Rhodes and Gunniston were moving toward the door, their business done. "We will," Rhodes said.

"Again, sorry about all the commotion."

"Don't worry about it. h.e.l.l, you gave everybody somethin' to jaw about at the dinner table!"

"Not much jawing, I hope."

"Oh. Right. Don't you worry about a thing. You can count on Ed Vance, yes sir!"

"I know we can. Thank you, Sheriff." Rhodes shook Vance's hand, and for an instant the sheriff thought his knuckles were going to explode. Then Rhodes released him and Vance was left with a sickly smile on his face as the two air-force officers left the building and strode out into the hot white light.

"Wow." Vance ma.s.saged his aching fingers. "Fella don't look as strong as he is."

"Man, wait'll I tell Doris about this!" Mayor Brett's voice was shaking and thrilled. "I met a real colonel! Lordy, she won't believe a word of it!"

Danny walked to a window and peered out through the blind; he watched the two men moving away, heading toward Republica Road. He frowned thoughtfully and picked at a hangnail. "Object," he said.

"Huh? You say somethin', Danny boy?"

"Object." Danny turned toward Vance and Brett. He had sorted out what bothered him. "That colonel said Dr. Hammond probably saw the 'object' go past. How come he didn't say 'meteor'?"

Vance paused. His face was blank, his thought processes unhurried. "Same thing, ain't it?" he finally asked.

"Yes sir. I guess. I just wonder why he put it that way."

"Well, you ain't paid to wonder, Danny boy. We've got our orders from the United States Air Force, and we'll do just what Colonel Rhodes says do."

Danny nodded and returned to his desk.

"Met a real air-force colonel!" Mayor Brett said. "Lordy, I'd better get back to my office in case people call and want to know what all the ruckus is. Think that'd be a good idea?" Vance agreed that it would be, and Johnny Brett hurried out the door and just about ran to the bank building, where the electric sign spelled out 87F. at ten-nineteen.

9 Tic-Tac-Toe

Jessie had seen the helicopter come down in Preston Park as Xavier Mendoza pulled the wrecker into his Texaco station and cut the engine. While Mendoza and his daytime helper, a lean and sullen young Apache named Sonny Crowfield, labored to unhook the pickup and get it into a garage stall, Stevie walked away a few paces with the ebony sphere between her hands; she had no interest in the helicopter, or what its presence might mean.

A Buick that had once been bright red, now faded to a pinkish cast by the sun, slid off Republica Road and pulled up to the garage stalls. "Howdy, doc!" the man at the wheel called; he got out, and Jessie's eyes were bombarded by Dodge Creech's green-and-orange plaid sport jacket. He strode jauntily toward her, his fat round face split by a grin that was all blinding-white caps. One glance at the pickup stopped him in his tracks. "Gag a maggot! That ain't a wreck, it's a carca.s.s! "

"It's pretty bad, all right."

Creech looked into the mangled engine and gave a low, trilling whistle. "Rest in peace," he said. "Or pieces, I might say." His laugh was a strangled cackle, like a chicken struggling to squeeze out a square egg. He recovered quickly when he saw that Jessie did not share his humor. "Sorry. I know this truck put in a lot of miles for you. Lucky n.o.body got hurt-uh-you and Stevie are okay, right?"

"I'm fine." Jessie glanced over at her daughter; Stevie had found a slice of shadow at the building's far corner, and looked to be intently examining the black ball. "Stevie's... been shaken up, but she's okay. No injuries, I mean."

"Glad to hear that, surely am." Creech dug a lemon-yellow paisley handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and mopped the moisture off his face. His slacks were almost the same shade of yellow, and he wore two-tone yellow-on-white shoes. He owned a closetful of polyester suits in a garish rainbow of colors, and though he read Esquire and GQ avidly, his fashion sense remained as raucous as a Sat.u.r.day night rodeo. His wife, Ginger, had sworn she would divorce him if he wore his iridescent red suit to church again. He believed in the power of a man's image, he often told her-and anyone who would listen; if you were scared to make people notice you, he said, you might as well sink on down and let the ground swallow you whole. He was a big, fleshy man in his early forties who always offered a quick smile and a handshake, and he'd sold some form of insurance to almost all the residents of Inferno. In his broad, ruddy-cheeked face his eyes were as blue as a baby's blanket, and he was bald except for a fringe of red hair and a little red tuft atop his forehead that he kept meticulously combed. He touched the gaping hole in the pickup's engine. "Looks like a cannon hit you, doc. Want to tell me what happened?"

