COPYRIGHT

ISBN-13: 978-1-62205-011-6

THE BIRD CAGE

Kate Wilhelm

Copyright © 2012 InfinityBox Press

“The Bird Cage” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jan/Feb 2011.

“Changing The World” was first published in Asimov’s Magazine of Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 2010.

“The Fountain Of Neptune” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2008.

“Rules Of The Game” was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, 1996

All rights reserved. Except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews, no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means in any manner without the written permission of the publisher.

All characters, groups, places, and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious.

Cover: Richard Wilhelm

InfinityBox Press

7060 North Borthwick Avenue

Portland, OR 97217

www.infinityboxpress.com

www.facebook.com/InfinityBoxPress

www.facebook.com/kate.wilhelm.52

The Bird Cage

GRACE WOOTEN STOOD at a wide window facing outward, seeing little of the vista before her—grounds keepers going about their work, and beyond them steel bars with half a dozen chimpanzees going about their own day on the other side. At a nearby window Edward Markham was also gazing out. She knew without looking that his hands were shaking, his head jerking now and again in a spasmodic motion he could not control. It took an effort to keep her own hands from clenching as she waited for him to speak, to respond to her report.

“Dr. Wooten,” he said finally, swinging around from the window, “you don’t have six more months to try any new parameters. I know what that means. New parameters, new tests, new waiting periods. New analyses. New tests. The answer is no!” He had started off in a relatively mild tone, but his voice rose even as it quavered.

“I’m fifty-three years old, Dr. Wooten. I watched my father die of Parkinson’s. I saw my brother die. And I have no intention of dying from it! You’re going to suspend this goddamn disease until they come up with a cure. First it was gene therapy and that didn’t work. Drugs don’t work. Now they promise stem cell research will do it. And the years go by. I don’t have years! You have two weeks!”

“I can’t proceed before I know what those anomalous brain waves mean,” she said. “We’re working around the clock here, trying to analyze our data, but it takes time.”

“Those goddamn monkeys can’t tell you what you want to know. How many brains have you examined? What did they tell you? Nothing! You won’t get a thing from them. You need a person, someone you can wake up and ask questions! Someone who can tell you what it was like. Those monkeys out there act just like all the others. No change. No lasting effects. Nothing happened to them! That’s all you need to know. Nothing happened!”

“We did find differences in those we sacrificed,” she said. Her mouth felt dry, the words sounded raspy. “We agreed to wait at least two years to see if a change in behavior occurs. Brain trauma sometimes requires a period of time to manifest in overt behavioral changes. It has been only thirteen months for two of the subjects.”

“And then you’ll want two years to wait to test the new parameters, then two more. Dr. Wooten, I don’t have that kind of time! I hauled you out of a scruffy university laboratory where you had a few horny students to help, underfunded all the way, forever begging for pennies. I haven’t denied you anything, not a goddamn single thing you said you need. More assistants, more lab space, more computers, the monkey compound, more monkeys. It’s time for a human experiment. Tomorrow I intend to stop all my medications, prepare myself exactly the way you said I have to. I’ve taken care of the business and legal matters already. Between now and two weeks from now, get a volunteer, put him under for a week and ask him questions when you bring him out. And get ready to treat me. You get that? Two weeks!”

“I’ve explained why I can’t find a volunteer just like that,” she said. “It’s illegal to—”

“You’ll do it or I’ll bring in someone who will!” he yelled. “I’ll get you a volunteer! You just be ready to start on him when he gets here. Dr. Wooten, understand this. All this is mine. Mine alone. You work for me and I can fire you faster than you can blink. You’ll do it or someone else will.”

Immobilized, she stood at the window and watched his lurching walk to the door. When it closed behind him, she moved to her desk and sank down into her chair, staring at her spacious office, the handsome furnishings, pale wood, pale green cushions, coffee table… A door at the side of her office opened and Dale Sumner entered carrying a bottle and two glasses.

“You heard?” she asked.

“Every word. Ugly bastard, mean as they come. Let’s have a drink.” He poured scotch into a glass and handed it to her, pulled a chair closer to her desk and sat down, then poured a second glass. “Cheers,” he said before taking a long drink.

She sipped her own and put the glass down. “He’s deteriorated a lot in the past month,” she said in a low voice. “He’s terrified.”

“Grace, how long’s it been? Six and a half years?”

“Sixteen,” she said.

“Not from when you started, just here in paradise. Six and a half years. I’ve been working with you for twelve. Time flies. Walk out, Grace. Leave it. You don’t need any more of his money. You haven’t taken time off to spend a cent on a thing beyond the barest of necessities for the last six and a half years. You need a break, a long vacation. Now’s the time.”

“Sixteen years,” she said, raising her glass. This time she took a real drink. She laughed. “You were one of those horny students he mentioned.”

“That I was,” he said grinning.

“Go home, Dale. How long has it been since you got home in time for dinner with Staci? Before Bridget was in bed. Take the day off tomorrow. Take them to the park or for a boat ride or something.”

“Let me take you home first,” he said.

She shook her head. “I want to walk out there in our own private park for a bit. I need a little time to think.”

Jean Biondi glanced out from the work room of the fabric shop, withdrew. “They’re still at the catalogues,” she said.

Dora looked up from her sewing machine and nodded. “Bet she won’t buy a thing. She’ll have to think about it, take a few samples home, consult with hubby… Whatever.” She went back to sewing.

Jean nodded, grinning. There was little for her to do in the room, but neither did she want to go out to the show room, where she was certain that customer would beckon her to come and voice an opinion about drapery fabric. If she had a living room with a window wall to decorate, she thought, her drapes would be pale, primrose background with giant red poppies. Her grin broadened. That customer would reel. She glanced out again.

“She’s actually leaving,” she said, then waited until the door closed behind the customer before she walked out herself.

Lizzie was leaning back in her high chair. “Honey,” she said when Jean approached, “will you check and see if we have a full bolt?” She scribbled the stock number on a note. Lizzie’s Fine Fabrics did a good business, which Jean attributed as much to Lizzie’s good humor and patience as to the high quality of her stock and her all-encompassing knowledge about drapes, slip covers, curtains, everything that made a house a home, she sometimes said. She treated Jean more like a daughter than an employee.

“What did she finally pick?” Jean asked, peering at the open samples catalog. “That?”

“That,” Lizzie said with a grimace.

“She’ll be back within a year to get something else,” Jean said, shaking her head. The sample was a shiny gold brocade. “A window wall that puts your eyes out guarantees a repeat customer.” She reached across the wide counter—

Cody resists her nudge. “You go first,” he says.

The pond looks different, shinier than before. They came here all the last week to slide on the ice, not far out, just near the edge. They aren’t supposed to come this way after the school bus drops them off, but they do. It’s very cold again after a lot of weekend rain, and they were afraid the ice might be gone, but it’s still there, only different.

“Go on,” she says. “Don’t be a scaredy cat.”

He shakes his head. “I want to go home. I’m cold.”

“You first!” she yells and gives him a shove onto the ice.

He tries to catch himself, but he plunges forward, and the ice breaks. He screams in panic as he falls, first to his knees, then full out. She screams, too, and backs up. Cody is pulling himself out, dripping, screaming, terrified.

She backs away farther as he drags himself to the bank, trying to reach for something to help get him out. His mitten keeps slipping off a rock. Now he is screaming, “Mommy! Mommy!”

She turns and runs with his screams in her head. At home she races to her room and into the closet, shaking, freezing, crying. She has wet herself—

“Jean, my God, what’s wrong? You’re shaking like a leaf! What happened to you?”

Lizzie was holding her arm, and Dora was kneeling by the chair, rubbing her hand. Jean was cold, shivering, terrified. She didn’t know how she had gotten to a chair, why she was sitting down with both older women there rubbing her, patting her. She couldn’t stop shivering.

“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I don’t know what happened.”

“You’re like ice,” Lizzie said. “I’ll put on coffee, something hot. You’re coming down with something.”

They insisted on taking her home, with Lizzie driving Jean’s car, Dora following to take Lizzie back to the shop. It was a warm day, June eighteenth, and Jean was chilled throughout her body. Lizzie and Dora checked to make sure she had everything she might need, and hovered until Jean begged them to leave.

“I don’t know what that was all about,” she said. “But I’m fine, really fine, and I won’t go out or anything for the rest of the day, just to make sure it isn’t the flu or something coming on. Promise.”

Finally alone, she thought about that day, twenty five years ago, when she and Cody had been in first grade together. She didn’t even know exactly where her family had lived then, out in the country somewhere, and Cody’s family had lived beyond them. Where? She shook her head.

She had not thought of that incident for years, maybe never after moving in to Portland. But she had left him, she had run away and left him struggling to get out of the water, to get home soaking wet in freezing weather.

She felt tears of shame fill her eyes and shook her head. Only six years old, she told herself. She had been six years old. Panic, terror… His screams, his terror had overwhelmed her own, and she had not helped him, had run away.

She didn’t even remember his last name. Just Cody, the boy who lived down the road. They had an orchard, an apple orchard. And strawberries.

Had he caught pneumonia? Had he been injured? She didn’t remember. Her family had moved to Portland that spring before school was out. She had not thought of Cody for more than twenty years, and now she wept for him, for her cowardice, her failure to help him, and his screams of terror echoed in her head.

Grace woke with a start, jerking upright so fast she felt dizzy for a moment. It passed and she got out of bed, pulled on her robe and went to check the monitors. Nothing had changed. She gazed at the brain wave monitor tracing gently undulating, very shallow waves where every ninety minutes there was a spike of activity that should not have been there. It wasn’t rapid eye movement sleep, dreams. His eyelids remained as still as the rest of his body. Wearily she rubbed her own eyes. It was two in the morning.

She knew she didn’t have to go into the room, that she would learn no more there than the monitors were recording, see nothing more than she could observe through the one-way glass, but she pulled on her coat over the robe and went into the adjoining room to gaze at the man on the water bed that was holding steady at forty-five degrees, with a coverlet at the same temperature, pillow, cap on his head, all forty-five degrees. Room temperature forty-five. The man on the bed did not stir when the light came on, when she touched him.

“What’s going on in your head?” she whispered. “What’s going on?”

When she began to feel chilled, she returned to check all the monitors again, and then to go back to the room she was using, the room where he would sleep for another week, the regular eight-hour sleep that he had said was his custom. It was a pleasant room with an easy chair, a good bed, a television, desk, all the comforts, she thought bleakly, taking off the coat, but not quite ready to go back to her own fractured sleep. She had trouble remembering when she’d had an uninterrupted sleep of eight hours at a stretch. “Long, long ago,” she murmured. Five more days, she told herself, just five more days, then we’ll both sleep the way people are meant to sleep.

Trevor McCrutchen tossed in his cards, stood and stretched. “Deal me out,” he said. “I’m going to make some nachos.”

“Sore loser,” Ezra said with a laugh as he pulled in his chips. “Any beer left?”

“Sure. In the cooler.” Hal and JD got up and headed for the back patio and the cooler.

Their monthly poker sessions, Trevor thought grinning, usually ended after an hour or so, followed by a lot of eating and drinking beer, smoking a little, and good talk. He had nachos ready to pop into the oven, then ten minutes later out on the patio with them.

He set the timer, turned to get a drink of water—

“Hey, you’re not supposed to be out here with sparklers,” he yells as Cody strikes a match to light one. “You little shit, they’re for tomorrow night after dark,” Trevor calls. He’s near the barn, too far away to grab the sparkler from his brother. He starts to trot over just as Cody laughs and waves a string of firecrackers in the air, then holds one to the sparkler.

“Jesus,” Trevor says, then yells, “You’ve been in my stuff! I’ll… Cody, throw it! Don’t hold it! Toss it out on the field.”

Cody stands as if transfixed as the wick catches.

“Throw it out to the field!” Trevor yells, racing toward his little brother.

Cody drops the firecrackers into the dry grass at his feet where they instantly start their explosive pops, and the grass is on fire almost as fast. Racing to him, Trevor screams for Cody to get away from the burning grass, to run into the plowed field.

Trevor tackles him. Cody’s jeans are burning, and now he is screaming, too. Trevor yanks him up, runs into the field and throws his brother to the ground, rolls him in the soil and beats on the flames with both hands, throws dirt on the jeans. They are both yelling. Cody is trying to push Trevor away, striking at him.

Exhausted, the flames out, Trevor starts to shake, and Cody is sobbing. Beyond the plowed dirt the grass fire is blazing, and their Dad is there suddenly, hosing down the grass fire—

“Hey, Trevor, you planning on burning down the joint?” Ezra walked into the kitchen. “Hey, Trevor! Man, what’s going on? All that smoke! Trevor! Snap out of it!”

Trevor began to shake, he coughed, and backed away from the stove, nearly fell down, and Ezra grabbed his arm. “Trevor, say something! What’s wrong with you? Say something!”

Trevor shook his head, dazed, shaking and unsteady. “Don’t know,” he mumbled. “Don’t know.”

“Yeah, me too. Come on. Sit down. You want a beer, water? Shit! The oven!” He turned off the oven and using a kitchen mitt pulled the burned nachos out, ran to the patio with the smoking pan, then returned with JD and Hal. “Let’s get him to a chair or something.”

They took him to the patio and pushed him down onto a chaise. Someone put a beer in his hand, and gradually his head began to clear, the shaking stopped.

“A flashback or something,” he said after taking a drink. “I’m okay now. It’s okay.”

“Dude, you’d better get to a doctor, get checked out,” Ezra said. “You were out like a light, standing like a statue, but out.”

“Man, you could have burned down the whole house! And you just stood there!” JD said.

Later, alone, Trevor played the scene over and over. How frightened they had both been. Not just that, he knew. Not just that. He had felt the fire, had felt it on his legs, burning his flesh. Cody had been burned, not seriously, but enough to hurt like hell, and he had felt it, too.

One of those kid incidents that you never really forget, he thought. He had threatened to pound Cody to a pulp if he ever got into his stuff again, but it wasn’t that either. That had been an anger reaction after fear and dread. He remembered the fear and dread, and he remembered feeling his legs burn.

It was irrational, Jean kept telling herself, pacing in her small apartment. All night she had come wide awake repeatedly, replaying that scene at the pond over and over, feeling all that fear again and again. Fighting a surge of guilt again and again. Irrational, she repeated. Crazy time. She had been six years old. A child, little more than a baby. And she had reacted as a child, a very young child. It was crazy after so many years to feel guilt over something she had done at that age. Children that young couldn’t be held responsible for not acting as adults.

She paced. The pond had been so shiny, wet. Now she knew what that meant, but she hadn’t known then. Neither had Cody, but he had been afraid of it and she had pushed him. She shook her head.

“Dear God, not again,” she said in a low voice. It had been cold, windy, but above freezing she knew now, but she had not known it then. He had been afraid. I want to go home. I’m cold. And she had pushed him.

Wearily she walked to the kitchen and stood at the sink. She should eat something, make coffee, do something. She didn’t even know his last name.

She should tell him she was sorry, she thought suddenly. Had he been haunted by that plunge through the ice? Falling into the icy water? As if it had been decided for her, she knew she had to find him, tell him she was sorry. Her mother would know his name.

