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'Unless,' he reasoned, 'time has stopped.'
He looked at the streaking pinpricks of light for a moment before he realized all those streaks were headed in one direction, then he realized he too was moving in the very same direction — like he was falling with the stars, only without any sense of motion beyond this lone visible cue.
He looked around as best he could, trying to pinpoint Didi inside this glowing maelstrom — and while he thought he saw something he couldn't be sure. And he soon discovered sound didn't convey here; his attempts at speech were pointlessly unsuccessful — but just then his mind began struggling with what he thought must be the onset of something like claustrophobia. Panic settled, the inability to breathe buffeted him like a vulture's beating wings and then he wanted to scream — and realized he couldn't even do that...
Then in an instant as sudden as a returning heartbeat he was surrounded — by light — but he was breathing again and the first thing he wanted to do was cry. To scream out at the light and cry.
'Is this what it felt like to be born?' he said to himself — then Didi appeared by his side, and when she saw Callahan she flew into his arms.
88/66.3
Wherever they were...it was still dark — no matter where they looked.
But they were some "place" now, not adrift in deep space, and as his eyesight grew used to the dim light he could make out a long steel-gray corridor ahead, and within a few moments he began to see shapes moving their way. Impossibly thin shapes, he soon realized, but living beings nonetheless. As one of them approached he was startled by the apparent height of the creature, until he recognized Jim walking their way — or Jim's identical twin — only the creatures with him did not appear to be his family. No, they were all as tall as Jim, yet they all appeared equally curious.
'We are sorry for the abrupt nature of your coming,' Jim thought to Callahan, 'but there was little time to indulge in formalities.'
"Okay," Callahan said to Jim.
"Okay...what?" Didi asked, clearly confused by Callahan appearing to talk to himself — and she was still clearly cold as could be.
'She cannot hear my thoughts,' Jim explained. 'These were not directed at her.'
"Alright," Harry said.
"Who are you talking to?" Didi added.
"We'll need something for this woman to wear," Harry said to Jim.
"You know what? I'm just going to shut up and let you talk to yourself," Didi sighed.
"Probably a good idea. Jim? Could you say something to her?"
Jim turned to her and she suddenly felt as if she was now the one under the microscope, and she felt very small indeed. Not only that, but this creature was positively Spielbergian in appearance — a spindly creature that seemed to have evolved in deep space, a creature bred to endure millennia in transit between stars and now, as he focused his attention on her she didn't know what to expect.
Then she heard from somewhere deep inside the unknown recesses of her mind 'Take me to your leader,' and she had to laugh.
"I see. You're a comedian, right?"
'I need you to come with me now,' Jim thought.
"Okay, but you need to know something first."
'Oh?'
"I only kiss on the first date."
That seemed to stump Jim, but he only nodded and then turned to face his companions — who one by one came forward to look her over.
'May I touch you?' one of them asked, and for some reason Didi knew this one was female, or whatever passed for female around here.
"Knock yourself out," Didi grinned. "All of you. Go for it."
'We have never seen a human female,' one of them said.
"That's alright," Didi sighed. "I've never seen an alien — so that makes us even."
Callahan stood back as the mob surrounded Didi, who began pulling gently on her arms then flexing her wrists and elbows, marveling at the anatomical complexity that they, apparently, did not share. Another examined her spine, then her shoulder blades, while another bent low and probed her knees and ankles — then her toes.
'The gross morphology is not all that different from the male,' one of them said. 'How do you account for that?' this one asked Jim.
'Sexual differentiation takes place hormonally, before either androgenesis or gynogenesis takes place,' Jim said. 'Both the male and the female contribute hereditary characteristics,' he added.
'Do you mean,' another cried, 'that sexual differentiation is a simple matter of chance?'
'I do.'
'Then how do they control population growth?'
'War and disease, primarily,' Jim sighed.
They all turned to face Didi and Callahan, and both could sense the others' feelings of astonished pity.
'How do you mate?' one of them asked — out of the blue.
"What do you mean?" Callahan growled.
'I mean, how do you physically join?' this one asked.
"Privately, and that means without an audience," Callahan snarled.
'I see. She is with child now, and we wanted to understand how this happened.'
"What do you mean, I'm with child?" Didi cried.
'You mated,' this one said patiently, 'therefore you are with child. Is this not correct?'
