Up the Walls of the World

Chapter 9

To Dann’s relief the mood at supper is light hearted, even merry. Noah’s people are alone in the echoing messhall, eating early with the June sun high overhead. Kirk and his dog are away, staying in some part of Deerfield Dann guesses he will never see.

Kirk’s absence greatly improves the tone. Noah expands, plays father to his little band, and tells a funny tale of a long-ago subject who kept receiving a mysterious number that turned out to be his girl’s bank balance. Somehow it conveys the old man’s long struggle. “That was before we had a computer capability, Miss Omali.”

She actually smiles. Dann wonders if TOTAL knows all the numbers in America .

Ted Yost recounts a tale of being thrown out of shipboard poker games for winning too often. “Never was that hot again,” he admits. Even Costakis ventures in with a yarn about opening a safe in which the urgent secret turned out to be an executive’s rotting lunch. The girls and Winnie laugh unforcedly.

“They must think we’re practicing the obstacle course,” Winnie pokes the monstrous portions of pot roast. “You know, we should call this Noah’s ark.”

It has to be a tired joke, but Noah chuckles benignly. “We’ll show them tomorrow.”

Only Rick has been silent and withdrawn. Now Dann sees his face clear. He sits up straighter and starts eating. Has his parasitic brother been tranquillized again?

I’m getting to believe this, Dann thinks. I’m acting as if it’s true. Do I actually believe they can—whatever it is? He doesn’t know, but he is enjoying the pleasant in-group atmosphere. They’re feeling free, he thinks. Unimpinged on. If any of this is true they must lead miserable lives. Don’t think of it. No way to help.

Suddenly everyone falls silent: a car has stopped outside and a tall thin man is heading for them. But it isn’t Major Fearing, it’s a stranger with a flat cowlick of white hair. The tension relaxes. Dann spots the caduceus on the man’s fatigues and pushes back his chair.

“Good evening, ah, Doctor Catledge’s party? I’m Doctor Harris. Just dropped by to see if you need anything.”

Dann introduces Noah. Harris looks curiously around the table; he has a thin, dry, long-upper-lipped face.

“Our medical station is right in the next area, Doctor Dann, you’ll find the number on your phone. Wait—” He extracts a blank card and scribbles on it. “We have a pretty complete little facility if you have any problems.” Harris’ manner is cheery but the lines in his face suggest weary compromises in the face of many peculiar demands.

“Thanks.” Dann pockets the card. Harris looks around the table again, still casual.

“An odd thing happened this afternoon,” he remarks. “About fourteen-fifty, ah, ten to five. You didn’t notice anything, by any chance? A feeling of disorientation, say?”

They watch him silently. Just as Noah opens his mouth, Rick speaks up.

“Oh, you mean the blip.” He nods reassuringly at Harris. “Not to worry. It merely means we’re near the end of this sequence.”

“Blip? Sequence!” Harris’ insectile upper lip pulls down.

“Yes. You remember Admiral Yamamoto in World War Two? Very important, boss man on the Japanese side. He was torpedoed off Rabaul in 1943. Changed the war and all that.”

Harris frowns. “Excuse me, young man. I was in the Navy. It happens Yamamoto was shot down, over Bougainville .”

“Oh, that’s in this sequence,” Rick smiles. “In the original sequence he was sunk. That’s why you felt the blip this afternoon. Don’t worry, you won’t know a thing.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Look.” Rick leans forward confidentially. “Japanese scientists, see? Very bright, very gung-ho. Took it to heart. So they secretly worked out a temporal anomalizer thingie. Like a time machine, to you. To go back and change it, see? But they’ve only managed to change the details, yet, he’s still getting killed. So they keep on trying. When you feel a blip like this afternoon it means they’re ready again, they’re testing. Then they wrap up this sequence and start over. You’ll be back in the Navy any time now. Have fun.”

Harris stares at him. The air around the table quivers.

“The thing is,” Rick lowers his voice, “some of us with psi powers remember other sequences, see? Different things happen—I think Dewey got elected once. We figure it’s rerun at least twelve times. But like I said, you won’t feel a thing.”

“I see.” Harris closes his chitinous mouth. “Ah. Well. Good to meet you, Dann. You have our number. Anything we can do.”

He leaves, walking fast. Everybody breaks up except Costakis, who looks shocked.

“Sssh,” Valerie gasps, “he’ll hear you.”

