Everville

PART FIVE. PARADE

Not for the first time in the dark years since the Loop, Tesla dreamed of fleas. A veritable tsunami of fleas, that rose over Harmon's Heights with the wreckage of America on its busy crest, and teetered there, ready to drop at a moment's notice. In its itching shadow, Everville had become a lagoon city. Main Street was a solid river of fleas, upon which makeshift rafts were paddled from house to house, rescuing people from the leaping surf.

A few folks seemed to know her, though she didn't recognize any of them.

"You! You!" they said, stabbing their fingers in her direction as she towed her own creaky little boat down the street, "You did this! You with the monkey!" (She had a monkey on her shoulder, complete with vest and red felt hat.) "Admit it! You did this!" She protested her innocence. Yes, she'd known the wave was coming. And yes, maybe she'd wasted time with her wandering when she should have been warning the world. But it wasn't her fault. She was just a victim of circumstance, like all of them. It wasn't "Testa? Wake up! Tesla? Listen to me.

Wake up, will you?"

She unglued her eyes to find Phoebe staring down at her, grinning from ear to ear.

"I know where he is. And I know how he got there." Testa sat up, shaking the last of the fleas from her head.

"Joe?"

"Of course Joe." Phoebe sat down on the edge of the sofa. She was trembling. "I was with him last night, Tesia."

"What are you talking about?"

"I thought it was a dream at first, but it wasn't. I know it wasn't. It's just as clear in my head now as it was when I was there."

"Where?"

"With Joe." "Yes, but where, Phoebe?"

"Oh. In Quiddity."

Tesla was ready to dismiss the whole thing as wishful thinking at first, but the more Phoebe told, the more she began to think there was truth here.

Raul concurred. Didn't I tell you? he murmured in Tesla's ear when Phoebe came to the part about the door on Harmon's Heights. Didn't I say there was something about the mountain?

"If there is a door up there... " she thought. It explains why this damn town's gone crazy.

"I have to go up there," Phoebe was saying. "Get through the door, so I can go find Joe." She grabbed hold of Tesla's hands. "You will help me, won't you? Say you will."

"Yes, but-2'

"I knew. I said the moment I woke this is why Tesla came into my life, because she's going to help me find Joe."

"Where was he when you left him?"

Phoebe's face fell. "He was in the sea."

"What about his boat?"

"It went on without him. I think... I think they must have thought he was dead. But he isn't dead. I know he isn't. If he was dead I wouldn't be feeling what I'm feeling now. My heart'd be empty, you know?"

Tesla looked at the woman's elation, and heard her faith, i@ and felt a pang of envy, that never in her life had love taken hold of her this way. Perhaps it was a lost cause, going in search of a man lost overboard in the dream-sea when it seemed the world was about to end, but she'd always had a taste for lost causes. And if she spent the last few hours of life trying to reunite these lovers, was that so petty an ambition?

"Did Joe tell you where the door was on the mountain?"

"Just somewhere near the top. But we'll find it. I know we'll find it."

It was less than half an hour later when Tesla and Phoebe stepped out into the sun, but Everville was already in high gear. Main Street was fairly swarming with people: bleacher builders, banner hangers, balloon inflaters, barricade raisers. And where there was labor, of course, there were people around to watch and remark upon it: coffee drinkers and doughnut dippers, advice givers and troubleshooters.

"We shouldn't have come this way," Phoebe said as they waited in a line of a dozen vehicles for a truckload of chairs to be unloaded.

"Calm down," Tesla said. "We've got a long day ahead of us. Let's just take things as they come."

"If only they knew what we know," Phoebe said, watching the people on the sidewalk.

"Oh they know," Tesla said.

"About Quiddity?" Phoebe replied incredulously. "I don't think they've got the slightest idea."

"Maybe it's bufied deep," Tesla said, studying the blithe faces as the passed. "But everybody gets to go to Quiddity y three times, remember."

"I got to steal a visit," Phoebe said proudly.

"You had help on the other side. Everybody else gets their glimpses, then forgets them. they just get on about their lives, thinking they're real."

"Did you do a lot of drugs?" Phoebe said. "I've had my moments," Tesla said. "Why?"

"Because some of the stuff you come out with-it doesn't make any sense to me." She looked across at Tesla. "Like what you just said, about people thinking they're real. they are. I'm real. You're real. Joe's real."

"How do you know?"

"That's a stupid question," Phoebe said.

"So give me a stupid answer."

"We do stuff. We make things happen. I'm not like... like-" she faltered, searching for some frame of reference, then pointed at one of the coffee sippers, who was sitting on the curb scanning the cartoon strips in the morning's Oregonian. "I'm not in the funny pages. Nobody invented me. I invented myself."

"Just remember that when we get to Quiddity." "Why?"

"Because I think a lot of things got invented there." "Go on."

"And where things are made, they can be unmade. So if something comes after you-"

"I'll tell it to go fuck itself," Phoebe said. "You're ]earnings" Tesia said.

Once they were off Main Street the traffic lightened up considerably, and disappeared completely once they reached the road that wove up the flank of Harmon's Heights. It didn't take them all that far. About a third of the way up the mountainside it came to an unceremonious halt, without so much as a sign or a banier to mark the place. "Damn," Phoebe said. "I thought it went further than this."

"Like all the way to the top?"

"Yeah."

"Looks like we've got quite a hike ahead of us," Tesia said, getting out of the car and staring up the forested slope.

"Are you up for it?"

"No."

"But we're here. We might as well give it a try." And with that, they began their ascent.

In Ws long life, Buddenbaum had met many individuals who had tired of the human parade. People who had gone to their death with a shrug, content that they no longer had to witness the same old dramas played out over and over again. He had never understood the response. Though the general shapes of human exchange were unchanging, the particulars of this personality or that made each new example fascinating in and of itself In his experience no two mothers ever educated their children with quite the same mingling of kisses and slaps. No two pairs of lovers ever trod quite the same path to the altar or to the grave.

In truth, he pitied the nay-sayers; the souls too stunted or too narcissistic to revel in the magnificent minutiae that the human drama had to offer. they were turning their backs on a show that divinities were not too proud to patronize and applaud. He'd heard them with these ears, many times.

Despite the fact that his body knitted together with extraordinary speed

(in a week his defenestration would be an embarrassing memory), he was still in very considerable discomfort. Later, perhaps, when the avatars had arrived and he was certain everything was in hand, he'd take a little laudanum. In the meanwhile, his chest hurt like the Devil and he had a distinct limp, which gained him some unwarranted attention as he made his way out in search of a decent breakfast. It would be inappropriate, he decided, to go to the diner, so he found a little coffee shop two blocks from his hotel and sat by the window to eat and watch.

He ordered not one but two breakfasts, and consumed the better part of both in preparation for the exertions and lastminute panics ahead. His eyes scarcely strayed to his plates as he emptied them. He was too busy watching the faces and hands of the passersby, looking for some sign of his employers. It was by no means certain they would come in human garb, of course. Sometimes (he never knew when) they would descend out of the clouds wreathed in light: the wheels of Ezekiel rolling into view. Twice they'd come in the form of animals, amused, he supposed, by the conceit of watching the drama from the perspective of wild beasts or lap dogs. The one way they had never come was as themselves, and after years of doing them service he'd given up hope of ever seeing their true faces. Perhaps they had none. Perhaps the plethora of faces they put on, and their appetite for vicarious experience, were evidence that they had neither lives nor flesh of their own.

"was everything okay?"

He looked round to see his waitress standing at his side. He had not taken too much notice of her until now, but she was a wonderful sight: hair raised in a vivid orange hive, breasts rampant, face daubed and drawn and dusted.

"You're looking forward to something today, I can see that," Buddenbaum remarked.

"Tonight," she said, with a flutter of her mascaraed lashes.

"Why do I think it's not a prayer meeting?" Buddenbaum replied.

"We always throw a little party Festival Weekend, me and some of my girlfriends."

"Well that's what festivals are for, isn't it?" Buddenbaum said.

"Everybody has to let their hair down@r put it u@nce in a while."

"Do you like it?" the woman said, patting the hive affectionately.

"I think it's extraordinary," Buddenbaum said, without a word of a lie.

"Well thank you," the woman beamed. She dug in the pocket of her apron, and pulled out a little sheet of paper. "If you feel like dropping in," she said, proffering the paper. On it was an address and a simple map.

"We have these little invites made, just for the chosen few."

"I'm flattered," Buddenbaum said. "My name's Owen, by the way."

"I'm pleased to meet you. I'm June Davenport. Miss."

The addendum could not be ignored politely. "I can't believe you haven't had offers," Buddenbaum said. "None worth accepting," June replied.

"Who knows? Maybe tonight'll be your lucky night," Owen said. A

lifetime of yearning crossed the woman's face. "It better be soon," she said, more lightly than it was -felt, and moved off to ply the needy with coffee.

was there anything more beautiful, Owen wondered as he left the coffee shop, than a sight of yearning on the human face? Not the night sky nor a boy's buttocks could compare with the glory of June Davenport (Miss)

dolled up like a whore and hoping to meet the man of her dreams before time ran out. He'd seen tale enough for a thousand nights of telling there on her painted face. Roads taken, roads despised. Deeds undone, deeds regretted.

And tonight@d every moment between now and tonight-more roads to choose, more deeds to do. She might be turning her head even now, or now, or now, and seeing the face she had longed to love. Or, just as easily, looking the other way.

As he made his way down towards the intersection, where-Aespite the previous day's encounter-he still intended to keep watch, he chanced to look up towards Harmon's Heights. There was a mist cloud gathering on the summit, he saw, hiding it from view. The sight gave him pause. The sky, but for this mist, was flawless, which made him think it was not of natural origin.

was this the way his employers would come: down out of a clouded mountaintop, like Olympians? He'd not seen them do so before, but there was a first time for everything. He only hoped they wouldn't be too baroque with their theatrics. If they came into Everville like blazing deities, they'd clear the streets.

Then who'd go to June Davenport's party?

The mist had not gone unnoticed in other quarters. Dorothy Bullard had called up Turf Thompson, whose meteorological opinion she'd long trusted, for some reassurance that the cloud wasn't going to dump rain on the day's festivities. He told her not to worry. The phenomenon was odd, to be sure, but he was certain there was no storm in the offing.

"In fact," he remarked, "if I didn't know better I'd say that was a sea mist up there."