"Not always," Didi said, clearly relieved.
'But we have seen fertilization occur. Are you saying this may not lead to pregnancy?'
"What do you mean you saw fertilization occur?"
'We have observed a fertilized egg in your womb? Does this not mean you are with child?'
"I don't know?" Didi replied.
'We must keep both of you here until the child is born,' Jim told Harry.
"I beg your pardon?"
And that really seemed to confuse Jim. 'You ask me for pardon? What does this mean, please?'
"It means we aren't staying here, period. You need to send us back. Now."
'We need your offspring.'
"Tough shit."
'Your feces is tough?'
"No. You need to send us back. Now."
'I will send you back, now. A year from now, by your method of time keeping.'
"Harry," Didi whispered, "I don't think we're in much of a position to argue."
'When you return,' Jim added, 'no time will appear to have passed, and neither of you will have aged.'
Callahan seemed to think about that one for a moment, then he asked: "And just what the Hell are we supposed to do here — for a year? And oh, by the way, where is here, exactly?"
'You will find we are interested in you, and so it is possible you will find us more than sympathetic students,' one of the others said.
Didi turned to the group and shrugged: "Any chance I might get something to wear? Ya know, sometime in the next year or so?"
'Apologies,' Jim stated. 'Come with me.'
They started to walk down the dimly lit passageway, but Jim paused before he walked over to a wall and held a hand up to a sensor — and then a hundred meter long section of the passage turned translucent. Callahan could hardly grasp what had happened — because now it appeared as if their entire group was suspended in deep space. Yet...Callahan could feel the same floor underfoot, and he could still breathe, so...where were they?
"Jim? I hate to ask, but just what is this place?" he asked.
'Your scientists call this a Dyson Sphere.'
"Is this your home?" Didi asked.
'Home? Ah, no, this is not our home world,' Jim said. He pointed at a spot and a tiny illuminated square appeared — almost as if it was hovering in space — then he turned to Didi. 'Your home world is here,' he said — but all either Harry or Didi could see was a faint smudge inside the square.
"That's earth?" Harry sighed, his voice full of wonder.
'What you see here is what you call your Milky Way, the galaxy where your home is currently found.'
Callahan swallowed hard and briefly, gently shook his head.
And then Jim turned and "walked" across the chasm until he came to a place he seemed to recognize, then he pointed again and another identical red square appeared — this one hovering in an area beyond a huge, densely packed cluster of stars and galaxies. 'This region,' Jim thought, first pointing to the clustered formations of galaxies, 'is the approximate center of our current universe. The region, this one inside the illuminated square, is where our home galaxy is currently located.'
"I don't see anything?" Didi sighed.
'This region is beyond the resolving power of the current instrument.'
"How far away is it?" she asked.
'From your earth it is approximately twenty billion light years.'
"But the universe isn't that old," Didi mumbled, "so how could that be possible?"
'Your world is twelve point three nine billion light years from the center of this universe, but my world is another seven billion light years beyond, only on the far side of the center of the universe relative to your home.'
"So...are you telling me you're twenty billion years old?" she scoffed.
'Me? No. I am seven of your years old.'
"Okay," Didi whispered, "I give up."
"Say Didi, your headlights are showing..." Harry whispered.
"In case you've forgotten, Harry, I am completely naked. And I'm still cold as shit."
"I haven't forgotten," he said — looking away, and now trying to avoid a certain stiffness coming on in his 20 year old self.
Jim turned away and took off down the passageway, and Didi followed — gratefully — while Callahan turned and looked around the translucent passageway once again. The first thing he noted was the little illuminated red squares — and he watched as those disappeared first — then the dull gray color returned to the surfaces and once again it looked like he was inside a long metal corridor of some sort. Completely baffled, he just shook his head and turned to follow Jim and Didi, for the first time he could remember thinking she had a really nice ass...
88/66.4
Brendan looked on helplessly as the Titanic disappeared within banks of swirling black mist, but Deborah Eisenstadt looked at the sight feeling both curiosity and revulsion.
"I think what we just witnessed was some kind of wormhole formation," she sighed warily, "but what was that ship doing there?"
"What were they doing there in the first place?" Brendan cried — before angrily turning away from Deborah and running to his bedroom.
