Would it make any difference if I told you how much you look like your sister, Bobbi?

No-he saw in her face nothing would make any difference.

“-don't know how bad you look,” he finished lamely.

“No,” Anderson agreed, and a ghost of a smile surfaced on her face. “I got an idea, though, believe me. Your face… better than any mirror. But, Gard-sleep is all I need. Sleep and…” Her eyes slipped shut again, and she opened them with an obvious effort. “Breakfast,” she finished. “Sleep and breakfast.”

“Bobbi, that isn't all you need.”

“No.” Bobbi's hand had not left Gardener's wrist and now it tightened again. “I need you. I called for you. With my mind. And you heard, didn't you?”

“Yes,” Gardener said uncomfortably. “I guess I did.”

“Gard…” Bobbi's voice slipped off. Gard waited, his mind in a turmoil. Bobbi needed medical help… but what she had said about ending their friendship if Gardener called anyone…

The soft kiss she put in the middle of his dirty palm surprised him. He

looked at her, startled, looked at her huge eyes. The fevered glitter had left them; all he saw in them now was pleading.

“Wait until tomorrow,” Bobbi said. “If I'm not better tomorrow… a thousand times better… I'll go. All right?”

“Bobbi-”

“All right?” The hand tightened, demanding Gardener to say it was.

“Well… I guess.

“Promise me.”

“I promise.” Maybe, Gardener added mentally. If you don't go to sleep and then start to breathe funny. If I don't come over and check you around midnight and see your lips look like you've been eating blueberries. If you don't pitch a fit.

This was silly. Dangerous, cowardly… but most of all just silly. He had come out of the big black tornado convinced that killing himself would be the best way to end all of his misery and ensure that he caused no more misery in others. He had meant to do it; he knew that was so. He had been on the edge of jumping into that cold water. Then his conviction that Bobbi was in trouble

(I called and you heard didn't you)

had come and he was here. Now, ladies and gentlemen, he seemed to hear Allen Ludden saying in his quick, light, quizmaster's voice, here is your toss-up question. Ten points if you can tell me why Jim Gardener cares about Bobbi Anderson's threat to end their friendship, when Gardener himself means to end it by committing suicide? What? No one? Well, here's a surprise! I don't know, either!

“Okay,” Bobbi was saying. “Okay, great.”

The agitation which had almost been terror slipped away-the fast gasping for breath slowed and some of the color faded from her cheeks. So the promise had been worth something, at least.

“Sleep, Bobbi.” He would sit up and watch for any change. He was tired, but he could drink coffee (and take one or two of whatever Bobbi'd been taking, if he came across them). He owed Bobbi a night's watching. There were nights when she had watched over him. “Sleep now.” He gently disengaged his wrist from Bobbi's hand.

Her eyes closed, then slowly opened one last time. She smiled, a smile so sweet that he was in love with her again. She had that power over him. “Just… like old times, Gard.”

“Yeah, Bobbi. Like old times.”

“I… love you.

“I love you too. Sleep.”

Her breathing deepened. Gardener sat beside her for three minutes, then five, watching that madonna smile, becoming more and more convinced she was asleep. Then, very slowly, Bobbi's eyes struggled open again.

“Fabulous,” she whispered.

“What?” Gardener leaned forward. He wasn't sure what she'd said.

“What it is… what it can do… what it will do

She's talking in her sleep, Gardener thought, but he felt a recurrence of the chill. That crafty expression was back in Bobbi's face. Not on it but in it, as if it had grown under the skin.

“You should have found it… I think it was for you, Gard

“What was?”

“Look around the place,” Bobbi said. Her voice was fading. “You'll see. We'll finish digging it up together. You'll see it solves the… problems… all the problems…”

Gardener had to lean forward now to hear anything. “What does, Bobbi?”

“Look around the place,” Bobbi repeated, and the last word drew out, deepening, and became a snore. She was asleep.

Gardener almost went to the phone again. It was close. He got up, but halfway across the living room he diverted, going to Bobbi's rocking chair instead. He would watch for a while first, he thought. Watch for a while and try to think what all this might mean.

He swallowed and winced at the pain in his throat. He was feverish, and he suspected the fever was no little one-degree job, either. He felt more than unwell; he felt unreal.

Fabulous… what it is… what it can do…

He would sit here for a while and think some more. Then he would make a pot of strong coffee and dump about six aspirins into it. That would take care of the aches and fever, at least temporarily. Might help keep him awake, too.

…what it will do…

Gard closed his eyes, dozing himself. That was all right. He might doze, but not for long; he'd never been able to sleep sitting up. And Peter was apt to appear at any time; he would see his old friend Gard, jump into his lap, and get his balls. Always. When it came to jumping into the chair with you and getting your balls, Peter never failed. Hell of an alarm clock, if you happened to be sleeping. Five minutes, that's all. Forty winks. No harm, no foul.

You should have found it. I think it was for you, Gard…

He drifted, and his doze quickly deepened into sleep so deep it was close to coma.

shusshhhhh…

He's looking down at his skis, plain brown wood strips racing over the snow, hypnotized by their liquid speed. He doesn't realize this state of near hypnosis

until a voice on his left says: “One thing you bastards never remember to mention at your fucking Communist antipower rallies is just this: in thirty years of peaceful nuclear-power development, we've never been caught once.

Ted is wearing a reindeer sweater over faded jeans. He skis fast and well. Gardener, on the other hand, is completely out of control.

“You're going to crash,” a voice on his right says. He looks over and it is ArglebargleArglebargle has begun to rot. His fat face, which had been flushed with alcohol on the night of the party, is now the yellow-gray of old curtains hanging in dirty windows. His flesh has begun to slough downward, pulling and splitting. Arglebargle sees his shock and terror. His gray lips spread in a grin.

“That's right,” he says. “I'm dead. It really was a heart attack. Not indigestion, not my gall-bladder. I collapsed five minutes after you were gone. They called an ambulance and the kid I hired to tend bar got my heart started again with CPR, but I died for good in the ambulance.”

The grin stretches; becomes as moony as the grin of a dead trout lying on the deserted beach of a poisoned lake.

“I died at a stoplight on Storrow Drive,” Arglebargle says.

“No,” Gardener whispers. This… this is what he has always feared. The final, irrevocable, drunken act.

“Yes,” the dead man insists as they speed down the hill, drifting closer to the trees. “I invited you into my house, gave you food and drink, and you repaid me by killing me in a drunken argument.”

“Please… I…”

“You what? You what?” from his left again. The reindeer on Ted's sweater have disappeared. They have been replaced by yellow radiation warning symbols. “You nothing, that's what! Where do you latter-day Luddites think all that power comes from?”

“You killed me,” Arberg drones from his right, “but you'll pay. You're going to crash, Gardener.”