SWEET DREAMS

Originally appeared in Infinity, July 1957.

The nightmarish thing floated down out of space and landed smack in the middle of 50th Street between Madison Square Garden and Polyclinic Hospital. It landed just as the huge stage door of the Garden opened—calliopened, you might say, if you wanted to play on the way the gay circus din tootled out.

First a team of six ponies pulling a miniature fire engine jumping with midget firefighters, then a dozen scantily mahouted elephants painted pink, came out of arc light and sawdust into neon glow and mirroring asphalt. And it seemed, to those few who were looking on, that the thing, which none of them had seen land, was merely swinging into line.

Having played three weeks at the Garden, the ponies and the elephants could have recited the route. Turn right at the corner of 50th Street and 8th Avenue, go down the block, turn right again at the corner of 49th and 8th, to the stage door on that side of the Garden, to be ready for the next time of entering the arena.

Only when the thing following them turned the wrong way—going up 8th Avenue instead of down—did anyone really pay it any mind.

Ptl. Roger O’Reilly, gloomily humming Moritat, saw the procession coming and set about funneling into one lane the southbound traffic, shoving it away from the southwest corner of 50th and 8th to let the procession clip-clop, clink-clank, and ponder past. How much more of this? His raincoat sheathed him clammily and cracked like thunder with every move he made. It was a miserable evening. Intermittently, hail, a myriad rosaries of hail, pattered down. A gaudy neon haze veiled the avenue, blurring everything with a satanic Midas touch.

Even wiping with the cuff of his glove the weeping crystal of his wristwatch, O’Reilly had a devil of a job making out the time. 7:14. Damn!

Usually he loved the noise and the rush. Both of them were catching. Both of them were invigorating signs of life going on about its business of living. But now, at this moment, he was longing to breathe air free of carbon monoxide, longing to get out of the sleet, longing to get away from baaabaabbbaabaaaa-baaabbba! the mad hornblowing that always went with bad weather. The warm smells streaming out of the cafeterias lining 8th made his belly growl more savagely. He could go for bacon and eggs and buttered toast and coffee black, right now. And, to tell the truth, on top of that he would soon have to go to the john. Damn!

The warm smells were really hitting him. Funny, he’d begun thinking more and more about food ever since he and Maria had failed to hit it off. More than merely thinking about it. One hand was directing traffic; with the other he patted his belly. Yep, even through the raincoat he could tell. Have to work some of that off.

Speaking of bulges, he had the bulge on traffic now, and he swept his gaze around as the clip-clopping, clink-clanking, and pondering grew louder. He grimaced as the dark mass of the Garden passed his eyes. The building loomed as a monumental reminder of his guilt.

But what, after all, had he done that was such a crime? All he had done was spend part of his precious forty-eight-off in taking Billy to the circus this morning. And when a seven-year-old went to a real live circus for the first time in his life it meant he had to have all that went with it—cotton candy, ice cream, pink lemonade, hot dogs, soda pop, peanuts, crackerjack, popcorn, the works.

So what if the kid had a little bellyache? All kids have to go through that kind of thing more than once before they learn when enough is enough. So what if a long-standing rule had gone smash? Going to a real live circus for the first time only happens once in a lifetime. There was no reason for Maria to go Tibetan. Yakkety-yak. “You know what the dentist said about feeding Billy sweets. You’re not making that much gold you have to turn Billy’s teeth into little Fort Knoxes.”

“All right, all right. Lay off.”

“If you’ll inlay off.”

“Am I supposed to laugh?”

She always made him feel such a fool with her biting wit. And that always drove him into making some foolish retort then left him furious with himself for making it, and finally wreathed him in fuming silence. Of course, she never threw it up to him that she had been a schoolteacher; he had to give her that much. But then, when they first went together he had spoken of wanting to study law and so she hadn’t felt, as some he might name had—her mother he was thinking of—she was marrying out of her circle. But that was before Billy came and Maria was so terribly sick. And what with one thing and another he had given up his dream. Yet, though she never said anything about it, he knew she still thought he could do it if he’d only put his mind to it.

Put his mind to it! Easy to say. He shook his head impatiently. Better put his mind to the flow of traffic, here and now. And it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye out for his sergeant’s patrol car and for the flat, beet-red face that would be leaning out and shouting something at him. The guy was more G.I. than O’Reilly’s top-kick in the Army. There were many times with both of them when O’Reilly had to force himself, nails in palms, to remain silent.

Clip-clop. The procession began rounding the corner. O’Reilly smiled at the ponies and the elephants and nodded at the firefighters and the mahouts. Billy had gone for them all in a big way. His smile faded. Poor kid! When O’Reilly left to report for duty the kid was just beginning to double up in pain. And Maria was running around, soothing the kid with one voice and chewing out O Reilly with another.

O’Reilly brought himself up sharply into full consciousness as a black mass detached itself from the rear of the procession and marched up 8th.

Ptl. Roger O’Reilly blew his whistle indignantly.

But the thing kept wedging its way up 8th, driving upstream through rapidly jamming lines of cars, crushing grilles and fenders, a juggernaut.

The happening had caught Ptl. O’Reilly flatfooted but he quickly recovered. Fumbling to unhook the thong of his nightstick from his breast shield, he hurried in the thing’s deliberate wake and overtook it. He rapped on the thing with his nightstick. “Hey, you!”

O’Reilly was too angry just then to give himself over to wondering what the “you” might be. Vaguely he was thinking it was a small vehicle of some kind, though he could see no wheels. For that matter, he could see very little distinctly in the all-blurring neon haze. It seemed to him the thing was a sort of carapace with an engine under it driving it and he had a dim vision of a midget inside working it. Though as he could see no opening for eyes to peer out it was no wonder the thing was going blindly amuck.

No wonder, but no excuse. O’Reilly rapped again. The thing did not slacken its pace. It kept on undeviatingly, ramming through the stalled and piling up ranks, through a jungle of clashing gears and cursing drivers and bleating horns.

O’Reilly trotted after it and rapped again, this time much harder. “Hey, you!”

He was going to add, “You in there, stop the damn thing!” But the words tangled in his vocal cords. A wave of shock shot along the nerves of his arm and his hand waived possession of the nightstick. Under his raincoat a downpour of sweat drenched him. It was due to something more than the electrifying pain. A thought arrested him. What in the name of heaven was this thing bulling its way through cars twice its size?

He had a strange feeling the thing had nothing to do with the circus. It wasn’t simply that he knew it had never during his tour of duty rounded the corner with the regular procession or that he couldn’t remember seeing it in the performance he and Billy had attended only that morning, for it might easily be a newly-dreamed-up prop in a clown bit and there was always so much going on in the arena that he could easily have missed noticing it. He was simply sure now that it wasn’t part of the circus.

He stared at it hard. It was no vehicle. There was no midget inside. And no engine. Yet something more than the neon haze was blurring its contours. The thing was quivering with an unearthly energy of its own. It was alive.

