ONESY IN THE HOSPITAL

1

This was a dream.

It didn't feel like one, but it had to be. For one thing, he'd already been through March fifteenth once, and it seemed monstrously unfair to have to go through it again. For another, he could remember all sorts of things from the eight months between mid-March and mid-November - helping the kids with their homework, Carla on the phone with her friends (many from the Narcotics Anonymous program), giving a lecture at Harvard . . . and the months of physical rehab, of course. All the endless bends, all the tiresome screaming as his joints stretched themselves out again, oh so reluctantly. He telling Jeannie Morin, his therapist, that he couldn't. She telling him that he could. Tears on his face, big smile on hers (that hateful undeniable junior-miss-smile), and in the end she had turned out to be right. He could, he was the little engine that could, but what a price the little engine had paid.

He could remember all those things and more: getting out of bed for the first time, wiping his ass for the first time, the night in early May when he'd gone to bed thinking I'm going to get through this for the first time, the night in late May when he and Carla had made love for the first time since the accident, and afterward he'd told her an old joke: How do porcupines fuck? Very carefully. He could remember watching fireworks on Memorial Day, his hip and upper thigh aching like a bastard; he could remember eating watermelon on the Fourth of July, spitting seeds into the grass and watching Carla and her sisters play badminton, his hip and upper leg still aching but not so fiercely; he could remember Henry calling in September - 'Just to check in,' he'd said - and talking about all sorts of things, including the annual hunting trip to Hole in the Wall come November. 'Sure I'm coming,' Jonesy had said, not knowing then how little he would like the feel of the Garand in his hands. They had talked about their work (Jonesy had taught the final three weeks of summer session, hopping around pretty spryly on one crutch by then), about their families, about the books they had read and the movies they had seen; Henry had mentioned again, as he had in January, that Pete was drinking too much. Jonesy, having already been through one substance - abuse war with his wife, hadn't wanted to talk about that, but when Henry passed along Beaver's suggestion that they stop in Derry and see Duddits Cavell when their week of hunting was over, Jonesy had agreed enthusiastically. It had been too long, and there was nothing like a shot of Duddits to cheer a person up. Also . . .

'Henry?' he had asked. 'We made plans to go see Duddits, didn't we? We were going on St Patrick's Day. I don't remember it, but it's written on my office calendar.'

'Yeah,' Henry had replied. 'As a matter of fact, we did.'

'So much for the luck of the Irish, huh?'

As a result of such memories, Jonesy was positive March fifteenth had already happened. There were all sorts of evidence supporting the thesis, his office calendar being Exhibit A. Yet here they were again, those troublesome Ides . . . and now, oh goddam, how was this for unfair, now there seemed to be more of the fifteenth than ever.

Previously, his memory of that day faded out at around ten A.M. He'd been in his office, drinking coffee and making a stack of books to take down to the History Department office, where there was a FREE ?WITH STUDENT ID table. He hadn't been happy, but he couldn't for the life of him remember why. According to the same office calendar on which he had spied the unkept March seventeenth appointment to go see Duddits, he'd had a March fifteenth appointment with a student named David Defuniak. Jonesy couldn't remember what it had been about, but he later found a notation from one of his grad assistants about a make-up essay from Defuniak - short-term results of the Norman Conquest - so he supposed it had been that. Still, what was there in a make-up assignment that could possibly have made Associate Professor Gary Jones feel unhappy?

Unhappy or not, he had been humming something, humming and then scatting the words, which were close to nonsense: Yes we can, yes we can-can, great gosh a'mighty yes we can-can. There were a few little shreds after that - wishing Colleen, the Department secretary, a nice St Paddy's Day, grabbing a Boston Phoenix from the newspaper box outside the building, dropping a quarter into the saxophone case of a skinhead just over the bridge on the Cambridge side, feeling sorry for the guy because he was wearing a light sweater and the wind coming off the Charles was sharp - but mostly what he remembered after making that stack of giveaway books was darkness. Consciousness had returned in the hospital, with that droning voice from a nearby room: Please stop, I can't stand it, give me a shot, where's Marcy, I want Marcy. Or maybe it had been where's Jonesy, I want Jonesy. Old creeping death. Death pretending to be a patient. Death had lost track of him - sure, it was possible, it was a big hospital stuffed full of pain, sweating agony out its very seams - and now old creeping death was trying to find him again. Trying to trick him. Trying to make him give himself away.

This time around, though, all that merciful darkness in the middle is gone. This time around he not only wishes Colleen a happy St. Paddy's Day, he tells her a joke: What do you call a Jamaican proctologist? A Pok��mon. He goes out, his future self - his November self - riding in his March head like a stowaway. His future self hears his March self think foat a beautiful day it turned out to be as he starts walking towards his appointment with destiny in Cambridge. He tries to tell his March self that this is a bad idea, a grotesquely bad idea, that he can save himself months of agony just by hailing a Red Top or taking the T, but he can't get through. Perhaps all the science - fiction stories he read about time when he was a teenager had it right: you can't change the past, no matter how you try.

He walks across the bridge, and although the wind is a little cold, he still enjoys the sun on his face and the way it breaks into a million bright splinters on the Charles. He sings a snatch of 'Here Comes the Sun,' then reverts to the Pointer Sisters: Yes we cancan, great gosh a'mighty. Swinging his briefcase in rhythm. His sandwich is inside. Egg salad. Mmm-mmmm, Henry said. SSDD, Henry said.

Here is the saxophonist, and surprise: he's not on the end of the Mass Ave Bridge but farther up, by the MIT campus, outside one of those funky little Indian restaurants. He's shivering in the cold, bald, with nicks on his scalp suggesting he wasn't cut out to be a barber. The way he's playing 'These Foolish Things' suggests he wasn't cut out to be a horn-player, either, and Jonesy wants to tell him to be a carpenter, an actor, a terrorist, anything but a musician. Instead, Jonesy actually encourages him, not dropping the quarter he previously remembered into the guy's case (it's lined with scuffed purple velvet), but a whole fistful of change - these foolish things, indeed. He blames it on the first warm sun after a long cold winter; he blames it on how well things turned out with Defuniak.

The sax-man rolls his eyes to Jonesy, thanking him but still blowing, Jonesy thinks of another joke: What do you call a sax-player with a credit card? An optimist.

