Nightbodies

Nightbodies

A Ravenous Romance™ Original Publication

by Eric Del Carlo

Ravenous Romance™ Original Publication www.ravenousromance.com

Copyright © 2010 by Eric Del Carlo Ravenous Romance™ 100 Cummings Center Suite 123A Beverly, MA 01915 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review. ISBN-13: 978-1-60777-368-9 This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Prologue: Soon, Bones and Ashes

"Humankind," pronounced the Illuminare Supreme, "is on its way out." Pale striated marble walled the chamber. Baroque columns held aloft the distant ceiling. It was a place cool in temperament, heavy with the deep heat of the planet, a site suited to the Illuminoids who inhabited it. The marble warren was somewhere to wait, to contemplate, to hold forth on matters just such as this one: the extinction of humanity. Much time had been marked here. Somnolent centuries. Solemn ages. But those who had so patiently resided in this place knew what their sovereign knew— that their stay here was indeed drawing to a close, all because of the coming expiration of the Earth's most plentiful and most bothersome occupants. Illuminoids fluttered around the grandest of their kind, the Illuminare. They were, all of them, beings of vast energy and radiance, still touched with the glory of the stars, not having cooled entirely with this planet they had waited so long to reclaim. The chilling of Earth had driven them to this temporary— and temporary was quite the relative term—shelter, where the remainder of their once-full ranks had hunkered and huddled, and watched for the very event which the Supreme had just foretold in broad, grandiloquent terms. What perhaps made it so delicious, this coming fulfillment of a long-awaited milestone, was that the humans were bringing about their own end. Such self-destructive creatures, so brutal to the very world on which they had taken up squatters' rights. A sweet irony. The Earth's cooling had allowed the existence of these primates in the first place; now they had contrived to warm it again with their industries, as if to make it ready for the reoccupation by its rightful owners. Here in the marble chamber, the Illuminare Supreme lifted a glowing hand. The gesture

was invested with theatricality. "It will be as it was," the Supreme intoned. "The Earth shall be ours. And the humans"—a soft rumble of a laugh—"they will be bones, they will be ashes." Again the Illuminoids stirred, aroused by their leader's words. A few of the eldest among them remembered the times long past when their ilk had roamed the surface unfettered, when the atmosphere lay thick and hot, when the ancient sunlight dazzled the land. These elder Illuminoids had waited with their sovereign, keeping the grand vigil, observing the rituals of expectation and remembrance. It had been a long, lonely, doleful wait. And now it was ending. The Supreme spoke the truth. The humans were conveniently scorching themselves off the face of the Earth.

Chapter One Set the Night Ablaze

Beneath the tight black leather jacket he wore, Byx's body burned with heat, with vitality, with desire. He strode the city's streets. Blue eyes shone bright in his skull, seeming to cast a radiance—but only seeming to, because on a second look they were only eyes of a particularly lustrous blue shade. Nothing more. Byx was aware of those second looks that he drew, and a grin of confident knowing cut his lean face. High cheekbones stood out underneath those eyes. His brows were thin, arching slightly. His eyelashes were long. Nose, small and straight. The narrowness of his features, capped by dark disheveled hair, was mirrored by his physique. Trim. Limbs long but proportional. Flesh taut with muscle, but not swollen. Jeans hugged slim hips and a heart-shaped ass. The ladder outline of his ribs was visible against the dingy white T-shirt he wore. He walked in boots of wearied leather. It wasn't unusual to be thin in the city. Not in any city. It wasn't fashion; it wasn't affectation. Food supplies determined the trend. That, and the better quality of foodstuffs that people ate these days. Fruits and vegetables were grown in the city itself, on the rooftop gardens, in the parks. Planted, picked, distributed locally, as fresh as you could get. Ironic that it had taken the end of civilization to get Americans to start eating more healthily. Byx chuckled to himself as he continued to cut a way through the night-cooled cityscape. Of course, it wasn't really cold. San Francisco, once upon a time, had boasted fairly chilly temperatures. Its oceanside location and the logistics of the Bay had contrived to keep the city stingily cool while environs nearby enjoyed warmer days. Well, maybe enjoyed wasn't the word anymore. At least, not from the viewpoint of the humans. Still, at this deep hour of the night the thermometer dropped enough to make the streets

tolerable for most people, and so this was when the liveliness of the city was most evident. It was why Byx was braving the temperatures that he personally found a touch brisk. So it was that the old diurnal routine had been inverted. San Francisco, like other American cities, like other urban centers around the world, slept through its days and roamed about with the moon-silvered night. The dark was now a time of commerce, of community. It was also, as it always had been, the time of the hunt. Byx was newly arrived in San Francisco, though he'd visited it in the past. He had an abiding affection for the cities of this continent. He was invested with powers beyond the merely human, one of which was an ability to slip across distances, even vast ones, as though crossing a room. Thus he had traveled to far-off lands, navigated languages, sampled the wildly divergent edibles, soaked up whatever remained of the native cultures. But the Americans had a wonderful optimism to them, something bred into their basic character. They tried to keep the whole affair going. Sustain the present moment. Think currently. They grew their food responsibly, erected windmills, reduced waste to virtually nil. Too late, too late. But the lateness didn't really matter to them, not when they were operating in the great Now. He was on Valencia, with the downtown's green towers behind him. Many of those soaring monumental buildings, once proud symbols of the finance, were today farms, taken over floor by floor, brimming with greenery, producing food for the city, even providing grazing space for goats as well as vast vertical floral playgrounds for the feral cat population that had exploded before settling into sustainable numbers. The only reason Byx knew he was on Valencia Street, just below Market, was because of his old familiarity with the urban layout. The streets signs were gone. Most such signs had disappeared from San Francisco, wrenched down and appropriated as souvenirs during any of the several spasms of mass migration toward imagined better environments. Byx wondered whether those same charming old street markers were still being cared for, gently handled, ritualistically polished, wept over by remembering eyes. Or were the signs now clutched by bleached fingers of bone in the Southwest Mega-desert, in the Las Vegas Sear, in the Neo Dust Bowl?

Maybe one of the latter. But maybe not. San Francisco wasn't the only metropolitan area that still supported a skeletal populace. Skeletal, indeed. Byx noticed the faces as lean as his own, saw the bodies bared to the waist and the bony shoulders, the backbones as prominent as segmented cables. But, again, the people didn't look particularly unhealthful. Night had brought the vitality of the city into view once more. Electric transports and scooters whirred on the street. The machines were old but carefully maintained, still functioning. They were of that generation of transportation that had come too late, a genus of vehicle that should have been created twenty years before to replace the fantastically destructive engines of the past. Byx had seen a few of those ancient automobiles which had once virtually swarmed the planet. Such mobile contrivances belonged, and for the most part did reside, in museums. Not that museums were maintained anymore. Everything was now a museum. Or on its way to becoming one. Such gloom-tinged thoughts didn't dampen his spirits. As enchanted as he was by the humans, they were not his kind. Their fight simply wasn't his own. Their demise wouldn't entail death for him, nor for those beings with whom he did belong, the Illuminoids. Granted, he was estranged from his fellows, to be sure. He had left them below. In fact, Below. That was what some of the younger ones—he was one of those youngsters—called the dreary maze of marble: the Below. Where the old ones amassed around their living deity, performing endless pious ceremonies, counting the long numb hours, and marking off the years and centuries. Byx, like a few others of the young, had had enough. More than enough. Such was, after all, the way of youth: to rebel, to see with a naked clarity that which the elders had forgotten or buried over with stagnant ritual. Life. Humans would soon be gone, yes, but meanwhile there was a vibrant world far above the magma-heated chambers of the Below. Byx wouldn't wait. He wanted life now. Just as the humans lived in their resolute Now, so he would too. And that was what he had been doing, wandering the warming surface of the Earth.

Solitary, rebellious, aroused. Inevitably, those elders of the Below wanted him back. He was a fugitive from the marble-walled refuge. Surely they would send or had already sent agents to retrieve him. He'd kept alert for any signs that he was being tracked. As yet during these past years of his sojourn on the surface, he had detected no pursuers. But they must eventually come. He moved along the sidewalks, over cracked pavements that would never be repaired. He moved among more people. He sensed their vitalities, the pulsing of their spirits. It wasn't a gloomy scene, despite the evident deprivations. People went about their business. They socialized. San Francisco, compared to even five years ago, was grossly underpopulated. But those standards were false ones anyway. This seemed, to Byx, to be a more workable dynamic. The city's formal infrastructure was gone. Electricity was produced on a block–by-block basis, through arrays of windmills. Water was processed much the same way. There was even a local monetary system which functioned simply because people agreed that it did. There had been a banner which had hung for years across the front of City Hall which had read Now Under No Management. The hanging had disappeared but the sentiment still applied. And yet people managed. More than motorized traffic moved, of course. A throng of bicycles and skateboards was pouring onto the street now. Some parts of the city lay virtually deserted, stripped, and left to rot, but this wasn't one of those districts. Here was life, even a certain urban congestion that harked back to bygone days. People gathered together instinctively. It was the final clustering of the species, and they all should have known that. They didn't act like they knew though, thought Byx as he continued to navigate through the mounting number of pedestrians. He heard laughter, singing. A drunk stumbled off the fractured edge of the curb, and was helped back up by two different passersby. Marijuana smoke perfumed the air. He soaked it all in, relishing the sensations, the sights. The elder Illuminoids were wrong to hate these creatures. Humanity had had its time on the planet, and there was no point in

begrudging that. The eons of waiting were just the natural order of things. The Earth's primordial heat had, over time, bled away, and Byx's kind had been forced to go Below to survive, to huddle against the subterranean heat still radiating from the planet's molten core. But of course if those elders, so chained to the traditional ways, had been willing to adapt themselves as Byx himself had done— Well, there was no sense in playing that what-if? game. The older generation remained in permanent thrall to the Illuminare Supreme, and that personage would never deign to accept adaptation on a mass scale. It was all or nothing for the Illuminoids. That was the fundamental credo. That was the unshakable dogma, the hard and fast— A skateboarder cut past him as he was crossing at an intersection, coming close enough to graze him. Byx, startled, jerked to a halt. He heard a tight skid, the thump of the board as its rider stepped off it. "Oh, hey, sorry. Didn't mean to nudge you, man. You okay?" Byx turned. In some ways it was a new age of politeness, almost Victorian in its emphasis on good manners, though certainly without any of that cloying formality. Fewer people meant, apparently, that one should make an effort to be cordial or at least civil to those who remained. "No worries," Byx said, lifting a hand, suddenly unsure if the phrase was still used here. Then again, the skateboarder had just employed that timeless man with him. Language in the American states had fallen into a sloppy, slangy casualness, and that was no bad thing, in Byx's view. The humans representing financial interests that had stood stubbornly in the way of environmental rescue had couched their arguments in formal terms. Language as a barricade. He was still standing out in the crosswalk. The 'boarder, twisted about, was a few feet away. Give him a nod and he'd be on his way. Give him a smile and something else might follow. So went Byx's thinking. He smiled at the skateboarder. Young twenties. Maybe, in fact, twenty. City-thin, dusky complexion. A wide jaw, full-

lipped. Soft brown eyes—once, "fawn-like" would've been the term. Lots of anthropological jargon, however, had fallen by the wayside in the past two decades. Nobody, for instance, was a "bear" in the morning anymore. People didn't want to be reminded of what was already gone. He saw the young man responding to his smile. He wore a snug T-shirt of haphazard purple and pink slashes, along with roomy, many-pocketed pants that ended halfway on his shins. He had sandals on his feet. "Where you heading in such a hurry?" Byx asked, still smiling. Soft eyes blinked. "Nowhere." "Want to walk awhile instead?" There were no traffic lights, of course, but humming electric pods and rattling bicycles were having to stream around the two of them. The skateboarder brought a sandaled foot down on the rear lip, and the board jumped up into his hand. "Sure," he said. They walked Valencia, in the direction Byx had been going. The young human had a shy way of speaking, dropping into a whisper at the ends of his sentences. His name, he said, was Berry. "Byx." Board tucked tight against his hip, Berry's smooth brow furrowed. "What is that, Dutch?" It surprised Byx. You hardly ever heard anyone citing nationalities. Cultural identity, particularly on this continent, had little meaning. Mass evacuations and relocations had mixed the species, erasing ancestries. "Does that matter?" Byx countered. "Nope." Berry looked at him sidelong. "Maybe you want to stop walking? For a while..." A grin stood out on Byx's lean face. Berry was gazing back into his blue eyes, the heat of the night simmering there, expectantly. * * **

"Jesus, you're hot!" Byx, embracing and being embraced, paused for a chuckle. He felt his own ribs pressing hard against those of the skateboarder. "I don't mean you," said Berry, mock-admonishing; then, reconsidering, "Well, I do mean you. I mean, you are hot. But what I mean is, hot. Temperature. Jesus, you're burning up!" Abruptly he unwrapped his arms from around Byx's torso and took a cautionary step back. "You don't have the Pest, do you...?" Voice trailing off timidly at the question's end. There were places to go, abandoned buildings, even in this relatively populated district where a lot of the housing was still occupied. This place was musty and empty, but it still had a function, as evidenced by the candle and matches left here, and by the large slab of colorless sponge that served trysting visitors as a bed. Berry's skateboard lay on its side beside the candle. The two males hadn't yet reached the bed. "No," Byx said, still chuckling. "No Pest. See?" He raked up his dingy T-shirt. Pest was a kind of catchall name for the various mutating, antibiotics-resistant strains of influenza and respiratory infections that made the rounds every few years or months. Usually such diseases, leftovers from bygone pandemics, were accompanied by fever and high body temperature. Byx brought his laughter under control. This young human man had reasons to be concerned, but Byx didn't want him thinking he was making fun of him. Berry was staring at Byx's hairless chest, which was where the inevitable pustules of those various diseases usually showed up. Only, Berry's soft eyes were gazing with a growing rapture. Thoughts of the Pest had probably already left his head. With a deft little shrug Byx dropped his leather jacket to the gritty floorboards. He peeled the dirty white T-shirt off himself. The night was warm and the air in here close, but he still felt a chill. The Earth's temperature was rising, yes, but it wasn't yet hot enough for comfort. For his comfort, and the comfort of the rest of the Illuminoids. In fact, right now it would still be fatal to those of his breed who hadn't submitted to adaptation.

Still, when he shivered and his nipples came erect, it was as much a matter of excitation. Berry, imitating, shed his shirt, revealing a trunk tight-fleshed and mapped with lean muscle. He was still ogling Byx's chest as he stepped forward again, bending now to flick his tongue over the sharp, raised bud of a nipple. Byx's groin tightened with the swelling of his cock. Berry dropped his mouth fully over the nipple now, batting it with his tongue tip, catching it with his lips, finally grazing it with his teeth. The sensations shortened Byx's breath. He reached down, fingers closing on bare shoulders. With a grunt he hauled Berry upright. Soft eyes were blinking again. Berry's wet mouth hung open. Byx's own fell on it. Their lips mashed together. Byx speared his tongue into the young male's mouth. Their arms snaked around each other once again, bodies coming tightly together. Berry's crotch too was hardening, swelling. It pressed on Byx's. Hips were grinding now. The kiss was a wet, devouring exercise. Vertical was no longer practical. They needed to get horizontal. Luckily the improvised bed was only a few strides away. They got there by scuttling and lurching, neither wanting to break the kiss nor relinquish the embrace. Byx's heart was pounding; blood sang in his veins. Such human mechanisms. Yet he had adapted to them, taking on this physiology willingly, adapting himself to it and to this strange surface environment which was still so much better than the dull familiarity of home. The Below was a fine sanctuary, a place to store the race of the Illuminoids until a time appropriate for their retaking of the world. But it was not a place to live, to experience, to grow. To exercise one's thoughts and body and spirit. And anyway, Byx liked this human shell of his. Such excitements! Such sensations! There came a fumbling and tumbling, a wresting away of clothing and the start of a wild grappling as the two male bodies, naked now, rolled together onto the foamy slab. Byx's hands slid across the smooth dark flesh. Berry grabbed and groped with adolescent fervor. Their mouths met again hungrily. Tongues tangled. Berry's fingers raked through Byx's dark untidy hair. Byx's fingers dug into a taut hemisphere of Berry's ass.

He felt Berry's fiercely hard cock press his flat belly, brush his thigh. Byx reached between them, as they still flung themselves from one side of the slab to the other, and closed a hand around both their shafts. He gripped, cock against cock. Meat throbbed on meat. A sweet trembling moved through both men. Berry opened his mouth on a groan. Byx squeezed tighter, pressing his balls against Berry's. With his thumb he brushed Berry's cockhead, sliding through the oily dribble already seeping from it. "I need to..." the human was saying, "I have to..." Not trailing off in shyness now, but in panting excitement, he thrashed about and came free from Byx's grip. Then there was a violent wrestling, and Byx found himself on his back, sinking into the drab sponginess, with bare smooth shoulders pushing apart his thighs. He lifted his head to watch Berry as, on squirming elbows, he plunged his mouth down onto Byx's rampant cock. It was a single furious dive, a perfect fearless swallowing. Byx gasped. Berry's encircling lips fell to the hilt, to the tickling wiry curls. The pressure of his mouth was intense. The deep-throating successful, Berry now took a moment to savor it. He held Byx in his mouth for several full seconds. Byx felt the warmth, the living wetness. The sensation, when he had experienced it for the first time years ago, had astounded him. Even then, long ago in human terms, he had understood that this was something almost beyond the sexual. An ultimate intimacy, a sublime connectivity. The pause ended, and Berry's head started to rise and fall. It was—and Byx had expected this from first seeing him at the crosswalk—a perfect cocksucking rhythm, completely skillful. The young male's tongue lavished him. His cheeks remained caved in around Byx's shaft, making a firm suction. One hand cupped Byx's balls, and the sweet cradling intensified the pleasure. Byx reached down a hand, almost blindly. His eyelids were fluttering. Candlelight threw chaotic moving shadows on the wall. His fingers grazed the curve of the shoulder, tracing the

bones of the socket. Berry's mouth continued to lift and drop, with much slurping and grunting. Beyond the bobbing head, the youngster's ass was thrust toward the cobweb-strung ceiling. Yellowish light spilled and writhed across the two shapely hillocks. With Byx's fingers tightening on Berry's shoulder and levering up with his other arm, it was still a struggle to get Berry's mouth to let go of his cock. The skateboarder made a hungry mewling sound that might have been all he had left in the way of language at the moment. Again it was a kind of wrestling. They grappled on the foamy slab, though Byx had a more deliberate intention, while Berry was just bucking and flailing, lost in the sexual delirium. Eventually the darkly complected man was arranged on his hands and knees. Byx swiped two fingers across his tongue, then smeared the digits over the waiting hole. Berry shivered at the contact. Byx, spit-slick cock throbbing, moved into place. The pucker grabbed him. He slid his cockhead in, retaining enough decorum to be gentle about it. It was, after all, an age of good manners, and one didn't just slam one's cock home in someone's ass without first determining vulnerabilities and tolerances. He was making a slow easy ingress of it, inch by languid inch, when Berry's head turned on a narrow neck. Soft eyes were soft no more; rather, they were ablaze with lust and ferocity. Lips curled, teeth showed, and these words came, "Fuck me, motherfucker! Do it, goddamn you!" Byx knew a command when he heard one. Knees planted, he took clenching hold of the pronounced hipbones. In a single lunge he buried himself in the luscious ass. Connectivity in another form, and every form was beautiful. He set about hammering into Berry's hole. Impacts were hard, jarring. He heard and felt his balls slapping against taut flesh. His fingertips went white on Berry's flanks. But, with a sense of fairness and, once again, protocol, he reached a hand around Berry's hip, all while maintaining the assaultive thrusting tempo. Berry's head whipped from side to side when Byx's hand closed for a second time around his cock. More growls followed, jungle shrieks. Loveliness.

Byx needed to handle him only for what seemed a few seconds; even so, in that span he was sure he'd pounded into that ass a dozen more times. Then Berry's mahogany-hard cock jetted in his hand. The spasm took his entire body with it so he contorted wildly. And with his hole still clutching Byx, that final fit of energy served as the ultimate prompting. Byx's cock spurted deep inside the male. Each wrench was a vital pleasure. With his eyelids again fluttering, the shadows squirmed like phantoms on the wall. After a time he disengaged himself. His half-erect cock slapped wetly against his thigh as he draped himself across the foam. Berry, lying on a hip, was blinking. He looked around with an expression of someone who recognizes a place but wonders how he's gotten there. His gaze shifted to Byx, and his smile was young and bashful. Berry said, "Um, that was..." He wanted a special word, Byx guessed, so he supplied it, "Hot." A grin lit Berry's face, which wore a sheen of sweat. In fact, his whole body was moist. "Yeah. Hot. Crazy hot, man." He shook his head as he made a first move toward rising from their bed. Other people probably used this place, and he didn't want to occupy it too long. Byx turned, looked around for the various articles of his clothes. The slab shifted as Berry stood. "I mean hot," he said, as if picking up words he'd left off earlier. "I mean, like you've got some crazy heat inside you. But that can't be, right?"

Chapter Two One Less Thing to Carry

The mother was telling the daughter a hard truth. It was a reality concerning children, and the confrontational language, delivered in so blunt—even ruthless—a manner, charged the scene with discomfort. It was, Val Lucien thought with gratification, literally squirm-inducing. The lobby of the defunct commercial building was a South of Market site others in the theater community had used before. Lighting the place had been easy enough; there were plenty of savvy techies who could rig up a space with minimal fuss. That was the nature of the craft. More, though, it was pretty standard nature these days. People improvised, jerry-rigged, contrived. It was a theme Val had used in previous works. And those efforts kept things running, maintaining the final semblance of civil structure here in San Francisco. But that wasn't the theme he had employed for this piece, being presented to an audience for the first time tonight. Val had chosen a different anchoring concept to hold down this drama when he'd started on it two months ago. It was the logical extension of that earlier theme. The pluck and ad-lib antics of humanity would only take the race so far. What was on stage (there was no "stage" but one couldn't escape the term) was what waited beyond that so far. In fact, this mother-daughter scene expressed the new motif succinctly. From the back of the lobby Val Lucien watched the shadowed shoulders bunch, heard the creak of chairs as people—not fidgeting from boredom, he was confident—tried to find positions that would make the harsh moment on stage a bit easier to bear. What the mother had to say about children was something no parent should say to an offspring. Val had used that premise to construct the scene. In his work he always sought a specific emotional response. Here the audience was meant to be shocked, but for a specific reason, not merely for the jolt of the words. He wanted that thought in their heads right now: What the mother had to say about children was something no parent should say to an offspring.

There was more to come. The threads of the drama still had to be knotted, then neatly cut. The players would do their jobs, he was sure. Sitting at the lobby's rear, at two removes really, Val saw the scene end and the next swing into view. Easy staging. Voices carried well. Scant props. It was a decent turnout. By now, after five years as a serious playwright and three years as one who was taken seriously, he could expect an audience to show up at something to which his name was attached. The city had a theater scene. These days, that alone was an accomplishment. Of course, many of those gathered here tonight were artists themselves. They painted and wrote and made music. All were setting down, into permanent form, reality as they saw it. Artists absorbed reality, then processed it and drew their conclusions. Art was the afterthought, meticulously pondered. Val sniffed a quiet laugh to himself. These were the sort of thoughts that if said aloud took on an eye-rolling pomposity. He settled back in his seat, feeling that with the mother-confronts-daughter scene now presented and appreciated, the remainder of the play couldn't fail. San Francisco had made him a playwright. Being among artistically inclined people had, he was sure, excited in him an urge to create which had not been there before. Certainly he didn't have memories of childhood impulses toward creative expression. There had been no time for that. Or, if there had been time, other matters had seemed more urgent. Well, more than seemed. His family had had to deal with the severities of Arizona growing day by day as it transformed into the Southwest Mega-desert. He remembered the ordeals as games, since that was how his parents shaped the increasingly desperate situations for him. Not, he thought now, to shield him from the reality, but to keep him functional. A child could be useful in a game, once he'd had the rules explained and knew the goal. He would be less useful, maybe useless, in a real crisis. Thirst was a game called Quench, which was punctuated by magic words you could only

say at certain times. Waiting in Relief lines was The Snake: something about how it writhed and you had to hang on, keep your place. The game clearest in his memories from Arizona was One Less Thing to Carry. That had been simply the packing, the loading, the leaving. On the journey out, when he was five years old, they had played a whole new slew of games. Probably the family vehicle had limped and sputtered and barely made it beyond the reach of the widening consuming wasteland. Probably the hardships had been fierce. But Val couldn't now conjure up any adult feelings of horror at the circumstances. His parents had kept it an adventure for him, recasting the reality that was right before his eyes. Even still, it had taken the artistic community of this city to show him what could come of such reinterpretations. The notion had struck him late. The family exodus had aimed for the far north, to a still-rainy (then, anyway) Canada, but the excursion had fallen well short. Again, not a disaster or travail, at least as he remembered it. San Francisco. Suddenly it was the destination, the arrival a cause for celebration. This, he knew now clearly, wasn't entirely invention on his parents' part. The celebrating was warranted. Quench, he noticed, disappeared. They had water; they had more and possibly better food. There came shelters, several in succession, that were called home. Finally, there was somewhere with electrical current. Arizona, as it shriveled, also withered in Val's memory, becoming mostly a place defined by the games he had played there. Those same games had given shape to his earlier works. Someone had suggested he write. Pragmatic advice: You should write. Like judging young muscle tone and suggesting the career of athlete. (Certainly that wasn't a career anymore.) Val had been nonplussed, but he had taken on the idea and gone about considering it. Probably it was the curt practical way the notion had been introduced to him that had given him the confidence to, after a seemly period of contemplation, do as he was advised. Write. So, he wrote. In the space of a few completed godfuckingawful short fiction pieces, he saw his first theme emerge: plucky adaptivity, humans reimagining their circumstances, taking what was at hand and making do.

That, for quite some time, had stayed with him. Meanwhile, of course, he'd had to learn how to construct basic dramatic scenarios. He saw these as blueprints, hard inanimate lines. It was art as engineering. The acquaintance who had first advised him to write later said she regretted doing so. "The world needs cooling," she had said. "But not this kind of chilling." But later still, she had complimented him lavishly on his first success, and had since, maybe rightfully, taken credit for every word he had ever written. More, she claimed to have put him on his way toward writing for the stage. The anecdote went: "His dialogue leapt. But everything between read like stage directions. And I told him so." As Val remembered it, the very real incident had gone a lot like that, only she had said "instructions," not "stage directions," leaving the final realization of the proper use of his abilities to him. It had been a relief, truly, to jettison the prose and write only those pure strings of spoken words. It had felt at first like doing half the work, and that feeling had never entirely gone away. At first, he had been left with the sense of things unfinished. Three works for the stage were written, set aside, returned to, fussed over. Two of them, after he had at last declared them done, were produced. One was his first success. Tonight's offering he'd entitled On the Winning Side, which had a smirky Rule Britannia crickety sound to it that he had decided, after whimsically concocting it, he actually liked. All the story threads wrapped nicely around the title. The winning side here wasn't any kind of side. There was no contest. No competition. The game, as the mother in the earlier scene had said, was already over. Five minutes before the final lines were spoken, Val Lucien spotted the male with the dark tousled hair. He was on the far side of the lobby, also in the rear. A lighting change on the stage picked him out, or rather gleamed on the leather jacket he wore. That shine caught Val's attention from the corner of his eye. He had been restlessly waiting for the show to end, impatient with it now. He was pleased with the piece, to be sure, but it already felt long past to him somehow, a good work

growing overly familiar, losing a small measure of its strength with every line spoken. The man was visible in profile. For the past hour plus, Val had mostly been watching the backs of heads. Here he had a face to look at. High cheekbones, pert nose. Were the eyes blue? Could he possibly pick out the color from this distance? No, of course not. But that didn't mean the eyes weren't a shade of piercing blue; didn't mean that at all. The words being professionally recited on the stage, that part of the lobby bordered by two banks of defunct elevators, were now like voices unclear and ignored in another room. A kind of vertigo went through Val, starting at his feet, then twirling upward until he blinked at the dizziness. The male was now grinning. That grin had cut across the trim features while Val's sight had momentarily wavered. His chair creaked as he rose. Without regard for the actors reciting his words, Val stumbled and fumbled across the lobby's rear. The tall windows were painted white to keep away the oglers and reflect light better, so this space didn't cook during the day. He made a terrible racket, but if anyone turned to glare he didn't see, and he heard no one shushing him. Two seats away he abruptly sat. The male with thick dark rumpled hair continued to grin, which electrified his whole face. Yes, the eyes were blue, radiantly so, it seemed. Eyebrows arched thinly over them. He had a sleek figure. He was twenty-five or so, but that so could stand for anything. If twenty-five, then he was four years Val's junior, who was himself trim with fair hair and easy, pleasing features. Val continued his close careful study since the man didn't turn his way, thus not forcing him to turn away, embarrassed to be caught staring. At the moment, though, Val doubted he could have torn his gaze from the sight of this slim, confident male beauty. He did not know this person. Others here tonight he didn't know by name, but they were still recognizable, of a kind, the usual suspects of the artistic community who could be counted on to turn out for an event like this. Neither had Val seen this man arrive and take this distant seat, even with nearer ones to the action available. Probably eighty people had come. Taking it as a percentage of the city's

population, that was impressive. Even with San Francisco a ghost of its former self, people still wanted to see a work by Val Lucien. That was gratifying. Ego-building. But it was unimportant now, as the final bits of dialogue were flung around the stage. It still sounded like conversation from another room to Val, even though he knew each word and could even be pressed to reveal what had decided, during the rewrites, many specific word choices he had ultimately made. On stage, Claire, the daughter, was fending off a last desperate accusation laid against her by her lover. They were bitter words, pointless—but it was a pointlessness he had striven for through several do-overs of the closing lines. The blackout took away the gleam of the man's jacket. A leather jacket. Who wore a leather jacket indoors? Who wore a leather jacket at all? For a brief second there was a persistence-of-vision thing where Val continued to see those bright blue eyes, but maybe that was just the imagination of an overworked playwright, opening night jitters, whatever you like. During those seconds of dark, which cued the audience to start applauding, Val slid onto the next empty seat. The male was clapping loudly. When the lights came up, the grin was there, wound even tighter perhaps, stretching the corners of his mouth. Val, still staring, was too close to ignore. Even so, the man in leather kept up the applause, perhaps goading the others to sustain the huzzahs as the performers stepped up for bows, for humble pantomimed thanks. On the Winning Side was done, and it was natural, or normal anyway, for Val at this time to be emotionally past the work, already thinking of what was to come next. Also normal for him was to have several pieces lined up, ready to be taken on. He accumulated ideas, as did every artist of every stripe. With him, however, though surely with some others too, a kind of processing went on, where the dribs and drabs of ideas were sorted and squeezed while he was engaged in a current work. As a result, he usually had two, even three, ready-made pieces available to start on at any time. Some ideas he'd skipped over repeatedly, and some of these had benefitted from the added time to ferment. At this moment, however, he found his mind was the proverbial blank page. Quite suddenly the dark-haired male turned, piercing him with—indeed—piercing blue

eyes, and said as if continuing an earlier conversation, "When the mother is telling Claire that she shouldn't get pregnant, first I thought the mother was saying she regretted having the daughter. But at some point I figured out that the mother meant nobody ought to get pregnant. No more children for anybody anymore. Then I realized that the woman, the daughter, Claire, was figuring it out at the same time I was." Val moved his tongue in a dry mouth. In the distance the applause dissipated and the lights brightened fully. It might be whole minutes before someone spotted him and members from the audience converged with congratulations and criticisms; or that might happen much sooner. He forced dry words. "That was just how I'd hoped it would be. That timing." "You—wrote it?" "I did." Something happened with those eyes; somehow the blueness glowed brighter still. But when the male said, "It's good work," Val himself glowed with the praise—yes, call it praise. Desire prickled him. "You, ah…" What? Come here often? It was the ironic tonguetying of the man who wrote sharp concise dialogue. Later, he guessed, he would laugh at himself. At the moment, however, he felt opportunity slipping. He lunged. "What's your name?" Not a lunging instant too late, it looked like. The man rose, leather creaking. He wore jeans and boots. His T-shirt was gray with use. He said, "Byx." It took Val another instant to realize he'd been answered. Byx. A name. But Byx was now stepping around his chair, taking strides toward the lobby doors, which the usher had opened, letting in the night's sultriness. Byx gave Val another grin, then slipped out. "There he is!" someone said. Val too now rose, and they came for him, with aggressive congratulations and critiques. He braced for the onslaught with his body and intellect; his spirit had already fled through the doors. * * **

In a group they left the commercial building's converted lobby, a racket of artistic opinion that became the need to huddle and confer. Val ended up inhaling clouds of marijuana smoke in a bar with moldy walls. He did his best not to be the center of attention, was fairly successful at that, and got out of there after a time. He drifted past the darkened venue where his play was now a memory, not remembering consciously setting out for here. No one in a leather jacket was waiting for him. At home, a unit in a building with a rooftop windmill that provided reliable electrical flow, he heated water for tea, rank herbal stuff from the block garden. He found some hard bread and decided to melt cheese over it, but the very old microwave just fizzled when he went to turn it on. He hit the button several times, but it was dead. He said over it in graveside tones, "One less thing to carry," laughed, and sat with his tea as the windows started to pale. The bread softened as he held it over the steaming cup. Alone, tired, exhilarated, yearning, he said again and again, "Byx. Byx. Byx. Byx..."

