The Clown's Graveyard
Chapter Fourteen: Staring at the Moon

If ever there was a woman well-served by the system, it was Angela Whitfield. She was intuitively in tune with every trend, fad, and fashion and she achieved fulfillment as naturally as water finding its level. She didn't need anyone to tell her how to get the most out of life as a cosmo-drinking, Pilates-training, sex-on-top San Francisco woman. She was as untroubled and uncurious as they come. Which is not to say she didn't have a sense of adventure; but it was experience she sought, not answers to vague existential questions. I assumed she'd followed Lou back to the Emperor Norton for the usual reasons a woman joins a gentleman at a rented room, coupled with the lark of blackmailing Blanston, and as lagniappe, a ground-floor peek at Andy Hunter's next venture. UFOs and talking chimps were a lot more than she had bargained for and it showed in her face.

"Can we slow down just a second here?" she said, raising her hands as if to stop a gong from sounding.

Jerry, Roy, and Brenda watched her. They'd come all the way from Twenty-nine Palms for answers, and getting them from Joe Bananas didn't faze them in the slightest. They'd accomplished any necessary suspension of disbelief en route, spacecraft in tow. Dr. Turezyn looked like she was ready for anything. We had seven; I couldn't imagine an eighth would make a critical difference. Still, winning Angela over was essential. A trio of backwater boobs and a disaffected witch doctor were low-lying fruit indeed—what did they have to lose? Angela had plenty to lose and who could say what to gain by abandoning her perfectly-crafted script and throwing in her lot with the Fabulous Ontarians. The choice she made would be a harbinger of success or failure so powerful as to be self-fulfilling.

"Take your time," Dr. Turezyn said soothingly. "It's a lot to take in. The implications are—"

"This is no time for waffling," Jerry interrupted. "If this monkey's right there's big things brewing. In or out?" He tapped the Egyptian trowel against his thigh.

"What I want to know," said Angela slowly, recovering her composure enough to brush off Jerry's impatience, "is even if these Fabulous Ontarians are real—you've seen the spaceship, not me—even then, who's to say what side they're on? Should we really be so eager to turn our brains over to them?"

"Got a point," Jerry grunted. "Hunter? What you say about that? Who's to say these guys are on the level? How do we know they're not just selling us a bill of goods?"

"Sorry, Andy," Angela went on. "And this thing they're going to reveal to us, now that we're all so wise and everything—I mean, aren't we still trying to figure out the last messiah? Are things so bad the way they already are?"

The validity of her point almost made me forget the fraudulence of the premise. "It's not that, exactly," I said, trying to think on my feet.

"It's not about changing things," said Brenda. "It's about things changing." She tucked her hair behind her ears and borrowed a cigarette from Lou. "Look at me. I'm half Pueblo, a quarter Chinese, an eighth Irish, a sixteenth African. None of those people ever asked to run into each other here. That's just where history took them. Now here I am, thankful for what I've got. I figure these Fabulous Ontarians are coming whether we like it or not. If they've got something to say, I'm all ears, you know?" Roy hung on her words, his mouth ajar.

"Miss Park is correct," Joe Bananas said warmly. Angela suppressed a flinch at the sound of his voice. "And your forbearance will be rewarded with insight soon enough, not to worry." I wondered how Joe had learned Brenda's last name.

"The thing that gets me," Roy jumped in, "is, you know, what are these Fabulous Ontarians all about? That's what I want to know. I mean, can you imagine meeting these guys face to face? Do they eat with their mouths? What does their music sound like? What do they think," he swallowed hard, "what do they think of us?"

Angela looked around the room, her gaze resting briefly on each face. "All I can say is, you're all dealing with this admirably well."

A pigeon fluttered to rest on the windowsill. I looked out at the street below and saw James Chung standing on the opposite corner, drinking a V-8 and watching the passersby over the top of his sunglasses as if killing nothing but time. My blood turned to ice.

James Chung had taken care of a problem once for Carl Angstrom, never the Consortium's most sentimental member. Angstrom had been having trouble with an upstart startup in his space. He had pressured the newcomer to sell out or reposition but the guy wouldn't budge. So Angstrom put in a call to James Chung, or maybe he just ignited some black powder in a stone crucible and stepped back.

