Tom O'Bedlam

1

Elszabet felt a dream starting to come over her while she was still awake. In the beginning it had been terrifying when that happened, when the tendrils of unreality began to invade her conscious mind. But not any more. A lot of things that once had been terrifying to her terrified her no longer. She wasn’t sure whether she ought to be troubled by that.

She was lying in the hammock that hung from wall to wall along one corner of her cabin. Reading a little, dozing a little, not quite ready to get into bed. It was about an hour before midnight of a cool autumn evening, wind off the sea blowing through the treetops. And suddenly she was aware that the dream was there, hovering just outside the gates of her consciousness. She lay there, letting it happen, welcoming it.

Green World again. Good. Good.

By now she had had all the other dreams too, the complete set of seven, sometimes two or three of them the same night. It was a week now since the wandering mystery-man Tom had showed up at the Center, and all week the dreams had been coming to her thick and fast. Was there a connection? It seemed that there had to be, though it was hard for her to understand how it was possible. In the week Tom had been there Elszabet had seen Nine Suns, she had seen Double Star One and Two and Three, she had seen Sphere of Light and Blue Giant.

But of all the dreams, Green World was the one she cherished. In the other strange worlds of the dreams she was only a disembodied observer, an invisible eye floating above the bizarre alien landscape; but when she entered Green World it was as a participant in the life of the planet, plunged deep into its rich and sophisticated culture. She was coming to know the place and its people; they were coming to know her. And so every night, drifting off to sleep, Elszabet found herself hoping she would be allowed to go once more to that lovely place where she felt—God help her—where she was starting to feel so thoroughly at home.

Here it comes now. Green World, hello, hello.

It was as though she had never been away—never gone off on a sojourn to that scraggly troublesome place called Earth where she spent the other part of her life. It was Double Equinox day and the triads were gathering in the viewing-chamber. Here were the Misilynes, arm in arm in arm, and just behind them came the delicious elegant Suminoors, and those, those there, weren’t they the Thilineeru? The Thilineeru had doubled with the Gaarinar, so the gossip had it, and evidently the gossip was true, for there were the Gaarinar and they glistened with an unmistakable overtone of Thilineeru texture, a sheen like the ringing of bells.

And who was this? This heavy dusky figure with that single huge glowing eye rising like a fiery yellow dome from his broad head? He strolled serenely through the room followed by a vast entourage, and from all sides people came toward him to pay their respects. Elszabet thought she had seen him before. Or someone of his kind, at any rate. But she wasn’t sure where.

Ah. They were announcing him now: a shimmering tremolo of silvery sound dancing through the air, telling everyone at once that this was none other than the Sapiil envoy, His Excellency Horkanniman-zai, minister plenipotentiary of the empire of the Nine Suns and high representative of the Lord Maguali-ga to all outer-sphere nations. How imposing a set of titles; how imposing a personage! Elszabet waited her turn to greet him. Come, said Vuruun, who had been ambassador to the Nine Suns himself in the time of the Skorioptin Presidium of blessed memory, let me introduce you. And brought her forward until His Excellency Horkanniman-zai noticed her. The envoy of the Sapiil extended a thick black whiplike limb in greeting; and she touched it with one of her own crystalline fingers, as she had seen the others doing, and felt herself flooded with the light of nine dazzling suns.

It is a gift, said the envoy of the Sapiil gently.

And then he turned away, airily remarking to one of the Suminoors that this was the finest evening he had spent since that time last year, at the investiture of the Kusereen Grand-Delegate on Vannannimolinan, when the Poro sky-dancers had impulsively dedicated a whole season’s performances to him and—

Elszabet heard no more of that story. The Sapiil envoy had moved along. He stood with his broad back to her now, framed by throbbing green light in the faceted north window of the viewing-chamber. But no matter: there were other diversions. Visitors had come from all over the galaxy to see the Double Equinox. Some wore the bodies of their native worlds; others, not as compatible with local conditions, had donned crystalline. The room buzzed with the chatter of fifty empires. Three Blades of the Imperium and a Magister, someone was saying. Can you imagine? All in the same room. And someone else said, They were Ninth Zygerone, I’m sure of it. Have you ever seen Ninth before? And a soft whisper: She is of the Twelfth Polyarchy, under the great star Ellullimiilu. Years since one of them has been here. Well, of course, it is the Double Equinox, but even so—

From somewhere far away a knocking sound, insistent, annoying. Rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat

“Elszabet?”

She stirred. Looking about, turning to one of the Gaarinar to ask something about the princess of the Polyarchy, the being from Ellullimiilu.

Rat-tat-tat Rat-tat-tat

“It’s me, Elszabet. Dan. I have to talk to you.”

Dan? Dan? She sat up, blinking, muddled, still more than half-entangled in the delicate sarabandes and minuets of the Green World folk. Who was Dan? Why was he making that sound? Didn’t he know it was the night of the Double Equinox and—

More knocking. “Are you all right? Look, if you don’t answer me I’m going to come in there and see if you’re—”

“Dan?” she said, trying to shake free of her confusions. “Dan, what’s the matter? What time is it?”

“It’s almost midnight. I didn’t mean to intrude or anything, but—”

“Okay. Just a second.” She thumbed her eyes. Almost midnight. She was in the hammock, a book turned face down across her lap. Must have dozed off, then. Dreaming. The Green World—the Double Equinox, was it? An ambassador there from the Nine Suns, and someone else from Blue Giant, and a Ninth Zygerone, whatever that was—oh, God. God.

The ragged end of the interrupted vision scraped and screeched in her brain. She put her hands to the sides of her head. The pain was almost unbearable. To have been wrenched away from all that so suddenly, so roughly—

“Elszabet?”

“I’m coming,” she said. She swung her legs over the side of the hammock, paused for a moment with her feet just touching the floor, took three deep breaths, wondered whether she’d be able to keep her balance when she stood up. She was shaking. To get drawn in so deeply, to become so enmeshed, so dependent—like a drug, she thought. Like a narcotic. “Just a second, Dan. I’m—waking up slowly, I guess—”

“I’m sorry. Your light was on. I thought—”

“It’s all right. Just a second.” She steadied herself. The last strands of green radiance were fading from her mind. She went to the door.

He loomed in the doorway, a dark figure against the darkness, his eyes very white, very wide. When he stepped inside she saw that he was glistening with perspiration, that his face was actually flushed: a distinct undertone of light pink beneath the chocolate. She hadn’t known that it was possible. She had never seen him this agitated before. Relaxed, mellow Dan. She closed the door behind him and looked about for something to offer him, a drink, a popper, anything to calm him. He shook his head. “Mind if I?” she said, as the box of poppers wandered into her hand. Another shake. She pulled one out. The tranquilizing vapor traveled from her nostrils to her cerebral cortex in half a microsecond. Ah. Ah. That’s better.

“What happened, Dan?”

He was sitting on the edge of her bed, looking like a man who had just run ten kilometers and was having some trouble catching his breath. “I feel a little foolish now, getting so worked up,” he said. “It just seemed to me that I had to run in here right away and tell you, that’s all.”

He was being exasperating, though he probably didn’t intend to be. She said, a little irritably, “Dan, what happened? Are you going to let me in on it or not?”

Sheepishly he said, “I finally had one just now. A space dream. My first.”

“Now I see why you’re so keyed up.”

“After all these months trying to analyze other people’s imagery data without really having the foggiest idea what the hell they were actually experiencing—”

“Oh, Dan. Dan, I’m so glad that it happened at last—”

“It was Double Star One. I closed my eyes, and bang! There I was, red sun, blue sun, alabaster block. And the big thing with horns standing on top of it. Two or three more just like it a little distance away, doing something like drilling a well. But the clarity of it, Elszabet! The absolute conviction that this was reality. Hell, I don’t need to tell you. But I couldn’t help being overwhelmed—all this time, wondering whether I was ever going to experience it, wondering what was wrong, why I was blocking—” He grinned. “So I had to tell someone. You. Came running over, and your light was on, and—you’re annoyed, aren’t you? That I woke you up for something so trivial?”

