Logan was inclined to ignore him, as one would avoid a beggar, except -- how to ignore a stranger in one's own house late at night?

How the hell did he get in? The White House is tighter than a drum since the assassination attempt. Yesterday a new guard asked for MY identification. Where does this sucker get off roaming around like he owned the place?

Logan could not sleep, had risen in the middle of the night -- soft moonlight streaming through the window into his bedroom -- and padded outside to pace the dimly lit hallway to think, to ponder, to --

There was no avoiding him. "Can I help you?" Logan asked in his best shopkeeping manner.

"Thanks, just browsing," the stranger rejoined, playing to the gambit.

Logan stared silently at the younger man. If he intended to kill me, he would have tried by now.

The man turned to face him. "I'm not going to kill you. There's nothing to worry about."

"Can I help you?" Logan repeated, feeling like an usher.

"Yes you can, Logan."

"My friends call me Mister President," he responded dryly. "Who the hell are you?"

"You may call me Allen, Sir. I have some personal questions."

Reporter? Logan thought.

"No. Not a reporter."

Before Logan could reflect on this second instance of extreme perspicacity, the stranger added, "But first, I should tell you --" He glanced right and left down the hallway conspiratorially, then winked:

"You're having a dream."

A lucid dream! It had been years since the last time he'd "awakened" to become aware of a dream even while it continued. The awareness had not given him control; the characters continued to act independently of his volition. They walked and talked with the random unpredictability of real life, even though he knew them to be a product of his own mind.

If such was the case -- if he was dreaming now -- this was the first time he had been informed by one of the characters themselves.

It may be, he decided. What other way to account for this? I need a reality check. Was there a filminess over his perceptions; an other-worldly quality to the setting?

"Allen, hmm?" He saw incredible detail: the pores of the man's skin, the pale blue of his eyes, a tiny mole on the neck just above the shirt collar. The dark blonde hair was combed but fundamentally unkempt, apparently unmanageable, a lock dangling down the forehead.

If he isn't real, this is one hell of a dream. Or am I wigging out?

"Does this help?" Allen asked, floating slowly into mid-air above the carpet.

"Yeah." Logan grunted as he took an open-handed swipe at Allen's face, his hand passing through nothingness. "And that does, too."

"Fine. Then shall we get down to business?"

After accepting that he was dreaming, Logan began to enjoy the experience. He and the stranger chatted as they wandered the White House corridors alone and undisturbed.

"Tell me about yourself," Allen requested politely, and Logan reminisced volubly, interminably.

Born in Columbia, South Carolina, during the first great depression, he'd been called "Jam" in childhood; from "log-jam", and also the reputation of "jamming" his opponents. He'd skipped two grades in grammar school, and entered college at the age of fifteen, the youngest student in the school's history.

Minutes turned to hours, and Logan talked on. He dug scraps of poetry from memory, and recited in a gravelly voice. There were loves and hates and aspirations. "I wanted to be a brakeman on a railroad. I thought this was the greatest thing, to go out into the world and explore, I couldn't wait to leave home." He laughed. "All the brakemen carried a big stick and beat the hobos in the head. Heh, I thought this was great. This was the same year that Annie Williams kept me after school and gave me a hundred lines of poetry to memorize. Hell, it only took me five minutes, but that was when I decided I wanted to be a brakeman --"

Hours stretched to days, but night remained frozen into the corridors of the White House.

"Let me tell you about the time I burned down my schoolhouse." He spun stories of boyhood adventure; of playing in empty weed and bramble-filled vacant lots, of cutting through alleys and back yards on the way to and from school. On weekends, he'd played ball in the streets with his friends, and on lazy summer afternoons they'd lain on patchy lawns and told dirty jokes, and plotted, and looked into the sky to find shapes in the clouds. He was both a ring-leader and a loner, and suffered from inordinate curiosity and a vigorous sense of adventure. One lonely Saturday afternoon, in the panic-stricken moment of an experiment with matches and newspapers gone awry, he found that he was burning down his school. Accidentally.

"It got out of control, you know, and I couldn't get it out." He chuckled in a deep chested, gravelly voice. "I was never caught, and I sure as hell never confessed. Years later, after I was grown, I finally told my mama.

" 'Piss and vinegar,' she said. ' We're descended from Leif Ericson, you know, and he was the son of Eric the Red. That's where you got it,' she said, and winked. She was a great woman. Enjoyed a good laugh. Had a red head's temper, though. Got my britches warmed more than once."

There were stories he'd forgotten; incidents long submerged bubbled to the surface. There were moods, and modes of thought, and opinions, ways of thinking, points of view; and Logan spilled it all and dredged for more. He told his story, but it was not so much a telling as a reliving. Allen walked by, listening, but not so much listening as absorbing.

Sharon had died. He told of their marriage, and their daughter, Lisa, and Sharon's fatal encounter with a drunken driver, and a tear ran down his cheek, and Allen cocked his head sympathetically. He had not remarried. Instead, he'd thrown himself into politics, running for Congress and winning on the first try.

Days stretched into weeks as they wandered the corridors, never repeating their path, until Allen-the-stranger bid him stop, politely, finger to pursed lips, and began speaking, and as he spoke Logan realized that he could not understand a word the man was saying, it was in a language, a tongue foreign to his ears, and he wondered if Allen would remain a stranger forever --

He awoke. In his bed. Babbling. The foreign words came from his own mouth.

What the hell was that? he wondered. He squinted groggily at the clock-calendar glowing softly by the bed. The weeks had been minutes. The sharp edges of the dream were already blurring, slipping into oblivion.

Logan cracked the door to his daughter's bedroom and peered inside. Soft, white light streamed through the west window, sprawling across the oak floor.

Lisa slept peacefully in her bed. Two year old Marla sprawled on her back beside her mother, at a ninety degree angle outside the covers, brown hair framing her face. She snored gently, mouth open, "catching flies." Logan came in quietly and turned the little girl upright, pulling up the covers she had kicked aside and tucking them gently around her. Hermes the Cat, lying at the foot of the bed, lifted his head, "Meowed", and started a brief flurry of purring which died out in a few seconds.

"Hermes," Lisa had named him, after the Greek herald. A few days ago she and Logan had broken up with laughter when Marla gravely announced her observation that "Hermes got wormies."

He stepped quietly to the window and peered into the sky. The exterior lights were off -- as they had been for years now -- to advertise an economy that the rest of the nation practiced from necessity.

In the south-west the full moon seemed inches from the tip of the tall oak across the lawn. Logan waited patiently, watching the gap close, until leaves were etched sharply, brushing across the glowing disk.

What will she see? he thought. What wonders will she see?