Aces High

BY LOST WAYS

By Pat Cadigan

It was unseasonably hot for May, a fast preview of deep summer, and the children gathered at the fire hydrant made a timeless scene. The only thing missing was expertise-no one knew how to release the water from the hydrant. Never mind that such a thing would result in a precipitous drop in the local water pressure, seriously impairing fire fighting, which was why arsonists were always willing to accommodate a gaggle of sweaty kids on a hot day. But there was never an arsonist around when you needed one.

The man in the mom-and-pop convenience store was not watching the kids; he was watching the young woman with the shoulder-length auburn hair and the wide green eyes who was watching the kids. He'd been tracking her since she'd gotten off the bus three days before, usually from the shelter of one of his favorite tabloids, like the one he was holding now. The headline read: WOMAN TURNS INTO JOKER, EATS MATE ON WEDDING NIGHT!! Harry Matthias had always had a taste for the lurid.

The girl across the street, however, was anything but lurid. Girl suited her better than young woman, even though he was reasonably sure she was over twenty-one. Her heart shaped face was unmarked, unlined; unfinished. Unsophisticated, very attractive if you looked twice and he imagined most people did. You'd never think that she was anything other than one more innocent morsel throwing herself into the jaws of the big city. But Harry, more often referred to as Judas, knew differently. The Astronomer would reward him handsomely for this one.

Or rather, the Astronomer's people would. The Astronomer himself didn't bother with you, not if you were lucky, and Judas had been very lucky, almost too lucky to live. He'd gone from being a joker groupie, what they'd called a jokee (and laughing at him, too, when they said it) to being an ace himself. A very subtle ace, to be sure, but very useful with his ability to detect another ace and the power involved. His power had come out that night in that crazy cabaret, the jokers Wild. Saved his life; they'd been about to serve him up proper when the spore had turned and he'd exposed that shape-shifter woman. What changes they'd put her through, to coin a phrase. He didn't like to think about it but better her than him. Better anyone than him, even the girl across the street, though it would have pained him; she was attractive. But he was only delivering her to the Masons, where she wouldn't be wasted. What a talent she had; they'd probably pin a medal on him when he brought her in. Well, they'd pay him, anyway, enough to take the sting out of being called Judas. If he'd felt any sting, which he didn't.

The girl smiled and he felt himself smiling in response. He could sense her power gathering itself. Absently, he tossed a few coins at the cashier for the tabloid and stepped out onto the sidewalk with the paper under his arm. Once again he found himself marveling; even though he knew it took a special power all its own to detect an ace, he was still amazed that people never knew when they stood before something greater than themselves, whether it was an ace, TIAMAT, or the One True God. He glanced at the sky. God was on coffee break and TIAMAT had yet to arrive; right now it was just him and the girl, and that was company enough.

He alone felt it when she let fly. The power surged out of her both like a wave and like a fusillade of particles. The magnitude was frightening. This was a power primeval, something that felt old in spite of the relative newness of the wild card virus, as though the virus had activated some ability native but dormant for centuries.

Could be, he thought suddenly-didn't every primitive people have some kind of rite meant to call down the rain? Without warning, the fire hydrant popped and water gushed out onto the street. The kids waded in cheering and laughing, and she was enjoying them so much, she never noticed his approach.

"Police, miss. Come along quietly." The complete surprise on her face as she stared at the badge he held under her nose made her seem younger still. "You didn't really think you were going to get away with this, did you? And don't play innocent-you're not the only ace we've ever had in this town, you know."

She nodded meekly and let him lead her away.

The Cloisters were completely wasted on her. She didn't bother to look up at the soaring French Gothic architecture or even the ornately carved wooden door where he delivered her like so much goods into the waiting hands of Kim Toy O'Toole and Red. He resisted the urge to kiss her. For a guy named Judas, kissing would be pouring it on too thick. Hey, little girl; she hadn't even noticed the absense of police uniforms.

Red had been mildly florid until the wild card virus had bitten him. Now he was completely red all over and hairless as well. He thought of it as a comparatively tolerable condition.

