MARC LAIDLAW

THE BLACK BUS

DRIVER APPROACHED THE main gates, hunched low against the cold clouds and the
eerie onrush of music that crept out over the escarpments of the amphitheater,
thin groping notes like the claws of wintry trees made of black sound. Colored
lights, auroral, pulsed against the clouds in time to the music, reminding him
of something older than memories of childhood Hell-dreams. He imagined his
grandfather's evangelical words driving down at him like a pelting brimstone
hail, and thought how the old man would see the theater as a concession erected
around the mouth of Hell, into which the damned were lured with music and
screams which passage through the gates had transfigured into wild, seductive
laughter. He pulled up his collar against the storm of invisible coals, and
wished he could have stayed in the bus. But it had broken down completely, the
prognosis was terrible, and he needed help.

He glanced back at the old bus, cold now in the mountain moonlight and the
distant moth-battered glare of the stadium lights, far out at a corner of the
lot among a dozen other buses not quite as full of memories, though equally
lurid: paisleys, spirals, fractal swirls in luminous paints. An anachronism, a
retrograde voyager, an affront to the new serious spirit of reform. Do drugs! --
it seemed to tell all the little children who followed its progress on the back
roads, delighting in its psychedelic colors. Run from home and join the circus!
Following the Group was the same thing.

Turning back toward the gates, he saw another bus pulling in before the
amphitheater, brakes squealing and then a gasping hiss of air as it stopped
almost directly in his path. Gleaming black, with a long row of square windows
all seemingly cut from warm yellow parchment. Its black surface was weirdly
textured in diamond-shapes, oblique facets that turned light back on itself:
like a stealth-bus, invisible to enemy detection. He walked around it
cautiously, watching it over his shoulder, expecting the front door to open --
anxious, in fact, to see the driver sitting up in the high seat at the top of
the steps.

"Tickets," said a voice, and he whirled to find himself in the shadow of the
gate. A flashlight caught and held his hands in glare, making the hairs stand
out like abrupt shards of spun glass, the blemishes suddenly malign. He jerked
his hands out of the light and plunged them into his pocket as if to spare them
such scrutiny, but actually searching for the plastic pass that had been his for
longer than he could remember.

The torch, its bearer still unseen, waved him in, opening a path into the cement
tunnel strewn with tom tickets, broken bottles, pools of piss with cigarette
butts disintegrating in them. He hurried, but the beam deserted him. Laughter,
and then a low growling that might have been nothing worse than some enormous
old man clearing his throat. He walked around the sound of breathing, kicked a
crushed can skittering, walked into a solid wall of stench and sound. He didn't
need to see the Group. Their music was everywhere. He brushed cobwebs from his
face and stepped out into the amphitheater.

Bodies like an ocean, like a breaking wave of souls caught in mid-curl, rushed
away beneath him to fill the vast pool of the theater, curving up and around,
reaching to the sky on all sides, energized by the pulsing light. All of them
dancing, swaying, caught in the trance of the music. From down here the clouds
looked like a vaporous cover thrown over the theater. Looking up made him dizzy,
his vision lined with a funnel of possessed faces staring down at him-- past
him, really, toward the stage. He shuddered and followed their eyes with his
own, knowing that was where he could always find his charges.

The Group was so much smaller than its music. Tiny figures, although of
jewel-like clarity even in the smoky distances of the theater, they bent above
their instruments, hardly moving anything but arms and fingers. He had seen them
often enough to know their eyes were closed, their mouths fixed in grave and
urgent expressions. So they would remain until some shrieking inspiration bore
its way through them, when their heads went back and their eyes bulged and words
spirited from their throats in desperate harmonies. -- But that was always
later. This early on, the concert was a voyage in its infancy, almost plodding
still. It was perhaps the only time he would be able to find his riders.
Earlier, the place would have been a riot of people vying for position; later it
would be a frenzy. Things were relatively subdued.

He found a stairway leading down into the sunken center of the arena; it was
covered in bodies, worshipers who hardly acknowledged his presence, barely
allowed him to pass. They resented his worming passage, thinking that he sought
to put himself closer to the source of the music. If they had known how little
he wished this, they would have laughed in disbelief. Often he was forced to
halt and wait for a new path to open; and then he would feel himself trapped
with the music, suffocating in it. People all around him, eyes rolled back,
heads whipping from side to side, and himself deaf to it. Afraid they might
recognize that he was not one of them.

Finally he pulled himself free of strangers, seeing faces he recognized just
ahead, mere yards from the elevated heights of the stage. They were together
there, packed close as if for protection, the eternal pilgrims. No doubt there
were other such clusters scattered through the theater, but these were his own.
Driver had grown fond of them, if not their music. The object of their devotions
-- the Group -- meant nothing more to him than a steady job, travel, food,
companionship. He could as easily have been driving a limousine or a schoolbus,
or delivering parcels door to door -- in which case, he would never have
experienced the strangeness of such nights. The awareness of how close he had
come to missing this particular life lessened his dread of the crowd. He felt
almost at home here, through familiarity.

As he pushed his way toward Sonora-- her blond hair streaming back, metal rivets
threaded through the strands, long strips of gleaming tattooed scalp showing
above the wildly colored scarves she wore -- a fearful face thrust toward him. A
skinny young man, bearded and pale, his hair tom into tatters, his eyes wide
with horror. Screaming not with the music, which might have been appropriate
later in the night, but in time to some sinister rhythm of his own making.

He collided with Driver, who would have fallen if not for the congestion of
bodies holding him upright. "It's happening again!" he howled, staring
desperately into Driver's eyes. "I can't stop it -- make it stop! I always
forget!"

Driver flinched away from the apparition, anxious to avoid contact. The kid
reached toward him, then drew back himself, his eyes already wandering. "No," he
muttered, and Driver knew he was in the depths of some drug-inspired nightmare.
There were people in these crowds whose minds had cracked and would never heal.
People who appeared only in this context, screaming prophesy, gripped by
visions, having no relation to the outside world, the world of day. This one
sank to his knees, forcing the heels of his hands up into his eye sockets,
wrenching them violently as if pushing something in or jarring something loose.
"No, this is the first time," he said. Then he staggered upright again and
stumbled on, chewed up in the mill of flesh. To Driver he was vaguely familiar;
he had probably glimpsed him rushing through the crowds on his stoned jeremiad
on other nights, during other shows.

By now Sonora had noticed Driver, and she pointed him out to the others, who
drew him into their midst in a sheltered spot they had made of their bodies, a
haven woven of flesh and bone. It was difficult to hear them in the din, for the
music was building now, cresting toward some peak he did not wish to witness.
But they made him welcome with looks and gestures and squeezes on his arms and
shoulders. No doubt they thought he was becoming one of them, that the music had
finally done its trick and lured him in. In a spirit of companionship, Sonora
put her mouth to his ear and said, "Try this."

She opened her palm under his eyes, and in it was a little foil pack. She opened
that, and in among the silver creases he saw a thing like a stylized teardrop
the color of blood, a three-dimensional paisley, gelatinous, specks of light
sculling through it. She lifted it by the curled tail, like a tadpole, and laid
it on his palm. He could sense what was in it, and instantly panicked, gripping
the droplet as if to crush it.

"We all did it," she reassured him. "It's just coming on, we won't be too far
ahead of you."

"No," he said. And then, because it didn't register, he screamed it.

She drew back slightly to show her amusement. "It's not what you think," she
shouted. "This is new."

He shook his head firmly. "The bus is dead. We need a decent mechanic --we need
parts, and a ride to find them. We need help. Help!"

