Tom O'Bedlam

1

Jaspin hunched forward, gripping the stick as tightly as he could, using body English to keep the car from flipping over or skidding into a tree. There was no road any more. They were driving across slick slippery sodden grass, some sort of lawn churned into a quagmire by the wheels of the vehicles ahead of him. The rain was coming down so hard it flowed across the windshield in thick streams.

Jill said, “I’m sure this is where my sister is. Find a place to park and I’m going to get out and look for her.”

“Park? With umpteen thousand cars coming right behind me?”

“I don’t care. You pull up by one of those buildings. I’m going to go in there and get her. She isn’t right in the head. If I don’t protect her, somebody’s going to find her and rape her or maybe kill her. This isn’t a procession any more, Barry. It’s a crazy mob now.”

“So I notice.”

“Well, you stop and let me go find April.”

“Sure,” he said, nudging the brake panel. “You can get out right here and go find her.”

The car squiggled over the oozing mud and slid to a stop practically up against some big leafy bush. He kept the engine running.

“Park by one of the buildings,” Jill said. “Not here.”

“I’m not parking anywhere,” Jaspin told her. “I’m going to try to circle around and find some road out of here up that way. But you go on. You go look for your sister.”

“You’re not going to stop?”

“Look,” he said, “this is a dead end, you see? Christ only knows why the Senhor turned in this way, but what we have is some buildings right in front of us and a goddamned redwood forest behind the buildings, and in back of us we’ve got the whole tumbondé pilgrimage rumbling forward like a herd of maddened dinosaurs. I stay in here, I’m going to get squeezed flat up against those buildings or those trees. So you go look for your sister. I’m going to make a left turn up that dirt road and keep on going as far as I can, and if the road gives out I’m going to get out of my car and go on foot. Because what’s going to happen in here this morning is the Black Hole of Calcutta. People are going to get trampled by the thousands. Now you get out and you go look for your sister, if that’s what you want. Come on. Out.”

She gave him a venomous look. “How will I find you again?”

“That’s your problem.” Jaspin pointed off to the left. “You head that way, and maybe when things calm down a little I’ll come back and look for you. Maybe. Go on, now.”

“You bastard,” she said. She glared at him again. Then she shook her head and got out of the car. He watched her for a moment, running off toward the old weatherbeaten gray wooden buildings just ahead. Instantly she was soaked through. She looked like a giant half-drowned chicken sprinting through the rain.

He wondered about Lacy.

She had her own car, somewhere back in the main body of the procession. Not too far back, he hoped. He had told her last night, when the forecast of rain came in, that she should try to move forward, drive as close to the front as she could. He knew the rain was going to scramble everything up, though he hadn’t expected this, the sudden swerve off Highway One onto the county road, the blundering crashing intrusion on this peaceful rural neighborhood. It was impossible to figure what, if anything, the Senhor had had in mind, turning in this direction. He had just turned. There had been energy walls blocking their way, and then for some reason the walls went down and everybody went rolling right on. And now here they were. What a lousy mess, Jaspin thought.

Jill disappeared between two of the buildings. Two to one I’ll never see her again, he told himself. Well, what the hell. He got the car moving again. He felt the wheels digging ruts in the lawn and heard sucking sounds as they pulled free of the muck. Easy, easy—there, he was on a gravel road now, heading up along the front of a shallow-crested hill—just keep your head down and go right on slithering until you’re out of here, kid—

But there was no place for him to go. The gravel road ended at a kind of garbage dump, and there was just what looked like a vegetable garden on the far side and then the forest. Dead end no matter where you went. Jaspin looked back and saw hundreds of cars and vans piling up insanely in the triangular area between the two groups of buildings, with more and more and more coming on from the west. The ones to the rear didn’t seem to realize that there was no road in front, and kept on going, grinding blithely on into what was sure to be the biggest vehicular cataclysm in human history.

It didn’t make sense to drive back down the gravel road and join the frolic. Jaspin abandoned his car at the edge of the vegetable garden and made his way through the downpour as far as an enormous wide-branching tree. Standing under it, he was able to keep more or less dry, and he had a good view of the carnage.

They were just ramming helplessly into each other down there, the big vans going right up over some of the small cars. Like dinosaurs, yes, Jaspin thought, exactly like a herd of dinosaurs running amok. He saw the Senhor’s bus and the bus of the Inner Host right in the middle of it all. Banners were waving in the rain on top of the Senhor’s bus, and someone had mounted the statues of Narbail and Rei Ceupassear on the hood. The giant papier-mâché images were beginning to melt.

Jaspin wished he’d been driving with Lacy instead of Jill. At least that way he would know where she was, now. Jill probably wouldn’t have cared. But the Senhor did. The Senhor had found out that he was getting it on with someone other than his divinely chosen wife Jill, and the Senhor hadn’t liked it. Bacalhau himself had conveyed that information to Jaspin: You touch the red-haired woman, you make the Senhor very angry. So Jaspin and Lacy had been going easy the last couple of days. It was never wise to make the Senhor angry. And now Lacy was down there lost in all that madness and—

No. There she was. Clearly visible, red hair blazing in the midst of a crowd of maybe a thousand people who had left their cars and were lurching around chaotically on the lawn.

“Lacy! Lacy! ”

Somehow she heard him. He saw her looking about. He jumped up and down, wigwagging frantically until she saw him.

“Barry?”

“Get out of there,” he called. She started up the gravel road toward him, and he ran to meet her. She was drenched, her tight neat ringlets uncurling, her hair plastered to her skull. Jaspin held her for a moment, trying to steady her. She was quivering, whether from fright or chill he wasn’t sure.

Her eyes looked wild. “What happened? Why did we come in here?”

“God only knows. But this better be the Seventh Place, because we aren’t going to go any farther, for damned sure.” Sadly he said, “Holy Jesus, what a catastrophe this is turning into.”

“Do you know what this place is?”

“Some kind of boarding school, you think?”

“It’s the Nepenthe Center,” she said. “The mindpick place. I saw the sign when we went through the gate. This is the place where my old partner Ed Ferguson was undergoing treatment.”

“Well, it’s out of business as of right now,” said Jaspin. “It’s going to be a complete ruin in a little while. Look how they’re just swarming right through it.”

“I’ve got to find Ed,” Lacy said.

“Are you kidding?”

“I mean it. He’s probably wandering around dazed in that mob. I want to get him out and up here before he gets hurt. He lives in some kind of dormitory. We ought to be able to find it.”

“Lacy, it’s crazy to go down there.”

“Ed may be in trouble.”

“But is he worth risking your life for? I thought you said he was a louse.”

“He was my partner, Barry. Louse or not, I need to try to get him out. It’s not that I love him or even like him. But I can’t just stand by and watch this place get torn apart with him in it and not try to help him.”

“Like Jill,” Jaspin said. “Jill’s in there already, looking for her sister.”

“I’m going in there too. You going to wait here?”

“No,” Jaspin said. “I’ll come with you. What the hell.”

2

Buffalo had been saying all morning, We got to get out of here, Charley, that mob is coming, that mob is going to stampede right through this place. But Charley had said no, let’s hold on a little longer, Tom’s got to be around here somewhere and I want to take him.

Stidge couldn’t understand either of them. That Buffalo, he was just a shit-ass. He looked real tough, sure, but inside him there was just brown shit from head to knees. You hit a little trouble, first thing he wants to do is clear out. Charley, now, he wasn’t really afraid of anything—say that for him—but sometimes it was real hard to figure him. Like this thing he had for the looney, Tom. Take him along, all the way from the far side of the Valley, clear to San Francisco, now up here to Mendo, for what? For goddamned what? Gives me the creeps, Stidge thought, just looking at that guy’s eyes. And now Charley waiting around in the forest in the rain trying to find him, take him along again. Made no sense at all.

Charley said, “They had energy walls up. Then they took them down. I wonder why they did a thing like that. They’re wide open, now.

“Maybe Tom did it,” Buffalo said. “Found the generator and shut it down, let them all come running right through.”

“Why’d he want to do that?” Charley asked. “I don’t think he would. Must have been someone else, or maybe the power just conked out on its own. Tom likes this place. He wouldn’t want a mob running over it.”

Stidge said, “Man’s crazy. Crazy man would do anything.”

Charley grinned. “You think Tom’s crazy, Stidge? Shows how little you know.”

“Says he’s crazy himself, out of his own mouth. And the visions he has—”

“Crazy like a fox,” said Buffalo.

“Yeah,” Charley said. “Listen, Stidge, those visions of his, they’re not crazy, they’re true visions. He sees right into the stars. That make any sense to you? Nah, I bet it don’t. But I tell you, he’s not crazy. Only way he can keep from scaring people with that power of his, he has to say he’s crazy. But you can’t understand stuff like that, can you? All you understand is hurting people. Times I wish I never met you, Stidge.”

“All I understand,” Stidge said, “is that one of these days that Tom’s going to bug me too much, I going to put a spike in him. All summer long you been riding me, Stidge don’t do this, Stidge don’t do that, Stidge let Tom alone. I’m pretty sick of your Tom, you hear me, Charley?”

“And I’m pretty sick of you,” Charley said. “I tell you one more time, anything happen to Tom, you’re done, Stidge. You’re done.” He turned toward Buffalo. “You know what we ought to do? We ought to take one more look around those buildings, find Tom, pick up anything light enough to carry that might be worth something and get the hell away from here.”

“Yeah,” Buffalo said. “Before they come rampaging into the woods and tip over our van or something.”

Stidge said, “Instead of Tom, the one we ought to find is that woman, the tall one we saw before. Or that hot-looking one who was out on the road with the limping guy. Find one of them, bring her along, that’s what makes sense to me.”

