'Give me your address,' Terry said.

Terry arrived at Herb's motel thirty minutes later. It was in an old part of town, where faded paint peeled off dusty buildings. Room 204 was on the second floor, at the far end * of a narrow corridor that overlooked an empty swimming pool. Herb had worked on the s.p.a.ce station at high union wages, but either he saved every penny, or else he sent them all to his mother. Terry climbed the steps reluctantly. A grandson of his old ulcer began to burn into the other side of his guts. The books in the coffee shop had been interesting to read and all that. But what if these creatures really were able to cross vast distances in the blink of an eye? He might be walking to his death.

The lights in room 204 were on. Terry knocked softly on the door. There was no answer. He knocked harder. No one responded. He tried the doork.n.o.b. It was locked.

'Herb?' he called. 'It's Terry. Let me in.'

Still, no answer. Terry thought of Lisa Jackson. He ran to the manager's office.

The woman at the desk was as rough as her voice. Her face had as many lines on it as the leather of her raunchy cowboy boots. The fat ashtray beside her left elbow was glutted with cigarette b.u.t.ts. Terry thought he could see tobacco stains in her hard gray eyes. Terry identified himself as Herb's friend and asked for a key to room 204.

'Against the rules, my friend.' She blew a cloud of smoke in the air. He'd always hated cigarette smoke. It was no wonder he had to get drunk when he went to bars. 'You want a key, you've got to pay for it.'

He pulled out his wallet. 'How much? Room 204. One night.'

She sat back in surprise and then shrugged. Then she put out her cigarette and grabbed a large bra.s.s circle loaded with keys. She spoke wearily. 'You can have a look at your gay lover if it means that much to you. Come on.'

'Thanks.'

He followed her to Herb's door. There he stuck out his hand for the keys and suggested that it would be better if he went first. The remark must have confirmed in the woman's own mind that he was gay. She snickered as she handed over the bra.s.s circle. Terry inserted the key and opened the door.

Herb was alone in the room. He lay asleep on the bed beneath the blankets, his eyes closed. Every light in the room was on. Terry crossed to his side and shook him gently. Herb did not wake up. A plastic bottle containing red capsules stood on the bedstand near Herb's head. There was also a nearly empty water gla.s.s. For a moment Terry thought Herb had caught a cold and was taking antibiotics. Lauren had once prescribed similar-looking pills for Terry when he had been ill. He picked up the bottle and studied the label. Unfortunately, the pills were not penicillin, but phen.o.barbital. Herb was not sleeping. Half the bottle was gone. Terry touched Herb's neck. Herb was dead.

I should have called. I promised him I would.

'Is he a stiff?' the motel manager asked at his back.

'What?' Terry whispered.

'Did your friend go and kill himself? Horses.h.i.t, yes, he did. With those pills there. Man, this is the third one this year. These f.a.ggots and their drugs. Got to call the police now. You'll have to fill out the papers. Don't go thinking I will. I've got enough problems of my own.'

'I'll fill out the papers,' Terry said taking hold of Herb's cold hands. 'But I'd appreciate it if you called the police. I'd like to be alone with him for a few minutes.'

The woman paused at the door. 'Do you know why he did it?'

Terry swallowed thickly. 'He was afraid of the dark.' While waiting for the police to arrive, Terry found an open Bible resting under the blankets across Herb's chest. It was turned to Psalms. Terry read several of them aloud to Herb. He was still reading when an officer tapped him on the shoulder and asked if he would mind coming down to the station to answer a few questions. Terry said fine. At the station he filled out papers that asked for his name, address, and phone number. He also had to explain his relationship to the deceased. He told them he had met Herb for the first time that afternoon, interviewing him for a possible article on the return of Project Nova. Terry explained that Herb had appeared upset over the recent suicide of Lisa Jackson, who had been a friend of Herb's aboard s.p.a.ce Station One. The sergeant in charge nodded sympathetically. He appeared satisfied there had been no foul play, but he asked Terry if he would mind hanging around until they got the results back from the autopsy. A coroner was presently on duty in the lab. The sergeant thought it would only be a couple of hours. Terry said all right. At least at the police station he was around other people, and they carried guns.

