Some of the darkness fled the mirror, to reveal a dim room where people sat at small tables, drinking. A young man with a white streak through his hair sat upon a high stool on a platform at the room's corner, playing upon a musical instrument. Mor studied him for a long while, reached some decision, then spoke another word.
The scene shifted to the club's exterior, and Mor regarded the face of the building with almost equal intensity.
He spoke another word, and the building dwindled, retreating down the street as Mor watched through narrowed eyes.
He gestured and spoke once again, and the glass grew dark.
Turning away, he moved to the inner chamber, where he decanted the balance of the medicine into a small vial and fetched his dusty staff from the corner where he had placed it the previous summer.
Moving to a cleared space, he turned around three times and raised the staff before him. He smiled grimly then as its tip began to glow.
Slowly, he began pacing, turning his head from side to side, as if seeking a gossamer strand adrift in the air....
X
Dan turned up his collar as he left the club, glancing down the street as he moved into the night. Cars passed, but there were no other pedestrians in sight. Guitar case at his side, he began walking in the direction of Betty's apartment.
Fumes rose through a grating beside the curb, spreading a mildly noxious odor across his way. He hurried by. From somewhere across town came the sound of a siren.
It was a peculiar feeling that had come over him earlier in the evening--as if he had, for a brief while, been the subject of an intense scrutiny. Though he had quickly surveyed all of the club's patrons, none of them presented such a heavy attitude of attention. Thinking back, he had recalled other occasions when he had felt so observed. There seemed no correlation with anything but a warm sensation over his birthmark--which was what had recalled the entire matter to him: he was suddenly feeling it again.
He halted, looking up and down the street, studying passing cars. Nothing. Yet...
It was stronger now than it had been back at the club. Much stronger. It was as though an invisible observer stood right beside him....
He began walking again, quickening his pace as he neared the center of the block, moving away from the corner light. He began to perspire, fighting down a powerful urge to break into a run.
To his right, within a doorway--a movement!
His muscles tensed as the figure came forward. He saw that it bore a big stick....
"Pardon me," came a gentle voice, "but I'm not well. May I walk a distance with you?"
He saw that it was an old man in a strange garment.
"Why... Yes. What's the matter?"
The man shook his head.
"Just the weight of years. Many of them."
He fell into step beside Dan, who shifted his guitar case to his left hand.
"I mean, do you need a doctor?"
"No."
They moved toward the next intersection. Out of the corner of his eye, Dan saw a tired, lined face.
"Rather late to be taking a walk," he commented. "Me, I'm just getting off work."
"I know."
"You do? You know me?"
Something like a thread seemed to drift by, golden in color, and catch onto the end of the old man's stick. The stick twitched slightly and the thread grew taut and began to thicken, to shine.
"Yes. You are called Daniel Chain--"
The world seemed to have split about them, into wavering halves--right and left of the widening beam of light the string had become. Dan turned to stare.
"--but it is not your name," the man said.
The beam widened and extended itself downward as well as forward. It seemed they trod a golden sidewalk now, and the street and the buildings and the night became two-dimensional panoramas at either hand, wavering, folding, fading.
"What is happening?" he asked.
"--and that is not your world," the man finished.
"I do not understand."
"Of course not. And I lack the time to give you a full explanation. I am sorry for this. But I brought you this way years ago and exchanged you for the baby who would have become the real Daniel Chain. You would have lived out your life in that place we just departed, and he in the other, to which you now must go. There, he is called Mark Marakson, and he has become very dangerous."
"Are you trying to tell me that that is my real name?" Dan asked.
"No. You are Pol Detson."
They stood upon a wide, golden roadway, a band of stars above them, a haze of realities at either side. Tiny rushes of sparks fled along the road's surface and a thin, green line seemed traced upon it.
"I fail to follow you. Completely."
"Just listen. Do not ask questions. Your life does depend upon it, and so do many others. You must go home. There is trouble in your land, and you possess a power that will be needed there."
Dan felt constrained to listen. This man had some power himself. The evidence of it lay all about him. And his manner, as well as his words, compelled attention.
"Follow that green line," the man instructed him. "This road will branch many times before you reach your destination. There will be interesting sideways, fascinating sights, possibly even other travelers of the most peculiar sort. You may look, but do not stray. Follow the line. It will take you home. I--Wait."
The old man rested his weight upon his staff, breathing deeply.
"The strain has been great," he said. "Excuse me. I require medication."
He produced a small vial from a pouch at his waist and gulped its contents.
"Lean forward," he said, moments later.
Dan inclined his head, his shoulders. The staff came forward, issuing a blue nimbus which settled upon him and seemed to sink, warmly, within his skull. His thoughts danced wildly, and for a long moment he seemed trapped in the midst of an invisible crowd, everyone babbling without letup about him.
"The language of that place," the man told him. "It will take awhile to sink in, but you have it now. You will speak slowly at first, but you will understand. Facility will follow shortly."
"Who are you? What are you?" Dan asked.
"My name is Mor, and the time has come for me to leave you to follow that line. There has to be an exchange of approximately equivalent living mass if the transfer is to be permanent. I must depart before I lose one of the qualifications. Walk on! Find your own answers!"
Mor turned with surprising energy and vanished into the rippling prospect to the right, as if passing behind a curtain. Dan took a step after him and halted. The shifting montage that he faced was frightening, almost maddening to behold for too long. He transferred his gaze back to the road. The green line was steady beneath the miniature storms.
He looked behind and saw that the glittering way seemed much the same as it did before him. He took one step, then another, following the green line forward. There was nothing else for him to do.
As he walked, he tried to understand the things that Mor had told him. What power? What menace? What changeling step-brother? And what was expected of him at the green line's end? Soon, he gave up. His head was still buzzing from the onslaught of voices. He wondered what Betty would think when he failed to show up at her place, what his father would feel at his disappearance.
He halted and gasped. It only just then reached the level of realization that if this strange story were true, then Michael was not his father.
His wrist throbbed and a small, golden whirlwind rose, to follow him, dog-like, for several paces.
He shifted the guitar case to his other hand and continued walking. As he did, he was taken by a small pattern in the mosaic ahead and to his left--a tiny, bright scene at which he stared. As he focussed his attention upon it, it grew larger, coming to dominate that entire field of vision, beginning to assume a three-dimensional quality.
Coming abreast of it, he saw that it had receded without losing any of its distinction. A side road now led directly toward it, and he realized that he could walk there in a matter of minutes.