ALL IRREGULARITIES WILL BE HANDLED BY THE FORCES CONTROLLING EACH DIMENSION
TRANSURANIC HEAVY ELEMENTS MAY NOT BE USED WHERE THERE IS LIFE
MEDIUM ATOMIC WEIGHTS ARE AVAILABLE GOLD, LEAD, COPPER, JET, DIAMOND, RADIUM, SAPPHIRE, SILVER AND STEEL
SAPPHIRE AND STEEL HAVE BEEN ASSIGNED
It was an October night at the abandoned Duwolten Rail Station with the full moon shining far above, clouds obscuring its face and the wind blowing strongly. Yet the station was a mass of silent noises; leaves tumbling across its outside platforms, wooden shutters banging in the wind, and an occasional eerie whistling that filled the air from no visible source. Another sound entered the noisy silence; heavy footsteps and the creaking of an old door opening.
A middle aged man stepped out of the building and shivered, closing his big overcoat against the chill night air. He slipped a packet of matches out of his pocket and used one to light the oil lantern he was carrying. Tidily closing the door behind him, he crossed the platform and entered the building on the other side.
This was a small hotel that was part of the station. The man was George Tully. He had left most of his equipment in the buffet of the hotel and now he set to work. He had more oil-lanterns, and out in the entry-hall he hung them up on opposite walls. He paused to survey his work; the trash he had swept to the walls, how his lanterns warmed the dead appearance of this area. Satisfied, he arranged the rest of his materials on a bench across from the staircase. He owned an old tape-recorder with a microphone he had made a stand for out of a coat-hanger. He tapped lightly on the mike, watching the gauges to see if they registered the sound. Satisfied they did, he sat down and clasped his hands together in his lap. Keeping his voice soft and low he began to speak.
"In the name of God, please tell me who you are. 'Cuz I know you're here!" He paused to peer hopefully around, then resumed. "I'm a friend, and I want to help you. So will you let me help you? Please? You can trust me...." Muffled by the dust and cobwebs there came a soft sound. Tully looked up quickly but it was just a white dove flapping its wings. He shifted the tape recorder, then moved it to the bottom steps beside a lighted candle he had left there. Picking up the candle he stepped slowly up the stairs, carefully lifting his feet over the tiny trip-wires stretched from banister to wall. At the landing, he stopped nervously, looking up into pitch darkness and feeling an odd sense of... he did not know what. Something was there, he felt it. "I... I want to help you," Tully told the air. Then he heard it, the sound of footsteps across the bridge coming his way. "Who -- whoever you are." A moment later a figure appeared in the shadows atop the staircase. Tully could see light fall on one pale hand. "I want to help you, so in the name of God... who are you?"
For a moment the figure neither moved nor spoke, then inquired quietly, "Who are you?"
Tully almost backed up. This was the first time a ghost had ever spoken to him. "Who..?"
"I am from the other side."
"What?"
"The down platform." There was a sound of exhaled breath, and Tully's candle went out.
Still adjusting to the presence of another living person here, for Tully realized that was indeed what he was facing, it took him a second to react and then it was with indignation and some anger. "My candle! Do you know what you've done?!"
The quiet voice stated calmly, "Yes," and the stranger started down.
"You've blown it out during an important psychical investigation!"
"Have I?" A young man he was, with cropped blond hair and stern grey eyes.
Tully bristled at the stranger's arrogant manner. "Yes! And that could be dangerous!" He turned automatically to follow as this annoying stranger went down the stairs. "Mind the thread that -- " He heard it snap. The young man ignored it. "There's another one there!" The stranger glanced down briefly as his passage broke the other trip-wire. Tully glared down at him and followed, pausing to turn off his tape-recorder. "I'd appreciate an explanation!" he practically yelled.
"For what?"
"Breaking in here and interrupt -- "
The blond glanced back at him and asked coldly, "You own this place, do you?"
Flustered, Tully replied, "No. But I'm in the process of conducting an investigation -- "
"So am I."
Tully absorbed that cool statement, startled. "What?"
"Conducting an investigation, a serious one." He glanced contemptuously back at Tully, "You'd better pack up your junk and leave."
Tully stared open-mouthed at the young man, shocked by his callous rudeness. Then he pulled himself together and said angrily, "When I was here first, oh no!"
He did not know the significance of how the young man suddenly turned his head slightly, did not hear the voice that reached the other. {Steel...}
"I've been here for nearly two months!"
Steel ignored Tully. [Yes?] he answered Sapphire.
{Anything new approaching?}
Putting his irritation with the man he had found into his response, Steel answered, [No. Where are you?]
{Platform, your side. I think you'd better come here, now.}
Steel turned abruptly and headed for the door, Tully called after him, "It's my ghost, you know! I located it first!"
"Have you seen it?"
"No, but I've heard it!" The blond turned around just before the door, clearly surprised, and Tully smugly picked up his candle. "I've been observing their presence for nearly two months and they -- "
Steel interrupted angrily, "You have no right! Not in this." He shook his head and gave Tully a fiercely troubled look. "You see it happens to be more than just a ghost." He turned and went through the door quickly, slamming it behind him.
Tully stared at the door for a long, puzzled moment, finally he turned away and picked up his tape-recorder to carry it into the Waiting Room. He did not see a blackness appear in the air behind him and arrow through the closed door.
Sapphire stood on the platform, hands on her hips and head lifted, intently scanning. Steel asked impatiently, "Now what?"
"The time of year now?" she asked him.
He frowned. "Late October, why?"
She walked toward him. "Not here. Not on this platform."
He raised his head and scanned as she had been doing, but he sensed nothing. "What?"
"It's summer!" Sapphire drew a breath, savoring the air.
Bewildered, Steel asked, "Summer?"
"Yes, can you feel it? It's a summer night, can you feel the warmth?" She stretched contentedly.
He blinked and shifted, puzzled. "No."
"And the air! Filled with the smell of flowers!" She walked by him, intent on absorbing all the sensory data she was picking up. "And the trees! The movement of them! And the smell of newly-cut grass..!"
Steel turned his head, watching her. Firmly he asked, "What Time-period?"
She shrugged, "I don't know."
He moved after her, not liking how distracted she was. "The source?"
Sapphire stopped, listening again. "I can't tell, it's just that... it doesn't seem malevolent..! A sensation of -- warmth and calmness." She breathed in the air, enjoying it.
Steel's stern voice cut through the feelings. "It is malevolent. It has to be!" He bowed his head and said to her urgently, "Sapphire, there are no trees, there are no flowers." To the stubborn set of her lips he added, "There's only you and I, It, and a man." Then he turned to go through the door behind them.
"It's not locked," Sapphire said thoughtfully. Steel decided not to respond to that and just went in. The room beyond was the Buffet. There were tables, and chairs stacked on top of each other and one of Tully's lanterns lighted and sitting on a table. Sapphire asked softly, "Who is the man?"
Grumpily putting his opinion of Tully into his tone Steel replied, "Some would-be ghost catcher. He's in the booking hall busy trying to make contact with what he thinks is a lost soul." Sapphire smiled, trying not to laugh aloud. "Does it feel like summer in here?"
"No. This man -- "
"What's in there?" Steel demanded, standing at the next door. Sapphire considered answering that, then grinned and waited. Steel finally turned around and shot her an injured look then asked again, "What's in there?"
She walked over to him. "It's the reception area."
"Reception area?" He hated it when he did not understand. He also hated it when Sapphire laughed at him without laughing aloud.
"Yes, this wasn't just a station, there was once a small hotel attached to it. A railway hotel."
Steel said sarcastically, "How romantic." He ignored Sapphire's wide smile.
At the other end of the platform, the blackness gathered itself and released a figure.
Steel opened the doors and entered the reception area. It was a real mess; dirt, dust, papers and cobwebs everywhere. Sapphire walked past him and picked up a newspaper. Checking the date she said mildly, "Nineteen forty-seven."
Steel let slip some of his limited local knowledge. "They still had steam engines in those days."
"Why has it chosen this station?"
"I don't know." Disgruntled, Steel turned his back on Sapphire's curious gaze.
She cocked her head and said thoughtfully, "I mean, why choose this place? It's hardly what we expected."
Steel peered up the staircase. "Depends what it has in mind, what form it's taken."
Sapphire joined him. "Or whose form it's taken." She started up.
"Oh yes," he agreed, following her slowly. Yes, the man.
"Landing, hotel bedrooms," she told him as she got to the top stair, cataloguing the place for him. Dingy grey halls and shadowy closed doors greeted her eyes. Sapphire turned and waited for Steel to join her. They walked a pace down the hall, and glanced up the next staircase. "There are two more floors like this," Sapphire waved up.
They opened doors on opposite walls of the hall. Steel stared into the one he had opened. "How many rooms are there in all?"
"Twenty." Sapphire looked into Steel's room, then closed the door. They checked the next two rooms and she said calmly, "Only it doesn't seem to have taken up residence in any of them."
Steel grumbled, "You expect it to arrive with a suitcase, do you?"
She glanced back at him over her shoulder. "No." They stepped into the two rooms. Sapphire took a few steps in and for one instant her clothing changed, becoming a bonnet and blouse, and a long brown skirt. It was just a moment, but while she could not see the clothes, she felt it in a stirring of time, a whisper on intangible winds. She stopped, puzzled, then stepped forward and it happened again, for just a tiny bit longer. Alarmed, she called, "Steel." He appeared immediately at the doorway. "There's something happening here, something changing." Steel started toward her, but she held up a hand for him to stop. "Stay there. Watch me." Sapphire walked slowly across the room, then turned a puzzled look at her partner.
"What am I looking at?" he asked, confused.
She took a few nervous steps. "Well it happened just now, twice. My -- my clothes, my hair -- changed!"
"Into what?"
