In Arms We Trust

Part Three of Five

by Vasilis Adams Afxentiou

'Her kids' were graduating in December. It was already the end of November. Soon, she would have to relinquish her flock from the auspices of her wing. Kids she taught and parented for three months now, she would not look upon again, never to chide or commend, reprove or praise, soar jubilantly to magiclands of learning or pluck pensively at the subtle verse of Cushing.

Being a private enterprise, the language school had to maintain a high academic standard and enrollment. Whereas in a public school attendance was compulsory, independent of teacher and curriculum quality, here it was competitive. A dissatisfied parent could withdraw their child at any time.

Thus, Amanda Rhodes (along with her new life) was tentatively initiated into the earthy and onerous nature of enterprising academia ...

" ... Our institution lies between Scilla and Charibdis, Ms Rhodes," Niko Alexiou had said, standing over a cluttered rose-wood desk at her time of interview, three months before.

He was a tall, graceful man with unsettled eyes and eternally a lit cigarette between his fingers. His manner was refined and proud, taking infinite pains not to offend.

"Our students must be taught discipline softly. English, French, Italian, etc., is of secondary role, Ms Rhodes. We have to keep our students here, in the school, then teach them the language of their choosing. It is our primary job therefore, to mold the young people into participants, do it by entertaining, enchanting -- captivating them."

When he spoke he looked into her, not at her. She had to really dig her nail into her palm to severe the spell. The tenure of the textured low tone, the overlaying raspiness of a chain-smoker's voice, the exacting Swiss-precision of intonation and speckles Cambridge-English inflection vaunted contention with the best of Shakespearean champions. He wasn't merely speaking, he was orating from his heart of hearts. And she had loved every second ...

... Stavro gone, she retrieved her gabardine and walked down the long corridor for the main lobby. As usual, clusters of children, tiny tidy ones to tall tousled-hair ones, engulfed her in their passing, smiling and waiving or plodding and moping around with no visible acknowledgment of her presence, vacuum and unresolve on their adolescent faces. Her heart flitted. She forced herself to loosen up. Teaching would wear her down to the bone by day's end. She would forget all else during sessions. Fifteen to twenty-five souls often hung from her lips, her next articulation, gesture, the light in her eye.

"Precious babes ...." Suddenly she was overwhelmed.

She donned a transparent plastic hood over dense and ample red hair and walked out of Alexiou Language School into a rainy, cool night.

***

  When she arrived home that night, she found a letter from Mark and, slipped under her door, a note.

"Please come," the note said, "Alcyone at eleven tonight. It is important that I speak to you. I haven't been able to reach you by phone."

The signature was Niko's.

Nikolaos Alexiou was a competent administrator not by formal training but through insight and good sense. The first law in working with people, particularly children, was an active knowledge of the underlying psychology, the kind forged by thirty years exposure to the soul-bearing travail of classroom teaching. He had not simply survived it, he had cultivated upon it.

"They are our little hopes, Amanda." They had been sitting in his office after classes, at the end of her first school month. "I see more to these young, wound up people than just cute by-products of wedlock. They are our singular future. I look at teaching as the opportunity to have a say in that. Teach them our mistakes. Make them aware civilization cannot endure another round of the same, of the Xenon Glixxons."

He was a concerned boss and a gentleman. As some put their faith in politics or technology, Niko placed his on the young, rallied on their dreams and imagination.

As she got to know him better, she compared him to Frank. Frank too was enthusiastic when it came to the subject of children. The aim in his life had been to have a couple of his own ...

And Niko had hit upon a harmony in elements. He apprised his business, but parallel, undertook to sculpt character and inculcate reform. It was a kind of challenge, and Niko would involve himself wholly in it.

She, on the other hand, began once more in her life to evolve. Although she had passed into her thirties, she was surprised at the power of influence a well meaning relationship can have. She needed to revive principles that she had, at some point, put aside. Surprised at being aspired to Niko's time-honored, tested axioms. Axioms which sought to brake a fear-motivated race enough to think choices through instead of sublimately reacting to them.

"Fifteen thousand children have graduated since I have opened my school. Enough to populate a small city. With most of my pupils I have spent six or more years. What do you think of this investment? Every time they utter a snipped in English and French, German and Italian they will recall, too, the other things."

She knew what 'other things'. Respect to self, honor to parents, loyalty to a friend, and trust in dreams.

"A child must have dreams, otherwise it does not grow up, it withers away, Amanda."

"And we, Niko, who give love and dreams unreservedly -- what remains for us?" she had asked.

"The comfort," he had replied.

"The comfort?"

"Yes. The comfort of knowledge: to fear less because you know more."

"And ourselves?"

He had then turned and faced her directly. Kindness was in his voice. "We have reserves, Amanda. What we give is surplus that weighs us down. We are teachers because we love best giving little bits of ourselves... "

She blinked twice, the rendezvous with Niko!

Her watch said ten-thirty.

The shower was quick, but it revitalized her, lifting some of the day's fatigue. It took seven more minutes to fix her face. She slipped into a dark beige overalls suit, threw the black gabardine over her shoulders, and grabbed an umbrella. It was ten-fifty. She scooted.

***

Frank Patroni emptied the ash from the worn straight-stemmed pipe and returned it to the small black pouch with the Amphora tobacco.

His mind was elsewhere as the announcement of an arriving flight echoed in the moderately crowded lounge. People dressed warmly passed in front of him unnoticed as he just gazed through the giant glass panes of the Olympic terminal of Glixxon International Airport.

"We don't know how to love," Barbara had said closing the door behind her. "We try, but don't know how, Frank."

As her steps died away he had taken an empty glass and poured scotch into it till it was half full. He downed two gulps and felt it burn him into the real world. "Yea," he had nodded and drained the rest off. "We just couldn't take the time to learn."

His ex-wife was not one for explanations lately. Her mind was like a monorail, no two ways about anything, only Barbara's. But she had once had her tender and soul opening moments. Even today, she could be a different person when she wanted. And only then. It was these instances of genuine rapport Frank had invested in. But towards the end they got fewer and fewer, like she had outgrown the need, or something.

But he had not.

He nourished such contact.

Saw truth behind it.

The only kind that mattered. Whether it came from Barbara or Jim or Bob did not make any difference. Just so long as somebody was there to attempt it, he'd be opposite to appreciate it. The strange part being that this kind of give-and-take only came at the start of an acquaintance. People want to hide once you get to know them. He smirked to himself. Maybe it's the other way round. Maybe they clam up because they get to know you. He glanced at his wristwatch. A few more minutes and it will all be behind, he pretended.

"The departure of Olympic Airways Flight Number 091 to Athens... "

Frank Patroni got up, slung the shoulder bag over his right arm and walked to where the arrow pointed, to gate four.

Barbara slowly gave way to the Parthenon and Delphi as he boarded the 774 AiRammer. Somewhere beyond Barbara, the assignment, and the ancient relics, a frail thin figure named Amanda Rhodes precipitated. It appeared whenever he thought about nothing in particular, and about himself. It just hovered there in the back of his mind almost drained of life. But he held on to what remained, for she was the finest and truest of all whom he had known. He had lost her all too soon, and he never did find out why.

***

"Bet you can't do it a fourth time."

"Give'em to me, Frank. I'll roll sixes this time and buy Boardwalk."

"Amanda, you're just lucky. Nobody rolls what they want more than three times in a row."

" -- there."

"Boy! I don't know."

"I told you, it's my magic."

"Do it two more times and I'll believe."

"Here, you throw'em. They'll come up what I say. Go on."

"You're a witch, Amanda."

"No I'm not. I'm the good fairy of the ... "

***

The AiRammer flew serenely over a cottony surface that spread far bellow it. The soft drone of the engines periodically faded and returned as cabin pressure intermittently fluctuated causing Frank's ears to pop. Under the clouds was an overcast with perhaps showers. He was curious as to any ships sailing down there big enough to see.

As he wondered a spot appeared in the white fluff underneath and several hundred yards ahead of the massive aircraft. As they drew closer over it, it grew. When they reached it the hole was big enough to comfortably see through over a sizable area.

In the cockpit the pilot casually glanced in its direction, thought of inquiring to the navigator about it, but dismissed it when the stewardess brought coffee in.

Frank peeked through the open cockpit door, then turned to the window and peered through the giant crater-like opening that had formed through the clouds. To his surprise he discovered much more land below than water.

He must have slept longer than he thought. His watch was no good since he had not set it to compensate for the time lead. On his lap lay two cards, one for declaration of goods for customs, and one requesting routine personal information for immigration control.

As he filled the blanks the sensation of falling knocked the wind out of him.

"Excuse me," he stopped a passing stewardess. "Where are we?"

"Be landing in Athens in eight minutes, sir," she responded with an accent. "Have you filled the cards I left?"

"Almost finished. Thanks for not waking me. I didn't intend to hibernate," he said, irritated with himself.

"It happens to many. The quick night is deceptive. Thank you," she said, taking the empty plastic container from the elderly lady next to him.

He turned and looked again into the receding cloud hole that was now beginning to close. The speaker above his head came to life as the captain confirmed their approach at Spata Airport. Music followed, old familiar tunes from classic, flat screen motion pictures like Never on Sunday and Zorba The Greek. Then Axion Esti, a poem by a Nobel winning poet, Elites, that had been put to music by Theodorakis around the end of the last century.

The little, but independent, enclave of a country amidst the Aegean had yet to stop surprising the world with its swells of accomplishment in the arts and humanities, he reflected. The small country persisted to stalwartly persevere through the millennia, through old and new dictatorships, and the test of time. Wielding on, it seemed, by the spirit of twelve long-gone gods.

He commenced to taking out his pipe when he saw above him the no smoking sign. Replacing it in the pouch he returned it to his jacket pocket and fastened his seat belt. Then he looked down the aisle and saw the stewardess talking to another at the canteen ahead of him. He smiled. The young brunette turned and glanced in his direction. A puzzled look on her face. She then picked a cup up, filled it with water, and walked down the aisle. When she came to the row of seats Frank sat she leaned toward the elderly woman and offered the cup.

"Oh thank you, dear," the woman said a little surprised. "I was about to ring for some."

The young girl noticed that the call light was not on. Perturbed she accepted the empty cup and left.

"Very polite of her," the lady said to no one in particular. She turned to Frank. "But how did she know?"

"They're probably so familiar with the job it's like reading the passengers' minds," he said. Then to himself, Better quite that stuff, he warned and leaned back.

As they passed through the overcast the plane bounced some. Soon daylight dimmed and below streets and houses began appearing. Distantly a mount in the midst of the city protruded.

Acropolis.

***

  Niko rose when she came to his table. He seemed to her a might unsteady, but it could have been her imagination. The silver rimmed glasses he wore were deceiving. There was too much reflection from the small chandelier just over them.

She couldn't puzzle out what this was all about. Alcyone cafe was a regular for the school staff, two blocks away. Friday nights they would gather here, compare notes and chat on the week that past. Tonight, a Tuesday, she saw none of the familiar crew. Across from her was a man she respected unreservedly, had made life for her even beautiful with a dozen new aspects of looking at it, and guided her every step like a father does of a daughter.

"Please, what will you have?" he spoke, his tone dithered.

"Coffee," she told the waiter, "milk, no sugar."

"You have Stavro in one of your classes, Stavro Vergis?"

"Yes -- what's wrong?"

"He ran away. His mother called the school." He took a sip of his wine. "You expected something wrong?"

"I don't know," she tried to assimilate what had just been told to her. "He is an unhappy child. I tried to see why -- "

"It is the reason I wanted to see you. The sooner the better."

"You did right, but what can I do?"

"Amanda, the boy had spoken of you often to his mother. He thinks highly of you. A boy his age may even be infatuated with his teacher." His face from somber relaxed. Her heart flittered a second time that day.

"Stavro's father, it seems, got restless and left them ... " he paused mid-sentence, " ... the boy may try to contact you, his mother seems to expect it."

"I see," she managed. Then, "Thank you for trusting me so much so soon."

***

The downpour did not let down. She made her way back to the apartment. The black asphalt of the night streets danced glimmering to the down beat rhythm of the rain. There were passers-by scampering through the torrent. It never rained so much here other years before, she thought wearied. "They're going to kill this planet yet ...

"... Restless," she heard herself scoff, and splashed vehemently into a puddle. Sophistication be damned -- the father got itchy soles, upped and beat feet. Stavro's old man, his idol, simply left home, at break of dawn, a weak ago, because he got tired of it all. The thought enraged her, and even the wet cold didn't prevent her damp face from flaring.

Stavro worshipped him, and the sonofabitch traded him in for another woman. How can people do it? To children!

***

Dripping, with umbrella under arm, she sloshed out of the elevator. The flush on her cheeks must have palled her rusty mop. She doffed the plastic hood and marched across to her apartment door, fumbled at first, but managed to insert the key in the lock and turn it. Then she caught a glimps of motion from farther down the hallway.

Drenched, with black hair pasted on forehead, he stood, looking at her. She saw indecision in the eyes so, before he scrammed, she jostled the door open.

She held her breath, and beckoned him inside.

He approached like a wet pup, entered, looked at the wet trailings behind, and up at her.

"Oh, Stavro, don't worry about it." She exhaled and helped him out of the dripping windbreaker. "Dry yourself, in there," she pointed to the bathroom. She hustled to the bedroom for a robe. The tempest in her was giving way to anxiety.

The antiquated clock on the plastic, coffee table began to chime when she returned. It was midnight. She hung the terry cloth robe on the handle of the bathroom door and plopped on the sofa, drained from this day.

