No, it is the other reality. And it feels wonderful. She clings to it, never wanting to leave it—even as she realizes that she must.
* * *
Fulton held her tight and willed her back to him while Hill lay dead on the floor and Khorashev cowered in the corner. He knew now what had happened; he knew that somehow she had found her way back into her dream-world, and somehow she had used her powers to save him. He prayed that it was not at the cost of destroying herself.
She opened her gray eyes finally and stared at him, and he was overwhelmed with relief and gratitude. "It's over," he murmured. "You don't ever have to go back there again."
"What time is it?" she whispered.
Fulton glanced at his watch. "Almost nine. The summit's starting. Winn is safe, and so are we."
She shook her head. "I broke him yesterday—almost," she said. "I don't think he's like Hill yet, but he has changed. He is handing over the formula for some drug to Grigoriev today. I think it is important."
"All right. We'll talk to the press. We'll let the world know what's going on, and that should take care of it."
"I don't think that will work, Daniel. I think we have to stop him."
"But how?" And as soon as he said it he knew. "You can't go back there," he said.
"Yes, I can," she replied.
He knew what she meant by that. Yes, I can, if you want me to. Her wide eyes gazed at him, waiting for him to tell her what to do.
It was one thing to risk his own life, but he couldn't ask her to risk hers. Was it really that important? And did he really care about his country—or was he just confused and guilty and upset about his mother and feeling a hundred other emotions he was too tired to sort out?
I know a patriot when I see one, Lawrence Hill had said to him once, so very long ago.
What had he seen? What had he seen?
He started to give his answer to Valentina, but it was too late; her eyes were closed. She had seen what she needed to see, and she had already gone back.
* * *
Grigoriev was furious. His worst nightmares about the scheme had come true. Everything had gone completely to hell: KGB agents found murdered in a Greenwich Village town house, gunfire and deaths in the UN Mission, innocent bystanders hurt in an automobile chase through Manhattan. It was easy enough to figure out a way to blame it all on the Americans, but Grigoriev was not interested in finding someone to blame.
And of course, the psychic was gone.
"We must stop it!" he had shouted over the phone to Moscow, but Volnikov had disagreed.
"There have been problems," the KGB chief admitted, "but everything is still under control. The psychic will be back, and she will finish the job. Winn—and the drug—are almost ours. We are too close to victory to stop now."
His voice had sounded tense, but Grigoriev could take no comfort in Volnikov's anxiety. He had talked to other members of the Politburo; they too were worried, but they still supported Volnikov. We have started on this course, they said, and now we must see it through.
At least, Grigoriev thought, the odds were now somewhat better that Volnikov would be the one inspecting mines in Siberia.
* * *
She enters the building for the last time and stares at the grandfather clock in the middle of the floor. Ten past nine, the hands still say. Ten minutes from now. Is it the time, ordained from the beginning, when she will die, and the clock will cease to exist? She doesn't know; she only knows what she needs to do in those ten minutes, if only she can find the strength.
She races up the stairs.
* * *
They posed for photos outside the UN, and then proceeded to the room where they had met the previous afternoon. Winn felt tired and a little under the weather, but it was nothing serious, he was sure. Perhaps too much champagne at the state dinner last night. He looked at the abstract painting on the wall. Peace. Well, it wasn't such a bad painting. And the sentiment was certainly appropriate.
Roderick Williams had brought him the formula. It was in the briefcase that he placed next to his chair as he went to pour himself a cup of coffee. Grigoriev looked tense. Winn noted his quick glance at the briefcase. Perhaps he would relax when he got the formula.
"You had some trouble at your Mission last night," Winn murmured as he stirred his coffee.
"Yes. Difficult to say what it was all about. I hope it will not interfere with our discussions today."
"Oh, I'm sure it won't." Winn sat down. "We have to get past all this spying and counterspying and the like, don't you agree?"
"I certainly do." Grigoriev cleared his throat. "Well," he said finally, "I wonder if you brought that... item we talked about yesterday."
Winn stared down at his briefcase.
* * *
He stares up through the fog. The woman is shaking him, shouting at him. He tenses, ready to fight again. But she doesn't want to fight. "You must leave," she says. "It is dangerous. You cannot stay."
He gazes at her through the fog. She looks frightened and exhausted and very young. His head hurts; there is a fog inside as well as outside. What is he doing here? Why did she attack him before? Why is she helping him now?
"There is no way out," he says, remembering vaguely. "I looked."
"You have to leave the dream," she says.
This makes no sense to him. His head hurts too much for him to be dreaming. "I'm not—" he starts to say.
She shakes her head violently. "No—it is my dream. And you must hurry."
This makes no sense either. But she seems so sure of herself. "How do I leave it?" he demands.
"Jump," she whispers.
"You're crazy. We must be ten stories up."
"I don't think it matters. Reality is different here."
He thinks this may be true, but still he is not about to jump. "Maybe there's another way," he suggests.
"There isn't time!" she shouts. "Come," she says, more calmly. "I'll jump first."
