The Dreamfields

Chapter 11

The sun came up as the bus crossed the desert. Ralph awoke from fitful sleep—dreams of more fangs, sliding in the sockets of armored jaws—and saw the red light staining the earth. Blood, he thought. A residue of fear and nausea lingered in his stomach.

Nothing had become clarified in his mind by the time the bus pulled into Norden. He had no plans other than getting more sleep, letting the fatigue poisons drain away and seep into the carpet in his apartment on the base. The door of the bus hissed shut behind him as he stood on the sidewalk. The proprietor of the town’s miniscule grocery store glanced at him, then continued drawing up the store’s window shades.

On the path that led to the base, a lizard scurried away from him and disappeared into the rocks at one side. Ralph wondered if the two bright little eyes were watching him from some dark space as he passed. And who else is watching me right now? The thought chilled him despite the morning’s growing heat, until he forced it farther back into his mind. A little time’s all I need, he thought. To figure out what to do next.

The town had long disappeared behind the hills’ sand and scruffy brush. A few more yards and the buildings of the Opwatch base appeared inside the encircling fence, square and almost featureless, the same color as the dunes beyond them. The sun bounced off the blank walls with such intensity that he lowered his eyes and walked toward them with his head bent, as though through a storm.

He stepped through the unguarded gate and trudged towards the Rec hall, passing between the other buildings as they slowly sucked up their own shadows. The familiar scent of the Rec hall’s air-conditioned interior hit him in the face like a silent blow. The door of dark glass swung shut behind him. Another copy of the L.A. Times was spread out on the table.

Goodell raised his eyes from behind the sports section. Farther down the hall Kathy was fumbling her hand around inside her mailbox. Suddenly he felt even more tired than before he had come in, his fatigue now extending above him like the sides of a deep well. Right down here at the bottom, he thought. Where nothing ever changes. This is better than L.A.?

The chair across from Goodell was empty. It sighed as Ralph lowered himself into it. Idly, he leaned forward and pulled part of the newspaper toward himself. It was open to the editorial page. The first one read ‘XIMENTO—Was It Worth It?’

Goodell lowered the section he was holding. “Back kind of early, aren’t you?” he said. “I thought you were taking a whole week off.”

Without looking up, Ralph nodded. “There wasn’t anything to do. Really.” He sensed Kathy standing behind his chair but didn’t turn around.

“I thought it was kind of quick,” she said. “For you to hear about it and come back to see. It only happened last night.”

He twisted around and looked up into her placid expression. “It? What’s it? What happened last night?”

“You haven’t heard yet?” said Goodell.

“What?” He felt a spasm of irritation. They were both grinning.

“You’ll see.” Kathy giggled.

“You must not have gone up to your apartment yet,” said Goodell.

“You’ll see it when you get there.”

Their amusement at his ignorance was too much for his exhausted and frayed temper. He got up and strode out of the Rec hall without saying anything.

As he crossed the grounds to the apartment buildings, a current of fear rose and diluted his anger. Something that happened last night? he wondered. While I was— back there in L.A.?

He unlocked the door to his apartment, pushed it open, and peered into the dim space. Nothing seemed different. He stepped inside slowly. The air was stale, and a thin film of dust had fallen on everything during the few days he’d been gone. The window, he thought. That must be what they meant. He crossed the front room to the sliding door and pulled the curtain aside. Seconds passed before what was out there translated from his senses to his mind. Then he felt something—a universe?—drop sickeningly away from his feet.

As he crossed the base by the downward slope of the desert behind the apartment buildings, it had been hidden from him. He had seen it once before in a magazine article but it was much bigger than he could have guessed from the flat photographs of it.

An enormous jetliner, like a horizontal skyscraper, sat poised in the level area behind the base. The space was too small for it—one high dune at the edge actually touched the tip of one wing. Its polished silver surface reflected the sun like a mirror. But even through the dazzling glare, the precise black lettering on the tail section could be read, boldly proclaiming the name of its owner and his international headquarters—MUEHLENFELDT.

Ralph backed away from the glass, his heart accelerating. Hearing somebody pass by the apartment’s open door, he spun around, ran out into the corridor, and recognized the figure heading away from him.

“Glogolt!” he called. “Hey, come here!”

The fat watcher stopped, turned around, and ambled back to him.

“What’s the matter?” he said.

Ralph pointed towards the sliding door and the apparition visible through it. “What’s that thing doing here?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” mumbled the other. “It just kinda dropped out of the sky late last night. When we got off our shift there it was. They gave us orders not to go out and bother them. Okay by me.” He resumed his slow progress down the corridor.

I know why it’s here, thought Ralph. He went back into the apartment and stared with a bitter dismay at the silver jet. Because of me. They know I’m here and who knows what else. He threw himself on the couch and pressed his fists against his eyes, trying futilely to shut out the reflected light from outside. There would be no breathing space in this universe, no time to figure out what to do next.

Commander Stiles surveyed the remnants of his lunch—crumbs and a wilted lettuce leaf—then pushed his chair away from the desk. “I don’t know why he wants to see you,” he said. “All I was told was to send you out there.” His complexion was strangely mottled and he didn’t look up.

Jealous, thought Ralph. The old guy’s jealous because he wasn’t invited out to the jet. “All right,” he said and turned to leave.

“How do you rate. Metric?”

He looked back and saw the base commander’s face formed into a childish scowl. “Just lucky, I guess.” He headed to the building’s exit.

A resigned fatalism had gradually overtaken him, and it darkened as he crossed the base. The brilliant noon sun battered the ground but he was barely aware of it. Even if I just get a couple crummy little answers, he told himself. Then I won’t mind whatever they’re going to do to me.

To reach Muehlenfeldt’s jet, it was necessary to go out the base’s only gate and then circle around outside the fence. He stepped off the road and started over the yielding sand, keeping the fence a few feet from his side.

Inside it, the base buildings hulked and waited.

The sloping ground behind the base shimmered in the heat as he stood by the fence and looked down into the depression. When he had seen the jet from his apartment, the enormity of it had confused his sense of direction. He saw now that it was much farther away than he had thought.

It would take a considerable hike to reach it. He started down the slope but lost his footing and half-slid, half-ran to the bottom.

His shirt was clammy with sweat by the time he stood in the shade cast by the enormous fuselage. The end of one of the jets mounted beneath the backswept wing gaped over his head. He could see no ramps or steps extending to the ground, only the giant wheels sunk part way in the sand.

From beneath the plane, no doors or windows were visible. “Hey!” he shouted at the silver curve of its belly. His voice echoed from it and then was absorbed in the desert.

With a hissing noise an oval section slid aside and a metal stairway extruded from the opening. Ralph backed up and watched its measured descent until its bottom tread settled on the ground. He gripped the rail, raised his head and peered up into the opening. No one was visible at the top. Here goes, he thought, forcing his breath to slow. His shoes rang on the metal steps as he climbed up.

When he reached the top a hand grasped his elbow and pulled him off the steps and into the plane. He turned and found himself looking into a young, unsmiling face. The man’s eyes were too small and hard. On the sleeve of his jacket was a patch with the letters FSA. Another man with the same eyes and patch stood a few feet away.

“Mr. Metric?” said the first one, still gripping Ralph’s elbow. Without waiting for a reply the man propelled him farther into the jet. “The senator’s been waiting for you.”

As the man pushed him through, he stumbled over the bottom rim of a door. His forearm tingled when the grip on his elbow was released, allowing the blood to circulate again. The man closed the door between himself and Ralph.

An enormous aquarium formed a wall up to the arched ceiling of the jet. A mottled fish as large as Ralph’s head opened its ruffled fins, gaped at him, then moved sluggishly into the tank’s depths. Ralph stepped around the end of the tank and into the vast open area on the other side.

The high-backed chair swivelled around. He recognized its occupant from news pictures of him, but, like those of the jetliner, they hadn’t done the figure justice.

“Come in, Mr. Metric.” Senator Muehlenfeldt formed a cage with his long, age-browned fingers. “Seat yourself.”

Warily studying the seamed face with its wings of snow-white hair above the eyes, Ralph pulled a smaller chair away from the desk. He sank back into its padding without breaking his silence or his gaze.

“You look rather worried.” The senator smiled. “Is there something troubling you?”

Ralph shifted in his chair. “Maybe I’m a little paranoid,” he said. “After what happened in L.A.” It didn’t sound as ironic as he had intended it to sound.

“That was all most unfortunate. I really only wanted a little information from Gunther Ortiz. The only way to get it was for my psych-technicians to induce a memory flashback from his army experiences, and to identify the Alpha Fraction in his mind with his former enemies. No one, though, was prepared for the violence of the associations he had with that material. He broke loose and got away from us, with the results you saw. I’m very sorry about it all.”

“I bet.” Ralph pressed his fingers into the thick upholstery of the chair’s arms.

“Mr. Metric.” The world-famous head moved sadly from side to side. “I sense a great deal of hostility here. And it’s needless.” He pushed himself up from the chair. “Perhaps someone else can put your mind to rest. Come over here.”

The senator led him to a curtain, heavy with an intricate brocade, that was suspended from a curved track on the plane’s ceiling. “Still asleep?” said Muehlenfeldt, pulling the curtain aside. “No, I didn’t think you would be.”

He stood beside the senator without speaking as he gazed at Sarah. She was half-reclining on a small couch, one arm resting along its back. From a circular window she turned her face to them. An elegant dress of some glittery black stuff extended to her ankles, but left her tanned shoulders bare.

“Sarah’s my daughter, you know,” said Muehlenfeldt. “Since she was a little girl, she’s been a great one for secrets.”

Her eyes met Ralph’s, but no expression came into her face. She looks rich, he thought, feeling again the bitter sense of betrayal. Now that she’s in her proper environment.

The brocaded curtain moved along its overhead track, cutting the little space off from the rest again. Muehlenfeldt had withdrawn, leaving the two of them. Sarah drew her legs up so that Ralph could sit down on the end of the couch. When he had settled onto the cushion, he leaned forward with his arms on his knees and saw a long-stemmed wine glass that had fallen over and made a wet blot on the carpet. Sarah’s face had the partly hooded eyes of a joyless, infrequent drinker.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she announced flatly.

He looked over at her but said nothing.

“You think I fingered the Alpha Fraction. Got them all killed. You think I was working for my father all along.”

For a few seconds he watched her. “Yeah,” he said at last.

“Forget it,” she said. “He had us bugged all the time. Didn’t even need anybody on the inside.” She tilted her head, letting her hair fall across the top of the couch. “Believe that?”

“Maybe.” Who knows, he thought. Maybe it’s to the point now where it doesn’t even matter. “Is he really your father?”

“I don’t know. I’m not that wise a child.”

“Come on,” said Ralph. “Is he?”

She sighed. Her bare shoulders raised in a tired shrug. “Spencer used to tell me all those ideas of his, too. They might be true. I never knew my father very well. No rich kid ever does. If a being from another star took his place, I couldn’t tell you.”

Ralph nodded, wondering if the difference between the man and other men was due to the amounts of money and power he commanded, or to something even more alien than that. A part of himself, he knew, was watching Sarah, looking for that same difference in her.

“I just don’t know.” She sounded tired. “I was just about to a place where I thought I’d gotten away. From all this.” She lifted a hand to indicate the jet’s interior. “That’s why I left, went to L.A. in the first place, so long ago; even though I knew I could never make it into anybody else’s world. At best I could be free of any connections with here.” Her voice grew faint as she fell into some private reverie. “Billions of dollars and light-years away . . .”

He turned, leaned across the couch, and brought his hands to each side of her head. Her eyes stayed open as he kissed her, in a silver jet in the desert bright with light.

Then he let go of her, stood up, and drew aside the curtain enough to pass into the larger area. A dizzying confusion rolled through him. I still can’t tell, he thought. Maybe everybody’s from some other star.

“Ralph.” From some direction Muehlenfeldt appeared and put his arm around Ralph’s shoulder. The world-famous face of power and authority smiled pleasantly into his. “It was pure good luck that my men were able to get her out of there before that madman showed up and killed the others. Things aren’t working out the way I want them to. But you can help. You know what I’m talking about.”

“No.” Ralph shook his head. “I don’t.”

“That’s not necessary.” Muehlenfeldt steered him past the dark leather chairs. “There’s time for you to think about it. Then, when you’re ready to give me the info—well, I’m right here. Waiting for you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” An eerie perception of words dissolving free of their meanings floated over him. The senator let go of him, a door opened, one of the men—guards?—drew him away.

A few moments later, he was standing on the sand beneath the jetliner, watching the metal steps glide back up into the glistening belly. A hard rock of anger fell through him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he shouted at the closing door.

Chapter 12

Through the apartment window the bright desert stars were visible.

Ralph sat up on the couch in the front room and rubbed his taut face.

Sleep had eluded him for hours.

Maybe she’s telling the truth, he thought again. Maybe she didn’t betray the Alpha Fraction. Just a poor little rich girl, playing at revolutionary. Just to get back at her father. Only he turned out to be bigger and more dangerous than she could’ve guessed. He sorted through his fragmented thoughts again, wondering what sort of picture they would reveal if he could ever put them together in the right way. The senator, the jet, everything that had already happened—it all weaved in and out of his mind. He pressed his fingers to the corners of his eyes and wondered what time it was.

The room’s silence dissolved with the ringing of a telephone. For a moment he didn’t even recognize the sound. After several rings he stood up and went into the kitchen. He lifted the receiver from its mounting on the wall beside the refrigerator. “ ’Hello?” he said into it.

“Ralph—” The voice jumped into his ear, taut beneath an overlay of static. “Hey, is that you?”