"Maybe I've got some red Indian in me," he would say from time to time. He didn't. His wife, Kim Toy, was the offspring of an Irish career Army man and the true love he had met while on R amp;R in Hong Kong. Sean O'Toole had been a Mason, but he would barely have recognized the organization his daughter had turned to after her own spore had bloomed and she had discovered that the combination of mental power and pheromones could dazzle men far more greatly than was usual for a reasonably attractive woman. Red hadn't needed that kind of dazzling. Good thing; sometimes she couldn't help making it fatal.

They took the fresh piece Judas had brought them and stuck her in one of the old downstairs offices where interrogations (interviews, Roman would always correct them) could take place in privacy. Then they sat down outside in the hall for an unscheduled break. Roman would be along at any moment, after which they would have to dispose of the girl however the Astronomer thought best.

"Little creep," Red muttered, accepting an already-lit cigarette from Kim Toy. Little creep was a term that always referred to the Astronomer. "Sometimes I think we ought to stomp his ass and run."

"He's going to own the world," Kim Toy said mildly. "And give us a piece. I think that's worth keeping him around for."

"He says he's going to give us a piece. Like he was a feudal lord. But we're not all samurai, wife o' mine."

"Neither am I. I'm Chinese, fool. Remember?" Kim Toy looked past her husband. "Here comes Roman. And Kafka." She and Red sat up and tried to look impassive. Roman was one of the Astronomer's high-level flunkies, someone who could visit those segments of society that would have been considered above most of the questionable types the Astronomer had recruited. His blond good looks and flawless grooming gave him entree almost anywhere. It was whispered that he was one of the rare 'reverse jokers,' someone the spore had made over from a hideously deformed wreck into his present state of masculine beauty. Roman himself wasn't saying.

Following along behind him was his antithesis, the one they called Kafka or the Roach (though not to his face), for he looked like nothing so much as a roach's idea of a human. No one made fun of him, however; the Shakti device that the Astronomer had said would be their salvation was mostly Kafka's doing. He'd figured out the alien instrument that had been in the Masons' custody for centuries and he had singlehandedly designed and constructed the machine that completed its power. Nobody bothered him; nobody wanted to.

Roman gave Red and Kim Toy a minuscule nod as he headed for the office door and then stopped abruptly, almost causing Kafka to bump into him. Kafka leaped back, clutching his skinny arms to himself, panicked at the prospect of any contact with someone who washed less than twelve or thirteen times a day.

"Where do you think you're going?" Roman's smile was flat.

Kafka took a brave step forward. "We've found six aliens passing as humans in the last three weeks. I just want to make sure she's human."

"You want to make sure she's human." Roman gave him an up-and-down. "Judas brought her in. The ones Judas brings us are always human. And the Astronomer doesn't want us scaring off the good one§, which is why I interview them when they first get here. You'll pardon me for saying so, Kafka old thing, but I don't think your appearance will be any too reassuring. "

Kafka's exoskeleton rasped as he turned away and went back down the hall. Kim Toy and Red watched him go, neither of them caring to break the silence by so much as letting out a breath.

"He was watching the monitors when she came in," Roman said, straightening his expensive, tasteful tweed jacket. "Pity. I mean, the man obviously wouldn't mind getting next to such a nice female but the way he is."

"How's your wife, Roman?" Red asked suddenly. Roman froze in the middle of brushing an imaginary piece of lint off his sleeve. There was a long pause. One of the incongruous overhead fluorescents began to hum.

"Fine," Roman said at last, slowly lowering his arm. "I'll tell her you asked after her."

Kim Toy elbowed her husband in the ribs as Roman went into the office. "What the hell did you have to do that for? What was the point?"

Red shrugged. "Roman's a bastard."

"Kafka's a bastard! They're all bastards! And you're a fool. Next time you want to hit that man, get up and break his nose. Ellie Roman never did anything to you."

"First you're telling me how you want to own the worldexcuse me, a piece of it-and then you're chewing me out for throwing Roman's wife up to him. Wife o' mine, you're a real Chinese puzzle sometimes."