Chapter Three Scratching

Val Lucien waggled the gray plug until the socket let it go. It was the end of a many years' mating. He had lived in this apartment for quite some time, paying rent, withstanding the jibes of acquaintances who wondered: why pay, when there's so much empty housing in the city? But he liked the faithful on-off of lights and the even more necessary cooling of airconditioning during the daytime. The city was hotter now than it had been even, say, five years ago. The trend was no secret. The planet's warming was gravity, inertia, or any other inescapable physical principle. Val remembered the squats he'd called home when he and his parents had first arrived in San Francisco, though he couldn't quite remember the discomforts that must have come with those bare sanctuaries. He could, however, now imagine as a writer the hardships he must have endured, and that was enough to keep him paying his landlords and being grateful for the windmill on the building's roof. The microwave oven had had a good run. He'd heard of built-in obsolescence, products designed to fail after a teasingly short period of functionality. You heard such things and you had to wonder. Had people really been that wasteful, that greedy? Yeah, probably. He was awake with the sunset. It was not when artists normally woke. That was for the muzzy midnight, with wine-thick tongue and the nudging of an anonymous daytime playmate from one's bed. But here he was, on his feet, the light shrinking outside his windows. With the microwave unplugged he lifted it off the counter and set it on the floor. Meantime, he drank the tea left over from last morning, ate slices of cold meat, and chomped his way through an apple. In his head, last night's babble at the bar still played. Overlapping words, violent gesticulations, the parts of his play hauled out and had at. Food helped to pump blood into his brain, to wash out memories of the post-show celebrating. On the Winning Side would play again tonight. He had not attended a second

performance of any of his works in quite some time. He was confident the cast would carry off the piece as efficiently as they had once already. Really, he was an unnecessary part now. Last night he had watched the audience watch the show more than he'd actually observed the activity on stage. The play was its own entity now. He had exhaled the words, and they'd been drawn in by others and breathed out anew. Val laughed at the pompous thought, then was suddenly rescued from it as he realized that a fellow playwright had said that very pretentious thing to him at that moldy-walled bar last night. Val felt relief. As he dressed in loose striped pants and a light shirt, it occurred to him that he had already decided he would return to that South of Market venue tonight. He would see another showing of his own play. Or, rather, he would be there to look around, to wait, to hope for another appearance by Byx. There was no one and nothing to rescue him from this thought. It was entirely his own. He couldn't blame the urge on anyone but himself. Even Byx was innocent. Certainly the male hadn't done anything to encourage Val. He could still see the man's blue eyes. He ran phantom fingers into the pile of black hair. He wondered about the taste of those lips, the feel of his tongue, the warmth of his seed— Val banged the empty tea cup down on his small kitchen table. It broke the adolescently charged thoughts for the moment. Still, he would go to tonight's performance, and no doubt take with him these same embarrassing sexual yearnings. Collecting shoes and a few other sundry items for his errand, he wondered why he hadn't dragged some young thing back with him from last night's revels. Surely there must have been someone among the celebrants whom he could have cut from the herd and led home. He'd been the man of the hour. That, traditionally, was rewarded with a willing bedmate or two or more. Come to think of it, hadn't there been a pale blond-haired boy caressing his thigh at some point? It was all fish-eyed by the pot smoke, a lot of which Val hadn't even deliberately inhaled. Dressed and ready, with the night just dusking, Val pushed it all out of his head. He was

glad for the clear-cut simplicity of this errand he needed to do, which would keep him occupied until the opening curtain. Whether or not Byx showed up for a second viewing wouldn't matter until then, when it would matter a great deal to Val. For now, though, he was going scratching. * * ** Hiring a car meant hiring a driver, since Val had never learned how to operate a vehicle. He'd had other options. He had a few friends and more acquaintances who would have lent their transports and themselves to this venture of his. This wasn't an unusual undertaking, and for some reason people enjoyed seeing an "eminent" person—he was, after all, a successful playwright—going about his or her practical daily activities. I helped Val Lucien go scratching. That was like a prize to some people. But doing that would have also meant a kind of continuance of last night: talk about the play, about art in general and art in the very specific. He didn't want to find himself arguing about watercolors or, far worse, defending some work of his own. To justify one's artistic output was to invalidate it. It was a fight lost the minute you engaged in it. To borrow from himself: there was no winning side. Sixteenth and Geneva was the best nearby corner for what he was looking for, even though no signs designated the spot. San Francisco, as noted by many, was notorious for lacking street signs. Still, Val, longtime resident of the city and the neighborhood, knew the names through the sort of oral tradition you picked up after a while. At that corner, where as expected several willing hirees were waiting, he engaged a two-seater with a small but serviceable cargo space, and the wiry youngster attached to the vehicle set off, with Val as passenger and employer, out of the Mission's valley. The sky was still pale, though the sun itself had set. San Francisco wasn't like Arizona. It didn't consistently reach such searing temperatures, but it also had atmosphere, cloud cover, so it held the day's heat longer, as it was doing now. Val sweated against the mesh covering his seat. The car's windows were chipped, and

the engine buzzed louder than it probably should have, indicating it needed servicing. But the machine moved, and it climbed the necessary hills. Much of the city's remaining population had settled in the Mission and Noe Valley and the downtown. Outside that lay a great deal of fallow land. Unused housing, though some of it was in fact used by the vagabonds, going from squat to squat, much as Val and his parents had done years ago. Really, the city was still a city only east of Twin Peaks. But there was more of San Francisco proper, an outlying territory, whole swaths of which were truly and, if you wanted to admit it, forever abandoned. That was where you went when you wanted to go scratching. They put the Peaks behind them, and made their way along roads that were weedy and crumbling. The driver was young but not clumsily so, and he handled the car with a stately maturity. No roughshod riding, no unnecessary speeding, but no dawdling either. Val wasn't paying by the hour. The headlights picked out the obstacles and yawning divots decorating the streets. Still far ahead the Pacific was dimming. The sun, no more fearsome than it had been a hundred thousand years ago, was heading for an Asia that might be only a gigantic mound of corpses by now. Who knew? It wasn't the sun that had changed. Sol was as Sol did. Everything that was happening was, of course, the Earth's fault. Like the partner in a relationship who becomes the stranger, who does in the love affair. Earth had ruined itself but remained locked with its local star, trapped in a partnership that was now fatally abusive. There was a one-act in that, Val thought, but in the first reflection that follows any new idea, tracing it through to imagined reality, he was already inclined to reject it. Not that it wasn't a workable idea; it was. Two characters. Earth and Sol. Or to be cute: Ernie and Saul. Ernie spends the full twenty minutes of the playlet walking a circle around the—preferably corpulent, if you could find a fat actor—other, who sits in a massive chair, plump legs propped up, eating, belching demurely, excusing him or herself. (Or Saul could be Sally.) Ernie perspires, coughs, shudders, goes in and out of delirium, but gruesomely maintains his orbit without hitch. He rants against phantoms. He speaks of the needs of his greedy children, meaning the sentient bipeds

inhabiting his surface. Saul/Sally offers advice, recommends a holiday at the beach, put your toes in the water, breathe some fresh air. Some kind of emotional twist would have to take place at that point between the two entities, a hint of a romantic past perhaps, of better times now gone. It wouldn't be difficult to assemble that part of the piece, though in this first contemplation Val didn't know what the exact components would be. Still, the seated character would continue to dole out frivolous advice, but now, following the revelations, this would have assumed a sinister tone. With every cheerful guidance, the sun would tell the Earth it was too late to do anything about its condition—and too bad you didn't take my counsel when it might have meant something, idiot! Neat, fatalistic, easily written, easily acted, very likely easily absorbed by an audience. But with the first flush fading, Val saw that the idea was juvenile. Had his artistic inclinations been awakened at a much earlier age, he might well have written a piece like that in adolescence. Granted, he probably would have botched it, purpling up the dialogue and making the broken romance between the characters far too personal. Yet the structure, Val Lucien the adult saw with certainty, would have been the same. "Here's good." The imagined stage vanished, and Val was still sitting and sweating next to his young driver. The district had once been called the Sunset. Val had seen numerous paintings of the place; it was a favorite, or had been, among painters, at least until enough art had been produced from the rows of deserted, sand-blasted streets to make the vistas mawkish. Probably this part of the city had never been too pretty. They had stopped well short of the actual beach, but dingy sand was piled against every westward face of every standing structure. Grains blew across the decomposing asphalt in a faint wind. The houses were leeched of color. The engine's humming cut out, and the driver—red-haired, a mouth that didn't quite close all the way—stepped out, suddenly with a crowbar in hand which he must have slipped from under his seat. Val too got out. It was cooler here, by several degrees probably, than in the

Mission, but he didn't wonder why there weren't organized populations living out here. The scenery was just too grim. The Sunset was a cautionary tale everybody had heard far too many times. Ancient stucco homes were being slowly pulverized. Salt air ate hungrily. Everything was turning into Egypt. A flashlight clicked on in the driver's other hand, a powerful beam which he swept toward a nearby structure. Val nodded, and they went toward it, climbing the front steps. The crowbar dug a chunk out of the jamb, the wood like the stale bread Val had eaten last morning. But inside they found the place had already been had at. Earlier scratchers must have gotten in by some other access. The interior was plundered and unnecessarily roughed up. They moved on to the next house. The two mummified corpses they found laid out on the moldering living room carpet made this seem even more like desert tomb raiding. The bodies were bloodless, with no gender or odor whatever. The drab sand had gotten in through a broken window and lay everywhere. The flashlight swung through the room, and the two men followed it into the kitchen. Glass crunched underfoot. There was still a faint glow of the day coloring the window above the dry sink. Figurines lined the sill: a fairy, a dolphin, a horse with rider. "Here you go." Val examined the microwave on the tiled counter. It appeared serviceable. The driver continued, "We can test it. At the car. You want help with that?" Val was rocking the plug loose from the wall. "I've got it." From outside, echoing through the emptiness, came a coyote howl. It was taken up by two, three, four others. Val, writerly impulses still working despite his having already rejected the idea, realized what the nature of the relationship between sun and Earth, Saul/Sally and Ernie, should be. Not a romance. The Earth had come from the sun as primal matter, breaking loose from the nuclear inferno. But it had cooled, grown distant, though it was unable to shake its eternal proximity to the great gas giant. Doomed to wander about it forever. Worse, the offspring had had a change of heart and was now growing hotter in feeble imitation of its parent.

Val wrapped the cord around the microwave oven and picked it up. "Let's go." Something had drawn the coyotes to the car. They were stalking around it now. The driver, framed in the house's doorway ahead of Val, flicked off his flashlight. He turned, with a ridge of upper teeth showing in that mouth that wouldn't properly close, and said, "We have to just wait till they go." He backed into the house, and Val stepped back with him into the living room with the two mummies. Quietly the red-haired driver closed the violated front door. Val stood, hugging the microwave to his chest, and thought with sudden unpleasant urgency that he would miss the second showing of his play if they didn't get out of here in time. And that would mean, terribly, that he would miss the chance, as unlikely as it was, to see Byx again. As he drew breath to let out a sigh of disappointment, the first gunshot sounded in the street.

Chapter Four Smoking Gun

"Leave it! C'mon, goddammit, leave it!" The driver's hand caught the shirt's thin material at Val's shoulder and pulled. It staggered him a step, but he continued to hug the microwave oven to himself, knowing here was the whole point of their having come on this venture and that to give this treasure up would be some unreasoning step backwards. But another gunshot sounded outside—strange he knew that was what it was, never to his knowing having heard a firearm discharged before—and Val finally heaved the microwave onto the couch. Without the flashlight it was dim in the living room, almost impossible to see, in fact. Val turned and hesitated, knowing those two desiccated corpses were lying nearby. He didn't want to step on one of them, and hear and feel that sickening crackle. Panic was rushing through him. This was an emergency situation, but he was dithering. Well, what the hell did anyone expect? He was a playwright. "C'mon, this way!" The driver caught him again, this time seizing Val's hand. He had a strong, sure grip, and he led Val around the mummies and through the house's front room. They reached the broken-out window. The driver tore down the drape from its rod. Dust rained down on them. He flung the fabric over the sill, over the few glass fragments still in the frame. They had climbed crumbling brick stairs to reach the front door; this was the house's second story. The driver went through first, and Val heard the crunch of impact below. An instant later a voice rose, a stage whisper if ever Val had heard one: "It's okay. It's a soft landing." Which made Val realize that the driver, this youngster, had already determined that he needed to be cajoled along, coddled, as one would do for a frightened child. It wasn't an incorrect assessment. Val didn't exactly resent it. But it aroused a sudden mettle in him. The back of the house faced toward the ocean, still blocks away, and he landed in a drift

of sand. His heart, which had started pounding at the sound of that first gunshot, thumped loudly on his eardrums. Sweat prickled coolly on him. But already he felt more focused, more capable. To prove it, he asked, quietly and in a very deliberate tone, "Who's doing the shooting?" A fairly stupid question, but it was the asking in that steady voice that was important. "I don't know," said the red-haired youth. He reached out for Val's hand. "I'm okay." The faint sky glow revealed their surroundings. The tops of fences showed, banked with sand and other debris. They could escape any which way from here, it seemed to Val. The driver still had his crowbar in hand. He said, "If you're okay, you ought to get over that fence and hide. I've got to get my scoot." His vehicle. His livelihood. Surely this job was more than he'd figured on. It was supposed to be just a scratching jaunt to the avenues. Now it was something a lot more dangerous. But it couldn't be totally outside his experience, considering how calmly he was responding. There hadn't been a gunshot for probably a full minute by now. Rushing the words together before he changed his mind, Val said, "Give me the flashlight. I'll circle around the other way." Val ignored the tiny part of himself that said he was only making this heroic offer for the experience of it, just to test it out emotionally, so to serve as future writing fodder. The small voice, before he snuffed it out, added that he would regret this valiant impulse. The driver dropped the flashlight onto his palm. Val's fingers closed around it, thumb finding the switch but not activating it. "I'm going four or five houses down," the young man said, overbite teeth glinting, "then cutting over onto the street. Whoever's got the gun might just be hunting those coyotes"—he said it cuy-oats, vaguely like something out of Old West mythology—"but I still got to protect my wheels." The flashlight, Val found as he swung it, had a good heft. He said, "I'll go the other way.

Maybe I can use the light to distract the shooter." "Be careful. Watch out for the coyotes too." "I will." For the first time the driver's mouth snapped all the way shut, pressed into a grim determined line. The red head turned, and footsteps crunched away into the dark. Val turned and started off the other way. * * ** Byx had been playing the shadow. It was a trick of his kind, the Illuminoids, perhaps some prehistoric hunting instinct from a time when they had roamed the surface. It was a means of stalking. Byx, since the previous night, had made himself a shadow to the author of that play he had seen on a whim. He had followed the playwright to amuse himself. Strange, though, how that theater piece of his had stayed with him. Byx had arrived just at the start, the last one through the doors. He had seen other works of the stage at far grander venues, enacted on other continents, before the human culture had started to truly collapse worldwide. He had seen plays drenched with the ages of humankind, penned by masters, performed by artistes. But that piece last night—it had touched him, he dared say. And afterward, meeting the man who had written the work, that too had moved Byx, enough to spend all this time following that individual around town. Well, why not? His time was his own, more so than most others of his ilk. Better to fritter away that time up here than to hunker in the Below, that marble tomb, submitting to the Illuminare Supreme, who was a harsh being. As well as a fundamentally tedious one. He grinned to himself as this blasphemy, but it was only blasphemy down there, not up here on the planet's slowly heating surface, an environment still too cool for his breed at the present, though he had adapted to it and so could others if they'd only give themselves to the process. It was, again, the Supreme holding the rest of the Illuminoids back from that, Byx knew. They would wait, with their stubborn patience, for the world to restore itself to what they would call its natural and most conducive state.

It was arrogance. Yes, they were harsh and tedious and arrogant, the Illuminare Supreme and all who so zealously followed him. It was an arrogance little different from that of the selfdestructive humans who had obliterated their own habitat's ability to sustain their kind. Earth, ultimately, had not been manufactured with one particular dominant species in mind. The world changed, and various breeds had their turns. Illuminoids. Dinosaurs. Humans. No one had sovereignty, not permanent sovereignty anyway. The Earth wasn't an intended project. It had simply occurred, just as had all the living forms that had dominated it, each in its time. Only, the time of the Illuminoids, unlike the others, would come again soon enough. Byx didn't deny this. The playwright had piqued his curiosity. Byx had seen in that play a depth of understanding, an acceptance almost profound. He called to mind once again the scene he had discussed afterward with the work's author: Val Lucien, according to the playbill printed on tissue-thin recycled paper. In that scene a mother had spoken with shocking frankness to her daughter, a daughter who'd come seeking advice about motherhood. The older woman had told her child the truth. To the audience watching, Byx understood, it was a terrible truth, something that went against the primal instincts of the species as a whole. No more children, no more breeding. It was time to quit. Time to surrender all future history. In another fifty years or so, Earth would no longer be habitable for humans anywhere on its surface. Why prolong the death struggle? Who wanted to be the last poor suffering bastard choking and gasping on the oncefrozen tundra of the polar north? In that scene in the play the fictitious mother had argued that nobody should want to be that final forlorn individual, representative of a race whose era had irrevocably passed. Never had Byx heard a human being say it so bluntly. And since this Val Lucien had conjured this speech which the mother on the stage had recited, the sentiment was his, thus, Byx's fixation on the man, which had led him all the way out to these sandy hinterlands. Byx was an Illuminoid, despite the aspect of humanity he wore. When he wanted, he

could slip through space, crossing awesome distances if he wanted. Keeping up with the vehicle Val Lucien had hired earlier had proved no trouble. But now a new factor had been introduced: jeopardy. Shots fired, several of them, from a gun, an implement which humans had used historically to visit harm and death on each other. Remaining unseen, the preternatural stalker, he had observed the two males as they'd entered the forsaken houses, apparently scavenging. Having been in this city some while, Byx knew it was a common practice. Few goods were manufactured anymore. It was easier and more efficient simply to scrounge among what earlier evacuees had left behind. But the coyotes had come. They too were not uncommon, various forms of wildlife having infiltrated the city's traditional limits. You could find bobcats and foxes and even the occasional cougar in reaches like these. The coyotes weren't a serious problem for the two scavengers. The person with the firearm, however, was. Byx, one with the shadows beneath the pale night sky, saw the gunman move along the street. He fancied he could smell the man's baked-in sweat, hear the rasp of whiskers on his face. A hermit. Someone who lived out here among this desolation, alone. A madman with brains seared by the daily broil, wandering the apocalyptic avenues. He probably used the gun for hunting. He must be after the coyotes, but he was approaching the vehicle in which Val and the second man had arrived. There were other transports on the street, but they were decayed sandy mounds, abandoned years ago. This, was new, functioning. It meant visitors. It meant, to the hermit, intruders. Crouched by stairs half a block away, Byx saw the slovenly man with the rifle stop at the vehicle. The coyotes had scattered except for the one that had gone down soundlessly, skull lanced by a bullet. This, then, was the hermit's kill, the hunt successful. But evidently the car interested him more. He was now poking around it. But there was another figure suddenly on the scene, slipping out onto the street, stealthily, from the mouth of a narrow alley. An object swung in his grip, a crowbar. It was the man with red hair, the vehicle's owner whom the playwright had hired. On quick, quiet feet he

made for the armed whiskered recluse, who was opening a door of the transport, stooping to look inside. The scuff of a footfall alerted him at the last second and the madman rose, turning, bringing the gun to bear. A finger tightened, and the instrument rang. At virtually the same instant still another player emerged onto the street's stage. The playwright, of course, Val Lucien. He was further down the block, holding the lit flashlight, and was swinging it wildly while raising war-whoops of noise. The hermit whirled around even as the red-haired man dropped to the ground. Either shot or ducking out of the line of fire, Byx didn't know; he was much more concerned with whatever the hell it was Val thought he was doing. The beam twirled crazily, and the hermit seemed to take Val's cries as some kind of challenge. Letting loose a grating roar of his own, he charged down the street. He lifted the rifle, an aging semi-corroded weapon, though the limp coyote which the man was now racing past testified to its effectiveness. Byx rose from his hiding place by the stairs. He could overtake the gun-wielding man easily, but that would leave him visible. The playwright would see. Byx didn't wish to reveal himself, much less his nature. He had traveled far and wide for some years now without disclosing his true identity to any of these humans. But he was hardly helpless to intervene. He had adapted to this world, but he was still an Illuminoid, still a creature whose basic substance was primordial stellar matter. He stretched out an arm, stiffened the fingers, brought forth some small burst of that essence. * * ** The wildman was charging with his weapon like something come alive from a history of warfare—a Minuteman or Rebel, musketeer or doughboy. Val hadn't had to worry about the coyotes, after all; they'd fled, all but the unlucky one. A surge of instinct had made Val do what he was doing, raising all this noise and waving the flashlight around. Divert the wildman, draw him away from the driver. Well, that had

worked. The scraggly, bearded, long-haired, rag-wearing man had indeed turned all his attention toward Val, and was racing at him with a ghastly lunatic's cry, surely intending to shoot him just as he had already done to the youngster with the red hair whose name Val didn't even know. It was perhaps too late for him to run, though beyond turning tail Val saw few options. But again, instinct came with force and he stopped sweeping the flashlight every which way and aimed the powerful beam straight at the charging man, into his eyes framed by matted hair. Abruptly the bearded face twisted and the gun flew from his hands, clattering onto the street. The wildman howled, this time seemingly from pain, raising empty hands that appeared darkened—scorched? Still running, hands held aloft, he veered away from Val and continued on a course down the street, leaving behind the weapon and the coyote carcass. Val turned, watching him, baffled and exhilarated. The wildman disappeared into the distance. Val started toward the vehicle but paused, shining the flashlight over the discarded rifle. He could make no sense of what he saw. The instrument was smoking, and even several steps away he could feel the heat it radiated. He left it where it lay, unable to understand what had happened to it but understanding, at least, why the wildman had abandoned it. An instant later Val was sprinting toward the car and the body lying near it. This wasn't instinct now, just the simple need to discover if the red-headed youth was hurt or unhurt, dead or alive. Suddenly fear and empathy choked Val. He came to where the youngster sprawled, dropped to his knees and shone the flashlight over him. He lay still, but he was blinking. He wasn't unhandsome at all, Val now saw, irrelevantly. The driver's prominent upper teeth showed. "You get shot too?" the driver asked. "No." "No. I didn't hear another shot. No." "Did"—Val swallowed—"you get shot?" The driver was on his back. He lifted his head andput an elbow on the ground as if

getting ready to raise himself. "Shot at. Yeah. Just at. He didn't get me. What happened to him?" Val turned and played the flashlight's beam back along the length of the street, picking out the coyote carcass. "He ran away. A crazy person with a gun. He dropped it." The beam found it, threads of incomprehensible smoke still rising from it. "You're okay?" The driver pushed up from his elbow. Val caught his shoulder and helped him to sit up. His hand stayed there, firmly holding, feeling bone under the flesh. "Yeah. Okay." The driver looked at the vehicle and its open door. "He shouldn't've been fucking with my scoot." He saw the crowbar on the ground beside him and picked it up, smiling at it, perhaps imagining the violence it would have delivered had the odds been better. "Thanks for the help. I guess you distracted him, huh?" "I guess I did. Here, let me help you up." Plainly he didn't need it; he wasn't wounded. But Val liked this extra bit of contact. As the driver patted sand off the seat of his pants, Val said, "I suppose we should get out of here..." Meaning, by trailing off, to suggest something more? He wasn't sure. But the driver suddenly turned, the soles of his sandals gritting, and said, "Wait a minute." He left the crowbar and went hurrying toward the nearby house they'd vacated. Val waited, and when he came back out carrying the microwave oven, it was a surprise. More, Val was moved, inordinately so. The driver, as he went around the back to load the appliance into the car's cargo space, said, "Hey, it's the whole point of this." He hesitated. "I, uh, can still test it here, if you want, make sure it works." Blocks away another coyote howled. Val said, "Forget it. Let's just go." Getting in, he was shaking, finally feeling everything that had happened. Fighting the quaver in his voice, he asked, "What is your name?" "Griff." The engine came alive, and the vehicle jerked forward.

Chapter Five The Desperate Flesh

It didn't take much. "Help me up with this? I'll make tea." Val didn't need help; Griff didn't want tea. But the red-haired driver, having delivered his client home and collected his fee, nonetheless helped Val take the microwave upstairs to the apartment. It was the urgency of what they'd been through together out in the avenues. It had bound them, Val thought. The desperation of the flesh now carrying over into this. The new—new to him, anyway—oven, which functioned just fine, heated the water which he poured over the tea leaves, raising a mix of scents, pungent and floral. Val couldn't erase from his thoughts the image of the rifle smoking on the ground, nor the face of that crazy person who'd wielded it—at least until it had become literally too hot to handle. Val couldn't account for that, no matter how hard he tried. A firearm could overheat. He knew that much about guns, though you didn't see many of them anymore. But a weapon like that couldn't get so suddenly hot as to scorch its handler's palms, as Val had clearly seen happen to the wildman. Even if the gun had become hot from its recent use and even if the ragged man, no doubt mentally unbalanced, had held on to the instrument despite that heating, the rifle simply couldn't have gotten that hot— A hand came down atop his. They were sitting at the small table in his somewhat untidy kitchen, and the hand, a thumb moving on one of Val's knuckles, was meant to tell him this was taking too long, that the pretense of the tea was unnecessary. Val looked across at Griff. Freckles dotted his forehead. Sweat gleamed at his hairline. "What's your name?" Val blinked. He'd asked for this driver's name but hadn't given his own. "Val," then, figuring the name would go unrecognized, added anyway, "Lucien." "What do you do?" Griff asked, thumb still grazing him.

Small talk? "I'm a—" Better make a verb of it. "I write plays." Griff nodded. "Well, Val Lucien who writes plays, I've got to go back to work. Unless..." The hesitation was mock coy. Val left the teacups, rose from the table. Griff, with an overbiting grin, stood with him and followed him through the apartment to the room with the bed. Outside, the streets were growing lively with the relative cooling of the night. Val felt a rising excitement. He heard gunshots in his memory. As before, the sounds quickened his heart. Through the door, into the bedroom, a dim space. The bed was a thick foam slab with a single bluish sheet. He had art on his walls: paintings, pencil drawings, weaves. No escaping the artistic community, not even in one's bedchamber. But that was the communal support system. They came to his shows, and he hung their art on his walls. Fair was fair. At the foot of his bed he turned, and there was Griff, sliding into his arms. Val found he was about four inches taller than the red-haired male, not that that presented any difficulty. Val embraced his lean strong frame and firm torso. Griff lifted his chin; Val dropped his a few degrees. Their mouths met. It was at first a quaint, tentative kiss, but just for decorum's sake. The tentativeness ended with the second meeting of their lips, of course. Val mashed his mouth down onto Griff's, whose tongue emerged and snaked moistly against Val's. As the kiss deepened, their arms tightened, bodies pressing together. Val felt the younger man's strength, a wiry resilience. He hoped Griff didn't find him too soft, too weak, then discarded the thought. He was fit enough, particularly for a playwright. Besides, the era of male/male body worship had gone the way of snowy winters. Urgent desire came flooding up through Val. His hardening cock ground against Griff's crotch, finding there an answering rigidity. Their tongues continued to tangle. Val's hands roved Griff's solid back. Fingers tugged at his shirt, sleeveless and damp with sweat. Griff was pulling at the waist of Val's loose striped trousers, working them down over one hipbone, then the other. Val's cock sprang out into Griff's waiting grip. Air hissed through Val's teeth as the fingers tightened around him. He thrust a hand down into Griff's pants, the

angle awkward, until Griff, breaking their kiss and grinning, helpfully undid the fly and zipper. The pants dropped and pooled around his ankles. The rest of their clothes fairly flew from their bodies, aided by groping, grappling hands. Val felt desire turn to raging need as he beheld the naked form for the first time. More freckles speckled Griff's sinewy body. Veins corded his arms. His cock, uncircumcised, nested in a sweaty thatch of reddish pubic curls. It dangled, three-quarters hard, impressively long. "Your cock is beautiful." But it was Griff saying it. Val, fastidiously cut and slightly thicker than Griff, actually blushed. It had been weeks—maybe, just maybe, months—since he'd last had a lover. Had that term of celibacy corresponded to the writing of On the Winning Side? He hoped not. He hoped that wasn't some new eccentricity creeping up on him, a forced abstinence while he was doing his work. No. Probably he just hadn't found the time. He had put a great deal of effort into that piece, even if, as he'd previously noted, he had already moved on from it emotionally, ready to have at something new. Any pretense of sexual restraint was now, however, out the window. He caught Griff around the waist and pulled him onto the foam block. Their mouths slavered over one another again, a wonderfully sloppy, reckless kissing. They rolled on the bed, cocks pressing together. Val felt the sharp points of Griff's nipples graze him. He seized a firm handful of Griff's ass and squeezed. His other fingers slid, or tried to, into Griff's red hair, which was pruned down to a ragged fuzz on his skull. Val's hair, lighter in color and longer, gave Griff something to grab onto, which he did. Val's fingers stayed busy, catching one of Griff's nipples, then the other. He pressed the lively buds between thumb and knuckle, giving each a hard little twist, feeling the physical response snap through Griff's wiry body. It occurred to Val in the gathering mayhem that he needed to have this man's cock in his mouth right now. Whatever else happened here, he had to have that taste. Val scrambled with sudden swiftness down along the length of that bare body. The red-haired man, on his back,

lifted his knees. Val's shoulders butted apart the taut thighs. The object of his need reared gloriously before him. He took hold of Griff at the base of his shaft. Tiny squiggles of veins lined the length of him, dominated by the engorged cable-thick underside vein, pulsing at Val’s t eye level. In the few moments of preliminary tussling Griff had dribbled a few stringy drops of milk-colored liquid. Val, with delicate tongue tip, licked these up. The taste was salty, slightly medicinal. He then smeared his wet mouth over the cockhead, not taking it between his lips yet, just skimming the swollen crown lightly, teasingly. A shudder went through Griff, starting at his toes, causing him to clamp his thighs around Val's shoulders, finally ending with a ragged needful moan. It was gratifying. Heat throbbed behind Val's eyes. He sealed his mouth onto that purpled cockhead. His tongue toyed with the foreskin. He shifted his hand, lowering it, taking loving hold of Griff's balls. Damp red pubes covered the sack. Val applied the gentlest of pressure to those fleshy pouches as he dropped his mouth, in one heroic plunge, down onto his lover's manhood. The body whip-cracked once again, jouncing the foamy slab on which both men lay. Val's nose brushed the sharp curls. He had just deep-throated this male, taking that entire impressive length into his mouth, past his gag reflex, and into his throat. He held Griff like that for the count of two, three, four— But Griff wriggled beneath Val and a piteous cry escaped him, prompting Val to set his mouth in motion again, to lift and drop it on that rampant meat. The rhythm was there, as if waiting for him. He took it up readily. The circumscribing circle of his lips held Griff. His tongue played along the veiny length. He plunged again and again, proud of himself for his throat control. More, though, he savored this. There was a sweet, organic, humid flavor to this uncut cock. It reeked of maleness. It tasted of stark masculinity. Val delighted in the texture, so familiar, yet too long denied. His pent-up need found its release here. Strange. He probably hadn't looked twice at this

young male when he'd hired him and his vehicle. Certainly he couldn't recall indulging any lascivious thoughts about him, this man whose name he hadn't even bothered to learn until after they had shared a dangerous adventure together. Now Griff's cock was nectar. In fact, Val likely would've just kept on sucking him until he'd earned the reward of that sweet semen, the true essence. But Griff's fingers were raking his hair again, tightening, pulling. Griff was trying to yank Val off his cock. Orgasm was looming, and this driver wanted to do something with his seed other than to deposit it in Val's mouth. Val was willing. He allowed himself to be disengaged from the delectable male flavor. Griff was making mewling sounds. Val found himself on his back, lifting his knees toward his chin. He grinned fiercely. Griff positioned himself at the foot of the bed. The blue sheet had bunched under Val. Griff's cock glistened with Val's spit. But Val's hole was as yet unoiled, and plainly Griff meant to jam himself there. Again, Val's willingness was apparent. He waited to see if Griff would wet his fingers and smear Val's ass, or— Yes. Yes. The red-haired head lowered, and Val felt the delicious tickle of breath on his netherhole, an instant before the electric contact of Griff's tongue. As with the younger male, Val too jumped, the response snapping through his body like an electrical shock. Griff's tongue tip eeled wetly around Val's pucker. Excitement rippled over his flesh. When Griff fearlessly slipped his tongue inside, Val called out a few meaningless syllables, just as Griff had done. The rimming was intense, delirious, but also utile. When Griff finally moved up to mount him, Val was breathless for it. He'd already had that cock in his mouth. Now he would take it in his ass, opening his ultimate vulnerability to this near-stranger. "Your cock is beautiful." This time it was Val saying it. That cock touched his moistened, loosened hole. As it started its slide into him, Val, still limber at twenty-nine, dropped his legs onto Griff's shoulders. The cock filled him. Val crossed his ankles behind Griff's head as the younger man bent to his eager work.

