Part 1: Signs and Omens

She opened the store at the usual time; always the same time every day, no matter what. It was easy; she'd bought the house next door, made a few changes, and gave the town something a little different. "In Other Worlds" was all she wanted to do with her life, even while she was in college: open up something that wasn't your average antique and curio store. Her collegiate contacts were able to supply her with a wide variety of imported objects, some of them rare enough to attract shoppers from big cities hundreds of miles away.

But there was something in the shop rarer than any college professor could have found. Every day, before the shop opened, she stopped to smooth the dress on a rag-doll that held pride of place in a display case near the register. A simple doll in a vaguely Middle Eastern dress, but Sheila never went a day without looking at it or touching it. It was the only relic they had brought back from the Realm. Ten years ago now, but she still remembered.

She settled onto the padded stool behind the counter and thought about her brother. It would be Homecoming weekend at the high-school soon. He'd have to come back from college for that. Last year, she thought he might not; it was his freshman year, there were so many new and exciting distractions...No, she smiled to herself, nothing could distract him, after what they'd been through. Nothing this world had to offer could come close.

A floorboard creaked behind her. Odd; she hadn't notice anyone come in. She looked around.

...and, thousands of miles apart, strange things started happening.

Peter Grenway had set up the experiment ahead of time; it was one of his favorites. He was introducing it to the students, as he had the last two years at the high school:

" We'll be able to use electricity in this rig to break the water molecules down into the hydrogen, which will collect on this side, and the oxygen, which collects over here. If you did the reading, you know there's a special term for this--"

"Yeah, it's called boiling water."

Peter sighed and unconsciously pushed his glasses back up his nose. He'd worn them most of his life, and was nearly blind without them. Just once, he thought to himself. He turned to plug in the apparatus, and his hand brushed against a beaker, pushing it into the sink. There was a sound of glass breaking, and most of the class cheered. He grabbed the waste-paper basket and started picking bits of broken glass out of the sink.

"Hey, teach, how much you owe them now?"

Amazing how two dozen students can want to learn something about science, Peter thought, and it only takes one mouth to bring the whole thing to a halt. This mouth belonged to ReggieYeong, who didn't just make trouble for Mr. Grenway's science class. He was reputed to be a major graffitti artist, and there was even talk of gang activity. Nothing was ever proven, however. Peter tried once to talk to Reggie's parents, but they seemed to know as little English as Peter knew Korean. At one point, though, Reggie's father had thrown up his hands and said "Too far; it's done."

Peter preferred joking with the students to trying to run the classroom. "No problem; the school gets a Grenway discount."

"Man, I knew this place was cheap." Reggie again; on the subject of money, again. Everyone knew he had a lot of it; his parents still put in 14-hour days at the family dry-cleaners; they wanted to make sure their son didn't lack anything. They succeeded too well. Reggie let everyone know, every chance he got, how well-off he was. What a creep, Peter thought; he's worse than Eric ever was.

At the moment, Reggie was telling anyone who would listen about his new sweater, a strange-looking riot of seemingly random yarns. "This cost 250 bucks. It was woven by a computer program, so every one's unique."

"It still loooks like it needs to be finished," Peter muttered, hardly aware that he had spoken aloud. He also wasn't aware that the waste-paper basket had begun to give off a purplish light from within.

The sweater heard, and started to knit itself. Pulling yarns seemingly out of thin air, the cuffs, collar and bottom of the sweater started growing. Before Reggie realized it, the sleeves had grown past his hands, rounding off like cotton swabs. The collar covered his head entirely, and it was all Reggie could do to work his way out of it before he was sealed into his sweater like a moth in a cocoon. He pulled and twisted, fell out of his chair, rolled on the floor and finally had to slice an opening.

Of course it was against school rules to carry a switch-blade knife, but that was hardly uppermost in Peter's mind. He was worried about the way Reggie brandished the knife in his direction as he yelled, "What'd you do to my sweater?"

