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  She examined what she could see of the roadway, peering into the darkness intently. Incredulous, she watched headlights become attached to a bus even larger than hers, rather like a transcontinental Greyhound. It rumbled past at a speed that made her wonder why it was not flying. Certainly it had worked up adequate speed to take off.

  Well, if they can, I guess I can, she informed herself. On we go. She shoved her hands into her fur-lined gloves and turned the key.

  The bus purred into life. They inched onto the road. This part of the trip really is the easiest, she tried to reassure herself. Straight, and the wind isn't strong enough to be a problem. Often, high winds whipped across the flatlands, winds so strong that the county office canceled the Bookmobile visits. But the state road was well maintained, most of it was three lanes wide and some of it four, and at this end of the valley one could make out the lights of isolated homes. To Judith's considerable surprise, the radio condescended to work, due, doubtless, to an unusual inversion layer that reflected the signal into the valley. Judith grinned, demanded Bach—and got it. She snorted. Things seemed to be going better.

  Then the snow began.

  In five minutes she knew it was chains now or give up. She got them all on in less than an hour, and by that time almost was unable to drive out of the hollow the presence of the bus had made in the swiftly piled snowbank. But the chains were new and sharp, and they dug in. She drove down a whirling white tunnel beyond which was only darkness, solid, like ebony or granite. She dared not go on. She dared not stop. She shifted into a lower gear and continued. For as long as the bus would move, she'd drive. Every quarter mile brought them closer to the freeway, to the motel and people and safety. Every turn of the wheels made one step she need not take in the cold and snow when the storm was over, and she had to move or die.

  The man had a name, and most people knew what it was, but he was never referred or spoken to as anything but General. He deserved it. He made the essential breakthrough in the scientific aspect himself, and he convinced men who could take that information and turn it into a completed system that they could and must do so. Whatever they needed he earned or developed or bought or stole—ahead of time.

  When it was done, he named it the Puma. The name seemed particularly appropriate. The puma was the big cat of the American west, the most deadly carnivore that hunted alone. It moved with stealth, erupted into powerful movement, and destroyed with strength and speed. Yet a sleeping puma was harmless and could rarely be found, so camouflaging was its color, so clever were its habits of concealment. All of these traits were to be found in the Puma. It was deadly, and it was powerful, but it was nowhere near the size of previous—objects—of its kind. It and its transport and launching systems were approximately the size of a large bus which, as a sensible precaution, the exterior was designed to resemble. Just as the puma slept upwind of possible pursuers and could not be located by scent, the Puma disseminated no telltale radiation. And after it had done its work, its target area would be free of animal life, but clean. Troops could go in at once. That was the General's personal contribution.

  "Tests start tomorrow," the General said. Someone commented that the weather was not ideal. The General indicated that if a puma was hungry, the weather didn't matter a damn. If the Puma couldn't be transported and launched in a hurricane, it had better be redesigned. Did anyone need to do his job over again, and if so, why hadn't he spoken up before this?

  Nobody mentioned blizzard because nobody thought of blizzard.

  "It pounces on Sunday," the General said. "I've arranged for the test grounds to be empty. Except for us. Any indications that we've been breached?"

  There hadn't better be, so there weren't.

  Nobody asked if it wouldn't be better to use a dummy warhead. Half the point of the test was to see what the real one would do.

  The bus started Friday morning. On orders, the driver took it easy, crossing the desert at fifty-five, climbing the mountains at forty, slowing down in the tricky spots. They were to spend tonight at the summit in the lodge, then start down tomorrow to the flats. Two-thirds of the way to the highway the land conformation made radio or other wave-born communication erratic and chancy at best. A roughly circular area some ten miles in diameter held not a single human habitation. Unusual autumn rains had filled an arm of the sometimes-lake so they could park the bus on the shoreline and take no chances of setting a major fire and getting caught when they unleashed the Puma. Then only a few more miles to the freeway and on to the coast.

