First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, July 1993. Copyright © 1993 by Jamil Nasir. All rights reserved. Any redistribution, copying, alteration, or use other than personal reading is expressly forbidden.

SLEEPERS AWAKE

     It all started with a flash.

     It had been a mild October Sunday, yellow leaves fluttering down against a blue sky, the barking of a neighborhood dog and the tang of wood smoke coming faintly on the still air, warm enough to sit on your back deck all day. I had sat on mine till evening, reading, dozing, and watching the light turn long and yellow, then blue. Even when it got chilly and too dark to follow my spy book, where a beautiful girl in a parking garage was begging the hero to help her escape from terrorists, I didn't want to go in. I was leaning my chair against the cool brick of the house, listening to the trilling of crickets and an occasional car down on Thayer Avenue, when it came: a split-second of flashbulb blue piercing the neighborhood like an X-ray.

      My chair thumped down on four legs. Another chair scraped back in the kitchen. Vicki slid the glass door open, a magazine in her hand. "What was that?"

      We went and stood by the deck railing. The evening air was still and deep, two early stars shining through the branches of our backyard oak.

      The screen door next door slammed and Mrs. Romer's old, hoarse voice said: "Going to rain, I imagine."

     "There aren't any clouds," said Vicki.

     "What?"

     "There aren't any clouds. It wasn't lightning," Vicki yelled.

     "Maybe an electric short in the circuit box down the street. Big one. Somebody ought to call the electric company," I told Vicki.

      I got her to go in and call. I stood looking up into the darkness, crickets rippling the silence softly. Three houses down, Cindy Lipman stood in her back yard holding her baby, face a white blur looking up into the air.

     "You can bet it's some kind of bad weather, anyhow," said Mrs. Romer sourly, and went back inside, screen door slamming behind her.

      Looking up through the branches of the oak, I thought I heard, very faintly, the ringing of tiny bells blending with the crickets' song.

      Vicki came back out. "The line's busy. Probably a lot of people"

     "Listen," I hissed.

     "What?"

      I strained my ears. The ringing seemed to have retreated back into my imagination.

      But that night, on the edge of sleep, I thought I heard it again, sweet and distant, very faint.

     "You hear that?" I whispered to Vicki.

     "Mmm?"

     "Bells."

      Pause.

     "Go to sleep."

II

      Things were screwed up at work the next day. For one thing, the phones were broken. I had an important call to make to Syracuse, New York, but I kept getting whistling and crackling noises instead. The operator wouldn't answer. I finally told Rose to report it to the office manager, and spent the rest of the morning talking into my dictaphone. When I got back from lunch, Rose had the transcription on my chair. I put my feet on the desk with a contented sigh, uncapped a red pen, turned back the cover sheet, and read:

 Sleepers Awake

Sleepers awake, the voice is calling,
On battlements the watchmen cry:
Wake, city of Jerusalem! . . .

      The telephone rang. I groped for it.

     "Bill Johnson, please," said a faraway, staticky voice.

     "You have the wrong number."

     "This isn't Johnson's Formal Wear in Des Moines, Iowa?"

      I said no, hung up, and buzzed Rose, handed her the memo as the phone rang again.

     "Bill Johnson, please," said a faraway, staticky voice.

      I hung up. Rose was staring at the memo blankly. "That's funny. Something must be wrong with the word-processing system. I'll try to . . ."

      The phone rang. I answered it, watching her out of the office suspiciously.

     "Bill Johnson? Of Des Moines, Iowa?"

     "No, Bob Wilson, of Washington, D.C., the same guy you've gotten the last half-dozen times."

     "Sorry about that, Mr. Wilson. Tom Gibbs from New York City. I'm in Formal Wear. How are the phones down your way?"

     "Screwed up."

     "Same here. I've been trying to get through to Des Moines all morning. Seems like the trunk lines are out of whack. I can get Washington, Boston, Chicago, and L.A. okay, but the farm lands don't answer. Funny."