He closed his eyes and felt the room sway a little. “No,” he murmured.

“You’re dead. I can’t take any more stuff like this.” It was Spencer’s voice on the other end of the line.

“No, I made it.” Spencer’s words came in a rush. “I got away from Gunther. But there’s somebody else after me now. Must be some of Muehlenfeldt’s people, about seven or eight of ’em. I’ve been running all this time. Don’t know how much longer—” He broke off, his voice replaced for a moment by the sound of deep, rapid breathing. “You’ve got to listen,” he spoke again. “They’ll find me any minute. It’s up to you. The Master Historical Program—I read it as it was printed out. After you unlocked it.”

Ralph’s spine went rigid. “Slow down,” he said, pressing the phone tighter to his ear. “I can’t understand you, you’re talking so fast.”

“I can’t slow down.” Spencer’s voice wavered, as though he were about to break into tears. “I’ve been running all day and they’re gonna find me any minute.”

“The program.” Ralph’s own voice was tight with urgency. “What was in it?”

The sound of a few more ragged breaths came from the receiver.

“Operation Dreamwatch,” he spoke at last, his voice only a fraction slower and more controlled. “It’s like the Manhattan Project of 1942. You know, the first nuclear pile? Zip rods—”

The phone went silent for a few seconds, then clicked sharply and began an electronic buzz in his ear. “Spencer?” he shouted into the whining phone, but knew already there would be no answer.

He threw the receiver against the wall. It struck and dangled on the end of its cord, still sounding its faint idiot note. He glared at it, at the wall behind, at everything with a growing anger. This universe was still bent on hiding its secrets from him.

That does it, he thought disgustedly. He strode into the front room and picked up his jacket. I’ve got to talk to Sarah. Maybe she knows more—even just a little bit more—that I have to know.

Between the moon and the desert three jets left trails into the south.

The red lines healed and faded among the stars. Ralph felt like a ghost as he passed the silent line shack. The watchers, he calculated, were halfway through their shift, wandering around bored on the dreamfield.

And here I am, he thought, heading for the gate. Not bored, at least. Is that an improvement?

The dunes were a luminous blue in the moonlight. He followed the double trail of his previous footsteps out to Muehlenfeldt’s jetliner. Only when he was standing in the darkness beneath it, looking up at the tightly sealed metal flank, did he think, Now what? The thought of throwing pebbles up at the circular windows struck him as stupid, but he had no other idea. One of the scruffy bushes behind him rustled.

Before he could turn around, he was on his stomach, his face pressed into the sand. Someone’s knees were heavy on his back. Both his arms were brought up behind him and he was jerked painfully to his feet.

Twisting his head around, he could see over his shoulder the face of one of Muehlenfeldt’s guards. The malice underneath had split open the surface with a grin.

“Whatcha looking for?” the guard shouted in Ralph’s ear. “Looking for something? Huh?” He pulled the captive arms even farther up. “Whatcha snooping around for?”

Ralph couldn’t speak. The pain in his spine was making the stars go out one by one.

“Come on then. Jerk.” The guard trotted him forward. “The senator wants to talk to you.”

Another guard stepped out from behind one of the massive wheels. He pressed a button on a stubby-antennaed box in one hand. The jet’s stairs began their hissing descent.

Muehlenfeldt was alone in the jet, or at least there was no sign of Sarah.

The guards dropped Ralph in the middle of a curved section of sofa. He brought his arm out from where it had been twisted behind him, and felt the blood start to seep back into it. In a fluorescent blue dressing gown with a large red M embroidered on the front, Muehlenfeldt paced, scowling, back and forth in front of him. That looks ridiculous, thought Ralph, surprising himself with his calm. Like a cartoon of the world’s richest man.

“All right, Metric,” growled the senator, pointing a leathery finger at Ralph. “I’m not fooling around any more. You’d better open up pretty damn quick.”

Ralph massaged his aching arm. “I don’t know whatever it is you think I’m supposed to be able to tell you.”

“Cut out the games. I want all the details, all the names, everything you know about the Beta group.”

Puzzled, Ralph frowned. “You mean the Alpha Fraction, don’t you?”

The bony hand curled into a fist a few inches from Ralph’s nose. “Cut out the games!” shouted Muehlenfeldt. “Don’t try to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about! Beta! Beta! Beta!”

Pushing himself back into the sofa’s upholstery, Ralph looked into the senator’s eyes. It didn’t matter whether he was from another star or not—another type of alienness blazed in the lean face. Insane, thought Ralph. The man’s crazier than—

“All right?” said Muehlenfeldt, his voice softer but still trembling with suppressed rage. “There’s no point in trying to fool me. I know all about it.”

“Great,” muttered Ralph. A weary disgust pushed aside his apprehension for a moment. “Why don’t you tell me about it, then?”

“Get him out of here.” As Ralph was jerked up from the couch Muehlenfeldt slapped the guard on the side of the head. “Careful! Remember what happened to the last one!”

In a few seconds the guard pushed Ralph from the bottom of the jet’s stairs. He stumbled forward, landing on his hands and knees in the sand.

Rolling over on his back, he watched the guard’s scowling face disappear as the ramp retracted into the silver fuselage. The hissing stopped and the silence of the night desert crept up around him.

He got to his feet and walked out from beneath the wing. His hands looked so pale and inhuman in the moonlight he thrust them in his jacket pockets and trudged over the sand.

“Ralph.” Sarah’s voice.

For a moment he thought some residue of the senator’s madness had twisted his hearing. Then he saw her standing on the little trail, waiting for him. Some part of the spectrum was missing, the part that had made her dress sparkle when he had seen her inside the jet. Now the fabric appeared as a featureless black against her skin.

“What are you doing out here?” he said. “I thought your father would’ve kept you locked up.”

She shrugged, listless. “Why should he? Where’s to go?”

“Anywhere. Away from him.”

“No.” She reached out and took his hand. “All that money is very comfortable. I know. It even fills up a little bit of the hole left by the Alpha Fraction.”

“What’s this other thing he was talking about? The Beta group?”

“Who knows? He’s insane.” She brought her hand up and held Ralph’s against her shoulder. “Something he dreamed up.”

Of course, he thought. We’re all operating out of them now. “Now what,” he murmured. The words were sucked lifeless by the empty spaces around them.

Sarah let go of his hand and turned away. Silently, her figure withdrew into the darkness surrounding the jetliner.

It’s all dreamfields, he thought. The dunes wheeled around him as he looked for the trail he had been following. No difference between this and any other one. And the worst is to know you’re lost on them.

He lay down on the sofa in darkness. As soon as he closed his eyes, or so it seemed, he was driving down a freeway in his parents’ old Ford. Beside him sat Michael Stimmitz with one arm draped casually out the side window. “I suppose you’re pretty mad at me,” said Stimmitz. “For getting you into all this.”

“No, it’s all right. Really.” Ralph had the sensation that the car was going very fast, faster than he’d ever gone in anything, yet everything beyond the windshield was a featureless gray haze. This is all a dream, anyway, he thought. A weary hollowness slid through his muscles, It doesn’t matter.

“Ah, that’s the trouble with you, Ralph.” Stimmitz shook his head. “That’s always been the trouble with you. You just don’t get mad at things, do you? If you did, they’d go better for you.”

“Maybe.” He didn’t feel like arguing. Patiently he waited for the dream to end and for comfortable unconsciousness to slip over him again. “You’re a fine one to talk about things going better. You’re dead.”

Michael Stimmitz shrugged. “That’s not important. You’re still dreaming about me, aren’t you? I must’ve made some impression on the universe, or part of it at least, if people are still thinking about me when I’m gone. Right? I mean, your memory is evidence that I existed once. But you, Ralph—boy, I just don’t know.” The dream image of Stimmitz kneaded his forehead with one hand. “It’s going to be one of those names-written-in-water deals for you if you don’t shape up pretty soon.”

“Come on. Give me some slack, will you?” Ralph felt a point of resentful misery penetrate his apathy. “I’m going through enough crap right now without you coming back from the grave and bitching at me.”

“I’m only doing it for your own good, Ralph. You don’t want to die and just be forgotten, do you? No accomplishments?” Stimmitz’s voice dropped in volume and pitch as he leaned closer. “Take a look at what’s in the back seat.”

“I don’t want to,” sulked Ralph. “You’ve probably got something disgusting back there. I don’t want to see it, whatever it is.”

“Go on,” coaxed Stimmitz. “Take a look. What’s the harm? Maybe you’ll even wake up.”

Slowly, Ralph turned his head, his hands still gripping the wheel. Sarah lay curled up on the back seat, her head resting on her bare arm. Her hair spilled down to the floor. She’s dead, thought Ralph. Or at least here she is.

Her skin was white and cold-looking. A tiny drop of red glistened in the corner of her mouth, far below the bruised eyelids.

“What the hell’s that for?” said Ralph angrily. He swung around and leaned over the steering wheel, looking for an offramp. “How do I get off this damn thing,” he muttered.

“There’s more to be considered than just yourself.” Stimmitz gestured with one of his long-fingered hands.

“Thanks a lot. If you’re trying to be so goddamn helpful why don’t you tell me what’s going on with Muehlenfeldt and all the rest of that stuff?”

“Come on, Ralph. I’m just a product of your subconscious. I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”

“What’s the point, then. What’s the damn point.” Who needs this, he thought. He turned to face Stimmitz with more angry words forming on his tongue. But instead of Stimmitz, the slithergadee swelled and clattered its scales as it moved across the seat toward him, its jaws gaping hot and wide. The space outside the car grew dark and Ralph could feel the car falling, falling.

He woke up on the couch, surrounded by the dark apartment. Through the window he could see the cold stars still glittering over the desert. What time is it? he wondered. Everything seemed very still, the world in abeyance.

In his stocking feet he padded to the kitchen and looked at the little clock on top of the stove. Three a.m. A dark hour, he thought. So quiet.

Back in the living room, he gazed out the sliding glass door at the base and the desert. Nothing moved out there. In the distance, blue moonlight slid over the flanks of Muehlenfeldt’s jet. The pale luminescence on the ground had large, jagged black rips in it, the shadows of buildings and dunes and other objects, as the moon ebbed closer to the horizon.

The details of his dreams were fading beyond recall, but had left him with a certain melancholy. Sunlight might have dissipated it, but at this hour, Ralph knew, it was a true vision, a glimpse of dark eternity. This is the way it is underneath everything else.

He felt himself alone on the earth. The social construct of time had stopped, along with light and warmth. The dark hours would last forever.

Whatever point of conspiracy and violence his life had been hurtling toward still waited in the future. But this is worse. This is death and knowing you’re dead. He turned from the window, sat on the couch and pulled on his shoes. From the dark apartment he stepped into the dimly lit corridor and drew the door shut behind him.

The building was silent. Ralph passed by the closed doors, feeling like his own ghost. All the familiar components of his life were changed somehow, as though they were never meant to be seen at this hour.

Everyone else, he thought, is asleep or holding down a shift on the dreamfield. Far away from here, in either case. He entered the stairwell at the far end of the corridor and started down.

Outside, the concrete paths were like corroded silver in the partial light. He walked slowly between the buildings, not knowing for whom or what he was looking. This kind of motion is becoming a habit with me.

A small asphalt lot at the corner of one of the apartment buildings held the dozen or so cars that belonged to people on the base. A sad collection, mostly—aged and not well taken care of. Neglect and time had exposed their essential cheapness. Peeling fenders squatted over bald tires. Things have gotten out of hand, thought Ralph with grim humor, when metal starts decaying as fast as human beings. The dusty lenses of the cars’ headlights watched as he went by.

A honk from one of the cars’ horns startled him. He spun around on the sidewalk and stared at the dark windshields. Wobbling loosely at the end of a sleeve, a pale hand emerged from a side window and beckoned to him.

“Metric,” called a voice. “Hey, c’mere.”

Ralph bent forward, trying to see who was in the car. “C’mon, c’mon,” the voice shouted again. “Up and at ’em, dream watchers.” Ralph’s muscles untensed as he stepped off the sidewalk and headed toward the car. It was Blenek the operations chief, his voice recognizable even beneath a slight blurring of syllables. Drinking at this hour? wondered Ralph.

A brewery odor spilled from the car as he approached. Blenek waved an open can from his seat behind the steering wheel. “C’mon in and have a couple.” Beer slopped from the top of the can and rolled down his wrist.

Without saying anything, Ralph circled the car and got in on the other side. The seat was damp and a little sticky from the dregs of a couple of empty cans that rolled and fell to the floor as he sat down. They clattered softly against the ones already there. The cans rolled under Ralph’s feet as he pushed his legs into the space beneath the dashboard.

Blenek tore a full one from the six-pack on the seat between them.

“Here ya go,” he said with boozy friendliness.

Ralph felt intuitively that he had nothing to fear from Blenek; the man was, like the watchers he supervised, simply used and kept in the dark by the ones at the top. Whatever additional connections Blenek had with that uppermost layer were of no more importance than simple instructions to be carried out, revealing nothing of the designs behind them. Ralph knew there was nothing sinister about the car in the unlit parking lot—just a car with an inebriated occupant. The beer, though—Ralph pulled back and waved it off with his hand spread wide.

Blenek looked puzzled at Ralph’s motions, then nodded wisely as he signalled an Okay with the thumb and forefinger of his other hand. “Don’t worry, man,” he said. “ ’S all right. It’s not that stuff they stick in everybody’s ’frigerators around here. I bought this stuff down in Norden myself.”

Surprised, Ralph looked at him for a moment, trying to read something behind the reddened eyes. Then he took the beer from the unsteady hand.

