"Of course."

Before dawn one day long ago, Maui the mischievous Polynesian demigod crept to the summit of Haleakala, the House of the Sun, on a mission of filial love. His mother had complained that the days were not long enough to allow her to finish her tasks of cooking, cleaning, and drying tapa cloth, so Maui decided to do something about it. When the first ray of the sun appeared over the summit, Maui snared it with his lasso, thus trapping the sun. The sun pleaded for freedom but Maui would not release it until it promised to lengthen the days by slowing its trek across the heavens.

"The Niihauans say the shorter days show that the sun has broken its promise and so they've come to aid Maui when he returns to recapture the sun. They want to know if I've seen him! Can you believe it?"

Kolabati looked past Moki at the grown men dressed in feathers and carrying spears, and pitied them.

"What did you tell them?"

"I temporized. I wasn't sure what to say. But now I do."

Kolabati didn't like the look in his eyes.

"I'm almost afraid to ask."

His grin widened. "I'm going to tell them I'm Maui."

"Oh, Moki, don't toy with them. Aren't things bad enough already?"

"Who's toying?" he said. "I feel a strange power in me, Bati. I have a feeling I just might be Maui, or at least his avatar. I tell you, Bati, I'm here in this place at this time for a reason. Perhaps this is a sign as to why."

Kolabati grabbed his hand and tried to lead him down the slope. "Moki, no. Come back to the house. Work on that new sculpture you started."

"Later," he said, pulling free. "After I've told them who I am." She watched him stride back up to the rim and face the Niihauans, saw him pound his chest and gesture to the fires below and then to the night sky above. The traditional Hawaiians stepped back from him and whispered among themselves. Then the alii gestured to one of the younger men who stepped forward and drove his spear into Moki's chest. Kolabati screamed.

His consciousness is fuzzy, but he still has control.

Rasalom is in solution now. All his tissues—his bones, brains, organs, nerves, intestines—have liquefied. All that he was resides in a sack suspended from the hub of the four-spoked wheel that was once his body. The spokes have grown thicker, longer, and the stony womb has enlarged to accommodate his increased size. It is a cavern now, stretching downward into the infinity where the cold fire burns. The icy glow from below chills the sack where he grows, where his constituents reorganize into his new form. The petrous columns that arch across the cavern act as conduits for the fear, the violence, the pain, the misery they siphon from the surf ace, feeding him, shaping him.

His new form shall be ready by the undawn on Friday.

But now it is time for the next step—to deny them the sight of the sun.

Part II

TWILIGHT

MONDAY

1 • FELLOW TRAVELERS

FNN:

In case you haven't heard, we are witnessing a global collapse of the world's stock markets. The Nikkei Exchange has crashed. All stocks from Hong Kong, throughout Europe, and in London are in free fall. There is no reason to expect that the U.S. exchanges to fare any better when they open in New York this morning. We are witnessing the greatest financial cataclysm in history.

Precious metals, however, are a different story. Gold opened in Hong Kong at twelve hundred and fifty-one dollars an ounce and went through the roof from there. Silver opened at an astounding eighty dollars an ounce and hasn't stopped rising. No price seems too high to bid on these metals.

MANHATTAN

Suddenly Hank was awake. A sound from the bedroom. Breaking glass. Bugs—spearheads most likely—were ramming themselves against the windows, smashing the panes. They'd be swarming in and eating him alive now if not for the cyclone fencing. He listened for a while as they battered futilely against the metal links, then fluttered off, heading for redder pastures.

It used to be the nights were never long enough for Hank. His head would hit the pillow and before he knew it, the clock radio would switch on and Imus In The Morning would be bitching and complaining through the bedroom.

Now the nights were too long. He'd fallen into an exhausted sleep soon after stacking the cartons by the door, and now he nestled down into his blanket and tried to find sleep again. At various times during the night he heard screams from next door, thudding footsteps in the hallway. At one point a woman pounded on his door, crying about bugs in the hallway, begging for somebody to let her in. Hank's first impulse had been to open up—he actually reached for the bar—but then he'd wondered if it might be a trap, someone who'd spotted him bringing in his supplies and was trying to trick her way in. So he'd crouched there with his hands pressed over his ears and his teeth clamped down on his lips, waiting for her to go away. A sudden, agonized scream broke through the seal of his palms and he snatched them away to listen. No further screams, but violent thrashing just beyond the door, then muffled, gurgling sobs that were hideous to hear. Then silence.

Thoroughly shaken, Hank was about to turn and crawl back to his blanket when he saw the blood leaking under the door and pooling on the floor by the threshold. He gagged and ran for the bathroom.

Later on, when he could stomach it, he made coffee. With the sound down so low he could barely hear it, he watched the tube. The picture flickered now and again, but he never totally lost power. He had a battery-powered portable ready if needed. About the only things on were preachers and news—disastrous news.

The President had proclaimed a state of national emergency but the armed forces were proving ineffective against an enemy of such overwhelming numbers so intimately mixed with the population they were meant to protect. Those with wives, children, parents, were staying home to protect their own. The remainder were vastly outnumbered. For every hole they plugged with explosives—in the instances where they could safely use explosives—two more opened up elsewhere. People were quickly losing confidence in the government's ability to manage the situation. The whole social fabric was unraveling.

The news footage only steeled Hank's resolve to get out of the city as soon as the sun rose. In fact, why wait till dawn? The sky was getting lighter now. Those things should be on their way back to the hole already if they wanted to make it before sunrise. Maybe he could get a head start on loading the van.

The first stack was already draped and loaded on the hand truck. Hank lifted the bar and opened the door for a quick peek.

Someone was out there. Down the hall to his left a still form lay curled on its side near the elevators. No one else was in sight. Hank stepped outside his door, locked it behind him, then hurried down the hall, pushing the loaded hand truck ahead of him, following the long trail of smeared blood that ran from his doorway to the still form.

It was a woman. Or had been. Hank forced himself to look. He didn't recognize what was left of her. Her body was shrunken, wizened, all her exposed skin was shredded, chewed up but strangely bloodless. He bit back a surge of bile and told himself that it was a good thing he hadn't opened his door last night; if he had he might be as dead as she. He repeated that a couple of times as he turned his back to her and waited for the elevator to arrive.