Val's own cock lay thick and heavy on his flat abdomen. A drizzle of pre-come left a dot of warm wetness. Griff's hands were planted on either side of him, a bas-relief of veins marking the forearms. Griff began his steady thrusts. Val's eyes drifted shut, then rose half-lidded, like one reluctantly waking. The penetration was intense. He felt speared, impaled. But a fearsome pleasure accompanied it. Heat radiated through him, seething. His shaft twitched on his belly. It was just possible he might come without any direct contact with his cock. Through heavy blinking eyes he looked up to see Griff's features contorting. The lips spread and the overbite became something not quite comical, not grotesque, but certainly feral. To add to it, a growl sounded deep in Griff's chest. His thrusts increased in speed and violence. Val felt the impacts, heard the sharp spanks of Griff's balls on his flesh. Suddenly the growling grew to a savage cry, triumphant, the making of the kill. The sinewy body tightened, and Val felt a sweet scalding at his innermost core. Liquid heat gushed, filling him. With each jet Griff jerked, bouncing the two of them on the foam mattress. After a time, his slim hard chest rising and falling, Griff disengaged and panted, "Go ahead," collapsing on the bed beside Val, "and finish off however you want." It was quite a sweeping invitation, and Val could see Griff meant it. Val, with cock throbbing and pulse racing, was content merely to straddle Griff's rib cage, pull on his own member twice, three times, and spray frantic pearly cream all across his lover's chest and face. It made for a lovely sight. Griff was a good sport about it as well, even going so far as to lick up the stray spurts which had landed near his mouth. Val felt lightheaded, basted with sweat, satisfied, enervated. He rolled off Griff and lay there a moment. It was an untroubled, unthinking interlude. Looking down from a nearby wall was, in bleary charcoal, a fey-faced youth with long hair, posed with sword in hand and the blazing sun behind him. The picture meant nothing to Val right now. The interval ended abruptly, with a thought. The play. Followed by, more urgently: Byx! Val came suddenly upright on the foam slab. He had forgotten completely about the second showing of his play and his hope that Byx would attend it.

Griff, Val's seed still cooling on his chest, sat up too, scratching at his scalp through bristles of red. "Like I said"—he yawned around the words—"I got to get back to work."

Chapter Six Ring Down the Curtain

He wasn't completely Illuminoid, not really. Not after the adaptation he'd willingly undergone so as to escape the tedium and didactical despotism of the Below. He still retained many of the powers of his kind, the abilities which humans would call fantastic. But using them as he'd done recently had cost him, which was surprising and disturbing. In his years on the surface, this had never happened to him before. Byx found himself wobbling on his feet. There was a lightness in his chest, as of being unable to get a deep breath. He had stalked the playwright on his venture into the uninhabited dune-strewn reaches of the city. Well, not entirely unpopulated, obviously. There was that crazy hermit with the gun. Byx had intervened there, had heated the man's weapon to make it useless. And that aggressive act seemed to be what had drained his energy. He had overused his own powers; now he was paying for it. Served him right, he thought with grim humor. The playwright interested him. His work had impressed Byx, a slapdash little production but nonetheless effective. And that rather remarkable scene in the play between the mother and daughter— What to do now, though? Byx needed to rest, to gather his strength. Of course, if he were still Below, he could simply draw on the communal pool of power which his fellow beings shared. He could restore himself in an instant. That was the way of the Illuminoids. Creatures of community, of an interlaced social order. But that way meant submitting to the Illuminare Supreme. Byx had rejected the Illuminoid leader, at least as far as to slip away, out of his sphere of dominating influence. Byx had decided to go it alone, to adapt himself to the world's surface, to explore the curious life forms dwelling here, temporarily ruling the planet. The night's chill was serious now, and he shivered inside his snug leather jacket. For the

humans it was just another sultry, sweltering nighttime, barely tolerable. For Byx, having foolishly drained himself, it felt painfully cold. His natural internal heat had dimmed. He had to go to ground somewhere. But what about the playwright? Val Lucien was his name. Byx had lost track of him when he and the red-haired driver had made the return trip from the sandy fringe of the city. Presumably Val had been heading home. Byx knew where the man lived; he'd tracked him there already. Val had gone scavenging in the avenues. Scratching. That was the local term for it. In other cities the act of scrounging went by other names. In Chicago it was called slinging. Spokane: poking. Columbus, Ohio, and oddly enough also in Lubbock, Texas: tipping. All these terms belonged to the new American slang vocabulary, a language for a dying age. In halfflooded New York City the activity was known as spearing, because you'd damn well better go armed. That city had veritable armies of madmen living in its wastes. Byx put out a hand, found a wall. He was on a sidewalk, having used a final burst of his energy to return him to the Mission district. That had been a mistake. It was like a one-toomany-and-no-going-back-now shot of booze that tipped you over into incoherence. He blinked and blinked, trying to clear his vision, which was suddenly swimming with alarming colorless motes. He needed to get off the street. Now. At least the Mission was very familiar turf. He had always liked this part of the city best, even in those days when San Francisco had still functioned at nearly normal capacity. He could almost taste the neighborhood's lively sweat on the steamy night air, air that nonetheless chilled his flesh as he huddled against the wall, trying to get his bearings. Yes. He knew where he was. With an effort he pushed off from the wall and started down the street, placing his boot heels carefully. The South of Market area was just ahead. There was some traffic on the street, little electric vehicles whining past. He kept his blazing blue eyes on the ground, not now wanting to draw anybody's attention, certainly not on the hunt for another fast fuck like last night with that skateboarder Berry, though he'd definitely enjoyed that. Humans, after all, had their uses.

He couldn't get his sight clear, no matter how much he blinked. But he was navigating the rather uneven sidewalk well enough. Eventually he came to a corner, where he crossed the street. Ahead he heard a commotion: not a violent hubbub, though the voices did sound excited. He had reached his destination. Probably the smarter thing to do would have been to duck off the street entirely, go find some empty building, nestle on the floor, and wait for his strength to return—hoping it would, anyway. This hadn't happened to him before. But he was going in here instead. He still felt capable of sitting upright in a seat without drawing unwanted attention. Yes. He could manage that. Besides, he thought as he teetered toward the doors where indeed an excited crowd was gathering, the playwright might come again. And Byx wished very much to see the man once more. * * * * The Below. The Below. A memory of marble—hard, unyielding. He recalled the solemnity of the ancient hideaway of the Illuminoid race. Byx was a youngster with only a few centuries of life to him, a veritable hatchling by his species' standard. Some, like the Illuminare Supreme, had lived so long that they had, or claimed to have, actual memories of the time when their breed had dwelled above, on the surface. It had only been after some interminable stretch of years, a measurement almost meaningless in the stony sunless underworld, that it first occurred to Byx that those who made such claims might just be exaggerating. Or, less kindly, outright lying. Why? To maintain order, of course, the narrow-minded status quo. The Supreme had to sustain his power. The Illuminoids had to believe in their rightful and righteous ownership of the Earth. To do that, they needed grand tales of the time when their kind had dominated the hot surface of the planet. Byx didn't doubt that the Illuminoids had been the original sentient possessors of Earth. The history he'd been told was too elaborate, too solid in its details, to dismiss entirely. However, as he'd entered his race's equivalent of adolescence, he couldn't help but start asking questions. The answers from his elders didn't satisfy him. Worse, some of what they claimed

seemed obviously untrue. Why, for instance, had the Illuminoids been selected to rule the Earth? The creed went something like: the Ultimate Stellar Matter, creator of all, had deemed its first children to be the true and forever sovereigns of this planet, which it had also created. But what had created that Ultimate Stellar Matter? That was a common question for young Illuminoids to ask, and Byx did indeed ask it. When told it could only be answered by long contemplation of the sacred credo, Byx lost interest; or rather, he rejected the "answer" as a dodge. That he and the others who dwelled in the Below—though he hadn't yet learned to call the sanctuary by this cheeky name—had sprung from the stars, he was willing to accept. Certainly he felt a great fiery energy coursing within himself, a power that was only increasing with his slow rise toward young adulthood. And, yes, if pressed, he was willing to accept that some among the elders might just have lived on the planet's surface during the long ago golden age of the Illuminoids. But he was startled to realize there was no real proof of his kind's superiority over the other species who, he was taught, had since had their turns at ruling the world's surface. If dinosaurs, then primates had taken over up there, didn't that mean they had also been selected to rule? Blasphemy. Blasphemy! Byx was careful after his first questionings of doctrine to keep his views mostly to himself. Life in the Below wasn't, after all, completely unpleasant. He had the company and camaraderie of his fellow beings. There was a shared culture, though it definitely tended toward the dour and pious. Still, he had friends. There were even a very few others of his age who seemed to share his distrust of the established ways. Byx was cautious, as were these others, about even engaging in the open exchange of such ideas. They learned to communicate clandestinely. Byx was surprised by some of the vehemence he found. Some of his friends were secretly enraged by the society they found themselves in. They thought the elders fools, and the Below—this was the first time Byx was exposed to the insolent name—little more than a jail.

Of course, there were means for monitoring what went on above, on the planet's surface from which the Illuminoids had been driven so long ago by the general cooling. How else could they know about dinosaurs and the rise of the ape creatures? Specialists kept track of events far above the marble refuge. Byx found himself quite interested in this field. It was expected that Illuminoids, once reaching a certain age, would find some aspect of the culture to study, with an eye toward developing a useful skill. Their kind would not dwell forever deep underground. The Earth was heating, owing to the fortunate recklessness of the world's current caretakers. Soon the world would be restored. Once that happened, the Illuminoids would of course retake it, at which time the populace under the careful management of the Illuminare Supreme would be required to take up the tasks of maintaining an active civilization, a new era for their race. That time of retaking was fast approaching. But fast, Byx discovered early on, didn't mean tomorrow; it didn't even mean any time soon. He wondered facetiously if maybe he hadn't been born with a mental clock more calibrated to that of the short-lived humans currently occupying the Earth's sunny surface. Whatever the reason, he felt drawn to the science of monitoring, and so applied himself to it, learning from an elder, a female Illuminoid named Hutok who had mastered the craft and was more than willing to share this knowledge with any serious students. * * * * "Claire. Claire. This is foolishness. It's stupid. You're being stupid. Children are stupid. You're too old now to be this stupid. Stop it. Stop it!" Byx heard the words, and they indicated he was again awake, aware, which he hadn't been for some little while, he realized. His arms were wrapped tightly across his chest. His jacket was zipped up to his throat. He was trying not to tremble. He was pressed in on either side. The converted lobby was full, perhaps to or even beyond its capacity. He had been lucky to find a seat. He felt a vague wisp of recent memory: paying at the doors to see the show, taking this chair, then the fatigue and cold overtaking him completely. He had slipped away, had been skipping in and out of consciousness since. But it

was the same performance as last night. He recognized this speech. It was the speech, the one which had left such an impression on him. Around him he heard the stirrings, the indrawn breaths. A general sense of shock at the mother's words to her daughter. "It's too late for children, Claire." A hard staccato tone, the words like a series of blows. "Don't be so stupid. No one has the right to be that stupid anymore..." Byx, eyes squeezed shut and, body aquiver, once more slid into himself. * * * He proved a fine student. By now, after having passed through adolescence, concealing his rebellious nature was reflexive. Certainly Hutok, his instructor in the art of monitoring the Earth's surface goings-on, didn't seem to suspect Byx's tendencies toward dissidence. Illuminoids had strengths; they possessed gifts. One of these was, of course, the ability of teleport travel. The wink, as the children called it, being the ones who practiced it most, popping themselves through the marbled warrens, testing their limits, still unaware how limited they already were by the Below itself. These talents among others, so the dogma went, had served their kind well in their time of surface dominance. A lesser-used power was one that allowed them to temporarily change into inferior states of being. Since Illuminoids were the pinnacle of life, all other forms were, by definition, subordinate. It was a process regarded with some distaste, though in Byx's chosen field it was necessarily tolerated. The community needed current intelligence about global conditions, so the time of return would be recognized when it arrived. Thus, adaptation. It was a thing Byx had to learn. With admirable self-sacrifice he suffered it. It was a procedure which required a great deal of preparatory work, long stretches of meditation, endless mental exercises. Illuminoids took nourishment from heat and from the field of energy the race itself emitted. Byx was put on a diet of minerals, then actual consumables. These started to alter some of his internal workings. Again, he endured it, which pleased Hutok. His perseverance paid off. He made his first foray to the surface in the shape of a human life form, which would cause no alarm if he were spotted. The transformation wasn't, in his

opinion, so radical after all. Illuminoids were bipedal. They had a basic primate look. They had eyes and fingers and ears and toes. They possessed all the senses of the humans. Of course, Byx was accompanied by Hutok on this, his first venture surface-ward, using the trick of travel perfected by their species. The Earth was a revelation to him. His patient and rather kindly instructor had told him to expect to be overwhelmed. Byx was. The planet, the sky, the waters—everything seemed to crash over him as he beheld what he'd only heard about through teachings and mythical lore. The world's surface shimmered with beauty. He and his mentor observed these surroundings for only a few moments, long enough to test the air quality and temperature, more than enough time to note that conditions hadn't yet sufficiently warmed to allow the resurgence of their kind. But the trend was growing unmistakable. Human activities were definitely heating the world. The primitive creatures were unknowingly preparing the way. By the time the two of them finished their secret reconnoiter, Byx had made up his mind. He wouldn't wait for the final metamorphosis of the planet. If he, an Illuminoid, had the power to alter himself temporarily so to withstand the still lethally chilly environment of the surface, then he could change himself semi-permanently, for an extended stay up above. Among all that lush livingness. Amidst all that shocking beauty. And the humans themselves—what were they like? It all followed from that first experience. For the next term of his life Byx devoted himself to the transformational sciences. He became proficient, then expert, then a virtuoso. He wasn’t the only one newly dedicated to this field. Others among his old dissident comrades joined up, became operatives, laid plans similar to Byx's, though they were careful never to openly discuss such matters. Escape. Escape to the surface. Leave behind the tired rituals, the tedious jingoism of the Illuminare Supreme and his adherents. See the sun, feel the wind on one's face, move disguised among the humans. Thus he and a handful of others, youths all, fled the Below and scattered themselves across the teeming world. Byx didn't know the fates of those fellows. He suspected the elder

circle would have by now sent out obedient operatives to retrieve him and the other waywards. The Illuminare Supreme would never simply allow such rebellious behavior. However, Byx hadn't yet seen any sign of these supposed agents. Living among the humans was strange. It was possible his fellow rebels hadn't taken to living on the surface with the gusto he had. Perhaps they hadn't come to appreciate the vivid joys of sexual congress, the predatory erotic games in which these beings engaged. Byx had certainly embraced the carnality of the humans. Illuminoids reproduced, to be sure, but it was a slow-moving, thoughtful process, in accord with the stateliness of their life spans. Whatever else the Illuminoid race was, whatever fantastic powers they possessed which had allowed the breed to survive past its own appointed time of extinction, they didn't know how wonderful a simple fuck could be. * * * * "You're wretched, Claire. You're just...wretched. There's no other word. You don't love me. You don't love the future. You're disconnected. You don't belong!" The sharp words rang out over the rapt audience, drawing Byx back as the diatribe played out its last painful notes on the stage. His eyelids fluttered. He saw past the clustering heads of the watchers as the melodramatic finale was enacted. The actress playing Claire looked appropriately weary, wrung out, overused by the vitriol of her lover. She quietly said, "The future doesn't love me, or you, or any of us," and the lights went out, footsteps were heard, and new brighter light suddenly filled the lobby. Applause started. Last night, Byx recalled, he had led the applauding. Tonight it came as a wave. Cheers sounded. Chair legs scraped. There was a general rumbling as people started to rise. A standing ovation, the real deal. Byx tried to join. But it was difficult to get his feet planted. The lobby was crowded, and the applause loud and sustained. Why had he come here? The playwright. Yes. Was Val Lucien here? Byx didn't know, and he was in no condition to go searching among this mob. Besides, with a response like this the play's author would surely be at the center of attention, basking in his glory. Byx wouldn't have a chance to talk to him.

With a grunt he fell back into his seat, blinking at the motes swarming anew over his sight. People were shuffling, sidling, stepping past him as the row emptied. The players had had their bows. The applauding was done. Byx felt drained. Using his powers shouldn't have affected him so adversely, he realized in a sudden flash of clarity. Something was wrong. Maybe the adaptive process was finally wearing off. Perhaps he was reverting to his original form, an unavoidable eventuality. It might be that very soon he would have no choice but to return home, to the Below.

Chapter Seven Captive Audience

Val arrived late for his own show. Worse, he almost didn't get in. It seemed vaguely comical to him, at least at first. He still felt disoriented after his mad rush to the theater. This, on top of the adrenaline-inducing incident earlier with the gun-toting man out in the avenues. Following which he'd had that playful romp with Griff, who had been a good sport in offering him a ride to the show, which Val accepted. Arriving at the building where his play was going up for a second night, though, he looked out the chipped window of Griff's vehicle, goggle-eyed. A crowd had gathered at the venue. Hell, call it what it was: a throng. Stepping out as Griff pulled away with an amiable farewell, Val shook his head like it needed clearing. There was no mistaking it: these people were here for his play. They were trying to get inside. At the doors Val could see a beleaguered usher fighting to maintain order. Beyond, the lobby was full, row after row of jammed seats. Past those he caught a glimpse of the stage, just as the house lights dimmed and the lighting came up for the performers. In a moment the actress who played Claire would be stepping into view from one of the nonfunctional elevators. Anticipatory applause broke out. Val stood there on the sidewalk outside and gaped some more. Unbelievable. Easily three times as many people as last night had crammed inside, to say nothing of all these others still trying to gain entry. This was his play's second showing. Was it really that good? Had word of mouth about it spread that fast? Again he had to shake his head, this time grinning as well. It felt like a prank was being pulled on him. He thought ruefully he would have to miss his own play. Then the original reason he'd been in such a hurry to get here surged back into his mind. Byx. Byx. That dark-haired man who had haunted his thoughts since their encounter last night. Why did he have such a hold on

Val? There was no saying. In the end it didn't matter why. The fact of it was undeniable. A crowd of this size meant the odds of Byx being inside had increased. Didn't that follow mathematically? Perhaps. But what if Byx hadn't made it past the doors? Val, trying not to appear frantic, stalked up and down the sidewalk, looking over the people gathered and spilling out into the street. Byx wasn't among them; therefore, he was inside, watching On the Winning Side a second time. No, Val warned himself sharply. There wasn't any "therefore" about it. If he really wanted to measure this by the odds, then chances were that Byx wasn't in there. He had already seen the show. Why go again, and so soon? Val wasn't one to see repeat performances, not of his own work nor anyone else's. Still, this theater was the only landmark he had. As thinly populated as San Francisco was these days, finding one individual, and a near stranger at that, would be very difficult. Here was the only logical place he had to look. How to get in, though? He trotted back to the doors as the usher was struggling to pull them closed. On stage the first scene was just about to get under way, and those audience members sitting in the rear were turning about and shushing the crowd outside. In another few seconds the lobby would be sealed tight and Val wouldn't even be able to look inside, with the windows painted white. It wasn't his nature to be aggressive. Certainly he hadn't made much use of his artistic clout in these past couple of years of success as a playwright. That reluctance was no doubt born of associating with other artists almost constantly. Those in the community didn't let anybody get too full of themselves. It was frowned on, and rightly so. Anyone who inflated him or herself beyond acceptable limits was summarily punctured. You could lose friends quickly if you made an ass of yourself too often, and without comrades, without the necessary connections and support, your artistic career could vanish overnight. But these thoughts didn't deter Val Lucien as he strode boldly toward the doors, even as the usher was shooing away the last of those seeking admission, some of them actually waving

money. The whole scene still felt unbelievable to Val. But he ignored this as he took a final daring step forward and jammed his foot into the crack left by the closing doors. On the other side the usher glared back at him with an expression of frustration and astonishment. Apparently this turnout was as much of a surprise to him as it was to Val. "You have to let me in." The usher, the same one who had worked last night, clenched his teeth in exasperation. "Move your foot," he gritted. He sounded a little ways past the end of his patience, maintaining decorum by will alone. As Val remembered, this man had helped to scare up the necessary number of chairs to fill this lobby. Someone had roped him in to this duty as well, which was the way of the theater scene. "I have a right to be here," Val said, summoning up a tone of indignation and, even to his own ears, overplaying it. Well, he had never laid claim to any acting talents; he was just someone who could put good words into a performer's mouth. The usher yanked on the doors again, probably content at this point to snap Val's foot right off, but Val had himself wedged in good. More heads turned, more fingers raised to lips, more annoyed shushings from the people who had managed to get in. "We're at capacity," the usher said, a young man with a pockmarked but not unattractive face. "No more. No more, dammit—" "I am the author!" Val almost shouted with all the bombastic pique he could fake. He was the play's creator, true, but even by his own estimation, this gave him limited privileges. However, if he could use his status for anything, it ought to be to get himself into a sold-out showing of one of his own creations. That got the usher to press his face closer to the crack between the doors, to peer cautiously at Val. He muttered uncertainly, "I don't know..." At the same moment a figure loomed up behind him, imposing, dropping a hand on his shoulder. Val recognized the voice when it said, "For hell's sake, let him in." With that the doors were opened wider, Val was drawn inside, and the put-upon usher finally got the entrance

sealed. Val blinked in the dimness, still surprised at himself for the uncharacteristic fuss he'd made. At last he got a good look at his rescuer. It was who he had thought it was by the voice. Kaitlin Nalty. The woman who had first encouraged him to become a playwright. Of course she was here, though she hadn't come last night for the play's opening. She gave Val's arm an affectionate squeeze, then in her customarily forthright manner she led him to a seat. She accomplished this by ousting the man who had apparently accompanied her here from his chair. "Go stand in the back, won't you?" she murmured and somehow made it sounded like a reasonable request. The man smiled inanely and ducked away, and Kaitlin sat down with Val by her side. The play commenced, and soon the first scene reached its dramatic peak, with the appearance of Claire's future lover. At this point the work was still rather lighthearted, the dialogue breezy. The seductive feints came at an easy tempo, though already the emotional underpinnings were in place. The lovers had met. Everything was ahead for them, all the inevitabilities. With the commotion settled at the rear of the lobby, the audience watched the story unfold with a rapt focus. Val could actually sense the general concentration, every word given stern attention, every gesture by the performers and wrinkle in the developing plot studied for its full nuance. It was extraordinary. Val had rarely seen anything like it, and certainly not with any of his previous works. Even the fidgeting one could expect from an assembly of this size was absent. No throats clearing. No one fanning themselves with a program. Just watching. He should have been gratified, and he was. But he hadn't come here tonight to bask in his theatrical piece's apparent success. He was seeking Byx. Where was he? Val did his best not to crane about and make a nuisance of himself to those sitting nearby. But he did surreptitiously scan the rows ahead, studying each head until he had satisfied himself it didn't belong to the blue-eyed male. Between scenes he looked left and right, not finding Byx in the row in which he himself was sitting with Kaitlin.

The play had no intermission. He had written it specifically to run in the seventy- to eighty-minute range, allowing for any scenery chewing from the cast. He had no quibbles with this group of performers. They were professional. Each had a firm grasp of her or his character, and they meshed seamlessly. The person who had staged the piece had done a competent job. But without that mid-performance break, Val had to wait until the play's end before he could look in the rows of seats behind him for the man who had fairly bewitched him and driven him to come out to view his own work a second time. Not that Val had really watched. As much as On the Winning Side had felt like an older work of his at last night's premiere, tonight it seemed a dusty relic, the dialogue stale from overuse, the twists of the plot a series of tired contrivances. None of this was true, and he knew it, but he couldn't help the feeling. When everyone gasped at the scene between Claire and her mother, Val merely expected it, as if he had composed the audience's reactions as stage directions and they were simply doing what they were supposed to do. Kaitlin kept a protective hand on him throughout the show. Or, more likely, she was establishing her claim on him. No doubt later on she would regale any and all with the tale of how she had set Val Lucien on the path to playwrighthood. Without her, so she would imply or outright say, this very play would never have existed. It was a valid assertion, and Val had never contested it. But he couldn't be Kaitlin's prop tonight. When the play concluded with, "The future doesn't love me, or you, or any of us," Val thought the line a rather cheap summation. However, he was grateful for the standing ovation; more than a boost to his ego, it allowed him to get right to his feet and start scanning the four or five rows behind them. Kaitlin still had a hold of him and announced in her haughty voice as the applause finally ended that she had the masterpiece's author right here. Then she muttered conspiratorially into Val's ear, "We just have to get you out of here and away from these many hangers-on. Come, love, I know where there's an appropriate soiree..." But Val ignored her. His heart suddenly thundered in his chest. In the second row

forward from the tall painted-over windows, a lone figure sat as the others emptied out into the aisle. He wore a snug black leather jacket, zipped all the way up. He had crossed his arms over himself and appeared to be shivering. Blue eyes fluttered. Byx had come. But Byx looked ill. * * * * "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yes. Now, now, please, excuse me—" And even with all this polite deflection, Val still found it impossible to get free of all those who had descended on him. Kaitlin had called a lot of this attention to him, probably so she and he could make their grand exit together, with the fawners trailing after. But there were also quite a number of people here who knew Val personally, including, it seemed, everybody who had attended last night's show. "I just had to come again, Val," said a woman whose artwork decorated a wall in Val's bedroom. "And I brought along every warm body I could find. This play, it has power. I don't think I completely realized it at first. People need to see it..." He offered more mannerly acknowledgments of this and other praise, even as he edged a way further down the aisle. A babble of voices filled the lobby. Others from the audience were accosting the performers as they discarded their costumes and wiped away makeup. Even the technical folk who had lit the space were getting an overflow of the accolades. In Val's estimation they deserved it. There was acclaim enough to go around. In desperation he pulled on Kaitlin's arm until he could whisper into her ear. She was a tall woman, with a rich arrangement of sculpted dark hair and features which she held in a stiff cast. He said, "Kait, my dear, I need cover. My lay for the night is sitting four rows back and I've got to get to him before he decides I'm unreachable. Will you do me this favor?" Kaitlin Nalty was truly a friend and always had been. Her encouragement of Val's burgeoning writing talents had proven to be the real deal. When she'd told him his prose read like instructions, she had seen the worth of him. Had she thought him anything but a genuine artist, she wouldn't have said a word.

She modified her facial structure just enough to convey her disappointment, then quirked a smile to show him she understood and approved. Without even a glance to see who he meant, she murmured, "Go get him," and turned on the gathering crowd, throwing up her arms and launching into a convincing speech about the need for artistic solitude. Val actually climbed over several chairs until he reached Byx's row, which by now was entirely vacated. He had hoped for recognition from the man, for Byx to look up, see him, break into a grin. Byx would remember him, surely. They had spoken last night, albeit briefly. Byx had complimented his work, and he had returned tonight. Byx, though, continued to huddle and shiver, eyes drifting open and shut. He didn't appear aware of his surroundings. Up close Val could see just how pronounced the shuddering was. He sat on the adjacent seat and, after an instant's hesitation, reached out and touched Byx's denim-clad knee. What had happened to this man? Last night he had seemed healthy, vital. "Byx..." Val felt the marrow-deep shivers as he squeezed the dark-haired male's knee. "Byx, can you hear me?" "Unnnhhh—" It was a delirious sound, a sleeping man's attempt at forming a word. Val tightened his grip on the knee. He leaned close. "Byx, are you okay?" Suddenly the eyes snapped fully open, startling Val. Fear flashed in the blue orbs, replaced almost immediately by a canniness. "I'm still at the theater." He said it, didn't ask. He looked at Val, who had recoiled a bit. That grin, or a ghost's version of it, which Val had been hoping for earlier appeared at last on Byx's face. "The playwright..." The recognition warmed Val. But plainly this man needed some help. Was this a bad drug reaction? Did he have the Pest? There were clinics in the Mission staffed by volunteer medical personnel. Byx continued to shiver, but the spasms seemed to ease as Val watched, almost like the slim male was repressing them by force of will. "That's right. I'm the playwright. Val. Val Lucien. Do you need some help? Can I help you?" He still had a hand on Byx's leg, reluctant to break the contact. Again the blue eyes focused on him. "I told you it was a good play."