While he was shouting, Sonora peeled back the fingers of his hand one by one; he
ignored her silly game until he had finished shouting, and then, because she was
staring at his palm, he too looked down and saw the small reddish stain where
the teardrop had been. Even as he looked, it squirmed away into his skin, drunk
in as if the flesh were dry earth touched by rain.

At the sight, he began to forget his errand. He forgot where he was, who he was.
"Why" became the real concern, but when he asked it of Sonora and the others --
Chad and Parky, Selene and Yvette and Dietch -- they stilled him with their
hands and buffeted him into the dance, until he no longer questioned anything.
He gave up his will, if he had ever had it.

It was merciful, for a time, to escape his dread and innate skepticism, his
constant sense of something going wrong. But his anxiety did not end, exactly --
only changed, uncurling like the tail-end of that paisley, and left him weaving
through the gates again, this time one of a hushed line, holding hands in long
chains like human molecules, everyone deserting the theater silently, the entire
crowd speaking in whispers or not at all. Something vast slept behind them, and
they departed quietly so as not to wake it.

The matter of the bus had already been discussed, he discovered, as with
gestures Sonora indicated they were to board not their own defunct vehicle but
the black bus that had pulled up by the amphitheater gate. Apparently there was
room for them in it, and he went along, though he would not be the driver of
this bus. And that was something of a relief, too. It had been so long since
he'd been able to sit back and simply watch the changing roadside. He had always
felt so responsible for everything. . . .

Inside was pleasant contrast to the inky, angular black exterior. Here it was
all warmth and glow, soft pillows and cushions spread everywhere, low bunks
overhead for sleeping, plenty of blankets for the cold nights of traveling. He
slipped off his shoes and went on hands and knees onto the padded platform,
crawling toward the back of the bus, the warm rumbling cave above the engine. In
his own delapidated vehicle, the engine had growled under the hood, always up in
front of him. It was less efficient, but he missed it for a moment. Curled
against a pillow, eyes shut, he dreamed a clear picture of the other bus as it
had been, new and freshly painted, when he'd first hired on as its driver. Years
ago, and thousands of miles behind him, that had been. He realized-- had known
all along, tonight, without admitting it till now--that it would never be fixed.
The old bus was dead.

Now the passengers of the black bus, those who had invited them aboard some
unknown time during the show (as if their plight had communicated itself
osmotically), pulled down black shades, as though no spark of light could be
permitted out. Sonora and Chad joined in the effort, but Driver was content not
to move.

I wonder, he thought, since I'm apparently not the driver of this bus, I wonder
if I get to keep my name.

THEY WERE all passengers now, Sonora thought, watching Driver, halfway convinced
(but never quite) that she was sharing his thoughts. His fear was obvious
enough, betrayed by his stiff posture, as he lay among the cushions like a
wooden martyr marionette dropped down from a cross to which it was still
attached by strings. His mind barked out loud warnings; he felt threatened, but
it was easing.

She smiled and put her hand on his breast. "It's strange for you, not driving,
isn't it?"

"We're not moving yet," he said with a wry smile, as if he had seen into her
intentions.

"Yes we are," said Sonora.

Sonora could still remember her name, which was more than she could say of the
others on the bus. She wasn't sure about all of them; and they didn't seem
exactly sure of themselves. Chad she remembered; Yvette, yes-- and the one who
called himself Neuron. Or did she know Neuron? Hadn't for long, actually. He'd
come up to them during the concert, right after Driver had said he needed help.

"Join us on the bus out front," he'd whispered in her ear. "We'll take you
wherever you want to go."

He wore a cowboy hat, which, for a guy who called himself Neuron, was an odd
thing. But the crown of the hat was transparent, clipped away and replaced with
a transparent dome which crisply replicated the crease down the center of a
Stetson. And down in that dome you could see lights moving and pulsing inside a
plastic model of a human brain. At least she hoped it was plastic.

"It's not plastic, you know," he'd said right away, as if she'd asked audibly.
"It's laminated so you can look right in. Just as tough as my old skull."

"You go around like that?" she said.

"Sometimes I wear a regular hat, like when I'm working in bright lights. But on
nights like this I like to keep the top down and . . . 'just let the lights
shine!'"

The last of his words were a line from a song the Group was singing right at
that exact same instant.

"So how do I know which bus is yours?" she leaned and asked him.

"Can't miss it. She's black and weirdly angled, as you'd say."

"I'd say? You said it."

Now he was putting himself down beside her, his cowboy hat tossed off, and
wrapping a black bandanna kerchief around his head. The neural lights had dimmed
anyway. She vaguely remembered seeing his brain bobbing along way up ahead in
the dark tunnel as they were seeping out of the amphitheater, the last chords of
music hanging behind them like a bubble about to burst. She had followed him
dreaming of nightlights. "I don't suppose you have any wisdom pills, do you?" he
asked.

She pulled a vaporizer out of her pocket. "Will this do?"

"Hafta."

When he could speak again, he did so raspingly. "Who's your friend there? The
comfortable one."

"That's Driver," Sonora said. She couldn't tell if he was asleep or just
pretending. The motion of the bus lulled him. She realized it was probably the
first time he had ever allowed himself to sleep on a moving bus. My God, she
thought. The most basic pleasure of the journey and he's never experienced it
until now, no wonder he seemed so uncomfortable all the time.

Driver opened his eyes and looked at them.

"What kind of bus is this?" he said.

"You'll be sorry you asked that question," Neuron said.

Sonora had ominous intimations of an unspeakable horror about to be revealed. No
sooner had Neuron spoken his warning than an old man near the front of the bus
began to talk, twisting his leathery neck around so the cords twined together.

"This is the only kind of bus there is," the old man said.

"That there's Crouch," said Neuron. "And you just started him on his favorite
subject."

"It's not my favorite -- not by a long shot," Crouch said, knee-walking toward
them. "But it's one on which I have many opinions."

"That's what I meant," Neuron said.

"They're not the same thing, what you said and what you meant."

"Crouch, you make my brain tired."

"And it makes my soul weary looking at you, Cerebrus."

"What was that again?" Sonora asked, looking on amazed at this stream of
bickering, which suggested old well-worn rots in the relationship between these
men, so that she doubted they could ever talk to one another in any other way --
had they even wanted to.

"Cerebrus. The Spectacular Transparent Head. The Mind-Body split made manifest."

"I have many opinions about buses, too," Driver said. "I've thought about them a
lot, while I was driving. But this isn't like riding on any bus I can imagine.
This is like moving on waves, just soft little swells over the sea . . . or a
big lake."

"Or a river," said the old man. "A river's more like it."

Then "Look!" said Yvette at one of the windows, peering out through a tiny
spyslot she'd lifted beneath the shades. "It's our bus!"

Sonora turned around and made herself one of the eyeholes. They were coming down
from the mountains, narrow curving roads winding around and switching back,
wriggling down the slopes. They were out of the cool dark trees, the pines and
rivers and rocks. This was the arid desolate place above the foothills, the
place where nothing grew but weeds and aluminum guardrails. She had always hated
this part of the road-- of any mountain road. This was where the dust beat
itself senseless, blowing in from the plains; or where the salt fell, whisked in
off the sea. Nothing moved here but headlights.

On the switchback below -- moving past, under them, and then in the opposite
direction -- she finally saw their bus. Unmistakable. And there were people in
it.

"Hey," she said. "Driver, I thought you said the bus was broken."

His face darkened in a scowl. "I know that bus," he said. "And it died tonight."