James Chung abducted the troublemaker one Tuesday after work and took him to a seemingly abandoned warehouse in the Excelsior. There was no way of knowing for sure what went on there, but Chung was rumored to have served in a number of shadowy quasi-governmental organizations in this country and elsewhere, and he was known to be a skilled technician of the torturely arts. Angstrom was vague on the details beyond opaque references to pornography and bubble-gum pop and I wondered how much he really knew. After a few days Chung cleaned the guy up, wiped the last week out of his memory, and stuck him on a bench in a Muni station. The guy chalked up the gap in time to a stress-induced fugue and decided to sell his business to Carl Angstrom on highly disadvantageous terms. The next morning, his daughter's birthday, he used a shotgun to paint the living room with his brains.

Now James Chung was coming for me.

I nudged Lou and directed his attention out the window.

"Trouble?" he said under his breath. I nodded.

"Okay folks, we're going to have to continue this conversation elsewhere," Lou said to the others. "We have a little situation developing here."

"What's the problem, Lou?" Angela asked him.

"Andy can explain. Andy?" I wished I smoked so I could press a cigarette burn into the back of his hand.

"Stay away from the window," I said to them. "We're being watched. You may have heard of the Men in Black."

All had but Roy, who kicked himself for not being better informed. "They're like the INS for aliens," Dr. Turezyn told him gently.

"In spite of my brilliant disguise, they appear to have tracked me down. They think I'll lead them to the Fabulous Ontarians." I sighed, weary with the burden of responsibility.

"Piece of cake," Jerry said. "We make a Molotov cocktail with that bottle of whiskey there and heave it at him as a diversionary tactic."

"Damn, Jerry," Lou said.

Angela blanched. "Maybe I could just slip out—"

"Too risky," Lou told her, and took her hand firmly in his. "You'll be safer with us."

"Let's see what the roof looks like," I said. "Maybe we can jump onto another building and sneak out that way."

The others followed me up a foul stairwell to a door that opened onto a windy, soot-blown rooftop covered thinly with fine gravel. Once everyone was through the door I blocked it with a pile of cinderblocks, feeling more secure and more trapped at the same time. It turned out that the hotel stood several stories taller and a good fifteen feet away from its nearest neighbor. I crept over to the edge and peeked down at the corner. James Chung touched the brim of his baseball cap in greeting. He drained his V-8 and started across the street.

"Oh crap, we've really got to get going," I said to the others. "How are we going to get down from here?" We looked around frantically for ideas but found only rusty hangers, broken glass, bales of chicken wire, cut cables, faded paper trash. Brenda and Dr. Turezyn boosted Joe Bananas to see over the lip of a decrepit water tank. He wrinkled his nose and turned away with a thumbs-down.

"I say we stay and fight," said Jerry. Roy seconded him enthusiastically. At that moment a blood-curdling cry rose through the roof on which we stood, and then another, ending abruptly. A concussion rocked the building as if it had been hit by a dump truck though there was no sound.

"Unless you have a better idea," Roy added.

"Check this out," Lou called to me from the corner of the roof. I joined him next to a cast iron claw-foot tub perched on the corner of a low cornice. I shrugged impatiently. "The elevator principle," he said.

"Come on, this is serious," I said. "That only works in cartoons."

"Have you ever tried?" he said. "How long do you think it's going to take that guy to climb the stairs?"

I cursed and gathered the others. "Here's the deal," I said. "We all get in the tub. Joe, you're the most nimble—you push us off, then hop in. I'll watch the ground and count to three. When I say 'three,' everyone jumps straight up just before the tub hits the ground. That way we miss the impact." I hoped they didn't read the desperation in my eyes.

Lou and Dr. Turezyn got into the tub right away. The others hesitated. Jerry was the first to speak. "Let me get this straight," he said. Behind him a tall ventilation pipe shook momentarily, then slurped out of sight into the rooftop. "Are you sure that would be wise?"

"Not that it isn't a good idea," Roy hurried, "but maybe there's another way—right, Jerr?"

Jerry nodded.

"I appreciate your concern, guys," I said quickly, "and the rest of you, too. I'm sure you must be experiencing a lot of feelings right now. I'm feeling a few myself. But I really need to ask for your full commitment at this point—for the sake of the Fabulous Ontarians and their historic mission, I need you to trust me, and to trust what I tell you to do, and not let your fear get in the way of your destiny. Can you do that for me? Can you, Jerry? Roy? Brenda? Angela?"

No one moved or spoke. A rhythmic pounding began somewhere below us, slow at first, then double-time, then doubled again.