Comforted by his observations, Dorothy went on with the business of the morning. The first of the day's special events-a little pageant about how the first settlers came to Oregon, enacted by Mrs. Henderson's fourth-graders in the park, got underway ten minutes later than advertised, but drew a crowd of perhaps two hundred, which was very gratifying. And the kids were completely enchanting, with their little bonnets and their cardboard rifles, declaiming their lines as though their lives depended on it. There was a particularly affecting scene created around one Reverend Whitney (Dorothy had never heard of him, but she was certain Fiona Henderson had done her homework and the tale was true), who had apparently led a group of pioneers out of the winter snows to the safety of the Willamette Valley. Seeing Jed Gilholly's son Matthew, who was playing the good reverend, forging through a blizzard of paper scraps to plant a cross in the grass and give thanks for the deliverance of his flock quite misted Dorothy's eyes.

When the show was over, and the crowd dispersing, she found a proud Jed with his arm around his son, both beaming from ear to ear.

"Things are off to a damn good start," he said to Dorothy, and anyone else in listening range.

"You're not bothered about that other business, then?"

Dorothy said.

"Flicker, you mean?" Jed shook his head. "He's gone and he's not coming back."

"Music to my ears," Dorothy said. "And what about little Matty then?" Jed said.

"He was wonderful."

"He's been learning his lines for the past few weeks."

"I almost forgot them this morning," Matthew said.

"Didn't I?"

"You just thought you had," Jed said, "but I knew you'd remember them."

"You did?"

"Sure I did." He ruffled his son's hair, lovingly. "Can we get some ice cream, Dad?"

"Sounds like a plan," Jed said. "I'll see you later, Dorothy." to see Jed this way, and it She'd seldom had occasion was a real pleasure. "This is what the Festival's all about, isn't it?" she said ps and hats to Fiona as they watched the kids deposit their pro in cardboard boxes, then peel off with their parents. "People enjoying themselves." "It was fun, wasn't it?" Fiona said.

"Where did you find that bit about the reverend, by the way?"

"Well, I cheated a little," Fiona confessed, lowering her voice a tad.

"He didn't actually have much to do with Everville."

,,Oh."

"In fact, he had nothing at all to do with Everville. He founded his church in Silverton. But it was such a good

-q P

story. And frankly, I couldn't find anything about our founding fathers that was appropriate for the children."

"What about the Nordhoff story?"

"That comes much later," Fiona said, in her best schoolmarmish tones.

"Yes, of course."

"No, when it comes to the early years I'm afraid we have some very murky waters. I was quite shocked at how licentious Everville was at the start. There was certainly nothing very Christian about some of the goings-on here."

"Are you quite sure?" Dorothy said, frankly surprised by what she was hearing.

"Quite," said Fiona.

Dorothy left the subject there, certain that the woman was misinformed. Everville had probably seen some robust behavior in its time (what city didn't have its share of drunkards and hedonists?), but its origins were nothing to be ashamed of. If there was to be a pageant next year, she said to herself, then it wouldn't be some phoney story, it would be the truth. And she would tell Fiona Henderson in no uncertain terms that it was her responsibility as a teacher and as a citizen not to be telling lies, however well intentioned, to her charges. As she left the park, she took a moment to study the mist on Harinon's Heights. Just as Turf had promised, it was showing little sign of spreading. It was denser than it had been three-quarters of an hour before, however. The actual peak, which had earlier been visible through the fog, was now lost to sight.

No matter, she thought. There was nothing much to see up there anyhow. Just some bare rocks and a lot of trees. She consulted her watch. It was ten after eleven. The Pancake Contest and All-You-Can-Eat Brunch would soon be underway at the Old Bakery Restaurant, and the Pet Parade lining up in the square. She was due to be one of the judges of the flower arranging at noon, but she had time to drop by and see how things were going at the Town Hall first, where people would already be assembling for the Grand Parade, even though it wouldn't start for another two hours. So much to see. So much to do. Smiling people spilling off the crowded sidewalks, banners and balloons snapping and glittering against the blue August sky. She wished it could go on forever: a festival that never stopped. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

"I don't like this," Telso said.

She wasn't speaking of the climb-though it had steadily become steeper, and now left her gasping between every other word-but of the mist that had been little more than shreds when they'd begun their ascent and was now a thick, white blanket.

"I'm not turning back," Phoebe said hurriedly.

"I didn't say we should," Tesla replied. "I was just saying-" Yes. What are you saying? Raul murmured.

"That there's something weird about it."

"It, s just mist," Phoebe said.

"I don't think so. And just for the record, neither does Raul." Phoebe came to a halt, as much to catch her breath as to continue the debate. "We've got guns," she said.

"That didn't do us much good at Toothaker's place," Tesla reminded her.

"You think there's something hiding in there?" Phoebe said, studying the black wall that was now no more than three hundred yards from them.

"I'd bet my Harley on it."

Phoebe let out a shuddering sigh. "Maybe you should go back," she said.

"I don't want anything to happen to you on my account."

"Don't be ridiculous," Tesla said.

"Good," said Phoebe. "So if we get parted in there-"

"Which is very possible@'

"We don't go looking for each other?"

"We just go on."

"Right."

"All the way to Quiddity."

"All the way to Joe."

Lord, but it was clammy cold in the mist. Within sixty seconds of entering it, both Tesla and Phoebe were shuddering from head to foot.

"Watch where you walk," Tesla warned Phoebe. "Why?"

"Look there," she said, pointing to a six-inch wide crack in the ground.

"And there. And there."

The fissures were everywhere, and recent. She was not all that surprised. The opening of a door between one reality and another was a violation of the physical by the metaphysical; a cataclysm that was bound to take its toll on matter that lacked mind. It had been the same at Buddy Vance's house as here: the solid world had cracked and melted and fallen apart when the door had opened in its midst. The difference however, and it was notable, was how quiet and still it was here. Even the mist hung almost motionless. Vance's house, by contrast, had been a maelstrom.

She could only assume that whoever had opened this door was both an expert in the procedure and a creature of great self-discipline; unlike the Jaff, who had been a mere novice, and utterly incapable of controlling the forces he had claimed as his own. Kissoon? Raul suggested.

It was not at first thought an unlikely choice. She did not expect to meet a more powerful entity than Kissoon in the living world.

"But if he can open a door between here and the Cosm," Tesia thought,

"that means he has the Art."

That wouldfollow.

"In which case, why is he still playing in the shit down in Toothaker's house?"

Good question. "He's got something to do with this-I don't doubt that-but I don't think he could open a door on his own."

Maybe he had help, Raul said.

"You're talking to the monkey, aren't you?" Phoebe said.

"I think we should keep our voices down."

"You are though, aren't you?"

"Am I movin my lips?" Testa said.

11 9

'Yep.

"I never could-d-" She stopped: talking, and in her tracks. She grabbed Phoebe's arm.

"What?" Phoebe said. "Listen."

Anyone for carpentry lessons? Raul remarked. Somebody higher up the Mountainside was hammering. The sound was muted by the mist, so it was difficult to know how far off the handyman was, but the din laid to rest what little hope Testa had entertained of finding the door unguarded.

She reached into her jacket and took out Lourdes. "We're going to go very slowly," she whispered to Phoebe. "And keep your eyes peeled."

She led the way now, up the fissured slope, the hammering of her heart competing with that of the handyman. There were other sounds she heard, just audible between the blows. somebody sobbing. Somebody else singing, the words incomprehensible.

"What the hell is going on up there?" Testa murmured. There were lopped branches strewn on the ground, and a litter of twigs stripped from other branches, presumably those judged useful by the hammerer. was he building a little house up there, or an altar, perhaps?

The mist ahead of them shifted, and for a moment Testa caught a glimpse of somebody moving across her field of vision. it was too brief for her to quite grasp what she was seeing, but it seemed to be a child, its head too unwieldy for its emaciated body. It left a trail of laughter where it ran (at least she thought it was laughter; she couldn't even be certain of that), and the sound seemed to draw patterns in the mist, like ripples left by darting fish. It was a strange phenomenon, but in its way rather beguiling.

She looked round at Phoebe, who was wearing a tiny smile.

"There are children up here," she murmured.

"It looks that way."

She'd no sooner spoken that the child reappeared, capering and laughing as before. It was a girl, Testa saw. Despite her almost infantile body, she had budding breasts, which were ruddier than the rest of her pale body, and a yard-long ponytail that sprouted from the middle of her otherwise shaved skull.

Nimble though she was, her foot caught in one of the cracks as she ran by, and she fell forward, her laughter ceasing.

Phoebe let out a little gasp of concern. Despite the hammerings and the sobs, the child heard her. She looked round, and her eyes, which were black and shiny, like polished stones, were briefly laid upon the two women. Then the child was on her feet and away, racing off up the slope.

"So much for secrecy," Testa remarked. She could hear the child's shrill voice, raising the alarm. "Let's get out of their way," she said, catching hold of Phoebe's arm and hauling her off across the slope. The traumatized ground made speed virtually impossible, but they covered fifty stumbling yards before halting and listening again.

The hammering had stopped, and so had the singing. Only the sobbing went on.

That's not grief, Raul said.

"No?"

It's pain. It's somebody in terrible pain.

Testa shuddered, and looked straight at Phoebe. "Listen to me-" she whispered.

"You want to go back."

"Don't you?"

Phoebe's face was pale and wet. "Yes," she breathed. "Part of me does." She looked over her shoulder, though there was nothing to see but mist. "But not as much... " she hesitated, full of little tremors,

"not as much as I want to be with Joe."

"If you keep saying that," Testa said, "I'm going to start believing it."

A burst of nervous laughter escaped Phoebe, but turned into tears the next moment. "If we get out of this alive," she said, doing her best to stifle her sobs, "I'll owe you so much."

"You'll owe me an invitation to the wedding is all you'll owe me," Testa said. Phoebe put her arms around Testa, and hugged her.

"We're not there yet," Tesia said.

"I know, I know," Phoebe replied. She stood back from Tesla, sniffed hard, and wiped the tears from under her eyes with the heel of her hand.

"I'm ready."

"Good." Tesia looked back towards the spot where they'd been seen. There was neither sound nor sign of motion. It was not much comfort, given how hard it was to judge distance under these circumstances, but at least there was no horde of Lix or children bearing down upon them.

"Let's climb," she said, and led the way up the slope again. It was impossible to judge their precise direction, of course, but as long as the ground continued to rise ahead of them, they knew they were still on their way to the summit.

After a few paces they had further evidence that they were headed in the right direction. The moaning sound was becoming louder with every yard they covered, and it was soon joined by the voice of the singer. She faltered at first, as though trying to pick up the threads of whatever piece she'd left off singing. Then she apparently despaired of doing so, and began another song: this more melancholy than the first. A lament, perhaps; or a lullaby for a dying child. Whatever it was, it made Tesia feel positively queasy, and she found herself wishing a nest of Lix would appear from the cracked ground, so she'd have something upon which to pin her trepidation. Anything rather than the sobs, and the song, and the image of the skipping child with its lifeless eyes.