Gently she said, “It’s only that I was right in the middle of a dream myself. You know how it is when someone pulls you out of a dream. Any dream?”

“And it was a space dream?”

“Green World. Richer and more complex than ever before.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “I’m glad for you. I’m glad you came to tell me. And don’t call it trivial. Whatever else these dreams are, they aren’t trivial.”

“Why do you think I finally had one tonight, Elszabet?”

“I guess it was finally your turn.”

“A random process, you mean? No, no, I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean?”

He was silent a moment. “I’m always a fast man with a theory. But a lot of times my theories don’t stand up so well, do they?”

“I’m not the Board of Examiners. What are you thinking, Dan?”

“Tom.”

“Tom?”

“His being here. A proximity effect. Look, have you gone over the stats for the week? The frequency of space dreams has tripled since he’s been here. You’ve experienced that yourself, haven’t you?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“And you said just now that the dream you were having, the one I busted into, was the richest, the most complex you’ve had. Right? So what do we have? The frequency of dreams has increased among dream-susceptible subjects. The intensity of dreams has heightened too, apparently. And now someone who has demonstrated one hundred percent dream-nonsusceptibility since the whole thing began finally gets one too. Something’s going on. And what’s the variable factor that’s changed here this week? Tom. A very strange, probably schizophrenic individual wanders in, someone who we all agree gives off a distinct aura, a definite vibration of psychic force—am I right, weren’t you the first to remark on it, hasn’t every conversation you’ve had with him left you feeling that he has some kind of peculiar power?”

“Absolutely,” Elszabet said. “But what are you getting at? That Tom’s the source of the space dreams?”

“It makes more sense than my last idea, that they’re some kind of broadcast from an incoming extragalactic spaceship, doesn’t it?”

“You want my honest opinion?”

“Go on.”

“The same thing occurred to me, I have to admit. That there’s some link between Tom’s presence at the Center and the way the dreams have been coming more often. But all the same, I think I’d rather believe the spaceship theory.”

“Leo Kresh punctured that one. There hasn’t been time for our Starprobe to reach its destination and generate a response from the inhabitants of—”

“Why does Starprobe have to have anything to do with it, Dan? Suppose it’s unrelated. A spaceship, all right, coming in from God knows where, beaming us movies of other solar systems. Not in any way connected with the fact that we sent out an interstellar probe a generation or so ago.”

“Now you’re the one who’s multiplying hypotheses,” Robinson said. “Sure, that’s what it could be, but we’ve got no reason in the world to think that that’s actually what’s going on. Whereas we do have Tom right here at a time when the pattern of dreams is definitely changing.”

“Coincidence,” Elszabet suggested. “Why should proximity to Tom have the slightest relevance?”

“Are you just playing devil’s advocate, or do you have some reason for not wanting to accept the Tom hypothesis?”

“I don’t know. Part of me says yes, yes, it has to be Tom, isn’t that obvious? And the other part says that it makes no sense. Even assuming it’s at all possible for somebody to transmit images into someone else’s mind… and where’s the substantiation for that?… don’t forget that the dreams have been going on all across the West, Dan. He can’t be everywhere at once. San Diego, Denver, San Francisco—”

“Maybe there are several sources. Several Toms roaming around out here.”

“Dan, for God’s sake—”

“Or maybe not. I don’t know. What I think is that this man is in the grip of a psychosis so powerful that he’s somehow able to broadcast it to others. A kind of psychic Typhoid Mary capable of scattering hallucinations across thousands of kilometers. And the closer you get to him, Elszabet, the more intense and the more frequent the hallucinations are, although I’ll concede that proximity may be just one determining factor, more significant in the case of low-susceptibility types like me. But what about someone like April Cranshaw, who seems to have unusually high susceptibility? She’s been snarled up in dream after dream all week, awake or asleep.”

“How about Ed Ferguson?” Elszabet asked. “So far as I know, he’s the only one on the premises outside of you who’s never shown any susceptibility at all. I’ll be more willing to buy your idea if it turns out that Ferguson’s finally getting dreams too.”

“What do you want to do, wake him up right now and ask him?”

“Tomorrow morning’s early enough, Dan.”

“Sure. Sure, that makes sense. And we ought to interview April, too. Get her into the same room with Tom and watch what happens. Whether there are any hypersensitivity effects under direct proximity. That should be easy enough to arrange.” He leaned forward, peering intently at the bare wooden floor. After a time he said, “You know, Elszabet, I thought the dream I had was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. That weird landscape—those colors—the sky, lit up in four or five colors, like the greatest sunset that’s ever been—”

“Wait until you see the rest of them,” Elszabet said. “The Sphere of Light. The Nine Suns. The Green World. Especially the Green World.”

“More beautiful even than Double Star One?”

“Frighteningly beautiful,” she said in a very quiet voice.

“Frighteningly?”

“Yes,” she said. “The dream I was having when you came knocking on the door—I was annoyed with you, yes, for interrupting it. The way Coleridge must have been annoyed, when he was dreaming “Kubla Khan” and the person from Porlock came and bothered him. Do you know that story? But in a way I’m glad you broke in on it. Those dreams are like drugs. Half the time now I’m not sure whether I’m living here and dreaming about there, or the other way around. Do you understand me, Dan? It scares me that I’m so drawn in. Any kind of fantasy that draws you so deeply, that becomes so real for you—I hardly need to say it, do I, Dan? There are times I think, coming up from one of those dreams, that I’m gradually losing my own sanity, what little sanity I may have.” She shivered and folded her arms across her chest. “Chilly in here. Summer’s just about over, I guess. Do you know what else, Dan? Now the dreams are beginning to overlap for me. Tonight I saw figures out of Nine Suns and Blue Giant mixing in a party on Green World. As though it’s all flowing together in one big lunatic movie-show. That’s new. That’s really bewildering.”

“It’s all very bewildering, Elszabet.”

She nodded. “I wish I had even the faintest idea what the hell’s going on. An epidemic of identical dreams involving hundreds of thousands of people? How? How? Broadcasts from an alien spaceship? An itinerant psychotic scattering wild visions around at random? Maybe we’re all going psycho. The last gaudy convulsion of western industrial society: we all go nuts and disappear into our own dreams.”

“Elszabet—”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

“It’s late. We should try to get some sleep. In the morning we’ll start doing some further checking up on all this, okay?”

Robinson got up and walked toward the door. Elszabet felt a sudden rush of fear—of what, she wasn’t sure. In a hoarse voice that was little more than a whisper she said, suddenly, unexpectedly, “Don’t go, Dan. Please. Will you stay here with me?”

2

The woman, this Elszabet, hadn’t slept well last night. Tom could see that right away. She was all jangled up, the fist inside her heart closed even tighter than usual. And dark rings under her eyes, and her cheeks all drawn and hollow. Too bad, he thought. He didn’t like to see anyone unhappy, especially not Elszabet. She was so kind, good, wise: why should she have to be this troubled?

“You know,” he said to her, “you remind me a little of my mother. I just now realized that.”

“Did you like your mother, Tom?”

“You always ask stuff like that, don’t you?”

“Well, if you say I remind you of her, I want to know how you felt about her. So I know how you feel about me. That’s all.”

Tom said, “Is that it? Oh. How I feel about you is very good. That you listen to me, that you pay attention, that you like me. I don’t really remember very much about my mother. Her hair was fair, I think, like yours, maybe. What I mean is that you’re the sort of person I would have liked my mother to be, if I knew what my mother was like. You know what I mean?”

She seemed to know what he meant. She smiled; and the smile softened some of the tightness that was within her. She ought to smile more often, Tom thought.

“Where did you grow up?” she asked him.

