“Hold my wrist again. Hold it tightly. Hurt me with your hand.”
“Why?”
“I have to believe that I didn’t go off that bridge. I have to believe that all this isn’t happening in some... gray place between the last life and the next.”
He held her wrist tightly, made her gasp with pain. She smiled. “That’s better, a little.”
“The other group... they are the people who have been trained in the same things. I think they control the world. I can’t make myself believe in... their motives. I think they are evil. And apparently, the penalty for misplaced loyalty is death.”
“Wasn’t there a myth about a god who left Olympus, who preferred to live with man?”
“Men hate gods and fear them. I learned that quickly.”
“I don’t fear you. I don’t hate you. There’s just... a very definite awe. Can the others... find you?”
“They may be there when this plane lands. The first stop is Denver. So there isn’t much time for us.”
“What else can you do?”
“What did we do while we were waiting for the plane?”
She frowned. “Walked, talked.”
“Did we?”
He took over her mind quickly. The life left her eyes. Her hands rested flaccid in her lap. He gave her a better memory. He brought the memory up out of the good years. A great glittering ballroom, open to the sky, an orchestra, playing for the two of them. He dressed her in silver blue, a dress sheathed perfectly to the uncompromising perfection of her body. Music of Vienna, and a sky with too many stars, and the long dance as he looked down into her eyes.
After a time he released her. Her eyes focused on his with a slow fondness, and then she gave a little shudder and flushed.
“Lovely, Dake. But like dancing in a dream. Light, effortless. I always trample on my partner’s feet.”
“But it was real, Mary. You believe it happened. So it happened.”
She nodded, solemn as a child. “It happened.”
“Would you like more magic?”
“Much more. All there is.”
“Look at your hands.”
He had covered her fingers with great barbaric rings, with the emeralds and fire diamonds of illusion. She touched the stones.
“They... exist.”
“Of course. But all magic isn’t gay.” He dissolved all the rings but one, an emerald. He turned it into a small green snake curled tightly around her finger, its head lifted, eyes unwinking, forked crimson tongue flickering.
She flinched violently and then held her hand steady, stared at it calmly. “Magic doesn’t have to be gay. It has only to be... magic.”
“Do you believe?”
“In legend, Dake, it was necessary for you to sell your soul to the devil to be able to do this.”
“I refused to sell. That’s why there is a forfeit I have to pay.”
“The same forfeit I’m paying voluntarily. When you’re through with me.” She bit her lip and said, “I’m like a child with a new toy. I don’t want it taken away from me. Those two men back there — will they remember what happened?”
“Not what happened while I was controlling them. Just before and after.”
“Would the crew of one of these liners admit they had made an unauthorized landing?”
“They... might not, but...”
“Can you control all the passengers?”
“Not at the same time. I can put them to sleep, one by one, and give them a strong suggestion to remain asleep. But I can’t fly one of these things. I can’t therefore control the man flying it.”
“Could you make him believe he’d heard orders to land somewhere else, the way you made me believe in that... dance?”
He thought it over. “That might be done. It’s a case of erasing the memory later, though.”
There had once been a vast bomber base near Cheyenne Wells. One strip was kept lighted as an emergency strip. The flagship rolled to a stop. Sweat stood on Dake’s forehead with the intensity of his effort, with the diversification of it. He got the doors open. It was a thirty-foot drop to the hard surface. All around them the passengers slept. Up forward the crew slept, heavily. They walked on their toes inside the plane, talked in whispers. Dake let the emergency ladder down, climbed down and held the bottom steady as Mary clambered down.
A light came bobbing and winking toward them. A heavy man in khaki came out of the shadows. “What goes on here?” he asked.
Dake wasted no time on him. He took him over with punishing abruptness, made him stand aside, his eyes glassy. He took Mary by the hand and they ran across the runway. He turned and looked back at the aircraft, at the lighted control room. The crew stirred, came awake, looked around.
Dake and Mary ran and hid in the grass, watchful. After a time the flagship wheeled ponderously around, raced down the runway, lifted toward the stars.
Fifteen
In the desert the nights were cool and dry, the days crisp, blinding. It was a miner’s shack, abandoned when the claim was worked out. Mary drove into town eight miles away once a week for supplies. Fuel was a problem, water was a problem, money would soon be a problem. But each day was an idyll, each night pale silver with too many stars. They would sit on an outcropping of rock, still warm from the sun of the day. He would wonder where he had been — which exact portion of the big sky.
She wore jeans and white shirts and went barefoot gingerly until her slim feet were brown and toughened. The sun bleached the ends of her hair, whitened her brows and lashes, and turned her face a deep ruddy brown. He liked to watch her. She had a cat’s grace, a cat’s ability to relax utterly. They walked miles across the harsh burned land They talked of all things under the sun.
Mary never tired of making him perform. The tiny Pack B fascinated her. He taught her the sequence of wheels, tried to teach her how to use it. She tried until she was on the edge of tears, saying, “I can’t get rid of that last tiny little feeling that it’s impossible. If I could only accept it completely... Do it again, Dake. Let me watch again.”
And finally she refused to try anymore. Her smile seemed a bit strained.
There was another game. She would say, “I met this one when I was studying in Sarasota right after Korea. About five foot six, a hundred and seventy pounds, I’d say. Balding, with very silky blond hair. Big bland blue eyes, and a snub nose and a puckery little mouth, and two chins. He stood very straight, with his stomach sticking out, and when he was thinking of how he would explain something, he’d suck his teeth. He used to wear white slacks and a beaded belt and dark shirts with short sleeves, navy or black.”
“Like this?”
And she would clap her hands with sudden delight, or she would frown and say, “He’s wrong, somehow. Let me think. It’s the forehead.”
And he would alter the illusion until she was satisfied, and he would fix the man in his memory, ready to reproduce him at any time she desired. Once they had a party. He produced the illusions of a round dozen of the people she had described. He created them to the extent of his abilities, sitting taut with the strain of managing so many of them. And Mary walked among them, burlesquing the considerate hostess, saying outrageous things to them.
And suddenly she began to laugh, and she sat down on the sand, and laughter turned to tears, her face huddled against her knees. He dissolved the illusions and went to her, kneeling beside her, touching her shoulder.
“What is it?”
She lifted her wet face and tried to smile. “I... don’t know. It’s a crazy thing. I started feeling as though I’m... here with you like a favorite puppy, or an amusing kitten or something. And what you were doing was like throwing a ball for me to fetch it back to you, panting and wagging my tail.”