      The phone rang once more that afternoon. I picked it up, expecting Tom Gibbs, but it wasn't Tom Gibbs; it was a wide, distant hum, a faint gabble of ten thousand crossed lines overlaid with the electronic buzz of some vast malfunction, like a telephone call from Entropy itself. I hung up with a shiver and a quick prayer that It didn't intend to come visit in person.

III

      I was in a bad mood when I got home.

     "Where's the newspaper?" I complained, after searching the living room for it. "You didn't throw it away again, did you?"

     "It didn't come," Vicki called from upstairs. "I left you some green beans on the stove."

     "Green beans?" I went and looked at them mournfully.

     "I've got rehearsal, honey." She came downstairs, beautiful in a blue skirt and pink, floppy sweater, eyes vivid with makeup, gave me a barely touching kiss that wouldn't smear her lipstick. "And when I get back we have to go over to Mrs. Romer's. She swears she has ghosts. I promised we'd come and make sure there aren't any. I think she's gone crazy, poor old lady."

     "Ghosts? Honey, I don't want to go over there tonight. I'm tired. You wouldn't believe "

      In the back yard, crickets trilled in subtly shifting patterns, the air still and just a little damp. Moonlight cast a dark deck shadow on the grass. I was leaning on the railing before going back inside to my spy book, when I heard the faint, sweet sound of bells.

      I held my breath. The lights of Vicki's car had just disappeared down the hill. The sound seemed to be coming from around the side of the house.

      I tiptoed down wooden steps and through crackling leaves, poked my head past the gutter downspout at the corner.

      High in a young maple in Arland Johnston's side yard, unseasonable firefly lights floated.

      I snuck forward, the soft earth of iris beds silencing my steps. For a second it crossed my mind that Arland had hung out Christmas lights: I thought I saw tiny haloed saints and angels with trumpets. Then they all winked out at once.

      I stood looking up into the tree, lit pale by the moon. As I watched, a single leaf let go and fluttered down. Then I heard the bells again, faint and faraway.

      The firefly lights were floating around a tree in old Mr. Jakeway's back yard, down at the bottom of the street.

      I crept across silent asphalt moon-tinted the same deep, dusty blue as the sky, along the sidewalk in tree-shadows, pushed through a hole in Mr. Jakeway's hedge, getting scratched and poked. I picked my way through his quarter-acre back yard, trying to tell clumps of weeds from junk auto parts that could break your leg in the dark. Gnarled tree-branches hung almost to the ground.

      A cobra blur coiled around my leg and yanked me into the air.

      I tried to scream, but only a faint gurgling came out. I hung upside down, breath knocked out of me, spinning slowly, arms and free leg struggling wildly in the air.

      The rope around my ankle jerked. There were grunts from above, and I started going up again, slowly. Hands took hold of me and pulled me onto a thick tree-branch four stories off the ground.

      An old man squatted on the branch. For a second I thought he was Mr. Jakeway, but then I saw that he was even older, with a sour, wrinkled face, and no hair. He wore a long, dingy robe that the moon lit grey, with big buttons down the front. He peered at me through wire-rimmed spectacles. Around him crouched half a dozen kids in their early teens, watching me solemnly. Three of them held me onto the branch.

      The old man croaked: "I am the Angel of Death."

      I stared at him. Then I did something I would never have expected: I started to cry. I could see our house far below, yard awash in pale leaves, my old Datsun parked in front, a bag of newspapers on the walk waiting for the recycling truck. I had never seen the neighborhood from up here; already it looked faraway and out of reach, like a picture of someplace you used to live but will never see again.

     "Please stop crying," said the old man irritably. "I'm not going to take you yet. At least, not if you promise to stop poking around where you have no business. We're having enough trouble right now without you."

      I wiped my shirtsleeve across my nose hopefully.

     "Do you promise to stop snooping? To leave those little lights alone? And not to tell anyone about us?"

      I nodded eagerly. One of the teenage kids looped the end of the rope they had pulled off my ankle around my chest.

     "See that you don't," the old man croaked as they lowered me rotating toward the earth. "If you do..."

      When I reached the ground, I struggled out of the rope and ran blindly until I was inside my house, locked the door, drew all the curtains, and dialed 911.