Sapphire stepped into that strange stirring of time and raised her hands to tentatively touch at the area around her head. As the feeling vanished she dropped her hands and looked at Steel. "It was a light cotton shirt, and a straw hat!"
He frowned. "Summer clothes?"
"Yes!"
He paced, fretting. "Summer clothes, I don't see them. You smell summer on the platform, I don't." He paused at the door and looked back at her. "From here?"
"Yes."
He walked slowly across the room toward her but felt nothing at all. To double-check he asked her, "No?"
She shook her head. "No."
Steel looked disgruntled. "Well it seems to be interested in you, whatever it is." They both jumped as from outside came an eerie whistling, two level tones then a high one and a lowering scale of tones following it. Both of them peered out the window quickly at the platform, then Steel dashed out of the room and downstairs across the reception area into the buffet. Pausing at the door he turned to find Sapphire had kept up with him. "What did it look like to you?"
"Human."
Impatiently he asked, "Male or female?"
"I couldn't tell." Steel glared for a moment, then opened the door and they stepped out onto the platform. Side by side, they walked swiftly toward the other end. Sapphire suddenly slowed down and Steel stopped. They stood still for a moment, startled by the sweet scent of flowers suddenly filling the air. Sapphire turned quickly and froze. The filthy flower pots with their dead sticks and leaves were filthy no longer. They were full of blooming flowers. Sapphire said softly, "Steel..." She knelt and tentatively touched the flowers. In surprise she exclaimed, "They're real! They exist!" Steel turned around, startled. "The soil's fresh, it's been newly dug. Chrysanthemum compositae, Geraniaceae, cariaphallaseae..." Sapphire catalogued the flowers.
"Summer flowers in full bloom." Steel gazed at them uneasily.
"In late October," an amazed Sapphire added.
"Yes..."
Sapphire looked up curiously. "The man in the booking room..."
"What about him?"
She looked up determinedly from where she knelt by the flower pot. "Does he exist?"
Defensively Steel grumbled, "He's in there."
"But is he real?" At his glare, Sapphire shrugged. "You said it could take any form, did you do a spot-analysis?"
Steel was silent for a moment, then shot her an injured look. "Now you know that's not my territory."
Sapphire stood up and met Steel's eyes with silent laughter. "'Tis mine, you know." She brushed her hands off and rested them on her hips, teasing Steel with an affectionate smile.
Tully poured coffee from his thermos into its cup. He sighed, thinking wearily of that rude young man who so brusquely ordered him away. The blond seemed quite convinced of his own importance. *He's trying to steal my find,* thought Tully, watching shadows cast by his candle's light on the walls. *Thinks just because he's young he can force me to allow it.* Idly, Tully wondered what the stranger's name was. He started to take a drink when the door opened and the blond came in, stiff and tense.
Glaring at Tully, he said, "Are you playing tricks with me?"
Tully found the question confusing. "Tricks?"
"Yes. Tricks with flowers."
Ah, that explained the flashing eyes. Tully huffed, "I happen to be a psychical investigator, not a conjurer!" He calmed himself and asked thoughtfully, "So you've seen the flowers, have you?"
The blond faced him directly over the table. "I've seen some flowers, yes." He was obviously looking for an explanation.
"On the platform?" To the young fellow's silence, Tully shook his head. "Well I shouldn't worry, they won't be there long, they never are!" Feeling uncomfortable under the younger man's steady, suspicious gaze, Tully continued, "Even if you took some home, they'd still disappear later! I've tried it!"
The other's voice was low and cool. "And what about you?"
Tully stopped in the middle of taking a drink. "Me?"
"Are you likely to disappear... later?"
Tully started to laugh. "I shouldn't think so, no." He sipped his drink, feeling this strange youngster's fierce gaze on him.
Steel went to the door and Sapphire stepped in. She met his eyes and then walked over to stand in front of Tully who had not noticed Steel move.
Tully muttered sullenly, "I didn't make these notes to enter -- " he looked up at that point and broke off, staring at Sapphire. Standing in front of him was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Tall with a slender build, hair like silken gold sunlight... an angel's face and sweet dark eyes. Entranced, Tully stood up because he felt that was the only appropriate way to greet a vision. He ignored the young man who stood a few feet away. "How do you do?" he managed.
Eyes twinkling with affectionate laughter, the young woman held out her hand and replied, "How do you do, my name is Sapphire."
Tully automatically took the offered hand, delighted. "Oh!"
"And your name is..?"
"Oh -- eh, Tully! George Tully." Suddenly remembering he was holding one of his shoe pads in his free hand, he set it down and tentatively let it join his other hand. Her skin was soft and warm, Tully imagined she smelled as clean and fresh as she looked.
To his delight she took his hands in both of hers. "Well I'm so very pleased to meet you Mr. Tully." With both hands closed over Tully's skin, Sapphire began her spot analysis, dividing her attention enough to talk to Tully and send the information to Steel. {Muscular power emission ergs per second, pulse times acceleration, times distance divided by time...}
Tully continued on joyfully, "Well I must say I'm very pleased to meet you!"
She smiled warmly. "I suppose my friend didn't bother to introduce himself."
He smiled back, "No!"
{... spinal contraction enables movement to be made voluntary, or involuntary.} Sapphire spoke aloud to Tully, "He never does, I'm always having to apologize for him." Steel shot a glare her way.
"Are you? Oh," Tully sympathized.
{Voluntary muscle consisting mainly of fluid and skeleton is commanded at will....} "You know at first he thought you might be a ghost!"
Tully laughed, "Well I thought he was one!"
Sapphire laughed too. {... carrying nutrients and oxygen to the tissues,} "Well you certainly don't look like a ghost to me, Mr. Tully."
Tully shook his head shyly, "Oh I'm not! Flesh and blood like everyone else, I'm afraid!"
Steel broke into Sapphire's listing of Tully's composition with a flare of annoyance. [In other words it's human.]
{Yes. Life expectancy of present subject, fifty-seven point zero three years.} With that Sapphire released Tully's hands abruptly and left the room. The dazzled man followed after her but she closed the door behind her, and he was left with Steel.
"This ghost of yours..." began Steel immediately. Seeing that the other man did not hear him, he called, "Tully?"
Tully masked his annoyance behind politeness. "Yes?"
"Describe it to me."
"What?"
Sapphire listened at the door for a moment, then wandered away from it toward the staircase. She looked up thoughtfully and decided to check out the platform. Maybe the flowers were still out there.
Tully straightened up self-importantly, temporarily distracted from following Sapphire out. "Well I'm glad you asked that question, but it's not really my ghost -- "
"'It's my ghost, you know. I located it first!'" quoted the young man mockingly.
Embarrassed, Tully started, "Yes but when I said that I -- "
"Describe it to me."
Tully glared angrily and thought how annoying this fellow must be to work with. This led his thoughts back to Sapphire. "That young woman, is she, um...."
The young man looked at Tully for a moment and asked, "Is she what?"
Tipping idly back on his heels, Tully tried to sound casual. "Is she a relative of yours, or just a friend?" After all, he thought, they do look quite a bit alike; same color hair and skin tone, even their eyes.
A long moment passed as the young man considered Tully's question. "A business associate."
Tully nodded, thinking that if this was true, the young man was either an idiot or queer. "Oh. Business, yes I understand." He sat back down at the table.
The blond leaned over impatiently, "Mr. Tully -- "
George Tully interrupted, his eyes sparkling. "Of course I always work alone, myself! Not that I prefer it that way, but it's... difficult to find someone compatible, someone..." he looked up and met the other man's eyes knowingly. "Business associate." You are a fool aren't you, boy? He nodded politely to the young man who glared down at him.
Sapphire looked at the empty, grungy flowerpots and pursed her lips thoughtfully. She paced from one end of the platform to the other but nothing happened, so she entered the hotel buffet. The moment she was gone, a pocket of darkness coalesced and a young man clad in a brown soldier's uniform and carrying a rifle and kit-bag stepped out of it, whistling the same tune that had caught Sapphire's and Steel's attention earlier.
Tully was trying to explain some of the things that had happened since he came, that he had noticed. " -- Kind of darkness, that's all. Like a piece of darkness, not quite a shadow. Yes, like a piece of darkness."
The blond man sat beside him, gazing intently at him. "And that's all you've seen?"
Tully sniffed. "Well it's enough for the time being! I'm a patient observer!" He stood up with his bag and heavy coat on, and walked around the table.
The blond smoothed his coat, and said coolly, "Two months!"
"What?"
"You say you've been observing this presence for two months."
Tully tapped the barometer on the wall. "Approximately, yes." He heard the young man sigh softly and his thoughts returned to Sapphire. "Been very long?"
"What?"
"Business associates?" he asked, taking the barometer down.
The blond shifted uneasily, his gaze hawk-like. "Yeah, quite a long time, yes."
Tully raised his brow. "Good working relationship?"
"Perfect," and the young man was beginning to sound annoyed.
"Well that's a God-send, these days I -- "
"How long has it been haunting this place?"
Amiably, Tully answered, "As far as I can make out, for just those two months. From the time I happened to find it!" he said pointedly. Moving away, he paused and added, "I regard that as an important private and personal discovery! So what's your interest?"
The blond was idly fiddling with Tully's tape recorder, but he responded firmly, "I'm here to get rid of it." Tully turned around and stared at the other man in shock.
Sapphire sat on a table in the buffet, listening to the whistling outside. She got up and left the room for the reception area. The whistler fell silent as Sapphire went upstairs.
Tully puffed up with self-importance and turned on the blond man. "Making contact with that ghost as I have done and as I will continue to do is -- is essential!" There was no way he was going to be intimidated out of his discovery, no way at all.
"Not to me." The blond had picked up Tully's tapes and was turning them over in his hands curiously.
"It's necessary! I -- it's of supreme importance both to psychical and theological groups all over -- " Tully broke off as the blond abruptly stood up with one of his tapes and made for the door. "You won't get rid of that ghost, you know, you can't!"