Terry ended up being the one to contact Herb's parents. The sergeant traced them through NASA. Terry woke up the mother and father in Chicago at four in the morning. You must be mistaken, they said, our boy would never kill himself. They thought it was a crank call, but then the sergeant took the phone from Terry's hand and confirmed the bad news, only to shove the phone back on Terry a moment later. The mother began to cry. Terry was sorely tempted to tell her that her son was simply another victim of an ancient curse. But he said nothing. He had to save the world. He couldn't have the sergeant locking him up for a few days.

The results of the autopsy took six hours to come back. It was nine o'clock before Terry left the police station. The coroner's report stated that twenty-nine-year-old Herbert Fry had died from a self-induced overdose of phen.o.barbital. Great, Terry thought, feeling cranky by then. He could have told them that. Six hours wasted sitting on a wooden bench while the plague of aliens swept across the globe.

In the light of the bright new day, Terry drove to a park where he used to go with Jennifer and Lauren. It was a huge park - half a mile across - and had a duck-filled lake in the center. He bought a tall gla.s.s of lemonade at a concession stand and found a bench. He took off his shoes and ma.s.saged his feet in the gra.s.s and watched as young mothers appeared with blankets and babies and talked about what a fine day it was going to be. He, too, was happy for the sun.

He was thinking.

Kratine said that the reawakening of his curse was inevitable, and Chaneen had not argued the point with him. She in fact admitted to its power, yet she promised her children she would return to stop it. Regrettably, she did not say anything about the length of her return visit, and Jennifer was dead. But was it possible - given that the basis of his a.n.a.lysis was far from a reasonable possibility - that by sacrificing her life, Jennifer believed she could halt the spread of the possession that infected Lauren? In a sense Jennifer had simply copied Rankar. Then again, Rankar had not committed suicide. He had been murdered, and try as Terry might, even moving in the stratospheric circles that he presently was, he could not see how pouring gasoline on oneself and striking a match could help anybody. Terry feared that in taking the form of a child, Chaneen had lost the bulk of her cosmic perspective and magical powers. Certainly before the Nova departed, Jennifer had had no clear recollections of the Garden, only tormenting nightmares of Kratine.

There was another possibility. Jennifer had only killed herself after she had finished her story, and she had left her story out for him to find. Perhaps she felt she had fulfilled her purpose by describing in detail the nature of the beast that would come from Mars. Terry could only wish she had left behind a secret chant that could invoke the Fire Messenger.

Then there was what he considered the most likely explanation of her actions. Jennifer had killed herself because at heart she had not changed from her Chaneen days. She was still incapable of hurting others, even an enemy, especially when the enemy came clothed in the body of her beloved sister. Terry could relate.

What came next? What did he think?

I'm probably going to have to kill them.

Terry checked his watch. It was close to ten, which meant it was near eight o'clock in California. Military people started work early. There would be someone at the phone at Edwards. Terry walked to the neat red brick rec center at the center of the park and closed himself in a phone booth, disengaging the video transmission. A minute later he had reached the officer he'd spoken to the previous day. The guy was in a better mood.

'I'm sorry, Mr Hayes,' he said. 'Didn't Dr Wagner call you? She and Major Wheeler left last night.'

'Last night?'

'Yes, sir. They snuck out under the cover of dark. I shouldn't have been so abrupt with you yesterday. Word had already leaked out that they were here. The base has been surrounded by reporters since yesterday.' The man chuckled. 'We stashed them in the back of a supply truck and drove them right past the people at the gate. They were grinning from ear to ear. I've never seen two people so eager to be free. Frankly, I can't blame them.'

'Do you know where they went?' Terry asked.

