6190 words    THE MAN WHO WALKED ON THE CEILING
                             by
                       J. Brian Clarke


     "He fell out of the sky, you say? Literally?"
     "Damn right. Splat into the middle of a field."

                   -----------------
     
     It was a fine Friday morning. His mother was away for a
few days, so the house was quiet. Perhaps a little too quiet
for 7.00 am. Still half asleep, George Harold Kalewiski
stretched luxuriously and wriggled his toes. The morning sun
penetrated the small gap above the closed blinds, forming
thousands of tiny elongated shadows from the raised bumps of
the stippled ceiling.
     It was like a landscape.
     Correction. It was a landscape. An endless, monotonous
desert whose dunes were side-illuminated by the rising glare
of an alien sun. Casting its own looming shadow (in shape,
remarkably similar to the ceiling light-fixture in another
life), was a two-hundred meter dome which had once been a
ship; a mighty interstellar ark which brought the last
remanent of humanity to this fourth planet of Epsilon
Eridani. The terraforming was a slow process; it would be at
least another couple of generations before people could
venture outside without protection. But the oxygen level was
already up to six percent, and the current mean daily
temperature of forty-five degrees celsius was certainly not
the hellish sixty-three degrees of a quarter of a century
ago.
     George touched the controls of his lift belt and
drifted downward toward the lock on the Ark's north side. It
had been a tough fourteen hour grind to get Air Plant M-6 up
to spec, but finally the monster was happily chewing up
rocks as it belched its life-giving residue into the
atmosphere.
     He drifted lower, the antigrav bearing him smoothly
over those silly, regularly spaced dunes.
     His stomach growled.
     A dog barked.
     A couple of kids screamed at each other, and the
morning newspaper arrived at the front door with a thud.
     George sighed. Although his mind games were getting
better, and were certainly more entertaining than the slop
served up on the idiot box, he never seemed to be able to
maintain his concentration long enough. Just when things
would start to get interesting, so-called reality always
intruded and dragged him back to the mundane. Even his
mother; that dear, fussing, aggravating nuisance of a parent
who still treated her thirty-five year old offspring as an
adolescent; even when she was not around, there was always
something to prick his romantic bubble.
     Now he had three days to change that--and he would use
every precious moment. By the day after tomorrow, or perhaps
even sooner, what he already thought of as his mindtwist,
would be transformed into an ability as much beyond
daydreaming as speech is beyond the grunts of apes.
     It was too bad he was so misunderstood, especially by
his mother. When she was in a bad mood (which was often),
she called him lazy. Other times, usually when one of her
garrulous friends was present, she would soften the
criticism to one which labeled her only child as
introspective. Sure, he was no prize. George had been
painfully aware of that fact since his lonely, pimply
adolescence. And his job as assistant manager of a mens
clothing store barely covered expenses, including the modest
rent he paid the old lady. He had never had a steady girl,
although he supposed it would be nice to have such a
relationship--that is, if it did not involve so much time,
money and effort. So beyond the occasional fleeting affair,
usually with someone as colorless as he was, and which more
often than not broke up because of George's lack of interest
rather than from anything else, his happiest moments
remained with his books and the worlds they contained.
     He had hundreds of books. Perhaps thousands, counting
those boxed in the basement--he had lost count years ago.
Mostly fantasy and science-fiction, they lined two walls of
his room, floor to ceiling, two deep. They were in no
particular order because he preferred it that way. It was an
adventure in itself, to half close his eyes and wander his
fingers along the paper spines as he imagined each as a door
into a different universe. When he took one, whether it was
a dog-eared copy of something he picked up for a dollar in a
flea market, or a new release he bought only days before, it
made no difference. George would drop into the comfortable
leather of the old chair he had inherited from his father
(who never in his life read anything more significant than
the sports pages), turn on the reading lamp, and shed his
ordinariness like the proverbial frog who turns into a
prince.
     Mindtwist had first occurred to George when he read one
of those science fact articles which occasionally make an
unexpected appearance in a usually all-fiction magazine. In
this case, the magazine was a fly-by-night which blossomed
amid a blizzard of advertising, lasted for three issues, and
then faded away when its backers realized they have lost
their lower garments as well as their shirts. But because
the article was written by a physics Ph.D who happened to be
(in George's humble opinion) one the most underrated talents
in the science fiction firmament, George happily absorbed
what was pompously proclaimed in the title as THE ILLUSION
OF REALITY. 
     After explaining that reality is literally a 'creature
of the mind', the writer went on to claim that the potential
exists for as many alternate realities as there are minds to
conceive them. Only because human beings are brainwashed
from birth to believe in a single indivisible reality, does
the universe appear to be structured that way--when, in
fact, we exist within an infinitely flexible multiverse,
which needs only the touch of an untrammeled imagination to
become modified into whatever a person chooses.
     It was heady stuff, and perhaps if George was not so
desperate to believe (he had already flirted with
Dianetics), he would have spotted the exploitative nature of
the piece, not to mention its obvious contradictions. But,
George reasoned, if he could almost turn a stippled ceiling
into the fourth planet of Epsilon Eridani, then perhaps--
     Start small, he told himself. Start small.
     Practice!
     Determination!
     He had taken three days of his vacation so he could
have that much uninterrupted time until his mother returned
home. It was an opportunity which would probably not be
repeated until she dropped dead, or was dragged kicking and
screaming into a nursing home. Considering her current state
of rude good health, neither alternative seemed likely for
at least another decade or two. His mother hated to leave
her house for more than a few hours, and she had only done
so this time because her younger sister was getting married
again. So after a hurried breakfast, George launched himself
into his project.
     The process was, on the face of it, extremely simple.
     On and off, all that day, through the night and into
the next day, he forced his reluctant brain to work on
nothing else. Part of him, the unambitious easy-going part,
stood aside and watched with astonishment at the exhausting
regimen this new, almost messianic George Kalewiski imposed
on himself. Certainly, his purpose was not as grandiose as
mentally shifting himself to the alien world of an alternate
reality. Instead, George decided he would use his mindtwist
to start small.
     His only intent was to walk on the ceiling.

