That big boom. Did it mean the United States of America had just gone to war against beings from another world? Was he now living in an H.G. Wells novel? Henry felt a hard, squeezing flutter under his breastbone. If so, this enemy might have more than a few hundred rusty Soviet Scuds to throw back at Uncle Sammy.

Let it go. You can't do anything about any of that. What's next for you, that's the question. What's next for you?

The rave of the jets had already faded to a mutter. He guessed that they would be back, though. Maybe with friends.

'Two paths diverged in a snowy wood, is that how it goes? Something like that, anyway.'

But following the snowmobile's track any farther was really not an option. He'd lose it in the dark half an hour from now, and this new snowfall would wipe it out in any case. He would end up wandering and lost . . . as Jonesy very likely was now.

Sighing, Henry turned away from the snowmobile track and continued along the road.

13

By the time he neared the place where the Deep Cut joined up with the two-lane blacktop known as the Swanny Pond Road, Henry was almost too tired to stand, let alone ski. The muscles in his thighs felt like old wet teabags. Not even the lights on the northwestern horizon, now much brighter, or the sound of the motors and helicopters could offer him much comfort. Ahead of him was a final long, steep hill. On the other side, Deep Cut ended and Swanny Pond began. There he might actually encounter traffic, especially if there were troops being moved in.

'Come on,' he said. 'Come on, come on, come on.' Yet he stood where he was awhile longer. He didn't want to go over that hill. 'Better Underhill than overhill,' he said. That seemed to mean something but it was probably just another idiotic non sequitur non sequitur. Besides, there was nowhere else to go.

He bent, scooped up more snow - in the dark the double handful looked like a small pillowcase. He nibbled some, not because he wanted it but because he really didn't didn't want to start moving again. The lights coming from Gosselin's were more understandable than the lights he and Pete had seen playing in the sky ( want to start moving again. The lights coming from Gosselin's were more understandable than the lights he and Pete had seen playing in the sky (They're back! Becky had screamed, like the little girl sitting in front of the TV in that old Steven Spielberg movie), but Henry liked them even less, somehow. All those motors and generators sounded somehow . . . hungry. Becky had screamed, like the little girl sitting in front of the TV in that old Steven Spielberg movie), but Henry liked them even less, somehow. All those motors and generators sounded somehow . . . hungry.

'That's right, rabbit,' he said. And then, because there really were were no other options, he started up the last hill between him and a real road. no other options, he started up the last hill between him and a real road.

14

He paused at the top, gasping for breath and bent over his skipoles. The wind was stronger up here, and it seemed to go right through his clothing. His left leg throbbed where it had been gored by the turnsignal stalk, and he wondered again if he was incubating a little red-gold colony under the makeshift bandage. Too dark to see, and when the only possible good news would be no news, maybe that was just as well.

'Time slowed, reality bent, on and on the eggman went.' No yuks left in that one, so he started down the hill toward the T-junction where the Deep Cut Road ended.

This side of the hill was steeper and soon he was skiing rather than walking. He picked up speed, not knowing if what he felt was terror, exhilaration, or some unhealthy mix of the two. Certainly he was going too fast for the visibility, which was almost nil, and his abilities, which were as rusty as the clamps holding the skis to his boots. The trees blurred past on either side, and it suddenly occurred to him that all his problems might be solved at a stroke. Not the Hemingway Solution after all. Call this way out the Bono Solution.

His hat blew off his head. He reached for it automatically, one of his poles flailing out ahead of him, half-seen in the dark, and all at once his balance was gone. He was going to take a tumble. And maybe that was good, as long as he didn't break his goddam leg. Falling would stop him, at least. He would just pick himself up, and-

Lights blazed out, big truck-mounted spotlights, and before his vision disappeared into dazzle, Henry glimpsed what might have been a flatbed pulp-truck pulled across the end of the Deep Cut Road. The lights were undoubtedly motion-sensitive, and there was a line of men standing in front of them,

'HALT!' a terrifying, amplified voice commanded. It could have been the voice of God. 'HALT OR WE'LL FIRE!'

Henry went down hard and awkwardly. His skis shot off his feet. One ankle bent painfully enough to make him cry out. He lost one skipole; the other snapped off halfway up its shaft. The wind was knocked out of him in a large, frosty whoop of breath.

He slid, snowplowing with his wide-open crotch, then came to rest, bent limbs forming a shape something like a swastika.

His vision began to come back, and he heard feet crunching in the snow. He flailed and managed to sit up, not able to tell if anything was broken or not.