“He can’t, his car’s started.”

“That was ba-a-ad.” Ted Yost sighs happily, thinking maybe of the great Pacific. Even Margaret’s carved mouth twitches.

“Marvelous idea for a science-fiction story,” Noah chuckles.

“Do you read science fiction, Doctor Catledge?” Valerie asks.

“Indeed I do. Always have. Only people with ideas.”

“Flying saucers,” Costakis grunts.

“Not at all, Chris. Science fiction is quite another thing from UFOs, whatever they may be. But I certainly do believe there’s life on other worlds. Shall I tell you my secret dream?”

“Oh, please do!” Winona’s popeyes are shining.

“To live long enough to experience man’s first contact with aliens. Oh, my!” The old man bounces involuntarily. “Imagine, the day a voice comes out of space and speaks to us! Of the advent of a ship, a real spaceship!”

He isn’t joking, Dann sees astonishedly. Real yearning in that voice.

“And out gets a big blue lizard,” Frodo adds, “and he says, ‘Taake me to your an-thro-po-lo-gee dee-partment.’ ” She gives a happy, sizzling chuckle, like a different person.

“She gets out,” says Valerie quietly.

“Why not? Why not?” Noah laughs.

There is an odd, breathy silence. Faces glow. Dann, who does not read science fiction, is amazed.

“But we’d shoot them,” Winona says.

“It won’t happen,” Costakis says in his sour voice.

“No,” Rick agrees. The glow is gone.

“Who knows,” Noah says stubbornly. “It could happen any time. The Indians didn’t expect Columbus .”

“Speaking of voices from space,” says Dann, who has been ransacking his druggy brain, “didn’t I read that they’re listening for signals around Tau Ceti? By satellite, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, but it’s laser signals,” Noah says, and the conversation breaks up.

Costakis catches Dann’s eye. “That medic was sent to check us out. Rick shouldn’t have done that. Could be trouble.”

The little man has resumed his irritating fake-tough tone.

“Oh surely not, Chris. Professional courtesy, nothing more.”

“Sure, sure, Doc.”

It’s time to go.

“Well, no movie for us high security risks,” Ted Yost says.

“Probably be an old John Wayne,” Frodo grimaces.

It’s still light as they come out, a lovely evening. Dann loiters hopefully, but Margaret heads for the bus without a backward look.

“I’d love to walk,” Winona exclaims, “why don’t we all?”

The others are trooping aboard, leaving her between him and the bus. Dann barely checks the impulse to bolt around her.

“I know you’re a fast walker, Doctor Dann. Don’t wait for me, you go right ahead.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” he makes himself say genially.

She smiles happily and steps out beside him, blue hair, turquoise bosom and buttocks, bounding at random.

“How sweet of you… Margaret says you saw the deer. Oh, I hope we see one… Isn’t it strange this place is so peaceful, like a park?… Whatever they do down here, it’s nice for the animals. I wonder how big it is?”

She’s already puffing; he makes himself slow down.

“Well, if all the areas are a square mile, that’s at least six square miles. Say four thousand acres.”

“My goodness!”

It’s going to be a long mile, Dann thinks, remembering Margaret’s queenly stride. Stop that now. Talk to this idiot woman.

“Tell, Mrs. ah, Eberhard, what do you do when you’re not, ah, telepathizing?”

“Oh, Winona , please, Winnie.”

“Winnie.” He smiles cautiously. Watch it. Widow, divorcee?

She puffs along. “Oh, I keep busy. Right now I’m on a committee for part-time worker retraining. We refer older women who have to go back to work.”

“That sounds interesting,” he lies.

“Yes.” She inhales and lets it out hard. “If you want the truth, I’m an absolutely surplus human being.”

He gets out some polite objection, thinking in panic, Oh no. Not another. She’s marching determinedly, the smile firmly in place; Dann has a moment’s hope.

“In fact, I’m not sure I’m a human being.” She gives her automatic titter. But he knows he’s in for it. “I never learned how to do anything. Except raise kids and take care of my sick mother and my husband with diabetes. Poor Charlie, he passed on three years ago. My sons are in California . Their wives haven’t a use in the world for me; I don’t blame them. My younger daughter is in Yugoslavia digging up skulls. Next year she’s going to New Guinea , wherever that is. My oldest girl married a foreign service man. They—they never write. I wanted them to be, to be free—” She breaks off for a minute, stumping heavily along. “Now people think having four kids was bad. I never went anywhere or learned anything for myself. Now it’s too late.”