The other man stopped, and looked at him. "It is not just a ghost."
Taking his chance, Tully snatched the tape back. "Thank you." The blond shrugged and started out the door again. "But what else can it be?"
For a hundredth time in this discussion Tully wished he knew this fellow's name. The young man stopped, eyed Tully's tape for a few seconds, then came back in and closed the door behind him. He turned to Tully and while he spoke softly, his gaze was fierce. "Whatever it is, it represents a kind of energy."
"What kind of energy?"
"Negative energy." At Tully's exasperated look the younger man said contemptuously, "Cranks like you could never understand it. You only increase the danger."
Offended, Tully flashed indignantly, "By trying to help?!"
For a moment the young man looked taken aback. Then he smiled an amused, sad kind of smile. "By interfering." He turned and sat down at the table, lifting Tully's microphone and gazing over at him. "You're still in the dark ages, Mr. Tully!"
"Am I!!" Tully pointed at the door, "Well at least in my ignorance I'm sympathetic! At least I know he's in trouble! That he's been hurt in some way!" Noticing the other man's eyes stray to his tape, he held it protectively and joined him at the table, putting the tape back in its case. To Steel's somewhat exasperated expression, Tully added, "That he needs help!"
The blond blinked. "He?"
Sapphire made her way to the room where she had felt her clothing change. From outside the whistling again warmed the October air. She headed for the window to look out and stopped, staring in surprise. Written perhaps by a finger into the dust on the window were four elevens, each atop the other. At a faint stirring feeling, Sapphire turned and beheld on the table behind her a spray of flowers.
Tully said sheepishly, "I just feel that it's a man, that's all. The ghost of a man."
"Why?"
With an embarrassed shrug, Tully answered, "It's just that -- well I sense it, I suppose. I accept that it's a man, I haven't seen him, but... I just know. And then there's the sound."
Steel had laid down lazily on the bench, purposely antagonizing Tully. Now he sat up quickly. "What sound?"
"Of the things he carries." Tully shrugged seriously as Steel looked confused. "Heavy sounds. Well not all that heavy, but it's just as if he were... as if he were carrying a lot of bulky objects -- bags, luggage -- things like that." Steel listened thoughtfully, standing up and removing his heavy black overcoat. Tully continued, "That's why I feel he was a traveller, or-or a member of the station's staff. I feel... I think he cares about this place."
The blond tossed his coat onto the bench and walked over to Tully. "He has a... weird kind of interest in the place, yes."
"No! He cares. And someone who provides flowers, has the power to decorate that platform with beautiful flowers..." Tully chuckled softly, "how could he possibly represent danger?"
Hesitantly, Sapphire picked up the flowers. As she did so her clothes changed again for only a moment. Time moved around her, breathing like a mortal being as she sniffed the flowers. Once again the whistling came from outside, and this time Sapphire followed the sound downstairs and out onto the platform, still carrying the spray. Before she looked his way, the soldier vanished. Then the flower pots filled again with blooming plants, and she heard a demanding drum-beat, pounding out the heart of a song.
Tully packed his stuff away. Steel watched him coldly from a chair he had settled down in. "When will you be back?"
"Tomorrow."
"At what time?"
Sapphire's voice called urgently, {Steel!} Steel flashed to his feet, alarmed.
Tully answered with dignity, "To continue my investigations about eleven o'clo -- "
"Yes. Be quiet."
The quiet urgency of the young man's tone startled Tully, who turned to see Steel standing stiffly, face pale. "I beg your pardon?"
"I said be quiet." Ignoring Tully, Steel cast his voice to Sapphire. [What is it?]
Her answer carried echoes of nervousness. {The platform again. Something... changing, something happening!} She stood very still and listened as a pipe joined the demanding drum, and the daylight bathing her brightened and dimmed.
[Tell me,] demanded Steel.
{The flowers have appeared again. And the smell of summer, but... there's something else, Steel. There's something else this time.}
She felt him instinctively shiver, then he asked, [Can you identify it?]
{Just... a very powerful feeling... of hatred and resentment, a strong feeling of resentment. The whole atmosphere around here is charged with it. And that sound, Steel, can you hear that?}
[No. What is it?] He closed his eyes and drifted on inner winds, trying to hear what Sapphire heard.
{It's the sound of a band. It's approaching. It's coming here... and I can hear them, marching.}
Tully had been watching Steel intently, trying to understand what was happening. Now he heard the sound of a marching band and, startled, he rushed to the door calling back, "Do you hear that?"
Steel ignored Tully and sent frantically to his partner, [Be careful, Sapphire!]
Tully called again from the door, "You hear it?"
Sapphire had not answered him. Steel sent again desperately, [Sapphire be careful!]
She answered him this time, but her voice was tinged with spinning time. {I'm all right, Steel.} On the platform, her clothing changed again and stayed that way.
He should have stayed with her, provided a buffer when the attack came. He summoned intently, [Sapphire! Leave that platform now!]
A voice sang powerfully, the song the whistler had been whistling, "What's the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile..!"
Sapphire was delighted and paced along the platform. Steel's voice batted at her all a-fire with protective fright. [We're in the waiting room; come here, now! Sapphire!]
She stopped for a moment. Time twisted and left her floating in a sort of calm. When she spoke her words curled softly in a different accent. "It's hot... it's a hot summer day."
From somewhere the voice was still singing, "... Smile boys that's the style! What's the use of worrying?"
The tall young woman with long golden hair smiled wistfully. "He likes the sun, he says it makes things grow, makes the cold warmer. I can hear wood pigeons, and bees. It's very hot..! And very, very still," she whispered, no longer hearing the marching band that still played in some other time. "He's with them, you see. It's their special send-off." She entered the booking hall, just a door away from Steel and Tully.
Tully stood at the door and tried again to catch Steel's attention. "Do you hear it? Do you hear that?"
[Who are you, Sapphire?] The dim, dirty window of the waiting room suddenly was aglow with outside sunlight. Steel ignored it; nothing mattered but communication with his partner. [Who are you?] he called again.
Sapphire turned around in the booking hall, looking about curiously. She spoke aloud to Steel, to herself. "No passenger trains today. This station is closed to ordinary passengers. The waiting room doors are locked! There's just the girls. Just the girls who gave... who gave them...." She fell silent and dreamingly bowed her head.
Steel moved to the door, ignoring the sunlight streaming in. Tully ran to the window exclaiming, "Look! Look it's daylight out there!" He grabbed for the doorknob but could not open it. Stunned, he turned to Steel. "They're locked!"
Both men looked up as joining the cacophony outside came the hiss and shriek of a train braking. Steel pressed his palms and forehead against the door trying desperately to reach Sapphire.
She felt a melancholy grief, a loss to her heart and soul. The doors at the other end opened and a young man appeared in the entryway. She was proud of him and afraid for him as well. He stared at her across the room and she raised the spray of flowers to her lips. He marched stiffly forward and stopped just in front of her. His was a young farmer's face, hazel-blue-green eyes and fair skin, and he was tall. He said to her softly, "The girls who gave us flowers."
A cue of sorts for her to raise the flowers and pin them on his lapel. She looked up, met his eyes and began drowning in the memories he held out to share with her. The sound of a train pulling out and then... and then... crying in pain as his own life dripped into a growing puddle of blood; terrified as bombs fell all around and fires raged near him oh no, not burn to death! Better a quick death help me! And the terrible burning smell of nearby trees, fear that his flesh would be the next smell before he died HELP ME!!
A whimper escaped Sapphire's lips. Her eyes closed and tears spilled through the thick lashes as she felt his remembered pain. Then he stepped forward and through her, letting her feel the full intensity of his anger and pain. She gasped for breath, then she was released into her normal thoughts and called out, "Steel!"
Night came back abruptly and the waiting room door once again was unlocked. Steel burst through it and Sapphire joined him quickly, pointing at the stairs. The soldier was walking up them.
Steel hissed and ordered, "Wait!" The soldier stopped mid-step.
Tully dashed back into the waiting room, snatched up his cross and put it around his neck, grabbed up his candle and quickly came back out dodging around the two blondes and heading for the stairs. "It's amazing! Really amazing."
Steel aimed his voice at Sapphire. "Tell me."
She was still trembling, watching the ghost with wide, frightened eyes. "He... it is without life."
"An external projection?"
"No, an after-image." She shuddered.
Steel was startled. "After-image?"
"Yes, it lived once."
Tully babbled in awe, "To think we're witnessing... it's amazing!"
Steel headed forward, sparing the older man a quick glance. "Would you please be quiet?" He ignored Tully's wounded look and moved to the foot of the stairs. To the soldier he asked slowly, "Who... were you?"
Tully whispered angrily, "Surely you can see he was a soldier!"
Sapphire moved to Tully's side, watching the soldier tense as Steel coldly repeated, "Who... were you?"
The soldier turned around and glared angrily down at Steel. His voice was young and wounded. "Who am I, more like!"
Steel shook his head and said firmly, "No. Sorry, but you're dead. Who were you?"
Tully read the quick pain on the soldier's face and tried to soothe with tone, speaking to Steel, "Please give the poor lad a chance."
A hand touched his arm, Sapphire said softly, "Please... let him do it his way."
Steel ignored all of that, his attention on the young soldier. "You might as well tell me."
The boy lifted his head, challenging Steel. "Reckon you might as well find out for yourself!"
"All right. What do you want, here?"
The anger left the young soldier's face. He almost smiled and dared them coolly, "Reckon you might as well find that out more." Then he turned away from them and continued up the stairs, whistling his tune. He turned on the landing and vanished, Steel and Tully plowed to a stop on the stairs and stared up.
Tully turned furiously on Steel. "You see what you've done? You've driven it away!" Steel shrugged and started down to join Sapphire. "So that's your threat, is it?! That poor lad! I mean... I mean is that really your idea of evil?!!"