               ---------------------

     "He must have fallen out of a plane."
     "You'd think so, wouldn't you? But there was nothing up
there. Not even clouds. Just a few birds and the wild blue
yonder."

               -------------------------

     Although he was an avid reader of science fiction,
George was not scientifically inclined. So he did not bother
to set the experiment down on paper, or even counted the
number of times he repeated it.
     Each time, clad only in his shorts and with the room
temperature set at a comfortable level (he did not want the
distraction of clothing, or of feeling too warm or too
cool), he lay on top of his bed and stared at the ceiling.
     Except, he repeatedly told himself, that is not
necessarily the ceiling. There is nothing in the multiverse
which insists one direction must always be up and the other
down. What he was looking at could just as easily be 'down'.
And when one is looking down at a horizontal surface, logic
dictates it is a floor.
     Admittedly it was a peculiar floor, looking almost like
stippled plaster. But that was a trick of the light,
transforming what was likely a rough pour of concrete. A
mysterious force, presumably a runaway antigrav, was
pressing George upward against a soft surface. It was
embarrassing, but what the hell. He had been in tougher
situations.
     There was, for instance, that time he successfully
jury-rigged the Constellation Andromeda only seconds before
the space liner and her thousands of passengers would have
disappeared forever below the event horizon of a black hole.
And it was only last week he received the Star and Cluster
for his work during the Capella Negotiations--bringing
permanent peace to a sector which had been at war for
hundreds of generations.
     Alternately mindtwisting, alternately rationalizing,
forcing his tired brain out of the rut into which it had
been forced over a lifetime, George Kalewiski persisted.
Down was up, the ceiling was the floor, everything which
told him otherwise was illusion. Matter, gravity, energy,
electromagnetism, grass and onions, quarks and airplanes,
poached eggs, a rainy day, even the insufferable pipsqueak
who managed the clothing store where he worked--all
dreamstuff, the creation of his mind. So what his mind could
do, his mind and determination could undo.
     It only needed practice.
     Determination.