Her mouth felt dry when she called. The banal how’s everything, taking a day off, I’m fine, all the small talk seemed a terrible effort before she could get to her question.

“Mom, I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember where we lived before we came to Portland. Who our neighbors were. I know there was a strawberry field nearby, and that’s about all.”

“That was on McCrutchen Lane, out past Gresham. Why has it come up all at once?”

“Just trying to fill in some blanks in my memory,” Jean said. “Was that the name of the family with the strawberries?”

“Yes. I took you with me to pick berries when you were five. You and their little boy ate more than I got in my pail.”

Her mother laughed and chatted about those days until Jean said someone was at her door and disconnected. McCrutchen. Cody McCrutchen.

There was no Cody McCrutchen in the phone book. No C. McCrutchen. Stupid, she told herself. He could be anywhere in the world. He could be back there at the orchard spraying apples or something. Or in New York, or L.A. Anywhere. He could be in Portland, using a cell phone. That night she slept no better than the previous night, and when she turned up at the shop, Lizzie examined her closely and told her to go back home.

“Honey, you look like someone who isn’t sleeping, or eating either probably. Take the rest of the week off, get rid of whatever bug got hold of you. Summer flu, most likely. Watch movies, or read novels for a couple of days, get some rest, plenty of fluids.”

Jean was both relieved and sorry. She was too restless to sit still and no movie could hold her attention for more than a few minutes at a time. But neither could she have dealt with customers who dithered over curtains or blinds and chose shiny gold brocade for drapes.

She had to tell him she was sorry, she told herself almost desperately, and she no longer could know if it was for his sake or her own. She knew it was obsessive, compulsive, irrational, but she had to tell him. Maybe then that scene would stop playing in her head, maybe then his screams would stop sounding in her head. Maybe then she could sleep.

Trevor eyed a frozen chicken cacciatore with loathing before putting it in the microwave. Since the incident with the nachos he was almost afraid to light the gas stove. Not almost, he thought derisively. Scared shitless. If he’d been alone, would he have set his house on fire? As far as work went, he should have just called in sick. Maybe he was catching something. Maybe he really was sick.

Out, asleep or something for more than ten minutes! That business with the firecrackers. God, what had that been about? Why now? Cody had thought Trevor had been beating him, not beating out the fire, but beating him up for getting them in the first place. And fire burning his legs… His hands had been burned, not his legs, but he had felt his legs burning. He shook his head, tried to shake that day away, back out of memory where it had been for so many years. It persisted. He got a beer from the refrigerator, but before he had opened it, his phone rang. His father was on the line.

“Trevor! Your mother’s had an accident. They took her to St. Vincent’s Hospital there in Portland. I’m on my way in.” His voice was ragged, shaky with fear. “Call Cody and meet me there. Emergency room.”

“Dad, what happened? What kind of accident? How bad?

“Car,” he said. “That’s all I know. They just called. Meet me there.”

The microwave was dinging when he ran from the house.

At the hospital the admitting nurse consulted with someone on the phone, then said, “Doctor says you can see her for just a minute or two. They’re prepping her for surgery. After that, please stop by again. There’s some paper work to take care of.”

That started what he considered a night in hell. His mother had been barely conscious, already sedated. Her eyes had flickered a moment when he said he was there. She mumbled something, and he leaned in closer to hear when she repeated it, “Tell Cody I’m sorry.” Nothing more. She had gone to surgery before his father arrived, and together they had waited throughout the long night.

Head injury, internal injuries, a broken collar bone… When she came out of surgery, they took her to the ICU and only his father was permitted inside the tiny room filled with machines and tubes, monitoring screens, and then only for a few minutes at a time.

Mid morning, he thought almost with surprise. His father was slouched in a chair, his eyes closed, although he was not sleeping. Trevor thought he was praying.

“Dad, I’m going to Cody’s apartment. I’ll find him and get him in here.”

His father nodded silently.

Trevor had called Cody’s cell phone and left messages twice with no call back yet. He couldn’t tell if he was more angry with his brother than afraid for his mother who had not regained consciousness. He drove across town fast, cursing under his breath.

Cody lived in a studio apartment that was as barren and tidy as a barracks. Boxes lining one wall, a futon, one chair, a small television, two chairs at a table that held stacks of papers, letters and bills, with barely space for a plate, a microwave on a counter, a small refrigerator and sink were all it contained. Trevor’s glance about was swift, then lingered on the table. Cody’s wallet was there, and his cell phone.

“What the hell?” he muttered, picking up the wallet. It had a few dollar bills, credit cards, other cards. He tossed it down and began to look through the papers, then stopped when he came to a deposit slip for Cody’s credit union. He had deposited twenty-five thousand dollars five days earlier.

“Jesus! What’s he into?”

He had just started going through the rest of the papers when the doorbell rang. He raced to the door and yanked it open.

Jean backed up a step. “Cody? Cody McCrutchen?” The man looking at her was tall, reddish brown hair, blue eyes, probably about the right age. She shouldn’t have come, she thought. What if he had completely forgotten what happened at the pond that day? He’d think she was a nut case or something. She backed up another step.

“No. I’m his brother Trevor. He isn’t here. What do you want with him?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. Sorry to bother you. I… I just wanted to tell him something. Sorry.”

She was young, with nearly black hair in a pony tail, big dark eyes, and she looked almost haggard, with dark shadows under her eyes. He started to close the door, hesitated, then said, “You want to leave a message for him?” She was afraid, he thought, looking at her more closely. Afraid of Cody? Obviously she didn’t even know Cody.

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s nothing.” Almost inaudibly she added, “I’m sorry. I wanted to tell him I’m sorry.” She turned to leave.

He caught her arm. “Wait a minute. What do you mean? Who are you?” His mother’s message, Tell Cody I’m sorry, sounded in his head.

“Jean Biondi,” she said, jerking away from his hand on her arm. “I used to know Cody a long time ago.”

“Jean, stop. Wait a minute. Have you heard from him recently? Do you know where he is?”

She shook her head.

“Then why are you here? Sorry about what?”

“Something that happened a long time ago,” she said in a low voice. “When we were both just kids, six years old. I did something I’m sorry about. I… I thought I should tell him I’m sorry. I had a dream about it, or a flashback, something that made me remember, and I wanted to tell him.”

Trevor opened the door wider. “Jean, please, come in. We should talk. I had a flashback about him, too.” He felt his legs burn, and his hand was shaking.

Almost against her will, she nodded. Would it be enough to tell his brother? Make the screams stop, let her sleep again, make it all go away again? She went into the apartment with Trevor.

They sat at the kitchen table and she recounted the incident at the pond with her eyes downcast, her hands clenched in her lap. He got her a glass of water.

“It won’t go away,” she said in a low voice. “I keep hearing him screaming.”

“Jesus,” he said, sitting across from her again. “I keep feeling as if my legs are burning… ” He told her about the firecrackers. “I was fourteen,” he said. “Cody was ten. He thought I was beating him up for taking my firecrackers. He was crying, begging me to stop.”

“What’s happening?” she whispered.

“I don’t know. This is crazy. And I don’t know where he is. I’ve got to find him. Our mother’s in critical condition, a car accident.” He stopped and a wave of fear washed over him. His voice dropped to a harsh whisper as he said, “The police officer who told us about it said she didn’t try to stop. No skid marks. She just drove straight off the road, sideswiped a tree, went down an embankment and rolled over. She didn’t even try to stop. Just before they took her up to surgery she said to tell Cody she’s sorry.”

The color drained from her face as he talked. “You think it happened to her? A flashback or something?”

“I don’t know what to think. They said I was like a statue, with smoke rolling out of the oven. More than ten minutes. The timer was set for ten minutes. I didn’t hear it go off. Didn’t smell the smoke. Nothing.”

“I was in a chair, no memory of getting to a chair. Nothing,” she whispered. “I don’t know how long I was like that. Just nothing.”

For a time neither spoke again. Then Trevor rose. “I have to go back to the hospital. I’ll leave a note here for Cody.” He wrote his note on the back of an envelope and stuck it into the wallet so that most of it showed.

She stood, clutching the chair back. “What if it happens again? While you’re driving? While I’m driving?”

He looked at her bleakly. Yes, he thought, he believed his mother had had a flashback, too. Like a statue behind the steering wheel, the road ahead gone, everything gone, just a blank, and now she was in intensive care. “We should stay together for now,” he said. “Just for now, until we know what’s going on.”

“Whoever is driving has to keep talking. If I stop talking or you stop, take the steering wheel, put on the brake, what?”

“Back streets, no freeway, drive slowly. Grab the steering wheel and the hand brake,” he said hoarsely. Would that be enough? He didn’t know. “Come on, let’s go.”

Grace watched Edward Markham as he made his way awkwardly to the sofa with its pretty green cushions and sat down. After he was seated, she took one of the comfortable chairs on the other side of the coffee table.

“He’s stable, no change,” she said. “Tomorrow I’ll start the recovery period.”

“I want to see him as soon as he’s awake,” he said.

“No, Mr. Markham. He’ll need two days to recover, and after that four to six days, perhaps even a little more time, for the same physical tests he had before the procedure, and the same psychological tests. Until that is done, no visitors, no outsiders will be allowed.”

“I want to see him! As soon as he can talk.”

“I won’t permit that,” she said levelly. “This is my field, Mr. Markham, my regimen, and I will decide every aspect of this procedure, which I just outlined. You will not see him until I say so and that will be in from seven to ten days from today.”

His eyes narrowed, and his pasty complexion darkened. He looked very ill, more so than the previous week, as if his disease was worsening rapidly. He was off his medication, she knew. After looking over his list of medications and supplements she had told him he had to stop taking anything. Too many of them could cause a fatal reaction with the drugs she would infuse when the time came. She had hoped the fear of the consequences of stopping medication would dissuade him.

She had explained the parameters to him, temperature, medications, infusions of electrolytes, hydration… They could only be changed one by one, not in a cluster. She felt certain the temperature was correct, and changing anything else meant another waiting period for observation of the effects. Minute changes, incremental changes. It had to be the drugs. She knew the effects of temperature change. Too cold, death. Too warm, not enough drop in metabolism, either death from hypothermia or brain damage.

And he had his own parameters. Stop medications too soon, too abruptly, without supervision, a rapid deterioration in his illness. He had cursed the parameters, hers and his. She hoped he would die before that young man was released back into his life.

“You’re playing a dangerous game,” Markham said gratingly. “You forget your place here, Dr. Wooten.”

“I forget nothing,” she said. “He has to be in a totally neutral environment when he wakes up. An environment untainted by any outside influence, by any emotional outburst, or inappropriate questions. We don’t know how vulnerable he will be, how susceptible to fear or intimidation, or demands for answers he may not be able or ready to provide. I can ensure that environment. You cannot.”

“What fear? What intimidation? I just want to see him, make sure it worked. It’s my life at stake here!”

She rose from her chair. Your fear of death, Edward Markham. Your bullying, Her answer to his question remained silent. “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. Please do not return until I call you. There is nothing you can see here that has any meaning for you. There is nothing for you to do at this time.”

His expression was venomous as he laboriously pulled himself upright. So, fire me, she thought. If this test failed, if there was even a hint that the young man was damaged and she refused to proceed with Markham, he would fire her. She suspected that he already had someone else in mind to take over in that event. But not yet. Now he needed her. He understood that it would take time for a replacement to catch up, to learn enough to take the next step. Later she would not care. If it worked, she would publish, and she would quit, write a book, sleep. Later she would sleep.

After Markham was gone, she stood at the side of the cold water bed for a short time. Sleep well, she thought. Pleasant dreams. One more night, just one more night for you, my young friend, then, soon after that, perhaps I can sleep well and have pleasant dreams.

Jean sat in the hospital coffee shop waiting for Trevor, thinking of all the things he had talked about on the way to the hospital. He was an electrical engineer, divorced, his ex had taken off for Los Angeles, leaving him the house and mortgage, taking all the money, about growing up at the orchard, how he and Cody had fought, played together, fished, hiked. Monthly poker games with pals, books he liked, music… It had been a long slow drive and he never had stopped talking.

She had called his mother the day before to get Cody’s address, and she had spent the rest of the day accepting that she had to find him, then denying it. Back and forth all day. Mrs. McCrutchen had been cheerful and claimed to remember Jean. She had been pleased to tell her where he lived.

She might have had a heart attack at the wheel, Jean thought, not a flashback at all, but a heart attack or a stroke or something, and they had nothing to fear about driving, or swimming, or anything else. Strange memories surfacing didn’t have to mean anything else, just memories.

Lying about it didn’t help, she thought with a soft groan. Thinking about it didn’t help either. Where had Cody gotten twenty-five thousand dollars? She visualized his apartment, almost monkish in its barrenness, and boxes and boxes of books stacked against the wall, unopened, unread for more than two years. Trevor had talked about that, too. Cody and his girlfriend, together for three years, had split.

“He was in graduate school,” Trevor had told her, talking, talking about whatever came to mind. “She wanted to get married, start a family, but money was too tight, and he wanted that graduate degree. Horticulture. He broke it off after one big fight too many, I guess. It was a bad time. He dropped out of the program and bummed around for a couple of years, and just a year ago he started to save to go back. God, I hope it wasn’t drug money. Anything, almost anything but that.”

Thinking about it, she shook her head. He wouldn’t have deposited it in the bank, not if it was from drugs. It had to have some legitimacy to be so open about it. That might be a start, a way to find him, tell him she was sorry.

Abruptly she stood. Not again. Don’t play that over again. There had been a newspaper stand in the lobby, she remembered, and went out to get something to read, something else to think about.

She took a newspaper back to the cafeteria, got coffee, and sat in a booth trying to read one article after another as if she were back in school, cramming for a test. Finally Trevor joined her.

“How is she?”

“Stable, a little improved, they said. They put a reclining chair in for Dad so he can stay with her. He won’t leave and I can’t go in, so here I am.”

“Want some pretty bad coffee?”

He shook his head, then craned to see the article and photograph below the fold. She had read it. A local woman had hanged herself. Trevor’s face turned ashen and he snatched up the paper.

“You knew her?”

“Elise Bronstein,” he said. “Good God! Elise!” He let the newspaper fall. “She was Cody’s girl friend. She attempted suicide after the break up.”

Jean stared at him in horror. “You think she… Like your mother? Like you and me?”

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said raggedly.

Back in the car he sat with both hands clutching the steering wheel, staring ahead blindly. “I saw her a couple of months ago. She was happy, with a guy, thinking about getting married. She and Cody… always stormy, fighting the last six months or longer. I have to find him!” he said. “He could be hurt, or something. Like us, like my mother.”

He didn’t add like Elise, but Jean did in her head. “Let’s go back to his apartment, find out who gave him all that money. He must have a check book, someplace where he recorded the deposit. Online banking maybe.”

He started the engine.

“Keep talking, Trevor. Tell me about him, about Cody. Did you two keep in touch?”