"Maybe it hasn't, yet."

Sonora looked over at Neuron, but only briefly. His smile, like his words,
puzzled her. She went back to watching the bus below. Headlights vanished around
a curve, came out again, continued to weave. The air was full of dust or smoke,
so she could see the beams swinging back and forth.

Driver pushed up next to her. "What are you looking at?"

"Just what Yvette said. It looks like

"It can't be our bus."

"That's what it looks like, I'm sorry."

"It can't be our bus."

He looked anyway.

Someone up front switched on a radio and music came out of the scattered
speakers. It was the Group, predictably, broadcast from the microsatellite they
owned, which all the pilgrim buses picked up with a special antenna. Sonora
hardly heard it, it had been background music for so long. But she noticed when
the broadcast cut off suddenly.

Suddenly was hardly the word for it.

The tune died with a scream, then a hysterical wailing and clamoring. Voices in
panic and terror. "No!" someone shouted. "No, my God!"

"No -- no!"

Screams. Then a clearer voice, only slightly stronger than the others, high and
nasal, a man: "This is a report-- hello, are you there? Anyone? I'm reporting
live from the airfield where the Group was just now departing. It's hard to be
sure, but we just saw -- everyone waiting out here is afraid of it --"

For a moment the sane voice was drowned out by shrieking that completely
overwhelmed everything else. He moved away or somehow regained control -- at
least of himself, at least for the moment. "Oh my god, yes, it's apparently
true. We saw a fireball -- well, heard a horrible sound, first, hard to describe
-- impossible to describe, I'd have to say --sort of a metal scraping and then a
crumpling crash -- and then that fireball, an explosion that is now pouring up
into the sky.

"Brothers and sisters, I do not want to be the one to tell you this, but I saw
them with my own eyes and I have the microphone now, so my voice is going to
have to be the one to say it. I saw them board that plane a few minutes before
it took off. I would like to tell you that they were not on it, but I saw all of
them go in, and then the door closed and the ladder pulled away and the plane
started to taxi off down the runway into the darkness, so I could only see its
running lights moving across the field. It was very dark out there, everyone. I
don't know if another plane came in out of nowhere or if the Group's plane just
didn't get off the ground in time . . . or if something else went wrong. But I
can see a giant wing or a tail sticking up out of the flames; that's all I can
see through the smoke. That's all I can tell you now, my friends . . . my poor
friends. My God . . . I'm so sorry for all of us."

Silence in the black bus, indecipherable. Sonora knew that she and Yvette and
Chad and Driver were all looking out their windows at their own bus on the road
below, but somehow none of this seemed real. What they were hearing, what they
were seeing -- none of it.

Their crazy, colorful bus's headlights drove in and around, wove sharply once,
twice, and again. In an instant -- it happened that fast -- Sonora saw the bus
speed up and go out of control. The turn ahead was sharp and lit too late, and
whoever drove was not thinking of the road.

"You idiot!" Driver said, yelling down at the bus as if he could save it with a
word.

But he couldn't. None of them could have done anything to stop it going over the
edge. The disaster had begun when the Group got onto the plane; now it was only
spreading, a shockwave, carrying all of them with it.

"Shut those shades now," Crouch said firmly.

"But -- but --"

"I said shut those shades!" the old man insisted.

"Come on." Neuron was up next to her now, gently taking the shade out of her
fingers, sealing it down again. "Crouch knows."

"What's happening here?" Driver yelled at them.

It had to be asked, eventually. Sonora was not so sure it would ever be
answered.

The speakers shut off and the lights dimmed drastically. Only a few little bulbs
remained to show a way through the heaped pillows. For the first time Sonora
noticed figures sleeping, wrapped in sheets, on the overhead bunks which lined
the interior. There was not much room up there, under the curved ceiling; they
were crammed in like luggage, and among luggage. The bus whirred on, and it was
as Driver had said: it felt as though they were rocking, but not so gently now.
Crazily. With growing violence. She lay down flat on her back, afraid she might
be thrown or at least rolled; with arms spread wide, she grabbed onto the
mattress, convinced that they too were now going off the road.

A wave of sound roared through the bus, beginning in the pings and creaks and
groans and rattles of the engine, the shocks, the brakes and the tires --
growing louder and louder, until it sounded like jabbering voices. It built into
a storm of howls and crashing as if they'd been caught in an avalanche of souls
on the steep road. The sides of the bus felt too thin to protect them. Hail or
hammerblows struck the ceilings, the walls, even pummeled them from underneath.
She felt a repetitive, dull slamming just under one of her shoulders, a steady
beat that seemed to be aiming up deliberately at her, driving toward her heart.

Her mind had room for nothing else. The lights flickered and went out, and she
would have screamed except that Neuron was right up next to her, whispering
comfort in her ear, and she could see his brain glowing faintly, comfortingly,
through his bandanna. She grabbed onto him, wondering for a moment how Driver
was taking this -- sorry that he had always been so aloof from them. She
supposed he would be all right.

Then, some long time before she accepted the fact, the sounds died out and the
hammering stopped and even the sickening motion was done. They seemed to be at
rest, the motor purring-- idling -- underneath them; and all around them,
otherwise, perfect silence.

A few lights came on again. Neuron sat up and pulled his hat from a hook between
the windows, settled it over his head. He looked down at her. "You might want to
wait here."

"For what?" she asked, words that barely escaped her dry throat.

But he was moving on his knees toward the front of the bus, along with some of
the others, including old Crouch, who was coughing with a wet, bubbling sound as
if the shaking had jarred something loose in his chest. The others from their
old bus were sitting against the walls, the masked windows, some curled into
fetal positions among the pillows, eyes squeezed shut. Yvette sat with her arms
wrapped around her knees, watching Crouch.

Sonora looked over at Driver. His eyes were open but he was staring at the
ceiling, looking contemplative, resigned. When he saw her looking, he smiled
briefly, a darting flicker.

"Are you okay!" she said.

"I don't suppose so," he said. "On the other hand, does it matted"

Crouch whistled sharply, and she turned to look down the aisle at him. But he
wasn't calling her, or any of them. He was looking up at the sleeping racks. One
of them, up there, was stirring.

Just then, there was a loud pneumatic wheeze. A rash of warm air tore at her
scarves, as if the bus had gasped out its last breath. A bitter metallic cold
replaced the warmth she hadn't noticed until it was gone. The driver--whose face
she had not seen, who was no more than a scarcely registered shape in her
memory-- stepped from his seat and descended the steps at the front of the bus.
Everyone watched him depart through the accordioned doors, his shoulders sharp
in a dark, stiffly pressed uniform, disappearing outside. When he was gone,
Crouch moved irritably toward the sleeper in the closest bunk.

"Come on," he snapped, shoving the figure there. "It's your time."

There was a crackling sound, something like a canvas sail being unfurled in the
confined space, and a creaking groan. What Sonora had thought were sheets slowly
unfolded into wings. Pale leathery wings, bald as a rat's tail, with clawed
hinges. The sleeper, at Crouch's prodding, rolled from the bunk and dropped to
the floor, moving awkwardly on thin legs, its long nails catching and tearing in
the mattress covers. She had only a glimpse of its face -- but that was enough.
Sleepy slitted eyes, long white snout, thin ranged mouth. Then Crouch was
harrying it ahead of him through the aisle, down the steps and out the door.
Only when it was gone could Sonora look away, and then her eyes went immediately
to the others still slumbering overhead. They did not all appear to be of the
same sort; but there were more like that one up there.

