. Besides, by the time he'd reconsidered, the TV spot had already been wrapped.

Anyway, Vince was right. She seemed to be doing pretty well as public-relations...a real trooper. Her genuine, bubbly personality wasn't threatening any of the family queen-bees and her 44 DDs and tight little ass were magnets to the men with the cash.

"That tall guy is eyeing the Valencia Coupe." Vince held his hands up and mimed casting a rod and reel. "Time to poor on the charm. I guess we should at least pretend to care...right, bro?"

Eddie straightened his cuffs.

"We ain't sold the thing yet, Vince. And if that lawyer Jarvis catches wind what were up to before we're gone, it ain't gonna matter at all. Just be cool and go about your business. Earn enough money to keep J.J. off our backs at least."

Vince winked and pointed at him, clicking his tongue before heading off toward the front door.

The thought of J.J.'s goons rearranging his face with Louisville's finest lingered in Eddie's mind. He still had a couple of weeks to come up with the money, and he was sure he could pull off this big sales weekend, monkey with the tax records a bit and come out enough ahead to pay J.J. his principle and interest. Sometimes though, guys like J.J. got impatient and decided to show up early to collect. Eddie had two weeks left and he needed both of them.

Acting casual, Eddie wandered around the showroom and surveyed the afternoon's fresh meat

Some blonde woman one kid past pretty was touching up her lipstick in a driver-side mirror. Fast approaching her from the rear was Kurt Padacki, the lone part-timer still on staff...the only shark in the waters of new and used Kurumas. He was a good kid, and hungry. And someone who was genuinely honest. Some guests seemed to like that, like an exotic pizza topping. There was just enough demand for it to keep Kurt on hand, but only a little bit. The blonde looked the type though.

A pair of kids ran by Eddie, laughing raucously, a boy chasing a girl. He almost told them to knock it off, but thought better of it when he saw them ran up to Kurt's victim. There was no sense in rocking the sales boat.

He walked further into the room, toward the globe, noticing a fat, bald guy leaning close to the thing, studying it intently as he lapped at his vanilla ice-cream cone.

"That sure is something, isn't it?" Eddie commented.

The man looked toward him with a start, as if suddenly awakened from a trance.

"This thing's amazing. But you oughta put it behind glass or somethin'."

Eddie smiled, swallowed a stomachful of anger.

It had taken a week to get the thing delivered, Vince's buddy Raoul having finally come through on his promise to help. It arrived safe and sound at 2 am, the globe still in its cubical case which was lovingly padded by Raoul's cousins as if a five-foot-on-a-side box filled with nitroglycerin. The only hiccup was the third-hand forklift that had been sitting behind the showroom building since the lot opened. Upon bringing the the globe to the center of the main floor, the rarely-maintained hydraulics gave out six-inches from target, sending the whole thing crashing down. As the cousins hurriedly stripped away the padding, the ivory and glass walls of the case fell away like a million-piece jigsaw scattered by a frustrated gorilla.

Thankfully, the globe was still in perfect shape, resting comfortably on its low-profile stand. Jarvis was going to have a fit about the case though. He had yet to make up some bullshit excuse to mitigate his financial responsibility. Otherwise, the dumpster might as well be filled with Franklins rather than two hours worth of sweepings.

At least the thing was working out as well as he'd hoped. Gawkers had come from as far away as Virginia to view what the big banner strung across the showroom ceiling called the 'Eighth Wonder of the World'.

The kids ran by again, still laughing.

"The detail in this thing is incredible," fat baldy said, slurping at his cone.

"Yes, it is beautiful...a testament to Mister Hyde-White's craftmanship." Another slice of baloney, but a decent segue. "Not unlike the craftsmanship of a Kuruma."

"That's what the missus thinks." He nodded toward Kurt's blonde without taking his eyes off amethyst-colored Finland. "Been busting my balls for one of these Jap cars for months."

"Yes, well..."

The girl ran up the the man, panting.

"Daddy, how much longer?"

"Oh, not too much longer. Let's go see what mommy's doing."

As they walked away, Eddie noticed a trail of white drops on the floor. Then he noticed more on the globe, a trail of ice cream drips from Persia into the Indian Ocean. He took a handkerchief from his blazer and wiped the globe clean.

***

Eddie set the phone back into its cradle and leaned back in his chair, loaded his fork with a wad of Jade Tree's chow mein. He sighed as he watched the news anchor on channel 25 drone through the news of the day.

"Who was on the phone?" Kandi asked, nibbling on a potsticker.

"Vince. He's still trying to get Raoul to cough up the dough to fix the case he broke. Fat chance."

She sucked sauce from her fingers.

"I thought the case broke 'cause the forklifter gave out."

He opened his mouth: in went the noodles.

"Yeah, well...Raoul was drivin' the thing, ergo he pays the piper."

She stared at him, brow furrowed.

"Who's Ergo?"

He ignored the question, knowing she'd eventually shrug it off. She did, grabbing the take-out box of General Tso's chicken from the desk. An ad for bathroom cleaner faded onto the TV screen.

"I tell you this thing's gonna drive me to drink."

"What's that, puddin'?"

"That damned thing out there in the showroom. I must of spent half the day chasing away lookyloos hell bent on spilling something on it or picking at the gemstones to see if they'd come up."

"If Raoul gets a new case, won't that solve the problem?"

He plopped his fork into the box and set the box down beside the remote.

"By the time that dumb nacho gets his act together, the friggin' continents will have changed places. If that thing gets damaged, Jarvis will have my ass. Like it ain't bad enough I gotta worry about J.J. and his gang of Guinea goons, now I got a hot shot lawyer pissed at me."

"Poor puddin'. Seems like nobody with a 'J' in their name likes you."

He stared at her for a long moment, feeling smothered in bewilderment. He saw the newscast return in the corner of his eye, a graphic of giant snowflakes in the corner. He snatched the remote and turned up the volume.

"Good, the weather. I wanna hear this for the sale tommorrow."

"Welcome back, good people of the Garden State. It's 6:25 and time for Jake Mahoney with the weather."

A dapper, slim man in a tan sportcoat and powder-blue button-up appeared, standing in front of an enormous computerized graphic showing the eastern seaboard, speckled with clouds and meteorological symbols. He looked like a guy ready to go clubbing on the Miami strip.

"Thanks, John. But before we get down to the local stuff, take a look at this."

The screen switched to a nighttime aerial image of a bunch of apartment high-rises sprouting from a traffic and city lights. Everything was dusted in white.

"This is Tehran earlier today about one o'clock our time. While its not unusual for the city to get snowfall in the deep winter, the middle of May is an anamoly to say the least. Freak storms dumped massive amounts of the powder all the way down the country to the southern coast., so much so the government called a state of emergency."

"That's incredible," the anchor said.

"Yeah, around here they'd just open the ski resorts a few months early," Miami Jake shot back, to which they both laughed.

"Get on with it," Eddie grumbled.

"Anyway, on to what you folks at home want to know."

The computer map zoomed in to New Jersey, symbols rearranged and the weatherman started pointing and waving his hands like a pops conductor who's arms were on fire.

"Rain has been pushed back to Wednesday as this warm front pushes in from the south-"

TAP-TAP-TAP!

Eddie and Kandi looked out into the showroom toward the source of the sound, then at each other. He clicked the TV off.

TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP!

"That sounds like someone at the front window."

Eddie glanced up at the wall clock, jumped to his feet and snatched his coat.

"It must be the guy Vince talked to on the phone earlier. He told him to come by right about now. I forgot all about it."

"Aren't you closed? Why are you putting on your coat?"

"Honeybuns," he said as he marched out the office door. "Right now, if it was my funeral the guy showed up to, I'd climb outta the coffin to sell him something."

The showroom was a like a carnival funhouse during a power outage, mirrors and glass panes glinting from the dozen floodlamps illuminating the lot outside the windows, silhouettes of chairs and potted plastic philodendrons and desks with computer monitors and parked cars. And of course, one giant round sphere. All of it looked frozen in anticipation, ready to spring to life at the meerest command, the slightest touch of electric magic to become the paradise of automotive capitalism.

TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP!

Eddie waded through the hip-deep shadows toward the large figure at the front door, lit more from the back that the front by the nearest lamp. He slowed his pace nearly to a stop as he drew closer to the glass, unnerved by the stranger's featurless shape...it almost looked like he was wearing some sort of hooded robe or cloak. He half-expected to see an eight-foot-tall scythe.

He flicked on the lights over Genie the Receptionist's desk and breathed a sigh of relief when he looked into the deep-set eyes of an old man, his face dark and leathery like some Arab sun worshipper. He was dressed like a Catholic monk, like Friar Tuck from an old Robin Hood movie.

He unlocked the door, cracked it open. The scent of manure hit his nose.

"Good evening, young man."

"Hey, bud. What can I do for you?"

"I am looking for a Mister Edward Pinobscott. Would he happen to be here?"

The door cracked a bit further. The scent grew more complex: old dust and manure, maybe some of his Grandma's potpourri.

"Why? You looking to buy?"

"Goodness, no. I am here about a certain artifact he recently acquired."

"What kinda artifact?"

He raised his right arm and shook back his robes to reveal a trembling finger pointing toward the globe.

"I believe that is it."

Eddie's heart did a happy jig inside his chest. He suddenly felt faint. This had to be the 'old geezer' Vince had mentioned...Raoul's buyer. The greasy Puerto Rican had actually come through for once. He quickly flung the door open wide.

"Please call me Eddie, Mister...uh..."

"Cecil. William Cecil."

Eddie reached out and set a hand on the smelly man's shoulder, fluffing up a small cloud of dust as he shook his hand.

"Come on in!"

"Oh, thank you very much." He entered and drew his cowl away from his face. With his cowlicked white hair and roughly tapered mustache and beard, he resembled Don Quixote after a night drenched in cheap booze. "You've no idea how long I've been searching. I take no pleasure in his death, but I must say if it wasn't for your uncle's passing, I never would have thought to consider this area."

Eddie switched on the rest of the showroom lights.

"You knew my Uncle Howa...oratio?"

When the old man didn't answer, Eddie leaned around his shoulder to look him in the eye. He was staring wide-eyed, almost tearily at the globe.

"I never thought..." he smiled a little as he snapped from his trance. "Forgive me. It's just that now that I am here with the Parvus Mundus...the Little World, I find myself at once vindicated and humbled."

Eddie ushered him forward.

"Be my guest. Take a good, long look at it. It's in mint condition, too. Well, almost-"

The old man stopped two feet from the globe.

"Let me guess...Siberia?"

"Yeah," Eddie said, taken aback. "Hey, how did you-?"

"Hello."

The two men turned to see Kandi wiggle up alongside, offering the visitor a handshake and a lucious smile.

"I'm Kandi."

"Oh, my pleasure. William is my name." He shook her hand and once more gazed lovingly at the globe.

Kandi pinched her face in disgust and soundlessly mouthed to Eddie 'he smells'.

Ignoring her, Eddie slowly orbited the sphere, pouring on the good-natured aires.

"Pretty impressive, ain't it? And I don't want you to think it's not on the market, because as you and I both know...everything has a price, am I right?" He watched the old man from across the north pole, continued. "I want to be upfront with you in that I have this on loan from my dear Uncle's estate. I had to fight tooth and nail with his attorneys to take it from his mansion, but I assure you I have every legal right of possession under New Jersey law. What I mean to say is, Mister Cecil," he girded his nose against the odor and slung his arm around the old man's shoulders, dramatically waving his other hand in front of them. "Make me an offer I can't refuse and this thing's yours. Tonight."

"I already spoke with Jarvis."

Eddie coughed as his heart wedged in between his tonsils. He shied away.

"W...what?"

"Once I explained who I was and the nature of the Parvus Mundus he seemed quite eager to be rid of it. He said he would concoct some excuse to use on the University and court and that you may behave as if the Mundus was yours and yours alone."

"Oh, well..." Eddie felt a smile creep across his face as one one his many life's burdens evaporated. "How about we-"

Suddenly, the old man let out an ear piercing shriek as his eyes grew to the size of golfballs.

"My God, I just realized! Where is the case?"

Eddie laughed nervously.

"The case?"

"We had an accident," Kandi piped.

The man spun around, wild with terror.

"What?! When?"

"Early this morning. If you ask me, the case was cheap junk. All the real value is in the globe."

He shook his head, buried his face in his palms.

"Oh, this is simply terrible." He stared at Eddie earnestly. "Has the Mundus been damaged?"

"Not unless you mean that Siberia thing-"

"No, I mean today. Has anyone damaged it today? Has anything destructive like acid or flame been placed on its surface? Covered it with a cloth? Polished it?"

"No."

"Sprayed anything on it? Spilled anything on it?"