      It took them a long time to answer. After I had given my name and address, I said: "There's a weirdo in a tree at the end of my block who claims he's the Angel of Death. He's got some kids with him. They've got a rope snare rigged up that almost broke my back. This guy is dangerous, officer if you could see his face..."

     "Angel of Death...up in a tree...rope snare..." the heavy voice on the other end repeated slowly, "And what address would this be at, Mr. Wilson?"

     "It's the first house on your right as you turn onto Thayer Place. I don't know the exact address. You're sending somebody right over?"

     "It'll probably be half an hour, Mr. Wilson, before we can get to it. We've—"

     "Half an hour? Officer, there's a dangerous maniac—"

     "If you'll let me finish, Mr. Wilson, we've got thirty other emergency calls, and we just don't have the cars to cover them. I suggest you stay inside and keep your doors locked until we can get out there, but I wouldn't panic. The other wild calls we've had tonight have turned out to be hoaxes."

     "This isn't a hoax!"

     "I didn't say it was, sir. But look, we've got a report of a giant lizard prowling around Sligo Creek -- ate somebody's dog, says here. We've got a report of a mushroom cloud over on Colesville Road. We've got ghosts all over town. We figure it's one of these kids' Dungeons and Dragons clubs or some people very confused about when Halloween is, so I wouldn't get too concerned. Just stay inside until the officer gets there."

      As soon as I put down the phone, a scream sounded faintly from next door.

      I spent a minute that felt like an hour chewing the end off my thumb. I figured the Angel of Death guy and his kids were murdering Mrs. Romer. I wondered what I should do about that.

      Another scream.

      I banged out along leaf-deep sidewalks. All of Mrs. Romer's windows were lit and her front door was ajar. Mrs. Romer herself was standing in the middle of her small, well-furnished living room, wrinkled hands on her hips, looking around with solemn belligerence.

     "He's back," she announced in her hoarse voice as I stopped in the doorway. "Him and his alcoholic mother and his sponging sister."

     "Who?" I yelled, trying to keep my teeth from chattering.

     "Terrell."

     "I...I thought he was dead."

     "It was such a relief to me. I learned to love him afterward; he left me this house and a lot of money, God bless him. But he's back. Him and his alcoholic, sponging family."

     "Mrs. Romer, I've got a terrible emergency "

     "You look in the basement," she told me. "I'll go upstairs. If we can't find them, we'll have to look in the attic."

      And she started up the stairs, yelling quaveringly: "Terrell! Terrell! You come out right now!"

      It took me a while to get her calmed down. She wouldn't let me leave until I had crawled around in her attic, poking a flashlight into dusty, cobwebbed corners. Maybe I didn't hurry as much as I could have; with the Angel of Death guy prowling the neighborhood, Mrs. Romer's attic felt comfortably remote and full of dark hiding places. Thankfully, I didn't find her dead in- laws crouching in any of them. When I peeked out her front door twenty minutes later, I was relieved to see the red and blue lights of a police car rotating silently at the end of the street.

      I walked down to where a policeman and old Mr. Jakeway stood by a purring squad car, the mist of their breath rising into blue depths where the moon shone mistily. Another policeman was crashing around in the brush behind Mr. Jakeway's house, shining a flashlight up into the trees.

     "Hey there, Bobby," said Mr. Jakeway. "Officer here tells me you saw some kids up in my trees."

     "An old man and some kids. But that was an hour ago."

     "Well, they're gone now," said the policeman.

     "Officer, I know it sounds strange, but they were there. They pulled me."

     "You're not the only report we have on them," said the policeman, looking at a clipboard with his flashlight. "At least the old man. We got a call over on Pershing Drive, an old man fitting that description trampling through people's flower beds. Went off in a big foreign car, says here."

     "You think they're foreigners? Terrorists?" asked Mr. Jakeway, thrusting his old, grizzled head forward.

     "I don't know what they are. We've gotten a lot of strange calls tonight, is all I know."

     "Psychological warfare, maybe," said Mr. Jakeway, nodding and looking into our eyes one at a time. "Could be. You never know what they're inventing in those laboratories. Some kind of gas, maybe, makes you see people up in trees when there aren't any."