And then, as the song came round for another dirging verse, the mist unveiled a horror even her most troubled imaginings had not conjured.

There, twenty yards up the slope, was the hammerer's handiwork. He hadn't built a house. He hadn't built an altar. He'd felled three trees, and stripped them, and dragged them up the slope to fashion crosses, ten, twelve feet high. Then somebody-perhaps the hammerer, perhaps his mastershad crucified three people upon them.

Tesia could not see much of the victims. She and Phoebe were approaching the site from behind the crosses. But she could see the hammerer. He was a small, broad fellow, his head wide and flat, with eyes like the laughing child's eyes, and he was gathering up his tools in the shadow of the crosses with the casual manner of someone who had just fixed a table leg. A little way beyond him, lounging in a chair, was the singer. She had her gaze turned up towards the crucified, her lament still maundering on.

Neither individual had seen Tesla and Phoebe. As the women watched, appalled, the hammerer finished collecting up his tools and went on his jaunty way, disappearing into the mist beyond the crosses without so much as a backwards glance. The singer threw back her head, almost languorously, and hafted her song to draw on a thin cigarette.

"Why would anybody do something like this?" Phoebe said, her voice trembling

"I don't give a shit," Tesla replied, pulling her gun from herjacket.

"We're going to do something about it."

Like what? said Raul.

"Like getting those poor fuckers down,,, Tesla said aloud.

"Us?" said Phoebe.

"Yes, us."

Tesla, listen to me, Raul said. This is horrible, I know.

But it's too late to help them "What's he saying?" Phoebe asked.

"He hasn't finished."

It was a damn fool thing to do in the first place, coming up here. But we've got thisfar.

"So what? Turn a blind eye?"

Yes! Absolutely! "Christ...

I know, Raul said. This is a terrible thing and I wish we weren't here to see it. But let's find the door and get Phoebe through it. Then we can both get the fuck out of here.

"You know what?" Phoebe said, nodding towards the singer. "She might know where the door is. I think we should ask her." She pointed to Tesia's gun. "With that."

"Good deal."

Just don't look at the crosses, okay? Raul said, as they started up the slope.

The singer had finally given up her lament and was simply slumped in her chair, eyes still closed, smoking her dope. The only sound was the sobbing of one of the crucified, and even that had dwindled as they advanced, until it was barely audible.

"Just look at the ground," Tesla told Phoebe. "It's no use breaking our hearts."

Eyes downcast, they continued to climb. Tesla was horribly tempted to look up at the victims, but she resisted. Raul was right. There was nothing they could do. Up ahead, the singer was talking to herself in her blissed-out state.

"Hey, Laguna... ? You hear me? I got them, I got right there. Right there. White they are. So white. You wouldn't believe how-"

Tesla put the gun to the woman's temple. The stream of consciousness stopped abruptly, and the woman's eyes flickered open. She was by no means a beauty: her skin was leathery, her eyes tiny and surrounded with coarse bristles, her mouth-which was similarly ringed-was twice the width of any human mouth, her teeth tiny, pointed-perhaps sharpened-and innumerable. Despite her drugged condition, she plainly understood her jeopardy. "I'll sing some more," she said.

"Don't bother," Tesla replied. "Just point us to the door."

"You're not one of the Blessedm'n's company?"

"No.

"Are you Sapas Humana?" she said.

"No. I'm just the lady with the gun," Tesla said.

"You are, aren't you?" the singer replied, her gaze going back and forth between the two women. "You're Sapas Humana! Oh, this is wonderful."

"Are you listening to me?" Tesla said.

"Yes. You want the door. It's there." Without looking round she pointed off into the mist.

"How far?"

"A little way. But why would you want to leave? There's nothing on the other side but more of this mist and a filthy sea. Here's where the wonders are, in the Helter j Incendo. Among Humana, like you."

"Wonders?" said Phoebe.

"Oh yes, oh yes," the woman enthused, ignoring the gun that was still pointed at her head. "We've lived a shadow-life in the Ephemeris, dreaming of being here, where things are pure and real."

My God, is she infor a disappointment, Raul remarked.

But there was more here than a misinformed tourist "Isn't the lad coming through this door?" Tesla asked her.

She smiled. "Oh yes," she said, almost dreamily.

"So why are you hanging around?"

"We're waiting to greet them."

"Then you'll never see the wonders of the Hefter Incendo, will you?"

"Why not?"

"Because the lad's coming to destroy it."

The woman laughed. Threw back her head and laughed. "Who told you that?" she said.

Tesla didn't answer though she had no difficulty remembering. The first person she'd heard that from had been Kissoon. Not perhaps the most reliable of sources. But then hadn't she had the theory supported on several occasions since? It was D'Amour's belief, for certain. According to him the lad was the Enemy of Mankind, the Devil by another name. And hadn't Grillo told her of men and women across the continent who listed on the Reef the weapons they'd use to defend themselves if, or rather when, the holocaust occurred?

Still the woman laughed. "The lad's coming here for the same reason that I came," she said. "they want to live among miracles."

"There aren't any," Phoebe piped up. "Not here."

The singer grew serious. "Perhaps you've lived with them for so long," she said, "you don't see them."

Ask her about the crucifixions, Raul prompted.

"Damn right," Tesia thought. "What about them?" she said, jabbing her thumb over her shoulder.

"The Blessedm'n wanted that. They're spies, he said; enemies of peace."

"Why kill them that way?" Phoebe said. "It's so horrible."

The singer looked genuinely confounded. "the Blessedm'n said it was best for them."

"Best for them?" Tesia said, appalled. "That?" on't you have it in one of your holy books? A god dies that way-"

"Yes, but-"

"And he's reunited with his father, or his mother."

"Father," said Phoebe. "Forgive my ignorance. I've no memory for stories. Songs; that's a different matter. I hear a song once, and I've got it for life. But a joke, or a piece of a gossip, or even a god-tale"-she snapped her fingers-"forgotten!"

Suppose she's telling the truth, Raul muttered.

"About crucifixions?"

About the lad Maybe we've had the whole thing wrong from the beginning.

"And they're just coming to see the sights?" Testa replied. "I don't think so. Remember the Loop?" She brought her one and only glimpse of the lad to mind now, in all its vastness and foulness. Even now, after five years, the memory made her queasy. Perhaps the lad was not the Enemy of Mankind, the Evil One itself, but nor had it seemed to have love and peace on its collective mind.

"Will you join with me?" the singer was saying.

"Doing what?" Testa said.

"She asked if she could smoke," Phoebe said. "Didn't you hear her?"

"I was thinking."

"About what?"

"About how fucking confused I am."

The singer was stroking the tip of her reefer with i match flame. Whatever she was smoking, it wasn't hashish. The smoke was almost sickly sweet, like cinnamon and sugar. She inhaled deeply.

"Again," Testa said. "Inhale again." The woman looked mystified, but obeyed. "And again," Testa said, nudging he gun against the woman's head for emphasis. The woman duty inhaled two more tungfuls. "That's it," Testa said, as a soporific smile spread over the woman's face, and her eyelids began to flutter closed. "One more for luck."

The woman raised the reefer to her lips and inhaled a final time. Halfway through doing so the drug claimed her consciousness. Her hand dropped to her side, the cigarette failing from her fingers. Testa picked it up, nipped off the burning weed, and pocketed the rest.

"You never know," she said to Phoebe. "Let's get going."

Only now, as they started off the slope again, did Testa realize that the sound of sobbing had completely ceased. The last of the spies@rucified as an indulgence of their faithhad died. There was no harm now in looking.

Don't-Raul warned her, but it was too late. She was already turning, already seeing.

Kate Farrell was hanging on the middle cross, her belly bared and lacerated. On her left hand they'd nailed Edward.

On her right "Lucien.

He was the most battered of the three, and the most nearly naked, his thin white chest splashed with blood from a face thankfully almost hidden from her by his hair.

The breath went out of Tesla's body in a rush, and the strength from her limbs. She dropped the gun. Put her hands over her mouth to keep the sobs from coming.

"You know one of them?" said Phoebe.

"All of them," Testa gasped. "All of them."

Phoebe had hold of her, tight. "We can't do anything for them now."

"He was alive... " Testa said, the thought like a skewer in her heart,

"he was alive, and I didn't look, and I could have saved him."

"You didn't know it was him," Phoebe said.

She started to coax Testa away from the spot, turning her as she did so. Testa resisted however, unwilling to take her eyes off Lucien. He looked so Pitifully exposed up there, unable to defend himself against the world. She needed to Put him in the ground, at least. If she left him here he'd be a spectacle: pecked and buffeted and gnawed at. She couldn't bear it. She couldn't.

Somewhere in the turmoil, she heard Raul say: Phoebe's right.

"Leave me alone."

You can't help him. And Tesla: You're not to blame. He made his way. We made ours.

"He was alive."

Af@i,be.

"He saw me,"

IJ'You want to believe that, believe it, Raul said. I'm not going to tn@ and tell you he didn't. But if he did, then maybe that's why he lei go.

"What?"

He Could have called your name, but he didn't. Maybe he juvt laid eyes on you and thought: It's enough.

Tears started to fill her eyes.

"It's enough?"

Yes. It doesn't have to be terrible alwayv. Even this.

She'd never believe that, not to the end of her days.

What did he say we were? Vesselsfor something "For the infinite. Vessels for the infinite."

"What did you say?" Phoebe murmured.

"It's what he wanted to be," Tesla replied.

No, said Raul. It's what he was all along. Tesla nodded. "You know," she said to Phoebe, "I have a very good soul in my head." She sniffed hard. "The pity of it is, it isn't mine."

Then she let Phoebe turn her around, and together they headed on, up towards the door.

The tide took Joe at last, claiming him from the darkness and bearing him away, the way it had home The Fanacapan before him. For a while he was barely aware of his passage. Indeed he was barely aware of being alive. He drifted in and out of consciousness, his eyes fluttering open long enough for him to glimpse the heavens boiling overhead, as though sky and sea had exchanged places. Once, when he awoke this way, he saw what he thought were burning birds, falling out of the seething air like winged meteors. And once, seeing something glitter from the corner of his eye, he turned his head to catch sight of a 'shu, darting through the churning waters, its gaze gleaming. Seeing it, he remembered the conversation he'd had with Noah on the shore-"Please one 'shu and you please many"-and returned to his dreaming state comforted, thinking perhaps the creature knew him and was somehow guiding him through this maelstrom. When he was not quite awake, which was often, he remembered Phoebe in the weeds; saw her body rising and failing in front of him, lush and pale. And tears came, even in his sleeping state, thinking she had gone from him, back into the living world, and all he would ever have of her from now on was memory.