Val found himself smiling a bashful smile. "Well, it's certainly gotten popular overnight." That fact was still dismaying. "You've got lightning in a bottle." Byx's grin froze. His teeth stayed clenched a moment, then he ground out, "I...I need to go rest somewhere." That sounded like an appeal for help to Val. That somewhere implied Byx didn't have anywhere definite to go. Probably he belonged to the city's squatter population, without a fixed dwelling. Val said, "I've got a place where you can rest." His offer didn't feel impulsive, even though he spoke the words hastily. There were, however, practical problems. How to get Byx back to his apartment, for one thing. He wasn't sure if the man in the leather jacket could even stand up. Byx gave him a look of simmering gratitude. "Thanks, Val," he murmured. It gave Val all the strength he would need. Hell, he'd carry Byx home if need be. Toward that end, he put his arm around the other's shoulders, planted his feet, and made to haul him up out of his seat. "Excuse me, Mr. Lucien? Ms. Nalty said I should give you a hand. Do, um, you need help—with whatever you're doing?" Val glanced up and saw the man Kaitlin had evicted from his seat so to provide Val himself with a place to sit. "Do you have a vehicle?" Val asked. "Do I? Um, yes. I should go get it? Okay. Wait here, and I'll be right back." Val waited, keeping his arm around Byx, feeling the man's shakes come and go. His own heart was beating a fast, meaningful rhythm.

Chapter Eight The Guest

When Kaitlin Nalty's helpful escort finally introduced himself, it was at an inopportune moment—when he and Val were busy carrying Byx, by his arms and legs with his trim body swaying between them, up the stairs to Val's apartment. The man, probably fifteen years Kaitlin's junior, looked up the stairs (he was holding Byx's legs) and said to Val, apropos of nothing, "My name? I'm Candy. Hi." At which Val had to actually bite his tongue to keep from guffawing. Candy. Too perfect. But Kaitlin liked muscular virile lovers who weren't too clouded by intellect. And Candy was, no arguing it, a comely chiseled specimen who had proven very useful this evening. He had helped get Byx to his vehicle, a sporty black oversized jellybean with a powerful engine. Byx had faded out during the short drive here and was again nearly incoherent. When they had taken Byx down the hall to the bedroom and laid him on Val's bed, Candy lingered, smiling inanely again, looking around as if there were some other chore he might help with. "So, you, um, invented that show?" he asked. He seemed to ask everything. Val ushered him out of the bedroom and started coaxing him toward the front door. "That's right." Candy stopped and blinked at him. "What's that like? To write something, all those words...?" There was no need for Val to be rude. This man had done him a substantial favor. However, he wished Candy were someone he could just pay off for his services and be done with. Instead, he said, "It's work. Lots of work. I don't think up the words as fast as you see them spoken on stage." That appeared to strike Candy on some profound level. He let out a low whistle and

shook his head, impressed. Before he could ask something else, Val said briskly, "Thank you for your help. I have to go make sure my friend's all right." As urgently as he wanted to return to the bedroom, he refrained from shoving the bigger man out the door. Candy nodded. "Okay? I liked your play. It made me really sad." He turned and went tromping down the stairs. Val hurried to the bedroom, eager to see to Byx. * * * * It had become a simple problem: he was too cold, and the cold was starting to undo him. The shivers weren't muscle spasms. His body was responding violently to the lack of heat. Of course, Byx had a human body, and his form should have felt warm enough with the sultriness of this evening, especially under his leather jacket. But that wasn't the case. He was freezing. Consciousness came and went, and returned again after a half-dream where it had felt like he was being carried up a flight of steps. The helplessness was very unbecoming. He was an Illuminoid. He had powers beyond the mortal sphere of these humans. But, again, he had taken their shape, recast himself to pass among these current inhabitants of the Earth's surface. The overlap between his kind and theirs was deteriorating. It was the only explanation for this. Byx was lying on something soft. He was aware he had gotten away from the theater, that he had been transported to somewhere less crowded. Someplace where he could recuperate? Was that right, or he had imagined it? No. The playwright. Val. Val had come to his aid. Again he wondered if that were just another dream fragment, a fantasy fulfillment, since if he were to fantasize about rescue, Val Lucien was the male he would cast as his deliverer. Val, Val, beautiful Val, who had created such an extraordinarily insightful play— "Yes, Byx. It is me. It's Val. I'm right here, and you're safe." Byx once more came into an awareness of his body, of his surroundings. He must have been calling the name aloud. Val. Because Val was here, standing over him. Incredible. "Did you bring me here?" Byx's teeth wanted to chatter. He hugged his arms around himself again. The room was dim, its walls plastered with strange depictions. Artwork.

"I brought you here," Val said reassuringly. "To my home. You can stay here, get better here. Can you tell me what's wrong with you? Are you in pain?" Whatever Byx was lying on felt very comfortable. He groped at a thin blue sheet beneath him. "I'm cold," he said, and that started the chattering. His shivers worsened. But at least he was more or less conscious again. Val stepped closer and laid a hand across Byx's forehead. The touch was pleasant, providing a whisper of human heat. "You're hot," Val pronounced. He frowned. "But you're not sweating. Do you feel like you have a fever?" "No." It occurred to Byx that Val was likely wondering whether or not he carried some disease. Once, when human civilization still functioned, pandemics had periodically raced around the world. "No Pest..." Byx made a weak try at pulling up his jacket and shirt to show that his chest was free of pustules, just as he'd done for that skateboarder last night. What was his name, Berry? "Well," Val said, "if you're cold, we'll get you warm." He moved out of view. Byx heard rummaging. He felt himself returning more and more to the present moment. A moment later Val was back, holding up a fleecy yellow blanket. Byx lifted his head slightly to see that a cord trailed from an end of it. "I found this buried in a closet when I moved in here," Val said. "It's an artifact. I can't believe San Francisco was ever so cold that anybody could ever have used this thing. It works, though. I've tried it out. Here..." He bent, and Byx heard the plug being slotted into an outlet in the bedroom's baseboard. He rose and spread the blanket over Byx, tucking it in around him. "It'll take a few minutes to heat up." "Thank you," Byx said. His gratitude was quite real. More than Val bringing him here, this man was accepting without argument Byx's need for warmth. This was new to him. In his time on the planet's surface he had always been in control, never lacking for advantage over the humans. As much affection as he had developed for these creatures, he had to regard them as a lesser species. The facts bore this out. Illuminoids lived far longer. Illuminoids had powers of travel and transformation that, if revealed, would be seen by

human beings as magical, miraculous, terrifying. Yet here he lay, being tenderly tended to by one. And not just any random human representative either. This man had a talent that set him above others. He had a shrewd philosophical insight. Nothing else could account for a mind that could concoct that theatrical piece, a mind that could put forth in such plain convincing language the central tenet of this present age: humanity was on its way out. Hands were tugging on his boots. Val eased one off, then the other, pulling the blanket's bottom edge around Byx's feet. The metallic strips embedded in the blanket had started to warm noticeably. The heat felt delicious. Val slipped out of the room. A moment later a mechanical ding sounded somewhere, followed by Val's return. Byx saw as he lifted his head again that Val carried a cup of something steaming and fragrant. "It's tea." Val set it on a table near the bed. "It'll warm your insides. Here, I'll help you sit up." Which he did, piling pillows and assisting Byx. Byx looked up at Val, at a face handsomely drawn, at lightly colored hair. Val had a trim and healthy build. The sedentary life of a writer hadn't softened him, then. Byx wondered what this man did for exercise. And following that thought, he wondered a hundred other things. He had barely met this person, yet Val had brought Byx to his home, in a condition that most would have found alarming. Was it just a sexual attraction? Couldn't be, Byx decided immediately. He had some notion of how he appeared just now. Not particularly alluring. Nobody took home an invalid expecting a good fuck out of it. Val put the steaming cup in Byx's hands and hovered over him until satisfied that Byx could hold it without scalding himself with hot tea. Byx took a first sip of the strong beverage. "Good?" Val asked. "Very. Thanks." "This block has its own roof garden. Lots of herbs." The blanket, now cocooning Byx in electric warmth, and the tea diminished his shivering

further still. He felt like the worst was past, like he'd hit his nadir—which wasn't to say that he felt just fine now, or that he would continue to improve from this point. He had overstrained himself, made reckless use of his powers. He had kept this human form of his for quite some time. There were limits. His mentor, Hutok, the Illuminoid elder who had instructed him in the adaptive art, hadn't mentioned a specific maximum length for the transformative process, only that one existed. Adaptation was, for the Illuminoid race, an unpleasant necessity, a means to spy on the Earth's surface to see if the skin of the planet had sufficiently warmed to allow the rightful reclaiming of it. Rightful reclaiming. Byx sipped more tea. Those were words straight out of the mouth of the Illuminare Supreme. "You came to the play again." Byx looked up, smiled. Val was standing over him. "Yes. It's a good play, like I said. Worth seeing again." "I was surprised by the turnout," said Val. "Why?" He lifted his shoulders in a self-deprecating shrug. "Well, none of my previous shows has drawn a crowd like that." "This play must be different." Val seemed about to shrug again. Instead, he sat down on the bed's edge with a wondering look on his face. "In a sense they're all different from each other, everything I've written. But I went to the premiere. You were there. A decent-sized audience, though a lot were acquaintances. I went out afterward with a gaggle of them, and of course they talked about the show. But no one, to be honest, made much of a fuss about it. Oh, I received the odd compliment here and there, and the occasional barb. But it hadn't seemed to make any measurable impact. Nothing that could account for that mob that showed up tonight." He shook his head. "I just can't explain it to myself." "Maybe you shouldn't try," Byx suggested, finding speech was coming easier now.

"I suppose I shouldn't be yammering on about myself when..." Val gestured at Byx, as though to take in his state. The electric blanket continued to help, providing the heat Byx’s body was crying out for. Really, though, it was his Illuminoid self, his essence, needing the nourishment of the planet's deep heat, as well as the familiar pool of energy provided by his fellow Illuminoids. There was no point in denying it, Byx knew with a fatal finality. His time was running out, though in a less drastic way than it was for the entirety of the human race. "No, no," Byx said, as much to push away these thoughts for the moment as to respond to what Val had said. "Please, talk about yourself. You're a playwright. You must have been something and someone before that. Would you like to tell me about it?" And so, as Byx worked his way through the rest of the strong aromatic tea, Val Lucien sketched for him his autobiography. It wasn't uninteresting. A hardscrabble childhood in Arizona, before the whole region was swallowed by the growing Mega-desert; his family's escape, a flight that ended here in San Francisco; then Val's rise into adulthood and, more, how he had found his life's meaning, becoming an artist. As he talked, Val absently reached out a hand and rested it atop the radiating blanket, on Byx's leg. Val's thumb slid back and forth, grazing the calf. A small gesture of fondness, of intimacy. Or so it seemed to Byx. Byx felt better, measurably so. The tremors had gone. No doubt it was a temporary reprieve, but he was grateful for it anyway. "So that brings me up to tonight," Val said with another of those bashful little laughs. "When, it seems, I've become a genuine celebrity. I have a hit play. That or it was the wildest fluke, all those people showing up." "It wasn't a fluke," Byx said with conviction, sitting up straighter and setting aside the empty cup. "I still don't understand it." The hand stayed on Byx's leg; the thumb continued to rub. "You've captured something crucial. Something everybody knows but no one's

articulated so finely. You've captured the imagination. You've driven the point home, finally, absolutely. People are drawn to the truth. And you've given them that." "What truth?" The hand at last went still on Byx's leg. Val looked authentically confused. Didn't he know? Softly Byx said, "Humankind is doomed. You've said it out loud. And now people can embrace that truth."

Chapter Nine All the Waywards

The Illuminare Supreme cast his disappointed countenance on the children huddled before him. His imposing presence was almost punishment enough. He loomed, radiant and frightful, and all who inhabited this marbled network deep inside the planet knew his will was absolute, his rule unquestioned. None dared to oppose him outright. He had led his kind for so long, through these millennia of waiting. He sustained the traditions set down by those who had ruled before him, in that sad dwindling time when the Illuminoids had been forced to withdraw from the Earth's surface. But there was no need for a sermon on such matters. The children knew these facts. The Supreme felt a natural fatherly affection for these youngsters, some a mere handful of centuries old. Speeches were good. Protracted oratory had its place. Certainly he had mastered the craft long, long ago. His fellow Illuminoids hung on his words, though he had spoken them again and again, rehashing the same fundamental concepts, repeating familiar lore, making certain that nothing of their culture was lost, as was his duty. When the Earth's prime breed reemerged from its eons of concealment, they would be their authentic selves: dominant, dignified, righteous. They would know what it meant to be an Illuminoid because none of them would ever have been allowed to forget it. But the Supreme's disappointment was having its desired effect. The children, he saw, were fidgety, uncomfortable. They understood their transgression. That too was good. It meant that the lessons of the elders hadn't gone unheard, just temporarily unheeded. But one allowed for error among youths. Any creature that had ever put forth offspring in the long turbulent history of this world knew that instinctively. It was a rudimentary truth of nature. "So," the chief among the Illuminoids at last intoned, "all of you have shirked your duty in favor of games. That is...disheartening."

Five of them had been brought to his presence, into the solemnity of this chamber walled with striated marble, supported by columns stretching upward to the far-off ceiling. Here lay the heart of their culture as it existed under the surface. Here the Supreme held forth on important matters, as often as necessary. One among the children, a lad named Kwict, seemed even more ill at ease than the others in the group. His fidgeting had turned to outright squirming. He was a vibrant example of youthful Illuminoidhood, bursting with vitality, and a mind quick and hungry for knowledge. These were fine attributes. But a being could hunger for the wrong things. The Supreme focused his attention squarely on Kwict. After a moment of staring silence he said in his ponderous voice, "I find particular fault with you. The good elder Hutok who generously instructed you tells me you were one of the most promising students she ever had. And look what you have done with your ability: run off, gone to play games, indulging yourself like a—" "Those were not games." Kwict glared. As with all Illuminoids, he radiated a constant energy. They were a race born of stellar matter, after all. But now the youth fairly streamed with a palpable force, one that spread past his bodily outlines to wash against the chamber's pale walls. It had been so long, literally ages, since anyone had interrupted the Illuminare Supreme that for a moment he stood utterly stunned. His first impulse was to laugh aloud, as if at absurdity. But he curbed this, and checked the impulse which followed, which was to respond with anger, fury, outrage. He knew full well that some among his fellows privately regarded him as a despot, but his actions had always, always, been toward the greater good of the Illuminoid race. He took a single step forward. The four Illuminoid youngsters surrounding Kwict shrank back toward the walls. Kwict alone stood his ground. "If running off to indulge your fancies on the surface while you should have been seeing to your monitoring duties was not a game," the Supreme said, "then what, my child, would you

call it?" The lad exuded more defiance, but the fear, appropriately, was present as well. "It was...curiosity." "Indeed. A fancy. A whim." "No," Kwict said, contradicting yet again. This time the Supreme felt no urge toward laughter. "No?" "No, my Supreme," the youth repeated, supplying the honorific reflexively, it seemed. "We..." He paused to look behind him, at his wayward comrades now huddling against the marble walls. "I was hungry for the surface. I wanted to know what it was like to—to live up there. To see sunlight. To stand beneath the stars. All my life I've lived here, in this place, with rock all around. I...I wanted, needed, something more." He appeared shaken by his own words, seeming to shrivel at last in the Supreme's powerful presence. Again the leader of the Illuminoids might have struck out, but he maintained an admirable mastery of his emotions. "Kwict," he said, tone gentler than before, "you didn't live on the surface. You took on the shell of an inferior life form. You degraded yourself. It was a necessary debasement. Do not imagine that I don't understand this. We need monitors. Conditions are changing up there. The time is nearing. But when we return to the face of the world it will be in our proper forms, as the unadulterated glory of the Illuminoid species, the rightful overlords of Earth, the original denizens." He felt himself swelling with the fervor, as came to him whenever he addressed an assembly. But such sermonizing wouldn't succeed here. These youths had heard words like these many times before. In their callowness they had rejected such sentiments but they weren't, ultimately, corrupt. Just deluded. Once more adopting a softer tone, the Illuminare Supreme said, "Whatever your reasons, all of you"—he gestured to include all five waywards—"however you motivated yourselves to commit these misdeeds, the inescapable fact is that you neglected your duties. All of you trained to be monitors, and at the first opportunity you abandoned your missions. That is shameful."

Kwict looked at the floor, adopting an attitude of supplication which pleased the Supreme. The others, less bold, had by now practically flattened themselves against the striated walls. These children had engaged in a conspiracy. Theirs had been a concerted effort, all of them volunteering for monitoring duty all at once. But on the scale of past treacheries it didn't register as too significant, the Supreme knew. Eons had passed for their kind in this underworld warren. Other Illuminoids, ones vying for actual power, had concocted much worse schemes. The Supreme had dealt with them fairly, yet decisively. As he must deal with these. Only one decision had awaited his consideration. Now that these five had been brought before him, the Supreme had decided. He stretched out a hand and touched Kwict's shoulder, bidding him to look up. With fearing eyes the youth did so. "There is one of your comrades who has not returned. A sixth member. All of you others, realizing your errors, came back of your own volition." That might not have been entirely true, the Supreme knew. They more likely had simply grown frightened or run low on their natural energies, and so had needed to replenish. But it was better to put into their minds the notion that they had erred as well as repented. "But," he went on, "there is one who does not yet realize he has betrayed his kind. His name, I understand, is Byx." He saw the flinch Kwict tried to hide. These two, then, must be close allies. Friends. Kwict and Byx. Perhaps the two had devised the whole intrigue between them, drawing in the other weaker four. The Illuminare Supreme, hand still on the lad's shoulder, loomed over him with his full majestic bearing. "You, Kwict, are to go back up to that surface you so crave. And there you are to track Byx, subdue him, and bring him back where he belongs. Go now. The elder Hutok is waiting to prepare you for your new undertaking." With a sharp shake of his head, he dismissed the whole company. What he had made certain that none of the waywards saw, Kwict least of all, was what the Supreme was drawn forth covertly from Kwict's body. It was a small glowing orb, composed

of a ravishing light unlike any other in the chamber. Energies leapt within it as it hovered above the Supreme's hand, plainly in the power of the Illuminoid sovereign. To the empty chamber he said, "I will hold a portion of your essence captive, Kwict, until you return with Byx. And if you fail me, you shall regret it." The ball of lively light rotated a moment over his open palm until the Supreme closed his fingers around it, seeming to extinguish its brilliance, though merely hiding it from view.

Chapter Ten Tender is the Day

Val's guest slept a great deal, but at least it appeared to be actual sleep now, not deliriumlaced semi-consciousness. He found the continued presence of another individual in his domicile much less disruptive than he would have guessed. He had lived alone for a number of years. He was used to it, to the static nature of his personal environment and the fact that once past his front door he needn't take anyone else into immediate consideration. Those were good conditions for a writer, he had always thought. Granted, in the normal course of his life he did indulge the occasional visitor. Griff, the driver who had taken him scratching for his replacement microwave, was the most recent example. But even the few repeat lovers he'd had since moving into this apartment had never lingered, had certainly never taken up residence. Not that this Byx was moving in, Val thought as he went about the night's domestic chores. This evening his play had met with a rousing success, drawing an audience large enough that a bigger venue would have to be found if that sort of turnout continued. But the mob scene at the theater seemed remote to him now, more something he had invented on the page rather than a real occurrence. The simple activities of the night kept him occupied. He tidied up his kitchen, which had gotten well out of hand over the past couple of weeks. He went up to the roof garden, chatted briefly with one of the tenders there, and came back down with a few fresh vegetables. Things still grew, even in this climate; one just had to have the knack. Val checked in on Byx periodically. He was still wrapped up in that archaic electric blanket, soaking up the overwhelming heat it supplied. That, Val admitted, was quite strange. Byx wasn't oozing with sweat as he would be with a fever, the universal telltale of the Pest. Val had never heard of any disease that made a body crave warmth so. Maybe it was psychological. Perhaps Byx was crazy.

Yet even that thought didn't disturb Val. Firstly, he didn't believe that Byx was mentally unbalanced. Even in this partially incapacitated state, the blue-eyed man had a stable manner, a sane presence. Secondly, no abnormal mental or emotional state could account for the lack of sweat on his brow, for the fact that he hadn't succumbed to heatstroke after hours of that blanket's intense enveloping temperatures. It seemed apparent to Val that Byx needed the heat, no matter how inexplicable that need was. He was tempted to put down his acceptance of this physiological peculiarity to the playwright in him, to the writer’s imagination that could construct fantasies and invest them with a believability, no matter how farfetched. But he saw the pretentiousness of this inference. It wasn't some exceptional ability on his part. It was Byx, who had enchanted him, so much so that Val was willing to go along with any eccentricity, no matter how bizarre. And he was so very beautiful, wasn't he? Val stood on the threshold of his bedroom and gazed at the male, still fully dressed, leather jacket and all, wrapped in the fuzzy electrical blanket. His eyes were closed, the long eyelashes moving with irregular tics, indicating a dreaming mind. Val studied his elegantly high cheekbones, the sensual line of his lips. When he had first caught sight of this man last night at the theater, he had thought it was Byx's eyes, those blue bewitching orbs that had drawn and held his attention. Attraction could be like that sometimes, a single trait leaping out, demanding attention. But a characteristic as trivial as blue eyes couldn't, Val thought, account for his own captivation. He wasn't frivolous. He wouldn't give this much notice to someone on the strength of any combination of pleasing physical qualities, much less a lone attribute. No. There was something more, much more, to Byx. There simply had to be. But that wasn't to say he wasn't a lovely sight. Val indulged himself for a few minutes, standing and staring. The night was starting to wane. Outside, the city was growing somnolent with the coming day. He too felt fatigue closing over him. He would need to sleep soon. Though his apartment was relatively spacious, he really had nowhere else to sleep but on this bed. He had no couch, and the idea of sleeping across a couple of kitchen chairs or on the floor

didn't particularly appeal. After all, it was his home, and the foamy slab that was his bed afforded a generous amount of room. He slipped off his sandals and trousers. Normally he would have the air conditioning going, but he guessed Byx wouldn't like the blasting cool air. Already Val's shirt was sticking to him. He shed that as well, and lay down next to his strange sleeping guest, clad for modesty's sake in a pair of briefs. Byx didn't stir. As the night ebbed, sleep came for Val. * * * * Dreams were not the sole province of humans, nor even of those dwindling species currently occupying the Earth's outer skin. Dreams belonged to all living creatures with even a scintilla of the grander spark. Dogs dreamt, people dreamt, and certainly Illuminoids did as well. However, since assuming a human shape, Byx had found himself dreaming with a greater vividness, or at least with more recklessness, than ever before. It was, for him, just another intriguing aspect of this borrowed life he was living. He retained his Illuminoid intellect, of course, as well as the extra-human functions of his brain. But it seemed the transformative process had opened his mind to the peculiar intensity of humanlike dreaming. As he lay bundled in the electrically generated warmth, phantasmagoric images slid across his mind's eye. He saw places he had visited all around the globe, or hallucinatory versions of those locales anyway. Some didn't match up to reality. Certainly he had seen no ivory castle dominating the desiccated landscape of a virtually uninhabited Australia, but in his dream one stood, soaring above the burnt red terrain. He also visited a rainforest, still magnificent though criminally reduced from its onetime glory. In another dream, more fully fleshed than most of the others, he wandered Paris. He had in truth seen this city only a few years ago, before the remaining natives had been forced underground. His mind spun a fantasy of music, food, wanton sex, twirling lights. The passion of the dream dizzied him, awakening his desires. It did more than that. It goaded him back toward consciousness, toward coherency. He opened his eyes, feeling hunger—for food, and perhaps for other sustenance as well.

The bedroom had no window, but Byx could tell from the brightness of the rest of the apartment that day had come. He had slept the whole night away. He blinked at the drawings and paintings and weavings adorning the walls. Not bad work. Some of it quite good, even, according to human standards. Illuminoids didn't create art in basic forms like these, but that didn't mean he couldn't appreciate such efforts. While in Paris he had spent days in the abandoned Louvre. Paris? Yes. He had just been dreaming of the city. And of food. He was not alone on the bed. Byx jerked upright, but it came just as the necessary memories to explain his situation fell into place, dislodging the lingering surreal imagery of his dreams. Lying next to him, though not touching him, was the playwright, Val Lucien, who had spirited him from the theater back to his Mission apartment. Val had tended to him. Val was his savior. Val lay beside him with a conspicuous hard-on outlined by the snug briefs he wore. Byx let the fleecy yellow blanket fall to his waist. He no longer felt chilled. His internal temperature had stabilized, for the moment anyway. He reached over the edge of the foam bed, pulling the blanket's cord from the wall socket. He was still fully dressed, save for his boots. Already the day was heating this place. He sensed the warmth seeping through the walls and welcomed it. For him the surface days were much more tolerable than the nights, although in all his time up here he hadn't yet lost that feeling of wonder over there being day and night. Light and darkness. The sun's glory shining on the world as it spun, as it orbited. Illuminoids were born of that yellow star in the sky. In the Below there was no hint of its radiance. Byx let himself study the playwright. It seemed harmless, diverting, not an impingement. Human sleep was different from Illuminoid sleep; it was both more earnest and less restorative, Byx had found. Val lay unmoving but for the slow rise and fall of his chest. Flesh was tight on his torso, with almost no hint of fat. His fair hair was matched by the wan shade of his skin. Fine pale needles of hair ringed the man's pinkish nipples. Lean muscle gave a firm shape to his limbs. Again Byx wondered what physical activities the writer engaged in to keep himself in

such condition. But Byx's gaze returned repeatedly to the stark enticing ridge of Val's cock, barely contained by his briefs. Byx still wore his leather jacket. With the day's increasing heat he no longer needed it. He tugged at the zipper, drew it downward with a slow whisper of brass teeth, and dropped the jacket onto the floor. He followed it with his dingy white T-shirt. And why not his pants? Yes. He had slept in his clothes. He could smell and feel the sweat that had dried on his body. Carefully, not wanting to inconsiderately wake Val by either his movements or making noise, he slipped the jeans off and lay back, luxuriating. It was enough to feel healthy once more. He didn't even indulge in thoughts of what the night's disturbing fit of fatigue meant. No need right this moment to consider those larger implications. He was content to just lie here, beside this lovely male. Byx wore no underwear. His cock hardened in unhurried, luscious stages. After some while, unable to help himself, he took hold of his rigid shaft and started to pump. * * * * The gentle jouncing brought Val up leisurely from the deep well of sleep. He recognized the rhythm; it was as basic and timeless as a heartbeat. Even before lifting toward full consciousness, Val was already responding. His erection strained in his briefs. The apartment was warm. Very warm. It was daytime, maybe an hour or two after sunrise. He sometimes stayed awake this late, but it was usually here at home, where he always had the air conditioning to keep the sweltering temperature at bay. Not today, though; he'd left the air conditioner off in deference to his guest. Today he was living like a squatter. This apartment was just a shell, a shelter, without any environmental modifications. Well, he'd lived his youth like this, in derelict buildings lacking all amenities. Beneath him the foam slab rocked to a familiar tempo. A thought came and went of Griff, steadily plowing Val's ass on this very bed. But the memory didn't even have the chance to take hold as a fantasy. Val's eyes at last drifted open to see the naked dark-haired man lying

beside him, jerking on his cock. A feeling of rushing blood seemed to sweep Val's entire body. His already very erect manhood surged into an absolute, limit-testing, improbable hardness. The cockhead slipped past the waist of his briefs, dropping a pearl of hot pre-come just below his navel. Byx stopped what he was doing. Not, it seemed, out of embarrassment—which Val imagined he would be feeling under the same circumstances—but rather with a sheepishness that was given voice with, "Hey, I'm sorry if I woke you." Val expelled the breath he'd been holding. "I'm glad you did," he murmured, trying belatedly to put a provocative spin on the words. But what was the point? His guest was lying here with him on his bed, shamelessly jerking off. What would a clever pick-up line avail him now? He laughed, a good single hard blast of released tension. He had wanted something like this to happen, hadn't he? It was partly why he had brought Byx home. But—but this? It was vaguely ridiculous, like an overwrought adolescent fantasy. "Which part of me do you find funny?" Byx asked, but the question had no hostile undertone. He wasn't embarrassed. "Oh, not funny. Not you. This situation, maybe. But you...you're really quite beautiful, Byx." Again came the sensation of blood hurrying in his veins. Byx still held his cock in his hand. Val realized he was nearly as exposed, almost as flagrantly "guilty" of sexual arousal, what with his own blatant display. With that, he lifted his hips from the bed, peeled the briefs down his legs and flung them to the floor. "Anything about me you find funny?" he offered. For just an instant he thought sure Byx would find some fault, something genuinely laughable about his nude form. Val didn't know where such insecurity came from. Normally he had an easy, though not obnoxious, confidence in his physique. "Nothing funny," Byx assured, grinning. He looked Val in the eye. "Just ravishing." He

shifted his gaze, eyeing Val's cock with evident intensity. Val found he liked being ogled in this way. And how strange this was, the whole scenario. A few hours ago this man had been lying in this same spot fully dressed, wrapped up in an electric blanket, shivering as if with extreme cold. Now he appeared quite recovered, and was apparently randy as could be. Blue eyes still on Val's staff, Byx again started to work his own cock, sliding his fingers loosely up and down the vein-filigreed shaft. Val watched the man's balls bounce lightly against his thigh. Without any forethought—perhaps deliberately without any forethought—Val took a hold of his cock as well and imitated the actions of the blue-eyed male. Again the foamy block jounced underneath him, the movement stronger now, two cocks being manipulated at once, in a natural perfect symmetry. It evoked a series of memories, individual frames culled from a fast run of past actions. Val recalled early sexual experiments, back in the days of scrabbling living, performing testing acts like this: exposing himself to another male for the first time, feeling a flush of excitement stronger than anything he'd ever experienced before. He had even done this, lain side by side while handling his cock in the practiced manner, watching his motions duplicated, feeling without any actual physical contact the rising carnal tumult of his partner. But it occurred to Val after a minute or two, after taking himself perhaps a quarter of the way toward his orgasm, that he didn't really want to just lie here and jerk himself off, no matter how beautiful a spectacle Byx made beside him doing the same thing. So he stopped. And Byx, gaze still fastened to Val's groin, stopped too. Blue eyes raised and blinked, questioning. Val reached across the separating blue-sheeted foam and closed his fingers around Byx's staff. Byx’s lean toned body jumped, and again a grin split his lovely features. Val felt the wondrous, familiar warmth of the rigid flesh. He slid his thumb up and down the shaft, feeling the hard sponginess beneath silken skin, the soft irregular interruptions of the veins.