“Count on you, saying something like that,” said Charley. “Just what we need, kidnap a woman now. Tom’s what we want. Find Tom, get away from here. You clear on that, Stidge?”

“I don’t know why the hell—”

“You clear on that, Stidge?”

“Yeah,” Stidge said. “I hear you, man.”

“I hope you do. Come on, now.”

“You two go look for Tom,” Stidge said. “I got another idea. You see that bus out there, the one with the cockeyed statues on top, all the flags? I think I’ll take a sniff in there. I bet it’s the treasure bus.”

“What treasure you talking about?” Charley asked.

“The marchers’ treasure. I bet it’s their holy bus, all kinds of rubies and emeralds and diamonds in there. I’ll just take a little look. That okay with you, Charley? While you’re hunting around for Tom?”

Charley was silent a moment. Finally he nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Grab yourself a sack of rubies.”

3

Just as Jill stepped up on the porch of the long wooden building that she thought might be the dormitory, a lanky dark-haired man came running out of it and slammed straight into her. They collided with a solid thunk and went bouncing back from each other, and they stood there for a moment looking at each other, both of them a little stunned.

He was wearing a white coat and had the look of someone who might be on the staff. “Sorry,” Jill said. “Hey, can you tell me, is this where they keep the patients?”

“Get out of my way,” he said. He had a sort of crazed look in his eye.

“I just want to know, is this where—”

“What do you want here? What are all you people doing here? Get out. ” He waved his arms at her. It was the craziest thing she had ever seen.

“I’m looking for my sister. April Cranshaw. She’s a patient here and I want to—”

But he was gone, sprinting past her like a maniac, disappearing into the storm. All right, Jill thought. Be like that. See if I care. She wondered how crazy the patients here must be, if that was what the staff was like. Man looked like a doctor, maybe a psychiatrist. They were all crazy anyway. Of course, the fact that thousands of cars had just driven onto the grounds and the whole Mongol horde was charging around on the lawn out there might have upset him a little.

She went into the building. Yes, it did look like a dorm. Bulletin board up, notices posted, a lot of little rooms opening off the hallway.

“April?” she called. “April, honey, it’s Jill. I came to get you, April. Come on out, if you’re in here. April? April?”

She looked in one room after another. Empty. Empty. Empty. Then in a room down at the end of the corridor she saw a man sitting on the floor, but he was either drunk or dead, she couldn’t tell which. She shook him, but he didn’t wake up. “Hey, you. You! I’m trying to find my sister.” But it was like talking to a chair. She started to go out, but then she heard sounds coming from the bathroom, someone singing or humming. “Hello?” Jill said. “Whoever’s in there.”

“You want to use the bathroom? I can’t let you. I have to be in it. I’m supposed to stay in here until Dr. Waldstein comes back, or Dr. Lewis.”

“April? That you, April?”

“Dr. Lewis?”

“This is Jill. For Christ’s sake, your sister Jill. Open the door, April.”

“I have to stay in here until Dr. Waldstein or Dr.—”

“So stay in there. But open the door. I need to pee, April. Do you want me to pee in my pants? Open it.”

A moment of silence. Then the door opened.

“Jill?”

It was like the voice of a little girl. But the woman who was behind it was like a mountain. Jill had forgotten how huge her older sister was; either that or April had really been piling it on since she’d come up here. Some of both, Jill thought. April looked weird, too—weirder than Jill remembered, totally spaced-out, her eyes gleaming and strange, her face very white, the fat cheeks sagging.

“Are you here to help me make the Crossing?” April asked. “Mr. Ferguson made the Crossing a little while ago. And Tom says we all will. We’ll go to the stars today. I don’t know if I want to go to the stars, Jill. Is that what happens today?”

“What happens today is that I’m going to get you out of this place,” Jill said. “It isn’t safe here any more. Give me your hand. Here. Come on, April. Nice April. Pretty April.”

“I’m supposed to stay in the bathroom. Dr. Waldstein is coming right back and he’ll give me an injection so I’ll feel better.”

“I just saw Dr. Waldstein running like a lunatic in the other direction,” Jill said. “Come on. You can trust me. Let’s go for a little walk, April.”

“Where will they send me? To the Nine Suns? To the Green World?”

“You know about them?” Jill asked, surprised.

“I see them every night. I can almost see them now. The Sphere of Light. The Blue Star.”

“That’s right. Maguali-ga will open the gate. Chungirá-He-Will-Come, he will come. There’s nothing to worry about. Give me your hand, April.”

“Dr. Waldstein—”

“Dr. Waldstein asked me to get you and bring you outside,” Jill said. “I just spoke with him. Tall man, dark hair, white coat? He said, Tell April I won’t have time to come right back, so you get her.”

“He said that?” April smiled. She put her hand in Jill’s and took a step or two out of the bathroom. Come on, April. Come on. That’s right. Jill led her sister across the room, past the dead or unconscious man sitting on the floor, toward the door. Out into the hall, down the corridor. They were almost to the exit when the outside door opened and two people came running in. Barry, for Christ’s sake. And that red-headed woman of his.

“Jill?”

“I found my sister. This is April.”

“Then this is the patient dormitory?” the redhead asked.

“Right. You looking for someone too?”

“My partner. I told you, he was a patient here.”

“Nobody else around in here. No, wait, there’s one guy. In the last room on the left, down the hall. I think he’s drunk, though. Might even be dead. Sitting on the floor, big grin on his face. What’s happening outside?”

“The Inner Host is trying to get everything calm,” Jaspin said. “They’ve fanned out through the crowd, carrying the holy images. It’s almost a riot but they may just be able to quiet things down.”

“And the Senhor? The Senhora?”

“In their bus, far as I know.”

Jill said, “The Senhor ought to come out. That’s the only way to quiet things.”

“I’m going down the hall,” the redheaded woman said.

Jill told Jaspin, “You ought to go to the Senhor, ask him to speak to the crowd. Otherwise you know it’s all going to turn berserk, and then what happens to the pilgrimage? Go talk to him, Barry. He’ll listen to you.”

“He won’t listen to anyone. You know that.” From down the hall the woman called, “Can you come here, Barry? I found Ed, but I don’t think he’s alive.”

“He made the Crossing,” April said, like someone talking in her sleep.

“I better go,” Jaspin said. “What are you going to do?”

“Take April, find a safe place, wait for everything to settle down.”

“Isn’t this a safe place right here?”

“Not when ten thousand people decide to come in out of the rain all at once. Old rickety building like this, they’ll knock it right over.

The redheaded woman was returning, now. “He is dead,” she said. “I wonder what happened. Poor Ed. He was a bastard, but still—dead?—”

“Come on, April,” Jill said. “We got to get out of here.”

She led her sister around Jaspin and out on the dormitory porch. The scene in front of her was wilder than ever. Cars were stacking up like flood debris. People everywhere, yelling, bewildered, churning around like bees in a hive. No room for anybody to move: they were all butted up one against the next. In the center of everything was the Senhor’s bus. In front of it the eleven members of the Inner Host could be seen, all decked out in their high tumbondé drag and carrying the soggy images of the great gods. They were moving slowly forward, cutting a path through the throng. People were trying to give way before them but it was hard: they had no place to go.

Then Jill saw a stocky little man with a big mop of red hair climb up the side of the Senhor’s bus, do something to the protective screen on one of the windows that somehow disconnected it, and go wriggling inside.

“Oh, Jesus,” she said. “Barry? Barry? Come on out here! It’s important!”

Jaspin poked his head out the door. “What is it?”

“The Senhor,” Jill said. “I just saw some kind of scratcher break into his bus. The Host is out marching the statues around, and nobody’s guarding the Senhor, and somebody just broke into the bus. Come on. We’ve got to do something.”

“Us?”

“Who else? April, you stay here until we get back, you understand? Don’t go anywhere. Not anywhere at all.” Jill beckoned fiercely to Jaspin. “Come on, will you? Come on. ”

4

Tom felt the ecstasy rising and rising and rising. It was as though all the worlds were coming to him at once, the light of a thousand suns illuminating his spirit, Ellullilimiilu and Nine Suns and the Double Kingdom and all the myriad capitals of the Poro and the Zygerone and the Kusereen flooding through him at the same time. It seemed to him that even the awesome ancient godlike Theluvara themselves were warming his soul from their eyrie at the farthest reaches of space.

He had done it. He had initiated the Time of the Crossing at last. He still quivered with the power of the sensation that had engulfed him at the moment when he had felt the soul of that man, that Ed, rising from his body and arching upward, soaring toward its destination in the distant galaxies.

Now, ablaze with joy, Tom wandered like a Blade of the Imperium through the Center, from one deserted building to the next. Two of his followers were with them, two of those who had loaned him their strength when he had lifted that man, that Ed, to his Crossing. But there had been two others when they had done that, the Mexican man and the heavy-set woman, and they had disappeared when all the shouting and excitement began.

I need to find them, Tom thought. I may not be strong enough with just these two to undertake the rest of the Crossings.

The strength that he had received from the other four, when he had sent the man to the stars, had been essential. That he knew. It had taken immense energy to achieve the Crossing. In the instant of the separation of Ferguson’s body and his soul Tom had been able to feel every particle of his own vitality at risk. It had been like the dimming of the lights in a room when too much energy was required at one time. And then the other four, the Mexican and the heavy-set woman and the artificial woman and the priest, had come to his rescue, had sent their own power roaring through the chain of linked hands, and Tom had been able to accomplish the Crossing for Ferguson. There were other Crossings now to do. He had to find the missing two.