Peter stepped back, still clutching the waste-paper basket in one hand. "Hey, it's not me! I'm not in this!"

Thick purple smoke poured out of the basket, filling the room in seconds and setting off the fire-alarms. When the smoke cleared a minute or two later, Mr. Grenway was nowhere to be seen.

If anyone had looked to the field north of the high school, they would have seen Mr. Grenway suddenly appear on the edge of the woods there; still holding the waste-paper basket. When he realized where he was, he screamed and dropped the basket. The purple glow within was dying away.

The hat; that's where he'd seen it before. But that was years ago, in another place. Why was this happening now? He'd have to look for his answers back home; where he'd grown up. Of course, now "home" was several hundred miles away, at the other end of the state. He'd have to go to his apartment, pack a bag. He could call the school office from there. But what would he tell them?

Two time-zones away, in California, the sun hadn't been up an hour, but Diana Rorie-Calvin was up and dressed before the sun. Now she jogged the sand-covered streets of Tustin, California, with Sandy, a happy tan-colored German Shepherd on a leash. The dog was glad to get a daily run, down the road, around the perimeter of the El Toro military base, and back. Diana did it for a mix of overlapping reasons: she stuck to the training regimen she'd followed since grade school; she could no longer imagine not following it. She didn't mind doing a favor for the dog's owner, either; old Mr. Ybarra kept Sandy as a watchdog, and couldn't give it the exercise it needed. Then, too, Mr. Ybarra was the super at the apartment complex; Diana was not above hoping that befriending the dog would make its master more disposed to repair things a little sooner. Plus, Diana didn't like the idea of jogging through this neighborhood, day or night, without a dog. The apartments drew a sad and strange mix of residents: bikers and off-base military, college students and alcoholics. Odd place to find an Olympic-class athlete.

She turned the final corner, and she and the dog put on a last little burst of speed on this last block. The apartment building might have been considered luxurious in the 50s and 60s, to a snow-bound Midwesterner, but now it was just a run-down three-story stucco building, no central air, and a rather dubious pool in the center of the courtyard. Still, it was what they could afford.

She knocked on Mr. Ybarra's door and called out, "Here's Sandy!"

Old Mr. Ybarra moved a little slowly, plus he was tinkering with a broken air conditioner in the back workshop, so it took him a minute to answer. When he opened the door, Sandy bounded happily inside. "Thank you, Senora."

"Mr. Ybarra, I don't want to be a pest, but the shower's been leaking for three days now--"

"I take care of it this afternoon. Don't worry."

Diana smiled. Usually, when he said "Don't worry", the problem would be taken care of later that day. She turned toward the stairs.

By the stairs she checked the mailbox. Out of reflex; it was too early for a delivery. Nothing. Since she'd lost her job at USC, she'd sent out dozens of resumes for school coaching positions, not hearing anything. Was she overqualified, or were the schools afraid of her possible salary demands? Every day she turned the problem over in her mind, as she did now, walking up the steps to her third-floor apartment. Then there was the long-shot; she met last week with someone from a TV production company, who suggested that she might find work as a stunt double. It was good money, and nothing she couldn't handle. But she needed membership in the Screen Actors Guild for that. She'd filled out her paperwork, and was still waiting to hear from the Guild. It would be wonderful if that came through; they could move out of this place, get closer to L.A.

They. She'd also been thinking a lot about Sam Calvin lately. It had seemed so perfect at first; both of them USC athletes at the top of their form. He just missed making the Olympic wrestling squad; but he had reassured her that her being on the track team never bothered him. Well, maybe it didn't then. Since then, he'd never taken anything but small part-time jobs: security guard, parking attendant, and now a bar bouncer. She'd brought in most of the money, even after the budget cuts. They had practically no life together since he started working nights.