Driving very slowly, keeping to side streets through neighborhoods she had never seen before, he talked about his brother. “He was a daredevil as a kid, never afraid of anything. And smart, smarter than me. He wants to make a difference in farming, soil management or something, or he did before he dropped out. He was devastated when Elise attempted suicide. Blamed himself. We were planning to hike up in the Olympic wilderness in August, looking forward to it… ”

Most of his rambling was meaningless, Jean thought, just random thoughts, memories of a man who loved his kid brother. They talked every week or so, and Cody had a cell phone. She made a mental note of that. They emailed each other more often than they talked, another note—there was a computer in that little studio apartment. They could search files or something. He worked as a groundskeeper somewhere, just another of a series of go-nowhere jobs while he tried to accumulate a little money before he got back in school. He had not been willing to take a real job with a real commitment, he wanted to get back on his own track, finish what he had started. He had not mentioned going away, leaving.

Trevor was in the middle of another bit of trivia when he pulled up to the curb outside Cody’s apartment building and stopped talking.

“Made it,” he said after a moment. “Jean, are we being stupid?”

“No,” she said. “We are not. Let’s find his computer and see what’s on it. Maybe find his cell phone, check recent messages. Find out where he worked. Someone signed pay checks for him. Find out if he turned up at work this week. Like you said, we have to find him, get to the bottom of this. It seems as if everything going on revolves around him one way or another.”

“Good thinking,” he said. “I’ve been too busy talking to think about a thing. I’ve never talked so much in such a short time in my life. Let’s go in.”

Inside the dreary apartment, Jean checked the refrigerator that proved to be almost as barren as the furnishings of the place. No vegetables, no milk, no perishables. She searched pockets for a cell phone as Trevor began to search the files on a laptop that he had found under a lot of papers on the table. Jean found the cell phone and his check book in a wind breaker pocket.

An hour later they considered the meager results of their searches.

“He worked for a company called Markham Enterprises,” Trevor said. “They’re into a lot of different things, but primarily land development. Somewhere they have property that requires a regular crew of grounds keepers.”

He drew in a long breath. “And that big check apparently was paid to him by the company, signed by Markham. That’s all he entered in his check book, just Markham.”

She nodded. “I think he knew he’d be gone for more than a few days, and he cleaned out his refrigerator.”

“Go away and leave his wallet, his cell phone, lap top, check book? It doesn’t make any sense,” Trevor said. “You take ID if nothing else, even if you’ve gone camping. His camping gear is in the closet.”

She felt as helpless as he looked. Hesitantly she said, “Maybe you should notify the police. Make a missing person report or something.”

He thought about a twenty-five thousand dollar check recently deposited and shook his head. “He could be in real trouble. Something he wouldn’t want the police to know about,” he said in a low voice. “Scare my dad even more than he is now. Not yet. Maybe later, but not yet.”

“Is his car here?”

“He sold it, said it was an expense he could do without. He uses a bike to get around.” He jumped up. “I didn’t think to check it out. Wait here.” He hurried from the apartment, returned a minute later and said flatly. “It’s chained to the rack. Someone came to get him. He must have emptied his pockets and left with him.”

He looked about the apartment, crossed to the table and snatched up Cody’s cell phone. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“What are you going to do?”

“Let’s go to my place. Get something to drink. I’m going to call every number in his address book. Someone has to know where he is. He wouldn’t have walked out with a stranger.”

After another hellish drive with Trevor talking all the way, they were on his patio drinking iced tea. No alcohol, Jean had said. He had to go to the hospital by five to check on his mother, relieve his father, let him leave her long enough to take a walk, eat something.

“If anything happens… ” she had said turning down beer, a mixed drink. “You know. They shouldn’t smell alcohol.”

Now he was making another call.

She listened to the one-sided conversation dully. Nothing. No one knew anything. He disconnected and put the phone on a table. “I’ll finish later,” he said. “I have to go. I’ll finish calling later.” He drained his glass and stood. “Jean, why don’t you stay here. I’ll get a cab. You can rest.”

She jumped up. “No! I don’t want to be alone! Stay together, you said that we should stay together.” She heard the panic in her voice and drew in a long breath. “I’ll drive this time. We should take turns. Trevor, I don’t want to be alone. Not yet.”

He examined her face, nodded. “Yeah, we should stay together for now. Let’s go.”

He sat with his eyes closed as she drove and talked about whatever came to mind. She had been an interior decorator. The company tanked and she lost the job, got hired by someone called Lizzie, a fabric shop. She liked to ski. Her voice faltered and stopped and he said quietly, “Keep talking, Jean.” She started again.

“I thought I had wet myself. But I hadn’t. When I took off my snow pants, I was dry. He was wet, not me, but I felt wet and ashamed.”

“Keep talking,” he said again in a strained voice. He had felt his legs burning, Cody’s legs burning. “You’re doing fine. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Her mouth was dry. But she had felt wet that day. She talked without any real awareness of what she was saying. Now and again she glanced at him, now and then caught him glancing at her.

Again in the coffee shop, this time with a book, she was prepared to wait a long time for him to return, and that day at the pond played in her head, the sensation of being wet, freezing cold and wet, screaming. She wanted to scream and bit her lip, forced herself to look at the open book she held, and could not remember what she had read. She started over.

Finally he came to the booth and slumped into the seat opposite her. “She’s a little better,” he said. “Breathing without the ventilator. If the improvement continues through the night, they might move her to a private room tomorrow. Still critical, but better.”

“Your father? How’s he doing?”

“He went out to eat, but he won’t leave again tonight. Ready to drive?”

It was worse for him, she knew. His mother in critical condition, missing brother, worried about his father. It was a lot worse for him. He looked exhausted. They both were exhausted. She had not slept well for nearly a week, and he had not slept at all the night before, and little the night before that. They walked silently to the car and she got behind the wheel and started.

Driving on Sandy Boulevard, dreading the bridge ahead because bridges were suddenly frightening, talking about nothing, making noise, that’s all it was, making noise, she glanced at him. He was staring straight ahead, not moving, unaware that her voice had stopped. She hit the brake.

“Trevor! Are you all right? Trevor!” A car horn startled her, and she signaled for a turn onto the first side street she came to. Midway down the block she was able to pull in at the curb. “Trevor, please, wake up!” She undid her seat belt, twisted around to shake him. He did not respond. She drew back, staring at his immobilized figure. He was sitting upright, his gaze fixed, unmoving.

Without warning, she began to weep, to sob, with her head against the steering wheel, clutching it hard with both hands. Her paroxysm of sobs eased and she groped in her bag for tissues. They couldn’t be alone, she thought in despair. They would need keepers, attendants. Be put away in institutions. No more jobs. Never alone unless sound asleep. No more driving. Or skiing. Hiking. No more life.

She leaned back, closed her eyes and waited for him to wake up, to come back. She didn’t know how long it took before she sensed that he had moved, pulled against his seat belt or something. He made a choked sound, almost a sob.

She reached for his arm, and this time he turned toward her with a strangely blank expression. “Snap out of it,” she said. “It’s okay now. You’re okay now.”

He blinked rapidly, rubbed his eyes, then said, “Again. I did it again, didn’t I?”

“It’s over now. Are you all right?”

“Jesus!” he said. “Drive, Jean. Get back to my place. I’m okay now.” In a lower voice as despairing as her own thoughts were, he said, “It happened again.”

They had ordered take out burritos and found that neither of them was interested in food. It was dusk, the endless day closing down, she thought, listening to him on the phone again. “Sorry to bother you,” he said and disconnected. He punched in the next number.

He had not talked about his flashback, nor had she asked any questions. It didn’t matter what it had been. None of that mattered. Reliving the past, experiencing long forgotten incidents, it didn’t matter. What was terrifying was that they were experiencing Cody’s past, feeling his pain, his fear as well as their own. That was impossible, and it was terrifying.

“Mike?” Trevor said. “My name is Trevor McCrutchen and I have to find my brother Cody. It’s extremely urgent that I find him. Can you help me?”

He listened a moment, then said, “It’s a family crisis. Our mother is in intensive care following an accident. She is in very critical condition. He has to be told.”

Jean bolted up in her chair where she had been slouched.

Trevor nodded to her and grabbed a notebook from across the table as he listened to the man on the phone.

“I don’t know what he’s doing,” Mike was saying. “He was taken inside, off the grounds, on special assignment for Dr. Sumner and Dr. Wooten. One of them can probably reach him for you. Gee, Mr. McCrutchen, I’m sorry to hear about your mother. Sure, Cody would want to be there with you, a time like this. Let me give you their numbers.”

Trevor wrote the names and numbers, thanked Mike and put the phone down. His hands were sweating. “The Markham Research Group,” he said hoarsely. “He was working there, but now he’s doing something for two doctors, on the inside. That guy, Mike, is his boss.” His mind was racing feverishly. Doctors? Medical doctors? Researchers? For a land development company? He wiped his hands on his legs and picked up the phone again, keyed in the first number and reached voice mail.

“Dr. Sumner, this is an urgent message.… ” He could hear the desperation in his own voice as he gave the same information he had told Mike—his name, number, emergency, intensive care, critically injured mother. He disconnected. Without pause he called the second number, and repeated the message on Dr. Wooten’s voice mail.

“Now we wait,” he said when he put the phone down again.

Jean woke with a jerk, sat upright, confused, then remembered. At eleven they had gone to bed, she in a room across a hall from Trevor’s. Several times during the night she had come awake, once getting up to check, make certain he was still there. And now it was six in the morning. When she looked across the hall, he was sitting on the edge of his bed.

Together they went to the kitchen and he put on coffee. “Hungry?”

“Not yet. Later. I have to go home, shower, change my clothes.”

“Me too,” he said. “We’ll eat something afterward. I can’t call them again before nine, I guess. There’s plenty of time.”

She drove to her apartment, talking all the way, and he sat in her living room while she showered. She left the door open and he listened to make sure the water got turned off. They didn’t linger any longer than necessary, then back to his house where she sat listening in the living room while he showered and dressed.

This is how it’s going to be, she thought bleakly when he emerged. She went to the kitchen with him, to stay nearby while he scrambled eggs and made toast.

Neither had anything to say as they ate breakfast.

At eight-thirty his phone rang. Dr. Sumner was returning his call.

“I have to see him,” Trevor said. “My brother. Where is he? He has to know about our mother.”

“Mr. McCrutchen, I’ll give him your message, and as soon as possible, he’ll get in touch.”

“What does that mean? As soon as possible. Dr. Sumner, I’ll get the police to open up that place, wherever it is. What have you done to him, with him?”

There was a long pause, then Sumner said, “I’ll come to your place. We can talk. Half an hour. Give me an address.”

When Trevor disconnected he said furiously, “He’s coming here. So help me God, if he stalls, I’ll have the cops take over!”

Grace had listened to Trevor’s frantic call twice, then deleted it. Earlier she had adjusted one of the drugs, and she waited to see if the spike had been affected. At ten minutes after nine, on schedule, there it was, increased activity where there should not be any. Wearily she started the temperature adjustment. It would be a long, slow process to bring him up to normalcy. She knew as little as she had known when she started on her new young subject. Now it would depend entirely on his subsequent tests and his overt behavior to determine if he had suffered any ill effects that could be detected without an actual brain examination under the microscope.

Trevor opened the door to admit Dale Sumner. He looked to be in his forties, with receding dark hair, mild blue eyes, laugh lines at his eyes, a slightly stooped stance. And he looked worried, harried. His handshake was surprisingly strong.

“That’s Jean Biondi,” Trevor said, leading Sumner into the living room where Jean was standing by the sofa. “Look, Dr. Sumner, I have to talk to my brother. Our mother is critically hurt and he has to know. That’s the bottom line here.”

“Mr. McCrutchen, please calm down. If your brother is working with Dr. Wooten on a special project, it may not be possible to reach him immediately, but I can assure you he’s not in danger, not in trouble—”

“What do you mean if he is? Why don’t you know if he is or isn’t? Who’s Dr. Wooten? What special project that won’t let him use a telephone?”

“I’m on vacation,” Sumner said. “All this week and next, so I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but I do know that there’s nothing at all dangerous in Dr. Wooten’s research. That’s all I can tell you at this time.”

“I’m calling the cops,” Trevor said. He yanked his cell phone from his pocket, then stopped moving.

Jean saw the blank look come over his face and screamed. “Trevor! Oh, God! Not again!”

“What’s wrong with him?” Sumner asked, moving a step closer to him. “A form of epilepsy?”

“No! Help me get him into a chair.”

Together they maneuvered Trevor down into a chair. He didn’t resist, nor did he help in any way. He sat upright, his phone in his hand, his eyes open but blind.

Sumner knelt beside him and felt his pulse, straightened, and asked, “Do you know what’s wrong with him? His pulse is racing. He could be having a heart attack.”

She felt tears burning and wiped angrily at them with the back of her hand. “I don’t know. He doesn’t know. It happened to me, too, and his mother, and Elise, and she hanged herself, and there could be others out there.”

“Ms. Biondi, please. Calm down. We should call nine-one-one, get medical help for him.”

She shook her head. “It’s about Cody! It’s always about Cody.” She felt Sumner’s hand on her arm and wrenched away. “What are you doing to him? What’s happening to him?”

“Ms. Biondi, Jean, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What happened to you, and to his mother? What’s wrong with him? Please, just sit down and tell me about it.”

They were standing at Trevor’s side. He had not moved. Jean took the cell phone from his hand and put it on the end table. With her gaze fixed on Trevor, she backed up to the sofa and sat down and she told Sumner what had happened to her, what had happened to Trevor. “He could have burned down the house, and himself,” she said in a dull voice. “His mother drove off a road without applying the brakes. She didn’t try to stop, and now she’s in critical condition. Elise Bronstein was Cody’s lover years ago and she hanged herself.”

She looked at Sumner for the first time since starting to talk about it. He looked disbelieving, remote, as if watching a specimen on a slide. That was how it would be, she realized. No one would believe anything they said. Just memories surfacing. Coincidence.

“I felt wet and freezing, but I was dry!” she cried. “Cody was wet and freezing. Trevor felt his legs burning, but his legs had not burned. Cody’s legs were burned. His mother’s message before they took her to surgery was to tell Cody she was sorry.” She looked at Trevor’s still figure. “He’s feeling whatever Cody was feeling then, whenever that was.”

“How long does he last like that?” Sumner asked, looking at Trevor.

“I don’t know.”

Sumner went back to him and felt his pulse, peered at his eyes. He sat down and watched Trevor without speaking again.

“He’s waking up,” Jean said, and hurried over to Trevor. His eyelids were fluttering, and he shook his head, opened his eyes with a blank look on his face.

“Trevor, it’s all right,” she said. “You’re okay.”

Abruptly he lurched to his feet, upsetting her balance. She fell backward, pulled herself up, only to see him staggering, running to the hall, and the bathroom.

“Stay here,” Sumner said sharply and followed him.

Trevor held onto the counter by the sink, trembling, his eyes closed. He was barely aware of Sumner’s presence until he heard his voice.

“Are you ill? Are you all right?”

“I walked in on him,” Trevor said in an agonized whisper. “Him and a girl. I felt—” He opened his eyes and yelled, “Get out of here! Leave me alone, damn you! Leave me alone!”

Jean was outside the door when Sumner came out, almost as shaken as Trevor had been. “Is… is he all right?”

“I think so. We’ll wait for him to come out.” He wiped his forehead, then said, “Jean, please tell me again. Tell me what’s been happening to you, to him.”

It was a long wait before Trevor returned to the living room. He was pale, pinched looking. “Tell me where he is! Now!” he yelled at Dale Sumner.