Prowling from building to building, he scarcely noticed the rain. He was vaguely aware of the great mob of strangers that had erupted into the Center grounds and was crashing about in the open space between the dormitory and the staff cabins, but that didn’t seem important. Whoever they were, they meant nothing to Tom. In a little while everything would be calm again, and all these frantic strangers would be setting forth on their journeys to the stars.

A voice at Tom’s elbow said, “It was the real thing, wasn’t it? The actual Crossing?”

Tom looked down and saw the priest. “Yes.”

“Where did he go, do you know? Ferguson.”

“The Double Kingdom,” Tom said. “I’m certain of it.”

“And which is that, then?”

“One sun is blue, and one is red. It is a world of the Poro, who are subject to the Zygerone. Who are ruled by the Kusereen, who are the highest masters of all, the kings of the universe. They have gathered him in. He is among them at this moment.”

“Already there, do you think?” Alleluia asked. “So far away?”

“The journey is an instant one,” Tom said. “When we Cross, we move at the speed of thought.”

“One sun is blue, one is red,” Father Christie murmured. “I know that place! I’ve seen it!”

“You’ll see them all,” said Tom. He spread out his arms to them. Down below on the lawn, cars and trucks were smashing against each other with idiotic fury. “Come, follow me. We’ll go out there and find other people who are ready to Cross, and we’ll guide them to their new homes. But first we have to see where our other helpers have gone. The fat woman, the Mexican—”

“There’s April,” Father Christie said. “Outside the dormitory.”

Tom nodded. She was standing on the porch in the rain, turning from side to side, smiling uncertainly. Tom ran over to her. “We need you. For making the rest of the Crossings.”

“I’m supposed to wait here for my sister.”

“No,” Tom said. “Come with us.”

“Jill said she’d be right back. She went down that way, where all the people are running around and shouting. Are you going to send me to some planet?”

“Afterward,” Tom said. “First you’ll help to send others. And then, when I can spare you, I’ll send you after them.” He reached for her hand. Her fingers were plump and limp and cold, like sausages. Her hand lay squidlike in his. He tugged at her. “Come. Come. There’s work for us to do.” In a slow shuffling way she followed him out into the rain.

5

The lawn in front of the dorm was a sea of mud. Jaspin, sloshing along behind Jill, had a sudden vision of it all turning to quicksand, everybody sinking down beneath the surface of the earth and disappearing, and the whole place restored to peace again.

Jill was moving like a demon, clearing the way, shoving, pushing, elbowing. Jaspin followed along in her wake. A kind of general screaming was going on, nothing coherent, simply an all-purpose roar of confusion that sounded like the grinding of giant machinery. Little openings formed in the crowd, just for a moment, and closed again. A couple of times Jaspin stumbled and nearly went down, but he kept his balance by grabbing the nearest arm and hanging on. If you fall you die, he thought. Already he could see people crawling around at ground level, dazed, unable to get up, vanishing in a forest of legs. Once it seemed to him that he had trampled someone himself. But he didn’t dare look down.

“This way,” Jill yelled. She was practically to the Senhor’s bus now.

Someone’s flailing arm caught him in the mouth. Jaspin felt a jolt of pain and tasted salty blood. He struck back instantly, automatically, bringing the sides of his hands down like hatchets on the man’s shoulders. Maybe not even the one who had bumped him, he realized. He heard a grunt. Jaspin couldn’t remember the last time he had hit anyone. When he was nine, ten years old, maybe. Strange how satisfying it felt, striking out like that in response to the pain.

Just ahead Jill was struggling with a big hysterical farmboy-looking guy who had caught hold of her right in front of the door to the bus. “Maguali-ga, Maguali-ga,” he was roaring, gripping her with his arms around her waist. He didn’t seem to be defending the Senhor’s bus or doing anything else that had any purpose; he was just out of control. Jaspin came up behind him and hooked his arm around the big man’s throat. He squeezed hard until he heard a little hoarse yoiking gagging sound.

“Let go,” Jaspin said. “Just take your hands off her.”

The man nodded. He let go and Jaspin swung him around and heaved, sending him reeling off in the other direction. Jill dashed up the steps and into the bus, Jaspin right behind her.

The interior of the bus was an island of weird tranquility in the maelstrom of chaos. Dark and silent, smelling of sour incense. Flickering candles. The heavy draperies seemed to filter out the drumming of the rain and the booming cries of the mob. Cautiously Jaspin and Jill moved to the rear of the antechamber and pulled back the brocaded curtains that concealed the middle section of the bus, Senhor Papamacer’s chapel.

“Look, there he is,” Jill whispered. “Oh, thank God! Is he all right, do you think?”

The Senhor appeared to be in a trance. He sat immobile in his familiar lotus pose, face to the wall, staring rigidly at an image of Chungirá-He-Will-Come. Around his neck was the enormous golden breastplate, studded with emeralds and rubies, that he wore only on the most solemn occasions. Plainly he was off on some other world. Jaspin started to go over to him; but then he heard a sound like a panicky whimpering cry coming from the farthest room, the living quarters of the Senhor and the Senhora. A woman, crying out in some unknown language—an unmistakable plea for help—

Jill turned to him. “The Senhora’s in there, Barry—”

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath and lifted the curtain.

On the far side, the innermost kingdom of the Senhor, everything was in disarray. The draperies were dangling, the wooden images of Maguali-ga and Chungirá-He-Will-Come had been knocked over, and the Senhor’s storage cabinets were overturned. The contents of the cabinets had been spilled out helter-skelter onto the floor—ceremonial robes, ornate helmets and sashes and boots, all the flamboyant regalia of the tumbondé rites.

In the rear corner of the bus Senhora Aglaibahi stood backed up against the wall. Just in front of her was the stocky red-headed scratcher, the one whom Jill had seen clambering into the side window of the bus. The Senhora’s white sari was ripped down the front and her heavy breasts, gleaming with sweat, had tumbled into view. Her eyes were bright with terror. The scratcher was holding her by one wrist and was trying to get hold of the other. Probably he had come into the bus with burglary in mind, but there must not have been anything here that he considered worth taking, so he was turning his attention now to rape.

“Leave her alone, you son of a bitch,” Jill said in a voice of such ferocity that Jaspin was momentarily astounded by it.

The scratcher whirled around. His eyes went from Jill to Jaspin and back to Jill. It was the look of a cornered beast. “Watch it,” Jaspin said. “He’s going to come right at us.”

“Stay back,” the little man said. He was still gripping Senhora Aglaibahi by the wrist. “Get over there, by the wall. I’m getting out of here and you aren’t going to try to stop me.”

Jaspin now saw a weapon in his other hand, one of those things they called spikes, deadly little things that delivered lethal electrical charges.

“Careful,” he said quietly to Jill. “He’s a killer.”

“But the Senhora—”

“You stay back,” the little man said again. He tugged at the Senhora’s arm. “Come on, lady. Let’s you and me get off the bus, okay? You and me. Let’s go.”

Jaspin watched, not daring to move.

The Senhora began to wail and howl. It was a high keening unearthly cry that might have been the song of Maguali-ga himself, an intense rising-and-falling screech, a terrifying sound that very likely could be heard all the way to San Francisco. The red-haired man shook her arm fiercely and said, “Cut that out!”

Then things began to happen very fast.

The curtain lifted and the Senhor appeared in the doorway, looking dazed, as though he were still at least in part deep in his trance. For a long moment he stared in amazement at what was going on; then the awesome deep-freeze look came into his eyes, and he raised both his arms like Moses about to smash the tablets of the Ten Commandments, and he cried out unintelligible words in a colossal voice, as if trying to knock the intruder over by sheer decibel impact alone. In the same instant Jill sprang forward and attempted to pry the Senhora loose. The scratcher turned to her and in one quick unhesitating movement drew his spike across Jill’s ribcage from side to side. There was a little flash of blue light and Jill went crashing back against the wall. Then the scratcher released Senhora Aglaibahi and lunged forward, trying to get past the Senhor. As he came up alongside him he paused, as if noticing for the first time the jeweled breastplate the Senhor was wearing. The scratcher yanked at it but the clasp held firm. The scratcher did not let go. He started up the middle of the bus toward the front exit, dragging the Senhor along by the breastplate.

Jaspin looked back at Jill. She lay crumpled and motionless, her arms and legs twisted into knots. The Senhora was in a heap on the other side of the bus, trembling, sobbing convulsively. The scratcher, pulling Senhor Papamacer with him, was halfway across the chapel now, heading toward the antechamber. Jaspin looked around for a weapon. The best thing he could find was the little statue of Maguali-ga. He snatched it up and ran toward the other end of the bus.

The Senhor and the scratcher had reached the driver’s compartment of the bus. As Jaspin came toward them they stepped outside, onto the little platform that led down to ground level. There they halted, still struggling, the scratcher yanking and pulling on the breastplate, Senhor Papamacer booming out curses and pounding the scratcher with his fists, both of them in full view of the astonished crowd of the Senhor’s followers.

Jaspin peered out into the surging rain-drenched mob. There was real hysteria out there now. He could hear them yelling, “Papamacer! Papamacer!” But no one went to the Senhor’s aid. Jesus, Jaspin thought, where’s the Host? They must see what’s going on. Why don’t they come help the Senhor? Then he realized that it was impossible for anyone around the bus to move, they were all so tightly jammed. A human gridlock out there.

Then it’s up to me, Jaspin told himself.

He lifted the statue of Maguali-ga like a club and maneuvered for an opening, trying to get into position to bring it down on the arm that held the spike. But the two of them were thrashing too wildly for him to be able to get a clear shot at the weapon.