His mother will be worried out of her mind, Amanda fretted. I'd have to get Stavro home tonight. Somehow.

***

She blinked and the exhaustion fell away, back to where it had come from.

Stavros stood in front of her wrapped up in the mauve terry cloth bathrobe, several sizes too big for his petite build. His hair was neatly combed and the look of a clean and manageable little young man was upon him once again. Her gaze and a slight smile lingered on him.

He beamed at her. She saw acknowledgment there.

She would at that moment trade them all. All the men in her bleak, sodden life for this boy, this child, who wandered soggy and gloomy streets of night to find her. Would forfeit -- had she any -- all the treasures of Troy to have him as her own.

Instead, she said, "Do you remember the poem, Stavro?"

"A little."

"The title?"

He furrowed an eye. "'You Mustn't Quit'."

"Do you want to quit loving people because something came in the way?"

He stared. Smile diminishing.

"Your mom needs you now, more than ever. Do you want to quit on her, Stavro?"

He said nothing, but looked at the phone.

She nodded.

He walked to it, picked up the headpiece and began to form the number. "I love you, also, Ms Amanda," his voice was barely audible.

She knew he meant it. "I love you too, Stavro," she said.

***

Is there a moral component in the order represented by the international system? had been the young scholar's essay theme. The young man had been an exchange student Mett had helped to bring stateside (people still called the place stateside back then) to study International Relations and Strategic Studies. Peri, as Lovesigh used to call him, short for Pericles, was left under the Professor's auspices and was a promising fellow, hard-working and analytical for his tender years and experience.

Peri would come to the Lovesighs house often, in those days, to get help from Penelope and the Professor. And in those days Lovesigh had energy to spare, and then some. The Federate University of Government Studies was only a few blocks away from the couple's house.

Although Peri's project essay encompassed the entire global community at first, with slight modification, it could as well have been applied to its constituent parts. And later on he did apply it -- to his host constituent federation of NovaAmerica comprised of NewStates, EastCanada and WestCanada. Lovesigh remembered as if it had been only yesterday the youth's vigorous support and allusions.

"An attempt, Dr. Lovesigh, to deal with the role of mores in international, or domestic, politics seems to contain numerous pressing needs," he began, a little uncertain at this first and challenging undertaking.

"Indeed it does," Lovesigh, himself, had responded then as understandingly as any fellow colleague would have.

"In particular," Peri continued, "the question of the existence or not of a moral code component in the international system can hardly be answered with a definite affirmative or negative answer. It can neither be supported that the international system is prevailed by immorality, nor that there is a critical mass of moral values identified and respected by all states. In fact," Peri went on, "I have read in an old volume by E. H. Car, both the moralists -- those who suggest that in international politics there are always clear-cut moral options -- and the cynics -- those who support that there are no moral options -- offer extreme and insufficient answers on the issue of the role of ethics in the international system."

Lovesigh had rendered a slight nod.

Peri went on with the fervor of one who had only then found one's true calling.

"Car, as well, said: The utopian who dreams that it is possible to eliminate self-assertion from politics and to base a political system on morality alone is just as wide of the mark as the realist who believes that altruism is an illusion and that all political action is self-seeking."

"All very true," Lovesigh replied, "and the balance of reason impeccable. But look around you." He had bent his had to one side, and had smiled a bit. "Who is the realist, and who the utopian today, Peri?"

The boy had stared at him with what appeared to be regard, and gestured a belated nod of affirmation.

"Then, we see," Peri went on, "that different ethical codes, give different content to each moral value. As a result, Hans Morgenthau is quite right to observe that: Universal moral principles, such as justice or equality, are capable of guiding political action only to the extend that they have been given concrete content and have been related to political situations by society."

"True. But for Machiavelli," put in Lovesigh, "moral and legal rules were taken not to impinge on the sphere of actions of the state. Consequently -- like you mentioned to me earlier -- as appropriately put by H. Bull, political and moral life were presented as alternatives and the pursuit of the national interest was perceived as alienated by any moral values."

"Still," said Peri, "in the post-W.W.II period, within the Machiavellian tradition, it became obvious that such a hypothesis was based on a misconception of political morality. As Hans Morgenthau once again comments: the choice is not between moral principles and the national interest, devoid of moral dignity, but between one set of moral principles divorced from political reality, and another set of moral principles derived from political reality."

"The key word here, Peri, is 'moral' as in 'moral preconceptions', 'misconception of political morality' and 'moral principles'. Nowhere are the words userpage, dictatorship, despotism or oligarchy referred to benevolently. You know why? Because all your references are from within the context leading to and not away from the route of Democratic processes. Your books or sources are from an eclipsing system/code of government. They could not have foreseen today's reality.

"Your own little country is one of very few that enjoys what those books talk about: constitutional liberty. Hellas cherishes freedom and is therefor cautious and weary of innovative promises. Why? Because she's been burned, butchered even, by such. Many, many times in her long and enduring existence. And has the experience of tyranny forged in her native stones. In days of old, she has paid a price -- been crucified indeed -- for trying to share 'lux et veritus', Logos and Eros(Socratic Discourse and Love) with a blind and deaf, crude and hostile world. Wise men, prophets and philosophers are restless and searching people, Peri. And in their uneasiness they stir waters that are accustomed to being stagnant, and let the stench loose. Socrateses and Christs are never popular. Truth is disinfectant on a gaping wound. It burns and bites as it disinfects. And the light truth emits blinds all those used to living in the shadows of chicanery, concealment and self-worship. Goodness bares and love disarms a war-loving warrior of his shield, his sword, and his hostility.

"And oftentimes blood wants to be drawn ... and, eventually, is. So, your tiny niche of the world has learned to know better: it protects itself -- as it has been doing for thousands of years. And survived. It's the surest way today a Democracy can weather the ills of an ailing planet. So, raise for a moment your head from your tomes and texts. Look around you. Inside you, Peri. Assess. Then appraise through the prism and measure of your own morality: The morality so many Hellenes have died for to protect and save, for us all, the concept of free ideas and liberated man.

"What do you honestly, truly see surviving out there in those streets that carries a hint even of semblance to your own axiom of ethos, of ethicalness? What can live through, survive out there in those streets -- those modern battlefields and jungles -- by fidelity alone, can abide to all that rectitude and all those codes of principles which you've read and studied about in those books? A totalitarian-spendthrift-controlled society, Peri, does not have time to tolerate that which Plato calls in his Symposium 'Virtue' and 'Love'. Love and Virtue today, Peri, seem like fossil luxuries of long-passed infinitely more romantic times."

A shadow befell on Peri's otherwise bright eyes, and his lips pressed together tightly.

But the lethal words that had been the cause for Peri to be hounded came a year later, upon completing a project analysis on the chronic and systematic shriveling of civil liberties. From that day on, to the day he was quietly 'deported', his innocent relentless inquiry into the nature of verity had already betrayed him. Verists were barbs to objectivists.

"Finally [His last words, at the time, to Lovesigh on the subject. P.P.], moral constraints on the undertaken policies come also from (Morgenthau again) the reactions of pressure groups, NGOs and the overall position of the public opinion. To illustrate it, we can refer to the reactions of the pre-NewStates public opinion to the revelations of the assassination plots being engendered by the now idealized, sanctified CIA..."

Lethal words.

How was the young man to know that those instruments of the governments whose name he had uttered banded together along with what once were known as DIA, NSA and FBI into a single pack now that ran the federations of half the Earth; and had been the direct predecessors to, the dreaded new Stalins of, SIA?

How was he to know that there was no such thing as freedom of expression in NovaAmerica, and in most of what had once been considered the richest and most enlightened countries in the world, but that there was only a facade of such now? How was Peri to know that independence had atrophied, had been shoved aside, in lieu of a bold 'neoteric and disciplined' establishment? And that it had tagged onto itself a splashy logo for a name: 'NewSay for NewStates'?

"Fanfares, Penelope," Lovesigh finally expelled returning to the present and facing now the bright-eyed smile of the young woman atop his unkempt desk, "pomp, shine and show are for Broadway ... "

But, there persisted a glimmer in his eye too. No, my young friend, the glimmer said, you had not been wrong. But you had only been a young pup in a nest of wasps.

He remembered then how they had taken the lad from him as they had later taken his light, his music, and his drinking water: Penelope. The Generals wanted that he have piece and quiet to develop his equations, so as to save their dutch gold buttocks.

"Too much radiation from the ozone holes," they had said of the premature cause of his wife's sudden death at giving birth to their stillborn daughter. And the boy had been an unforeseeable disruption: a 'debacling and weakening force' in the life of the good Professor.

So they clipped off the smiling boy, too. The Professor pondered in his thoughts. Dictators, benevolent or not, are revolted by truth-questing students. More so by young and searching ones. Shudder at the young students' scent of independence and their free growth, the growth and efflorescence of open thought. Generals and Colonels are averse to and incensed by young blossoms, like Satans to holy water.

"Pomp, shine and show are for Broadway," he repeated, "not staid civil servants." Lovesigh managed to protract his rendered soliloquy to include still one more thing. "And I hate having to put up with the likes of Fagan ... only second to that."

He nudged a lax elbow toward the wall to his right, which was covered by arrays and facets of tiny blinking pinpoints.

"My permanent 'Christmas tree'."

A rectangular matrix of prismatic sheens flared from the wall just then.

For an instant Anthony Lovesigh saw in the flare's brilliant flash, the radiance, fashion the face of a young lad. The lad's smile bright and eye-catchingly alive as refreshing forget-me-not after a spring shower.

***

The fits had come six months after her menstrual period. She had thought of them as natural a happening as the female cycles, since they too followed a regular pattern.

Amanda accepted the attacks as she did so many other new happenings inside and outside herself, like changes over her body. She told no one. She would as soon talk about her feminine cycles than about the fits. Both were very personal, strictly confidential matters. Not till she read in a teenage magazine describing the affliction did she know that it was epilepsy, that all girls her age did not have it, and that she had an inveterate sickness, that is, a sickness that had no cure.

The magazine talked about a special aid, too. Something like a hard rubber grid you stuck between your teeth, secured around your head with a band so as not to bite your tongue off when the spasms came. Timidly but resolved she went to a pharmacy the following day and told them she wanted one. They did not have it but were quite willing to order it. So she left a deposit and a week later walked out of the same pharmacy with the aid in a small bag. Since then most of Amanda's problems had been manageable, for the curse of fits never, but never, came -- for no reason she could explain -- unless she was absolutely alone and safe from discovery. Even then she felt able to control it for a short while, and a few times even managed to delay it for several minutes.

***

Sophocles, short, sinewy, and balding stood beside him.

"I'll take these two, Frank," he said with tenor voice. "Hurry -- I'll get a parking ticket!"

He was quick and efficient with movements as he led the way to the car. Frank was reminded of oldie, Allen Arkin movies, for the Hellene fellow resembled the actor disturbingly.

"Are you sure your name is Sophocles," he said.

The other looked at him quizzically. In one swift movement he stopped, lowered suitcases and pulled out an ID. "Okay?"

"Okay," frank said, and laughed out loud. Sophocles, shrugged and bobbed his head, and laughed too.

"It's a good thing I lived in Manhattan a few years -- or is it jet lag?"

"A bit of both I guess. The City does have its way of making you hypersensitive, though. Suspicious too -- but it's not the reason I asked. Just that ... Sophocles, you're almost identical to somebody I've seen in old films ... " Frank patted him on the back as he explained.

"Yaa know theah, patneah, yaa'll 're tha spittin' eemage of a Christopher Plumber, yaaself," Sophocles returned trying to slur his words John Wayne like.

When they got to the Opel Konda they dumped the luggage in the trunk and drove off. The light autumn drizzle soon stopped and the sun came out. Frank rolled the window down and whiffed in the scent of post-rain freshness.

Sophocles looked sideways at his colleague and saw him close his eyes. Smells different, my friend? he thought. A lot is suddenly changing in this nook of the globe, he deliberated silently. Hellas is producing another kind of headline than just touristy. Sophocles brows were knitted in his own deep thoughts, when suddenly the other interrupted.

"What's up, Sophocles?" Frank's eyes remained shut.

"Things rise, float on air, then just drop. Local scientists say it may be 'hypersaturation of static electricity'.

Frank opened his eyes and ran a finger along the still-wet edge of the window. With a quick motion of his wrist he flicked away the drops. "Static electricity you say?"

"Not me, the scientists."

"What kind of things?"

"Small things."

Frank found himself being nettled by a gut feeling of uneasiness. Something at the very far back of his mind nagged vague familiarity to Sophocles's account. But it was well buried and obscure, and inaccessible just then.

He let it pass.

"When did all this start?"

"Two and a half months ago," Sophocles began. "Kiosks here have the greatest number of things loose and on display. Little things. They suffered worst. The goods, en mass, just shot up and hovered. A while later, they just collapsed back down. Imagine the mess. The owners trying to sort them out and reestablish order on their little kiosk shelves.

"That came first. The areas struck: the city and eastern suburbs. Two Olympic planes flying over the Argyroupoli suburb at the time reported instrument malfunction and -- loss of climb control. They found themselves half a kilometer higher in less than a minute while coming in to land. Radar verified it. Weird things went on in the fuselage too ... "

Frank listened all the way into the city's center.

" ... You should have seen the place. It was like that restored five and dime store on eighth and fifty-seventh, turned upside-down. Just released this morning by the French," Sophocles continued as they pulled into a parking slot below the Caravel hotel, "two satellites, the Arianne IV and a classified one, skipped up a click in their orbit."

"Many come?"