Then even the dreams of Phoebe faded, and he floated on through a cloud of dirty smoke, his mind too weak to shape a thought. Ships passed him by, but he didn't see them. If he had-if he'd seen how they rocked and creaked, filled to the gunnels with people escaping the Ephemeris-he might have tried to catch hold of a trailing rope and haul himself aboard, rather than let the current they were fighting carry him on towards the archipelago. Or at very least-seeing the terror on the faces of the passengers-he might have prepared himself for what awaited him on the shore. But seeing nothing, knowing nothing, he was carried on, and on, through the remains of splintered vessels that had foundered for want of captains, floating mortuaries of doomed travelers, through places where the sea was thick with yellow ash, and cobs of fire glittered around him like burning fleets.

Steadily the waters grew shallower and less tempestuous, and at last he was carried up onto the shores of an island that in its glory days had been called the island of Mem-6 b'Kether Sabbat. There he lay, among the flotsam and jetsam, his balls bleeding, his mind confounded, while moment by moment the island he had been carried to was undone, and its undoer, the lad Uroboros, came closer to the shore on which he slept.

The distance between the shores of Mem-6 b'Kether Sabbat and the Mountainside where Tesla and Phoebe were climbing was not readily measured. Though generations of thinkers in both the Cosm and the Metacosm had attempted to evolve a theory of distance between the two worlds, there was little consensus on the subject. The only thing the various factions agreed upon was that this distance could not be measured with a rule and an abacus. After all, it was not simply the distance between two points: It was the distance between two states. Some said it was best viewed as an entirely symbolic space, like that between worshipper and deity, and proposed an entirely new system of measurement applicable to such cases. Others argued that a soul moving from the Hefter Incendo into Quiddity underwent such a radical altering that the best way to describe and analyze the distance, if the word distance were still applicable (which they doubted), was to derive it from the vocabulary of spiritual reformation. The notion proved untenable, however, one man's reformation being another's heresy.

Finally, there were those who argued that the relationships between Sapas Humana and the dream-sea were all in the mind, and any attempt to measure distance was doomed to failure. Surely, they opined, the space between one thought and another was beyond the wit of any man to measure. they were accused of defeatism by some of their enemies; of shoddy metaphysics by others. Men and women only entered the dream-sea three times, they were reminded. For the rest of their lives Quiddity was a lot further than a thought away. Not so, the leader of this faction-a mystic from Joom called Carasophia-argued. The wall between the Cosm and the Metacosm was getting steadily thinner, and would-he predicted-soon disappear altogether, at which point the minds of Sapas Humana, which seemed so pathetically literal, would be revealed to be purveyors of the miraculous, even in their present, primal state.

Carasophia had died for his theories, assassinated in a field of sunflowers outside Eliphas, but he would have found comforting evidence for his beliefs had he wandered through the minds of the people gathered along the parade route in Everville. People were dreaming today, even though their eyes were wide open.

Parents dreaming of being free as their children; children dreaming of having their parents' power.

Lovers seeing the coming night in each other's eyes; old folks, staring at their hands, or at the sky, seeing the same.

Dreams of sex, dreams of oblivion; dreams of circus and bacchanalia.

And further down the parade route, sitting by the window from which he'd so recently fallen, a man dreaming of how it would be when he had the Art for himself, and time and distance disappeared forever.

"Owen?" Buddenbaum had not expected to see the boy again; at least not this side of midnight. But here he was, looking as invitingly languorous as ever.

"Well, well-"

"How are you?" Seth said.

"Mending."

"Good. I brought some cold beers."

"That was thoughtful."

"I guess it's a peace offering."

"Consider it accepted," Buddenbaum said. "Come here and sit down." He patted the boards beside him. "You look weary."

"I didn't sleep well."

"Hammefings in heaven?"

"No. I was thinking about you."

"Oh dear."

"Good thoughts," Seth said, settling himself down beside Buddenbaum.

"Really?"

"Really. I want to come with you, Owen."

"Come with me where?"

"Wherever you're going after this." "I'm not going anywhere," Owen said.

"You're going to live in Everville?"

"I'm not going to live anywhere."

"Is that just some way of saying you don't want me around," Seth said,

"'cause if it is, why don't you just come right out and say it and I'll go?"

"No, that's not what I'm saying at all," Owen replied.

"Then I don't understand."

Owen peered out of the window, chewing something over. "I know so little about you," he said. "And yet I feel-"

"What?"

"I've never really trusted anybody," Owen said. "That's the truth of it. I've wanted to many times, but I was always afraid of being disappointed." He looked at Seth. "I know I've cheated myself of a lot of feelings," he went on, his turmoil plain, "maybe even love. But it was what I chose, and it kept me from being hurt."

"You've never loved anybody?"

"Infatuations, yes. Daily. In Italy, hourly. All ridiculous, all of them. Humiliating and ridiculous. But love? No. I could never trust anyone enough to love them." He sighed heavily. "And now it's almost too late."

"Why?"

"Because sentimental love is a human affliction, and I won't be susceptible for very much longer. There. I've said it."

"You mean-you won't be human?" "That's what I mean."

"This is because of the avatars?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"Explain it, will you?"

"Stand up," Owen said, coaxing Seth to his feet. "Now look out of the window." Seth did so. Owen stood behind him and laid his hands on Seth's shoulders. "Look down at the intersection."

There was no traffic below; the streets had been turned over to pedestrians until the parade was finished.

"What am I supposed to be looking at?" Seth wanted to know.

"You'll see," Owen said, his hands moving up to Seth's neck.

"Am I getting a massage?"

"Hush for a moment," Owen said. "Just-let the vision come.

Seth felt a tingling at the nape of his neck, which quickly spread up into the base of his skull. He let out a little sigh of pleasure. "That feels good."

"Keep your eyes on the road."

"I wish you'd just... " The remark fell away. He gasped, and grabbed hold of the windowsill. "Oh. My. God." The intersection was melting; the streets turning into laval rivers, decorated with flickering bands of scarlet and gold. they were moving-all four of them-towards the center of the crossroads, their brilliance increasing and their breadth diminishing, so that by the time they met they were narrowed to blazing ribbons, so bright Seth could only bear to look at the place for a heartbeat.

"What is this?" he breathed.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"Oh God, yes. Did you make it?"

"A thing like this isn't made, Seth. It doesn't come out of the air, like a poem. All I can do is set it in motion."

"All right. Did you set it in motion?"

"Yes I did. A very long time ago."

:'You still haven't told me what it is.

'It's an invitation to a dance," Owen said softly, his mouth close to Seth's ear.

"What kind of dance?"

"The dance of being and becoming," he said. "Look at it, and forget your angels, hammering in the sky from heaven's side. This is where the miracles come."

"Where things meet."

"Precisely."

"Myjoumey ends at the crossroads. That's what you said."

"Remember that, later on," Owen said, his voice hardening. "Remember I never lied to you. I never told you I was here forever."

"No you didn't. I wish you had, but you didn't." "As long as we understand each other, we can have some fun today."

Seth turned his gaze from the street now. "I don't think I can look at it any longer," he said. "It makes me feel sick."

Owen ran his hand lightly over Seth's skull. "There," he said. "It's gone."

Seth looked back at the intersection. The vision had indeed disappeared. "What's going to happen?" he said to Owen. "You just stand in the middle of the crossroads and something comes to take you away?"

"Nothing so simple," Owen replied.

"What then?"

:'I'm not even sure myself."

'But you know what's going to happen to you, at the end of all this?"

"I know I'll be free from time. The past, the future and the dreaming moment between will be one immortal day - - - " His voice grew softer as he quoted the words, until by the end it was barely audible.

"What's the dreaming moment?" Seth said. Owen drew the youth closer to him, and laid a kiss on his lips. "You don't need me to work that one out," he said.

"But I do," Seth said, "I don't want you to go, Owen." "I have to," Buddenbaum said. "I'm afraid I have no choice in the matter."

"Yes you do. You could stay with me, for a while at least. Teach me some of what you know." He slid his hand down over Owen's chest. "And when you weren't teaching me"-his hand was at Owen's belt now, unbuckling it-"we could fuck."

"You have to understand how long I've waited," Owen said. "How much planning and plotting and manipulation I've had to do to get here. It hasn't been easy, believe me. I've almost given up countless times." Seth had unbuckled. Owen's belt, and was now unbuttoning his trousers. Owen kept talking as though indifferent to the boy's manipulations. "But I held on to the vision," he said.

Seth's fingers had found Owen's sex. Plainly his indifference had been play-acting.

"Go on!" Seth said, clasping the thing.

"Are you always in heat like this?" Owen said.

"I don't remember," Seth said. "Everything that happened before I met you"-he shrugged-"is a blur."

"Don't be silly."

"I'm not. It's true. I was waiting for you to come. I knew you would. Maybe I didn't know what you'd took like-"

"Listen to me."

"I'm listening."

"I'm not the love of your life."

"How do you know?"

"Because I can't be what you want me to be. I can't stay and watch over you."

Seth kept stroking. "So?" he said.

"So you'll have to find somebody else to love."

"Not if you take me with you," Seth said, "into the dance." He looked out of the window, down at the hard, gray street. "I could bear the heat of it, if I was with you."

"I don't think so."

"I could! Just give me a chance." He dropped down onto his haunches in front of Owen, and applied his tongue to the man's half-hard prick.

"Think what it'd be like," he said, between licks and kisses, "if we were together down there."

"You don't know what you're asking."

"So tell me. Teach me. I can be whatever you want. Believe me."

Owen stroked the boy's face. "I believe you," he said, idly toying with his prick. "I've told you before, you're remarkable." Seth smiled up at him. Then he took the tumescent prick into his mouth, and sucked. He was no great technician, but he had an appetite for the act that could turn him into one very quickly. Ow en ran his hands through the boy's hair, and let out a shuddering sigh. Usually, in the midst of being pleasured, he lost his grasp of any business but the one at hand, or mouth. Not so now. Perhaps it was the sense of finality that attended his every deed today (his last breakfast, his last noon, his last blow-job), perhaps it was simply the fact that the boy had a way with him, but the sensations running up his body from his groin made his thoughts almost crystalline' What was the use, he wondered, living an immortal day if it was a solitary condition? Rare and wise and lonely was no way to live out eternity. Perhaps if he'd had his druthers he might have chosen someone closer to his physical ideal with whom to share the experience, but then accommodations could probably be made in the flux of possibilities that would presently appear in the street outside. When the powers of evolution were unleashed, it would be easy to fix the boy's profile and narrow his hips. He looked down at Seth, running his thumb over the wet rendezvous of lip and shaft.

