She slipped out of her clothes and stood for a little while on her porch in the darkness.
The night was warm. Owls were talking in the treetops. The long golden Northern California summer still had a few weeks to run, maybe even many weeks. This was only September. Sometimes the rains didn’t begin until the middle of November. What a change that was, when the unending months-long procession of sunny days suddenly yielded to the implacable downpours of the Mendocino County winter! It could rain for weeks at a time, December, January, February. And then it would be spring again, the trees greening up, the drenched land beginning to dry out.
She heard distant laughter. Staff people, fooling around up front. For some of them this place was just a big summer camp for grown-ups all year round. Do your work by day, fool around by night, hanky-panky in this cabin or that one, maybe on the weekend drive over to Mendocino, take in a club or a restaurant or something like that. Mendocino was the closest thing to a city that there was around here. Fifty years back it had actually had a little flurry of a boom, trying to set itself up as a rival to San Francisco for preeminence in Northern California at a time when San Francisco was suffering from a lot of self-inflicted wounds; but in the end what became clear was what everyone had really known all along, which was that San Francisco had been designed by geography to be a major city and Mendocino hadn’t been. Even so, it still looked more or less citylike, and you could have a good time over there on the weekend, or so Elszabet had heard. Even in the present condition of the world you could have a good time, if you had the knack of shutting your eyes to what was really going on.
Again, laughter. Higher-pitched, this time. A squeal or two. Elszabet smiled and went inside and got into bed. A little music, she thought, while falling asleep. Bach? No, she’d had enough Bach for tonight. Schubert, the string quintet. Sure. Warm web of sound, deep, melodious, thoughtful. She flicked the stud to automatic so the system would shut down when the music was over, and turned on the cube. And lay there, half-listening, thinking more about tomorrow’s staff meeting than she was about the music. Space dreams from Vancouver, space dreams from San Diego, space dreams from Denver. Everywhere. Paolucci was coming up from San Francisco to deliver a report. There was even a possibility that Leo Kresh had been able to make it all the way from San Diego. Something very odd was going on in San Diego; that was the word. But what was going on everywhere was odd. She had laughed at Dan Robinson’s idea that afternoon when they were down at the beach, that the dreams were messages from an alien spaceship approaching Earth. Wild, weird, far-out notion, she had thought then. Now she wasn’t so sure that it was all that wild. She wondered if Robinson had done any further work on that, to check out whether such a thing was possible. Tomorrow at the meeting I’ll ask him if…
Still thinking about the meeting, she wandered off into sleep.
And somewhere during the night she had a space dream herself.
The greenness came first. Little wisps of thick furry fog, sidling into her mind. She was close enough to consciousness to know what was starting to happen. She was sleepy enough not to care. She had fought this thing off as long as she could. The invasion of the sanctuary, alien strangenesses creeping in from God knows where. Now she wasn’t able to hold it back any longer. It was almost a relief, giving in to it at last. Go on, she told the dream. Go ahead and happen. It’s about time, isn’t it? My turn? Okay, my turn, then.
Green.
Green sky, green air, green clouds. The landscape was shades of green. Hillside, river far down below, meadows unrolling to the horizon. Everything looked soft and friendly, a gentle tropical landscape. Elegant trees without leaves, slender green trunks, green scaly branches coiling outward, bending back toward the ground. The sun faintly visible behind the veil of fog. The sun was green too, maybe, though it was hard to tell for sure, the way the light came blurrily through all that thick swirling fleecy fog.
Something was beckoning her.
Crystalline creatures, supple, almost delicate. Their long-limbed bodies glistened. Their dark eyes were bright and glittering, a row of three on each of the four sides of their heads. They were moving toward a shimmering pavilion on the hill just beyond her, and they were inviting her to come with them, calling her by name, Elszabet, Elszabet. But the way they were saying it was unearthly and awesome, a hushed reverberating whisper that resonated against itself again and again, an echo-chamber whisper that had in it an eerie whistling quality and an undertone like the roaring of distant winds. Elszabet, Elszabet.
I’m coming, she told them. And put her hand in their cool crystalline hands and let them carry her along. She floated just above the ground. Occasionally a strand of thick fleshy grass brushed her toes: when it did, she felt a sharp but not unpleasant tingling and heard the sound of bells.
She was entering the pavilion now. It seemed to be made of glass, but glass of a peculiarly yielding sort, warm and rubbery to the touch, like congealed teardrops. All about her moved the delicate crystalline people, bowing, smiling, stroking her. Telling her their names. The prince of this, the countess of that. A crystalline cat sauntered among them. It rubbed its crystalline ears against her leg; and when she looked down she saw that her leg was crystal too, that in fact she had a body just like theirs, shining and wondrous. Someone put a drink in her hand. It tasted like flowers; it erupted in a thousand brilliant colors as it made its journey through her body. Do you like it, they asked? Will you have another? Elszabet, Elszabet. There is the duke of something. Beside him are the duchess and the duke-other of something and the marquis of something else. Look, look, there is the city, coming into view now below! Will you have it? We will give the city your name if you like. There, it is done: Elszabet. Elszabet. They all congratulated her. They clustered close and she heard the faint tinkling of their arms and legs as they moved, a little silvery whispering sound, like Christmas-tree ornaments swayed by a breeze. Do you like it here, Elszabet? Do you like us? We have a poem for you. Where is the poem? Where is the poet? Ah: here. Here. Make way for the poem. Make way for the poet.
A crystalline she had not seen before, taller than any of the others, came up to her, smiling shyly. Come, he said. I have a poem for you. They stepped outside the pavilion and greenness descended on them like emerald rain. He put something in her hands, an intricate little object that looked like a puzzle-box of glass, layer within layer, transparent to the core with a meshwork of dazzling glassy gears going round and round at the center. This is your poem, he said. I call it Elszabet. She touched it and a green flare of light sprang up from it and leaped across the sky, and from the pavilion came the tinkling sound of applause. Elszabet, they all said. Elszabet, Elszabet.
The green light deepened and thickened around her. She was swathed in it, now. The air seemed almost tangible. So warm, so woolly. So green, green, green.