Free Midnight Lamp by Gwyneth Jones Page A

table and switched off the flashlights, needless exposure in this starlit darkness. Ax had given up smoking, but he kept a pack for use in emergencies. He lit one now.
    ‘Well,’ he said, to break their silence. ‘The world gets stranger.’
    The commonsense theory said that the increase in “strange phenomena” was an illusion: just that more people were likely to believe, and therefore more daft stuff likely to get reported. Commonsense, however, might well have become obsolete. Maybe it was some kind of fall-out from the Zen Self experiments, maybe it was Gaia, finally found a voice at last, and signalling her displeasure. Ax believed, with reservations, in Gaia theory: not in the nature deity. Maybe fusion consciousness theory would tell him what to think about random ghostly werebears, once the theory had settled down.
    ‘Ax,’ announced Sage, off on his own angle. ‘We have to get sorted. I know you don’t like guns, but it’s not sensible to wander around over here unarmed.’
    ‘We’d look a little conspicuous loaded for bear, on the streets of Los Angeles.’
    ‘Sage,’ said Fiorinda, ‘Someone was fighting me.’
    ‘ What— ?’ said Sage, snapping to attention.
    ‘The bears,’ said Ax. ‘Look, I think we should get out of here. I don’t know what that was, maybe we found out why this place is deserted, but whatever causes that kind of effect we should leave, before they come back.’
    ‘Not the bears ,’ said Fiorinda to Sage. ‘Someone was fighting me. I wasn’t remotely in trouble, just off guard, but someone was there .’
    ‘ Fiorinda !’
    ‘Huh? What are you two talking about?’
    ‘How many bears were there, Ax?’ asked Fiorinda sharply.
    ‘How many? I don’t know. I’m not sure, it seemed like dozens.’
    ‘There was one. I was fooled myself at first, but think about it.’
    ‘She’s right,’ said Sage, after a moment.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Ax, wonderingly, short term memory recovering from its confusion, revealing the shadowy beast that had flashed around him.
    ‘There was one real bear, the rest of them we hallucinated? But not you?’
    ‘Someone set a real bear on us,’ cried Fiorinda. ‘And made it seem like a pack of them! Catch up , Ax! God knows what a bear means, but Harry the repo man was right. There’s another Rufus. Not as strong as me, not yet, no way, but strong enough. Oh, shit, and whoever it is knows about us!’
    ‘Hey,’ said Ax, ‘Slow down, sweetheart, don’t panic, you did good, don’t—’
    ‘The bear spoke to me!’
    ‘What did it say?’ asked Sage, adding carefully; ‘For me that didn’t happen.’
    ‘It said, kill me ,’ breathed Fiorinda. ‘And I know why. It’s a monster. It wants to die. I would want to die if that were me—’ She broke off, exasperated. ‘You think I’m having a paranoid delusion. You think I did the bear thing myself.’
    ‘No!’ they cried, appalled. But they were lying.
    Fiorinda’s head started to spin. She clutched at her hair, feeling the wadded thickness, close-packed scenes of horror, collapsing in on her—
    ‘ Sage! I’m trying to do what you said, believe everything’s real, and the bear makes sense if this world is real! Oh, God, don’t take this from me—!’
    Sage jumped up, zoomed around the table, grabbed her and hugged her tight.
    ‘Sweetheart, listen, listen. I won’t lie, I think you could be wrong. Not crazy, wrong. Weird things happen for all kinds of reasons. Don’t be scared, darling, you’re just leapin’ ahead, this does not have to mean there’s a Fat Boy.’
    A shudder went through her. ‘All right,’ she whispered. ‘That’s doable. I c-can handle “I could be wrong”.’
    Ax took her hand, and stroked her hair. ‘You could be wrong, but you’re not, usually. What do you want to do? Quit this stupid gig? You just say the word.’
    ‘No,’ she said, her face very white and eyes dark pits in the starlight. ‘You don’t either of you get it. We can’t