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One It was an odd sound, like the wind whipping a heavy wire stretched too tight. She heard it and a tense shiver crawled up her spine. The sun scorched down, hotter than she’d expected. The sky, a washed-out white instead of its usual blue seemed to trap in the heat. There wasn’t the hint of a cloud to offer relief. It was Wednesday, the middle of the week. No one swam in the ocean. No one looked down from the private, guarded cliffs rising up from this deserted stretch of beach. Only a stray black dog, little more than a pin-dot in the distance, wandered aimlessly in her direction, veering occasionally into the surf to cool its burning feet. Ignoring the dog and the heat soaking through her red bikini, Julie Ferris turned to her sister, propped up on the sand just a few feet away. “Listen, Laura—do you hear that sound?” The tall, sleek young woman beside her sat up on her faded yellow beach towel. A sticky breeze coming in off the ocean lifted strands of her pale blond hair. “What so
Two Julie Ferris shoved open the front door of her office on the corner of Canon and Dayton in Beverly Hills. Donovan Real Estate, a company that specialized in palatial-sized homes and properties, had been a fixture in the area for more than twenty years. Julie had been with the company for eight of those years, starting as a receptionist during her term at UCLA. She never thought she would wind up in a sales position—top sales—she corrected, thinking of the money she earned each year and the plaques that covered her office walls. She stopped at the receptionist’s desk, dark mahogany, polished to a mirror-gloss sheen, the Queen Anne tables in front of the off-white sofa and chairs equally expensive and well-cared for. “Any messages, Shirl?” Julie asked the voluptuous bleach-blond girl behind the desk, the only thing out of place in the elegant, conservative interior. “I meant to get in earlier, but my car wouldn’t start. I had to call Triple A and have them jump-start the battery.” Sh
Three Julie walked out of her office, heading toward the front door at the opposite end of the room. “Always in a hurry.” Seated at his desk, Fred Thompkins chuckled. “I told you what my doctor said about that.” She paused beside his chair and smiled down at him. “He said you have high cholesterol and a heart condition. That you had better learn to slow down. You said that also applies to me, that I should stop and smell the roses. I believe you’ve mentioned that, Fred.” “Maybe I have…a couple of dozen times.” He was an overweight retired math professor who wore funny little paisley bow ties. He grinned above the starched white collar that cut into the folds on his neck. “Unfortunately, you never listen.” “That’s because I don’t have high cholesterol and I’ve got bills to pay.” More next month, she thought grimly, when Dr. Heraldson’s psychiatric bill came in. She just hoped the sessions would be of some help to her sister. “You still looking for Patrick?” “I’m always looking for Patri
Four Pain. Excruciating pain. Julie felt the throbbing, pulsing ache well up from the deepest part of her brain. The slatted wooden blinds over the bedroom windows were closed, yet tiny cracks of light seeped in, stabbing like white hot rays behind her eyes. The hot, damp skin across her forehead felt stretched and swollen as if it might burst. Her lips were dry. She moistened them with her tongue. Nausea threatened, a reaction to the incredible pain in her head. Julie rolled to her side, her small hands fisting the pillow, her teeth biting into her lower lip. It wouldn’t last much longer. It never did. No more than a couple of hours. The brief duration made them bearable, and the fact she had never had them until these past few weeks. Perhaps it was some sort of virus, an illness that was fleeting. She could stand the pain, if only she knew the cause. Knew for certain the headaches wouldn’t get worse. A second hour passed. Her body lay on the sheet bathed in perspiration, but the pain
Five Commander Valenden Zarkazian lay quietly beneath the clean white sheet on the hospital bed, listening to the beeping sound of the heart monitor attached by wires to his chest. The curtains were drawn so that only a sliver of light fed into the darkened room, dimly illuminating the stark white walls and dull gray linoleum floors. He was lying on his back, his mouth and nose covered by a plastic oxygen mask, his arms resting limply at his sides. A needle dripped clear liquid into a vein in his wrist. He was glad for the quiet, the undisturbed moments to gather his thoughts and come to grips with where he was and what he was feeling. To discover exactly who he had become. It was the oddest sensation, lying there in the darkness, one that, with his limited information, he hadn’t completely expected. His body lay still but his thoughts were in turmoil. His mind was a jumble of information, his senses bursting with memories, images, and sensations—both tactile and internal—the forces so