Jessie began; she registered Stevie standing nearby, then focused all her attention on telling Dodge Creech the story.

Stevie, comfortable in the cool shadow, was watching the black ball do magic. Her fingerprints had begun to appear in vivid blue again; it was a color that reminded her of pictures of the ocean, or of that swimming pool at the motel in Dallas where they'd spent last summer vacation. She drew a cactus with her fingernail, watched as the blue picture slowly melted away. She drew scrawls and swirls and circles, and all the patterns drifted down into the ball's dark center. This is even better than fingerpaints! she thought. You didn't have to clean anything up, and there wasn't any way to spill the paints-except there was only one color, but that was okay, because it sure was pretty. Stevie had an idea; she drew a little grid across the black ball and began to fill it with X s and O s. Tic-tac-toe, she knew the game was called. Her daddy was very good at it, and had been teaching her. She filled in all the X s and O s herself, finding that the O s linked up across the bottom row; the grid melted away, and Stevie drew another one. X s won this time, in a diagonal line. Time for a third grid, as this one melted away as well. Again, X s won. She remembered that her daddy said the middle s.p.a.ce was the most important, so she started an O there and, indeed, the O s won.

"What'cha got there, kid?"

Stevie looked up, startled. Sonny Crowfield was staring at her; his black hair hung to his shoulders, and his eyes were black under thick black brows. "What is it?" he asked, wiping his greasy hands on a rag. "A toy?"

She nodded and said nothing.

He grunted. "Looks like a piece of s.h.i.t to me." He sneered, and then Mendoza called him and he returned to the garage.

"You're a piece of s.h.i.t," she said to Crowfield's back-but not too loudly, because she knew s.h.i.t was not a nice word. And then she looked back at the black ball, and she caught her breath with a gasp. Another blue-lined grid had been drawn in it. The grid was full of X s and O s, and X had won the game across the top row.

It slowly faded away, back into the depths.

She had not drawn that grid. And she did not draw the one that began to appear, the lines precise and as thin as if sketched with a razor, on the surface of the black ball. Stevie felt her fingers loosen. She almost dropped the ball, but she remembered her mother saying not to. The tic-tac-toe grid was complete in another couple of seconds, and the X s and O s began to appear. She started to call for her mama, but Jessie was still talking to Dodge Creech; Stevie watched the grid's s.p.a.ces being filled-and then, on an impulse, she put an X in one of them as soon as the ball's inner finger had finished an O.

There was no further response. The grid slowly vanished.

A few seconds ticked past; the ball remained solidly black. I broke it, Stevie thought sadly. It's not going to play anymore!

But something moved down in the depths of the sphere-a brief burst of blue that quickly faded. The razor-sharp lines of another grid began to come up, and Stevie watched as an O appeared in the center s.p.a.ce. Then there was a pause; Stevie's heart jumped, because she realized whatever was inside the black ball was inviting her to play. She chose a s.p.a.ce on the bottom row and drew an X. An O appeared in the upper left, and there was another pause for Stevie to decide on her move. The game ended quickly, with a diagonal of O s from upper left to lower right. Another grid appeared as soon as the last vanished, and again an O was drawn in the center s.p.a.ce. Stevie frowned; whatever it was, it already knew the game too well. But she bravely made her move and lost even faster than before.

"Stevie? Show Mr. Creech what hit us."

She jumped. Her mother and Dodge Creech were standing nearby, but neither of them had seen what she was doing. She thought Mr. Creech's coat looked like somebody had sewn it while they had their finger stuck in an electric socket. "Can I take a gander, hon?" he asked, smiling, and held out his hand. Stevie hesitated. The ball was cool and utterly black again, all the traces of the grids gone. She didn't want to give it up to that big, stranger's hand. But her mother was watching, expecting her to obey, and she knew she'd already disobeyed far too much today. She gave him the black ball-and as soon as her fingers left it and Mr. Creech had it in his hand, she heard the sigh of the wind chimes singing to her again.

