Strangers

chairs ceased vibrating. The salt and pepper shakers halted in midwhirl and hung motionless in the air.
        For a second or two, the diner was preternaturally silent.
        Then the twelve chairs and the last of the shakers dropped straight down, bouncing off tables and other chairs that had never taken flight. When everything at last came to rest in tangled rubble, Dom and Brendan were as unscathed as those who had taken refuge under the tables. Dom blinked at the priest, and around them all was graveyard-still. This moment of silence was longer than the first. It seemed as if time had stopped, until Marcie's thin whimpering and her mother's murmured assurances started the engines of reality purring again, drawing the others from their places of shelter.
        Ernie was still massaging his shoulder, where he had been hit by a salt shaker, but he was not seriously hurt. No one else was injured, though everyone was shaken.
        Dom saw the way they were looking at him and Brendan. Warity. Just as he had figured they would look at him if he proved to have the power. Just the way he had dreaded being looked at. Damn.
        Ginger seemed to be the only one who was- not put off by his new status. She enthusiastically embraced Dom and said, "What matters is that you've got it. You've got it, and eventuaily you can learn to use it, and that's wonderful."
        "I'm not so sure," Dom said, looking at the broken chairs, fallen lighting fixtures. Jack Twist was brushing salt and drywall dust off his clothes. Jorja was still comforting her frightened child. Faye and Sandy were picking splinters and other bits of debris out of their hair, and Ned was pondering the danger of the live wires dangling from the ceiling where the chandelier had torn loose. Dom said, "Ginger, even when I was using the power, I didn't know how I was doing it. And when it ran wild… I didn't know how to stop it."
        "But you did stop it," she said. She kept one arm around his waist as if she knew - God bless her - that he needed the reassurance of human contact. "You did stop it, Dom."
        "Maybe next time I won't be able." He realized he was shivering. "Look at this mess. My God, Ginger, someone could've been badly hurt."
        "No one was."

    "Someone could have been killed. Next time-"
        "It'll be better," she said.
        Brendan Cronin came around the long table. "He'll change his mind, Ginger. Give him time. I know I'm going to try again. Alone, next time. In a couple of days, when I've had time to think it through, I'll go out somewhere in. an open field, away from people, where no one can be hurt except me, and I'll give it another try. I think it's going to be difficult to control the… energy. It's going to take a lot of time, a lot of work, maybe years. But I'll explore, practice. And so will Dom. He'll realize as much when he's had a couple of minutes to think about it."
        Dom shook his head. "I don't want this. I don't want to be so different from other people."
        "But now you are," Brendan said. "We both are."
        "That's damn fatalistic."
        Brendan smiled. "Though I'm having a crisis of faith, I'm still a priest, so I believe in predestination, fate. That's an article of faith. But we priests are a clever bunch, so we can be fatalistic and believe in free will at the same time! Both are articles of faith." For the priest, the psychological effects of these events were far different from the fear raised in Dom. As he talked, he repeatedly rose onto his toes as if he were nearly buoyant enough to float away.
        At a loss to understand the priest's good humor, Dom changed the subject. "Well, Ginger, if we've proved half of your crazy theory, at least we've disproved the other half."
        She frowned. "What do you mean?"
        "In the midst of all that… uproar," Dom said, gesturing toward the battered ceiling, "when I saw the rings appear on my hands again, I decided the psychic power wasn't a sideeffect of any strange viral infection. I know the source of it is something else, something even stranger, though I don't know what it may be."
        "Oh? Well, which is the case?" she asked. "Have you merely decided, or do you really know?"
        "I know," Dom said. "Deep inside, I know."
        "Oh, yes, me too," Brendan said happily, as Ernie and Faye and the others gathered around. "You were correct, Ginger, when you suggested the power was in Dom