Free The Bible Repairman and Other Stories by Tim Powers

he was going to be sick. “There would have been cops, ambulances –”
    “Yes,” said Evian, “if we hadn’t stepped in and asserted national security. Pre-emptive jurisdiction. Nerve gas, terrorists, plausible enough. We were in place around the building and had it cordoned off even before the first survivor came out.”
    “That was me, I think,” said Felise with a visible shiver. “And I think you guys
did
stun-gun me, now that I think of it.” She gave Hollis a haunted look. “It’s only six months ago, for me.”
    “What,” said Evian, leaning forward, “was it?”
    “It was silver-and-black balls,” snapped Hollis, “and donut-shaped things, that busted the place up and killed people.”
    “Silver and black,” whispered Felise, nodding.
    “What did it say?”
    Hollis’s chest was suddenly cold, and his hands were tingling, and he couldn’t take a deep breath. “Say? It didn’t
say
anything! Good God!”
Had
it
said
anything?
    “It didn’t say anything,” said Felise, still whispering, “I swear.” “
    What do you think you …
learned
from it?” “
    Nothing,” said Hollis. “Stay out of pizza parlors.”
    Evian smiled. “When’s the last time you’ve seen a doctor, got a, a check-up?”
    “What, radiation? After thirty-one years?” When Evian just continued to smile at him, Hollis thought about it. “When I was in college, I guess.”
    “That’s a long time.”
    Hollis shrugged. “All I want to hear from a doctor is, ‘If you had come in six months ago we could have done something about this.’” “
    You were going to college, but you never went again after that night.” “Sure. What’s the use of knowing anything?” “And you’ve never married.”
    “I don’t know any women well enough to hate ‘em that much.”
    Felise laughed with apparent delight. “Lyle says the same thing! It was redundant for that thing to crush people
physically.”
    Evian went on, “I gather you share Felise’s opinion that it was one thing, that appeared as a lot of inconstant shapes?”
    Hollis sighed deeply. “You guys actually know something about … all that?”
    “We’ve been looking into it for thirty years,” said Evian. “Across thirty years, anyway,” said Felise.
    Hollis rubbed his face. “Yes,” he said, then lowered his hands and looked down at them. “It was one thing. It … passed through our, our what, our space, like somebody diving into a pond through a carpet of water lilies. If the diver’s arms and legs were spread out, the water lilies might think it was lots of things diving through them.” He looked at Felise. “And how have you been, these last six months?”
    “I sleep fourteen hours a day,” she said brightly. “Lyle’s dying of cancer, probably because he wants to. We all have low self of steam.”
    “What made you come here today?” asked Evian quietly. “We’ve been monitoring you closely ever since that night. You never came back here before. In fact according to our schedule you weren’t supposed to come here today.”
    Kokolo looked sharply at Evian. “You’re saying this is an anomaly? I don’t believe it.”
    “I’ll query Chicago in the window, but I’m pretty sure.” Evian looked back at Hollis. “So – why?”
    Hollis realized that he was drunk. Good enough for now, but he’d have to get them to fetch another bottle soon.
    “Lately,” he began. He frowned at Evian, then went on, “Lately I’ve been dreaming that what happened here, after the part of that night that I could remember, was that – I met myself, finally. And that in fact there isn’t anybody else besides me. Like you’re all just things I’m imagining because I’m separated from myself now and trying to fill the absence. I – guess I came here today to see if I could meet myself again, somehow, so I can be me and stop being this, this flat roadkill.”
    “Solipsism,” said Felise. “I thought that too, for a while, but it was so obvious