The Radio Magician and Other Stories by James van Pelt Page B

a trailer in a public parking lot overnight. There’s zoning to consider.”
    “Do you want to know why we’re here?”
    “Sure.” His head swam a little. The incense was strong, even stronger than he’d first thought. He could taste it, an exotic flower coating the back of his throat. “Can I have a glass of water?”
    Jennifer filled a cup she took from the strainer. He sipped it gratefully.
    “It’s about the bombs,” she said. “It’s about duck and cover, and confronting the sword of Damocles.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    She leaned toward him, her hands clasped now, elbows on her knees. “Don’t you remember? Didn’t you have nuclear nightmares?”
    For a second he relived being ten (or was it last week?), where he looked out his windows at the orange glow climbing in the sky, and the sick, lost feeling of recognizing it, too late. Rushing toward him, like in those Civil Defense films, a death wall filled with long glass teeth ready to shred him in an incinerator of instant motion. And he couldn’t move, not in the dream. It was always too late. He remembered hiding beneath his desk in third grade like all the other kids, rumps poking out of one side and hands-covered heads poking out the other. Even at the time he thought that his desk would be poor shelter if the roof came down. He sucked his breath in sharply. He had had that dream last week! The illusive dream he never recalled.
    “I never knew where my family was, in the dreams. I couldn’t help them,” Jennifer said sadly.
    Trellis leaned against the sun-warmed wall. His head swam with incense and the weirdness of the conversation, but what troubled him more were all the nuclear war images he’d ever stored up trying to leak out, every mushroom-clouded nightmare he’d ever dreamed. Nobody talked about nuclear bombs anymore. Atomic bombs were a part of the ’60s. They were yesterday’s fears. Weren’t the bombs locked up safely or destroyed now? “Really, ma’am, this is . . . interesting . . . but I think you’re going to have to move the trailer.” He stood, being careful not to thump his head on the ceiling. “Um . . . what was that you said about the sword of Damocles?”
    She considered him for a moment, still leaning forward. “You came all the way out here to see us. Most people can’t come this far. You should see the rest. Come downstairs. Would you tell the folks outside that we’ll be a few minutes?”
    Trellis opened the door. Sunlight glinted off windshields, and he could hear automobile traffic again. “The lady asks you to be patient.” The Marine Corps guy shrugged. The line looked like it had gained a few more people since he’d come in.
    The closing door shut out all noise.
    Jennifer opened the curtain. “Watch the step,” she said as she started down. “There’s no bannister.”
    A long flight of stairs lit by a light at the bottom fell before him.
    “How can you have stairs in a trailer?” After a few steps, he knew he was below the surface of the parking lot. “You’ll get in trouble for excavating on mall property.” But the roughly-carved rock walls didn’t look new, nor did the rock stairs worn to a groove in the middle appear freshly quarried. His fingers trailed down the stone as he descended, and patterns cut into the cool rock passed beneath them, like hieroglyphs or maybe something even older: cave carvings perhaps. When he came back, he decided, he’d look at them more closely with his flashlight.
    “The mall’s a Johnny-come-lately,” said the woman. “Besides, the stairs come with the trailer.”
    The descent emptied into a round chamber fifty feet across with a domed ceiling lit by a large chandelier dangling from chains in the middle and four muted lamps mounted on wall sconces. Chilly, dry air moved across Trellis’s face. The hooded man and Chastity sat on a long stone bench in the middle of the room, facing them. A shadow fell across the man’s face, so Trellis couldn’t see his