"This did the damage?" Creech blinked slowly, weighing the object in his palm. "Doc, you sure about that?"

"As sure as I can be. I know it's light, but it's the right size; like I said, it was lodged up in the wheel well after it went through the engine."

"I just can't see how somethin' like this could've busted through metal. Feels like gla.s.s, kinda. Or wet plastic." He ran his fingers over the smooth surface; Stevie noted that they left no blue fingerprints. The wind-chimes music was insistent, yearning, and Stevie thought, It needs me. "So this is what blew out of the thing that went by, huh?" Dodge Creech held it up to the sun, could see nothing inside it. "Never seen the like of this before. Any idea what it is? "

"None," Jessie said. "I expect whoever came down in that helicopter might know. Three of them were following it."

"I don't rightly know what to put in my report," Creech admitted. "I mean, you're covered for collision and injuries and all, but I don't think Texas Pride'll understand that a plastic baby bowlin' ball tore a hole smack dab through a pickup's engine. What're you plannin' on doin' with it?"

"Turning it over to Vance, just as soon as we can get over there."

"Well, I'll be glad to take you. I don't think your pickup's goin' anywhere."

"Mama?" Stevie asked. "What'll the sheriff do with it?"

"I don't know. Maybe send it somewhere to try to figure out what it is. Maybe try to break it open."

The wind-chimes music pulled at her. She thought that the black ball was begging her to take it again; of course she couldn't understand why Mr. Creech or her mother didn't hear the wind chimes too, or what exactly was making the music, but she heard it as the call of a playmate. Try to break it open, she thought, and flinched inside. Oh, no. Oh, no, that wouldn't be right. Because whatever was in the black ball would be hurt if it was cracked open, like a turtle would be hurt if its sh.e.l.l was broken. Oh, no! She looked up imploringly at her mother. "Do we have to give it away? Can't we just take it home and keep it?"

"Hon, I'm afraid we can't." Jessie touched the child's cheek. "I'm sorry, but we've got to give it to the sheriff. Okay?"

Stevie didn't answer. Mr. Creech was holding the black ball down at his side in a loose grip. "Well," Mr. Creech said, "why don't we head on over and see Vance right now?" He started to turn away to walk to his car.

The music pained her and gave her courage. She'd never done anything like what streaked through her mind to do; such a thing was a sure invitation to a spanking, but she knew she would have only one chance. Later she could explain why she'd done it, and later always seemed a long way off. Mr. Creech took one step toward his car. And then Stevie darted forward, past her mother, and plucked the black ball from Dodge Creech's hand; the wind-chimes music stopped as her fingers curled around the ball, and Stevie knew she'd done the right thing.

"Stevie!" Jessie cried out, shocked. "Give that back to-"

But the little girl was running, clutching the black ball close. She ran around the corner of Mendoza's gas station, from shadow into sunlight, narrowly missed ramming into the trash dumpster, and kept going between two cacti as tall as Mr. Creech.

"Stevie!" Jessie came around the corner, saw the little girl running across somebody's backyard, heading toward Brazos Street. "Come back here this minute! " Jessie called, but Stevie didn't stop and she knew the child wasn't going to. Stevie ran along a wire-mesh fence, turned a corner, and had reached Brazos; she disappeared from sight. " Stevie! " Jessie tried again, but it was no use.

"I do believe she wants to keep that thing, don't you?" Creech asked, standing behind Jessie.

"I don't know what's gotten into her! I swear, she's been acting crazy ever since we got hit! Dodge, I'm sorry about this. I don't-"

"Forget about it." He grunted and shook his head. "Little lady can fly when she wants to, can't she?"

"She's probably heading home. Dammit!" She was almost too stunned to speak. "Will you give me a ride to the house?"

"Sure thing. Come on."

They hurried back around the corner to Creech's Buick-and two men, one in the uniform of an air-force officer, were standing beside it. "Dr. Hammond?" the man with a black crewcut said, stepping forward. "We need to talk."