“Thanks.” He opened it and tossed the ring and tab onto the car’s cluttered floor. The can’s icy sweat seeped between his fingers as he tilted his head back and swallowed.

The bitter liquid pulsed down his throat and completed a circuit somewhere inside him. “God, that’s good.” Another swallow stoked the little fire. Exactly what I needed, thought Ralph. He was pleasantly amazed at the potency of its effect on him. “What kind is this?”

“Good stuff, huh?” Blenck pulled at his own can, then mumbled some Teutonic-sounding brand name. “This isn’t that pale Colorado sugar-water all those pansy college kids and movie stars drink. This is real beer. Put hair on your chest, as my old man used to say.”

He had never thought about Blenek having a father. Ralph sipped meditatively at the beer. But then everybody has one. More beer deepened this vision. And mothers. And grandparents, and old friends they see or don’t see anymore. He gazed over the rim of his beer can at Blenek. It suddenly seemed as if the corpulent operations chief, and everyone else in the world, had an enormous cavern he dragged around behind him everywhere he went. He drained the can and let it slide from his fingers. It bounced on the edge of the seat and fell with the others.

Blenek pulled another can free and handed it to Ralph, then took the last one for himself. The small percussive sound of the opening cans stood out again the night’s silence.

Ralph wiped his damp upper lip with the back of his hand. “So you know about that stuff, huh? That beer they sneak into your kitchen when you’re not around?”

“Oh, sure.” Beer gurgled inside the can as Blenek gestured with it.

“Suspected somebody was screwin’ around a long time ago. Never caught ’em, though. They’re pretty sneaky about it.”

“Ever tell anybody about what you knew was going on?”

“Naw. I figured, what’d be the point? The only ones who could do something about it are probably the ones doing it in the first place. You know—the general and his staff assistants.” Blenek tilted the can into his mouth for several seconds, then lowered it.

“What about the other watchers?” said Ralph. “Why didn’t you tell them?”

“Tell them?” Blenek guffawed into his beer can. “Most of ’em already know! Jeez, you’d have to be really pretty dumb not to know about it. I mean, free beer showing up in your fridge is pretty obvious.”

“Oh? Yeah, I guess maybe it is.” More beer slid into his stomach, but instead of connecting with his nervous system and lighting things up the way the first can had done, this one produced a slight fog around his mind. Pretty strong stuff, he thought, whatever it is. He tilted the last of it out and dropped the empty can with the rest.

“How come—” He groped for words. “How come nobody ever did anything about it, though? I mean, why didn’t they stop drinking it, at least?”

“Stop drinking it?” Blenek goggled at him from across the car seat. “What the hell for?”

“Well, there’s something wrong with it, isn’t there? They put something in it, don’t they?”

“Whaat?” Slowly, Blenck’s head moved from side to side. “Wow, Metric, you sure got some wild ideas. You mean, like putting salt-peter in prisoners’ food or something? That’s, uh, pretty crazy if you ask me. It’s just ordinary beer they put in the ’frigerators. There’s nothing wrong with it. Just beer, is all.”

Ralph frowned as he watched the other lean over the back of the seat and snag another six-pack. There was most of a case sitting on the car’s back seat. “How would you know?” he said at last.

“Man, I’ve drunk plenty of beer in my lifetime. If anybody added anything to it, I’d know. Believe me.” With a flourish he ripped the tab from another can. “Most of the watchers prob’ly figure that if the people who run this place want to stock free beer in the fridge, it’s fine with them. What’s to complain about? Kind of like a fringe benefit, you know? Me, I just like a better kind of beer. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, I guess. Wait a minute. No—nothing.” Ralph lifted his hand to rub his forehead and discovered he had a half-full can of beer in it and no memory of how it got there. The dots of moisture on the smooth cylinder glinted like jewels in the moonlight that came through the windshield. In two gulps he had drained the can. He had never drunk beer this fast before, but now it just seemed to fall without effort into a hole inside himself. It must be the stress, he told himself. The desert’s horizon beyond the base tilted for a few seconds, then settled down.

“ ’Nother one?” Blenek’s can-laden hand came into view.

Ralph took it and tugged it open. The pleasantly sour foam spilled across his tongue. He leaned back into the seat and closed his eyes. There was no point, he decided, in telling Blenek all that happened, and was still happening. That was all in another universe, far from this cozy alcoholic communion. Respite, he thought vaguely. Time out. He had read once of how the soldiers in the trenches of World War 1 had sung and jollied around between charges at the enemy a few hundred yards away. Now he understood that. Now he felt free to savor this little piece of time, no matter what terrors he had already gone through and what even worse ones still lay ahead.

The empty cans were two layers deep on the car’s floor when Blenek held up an unsteady finger. “Lemme show you somethin’.” He tilted in front of Ralph and opened the glove compartment.

“Wha’s that?” said Ralph thickly. Filling the compartment was a rectangular piece of electronic equipment with dials and switches studding its front panel. A momentary flash of paranoia bubbled inside him.

“CB.” said Blenek. “Citizen’s Band radio. Big fad for ’em a while back. Lots of people were stickin’ ’em in their cars, chatting back and forth with each other as they drove along. Now it’s back to mostly truckers and a few lonely old geezers like me.”

A pang of shame hit Ralph, partially sobering him. Who could tell what private sorrow Blenek was drowning out here in the darkness all these nights?

Blenek switched on the equipment and fiddled clumsily with the now softly glowing dials. Voices crackled out of a speaker somewhere on the dash. Disembodied truck-drivers warned each other about speed traps on the highways. A couple of kids swapped details about their radio equipment—much talk of diodes and transistors. Other voices came and went, flying through the dark air. Ralph listened and watched through half-shut eyes. Too much of that damn beer, he thought dimly.

“Here.” Blenek had pulled a microphone on a coiled cable from the glove compartment. “Say something. See if anybody wants to talk to you.”

He took the mike, hesitated for a moment, then pressed the button on the side. “Does anybody—” He spoke slowly and carefully. “Does anybody out there know what’s going on? Anybody? Anywhere?”

“What a weird question,” mumbled Blenek from somewhere beside him.

No answer came. Ralph dropped the mike and looked across the seat.

Blenek had fallen asleep, his head resting against the top of the steering wheel. With a fumbling hand Ralph switched off the radio. The glowing dials lapsed back into darkness. A couple of empty beer cans tumbled to the ground as he opened the door and got out. Under the stars’ gaze he reeled back to his apartment.

After relieving his aching bladder, he made his way to the kitchen and discovered that the stove’s little clock still read three a.m. He leaned across the cold burners and brought his ear up against the clock’s face. There were no tiny mechanical sounds. Stopped, he thought, straightening up. Dead. He wobbled into the living room and collapsed on the couch. For a moment he thought of Sarah and felt alone and forsaken. At last he fell asleep and dreamed again about the slithergadee.

Chapter 13

The sun was well up before he woke again. The familiar teeth of his nightmares faded away. He swung his feet to the floor from the couch. His clothes felt damp and sleazy, with the odor of stale beery sweat from the shirt bunched up under his arms. After finding his way back from Blenek’s car he had collapsed on the couch without even taking off his shoes. But that’s over now, he told himself. That little interlude. I’m back in my own universe again. The comforting alcohol had drained away.

A cold shower perked up his circulation. Then he opened his bedroom closet, threw his wadded-up civilian clothes into the corner and took one of his Opwatch uniforms from a hanger. Just like an old skin, he thought, pulling on the shirt. I thought I’d gotten rid of it for good.

Half of a box of saltines was all he could find in the kitchen cupboards.

The crackers clung so tightly to the roof of his mouth that he could barely swallow. Now what? he thought, staring out the window as his molars ground together. If I ever had a permanent answer to that question. . . .

Spencer had babbled on the phone about—what? With an effort, the frantic words came up from Ralph’s memory. The Manhattan Project. 1942. Something about that didn’t seem quite right. Had it been called something else? The first nuclear pile. Through his mind floated vague notions of what he’d learned in some physics class in college. Hadn’t they put it together in an underground tennis court or something? He shook his head. This, he thought, is what comes from being asleep all your life. You never know what important stuff you’re going to miss. And what, for Pete’s sake, is a “zip rod”?

He walked into the front room and stared out the sliding glass door.

Muehlenfeldt’s jet was still out there, gleaming in the sun, painful to the eye. The senator might know what Spencer had meant on the phone. His men in L.A. might even have pumped Spencer for information before they killed him. So what’s the point in asking me anything? thought Ralph. Everybody around here seems to know more than I do. He crumpled the empty saltine box in his hands, dropped it, and went back into the bedroom to get his Opwatch jacket.

There was no one in the Rec hall when he entered. It was still too early for any of the watchers to be awake after their shift last night. Good thing I’m still on vacation, he thought in a mixture of irony and relief. He walked down the corridor to the last room, the one least used by anybody on the base—a tiny library with metal shelves crammed full of shabby-looking volumes.

Ralph stepped into the room and ran his eyes over the faded book spines until he located what he was looking for. One shelf held an outdated encyclopedia set. He pulled out the M volume and started leafing through it.

He felt no surprise when he found that the pages had been neatly razored out where the article on the Manhattan Project would have been.

That’s real cute, he thought. Why not throw away the whole hook? Who would have noticed? The sense of deranged ingenuity annoyed him. He didn’t even bother to open any of the other volumes.

“An encyclopedia?” The shopkeeper frowned and held the sides of the cash register drawer. “What would we carry something like that for? Don’t think we’d get much call for it. This ain’t a bookstore, you know.” He fished change for a dollar from the drawer and slid it across the counter.

“No,” said Ralph, pocketing the pack of gum he’d bought in order to start the conversation. “I mean, do you have a set at home? Where you live?”

“Now that’s a funny thing.” The man stroked his chin meditatively.

“Sure are a lot of people asking about encyclopedias lately.”

“Yeah? Who else?”

“Oh, they said they were from some publishing company back east.”

The shopkeeper nodded his head in the general direction. “They sure had mean little eyes, though. Never can tell, I guess. Anyway, they said their company was bringing out some new fancy type of encyclopedia, and they were going around Norden giving people cash for their old ones. Fred Webb—you know, the barber—he said they gave him two dollars a volume for an old set of Globals that his kids used to do their homework with.

“They’re all grown up and moved out now, of course, so Fred figured he might as well have the money for the books. There probably weren’t more than four or five sets in the whole town, and those publishing company people most likely got ’em all. Encyclopedia paper must be getting pretty scarce.”

Muehlenfeldt, thought Ralph. Just ahead of me. There’s some kind of info about the old Manhattan Project that he’s trying to keep me from finding out. Just like he thinks I’m keeping something secret from him. But what?

“Whatcha need one for, anyway?” asked the shopkeeper. “Something you wanted to look up?”

“Yeah.” Coin by coin he picked up his change from the counter.

“What was it? Maybe I’d know something about it.”

He smiled wearily, without hope. “I don’t think so. I needed some information about the first nuclear pile experiments.”

“The ones in 1942?” said the shopkeeper. “At the University of Chicago, with Enrico Fermi?”

Startled, Ralph looked at the man on the other side of the counter. “I guess that’s the one,” he said slowly. “The Manhattan Project. What do yo know about it?”

“That’s not what it was called. The code name was ‘The Metallurgical Project.’ ” He slapped the counter and looked pleased with himself. “I was reading an article about it just the other day. In an old copy of the Reader’s Digest. I save all my issues—got ’em complete for, oh, some forty years back.”

The skin on Ralph’s arms and neck tensed with a small but growing current of excitement. “Do you still have that one? Can you find it?”

“Oh, sure. Watch the register for a minute, will you?” The shopkeeper left the counter and headed for the stairs in back that led to the rooms above the store. After a few moments, during which Ralph could hear grunting and sliding noises from above, he reappeared carrying a cardboard box. It was haphazardly filled with copies of the Reader’s Digest, the top layers of the mound threatening to slide and capsize onto the floor.

“Uff.” The shopkeeper was red in the face as he heaved the box onto the counter. “Here we go,” he said after a moment of labored breathing. “Let’s see now . . .”

Ralph leaned forward and watched the man shuffle the thick, squarish magazines about. The covers had all faded into pastels while the edges of the pages had darkened into a dirty brown.

“I think it had a picture of some kind of birds on it.” The shopkeeper frowned in concentration. “Or was it two deer standing in a forest? No, this is it. This is the one.” He held the copy up between them. A cactus blooming with yellow flowers was on its cover. The shopkeeper leafed through it, stopped, and folded it open upon itself. “Look at that.”

He took the magazine from the shopkeeper’s hands and read the article’s title. I WAS THERE—WHEN THE ATOMIC AGE WAS BORN!

His eyes quickly scanned the text but caught at nothing. “Can I borrow this?” he said, looking up at the shopkeeper.

“Eh, keep it.” The man made a little pushing motion with his palm. “I only save ’em because I’m too lazy to throw ’em away.”

“Hey, thanks.” Gripping the magazine, Ralph turned and ran from the store.

When he got back to his apartment on the base he dropped onto the couch and started to read the article. It only took a few minutes to devour.

The article’s author had been one of the scientists who had worked in 1942 to create the world’s first nuclear pile—CP-1, or Chicago Pile Number One. In typical Reader’s Digest prose, he described the construction, supervised by Enrico Fermi, of the twenty-four-foot diameter sphere from graphite bricks and uranium metal and oxides, and the work crews—University of Chicago graduate students—smearing their faces with the greasy dark stuff and catching their fingers between the heavy bricks.