Maybe now—now—

Jaspin swung the statue with all his force. It came down hard, but on the wrong arm, the one with which the scratcher was trying to pull Senhor Papamacer’s breastplate loose. The scratcher grunted sharply and let go of the Senhor, who was slammed by his own momentum against the open door of the bus. Jaspin tried to push him back inside, but to his amazement Senhor Papamacer shook his head and rushed forward, seizing the scratcher by both his shoulders, pulling him around, shaking him furiously, showering him with what sounded like Brazilian obscenities. All the monstrous intensity of Senhor Papamacer’s soul was pouring forth in a frenzied attack on this grubby stranger who had dared to violate the holy sanctuary. The scratcher, blinking and gaping, did not seem to know what to do in the face of such an insane onslaught.

A couple of members of the Host were getting through the crowd, now. Jaspin saw them down below, ten, fifteen meters from the steps of the bus.

The scratcher saw them too. He brought his spike up in a sudden desperate swipe and jammed it against Senhor Papamacer’s chest. There was another puff of blue light and the Senhor, arms and legs convulsing, sprang high into the air, fell back, dropped heavily to the ground. The scratcher, without pausing, jumped down beside him, made one last unsuccessful grab at the breastplate, then darted off to the left, disappearing into the crowd just as Bacalhau and Johnny Espingarda came running up.

Bacalhau knelt beside the Senhor. With trembling hands he touched the Senhor’s cheek, his forehead, his throat, then looked up, and his face was the face of someone who had seen the end of the world.

“He is dead,” Bacalhau cried in a voice like thunder. “Is dead, the Senhor.”

And then everything went wild.

6

Elszabet realized that somehow she had crossed from the dormitory to the gymnasium, though she had no recollection of having done it. Now she stood just at the edge of the little rose garden outside the gym, numb, watching in disbelief as the mob of tumbondé people tore the Center apart.

It was very much like a dream. Not a space dream, but the ordinary sort of anxiety dream, she thought, the kind in which it’s the opening day of classes and you don’t know where the course you’ve registered for is supposed to meet, or the kind in which you’re trying to get from one side of a crowded room to the other to speak to someone important, and the air is thick as molasses, and you swim and swim and swim and can’t get anywhere.

These people, these cultists, were going to destroy everything. And there was nothing at all she could do about it. She knew what she had to do: round up the patients, get them to a safe place, if there was any such thing left. And find Tom before he carried out any more Crossings. But she was frozen where she stood. She felt paralyzed. She had tried to protect the Center and she had failed, and now it seemed too late to do anything. Except stand and watch.

It was getting very crazy out there now.

It had been bad enough at the beginning, when they were simply pouring in with their cars and vans and parking them all over the place, banging up against one another in a great screech of crumpling metal, and then getting out and running round and round until there was no room for anybody to move. But now it was much worse; now it had entered an entirely different and more frenzied phase.

The real trouble had started after that little black man in the strange costume had been killed on the steps of that multicolored bus right in the middle of everything. He must have been their leader, their prophet, Elszabet decided. She had seen the whole thing, just as she was coming out of the dorm to go in search of Tom. The little black man and the other one, the red-headed hoodlum who had accosted her earlier, coming out of the bus and fighting just outside it. The third man coming out of the bus waving that heavy wooden statuette around, trying to club the scratcher with it. And then the scratcher hitting the cult leader with his spike—that was when things had gone truly berserk.

In their grief the tumbondé people were ripping everything apart. They surged back and forth like the tides of a human ocean, crashing into cabins and knocking them off their foundations, pulling up bushes and shrubs, overturning their own vans. The craziness was feeding on itself: the rioters appeared to be trying to outdo each other in displays of rage and sorrow, and it looked as though even those who had no idea what had touched off the upsurge of violence were joining the rampage.

From her vantage point at the edge of the Center Elszabet had a view of almost everything that was happening. The GHQ building seemed to be on fire, black smoke rising from it in the rain. Down the other way the pick cabins were being smashed to splinters—all that intricate and costly equipment, Elszabet thought sadly, everything so painstakingly matched and calibrated, and all the files, all the records—and beyond them she could just make out the staff cabins, her own cabin, nestling in the woods, people swarming all over them, hurling things out the windows, kicking in the walls, even tearing up the ferns on the hillside just outside. Her books, her cubes, her records, the little journal that she sometimes kept—everything out in the mud by now, she supposed, trampled underfoot—

There was nothing she could do but watch. In ghostly calmness she scanned the scene from north to south, from south to north, strangely calm, paralyzed by shock and despair, watching. Watching.

Then she caught sight of Tom. That was Tom over there, surely. Yes. Appearing out of nowhere a little way uphill, drifting past the far side of the dormitory building, going around to the left. Down toward the middle of the madness.

Like everybody else he was flecked with mud and soaked to the skin, clothing sticking to his spare fleshless body. And yet he seemed uncaring of that, invulnerable to the weather, as if he were surrounded by some invisible sphere of protection. He was walking slowly, almost casually. He had a sort of entourage with him: Father Christie, Alleluia, April, Tomás Menendez. They were all holding hands, as though they were frolicking off to a picnic in the forest, and they all seemed extraordinarily serene.

I’ve got to go to them, Elszabet thought. April and the others are in no shape to be left wandering around on their own in this riot. And I’ve got to get him away from them too. Before he helps any more of them make the Crossing. Find them a safe place, she thought. And then take Tom and put him somewhere safe too, where he can’t harm anyone and no one can do any harm to him.

But she made no move to leave the rose garden. Taking so much as a single step seemed impossible.

“Elszabet?” someone called.

She turned slowly. Bill Waldstein, flushed-looking, big smears of black mud all over his white clinical jacket.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked.

“Watching it. It’s worse even than we imagined it could be.”

“For Christ’s sake, Elszabet. You look absolutely stupefied, do you know that? Where’s April?”

Elszabet pointed vaguely toward the middle of the lawn.

“I left her with you,” Waldstein said. “I was just going over to the infirmary to get a sedative for her. How could you leave her alone? Why did you come out here? What’s the matter with you, Elszabet?”

She shrugged. “Look at what’s going on.”

“Come on, snap out of it. We need to round up the patients before they get hurt. And we need to find Tom and seal him away somewhere so he can’t—”

“Tom?” she said. “Tom’s right over there.”

Waldstein peered into the dimness. “Jesus, yes. And April’s with him, and Menendez, and Father Christie—” He stared at her. “You’re just letting him waltz away with them like that? You know what he’s likely to do to them?” Suddenly Waldstein looked as berserk as any of the tumbondé people. “I’m going to kill him, Elszabet. He’s brought all this insanity down on us, with plenty more to come. He’s got to be stopped. I’m going to kill him—”

“Bill, for God’s sake—”

But Waldstein had already broken into a run. She watched him run across the swampy lawn, fall, scramble to his feet, fall again, scramble up. With agility he sidestepped a group of tumbondé people who were carrying what looked like pipes torn from some building’s heating system, waving them around like baseball bats. He ran up toward Tom, shouting and gesturing. Elszabet saw Tom turn toward Waldstein with a benign smile. She saw Waldstein leap at Tom and both men go sprawling. Then she saw Alleluia pluck Waldstein free of Tom the way one might pluck an insect from one’s arm, and hurl him at least fifteen or twenty meters through the air, sending him crashing into the trunk of a towering pine.

Even at this distance, Elszabet plainly heard the sound of the impact as Waldstein struck the tree head first. He dropped without a quiver and lay without moving.

Dante Corelli came around the side of the gymnasium at a fast jog just at that moment and pulled up next to Elszabet. Elszabet turned to her and said almost in a conversational tone, “That was Bill, did you see? He jumped on Tom and Alleluia simply picked him up and—”

“Elszabet, we’ve got to get out of here. We’re all going to get trampled to death.”

“I think Bill must be dead, Dante. I heard the way his head hit the tree—”

“Dan’s on his way down from GHQ. He’ll be here in a minute and then the three of us are going to run for the woods, do you hear me, Elszabet? Look, there’s a whole new mob charging up the hill right now. You see them coming? Holy Christ, do you see them?”

Elszabet nodded. Confusions gripped her spirit. She knew she was sinking deeper into that strange paralysis of the will. Simply paying attention to what was happening was an effort. A mob, Dante had said? Where? Yes. Oh, yes. There. They were streaming up out of the central chaos like some unstoppable torrent, overrunning everything in their way. They were heading toward the place where Tom and his little band of followers stood. “Oh, God,” Elszabet murmured. “Tom. Tom! ”

Father Christie went running forward to meet the tumbondé people, waving his arms, crying out to them. Offering a blessing, perhaps. The comfort of the Church in a time of chaos. They swept up and over him and he disappeared beneath their feet. Alleluia was next. She planted herself squarely in the path of the advancing mob and with astonishing energy that seemed almost diabolical began scooping them up and flinging them against the trees, one, five, a dozen of them, tossing them to their deaths, until she too was pulled down and was lost to view.

“Tom,” Elszabet said quietly. She could no longer see him, or April, or Menendez.

She heard Dante saying to someone, “It’s like she’s gone out of her mind. She just stands here, watching.”

“Hey. Elszabet.” It was Dan Robinson. He touched her arm. “We have to get out while we still can, Elszabet. The Center’s in ruins. The mob’s completely out of control. We’ll slip off into the forest and take the rhododendron trail, okay? We should be able to get deep enough in so they won’t bother us there and—”

“I have to find Tom,” Elszabet said.

“Tom’s probably dead by now.”

“Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. But if he’s alive we have to find him. And find out what he is. There are things we have to know about him, about what he’s doing, don’t you see that? Please, Dan. Do you think I’m crazy? Yes, you do, both of you. I can see that. But I tell you, I’ve got to find Tom. Then we can leave. Not until then. Please try to understand. Please.”

7

Tom held the fat woman with one hand and the Mexican man with the other and stood his ground calmly while the crazy people went rushing by. He knew they wouldn’t hurt him. Not now, not while the Crossing was actually under way. He was safe because he was the chosen vehicle of the star people, and surely everyone knew that.

It was too bad, he thought, losing the priest and the artificial woman. Now they would never have a chance to make the Crossing. But even without them, it would still be possible for him to invoke the power. It was getting easier. With each new one he sent, his strength grew. A great tranquility was on his soul, a sense of the divine righteousness of his mission.

“Here,” Tom said. “This is the next one that we’ll send.”

“Double Rainbow,” the Mexican man said. “Yes, he is a good one. We will give him to Maguali-ga.”

This one was an Indian. Tom realized that right away. He had seen a lot of Indians in his time. This one was a thick-bodied flat-nosed man with dark glossy hair, maybe a Navaho, maybe something else, but certainly an Indian. The Indian was standing with his back to a burning building, hurling clods of mud at the rioters as they ran by and calling out things to them in a language Tom didn’t understand. The Mexican went up to the Indian and said something to him, and the Indian’s eyebrows lifted and he laughed; and the Mexican said something else and the two men clapped each other on the back, and the Indian came striding over to Tom.

“Where you going to send me?” he asked.

“The Nine Suns. You will walk with the Sapiil.”

“Will my fathers be there?”

“Your new fathers will welcome you into their number,” said Tom.

“The Sapiil,” said the Indian. “What tribe is that?”

“Yours,” said Tom. “From this moment on.”

“You will go to Maguali-ga,” said the Mexican. “You will never know pain again, or sorrow, or the emptiness in the heart. Go with God, friend Nick. It is the happiest moment for you, now.”

“Stand close around him,” Tom said. “Everybody join hands.”

“Maguali-ga, Maguali-ga,” the Mexican said. The Indian nodded and smiled. There were tears in the comers of his eyes.

“Now,” Tom said.

It was quick, a fast sudden surge and the big man slid easily to the ground and was gone.

Easier and easier all the time, Tom thought.

He led the fat woman and the Mexican past a place where a small building had been all broken up into slats, and started to go down toward the center of things, toward the bus that was sitting right in the middle. He thought he might sit on the steps of the bus and use that as a kind of platform for performing the Crossings. But he had gone only a few steps when a man and a woman came up to him. They looked pale and uneasy, and they were holding hands as if their lives depended on staying together. The woman was small and good-looking, with curling red hair and a pretty face. The man, who was slender and dark, had a bookish look about him.

The man pointed toward the Indian, who was lying in the mud with the smile of the Crossing on his face. “What did you do to him?”

“He has gone to Maguali-ga,” Menendez said. “This man, he holds the power of the gods in his hands.”

The man and the red-haired woman looked at each other.

The man said, “Is that what happened to the other man, the one in the dormitory?”

“He went to the Double Kingdom,” Tom said. “I have sent some to Ellullimiilu today also, and some to live with the Eye People. The whole universe is open to us now.”

“Send us to the Nine Suns!” the woman said.

“Lacy…” the man said.

“No, listen to me, Barry. This is real, I know it. They join hands and he sends you. You see the smiles on those faces? The spirit went out of him, you saw that. Where did it go? I bet it went to Maguali-ga.”

“The man’s dead, Lacy.”

“The man has left his body behind. Listen, we stay here any longer, we’ll get trampled to death anyway. You see how they’re pulling the place apart since they saw the Senhor get killed? Let’s do it, Barry. You said you had faith, that you had seen the truth. Well, here’s the truth. Here’s our moment, Barry. The Senhor had it upside down, that’s all. The gods aren’t coming to Earth, you see? We’re supposed to go to them. And here’s the man to send us.”

“Come,” Tom said. “Now.”

“Barry?” the woman said.

The man looked stunned. He was afraid, untrusting. He blinked, he shook his head, he stared around. To help him, Tom sent him a vision, just the edge of one, the nine glorious suns in full blaze. The man drew in his breath sharply and pressed both his hands against his mouth and hunched his shoulders up, and then he seemed to relax. The woman said his name again and put her hand on his arm, and after a moment he nodded. “All right,” he said quietly. “Yes. Why the hell not? This is what we were all looking for, wasn’t it?” To Tom he said, “Where are we going to go?”

“The Sapiil kingdom,” Tom said. “The empire of the Nine Suns.”

“To Maguali-ga,” said Menendez.

Tom reached for the hands of the fat woman and the Mexican. He rocked back and forth on his heels a moment.

“Now,” he said.

Both at once, this time. He took the energy from the fat woman and the Mexican and passed it through himself and sent the man and the woman to the Sapiil. The ease of it surprised him. He had never done that before, two at the same time.

The man and the red-haired woman slid to the ground and lay face up, smiling the wonderful Crossing-smile. Tom knelt and lightly touched their cheeks. That was a beautiful smile, that smile. He envied them, walking now among the Sapiil under those nine glorious suns. While he was still here slopping around in the mud. But that was all right, Tom thought. He had his tasks to do first.

He started down the hill again. All about him were people screaming and shouting and waving their arms hysterically in the air. “Peace to you all,” Tom said. “It is the Time of the Crossing, today, and everything is going well.” But the people came rushing past, confused and angry. For a moment Tom was swept up in the confusion, jostled and buffeted, and when he was in the clear again he could no longer see the fat woman or the Mexican. Well, he would find them again sooner or later, he told himself. They knew he was heading toward the bus, and they would go there to wait for him, because they were his assistants in bringing about the Crossing, they were part of the great event that was unfolding here today in the rain and the mud and the chaos.

Someone caught him by the arm, held him, stopped him.

“Tom.”

“Charley? You still here?”

“I told you. I was waiting for you. Now come on with me. We got the van still sitting out there in the forest, in the clearing. You got to get yourself away from here.”

“Not now, Charley. Don’t you understand that the Crossing is going on?”

“The Crossing?”

“Six, eight people have set out on the journey already. There will be many more. I feel the strength rising in me, Charley. This is the day I was born for.”

“Tom—”

“You go to the van and wait for me there,” Tom said. “I’ll come to you in a little while and help you make your Crossing, as soon as I can find my people, my helpers. You’ll be on the Green World an hour from now, I promise you that. Away from all this craziness, away from all this noise.”

“Man, you don’t understand. People are getting killed here. There are trampled bodies all over the place. Come on with me, man. It isn’t safe for you here. You don’t know how to look after yourself. I don’t want to see anything happen to you, Tom, you know? You and me, we’ve traveled a long way together, and—I don’t know, I just feel I ought to look after you.” Charley took Tom’s arm again and pulled gently. Tom felt the warmth of this man’s soul, this scratcher, this wandering killer. He smiled. But he could not leave, not now. He peeled Charley’s hand from his arm. Charley scowled and shook his head, and started to say something else.

Then the crazy mob came swirling back in their direction and Charley was borne away, carried off by the tide of humanity like a twig on the breast of a raging river.

Tom stepped out of their way and let them go thundering past. But he saw it was impossible to get to the bus now. Things were too wild, down there in the middle of the lawn.

He thought he saw the fat woman off toward one side, and went off in her direction. But as he was clambering over the tumbled boards of some shattered little cabin he lost his footing on the slippery wood and slid downward into the shambles of planks and joists. For the moment he was stuck, his leg jammed deep down into it. There was a stirring in front of him and someone began to crawl out from the pile of wood.

Stidge, it was.

The red-haired man’s eyes opened wide at the sight of Tom. “What the fuck. It’s the looney. Hello, looney, you fucking trouble-maker. How come Charley’s not right there holding your hand?”

“He was here. He got swept away by the mob.”

“That’s too goddamn bad, isn’t it?” Stidge said.

He laughed. He reached into his tattered jacket and drew out his spike. His eyes were gleaming like marbles by moonlight. He poked the tip of the spike against Tom’s breastbone, hard, once, twice, three times, a sharp painful jab each time. “Hey,” Stidge said. “Got you where I want you, looney. Charley beat me up once on account of you, you remember? That first day, out in the Valley, when you came drifting in? He kicked the shit out of me because I laid a hand on you. I never forgot that. And then there were other times later, when I got in trouble on account of you, when Charley talked to me like I was nothing but a piece of crap. You know?”

“Put the spike away, Stidge. Help me get loose, will you?” He pushed at the timbers pinning his leg. “Poor Tom’s foot is stuck. Poor Tom.”

“Poor Tom, yeah. Poor fucking Tom.”

“It’s the day of the Crossing, Stidge. I’ve got work to do. I have to find my helpers and send people where they’re meant to go.”

“I’ll send you where you were meant to go,” Stidge said, and flicked the stud on the spike to turn on the power. “Just like I did to that crazy jig on the bus back there. For once I got you and no Charley around, and—”

“No,” Tom said, as Stidge drew the spike back and jammed it toward Tom’s chest.

He brought his hand up fast and seized Stidge’s wrist, holding it steady for a moment, summoning all his strength to keep that deadly little strip of metal from touching him. He trembled against Stidge and for a long instant they struggled in stalemate. Then Stidge began forcing his arm forward, slowly, slowly, bringing the tip of the spike closer to Tom’s chest. It took all that Tom had to hold that thing away from him. Stidge was pushing it closer and closer. Tom was shivering. Fiery pain shot up and down his arm and into his chest. He looked into Stidge’s hard glaring eyes, right up against his own.