Mechanically, O’Reilly retrieved his nightstick and picked up his pursuit of the thing once more. In the short time it had taken the thing to near 51st Street the screeching of brakes and the crashing of chrome had drawn a crowd. Pedestrians were converging, like iron filings around the north pole of a bar magnet, and adding to the noise and confusion.

O Reilly swore aloud and couldn’t hear himself, and that made him swear again and louder. He ranged his eyes across the cars cobblestoning the avenue ahead. He knew it. The one time he would have welcomed seeing his sergeant’s patrol car it was nowhere in view.

It was up to him alone. What could he do? He certainly couldn’t go on playing tag with something that refused to be it.

For the first time the thing slowed. O’Reilly took heart. The thing stalled at the crossing of 51st and 8th, as if the burden of assessing the cardinal points of the compass weighed it down.

A sudden pushing from behind propelled a young man from the crowd on the northeast corner into the street.

O’Reilly sensed a rippling of the thing toward the young man, a menacing tropism, and he yelled, “Get back on the curb.”

The young man hesitated in a momentary show of bravado. But something—O’Reilly’s tone or the rippling of the mass or both—reached him and he turned and tried to shove his way back into the safety of numbers. “I can’t,” he said despairingly.

The rippling lapped out all at once, like a wave from the body of the sea. Its tip whipped blindly around in a narrowing cone, feeling. It touched the young man.

He went pale. Not daring to look around, he said, “Help me!” wildly, and tried again to break through the adamant wall of the crowd. A woman screamed and beat him back with her umbrella.

O’Reilly ripped open his raincoat and wrapped his fist around the pearl handle of his Colt .38. The feeler was flowing back into the black mass and, writhing, the young man with it. It had him by a padded shoulder and was towing him to itself relentlessly. O’Reilly took careful aim at the core of the mass.

“Let go of him,” he said, not even hoping the thing would understand, or would heed if it understood, but complying with his feeling of what was fitting. He waited one moment. Then, as the towing went right on, he held his breath and squeezed the trigger.

With the first shot the mob lost its temporary paralysis and moved out and away like a shock wave. With the last shot, with the last empty click, the feeler stopped moving.

But it seemed to O’Reilly, who had seen no sign of impact, the feeler stopped moving not because the thing was riddled, was suffering from damaging hits, but because the thing was puzzled, was trying to grasp a new factor in these strange surroundings. The feeler stopped moving, but did not loosen its grip.

The pause, however, gave the young man a chance to shuck his jacket, leave it dangling from the end of the feeler, and take off through the evaporating crowd.

It took the thing a while to weigh the jacket and find it wanting. During that while, O’Reilly shooed the few remaining souls into shelter. And then he was standing surveying the abandoned cars, the tidal wrack of hats, umbrellas, bundles, purses, shoes, the faces peering out of hiding. He was alone with the thing. It let the jacket fall and rippled tentatively toward him.

He backed slowly. There was no thought in his mind save to keep the thing in this one spot somehow until help came. The shots and the congestion and phone calls from frightened citizenry should surely bring that help soon. In the meanwhile he would keep the thing following him in this constricted space, trying to let it get neither near enough to seize him nor far enough to lose track of him.

The wavering tip, striking out at where he had been or would have been, was coming closer each time it lashed out, and O’Reilly had no moments to spare for watching out for the help that should be arriving. But when he caught a movement outside the rim of seeing he gave a sigh a child might give when an adult relieves it of a burden too much for it to bear. And he turned his head a fraction to take in the figure stealing across the margin of his vision.

It was a woman. The veins at his temples strained apoplectically. The woman was bending to recover her umbrella.

O’Reilly shot his gaze back to the thing. The presence of the woman was causing it to veer away from him. The woman took hold of the umbrella and began to straighten. Then she saw the thing rippling in her direction and she dropped the umbrella, her body a frozen tilted Z. The tip of the feeler waved about, searching.

“Beat it, you damn fool,” O’Reilly yelled furiously.

But with a tightening of her mouth the woman bent again and took up the umbrella. She was straightening again when the feeler reached her.

Feverishly O’Reilly reloaded his .38 with bullets from his belt. He fired into the mass and, when that had no effect, fired at the feeler, with the same lack of effect. He re-holstered his useless .38. Hanging again from his shield, his nightstick thumped his raincoat as he ran.

The thing had learned to reject clothing. The feeler went for flesh. It wrapped itself around an arm of the woman and reeled her in.

O’Reilly caught the woman by her other arm and about her waist and dug in his heels, or tried to on the slick pavement. The woman had fainted and there was no screaming in pain at the tug of war. But it was impossible to free her of the remorseless reeling in without tearing her in two. And O’Reilly had to give ground and in the end had to let go and look on, raging impotently.

Wavelike, another feeler emerged. It had less reach but much more breadth. It shrouded the woman. Then, as if it were spitting out a pit, it unshrouded her and rolled her out in one motion.

She lay on the gleaming asphalt, a shriveled husk, as if the thing had sucked her of her being, gutted her of the vital energy that had kept her body going and given it meaning. In the neon blur her flesh seemed already to have the glow of putrescence.

O’Reilly learned too late he had taken his mind from the thing too long.

As if the savoring of her being had only whetted its appetite, the thing suddenly flicked its long feeler at O’Reilly. It had new power, new speed, and O’Reilly was not quick enough or strong enough to get away. The cable-like end of the feeler took several turns around O’Reilly’s bare wrist, making him fast, “So this is it,” O’Reilly thought wonderingly. His calmness astonished him, but astonished him calmly too. “So this is how it ends. So long, Maria. So long, Bill—”

But to hell with philosophical acceptance of the inevitable. There was fight in him. He would not let the thing wither him without struggling to the last for the possession of his soul. And he fought vainly but grimly.

But it was not the short broad shrouding feeler that emerged as he neared the body of the mass. It was a third feeler, wire-fine.

It thinned to almost microscopic fineness and, while the long feeler held his arm immobile, thrust painlessly into his skin. He felt nothing. But another sense, one he became aware of for the first time, told him the feeler was racing along the nerves of his arm to his brain and that it was forking, branching, twigging out in his brain.

The probing invisible ends touched memories to life—not so much resurrecting them as throwing him back into the time of their happening…

* * * *

“Moon,” said his mother’s voice in the darkness. “Moon.” And wondering he looked up from the pale blur that was her face to the pale blur that was her hand pointing to a bright roundness or a round brightness a little higher up in the darkness. She said, her voice too seeing a blur to his sleepy hearing, “See, baby? Moon?” But the round brightness or the bright roundness was not at all like the brown-and-white thing he remembered seeing moving slowly in and against the green-and-blue space. The brown-and-white thing was Moo. Maybe Moon was another thing?

* * * *

His uncle puffed on the pipe, but only a dead smell came out. His uncle felt around in the pockets of the vest. “Damn! I’m all out of matches,” his uncle said, looking at him as at a fellow-sufferer. “I know where,” he said, his words falling all over themselves in their hurry to get out, “in the chicken.”