“A whole lot of places. Nevada, I think. And Utah.”

“Deseret, you mean?”

“Deseret, yeah, that’s what they call it now. And Wyoming, though of course you can’t live in a lot of Wyoming, on account of the dust that blew in from Nebraska, right? And some other places. Why?”

“Just wondering. I didn’t think you were from California.”

“No. No. I been to California before, though. Three years ago, I think. In San Diego. Stayed there five, six months. Nice and warm, San Diego. All kinds of strange people there, though. They don’t even speak English, a lot of them. Foreigners. The Africans. The South Americans. I knew a few of them there.”

“What brought you to San Diego?” she asked.

“Traveling. I got caught in the hot wind one day. You know what I mean, the hot wind? Radiation. This was when I was back living in Nevada. I can feel it, you know, when there’s radiation blowing on the wind, hard dust, makes my head tingle inside, right over here, the left side. And I felt it coming, but where can you go? That mean east wind, picking the stuff up Kansas way, maybe, blowing it and blowing it and blowing it, clear out to Nevada. No place to hide, that happens. You don’t get that stuff here, do you? This far west. But I got a dose, and I was sick for a while, my hair fell out, you know? So I thought I’d rest me in San Diego until I was better. Then I moved on. Got tired of the foreigners. I never stay the same place long. You never know, someone’s going to hurt you.”

“No one’s going to hurt you here, Tom.”

“Oh, you won’t hurt me. But that don’t mean no one will. Not even here. Poor Tom. Tom’s always wandering. And the wandering won’t stop, will it, till we get to the Last Days and make the Crossing. But the Last Days are almost here, you know.”

She leaned forward, body tensed. That always happened when he came around to that subject. This was the third or fourth time he had talked with her this week, here in this little office of hers with the big green screen on the wall, and each time, the moment he had mentioned the Crossing or the other worlds or anything like that, he had seen the change in her right away.

She said, “Do you want to tell me some more about the Crossing this morning?”

“What do you want to know?”

“All about it. Whatever you want to tell me.”

“There’s so much. I don’t know where to begin.”

She said, “We’re all going to go to the stars, is that it? To jump across space somehow and take up new lives on other worlds?”

“That’s it, yes.” She had a little machine in front of her, something to record his words. He saw a red light glowing. Well, that was all right. He trusted her. He had never trusted many people, but he trusted her. She wouldn’t do anything to hurt him. “I mean, we’re not going to go in our actual bodies. We’re going to drop our bodies behind us here, and just our essences are going to go over to the new worlds.”

“And they’ll give us bodies there? If we go to the Green World, say, will we get the crystalline bodies, with the gleaming skins and the rows of eyes?”

Tom stared at her. “You know about the Green World?”

“I know about them all, Tom.”

“And you know that they’re real?”

Softly she said, “No, I don’t know that. I just know that I’ve seen them in my mind, and so have a lot of other people. I’ve walked around on the Green World with the crystalline people, Tom. In my mind. And I’ve seen the people of the other worlds, too, the Nine Suns people with the one big eye, and the Sphere of Light people with all the dangling appendages—”

“Sphere of Light, yes, that’s a good name for it. That’s the Great Starcloud, that light. Those are the Eye People that live there. All these places are real, you know.”

“How long have you known about them?”

“Ever since I can remember.”

“And you’re how old, did you say?”

He shrugged. “Thirty-five, I think. Maybe thirty-three. Somewhere around there.”

“Born just before the Dust War?”

“No, just after it started,” he said.

“Your mother was in the radiation zone when it broke out?”

“On the edge,” Tom said. “Eastern Nevada, I’m pretty sure that’s where we lived. Or maybe across the line in Deseret. Utah. I know she got a little radiation, just a touch, while she was carrying me. She was sick a lot afterward, died when I was a kid. It was a lousy time.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” She really was. He could feel it. How nice she is, he thought. I hope she has a good Crossing, this Elszabet, this good, kind woman.

“And the visions? They go right back to your childhood?”

“Like I said, as far back as I can remember. At first, like, I thought everybody must see these things, and then I found out nobody else did and I thought I was crazy.” He grinned. “I guess I am crazy, huh? You live with stuff like this in your mind all these years, it makes you kind of crazy for sure. But now everybody’s seeing the stuff I see. Last couple of years, people around me have been talking, saying they have dreams, they see the Green World and the rest. A few. There was this black man in San Diego, a foreigner, South American, drove a taxicab: I stayed in his house a while, town called Chula Vista, he rented a room to me. He started seeing them, the visions. Dreaming them, I mean. Told all his friends. He seemed real crazy to me. I got out of there. And then other people, the scratchers I was traveling with, some of them saw them—and here you say you see them too—everybody’s starting to see them, right? And me, I see them better, clearer, sharper. I get a lot more detail now. The power’s been deepening in me almost day by day: I can feel it changing. That’s how I know the Time of Crossing is coming near. They picked me, the space people, who knows why but they picked me as a kind of forerunner, the first one to know about them, you follow me? But now everybody will know. And then one by one we’ll start to go to their worlds. It’s all part of the Kusereen plan. The Design.”

“Kusereen?”

“They rule the Sacred Imperium. They’re the current great race, been in charge millions of years, everybody reveres them, even the Zygerone, who are extremely great themselves, especially the Fifth Zygerone. I think the Fifth Zygerone will be the next great race. It does change, every I don’t know how many millions of years. It was the Theluvara before the Kusereen, three billion years ago. It says in the Book of Suns that the Theluvara may still exist, somewhere way out at the end of the universe, but nobody’s heard anything from them for a long time, and—”

“Wait a second,” Elszabet said. “I’m getting lost. The Kusereen, the Zygerone, the Theluvara—”

“It takes time to learn it all. I was jumbled up about it maybe ten years until it came clear. There are a zillion races, you know—practically every sun has planets, and the planets are inhabited, even ones that you would think couldn’t possibly have life on them because their sun is too hot or too cold, but there is life all the same. Everywhere. Like on Luiiliimeli where the Thikkumuuru people live, it’s a planet of this big hot blue star Ellullimiilu that’s like a furnace, the ground itself melts there. But the Thikkuumuru don’t care about that, because they don’t have flesh, they’re like spirits, you know?”

“Blue Giant,” said Elszabet, almost to herself. “Yes.”

“And the Kusereen, we were talking about their plan: they want new races all the time, they want life moving around from world to world so nothing gets old, nothing gets stale, there’s always change and rebirth. That’s why they keep making contact with the young races. Like us, we’re only a million years old, that’s no time at all to them. But now they want us to come to them and live among them and exchange ideas with them, and they know it has to be soon, because we’ve been in big trouble here, always on the edge of blowing ourselves up or dusting ourselves to death or something, and this is the last chance, right now. So we’re going to make the Crossing. And—”

“Are there wars among these races?” Elszabet asked. “Do they fight with each other for supremacy?”

“Oh, no,” Tom said. “They don’t have wars. They’re way beyond that. Any race that thought it wanted to make war, it destroyed itself long ago, millions, billions of years ago. That always happens to the warlike races. The ones that survive understand how stupid war is. Anyway, it’s impossible to have wars in the stars because the only way you can get from star to star is by making the Crossing, and you can’t Cross unless the host world is willing to receive you and opens the way for you, so how could there ever be an invasion? There was a time once during the Veltish Overlordry in the Seventh Potentastium when—”

“Wait,” she said. “You’re going too fast again. You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to make a list. All the different worlds, their names, the physical form of the people who live on each planet. We’ll put it into the computer, put it right up on the wall here where the big screen is. Just so I can get everything sorted out. And then after that I want you to tell me about the histories of these different worlds, whatever you know, the dynasties of ruling races and all that, just talk it all out and we’ll organize it later. Will you do that with me?”

