"No!" Izzy pulled out the beeper and examined it. "Three point five and rising. Damn! Shaman’s trying an epoche." The air shimmered with heat waves. The Space People advanced through a mirage of shining sand that looked like the Great Salt Lake. As we continued to advance, it cleared, and behind them, suddenly, nearer than the chotchke market of Nazlet El-Semman, there appeared a large concession complex that had not been there a moment before, although everyone in the world except Izzy, Johnny and I?and Shaman?remembered its being there.
The Texas state flag hung limply from a huge pole beside it. In addition to the entrance at the base, there was another entry on the upper story, a pair of glass doors opening into empty space. It looked exactly like a highway rest stop cafe, with the overhead passenger walkway amputated.
"Lila," Izzy asked her, "how’s the Vietnam War going?"
"The what?"
"The Vietnam War. This is important."
"Well, Iz, last I heard anyway, the VC were still holding onto Manhattan, Washington, and most of the American east coast, but the government in Memphis is making them fight like hell to advance inland. Why?"
"And who’s president? C’mon, Lila, honey, I gotta know the score before Shaman leaves the dishwasher."
"What president?" Sarvaduhka interjected. "The last president was Kennedy, in nineteen hundred and sixty-three. Since then, it’s been a monarchy. Are you completely crazy, besides being a back-stabbing fornicator?"
"Well, boys," Izzy said, "better switch to Plan B. Looks like we’re not gonna make it to customs before midnight?Do we still have midnights…? Hey! Where’s the baritone?" The Haymaker’s horse was snorting nervously. Its saddle was empty. At its hooves was a dead asp with a bolo tie around its eyes.
"Dang!" Johnny said. "There goes the best Earther baritone you ever saw."
"Phooey!" Sarvaduhka spat and tramped forward, biliously abreast of Izzy. "It was stupid to bring a horse to carry that asp in the first place."
The Space People huddled about two hundred yards away. Someone had appeared against the double doors of the cafe. "That’s Gypsy or I’m a mute coyoot," Johnny said. "I ain’t seen that boy since we chain-ganged together on the Magellanic Stream." Gypsy was banging on the glass. Banging, banging. Then sliding down slowly, leaving a trail of ichor. And revealing behind him, as he fell, a tall figure dressed in white. There was a catch in Johnny’s voice: "And that’s gotta be Shaman."
Where’s Nora? I thought?I Mel?eyes closed, swooning at the cafe table. Is she okay?
"Sure she’s okay," Izzy said, down on the desert. "She’s batting a thousand, kid, only we may not be doing so good. I don’t like the way Shaman’s smiling."
Johnny Abilene was unzipping his human skin. My father! The big hat fell down around his dendrites. The spurs and boots slid down his horse’s flanks and slithered, still stuffed with feet, to the sand below. The horse, spooked, took off toward the Pyramid of Cheops, leaving Johnny hovering there for a moment before he fell to the ground, at noticeably less than 32 feet per second squared.
Lila Kodzi petitely threw up.
Sarvaduhka dismounted, ran to Izzy and fell on his knees. "Izzy, we are okay, yes? The Space People will not hurt us, yes? You have Plan B? Izzy, what is Plan B?"
Izzy slapped the Haymaker’s mount on the rump and watched it gallop toward the Space People, followed by Sarvaduhka’s horse. "Let me think a minute," he said.
"Nora?" It came out of my throat like a death rattle. "Mom?" I lifted my head from the table. My cheek was wet?I had been drooling. She was cold. She didn’t move. I saw Shaman standing at the glass doors, Gypsy slumped at his feet. An acrid vapor rose from Gypsy’s flesh. The color was steaming out of it, yellow to grey to black. "Nora?"
"I’m you," Shaman said. He was looking out into the desert, not at me. He drilled without spirit, like a drunken tarrier, never noticing how dull his bit was since my epoche. "I’m you"?a tired song, water on water; I’d seen my fulcrum, I’d glimpsed who I was, though I too was tired.
Shaman angled and bobbed his head, peering past his Space People at Izzy’s band. "Peripherized," he muttered. "The sly dog!"
He turned toward me and lifted his chin; I knew he wanted me to come to him, to stand at his side. My body felt leaden. My pulse echoed in my skin. I had to leave Nora and go to him. He put his arm around my shoulders.
Down below, the Space People leaned toward us like heliotropes to the sun. Sarvaduhka was hugging Izzy’s saddle bags. Lila covered her eyes and drew her head down between her shoulders as if she could withdraw like a turtle into its shell. The force of Shaman’s thought flung Johnny Abilene into the sand; posing there before the glass, Shaman spoke to everyone?inside their own heads.
"This is my property. He’s me. Here is my fountain, my ancient spring. He’s me. His deep waters sired and nurtured me until I ripped out my umbilicus and dammed Abu for my own pleasure. He’s me. Abu will remain on Earth forever. Abu?He’s me?is my eternal life."
"But Shaman," I said, "I’m not you."
Izzy was ransacking his saddle bags, as if Plan B were in there. Lila had climbed down off her horse and was sitting on the ground, her head lolling against Sarvaduhka, who still knelt beside Izzy, begging him to think of something to save them. Johnny, his slimy Magellanic body glimmering on the sand, struggled to lift himself.
"I got a feeling," Izzy said as baggies of moldering Danish, maps, sun tan lotion, airline tickets, ephemerides and sen-sens flew from his saddle bags. "I got this feeling, Ducky!"
I, Abu, had lived through many things. I had seen civilizations come and go. The Space People could scythe Izzy and the others into the dunes, and I need barely notice. But I, Mel, was so new to this world?twenty years of it?that every flutter was still a revelation. Oh, Izzy, come through!
"Ah!" Izzy thrust high a travel brochure he’d picked up at the American Embassy in Cairo. Then he riffled through it till he found the paragraph he’d been looking for, the one that hadn’t been there before Shaman’s epoche, the one he’d sensed via Izzovision. "Look at this, Sarvaduhka."
Sarvaduhka read as Izzy held the page open before him. "So what?"
"The motel business has really dulled your brains, Duke." Izzy ran toward the Space People waving the brochure over his head. "Hey! Look at this. Hey! Did Shameface show you this?"
The Space People were leaning to see Shaman through the glass doors above. Izzy had to swing them around, one by one, bodily, to make them look at his paragraph. When they did, some gasped and seemed immediately stricken, others became angry and denied it, pushing him away, while still others started to argue with Izzy and with one another.
Above, Nora stirred. I ran to her. "Mother!"
"I’m you!" Shaman protested. I ignored him.
"I am but a remote descendent of your creature Chephren," Nora told me. Her face was coloring again, the eyes filling with light.