"Ted's an a.s.shole. He isn't even here." I wondered where here was. I wondered who I was talking to. She was holding my hand. "I want to be dead too. Everybody else gets to be dead-why can't I?"

"Because once you're dead, you can't change your mind about it."

"I don't want to change my mind. Being dead can't be all that bad. n.o.body who was dead ever complained about it, did they? Like Shorty. Shorty's dead. He was my best friend-and I didn't even know him. And my dad. And Marcie's dog. And the little girl. Oh, G.o.d"-I started to cry then-"we shot a little girl! I was there, I saw it! And Dr. Obama-she told me it was all right! But it wasn't! That's all bulls.h.i.t! She's still dead! We didn't even try to save her! And I didn't see any Chtorrans! Everybody else said there were Chtorrans, but I didn't see any Chtorrans!" I wiped at my face, wiped the snot away from my nose. "I didn't believe in the Chtorrans. I never even saw the pictures. How was I to know?" The words bubbled up in my throat, tumbling out one after another. "I saw the Chtorran kill Shorty. I burned it. And I saw them feeding dogs to the Chtorran. Marcie's dog. I saw them bring the Chtorran onto the stage. Dr. Zymph checked the gla.s.s-oh, G.o.d-I saw it break. The Chtorran just boiled out into the auditorium. I saw the people running-I saw it-" I was choking on my own sobs now. She was holding my hand tight I wiped at my face again, but she was there with a tissue. I took it and mopped at my nose and eyes. Why was I crying, I wondered. And why was I saying all of this?

"Don't go away!!" I said suddenly.

"I'm right here."

"Stay with me."

"It's all right, I'm right here."

"Who are you?"

"It's Dinnie."

"Dinnie? I don't know any Dinnie." Or did I? Why did the name sound familiar? "What's wrong with me?"

She patted my hand. "Nothing's wrong with you that won't get better. Are you through crying?"

I thought about it. "Yeah, I guess so."

"You going to open your eyes?"

"No."

"Okay. Don't."

I opened my eyes. Green. The ceiling was green. The room was small and dimly lit. A hospital? I blinked in confusion. "Where am I?"

"Reagan Memorial."

I turned my head to look at her. She wasn't as weird-looking as I remembered. She was still holding my hand. "Hi," I said.

"Hi," she said. "Feeling better?"

I nodded. "Why did you wake me up?"

"House rules. Anyone on pentothal has to be awakened when they come out of surgery, so we're sure they can handle their own breathing."

"Oh," I said. I was covered with blankets. I couldn't feel anything. "What happened?"

She looked unhappy. "The Chtorran killed twenty-three people. Fourteen more died in the panic. Thirty-four were injured, five of them critically. Two of those are not expected to live." She eyed me critically. "In case you're wondering, you will."

I started to ask, "Who-" But my voice cracked and I didn't finish the sentence.

"'Who' what?"

"Who was killed?"

"They haven't released any names yet."

"Oh. So you don't know."

I couldn't fathom her expression. She looked oddly satisfied. "Well, I can tell you this-some of the Fourth World delegations are going to have to be restaffed. We've filled up two wings and the morgue with them. They were all sitting in the first five rows. And the worm threw himself across that whole section."

Something occurred to me then, but I didn't say it. Instead, I asked, "How did it get out?"

"They had the wrong kind of gla.s.s in the cage. They thought they had hundred-strength. It was only ten. There's going to be an investigation, but it looks like there was some kind of foul-up in supply. n.o.body knew."

I tried to sit up and couldn't. I was strapped to the bed.

"Uh, don't," Dinnie said, putting her hand on my chest gently. "You've got five broken ribs and a punctured lung. You're lucky you didn't hit a major blood vessel. You were under that Chtorran for fifteen minutes before we got you out. You were on CPR maintenance for at least thirteen of those minutes."

"Who-?"