And Tom picked up Stidge’s soul and hurled it to Luiiliimeli.

He did it easily, smoothly, like skipping a stone across a pond. He did it all by himself, because he had to do it and his helpers were nowhere in sight. There was just no effort in it at all. He simply focused his energies and gathered the force and lifted Stidge’s soul and threw it toward the heavens. Stidge stared at him in astonishment. Then the surprise went from his face and the Crossing-smile appeared, and the spike dropped from Stidge’s dead hand, and he slumped down onto the pile of timbers.

Tom huddled over him, amazed, shaken, trembling, feeling sick to his stomach.

I did it all by myself, he thought.

It was just like killing him, he thought. I picked him up and threw him.

I never killed anybody before, he thought.

Then he thought, No, no, Stidge isn’t dead, Stidge is on Luiiliimeli now, in the city of Meliluiilii under the great blue star Ellullimiilu. They have him and they’ll heal him of all the sickness in his soul. It wasn’t a killing any more than the other Crossings were. The only difference is that I did it all myself, that’s all. And if I hadn’t, he would have killed me sure as anything with that spike, and then there would be no more Crossings for anyone.

You understand that, Stidge? I didn’t kill you, Stidge. I did you the biggest favor of your life.

Tom felt himself starting to calm down some. The queasiness left him. He probed at the scattered timbers, trying to get his foot free.

“Here. I’ll help you.”

It was the fat woman, climbing clumsily toward him. Her face was flushed, her eyes were strange. Her clothing was torn in two or three places. “Got my foot stuck somehow,” Tom said. “Give me a hand—here—here—”

“That’s the man who killed the other one outside the bus, isn’t it?” she said. “Everybody was looking for him. He’s dead, right?”

“He made the Crossing. I sent him to Luiiliimeli. I can do the Crossings without any help, now.”

“I think this is the one that’s holding you,” she said. “Here.” She wrenched a huge beam upward and tossed it aside. Tom pulled his leg free and rubbed his shin. She smiled at him. He felt the sadness coming from her, behind the smile.

He took her hand and said, “Where would you like me to send you?”

“What?”

“I can spare you now. I can give you your Crossing.”

She jerked her hand free of his as if his touch were burning her. “No—please—”

“No?”

“I don’t want to go anywhere.”

“But this world is lost. There’s nothing left here but pain and grief. I can send you to the Green World, or the Nine Suns, or the Sphere of Light—”

“It frightens me to think about that. It’s like dying, isn’t it? Or maybe worse.” Her face grew panicky and she knelt and scrabbled around at her feet, grasping at the spike that had dropped from Stidge’s hand. “I’m afraid. To start all over, to face a whole other world—no, No. I’d rather just die. You know?” The strangeness had gone from her eyes. She seemed to have come up out of some long tunnel into the open air. Her voice, which had always seemed to Tom like a little girl’s voice, was a normal voice now. She was still talking. “I’m sick of being me. Carrying around this great awful body. Always afraid. Always crying.” She was fumbling with the stud of the spike, trying to figure out how to use it. She didn’t seem to know how. But then it began to glow and Tom realized she had turned it on after all. She was holding it between her breasts. Her hand was shaking.

“No,” he said. He couldn’t let her do that. He clamped his hand around her fleshy wrist and sent her to the Fifth Zygerone World.

As she dropped her body it fell with a terrible crash, landing beside Stidge. But she was smiling. She was smiling, that was the thing. Tom picked up the spike and switched it off and hurled it as far as he could, off into the shrubbery.

He crouched for a moment, catching his breath, getting his balance. He glanced at the two smiling bodies in front of him, thinking, It was like killing, but I didn’t kill them, no, I just sent them away. Stidge would have killed me and she would have killed herself, and I couldn’t let either of those things happen. So I did what I had to do. That’s all. I did what I had to do. And this is the day of the Crossing, which is the most wonderful day in the history of the world.

He felt better now. He made his way carefully down from the fallen building. The riot was still going on. More buildings seemed to be burning. He looked straight ahead, through a clearing that had suddenly appeared, and saw the tall woman, the one who had been so kind to him, the doctor, the one who was called Elszabet, just across the way. She was staring at him.

Tom smiled at her. She seemed to be calling to him, beckoning him. He nodded and went to her.

8

“There he is,” Elszabet said. “I’ve got to talk to him. Will you wait for me?”

She turned toward Dan Robinson, toward Dante. But at that moment a bunch of howling, screeching rioters swept through the place where they were standing, and when Elszabet looked again neither one was in sight. She thought she heard Dan’s voice from far away, but she wasn’t sure: the sound was lost in the wind and the screaming of the mob. Well, Tom was the one she wanted now.

He was standing by himself in front of the ruins of the staff recreation hall. Like a miracle, she thought, seeing him suddenly appear out of the chaos that way. How peaceful he looks, too. Probably he’s been drifting around in all this craziness for hour after hour without even noticing what’s going on.

“Tom?” she called.

He sauntered toward her. He seemed in no hurry at all. Looking beyond him, Elszabet saw a couple of figures sprawled on a pile of scattered timbers as though they were asleep. One was April. The other seemed to be the red-haired scratcher who had killed the cult leader on the steps of the bus. They lay motionless, not even stirring.

It seemed to Elszabet that she and Tom were the only two people on the grounds of the Center just now. A sphere of silence appeared to surround them.

“It’s Miss Elszabet,” Tom said. He was smiling in a weird exalted way. “I was hoping I’d find you, Elszabet. Do you know what’s been happening? This is the time I told you would come. When the Crossing begins to happen. As the Kusereen intended for us, all along.”

“What did you do to Ed Ferguson?”

Still the strange smile. “I helped him make the Crossing.”

“You killed him, is that what you’re saying?”

“Hey! Hey, you sound angry!”

“You killed Ed Ferguson? Answer me, Tom.”

“Killed? No. I guided him so that he would be able to drop his body. That’s all I did. And then I sent him to Sapiil.”

Elszabet felt a chill spreading along her arms and legs.

“And April?” she said. “You guided her the same way?”

“The fat woman, you mean? Yes, she’s gone up there too, just a minute or two ago. And the Indian man. And Stidge there, when he tried to kill me. And I’ve sent a lot of others, all morning long.”

She stared, not believing, not wanting to believe. “You killed all those people? My God… Nick, April, who else? Tell me, Tom, how many of my patients have you killed so far?”

“Killed?” He shook his head. “You keep saying killed. No. No, I haven’t killed anybody. I’ve just been sending them, that’s all.”

“Sending them,” Elszabet repeated in a flat voice.

“Sending them, yes. This is the day of the Crossing. At first I needed four helpers to do it. And then two. But now the power is very strong in me.”

Elszabet’s throat was dry and tight. There was a terrible pressure in her chest, a kind of silent shout fighting to escape. Ferguson, she thought. April. Nick Double Rainbow. All dead. And probably most of the others too. Her patients. Everyone she had tried to help. What had he done to them? Where were they now? She had never known such a crushing feeling of helplessness, of emptiness.

Quietly she said, “You’ve got to stop, Tom.”

He looked amazed. “Stop? How can I stop? What are you talking about, Elszabet?”

“You can’t do any more Crossings, Tom. That’s all, you just can’t. I forbid you. I won’t let you. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m responsible for these people—for all the patients here—”

He appeared not to comprehend. “But don’t you want them to be happy, Elszabet? For the first time in their lives, happy? ” That strange ecstatic smile, still. “How can I stop? It’s what I was put on Earth to do.”

“To kill people?”

“To heal people,” Tom said. “Same as you. I never killed anyone, not even Stidge. The fat woman, she’s happy now. And Ed. And the Indian. And Stidge, him too. And you… I can make you happy, right now.” He leaned close to her and his smile grew even more intense. “I’ll send you now, Elszabet. Okay? Okay? That’s what you want, isn’t it? Will you let me send you now?”

“Keep away.”

“Don’t say that. Here. Give me your hand, Elszabet. I’ll send you to the Green World. I know that’s where you want to be. I know that’s where you could be happy. Not here. There’s nothing for you here. The Green World, Elszabet.”

He reached for her. She gasped and pulled back from him.

“Why are you afraid? It’s the Time of the Crossing. I want so much to send you. Because… because…” He hesitated, fumbling for words, looking down at his feet. Color blazed in his cheeks. She saw tears beginning to glisten in his eyes. “I wouldn’t hurt you.” His voice was thick and hesitant. “Not you. Not ever. I wouldn’t hurt anyone, but especially not you. I…” He faltered. “I love you, Elszabet. Let me send you. Please?”

“But I don’t want—” she started to say, and broke off in mid-sentence as a powerful wave of dizziness and numbness swept over her. She struggled for breath. Something had happened. His words, his tears, the wind, the rain, everything all at once came rushing in on her, sweeping her away. She felt herself swaying, the way so many times she had swayed when an earthquake went rumbling through the ground beneath her, that old familiar sensation of sudden astonishing motion, the world slipping loose from its moorings.

A great abyss was opening before her, and Tom was inviting her to jump. She caught her breath and stared bewilderedly at him, appalled and tempted, and appalled at how tempted she was.

“Please?” he said again.

There was a roaring in her ears. Make the Crossing? Drop the body? Let him do to her what he had done to Ferguson, to April, to Nick? Give him her hand, let him do his trick, topple at his feet, lie here dead and smiling in the mud?

No. No. No. No.

It was crazy. All this talk of other worlds, instantaneous journeys. How could any of it be real? When Tom sent people, they died. He had a power, a deadly one. They died. That must be what happens to them, right? Right? She didn’t want to die. That hadn’t ever been what she wanted. She wanted to live, to flourish, to open, to blossom. She wanted to feel some peace in her soul, just for once in her life. But not to die. Dying wasn’t any kind of answer.