Lately he started coming home later and later; just at sunrise the other night, hours after the bar closed. He wasn't home when she left to go jogging, and he wasn't home yet. It was another day when she didn't have anywhere to go. Should she shower in the apartment, leaks and all, or go down to the changing room for the pool? This was one of those days when the walls started closing in; she threw a change of clothes into a sports bag, opened the door and stopped. From her door she could see to where the courtyard opened onto the street. Sam was getting out of a convertible at the curb; a convertible driven by a woman who looked to be Diana's age, but who had a Godawful hair weave that looked like the Eiffel Tower. Diana watched Sam kiss this woman, who drove off.

Diana was surprised to find that she felt--nothing. Absolutely nothing. Watching her husband kiss another woman was like watching an anthill. All she could think about was the last time she saw Sheila; the last of the group who made a point of staying in touch. That was four years ago, when Sheila came out west for the wedding. They hadn't spoken much, except that Sheila said, "I hope this works out." Diana knew that Sheila was thinking, "I hope you know what you're doing."

Sam walked into the apartment, said only "We got any coffee?" and went into the kitchen area. Diana just stood by the door, not moving, not speaking. Finally, Sam noticed the silence. "What is it?"

Diana found her voice. "You don't even care; that's what it is. You didn't care that I could see that just now."

Sam set his coffee cup down. He seemed to be reading from a script; one he'd committed to memory long before. "Maybe you don't care, but I still need to feel like I'm alive. I can't look to you for that. I try to talk to you and sometimes it's like there's this big secret you won't let me in on..."

"Don't bother. I've heard this before, and you don't even mean it. Just admit that you're looking for a good time, and I'm out of here."

"Maybe you'd be leaving too soon," he said, suddenly flashing a cold smile and pulling an envelope out of his jacket pocket. An envelope from the Screen Actors Guild.

"Dammit, did that come just now?"

"No, it came three days ago."

"Give me that."

"You want something?" He suddenly tossed the coffee cup toward her. It missed and went out the still-open front door, over the railing and splashed into the pool. "You want something?" he repeated, louder and angrier, throwing a butcher block full of knives at her. Diana ducked; the block hit the wall behind and the knives scattered at her feet. "What else have you been hiding from me?"

"God, look who's talking."

Sam grabbed the only other thing left on the counter--an empty paper-towel holder--and threw that at Diana.

Diana caught it.

She caught it straight-armed, elbow not bent at all, and with the force Sam put behind the throw, it could well have broken a bone in her hand. But it landed gently in her hand, and, as she curled her fingers around the wooden rod, it seemed to pulse, as if it were a beating heart. She knew that feeling, and watched as the towel holder took on a green glow and started to lengthen.

It only took a few flicks of her wrist. She struck the floor with the staff, causing one knife after another to bounce up, to be struck back into the kitchen. Sam, who had involuntarily backed up to the wall when the staff started glowing, found a half-dozen blades coming at him. Whether by accident or by design, they all missed his skin, but pinned the loose fabric of his shirt and pants to the back wall.

Diana put the sports bag over her shoulder and walked into the kitchen. She kept coming until her face was a mere inch from Sam's. "You were right, dearest," she said, barely above a whisper; "there is something in my past you don't know about. Let me give you a hint."

She crossed the apartment in a few quick strides. As she reached the threshold, she planted the staff like a vaulting-pole and went over the side of the railing. If Sam could have moved, he would have seen Diana come down on the end of the diving board, bounce back into the air, execute a double-forward somersault and land in front of the mailboxes.

She looked at the staff, which had once again become simply a towel holder, and dropped it into a nearby trashcan. But she knew what it signified. She checked the wallet in her sports bag, which held the only credit card Sam hadn't maxed out; because she never told him of its existence. She'd saved it for an emergency, and this was clearly it. She walked down the street, trying to figure how to get to the airport. She didn't look back.

If she had, she might have seen Mr. Ybarra, who had watched her spectacular performance. "I told you, Sandy," the old man whispered to his dog, "the senora was someone special."