As a safety measure— Ralph leaned forward, reading the scientist’s words intently— we constructed a “zip rod.” This was a wooden rod running through the pile with strips of cadmium metal tacked to it. Cadmium, the best of neutron sponges, would put out any atomic conflagration that got out of hand. The rod had to be pulled out of the pile by a rope before the nuclear reaction could begin; release the rope and it would zip back into the pile, quenching the neutron activity.

The article ended with Fermi and the rest going on to glory, choirs of radiation counters clattering softly in the background, and the Atomic Age dawning its harsh light over the world.

So what’s that got to do with anything? thought Ralph, laying the magazine down on the couch. Its pages fluttered shut. He couldn’t see any connection between the Metallurgical Project and Operation Dreamwatch. But why did they tear out the pages from the encyclopedia in the Rec hall and round up the ones in Norden? He shook his head, once again feeling weighed down with conjectures that baffled and led nowhere.

Operation Dreamwatch had, he saw now with dismay, generated its own darkness. Sliding over the earth the mysteries bred and multiplied: mysteries that went unanswered, their carcinogens festering until this new inescapable universe had the face of the dreamfield’s slithergadee—malignant and inexplicable. And we just huddle together and cower, thought Ralph, remembering—bitterly—the night Michael Stimmitz had died. But nothing will ever come to lift us out of this place.

He got up, went into the bedroom and pulled open one of the bureau drawers. There, where he’d hidden it beneath layers of underwear and socks, was the tape of Bach cantatas that Michael Stimmitz had left for him. It seemed centuries ago. And I still don’t know, thought Ralph, what he was trying to tell me with it.

In a spasm of anger he plucked the clear plastic reel from the box and threw it against the wall. It bounced to the floor and wobbled around in circles, spinning the mute tape out into a tangled mass.

He inhaled deeply to calm himself but expanded the hollowness he felt growing inside. From the bottom of the tape box, he took the square booklet containing the notes and translations for the cantatas. There were no more secret messages scribbled in its margins now than there had been the first time he had looked through it. So what’s the point? he thought, closing his eyes and running his hand over the booklet’s slick paper cover.

He frowned and opened his eyes. His fingers had touched something—or had they? Turning the booklet to the light, he watched his hand brush across the cover, then stop at the same point he had felt before. A slight indentation, invisible to the eyes, ran around the edges of the capital letter “B” of Bach’s name, as though some-one—Stimmitz?—had carefully outlined it with a dry ballpoint pen or something.

B? thought Ralph. His hand moved down the cover, brushing across it until his fingers felt another incised letter—an “O” in the conductor’s name.

There were only two more letters with indented outlines, for a total of four. So that’s the message Stimmitz left, thought Ralph. There was no need for guessing or deciphering. The four letters spelled BOMB.

Bomb? wondered Ralph, but only for a moment. His mind sorted out the right connections. Spencer got the two things garbled. The Metallurgical Project— and the Manhattan District, that’s what it was called. A long-forgotten fragment of some college lecture came back to him. The Manhattan District was the name for the group of army engineers who constructed the first atomic bomb. The image of a mushroom-shaped cloud blotted out his vision for a moment. Then he could see again. Not everything was explained but enough was.

The Thronsen Home was the closest construction to the gigantic desert military installation, the home base of the plasma jet bombers whose trails laced the sky every night. What if—the thoughts went through Ralph’s mind like electric currents—what if the Thronsen Home wasn’t just part of a harmless mental health program for juvenile delinquents?

What if the supposed therapy was a front for the creation of a nuclear device powerful enough to incinerate the whole area, military bases included? It didn’t seem any less likely to Ralph than any other possible explanation. Perhaps Muehlenfeldt was from another star. Perhaps similar “therapy” programs had been set up for the USSR’s wayward children. China, too? Possibly. Anybody—or thing—ingenious enough to devise a cover-up as elaborate as Operation Dreamwatch could figure out a way to accomplish what it wanted anywhere else as well. And after the Earth’s major military bases were destroyed, would the invasion force that Muehlenfeldt had preceded come at last?

For a few seconds the elaborate explanation that had built itself in Ralph’s mind like an instantaneous coral reef trembled, fragile under the weight of everyday logic. Then it solidified, hard as rock. Who cares if it’s weird? he thought. A kind of desperate hilarity washed through him. Who cares if it sounds like science fiction? When the world becomes science fictional, then only science fiction will explain the world. He dropped the booklet, got his coat from the closet, and ran out of the apartment without closing the door behind him.

The base vehicles—two jeeps and a small truck, with OPWATCH stencilled on their sides—were kept parked behind the administration building. Ralph quickly looked inside each in turn, but none of the keys were in the ignitions as he’d been hoping. He stood for a moment with his hands braced against the door of one of the jeeps, wondering where the keys would be kept. The base commander’s office? That seemed likeliest.

Quietly he went to the side of the building, then stooped down and duck-walked beneath the window of the commander’s office. For a while he waited and listened, but heard no voices or shuffling of papers. He raised himself up and peeked over the sill, hoping the commander was out to lunch away from his desk. The office was empty as far as he could see, the commander’s chair vacant and pushed away from the desk.

Operation Dreamwatch had certainly been cheated by whomever had gotten the contract for the window screens. As everyone in the base apartments knew, the wire mesh could be easily pulled loose from the metal frames. In a few seconds Ralph had a triangular flap loose from one corner, large enough to crawl through. He landed on his hands and feet behind the desk. When he stood up he felt something hard and cold press itself behind his left ear.

“Don’t move, Metric,” came Commander Stiles’s voice. “Or you know what’ll happen.”

Suddenly he couldn’t swallow, though he wanted to very much. He stared at the distant blank wall and closed door on the other side of the desk, and listened to a faint roaring sound—his bloodstream—grow louder in the room’s silence.

“I’m going to take the gun away from your head,” said the commander evenly. “Then I want you to go and sit down in the chair on the other side of the desk. I’ll be aiming at your heart.”

The cold circle of pressure against his skull ceased. Without turning to look back, Ralph walked slowly around the desk and sat down in the smaller chair on the other side. Then he looked up.

The gun, a fixed point in space, didn’t waver as Commander Stiles lowered himself into his own chair. It remained outstretched in his hand, pointing its dark metal snout at Ralph’s chest. Their eyes met over the weapon between them.

“Metric.” The commander shook his head slowly, the seams in his face shifting in amusement. “Very irrational of you to come back here to the base. Just as if we haven’t had you under suspicion for a long time. Didn’t you think we’d keep an eye on anyone your friend Stimmitz was spending so much time with? I watched you looking through the jeeps outside. I even know all about your little adventures in L.A.—I was told about them as soon as I had reported that you had shown up here. So nothing you’ve done has really been very clever, has it?”

Ralph’s voice moved like a rasp through his dried throat. “No,” he said. “I guess not.”

The commander sighed. “I’m afraid Senator Muehlenfeldt has run out of patience with you. Frankly, he’s been hesitant to use, uh, harsh methods to find out what you know, because of what happened with the other Beta group member that was questioned. But we know what to expect now, so the danger caused by an explosion can be limited to just yourself. The worst that can happen—except to you, of course—is that we won’t get any info out of you at all.”

“Stiles.” Ralph felt dizzy looking at the other’s impassive face. “Do you know what’s going on? Do you know what they’re doing here? What they’re going to do?”

“Come, come,” said the commander mildly. “Of course not. Moral persuasion is of little use here, I’m afraid. I’m too much of a professional to be concerned about the purpose of the whole thing. Everyone who works for Muehlenfeldt is a professional.”

The room’s contents glowed as adrenaline pumped into Ralph’s blood.

He had gleaned enough from Stiles’s mysterious references to formulate a plan. “In that case,” he said, leaning forward, his voice taut, “I’ll just have to set off my device right now and take you with me.” He reached with careful drama for one ear.

The commander dropped the gun and pushed himself frantically away from the desk. His chair toppled backward as Ralph dove head first over the desk and collided with his chest.

Stiles’s arms scrabbled weakly at the carpet as he lay dazed and gasping beside the overturned chair. Ralph reached back to the desk and picked up the gun. He pointed it at the commander but the trigger didn’t budge.

The older man was raising himself, up on one arm and Ralph still hadn’t found how to release the safety on the gun. He threw it by its barrel at the commander’s skull, producing a loud crack and a groan from Stiles before he slumped back down and lay without moving.

The keys were in the desk’s top drawer. He stuffed all the sets into his pockets and climbed back out through the torn screen. In less than a minute he had matched one of the key sets to the ignition of one of the jeeps and started it with a roar that did much to satisfy and quiet his trembling limbs. He backed away from the building, then threw it into first and headed for the base’s gate. Kathy and Goodell, walking on the path from the apartments to the Rec hall, leaped out of his way, then watched with open mouths as the cloud of dust churned towards the highway.

Chapter 14

The wind blowing through the open jeep seemed to clear his thoughts and give him a sense of purpose. Las Vegas, he said to himself. There should be an FBI office there. Somebody who’ll listen, and he able to do something. He pressed the accelerator harder against the jeep’s floorboard. The decision was already firm within him that, no matter what happened, he’d get Sarah away from whatever it was that claimed to be her father.

Miles of straight or gently curving road passed between the flanks of the dunes on either side, glaring fiercely in the afternoon sun. He found a pair of metal-rimmed sunglasses in the dashboard cubbyhole and put them on. The dark lenses reduced the rearview mirror from a rectangle of burning reflection to the visible awareness of the road piling up behind him. There was someone following him.

He studied the mirror, glancing at the road briefly to keep from going off on the shoulder. The figure behind him was a motorcyclist. He could make out the sleek black fairing that transformed the cycle into a bullet shape, and—was he imagining it or could he really make out so much detail?—the tinted, blank face shield of the rider’s helmet as he bent low over the handlebars.

The distance between Ralph and his pursuer was slowly growing less, the figure becoming perceptibly larger in the rearview mirror.

Must be one of Muehlenfeldt’s men, thought Ralph. He’ll be on me before too long. The jeep was already pushed to its limit, at a speed much less than that of the motorcycle behind.

Signs flashed by at the side of the highway. The road would soon divide into two, one branch heading north and the other continuing on to Vegas.

Maybe, thought Ralph, maybe . . .

When he came to the fork in the highway he took the northward branch, the jeep’s tires squealing as he arced through the start of a long currving section running behind a low rubble-faced bluff. He caught a quick glimpse of the motorcyclist taking the same turn behind him, before the bend in the highway brought the bluff between them.

As soon as he was sure he was blocked from his pursuer’s vision, Ralph hit the brakes, trying not to skid and leave any telltale black marks on the asphalt. He lost control for a moment and felt the jeep’s rear end slide out from beneath him. When the vehicle came to a stop it was sitting cross-wise in the lane, pointed towards the flat desert beyond the side of the road.

Without turning the steering wheel, he dropped the jeep into first gear, trod on the accelerator, and lurched forward. The jeep rolled off the edge of the asphalt, then plunged down a steep bank of loose rock and dirt. The rear wheels spat small rocks into the air as the jeep careened sickeningly downwards. Ralph clung to the jittering wheel.

The jeep came to the bottom of the slope and hit the level desert floor with a whump that bounced Ralph from the seat. The engine choked and died but he made no movement to start it again. Instead, he listened, hearing at first only the slight clatter of pebbles dislodged and rolling down the slope. Then came the growling roar of the motorcycle, diminished by the distance to the highway above. It grew louder, peaked in a snarl, then dopplered away, following the curve of the highway.

Ralph started up the jeep and accelerated across the sand, cutting across the interval of desert towards the other branch of the highway. It would be a while, he knew from his memory of the area, before the northbound branch would straighten out far enough away from the bluff for the motorcyclist to see that his quarry had eluded him. By then Ralph should have gained a sizable lead on the route to Vegas. He sped up, the jeep bouncing over the rock-strewn desert. It was, he knew, only a temporary reprieve.

It was over sooner than he expected. Out on the dark road, with nothing in sight but moonlit dunes and brush, the jeep’s engine sputtered, coughed, ran steady for a few seconds, then sputtered again and died. For the first time Ralph looked at the little circular fuel gauge on the dashboard. The tiny needle was set hard against the EMPTY mark.

He sat staring at the dial for nearly a minute, stunned. He marvelled dismally. Whatever you overlook is just what shoots you down.

With an effort he pulled his mind from the edge of the pit gaping before him. He switched off the headlights, then got down from the driver’s seat and stood away from the jeep. In the dim moonlight it squatted silently on its knobby tires. No longer an ally of his or even neutral, but gone over now to the other side—Muehlenfeldt’s universe.

Wait a minute, thought Ralph. He circled around behind the jeep and found a set of dangling straps beside the spare wheel, but not the fuel can.

Carefully, not daring to expect anything, he leaned over the side of the jeep and probed the dark interior with his hands. Behind the seat he found the fuel can. He lifted it out and heard a cheering gurgle. Not full, but at least a few inches of gasoline sloshed back and forth inside the container.

When the jeep’s engine was spinning again, Ralph let out the clutch and started picking up speed. Enough, enough, he breathed to the twin cones of light racing over the road ahead. Make it enough to get to where I can get some more.

Anxious miles ticked off on the odometer, until finally the miraculous occurred. A tiny store with a single antique gas pump appeared, nestled in the angle where a smaller road joined the highway. Ralph brought the jeep to a halt beside the pump and jumped out.

The hose’s nozzle was padlocked tight to the side of the pump. He tugged futilely at it for a moment, swore, then let go of it and ran to the store. A single fly-specked light bulb dangled beneath the battered soft drink sign, illuminating the screen door. He jerked it open, found the wooden one behind it locked, and began pounding on it. “Hey!” he shouted. “Wake up in there!” The door rattled on its hinges as he kicked it.