“Oh, no, surely—” His voice utters platitudes while his insides shrivel at the pain behind her words. Isn’t there a single normal person here? He can’t take much more.

“I’m sixty-two, Doctor Dann. I have a high school diploma and arthritis of the spine, you remember.”

Oh God, that’s right; he’d forgotten. Outpatient at the Hodgkins Clinic.

“They tell me I’ll be in a wheelchair in a couple of years. It won’t shorten my life, but it’s starting to hurt. That’s why I do all I can now.” She gives her laugh. “Oh, I can do simple work, like the committee. I can be a Grey Panther for a while— No use kidding. I missed the bus called life… Doctor, I—I’m so afraid of what’s ahead.

“I saw an old woman in a wheelchair when I was in the clinic. She was all wasted and twisted up, helpless. She kept moaning ‘No… no… no’ over and over. Nobody went near her, they’d just parked her there. She was still there when I came out— I tried to talk to her, but—Doctor Dann, I’ll be like that.”

Her face is frightening, he is sure she is going to cry, God knows what. But no; her features compose themselves, she stumps on determinedly amid her ludicrous bouncing flesh. He can say nothing, his heart is choking him.

“I would have loved it,” she says in a low, different voice. “Oh, I would have loved to have done it all differently. Really lived and been free. To know things. When you’re old and sick it really is too late, you don’t understand that when you’re young.”

The pain, the longing hurts him physically, in the way others’ pain always does, as he assumes they hurt everybody. She’s right, of course. No way out. The woman’s dilemma, an old story. Don’t think of it.

“It’s an old story, isn’t it?” Her voice is resolutely normal. “I shouldn’t have cried on your shoulder. You—we’re so glad you’re with us.”

“Not at all,” he mumbles, wondering if she’s reading his mind. Suddenly he sees relief. “Well now—look! There’s your wish.”

In the sunset light ahead of them two does are leaping leisurely across the blacktop.

“Oh-h-h!”

They watch as the creatures browse idly and then suddenly soar erratically into the woods, their white flags high. As they disappear a fawn bounds after them.

“How could anybody shoot them!” Winona exclaims.

“It doesn’t look as if anybody does.”

“Oh yes, they hunt here. Lieutenant Kirk said he was going to, even if it’s not the season.”

He sighs, refusing empathy, and they walk on.

“Doctor Dann, sometimes I think there’s two different kinds of people.” Her tone is surprisingly hard. “The ones who like to hurt things, and—”

He is tired of it all, tired of pain, tired of holding back. “A politician I used to know would agree. He used to say, there’re two kinds of people—those who think there are two kinds of people and those who have more sense.”

To his surprise she replies slowly, “You mean if I’d been brought up like Lieutenant Kirk I’d see them as something to shoot?”

“Yes. Or if you got hungry enough. Or other factors.”

“But I’m not,” she says stubbornly. “Just because something good can, can fail, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

Well, well. Trapped under the blue curls is a brain, or what might have been one.

“I think you’ve just enunciated a philosophical principle I’m not equipped to deal with.”

“Oh my goodness!” The flutter is back.

Their slow progess is finally reaching the last corner. His legs are cramping with impatience.

“Do walk on, please, Doctor Dann.”

Damn, she is reading his mind. No, it must be body-signals, she’s sensitive. Effortfully he asks, “How did you get into Noah’s, ah, ark?”

“He put an ad in the Star. I’ve always known I’m psychic. But—” She frowns. “The things he wants, numbers, letters—it’s so hard. They don’t mean anything.”

“You pick up meaningful thoughts more easily?”

“Oh yes, of course. And people’s feelings. It’s so hard at the office when people are angry. People get mad with me a lot.” She giggles deprecatingly.

Remorse bites him. “Do you pick up any, ah, emanations from this place?”

“I certainly do, Doctor Dann. I’ll tell you something. This place is a portal. There’s a presence here. You felt it this afternoon, that was a projection from the spirit plane.”

The language of mysticism. He imagines her giving seances, fortune readings.

“Did you ever think of going into business as an, uh, medium?”

“Oh, I’m too erratic. You see, my gift comes and goes. And I couldn’t pretend.”