"Understatement of the year. Hellenic immigration is going crazy. Visa and passport control had to recruit. It seems West and East have never before been so close yet so far. They're infiltrating into the country, all at once -- a few without valid papers. Scientists, para-scientists, clergy, private concerns, academicians -- place is crawling with SIA -- and more on the way. Tourist business is booming in a minimum tourist season. Not to mention the influx for the Games preparations"

"The Olympics?" Frank said.

"Yes ... parallel, there's a scientific Olympiad as well."

"How long do these things last? How many were there?"

"One to three minutes. There have been three 'anomalies' so far; four weeks apart, precisely."

"Anomalies?"

"Greek for irregularities or abnormalities."

"Say there's a fourth, when is it's E.D.O.?"

"E.D.O.?" Sophocles asked.

"Estimated Date of Occurrence."

"Next month. Wednesday, the second of December."

They entered Frank's room; the rack with the suitcases followed, tugged by a beige-suited boy. Through the open balcony door, directly in front, Lycavitos rose against a now speckles blue heaven.

He wished Barbara had come. He had phoned her as soon as he got the news of the trip.

"It won't mend anything, Frank. The idea sounds great. But I don't think it's going to work." She had hesitated, "I didn't mean what I said the other day. You can love, Frank. But -- but I need something more. So hard to explain. Please try to see."

Frank did. He saw that if he tried any harder Barbara would not be able to help but to love him. But because he had willed it. Not she. She was the one who couldn't see. And he would never be able to explain to her. Nor to anyone else.

He threw his shoes off, and stretched out on the bed. But his eyes stared unblinking at the ceiling.

He felt it then. Incredible as it seemed, he felt the presence strongly.

"Amanda ... Here!" he mumbled. "So near!"

***

Father Loukas T. Mettropoulos punched the 'print-out' key and got up. A quiet purring came from the machine as the portable PC expelled results of several differential equations fed into it a few minutes before.

The tall lean priest satisfied, hastened into the kitchen. He lifted the simmering casserole off the electric range and put it to one side. Then he took two green peppers and an onion, washed them, and began slicing. With swift wrist action he diced the three vegetables, put them in the pot and added a pinch of clover and three slivers of carnation. He doused them with a glass of water and replaced the half-done squid stew back on the range hotplate.

The real thing, his thoughts indulged. Old country squid, old country vegetables and spices, cooked in the old country. It's got to be different.

A minute later he was leaning over the printer again regarding the solutions to his data. A segregate part of his thoughts was going over the liturgy of which he was to be an honorary participant that evening. Of course when it ended he would be bombarded with the usual queries: "What is a priest doing in the realm of science -- physics?" "How can the two coexist?" "Have you not found fulfillment, God, in faith alone that you have to inquire within the atom and beyond Creation?" et cetera. Clergy of the old country found the antitheses of his endeavors baffling, to say the least.

It was like attempting to unite light and darkness. Even in NewStates the concept was difficult to reckon with. But his cleric colleagues there had at least accepted him for what he was, an inquiring but devoted priest, and left it at that. Father Lucas found early in his life two things hale him. The first was the soul. The second, matter: That which shrouds the boundless force. Entelechy, the ancients had named it. The inherent force in living beings that regulates the life processes but is not discoverable by scientific investigation.

The priest punched a second class of equations into the unit's processor, blinked a couple times and withdrew the cube for later use. Next, he started on a letter to aunt Marika. She lived on the island of Thassos five hundred kilometers northeast, as the crow flies. He had phoned her earlier that day and thanked her for the use of the apartment. His mother's sister would surely have been hurt had he booked a room in a hotel. Being his godmother as well, made it doubly obliging for him not to oppose. So, he move into her Athens's flat.

It as well had saved money for NASA. His expense account was an ample one. He could have resided in luxury if he had so wished, as most of the other delegates. But he had used his personal money even to go across the channel of Argosaronikos to Aegina and fish for the squid. Even the garnishing for the now steaming meal came from his own pocket.

It was trust on small matters, minute details, as well as major projects, that brought his name up as the likeliest candidate for following up the events in Athens. There were the other particulars too. He spoke Hellenic fluently and was the latest Nobel-awarded physicist, and the youngest. The fact that the priest's IQ surpassed all known registers and methods of measuring did not hinder his eligibility. His regard for science made itself once more evident when two days after he had taken the deficient intelligence test he came up with one capable of measuring results above the up to then theoretical two hundred maximum. He used plus infinity as limit, the progression being geometric. Applying the new test to a small number of exceptional individuals, the results remained undisclosed, classified as top secret, in a SIA government vault.

His was the most well guarded.

When Father Lukas finished keying and printing the letter, he reinserted the cube he had put aside and switched from word processing to computing. After a few minutes he went into phone mode and dialed an eleven digit number. He now hit the space-bar three times designating overseas priority.

The displayed resolved into rough digital squares that gradually tightened into a fine digital image which melded quickly into a sharply focused bust.

The same transformation took place on the terminal at the other end.

  "How's your luck in native waters?" a raspy, anxious voice came through the tiny PC speaker.

The priest smiled broadly, "I wish you could smell it," he said. "Two kilos of fragrant Aegean squid. I'll send some back, somehow."

"Not my dish, Father Lukas. Mousaka, the way you or your mom make it, is good enough," the other said.

The face took on a more concerned look.

"Your data is coming in without kinks. Patching you into the Molos satellite relay seems to have done the job."

"Hold on, Abe. Let me turn off the range or the stew'll overcook."

Seconds later the conversation resumed. "Russia -- I mean the Federation of Soviet Republics's delegates are using the Molos reflectors too. We got together the other day and had a very civil dialogue as it goes. They want their terminals as interference free as everybody else's."

"It's hard to believe, after those not-too-mild accusations. For a while there, I thought we were back in the sixties of a century ago." The man on the screen exhaled, clearly relieved a quantum.

"They do, Abe. So do the French, British, Japanese, and Chinese. It's too important to fool with, this thing. Might scramble their own circuits in the process of jamming ours. Besides, there's pressure -- hate to talk like a politician -- on all sides."

The screen flickered for a fraction of a second. A teeny indicator lit up.

"What's that?" the Programs Planning Chief and Government Attache to NASA's Director inquired.

"Look at your 'power intermittence' display."

The other's eyes looked to the left and below. "A power slump -- short duration -- but still detectable. How common are these black off's there?"

"They're common enough. But not to worry about. The back up cells can keep us properly linked," the priest reassured. "I don't like seeing you worried though."

"It's those over me that keep me worried, Lukas. Not your set up. It's our pet project, your brainchild, that you left behind unattended that is the focus of controversy. Inside and outside the country," the man said, wiping a neatly folded handkerchief over his temples.

"You know I don't approve. We won't miss out next time. Last time we didn't sit around a table to explain what the Alpha isn't capable of doing. People are afraid of what they don't know. What happened then won't occur again. World powers can feel as insecure as individual people. It's what makes them act mischievous sometimes," said Father Lukas, in a comforting but solemn tone.

"At times you give me the impression that we're all children, Lukas. Children playing with Cosmic fire. And it scares hell out of me."

"Maybe some others are on to this fear -- but the Modified Alpha is not the place to look for it."

"I want to hear more on that. Just watch yourself, the world will turn up-side-down for you tomorrow, Lukas. We'll ponder upon your data. Your syllogisms, too."

The screen went blank for a second and automatically changed to computer mode. A tiny cursor began scurrying left to right as soon as Father Lukas touched two fingers on the peripheral input contacts. Scientific denotations emptied orderly on the monitor. Inside, he experienced the same awesome feeling as he had that first time.

***

The association between the two had been informal and convenient. Fagan being his boss and head of the Groundwork Administration residing and working in Annex Capital, Washington DC. with frequent short visits to the Institute. The years of collaboration affected upon them an easy going relationship that seasoned into a formidable bond.

On his arrival at Father Lukas's home that day Fagan had described the events in detail and presented the situation as one coherent to the priest's academic and personal background.

"We know of no such hypothesis," Fagan had told him. "Gravitics is still in diapers both in Eastern and Western technology. Then this ... "

Father Lukas was not hearing something new. He was fully aware that his own research alone was the vanguard in this field. Gravity could not be manipulated or altered in any fashion by means known to science. Like the speed of light it was untouchable and unthinkable of control. Except on paper-calculations.

"And you want me to go," he had said.

Abe Fagan nodded.

"Abe, I'm working on a number of things right now," the priest spoke sincerely. "One of which is supporting and conclusive proofs to an extensively more detailed and encompassing field theory. Then there's the people of my parish. They have gotten to know me quite well and in a way are dependent on my presence in church on Sundays, and when they need me. There's my other parish, too, my students at the Institute, who will be having their term exams shortly, my help being essential to them. And you ask me to leave?"

"Lukas," the other whispered, almost imploring, "you are the only one with qualifications and experience close enough to the subject to send. Besides, you know the local language fluently, you have the respect of the government there, and most important you know and can trust people there." Fagan's face mildened. "Your parish and students most likely have heard the news. They'd be willing and, it wouldn't surprise me, anxious for someone like you to go and tackle the heart of this thing ... "

Father Lukas had been thinking while the other spoke on. It was something he had trained himself to do, listen and simultaneously think of something entirely different. This time his mind took flight in the past, to his father's last wish: 'go back', return to the old country. It blared out now in Luka's mind, in smeared red letters from his father's dying blood.

Father Lukas did not want to believe that people just died. That they were left for the soil to digest, and with the years their entity to vanish into a vague history. He was not compelled, out of conviction and his own unexplainable experience, to accept oblivion of the soul. His obligation to religious dogma had not blinded him -- it had been impelling him. To ignore the agony of his father's last moments, he had done enough. He would not any longer, he decided then and there.

Fagan, meanwhile, was studying the young clergy's bright and penetrating eyes. He wondered, what thoughts this different and exceptional man could be having?

As Father Lukas was about to give his reply, a question flicked through his conscious. What more was my father trying to say, and why?

At precise such moments of urgency, answers he needed so vitally overwhelmed a part of his brain, an intuitive, inarticulate sector of his being. But seldom was he able to capture their full essence, for, they fleeted whispering only echoes in microseconds; leaving only untraceable, quickly-dissolving trails.

"I'll go." he had said.

The man across from him had loosened only then.

***

Fagan's visit had taken place nearly four weeks after the third occurrence of the oddity. At first many of the top men in the fields of physics and astrophysics he discussed it with speculated that the moon's rotation about the Earth may have had some bizarre role in the phenomenon, since it had a punctual period. But no one could explain why only this particular spot on the Earth was being affected.

Father Lukas blew at the steaming hot stew on his fork. He carefully nibbled some.

"A pinch more of oregano," he noted to himself, and took the rest of the morsel of squid into his mouth. He sipped some red wine and prepared cooling a second forkful.

Christmas would soon be upon them.

He did not remember celebrating the spirited days in the old country. He was only two when they had left it. And in NewStates the celebration, as any fervent expression of religious eagerness, other than Glixxon's NewTime Religion and Faith Galore, was frowned upon. One could have any faith as long as it was declared supplemental and secondary to Glixxon's Polar Churches. But Lukas waved all that trash aside.

He knew Glixxon's kind.

His parish confessed enough of their travails ... to brand the man a lunatic. A man insane. An egopath whose only values lay in wholesale taking. Taking even his proselytized, his own disciples' possessions. A man who had never been taught benevolence, gratefulness and generosity. Had, somewhere in his life, missed learning the joy of giving and charity. An unhappy, unfortunate man who used religion to only canonize his lust and avarice. A sad, pitiable man who had no God-given sensitivity in his heart, but the black candle of covetousness and duress. One who lived by the primitive code of a thousand years before, and even before that. Hunnibal's code. Attila's wantonly destructive code. A disparaging code of pilferage and raw survival. I take your chattels, it said, and I will protect you from myself.

Lukas put distance from the dolor that engulfed almost half the world due to this man. He prayed for him. There was both love and goodness in everyone. One only needed to search for them. If one searched one would find.

Even Xenon Glixxons.

Lukas knew the ceremonials of his and his ancestor's faith by heart. The St. Basil Pie, the house calls the children made singing the Carols, the early dawn church Services, then the presents from older relatives who never came empty-handed; the kitchen full of women cooking and preparing for the Eve's dinner -- the smells: garlic, lemon, wine, lamb roasting. It was a time of holy miracles, divine blessings, and joyful expectations.

Not of Glixxons.

He felt a familiar warmth and glow at these time-honored, classic customs. Old country, undying rituals. Traditions arising from deep history and overwhelming faith, sacrifice and respect; observance and a form of manner, behavior and attitude that was imbedded in plain but decent and good people, whose courage, nevertheless, handicapped the spread of boorishness and savagism. Customary but humane orthodoxy, without which brute empires would have sprung and ruled all of Earth. Ruled by sword and flame like the Khan and Ottoman, and not by the justice of fair play and the righteous heart. Wild hordes that would have overrun, ravaged, then strangled all civilization and culture opposing their path, dropping chopped off heads and terror behind them, and no less but revive the dark, primordial ages. The Holly Church, any Church, hand in hand with edification, thwarted these heaves of barbarism. Without the early Martyrs and Pilgrims of peace and love-thy-neighbor spirit the rule of the broad sword and the scimitar would have prevailed.