He walks on, swinging his case, not listening to the Jonesy inside, the one who has swum upstream from November like some time-travelling salmon. 'Hey Jonesy, stop. Just a few seconds should be enough. Tie your shoe or something. (No good, he's wearing loafers. Soon he will be wearing a cast, as well.) That intersection up there is where it happens, the one where the Red Line stops, Mass Ave and Prospect. There's an old guy coming, a wonked-out history professor in a dark blue Lincoln Town Car and he's going to clean you like a house.'

But it's no good. No matter how hard he yells, it's no good. The phone lines are down. You can't go back, can't kill your own grandfather, can't shoot Lee Harvey Oswald as he kneels at a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, congealing fried chicken on a paper plate beside him and his mail-order rifle aimed, can't stop yourself walking across the intersection of Mass Ave and Prospect Street with your briefcase in your hand and your copy of the Boston Phoenix - which you will never read - under your arm. Sorry, sir, the lines are down somewhere in the Jefferson Tract, it's a real fuckarow up there, your call cannot go through -

And then, oh God, this is new - the message does go through! As he reaches the corner, as he stands there on the curb, just about to step down into the crosswalk, it does go through!

'What?' he says, and the man who was stopped beside him, the first one to bend over him in a past which now may be blessedly canceled, looks at him suspiciously and says 'I didn't say anything,' as though there might be a third with them. Jonesy barely hears him because there is a third, there is a voice inside him, one which sounds suspiciously like his own, and it's screaming at him to stay on the curb, to stay out of the street -

Then he hears someone crying. He looks across to the far side of Prospect and oh God, Duddits is there, Duddits Cavell naked except for his Underoos, and there is brown stuff smeared all around his mouth. It looks like chocolate, but Jonesy knows better. It's dogshit, that bastard Richie made him eat it after all, and people over there are walking back and forth regardless, ignoring him, as if Duddits wasn't there.

'Duddits!' Jonesy calls. 'Duddits, hang on, man, I'm coming!'

And he plunges into the street without looking, the passenger inside helpless to do anything but ride along, understanding at last that this was exactly how and why the accident happened - the old man, yes, the old man with early-stage Alzheimer's who had no business behind the wheel of a car in the first place, but that had only been part of it. The other part, concealed in the blackness surrounding the crash until now, was this: he had seen Duddits and had simply bolted, forgetting to look.

He glimpses something more, as well: some huge pattern, something like a dreamcatcher that binds all the years since they first met Duddits Cavell in 1978, something that binds the future as well.

Sunlight twinkles on a windshield; he sees this in the comer of his left eye. A car coming, and too fast. The man who was beside him on the curb, old Mr I-Didn't-Say-Anything, cries out: 'Watch it, guy, watch it!' but Jonesy barely hears him. Because there is a deer on the sidewalk behind Duddits, a fine big buck, almost as big as a man. Then, just before the Town Car strikes him, Jonesy sees the deer is a man, a man in an orange cap and an orange flagman's vest. On his shoulder, like a hideous mascot, is a legless weasel-thing with enormous black eyes. Its tail - or maybe it's a tentacle - is curled around the man's neck. How in God's name could I have thought he was a deer? Jonesy thinks, and then the Lincoln strikes him and he is knocked into the street. He hears a bitter, muffled snap as his hip breaks.

2

There is no darkness, not this time; for better or worse, arc-sodiums have been installed on Memory Lane. Yet the film is confused, as if the editor took a few too many drinks at lunch and forgot just how the story was supposed to go. Part of this has to do with the strange way time has been twisted out of shape: he seems to be living in the past, present, and future all at the same time.

This is how we travel, a voice says, and Jonesy realizes it is the voice he heard weeping for Marcy, for a shot. Once acceleration passes a certain point, all travel becomes time travel. Memory is the basis of every journey.

The man on the corner, old Mr I-Didn't-Say-Anything, bends over him, asks if he's all right, sees that he isn't, then looks up and says, 'Who's got a cell phone? This guy needs an ambulance.' When he raises his head, Jonesy sees there's a little cut under the guy's chin, old Mr I-Didn't-Say-Anything probably did it that morning without even realizing it. That's sweet, Jonesy thinks, then the film jumps and here's an old dude in a rusty black topcoat and a fedora hat - call this elderly dickweed old Mr What'd-l-Do. He's wandering around asking people that. He says he looked away for a moment and felt a thump - what'd I do? He says he has never liked a big car ?what'd I do? He says he can't remember the name of the insurance company, but they call themselves the Good Hands People - what'd I do? There is a stain on the crotch of his trousers, and as Jonesy lies there in the street he can't help feeling a kind of exasperated pity for the old geezer - wishes he could tell him You want to know what you did, take a look at your pants. You did Number One, Q - E - fuckin - D.

The film jumps again. Now there are even more people gathered around him. They look very tall and Jonesy thinks it's like having a coffin's-eye view of a funeral. That makes him remember a Ray Bradbury story, he thinks it's called 'The Crowd,' where the people who gather at accident sites - always the same ones ?determine your fate by what they say. If they stand around you murmuring that it isn't so bad, he's lucky the car swerved at the last second, you'll be okay. If, on the other hand, the people who make up the crowd start saying things like He looks bad or I don't think he's going to make it, you'll die. Always the same people. Always the same empty, avid faces. The lookie-loos who just have to see the blood and hear the groans of the injured.

In the cluster surrounding him, just behind old Mr I-Didn't-Say-Anything, Jonesy sees Duddits Cavell, now fully dressed and looking okay - no dogshit mustache, in other words. McCarthy is there, too. Call him old Mr I-Stand-at-the-Door-and-Knock, Jonesy thinks. And someone else, as well. A gray man. Only he's not a man at all, not really; he's the alien that was standing behind him while Jonesy was at the bathroom door. Huge black eyes dominate a face which is otherwise almost featureless. The saggy dewlapping elephant's skin is tighter here; old Mr ET-Phone-Home hasn't started to succumb to the environment yet. But he will. In the end, this world will dissolve him like acid.

Your head exploded, Jonesy tries to tell the gray man, but no words come out; his mouth won't even open. And yet old Mr ET-Phone-Home seems to hear him, because that gray head inclines slightly.

He's passing out, someone says, and before the film jumps again he hears old Mr What'd-I-Do, the guy who hit him and smashed his hip like a china plate in a shooting gallery, telling someone People used to say I look like Laurence Welk.