Suddenly the black bus seemed less of a haven than she had imagined. She went on
her knees after Neuron, who was sitting at the edge of the platform pulling on
tall boots. Her own sandals were below in a pile of shoes.

"Be sure you get the right ones," he said as she rooted for her pair. "This
isn't the place to go walking off in someone else's shoes."

"You and your identity," Crouch called back sourly from the doorway. Then he
stepped off into the night, and Sonora distinctly heard his footsteps crunching
down hard into gravel or sand. The sound reassured her. At least they were
somewhere.

There was a pile of loose shawls and blankets near the shoes. She dragged a
poncho with a mandala pattern over her head and went down the aisle, down the
steps, looking over once at the driver's seat and the dashboard as she went. She
didn't drive, herself; but it looked like any other bus.

Stepping out, she learned instantly where the heat had gone. Sucked up, sunk
into the reddish sand, which instantly snatched the last trace of warmth from
her body. She stood hugging the blanket around her, cold as alabaster yet not
quite feeling the chill. That numb.

Footprints led away from the bus, toward the horizon. At the end of that
lengthening trail was the dark uniform of the driver, plodding steadily along.
But Crouch, who stood outside, and Neuron, who now jumped down beside her and
stamped his feet as if to force nonexistent heat into them, were not looking
that way. They gazed straight out ahead of the bus, in the direction it was
headed. Neuron pushed back his cowboy hat for a better view of the winged
silhouette that was lofting higher by the second against a dark sky with faint
stars in it. It was the violet hour, wolf-glow, but lacking qualities she
associated with dawn or dusk. Then she realized what it was. At the zenith was a
molten orange glow, like a sun without definition; while spreading away from
that in rippled waves was steadily deeper darkness, purpling till it coalesced
into perfect blackness against the land. It was the exact opposite of sunrise or
sunset; here, darkness massed at the horizon, and light retreated toward the
center of the sky. Stars burned and flickered close to the ground, like the
lights of a desert city. The flying shape, as it gained distance, gradually
merged with the darkness that ringed them entirely. Behind them, she noticed,
was no sign of the mountains they had traversed; nor of any river, for that
matter.

Sonora was grateful to have at least the thick blob of molten light above,
though it cast no warmth that she could feel. Even as she thought this, she saw
that it was dwindling -- that the darkness was not a static thing, a mere wall
around them, but continued to grow and seep up across the sky. Blue and violet
invaded the orange flare, weakening it while she watched. It was like a foreign
cell under attack, dissolving. Stars marked the territory taken by night.

Well, she thought. At least there are stars. For the moment. I won't take them
for granted.

As the orange light faded, Crouch and Neuron grew visibly nervous. They peered
hard at the horizon, squinting into the dark, until the old man began to curse.

"I can't believe it," he said. "Another one."

"Maybe he'll be back," Neuron said. "Anyway, there's more."

"Not many!"

This, too, had the feel of an old -- an endless -- argument.

"Okay," Neuron said, turning toward Sonora. "That's about it for us, now. You
better get back up inside there."

"What about the driver?" Sonora said, for at the end of that long trail of
footprints there was nothing now but more darkness.

"Looks like that's taken care of," he said, nodding up the stairwell. Driver
himself had taken the seat, settling in with an eager look as he examined the
dashboard, tested the steering wheel, and finally tried the lever that worked
the door. It sighed shut casually, squeezing the inner light to a narrow slit
between its robber flaps -- until even that went out.

"Hey!" Neuron shouted.

"Shit!" Crouch yelled. "Don't move!"

The black bus was gone. There was nothing now but darkness sweeping in over the
empty plain of sand, with the three of them standing there alone while wind
erased the tire tracks.

Sonora spun to look around, to see where it had gone; but Neuron grabbed onto
her, harder than she had ever been grabbed. "Don't . . . move!" he cried. She
could hardly see his face, it was so much darker now. A membrane seemed to have
been pulled even across the stars. There was only a tiny sullen dot of orange
being extinguished in the vault overhead. Once it snuffed out, there would be
nothing left to see by.

Everything was quickening. Night came on like the wind, which roared out of
nowhere as if bent on tearing them from their place. She planted her feet in the
sand and knelt, dragging Neuron down beside her. Voices buzzed in the sand,
which scoured her flesh, tore at her eyelids. She screamed and the sand rushed
into her mouth, caking her tongue, drinking every ounce of moisture-- stealing
it from her, sucking the life away. Neuron and Crouch had her by either arm,
holding her between them, and they were doing something she couldn't quite see.
Waving their arms, pounding the air with a hollow sound.

Suddenly something blocked the wind. As if a wall had been erected behind them
and they stood now in a quiet, sheltered spot. Sonora brushed sand from her
eyes, tried to look behind her, but something else caught her stinging gaze. The
light again, a thin slice of yellow, opened up before them. The steps of the bus
were revealed.

"Go!" Neuron yelled, and shoved her in. She stumbled on the steps, clinging to
his arm, pulling him with her. Crouch, his face scraped raw and caked with
bloody sand, swept the air with open hands, feeling for the door but missing it.
Beyond him, something enormous moved toward them at inconceivable speed-- like a
part of the landscape curling and reaching for the bus. Sonora screamed and
grabbed for his hand, and Neuron turned and saw it too, and also grabbed. They
caught him by one wrist, but their screams -or the view-- had startled Driver,
and he closed the door with only that one hand yet inside the bus.

"Wait!" she said. "Open it -- open!"

Driver was slow, as if stunned by what he had seen through the door. She
couldn't grab the lever herself, not without letting go of Crouch -- and that
wouldn't have been wise. As hard as she and Neuron pulled, she could feel the
old man's arm slipping out of their grasp.

"Driver!" she screamed.

"Go!" Neuron yelled.

"The door!" Sonora cried.

"Just go!"

Driver stamped on the gas and the engine roared. His face was white, stricken.
He started to haul on the stick shift, and Sonora could hear gears grinding,
could feel the wheels catching in something, jerking them forward.

Yvette rushed up then, grabbed the lever and hauled it back. The door wheezed
open again. At first all she could see was Crouch's hand and forearm. It seemed
to end in midair, just below the elbow; but that couldn't be true. Driver threw
the shift the rest of the way into gear. With a liberated growl that quickly
became a whining purr, the black bus lurched forward, throwing its passengers
back. Crouch flew into the stairwell and the door clapped shut, rubber flaps
somehow sealing out the night.

Neuron moved quickly, gathering the old man up in a limp heap from the stairs,
carrying him back to the padded platform where he laid him down gingerly. Sonora
peered over his shoulder, expecting to see Crouch in rags, shredded and bloody,
worse than he had been a moment before.

But he lay breathing quietly, sand covering his clothes, lining the wrinkles of
his face, otherwise apparently untouched. He opened his eyes and breathed up at
Neuron:

"Got me."

"No, old man," Neuron said. "You're fine. You're gonna be okay this time."

Crouch shook his head. "I was out there -- for ages. I just barely remember you.
. . . "

Driver, at the wheel, still accelerating -- though Sonora couldn't imagine into
what, with the windshield showing nothing ahead of them -twisted around to say,
"What happened? I only shut the doors for a second -- a fraction of a second."

"To you it was a fraction of a second," Neuron said, then turned back quickly to
Crouch. "But you remember now, don't you? You're here again."

"I'm changed, though -- changing. I want . . . I need to lie down."

"You are lying down."

"No, I mean -- up there."

Neuron glanced at the overhead racks. Sonora thought she saw his lips move in
prayer. Then he put a hand on Crouch's breast.