Kim Toy frowned up at the buzzing light, which was now flickering as well. "It's a Chinese-puzzle world, husband o' mine."

Red groaned. "Samurai bullshit."

"State your name, please. In full."

He was arguably the best-looking man she had ever met in person. "Jane Lillian Dow," she said. 3n the big cities, they had everything, including handsome men to interrogate you. I heart New York, she thought, and suppressed the hysteria that wanted to come bubbling up as laughter.

"And how old are you, Ms. Dow?"

"Twenty-one. Born April first, 19-"

"I can subtract, thank you. Where were you born?" She was terrified. What would Sal have thought? Oh, Sal, I wish you could save me now. It was more a prayer than a thought, cast out into the void with the dim hope that perhaps the wild card virus could have affected the afterlife as well as this one and the late Salvatore Carbone might come trucking back from the hereafter like ectoplasmic cavalry. So far, reality still wasn't taking requests.

She answered all the man's questions. The office was not especially furnished-bare walls, a few chairs, and the desk with the computer terminal. The man had her records in under a minute, checking the facts against her answers. He had access to her whole life with that computer, one reason why she'd been so reluctant to register with the police after her wild card spore had turned itself out in high school five years before. The law had been enacted in her hometown long before she'd been born, and never taken off the books when the political climate had changed somewhat. But, then, not much had changed in the small Massachusetts town where she'd grown up. "I'll be licensed and numbered like a dog," she'd said to Sal. "Maybe even taken to the pound and gassed like a dog, too." Sal had talked her into complying, saying she'd draw less attention to herself if she obeyed their laws. When they could account for you, they left you alone. "Yeah," she'd said. "I'd noticed how well that kind of thing worked in Nazi Germany." Sal had just shaken his head and promised that things would work out.

But what about this, Sal? They're not leaving me alone, it's not working out. New York was the last place she had expected to be picked up by the police as an ace and, when a break came in the questioning, she said so.

"But we're not the police," the handsome man told her pleasantly, making her heart sink even lower.

"Y you're not? But that guy showed me a badge…"

"Who did? Oh, him." The man-he'd told her to call him Roman-chuckled. "Judas is a cop. But I'm not. And this is hardly a police station. Couldn't you tell?"

Jane scowled into his slightly incredulous smile. "I'm not from here. And I saw what happened a few months ago on the news. I figured after that the police would just set up anywhere they needed to or had to." She looked down at her lap where her hands were twisting together like two separate creatures in silent combat. "I wouldn't have told you about Sal if I'd known you weren't the police."

"What difference does that make, Ms. Dow? Or can I call you Jane, since you don't like to be called Water Lily?"

"Do what you want," she said unhappily. "You will anyway. "

He surprised her by getting up and telling the people in the hall to bring in some coffee and something to eat. "It occurs to me we've kept you here far too long without refreshment."

"The police wouldn't do that for you, Jane. At least, not the New York City police."

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Sure. Then, I guess I'll have some coffee and be on my way."

The man never stopped smiling. "Where have you got to go?"

"I came here-here to New York, I mean-looking for Jumpin' Jack Flash. I saw him on the news…"

"Forget it." The smile was still there but the eyes were cold. "You can't do anything for each other."

"But "

"I said, forget it."

She looked down at her lap again.

"Come on, Jane." His voice softened. "I'm just trying to protect you. You need it. I can just imagine what a hot dog like that would do to an innocent little morsel like yourself. Whereas the Astronomer has a use for you."

She lifted her head again. "A use?"

"A use for your power, I should have said. Forgive me." Jane's laugh was brief and bitter. "A use for my power is a use for me. Maybe I am innocent next to you but I'm not stupid. Sal used to warn me about that."

"Yes, but Sal wasn't an ace, was he? He was just a pathetic little swish, one of that very early kind of joker we've always had in the world. One of nature's mistakes."

"Don't you talk that way about him!" she flared, moisture suddenly beading on her face and running down her arms and legs. The man stared at her wonderingly.