      The other policeman crashed out of the bushes, looking scratched and out of breath.

     "You ought to cut down some of those weeds back there," he told Mr. Jakeway.

IV

      I had left the house door open; it spilled a rectangle of light onto the front walk in the still, cricket-trilled air, and I could hear the phone ringing half a block away as I walked back up from Mr. Jakeway's.

      I rushed in and answered it.

      It was Vicki. "Bob? Hi."

      She never calls me "Bob" unless somebody is listening. In the background I could hear music and voices.

     "I'm going to be a little late tonight. Something wonderful has happened."

     "Where are you? Are you all right?"

     "Of course I'm all right. I'm at rehearsal. Honey, you'll never guess what happened."

     "Are you coming home? There's some weird things—"

     "I'm going to be a little late. Honey, there was a producer at rehearsal tonight. None of us knew it. Stuart introduced us afterward. His name is Ken, and he's doing a show at the Kennedy Center in March. And he signed me up for a part. With Tim Curry."

     "That's great, honey, great! But I wish you'd come home, because—"

     "Honey? The line's getting staticky. We're going out to celebrate and sign the contract. Can you hear me?"

     "I can hear you fine."

     "Hello? Bob? Oh, he's gone," she said disappointedly to someone at her end, and hung up.

      Aside from a few distant crackles, the phone was dead.

      I got my keys, locked the front door behind me. The gas station at Dale and Piney Branch glared with white neon, self-serve customers dawdling over their hoses. Overfed diners tottered out the door of the Chesapeake Crab House. I pointed the Datsun toward town. Half an hour later I was banging on the locked door of the Souris Studio storefront on 14th Street, cupping my hands on the glass to peer into a dim entrance area with a coatrack, a few shabby chairs, and a display stand for theater programs, but no people. I stood in the smoky, run-down darkness trying to imagine where one would go to celebrate a contract. Then I walked back to the parking garage.

      My car was on the third sublevel. I went down urine-smelling concrete steps, crossed the oil-stained, neon-lit ramp. I had the door unlocked when a voice behind me said: "Can you give me a ride?"

      The ramp had been deserted a second before. "No," I said, and yanked the door open.

     "Please. Someone is following me. Please."

      That made me turn and look.

      She was small, slim, with fashionably tousled blonde hair, breathtaking dark eyes. She wore black tights, a black leather jacket, little pink ballerina shoes. Her face was wild, lips trembling. She came closer between the car.

     "Please," she said.

      The heavy throb of an engine echoed down the ramp, and her pupils dilated crazily. Her breath came in tearing gasps.

      D‚j. vu. I moved away from the car door with a quick gesture. She scrambled to the floor of the passenger seat and crouched there, head down.

      I got in, backed out of my space, and headed up the ramp. At the first turn I had to edge past a black Mercedes limo coming down. I edged close enough to see through the tinted glass of the back seat.

      An old man with a bald, wrinkled face sat there. He wore a grey robe with big buttons, wire-rimmed spectacles. He didn't see me; his eyes were straining through the windshield as if looking for something.

      My heart pounded. I paid the garage attendant in his cubicle of light with a shaking hand.

      We were rattling over potholes on 14th Street before the woman said: "You know him." She was staring up at me.

     "I'm going to call the police."

      She laughed shortly. "The police," she sneered. She threw herself into the passenger seat. "Take a right here. You can use my phone."

      As we drove it began to rain. A few minutes later, turning down 22nd Street, I suddenly had the feeling that I was leaving behind everything familiar to me, my whole life.

      A few blocks down 22nd, I pulled over by a brick building with wide front steps between worn stone lions, brass-and-glass entrance doors glittering with chandelier light. The building elevator was elderly but highly polished. The third floor hall was silent, lit discreetly by brass leaves with bulbs behind them, carpeted in a red floral pattern. The woman unlocked a door near the end, locked and bolted it behind us.

     "Phone's over there," she said, her hand a pale blur in the dark. She hurried into another room.

      Rain pattered on the sills of open windows, and the glare of streetlight showed black and white outlines of magazines, clothes, and dishes scattered over deep chairs and a sofa, low glass- and-metal tables. Shelves held powerful stereo components, books, and vases. Shadowy art prints hung on the walls.

