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Charlie Gilbert himself nearly vanished where he sat next to her in the theater, enjoying the rare performance of the ballet company, taking in the fragrance of the perfume he had only that day bought for her: the dance company had come out in semi-shadows, and the small touring orchestra unfolded the fragile melodies of a nearly forgotten work. The work was not originally meant for the dance theater, but it had become the strategy recently—almost by governmental decree—to combine music with some other medium in order to provide some kind of distraction and retain more control over the emotional states of the audience.
    In the beautiful, lilting second movement, one of the male dancers, symbolizing Autumn, reached sweepingly over the sleeping form of a frail young woman. He lifted her on balmy winds. He carried her through dreams of the passing seasons. And Christy Cooper sighed, then vanished with a sudden pop ! as air rushed in to fill the space she occupied next to Charlie.
    The audience went wild with fright. The orchestra stopped and the house lights showered everyone with a bold, vivid luminescence. The dancer in the arms of Autumn swooned.
    At that time, vanishings were quite uncommon, at least insofar as the general public was concerned. This sort of thing only happened to "other people," but not here. Not in healthy Palo Alto. The disease only struck those more emotionally unbalanced than the rest of the citizenry. The crazed and the troubled in mental institutions were the first to go. But no one paid any attention to them. They just weren't in their beds when morning came, their radios having played all night.
    But then the bacterium that caused the Syndrome began working its way up the ladder of emotional instability as the disease mutated or spread.
    And Charlie Gilbert wandered the streets for the best part of the night, confused. Then, embarrassed and apologetic, he rushed to the nearest video to summon the aid of Lanier, whom he knew to be immune to the disease. He knew that Lanier could succumb and not succumb at the same time. Lanier, like everyone else, suffered from the disease, but could prevent himself from vanishing. Or he could succumb—vanish from the very earth—and return at will. And no one but a Stalker could do this.
    Francis Lanier had, just moments before Charlie Gilbert's call, returned from fighting Seminoles in central Florida ca. 1870 in an odd phasing of Rachmaninoff's Prelude in G , rescuing a bitter industrialist bent on self-destruction. After a chase through steaming everglades and a decent burst from his Malachi machine pistol that fired rounds of anesthetic needles, the man returned to Lanier's workroom quite unconscious, but safe. But this was not until the man, in his flight of manic despair, had managed to secure sixteen blood-matted Indian scalps. The Defense Department expressed its gratitude to Lanier in an eloquent communiqué, which he summarily trashed. Killing Indians to the tune of Rachmaninoff was not Lanier's idea of a good time.
    Tired as he was, and soaking wet from the Florida swamps, the plight of Christy Cooper seemed to rally his interest and strength.
    By the time Charlie had found his way to Lanier's Bel Air home, he had calmed down somewhat. Lanier left him nursing a quart of the best Scotch he owned, and assured his friend that the best would be done. He only hoped that it wouldn't have anything to do with angry Seminole Indians.
    Ben-Haim. Orchestral Suite: From Israel . Second movement. It was an unusual work, quite nationalistic, very beautiful, and nearly forgotten. It was from the middle of the last century and was just the thing that one could easily lose oneself in, if one were in the proper mood, romantically speaking. Lanier grinned to himself as he entered the workroom alone: only a person in love— deeply in love—could lose herself so well in such a piece of music.
    Lanier dimmed the lights. He sat on the floor in a half-lotus position at the