The Darrell Schweitzer MEGAPACK ®. Darrell Schweitzer

of a better term…comic-book stuff. Anybody could invent a term like “tetrarchon.” For all I knew, it wasn’t even grammatical Greek.

      “Stephen,” I said at last, as gently as I could, carefully weighing each word. “Don’t you think your life would be…happier…if you explained all this to a doctor?”

      I have never seen such a look of hurt and hatred as came over his face in that instant. Our friendship was dead, I was sure. He felt I had betrayed him, more vilely than could be put into words, drawing all his secrets out of him just to ridicule his pain.

      In an incredibly frigid tone he said, “You think I’m insane, don’t you Ben?”

      I could only sigh. Now I was the one who was weeping, out of sheer frustration. I was at the end of my resources. “Frankly, yes,” I said at last.

      “Then goodbye.”

      He packed up his things and left. I guess he must have quit school, because I didn’t see him again for twenty years.

      * * * *

      In the autumn of 1993 a small parcel arrived at my office, addressed very carefully by hand in block letters: DR. BENJAMIN C. SCHWARTZ, PH.D., DEPT. OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT IRVINE, etc. I knew the handwriting at once, of course. How ironic, I thought, that the one initial lie I’d told to win Stephen’s confidence had turned out true. Shortly after he left I switched my major to history, and here I was, a professor. Probably he’d followed my career with even greater diligence than I’d followed his.

      Of course his entire Stephanus of Chorazin sequence was eventually published to considerable controversy and critical acclaim, and has achieved a place on that small shelf of “serious” graphic-story work, somewhere between Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Eli Needleman’s The Hell Book.

      And now, for some reason, he’d chosen to contact me.

      I opened the parcel with no little trepidation and found inside the coin of Bernardus of Chorazin, plus a round-trip plane ticket flying me first class to Philadelphia the following weekend, and a simple note:

      Ben,

      We have much to talk about still. Come at once. I need you.

      Your friend,

      Steve

      Somehow—at least I imagined—he knew my wife was off with her mother to London for two weeks, and that the semester break was about to start. I could come.

      It was an awesomely powerful temptation. Every memory of Stephen came flooding back, as if I’d last seen him in the university library only yesterday. I guess I was more obsessed than I’d realized.

      After considerable thought, I decided I had to go.

      I spent the flight leafing through my copies of his books. (Should I be silly enough to ask him to autograph them? Was that being silly?) I rehearsed in my mind what I was going to say to him, what approach I’d take, for all I didn’t know anything about his life in the intervening two decades save that he must be at least minimally functional, having managed to stay out of jail and the nut house, and in the good graces of his publishers. But beyond that, I drew a blank.

      The taxi let me off in front of his house, a tasteful, small pseudo-Tudor on a back street in Wynnewood, no more than five miles from the Villanova campus. I rang the bell and the door opened, but he was behind it, so I didn’t see him until I was inside and he’d closed the door.

      What a pair: Here I was, three hundred pounds, nearly bald, gray goatee, wheezing from the effort of carrying my suitcase from the cab. He must have been at least thirty-seven, but he still looked like a little kid, the same dark bangs down almost over his eyes, the same lost-boy look. He might have grown an inch, and there was a little gray and a trace of facial hair, but this was still the Stephen Taylor I’d known in the 1970’s. It was as if no time had passed at all, and relationship resumed precisely where it had left off. He looked as frail and scared as ever.

      “Why don’t you let me take that?” He reached out and took my suitcase, then almost flopped over it as he dropped it to the floor from the unexpected weight. He merely walked away from it and led me into the kitchen, where he went through the nervous motions of courtesy. Indeed, the airline food had hardly satisfied me and his offer of orange juice, bagels, and liverwurst was entirely welcome.

      He sat quietly while I ate. I tried to read his face then. He remained, as ever, a mystery. I wasn’t even sure he was glad to see me. I hoped that all was forgiven and we were friends again. I hadn’t just pitied him, twenty years ago. There had been something in him I valued, even admired.

      But there was no warmth in his manner. He sat still and seemed to be listening for something. A clock ticked in some other room. The house creaked. Outside, a horn blared, stuck, then shut off suddenly.

      “You got my package.”

      “Of course,” I said.

      He laid out a bag of chocolate chip cookies, taking none for himself.

      “Then you know why I’ve asked you to come here.”

      “No,” I said with my mouth full. “No, actually I don’t.” I swallowed some orange juice and rested the glass on the table. He went to the refrigerator and got me a refill.

      “It’s all the same, Ben, after all this time. Nothing has changed. Chorazin, the Tetrarchonate, everything.”

      “I thought you were done with that series. Steve, I’ve got all your books. It sounds unlikely, but I’m one of your biggest fans.”

      “Why unlikely?” For a moment I thought—with a flash of relief—that he was joking. Vanity in Stephen Taylor would have made him more human. But he didn’t even seem to expect an answer. He was listening again, for something. The side of his face twitched. He’d developed a nervous tic since the last time I’d seen him.

      “Steve, I can’t lie to you. You’re crazy. This is some kind of delusion. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a psychiatrist or not, but if not I’ll have to be the one to break it to you that your entire life has been suffocated by a particularly hideous fantasy.”

      I paused. I was afraid he’d be angry. But he spoke emotionlessly. “Produce the coin.”

      He didn’t have to ask if I’d brought it with me. I produced it.

      “That’s real, isn’t it?”

      “And so’s a scrap of metal somebody says is from a flying saucer. I don’t know where it came from. But, Steve, look, I’m your friend, and that’s why I have to convince you, finally, that you made all this up. It’s a brilliant act of creation, but that’s what it is, an act. Something you did. God alone knows why. If you’d imagined yourself to be Tarzan or James Bond, I could understand, but this isn’t escapism. It’s the opposite. You’ve built your own Bastille and condemned yourself to life imprisonment. What I want to do, as your friend, is set you free.”

      For several seconds, he made no response. The house was silent. Then he said, “What makes you think I started it, and not my father before me, and his father, and his, unto the umpteenth generation?”

      “Oh, come on—”

      “Ah-ah—” He raised his hand for silence, then held up the coin in both hands, quite intentionally, I suspect, like a Communion Host. He stared at it for a long time, then spoke again, without looking up. “Let us not argue, but instead deal with the matter immediately at hand, which is why I summoned you here.”

      “Yes,” I said. “Why did you?”

      “Would you really…set me free?”

      I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to get drawn into the fantasy again.

      “I think you would,” he went on in the same, dead monotone, “because you truly are my friend. But I’m not entirely sure what you can do against the Severus. I just hope you can think of something.