Six “But I don’t want to come out for the weekend, Julie. I’d rather stay here.” “Come on, honey,” Julie coaxed her sister over the phone, “it’s my birthday. Babs is coming for dinner on Saturday night. Owen’s in town. He’s promised he’ll stop by. We’ll have ourselves a party.” “I-I don’t know….” Julie rubbed her temple, trying to ignore the headache that had built behind her eyes. “Come on, Laura, please? The weather’s going to be clear. We can lie out in the cove and no one will bother us. You can tell me how your sessions with Dr. Heraldson are going.” “He wants to hypnotize me.” “So?” “I don’t want him to, Julie.” “Why not?” “I-I don’t know. I just don’t like the idea.” Julie took a steadying breath and slowly released it. “We’ll talk about it when you get here.” “It’ll be too late by then. Tomorrow’s my appointment.” “Well…if Dr. Heraldson thinks it’s a good idea, maybe you should do it.” “I suppose so. I guess it couldn’t hurt.” A pause on the phone. “I’d forgotten it was your bi
Seven Sitting behind the desk in her office, Julie hung up the phone with a shaky hand and slowly came to her feet. Brian Heraldson, Laura’s psychiatrist, had just called. He said he needed to see her. He said Laura had just left the office, having finished her second hypnosis session. He said it was important that he and Julie speak. On the surface, that didn’t seem all that ominous. As Laura’s sister, she had offered to help in any way she could, knowing he might want input from the only immediate family Laura had left. Yet there was something in his voice, something urgent, perhaps even fearful, that turned Julie’s stomach upside down. She pressed the intercom button, told Shirl she’d be out for a while, then left through the rear door leading out to the parking lot. Westwood wasn’t far. In minutes, she was standing in front of the receptionist’s desk, asking the pretty little brunette to tell the doctor she was there. “He’ll be right with you, Ms. Ferris,” the young woman said, pro
Eight Julie woke up Saturday morning feeling a little out of sorts. She was twenty-nine today. A year away from thirty. The big three-0. It didn’t make a woman feel good. Which was one of the reasons she had given herself the day off. A birthday came just once a year. She deserved a little present to herself, and time off to do whatever she pleased was what she wanted most. The last thing she wanted was to work. Chances were slim, but she might run into Patrick at the office. Julie felt a tightening in her chest just to think of the supper she had shared with Patrick last night. God, those eyes. A bright cornflower blue. Beautiful eyes that had seduced dozens of women. For years she had taught herself to ignore them. But then not once in the last eight years had he looked at her the way he did last night—as if there was no one else in the room. Maybe not anywhere else on the planet. He seemed so different since his heart attack, so much…stronger. That was the word. He had always been p
Nine Brian Heraldson sat across the desk from the petite redhead and the tall slender blonde. Laura Ferris had insisted her sister come along when she listened for the first time to the tapes of her previous sessions. She told him about the incident at Julie’s birthday dinner and repeatedly said that the experiences she remembered had actually occurred. She was even more convinced when she heard herself on the tape of the previous sessions. As the tape came to a close, tears welled in her eyes. “They took me,” she whispered, the wetness beginning to roll down her cheeks. “They stripped off my clothes and stuck their instruments inside my body, just like I said on the tape.” She sat there on the gray leather sofa, clutching her sister’s hand. “I remember the shuffling sound of their feet on the deck and the next thing I knew they were standing there in the guest room. They didn’t come in through the door—they were just suddenly there.” “Take it easy, Laura,” he said when she began to cr
Ten Julie stayed up well past midnight. As soon as she got home, she began going over the real estate investment information for her meeting with Owen Mallory. She went over each project she intended to present to him, but it was hard to concentrate when her thoughts kept straying to Patrick and the kisses they had shared, the things he had said to her. It took a good deal of determination not to dwell on her growing desire for him, but her sister’s problems were far more pressing. Thinking of Laura and her terrible fears, she turned next to the books she needed to read. Though the hour grew late, once she got started, they were just too fascinating to put down. She had never thought much about UFOs, one way or another. It never actually occurred to her that such things might really exist. Now as she perused the volumes scattered all over the pinewood floor in her bedroom, she had to admit the possibility of life on other planets didn’t seem quite so far-fetched. And she wasn’t alone i
