Jack is about to pull his head inside and run downstairs to join the crowd below when he sees it, moving inexorably along the street at the speed of a brisk walk, devouring everything in its path. Not a ravaging behemoth from another age, something much simpler and much, much worse.
A hole ... so wide the moonlight can't find its far edge, so deep Jack can't hear the buildings hit bottom when they tumble into its ever-expanding maw. If the world were flat, a dirt pancake floating in space, and its edge began to crumble and fall away, this is what it would be like on that edge.
Part of Jack is saying this is a dream, it has to be, but another part is saying you wish it was a dream: this is too real to be a dream. Either way, he knows he can't escape, knows the hole will swallow the hotel well before he reaches the lobby. So he watches in fascinated dread as Hell's Kitchen crumbles and disappears into the approaching edge of infinity. Panic reigns supreme below as the marching rim undermines the pavement, sending cars and screaming bodies tumbling into the void, but Jack feels an unnatural calm. Gia and Vicky are already gone, swallowed with the rest of the East Side; soon he will be following them and there is nothing he can do about it, nothing he cares to do about it.
The rim is almost to the hotel now. Jack grabs a chair and uses it to smash the window. Then he climbs out onto the ledge and strains to see into the depths, but the bottom is lost in midnight shadow. He feels the building shudder and tilt to a crazy angle. As the hotel leans, poised on the rim, Jack leaps from the ledge. If he's going to fall, he'll fall his way.
He swan-dives into the abyss ...
And hears a loud crash! It's not the hotel ... it's something else ... something smaller ... closer ...
Jack blinked in the darkness. Not complete darkness. The glowing red numerals on the clock read 4:33; light from the street filtered around the drapes. No cosmic rumble or sound of mass panic in the street outside.
He let out a deep breath. Another nightmare. But what was that noise? Sounded like it had come from
"Aw, no."
Grabbing his pistol from under the pillow, he jumped out of bed and crept toward the bathroom. The only light at this end of the room was a narrow strip from the hallway leaking past the bottom edge of the door. The bathroom was dark ... and the cold air flowing from it chilled his feet.
"Not again."
He reached in and turned on the light. Squinting in the glare, he saw the first crate under the sink where he'd left it. But now a new box of the same dark green material, smoking like dry ice, sat in the middle of the floor.
Jack checked the room door. This time he'd leaned the desk chair under the doorknob before hitting the sack. The chair was still in the wedged position.
Back to the bathroom: the second box had obviously arrived by the same route as the first. Which was ... how?
He stepped back to the desk and retrieved a hotel pen from beside the phone, then used that to flip off this crate's lid.
No mini girders this time. The new crate was filled with curved metal plates and copper spheres, all collecting a rime of frost as moisture from the air condensed and froze on their surfaces. He checked out the underside of the lid and saw more construction plansan exploded diagram of whatever it was, plus an illustration of the completed structure: Looked like an oil rig with a warty dome on top. As before, the directions appeared to have been seared into the material of the lid. He even thought he saw something that looked like lettering in one corner, but couldn't decipher it through the thickening layer of frost. He could check that out later. Right now ...
Jack shiveredwith cold as well as uneasiness. It was damn near freezing in here. He turned off the light and closed the bathroom door behind him.
He checked the clock again: 4:35 A.M. This second crate had arrived about the same time as the first. What was all this? Some weird equivalent of the "interociter" from This Island Earth? Was that it? Was he supposed to assemble the damn thing?
"Don't hold your breath, whoever you are," he muttered as he sat on the bed.
Jack had a bad feeling about that gizmo in there, a sense that putting it together might not be such a good idea. But even if he were gung-ho to do the Erector Set thing with it, he didn't have any tools with him.
He wondered if Lew had come back to the hotel. Wouldn't hurt to get his input. Maybe he'd seen something like this before.
An ungodly hour to get a call, but so what? Lew had got him into this. He rang Lew's room but no answer.
Still out in Shoreham, he guessed. It could wait till morning.
Jack got back under the covers but knew he wouldn't sleep. He tried not to think of those crates or the dream ... a giant hole again, sucking him down. Why did it feel more like a premonition than a dream?
His thoughts drifted to Ceil Castleman and the lost, utterly crushed look in her eyes as he'd led her to the closet. And that called up another visionLewis Ehler, who seemed rudderless without his missing Melanie.
He lay still, thinking about lost souls as daylight grew beyond the pulled curtains.
Roma ...
"Once again we come up empty-handed," Mauricio said from his place on the basement shelf.
Roma saw no need to acknowledge the obvious. He had a sinking feeling as to where the second delivery had come to rest.
"What I do not understand is why. Why is the Otherness directing the components elsewhere?"
"Maybe the stranger has found a way to influence the Otherness?"
Roma snorted in derision. "That man, controlling the Otherness? I hardly think so."
"But what other explanation is there?" Mauricio said, rising and pacing along the shelf. "You are The One. The device is for your use. Why would the Otherness direct it to anyone else? Unless ... "
"Unless?"
"Never mind. It was a fleeting, ridiculous thought."
"Say it."
"Very welclass="underline" Unless you are not The One."
The words staggered Roma. His terror-clenched jaw blocked speech. He locked his knees to keep from sagging. Not The One? Unthinkable! He had been preparing for ages! It could be no one else. There was no one else!
"You can see why I might think that," Mauricio said quickly. "After being prevented from killing the stranger, I had to wonder: Could he be The One? But of course that is impossible. I would not have been sent to you if you were not The One. The stranger has been marked by the Otherness, but he is not The One."
Mauricio was right. He had to be. The Otherness was not capricious. It was infinitely patient and glacially deliberate. It would not suddenly designate another over him without sufficient cause. And he had given it no cause.
Roma felt his muscles relax as the terror oozed away. Still, it left him feeling strangely weak.
"I believe the Otherness has plans for the stranger. In good time we will know. If it has delivered the device to him, it is no doubt for a good reason. We will not interfere."
"Your faith is admirable," Mauricio said. "But the Otherness is not infallible. It has made mistakes before, as you well know."
Roma nodded. "Mostly by underestimating the opposition." And he had often paid the price for those mistakes. "But these are different times. The opposition is all but non-existent these days."
"Let us hope you are right," Mauricio said.
Yes, Roma thought with a sharp pang of uneasiness. Let us fervently hope so.
1
Still a little shaky and unsettled from the night before, Jack balanced his cup of coffee atop the lobby pay phone and dialed Gia. Everything was fine there. No signs of anyone lurking about. That was a relief. Next he checked his voice mail. Only one call andcheersnot from his father. Oscar Schaffer had left him a terse message.