"Are you doing that on purpose? Or is it just a stress reaction?"

Before she could answer, the red man and the Oriental woman came in with a platter of small, neatly made sandwiches. Jane subsided and watched as the couple laid everything out on the desk, even pouring the coffee.

"Fresh from the Cloisters' own kitchens," Roman said, gesturing at the platter. "An ace has to keep her strength up."

"No, thanks."

He jerked his head at the couple, who took positions on either side of the door. More water ran down Jane's face and dripped from the ends of her hair. Her clothes were becoming saturated.

"It's water pulled out of the air around me," she said to Roman, who was beginning to look alarmed. "It happens sometimes when I'm under pressure or-or whatever."

"Fight or flight," he said. "Adrenaline produces sweat to make you more slippery, harder to hold onto. Probably the same principle at work."

She looked at him with new respect. Even Sal hadn't thought of that and he'd been pretty smart, coming up with all those experiments to test the depth and range of her power. It was only because of Sal that she knew her power was effective on things no more than half a mile away from her. He had also figured out that she could cause atoms to combine to make water as well as call already-existing water out of things, and he'd been the one to calculate it would take her forty-eight hours to recharge after exhausting the power, and coached her on how to stretch her energy out so she wouldn't spend herself all at once. "No good being completely defenseless," he'd said. "Don't ever let it happen." And since that one time back home in Massachusetts, she hadn't and never would again. Sal had watched over her for those two days when she'd been half afraid and half hopeful that the power was gone for good. But Sal had been right about its return; she'd been prepared to hand herself over to him completely.

He'd refused her. Once again, she'd offered herself and he'd turned her down. He couldn't be her lover, he'd said, and he wouldn't be her father. She would have to be responsible for herself, just like anyone else. And then, as though to drive the point home, he'd gone back to his apartment and drowned in the bathtub.

Like some sadist's idea of the cruelest joke in the world. Sal Carbone, her one real friend, had fallen and struck his head and breathed soapy water till he died. Only five weeks ago.

"Sal, you're my soulmate," she'd told him over and over, and he'd allowed it was true. They had a rare friendship, a meeting of minds, hearts, and spirits. Perfect for each other except for the fact that he'd been gay. The second-cruelest joke in the world.

"Water Lily."

The name snapped her back to the present. "I told you not to call me that. Only Sal called me Water Lily."

"Sal's exclusive option expired with him." The man suddenly softened again. "Never mind, dear. Tell me, just how how much do you know about what's been happening over the last few months?"

"As much as anybody else." She reached forward shyly and picked up the cup of coffee nearest her. "I watch the news. I guess I mentioned that."

"Well, it isn't over. In the next month, this town-this country, the entire world-will see something that made what happened a few months ago look like a Bible-class picnic. Only the people we recruit stand a chance of ending up on the right side of the graveyard."

More water appeared on her face. "If you're not the police, who are you?"

The man smiled approvingly as she sipped at her coffee. "What do you know about the Masons, Jane?"

"Masons? Masons?" In spite of everything, she burst into laughter. "My father's a Mason!" She forced her giggles to subside before they became hysterics. "What do Masons have to do with anything?"

"Scottish rite."

"Pardon?" Jane's laughter wound down and faded away. The flat cold quality was back in the man's smile.

"Your father's affiliation was probably Scottish-rite. We're Egyptian. Egyptian is quite different."

Her giggles threatened to come back. "That's funny, you don't look Egyptian."

"Don't get nervy, it doesn't become you."

She glanced at the man and woman by the door. "You're the one who knows everything. I just got here." More moisture sprang out on her face and ran down her neck. "And I can't leave, can I?"

"We need you, Jane." He sounded almost kind now. She pulled a napkin off the desk and blotted her face with it. "We need you very badly. Your power could make all the difference."