“I’ll take you there,” Sumner said. “Come on.”

“I’ll sit in the back,” Trevor said at Sumner’s car. “Sit up front, Jean.”

Then, with Sumner driving, Jean said, “You have to tell us what’s going on. What Cody’s doing. Where we’re going.” She tried to control panic, but heard it in her voice.

“Stay calm, Jean,” he said. “It isn’t dangerous. We’re a research group, sleep research. It’s good research, legitimate research, and very important. We’re looking for a way to prolong life through a cold sleep until cures can be found for various diseases. Leukemia, cancer, Alzheimer’s. Cures will be found in the next decade for many diseases, but many people will die first, and we’re trying to save their lives.”

“What does that mean, cold sleep? Cryogenics?”

“No. It’s been determined that certain heart attacks, certain strokes can be controlled and even cured following a short period of lowered temperature for the patient. We’re trying to extend that period for much longer times, months, possibly even years. Not cryogenics, just a carefully maintained cold period above freezing, but low enough to slow metabolism almost to a standstill, prevent cellular damage, other adverse effects.”

“You’re using Cody in such an experiment?” she whispered. “Is that what you’re doing? Why the secrecy? He didn’t even tell his own brother, or his parents, anyone. If it’s legitimate, why the secrecy?”

“We require a confidentiality oath for everyone who works out there,” Sumner said. “PETA. The animal protection rights people. We use chimpanzees for our research. They’ve been fine, not damaged, but that group could try to break in, liberate them, and someone would be killed. Decades of research would be set back or stopped completely.”

She twisted around to glance at Trevor again. His face was still averted, his gaze apparently out the side window. She bit her lip. This was worse than before. Whatever he had seen, felt, experienced was worse than before.

“You’ve stepped up from chimps to people,” she said bitterly. “Without knowing what might happen, you just used a man.”

He made no response and she said nothing more. They had left the city, were heading west, out into the foothills of the Coast Range.

“He wouldn’t have ridden his bike out this far,” Jean said after a lengthy silence.

“No. He didn’t. He was in a car pool with several others from Portland,” Sumner said. “Dr. Wooten might have picked him up for this test, but I don’t know that.”

“Right,” she said even more bitterly. “You’re on vacation. You don’t know what’s going on.”

They turned off the highway onto a county road, and soon after that, turned again, this time onto a gravel drive posted with Private Property signs. After a short distance they came to a high iron gate, with a sensor that started to blink as he drew near. He held up a card to be scanned and the gate swung open. He drove into the compound of the research group.

They were in a narrow valley that widened as he continued driving, and before them appeared a large building. He drove around to the side where a dozen other cars were parked, passed them by, and went on to a smaller parking area with only three cars.

“We’re here,” he said.

He used his card at the door, then led them through a labyrinthine of halls, opened a door, again using his card, and stepped aside for them to enter an office. The rear wall was made mostly of windows with a park view. A desk, several comfortable chairs grouped at a coffee table, television, a counter with a coffee maker and cabinets made up the furnishings.

“My office. Please wait here for a few minutes,” Sumner said, going to a door on one wall. “I’ll be back soon.” He left them in the office.

Jean walked to the windows and caught in her breath. “Trevor, come here,” she said. “Look.”

There was a park, a round table with a big umbrella, chairs, and off to the side, a barred area. She could see two chimpanzees on the other side of the bars.

Grace looked up in surprise when the door to the monitoring room opened and Dale Sumner walked in. “I told you to stay away,” she said sharply. “You’re on administrative leave for the time being. Why are you here?”

“I have two people with me,” he said. “One of them is the brother of the guy you have in cold storage, and he was going to call the cops.”

“Oh, my God. What did you tell them?”

“More to the point,” he said, “is what we’re going to tell them. How far along are you?”

“Recovery. I started the procedure this morning.”

“Not good,” he said frowning. “The brother wants to see him, to hear him say everything’s hunky dory.”

“I need ten minutes,” she said. “The temp is climbing, and in ten minutes either we’ll see the spikes or we won’t.”

He rubbed his eyes, examined the various monitors for a minute, walked to the one-way glass to observe the sleeping man, then said, “I can’t stall them long, Grace. Let them in here, let them see him sleeping and explain that it will take another two days for full recovery to be complete, that it would be dangerous to try to rush it. They won’t recognize a thing they see or even begin to understand what they’re looking at. And, Grace, we have to talk. After we get rid of them, we have to talk. There’s something you have to know.”

“What have you already told them?”

“Basically a broad outline of what we’re doing, prolonged cold sleep, the chimps are fine, he’s fine, no glitches. Everything’s fine.” He turned to leave. “I’ll bring them in and do the talking. You all right with that?”

She nodded. “I’ll turn off the brain wave monitor. I don’t want them to question the activity.”

“Damn right you don’t,” he said.

The spikes would be on record even if she didn’t stand over the machine, she knew, but she wanted to see it, know now if the spikes stopped, know precisely when they stopped. She turned it off as he walked out.

Grace could sense their hostility when Dale brought the others into the room. Trevor looked like his brother, she thought distantly, shaking his hand, but Cody’s eyes had been dancing, his big smile engaging. His brother’s eyes were as cold as ice, his face a mask. The young woman was a mystery, his girl friend? Cody’s girl friend. She was very pretty, and as hostile and suspicious as Trevor. Dale took them both to the observation window where they stood without speaking for several minutes before they turned away.

“Every bodily function is being monitored around the clock,” Dale said, motioning toward blinking lights and lines on LED screens. “The recovery procedure is underway, and is absolutely normal in every aspect. It takes about three days to return to a normal state and that process can’t be rushed without grave risk to the subject. Did you see our chimps out in the compound? There are six, and we use them repeatedly without ill effect.”

“When can I talk to him?” Trevor demanded. “How cold is he?”

“We keep the subjects at about forty-five degrees. That’s been the optimal temperature after many trials over the years,” Dale said smoothly. “Not a single subject has suffered at that temperature. This research is in its twentieth year, and it will continue for many more years before we’re satisfied that we can offer it to the general public with all the variations of individuals taken into account. Your brother is our first human subject and there could be thousands more before we can go public.”

Trevor’s cell phone rang, startling them all. Grace cried, “Not in here! Dale, get him out of here!”

“It’s the equipment,” Dale said, rushing Trevor to the door and out, with Jean at his heels. “Sorry,” he said after the door was closed behind them. “We made it a rule never to take calls in there. No electronics are allowed in there.”

Trevor was paying no attention as he answered the call from his father. He spoke briefly, then said, “They’re moving my mother to a private room. She’s conscious and I can see her in about two hours. I have to go.”

Grace came from the monitoring room and Dale said, “I have to take Mr. McCrutchen back to town.” He turned to Jean. “Why don’t you stay here and tell Dr. Wooten exactly what you told me, what happened this morning. She can fill in details about Cody’s role.”

“I can’t,” Jean said. “I’ll drive him to the hospital.”

“I’ll take him and wait to bring him back,” Dale said. “Stay here and get a little rest for a few hours.”

Trevor nodded. “You need to rest a little,” he said to Jean. “It’s okay. Let’s go,” he said turning to Sumner.

Grace listened to them, bewildered, and belatedly she nodded also. “Please, Ms. Biondi. I could use some filling in, and I’m sure you can, too.”

Jean looked at Dale Sumner. “You saw him. You know. You have to be careful.”

“I know I do,” he said quietly. “I’ll bring him back as soon as he’s ready.”

It was too surreal, Jean thought, sitting at a table in a park, watching chimpanzees grooming one another, scrambling up a tree in the distance, coming to the bars to gesture and make noises at the woman across the table from her. She had watched Dr. Wooten hand one of them a bag of peanuts, return to the table, listened to her say, “They’re as spoiled as brats. They expect a treat whenever I come out here.”

Jean had told her everything she had told Dr. Sumner, and Dr. Wooten had not made a single comment. She had listened without expression, revealing nothing. She seemed old, gaunt and unkempt, with wrinkled pants and shirt, as if she had not changed clothes, slept or looked at herself in a mirror for a long time. Her hair was gray, short and in need of a shampoo.

“Why did Cody agree to it? Become the first human subject?” Jean asked. Her real question was why had Cody trusted this woman.

“I’m not altogether certain,” Dr. Wooten said. “Money, of course. Mr. Markham paid him well, I expect, and there’s a guaranteed monthly payment for the next two years as long as he keeps coming in for routine tests, physical and psychological. He said it would get him through the rest of his education. But I think it was more than that. Something else. Being part of something bigger, and even exciting. I hardly knew him, Jean. But he was a very willing subject.”

“That Mr. Markham, why is he doing this?”

“He’s dying. And he’s very rich. He set up a foundation to keep the research going into a distant future. Perhaps he’s just a philanthropist and wants to do something worthwhile with his money.” She told the lie easily, persuasively, and marveled at how reasonable it sounded. But he had set up the foundation, even if it was to ensure that funding would not get cut off while he was in a cold sleep, delaying death. She could not tell this young woman that Markham was a man who profoundly feared death. Or that he hadn’t given a damn about Cody or what happened to him. She could not tell Jean that no one knew yet what had happened to Cody, how it might effect him, that it might even destroy him.

“I’ll put on some coffee,” she said rising. “I often sit out here and have coffee, sometimes lunch. We have a very good cafeteria, by the way. If you begin to get hungry while you wait for your friend to get back, we can have lunch sent to the office.”

After starting the coffee she hurried to the monitoring room to check the brain waves, and groaned softly when the screen came on. There was the spike, right on schedule. She reached for the control to hide the screen again, but drew back and peered more closely at the peaks, the duration. Seven minutes, they had lasted only seven minutes before subsiding again. Half as long as the others. “Thank God,” she said under her breath. “Thank God.” At last they had a clue, their first clue.

At the table outside, Jean felt a lassitude creeping over her. She was so tired, she thought, so very tired. Trevor was exhausted. Dr. Wooten looked equally exhausted. She was surrounded by people near their limit of endurance. She pulled herself up straighter, yearning for a bed, for a long peaceful sleep. Dr. Wooten had said that only she and Dr. Sumner used this little park that was off limits to the rest of the staff and everyone else except the ground crew that came to tend it. How nice to have your own private park, she thought, yawning widely. She would have put a hammock up, used this bit of privacy to get in a little nap now and then. Her eyelids were getting too heavy, and she closed her eyes. Just for a moment, she told herself.

Dr. Wooten returned with a coffee tray and stood silently watching the young woman, pitying her because she knew she had to do everything in her power to make her dismiss her own experience, make her put it out of mind, forget it again, attribute it to coincidence. Not yet, she knew. Hear what the mother had to say about her accident first, hear what Cody had to say when he woke up. It couldn’t be true, she told herself. It couldn’t have happened the way Jean had described it. An impossible event, series of events. Improbable as it might seem, they all had to be attributed to coincidence.

She made a clatter putting the tray down, and Jean woke up with a start.

Grace had returned to the monitors two more times. The first time, a flutter of motion in the brain waves had been recorded, and on the next hurried check the line had been gently undulating, hardly a ripple. She left the screen turned on after that. And now it was time to have another look and more than anything in the world she wanted to see the spikes resume.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said to Jean who was in the office. “Make yourself comfortable, or go back out to the park if you’d like.”

Jean nodded. Trevor had been gone an hour and a half, much of the time spent driving to the hospital, she knew, and it might be another hour or longer before he returned. She wished she had gone with him. Not knowing if it had happened again was almost worse than watching it happen. And she worried that she could have it happen here, with Dr. Wooten, and it frightened her. They might send her to a hospital, or give her a shot or something. Or course, Dr. Wooten didn’t believe her, although not a word to that effect had been uttered, but still it was unbelievable. She might think Jean was having some kind of seizure and do whatever doctors did when people had seizures.

In the monitoring room Grace watched the last few minutes pass, not holding her breath, but feeling almost breathless. Then the wave changed. She rushed to the cold room without thinking about a coat, and she stood over Cody McCrutchen and watched his eyelids reveal rapid eye movements, REM sleep. She let out a long breath of relief. He was dreaming. She remained at his side until she was chilled through and through, until the movements stopped again.

“Thank God,” she said under her breath, back in the monitoring room, rubbing her cold arms briskly. His dream time had been four to six minutes shorter than normal, but even that was all right, she decided. He was still very cold.

“Everything’s fine,” she told Jean when she returned to her office a few minutes later. “Right on schedule.”

“But you can’t say when he’ll be awake and fully aware,” Jean said accusingly. “That’s what you said before.”

“No, I can’t. I can predict the progress of my own test when I control the various physical aspects of it, but every individual is unique and when he’s back to normalcy, he’ll be as unpredictable as everyone is.”

Jean turned away to gaze out at the park again. No matter how hard she tried to get Dr. Wooten to admit to anything, any contradiction, she had a way of avoiding a direct answer while making her response appear reasonable.

When Trevor and Dr. Sumner returned after three that afternoon, Trevor went directly to Jean and said, “Mother’s in a private room now. She doesn’t remember a thing before the accident. She was driving and woke up in the hospital. They said it often happens like that, amnesia for an accident, before it happens, how it happens. She’s going to be okay, what they called guarded condition, in the hospital for about a week probably, but the real crisis is over.”

“She didn’t mention Cody?”

“No. I told them I tracked him down out camping with buddies in the Olympic wilderness, out of touch until late next week. They’re good with that.” He looked at Dr. Wooten then. “How’s Cody doing? How’s it coming?”

“He’s fine, responding exactly as expected. Mr. McCrutchen, there’s nothing you can do here, nothing to do about him until he’s fully back to normal, and that won’t be until Monday. Why don’t I give you a call when you can see for yourself that he’s all right.”

He hesitated, glanced at Dale, who nodded in agreement. “If anything at all untoward happens, I’ll call you,” Dale said. “Why don’t I take you and Jean back home now and let you both get a little rest. I give you my word that I’ll call if anything happens.”

Trevor looked at Jean and she nodded also. There was nothing they would learn here, she was convinced, and she wanted to leave, never come back, never spend another minute with Dr. Wooten.

“Okay,” Trevor said. “You have my cell phone number. Day or night. You know what I mean.”

Later, with Dale at her side, Grace watched the recorded brain wave again. There was no need to explain what they were seeing. When the wave fluttered and returned to an expected line, Dale exhaled. “The bird can’t get out again,” he said softly. “It’s back in the cage.”

“What does that mean?”

“Don’t you remember?” He laughed. “Several of your horny grad students were sitting around doing what they do at that age, arguing about mind/body and you said the mind is a bird in a cage that has no door.” He gave her an appraising look, then said, “You found the door, Grace, and you opened it.”

Abruptly she wheeled about and left him in the monitoring room. She walked through her office and out to the table in her own private park. The chimps chattered to her and she ignored them. It was something she could have said, something she had always believed, had to believe. There had to be another explanation, or no explanation at all. One of those inexplicable mysteries without a solution.

She was still sitting there when Dale came out with a tray, glasses, ice, water, and a bottle of scotch.