Eddie thought about telling him about the ice cream incident. He thought better of it, considering the old codger's apparent sensitivity. Maybe this was some weird haggling technique. He had to admit it was effective. The guy was rattling him bad.

"What about transportation? Was the Mundus rolled around or...no, I suppose not. Even I would have noticed that."

"Noticed what?"

"Excuse me," Kandi said, getting their attention. "Why do you keep calling this thing the Mundus?"

The question seemed to calm him down, distract him from whatever siren had gone off in his head.

"You know it as a globe, its true name is the Parvus Mundus, Latin for 'Little World'."

"So, it's a really fancy globe, then?"

"No, my dear. It is much more than that. Much more. Which is why I'm prepared to pay handsomely for it." He looked at Eddie. "Mister Pinobscott. I am prepared to offer you the sum of ten thousand dollars and I will take this off your hands."

There was a long, awkward silence as Eddie stared slack-jawed. He finally burst out laughing.

"You...you're joking, right?"

The old man remained stone faced.

"You're serious?" Eddie pointed to the globe. "Look at this thing. There's more colored ice on this thing then Cartier's wet dreams. It's gotta be worth a million times that."

The old man closed his eyes and let a thousand-ton sigh escape his lips. He slumped, noticably crestfallen.

"I told the others that. And that anyone who had possession would not part with the Mundus for such a meager sum."

"What others? You mean Raoul?"

"I'm sorry, I don't know who you're talking about."

"You mean Raoul didn't send you here?"

The old man slowly shook his head.

"I am from the Obsidian Order of Hermetic Monks."

"Sure you are."

"Mister Pinobscott, you must allow me to take the Mundus. We will all be in grave danger if you do not."

Eddie smiled and spun around on his heel, marched curtly to the front door, opened it and gestured toward the cool, starry night air.

"It was nice meeting you."

The old man turned to Kandi, gently took her by the hand.

"Dear sweet child, you must understand unless this artifact is taken to a secure location and returned to its protective case, we will all be destroyed."

"Puddin'? Maybe we ought to listen to him..."

"Look, dammit," Eddie let the door close. "I think we've had just about enough of this insanity. Either get out or I call the cops."

"I can see you are going to need some convincing. Dear, would you be so kind as to fetch me a small glass of water and a straw?"

Kandi nodded and walked over to the receptionist's desk.

"I'm dialing now," Eddie said as he snatched Genie's phone and punched an open line.

"C'mon sweetie," Kandi whispered. "Let's humor the guy. I think he's funny."

Eddie frowned at her, watching her grab a couple of red stirring straws from the coffee station.

"I thought you said he was smelly?"

She poured some water from the reservoir into a styrofoam cup.

"Well, I think he's funny too."

Eddie clicked his tongue a moment and set down the receiver. He spoke up for the old man's benefit.

"Okay, pal. You can have a chance to show me your big scary magic trick. Then I'm calling the little men in the white coats, capiche?"

"More than fair, Mister Pinobscott." He took the water and straws from Kandi. "Thank you, my dear."

The old man coughed and cleared his throat.

"Are either of you familiar with the Late Renaissance polymath John Dee?"

They both shook their heads.

"A devoted Christian and patriot to the court of Elizabeth the First, John Dee was one of the grandmasters of the alchemaeic arts, a sort of science of mysticism."

"You mean, like Nostrodamus?" Kandi asked.

Eddie slapped a hand over his face, mumbled: "Christ..."

"Yes, a bit. Though he was French and was active several years prior, John Dee and Michel de Nostredame shared an affinity for divination. Dee had a rather sizable collection of alchemaeic artifacts, those which he used during his nightly attempts at scrying, and others which he created for the purposes of experimenting on the natural world. The Parvus Mundus is the greatest of these creations, so great in fact it holds a dangerous amount of power within itself, too great for even the likes of Dee to control."

"How come it's not in a museum somewhere?"

"An exceptional question, my dear. Dee was so taken aback by the success of his creation that he immediately set about spiriting it away to a hidden location, locked behind magic wards designed to negate its effects. By and by, before his death, he formed a secretive order of monks to act as guardians of the Mundus. I am of that order. There are only twenty of us left."

Eddie slowly made his way back over to the globe.

"So, how'd my uncle get his hands on it?"

"None of us are quite certain. One of Dee's ancestors is thought to have discovered the whereabouts of the Mundus and brought it to America shortly after the Colonial Revolution. The history is a bit fuzzy after that. Your uncle, being fabulously wealthy and a collector of oddities and curios, purchased the Mundus, we believe sometime between 1987 and the present year."

Eddie stared at the continent of North America, scanning the motley rainbow of the United States.

United States?

"I'm gonna cry bullshit, old man. If this Dee guy made this thing back in the Renaissance, how come it shows the U.S.? We weren't even a country then."

"Yes, I know. That's one of the mysterious properties of the Mundus. A certain temporal connection to the Earth. When political boundaries change, the globe often spontaneouly evolves to match."

Eddie glared at him, incredulous.

"Things can't do that."

"This can, I assure you. It's not a perfect match to the real thing, though. It seems to have a will of its own."

"So, that's it? It's just an automatic globe? That's the big secret?"

"Oh, no. Allow me to demonstrate the Mundus' power." He dipped one of the straws in the cup of water and pressed his finger over the upper end, trapping the water inside. "Normally, I would never be able to do this, considering the protective wards. And I would never want to do it in any case. But I can see you are of a particularly skeptical nature."

The old man pulled the straw from the cup and hovered it over the eastern coast of America, right over the little emerald splotch that was New Jersey. He lifted his finger from the straw's upper end and deposited a tiny droplet of water which quickly ran down to Cuba and then into the Amazon.

"Oh, dear...a little too much. Well, the jungle climes won't notice anything out of the ordinary."

"What are you tal-"

Eddie stopped as soon as he heard the pitter-patter, then hammer-dancing on the roof. Kandi moved closer to the front windows, sucked in a breath. A sudden torrent of rain crashed onto the asphalt...a bashing, seething , splashing, stinging, growling, howling, drenching rain like nothing Eddie had ever seen before. In seconds, little rivers began to form bigger surges that poured across the sidewalks and overwhelmed the drains nearest the showroom.

And then everything stopped. Utterly.

Eddie felt his tongue shrivel as he stared slack-jawed. Kandi pressed her cheek against the glass, gazed into the sky with wonder.

"There's not a cloud in the sky!"

"It's my understanding that only certain types of physical contact actually stimulate the Mundus. The casting of light and shadow or gentle passage of air currents, for example, should have little effect, though since the Mundus was always meant to be encased, I can't be certain of any lower limitation. A gentle touch may or may not have an effect. Sudden impacts and changes in temperature will most certainly."

The old man took the second straw and leaned close to the globe, hovering the busines-end over the same location he had placed the water. He gently blew into the other end.

This time, a low howling vibrated the air, thrummed every pane of glass in view. Kandi backed away from the windows as she held her hands to her bosom, astonished at the view outside. A hurricane was passing over the neatly parked Kumuras, whipping spent napkins and hotdog wrappers into a mid-air frenzy. The puddles and streams left over from the downpour flittered away as if swept aside by an invisible push broom. In a minute, the lot was as dry as it had been an hour before.

The old man stood tall once more and pressed a hand to his forehead.

"Oh, my. A little dizzy after that..."

Eddie grabbed him by the shoulders.

"You mean to tell me that whatever happens to this thing, happens to the Earth?"

"Yes, that's what I've been trying to explain."

Eddie laughed loudly.

"Man, this is incredible! It's like...like...the power of God or somethin'."

Kandi spun around. Mascara had streaked her cheeks.

"You have to get rid of this thing."

"Whaddyamean? Why?"

"She's right, Mister Pinobscott. This kind of power is far beyond the grasp of mortals. Allow me to take it away and be done with it."

"You are crazy. I could buy half the universe with what this thing's worth. It's like having a talking dog or something."

"Have you ever heard of the Little Ice Age? How about the Tunguska Blast of 1908? Or the Black Dragon fires that raged across China? All of these events and many others can be traced back to the Mundus. Countless lives have been lost because of mishaps and mistakes made by men far more learned and wise than yourself, though I dare not say more arrogant. We cannot risk something worse happening to the Mundus, Mister Pinobscott. If some calamity were to destroy it, it could prove the end of the world. Do you really want that kind of responsibility?"

Eddie felt the life drain from him and he backed away, slumped to the floor. The ice-cream. He remembered the ice-cream that bald cheapskate dribbled on the globe. What if it had been cigarette ashes? What if a heavy snowfall caved the roof in above it? What if J.J. showed up and decided to take his frustrations out on the pretty half-ton trinket in the middle of the showroom. He wondered how many ten-point-oh richter scale quakes would be caused with each blow of a sledgehammer. The thing would indeed grant him a sort of power-of-God.

But he was not God.

"Okay, bud. It's yours."

"Bless you. Of course, the ten-thousand dollars is still yours for compensation. I hope it will soothe the wounds of disappointment."

"Ten G's would probably only buy me one of my kneecaps, but thanks anyway."

The old man rummaged a hand through his robes and revealed a small, tattered piece of fabric.

"I must take my leave and report the good news to my brothers. Please bring the Mundus to this address." He tossed the fabric into Eddie's lap. "Noon tommorrow."

***

The sun just peaked over the ridge and blinded Eddie just as he lowered the pallet into the back of the truck. He squinted against the burning of his retina, ignored the sting of pain from the marbles of hot, salty sweat pouring into his eyes from his brow.

He and Raoul had managed to raise the globe gently on the forks and place it back onto its stand atop an old pallet for transport. Thankfully, the globe suffered no damage in the process and the forks only contacted the surface near Antarctica – maybe a bad couple of minutes for a bunch of penguins and some guys at McMurdo, but the Jersey coast would see another morning.

"C'mon, baby...hold out..." he muttered, heart hammering from the idea of the hydraulics blowing out again, the forks crashing down, the globe crushing the half-rotten pallet and tumbling out onto the parking lot, spelling the Apocalypse. Inch by inch, the forks lowered, the pistons squealing like a hungry piglet, until at last wood met aluminum and he could back away, letting the old used moving van sag beneath the weight.

The forks clanged against the asphalt as he switched off the lift's motor.

"You sure this thing will hold it?"

Raoul played with the toothpick in his mouth and bent his wiry frame this way and that, examining the globe, pallet and his truck's groaning suspension.

"Naw, I tink we're fine, man. I mean, how far chu gotta go?"

"Gettysburg."

Raoul stood wide-eyed, the toothpick falling from his lips.

"Chu mean in Pennsylvania?"

Eddie climbed out of the lift's seat.

"I sure as hell don't mean Gettysburg, Nevada."

"Oh, eh...damn, man...I mean, I gotta get home, chu'know. My wife, she outta town an-"

"I'll give you two thousand dollars. Cash."

The Puerto Rican scrubbed a hand through his bushy black hair, then dug another toothpick from his burgundy skinny-jeans.

"Eh...I'll buy her a new gato."

Eddie held out his hand.

"The keys?"

"Dare in the ignition. Hey, chu wan me to strap it dawn?"

"No! I mean...no. In fact, don't even touch it."

He shrugged.

"Chu got da money. Chu da boss."

As Raoul closed and latched the roll-up door, Eddie squinted at the sun as it finally rose above the interstate in all its splendor. He looked at his watch. They had about five hours to get to the old man's address, whatever it was. Maybe they'd arrive at some hilltop monestary. Would they have a case to put the thing in? Thing...he wasn't thinking of it as a globe anymore, some fantastically valuable trinket to smoke a stogie over while you sip brandy. It was a doomsday bomb. One pothole and POOF! One jackrabbit start or lead foot on the brake and the thing would be bouncing all over the place. The old man said a gentle touch would be harmless. Or did he say it might be harmless? Putting thick straps around the thing, tightening them...how many people would be crushed under the pressure?

His hands trembled.

"Just wait for me in the cab, Raoul."

"Hey, isn't he gonna strap that thing down?" Vince said, coming out the showroom door.

"It's fine Vince." He told his brother he'd found a buyer, told him he was going to exchange it for gold bullion. It was the stupidest lie he'd ever told, but Vince believed it. The less people that knew about the thing's actual powers, the better. Of course, Kandi knew the truth as well and he wondered if she'd finally crack and spill the whole story during business hours. By then, though, they'd be long gone and there wasn't a thing he could do.

The truck driver's door opened and closed as Raoul climbed in.

"Hey, I don't want that thing gettin' banged up."

"Unless we go over the side of the four-forty-four ass over coffepot, I think it'll be just fine."

Vince nodded thoughtfully. He seemed convinced.

"So, Kandi tells me your headin' to the Penn?"

"Yeah, we..." his words trailed off as he watched a dark blue sedan exit the offramp of the distant interstate and start down the frontage road to the back lot-entrance. The car slowed and turned toward them, zipped across the wide expanse in less than a minute.