"I'm in," said Brenda. She stepped into the tub and gave high fives to Lou and Dr. Turezyn, then clapped her hands in anticipation. Jerry helped Roy awkwardly into the tub, then followed. I squeezed into the end and looked reluctantly over the side. My palms and the soles of my feet broke into a cold sweat. It was only eight stories down but it might as well have been eighty.

"Okay, Angela," I said. "Just step in here nice and easy. It's all right." The six of us in the tub murmured encouragement.

She pushed her hair out of her eyes, shivering. "I don't know, Andy. I do trust you, you know I do. I know you mean well."

"It's not about trusting him," said Lou. "It's about having faith in him. Andy may not always know what he's doing, not that often, matter of fact, but he always comes through in the end. I, for one, never lost faith in him, and I've never regretted it."

The wind died down and all was still. The ominous sounds within the building had ceased. Angela took a deep breath, fixed her hair in a scrunchie, and stepped into the tub. I turned quickly to Joe to give the signal, seeing my reflection in his shiny black orbs. His laugh lines deepened as he tensed to heave us over.

Suddenly we were in mid-air and Joe was scrambling in behind me. We seemed to float for a moment before beginning our descent. The air whistled past as we fell, the tub swaying as we shifted our feet. I watched the ground swiftly nearing, the jagged alley trash coming into focus. "One," I said. I saw that the motel room above ours was much nicer. "Two." I felt fingers digging into my upper arm. "Three!"

The tub hit bottom with a horrendous crash as the eight of us hung suspended for a split-second, then completed our little hops. Choking on dust and garbage fumes, we stepped out of our conveyance and fled to our cars. "Where now?" Jerry gasped as he ran, his balding face red.

"My place," said Angela, her voice thick with enough adrenaline to win a marathon. "My roommates are out of town. We can hole up there and do what we need to do."

"What a day," Lou said, pounding the steering wheel. "We got some dough, we got reinforcements, we got a talking monkey besides. We're batting a thousand."

"Chimp," said Joe Bananas from the back seat. The three of us had jumped into the Cutlass; the other five were in Jerry's van.

"You got it," said Lou. "Eh? Eh?" He punched me on the usual arm bruise.

"Easy there," I said. "We're not out of the woods yet." I told him what I knew about James Chung as we sped down Bryant Street toward Potrero Hill. I glanced over my shoulder every few seconds, afraid to hope we'd made a clean getaway. Blanston knew that Lou and I were working together; had he also divined our larger objective? I'd felt marginally secure in the thought that we were no more than an annoying loose end, an insignificant detail in light of the impending Release. But if Blanston knew that we were hatching a conspiracy to bring down the entire IC empire—that was a horse of a different color. The appearance of James Chung suggested that our demise was now a top priority.

I turned in my seat and peered through the back window. The mid-afternoon traffic was light, the sparsely populated South of Market streets a far cry from the morning's pandemonium in Berkeley, but the air was charged with latent chaos that flickered along the cornices of warehouses like St. Elmo's fire. The banana gag, the earthquake, the mermaid, and the countless absurdities they'd spawned in turn had created a self-fulfilling expectation of stranger things yet to come. Rumor, speculation, and superstition ran rampant, all of it beyond the purview of Integrated Consciousness. At a time like this people cast aside the scripts for their daily lives, drawn to the confusion like moths to a house fire.

Blanston and Digital Andy would be working overtime to stem the leakage. They'd launch appealing new promotions and fads to regain the attention of their customers. They'd reel them back in by putting the elements of yesterday's disruption into more rational, less enigmatic contexts: the banana icon as clip-art, the mermaid as supermodel, the flag-waving chimp as sitcom star. People would settle down in a few days, their attention span exhausted, and everything would go back to normal. We had to strike quickly while we still had momentum on our side. And before James Chung caught up with us.

A cacophony shattered my reverie. An unusual number of ravens had gathered in the vicinity, circling and cawing over our heads while we waited for a traffic signal. I shuddered—they were big ones, wingspans ten feet or more. "Let's get out of here," I said to Lou. He gestured at the red light, a bemused smile on his face. A crowd had gathered in front of the bodega on the corner, evidently discussing the huge birds. By the time the light changed the mob had spilled into the street, barring traffic yet again. To my dismay I saw that the driver of the car ahead of us had joined the crowd, leaving his vehicle unattended. "Come on, damn it," I muttered, reaching across Lou to lean on the horn, which was barely audible over the honking and bleating of the ravens. Then one of the birds broke formation and dove in a black streak right at us. Before I could flinch its beak had pierced the windshield like a pencil through paper just inches from my face. I yelped and struggled to free myself from my seatbelt, my heart racing and my hands shaking hard. As this bird rose to rejoin its coven, another swooped downward a dozen feet away, making straight for a slim young woman in a bright blue sweater. In a single smooth motion the raven snatched her in its talons and glided away while its terrified passenger shrieked horribly for help, the two of them receding to vanish like a lost balloon into the clear blue sky.

