Free Stairway to Forever by Robert Adams Page B

from the first time he ever had entered—rather, had quite literally fallen into—this sand world, but this last, now, here, tonight—this was just too much. This was the one impossible thing that he simply could not credit, could not blind himself into believing. His cat, Tom, was dead, dead and buried and moldering in the black earth of the old mound, high above this place, and that was that.
    Or was it . . . ? If it was, then how . . . ? A dream, that was it. That had to be it, was he to retain any shred of his sanity. It was all just an especially vivid, real-seeming dream.
    He raised one trembling hand and very hesitantly touched the warm, furry feline head just behind the ragged-edged ears, his fingertips feeling the bumps and hard ridges of scar tissue that lay thickly all over that head under the covering fur. And, arching up to meet the petting hand, just as old Tom always had done, the strange but familiar blue-grey cat pushed its head up into Fitzs cold-sweaty palm.
    Then, for a long while, Fitz just lay there and stroked the cat's head and back, feeling beneath the short, but dense and velvety fur the bumpy line of vertebrae and the twin banks of hard muscle flanking the spine, feeling the movements of the highly mobile scapulae as the big cat treaded in a transport of feline pleasure.
    Nor was the cat the only one enjoying the contact. To Fitz, it felt so very, very good to once more stroke a warm, gentle, loving and furry creature. In

    the months since Tom's murder, he had forgotten until now, consciously, at least, just how soothing and relaxing and deeply satisfying it was to him just to lie or sit and stroke a cat.
    "Such a good dream," thought Fitz, aloud. "Such a pleasant dream."
    Pushing farther up onto the man's chest, the big cat, careful to keep his claws sheathed, placed one big paw low on either cheek and began to lave the stubbly chin with his wide, deep-pink tongue.
    "Tom!" croaked Fitz from a throat suddenly constricted tight. "Oh, Tom, good old Tom, boy. God, how I've missed you, Tom."
    And then . . . and then, he knew for certain that he was only dreaming. He knew because then the cat, always much loved, but still only a dumb beast for all of that, because then the cat spoke to him.
    "And I have missed you, too, my good old friend. I often have been very lonely without you, missing the loving touch of your hands upon me. Why do you not leave this hot, dry, shadeless place and come to where I now live, among wooded hills and cool valleys and sparkling little streams of fresh, cold water, all filled with tasty fish and frogs?"
    Fitz sat up then, violently, with a strangled scream bubbling from between his cold, numb lips. The moon was long since set, the first rays of the rising sun were illuming this strange world and his body was sticky, tacky with the sweat of ... of fear? No, he could never fear old Tom, alive or dead. No, fear that he might be losing his sanity, more likely. Might be going mad, as the woman he had known as "mother" had, shortly before her death.
    Preoccupied with his chaotic jumble of thoughts and half-thoughts and suppositions, he did not take out either of the bikes to bear him down to the sea

    for his regular morning swim, but simply walked, barefoot and naked, over the dunes and down the beach to where the gentle surf broke lazily upon the shore. He did not really fully awaken until he felt the shock of the night-chilled water. Then he swam about for as long as he could tolerate the cold, at which point he allowed the roller to bear him with it and deposit him in a place shallow enough to stand with the returning sea water swirling and tugging at his legs, even while the ever-constant, warm, dry beach breeze began to dry his body. It was while he stood there, some mile up the coast from the spot at which he had entered the water, that he noticed the strange large tracks leading from the surf-line mark off inland, toward the nearer range of dunes.
    They were not bird