  Except that the obvious is always the enemy. They got a flat tire and the driver became stubborn. No way was he going to drive that bus without a good spare. Unhitch the four-wheel RV off the back, take the tire to the station and get it patched, return and stow it. The schedule would have to be put back one day. The General was not pleased but, to everyone's relief, he was not unduly upset.

  And that's what they did.

  Then the rain began, and it started to look and smell like snow. They had to get the bus out of the mountains, down to the flat, and they might not be able to for a week or so if that snow…

  They started about four. Driving conditions were very, very bad. Snow hit them halfway across the flats. In the whiteout, the driver became totally disoriented. By the time they found themselves trying to go back up into the mountains, it was too late to do anything but wait it out.

  The General was not pleased. He should have been.

  Each morning, Silk became more concerned for Feather's safety. The little one became more and more determined to solve the mystery of the man she would never call Master. Silk could not shake her feeling of impending doom and began acting strangely. Someone suggested that a Wise Woman or a veterinary Healer might find out what troubled their usually self-possessed mother cat. Not until she leaped into wakefulness one night yowling like a scalded ice-demon and stalked about the house growling, her tail switching, her eyes blazing, did anyone take the suggestion seriously. Then Anja requested the presence of a member of the race of sentient beings who coexisted in their land (although separately, for the most part), and who could speak with both animals and humans.

  The word passed. A woman of those people appeared at the steading. Silk met her. What she told Anja sent the fastest rider on the best horse to another place—and the word flew.

  A man who knew of Gates, and what might come through them, and the horror caused by Alizon while their Gate was open, took horse and rode day and night. Others joined him.

  They were too late. The Gate was open, the Call sent, and death was the payment for passage. They established a defense perimeter outside that of the entities who had opened the Gate, and waited.

  Silk stalked and growled. She continued yowling. Her fur sparked blue stars when she swished her tail.

  Beyond the standing stones—or beyond the opening framed by the three stones—was a sunlit day.

  Judith was no longer young, and she had never been pretty. She was far too bright and independent for a girl of her generation. Loneliness was a curse she did not suffer as a child—not with eleven others in the family, and she in the middle. As a young woman, getting out, away, earning college money, then working her way through in the company of her best friends, those in books, had taken every moment. When the time to be lonely arrived, she had learned how to handle it.

  Fantasy was so much more satisfactory a place to live than reality that Judith spent much of her life there. Doing so was both reasoned and intentional. She had a clear, biting sense of what was and what was not. She simply preferred what was not. Life in books and beyond them, in places where only her imagination created worlds—sufficed. Satisfy, it did not, but reality offered so much less that Judith had long since relegated living in it to such times as she was with others. She wished she could reject it completely.

  As she tried, unsuccessfully, to reject the sunlit world beyond the stones.

  The cat would not let her. She crawled from under the dashboard scream
ing in demand to be allowed out of the door. Shocked, Judith watched the contractions of labor begin in her sides. The cat clawed the door and screamed again.

  "No, no," Judith exclaimed. She reached for the animal, to be met with teeth and claws and infuriated noises. The cat ripped and tore at the rubber edges of the doors, squirming to get her head between the flanges. She would kill herself—or her babies.

  "All right, all right," Judith yelled at her. "I'll take you out. Wait a minute."

  She shoved her arms first into her down jacket, then into the knapsack straps. The cat continued to scream. Judith picked up the beach towel, threw it over the cat, and stuffed cat and towel into the backpack. The cat became suddenly silent.

  Judith almost stopped. "No, I said I would," she whispered. This time I have really flipped, she thought. Keeping a promise to a cat, yet?

  She could not take her eyes off the brilliant rectangle of sunshine, the green, grassy hills, the hint of a stream, the likelihood of wildflowers, the … She grabbed the lever and opened the door. The balky back door chose this time to open, too. Before she could stop herself, she jumped down into the snow and stamped to the front of the bus. She could smell spring! She could feel warm wind on her face!