                -------------------

     "There were witnesses?"
     "A dozen or so, including a priest. Our boy apparently
dropped in on a church picnic."
     "Good god."
     "Exactly what the priest said."

                --------------------

     Saturday. 11.33 pm.
     It was dark, and George was sprawled face down on
something hard and rough. His head and body ached, his nose
hurt. He sniffed and tasted blood. George moaned, struggled
to his knees and rose unsteadily to his feet. He wanted
something to wipe his nose, but his shorts had no pockets.
Again he sniffed.
     "Whad happerd? Where ab I--?"
     As his eyes adjusted, he saw a pale, horizontal sliver
of light low to his right. Closer, was something shiny on
the floor. He knelt down and ran his hand over a round,
smooth object which had a small knurled projection at the
top. He stood again. There was a wall, and what he thought
was a picture hung very low on the wall. He shuffled toward
the picture, stooped, and made out the faint grid of a
calendar. But why was the picture below the calendar instead
of above it, as it should be? He peered closer. Of course.
Some idiot had hung it upside down.
     Upside--?
     George whimpered as he turned around and then forced
himself to look up. Unmistakable, even in the faint light,
his bed clung incongruously to the ceiling.
     "No," he said. "Can't be--"
     He fell.
     He was lucky. He tucked his head down as he fell, or he
would probably have broken his neck as he landed on the edge
of the mattress and bounced to the floor.
     "Can't be," he muttered, numbly repeating himself like
a broken record as he pulled himself to his feet, staggered
across the room and thumbed the light switch. Above him, a
crack which extended across half the ceiling. It started
near the light fixture above his bed and ended just above
the window. There was an ugly dark spot where the crack
started. George grabbed a tissue from the bedside table and
dabbed it against his nose. It came away touched with
scarlet. 
     Now he remembered.
     He did it. 
     He had walked on the ceiling!

                     -------------------

     "He was already dead when he hit? So if it wasn't the
sudden stop at the end, what the hell did kill him?
     "Asphyxiation. Lack of oxygen. He was also frost
bitten."
     "Oh come on! It was ninety degrees out there!"
     "Only at ground level. But if he was high enough when
he began to fall--"

                     ---------------------

     Despite his hurts, George flung his arms wide and
flopped backward onto the bed. Still sniffing back the
blood, he stared with streaming eyes at the dark spot and
the crack. It was his evidence, the indisputable proof of
his awesome accomplishment.
     Yet he could not remember the exact moment when it
happened. Presumably he fell (If 'fell' was the correct
term. Or would a whole new lexicon have to be invented to
accommodate alternate realities?) and landed badly. He was
knocked unconscious by the impact, which explained the
amnesia. He hoped he would never remember that part of it.
It could hardly have been a pleasant experience falling six
feet to a face-down landing on hard plaster.
     He giggled. "I fell up!"
     It would not do to have Ma see blood on the ceiling.   
Not only would she not understand, she might even get around
to wondering if her wayward son had done something kinky
during her absence. George's giggle became hysterical
laughter; a paroxysm of mirth leaving him gasping. If
walking on the ceiling isn't kinky, what is?
     He shrieked helplessly.
     Later, after he took a flash photograph of the damaged
plaster, George found a small can of white paint and care-
fully dabbed out the red smear. There was not much he could
do about the crack, except perhaps to explain it as the
result of vibration caused by a passing truck (She probably
wouldn't believe that either). Then he went into the
bathroom and cleaned up his damaged face. The bleeding had
stopped, although his nose still looked as if it had been
the destination of a hostile fist.
     Nevertheless it felt good to be a pioneer. Perhaps the
pioneer. George imagined the future his mindtwist had just
initiated; a strange, ever shifting but never dull world of
infinite realities in which the name of Kalewiski would be
up there along with the other giants; Newton, Einstein,
Hawking and the rest. Is this how Edison felt when the first
primitive light bulb glowed into life? Was Henry Ford as
proud when the first Model T rolled off the assembly line?
     I doubt it, George told himself comfortably. Those men
were merely talented reflections of their times. After all,
for them the basic technologies already existed to turn
night into day, or transform the continent into a
neighborhood. In his own case, history would record that
George Kalewiski's contribution was as much beyond light and
movement as the Concorde is beyond the stagecoach. 
     But that would be tomorrow.
     Well, not exactly tomorrow. It was when his mother was
coming home.
     Anyway, right now he was tired and needed to go to bed. 
     Remarkably, George's sleep was dreamless.

