Not “like Jim ‘s father” which The Friend would have said. Not “whom he
failed to save,” as the alien would surely have put it MY FATHER. I
FAILED. MY. I.
The infinite universe just kept expanding, and now an entirely new
possibility presented itself to her, revealed in the telling words about
Steven Aimes. No starship rested under the pond. No alien had been in
hiding on the farm for ten thousand years, ten years, or ten days. The
Friend and The Enemy were real enough: they were thirds, not halves, of
the same personality, three in one entity, an entity with enormous and
wonderful and terrifying powers, an entity both godlike and yet as human
as Holly was. Jim Ironheart. Who had been shattered by tragedy when he
was ten years old. Who had painstakingly put himself together again
with the help of a complex fantasy about star-traveling gods. Who was
as insane and dangerous as he was sane and loving.
She did not understand where he had gotten the power that he so
obviously possessed, or why he was not aware whatsoever that the power
was within him rather than coming from some imaginary alien presence.
The realization that he was everything, that the end and beginning of
this mystery lay solely in him and not beneath the pond, raised more
questions than it answered. She didn’t understand how such a thing
could be true, but she knew it was, at last, the truth. Later, if she
survived, she might have the time to seek a better understanding.
Lub-dub-DUB, lub-dub-DUB. . .
Closer but not close.
Holly held her breath, waiting for the sound to get louder.
Lub-dub-DUB, lub-dub-DUB. . .
Jim shifted in his sleep. He snorted softly and smacked his lips, just
like any ordinary dreamer.
But he was three personalities in one, and at least two of them
possessed incredible power, and at least one of them was deadly. And it
was coming.
Lub-dub-DUB. . .
Holly pressed back against the limestone. Her heart was pounding so
hard that it seemed to have hammered her throat half shut; she had
trouble swallowing.
The tripartite beat faded.
Silence.
She moved along the curved wall. Easy little steps. Sideways.
Toward the timbered, ironbound door. She eased away from the wall just
far enough to reach out and snare her purse by its straps.
The closer she gut to the head of the stairs, the more certain she
became that the door was going to slam shut before she reached it, that
Jim was going to sit up and turn to her. His blue eyes would not be
beautiful but cold, as she had twice glimpsed them, filled with rage but
cold.
She reached the door, eased through it backward onto the first step, not
wanting to take her eyes off Jim. But if she tried to back down those
narrow stairs without a handrail, she would fall, break an arm or leg.
So she turned away from the high room and hurried toward the bottom as
quickly as she dared, as quietly as she could.
Though the velvety-gray morning light outlined the windows, the lower
chamber was treacherously dark. She had no flashlight, only the extra
edge of an adrenaline rush. Unable to remember if any rubble was
stacked along the wall that might set up a clatter when she knocked it
over, she moved slowly along that limestone curve, her back to it,
edging sideways again.
The antechamber archway was somewhere ahead on her right. When she
looked to her left, she could barely see the foot of the stairs down
which she had just descended.
Feeling the wall ahead of her with her right hand, she discovered the
corner. She stepped through the archway and into the antechamber.
Though that space had been blind-dark last night, it was dimly lit now
by the pale post-dawn glow that lay beyond the open outside door.
The morning was overcast. Pleasantly cool for August.
The pond was still and gray.
Morning insects issued a thin, almost inaudible background buzz, like
faint static on a radio with the volume turned nearly off She hurried to
the Ford and stealthily opened the door.