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    Meanwhile, Ralph had started climbing up a ladder on the side of the frst dish. It led up to a platform directly under the huge dish itself. By the time we reached him, he'd gotten on to the platform, and pulled the bag off of his shoulder.

    Ralph pulled some stuff out of the bag, and fddled with it for a few moments. Then he suffered a drunken spazz, during which he managed to tip himself over backwards over the guardrail. He fell fat on his ass, and onto his back—a twenty foot drop that should have broken bones, or killed. But, saved by his drunken rubberyness, or maybe a charming quirk of Ozian physics, or both, he got up, groaning, and started running in our direction, waving his hands frantically, motioning to us to run, too.

    We did, until Ralph grabbed hold of both of us and shoved us down fat on the ground. "Cover your heads!" he shouted. An eyeblink passed, and there was a deafening explosion. Hot metal rained down around us.

    When it seemed safe, I turned around and saw a smoking stump where the radio dish had been. No blackness fowed up from it.

    I fnally knew what was in the bags.

    We stood speechless while Ralph got up, unsteadily dusting himself off.

    "This all has gotta go down fast," he said, "I may not even make it all the way through before Bjhennigh sends the shitstorm down around my head." He paused to Tarzan-whistle at the herd. "And to tell you the truth, I'm not sure what's gonna happen when and if I do fnish the job."

    His humvee, bashed and caked with gore all along the front left bumper, pulled up along side of him. The bumper uncrinkled as I watched. Ralph reached in and grabbed another bag. He hefted it over his shoulder, then reached in and pulled out a pint bottle of Jim Beam. He must have been stashing booze all over the place for most of a decade.

    He twisted the cap off and drank about half of it. "What you two

are gonna hafta do," he said, "is go get Nick."

More news.

I looked at him wide-eyed, incredulous.

    "Bjhennigh's had him sitting in a dungeon ever since our little mishap on his front lawn."

    He saw my look, and stared back at me resolutely. "Look. You shouldna come anyway. An now you're here. So. You have two choices. One—stand here with your thumb up your ass, and die.

    Two—get into the Fortress, maybe die, maybe get Nick, who is, I guarantee, the only possible help for several miles around." He looked at me sadly, like maybe he was going to cry again. "I'm sorry things happened for ya this way, Gene. You're a good man. Good luck."

    I wanted to protest, but he'd already turned around and started for the second dish. So I just stood there.

    Ledelei grabbed me by my ogre suit and whirled me around.

    "Come on, Gene," she said, "Snap out of it. We don't have time for this bullshit."

    And she also marched away, in the opposite direction, towards the Hollow Man's Fortress. I followed her. What else was I gonna do?

    I caught up with her, and stopped her.

    "Alright," I said, catching my breath, "we're going to get Nick. Great. That's just fucking fantastic. But if we just cruise up the road, we're not going to make it. They must have seen that explosion. Bhennigh's gonna be sending something down this road in the next few minutes."

    She looked up the road, then looked at me. "Okay," she said, "What then?"

    I didn't know, but I also didn't want to look like an idiot. "Well, frst, let's get some cover behind that hill." Sounded good. I pointed back over a rise immediately behind me. We jogged over it and crouched down, checking out the terrain.

    Pretty soon, Ledelei pointed back behind us in the direction of the nearest dish. "What's that?"

    I looked. "I don't know," I said.

    I hadn't seen it before from the front, but could now see that there was some kind of black stuff trailing away from each of the dishes, starting from just under where the cloud was pouring out. The stuff covered the back of the bottom half of the structure like ivy, and a thick umbilicus trailed off in the direction of the fortress. "Let's go check it out."

    There were tendrils of it running wild into the soil in all directions, but it appeared that someone had trained some of them to grow together towards the fortress, in a monster jumble like black kudzu, about eight feet in diameter.

    The vine-tangle writhed obscenely over the ground, a slow orgy of obsidian worms, somehow transmitting something awful, powerful. A sheen of anti-energy radiated out from it, catching the sound out of the air around it.