The management and workers at Tornado Tool and Die knew that they were expected to lay out a fancy buffet for whichever corporate bigwig came to the works. They had just suffered a hostile takeover by Harleigh Enterprises, and were expected to show a corporate representative around. The buffet, however, was simply spaghetti and some appetizers served on paper plates. Tornado wanted to get one last word in to Harleigh: that this factory was a blue-collar family operation, and that any attempts to dissolve the company would send a lot of workers, underpaid as they already were, over the edge of the cliff.

At first it didn't look good, when the airport rental car pulled up and out of the back seat got Eric Harleigh, the son of the owner of Harleigh Enterprises, and himself an officer in the company. He could be expected to follow his father's agenda, regardless of what it meant to the people here.

The young man of power and privilege stepped to the podium set up next to the buffet, so that he could address the workers. He took a few quick glances around the shop floor on his way to the microphone, and the workers assumed that he was already calculating what to sell off and what to dismantle. Actually, Eric had gone on only a few of these visits; the holdings of his father's company were mostly ink on a ledger to him, and he actually enjoyed seeing the reality of what he and his family owned. Of course, it wouldn't do to show his enjoyment in public; his father had pounded many lessons into Eric, but keeping one's counsel to oneself was the first.

"I did want you to see that I don't have horns and a pitchfork." Eric's attempts at levity didn't go over well anywhere else, and the Tornado workers didn't think much of it either, but Eric sailed on. "I do want to assure you that the corporation has not set any plans in stone. I didn't come here with any secret agendas or schemes. I do want to look around at this plant, and after we study its production and its people, I can promise you that we'll try to chart a course that will be for the benefit of everyone."

They were basic corporate platitudes of interest and compassion. Whether Eric meant any of them was beside the point; he was sent to speak them to the Tornado workers, and that's what he did. The workers predictably didn't cheer the end of his remarks, and simply began lining up at the buffet table.

Rick, who had been shop steward for a dozen years and a union representative since his first week at Tornado, tried to smooth over things for Eric's benefit. "We're all a little worried about the manpower issues; you understand."

Eric, ignoring the plate that someone had prepared for him, started working his own way down the table, going light on the salad and heavy on the pasta. "There's no other way I can say it. Our lawyers already have your numbers; I wouldn't have come here if that's what this was all about. We're looking at broader questions, which effect you and the corporation."

He's hiding behind that damned corporate doubletalk, Rick thought to himself. Maybe he's got an open mind, but he's still playing it cagey. I hope I don't have to bring the roof down on him to get him to see reason.

It may have only been a lighting fixture and not the whole roof, but at that moment a fixture came loose and fell toward Eric, directly below, trying to choose between two relish trays. Rick only had time to yell, "Look out!"

Eric looked up, saw the plummeting piece of metal as big as a television set, and turned to an absurd reflex: he held his paper plate full of spaghetti above his head, as if it would save his life.

It did.

Whether anyone beside Eric noticed that the plate seemed to give off a silver glow wasn't remembered. All Eric knew was that he ducked beneath a paper plate full of noodles, and that a hundred-pound light fixture struck it, then bounced off. Eric was shaken by the near-miss, and nobody could blame him. Killing or crippling the new owner's son would be a terrible way to get their point across. Nobody was surprised when Eric stared at the light, then at the plate, gave a strangled scream and ran to the rented car.

"Are you sure you're alright, Mr. Harleigh?" asked the driver, an intern from the home office. "I could drive you into town, let a doctor check you out. I could swear the lamp was coming straight at you."

Eric tried to be his snobbish, overbearing self, and to his credit he came close. "Are you kidding? How could a plate of spaghetti save me from that? Anyway, it's over now." Then in an exaggeratedly casual voice: "How soon can you get me to the airport?"

The alarm clock didn't go off; it wasn't supposed to. Hank Garmond woke up anyway, a few minutes past his usual time, then smiled, stretched like a jungle cat, and turned the clock-radio away from the news to a mostly-oldies station. He contentedly drifted into and out of sleep for the next two hours. This was a luxury.