"Uh, oh," Vince mumbled. "You don't think...shit...shit..."

The car pulled up along side the truck. Two men climbed out of the front doors, both impeccably dressed in Italian suits and five-hundred dollar sunglasses. The driver was a square-jawed collossus, close-cropped blonde and Aryan through and through. The other was leaner and more proportionately chisled, like a Greek statue left on the beach to soak up a tan, ready to tear off his clothes and grace the cover of one of Kandi's smut books. The low-rent Fabio quickly opened up the rear door. Out poured a fat little dumpy fellow about sixty.

"Gentleman," J.J. Dagostino said as he smoothed his slick, steely hair and stepped around the rear end of the car. Eddie had nearly forgotten how comically high-pitched and simultaneously menacing his voice was. A sociopathic circus midget.

"I thought I saw you from the up there on the road and figured I would drop by and say hello."

He snapped his fingers and pointed to the showroom entrance. The Aryan gorilla marched over and went inside.

"We're not open yet," Eddie growled. Vince looked at him like he was crazy. J.J. was not the kind of man you wanted to piss off, but he didn't care, wondering instead if he could find something small and fine enough to press against just the right spot on the 'thing' to crush the little weasel out of existence.

"Oh, I beg to differ," J.J. snarled. "We are open when I say we are open. Afterall, being an as yet unreimbursed investor in this establishment makes me an equal partner."

"What do you want?"

Vince moved between J.J. and Eddie.

"Mister Dagostino, my brother ain't feeling too good today. It's kinda screwing his head all up, y'know what I mean?"

J.J. snapped his fingers. In the blink of an eye, Fabio bounded over the Vince and grabbed him, shoved him out of the way and pinned him to the side of the truck.

"What do you want?"

"Even you aren't that stupid. You owe me money, remember?"

"Yeah, well, you'll get it at the agreed time."

"Oh, I see. Too bad for you two I decided to push my schedule forward a few days. A hundred grand leaves a pretty big hole in a guys pocket, know what I mean?"

The giant Aryan burst from the doors, dragging Kandi by the forearm. Today she was the Statue of Liberty. She desperately held her silver-painted styrofoam crown on her head as they went.

"How about it?" the Napoleonic loanshark hissed. "Where's the money."

Eddie stared at him for what seemed an eternity, reading the cold soullessness staring back at him. The simple control this little man had over his life seemed meaningless now, an insignificant pinprick compared to the billions of lives at stake. Inside the truck there was what could be Armaggeddon. Outside, there were just three assholes.

"I don't have your money."

"Gee, that's too bad." He snapped his fingers and instantly, Aryan popped open a switchblade and placed it against Kandi's throat. Fabio pulled a 9mm from his jacket and shoved the end into Vince's mouth.

"Whay-whay-whay!" Vince said, trying to talk past the panic and gun barrel. "O'en eh ruh!"

J.J. scowled at Fabio.

"What? What's he sayin'?"

"O'en eh ruh!" The thug pulled the gun free of his teeth. "Open the truck!"

"No, Vince!" Kandi shouted, wincing against the knife blade.

"Mister Dagostino," he panted. "Inside the truck is something worth way way way way more than a hundred G's."

"Yeah? Let's see."

Snap!

Aryan pulled Kandi over to J.J. and handed her off, unlatching the truck's rear door, sliding it up.

J.J. let go of the young lady and slowly walked over the the open door, astonished.

"Holy Mother of God...is that thing really-?"

"Made from precious gems. It sure is, Mister Dagostini."

"Shut up, Vince," Eddie barked.

J.J. scratched his chin and stroked his slick hair, gazed hungrily at the globe as Canada's rubies glinted in the swelling sunlight. He finally raised his other hand and moved toward the truck.

"Don't touch it."

"It's mine, now. I'll touch it whenever I want." He drew closer, the shadows of his fingers sliced across the lapis and sapphire Atlantic.

"J.J....listen to me, you don't want to do that."

Closer and closer he drew, his index finger inching toward the United States. Toward the East Coast. Toward New Jersey.

Time seemed to grind to a stop as an explosion of adrenaline hit Eddie's system. He vaulted toward the long-haired goon holding onto his brother and snatched for the gun in his hand. Vince clamped his arms around the man's waist as Eddie twisted the gun, cranked on his wrist as if it were a stubborn socket-wrench. Fabio howled in pain and slammed his right hand onto Vince and slid his finger inside the trigger guard-

J.J. and the Aryan muscle dove to the ground when the gun went off, the bullet ricocheting. Kandi screamed. Raoul leapt from the truck's cab, coughing on the toothpick he'd swallowed. Vince pushed the thug back against the sedan, rammed his shoulder into his gut. The gun slipped out of his fingers, bouncing on the trunk of the car, clacking to the asphalt somewhere unseen.

As Aryan scrambled to his feet, Eddie rushed at him and planted the tip of his Floorshime in his face, sending him reeling.

"You sonofabitch!" J.J. screamed as he righted himself, slid a hand inside his coat.

"Don't move!" Vince shouted. Everyone froze and stared at the gun waving in his hand. J.J. slowly withdrew his hand.

Kandi screamed again.

His heart nearly jumping from his chest, Eddie turned to her.

"What, now?"

She raised a hand, aimed a trmbling finger at the open back of the truck.

"L...look!"

Eddie did. On the globe, just a fraction of an inch from the Eastern coastline of the United States was an oval-shaped impact, tiny but perceptible cracks radiating outwards into the Atlantic Ocean, a dark scuff plowing across the center of New Jersey. It was similar to the blemish on Siberia.

They all heard the soft crackling sound next, looked around to find its source. It started very faint, slowly grew louder, began as wrapping paper crumpled across the street, then quickly became bacon sizzling in the next room. A chorus of horns started on the highway, screeching tires, chuttering tractor engines being downshifted for a sudden stop.

And then, something made Eddie look up, squint his eyes against the ever-blueing sky. A second, tiny sun was moving down the sky, dropping like a spent Very flare, flickering and sparking as it left a long white tail of smoke and steam in its wake.

"What the hell is that?" J.J shouted, verbalizing for everyone.

Not taking his eyes from the falling wonder, Eddie reached out toward Kandi, waved his hand in the open air until his fingers found her arm. He pulled her toward the truck,

"Get Raoul and get in the truck."

She nodded dumbly.

"Vince," he said.

Vince stared at the sky, transfixed.

"Yeah?"

"Get in the truck."

"Yeah, okay...sure...whatever you say, bro."

Eddie nudged J.J. aside whom, along with his two henchmen, was gawking with newborn amazement, their heads slowly tilting downward in unison as their gaze followed the blazing UFO toward the surface and behind the ridgeline. He rolled down and locked the back door and scurried to the driver's door.

The air rocked with thunder just as his butt hit the seat, like the rumble of sheetmetal bashed with a sledgehammer, only a hundred times louder. He slammed the door shut and cranked the key. The engine sputtered, coughed.

"What the-?" Vince was looking toward the highway. Cars were being swept over the top like toys, along with a grand collection of shrubbery and roadside litter, giving form to a hurricane of wind.

The engine coughed as he wrenched on the key again.

"No, man!" Raoul shouted, squeezed between Eddie and Kandi on the dusty bench set. "Chu gotta put some gas on it before chu turn da key!"

Eddie mashed his foot down on the accelerator and the truck roared to life.

"Oh, my God..."Vince said.

Kandi gasped.

"Holy chit! WHADDAHELL is dat?"

Eddie looked back toward the highway and almost pissed himself at the sight. Beyond, a foaming wall of blue-green liquid was rising into the air, just tall enough to block out the sun. Only it wasn't just getting taller. It was also getting closer.

"Hang on!" Eddie snatched the column shifter and slammed the automatic transmission into drive. He floored the pedal and made a broad circle around the empty section of the parking lot. He eventually passed the showroom and J.J. and his men scrambling into their car. He was heading straight for the tsunami.

"Puddin'?!"

"What are you doing, bro?"

"We need more of a head start," he snapped, slamming on the brakes. He could hear the globe slide forward on the deck. "I shoulda strapped the thing down."

He cranked the wheel hard and turned them around, setting the gear to 'P'. He jumped out of the cab.

"Eddie, get back here!"

He watched the gargantuan wave draw nearer, blot out more of the sky. It had to be at least a thousand feet high, moving like a mountain of blue Ferraris all vying for first place. He ignored the shrieks and cries for the cab, stared at the tower of water, waited for it to get closer. He waited until he heard the sound of the crashing ocean. Waited until the ground thrummed under his feet.

Then he jumped back into the truck and put it into gear. The tires squealed as the shot forward, the speedometer climbing steadily. Eddie fought to keep the thing steady and true, nearly clipping the back of J.J.'s sedan as it careened past them.

"Where are they going?" Vince shouted over the roaring engine.

"Back to the highway...idiots."

A hundred feet from the end of the lot, Eddie glanced at the side mirror and saw the ridge swallowed by a moving mass of roiling, frothy liquid. A hundred sparkling Kumara's, representing a week's amount of Carlos' elbow grease, vanished before his eyes. The showroom and all the little outbuildings, the storage shed, the detail shop, all disappeared as easily as embers from a snuffed cigarette. Even the big propane tank barely made an impression when it burst into flames, dying in a split-second burst of orange fire that was at once gulped down by a trillion gallons of salty death.

The truck was doing ninety when it sailed off the curb onto Bolivar Street. The tsunami crashed down behind them, a mad, sizzling, gibbering mountain range of fizzing water. The huge wave broke into a million million fingers of turbulence which plowed beneath the barreling truck's chassis and lifted it into the air like a hand of a giant. The cab became an echo chamber of white-water thunder and human screams as Eddie let go of the steering wheel, leaving their fate to hydrodynamics. Up they rose, climbing the roiling wall until they could all see the extent of the city outside the windshield. Countless buildings and roads, parks and trees were gobbled up by the unstoppable monster.

A moment later, the truck crested the thousand-foot wave, Eddie thought he could see Pennsylvania in the distance. As the ride grew smoother, Raoul made the sign of the cross over and over, muttering Hail Marys with his eyes welded shut. Vince sobbed into his hands, telling everyone he'd never do another wrong thing in his life. Kandi took Eddie's hand and squeezed.

And he squeezed back, thankful.

CLOCK SOLITAIRE

Dr. Leslie Stoddard sipped her no-fat diet latte and checked her watch again.

She looked around at the other four tables on the patio. She was alone, which was ideal and not at all surprising. The Bean Press was the only place in town for the lab's staff during the breakfast and lunch hours, but at 2:27 in the afternoon and a half-hour before closing, it was as dead as Marley's ghost.

A quick, nonchalant scan of the ten-story building looming high on the other side of Feynmann Boulevard didn't tell her much. As carefully crafted and hermetic as her plan seemed, there was always the possibility Joanne would do something unanticipated; perhaps murder her before the end in a fit of desperate retaliation.

Leslie sipped.

She wasn't a fatalist. She liked her life and had no wish to confirm her agnosticism one way or the other. But, for the good of WETSLab, the good of her friends, the good of humanity, meeting her end by Joanne's hand would be a worthwhile sacrifice. She would die satisfied.

"I'm shocked you actually showed up," a posh voice remarked. "I was half-expecting this to be some purile prank."

She turned and looked into the dour but stunning face of Dr. Joanne Knight, the most hated woman in the entire Wells-Ellison Theoretical Science Laboratory campus. The woman had to be in her forties, but was still drop-dead gorgeous, Aphrodite's head affixed to a body fit for a gently-worn porn star. It was no wonder she managed to steal Nathan's affection.

"And once again I'm faced with a thousand meter stare..."

"I'm sorry. I was just...distracted," she said, shaking off her trance. Over the weeks of constant psychological torture, she had habitually fallen into a stupor whenever Joanne was in eyeshot, her mind a churning river of hateful thoughts.

Joanne laughed impishly.

"You're like a chimp confronted by a sequin dress. It's a wonder you ever manage to find your way to the toilet every day."

Leslie stared at her latte cup, imagined her fingers close around it ever more tightly, the heavy paper warping and collapsing until hot coffee sloshed over the brim, the whole thing crushed within the iron grip of her quaking fist, the pulsating sensation within the flesh of her fingers an analog of Joanne's black heart pumping out its last before bursting.

"I'm sure you want to make this quick," she said through clenched teeth. "Please sit while I get you something-"

"No, don't." The statuesque beauty went toward the shop's front door. "You'll likely just foul it up."

She watched the door swish shut, then scanned the roofline of the building across the busy street. The Other had to be there by now, wondering what was going on. Hopefully, it would take a few moments to figure everything out.

