clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org

THE GODS OF HYPERSPACE 143
Sally turns her head upward. "I feel—I feel a current running through
my body. But it doesn't hurt."
More of her hair strands stand out from her body, as she spreads her
legs and trembles slightly. She starts taking great gasps of air.
Narcinko crouches and tries to track the dot with his Heckler and
Koch 9-mm semiautomatic.
"Don't shoot!" you yell at Narcinko.
Sally's breath comes in short spurts now. She is shaking.
Narcinko takes a step forward. Perhaps he is going to try to swat the
dots of flesh away from Sally, but, as he approaches, the dots separate and
stop dancing. They look delightful, but you worry. If the tiny dots are
hot and penetrate Sally's body, she would burn. The dots seem to alter
her perceptions, and that could also mean danger, a danger not to her
body but to her mind.
"Wait," you say as a flowery odor fills the air.
The dots vibrate, making oboe-like sounds and moans. Could this be
what 4-D speech sounds like as it intersects your world?
"Don't stop," Sally whispers.
The dots continue to vibrate. Sally breathes in short shallow breaths,
oblivious of who would hear or who would care. Then she starts to rock
back and forth as her pupils dilate.
You can't stand it any longer. The sounds of the flesh dots are affecting
you too, making you drunk with pleasure. You lean into Sally. Her hair
has the sweet but musty smell of a garden in early autumn after a long,
luscious rain.
"Stop," Narcinko yells to the lights as he claps his hands together with
a loud bang.
Narcinko leaps toward Sally. "Enough of this," he says as he swings his
huge hands at the dots. But they are too quick for him.
The dots dart through the closed, bulletproof window and shoot
toward Pennsylvania Avenue. Sally is the first out of the White House to
follow them. You and Narcinko are close behind.
You try to get your sense of direction because intermixed with the spinning
dots of flesh are flares coming from other flesh blobs, flickering so
swiftly that you cannot be sure where they are coming from. The shimmering
blobs reveal momentarily eerie forms, things that look like eyes swimming
and swiveling to stare at you with an incandescent glare, like the eyes
of owls or deer when a beam from a car's headlight catches them by surprise.