Steel said firmly, "Yes."
Tully blew up and shouted at the blond, "Well 'tisn't mine!" Realizing the uselessness of shouting at Steel, Tully turned and went up the stairs pleading, "Please come back! In the name of God, please come back. I heard a voice from the heavens saying unto me... blessed are the dead, which die in the Lord from the henceforth... Yea, said the spirit, that they may rest from their labor...."
They abandoned Tully to his efforts and went to the other part of Duwolten, to the buffet. Sapphire walked into the room and joined a pacing Steel. She said mildly, "The afterimage is of someone who died during the Great War."
Her partner was instantly confused. "Great War?"
"Nineteen-fourteen to nineteen-eighteen."
Bewildered, Steel sat down in a chair. "Died here? You mean this was a battleground?" It didn't look like one.
"No, the sendoff was from here. His sendoff. Didn't you hear the train?"
He nodded. "Yes."
"And the women?"
Steel looked up from Tully's lantern. "Women?"
"Yes, the ones who once cheered them on their way, made them think that they were heroes."
A laugh broke from him. "No, I didn't hear them."
"I did. It was something he wanted me to experience, to participate in." Steel eyed her sharply, and she smiled. "Just momentary, I don't think he wanted to frighten me, he just wanted me to experience it."
He folded his arms and glared indignantly at the table. "Why?"
Sapphire considered the question carefully. "Because those women were part of this place for him, he resented what they stood for."
Now this was information he could use, but it still astonished him. "You sensed that!"
"Yes." She listened to the flow of his thoughts, his determination to work out this puzzle to his satisfaction.
"Was it the same feeling of resentment and hatred you felt earlier on on the platform?"
She thought about that, too. "Some of it, yes. But not all of it."
Steel stood up, his thoughts a streak of hunger for data. "So this is where it all started for him! His death started here!" Sapphire bowed her head in agreement, feeling Steel's mind twist around furiously. He began to pace, grumbling, "Great wars! Civil wars! Holy wars! You know sometimes I wonder why they bother to send us here!" He shook his fist angrily. "It's not enough. That amount of resentment, it's not enough!" He stalked back and forth, thinking aloud. "He was a soldier! He went to war, he must've allowed for the possibility of being killed prematurely!" Finally Steel sat down, fuming. "No it's not enough." When she was sure he wasn't going to get up again, Sapphire joined him. He looked up at her. "You're sure that was the war he was killed in?"
"Oh yes. I saw his death. It was something else he wanted me to experience."
Steel gave her a long, fretful look, resting his hands in his lap. Suddenly he frowned. "Where's Tully?"
"Waiting."
"Where?"
Silently laughing, she answered, "In the waiting room."
He looked at her indignantly for a moment then stood up abruptly suddenly very worried. "I'm going to send him home." He stalked out the door with Sapphire quick on his heels and they went into the other building. Steel paused and looked over at the staircase. Softly he said to Sapphire, "We have to find out who he was. His name, where he lived, and exactly where and when he died. What his intentions are."
Tully sat on the bench, all puffed up and angry. When Steel walked in the older man looked up at him accusingly and grumbled, "He didn't come back!"
"No?"
Tully shifted angrily. "Well I'm hoping, praying if you like, that he hasn't deserted us for good!"
Steel sat down beside Tully. "I doubt he has."
"That'd be a pity, a great pity. I feel the ghost of that poor lad has things to say."
To Tully's surprise, the blond man shrugged agreeably. "I'm sure he has."
"Things to tell us!"
"Mr. Tully -- "
"So I've decided to stay on tonight, not to go home."
Tully could almost feel the gray eyes blaze. "Have you."
Suddenly scared, the old man stood up and away from Steel's cold gaze. "A sort of emergency service, if you like. But no more jokes! I'd rather you didn't make fun of me." He had the satisfaction of Steel looking away rather sheepishly. "I'm not stupid, I happen to realize -- " Tully cut himself off as the other man looked at him again.
"Realize what?"
Having the strangest feeling of knowing a secret, Tully found himself able to smile. "That the pair of you seem to be working along similar lines to me." For just a moment the faintest flicker of amusement appeared in the blond's eyes. Puffily, Tully said to it, "All right then, alternative lines."
"Yes I'd prefer that."
Tully glanced over at the door where Sapphire was standing, and flashed her a 'point made' look. She smiled warmly back at him. Emboldened, he continued, "I mean I'm aware of your... well I suppose your tour de force."
Sapphire cocked her head. "Our what?"
"The way you're able to communicate. Some method of thought-transference, is it?"
For a moment Sapphire seemed quite startled, then she almost grinned. "Something like that, yes."
Tully nodded. "Very clever. And you obviously have a leaning towards clairvoyance also, must've taken years of practice." While Tully was preoccupied with Sapphire, Steel had been rummaging through the tapes on the table. He looked up as Tully babbled on. "Now my approach to the supernatural is much more -- "
"Mr. Tully!" Steel interrupted sternly.
Tully glanced around. "Yes?"
"Do you have any more tapes for this machine?"
Wary of letting Steel into his stuff, Tully snatched his bag up. "I have some, yes."
"Recordings you've made here during the past two months?"
"Yes." Tully backed away as Steel came swiftly over, quite obviously after the bag. "Well I'm not giving them to you! You referred to my equipment as junk!" They glared at each other.
"It's still junk, give them to me."
"Oh, no no!" Tully shuffled the bag behind his back but he realized if the blond wanted it enough, there would be no way of keeping it from him. An idea hit Tully and he said reasonably. "This happens to be part of a record of my research, now I've answered a great deal of questions from you, but you haven't answered one of mine." Steel shifted uneasily under Tully's steady gaze. "So as fellow investigators -- " Tully hurried on as Steel opened his mouth to object being classed with him, " -- a part of my research information in exchange for a part of yours."
Steel considered that, then smiled and aimed his words at Sapphire. "Tell him." Tully allowed him to take the bag then, and on his way out of the room Steel stopped beside Sapphire and, giving Tully a look of pure malicious mischief, held up two fingers pinched together. "This much!" and left.
Sapphire watched him go, then smiled at the frustrated Tully.
Steel crossed the platform and went through the buffet into the hotel. He walked up the darkened stairs to the room where Sapphire had said her clothes had changed, where he set the tape recorder on a low table and started rewinding the tape that was on it.
Tully and Sapphire sat on the bench in the waiting room. Tully was gratified that Sapphire looked straight at him and seemed to take seriously everything he said. "This force, what does it look like?" he asked her.
"We don't know."
"And yet you say that it's dangerous, it's evil!"
"Yes," she said seriously.
He thought about the impression he had of the young ghost, and said determinedly, "Then it can hardly be the ghost of that poor soldier! The man who killed him, perhaps."
"No, this force is not human."
Her tone left no room for argument, and it startled Tully. "But you said-uh -- "
"It simply draws its power from the emotional responses of the human kind."
Tully frowned. "You mean the human soul?"
She considered that, then smiled. "No I do not mean the human soul. I mean responses."
"Like what?"
"Like hatred, anger, resentment." Her attention was drawn away suddenly, time drew a breath outside. Alerted, she walked to the door and looked out.
Tully was shocked. "You're trying to tell me that this force thrives upon the feelings, upon some of the worst human feelings?"
She turned back to him, "Yes."
"Of living people?"
"No. Preferably the dead." The feeling of time moving outside was growing at an alarming rate. She left the room, closing its door behind her. Tully stared at the closed door in confusion then nervously picked up his cross and held it tightly.
On the platform, the blackness coalesced again, then vanished. It left behind the young soldier and another man, a man in a flight jacket and goggles. 
The two men looked at each other, then as one their gazes turned toward the hotel. The soldier started briskly toward it, the pilot followed after him. They stopped outside the door and considered their next move.
Tully looked out the waiting room door. Sapphire stood at the base of the stairs, her attention firmly focused up. He joined her and asked, "So where does this force come from?"
"We don't know that either," she answered without looking at him.
"Well you seem to know enough!" he huffed.
"Yes."
Tully had a feeling Sapphire wasn't going to answer many more questions, so he chose his next one carefully. "Well how can this force use the persona of the dead?"
"Because the persona lives on."
"Where?" Tully asked quickly.
"In the atmosphere. It only has to be activated."
"All right, so where does the -- "
"No more questions, please." She turned and stood sideways on the stair, her mind elsewhere.
"WHAT?"
"The exchange is over."
Tully blew up indignantly. "It is not! I let your friend have four tape recordings! All I've had so far in return is a few hints about how dead people..."
A door slamming outside startled Tully into silence. A moment later Steel's voice called, "Mr. Tully!" and the blond came in.
Tully turned to him, relieved. "Ah, just the man I wanted to see -- "
"The first tape on this machine." Steel was carrying it.
Startled, Tully asked, "Yes?"
"Had it ever been used before?"
"No." Steel headed for the waiting room, so Tully tried to talk to Sapphire. "It's a blank tape -- " he broke off as the woman quickly followed her partner. "-A new one!" he called after her, hurrying to catch up with them.
Steel set the recorder down and asked Tully, "Did you check it before you used it?"
"Of course, I always do!"
"And?"
Thoroughly annoyed, Tully grumbled, "Well I just said it was blank!"
Steel turned to his curious partner. "The first and only recording with this tape was out there earlier this evening."
Tully snapped angrily, "Yes."
"Have you played it back since?"
"Well I haven't had much chance, have I?"
Sapphire interrupted softly, "What is it, Steel?"
Something had upset him, that was apparent. He fiddled with the tape player, rewinding the tape, and then turned it on. Tully's voice came clearly, with little distortion and Tully felt proud, even though the blond man kept eyeing him suspiciously. "In the name of God, please tell me who you are. 'Cuz I know you're here! I'm a friend, and I want to help you."
Tully fidgeted under Steel's stern gaze. "Well there's nothing wrong with that!"