Eleven Gripping the thin silk caftan over her breasts, Julie stared at the front door Patrick had just closed behind him. She could hear his heavy footfalls on the stairs leading down to the street. Her chest hurt. Tears spilled over her lashes and trailed down her cheeks. “Oh God, Patrick, what did I do?” But silence was her only answer. For the last eight years, she had harbored a secret physical desire for Patrick Donovan. She had fought it, defeated it, filed it safely away. But since his heart attack, things had changed. It had been easy to refuse the selfish, hedonistic man he had been. But this new Patrick, this gentle, caring, concerned Patrick Donovan was a man she could not resist. She had been frightened of the risk she was taking, but it never occurred to her that Patrick might be having reservations, too. Or perhaps he had discovered he no longer wanted her the way he had believed. Blinking back a fresh round of tears, Julie walked into the living room. She grabbed a tissu
Twelve It was silly. Absolutely idiotic to be crying about a man like Patrick Donovan. But Julie couldn’t help it. Not since the moment she had left the office at 10:00 p.m., climbed behind the wheel of her car, and seen Patrick pull up in Felicia Salazar’s fancy limousine. Julie knew who it was—with a plate that read Feline l, it wasn’t hard to figure out. Besides, she had seen the woman kissing Patrick when he had opened the heavy car door. God, just thinking about it made her stomach roll with nausea. Julie took a nerve-calming sip of the brandy she had poured herself when she got home. No wonder Patrick hadn’t wanted her. Why should he when he had a beautiful, exotic creature like Felicia dying to crawl into his bed? God, she felt like a fool. She drank some more of the brandy, tilted the glass and drained the contents, then coughed as the burning liquid fired down her throat. Damn him! Damn him to hell! What in the world had ever made her believe he had changed? Grateful to the al
Thirteen At four o’clock in the morning, Val’s eyes snapped open. He lay next to Julie in his king-sized bed, wide-awake. Where he came from, there was no such thing as sleep; they had evolved from the need for sleep more than ten thousand years ago. But his body here on Earth demanded it in order to stay healthy. He had learned to sleep for a couple of hours, a normal sleep cycle, but when the cycle ended, instead of falling into a consecutive period of sleep as most people did, he usually awakened. He would pad around the house for a while, read, or write in his journal, then return to bed and try to get another two hours of rest. Sleeping that way, in short intensive cycles, six hours was enough, but the task took maximum effort. It was a battle he constantly waged. Like eating Earth food, it was a fight he couldn’t afford to lose. Stretching his long legs out beneath the sheet, Val lay back against the pillow. Julie’s red hair curled just inches away from his nose. He reached over
Fourteen The meeting was almost ready to begin when Julie and Patrick arrived. Laura, who had mended fences with Brian Heraldson and agreed to his plea to let him join her, was already seated next to him on the sofa in the living room, a white-carpeted, silk-draped area that looked out over the channel. Julie introduced Patrick as a friend of hers and Laura’s then, at Dr. Winters’s urging, they went in and sat down with the others. “It’s good you all could make it.” Dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt, the doctor surveyed the room full of familiar faces. “I hope no one had an exceptionally difficult week.” The gardening expert, Willis Small, shifted a bit in his chair. “I’m afraid mine hasn’t been all that pleasant. I’ve had several disturbing dreams this week, Dr. Winters.” “Dreams that involved the Visitors?” he asked. Willis Small nodded. “I don’t remember too much. I dreamed I was taken aboard one of their ships. They did some testing. I dreamed they took a semen sample
Fifteen Val sat in the study of his penthouse apartment reading the Los Angeles Times. Patrick Donovan had enjoyed reading the paper. Val couldn’t read the front page without chills running up and down his spine. Murder, rape, gang violence, child abuse—earth’s inhabitants were unaccountably savage. Their primitive drives made them reckless, often governed by emotion or instinct, rather than common sense. In Los Angeles alone, not a single day seemed to pass without total mayhem and dozens of heinous crimes. Val folded the paper and tossed it onto his desk. There was no crime on Toril. No murder, no mayhem, no hideous disease, no suicide, rarely even an accident. Not even the weather played a part in the life or death cycle as it did here on Earth. There the weather never changed. The clear, acrylic-like dome that housed the cities of the planet were all thermostatically controlled. Life was controlled as well, planned in an orderly fashion from birth to death. From test-tube conceptio