The man must have verified with somebody - possibly Dean Ramsey himself - who Terry Hayes was. He spoke freely. 'Major Wheeler told me he was itching to look up a pair of old girlfriends in Los Angeles. I believe Dr Wagner was dropped off at the L. A. airport. She was anxious to get out in the country. She'd said she needed to see green gra.s.s and tall trees again.'

Terry was reminded of a remark Jennifer had made.

'When she comes back, she will have to come here - no matter what.'

'What garden was she going to?' Terry muttered.

'Mr Hayes?'

'Where in the country? Wyoming?'

'Don't you know? She told me she was going with you, Mr Hayes. That you were going hunting together. You like to hunt, eh? There's a sport I've always loved.'

'Did she say anything else?'

'Not that I remember offhand. Is the hunting season open in parts of Wyoming?'

'It is now,' Terry said. 'How is Major Thompson doing?'

'He's alive. I suppose he's a little better. But his condition is still listed as critical. I'll tell him you were concerned about him if I get a chance to talk to him.'

'Thanks. Thanks for the information.'

'You bet.'

Terry set down the phone and walked across the park to his car. Lauren had known he would call. She had intentionally left behind the clues to her destination. She would be at the cabin, and she wanted him to meet her there.

Terry came to a decision. He came to it quickly and without further internal debate. He would meet her in Wyoming. He was afraid of her. He was convinced she would kill him, or worse. Yet he felt he had to go. Maybe all the books were wrong. Maybe she could be saved. He would have to try. He was sure Chaneen would have been proud of him.

Terry drove to the bank and withdrew his savings, a whopping $4,657.13. From the bank he called the airport. His timing was off. He had just missed a plane to Casper, Wyoming. The next one didn't leave till 4:56 p.m., arriving in Casper at seven. He reserved a rental car to be ready for him when he arrived. It was a three-hour drive from the airport to his cabin. It would be dark when he got there.

Terry left the bank and drove to a Catholic supply store. There he purchased a rosary, a couple of crucifixes, a Bible, and a blue vial designed for storing holy water. He went to a church next and filled his vial with sacred water and asked the priest in the confessional booth to bless his paraphernalia. He knew he was being foolish but he figured he may as well play all the numbers on the table, just in case.

He had bought silver crucifixes.

He stopped at a sporting goods store next. He was going to meet Lauren at the cabin and sprinkle her with holy water and tap her lightly on the forehead with his Bible, and the demon would pop out of her stomach and melt into purple gook at her feet. That was one plan. Or else he was going to hypnotize her and lead her through a rebirthing session, where she got rid of the stress from her trip to Mars. Then again, maybe all he had to do was kiss her once and she would turn back into his loving Princess. He was going to save her, G.o.d willing. He had already decided that.

He had also decided he was probably going to have to kill her. At the sporting goods store, he studied the handguns, until the beer-bellied warrior behind the counter informed him that he would have to wait a minimum of three days before he could pick up a revolver or a pistol, even if he paid cash for it today. Terry let himself be led to the racks of shotguns and rifles. There the warrior began a lengthy discourse on the advantages of one weapon over another. Terry interrupted and said he wanted the gun the police most often used when they were up against a nasty criminal. Ten minutes later he walked out of the store with a pump action Remington shotgun and two boxes of forty-gauge steel pellets. The man had a.s.sured him that all he had to do was tell the airline he had the shotgun stored in his luggage, and fill out a brief form, and he could take the gun with him to Wyoming. But Terry didn't have any luggage, and so along with his gun and his sh.e.l.ls, he bought a fine leather case to carry his equipment, at an exorbitant price. He charged it, what the h.e.l.l. He would probably be living in a coffin when the bill came in.

Terry drove to the airport and parked his car. He had four hours to kill. Leaving his shotgun in the trunk for the time being, he ate lunch in the airport cafeteria. He had a hamburger - rare. He put garlic powder on it, along with his lettuce and tomatoes. He was in a sick mood. He had always been kind of sick in the head, he supposed, but he had never wanted to hurt anybody. He looked around the busy cafeteria and realized he had eaten there the day he had flown up to see Lauren and Jennifer, just before Lauren left, for Mars. It was amazing how life turned in a circle, he thought, and how the circle eventually spiraled downward into nothing.