"You do learn fast," he said. The boy grinned around his lollipop.

"Keep going, keep going," Owen said, pushing his full length down Seth's throat. Seth gagged a little, but born cocksucker that he was, he didn't retreat from the challenge. "Good Lord," Owen said. "You're very persuasive, you know that?" He stroked Seth's face. The cheekbones were too low, the nose too lumpen. As for the hair, it was characterless: a mousy mop that he would need to re-create completely. Perhaps give him black ringlets to his shoulders, like something from Botticelli? Or maybe make him a sunbleached blond, with a fringe that flopped over his eyes. He didn't have to decide now. Later would do. Just before the abolition of nows and laters.

He felt the familiar tingle in his groin.

"That's enough," he said gently. "I don't want to finish just yet." If the boy heard him he didn't obey. Eyes closed, he was lost in an oral reverie, his drool so copious his motion had foamed it up at the root of Owen's cock.

My dick's Venus, Owen thought, risingfrom the sur The thought amused him, and while he was giggling at his own wit the boy's mouth brought him to crisis. "No!" he yelled, and forcibly pulled himself from between Seth's lips, pinching it behind the head so hard it hurt. For a moment he thought he'd lost the battle. He grunted and convulsed, closing his eyes against the bewitching sight of Seth kneeling in front of him, his chin shiny. He pinched harder still, and by and by the crisis retreated.

"That was very close," he gasped. "I thought you wanted me to finish." Seth opened his eyes again. Sometime during the proceedings Seth had unzipped, and slackened his cock. He was still working it.

"I haven't time to kick back and recover," Owen replied, "Lord knows, I shouldn't have let you start, but@'

"You kissed me first," Seth said, a little petulantly. "Mea culpa," Owen said, raising his hands in mock surrender. "I'll know better next time."

Seth looked despondent. "There's not going to be a next time, is there)" he said.

"Seth-';

"There's no need to lie to me," the boy replied, tucking his sex out of sight. "I'm not stupid."

"No, you're not," Owen said. "Get up, will you?" Seth got to his feet, wiping his lips and chin with the ball of his hand. "It's because you're not stupid I've told you all I have.

I'm trusting you with secrets I haven't shared with any living soul."

"Why?"

"Honestly, I don't know. Maybe because I need your company more than I thought I did."

"But for how long?"

"Don't push me, Seth. There are consequences here. I have to be certain I won't lose everything I fought for if I bring you along."

"But you might?"

"I said: Don't push me." Seth hung his head. "And don't do that, either. Look me in the eyes." Slowly Seth raised his head again. He was close to tears. "I can't be responsible for you, boy. Do you understand meT' Seth nodded. "I don't know what's going to happen out there myself. Not exactly. I only know that a lot of powerful minds have been wiped clean-gone, just like that-because they got to the dance, and found they didn't know the steps." He shrugged and sighed.

"I don't know what I feel for you, Seth, but I know I don't want to leave you a vegetable. I couldn't forgive myself that. On the other hand"-he took hold of the boy's chin, his thumb in the cleft-"something about our destinies seems to be intermingled." Seth opened his mouth to speak, but Owen hushed him with a look. "I don't want another word on this subject," he said.

"I wasn't going to say a word."

"Yes you were."

"Not about that."

"What then?"

"I was just going to say: I hear the band. Listen."

He was right. The distant sound of brass and drum was drifting in through the broken window.

"The parade's started," Seth said.

"At last," Owen replied, his gaze going past Seth to the crossroads below. "Oh my boy, now we shall see-"

"I suggest you stand still for a moment," Raul sWd.

Tesla stopped in her tracks, bringing Phoebe to a halt beside her.

Very still, There was movement in the mist ten or twelve yards ahead of them, Tesia saw. Four figures (one of them was the hammerer, she thought) moving across the slope. Phoebe had seen them too, and was holding her breath. If any of the quartet glanced in their direction, the game was up. With luck Tesla thought she might take out two of the four before they reached the spot where Phoebe and she were standing, but any one of the quartet looked fully capable of killing them both with a blow.

Not the prettiest things in creation, Raul remarked.

That was an understatement. Each displayed a particular foulness, which fact was emphasized by the way they hung upon each other's shoulders, like brothers in grotesquerie. One was surely the thinnest man alive, his black flesh pasted over his sharp bones like tissue paper, his gait mincing, his eyes fiery. At his side was a man as gross as the first was wasted, his robes, which were pale and mud- or bloodspattered, like his brother's, open to his navel. His breasts were pendulous, and covered in bruises, the source of which was a creature that resembled a cross between a lobster and a parrot-winged, clawed, and scarlet-that clung to his tits like a suckling child. The third member of this quartet was the hammerer. He was the most brutish of the four, with his iron shovel head and his bullish neck. But he whistled as he went, and the melody was sweetly lilting, like an Irish air. On his right, and closest to the woman, ran the runt of the litter, a full head s orter the hammerer. His skin was the color of bile and had a clammy gleam to it, his scrawny form full of tics and stumbles. As for his features, they were testament to calamitous inbreeding, eyes bulging, chin receding, his nose no more than two slits that ran from between his eyes to just above his twisted mouth.

they didn't seem to be in any great hurry. they took their time, chattering and laughing as they went, sufficiently entertained by one another's company that they didn't even glance down the slope towards the women.

At last the mist closed around them and they were gone. "Horrible," Phoebe said softly.

"I've seen worse," Testa remarked, and started up the slope again, with Phoebe still clinging to her arm.

There was a subtle ebb and flow in the mist around them now, which became more pronounced the higher they climbed. "Oh my Lord," Phoebe murmured, pointing to the ground. The same motion was visible underfoot: the grass, the dirt, even the rocks strewn around, being pulled by some force further up the mountain, and then released, only to be plucked up again seconds later. Some of the smaller pebbles were actually rolling uphill, which was odd enough, but odder still was the way the solid rock of the mountain responded to this summons. Here, close to the threshold, it hadn't cracked, it had softened, and was subject to the same motion as mist, dirt, and grass.

"I think we're getting warmer," Testa said, seeing the phenomenon. This was the same extraordinary sight she'd witnessed at Buddy Vance's house: apparently solid objects losing faith in their solidity, and bending out of true. The Vance house had been a maelstrom. This was not. It was a gentle, rhythmic motion (Tidal, Raul quietly observed), the rocks being coaxed rather than bullied into surrendering their solidity. Testa was still too traumatized by Lucien's death to be in any state to enjoy the spectacle, but she could not help but feet a twinge of anticipation.

they were close to the door-, she didn't doubt it. A few yards more, and she'd have sight of Quiddity. Even if the doped singer was right, and there were no wonders to be found on the shore, it would still be an event of consequence, to see the ocean where being was born.

Laughter erupted somewhere nearby. This time the women didn't stop climbing, but instead picked up their pace. The motion of mist and ground was more urgent with every yard they covered. It was like an undertow, tugging at their feet and ankles, and though it didn't have sufficient strength to overturn them yet, it would only be a matter of time, Testa guessed, until it did.

Ifeel a little strange, Raul said.

"Like how?"

Like-I don't know-like I'm not quite secure in here, he replied. Before she had a chance to quiz him further on this, a particularly powerful wave passed through ground and air, parting the mist in front of them. Testa let out a gasp of astonishment. It was not the mountaintop unveiled before them, but another landscape entirely. A sky of roiling colors, and a shore upon which the waters of the dream-sea threw themselves, dark and foamy.

Phoebe let go of Tesia's arm. "I don't believe it," she said. "I see it, but I don't@'

Tesla "Amazing, hub?"

Hold on to me.

"What are you talking about?"

I'm losing my grip.

"So what else is new?"

Tesla! I mean it! He sounded panicky. Don't get any closer.

"I've got to," she said. Phoebe was already three strides ahead of her, her eyes fixed on the shore, "I'll be careful." She called out to Phoebe. "Slow down!" But her request was ignored. Phoebe hurried on as though mesmerized by the spectacle ahead, until without warning the motion in the ground escalated, and she was thrown off her feet. She went down with a cry loud enough to rouse anyone within a twenty-yard radius and had difficulty getting back onto her feet.

Testa stumbled to her aid, the earth and air increasingly p agitated, as if stirred up by their very presence. She grabbed hold of Phoebe's arm and helped her to her feet, which was no minor task.

"I'm all right," Phoebe gasped, "really I am." She looked round at Tesia. "You can go back now," she said.

Listen to her, Raul said, his voice quivering.

"You've done everything you can," Phoebe went on. "I can make it from here." She threw her arms around Tesla. "Thank you," she said. "You're an amazing woman, you know that?"

"Take care of yourself," Tesla said.

"I will," Phoebe replied, breaking their embrace now, and turning her gaze and her body towards the shore,

"I meant what I said," Tesla called after Phoebe.

"What's that?"

"I wasn't@'

She didn't have time to finish, distracted as she was by a figure who appeared on the shore ahead of Phoebe. He was, of all the creatures she'd seen at work and play here, the most authoritative; a fleshy, imperious individual, with sly, hooded eyes and a dozen or so small gingerish beards sprouting from his cheeks and chins, each teased and twirled so they resembled horns. In one hand he carried a small staff. The other he was using to lift up his voluminous robes, allowing three children-identical to one another and to the laughing child Phoebe and Tesla had encountered on the slope below-room to play tag between his bare and spindly legs. He was not so diverted by their frolics, however, that he didn't see the women in his path, and by the look on his face it was plain he knew they were not part of his retinue.

Instantly, he raised a shout, "Gamaliel! to me! Mutep! to me! Bartho! Swanky! to me! to me!"

Phoebe turned and looked back at Tesla, her face a picture of despair. The shore lay ten strides from her, at most, and now the way was blocked.

"Duck!" Tesia yelled, and pointed Lourdes at the man in the robes. He raised his staff the same instant. There was energy skittering about it, she saw, gathering coherence It's a weapon! Raul yelled. She didn't wait for proof. She simply fired. The bullet struck the man in the middle of his belly, lower than she'd aimed. He dropped his robes and his staff, and let out a cry of such shrillness she'd thought maybe she'd mis-sexed him. The children's giggles turned to shrieks, and they raced around him as he tottered forward, the cry still coming between his tiny teeth.

One of the children pushed past Phoebe, ignoring or indifferent to the gun, yelling, "Somebody help Blessedm'n Zury!"