A mutuality remained at play here. Grin tightening with the pleasure of Val's fondling, Byx reached for and took his hold of Val's cock, squeezing it. Byx slipped his little finger downward to trace the tiny ridge bisecting Val's scrotum. The rasp of the fingernail put a tremor of promised ecstasy through Val. They resumed the slow pulling rhythm. It was graceful. Byx held him with authority. His elbow dipped and rose as his arm moved. Val's excitation increased. It was more than just mechanical manipulation, of course; Byx knew what he was doing, but it was the attraction that made this worthwhile. Val's first glimpse of this man, across the back rows of the theater on the night of his play's premiere, remained vivid in his mind. How gorgeous a creature he was. Val worked the cock harder, throwing his shoulder into the repetitive motion. He could feel the pulsing of Byx's shaft, the quiver of the large underside vein. Val's heart sped. Sweat started to dot his forehead, his chest. He heard the slap of his own testicles against his leg as Byx's jerkings also increased in speed and fervor. Another thirty seconds of this, maybe, and Val was going to be spraying his seed with hot abandon. But he didn't want to do that, he decided. Not yet. He disengaged himself from Byx's hand. He shifted, knees sinking in the foaminess of the bed as he repositioned himself. His bare shoulders pushed apart the firm thighs, which proceeded to close around his upper body as Val dropped his mouth with an almost feral hunger down on top of Byx's cock. He tasted the luscious salty sting of pre-come even as he swallowed the crown. It went over Val's tongue and into his throat. His lips encircled the shaft's girth, maintaining an unbroken moist ring as his mouth plunged. He laid his hand on Byx's balls, cradling, applying a tender pressure. He inhaled the musk of damp, dark curls. As Val set about blowing the dark-haired man, he felt all the excited squirmings of Byx's body, heard his escalating cries, felt fingers grazing his skull through his lightly shaded hair as Byx's hands flailed about. Trimly muscled legs pressed Val's torso from either side. His distended mouth rocked up and down, a fiercer rhythm even than what he'd managed with his hand. Breath seethed in and out of his nostrils. Spit wet the corners of his mouth and dribbled to

his chin, but he didn't break contact for an instant. His own cock, caught in a fold of sheet underneath him, beat with an urgency that again threatened to send him over into his climax. But he fought off the crisis. He concentrated on the fellatio he was diligently performing, on bringing this male to his ultimate stage of bliss. When that moment arrived, a few seconds later, it was accompanied by a ragged yowl, all vowels, that tore through the bedroom. Byx's body tensed, his balls clenched in Val's caressing fingers, and warm viscous jets rewarded his mouth. Val swallowed and swallowed, determined not to let a drop escape, pausing to relish the flavor, even keeping his mouth in place as the spasms eased, as the first softening of the flesh set in. Finally, with that salted sweetness coating his tongue, Val released his lover. He sat up, looking down on Byx's languid body, on his lethargic smile and drooping eyelids. It was possible this man would be an inconsiderate lover, one of those I've-had-my-come-soeverything's-over sexual egocentrics. After all, what did Val really know about this person? But instinct told him Byx wouldn't leave him in the lurch, and that faith was justified immediately as Byx visibly roused himself as if to a task, not unpleasant, that needed doing. His grin had a delightful sauciness to it as he directed Val to lie back, to part his legs. The slim figure settled between Val's knees. Byx's shapely ass pointed toward the ceiling as he lowered his mouth, pausing to exhale hot breath on Val's staff, to slaver his tongue over the sensitive waiting crown, then to spread his lips slowly over the cockhead. It was a gradual, luxuriant swallowing, and it whipped a bolt of pleasure through Val's body. He was already hyper-aroused. Byx's languorous ministrations weren't going to prolong this for him. But Byx surprised him. The suction he provided somehow kept Val in a kind of stasis, hanging between the charged poles of stimulation and orgasm. The head of dark hair lifted and fell. Val looked down, taking in the beautiful sight, seeing through the tumbling locks as his straining hard-on disappeared again and again into the loving mouth. As he had done, Byx fondled his balls. That felt good. When Byx whispered a fingertip over his ass-pucker, it was simply too much for Val. Overload. He tensed and erupted. The

climax struck with the seeming force of one of the howling windstorms, new phenomena that had been impacting the Bay Area during these past few years. The pleasure battered him, lifting his shoulders from the bed, clenching his ass. The spunk tore from him, and also as Val had done, Byx stayed to catch every spurt. The apartment seethed with heat. It rose in almost visible spirals from the wide rumpled bed. The scent of semen in the air, of aroused male flesh, somehow added to the general sense of sultriness. Val's body glistened with sweat. Byx worked his way on knees and elbows up the bed to fall beside him, laying his cheek on Val's outstretched arm. "I like the taste of your come," Byx said. It seemed a perfectly straightforward statement, with no hidden meanings. Val checked a reflexive chuckle. "I like yours too." Which was true. The flavor remained on his tongue. Still, it was an odd bit of post-coital chatter. Byx's head turned. He lazily kissed the inner flesh of Val's biceps. "I suppose you sleep during the daytime?" An even stranger thing to say. What kind of question was that to ask? "Doesn't everybody?" Val countered, but even as he posed it, he thought his question missed the mark, that it didn't quite convey what it should. It was like when he would write a line of dialogue that rang slightly false, that he knew would need to be revised. "I mean, don't you?" He too turned his head. And he looked into vivid blue eyes, seeing twinkling humor there, and perhaps something more—a decision being made, a risk calculated. "Maybe," Byx murmured, "I should tell you about myself."

Chapter Eleven A Hunter’s Moon

Time moved slowly for the Illuminoid race. Whatever else Kwict thought, whatever seditious sentiments he had kept hidden, he had to admit to this basic tenet: time was to an Illuminoid as it was to a stone, to the torpid clock of the universe, to the rise and disintegration of the stars themselves. No surprise there, really. Illuminoids were of the stars, or so the elders endlessly declaimed. Origins meant little to Kwict. He concerned himself with the present, as well as the tomorrows that awaited. The future. A bright future for the Illuminoids. That destiny seemed inevitable. The retaking of the Earth's surface lands, deliverance from the Below, a new era of Earthly domination for his kind. But it was the slowness that rankled him, that ate at his spirit. Whenever he had made murmurs of impatience as a child, it was uniformly put down to the flightiness of youth, to a lack of understanding regarding adult matters. The opinions of a child, so went established lore, were worthless. Kwict had never forgotten those early shamings. They had seemed designed to stifle intellect, to create a new generation of blind obedients, in thrall not just to the Illuminare Supreme, but to the Illuminoid creed of patience and languor which, he suspected, hadn't always been his species' guiding principles. Rather, it seemed to him that Illuminoids should be quite impatient. Eager. Zealous with the desire to revisit the lands above, so long denied to them. Kwict simply did not accept that transformation of one's form so to once again master the planet's surface was somehow a crime, something that just wasn't done. He had done it. And now, this time at the Supreme's behest, he would do it again. Following a route through the marbly branches of the great maze, he arrived at the chamber of Hutok. Here was the elder who had initially instructed him in the techniques of adaptation. Kwict, despite himself, felt a crushing shame as he came before his mentor. Hutok

had been kind to him. Kwict had begged for instruction, and this knowledgeable, wily old Illuminoid had granted him lessons without question, without first deeming him too young, too callow, too impatient. The work had been strenuous, to be sure, but Hutok had ably brought out Kwict's talents, refining his skills, easing the entire process. It had seemed to come naturally to Kwict, but he acknowledged, then and now, that he never would have progressed so quickly without this elder's coaching. Hutok, of course, was waiting for him. The chamber had been arranged as if for an instructive session, though this was to be merely a preparatory one. Kwict knew the techniques. But this time the transformative sequence was to be done swiftly, with unflinching deliberation. Hutok was on hand only to facilitate. Today she was to be a technician, not a teacher. "Are you ready?" was Hutok's greeting. She regarded her erstwhile pupil impassively. Kwict tried not to read disappointment on the elder's features. The Supreme had judged Kwict and his fellows to be criminals—or perhaps merely delinquents, which might even be worse. It was one thing to have committed a true transgression, a sin which the older, more powerful Illuminoids would take seriously. It was a lesser, weaker thing to have perpetrated a mere childish infraction, something which might be dispensed with by a few stern words. Of course, only Hutok knew her own feelings on the matter of Kwict's abuse of his surface monitoring duties. "I'm...ready." Kwict faltered, dropping his gaze timidly to the gleaming floor, suddenly unsure whether this was a human convention he had picked up during his time above. Did Illuminoids lower their eyes when ashamed? Hutok calmly indicated a spot within the chamber where food awaited, mounded into a crystal bowl. "Then consume that and take your place. We'll go directly to the third tier. Assume the appropriate mode." No meticulous instructions, no coaxing, no gentle murmurs of encouragement. Kwict obeyed, quickly eating the bowl's contents. Normally Illuminoids subsisted on heat and the communal pool of energy supplied by their fellows. The fibrous roots in the bowl

were flavorless, but such nourishment was necessary for a transformation. He tried to comfort himself with the thought that, whatever else, his former master now regarded him as wholly capable of performing all the necessary stages for the adaptive procedure. What she was asking Kwict to do required a level of skill he himself wouldn't have boldly presumed to possess. Nonetheless, the young Illuminoid set himself to the task. For nearly a decade he had roamed the Earth's surface. Time crawled for the Illuminoid race, yes, but up above it could be readily measured. Night followed day. Some places on the globe were still visited by seasons. The planet orbited its yellow star. There was even a satellite, a great gray lonely hunk of rock that phased above the Earth itself. Kwict had often enjoyed watching that moon, which remained visible at some point during each day virtually wherever he had traveled. Ten years. It was that idiosyncratic Illuminoid sense of time that had accounted for the fact that he and his fellows had not been immediately missed by the elders of the Below. What were a handful of years? A petty amount of time. Probably their absences hadn't aroused more than a glimmer of curiosity for the first half of that decade. But Kwict had been aware of the time, keenly so. The passage of days, hours, minutes, even the fleeting instants, had taken on a grand significance, a poignant majesty. He had experienced the gradual slide of history in far more immediate terms than ever before. In his transmogrified form he had grasped how a year's worth of time was assembled, how it built into something solid, momentous, a block of chronological reality disparate from all that had come before it and distinct from every one which would follow. This was a revelation, one among many. He hadn't been alone in his crime, or his delinquency, or his childish prank, or whatever it was the Illuminare Supreme and the other powerful members called what Kwict and his colleagues had done. They had formed a cabal. It had started as a whispering of discontent among the youths of the Below, and had advanced over time into a kind of coherent secretive movement. They had all submitted themselves for mentoring in the transformative sciences.

Kwict saw now retrospectively that their small group had approached this plan with varying degrees of seriousness and dedication. Certainly he himself had committed fully to it. So had Byx. Yes, Byx. A strange sense of longing curled its way through Kwict at the thought of the youthful Illuminoid. They had been comrades, confederates, each devoted to the cause of rebellious behavior. Perhaps some of the others, those same ones who had joined him before the glowering Supreme a short while ago, hadn't felt a similar solemn commitment. Maybe to those others the whole effort was a sort of elaborate prank, mere juvenile high jinks, just as the elders thought. But for Kwict, and for Byx as well, there had been a true devotion. And that faithfulness had, for Kwict at least, colored his personal feelings for his fellow youth. He had felt for Byx a kind of loyalty, even an affection, that he hadn't entirely understood until, in human form, he had experienced those formidable bodily drives and potent emotional currents. So strange. He, a mighty Illuminoid, had had to assume the trappings of a lesser species to understand his own emotions. He loved Byx. It was a human term, one which had taken him some time to comprehend. "You're not concentrating," said Hutok. Kwict had been settling into the pattern, a mental design bolstered by the disciplines he had learned. It wasn't a matter of clearing thoughts from one's mind; it was the explicit focus on certain of those innate cognitive configurations which all Illuminoids possessed in their collective memory. The potential for adaptation existed within their race, though one didn't often hear this mentioned. The inborn talent was viewed as something undignified. But everyone could do it, though some did it better than others. Hutok was among the silently acknowledged masters of the art. Kwict, as the Illuminare Supreme had said, had been one of Hutok's most promising students. "Sorry," Kwict said. Hutok ignored the apology. Still unperturbed, she made the ritual gestures that indicated Kwict should attempt the third tier once more.

But the younger Illuminoid hesitated. He gazed a lingering moment at the elder opposite him and repeated, "I am sorry." Hutok returned him a blank look, or a nearly blank one. Something moved now on her face, perhaps nothing more significant that a twitch of annoyance. More than once during his training, Kwict, despite his natural aptitude, had driven his mentor to distraction with clumsy mistakes and restlessness. Yet it seemed to Kwict that his kindly former teacher was, for the first time since he had arrived at the chamber, actually seeing him. "I didn't mean to betray you," Kwict said, abandoning for the moment his attempt to reestablish the tier necessary toward his transformation. His tone was grave, heartfelt. He hadn't planned on saying anything of this sort to the elderly instructor. "My...crime...wasn't directed toward you personally." Hutok blinked slowly, which seemed like another of those peculiarly human habits, one of the near-infinitude of tiny telltales by which the Earth's current surface inhabitants communicated with one another. Certainly Hutok herself had employed the humanly shape many, many times. Perhaps she too had absorbed some of those ways, either unconsciously or deliberately. After a lengthy silence the older Illuminoid said, "Of course you didn't mean me personal harm." A surge of warm sentiment rushed through Kwict. He had felt mostly nervousness while standing before the Supreme, an expectation of punishment. There had been no knowing how the Illuminoid leader might choose to deal with the band of rebels. But here, facing his mentor, Kwict experienced a genuine contriteness. He was glad Hutok was accepting his remorse. But that gladness dissolved abruptly, cruelly, even though Hutok did not speak the following words in a cruel or even reproachful tone: "Your crime wasn't against me, Kwict. It is against our people. Surface conditions must be monitored. Rather than see to this duty, however, you and others decided to satisfy your own needs. What greater betrayal could there

be?" It seemed for a moment that the elder actually expected an answer, that this was merely some interesting philosophical question she had posed. But Kwict had no reply, no excuse to offer his bygone mentor. He couldn't hope to make Hutok understand, or maybe it was that she understood perfectly, and rightly condemned Kwict and his fellows for their actions. Silently now, Kwict resumed the attainment of the third tier. It came easily this time, as if Hutok's original instructions were still fresh in his mind. * * * * He sucked air into his lungs, feeling his chest swell. Cool. Flavorful. That air was bracing. The Below smelled of stone, of the Earth's deep heats. In those marble-walled passages and chambers , the atmosphere never moved. All remained still. No new ideas found mobility. The Supreme had maintained a static order all through Kwict's life. He saw as perhaps he hadn't before that this was no small feat on the part of the Illuminoid sovereign. Doubtless others before Kwict and his comrades had committed, or at least contemplated, rebellious acts. Yet the Illuminoids as a race had retained their culture, their social structure, throughout all these ages. Kwict had finished the adaptation, climbing through the remaining tiers of the procedure under the blunt toneless commands of Hutok. At the same instant he had transported himself, performing a kind of catapulting up through the rocky reaches of the planet, all the way to its surface where he rematerialized. It was a talent of his species, this ability to move oneself over vast distances and through solid matter, which was far less frowned on than transformation itself. He was here. He breathed the lively air, eyes still shut. He felt the chill on his unclothed, altered flesh. The climate hadn't yet changed sufficiently. This world needed to heat still further so to allow the Illuminoids to reclaim these lands. But Kwict hadn't come here merely to monitor the temperature. He had taken on a new mission, one of vast importance. Find Byx. Retrieve him. So the Supreme had ordered. In gradual stages, as with the transformative process itself, Kwict opened his eyes. It was night. He'd come up on the dark side of the planet. No wonder the chill was so

severe. Still, despite the darkness, images flooded in, and Kwict absorbed them, frightened and delighted. He stood on shifting, yet ultimately solid ground. Gravel moved beneath his bare soles. Grit stirred in a faint breeze. From somewhere nearby came the creak of aged metal. Above lay the wide swath of star-punctured black. And in that nighttime sky the moon shone, eternal and lonely, its face neither judging nor caring. Kwict's human heart beat faster at the sight, roiling up emotions he had never entirely understood as an Illuminoid. He felt longing, melancholy. He felt an ache for Byx, a mounting desire to see his friend. When they had all first come up here, they had necessarily scattered. Each went his or her own way, seeking separate adventures. If operatives were ever sent after them, so Byx himself had reasoned during one of the secret meetings of the cabal, those agents would not be able to catch them all at once, in a single bunch. So, for safety's sake, they had strewn themselves across the globe. In those heady days Kwict had gloried in his human body, seeing it as vindication. Here was the proof the Illuminoids needn't wait for the Earth's climate to finish its shifting; they should simply change themselves. Transform. Adapt. But the dream had started to crumble. Kwict had experienced fear, as well as a growing sense of fundamental disengagement. Day by day he felt a little less real. Or else it was that the charade of his adapted form had simply worn out. He had found himself unable to go on. Terrors had started to assail him. He felt like a fraud, which, of course, he was in a very real sense. Then too he had experienced a kind of general weakening, as if the shell he had assumed were wearing itself out. He had wondered if some definite limit were set on the adaptations, if the Illuminoid within slowly depleted the human form it took on. But it was that growing sense of dislocation that had finally overwhelmed him, and returning to the Below had seemed his only choice. There, among his kind, he had found replenishment, drawing the communal life force into himself. His fellows had evidently followed this same pattern, though some far more quickly. All of them had withdrawn from the

surface. Only Byx, after ten years, remained free. Still human, still roaming the Earth. Kwict had thought often about Byx during his previous sojourn on the surface; had fantasized about tracking down his comrade, about meeting him while they were both in human form and subject to all the remarkable humanly whims and pleasures. But he hadn't wanted to risk their safety. Now, however, everything had changed. The rules were different. Kwict lifted his arms, stretched them out into the surrounding barren night. He opened his mouth and let out a feral cry, the hunter's call. He would obey the Illuminare Supreme's direct and undeniable command. A lifetime of conditioning allowed him no other possibility. He would find Byx. Once again Kwict raised his eyes to the moon, the savage howl tearing from his throat until that stark gray face of stone swam with his tears.

Chapter Twelve Illumination

Val Lucien fought against the feeling, throwing the full cerebral brawn of his writer's imagination into the effort. To write was, in a sense, to delude. This wasn't the sort of statement Val himself would ever make aloud, but others among the artistic circle to which he tenuously belonged had little shame about such pompous pronouncements. Neither did he count himself among the number of professed "self-deluding" writers he had encountered in San Francisco— that was, those who claimed the characters they created took on lives of their own, rising off the page and exerting an autonomous will, or else appearing at the ends of their beds while they slept, explaining how their fates should play out. Pretentiousness, Val had thought almost from the instant of his first concerted effort to create something of worth purely out of words. He had never believed in any sort of reality for which he was solely responsible. He made fiction. Even when deep in the process, when a piece occupied him virtually ever conscious moment in a given day, he never felt himself disappearing into it. Never was there a true sense of immersion, beyond what was necessary to give the work a pleasing authenticity. But right now, deep into the daytime and at an hour when he should be sleeping, with the taste of his lover still tangy in his mouth, Val Lucien intentionally applied those deluding skills to himself. What Byx had told him was, plainly, madness. But perhaps, with the right amount of effort, Val could make himself believe. Or at least could prevent himself from summarily judging the lovely male with the dark hair to be a total lunatic. It was proving difficult. The feeling Val fought most ardently against right now, as he sat with Byx on the bed, was a crushing sense of disappointment. He had already invested in this man, allowed his emotions to start to take root. The sexual attraction had awakened his sentimental impulses. Byx fascinated him. That enchantment had started from the first moment

Val had laid eyes on the male. How romantic a notion that was. How keenly Val wanted that initial captivation to remain unadulterated, justified. But what Byx had just finished telling him, uninterrupted, the tale growing and evolving as Val had sat and listened with a mounting uneasiness—well, how could anyone believe such rot? Even for the writerly mind of Val Lucien, who had concocted outrageous absurdities for the stage, this was simply too much. Nothing, he admitted now, could make him succumb to Byx's own evident self-delusion, one of such elaborate and fantastical intricacy that it could only come from a mind torn free from the moorings of sanity. Droplets of perspiration streaked Val's body. He still sat naked, as did Byx. That nudity, which a mere half hour ago had felt comfortable and natural, now lent Val a sense of vulnerability. It seemed somehow unseemly to be unclothed in the presence of such craziness, as if clothes would provide a basic defense against what Byx had told him. And what was it that Byx had said, exactly? Val palmed a hand across his chest, feeling the slickness of damp flesh. Outside, he heard a wind stirring. Illuminoids? The Below? Transmutation? A race of beings as old as the stars? Those were schizophrenic inventions. Val had stopped listening closely halfway through, and instead struggled against the seemingly undeniable notion that Byx was mad. Or else he had unfolded this extravagant, complex tale as—what? A means of impressing Val, of demonstrating his own creative prowess? With his face set into a meticulously neutral cast, Val studied the man sharing his bed. No, this was no fancy. Byx believed what he was saying. He belonged to this breed of Illuminoids, and they lived deep beneath the surface of the world, and he had come up to dwell among the natives— No. Insanity. Ugly, bare, indisputable craziness, without a shred of supporting evidence. Except, perhaps, for the curious fact that Byx, while enshrouded for hours in a heating blanket set to full power, had not exuded a single bead of sweat. Byx had ceased talking. Val continued to gaze at him, having offered no comment, no acknowledging sound, for many minutes now. Blue eyes stared back at him. Those luscious lips

were curled into a strange, amused quirk. "So, Val Lucien," Byx said with a hint of flippancy, and beneath that something more solemn, "what do you make of me now?" It was, Val thought, a challenge. I dare you to disbelieve. Or, just as likely, I dare you to accept my story. Val didn't speak. Was a threat implied? He felt no danger signals from this man, but then again, a short while ago he had been entirely sure of Byx's sanity. "I'll save you the trouble," Byx said. "You are regretting bringing me here. Regretting meeting me. Regretting even that first moment when we saw each other, in the theater." The flippant tone had faded, until all that remained was a voice slowly choking, threads of sorrow wrapping about the words. It touched an instinct in Val. He and this man had made love a short time ago, and that physical joining had been a kind of confirmation, a consummation, of the feelings that had been growing inside Val. He couldn't, he found, just shut off those emotional impulses so quickly or so completely, even though good sense told him he would have to do so, sooner rather than later. But for the moment he reached out, without giving thought to the gesture, and cupped Byx's bare shoulder. His skin was dry, where Val was fairly streaming from the heat baking the un-air-conditioned apartment. "I don't regret any of that," he said, and it was true. He couldn't regret meeting this man or their lovemaking. He could, however, regret what Byx had said, changing the entire dynamic of their burgeoning relationship with this demented story of inhuman creatures who lived far underground. The look of gratitude that came to Byx's blue eyes was heartbreaking, even as the darkhaired man tempered it with a small dismissive flick of his hand. "Right. That wouldn't be what you'd regret, after all. In all my time up here I've never revealed myself. It never even occurred to me to do so. You humans are quite easy to live among—" "We humans," Val murmured. He squeezed Byx's shoulder, then let his hand drop. He would have to get his guest out of here. Byx could go back to wherever he'd come from, be that a squat or the subterranean Below he had referred to. Either way, their time together was going

to be cut brutally short. Val's disappointment was turning to a devastating grief. As premature and preposterous as it seemed now, he realized he had been well on his way to falling in love with this man. Yet behind that sorrow, Val also felt a slowly gathering anger. A fury constructed of that disillusionment and heartache, a tempest of emotion he feared he wouldn't be able to control once it took hold. "I need to prove this to you," said Byx. "No," Val said, shaking his head. He knew an ugly scene was coming. "No, you don't have to do that." But he said it helplessly, aware he couldn't hold off the inevitable. Relationships, even those of the shortest term, carried with them certain presuppositions, one of which was that if the relationship were to end, it would happen uncomfortably for one or both parties. But Byx was scooting off the bed. His cock bobbled as he stood and looked about the room. "Do you have a candle?" "It's daylight," Val said unnecessarily. Mostly he didn't want to give this scenario its start, whatever it was, whatever deranged notion Byx felt he had to play out. But, again, that inevitability loomed. His grief, which had grown out of savage disappointment, now became a weight of depression. Apparently his anger would wait until later. He gestured at the small table by the bed, atop which rested a few random baubles. "In there," he sighed. "Second drawer down." Byx came around the bed, a look of eagerness on his elegantly handsome features. Val couldn't help but watch the movement of his body, the easy physical flow of this man. Beautiful. Too bad all that loveliness was attached to a warped mind. Val also made a move to stand. Despite the intensifying heat, it was time to get dressed. He was going to have to send this man out of his home, out into the broil of the day, which presumably wouldn't bother Byx, considering that bizarre business with the electric blanket. "No. Stay there. Just watch."

Val sank back onto the foam, turning as Byx set the candle on the tabletop. It was a semi-misshapen stub of purple, the wick dark and bent. "Now"—Byx grinned—"watch this." He took four steps back, as though counting them off, so Val had a free range of vision. "And..." A pearl of yellow flame snapped to life atop the candle. It seemed to happen with a tiny audible pop. Val gazed. The candle continued to burn, the small tongue of flame doing nothing extraordinary. He looked at Byx. "And...?" he prompted. "Did you see me lighting the thing?" "No." "Did you see me do anything to, I don't know, to treat the wick in any way?" "No." The grin ebbed. Byx's eyes narrowed. "Then why aren't you impressed?" "Because it was a trick," Val said, the depressive load still on him. For a moment he longed for anger; that at least would lend him some energy, allow him to get the whole awful process truly under way. "I don't know how the trick was done. I don't care. Besides, what does it prove?" For a moment Byx looked stunned, as if he'd expected his demonstration to recast the whole scene, to make Val see. Finally he let out a long breath. He stooped and snatched up his jeans, then his shirt. As he dressed, Val wondered if it would be just this easy, if Byx would simply go without prodding, if they could somehow avoid the ultimate terrible finale of what had been too short—far, far too short—of a love affair. But no. Of course not. Nothing was that painless. Had Val been writing a breakup scene, he wouldn't just allow the characters to walk away from each other. Though how wonderful if he did just that someday in some future work, confounding his audience's expectations. Byx's head of dark hair popped through the neck of the T-shirt as he snugged it down

around his lean trunk. He was grinning anew, with a greater zest than before, Val noticed uneasily. "If that doesn't convince you"—blue eyes flicked toward the candle—"then I'm going to have to do something drastic." Val, still sitting naked on the bed, felt himself shrivel just a little. Something he might have called a premonition, had he subscribed to a different set of beliefs about how the universe operated, put a tiny shiver through him. The moan of the wind was increasing outside the apartment's windows. He opened his mouth, started to say, "No, you don't have to do—" But it was too late for that. * * * * Byx felt the sort of reckless giddiness that belonged to human dreaming. At every stage of events since he and the playwright had had sex, caution should have halted him. What was he doing? This was out of all the bounds he had rightly set for himself. What he had confessed to Val moments ago was true: never before had he revealed himself to any of the Earth's surface natives; never had the notion of doing so ever entered his mind. He had told Val other truths as well. The full realization of what he had done only added to the dizzying sense of heedlessness he felt. Today, after years of dwelling among these frail creatures, he had violated every stricture he'd ever set for himself. All discretion had been spurned. Every wary impulse went ignored. He had apparently decided that today, this day plucked arbitrarily from among all the others, he would expose himself as an Illuminoid living disguised among the humans. Only, of course, this wasn't simply some random day without significance, without a pivotal event to set it aside from the many others he had lived on the world's surface. Today he and Val Lucien had made love for the first time. That mattered. That had changed the pattern for him, had canceled all the cautionary rules. Val was no chance, whimsical fuck. The playwright touched him. He was unlike any human being Byx had ever

known. What Val Lucien had created for the stage was the heralding of a time of recognition, a last, poignant, maturely arrived-at moment of acceptance for what awaited their species: extinction. Surely Val wasn't the first person to proclaim humankind's tenure on the Earth to be through. Byx had the impression that the history of these primates was littered with doomsayers down through their pitifully brief eras. But Val had captured something immediate and tangible. Byx had felt it himself on that first viewing of the play, and evidently that zeitgeist flash had sparked a spreading blaze. People recognized the message of the theatrical piece for what it was, a latter-day clarion call. A last-day calling, in fact. And so, with all bets off, Byx had felt the freedom to reveal himself to his new lover. His own time was winding down, after all. As the human race entered its phase of final waning, so he too was diminishing, evidently losing the integrity of this body. His time, too, was nearly over. So why not speak the truth about himself to the one human male who personally mattered to him? Byx had thought to transport himself away, right before Val's eyes. The kindling of that candle's wick, employing that same power with which he'd heated the madman's rifle in the avenues, hadn't done it. But surely his sudden and total disappearance would convince Val of his extra-human nature. There would be no explaining the feat away as a "trick." It occurred to Byx, however, that he needn't even do anything that extreme. Still grinning mischievously, he went to a corner of the bedroom. He pointed to the opposite corner. The line crossed the expanse of rumpled blue-sheeted bed where Val sat, head hanging glumly, a look of mixed incredulity and unhappiness on his face. Byx was sorry for whatever pain he was causing the man. "Can you see both corners?" he asked. "This one and that one?" The dour expression remained as Val lifted his head, but he said clearly, "Yes." "You can see them both at once?" The giddiness gave him a vibrating energy. By this he would prove himself to Val.

Val moved back a little on the bed, looking out of the corners of both his eyes. He was taking this seriously, then, or else just indulging Byx. He said, "Yes. Both corners. Now what?" This last he asked flatly, with a hint of annoyance, maybe even anger. The grin wound tighter on Byx's face. He gathered up his innermost substance, his primary energy, tapping into that well of primordial stellar matter that was the essence of every Illuminoid. A jaunt across this room wouldn't drain him appreciably, and it would accomplish what no words nor any petty power demonstrations could achieve. "Now watch. Watch. Here I—"

Chapter Thirteen The Leaf on the Wind

"—go." Byx's legs would not support him. They quit with a finality that was almost petulant, and he fell to the ground. This wasn't the far corner of Val Lucien's bedroom. This wasn't any spot inside Val's apartment. Byx was outdoors in the bathing heat of the day, which was being churned by a wind of some force. As he dropped full-length onto the ground, grit blew into his eyes. He blinked, lifted a hand to rub at his eyes, and even that was an effort. His arm felt limp. His fingers were numb. This was that same weakness, the same lightness in his chest and general sense of enervation that he'd experienced earlier when he had stumbled into the theater after overusing his powers. Only this time the feebleness was much worse. It felt as though all the animation had been bled from him at once, as if his life reserves had been drained down to their ethereal fumes, as if life itself were ebbing. He was dying. But that thought, even as he shaded his eyes against the gusting wind, evoked a strong denial in him. No. No. He wasn't dying! He had simply overtaxed himself again. Something had gone wrong, and he had overshot the corner of the bedroom he had been trying to reach so as to demonstrate conclusively to Val that he was an Illuminoid, a being of extraordinary powers. Those powers had cost him this time, however. He had indeed overshot his target. Where was he? It was little comfort that his practical presentation probably had convinced Val that he'd spoken the truth earlier. Surely the playwright wouldn't dismiss that as some sort of stunt, a deception, the way he had rejected as proof the lighting of that candle. Val would have seen him disappear from the bedroom. That he hadn't rematerialized in the room's far corner didn't take away from the phenomenal nature of the feat.

