* * * *

The Spark grew brighter. He was more than a something that merely knew
that it existed. He was a man, and he had a name, and a military rank,
and memories. Memories of the searing blue-green flash, and of what he
had been doing outside the shelter the moment before, and memories of
the month-long siege, and of the retreat from the north, and memories of
the days before the War, back to the time when he had been little Allan
Hartley, a schoolboy, the son of a successful lawyer, in Williamsport,
Pennsylvania.

His mother he could not remember; there was only a vague impression of
the house full of people who had tried to comfort him for something he
could not understand. But he remembered the old German woman who had
kept house for his father, afterward, and he remembered his bedroom,
with its chintz-covered chairs, and the warm-colored patch quilt on the
old cherry bed, and the tan curtains at the windows, edged with dusky
red, and the morning sun shining through them. He could almost see them,
now.

He blinked. He _could_ see them!

* * * * *

For a long time, he lay staring at them unbelievingly, and then he
deliberately closed his eyes and counted ten seconds, and as he counted,
terror gripped him. He was afraid to open them again, lest he find
himself blind, or gazing at the filth and wreckage of a blasted city,
but when he reached ten, he forced himself to look, and gave a sigh of
relief. The sunlit curtains and the sun-gilded mist outside were still
there.

He reached out to check one sense against another, feeling the rough
monk's cloth and the edging of maroon silk thread. They were tangible as
well as visible. Then he saw that the back of his hand was unscarred.
There should have been a scar, souvenir of a rough-and-tumble brawl of
his cub reporter days. He examined both hands closely. An instant later,
he had sat up in bed and thrown off the covers, partially removing his
pajamas and inspecting as much of his body as was visible.

It was the smooth body of a little boy.

That was ridiculous. He was a man of forty-three; an army officer, a
chemist, once a best-selling novelist. He had been married, and divorced
ten years ago. He looked again at his body. It was only twelve years
old. Fourteen, at the very oldest. His eyes swept the room, wide with
wonder. Every detail was familiar: the flower-splashed chair covers; the
table that served as de