CHAPTER XX
There seemed to be a sheath of fog wrapped around him, or perhaps it was a section of cloud. White, soft, without substance, it buoyed him up. He did not open his eyes. He did not need to; the images he saw against the inner surfaces of his eyelids far eclipsed any the mundane world might hold.
Harker saw glowing masses of color, a sky of red bordered with turquoise, clouds of gold, smaller flecks of chocolate and ultramarine. He heard the distant rumble of voices, or was it the sound of thunder?
He remembered things.
He remembered someone (Mart Raymond?) looking down at him, lips drawn, eyes ringed with shadows, saying, "Jim, do you really want to go through with this thing?"
He remembered Lurie, looking awkward and ungainly. Poor Lurie. Lurie had got him into this whole mess in the beginning, hadn't he?
Lois had been there too, her face a blank emotionless mask. And there had been others—the four senators, Vorys, Brewster, Dixon, Westmore. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The ghostly riders of death.
Reporters? Video men? Yes, there had been quite a crowd.
Harker stirred gently in the cradling mass of fog that held him. He had never been so comfortable in his life as now, lying in what seemed to be free fall, no weight on him, no conflicts clashing in his tired brain, nothing to do but relax and dream of yesterday.