“In the chicken?” his uncle said, raising a heavy eyebrow. “Oh, yes, in the chicken. Go get them, Roger boy. You’ll find some on the chicken table where your mother is stuffing the kitchen for dinner.” “Don’t tease the child, Frank,” his aunt said, half-laughing, half-angry. “No, that’s right,” his uncle said, puffing out more of the dead smell. “Sure, you go in the chicken and look on the chicken table where your mother is stuffing the kitchen for dinner.”

* * * *

He was chanting “Cheese and crackers got all muddy!” and all at once the old priest he hadn’t seen or heard coming had him by the ear and it hurt. “Blasphemy, blasphemy, blasphemy!” the old priest said, boxing the other ear each time he said the words “Beware the dead-a-ly sin, O’Reilly. Beware the dead-a-ly sin”

* * * *

The thing was giving him an eerie impression of being in a listening attitude, as if it were wiretapping his mind. That was the first thing that struck him when he knew he yet lived. And it suddenly struck him the discrete memories—of his mother, his uncle, the priest who had collared him—had one thing in common. They had to do with the use of words. Was the thing threading its way through the labyrinth of his mind trying to reach the speech center of his brain? Was it trying to find a way to communicate?

That seemed to be so, for as if it were aware he was glimpsing something of its want, he had or rather received a feeling of satisfaction. The sense he was newly conscious of was telling him that the thing was probing for order, for a filing system, for a frame of reference. The sense was telling him that the thing was responding with a feeling of well-being when it found, a feeling of misgiving when it failed to find, a framework conforming to its own sense of order.

This awakening avenue of perception of his appeared to be functioning on the deepest level—sub-electronic?—of his being, following the flow of traffic, not able—yet?—to control the flow. At one point he sensed a feeling of horror as a branching probe pulled back from the gaping abyss of the great longitudinal fissure, then a bit later a feeling of relief as it found the great band of fibers bridging the gulf between the hemispheres of his brain and crossed safely.

Suddenly he could see again. His mind’s eye had so taken up his attention that he was not aware until now that he had been blind to the outer world. But now he was looking at the outer world again and the long-familiar seemed unfamiliar. He found it hard to bring the world into view. There were too many blocks. In all directions it was as if he were trying to see around corners. And it seemed to him it was because he was seeing his world not only through the sieve of his own mind but also through the sieve of another’s mind. For it now looked to him as if he were the thing’s eyes.

Now when he turned his gaze upon the thing itself he save its appearance had changed. It was not a solid mass but a latticework of fibers, pulsating rapidly. He saw it rather clearly now; there was no blurring of contours. Yet his new sense—sub-electronic? It seemed to whisper yes—was telling him he still did not see the thing as it really was, but saw it filteringly, saw it as it saw itself as he saw it.

The world seemed almost as though he were looking through his grandmother’s glasses. They were shiny and made her eyes seem very large. When he was still too young to frame his wants in words he would reach up for the glasses. But he had to sit quietly on his grandmother’s lap and let her hold the glasses to his eyes. And then didn’t the world turn strange! But then one time he snatched them from his grandmother’s face and they nearly broke and his father slapped his hands and said Roger was a bad bad boy and could not look through grandmother’s glasses any more. But even after that his grandmother sometimes let him look through them, though he had to nod his head first that he would not grab and would sit very still on grandmother’s lap while she held the glasses to his eyes.

He and the thing were moving, having come to some understanding on a level he hadn’t yet transposed to consciousness. They had begun moving east on 51st. Going the wrong way on a one-way street, O’Reilly thought in crazy outrage. He mounted the sidewalk. The black mass went along with him as a man might humor a dog on a leash.

A sound like a slow leak. O’Reilly looked around. He saw a form in blue. It was hissing to gain his attention. He squinted. “Sgt. Vitello?”

“Yes. Listen, O’Reilly,” as though whispering made any difference—“you got it?”

“No. It has me.”

“Oh. What the hell is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where the hell you going?”

“I don’t know.” No, that was wrong because he suddenly knew where they were heading. “The Public Library.”

“The Library? What the hell for?”

“I don’t know.” He knew, but it would take too long to explain.

“You don’t know? You sound funny, O’Reilly. Has it got you hypnotized?”

“No.” No?

“Well, you try to stall it, whatever it is. We’ll clear the way.”

“I’ll try.”

Sgt. Vitello blurred away.

The thing seemed to be in no hurry—or at least had not yet mastered the earthly sense of time. Slowly they moved east along 51st. When they crossed Broadway O’Reilly saw his sergeant’s patrol car coming alongside. It cruised slightly ahead of them. His face palely strange, Sgt. Vitello was whispering into his mike, nodding earnestly to add weight to his words.

O’Reilly sensed the entire city marking time, holding its monstrous breath, waiting, listening. The sound of his feet on the pavement seemed to him deafening. Close about him an eerie silence pulsed, and at the rim of it he heard sirens waxing and waning. He seemed to be moving in a limbo, feeling his way through fog up a slippery slope while a dark sea was eating away the sand under his heels.

At 5th Avenue they turned right. Ahead of him O’Reilly saw his sergeant’s patrol car and on either hand he caught glimpses of blue cordoning off the cross streets, giving shape to amorphous crowds. On the wet gleaming avenue all was vague and blurred, like a scene on the floor of the sea where creatures grow their own lamps.

They moved down 5th to 42nd Street. O’Reilly and the thing turned in at the main entrance of the Public Library, passing between the flanking twin stone lions the Little Flower had named Patience and Fortitude, the thing flowing up the steps, its own escalator.

Through echoing emptiness they made for the reference room and, once there, for a table where an unabridged dictionary broodingly spread its heavy wings. Needing no prompting, O’Reilly turned to page one and skimmed his eyes down each of the three columns in turn. He flipped the pages at a pace that seemed to suit the thing. In thirty minutes he went through the entire volume. That done, he picked up an English grammar he spied nearby and scanned his way through that in the same fleeting manner. When he had shot the back cover to with an index finger he straightened.

During all this time he hadn’t thought to sit but had bent over the books; and now when he straightened he creaked and with a smile of pain said, “Ouch!”

Words ribboned out across a mental screen. Before he grasped the meaning of the words he grasped the meaning of the writing. The thing was talking to him.

It seemed as if the thing had registered the whole of the unabridged and of the grammar, together with images the words had struck off like sparks in O’Reilly’s mind without his knowing at the time, and to convey its message it lightninged to the right pages and lines and brought out in italics the words it wanted.

That vibration was in your speech range, the thing strung out. What were you saying?

O’Reilly required a moment to think back. Then he remembered the smile-producing pain of straightening and, on a mad impulse, visualized a comic strip balloon encircling the legend Ouch!

At once the filing system of the thing whirred and came up with a definition. Ouch, noun. [ME nouch “a nouch” being mistaken for “an ouch”) < OF nouche, necklace, collar < OHG nuscja.] A brooch or clasp; a setting of a jewel. The definition did not satisfy it. O’Reilly sensed a feeling of bewilderment, which the thing quickly put into words. I fail to understand. What called that object to your mind?