                ------------------

     "What are you saying? That he fell from the
stratosphere or something?"
     "Maybe even higher than that."
     "Jesus!" 

                  ------------------ 

     She phoned just before lunch on Sunday. Her bus would
arrive at four fifteen, so would he please pick her up at
the bus station.
     "Yes Ma." For a fleeting moment George was tempted to
blurt out everything, but restrained himself with the
knowledge of how she felt about unnecessary expense on long
distance phone calls. What could he tell her anyway? That he
walked on the ceiling last night?
     "Yes dear," she would say before she prattled on about
who wore what at the wedding, or gushed about another
achievement of his cousin Clarence, the lawyer. George had
an intense dislike for that insufferable offspring of his
aunt's first marriage.
     Of course, things were different now. He would show
them!
     But at 3.45 pm, George's cockiness evaporated while he
was putting on his coat. The Plymouth was at the curb, less
than fifty feet from the house. But what if, during that
fifty feet, his subconscious decided to repeat what he
achieved the night before? What if he fell up toward a floor
that wasn't there? Could he reverse himself before it was
too late? And if he did, would he fall back to a sickening
termination on the hard pavement? A hard knot at the pit of
his stomach, George crept to the window and looked out--and
up. The sky was an empty blue. Yet the emptiness was not
without expression. In a mocking, malevolent way, it seemed
to beckon.
     "No!" Horrified, George whipped the blinds closed and
backed into the room. "I am not going out there. I can't!"
     He clenched his fists until nails dug cruelly into
flesh, forced himself to consider what would happen to his
job if he locked himself indoors like a hermit. He thought
of the vituperative tongue-lashing he would have to endure
when his mother discovered there was no more rental income.
There has to be a way, he thought desperately. There has to
be--
     Yes. Yes!
     He ran to the basement, grabbed a coil of rope which
had been a clothes line before his mother acquired a dryer,
hurried back upstairs. He attached one end around his waist,
opened the front door and carefully threaded the other end
through a space in the decorative ironwork framing the steps
leading up to the door. Then, after closing the door behind
him, he paid out the rope as he backed down the walk to the
curb.
     "Young man, are you alright?" 
     It was the irritating nasal of the skinny widow next
door. Although Ada Grierson was only about George's age, her
widowhood apparently gave her the right to call him 'young
man'. In his more uncharitable moments, George wondered if
her late husband had been hagged to death.
     He waved his hand. "No problem, Mrs Grierson. Just a
small experiment I am working on."
     The reaction to his explanation was a disapproving
sniff, as the widow withdrew into the darkness of her
parlor.
      He unlocked the Plymouth, slid inside, pulled the rope
after him and then firmly attached the seat belt. "There!",
he told himself triumphantly. If it had happened, the worst
would have been trying to explain to the bitch why he was
floating in the air like a balloon on a tether. George was
sure she would express strong disapproval.
     He was slightly late at the bus station. Bag at her
side, lips in a thin impatient line, his mother waited at
the curb. He leaned over and rolled down the passenger
window. "You are late," she said unnecessarily.
     "Sorry Ma. The traffic was bad." He started to get out
on the driver's side, changed his mind, slid across the seat
and got out on the passenger side. Holding on to the car
door with one hand, he picked up the bag and slung it onto
the back seat. Then, taking his mother's hand, he backed
into the car and pulled her after him. She said nothing
until he started the motor and turned into traffic.
     "George."
     "Yes Ma?"
     "What was that rigmarole about?"
     "What rigmarole?"
     "A gentleman is supposed to help a lady into a car
before he gets in himself. You used to do it that way,
George."
     "Sorry Ma. I read an article about auto safety. It said
you should never open a car door into traffic."
     Her eyebrows rose. "Are you alright, George?"
     "Of course. Why?"
     "Since when have you read anything other than that
trash you have been collecting?"
