disoriented; when he realized who he was, he clutched the bed railing
and pulled himself into a sitting position. The skin around his eyes
was puffy and dark but otherwise he was dreadfully pale. His face had a
grey sheen to it, as if it wasn’t perspiration pouring from him clear
beads of oil. His blue cotton pajamas were rumpled, darkly mottled with
sweat, and caked with dirt in places.
He said,
“Stop me.”
“What the hell’s going on here?” Hal asked, his voice cracking.
“Out of control.”
“Where did you go?”
“For God’s sake, help me.” Pollard was still clutching the bed rail
with his right hand, but he reached entreatingly toward Hal with his
left.
“Please, please…” Stepping closer to the bed, Hal reached out -and
Pollard vanished, this time not only with a hissing sound, as before,
but with a shriek and sharp crack of tortured metal. The
stainless-steel railing, which he had been gripping so fiercely, had
torn loose of the bed and vanished with him.
Hal Yamataka stared in astonishment at the hinges to which the
adjustable railing had been fixed. They were twisted and torn, as if
made of cardboard. A force of incredible power had pulled Pollard out
of that room, snapping quarter-inch steel.
Staring at his own outstretched hand, Hal wondered what would have
happened to him if he had been gripping Pollard. Would he have
disappeared with the man? To where? Not someplace he would want to be:
he was sure of that.
Or maybe only part of him would have gone with Pollard. Maybe he would
have come apart at a joint, just as the bed railing had done. Maybe his
arm would have ripped out of his shoulder socket with a crack almost as
sharp as that with which the steel hinges had separated, and maybe he
would have been left screaming in pain, with blood squirting from
snapped vessels.
He snatched his hand back, as if afraid Pollard might suddenly reappear
and seize it.
As he rounded the bed to the phone, he thought that his legs were going
to fail him. His hands were shaking so badly, he almost dropped the
receiver and had difficulty dialing the Dakotas’ home number.
BOBBY AND Julie left for the hospital at 2:45.
The night looked deeper than usual; street lamps and headlights did not
fully penetrate the gloom. Shatters of rain fell with force, they
appeared to bounce off the blacktop streets, as if they were hard
fragments of a disintegrating vault that had come through the night
above.
Julie drove because Bobby was only three-quarters awake His eyes were
heavy, and he couldn’t stop yawning, and thoughts were fuzzy at the
edges. They had gone to bed three hours before Hal Yamataka had
awakened them. If Julie had to get by on only that much sleep, she
could do it, Bobby needed at least six-preferably eight-hours in order
to function well.
That was a minor difference between them, no big deal.
because of several such minor differences, Bobby suspected that Julie
was tougher overall than he was, even if he could whip her ten times out
of ten in an arm-wrestling competition. He chuckled softly.
She said, “What?”
She braked for a traffic light as it phased to red. Its blood image was
reflected in distorted patterns by the black, murky like surface of the
rain-slick street.
“I’m crazy to give you an advantage by admitting this, I was thinking
that in some ways you’re tougher than me.”
She said, “That’s no revelation. I’ve always known I’m tougher.”
“Oh, yeah? If we arm wrestle, I’ll whip you every time
“How sad.” She shook her head.
“Do you really think beating up someone smaller than you, and a woman to
boot, makes you a macho man?”
“I could beat up a lot of women bigger than me,” Bobby assured her.
“And if they’re old enough, I could take them on two or three or four at
a time. In fact, you throw half a dozen big grandmothers at me, and
I’ll take them all on with one hand tied behind my back!”
The traffic light turned green, and she drove on.