Through the window on one side he saw a light switch on in the store’s depths. A few moments later the door swung open, revealing a stooped figure in striped pajamas. The old man’s wizened head was hairless except for the gray stubble on his receding chin. His eyes widened at the sight of Ralph.

“Hey, I need some gas.” Ralph grabbed the man’s elbow and pulled him outside. “And quick—it’s an emergency.”

“No,” moaned the storekeeper. “I . . . won’t give you any.”

“What? Why the hell not? I’ll pay for it.”

“It’s wrong.” The old man feebly tried to jerk his arm free from Ralph’s grip.

“Wrong?” He dragged the man closer to the gas pump. “What’re you talking about? What’s wrong?”

“To be on the road after dark.” The cracked voice had shrivelled to a whisper. “There’s haunters out there!”

“What the— Come on, I don’t have time for this crap.”

“No, no, it’s true! Turrible dark things. The little dot’s out there!”

“The little dot?” Ralph stopped and looked into the old man’s face, caught for a moment its mask of feebleminded panic.

“When you turn off your TV,” whispered the store-keeper. “And it all turns into a little white dot in the middle, and then the dot goes away and flies through the night, and it catches you and . . . sucks your blood. It’s true.”

“No kidding,” said Ralph wearily.

“Yes! Yes!” shouted the old man in a sudden fervor. “Turrible dark things in the night!”

“Then you might as well give me some gas. Because I get those kind of things in the daytime, anyway.”

“No.” Convulsively, the old man pulled his arm free and ran back to the store, his thin pajamas flapping against his narrow legs. Ralph sprinted after him and caught the door before the old man could slam it shut.

Inside the store the old man had seemingly vanished. Ralph scanned the rough wooden shelves packed with cans of beans and sacks of flour that revealed nothing to him. Suddenly he noticed the edge of a shiny pink scalp showing from behind a row of barrels. He walked over to them on tiptoe, then reached behind and pulled the old man up by his stringy throat. “Give me that damn key,” grated Ralph. “The one to the gas pump.”

“Ak . . . ak . . .” gasped the storekeeper. His face darkened as he dangled from Ralph’s fist. “You—you’re one of . . . them!”

“That’s right. My buddy the little dot is right outside. So hand over the key.”

“I don’t have it!”

“Where is it?”

“In the cash register.” The old man flapped his arm. “Over there!”

Ralph dropped him and went to the counter at the rear of the store. He struck the NO SALE button on the tarnished metal register. Under the change bin in the drawer he found a ring of keys.

When he had finished filling up the jeep’s tank, as well as the spare gas can, he tossed the keys at the baldheaded face that peeked out at him from the corner of the store’s window. The keys bounced off the glass without breaking it but the old man ducked out of sight anyway. Ralph started the jeep and got back on the highway, wondering, as the wind increased in velocity, what dim mythology he had just gained a place in.

Las Vegas was beating off the night with neon. He drove past the incandescent casinos, his mind racing faster than the crawling traffic.

A motel, he decided. A cheap one—that’s what I need. To get the dust off. Nobody will listen to me if I look like I do right now.

Beyond the city’s brilliantly lit center he entered into one of the darker sections. The neon signs were smaller or broken, flickering their odd off-colors over shabbier, squatter buildings and the older cars parked around them. Ralph pulled the jeep in under a sign with red and green tubing twisted into the outline of a palm tree. The engine clattered for a few seconds when he turned the key, then sighed into silence as the fuel gauge needle fell the fraction of an inch to EMPTY.

“Always glad to see an army man in town,” said the gray-haired lady behind the motel office desk. She handed the room key to Ralph. “Have a good time.”

Perplexed, he stopped halfway through putting his wallet back in his pocket. He realized then that she had mistaken the Opwatch patch on the sleeve of his jacket for a military emblem. “Yes,” he said. “I will.”

I should’ve taken my civvies, he thought as he walked across the motel’s courtyard. He had a sudden, irrational fear that the Opwatch emblem, small as it was, could only help Muehlenfeldt’s agents spot him.

He let himself into the motel room and locked the door. On the bottom of the pink plastic trash can in the bathroom he found a discarded razor blade, its surface dotted with rust. He sat on the edge of the bed and carefully—the blade was dull and hard to work with:—picked at the threads holding the Opwatch insignia to the fabric. When it finally came loose he flushed the patch down the toilet, then laid the jacket out on the bed and sponged the dust from it with damp paper towels. He hung it by the window and then let a hot shower massage the driver’s cramp from his shoulders and arms.

“Is there a telephone booth around here?”

The gray-haired lady behind the desk smiled and nodded. “Just around there on the side of the building.”

Ralph closed the door and walked into the darkness on the office’s far side. He stepped into the glass cubicle and picked up the directory hanging by a chain below the telephone. I wonder if the FBI is open all night. He spread the book open, limp from constant use. Seems like they should be.

As he flipped through the tissue-pages, he looked up through the booth’s glass and froze. The row of parking spaces where he had left the jeep was visible from an oblique angle. Someone, a dark silhouette wearing a helmet, was leaning into the jeep and examining it. The motorcycle with the bullet-like black fairing could be seen, sleek and ominous under the streetlight.

Ralph ducked behind the metal bottom section of the booth. The telephone book dangled on its chain over his head. Slowly, he opened the folding door and peered out, his head close to the ground. The motorcyclist hadn’t spotted him yet. As he watched, another figure separated from the shadows and approached the one with the helmet.

They conferred for a moment, then started toward the motel office.

He crouched out of sight in the phone booth, waiting and listening to the tread of his two pursuers across the asphalt of the motel courtyard.

The office door opened, then closed. He crouched over and ran awkwardly to the parking spaces, scrambling into the jeep. The engine started with the first turn of the key, and in seconds he was on the street, accelerating and heading for the illuminated area of the city.

Jerk, he cursed himself as he drove. Just had to screw around and wait for them to catch up, didn’t you? He kept forgetting that in this universe there was no time, that everything was always later than he thought. Or too late. The jeep pressed on toward the surging neon.

The traffic was so thick in the main part of the city that he couldn’t see whether he was being followed or not. He pulled into a casino parking lot, beating out a wide Cadillac for the only vacant space, then got out and sprinted past the rows of empty cars that surrounded the empty building.

The noise and light inside reassured him. Somewhere out of sight, a band heavy with brass was playing, its sounds interspersed with the constant sound of people and money in motion. Words became altered and lost in a partly mechanical, partly human clatter. Ralph hurried through the lobby, beneath blazing tiered chandeliers and past slot machines with little flashing lights. Where, he thought with a combined desperation and irritation, do they keep the phones around here!

Across an expanse filled with more slot machines and people he spotted a booth. It was set against a wall that opened onto another gigantic room where people clustered around and stared into the depths of felt-lined tables. He hurried down the wide carpeted steps and started pushing his way through the nearest aisle.

A fat woman with blue hair and rhinestoned glasses—her small eyes glittered behind the lenses—stepped backwards into the aisle to watch the whirling symbols on the machine she was playing. She collided with Ralph as he tried to get past. A paper cup full of nickels dropped from her hand, and the coins scattered over his shoes and the carpeting. “Hey!” she shrilled at him. “Watch where you’re going!”

“Sorry,” he called over his shoulder. He brushed past two more women, who stared at him indignantly and held their own paper cups tightly to their breasts. Finally he broke free into the clear space in front of the telephone booth. When he got inside it he pulled the folding door shut and sank onto the little seat in relief. The casino noises filtered softly through the clear panes of the booth. He placed the telephone book on his lap and opened it, the thin paper clinging to his sweating hands.

There was no listing for the FBI. Bewildered, he flipped back and forth through the book, looking under “Federal.”

“Bureau,” and “Investigation” with no results. He scanned all the subheadings under “U.S. Government,” but still found nothing. What’s going on here? he wondered, feeling cold dismay gathering inside him.

Finally, he slid a dime into the phone and dialed Information. “May I help you?” cooed the mechanical-sounding voice in his ear.

“Do you have a number for the FBI?” he said. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation?”

The line hummed for a second. “That number is unlisted,” said the operator. “I can put you through to it, though.”

A flurry of beeping electronic sounds, then he heard the sound of another telephone ringing. It went on for a long time until someone answered. “FBI,” a man’s voice said casually. There were the faint sounds of chewing and swallowing, as though he were eating a sandwich.

Ralph took a deep breath before he spoke. “I want to report a plot. A criminal conspiracy. They’re—”

The voice on the other end of the line sighed. “I don’t think we can do anything for you, then. You’ve got the wrong people.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“It’s all right,” said the voice. “We still get—well, not a lot, but a few—calls from people who still think the Bureau handles that sort of thing. I guess most people don’t know that we’ve been re-organized.”

“Re-organized?” said Ralph, incredulous.

“Oh, yeah. It was a long process, but it began when the old Hoover papers finally came out of the archives several years ago. A lot of stuff the old boy had done didn’t look too good, and Congress stepped in and started changing things around. The bureau was pretty low in prestige right then—hadn’t solved any big kidnappings or anything for a long time.

“It really began with the Watergate thing. So now we mainly just keep records and send out pamphlets to high school classes. That sort of thing.”

“Hell,” muttered Ralph. He kneaded his forehead with one hand. “Well, who am I supposed to—”

“What you want,” interrupted the voice, “is the Federal Security Agency. They kind of took over the things we used to do. Somebody had to.”

“Oh. How do I get hold of them?”

“They’re in the book. Okay? They ought to be able to fix you up, whatever your problem is. They all carry guns and do the TV hero bit. Just like the bureau used to be.” The voice sounded wistful, caught in memories.

“Thanks,” said Ralph.

“Glad to help.”

He already had the telephone book open to the letter F when it struck him. The initials, he thought. FSA. His hand turned the pages by itself and found the listing for the Federal Security Agency. There was a tiny illustration of the agency’s emblem. It was the same as the shoulder patch that Muehlenfeldt’s guards had been wearing.

No way, thought Ralph, staring at the tiny letters and numbers in the book. There is no way I’m going to call them. Besides, what’s the point?

He suddenly felt like laughing. They’re already here looking for me.

The telephone book fell from his lap as he stood up and opened the booth’s folding door. He stepped out into the open space that bordered the floorful of slot machines and their players. A man was striding rapidly toward him from around the other side. Ralph caught sight of the other’s grim face and started in the opposite direction. He broke into a run and glanced over his shoulder to see the man running now as well, brushing a waitress with a tray of drinks against the wall.

The gamblers at the tables looked up curiously as Ralph sprinted past them. A bulky man wearing a uniform like a policeman—one of the casino guards—stepped into his way, but Ralph managed to duck under the outstretched arms. Behind him he heard his pursuer collide with the guard. He looked back as he ran and saw the two men fall entangled to the ground. The sound of a gunshot hit Ralph like an electric shock. There was a second of quiet as the unseen band stopped playing, then a woman’s scream mixed with the harsh clatter of an alarm bell.

He had spotted a side exit and was through it before his pursuer had gotten up from the casino guard’s limp body. Behind him was the bright chaos of milling figures, scattering gamblers and more guards pouring in from nowhere. As Ralph plunged between the dark shapes in the parking lot he saw another figure running toward him from the street. There were no features visible in the darkness but he thought he recognized the outline of the motorcyclist.

“Metric!” called the figure. “Stop!”

Ralph had already changed directions, dodging between the cars as he tried to elude the other man. The parking lot seemed vast, an endless maze without light. From the street he had lost sight of came a mounting wail of sirens.

More figures appeared at the end of the aisle. He scrambled across the hood of a car and, his lungs aching, headed down another corridor.

The sharp noise of guns came at him from two directions. He dropped to his knees, his hand scraping painfully on the asphalt. Brief spurts of flame accompanied each shot, quick orange red flares in the darkness. A fragmented memory passed through his mind from a book about police: if the gouts of fire looked round, then the gun was being fired directly at you—if teardrop shaped, it was being fired in a different direction. There was no time to wonder why the flares at either side of the parking lot were spurting toward each other and not at him. He squeezed beneath the nearest parked car and crawled, his face brushing the asphalt, to the other side, away from the battering roar of the guns.

The firing became more sporadic but the flashes still tapered toward each other. Ralph got to his feet, crouched over and ran toward the border of the lot. On this side it was flanked by an unlit service road that curved around to the rear delivery entrance of the casino. He reached the road and suddenly heard the whine of an accelerating engine. The shape of a motorcycle was just visible hurtling toward him. Beyond it, a car was turning into the far end of the service road.

Ralph pivoted around in the now quiet parking lot but froze when he saw one of the figures running to him. Then, before he could make any movement, the motorcycle skidded around at his side, its roar drowning out the rest of the world. The machine’s rider slammed an arm across Ralph’s chest, then fell with him as the motorcycle toppled and spun away on its side.

Stunned, he lay on his back, the stars blurring above him as he gasped for breath. The motorcyclist didn’t get up, but still gripped Ralph fast about the waist.

As though from a great distance he heard the car stop and its doors open. Hands gripped him and lifted him from the ground. The motorcyclist’s arm loosened and he seemed to fall away in the darkness.

Ralph was emerging from his daze as he was deposited in the car’s back seat. The door slammed shut and the car sped around in a tight circle, jostling him against the seat’s other occupant as the wheels thumped over the curb of the narrow street.

“You sure gave us a hard time, Ralph,” said the person on the seat beside him.

He focused his vision on the other, then slumped down in the seat and stared at the lights reflected on the car’s ceiling. His mind was frozen wordless.

“Come on,” said Spencer Stimmitz. “Pull yourself together. We don’t have much time.”