3

He's unconscious in the back of an ambulance but watching himself, having an actual out-of-body experience, and here is something else new, something no one bothers to tell him about later: he goes into V-tach while they are cutting his pants off, exposing a hip that looks as 1 if someone had sewn two large and badly made doorknobs under it. V-tach, he knows exactly what that is because he and Carla never miss an episode of ER, they even watch the reruns on TNT, and here come the paddles, here comes the goo, and one of the EMTs is wearing a gold crucifix around his neck, it brushes Jonesy's nose as old Mr EMT bends over what is essentially a dead body, and holy fuck he died in the ambulance! Why did no one ever tell him that he died in the fucking ambulance? Did they think that maybe he wouldn't be interested, that maybe he'd just go Ho-hum, been there, done that, got the tee-shirt?

'Clear!' shouts the other EMT, and just before they hit him the driver looks back and he sees it's Duddits's Mom. Then they whack him with the juice and his body jumps, all that white meat shakin on the bone, as Pete would say, and although the Jonesy watching has no body, he feels the electricity just the same, a great big pow that lights up the tree of his nerves like a skyrocket. Praise Jesus and get-down hallelujah.

The part of him on the stretcher jumps like a fish pulled from the water, then lies still. The EMT crouched behind Roberta Cavell looks down at his console and says, 'Ah, man, no, flatline, hit him again.' And when the other guy does, the film jumps and Jonesy's in an operating room.

No, wait, that's not quite right. Part of him's in the OR, but the rest of him is behind a piece of glass and looking in. Two other doctors are here, but they show no interest in the surgical team's efforts to put Jonesy-Dumpty back together again. They are playing cards. Above their heads, wavering in the airflow from a heating-vent, is the dreamcatcher from Hole in the Wall.

Jonesy has no urge to watch what's going on behind the glass - he doesn't like the bloody crater where his hip was, or the bleary gleam of shattered bone nosing out of it. Although he has no stomach to be sick to in his disembodied state, he feels sick to it just the same.

Behind him, one of the card-playing does says, Duddits was how we defined ourselves. Duddits was our finest hour. To which the other replies, You think so? And Jonesy realizes the docs are Henry and Pete.

He turns toward them, and it seems he's not disembodied after all, because he catches a ghost of his reflection in the window looking into the operating room. He is not Jonesy anymore. Not human anymore. His skin is gray and his eyes are black bulbs staring out of his noseless face. He has become one of them, one of the -

One of the grayboys, he thinks. That's what they call us, the grayboys. Some of them call us the space-niggers.

He opens his mouth to say some of this, or perhaps to ask his old friends to help him - they have always helped each other, if they could - but then the film jumps again (goddam that editor, drinking on the job) and he's in bed, a hospital bed in a hospital room, and someone is calling Where's Jonesy, I want Jonesy.

There, he thinks with wretched satisfaction, I always knew it was Jonesy, not Marcy. That's death calling, or maybe Death, and I must be very quiet if I'm to avoid him, he missed me in the crowd, made a grab for me in the ambulance and missed again, and now here he is in the hospital, masquerading as a patient.

Please stop, crafty old Mr Death groans in that hideous coax?ing monotone, I can't stand it, give me a shot, where's Jonesy, I want Jonesy.

I'Il just lie here until he stops, Jonesy thinks, I can't get up anyway, just had two pounds of metal put in my hip and it'll be days until I'm able to get up, maybe a week.

But to his horror he realizes he is getting up, throwing the covers aside and getting out of bed, and although he can feel the sutures in his hip and across his belly straining and breaking open, spilling what is undoubtedly donated blood down his leg and into his pubic hair, soaking it, he walks across the room without a limp, through a patch of sunlight that casts a brief but very human shadow on the floor (not a grayboy now, there is that to be grateful for, at least, because the grayboys are toast), and to the door. He strolls unseen down a corridor, past a parked gumey with a bedpan on it, past a pair of laughing, talking nurses who are looking at photographs, passing them from hand to hand, and toward that droning voice. He is helpless to,top and understands that he is in the cloud. Not a redblack cloud, as both Pete and Henry sensed it, however; the cloud is gray and he floats within it, a unique particle that is not changed by the cloud, and Jonesy thinks: I'm what they were looking for, I don't know how it can be, but I am just what they were looking for. Because . . . the cloud doesn't change me?

Yes, sort of

He passes three open doors. The fourth is closed. On it is a sign which reads COME IN, THERE IS NO INFECTION HERE, IL N'Y A PAS D'INFECTION ICI.

You lie, Jonesy thinks. Cruise or Curtis or whatever his name is may be a madman, but he's right about one thing: there is infection.

Blood is pouring down his legs, the bottom half of his johnny is now a bright scarlet (the claret has really begun to flow, the old boxing announcers used to say), but he feels no pain. Nor does he fear infection. He is unique and the cloud can only carry him, not change him. He opens the door and goes inside.

4

Is he surprised to see the gray man with the big black eyes lying in the hospital bed? Not even a little bit. When Jonesy turned and discovered this guy standing behind him back at Hole in the Wall, the sucker's head exploded. That was, all things considered, one hell of an Excedrin headache. It would put anyone in the hospital. The guy's head looks okay now, though; modem medicine is wonderful.

The room is crepitant with fungus, florid with red-gold growth. It's growing on the floor, the windowsill, the slats of the venetian blinds; it has bleared its way across the surface of the overhead light fixture and the glucose bottle (Jonesy assumes it's glucose) on the stand by the bed; little reddish-gold beards dangle from the bathroom doorknob and the crank at the foot of the bed.

As Jonesy approaches the gray thing with the sheet pulled up to its narrow hairless chest, he sees there is a single get-well card on the bedtable. FEEL BETTER SOON! is printed above a cartoon picture of a sad-looking turtle with a Band-Aid on its shell. And below the picture: FROM STEVEN SPIELBERG AND ALL YOUR PALS IN HOLLYWOOD.

This is a dream, full of a dream's tropes and in-jokes, Jonesy thinks, but he knows better. His mind is mixing things, pureeing them, making them easier to swallow, and that is the way of dreams; past, present, and future have all been stirred together, which is also like dreams, but he knows that he'd be wrong to dismiss this as nothing but a fractured fairy-tale from his subconscious. At least some of it is happening.

The bulbous black eyes are watching him. And now the sheet stirs and humps up beside the thing in the bed. What emerges from beneath it is the reddish weasel-thing that got the Beav. It is staring at him with those same glassy black eyes as it propels itself with its tail up the pillow, where it curls itself next to that narrow gray head. It was no wonder McCarthy felt a little indisposed, Jonesy thinks.