“I see.” His own gift of chemical tranquillity is going fast. Thank God they’re almost at the barracks. The roadway is empty, no cars are parked outside. Music is coming from a group sitting on the front steps: Rick’s radio.

“Thank you, Doctor Dann.” Winona reaches up and pats jerkily at his upper arm before she toddles on.

It’s Ted Yost, Costakis, and Rick on the steps. Rick turns a glum face to Dann and says listlessly, “Somebody went through our stuff.”

“What do you mean?” Dann’s hand goes involuntarily to his breast pocket, touches the kit.

“The place got searched while we were eating,” Costakis says in his sneering tone.

Dann is frantically reviewing the plausibility of the supplies in his bag. “Did they take anything? How do you know?”

“My smokes,” says Rick. “It was in my right sneaker. It moved. And I think they opened this.” He holds up the radio. “The battery case was in wrong. Clowns.”

“Checking electronics,” Costakis says wisely. Dann can’t help noticing how he is perched apart from the other two. Ever on the fringe.

Ted Yost sighs. “I think I’ll take a walk.”

The door bursts open above them and Noah charges out. “Somebody has unplugged half our equipment! Everything’s moved around,” he explodes. “Really, what extraordianary people. Chris, can you help me sort it out?”

“Check.”

Dann hurries to his room. His bag seems to be intact but his other possessions look vaguely different. Have strangers been through? He can’t be sure. Absurd.

He sits on the cot with a capsule in his hand, noticing that the forest beyond the barracks looks quite lovely in the sunset light. Like the woods of his Wisconsin boyhood. Golden spotlights are picking out the floating delicacy of birches, the shadowy oak-trunks, the ferns and moss-cushions.

Why do I need this stuff, he thinks. Why can’t I take it? All these others, Rick, Costakis, Winona, each in their private misery without relief. Ted Yost. What kind of selfish coward am I?

As so many times before the resolve to throw away his chemical crutches wells up in him. Quitting would be physically rough, but he believes he can take that. But then to go on, to face the daily reality of life, the assaults of pain, to—to—

To remember.

—And as he gazes at the woods, the sunset rays turn rose and red like torches behind the trees, lighting them into dark silhouettes against the fiery sky. Fingers of fire—his gut lurches, he clenches his eyes, gasping, and fumbles the capsule into his mouth. That’s why. Yes, I’m a coward.

Shaking, he goes to the latrine for water, grateful only for his access to relief. How many of the others would resist, if they had this escape from the pain of their lives? He only knows he cannot.

When he comes out the flaming light has faded. Rick’s transistor is playing somewhere, but no one is in sight. Dann strolls around to the pool and finds the two girls in the water again. He sits down to watch.

Fredericka—Frodo—attacks the water with her scrawny arms, thrashing along like a spider. Beside her Valerie swims effortlessly. The warm evening light lingers, harmless now. Presently they climb out and come over to Dann, sharing a towel. Frodo goes through her solicitous routine and sits beside Val on the grass. Their smiles, their every gesture, say Mine. We two together.

Unwelcomely the intuition of their vulnerability comes to Dann. To cherish, to defend their little fortress of union. To love, in the face of the world’s mores and the threat of every egotistical male. So fragile.

As Val combs her hair the two of them start humming, glancing at him mischievously. Presently their voices rise in harmony, parodying an old ridiculous tune. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine—”

It’s a lovely moment; the sweet mocking voices touch him dangerously. When the song ends he can only say roughly, “I wouldn’t sit on that grass too long, Frodo.”

“Why not?”

“Chiggers.” He explains the curse of the South and Frodo scrambles into a chair. There is a pause in which a wood-thrush gurgles and trills.

“Doctor Dann,” Valerie says, “you won’t let them do anything to us, will you?”

Behind her Frodo’s dark eyes are peering intently at him out of her monkey face. It comes to Dann that he’s being asked a real question.

“What do you mean, do something to you?”

“Like, keep us here if we do it.”

“Control our heads,” Frodo adds. “Use drugs on us, maybe.”

“What on earth for?”

“So we’d do what they want,” Valerie explains. “Be, be like telephones for them. I mean, if they really want this submarine thing.”

“Good heavens!” Dann chuckles. “Why, no one—you’ve been reading too many thrillers.”

“You honestly, truly think it’s all right?” Val persists.

“I assure you. Why, this is the U.S. navy. I mean—” He doesn’t know what he means, only to assuage the fear in her eyes.

