February 1999: Ylla

      They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars by the edge of an empty sea, and every morning you could see Mrs K eating the golden fruits that grew from the crystal walls, or cleaning the house with handfuls of magnetic dust which, taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind. Afternoons, when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees stood stiff in the yard, and the little distant Martian bone town was all enclosed, and no one drifted out their doors, you could see Mr K himself in his room, reading from a metal book with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand, as one might play a harp. And from the book, as his fingers stroked, a voice sang, a soft ancient voice, which told tales of when the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient men had carried clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle.

      Mr and Mrs K had lived by the dead sea for twenty years, and their ancestors had lived in the same house, which turned and followed the sun, flower-like, for ten centuries.

      Mr and Mrs K were not old. They had the fair, brownish skin of the true Martian, the yellow coin eyes, the soft musical voices. Once they had liked painting pictures with chemical fire, swimming in the canals in the seasons when the wine trees filled them with green liquors, and talking into the dawn together by the blue phosphorous portraits in the speaking room.

      They were not happy now.

      This morning Mrs K stood between the pillars, listening to the desert sands heat, melt into yellow wax, and seemingly run on the horizon.

      Something was going to happen.

      She waited.

      She watched the blue sky of Mars as if it might at any moment grip in on itself, contract, and expel a shining miracle down upon the sand.

      Nothing happened.

      Tired of waiting, she walked through the misting pillars. A gentle rain sprang from the fluted pillar tops, cooling the scorched air, falling gently on her. On hot days it was like walking in a creek. The floors of the house glittered with cool streams. In the distance she heard her husband playing his book steadily, his fingers never tired of the old songs. Quietly she wished he might one day again spend as much time holding and touching her like a little harp as he did his incredible books.

      But no. She shook her head, an imperceptible, forgiving shrug. Her eyelids closed softly down upon her golden eyes. Marriage made people old and familiar, while still young.

      She lay back in a chair that moved to take her shape even as she moved. She closed her eyes tightly and nervously.

      The dream occurred.

      Her brown fingers trembled, came up, grasped at the air. A moment later she sat up, startled, gasping.

      She glanced about swiftly, as if expecting someone there before her. She seemed disappointed; the space between the pillars was empty.

      Her husband appeared in a triangular door. ‘Did you call?’ he asked irritably.

      ‘No!’ she cried.

      ‘I thought I heard you cry out.’

      ‘Did I? I was almost asleep and had a dream!’

      ‘In the daytime? You don’t often do that.’

      She sat as if struck in the face by the dream. ‘How strange, how very strange,’ she murmured. ‘The dream.’

      ‘Oh?’ He evidently wished to return to his book.

      ‘I dreamed about a man.’

      ‘A man?’

      ‘A tall man, six feet one inch tall.’

      ‘How absurd; a giant, a misshapen giant.’

      ‘Somehow’ – she tried the words – ‘he looked all right. In spite of being tall. And he had – oh, I know you’ll think it silly – he had blue eyes!’

      ‘Blue eyes! Gods!’ cried Mr K. ‘What’ll you dream next? I suppose he had black hair?’

      ‘How did you guess?’ She was excited.

      ‘I picked the most unlikely color,’ he replied coldly.

      ‘Well, black it was!’ she cried. ‘And he had a very white skin; oh, he was most unusual! He was dressed in a strange uniform and he came down out of the sky and spoke pleasantly to me.’ She smiled.

      ‘Out of the sky; what nonsense!’

      ‘He came in a metal thing that glittered in the sun,’ she remembered. She closed her eyes to shape it again. ‘I dreamed there was the sky and something sparkled like a coin thrown into the air, and suddenly it grew large and fell down softly to land, a long silver craft, round and alien. And a door opened in the side of the silver object and this tall man stepped out.’

      ‘If you worked harder you wouldn’t have these silly dreams.’

      ‘I rather enjoyed it,’ she replied, lying back. ‘I never suspected myself of such an imagination. Black hair, blue eyes, and white skin! What a strange man, and yet – quite handsome.’

      ‘Wishful thinking.’