Before even that, had it not been for the sage wisdom, virtue and prudence of a Plato and the imperturbable emotional calm -- the advocate of the renunciation of momentary in favor of more permanent intellectual and spiritual pleasures -- of an Epicurus, a Democritus and an Aristotle, the courage, artifice and resolve of a Leonidas the Spartan and a Miltiades the Athenian all that symbolized civilization then would have been lost. Burned by, and perished in, the wildfire called Darius, Artaxerxis and Xerxis the Persians. Barbarism would have dominated and eradicated all that embodied the better side of man and woman; the merciful and illuminated side that ripened into worthwhile, wholesome and admirable attributes in people, into the caring leaning and traits, the concerned, and predominating, compassionate hue of humanity.

Lukas felt complete and whole, and -- just then -- what he wanted to be, a simple, human with frugal only needs. All the rest in his life were complications he could not help. But they were there, and to ignore them was like closing one's eyes to sight. His two gifts, one of profound acumen the other of an unexplainable power to intervene upon the functioning of, interface with, electronic matter and communicate with inanimate circuits, brought rise to many remarkable questions. He did not have the answers, only the belief and faith that something above man governed and bestowed order to that which man himself could not as yet cope with.

That same share of Intellect and Understanding that he saw himself part of, restless and inquiring as ever, now set about in an analytical drive and manner to examine hairsplittingly the facts.

Bits and pieces of information raced inside the priest's brain, silently, almost vertiginously, seeking other fragments of compatible data to associate to.

Father Lukas's awareness could not consciously conceive, but could acknowledge, the overall actual procedure. The impression of the process was familiar to him in a vague but detectable way. He had dreams and fleeting instances where he felt, and in an indescribable fashion 'saw', that he functioned not as single man. It seemed that there were others, uncountable numbers of entities, that he had no precedence to associate them with. A God, perhaps, with all the souls and angels vastly, brightly clustering, reticulating a sphere-upon-sphere of soothing, pleasant, afflatus-imparting light about Him. Or the galaxy with its every brilliant star drawn from its center of ebullience to luminate the darkness beyond.

As he ate apparently unruffled on the surface, a tiny universe of charges from atoms, molecules, axons and neuron cells coalesced furtively and invisibly onto a speck of living gray tissue in his left frontal lobe.

His breathing deepened.

More oxygen was needed.

In the bloodstream epinephrine, adrenaline and other sympathomimetic hormones made their presence felt. A ferment of the chemistry was triggered. The eyes at first moved quickly. Then became quite still. Muscles relaxed.

A shell that could not be seen was closing out random implications, and within probable deductions from inference association. But its circumference, if it could be measured tangibly, would have been a planet-size bubble close to the periphery of the moon. Too huge to draw feasible conclusions from --.

Portions, then sectors began drifting off and fading from the incorporeal yet extant volume of information inside the priest's head. More data was abstrusely discovered to be immaterial, and discharged. The enormous accumulation bit-by-bit shrunk to the meek size now of a phantom and unseeable walnut of super-packed and concentrated essence.

Axiomatically, it all pointed to one other like himself present in the general area. This city's general area. Someone, who unlike him ... had a different kind of 'Gift'.

He put the fork down.

He pushed the still-full dish away.

The breathing became normal and the heartbeat found its natural pace.

"There is ... another, mother ... " He whispered.

His lips could not decide on their next expression: to smile or to grieve.

On their next utterance ...

The gift was a power only he had known about so far. Its control needed strength and discretion -- discretion most of all -- far above that of the average person's. And the fear it spawned ... Oh that first fear ... on his, on any unsuspecting mind, it could paralyze. His own being could barely contain, check, the frightening implications of such authority. The endowed person could easily be driven to madness; if inclined, ransack and plunder ... who knows what, to what extent, how big a surrounding area. Do extensive, total damage to himself and others, unsuspectingly.

Heart and apprehension filled him, combated each other within him -- then peace came. With it only a desire to help. For, he believed, that if the other was predespositioned to do consciously harm, he would have had done it by now. More likely ... his counterpart was as helpless as he had once been. Moreso, if there was no guiding voice from within to instruct and cushion the shock.

"Dear mother, why is this?"

Then, "I must help!"

He stood up and placed the cloth napkin on the table.

The portable computer console stirred to life once more as he placed his two fingers on the input contacts. This unique action consummated the strange network, this unprecedented rapport between man and machine. While his brain formed and specified concepts, faint symbols and nebulous diagrams resolved upon the monitor. These gradually took on a more solid substance. A three dimensional axis with artificial perspective as depth began a tri-ordinate, spherical, scan similar to an old flat-screen radar monitor but with depth added. Quickly, lines, shaded areas, and cubic forms materialized. Squares, planes, and a plethora of small and not so small polygonal structures appeared as the three cursors commenced on a high velocity scan at right angles to each other.

On the screen before him a portion of Athens was being duplicated. Upon zooming in and out details and general characteristics could be discerned: A three dimensional map was being processed to completion. Its epicenter pinpointed the location of a wavering field, an abnormal source of displacement, due to his affinity only he could sense -- a biological infra-spectral emitter of culminating radiation. The likeliest source. The same (it had to be) that stunned the ancient capitol only weeks ago. Forecast to do the same tomorrow.

"Argyroupoli," he murmured.

He punched in a split image display and compared the original configuration with that of pre-installed map data of the city. Magnifying the suburb further, street and avenue names, and house numbers appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

"Kallipoleos -- Kallipoleos number 14, fifth floor ..."

He noted the spot where the 'hairs' crossed. The concurrence point.

The digital clock on the upper right hand corner of the monitor indicated 14:36.

He pressed a key and seconds later a dry copy rolled out from the machine. He quickly folded the sheet, placed it in his coat pocket, and switched the computer to remote mode.

The soiled dishes were put in the sink and the table wiped clean with a wet sponge. Next he peeked into the casserole with the rich home cooked stew, and placed the lid over it.

In the sitting room he pulled from under the hard divan he slept on a suitcase and opened it. From a side-pocket he withdrew a rectangular metal case and unclasped the catch. He pushed the flat back end towards him and a small drawer slid open. A solid gold band with a watch attached to it lay within. He secured it around the left wrist.

Immediately what showed to be the face of the watch became animate. At the same time a soft peeping sound could be heard emanating from the room he had been in only minutes before. He grimaced satisfied.

He put on his black priest's hat and was about to exit the apartment.

Leaving the door open, his tall sinewy figure floated soundlessly back into the kitchen. Finding a plastic shopping bag he fitted the pot of stew inside and a loaf of crusty bread. He then corked the nearly full bottle of wine and added that too.

"The poor soul," he said. "Probably be too scared to cook, or eat."

  The next few days were the most distressing period in Abe Fagans tightly drawn, but orderly existence.

"I'm not a child, dad," Dantea finally said. "I've managed without Sean for six months. You weren't around all day long either. Right?"

"But I was in the same city. A ten-minute drive..."

Fagan worried for her. He didn't want her to be found lying on the street some night, hemorrhaging from a gapping gut wound like his son-in-law. The hospital where they had both been working at was only two blocks down. Citizen Protection for this close a walk was for all practical purposes shelved. At least that's what Sean said. Not that he had any great sentiment for the 'hoodlums' as he referred to the ape-like CPs. "They're empty up here," he would say clipping his words out in customary Belfast fashion -- probably a left-over from his granddad -- and point below his curly red hair. "Got nothing in here, either," he'd pat his chest.

Fagan did not approve. But the boy had been well breed, an upcoming surgeon, and he had adored Dantea, adorned her life, too, with his rare Irish verve and zest.

Fagan drew a long and quiet breath, and whispered through his teeth. "Bums."

"What?"

"No -- nothing, dear. Who's going to be taking you to the hospital while I'm gone?"

"Nobody," she said, and peeked at him childishly. "Be going by myself."

Fagan's head did a half pirouette, and two very round eyes pouted at her while the face ashened as she looked on.

"Oh, dad, I didn't mean I'd be going there alone ... only joking. I'm moving into the intern dorms. I'll be staying there till the baby comes. And longer. Till you're back ... OK?"

It was difficult for him to regain his color and speech.

He exhaled. "Don't ever do that again ... Please!"

Dantea had already regretted it. Abe Fagan was not Sean O'Grady. But he had been trying to be that too since Sean's violent death.

She approached, put her arms around him and hugged him.

Fagan did not see the tears that welled up in her eyes.

He didn't give her any details of why he was going or that he would be a boarding guest at Mite Industries for an indefinite period of time. Only a nine digit telephone number had to suffice, for now at least. She, too, gave him her new number at the dorm where she'd be staying. Her work phone he already had.

He helped with the packing and was surprised to see Dantea almost as agile with her movements as before her pregnancy. Nature never ceased to provide surprises, every so often. Only lately, there had been a deluge. Most were not the pleasant kind. Rather, they were infamous. To know something that your neighbors didn't, but which would involve their welfare -- their and their family's life possibly -- sometimes amounted to the onset of very crucial feelings, besides the sheer mental havoc.

There were still loose ends to tie off.

Thank those neighbors for one, for keeping an eye on his daughter. Even in a society governed by anxieties brought on by fear, mistrust and daily doubt, good will prevailed somehow in well-guarded pockets in individual communities. It had been this hidden aspect of society, the common sense mien of it, that imparted hope and patience to the overwhelming masses; and prevented an international uprising the likes of which the world had never seen.

Fagan shuttered at this thought.

To his mind came the Senator's incident. What could force people -- and the Congressman was just one among the thousands (but off the record) disappearances -- to believe that death could be far better than life? Almost all had left a note behind to that effect: a praise to some strange live lights, adulation to another 'domain' that is presumably drawing near. A praise to death, as far as he could decipher. An encomium to the dark side of forever. What form of disparagement or metaphysical promise could gather so many volunteers for a journey from which there was no return? Something just didn't fit, didn't make sense ...

Fagan shook his head and pulled the security gate of Dantea's flat shut.

They went to the old Polish couple that lived next door, and which had been displaced from their native country to NewStates in the Great Shuffle of '18.

Dantea often enough recounted to him the stories the elderly burly woman had told her about the old country; and the old days in this country. She trusted her, Dantea being a doctor and all and not involved in any politics or government matters or, worse, in this tattle about insurrection and liberation and the like.

Although Mrs. Jizensky was not an all out rebel, she could tell when things had taken a turn for the worst, had gone too far. Like now. Like with her country and this country, the two Canadas, Europe, and a lot of the world; the unchecked steady spread of this disease called oligarchy, better yet: Xenonphobia, all over. Supposedly, a band of the cream of the crop of the business aristocracy and a cadre of top ranking military officers, the most powerful of the elite, had been summoned to join forces supposedly to regulate and damper the heedless abuse of the worlds foundering natural stocks.

Summoned by no other than the 'monk' himself, Xenon Glixxon, the visionary-theorist atop of the world.

"My fut!" Mr. Jizensky had not lost the trademark of her patriotism: her Polish accent.

[North to The Faith Monastery was located on the precise Magnetic North of the Earth in the Arctic. The other Monastery, South to The Faith, had been built directly over the Magnetic South in the Antarctic. "Strong magnetic fields rejuvenate the cells," Glixxon said. A retired loner-magnate himself now, Xenon spend half his fortune bribing people and building his two Edens. All who had wanted to convert and had gone to his calling had been indoctrinated, vowing to stay and never to leave. At first there had been only a trickle of proselytes. With time and the worsening of living conditions everywhere, it was many who turned their worldly possessions over to him to became devoted and loyal followers. P.P.]

"That day in July of 2020," the old woman had began. "Daybreak had been ushered by the escort of tanks and accompanied by martial marches ... "

A nation that had never before experienced a conqueror's combat boot stomping on its soil, could not imagine of this ever happening -- could not conceive of anybody wanting to spoil what had once been called 'the American Dream' -- was rudely awakened by a cold splash of nightmarish, icy news:

"This is a benevolent dictatorship. Do not leave your home or place of work, get off the street if that is where you are, or you will be shot on sight. Do not use your initiative or incentive, it is against the law. You will be told what to do shortly."

"It had been so unbelievable I had to record it," said Mrs. Jazinsky. "Today, thirty years after, when I listen to it I break out laughing.

"Then, in cold sweat.

"I cry after.

"You see we lost our boy, Paul was his name, that day. The driver of the school bus had tried to take the kids back home. Ran through a road blockade, and got lasered by a tactical satellite. Only molten metal left. Not even a tiny bone ... "

She became thoughtful for a moment. "After that Sergi and I didn't see it fit to have another child." She took a deep breath. Her silent husband, whenever he was present, would only nod calmly to himself during his wife's explicit accounts.

"That's exactly as I remember it, lov. Nobody who had heard the loud and rowdy raucous, those haughty deliveries that tragic morning can ever forget. And it was everybody who had heard'em. Again and again. O-w-ver and o-w-ver. Like a broken record on those old record players." She hooked and knotted now surprisingly confident and peaceful at crocheting her embroidery piece.

"But truth is like cork in water. No matter how many times you push it to the bottom, it always pops to the top. And Xenon's name always comes up when people ask how all this came about. If you ask me, that man is a living crazy -- a glutton for power. Monk and all! My fut! To be the monarch among the oligarchy is not good enough. He wants to be called Planetarch!"

It had been the only time Dantea saw tough Anna Jazinsky shiver.

Although not formally educated Mrs. Jizensky had a keen mind. In her sixty-seven years she had probably read what must have been thousands of books so as to waddle through the legions of hours of inactivity during the night shifts at hospitals and her moonlighting privately to care for patients at their homes.

"Oligarchy," she had imparted to Dantea several months back, "the rule by a few, governs."