     George sighed. "Speculative fiction is not trash, Ma."
     "Speculative fiction, is it? In that case, my house is
a mansion." Emmaline Kalewiski changed the subject. "And why
is that rope wrapped around your waist?"
     He glanced down, licked his lips. "It's ah--" He
swallowed. "Ma, can it wait until later?"
     She sniffed, and the thin line of her lips became even
thinner. Her silent disapproval was almost a shout.
     When they pulled up outside the house, George had
barely set the brake before his mother was out of the car
and marching up the walk to the front door. Although he knew
she had a key in her purse, she stood tapping a foot
impatiently while he eased himself out of the Plymouth,
threaded the rope through the door handle, removed her bag
from the back seat, closed the door, and then paid out the
rope as he backed up the walk.
     Ada Grierson's window opened. "Hello Emmaline. Was it a
nice wedding?"
     "Very nice, Ada. Did my son behave himself while I was
gone?"
     "If he did not, Emmaline, then I must say he was very
quiet about it. Although I do wonder about--" A pair of pale
eyes gleamed maliciously. "--that mysterious business with
the rope."
     "I am also wondering about that, Ada."
     "Why don't you drop over tomorrow morning? About ten?
We will have a cup of tea and a chat."
     'We'll swig beer and swap the latest dirt', George
translated sourly.
     "Thank you, Ada, I will."
     "Good. See you tomorrow then."
     "See you tomorrow, Ada."
     Meanwhile George retrieved the rope, used his own key
to open the door, picked up the bag and entered the house.
Stern faced, his mother followed. "You are not very nice to
Ada, George."
     "I am not nasty to her either, Ma. I just don't have
much to say to the lady."
     "Perhaps you should. It is unhealthy for young people
to be so much on their own. Ada needs human companionship
too, you know."
     George tried to imagine himself sharing a bed with that
bag of bones, and found it as impossible as it was horrible.
"Yes Ma," he said wearily.
     His mother pointed. "Now tell me about the rope."
     He decided the best way to shut her up was to tell the
truth. "It is to prevent me from floating off the ground,
Ma."
     Plucked eyebrows rose slightly. "Oh?"
     "You see, last night I did something wonderful--and
scary. I walked on the ceiling of my room."
     The eyebrows rose slightly higher. "You walked on the
ceiling."
     "Yes Ma. But because I am not sure if I can fully
control the ability, I figure it is best to take precautions
each time I go outside."
     She considered, her angular face forbidding. "This
happened last night, you say?"
     "Yes Ma."
     "Show me."
     He led the way up the narrow stairs to his room. He
showed her the crack in the ceiling, and pointed to the spot
where he had painted over the blood smear.
     "I never noticed that crack before," his mother said.
"What caused it, I wonder?"
     "Ma, I just told you. Before I walked on the ceiling, I
fell on it. That is what caused the crack."
     "Yes, dear."
     "You don't believe me, do you? How do you think that
spot of blood got up there?
     "All I see is a patch of fresh paint."
     George was angry. "Ma, what if you saw me walk on the
ceiling?"
     "Very unlikely, dear."
     That was twice she called him 'dear'. The last time was
when he almost died from meningitis. He had been thirteen
years old.
     George took a deep breath. "Ma, why don't you unpack
and make yourself a cup of tea. Then, in exactly one hour,
come back here."
     "Why?"
     "Will you, please?"
     His mother glanced at her watch. "It is almost five-
fifteen and I have not eaten since noon. Therefore I will
make supper, which will be ready at precisely six o'clock.
If you choose not to join me at that time, I will eat alone.
Afterward, it is possible I may come up for whatever it is
you wish to show me. I do hope, however, it has nothing to
do with that nonsense about walking on the ceiling."
     "Yes, Ma."
     As soon as she left, George kicked off his shoes,
removed his jacket and tie, loosened his belt, closed the
blinds and lay on the bed. He'd show the old bat!
     "George, you are on the ceiling," she will say. "Come
down this instant." She was, after all, the supreme
unflappable. But even if she denied the evidence of her own
eyes, it could not change what he had done. And that--
     Was just the beginning.