Chapter 15

Wailing sirens had surrounded the car as it sped out of the center of the city. The noise was so loud that Spencer had given up trying to say anything more, but had merely grinned and gestured with his open palm for Ralph to be patient—all questions would be answered eventually. They both swayed as the motorcade wheeled off the highway and headed across the desert towards the waiting helicopter.

It seemed to be bouncing gently on its landing gear. The sirens died and Ralph could hear the urgent whup whup of the blades flashing silver in the moonlight. In front of the rough semicircle that the police motorcycles formed on the sand, the car pulled up and stopped.

“Come on,” said Spencer. He opened the door on his side, got out and strode rapidly to the helicopter. After a moment Ralph followed him.

“Hop in.” Spencer held open the curved transparent door.

Ralph looked into the machine’s cramped interior. There was barely room for two seats behind the pilot. The clear plastic sphere seemed fragile as a bubble. Something fell and connected inside himself and he suddenly backed away. “No,” he said, shaking his head.

Spencer stared at him. “Hey, what’s the matter?”

“I’m not getting in that thing. I’m not doing this stuff anymore.” He felt his face stiffening with blood. “I’m tired of getting fooled and fooled with by everybody that comes along. You’ve suckered me enough times already. I’m not going for anymore. You can try that universe out on somebody else.” He turned away, disgusted.

“What are you talking about?” said Spencer.

“Come on,” he said, turning to look at him again. The noise from the helicopter—the cool, expressionless pilot fluttered the throttle—and the uneasy blue lighting from the headlamps of the police motorcycles drained the reality from the scene. “You know what I mean,” shouted Ralph. “All that stuff with that phony Alpha Fraction and everything. Pretending to be part of a group working against Operation Dreamwatch, and then you show up here as one of Muehlenfeldt’s agents. And now you want me to climb in that thing? So you can toss me out over the desert or something?

“No way. That’s it. Go tell Muehlenfeldt he can blow up the whole damn world for all I care. I’m not going to do anything to stop him. As if I could anyway.”

“Have you ever got it wrong,” said Spencer, laughing. “You didn’t get picked up by Muehlenfeldt’s men—we just rescued you from them. What do you think all that shooting was about?” He gestured, encompassing the helicopter and the distant car. “This is the Beta group, dummy.”

“No such thing,” said Ralph sullenly. “That’s just Muehlenfeldt’s paranoid fantasy.”

“Ha. I bet he wishes that’s all it is. Unh-unh. This is for real.”

“Yeah? Then how come you didn’t tell me about it back in L.A.?”

“I didn’t know about it then.” Spencer shrugged and spread his free hand. “I didn’t find out about it until they picked me up, right after we tried to bug the Opwatch office. Remember when I phoned you? That’s who was after me, not Muehlenfeldt’s bunch. Look.” He caught Ralph’s elbow and tugged him to the helicopter. “We have to hurry. Get in and I’ll fill you in on everything. Trust me.”

One of the two men who had been in the car’s front seat during the rush from the city was now walking toward them. The headlamps glared around his bulky outline. “What’s the problem?” he said as he approached.

“What are you waiting for?”

“No problem,” said Spencer. “Just a little fear of heights, that’s all.” He pulled harder on Ralph’s arm.

He hesitated for a moment, then stepped towards the helicopter.

What’ve I got to lose, he thought as he climbed-through the oval door. The worst that can happen is more lies. The pilot grinned over his shoulder and formed an O with his thumb and forefinger. Spencer got in, then closed and dogged the door. The machine tilted and the ground fell away.

Ralph looked down through the clear, curved side of the helicopter. The police escort were turning their motorcycles around and heading back into the city. Their lights grew smaller and were lost as the helicopter banked and headed west. Below, he recognized the long strip of highway he had travelled just a few hours ago in the opposite direction. Back to the base, he realized. That’s where we’re going. He glanced at Spencer beside him, as he felt the outlines of what he’d assumed wavering once more.

How much of this should I believe this time? “Well, let’s hear it, then,” he said.

“You know,” said Spencer, “a lot of this stuff is kind of hard to believe. Pretty strange and all.”

“I don’t think I’ll have any trouble with it. Not anymore.”

Spencer leaned forward and picked up an object from the helicopter’s floor. It looked like a miniature portable television, white plastic and gray screen. He set it on Ralph’s lap and pressed a button on its side. The screen lit up and began focusing into a picture. “Pretty neat, huh?” said Spencer. “This is a first class operation, believe me. Maybe a little more elaborate than necessary, but really top notch electronics.”

The screen held Ralph’s attention. He watched as words appeared, almost too small to read: “Beta Group Orientation Aid.” Below that was his own name. The words vanished and were replaced by the minute image of a serious-faced young woman wearing glasses with heavy black frames. She was seated at a desk and held several sheets of paper in her hands. “Greetings,” she said—her voice sounded tinny coming from the viewer sitting on Ralph’s knees. “If you are watching this—”

“What is this?” shouted Ralph. The voice stopped and the woman’s image froze as Spencer reached over and pressed the button on the side.

Ralph knocked his hand away and slapped the top of the viewer. “I’m not going to sit here and watch some crummy training film, for Pete’s sake.”

“Take it easy,” said Spencer. “We went to a lot of trouble to prepare this for you. It went into the can only a few hours ago.”

“Yeah, well, what is it?”

“It’s an orientation aid, just like it said.” Spencer’s exasperation showed. “You sure have become hostile. You know that?”

Ralph snorted in disgust. “That’s because this is a sleazy universe we’re operating in,” he said. “As I’ve been finding out.”

“Big deal. Welcome to the club.” Spencer pressed the button again. “So just watch the film, okay? Tape, actually.”

The image on the screen was moving again. Ralph focused on it and shut out the cramped interior of the helicopter.

“—this,” the intent woman was saying, “Mr. Metric, you will shortly be asked to assist in an endeavor the success or failure of which will literally determine the fate of the world.” She paused and the letters FATE spelled out at the bottom on the screen.

“The audio-visual company that did this for us,” whispered Spencer, “also contracts for a lot of children’s educational TV. I think some of it carries over.”

Ralph ignored him. The glowing screen pushed the darkness outside the helicopter farther away.

“The purpose of this presentation,” said the woman on the screen, “is to inform you of the actual nature of the organization known as Operation Dreamwatch, and to familiarize you with the agency seeking to counteract this threat to humanity.”

“Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?” said Spencer.

“Shut up.” Ralph leaned closer to the viewer.

“Briefly,” continued the woman, “the group you were in contact with before, known as the Alpha Fraction, was not the only one investigating and working against Operation Dreamwatch. The Alpha Fraction was in fact only a diversion designed to help conceal the existence of the Beta group—the real anti-Opwatch organization. Organized as a section of Army Intelligence, the Beta group has been investigating Senator Muehlenfeldt and his activities for over a year. The formation of a separate, clandestine organization for this purpose was necessary due to the domination of the Federal Security Agency by Muehlenfeldt and his associates.

“The existence of the Beta group was kept a complete secret from the members of the Alpha Fraction. This was done in order to maintain the smaller group’s usefulness as a decoy for Muehlenfeldt’s attention.

“Knowledge of the Alpha Fraction’s existence was deliberately planted in the Opwatch organization. As they were then under varying degrees of surveillance by Muehlenfeldt’s agents, any knowledge of the Beta group on their parts might have endangered the secrecy of the larger organization.

“One man, Michael Stimmitz, was a member of both groups, serving to coordinate the actions of the two groups.”

“Mike didn’t even tell me about it.” Spencer sounded proud of the fact.

“It was only after they caught up with me in that phone booth that I found out.”

“Unfortunately,” continued the woman on the screen, “last week Muehlenfeldt learned of the Beta group’s existence, due to the inadvertent exposure of one of its members who had infiltrated the Federal Security Agency. At the outset of interrogation, the Beta member was able to trigger a miniature bomb planted in his skull.”

So that’s what Stiles was talking about, thought Ralph. An image filled him for a moment of the unnamed infiltrator’s explosive death ripping out from the head’s center.

The woman shuffled the papers she held and spoke again. “Other infiltration attempts have been more successful, even onto the staff of the Thronsen Home. Enough has been pieced together just a short time ago to form a picture of Operation Dreamwatch’s true intent and the mechanics involved in fulfilling it.

“From the first reports of what was going on inside the Thronsen Home, it was hypothesized that the sleeping juveniles were part of an elaborate cover-up for the project’s real purpose. Upon further investigation this hypothesis turned out to be in error. The children are in fact the essential component of Operation Dreamwatch’s plans.

“The real purpose of Operation Dreamwatch is the construction and detonation of an explosive device of tremendous force. The children kept sleeping at the Thronsen Home are themselves the bomb.” The letters BOMB appeared on the bottom of the little screen.

Ralph felt his innards constrict at the image of the sleeping children.

Stimmitz knew, he thought. He had it figured out.

“The principle involved,” continued the woman, “is analogous to the construction of a nuclear reactor pile, but using psychic energy rather than atomic. The devisers of Operation Dreamwatch have developed the means for converting the basic energy of the human mind into a destructive device of incredible magnitude.” The woman paused, the eyes behind the glasses seeming to pierce the double layer of glass between her image and Ralph. “The estimated potential,” she said quietly, “is sufficient for the literal destruction of the planet through the conversion of the earth’s crust into a molten and/or gaseous state.”

Ralph rocked back in the seat and stared at the viewer on his lap. The woman on the tape was watching her hands shuffle through the sheets of paper. He turned his head away and looked out through the side of the helicopter at the night. A vision moved through him of the earth’s surface boiling away, exposing the fierce core. There was no question of belief—within himself he knew the world was only a thin shell against all possible furies. The woman’s voice brought his attention back.

“The psychic bomb,” she went on, “works in the following way. The children involved were carefully selected from psychiatric profiles for their high innate energy levels and low tolerance of emotional frustration. These were the qualities that led to their delinquent behavior in the first place.

“Maintained in a sleeping state in the Thronsen Home, their psychic energies were then united in a common pool through the formation of the dreamfield. Dream experiences, based on each individual’s psychological history, were then administered to heighten the degree of emotional tension, increasing in turn the amount of psychic energy in the pool.

“Eventually, as in a nuclear pile, levels of energy are reached where further increases take on an exponential growth curve, the energy increasing faster and faster without any further input. This chain reaction continues, eventually resulting in the bomb’s fantastic destructive capacity, unless somehow controlled.

“To control the rate of reaction in a nuclear pile, a damping material such as cadmium can be used. This metal, inserted into a nuclear pile, soaks up some of the energy and maintains the reaction at a safe level.”

That’s right, thought Ralph. Zip rods.

“To keep Operation Dreamwatch’s ‘psychic bomb’ from premature explosion, a similar method has been employed. Individuals characterized by low psychic energy levels—the so-called ‘watchers’—were inserted into the dreamfield to soak up enough of the dreaming children’s released energy to keep the process from reaching its exponential growth curve. Just as some individuals are capable of infinitely higher levels of psychic energy, the watchers are capable of unlimited absorption of that energy without altering their own nature. This was confirmed by the secret electronic monitoring of the serotonin/melatonin activity in each watcher’s brain. While these hormonal levels are not themselves the psychic energy process, they are an indicative side effect of it. To further insulate the watchers from the energy released on the dreamfield, large amounts of ethyl alcohol—in the form of beer—were made available to them. Thus, the children’s psychic energy levels were kept damped until the psychological frustration experiences on the dreamfield had developed their capacities to the point of a world-annihilating release of energy.”

The woman paused again before going on. “Unfortunately, Operation Dreamwatch has reached that point. The psychic bomb’s assembly has been completed. At this moment, the children’s collective psychic energy has entered its exponential growth curve, and is increasing to the levels necessary for detonation.”

The screen suddenly went blank except for the words “End of Orientation.”

“Just in time, too,” said Spencer. “Here we are.”

Ralph looked up from the now empty viewing screen, then out the helicopter’s side. Curving up towards them were the roofs of the base’s familiar buildings. Beyond the apartments he could see that Muehlenfeldt’s jetliner was no longer there. And where’s Sarah now? he wondered.

Ralph said, “Wait a minute.” The helicopter settled among clouds of dust. Figures could be seen emerging from the administration building and heading toward them. “That tape didn’t explain enough.”

“That sort of thing never does.” Spencer took the viewer and set it on the helicopter’s floor. “So what else do you want to know?”

“If all the watchers’ energy levels were being monitored, how come your brother wasn’t ever suspected of being different? I mean, his energy level must have been pretty high.”

Spencer nodded. “Just goes to show what a first class operation this Beta group is. They knew about the monitoring before they sent Mike to hire on as a watcher. So they modified his brain chemistry—this is what I was told when I asked about it—so that instead of his producing normal serotonin, a molecular tail was added to the hormone. That way, his serotonin/melatonin activity couldn’t be accurately determined by the Opwatch monitors, making his psychic energy level seem much lower than it really was.”

Puzzled, Ralph scratched his chin. “But what about, me?” he said. “If the watchers are only good for soaking up other people’s energy, then why did Mike think I could be of any use to the Beta group? What am I supposed to be able to do?”

“Mike figured you were different from the other watchers. There was something that made him think that your psychic energy level wasn’t naturally low, that actually it’s normal or even higher. But before you hired on as a watcher you must have gone through a period of being surrounded by very low-energy persons, and a subconscious telepathic ability picked up on that and depressed your energy level to match.”

The Juvenile Hall, thought Ralph. The helicopter’s cramped interior seemed to fade away as his memory shot back to the long night-shift hours at the correctional facility below L.A. Of course, he thought. The kids there hadn’t gotten into trouble because of too much energy and frustration. They were the ones who drifted into dope and petty theft because they didn’t have enough energy to resist. So passive that life just blew them along like leaves. And there I was surrounded by them every night, their dreams oozing under the doors of their little locked rooms. Tangling my feet as I walked down the corridor with my flashlight. No wonder I was ready to become a watcher after that.