O’Reilly felt a secret sense of joy in every cell of his being. He wondered—and wondered if his wondering showed—if he could keep the thing off balance. If it could make mistakes, it was vulnerable. How vulnerable would hang on how effectively it could rectify its errors. All right now, what called that “object” to his mind? Very well, then; he pictured himself straightening and grimacing.

A feeling of impatience. I caught that sensation of pain at the time, as well as your remembering of it. Explain what that has to do with a brooch or clasp or a setting of a jewel.

The word ouch is a homonym. The entry following the one you quoted is the one applying in this context. Ouch, interjection. A crying out expressing pain. What surprised him was that his total recall did not surprise him. He would work on that later. If there was a later.

Meanwhile the thing had been working on what he had sent and was now responding. A feeling of pain, and then a comic strip balloon containing the legend Ouch!

Yes, O’Reilly confirmed.

A feeling of crossness. Brick by brick it laid out the course of its thinking. I was not questioning the validity of the meaning just then. I was crying out to express pain.

My, my. Might one ask why? Why?

We do not have what you term homonyms and I find the concept excruciatingly painful.

Tell us more.

Outside my own world I have only a tenuous hold on reality. I cannot tolerate ambiguity.

“‘Oh, really?’” Ptl. O’Reilly thought wryly. And then, more sanely, seeing an opening, Where is your world?

It considered a moment and then, I come from a planet of La’anah, the dark companion of the star Algol.

Per se, the wording had no emotional coloring, but O’Reilly sensed pain too intense for ouch!—a telescoped reliving of the La’anahan’s long journey in the vessel of its own form, across deeps of space and time, through bombardings of energy and matter.

Why did you leave your home and come here?

I do not know why I left. What happened must have been exceedingly unpleasant, for though I remember the frightening journey I have forgotten everything about the circumstances of my leaving except that I have forgotten about the circumstances of my leaving.

Come again?

I am here for one thing. I have been hunting for this thing for a long time. I landed where I sensed it at its most and strongest.

O’Reilly put off asking what the La’anahan was hunting. Instead, telling himself to be persuasive, he thought, No one here wants to harm you if you come in peace. Do you mean well?

Of course.

Good. O’Reilly found he had been perspiring.

But what is well for me may not be well for you.

A cold trickling. O’Reilly remembered the woman. Knowing he would not like the answer, he asked, What are you looking to find here?

A feeding ground.

Persevering, O’Reilly asked what he dreaded to ask, What do you feed on?

Life energy.

What is that?

You do not know?

No. He was afraid he did know.

Really, you ought to know. You have it. It is what differentiates organic from inorganic matter, to use your crude definition.

O’Reilly felt sick. He was again remembering the woman, before and after. He nerved himself. How often do you have a craving for this life energy?

Not often. But as soon as the La’anahan had raised hope with those words it beat hope down with its next word, Always.

Not good, O’Reilly, not good at all. He wondered if the thing got a charge out of playing cat-and-mouse with him. But he astonished himself by being quite calm, as if knowing the worst tranquillized. Still, he hesitated before putting his next question. Perhaps it wasn’t in the best—should he say?—taste. Then too it might give the thing ideas. He drew in breath. Here went. Then why haven’t you drained me of my life energy as you drained that woman of hers?

What I drained before was not at all satisfying. It was flat, insipid. There was something lacking. Life energy on Earth struck me as being very disappointing, hardly worth the bother of obtaining.

Very good, O’Reilly, very good indeed. An upwelling of relief showed him he had not been quite so calm as he had imagined. Then you won’t be wanting anymore?

On the contrary. The encounter sharpened my appetite for the real thing.

Take a giant step backward, O’Reilly, bade to not good at all.

But before I can fully digest and enjoy the essence of Earthly life energy, I must find out as much about your way of life as I can.

Why must—

A lap dissolved. The La’anahan overrode O’Reilly’s thought, into, I will ask the questions.

Let’s not get nasty.

What sort of job do you have?

“I personify the superego in the mind-body politic.” Now where the hell did that come from? That had never been his kind of language. The shock of the thing intruding in his mind seemed to have jolted him into a new perspective of his world and of himself in his world, a perspective that covered more ground and took in what lay beneath the surface. That was all right for him to know but he had to keep the La’anahan off balance. The longer he could keep it from grasping the way of life on Earth the better for that way of life.

I am waiting patiently, the La’anahan conveyed impatiently. It is important for me to know, for your social status, what you do for a living, these things color your outlook.

I’m a—He started to think policeman. He stopped. He wondered—and again wondered if his wondering showed—if he could get away with the thought that had just come to him. Even if he could, maybe he was making too big a thing out of it, placing too much reliance on it as a possible weapon. He risked it. I’m a copper. He tried to picture the word only, none of its connotations.

Ah. Copper, noun. One who runs a copping machine.

Secret joy. No.

He sensed a feeling of foreboding. No?

No. Copper, noun. Slang. A policeman.

Utter revulsion. There is more than one copper? Yes, I see—copper, noun. [AS. coper < L. cuprum, cyprium < Gr. Kyprios, of Cyprus < Kyprus, Cyprus, famous for copper mines about 3000 B.C.] 1. A reddish, ductile metallic element (Atomic No. 29, Symbol Cu), found native and in ores, one of the best conductors of heat and electricity, in the pure state and in alloys much used in the arts. 2…” Enough! Excruciating pain. The La’anahan was really suffering. It shut itself off from him, as a hurt animal might seek to be alone, and left him to his own thoughts for the moment.

Copper brought to mind one who was all copper. Sgt. Vitello. What was he doing out there in the neon mist? He thought of his dislike of Sgt. Vitello’s G.I.-ness and for the first time found it ironic that one Ptl. Roger O’Reilly who went in for policing of others should hate policing of himself. Policing. Policing the area. Field-stripping a cigarette—splitting the paper and scattering the tobacco and then balling the paper into an infinitesimal wad—made policing the area easier later. Come back, O’Reilly. No buts. You can’t escape by retreating into the past. Right now you’d better find a way of field-stripping this thing that latched on to you—and that’s cutting in again.

O’Reilly sensed an expending of energy had taken place. But the La’anahan had regained its composure in the main and the sending came through impersonally as a news bulletin flashing around the Times Tower. I begin to win an insight into the distinctions you make, into your abstracting from the totality of reality.

Then go away. Don’t you see you’re only a bad dream?

If your world-view is no more chaotic than I have had this far to endure I believe I can manage to absorb life energy here with some degree of efficiency and satisfaction after all.

Better hurry to sanctuary. In a moment the dreamer will waken—and then where will you be?

But I need to learn more. Now, what are your wants?

The most immediate one? To get off the hook. Damn it, the La’anahan’s smug assuming that O’Reilly would collaborate in the destroying of his kind was infuriating. Now look here, Jack, enough is enough. Why should I tell you?

He sensed astonishment. Because you can do nothing to hinder me. You do not give in to the inevitable?

Grim blankness was O’Reilly’s answer.

If you are unwilling, however, I may find others more amenable. Something like a sigh. You are putting me to a lot of trouble.

Too damn bad, Jack.