Blood continues to pour down Jonesy's legs, sticky as honey and hot as fever. It patters on to the floor and you'd think it would soon be sprouting its own colony of that reddish mold or fungus or whatever it is, a regular jungle of it, but Jonesy knows better. He is unique. The cloud can carry him, but it cannot change him.

No bounce no play, he thinks, and then, immediately: Shhh, shhh, keep that to yourself

The gray creature raises its hand in a kind of weary greeting. On it are three long fingers ending in rosy-pink nails. Thick yellow pus is oozing from beneath them. More of this stuff gleams loosely in the folds of the guy's skin, and from the comers of his - its? - eyes.

You're right, you do need a shot, Jonesy says. Maybe a little Drano or Lysol, something like that. Put you out of your mi -

A terrible thought occurs to him then; for a moment it's so strong he is unable to resist the force moving him toward the bed. Then his feet begin to move again, leaving big red tracks behind him.

You're not going to drink my blood, are you? Like a vampire?

The thing in the bed smiles without smiling. We are, so far as can express it in your terms, vegetarians.

Yeah, but what about Bowser there? Jonesy points to the legless weasel, and it bares a mouthful of needle teeth in a grotesque grin. Is Bowser a vegetarian?

You know he's not, the gray thing says, its slit of a mouth not moving - this guy is one hell of a ventriloquist, you had to give him that; they'd love him in the Catskills. But you know you have nothing to fear from him.

Why? How am I different?

The dying gray thing (of course it's dying, its body is breaking down, decaying from the inside out) doesn't reply, and Jonesy once again thinks No bounce, no play. He has an idea this is one thought the gray fellow would dearly love to read, but no chance of that; the ability to shield his thoughts is another part of what makes him different, unique, and vive la difference is all Jonesy can say (not that he does say it).

How am I different?

Who is Duddits? the gray thing asks, and when Jonesy doesn't answer, the thing once more smiles without moving its mouth. There, the gray thing says. We both have questions the other will not answer. Let's put them aside, shall we? Facedown. They are . . . what do you call it? What do you call it in the game?

The crib, Jonesy says. Now he can smell the thing's decay. It's the smell McCarthy brought into camp with him, the smell of ether-spray. He thinks again that he should have shot the oh-gosh oh-dear son of a bitch, shot him before he could get in where it was warm. Left the colony inside him to die beneath the deer-stand in the old maple as the body grew cold.

The crib, yes, the gray thing says. The dreamcatcher is now in here, suspended from the ceiling and spinning slowly above the gray thing's head. These things we each don't want the other to know, we'll set them aside to count later. We'll put them in the crib.

What do you want from me?

The gray creature gazes at Jonesy unblinkingly. So far as Jonesy can tell, it can't blink; it has neither lids nor lashes.

Nyther lids nor lashes, it says, only it's Pete's voice Jonesy hears. Always nyther, never neether. who's Duddits?

And Jonesy is so surprised to hear Pete's voice that he almost by-God tells him . . . which, of course, was the intention: to surprise it out of him. This thing is crafty, dying or not. He would do well to be on his guard. He sends the gray fellow a picture of a big brown cow with a sign around its neck. The sign reads DUDDITS THE COW.

Again the gray fellow smiles without smiling, smiles inside Jonesy's head. Duddits the cow, it says. I think not

Where are you from? Jonesy asks.

Planet X. We come from a dying planet to eat Domino's Pizza, buy on easy credit terms, and learn Italian the easy Berlitz way. Henry's voice this time. Then Mr ET-Phone-Home reverts to its own voice . . . except, Jonesy realizes with a weary lack of surprise, its voice is his voice, Jonesy's voice. And he knows what Henry would say: that he's having one whopper of a hallucination in the wake of Beaver's death.

Not anymore, he wouldn't, Jonesy thinks. Not anymore. Now he's the eggman, and the eggman knows better.

Henry? He'll be dead soon, the gray fellow says indifferently. Its hand steals across the counterpane; the trio of long gray fingers enfolds Jonesy's hand. Its skin is warm and dry.

What do you mean? Jonesy asks, afraid for Henry . . . but the dying thing in the bed doesn't answer. It's another card for the crib, so Jonesy plays another one from his hand: Why did you call me here?

The gray creature expresses surprise, although its face still doesn't move. No one wants to die alone, it says. I just want someone to be with. I know, we'll watch television.

I don't want -

There's a movie I particularly want to see. You'll enjoy it, too. It's called Sympathy for the Grayboys. Bowser! The remote!

Bowser favors Jonesy with what seems a particularly ill-natured look, then slithers off the pillow, its flexing tail making a dry rasp like a snake crawling over a rock. On the table is a TV remote, also overgrown with fungus. Bowser seizes it, turns, and slithers back to the gray creature with the remote held in its teeth. The gray thing releases Jonesy's hand (its touch is not repulsive, but the release is still something of a relief), takes the controller, points it at the TV, and pushes the ON button. The picture that appears - blurred slightly but not hidden by the light fuzz growing on the glass - is of the shed behind the cabin. In the center of the screen is a shape hidden by a green tarp. And even before the door opens and he sees himself come in, Jonesy understands that this has already happened. The star of Sympathy for the Grayboys is Gary Jones.

Well, the dying creature in the bed says from its comfortable spot in the center of his brain, we missed the credits, but really, the movie's just starting.

That's what Jonesy's afraid of.

5

The shed door opens and Jonesy comes in. Quite the motley fellow he is, dressed in his own coat, Beaver's gloves, and one of Lamar's old orange hats. For a moment the Jonesy watching in the hospital room (he has pulled up the visitor's chair and is sitting by Mr Gray's bed) thinks that the Jonesy in the snowmobile shed at Hole in the Wall has been infected after all, and that red moss is growing all over him. Then he remembers that Mr Gray exploded right in front of him - his head did, anyway - and Jonesy is wearing the remains.

Only you didn't explode, he says. You . . . you what? Went to seed?

Shhh! says Mr Gray, and Bowser bares its formidable headful of teeth, as if to tell Jonesy to stop being so impolite. I love this song, don't you?

The soundtrack is the Rolling Stones' 'Sympathy for the Devil,' fitting enough since this is almost the name of the movie (my screen debut, Jonesy thinks, wait'll Carla and the kids see it), but in fact Jonesy doesn't love it, it makes him sad for some reason.

How can you love it? he asks, ignoring Bowser's bared teeth ?Bowser is no danger to him, and both of them know it, How can you? It's what they were playing when they slaughtered you.

They always slaughter us, Mr Gray says. Now be quiet, watch the movie, this part is slow but it gets a lot better.