He poured drinks, dropped in ice cubes, handed one to her. “It’s mostly water for you. You’re so beat a real drink would floor you.” Without pause he continued, “We can’t let a son of a bitch like Markham do that,” he said. “That kid in there is as innocent as a baby compared to Markham, and capable of destroying anyone he ever interacted with, however harmless that interaction was in the past. How many people has Markham already destroyed one way or another, whether or not they’re dead now. Their own humiliation, fear, whatever, in addition to his rage and fear, his sadism, power lust, blood lust even, how many of those poor sods would withstand an invasion by him?”

“You believe what they were saying?”

“I saw Trevor McCrutchen experience his brother’s orgasm in his first, most intense sexual encounter of his life,” he said evenly. “He happened to walk in on them, unaware. But there it was. I saw him, Grace. I believe every word.” He lifted his glass and said, “Cheers.”

She drank and wished he had added more scotch. She wanted oblivion for a time. “It depends on Cody’s condition when he wakes up,” she said in a low voice. “If he’s a raving maniac, Markham will back off.”

She did not voice the rest of the thought. Dale knew it as well as she did. If Cody appeared to be as normal as the chimpanzees always were, Markham would demand to be next, if not with her, then with her replacement. And his money would guarantee that her replacement would obey his orders. A bird out of its cage. A predatory, merciless bird who had hurt countless others already and would never hesitate to crush anyone who got in his way.

“Grace, I called down for dinner for two, and I have a bottle of pretty good Pinot Noir. We’ll eat, then you’ll hit the bed while I man the battlements for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll know what we have to do.”

“I want you to leave, Dale. Go home, the way I told you. I don’t want you mixed up in this.”

He drank deeply, put his glass down. “I’m already in, and I intend to stay in. God, how I wanted to say something like that to you when you were a real slave master over me as a grad student. The hours you made us put in! No, my dear mentor, it’s sleep for you tonight, and tomorrow decision time. Our decision time.”

Sunday afternoon, Grace watched Cody shift his position slightly, not awake yet, but in the process of waking. Most, but not all, the tubes and sensors were gone. They would continue to monitor his blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen level and basic brain function for the next few hours. And they would keep him hydrated. The room was a comfortable seventy-two degrees and now a warm, preheated coverlet was over him.

He shifted again and his eyelids fluttered, then opened. He yawned as he came awake with the blank expression of anyone waking from a long sleep. Very quickly the blank look was replaced by comprehension, awareness of her presence, of the bed, the room. He yawned again.

“Is it over?” he asked.

“Yes,” Grace said. “How do you feel?”

“Thirsty. My mouth is dry.”

“I have chipped ice for you,” she said. “No liquids yet, but ice will help. I’ll raise your head a bit first.”

She did that, then put a spoonful of cracked ice to his mouth. “Do you remember any of it?” she asked.

“No. Out like a light, then awake. Did I really sleep a week?”

“Yes.”

“I’m a little cold.”

“I know. Your temperature is not quite up to normal yet, but it’s getting there. Any dreams?”

“No. It seems impossible that it was a whole week. Easiest cash I ever picked up.” He grinned broadly, then yawned again. “Why am I still sleepy?”

“Induced sleep isn’t the same as regular sleep,” she said. “I’m not sure why. Maybe that’s a whole new area for someone to explore.”

She remained with him for ten more minutes, talking easily, asking few questions which he answered readily, then she said, “You’ll want to nap awhile, I imagine. There’s a pull bell on the rail, if you want anything.”

He was yawning when she stood, watched him another few seconds, then left. In the monitoring room again, she leaned against the door with her eyes closed until she felt Dale’s hand on her shoulder. He swung her around and hugged her fiercely.

“My God, Grace,” he said. “You did it! He’s fine! Not just fine. He’s great!”

“Not so soon, Dale. Not so soon.”

“You know it, and so do I! He’s great. Let’s have a look.”

He propelled her to the glass where they saw that Cody had rolled to his side with his knees slightly bent, one hand barely visible on the edge of the cover. He was sound asleep.

“His next wakeful period will be the real test,” she said faintly, but without conviction. She did know it. Cody was fine.

“Right,” Dale said with a laugh. “I’ll make two CDs, one for Trevor McCrutchen and one for Markham. I’ll take Trevor’s over to his place and come right back. Those two poor souls have to have some of the pressure relieved before they explode. He probably won’t wake up before I get back.”

She agreed. He would probably sleep for several hours and wake up thirsty, and maybe even a little hungry.

She stayed in the monitoring room when Dale left to make his CDs, leaving one camcorder turned on the way it would be for the rest of the day and night, recording every twitch, every sound that Cody made. Frequently she moved to the window to watch him sleep, then sat down again. He was snoring softly.

Decision time, she told herself. It was decision time.

Trevor and Jean watched the CD with Dale, both of them silent and tense. When it stopped, Trevor said, “He just rolled over and went back to sleep?”

“That’s what happens,” Dale said. “Seems incredible, weird, but that’s the same way they all behaved. He’ll doze off and on the rest of the day, and sleep well tonight. Tomorrow he’ll be able to eat a little, just light food, bouillon and apple juice, post-surgery diet kind of food for a day, and gradually get back on to real food, whatever he wants. He’ll be wobbly tomorrow, but on his feet, in the real bedroom prepared for him, and then out to the park for walks, and so on.” He leaned forward in his chair and said, “Trevor, he’s great, really fine. No after effects, nothing negative to report in any way.”

“No dreams?” Jean said. “What if he starts remembering dreams after a day or two.”

Dale shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. You’re much more likely to recall dreams within the first few minutes of waking up than later. And even those you recall tend to fade out of consciousness with each passing minute.”

“He was grinning as if he’d just won a bet, or pulled a fast one or something,” Trevor said.

“Yeah,” Dale said. “Look, I’ve been thinking of what you two told us, and it makes me want to hit the books again about synchronicity. You know, the Jungian theory. Too vague in my memory to recall much of it, things happen that appear to be connected, but the connection can’t be found or confirmed. Something like that. You both happened to have vivid dreams, waking dreams about Cody, hallucinations, or, as you said, flashbacks. Then your mother was critically injured. You couldn’t find your brother, and more flashbacks. Could it be that your anxiety was making your imagination work overtime? Who knows? But now that you know Cody’s okay, and your mother’s going to be okay, that node in your brain can relax again.”

“And Elise? That woman who killed herself?” Jean said. “She’s no one’s imagination or hallucination. Dead is dead.”

“Obviously she was unstable if she tried it before, and who knows what pushed her over the edge this time? A new engagement? The man in her life? Something else?”

“There’s always the logical explanation, isn’t there?” Jean said bitterly.

Dale regarded her soberly for a moment, shook his head. “No, there isn’t always. And as a scientist, it drives me batty, but I can accept it and make a stab at the things that maybe we can explain. It’s the best I can do, and I accept that.”

He looked at Trevor then. “Are you going to tell Cody the things you told us? The flashbacks?”

Trevor drew in a breath, exhaled before he said, “No. If he doesn’t remember, I won’t tell him. No point in bringing up painful memories for him.”

After Dale left them, Jean said, “Do you accept his explanation? Synchronicity? Hallucinations? Waking dreams?”

Trevor shook his head. “No. And neither do you. It happened, and we’ll never know how or why. But it happened, all of it, and we’ll both always know that and live with it. Can you accept that?”

“Yes,” she said in a low voice. “There’s no other choice, is there? Our secret.”

Back in the monitoring room Dale said, “They’ll be okay. He’s an electrical engineer, practical, and he knows damn well what he experienced, and that there’s nothing he can do about it or say to explain it. She’ll manage to put it out of mind and get on with her life.”

Grace nodded. Some things you just have to live with, she thought. “Cody’s still sleeping, vitals normal, temp still rising. I’ve been thinking, Dale, and I know what I have to do and how to do it.”

“We have to kill Markham,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “We have to kill him.”

A week later, after Trevor had come to get Cody, who was as happy and trouble free as a child with sparkling blue eyes, Grace stood at the window observing Markham on the water bed. The temperature of the bed, of the whole room, was at forty-one degrees. The only sensor monitoring him was for brain function.

“He’s gone,” she said.

Together she and Dale put pajamas on Markham’s body and moved him to the bedroom where the thermostat was set at eighty-two. She took the glass with a little orange juice and dissolved sedative out and brought in an identical glass with half an inch of orange juice. She removed her surgical glove and handled the glass, then replaced the glove and pressed Markham’s fingers on it in several places and put it on the night stand. Dale, also gloved, wiped a small pill box clean and pressed Markham’s fingers on it, put it on the stand next to the glass.

“We’re done in here,” he said.

They left the room and returned to the treatment room where Dale pumped out the cold water and replaced it with tepid water. They were ready for the sedated chimp to be brought in and the new procedure to start.

A police lieutenant took Grace’s statement in the park, sitting across from her along with a detective with a tape recorder.

“I know this has been a shock,” the lieutenant said. “Just tell us exactly what happened. Why he was here.”

“He often came to watch the procedure,” she said. “He was funding the research center and took a great interest in our work here. Sometimes he took a nap in the bedroom he had set up. He said he was tired and would just sleep over all night this time. He asked me for some orange juice to have with his sleeping pill. I never gave it a thought, about the sleeping pill or his fatigue. He was very ill, you know, and I assumed he was managing his own medications, so I didn’t think about it. I took in the orange juice and put it on the night stand. I removed the bed spread and turned down the bed for him. I asked if he would want dinner later on, and he said no. He just wanted to sleep. I went out and back to work. We had just started with the subject that day and there was much to be done, to be observed. I never gave Mr. Markham another thought until late the next morning when I realized he had not come out. I found him.”

She knew that forensics had gone over the room, that the lab tests would show a few grains of his prescription sleeping pill in the pill box, that the juice in the glass would show nothing but juice. His body would have registered a little cool, indicating that he had died soon after going to bed. They had seen the chimp on the water bed, stared at the lights and lines on the LED screens without comprehension, had questioned her and Dale separately, compared notes.

“What kind of research exactly are you doing here?” the lieutenant asked.

“Basic sleep research, trying to determine the optimal temperature for restful sleep, and especially for patients recuperating from surgery or awaiting transplants. Sixty-five, sixty, higher or a little lower.” She nodded toward the compound. “They are our subjects.”

There was a little more and when he seemed content, Grace said, “Lieutenant, he was a great man, a benefactor to humanity. He knew he was dying and he wanted to do something that would persist and help others. He desperately wanted to conceal the fact that we use chimpanzees in our research, for fear that misguided people might object. As you can see, our subjects are not mistreated in any way. It’s important to keep them healthy and active or the research would become meaningless.”

He nodded. “I don’t see any need for that to come into it, Dr. Wooten. He was sick, dying, probably in pain, since it seems he had deliberately stopped taking his meds. Then he took too much sleep medication. Maybe he decided it would be best to go that way, in his sleep like that.”

She continued to sit in the park as dusk fell. The chimps became quiet and a bat squealed overhead. Dale joined her.

“We have to start further back,” she said. “As soon as those anomalous patterns show, we change one of the parameters, and if it shows again, conclude the trial.”

“I know,” he said. “I’ll be going home soon. Are you going home?”

“No. I’ll sleep on the sofa tonight.”

“Don’t stay out here too long. You’ll get chilled or the mosquitoes will find you.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “See you in the morning.”

She remained there until the stars appeared. And she thought, the cage door had been opened, and now it was closed and it must never be opened again. The evil bird that was in Markham’s cage was locked in place or not, but if his death had opened that door finally, the bird had flown far, far away.

Changing the World

—MELVIN H. TOOMY— HE TYPED IN THE WORDS, sat back and studied them, then deleted them. Since it was his confession, he didn’t need to add his name up front like that. He started over.

—It began the day I overheard my wife and daughter talking about me—

He remembered the conversation all too clearly. Penny and her husband Ryan were visiting for the weekend. They had been married for one year, were still in the honeymoon phase, and Penny had little sympathy for anything or anyone who disturbed the roseate glow that enveloped her. Ruth was speaking when he happened to draw near the open kitchen window.

“He’s just so aimless these days. It worries me.”

“Mother, he’s driving you crazy is what he’s doing. Why doesn’t he go play golf or something?”

“He sold the clubs. He said thank God he’d never have to spend another hour with another idiot chasing a little white ball around in the blazing sunshine.”

“Oh, great. He won’t go fishing or hunting, or take up glass blowing or something, or volunteer for anything, so he’s bored. It’s not your problem, Mother. It’s his.”

“It must be terribly hard for him. You know, the big office, secretary, expense account lunches, and now all of it’s gone. Stock options worthless, 401(k) practically worthless. You start out thinking you’ll do great things, change the world or something, and suddenly you’re sixty years old, it’s all gone, and you wonder what happened. He’s put out feelers, but no one will hire a sixty-year-old man… ” The words trailed off.

He grimaced as the words played in his head. He couldn’t stand having his wife pity him, or his beautiful daughter dismiss him that way. And God knew he never had thought of changing the world or anything else. He closed his eyes, remembering the weekend from the past April and how it had changed his life.

That night at dinner Ruth talked about one of her staff at the high school. “She took the laptop home with her, left it in her car while she ducked into the store for milk, and it was stolen. Students’ personal information, personnel information. We have backups, of course, but still, someone has that information now.”

“Happens all the time,” Ryan said. “Everyone should have an external hard drive and carry it if they have to take work home.”

“How does that work?” Ruth asked. She was principal of the high school and loss of the files had been a worry all week.

Ryan explained external hard drives, and the following day he and Mel had gone out to buy one. He installed it on the home computer that Mel rarely touched, but that Ruth often used.

“See,” he said, when they were done transferring files and programs. “Take it out, and there’s the whole computer in a gadget hardly bigger than a deck of cards. Keep it in your purse or your pocket, plug it in a home computer and you’re all set.”

“If confidential information is on it, does that mean no one can find it on the main computer, or even know it’s been there?” Mel asked, thinking of the many times he had read that investigators had seized someone’s computer and found damning information. They had seized computers at his company. His late company, he corrected. It had gone bankrupt two months earlier.

Ryan shook his head. “Not just like that. The computer has a record of the external drive, so searchers would know about it. And the original data is still recoverable, of course.”

Mel would have asked more questions, but Ruth said lunch was ready. As they ate, she asked how the visit with Ryan’s parents had gone.

Penny and Ryan exchanged glances and she ducked her head, played with an olive on her plate and remained silent. Mel watched her with a pang, recalling how she used to play with olives or peas, rolling them around, chasing them, and both he and Ruth had pretended not to notice.

“It was fine,” Ryan said without inflection. “We showed them around the city, they did some sightseeing on their own, then back to JFK and Orlando. I doubt they’ll ever visit New York City again. They don’t like it.”

“They want us to have children,” Penny said in a strained voice. “We said we planned to, just not yet.”

Ruth’s lips tightened, but she did not comment, which Mel thought was commendable. Neither of them liked Ryan’s parents. Too reactionary, too authoritarian, too sanctimonious, they had agreed, adding more and more pejoratives to follow the too until they were both laughing.

“I don’t think any allegation voiced yet has been too screwy for them to swallow,” Ryan said in the same flat tone he had used before. “I can’t imagine how crazy it would have to be before they would draw the line.”

“Some of the teachers are caught up in a kind of madness,” Ruth said in a tight voice. “They listen to the same talk radio, that Bob Fellowes, or television programs all parroting the same message, and just accept whatever is said.” She shook her head and changed the subject.