Shrinking like withering tendrils, the probes began to withdraw from the folds of O’Reilly’s brain.

Hold on. O’Reilly gave in. It would not do to lose contact. Not only would he most likely lose his life energy to the La’anahan once it had no more use for him as a seeing eye, but he would only make way for another victim.

The La’anahan held on.

All right, roper, get on with your polling. Now what was it you were asking?

What are your wants?

Oh, yes. Well—Well, what? Bacon and eggs and buttered toast and coffee black. Let’s see you make like a genie and serve them up.

Food? Ah, I see. What life energy is to me. But that is only to keep you going; that is of the flesh. What is the aim of your going; what of the spirit?

Hey, Jack, you mean to say you have a spirit? No matter, let me think. This was a thing he had never verbalized. What I want out of life is to realize my potential, to live productively for myself and for those I love.

Love? The La’anahan winced at the concept but came back gamely. Go on.

G’wan, yourself. What more do you want to know?

Who are those you love?

My family.

Family? The La’anahan winced once more.

O’Reilly hesitated and then brought out a Yes. Then, since their images had flashed across his mind, he added reluctantly, My wife and my son.

Where are they?

He hesitated a bit longer this time. Home. He tried to keep from picturing where home was.

He must have succeeded, for the next query was, Where is home?

Persistent bastard. He visualized the cross-hatching of Manhattan and pinpointed a building on the lower East Side. Underground in his mind at the same time, without his really realizing it, he schematized the subway that shuttled him between home and precinct.

Lead me to your home.

Not so fast, Jack. What for?

These relationships—love and family—are new to me. I want to know more about their functioning. I want to see through the eyes of your wife and your son.

Those are big wants, Jack. Would you promise not to harm them?

Promise? I do not have to bargain with you.

Then I can’t promise to lead you to my home.

Never mind. I know the way.

Now was the moment for wakening. And if that failed, now was the moment, for falling into the deeper fantasy of madness.

The moment slipped away and he found himself in the iron grip of unrelenting reality. He was moving with the La’anahan into the vast empty hall, trying to think of a way out. And then they were leaving the Library, passing the stony pride of Patience and Fortitude, and he had no notion of what he might do to forestall the meeting with his wife and son.

O’Reilly turned right, expecting to move down 5th.

No. The tethering coils implemented the no. The map of Manhattan flashed across O’Reilly’s mind, the subway a fiery tracing. Lead me to the subway entrance.

He had planned on going by shoe leather express. You don’t want to go by subway. Stall for time.

The La’anahan didn’t bother to argue. They turned left, then moved east, toward Grand Central.

It had darkened out and the neon haze had thickened and O’Reilly was at first not certain the detached shadows following them were real. Then he heard voices and the shadows edged nearer.

Hissing.

“Sgt. Vitello?”

Something inaudible.

“Sgt. Vitello?”

“I said yeah. You all right, O’Reilly?”

“So far. Listen, it wants to—”

“What the hell you do in the Library?”

“Read.”

“Oh. What the hell for?”

“It was learning to communicate.”

“Oh.”

The shadows pacing O’Reilly and the La’anahan had ventured nearer and O’Reilly made out the familiar heft of Sgt. Vitello and, taller, leaner, an unfamiliar figure in snappy military uniform.

“Let me, sergeant.” A brisk brushing-aside voice.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m Lieut. Wayne, U. S. Army.” Far as O’Reilly could make out, the lieutenant seemed a personable though somewhat eager-beaverish young man, gravely enjoying the urgency of the emergency. “Sgt.—?”

“Vitello, sir.”

“Sgt. Vitello and I are a liaison team. Now, this thing has already killed one person, besides doing thousands of dollars damage. Our job is to stop it before it kills anyone else and before it does any more damage. Now, you’ve been with it nearly two hours, officer. What can you tell us? What is it?”

“It’s a being from another world.”

“Hmm. You sure of that? Sure it isn’t a Commie trick?”

“I’m sure. Listen, get my—”

“What does it want?”

“It wants to feed on humans.”

“It what?”

“Wants to feed on humans. It needs a source of what it calls life energy.”

“Well, you tell it the Army means business. Unless it surrenders unconditionally we’ll wipe it out, hear? Even if it takes an atomic warhead to do it. I’ll wait if you have to translate that.”

“It understands.”

“Fine. Then if you’ll steer it to the command car around the corner—” His mouth flapped open as O’Reilly and the La’anahan continued on toward Grand Central. “See here, where are you going?”

“To the subway. Listen, get my—” But the lieutenant was speaking into a walkie-talkie that O’Reilly only now noticed. “The alien is disregarding the warning. It is proceeding east, toward the subway entrance at Grand Central… I’ll find out, sir.” To O’Reilly he said, “Why the subway?”

“We’re heading home.”

“Hmm. And that’s downtown, I suppose.” O’Reilly nodded. “It would be. If we could only get it, say, out in the wilds of the east Bronx—”

“That wouldn’t do any good.” The lieutenant was insultingly forbearing. “We could run it down with tanks, you see, or lob shells at it.”

“That still wouldn’t do any good.”

“And why not?”

This was like discussing ways and means of dispelling a ghost—with the ghost in question listening in.

“It crossed space in its own body.”

“So?”

“So it can soar above any try at running it down, it can ward off any bombarding.”

“Hmmm.” Into the mouthpiece, “Did you get that, sir?… Well—”

While the lieutenant was talking Sgt. Vitello seized the opportunity to say, “O’Reilly, what you been trying to tell us?” Blessings on that flat, beet-red face. “Get my wife and son—” That was all that streamed out; the La’anahan had turned the tap.

“What about your wife and son?”

Get my wife and son away.

“What’s wrong, O’Reilly? What you trying to say?”

Get my wife and son away.

“Why’n’t you answer?”

Get my wife and son away.

“Your wife and son—you afraid of what it might do to them? That it?”

O’Reilly couldn’t answer by speaking. But if he didn’t telegraph it there might be another way of answering. He closed his eyes so the La’anahan would not see the streetscape bobbing—and nodded.

“Aha. And you want us to get your family away?”

His head was a balloon trying to contain too much pain. The La’anahan was thinking blow after blow in blind frenzy. The pain would end if he opened his eyes. He held them shut and nodded again.

“Watch it, O’Reilly.”

His shoulder struck something hard, something real as you could want, and his eyes flew open. They were nearing the crossing of Madison Avenue and he had run into the light standard at the corner. He would have reeled but for the La’anahan’s hold. As it was, the throwing awry of his weight wrenched his arm.

The slight pause brought the detached shadows closer yet. Too close.

A blending of anger and hunger, and it was O’Reilly’s turn to call out. Watch it.

But the words did not sphere out in the air and the detached shadows did not get the message of danger.

The lieutenant was looking at him and saying into the box, “No, sir, the poor guy still can’t speak.” There was an absent kindness in his gaze, as if he had written off O’Reilly. “You’re getting his home address from Centre Street?… Hmm. That will be quite some job, sir, to evacuate the whole housing development.” He squinted, consulting his wrist. “I have 2105 hours, sir.” And he began to say something else when the box shot from his grasp like wet soap as the La’anahan whipped-wrapped his arm.