"Listen!" Steel ordered, sitting on the table-edge.
"So will you let me help you? Please? You can trust me...."
The flapping sound that suddenly came and went, Tully identified for them. "A pigeon." Sapphire smiled at him.
There was a thump, and a crackling sliding sound. Steel lifted his head. "That's you moving the machine?"
"Yes."
"You don't switch it off when you move it?" he asked accusingly.
Tully flushed. "No."
Then the sound changed. It was sudden and startling how the background noise suddenly became hollow, as if in a cave, and there was a humming sound like electrical equipment. Tully frowned, confused. Within the background noise was the sound of someone breathing in quick, shallow breaths. And then a voice spoke, a very young, frightened and helpless voice. "What're they doin'?"
The voice that answered was much deeper, and a bit older-sounding. Both voices kept catching, as if they couldn't breath well. "Radio... radio messages. Making... making distress call."
Steel shared a pained look with Sapphire as the younger voice spoke again. "Jamie's passed out. The air... not enough air..."
The other said sternly, "Then don't waste it talking."
Still the young one spoke dazedly between harsh breaths, "How... how deep are we? At the bottom? Aye? No pumps workin', an-and we're at the bottom, aye? Tanks are full... and we're at the bottom. Right at the bottom..!" The speaker was obviously suffering from oxygen starvation, his repeated comments a symptom.
"Don't... don't talk. Save... save the air...."
The hollow sound went away, they heard Tully's angry voice on the recorder. "You've blown it out during an important psychical investigation!" Steel had apparently been out of the microphone's range, as it hadn't recorded his response. "Yes! And that could be dangerous!"
Steel reached down and shut off the tape. They all stood for a moment, painfully affected by the sad, young voices they had heard.
Tully shifted and asked softly, "And that was picked up..?"
"On the footbridge stairs."
That the blond didn't sneer or remind him he should know where the sound had been picked up, somehow made Tully feel less angry with him. "But I heard nothing at the time."
"No?" Tully shook his head. "Have you ever heard anything like it before?" Steel was rapidly recovering what seemed to be his usual temper and interrogated Tully mercilessly.
"No," Tully answered, still shocked.
"NOTHING like that," frowned Steel.
Tully shook his head gravely. "No. Only the sounds of the soldier."
Sapphire steepled her fingers and murmured, "Sounds like death again, someone's death."
Steel flinched. "Yes."
"Where were they?" Sapphire puzzled.
Tully glanced at her, "In a submarine." At another time he would have been gratified at how startled the two young people were, but now he was still grieving for the ghosts. "And yet..."
Steel came over to him, "What?"
"Well, our young soldier was obviously from the first world war, and that seems sort of... sort of later."
"Why later?" Steel had shifted to data-gathering mode, intently.
"Well I don't think they had electric pumps for ballast tanks in the first World War. But I couldn't swear to that but uh -- " he broke off. Steel had held his hand out to Sapphire and the two left the room. Tully quickly followed after.
Steel stood near the bottom steps and pointed up. "I was at the top of the stairs on the foot bridge. Tully was at the foot here, he -- "
"Working my way up."
They both looked at him, apparently they had forgotten he was there. "Working his way up!" Steel and Sapphire looked at each other in silent agreement, and then the woman started forward. "Try the stairs," suggested Steel.
Sapphire took a few steps, the two men watched her anxiously. She stopped and looked back at them. "Nothing."
"What about the top?"
She went up to the landing then paused and whispered softly, "Yes. There's something... somewhere." She could feel time twitch and stir nearby and looked back down at Steel. "It's not very strong. But somewhere here."
"What are you sensing, resentment?"
She shook her head. "No."
He frowned, this data didn't fit. "Hatred?"
"Neither of those. It's more like..." suddenly she stiffened, taking a deep breath as her feelings identified the contents of the nearby emotional field. "Fear, and hopelessness."
"What's the temperature?"
"Cold."
Tully leaned near Steel, whispering softly, "That's odd, I've never recorded a temperature drop there, always the opposite." Steel flashed him a startled look.
Sapphire's mind drifted in shifting time, "Yes it's quite cold."
Steel's voice anchored her from a distance, "Give me details."
She stepped up the stairs and it got colder, she shivered and hugged herself. "It's just cold. But it's a strange sort of cold, like..."
"Like at the bottom of the sea?"
When she hit the top stair, Sapphire stepped into a pocket of light. brilliant clear white light and blue sky surrounded her, high winds tossed her hair. "No, the other extreme!"
"What?!"
"It's like high in the air! The air is thin, it's a high altitude!"
"But it's still dark..?"
Her cheeks were cold, and she raised her hands to warm them. "No! The sun is shining! It's very bright, it's almost dazzling!" Time twitched again around her, then straightened out abruptly, and Sapphire found herself standing in the dark. "It's gone. Whatever it was, it's gone, Steel!"
"Maybe it's all designed to confuse us." Steel and Sapphire stepped together onto the platform. They had left Tully behind inside. Steel worried at the problem like a dog with a bone, "It's all a bit of a mixture, isn't it? Bottom of the sea, high in the air. Things out of order, out of time."
"And the voices?"
Steel turned around, not liking the situation they were in. "It has to be the soldier. The main instrument is the soldier, only him."
A light wind ruffled their hair and tossed leaves along the platform. "Yes," Sapphire agreed.
Steel glanced at her, then began to pace. "We've seen him. We know this place is a goad to him, that his resentment started here."
"Is that what you're thinking, or what you're hoping?"
"Hoping. I'd rather not have to think the obvious." He stopped pacing and knelt beside Tully's tape recorder.
"That this could be a recruiting ground for the dead."
He picked up the tape recorder, "Yes. I'm gonna check the other three tapes." Steel entered the hotel and started upstairs, pausing on his way up because he heard the soldier whistle tauntingly. Steel got to the room he had appropriated as his and set the recorder on a table, rejecting bedsprings. The taunting whistling drew him to the window, but there was nothing to be seen. Shaking his head, he went back and put a tape in the recorder.
On the platform, the soldier appeared first and then the pilot, then three young men in coveralls. The soldier looked up toward the room Steel was at work in.
Steel dusted off a chair and carried it over to where he was going to sit. As he set it down, he felt a change. For an instant he was clad in a flight jacket, the pilot's uniform. Steel froze, then cautiously checked his head and arms, but he was still in his normal suit and tie. Calming himself, he sat down and reached for the recorder and the change manifested itself again, catching him off guard.
Sunlight streamed through his cockpit and warmed the control panel. He desperately moved to counter the malfunctions, but the plane began to shake around him and its nose suddenly dipped as the engine stumbled and roared, then exploded. He frantically held onto the wheel, sweat-soaked hands slipping in his leather gloves. Falling, falling! No way out! In despair he closed his eyes as the room (room?) spun around him.
Sapphire sat with Tully in the waiting room. She was getting rather bored but then she raised her head to look at Tully. Something drastic had changed... it wasn't him. She looked up and reached out to Steel.
Tully glanced up from his book and saw a look of quick horror cross Sapphire's face. "What's wrong?" She didn't look at him, just got to her feet and went quickly out to stand at the foot of the stairs. Tully followed her and spoke very softly, coaxingly. "Will you please tell me what's wrong?"
She turned around, still intent upon the upper level, then finally looked at him. "It's Steel." Without bothering to explain more, she headed out onto the platform. He followed quickly.
Tully stopped, "Look!" The flowerpots were once again alive.
Sapphire's voice was icy with anger. "Ignore them." As he bent to touch the flowers she spoke coldly, "I said ignore them, Mr. Tully. Stay with me." He stared in astonishment at her as she started purposefully across the platform.
"Yes but the flowers are-!" Tully broke off as he heard the soldier whistling loudly nearby.
Sapphire glanced around, her anger palpable. "We must ignore that too... for now." She led Tully into the reception area. "Steel?!" Aside from the whistling, there was silence.
"It seems to be everywhere!" Tully edged near to Sapphire.
"Yes, I know. Steel!?!" She started toward the stairs.
Tully rushed after her speaking frantically. "All I wanted was a chance to try and talk to him!" Sapphire stopped on the bottom step as Tully started again, "The soldier..." he trailed off as she turned.
She was angry, and it frightened him how sharp her look had become. "Mr. Tully, I'm sure you will get your chance but not just now."
He gazed helplessly after her as she started going up. She paused in mid-step. {Steel!} She felt him above her in beaten silence and gently called, {Tell me, Steel. Try to tell me what's happened.} Still he couldn't answer. She glanced down at Tully, her expression a summons to follow her.
"Where're you going?" Tully asked as they got to the top and Sapphire started up the next staircase. He stepped up with her, saying, "There's nothing there!" The words rang in a hollow, damp tunnel of sound. Sapphire stopped and came down a step. "Listen!"
"I heard that."
"Like being in a room under the ground," Tully whispered.
"Or under the sea..." Sapphire reminded him.
"Yes." They stepped down into the hall, and when he spoke again, "Under the sea... we're back to normal!" Tully exclaimed.
Sapphire turned and moved toward the third room down, suddenly sure where Steel was. Tully gallantly ducked in front of her. "I'll go in there first please! You just keep behind me, right?" He opened the door cautiously and they walked in. On the other side of the room, they could see Steel slumped in a chair, his back to them. Sapphire cut Tully off and moved anxiously to touch the chair. "Is he asleep? Or what, is he ill?" Tully asked nervously.
Sapphire looked at him. "Mr. Tully..."
"Yes, can I help?"
"Would you check the other rooms on this floor, please?"
He frowned, "Check them?"
"Make sure there's nothing strange in them."
Tully headed for the door, "Leave it to me." He paused in the doorway, staring worriedly at Sapphire who had turned and bent over her partner. "If you get worried -- " he broke off as she looked at him, eyes ablaze with fury.
But she said softly, "I'll shout."