Those three little scenes, Mel thought, did it. Any one of them alone would have been forgettable, but the three coalesced, merged, and his world changed.

The alarm he had set went off. Ruth would be home in an hour and he planned to have things started for dinner. His confession would have to wait. He exited his word processor, closed the program and shut down the external hard drive which he had named X. He unplugged the X drive, slipped it in his pocket, and plugged in one hardly bigger than a cigar, one he thought of as X2, but was also named X. It held their passwords, email addresses, a few other things, enough to justify its existence. The hard drive Ryan had plugged in was named H, and it backed up the entire computer.

So now he had three external hard drives, Mel reflected, and derisively added, thus I embrace the digital age, better late than never.

He had been the general manager of publications, the official news letters, shareholder reports, and such that were routinely published. With a secretary and several staff members there had been no need for him to learn to use a computer at work, and he had not even attempted to explore it. In the last six months, however, he had come a long way, he thought with satisfaction. He had discovered search engines, blogs, Google, Wikipedia… Very early on, he had decided he needed to hide what he was finding on the Internet and he had bought X, the big second hard drive to save Ruth’s peace of mind.

After that April visit by Penny and Ryan, he had begun listening to Bob Fellows, and he had started watching television in a way neither he nor Ruth had ever done in the past. He had been curious about what messages were turning teachers into people who made Ruth roll her eyes and change the subject, what kind of messages made Ryan imply that his own parents were ripe for crazy talk.

That constant drumbeat of conspiracy theories, hate talk, fear-mongering had been too much for Ruth to bear, and if he had been driving her to distraction by inactivity, his new activity had made her doubt his sanity. He was finding more and more of the same kind of madness on the Internet, but his computer usage was all stored on his personal external drive he had named X, and their household remained peaceful. After a month he stopped listening to Fellowes, and he stopped watching the television shows she despised. He had seen and heard enough, and now he simply tuned in occasionally to see if they were still doing it. They were, louder all the time.

In the kitchen he whistled softly as he put potatoes on to start cooking. Although his dinners were simple comfort food that he remembered from his childhood, Ruth was appreciative and, to the surprise of both of them, something had been rekindled that had been dormant. Her eyes sparkled, and to his eyes she looked younger and prettier than she had just a few months earlier.

Not long after the visit by Penny and Ryan, he had begun to mull over the question Ryan had raised: what allegation would be crazy enough to make his parents draw the line? At first Mel doubted there could be such an allegation, since the ones being voiced appeared to be more than enough to have that effect already.

A thunderstorm in July supplied an answer to the question. Both he and Ruth came awake when thunder shook the house, followed almost instantly by lightning. He patted Ruth’s shoulder and got up. “I’ll see to windows. Go back to sleep.” She murmured something, pulled her pillow over her head and remained in bed.

Standing at a window watching lightning flare repeatedly, it came to him. Lights in the sky. UFOs. But it had to be different from the many UFO sightings and visitations reported and debunked over decades. He began to smile, then chuckled, and by the time the storm blew over, he had decided to do a little research and then launch his own conspiracy theory and put the idiots to the test.

First, he needed some cover, a reason for his new-found cheerfulness. The house had a partitioned-off section of the basement where a previous owner had set up a wood-working shop that would serve his purpose. He bought a few tools, wood, several books with plans for home projects, shellac, varnish, paints, thinners, and a box of surgical gloves.

Everything he purchased during that period was simply to account for the gloves. Ruth never questioned any of it, and even expressed her satisfaction to Penny that finally he had latched onto a hobby.

He invented a whistle blower from a never-to-be-named top secret government agency, and named him Cyrus Cornwall. By September Cyrus was ready to write his first letters, to be accompanied by several highly redacted, top-secret government memos and other documents.

—I am employed in a unit of (redacted). Our unit is composed of three tiers of investigators: Tier 1 receives a copy of every sighting of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) reported in the United States. Most of these sightings are readily dismissed as natural phenomena: commercial and private aircraft, armed forces craft, planets, swamp gas, reflections of lights on clouds, and so on. A number of them are sent to Tier 2 for further investigation by operatives who go into the field to question observers, examine alleged landing sites, and otherwise seek to prove or disprove the authenticity of the sighting. Among the reports escalated to Tier 2 are some that are sealed and immediately escalated to Tier 3.

—For a number of years I was assigned to Tier 2, but in recent years I have worked in Tier 3. The sealed reports our group receive are eye witness accounts of UFOs landing, and occupants emerging. In each and every account in this group the space travelers are described as “looking just like us, like normal people.” See addenda 1-5—

He saved the work, pocketed his X drive and went to the workroom to spend a little time on the bird house he was making. He had found to his surprise that he enjoyed doing it and that he even recalled some of what he had learned in his ninth grade shop class. The shop proved to be a good place to think of his next move. Codes, he thought, sanding a piece of cedar. He would code each letter so that he would know who to follow up with if any of his recipients responded. A classified ad in the New York Times would do. A response on a Sunday in the Times would bring the lucky one more material.

He invented observers for the landings he had chosen from the vast number of references he had found on the Internet under UFOs. His observers were from 1946, 1953, 1961, 1988, 2000 in widely separated areas of the United States. Two college boys camping, a housewife in her back yard, a doctor, three hunters, a retired pilot, good sober, law abiding citizens with no agenda of their own. He had thought of trying to duplicate newspaper accounts of their reports, gave it up, and decided to simply summarize the reports and the follow-up accounts of the deaths and or disappearances of each and every one of them within days of going public with what they had seen.

Writing as Cyrus Corning, he summarized the sightings.

—Dr. Jerome Henderson, vacationing on the shore of Lake Ontario with his family, stepped outside late at night and saw a UFO land a short distance from his cabin. A bright moonlit night permitted him to see clearly when a hatch opened and people appeared, descended, and walked to a waiting bus that looked like a tour bus. He estimated that forty to fifty people left the space craft. He stated, “They were just ordinary people, a mixture of types one might see on any street in any city, and probably all were under forty years old. The bus departed when they were loaded, and the space craft rose silently, made a sharp turn and vanished.” Three days later, one day after Dr. Henderson made his report, he was killed in a one-car traffic accident—

The summaries were similar in most respects, sometimes a bus was reported, or several large vans, once a closed truck. All the observers died or disappeared within a day or two of reporting the landing. Mel knew his accounts were too amateurish, too non-specific to be taken seriously. But wasn’t that the point? he argued with himself. Crackpot stuff, crazy talk, unverified and unverifiable was exactly his point.

Many of the memos he worked on were from Major (redacted) to Colonel (redacted), and in one instance to General (redacted.)

One was so heavily redacted that the only legible words left in the memo were urgent, immediate action, highest classified priority, seizing such visitors alive, deniability, Project Skylight, FOIA.

He bought a ream of paper and envelopes in Middletown where he was unknown, thirty miles from Port Jervis, where he and Ruth had bought their house years before and he was well known. When he printed out his material, he made eight copies, and he wore surgical gloves. He used a moist sponge to seal the envelopes, the stamps were self sealing. He was careful not to leave a fingerprint on anything, not to leave any DNA on anything.

In mid September he was ready to mail eight messages, each coded in such a way that he would know who, if anyone, responded. He took the train to Manhattan, an hour and ten minutes away, to mail them. While there, he bought some deli salami and corned beef, the kind he couldn’t find in Port Jervis. That night, to Ruth’s delight, he prepared Reuben sandwiches for dinner.

It took three weeks for one of the bloggers to post a nearly complete copy of Mel’s original mailing, and it went viral within minutes.

Bob Fellowes was next to refer to it in an hysterical rant:

“They’re here among us, and have been since the forties! Maybe longer! What’s their purpose? What are they after? How many have come? Forty or fifty at a time! Year after year! For decades! There could be many thousands of them walking among us! Call your congressmen! Call the president’s office! Call your governors! America, we demand answers! They’ve had time to be assimilated, to have families, to infiltrate every level of government! Who’s in charge, us or them?” His voice became more and more shrill as he raved.

Mel was both fascinated and alarmed at the way conspiracy theories were advanced by mid-October. The invasion had to be world-wide, else why had the Soviets launched Sputnik? Had they been starting a search of extraterrestrials on the moon or Mars, or possibly a mother ship in orbit out there? And why had the United States launched a desperate push to get to the moon and to Mars if not to conduct such a search? And now, international cooperation on a space station. Advanced nations were cooperating in an unprecedented way. Searching for extraterrestrials?

A panel of experts in an hour-long television broadcast discussed the difficulty of detecting them. If they existed, they repeated often. DNA samples might possibly identify them. Autopsies were the only conclusive method, of course. One Harvard professor said: “Keep in mind that such advanced technology that allows them to navigate interstellar space would allow them to conceal their identities in a manner that we are unable to imagine.”

Another panel discussed what possible threats hostile extraterrestrials could pose, with the most obvious one being the release of a pathogen for which they had immunity and humans didn’t. Were they waiting for a predetermined critical moment of their own, sufficient numbers, for example, to launch an attack? Or were they waiting for sufficient infiltration of all levels of government and industry?

Mel had sent his original material to one senator and two representatives along with the others. The senator responded, as he had expected him to. A serious legislator, no doubt he had turned the matter over to one of the intelligence agencies. One representative, two bloggers, and Bob Fellowes also responded. Mel sent them all identical messages, taking the same care he had shown before, and mailing his answers in Manhattan again. His message was simple and short: “No more until I feel safe. The Whistle Blower Protection Act can’t protect me. My life is in danger.”

A week after he mailed his response, two congressmen demanded hearings in the House of Representatives. One of the bloggers demanded all memos, communications, records, reports, etc. regarding Project Skylight through the Freedom of Information Act. It wasn’t clear exactly which agency he petitioned. And Bob Fellows became even more hysterical.

By November Mel knew it was time to reveal the hoax, to prove to the country, possibly to the world, that the populace had been primed to believe any nonsense that was presented.

He sat at the computer to write his confession and stared at a blank screen. When the alarm sounded hours later, the screen was still blank, and he left to start dinner. Tomorrow, he told himself.

Day after day he sat at the computer and stared at a blank screen. Where to start? How to start? He felt as if his fingers had frozen, his brain had turned to stone. He had lost faith in words and had to consult a dictionary to look up the word hoax, which had become as alien as the invaders he had invented. All the phrases and sentences he thought of while sleepless in bed vanished by the time Ruth left for the high school.

—Project Skylight is a hoax!— He sat back and looked at the words, deleted them. They weren’t even his own words. Day in, day out various people were saying that, to no avail. Learned people, people in authority, officials were saying that, only to be drowned out like whispers in a thunderstorm.

No matter what single word he keyed in, it continued to exist as isolated as a pinpoint island in the middle of the ocean. Nothing followed. Nothing could logically follow. The screen remained blank.

Penny and Ryan came for Thanksgiving and although Ruth prepared a traditional feast which was as delicious as it always had been, there was an air of unease at the table. Laughter and banter, gaiety all seemed forced as if they were amateur actors in a poorly rehearsed play.

Serving pumpkin pie, Ruth asked Penny, “Is there something bothering you?”

Penny glanced at Ryan, and her forced smile vanished. She nodded. “Ryan talked to his folks about the holidays, to let them know we’d like to visit them over Christmas for a day or two.” She looked at Ryan again, then mumbled, “You tell them.”

He appeared as strained as she did. “Mother wanted to know if you two had your DNA sample done yet. If Penny had.”

“They don’t want me to come until I do it,” Penny said in a low voice.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Mel said. “The whole thing is a hoax. Some bored teenager having himself a joke. They aren’t buying that crap, are they?”

Ryan nodded. “They are, and a lot of others are, too. Everyone born after 1940 eventually will be tested, DNA sampled. That lets my folks out.” He put his fork down. “Do you remember my brother Jack? He was at our wedding and the reception.”

Mel had a vague memory of him. Older than Ryan, receding hair, quiet. He nodded.

“He works in the state department,” Ryan said. “He hears things, knows things. He said the government is taking this seriously, testing people, lie-detector tests, trying to find a leak. He said whoever started this business has to be someone who knows, and has taken sophisticated steps to protect his identity, changing details here and there, but the gist of it is on the mark.”

Ruth gasped and made an involuntary gesture that knocked over her wine glass. Hurriedly she left the table and for a moment Mel thought it was to bring paper towels or something to soak up spilled wine, but she headed for the hallway to their bedroom. Before he could follow, she was already returning with her handbag. Ignoring the wine spreading on the table cloth, Ruth took a folded paper from her bag and handed it to him.

“This came yesterday,” she said.

It was a memo from the superintendent of schools. Mel scanned it quickly then read aloud the concluding sentence, “All personnel are required to submit a notarized copy of their DNA results to this office before the winter semester starts on January 4.”

Mel felt as if the world was fading, or he was fading from it and only gradually he became aware of Ryan’s voice again.

“It’s happening all through the government. No publicity yet. But it will get out and then it will be hell. It isn’t a kid in a basement playing games, but someone who knows too much. They’ll track him down and he’ll never be heard from again, that’s for sure. Psycholinguists are studying the text. Analyzing it. Educated, proper use of grammar, repetition of words, use of certain words over others. If the guy ever wrote a thing that was published, they’ll track him down that way. Apparently he used a code that included a lot of Cs, Ys, and Os. Twice it was CY, a number, then CO. Pronounce it,” he said. Then he did so, “C Y C O, psycho. He’s mocking them. They’ve put cameras on every mail drop box in New York City. Tracking purchases of paper and stamps. Investigating photocopy shops, train and plane trips to New York. They’ve pulled out the stops. They’ll find him and he’ll have a fatal accident or disappear exactly the same way all those people who saw aliens come to earth did.”

Mel didn’t know when he had sat down again. He was in his chair, watching the blood-red stain spread on the white table cloth.

The Fountain of Neptune

SHE DID MOST THINGS RIGHT, got a second opinion, did not panic, did not go on a drinking binge, or search for a third opinion. What she failed to do was take a friend with her or tape record the conversations with both brain surgeons. Consequently, her memory of what one or the other said proved to be sketchy, but key phrases were ineradicable. Inoperable. A baseline cat scan. More blurred vision likely, more frequently. Possible double vision. Possible distorted images, illusions. Possible hallucination. Probable headaches.

“Live your life normally,” one or the other said. “I’d like to see you again in three months.”

“Why?”

“With another cat scan we can better predict what to expect.”

Her question had covered both parts, live a normal life, as well as a return appointment. A normal life meant working every day for a corporation that cared as little about her as she cared about it. She remained in her apartment for several days, spending time weeping, then she added up her assets, including the sale of her car, cashing in her retirement plan, selling most of her possessions. She bought a laptop computer, a beginner’s Italian language CD, and a new digital camera. And she made a reservation for a flight to Rome. At the last minute she made it first class.

She had been to Rome once for a three-day conference and one day of sightseeing. At the near demand of a tour guide, she and everyone else in the group, had dutifully tossed a coin into Trevi Fountain. “Rome will call you back,” the young guide had said.