She took a big long drink, oblivious to the bitter heat that seared the back of her throat as she thought of Nathan's handsome face. The idea of his pianist's hands sliding over the walking Wonderbra's naked skin made her blood steam. Her feelings for the third-level technician were no secret, hovering around him constantly whenever he dropped by to work on the Fugue. And he didn't seem to mind. At first lingering glance, Joanne called him a distraction, branded him a hinderance to her work.

Then she slept with him.

Nathan only had eyes for Joanne now, the bowels of B section once again distraction-free. And why shouldn't he? He could fulfill his desires with a ten-out-of-ten every night, not the medicrity that was Leslie Stoddard. Her ordinary face and twenty-pound overweight frame were like a spoonful of cinnamon to a man dying of thirst.

The Bible taught others to 'love thine enemy'. Joanne crushed her enemies into non-existence beneath stilletos. To her, people were obstacles to be thwarted, typographical errors in her book of life to be blotted out with correction fluid. And yet Joanne was appalingly sociable, a queen bee among a scientific hive. Three months into her position and her libido and intellect dominated half the campus. Another six and she'd be the tyrant of Machiavelli's dreams.

Leslie sighed, draining away the latest flood of nervous stress to fill her system.

The idea of Joanne gaining that much power used to send her into sobbing convulsions, ineffectual catharses carried out in the closest place she could find that afforded privacy: the ladies' room, a janitorial closet, even under her desk. But endless weeks of drowning in Joanne's hateful, toxic verbal sewer had broken her. As the weeks went by, her face took on a pertpetually gray stare, a torrent of despair crammed down inside her ever more tightly, like kilometer-long snakes forced into a tiny can of novelty peanut brittle.

It wasn't fair. She'd worked her whole life, nearly a decade in University and a decade at the WETSLab, clawing her way into the highest peaks of academics, taking all the crap dumped on her from those higher on the pyramid just to end up the assisstant to Satan's dominatrix for the past ninety days. Meanwhile, despite the gum-snapping first-impression she gave people, Joanne was an unparalleled genius, creating breakthroughs as easily as erections. Rumor was she tested out at 220 plus, and only that low because she supposedly got bored with the exam.

According to what amounted to a week of overnight internet research, Joanne had bounced from position to position ever since leaving Imperial College, staying at General Dynamics, Nyborg-Jaarlsberg, Hoyt and Sandia just long enough to reinvigorate whatever research programs they had and generate glacially unstoppable ill-will among colleagues. The head of the AVLIS program at GD called Joanne a "narcissist's narcissist, untrusting of anyone and emotionally arctic."

Unfortuneatly for everyone at WETSLab, Joanne was superficially deserving of her self-praise. It had been Joanne's theory of Curled Convergence that allowed the prototype Fugue to be built. The math was beyond anything Leslie had seen...beyond anything anyone in B Section had ever seen. Vast resources had been allocated to bring about the new application. No one could stand her, yet no one could deny her. WETS was going nowhere with its temporal technology division and without Joanne's input, hundreds of billions of dollars would be on the line, dozens of careers would be in jeopardy.

But Leslie was no intellectual slouch. None of the members of B section were. If Joanne were gone, the engine of scientific progress would still run, the boundaries of knowledge would still recede. She proved as much last Monday morning, when she finished her own calculations: the much vaunted proof of Curled Convergence and the Fugue had a flaw.

A fatal flaw, it turned out.

Tinkling bells perked her ears. Her chest burned at the sound of heels clacking against the concrete toward her, the burn swiftly mutating into a scaly crawl up her spine as Joanne passed by and swiftly took a seat scross the small round table.

"Let's come right down to business, shall we?" She sipped her coffee and dabbed a line of whipped cream from her lip. "I know why you asked me here."

Leslie's heart nearly sprung from her chest, her mouth suddenly parched. Had she forgotten to erase all her whiteboard notes? Did she leave some clue for Joanne to follow?

"I...thought we could talk...clear the air."

Joanne smiled, a host of calculations buried within.

"Oh, come now. Do you really think a veil of suspicion hasn't colored my every thought? Asking me to coffee...the very idea that such a thinly disguised pretense would work is insulting, even to someone with your meager abilities."

She took another sip.

"We have nothing to talk about, my dear. Nothing in common. Except perhaps a desire to see the other rubbed from existence and thus my suspicion. You've always considered me some kind of oppressive weight, a gravity to keep you from rising to your potential where you can pat yourself lovingly for doing the absolute minimum that could be considered a success..."

Leslie squeezed her eyelids together, held back a raging river and braced herself against the usual routine. Even after three months, the verbal barbs still pierced her mental armor, bashed down every brick of her hastily reassembled self-confidence. First came the patronizing, then direct insults cobbled from every weapon that could be flung from another's mouth. The sick pleasure it gave Joanne was obvious. A smile of some kind never left her face, whether as subtle as that worn by La Gioconda or as grotesque as something fit for the Cheshire Cat. She fed off the pain of others and life had given her the tools to feed very well.

"...you should admit your failings, Stoddard. These persistant attempts to place both of us in the same caste will do you no good in the long term, although I'm sure it's some form of sickness..."

She buried her face in her hands to hide the hot, salty streams and shield herself in the same useless way a child holds fast to a bedsheet as a defense against a slobbering nightmare. She couldn't allow this to continue. But what gave her the right to play God and meet out ultimate judgement, even to someone as vile as the woman across the little coffee house table? But she couldn't bring herself to turn the other cheek again. Thousands of humiliations both tiny and gross had been poured onto her for weeks. The image of that perfect, trim face casting total, undeserved disdain followed her every second of the day while at WETS and haunted her every minute she was away. Joanne even came to her in her dreams, every night cutting her with scalpel-like fingers, burning her to a crisp with a lab laser or pushing her from the top of a building or the coastal cliffs into a swirling, fiery morass that she first took to be a pit of hell, but realized, just before bolting upright in bed, that it was Joanne's mouth, agape with laughter, devouring space and time like a galactic black hole.

With every ounce of will left, Leslie managed to ask the one question that had plagued her from the beginning: "Why are you so cruel?"

Joanne laughed.

"Once again you prove yourself incapable. Cruel? I'm nothing of the sort. Whatever psychoanalytical supermarket trash you've been plowing that oversized nose through is warping your sense of reality. I am not cruel by any rational standard, only brutally honest. I simply hold you in contempt as I would hold any lower form of life. Oh, it's not your fault, Leslie. You can't help being mediocre. The world encourages it and I take advantage of it, as a lioness takes advantage of the wounded and young in a herd of zebra. To you I am cruel. To me you are an irritant, like a fly buzzing around a bedroom at night. Something to be smashed the moment you land on my upturned, exposed ear. I am on this world to project myself as far as possible, to conquer and control. Everyone and everything that impedes me is nothing more than an obstacle. I'd have more respect for you if you had the same outlook, but you don't. You, like everyone else at that troglodyte factory you call a laboratory, are nothing more than a presumtuous, no-talent clinger, desperate to hold onto the coat tails of your betters."

Like a match given new life at the flick of a thumbnail, the tiny, supressed bead of hate that constantly smoldered inside Leslie blazed nuclear-hot. All semblence of civility left her in that moment, all force of conscience, all trace of compassion. To believers, vengence was supposed to be the proprietary business of God. But 'vengence is mine' could be interpreted another way. It could mean that vengence was of God.

Vengence was holy.

Leslie smeared her hands down her face, composed herself.

"You said you knew why I asked you here," she said flatly.

Joanne glared at her, her gorgeous, powder-blue eyes veiled behind a suspicious squint.

"Drop the act, Stoddard. It's unbecoming, even for someone as pathetic as you."

"It's no act. I just don't think you know why I asked you here. In fact, you don't know anything."

As the last words spilled from her lips, Leslie's heart thundered, soaked in adrenaline. She had never spoken to Joanne like that. No one ever had, to her knowledge.

And it was clear Joanne wasn't used to being on the receiving end of such commentary. She stared across the table, her jaw slackened, the muscles of her forehead knit together in a mask of what could only be described as pain. Several seconds passed before the wounded beauty broke free of her coma: someone honked a horn and a woman in a flower-print dress chattered angrily at a car across the street.

Joanne rocked back in her chair and crossed her arms, smirking. Leslie had seen the stance before: it was preparation for dropping a nuclear bomb, the look of a cat seconds before pouncing across the floor onto an unsuspecting mouse.

"The Fugue. You and I are the only two people on this planet who know how to use it, though I should instead say 'operate'. The word 'use' implies you would be its master and therefore of a higher intellectual stock than you actually are. Nevertheless, once you invited me to coffee...a wholly uncharacteristic and feeble gesture on your part...I knew something was afoot and I checked the logs. I must say I wasn't shocked to find that last Monday, the first full day after the Fugue had been activated, you had traveled into next week and returned immediately thereafter. Afterall, you couldn't have traveled back before the device was first activated...that would constitute a general paradox and you would be annihilated in transit. So you traveled into the future and then back to as early a time as you could and still account for any temporal drift.

"I remembered you had taken a two-hour lunch break that very day. I asked around and discovered you had been seen around various low-security sections of the grounds in a way that defied causality. I confirmed as much on some of the security tapes. You seemed at various times on that afternoon of being in two places at once.

"Once I had read the system log and deduced what you were up to, I entered the Fugue and, just as you had, traveled into the future to meet myself in a suitably non-descript location, which I simply decided upon before I departed the present time. Myself and my...self re-entered the Fugue and returned, sequestering ourselves in my office to devise a counter to your addlepated scheme. Am I going too quickly for you?"

"No."

The lid on Joanne's coffee burbled as she took a leisurly drink.

"It's quite an exhilarating and surreal experience, staring into your own eyes outside of a mirror. And I must admit it was a very clever thing you did, initially going into the future. Afterall, if one simply jumped into the Fugue and traveled, say, an hour into the past, one would have the advantage of knowing exactly when and where one's past-self would be, thus eliminating certain logistical difficulties. However, there would be the insurmountable problem of imparting memories to one's self, memories of experiences which hadn't yet been lived. Doing so could alter one's pattern of behavior and thus create a behavioral paradox. You might not enter the Fugue when necessary to bring about the moment when you entered the Fugue."

Her smile faded, her expression cut from a block of ice. She moved her coffee cup aside and leaned over the table, her eyes threatening.

"Did you really think you could get away with an assassination? Sniping me from the top of the Nagami building?"

Leslie did her best to hide the sudden wave of relief that coarsed through her. There was no way she could be certain Joanne would fall for the ruse, unless her office had been bugged, which was apparently the case. She had looked for the bug several times, always without success. Little slips in conversation confirmed its existence, though.

"You disgust me. You wasted billions of dollars of equipment and millions of hours of work, the greatest invention in the history of histories, to play a silly game not worthy of a pulp crime novel. It would be less base of you to shoot me in the back and try in your own inept way to hide my body. You're as unimaginative as you are plain-faced."

She sat back down, almost slouched.

"You needn't worry about it anymore in any case. My duplicate is as we speak handling the situation with your duplicate. I implored myself not to use deadly force, but I do have a way of using all means at my disposal to achieve a goal. At least I won't be messy. And if causality lives up to expectations, you'll either be seeing things through your duplicate's eyes in a few days passing or you'll change your future course of action and this entire Flemingesque plot with disappear into the dustbin of rejeted timelines." She sighed triumphantly. "Of course, since I'm still sitting here and you're still there, you must have stubbornly refused to change your actions, foolishly hoping to prevent the inevitable. I can't say I'm surprised."

The coffee shop doors ting-a-linged as the barista came outside, broom in hand. He smiled at Joanne as he started to sweep away myrtle flowers from the entryway.

"For a long time," Leslie murmered. "I'd considered killing you outright...maybe make it look like an accident."

Joanne quickly stood.

"I have better things to do."

Leslie continued.

"Unlike you I know my limitations. I know I wouldn't be able to cover my tracks." Her eyes drifted unfocused. She stared into the space past Joanne's hip. "Eventually, some local Columbo would smoke me out and I'd end up..." She turned her head, locked onto the powdery eyes of Nemesis. "I had to find a way of getting rid of you without being caught. If my life was forfeit through prison or worse, you'd still have some power over me. The memory of you would still be a chain on my neck."

"You're deranged. I came out here with the intent of pulling the plug on this little farce and showing you I'm not one to be intimidated. I see though that I might as well be discussing rational humanism with the Pope. I'll expect your resignation before five o'clock. At least I'll have the pleasure of seeing you ruined before I snuff you out in a few days."

Joanne walked toward the patio entrance.

"Did you know I had a twin sister?" Leslie said loudly. "Her name's Betty."

A moment passed and a shapely figure appeared in of the corner of her eye.

"What do you mean?"

"I knew you'd be suspicious of my invitation to coffee, probably expecting me to slip you poison and send you into Lake Teller."

Joanne sat back down. She looked noticably rattled, her constant smile no longer constant.

"The thought had occurred..."

