Point of Impact

He was a god. Able to do anything he wished.

And what he wished to do right now was… walk. To stride down the beach, to pass among his people, disguised as a reedy, tubercular man all dressed in black, but beyond comprehension to mere mortals.

As far above them as a man was above an ant.

They couldn’t know. He felt sorry for them, being so weak, so stupid. So pitiful.

He started to walk, feeling the sand like a living thing under his boots, hearing the soft chee- chee-chee squeaks it made with each step. He was aware of the evening breeze touching his skin, the smell of salt and iodine from the sea, the taste of the very air. He was aware of everything, not just on this beach, but radiating out to galaxies a billion light-years from where he walked. It was all his territory, all of it. If he reached up his arms, he could encompass it all in his grasp.

He laughed.

Ahead, somebody finished up a Frisbee game and headed for their towels. A beach volleyball game wound down. Traffic roared past on the highway, the cars and trucks taking on the aspect of dragons: fearsome creatures in their element, but creatures who knew better than to cross his path. He was Tad the Bershaw, and any being with enough sense to see him would know he was to be feared.

He walked through his kingdom, feeling for the moment benevolent in his omnipotence. He would suffer them to live.

For now, anyway.

Jayland/Quantico, Virginia

Jay Gridley had always been a man who enjoyed moving fast. When he slipped into his sensory gear and the net blossomed before him, infinite in its possibilities, he had always chosen speed as his vehicle. If he drove, it was a Viper, a rocket with wheels that smoked everything else on the road. Sometimes he flew — rocket packs, jets, copters, whatever. He created virtual scenarios that he zipped through like rifle rounds, clean, fast, slick as a tub full of grease.

Oh, now and then he would do period. He’d make a Western town and mosey into town on a horse. Or a boat. But getting there in a hurry was his pleasure, and most of his programs reflected that. Getting business done had always been about getting it done, not about the trip.

Not today. Today, Jettin’ Jay was out for a stroll, through an Eastern garden. It wasn’t strictly accurate, his program, it had mixed elements in it: Right where he was at the moment stood a Japanese tea house with a little brook running past it. Just ahead was a Zen garden, three rocks in a bed of raked sand. But over to the left was a Shaolin temple, monks out front doing kung fu, and to the right, a second temple, straight out of Bangkok, with traditional Siamese dancers moving like snakes. The Taj Mahal was past that, and there were even some pyramids off a ways behind him. It was a veritable theme park of Eastern religious thought.

The sun shined brightly, the day was warm with a little breeze, and the smell of jasmine and sandalwood mixed with roses and musk.

Welcome to the land of the happy, nice people, Jay. Your kind of place.

He smiled, walking slowly, not in the least bit of a hurry. What he wanted was here somewhere, but you know what? He would get to it when he got to it.

To be honest, he hadn’t exactly embraced the tenets of Buddhism. The eightfold this, or the four ways of that. But there was an energy about what Saji did and how she related to it that he did find worth thinking about. He’d never considered himself much of anything, other than a computer jock, but this go-with-the-flow stuff — that was Taoism rather than Buddhism, right? — well, here of late, it had a whole bunch of appeal.

Thank Sojan Rinpoche for that, along with her other, more earthy talents.

A bee flew past, buzzing, looking for pollen.

Ah, yes, what could be better than a stroll in the cosmic gardens—

“Hey, Jay, you awake?” came the somewhat dissonant voice, intruding on his scenario.

Jay dropped out of VR, and was at once back in his office at Net Force. Standing in the doorway were two coworkers, Alan and Charlie.

“That door is supposed to be locked,” Jay said, mildly irritated.

“Yep, and if you hadn’t wanted somebody good enough to rascal the sucker, you’d have hired somebody other than us,” Charlie said. He waved his key card. “You ought to change the codes every year or two, Jay.”

“Would that do any good?”

“About as much good as me changing the codes on my bike did,” Alan said.

Jay laughed. He had broken into the comp on Alan’s fuel-cell scooter and programmed it so it wouldn’t go faster than nine miles an hour. Well, that was the old Jay. He was a new man these days. No more sophomoric games.

“C’mon, we’re going to Pud’s for burgers and beer.”

Jay spoke without thinking. “Nah, I’ll pass. I’m giving up eating flesh.”

Both Alan and Charlie stared for maybe two seconds before they cracked up. They laughed. They laughed harder. They fucking howled.

“Flesh? Flesh, you said? Ah, hahahaaa!”

“Gee, Jay, we wouldn’t want you to kill and eat the waitress or anything. Flesh? Oh, yeah, I can hear that: ‘Excuse me, ma’am, could I get a fleshburger on an onion bun, and could you sprinkle it with a little ground-up human skull?’ ”

“I dunno, Charlie, come to think of it, maybe we ought to skip Pud’s and go to that new place, you know, Cannibal Moe’s, instead. I hear they have a real good chicken fried thigh there.”

“Nah, Alan, I think we should go to the new Donner’s Pass Pizza, and pick up a pizza with fingers and nipples. Or maybe the spaghetti and eyeballs.”

“Fuck off and die,” Jay said. “You know what I mean.”

The two men looked at each other and shook their heads in mock sadness.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Alan said. “The man is in love. Next thing you know, he’s gonna be wearing a cowled robe to work and doing Gregorian chants up and down the halls.”

“Yeah, and sprinkling rose petals everywhere and smiling at everybody like a fool.”

“Go away,” Jay said.

They did, cackling down the hall as they went.

Well. That certainly went well, didn’t it? Maybe you might want to be a little bit more low key in your conversion to vegetarianism, hmm?

Too late now. By tomorrow morning, this would be all over the building. He knew the jokes would be coming, and he had better recode his lock and his access, or his computer would be full of crap, too.

Still, he grinned. He could stand a little ribbing. He was, after all, the new, improved Jay Gridley, much more mellow than the old Jay had been. Much more.

8

Washington, D.C.

Toni came up from sleep all of a moment. She looked at the clock on the bedside table. Two A.M., and she was wide awake, not a trace of drowsiness. Well, wasn’t that terrific?

What, she wondered, had awakened her? Another hormone-fueled dream she couldn’t remember?

She glanced at Alex, who slept soundly, tangled in the sheet and a couple of pillows. Sometimes he snored, and that might do it, but while he was breathing deeply, he wasn’t making any noise to speak of.

She listened carefully, but the house was silent. No footsteps skulking down the hall, no creaks of doors being stealthily opened. No feeling of intrusion.

Was it because she needed to go pee?

No, not really, she always needed to go pee these days, and the urge wasn’t particularly strong. She had fallen asleep plenty of times needing to go more than now. Still, as long as she was awake…