Conspircaies

'We don't have to tell anyone about this do we?'

'I'll have to put it in my report,' the guard said, 'but it won't go beyond that.'

'Good,' Miles said, relieved. 'Thank you. I have a reputation to uphold in this organization.'

'I hear you. It's just a good thing I was upholding your ass a few moments ago or you wouldn't be worrying about your reputation or anything else.'

The guard laughed good-naturedly. Miles saw nothing funny about it.

Jack…

…feels his bed move and opens his eyes.

His eyes search for the clock's red numerals and can't find them. The room is dark…too dark. Light from the street lamps below usually leaks around the edges of the drapes, but not now. A sound leaks through instead…a deep basso rumble shuddering through the floor and walls.

His bed trembles as the rumble grows, mixing with frightened cries and wails from outside.

Jack rises and pads across the vibrating floor to the window where he pulls back the drapes. The moon is high and full in a pristine sky, bathing the world outside with glacial light. The street is clogged with crawling cars and frantic people screaming, running, clawing over each other in a scene out of every giant monster film ever made. It's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms times ten, but this is no movie; this is real. Even up here on the fifth floor he can smell the raw-edged panic as the mob struggles downhill, west, toward the river. He scans his limited view to the east to see what's driving them. All he can tell is that the rest of the city is dark.

Power failure, he thinks, and then blinks. An icy phantom breeze ripples his nape hairs as he cups his hands around his eyes and squints through the glass…it's too dark. Even with the power gone and the lights out, the moonlight should pick up something.

Jack slides the window back and pokes his head through the opening for a better look. If nothing else, the metallic top of the Empire State Building should be visible. But the sky is empty there, stars twinkle where buildings stood.

And that rumble, growing ever louder, deafening now, jittering the entire building on its foundation.

And then, still staring east, Jack sees an office building tilt, then fall away, disappearing behind the structure before it. And now that building is collapsing, and then the one in front of it follows, a wave of destruction coming his way.

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 plans—an 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 shivered—with 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 vision—Lewis 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.'