On the street, Mitchell watched the two men go off together in bewilderment.
IV
Macklin was playing jacks.
He didn't have a head on his shoulders and he was squatting on a great curving surface that was Spacetime, and his jacks were Earth and Pluto and the rest of the planets. And for a ball he was using a head. Not his head. Mitchell's. Both heads were initialed "M" so it was all the same.
Mitchell forced himself to awaken, with some initial difficulty.
He lay there, blinking the sleep out of his eyes, listening to his heart race, and then convulsively snatched the telephone receiver from the nightstand. He stabbed out a number with a vicious index finger.