Yes, that was all well and good, Byx thought as, still blinking, he labored to lever himself up so he wasn't lying face down on the ground. He had not, he realized, collapsed on concrete. This was earth, dry flaky soil. A few feet away a tree stood. It was a husk, the bark gray and dead. He was, he saw as he managed to look around, deep in a grove of some sort. Not all the surrounding foliage appeared lifeless, though it certainly looked wearied by the heat. Where was he? The question, asked silently a second time, took on a new urgency. Byx didn't know why he hadn't transmitted himself across the bedroom as he'd wanted to. Perhaps it was a symptom of the overall failing of this form. He was no longer able to expertly exert his special abilities through the prism of this human shape he had adopted. That likely meant only the integrity of this body was expiring, not him, not his authentic self. Not the Illuminoid within. But he wasn't done with this body. He liked his human construct. He liked what he could do in this fleshy assemblage of primate parts. More than that, though, it was from inside this shell that he had joined with Val. The two of them had made love as humans. Val found him attractive in this body. It wouldn't be possible for the two of them to interact were Byx to resume his natural form. It wasn't fair. This thought momentarily dismayed Byx, as if it had been deposited in his mind by some outside agency. Fair? Fairness wasn't an Illuminoid concept. Part of Illuminoid lore dictated the existence of the Ultimate Stellar Matter, which was an active guiding force, something beyond physics and all physical law. Byx hadn't embraced this belief. The Ultimate Stellar Matter supposedly assigned a moral worth to the universe. But it didn't promise fairness. Humans had philosophies, many of them, that touted this notion of equity. It was just another of their fascinating idiosyncracies. A backward ideology, to be sure, but vaguely endearing. Maybe, though, he had been in human form long enough that their strange outlooks were starting to infect him. Normally he would have indulged in a laugh at this thought, but right now it didn't seem amusing. He was still trying to ascertain his whereabouts. If he had lost control of his ability to

accurately transport himself, then he might be anywhere. He had used this power to travel the world over these past years, flinging himself from continent to continent, across the vast stretches of the damaged oceans, some so impacted by the environmental change that they were virtually fish-less. If he couldn't control his conveying ability, how could he ever return himself to the Below? He couldn't concern himself with that just now. For one, he really didn't want to think about going back there, about surrendering once more to the domineering will of the Supreme. But more immediately, he needed to figure out where he was, and how he was going to get back to Val. A strong wind was blowing the trees, some of which stood quite tall. He heard the creak of the parched trunks. The greenery of the Earth was suffering as much as human and animal life. This had always struck Byx as rather cruel, considering that the human species had in large part touched off the adverse climatic conditions. It seemed they ought to be the sole breed to pay the price of that. This time he did grant himself a laugh as he finally managed to push himself into a sitting position. He was thinking in terms of fairness again. How odd. He had the grit out of his eyes by now but was still having difficulty seeing due to the white motes once again swimming across his vision. Deliberately he closed his eyes and drew long breaths. He fought the vertigo, and after a moment he was able to look around, to see where he was, at least in immediate terms. The woods were dense, overgrown, untended. The underbrush was a thick arid mulch. Around him, debris fell from the swaying branches. Leaves, some with only a trace of green to them, came free and twirled about as they dropped. The wind caught these same leaves as it sawed among the boles. Byx could see no structures, no signs of habitation. Across the world there stood many, many places, once occupied by people, that had since been abandoned; but there was usually

some indication of that onetime occupation. Buildings, artifacts. Natural erosion hadn't yet erased the tokens of human civilization, though that would come in time. And what, Byx wondered for what might well have been the very first time, would the Illuminoids construct in place of that human culture once they resumed their supremacy of this planet? For a moment the question stopped Byx with stunning force. During all his young life, throughout the endless periods of indoctrination and the learning of his people's lore, he couldn't recall any elder, anyone at all, ever truly addressing that point. What, exactly, would the Illuminoids do with the Earth's surface once they had it? But even this thought he shook off. Now wasn't the time for contemplation, especially not about such momentous, though abstract, issues. He again focused on his immediate surroundings. So, no signs of buildings, no architectural clues that might tell him where he was. Very well. He looked up past the waggling treetops, at a sun-washed sky. The sun. It wasn't yet high. But was it rising or sinking? It told him he was on the day side of the planet, anyway. In fact—he squinted, trying to judge the yellow orb's height—if it were on the rise, then this might still be the same time zone as that of San Francisco. That would be good, though, he admitted, he still might have inadvertently traveled thousands of miles from where he'd started, instead of the few strides across the room he had been expecting. He sat there for several minutes, soaking up the day's warmth, hoping for some replenishment from it. Eventually he pulled his bare feet beneath him—he hadn't put on his boots for this jaunt—and struggled and wobbled and after a time stood up, dizzy and weak. The wind tousled his hair. The trees around him offered no suggestion as to what direction he might take. He needed to reconnoiter. There was another thought that crept into his head as he took his first shaky step, naked soles crunching among the brittle brush, and this one he couldn't ignore. If he was indeed thousands or hundreds or even, say, fifty miles away from San Francisco, did he still have the strength to transport himself back there? Or, more critically, did he dare to try? * * * *

Illuminoids left traces of themselves. Even in human form they were not, in their essences, human. Kwict had always known this. In a way it bolstered his own subversive philosophy, which stated that his species would be better off adapting itself to live on the planet's surface, rather than waiting for the Earth to right itself. Certainly he would never have been able to convince the Illuminare Supreme of this position. But being more than human meant that his adapted fellows stood apart from the human beings whose shapes they had assumed. One simply had to know what indicators to look for. Hutok had explained, her instructions bland and precise, what Kwict should seek once he returned to the surface. The elder was wise. Kwict, still shamed by the reprimand he had received from his former mentor, had silently absorbed this final lesson. Now he applied the teaching. He had scavenged some clothing, looting a house that stood in an abandoned row of similar structures in a barren suburban stretch somewhere, he thought, on the continent of Europe. No one had stirred among the ruins. There was no light but the stony radiance of the hunter's moon above. He spread his senses outward, onto the velvet night. Whoever had lived here was gone. This place had been evacuated by people seeking cooler climes. Had he cared to listen, he might have detected the spectral echoes of those uprooted lives. But Kwict felt no particular sympathy. Humans had abused their environment, making it unsafe for themselves. They didn't deserve this world. Further and further his impulses expanded, radiating outward, slowly cloaking the globe. As he stood there on the deserted street, amidst the gradually corroding rubble, he experienced a strange diminishment, as if he were giving away his vitality, dispersing it across this world. It didn't seem to be a physical effect, but more a mental one. He had never exercised this power before. Until Hutok had instructed him, Kwict hadn't guessed that Illuminoids could even do this. He wondered what other secrets the elders kept from the younger members of their species. Just as he was stretching himself to what felt like a distinct limit, beyond which he might simply break apart and strew himself to the Earth's farthest reaches, a ripple crossed his field of

discernment. There. Yes. Just as Hutok had described it. The telltale of Illuminoid activity, the very trace for which he had been told to be alert. Another Illuminoid, here on the surface. There was only one other of his kind. Only Byx. Kwict's sense of triumph was dulled by the surge, hot and very human in its intensity, that coursed through him at the thought of his friend, the wayward Illuminoid he so dearly loved. He fixed the location in his mind. It was quite some distance, at least as humans would measure it. Kwict would go to Byx. He would do the bidding of the Supreme, and subdue him and return him to the Below.

Chapter Fourteen A Taste of the Storm

Some improbable amount of time passed before Val became truly conscious of the hammering at his door. It was the sort of literary device, more common to prose than to the stage, meant to convey an abnormally preoccupied mind. Someone knocks on a character's door, but he just stands and stands there, not hearing the pounding. Val had always found this unlikely. Sound would still carry. The fictional man might ignore the knocking—Val would cheerfully concede that—but surely he would still hear it. Yet as the sharp raps finally penetrated, Val, at last wrenching his gaze away from the empty corner of his bedroom, heard as a kind of retroactive echo the previous few minutes of sustained pummeling on his apartment's front door. Someone requesting entry. After sunrise? Again, improbable. More, bloody farfetched. Val finally set one foot before the other and started down his hallway. Just as the knocking had echoed in his head, so too there burned on his mind's eye the vivid image of Byx, who until recently had occupied that now very much unoccupied corner of Val's bedroom. What had happened was beyond all the improbabilities Val might ever imagine. Not a trick. Not some artifice. Byx had disappeared. And that was impossible. The urgent rapping at Val's door was something totally unrelated. Until it wasn't. Until with a sudden mental jerk Val put the two events together. Byx somehow had disappeared, and now he had reappeared outside the front door. That was him, hammering away. A great gush of hope came to Val as he now rushed toward the door. Byx hadn't truly vanished, then. Or at least he hadn't disintegrated, which was exactly how it had looked to Val when his blue-eyed lover was suddenly and irrefutably no longer standing in the bedroom's corner. Byx would explain how it was done, he told himself giddily as he raced the last few feet.

He would also—here Val's imagination took true optimistic flight—tell Val that all that stuff about Illuminoids was just some bizarre joke, the elaborate baroque setup for the disappearing act. All would be restored. Everything would be perfect, as it had been in the luscious afterglow of their lovemaking. Val turned the lock with fumbling fingers and yanked the door, banging it into his bare toe. He was, he realized only now that the door was open wide, still quite naked. It was not Byx who stood there. As it had before, disappointment crushed Val. He saw how desperately he wanted to forgive Byx for all that crazy talk of earlier. But Byx hadn't come to call. This man was not quite a stranger, but neither someone terribly familiar. "Candy?" It was the man who said this, not Val. Candy. Yes, the one who spoke in questions. Kaitlin Nalty's escort of last night. Val just shook his head, as if he could dismiss this person without engaging with him. The apartment was on the building's second story. A stairway led up to this door. He and Candy, just a few hours before, had carried Byx up these steps. A howling sound came from that stairwell now, a strange violent ululation. Candy appeared harried. He had cropped brown hair, but it looked disarrayed anyway. He was wearing the clothes he'd had on at the theater, but now they were rumpled. "What is that...?" Val mumbled distractedly, glancing past the man's broad shoulder. The odd howl seemed to have no source. The light was dim, he saw, as it shouldn't have been in what had to be, by now, full daylight. "That? The storm, you mean, right?" Val's eyes flicked back to Candy's handsome face. He wondered briefly just where Kaitlin had found him. "Storm?" Val asked. "There's a windstorm," Candy said, stumbling upon a declarative sentence. With that the ghostly yowl made immediate sense. The wind played the hollow of the

stairway like an instrument. Val could even hear, around him, the scratching noises at the windows of his apartment. The windstorms had started up a few years back. They were a new climatic feature for the region so far as he knew, one more indication of an environment gone haywire, or so went the general consensus. Such storms, so far, hadn't settled into any sort of pattern. They didn't arrive at any particular time of year. Not that this was especially surprising. After all, seasons didn't really even exist anymore, did they? These thoughts were playing out in real time in his head, Val realized. Meanwhile, Candy was still in his doorway, and Val himself was still standing naked before him. He felt a belated flush of embarrassment. He certainly wasn't a prude, but neither was he casual about nudity. It seemed a little late, though, to step modestly behind the door. Holding his ground, he asked in a forthright tone, "What are you doing here?" "Here? Oh. Ms. Nalty sent me, Mr. Lucien." This explained nothing, of course, but Val saw he was going to have to prompt Candy for the rest of the information. It seemed inhospitable, in the meantime, to leave him on the doorstep like this. With a feeling of resignation Val stepped back and said, "Come in, Candy." After all, this same man had helped him to transport Byx safely from the theater to this apartment. Byx. For a moment Val had actually forgotten what had just happened with Byx. "Thanks." Before stepping inside, Candy bowed his head and raked fingers through the straight-up tufts of his hair. Fine particles fell audibly on the top step. He also slapped at the pearl gray vest he wore. More grit shook out. Finally he crossed the threshold. "Sand?" he said/asked as Val closed the door. "Oh." For the first time Candy seemed to notice Val's nakedness. He took an unapologetic survey of Val's body, looking him up and down in an almost comical fashion. "Oh?" he said, as if mimicking Val.

"I was sleeping," Val explained, the lie coming unbidden. He wasn't about to relate the tale of Byx's disappearance to this person. He didn't want to consider the undeniable reality of what had transpired, much less speak of it out loud to this near-stranger, this good-looking, slowwitted trophy of Kaitlin's. Val had never begrudged Kaitlin her taste in males. If she liked them pretty and dumb, and if they liked her, then so be it. "It's daytime, Candy," he added, to authenticate his lie. People slept during the day, therefore he had been asleep, therefore he was undressed. "I'm very sorry I woke you up." Candy said it with a blunt sincerity that was, in its way, charming. Val wasn't going to get any information with the two of them standing in the entryway. Neither was he going to take Candy into the bedroom, even though that was where Val's clothes still lay strewn about. He had a gown in his workspace, a niche of a room just off the kitchen. He led Candy there, where he picked up the robe and folded it over himself. Here he could hear the ferocity of the wind more clearly. Grit rained across the windows. The gusts were powerful, each one seemingly stronger than the last. "Wow!" Candy declared, no interrogative hesitancy in his tone this time. He was looking around the small room, grinning wildly, displaying a full array of broad gleaming teeth. "You got so many books!" It was true, though Val couldn't recall any visitor ever being so impressed by the accumulation. There wasn't much prestige to having a book collection, and certainly these volumes of his weren't rarities or items of any worth beyond their contents. He had gathered most of them on scratching expeditions, mostly in that time when San Francisco was still relatively new to him. As people had left the city in waves, many hadn't bothered to lug these cumbersome apparatus with them. Val had collected them in armloads. Quite a few he had never read, but some he had thumbed at length, and some of those had quickened his growing love of words. "You do your writing here too, right?"

"Yes." A laptop sat on a small square desk. "I keep thinking about your play," said Candy. "What that woman's mother said. You remember?" "I do." Candy was still ogling the books that were piled in drifts all along the small room's walls. "Candy. Why are you here? Why did Kaitlin send you?" "Oh?" The grin dropped as he set himself to his mission's purpose. It wasn't, in the end, anything surprising, not even Kaitlin's dispatching of this hapless lug at so odd an hour. She was concerned about the venue for On the Winning Side. It wasn't big enough. The play would need to relocate, and she had several suggestions. Val didn't doubt for a moment that her concern was genuine. But plainly she also wanted to involve herself in what was now a consequential artistic event. The play was more than popular. It had struck some central nerve that Val had, at best, been half aware of when he was penning the piece. Sometimes art was like that. The viewer did half the work, gave it its meaning, found the profundity when the artist himself might have only been trying to complete the damn thing. Val nodded vaguely, listening more to the mounting fury of the wind. Candy had shaken sand out of his hair. That meant the storm was gathering it from out in the dune-blanketed avenues, carrying it across the breadth of the city. A powerful gale. He remembered as a kid hearing, in those days when national and sometimes even international news reports were still broadcast, about surging storms that would scour their way across the Neo Dust Bowl, raising apocalyptic billows of parched dead soil, raining gray down on the few semi-functional places of inhabitation—towns and holdout cities that probably no longer even existed today. Candy had finished delivering his message. Val kept nodding until he realized he didn't need to any longer. At that moment he heard a crash from above, and a second later something tumbled past the windows and clanged loudly on the street. He took a step toward a window, then hesitated. The pane was a sheet of ancient, transparent metaplastic. Sand blew past it and against it at a savage speed. How bad was this storm going to get? "Kaitlin sent you out into this?" Val said incredulously.

"No. It wasn't like this when I left her place. It only just starting to get this bad?" He looked around the room again, this time with his brows drawn together. "How come it's so hot inside here?" Val hadn't had the air conditioning on, and the apartment had warmed up, as it was wont to do without any climate control. Val went to the wall switch, but wasn't surprised that nothing happened when he activated it. Something big had just fallen off the roof, likely some operative component from the building's windmill array. There went the electricity, at least until repairs could get under way. Candy had done his duty. Val saw that Kaitlin was correct; he would indeed need to relocate the play for tonight's performance. But such matters could wait. He looked to Kaitlin Nalty's messenger. He couldn't send this man back out into the storm, not even in that sporty black car of his. Candy met Val's eyes. With that same blunt candor as before, Candy said, "You think maybe we could fuck? I mean, if your friend from before, the one who seemed sort of sick, isn't still here...?" * * * * Val Lucien had, in his time, had his share of sex under strange circumstances. But this was heading swiftly toward the fore of the list, ahead of the occasion at a party inside the claustrophobic confines of a hallway closet where he and his nameless partner could both overhear the conversations of the people politely ignoring them on the door's other side. There was also the madcap fuck, rather drunken, which he'd half successfully engaged in on the seat of a moving pedicab. Another time he and the understudy of his first professionally performed play—really, just two one-acts that he had wrestled into a coherent narrative—had screwed on the dimmed empty set, rolling around on the floor, crashing into the furniture. Val had even called the male by his character's name several times, hysterical with glee over the success of his art. Now here was Candy. And they were going to have sex with a windstorm abrading the

walls. With Byx having literally fucking vanished a short while ago. Strange circumstances, indeed. When Val had taken him down the hall to the bedroom, he stopped in the doorway, not so much to ask himself what the hell he thought he was doing, but to gaze with a kind of heartbroken rapture at the purple candle, whose flame still flickered, on the table by the wide bed. The daylight had faded considerably. That little yellow tongue of fire now threw shadows in the windowless room. I am in shock. So Val told himself, and it seemed a reasonable conclusion, even a reasonable reaction to what had happened with Byx. Someone in shock might do unusual things. So Val, having witnessed the genuinely shocking disappearance of his lover, was going to respond by having sex with this good-natured semi-simpleton. "Excuse me?" Candy said, edging past. He stepped to the foot of the foam slab and, back to Val, started to undress. First he divested himself by dropping the pearl gray vest off his wide hard shoulders, revealing a musculature that made a long straight trench out of his spinal column. He reached down for his shoes, setting them aside pigeon-toed to each other. Then he raked a pair of charcoal-colored slacks down legs that were almost exaggeratedly muscled, the calves rounded with firm flesh below the knees. His butt was dusted with a faint dark fuzz. Candy looked back over his shoulder, eyes alight with curiosity, it seemed. Val had no idea, none, what sort of expression was currently on his own face, but Candy gave him a grin and climbed up onto the bed, settling onto his hands and knees with the loyal obedience of an expertly trained dog. Val realized his cock had been hardening by twitching stages over the past minute. He hadn't even been aware of his own arousal, which was usually accompanied by a kind of intellectual appreciation, a conscious judging of bodily aesthetics. He could see that Candy was an attractive male. He'd thought so when Kaitlin had rousted him out of his chair at the theater last night so to make space for Val. But he hadn't found himself attracted to Kaitlin's escort. Until now. Until delectable sweet Candy had posed himself in a fuck-my-ass position on

Val's bed. Now Val found the well-muscled male appealing, as evidenced by the hard-on tenting his robe. With a sharp shrug he dropped the gown to the floor. He was in shock. There wasn't any other plausible explanation for this behavior on his part. This, he realized with a tiny surge of dismay, was going to be the third man with whom he'd had sexual congress in the past fortyeight hours. Griff, Byx, now Candy. It was vaguely astonishing, though he didn't feel the sense of triumph he might have were he ten years younger. These felt, instead, only like strange events arranged into a series. There was no twinge of guilt, not even its suggestion. Fidelity had always seemed a stunted concept to Val, a kind of throwback emotionalism. He certainly didn't feel he was cheating on Byx. Whatever that meant. He licked at the two middle fingers of his right hand. When they were slick enough, he stepped forward, reached out and slavered them over Candy's offered hole. At first contact Candy bucked, as though he hadn't expected it. Then in a faint monotone he said, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh," without any obvious meaning to the repeated syllable. Val wondered what had possessed this male to want to do this, but he didn't linger on the question. He didn't care. Val climbed up onto the bed. He knelt behind Candy, knees between those muscle-rounded calves. His cock pulsed in his hand as he guided himself to the waiting pucker, to the ultimate access to this delightful masculine form. Candy wasn't a beauty like Byx was, but he was perhaps a kind of male ideal, strong and capable, dominant, descended from a interminable line of hunter-gatherers. Right. And Val Lucien, fey playwright, was about to fuck him in his ass. This last was less a thought, more a semi-articulated impulse, the final physical rush that set his cockhead firmly against Candy's portal, that pushed him forward to slip the swollen cap inside the cinching ring. "Ahhhrrrhhh," Candy said this time. Muscles knotted above his shoulder blades. Val paused. "Am I hurting you?" he asked, though he had been proceeding in the

customarily tactful manner. Not every man liked being speared outright. Candy raised his head of cropped brown hair. He turned it so Val saw the crescent of one eye. "Doesn't matter. You've got to do this." Again Val couldn't guess at the meaning of this statement. In fact, he had no real sense of Candy's emotional state just now. He wasn't sure if the man was even aroused. Val suddenly found himself hesitant about reaching around to grope for the man's cock to test for tumescence. Then again, some guys didn't want that kind of contact. They just wanted to be fucked and nothing else. So be it, Val thought again. He slid himself further into the spit-greased hole. Candy gripped his intruding cock. Val felt the internal living heat of the man. He took hold of Candy's hips, pulling him back on his knees, driving himself deeper still. The inches of his manhood disappeared into the male's ass. Finally his balls pressed against Candy's firm globes. He had penetrated fully. Next to the foam field of the bed, the candle's yellow flame continued to palpitate. His eyes held the fire for a moment. Its tiny heat seemed to expand, to enlarge within Val's body and spirit. He abruptly felt something greater than a mere mechanical stimulation, the ingrained excitement provoke by naked male flesh. He suddenly wanted Candy. Wanted to join himself to the man. Wanted to plunder him. He wanted to take from Candy all the pleasures that Byx had wordlessly promised: nights and nights and nights of lovemaking, of caresses and tendernesses, of fulfillment, camaraderie, love. Val couldn't have such things from this person, but he could and damn well would fuck Candy like a piece of meat. A Byx-like grin stretched Val's face. His fingers locked themselves over Candy's chunky but taut hips, knuckles whitening. He drew himself slowly out of Candy's ass until he was connected only by the thick purpled crown of his cock, then thrust back in, a full impalement, and was strangely gratified by the animal-like grunt that came from Candy, by the way his body bucked again. Did it hurt now? Fuck him, Val thought with an unfamiliar mix of aggression and

lust. Fuck him he did. Val's lunges came with force and speed. He plunged to the deepest reaches of Candy's ass with his every onslaught. Flesh smacked flesh. Val felt the borderline painful slaps of his balls as they impacted the rounded surfaces of Candy's quivering ass. Candy's brawny arms shook as they supported his weight, as they sought to brace his whole body against this encroachment from behind. One elbow gave way, then the other, and Candy collapsed forward onto the bed. But Val didn't release his hips, holding the lower half of his body upright, continuing to pound himself into the hole Candy had presented for his pleasure. You've got to do this. Those were Candy's own words. Val grinned even harder, eyes narrowing and starting to water. Yes. He did have to do this! The slaps of his balls against Candy's ass increased in fury. Candy's legs were shivering, as if with strain, and this set his whole body to vibrating. Val's ferocity multiplied his pleasure. Great waves of excitement rose in him, pouring up through his body. Outside, distant but menacing, the windstorm scoured away at the city. Val looked again at the purple candle's diligent flame, and once again it affected him, this time touching off the final madness. Ecstasy liquified a portion of Val's being, gushing it outward through the duct of his engorged cock. He matched the jets with a few final hammerings of his body against Candy's. He felt his come spurting, warming Candy's innermost depths. The bedroom whirled, slowed, settled. With a gentleness that felt comical, or maybe hypocritical, he disengaged himself from Candy, who at last fell full length and facedown onto the bed. He let out a slow groan that was, yet again, indecipherable. "Are you all right?" Val asked. He settled back on his haunches. Candy's head turned again. The same single eye regarded him. With half his handsome face muffled by the foam and overused blue sheet, he asked, "Would you help me come?" It wasn't his usual reflexive, sentence-ending question sound; this was, instead, a plaintive sincere

query. It touched Val, unexpectedly. "Sure," he said, willing to go along with just about anything Kaitlin's escort might have in mind. As it happened, it was a very simple sex act. Candy flopped over until he was half-lying in Val's lap. His thick hard cock fell against the swell of his rigid abdominal muscles. Val reached for him and started pulling on the swollen, sausage-sized meat. Candy's girth was enough that Val's fingers didn't meet. Still, he got a good grip and set about jerking off the man. Candy's reaction to the hand job was something fairly astonishing. He thrashed around on Val's lap, muscle-heavy body squirming. His feet kicked. His hands grappled at the air. He kept his eyes fiercely closed and teeth bared in a veritable rictus. He emitted mewling sounds that this time sounded like language-less cries of distress. Val continued to work his cock, adopting a fast but not rushed tempo, liking the feel of the thick shaft and the jounce of Candy's large testicles. Abruptly his thrashing increased, enough that for an instant Val thought the man was having a fit. But it was instead the climax of this modest sexual payback. Candy erupted. His juice shot toward the ceiling in thick syrupy gouts. The spatters struck his heaving chest and stomach audibly, and a renewed scent of semen rose in the room, overpowering the not-quite-neutral odor of the burning candle. Val continued pumping until the last spray, then released Candy's member. Candy's spasms had finished, but he remained sprawled across Val's knees. Val watched as the man gradually caught his breath. The episode felt vaguely absurd, but then, sex was like that more often than one would care to admit. "I'm glad we did that," Candy said, another decisive declarative statement. "Sure. Me too." A heavy gust scraped sand over the outer face of the building. Val heard and felt the joists creak. For the second time he wondered just how bad this storm would get, presuming it hadn't already peaked. Maybe, though, this was just a taste of it. One of the places Candy had mentioned Kaitlin mentioning as an alternate venue for

tonight's showing of On the Winning Side had been the Bandshell in arid, overgrown Golden Gate Park. Certainly the outdoor space would accommodate any number of patrons—presuming lighting and sound equipment could be assembled quickly enough—and it might just be perverse to put up the show there, in such a desolate setting. But Val hadn't yet made up his mind, and the behavior of this storm would certainly affect that decision. He knew he should just let this postcoital interlude be for the moment, or else fetch a towel for his visitor. But he looked down at Candy, frowning with curiosity. He asked, "Why did you say that I—I had to do this?" "I meant that we had to?" "Did we?" Val asked, countering the question that probably wasn't a question. Candy nodded. Thistles of brown hair tickled Val's stomach. "I never did that with a, you know, a man before. I thought I ought to. I wanted to do it with you because you made that play. I kept on thinking about it, how sad it made me feel. But I understood it finally, I think. I mean, there aren't going to be any more people. In the future. People aren't going to exist anymore? So why not do everything you can before that?"

Chapter Fifteen The Forest for the Trees.

The storm had worsened. Among other effects, this had made it impossible for Byx to determine whether the sun, above all this blowing gritty mayhem, was rising or sinking. He supposed that didn't much matter, not in the immediacy and danger of this predicament, but he still did want to know where on Earth he was. Without the sun's movements he couldn't even confirm what time zone he was in. He held onto the gray bole of a tree as a forceful gust struck his back. His knees buckled slightly, but he stayed upright. That was something of an accomplishment, considering how weak he felt and how powerful this gale was proving to be. Above, beneath the swirling monochrome of the sky, the forest's treetops were whipping wildly. Already he had heard several branches, sizable by their sound, crash to the ground. Around him the trees, living and dead, creaked as they teetered. The air was thick with leaves, bits of bark, dirt, flying sand. The wind was working down into this grove, raking up the desiccated underbrush. Byx gripped the tree trunk again as the riled up air slapped at him, flinging soil at his eyes. He squinted. He spat out dirt. He wondered if this was a part of the world that was subject to tornadoes. It would be difficult to say, even if he knew precisely where he was. In his time on the surface, fleetingly brief by Illuminoid standards, he'd seen climate patterns change. In fact, the very concept of patterns was growing obsolete. The environmental alterations were picking up strength and speed, reaching out in all directions, like some animated thing freed at long last from constraints. Celebrating its liberty. Exploring new possibilities. Something like, Byx thought ruefully, a member of the Illuminoid race finding emancipation as a human being. He pulled himself around to the other side of the tree. It stood fairly wide, its bark pitted

and branches gnarled, but still it lived. On this lee side he had some meager cover, though errant blasts of wind continued to strike glancing blows from either side. Fatigue hung heavily on him. He needed recuperation, replenishment. He'd had a safe haven at Val's apartment, and he had thrown it away on a stupid stunt to prove himself to the playwright. Byx caught himself before he launched into a silent diatribe of self-recrimination. He could castigate himself for his actions later, if he had a later. Right now, even more than determining his location, he needed to survive this storm. It was possible he could die out here, in his weakened state. What if he had landed smack in a major windstorm gathering in the center of the Neo Dust Bowl? The tempests that came to life in those regions could last for weeks. Months. It was how the Bowl had been recreated in the first place, so he understood. Shelter. He needed to get indoors. So far, though, there had been no sign of any buildings, not even ruins, and visibility was only getting worse. He couldn't see clearly for more than a few feet now. It was growing hard to breathe. The air was granular, churning and flailing. Already his lungs ached. He had to get moving, no matter how weak he felt. He could transport himself. In his days up here he had effortlessly hurled himself the length of vast land masses, across oceans, over the thawing ice of the Earth's poles. No corner of this world had been shut to him. But he didn't dare. A short while ago he had tried to transmit himself across a room, and he'd ended up here. The exertion had cost him dearly. If he tried it again, he couldn't depend on the results. It was well inside the confines of conjecture for him to kill himself in the attempt. His time was running out. He didn't have the strength to maintain this human form much longer. The Below beckoned with its atmosphere of spontaneous convalescence, with the freeflowing energy emitted by his fellow beings. An hour down there and he would be whole again. He would also, however, no longer have this human vessel. And, as significantly, he would be the subject once more of the Illuminare Supreme.

Maybe, though, that whole point was irrelevant. How could he even return himself to the underworld lair of his species, shedding his skin and casting his true self back to the Below? If he couldn't even safely cross a room— And dammit, he just wasn't ready to go. At the very least he required a farewell to Val, though he wanted so much more than that. Byx tried to summon strength, as though he could suck it from this turbulent air, borrowing the storm's energy the same way he would absorb it from the communal pool of power in the Below. The strange thing was, though, it actually seemed to work, at least a little. An odd whisper of vitality flowed into him from no apparent source. It was incremental, but he did feel a perceptible increase in bodily strength. His legs firmed beneath him. Some of the general frailty left his body. He pushed himself more fully upright. Grit abraded his cheeks. Leaves caught in his dark, disarrayed hair. He set one foot before him, let go of the tree trunk, and took another step. He didn't tumble over; the gusting wind didn't knock him to the ground. He grinned, and was immediately rewarded with the taste of sand. It didn't matter. If he could take one step, he could take another and another. He could keep going until he found shelter. Trying to follow the way of least resistance, Byx set off into the wind-whipped chaos. As he made his bare-footed teetering way, he again drew from the mysterious, and probably illusory, source of energy he had inexplicably discovered. * * * * This wasn't the first time Kwict had found himself materialized inside some unexpected weather phenomenon. In the Below no climatic conditions prevailed. All was serene, still, dull. One of the initial surprises the Earth's surface had had for him was the chaotic mood of its environment. He had known, intellectually, that the planet's outer skin was subject to change. The knowledge was a core part of the lore of his people, after all. The Earth was in flux, and was slowly correcting itself so to allow the Illuminoids, the world's proper masters, their return. How many thousands of times had he heard that dogma expressed?