"I guessed you'd check the Fugue log to see if I used it and perhaps set in motion some Byzantine plan to snuff you out. Sure enough, you suspected as much and took it upon yourself to use the Fugue for yourself, meeting with your alternate self to devise a plan to deal with me first...a sort of pre-emptive strike."

"An apt description."

"Only you were wrong. I never actually used the Fugue, only altered the log...the passcodes are pretty thin. The long lunch you suspected me of using for a clandestine meeting with my past self was in fact nothing more than an ordinary visit from my sister Betty who kindly agreed to dress like me and mill around the low-security sectors within sight of every camera in use."

"Wait...are you telling me you never intended to assassinate me?"

"Not exactly, no. Your ultimate end was always foremost on my mind. But instead of carrying out the deed myself, I devised a means to effectively force you to bring about your own destruction. See, Joanne...past and future duplicates are another causal paradox of the Fugue, something that, if you think about it, effectively renders the device useless. I figured that out a while ago during one of my 'overnight spinster sessions', but I never told you. I guessed that I could use the information to finally be rid of you...and I was right. Bringing back a duplicate from some other moment in time effectively violates the law of conservation of matter and energy, one of the most basic laws of existence. Oh, I'm sure you'll just tell me that in an expanding universe, miniscule fluctuations in Spacetime can spontaneously create bits of matter and energy. But even your startlingly fit figure is far greater on a local scale than any 'miniscule fluctuation'. Once you brought back your duplicate from the future, you essentially added mass that didn't belong here. There's now more 'stuff' in the universe than there should be.

"Temporal duplicates cause an instability in Spacetime, but it takes a while for that instability to show itself in the macroscopic world. The math showed a direct correlation between an object's mass and the amount of time needed for substative breakdown from duplication. I invited you to coffee at this very moment because I knew when the breakdown would occur...something I very much want to witness first-hand."

Joanne slowly stood, a hateful holocaust in her eyes.

"Right about now, your duplicate is walking around the roof of the Nagami building wondering why my duplicate isn't where she's supposed to be. Any moment, Joanne-number-two will realize she's been duped and that there is no other Leslie Stoddard, that the logs were faked, that the camera recordings were not what they appeared to be. Then she'll wonder why I've gone to all the trouble to lead the both of you down this path to nowhere. Then she'll realize. That steel-trap mind of hers will know fear for the first time. She'll know the abyssal terror that comes from being in a landscape totally alien to someone whom perfection is second-nature: she'll know she's made a mistake."

The beauty staggered away from the table, clapped her hands over her head as if it were a bomb set to explode.

"Very soon, your duplicate will hop back into your car and race back to the lab complex to re-enter the Fugue and thus halt the existential breakdown of both of you. Of course, that won't work because if she enters the Fugue and travels to the past, she'll simply encounter two duplicates: you and herself in the past. With three of you at once, I'm certain your oblivion would arrive all the sooner. And she cannot travel into the future because being your duplicate, she will necessarily encounter you in the future and this entire delicious episode with occur again. Even if she travels to the distant future to a place where you are long dead, the matter of your decaying bones or flittering atoms will still be there to push her into paradox."

"Paradox?" Joanne shouted, her voice trembling with fear, about to come to tears. "Don't you understand what you've done?"

"What I've done? You're about to be wiped from existence and you still can't dredge deep enough into your soul to find a single speck of humility. I do know what I've done, Joanne. I've scrubbed a malignant stain from the universe."

Joanne shot toward her and slammed a fist onto the table. Both coffee cups bounced, hers rolling off onto the patio.

"Temporal parity, you idiot! With two duplicates, the duplicates would have destabilized each other, theirs is the strongest fourth-dimesional bond. But with only one, the process becomes a self-propagating imbalance. Now, my duplicate and I share the strongest bond...we'll be annihilated. And once we are, the universe will then be spontaneously missing matter." She snatched Leslie by the collar, leaned into her face. "You fool! In your purile desire to obtain revenge you've torn to shreds a fundemental law of existence and now there is no way to reset the balance! Annihilations will continue indefinitely! Everything! All of us! The entire Universe! It's all going to-"

The tall sexpot vanished without flash or sound, as if canceled by the flick of a light switch. Instantly, tires squealed somewhere down the street, followed closely by a loud smash of metal and glass, puncuated by screaming car horns. The barista stopped sweeping long enough to see the nearby accident, then shook his head and went back to work.

Leslie sipped her latte and watched a robin land in a nearby tree, closed her eyes and let her face soak up the afternoon sun, oblivious to the multitude of sounds in the air. She didn't even notice the barista's broom falling to the patio...

AND THE SKY CRIED, HAVOC!

Willy Sanderson eased back on the flight stick, smiled as his skin soaked up the friendly sunlight streaming onto him at six-thousand feet above sea-level.

He'd never have guessed there was a war going on.

He leaned to the side, looked over the side of his Vought Bluebird and squinted through his goggles, tried to make out some of the miles of trenches and bugwarms that supposedly lined the Belgian countryside. There was only a patchwork of fields and landmarks, a quilt made from the Earth and many generations' toil, nothing to indicate the hell people had been going through these past years.

It was called the war to end all wars, but he never got to see it first-hand. Ever since he'd arrived in early March, he'd been flying patrols day in and out at thousands of feet above the real fighting, usually far to the north or far to the south of any ground action. In two months, he and Pat had had only one scrape in the air: about twenty miles north of Ypres, a trio of Type III's, outclassed by their Bluebirds any day of the week. Willy had sent the first smoking. Pat did as much to the second and the third had thought better about single-handedly fighting a still-fresh pair of 'American devils'.

He bumped the throttle forward a bit, juiced the engine. They'd head back in about another twenty or thirty minutes, then fuel up for another go, maybe sniff out some of the Hun during the next couple of sorties.

Patrick Doogan was about four or five hundred feet below and a half-mile ahead, just pushing through a curtain of sunlight cutting through a mounting cloud layer. Willy wondered what Pat's mom was thinking right now. She'd been pretty pissed when Pat told her he was joining the Army to fly. She kept telling him the British weren't worth fighting for, that they were as bad as the Hun. But he was sure she was just worried about him. His pop had died the year before and it had affected them both pretty severe. Pat had just wanted to get away, take his flight experience from the farm fields and find some adventure.

As he watched, Pat's plane slowed and gracefully rose to match altitude, allowing Willy to catch up and come along side. Pat waved his arm to get his attention, but he was already watching him and gave him a quick smile and boy-scout salute to prove it.

Stone-faced, Pat pointed to something below.

Willy scanned down the port and starboard side of his Bluebird, surveyed the green countryside, the criss-cross of roads, the occasional glint of a sun-kissed stream. A half-mile down, he saw the distinct, silver shape of a biplane, a pair of black crosses emblazoned on the upper wing surface. It definitely wasn't a Type III.

An Albatros, maybe.

He issued Pat a hearty thumbs'-up, then eased the stick forward, sending his plane into a steep dive. He looked back to make certain his friend was following him, but the Irishman had already zoomed into the lead. Reluctantly, he fed fuel into the engine and increased speed to pursue.

The spars nearest him complained.

"Darn it, Pat," he muttered. "You'll crack us up." The Bluebirds could take a surprising amount of punishment, but he'd heard of planes crumpling like kites in a typhoon when they took a dive too fast. It was a warning the squadron commander was fond of repeating.

The German plane grew larger as they closed, the Earth below now under the shadow of an endless blanket of clouds. It'd rain soon. Best to clobber this Fritz and turn tail for home as soon as possible. He'd always had a twinge of concern about getting hit with lightning. Already a quarter-mile in front of him, Pat would strike first. Willy held his breath as was his habit before a fight, but released it as he watched his wingman veer off his prey at the last moment.

Shaking off the odd sight, he continued to close on the Albatros, slid his hand around the trigger grip and prepared to open up his Vickers on the enemy's silvery tail. If Pat didn't want this kill, he'd take it. He'd have to. If they both flew past without doing any damage, they'd be at an immediate disadvantage, absent the element of surprise and in Fritz' twelve. It'd be serious business at that point: an Albatros could outrun and climb higher than Bluebirds on most days.

About three hundred yards now. Just a little closer and he'd open up, listen to the Vickers MG tatter like his sister's sewing machine, watch the Kaiser's fabric shred to pieces in the mile-high wind. He averted his eyes for a fraction of a second, caught Pat as he throttled back and matched speed with the enemy plane, leveled off two hundred feet lower, like a Doberman waiting for a sic 'em.

The German spun around in his cockpit and waved furiously. As Willy met his gaze, his hand slid away from the trigger and he instinctively slew his Bluebird to starboard and leveled out, cutting his speed until he was beside the Albatros, flying steady. If he had a baseball, they could've played catch.

The guy looked terrified, but it couldn't have been from the prospect of being bullet-ridden; he made no evasive maneuver at all. He may have well as been Artie Higgens or Jack Tucker or any of the other flyboys from Kelly Field. Scared, but not at them. Funny thing was, he wasn't wearing any goggles or flight cap. Or even a proper uniform. He had a white undershirt and suspenders, like he'd jumped out of a cot and straight away decided to go out for a mid-morning flight.

The German pointed adamantly at the thick cloud layer, now completely filling the sky above, tinged cream-colored and fat with rain. He waved frantically, as if his arm was on fire, then shouted something, or rather mouthed something; his words were lost in the drone of 180 horses.

"What?" Willy shouted. "What's wrong?"

It was no use. He couldn't understand him even if he could hear him.

The German reached into his cockpit and he suddenly shot skyward, climbing toward the clouds. Pat must have taken the action as his cue, because a heartbeat later, he was in hot pursuit. He'd witnessed the guy's strange behavior and probably wouldn't shoot him. But, knowing Pat, he'd stick to him like tar, follow all the way to the Kaiser's privy door if he had to. At least they'd keep him busy...if he was dodging their Bluebirds, he wasn't doing anything nefarious somewhere else.

The Albatros climbed until it vanished into the thick, low ceiling. Pat was close behind.

"C'mon, Patty, don't-"

But into the clouds he went none-the-less.

Willy eased back on his stick, slowly brought his plane within a thousand feet of the cloud layer. As soon as Pat came out, he'd pull up next to him as quickly as he could and give the signal to head for home. There, they could wait until the weather cleared a bit-

A smoking mass emerged from the clouds dead ahead, like a crumpled wad of paper set on fire and cast aside by an indifferent god. Willy dove to follow its trajectory. He closed on it, passed on the right, stared at it in astonishment for as long as his neck would hold out, then finally banked to port, traced a lazy circle to keep it in his three. His heart wedged into his throat when he saw the white star with red dot and the undercarriage corkscrew bent, the axle piercing one of the mangled wings. The gas tank had caught fire and blown, the dead Bluebird's fabric blackened around the trailing edges.

"Oh, God!"

No one could live through that. And even if they did, the impact from seven thousand feet would finish the job.

Willy welded his eyes shut, desperate to scrub away the images of Patrick flashing through his mind. His best friend...dead. He imagined telling Mrs. Doogan, watching her face blanch as her beautiful green eyes drown.

And then, he remembered the Albatros.

He climbed sharply, came within a hundred yards of the clouds. The German must have caught Pat in a patch of clear, got behind him somehow and hit him with a lucky shot that caught him in the tank. It'd be the first time he'd ever heard it happening, though. Bullets normally just punched a hole in a tank and the gas dribbled out. He'd even seen hot rounds demonstrated back at Kelly that didn't set a tank on fire.

He flinched as something inched out of the clouds above and ahead. At first, he thought it the German's undercarriage, but it was too big, not a tire, but a sort of grayish bump, then two, three and four bumps, all sliding into and out of the clouds. The shapes grew, were soon joined by another set of bumps a few yards away that dropped in altitude, became a form more familiar to him except in scale. The sight pushed the image of Pat's face from his mind. It pushed the war from his mind. It pushed the world from his mind.

Willy gagged and coughed as the hundred-mile wind dried his gaping mouth, turned his tongue into a prune. He pulled his goggles clear of his eyes, expecting to discover a blot of oil of the lenses.

There was no blot.

Dead ahead was the biggest bird he...anyone had ever seen. It plunged fully from the mists, helped aloft by an eerily silent flap of its gigantic wings, two great surfaces, each at least a hundred feet wide.

Hands trembling, he snugged his goggles and upped the throttle, managed another ten miles per hour. The Bluebird edged closer and under the enormous beast, buffeted by the air pushed over his in another huge wing flap.

They'll never believe this.

"Golly-gee, Captain, my wingman and best friend were killed by a giant Thanksgiving dinner."

Saying the words didn't make them sound any less crazy.