10 Blue Void

Still cradling the black ball, Stevie reached the house and paused to search beneath the bay window for the white rock that opened to reveal an extra house key tucked away inside. She was out of breath, still shaking from being chased by a dog as she ran along Brazos Street; the dog, a big Doberman, had snarled and leaped at her, but it had been chained to a pole in the yard and the chain had snapped it back. She hadn't even stopped to thumb her nose at it, because she knew her mother and Mr. Creech would be coming after her.

She found the white stone and the key and got into the house. The air conditioning chilled the perspiration on her skin, and she walked into the kitchen, pulled a chair over to stand on, got a Flintstones gla.s.s from the cupboard, and poured herself a gla.s.s of cold water from a pitcher in the refrigerator. The black ball was still cool, and she rubbed it over her cheeks and forehead. She listened for the sound of Mr. Creech's car pulling up out front. It wasn't there yet, but it would be soon.

"They want to break you open," she said to her playmate inside the ball. "I don't think that would be very nice, do you?"

Of course it didn't answer. It might know how to play tic-tac-toe, but it had no voice except for the singing.

Stevie took the ball into her room. Should she try to hide it somewhere? she wondered. Surely her mother wouldn't make her give it up after she'd explained about the music, and how the black ball had a playmate deep inside it. She thought of places to hide it: under her bed, in the closet, in her chest of drawers, in her toychest. No, none of those seemed safe enough. Mr. Creech's car wasn't there yet; she still had time to find a good hiding place.

She was mulling it over when the telephone rang. It kept on ringing, and Stevie decided to answer it since, at the moment, she was the lady of the house. She picked it up. "'Lo?"

"Young lady, you're in for a spanking!" Jessie's voice was mock furious, but genuinely relieved. "You could've been killed, hit by a car or something!"

"I'm all right." Better not to say anything about the dog, she decided.

"I'd like to know just what you think you're doing! I'm getting pretty tired of the way you've been acting today!"

"I'm sorry," Stevie said in a small voice. "But I heard the singing again, and I had to get it away from Mr. Creech 'cause I don't want it to get broken."

"That's not for us to decide. Stevie, I'm surprised at you! You've never done anything like this before!"

Stevie's eyes burned with tears. Hearing her mama speak this way was worse than a spanking; her mama could not hear the singing and would not understand about the playmate. "I won't do it again, Mama," she promised.

"I'm very disappointed in you. I thought I'd taught you better manners. Now I want you to listen to me: I'm still at Mr. Mendoza's, but I'm going to be home soon. I want you to stay there. Do you hear me?"

"Yes ma'am."

"All right." Jessie paused; she was mad, but not mad enough to hang up and leave it like this. "You frightened me by running off like that. You could've gotten hurt. Do you understand why I'm upset?"

"Yes. 'Cause I was bad."

"Because you were wrong," Jessie corrected. "But we'll talk about it when I get home. I love you very much, Stevie, and that's why I got so angry. Do you see?"

She said, "Yes. And I love you too, Mama. I'm sorry."

"Okay. You just stay there, and I'll see you later. 'Bye."

"'Bye." They hung up at about the same time, and at the Texaco station Jessie turned to Colonel Rhodes and said, "Meteor my a.s.s."

Stevie's tears dried. She returned to her room with the black ball, which was showing blotches of blue on its surface. Now the idea of hiding it bothered her, but she didn't want it broken to pieces, either. She'd been bad-no, wrong-enough for one day; but what was she to do? She crossed her room and looked out her window at the sun-washed street, trying to figure out what was the right thing: to hide the black ball, in disobedience of her mother, or give it up and let it be broken open. Her mind reached a dead end beyond which she could not think, and in the next moment she decided to entertain her playmate as well as possible before Mr. Creech's car arrived.

She wandered over to her collection of gla.s.s figurines on a table. Within the black ball there was a line of blue, like an eyelid beginning to open. She said, "Ballerina," and pointed to the dancing gla.s.s figure, her favorite. Then: "Horse. This one is like Sweetpea, only Sweetpea's a real horse and this is made of gla.s.s. Sweetpea is a pal... a pal..." She still had trouble with some words. "A 'mino," she said, giving up the struggle. She pointed to the next: "Mouse. Do you know what a mouse is? It eats cheese and doesn't like cats."