"My power," she echoed thoughtfully, remembering the boy in the cafeteria five years before, tears pouring from his eyes while he screamed. He hadn't cried a bit at the news of Debbie's suicide (exsanguination from self-inflicted lacerations-medicalese for she slashed her wrists and bled to death-and, oh, yes, victim had been thirteen weeks pregnant). She'd always wondered what Debbie would have thought about what she'd done to her faithless boyfriend. Debbie had been her best friend before Sal but she never prayed to Debbie the way she prayed to Sal, as though Debbie belonged to some other universe. Maybe that was so. And maybe there was still another universe where Debbie hadn't taken her own life when the father of her baby had rejected her, and so no need for Jane to have forced the tears out of the boy's eyes, no wild card virus to have shown itself. And then maybe there was even another universe where Sal hadn't had to drown in his own bathtub, leaving her alone and so in need of someone, anyone, to trust. Maybe…

She looked at the man sitting in front of her. Maybe if pigs had wings, they could soar like eagles. "We need you," he'd said. Whoever we were. Egyptian Masons, whatever. How good it would be to give herself over to someone's care and know that she'd be looked after and protected.

Can you understand that, Sal? she thought at the great void. Can you understand what it's like to be completely alone with a power too big for you? They need me, Sal, that's what they say. I don't like them-and you'd hate them-but they'll look after me and I need someone to do that right now. I'm all alone, Sal, no matter where I am, and I've come here by lost ways and there's nowhere else to go. You know, Sal?

There was no answer from the great void. She found herself nodding at the handsome man. "All right. I'll stay. I mean, I know you won't let me go but I'll stay willingly."

His answering smile almost soothed her heart. "We understand the difference. Red and Kim Toy will take you to your room " He stood up and reached across the desk to take her hand. "Welcome, Jane. You're one of us now."

She drew back, putting both hands up as though she were at gunpoint. "No, I'm not," she said firmly. "I'm staying here of my own will but that's all. I'm not one of you."

That frightening coldness returned to his eyes. He let his hand drop. "All right. You're staying but you're not one of us. We understand the difference there, too."

The room they gave her was the corner of some larger area of dismal, cold stone converted into a warren of smaller rooms with prefab, plasterboard walls. Thoughtfully, they fetched her few worldly goods from the tiny efficiency she'd rented and, also thoughtfully, they provided her with a television as well as a bed. She watched the news, looking for more footage of Jumpin' Jack Flash. Otherwise, she occupied herself by producing small droplets of water from her fingertips and watching them distend and fall.

"Is she pretty?" asked the Astronomer, sitting in his wheelchair by the tomb of Jean d'Alluye. There was still some blood on the stone figure; the Astronomer had lately felt the need to recharge his power.

"Quite pretty." Roman took a perfunctory sip from the glass of wine and set it aside on the preacher's table nearby. The Astronomer was always offering him things-booze, drugs, women. He would take a taste out of courtesy and then set whatever it was aside. Exactly how much longer the Astronomer would allow that to go on was anyone's guess. Sooner or later he was bound to make some bizarre demand involving Roman's debasement. No one came out of association with the Astronomer unscathed. Roman's attention wandered to a shadowy area under a brick arch where the skinny blasted ruin called Demise slouched brooding, his bottomless gaze fixed on something no one else could see. In another part of the room, near one of the lantern poles, Kafka was rustling impatiently. He couldn't help rustling with that damned exoskeleton. It sounded like a multitude of cockroaches going wingcase to wingcase. Roman didn't bother trying to hide his disgust at Kafka's appearance. And Demise-well, he was beyond disgusting. Sometimes Roman thought that even the Astronomer was ginger about Demise. But both Demise and Kafka had been through their allotted humiliations courtesy of the wild card virus, while he could only wait and see what the Astronomer had in mind for him. He hoped there'd be enough time to know which way to jump. And then there was Ellie… The thought of his wife was a fist in his stomach. No, please, no more for Ellie. He looked at the glass of wine and refused for the millionth time to succumb to the desire for anesthesia. If I go down-no, when I go down, I will go down in full possession of my faculties…

The Astronomer laughed suddenly. "Melodrama becomes you, Roman. It's your good looks. I could see you in some other life rescuing widows and orphans from blizzards." The laughter faded, leaving a malicious smile. "Watch yourself around that girl. You could end up a little prematurely as the dust we all are."