"Fine." He closed the door behind him, glad to be out.
Sapphire turned and ever so gently took hold of Steel's upper chest, ignoring the soft brown hair that capped his head. She pulled him back and as she did so, for a split instant his clothing changed into a flight jacket and the rest of a pilot's uniform. {Steel,} she whispered into the still mind. The body was not his, and fit his suit badly as it was taller. It was a tall young man with brown hair and nearly black eyes, and eyebrows that grew together in a rectangular face, faintly slanted eyes betraying a bit of Mongolian ancestry.
He stared blindly and then spoke, Steel's flatter tones through another man's vocal chords. "Take it back, Sapphire. Take time back. But hurry."
She whispered softly, "Yes, Steel."
The door swung open and a relieved Tully stepped in. "It's all all right out there -- "
"Please stay there, he's unconscious," Sapphire said urgently.
"Unconscious! Well let me -- "
One more time Tully saw Sapphire go dangerously cold. "Mr. Tully, I KNOW him, I KNOW what to do. Just stay there." The open threat in her eyes scared him to obedience.
"All right," he said quietly.
Steel reached through terrifying distance. [Quickly Sapphire, take time back.]
She knelt beside the chair, intent. {With Tully here?}
He turned slightly and looked desperately into her eyes. [You'll have to. You must get me back, quickly.]
{Take my hand then.} She grabbed his and they twined their fingers together. Tully watched in confusion. {Keep me here,} Sapphire told Steel. And then she began to turn time. Tully vanished from the room.
He appeared outside the door, a tape rewound just a little, "I'll go in there first please. You just keep behind me, right?" Again, the tape rewound to Tully coming around the landing heading up.
Steel held on tight to Sapphire's hand. "Quickly. Quickly!" he gasped.
Tully hurried by the flowerpots heading for the hotel. Time flipped.
Steel fell back against the chair he sat on, the body he had been forced into shaking violently. "Quickly... or I'm as dead as he is!"
Tully appeared at the bottom steps in the reception area.
Suddenly the room Sapphire and Steel were in filled with brilliant sunlight and high-atmosphere winds, Sapphire looked up.
Tully came through the doors onto the platform.
He sat reading his book, looked up alertly and then headed for the waiting room door.
The walls around faded into a brilliant blue sky. Sapphire stood up, her hands tight around Steel's and she hung on tightly as Steel, wearing the pilot's clothes, fell through the air. For a moment the room was back with a terrified Steel in the seat clinging to Sapphire's hands, then it was the pilot, clinging and falling with a roaring engine in his ears and then... then the wind died and the light faded. Sapphire looked down at Steel. He stared dazedly ahead, then pulled her hand down and kissed it thankfully.
Tully spoke outside the door. Steel glanced around, met Sapphire's eyes and released her hand. She disappeared, pulled back by time to where she had been. The door opened and Tully stepped in, followed by Sapphire. Steel turned around and asked politely, "Yes?"
A human was a tape that both played and recorded. Tully stuttered in confusion, "Oh, uh... we've been looking for you."
"Why?"
Tully's mouth opened and closed, his first impulse for some peculiar reason being to ask Sapphire if Steel was asleep. "Because uh -- " He finally looked at Sapphire. "Yes why?" and then his subconscious memory jogged him. "Wasn't I supposed to be... checking out the other rooms on this floor, or something?"
"Yes," she answered him softly.
"Making sure there's nothing strange in them?"
"That's right."
"Ah, leave it to me." He left, closing the door behind him.
Sapphire sat beside Steel, noting that he was still very pale. "Remember?" she asked him.
He whispered hollowly, "I'm not sure," and held out a hand to her.
She took it gently, and let her power flicker. "Remember now?"
Steel gazed into the distance, "Yes...." With a gasping cry he leaped from the chair and spun to stare at it wildly. After a moment he pulled himself together and turned to Sapphire. "It was a death. Someone's death."
"Yes, it was your turn to experience it."
"Who was sitting in that chair, the soldier?"
She considered that, "No it was someone else. Another arrival. A new recruit."
"What did he look like?"
Sapphire looked at him. Despite iron control, his face was still white. She stood up and walked around behind him. "He was young, he was wearing flying clothes."
"What time period?"
"Their second World War. But there were no connections with this place."
Steel frowned, puzzled. "None at all?"
"Not during his life, none that I could sense."
If possible, he turned paler as he spoke. "And how close did I come to joining him... in his last flight?"
She touched his shoulder, gripped it tightly. "Almost as near as the real thing."
He turned his head, eyes touched with haunted fear, and then determined. "Yes? Yeah well I've had enough of GHOSTS waging war on us!" He snatched her hand from his shoulder and headed for the door. "It's time we fought back!"
He jerked the door open and almost plowed into a very startled Tully who started to speak, "It's all all right out there -- "
"Lights!" Steel said harshly.
Tully stared at him blankly, his inner-mind floundering in brief confusion. "Hmmm?"
Steel pointed at the lamp on the wall. "Lights are for the living!"
"What?"
Slowing himself down, Steel said smoothly, "The darkness is for the dead, right?"
"Well, uh -- "
"I think it's about time we got some of these working," he indicated the gas-lamps.
Tully looked doubtful. "You'll be lucky."
"I should think so, yes." Steel headed out the door.
"These lights have been out of action for donkey's years!" Tully hollered after him.
"So?"
"So how do you expect to get them to work?" Steel didn't answer, hurrying downstairs.
Tully frowned at Steel when the young man came into the waiting room. The blond was down to his shirt and thin tie, having removed his jacket to work on the gas-system's controls. Steel wiped his hands off now and looked up at the light, seeming satisfied. Tully asked him, "Light it?" still very doubtful.
"Yes."
Sitting on the bench as he was, Tully grumped, "Well how on Earth do you expect me to light that?"
Steel cocked his head and shot Tully an innocently surprised look. "With a match! Come on, up you get." He picked up his coat and started putting it back on. When Tully didn't move, he said impatiently, "Will you get up and light it?"
Tully sighed and stood under the light grumbling, "But they're obsolete!"
Steel said mockingly, "Well you should know about obsolescence, Mr. Tully!"
"I beg your pardon?!"
Steel snatched up the matchbox and shoved it at him. "Just light it," he said, straightening his coat and doing up its buttons.
Tully stepped up onto the bench. "But what about all the other lamps?"
The other man's response was faintly teasing. "They're waiting to be lit."
"'They're waiting to be lit,'" mimicked Tully. He opened the light's cover, pulled a cord to release the gas, and lit a match. He held it under the light, but nothing happened. After a moment Tully shook out the match and closed the light, stepping down and giving Steel an "I told you so," look.
Steel walked over to stand beside Tully and gazed up at the light. There was a sudden soft whoosh and Tully gawked up at the now lighted lamp. He looked over at Steel, who was quite pleased with himself. "Beautiful," the blond said. Then he turned and left the room.
"One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five." Steel walked as he counted, his mind flicking out light pulses of heat leaving a trail of lighted gas lamps behind him. He entered the buffet and then reception area, heading upstairs to the hall where Sapphire stood, looking up the next flight of stairs.
"It's not happening now," she told him.
"When it was, did you sense anything?"
"Not really," she glanced around at his startled face.
"NO responses?"
She shook her head. "It didn't last for very long."
Steel paced. "Did you sense anything that was once human?"
Sapphire shrugged and watched him. "There wasn't enough time."
He stopped, then began pacing again. "One, two, three, four -- " he stopped again. "So there was only... really a change in the quality of the sound."
"Yes."
"And you think it came from the submarine."
She turned and looked suspiciously upwards. "From a compartment in that submarine, yes."
Steel stalked into the room where he had left the tape-recorder and hit play. Tully's voice came out. "I... want to help you." Snatching up the machine, he joined Sapphire on a bench in the hall. They listened to the hollow sound, faint machinery humming.
"That?" Steel asked her.
"Not as much, not nearly as much."
Steel hit fast-forward and then play again. The hollow sound had a different pitch this time. "How 'bout that?"
"No I didn't hear that."
He sat restlessly beside her. "You didn't hear that and you didn't hear the sound of the electric generator."
She shook her head, "No."
He hit fast-forward twice and then play. The young, terrified voice spoke. "The air... no' enough air..."
"Don't waste it talking..."
Sapphire cocked her head, remembering. "There are three of them, and one's unconscious."
"H-how-how deep -- " continued the younger voice.
Sapphire looked at Steel. "Young voices."
"-bottom?"
Nodding, Sapphire added, "The voices of young sailors."
"No pumps workin', and we're at the bottom..!" The voice sounded helpless and bewildered, and so young.
Sapphire drew a breath, reaching to shut off the recorder. "I think -- I think that what Tully and I experienced was later than that, when the electrical supply to the submarine had failed."
Steel winced. "The men were already dead?"
"Well there was no air left for them to breathe."
He thought very hard, "And they were all young. The soldier, the pilot, the men from the submarine."
"Seems like it, yes."
Steel pursed his lip, intent. "Young men die in war, it's ACCEPTED, so they can't be using that."
"Maybe they were work -- "
He did not hear her. "But they're still here!" Sapphire rolled her eyes and waited for him to come out of this intense focus. "It's supplying them with power..." he paced fretfully. "It's allowing them to use after-images of their own deaths to fight us. Therefore each one has his own death, his own individual resentment."
"Maybe they're working as a group."
He looked quite startled at her. "Collective grievances?"
She nodded. "The soldier acting as head-man."
"The spokesman."
"Yes," she agreed.
He started pacing again. "Yeah, maybe. The spokesman usually wants to negotiate, and he hasn't asked for anything from US."
Sapphire waited, and when he stayed silent said pointedly, "Not yet."
Steel went back into the room, to its window. He held his fingers bare inches away. "Just before I took that crash dive, he was keeping things cheerful by whistling that little tune of his..." He moved away to the chair. "And there was another thing, written on the window."
