Come into the bulbshine and sit with him, with the stranger at the small public table. It’s almost hosing-out time. See if you can sneak in under the shadow too. Even a partial eclipse is better than never finding out—better than cringing the rest of your life under the great Vacuum in the sky they have taught you, and a sun whose silence you never get to hear.

What if there is no Vacuum? Or if there is—what if They’re using it on you? What if They find it convenient to preach an island of life surrounded by a void? Not just the Earth in space, but your own individual life in time? What if it’s in Their interest to have you believing that?

“He won’t bother us for a while,” They tell each other. “I just put him on the Dark Dream.” They drink together, shoot very very synthetic drugs into skin or blood, run incredible electronic waveforms into Their skulls, directly into the brainstem, and backhand each other, playfully, with openmouth laugh—you know, don’t you is in those ageless eyes… They speak of taking So-and-So and “putting him on the Dream.” They use the phrase for each other too, in sterile tenderness, when bad news is passed, at the annual Roasts, when the endless mind-gaming catches a colleague unprepared—“Boy, did we put him on the Dream.” You know, don’t you?

WITTY REPARTEE

Ichizo comes out of the hut, sees Takeshi in a barrel under some palm leaves taking a bath and singing “Doo-doo-doo, doo-doo,” some koto tune, twanging through his nose—Ichizo screams runs back inside reemerging with a Japanese Hotchkiss machine gun, a Model 92, begins setting it up with a lot of jujitsu grunting and eyepopping. About the time he’s got the ammo belt poised, ready to riddle Takeshi in the tub,

TAKESHI: Wait a minute, wait a minute! What’s all this?

ICHIZO: Oh, it’s you! I—thought it was General MacArthur, in his—rowboat!