  Almost, she waded forward to pass through the open … gate? Space?

  "No," she said aloud. To do that was foolish. She had no way of knowing what really was … there. If anything. The Bookmobile had brought them this far; it could take them through. Remaining inside it was the only protection she had.

  She knew the lintel stone to be more than a foot above the top of the bus, the side stones of the … entryway … just far enough apart to let it through—if she folded the rearview mirror back.

  As she got ready, she could feel the cat inside the knapsack. The kittens must be coming. A pained yowl made her wonder if the first one was here. She could not stop.

  When she climbed back into the driver's seat, she did not close the door, she just gripped the wheel until her knuckles went white, then pried her right hand free so she could turn the ignition key. The bus responded. It was perfectly lined up, as if things were planned—as things were in fantasy. Forward in the lowest gear.

  The front bumper contacted something invisible. It gave slowly, as if it was heavy but movable. The bus dug its chains in and shoved. Judith held her breath. The cat squalled again.

  They rolled almost through, suddenly, as if the bus was a cork coming out of a bottle … and stopped. The back doors had never fit properly. They always stuck out farther than the front ones. The bus was wedged by the strong, steel doors.

  Judith shifted into neutral. She stepped down onto grass. Everything was fuzzy, half-there. She could see and not see that the bus must have pushed aside a great block of stone. On the other side of the stone was something concealed by a putrid red-orange flare. She looked away quickly. Even half-seen, it made her ill. She blinked and looked up, beyond. Whatever was there, and she could but dimly perceive this, also, was cloaked in living blue-green light. It confused her completely.

  She felt fury from the evil red entity. She was not the one they expected. She had taken that one's place, and all their time and effort had gone for naught. They were determined to clear the Gate and try again. She must move the bus immediately. Why this sensible demand seemed evil she did not know, but she had no doubt whatever.

  From the benificent beings lapped in their cool loveliness, she felt … rejection? No, they did not reject her, they warned her. She must not remove the blockage in the gate. What the red entities sought to replace it with was Wrong. She must return or die, but she must not return!

  The cat squirmed and cried. Judith swung the knapsack off and set it on the sunny earth in front of the bus. She opened it and turned back the towel. The cat lay on her side panting. Two small dark lumps lay where she had pushed them. Judith touched each gently. Dead kittens. Poor little things. She hoped this next one would live. Maybe it would if she blew into its nostrils or massaged it to get its heart beating. Her whole world became too small to hold the impossibilities outside the knapsack. There, in the cat giving birth, was reality.

  The kitten slid out smoothly. The cat panted a moment, then sat up and checked the small, damp baby . She opened her mouth and made an almost inaudible sound. Judith found herself crying. This one was dead, too. There could be more. She'd better take the dead ones away now, before the new mother could worry about them.

  She reached in. The cat had chewed off the cords, licked away the cawls, and the lifeless infants were still warm and soft. Judith continued to cry. She wasn't sure why, because she knew it was better for them to die at birth than to have to be put to sleep or to go homeless. But they were so perfect and so innocent. She held them in her cupped palms and cried.

  She didn't want to set them on the bare, scraped dirt while she went back in for something with which to dig. So, without thinking, she put them on the great block of stone.

  The sound, the sensation of being drowned in bloodred flame, the incredible shock of the reaction to that simple move took her senses. When she regained consciousness, she was lying on soft grass and the cat was meowing in her ear. Judith sat up. The surface of the stone had been burned black—except for three smallkitten shaped white spots. The entity concealed by the red-orange light was gone. No longer fuzzy, whatever she looked at seemed too sharp-edged, too real.

  The cat meowed.

  "Oh, the knapsack tipped over." Judith righted it. The cat leaped in and pawed at the towel. Judith removed it carefully, supporting it as fully as she could. She set it down and parted the folds. Two small black and gray kittens mewled and wriggled. The cat pushed between Judith's hands and settled herself by her babies. She purred.