At the same moment the La’anahan paid out another part of its form to entangle Sgt. Vitello. It fed the lieutenant to the shrouding projection and in the following moment he was a discarded husk. O’Reilly sensed a feeling of pleasure that evoked in him a feeling of horror. The La’anahan was beginning to rope in Sgt. Vitello.

Without thinking it out, O’Reilly thought to the La’anahan, Wait. You want to see through the eyes of my wife and son, don’t you?

Yes. I am more than ever anxious to gain insight into human relationships. I absorbed more life energy this time. Earth seems very promising.

Damn you. Damn Sgt. Vitello, too. What was he getting his family into on that book-of-rules bastard’s account? Then let him go and I’ll tell him to countermand the warning.

The La’anahan released Sgt. Vitello, as someone with a sweet tooth might forgo an éclair now for a torte later.

If the sergeant had moved far enough away, instead of dazedly remaining within reach of the La’anahan, O’Reilly would have broken his word. But since things stood as they did he said bitterly, “Listen, I got it to let you go by promising you’d see my wife and child remain home. Don’t warn them. Leave it for me to handle when we get there.”

Sgt. Vitello, too shaken to show it just yet, mechanically picked up the walkie-talkie, rattled it tentatively, and spoke into it. “Hello?… No, sir, this is Sgt. Vitello. The thing got the lieutenant the same as that woman.… No, O’Reilly’s still okay. He’s able to talk again. Says not to warn his wife, he’ll take care of that when they get there. I don’t know if he’s got something in mind and he’s speaking for himself—or if the thing’s making him say that.”

Have you something in mind, O’Reilly? Going to bring the thing home, O’Reilly? Even after seeing and sensing what happened to the lieutenant? It may not be too late to try to scream out a countermanding of the countermanding.

They left the sergeant behind and O’Reilly did not try to cry out.

* * * *

He was not aware of the rest of the way. One minute of consciousness he was at the corner of 42nd and Madison, the next minute of consciousness he was at the subway entrance.

In between, if the La’anahan was tuning in and not rubbernecking at the misty buildings in the neon haze, it was receiving confused musings. Who was O’Reilly to take it on himself to shape fate? Leave it to the big brains who would be working on this right now. Who was O’Reilly to rebel against the writing off of Ptl. Roger O’Reilly? Who was O’Reilly to jeopardize his family with a mad scheme? At that point the in-between ended.

They descended. The change booth was empty. A spilling of tokens glinted. The labyrinth was empty and silent. They passed through a gate instead of through a turnstile and it seemed to O’Reilly they were passing through another sort of gate, winding through a horn, for he sensed the banshee keening of sirens on either side of silence.

As he descended, the La’anahan cascading beside him, he kept his eyes on his shoes. He did not look toward the tracks. Trying to shield what he intended, he willed himself not to perceive the fact that the platform ended abruptly and that there was a drop to the tracks. He willed himself to perceive that the platform continued on. He wharfed it out in his mind.

Just before he turned his head toward the edge of the platform he closed his eyes and visualized it as extending some three feet further. He kept his eyes closed, still holding the image.

If the La’anahan kept moving, the unreal platform would betray it. It would fall and strike the third rail.

The belaying would take O’Reilly too. That was the hard part, not thinking of the searing flash that would kill him too.

The La’anahan kept moving. They went over the edge.

It might have been an abyss. Surprisingly, he had time to feel himself one with all—not only with Maria and Billy but with the frightened young man who had escaped, the tight-mouthed woman who had not, the plodding Sgt. Vitello, the patronizing lieutenant. The love of the first two and the bravado and stubbornness and stickling and vanity of the others were his—and changing circumstances made them petty or noble, foolish or wise, changing reality. His flesh was shrinking from the reality of impact, just as he had always felt his spirit rebelling against the demeaning label average. He knew now he was uncommon, unique, like everyone a wondrous combining of atoms such as never was in all the time and space that had gone before, such as was not otherwise otherwhere existing now, such as never would be again in all the time and space to come. Unique—but, like everything unique, expendable in the sight of eternity. Something you can write off—but unique. And even as he felt himself relinquishing his selfhood, felt his individual temporal oneness merging in the fullest communion with the host of onenesses in an eternal flow, he thought triumphantly, That’s who I am! and made ready to receive the searing flash.

There was no searing flash. He was still living. His heart seemed to be congealing, but he was still living. The La’anahan fell, its form spilling across the third rail, but nothing flowed through it to O’Reilly, who had landed sprawling atop it, but its own pulsating. The La’anahan might have been made of insulating material.

After a moment the La’anahan floated up from the tracks and back upon the real platform, bearing O’Reilly with it. Interesting. I imagine I will do a certain amount of blundering until I perceive your world clearly. Playing cat-and-mouse?

A rumbling. Gaudy lights burning deep in darkness. O’Reilly somehow got to his feet and stood unsteadily. Thundering and screeching, a train pulled in. The first car was empty save for the motorman and two soldiers with bazookas. The second car was empty, the third and the fourth.

The train was moving and they were on it. The disappointing outcome had taken all the starch out of O’Reilly. He sat numbly, swaying like some bit of homeostatic equipment. After a time of blankness he caught himself humming Moritat and wondered vaguely at the perseveration. He had gambled and lost. The paying up and the knowing what he had staked would not bear thinking of.

Not too surprisingly it was easier to take in happenings on a larger and remoter scale. He found himself envisioning, though he could not tell whether it was through his own imagining or through some sensing of the La’anahan’s planning, all Earth one breeding pen for a living embodiment of Minotaur-Cetus-Orc-Dragon. And he pursued this vein of thinking until it too would not bear thinking of.

His awareness went outward and he realized the train was not only snailing along but was making the most of the local stops. Although the doors did not slide open and although there was never anyone waiting on the platforms the train idled a good five minutes at each stop. What were they readying at the other end? What could they do?

His station.

Hissing. Almost automatically he looked around for Sgt. Vitello, knowing as he did so he was being foolish and that it was the doors reluctantly hissing open.

He needed an effort of will to overcome inertia and get going, to cross the abyss between threshold and platform. And then, abstractedly hearing his steps ringing on the concrete, not connecting the sound with himself, he was covering the block between exit and home.

Street lamps were swinging two monstrous shadows back and forth. Glistening pavement was washing along two monstrous reflections, washing them along waveringly, with the moiré effect of one screen overlapping another.

His mind crossed the walk ahead at a run, disappeared from his field of vision, shot to a sixth story window where a light would be marking Billy’s room. Poor kid. The window to the right of Billy’s was his and Maria’s. Maria. Was she there?

If the man in charge had disregarded what O’Reilly told Sgt. Vitello—to let Maria and Billy be—and had informed her of approaching danger and had not evacuated her with the others but had left it up to her, would she stay on to be with O’Reilly in his bad time? And, if she stayed on, would she keep Billy there or send him away? He didn’t know.