"No, old man, you're not --"

"Damn it, I know what I need. Help me up. I wasn't asking, I was telling you."

A few of the passengers moved to his aid, but Neuron was not one of them. Sonora
put her arms around him; as much for her own comfort as for his. Crouch hobbled
a few feet down the center aisle to the newly empty bunk, and allowed himself to
be boosted up into the rack. They put a pillow under his gray head, swept the
sand out from under him. Then he closed his eyes and turned his face away. In
moments he was as quiet as the rest of the sleepers up there.

Neuron sank down onto the mattress. "I can't believe it," he said. "This is bad.
I thought Crouch was-- if anyone, Crouch was here for the long haul."

Sonora kept her arms around him. She glanced up at the front of the bus, saw
Driver's face in the black glass of the windshield. What did he see out there,
she wondered. How did he keep control?

DRIVER STARED down into the headlights, which scarcely showed anything except
flat sand unrolling ahead of him, just enough to drive straight into. He drove
by instinct, or by trust, suspecting that there were no obstacles in their path
-- would be none for quite some distance. Thinking, grimly, that even if he ran
into a wall -- so what?

It was something he reflected, to be up here again, in the driver's seat, doing
the only thing he had ever done for as long as he could recall. He felt relief
at being essentially alone. Too many passengers back there-- from the old bus
and from this new one -- brought on that unfocused, troubling pressure he always
felt in crowds, as if he were in danger of coming apart or losing himself in
their midst. They would know him as Driver now, and he wouldn't have to know
much about them. They would be grateful to leave the driving to him.

It was a challenge. He had never seen a road like this;or imagined one existed.
Well . . . maybe he had. On certain nights after days of driving, after weeks of
journeying on the endless pilgrimage, following the Group, he would sometimes
lie in bed in some motel, or in a sleeping bag on the ground outside the bus,
and imagine that he was still driving -- but in perfect darkness, with his eyes
closed. He would dream the act of driving distilled to its essence-- no real mad
beneath the tires, only the voyage itself, always leading into sleep.

Sleep, he supposed, if you could stay conscious through it, might be like this.
Lucid dreaming, that's what this was. Or dreaming wakefulness. A drugged kind of
--

Squirming memories surfaced; the palm of his hand tingled. Something about a
drug, a droplet, a burrowing thing.

He was on the verge of remembering when a white shape flew into the headlights
and slammed against the windshield. He hit the brakes, screaming into the face
of the thing that had crumpled against the glass -- crushed snout, red slit
eyes, torn wings as wide as the windshield. When the bus finally ground to a
stop, the flattened thing slid backward and fell into the dust.

Sonora and Neuron stood next to him, peering down. In the headlights it was
fairly well-lit, and apparently dead. Its wings unfolded the rest of the way,
its claws twitched galvanically then stilled. From one of the withered
wing-fingers, a bit of colored ribbon dangled, talon-pierced. It was a rainbow
paisley pattern, part of a scarf or a pennant. Driver had seen the colors
before, flapping over the stage at a concert.

"Damn," Neuron said. "I guess we are headed the right way."

"You're not going out there again," Sonora said.

"No. You can keep on going, Driver-man."

Driver sank back into his seat. The engine had stalled, but it started up easily
enough. He pulled forward slowly, watching the ruined thing pass under the front
bumper. He was careful to drive as straight as possible, but even so, he thought
he heard the wide wings crackle as the tires passed over them.

Neuron clapped him hard on the shoulder. "It's a good sign," he said, nodding.
"A real good sign."

Not long after that, the stars reappeared. Dead ahead, clustered low on the
horizon, spreading slowly apart as the bus sped forward.

He was squinting for a better look when he saw something moving. He wasn't ready
for a repeat of the last collision. He started to brake, hoping to avoid a mess;
but then he saw the pale thing waving. A person.

"What's going on?"

Without answering, he brought the bus to a stop. The person outside--a skinny,
ratty-looking kid -- came running toward them down the bright twin tunnel of
headlights, waving his arms desperately. When he reached the bus he started
banging on the door.

Driver looked back at Neuron, as if for permission. "Go ahead," the cowboy said,
and Driver opened the doors.

The kid hurled himself up the stairs, breathless and laughing. "I can't believe
it!" he was saying. "You -- you found me out here. I mean, there's others here?
Wow! I thought I could hear them up ahead, you know, I been following just the
little sounds in the dark, just those few notes you can barely hear. But I
should have known I wasn't the only one. I couldn't be the only one. I mean, of
the followers who'd do this, who'd come here."

His eyes were everywhere all at once, pupils enormous, as if he'd been staring
into darkness forever. Finally his gaze settled on Driver, and his wide smile
froze inside his pale ragged beard.

"I remember you," he said. "I met you! And you're really here now. Man!"

Driver started to look away, leaving him to the others. The kid was crazy or
high. Then, abruptly, he remembered their meeting in the amphitheater earlier;
the kid had come rushing up to him just like this, exactly as crazed, and then
staggered off.

"Man, this is great," he was saying. "We'll catch up with them now, yeah. You
got a bus and everything. How'd you manage that? I mean, on foot it's tough. I
didn't have much to go by. But -- but maybe it's what you have when you go,
right? I mean, were you all in a bus? All of you?"

He looked around the interior of the black bus, but no one answered. The other
passengers seemed almost embarrassed by his manic energy.

"I mean, all I had was my own two feet, right? Only way I could think to follow
was to, you know . . . walk. I found an edge, like, a real high place, top of a
building. A real tall building. It was so tall the lights on the ground looked
like tiny faraway stars, you know? Like stars, yeah. And I just went walking
toward them, right out into the sky, stars above and below, stars everywhere . .
. and I walked through that for a while, till the stars went away and it got
dark. But I could hear the Group again, finally. Like they were up ahead just a
little ways-- they didn't have much of a head start on me. That was such a
relief, right? I mean-- I was trying to imagine the world without them. What's
left? Hey . . . you got a radio, why aren't you tuned in? You gotta tune 'em in.
How else you gonna follow?"

The kid went to the dashboard and punched on the radio. It hadn't been on since
they'd seen their old colorful bus plunge into darkness. It crackled to life
now, as if the satellite were still out there orbiting in the dark, bouncing
signals to anyone who cared to receive them. . . .

Music.

Driver straightened when he recognized it. The Group was coming in clear, as if
they were outside the bus, surrounding it.

"Yeah," the kid said, ecstatic. He sank down on the steps.

Some of the others began to whisper, in the back of the bus. Yvette and Chad
sounded excited. They knew all the tapes, all the recordings going around, being
traded; they knew not only all the songs, but all the individual concerts, had
heard most of them in person. But this was something new. This was. . .

"It's happening right now," Chad was saying. "Can't you feel it?"

And Yvette: "It's live!"

"Yeah!" the kid on the steps agreed. "That's them! We're catching up! What're we
doing sitting here, Driver? Let's get moving!"

Driver had already been in the act of pushing the great bus forward. He bent
once again to the task of driving, while music filled the black bus and the
stars spread out on the horizon, drifting higher now. Not stars at all, he saw,
but fires. Scattered fires burning all over the slopes of some dark shape. He
sensed that something held them up, but could gain no impression of it. Spires,
or simply a wall? The sky was too black to allow a silhouette, and the fires lit
nothing but themselves.

The excitement in the bus grew as they approached the lights. The music was
getting louder, the signal stronger. It was strange to know that the Group was
up ahead playing -- but to what audience?

