The Heaven Makers Part 15

"Yes! Yes, I believe you!"

"Could the car have hysterical paralysis?"

"No. Oh, Andy, I couldn't just turn on hate against you. I couldn't." His arm ached where she clutched it. "What are they? My G.o.d! What is it?"

"I don't think they're human," Thurlow said.

"What're we going to do?"

"Anything we can."

The rainbow circles beneath the dome shifted into the blue, then violet and into the red. The thing began to lift away from the grove. It receded into the darkness. With it went the sense of oppression.

"It's gone, isn't it?" Ruth whispered.

"It's gone."

"Your lights are on," she said.

He looked down at the dash lights, out at the twin cones of the headlights stabbing into the grove.

He recalled the shape of the thing then -- like a giant spider ready to pounce on them. He shuddered. What were the creatures in that ominous machine?

Like a giant spider.

His mind dredged up a memory out of childhood: Oberorn's palace has walls of spider's legs.

Were they faerie, the huldu-folk?

Where did the myths originate? he wondered. He could feel his mind questing down old paths and he remembered a verse from those days of innocence.

"See ye not yon bonny road

That winds about yon fernie brae?

That is the road to fair Elfland.

Where thou and I this night maun gae."

"Hadn't we better go?" Ruth asked.

He started the engine, his hands moving automatically through the kinesthetic pattern.

"It stopped the motor and turned off the lights," Ruth said. "Why would they do that?"

They! he thought. No doubts now.

He headed the car out of the grove down the hill toward Moreno Drive.

"What're we going to do?" Ruth asked.

"Can we do anything?"

"If we talk about it, people'll say we're crazy. Besides . . . the two of us . . . up here . . ."

We're neatly boxed, he thought. And he imagined what Whelye would say to a recountal of this night's experiences. "You were with another man's wife, you say? Could guilt feelings have brought on this shared delusion?" And if this met with protests and further suggestions, "Faerie folk? My dear Thurlow, do you feel well?"

Ruth leaned against him. "Andy, if they could make us hate, could they make us love?"

He swerved the car over to the shoulder of the road, turned off the motor, set the handbrake, extinguished the lights. "They're not here right now."

"How do we know?"

He stared around at the night -- blackness, not even starlight under those clouds . . . no glow of weird object -- but beyond the trees bordering the road . . . what?

Could they make us love?

d.a.m.n her for asking such a question!

No! I mustn't d.a.m.n her. I must love her . . . I . . . must.

"Andy? What're you doing?"

"Thinking."

"Andy, I still find this whole thing so unreal. Couldn't there be some other explanation? I mean, your motor stopping . . . Motors do stop; lights go out. Don't they?"

"What do you want from me?" he asked. "Do you want me to say yes, I'm nuts, I'm deluded. I'm . . ."

She put a hand over his mouth. "What I want is for you to make love to me and never stop."

He started to put an arm around her, but she pushed him away. "No. When that happens, I want to know it's us making love, not someone forcing us."

d.a.m.n her practicality! he thought. Then: No! I love her . . . but is it me loving her? Is it my own doing?

"Andy? There is something you can do for me."

"What?"

"The house on Manchester Avenue . . . where Nev and I were living -- there're some things I want from there, but I've been afraid to go over there alone. Would you take me?"

"Now?"

"It's early yet. Nev may still be down at the plant. My . . . father made him a.s.sistant manager, you know. Hasn't anyone told you that's why he married me? To get the business."

Thurlow put a hand on her arm. "You want him to know . . . about us?"