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more human scale of magic and knowing he would fail; Also trying to memorize
something already passing: the shape of Harry s face, the set of his eyes,
slightly athwart one another, even more elfin in his illness, though glazed;
unable to imagine this fevered face with rounded nose and high forehead and
strawlike patchy hair, even this ill frame, decaying in a grave.
"I ll carry you around with me wherever I go," he said, and kissed Harry on
the forehead. Harry reached up slowly and hooked his hand around Arthur s
wrist, touching his heated lips to Arthur s right palm.
"Same here."
Arthur left the room quickly, eyes forward. In the parking lot, he sat behind
the wheel of the rental car, stunned, his head seeming stuffed with sharp
twigs.
"Thank you for letting me do that, I d like to go back to my family, if
there s time."
As the sun rose high over Los Angeles, nothing constrained him from returning
to the airport and taking the next available flight back to Oregon.
42
Hicks leaned against a massive marble-covered pillar, watching dozens of
people enter and leave the hotel lobby. Most were dressed in business suits
and overcoats; the weather outside was brisk and there had been cold rain just
an hour before. Many others, however, seemed ill equipped for the weather;
they were out-of-towners, gawkers.
Much of official Washington had seemed to come to a standstill. With the
Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House in open conflict
now, such petty considerations as budgets had to wait. The tourist trade,
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oddly, had momentarily increased, and hotels through much of the city were
jammed. _Come see your Capital in an uproar._
After an hour, he still had not spotted Bordes, so he checked for messages at
the desk. There were none. Feeling more isolated than ever, his stomach sour
and his neck tense, he returned to the pillar.
It was remarkable how life went on without apparent change. By now, most of
the people on Earth were aware the planet might be under sentence of death.
Many had neither the education nor the mental capacity to understand the
details, or judge for themselves; they relied on experts, who knew so very
little more than they. Yet even for those with more education and imagination,
life went on conducting business (he imagined the events being discussed over
expense-account lunches), politics almost as usual (House investigations
notwithstanding), and then back at the end of the day to family and home.
Eating. Visits to the bathroom. Sleeping. Lovemaking. Giving birth. The whole
cyclic round.
A tall, gangly black youth in a green army overcoat passed through the
rotating front door, paused, then walked ahead, looking right and left
suspiciously. Hicks clung to the security of not moving, not making himself
conspicuous, but the boy s head turned his way and their eyes met and held.
Bordes raised one hand tentatively in greeting and Hicks nodded, pushing away
from the pillar with his shoulder.
The youth approached him quickly, coat swishing around his ankles. An
embarrassed grin crossed his face. He stopped two yards from Hicks and offered
his hand, but Hicks shook his head angrily, refusing to touch him.
"What do you want from me?" he asked the boy.
Reuben tried to ignore Hicks s discomfiture, "I m pleased to meet you. You re
an author, and all, and I read...Well, forget that. I have to say some things
to you, and then get back to work." He shook his head ruefully. "They re going
to work all of us pretty hard. There s not much time."
"All of who?"
"I d feel better talking where nobody will pay attention," Reuben said,
staring steadily at Hicks. "Please."
"The coffee shop?"
"Fine. I m hungry, too. Can I buy you lunch? I don t have a lot of money, but
I can get something cheap for both of us."
Hicks shook his head. "If you convince me you re on to something," he said,
"I ll spot _you_ lunch."
Reuben led the way to the hotel cafeteria, emptying now as the lunch hour
ended. They were led to a corner booth, and this seemed to satisfy the boy s
need for privacy.
"First," Hicks said, "I have to ask: Are you armed?"
Reuben smiled and shook his head. "I had to come here as soon as I could, and
I m almost broke now as it is."
"Have you ever been in a mental institution, or...associated with religious
cults, flying-saucer cults?"
Again, no.
"Are you a Forge of Godder?"
"No."
"Then tell me what you have to say."
Reuben s eyes crinkled and he leaned his head to one side, his mouth working,
"I m being given instructions by, I think they re little machines. They were
dropped all over the Earth a month ago. You know, like an invasion, but not to
invade."
Hicks rubbed his temple with a knuckle. "Go on. I m listening."
"They re not the same...whatever you d call the things that are going to
destroy the Earth. It s hard to put in words all the pictures they show me.
They don t show me everything, anyway. They asked me to just come to you and
give you something, but I didn t think that was fair. The way they came on to
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me wasn t fair. I didn t have any choice. So they say, in my head" he pointed
to his forehead with a long, powerful forefinger "they say, all right, try it
your way."
"How do they oppose these enemies?"
"They seek them out wherever they go. They spread out between the & stars, I
guess. Ships with nothing alive, not like you and me, inside them. Robots.
They visit all the planets they can, around stars, and...They learn about
these things that eat planets. And whenever they can, they destroy them."
Reuben s face was dreamy now, his eyes focused on the water glass before him.
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