Hank (his whole life, nobody had ever called him "Henry") hadn't had much luxury lately. College had its moments, but law school was non-stop pressure. It made college look like the third grade. It even took him a fourth year; not because of his grades, but because he had to stop and take a full-time job to pay for the final year. After that, he was lucky enough (so he thought) to land a job with the Federal government in Washington. But luck didn't translate into a decent salary; he had to start rather far down the ladder.

That was in the past, however, and so was the studio apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the godawful daily commute. And the neighbors; let's not forget them, he thought as he paced around his new apartment. What looked like a nicely-kept apartment complex had more than its share of creeps, domestic violence and flat-out weirdness. One woman ran seances out of her apartment. The week before he moved, Hank and a buddy from the office, who'd stopped by to help him pack, swung by that apartment to (ha!) see what the future might hold.

If they were expecting to see some sort of odd occult museum, they were disappointed; the apartment was rather ordinary, neat and well-kept, except for a glass-fronted bookcase that held what could only be called an eccentric collection of objects, including a small box of Captain Crunch cereal, an old tube from the day when radios and televisions ran on tubes instead of transistors, a cigarette stub covered with a bright orange shade of lipstick, and a robin's egg.

Hank settled into the guests' chair and waited for the woman who lived there to speak. When she did, she was hard to understand; there was some Jamaican in her voice, some New Orleans, and a couple of accents Hank didn't recognize. Still, he soon caught on and was able to follow her.

"You got leadership on you," she spoke to Hank, or, rather, to the rug at his feet. "You been the hero before, an' you be the hero again. But you not gonna save the day. Not by youself, anyway."

Maybe that was just the kind of impressive-sounding nothing a fortune-teller can get away with, Hank thought. Still--but that was years ago. So much has changed since then. And he surely wasn't going to go back to the Realm anytime soon.

Instead, here he was, in a one-bedroom apartment off of McClellan Circle, near Embassy Row. His last raise gave him the means to get into Washington proper, to a nice set of rooms in a nice neighborhood. This was the second of five vacation days he'd burned to be able to putter around the apartment and get it exactly right.

He unboxed things that hadn't seen the light of day since before law school: trophies, honors, clippings. Then there was the set of green binders, full of dozens of entries. Hank had started the book a dozen times, put it away, started again. Part of him felt that he had to record his experiences with his friends in the Realm, and part of him felt it was a temptation--he was in this world, after all. Nobody could live in both; he shouldn't try.

Hank left the books, picked up a broom and started sweeping around the baseboards of the dining area. He happened to be looking out the window when he saw a little kid--maybe three years old--break away from his mom to chase after a pigeon, which was walking between two parked cars. The bird waited until the toddler was almost next to it, then flew off. The child followed it--into the path of an oncoming truck.

In spite of himself, Hank, knowing he couldn't be heard or seen, still yelled, "Look out!" He waved his arms, still holding the broom.

On the second wave, the broom curved.

Without even thinking, he knew what he held, and drew back a string that didn't even appear until he reached for it. He fired off a pulse of energy that swooped down to the street, actually picked the boy up and drop him back on the sidewalk before disappearing like mist.

Hank couldn't move for about five minutes. Everything he had just been thinking--about not letting the past control his life, about staying grounded in one world at a time--had vanished as completely as the energy pulse he had used to save the young boy. When he did finally move, it was to tenatively try the broom again, but the bow was gone. Was it a hallucination? He'd been thinking about his time in the Realm--maybe he saw the child in trouble and imagined the rest...

No; he knew what had just happened. And he knew that he couldn't get the answers to any questions if he stayed here.

Bobby O'Neill's class schedule wasn't light by any means; whoever said jocks get to coast through college never went here, he thought, more than once. Still, this was his one weekday with no classes. The weather was perfect; Indian summer, just warm enough, and the national park was just close enough to campus.