“Yeah. Yeah, you bet I will. It’s important that everybody knows these things, so that when we make the Crossing we aren’t all bewildered. That we know about the Design, that we know which the Pivot Worlds are, and all.” Tom felt the fever of joy rising in him so strong that he thought it might even call up a vision right here. This woman, this wonderful woman—he had never known anyone like her. “Where I think it begins,” Tom said, “is with the Theluvara, when they ruled the Imperium—”

She held up her hand. “No, not right now, Tom. I’m awfully sorry. There isn’t time this morning. I’ve got to get out and see the people I look after here, the sick people. Suppose I give you a day to think about things, okay? And then we’ll meet again here tomorrow, and the same time every morning until you’ve told me all you want to tell me. Is that all right?”

“Sure. Whatever you like, Elszabet.”

There was a knock at the door. On the little screen just next to the door Tom saw the image of the person standing outside, a big soft round-bodied sweet-faced woman in a pale pink sweater. Tom had seen her around before. “Come in, April,” Elszabet called, and pushed something that automatically opened the door. “Tom, this is April Cranshaw. She’s one of the people I look after here. I thought you and she would like to get to know each other a little better, maybe. Take a walk with her now, just stroll around the grounds—I think you two will like each other very much.”

Tom turned to the fat woman. She looked very young, almost like some sort of huge little girl, although he could tell that actually she must be as at least as old as he was and it was simply the flesh of her, like baby fat, that smoothed out all the lines in her face. And she was wide open, as wide open as anyone he had ever known. As tightly as that man Ed Ferguson was shut, that was how wide this April was open. Tom had the feeling that all he needed to do was touch his fingertip to her plump wrist and every vision he had ever seen would go pouring into her, she was that wide open. She seemed to know it, too: she was staring at him in a timid, fearful way. Look, he wanted to say, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not Stidge, I’m not Mujer. I won’t do anything bad to you.

“Is that all right with you, April?” Elszabet asked. “Will you take Tom for a walk?”

In a soft fluttery voice April said, “If you want me to.”

Elszabet frowned. “Is something wrong, April?”

The fat girl was bright red. “Should I say? In front of—”

“It’s all right. Just tell me.”

“I guess I’m a little upset this morning,” she said, soft-voiced, breathy-sounding, little girl within a big huge body. “I know you want me to go for a walk with him, but I just feel kind of upset.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know.” A wary look in Tom’s direction. “The space dreams. The visions. They’re coming so close together, Dr. Lewis. Sometimes I almost don’t know where I am, they’re so strong. Whether I’m here or on one of those worlds, I mean. And since I walked into your office just now—I mean—that is—”

“Go on, April.” Elszabet was leaning forward again, giving the fat girl her fullest attention, no longer looking at Tom at all.

“I mean it’s—getting—very—hard—for—me—to—think—straight—”

“April? April?”

“She’s going to fall down,” Tom said. He rushed toward her as she tottered and managed to get his arms around her just in time, under her breasts, and hold her up. She was heavy. She was incredibly heavy. Must weigh two, three times as much as me, he thought, struggling with her. Elszabet went around to the other side and helped him. Together they eased her down to the floor. She lay there on her back, gasping. Elszabet turned to him with a nervous smile and said, “Will you go out and down the hall, Tom, and ask Dr. Robinson to come in here? You know who he is, the tall dark-skinned man? Go send him here, Tom. Will you, please?”

“Did I do that to her?” Tom asked.

“It’s hard to know that, isn’t it? But she’ll be all right in a minute or two.”

“I guess I’ll have to take that walk with her some other time,” he said. “Okay. Dr. Robinson. I’ll go send you Dr. Robinson. Thanks for talking to me, Miss Elszabet. It means a lot to me, having someone to talk to.”

He went out, down the hall.

“Dr. Robinson? Dr. Robinson?”

That poor fat girl, Tom thought. Passing out like that. It’ll be a blessing, dropping the body, that one. The poor fat girl. I wish her an early Crossing, he thought. But that’s what I wish us all, every one of us, an early Crossing. I hope we can go next week, even. Tomorrow, even. Tomorrow.

3

WHENFerguson came back to the dorm after morning therapy he found two letters lying in the middle of his bed. He scooped them up, dropped them on the floor next to the bed, and sprawled out, bone-weary. He could play the letters later. Wasn’t ever anything in the mail worth knowing, anyway. Dr. Lewis went through everybody’s letters first, cut out anything that might be considered disturbing.

Tired. Suffering Jesus. First an hour-long interview with Dr. Patel, the precise little British-accented Indian, who always came at you with questions from six different unexpected angles. He was still working on space dreams, how Ferguson felt about them, the fact that other people were having them and he was not. Or was he? “You are not now by any chance beginning to experience the perceptions of that sort, are you, Mr. Ferguson?” Screw you, Dr. Patel. I wouldn’t tell you even if I was. And then an hour jumping up and down like a lunatic in in the rec center, physical therapy session led by that ferocious dykey broad Dante Corelli—holy Jesus, they make you dance until you drop and don’t even apologize—

If only I had managed to get the hell out of this place when I tried it, Ferguson thought. But no, no, they had their goddamn little chip in me, they just sent out their copter and reeled me in like a fish—that was how it was, wasn’t it, I actually did escape, me and Allie, we were gone three goddamn hours, was it? Five, maybe. And then they reeled me in.

He looked around the room. Same old dismal roommates. Nick Double Rainbow zonked out on his bed, brooding about Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill. Poor bastard, he must wipe out General Custer ten times a day in his head. Lot of good it does him. And over there, the other sad case, the Chicano, Menendez. Chanting and muttering to himself all the time, praying to the Aztec gods. Nice peaceful guy, probably dreaming of putting us all on the altar and cutting out our hearts with a stone knife. Jesus. Jesus, what a looney bin!

Ferguson picked up one of his letters and stuck the little cube into the playback slot. On the three-by-five screen the image of a good-looking blonde woman appeared. She’d have been terrific if she didn’t look so solemn.

“Ed,” she said. “This is Mariela. Your wife, in case they’ve picked that out of you.”

Well, they had. How were you supposed to deal with all this? Ferguson halted the letter and touched his ring. “Request wife,” he said.

Back at him came the data he had stored: “Wife: Mariela Johnston. Birthday August seventh. She’ll be thirty-three this summer. You married her in Honolulu on July fourth, 2098—”

He let it play on to the finish, wondering how the people in charge here expected him to make sense out of anything, since they didn’t know he had this little ring-recorder to fill him in on his own history. He activated the letter-cube again and Mariela returned to the screen. “I just want you to know, Ed, that I’m going back to Hawaii. I’m booked on a boat next Tuesday, which is a day after you’ll get this. It isn’t that I don’t love you any more, because that isn’t so, but I felt after that visit I had with you at the mindpick center in July that there simply wasn’t anything happening between us any more, that maybe you didn’t even remember who I was, that you certainly didn’t care for me any more, and so I want to go away from California before they release you. For both our sakes. I’ll be filing the papers in Honolulu, and—”

All right, Mariela. Who cares anyway?

He killed the cube and put the other one in. This letter was from a gorgeous hot-looking redhead who called herself Lacy. “Request Lacy,” he told his ring, and found out that she was a San Francisco woman, evidently a girlfriend of his, partner in the Betelgeuse Five deal. Okay. He got her back on the screen, thinking maybe she was going to tell him she had arranged to come up here for a visit, and wondering if that would cause him any problems with Alleluia.

But that wasn’t what she was planning at all.