"Eleven."
Startled, Steel said, "Yes."
Sapphire raised her head, eyes distant as she tapped into a data-source in another time. "The Great War ended with the suspension of hostilities, the fighting stopped the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month." Finished, she turned to him and waited.
"There were FOUR elevens." He began to pace again.
She nodded, "I know."
"So do ghosts make mistakes with their arithmetic?"
"What?"
Steel was on a roll, completely furious. "Well this particular ghost made another kind of mistake." He glanced briefly at her. "Wouldn't you say he feels a bit too sorry for himself?"
"Why?"
He sat down, his back to her and a stiffness to his shoulders that invariably boded ill for anyone who angered him. "Showing you the kind of women that sent him to war, haunting the place that gave him send-off."
She softly reminded him, "Writing out the date of a cease-fire he never lived to see."
The tense shoulders sagged somewhat. "Yeah, he's a ghost with FEELINGS. It's almost as -as if he's asking for sympathy..! *I* think whatever it is made a BAD choice in him."
Sapphire nibbled on a nail thoughtfully. "Don't be too sure," she cautioned, remembering the intensity of the soldier's feelings.
"A ghost with feelings.... I'm gonna bring those feelings OUT!" He stood up abruptly, eyes alight.
"WHAT?!" Sapphire turned around, appalled.
"You stay there, watch from the window, watch the platform." Sapphire looked extremely rebellious as Steel said, "I'm gonna bring him out!" He snatched up a board from the floor and turned to her, teeth bared dangerously. "I'm gonna make things REALLY irritating for him!" He tapped the wood against the wall and Sapphire stared at him. "After all HE'S been through he needs cheering up!" he said, raking the wood against the bedsprings. He turned cheerfully to his partner. "Right?"
Sapphire was gaping at him with shock. She shut her mouth and said sternly, "Wrong."
Steel disregarded her. "Just watch the platform, let me know when you see him." Giving Sapphire no chance to argue, he ran out.
She shook her head, thinking he must have been a devil to raise, and went to look out the window.
Steel slammed into the waiting room and said one word to Tully, then he went out of the room almost at a run. Tully went looking for him and finally found him by following the sound of banging to a room where Steel was digging through buckets and cans. Tully stared for a moment, then demanded, "What d'you mean, sing?"
Steel lifted his head. "I want you to SING. We'll cheer this place up a bit!"
The gleam in his eyes betrayed him with its maliciousness, making Tully suspicious. "I wonder if you mind telling me why -- "
He was cut off by Steel's making for the door, carrying a big silver bucket. The blond grabbed Tully's arm and pulled him out with him. "The soldier."
"Yes?" urged Tully.
"We're going to bring HIM to us."
"How?" asked the suspicious man.
Steel's eyes sparkled with laughter. "By singing his song for him, that's how. But we're not going to do it the way HE does it." He dashed up a few steps on the stairs and looked down. "We're gonna liven things up a bit! Do you know the words?"
Tully found himself suspicious. "Words?"
"Yes, to the tune he's always whistling?"
"Yes."
Steel nodded. "Sing it." He went running up the stairs. Tully clamped his lips shut and glared after the young man, who came back down a few seconds later to give Tully an almost friendly innocent look. "Come on Mr. Tully, let's hear them!" He started whistling cheerily.
Against his will Tully was drawn to begin, "Pack up your t -- " he stopped himself, thinking *Dear Lord he's got ME doing it now!*
"That's fine," cheered Steel. Tully threw his hands up and turned away, heading for the waiting room. Steel trotted after him and grabbed his arm. "Tully..."
"Yes?" asked Tully, shooting Steel an angry glare.
"I can't do it without you." He flashed an utterly charming smile and waved his hand hopefully. In spite of himself, Tully gave in. Steel grinned and urged, "Let's make them sound happy, come on!"
In spite of the effort to keep glaring at Steel, Tully began. "Pack up your troubles in your old -- "
Steel cheered him on, "Great! Louder, louder!"
"-Kit bag and smile, smile, smile. While you've a Lucifer to light your fag, smile boys that's the style..!"
In the hotel room, Sapphire lifted her head and listened. Tully really had quite a good voice. She smiled to herself and glanced up at the lights to make sure they were on. Steel was asking for it, and he would very probably get it, and so might she and Tully.
"What's the use of worrying, it never was worthwhile, so pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile." As Tully sang, Steel came down the stairs with bucket and stick. Tully eyed him suspiciously and fell silent when he finished.
Steel looked at him. "Again." When Tully kept silent, "Come on, you wanna see your ghost again?"
"Yes."
"You wanna make contact with him?"
"Of course."
The now-familiar expression of cruel mischief lit Steel's eyes. "Well let's waken the dead, shall we?" He lifted the bucket and started beating on it, the tempo of the song and he started singing, his voice pushing Tully into it if for nothing else, to make up for Steel's off-key tones.
"Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile. While you've a Lucifer to light your fag, smile boys that's the style! What's the use of worrying, it never was worthwhile, so pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile!"
Sapphire above raised an eyebrow at Steel's deliberate bad singing.
Steel paced as they sang, picking up the tempo on the repeat verse, leading Tully out onto the platform. As they began to repeat it for the fourth time, the blackness solidified in the booking hall. It vanished again in a moment, leaving behind the furious soldier with his rifle cocked and ready. He turned and started up the stairs, then stopped. There was a more vulnerable target than this "Steel" fellow. The soldier turned around and vanished.
Sapphire was still watching the platform when the gas-lights went out in the room. She ran quickly to the hall to find those lights out too. Slightly alarmed, she turned around and jumped several inches back as she almost walked into the soldier. As Tully and Steel began their sixth repeat, the soldier left Sapphire in a hallway lit by blue electrical light. She slowly slid down the wall, clad now in coveralls and a woolen hat, gasping for breath.
As they began the eighth repeat, Tully decided that was enough. "No more!"
"Mr. Tully..!"
"No more!" the angry man stated sharply.
"Come on!"
"No, no." Tully ignored Steel. Looking up he whispered a plea to the ghost. "I'm sorry! I didn't want to do it, really I didn't." As Tully whispered, the soldier appeared in the buffet. "I'm sorry. Please bring back the flowers again, will you?" A self-satisfied smile spread across the soldier's face, and he vanished again. "Let's see the flowers again -- " Tully's plea was cut off by the sound of rifles going off. He looked up, startled as the night air was lit with falling bombs, and one specially bright flash of light.
"A flare..!" Steel exclaimed.
"What?" Though startled by the turn of events, when a World War I hand grenade rolled to a stop in front of Tully he quickly grabbed it and threw it as far away from them as he could. It exploded in a fierce ball of fire, and gunfire erupted around them. Tully ducked low and ran into the hotel.
Steel stood in the midst of it all, clenching his fists. This was annoying but he knew better than to let it scare him. Then he realized that it was not him who was scared at all. "It's Tully!" he exclaimed. He went into the hotel calling, "Tully! Mr. Tully!
Tully was nearly all the way upstairs when he heard the guns and bombs outside stop. He almost went back down but then a noise from above caught his attention. It was a sort of clanging, hollow sound and it brought him into the upper hall. At the other end he could see Sapphire crumpled on the floor. Without thinking he started toward her and after a few steps he stepped into a pocket of darkness and electric light, of air laden with carbon dioxide. For a moment he remained himself, stopping in shock. Then his clothes changed to overalls and a shirt over them.
Jamie was slumped on the floor and the other boy was nowhere to be seen. But somehow he knew it wouldn't be long before the other one joined them. Coughing, he staggered over to Jamie and slid down beside the crumpled figure, putting a hand on his friend's shoulder and wishing there was a way to save them all.
Steel started up the stairs when from the buffet behind him came music, jazzy music and the sound of people talking. The room was empty to his eyes, but he heard a door swing shut in the middle of the room. Footsteps came past him, a soft, velvety young man's voice spoke hopefully. "Excuse me, sir," but Steel shook himself free of his curiosity.
[Sapphire?] he called. The lack of response alarmed him.
"Tully?" No response from either party. Though he did not care about Tully, Sapphire's continued silence upset him a great deal. He got up to the hall and stared at the two limp forms across from him. "Mr. Tully?" Cautiously he stepped forward, holding out his hand as far in front of him as he could. In a moment his fingers brushed into damp, cool air. He let his fingertips trace the change from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. There was no way past, he would have to go through. But no sense in not knowing what he was walking into. Steel snatched his hand back and took off his coat. He draped it over his arm and held it out into the cold dampness.
The change was sudden. His coat became a multi-colored hand-woven vest. Looking narrowly over the vest he could see the hall as it was for them. Faint electric lighting... his flesh crawled as something touched his back. Steel quickly pulled his arm out of that part of the hall and put his coat back on, looking around warily. He checked the stairs but nothing was there. He went back to the point in the hall where it changed, hesitated, then turned and kicked open the door beside him. The lights were out in there and he could see the soldier standing near the window.
"I'm the one that's responsible! I'm the one that wants to get rid of you, ME, not them!" he raged at the soldier. Calming himself, he stepped forward. "So why punish them?"
The soldier shrugged. "Everyone has to die."
Steel hesitated, his temper vanishing in the face of this lost young man. "When it's their time, yes. Not your time. 'Cuz you have no SAY, you DON'T belong with the living."
This put the soldier on shaky ground. He said defensively, "I'm here, aren't I?"
"Then prove it." Steel gestured towards a chair. "Shake my hand! Or come and sit down with me!" He moved and sat down. "Come on, talk with me. Tell me your name. Perhaps we can have a nice, warm human conversation." The soldier glared helplessly at Steel, who was rapidly recovering his usual mocking manner. "Ah, but you can't do that, can you? You don't belong here, you don't belong with us. You belong in the darkness! You and your friends!" He stood up and tried to sound casual as he pointed out, "You're dead! Every single one of you."