    I clapped my hand near it and the sound was muted and dead.

    Little teardrop shapes skittered over the outer surface, running for a little while, then absorbing back into the vines.

    "I don't know what this does," I said, "but it must be something important."

    "A power source or something? Like for the band amplifers?"

    "Yeah. Maybe something like that. It looks like it runs right up to the Fortress. Maybe we can follow it down, see if it plugs in. Maybe there's a way in. I don't know. What do you think?" After a second she nodded her agreement. "Yes. We could stay close against it and perhaps they will not see us. Perhaps. Let's go."

    There was a commotion from the direction of the road. We heard an engine, that of a car or small truck, and the sound of running feet. We fattened out on the ground and were silent until well after the noise stopped.

    Ledelei grinned and said, "You told me so."

    "I'm supposed to say that," I observed.

    She looked puzzled. "No. Why would you?"

The terrain stayed much the same as it had been: low rolling hills with a few sickly trees, and pale unwholesome grass, somewhere between dead and alive. It was especially so in the immediate vicinity of the vine tangle, which made me think that being in such close proximity to it probably wasn't doing us much good either.

    After a little while, we found some rusty shovels and little gardening tools. Soon after that, we found a neat stack of bones and skulls. Little ones. Munchkin size.

    After we'd hiked for about ffteen minutes, we heard the sound of Dish Number Two going up, then soon after, more troops on the road, heading in Ralph's direction. I prayed he was as good a soldier as I thought he was, and that the hummers could continue to cover him.

    We were now dangerously close to the Fortress.

    I took a moment to look at this fancy gun Ralph had entrusted me with. I hadn't thought up until then to look to see if there were any bullets in it. I had only fred it once, but I wasn't sure if there was anything else in there, having never looked.

    I gingerly fgured out how to fip open the part with the chambers in it. I looked inside and saw six bullet sitting in there. Six. It was full. But I had fred it once, and as far as I knew, no one had touched it except me. Maybe it didn't actually fre the bullets, I thought. Maybe it grew new ones.

    Finally chalking it up "to more weird stuff I didn't understand," I fipped the safety back on, and shoved the gun back down into the ogre pocket.

     The vine-tangle we'd been following skirted the side of a hill for most of the way, then took off across a low, fat feld, meeting up with two other tangles, and disappearing into an opening in the side of the fortress. I guessed that three others met on the other side, running from the other three dishes.

    I was expecting a mote, but there was no such thing, just two guard towers at the front and rear of the building, on a wall surrounding the place. I supposed there were two more on the other side. A sentry paced back and forth on each of the towers. We were, so far, able to avoid being seen, but would have to somehow come to terms with covering the last fve hundred yards to the wall out in the open. I quietly said as much to Ledelei.

    "Not only that," she whispered, "but where will we go in? We certainly can't just stroll in through the front door. Maybe we can squeeze though with the black stuff?"

    "I don't think so..." I said. The hole looked impossibly small. "Even if there's a little room to squeeze through, what happens if you touch that stuff? I don't want to experiment, thank you."

    She gave me a sharp look. "We may have to try if you want to get the Winkie King free."

    "The Winkie King?" Sounded to me like somebody with a dis count winkie wearhouse. I hadn't realized Nick was the king of anything.

    "I'm going to try it," she said. "You can follow if you want to."

    "Wait," I said, "don't be stupid." Then, from out of nowhere, surprising myself, I said, "Wait till they both turn around at the same time."

    Where did I get that from? I was certain I'd seen all this before.

    But that was crazy.

    But, eventually, they both turned around at the same time, and we ran for it, hit the wall and stuck there. Ledelei started inching her way towards the opening where the vines snaked in. I pulled on her arm and held up a fnger.

    The place was looking more and more familiar all the time, but I still couldn't fgure out why. Maybe something in this place was doing something to my brain. Hell, maybe there was a Mickie sitting in there, a little humunculous slowly possessing me. That was a cheery though. But the fact remained—I knew stuff. And I didn't know why.