Terry had to put a hand over his eyes to stop pa.s.sersby from seeing his tears. He was a crybaby. He doubted Lauren had ever cried on Mars, whatever had come her way. He tried not to think about what she had gone through to become what she was. He tried to console himself with the idea that there must be something beyond the circle of their lives. The G.o.ds. The stars. Chaneen. He would have given anything in the world to have Jennifer sitting by his side right then. He would have given the world. More than his fear for his own life, and Lauren's life, he worried that the thing in Lauren was going to take the world, and suck it dry.

Terry finished his hamburger and entered a phone booth. He did not engage the video system. He placed two calls.

The first was to Kathy Johnson.

Her story came out only after a long and halting conversation.

Her night had been worse than his own.

Kathy had taken Terry's advice and gone to stay with her parents. She didn't give them a reason. They were happy to have her, if only for the night. They didn't suspect anything was wrong. Lorraine did. Lorraine was a full telepath when it came to Kathy's state of mind. Lorraine was home for the week from her latest mental hospital. She knew Kathy was upset about Gary and that it had something to do with demonic possession. Lorraine actually said that. She followed Kathy from room to room, trying to get her to play Monopoly. She really got on Kathy's nerves. Kathy ended up having to pop a couple of Valium to keep from hitting her. She had picked up a fresh prescription that evening, after leaving Edwards Air Force Base.

Eventually the household went to bed, including Lorraine. But Kathy couldn't sleep. Gary was on her mind. She tried calling Terry in Houston but couldn't reach him. She got up and checked all the doors and windows in the house. They were locked. In the living room, she turned on all the lights and sat down and tried reading Time magazine until she felt drowsy.

Then something happened. But she was not sure whether it really happened, or whether it was just a dream. She might have fallen asleep on the living room couch and had a nightmare. She remembered hearing a noise at the front door and sitting up with a start. The lights in the living room were still on. Only now they shone with a red glow. The t.i.tle of the magazine lying on her lap was still Time.

Only now it had a picture of Mars on the cover.

I got up and went to the door. My body felt heavy. I thought I had taken one too many pills. But I can't say I felt scared. I remembered Gary and all, how evil he had acted. I knew it might be him. But I wasn't afraid. I thought that I might have misunderstood him. He was famous. He was a hero. He had probably had to make difficult decisions on Mars. He might have had to decide, for example, to kill someone. But that did not necessarily make him evil, not if he acted in the line of duty. He was a s.e.xy guy, I thought. s.e.xy guys did kinky things. I could get into it, if that's what was required of me to be with him. Suddenly I did want to be with him, more than anything else in the world.

I heard a noise on the other side of the door. It sounded as if a big strong man was rubbing his naked legs against the door, rubbing oil deep into his flesh, deep into the grain of the wood. There was a rhythm to the slippery sound. It slowly pulsed up and down, like long and carefully administered strokes, in and out of my mind. I pressed my body to the door. I could feel the warmth of the oil seeping through the wood. I wanted to be apart of the rhythm, to join with it. I pressed my hips into the door. It was there I felt the oil the most, the warmth. It was a sticky heat. It was itchy.

But as I scratched myself on the door, the itch got worse. Like the pulsating noise, though, it was not unpleasant. It was tolerable as long as I thought about Gary. It never occurred to me that I should open the door. It did not seem necessary. I just thought of Gary's eyes, the last time I had seen him, when he had said he would visit me.

I took off my robe and nightgown. I didn't need them. They were beginning to annoy me. I returned to stroking the door with my hips. I loved it. The surface of the door felt to me like the skin of a man who had just emerged from a hot pot of grease. It was smooth. It was delightfully erotic.