  Someone chuckled softly.

  Judith, her mouth open in shock, turned her head to look up so quickly that she became dizzy again. She decided she was hearing things and lay down.

  Someone said something her ears heard as gibberish but her mind understood as, "It's too soon. Give her more time. Come away for now."

  Nothing was real, and she was absolutely sure she was dead. This was neither heaven nor hell, though it seemed to have attributes of both, but it was outside the world of what was and what was not. Judith knew no other ways of going outside, beyond, than those of conscious fantasy, madness, or death. She had not made up any of this, if she was mad she could do nothing about it, but if she was dead, she found she didn't mind. She sat up very slowly this time. The dizziness seemed to have passed.

  Even more slowly, she got to her feet. The lovely spring world she had seen through the opening was all around her. Holding onto the Bookmobile, she began circling it to the right. The vehicle just stopped—ceased to exist—not as if cut, she could not see into the interior—at the rear edge of the blocked opening from there to here. She continued on around the stones and along the side of the bus to the open door. She entered and walked to the rear seat under the window. Snow whirled around the back of the bus; cold penetrated through the windows.

  Shaking her head, Judith returned to the driver's seat and stared through the windshield. A blob of black was racing toward them across the sunny grass. It yowled, and the cat, her cat, Judith almost thought, responded. Judith was quite beyond astonishment, so when the blob became a large black cat she merely continued to watch. The two cats greeted each other with an enthusiastic abandon that culminated in the big one giving the small one a thorough bath. New mama or not, her mama wanted to show how glad she was to see her offspring. Judith cupped her chin in her palms and leaned forward on her elbows to watch. She felt wonderful; relieved and happy and wanted and safe and loved.

  She felt even better ten minutes later. The big black cut bounded over the rectangular stone as if she would not have used it for a litter box. Turning, she made a second leap that landed her at Judith's side. Purring so loudly that the windows rattled, the cat butted the top of her head into Judith's middle.

  That's love, Judith th
ought, stunned. Not rub-the-side-of-the-jaw-along what you're claiming, but the highest compliment a cat can pay. She had wondered if she should be a little afraid. The older cat wasn't quite the size of an ocelot, more long-tailed bobcat size, and gave the general impression of being a domesticated animal. But it was no tame tabby. Moving slowly, she brought her hands over and rubbed the top of the cat's head. It purred even louder.

  "Silk!" Judith exclaimed. The cat's fur was so exquisIte to the touch that she could think of no other comparison.

  The cat pulled back, looked at her, and nodded. Nodded

  "Your name is Silk?" Judith ventured. The cat nodded again.

  "Judith Justin," she murmured. Silk licked her hand once.

  If she was going to have a conversation with a cat, she must find a topic of interest to both of them. "Have you seen the babies?"

  Silk was out of the Bookmobile so rapidly one might have thought her to disappear. Together, Judith and Silk admired Feather's babies.

  This time when somebody chuckled, Judith looked up, smiling. The man was big and bearded and about her age, and he was dressed as nobody dressed where she came from, nor had for several hundred years, and he smelled distinctly of horse and sweat, but he reached out to help her to her feet, shook her hand in a perfectly normal manner, and greeted her in English.

  "The name's Tregarth," he said. "Call me Symon. It's a well-known name here, though I'm by no means the first to wear it."

  "Judith Justin," Judy replied.

  "Librarian," Simon added. "That is a Bookmobile, isn't it?"

  Judith nodded, nonplussed.

  The man shook his head slowly. "What a surprise that must have been," he said softly, "when they were expecting the Puma."

  "The Puma?" Judith asked.

  "Suppose you turn off the engine and join us over there." The man waved toward a low hill that seemed to have sprouted several people. "We wanted to wait until you'd sorted yourself out. But food and drink are in order now, aren't they?" He grinned. "And explanations—at least as many as we can give."