Sixteen Julie alternated between bouts of weeping and fierce determination. Alex Donovan wasn’t the kind to give up, and neither was she. There was always a chance he would live. But as the hours crept past, the chance seemed more and more remote. At ten o’clock, he slipped into a coma. At midnight, his condition remained the same. At 2:00 a.m., Julie sat in the hall outside his door silently weeping. Patrick had just gone in. He came out a few minutes later. “The doctor says he’s resting peacefully, which is exactly what you need to do.” “I’m not leaving. I couldn’t sleep, anyway, even if I tried.” Patrick stayed up, too, sitting beside her on the sofa Mario had ordered placed in the hall, his shoulder solid and comforting beneath her cheek when she finally did fall asleep. She wondered what he was thinking. She remembered how devastated he had been by his father’s first stroke, the guilt he had suffered for not being there when his father needed him. He had been nearly unable to func
Seventeen Julie sat at Alex Donovan’s bedside, holding the old man’s once-paralyzed hand. He was sitting propped up in bed, smiling, his cheeks robust instead of hollow, looking more fit than he had in years. “It’s a miracle,” Alex said. “I ought to be lying out there next to Martha, six feet under, but for some damnable reason, God saw fit to keep me alive.” “It is a miracle, Alex. And no one is more grateful for it than I am.” “How does Patrick feel? He hasn’t come around all that much since the stroke. At times it’s hard to know what that son of mine is thinking.” “Patrick barely left your side the whole time you were sick. He loves you, Alex. He always has. Surely you don’t believe he feels anything less.” Alex pointed toward a small rubber ball lying on a tray beside his bed and Julie handed it over. “There is the matter of his inheritance.” He began to squeeze it with his still weak left hand, determinedly working the muscles and tendons. “Before his heart attack, there were time
Eighteen Val leaned back in his chair, surveying the computer screen in front of him. He was working on a listing for Fred Thompkins, trying to establish the value of a Hollywood Hills estate that had once belonged to Errol Flynn, but he couldn’t seem to concentrate. His mind kept straying to Julie, to the scene he had made at her house. He had barged into her home in the middle of the night, been demanding and overbearing—all in all, behaved like a complete and utter madman. What was happening to him? Where was Valenden Zarkazian, scientist, leader—rational, logical, always in control? Even Patrick had never behaved so insanely. But then, Patrick had never been in love. Val winced as the word popped into his head. Between Patrick’s perceptions, the television shows he had watched, and the books he had read, he knew the symptoms. It was like a disease, he believed. An Earth disease, and Val was certain he had somehow unwittingly contracted it. It occurred to him he might administer som
Nineteen Val hunched over his desk, his elbows propped on top, his head hanging down. He raked his hands through his hair, but it tumbled forward again, forming a stubborn curl over his forehead. He had been sitting this way for nearly an hour, his heart throbbing dully, feeling sick to his stomach. Every time he closed his eyes he could see Julie standing in the doorway, his journal clutched under her arm. He could see her pale face, stricken with grief and fear. He could remember the way she had looked at him—as if he were some kind of monster. Or perhaps some kind of bug. Poetic justice, they called it—since that was the way he had first looked at her. Someone knocked at the door, and Val lifted his head. “What is it?” The door swung wide and Shirl Bingham stuck her head through the opening. “Are you all right, Patrick? You’ve been ignoring the intercom for almost an hour. I thought maybe—” “I’m fine. I just had some things to go over.” He stood up, shoving back his chair, the wheel
Twenty As luck would have it, Patrick wasn’t at the office when Julie arrived. She had been primed to face him, her blood running high, every nerve ending alert. He was out with Fred Thompkins, Shirl said. She wasn’t quite sure when he was scheduled to return. The adrenaline slowly faded, and now as she slumped in the chair behind her desk she just felt nervous and tense. Her mind kept going over the things she had read in the journal, the questions she wanted to ask, the answers he might give. Mostly, she just wanted to see Patrick’s face, even if the face wasn’t really his. The light stiletto click of a woman’s heels sounded but Julie barely heard it. Then the door slammed open and Babs walked in. “All right, what the hell have you done to him?” “Who?” Julie sat up straighter in her chair, trying to gather her wits, but it took a gargantuan effort. “Patrick. He must have lost ten pounds in the past three days. He isn’t sleeping. He barely speaks to anyone. He sure as hell isn’t eatin