He didn’t know her any more. She was baffling, a stranger. Then did it follow she no longer knew him? These two had come together, had their moment, then had gone on, tracing in their crossing an X, the unknown.

The diverging had begun with the cumulative exasperations of living a soul-stifling life, with him taking out on her his anger at his sergeant—which anger in turn now seemed a surrogate for anger at himself. Then quarreling, then quarreling and not bothering to make up, so that all that remained was not even bothering to quarrel—and then they would be stonily apart as the lions Patience and Fortitude.

And now he was at the housing development and gazing wonderingly at the grim disposition of helmeted and green-denimed troops armed with flame-throwers, bazookas, and mortars.

A circus, really. They might have been clowns waiting in the wings to go on, waiting to go into the kind of sad slapstick that makes you laugh. He looked up. There should be trapeze artists. Sure enough, police helicopters whirred under the Big Top.

He felt the twinings of the feeler tighten about his wrist and he turned on the La’anahan more in futile rage and outrage at its perseity, at its daring to be, than in fear. For in the blurred world in which he was moving he was on the verge of convincing himself it was all remote, unreal, a dream—and the La’anahan had ended his dream abruptly as a hangman’s noose an ejaculation.

He wakened to the cloying smells of gas, oil, rubber. And familiar home seemed all at once a nightmare shape thrusting through fire and brimstone.

As he passed into the central court his eye fell upon a group standing off to one side, some of them personages he knew from pictures in the papers—the mayor, the police and fire commissioners—, the others a constellation of top military brass. A few nodded at him encouragingly. And that set him to pendulating between believing and despairing. He had a feeling they were watching him with that absent kindness as if they too had written him off. He couldn’t blame them. Hadn’t he in effect written off Maria and Billy?

Maria and Billy. He felt suddenly lost.

Once you were in the circle of buildings there was nothing to distinguish one from the others. Without the numbers over the entrances you were lost in a maze, if you got turned around. It wasn’t that, however, that gave him the lost feeling. It was the surrounding troops with their unavailing flamethrowers and bazookas and mortars. If that was the best they could do—His gaze shot to a sixth story widow. Light burned through a cut-out rectangle. But that didn’t have to mean anything. Almost every window in the development blazed, and he could tell by the vacant blazing, the lack of human shadows, that the tenants had gone. So that one light didn’t have to mean Maria and Billy were still home.

He looked back at the VIP group, almost lost now in shadows. They gave him no sign, or at least he was unable to read any.

He made for the building in which that all-important light burned.

The wet runs streaks of green down the building and across the walk. The green comes from the oxidizing of the copper flashing. Funny, a copper leaf turns green—that ashtray in the shape of an oak leaf he had made in school during shop period as a Father’s Day gift for a father who had not lived to receive it—and a green leaf turns copper. Had Billy been working secretly on something to give him this coming Father’s Day?

Poor kid, a sickly green tingeing the high color of his face. Was that the last memory O’Reilly would have of him?

At the entrance O’Reilly glanced up at the night sky. The moon was a pale, almost invisible blur in the neon mist. In the offing a tug was mooing. Somewhere out there La’anahan was making Algol wink at some cosmic jest.

Entering, he thought of the six tiring flights. Would the La’anahan fit into the elevator? No harm in trying. It was a tight squeeze. He pressed the button. The inner door did not slide to. He looked to see if something of the La’anahan was wedging the door open. No. He stared impatiently at the flight of buttons—and realized with a start that he had pressed not the sixth floor button but the first. He pressed 6 and the door slid to and they rose.

He was angry with himself until he realized something more. The La’anahan had not corrected him. He sensed it had been unaware of the slip. What did that prove? That because O’Reilly thought he had pressed the right button the La’anahan thought the same? If so, was that a weakness of the La’anahan’s, an inability to discern the real workings of the human mind, to know when the unconscious was bossing the conscious?

No time now for wondering about that. As the elevator rose so did his fear. His heart sank as the elevator reached 6.

As they moved down the corridor he vaguely noted through open doors signs of hasty flight. His own door was closed.

His door key was in his right hand pants pocket. Because of the La’anahan’s restraining hold he had to reach around with his left hand, like a contortionist, and fumble under his crackling raincoat to get at it. At last he had it and he unlocked and opened the door.

Silence. The only light was that overflowing from Billy’s room into the hall.

Unwillingly O’Reilly moved along the hall toward the light. The room this side of it was his and Maria’s. He peered in.

Even before his eyes began adapting to the gloom, even before his ears caught the almost inaudible breathing, he knew.

Maria.

On the bed in the darkness lay the still form. He wondered angrily how she could be sleeping so calmly.

He had been hoping against hope, hoping whoever was running the show had evacuated Maria and Billy with the others. But the man in charge had left them to be goats staked out for a tiger.

Billy moaned.

The moaning seemed to have wakened Maria as the noise and confusion of evacuation had not. The pale blur of her face rose and the pale blur of her hand moved out and turned on the bedlamp.

In the sudden light there seemed to O’Reilly something strange about the room, but at the moment he had eyes only for Maria. He edged forward to shield from her eyes as much of the La’anahan as he possibly could.

When they were making out and she cared enough she could be something to see; right now she was a sight. She sat up, threw back the covers, and swung her feet to the floor.

Fretful, sleepy, untidy, she knuckled the dark half-moons under her eyes.

He found himself thinking, “I never noticed before; her hair is beginning to gray.” A wave of sadness and tenderness washed over him and he had an impulse to reach out and touch the gray gently.

It took a moment for her eyes to accommodate to him in the doorway and in that moment her eyes seemed to be returning from some region far beyond the four walls, as though they had been out seeking escape from drab reality. And he was suddenly seeing her rebelling against cramping rooms, against the squeezing of bills, bills, bills. By the time he paid out his allotments and dues of all kinds she had to do some stretching to make their $66 monthly rent.

She glanced briefly at the bedside clock. Her eyebrows semaphored surprise. Roger was early. “Something wrong?” She stood up, her toes feeling for her slippers, finding them, squirming in. Then she saw the La’anahan. “What’s that?”

“Now, be calm,” he said, trying to be calm. “Whatever you do, stay quiet.”

She stared at the thing. “What is it?”

“It’s—well, it’s a being from another planet.”

A long pause. “Oh? Just what planet is your friend from? Maybe I know someone there.”

He told her.

“No, I’m afraid I don’t know anyone there,” she said after giving it some thought. She threw on her robe. “No, really, what is it?”

“What I told you. A being from another planet.”

“Chuckle, chuckle.” All at once the flippancy flopped. She belted her robe savagely. “Damn it, O’Reilly, I’m in no mood for games. Billy’s moaning.”

If he knew her at all, she was ready to fling past them out of the room. He said, desperately, “Wait.” She waited, her fingers restless on her hip. “Listen to me, will you? This is no persiflage.”

“A being from another planet?” she said. He remained silent and she said, still more disbelievingly, “A being from another planet?”

That didn’t sound right. The words came stumblingly. She was an actress going up in her lines. She was acting a part. She had known the thing was coming and she had stayed. Why?