“But what was the clue?” he said, focusing again on Spencer. “What made Mike suspect all that?”

“Really want to know?” Spencer grinned. “You were the only watcher—besides him and Helga, of course—that didn’t have a television in your apartment. Not even a little portable one. That’s a very un-watcherish thing to do. A TV is always the most important thing a low-energy person owns.”

“Maybe,” said Ralph. He briefly wondered what his energy level was like now, after all that he had gone through. “But what am I supposed to do now? I mean, what did you bring me back here to do?”

Someone unlatched the helicopter’s door from outside. Spencer laughed and pushed Ralph toward the opening. “Do?” he said. “Save the world, schmuck! What else is there to do?”

Ralph stumbled out of the helicopter, his heel catching on the rim of the door. A man wearing some kind of military uniform caught him. “Mr. Metric?” the man shouted over the helicopter’s noise.

He nodded, shielding his eyes from the grit tossed up by the whirling blades. Behind him he heard Spencer’s feet hit the ground.

“Come on, then.” The uniformed man steered him by the elbow away from the wind and noise.

The army seemed to have taken over the base. As they headed for the administration building, Ralph pushed his hair away from his eyes and saw groups of soldiers standing at regular intervals around the fence. Dark green military trucks were parked in the base’s center. The buildings and the grounds were bathed a harsh electric blue by enormous floodlights at the top of wheeled towers.

A rifle-bearing guard at the door of the administration building saluted as they went in. With Spencer behind, the uniformed man—some kind of Intelligence officer, Ralph guessed—hurried him down the corridor.

Another guard saluted and held open the door of Commander Stiles’s office.

Inside, a gray-haired man with the face of a crabby eagle set around a briar pipe was sitting at the desk. He was wearing a dark green jumpsuit with four metal stars on each shoulder. This time the man who had met them at the helicopter saluted, then withdrew, closing the door behind him.

“Here he is. General.” Spencer turned to Ralph. “This is General Loren. He’s in charge of the whole Beta group’s operations.”

“Mr. Metric.” The general stood up and extended a massive brown hand over the desk. As Ralph took it, he could see behind him the torn corner in the window screen and the bloodstain on the carpet where Stiles’s head had been. “Glad to have you here with us at last,” said the general. “There’s very little time left, I’m afraid.”

“That’s what everybody keeps saying.” A sudden impatience broke open inside him as he pulled a chair up to the desk and sat down. “So far, nobody’s said anything about what I’m supposed to do about it.”

The general sighed through his pipe and folded his great hands together on the desk top. “Mr. Metric,” he said slowly, “I wish there was more time to explain this to you. Or time enough for you to rest before making a difficult decision. But you’re going to have to act on only a very sketchy knowledge of the situation.”

“That’s all right.” Ralph waved a nonchalant hand. He felt slightly giddy—his emotions seemed to have separated from events, going through their own accelerating changes. “As long as it’s a good sketchy knowledge it’ll be more than I’ve had before.”

“Are you drunk?” said the general, frowning.

“He’s all right,” said Spencer. “Just overdosed on happenings. Come on, Ralph, this is serious.”

“All right!” shouted Ralph. He flushed with anger. “So get on with it! I’m listening.”

General Loren made little smacking noises around the stem of his dead pipe. “I presume,” he said at last, “that Mr. Stimmitz showed you the prepared orientation tape. Good. Then you know the nature of the disaster we’re trying to prevent. Disaster is, of course, putting it weakly. If Operation Dreamwatch reaches its culmination there will be no one left afterward to call it a disaster.” One of his hands pushed through the sweat on his forehead. “Frankly, the only reason some of us are maintaining any sort of calm is that we’ve been living with the idea for a little while.”

I think, said Ralph to himself, I’d rather live with it than be chased by it all day. “Go ahead,” he said calmly.

After a deep, steadying breath, the general plunged in. “At this moment, the psychic energy level located in the Opwatch dreamfield is building to the point where it can be detonated. From the information we’ve been able to get hold of, it’s apparent we only have a few hours until that point is reached—”

“Why not blow up the Thronsen Home?” interrupted Ralph. “Bomb it, as a sort of preventive strike. If the kids in there were destroyed, wouldn’t their psychic energy be gone as well? Now I know that sounds callous, but given the alternatives—”

“No.” The general shook his head. “It’s too late for that. Most of the Thronsen children have died already—physically, because their psychic energy has already been displaced into the dreamfield, where we can’t get at it. Once that energy starts on its exponential curve, it has a life of its own. It can’t be damped by sending the watchers into the field—even if we could convince any of them to go.”

“Wait. Wait.” Ralph pressed his fingers to his brow for a few seconds.

“If the energy is located in the dreamfield, why should we worry about it exploding? That’s a pocket universe, separate from this one. We wouldn’t be hurt by an explosion there.”

“Not if the dreamfield remained a separate universe. But it can be transposed into this one. Just as part of this universe, the watchers, could be inserted into the dreamfield, the dreamfield can be inserted into this universe.”

“That’s how my brother was killed,” said Spencer. “See, the extent to which this universe and the dreamfield can be overlapped is variable. The watchers were never completely inserted into the dreamfield, but just far enough so they could see the dream sequences the kids were being put through—though that’s unimportant—and also to keep the energy level from premature detonation. Premature, that is, if your intention is to destroy the world. Anyway, the watchers were always between universes, so to speak. That’s why they couldn’t physically interact with the figures on the dreamfield. Until Mike was killed. Then the dreamfield was momentarily transposed onto the same plane as the watchers, and the field’s slithergadee was able to get at Mike.”

So that explains it, thought Ralph. He saw again the bloodstain on the ground outside the base. The sudden transposition must have pushed us closer to our own universe—close enough to bleed into it.

“That’s why the psychic bomb is dangerous,” continued the general. “A split second before it’s to be detonated, the entire dreamfield containing it will be inserted into this universe.”

“Oh.” Ralph felt some space inside him diminish, as if to make room for the dreamfield’s intrusion. The inevitability of it seemed to be already darkening the earth outside the window. “You mean you brought me all the way back here just to tell me this? Somehow, that doesn’t seem, uh, kind. I could have caught it with everyone else in Las Vegas and been just as happy.”

The general giggled, producing an unnerving effect. “Well,” he said, “there is a way to keep the psychic bomb from going off. That’s why you were brought here.”

A small, trembling premonition moved upwards along Ralph’s spine.

Not of danger—all time, he knew, had now moved past that point—but of a fearful responsibility with its point weighing against his breast alone. A grade-school fear resurrected, but now bigger than himself, bigger than anything— What if I screw up! he thought bleakly. The realization that there would be no one to blame him afterward didn’t help. He could barely squeeze his voice out. “What am I supposed to do?”

The large brown hands on the desk top were white-knuckled. The general seemed petrified, his teeth clamped on his pipe in a frozen rictus.

A small red spot of anger bloomed in the center of Ralph’s vision, blotting out the general’s face. He just realized that the whole thing depends on me. Ralph stiffened in his chair.

“Forget him,” said Spencer. He came over and sat down on the corner of the desk. “I’m surprised the military mind was able to bear up this long. This sort of thing just isn’t in their universe.”

“So what’s the plan?” said Ralph. “What am I supposed to do that no one else can?”

“It’s like this. The psychic energy doesn’t automatically explode at any point of its exponential growth curve.” Spencer held his palms a few inches apart. “In fact, there’s only a limited range of the curve where it can be detonated at all. Below that range, the energy will dissipate harmlessly if a detonation attempt is made. Above that range, the energy consumes itself—burns itself out. If the detonator can be set off before the critical range of the growth curve is reached, then the psychic bomb is harmless.”

“So where’s the detonator?”

“It’s on the dreamfield itself. It’s the thing the watchers call the slithergadee.”

A memory of fangs sliding in their sockets, then Ralph rose a few inches from his seat. “You mean you want me to go back on the field and—and do what to that thing?”

Spencer pushed him back down in the chair. The general’s pipe fell from his mouth. “The Beta group,” said Spencer, “has developed a device you’ll take with you onto the field. You merely have to locate the slithergadee, adjust the device as you’ll be shown, then use it to set off the slithergadee/detonator—before the energy level’s critical range is reached. That’ll defuse the bomb.”

“Is that all?” Ralph’s laugh came out like a gasp. “You’re crazy—that thing could be anywhere on the field. And what’s to prevent it from getting me like it did your brother?”

“Hopefully you’ll get it before it gets you. As for locating it—the sooner you go, the better chance you’ll have.”

No wonder the general froze up, thought Ralph. “It’s impossible,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter whether you think it’s impossible.” Spencer gripped the edge of the desk and leaned forward. “You’re the only one who can even try. Only a former watcher can be inserted into the dreamfield. There’s not enough time to prepare anybody who hasn’t been one—and you know we can’t use any of the other watchers, even if, we could convince one to go. They’re useless for daily living, let alone something like this. Face it. You’re the only one.”

Two images rose in his’ mind. Sarah, and—incongruously—the grinning dog named Rin-Tin-Tin. At least he tried, thought Ralph. Or something like that. “All right,” he said. “I’m ready to go.”

Chapter 16

“It looks like a rifle.” Ralph hoisted the thing in his hands.

Spencer nodded. “I think they did take the stock from an army carbine. Just to make it a convenient shape to hold and aim.”

The sports-jacketed Beta group technician who had brought the device in a padded cloth bag now glanced nervously at the desk. The general was sipping at a paper cup of water held in a trembling hand. “Is everything all right?” he said. “Has Shadrach here been briefed?”

“Metric,” corrected Spencer absently. He was studying the gunlike device intently. “Show him how to work this thing.”

“Really very simple.” The technician tapped at it with a pencil. The whatsit—you know, the detonator for the psychic bomb—is really a concentrated energy source in itself. Kind of a small bomb to set off the larger bomb. We haven’t been able to figure out yet how the detonator is controlled, except that it’s set off by a relatively small energy pulse. This gun will emit such a pulse—three of them, in fact, so you’ll have that many chances. Get within fifty feet of the detonator, aim the device just like a normal gun, and pull the trigger. That’s all there is to it.

“Except—see these two dials here?” The pencil tapped at two small gauges facing upwards at the gun’s middle. “The one on the left will indicate at what level between the dreamfield and this universe the detonator actually is. We can’t determine this beforehand because the detonator apparently can be transposed independently of the dreamfield and the psychic bomb—probably as a safety measure until the moment of detonation. You must, before firing the pulse at the detonator, adjust the dial on the right—see the little knob here on the side?—to match the reading of the other dial. That will set the pulse at the same level between the field and this universe as the detonator occupies. The pulse has such a narrow ‘reality bandwidth’ that it will miss the detonator entirely if they’re not exactly in the same plane.”

“So what you have to do,” said Spencer, “is find the slithergadee, get within fifty feet, read the dial on the left, set the one on the right to match it, aim and fire. Got it?”

Ralph nodded. All the moisture from his mouth seemed to have travelled to his hands. “What’s this other stuff here?”

“This clips onto your belt,” said the technician, attaching a small rectangular box to Ralph. “It’s just a battery for the gun. Then this cable runs from it and plugs into the stock. Like that. Now you’re all set.”

He cradled the gun in his hands and headed for the door.

“Good luck,” rattled the general’s voice behind him.

On the way to the line shack, with Ralph in the center of the small procession and bearing the gun like some new totem, they passed close to one of the army trucks. He peered into its open back, then halted suddenly on the path. The truck was filled with former watchers, sitting quietly on narrow wooden benches that ran the length of the vehicle. A few had fallen asleep, heads and shoulders slumped against each other, but most wore the vacant, glazed expression of people trying to notice as little as possible of whatever unpleasant experience they were undergoing.

“Come on.” Spencer pulled at Ralph’s elbow. “Don’t waste the little time you got.”

“Just a minute,” said Ralph. He had spotted the two watchers he had been seeking, sitting side by side in the middle of the group. “Hey, Goodell! Kathy!”

The two leaned forward from the bench and looked down the ranks of knees at him, framed in the truck’s rear opening. “Ralph,” said Goodell, smiling weakly. “What are you doing out there?”

“It’s too complicated to explain now.”

“Well,” said Goodell wistfully, “isn’t this something? I guess every good arrangement has to come to an end sometime.”

Beside him, Kathy suddenly jerked upright, as if jolted from sleep. Even her face tensed, the usual slack lines tautening from within. “Is that all you can say?” she shouted at Goodell. “They round us up and cram us into these smelly trucks and all you can say is your crummy good job is over? Is that all?” She swung and connected her small fist with Goodell’s ear. She was still shouting something as Ralph let himself be led away.

“There’s hope for us all,” he muttered, using up the last of his capacity for amazement. Spencer and the Beta technician didn’t seem to hear him.

They passed the saluting guard at the entrance of the line shack and hurried into its cavernous interior. Another technician was up in the control booth, looking around the little glass-enclosed area and comparing it with a booklet he held.

“Hey!” Spencer shouted up at the booth. “Are we ready to go?”

Somehow he had expanded to fill the hole left in the Beta organization by the general’s collapse. Perhaps he had been born to. He turned to Ralph.

“All right, then. Grab a strap.”

Without stopping to think, Ralph stepped into the middle of the space and with his free hand caught one of the loops dangling from the suspended cable. With a shock of recognition, he felt the familiar coldness of the metal contact against his palm.