“Ed, I have to tell you something marvelous, which is that I’ve found happiness and meaning in my life for the very first time,” she said. “Do you remember that time in the summer when I said I had had a weird dream, the strange planet, the creature from outer space with the horns? That was the beginning of it for me. It was a religious revelation, though I didn’t understand that then. But since then I have discovered the tumbondé movement, which maybe you don’t know much about—it started in San Diego, a great man named Senhor Papamacer, who is leading us toward a union with the gods, and I have gone into it heart and soul. I have joined the march north, hundreds of thousands of us following the leadership of the Senhor, and I feel completely transformed and even redeemed. It’s as though I’ve been purified of all the shady bad things I used to do—forgiven, handed a clean slate. And all because of the vision I had, that weird figure under those two strange suns—”

Jesus, Ferguson thought bleakly. Listen to her. Like a convent girl, she sounds. And these crazy dreams, changing everybody’s lives. The whole world’s gone nuts. Everybody but me.

“—And we are marching toward the Seventh Place where the final redemption will be offered. What I mean to say is that we will probably be passing close to Mendocino in a little while, and I think if you could somehow get yourself out of the Nepenthe and join us, if you could give yourself over to tumbondé and accept the guidance of Senhor Papamacer, you too would find yourself transformed, you would feel all the bitterness and unhappiness that has marked your life fall away from you in a moment, as it has for me, and—”

Sure. Just waltz out of here and sign on with the Senhor, whoever he might be. Was that all that it took? Dr. Lewis has already played this letter, Lacy baby. If there was a chance in a million that I could get away from this place to join you, do you think I’d be hearing you now? Do you?

“—Am confident that the blessing of Maguali-ga will be conferred upon you also, that the shining light of Chungirá-He-Will-Come will enter your soul—if only you would join us, dear Ed, come forth to us as we undertake our pilgrimage toward the Seventh Place—”

He scowled and shut off the cube. What crazy shit. Going off to have a union with the gods? The other one, going back to her family in Hawaii, at least that made a little sense. But this—this crazy stuff—

So he was rid of them both, that was how it looked. All right. All right. There was still Alleluia, who was as good as both of them put together. Somehow there was always another woman better than the last one when he needed her. Ferguson shook his head, trying to clear it. He wondered what Alleluia was doing now. He’d see if he could find her. Maybe a little walk in the woods—their customary midday frolic—

“Ed?” called a voice from outside. “Ed, you there?”

Ferguson frowned. “Who is it?”

“Me, Tom. You got some time free?”

One more lunatic. Well, why not? “Sure,” he said. “Hold on, I’ll let you in.”

He opened the door. Tangle of wild hair, strange wild staring eyes. There was something wrong with this guy, no question about it. Definitely not playing with a full deck. Ferguson stood there uncertainly, wondering what, if anything, was on Tom’s mind.

“Today’s the big day for you,” Tom said.

“Yeah? It is?”

“You remember last week, the first time we talked? When I said I’d show you how to have the space dreams?”

“You said that?”

“In the mess hall, yes. We were sitting with the little priest, and you gave me some bourbon and then—”

“I don’t remember shit about last week,” Ferguson said wearily. “Don’t you know that? I remember that we met somewhere, I know your name’s Tom, all the rest is gone. Picked. That’s what they do in this place, they ream out your mind. You know that, don’t you?”

Tom made a funny little gesture, as though he were dismissing what Ferguson had just said as so much noise. “Well, if you don’t remember, I do. I can feel your misery, friend. And I mean to help you up from all that. Come on, let’s go for a little walk. Into the woods a ways, where it’s quiet, where it’s peaceful. You still haven’t had a space dream, that right?”

“No,” Ferguson said. “As far as I can remember, no, I haven’t. Except—” He paused.

“Except what?”

Ferguson frowned. “I’m not sure. But there was something. Hold on, let me check.” He went into the john so that Tom would not see what he was doing, and touched his ring and requested his file of unusual events, week of October eighth. His own voice, small and quiet, came up out of the recorder, running through all sorts of stuff, anything that had happened to him in the past few days that he had thought might be worth saving from pick. Most of it was just junk. But then came an entry for two nights earlier: “Something a little like a space dream last night, maybe. Just the outside flicker of it, anyway—a feeling that the world was wrapped up in green fog. I think that’s something like one of the dreams they have, the Green World dream. That was all I got, the fog. I don’t think that’s the real thing. But it was a beginning, maybe.”

Tom was looking at him strangely when he came out.

“You talking to yourself in there?”

“Yeah,” Ferguson said. “A little conference with myself. Listen, one of the space dreams, it has to do with green fog, doesn’t it?”

“That’s the Green World. A very beautiful place.”

“I wouldn’t know. All I saw was fog. In my sleep, night before last. Green fog.”

“That’s all? Just fog?”

“Just fog.”

“Okay,” Tom said. “The dreams are trying to break through, then. You’ve made a start. Maybe because I’m right here the influence is stronger. But you see? You can do it just like anybody else, Ed. You come on along with me now. Out into the woods.”

“What for?”

“I told you. I’m going to give you a space dream. But we ought to go where nobody can bother us, because you got to concentrate. Okay, Ed? Come on. Come on, now.”

“It isn’t going to work. You tell me: How can I have a dream when I’m wide awake?”

“Just come with me,” Tom said.

Ferguson shrugged. Nothing to lose, was there? Might as well try it. He nodded to Tom and they went out into the warm autumn morning, around the side of the gymnasium and onto the path into the woods. They passed a couple of people as they walked: Dante Corelli, April Cranshaw, Mug Watson the gardener. Dante smiled and waved to them, the gardener paid no attention, fat April gave them a quick frightened look and immediately turned the other way, as if she had seen a couple of werewolves out for a stroll. Poor nutty fat broad, Ferguson thought. Thing that would make her feel better would be getting laid once or twice. But who would want to, with her? Not me, you betcha. Holy Jesus, not me.

“What about here?” he said to Tom.

“Fine. This is just fine. Sit down here on this rock. Next to me, that’s right. Now the thing you have to know,” Tom said, “is that the universe is full of benevolent beings. Okay? There are more suns than anybody can count, and all of those suns have planets, and those planets have people on them, not people like us, but people all the same. They’re all alive and out there right this minute, going about their lives. Okay? And they know that we’re here. They’re beckoning to us. They love us, every one of us, and they want to gather us to their bosom. You with me, Ed? You got to believe this. Through the vehicle of dreams they have contacted me, and I am the emissary, I am the forerunner who will lead everyone into the stars.” He was leaning close to Ferguson now, his dark strange eyes drilling in hard. “Does this sound like a lot of crazy stuff to you, Ed? You must try to believe. Just for the time being, put aside all your anger, put aside all your hatred, all the deadly stuff that sits inside you like a lump of ice. Tell yourself this guy Tom is crazy, sure, but you’ll pretend, just for a minute, that he knows what he’s talking about. Okay? Okay? You’ll pretend. Nobody’s going to know that Ed Ferguson allowed himself to believe something weird for sixty seconds. Tom won’t tell anybody. Believe me, Tom won’t tell. Tom loves you. Tom wants to help you, Ed, to guide you. Give me your hands, now. Put your hands in mine.”

“What the fuck,” Ferguson said. “Holding hands, now?”

“Believe in me. Believe in them. You want to go on feeling the way you’ve felt all your life? Just for once, let everything go. Let it all open up. Let grace come flooding in. Give me your hands. What do you think, that I’m some sort of queer? Uh-uh. Just trying to help you. The hands, Ed.”

Tentatively, uneasily, Ferguson put out his hands.

“Now relax. Let yourself go. You know how to smile? I don’t think I ever see you smile. Do it now. Fake it, if that’s what you have to do. Just a silly grin, corners of the mouth turn up, don’t worry how silly it is. There. There. That’s it. I want you to keep on smiling. I want you to tell yourself that within you is an immortal spirit created by God, who has loved you every instant of your life. Smile, Ed! Smile! Think of love. Think of the worlds out there waiting for you. Think of the new life that will be yours when you drop the body and make the Crossing. You can be anyone you want up there, you know. You don’t have to be you. You can be tender and loving and kind andnobody will laugh at you for being that way. It’s a new life. Keep smiling, Ed. Smiling. Smiling. That’s it. You don’t look silly at all, you know? You look wonderful. You look transformed. Now give me your hands. Give—me—your—hands—”

Ferguson felt helpless. He wanted to resist, he wanted to put up a wall against whatever it was that was trying to batter its way into his mind, and for a moment he had the wall actually built; but then it collapsed and he was unable to resist in any way. His hands drifted upward like a couple of balloons, and Tom reached for them, grasped them firmly in his, and in the moment of contact something like an electrical force went jolting through Ferguson’s brain. He wanted to pull away but he couldn’t. He had no strength at all. He sat there feeling the power of the galaxies come flooding through him and there was no way he could resist it.