A handful of tyrants in the country and most of the world nicknamed 'government men' -- made up of Generals and a core of SIA directive givers and their henchmen implimenters -- called the shots. In Europe the tyrants had their establishment of operations in Luxembourg, the richest country in the world. In Asia, it was Hong Kong and by far the wealthiest province in that area. Africa and Arabia had Pretoria. The fusing infrastructure that welded and audited worldwide contingencies and doctrines was a homogeneous vintage: the same SIA directive givers.

Simple folk simply cowered back from such megatheria of cruelty and their pitiless lust for absolute power.

It had all started when the perception and sense mechanisms, the impression aptitudes, not so much of Democracy, for one can still experience freedom without it, but of natural socio-evolutionary processes had been tampered with, misused and corrupted. The environment's instincts, or sensors that maintained environmental equilibrium, had been systematically slighted and severely abused. The answer givers and problem solvers of the world had then gathered, first in Rio De Janeiro in 1992, then come 1997 they amassed in New York, 1998 in Buenos Aires and after the turn of the millennium ... here ... there ... anywhere this noble cause called for them to assemble and ponder and try to respond to the dire calls of a ravished world. But nothing came of it.

Except for a few.

The dandies of power.

Power.

It wet and soothed intrepid gustos and dauntless passions and grandures of gargantuan and unlimited wealth. Where there was a question of power, scruples and principles came second ... and soon after abolished. This was the rationale of the dandies.

Religion, Government, Business.

The holy trinity of power.

'Clean' and dirty power. But Power, nonetheless.

Whoever controlled one or more of these 'institutions' could control man's destiny. The dandies had chose Government, and, turned it into the most outrageous and sophisticated form of business mismanagement and miss-administration the world had ever seen. But it had been by a quirk of the most intrepid gamble. A gambit of a risk that had brought the venture of the arch-dandy of them all to the pinnacle of eminence and triumph.

He had chosen to bet on Religion.

And he outwitted them all. Soon had them all working for him. One can discuss things with the President of a country or the President of a company.

But not with God.

"Every word God utters is law. Divine -- incontestable -- law."

"THE Law!" Claimed Xenon

So the hoop went a full and round circle. Where before religion failed or was only patronized, now religion brandished a full-fledged revival. Theocracy backed by martial forces and covert operatives had been the most effective form of despotism known in all of history. But history in these illuminated epochs and enlightened societies had been banned because it proved anachronistic in the face of such high-tech vaults as the man-made singularity of the 'beacon', the Q-ALPHA 1(c) and its upgrade the Modified Alpha, and, most recently, the fringe. So the times were ripe for a return to good ol' God, Xenon had figured. With the Earth soon to die there would be no future for history. Rain and sun ripen fruit for the plucking. Fear and desperation arising from the hopelessness of a Dying Earth compounded by oppression deteriorated the masses enough to get them to grab on to anything. Even on to a monk prophet who voiced hope through promises of other worlds, but only by observing God's Commands directly from him, Xenon Glixxon. The primary Command of more to come had been for simple folk to bow their heads to the Almighty and trust in the sturdy arms of Citizen Protectors, God's chosen and armed 'angels of mercy'.

"Tanks, laser canons, arms and armament everywhere you turned. What's that antique of a statue standing for, up there outside New York's Manhattan harbor?" Mrs. Jizensky would ask, ruefully nodding her head. "So immigrants passing by can have a good chuckle? They should take it down and sell it for scrap, as they sold us out to those Generals and SIA hooligans." She licked her dried pink lips.

"Nobody would have believed it, back then. So much going for us in the old country. The whole world looking up to betterment. The turn of the millennium. The turn for the greater and the finer, people everywhere had cheered. Only to have it come to this. Who ever heard of the dollar flaunting 'In Arms We Trust'!"

Mrs. Jizensky was getting old and she had seen too many people leave their last breath in her arms to fear death much. Her nursing career taught her that death was unavoidable; but not that dying had to be pointless.

"God forgives all because God knows all," she had once declared to Dantea. "That statue, up a ways north, is still standing for as sure a purpose as that of you wanting to see this little one," she had patted Dantea's belly gently, "raised and nurture in a sane and free and kindhearted society. Not this butcher shop of a planet!"

Dantea had cried that night; cried for all the unborn babies under the sun.

***

Amanda Rhodes let her head fall back on the cushion behind her. Since that September day she had been steadily losing weight little by little. Her color and strength seemed to fade progressively leaving her numb and empty. The sleep she so much longed for was robbed from her when nights haunted her dreams with bizarre, inhuman visions. She had never had dreams such as these before.

"How can my mind play such games with me," she asked herself. "Why?"

The daily four-hour sessions at the English school had become harder with each passing day. She had not the stamina lately to even stand up long enough to write on the blackboard without the need to sit and rest. Fortunately her speech and thinking were not impaired, and as long as she sat and did not strain she could still function. But for how long, she wondered.

The students, her students, seemed to understand her difficulty. They did not tire her. Partly, it was her doing as well. She taught with all her heart put into it. She learned after a hard first month that a child was the truest and most loyal friend one could have. Thenceforth there had been no major problems, and the ones that did surface practically solved themselves. The school's director, Mr. Alexiou, was always there to turn to for any academic and discipline guidance. In his early fifties he knew adult psychology as proficiently as child psychology. She could see him being concerned about her well-being, but since she did not give him the occasion he did not seem to find it in himself to be indiscreet and quarry on what was happening to her. She did her job well and the children were learning English, and he did not pry.

Amanda Rhodes did not know that already all her children loved her as much as she loved them. But she was aware that most of them looked forward to the day's lessons with her. She wanted to believe that by the end of the school term she would make friends with them all. It was during these upside-down days that she realized how much she missed having children of her own.

How much she thought of Frank.

Her recollections of him were still fresh, live impressions that stirred within. He persisted -- even after five long years of not having seen each other -- to influence her life and being.

It was at graduate school they had last been together, before her trip that summer to Europe and his hire six months before to the Star on a full-time basis.

Deciding to go to the same university Frank had been attending, Amanda had to leave home and find an apartment in the Bronx. This presented no difficulty since Frank had already staked out several for her to look at and choose from -- all near his own.

Throughout their years at college they had not had enough of each other it seemed. The relationship was not a constricting affair, but a need and mutually felt one and one shared strongly by both.

They agreed to live apart so as not to interfere with their studies. Yet each knew of the deeper reason for this. It had to do with trying to understand and learn to deal with a strange and obscure aspect of their person.

Amanda could no longer pretend to be unconcerned about the 'tricks'. Human beings could not just will things to do what they wanted. Since this impossibility entered her life and paradoxically became a pragmatic ability, an increasingly frightening phenomenon, she spent exhausting hours over volumes and scientific diatribes and dissertations to get a bearing on what it was. Parapsychology, para-physics, spiritualism, black magic and ancient and contemporary religions had become her most sought after references. None, however, described what she felt, or expounded satisfactorily on her private tap of power.

Though she had promised her dying father not to do the tricks, Frank, a few days after the funeral, had asked for one last. And she broke that promise.

***

The clouds that morning had been puffy and had the color of lead. The rain that was about to burst down would have ruined the barbecue that was planned for later on that day. Frank thought of grandpa Patroni. Francesco Patroni. The man he had been named after. The man whose English was still broken and whose accent still carried the sing-song poetry of his native Catania. Who slipped into his hand or pocket, every Saturday, movie money or candy money, not once forgetting the ritual. It had been St. Fransiscus day, the day they celebrated his name-day with the outing.

A thick gray calm fell on Amanda and Frank as they exited the empty house onto the grassy loan. The pungent smell of ozone made their nostrils flare. The wooden porch that she had watched her father built a couple years before seemed broader under the gloom of swollen inky clouds. As they stepped down from the partico to the narrow walkway, huge drops began to plummet. They ran onto the freshly-cut lawn rustling through dried old leaves and stopped at its center.

Frank turned and faced her. An inquiring look rounded his chestnut eyes.

"Like the dice," he whispered, conspiratorially, and a sirocco ruffled Amanda's auburn curls.

She looked up at the convoluting glum masses, and she recoiled. The breeze was getting stronger and the clouds tumbled now like mega bowling balls.

She winced back from the mute havoc that played above her. Suddenly a hideous ripping noise on all sides startled and drove her further arear. She gave a small scream and froze in her tracks.

Thunder boomed!

The heavens boiled with white-gray fury. Clouds frothed and effused, irradiated red flashes against the remaining holes of silver and blue in the sky. The thick plumes puckered squarely over their heads.

Frank could taste the hot, moist air of a killer storm brewing. The deserted house looked glum under the swelling graying war of the overcast. No backing out now, he thought. He took a deep breath.

The clouds hovered, undecided, above them. Frank saw that this time Amanda hardly noticed the gloom ingest them, and he felt a strong squeamishness, but also a burst of anger at his endless unease. He shut His eyes stiffly, then opened them briskly. He glanced at a careening Amanda then, and behind his back he crossed his long moist fingers.

A barrier, a violet perimeter, sprayed static electricity into the air around. Sand devils hopped and danced, whirling over the sandbox at the yard's edge. Then wind gushed by, the wake of the crossing of something vast. Out at the distant horizon ascended a monstrous tidal swell amassing into a volcano made of clouds.

Amanda moved her lips, but no sound issued forth.

Spikes drove into Frank's back, smashing the breath out of him. Not too far off, clouds and solid earth assimilated in grim platinum oneness, a drab press of land and sky. Dust, dirt and loose leaves rose and rushed in great heaves and the earth itself seemed to waver and shimmy, like so much flab. The clouds obfuscated in gigantic flashing orbs tearing away from the volcano massif. They eclipsed most of the sun's light and filled the sky to the azimuth.

Amanda, head flung back, jaw agape, whined like a struck pup, a sound Frank had never heard before.

She's had it, he thought. Poor Amanda.

There's no stopping it now. The whole city seemed to be under some kind of ubiquitous, an all-powerful, mad spell of whirling.

"It's awful!" Amanda screamed.

Frank felt her gasp, recoil and shake uncontrollably. "Hold on, Amanda," he egged on whispering. "A little longer. Don't die!

Then he turned to God, "No!"

Frank's face caricatured, aghast.

The very ground under him throbbed.

"God, please, NO!"

The young girl's face suddenly became well-defined. A narrow shaft of sun passed through a rift in the clouds and shone on it. Out of the balling murk above, more spears of sunlight suddenly spewed out and fell upon them both, engulfing them. Like the diaphragm of a stupendous camera the rent in the cloud blanket wrapped around its circumference, withdrawing at a frenzied speed. Now the column of light spread, becoming an island of brightness that surrounded them while beyond dusky dimness still reigned. First the lawn, then the house -- the dazzling island fanned out all around them.

Frank wavered as an onrush of blasting wind sucked at his hair and clothes. The updraft of air almost lifted him.

His arms reached out to anchor Amanda down with what left there was of his lessening weight. But the instant he approached the fabric of her clothing he was thwarted away. So violent was the repulsion that his arms felt they had been loosened from the armpit. Amanda meanwhile did not stir. Not a strand of her hair disheveled. She stood there, poised and halcyon -- a marble statue in a tempest.

The force of rising air lessened as the circle of clearing blue sky increased, repelling the retreating clouds further out to the horizon.

Finally, a soothing breeze only remained.

The havens smiled.

Clouds were nowhere in sight.

The summer afternoon sun reigned once more over a city sprinkled with what must have been confounded people. Frank stopped boring his hands into his pockets to buttress against another quake. He squinted up at the sun and realized that it must have all seemed to be a hallucination to all but him.

The girl's eyes came to life then. When she turned to face him, he saw a face drained of color, and much older.

"I'm frightened," she said, and floated feather-like down onto the grass.

***

Till that day Frank had not played his games with people. Had never entered a human mind before. But his concern for the unconscious Amanda would change all that. It superseded all his fears and premonitions.

The apprehensions aestivating at some deep dungeon of Frank's conscious, a place he could not name or place, suddenly expelled into ridged dread. His young boy's alarm of a foreboding unknown, blended with superstition and inexperience to rouse panic. He felt his stomach shrink and his knees ready to collapse him next to the senseless Amanda.

But she had done it for him.

She had risked herself for him. Another like him, with an equally unexplainable side that they didn't understand, had given everything so the rain could go away.

For him alone.

Timidly at first, Frank inquired into a well guarded sector of his mind -- a topos he only knew existed. A brain-scan at this time would have revealed an aura building around his pituitary gland located near the base of the brain and whose secretions impinge on most basic body functions. As the aura spread, normal awareness was now sublimated by one unaided by his five senses. In place of these there was perception, conception, emotional identification, sensitiveness and second sight. He recognized these for what they were, and they were not his own currently but another's, Amanda's.

He felt embarrassed initially. But he saw that he could control, although clumsily at first, the intensity of the probing and the choice of the regions in her mind that he wanted to explore. Searching over the still dormant surface of her mind's periphery, a soft web of inquiring pulses gently penetrated the anaesthetized girl lying on the green.

It was not so difficult. He only needed to manipulate his thinking so as to coordinate his presence in another sphere of being. But a chill ran through him, and he halted the process.

He realized just then that his person, his very being, no longer dwelt just in him, but had become a weird composite with another's.

But he trusted and befriended no one as he did Amanda, and she lay there helpless now because of him.

Slowly, he separated his own identity from Amanda's. The array of the web inside her mind that was himself became more defined and transformed itself into a refined network of rays radiating from a single central source similar to a sphere with spokes generating from its hub. Most of the spokes remained unaltered, but a few telescoped out penetrating deeper seeking to find where Amanda's consciousness had retracted to, where the weary little girl had taken refuge.