"I could." Roman's gaze went to the upper gallery. The Italian wood sculptures were gone now; he couldn't remember what they'd looked like. "But I won't."

"And what makes you so sure?"

"She's a white-hat. A good guy. She's a twenty-one-yearold innocent, she doesn't have murder in her soul." Belatedly, he looked at Demise, who was staring at him the way you never wanted Demise to stare at you.

Roman braced himself against a broken-off pedestal. It would be horrible but it wouldn't last long, not really. The eternity of a few seconds. At least it would put him beyond the Astronomer's reach for all time. But it also meant he wouldn't be able to help Ellie, either. I'm sorry, darling, he thought, and waited for the darkness.

A quarter of a second later, the Astronomer lifted one finger. Demise sank back into himself and resumed staring at nothing. Roman forced himself not to sigh.

"Twenty-one," mused the Astronomer, as though one of his people had not just narrowly escaped being killed by his pet murder machine. "Such a fine age. Plenty of life and strength. Not the most level-headed age. An impulsive age. You're sure you're not just a little bit afraid of her impulses, Roman?"

Roman couldn't resist sneaking a glance at Demise, who was no longer paying any attention. " I don't mind staking my life on someone whose heart is in the right place."

"Your life." The Astronomer chuckled. "How about something of value?"

Roman allowed himself an answering smile. "Excuse me, sir, but if my life didn't have some value to you, you'd have let Demise do me a long time ago."

The Astronomer burst into surprisingly hearty laughter. "Brains and good looks. They're what make you so damned useful to all of us. Must be what attracted your wife to you. You think?"

Roman kept smiling. "Very likely."

Her dreams were full of strange pictures, things she'd never seen before. They troubled her sleep, passing through her head with an urgency that felt directed and reminded her of Roman's impassioned pleas for her to join them. Whoever they were. Egyptian Masons. Her dreams told her all about them. And the Astronomer.

The Astronomer. A little man, shorter than she was, bone thin, head too large. What Sal would have called bad-ass eyes while making that sign with his hand, the index and little fingers thrust out like horns, the middle two curled over his palm, some kind of Italian thing. Sal's face floated through her dreams briefly and was swept away.

She saw the entrance of some kind of church-no, a temple, definitely not a church. She saw it. but she wasn't there, couldn't have been there; this was a time before she'd been born. Her disembodied presence scanned a nighttime street and then floated up the temple steps past the man on the door who seemed to be frozen. She had a glimpse of a great room aglow with candles, two columns, and a man on a platform, wearing'some kind of gaudy red and white thing over his front, just before the screams began.

Not just screams but screams, SCREAMS, ripped from the throat of a soul gone forfeit. The sound stabbed into her. There was time for her point of view to swing around cameralike so she could see it was the little man screaming, the Astronomer, staggering into the hall. Then there was a fast jumble of pictures, a jackal face, a hawk's head, another man, his wide face pale; light glinting off the little man's glasses and then some kind of a thing, a creature-thing-slime-massdamned-thing-thing-thing.

She found herself sitting up in bed, her arms thrown up in front of her face.

"TIAMAT." Unbidden, the word came to her, and unwanted it hung there in the darkness. She rubbed her face with both hands and lay down again.

The dream returned immediately, dragging her under with horrible strength. The little man with the enormous head was smiling at her-no, not at her, she wasn't there and she was glad; she didn't ever want anyone to smile at her that way. Her point of view drew back and she saw that he was now standing on the platform, and around him she saw several figures-Roman, the red man, and the oriental woman, a thin wreck of a man with the feel of death about him, a woman with regret so etched into her features that it hurt to look at her (somehow she knew the woman was a nurse), a young albino man with a prematurely old face, a creature male, she thought-that might have been an anthropomorphic cockroach. There but for the grace of God, she thought.

God is still out on coffee break, little girl. She was looking into the face of the man who had brought her here, the one they called Judas. He was the only one who could see her. It's just the luck of the draw, babe, and you were lucky. And so was I. Blackjack!