And he saw.

He saw the Green World, with long slender shining people moving delicately around in a glittering glass pavilion. He saw the blue sun, pouring out pulsing streams of fire. He saw the planet of the nine suns.

He saw—he saw—he saw—

A torrent of images. Dizzying him, dazzling him. His mind whirled with the multitude of them. The whole thing, all the dreams at once, world upon world upon world. Landscapes, cities, strange beings, the empires of the stars. He trembled and shook. Nothing would hold still. A strange joy overwhelmed him, a hurricane of bliss. He cried out and toppled, slipping forward, falling practically at Tom’s feet, and lay there sprawled on his belly with his forehead pressed against the damp soil, while the first tears that he could remember shedding came welling up and spilling out in hot streams down his cheeks.

4

THEmoon was a bright gleaming sickle out there over the Pacific and Venus was gleaming right alongside, a cold clean point of white light. It was a clear, mild night, the air free of fog but nevertheless a little soft around the edges, maybe a hint of the oncoming rainy season that was still hanging back, lurking somewhere north of Vancouver. Jaspin said, “What was the name of that little town we passed yesterday?”

“Santa Rosa,” Lacy said. “It used to be a pretty good-sized city.”

“Used to be,” Jaspin murmured. “This is the Land of Used-to-Be.”

They were sitting on the side of a low snubby hill, rounded and curved almost like a breast, that rose out of a broad sloping pasture, a sea of grass. This unspoiled Northern California landscape up here above San Francisco was very different from what he was accustomed to growing up in Los Angeles, where the scars inflicted in the prewar days of vast population and intensive development were everywhere, ineradicable.

Though the moon was only a crescent it cast stark shadows: the gnarled solitary oak trees, upjutting rocks, the rough surface of withered brown grass—everything stood out sharply. The ocean was a couple of kilometers in front of them. Behind them lay the enormous chaos of the tumbondé caravan, practically an ocean itself, an innumerable multitude of vehicles stretching a bewildering distance back toward the inland freeway and beyond. In San Francisco and Oakland the Senhor had gained so many new adherents that the size of the procession was just about doubled now. The Pied Piper of Space, Jaspin thought, scooping up eager followers with both hands as he marched merrily along toward the Seventh Place.

Jaspin let his hand rest lightly on Lacy’s shoulders. This was the first time he had managed to find her in three days, since they had broken camp outside Oakland. He had begun to wonder whether she had turned around and gone back to San Francisco for some reason, even after telling him how much tumbondé meant to her. But she hadn’t, of course. She was simply off somewhere, swept up in the maelstrom of worshippers. The procession was so big now that it was easy to get lost in it. Jaspin had finally spotted her tonight, trying to get through the frantic mob in front of the platform where Senhor Papamacer was supposed to appear. “Forget it,” he had told her. “The Senhor’s changed his mind. He’s having a private communion with Maguali-ga tonight. Let’s go for a walk.” That was two hours ago. Now they were on the coastal side of the hills and the sounds of the caravan were faint in the distance.

“I never realized California was this huge,” Jaspin said. “I mean, what the hell, I’ve seen it on maps. But you don’t understand the size of it until you set out to march up the length of it from the bottom to the top.”

“It’s bigger than a lot of countries,” Lacy said. “Bigger than Germany, England, maybe Spain. Bigger than a lot of important places. That’s what Ed Ferguson told me once. My former partner. Have you ever been to another country, Barry?”

“Me? Mexico, a few times. Doing field research.”

“Mexico’s right next door to where you lived. I mean really another country. Europe, for instance.”

“How would I have gotten to Europe?” he asked. “Magic carpet?”

“People go to Europe from America, don’t they?”

“From the East Coast, maybe. I think they run some ships back and forth. But not from here. How would you do it from here, with the whole dusted zone in between that you’d have to get across?” Jaspin shook his head. “There was a time when people went all over the world in an afternoon, you know. Australia, Europe, South America, wherever, you just got on a plane and you went.”

“They still have planes. I’ve seen them.”

“Sure, planes. Maybe some of them still fly across oceans, I don’t know. But the politics is all wrong now. With the old countries broken up into all sorts of pieces, Republic of This and Free State of That, fifty visas needed to get from here to there—no, it’s a mess, Lacy. Maybe a mess that’s completely beyond fixing by now.”

“When the gate is open and Chungirá-He-Will-Come has arrived, everything will be put to rights,” Lacy said.

“You really believe that?”

She turned her head sharply toward him. “Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do.”

“You don’t entirely, do you, Barry? There’s still something holding back somewhere in you.”

“Maybe.”

“I know there is. But it’s all right. I’ve known people like you before. I was one myself. Cynical, doubting, uncertain—why not? What else would anybody with half a grain of sense be, growing up in a world where you travel half an hour outside the cities and you’re in bandido territory, and everything for a thousand kilometers on the other side of the Rockies is a radioactive mess. But it can all drop away from you, all those doubts, all those wiseacre attitudes, if you just let it happen. You know that.”

“Yes. I do.”

“And we’re at the end of a long bad time, Barry. We’ve come down to the bottom, where there’s hardly any hope left, and suddenly there’s hope. The Senhor has brought it. He tells us the word. The gate will open; the great ones will come among us and make things better for us. That’s what’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen very soon, and then everything will be okay, maybe for the first time ever. Right? Right?”

“You’re a very beautiful woman, Lacy.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“I don’t know. I just thought I’d tell you.”

“You think I am, huh?”

“You have any doubt?”

She laughed. “I’ve heard it before. But I’m never sure. There isn’t a woman alive who thinks she’s really beautiful, no matter what men tell her. I think my hair is very good, my eyes, my nose. But I don’t like my mouth. It spoils everything.”

“You’re wrong.”

“On the other hand I think my body is quite satisfactory.”

“Is it?” he said.

Her eyes were very bright. Jaspin saw the sickle moon reflected in them, and he thought he could even make out the brilliant white point that was Venus. With the arm that was around her shoulders he pulled her toward him; he brought the other arm up and let his hand wander lightly across her breasts. She was wearing a soft green sweater, very thin material, nothing underneath. Yes, he thought, quite satisfactory. He wanted to put his head between her breasts and rest there. Vaguely he wondered where Jill was, what she was doing now. His wife. A farce that was. He hadn’t even seen her in two days. Apparently she had lost interest in the Inner Host, or more likely they had lost interest in her; but there were plenty of others around here to amuse her. He’d been right about her the first time: a drifter, a waif, scruffy, useless. Lacy was a different story: shrewd, wise, a woman who had seen a lot and who understood what she had seen. If in her earlier life she’d been a con artist, a swindler, so what? So what? You were a con artist yourself, Jaspin told himself, remembering his UCLA days when he’d made a career that hadn’t amounted to much more than hastily patching together his lectures out of other people’s ideas. A scholar, you think? No, a phony. You might just as well have been peddling real estate on Betelgeuse Five. But none of that mattered any more. We will soon all be changed, he thought. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. He began to pull her sweater upward. Smiling, Lacy moved his hands away and drew it up herself, and tossed it aside. Her jeans followed a moment later. She seemed almost to glow in the moonlight, skin very pale, curling red hair standing out luminously against it.

“Come on,” she whispered hoarsely.