But to experience the conditions was something else. On his first foray to the surface, under the studious supervision of Hutok, Kwict had been absolutely dazzled and dismayed by the vast sense of movement and turbulence: air in motion, clouds scudding the sky, oceans lashing at shorelines. How fantastically different from the stony stasis of the Below. Later, after he had made his escape and become a renegade, he had delved into the varieties of the Earth's ever-changing climes. He had witnessed geysers erupting from the ground, an electrical storm that had paled the night sky with many-forked fury. He had seen seas rise to swamp islands. He had even beheld rain, that precious rarity, at a far northern latitude. And of course he'd seen his share of windstorms. It was, he had once thought fancifully, the anger of the Earth. A dry, abrasive, indignant fit of pique. An infantile but effective demonstration of rage. No doubt this world had plenty to be angry about. Its current inhabitants had affected it in ways that—again, so said his people's lore—the Illuminoids had never conspired to do. Kwict shielded his eyes against the howling grit. He had crossed the face of the planet to reach this place. He knew where he was. The Earth's surface was no mystery to him, as it must be to all those Illuminoids, the great majority of the race, who had been born in the Below and who had never submitted to adaptation so to explore these upper reaches. San Francisco. It was on the westward brim, a harbor city, of the continent most of the humans still called North America. Kwict had passed through this place before, as was his wont. His travels had consisted of just that—traveling. He had never settled in one particular place for any extensive period, preferring to see as much as possible, to sample the strange diversities of human culture, as well as, or even more so, to explore the natural features of a world which would very soon belong, again, to his kind. But this wasn't San Francisco as he had ever experienced it before. Though he was certain of his whereabouts, there was no recognizing the site. Really, there was no seeing it. The windstorm was fearsome, and visibility was almost nil. However, he could at least tell he was in woods, which meant this was one of the city's parks, several of which had been turned over to

agricultural efforts, while others had been left to go wild or die, or both. This might even be the city's largest preserve, Golden Gate Park, which would mean these were indeed wild lands. Somewhere nearby an Illuminoid had employed his powers. Kwict had sensed that usage, had pinpointed the location, and brought himself here. No other of his kind was on the surface. Both the Illuminare Supreme and Hutok had assured him of that. No one except Byx. As he strode forward, withstanding the wind's blasts, using the swaying trees as handholds, Kwict felt that familiar longing, the secret potent sentiment. Love. The love he nurtured for his fellow Illuminoid, his comrade rebel. The ache was worse now that he had again adopted a human shape, configuring himself as a lithe, blond-haired, elfin-faced male. Physical impulses raced through him, responding to emotional cues. Love wasn't just a matter of the mind; it expressed itself in a variety of very bodily, very human ways. He had sensed Byx from half a world away. The signal the wayward Illuminoid had unknowingly broadcast still reverberated faintly, unaffected by the madness of the gale blowing west to east across the city, gathering up clouds of sand and polluting the air with a scent of sickly oceanic brine. Kwict still perceived, in that manner that Hutok had taught him, the muted trace of Illuminoid activity. Following that indication took him deeper into the creaking, waggling trees. A limb snapped loose above him and crashed to the ground. He was near to his target, but he would have to proceed cautiously. What, he paused to wonder, was Byx doing out in the middle of all this? Abruptly Kwict halted. He grabbed hold of the nearest tree as a strange sensation, somewhere between pain and surprise, fluttered through him. Some sort of effect had just passed across his being. It had felt like a ripple, like a searching spreading wave. And it had found him. He stood still, with the wind raking his blond hair and grit rasping him wherever his flesh was exposed. He didn't feel any particular ill aftereffects from whatever had just happened to him, but the incident was disturbing nonetheless. And familiar, in some odd, out-of-context

fashion. It took him a moment of concentration—time, he knew, he should be spending getting on with his pursuit—to identify the feeling. It was the sense one had when drawing, reflexively, from the communal store of energy of the Below. The Illuminoids emitted such power unconsciously, in much the manner that a star radiated its light and heat. This was proof, in the minds of the elders, that their species was essentially a collective. They must remain together. When they retook the planet's surface, went the firm creed, it needed to be en masse. All of them at once, or none of them at all. An intractable tenet. This also justified the prejudice that many held against adaptation. If the whole race didn't do it at once, then it simply shouldn't be done, with the begrudging exception of those few self-sacrificing individuals who would monitor conditions up above. Kwict, when he was in the Below, contributed automatically to that communal pool. His essence issued energy as well as absorbed it. It was a natural life cycle. But he had never experienced it like this, as a curious, individualized tickle that shivered through him, sponging up a tiny amount of his vitality. Not draining him, but merely borrowing some small portion of what he had. A fellow Illuminoid using him to help renew himself. Byx... A peculiar giddiness took hold of Kwict as he shoved off from the tree, wading through the wind and airborne debris. Byx was nearby. Kwict was closing on him. After a short distance the sensation came again, a definite siphoning this time. Kwict did nothing to try to stop it. He had no idea if he could stop such an action. He marveled at the unique intimacy of it. In the Below it was never like this. The energy pool was anonymous. But here, on the surface, it was a distinct being-to-being transfer. He gave. Byx took. From out of the maze of gray careening trees a structure emerged. A squat thing. Old. Windows boarded. Constructed of dull reliable brick. Kwict made for it, sensing the presence already within. His heart pounded with anticipation and need.

Chapter Sixteen This Small Dim Corner of the World

Byx, once he had shouldered the door shut and turned the latch, didn't quite collapse on the floor of the tiny, humped brick structure, but he did allow himself to drop to a knee, to heave breaths of clear though stale air. Simply being out of the storm's frenzy was such a relief that his skull rang with it. Again he knuckled his eyes. The colorless motes were gone. A definite strength had returned to his limbs, though he remained relatively weak. The interior was dim. Presumably this had been a utility shed or something like it, certainly not a residence of any kind. It was a single room, empty, dusty, its corners cobwebbed. Slats lay across the windows, affixed without much care. This place must have been deserted long ago, back when anyone would bother, prior to abandonment, to actually board up the windows. The windstorm rattled the low, peaked roof. Grit scrubbed the exterior bricks, which, in dull suffering fashion, merely withstood the onslaught. Shelter. He had somehow found the shelter he needed. Byx grinned, chest still rising and falling as he sought to clear his throat and lungs of the taste of sand. Relief flooded him. Awareness that the storm might have killed him was even keener in his thoughts now that he'd escaped its wrath. In all his time on the Earth's surface, he couldn't recall ever experiencing such a sense of mortal jeopardy. It had been very, well, human. The grin faded from his narrow features. He liked the humans. And certainly he was drawn to a particular member of their breed, Val Lucien, for whom Byx had experienced feelings he hadn't before guessed he was capable of. But—to be human, what a burden it must be. Almost an affliction. Never before had he realized this. Then again, never before had he been in such a weakened state while wearing this human form. The vulnerability was unnerving. He might have gone on wandering out in that storm for hours, with the wind blinding him and the

sand slowly choking him. He hadn't been able to employ any of the extraordinary abilities of his kind, those Illuminoid powers he retained even in this fragile human shell. Today he might have died. Today he had dimly glimpsed death. And to die in this body would mean to die as an Illuminoid. Even if he had desperately shed his shape at the last moment, the conditions of the planet's surface would have finished him almost instantly. The Earth's climate was still fatally hostile to his species. The world needed to heat further so to accommodate its original possessors, so to make way for the glorious resurgence of the mighty Illuminoids. Byx, sagging back on his haunches, let a shivery laugh escape his lips. He was thinking in dogmatic terms. That last bit might have been a part of a sermon from the Supreme. Did that mean he was subconsciously preparing himself for a return to the Below? He hoped not. He didn't want to go back. He still liked it up here, despite the danger he'd just survived. He had to see Val again, no matter what. Somewhat restored by the strange surges of energies he had received, imaginary or not, Byx now slapped at his dingy white shirt, at the legs of his jeans, raising little clouds of gray dust. He shook out his dark hair, rattling grains of sand on the planks of the floor. The wind continued to howl, but he didn't suppose it mattered now if the storm increased in intensity or not. He was safe in here. This squat little structure, nestled in these woods, had obviously stood for many, many years. It would go on doing so despite the storm's severity. Here Byx could merely wait it out. It would only become a problem if the tempest were indeed one of those megastorms that churned for days or weeks or longer. But maybe by then he would have regained his ability to transport himself, and he could fling himself right back to Val's apartment in San Francisco, there in the Mission. Rematerialize, after a prolonged absence, in that far corner of the bedroom which had been Byx's original destination. Perhaps he would find Val still anxiously waiting, fretfulness turning to sudden joy on seeing his lover's return, hurling himself at Byx, arms wide, cock hard and wanting. The image stood vivid in Byx's mind. He could, with a little concentration, still taste

Val's come from when it had erupted into his mouth. Interrupting this remembrance, there came without any warning a knock at the door. What sprung into Byx's thoughts before anything else, before even any physical reaction, was a human fable. Or a fragment of a fable, anyway. It went: The last man on Earth sits alone in the room. Suddenly there is a knock on the door. Maybe that was indeed the entirety of the fable. His blue eyes centered on the door a few steps away. Tension snaked through his body. The wind hadn't let up. The roof continued to shudder under the gusts. The knock had consisted of three sharp raps, evenly spaced, the classic human request for ingress. It was possible, however unlikely, that the raps had come from some innocent source—say, a branch being whacked against the door. That didn't account for the uniform length between each knock, but anything might occur in the fierce randomness of the gale outside. Not that Byx believed this. He planted his bare feet on the floor's boards and slowly rose. The knocking came again. One, two, three. If someone was out there, Byx should let him or her inside. For all he knew this was the only shelter for miles. Some unaccountable premonition, however, told him no human waited on the other side of the latched door. Even so, he felt an obligation, one he couldn't entirely explain to himself, to lend aid to whoever was out there. He crossed to the door. Hand raised, he hesitated, but it was only to try again to dig from his memory, from the mishmash of human lore he'd absorbed over the past years, the ending to that tiny fable. What did the last man on Earth discover when he opened that door? Byx could find no finish, no answer. He would have to create the finale for himself by seeing it through firsthand. Byx lifted the latch. The wind grabbed the door and flung it violently wide. Framed in the doorway, with a chaos of dun and gray rubble swirling behind him, stood a male. Blond of hair, sleekly built, a face suggesting that of a child's or a fairy's, though with a definite adult structure. The man, quite human to all appearances, was gazing at Byx without surprise.

Again Byx felt the flutter of premonition, though he didn't believe in such superstitions. They were the province of humans, a race who lived for brief spells, who sought answers to pointless questions, who wasted their time trying to unlock mysteries that weren't true mysteries, just reality laid naked. "Why were we born?" "Why does the universe exist?" Pitiful. They couldn't see the forest for the trees. Byx met the stranger's eyes. The man was far too calm even as the winds tore at him, tugging at his clothes, whipping his golden hair. He had not come desperately to the door of this squat structure, seeking refuge. He had come, instead, for Byx. With that sudden terrible knowledge, Byx took a step back. "Won't you come in?" He was pleased with himself at the steadiness of his voice, at the civility he was able to summon, even now, under these circumstances. This was an eventuality he had been anticipating for years. Now it had come. At long last. The blond-haired male, dipping his head in a mannerly acknowledging bow, stepped across the threshold. Grit and leaves roared into the room with him until he reached behind and drew shut the door with a finalizing click of the latch. The storm receded. Despite its severity and savagery, it was no longer important. It couldn't reach them here, inside this dim brick-walled haven. This place might as well have been the last little corner of the world, with only these two inhabitants to populate it. As Byx had done, this new arrival wiped at his eyes, which were a soft shade of greenish brown. He patted at his clothing, shaking loose the dust, then scraped clawed fingers across his scalp. "That is quite the storm out there," said the visitor. His tone was as even as Byx's, but there was an undertone of mirth, maybe even mischievousness. It wasn't disagreeable. "Yes," Byx said. The blond male stopped as he made to slap at the sleeve of his shirt. Green-tinged eyes fixed on Byx. "Oh," he finally said, then laughed. "Of course. Why would you recognize me?" Traces of that premonitory feeling lingered. Byx swallowed, again tasting sand, again

finding the faintest hint of Val's sweet semen in his mouth. Steeling himself, not at all certain he wanted any kind of answer to the question, he nonetheless asked, "Do I know you?" "Not in this shape." In that moment, Byx understood. But the man finished, "I'm Kwict." He took a step toward Byx, who involuntarily shrank back. Kwict stopped, offered a smile that seemed part amused, part saddened. He raised empty hands, palms outward, a perfectly human gesture which indicated peaceful intentions. "Why are you here?" Byx asked, rather than any of the many other things he might have said: a warm greeting to his old comrade, some gesture on his own part of solidarity with the rebel Illuminoid who he hadn't seen in ten years. But this question seemed more urgent, more charged with dire implications. Fear beat in Byx's chest as he asked again, "Why?" Kwict's hands remained up and empty. Really, it was a handsome form he had chosen for himself. All suggestions of amusement suddenly vanished from his manner, and he said in a forthright tone, "I know what you need, Byx. And I'm here to give it to you." * * * * The human part of him wanted to weep, wanted to simply collapse in a fit of emotionalism. Here, after all this time, stood his friend. Kwict hadn't seen, when the members of that rebellious cabal had all made their individual escapes, just what form Byx had assumed for his sojourn on the surface. Byx, it appeared, had adopted a dark-haired, slim-bodied shape. It was very becoming. Kwict knew, though, that he wasn't merely responding to Byx's physicality in purely human terms. There was true emotion at play here, the awakened feelings of an Illuminoid. Just now Byx looked rather worse for wear, but presumably he too had materialized in the windstorm, though why he hadn't simply transmitted himself to some other location, Kwict didn't know. But once his mind had swept aside the sentimental intensity of the moment, he did understand. Byx evidently was in a weakened state. This had less to do with his appearance than with

the fact, an undeniable one, that he had been just recently drawing energy from Kwict as only a fellow member of the Illuminoid race could. If Byx was reaching out for such vitality, it meant he genuinely required replenishment. This survival instinct of the species wasn't something Illuminoids engaged in for sport. He took another step toward Byx, remembering him in his original form, recalling those times of secretive planning, all to reach the world's surface. And here they were, out from under the oppressive thrall of the Illuminare Supreme. Only not really, Kwict thought with a surge of bitterness that he tried to ignore. After all, he himself was here on a mission of retrieval at the behest of the Illuminoid sovereign. But first things first. "You need strength," he said to Byx, who still eyed him warily. When Kwict lifted a hand, however, Byx didn't flinch. He allowed Kwict to reach for his face, to graze a knuckle gently across his sculpted cheekbone, then to trace a finger along Byx's elegantly molded jawbone. "Take that strength from me," he said, just as his fingertip brushed the edge of Byx's lips. Desire was an ache inside Kwict. Byx appeared to understand. He too reached out a hand and laid it on Kwict's shoulder. Even this small contact was welcome. The drawing of energy renewed. Kwict experienced it again as a curious fluttering, but he didn't fear it now. He felt no depleting effects. Byx's fingers tightened, as if this physical contact were necessary to the transfer of vitality. It wasn't. But again Kwict was happy for the touch. He continued to brush Byx's face with his fingertips. And Byx continued to let him do so. After a time, with their little sanctuary still lashed by the storm, Byx ceased to tap Kwict for energy. He looked healthier now. His piercing blue eyes blinked slowly, and a lazy smile curled its way across his finely boned features. Such a lovely shell he had chosen for himself. "Thank you," he sighed.

"You probably need more," Kwict said. Though Byx indeed looked better than before, he certainly didn't appear to be fully restored. "I know, I know." Byx nodded. "But maybe we should do this slowly. Not all at once. I've never—" He gestured vaguely, as if at an invisible line connecting the two of them. "I mean, an individual transfer like this. I've never done that. I didn't even know it was possible." "Apparently it is." Kwict had dropped his hand, though the tips of his fingers still tingled with the feel of Byx's flesh. "But did it…drain you? In any way?" "No," Kwict said. "I feel fine. Did you ever receive any lessons from any of the elders about the science of such transferrals? I remember a few, though it wasn't a field that much interested me. It's not a zero sum game, I remember them saying. The vitality of the Illuminoids is effectively infinite. Our life forces perpetuate. We create energy by existing. It has to do with our origins, the stellar matter from which we come. I knew that was how it worked in a communal sense. You know, in the Below, where they are many of us gathered together, where the pool of power is wide and deep. But I didn't know it could work just as well between individuals. It is working. Right?" Again Byx nodded. "Yes. For some while now I've been feeling like my living essence was draining, like my time was running out." His eyes wandered, uneasiness flashing in them. Then they focused and snapped back toward Kwict. "Why are you here?" He had asked this same question earlier. Now it had gained an edge. Kwict retreated half a step without meaning to. He wished he could have gone on forever, he thought wistfully, caressing his friend's face. Perhaps doing more than that. Perhaps, finally, expressing his true potent feelings for this being, regardless of the shape he wore. "I'm here to take you back." The words leapt out, blunt, shameful, and Kwict immediately wished he could take them back. Too late. Byx's face hardened, and it was an awful thing to witness. The beauty of his features became a stony mask. A glint of teeth appeared as his lip curled, not in a smile this

time, but rather in a predatory leer. His shoulders bunched under the dingy shirt he wore. Kwict noticed, as he hadn't before, that Byx was barefoot. "The Supreme sent you after me," Byx said with a cold finality, as though he were repeating words Kwict had uttered aloud. There was no sense in denying it, Kwict saw. "Yes," he whispered. Byx stalked toward him, blue eyes now ablaze, anger in every line of his body. "You'll never take me back!" he shouted, seeming to match the storm's fury with the volume of his voice. "I'll kill you before I'll let you drag me back down there!" Kwict, astounded and frightened, watched hands rise toward his throat.

Chapter Seventeen The Fellowship

What the fuck was he doing? The question, slashing through Byx's mind, seemed to have little to do with him. Surely it wasn't he who was reaching toward his comrade's throat with a murderous intent. Surely he would never harm Kwict, a fellow Illuminoid, the blond-haired, elfin-featured human facade he wore notwithstanding. But it was him doing this, and Byx knew it. And so he again asked the sharp, profane question of himself: What the fuck was he doing? It was enough to stop him, to freeze his hands before they actually closed on Kwict's neck. Kwict. His friend. A trusted member of the inner circle, a serious individual, one who had seemed so dedicated to the cause. Escape the Below, submit to adaptation and go live up top among the human creatures. That had been the plan, and Kwict had done his part. Byx had clear memories of him as an Illuminoid. He had felt a bond with this being, a genuine fellowship. Kwict was the last one from their group whom Byx would have guessed would end up doing the bidding of the Illuminare Supreme. But that was what this was. Kwict had admitted it. He was here to take Byx back. New anger, given strength by the same energy Byx had borrowed from Kwict, surged into his hands, and he almost lunged forward again and took Kwict's throat in his grip. Instead, he let his arms drop. He turned away. "I won't go with you," he said, but his tone was more sad than defiant. He was disappointed in Kwict. But maybe that was unfair. There it was again—he was thinking about fairness, of all things. A long time he had been up here among the humans, half-consciously absorbing their ways, their mores. Kwict was silent. Outside, the windstorm howled on, indifferent to the emotions at work

inside this little shelter. After a moment Byx heard a soft, choked gasp. He looked back. Kwict's attractive features were suddenly tortured into a grotesque visage. His upper teeth sank into his lower lip. Twin lines of tears marked his cheeks. This was crying, Byx knew. He had seen it. He even, after a time, understood it. Humans used this display to express grief, in its vast variety of forms. It was something he himself had never experienced, had never even tried to achieve. It had always looked unpleasant to him. It looked that way now. But Byx also felt a twinge of sympathy. Even if Kwict had betrayed their cause and was now acting on the Supreme's behalf, that didn't entirely erase the comradeship they had shared. Unable to resist the impulse, Byx stepped again toward Kwict, lifting a hand to lay it once more on his shoulder, to squeeze some kind of general reassurance into his body. "I'm—I'm sorry, Byx." Kwict's voice hitched, his chest catching as he sobbed. It was quite an emotional spectacle. Byx hadn't forgotten his anger—how dare his erstwhile friend betray him in this manner!—but it was tempered now with embarrassment for Kwict, as well as a grudging compassion. Already he wondered just how great a betrayal this was, if that was even the proper term. Yes, Kwict had been sent by the Supreme to bring Byx home. But there must be more to the story than that. Byx wanted to know it all. "Tell me," he said softly. "Tell me how it happened." And so Kwict did, in fits and starts between the sobs which he gradually brought under control. It wasn't, in the end, a terribly remarkable tale, or at least it lacked any of the inexplicable coincidences and reversals of bad fiction. (Byx had perused over the years a generous sampling of those human narratives that were like the fable he had half-recalled earlier. Some human stories qualified as great art, as far as he was concerned.) Kwict's recounting also satisfied Byx on a crucial point. He wasn't the only one who had lost vitality over the years inhabiting a human form. It had happened to most of the others, those

who hadn't just quit prematurely on the whole enterprise out of fear or a dwindling will or simple homesickness. The draw of one's own species, it seemed, was powerful, though Byx wasn't sure, even after so long on his own, if he himself shared that cardinal need. Maybe it was just one more way in which he was exceptional. Certainly he had lasted longer than anyone else. Kwict had said it: he was the last of the original group. The final holdout. The ultimate wayward, in the words of the Illuminare Supreme. "I had to agree to it, Byx!" Kwict blubbered before abruptly and with an obvious effort of self-control bringing himself to a standstill for the count of five. Then he released a long, gradual breath. He palmed his eyes, wiped his nose, and regarded Byx with greenish-brown, and now bloodshot, eyes. "I stood before the Supreme and he charged me with this task. I had to obey." "Did you?" Byx asked, but to his own surprise he didn't give the question any sarcastic edge. His sympathy for Kwict had grown, especially since he had pulled himself together. Byx had no trouble picturing the scene: the central sermon chamber, walls striated with marble, regal columns holding aloft the distant ceiling, an ancient place steeped in tradition; and looming there, the primary feature of the chamber, would be the Supreme himself, glowering down on Kwict and the others, exerting the full palpable power of his presence. Byx couldn't entirely hide a shudder. Yes, he sympathized with Kwict. He raised a hand, this time without violent intentions. He slid the edge of his thumb along the wet track marking Kwict's cheek. He had liked it earlier when Kwict had caressed his face while Byx had been drawing energy from him. "I think I understand," Byx said. "Thank you. Thank you for that." "But I'm not going with you." "I see." Byx heard no implied threat there. He moved to wipe the man's other cheek. Kwict, just

as gently, lifted a hand, caught Byx's, squeezed it. He turned his head and set his lips to Byx's palm. The kiss was soft and unhurried, warm and meaningful. "I never told you what you've meant to me," Kwict murmured. "No. No, you haven't." Byx felt a quickening of his pulse. He was sufficiently restored to experience arousal once again. Kwict had chosen a fine shape for himself, a delightful one, in fact. "Why don't you tell me now?" Kwict's mouth floated toward his. The kiss was soft, not quite chaste, and certainly not without an underlying urgency. Byx let his lips slip apart, and Kwict's tongue quickly invaded. He could recall only comradely affection on his part for Kwict. Escape from the Below had consumed Byx in those days. Had the indications of deeper feelings been there all along, while they were plotting to submit themselves to the adaptive process and live independent lives on the Earth's surface? In retrospect, Byx couldn't have said. But here now was the evidence of Kwict's passion, its intensity increasing. Their mouths ground, one atop the other. Byx's tongue tangled eagerly with the blond-haired male's. Hands fell on Byx's shoulders. He slid his arms around Kwict's body, cinching him into an embrace, his hands finding the linked knobs of his spine and the lines of lean muscle bordering that backbone. Their bodies pressed tightly together. Kwict and he were the same height, and Byx's nipples brushed Kwict's through the fabrics of their shirts. Their groins met. Hardnesses arose. Hips started an instinctive grinding. The pleasure inflamed Byx. He was familiar with the excitations of this body, with its carnal needs and rhythms. But this was something different, something separate even from the special lovemaking he'd experienced with Val Lucien. This being was a fellow Illuminoid. Granted, he wore a human shape, but Byx knew him intimately for what he truly was. Never before had he had sexual congress with a member of his own species. Such activities were reserved for Illuminoids much older than either himself or Kwict. Sex, for his race, was purely a means of procreation, and such a matter wasn't entered into lightly, and certainly not without the

considered permission of those who saw to the smooth running of Illuminoid society. But this wasn't the Below. And he and Kwict could act out in any way they liked. Freedom. True, unfettered, frenzied freedom. Joy moved Byx's hands, those same hands which minutes ago had been rising to strangle this man. Now they pulled at Kwict's clothing. Kwict was doing the same, yanking at Byx's Tshirt, tugging at the fly of his jeans. Their kiss broke as they fumbled about, engaged in a wild disorderly act of undressing. They staggered one way across the floorboards of the small dim room, then back the other, never completely losing contact with one another. Though it would have been much less complicated, and not nearly as entertaining, had they simply stepped back from each other to shed their clothes, after a few moments the task was accomplished. The two males, naked and erect, faced off there in the storm-scourged confines of the tiny brick building. Byx, lips and chin wet, grinned. Across, Kwict's cock twitched visibly amidst its sweat-matted thatch of blond pubic curls. The men had at each other. They came together in a grappling, devouring display of trim musculatures, outlined rib cages and rumpled, disparately colored hair. Kwict reached around for a handful of Byx's taut ass. Byx's avid fingers caught the nub of Kwict's left nipple and twisted. Kwict's mouth dropped onto Byx's throat, tongue laying down a glistening stripe before teeth closed for a nipping of the flesh. Leaving a brief stinging redness to mark the skin around Kwict's nipple, Byx worked his hand downward between flat pressing stomachs, finding the twinned knobs of their cockheads. He looped the two cocks in a firm ring formed by thumb and fingers and squeezed, drawing the manhoods together, making them almost one. Kwict groaned as Byx, planting his feet, set about studiously pumping the paired meat as one. His elbow pistoned. Against his cock he felt Kwict's, felt the pulsing of engorged tissues, registered the twinges and quivers. Kwict's head rose from Byx's neck, and their mouths crashed

together once more, hard and haphazardly enough that their teeth knocked, which Byx found amusing, even amid all the gathering sexual mayhem. They sorted out the kiss again, and their tongues delved lusciously. Kwict eased his hand further around, tugging on a rigid hemisphere of Byx's ass until he could send a questing finger to probe at the pucker secreted in its long curving valley. Byx shuddered at the contact, a pleasant tremor this time, the sensation one of promise and sweet vulnerability. They kissed for long, slow minutes. Byx, with his doubled handful, pumped their cocks. Outside, the winds tore. Kwict broke off the kiss, twisting his face away so vehemently that for an instant Byx thought that this was to be the true moment of betrayal—Kwict, having gotten him to truly let down his guard, would now pounce on him, render him unconscious perhaps, or use some other means to subdue him, so as to haul him back to that bleak underworld far underneath the world's sunbathed surface. But Byx's fear was misplaced. Instead, the grappling renewed. There came grunting maneuvers, masculine muscle working against itself until Byx found himself with his back and shoulders pressed against the spongy interior wall. Beneath the aging wood he felt the firmness of the stubborn brick. His feet were spread and planted once again. His cock thrust forward. A blond head descended out of his view in the dimness. He heard knees settle on the floor. Warm breath touched his cock. Kwict's hands slid up his thighs, along the cables of his slim hard muscles. Byx's own breath caught in his throat. He chanced to wonder, the thought flitting through his head, just how Kwict had spent his previous stay on the world's surface. Had he traveled extensively? Had he interacted, as Byx had, with the humans, delighting in the strange doomed creatures' ways? Had Kwict, sharing some part of Byx's appetites, gorged himself on the carnal possibilities their adapted bodies allowed them? That last seemed likely, he judged, as pleasure overwhelmed the thought. Kwict's mouth was on his cock, lips cinching the crown, tongue playing over it lightly, skillfully. One hand cupped Byx's balls. The other was again slithering around Byx's body, finger seeking Byx's

stimulated hole. Byx pushed his shoulders harder against the aging wormy wood, rocking his hips forward, giving Kwict's probing finger its full access. It also thrust his cock deeper into Kwict's mouth. The green-eyed male took his shaft fearlessly, answering the question of whether or not he had indulged himself during his sojourn on the surface. Kwict gave Byx's testicles a delicate squeezing, which augmented the pleasure of the sudden deep-throating Kwict performed, sucking Byx right down to the base of his shaft. In the vague gloom of light let in by the careless boards not quite covering the windows, Byx's eyes popped wide. He gasped. His gaze strayed downward to see the golden head as it commenced to bob. Kwict's tongue remained agile, exploring Byx's vein-lined staff as his hungry mouth rode it up and down. Byx heard the wet slurping sounds, and felt the occasional savoring hum from Kwict's throat, which spiked fresh pleasure through Byx. That probing fingertip had gained access to Byx's hole and was wriggling about in the pinched entry to his ass. Byx liked how it felt. He liked all of this, such an unexpected episode. He tried, without giving it much effort, to recall if he had ever even entertained notions about Kwict beyond the merely comradely. Certainly he had trusted this person, which had made it all the more shocking when he'd announced himself as an agent of the Supreme. But Byx, taking a shallow glance at his memory, couldn't remember ever nurturing a true depth of feeling for his fellow rebel, nothing that would indicate the attraction Kwict evidently felt for him. Nonetheless, he welcomed it. He welcomed Kwict's mouth on his cock and the finger eeling its way into his ass. This was all a delight, a celebration, even. At long last an agent of the Below had come for him, as he had always suspected one must, eventually. Strange that it had turned out to be Kwict, or maybe there was a certain inevitability to that. Strange too that it had taken the Illuminare Supreme and his ilk ten years to fully realize that a small number of the younger Illuminoids had fled to the surface. Then again, the elders had a different time sense. Byx relaxed into the blow job. Kwict was sucking him at a good diligent speed, maintaining a professional suction, careful about the grazing of teeth on the sensitive human

organ. Warming impulses flowed up through Byx. It was, he realized, quite stifling inside the small building, but it was a temperature suited for Illuminoids, even those who had adopted human forms. Kwict was swirling his firm digit inside Byx's ass, exciting a sweet blend of sensations. Byx felt pleasured and violated, and embraced both effects. Kwict's other hand clutched his balls with a little more force. Byx's juice was stirring, roiling. With Kwict's finger now jamming in and out of him at a quickening, determined rhythm, Byx found himself thrusting his cock harder into Kwict's mouth. His hands swam through the dim air and caught the disheveled blond locks. Rocking onto his bare heels, he proceeded to fuck Kwict's face. His fellow Illuminoid took every lunge of his cock heroically. He released Byx's balls, which now smacked audibly against Kwict's saliva-dribbling chin. Kwict's finger plunged to a new depth in his ass, touching the live wire of his prostate. All the warm streaming energy that was electrifying Byx's body now reversed and turned groin-ward, a great rushing cascade of rapture. His orgasm struck with a potency that rivaled the strength of the storm outside. His legs shook beneath him. His fingers tightened in Kwict's hair. His first jet of juice tore a wild cry from him. Kwict's finger was squeezed by the bunching of Byx's ass even as that finger continued to wriggle deliciously, intensifying these ultimate pleasures. Byx spilled and spurted into the man's mouth. Kwict made grateful muffled sounds as he swallowed Byx's come. He took hold of Byx's balls again, milking them, gently coaxing every possible issue from the fleshy pouches. Finally, as Byx felt his knees starting to give way, Kwict let the cock slip out of his mouth and stood. Byx's hole continued to throb where the blond man's finger had encroached. "I feel weak again," Byx murmured, but he followed the statement with a soft friendly laugh. "That's normal," Kwict said, wiping his pixieish mouth with the heel of his hand. "You probably need more energy. Let me give it to you."