              ---------------------

     "So what am I supposed to put in my report?"
     "What you always do. The truth."
     "Oh sure. An adult male casually attired in T-shirt and
rugby pants, created a small crater within my jurisdiction
when he fell from the edge of space this afternoon. Just
routine."

                ---------------------

     At exactly five fifty, George's mother heard a muffled
thump upstairs.
     What is wrong with that boy?, she wondered
unsympathetically as she set the table for two.
     At ten after six, while she was in the middle of her
meal, there was another thump. It was followed almost
instantly by a crash which shook the house.
     It was too much, even for the tolerance of this long-
suffering parent. Emmaline Kalewiski carefully patted her
thin lips with a napkin, got up from the table and marched
upstairs to George's darkened room. After turning on the
light, she found her son lying prone between the bed and the
wall. The bedside table had fallen. His radio, a bedside
lamp, glass from a broken drinking glass, and several paper-
backs were scattered across the floor.
     She touched his shoulder. "George?" He did not stir.
     "George, that is enough!" She stooped, turned him over
and saw the large gash across his forehead. Blood oozed
profusely. "George dear!"
     He did not recover consciousness until next day, in the
local hospital. When she was finally satisfied her son was
on the mend, Emmaline went home and tidied the mess in his
room. It was then she found a second crack in the ceiling.
     And a small smear of blood.

              ----------------------

     "Has he been identified?"
     "We're working on it."
     "What about missing persons?"
     "Not yet. It's a big country. Hundreds of people turn
up missing every day."
     "Perhaps he's not from this country."
     "Oh sure. Perhaps he is not even from this planet."
     "That is not funny."
     "Who's laughing?"