"Go!" Tesla yelled to Phoebe, but the order got lost in the din of Zury's agony and the children's shrieks. 'the niist didn ;t mute the cacophony, it served as a roiling echo-chamber, the tu mult gathering so much power it made the soft ground shudder. w By the panicked look on Phoebe's face it was plain she as too confused to take advantage of the chance while she had it. Yelling to her again, Tesia started through the shallows to press her on her way.

Nofarther! Raul was yelling in her head. I can't hold on.

He wasn't alone in this. The assault of noise and motion threw Tesla's senses into confusion. Her sight seemed to fly ahead of her, drummed from her skull, and for several sickening heartbeats she was looking back at herself from the very threshold between Cosm and shore. She might have been claimed completely, but that Phoebe reached out for her, and the contact brought her sight to heel.

"Get going!" she yelled to Phoebe, glancing towards Zury. He was in no condition to protest Phoebe's departure. He was bent double, puking up blood.

"Come with me!" Phoebe hollered.

"I can't."

' I'You can't go back that way!" Phoebe said. "They'll kill you.

"Not if I'm-2' Tesla-? Raul was yelling.

"Quick. Go on, for God's sake!"

Tessllaa-?

"All right!" she said to him, and pushed Phoebe from her, down towards the shore.

Phoebe went, wading through a swamp of softened rock.

Tesssilaaa "We're going!" Tesla said, and turning from Phoebe started back towards solid ground.

As she did so there was a moment of utter disorientation, as though her sanity suddenly fled her. She halted in midstride-her purpose, her will, her memory-gone from her in a blaze of white pain. There was a blank time when she felt nothing: no pain, no fear, no desire for self-preservation. She simply stood teetering in the midst of the tumult, Lourdes slipping out of her hands, and lost in the tidal ground. Then, as quickly as her wits left her, they returned. Her head ached as it had never ached in her life, and blood ran from her nose, but she had sufficient strength to continue her stumbling journey to safe ground.

There was bad news ahead, however, and it came in four appalling shapes: Gamaliel, Mutep, Bartho, and Swanky.

She had no strength left in her limbs to outrun them. The best she could hope now was that they not execute her on the spot for wounding Zury. As the hammerer closed upon her, she glanced back over her shoulder, looking for Phoebe, and was pleased to see that she had crossed the threshold, and was gone.

"That's something," she thought to Raul. He made no reply. "I'm sorry," she said. "I did my best."

The hammerer was within a stride of her, reaching to seize her arm.

"Don't touch her," somebody said.

She raised her spinning head. The somebody was striding out of the mist, carrying a shotgun. It was pointed past Tesla, towards the wounded Blessedm'n.

"Walk away, Tesla," the shotgun wielder said.

She narrowed her eyes, to better make out the face of her savior.

"D'Amour?"

He gave her a wearily wolfish grin. "None other," he said. "Now, do you want to just walk this way?"

The hammerer still stood within striking distance of Tesla, plainly eager to do her damage. "Move him," D'Amour told Zury. "Or else."

"Bartho," the Blessedm'n said. "Let her pass."

Whining like a frustrated dog, the hammerer stepped out of Tesla's path, and she stumbled down the slope to where D'Amour stood.

"Gamaliel?" Harry said. The black stick-man turned his seared head in D'Amour's direction. "You explain to the Brothers Grimm here that I've got sights on this gun that can see through fog. You understand what I'm telling you?" Gamaliel nodded. "And if any of you move in the next ten minutes I'm going to blow the old fuck's head off. You don't think I can?" He took a bead on Zury. Gamaliel whimpered. "Yeah, you get it," he said. "I can kill him from a long way down the hill with this. A long, long way. Okay?"

It wasn't Gamaliel who spoke, but his obese brother.

"O-key," he said, raising his fat-fingered hands. "No shoot, o-key? We not move. 0-key? You not shoot. 0-key?"

"O-key do-key," D'Amour said. He glanced round at Tesla. "You fit to run?" he whispered.

"I'll do my best."

"Go on then," D'Amour replied, slowly backing away.

Tesla started off down the slope, slowly enough to keep D'Amour in view while he retreated from Zury and the brothers. He kept retreating until he could no longer be seen, then he turned, and raced down to join Tesla.

"We got to make this quick," he said.

"Can you do it?"

"Can I do what?"

"Pick Zury off in the fog?"

"Hell no. But I'm betting they won't risk it. Now let's get going."

It was easier descending than climbing, even though Tesla's head felt as though it were splitting. Within ten minutes the fog ahead of them brightened, and a short while after they stumbled into the bright summer air,

"I don't think we're out of trouble yet," Harry said.

"You think they'll come after us?"

"I'm damn sure they will," he said quickly. "Bartho's probably making crosses for us right now."

The image of Lucien flashed into her head and a sob escaped her. She put her hand to her mouth, to stop another, but tears came anyway, pouring down.

"They're not going to get us," D'Amour said, "I won't let them."

"It's not that," Tesia said.

"What is it then?"

She shook her head. "Later," she said, and turning from him started on down the slope. The tears half-blinded her, and several times she stumbled, but she pushed her exhausted limbs to their limits, until she made the relative safety of the tree line. Even then she only slowed her pace a little, glancing back now and again to be certain she hadn't lost D'Amour.

At last, with both of them gasping so hard they could barely speak, the trees began to thin out, and a mingling of sounds came drifting up towards them. The rush of Unger's Creek was one. The murmuring roar of the crowd was another. And the thump and blare of the town band as it led the parade through the streets of Everville was a third. "It's not quite Mozart," Tesla thought to Raul. "Sorry." Her tenant didn't reply.

"Raul?" she said, this time aloud.

"Something wrong?" D'Amour wanted to know.

She hushed him with a look, and turned her attention inward again.

"Raul-?" she said. Again, there was no answer. Concerned now, she closed her eyes and went looking for him. Two or three times during her travels he had hidden from her in this fashion, out of anger or anxiety, and she'd been obliged to coax him out. She took her thoughts to the divide between his territory and hers, calling his name as she went. There was still no response.

A sickening suspicion rose up in her.

"Answer me, Raul," she said. She was again met with silence, so she crossed over into the space he occupied.

She knew the instant she did so that he'd gone. When she'd trespassed here on previous occasions his presence had been all-pervasive, even when she hadn't been able to make him speak to her. She'd felt his essence, as somet ing utterly unlike her, occupying a space which most people lived and died believing theirs and only theirs: Their minds. Now there was nothing. No challenge, no complaint, no wit, no sob.

"What's wrong?" D'Amour said, studying her face.

"Raul," she said. "He's gone."

She knew when it had happened. That moment of agony and temporary madness at the threshold had marked his departure, her mind convulsing as he was ripped out of it.

She opened her eyes. The world around her-the trees, the sky, D'Amour, the sound of creek and crowd and band EVERV"ILLE 377 were almost overwhelming after the emptiness where Raul had been.

"Are you sure?" D'Amour said.

"I'm sure."

"Where the hell did he go?"

She shook her head. "He warned me, when we were close to the shore. He said he was losing his grip. I thought he meant-"

"He was going crazy?"

"Yes." She growled at her own stupidity. "Christ! I let him go. How could I have let that happen?"

"Don't beat yourself up because you didn't think of everything. Only God thinks of everything."

"Don't get Christian on me," Tesla said, her voice thick. "That's the last fucking thing I want right now."

"We're going to need help from somewhere," D'Amour said, casting his eyes back up the mountain. "You know what they're doing up there, don't you?" "Waiting for the lad."

"Right.

"And Kissoon's head of the welcoming committee."

"You know about Kissoon?" D'Amour said, plainly surprised.

So was Tesla. "You know about him too?"

"I've been following him across the country for the last two months."

"How did you find out he was here?"

"A woman you know. Maria Nazareno."

"How'd you come to find her?"

11 e und me, the way she found you."

Tesla put her hand to her face, wiping away some of the sweat and dirt.

"She's dead, isn't she?" "I'm afraid she is. Kissoon traced her."

"We're a lethal pair, D'Amour. Everybody we touch-" She let the thought go unfinished. Simply turned from him and continued her descent through the trees.

"What are you going to do now?"

"Sit. Think."

"Mind if I come with you?"

"Have you got some last-minute maneuver up your sleeve?"

"No.

"Good. Because I'm sick of believing there's a damn ing we can do about any of ffiis."

"I didn't say that."

"No, but I did," Tesla said, marching on down the slope. "They're coming, D'Amour, whether we like it or not. The door's open and they're coming through it. I think it's about time we made our peace with that."

Harry was about to argue the point, but before he could find the words he remembered the conversation he'd had with Norma. The world could change, she'd said, but it can't end. And where was the harm in change?

was it so dandy the way it was?

He looked up through the swaying branches at the gleaming blue sky, while the music of the town band came to him on a balmy breeze, and he had his answer. "The world's just fine the way it is," he said, loud enough for Tesla to hear it. She didn't answer him. Just marched on down to the creek and waded over. "Just fine," he said to himself, asserting with that his inalienable right to defend it. "Just fine."

After her literal fashion, Phoebe had expected to find a door awaiting her at the end of her trek. It would more than likely be fancier than any door she'd seen, and she wasn't so nzffve as to expect a bell and a welcome mat, but to all intents and purposes it would be a door. She would stand before it, turn the handle, and with a majestic sigh it would open before her.

How wrong she'd been. Passing between worlds had been like having ether at the dentist's in the bad old days: her mind fighting to hold on to consciousness, and losing, losing, losing She didn't remember falling, but when she opened her eyes again she was face-down on snow-dusted rocks. She lifted herself up, her body chilled to the bone. There were drops of blood among the snowflakes, and more falling from her face. She put her hand up and cautiously touched her mouth and nose. It was the latter that was bleeding, but there was very little pain, so she assumed she hadn't broken it.

She dug for a handkerchief in the pocket of her dress (which she'd chosen for its skimpiness, in expectation of Joe seeing her in it; a decision she now regretted) and found a balled-up tissue to clamp to her nose. Only then did she start to take much notice of her surroundings.

Off to her right was the crack through which she'd come, the day on the other side brighter (and warmer) than the purplish gloom in which she found herself. Off to her left, partially surrounded in mist, was the sea, its dark waves almost viscous. And on the shore between, squatting in countless numbers, were birds that vaguely resembled cormorants. The largest perhaps two feet tall, their bodies mottled and almost waxen, their heads-some of which were decorated with crests of green feathers, others of which were completely bald-tiny. The closest of them were perhaps two yards from her, but none showed the slightest interest in her. She got to her feet, her teeth chattering with the cold, and cast a glance back the way she'd come. was it worth risking a return journey, just to find herself some more adequate clothing? Without something to cover her up she was going to be dead from the cold in a very short time.

