Glimmering

He saw his grandmother’s trailer on Moody’s Island, crowded by the ancient lilac trees that were the sole remnant of the farm that had once stood there. The bee droned past him and he twitched involuntarily, sank onto the bed and he pressed the blossoms to his face. The wind blew warm as blood, the trees moved against a sky so purely blue it made his heart ache, a sky he only saw in dreams now. He knew he was half-asleep, but he made no move to get under the covers, or to put the flowers back into their glass. Instead his fingers tightened upon the mass of blossoms, crushing them against his cheeks and eyelids. The wind rose and the trees thrashed, the sun’s warmth faded as one by one the stars sprang out against the blue. The bee’s humming ceased. The air grew cooler as he flattened his palms against broken blossoms and moved upon the bed.

Beyond the tracery of limbs and sky a darkness stretched. True night, black and fathomless, with no spectral glare to rend the constellations as they passed above him. Cassiopeia, Corona Borealis; Andromeda and Dagon. Amidst the stars a small figure shaded her eyes, as though gazing into a great distance, then began to walk toward him. Beneath her feet the darkness churned into sand, the stars to flecks of dust. As she drew closer he could see her face, small and pale and unsmiling. She was naked save for the aniline glitter of her raincoat, the streaming bands of green and amethyst that bloomed around her.

“My feet are upon the New City.” The words licked like flame against his ears. “And my heart beneath my feet.” He could feel her warm breath upon his cheeks. “But we who were living are now dying, here at the end of all things; for a foolish man bears our world away with him, who did not speak one word to the king concerning the anguish that he saw.”

The smell of lilacs flowed from her. She knelt between his legs, arms outstretched, and with a hand light as rain brushed the flowers from his cheeks. “Do you remember nothing?” she asked.

He started to reply, but she kissed him, her mouth cool and sweet as sap. His arms enfolded her and he drew her in, her fine hair a mist across his eyes as she moved against him. When he came it was like falling into sleep, a long slow shudder and the girl’s sighing breath in his hair. He lay there, trying to hold in his mind the image of stars and green trees, the odor of lilacs and rain falling upon a withered land.

Then he woke. There was a pounding at the door and John Drinkwater’s voice echoing from the telephone with his 6:00 A.M. wake-up call. Trip rose groggily, brushing leaves from his hair as he stumbled to his feet; and looked out upon his room to see lilacs, twigs and limbs and heaps of lilacs: lilacs everywhere.

He never saw the girl again. They were unable to get enough fuel for the bus to drive them to Boston, so Lucius arranged a morning flight from Westchester Airport. A hired car drove them; their equipment would follow.

At the airport Trip and John Drinkwater and the others sat in the crowded first-class terminal, with its smells of stale vanilla and ersatz coffee. Trip watched impassively as airport security surrounded a well-dressed Asian man whose mask fell away to reveal the garish cicatrices and facial tics of petra virus in its secondary, infectious phase. Lucius Chappell averted his eyes. Jerry Disney made a disgusted sound and headed for the bathroom. John Drinkwater lowered his head. His lips moved, praying—Lord, grant Thy love and healing grace upon those who suffer—and Trip felt a small surge of love for him. Meanwhile the Asian man stood wordlessly as his briefcase and roll-along were taken and sheathed in protective latex. He waited with the starkly composed expression of despair as orange-suited men pulled a transparent hood over his head and bore him away. Shortly thereafter someone whose mask and silvery eyes were embossed with the NatLink logo informed Lucius that their plane was ready to board. As it turned out, it was the only flight that would leave New York that week.

CHAPTER FOUR

Between Planets