Now he knew what had been troubling him since entering the apartment—slight, scarcely perceptible shiftings of the furnishings. They had bugged the place. This was their first chance to study the La’anahan. And no doubt they had asked her to kindly play for time.

And now that he knew, the La’anahan knew. Wasn’t it about due to become impatient? Or was it so sure of its invulnerability that it was willingly—gloatingly—playing along?

“Okay,” he said wearily. “You can stop acting. Why in the name of heaven,” he said with more spirit, “didn’t you leave? They told you I was bringing danger, didn’t they?”

“Why didn’t I leave?” she echoed dumbly. “Yes, a colonel came and said there was some kind of danger, he couldn’t say or wouldn’t say exactly what. I wanted to grab Billy and run. The colonel told me I could if I wanted to. But he said that you said for us to stay. I figured you knew what you were doing.”

That’s a laugh. O’Reilly know what he’s doing? Don’t you remember? O’Reilly doesn’t know enough to curb a seven-year-old’s gluttony.

It might have been the thought of gluttony that made the La’anahan choose to take over at this point.

Love and family appear to involve basically simple relationships. Simple, but exceedingly energy-dissipating. I am afraid I shall have to frown on them for all but breeding purposes. And without transition, I have done with you for now.

And like lightning in reverse all the probing ends withdrew and the feeler unwound. Before he could warn Maria he saw the La’anahan bracelet her wrist and plunge the probe into her arm like an intravenous tube.

Then Maria was gazing at him as if she were seeing him for the first time—and in a sense she was, for through her eyes the La’anahan received its first glimpse of him. O’Reilly stood rooted in horror, imagining the terrifying sensations Maria must be experiencing.

A mad thought came to him. His Colt .38. If he were to turn it on Maria, Billy, and himself he would at least cheat the La’anahan of their life energy. Perhaps if every about-to-be victim did the like—or had it done—the La’anahan would give up and go away.

He never knew if he really would have carried out this mad thought. For even as it was coming before his board of censors Maria was free and the La’anahan was moving along the hall toward the spill of light and there was one over-riding thought.

Billy.

O’Reilly and Maria acted as one—uprooted themselves, ran after the La’anahan.

The bedside lamp—a grinning panda—was glowing. Billy had an unreasoning fear of the dark. Billy stirred and frowned in his sleep, as if the noise of their entering had set an unpleasant chain of thought to rattling. A plaintive whimper.

Billy. Billicum.

The La’anahan groped, found Billy’s wrist, and attached itself.

O Reilly turned Maria’s face away. He gripped her shoulders hard. In an intense whisper he said, “Go. Leave the building. They’ll take care of you downstairs.”

She heard him but made no move to go. It would be useless to say it again. He held her more tightly.

He gazed over her head at the make-believe characters cavorting on the wallpaper. Then a lack of movement where movement had been forced his attention back to the bed. The La’anahan seemed to have settled for a good long look through Billy’s eyes. Either that, or some form of paralysis had frozen it, stopped its pulsating.

It remained that way for a chilling moment, then with blinding suddenness it broke contact.

Whoosh! It shot through the ceiling, through the roof, with a velocity that left a clean edge to the hole it made. It disappeared so swiftly that save for the hole O’Reilly could have convinced himself it had never really been.

Looking up as if from the bottom of a well at the stars, he breathed deeply, almost rolling the air on his tongue in delight. He turned quickly to gaze at Maria, who seemed lost in wonder, too. Then he took off his raincoat and tented it over the bedposts at the head of the bed to shield Billy from the mist that blew down.

“I’ll move him,” he said, “as soon as I get hold of myself.” He showed her his hands. They were shaking.

She said, echoing her first words after giving birth to Billy, “Is he—all right?”

As if on cue, Billy moaned.

Gently, O’Reilly turned the boy slightly and the moaning stopped. “He’s all right.”

Hissing.

O’Reilly closed his eyes and grinned—wryly. “Sgt. Vitello.” He opened his eyes and there was the beet-red face peering around the jamb.

“What happened? Something flew up too fast for us to tell what it was. They sent me to find out was that the thing.”

“It was.”

“Is it gone for good?”

“So I believe.” O’Reilly smiled as Sgt. Vitello emerged and crossed himself. “If it ever gets back to its home planet it will forget all about Earth except that Earth is an unpleasant place for it to stay.”

“Why’d it go?”

Why had it gone? O’Reilly’s new sense of awareness came to his aid. “Well, Sergeant, I believe it went through an exceedingly terrifying physiognomic experience. Here it had begun to orient itself toward objects in the external world semantically, perceiving without affective overtones other than the particular cultural coloring of a language—”

“Cut the double-talk. What happened?”

“—and then, suddenly, just when it thought itself on solid ground, it plunged into the metaphorical abyss of a dream world—and what was even more dizzying, of a child’s dream world. The crucial point, Sergeant, was that it didn’t know the child was dreaming. It thought what it was seeing was real.”

“All right, wise guy. See how far that kind of talk will get you when you fill out your report.” Sgt. Vitello seemed a bit dazed, as if he didn’t quite know what to do now. He fidgeted, getting madder in the face. An inspiration. He barked, “Well, what are you waiting for?” O’Reilly looked blank. “It’s all moonshine over the lake now. C’mon, you still have an hour to put in at the Garden.” In the moment of silence that followed, Sgt. Vitello seemed to be hearing the echo of his words. His face turned beerier and he said hastily, “Ah, forget it.” And he turned to leave. He turned again in the doorway without pausing and nodded at them without quite meeting their eyes. “See you.”

Cu. Copper. Why, the ductile, malleable old softy. He had to work hard at being rough and tough to keep from mother-henning all over the place.

O’Reilly and Maria exchanged smiles. Then O’Reilly, trying not to disturb Billy’s sleep, transferred him to the bed in their room. Maria softly pushed back the hair sticking to Billy’s damp forehead. She kissed him lightly and moved back.

The mirror caught her eye. She went pale. “Oh, how terrible!”

“What?” O’Reilly asked, scared. He turned to the window, thinking the mirror was reflecting something outside. Had the La’anahan, cat-and-mousing, returned after all?

He saw nothing but misty night and swung bade to Maria.

She was flinging a comforter over the mirror.

“That’s a special glass. There’s a camera pickup in back of it. It just now came to me what a sight I must look to all of them out there.”

“Woman,” he said weakly, “don’t do that.” He suddenly put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Know what?”

“No, what?”

They laughed.

“I love you.”

A new light came into her face. Silently they looked into one another, too happy for laughter. They were speaking the same language.

Billy moaned and wakened. He sat up, rubbing away what the sandman had sprinkled.

O’Reilly looked at Billy, looked at life going on, and an almost terrifying tenderness surged through him. He swept the boy up in his arms and held him fiercely. Then he loosened the hug and said quietly, “Did we wake you, son?”

A child is at his most angelic when he’s just leaving the waking world and when he’s just coming to. Billy smiled and his father didn’t notice the lack of wings. “That’s all right, daddy. I’m glad you did. I was having an awful nightmare.”