Several cortex layers of inactive brain tissue were left behind as he reached beyond it. The tissue was numb and irresponsive to his touch. Carefully and with circumspection he routed more of the invisible probes through her brain. Like a delicate play with marionettes hanging on unseeable strings, Frank found his mental hands full with manipulating tasks. As an observer amidst a vast complex of interwoven assortments and plaited manifolds he did nothing but watch.

He saw flashes bolt along straight rope-like extensions and lose themselves in a gray and maroon remoteness. He followed these and discovered they led to the lungs where they diffused into a network of smaller capillaries that encompassed the pneumonic cavities. Similarly he trailed after signals leaving for the heart, and saw it pulse only when these arrived. They were not affected by Amanda's condition, but streaked regularly to their targets making the heart pulse and the lungs breathe.

He exhaled in relief.

Next, he felt his way to the audio and optic centers. In an effort to revive the limp body he willed Amanda's eyes to open, but nothing happened. Reluctantly, he applied more force. His own eyes meanwhile were steered to looked upon Amanda all this time. The probing part of him inside the girl's head slowly became aware of blurred light. With some effort the obscured glow gradually resolved into sharper images that began to focus -- the shock stunned him. He was at two places at once.

He shut his eyes.

Only then did he see one, and only one, image. Himself. With eyes closed tautly. The spell of double vision and intense nausea passed. Now, he was merely staring upon himself leaning over the unconscious Amanda. It was like gazing into a three dimensional looking glass, with himself on the other side. Once more he opened his eyes, only to close them instantly. But the imprint lingered: two superimposed images: him looking upon an unconscious Amanda who was looking back at him.

Curiosity overcame vertigo. His will helped by instilling calm in him and a sense of security. He had nothing to fear from Amanda. She would have understood that he was doing this only to bring her back to well-being.

As that specific mental spoke withdrew from her optic center another already was cautiously infiltrating a different region ...

Frank sucked in air as a sense of falling overcame him. The fear of loss at that moment exploded into sheer panic. His physical body shuddered as beads of sweat ran on his forehead. This place was huge and lost itself in vastness. His knuckles grew white from their strangling grip on the grass below him. Wearily, reality began to restore, establishing that only a small part of him was venturing in Amanda's brain. With this as reassurance, Frank now fully advanced into Amanda's subconscious.

"God!.."

The physical interpretation of what he sensed, a simile, would be a labyrinthine juxtaposition of creation and chaos. He did not see with his eyes, but with a vision akin to dreaming; and as in a dream, he participated. A perception he was not cognizant of before came into play here. Clusters of implicit and virtual histories, some depicting vivid images of the recent past, others rendering indeterminate facsimiles and impressions -- stored perhaps from an infant age -- and still more caricatured and nebulous vestiges, Frank made no sense of, profused and cascaded around him. They rendered color, shape, and distance in their most fluent scopes. Hues varied unceasingly blowing up and shrinking into caricatured figures and objects, some of which had total lack of form and meaning ... most, spiraling into kaleidoscopic torrents of insignificant yet emotionally charged symbols bandying to and fro, coming from nowhere and going everywhere.

While Amanda's unaware mind continued its rest, the kneeling boy next to her learned about his own. In the process he taught himself how to defend his emotions, how to control and differentiate his identity and being from another's, and how to tell hard reality from hard illusion.

While he was witnessing all this he had glimpses of something quite unlike all else. In a sense it appeared more solid. A globe. It pulsed. It coalesced and was more dense than the rest of the arbitrariness that caused havoc all around him.

"Amanda!" he whispered.

... Meanwhile, behind his preoccupied awareness the spoke that had gone independent, infiltrated deeper in the girls subconscious. Unchecked, it radically veered into a remote psychic cavern. A long corridor of melanite with pulsing shimmers and 'puffs' of what appeared to be beaten gold. Attracted it was by the immensity of force emanating from within. Traveling at the speed of a brain-wave, it extended its mote of energy farther into the neuron tunnel ...

Concurrently, at that other part of Amanda's brain, the main part of Frank's awareness approached the pulsing sphere before him with the utmost care. Knowledge seemed to come from nowhere, but he knew that in front of him was that which constituted Amanda's self awareness, her conscious in a state of inactivity. From it radiated a multitude of bright colored needles of light. As he came nearer a cluster of the thin rays rearranged themselves in a smooth sliding fashion, till a sparkling array of beams formed, left the glowing sphere with only a thin line trailing behind it and traveled towards him, almost relinquishing itself completely of its bearer. It was her.

"Amanda!"

An Amanda of light.

"Her soul," he wanted to say and exhale realizing just then that he was holding his breath all this while.

... At this other place ... the tunnel fell away and behind the rogue lone spoke. The quanta of energy that was the stray iota of Frank's invading awareness -- only a subatomic spindle that was trailed by nothing more than a relaying, an ethereal almost, thread -- halted.

That which it confronted was neither Frank or Amanda.

It was not endogenic to either.

It bore no resemblance to any correlation that instinctively or intuitively, or otherwise, could define it. Yet, this commanding presence was as part of both as a vague lost and primal cognizance remembered from time untold.

The maverick blip of energy, that had wandered on its own, unable to contain what surged before it, overloaded, and froze. A sub-increment of information, however, was already on its way back to the spoke-core. It was in this process of conveying stored data to the hub of Frank's awareness, through the aetherially thin tie thread, when a tractor force took hold of the overloaded stunned probe and yanked the tiny speck-of-a-probe-head into force's core field ...

Elsewhere, the aura that was Amanda's conscious neared Frank shimmering. It stopped before him. An eddy, like a long curling arm of lustrous current, circled him veering, winding, curving swiftly about him. An ecstasy of restful, glowing content filled the boy outside and within. The myriad spoke-like extending beams, the aura that was an Amanda-of-light, then retracted to their core while the aware entity in Amanda's mind, that was Frank's extension, guided her onto the path of awakening consciousness.

The girl's limp body stirred under the clear blue sky. Frank's far away look now focused on her as the absent portion of him returned. Tired and spent himself, he leaned over the girl who was trying to sit up. She looked around her, then her dazed eyes found his.

"The sun's out," she cried.

"Not a cloud in sight," he replied helping her to stand. "Amanda, it worked!"

... As his mind reconciled with all that had transpired, a microbit of living information silently deposited its data somewhere in his conscious ...

For a fraction of a second Frank became acutely aware of a tremendously disturbing fact. His body involuntarily shuddered, but did not know why.

"I'm so tired," had been Amanda's words then. "So wonderfully tired ... and hungry."

***

Her small apartment overlooked Athens airport, and beyond, the mirroring Gulf of Argosaronikos. In the distance she could make out the splendor of the island of Aegina, and just barely discern the high ground of the other tiny island of Aggistri, behind Aegina's northern tip. On a clear day she could distinguish hues of colors on Aggistri, the white of a village, the green of vegetation, the alabaster-beige of eroding cliffs and, more golden, the ochres of wheat and oat fields.

Her visits to Aggistri were frequent. The two hour boat ride there by kaique spurred her senses and cleared her mind; and the weekend excursions to it revived her, making her fresh and able to cope with the week that was to follow.

But lately she had strength to only think about an escape there. She dared not venture going lest an unexpected attack come, but there was a desire to go farther on, too. Travel north, to her family's village, and from there high up where the falcon and the eagle nest ...

She had three attacks since September with none of the pre-warning signs that always preceded these, as in the past. She knew that a large portion of her weariness was due to her being continuously on guard. It deprived her of any rest, even invaded her sleep through intense unrecallectable nightmares.

Although the attacks did not deviate from their old and usual pattern, still she could not chance it. They came, and she was ever-grateful for this, punctually on the date of her period. Knowing this, she would take the day off from the English school. She would stay locked in the apartment. When the tolling of the bell would sound in her head, she would lie in bed and wait ... and pray.

She thanked God her monthly cycles were so exact. It would have torn her apart if it were otherwise. This characteristic stability retained for her her sanity.

"But for how long!" she heard herself gush out. And, "What's going on with me!" It was a pleading cry in search of heed. Her eyes blurred from their erupting wetness. Years of pent-up anxiety suddenly vented. She buried her head in her hands and cried tears of resentment and resignation.

It was then the doorbell sounded.

She rose slowly from her bed and composed herself. Must be one of the kids, she said silently, come for extra help. Her students and Mr. Alexiou were about the only contact she had, and kept, with the outside world. She had neither the strength or fervor for more.

The thin well-dressed man before her reached out his hand, "Good afternoon."

"Niko!"

She took the hand and felt its warmth and gentleness spread through her own.

"Please excuse me if I am intruding," he began. His face and spectacled eyes conveyed a discomfort.

Amanda asked him in and closed the door.

"No, thank you," he said, when she gestured to a seat and offered to make Hellenic coffee.

"It's very kind of you, Amanda, but I'll have to run back to the school. Is it not terrible, I cannot leave it even for a decent visit? Everything seems to stop there the minute I step out the door." He gave a short gasp of a laugh.

"That's the hassle of having your own business," she responded, trying to comfort the fretting man.

"How true -- but to you now. There will not be classes today, so don't come, Amanda."

"It's kind of you to come and tell me. But you needn't have gone through the trouble -- "

"I did not want you to make the trip all for nothing. I have a car. It's such an inconvenience with that rickety old bus -- Oh, how I know. I rode on it for years." He shook his head.

"It would have been a strain for me, too, I know," she nodded. "But you should have called, not come."

"It's not the same," he said and dithered, as though trying to decide on something. "I have a good friend who is a doctor. A splendid fellow, very competent, Amanda. The school will cover the examination expense; that's why we are insured. It's why I came in person. To tell you this."

"I know I'm not up to par, Niko -- "

"Please. You are more than I could have asked for. Do you know how difficult it is to find good English teachers here? Contrary to what you think, you are above par, Amanda. And I want to help you. To keep you as long as possible."

He took out a handkerchief and brought it over his temple. "Tomorrow is your off day," he said putting the handkerchief away. Reaching into his coat's breast pocket he took out a pad and pen, and scribbled quickly on it. "Tomorrow go and see him. Please."

Amanda took the piece of paper and folded it.

"And be careful on your way ... the newspapers are filled of warnings for pedestrians. This thing, this 'phenomenon', they say, will come tomorrow." He straightened his coat.

"Is that why we're not having classes? Because of that?" asked Amanda.

"Today and tomorrow. Parents are beginning to be afraid for their children. They believe this 'happening' will start affecting people. Or little children. Last time cats and many small dogs were found hurt, crushed. As though they fell from great hights." His acute nervousness seemed to have made him stutter. "As ... as though our own problems are not enough. We have this now ... this Nemesis over our heads."

Amanda had her own experience of the 'Nemesis' as Mr. Alexiou called it. When it struck, her apartment was in shambles. It resembled having been through an earthquake. Since it became a regular monthly thing the last three months, she and most of the local population secured their light, fragile possessions by anchoring them down.

She thanked her employer and tried comforting him.

"They will find what the cause is soon. That terrible man -- . Don't worry. Half the world's scientists are gathered in Athens, Niko."

"The Olympics will not be The Games of Peace this season I'm afraid. He took a deep breath, "I pray they stop this thing, and that ... that Fuehrer, in the Poles! He says he believes in God, -- it's in arms he trusts. Not God. And the glitter of gold," he said vexed, approaching the door to leave. "Do not forget the doctor, Amanda."

He waved good bye as he walked down the hallway.

She waved back and closed the door when he was out of sight.

Not a minute after, the bell rang again.

When she opened the door she groped for support.

"Frank!"

  "So the Divine and my Anthony's Fringe Theory steadily dash towards an unavoidable confrontation," his Penelope had said, a week before she had expired her last breath while giving birth to the stillborn girl.

Yes, sure, too much radiation from the ozone holes, the experts had concluded. As good an excuse as any.

Why couldn't he have died instead.

He often thought about these words, her words, and, "Curious," he whispered to her, "why men of science -- medical, civil, political or physical science -- don't study up a bit on the philosophy of religion, the arts and humanities, the classical studies."

He wondered if that time had not come? Of archetypal antagonists to concede being siblings, offsprings of the same parent. Even be one and the same.

"Why men of creed and belles-lettres circumvent the learning of these sciences themselves. Why the need of creating a chasm where soon providence will prove that there is none?"

It wasn't the best of worlds, he admitted. People were still messing it up, no real headway was being made. But it was the only livable world humanity had.

And soon it will be gone, wiped clean of life by the deeds of a careless century, he thought morosely. Besides environmental pollution reaching an all time high, military, political and media pollution had followed staunchly close. The century had given way to soldiers becoming professionals: private enterprises for hire. Living had to became a soldiering way of life to survive by 2052 AD.

"I wish I had your faith of trust, General," he had wanted to say to Moffet the other day. "Your sources, too."

But he hadn't. Because Lovesigh's gist of aim and trust was elsewhere.

"Generals and all can poke each other's eyes out as far as I'm concerned -- like they've been doing since their pathetic invention, war.

"There's this guy, Penelope. Dunne's his name, that says:

'Thrust ivrybody -- but cut th' ca-ards.'

"So, who 'thrusts' a crowd that needs to go to war every twenty years or so in order to balance their books?" he wanted to ask the bronze-heaving General. "Hell, Moffet, who can honor a system of government promoted by a handful of dog-eat-dog troops, 'civil servants', government men spoofs and SIA spooks whose sole motto in life is, 'Your death is my living'; and, whose work of endeavor or Gross National Product is essentially based and appropriated from the sales, proliferation and use of arms and armament, spontaneous and never-ending skirmishes and war?" he wanted to hear himself articulate in front of the ominously powerful machine behind the General man. "Sounds to me too close to a second, but runaway, USSR."