“Nobody would miss us,” says Frodo in a low voice. “Not one of us. I checked. None of us has anybody waiting outside.”

“Goodness. Now, look, you mustn’t worry about such nonsense. I give you my solemn word.”

Val smiles, the trust in her eyes momentarily pierces him. His solemn word, what does that mean? But it has to be all right, he thinks. After all, Noah Catledge—

“It’s not just the Navy,” Frodo says. “That Major Fearing isn’t in the Navy. He despises us.”

“Aren’t you being just a little, ah…”

“No, he really does.” Valerie’s eyes have clouded again. “He hates us.”

“I don’t see how his likes or dislikes could be a threat to you,” Dann says soothingly.

“I do.” Frodo stares at him over Val’s head and draws her finger across her throat. “I bet he’d hate having his mind read.” Her tone is light but she’s scowling ferociously, willing him to understand.

Dann recalls his brush with Fearing, that intensely covert man. His aura of secret power, the invisible fortifications of self. Trust nobody, withhold everything; classic anal type. Frodo is perfectly right; for a man like Fearing to have his mind read would be traumatic. A terrible threat. Dann chuckles, disregarding some subterranean unease. Could Fearing be snooping about to check on Kirk’s enterprise? Comical!

“I really wouldn’t worry,” he says so warmly and firmly he quite believes it. “After all, he can’t do away with me.”

The girls smile back and they chat of other things. But under the surface Dann has an instant of wondering. What could he do if the military decided to treat these people as resources, conscript them in some way? If he had to make some protest, who would listen? Nobody, especially after one look through his prescription records. For that matter, who would miss him if he never showed up again?

—But this is crazy, he tells himself. And sanity returns with the conclusive answer: It’s all nonsense because tomorrow nothing will happen. Nothing ever has. This test will turn out like all the rest, ambiguous at best. He hopes it’s ambiguous for old Noah’s sake. But unseen voices are not going to come out of that submarine, this ragtag of people is not able to read secrets out of anybody’s mind. They’ve got him as crazy as old Noah with his blue lizard science fiction.

Relieved, his smile strengthens. Valerie is telling him how she’s working as a junior nurse while Frodo starts law school at Maryland U. The vision of Frodo as a lawyer diverts him. In the fantasy twilight of Deerfield he wishes them well with all his battered heart.

When they go in he remains, waiting for what he will not admit. The twilight deepens. From back in the woods the frogs tune up. Nothing is going to occur.

But just as the last light goes, she is there.

Tall and so divinely lean as to be almost grotesque, in a sexless grey suit, she is in the water almost before his eyes can separate her from the dusk. He has only an instant glimpse of sharp high breasts and elegant thigh. She makes no splashing; only a straight wake down the pool to him, a swift turn underwater and she’s started back again, the long dark arms reaching rhythmically, a chain of foam at her feet. In the shallow end her jackknife turn makes an ebony angle against the water. Then she is streaking back toward him, only to turn and repeat, again and again and again.

He sits hypnotized. Is this strenuous ritual a professional skill? It doesn’t look like play. Indeed, it has almost an air of self-inflicted penance. Whatever, she gives no friendly sign.

The stars come out, the cicadas start their shrilling. From the far barracks he can hear voices and music. How marvelous that the others wish to stay in their lighted box, leaving him alone here with her. But she is still at it, like a mechanical thing. Swim, turn, swim, turn—God knows how many times, he hasn’t counted. So long… Surely she will go straight in afterwards. He is unreasonably saddened.

At last she climbs out to wrap herself in a pale robe. He summons courage.

“Miss Omali? Margaret?”

She hesitates and then to his delight comes pacing toward him. He jumps up, choking the impulse to comment on her exercise. Instead he points up at the spangled sky.

“Would you like to inspect my friends?”

Her face turns up. “Hey, they’re really bright here.”

“If you’re not too chilly I could tell you about a few of them.”

“All right.” Her aloof voice is amused, more relaxed than he has heard it. Abruptly, she has stretched out in the chaise. He daren’t look.

“Well, first see that bright one just rising above the trees. That’s not a true star, it’s Mars, a world like ours, shining by reflected sunlight. Notice how red it is. It comes very close, say thirty-four million miles—” He rattles through every picturesque fact he can think of.

“How far are the others?”