Six men were standing about ten feet down the hill from him, their shadows impossibly long and crisp on the diamond-dusted new snow. They were all wearing parkas. They all had clear plastic masks over their mouths and noses - these looked more efficient than the painters' masks Henry had found in the snowmobile shed, but Henry had an idea that the basic purpose was the same.

The men also had automatic weapons, all of them pointed at him. It now seemed rather lucky to Henry that he had left Jonesy's Garand and his own Winchester back at the Scout. If he'd had a gun, he might have a dozen or more holes in him by now.

'I don't think I've got it,' he croaked. 'Whatever it is you're worried about, I don't think-'

'ON YOUR, FEET!' God's voice again. Corning from the truck. The men standing in front of him blocked out at least some of the glare and Henry could see more men at the foot of the hill where the roads met. All of them had weapons, too, except for the one holding the bullhorn.

'I don't know if I can g-'

'ON YOUR FEET NOW! NOW!' God commanded, and one of the men in front of him made an expressive little erking motion with the barrel of his gun.

Henry got shakily to his feet. His legs were trembling and the ankle he'd bent was outraged, but everything was holding together, at least for the time being. Thus ends the eggman's journey Thus ends the eggman's journey, he thought, and began to laugh. The men in front of him looked at each other uneasily, and although they pointed their rifles at him again, he was comforted to see even that small demonstration of human emotion.

In the brilliant glow of the lights mounted on the pulper's flatbed, Henry saw something lying in the snow - it had fallen from his pocket when he wiped out. Slowly, knowing they might shoot him anyway, he bent down.

'DON'T TOUCH THAT!' God cried from His loudspeaker atop the cab of the pulp-truck, and now the men down there also raised their weapons, a little hello darkness my old friend peeping from the muzzle of each.

'Bite shit and die,' Henry said - one of the Beav's better efforts - and picked up the package. He held it out to the armed and masked men in front of him, smiling. 'I come in peace for all mankind,' he said. 'Who wants a hot dog?'

CHAPTER TWELVE

JONESY IN THE HOSPITAL

1

This was a dream.

It didn't feel like one, but it had to be. For one thing, he'd already been through March fifteenth once, and it seemed monstrously unfair to have to go through it again. For another, he could remember all sorts of things from the eight months between mid-March and mid-November - helping the kids with their homework, Carla on the phone with her friends (many from the Narcotics Anonymous program), giving a lecture at Harvard . . . and the months of physical rehab, of course. All the endless bends, all the tiresome screaming as his joints stretched themselves out again, oh so reluctantly. He telling Jeannie Morin, his therapist, that he couldn't. She telling him that he could. Tears on his face, big smile on hers (that hateful undeniable juniormiss-smile), and in the end she had turned out to be right. He could, he was the little engine that could, but what a price the little engine had paid.

He could remember all those things and more: getting out of bed for the first time, wiping his ass for the first time, the night in early May when he'd gone to bed thinking I'm going to get through this I'm going to get through this for the first time, the night in late May when he and Carla had made love for the first time since the accident, and afterward he'd told her an old joke: for the first time, the night in late May when he and Carla had made love for the first time since the accident, and afterward he'd told her an old joke: How do porcupines fuck? Very carefully How do porcupines fuck? Very carefully. He could remember watching fireworks on Memorial Day, his hip and upper thigh aching like a bastard; he could remember eating watermelon on the Fourth of July, spitting seeds into the grass and watching Carla and her sisters play badminton, his hip and upper leg still aching but not so fiercely; he could remember Henry calling in September - 'Just to check in,' he'd said - and talking about all sorts of things, including the annual hunting trip to Hole in the Wall come November. 'Sure I'm coming,' Jonesy had said, not knowing then how little he would like the feel of the Garand in his hands. They had talked about their work (Jonesy had taught the final three weeks of summer session, hopping around pretty spryly on one crutch by then), about their families, about the books they had read and the movies they had seen; Henry had mentioned again, as he had in January, that Pete was drinking too much. Jonesy, having already been through one substance-abuse war with his wife, hadn't wanted to talk about that, but when Henry passed along Beaver's suggestion that they stop in Derry and see Duddits Cavell when their week of hunting was over, Jonesy had agreed enthusiastically. It had been too long, and there was nothing like a shot of Duddits to cheer a person up. Also . . .

'Henry?' he had asked. 'We made plans to go see Duddits, didn't we? We were going on St Patrick's Day. I don't remember it, but it's written on my office calendar.'

'Yeah,' Henry had replied. 'As a matter of fact, we did.'

'So much for the luck of the Irish, huh?'