They moved close together. This felt strange to him, dreamlike, very beautiful and very peculiar both at once. He had never been much of a romantic, especially when it came to this; but somehow it seemed different this time, unique, brand new. Was it the imminence of the coming of the gods? That had to be it. Here on this hillside north of San Francisco under the moon and the stars, Venus shining bright: he knew that the bad time was ending, and he could feel all the raw and pimpled places on his soul beginning to heal. Yes. Yes. Chungirá-He-Will-Come, he will come. And when I stand forth to face him, I will not be alone.

Indeed we have all been changed, Jaspin thought. In a moment. In the twinkling of an eye.

“You know what?” he said. “I love you.”

“Which means you’re finally learning how to love yourself,” Lacy said. “That’s the first step in loving someone else.” She smiled. “You know what? Me too. I love you, Barry.” That was the last thing that either of them said for quite a while. Then after a time Lacy said, “Wait a minute, okay? Let me get on top. Is that all right with you? Ah. That’s it, Barry. Right. Oh, yes, right. ”

5

“Proximity, that definitely appears to be the key thing,” Elszabet said. “Or at least one of the key things.” She was in her office, early afternoon, looking up at Dan Robinson, who was leaning in a loose-jointed way against the wall by the window. He seemed to be all arms and legs, standing like that. The sky, as much of it as was visible through the tiny north-facing window, was graying up, heavy clouds beginning to move in. She said, “You were right. If what happened to April is any indicator, proximity has to be a significant factor. I’m prepared to concede that now.”

“You are. Well, that’s something.”

“How’s she doing?”

“She’ll be okay,” Robinson said. He had just come from the infirmary. “We’ve got her paxed out, hundred milligrams. Lordy, that girl is big! She had a little surge, is all. Rush of blood to the head, essentially.”

“More like a hot flash, I’d say. You should have seen her. Red as a beet. As a tomato.”

Robinson chuckled. “Some tomato. Exactly what happened, anyway?”

“Well, as you and I discussed, I cooked things up so there’d be an occasion for her to come into my office while Tom was here. The moment she saw him, she started to hyperventilate.”

“Hippopotamus in heat?”

“ Dan. ”

“Just a flash image. Sorry.”

“It wasn’t a sexual thing with her, I’m pretty certain. Even though she was blushing like a girl who’d been goosed on her first date. Tom doesn’t seem to arouse sexual feelings in people, did you notice that?”

“Not in me, at any rate,” Robinson said.

“No, I wouldn’t think so. Not in anyone, apparently. He seems-well, asexual, somehow. He’s very masculine but nevertheless it’s hard to imagine him with a woman, wouldn’t you say? There are men like that. But he stirred some sort of excitement in April, and it was a fast change of breathing, mottled blotches on her cheeks, then this bright red flush.”

“Like an allergic reaction. Adrenaline surge.”

“Absolutely. She weaved around a little and told me she was feeling upset. About what, I said, and she said it was on account of her dreams, her visions, that lately they were coming much more closely together and they were more vivid.”

“Proximity effect. Tom.”

“Said she was having trouble thinking straight. Sometimes hard for her to tell which was the real world and which was the dream.”

“You made a similar remark last night.”

“Yes,” Elszabet said. “I remember. Hearing it from April was—well, disturbing. Her speech became slurred and she swayed back and forth. Then she started to pass out. Tom and I caught her just in time and managed to lower her to the floor. The rest you know.”

“Okay,” Robinson said. “Seems pretty conclusive that Tom’s presence here is hyping up the hallucination level.”

“Yet the dreams have been experienced across enormous distances. Proximity seems to intensify, but it’s not essential.”

“I suppose.”

“We’ve got the distribution charts. Space dreams reported simultaneously from all over the place. If he’s the source then he must be a tremendously powerful transmitter.”

“Transmitter of dreams,” Robinson said softly, shaking his head. “Doesn’t all this sound completely buggy to you, Elszabet?”

“Let’s just work with it,” she said. “A hypothesis. He boils with images, fantasies, hallucinations. He boils over. Broadcasts them from the Rockies to the Pacific, San Diego to Vancouver, as far as we know. Susceptibility varies from practically none at all to extreme. Perhaps some correlation with emotional disturbance level… victims of Gelbard’s syndrome appear to pick up the stuff much more readily than others. But that’s not a complete correlation, because people like Naresh Patel and Dante Corelli are definitely not emotionally disturbed, and they’ve been getting the space dreams almost as long as some of the patients, whereas someone like Ed Ferguson, who is a patient, has proved completely resistant to—”

“Do you really think Ferguson has Gelbard’s, Elszabet?”

“He’s got something, I’d say.”

“He’s got a bad case of scruple deficiency, that’s all. The more I observe him, the more convinced I become that the guy’s simply a con artist who wangled treatment here because it sounded better to him than being tossed in jail for Rehab Two. Now, if you want to tell me that anybody as casual about matters of morality as Ferguson mustipso facto be emotionally disturbed, you might have a case, but even so, I think—” Robinson paused. “Which reminds me, have you run a check on whether Ferguson’s showing any proximity effects? He had breakfast with Tom last week, and he’s been seen talking with him a couple of times since.”

Elszabet said, “I had Naresh run through Ferguson’s pick reports for space-dream symptomata. Evidently there have been no dreams per se, but the night before last Ferguson did turn up with a trace of something. Just the merest shadowy outline of a bit of Green World imagery. I tried to call him in for a conference this afternoon but he wasn’t around. Went off for a walk in the woods, they told me.”

“Another escape attempt, you think?”

“No, although I’m having him monitored closely anyway. But he’s out there with Tom. Been out there quite a while.”

Robinson’s eyes narrowed. “A very odd couple, those two. The saint and the sinner.”

“You think Tom’s a saint?”

“Just a quick glib phrase.”

“Because I do. It’s an idea that’s been tickling at me the last few days. He’s so strange, so innocent—like a holy fool, like the chosen of God, you know? Like an Old Testament prophet. Saint’s not a bad label for him either. He wanders in the wilderness—what’s the line, ‘despised and rejected of men—’ ”

“’A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.’”

“That’s it,” she said. “And all the time he’s carrying inside him this tremendous gift, this power, this blessing—he’s like an ambassador from all the worlds of the universe—”

“Hey,” Robinson said. “Hold on a little, there. A saint, you say. A messiah, actually, is what you seem to mean. But now you’re talking as though the stuff he’s giving out, if indeed he’s the one who’s giving it out, is an authentic vision of actual and literal other worlds.”

“Maybe it is, Dan. I don’t know.”

“Are you serious?”

She tapped the little mnemone capsule on her desk. “I’ve been interviewing him. He’s been filling me in on the background of the places in the dreams—the names of the worlds, the races that inhabit them, the empires, the dynasties, fragments of the history, a whole vast intricate interwoven structure of galactic civilization, tremendously dense in detail, internally consistent so far as I’ve been able to follow what he’s saying, which I confess is not really very far. But what emerges nevertheless is very damned convincing, Dan. He’s definitely not improvising. He’s lived with that stuff a long time.”

“So he has a rich fantasy life. He’s spent twenty-five years dreaming up those details. Why shouldn’t it be intricate? Why shouldn’t it be convincing? But does that mean those empires and dynasties actually exist?”

“The things he says coincide in every detail with things that I’ve experienced myself while undergoing space dreams.”

“No. Not relevant, Elszabet. If he’s transmitting images and concepts and you and a lot of other people are receiving them, that still doesn’t mean that what he’s transmitting is anything but hallucinatory in origin.”

“Granted,” Elszabet said. “Okay, we have a phenomenon here. But of what kind? If Tom is indeed the source, then it would appear that he possesses some sort of extrasensory power that allows him to transmit images to other people by mind-to-mind contact.”

“Sounds a little farfetched. But not inconceivable.”