She did not tell her mother, who would berate her for leaving a job with health benefits at a time like this. Nor did she tell her sister, who would scream and wail and insist that she come live with her and her family of four noisy children under the age of twelve and a husband who worked when it was convenient. She told them both that she was being transferred to the Rome office. She did not burden her few good friends who would grieve helplessly, or her ex, who would not. And she did not tell anyone in the office. She knew it would be on her insurance record, and she never would be insurable again.

She was forty-two years old and more than likely she would be dead within six months. So she flew to Rome first class.

She had found an apartment on the Internet, and chose it because it had Internet access, sparing her the search for a cyber café. Her landlord thought she was a writer, and in a sense she was. She had spent more than a decade writing meticulous reports for an R&D department, and now she began keeping a record of the progression of her inoperable tumor. At first there was no particular reason, but after she missed her appointment scheduled for early May, she decided to send the medical record to the brain surgeons.

The blurred vision came more often, sometimes embarrassingly in public, more often when she was in her apartment.

She spent one week in Florence, awestruck by David and the Pieta, overwhelmed by the Tivoli gardens, and the Ufizzi museum, but her call had issued from Rome and she was not tempted to leave again. There were days in the Vatican museum; operas in a gothic church; days wandering around the Colosseum, populating the arena with gladiators, the forum with politicians; a special exhibition of Leonardo’s work reproduced full size; a close-up view of the Last Supper…

She was in love with Rome, with the streets strewn with litter that came alive in any breeze, with the gelatos and pizza slices topped with anything edible, the espresso, all the food. And most of all she was in love with the magic of its sunlight, the complexity of Rome’s agelessness, where contemporary glass and steel structures stood side by side with those from a past of almost inconceivable antiquity—a monument here, a stele there, remnants of a temple, a statue, the juxtaposition of an ephemeral flicker in time and the mute eloquent endurance of millennia.

In the evenings she studied Italian, wrote her daily report, and downloaded her pictures onto her computer, deleted many, manipulated others, enhanced some, and put the saved images on a CD, to be sent to her sister eventually.

That evening, the last day of May, she gazed at her latest pictures of Neptune’s Fountain in Piazza Navona. It was her favorite so far and she had visited it several times. Neptune doing battle with an octopus and nymphs mounted on horses rising from the fountain basin. Neptune was as muscular as a body builder. All the male statues were, and the females were all lissome, willowy, with not a muscle or bone in sight. The steeds looked wild and beautiful. But something was wrong.

She looked for previous pictures she had taken of the fountain, then printed the versions to compare them, find the cause for her unease. It came as a mild surprise to see that she had been to that one fountain four different times. The pictures were dated, and the first one had been taken April eleventh, one in early May, one mid May, and the most recent on the last day of May.

After putting them in chronological order to examine them, she gasped, and stood up so quickly, so urgently that she knocked her chair over. Steadying herself with a hand on the table, she closed her eyes hard, rubbed them, and without looking again at the pictures yet, she backed away from the table, and only then opened her eyes and crossed the few feet to her tiny kitchen for a glass of water.

All the pictures were different. “It’s started,” she said under her breath.

Distorted images, one of the doctors had said. Illusions.

She had entered the next phase, she thought dully, and forced herself to return to the table, to study the set of pictures, seeking to learn when the new phase had started without her noticing.

Some of the views were from different places around the fountain, single shots, but the four she singled out had all been taken from the same location. She had been seated on the same bench for each of the four. The changes were subtle, but unmistakable. They presented a sequence in time. First the nymph’s head was turned away slightly, her hair streaming behind her; the horse’s head was lowered, and towering over them Neptune was straining in a struggle with the octopus that had one arm wrapped around the god’s leg. Next the nymph’s head was turned more to the front, and the horse had lifted its head. The octopus was lower down on Neptune’s leg.

They were not illusions, she realized, but full blown hallucinations. She was telling herself a story and providing graphic images to illustrate it. In the last picture the nymph had finished turning her head, and was smiling up at Neptune, and he was done with his mock battle, and now was looking down on the nymph, his hand extended toward her. Even the horse was looking at him in that picture.

Slowly, moving with care, she gathered all the printouts and slipped them into an envelope. Hallucinations, the final phase?

A church bell tolled the hour of eight, her daily signal to leave the apartment, drop in at a news stand to buy a newspaper, go to dinner at a neighborhood trattoria. She stifled a giggle as she wondered if she would hear Pan’s pipes, see his mad dance.

She walked the block to the news stand, purchased her newspaper, and on impulse asked for a picture of the Fontana di Netunno en Piazza Navona. The shop keeper smiled at her Italian baby talk and answered in English, as he always did.

“Neptune’s Fountain, poster size? Postage?”

She didn’t know how to say about eight by ten, and held up her hands to indicate the size.

He found one in a stack of glossy prints and as she counted out money, he said, “You should visit it at dawn, the first light of the sun. Some say that’s the time of magic.”

“Gracie,” she said and he answered that she was welcome.

That night she was not surprised when the glossy professional print proved to be unlike any of her own. Again, not glaring differences, but significant, meaningful.

That night she also recalled another of the phrases one or the other doctor had used: need a companion. Of course, she thought, she couldn’t be left alone acting out a hallucinatory experience. She could harm herself or, worse, harm others. A companion. Institution? It was just as well she had put it out of mind for four months. She marveled at how her mind was protecting her from remembering too much.

There were things she had to do: address the envelope to her sister, write her a letter, include a copy of her will, details about her bank account, some passwords, name and address of her attorney who had drawn up the will. Edit the ongoing report of her situation for the doctors, make two printouts, address those envelopes.

And she had to arrive at the Fountain of Neptune at dawn to see the magic of the first rays of light. That had to wait until after she had taken care of more mundane things.

The days were becoming quite warm, even hot, but the predawn twilight was pleasantly cool, and there was a slight mist in the air. She was disappointed to see another person at the fountain that early morning, a man seated on the bench she had come to regard as her own. He rose and moved to a different bench as she approached. They were the only two people in sight at that hour.

“Good morning,” he said as she drew near. “It’s a lovely morning, a lovely time of day.”

An Englishman? Canadian? Possibly even an American. He had no trace of an accent. She nodded at him and sat down.

The light was changing from the soft pearliness of predawn to a more luminous, sharper light, the mist was dissipating and the world was taking on distinct edges, defined shapes where there had been suggestions of shapes.

She blinked. Before her was an expanse as black and smooth as polished ebony. Then there was a ripple, another, and with astonishing swiftness a golden aura spread over the surface, to be shattered by a roiling eruption, a crashing turbulence that cast golden waters into the air like glittering beads of gold, showers of gold, geysers of gold, fountains of gold. Arising in the waves were horses, snorting, neighing, tossing their heads, scattering more gold. Their riders were maidens bent low over streaming manes, and in their midst stood a powerful man who commanded the waves to cease, and there was calm.

She didn’t know when she had risen, if she had cried out, but the stranger was at her side, his hand steadying her, and the Fountain of Neptune was a fountain.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She moistened her lips, nodded. “A dizzy spell,” she said weakly. “It’s over.”

“Perhaps a coffee?” he said. “You’re very pale. You’re trembling.”

She groped for the bench and sat down. “I just need a moment,” she said. Her heart was thumping wildly, her breathing ragged.

He sat on the same bench, and they both gazed at the fountain.

“They call this the Eternal City,” he said in a reflective manner. “People link the phrase to the Catholic Church, of course, but it was an eternal city long before the church was founded. Eternity stretches both ways, to forever. Some say the old gods are still alive in the real eternal city. Perhaps they do yet live. Perhaps, like the city, they are eternal.”

He was talking to calm her, she thought. Maybe he had been afraid she would faint, fall down, and now he was waiting to make certain she was all right. She glanced at him. “You’re not Italian, are you?” she said, not for information, but in order to let him know he could leave now, she had recovered. Just a momentary dizzy spell.

“No. I’m a Roman. Antonio Mercurio. Are you certain you don’t want a coffee?”

“Thank you, but no. I’ll be on my way in a minute or two.”

“You saw them, didn’t you?” he said in that same reflective tone he had been using.

She stood up quickly, adjusted her shoulder bag, and started to walk away fast, without speaking.

“Don’t be afraid, Julia,” he said. “I’ll be here for you when you return.”

She stopped moving and for a time she did not even breathe. Dear God, she thought then, he was part of it, part of her hallucination, no more real than the golden water of the sea, no more real than the snorting, neighing horses. He knew her name. Of course he did. He was her creation and knew whatever she knew. Suddenly she wanted a cup of coffee, hot and black and very strong coffee, but she did not move. Her vision had become too blurred to dare take a step. Shapes that minutes before had hard distinct edges had become shadow figures.

“Now we will have coffee,” he said at her side, his hand firm on her arm. She did not resist, but let him lead her through a world of shadows, around a corner, to a chair.

“It passes quickly,” she said. “Please do not concern yourself with me.”

It was already passing. An awning overhead, tables with place mats, an elderly gentleman reading a newspaper with an espresso before him. He lowered the paper, smiled broadly at her companion, and spoke in rapid-fire Italian, too fast for her to follow.

The man across the table from her returned the smile and replied briefly. She bit her lip. Stock phrases she had memorized? Something she had learned and consciously had forgotten?

“Why would the Roman gods alone be eternal?” she asked, and felt that the question had come almost out of desperation for something to say, something that was not the something that needed to be said. Was the table, the other customer, all of it one big hallucinatory experience? Where was the start and end of it?

“Not just the Roman gods,” he said, smiling slightly at her. “Perhaps all of them. These are the gods you heard and responded to. Few hear, fewer respond, and even fewer admit the evidence of their senses.”

“If I had responded to Vishnu, I would be in Calcutta sipping tea,” she murmured. “Is that your meaning?”

He laughed.

She looked away from him, at the street where shopkeepers were starting to open awnings, to put out signs advertising their wares, arrange pastries in windows, open freezer cases with gelato… Although it all looked real, concrete, she no longer felt any trust in the evidence of her senses. The evidence of her senses was being warped by a growth in her head.

“Perhaps it is granting you freedom to see for the first time what has always been there,” he said.

Resolutely she kept her gaze averted. A waiter came and greeted her companion as an old friend, volubly, effusively, including her in his obvious welcome.

When a fast-paced dialog ensued, she felt her hands trembling again. The waiter laughed, spread his hands, and bowed to her before he withdrew, shaking with laughter.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

“I told you. Antonio Mercurio.”

She resisted the temptation to look at his feet clad in sandals, and he laughed again. “No, no wings on my heels.”

“I’m going mad,” she said in the same low voice, hardly above a whisper. “I see illusions, hallucinations. I don’t know what’s real, what isn’t.”

“Reality has many faces,” he said. “You have completed the first two parts. There is one remaining. You must admit the evidence of your senses.”

She shook her head. The waiter returned with coffee and they spoke words she could not understand. She gripped her coffee cup, welcoming the heat.

“What did you see in your pictures?” Mercurio asked when the waiter left once more.

“Changes, a sequence of changes. I hallucinated them to illustrate a story in my head. There weren’t any real changes.”

“Was the sequence finished?”

“I don’t know.”

“And at dawn, what did you see?”

She shook her head harder, risking blurred vision again.

“When we leave, you must choose. Turn left and I’ll walk with you to your bus and wait for it with you. Turn right, and we return.”

“Back to the Fountain of Neptune.”

“Fontana di Netunne,” he said. “And you must then tell me what you saw at dawn.”

Back to her apartment, probably a doctor, hospital. She pushed her coffee cup back and rose from her chair, and they took the few steps to the sidewalk where she paused, then turned right.

“I saw a golden sea, horses rising with maiden riders, I saw Neptune command the waves to stop roiling and crashing, and there was a calm golden sea.”

They approached the fountain, and now the sequence was finished. Neptune had completed his gesture. His gaze was on her, his extended hand reached out to her, and with Mercury at her side she walked into the warm, golden water of Netunne’s sea.

Rules of the Game

I WAS WATCHING A SENATOR give a speech a few years ago: “They say it’s not about money, it’s about money. They say it’s not about politics, it’s about politics. They say it’s not about sex, it’s about sex.”

Then Harry came in and said, “Hey, so the guy plays around a little. What’s the big deal?”

Eleven months ago I kicked Harry out, after six years of being married. He talked me into calling it a trial separation, and agreeing to let him keep his office in our house because he had a year’s supply of letterheads and cards with this address. He even had an ad in the yellow pages with this address and phone number: Computer Consultant, On Site. He hung out here, ate my food, drank my coffee, and was gone by the time I got home from work. Too late I realized that what he gained from our agreement was rent-free office space and freedom.

I left him a note in his pigsty of an office telling him I wanted a divorce. He never got around to answering. I left the divorce papers on his desk; they vanished. He was as elusive as a wet fish when I tried to reach him.

Two weeks ago I buried him.

Now I’m starting to clean up the messes he left behind, especially his office here in my house. There are dirty coffee mugs, glasses, half a sandwich with a thriving mold colony on it, papers everywhere, and three computers. I pick up two mugs and a glass and start to take them to the kitchen when suddenly he’s there.

Harry Thurman, as big as life, if not as solid. I can see a lamp through him. He’s like a full color transparency.

I cry out and drop the mugs and the glass, and he yelps and disappears.

“And stay out!” I yell at the lamp.

I step over the mess on the floor, run from the office, and close the door behind me. I’m shaking. A hallucination, a figment of my imagination. A visitation? I’ve read that it’s not uncommon to see the newly departed, a fleeting image, sometimes a comfort to the grief-stricken. I’m hardly that, not that I wanted him dead, just out of my life.

I admit I was shaken by the suddenness of the apparition, but I don’t feel afraid. What I feel is anger. How dare he do that, show himself when I’m cleaning up after him again? My fury ignited when I opened his apartment to clean it out and found expensive suits, a huge flat-screen television, DVD system, Chivas Regal… He drove a two-year old BMW. For a year I lived in near poverty, making our mortgage payments, insurance, his and mine, taxes… I cashed out my 401K to meet payments, since I couldn’t sell the house without his cooperation. A small inheritance from my aunt made the down payment; I would have lost everything if I failed to pay up every month. My fury increased when I found two gift boxes in his bureau, one addressed to My Darling Marsha. That was a bracelet with semi-precious gems and pearls. The other was to Dearest Diane, a heavy gold chain. I also found four credit card bills totaling twenty-seven thousand dollars, for which I am responsible since I’m his widow and my name is on them along with his. And he had the nerve, the effrontery to show himself!

“Let it go,” I tell myself, and head for the kitchen for a glass of water, and decide I really want more than just water. I take a gin and tonic into the living room where I sit and regard the bracelet and gold chain on the coffee table.

“Pretty, aren’t they?” Harry says, and he’s mostly there again, blinking on and off like a Christmas tree light.

Very carefully I put my glass down on the coffee table, then close my eyes hard. “Either come in all the way, or go out, but stop that blinking!”

“I’m doing the best I can.”

When I look again, he’s still there, no longer flickering, and I can still see through him.

“You’re not hallucinating,” he says. “I’m really here, or mostly here.”

I take a long drink. “Why?” My voice is little more than a whisper.

“I don’t know why. I just found myself here. You scared the shit out of me when you suddenly saw me, by the way.”

“What do you mean? How long have you been here?”

“When did that real estate agent come?”

“This morning.”