Jonesy folds his hands in his red lap - the bleeding seems to have stopped, at least - and watches Sympathy for the Grayboys, starring the one and only Gary Jones.

6

The one and only Gary Jones pulls the tarp off the snowmobile, spots the battery sitting on the worktable in a cardboard box, and puts it in, being careful to clamp the cables to the correct terminals. This pretty well exhausts his store of mechanical knowledge - he's a history teacher, not a mechanic, and his idea of home improvement is making the kids watch the History Channel once in a while instead of Xena. The key is in the ignition, and the dashboard lights come on when he turns the key - got the battery right, anyway - but the engine doesn't start. Doesn't even crank. The starter makes a tut-tutting sound and that's all.

'Oh dear oh gosh dadrattit number two,' he says, running them all together in a monotone. He isn't sure he could manifest much in the way of emotion now even if he really wanted to. He's a horror-movie fan, has seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers two dozen times (he has even seen the wretched remake, the one with Donald Sutherland in it), and he knows what's going on here. His body has been snatched, most righteously and completely snatched. Although there will be no army of zombies, not even a townful. He is unique. He senses that Pete, Henry, and the Beav are also unique (was unique, in the Beav's case), but he is the most unique of all. You're not supposed to be able to say that - like the cheese belonging to the Farmer in the Dell, unique supposedly stands alone - but this is a rare case where that rule doesn't apply. Pete and Beaver were unique, Henry is uniquer, and he, Jonesy, is uniquest. Look, he's even starring in his own movie! How unique is that, as his oldest son would say.

The gray fellow in the hospital bed looks from the TV where Jonesy I is sitting astride the Arctic Cat to the chair where Jonesy II sits in his blood-sodden johnny.

What are you hiding? Mr Gray asks.

Nothing.

Why do you keep seeing a brick wall? What is 19, besides a prime number? Who said 'Fuck the Tigers'? What does that mean? What is the brick wall? When is the brick wall? What does it mean, why do you keep seeing it?

He can feel Mr Gray prying at him, but for the time being that one kernel is safe. He can be carried, but not changed. Not entirely opened, either, it seems. Not yet, at least.

Jonesy puts his finger to his lips and gives the gray fellow's own words back to him: Be quiet, watch the movie.

It studies him with the black bulbs of its eyes (they are insectile, Jonesy thinks, the eyes of a praying mantis), and Jonesy can feel it prying for a moment or two longer. Then the sensation fades. There is no hurry; sooner or later it will dissolve the shell over that last kernel of pure uninvaded Jonesy, and then it will know everything it wants to know.

In the meantime, they watch the movie. And when Bowser crawls into Jonesy's lap - Bowser with his sharp teeth and his ethery antifreeze smell - Jonesy barely notices.

Jonesy I, Shed Jonesy (only that one's now actually Mr Gray), reaches out. There are many minds to reach out to, they are hopping all over each other like late-night radio transmissions, and he finds one with the information he needs easily enough. It's like opening a file on your personal computer and finding a wonderfully detailed 3-D movie instead of words.

Mr Gray's source is Emil 'Dawg' Brodsky, from Menlo Park, New Jersey. Brodsky is an Army Tech Sergeant, a motor-pool munchkin. Only here, as part of Kurtz's Tactical Response Team, Tech Sergeant Brodsky has no rank. No one else does, either. He calls his superiors boss and those who rank below him (there are not many of those at this particular barbecue) hey you. If he doesn't know which is which, pal or buddy will do.

There are jets overlying the area, but not many (they'll be able to get all the pix they need from low earth orbit if the clouds ever clear), and they are not Brodsky's job, anyway. The jets fly out of the Air National Guard base in Bangor, and he is here in Jefferson Tract. Brodsky's job is the choppers and the trucks in the rapidly growing motor-pool (since noon, all the roads in this part of the state have been closed and the only traffic is olive-green trucks with their insignia masked), He's also in charge of setting up at least four generators to provide the electricity needed to serve the compound growing around Gosselin's Market. These needs include motion sensors, Pole lights, perimeter lights, and the makeshift operating theatre which is being hastily equipped in a Windstar motor home.

Kurtz has made it clear that the lights are a big deal - he wants this place as bright as day all night long. The greatest number of pole lights is going up around the barn and what used to be a horse corral and paddock behind the barn. In the field where old Reggie Gosselin's forty milkers once grazed away their days, two tents have been erected. The larger has a sign on its green roof: COMMISSARY. The other tent is white and unmarked. There are no kerosene heaters in it, as there are in the larger tent, and no need of them. This is the temporary morgue, Jonesy understands. There are only three bodies in there now (one is a banker who tried to run away, foolish man), but soon there may be lots more. Unless there's an accident that makes collecting bodies difficult or impossible. For Kurtz, the boss, such an accident would solve all sorts of problems.

And all that is by the way. Jonesy I's Job is Emil Brodsky of Menlo Park.

Brodsky is striding rapidly across the snowy, muddy, churned-up ground between the helicopter landing zone and the paddock where the Ripley-positives are to be kept (there are already a good number of them in there, walking around with the bewildered expressions of freshly interned prisoners the world over, calling out to the guards, asking for cigarettes and information and making vain threats). Emil Brodsky is squat and crewcut, with a bulldog face that looks made for cheap cigars (in fact, Jonesy knows, Brodsky is a devout Catholic who has never smoked). He's as busy as a one-armed paperhanger just now. He's got earphones on and a receptionist's mike hung in front of his lips. He is in radio contact with the fuel-supply convoy coming up I-95 - those guys are critical, because the helicopters out on mission are going to come back low - but he's also talking to Cambry, who is walking next to him, about the control-and-surveillance center Kurtz wants set up by nine P.m., midnight at the latest. This mission is going to be over in forty-eight hours at the outside, that's the scuttlebutt, but who the fuck knows for sure? According to the scuttlebutt, their prime target, Blue Boy, has already been taken out, but Brodsky doesn't know how anyone can be sure of that, since the big assault choppers haven't come back yet. And anyhow, their 'ob here is simple: turn the whole works up to eleven and then yank the knobs off.

And ye gods, all at once there are three Jonesys: the one watching TV in the fungus-crawling hospital room, the one in the snowmobile shed . . . and Jonesy III, who suddenly appears in Emil Brodsky's crewcut Catholic head. Brodsky stops walking and simply looks up into the white sky.

