Winter Moon

but he knew it had traveled from some strange world into that Montana

night.

Thereafter, it must have found a hiding place, into which it had

crawled. No other analysis of the situation made sense. Hiding. If

it had wanted its presence to be known, it would have revealed itself

to him that night or later. The woods, vast and dense, offered an

infinite number of places to go to ground.

Although the doorway had been enormous, that didn't mean the

traveler--or the vessel carrying it, if a vessel existed--was also

large. Eduardo had once been to New York City and driven through the

Holland Tunnel, which had been a lot bigger than any car that used

it.

Whatever had come out of that death-black portal might be no larger

than a man, perhaps even smaller, and able to hide almost anywhere

among those timbered vales and ridges.

The doorway indicated nothing about the traveler, in fact, except that

it was undoubtedly intelligent. Sophisticated science and engineering

lay behind the creation of that gate.

He had read enough Heinlein and Clarke--and selected others in their

vein--to have exercised his imagination, and he had realized that the

intruder might have a variety of origins. More likely than not, it was

extraterrestrial.

However, it might also be something from another dimension or from a

parallel world. It might even be a human being, opening a passage into

this age from the far future.

The numerous possibilities were dizzying, and he no longer felt like a

fool when he speculated about them. He also had ceased being

embarrassed about borrowing fantastical literature from the

library--though the cover art was often trashy even when well

drawn--and his appetite for it had become voracious.

Indeed, he found that he no longer had the patience to read the realist

writers who had been his lifelong favorites. Their work simply wasn't

as realistic as it had seemed before. Hell, it wasn't realistic at all

to him any longer. Now, when he was just a few pages into a book or

story by one of them, Eduardo got the distinct feeling that their point

of view consisted of an extremely narrow slice of reality, as if they

looked at life through the slit of a welder's hood. They wrote well,

certainly, but they were writing about only the tiniest sliver of the

human experience in a big world and an infinite universe.

He now preferred writers who could look beyond this horizon, who knew

that humanity would one day reach childhood's end, who believed

intellect could triumph over superstition and ignorance, and who dared

to dream.

He was also thinking about buying a second Discman and giving Wormheart

another try.

He finished a beer, put the bottle on the porch beside the rocker, and

wished he could believe the thing that had come through the doorway was

just a person from the distant future, or at least something benign.

But it had gone into hiding for more than five weeks, and its

secretiveness did not seem to indicate benevolent intentions. He was

trying not to be xenophobic. But instinct told him that he'd had a

brush with something not merely different from humanity but inherently

hostile to it.

Although his attention was focused, more often than not, on the lower

woods to the east, at the edge of which the doorway had opened, Eduardo

wasn't comfortable venturing near the northern and western woods,

either, because the evergreen wilderness on three sides of the ranch

house was contiguous, broken only by the fields to the south. Whatever

had entered the lower woods could easily make its way under the cover

of the trees into any arm of the forest.

He supposed it was possible that the traveler had not chosen to hide

anywhere nearby but had circled into the pines on the western foothills

and from there into the mountains. It might long ago have retreated

into some high redoubt, secluded ravine, or cavern in the remote

reaches of the Rocky Mountains, many miles from Quartermass Ranch.

But he didn't think that was the case.

Sometimes, when he was walking near the forest, studying the shadows

under the trees, looking for anything out of the ordinary, he was aware

of ... a presence. Simple as that. Inexplicable as that. A

presence.

On those occasions, though he neither saw nor heard anything unusual,

he was aware that he was no longer alone. So he waited.

Sooner or later something new would happen.

On those days when he grew impatient, he reminded himself of two

things.

First, he was well accustomed to waiting, since Margaret had died

three years ago, he hadn't been doing anything but waiting for the time

to come when he could join her again. Second, when at last something

did happen, when the traveler finally chose to reveal itself in some

fashion, Eduardo more likely than not would wish that it had remained

concealed and secretive.

Now he picked up the empty beer bottle, rose from the rocking chair,

intending to get another brew--and saw the raccoon. It was standing in

the yard, about eight or ten feet from the porch, staring at him. He

hadn't noticed it before because he'd been focused on the distant