Everything went dark. There was a sensation of incredibly fast movement. Something was propelling her toward a tiny point of light far ahead in the blackness.

And then suddenly she was there; the light swelled from a pinpoint to a fiery mass and she hit going full-out at the speed of thought. The light shattered and she was tumbling softly on the mossy floor of a forest. She rolled over once and came to rest gently at the base of a large tree.

Well, she thought, this is more like it. I must have missed the White Rabbit, but the Mad Hatter ought to be around here somewhere. She shifted position and found she had to grab hold of a large root to keep from floating away.

Look, whispered a voice very close to her ear. She turned her head, her hair floating around her as though she were underwater, but she saw no one. Look. Look! Look and you'll see them!

A puff of mist blew between two larches in front of her and disintegrated, leaving behind a man dressed in the height of eighteenth-century finery. His face was aristocratic, his eyes so piercing that she caught her breath as his gaze rested on her. But she had nothing to fear. He turned; the air beside him shimmered and a strange machine melted into existence. She blinked several times, trying to see it clearly, but the angles refused to resolve themselves. Try as she would, she couldn't tell whether it was large and sharp-cornered or small and molded, sculpted in marble or nailed together with wood and rags. Something glimmered and detached itself from the machine. She marveled; a part of it had just gotten up and walked away.

No. What she thought was part of the machine was a living being. She wanted to pull her gaze away just for a moment but she couldn't. It wouldn't let her. Alien. Reminiscent of certain other aliens she'd seen on the news in the attack. Jumpin' Jack Flash. The thought was neatly shoved aside.

The alien turned to the man and stretched out an arm, or some appendage. Now it began to look more like living matter than part of a machine. The alien smoothed into something roughly bipedal though it seemed to be holding the form only by sheer will-the ergotic hypothesis (where had that come from?). The appendage touched the machine and melted into it. A moment later something protruded from the side near the man. He took hold of it and very carefully removed it. The alien sank a little, diminished. She realized it had expended a great deal of its life-force to give the man-what?

The man held the thing to his lips, his forehead, and then lifted it high overhead. Briefly, it took on the form of a human bone, a club, a gun, then something else.

Shakti, whispered the voice. Remember this. The Shakti device.

I'll never forget it, she thought. The floating feeling was starting to leave her and she grew afraid.

Now, look. Look up.

Unwillingly, she raised her head and looked up at the sky. Her vision shot up, racing through the sunlight, through the blue, through clouds, until it left the Earth entirely and she was looking at the naked stars. The stars dispersed before her until she was staring into the blackness of space, and still her vision was traveling.

Something was there ahead of her, invisible in the blackness. Something… it was so far away she could not begin to conceive of the distance. It was on its way to Earth. It had been this far away in 1777, when that man (Cagliostro, said her mind and she didn't wonder how she knew) had accepted the thing-Shakti-from the alien and then-and then-went on to perform many feats seen as miraculous including mind reading, levitation, transubstantiation, amazing all those in the courts of Europe while passionately recruiting for the Egyptian Freemasons..

She struggled to absorb the information pouring into her from the dream. Not that it mattered, because when she woke up she wouldn't remember any of it. That was the way it was with dreams. Wasn't it?

… because he wanted an organization that would keep the Shakti device safe and hand it down from generation to generation, to only the most trusted people, until its mysteries could be unlocked and completed, when it would be needed for the arrival on Earth of-

Something writhed in the darkness ahead of her. Or perhaps the darkness itself was writhing in agony at having to contain this thing, this- for the arrival on Earth of-

It burst upon her without warning or mercy, far worse than it had been when she touched it in the Astronomer's mind. It was the gathering, the congealing, of the highest, lowest, most developed, polished, and refined forms of evil in the universe, evil that made the greatest human atrocities seem petty by comparison, evil she could not understand except with her gut, evil that had been rushing toward this world for thousands of years, swallowing anything in its path, evil that would be arriving any day now, any day.