The Second Shield

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In the night, despite the unsettling trouble that was brewing with the client from Miami, the blustering and the importuning and the implied or even outright threats, Beckerman managed to dream satisfactorily after all. He dreamed a little free-standing staircase of alabaster and malachite that pivoted in the middle and went back down itself through some other dimension like something out of an Escher print; he dreamed an attenuated one-legged bronze statuette with three skinny arms and a funny spiral topknot, Giacometti meets Dr. Seuss, so to speak; he dreamed a squat, puckery-skinned cast-iron froggy thing with bulging ivory eyeballs that periodically opened its huge mouth and emitted little soprano squeaks. Everything a bit on the bizarre side, even for Beckerman; but he did have a tendency to go over the edge a little when things got tense. The three pieces were arrayed in a neat row by the side of his bed when he woke, just before noon. It was, he thought, a damned fine batch of work.

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