      The woman was opening and closing drawers in the other room. She hadn't turned on any lights. I dialed 911 on a telephone shaped like a banana. It was busy.

     "You have a phone book?" I called.

     "Somewhere." She sounded preoccupied.

      A phone book-sized binder lay on a table at the end of the sofa; but when I opened it, I found myself looking at an eight-by-ten glossy photograph of her wearing only a gold necklace, her delicate, muscular body stretched out on a bed. I closed the book with a snap. From where I stood I could see out the window.

      The woman's voice said behind me: "Look, I need a ride somewhere. It's a matter of life and death. Can you help me?"

     "No," I said. "Not yet."

      She came around the sofa. She was wearing a white plastic raincoat over a white dress and white stockings, carrying an overnight bag. I held her so she wouldn't get too near the window. Streetlight glow lit her face silver-gray.

      A black Mercedes limousine was parked across the street.

     "Oh my God," she whispered. She started to shake.

      I got her by both wrists, whispering: "Shh." I was imagining the Angel of Death and his chauffeur listening in the hall outside.

     "No!" she screamed in a sudden frenzy. "No!" She tried to wrench her wrists away from me.

      I wrapped my left hand around her face, pinioned her arms with my right, and dragged her struggling into the next room. One of her blue rubber boots kicked off and hit the wall. I crushed her down on a big, unmade bed, held a pillow over her head to muffle her screams. After awhile, lack of air made her quiet.

      I took the pillow away enough to say in her ear: "Maybe they don't know we're here."

      She lay still.

      I helped her sit up. Her face was red, swollen, wet, her breath gasping with sobs. I put my finger to my lips and crept back into the living room, listened at the front door. The elevator opened once, but voices and footsteps went away in another direction. There was no other sound. I tried the telephone. There were only buzzing and crackling noises on it now. I sat down against the wall behind the front door, my ears straining against the patter of rain and the sound of traffic.

      After a long time I peered out the window again. Streetlight glittered on wet pavement. The black limo was gone.

      The woman was asleep in her coat, one boot on, her face calm and intent like a child's. She woke with a start when I touched her.

     "They're gone," I told her. My voice seemed to come from far off somewhere. I had started to shake.

      She looked up into my face for a minute. Then she began fumbling with the buttons on her dress, breath quickening.

V

      I woke up next to her after midnight, exhausted. Her skin seemed to glow faintly in the dark, as if there was a light inside her.

      I lay and watched her. Gradually she woke up too.

      When she was awake, I said: "I don't understand what is happening."

      She propped herself up, sitting against the head of the bed, got a cigarette from the night table. Tendrils of smoke curled around her pale hair, pale shoulders.

     "You're dead," she said.

      I didn't say anything to that.

     "Everybody's dead. Everybody at once," she went on. "All together. Whoosh. A wholesale global disaster, Sunday evening about five-thirty. You might have seen a flash or felt a sharp pain. I won't tell you what it was, since it's no longer your business, but almost a billion people died in the first half-hour, and more are coming in all the time."

     "Almost nobody noticed. But now you're starting to notice. Now your comfortable consensual reality is starting to break down, to be rebuilt by more powerful forces: desires, obsessions, fears."

      I got out of bed. I felt dizzy.

     "I have to go," I said. "Home."

     "You don't have a home anymore. Just a blackened spot on a tiny piece of dust buzzing around a spark of light in a far corner of the universe. And a dream image that could vanish any second. You might as well stay here." She smiled, letting a wisp of smoke curl out through her lips.

     "I can't," I said thickly, hunting for my underwear in the pile of clothes by the bed. "My wife..."

VI

      By the time I turned the Datsun onto Thayer Place, it had stopped raining. Untidy maple branches looming over the front walk in the dark dripped on the limp, waterlogged bag of newspapers. I was heading shakily for the front door when there were steps behind me on the sidewalk.

      A bent figure was jogging painfully up the hill. I stumbled backward, the adrenaline of fear flashing through me, but it was only Mr. Jakeway, unshaven jowls wagging, sunken eye- sockets filled with shadow.