“Take that very bright blue-white star right overhead there. It’s a sun called Vega, it’s bright because it’s comparatively close. The light that just reached your eyes took only twenty-six years to get here. Call a light-year six million million miles, Vega is about a hundred and fifty million million miles away.”

“Fifteen times ten to the thirteenth. Um.” In the starlight he can see her flawless profile.

“Wait. That reddish one just moving up from that oak, that’s Antares. It’s four hundred and forty light-years—

A man’s figure has emerged from the woods right behind them.

“Hi.” It’s Ted Yost’s voice. Dann is gripped by fury.

“Hi, Ted. Doc’s showing me some stars.”

“Hello, Ted.” Dann can scarcely control his voice, he is in such dread that the boy will sit down. “Having a stroll?” he croaks.

“Yeah. Well, goodnight Doc,” Ted says to Dann’s infinite relief. “I thought you might be somebody else.” His footsteps fade away.

“Ted’s good,” Margaret remarks.

Dann would call him a saint for his absence, he starts an involuntary word of pity and stops.

“I know about him. I have all your records.”

“I see… What did he mean?”

“Oh, Ted kind of watches. He breaks up the lieutenant’s games.”

“I see,” Dann repeats, thinking with loathing of Kendall Kirk. And be himself has done nothing to help her, has let that barbarian persecute her while he festered in his selfish fogs.

She is still staring dreamily upward. The sky is magnificent here, even the air seems charged with mysterious energy. Beautiful Deerfield.

“How did you mean, about stars rising? I thought they stayed fixed.”

“Well, the earth is turning so the whole sky is moving over us toward the West. About fifteen degrees an hour. They rise and set like the sun or the moon.”

“I didn’t know that. Fifteen degrees, twenty-four hours; three hundred sixty degrees. Hey, neat.”

Is this what cool means, reducing everything to number?

“But of course we’re moving around the sun too, so we don’t see them in the same place every night.” He pommels his memory for the star-books of his boyhood. “They rise about four minutes earlier every evening, I believe. That’s about twice the width of the full moon. I’m sorry I can’t give you more figures for your mathematics.”

She laughs faintly. “Oh, that’s not math, that’s only computation… I count things. Like, there were thirty-four tables in that messhall. Sixteen at each table, allowing two feet each. Five hundred and forty-four.”

In that beautiful head, numbers whirling endlessly. “I’m surprised,” he says, and catches the glint of change in her eyes. Is she thinking he’ll comment about her being a woman, or a Black? “I’m surprised you haven’t gone metric.”

She really laughs this time and her gaze goes back to the stars. The air seems to be humming with some kind of energy. He hasn’t felt so happy, so alive in… years.

“That’s east, right?” she says meditatively. “Yeah, I can almost see them rise. Only it’s really the trees that are sinking down. They just stay there. Cool— Do those stars coming up have names? They’re not much.”

“Ah, but you’re looking toward the very center of our Galaxy. Those stars are called the Archer. Behind them are clouds of dark gas and dust, and beyond that is a tremendous glory we shall never see. Thousands upon thousands of blazing stars packed in a great central mass. If the clouds weren’t there they would light up our whole sky, and the light would have been on its way thirty thousand years.”

He makes his mind produce numbers, dimensions, rotations, anything he can summon up in the brimming, tingling night. He is so happy that he has a momentary image of the Archer beaming rays at him, like an astral Cupid. Stop it, calm down.

She gazes quietly toward the Milky Way, apparently pleased with his talk. The noble poise of her head, the exquisite line of her throat and shoulders exposed by the grey wrap are almost unbearable to him. Daughter of the starry night; he has the absurd feeling that he is introducing her to her proper domain.

“Funny,” she says when he runs down, “it’s like I can feel them, almost… something out there, a million million million miles away. Cool.”

It’s touching her, he thinks; she’s dropped the exponents. He rubs his brow to damp the tension. But it doesn’t ease, it seems to be thrumming up around them. I’ve overdone it, he thinks. Must ease off.

And suddenly it’s worse, a surging, inflooding feeling so strong that he flinches and peers at Margaret under the delusion that she must be feeling it too. She’s sitting quietly, her hand at her throat. Next second it lets go of him; they are alone in the night.

How wonderful to have her here, resting so companionably. He searches the sky for something else to intrigue her. Perhaps the great circumpolar clock of Dubhe and Merak?