She only contemplated this for a moment. Then she caught sight of one of the Blessedm'n's children on the other side, apparently staring in her direction, and the horror of all that she'd experienced to get here came flooding back. Better the cold than the crosses, she thought, and before the child could summon someone to come after her she retreated down the shore towards the water, the veil of mist between her and the doorway thickening with every step, until she could no longer see it; nor, she prayed, be seen.

It was still colder by the water's edge, a chilling spray rising off every breaking wave. But there was compensation. Off to her right the mist was patchy, and she caught sight of lights twinkling some distance along the shore, and the vague silhouettes of roofs and spires. Thank God, she thought, civilization. Without delay, she started towards it, staying within sight of the water at all times, so as not to get lost in the mist. As it turned out, it thinned and disappeared after she'd been walking for five minutes, and she finally had an uninterrupted view of the landscape before her. It was not a reassuring sight. The city lights seemed to be no nearer than they'd been when she'd first spotted them, and the rest of the scene-4he shore, the rocky terrain beyond it, and the dreamsea itself-was desolation, or near enough. The only color was in the sky, and that was a fretful stew of bruisy purples and iron grays. There were no stars to light her way, nor any moon, but the spattering of snow upon the scene lent it an eerie luminescence, as though the ground had stolen what little light the sky had owned. As for life, there were the birds, whose numbers were now very considerably thinned, but were still dotted along the shore, like an an-ny awaiting orders from some absentee general. A few had left their stations and were diving after fish in the shallows. It was not a difficult task.

The waves were fairly brimming with tiny silver fish, and she saw a few of the divers emerging from the water with their beaks and gullets so stuffed with thrashing fish she wondered they didn't choke.

The sight reminded her of her own hunger. It was six hours or more since the breakfast she and Tesla had snatched before setting out. By now, even on a diet day, she'd have snacked twice and eaten lunch. Instead, she'd climbed a mountain, viewed a crucifixion, and crossed into another world. It was enough to make anybody's stomach grumble.

One of the birds waddled past her, and as it flung itself into the water in search of nourishment her gaze went up the beach a yard or two to the place where it had been squatting. was that an egg, nestling between the stones? She strode to the spot and picked it up. It was indeed an egg, twice the size of a hen's egg, and subtly striped. The notion of eating it raw was less than appetizing, but she was too hungry to fret. She cracked it open and poured the contents into her mouth. It tasted more pungent than she'd anticipated; almost meaty, in fact, with the texture of phlegm. She swallowed it down, to the last drop, and was just casting her eyes around for another when she heard a vehement squawking sound and swung round to see the irate egg layer charging up the shore towards her, its head down, its ruff of feathers raised.

Phoebe was in no mood to indulge its tantrum. "Shoo, birdie!" she told it. "Go on, damn you! Shoo!"

The bird was not so easily driven off. Its din rousing similar squawkings from all the birds in the vicinity, it kept coming at Phoebe, and its darting beak caught her shin. The wound stung. She yelped and hopped back from the bird to keep out of its range, her advice to it less gentle now.

"Piss off, will you?" she yelled at it. "Damn thing!" She glanced down at her stinging leg as she retreated, and her heel slipped on the snow-slickened stones. Down she went for the second time in half an hour, for once glad her buttocks were well padded. Her fall had landed her in more trouble, however, not just from the egg layer but from sev- eral of its fellows, who plainly viewed her fall and the howl of rage that accompanied it as a threat. Crests and ruffs erected on all sides, and two or three dozen throats gave up the same shrll squawk.

This was no longer a little inconvenience. Ludicrous though it seemed, she was in trouble. The birds were coming at her from all directions, their attacks capable of doing no little damage. She went on yelling in the hope of keeping them at bay while attempting to scramble to her feet. Twice she almost did so, but her heels slid over the rocks. The closest of the birds were in pecking distance now. Beaks stabbed at her arms and shoulders and at her back.

She started to flail wildly, catching birds with her hands and even knocking a few of them over, but there were too many to floor. Sooner or later, one of the beaks would puncture an artery, or stab her eye. She had to get to her feet, and quickly.

Shielding her face with her arms she got onto her knees. The birds didn't have much room in their skulls for brains, but they sensed her vulnerability, and escalated their assault, pecking at her back and buttocks and legs as she struggled to rise.

Suddenly, a shot. Then another, and a third, this accompanied by a hot spray against Phoebe's left arm. The tone of the squawking instantly changed from mob mania to panic, and parting her arms Phoebe saw the birds retreating in disarray, leaving three of their flock dead on the ground. Not just dead in fact, almost blown apart. One was missing its head, another half its torso, while the third-which was the sprayer-still twitched beside her, with a hole the size of her fist in its abdomen.

She looked for their slaughterer.

"Over here," said a faintly bemused voice, and a little way along the shore stood a man wearing a coat of furs, his cap fashioned from an animal pelt, with the snout as a peak. In his arms, a rifle. It was still smoking.

"You're not one of Zury's mob," he observed.

"No, I'm not," Phoebe replied.

The man pushed back the peak of his hat. to judge by his features he was of the same tribe as the hammerer, his head flat and wide, his lower lip bulbous, his eyes tiny. But whereas the cross maker had been unadorned, this creature's face was decorated from brow to chin, his cheeks pierced with rings perhaps fifty times, from which tiny ornaments dangled, his eyes ringed with scarlet and yellow paint, his hair teased into ringlets, which softened his beetling brow.

"Where are you from?" he said.

"The other side," Phoebe said, the correct vocabulary, momentarily deserting her.

"You mean the Cosm?" "That's right."

The man shook his head, and his decorations danced. "Oh," he sighed, "I hope that's the truth."

"You think I'd dress this way if I was a local?" Phoebe said.

"No, I don't suppose you would," the man replied. "I'm Hoppo Musnakaff. And you?" "Phoebe Cobb."

Musnakaff had unbuttoned his coat, and now shrugged it off. "We're well met, Phoebe Cobb," he said. "Here, put this on." He tossed the coat to Phoebe. "And let me escort you back to Liverpool."

"Liverpool?" That sounded like a mundane destination after such a journey.

"It's a glorious city," Musnakaff said, pointing towards the lights along the shore. "You'll see."

Phoebe put on his coat. It was warm, and smelled of a sweet perfume tinged with oranges. She plunged her hands into the deep, fur-lined pockets.

"You'll soon warm up," Musnakaff said. "I'll attend to those wounds of yours while we go. I want you to be presentable for the Mistress."

"The Mistress?"

"My@mployer," he replied. "She sent me along here to see what Zury was up to, but I think she'd be happier if I forsook the spying, and brought you home instead. She'll be eager to hear what you have to tell her."

"About what?"

"About the Cosm, of course." Musnakaff replied. "Now will you let me give you a hand?"

384 Clivc Barkcr

"Please."

He came to her (the perfume on the coat was his, she iscovered: He reeked of it) and putting his arm through hers escorted her over the slithery rocks.

"That's our transport," he said. There was a manycolored horse, as bright as a peacock's tail, a little way ahead of them, grazing on the coarse grass that spurted between the slabs of what had once been a fine road.

"King Texas had this highway laid, when he was wanting to impress the Mistress. Of course it's gone to ruin since."

"Who's King Texas?"

"He's the rock," Musnakaff replied, slamming his foot down. "Crazy now, since she left him. He loved her beyond love, you see; rock can do that." "You know I don't have a clue what you're talking about, don't you?" Phoebe said.

"Let's get you up on the nag, eh?" Musnakaff said. "That's it. Right foot in the stirrup. And up! Good! Good!" He flipped the reins over the horse's head, so as to lead it. "Are you secure?" he asked.

"I think so."

"Take hold of her mane. Go on, she's not going to complain." Phoebe did as she was instructed. "Now," said Musnakaff, gently coaxing the animal into a walk. "Let me tell you about the Mistress and King Texas, so you'll understand her insanities better when you meet her face to face."

It was the sound of panicked shouts that roused Joe from his stupor. He lifted his head up off the fine red sand of Mem-6 b'Kether Sabbat's shore and turned it back towards the sea that had delivered him here. Two or three hundred yards from the beach was the good ship Fanacapan, loaded down with passengers. they squatted on the wheelhouse roof; they clung to the mast and ladders; one even hung on the anchor. But their weight and agitation was proving too much for the vessel. Even as Joe watched, The Fanacapan tipped over sideways, pitching two dozen of its passengers into the water, where their shouts were redoubled.

Joe got to his feet, watching the disaster unfold with sickened fascination. The people in the water were now scrabbling to climb back on the boat, their efforts assisted by some of their fellow passengers, and violently opposed by others. Whatever the intention, the effect was the same. The Fanacapan tipped over completely, clearing decks, wheelhouse, mast, and ladders in two seconds, and as it did so its timbers cracked and with startling suddenness it proceeded to sink.

It was a pitiful sight. Small though the vessel was, its descent threw the dream-sea into a fair frenzy. The waters churned and spurned, seeming to seize many of the people in the water and pluck them down. they went shrieking and cursing, as though to their deaths, though Joe supposed it could not be by drowning. After all, he'd lingered under water for several minutes with Phoebe, and had not lacked for air. Perhaps these panicky souls would discover the same; but he suspected not. Something about the way the waters circled these flailing souls made him think there was sentience there; that the dream-sea would be as cruel to these failed voyagers as it had been kind to him.

He turned his back on the sight, and scanned the shore. It was far from deserted. There were people along the beach in both directions as far as his eyes could see, which was a long way. The gloomy sky had given way to an exquisite luminescence, the source of which was not a heavenly body but objects themselves. Everything was shining with its own light, some of it steady, some of it glittering, but glorious in its sum.

Joe looked down at his body, at his blood-stained clothes and his wounded flesh, and saw that even he was shining here, as though every pore and crease and thread wanted to make itself known. The sight exhilarated him. He was not unmiraculous in this miraculous place, but came with glories of his own.

He started up the shore now, towards the groves of titanic trees that lined it, so vast he could see nothing of the island itself. This was, he was certain, Mem-6 b'Kether Sabbat. On the voyage Noah had rhapsodized about the color of its sand. There was no shore so red, he'd boasted; nor any other island so fine. Beyond that Joe had little sense of what to expect. The Ephemeris was not one island but many, he knew that, an archipelago formed-so tradition had itaround pieces of debris from the Cosm. Some of that debris was alive: the tissue of trespassers, which the dream-sea had transfon-ned and fantasticated, using the minds of those men and women as inspiration. Most of the debris was dead stuff, however, fragments of the Heiter Incendo that had slipped through a crack. With time, and with Quiddity's attentions, these became the lesser, plainer islands in the group. Though they numbered in their thousands, Noah had said, most of them were deserted.