Lou gunned the engine, wrenched the Cutlass into reverse, and peeled us back to the last cross-street. As I fought to control my panic, Joe Bananas placed a firm hand on my shoulder. "Do not worry, my friend," he intoned softly. "They like to play with humans but they do not eat them. She will be all right."

I took a few deep breaths—as deep as I could manage, anyway. "Of course," I said tightly, forcing a smile. "Thank you, Joe. She's probably having the time of her life up there."

Lou let out a whoop. "Fantastic," he said. "It's exactly the kind of fucked-up shit you always used to talk about! What's that big Arabian bird called—the Moc? The Soc?"

"Yeah, sure, sure," I said. But what kind of world was this, where a woman just walking down the street could be snatched away like that, to face who knows what kind of fate, leaving her family to a lifetime of wondering? Anything was possible, indeed. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, and waited for my hands to stop trembling. For a moment, I wished I could open my eyes and find myself back at my desk with everything back to normal.

"Lord have mercy," Lou went on. "Those were some big fuckin' birds. Take a barrel of oil to fry one of those things, am I right?" He punched me on the upper arm. I was getting sore on that side. "Big fuckin' birds."

Angela lived on the side of Potrero Hill just north of Eighteenth Street on Vermont. From the outside her house looked like any other three-story Potrero Victorian: a little shabby, not as gaily painted as the places in the Haight or the Castro, a cracked window or two, basically sound. But the interior was another story. Behind the façade, the house was skeletal, just beams and two-by-sixes where walls and floors should have been. Wiring and pipes ran between the studs like nerves and arteries. Here and there within this spare framework were suspended a number of floored areas connected by short staircases, some with walls, others without. The effect was simultaneously spacious and disorienting; it was hard to tell what room you were in, or how to get from one space to another. All around loomed bizarre creatures formed from rebar, wheel rims, gas pump nozzles, scrap copper, and chicken wire. I never would have pictured Angela Whitfield in such an environment. She seemed more the Audrey Hepburn's living room type.

Lou and I followed voices to a kitchen space in the upper back of the house, where we found the others gathered around a massive, bloodstained butcher block. They were in a state of high excitement but fell silent when we joined them. They looked nervously at one another. It was Jerry who spoke up. "See here Hunter, we'd like some answers." He stopped short, perplexed.

"What Jerry means, Andy," said Angela, "is that we've all been noticing a lot of strange things going on lately. Besides the Fabulous Ontarians, that is. And," she gestured at Joe Bananas. "No offense," she hastened to add.

"None taken," Joe Bananas murmured graciously.

"Right, exactly," Jerry resumed. "I knew San Francisco was a pretty strange place, everybody knows that," he said with the worldly authority of someone who'd never left Twenty-nine Palms. "The place is full of fruitcakes and anarchists. You see stories all the time—San Francisco's always electing horses and outlawing neckties and having naked marches down Main Street and so forth. But the things that are going on out there right now, things that I've seen with my own eyes since I've been here—that's a whole other matter. Vacant lots that sprout buildings from one minute to the next. People whispering to animals, and animals to people. Mysterious symbols and musical codes."

"Insects with intelligence and sensitivity," said Dr. Turezyn.

"Stuff moving all by itself, with no one there to move it," said Roy.

"Loud music and flashing lights inside phone booths, but you open the door and no one's there," said Brenda. They were all talking at once, their hands fluttering madly to describe what they'd witnessed.

"What we're wondering is," said Angela, "does this have something to do with the Fabulous Ontarians? Or is it ..." she shrugged helplessly. "What's the deal, Andy?"

"I—"

"And where is it going to lead?"