* * * * It felt like culmination, like consummation. Like a long-held fantasy finding fulfillment after so many years. Kwict's human heart thumped at an excited tempo in his chest. His hand shook slightly as he lifted it to his mouth, smeared his fingers with a mixture of spit and Byx's residual semen, then applied the digits to his lover's waiting hole. Byx leaned against the wall before him, feet wide, hands to the wood, ass thrust out. He was beautiful in this guise, as he had been beautiful in Illuminoid form. It was the essence of Byx that Kwict cherished, of course. His fierce, intrepid spirit. His joviality. The innate life about him. That was what had drawn Kwict to him in the first place, when they were still in the Below, when the notion of rebellion against the Supreme was a barely coalesced impulse in either of them. Kwict had known he himself didn't possess the same intense initiative as his comrade. It wasthat drive which had partly attracted him to Byx. But even then, when they had first started to mutter mutinous views to each other, Kwict knew something more figured in to his own interest in his fellow youthful Illuminoid. How strange, it seemed now, that he hadn't understood his own true feelings until he'd assumed human form, until the concept of love had evidently taken hold of him. Byx shivered visibly at the contact of Kwict's moistened fingers. When Kwict had finished slavering the hole, he stepped up behind the dark-haired male. Already his cock dribbled, anticipating, his whole body hungry. With the tart taste of come still on his tongue, he fit himself to the offered ingress. Byx's ring gripped Kwict's cockhead. He eased in, letting the natural pull of the flesh draw him further inside. The internal heat clenched him as he slid deeper. Byx wriggled around him, making every inch of penetration more intense, more pleasurable. After a moment he stood flush against Byx's body, pelvis pressed to his backside. Kwict's cock, pulsing with need, had disappeared wholly inside Byx's ass. He laid his hands on Byx's pronounced hips, knuckles curling over the bones beneath the flesh.

"Now," Kwict said in their isolated refuge from the storm, "take what I give you." Byx did so, with obvious relish. Kwict, feet firmly braced, began his thrusts. The strokes were smooth and easy, Byx's channel gripping him perfectly. Pleasure rose glowingly throughout Kwict's being, a growing ecstasy. He maintained a measured tempo, enjoying every increment of this, sealing it into his memory with a suspicion that he and Byx might not get to do this again for some long time, if ever. With each plunge Byx released a soft, ragged moan. His ass flexed beneath Kwict's hands, muscles bunching and releasing, hips counter-thrusting, allowing the deepest penetration possible. Kwict plundered him, the swollen crown of his cock seeking the deepest heat, the innermost core. But this was more than a mere ass-fucking. As Kwict stroked into his lover, he also poured out another wave of the living essence that Byx needed. This time the rippling sensation that marked the transferral of energy combined with the intense sexual turmoil, creating by an unguessable alchemy something that was beyond anything Kwict had experienced either as an Illuminoid or an Illuminoid wearing the skin of a human creature. He sensed Byx absorbing this outpouring, gaining strength. Kwict had seen, even in those first shocking moments of laying eyes on this being, that he could never take him back unwillingly to the Below. Kwict was no enforcer. He couldn't very well coerce Byx. Why had the Illuminare Supreme charged him with this impossible task? Maybe the Illuminoid sovereign was playing some deeper game. Kwict dismissed these thoughts—or, rather, they were flung from his mind in the increasing frenzy of the present moment. He had sped up his rhythm, driving himself harder and faster into Byx's hole. His fingers tightened on Byx's hipbones. His teeth bared. Byx's soft moans had turned to feral grunts. He had removed one arm from the wall, and that hand, Kwict could tell by the avid action of Byx's shoulder, was busy pumping his renewed cock. This excited Kwict further. He smacked with an even greater fury now into the luscious form arrayed before him. Flesh hammered on flesh. His balls swung and slapped. Webs of tension

crisscrossed his body, muscles tightening, pressure mounting. Byx wrenched violently, and in the room's dimness Kwict saw pearls glisten and fly and spatter the wall. The suddenness of the movement wrested something inside Kwict, pushing him past the limit of what this body could withstand. The bliss erupted, a vast lovely agony of pleasure. Spasmodic torrents shot from him. Liquid heat poured into Byx. Kwict shook with the severity of the orgasm. It was fantastic, beautiful, miraculous. It was the realization of the sexual act as he'd never known it before, not in all the times he had dabbled with the human creatures during his previous travels. Here in this wind-whipped little building, inhabited by the only two Illuminoids currently on the Earth's surface, Kwict understood the love in lovemaking. Eventually he staggered free. Byx sagged against the semen-flecked wall. They both finally lay down on the floor, arms about each other. The roof, Kwict realized, wasn't rattling quite so noticeably any longer. Maybe the windstorm was beginning to flag. Byx kissed his shoulder. Kwict felt a mild rasp of stubble. "There's something you didn't tell me," Byx said after a minute or two. "How did you find me?" "There is a technique. Hutok showed me." "Can you teach it to me?" "I...think so. Why?" "Because," said Byx, rising onto an elbow and flashing a grin down on his lover, "that way neither of us will need to return to the Below. Not ever. I propose a fellowship."

Chapter Eighteen The Play’s the Thing

It had seemed hugely improbable, a massive misguided effort directed toward a hopeless cause. But Val Lucien found himself proven wrong. The exertions didn't involve him. No one asked for his help. The project had taken on a life, fertile and animated, of its own; and none of it required his participation. He had written the play. And the play no longer needed him. That struck him as fitting. After all, hadn't he moved on from his creation? On the Winning Side was written. It was done. His artistic instincts had already propelled him onward, toward his next work, whatever that would be. But it appeared obvious to him that his efforts as a playwright had hit a peak. Perhaps not the ultimate peak. Maybe this wasn't to be his greatest achievement, the work that would mark him for the rest of his life. But he couldn't deny, and didn't try to, that this show had touched people in a way he had never managed before, at least not on so grand a scale. The show was going up at the Bandshell, the outdoor venue in Golden Gate Park. Like the rest of that preserve, the site was abandoned, fallow. The dunes that had devoured the eastward avenues had also long ago begun an encroachment here. It was an impractical site for a theatrical event, but ever since Kaitlin Nalty, through the agency of her current paramour Candy, had suggested it, the idea had intrigued Val. Of course, he had presumed tonight's performance was off, canceled by the storm that had blown over the city, wreaking havoc before fizzling out in the late day. The building which housed Val's apartment wasn't likely to get electricity back for a day or two, even with the rooftop's windmill array already being repaired at fast efficient speed by the block mechanics. But Val's presumptions regarding his play apparently meant nothing. He had assumed the show couldn't be relocated in time, that the cast would need to adjust to the geometrics of the new venue, that lighting and necessary sound amplification equipment couldn't be properly

assembled in the space of a few hours. More, Val had supposed that no audience would show up, not after the trauma that the city had just undergone. The enormous windstorm had dumped sand everywhere. The streets were gritty with it. It was the worst of the gales that had so far struck the region. This was a weather phenomenon, new to San Francisco, that was only going to increase in violence and perhaps frequency as time wore on. The planet's climate would find no ways, on a yearly or perhaps monthly basis, to wipe away the human race. It fit the theme of his play. But the effort was undertaken, and every hand lent to the endeavor performed with professional determination. None of the obstacles proved insurmountable. The technical crews could set up anywhere, it seemed. They trucked in generators and strung their rigs and lit the great ghostly hollow of the Bandshell, vaguely Roman in its decaying grandeur. They wired the space for sound so words murmured on the wide open-air platform would reach the ears of every audience member. Two and a half hours after sundown, with the heat dipping to tolerable levels, the cast ran through a quick restaging of the piece to take advantage of the larger area. The show required few props, so that didn't affect any of the activities. Val didn't personally see any of these preparations. Candy had left before sunset, zipping away in his black car, leaving behind the silly, half-believed memory of the curious sexual interlude he and Val had engaged in. Val didn't regret the episodebut it did seem pleasantly foolish in retrospect. Byx did not reappear, though Val, alone again in the apartment, did specifically wait on that reappearance—a literal reappearance, to correspond with Byx's still utterly inexplicable, troubling disappearance. Then word had come to him. Kaitlin dispatched another messenger, not Candy this time, to inform him of all the busy doings in the park. Val, again only able to summon a halfhearted belief, went to see, and was astonished. The Bandshell was illuminated triumphantly. The wind had scoured the sky, and stars shown down with a fine metallic brightness. Quantities of sand had been dumped on the scene, giving the impression, if one had the imagination for it, of blanketing snow.

Val arrived a half hour or so before the supposed starting time. Kaitlin had arranged for a car to bring him. She had taken charge of everything. Even though she herself owned none of the necessary technical gear nor, so far as Val had ever been able to determine, operated a business of any kind, Kaitlin Nalty could cause things to happen, could will social events into existence. She was apparently determined to make herself a part of the sensation that was Val Lucien's latest work. And as always, he didn't begrudge her this participation. The woman had had a positive effect on his artistic life. Also, he was fairly certain as he at last arrived on the lively scene, nobody but Kaitlin Nalty could have relocated his play to this spacious outdoor venue in the immediate aftermath of a destructive city-wide windstorm. And nobody could have put out the word so quickly and effectively to bring in an audience of this magnitude. The size of the crowd put to shame the mob which had showed up last night, overspilling onto the sidewalk outside that crammed lobby. Here, perhaps, were upward of a thousand people. A thousand. Val, alighting from the vehicle that had collected him, stood on the rim of the long artificial gully, at one end of which lay the Bandshell. Two museums, shut down decades ago, bordered either side of this long, sand-covered space. He goggled at the activity, at the audience settling at the immense stage's floodlit foot. There were no chairs, no benches, no seats. People had brought blankets and tarps, and they spread them atop the patches of sand and sat. Technicians were still busy with the equipment, and now and again a loud startling pop sounded across the nighttime. Speakers, Val saw as he squinted about, were arranged in a semicircle that extended from the Bandshell's wings. How much of this sound gear, he wondered, was being cobbled together and jerry-rigged at the last minute? It didn't matter. After a moment of observing these proceedings, after letting all his doubts about this whole enterprise play out in his head, Val Lucien decided the play would succeed. This audience, in the wake of calamity, had made the effort to come here. People wanted to see this show. Perhaps they even needed to. The performers would bring it off, and

the engineering wizards would make that possible. People scampered all around him. He didn't even think to look for familiar faces. And so it was a jolt to hear his name called. "Val." For the spark of an instant, for the tiniest flick of time, he thought it would be Byx he would see when he turned. That beautiful blue-eyed, dark-haired male, who had magically vanished from a corner of Val's bedroom not twenty-four hours ago. Val had thought he should stay home, hold a constant vigil, watch for Byx's reappearance. But the impossible nature of what had happened—the absolute, physics-defying ludicrousness of it all—somehow gave Val the license to walk out. He needn't sit and stare at that terribly vacant corner. No gnashing of teeth or rending of clothes or whatever the hell it was a person was supposed to do in a situation like this. "Like"? Hah! What could be like this? So when he turned and saw Kaitlin, as elegantly dressed and mannered as she'd been last night, the flicker of hope died without much fuss. Not that Val was coping with the loss in heroic fashion; nothing of the kind. Byx's absence was a blow, a gouge, a horrid shock. How he longed to see the man again. "Kaitlin, I simply don't know what to say." Val smiled. She returned him one of her own, and Val was surprised to see the strain the expression revealed. This woman hadn't simply waved a hand to bring all this about. She had exerted herself, and for once it showed. Val felt a surge of gratitude. After all, he had started this with words he had written all on his own on the laptop in his cramped, book-filled workspace. Kaitlin said, "When you've struck a writer speechless, you've accomplished something." But her voice, with a small, almost imperceptible quiver in it, betrayed her fatigue. He gave a laugh. It sounded hollow but felt honest. To bolster that sincerity Val squeezed her forearm, only realizing as he was doing it that Kaitlin Nalty wasn't a personage you just reached out and squeezed. It also occurred to him that the two of them had very likely shared a lover in the person of Candy. That fact, however, meant nothing.

"It's..." he started to say, then swept a hand to take in the whole implausible wonderful scene. "Yes, it is, isn't it?" Kaitlin agreed, with a little more vigor. They chatted a few moments more, as the final minutes ticked down and it looked quite as though the show were actually going to start at the scheduled time. Val gazed at the multitude again, still stunned. A thousand, had he guessed? Maybe two thousand were attending. Maybe more. It was more people assembled in one place than Val had seen for years. As artistically inclined and community-minded as San Francisco was, events rarely occurred in the city which attracted vast crowds. Inevitably Val was spotted by others who knew him. Kaitlin stayed at his side a little while longer, then slipped away, uncharacteristically without fanfare; and he dealt with the wellwishers, the congratulators, the gushers, the—sycophants? Was he suddenly successful enough to have drawn toadies to himself? It just might be so. Lighting changes indicated the show was about to start. The small crowd Val had attracted mostly dispersed. The bulk of the audience was settled on their picnic-like blankets before the stage. Val wandered down into the long cement, sand-piled vale as the first lines of dialogue sounded from the gauntlet of speakers. The words sounded pitch-perfect to him, which meant that despite the intimidating venue, the performers were doing their jobs without hitch. Val stayed on his feet, kept to the rear. Again he found himself watching the audience rather than the play itself, though by now this all seemed vaguely ridiculous. Had he had any idea, when he was conceiving and writing and polishing On the Winning Side, that it would become any kind of local cultural spectacle? No. Of course not. He had dealt with his handful of characters, delving into them for their motivations, for their deepest, most accurate human responses. The character of Claire's mother, in her first incarnation inside Val's head, had been much gentler and far more intelligent. But that intelligence had led to tactfulness, and he had realized after a few dabblings with her that she shouldn't be tactful. And so was born the blunt, painfully straightforward woman who informs her daughter that having children is a momentous

mistake she must not make. That confrontation came and, after what seemed a great collective inhalation and exhalation of breath, went. Everyone knew about the scene by now, Val figured. It was the play's main draw. People would tell their friends and acquaintances to go see it on the strength of that single exchange between the made-up mother and fictitious daughter. It was fine with Val. If an audience came away thinking the human race was doomed, that was okay too. It was a valid conclusion to come to. Hell, and all these folk didn't even know about the Illuminoids, he thought with an eerie mischievous leer on his face as he continued to mill around among the technical personnel gathered at the back of the audience. A few of these nodded to him or offered silent thumbs-up congratulations. He returned them pleasant smiles, remaining distracted, barely aware of what was happening on the broad stage open to the radiant stars. Illuminoids. A race—according to Byx, Earth's original race—who planned to retake the planet once its climate had reached some acceptable level of temperature. The Illuminoids loved the heat, and included among their number was a certain male with piercing blue eyes— Val cut off the thought but couldn't dismiss it all as madness, though he still wanted to. Byx had performed a feat in Val's presence that was beyond mere mortal understanding. If Val accepted that—and how could he not?—then perhaps he was obliged to admit, or at least consider, the rest of it. Byx's whole story. The play ended. Applause and cheers erupted into the night. Val wondered where Byx was, right this very moment. * * * * Kwict stood outside the small, beleaguered brick structure for a while after Byx had walked off through the surrounding trees. He had, of course, agreed to the fellowship which Byx had suggested, though he'd done so with a private reluctance. He understood what their new association really entailed: it meant they would be apart, coming together only on rare occasions. It was, it seemed, a fulfillment of that strange intuition Kwict had experienced earlier, the

sense that lovemaking between them would be infrequent, perhaps even a singular event. This was why he had savored it so, and why he stood here in its aftermath and basked in the memory, which was still a physical thing reverberating through his body. Even now he could feel his cock plunging repeatedly into Byx's ass. He would hold those sensations dear to him for all the years to come. Byx had proposed they split up, rejoining only in the event one or the other of them required a recharging of energy, which they now knew could be effected on a one-on-one basis, Illuminoid to Illuminoid. They didn't need to return to the Below. They could sustain themselves, just the two of them. But Kwict, as he breathed in the night air, understood Byx's reasoning for parting ways. There was a technique for finding Illuminoids on the Earth's surface. Kwict had used the method taught to him by Hutok to locate Byx. He had passed on the procedure to Byx. Now they could each find the other when they needed to. It was just as true, however, that subsequent hunters sent up by the Supreme from the Below could and would use that same technique, tracking any usage of Illuminoid power on the planet's surface. Byx's idea, a sound one, was to deny those inevitable pursuers a single easy target. If the two wayward Illuminoids were not together, one might elude capture even if the other was snared. Kwict grasped the sense and practicality of this strategy. But it put an ache into his heart to part from Byx, his beautiful comrade, the object of all his human and Illuminoid affections. The sky's starry vault was scrubbed and bright. Kwict felt no qualms about leaving behind the community of his own species in its underworld ancestral dwelling place. Illuminoids belonged on the surface, after all. They were too grand and mighty to hide themselves so far under the ground. Kwict was pleased with his human shell, with this blond-haired form. He flexed his body, feeling the luscious strain of sex-stressed muscles. The taste of Byx's juice remained on his tongue. He knew he would be able, for years to come, to call this flavor to mind, to relive their glorious time together in this squat little shelter, under the lashings of the storm.

Others would come to the surface, surely. Perhaps even another generation of rebels, seeking escape from the monotony of life in the Below. Without question, though, the Illuminare Supreme would send further agents, once it became evident that Kwict himself wasn't going to execute his mission. How would he and Byx defend themselves against these operatives? Kwict didn't know. It would be an adventure. Maybe they could even proselytize those agents, make them understand the reasons for rebellion, demonstrate to them the lives they could lead up here on the planet's warming and lovely surface, if only they would accept adaptation on a more permanent basis. It was no sin, after all, thought Kwict, to be human. He laughed quietly, gave the brick building a last wistful look, and transported himself across the vast majestic curve of the Earth, seeking his own separate destiny and carrying with him the eternal memory of Byx, the being he would always love. * * * * He followed the roaring of voices that lifted to the stars, and the blare, seen through the shaggy untended trees, of the lights. With every barefoot step he tested his strength, and each time he found himself restored at full strength, seething with renewed energy. He had Kwict to thank for that, and he was appropriately grateful. He was also pleased with the inaugural success of their fellowship, the mutual cooperation which would, hopefully, sustain both of them for some time to come. After maneuvering among the randomly placed trees awhile, Byx stepped out onto cracked pavement. This was San Francisco. Kwict had said so. With that information Byx had guessed he'd transported himself to Golden Gate Park, rather than across Val's bedroom like he had planned. As he cleared the trees, he looked around, past a sea of parked vehicles, to the brightly lit amphitheater. Yes, Golden Gate Park. He was correct. An event was just ending, it looked like. Byx lingered on the edge of the roadway, near one of the dark, defunct mounds that had been, he thought, a museum long ago. The roaring voices, he realized, had been cheers, a great

tumult of them rising out of the long open-air grotto set before the cutaway stone shell that cradled a stage, where presumably the show had gone on, whatever it was. People were spilling up over the brim of that viewing area now, hundreds, then hundreds more. It was quite a crowd. Byx couldn't remember seeing such a number gathered in one place for some time. Maybe years. Even nations that were still relatively populous didn't often draw throngs of people to any one given locale. There were few leaders any longer to give speeches to the masses, nor religious honchos to preach their special truths. Probably this had been some mere entertainment, Byx conjectured as he sidled away from the crowd making for the fleet of electric cars and scooters. The talk was bubbly, excited, though he didn't try to eavesdrop. He was whole. He had survived. He had secured a provisional future for himself, one that didn't require him to return, humbled and weakened, to the Below. No doubt that if the Supreme had a hold of him again, the Illuminoid ruler would find some means of restraining him, of preventing him from escaping again to the surface. Byx would have found himself a prisoner. An odd idea. A human concept. Whatever the event, the attendees had dressed well for it. Byx, in his sand-scoured jeans and T-shirt, with no shoes on his feet, hair still postcoitally disheveled, didn't try to fall in among the revelers. The storm had passed hours ago, though it appeared to have left a patina of grit on everything. He felt the grains on his naked soles as he wandered around the throng's edge. Down in the grotto, he saw as he came up to its balustraded lip, equipment was being broken down or covered up. On the still-distant stage, people milled, also seeing to the general tidying of the gear. Must've been a hell of a show, he mused. "Byx." He turned. Dapperly dressed, with a disbelieving look in his eyes, Val Lucien stepped toward him. The playwright appeared dazed, as if Byx's appearance here was one too many fantastical occurrences in a row. Maybe it was. Byx didn't know, and didn't care.

Arms wide, he raced toward Val. The two men embraced, bodies tight against one another, arms cinching, hands clinging. Emotions tumbled end over end in Byx, a great careening joy at seeing the fair-haired man once more. He had figured on returning himself to Val's apartment, so to belatedly complete the demonstrative journey he'd started many hours before. "What are you doing here?" Byx realized after a few thundering heartbeats that Val had asked the question, not him. He pulled back his head to gaze at the playwright, and in that same instant he realized with an intuitive jolt what show he had just missed, what had prompted that great roar of approval from the audience. Grinning, Byx said, "Why, I came to see your play, of course!" Wonder swam in Val's eyes. But he managed an ironic smirk, and countered with, "Aren't you tired of it by now?" A tremor of laughter moved through Byx—laughter, and other more lively and meaningful emotional responses. It all welled inexplicably into his eyes, into the underused ducts there. His voice sounded frail to his own ears as he said, "Never. I'll never be tired of it. Never." The entourage that had surrounded Val before he'd broken off and come toward Byx now dispersed behind him, into the general movement toward the vehicles. Already the night hummed with the buzz of departing motors. The two males still held each other. Val set his lips against Byx's. The kiss did not become a mad tangling of tongues and grinding of bodies, but it promised those things, and more. Val said, "Come with me, Illuminoid. Let's get out of here."

Chapter Nineteen Adrift

Byx dropped his T-shirt onto the floor, near where he'd left his boots and leather jacket. Val had scratched a match and lit the same purple candle whose wick Byx had caused, through skills born to him as an Illuminoid, to ignite. The lack of electric light in the apartment seemed to recast the place, make it exotic, though not inhospitable. "You know something?" Byx, standing shirtless in the bedroom, looked down at himself. "I stink." Val still wore a dreamy smile, as if this was some pleasant fantasy he didn't quite trust but was unwilling to relinquish just yet. He too had started to remove his clothing. Halting, he asked, "Do you want a bath?" "You agree I stink, then?" Byx grinned wryly. "I like the way you stink, if that's the word you insist on. But I've got enough water stored up for a bath." The bathroom, where Val lit more candles, was pasted with limestone-colored tiles. A full-length mirror, its edges scrolled with elaborate brass curlicues, backed the door. Val set about filling a gray porcelain tub with water. Byx had left his jeans back in the bedroom, and stood naked and itchy, the gritty feel of the storm still on him, as well as the odors and fluids he'd picked up from his sexual encounter with Kwict. He felt the need for a fresh start, a cleansing. Val squirted something over the filling basin from a plastic tube, which excited a cheerful eruption of soap bubbles from the water. A floral fragrance filled the tiled room. Val too had shed his clothes, and Byx stood back and watched as he crouched alongside the tub, stirring the contents with his hand, concentrating on the task. Byx noticed the darker shades the candlelight found among his hair. He studied with appreciation the sensual curves of his ass. When it was time to step in, Byx was surprised to find the water heated. He'd expected it

tepid. He liked the temperature, though. Wriggling his toes among the bubbly water, he settled slowly at one end, while Val took the other. It wasn't too roomy a bathtub, but they managed, Val hooking his calves over Byx's thighs and planting himself to one side of the spigot. The soapy bubbles encircled his midriff, giving his torso the look of a fleshy tor rising through a cloud layer. The luscious warmth spread through Byx's extremities. The flowery scent suffused him. Muscles relaxed. Even his mind, knotted with all that had happened over the past few days, started to untwist. Val reached for a pair of thick, textured clothes, and the two men set about scrubbing one another. It was a delightfully hedonistic, though also practical, exercise. Val had Byx lift his arms so he could swab gobs of soapiness into his armpits. Byx wiped Val's chest, using a circular motion, the cloth catching the man's pink nipples. Val swiped out the groove behind each of Byx's ears. Byx raised a cupping doubled handful of water over Val's head, wetting down his hair, plastering it to his skull. The playwright smiled. He had a dot of white soap affixed to the tip of his nose. They were wordless as they did this. That errant thought Byx had had earlier about making a fresh start seemed more serious now. As the final grains of sand were scoured out of his hair, he felt a sense of newness. It occurred to him that he had no plans to leave this city, to travel on and further explore this planet as its erstwhile dominant species came to its predestined end. He had no intention, more to the point, of leaving this man. As long as Val wanted him, he realized, he would remain here. After a time, with flesh glowing and tingling in the shadow-dancing candlelight, they set aside the scrubbing cloths. They shifted closer and embraced, wet limbs wrapping soap-slick bodies. Mouths, upper lips glistening delicately with perspiration, came together. Byx felt himself melting against Val's lips, a conduit opening between the two males, strengthened by the living cable of their joined tongues. Erotic energy flowed into him. Byx was aware, even as he

felt himself tumbling away into the steamy sensuality of the moment, that this was akin to the vitality transfer he'd experienced with Kwict. He understood his fellow Illuminoid rather adored him, that those feelings were genuine, but Byx harbored only a comradely affection for Kwict. For him, he felt solidarity, brotherliness. For Val, however, Byx felt—felt— "I love you," he said in that instant when they broke their kiss, so to draw air. The words were out before he could consider them: human words, ones strewn across the art and culture of these creatures, down through their pitifully short centuries. The phrase had even found its way into Val's play, Byx recalled. I love you. So Claire's lover said to her at one point, though the tone of that scene had been one of gloomy desperation. Val's eyes, wide and very attentive, hovered before Byx. Byx wasn't waiting on any sort of reply. During their kissing his cock had engorged. So had Val's. Byx felt where their shafts now touched, below the water's slowly cooling, soap-sculptured surface. With a look of wildness Val suddenly lifted partway out of the tub, grasped Byx's cock, and fitted himself down onto the yearning crown. Byx felt his cockhead clutched by the slippery entry, felt himself sliding through, Val's channel drawing him deeper. The abruptness shocked a cry out of him, as Val fairly slammed down on top of his erect staff, impaling himself mercilessly. Water slapped the tub's sides. The nearest candle guttered, dimmed, then brightened. After that, the bubble-thick bathwater rolled about in the porcelain hollow. Val managed to anchor slick fingers onto Byx's shoulders, so to give himself the leverage to rise and drop on top of Byx's cock. Byx did his part as well, closing his hands around Val's trim middle, thumbs just under the playwright's floating ribs, and helped him keep the bouncing rhythm going. Ethereal soapy clots flitted in the air. More than once the water actually sloshed over the tub's rim, dribbling audibly on the tiles. The grip on Byx's shaft remained strong. Val's seemingly awkward positioning evidently kept his ass tightly clenched. The man was obviously relishing this intense penetration, slamming down ever harder, face twisting into new contortions of anguished pleasure.

Neither did Val's cock flag, staying dutifully erect, rubbing with increasing fury against Byx's taut belly. Val's thighs flexed, and his knees worked at a punishing tempo. Fingertips gouged Byx's shoulders, but Byx welcomed that intensity, indicating as it did the approach of the same crisis point he himself was about to reach. In his position, he couldn't even thrust up against the dogged plunging of Val's ass. He was like an object manipulated. Again, he had no protestations. The mad ecstasy of this was triumphant, celebratory, even consummating. The slippery length of Val's cock continued its frantic burnishing of Byx's stomach, until hot spatters suddenly striped Byx's damp chest and the underside of his chin. Stray flecks of pearlescent seed were even flung high to leave gleaming marks on Val's rictus of a face. With that, Byx let go of his pent-up orgasm. Juice jetted out of him, spraying up into Val's sweet clasping hole. The bliss blended with the surrounding water somehow, becoming a liquid, oceanic, driven by the moon's actions, a flowing wondrous current, free and obedient all at once. Afterward, he sank back into the now-tepid water, where at last the bubbles were dissipating. He felt enervated but it wasn't, this time, a lack of essential vitality. He was restored, thanks to Kwict, and he would maintain this vigor—also thanks to Kwict and the fellowship they had formed. For the moment Byx merely felt contentedly adrift, as Val uncoupled himself from Byx's reluctantly softening cock, as the two males settled back and just lay there in the water awhile. The interlude lasted and lasted until, as Byx was fading away into a kind of empty reverie, he heard the gentle reciprocating words. "I love you too, Byx." It was then, for the first time, that it occurred to Byx to wonder if somehow the humans could be taught to adapt themselves to the Earth's changing environmental conditions, so they might survive. * * * *

Illuminoids, whatever else they did, evidently slept. Val Lucien regarded his bedmate in the stultifying, un-air-conditioned atmosphere of the bedroom. The purple candle's tiny patient flickers played over the high cheekbones of Byx's face. The words had been said, Val thought with a kind of serene detached satisfaction. I love you. It was a mutual declaration, heartfelt and meaningful. He couldn't have said what, exactly, it meant for him and his lover in practical terms. Was Byx going to stay? Was he going to live here in the apartment? He was welcome to. But such arrangements could wait until tomorrow night. Val reached for the table beside the bed. In a drawer was paper and a pen. Other conversations could wait for tomorrow as well. Byx had told him about the Illuminoids. He could expand on that. Val, perhaps, was ready to believe. For the moment, however, in this gentle aftermath of their lovemaking, Val felt the tugging and nagging of an idea that wanted to come to life. Thus, the pen and paper. On the Winning Side had started this way, a badgering little notion, the faintest outlines of a melodrama; and he had sketched his first notes, put to paper those initial points. Now the artistic urge moved his hand, forced the terse framework of a story that had come to his mind. He wasn't surprised to see it was a fantasy, something beyond the bounds of accepted reality. He had worked in the field before. It was fun, spirited; it allowed for a pleasant measure of artistic liberty. Of course, people expecting some kind of follow-up or retread of Side were going to be disappointed, but that didn't concern Val. Not one bit. Right now he wanted to write about superbeings who dwelled deep inside the Earth, and the lone beautiful member of this fanciful species who makes his escape to the surface, to live among the humans.

Epilogue The Below

The majority of the elders would not learn of Byx, nor of the agent who had been sent to retrieve him and who had failed to return. Information moved slowly here, in keeping with the ponderous rhythms of many of the lives of the Illuminoids, especially the older denizens of this underworld. The Supreme contemplated the ball of glowing energy that hovered above his open hand. It rotated. He had snatched this from Kwict without the youngster's knowledge. It was a portion of that wayward's essence, and with it the Illuminare Supreme could affect Kwict, make his existence—unpleasant. Still, Byx and Kwict were merely two waywards. It rankled the Supreme to think of them up there, running loose, no doubt behaving in ways ill-suited to the dignity of the Illuminoid race. Yet he was strangely hesitant to make use of this captive bit of Kwict's essence. After all, he had an abiding affection for his race's children. The sovereign had more immediate concerns. He had his duties, the burdens of leadership. He was among the oldest of their kind. He didn't burn with impatient need to visit the Earth's surface as some of the younger Illuminoids y did. He had his memories of that upper land, when the Illuminoids had ruled over its sultry and torrid reaches. What a glorious time that had been. It was also an era which would come again, soon. In the antechamber he paused, feeling a wave of weariness. For so long he had maintained the traditions of his species, kept its lore alive. Without him the Illuminoids might well have descended into ignorance, even barbarism. Yet there were times when he himself experienced doubt, or at least a soulful fatigue. This was one of those occasions, he realized as he sagged against a marbled wall. For a terrible instant he wondered if he could truly lead his people back up to the surface when the proper time arrived. Would all the Illuminoids follow,

including those elders so set in the routines and monotony of their existences? Some, the Supreme feared, would be too frightened of the great change that must come. He wondered too if he would live to see that day, and if he didn't, who would lead his people. The Supreme closed his fingers around the radiating, rotating orb. He would, of course, have to make use of this. Byx and Kwict both had to be brought back here. The momentary fugue passed. He drew himself to full regal height and strode out into the grand chamber, with its lofty columns, where the assemblage was gathered. Anxious adoring faces looked to him, awaiting the comfort of his familiar words. "Humans," said the Illuminare Supreme in his authoritative rumbling tones, "are on their way out."

THE END