     "Bobby," he rasped. His thin, trembling hands took hold of my shoulders and he leaned on me, breathing hard. "Have they got you too? Or are you awake?" His breath smelled faintly alcoholic.

      Before I could answer he went on: "They're lying, Bobby. Nothing's happened. Nobody's dead. Don't believe 'em, boy." He leaned on me harder, put his arm around my shoulder. "They want us to move aside. Just move aside and give up. They're using some kind of gas. Black gas. Thank goodness I found you, Bobby," he said hoarsely. "Everybody else is walking around in a dream."

      I stared at the glitter of his eyes in the dark. I felt strange.

     "Who?" I finally blurted out. "Who?"

     "I don't know who," he whispered hoarsely. "But they're not from here. Aliens, maybe. I seen them walking through the streets, spraying black gas. We've got to do something, Bobby, before they—"

     "Somebody told me it was a worldwide disaster " I stammered miserably.

     "That's what they say! That's their story! But it's a lie, Bobby. They want us to—"

     "So what do we--what do we do?"

      The question seemed to agitate him. "We have to wake up the others! We have to wake everybody up! Quick! Where's your wife? I'll go after Arland. Come on!"

      His panic infected me. I ran up the walk to our front door.

      The living room untidy and familiar, yellowish light from the floor lamp by the couch throwing familiar shadows--turned my panic into cold, jittery sweat.

     "Vicki?" l called.

      No answer.

      Out the window, Mrs. Romer's brightly lit kitchen caught my eye. Something was going on in there.

      A man and a woman sat at a table by the kitchen window, talking tensely. I couldn't hear what they were saying. The woman looked vaguely like Mrs. Romer, but young, with an obsolete hairdo. The man was unshaven, jowly, tired-looking.

      There was a muffled scream, and the woman dived across the table and buried a paring knife in the tired-looking man's forehead. They tumbled down out of sight, the woman screaming wildly.

      My heart pounded. A darkness came over my eyes. I sat down heavily on the couch.

      When I started to think again, I was exhausted, drained, too tired even to see clearly: the wall, floor lamp. and coffee table next to me looked fuzzy, translucent, unreal.

      Voices, laughter, and footsteps were approaching along the front walk. The front door flew open and a dozen people came in. As they did, the living-room changed. The walls turned from blue to peach and fled outward in a long, curving line; the hardwood floor became plush blond carpet and sagged to shape a huge sunken living-room with grand piano, Chinese screens, round, furry chairs and sofas, dark lacquered cabinets, soft lighting, tropical plants. My body felt peculiarly stiff. I looked down with difficulty. All I could see of myself was a large Chinese vase displayed on a carved stand

      The people who piled through the arched oak front door looked too grown-up to be carrying on the way they were. The men wore tuxedos with flowers in the lapels, the women glittery outfits that seemed to be half evening gown, half bikini. They were all young and beautiful. They crowded, laughing, chattering, and squealing, up a wide, curved staircase.

      I was still too tired to move, so I sat numbly for another few minutes until two people came back down the stairs. Music and merrymaking sounds came faintly from above.

      The two people, a man and a woman, leaned on the grand piano no more than a stone's throw from me. The man was broad-shouldered and tall, with the kind of face Michelangelo used to carve out of marble, hair curling carelessly over his collar. He gazed at the woman as if there was nothing else to see in the world.

      She was my wife. A little bigger in some places, a little smaller in others than I remembered her, dark ringlets thicker, the West Virginia jawline trimmed down some, but unmistakably Victoria Wilson. She was wearing a tight, slithery dress of gold sequins that showed off most of one leg and that I had to admit looked great, even though it was embarrassing the hell out of me.

      I tried to stand up and make a fuss. I couldn't move or talk.

     "You haven't given me your answer, darling," murmured the man gazing down at her. She was gazing at him too, in a way I didn't like. "You can't leave me hanging like this. Please . . . ."

     "How can I answer? How can I even think right now, Billy? Everything is so wonderful! I feel as if I'm in heaven!" She put her drink on the piano and kicked off her high heels. "Do you think it's a dream? An Oscar nomination, a box-office smash..."