The soldier glared impotently at him, tears in his eyes. "Not for long we won't be."
Steel held out his hand, eyes blazing with challenge and stepped forward slowly. The moment his fingers brushed the soldier, the man vanished and all the lights came back on. Steel slumped heavily against the windowpane for just a moment, then he pulled himself together and went back into the hall. Tully and Sapphire still lay across from him. He drew two deep breaths, preparing to enter, when the soldier whispered in his ear, "Not for long... we won't be." Steel glanced warily around but there was nothing to be seen. Holding his breathe, he stepped into the pocket of change.
Another identity circled his, he tried to ignore it as his clothes changed into the woven sweater and coveralls. Tully turned his head and asked, "What're they doing? Jamie's passed out," he indicated Sapphire's limp form. Steel swayed, fighting the responses that were pushing out of him. He stepped shakily forward until he got to them and sank down beside Sapphire, gathering her up into his arms. Tully kept talking, stuck in the identity of one of sailors. "The air... not enough air...."
{Steel,} Sapphire called weakly. He pulled her up and they leaned heavily against the wall.
Tully continued, "H-how deep are we? At the bottom?" There was a scraping, sliding sound and the hall tilted sending the two young people stumbling solidly into the other wall. The impact forced Steel to take a breath of horribly thick air. "No pumps workin', and we're at the bottom?!" There was nothing he could do for Tully yet. He grabbed Sapphire's leg and tried to drag her down the hall but the deck lurched again and he fell beside her.
Sapphire managed to open her eyes and meet his. {Steel. Now.}
[I can't breath!] he replied desperately.
Tully's voice echoed behind them. "Tanks are full... and we're at the bottom, right at the bottom..."
Steel looked at Tully and saw no help coming from that quarter. He clambered up, pulling Sapphire with him, bracing them against the wall and staggering determinedly toward the other end of the hallway.
{Steel!} she called in warning.
The second voice, older deeper, spoke out of the air. "Don't talk... save... save the air."
Steel's mind clouded. For a moment he lost control and his identity was suppressed as he said, "Don't talk... save... save the air." He broke free and looked for the ghost whose words he knew he was speaking, but there was no one else there. They were at the interface so he set Sapphire down.
She whispered, "Steel..."
[It's all right.]
Sapphire shook her head feverishly. "It's not all right, I can't breathe!"
"Here!" He grabbed her shoulders in both hands and shoved her through the interface. For a moment he saw her stumble in the blackness beyond, her blue skirt flowing around her legs, then she was out of his sight. He fell exhausted against the wall, and then the deck lurched again, throwing him against the other wall. He was getting really tired of that. He gathered his strength and made a quick dash for Tully. Grabbing the older man's arm Steel hauled him down the hall and shoved him over the interface. Again he sagged against the wall.
"Help us...." Steel jerked around and stared in shock. There were three young men at the other end of the hall. "Please, help us!" They were so young and he knew, knew from what he had experienced just now, what they felt. Even the one... what was his name, Jamie? half sat up and looked hopefully at Steel. Right, get them out too. He closed the distance with a few steps, reaching out a hand to the one young man who held his hand out too. Just short of touching, Steel realized the futility of trying. They were dead and not even hauling them across the interface could change that. It wasn't in his power to help them. Mutely he lowered his hand and shook his head at them, pleading for understanding. He backed away, forcing himself not to look at them again, and stepped across the interface into dry oxygen-rich air.
He stood for a moment inhaling deeply, then looked down at Sapphire where she sat beside an unconscious Tully. Unable to keep the pain out of his voice, he asked her, "You saw them?"
"Yes."
"You heard them?"
She nodded, "Yes." Steel turned around to look back down the hall, but the interface was gone, having failed its purpose. Sapphire spoke again from behind him. "Let's get him off the platform, Steel."
"What?"
"He needs air."
Oh yes, Tully. Steel turned to her. "Fifty-seven point three, you said." Sapphire looked blankly at him. "His life expectancy."
"That's right, yes."
"How old is he now?"
Sapphire set a hand firmly on Tully's shoulder, scanning. "Fifty-two point nine."
The merry light came back into Steel's eyes. "Then he'll survive, won't he?" he said, nodding.
She glared at him with sudden understanding. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"
Steel nodded, his voice gruff. "Yes."
"Got more than you bargained for, though."
He refused to be shamed. "It worked, didn't it?"
Sapphire shook her head and turned back to Tully.
Sapphire re-lit the lamp in the waiting room. Tully was still out, but now at least it was more sleep than oxygen starvation. Steel was pacing the room.
"They weren't dressed as sailors," he finally said.
"No," she agreed.
"So what were.. civilians doing on a submarine?" he turned hopefully to her.
"I couldn't tell."
Steel frowned and grumbled, "I thought you were always the expert on history."
She grinned at him, "When it makes sense, yes."
He frowned again and then turned and leaned toward her. "When they called out to me for help -- "
"They were probably trying to trick you." Sapphire knew then what was bothering him; despite knowing they were beyond help, he felt he should have tried.
But he looked extremely doubtful. "Maybe, but when they did call out...." He hesitated.
"Yes?" she asked, reaching for the thermos cup.
"Was it as ghosts or as living people?"
Oh, this was worse than wanting to help. He really felt he might have been able to. Sapphire said reasonably, "Well it could hardly have been as living people, unless of course you were once a ghost in THEIR time."
"I wasn't."
"Well there you are, then," and she cheerfully poured coffee into the cup, feeling Tully would need some.
Steel straightened up, his brow furrowed. "Well anyway, I don't think they intend to be ghosts in this time-period for long."
Alert to his phrasing Sapphire asked, "What do you mean?"
"NOT according to that soldier." He avoided her eyes and folded his arms, pacing to the other side of the room. "Wake him up."
Sapphire set the cup in front of Tully, and sat close to him. "Mr. Tully. Wake up Mr. Tully."
He stirred, then blinked awake. He was surprised to find her there holding out a cup of coffee to him. "Oh, thank you!" He took a drink, then Sapphire put the top back on the thermos. Innocently Tully asked her, "It wasn't my asthma again, was it?"
The furious explosion came in a most startling volume. "NO IT WAS NOT YOUR ASTHMA!! When you first came here, what did you do?" Steel demanded, glaring at Tully.
Tully ignored him and turned to Sapphire in horror. "I remember now, they tried to kill us!"
Steel corrected him angrily. "Not quite, they encouraged us to die. When you -- "
"But you antagonized -- "
Steel overrode Tully's protest, "When you first came to this place -- "
Tully refused for once to be overridden. "You antagonized the ghost of that young soldier!" he accused.
"I know, I meant to."
Astonished, Tully gaped at him. "Meant to?!"
"Yes! And given the opportunity I intend to antagonize him even FURTHER, if it helps me to find out WHO he is, who his friends are, and why they've decided to haunt this particular railway station!!"
"Well perhaps if you go -- "
"Oh if I went out there and asked him NICELY what his name was? I TRIED that!"
Tully remembered very well how Steel had tried that. "Well knowing how you talk -- "
Steel interrupted him impatiently. "Come on now, Mr. Tully, are they behaving the way your average ghost is supposed to behave?" He started to pace, then turned and asked mockingly, "Would all your pals at psychical HQ classify them as good ghosts or bad ghosts?"
"That depends!"
"And what about one of your priests?"
"What about him?"
Steel picked up Tully's cross. "Would he give them a favorable report?" he asked, dangling it.
Tully snatched it out of Steel's grasp and glared at him, but controlled himself. "Again that depends."
"They attack us with their own pasts," Steel began.
"I know!"
"With their own DEATHS, Mr. Tully! I saved you from one such experience, Sapphire saved me from another!" Tully gaped at Sapphire in surprise. She just looked back at him, not willing to clarify that. "So, when you first came here..." continued Steel.
Tully turned angrily away from both of them. "When I first came here there wasn't all this trouble!"
"There was no danger?"
"NO!"
"Just NICE peaceful ghosts!"
Tully clenched his fists, fighting tears. "Until you people arrived yes!" He jumped up and went out of the room, shooting back over his shoulders, "Everything was all right until you arrived!"
Steel looked after Tully for a moment, then sat on the table and looked almost apologetically at Sapphire. She shrugged back at him, then went out into the booking room and joined Tully on the bench. He sat with his arms tightly folded and a rather petulant expression on his face.
"Mr. Tully," she began softly.
He shook his head. "I'm sorry, I will NOT be placated!"
"He has a job to do," she replied, gazing steadily at him.
"And so have I! I seem to have no say in anything anymore, decisions are made FOR me, and look what's happened!" He looked at her finally. "I would never THINK of making a ghost angry! But then that's the way *I* do things, unfortunately nobody seems to be interested in the way that I do things."
Steel's voice boomed in his head. [So what is your way?]
"What?!" Tully looked around toward the waiting room, but with a soft whoosh of displaced air Steel appeared behind him.
"When you first came here two months ago, when everything was going right for you, what did you do?" he asked curiously.
Tully was not prepared for Steel to behave almost friendly. "Do?!" he snapped as the younger man sat down beside him.
"Yes. I mean, the ghosts weren't sitting around here waiting for you, were they?" Steel folded his arms and both young people looked at Tully.
"No. I prevailed upon them to make some form of contact." He glowered at his feet, refusing to look at them.
"Ah, and how did you um... prevail upon them?"
"Well if you must know, I had a sitting!"
Steel looked blank. "A what?"
"A sitting! A one-man sitting!"
Sapphire smiled slightly, "A seance?"
"Yes!"
Steel leaned forward curiously. "Where?"
"In the buffet."
The blond man gave a perplexed shake of his head. "And the ghosts responded to that, did they?"
"Well they have to, it's a kind of summons!" Tully met Sapphire's eyes for a brief second and closed tighter into himself. "All right it wasn't very successfu
