The house was terribly quiet, and the walls seemed to be moving closer together. Eric put on a classical CD at low volume, put two potpies in the oven and boiled some frozen vegetables. Eating alone was again a thing to be dispensed with quickly, as it had been since the divorce. Thinking about Nataly, imagining her sitting across the table from him, helped.
He rinsed his dishes, put them in the dishwasher with their cousins from breakfast and meals of the previous day. Some brainless sitcom was on screen when he turned the television set on, and he flipped channels for twenty minutes before turning it off. One of Nataly’s loaned books remained on the coffee table. He’d read it, but looked through it again: strange lights over Sedona, magnetic vortices, portals to other dimensions, aliens living in his own backyard, blah, blah, blah. He snapped the volume shut, put it on the coffee table and leaned back in the embrace of an overstuffed chair. For a moment he dozed, but came back startled by a sound from the basement that could have been a door opening or closing. He pulled the Colt Modified from its underarm holster, snicked off the safety and pulled the hammer back from half cock. The floor creaked once as he padded to the basement stairs on stockinged feet. The downstairs lights were still on. Eric put his back to the wall, went sideways down the stairs, gun leveled.
The door to the tunnel was closed. When he first glanced at it, Eric detected blurred movement to the right, but when he looked directly nothing was there except two boxes and a broom in a corner. He unlocked and opened the tunnel door. Nothing. Closed and locked it again. He was not feeling foolish; instincts honed by twenty years of life-threatening work were telling him to remain observant. He sniffed the air, but there was nothing obvious. The quiet was absolute. He stood motionless for minutes, eyes scanning back and forth. Even as he ascended the stairs again, the Colt held lightly in his hand, he felt an apprehension about having missed something.
Eric sat down in his chair again, put the Colt on the table in front of him. He sat that way for an hour, feeling as if he’d had six cups of strong coffee. And when the telephone rang, a shudder ran through him from head to toe.
“Hello.”
“Hi. Just called to say good night. I’m going to bed early.”
It was wonderful to hear her voice. “Not me. For some reason, I’m jumpy tonight.”
“Take the pills I gave you. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Every sound makes me hyper-alert.”
“The pills will help. Do you have to go out of town?”
“No. I would have heard something today, but it could be anytime.”
“How about tomorrow night?”
“Sure. Why don’t we eat at my place? I’ll fix you a pot pie, and show you my etchings.”
“You live on those horrible things. Okay, pick me up at five. Marie can close up.”
“I’ll be there. Sleep tight.”
“You too. Bye.”
A click, and Nataly was gone, but suddenly the world was good again. The jumpiness was still there, but didn’t seem important anymore. His watch said ten, early for bed, but if he stayed up his hyper-vigilance would only get worse, and for no good reason he could see.
The little piece of folded napkin was still in his pocket. He unfolded it, took the two pink tablets Nataly had given him to the kitchen and washed them down with a glass of water.
He undressed, and brushed his teeth, checked the doors, windows, the video recorder downstairs. The pills seemed to be working, the jumpiness fading, and no more imagined movement in his peripheral vision. The house was thankfully quiet when he finally crawled into bed at ten-thirty and turned off the bed stand lamp. He felt relaxed; a tingling that began in his toes and worked its way upward. He heard a car go by outside his house, recede in the distance. From far off came a mournful call of a dog or coyote on the prowl.
There was a lapse of consciousness for some length of time, and then he was aware again. His eyes were closed, his skin warm against the sheets. When he willed his eyes to open they didn’t respond. He wondered if he was on the edge of dreaming, but could smell traces of cooking odors in the air. He felt a tingling again in his legs, a pleasant feeling, and he sighed.
The vision began with a sound like gently bubbling water, and then it was as if a curtain was raised on a brightly lit stage. Eric felt the muscles of his closed eyes tighten at the brightness. There was a pale blue sky, a giant eye of emerald green hovering there above a golden man. The man was seated in lotus position on a green rug that floated on a layer of mist over an endless pool of bubbling water. He was dressed from head to toe in a net of shimmering white cloth that filtered the brightness of his golden skin.
Eric realized with a start that he was looking at himself, though the eyes seemed extraordinarily blue.
“Hello,” said the man, and smiled. “We’ve not formally met before, though I’ve wished for it.”
It was his own voice, but affected, and Eric suppressed a laugh. He could feel the cool air in his bedroom; hear the occasional creak as the house settled in the night. “This must be a waking dream,” he said, and felt his lips move. “I know I’m not asleep.”
“Not exactly,” said the golden man, “but in this state you can receive the information I have for you, and remember it when necessary. We don’t have much time. There will be a disturbance, but you will not come to harm. You must focus on what I have to say, and we’ll protect you.”
“We? You’re me; I can see that, an interesting illusion I’m conjuring up for myself. Nataly’s new-age stuff is getting to me. Interesting.” Eric could not remember being so relaxed, and willing to go along with the flow of what was happening.
The golden man’s voice was sharp. “This is not some amusing dream. Now listen to me carefully. The star craft you call Sparrow must be flown again, and you must fly with it. The information you need is here; it’s only necessary that you look at it, and it will be stored in the proper place in your mind.” The man made a swirling gesture with one hand, and a framed page of text and symbols appeared to one side of him. The text was already scrolling when Eric looked at it, accelerating as he focused, a near blur of text and diagrams rushing past his view. He was drawn to it, mesmerized, though other things suddenly tempted his senses. He felt motion in the air around him, and there were sounds: a rattling, a crack like a hammer hitting stone, a pounding on a wall or floor in his house.
“Concentrate!” said the golden man.
It was more than pounding. It was the sound of a struggle coming from the basement. Eric’s eyelids fluttered, and flashes of darkness obscured for one instant the data scrolling in front of him.
“Ignore it! You’re safe! We’re nearly finished!”
There was a crash, and the pounding stopped. Eric smelled a strange, coppery scent, and the blur of words and diagrams suddenly ceased. The golden man stared at him with concern, but had not changed his position. The large, emerald eye above him was gone. Eric felt uneasy by its absence, and wondered why.
“The danger is past. I’ll make a small correction when we’re finished,” said the golden man. “Your confusion is understandable. Don’t be alarmed by it.”
“Don’t be alarmed? I’m in a waking dream, talking to myself while something or someone is crashing around in my house, and my legs and arms won’t move and I’m supposed to be reading something that’s a blur to me. Who or what are you?”
“I’m you,” said the golden man, “the essence of you, if you wish. I hope we can meet again, just the two of us, but for now I must channel for our friends. What you do for them you do for yourself, and for all humanity. We are honored.”