Mr. X

    fight. . .

    fight it with aaall of your might...

 and Ned felt himself begin to fade out of existence with the abruptness of a raindrop on a hot sidewalk. He held out his hands and through their hazy, lightly tinted fabric saw the tiles of the kitchen floor.

 •The madwoman in the living room shouted, 'Why are you doing this? Don't you understand I'm already in hell?'

    A dry male voice said, 'Don't worry, Mrs. Anscombe. You will be taken care of soon enough.'

 •Robert and Ned stared into their identical faces and seemed to glide toward each other without any sort of conscious movement. Ned's being trembled with the awareness that his brother's survival, and in some sense his own, depended upon an extraordinary act of surrender.

 •They heard the woman shout,Shit, I really am in hell, only the son of a bitch isn't RED, it's BLUE!

 •Gliding toward Robert, Ned experienced a new sort of terror, which was focused on the awareness that he was on the threshold of a change that he could neither control nor foresee. The terrorbecame exquisite when he realized that part of his being was already stretching out its arms in yearning.

 •A rational, self-protective portion of Robert also welcomed the coming mystery, for it recognized a chance of survival. The part of Robert that was chaotic and irrational resisted in a terror greater than Ned's. He felt despair and revulsion at having been swindled into a destructive bargain.

 •Irresistibly, Robert and Ned sailed toward each other, met, and melted together, each with his own fears, doubts, and resentments, and for a moment their psyches tangled and rebelled, one aghast at the other's depth of rage and violence, the other repelled by what seemed the unbearable narrowness and smallness of his confinement, therefore burning tomutiny, tolay waste—

 •No sooner than registered, this ambivalence dissolved into a resolution and harmony, a wholeness shot through with the perception of an even greater, more roomy wholeness, equal to the possession of a kind of magnificence, withheld from them only by the fact of Ned's actualabsence. Such depth of personal surrender accompanied this sense of possibility that both instantly drew back, but in one mind and body they soared together through the kitchen wall with what their Ned-half experienced from his inextricable other self as an acknowledgment of a compounding sweetness and satisfaction equal to his own.

 •Together they fled into the fir-scented night, and their Robert-half seized control and sped them away. Ned felt as though pedaling uphill on a leaden bicycle, then as though swimming underwater against a strong current. His muscles ached, his lungs strained for oxygen. Mile after blurry mile slipped by. With no transition, they came to rest in a vacant lot where Queen Anne's face trembled about them. Robert peeled him off like a dirty shirt. Millions of stars gleamed down from the night sky.It's too much, Ned thought,way too much.

    'Where are we?'

    “I'm somewhere in Wisconsin,' Robert said. 'You're in Edgerton, with Mom.'

    Ned pulled his knees to his chest as a spike drove into his head.

 •80

 •“And I was you,' said Robert. 'Long enough to get us out ofBoulder, anyhow.'

    “I can't believe I forgot what we did,' I said. “I saved your life.' “I've saved yours a couple of times,' Robert said. 'Can you stay alive until our birthday? I can't protect you every minute of the day.' 'We have more to talk about,' I said, but he was gone.

 81 • Mr. X

 •O You Hoverers, You Smoke Ravening from the Cannon, Your Son is wondering if in Your Triumphant Millennium what used to be called 'the servant problem' still exists. Do you, in Your Exalted Realms, employ the services of humbler beings, no doubt enslaved, no doubt from Conquered Territories? If so, you know what I'm talking about. A slave is no different from a servant, except for being an even greater responsibility. The patron saint of servants is Judas. My earthly parents suffered the depredations of disloyal maids and housekeepers, and I, too, have had my Judases, the first of them one Clothhead Spelvin, whose betrayal I answered with a summary visit to his jail cell. And now, that twitchy collection of street-sweepings, Frenchy La Chapelle, has failed me.

    This morning I snatched sans payment a copy of theEdgerton Echo from the newsstand and nipped up Chester Street, scanning the front page. The editors had been allowed time enough only to insert a paragraph reporting the destruction by fire of a 'modest rooming house.' A single fatality was considered a possibility. Tomorrow's rag would supply photographs and complete details.

    I strolled to the scene of the happy event in the guise of an ordinary mortal. My visible, daytime self possesses the dignity of a retired statesman or diplomat, with perhaps a hint of a general's authority. In a weathered manner, I am still handsome, if I say so myself. (To complete these details of my mundane existence, I employ a false or assumed name, which contains a revelatory joke no one is likely to perceive, and I have recently retired from an executive position.)

    One matter niggled as I neared the site. I should haveknown of my son's death, as I hadknown of his mother's. Yet this was the weakling offspring, whose share of my legacy may have been too insignificant to permit telepathic transmission.

    The 'modest rooming house' had been reduced to a heap of rubble. Within a network of red tape declaringDO NOT CROSS HAZARDOUS AREA DO NOT CROSS HAZARDOUS AREA, investigators in orange space suits prowled through the mess. A collection of dimwits and ghouls had assembled across the street.

    I circulated through them and picked up what I could. Several blamed the fire on faulty wiring. Many considered Helen Janette, the landlady, an ill-tempered harridan. I nearly went mad with impatience:What about the fatality?

    At last I buttonholed a wheezing wreck.Didn't one of the tenants perish?

    'Say what?'

    Some guy died.

    'Oh, yeah. Otto. Damn shame. Did you know him?'

    Notto speak to.

    The wreck nodded. “It shakes you up more than you want to let on.'

    Oh, it does shake me up.

    I hastened back to the sty and fastened onto the news broadcasts. An unidentified body had been removed from the scene. An hour later, identity was suspected but unconfirmed. Identity had been confirmed but withheld. Not until noon was the victim named as Otto Bremen, a seventy-year-old crossing guard at Carl Sandburg Elementary School.

    By evening, the broadcasters were exercising their internally amplified voices to announce that investigators and fire specialists in the pay of Edgerton's Departments of Fire and Police had concluded that the fire was of suspicious origin.

    You understand my complaints about the servant problem.

 •Truth be told, Frenchys are hard to come by. I have decided to give the snake a second chance. Frenchy is not so stupid as to boast of his crime. (Except to Cassie Little.)

    Frenchy's life shall be spared, as long as he can repair the damage and look up some old acquaintances to