“I can make out a valid case for the ESP angle. He told me this morning that he was born right after the outbreak of the Dust War, and that his mother was in Eastern Nevada when she was carrying him. Right on the edge of the radiation zone.”

“Telepathic mutation, is that what you’re saying?”

“It’s a reasonable hypothesis, isn’t it?”

“Bill Waldstein should only hear all this stuff. He thinks I’m prone to cooking up wild theories,” Dan said.

“This one doesn’t seem so wild to me. If there’s an explanation for Tom’s abilities, a light touch of radiation at the time of conception isn’t the most fantastic possible idea.”

“All right. A telepathic mutant, then.”

“A phenomenon, anyway. Okay. Now, as to the content of the material that he’s producing, perhaps he’s in the grip of some powerful fantasy of his own invention that by virtue of his extrasensory abilities he’s able to scatter around to any susceptible mind within reach. Or, on the other hand, perhaps he’s uniquely sensitive to messages being beamed our way telepathically by actual civilizations in the stars.”

“You want to believe that very much, don’t you, Elszabet?”

“Believe what?”

“That what Tom is transmitting is real.”

“Maybe I do. Does that worry you, Dan?”

He studied her for a long moment. “A little,” he said at last.

“You think I’m going around the bend?”

“I didn’t say that. I do think you’ve got a powerful need to find out that the Green World and the Nine Suns planet and the rest are actual places.”

“And therefore that I’m being drawn into Tom’s psychosis?”

“And therefore that you’re a little more deeply committed to escapist fantasies than might be altogether healthy,” he said.

“Well, I feel the same way, okay?” Elszabet told him. “If you’re worried about me, that makes two of us. But it’s such a damned attractive notion, isn’t it, Dan? These beautiful other worlds beckoning to us?”

“Dangerous. Seductive.”

“Seductive, yes. But sometimes it’s necessary to let yourself get seduced. We’ve got such a shitty deal, Dan, this poor broken-down civilization of ours, living like this in the ruins and remnants of the prewar world. All these shabby little countries that used to be pieces of the United States, and the anarchy that’s going on outside California and even inside a lot of it, and the sense that everybody has that things are just going to go on getting worse and worse, uglier and uglier, shabbier and shabbier, that progress has absolutely come to an end and that we’re simply going to keep slipping farther back into barbarism—is it any wonder that if I start dreaming that I’m living on a beautiful green world where everything is graceful and civilized and elegant I’m going to want to find out that it really exists? And that we’re soon going to be able to go to that green world and live there? It’s such an irresistible fantasy, Dan. Surely we need some fantasies like that to sustain us.”

“Go there?” he said, looking startled. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t tell you Tom’s whole notion. When I play you his capsule, you’ll hear it. It’s an apocalyptic concept: the Last Days are at hand, and we’re going to drop our bodies—that’s his phrase, drop our bodies—and be translated to the worlds of the space dreams and live there forever and ever, amen.”

Robinson whistled. “Is that what he’s peddling?”

“The Time of Crossing, he calls it. Yes.”

“The opposite of what this other bunch, these Brazilian voodoo people, are saying. The way they have it, the space gods are coming to us, isn’t that what Leo Kresh told us? Whereas Tom—”

Elszabet’s telephone made a little bleeping sound. “Excuse me,” she said, and glanced behind her at the data wall to see who was calling. Dr. Kresh, the wall screen said, calling from San Diego.

They exchanged looks of surprise. “Speak of the devil,” Elszabet murmured, and thumbed the phone. Kresh’s face blossomed on the screen. He had gone back to Southern California late the previous week, and right now he seemed as though he had been through some changes since his visit to Nepenthe: he was uncharacteristically rumpled-looking, flushed, plainly excited.

“Dr. Lewis,” he blurted, “I’m glad I was able to reach you. Quite an astonishing development—”

“Dr. Robinson is with me here,” Elszabet said.

“Yes, that’s fine. He’ll want to hear this too, I know.”

“What’s happened, Dr. Kresh?”

“It’s the most amazing thing. Especially in view of some of the ideas I heard Dr. Robinson propose while I was up there. In relation to Project Starprobe, I mean. Are you aware, Dr. Robinson, Dr. Lewis, that there’s a ground station in Pasadena that has been tuned all these years to receive signals from the Starprobe vehicle? It’s operated by Cal Tech, and somehow they’ve kept it maintained, just in case—”

“And there’s been a signal?” Robinson said.

“It began coming in late last night. As you know, Dr. Robinson, the Starprobe hypothesis had occurred to me independently, and in the course of my investigation I learned about the Cal Tech facility and established contact with it. So when the signal began arriving—it’s a tight-beam radio transmission at 1390 megacycles per second, coming to us from Proxima Centauri via a series of relay stations previously established at intervals of—”

“For Christ’s sake,” Robinson broke in, “are you going to tell us what it was that came in or aren’t you?”

Kresh looked flustered. “Sorry. You understand, this has been a very confusing experience for me, for everyone—” He caught his breath. “I’ll put the images on the screen. You’re aware, I think, that the probe was programmed to enter the Proxima Centauri system, scan for planets that might be habitable, take up orbit around any that it found and drop down into the atmosphere of any planet that showed clear indication of life-forms. The nine hours of transmission that have come in so far actually cover a real-time period of about two months. This is Proxima Centauri, viewed at a distance of point-five astronomical units.”

Kresh disappeared from the screen. In his place appeared the image of a small, pallid-looking red star. Two other stars, much brighter, were visible in a corner of the screen.

“The red dwarf is Proxima,” Kresh said. “Those are its companion stars, Alpha Centauri A and B, which are similar in spectral type to our sun. The Cal Tech people tell me that all three stars appear to have planetary systems. However, the Starprobe vehicle found the planets of Proxima to be of the greatest interest, and so—”

On the screen now appeared a featureless green ball.

“My God,” Robinson muttered.

Kresh said, “This is the second planet of the Proxima Centauri system, located point-eighty-seven astronomical units from the star. Proxima Centauri is a flare star, I’m told, subject to fluctuations of brightness that would be dangerous to life-forms at any closer range. But the Starprobe vehicle detected signs of life on Proxima Two, and reconformed itself for a planetary approach—”

On the screen, thick swirling mists, heavy, impenetrable-looking. Green.

Green.

“Oh, my God,” Robinson said again. Elszabet sat tensely, hands balled into fists, teeth digging against her lower lip.

Another shot. Below the cloud cover.

“You will see,” said Kresh, “that even though Proxima Centauri is a red star, the cloud cover is so dense that from the surface of the second planet it appears green. The cloud cover also, the Cal Tech people tell me, sets up a sort of greenhouse effect to keep the temperature of the planet within a range suitable for the metabolism of living creatures, despite the low energy output of the primary star Proxima Centauri—”

Another shot. Low orbit now, virtually skimming the clouds. High-resolution cameras coming into play. A focus shift; then new images, fantastically detailed. A gentle landscape, lush green hills, shining green lakes. Buildings down below, mysterious structures of disturbingly alien design, unexpected angles, baffling architectural convolutions. Another increment of camera capacity. Figures moving about on a lawn: long, tapering, frail-looking, with crystalline bodies bright as mirrors, rows of faceted eyes set on each of the four sides of their diamond-shaped heads. “My God,” Dan Robinson said over and over again. Elszabet did not move, scarcely even breathed, would not let herself so much as blink. That is the Misilyne Triad, she thought. Those must be the Suminoors, and those, the Gaarinar. Oh. Oh. Oh. She was numb with awe and wonder. She wanted to cry; she wanted to drop to her knees and pray; she wanted to run outside and cry hallelujah. But she was unable to move. She remained perfectly still, frozen with astonishment, as image succeeded green image on the screen. Everything unbearably strange. Everything bizarrely alien.

Everything also completely and utterly and entirely familiar, as though she were looking at photographs of the town where she had lived when she was a child.