And then, from the passengers, came a cry of disappointment and frustration --
even of despair. For the tunes had blurred into a final lullabye . . . the
Group's signature piece, after which they always left in utter silence.

"Hurry!" they were yelling at him, as if he could squeeze any more speed from
the bus-- as if they didn't mind crashing headlong into whatever black enormity
held the specks of flame aloft. He couldn't bring himself to drive blindly,
though. The closer he got to the lights, the slower he went-- he had no sense of
depth here. How far had he come? How far had he to go?

The tune crested, tumbled over an inevitable edge into silence.

"Noooooo," they wailed inside the black bus.

At that moment, the bus passed through a gate, an entrance or exit of some sort,
into a tunnel. It was luminous with a deep violet light. They were descending,
so he took his foot off the accelerator for an instant -- and just then, they
burst out abruptly into a huge arena, a stadium or coliseum whose dimensions
were almost inconceivable.

They had emerged somewhere in the middle of the field. Ramparts or bleachers
rose on all sides; they were like distant mountains, their true size impossible
to judge. He had no sense of scale.

The ground was littered with rubbish: chunks and splinters of whitish rock that
looked like the shards a mason leaves behind when he chisels a tombstone.
Gnawed, discarded bones; soiled take-out containers. Worms and flies crawled and
buzzed through the heaps of filth. Glass crunched and burst under the tires.
Wide piles of embers smoked and glowed here and there like the remains of
bonfires. He drove carefully through the waste, not wanting to be stranded here.
Static poured from the speakers; all directions looked equally undesirable, all
destinations futile. To head for any one of the surrounding walls would have
been equally vain; they were all impassable.

"We missed 'em," the kid on the steps said, dejected. "We just missed them." He
put his head on his knees and began to sob. "All that . . . and . . . and . . .
"

Sonora moved over to him. Her eyes were on the desolate scene beyond the window,
but she put a hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Hey, don't worry. We'll catch them next time, okay? They're still out there."

"But where?"

Sonora fiddled with the radio dial, but all bands seemed equally dead now.

"We'll figure it out," she said.

"Not here, though," said Neuron.

"What do you mean?" Sonora turned to look at him. Driver kept the bus moving
slowly, weaving around heaps of smoldering coals, because that was what he knew
how to do.

"We have to keep moving. We have to get out now. If we get stranded, stuck here,
they'll pull so far ahead we'll never catch up."

"How . . . how do you know all this?" she asked.

"We've been following them a lot longer than you," he said. "You learn these
things."

"But -- but all this, it only happened tonight -- I mean, if this is still
tonight."

Neuron shook his head. "You don't see. It didn't happen tonight, whatever that
means. And it hasn't happened yet, neither. It happened a long time ago -- and
it's still happening, even now. It keeps deepening; it keeps moving through all
the levels, and that's where some of us come from . . . from the world before,
or another one before that. Just like you, now, hooking up with us. It'll change
you eventually, like it changed me." He put a finger to his skull. "You'll
become what you are, along the way; but what you are will change."

Sonora stared at him, irritated. "Just tell us what to do," she said.

"If I knew that . . . " Neuron started.

"Let me," came a rasping voice from above them. In the rear-view mirror, Driver
could see someone stepping down from the bunks. It was Crouch, the old man. He
hadn't been there long, but apparently it was long enough. He almost wasn't
Crouch anymore.

He knelt before them, extended his pale, long-fingered hand, and slowly opened
his fingers. Driver gasped. From the popping blue veins in the old man's palm,
red slugs were crawling. They wriggled up, dried, curled to a wisp at one end, a
rounded blob at the other. "Corpsules," Crouch said. "I can make my own now."

It was the first thing Driver had seen here that truly frightened him.

Then he remembered when he had seen them before.

When and where. . . .

The amphitheater. Like this place, only smaller, enclosed, packed with people.
Could this be the same place, much later that same night, with all the people
gone from it? Had they been driving in a circle all night, and now everyone was
home and sleeping except them? But it was so immense . . . had they shrank
somehow?

"Disgusting," Chad said, his face pressed to a window. "Look at all them fukkin
diapers, my god. And the cans, the garbage bags." Which there were, bursting at
the seams, stuffed with rancid meaty stuff, ground worms maybe, that wouldn't
quite ever decay, it was so rubbery and plastic.

"Yea, verily," said Crouch now, raising two fingers in a peace sign, then making
a sign of power over the handful of red drops. "Behold me, that am yet angel."

And then his wings unfolded.

It wasn't a good idea, there in the bus. He battered them against the racks and
jumped back, hunching smaller. "Jesus!"

"Looks like this isn't your day, old man," Neuron said, putting arms around him,
helping him pack the wings back in again. In almost the same gesture, he swiped
the handful of drops from the white-furred palm. Apparently it was expected.
Crouch sucked in his cheeks and, still stooping, hobbled painfully toward the
front of the bus.

"Open the doors," he said commandingly as he passed Driver.

"But --"

Crouch hit the lever himself. The smell that swept in was unbearable. He faced
into it, descended with his nose held high, turned and faced the bus and all its
company. Seeing him out there, surviving in the emberlight, some of the
passengers let up the windowshades on that side. Crouch clicked his heels
together, put his hand to his brow in a crisp salute, and bowed stiffly at the
waist. Then he sprang into the air and was gone.

"Now we take these," Neuron said. Waving a corpsule under Driver's nose.

Sonora also remembered the droplets. She rushed over to Neuron and grabbed it
out of his hand.

"This!" she cried. "This is why we're here!"

"Well, in a sense," Neuron said with a shy smile. "Or hadn't you figured that
out yet?"

"I don't mean what you think I mean," she said. But she wasn't sure how to put
it. Wherever they were -- death, a dream, some other kind of place whose name
came not quite so readily to the tongue -- they wouldn't have been here except
for the drag. They would have been somewhere else completely; perhaps they might
have passed through here briefly, on their way to that other place. But instead
they had gotten off the road-- driven off it almost deliberately-- and were now
trapped in this . . . she wanted to call it a borderland, but she wasn't sure it
was either a bordering region or a zone between borders. It was more like
another planet, that extensive.

"He's wigging out," said one of the original passengers, whose name she had
never known. She thought he was talking about Neuron, but he saw she thought
that and shook his head, nodding toward the ceiling.

Wild laughter from overhead.

They went out, all of them, to see Crouch turning somersaults in the sky above.
He was just luminous enough to be visible.

"Come on, old man!" Neuron yelled, clenching his fists. He had dropped the red
tears into a vial he wore around his neck.

"I'm not following him," someone else said.

Crouch hooted at them.

"Where are they?" the bearded kid cried. He sounded mad.

"Right here," Crouch called down to them. "But not right now."

"We know that much," Neuron said. "Should we drop now?"

"Not yet. They're farther ahead. Just follow me."

"Good job, old man." Neuron looked ecstatic, and when the kid saw him, he
relaxed, too. "You heard him, Driver! Everyone back on board!"

Sonora went up just before Neuron, who came last. She realized she had smelled
nothing outside-- not since the moment she stepped out of the bus. As if the
decay were only an image of decay, a projection affecting only the eyes. But as
she boarded the bus again, she gagged on the stench that followed her in. Driver
had his face covered with a monogrammed handkerchief he pulled from the label of
his charcoal black uniform. It was a relief when the door shut behind Neuron.

She let him past, smiling broadly when he looked at her, then turned and
whispered urgently to Driver: "Don't take those drops!"