And yet—and yet—what if what Tom offered wasn’t death at all, but life, new life, a second chance?

She felt an overwhelming pull, an irresistible temptation—the Green World, that wondrous place of joy and beauty, so vivid, so real. How could it not be real? The Project Starprobe photographs—the smile on Ed Ferguson’s face—that sense of absolute conviction and faith that Tom radiated—

So why not, why not, why not?

“All right. I’m not afraid,” she heard herself saying.

“Then give me your hand. This is the time. I’ll help you make your Crossing now, Elszabet.”

She nodded. It was like something happening in a dream. Just give him your hand, and let him send you to the Green World. Just yield, and float upward, and go. Yes. Yes. Why not? She thought of Ed Ferguson’s smile. Could there be any doubt? Tom had the power. The sky was breaking open, and all barriers were down. Suddenly she felt the closeness of that silent dark immensity that was interstellar space, just beyond the low heavy clouds, and it was not at all terrifying. Give him your hand, Elszabet. Let him send you. Go. Go. This poor tired world, this poor ruined place: why stay? Everything’s done for. Just say good-bye to the world and go. Look what’s happened to the Center. That was the last sanctuary, and now it’s gone too. You have no one left to care for here any more.

“You were so very good to me, you know,” Tom was saying. “There wasn’t anyone was ever that good to me before. You took me in, you gave me a place to stay, you talked to me, you listened to me. You listened to me. Everybody thinks I’m crazy, and that’s all right, because most people like to leave a crazy man alone. I was safer that way. But you knew I wasn’t crazy, didn’t you? You know it now. And now I’m going to give you what you want the most. Put your hand in mine. Will you do that, Elszabet?”

“Yes. Yes.”

She reached her hand toward his waiting hand.

She heard someone calling her name in a peculiarly desperate way, raggedly punching out the syllables, El Sza Bet, El Sza Bet The strange hypnotic moment was broken. She pulled her hand back from Tom and looked around. Dan Robinson came trotting up. He appeared exhausted, almost ready to collapse.

“Dan?” she said.

He glanced at Tom casually, without interest, almost as though he had not recognized him. To Elszabet he said in a dull toneless voice, “We should have cleared out an hour ago. There’s shooting going on now. They’ve got guns, lasers, God knows what. They’ve all gone nuts since their leader was murdered.”

“Dan—”

“Every way out of here is blocked. We’re all going to die.”

“No,” she said. “There’s still one way out.”

“I don’t understand.”

She indicated Tom. “The Crossing,” she said. “Tom will send us away from here. To the Green World.”

Robinson stared.

“This place is done for,” Elszabet said. “The Center, California, the United States, the whole world. We blew it, Dan. We got in our own way, we tripped flat on our face, we fouled our own nest. Everything’s gone crazy. How long do you think it will be before they start dropping the hot dust again? Or the bombs, maybe, this time? But that’s only going to happen here, on Earth. Out there everything will be different.”

He was gaping. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely serious, Dan.”

“Incredible. You think you can go to some other world, just like that?”

“Ferguson did. April. Nick.”

“This is completely insane.”

“You can see the smiles on their faces. It’s pure bliss. I know they’ve gone to the star worlds, Dan.”

Robinson turned to Tom and studied him in astonishment. Tom was smiling, nodding, beaming.

“You actually believe this, Elszabet? He snaps his fingers, and off you go?”

“Yes.”

“And even if it’s true? You can just drop everything, run out on all responsibilities, skip off to your Green World? You could do that?”

“What responsibilities? The Center’s been smashed, Dan. And if we stay here we’re going to get killed in this riot anyway. You said so yourself two minutes ago, remember?”

He looked at her; he seemed bewildered.

“I’ve thought it through,” she said. “Even if we could get away from this mob I don’t want to stay here any more. It’s all over for me here. I did my best, Dan. I tried, I honestly tried. But it’s all smashed. Now I want to go away and make a second start somewhere else. Doesn’t that make sense? Tom will send us to the Green World.”

“Us?”

“Us, yes. You and me. We’ll go there together. Here, put your hands in his. Just do it, Dan. Go on. Put your hands in his.”

Robinson stepped back and thrust his hands behind him as if she had tried to pour burning oil on them. His eyes were bright. “For Christ’s sake, Elszabet!”

“No. For our sakes.”

“Forget all this nonsense. Look, maybe we can still escape through the forest somehow. Come with me—”

“You come with me, Dan.”

Again she reached for him. He pulled farther back. He was shivering, and his skin had taken on an almost yellowish tinge.

“We don’t have any more time, Elszabet. Come on. The three of us, out the back way down the rhododendron trail—”

“If that’s what you want to do, Dan, you’d better go.”

“Not without you.”

“Don’t be absurd. Go.”

“I can’t leave you here to die.”

“I won’t die. But you might, if you don’t get going now. I wish you well, Dan. Maybe I’ll see you again someday. On the Green World.”

“Elszabet!”

“You think I’m absolutely crazy, don’t you?”

He shook his head and scowled, and reached for her as if to drag her off by force into the forest. But he couldn’t bring himself to touch her. His hands hovered in mid-air and halted there, as though he feared that any direct contact with her might somehow hurl the two of them careening off toward the stars. For a moment he stood frozen in silence. He opened his mouth and no words came out, only a muffled sob. He leaned close and gave her one last look, then turned and darted away between two of the shattered buildings and was lost to her sight.

“All right, then,” Tom said. “Are you ready to go now, Elszabet?”

“Yes,” she said. And then she said, “No. No—”

“But you were ready a moment ago.”

She waved him back. The roaring in her ears had returned, even louder this time. She peered into the rain swept dimness, trying to see Dan Robinson. But he was gone. “Let me think,” she said. Tom began to say something, and she gestured again, more urgently. “Let me think, Tom.”

You actually believe this, Dan had said. He snaps his fingers, and off you go?

I don’t know, Elszabet thought. Do I actually believe it?

And then Dan had said,You can just drop everything, run out on all responsibilities, skip off to your Green World?

I’m not sure, she thought. Can I do that? Can I?

Tom was watching her, saying nothing, letting her think. She stood wavering, lost in doubts.

Do I believe? Yes, she thought. Yes, because there is no real alternative. I believe because I have to believe.

And can I shrug off my responsibilities here and go? Yes, my responsibilities here are ended. The Center has been destroyed. My patients are gone. There’s no work left here for me to do.

She scanned the distance once again for Dan Robinson. It would have been so beautiful, she thought, if he had come with her. The two of them, starting their lives over on the Green World. Learning to live again, learning to love. It would have worked, she thought. Wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it? But instead he had run off into the forest. All right. If that’s what he needs to do, let him do it. He doesn’t understand. His Time hasn’t come, not yet.

“I think you’re ready now,” Tom said.

Elszabet nodded. “Let’s both of us go, Tom. You and me together, to the Green World. Wouldn’t that be a fine thing? We’d both be crystallines together, and we’d stroll down to the Summer Palace and we could laugh and talk about this day, all the rain, the mud everywhere, the craziness all around us. Yes? Yes? What do you say? When you send me, send yourself along too. Will you?”

Tom was silent a long time.

“I wish I could,” he said at last, softly, tenderly. “You know, right now that’s the one thing I want more than anything. To go to the Green World with you, Elszabet. I wish I could. I wish I could.”

“Then do it, Tom.”

“I can’t go,” he said. “I have to stay here. But at least I can help you. Here, give me your hands.”

Once more he reached for her. She was shaking all over. But this time she didn’t pull back. She was ready. She knew it was right.

“Good-bye, Elszabet. And-hey, thanks for listening to me, you know? His voice was very gentle, and there was a note in it that was close to being mournful, but not really. “That meant a lot to me,” he said. “When I’d go to your office, you’d listen to me. Nobody ever did that, really, except Charley, some of the time, and that was different, with Charley. Charley isn’t like you.”

How sad, she thought. I can go and Tom, who has done all this for us, has to stay.

“Come with me,” she said.

“I can’t,” he said. “You have to go without me. Is that all right?”

“Yes. All right.”

“Now,” he said.

He gripped both her hands. Elszabet drew her breath in deeply, and waited. A sense of happiness, and grace, welled up in her. She was wondrously calm and certain. She had done her best here, but now it truly was time to leave. A new life would be beginning for her on a new world. It seemed to her that she had never known such certainty before.

She felt a sudden moment of new tension, a tension she had never before experienced, a sort of suspension of the soul; and then came a release. The last thing she saw was Tom’s taut stricken face, full of desperate love for her. Then the greenness rose up about her like a fountain of joyous light, and she felt herself setting forth, beginning the wondrous voyage outward.

9

It looked like a battlefield now. The rain was coming down harder than ever, and the lawns and gardens and meadows were churned into a great sea of muck, and all the buildings were smashed or burning or both. Some people were wandering about like blind men, staggering in the storm, and some were hunkered down behind the cars and buses, shooting at each other. Tom took a last look at the smiling woman lying at his feet, and walked away, still hearing Elszabet’s voice saying, “Come with me,” and his own, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

How could he have gone now, with the Crossing only begun?

He wondered if he were ever going to get to go at all. There were so many to send, and he was the only one with the power, wasn’t he? Maybe he could teach others, somehow. But even so—there were so many who had to go. And he thought again, as he so often had before, of Moses, leading his people to the promised land and peering into it from the outside, and the Lord saying to him, I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. Was that what was going to happen to him?

Tom looked up toward the sky, trying to pierce through the clouds to the stars. Those golden empires, waiting. Those godlike beings. Those shining cities, millions of years old.