She disappears into the fog. He considers, then struggles to his feet and limps after her. He does feel a sense of urgency, although he has no idea where it comes from. He gropes his way forward and catches up to her at the edge of the roof. "You'll die if you jump," he says.
"Perhaps, but you won't die if you jump. You must trust me."
"Why?"
"Because it is my dream," she says. She stares at him for a moment, and then she turns and steps off the edge.
* * *
Falling—perhaps forever. She sees nothing except fog, feels nothing except air rushing by her, the terrifying lack of solidity beneath her. Has she succeeded? Perhaps she will never know. Perhaps that is her punishment.
"I tried, Daniel," she says, but the air swallows her words, and she realizes there is nothing to do but close her eyes—and fall.
* * *
Seconds passed. Grigoriev glanced at his watch: ten minutes past nine. "Is anything the matter, Ted?" he asked.
"What? Oh—oh no. Just... thinking." Winn reached into the briefcase and took out a manila envelope.
* * *
He looks down into the fog. There is no sound of body striking pavement, but what does that mean? He is terrified. Something is happening, but he doesn't know what. Something must be done, but he can't jump. He just can't.
And then he feels something—it takes a moment to realize what. The roof is disappearing beneath his feet. It is slowly losing its firmness, turning into the consistency of sand, then jelly. He looks down: it is shimmering, going out of focus, like a movie where the projectionist has fallen asleep. He senses that the whole building is about to disappear.
It is her dream, he recalls, and now she is gone.
He cannot think any longer. He must forget about his terror and do something. He closes his eyes and says a prayer.
Then he follows her off the edge.
* * *
Winn stared at the manila envelope for a moment, then slowly put it back. What could he have been thinking of? H
e laughed softly to himself, as if to cover his embarrassment. Was he all right? He felt a little dizzy, but otherwise fine. But to consider simply giving the formula away... Poole had opposed even telling the American public about it. You can't just rush into these things for the sake of getting a treaty.
"Aren't you going to give me the formula, Ted?" Grigoriev asked.
And why did Grigoriev want the formula now? It just didn't make any sense. "Changed my mind, Pavel," he replied. He shut the briefcase. Then he took a breath. "I think that if we're going to consider a comprehensive arms-reduction treaty," he began, "we should first look at the Soviet Union's record of compliance with past treaties it has signed. And we should also consider its outrageous interference in America's internal affairs with respect to the murder of Colonel Thomas Poole...."
As he started in on his speech, he realized that he was in a very bad mood—probably because he had narrowly avoided making a colossal blunder.
Well, Grigoriev was just going to have to suffer for it.
* * *
Grigoriev listened to Winn's harangue with the patient blankness of someone who has heard such things many times before. That was that, then. No treaty, no progress, but the worst outcome had been averted: Grigoriev was not going to resign. He had done his job, but for some reason the plan had failed utterly. Winn was as anti-Soviet as ever. And Volnikov was ruined.
Eventually Grigoriev stopped listening altogether, and instead started planning exactly how he was going to tell Volnikov about his new assignment. The work is difficult, comrade, but you'll love the climate. Ah, well.
Thou art my grave, wherein I cast
Forever all my sorrow past.
—Friedrich Ruckert
~
Widmung
Strips of shredded programs streamed from the balcony. An endless parade of people laid bouquets at his feet. The hall seemed to shake with the applause. He smiled. He bowed his head in gratitude and humility. He held out his arms to the audience, as if embracing it. And then he sat back down at the piano for a final encore. The audience sighed with pleasure, seated itself also, and rustled its way into silence.
The piece began softly—just a rhythmic figure in the left hand. That was enough to make people sigh again, however. It was Widmung—Dedication—a Liszt transcription of a Schumann song; one of his specialties now. Strange to have a dedication at the end of the performance, perhaps, but no one was complaining.
Like most Liszt, it soon became overwrought—the left hand declaiming the melody while the right hand cascaded over the keyboard—before finally subsiding at the end to a repetition of its rhythmic beginning. Near the end there was also a quotation from Schubert's Ave Maria, to let you know the object of Liszt's own dedication.
The audience knew to whom he was dedicating the piece. They knew everything about him. He was more romantic than Liszt, more heroic than Beethoven. And he could also play the piano. When the last chord had died away to silence, they stood and cheered again, pleading for one more encore, but it was not to be. He waved and was gone, the spell ended, and thoughts of cabs and weather reports and where did I put my gloves slowly replaced the magic he had wrought.
"Wonderful," Hershohn exclaimed backstage. "You were never better."
"Not bad, except for the Waldstein," he murmured. And then he went into his dressing room to throw up.
* * *
The limousine pulled up to the high gates. The driver pressed a code in a device on the dashboard, and the gates opened. He drove through, and the gates swung shut behind him. The limousine continued up the winding drive, coming to a stop in front of the brightly lit house.
"Good night, sir," the driver said.
"Good night," Daniel Fulton replied from the backseat, and he got out.
It was snowing. The world was white and soft and silent. Fulton closed his eyes for a moment and felt the flakes on his face, felt the silence. Then he walked up to the front door of the house. Above it, a camera was blinking red, red, red. He inserted a card in a slot by the door, punched a code, and the door opened for him. He stepped inside.