Twenty-One Laura hung up the phone and walked through the beaded curtains into the living room of her tiny apartment. Brian lay in a comfortable sprawl on the couch. The Dodgers were playing the Mets, the Mets ahead two to one in the bottom of the seventh inning. She had no classes at city college today and the day off from her part-time waitressing job. “Who was that on the phone?” Brian asked during a commercial. It felt good to have him there, so natural somehow, to have him around the house. She didn’t know why, it just did. “That was my sister.” “That’s the second time she’s called in the past two days. What’s up?” Nothing particularly exciting. My sister’s just in love with a man from outer space. Other than that there’s not much new. “Just girl talk. We went shopping a couple of days ago. She wanted to know how I liked the clothes she bought me.” Brian propped himself up on an elbow. “Your sister’s always so thoughtful. She loves you very much.” “Julie’s a terrific sister and a
Twenty-Two The days careened past, slipping through their fingers like sand through an upended hourglass. They made every moment count, soaking up each experience with quiet desperation. As Julie had hoped, Patrick loved Yosemite. They hiked steep trails into the woods, walked paths along babbling streams, and climbed to points that overlooked bottomless precipices. Arming themselves with plastic garbage bags pulled on over their clothes, they carried a picnic lunch up to the top of Vernal Falls. “There are no waterfalls on Toril,” Patrick said, stopping along the steep trail to admire the rainbows created by the thick spray of water. “There are a few small hills, but no deep valleys, and even those few places lie beneath great domes that keep the temperature constantly controlled.” To Julie it seemed a terrible injustice for a vital man like Patrick to be forced to live indoors. When they finally reached the top of the steep trail up the falls, Patrick seated himself on a rock near th
Twenty-Three The wail of the siren echoed off the buildings along the Boulevard as the ambulance wound its way toward Cedar Sinai Hospital. The traffic had been heavy, slowing the vehicle nearly to a halt, making the long journey seem to take forever. Julie heard the siren only vaguely. Sitting next to the gurney on which Patrick lay, her cheek pressed to his chest, her fingers clutching his hand, the world was a vague, distant blur. Her mind was gratefully numb, dull with grief and loss. In a corner of the ambulance, one of the attendants stared out the window, giving her privacy for her sorrow. The ambulance attendants had exhausted every avenue in an effort to restore Patrick’s heartbeat. Now he lay quietly on the gurney, each of them resigned to failure. Julie almost felt sorry for them. It was hardly their fault Patrick couldn’t be saved. In truth, he had died long ago. Against her cheek, his skin felt cool, no longer warm and enticing. Still, she didn’t move away. Soon he would b
Twenty-Four Tony Sandini stood next to Vince McPherson in the locker room of the Chicago Health and Fitness Club. Vince had been playing a little racquetball while Tony indulged himself in a long relaxing massage. They had just finished a nice hot shower and were getting ready to go into the snack shop for something to eat. “So what’s the word on the Brookhaven deal?” Vince dried the back of his neck, then began to work on his curly dark brown hair. He was in good shape for a man in his late forties. He couldn’t imagine letting himself run to fat like his friend Tony did. “That Bonham chick with the pension fund give the okay yet on the Westwind trust deed sale?” Sandini grunted. “As a matter of fact that was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. The pension fund turned down the purchase. We got to find somebody else or give up and try somethin’ different.” “Something different like what? Wringing the money out of that stupid bastard, Donovan? If you recall, that’s what I wa
Twenty-Five Julie paced the floor of her living room in front of the big plate glass windows overlooking the sea. She was waiting for Patrick, nervously anticipating his return from the bank, hopefully with the money he so desperately needed. She glanced at the clock, which ticked ominiously yet seemed to move almost painfully slow. She had watched it since the moment she’d gotten home, thinking Patrick would surely be arriving right behind her. But so far he had not appeared and the bank had been closed for nearly two hours. The sound of a racing engine as his Porsche pulled into the driveway announced his impending arrival, and Julie hurried toward the door. Yanking it open, she rushed out to greet him before he’d had time to reach the porch. “Patrick, I’ve been worried sick.” She slid her arms around his neck and he hugged her tightly against him. “What happened? Did the bank give you the money?” The muscles in his shoulders went tense. His face told her the answer, his expression t
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