At the center of the black sphere, there were little cracklings of blue like fireworks going off. Stevie picked her Raggedy Ann doll off the bed. "This is Annie Laredo. Say h.e.l.lo, Annie. Say we're glad you came to visit today. Annie's a rodeo girl," she told the black ball, and then, continuing around the room, came to her bulletin board. On it were construction-paper cutouts that her father had helped her put up. She pointed to the first. "A... B...C...D...E...F...G... that's the alphabet. Know what the alphabet is?" Something struck her as very important. "You don't even know my name!" she said, and held the ball up before her face. She watched the stirrings of color at its center, like beautiful fish swimming inside an aquarium. "It's Stevie. I know how to spell it. S-T-E-V-I-E: Stevie. That's me."

Also on the bulletin board were pictures of animals and insects clipped from magazines. Stevie lifted the ball so her playmate could see, and touched each picture as she said the names: "Lion... that's from the jungle. Ost... ostr... that's a big bird. Dolphin"-she p.r.o.nounced it daufin-"and those swim in the ocean. Eagle... that flies really high. Gra.s.shopper... those jump a lot." She came to the final picture.

"Scor... scorp... a stinger," she said, and touched it too, though it was her least favorite and her father had put it up as a reminder not to walk barefoot outside.

What resembled tiny bolts of lightning curled up from the sphere's center and danced across its inner surface; they connected briefly with Stevie's fingers, and a cold tingling shot through her hand all the way to her elbow before it subsided. The sensation startled her, but it wasn't painful; she watched the lightning bolts arc and pulse inside the ball, as its center of brilliant blue continued to grow. More entranced than scared, Stevie held the ball between both hands. The lightning bolts curled out and touched her hands, and for a few seconds she thought she heard her hair crackle like Rice Krispies. She thought that just maybe she should put it down now. There was a storm inside the black ball, and the storm was getting worse. It occurred to her that her playmate might not have liked something she showed it on her bulletin board.

She took two steps toward the bed, intending to gently put the ball down and wait for her mother to get home.

But she didn't make it another step.

The black ball suddenly burst into an incandescent, frightening blue. She started to open her fingers and drop it, but the movement was too late.

The tiny lightning bolts shot from its surface, intertwined through her fingers, continued up her arms and shoulders, wrapped like smoke around her throat, and leapt up her nostrils, into her widened eyeb.a.l.l.s, coc.o.o.ning her head and piercing through her skull. There was no pain, but in her ears was a low murmur like distant thunder, or a steady and powerful voice unlike anything she'd ever heard. Her hair jumped with sparks, her head rocking back and her mouth opening in a soft, stunned exhalation: "Oh."

She smelled an odor of burning. My hair's on fire! she thought wildly, and tried to put it out with her hands but they would no longer obey. She wanted to scream and tears were in her eyes, but the thunder voice in her head swelled up and crashed over her senses; she felt herself lifted up as if by waves, pulled down again into a blue swirling place where there was no bottom nor top. It was cool here, and quiet, far from the storm that raged somewhere else. The blue void closed around her, held her firmly, continued to draw her deeper. Only she was no longer in her skin; she seemed to be made of light, and weighed as much as a feather in the wind. It was not a fearsome thing, and she was amazed that she was not afraid-or, at least, not crying. She did not fight it, because fighting seemed a bad thing. It was a good thing to drift down in this blue place, and to rest. To rest, and to dream; because she was certain this was a place where dreams lived, and they would find her if she did not try to fight. She slept, as the blue currents folded around her, and the first dreams came in the shape of Sweetpea, her mother and father already astride the golden horse and urging her to join them for a long day where there was no sadness, only pure blue sky and sunshine.

Stevie's body fell backward, hitting the floor on its right shoulder. The ball, blue and pulsing, jarred loose from the frozen hands and rolled under the bed, where it slowly turned to ebony again.

11 Transformation

"I don't know what kind of bulls.h.i.t you're trying to throw," Jessie said, "but it was no meteor. You know that as well as I do."