Cambry walks on three or four steps by himself before realizing that Dawg has stopped cold, is just standing there in the middle of the muddy cow pasture. In the midst of all this frantic bustle - running men, hovering helicopters, revving engines - he's standing there like a robot with a dead battery.

'Boss?' Cambry asks. 'Everything all right?'

Brodsky makes no reply . . . at least not to Cambry, he doesn't. To Jonesy I - Shed Jonesy - he says: Open the engine cowling and show me the plugs.

Jonesy has some trouble finding the catch that opens the cowling, but Brodsky directs him. Then Jonesy leans over the small engine, not looking for himself but turning his eyes into a pair of high-res cameras and sending the picture back to Brodsky.

'Boss?' Cambry asks with increasing concern. 'Boss, what is it? What's wrong?'

'Nothing wrong,' Brodsky says, slowly and distinctly. He puts the headphones down around his neck; the chatter in them is a distraction. 'Just let me think a minute.'

And to Jonesy: Someone yanked the plugs. Look around . . . yeah, there they are. End of the table.

On the end of the worktable is a mayonnaise jar half filled with gasoline. The jartop has been vented - two punches with the tip of a screwdriver - to keep the fumes from building up. Sunk in it like exhibits preserved in formaldehyde are two Champion sparkplugs.

Aloud, Brodsky says 'Dry them off good,' and when Cambry asks, 'Dry what off good?' Brodsky tells him absently to put a sock in it.

Jonesy fishes the plugs out, dries them off, then seats and connects them as Brodsky directs. Try it now, Brodsky says, this time without moving his lips, and the snowmobile starts up with a roar. Check the gas, too.

Jonesy does, and says thank you.

'No problem, boss,' Brodsky says, and starts walking briskly again. Cambry has to trot a little to catch up. He sees the faintly bewildered look on Dawg's face when Dawg discovers his head?phones are now around his neck.

'What the hell was that all about?' Cambry asks.

'Nothing,' Brodsky says, but it was something, all right; it sure as shit was something. Talking. A conversation. A . . . consultation? Yeah, that. He just can't remember exactly what the subject was. What he can remember is the briefing they got this morning, before daylight, when the team went hot. One of the directives, straight from Kurtz, had been to report anything unusual. Was this unusual? What, exactly, had it been?

'Had a brain-cramp, I guess,' Brodsky says. 'Too many things to do and not enough time to do them in. Come on, son, keep up with me.'

Cambry keeps up. Brodsky resumes his divided conversation ?convoy there, Cambry here - but remembers something else, some third conversation, one that is now over. Unusual or not? Probably not, Brodsky decides. Certainly nothing he could talk about to that incompetent bastard Perlmutter - as far as Pearly's concerned, if it isn't on his ever-present clipboard, it doesn't exist. Kurtz? Never. He respects the old buzzard, but fears him even more. They all do. Kurtz is smart, Kurtz is brave, but Kurtz is also the craziest ape in the jungle. Brodsky doesn't even like to walk where Kurtz's shadow has run across the ground.

Underhill? Could he talk to Owen Underhill?

Maybe . . . but maybe not. A deal like this, you could get into hack without even knowing why. He'd heard voices there for a minute or two - a voice, anyway - but he feels okay now. Still . . .

At Hole in the Wall, Jonesy roars out of the shed and heads up the Deep Cut Road. He senses Henry when he passes him ?Henry hiding behind a tree, actually biting into the moss to keep from screaming - but successfully hides what he knows from the cloud which surrounds that last kernel of his awareness. It is almost certainly the last time he will be near his old friend, who will never make it out of these woods alive.

Jonesy wishes he could have said goodbye.

7

I don't know who made this movie, Jonesy says, but I don't think they have to bother pressing their tuxes for the Academy Awards. In fact? -

He looks around and sees only snow-covered trees. Eyes front again and nothing but the Deep Cut Road unrolling in front of him and the snowmobile vibrating between his thighs. There was never any hospital, never any Mr Gray. That was all a dream.

But it wasn't. And there is a room. Not a hospital room, though. No bed, no TV, no IV pole. Not much of anything, actually; just a bulletin board. Two things are tacked to it: a map of northern New England with certain routes mapped - the Tracker Brothers routes ?and a Polaroid photo of a teenage girl with her skirt raised to reveal a golden tuft of hair. He is looking out at the Deep Cut Road from the window. It is, Jonesy feels quite sure, the window that used to be in the hospital room. But the hospital room was no good. He had to get out of that room, because

The hospital room wasn't safe, Jonesy thinks as if this one is, as if anyplace is. And yet . . . this one's safe-er, maybe. This is his final refuge, and he has decorated it with the picture he supposed they all hoped to see when they went up that driveway back in 1978. Tina Jean Sloppinger, or whatever her name had been.

Some of what I saw was real . . . valid recovered memories, Henry might say. I really did think I saw Duddits that day. That's why I went into the street without looking. As for Mr Gray . . . that's who I am now. Isn't it? Except for the part of me in this dusty, empty, uninteresting room with the used rubbers on the floor and the picture of the girl on the bulletin board, I'm all Mr Gray. Isn't that the truth?

No answer. Which is all the answer he needs, really.

But how did it happen? How did I get here? And why? What's it for?

Still no answers, and to these questions he can supply none of his own. He's only glad he has a place where he can still be himself, and dismayed at how easily the rest of his life has been hijacked. He wishes again, with complete and bitter sincerity, that he had shot McCarthy.

8

A huge explosion ripped through the day, and although the source had to be miles away, it was still strong enough to send snow sliding off the trees. The figure on the snowmobile didn't even look around. It was the ship. The soldiers had blown it up. The byrum were gone.

A few minutes later, the collapsed lean-to hove into view on his right. Lying in front of it in the snow, one boot still caught beneath the tin roof, was Pete. He looked dead but wasn't. Playing dead wasn't an option, not in this game; he could hear Pete thinking. And as he pulled up on the snowmobile and shifted into neutral, Pete raised his head and bared his remaining teeth in a humorless grin. The left arm of his parka was blackened and melted. There seemed to be only one working finger remaining on his right hand. All of his visible skin was stippled with the byrus.

'You're not Jonesy,' Pete said. 'What have you done with Jonesy?'

'Get on, Pete,' Mr Gray said.

'I don't want to go anywhere with you.' Pete raised his right hand - the swooning fingers, the red-gold clumps of byrus - and used it to wipe his forehead. 'The fuck out of here. Get on your pony and ride.'