     "And all because of you," he said. "You made that film what it is. Without you it would have been nothing."

     "Oh, Billy—"

      He drew her close in his strong arms, crushing her to him with barely controlled passion, and as their lips touched a shudder went through him.

     "Hey!" I managed to yell in outrage.

      I thought Vicki glanced at me, but the man didn't seem to hear.

     "It's funny," he said when they were done slobbering on each other. He seemed ready to cry. "Here I am, the most powerful man in Hollywood I really thought I had it made. Any woman in the world would do anything to get in my next picture. But the one I really want the one I must have--won't have me."

      He knelt down in front of her, looking up with imploring eyes.

     "Please," he whispered. "Please . . . ."

     "Oh, brother!" I groaned.

     "Will you shut up?" Vicki screamed at me, stamping her foot.

     "What are you doing here? I didn't come snooping around your stupid, corny private eye scene with that slut, did I? Get out of here! Leave me alone!"

      Her rage hit me like a wave. Everything turned fuzzy and translucent again, Vicki and the Hollywood producer like ghosts with lights glowing inside them. The producer didn't seem to have noticed Vicki yelling he stood up and took her in his arms again. And as they kissed, something funny happened: the light inside Vicki seemed to flicker and go dim, while the light inside the producer got stronger, as if he had drawn some of her light into himself.

      And there was something else someone I hadn't noticed before, sitting on a distant love seat, half hidden by a dwarf palm, hands clasped patiently over his long grey robe, wire-rimmed glasses patiently watching the oblivious lovers.

      I struggled, trying to shout a warning, but I couldn't move or make a sound.

      Ghostly music played. Vicki and the producer started to dance, close and slow, gradually swaying over near where I sat stiff and dumb. Soon the producer's tuxedo bottom swayed languidly in front of my face. I lunged forward with all my strength, and bit it desperately hard. He screamed and jumped out of her arms, whirling in astonishment and rubbing himself.

      Vicki's face was ugly with rage as she kicked me off my stand to shatter against the wall.

VII

      I stood in the trough of a mountain in heavy night rain, showing my thumb to Interstate traffic that made a pale ribbon through murky darkness up the mountain's shoulder. Every few minutes lightning struck the summit, lighting wooded hills and sending out a crackling boom. I wore an old army surplus poncho, I was seventeen, the rain was warm, and the crowded, lonely highway made me feel somehow alive, vital, like a sailor on an uncharted ocean. When a little white car pulled out of traffic up the shoulder, I ran, lugging my knapsack, and climbed into the front seat next to a girl.

      She was slender and young, wearing jeans and a floppy sweater, tousled blonde hair falling to her shoulders, dark eyes that flashed at me, then watched the mirror for an opening in traffic. Her pale hair and skin seemed to glow in the dark.

     "Where are you going?" she asked.

      It seemed strange that I couldn't remember. To hide my confusion, I pulled the poncho off over my head, getting water on the front seat. I felt the car accelerate.

     "Okay," she said softly. "Come and say goodbye."

      We climbed the mountain toward the storm, which now sent out a flash and a boom.

      High up, the highway was bordered by jutting boulders and pines, the mountaintop bulking black in the gloom. At a sign that said "Authorized Vehicles Only," the girl jerked the steering wheel to the right and we were climbing a rutted track among the boulders, the lights of the highway abruptly left behind. Pine trees swayed and moaned in the rain and wind, dead leaves whirled and scattered before our lights. There was a blinding flash that seemed to obliterate everything, and a splitting bang that shook the mountain.

      The track turned steeply up, and the little car's engine strained, its wheels spinning. At last we came to a slope it wouldn't climb. The girl killed the engine and lights and we got out into wet, rushing air that smelled of ozone and scorched rock. My skin prickled with electricity. Not far above, black clouds roiled, muttering heavily.

      She was a pale blur scrambling through high grass that bent hissing in the wind. I scrambled up the slope after her.

      Something loomed above me: a huge rock cropping out of the very top of the mountain. She was climbing it.