    I pulled her in the opposite direction, towards the front of the building. About a third of the way down, there was a section of wall that was a slightly different color than the slate gray surrounding it. I slapped it with my open palm, and the wall section slid inward.

    Just like I knew it would.

I awoke to the lilting strains of Louie Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," carressing the air at a REALLY HIGH VOLUME, from speakers that seemed to be mounted squarely inside of my head. I came up so fast from those dark dreamless depths that I practically got the bends.

    "OW!" I said. It barely cut through the orchestration. I clutched my ears and squeezed my eyes open, cursing the light.

    Then I saw the black cloud.

    My frst reaction was to question my awakeness. My second reaction was to question my sanity. I'd already seen more than enough of the fucker to inspire the appropriate awe and terror, but this was ridiculous. In a horrible way. From where I lay, the sky was bisected, like a tropical fsh tank splitting water from air. Like there was a wall of glass that began at the easternmost wall of the city, then headed straight up to infnity.

    And against that glass wall—generated by Glinda?—the black cloud squirmed like a living thing. An ameoba, rendered so microscopically huge that you could scan its subatomic undulations. Roiling ferce against the barrier.

    Trying to force its way in.

    I dragged my ass up past my knees, assumed the standing position. The world wobbled slightly, then righted itself. I levelled my gaze on Mikio's Science Club, who were gathered at the edge of the roof. They looked like a Marx Bros./Three Stooges reunion, featuring everyone from Zeppo and Shemp to Curly Joe.

    Was Mikio Groucho, or Moe, or what? He looked more like the late, great Toshiro Mifune, doing his version of the Absent-Minded Professor. He was at the center of the crew, performing wild gesticulations, no doubt squirting out some more of his weird genius.

    As I watched, several associates scurried off to help manifest his latest inspiration. But, of course, I had no idea what they were on about. All I could hear was St. Louie's gravelly benediction, thundering out of my stereo system.

    By now, I was awake enough to appreciate the sentiment. One of the world's sweetest songs, and most perfect recordings, was far more than mere ironic counterpoint; in context, it was a purely Ozian gesture of innocence as strength and power as compassion. My pissiness withered of its own accord, as the beauty of the gesture soaked in; and I was grinning by the time I penetrated the throng and wrapped my arms around that lovely boy.

    "Hey," I said, then slipped my tongue between his lips, just long enough to get his dancing.

    "Oh, hi!" he said, then reared in and kissed me back. "It's gettin' grim here, but I think we''re onto something!"

    At which point, the Skyrrla let out a radiance so huge that I felt, more than saw, the blackness recoil. It made my short hairs stand on end, but I liked how it felt: the dreadfulness massively undercut by that warm Skyrrla vibe. And when I looked at Mikio, his features almost washed-out by the brilliance of the surge, I could tell that he felt it, too.

    "Mmmmmm," I said, not wanting to understate it. He smiled, held me close. I sought his neck out, nibbled on it. He made his version of the noise I was making. We took a moment just to bask in the warm glow.

    In that moment, it felt like no harm could come to us. Ever. It was a mighty fne feeling. For that moment, I looked at the cloud like I would look at a monster movie. Safely detached. Vicariously grooving on the special effects. Viewed from that perspective, it really looked pretty cool.

    Directly before us, the cloud had backed up several feet. It began to churn from within, turn oily, as if it were secreting or dredging up lube from somewhere in its innermost depths. There was a swirling in the blackness that began to glisten, then practically drip. No rain cloud, however swollen, had ever exhuded such viscosity. As a pure spectator, I was totally impressed.

    Then the slickness began to spread, down the length of the cloud; and, perversely, the farther away from me it went, the more terrifed I began to feel.

    "Mikio?" I could hear it in my voice. "Is, um, the Skyrrla making that force feld thingee happen?"