He steered his motor scooter down the roads of the national park, looking for an open field. This was his second year in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but he'd taken to them as if he'd lived there all his life. He could go there when he was happy, or when he was introspective, or when he wanted to blow off some steam, or when, like this time, he just wanted to get in some batting practice.

Finding his favorite field, he pulled the scooter off the road. Out of his knapsack he pulled a beat-up aluminum bat; an old high school souvenir. He'd used that bat to win the school three Nationals trophies, as well as to set a state batting record. He scanned the gravel along the road for some good-sized rocks,. picked up a few, tossed them up one at a time, and proceeded to hit them a few hundred feet down the field.

"Yo, Bamm Bamm!"

One of his fraternity brothers, Lamont Biggs, a football letterman, was also in the park that morning, but for different reasons. "I got some assignments to make up for Winograd," he reminded Bobby. Professor Winograd taught "Fundamentals of Earth Science"--or, as the house referred to it, "Bonehead Botany". It was one of the core courses that the school athletes had to pass to keep their NCAA eligibility. Bobby had gotten it out of the way his freshman year. He stopped his fungo practice and helped Biggs gather some of the spectacularly colored fallen leaves.

"So, you heard from anyone yet?"

"About what?" Bobby asked.

"Drop the act, man. There were four scouts at least at your last game."

"Well, none of them spoke to me."

"Yeah, why should they? Five for five, three home runs..."

"It was the team's win."

"You're for real, aren't you? You really mean to say there's no dollar signs in your head?"

"Hey, we all could use some money."

"What are you trying to dodge me for? I'm not NCAA. Just tell me what you've really got on your mind."

"First things first. I just want to get through school. After that, I'll talk things over with Terry..."

"Well, I knew she'd be in there somewhere. What's she got to do with baseball?"

"It's more than just that. She's got a good view of things."

"Like what; she can see into the future?"

"Of course she can; didn't you know?" Bobby didn't mind telling Biggs the truth, only because Biggs would refuse to believe it. As far as Biggs was concerned, Terry was Bobby's girlfriend, known at the house as "Pebbles" to Bobby's "Bamm Bamm", and that's as far as it went. Bobby thrust a handful of leaves at Biggs. "This ought to keep Winograd happy. I have to hit a few stones."

"On top of team practice? Why do you do it?"

"I love the game, Inch; that's all I can say. I just love the game."

In the frat's tradition of naming members after cartoons, Biggs was "Inch High Private Eye", both because he was an Administration of Justice major, and because this defensive lineman was one of the largest brothers in the house. Still, he had to look up into Bobby's eyes, to see if he was kidding. He shook his head in disbelief, and wandered off to gather a few more specimens.

I'm not weird, am I? Bobby wondered, striking a rock with a ping that sent it far down the open field. Just 'cause I'm not trying to line up an agent, or trying to get into the minor leagues before I'm twenty-one. Ping; the rock cut to the left, but still would have been a fair ball. Hell, I know guys have been chasing me; that's where Terry really helps me out. Ping; the rock angled into the ground; too hard. Wonder if she got my last e-mail; wonder if she can come up this weekend.

Ping.

Bobby hit rocks in this field because it was about as long and as clear as a major league baseball diamond. He kept all the landmarks in his head; bases and the mound, dugouts and bleachers, to measure his practice sessions. This time, however, the rock cleared what would have been the center field wall, and was still climbing. It rose as it sped through the air for another hundred yards, two hundred yards, before it started to fall to earth again. The rock was still traveling at high speed when it hit the tree-line.

It had traveled a mile and was still traveling.

Bobby didn't even have to look, but he knew he had to. Sure enough, the golden glow that had surrounded his bat was fading in the sunlight. He didn't stop to think about it; he ran to his scooter. He knew he had to find the nearest pay-phone, and try to contact Sheila.

Coming April 15: 

Part 2: Reunion