As a result of such memories, Jonesy was positive March fifteenth had already happened. There were all sorts of evidence supporting the thesis, his office calendar being Exhibit A. Yet here they were again, those troublesome Ides . . . and now, oh goddam, how was this this for unfair, now there seemed to be more of the fifteenth than ever. for unfair, now there seemed to be more of the fifteenth than ever.

Previously, his memory of that day faded out at around ten A.M. He'd been in his office, drinking coffee and making a stack of books to take down to the History Department office, where there was a FREE WITH STUDENT ID table. He hadn't been happy, but he couldn't for the life of him remember why. According to the same office calendar on which he had spied the unkept March seventeenth appointment to go see Duddits, he'd had a March fifteenth appointment with a student named David Defuniak. Jonesy couldn't remember what it had been about, but he later found a notation from one of his grad assistants about a make-up essay from Defuniak - short-term results of the Norman Conquest - so he supposed it had been that. Still, what was there in a make-up assignment that could possibly have made Associate Professor Gary Jones feel unhappy?

Unhappy or not, he had been humming something, humming and then scatting the words, which were close to nonsense: Yes we can, yes we can-can, great gosh a'mighty yes we can-can Yes we can, yes we can-can, great gosh a'mighty yes we can-can. There were a few little shreds after that - wishing Colleen, the Department secretary, a nice St Paddy's Day, grabbing a Boston Phoenix from the newspaper box outside the building, dropping a quarter into the saxophone case of a skinhead just over the bridge on the Cambridge side, feeling sorry for the guy because he was wearing a light sweater and the wind coming off the Charles was sharp - but mostly what he remembered after making that stack of giveaway books was darkness. Consciousness had returned in the hospital, with that droning voice from a nearby room: Please stop, I can't stand it, give me a shot, where's Marcy, I want Marcy Please stop, I can't stand it, give me a shot, where's Marcy, I want Marcy. Or maybe it had been where's Jonesy, I want Jonesy where's Jonesy, I want Jonesy. Old creeping death. Death pretending to be a patient. Death had lost track of him - sure, it was possible, it was a big hospital stuffed full of pain, sweating agony out its very seams - and now old creeping death was trying to find him again. Trying to trick him. Trying to make him give himself away.

This time around, though, all that merciful darkness in the middle is gone. This time around he not only wishes Colleen a happy St. Paddy's Day, he tells her a joke: What do you call a Jamaican proctologist? A Pokemon What do you call a Jamaican proctologist? A Pokemon. He goes out, his future self - his November November self - riding in his March head like a stowaway. His future self hears his March self think foat a beautiful day it turned out to be as he starts walking towards his appointment with destiny in Cambridge. He tries to tell his March self that this is a bad idea, a grotesquely bad idea, that he can save himself months of agony just by hailing a Red Top or taking the T, but he can't get through. Perhaps all the science-fiction stories he read about time when he was a teenager had it right: you can't change the past, no matter how you try. self - riding in his March head like a stowaway. His future self hears his March self think foat a beautiful day it turned out to be as he starts walking towards his appointment with destiny in Cambridge. He tries to tell his March self that this is a bad idea, a grotesquely bad idea, that he can save himself months of agony just by hailing a Red Top or taking the T, but he can't get through. Perhaps all the science-fiction stories he read about time when he was a teenager had it right: you can't change the past, no matter how you try.

He walks across the bridge, and although the wind is a little cold, he still enjoys the sun on his face and the way it breaks into a million bright splinters on the Charles. He sings a snatch of 'Here Comes the Sun,' then reverts to the Pointer Sisters: Yes we cancan, great gosh a'mighty. Yes we cancan, great gosh a'mighty. Swinging his briefcase in rhythm. His sandwich is inside. Egg salad. Mmm-mmmm, Henry said. SSDD, Henry said. Swinging his briefcase in rhythm. His sandwich is inside. Egg salad. Mmm-mmmm, Henry said. SSDD, Henry said.

Here is the saxophonist, and surprise: he's not on the end of the Mass Ave Bridge but farther up, by the MIT campus, outside one of those funky little Indian restaurants. He's shivering in the cold, bald, with nicks on his scalp suggesting he wasn't cut out to be a barber. The way he's playing 'These Foolish Things' suggests he wasn't cut out to be a horn-player, either, and Jonesy wants to tell him to be a carpenter, an actor, a terrorist, anything but a musician. Instead, Jonesy actually encourages him, not dropping the quarter he previously remembered into the guy's case (it's lined with scuffed purple velvet), but a whole fistful of change - these foolish things, indeed. He blames it on the first warm sun after a long cold winter; he blames it on how well things turned out with Defuniak.