He felt very worn-out. And heartsick, and full of hurt. "What manner free-thinking citizen of the world will vouch for or go in with an establishment that promotes and supports military dictatorships -- enlightened or not -- so as to perpetuate on to others a soldiering and warring way of life, and a cruel enough martial fascism to have gotten even George Smith Paton disgusted with the military. Glixxon should try onto himself what he dispenses so easily to others -- ."

He shook his head, " -- Forgot. Politico-Religious leaders nowadays have a different cadre of equerries, and set of rules they abide by."

Who wants to be an enlistee from cradle to grave? The law of war governs the establishment here, he thought haggard. There's a spontaneous war waging here 365 days, General, he wanted to tell him. It's a perpetual battle-field. It don't matter any -- no difference if it's Nam or New York, the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Mexico, 'Warring Is Our Business' the logo goes. Or should it be, 'In Strife and Bullying We Trust'? Whether you're civilian or troop makes no difference. You have got to learn to dodge bullets in our own native streets-of-battlefields too, sooner or later.

But time was dear precious to Lovesigh.

What was the point of all this grim, pondering dirge, Lovesigh's thinking went on, when there were no longer principles around other than glorying in victory? No code in sight other than the law of domination. When there was no precept, other than the doctrine of Hannibal, Attila, Gengis Khan, Caesar: Veni, Vidi, Vici -- I Came, I Saw, I Conquered.

War.

Soldiering.

War.

Dominate.

War.

Militarize ... civilians too.

Make the country, all countries, into a great boot camp: "Mine is not to ask 'why?', mine is but to do or die."

In memorial to great Roman Legions, create anew great World Battalions: bastions of the perfect flesh and blood machina, the Ecumenical Soldier-Citizen.

"That's the people over us, Penelope," he now said turning to her. "The people whose boot-sole we're under. The same oppression and colonialism the Irish, the Scots, the Welsh -- the Kelts -- had been trying to throw off for 700 years (and bless them, succeeded in the memorable Joint Act of August in 2010), so as not to be assimilated into a permanent kind of tyrannical affair. The same Goths, Visigoths, the same Ottomans -- and their lack of taste of freedom and elegance of liberty -- that the front of civilization had successfully booted out after half millennium of their carnage, rape and catastrophe of Europe. The same hold India and South Africa had once bucked off. Glixxon's breed of oppressors is a lineage of people, present throughout history and the globe, in every race and creed, that is arrogant, overbearing, absolute, bloated; one that feeds on anguish, suffering and the shaming of others.

"Patriots, Penelope, at least the ones I hold in esteem, are not those people. They are not the Glixxons or Attilas, the Moffets or Hannibals, not the SIAs or Stalins. They are the Martin Luther Kings and the Mark Twains, the Lincolns and Bravehearts, the Nathan Hales and Leonidases, Patrick Henrys and Joan d'Arks and Don Quixotes. People like the Russians -- and overall Soviets -- who with valor and sensible internal strength realized a mistake, accepted it and corrected it without bloodshed and with the wholehearted help and camaraderie aid of old America and old Europe.

"These had been peace-loving people, Penelope; who as well cared and had a special love of life. But, when their freedom was trampled upon, fought then the oppressor not embrace him; kicked him out then not roll out the red carpet for him. Had not bowed their heads and bleat then like sheep. If the colonists had not done so ... we'd, and half the world, be speaking king's or cockney English and be hailing 'God save the Queen' today."

His own wisdom, that which he acquired with much pain and suffering bound to a wheelchair, years after Penelope's passing, told him that life did not allow such luxuries. Rambling on to himself about proverbial ontological and epistemological clashes was about as effective as trying to train a fish to rap.

"Pixelpocks!"

Annoyed, he advanced his electric wheelchair to the blinking screen of the terminal that occupied the corner with the two windows in his study.

"Why do you refuse to cooperate with what's in my head?"

The lit wall to his right sparkled brazenly.

"Christmas tree!"

The machine was a Rochard main-ram computer model Q-ALPHA 1(c), they had told him. Conception and outgrowth of none other than the Lukas Thomas Mettropoulos. The world-wide network accessed Lovesigh to data sources others could only wish for.

"The house you live in (Space Force General Rupert Moffet had forgotten Michael, Lovesigh noted) is planned, designed and built as annex to it. No other construct, I know of, in or outside the country, can claim a more privileged synthesis than the Q-ALPHA 1(c).

"For one, it ties into all the non-intelligence satellites orbiting the globe. Links to the three-point space-mesh telescope, and, listen to this," the frog-eyed soldier pouted, "it shares time with Co.N.D.O.R.S."

(Coordinated Nations Deep-space Observatory and Reconnaissance Station, the furthest man-made orbiting artifact. Its location, in orbit around Alpha Centauri.)

Lovesigh could open the gates of the havens -- summon the stars of a thousand galaxies right into his very den -- at a mere touch of a key, utilize processors that ran in plasmic time (the unit period of which equaled one electron spin).

" ... But I don't have the one thing that will make all this come together, General. Paradox Technology."

"A field still in diapers," declared General Moffet, stiffly. "Sorry, but the Alpha is the closest thing we have to artificial intelligence. At the moment. Dr. Mettropoulos is, nevertheless, as we talk, working on a modified plan of the same."

"I Need Para-Tech. Raw Vacuum."

He had to produce the vacuum found outside the fringe, before simulating the fringe itself. Vacuum so empty that it sucked into existence primordial matter: electrons, neutrinos, quarks, and their anti-particles.

What he wanted was to un-create a small segment of the universe. Just enough to twine a microcosmic simile of the fringe. A mathematical sphere of extra-universe within a shell of fringe, outside which the known universe lay.

But the colossus that Q-ALPHA 1(c) was, was still uncooperative.

"It simply does not resonate to my thinking, General," Lovesigh had told the man from the military who dropped in every so often and who looked and dressed like a mannequin with straight edges.

"How is that, Professor?"

"I used all possible methods to get it to simulate a mathematical matrix on the parameters of the fringe. But the screen keeps glaring out 'INSUFFICIENT DATA' or similar graffiti. I want transitive solutions, General. The machine does not have empiricism of what it is asked to do."

"Why not?" The General whisked an invented fleck of dust from his uniform.

"Simple. Because it has not done it before. There's no antecedent model to follow. No algorithmic precedence to guide it through a topos analogous to that of the fringe."

"Topos, sir?"

Lovesigh gave him a lethal glance and conciliated with severe patience. "Topography has the same root, General -- where was I?"

General Moffet's prevailing sky-blue eyes had become obfuscated now, relinquishing all light of understanding, and dropped deep into their sockets.

Yet, Lovesigh's own 'third eye' clearly envisaged the worm-holes and the toroidal geometry that wrapped around the fringe plexus.

"I can knit the matrix," he continued at a pant, "up to fourth degree partial differentials. Enough to conceptualize a converging consistency. But the Mett(ropoulos)-Par(dulli) Transforms after that generate three digit factorials raised to a transcendental function exponent."

He halted, and took a waft of air down his lungs.

"The results are both prime and rational roots. The primes, I do not know about, nor have I the leisure to work on. But the rational roots, these, General, are the afflatus! They come in paired sets of four, and each pair plots two real-point coordinates of worm-hole ends. One end lies in this Universe ... the other disseminates information at the fringe threshold."

"Uh-humn."

"But there are ungodly many!" Lovesigh woofed.

The General jumped.

"If that recalcitrant machine could just discriminate worm-hole ends near-by from ... from ones in Proxima Centaury."

He had uploaded it with all the constellation perspectives, volumes of maps of the skies as viewed from Earth. To no avail. The machine circuits, electromagnetic themselves, were being disoriented by the plethora of space-time inconsistencies generated by the holes. They were being thrown off by the maverick vortexes spawned by the ends. Boggled down with gibberish every time he asked for anything above a third degree partial differential. The quanta fluctuations prevalent defied the machine's laws of cause and effect.

He gruffed and grunted as he explained, and so did the General.

Still, Lovesigh could envisage both the fringe's geometric texture and its reference loci. He envisioned the fabric itself, the approximation limits the hyperbola the open-end toroid unfolded into, its cross section mass-to-energy ratio and space-time density and curvature. "... but the banal machine cannot work with chaos paradoxes."

"It can't?"

"No! The stuff of logic the naive beast is made of rejects probable antitheses whose limits approach contradiction. Its nodes and links fail to function beyond the capacity of conventional reasoning. Do you follow, General?"

The other stared at him wide-eyed. "It cannot," he said, at last.

"Certainly not. How can it when it has not been provided with virtual orientation, modified to bypass binary logic in view of stochastic sampling? Elementary, General: It is incapable of indulging and commenting on non-deterministic solutions."

"I will report your remarks to the President, sir."

The man had then risen, bowed his head crisply and enthusiastically marched to the door.

"General, that's my wardrobe."

***

She grasped the doorknob tightly with both hands. She just hung on to it. She didn't know how long her strength would keep her from crumbling to the floor. Only a few hours ago she had been thinking of him -- that she would likely never see him again.

He had been at the core for her leaving the States. It hadn't been the horrid dictatorship, that had turned everything up-side-down, or the sites in Europe, or her father's birthplace, nor anything else. But she had justified it then that it had been all those. Today she knew better. He was never absent from her thoughts. Her every emotion pivoted about Frank, its fulcrum rested fully and solely on him, leaving room for no one else.

I would never make him happy, she had rationalized, after that morning found them waking side by side at his apartment. His loving was sweet, most tender, the only she ever dared to have. With the shadow that hung over her, her life's lovers could be counted on a single finger. And Frank was the only one she needed and wanted. But the one she would never allow herself to have or hope for.

"I don't understand you," he had responded, "why won't it work, Amanda? At least you owe me the reasons, an explanation, for God's sake."

How could she tell him? How would she explain that she'd make life hell for both of them. Alone, she could bare her heavy cross. She had learned how to, even though it took years and constant vigilance. He wasn't obliged in any way to share her suffering, this kind of torment and anguish. She could not allow it. And it was up to her to see that he would not.

"I have a career, Frank, to think of," her arguments went on. "I can't marry and put my husband aside to follow what I love. And it's music I love. One can't have two masters and be loyal to both. Why can't you understand?"

Immediately she regretted it. It was phony and incredible, but he didn't object. Nor did he believe her.

"There's something you're keeping from me," he had said, his eyes riveted on hers. "Amanda, what is it? Is it someone else?" He shook his head violently, "I don't believe it. I know you well enough to justify that. It's not you!"

You don't know me, not all of me, Frank, she said to herself. Out loud, "That's how it sometimes works out, Frank. We don't even know who we are, till that last minute."

"Amanda!" he had called out after her as she ran down the dark hallway. Running away from sanity.

Since then the echo never really ceased.

"Amannda!.."

The pale thin woman across from him staggered, blinked and toppled into his arms.

"Let me help," a voice came from behind Frank Patroni in English then in Hellenic.

Frank looked over his shoulder to see a tall and thin black-cladded figure run toward him. He picked Amanda in his arms as the other pushed the door wide open.

"Thanks," Frank said. "English is fine, Father -- New York."

The priest followed.

"Did time there myself," he replied. "And the young lady?"

"An old classmate." Frank laid the unconscious Amanda on the bedroom bed.

"A cold compress might do some good," the priest said and went to the refrigerator. He placed the pot of stew he carried inside and activated the ice dispenser. Swiftly he packed several cubes in a small towel he found next to him and was about to take the compress back.

A change took place.

A disorientation.

What followed ... was falling, helplessly.

Vertigo ...

He let go of the compress, shut his eyes and grabbed on to the refrigerator handle.

Noise ...

Awesome, mangling, sheering screeches came from all around.

He shook his head and opened his eyes. His ears popped.

The ice pack floated before his nose, tumbling.

"Sick ... " he groaned.

He grunted with nausea.

His index finger extended by itself and gave the floor ... that was up ... a nudge. He traveled down to the ceiling light, grazed it, bumped on the off-white ceiling ... and began falling up to the terrazzo floor again ... or was it down.

"Lord ... I'm sick ... "

He felt the urge to exhale or cry out as disorientation completely overcame him. The din rose all around, and from beyond he thought he heard voices -- no, screams and yells -- but his ears buzzed and hurt and could not distinguish through the rubble of cacophony that closed in from everywhere.

A warmness flowed to his dry lips. When his tongue went over them the salty thick taste told him it was blood. Awkwardly he reached into his pocket and brought out a white handkerchief to the hemorrhaging nostrils. The noise lessened as a sort of acquiescence precipitated.

"Are you all right!"

"I think -- " he began as an attack of coughing and retching took hold. "Yes -- yes," he tried his best to reassure. "But I can't seem to walk."

"It's gravity -- stay low -- it's gonna reverse soon," Frank shouted. "Get your baring ... The pendant light is the ceiling ... "

"I know ... I'll try crawling your ways." A fraction of a 'G' -- a hundredth -- an eightieth? But negative!.. His mind tried to estimate.

Gingerly, he brought his body down into a kneeling position.

"I mustn't use normal muscular coordination," he said to himself, "only slight weak tensions ... ."

"Can you manage, Father?" Frank called out again from the bedroom. "I can't make it to help ... ."

"No ... stay there," he said to Frank, then to himself, "I'm getting the hang of it."

He remembered the compress. His eyes measured the distance and the object which now was rising to the ceiling. He gave a spring. He rose on all fours ... and continued rising. An arm reached out and grabbed at the compress when a thud shook him as his back slammed against the plaster of the ceiling. The pain was less than the surprise.

