"Just cartoons," Minelli said quietly. Without changing channels, he lay back to watch, as if he had forgotten his original purpose. Edward walked over and changed channels for him, looking for news. On the twenty-four-hour News Network, an announcer was finishing a story on conflict between the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

"Nothing," Minelli said pessimistically. "Maybe I was seeing things."

Then, "Astronomers in France and California have offered varied explanations for last night's unprecedented meteor activity in the solar system's asteroid belt. Seen throughout the Western Hemisphere, clearly visible to the naked eye in areas with clear skies, bright explosions flashed throughout the ecliptic, the plane occupied by the Earth's orbit and the orbits of most of the sun's planets. Speaking from his phone in Los Angeles, presidential task force advisor Harold Feinman said it might take days to analyze data and learn what had actually happened deep in space, beyond the orbit of Mars. When asked if there was any connection between the meteor activity and the alleged spacecraft and aliens on Earth, Feinman declined to comment."

"Smart man to admit he's an idiot," Minelli said. "Asteroids. Jesus."

Edward flipped past other channels, but found nothing more.

"What do you think, Ed?" Minelli asked, slouching back in the comer of the broad L-shaped couch. "What the hell did I see? More end-of-the-world shit?"

"I don't know any more than they do," Edward said. He entered the kitchen. "Do you have a doctor in town? A psychiatrist?" he asked Bernice.

"Nobody worth the name," she answered, her voice as low as his. "Your friend's still not doing too well, is he?"

"The government got rid of us in a real hurry. He should be in a hospital somewhere, resting, cooling down."

"That can be arranged," she said. "Did he actually see something?"

"I guess so," Edward said. "I wish I'd seen it."

"Day of the Triffids, that's what it was," Minelli said enthusiastically. "Remember? We'll all go blind any minute now. Break out the pruning shears!"

Stella stood by the stove, methodically cracking eggs into a pan one by one. "Momma," she said, "where's the pepper mill?" She brushed past Edward, tears in her eyes.

Chapter 34

34

Walt Samshow stepped from the cab on Powell Street under the shadow of the St. Francis Hotel awning and turned around briefly to look across at long, silent lines of hundreds of marchers parading around Union Square, a cable car grumbling by covered with swaying tourists, spastic traffic of cars and more cabs, civilized mayhem: San Francisco, other than the marchers, not terribly different from his memories of it in 1984, the last time he had been downtown.

In the spacious, elegant lobby of the St. Francis, with its polished black stone and dark lustrous woods, Samshow began hearing the rumors practically the moment he set his luggage down by the front desk.