I went to the infirmary. Dr. Kim was awake. “Where’s Sunda?” he asked.
“On the phone with Sidrath and Here’s Johnny. They made Trans Lunar Injection right after lunch. You were asleep.”
“So be it,” said Dr. Kim. “Did you say hello to our friend?”
I saw the Shadow in the corner, under the magnolia, near the foot of the bed. I felt a shiver. It was the first time he had ever appeared without our—summoning him. The bowl on the table was empty.
“Hello, I guess,” I said. “Have you talked to him?”
“He’s not talking.”
“Shouldn’t I get Hvarlgen?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Dr. Kim. “It doesn’t mean anything. I think he just likes to exist, you know?”
“I’m here anyway,” Hvarlgen said, from the door. “What’s going on?”
“I think he just likes to exist,” said Dr. Kim, again. “Did you ever get the feeling when you were running a program, that it enjoyed running? Existing? It’s all in the connections, the dance of the particles. I think our friend the Shadow senses that he won’t exist very long, and—”
Even as he spoke the Shadow began to fade. At the same time the dark substance twisted into being in the bowl. I looked down into it. It was dark yet clear yet infinitely deep, like infinity itself. I could see stars beyond stars in it.
Hvarlgen seemed relieved that the Shadow was gone. “I’ll be glad when the Diana gets here,” she said. “I don’t know which way to turn; which way to proceed.”
I sat on the foot of the bed. Dr. Kim took another shot of PeaceAble and passed the pipe to me.
“Dr. Kim!”
“Relax. He’s no longer the test bunny, Sunda,” he said. “His bowel is no longer the pathway between the stars.”
“Still. You know that’s only for people who are terminal,” Hvarlgen said.
“We’re all terminal, Sunda. We just get off at different stops.”
That night after supper, we played Monopoly. The Shadow appeared again, and again he had nothing to say. “He doesn’t speak unless we call him up,” said Hvalgren.
“Maybe the ceremony, the chair, the lunies watching, are part of the protocol,” said Dr. Kim. “Like the questions.”
“What about the Others? Do you think we’ll see them?” I asked.
“My guess is that there’s no them to see,” said Dr. Kim.
“What do you mean?”
“Imagine a being larger than star systems, that manipulates on the subatomic level, where the Newtonian universe is an illogical dream that cannot be conceptualized. A being that reproduces itself as waves, in order to exist, that is one and yet many. A being that is not a where-when string—as the Shadow calls it—but a series of one-time events…”
“Dr. Kim,” said Hvarlgen. She played a conservative but deadly game.
“Yes, my dear?”
“Pay attention. You just landed on my city. Cash or credit?”
“Credit,” he said.
That night I dreamed. I slept late, and woke up exhausted. I found Hvarlgen in Grand Central, on the phone with Sidrath, as usual lately. A lunie was changing the poster from D=29 to D=11.
“Here’s Johnny and Sidrath just crossed Wolf Creek Pass,” Hvarlgen said, hanging up.
“They’re balling the jack,” I said.
“They’re using boosters,” she said. “We all have the feeling we’re running out of time.”
This was to be, by agreement, our last contact session. All the lunies were there; in their yellow tunics they were as alike as bees. I sat in the usual spot, which seemed to be part of the protocol. I enjoyed the position of prominence—especially since I got to keep my pants on.
Hvarlgen placed the bowl on the floor and the dark whale dove—twisted beautifully out of its bowl—and the Shadow appeared in the image of a man.
Hvarlgen looked at me. “Do you have a question?”
“What happens after the communication?” I asked.
“I cease to be.”
“Will we cease to be?”
“You are a where-when string.”
“What are you?” asked Dr. Kim.
“Not a what. A where-when point.”
“When does the communication take place?” asked Hvarlgen.
“Soon.” He was repeating himself. We were repeating ourselves. Was it my imagination, or did the Shadow seem weary?
Hvarlgen, nothing if not democratic, turned her chair toward the lunies gathered in the doorway and on the bed.
“Do any of you have any questions?”
There were none.
There was a long silence and the Shadow began to fade. I felt like I was seeing him for the last time, and I felt a sense of loss. It was my image that was fading away…
“Wait!” I wanted to say. “Speak!” But I said nothing. Soon the Shadow was back in its bowl.
“I have to get some sleep,” said Dr. Kim, taking a shot of PeaceAble.
“Come on, Major,” said Hvarlgen. We left, taking the lunies with us.
I made my own lunch, then watched a little bit of Bonnie and Clyde with the lunies. Like them, I was tired of the Moon. I was tired of the Shadow. Tired of waiting for either the communication, or the arrival of the Diana—both events over which we had no control.
I took a walk around the little-used periphery tunnel that led from South to North via West. It was cold and smelly. Ahead of me I saw a new, unfamiliar light. I hurried to West, suspecting what it was. Forty kilometers away, the high ragged rim of 17,000-foot peaks at the western edge of Korolev was touched with sunlight.
Dawn was still hours away, but it had already struck the tops of the nameless mountains, which were as bright in the sky as a new moon, the Moon’s moon, casting temporary backward shadows across the crater floor. Everything seemed reversed.
I stood for what seemed like hours, watching. The dawn was as slow as an hour hand, and I grew cold.
From West I cut straight through to East, even though I hadn’t been invited. Hvarlgen was still on the phone, and I felt like talking with somebody. Maybe Dr. Kim would be awake.
The infirmary smelled like a Tennessee hayfield, bringing back sudden memories of childhood and summer. The Shadow was standing in the shadows under the magnolia, looking—worn out. Like an old person, I thought, he was fading away.
Dr. Kim was staring straight up at the stars. His spraypipe had fallen from his fingers, onto the floor. He was dead.
Dr. Kim had left four numbers in an envelope marked “Sunda,” with instructions that they were to be called as soon as he died, even though they lived in four different time zones, scattered around the Earth. They were his children. Most of them were awakened from sleep, but they weren’t surprised; Dr. Kim had already said his good-byes.
As I watched Hvarlgen making the calls, for the first time in years I felt lonesome for the family I had never had.
I wandered from Grand Central back down to East. Dr. Kim’s body had been put in the airlock to decompress slowly, and the room was empty except for the Shadow, which stood silently at the foot of the bed, like a mourner. I lay down on Dr. Kim’s bed and looked up through the magnolia, trying to imagine what his eyes had last seen. The dawn light still hadn’t touched the dome, and the galaxies hung in the sky like sparks from a burning city.
Hvarlgen came to get me, and we held a brief service in Grand Central. Dr. Kim’s body was still in the airlock, but the Portable Dante and the spraypipe on the table represented him. The lunies attended in shifts, since they were preparing the station for incoming. Hvarlgen read something in Old Norse, then something in Korean, then a bit from the King James Bible about the Valley of the Shadow of Death.