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The Maze - Nineteen ”This is so strange,” she replied, “but there’s a part I was reading that reminded me of you. Remember the stuff you told us about your years in Sun Valley?” “Sure, but what stuff, exactly?” “You'll see,” she replied mysteriously. “You just read that book, and then let’s talk again after that.” With his curiosity aroused, Ted did begin reading the book, and it soon became clear why his niece had sent it. At one point in the story, MacLaine wrote of an extraterrestrial, a woman named Maya, from a mountainous area in South America. Ted was astonished. The description of MacLaine’s Maya matched exactly with the young, beautiful woman he had known and cared for so deeply in Sun Valley. Everything he read there about her-the mannerisms, the conversations, the mysteries-seemed the same as with his Maya, and even some of the events in OUT ON A LIMB felt strangely familiar. Ted had certainly never thought of Maya as any sort of alien or extraterrestrial, but simply as a very unusual person from whom he’d learned important things, a cherished friend. This book, however, made him look back on those months with Maya and question the whole situation more carefully. How could he have been so close to her and yet have known nothing about her, not even her last name? Why had there been no record of her employment in the personnel office, and what could he really believe of her fantastic description of the place and the way her people supposedly lived? He longed to contact Shirley MacLaine and tell her that he, too, had known this Maya and had been deeply affected by their relationship. It was an overwhelming revelation. Ted phoned his niece immediately, and they discussed all the details he had shared with her long ago. He also phoned Marie, who was intrigued by Ted’s possible discovery about Maya. “T don’t pay much attention to UFOs and all that,” Marie said, “but it’s an amazing coincident, to say the least.” “No, I don’t think it is,” Ted replied, “not a coincidence, Masquerade of Angels 184 The Maze - Nineteen Marie. I’ve remembered something else, something that hap- pened back in Atlanta, and maybe you’ll recall my talking about it then. There was this guy, Mark, who was a friend of some people I knew, so I got to know him a little bit, too. Mark had an alcohol problem back then, and one time when he just disappeared on a drunk for a few days, his friends asked me to use my psychic powers to find him.” “This sounds familiar, all right,” Marie said, “but I just can’t remember the details of what happened.” “Well, I concentrated and got an image of a seedy old motel across town, so I drove over there,” Ted continued, “and sure enough, Mark was there. He’d been doing some nonstop drinking and was in really bad shape. I finally got him sober enough to talk about his problems, and that’s when he told me. About this woman he was in love with, a woman he met out in west Texas, who was beautiful, golden- tanned, wonderful. A woman named Maya. He described her exactly like my Maya, and I just thought it was some weird coincidence. I mean, how many Mayas can there be, for pete’s sake? She-my Maya-was just too unique for me to believe there could really be more of her, like copies or something. But now there’s MacLaine’s Maya, and I don’t know what the heck is going on with this.” Marie had no answer, nor did anyone else. There was no one in Albuquerque to whom he could talk about this per- sonal revelation. Only those he had told about Maya long ago, he felt, would have believed him and realize what a shock OUT ON A LIMB had given him. He certainly didn’t want any of his new friends, to whom he was plain ordinary Ted, to think he was crazy or making up tall tales after read- ing the book. So he kept it all inside. No matter how much he found himself wondering about UFOs and extraterrestrials after that, he did not share his private thoughts. The year passed outwardly in a normal fashion, then, until an incident in 1985 when he was visited by friends from Alabama. Several days into their stay, Ted woke up at half past three a.m. with his heart racing. Getting quietly out of bed, he looked around the mobile home for any sign of some- thing wrong. All his guests were sleeping peacefully, but Ted Masquerade of Angels 185