A slight nudge this time tossed him forward and down, along the short hallway and into the bedroom.

When he looked in -- he knew.

***

Frank's hand held on tightly to the only object not affected by the turmoil of physical laws: the bed Amanda lay on.

He groped with the other hand to assist the Priest who frantically tried to reach him and the figure that lay unperturbed on the bed.

The priest's eyes took in the unbefitting calmness on the face. Composed, her color almost all there, it glowed of peace and serenity. He could not imagine what suffering and struggling with one's self could result in, bring such, relief upon a continence.

"Your friend is lucky." His voice rose above the din. "The bedlam isn't phasing her any."

"Unnatural -- " Frank whispered, more to himself, and cleared his throat.

"Nothing is unnatural before God." The priest interceded, approached and went to take hold of the woman's wrist. "Her pulse -- " he began.

His words cut short.

A flash of shock passed over his face.

The arm recoiled, sling-shot fashion, as though kicked off by a spooked stallion. "Aawoo! Dear Lord!"

"Sorry. I should have warned ... "

Frank held on to the bed with one hand while gravity continued to defy Newtonian axioms.

"Have you seen her lately -- before today I mean?"

"Not for years -- five to be exact. Who are you?"

"A priest of the Hellenic Orthodox faith."

"You'd be praying if you were a priest."

"Apparently I'm not a very reliable clergy."

"Didn't mean to offend. You just seem to be dealing with things more scientifically than -- say, dogmatically."

Father Lukas gasped a laugh. "Observant -- trait of a soldier, or reporter perhaps? I do dabble in science when the good Lord sees a need for it." He tried to keep his distance from the supine body.

"She's solid lead ... can't budge the bed as much as a centimeter."

"Everything is bouncing around ... as if in deep space ... except her." He looked around himself. "You know what a paradox is, Mr. -- "

"Frank Patroni, New York Star. It's a he -- , heck of a time for introductions," he managed to say before an eddy of force made him drift rolling on his back. "Shall I continue with the 'Father'?"

"Coriolis effects ... Sorry, fault of circumstance, Lukas Mettropoulos, Massachusetts."

"And other than the church, Father Mettropoulos -- "

"Lukas, with a 'k', is splendid."

"Besides the church, Father Lukas, what else draws you to summer-land?"

"To date that would have made for a very difficult question," he said turning his gaze upon the still girl. "Not that it makes it any easier to say now."

"I should think it simple," the man wavering next to him said, he too throwing an appraising glance at Amanda's tranquillity. "Faith."

The priest's face, now flush from effort, turned to the other man. He saw sensitive inquiring eyes. Concerned. Loving, but troubled. A kind of loving that he himself had never known, but a few times dared to imagine. Like Christ, man and woman he loved alike. What was this man's love like? Why did Christ not 'love' a woman?..

A shadow streaked by him. He blinked.

The compress had toppled to the ceiling -- and dropped next to him.

An echo reverberated throughout the apartment building and beyond. The city too it seemed dropped into place again. Their was a sensation of spinning as the two men groped to orientate their regained weight. Normality took hold of the laws of the Universe once again. Rescued sanity from an awake nightmare.

Both pair of eyes riveted on the bed.

Beneath them the woman's head moved.

"Amanda -- " Frank whispered softly.

The priest rose and found the compress. He wrapped the loose ice tightly, hesitated a little, and placed it on her forehead. No backlash.

"How do you feel?"

"Ah, so light -- empty inside. I didn't ... I couldn't help it, Mr. Alexiou -- "

"Frank, Amanda. I'm Frank."

"It is you!." Her eyes were fully open now.

"You passed out."

A spent smile of felicity came on her face and her eyelids drooped once again. She grasped his hand tightly. "Whose funeral is your friend going to?"

"This is Father Me -- Me -- "

"Lukas Mettropoulos." He extended a hand cautiously, then with more bravado. "I wish you well. Do you want me to get you a glass of water?"

She nodded, chagrined.

When the other left, Frank approached closer. "It's our karma. Stop fighting it, Amanda."

"Oh Frank, I just didn't want you to see this side of me."

"I hadn't believed a word of it. And I've seen all of your sides, Dear Lady -- what's new?"

"I'm an epileptic -- and you've just witnessed an attack."

"An epileptic?"

"Yes -- the seizures, the blacking out. Only, the last few times, I've lost all control -- "

"You could control the attacks?" Father Lukas's voice interjected.

With an apologetic look he stood by the doorway a full glass of water in his hand. He passed the glass over while Frank tucked a pillow behind Amanda's head.

She returned the half empty glass. "Thank you. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Before this, at least, I had some warning -- "

"Before? You were warned?" The Priest asked calmly.

"Slight numbness and ruffle in my head. Sometimes loss of bearing and balance. People speaking next to me seemed their voices came from miles away -- I just knew, and left. I didn't want anyone to see me like this. She turned her face from them.

"You've had a faint spell, that's all. You had no -- "

" -- no warning at all?" Father Lukas patted Frank's hand furtively.

"Seconds maybe, a tolling sound -- but today nothing, nothing at all. And -- a day too soon."

"The attack came sooner?"

"By one day," she said. "What happened in here?"

"Tomorrow. The attack was to come tomorrow?" The priest ignored her confused eyes and her question.

"Father, all respect due, the curse struck the day of start of my period. Always!" She took in the shambles around the room, "Oh no -- "

"And you've been ... that regular ... always?"

"Yes -- no sense in diagnosis, Father. There's as much a cure for me it seems as there is for this mess. It happened again, didn't it? While I was out?" She looked from one to the other.

Frank just nodded.

The priest merely returned her look, his face wan, a thin smile on it.

"Be glad of it. I think it was the worst," Frank said.

***

Mark Rhodes had only read about the Athens Express in cloak-and-dagger novels. The train that crossed the famed transcontinental railway line tying two continents and over half a dozen countries, persisted in having that misty intrigue about it in real life as it did in the texts of fiction intrigue. The wooden interior of the reconstructed coaches, the smoke-filled lounge with the dimly lit walnut bar counter, and the white uniform jacket of the man behind it reminded him of scenes of long ago vogue shrouded in mystery and tongue-in-cheek complot and cavalier fascination.

He sat at the bar immersed in the magic of the train, swaying ever so slightly and mesmerized with the muffled clipity-clak of the steel wheels and the murmur of conversations. He became aware of the scanty twinkling around him. The images in his mind manifested and they triggered the inevitable. They stimulated that curious part of his brain that always left him breathless. The electrified air suddenly gave up its charge and returned to normal, ordinary non-ionized gas molecules. He didn't think anybody had noticed.

The youthful man took out a turquoise pack of non-filter cigarettes, tapped one on the pack and put it between his lips. He lit it, drew the smoke in and relaxed. The French knew how to make a cigarette, he humored. Don't have to go through an entire pack to get that silty taste in your pallet. Rising blue smoke mingled with a curly tuft of ebony hair. He gazed at the gossamer trails drifting up till they diffused into thin sheets above the heads of the lounge car patrons.

His wandering eyes halted their aimless meanders. A germ of a thought piqued at him just then, a hint of a forming concept. He locked onto it and urged it to bloom. The cigarette, the swirls of smoke apparently spawned more than pretty vortex patterns. They connected to a crucial point in his life, an aspect of his that was as private as it was unbelievable. And all brought on by this one cigarette. The spore had been around all the time, but he never saw it till today, now. The squandering smoke about him made him envision logs burning in a fireplace. Flame and the smoke of this combustion were the intangible by-products. "Steam and gasses," he articulated, absent mindedly, then coughed to cover the oversight.

"Signiore?"

He looked, and the eyes of the slick-combed barman were on him.

"Scotch please," he said, covering the best he could what welled inside him. His fingers tapped nervously on the glossy varnish of the counter as the significance of what had just taken place unruffled within. He didn't want to loose track of it.

It wasn't the smoke itself, but the solid it came from; and what was this process but the reciprocal of solidifying smoke, a gas, or air by pressure.

Pressure!

The concept of the analogy of pressure.

So elated was he that he gulped the drink down in two swallows.

"Oh Moses -- " a raspy, choking voice splurted.

The barman's eyes measured the action. Seconds later another Scotch appeared.

He pushed it aside taking two bills out and placing them on the counter. "Keep the change. And the Scotch is on me." He walked away in a hurry.

The compartment was empty.

He was alone and grateful for the privacy. His travel companion, a plume-hatted, leather-drawered Swiss, precise about his meals as were his reputed country's watches about time, was most likely having dinner.

Mark Rhodes was alone and ready.

Witnesses would not do.

As a matter of fact it could present a hazard having anyone around -- in more ways than one, as he recalled.

That fateful day returned.

Screeching tyres. Amanda's scream. Alex crying out, "Watch out, dad!" The dead, viscous silence as their car left the road, the air rushing by -- a silent sound -- the open windows as they fell ... fell ... fell.

A sour taste filled his mouth and his throat burned. Those last, scanty seconds seemed to last for ever ... would last to the end of his life. The scene, ruthlessly slow, passed before him for the uptieth time, dragging them down an endless, dark and thick pit through eternity.

They -- not a scratch.

Their father -- multiple contusions and internal injuries, crushed lungs and a fractured neck.

Why?

Because he was thrown through the windshield and on to the rocks, while the three of them were not. But it wasn't enough of an answer. It didn't justify their own escape from injuries. The likelihood of surviving a twenty meter fall and a crash on sea hewn rocks without as much as a sprained wrist was not a plausible outcome. The wreck they had walked away from was a jumbled heap of twisted and crushed metal. All of them should have died, on the spot. Yet, they suffered only mild shock. The picture was indelible on Mark's brain; glass, plastic, steel, and fabric mashed into an inseparable slab. Except the back seat, where they sat. That, was intact. Not fragments even had touched them. Hard as he had tried, he could not explain it.

The effect was not what primarily preoccupied Mark. But the cause. A careless moment of whim his child's mind had indulged in. An abandonment to an instant of innocent fantasizing that oddly enough had jumped to life and action upon the road ahead that a second before had been empty and dark. An image so real and of such vivid detail that Paul Rhodes had swerved off the highway and into the abyss to avoid smashing into it.

A jolt shot up his spine.

Sweat beads popped up and erupted over his forehead and around his tense mouth. Then came the shakes, uncontrollable shudders that rattled his body like amperes passing through it. He twitched and trembled, and held on to sanity.

"Check yourself," he hissed between clenched teeth. "Guilt won't bring him back. It's not your doing. You didn't know then."

It seemed to work. The nerves untangled and the muscles eased and slackened.

After the accident he knew.

He could make things appear.

Out of thin, clear air he could create manifestations. Things that were in his mind he only needed to look at as though they were in front of him -- and voila tout! they materialized. Without substance, of course. But you could not tell till your hand went right through them. A three dimensional image just materialized when he willed it. Sometimes when he did not. But after the tragedy and years of drill and practice, little of that left him without his consent and awareness.

The reason he had chosen psychology to major in was to further discipline his thoughts, and the images that once had jumped out of his mind. He wanted, too, to know all he could about the human psyche, the workings that went on behind the eyes, and what the mind and spirit of man hid. Simply, he hoped to find out what more was within him that others did not have.

Now, he felt he was getting closer than ever before.

His face looked calmer after that thought.

His body slackened. He sat on the lower of the two bunks, and prepared. Glancing at his wrist watch he saw that he had several minutes before the other man came.

His eyes narrowed in concentration. Almost instantaneously the vacant air before him began to sparkle. In what seemed only a few seconds a transparent round form began appearing. It hovered with little motion at eye level as it resoluted into realistic clarity. If one looked closely he could see through it; the image was dense but transparent.

"Pressure," he commanded.

The space around the object glowed intensely as low crackling noises could now be heard. The illusion acquired a texture of opaqueness as the small room filled with a slight but penetrating odor.

"Smell, taste, ... " the concentrating figure demanded, "more, more pressure."

The object took on a bright red glaze and could not be distinguished from another of its kind or be disputed for its solidity.

"Cut!" he ordered and reached a hand under it. The ripe fruit plummeted into it as the door opened.

"Aha!" the intruder exclaimed, "hiding good apples, are you? That is why you did not attend dinner."

Mark Rhodes wiped the wetness from his forehead with the back of his arm, juggled the fruit, and tossed it to the other.

"Bon appetite," he said.

The Swiss crunched into the apple.

"Delicious!"

© 1999 Vasilis Adams Afxentiou

A short biography. I am an ESL/EFL (English as a Second Language/English as a Foreign Language) teacher in Athens, Greece. I have been teaching English on-and-off since 1968, and full-time for the last fifteen years. Prior to that I worked as a Technical Specifications Writer for seven years and as an Engineer for five years. I was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. I went to university in the United States where I received my degrees. My writing credits include published fiction and non-fiction appearing both in Greece and in the USA. Some stateside publications I have written for are Greek Accent, National Herald (Proini), and Crosscurrents. I have received several Distinctive Certificates from WD Writing Competitions held over the years, and also Honorary Mention in my Greek works(narrative and poetry) here in Athens. In Greece I've been published in 30-Days, Key Travel News, Greece's Weekly, Athena Magazine and had a weekend travel column in a local newspaper. My email address is vafx@hol.gr for your comments. Some other e-zines that have puplished my stories in are The Domain, Ibn Quirtaiba, Cosmic Visions, Dark Planet, Basket Case, BORNmagazine, Aspiring Writer, ThinkB, Appalachians, Newwords, Zine in Time, and a couple dozen more.

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