"Me. And you're lucky, buster, because I'm d.a.m.ned good at it. It's a good thing you took a step back before he fell on you, else I wouldn't have been able to reach your face with the mask-or your chest with the thumper. It took seven men to roll that Chtorran off. They wanted to flame it, but I wouldn't get out of the way. You can thank me later. They weren't too happy about it. Who have you got mad at you anyway? I never saw so many angry men with torches. But I don't abandon my patients. By the way, I think one of those broken ribs is mine. Don't ask. I couldn't be gentle. Oh, and you've also got a fractured kneecap. You were on the table five hours." She hesitated and then mouthed the words, "On purpose."

"Huh?"

She leaned over me to fluff my pillow, and as she did her mouth came very close to my ear. "Somebody didn't want me to save you," she whispered.

"Huh?"

"Sorry," she said out loud. "Here, let me fluff that better."

Again, she whispered, "And they wanted to let you die on the table. But you're under medical protection here, and n.o.body's going to be allowed to see you without a nurse present. Me."

"Uh . . ." I shut my mouth.

Sitting back again, she said, "By the way, you may be a hero. Some of the doors in that room were jammed. No telling how many people that thing might have killed if you hadn't stopped it before the rest of the cavalry arrived."

"Oh." I remembered the Chtorran swinging around and starting toward me, and suddenly, I was nauseous Dinnie saw the look of alarm on my face, and was there with a basin almost immediately. My stomach lurched and my throat convulsed-and there were cold iron claws digging into my chest "Here!" She shoved a pillow into my arms, wrapped me around it so it splinted my abdomen and chest. "Hang onto that." -nothing came up. I retched again, and then once more. Each time the pain dug into me again.

"Don't worry about your incision-you're well-glued. I did it myself. You won't splatter."

But the feeling had pa.s.sed. The pain had blotted out the need to vomit.

I looked at Dinnie. She grinned back. And in that moment, I resented her all over again. For her presumption of such familiarity. And then I felt guilty for resenting her when I owed her so much. And then I resented her for making me feel guilty.

"How are you feeling now?"

I took inventory. "I feel like s.h.i.t."

"Right. You look like it too." She got up then and went to the door and whistled. "Hey, Fido-!"

A ROVER unit trundled in then and wheeled up to the bed. She plucked a handful of sensors out of the basket on top-they looked like poker chips-and started sticking them to various points on my chest and forehead, neck and arms. "Three for EKG, three for EEG, two for pressure and pulse, two for the pathologist, one for accounting and an extra one for luck," she said, reciting the nurse's mnemonic.

"Accounting?" I asked.

"Sure. It automatically checks your credit rating while you're lying there, so we know how much to charge."

"Uh, yeah."

She turned to the ROVER unit and studied its screen. "Well, bad news for your enemies. You'll live. But a word of advice: next time you try to make love to a Chtorran, you be the boy. You're a lot safer on top."

She peeled off the sensors then and dropped them back into the basket. "I'll leave you now. Can you fall asleep by yourself, or do you want a buzz-box?"

I shook my head.

"Terrif. I'll be back with your breakfast."

And then I was alone again. With my thoughts. I had a lot to think about. But I fell asleep before I could sort things out.

THIRTY-SIX.

I WAS back in Whitlaw's cla.s.sroom.

I felt panicky. I hadn't studied for the test-I didn't even know there was to be one. And this was the final exam!

I looked around. There were people here I didn't know, but as I looked at them, their faces solidified into familiarity. Shorty, Duke, Ted, Lizard, Marcie, Colonel Wallachstein, the j.a.panese lady, the dark fellow, Dinnie, Dr. Fromkin, Paul Jastrow, Maggie, Tim, Mark-and Dad. And then a lot of other people I didn't recognize. A little too many.

Whitlaw was in front of the room, making sounds. They didn't make sense. I stood up and said so. He looked at me. They all looked at me. I was in the front of the cla.s.sroom and Whitlaw was in my seat.