He passed under the monster's tail and could see it legs clearly, huge, muscular limbs that tapered over several yards, ending into a pair of ash-gray talons that could easily crush a fighter like a rotten apple. The talon closest to him, near enough to make out little cracks snaking around the chitnous claws, was empty and hung slack, threatening to reach down and pluck him from the sky. The more distant talon was clenched tightly around a white object that flapped in the wind. Had the monster got the German too? He hadn't seen any other wreckage, but the color didn't look like it belonged to a Bluebird. In any case it was too far away to make out clearly.

He banked just as the wings beat again, forcing him to hold onto the stick with a death-grip. He quickly centered his plane and continued forward up under the breast until he could just glimpse the bottom of the monster's head. He expected to see the underside of a freakishly large beak, but was further astonished to see a shape something like a crocodiles' snout.

The thing could swallow him whole.

He slowed, letting his little plane slide back under the beast's back end. He hadn't been noticed yet. If he was careful and took his time, he could make a clean getaway, go back and check on what was left of Pat's plane. Maybe by some miracle...

The cloud layer above flashed, lit from behind with a million electric light bulbs. A peel of thunder blasted the air, suffocating for an instant the endless drone of the Wright Hispano engine. He watched the monster flap its wings, unfazed by the turning weather.

He snapped his head port and starboard, perked his ears just as the sky exploded in more thunder.

There it was again. A high pitched sound, impossibly faint in the throbbing air. A voice...a scream. In the corner of his eye, he caught a movement from the closed talon. The white object was moving. He zipped toward the person thrashing about. It was a girl, probably no more than seven or eight years old. She was in a white nightgown, her body half buried inside the hard muscles of the closed talon. She had seen the Bluebird and was waving and stretching her arms toward it, crying and screaming.

He had to do something. He had to get the girl without pissing off the monster, otherwise he and the girl would join Pat and the German for supper.

He snatched the MG trigger and let go of it almost at once. He could pepper the thing with bullets, but he doubted he could do any damage that way. He'd need a railway gun to pierce the thing's hide.

But even the Titanic was sunk by a lowly chunk of ice; there had to be a way. What about hitting it in a sweet spot? Where? It's head? Back off, climb into the clouds and pour on the gas until he could get a clear shot. A bullet in the brain. Isn't that how you take down a big animal? Calling this thing big was like saying the noonday Texas sun was kinda bright. And where would he be if blasting it in the skull did work? The little girl would still be in its clutches all the way to the ground. She'd be lost as a thousand tons of chicken dinner cratered some poor farmer's crop.

He slammed his fist against the cockpit rim, dented it some.

"Think, dammit!"

He glanced up at the girl. She was pushing against the talon as if she could pop free just by doing so. He could see the anguish on her face even from his distant vantage point. He pulled within a dozen yards. She reacted by stretching out to him, her face distorted by tears and terror. Reaching down beside his seat, he unlashed the Very pistol from its home, double-checked the barrel to make sure a flare was loaded. With the slightest touch, he continued to bring the Bluebird closer, until the girl could almost reach out and touch the upper wing.

"I'll catch you!" he shouted. She reached out to him, screamed and cried. "I'll get it to open its claws and..." He stopped himself when he remembered she likely spoke French or German. And he didn't.

Grasping the stick in his left hand with granite-hard steadiness, he held up the Very pistol, waved it furiously to get her attention. She choked back her tears, stared at him desperately. He motioned with the pistol as if shooting the monster, then dropped the pistol in his lap and made a fist and opened the fingers quickly, then pointed to himself.

She nodded abruptly and closed her eyes.

Willy nudged the throttle a hair's breadth and inched himself directly under the talon. It'd be like catching her falling from a barn loft. A piece of cake. He spent a good minute lining the Bluebird up, building his courage and finally grabbing the Very. He had no idea how hot the flare would burn, but he knew it had to hurt. It'd be like an earwig taking a bite into your bare hand. Nothing life threatening, but it'd hurt like hell.

With a deep, trembling breath, Willy aimed the pistol, a little ahead of the giant bird's leg and squeezed his fingers. The little rocket fizzed from the stubby tube like Satan's discarded glowbug, zipping out fifty feet in front of him in a confused, drunken run. The wind finally caught it and forced it backward, deep into the feathers covering the bird's thigh.

The next sound rattled his bones. A demonic screech-roar-growl filled the air and echoed in his ears, louder than thunder and infinitely more threatening. The Very slipped from his hand and bounced off the fuselage. He didn't try to grab it before it fell, his attention anchored firmly on the girl. The talon relaxed and bloomed open. The girl slipped, bounced off one of the claws and flopped hard across the cockpit opening like a sack of beans.

Willy held her firm as she squirmed and slid her feet into the pit between his. He pushed forward on the stick to gently dive away. He looked up in time to see the creature's weird crocodilian head pivot toward them, glassy, golden eyes without pupils or irises ablaze with anger. It screeched again, a sound now far more menacing. It beat its wings successively as it shifted its enormous bulk into a wide a turn.

"You're okay, sweetheart," Willy lied as he sharpened his dive and craned his neck to track the thing. It moved impossibly fast for its size, nearly complete with its turn.

They couldn't outrun it. They couldn't dive fast enough to reach the ground before it would snatch them in its jaws.

"Pat," he said, "If you're still here, lend me a hand buddy." Maybe the girl would think he was praying.

And maybe he was.

Quickly, he bottomed the throttle and pulled back on the stick, felt the blood run from his skull. The girl whimpered. He clamped an arm around her waist to hold her firm as the Bluebird strained to complete the maneuver. When he was completely inverted, he rolled the plane, brought the world back into its normal orientation. Now he was racing right at the monster, closing for what would surely be only a few more breathless seconds.

He adjusted the Bluebird's trajectory, centered his target and opened fire, the Vickers' muzzle flash obscuring the face of the oncoming nightmare. He let the weapon suck down ammo greedily, watched the heat and steam angrily pour from every seam as the barrel became searing hot from the endless mechanical march of lead death.

Empty, the gun fell silent and he latched his arm around the girl and watched the monster lever its mouth open, create a huge, tooth-rimmed oubliette in which they'd be forever lost. Willy wanted to say something to the girl, just say her name, pour all the hope and love in the world onto her to give her a final moment's peace.

He barely saw the silvery bolt streak in from two o'clock before it vanished in a ball of flame just behind the creature's head. The creature screeched and bucked, pulled up just as the Bluebird careened under its flaming neck. Willy jinked around a swath of falling wing-fabric, marveled at the half-eradicated black cross still visible.

The creature flapped furiously and rose up at an incredible rate, finally slipping into the cloud layer, swallowed utterly by the mystery that bore it.

A moment later, the little girl said something.

Willy wiped tears from under his goggles and bent his head down to hear her repeat.

"Ich heisse Emily."

"Your name? Your name is Emily?"

She nodded.

He banked gently, brought the compass to a return heading and poured on the speed toward the sunlight and home.

THE INDEX OF CHAWN DOE

The computer beeped happily, like an insane man praising life while shouting from ten stories up an asylum engulfed in flames.

Melissa smashed the enter button again. Another beep, but not a pixel moved on the screen.

She slapped a hand against the harddrive cabinet.

"Come on, you pile of shit."

Simon 'Daffy' Giunchiglia peered over the side of the cubicle.

"What's the matter, deary?"

Her fingers rattled the keyboard in machine gun rythmn, the terminal bellowing out a monotone symphony of sour notes.

"This thing froze up again." She reached under the desk and probed around to find the power switch. "When are they gonna buy some new equipment for this place?" The monitor blipped, a Microsoft logo appearing. "I mean, this stuff would embarrass the frickin' Pharoah. I halfway expect to take a hammer to it one day and have hamsters and little wheels spill out all over the desk."

Daffy examined his fingernails.

"Yes, well, you can't have everything, deary. City and state coffers, what they are, leave little for ones such as we."

Her chair creaked as she slumped back. She'd never liked Simon, though she was always polite and gave him the time of day if he asked. Daffy was a whole parade's worth of gay pride in one man. It was to him what Juche was to North Koreans. A nice concept for late-night television PSAs, but in the working world that much pride for anything just turned you into an asshole.

"By the way," he said, his nose craning smugly into the air above a too-broad-to-be-genuine smile, "Francine said I should find someone to handle my caseload while on vacation." He passed a two-inch wide manila folder over the cubical wall, plopping it onto her paper-strewn desk. "She thought you could use the extra work. Things seem to be getting a little slow in the world of sex-workers and lowlifes, am I right?"

She normally handled cases dealing with former prostitutes and addicts. Runaways would be an unwelcome switch, one more push toward the emotional cliff overlooking crazytown.

"Look, Daffy, I-"

"You'll be fine, deary. But you should also know I'm leaving a bit early...Nigel and I are catching a flight before the holiday crush. I've got one appointment with a little boy lost that I won't be able to make...would you be a darling sweetheart and cover for me?"

"What?" she stared, slackjawed. "I can't go out...you just handed me the files for Crissakes!"

He laughed, swishing his hand dismissively.

"Oh, pish. You won't have to go anywhere. Some stud from the local precinct is bringing the kid by."

"This really isn't my problem, Daffy."

He pointed to the thick file and smirked.

"It is now, toots. Along with your other problem of a tight deadline. You need to have each of those files status and indexed by tomorrow noon."

She entered her username and passkey into the terminal, tapped enter.

"Ain't gonna happen."

"It will if you stay late. You are salary, you know."

"I can't stay late."

"Melissa Romo, are we suddenly not-single? Do we have a hot date?"

Her cheeks flushed.

"Fuck you."

"Sorry, you're not my type. No offense, deary, but you've nothing but time on your hands and Francine the Mean who sits on her golden throne in her office next to the men's room is looking to thin out the staff to meet her budget. I don't get paid to be her tushy-smoocher for nothing. God knows I rather be smooching her nephew's tushy, the little Cuban kitten that he is."

She opened the computer program, suddenly tasting bile.

"Well...you are offensive, you know that?"

"It's the best defense." He made off for the empty cube farm behind her, laughing. "Anyway, I hear there's going to be another fabulous meteorite shower, something to excite a no-social-life astrologer like yourself." He turned around, shouting at her as he walked backward. "By the time you're done here, it'll be dark enough to get a really good look at something with a bright future."

"Astronomer," she growled, then under her breath: "Asshole."

***

At twenty-four, Melissa already felt old and used up.

College had been something akin to a hallucinagenic mushroom, catapulting her ever higher into the clouds of optimism and away from reality. She had come straight out, ready to shill her hard-won credentials in the face of any hungry employer. It turned out the only one with an appitite had been the Cluck Shack at the Bildeboro off-ramp, and credentials weren't something they cared much about.

Six months after graduating, she'd spent her last night over a fry cooker sobbing over her father's losing battle with bladder cancer, a shock since he'd only been diagnosed two weeks earlier. In the mail that night was an acceptance letter from the State Civil Services Bureau: they wanted her to start working in the local social improvement office, what she had thought would be a dream job, a chance to use her BSW for something other than a debt machine.

Not long after starting, she learned her position was open because the prior occupant decided to resign via a bedsheet around her neck. And it was easy to see why. A day spent interviewing methheads and jumping through every bereaucratic hoop ever concieved only sent oneself hurtling head first into the sharp rocks of depression. Even worse was the bald-faced cynicism perpetuated by the rest of the staff, everyone from arctic char Francine Hermanez, the office director, to Daffy and his endless merry-go-round of sychophantic assisstants.

Methheads and dope addicts were human beings who needed help. Sure, many of them were just self-destructive jackasses, but many of them were just folks who'd taken a wrong turn in life and had gotten lost. They deserved mercy and love, not fingerpointing and judgement from the 'normal people'. At first, Daffy took to calling her 'the Nun', contemptuous of her open willingness to do the right thing rather than the easy bureaucratic thing, something he in particular excelled at. He stopped after a time, though she's not sure whether it was because he witnessed her determination or because she threatened to insert her Swingline where only men had gone before.

Melissa sighed, feeling the weight of the heavens on her shoulders. She stared at the thick docket Daffy had given her and then at the ream of blank S/I forms peeking out from the file stand. All of the information on each file needed to be entered by hand on the forms, the Status, and then the information had to be likewise added to the computer database, the Index. Each form would take about twenty minutes, with another five minutes to double-check the information. At least four or five hours total, assuming Hal 9000 didn't take another diarrhetic dump on her, which it would. She turned and looked at the clock on the wall: 4:25 pm.

She wouldn't get out of there before ten.

Eleven.

She leaned over her desk, plowed her fingers into her long, straight hair and gently tugged at her scalp, desperate to massage away an impish migraine.

Daffy's sharp comment about her love life nagged her. It wasn't a secret she was single; something told in innocent passing to any of the office lackeys usually got blasted around like a Nigerian email. She hadn't had a date since college. No one in the whole SCSB building was available...or even desirable. And it didn't matter anyway; internal fraternization was against policy. After eighteen months at the Bureau, she was still utterly alone, with no one but a dusty bookshelf and cheap Korean telescope to entertain her after work. Her apartment didn't even allow cats.

