"Mr. Gibson?"

Gibson nodded and held the door wide open. "Please come in, Mr. Casillas."

The old man stepped across the threshold, moving with an energy that also wasn't in keeping with his apparent years.

"I believe your TV had a word with you earlier."

They had walked through into the kitchen. The odd little man seemed no more real to Gibson than the thing that had interrupted the NBC news.

"You did that?"

"I felt that I needed to get your attention."

Gibson took a unopened bottle of Scotch from the Welsh dresser. He cracked the seal with a brisk, businesslike twist and poured himself a large shot. Before he drank it down, he held the glass up to the light. He had to believe that something was real.

"Are you telling me that you interrupted a network TV broadcast just to get my attention?"

Casillas shook his head. "Believe me, I didn't interrupt anything. I only borrowed the facility. Besides, the skull was instructed to appear only on your set."

Gibson poured himself a second shot. "Do you want a drink?"

Casillas shook his head a second time. "Alas, I am unable to indulge in alcohol anymore, but please feel free to do so yourself, as much as you want. I can still enjoy watching a young man drink."

Gibson drank half the shot. "I'm not that young anymore."

"You're but a child from where I stand."

In an attempt to restore some minor normality to the situation, Gibson sat down at the kitchen table and indicated that Casillas should do the same. There had to be a way to find a point of perspective on all this, a position from which he could handle what was going on. It wasn't easy, not when faced with Casillas's preposterous clothes and even more preposterous suggestion that he could alter someone's television programming at will. And yet the skull had appeared on his TV. Gibson was starting to feel that it was going to be a long night.

"What exactly is this all about?"

"It is complicated."

Gibson sighed. "You know something? I rather thought that it might be."

"We also have very little time."

"We do?"

"Very little time."

When Casillas had first entered the kitchen, his eyes had moved around the room, darting from side to side, watchful, cautious; the jerky gaze, plus the small, fast motions of his head, and his delicate, fragile-looking bones gave him such a resemblance to an inquisitive bird, but once seated he fixed Gibson with an unwavering stare.

"Very little time indeed," he repeated.

Gibson leaned back in his chair. He didn't like that stare at all. The old man's eyes seemed to radiate power, as though they could bore into his head and read his very thoughts.

"Maybe you could start by telling me how you put that thing on my TV?"

Casillas looked sad. "I don't want you to think me rude or feel insulted, but if I did try to explain it, I very much doubt that you would understand. Shall we just say that my associates and I have considerable resources at our disposal?"

Gibson raised an eyebrow. "Associates?"

"I'm not acting alone here, Mr. Gibson. I am the representative of a much larger organization."

"Do you want to tell me what this organization is?"

"No yet. For the moment it will have to remain anonymous."

Gibson lit a cigarette. His patience was wearing a little thin. "This is all a bit too mysterious, Senor Casillas. If you don't want to tell me anything, why did you come here?"

Casillas sat up a little straighter in his chair and neatly folded his hands in front of him. "I have a problem."

Gibson regarded him expressionlessly. "We all have problems, senor."

"I seriously fear that you may have difficulty believing much of what I have to tell to you."

Despite himself, Gibson couldn't help grinning. "I've seen more than my fair share of the weird."

Casillas nodded. "I know that. That's why I'm here."

"So try me."

"My first reason for coming here was to see you, to look at you face-to-face and decide if you really were the person we were looking for."

"Are you telling me that this is an audition?"

Casillas smiled. "If you want to think of it like that."

"It's been a long time since I auditioned for anything."

"You could also think of it as the first phase of a recruiting process."

"And do I get the part?"

Casillas's smile faded. "Unfortunately, I think that you do. If you're agreeable, that is."

"Unfortunately?"

"I still have a number of reservations regarding your erratic and self-destructive life-style. You live in a serious state of denial, Mr. Gibson."

"I'm sorry I'm such a disappointment."

Casillas's fingers flexed. "Would you be willing to come with me and meet my associates?"

Gibson was on guard again. This was something new. "Right now?"

"There's no time like the present."

Gibson started to shake his head. "I'm not sure that I can do that."

Up to that point, Gibson had been prepared to let Casillas ramble on, figuring that he would get to whatever was on his mind in his own good time. To have the crazy old geezer sitting in his kitchen was one thing. To go out into the night with him was quite another.

Casillas had placed both hands flat on the table. "I can't urge you strongly enough. I realize that I'm expecting you to take a great deal on trust, which must be hard for a paranoid individual such as yourself, but this really is a matter of the utmost urgency."

Something was happening to the old man's eyes as he spoke: they seemed to be growing in his head, making it impossible for Gibson to look away. With a major effort of will he pulled loose from the bright-eyed stare and focused his attention instead on the portrait of himself on the wall.

Anger overtook Gibson. "This is a fucking charade."

The old man wasn't amusing anymore. It was an invasion, first of Gibson's home and then of his free will.

Casillas tilted his head slightly. "A charade, Mr. Gibson?"

"Yeah, right. A charade. I have the distinct impression that you can make me do pretty much what you want. First you cause some Aztec human-sacrifice demon to take over my TV and then…"

"Actually it was a rather benign mortality demon, low-level and virtually harmless beyond the odd prank."

Gibson pressed on regardless, feeding on his own fury. "And then you show up at my door, and I'm damn sure that if there hadn't been someone or something working on me I never would have let you in here. When it started, it was intriguing, but the idea of someone having the gall to sit right here in my kitchen and try to hypnotize me makes me good and mad. I don't give a fuck what the problem is or how little time you and your associates have got, but I'm not going anywhere with you or anyone until I know what all this is about. You can go on trying to work your mojo on me, but it's hard to put something over on an angry man."

Casillas was actually smiling. "You seem very adept at detecting what you call a mojo."

With a boldness that verged on recklessness, Gibson looked straight back into the bead-bright black eyes. "I've been around."

"That's exactly why I'm here."

"So start talking."

Casillas, seemingly aware that he had gone too far, took a deep breath. "You must understand that my associates and I are under a great deal of pressure and it tends to make us a little high-handed in our dealings with others." Gibson nodded. "I know how that goes." Casillas's expression was suddenly very hard and very cold. "You do?"

"Like I said, I've been around."

The old man seemed about to respond with an anger to match Gibson's, but then he controlled himself with a visible effort.

"The world is a nervous place, my friend. Already it dances from one real or imagined fear to the next. Although it doesn't know it yet, it now has very good reason for fear. A catastrophe is building of a magnitude that will surpass anything humanity has ever witnessed. Indeed, if it comes, it will be more destructive than anything ever witnessed by any life on this planet. It will be the worst thing to happen since the asteroid Telal exploded and wiped out the dinosaurs."