A little girl in a brown dress was sitting in the front row. Next to her, just sliding up, a gigantic orange and red Chtorran. He turned his blackeyed gaze to me and seemed to settle down to listen.

"C'mon, Jim!" Whitlaw hollered. "We're waiting!"

I was angry. I didn't know why. "All right," I said. "Listen, I know I'm a screwup and an a.s.shole. That part is obvious. But, see, what I've been doing is a.s.suming that the rest of you aren't. I mean, here I am listening to you people making noises like you know what you're doing, and I've been believing you! What an a.s.shole I am! The truth is, you people don't know what you're doing either-not any more than I do-so what I'm telling you is that my experience is just as valid, or just as invalid, as yours. But whatever it is, it's my experience, and I'm the one who's going to be responsible for it."

They applauded. Whitlaw raised his hand. I pointed at him. He stood up. "It's about time," he said. He sat down.

"You're the worst, Whitlaw!" I said. "You're so good at pouring your bulls.h.i.t into other people's heads that it keeps floating to the top for years afterward. I mean, you gave us all these great belief systems about how to live our lives and then when we tried to plug into them, they didn't work. All they did was create inappropriate behavior."

Whitlaw said, "You know better than that. I never gave you a belief system. What I gave you was the ability to be independent of a belief system, so you could deal with the facts as they happened to you."

"Yeah? So how come every time I try to do that, you come in and give me another lecture?"

Whitlaw said, "If you've been inviting me into your head and letting me run my lectures on you, that's your fault. It isn't me who's doing that. It's you. You're the one running those lectures. I'm dead, Jim. I've been dead for two years. You know that. So quit asking me for advice. You're living in a world I know nothing about. Quit asking me for advice and you'll be a h.e.l.luva lot better off. Or ask me for advice, if it's advice you want-and if it isn't appropriate, then ignore it. Get this, a.s.shole: advice isn't the same as orders; it's only another option for a person to consider. All it's supposed to do is widen your perspective on the thing you're looking at. Use it that way. But don't blame me if you don't know how to listen."

"Must you always be right?" I asked. "Sometimes it gets awfully annoying."

Whitlaw shrugged. "Sorry, son. But that's the way you keep creating me."

He was right. Again. He always would be. Because that was how I would always create him.

There were no other hands. "Then we're clear? I'm running this life from now on? Right."

I looked at the little girl in the brown dress. She didn't have a face. And then she did. It was Marcie's face ... and Jillanna's face ... and Lizard's face....

I turned to the Chtorran. "I have some questions for you," I said.

It nodded its eyes, and then looked into my face again. "Who are you?" I asked.

The Chtorran spoke in a voice like a whisper. "I don't know," it said. "Yet."

"What are you? Are you intelligent? Or what? Are you the invaders? Or the shock troops?"

Again the Chtorran said, "I don't know."

"What about the dome? Why was there a fourth Chtorran inside?"

The Chtorran waved its eyes from side to side, the Chtorran equivalent of a headshake. "I don't know," it said, and its voice was louder. Like the wind.

"How did you get here? Where are your s.p.a.ceships?" "I don't know!" it said. And it was roaring now. "How can we talk to you-?"

"I DON'T KNOW!" And it was raising up in front of me as if to attack "I AM IN CHARGE HERE!" I bellowed right back at him. "AND I WANT SOME ANSWERS!"

"I DON'T KNOW!!" the Chtorran shrieked-and exploded into a thousand flaming pieces, destroying himself, destroying me, destroying the little girl sitting next to him, the cla.s.sroom, Whitlaw, Shorty, all the people, everything-dropping it all into darkness....

THIRTY-SEVEN.

TED WAS sitting in the chair, looking at me. His head was bandaged.

"Did it get you too?" I asked.

"Did what get me?"

"The Chtorran. Your head is bandaged-did the Chtorran get you too?"

He grinned. "Jim, it's Wednesday. I just had my surgery this morning. They wouldn't let me in to see you before this."