They were in the new Dali wing of the Mirage. Here everything was surrealistic. The elevators looked as if they had been modelled out of naked flesh. The clocks melted on the wall (and still worked). Even the waitresses, wandering around the floor area trying to sell you cigarettes and Keno tickets, looked like something out of a nightmare: huge feathered tresses, gold swimsuits, bizarre makeup, but not on their chests; their chests gleamed out into the big casino room everywhere, twin peaks of flesh, bobbing between the tables.
He stared at the big golden sky down from Luxor, took a swig of rum and Coke, then looked at his wife. Marion Jenkinson was fifty-seven, one year younger than her husband. She lay on the bed dressed in a pale red and lime-green polyester jumpsuit, one she bought the day before from Emporio while he was in the bar. Her clothes matched the room. The standard lamp was in green verdigris copper, twisting round on itself like a serpent. The bathroom door had some painting on it that looked vaguely familiar: a woman, half-naked, turning to sand. And on the ceiling, watching you all the time, huge, staring eyes, Dali eyes, with big eyebrows and, as a recurring motif, that twirled-up waxed moustache. He gazed out the window, looking puzzled.
'What's wrong, Sam?'
'Nothing…'
Marion Jenkinson climbed off the bed and came and sat next to him at the window. 'It's very bright out there.' In the distance, beyond Luxor, somewhere close to where the airport ought to be, he guessed, the sky was simply golden, as if the sun were so bright it had turned into a local corona.
'It's moving,' they said, almost in unison.
He shut his eyes for a moment. The day was so bright it began to make the back of his pupils hurt with a pain that was like a long, slow bruise. When he opened them, the huge golden shape was directly behind the Luxor pyramid, and it was vast, like the filament from some vast light bulb. As it got closer, it appeared more complex too. An incandescent blue, like electric flame, ran along its skin.
'What is it, Sam?'
'I don't know.' He surveyed the street. No crowds, no lines of people. Hardly anybody at all. It was a hot day, he thought. Maybe everybody would stay indoors to watch this kind of show, whatever it was.
'It is fireworks,' she said, and he was aware of her arm on his shoulder.
'I suppose so.' And thought: No.
The storm — it was some kind of storm, he thought, it had to be — was now engulfing the peak of the Luxor pyramid, and from its underbelly fell what looked like giant gleaming hailstones, hundreds, even thousands of them, pouring out from the churning guts of the thing, down into the dark glass, down to the ground. Then it moved on. The great golden cloud was swamping the fairy-tale towers of Excalibur. It was impossible to see what was left in its wake. The shimmering golden ellipse covered everything behind.
He looked across the street. As he watched, the lights started to go out. First on the Flamingo, then on the Imperial, finally on Harrah's, opposite them. There was a distinct electronic ping in the room. The TV died. The air-conditioning died. The sudden, unexpected silence seemed to occupy the entire room. Outside, the golden cloud had reached Caesar's. Spheres the size of soccer balls were tumbling down from its livid underbelly, some spinning on their axis, the movement visible by a whirling filament of streaks in their sides, some pure gold, all the way down, a few turning pale, dying in the sparkling air.
'Sam…' she said.
'I'm thinking, woman. Give me time.'
The cloud moved on and on. He went to the door of the room, threw it open, stared across at the elevator. A bunch of people stood around it, banging the buttons, swearing, looking frightened, some pushing at the door to the fire stairs. Marion was at his shoulder.
'I can't go down them stairs,' she said. 'Not twenty-three floors, and who's saying it's safe in there anyway?'
'Nobody.' He pushed her back into the room, wishing she'd be quiet. Behind them the window was now pure gold. The cloud was enveloping the Mirage, and with it came the shower. They sat on the bed and watched the light show outside the glass. The painted eyes on the ceiling, so many, bright and huge and vivid, seemed to be laughing at them.
The picture outside the window was changing. The light was no longer quite so solid. Elements were moving in it. Maybe this was how they formed, he thought. Maybe this was the beginning of the ball shower. She clutched his hand. Her skin was wet with sweat. The temperature seemed to have climbed ten degrees. There was a thin, acrid smell, like ozone, and, above them, a chirruping, fizzing noise that seemed to fall down on the room, with a physical movement, like rain.
'It can't get in,' she said. 'It can't break the window, for God's sake.'
'Right. We just wait. It'll soon be over and then…'
Making a sound like a nest of snakes, a gleaming, fiery ball appeared at the window and hung there, as if it were looking at them. It was a good three feet across, blue light flickering across its skin, and revolving slowly, like a globe turning on its axis. Briefly, it rose a few feet in the air, as if it were examining the sea of eyes painted on the ceiling.
'Shit,' he said quietly.
'Sam, it can't come in.'
'No.'
The ball came down to their level, came right up to the window, so close he expected to see the skin pushed back, like a nose pressed up to the glass. Then it moved forward again and he thought she was going to snap off his hand. It was protruding through the glass, two-thirds of it outside the room, one-third in. And growing. Moving. Behind it, two more spheres had appeared, were hovering in the same way, like mute animals, catching the scent of prey.
There was a noise like the firing of a small gun, and then the first sphere plopped through the window, hung in the air, eighteen inches off the ground. The room was filled with the sound of hissing; it seemed to come at them from every direction. The smell of ozone was unbearable, and there was a sense of heightened atmospheric pressure, the sort you got when a plane was landing. He looked at his wife. Her nose was bleeding profusely. She had her hand to it, her mouth open, the blood dripping in.
'Sam,' she said thickly. And then it was gone. The ball raced past them, heat brushing their legs, into the open door of the bathroom opposite, skittered around the four walls, hovered over the toilet, and disappeared over the edge of the bowl.
'Bloody hell,' he said. A blue light hovered over the pink ceramic unit and steam was rising from the hidden water. Then the basin exploded with a roar, ripping off the half-open door, sending shards of porcelain blasting through the room. They ducked beneath the bedclothes and waited for the noise to die down.
'One down,' he said, gingerly coming out from beneath the sheets. Outside, the brightness seemed to be diminishing. 'It's moving past us. It'll soon be gone.'
The two spheres still danced outside the window. One made a little bob, then popped through the glass, no noise this time, it was as easy as stepping through a shower. The second followed and they stood at either end of the long window.
'Get under the covers, love,' he barked. 'Get some protection if one of these things goes bang. Don't move too much in case they pick it up. They're looking for something electrical, and we may be the closest they get to it.'
She scrambled beneath the sheets. He followed her, felt her scrabbling for his hand. He squeezed it once, bent over, kissed her roughly on the lips. 'Not a good idea to touch any more, Marion. Maybe we make more electricity that way.'
The closest started to vibrate, and streaks of azure appeared inside its skin. 'Under the sheet!' he yelled, and pulled what fabric there was over them. The thing was doubling in size, rippling blue and gold, swirling all the time. He took one last look, then pulled the pillow over his face. It took no more than a second. The thing imploded on itself with a deafening bellow and the room was filled with shattered flying glass. They could hear it arcing through the air above them, then impaling itself into anything it could find.