Hideaway

through which it was observed, as if Hatch was looking out through the eyes of another—eyes that beheld the world with all the compassionless, hungry, calculating practicality of a graveyard rat.
    For a time, the dream took on more of a narrative quality, wherein Hatch found himself running along a train-station platform, trying to catch up with a passenger car that was slowly pulling away on the outbound track. Through one of the train windows, he saw Jimmy, gaunt and hollow-eyed in the grip of his disease, dressed only in a hospital gown, peering sadly at Hatch, one small hand raised as he waved goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Hatch reached desperately for the vertical railing beside the boarding steps at the end of Jimmy's car, but the train picked up speed; Hatch lost ground; the steps slipped away. Jimmy's pale, small face lost definition and finally vanished as the speeding passenger car dwindled into the terrible nothingness beyond the station platform, a lightless void of which Hatch only now became aware. Then another passenger car began to glide past him (clackety-clack, clackety-clack), and he was startled to see Lindsey seated at one of the windows, looking out at the platform, a lost expression on her face. Hatch called to her—“Lindsey!”—but she did not hear or see him, she seemed to be in a trance, so he began to run again, trying to board her car (clackety-clack, clackety-clack), which drew away from him as Jimmy's had done. “Lindsey!” His hand was inches from the railing beside the boarding stairs.… Suddenly the railing and stairs vanished, and the train was not a train any more. With the eerie fluidity of all changes in all dreams, it became a roller coaster in an amusement park, heading out on the start of a thrill ride. (Clackety-clack.) Hatch came to the end of the platform without being able to board Lindsey's car, and she rocketed away from him, up the first steep hill of the long and undulant track. Then the last car in the caravan passed him, close behind Lindsey's. It held a single passenger. The figure in black—around whom shadows clustered like ravens on a cemetery fence—sat in front of the car, head bowed, his face concealed by thick hair that fell forward in the fashion of a monk's hood. (Clackety-clack!) Hatch shouted at Lindsey, warning her to look back and be aware of what rode in the car behind her, pleading with her to be careful and hold on tight, for God's sake, hold on tight! The caterpillar procession of linked cars reached the crest of the hill, hung there for a moment as if time had been suspended, then disappeared in a scream-filled plummet down the far side.
    Ramona Perez, the night nurse assigned to the fifth-floor wing that included room 518, stood beside the bed, watching her patient. She was worried about him, but she was not sure that she should go looking for Dr. Nyebern yet.
    According to the heart monitor, Harrison's pulse was in a highly fluctuant state. Generally it ranged between a reassuring seventy to eighty beats per minute. Periodically, however, it raced as high as a hundred and forty. On the positive side, she observed no indications of serious arrhythmia.
    His blood pressure was affected by his accelerated heartbeat, but he was in no apparent danger of stroke or cerebral hemorrhage related to spiking hypertension, because his systolic reading was never dangerously high.
    He was sweating profusely, and the circles around his eyes were so dark, they appeared to have been applied with actors' greasepaint. He was shivering in spite of the blankets piled on him. The fingers of his left hand—exposed because of the intravenous feed—spasmed occasionally, though not forcefully enough to disturb the needle inserted just below the crook of his elbow.
    In a whisper he repeated his wife's name, sometimes with considerable urgency: “Lindsey … Lindsey … Lindsey, no!”
    Harrison was dreaming, obviously, and events in a nightmare could elicit physiological responses every bit as much as waking experiences.
    Finally Ramona decided that the accelerated heartbeat was solely the result of the poor man's bad dreams, not an indication of genuine cardiovascular de-stabilization. He was in no danger. Nevertheless, she remained at his bedside, watching over him.

17
    Vassago sat at a window table overlooking the harbor. He had been in the lounge only five minutes, and already he suspected it was not good hunting grounds. The atmosphere was all wrong. He