Mr Gray lowered the head that had once belonged to Jonesy (Jonesy watching it all from the window of his bolt-hole in the abandoned Tracker Brothers depot, unable to help or to change anything) and stared at Pete. Pete began to scream as the byrus growing all over his body tightened, the roots of the stuff digging into his muscles and nerves. The boot can lit under the collapsed tin roof jerked free and Pete, still screaming, pulled himself up into a fetal position. Fresh blood burst from his mouth and nose. When he screamed again, two more teeth popped out of his mouth.

'Get on, Pete.'

Weeping, holding his savaged right hand to his chest, Pete tried to get to his feet. The first effort was a failure; he sprawled in the snow again. Mr Gray made no comment, simply sat astride the idling Arctic Cat and watched.

Jonesy felt Pete's pain and despair and wretched fear. The fear was by far the worst, and he decided to take a risk.

Pete.

Only a whisper, but Pete heard. He looked up, his face haggard and speckled with fungus - what Mr Gray called byrus. When Pete licked his lips, Jonesy saw it was growing on his tongue, too. Outer-space thrush. Once Pete Moore had wanted to be an astronaut. Once he had stood up to some bigger boys on behalf of someone who was smaller and weaker. He deserved better than this.

No bounce, no play.

Pete almost smiled. It was both beautiful and heartbreaking. This time he made it to his feet and plodded slowly toward the snowmobile.

In the deserted office to which he had been exiled, Jonesy saw the doorknob be in to twist back and forth. What does that mean? Mr Gray asked. What is no bounce, no play? What are you doing in there? Come back to the hospital and watch TV with me, why don't you? How did you get in there to begin with?

It was Jonesy's turn not to answer, and he did so with great pleasure.

I'll get in, Mr Gray said. When I'm ready, I'll come in. You may think you can lock the door against me, but you're wrong.

Jonesy kept silent - there was no need to provoke the creature currently in charge of his body - but he didn't think he was wrong.

On the other hand, he didn't dare leave; he would be swallowed up if he tried. He was just a kernel in a cloud, a bit of undigested food in an alien gut.

Best to keep a low profile.

9

Pete got on behind Mr Gray and put his arms around Jonesy's waist. Ten minutes later they motored past the over-turned Scout, and Jonesy understood what had made Pete and Henry so late back from the store. It was a wonder either of them had lived through it. He would have liked a longer look, but Mr Gray didn't slow, just went on with the Cat's skis bouncing up and down, riding the crown of the road between the two snow-filled ruts.

Three miles or so beyond the Scout, they topped a rise and Jonesy saw a brilliant hall of yellow-white light hanging less than a foot above the road, waiting for them. It looked as hot as the flame of a welder's torch, but obviously wasn't; the snow just inches below it hadn't melted. It was almost certainly one of the lights he and Beaver had seen playing in the clouds, above the fleeing animals coming out of The Gulch.

That's right, Mr Gray said. What your people call a flashlight. This is one of the last. Perhaps the very last.

Jonesy said nothing, only stared out the window of his office cell. He could feel Pete's arms around his waist, holding on mostly by instinct now, the way a nearly beaten fighter clinches with his opponent to keep from hitting the canvas. The head lying against his back was as heavy as a stone. Pete was a culture-medium for the byrus now, and the byrus liked him fine; the world was cold and Pete was warm. Mr Gray apparently wanted him for something ? - what, Jonesy had no idea.

The flashlight led them another half a mile or so up the road, then veered into the woods. It slipped in between two big pines and then waited for them, spinning just above the snow. Jonesy heard Mr Gray instruct Pete to hold on as tight as he could.

The Arctic Cat bounced and growled its way up a slight incline, its skis digging into the snow, then splashing it aside. Once they were actually under the forest canopy there was less of it, in some places none at all. In those spots the snowmobile's tread clattered angrily on the frozen ground, which was mostly rock beneath a thin cover of soil and fallen needles. They were headed north now.

Ten minutes later they bounced hard over a jut of granite and Pete went tumbling off the back with a low cry. Mr Gray let go of the snowmobile's throttle. The flashlight also stopped, spinning above the snow. Jonesy thought it looked dimmer now.

'Get up,' Mr Gray said. He was turned around on the saddle, looking back at Pete.

'I can't,' Pete said. 'I'm done, fella. I - '

Then Pete began to howl and thrash on the ground again, feet kicking, his hands - one burned, the other mangled - jerking.

Stop it! Jonesy yelled. You're killing him!

Mr Gray paid him no attention whatever, just remained as he was, swung around at the waist and watching Pete with deadly, emotionless patience as the byrus tightened and pulled at Pete's flesh. At last Jonesy felt Mr Gray let up. Pete got groggily to his feet. There was a fresh cut on one cheek, and already it was swarming with byrus. His eyes were dazed and exhausted and swimming with tears. He got back on the snowmobile and his hands crept around Jonesy's waist once more.

Hold onto my coat, Jonesy whispered, and as Mr Gray turned forward and clapped the snowmobile back into gear, he felt Pete take hold. No bounce, no play, right?

No play, Pete agreed, but faintly.

Mr Gray paid no attention this time. The flashlight, less bright but still speedy, started north again . . . or at least in a direction Jonesy assumed was north. As the snowmobile wove its way around trees, thick clumps of bushes, and knobs of rock, his sense of direction pretty much gave up. From behind them came a steady crackle of gunfire. It sounded as though someone was having a turkey-shoot.

10

About an hour later, Jonesy finally discovered why Mr Gray had bothered with Pete. That was when the flashlight, which had dimmed to an anemic shadow of its original self, finally went out. It disappeared with a soft plosive sound - as if someone had popped a paper sack. Some leftover bit of detritus fell to the ground.

They were on a tree-lined ridge spang in the middle of the God-only-knows. Ahead of them was a snowy, forested valley; on its far side were eroded hills and brush-tangled brakes where not a single light shone. And to finish things off, the day was fading toward dusk.

Another fine mess you've gotten us into, Jonesy thought, but he sensed no dismay on Mr Gray's part. Mr Gray stopped the snowmobile by releasing the throttle, and then simply sat there.

North, Mr Gray said. Not to Jonesy.

Pete answered out loud, his voice weary and slow. 'How am I supposed to know? I can't even see where the sun's going down, for Christ's sake. One of my eyes is all fucked up, too.'

Mr Gray turned Jonesy's head and Jonesy saw that Pete's left eye was gone. The lid had been shoved up high, giving him a half-assed look of surprise. Growing out of the socket was a small jungle of byrus. The longest strands hung down, tickling against Pete's stubbly cheek. More strands twined through his thinning hair in lush red-gold streaks.