'My God, he has fallen in love with that spy!' she thought, now seriously unnerved by the fluttering implications of such a turn of events. She couldn't imagine anyone less emotionally secure than Brendan, and certainly not if rejection was part of the formula, and especially as Didi and Harry were the only two people in the world he seemed to trust. Now there was nothing to do but go to the man-child and try to pick up the pieces. About all she could think to do was salvage what she could and get ready to deal with the fallout.
Yet when she knocked Brendan came to the door and held it open for her, then he stood aside and let her pass. She was curious now, yet on guard as she walked inside and sat in a little chair beside a small, built-in desk, and Brendan came back to his bed and sat there with his arms crossed over his stomach, looking down at the floor.
"You like her, don't you?" Deborah started. "I mean, more than a little?"
He nodded and said something that sounded a little like "I guess," yet his downward gaze remained unfocused, his voice unnaturally flat.
"She's almost twice your age, Brendan."
"I can't help the way I feel."
"Okay. How about Didi? Do you know how she feels — about you?"
He shook his head. His arms seemed to constrict around his midsection.
"Have you asked her how she feels?"
Tightening constrictions. Clinching teeth. Flexing fingers.
"What do you think has happened?"
His arms broke free and with his hands now free he pulled back the sky: "This!" he cried.
Deborah came and sat next to him, and from this vantage she could see what he had revealed. Didi pushing Harry to the rock-strewn beach. Her grasping hands pulling Harry free then she was mounting him, her back arched and her arms outstretched as if worshipping the sun and the sky. Streams of her auburn hair riding the wind in contrapuntal harmony to some deep reservoir of hidden need, then their hands came together in grinding supplication...
Deborah wanted to look away — yet she couldn't.
Brendan wanted to run from these images — yet he dare not. Not now. Not yet.
Then in a flash she watched a milky run of sperm seeking new life — just before the image flickered and disappeared.
"That's what happened," Brendan said, his voice a ladle full of despair. "Now she's going to have his baby. A girl. Another Dana."
"What?"
"Another one of...them."
"Them? Brendan, what are you talking about?"
"The baby will be one of theirs, just like the other Dana. They're part of the plan."
"The plan?"
"I can't see it yet, but it's taking shape now." He turned to Deborah and awkwardly put a hand on her breast...
And she looked at the boy, then at his hand — before she took a deep breath. "Brendan, you don't want to do this."
"I have to. He took her from me, so I have to take you from him." He pushed her down to the bed.
"Do you have any idea how old I am, Brendan?"
"It doesn't matter. We are not balanced now."
"Brendan — we aren't equations, you know? You can't balance human behavior the way you balance equations."
"Of course I can." He started to unbutton her blouse and within the cresting waves of the broken hearted she felt him mounting her so she looked up into his eyes...
He was a wilderness, barren and unclaimed, yet she could think of nothing to do now but cradle his face with her hands. It was, she realized, easier that way to wipe away his tears.
88/66.5
As strained as the moment was, Deborah Eisenstadt did not feel violated or even used; instead she was relieved when the man-child found release and wilted away inside her. He was openly weeping by that point, crushed under a weight of self-loathing few ever experience, and she couldn't help but feel pity for the stunted soul within. She had experienced more than her fair share of such men in both Soviet Russia and Soviet Armenia, little men who relied on the weight of their encroaching bureaucracies to force their way between a woman's thighs, yet she understood that wasn't exactly the case with Brendan Geddes. Other, far more insidious forces had shaped his soul, and when she had first chanced a glance into his eyes she had grown fearful. The man-child wasn't what he at first seemed; no...she had suddenly realized that he was far more dangerous than any of them had previously realized.
He was, she could now plainly see, quite morally unhinged. Right and wrong simply did not exist when numbers were standing-by to provide an answer to every single question. "Just because you can doesn't mean you should" had never entered his hierarchy of thought.
Yet his actions just now had broken through that barrier, and laying there on top of Eisenstadt she could feel his confusion. He was careening back and forth between guilt and anger, his fists clinched and intertwined in the bedding as he looked away one moment before he tried to apologize the next.
Yet he never really could bring himself to say he was sorry...
...and just then a roaring sound surrounded them...a deep, hideously loud roar like a jet fighter running up its engine before takeoff, and Eisenstadt turned in time to see a wall of steam emerging from the bathroom...