I'd been prepared to wing the first question but the second stumped me. Where indeed? Having pledged blind loyalty, they deserved a more truthful answer than I could give them. "The truth is, folks, I just don't know," I said honestly enough. "I know what you're talking about—I've noticed it too. But some things defy rational explanation. It's possible that the proximity of the Fabulous Ontarians—they're in high Earth orbit as we speak—is causing some kind of psychic interference. It may be a side-effect of the cultural acceleration process Joe spoke of earlier. Where it will lead, who can say? All we can really do is put our faith in the," I swallowed the lump rising in my throat, "in the Fabulous Ontarians."

They nodded earnestly. I wished I shared their naiveté.

"Andy?" said Roy after a moment. "Will they actually land? The Ontarians, I mean?"

"How big is their mother ship?" Jerry asked me. "Can it land at all, or is it a shuttle situation?"

"Well, and can they breathe our air?" Brenda piped up.

I was thrown once again into confusion. Having invented the Fabulous Ontarians in the first place, there was no reason I couldn't fill in these details as well. But the UFO the Twenty-nine Palms Three had found was real enough ... who did it belong to, and what were their plans? What was going to happen on October ninth—anything at all? Or everything at all? What if I got it wrong? But—was it possible to make something up wrong? My throat closed like a paper straw and the silence pounded in my ears.

"Of course they'll land," said Lou. Grateful for the relief, I sat back and took a long drink from the kamikaze Angela had made me. I was in way over my head. "At least that's what we'll tell people." He stroked his chin. "In reality, the Fabulous Ontarians will not be landing. They have very strict policies about physical contact with other life forms. Infection, you know. But we can't ask the American public to take our word for this without some kind of proof. And it would be a tragedy of biblical proportions if a single person were to miss hearing the message because of promotional constraints."

"What Mr. Black means is that liberties may be taken in furtherance of the greater good," said Joe Bananas.

"The landing will just be a way to focus people's attention for the telepathy thing," said Lou. "Kind of like lip-syncing. For that matter, we'll stage a concert around it." Lou gestured at the refrigerator as he spoke as if it bore maps or diagrams instead of alphabet magnets holding grocery lists and invitations. He sketched a star-studded extravaganza, a blue-ribbon audience of celebrities and dignitaries, fog machines, holographic lasers, towering sets, the mother ship of the Fabulous Ontarians descending to redeem the ignorance of mankind, all broadcast live to every home in the nation.

Lou could still talk a good game. If we could pull off half of what he said, we'd be in great shape. Before the Fabulous Ontarians even left the building there'd be so many telepathic message versions going around that IC would lose traction completely. Come Saturday, the Release would fall on deaf neurons. And stopping IC 2.0 was the whole point, right?

The Fabulous Ontarians would have broad cross-elemental appeal right from the start. Anyone with at least fifty percent Closet Messianist in them had been secretly hoping for something like this—that's a third of the population right there. Just about any persecution-oriented element, from Black Denim Trench Coat to Video Game Pacifist, would interpret the celestial visitors as potential allies. Not to mention Look to the Stars and the Science Fictionists, of course. Two-Handed Handshakers and Third Way Fellow Travelers would be eager to embrace the new future of man. Our crack team would line them up like chickens to the slaughter, the blind leading the blind. Only Lou and I would know the truth. At least I hoped we would. I wasn't sure of much at all anymore. And I was tired—I felt as if the entire enterprise were running on my own blood, draining me with every step we took. Lou was hell-bent for leather and I was happy to let him take the lead for a while. I needed to rest my nerves.

"Well, I'll tell you one thing," Jerry said importantly. "Jerry Platt is nobody's errand boy. Sure they want me on their side, because they know what's good for them. But that's a two-way street on any planet. I'll work with these Fabulous Ontarians because I think they've got the winning hand here and I plan to be on the inside of it. But I'm going to be watching them."

"They wouldn't expect any less," said Dr. Turezyn without irony.

"I can start spreading the word whenever they're ready," said Jerry. "My site gets a hundred thousand hits a day, and I've got two hundred thousand known good addresses."

"I thought you shut all that down," Roy said. "Isn't that what you told Brenda?"

Jerry scowled. "That's what they wanted me to do, the Integrated Consciousness people. Thought it aggravated my sociopathic tendencies."

"It'll sure come in handy now," said Lou. "What else have we got?"

Dr. Turezyn was on the edge of her seat. "As luck would have it," she said, "I'm going to be on the Sam Romero Show in two days."