Spencer turned and raised his hand to signal the control booth, then lowered it. He walked quickly up to Ralph while digging something out of his pocket. Onto Ralph’s arm he buckled something that looked like a wristwatch. “I almost forgot,” he said. “This will tell you how much time you’ve got. When the needle enters the red zone, it’ll be too late—the psychic energy level will have reached the detonation range. If that happens, you’ll probably be consumed by the explosion in a few seconds. So don’t try to cut it thin. Find the slithergadee and set it off as soon as you can.” Spencer started to back away.

“Hey,” said Ralph. “What happens to me when I trigger the detonator? Will I make it back here?”

“We don’t know.” Spencer turned and gestured sharply to the control booth. “We’ll try to get you back—”

There was no time for any more words. The shack faded away and in seconds he was on the dreamfield, the line snaking upwards out of his grasp.

He dropped to his knees, gasping. The dreamfield’s sky had turned yellow, writhing with figures at the edge of perception. A cold wind stiffened the air, though the ground seemed to be shimmering with heat.

The force that had stricken Ralph on his arrival passed, although his stomach remained coiled with nausea. He pushed himself upright with his free hand.

The field’s remembered streets and buildings stretched out in all directions, the mirror images endlessly repeating themselves. All the shadows were burnt away by the yellow light, except one that lay like a dark cross on the streets. That shadow was cast by Muehlenfeldt’s jet, crowded in among the buildings, its enormous wings over their roofs, the cylinders of its engines reflected in the plate glass windows—some silver bird of prey frozen amidst a deserted ant heap.

Ralph studied its blank, staring windows for a moment, then turned away and hurried down one of the streets leading from it. There was no way of telling if the slithergadee would be aboard the jet, but for now he fervently hoped it wasn’t. Somehow he felt sure Sarah wasn’t in there.

Only dreaded things, he thought.

He ran down the street, gripping the altered rifle in one hand, past the empty buildings and out of sight of the jet. In the middle of a crossroads he stopped and looked at the dial Spencer had strapped to his forearm. It was impossible to tell how far the tiny hand had travelled toward the red since he had left the line shack. My time sense is warped, he realized. The mounting energy on the field was disorienting him in every dimension. At his core fear mixed with the nausea. He ran on, the buildings heaving alongside him like slow waves.

There was no sign of the slithergadee. Ralph squatted down in the middle of the street and panted. He was afraid to look at the dial now—it seemed as if hours of running had gone by, with nothing but an infinity of small-town store fronts entering his vision. They should’ve known, he thought bitterly, staring at the asphalt with his head lowered in exhaustion. They should’ve known it wouldn’t be just waiting here for me to find. Either it’s hidden where I’ll never find it, or it’s on Muehlenfeldt’s jet—and how can I get at it there?

Something moved in the buildings to his right. He saw its motion from the corner of his eye. Gripping the gun tighter, he rose and walked slowly towards the drugstore where he had seen it.

Inside it was dark, the racks and counters arrayed in oppressive silence.

He walked farther into the building, until he stood in its center. As he pivoted slowly around, a figure rose from behind the cash register. “You,” it gasped, stretching an arm of fire toward him.

He stared at the swaying apparition for several moments until he realized what it was. One of the children from the Thronsen Home, he thought, dismayed. Burning up. The dream image seemed to be that of a boy sixteen or seventeen years old, but with the skin bursting into glowing heat. Red eyes, crazed with fever, stared at Ralph. The facial bones looked as if they were about to break through the incandescence. “You,” the image repeated, then flowed around the end of the counter and leaped at Ralph.

Its heat scorched his face as he dodged to one side. The glowing image rolled on its shoulder and clutched at his ankle. Frantically, he kicked free and ran for the door. It’s on the same level as me, he realized. Where it can reach me.

A pair of arms encircled his neck and he was thrown onto the sidewalk.

Another burning face hissed above him, pressing him into the ground with its heat and weight. He brought the rifle butt against its chest and pushed it away. Its shrill cry rang after him as he got to his feet and ran down the sidewalk.

The minds of the juvenile delinquents, with no existence now except on the dreamfield, had burnt out with the overloads of psychic energy, leaving nothing but the raw circuits of hate and fear. The street itself seemed to be on fire as more images emerged from among the buildings.

Their garbled shouts coalesced into one sound in the air. Ralph eluded the outstretched hands of one only to be tackled around the waist by another.

He beat at the radiant hands but more figures clutched at him, until he seemed to be at the core of some burning pit. The heat dizzied him, until the blood rushed into his head and he vomited.

Somehow his finger found the trigger of the rifle. He pressed the altered barrel down into the massed figures scrabbling at him, and fired. A roaring noise mixed with the suddenly deafening cries of the dream figures. He fell to the ground, clutching the gun to his chest. The burning hands were no longer tearing at him.

For a moment he was unconscious; then with one hand he lifted himself onto his side. The figures were scattering from him in all directions, heading for the darkness inside the field’s buildings. A few feet away something with the shape of a human being jerked and sputtered on the ground, dissolving into white-hot sparks.

The dial on his forearm was smashed, the needle dangling and useless.

He sucked in breath until his lungs stopped aching, then looked up and across the roofs of the buildings. Far away, the topmost part of the tail on Muehlenfeldt’s jet could be seen. He gripped the rifle and started toward the silver beacon, running past the buildings and ignoring the fiery eyes that watched him from within.

The plane’s bulk shielded him from the yellow sky. “Hey!” he shouted up at the curved belly. A panel shifted and slid open. He stepped back as the stairs slowly lowered, the bottom step finally grinding against the street’s asphalt.

No one stopped him at the top of the ramp. He walked cautiously into the silent interior.

The fish in the cabin’s huge aquarium was dead, floating at the top of the water. “Ralph,” came Muehlenfeldt’s voice as he stepped around the tank. “Come on. You can’t avoid this moment forever.”

The senator was sitting in the high-backed leather chair. His white hair no longer lay smooth against his skull but stood on end in a corona.

Ralph stood a couple of yards away and pointed the gun at him. “I need to know where the slithergadee is.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Muehlenfeldt. “Stop waving that thing about. I know what it’s for. You can’t hurt me with it.” He paused, smiling. “Come on. Nothing to say now?”

“Where is it?” Ralph lowered the gun.

“It’s no use to ask. You’ll never find it.” The smile grew wider and more wicked. “You’ll never find Sarah either. She’s not here—you’ll die universes apart from each other. Sad, don’t you think. She really is my daughter, you know.”

“No,” said Ralph. “She isn’t.”

Muehlenfeldt laughed. “Oh, but she is. Though perhaps spawn is a better word. We reproduce asexually—ah, yes, your friend Spencer was right about me. Very intuitive of him. Sarah told me all about his theories.” He tilted his head to one side. “Sharper than a serpent’s tooth—isn’t that how it goes? I was very surprised when she turned against me. But then maybe she was sick in some way. Maybe she forgot what she was and now she really believes she’s human. This taking on other creatures’ identities can be a dangerous business. So let it be that way, then. She can die with her adopted species.”

Lying, thought Ralph. His hands sweated on the gun stock. Confusion.

“Still nothing to say?” Muehlenfeldt leaned forward in his chair.

“Nothing to ask? Before it ends?” He sighed. “That’s the trouble with you—all of you. Too easily distracted by trivialities. Like that military nonsense in South America. That Ximento business. I instigated that—money in the right places, and enough of it. Just as a distraction, otherwise I’m sure my real purpose would have been exposed much sooner. Perhaps even delayed.”

One of his wrinkled hands described a sphere in the air. “Think of it as a work of art,” he said. “The transformation of your meaningless and dirty little lives into pure light. Perfect and intense. Like a star—that’s how it’ll look from far enough away. Don’t you think that’s worth more than the mere continuation of your petty existence?”

“You’re insane,” said Ralph. “You’ll die, too.”

“Fool. As if this were the only place in which I exist. I’ll be watching from out there when this poor husk is consumed with everything else.” He gripped the arms of the chair and laughed with his head thrown back, the cords in his neck beating.

Ralph watched, numb with sickness and the weight of defeat.

Muehlenfeldt’s laughter grew louder until it filled the space. A string of saliva bisected the cavernous mouth.

The yellowish teeth suddenly lengthened, sliding in their gums.

The teeth. Ralph stared, the realization bursting in him. He’s the slithergadee!

The laughter stopped. Muehlenfeldt’s figure seemed to grow larger as it rose from the chair. It was swelling, changing into its true shape. “Yes,” said the voice from the gaping mouth, sounding hollow and distant. “But it’s too late! Look out the window!”

He looked and saw that the sky outside had turned red, a fire that stretched to the end of every universe. Fumbling with the rifle, he backed away from the thing in front of him. The floor tilted beneath him and he fell against a table. The jet was climbing.

“Too late!” The voice was buried beneath the thing’s armor. Its claws ripped the carpet as it scrabbled toward him, the fangs in its mouth fully extended.

Ralph rolled over the top of the table and fell on the other side. His fingers trembling, he matched the dials on top of the gun. He pushed himself away from the table, lifted the gun and fired point-blank at the thing rising above him like a wave.

A flash of light and Muehlenfeldt’s muffled laughter echoed again in the cabin. “Idiot! How can you hit me with that thing when I can alter my level at will?”

“No,” moaned Ralph. He lifted the gun to his face. The needle of the dial on the left was swaying erratically back and forth.

“Give up,” intoned the buried voice.

Ralph got to his feet on the angled floor. He shouted something but the blood roaring in his ears drowned it out. A mountain of glistening scales and fangs toppled toward him. He didn’t look but watched the left dial’s needle reach its farthest point, then fall the other way. With the gun butt braced against his stomach, he turned the right dial’s needle in the opposite direction. In the split-second when they matched positions he fired.

Light, which grew brighter until he was blinded. He felt himself pressed upward against something. It dissolved and he was falling. Then he burned away as well, leaving nothing.

Chapter 17

He awoke on the shimmering desert. Sand and sky danced blurrily until he blinked and cleared his eyes. He lifted himself up on his elbows and looked around. There was nothing to be seen but the empty desert.

I wonder where the base is. He stood up, his knees trembling unsteadily for a moment, and shaded his eyes. One direction’s good as another, he thought, shrugging his shoulders. He started walking, his head lowered.

After several minutes of trudging through the sand and dry brush, he heard the sound of an automobile engine approaching. It appeared on the horizon, trailing a cloud of dust, and grew larger. He stopped and waited for it.

Sarah was at the wheel of a jeep. She pulled in front of him and stopped. The black dress, dusty now, was rolled up over her knees. “Get in,” she said.

The wind bathed him, coming over the lowered windshield. The jeep bounced over the sand and rocks for a little while, then climbed onto a strip of asphalt road and picked up speed.

“Where’d you get this?” he said finally.

“It was at the base.” Sarah pointed behind them with her thumb. “I managed to reach there after he—or whatever it was—dumped me off the plane. Spencer filled me in on what was happening, where you’d gone. Then I sneaked out and stole this.” Her hand patted the dash.

“Oh.” He looked at the strip of highway bisecting the desert in front of them. “How’d you find me out there?”

“Didn’t I tell you once I had a knack for finding things that were important to me? I knew where to look.” Her hand drew a line in the air. “You were like a falling star when you came back. Would you like something to eat? There’s a carton of something in the back.”

He found it and lifted it onto his lap. It was filled with cans marked U.S. Army, followed by a number of several digits. He pulled the opening strip on one and discovered canned peaches inside. He plunged his hand into the warm syrup and pulled out a slippery golden crescent that dissolved in his mouth like part of the sun. “Where’re we going?” he asked when he had finished the can.

“I thought up north would be pleasant,” said Sarah. “Big redwood trees with lots of shade under them. And it rains every week. Isn’t there a town up there called Eureka?”

“I have found it,” murmured Ralph. He closed his eyes. He opened them again when an after-image formed inside the lids of a gaping fanged mouth. “Got any money?” he said. “It’s a long drive.”

She pulled a man’s wallet from under the seat and handed it to him.

“Should be enough.”

It was crammed with folded bills. A twenty fluttered free as he looked inside. The wind caught the bill and sucked it into the dust behind them.

When he laid the wallet on the seat between them, Sarah took one hand from the wheel and touched his. Without thinking, he jerked it away, as though it were burned.

Her face turned a little, the eyes studying him. “He told you that I’m—like he was. Didn’t he? The same kind of thing. He told me he would say that to you.”

Ralph nodded. “Yeah. He said that.”

“It’s not true. It was just hate on his part, trying to come up with the lie that would hurt you most.”

He pressed his hand softly to her cheek. “I didn’t really believe it anyway.”

They drove on for a while. Ralph scratched his chin. “Won’t Spencer and the Beta group wonder what happened to me?”

She shrugged. “They’ll probably just figure you were destroyed when you set off the detonator. The whole dreamfield collapsed and went out of existence. They’ll look for your body for a little while and then give up. What does it matter? You’ve done enough for them.”

Ralph nodded. Maybe up north I’ll start writing again, he thought. He decided it wasn’t worth trying to get into L.A. and fetching his old unfinished manuscript from his parents’ house. They were probably still mad at him for abandoning their Ford somewhere in the city. Better to start all over. With everything. He turned and watched Sarah for a few moments, her hands resting easy on the jeep’s wheel.

“What’s the matter?” Her glance caught his. “Still thinking of what that thing said about me?”

“No,” said Ralph. He leaned back in the seat. “I don’t really care anyway. It’s all right with me if you are really a being from some other star. Just as long as you don’t do that thing with the teeth. You know? Where they turn into fangs and come sliding out in their sockets?”

“Okay,” she said. And smiled.