It was warm. In the front-hall mirror, he could see the reflection of a fire burning. He could hear the flames sizzle and crackle in the silence. "I'm here," he whispered, and he walked into the living room.
Valentina came toward him out of the darkness beside the fireplace. Instead of a rose, she was holding a glass of milk. "Welcome home," she said. They embraced, and she gave him the milk. "Hungry?" she asked.
"Starving."
His spinach salad was waiting for him on a table in front of the fire. He sat down on the sofa next to the table and began to eat.
Valentina sat next to him. "How did it go?" she asked.
"I muffed the octave glissandos in the Waldstein," he said. "Other than that, it was okay."
"Hershohn called. He said the crowd wanted to carry you off on its shoulders."
"Yeah. Well."
They smiled. Fulton drank his milk. When he was finished, he sat back on the sofa and silently watched the fire. Valentina put her head on his shoulder. Fulton could still feel the applause coursing like an electric charge through his body. Not so different from that first recital in Moscow—when he had astounded even himself. When Valentina had first come to him out of the darkness.
Not so different, and yet everything had changed.
He closed his eyes.
* * *
He had played moderately well at the White House command performance. Of course President Winn came up to him afterwards and gushed. Winn complimented more than his piano playing. "You're a brave man, Mr. Fulton, and you have my personal thanks in addition to the thanks of the American people."
"You're welcome." Fulton, too, had more on his mind than piano playing. "But if you really wanted to show your gratitude, you might work harder to improve relations with the Soviet Union."
Winn smiled. "Won't happen for a while, I'm afraid. What you had to say at that press conference frightened the entire nation. That fear isn't going to disappear quickly. There are still people out there who think I'm a commie spy, like Colonel Poole. I've got to keep proving them wrong. And Grigoriev has to be just as mean as I am to keep from losing face in his country. So it's back to the Cold War!"
"Except that now you've got new weapons to work on. Human weapons."
Winn shrugged. "We have to protect ourselves. I understand your concern, of course. You're afraid we'll still want to use Valentina."
"Is that such a foolish worry?"
"Not at all. Would it help if I gave you my word that we'll never do such a thing? And we'll keep the Soviets from doing it too." Winn stared at him. "You don't believe me, do you?"
He shook his head.
"You have a right to be skeptical, of course. But what more can I say?"
He didn't know.
* * *
"I want to make a lot of money."
This didn't seem to faze Hershohn. In fact, he seemed thrilled by the idea. "Happy to oblige, Daniel."
"And I want you to help me set up security systems—guard dogs, electric fences, bodyguards, the works."
"Going to try and keep out the world?"
"I have to, Charles."
"Won't be easy."
"No, but I figure a lot of money will help."
"You're probably right."
* * *
They were walking past the swimming pool beneath a hot Florida sun. "Your father saved my life, Danny. I can't thank him now, so I wanted to thank you!"
"You're welcome, I guess." Danny thought for a moment. "They gave him a medal, you know. It was post—post—"
"Posthumous. He deserved it." He noticed Danny's mother watching them from the door of her apartment. She didn't trust him; he meant trouble. He supposed she was right.
"I've got all that stuff now," Danny said. "He even sent me this special hockey puck from when he won a big tournament in college!"
"He told me you're quite a ho
ckey player!"
Danny smiled; he was missing a tooth. "Not as good as him, though."
* * *
He stared down at the old woman with the tubes coming out of her. "I'm sorry," he said. Her eyelids fluttered. Did that mean she understood? "I'm sorry," he repeated. But words weren't enough. Perhaps it was too late for words. And that left only one thing—perhaps the only thing they had in common, besides the fierce love that neither of them knew how to express. He put a cassette in the tape player by her bed and started it. The sounds of the Tristesse etude filled the hospital room. "This is all I know how to say," he whispered, "and you helped me say it."
He sat beside her then and held her hand while they listened to the music.
* * *
"Time to go to bed, I think," Valentina said.
Fulton opened his eyes. The fire was low. He arose, and they went upstairs together, holding hands.
They stopped first in the nursery. Fulton walked over to the crib and looked down at his sleeping son. He fussed needlessly with the blanket. His son ignored him and went about his business. As always, the reality of this living person managed to startle and, in a way, frighten Fulton, but he was getting used to it. "How are things, Billy?" he murmured. "Still have your father's psychic ability and your mother's musical talent? I certainly hope so."
Billy didn't respond.
Fulton turned to look out the window. Valentina stood next to him. The snow fell softly on the fir trees and the birches and, in the distance, on the fence and the guards patrolling it. The scene was beautiful and terrifying, like all of life. "There is no real protection, is there?" he said to his wife. "Billy will have to go beyond that fence someday, and so will you."
"It's true," Valentina replied. "But at least we are free to do so—free to take the risk."
"That's worth something, I suppose."
"It's worth everything, Daniel."
She was right, he knew. Fulton leaned into the crib and kissed his son. "Sweet dreams," he whispered. And then, while the snow fell and the guards patrolled, he and Valentina went off to bed themselves.
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