     "Hey!" I yelled, laughing. "This is crazy! We've got to get out of here!" The storm scattered my words. I started after her, fingers straining on narrow holds, tennis-shoes slipping on wet rock, wind and rain tearing at me blindingly. When I reached the top, I was gasping.

      The girl was naked, standing on the topmost pinnacle of rock, arching her body upward, straining her hands toward the clouds and moaning. The rock steamed, and the smell of burning and electricity was strong.

      The glow of her skin reminded me of something. I stood at the edge of the rock, suddenly trembling, dizzy chasms of wind rushing below me.

     "Don't be afraid," said the girl. "We're here to help you. To smooth your way from this world to the next."

     "No," I whimpered.

      But somehow I knew it was what I had always wanted.

      I pulled off my clothes, throwing them out into the blackness. The rock was hot and charred under my feet.

      I reached for the girl's upstraining body.

      A livid blue spark jumped between us, lighting for a second her white skin, her crazy eyes, the hair standing out from her head like a silver mane. Then she was clawing at me, pulling me desperately to her, and we wrestled, standing, kneeling, and lying, until the mountain seemed to rock thundering on the roots of the world.

      There was an enormous flash that cut the flesh from us in an instant, and I was illuminated from within: I saw our bodies flaming in the rushing air, and all the cracks and straining strength of rock under us, pushed up to the air from the liquid searing center of the earth, saw the live green things that crept and grew over the mountain toward the light, pushing upward by millimeters even in that second, saw birds huddled in their nests in swaying branches, saw animals crouching in their holes, a little river frothing at the foot of the mountain, and all rivers running to the oceans, the whales gliding silent and deep through the cold blue oceans, birds singing over the nests of their young in the evening, saw a young man leaning on a bridge in the evening, staring down into quiet water.

      And as the vision faded and I plunged through darkness like a dying spark from a Fourth of July rocket, I saw, seated in the midst of everything, an old, old man in a grey robe, hands folded patiently on his stomach.

VIII

      . . . a fresh October day with pale blue sky, yellow leaves fluttering down. I was sitting on my back deck, so tired that it was an effort to breathe, to hold my head up, so tired that the long yellow sunlight seemed aged and brittle, the breeze cold. Vicki sat in the chair next to mine, head bowed, hands lying useless in her lap like an old woman's.

      Slow footsteps came along the flagstones at the side of the house, with a heavy clunk, as if whoever walked there leaned on a staff. The footsteps climbed the wooden steps, and an old man came into view. He was tall and stooped in his grey robe, bald, wrinkled face grave and thoughtful.

      He stood looking down at us for a few minutes. Then he intoned in a strong, old voice: "The first seed of Life is desire. Life is the unwinding of desire, like the unwinding of a spring. When desire is burned away, the next world comes."

     "I sent you images, reflections of your own desires, to help you to the next world."

      Then a profound blue light shone from him, dimming the sun, and it was as if his body had turned inside out, had become hollow, had become an opening or doorway in the air of our back yard through which blue light shone from some other place, where I thought I could see stars. Flanking the door were two tall, shining figures in chain mail, leaning on heavy spears.

      Then they and the door and the old man were gone.

      A haze had come over the afternoon sun, making the sky pale. Mist was creeping through the bushes at the bottom of the garden. Birds sang and fluttered on the old grape arbor in Mrs. Romer's back yard. I was too tired to move, or even think, almost too tired to watch the mist roll in silently, softening the outlines of trees down on Thayer Avenue. After awhile the yellow leaves of our oak dripped with it, and the sky had turned twilight grey. The few sleepy songs of birds were muffled in the still air.

      Fog thickened, so now I could only see halfway down the hill. Mrs. Romer's grape arbor began to slip out of sight. My hand had somehow gotten locked with Vicki's, but I couldn't turn to look at her. A surf, invisible in the fog, seemed to roll under us now, as if the ocean washed around the foundations of the house. Soon I could only see the horizontal bar of the deck railing in the mist, and the oak tree's shadow leaning over us as soft grey silence closed around.

      My eyes were heavy and my chin drooped to my chest, but somewhere maybe deep inside, someone seemed to be shaking me gently and saying "Wake up, wake up."

      Then I fell asleep.

^^