"Tremendous." Lou opened Angela's fridge and took a long drink of milk straight from the carton. "That never happened," he said sotto voce before continuing. "We'll do our official announcement on the Romero show. In the meantime we get the buzz going. Nothing too specific, nothing too accurate, change it up a lot—we want to get people talking, arguing, speculating, that's the way." He paced back and forth in front of the fridge, his hands measuring out his words. "Jerry, you fire up your network. Roy, you help him. Brenda, you're a good talker. Call up everyone you know who lives in a different city and infect them. Did you ever read The Stand? Stephen King? No? Man, that's a great book. Anyway, get peoples' juices going. Angela, you do the same, but do it online. Turezyn, you've got the university crowd. Bananas, you and me are going to arrange the talent. We've got two days here, and then we're going to have a whole new set of jobs to do post-Romero, so we've got to step lively. Every minute counts." He stopped and faced us, gripping the edge of the butcher block. "Got it? Good. Let's get a beer."

By the time they snapped out of it he was halfway down the front steps.

The Milky Way lay close across the sky criss-crossed by shooting stars and flashing lights. The rings of Saturn and Neptune extended like handles from the banded gasbags. Night birds and bush babies called to each other from the trees as we walked down the hill to Seventeenth Street. The people on the opposite side of the street appeared to be descending the hill via escalator. I kept my eyes to myself.

I had visualized a cozy corner table where I could unwind, but the Bottom of the Hill was packed to the rafters with deafeningly loud hipsters. The floor pounded the soles of my feet and the walls ran with condensed sweat. A shirtless dervish gyrated several feet above the stage lashing a microphone cord, accompanied by a three-piece band. "You're in luck," the doorman screamed at me. "The Doors are playing. Surprise show."

"To say the least," I screamed at him. "I'll try to find a table," I shouted over my shoulder to the others. I'd re-applied my disguise, but still felt terribly conspicuous as I pressed on through the crowd. I couldn't imagine that James Chung's assassins would ever look for me here but I wasn't about to let my guard down. A ten-minute struggle brought me to a rare empty table in the back corner of the bar. Dr. Turezyn, Roy, and Joe Bananas joined me a moment later. They looked awkwardly at each other as they realized no one had got me a beer. Dr. Turezyn motioned for me to share hers. There was no sign of the others.

As I slumped in my chair I was hit with a crashing wave of fatigue. My tongue was too tired for conversation, and my mind too addled. Even back here it was too loud to hear myself think; the band had segued from a greatest-hits medley into a rambling piece centering around Jim Morrison's unfortunate poetry. I sank deeper into my seat, jumping now and then at Densmore's rim shots. There was a sudden commotion as a battering ram knocked the doors off their hinges. A squadron of armored cops came in and dragged Morrison laughing and kicking from the stage. The other three carried on after a few minutes but it wasn't nearly the same.

Roy, Dr. Turezyn, and Joe Bananas huddled intently, their fingers interlaced, their faces open. It was Roy's turn. "I'd spend hours and hours just wandering around in the desert. I used to go with my buddies but they always wanted to yell and throw beer cans around, so I went by myself. It's so big and wide open you can walk all day without seeing another person, without seeing anything but rocks, cactuses, and tees. And lizards. I used to always think that what I was seeing was the same thing that, you know, a cowboy would have seen, or a settler, or an Indian, and I used to wonder what it looked like to them. You know, wandering out there not knowing how far it was to the other side, thirsty and hot and all, but it's also really beautiful, you know? Anyway, the point is, I always used to feel like I didn't have a sense of purpose in the world. But as soon as I heard about that UFO, I knew it was for me. I knew that was what my life was going to be all about—the guy who found that UFO. Then you tell me that these guys hand-selected me to help them out." He pushed out his narrow chest. "I guess you could say I've found my destiny. It's to meet the Fabulous Ontarians, and travel with them back to their planet, and mate with their women."

"That's beautiful, Roy," Dr. Turezyn said, and the three of them squeezed hands.

Roy's faith in his vision staggered me. He had no doubt at all that the Fabulous Ontarians would arrive as scheduled, welcome him into their ranks, and transport him to their human-inhabitable planet to couple with their fully compatible females. He'd staked the meaning of his life on the flimsiest of premises with no regard at all for the possibility of disappointment. It was like watching a blindfolded aerialist glide through the air with hands outstretched and knowing that the other trapeze was no more than a fancy of the imagination. But what of it? He wouldn't be the first person to find out how far it is to the ground.