                ------------------------

     "Amnesia is not unusual in these cases," the doctor
assured Emmaline. "In any case, even if he never gets back
his memory of those few days, there is no reason why he
cannot resume a normal life. He impressed me as a reasonably
intelligent young man, if somewhat melancholy. And his
reflexes do appear to be normal."
     She pursed her thin lips doubtfully. She could not get
out of her mind the second crack in the ceiling. 
     --the spot of crimson.
     "Doctor."
     "Yes, Mrs Kalewiski?"
     "How do you think he got his injury?"
     "I was not there of course. But I see no reason to
quarrel with the police report that he probably lost his
balance while he was trying to stand on his bed."
     "Why would he be doing that?"
     The doctor shrugged. "Perhaps he was changing a light
bulb. You will have to ask him."
     She said forcefully, "I intend to!"
     "Surely you do not suspect foul play?"
     She waved her hand. "Of course not."
     "Then what is bothering you, Mrs Kalewiski?"
     "It is his--" She hesitated. "He doesn't want his books
anymore."
     "I beg your pardon?"
     "He has been collecting and reading them for years. It
was all he ever did. Fantasy. Science fiction. Thousands of
them. It was more than just a hobby." She gestured
helplessly. "Oh, a lot more."
     "An obsession?", the doctor prompted gently.
     She glared at him. "Yes! An obsession!". 
     Quite unexpectedly, Emmaline Kalewiski burst into
tears. For the first time since she was widowed, she was
completely unsure of herself. Until now she had always
tolerated her son because it was easier that way; he did not
interfere with her life style and friends, and because she
needed his rental money to supplement her meager pension
anyway. 
     But events had forced her to the realization there was
more to their relationship than indifference or economics;
that she had an intense motherly desire to protect him from
further harm. To be worried, in fact, for his sake rather
than for her own. As far as George's story about walking on
the ceiling was concerned, she wished she could forget that
just as thoroughly as he had. Unfortunately, every time she
went into that room, she could not help looking up at the
re-plastered ceiling and wondering how that spot of blood
got there.
     The doctor was saying, "--I wouldn't worry too much. If
that bump on the head has also cured a pattern of obsessive
behavior, I suggest you accept it as a bonus. Just in case
however, don't get rid of the books. Put them in storage
somewhere. Now is there anything else I should know about my
patient?"
     She bit her lip. "There is one thing."
     "Oh?"
     "My neighbor, Ada Grierson. She's a widow like myself,
although younger. She's about George's age."
     "There is some kind of romantic involvement between
this widow and your son?"
     "Well, there was certainly not one before George's
accident. He never liked her. Ada is not the best looking
girl in the world, and there are times when she does tend to
be a bit impatient with people."
     Having already noted Mrs Kalewiski's tendency to
underdramatize, the doctor suspected Ada Grierson was one
woman he would prefer not to meet. "And--?"
     "They have started going out together."

                ------------------

     "Have you checked the name tag on his shirt? It was
pretty illegible when your people dumped that mess of mud
and blood on my table."
     "It was not much help I am afraid. Just one name on
it."
     "What name?"
     "George."

                --------------------

     Two years and six months later.
     It was a hot, sticky July afternoon. Undeterred by the
heat, Ada and his mother were away on one of their
interminable and usually expensive shopping expeditions.
George dragged the lounger onto the minuscule patch of lawn
in the back yard, lay back and stretched luxuriously. The
sky--the patch of it visible between the big elm, the power
line and the house--was blue and perfect, and all was well
with the world (although it could be cooler). OK, so next
week was his and Ada's second anniversary, which meant he
should be taking advantage of his wife's absence to get her
a present. Although she was a bit of a nag sometimes, she
really wasn't such a bad sort once you got below that
abrasive exterior. And there were times, especially in bed--
     George chuckled. It was comforting to know Ada's good
side was reserved for her husband. As far as other people
were concerned, especially other men, she remained an
unattractive, excessively prickly cactus good only to stay
away from. No one could possibly suspect that beneath that
forbidding exterior beat the heart of a true child of
erotica, not to mention a culinary genius who could turn
even a simple poached egg into ambrosia.
     He held up the envelope he had picked up from the drug
store. When he found his old camera tucked away in a box in
his mother's basement next door, he was intrigued to find it
contained a half-exposed film. George tried to remember
where he last used the camera (as much as three years ago?),
and could only come up with a vague memory of a bewildering
weekend at a local science fiction convention. Among the
assorted eccentrics, he remembered a large girl who turned
up at the masquerade in a screaming wisp of nothing--which
she claimed was borrowed from an inhabitant of the sex
planet Amristhron. 
     George wondered if he took a picture of that all too
generous exposure of imperfect flesh, or if he prudently
turned the lens toward less ample subjects. For the life of
him, he could not remember. And he still wondered about
those few days of his life taken from him when he had the
accident, which was less than a month after the convention.
So it was entirely possible he had recorded a few images
during the blank period. His mother still insisted that
beyond the accident itself, there was nothing to remember--
although in the same breath, she admitted she had been away
part of the time at aunt Jennifer's nuptials.
     Again he looked at the envelope. Was there something in
here marking a watershed in his life? George was certain Ma
had not told him everything, and he was starting to suspect
Ada knew more than she let on. The only certainty was that
the George Kalewiski of that time had been a different
person with different interests and a different life. In
that former life, George remembered, he even disliked Ada!
     Are we the same?
     George raised that point with the doctor only a few
days ago. The doctor, an old-timer with not much time for
fancy theories, was brusque.
     "Don't bother your head about it. Just think of the
human personality as a diamond with an enormous number of
facets. If events cause you to turn a different facet to the
sun once in a while, does that make it a different diamond?
Hmm?"
     Open the damn envelope!
     George chuckled to himself as he ripped open the flap.
God knows why he had been procrastinating. The worst he was
likely to find was either a picture of a lot of bulging
female, or a self portrait of himself surrounded by those
stupid books. In either case, it was nothing to get in a
tizzy about, even if his wife should see them.
     And what if she did? Ada would uncork some sarcasm,
tell him to stop wasting her time, and then forget it. She
was like that.
     George removed the prints from the envelope. The first
half dozen pictures were, as he suspected, of the
convention. There were a couple of the head table during the
final banquet--was that bearded fellow Niven or Harrison?
There were other exposures of people he did not recognize,
plus an artfully posed group photo of the participants in
the masquerade. He recognized assorted BEM's, Trekies, a
Merlin, a Robin Hood, a couple of Doctor Whos, and a horned
and hoofed demon. All were fully if outlandishly clad, with
very little exposed flesh among the lot.
     Despite himself, George sighed with relief.
     The next print was puzzling. It was a photograph of
what looked like some kind of rough textured, light-colored
surface with a crack running across it. The crack terminated
at an irregular patch of dark red.
     No. Please no--
     George Kalewiski's universe shattered like overstressed
crystal, as with awful clarity he remembered what he did
during those missing days.