...and a moment passed before Harry emerged from the steam, now apparently dripping in seawater, and the first thing he saw was a barely clothed Brendan lying spent between Deborah's legs.
And he appeared to be not at all amused.
+++++
Yet he ignored them. He was toweling himself off now, then quickly drying his hair before Deborah realized this was a totally different Callahan. This Harry was young, not yet thirty years old. And this Harry Callahan still had two legs. His eyes were clear, focused, and full of an easy malevolence she didn't recognize. Yet she saw his fury wasn't directed at Brendan, or even at herself...
"Get under the bed," Harry growled, "now!"
"What?" she said...just as Didi Goodman came out of the steam-filled bathroom.
"Get the boy under the bed," Harry repeated as he walked to his closet. There was some kind of optical palm scanner there now, a device that hadn't been there yesterday, and she watched as Callahan put his hand on the scanner. A moment later a vault opened and Callahan passed some kind of futuristic assault rifle over to Didi, along with several magazines before he grabbed one for himself.
Deborah was pushing the boy under the bed as Harry and Didi ran from the room, but before she got under the bed she went to bathroom to have a look around...
Hot water was coming from the shower head, yet the floor was covered with briny smelling sea-ice, so she touched a large shard of ice and brought her finger to her mouth...
"...sea water..." she whispered before she turned and scurried under the bed.
They heard gunfire after that, and a lot of it. The sound of shattering glass filled their ears, then came two explosions and moments later smoke poured into the bedroom. Helicopters, several of them, roared by overhead and she cringed when heavy machine gun fire ripped through the ceiling, the bullets slamming into the slate floor around them with calamitous effect. Then came a blinding flash followed by a gut-wrenching lurch — before silence returned to the house.
Then — footsteps, running their way. Sounds of boots on crushed glass and shattered cabinetry falling away before she heard Harry's voice:
"You guys okay?" Callahan snarled as he entered the room.
"Yes, I think so," Eisenstadt mewed.
"Okay, you can come out now," he said as he leaned over and took her hand. "We need to get you two away from here for a while."
She followed him through the wreckage of his house — yet he seemed curiously detached from the carnage, almost like he'd never seen this place before — and as they walked out of the ruins and down to the street she saw that two of the studios were in flames, and then she saw the bodies of dead men laying in the street. Dozens of them, and at least two helicopters were down, their mangled wreckage again leaving Callahan totally unimpressed.
She saw smoke coming from beyond Liz's house, then a man walking from that house towards Harry. Meanwhile, Didi Goodman walked among the corpses, lifting up each head and looking at the revealed face — as if she was looking for someone in particular — and Brendan could hardly reconcile this image with the Didi he'd come to know over the last few weeks.
The man walking up from Liz's house walked up to Harry and Deborah Eisenstadt tried her best not to scream in fright. She recognized him now, noted the same tweed jacket and the wavy dirty blond hair — and that grin! It was Liz'z father, and she knew that because she'd seen photos of him both at Liz's place and in the living room by Harry's piano.
"Everything okay?" Harry asked Frank Bullitt.
But Bullitt just nodded and grinned as he passed, tossing a handheld radio to Harry as he jogged by.
And Harry turned on the unit and called — but who, exactly?
Yet a minute later a Callahan Air Transport Bell 412 circled and landed in the cul-de-sac, and who slid open the door and beckoned them in? Of course, it had to be DD and the Doc, and as soon as they were inside the helicopter and buckled in they were airborne and headed for The City.
Yet Harry hadn't joined them. Neither had Didi or Frank Bullitt.
"What the hell is going on?" she asked DD.
Who only shrugged before turning away.
Brendan, however, looked beyond the far side of the sky and all he could do was smile.
88/66.5.1
The Huey landed at the CAThouse adjacent to the old Presidio, and the Doc escorted Deborah and Brendan to a waiting Land Rover, and then, after DD and the Doc got in, the four of them drove over to the Wharf for lunch. Deborah had a million questions she wanted to ask, but all DD was willing to talk about was the unseasonably warm weather the Bay Area was experiencing. After arriving at Scoma's the Doc studied the menu with assiduous effort, finally settling on a coquille St. Jacques and the Dover sole amandine, recommending the same to Brendan. DD had her usual seafood Louie — while Deborah watched the unfolding proceedings with something akin to astonished agony bubbling away just under the surface.