Only the smoothness didn't last, not down between my legs. The itch there got even worse. I moved faster and faster to try to get rid of it, but it wouldn't go away. It began to hurt. I don't know why I didn't just stop. I couldn't stop. I realized I had my eyes closed. I couldn't even open them to look down and see what I was doing to myself. I couldn't get Gary's eyes out of my head. But I finally forced them open.

'Then I stopped stroking the door. The wood was smeared with my blood. I realized I had dozens of dark splinters stuck in myself. I was bleeding. The pain was terrible. I screamed, then I fainted.'

Kathy's father had woken her up at three in the morning. She was lying naked by the front door. She had only one splinter stuck in her skin, near her crotch. Her father didn't seem to notice her nakedness; he was terribly upset. Her mother appeared to be having a heart attack. Kathy threw on her robe and dashed upstairs. Her mother was pale, gasping for air. Kathy called for an ambulance. It was there in under five minutes. It was only while they were riding to the hospital that they realized that Lorraine hadn't woken up. The doctors at the hospital didn't know what was wrong with her mother. They thought it was a heart attack, but not all her symptoms lined up. However, the woman improved when she was placed in an oxygen tent. By sunup she was in stable condition, although they were keeping her in intensive care.

Kathy returned home at about eight o'clock. Lorraine was still in bed. Kathy went to her room to wake her up. She had a hard time getting her sister to open her eyes, and then when Lorraine did wake up, she slashed out at Kathy with her fingernails and slit open Kathy's lower lip. Don't bother me, b.i.t.c.h. Kathy didn't know how to respond. The violence was uncharacteristic of the new Lorraine; they hadn't fought in over two years. While Kathy was standing there holding her lip together, Lorraine laughed and said Gary would be coming back again tonight. That was all she said. She wasn't interested in the fact that her mother had almost died during the night. She went back to sleep. She was sleeping now.

That was Kathy's story, more or less.

She wanted to know what was going on.

'You were outside in the sun today,' Terry said. 'Did you get burned?'

'No. I went to the hospital twice. I didn't get burned, though.' She asked in a frightened voice, 'Why should I get burned?'

'Are you having trouble breathing?'

'No.'

'Do you have any marks on your throat?'

'No.'

'Are you bleeding anywhere?'

'Terry! Why are you asking these questions?'

'Are you bleeding?'

She hesitated. 'I'm on my period.'

'Did it start in the middle of the night?'

'Yes.'

'Should it have started?'

'No! Stop it. My mother's the one who's sick. Wait. Where are you? You sound like you're in an airport.'

'I am in an airport.'

'Are you coming to California? Fly out here. I'm going nuts.'

'I can't, not right away.'

'You have to. I don't know what happened last night. I don't think it was a dream. I don't have sick dreams like that. I think Gary was there. Why did you ask me if I had any marks on my throat?'

'I don't know. It's nothing.'

'Are you saying there were vampires on Mars?'

' Yeah,' Terry said dryly.

'Stop that! There's no time for it. What have you found out about Gary and Lauren?'

'They're vampires. For lack of a better word.'

Kathy was silent for a moment. 'Tell me what you know, Terry. Don't make anything up.'

He told her about his meeting with Lauren, his talk with Herb, his a.n.a.lysis of Lauren and Gary's characteristics. Then he did something he never thought he would. He started to tell her about Jennifer's story, the entire chronicle of the Sastra and Asurian war. He told her about the rings, Jennifer's ability to stick her hands in fire, and Chaneen. Yeah, he told her that Jennifer had been Chaneen, the loveliest of the offspring of the G.o.ds. He heard Kathy moan on the other end of the line. He a.s.sumed she thought he was crazy. But she had been listening with an open mind. Recent experiences had cracked her so wide open all that she wanted to know was how to make it end. She wanted the bottom line.

'Is this stuff real?' she asked when he was done.

'Who knows? Of course, it's not real. It can't be. But it explains the puzzle. If you're asking whether I believe it, you're asking the wrong person.'