     What he could not now avoid doing.
     
     The patch of empty sky was a magnet, cool, blue, an
irresistible eternity. As George felt himself drawn into the
new reality, he also sensed the lounger dropping below him.
He thought he heard someone shout, but it was unimportant.
At first the blueness only slowly expanded, then abruptly
exploded beyond the periphery of his vision. He felt the
coolness of air rushing past his heated skin, the tears
streaming down his cheeks as he squinted into the light.
Other unimportant sounds; street traffic, the call of a news
vendor, the wail of a freight train as it approached the
crossing, gradually faded to nothing. The angry buzz of a
light aircraft increased to a vague annoyance, then also
receded into the lower distance. The minutes passed and the
blueness became deeper. It became colder. Breathing was
difficult.
     But it did not matter. The entity who had been George
Kalewiski was already apart from the poor thing of flesh and
bone falling into the sky. That entity watched
dispassionately as the dying brain stubbornly maintained its
reverse-gravity reference. Still they rose together, the
material and the non-material, into the stratosphere and
beyond. Finally the last spark of life sputtered and was
extinguished, and the physical universe reclaimed its own.
The body began to fall.

              --------------------

     "His name was George Kalewiski."
     "That's nice. What else can you tell me?"
     "Officially? Only that he was home when his wife and
mother went out shopping that afternoon, and was missing
when they returned."
     "You mean there is an 'unofficially'?"
     "You won't believe it."
     "Try me."
     "Two small boys claimed they saw a man rise into the
air from behind Kalewiski's house."
     "Oh sure."
     "T'aint all, son. The pilot of a light plane had to
dive to get out of the way of what looked like a man
floating upward--at a couple of thousand feet."
     "Someone must have filled one of those inflatable sex
dolls with hydrogen or something."
     "Yeah?"
     "Yeah."
     "So how do you explain the fact of Kalewiski falling
out of an empty sky?"
     "I don't. And I have a nasty feeling I never will."
     "But you can't help wondering. Right?"
     "Wrong. I am going to put it right out of my mind.
Because, you see, I intend to sleep tonight."

                -----------------------

     Meanwhile, the entity continued into the light--