“Look north, up there—”

—Oh God, it’s back. A frightening thrum is pouring through him, collapsing his world—a silent tumult that whirls him out of his senses. And he is rushed into total blackness in which a spark blooms into a vision so horrifying that he tries to cry out.

The shape of horror is a white kitchen table, chipped and cracked; he has never seen anything so evil. He wants only to flee from the ghastly thing, still knowing with some part of him that it is unreal, is only on his inner eye.

Next instant reality goes entirely, he is swamped by dreadfulness. His limbs are wrenched out, he is struggling, gagged and spreadeagled, trying to scream at the sweating crazy dark faces above him in the smokey glare. A knife shines above him. Mother! Mother! Help me! But there is no help, the unspeakable blade is forced between his young legs, he can’t wrench himself away. Hideous helplessness. Father! No! No! NO! The face that is Father laughs insanely and the knife rips in, slices agonizingly—it is cutting into the root of his penis. Through the pain and screams his ears echo with drumbeats and vile beery stuff splashes onto his face.

Then everything lets go and he clamps into a knot around his mutlilated sex, rolls and falls hard to the floor in a gale of loud male voices. An old black woman’s face peers into his. He is dying of pain and shame. But as he clasps his gushing crotch he feels alien structure, understands that he is female. His childish body has breasts, his knees are dark-skinned—

And abruptly he is back in the empty night, back to his old familiar body: Daniel Dann huddled in a tin chair gasping “No—no—no—”

He shuts his mouth. Margaret is still there beside him, her hands over her face. The pain in his groin is so real that for a crazy moment he thinks she has done something to him. His hand must feel himself, find his genitals intact under the cloth before he can speak.

“M-Margaret. Are you all right?”

Through her fingers he can see the whites of her eyes. She’s shaking.

“The fire,” she whispers intensely.

“It’s all right, it’s all right.” He reaches clumsily for her arm.

What in God’s name happened?

“The fire,” she repeats. “Burning—the baby—Mary. Mary! Oh-h-h—” Slowly her hands come away from her face, she shakes his arm off, staring at nothing.

“There isn’t any fire,” he manages to say. But he’s lying, a dread suspicion is flaring up in Daniel Dann, former skeptic. The name she said. He is afraid to think what fire she means.

“I should have gone back,” she mutters. “I should—what?”

Oh God, oh God. The unsaid, unceasing nightmare of his life. I could have gone back for them. There was just time. I could have broken away and gone back in.

“Margaret, Margaret, there isn’t any fire. You’re all right. Only I think, somehow, it sounds crazy, I—” With utmost pain he makes himself go on. “That… was my fire, I think. Mary was my wife. I should have gone back and tried to get them out. I think you somehow fell into—I think you read my mind.”

Her trembling has quieted somewhat, her eyes turn to him in the starlight. “You… this place…” she swallows. “What—

“It’s all right, is was only—” He can’t imagine what but sits shakenly touching her fingers. Noises are drifting at them from the far barracks. A commotion seems to be going on, he can hear Rick shouting. Did—whatever—happen to them too? No matter. But his body is still hurting from hallucination; he has to know. Presently he finds courage.

“Margaret, I experienced, I felt—did something very hurtful happen to you when you were a child? Did someone—hurt you?”

The hand is yanked away, she is rising to her feet.

“Wait, please, my dear. Remember I’m only an old doctor who, who—” He is up too, blocking her way. “It was as if I lived it, Margaret.”

She is silent, one hand gripping the back of the chair. “Yes,” she says distantly. “Very… hurtful. Good night.”

“Oh, God. My God.” A hideous puzzle is trying to solve itself in his brain. He can find only the child’s appeal. “Please, my dear. You know mine now, my shame.”

She looks at him in the shadows, receiving perhaps some empathy of the maimed, or something more that floats between them for a moment.

“Mother married a student from Kenya,” she says in a dead voice. “He took us back there when I was thirteen. He, he went crazy.”

“Oh, my dear.” Filthy comprehension breaks on him, too filthy to be borne. “Oh, my dear…”

“Yeah,” Her tone is dreary, final. “Well, good night. Thanks for the stars.”

The full enormity of what has happened hits him at last. “Margaret, what did we—why—”

But she has gone.

He sits down drained, assaulted by invisible horror and impossibility. His head won’t think, he can do nothing but wait for strength to get to his bag. Suddenly a voice speaks behind him.

“Doc!” It’s Ted Yost again. “You better come inside. I think Rick is going off the end.”