things, a canopy bed? A bed so huge it made him feel like a doll? But he shook the question away. They were coming! They were here! He swiveled his feet to the floor and jammed them into the leather lace-ups that he had, apparently, possessed the energy to remove before passing out with exhaustion. Ramming his shirttail into his pants, he dashed to the door and down the hall.
“Suresh!”
The sound of his pounding caromed down the empty hallway.
“Suresh, wake up!”
The door to Suresh’s quarters opened to reveal his new chief of staff’s sleepy, bronze-colored face. He was wearing a puffy white bathrobe and slippers, blinking like a bear exiting its cave.
“Cripes, Horace, you don’t have to yell.” He yawned into his fist. “What time is it?”
“Who cares what time it is? They’re here.”
Suresh startled. “Right now, you mean?”
Rise up and meet them, Guilder. Bring them home.
“Don’t just stand there, get dressed.”
“Right, okay. I’m on it.”
“Move, goddamnit!”
Guilder returned to his apartment and stepped into the bathroom. Should he shave? Wash his face at least? Why was he thinking like this, like a boy on prom night? He ran a damp hand through his hair and brushed his teeth, trying to calm himself. Was this what passed for toothpaste around this place? This awful-tasting gritty goo? For the love of God, why, in ninety-seven years, had they never managed to come up with a decent toothpaste?
He removed a fresh suit from the wardrobe. The blue tie, the red, the green and yellow stripes: he didn’t know. He was suddenly so nervous his fingers could barely manage the knot. And hungry. A stone of cold emptiness sat in his gut. A visit with his old friend Grey would have been just the ticket to settle his nerves, but he should have thought of that earlier.
Standing before the mirror, he took a steadying breath. Easy, Guilder, easy. You know what to do. It’s just another day at the office. It can’t be any worse than a meeting with the Joint Chiefs, can it?
In point of fact, it could. But there was no use in dwelling on the prospect.
By the time he reached the lobby, Suresh was waiting with Guilder’s driver. “The trucks are on their way,” Suresh said as Guilder drew on his gloves. “You want a full detail to escort you?”
Guilder declined; he would go on his own. Best to keep things simple. The two men shook hands.
“Good luck,” said Suresh.
As the car glided down the hill, Guilder’s anxiety began to lessen. He was moving into the moment now. At the river they turned north and headed toward the Project. Its dark shape heaved from the earth like a headstone, a square of deeper blackness against the night sky. The portal was open, waiting.
They didn’t stop but turned east on the service road. At one time it had been used to move equipment to the site: the quarried blocks of stone, the twirling cement mixers from the concrete plant, the flatbeds with their stacked girders of harvested steel. Now it would carry an altogether different delivery. They passed through the auxiliary gate. Five more minutes and they drew up to where the two semis were waiting in a field of frozen corn stubble.
Guilder told the driver to go. The semis’ cabs were empty; their drivers, too, had departed. Guilder pressed his ear to the side of one of the trucks. He heard muffled murmurings inside, interspersed with a female sound of frightened weeping.
The voice in his head was silent. A profound stillness encased him like the anticipatory stillness before a storm. They would be coming from the west. He waited.
Then:
The first one appeared, then another and another, eleven points of glowing phosphorescence spaced at equal intervals on the horizon. The gaps between them narrowed as they neared, like the lights of a giant aircraft approaching.
Come to me, Guilder thought. Come to me.
Details began to emerge. Not so much to emerge as to enlarge. One was smaller than the rest—that would be Carter, of course, he thought; the unknowable, anomalous Anthony Carter—but the others took his breath away. In their powerful forms and graceful movements and absolute mastery of themselves they seemed to shrink the space around them, to bend dimensions, to rewrite the course of time. They flowed toward him like a glowing river, bathing him in the light of their majestic horror.
Come to me, he thought. Come to me. Come to me.
The moment of their arrival possessed a feeling of absolute