Someone's knuckles rapped on the cube partition.

"Excuse, me...miss?"

Melissa drowsily raised her head and swiped loose hair away from her face. A handsome, mustachioed man gazed down at her.

"May I help you?"

"I'm Detective Murphy. I was told by the lady to come see you about this little fellow here."

She rolled back in her seat to see a little boy standing behind the partition. In his dishwater grey hoodie and bleach-spotted jeans he resembled someone who just stepped out from under the Ghost of Christmas Present's robe. His skin was pasty white and he looked sickly, his eye sockets dark and hair dissheveled. His stare was cold and empty, his face as dour as a tintype sitter's.

If anyone felt old and used up, it was this kid.

She suddenly remembered: Daffy's appointment.

"Oh, yes...of course." She offered a handshake. "Melissa Romo. Would you mind waiting for me in the conference room?" She pointed to a glass-paneled door down the corridor. "I'll be with you in a minute."

He nodded.

"C'mon, son."

She hurriedly found the file from Daffy's stack, the normally typed heading flamboyantly scrawled in by hand:

John Doe, 8(ish).

Below, there was no photo or detailed information, only a muddy fax from the police department paperclipped to the blank form.

Reporting Officer: Det. Charles Murphy

Case#: CF 06/24/13/2256 - MINOR

Parent(s) / Guardian(s): Unknown

Incident: At about 1030 hours on June 24, I was at my desk when I received a call from a Ms. Trinity Sparks. Ms. Sparks explained that the previous night, while walking near the corner of 33rd and Mulhaney Street, she found a small boy in a near catatonic state. She took the child back to her apartment where she and her roommates attempted to talk to him and learn his parent's whereabouts. Being unsuccessful, Ms. Sparks contacted me the morning of the 24th and told me she would bring the boy to the precinct at about 1300 hours. Ms. Sparks arrived promptly as agreed and I proceeded to interview the boy at my desk. I questioned the boy for approximentally ninety minutes, attempting several methods to entice him to speak up for himself. The boy was either unwilling or unable to communicate, though he occasionally made hand gestures which were not within the context of my questioning. I then explained to Ms. Sparks that she should leave the child in my custody. I then contacted a Mr. Simon Giunchiglia of the SBSS branch off-

"I'm sorry, Miss Romo?"

She flinched. Detective Murphy was looking down at her.

"I really need to get back. I was told I could leave the boy here with you for a while."

She stood and gathered John Doe's file. Colored stacks of unrelated papers poured onto the floor. She sighed and crouched to clumsily scoop up the mess. Her computer beeped.

"Look," he said as he pulled a smartphone from his blazer. "I could maybe bring him back in a little while if it's easier."

"No." She was breathless as she shot upright. "I'm fine...now. Now's just fine."

She started down the corridor.

"I'll leave my card on your desk," he said loudly. "Give me a call when you're done and I'll send someone out to pick him up."

***

The room still smelled vaguely of Francine's rancid eu de toilette, a scent mark left during Tuesday morning's meeting. A series of baby-diaper-brown laminated folding tables formed a large horseshoe, two dozen plastic and tubular chrome chairs bunched around the outside like parade-side drunks. The walls of the room were Spartan, governmental off-white with only two small 8 x 10 photos of the governor and president in the far corner to break up the monotony. At the head of the horseshoe sat the little boy, his skin even more pallid in the room's humming florescent glow, staring intently at the only real source of color in the place: a pink box from Funai's Bakery, left there since Tuesday.

Melissa shut the door and moved to the end of the nearest row of chairs. She laid the file folder on the table and pulled up a seat next to the boy.

"Hi," she said softly.

The boy stared at the box.

"Would you like one? Are you hungry?" She reached out and pulled the box closer, raising the lid. Inside was half an apple fritter and a jelly doughnut someone had taken an enormous bite from, the red insides having oozed all over the cardboard like zombie gore. "Eww, uh...I can get you something."

The boy slowly turned his head, stared blankly at her.

"Hi," she said again, her voice almost a whisper. "My name's Melissa. You can call me Missy if you want."

The boy drew his right hand close to his chest, his wrist limp like a mannequin. Slowly, deliberately, he curled his fingers together and turned his hand around, extending his index finger toward his chin.

"One?" she asked. "I'm sorry, honey...I don't understand. Do you want something?"

He lowered his hand.

"Okay...do you have a name? What's your name?"

She waited.

"Do you understand me?"

Silence. She wondered at first if he was deaf, then decided the cop would've thought of that already. Maybe he didn't speak English. In any case, she'd better avoid Tarzan-speak. She held her hands against her chest.

"Melissa."

She reached out and set a hand against his chest, smiled at him expectantly. The boy turned his head to look at her hand, then parted his lips.

"Meeeleeesssaah."

"Oh, boy...no, I'm Melissa, me," she patted her chest. "You are?"

"Meeleesah."

"No...oh, hell. How about John? Can I can you John?" She put her hand on him once more. "John?"

"Chawn."

"Close enough."

Chawn raised his hand as before, pointed toward his chin.

"What is it you want, sweetheart? Can you tell me?"

After a moment, the boy sighed heavily and slumped back in his seat.

"Do you know where your mommy and daddy are?"

He turned his eyes toward her, then watched his own feet as he bobbed them mindlessly. Melissa pulled a pen from her trouser pocket and slipped a page from the file folder, turned it over to show the blank side. She drew a little stick-man in the center of the page, wrote the name 'John' underneath.

"This is you," she said, tapping the image with her finger. Chawn leaned onto the desk, resting his chin in crossed arms and watched her through the corner of his eye. She drew two more stick figures on either side of the first, these about three times the size. She smirked at her own lack of artistic talent; they were a little crooked and dispropotionate, but she was sure their meaning was clear after she added some long hair to the one on the left.

She set the pen down and laid an index finger underneath the larger figures.

"Your parents. Mommy and Daddy."

Without lifting his head, he reached over and pointed at the stick-woman.

"Meeleesah."

"...I guess it does kinda look like me..."

She quickly scribbled another woman in the corner and drew an arrow toward herself.

"This is me." Over to the family. "This is you and your parents. Where are your parents, sweetheart?"

With a sudden, albeit meager burst of energy, Chawn sat up and took the pen from her hand. He pressed the pen to the paper with an awkward grip, like a toddler just trying to get the hang of things. He scratched an extra pair of lines across the father and then the mother.

He set the pen down and aimed an index to the underside of his chin, his big, soulful eyes meeting hers. Melissa suddenly wanted to cry.

"Oh, honey...I don't understand. Do you have a problem speaking? Is that it?"

Chawn dropped his hand and sank back, frustrated.

***

The din was slowly growing louder, Detective Charles Murphy noticed. Not atypical for a weekday evening (the setting of the sun always seemed to bring out the weirdness in people), and he had gotten so he could almost set his watch by the decibel level reverberating across the second floor: clacking keyboards, inter-office chattering, coughs and sneezes, coffee burbling into awaiting mugs and slurped by parched lips.

Still, it wasn't particularly busy. He only had a serial purse snatcher on his plate, something better suited for the uniforms downstairs. None of the other jockeys were overwhelmed by any means and all of them seemed to be in a light mood, celibrating the 24 hour dip in the crime rate in their own way. The more he thought about it, the more the lull in work seemed really wierd. It was like a wet blanket had been thrown over the whole city, passifying everyone's bad intentions.

He flicked his pencil away and chewed on his cheek as he watched Guiterrez, the precinct's own doughnut commando, was across from him, studying the sports page of the Daily Republic as he munched on a bearclaw.

Charlie drummed his fingers and stared holes into his desk phone, trying his best to put the image of the Melissa Romo's pretty face out of his mind. It was strictly verboten to fraternize with civilians involved in a case. But she was really only a consultant, so he was sure the Sergeant wouldn't have an aneurysm over the whole thing.

She was probably still talking with the kid, but that also means she was probably still at the office. He could think of something, some pretense why he had to get ahold of her twenty minutes after seeing her last. Maybe see if she had any questions about the report...

She wasn't wearing a ring, though that didn't mean much in today's world. But he wasn't a detective for nothing. She'd had no pictures posted in her cubical, no trinkets or affectations of loved ones to get her through daily drudgery. Maybe she had a boyfriend, but he doubted it. Anyway, there was only one way to find out.

He snatched the phone and stabbed the numbers to dial the social office.

He leaned back and sniffed, cleared his throat and smoothed his tie against his chest as the line rang.

And rang.

...and rang.

"Hello?" a woman said.

He bolted upright.

"Hi...is this Miss Romo?"

"Yes, this is Melissa Romo."

"Hey, this is Detective Murphy. The one who brought you the kid."

"What can I do for you, Detective?"

"I was, uh...just wondering how things were going there...about the kid, I mean."

Smooth, Charley. Smooth.

***

"Hold on a minute," Melissa said, lowering her cell phone as she opened the conference room door and looked in on the boy. "I'll be right back, sweetie. I'll bring back a snack for you, okay?"

Chawn turned his head slightly, glancing at her as he pointed upwards. She smiled and shut the door, ignoring the gesture. She raised the phone.

"Sorry about that, I just want to keep an eye on him. I had to go back to my desk to get my cell and I don't think being away from him for very long would be a good idea."

"So, you figure out who he is yet?"

She smirked, walking along the wall toward the break room.

"You've got pretty high expectations, Detective. I've only had him for a few minutes."

"No, of course. Listen...did you have any questions about the report I'd sent over?"

She slipped into the darkened doorway and flipped on the lightswitch. Two florescent ceiling panels snapped to life, the one nearest the vending machines partially burned out.

"I don't think so." She scanned the snack machine and pinched the phone between her ear and shoulder as she dug through her pant's pockets. "Did you mention him doing that thing with his finger?"

"What, the pointing? Yeah he was doing that all day. Couldn't figure out what it meant. You got any ideas?"

She counted out a few coins in her palm and slipped them into the slot, the room echoing with the rattle and clank of hidden mechanism.

"I can get him to talk a little, but-"

"Really? We tried everything we could think of around hear and we couldn't get the little guy to open his mouth for anything."

Melissa typed in her selection and a bag of Cheezpups plunked into the hopper. She snatched the phone, wrestled the 'Pups out from behind the rubber flap.

"Are you alright, Detective? You sound a little nervous."

"Who, me? Nope, not me. No way. It's just busy around here. Y'know...trying to juggle irons on the fire."

***

Charlie closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, sensing a niggling pain behind his eye. 'Juggle irons on the fire'? He sounded like a complete idiot. He opened his eyes again: Gutierrez was watching him, licking glaze from his thumb.

He spun his chair around and quickly changed the subject.

"You said you got him to talk. What's he said so far?"

The kerchunkel of a soda dropping from a vending machine echoed on the line.

"Just his name. Well, my name at least."

"You're name? What do you mean?"

"He can repeat my name and I think he understands what it means, but I've been calling him John as in 'John Doe' and he doesn't seem to want to correct me."

"Maybe his name is John."

"Maybe, but I don't have any way of being sure."

He sighed. This was a stupid idea. Stupid.

"I wish we had a reliable name to check out. I'd even run DNA on him if I could."

"Why can't you?"

"Well, we can't really do that on a minor without consent."

"So, you need his parents to find his parents?"

He chuckled. It sounded forced,

"Yeah, I guess. No, really a DNA test would take at least a few days. The while-you-wait stuff you see on TV isn't too realistic."

"I wouldn't know. I don't have a TV."

"Oh..."

"Did anyone there examine him medically? Give him a physical? I usually handle drug cases around here and I know a lot of substances can screw you up pretty bad."

"The station doc took a look at the kid. She sat here the whole time I interviewed him and didn't seem to think there was anything wrong. She did wonder if he may be not right, though. Y'know...autistic or something...I'm not sure if I put that down in the report. She asked if we wanted to send him to psych, but I told her I wanted to try your office first. I figured if the kid was already being treated by someone, it be best to send him to someone he's familiar with. Of course, we don't know who that is."

"Yeah. I thought about autism, too. But I'm no expert and anyway I don't think there's really a simple test for that. Any missing person's report mention him?"

"No, we thought of that right away. There was no hit on the national database, nothing in the last few days on the local. The kid's a mystery."

"Yeah...look, I'm about to walk back in the room with him. I don't really know what more I can do. Maybe you should send someone over here to pick him up."

He hummed, the initial excitement of the phone call withering. For a split-second, he considered just saying his goodbye and sitting quietly among his dashed hopes. But words kept coming out, as if part of his subconscious refused to give up.

"Y'know, a lot of police work is just greasing wheels and building rapport. I'm off in about an hour. How about I take him for a ride around town, buy him an ice-cream? Some guys around here do that for young kids during investigations."