“I was here then. Two hundred seventy five thousand for this place! Wow! You’ll make out like a bandit. Didn’t I tell you that mortgage insurance was a good idea? And double indemnity for my insurance, plus the BMW. Beautiful rich young widow. What are you going to do with all that dough?”

“Harry! Stop this. Why are you here? What do you want?”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“No. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

After a moment, looking surprised, he says, “Neither do I.”

“Isn’t there someplace you should be? Report in or something?”

He shrugs expressively. He’s very handsome, even if he is dead. Thick black hair just curly enough, wonderful dark blue eyes with makeup-ad lashes, cleft chin. He’s wearing pale blue sweats, possibly the clothes he had on when a hit and run maniac clipped him and ran.

“You never used to drink alone,” he says, eyeing the gin and tonic as if he’s longing for one just like it.

“I never used to sit talking to my dead husband.”

He nods. “There is that,” he says. “You realize it’s a first for me, too.” He reaches for the gold chain. His fingers pass through it. “Ah well,” he says. “Diane ran a credit check on me and said get lost. And Marsha wanted to get married and I said there was a little complication, namely you. She got sore. If you can find the receipts, you probably can return them. Be worth your while.”

I need a therapist. It’s one thing to hallucinate but quite another to hold a conversation with a hallucination. It could even be a serious disorder. I drink the rest of the gin and tonic.

“Did you find the pictures?” he asks.

“What pictures?”

“Oh. Well. What are you going to do with the furniture and things?”

“Garage sale, auction. I don’t know.”

“You might want to look in the desk drawer. Bottom lifts out, and there’s a file folder… I’d get them myself, but…” He passes his hand through the bracelet and looks at me with what I used to think was an appealing expression, like a boy caught stealing a cookie.

I go back to his office, step over the broken mugs and glass on the floor, and head for his desk. There are pencils, pens, computer disks, miscellaneous office stuff in the drawer. I dump it out and there really is a fake bottom. The folder has Polaroid shots of seven different naked women, including me. Just one among many.

I take the folder, pick up a newspaper in the kitchen, and go out to the patio and the grill.

“Hey!” he says. “They’re worth something, you know.”

If he were not already dead, how satisfying it would be to hit him myself with a car, or a train, or a sledgehammer.

My lawyer said that when they find the guy who ran him down, and he seems confident that they will, we’ll sue him for a million for wrongful death. Rightful death, I think, watching the Polaroid shots writhe, blacken, and curl up, emitting clouds of foul-smelling smoke.

He doesn’t walk exactly, just drifts along, near me when I go out to the patio, near me when I go back inside.

“Why are you haunting me?” I demand in the kitchen. “I never did anything to you.”

“I’m not haunting you,” he says a bit indignantly.

“Then get out, go away, and don’t come back.”

“I can’t,” he says. “See, I’m doing my morning run down by the river, the way I always do, and whammo, just nothing. Then I’m here and you’re talking to the real estate agent. And neither of you seems to see me or hear me even though I’m yelling my head off, making a hell of a racket.”

“Who hit you? Do you know?”

“Nope. Came out of nowhere behind me.”

“Have you even tried to find out what you’re supposed to do now? Someone to ask what the rules are or something?”

“What rules?”

“I don’t know. There must be a protocol, something you’re supposed to do, someplace to check in. There are always rules.”

“Maybe,” he says. “I used to think there’d be a rosy-cheeked cherub waiting to take your hand and guide you, or maybe an old guy with a long white beard and a staff, maybe even a beautiful girl in a flowing white gown, something like that. But like I said, nothing, then here.”

“A little guy in a red suit with a white-hot trident,” I mutter. It’s another bureaucratic snarl. I know something about bureaucracy, working for a law firm as I do, or did. I quit a week ago. There are always rules and procedures, routines to follow, and there are always some things that fall through the system and get lost. Like Harry.

“Look,” I say, “I believe you’re supposed to haunt the person or persons who did you in. You know, revenge, something like that. Or are you haunting the house? If I leave, do you stay with the house, like the refrigerator and stove?”

“I believe,” he says, “the people who wrote those rules weren’t the ones who knew much about it.”

“Well, I’m going out now, and you stay here. Okay?” I pick up my purse, fish out the car keys and walk out, with him close enough to touch, if there were anything to touch besides a draft of cool air.

My neighbor Elinor Smallwood comes over to say hello, and it’s apparent that she doesn’t suspect that he is there; neither does her dachshund. “Lori, I hope you’re bearing up. Was that a Realtor I saw leaving this morning? Oh, dear, I hope if a buyer turns up, it will be someone compatible who speaks English. You know what I mean?”

I nod and return to the house. He doesn’t need doors; he flows inside while I’m still working with the key.

“It isn’t fair!” I yell at him. “I don’t deserve this! Get out of here! Let me get on with my life.”

He flickers for a moment, then spreads his hands helplessly. “I’m as stuck as you are,” he says.

I swallow hard as the realization hits me: he really won’t, or can’t, leave. No matter what I do, he’ll be there watching, commenting. I haven’t been to bed with a man in a year; I dated a few times but I never let things get out of hand. After all, I was still married. Now I’m not married; I’m thirty years old, and whatever I do, there will be my audience of one.

“Oh, God, what about Carl?” I say out loud. He’s the attorney from the office who is helping with my legal affairs. He suggested a quiet dinner in a discreet restaurant, and I know he intended to seduce me afterward, and I intended to let him.

“Ah hah!” Harry says gleefully. “You have a boyfriend!”

I head for the telephone to break my date with Carl. Actually he never gave me a second glance until I became a fairly-soon-to-be rich widow.

After the call I sit on the bench by the wall phone, my gaze on Harry, who is trying to pick up a salt shaker on the table. He swoops like a striking snake and his hand goes through it without causing a tremor; then he sneaks up on it stealthily, with the same effect. Over and over. God help me. If he learns to materialize completely, what then?

I start down a list of friends and family, trying to decide if there is anyone I can confide in. There isn’t. Who would believe me? Jo Farrell might, but she would find it exciting and want to hold a seance or something. I can imagine telling Super Iris; she thinks we mean like Superwoman, but it’s really Superior Iris who always knows more than anyone else and is free with opinions and advice. I can hear her voice in my head: “Surely you understand that it isn’t about ghosts…” Wherever she starts, it always ends the same: it’s really your own fault.

It isn’t my fault, but it certainly is my problem. I remember a little red phone book in the drawer with the false bottom. Why that when he had a Rolodex?

We go back to the office where I pick up the phone book. He tries to grab it, but the only effect is that of a cool breeze blowing across my hand.

In the kitchen I sit at the table and look over the names in the little red book. Twelve women! I even know one of them, Sheila Wayman.

Maybe, I tell myself, maybe one of those women still cares, maybe she’ll want him back, or maybe I can just dump him on one of them. Transfer him. Turn over custodial care… I can feel hysteria mingling with fury now, and I draw in a deep breath. Twelve! I pick up the Portland phone book and look up Sheila and Roger Wayman. Southwest Spruce. A twenty minute drive. Halfway to the door I stop. What will I say to her? I snatch up a paperback book from an end table, scrawl her name on the inside cover, and leave. He drifts along at my side.

“Where are we going?”

He just oozes between molecules or something and gets in the passenger seat as I get behind the wheel. For the first ten minutes or so he comments on the nice day, a beautiful June day in Portland, or the heavy traffic, or criticizes my driving, whistles in a low tone at a woman walking a dog… I ignore him. When I turn onto Spruce he leans forward, looking around, and now there’s a note of uneasiness in his voice when he asks again, “Where are we going?”

A minute later when I slow down to examine house numbers, he says, “This is crazy. She might not even be home. She was a long time ago. She won’t even remember me. What’s the point? What are you going to do, make a scene, pick a fight with her?”

I continue to ignore him. At her house I pull into the driveway and get out holding the book. He is close behind me all the way. If she isn’t home, I’ll sit in the car and read and wait for her, I think grimly, but she answers the doorbell. A small boy on a tricycle is by her side, and she is fifteen pounds overweight.

“Sheila?”

She gasps, recognizing me, and her face pales. “What do you want?” she whispers.

“I’m cleaning out the house and I came across this. I was in the neighborhood and decided to drop it off.” I hand the book to her.

“Wow! She’s turned into a tub,” Harry says at my side. Sheila doesn’t even glance in his direction.

In the car again, I say, “One down, eleven to go.” Harry lets out a ghostly type of moan, and tries to grasp my purse. He’s in the passenger seat with my purse on the same seat, where his crotch would be if he had any substance; he is looking at the purse cross-eyed as he makes a quick snatching grab, draws his hand back and tries with the other one. I start to drive.

Back at home, I make myself an omelette and salad and he practices. “It’s like having a muscle that you can’t find exactly,” he says. “Like wriggling your ears. I’ll get it,” he adds confidently. I’m very afraid that he will.

I plot out the following day, using a map, listing the women in the order of proximity, the closest ones on to the most distant. I had all day Saturday, when they might be home, and if not, then Sunday, on into the next week or however long it would take. I would track them down at their offices or schools or wherever they spent their time and see each one, give each one the opportunity to see Harry and, I hope, claim him.

And if none of them claims him? No answer follows the question.

I don’t bother with an excuse again. When Hilary Winstead comes to the door, I say, “I’m Lori Thurman. I was cleaning out Harry’s office and I came across your pictures. I burned them. I just wanted you to know.”

Behind me Harry says, “She makes a mean martini.”

Hilary Winstead stares at me, moistens her lips, and then slams the door.

Bette Hackman is tall and willowy, very beautiful. Harry sighs when she says, “What do you mean? I paid for those pictures. He swore that was all he had. That bastard!”

On southeast Burnside I detour a few blocks and park at the cemetery. A few people are around, none paying any attention to us as I walk to the new grave of Harry Thurman.

“That’s where you planted me?”

“That’s where you belong. Get in there and go back to sleep.”

He shudders and drifts backward. “You’re out of your mind.”

I guess I am. What I was hoping was that a guy with a long beard and a staff, or a cherub, or even a beautiful woman would cry out, “Harry! We’ve been looking everywhere for you. Come along now.” We return to the car and I drive on.

No one answers the doorbell at Wanda Sorenson’s house.

Diane Shuster says, “I could care less.”

“Shrewd, but nearly illiterate,” Harry comments. “Great ass, though.”

I am ready to give it up. No one sees him, or notices a cold breeze, or anything else out of ordinary.

Then he says, “How it goes is they’d call for help with the new computer, or new software, and I’d go in and find things screwed up royally. So I’d fool around and get things working, and accidentally log on to a porn site, something like that, and then… One thing leads to another.”

I grit my teeth and look at the next name: Sonia Welch. He nods when I turn onto River Drive. “Ah, wait until you see that house! Gorgeous place! Sonia broke it off before I was ready, actually. Afraid her old man would find out.”

He sounds regretful when he says, “That was part of it, of course, the fear of discovery, a mad husband with a gun, something like that. A little added spice.”

My lips are clamped so hard they hurt. I am determined to ignore him until he is so bored he’ll find a way to go somewhere else. He’ll find someone who knows the rules.

“That’s it,” Harry says, pointing to a tall gray house nearly hidden behind shrubbery. It is beautiful, with bay windows, stained glass panels, professional landscaping… A heavy-set man in shorts, holding a can of varnish, is touching up a motor boat in the driveway.

“Hello,” I say, getting out of the car. “I’m looking for Sonia. Is she home?”

The man looks me over as if I am up for auction.

“The husband. He’s a shrink,” Harry says. “Would you tell him your innermost secrets?”

I have to admit, although silently, that I would not. His eyes are as cold and fathomless as black ice.

“She’s back on the terrace,” Welch says. “Go on around.” He motions toward a walkway and returns to his boat repair.

I walk under a lattice covered with roses in bloom. The fragrance is intoxicating. I see the woman before I step onto the terrace; she is dozing apparently, with a magazine over her face against the late afternoon sun.

“Sonia?” I say.

With a languid motion she moves the magazine and looks around over her shoulder. Then she jumps up and jams both hands over her mouth, staring wide-eyed, not at me, but at my side, at Harry.

“No,” she cries then, and begins to back up, nearly falls over the chaise behind her, catches her balance, and continues to back up around a glass-topped table, staring, paler than death.

“I didn’t mean to, Harry,” she whispers. “It was an accident. Don’t come closer, stay back! Please, don’t come closer!”

Harry is flickering wildly, moving toward her like a cloud fired with lightning. Then he goes out. Sonia keeps backing up.

“Harry, stay away! I had to do it. I told you he was suspicious! I told you to stay away! I had to do it! You should have stayed away! Don’t touch me! Oh, God, don’t touch me!”

I don’t think she even saw me. I turn and retrace my steps under the roses and out to the car.

“Wasn’t she there?” Welch asks, looking up.

“I think she’s sleeping. I didn’t want to disturb her. I just wanted to thank for a favor she did me. It isn’t important.”

I knew there were rules, I tell myself, driving away. There are always rules.

To find these and other Kate Wilhelm titles on ebook, go to:

www.infinityboxpress.com

Watch for the new Barbara Holloway Mystery coming in September 2012!!

• By Stone, By Blade, By Fire

Other books by Kate Wilhelm now available:

Charlie Meiklejohn & Constance Leidl Mysteries

• Seven Kinds Of Death

• All For One

• Smart House

• Sister Angel

• Sweet, Sweet Poison

• The Gorgon Field

• The Dark Door

• Torch Song

• The Hamlet Trap

• With Thimbles, With Forks, And Hope

Collections

• Music Makers, including:

“Music Makers”

“Shadows On The Wall Of The Cave”

“Mockingbird”

“The Late Night Train”

“An Ordinary Day With Jason”

• The Bird Cage, including:

“The Bird Cage”

“Changing The World”

“The Fountain Of Neptune”

“Rules Of The Game”

Other Fiction

• Don’t Get Caught — NEW! —

Visit infinityboxpress.com and subscribe to our newsletter to find out about our new releases and other information.

Kate Wilhelm

Kate Wilhelm’s first short story, “The Pint-Sized Genie” was published in Fantastic Stories in 1956. Her first novel, More Bitter Than Death, a mystery, was published in 1963. Over the span of her career, her writing has crossed over the genres of science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy and magical realism, psychological suspense, mimetic, comic, family sagas, a multimedia stage production, and radio plays. She has recently returned to writing mysteries with her Barbara Holloway and the Charlie Meiklejohn and Constance Leidl Mysteries novels. Her works have been adapted for television, theater, and movies in the United States, England, and Germany. Wilhelm’s novels and stories have been translated to more than a dozen languages. She has contributed to Redbook, Quark, Orbit, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Locus, Amazing, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Ellery Queen’s Mysteries, Fantastic Stories, Omni and many others.

Kate and her husband, Damon Knight (1922-2002), also provided invaluable assistance to numerous other writers over the years. Their teaching careers covered a span of several decades, and hundreds of students, many of whom are famous names in the field today. Kate and Damon helped to establish the Clarion Writer’s Workshop and the Milford Writer’s Conference. They have lectured together at universities in North and South America and Asia. They have been the guests of honor and panelists at numerous conventions around the world. Kate continues to host monthly workshops, as well as teach at other events. She is an avid supporter of local libraries.

Kate Wilhelm lives in Eugene, Oregon.