You out there, you Kusereen who planned all this…is that your plan, to use me only as the instrument, the vehicle, and then leave me behind when the world ends?

He couldn’t believe that was so. He didn’t want to. They’d come for him right at the end. They had to, when all the others had made the Crossing. But maybe not. Maybe they’d just leave him here all by himself. How could he presume to understand the Kusereen? Well, he thought, if that’s what it is, that’s what it is. I’ll only find out when the time comes.

Meanwhile there’s work to do.

Charley came up to him, shrouded in mud.

“There you are,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d ever find you again.”

Tom smiled. “You ready for your Crossing now, Charley?”

“You’re really doing it? Sending people? To the Green World and all?”

“That’s right,” Tom said. “I been sending them all morning. To different worlds, Green World, Nine Suns, all of them. I even sent Stidge. He pulled his spike on me, and I sent him.”

Charley was staring. “You sent him, did you? Where’d he go?”

“Luiiliimeli.”

“Loollymooly. Good old Loollymooly. I hope he’s happy there. That goddamn Stidge. Going to live on Loollymooly.” Charley laughed. He looked somewhere past Tom. He seemed to be lost for a moment in his own dreams of other worlds.

Then he focused his attention again and said in a different voice, businesslike and quick, “Okay, let’s get the hell out of here, Tom.”

“I can’t, not yet. I got a few more things to do first—”

“Christ. Christ, Tom, what’s wrong with you? Let’s go find the van and start moving. Before one of these crazies takes us out. Can’t you see? They’re shooting at each other all over the place.”

“Don’t you want to make the Crossing, Charley?”

“Thanks all the same,” Charley said. “That’s not what I’ve got in mind right now.”

“I’ll give you the Green World for sure.”

“Thanks all the same,” Charley said again. And then he said something else, but Tom wasn’t able to make it out. All this noise, the shouting, the drumming of the rain. The crowd came surging by again and Charley was swept away. Tom shrugged. Well, maybe it wasn’t Charley’s time yet. He wandered on. Around him, people were slipping and sliding and falling down everywhere. Now and then someone turned toward him with what seemed an appeal in his eyes, and Tom would touch him and send him to one of the welcoming worlds. After a while he saw another familiar face come looming up out of the confusion, a man with rough pitted skin, hard blue eyes. “Hello, Buffalo,” Tom said. “How’s it going?”

“Tom. Hey. That’s Charley over there, isn’t it?”

Tom turned. For a moment he caught a glimpse of Charley once more, trying to shove his way through seven or eight frantic people. “Yeah,” Tom said. “That’s Charley. I was with him before but we got separated. Look, here he comes.”

Charley burst through the crowd and ran up to them, breathing hard, face shiny with rain and exertion. “Hey, Buffalo,” he said, “Christ, am I glad to see you.”

“Charley. Hey. Who else’s around?”

“Nobody. There’s none of us left but you and me. Maybe Mujer, I’m not sure. Let’s go look for the van, okay? We got to get ourselves the hell away from this place.”

“You bet,” Buffalo said.

“And you, Tom?” Charley said. “You come with us. We’ll ride away south, just like we talked about.”

Tom nodded. “Maybe in a little while, a few hours.”

“We’re going now,” Charley said. “Staying here any more is crazy.”

“Then you go without me.”

“For Christ’s sake—”

“I got to stay a few more hours,” Tom said. “People here, they need me. I can’t go yet. In a little while, sure. Maybe by dark.” Yes, he thought, maybe by dark. By then he would have done all that he needed to do here, and he could move along. He had made friends here and he had sent them to the stars. Now he would send some of these other people, the ones who had followed the little black man from San Diego, the taxi driver. And then he’d find Charley and Buffalo and ride off with them. He’d go somewhere else. Make other friends. Send them too. “You go find the van,” Tom said. “That’ll take you a little while. Later on, maybe, I’ll go back there in the woods and catch up with you, okay? Okay?”

He looked through and past them and it seemed to him that he could see Elszabet over there. Smiling. Come with me, she had said. I can’t, he had said. Okay. Whatever. Poor Tom. He could hardly bear to think about her. Wherever she was now. Green World, that was it. At least he had told her he loved her. At least he had managed to say that much. Come with me, that was what she had said. When he thought about that, what she had said, he felt like crying. But he couldn’t allow himself that, He didn’t have time to cry today. Maybe later. There was too much work to do. Walk down there where all those people were, touch them, help them to go. Elszabet glowed in his mind with the brightness of a new sun. Come with me, come with me. I can’t, he had said. He shook his head.

Charley and Buffalo were still standing there, staring at him.

“You really going to stay?” Charley asked.

“Only a few more hours,” he said again, very softly. “Then maybe I’ll catch up with you. You go look for the van. Okay, Charley? You go look for the van.”

10

It seemed to Dan Robinson that he had been running for hours: on and on in effortless strides, his heart pumping like some sort of untiring machine, his legs driving him over the sodden ground. It was the anger, he knew, that kept him going this way. He boiled with a rage so intense that he could contain it only by this blind, furious flight into the forest. Bizarre lunacy loose in the world, the Center in ruins, Elszabet gone… Elszabet gone…

Here, put your hands in his, she had said.Just trust me and do it. Dan. Go on. Put your hands in his.

He had no idea where he was. By now he might be at the far side of the forest, or perhaps he had just been going around in circles, crossing and recrossing his own trail. There were no landmarks here. One huge redwood looked just like the next. The sky, what little he could see of it through the tops of the giant trees, was dark now. But whether that was because evening was coming on, or simply an effect of the deepening storm, he couldn’t say.

He knew he wouldn’t be able to run much longer. But he was afraid to stop. If he stopped, he might have to think. And there was too much that he didn’t want to think about right now.

Tom will send us to the Green World, she had said. You and me. We’ll go there together. She had seemed so calm, so sure of herself. That was the worst of it, her calmness. He could still hear her saying,Now I just want to go away and make a second start somewhere else. Doesn’t that make sense? Tom will send us to the Green World. She had been beyond his reach at that moment. He had come close to snapping, seeing her like that. All he could do was turn and run from her; and he had not yet stopped running.

Suddenly there was a sound in his mind like the distant roaring of the sea. Flickering shafts of green light danced in the depths of him. So there was no escape from the visions, even out here. He was still infected with the general madness.

No, he thought. Get out of my head!

Tom will send us to the Green world, she had said. You and me.

Robinson wondered if he might have been able to keep her from doing it, if he had stayed beside her. Tried to reason with her. Dragged her away from Tom by force, if necessary. No, damn it. He couldn’t have done any of that. She had made up her mind. She had yielded completely. Maybe, he thought, it was seeing the mob smash the Center to bits that had sent her over the brink. He had wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her. To tell her that it was suicidal craziness, giving herself over to whatever power Tom had—to put her hands in his, and fall down dead with that blissful damn smile on her face.

The sea-sound grew more intense: a surging, a crashing. The air was becoming heavy about him, a thick green blanket. He heard far-off music, faint, tinkling, silvery needles of sound.

He felt the tip of his shoe snag against the exposed snaky root of a colossal redwood, and he lurched and went spinning and hurtling toward the ground. Struggling for balance, arms flailing as he skidded and stumbled, the best he could do was pull his head in and try to roll with the fall as his feet went out from under him and he landed hard on his left shoulder and hip.

For a moment he lay there, stunned, face down, arms spread wide, his cheek in a cold puddle. He made no attempt to get up. For the first time now he felt the exhaustion of his long run through the rain: chills, muscular spasms, waves of nausea. The green light grew brighter in his mind. Nothing he could do could hold back that onrushing vision. The green sky, the fleecy fog, that intricate music, those shining pavilions—

“Get out of my head… ” It was a harsh, despairing sound as he pounded his fist against the rain-soaked ground.

He saw the crystalline figures moving delicately across that flawless green landscape. The long slim bodies, the glittering faceted eyes, the slender limbs bright as mirrors. Those princes and dukes, those lords and ladies. Dan remembered how eager he had been to have his first space dream, how he had longed to have these visions flood his mind, how exciting it was when at last one had come to him. Running late at night across to Elszabet’s cabin like a schoolboy to tell her all about it. Now he wanted nothing more than to be rid of it. Please, he thought. Go away. Please. Go away…

They were talking to him. Telling him their names… we are the Misilyne Triad, they were saying, and we are the Suminoors, and we are the Gaarinar, and we—

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to know anything about you. Whatever you are. You’re phantoms, hallucinations.”

We love you, they said. That eerie whispering sound echoing through his mind.

He didn’t want their love. He was choking with fury, and despair.

Someone you know is among us, they said.

“I don’t care,” he told them sullenly, almost petulantly.

She wants to talk to you, they said.

He lay there quietly, cold, wet, numb, feeling lost. But then he heard a different sort of music, richer and deeper and warmer, and a new voice, delicate and tinkling and silvery like theirs, yet somehow less alien than the others, calling out his name across the great gulf of space. He looked up in amazement. He knew that voice. Beyond any doubt he knew that voice. So she got there after all, he told himself. He could feel the wonder blossom and grow within him. She actually got there. And that changes everything, doesn’t it? He didn’t dare move. Had he really heard it? Again, he thought. Please, again.

And then came her voice in his mind once more. Calling to him again. Yes, he knew it was real. And at the sound of that voice he felt all resistance begin to leave him, and his anger and his fear and his sorrow dropping from him like a cast-off cloak. And he got up, wondering if there still was time to find Tom somewhere back in that madness, and began slowly to walk through the rain toward the bright green light that blazed before him in the heavens.