He listened to dead air for a few seconds.

"That actually isn't a bad idea. An hour, then?"

"Alright. See you then."

He swiveled in his chair to plop the handset back onto the cradle. He leaned back and exchanged a glance with Guiterrez, listened to the constant drone of humanity in the building, the clack of women's heels, the burble of the watercooler out in the hall. He felt strange, like he'd just awoken from a hypnotic trance.

Gutierrez cleared his throat as he snapped his newspaper rigid.

"What was that about, Murph?"

Detective Charles Murphy furrowed his brow, hesitated to answer. Why did he call her? What was the matter with him?

***

Chawn sucked on his orange fingers. The Cheezpups were gone, but he hadn't touched his soda.

"John?" Melissa asked.

"Chawn," he repeated, staring quizzically at the odd color on his fingers.

She scooted her chair closer. She could've reached out and touched him, but refrained, wondering what kind of reaction he might have if she violated his personal space, though he certainly didn't seem violent. He'd scarfed the Pups in less than a minute and she wondered how long it had been since he'd last eaten. She should've asked the detective about it.

What was his name? Charlie? She couldn't stop thinking about him, like a catchy jingle that wouldn't leave your brain.

"I have a little work to finish up, maybe an hour or so. Then I'd like to take you somewhere. Would you like to go somewhere with me?"

He grunted, turned his index finger upward on his clean hand. She didn't think Charlie would mind...John seemed to trust her, afterall. She had no sense of tension or hostility from him at all. Besides, she had this strange compulsion, like an undefined itch, to just get in a car and just...well...go. Without parental consent, taking John anywhere would constitute kidnapping. With a police detective at her side, she felt a great deal more relaxed.

"You can watch TV in the break room while you wait."

Chawn stared at her, thumb between his lips.

"Teefweee."

She smiled. The kid was certainly cute, if inscrutable.

"That's right."

Going out for ice cream or a drive around the city wouldn't do. They'd need something inspirational, something grand. Something that would leave John in awe of the world and the universe to the point where he wouldn't be able to keep quiet. Something that would hammer whatever pent up fury or outcry that was locked within him out like a resonating taiko drum, thunderous and pure, free of evil spirits.

She knew the perfect place to go.

The boy slowly pulled his hand away from his face.

"Moaarr?"

"More? What do you mean?" She snatched the empty bag of 'Pups from the table. "These? You want more of these?"

"Moaarr theees."

"Uh, sure," she said, struggling to remember if she had any more change. "C'mon. I'll get you some and you can watch TV."

Melissa stood, invitied him with an open, outstretched hand. He rose from his chair and set his hand into hers. She suddenly felt giddy as they walked toward the room's exit, a schoolgirl getting ready to play hookey and steal a kiss under a tree somewhere.

"John?" she asked as she swung to door open. "Have you ever seen a meteor shower?"

***

Apple Hill was a little over an hour north of the city. The electric glow of high-rise buildings and clogged arteries of traffic were only a warm glow on the horizon, supressed enough to be ignored by even the crustiest stargazer.

Detective Murphy pulled Melissa's Tacoma off the state route and onto the old unpaved cow path, parking near a lone maple tree.

"I've got a cousin who's a deputy down in Cutter County. He patrols this highway all the time down there. He says his job's weird, whatever that means."

He turned off the headlights and engine and they both watched Chawn, seating snugly between them.

"Are you ready?" Melissa asked him. He was staring blankly out the windshield, more or less at the rotted wooden fence post planted in the ground a few feet ahead.

She popped her seatbelt open and peeled it from her body.

"Charlie and I will be right back, okay?"

He turned his head and robotically undid his belt. Melissa took the action as her cue and climbed out the passenger door, grabbing the pair of wool blankets she kept rolled up behind the seat. Charlie slid out the driver's side and waited for Chawn to follow.

Closing the door, the detective took in a huge lungful of night air.

"It's nice out here. Real peaceful."

She tossed the blankets into the truck's rusty bed.

"I come out here all the time," she said. "Sometimes I bring my telescope and sometimes I just come out empty-handed. There's less light pollution out here than anywhere else in the state, except maybe where your cousin is."

Charlie watched Chawn slowly walk out into the open dirt behind the truck and crane his head back, to scan the blossoming gardens of the moonless night sky. The kid almost seemed expectant.

"So," Charlie said. "I was never much for astrology. Are we gonna get pummeled by a bunch of falling rocks or what?"

"Astronomy. And we're just going to watch a meteor shower. Basically, the Earth is passing through the dusttrail left by a comet a long time ago. The pieces of dust enter the atmosphere and burn up. We see the flashes as meteors or shooting stars."

"Comet dust, huh?" He mimicked Chawn, took a moment to admire the heavens. "Why are you working at that crummy office?"

She unlatched the truck's tailgate.

"I love astronomy. But I also love helping people. Maybe I'll switch things up in a few years and work full time at an observatory." She smiled playfully. "Then I can moonlight as a Meals-on-Wheels driver."

A white-hot needle zipped through the eastern sky.

"Oh! Did you see that one? That was a good one."

"That was pretty cool," Charlie said.

She went over to Chawn and sat on her haunches to lower herself to his level. They watched another meteor blaze glorious and wink out.

The boy turned to look at her.

She gasped. The biggest grin she had ever seen had latched onto his face. He looked like a kid on Christmas morning basking in the reflection of foil-wrapped toys piled ten feet high.

"You like the stars, sweetheart?"

Melissa smiled and reached up to tussle his hair, forgetting to admonish herself about invading his personal space. In any case, he didn't seem to mind.

"Would it be better with a telescope?" Charlie asked.

"Huh?" It took her a moment to look away from the boy's blissful expression. "Oh, no. Meteor showers are best with the naked eye. There's a pair of binoculars under the driver's seat if you want to use them."

"Sounds good," he said, opening the truck door.

Chawn turned to view the sky again. Two more meteors flashed out of Perseus' bowels, neither very impressive.

He didn't move and she didn't make him. All three silently stargazed for a long moment, soaking in the tranquility of the night and the beauty of the universe, each of them an atom in the cosmos, insignificant but necessary and just glad to be.

Finally, the boy took a few steps forward. He glanced at her over his shoulder, then rotated his body enough so she could see his hand: he was pointing upwards just as before. Not as before, Melissa noticed: this time his finger wasn't aiming at his chin...it was aiming upward past his ear. As if confirming her observation, he lifted his hand higher, until it was beside his head, then above his head, the finger jutting up toward the open sky.

She leaped to the ground, crouched next to him.

"What are you trying to say? Is your daddy an astronomer? Does he show you the stars?"

He raised his hand higher until his arm was straight, then pivoted on his feet and levered his arm downward so his finger pointed about sixty degrees into the starry sky. Melissa puzzled, struggled to make sense of the action. What did he mean? Was it a constellation? Some sparkle-dot-pattern that reminded him of something? Was it-?

At first she though it another meteor. The glow was too constant, like a bright star, its movement too lazy. It made a sharp turn.

And meteors didn't turn.

"What's that?" she asked Charlie, pointing. "Can you see anything?"

He raised the binoculars to his eyes, twiddling the focus.

"Jeez, that's bright...making my eyes water..."

Melissa stood tall, felt a sudden wave of undefinable anxiety shoot through her spine.

The speck swelled, grew closer until it was a yellow glowing dime at arm's length. She stuffed a trembling hand into her pants pocket to claw for her keys, then remembered Charlie had drove.

He lowered the nocs and quickly wiped away tears. He looked through them once more, his words dripping with astonishment.

"What the hell is that? A helicopter?"

Transfixed on the ever-brightening light, Melissa put her hands on Chawn's shoulder.

"Honey," she said. "Let's get in the truck..."

"Yeah," Charlie added. "I think maybe that's a good idea."

She started to move, but something warm touched her left hand and she breathed a sudden, deep sigh of relief. She looked down to see Chawn's fingers nested within hers, his smile replaced by a content neutrality.

"Melissa!" Charlie shouted, tossing the binoculars on the seat. "Get in the goddamned truck!"

The object became the size of a half-dollar within seconds, then a basketball. She expected to hear some whoosh of exhaust or thrum of a motor. But in her ear there was only the steady kiss of a country breeze and far-distant chirps of crickets.

A perfect sphere as wide as a city bus came to a stop within a hundred feet of the Tacoma. It eased itself to the surface, touching down just on the other side of Route 16. A tall, glowing form as bright as the sphere emerged from the light and glided over the ground toward them, then peeled off into two. Chawn tore himself away from her hand and dashed to the forms, his hands far outstretched, as if about to hug a full-grown sequoia.

Charlie bolted to the back of the truck and tore a pistol from his coat. He braced himself, ready to unload a hail of bullets at the approaching forms. Almost instantly he recoiled from the intense light, shielding his eyes with a hand.

"John!" she screamed, not quick enough to stop him as her hand snatched at empty air. She watched the little boy merge with the intense light, engulfed like a moth diving face first into a blowtorch. Tears rolled down her face as her legs turned to jelly and she collapsed against the tailgate, awash in confusion and wonder and terror, unable to face the unknown horror and unable to avert her eyes. Her throat tightened, her every muscle on fire. She barely managed a breathless squeak as she tried to shout at the things to leave them alone.

The forms stopped a few feet away from her and the golden light eminating from the sphere diminished suddenly. She saw something resembling ten-foot stalks of wheat, without eyes or face and three pairs of tentacles writhing gently in the air around them. Their long, thin bodies ended near the ground in a cluster of smaller finger-like tendrils, though they seemed to float unaided.

They were beautiful.

Her mind suddenly overflowed with voices that were not her own. Just as she resigned herself to insanity born of fear, the voices coagulated and focused into something clear and distinct.

Do not be afraid, the taller of the two beings said. In fact, he didn't say it at all, but rather thought it and, somehow, she heard. We will not harm you. Your weapon will not be needed.

Charlie hesitated, lowered his hand and slipped his revolver back inside his coat. He glared at Melissa, dumbfounded.

"Did you hear that?"

Unsure if the word 'hear' was accurate, Melissa nodded as she stood, her fear waning. Along with the words injected into her mind came emotions and intent. She was certain there was nothing hostile coming from either of the strangers, though she wasn't sure how. It was like listening to one television's audio while deluged by a bank of disply models at an electronics store. It was a momentary struggle, but her brain seemed capable of tuning into just the right frequency.

Our child tells us you have been very kind to him.

"Your...child?" Charlie asked.

You know him as Chawn. For this dialogue, we will also call him Chawn. His actual name is not pronouncable in your language.

It took Melissa a moment to formulate a coherent thought.

"Who are you?"

From another island in the Creator's ocean. We are explorers, fortunate to find your world. There are few places with others. We are always joyful to learn of places with others.

"John...Chawn was lost, wasn't he?" she said.

Chawn says you are also very intelligent. We agree. We changed our outerness to allow movement among your population. The word is 'disguise'?

"I guess it is."

Chawn is very curious and wandered into a crowd. We left and searched for him from high above. Your cities are very hard to see through.

"He was inside a building or something most of the time," Charlie added. "Like a cell phone in a big-box store. You couldn't get any signal."

Your analogy is difficult to comprehend, but we understand the intended context. You are most likely correct.

"My thoughts. How are you speaking to me?"

You wonder why our child could not communicate directly as we do. Until maturity, our children are unable to focus between minds and are only able to influence passive pathos by induction. Chawn is particularly talented in this respect.

"I'm sorry, I don't-"

"Happy pills," Charlie told her. "The kid can make everyone feel good. Maybe do things they wouldn't normally. Be less asshole-y to everyone."

Again, your analogy is bizarre.

She suddenly felt light, as if a crushing weight had been lifted from her back and tossed away. She stared at the creatures for a long while, looking them over in awe. A million questions entered her mind and she was certain the creatures knew every one of them.

"Where will you go now?"

Familiar shores call to us.

The forms began to receed.

"Wait!" Charlie shouted.

"I think they've said their goodbyes," Melissa said.

They watched the figures disappear into the steady glow of the landed sphere, then squinted as the light intensified arc-bright and floated up into the sky, receeding ever more quickly.

He moved close beside her, his hand slipping around her waist.

A cricket sang from somewhere across the highway as the light became a pinpoint lost among the stars. They watched for what seemed an hour, Melissa overcome with a sense of peace and accomplishment.

And hunger. She suddenly wanted a cheeseburger.

"What are we supposed to tell everyone?"

"Tell them the truth," she said. "John was a little boy lost. And his parents came and picked him up."

###

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book could not have been completed without the cooperation and assistance of many wonderful and generous people, among them: the editorial team at Ashworth & Ashworth, Cynthia Goss and my lovely wife, Dian.

For more information regarding

current or upcoming projects, please visit

www.mhtardiff.com

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