scraping the car inched backward along its path of destruction. After ten feet the car cleared the superstructure of the Gateway. Everyone could see up to a platform that appeared to be made of Plexiglas. Oval stairs of the same material led up to it. Standing on the platform was a hideous alien creature illuminated by the unabating electrical sparks. Its coal-black eyes regarded those in the car with shocked disbelief.
All at once the creature threw back his head and let out an agonizing cry of grief. Slowly he sank down to the surface of the platform and gripped his head with his hands in utter anguish.
'My God! It's Beau,' Cassy said from the backseat.
'I'm afraid it is,' Pitt agreed. 'Only his mutation has been complete.'
'Let me out!' Cassy said. She undid her seat belt.
'No,' Pitt said.
'There're too many loose wires,' Harlan said. 'It's too dangerous, especially with all this sparking going on. The voltage must be astronomical.'
'I don't care,' Cassy said. She reached across Pitt and opened the door.
'I can't let you,' Pitt said.
'Let go of me,' Cassy snapped. 'I have to get out.'
Reluctantly, Pitt let Cassy get out of the car. Gingerly she stepped over the wires and then slowly mounted the steps to the platform. As she got closer she could hear Beau moaning over the mechanical hum and the sputtering wires. She called out to him and he slowly raised his eyes.
'Cassy?' Beau questioned. 'Why didn't I sense you?'
'Because I've been freed of the virus,' Cassy said. 'There's hope! There's hope we can get our old lives back.'
Beau shook his head. 'Not for me,' he said. 'I can't go back, and yet I can't go forward. I have failed the trust put in me. These human emotions are a terrible hindrance. They are completely unsuitable. Wanting you I have forsaken the collective good.'
A sudden increase in the electrical sparking heralded a vibration. It was slight at first but rapidly gained strength.
'You must flee, Cassy,' Beau said. 'The electrical grid has been interrupted. There will be no force counteracting the antigravity. There'll be a dispersion.'
'Come with me, Beau,' Cassy said. 'We have a way of ridding you of the virus.'
'I am the virus,' Beau said.
The vibration had reached a point where Cassy was having trouble maintaining her balance on the translucent steps.
'Go, Cassy!' Beau shouted passionately.
With one final touch of Beau's extended finger, Cassy struggled down to the floor of the ballroom. The room was now shaking as if there were an earthquake.
She managed to get back to the car. Pitt was holding the door open for her. She climbed in.
'Beau said we have to flee,' Cassy yelled. 'There's going to be a dispersion.'
Needing little encouragement, Harlan put the car in reverse and stomped down on the accelerator. There was more bumping and shaking than when the car had come into the building, but soon they were back in the main hall.
Deftly Harlan pulled the car around so that it was facing out through the shattered front entrance. The chandelier above was shaking so badly that bits and pieces of the crystal were flying off in various directions. Sitting in the front seat with no windshield, Sheila had to shield her face.
'Hang on, everybody,' Harlan said. With wheels spinning on the slick marble, he rocketed the Range Rover out through the front door, across the terrace, and down the stairs. The jolt from hitting the driveway at the base of the stairs was as bad as the impact had been when they'd slammed into the ballroom wall.
Harlan drove back across the lawn in a beeline toward the cleft in the trees that marked the point where the driveway emerged.
'Must you drive this fast?' Sheila complained.
'Cassy said there was going to be a dispersion,' Harlan said. 'I figured the greater the distance we're away the better.'
'What the hell is a dispersion?' Sheila asked.
'I haven't the foggiest,' Harlan admitted. 'But it sounds bad.'
At that moment there was a tremendous explosion behind them, but without the usual noise or shock wave. Cassy happened to have turned around in time to see the house literally fly apart. There also wasn't any flash of light to indicate the point of conflagration.
At the same time everyone in the Range Rover became aware that they had literally become airborne. Without any traction the engine raced until Harlan took his foot from the accelerator.
The flying lasted only five seconds, and the return to earth was accompanied by a sudden lurch since the wheels had slowed but the forward movement of the car had not.
Bewildered by this strange phenomenon Harlan braked and brought the car to a stop. He was unnerved at having totally lost control of the vehicle even if it had been only for a few seconds.
'We were flying there for a moment,' Sheila declared. 'How did that happen?'
'I don't know,' Harlan said. He looked at the gauges and dials as if they might provide some answers.
'Look what happened to the house,' Cassy said. 'It's disappeared.'
Everyone turned to look. Outside the car the pedestrians were doing the same. There was no smoke and no debris. The house had just vanished.
'So now we know what a dispersion is,' Harlan said. 'It must be the opposite of a black hole. I guess whatever is dispersed is reduced to all its primary particles, and they are just blown away.'
Cassy felt emotion well up inside of her. There was a sudden, intense sense of loss, and a few tears rolled out onto her cheeks.
Out of the corner of his eye, Pitt saw Cassy's tears. He understood immediately and put his arm around her shoulder. 'I'll miss him too,' he said.
Cassy nodded. 'I guess I'll always love him,' she said wiping her eyes with a knuckle. But then she quickly added: 'But that doesn't mean I don't love you.'
With a tenaciousness that took Pitt's breath away, Cassy clasped him in an intense embrace. Tentatively at first and then with equal ardor Pitt hugged her back.
Harlan got out of the car and went around the back. He got out the flasks. 'Come on, everybody,' he said. 'We've got some of our own infecting to do.'
'Holy shit,' Jonathan cried. 'There's my mother.'
Everyone looked in the direction Jonathan was pointing.
'You know, I think you are right,' Sheila said.
Jonathan alighted from the car with the intention of sprinting across the grass. Harlan grabbed his arm and thrust one of the flasks into his hand.
'Give her a whiff, son,' Harlan said. 'The sooner the better.'