Then again, maybe things would work out exactly as Roy had said. The only thing more baffling than his faith in the Fabulous Ontarians' existence was his presupposition that they were benevolent, and that joining them would be the best thing that ever happened to him. Was it Angela who had asked what was so wrong with things the way they were? Roy didn't seem all that unhappy with his life. He had his stoner afternoons in the desert and his magazines and his crush on Brenda. Why would he throw it all away in favor of the unknown? The world is a dangerous place. You never know what you might find, and it's an even chance you'll wish you hadn't.

I hadn't seen Lou or the girls since we'd come in. I craned my neck but couldn't spot them on the dance floor. They were probably having a three-way in the bathroom. Now I remembered what it was really like in high school, Lou living it up and getting all the girls while I did all the work. I was sure Integrated Consciousness hadn't crossed his mind in hours. All he cared about was the fun he was having. He was a gadfly, as much a liability as a help. At least Blanston had Digital Andy for a sidekick, or maybe it was the other way around. I had Peter Pan.

Right on cue, I saw Lou waving at me from over by the window. He was gesturing for me to join him. I sighed, braced myself for the details, and pushed my way across the room. "Hey, Andy," he said as I drew near. "You know James, right?"

Lou lay a fraternal hand on James Chung's shoulder. "James, I think you know Andy." The assassin nodded curtly.

Ice stabbed my chest. I could make no sound, and nodded back at him.

"Here's the way I see it. Andy, James here has been sent to kill you, but so far he hasn't been able to do it. You should hear the stories this guy has been telling me. Cars that won't start. Guns that jam. Bottomless chasms blocking his way." Chung nodded at Lou's words. "On the other hand, you'd sure like not to have to worry about this guy any more, am I right?"

"You could say that," I said warily, trying to make out Lou's pupils in the darkness. I glanced over my shoulders and Chung started as if to intercept my escape. I was already doomed.

"So what I've proposed to James here is that we stare each other for it, him and me. First one to blink or look away, the other guy gets you. How's that?"

It took me a few beats to understand what he was saying. Then I was dumbstruck, and could only gape helplessly, rooted to the spot, while Lou cleared a table in the center of the room and set up two chairs on opposite sides. He and James Chung stretched and preened at their respective ends, playing to the crowd that was already gathering four tiers high all around them. By the time I moved from the window I could only watch on tiptoe, straining to see past the peanut vendors, program hawkers, and ushers combing the stands. The touts were offering three to two that Lou would blink first, and five to one that he'd be distracted. I should have seen it coming, given how perfectly things had been going immediately beforehand.

The combatants took their seats, administered a few last medicated drops, and lined up, eyes closed. The lid judges and glance judges assumed their positions at the corners of the table. The umpire counted down from ten, then lifted her hands from their heads. The staring began.

The crowd erupted in cheers and attempted distractions. Spinning Catherine wheels to either side of the staring table sparked and whistled and produced prodigious amounts of thick black smoke that reached in slithery tendrils to cradle the reddening eyes of the starers. A guy with Lou's outfit painted on his bare torso waved a foam eyeball and jeered rhythmically at James Chung. A tinny play-by-play sounded from a small blimp shaped like a hot dog on a roll that hovered just over our heads. I saw a vein at Lou's temple beating frantically and sweat coursing down his forehead into his eyes. James Chung was cool, filing his nails with a manicurist's precision with his insouciant eyelids at three-quarters mast. Lou grunted and groaned, slapped the table, his face growing red and grotesque.

The ring was packed with sideshows, Chinese tumblers and belly dancers and animal acts. Neither man had dropped the other's gaze, now more than twenty-five minutes into the competition. I looked around on the wall behind me and saw newspaper clippings of legendary staredowns that had gone only half that long. This was one for the ages. At least I'd get a gala sendoff.

Suddenly there was a crash of broken glass. Seven tiny black birds flew in the window all in a row and raced around the room like a ribbon. They formed a tight circle over James Chung's head. I watched Lou nervously, imagined that I saw the lobes of his nose twitching. Then the avian wreath began to lower itself around the assassin's brow until he could barely maintain Lou's eyes beneath the fluttering ring. A bird pecked in passing, and then another. I climbed up the back of the old woman in front for a better view and saw that the seven birds were plucking Chung's eyelashes one by one. Soon only one remained, one so fine and so tenderly tucked into the folds of his doubled eyelids that it could barely be seen on the Jumbotron. At this point the birds loosened their circle and rose above his head. There they remained like a fell halo, holding the attention of every person in the room but the competitors and the officials. For a few long moments they did nothing, just fluttered in a circle in the silent, unbreathing air. Then they were red, as simple as that—from one beat of the wing to the next, scarlet as brilliant as their black had been deep. The assembly gasped as one, and had yet to release their breath when a siren wailed and red lights began flashing all over the room. The glance judge assigned to James Chung had raised her flag.