You know.

'Maybe I do,' Pete said. 'And maybe I don't want to point you there.'

Why not?

'Because I doubt if what you want is healthy for the rest of us, fuckface,' Pete said, and Jonesy felt an absurd sense of pride.

Jonesy saw the growth in Pete's eyesocket twitch. Pete screamed and clutched at his face. For a moment - brief but far too long - Jonesy fully imagined the reddish-gold tendrils reaching from that defunct eye into Pete's brain, where they spread like strong fingers clutching a gray sponge.

Go on, Pete, tell him! Jonesy cried. For Christ's sake, tell him!

The byrus grew still again. Pete's hand dropped from his face, which was now deathly pale where it wasn't reddish-gold. 'Where are you, Jonesy?' he asked. 'Is there room for two?'

The short answer, of course, was no. Jonesy didn't understand what had happened to him, but knew that his continued survival ?that last kernel of autonomy - somehow depended on his staying right where he was. If he so much as opened the door, he would be gone for good.

Pete nodded. 'Didn't think so,' he said, and then spoke to the other. 'Just don't hurt me anymore, fella.'

Mr Gray only sat, looking at Pete with Jonesy's eyes and making no promises.

Pete sighed, then raised his scorched left hand and extended one finger. He closed his eyes and began to tick his finger back and forth, back and forth. And as he did it, Jonesy came close to understanding everything. What had that little girl's name been? Rinkenhauer, wasn't it? Yes. He couldn't remember the first name, but a clumsy handle like Rinkenhauer was hard to forget. She had also gone to Mary M. Snowe, aka The Retard Academy, although by then Duddits had gone on to Vocational. And Pete? Pete had always had a funny trick of remembering things, but after Duddits -

The words came back to Jonesy as he crouched in his dirty little cell, looking out at the world which had been stolen from him . . . only they weren't really words at all, only those open vowel sounds, so strangely beautiful:

Ooo eee a yine, Ete? Do you see the line, Pete?

Pete, his face full of dreamy, surprised wonder, had said yes, he saw it. And he had been doing the thing with his finger then, that tick-tock thin, just as he was now.

The finger stopped, the tip still trembling minutely, like a dowsing rod at the edge of an aquifer. Then Pete pointed at the ridge on a line slightly to starboard of the snowmobile's current heading,

'There,' he said, and dropped his hand. 'Due north. Sight on that rock-face. The one with the pine growing out of the middle. Do you see it?'

Yes, I see it. Mr Gray turned forward and put the snowmobile back into gear, Jonesy wondered fleetingly how much gas was left in the tank.

'Can I get off now?' Meaning, of course, could he die now.

No.

And they were off again, with Pete clinging weakly to Jonesy's coat.

They skirted the rock-face, climbed to the top of the highest hill beyond it, and here Mr Gray paused again so his substitute flashlight could rehead them. Pete did so and they continued on, now moving on a path that was a little bit west of true north. Daylight continued to fade. Once they heard helicopters - at least two, maybe as many as four - coming toward them. Mr Gray hulled the snowmobile into a thick stand of underbrush, heedless of the branches that slapped at Jonesy's face, drawing blood from his cheeks and brow. Pete tumbled off the back again. Mr Gray killed the Cat's engine, then dragged Pete, who was moaning and semi-conscious, under the thickest growth of bushes. There they waited until the helicopters passed over. Jonesy felt Mr Gray reach up to one of the crew and quickly scan him, perhaps cross-checking what the man knew with what Pete had been telling him. When the choppers had passed off to the southeast, apparently heading back to their base, Mr Gray re-started the snowmobile and they went on. It had begun to snow again.

An hour later they stopped on another rise and Pete fell off the Cat again, this time tumbling to the side. He raised his face, but most of his face was gone, buried under a beard of vegetation. He tried to speak aloud and couldn't; his mouth was stuffed, his tongue buried under a lush mat of byrus.

I can't, man. I can't, no more, please, let me be.

'Yes,' Mr Gray said. 'I think you've served your purpose.'

Pete! Jonesy cried. Then, to Mr Gray: No, no, don't!

Mr Gray paid no attention, of course. For a moment Jonesy saw silent understanding in Pete's remaining eye. And relief For that moment he was still able to touch Pete's mind - his boyhood friend, the one who always stood outside the gate at DJHS, one hand cupped over his mouth, hiding a cigarette that wasn't really there, the one who was going to be an astronaut and see the world entire from earth orbit, one of the four who had helped save Duddits from the big boys.

For one moment. Then he felt something leap from Mr Gray's mind and the stuff growing on Pete did not just twitch but clenched. There was a tenebrous creaking sound as Pete's skull cracked in a dozen places. His face - what remained of it - pulled inward in a kind of yank, making him old at a stroke. Then he fell forward and snow began to fleck the back of his parka.

You bastard.

Mr Gray, indifferent to Jonesy's curse and Jonesy's anger, made no reply. He faced forward again. The building wind dropped momentarily when he did, and a hole opened in the curtain of snow. About five miles northwest of their current position, Jonesy saw moving lights - not flashlights but headlights. Lots of them. Trucks moving in convoy along the turnpike. Trucks and nothing else, he supposed. This part of Maine belonged to the military now.

And they're all looking for you, asshole, he spat as the snowmobile began to roll again. The snow closed back around them, cutting off their momentary view of the trucks, but Jonesy knew that Mr Gray would have no trouble finding the turnpike. Pete had gotten him this far, to a part of the quarantine zone where Jonesy supposed little trouble was expected. He was counting on Jonesy to take him the rest of the way, because Jonesy was different. For one thing, he was clear of the byrus. The byrus didn't like him for some reason.

You'll never get out of here, Jonesy said.

I will, Mr Gray said. We always die and we always live. We always lose and we always win, Like it or not, Jonesy, we're the future.

If that's true, it's the best reason I ever heard for living in the past, Jonesy replied, but from Mr Gray there was no answer, Mr Gray as an entity, a consciousness, was gone, merged back into the cloud. There was only enough of him left to run Jonesy's motor skills and keep the snowmobile pointed toward the turnpike. And Jonesy, carried helplessly forward on whatever mission this thing had, took slender comfort from two things. One was that Mr Gray didn't know how to get at the last piece of him, the tiny part that existed in his memory of the Tracker Brothers office. The other was that Mr Gray didn't know about Duddits - about no bounce, no play.

Jonesy intended to make sure Mr Gray didn't find out.

At least not yet.