Neuron was looking back at her. She straightened up and walked toward him,
feigning easiness. She swayed as the bus moved forward, and Neuron put his arms
out to catch her. They went right around her, tighter this time than before.
"Whoa, there. Gotcha," he said.

"You sure did." Sonora smiled, hands on his forearms, twisting away. She went
down to the mattress, scooting back in between Chad and Yvette. Neuron took a
lazy swipe at her, let his arm dangle, and smiled sideways sort of regretfully,
as if: oh well.

Sonora looked up and saw Driver watching her in the mirror. Concern showed in
his face, but she nodded slightly and he looked back at the road, such as it
was. Crouch flew on ahead of them, she supposed.

"What is it, Sonora?" Yvette asked, and Chad, hearing the question, looked over.

Chad had bowl-cut hair and a baggy sweater, a long face with the cheeks scooped
out of it. One eye wandered. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

"The drug," she muttered, low, her hands on either one's knee, so they leaned
closer to her. "Those drops. Do you remember taking them?"

"Sure," Chad said. "Just after the Group came on."

"It was just before," Yvette said, with equal certainty.

"But you both took them, right?"

"Yeah. But so what?"

"Something happened to us -- and I don't mean the drugs."

"I'm not stupid," Chad said. "I know where we are, Sonora. You're not the only
one who can pick up on these things, and it isn't exactly all that subtle."

"I don't think we're exactly where you think we are," Sonora said.

"All right, so is somebody going to say it?"

"We're dead, you mean?" Chad blurted out, laughing a moment after he had said
it.

"If we aren't, I'd like to know where we are," said Yvette.

"I think we're sort of dead, yes --"

"Sort of?" Chad howled louder.

"-- but there's more than that going on. When we died, we were on that stuff,
that drug. When you die, you're supposed to, like, let go of things, come all
apart, dissolve back into the universe-- at least for a while. But we're not
getting there. We're stuck somehow, stuck following the Group, just like we did
in life. Death is supposed to be experienced with clear, concise consciousness--
but we were, are, addled. So we're seeing all this instead of the Clear Light."

"Are you saying that even in death, there's drugs? " Chad asked. "Whoaw! "

"So we . . . we just let it wear off?" Yvette said.

"I hope that works. That's why I'm saying, don't take any more of the stuff.
What would it be like, here, to do more of it? What is it? What does it do to
you when you're. . . "

"Dead," said Chad, still laughing.

"There's a peyote paradise," Yvette said. "Maybe this is like that."

"This is no fukkin paradise," Chad said.

"I mean-- a drug land. But we're stuck here in our bodies, or our astral bodies,
because we're dead . . . so we're free from anything that would pull us back to
the Earth plane, like happens when you come down from peyote."

"Right, baby, I follow that," Chad said. "But what about this, Sonora? What if
we don't want to come down off this stuff? I mean, what's up ahead if we do?
What are we waking up to, comprende? I mean, the rest of the trip might not be
even this pleasant."

"But Chad, this is unnatural! We're not supposed to be here this long."

"Then what the hell are they doing here?"

Sonora looked around the bus at the other passengers, most of them unknown to
her, yet with stories and lives as full as her own, hard as it was to imagine.

"No, not them," Chad said. "The Group!"

"Maybe they were doing the same stuff as us," Sonora answered. "Or maybe they're
not here at all. The crash could have been like a lure, to get us here. To make
our bus go out of control."

"Jesus," Chad said. "That's creepy."

"Or maybe they died but they weren't drugged, so that's why they're getting
ahead of us, going forward while we're stuck here. So they were on that plane
but they weren't drugged at the time --"

"Yeah, right," Chad said. "The Group not drugged. Now you're really stretching
things. . . . "

As if to punctuate his sarcasm, there was a blare of music up ahead, a wild
chord sweeping through the bus. It electrified them; everyone crowded to the
windows except Yvette and Chad, whom Sonora held back.

"Wait a minute," she said. "What do you think about Neuron?"

"We should ask you that," Yvette said.

"I don't know," Chad said. "Why? What do you think?"

"I think -- he's here for a different reason than we are. He's chosen to stay
here. I remember him giving us the drugs, in the theater tonight; but we weren't
dead yet."

"How do you know we don't have the order of things confused in our memories?"
Yvette said. "What if our minds and personalities are breaking up even now?"

"I believe they are, yes, but somehow we got that original drug. Those red
drops. What if somehow, someway, Neuron was able to come out to us -- out of
death, I mean, into the living world."

"What if he's meant to," Yvette said.

"I see what you're saying Sonora," said Chad, dismissing the other. "The guy
came out and snatched us, sort of."

"In a way we can't understand."

"Oh, I understand it. He saw you, fell in lust, and went for you the best way he
knew how. Only to get you, he had to take all of us, since we're sort of, you
know . . . attached."

Sonora swallowed. "So I'm to blame?"

"He's to blame!" Yvette said.

"Then . . . what if we're not really dead? I mean, what if this really isn't
death, but some other kind of world, like you say? What if the Group, playing up
there, really is playing?"

"He's coming," whispered Yvette.

Neuron ducked out of the crowd at the front of the bus. "They're playing. You
want to come see?"

He put a hand out to Sonora.

"I can hear, thanks."

"Yeah," Chad said loudly. "We're kind of comfortable now."

Neuron glowered at Chad. He turned away, but took another look at Sonora over
his shoulder.

Then the bus stopped, she wasn't sure why. The music had been brewing, early
notes of a concert, the warm-up stage, arrival. She looked out a window, raising
the shade above her head, and saw light. It was artificial, drifting down from
incredibly tall spindly lampposts that arched overhead and dropped blots of
light across a concrete wasteland.

They were in a parking lot. All the garbage they'd passed through was peripheral
to this. They had come to another stadium inside the larger one, a relatively
tiny arena in the middle of the plain which was itself surrounded by ring-walls.

The black bus was the only vehicle in the lot. Except . . . yes, far off, around
a curve of the stadium, she could see a black airplane, sleek and inky, angled
something like the bus with a shimmering exterior, half-diamonds and other
geometric planes that made the craft look at once velvety and scaly.

Driver had parked within walking distance of the gates. She could see clots of
people moving through the dark arches, down the tunnels that led toward the
central stage. Not many, though. She had the impression these were stragglers,
hurrying in late.

"It's started already," Neuron said quickly to all of them, like a teacher
explaining to a class. He uncapped his vial. "Okay, Crouch will back me up on
this, it's time to drop. Who's first?"

Most of the other passengers moved forward. Sonora wanted to stop them, but she
didn't dare. It would have to be enough, for now, to save her friends--and
herself. They opened their hands and she said nothing. Neuron laid the red
corpsules in their palms as they walked past him, down the steps and onto the
cement, heading toward the music. Some licked their hands, slurped up the
droplets; but she remembered from a sudden tickling in her palm how easily the
things were administered.

She whispered, "Drop yours -- I mean, get rid of them-- as soon as you can.
Don't leave them on your skin."

"Why not just refuse?" Yvette said. "I mean, he can't make us take them."

"I can't believe you two," Chad said. "Dead, and afraid to take drugs. What
could happen to you now?"

"What if we're not dead?" Yvette said.

"Yvette, you are one confused girl. Do what you want. I'm going for it."

He pushed up from the platform and swaggered past Neuron, who dropped the
corpsule in his hand and winked at him. Chad slapped Neuron's shoulder and
popped the drop in his mouth, giving a thumbs-up to Sonora and Yvette on his way
out.

"Ladies," Neuron said. "You coming?"

"I don't know," Yvette said.