As we watched, James Chung's trembling head turned bright red, then blue, then purple. His lips pulled back, and without opening his clenched teeth he emitted a banshee wail that started loud and got louder. As the sound grew he rose from his seat, threw back his head, shook his fists at the sky, and collapsed into a heap of black powder on the floor.

"Boy, did you see that coming?" Lou asked me as the crowd dashed for the parking lot to beat the rush.

"No, I was busy watching my life flash before my eyes because you were going to get me killed, which is what would have happened if not for a seriously lucky break," I said angrily.

"No way, I had him beat anyway. I may not have pulled any alien races out of my hat but I still know something about winning a stare-off."

"How about next time we do it where it's your life on the line?"

"You don't have to thank me for getting that guy off your back," said Lou. "I know you would've done the same for me."

"I think we need to keep our priorities straight here," I said, still shaken. "Number one, don't get Andy killed. Don't make Andy crazy. Can't anyone follow these simple guidelines?" Lou saw nothing wrong with what had just gone on, and from his perspective I guess nothing really was. I reminded myself never to assume that my welfare was a consideration in Lou's decision-making.

I scanned the bar for Roy but couldn't see him. I was worried about the kid. What was I leading him to, where fantasies ordered his reality? Could I promise that the wrong dreams wouldn't come true?

I awoke with a start. My heart was pounding. The house was quiet, dark but for the harlequin pattern cast by the streetlamp through the front window. I remained frozen, tensed for any sound. A rat-tat-tat from the right shattered my poise, and I stumbled trembling out of bed and crouched on the floor in a tangle of bedclothes. The noise came again, the sound of a coin tapping on glass, and I followed it to the window. There was a face peering through the bottom left pane. To my shock, I recognized it as the clown from my dream, in the flesh. He met my eyes and motioned urgently for me to come outside. I glanced around the room breathlessly, looking for a weapon or a flashlight or something, then struggled into my clothes and rushed through the door carrying my shoes. I was just in time to see the clown pass from view at the limit of the streetlamp's reach.

I hurried down the sidewalk, my footsteps echoing off the dark houses along Vermont Street, hoping that the clown hadn't already turned onto a side street. I made out his white-painted head bobbing in the distance, never closer no matter how fast as I ran. Something rustled behind me and I glanced back to see four or five large birds turning and wheeling in the air behind me like kites. As I pushed my legs ever faster my vision was suddenly arrested by something on the sidewalk at my feet, momentarily illuminated by passing headlights. Only several paces ahead did I realize what it had been: a scarf, midnight blue with lilies scattered around its border. I would have recognized it anywhere. It was my mother's favorite.

On I ran, my lungs and eyes burning, the concrete sidewalk sending hot spikes through my shinbones, seemingly motionless between the clown barely visible ahead of me and the birds calling shrilly just behind. A voice called out in the distance. I couldn't be sure but it sounded like her. It came again, louder, two syllables—could it be my own name? My ears played tricks on me, and I couldn't tell what direction it had come from. I felt the darkness like an icy current against my face. The voice came again, this time definitely my name, the voice more surely hers. It was coming from straight ahead. All I could do was keep running, two steps ahead of the birds.

But it was impossible. My mother would be pushing sixty by now. She'd be fast asleep at this hour, not roaming the streets of San Francisco playing Marco Polo with a clown. If he had been a clown in the first place and not a trick of the light. It was all too ridiculous. I stopped short and was immediately knocked off my feet by the birds, caught up in a thresher of claws and beaks and wings. I flailed helplessly against their sharp edges, cowering from their horrible cries until I realized that the shrieking was coming from my own mouth. I closed it, and held still for a moment.

When my vision cleared, I found myself in a jumble of scrap-metal artwork in the corner of the living room. Two or three of the larger pieces had fallen on me, setting in motion a number of fan blades and pointy appendages. I extracted myself gingerly and stood apart from the mess. My arms and legs were covered with bloodless scratches.

Chapter Fifteen: The Mouse's Message