"The show must go on, right? You've got to get off and experience --"

"She doesn't feel up to it," Sonora said.

"Really?" Neuron pressed toward them. "Don't feel well? Now how can that be?"

"I've got sort of a psychic headache," Yvette said.

"They don't have to go if they don't want to," Driver said quietly.

Neuron stopped where he was and turned back toward him. "What's that ?"

"I said, there's no reason for them to get off the bus if they'd rather not."

"But, hey, out here in the parking lot . . . it gets a little scary during a
show."

"I'll be more than happy to stay with them. I've done it many times."

"Done it many times, huh? Look, Driver-man, you're just a suit, all right ? A
uniform, you get me ? Nobody's talking to you. You don't play a part in this."

"Do you want to drive?" Driver said.

Neuron paled, while up inside his hat, his brain blackened, emitting a dark
bruised light, purple as an injury. "Look here," he said.

Driver rose as Neuron stalked toward him.

"Hey," said a voice from outside. "What's going on in there?"

It was Crouch.

"Good, you're here," Neuron said. "The driver is giving us trouble this time."

"What? Impossible!"

"Get in and help me."

"I -- jeez -- can't. These fukkin wings!"

Crouch tried the doorway but got stuck in it. Driver pulled on the door lever
and the partitions began to shudder and flap, first crushing Crouch's fingers
and pinching his wings so he yelled, then expelling him backward onto the
parking lot. Soundlessly, but not before Sonora let out a warning cry, Neuron
leapt at Driver. Driver caught him, twisted, and simply shoved. Neuron tumbled
down the steps, landing directly atop the howling Crouch.

Driver then, before they could regain their feet, shut the door.

The two staggered upright, clinging to each other for support, livid and furious
now. They came toward the door, not seeing it, searching the air with desperate
hands. Before they made contact, Driver had already thrown the gears into
reverse. They stumbled past the windshield, dismayed to find the bus already
gone.

Standing next to Driver, Sonora and Yvette looked down at Neuron and Crouch. The
men searched an ever expanding spiral, Driver backing up a few yards whenever
they approached. Finally they turned and faced each other. Neuron tore off his
hat and stomped it flat; Crouch's wings shot out stiffly to both sides.

"This is unbelievable!" Neuron cried. "I can't believe it!"

"You?" said Crouch. "I got these outta the deal!" He jabbed a thumb at his
wings. "I knew that driver was trouble from the start."

"Why didn't you say something?"

"Why should I have to? Oh, I know. Because you're an idiot!

"How was I supposed to know?"

"He was different than the other drivers."

"No he wasn't, he was the same. It's been the same guy as long as I can
remember, and it was him again. You'd notice any little change in that face. It
never changes!"

"He was different tonight!"

Sonora put a hand on Driver's shoulder. "Do you know what they're talking
about?"

Driver shook his head.

"Because, I mean, if you're something more than what we think, I just want you
to know . . . we appreciate it."

"Really, I don't have the slightest idea. They're insane. Look at them now."

They were tearing at each other, roiling around on the cement. The old man cried
out each time Neuron grabbed his wings, and Neuron winced and growled whenever
Crouch hammered him on the crown.

"Give them plenty of room," Sonora said.

Driver pulled away from them completely, starting on a circuit of the stadium's
outer walls. As he drove, he slowly turned his course outward, moving aay across
the empty parking lot and gaining speed as if they were trying to break away
from a planet's gravitational field, attaining escape velocity so they could fly
off into the night.

"Do you know what you're doing?" Sonora asked.

"Getting some distance."

"What about them, back there?" asked Yvette.

Sonora thought of their friends, the bearded boy, who had taken the drug and
wandered into the theater. She hadn't said goodbye to any of them --hadn't the
chance. "I guess it'll wear off eventually . . . and then they'll have to go on.
Unless Crouch keeps giving them drugs, and then maybe they'll be here a long
time."

"No," Yvette said. "I meant them. In the bunks."

Sonora had forgotten that the bus was not empty.

"I can stop," Driver said. "Before we go any farther. We can unload them."

"What if we need them up ahead?" Sonora said. "What if they really are guides?"

She could imagine them waking in their own time, electing to fly out and scout
the way, instead of being rousted irritably and sent half-asleep into the dark
on a trivial mission.

"We'll let them sleep then, for now?" Yvette said.

"I guess. We're not going back then, are we?"

"I think the bus could make it through, if you wanted to," said Driver.

"It would have to, wouldn't it?" said Yvette. "I mean, Neuron got out, didn't
he? He rode this bus in and out between the worlds?"

"But he never stayed out," Sonora said. "And I think-- we only saw him when we'd
taken the drags."

"I thought he gave them to us, though."

"Yeah. . . . "

But that was before she remembered first seeing him. Events were out of order;
time did not quite dovetail here. That's how he did it, she realized -- that's
how he gave us what we needed to meet him . . . before we met him. He wasn't in
ordinary time. So he never really reached our world, where each thing follows
another, one event gives rise to the next. And we couldn't really get all the
way back there, probably; not even in the black bus, miraculous as it is. We
might pull up alongside our old bus and find it crashed on the mountainside,
everyone dead -- including ourselves. Who'd want to see that?

We can only go forward, she thought. Besides, maybe we weren't even alive then,
in the time before; maybe we were lost in some kind of other place, wandering
and vulnerable in a drug-land like the peyote paradise, and that's how he
reached us. We were so used to the sensation of dreaming, with all the drugs we
took, and everything seeming so unreal all the time anyway -how would we have
known if we'd been dead already?

But we've broken that cycle, whatever it was. We're going on now.

Driver's foot was on the floor and the bus kept going faster and faster, picking
up speed. Ahead of them, against a sky that was slightly lighter than she
remembered, she saw not stadium walls but actual mountains.

"You don't mind driving, do you?" she said, her hand on Driver's shoulder.

He shrugged. "It's what I do." His pained, martyred expression had softened; he
looked genuinely content. She realized that she was seeing someone new-- not a
stranger, but an old acquaintance never seen so clearly until now, and strange
because of that. He glanced up into the rearview mirror, meeting her eyes.

"Why don't you two go in back and try to rest?" he said. "I'm fine up here,
alone. I'm not sleepy, myself, and there's a long drive ahead."

"All right," she said. "Come on, Yvette."

She slipped out of her sandals and crawled back among the pillows with Yvette.
They lay down and wrapped themselves in blankets, and she thought of her old
companions, forgetting their faces as she had earlier forgotten their names.
Soft breathing filled the bus, soothing and hypnotic as the engine sound, but
coming from the bunks. Her eyes closed. At the last moment before sleep, she
recalled that they had not drawn the shades-- and wondered if it mattered. Her
eyes flickered open, going to the windows across the way. There were stars now,
and suggestions of clouds, high and faintly luminous, or reflecting some distant
glow. The sight reassured her; she let go of fear. Then she was a child again,
lulled, rocking, asleep.

AT THE WHEEL, watching a highway slowly appear out of the receding darkness,
Driver could feet the insignificant details of his personality sloughing away
with every mile, leaving only the essentials, paring him down to a bare-bone
surface solid as the hard, flat road on which the tires hummed. He was, had
always been, Driver.

Glancing into the mirror at his sleeping passengers, he was pleased they felt
safe enough to sleep. The bus was almost empty, but he knew that eventually it
would fill again. Somewhere on the road ahead were numberless hitchhikers and
wanderers on foot, pilgrims who might be ready for some company, all headed
toward something none of them could name.

Driver kept an eye out for them.