So, Joe had asked, what man or woman had founded the island that Noah had constantly referred to as "my country." Noah had replied that he didn't know, but there were those in the great city of b'Kether Sabbat who knew, and perhaps Joe would find favor with one of them, and be initiated into that mystery.

A frail hope, even then. Now it was not worth entertaining. The people on the shore were plainly refugees, most likely from that very city. If b'Kether Sabbat still stood, it probably stood deserted.

Joe intended to see it nevertheless. He'd come so far, and at such cost. Not to see the city which had been, according to Noah, the jewel of the Ephemeris-its Rome, its New York, its Babylon-would be defeatist. And even if he didn't make it, even if there was only a wasteland on the other side of the trees, anything was better than lingering here, among these desolate people.

So thinking, he started up the shore, the dream of power with which he had begun this journey entirely dashed, and in its place the simple desire to see what could be seen and know what could be known before he lost the power to do either.

Six Though Liverpool had seemed charmiess to Phoebe when she and Musnakaff first entered-its public buildings austere and grimy, its private houses either tenement rows or gloomy mansions-they soon encountered signs of an inner life that quite endeared the place to her. There were noisy parties going on in a number of residences they passed by, with parties spilling out onto the sidewalk. There were huge bonfires blazing in several of the squares, surrounded by dancing people. There was even a parade of children, singing as they went.

"What's the celebration?" she asked Musnakaff.

"There isn't one," he replied. "People are just making the most of what little time they think's left to them."

"Before the lad comes?" He nodded. "Why don't they try and leave the city?"

"A lot of folks have. But then there's a lot more who think: What's the use? Why go and shiver in Trophett6 or Plethoziac, where the lad's going to find you anyway, when you could be at home drinking yourself stupid with your family around you?"

"Do you have a family?"

"The Mistress is my family," the fellow replied. "She's all I need. All I've ever needed."

"You said she was insane."

"I exaggerated," he replied fondly. "She's just a little loopy." they came at last to a three-story house standing on its own, in a snow-dusted garden. There were lights burning in every room, but there were no partygoers here. The only sound was the din of sea-gulls, who sat on the roof and chimneys, staring out to sea. they had quite a view. Even from the street Phoebe was able to gaze down over a chilly but spectacular vista of roofs and spires, all snow-dusted, to the docks and the many dozens of sailing ships at anchor there. She knew very little about ships, but the sight of these vessels moved her, evoking as it did an age when the world had still possessed mystery. Now, perhaps, the only sea left to explore was the sea that stretched beyond the harbor, the dream-sea, and it seemed right to her that these sleek, elegant vessels be the ones to ply it.

"That's how the Mistress made herself," Musnakaff remarked, coming to Phoehe's shoulder to share the panorama.

"Ships?"

"Sailors," he replied. "She traded in dreams, and it made her rich beyond counting. Happy, too; till King Texas."

As he'd promised, Musnakaff had spoken about King Texas on the journey, and it was a sad tale. He had seduced the Mistress in her prime, so Musknakaff explained, and then, tiring of her, had left her for another woman. She had pined for him pitifully, and had several times attempted to kill herself, but life, it seemed, hadn't been done with her, because each time she'd survived to grieve another day.

And then, many years after his departure, he'd suddenly returned, begging her forgiveness, and asking to be allowed back into her arms and bed. Against all expectation, she had refused him. He had changed, she said. The man she had loved and lost, the man she still moumed, and always would, was gone.

"Had you been with me," she'd said, "we might have changed together; and found new reasons for love. But there's nothing left of you for me to want, except the memory."

The story seemed to Phoebe ineffably sad, as did the notion of trading in dreams, though she had no little difficulty imagining what that actually meant.

"Can dreams be bought and sold?" she asked Musnakaff "Everything can be bought and sold," he replied, look ing at her quickly. "But you know that, coming from the Cosm."

"But dreams-?"

He raised his hand to ward off further questions and led her to the gates of the house-which he unlocked with a key hanging at his belt-then ushered her up to the front steps. Here he paused to offer one last piece of advice before they entered.

"She'll want to quiz you about the Cosm. Tell her it's a vale of tears, and she'll be happy."

"That's no lie," Phoebe said.

"Good," he replied, and started up the stairs. "Oh, one more thing," he said as he went. "You may want to tell her I saved you from certain death. Please feel free to lie a little about that, just to make it seem more@'

"Heroic?"

"Dramatic." "Oh yes. Dramatic," Phoebe said with a little smile.

"Don't worry."

"Only I'm all she's got left now that the sailors don't come. And I want her to feel protected. You understand?"

"I understand," Phoebe said. "You love her as much as King Texas."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to."

"It's not even... I mean... she doesn't All his confidence had suddenly drained from him, He was trembling.

"You're saying she doesn't know?"

"I'm saying... " he studied the steps, "I'm saying she wouldn't care even if she did." Then, not meeting Phoebe's eyes, he turned from her and hurried up the icy steps to the front door. It was open in an instant, and he went inside, where the lamps were turned to tiny glittering flames, and he could wrap his sorrow in the shadows.

Phoebe followed him up and in. He directed her down a narrow, high-ceilinged passage to the back of the house. "You'll find plenty of food in the kitchen. Help yourself." Then he headed up the lushly carpeted stairs, his ascent announce y a tinkling of tiny bells.

The kitchen, Phoebe discovered, had probably been modern in nineteen-twenty, but it was a reassuring place to sit and rest her heavy body. There was an open fire, which she fed with a few logs, there was an immense black iron stove, pots large enough to cook for fifty, and the raw materials for such an enterprise arrayed everywhere: shelves of canned goods, bowls and baskets of fruit and vegetables, bread and cheese, and coffee. Phoebe stood in front of the fire for a couple of minutes, to get some warmth back into her chilled limbs, then set to constructing herself a substantial sandwich. The beef was rare and soft as butter, the bread still warm from the oven, the cheese ripe and piquant. By the time she'd finished putting the sandwich together, her mouth was awash. She took a hearty bite-it was better than goodthen poured herself a cup of fruit juice and settled down in front of the fire.

Her thoughts drifted as she ate and drank, back along the shore, through the crack and down the mountain to Everville. It seemed like days since she and Tesia had waited in the traffic on Main Street, and talked about whether people were real or not. The conversation struck her as even more nonsensical now than it had at the time. Here she was in a place where dreams were traded, eating rare beef in front of a wan-n fire; things were as real here as they'd been in the world she'd left, and that was a great comfort to her. It meant she understood the rules. She wouldn't fly here, but nor would she be chased by the Devil. This was just another country. Of course it had its share of strange customs and wild life, but so did Africa or China. She just had to get used to its peculiarities, and she'd be able to make her way here without difficulty.

"The Mistress wants to see you," Musnakaff announced from the doorway.

"Good," she said, and started to rise. She instantly felt lighthearted.

"Boy, oh boy," she said, picking up her cup and peering into it. "That juice has got a kick to it."

Musnakaff allowed himself a smile. "It's moumingberry," he said. "Are you not familiar with it?" She shook her head, which was a mistake. Her senses swam.

"Oh Lord," she said, and started to sit down again. 'Maybe I should just wait a few minutes."

"No. She wants to see you now. Trust me, she's not going to give a shit if you're a little tipsy. She's scarcely ever sober herself." He came over to Phoebe, and persuaded her back to her feet. "Now remember what I told you-"

"King Texas... " Phoebe mumbled, still trying to order her thoughts.

"No!" he yelped. "Don't you dare mention him."

"What then?" she said.

"The vale of tears," he reminded her.

"Oh yes. I remember. The Cosm's a vale of tears." She repeated it to herself, just for safety's sake.

"Have you got it?"

"I've got it," she said.

Musnakaff sighed. "Well then," he said, "I can think of no excuse to put this off any further," and duly escorted her out of the kitchen, along the passageway and up the stairs to meet with the Mistress of the strange house.

Thou h the trees that bounded the shore of Ephemeris grew

9 so close together their exposed roots knotted like the fingers of praying hands, and the canopy overhead was so dense the sky was blotted out altogether, there was not a leaf, twig, or patch of moss that didn't exude light, which eased Joe's progress considerably. Once in the midst of the forest, he had to rely upon his sense of direction to bring him out the other side, which indeed it did. After perhaps half an hour the trees began to thin, and he stumbled into the open air.

There, a scene lay before him of such scale he could have stood and studied it for a week and not taken in every detail. Stretching in front from his feet for perhaps twenty miles was a landscape of bright fields and water-meadows, the former blazing green and yellow and scarlet, the latter sheets of silver and gold. Rising overhead, like a vast wave that had climbed to titanic height and now threatened to break over the perfection below, was a wall of darkness, which surely concealed the lad. It was not black, but a thousand shades of gray, tinged here and there with red and purple. It was impossible to judge the matter of which it was made. It had the texture of smoke in some places, in others it glistened like skinned muscle; in others still it divided in convulsions, and divided again, as though it were reproducing itself. Of the legion, or nation, that lurked behind it, there was no sign. The wave teetered, and teetered, and did not fall.

But there was another sight that was in its way more extraordinary still, and that was the city that stood in the shadow if this toppling sky: b'Kether Sabbat. The glory of the Ephemeris, Noah had called it and, had Joe'sjoumey taken him not one step closer to the city's limits, he would have believed the boast.

It was shaped, this city, like an inverted pyramid, balanced on its tip. There was no sign of any structure supporting it in this position.

Though there were myriad means of ascent from the ground to its underbelly, which was encrusted with what he assumed to be dwellings

(though their occupants would have to have the attributes of bats to live there), the sum of these lactders and stairways was nowhere near sufficient to bear the city's weight. He had no way to judge its true scale, but he w@is certain Manhattan would have fitted upon the upper surface with room to spare, which meant that the dozen or so towers that rose there, each resembling a vast swathe of fabric, plucked up by one comcr and falling in countless folds, were many hundreds of stories high.

Despite the lights that blazed from their countless windows, Joe doubted the towers were occupied. B'Kether Sabbat's citizens were choking the roads that led from the city, or rising from its streets and towers in wheeling flocks.

Such was the sheer immensity of this spectacle he wis almost tempted to find himself a comfortable spot among the roots, and watch it until the wave broke, and it was obliterated. But the same curiosity that had brought him from the shore now pressed him on, down the slope and across a swampy field, where a crop of crystalline flowers sprouted, to the nearest of the roads. Despite the vast diversity of faces and forms in the throng upon that road, there was a certain desperation in their faces and in their forms a common dread. they shuddered and sweated as they went, their eyeswhite, golden, blue, and black@ast over their shoulders now and again towards the city they'd deserted, and the teetering darkness that shadowed it.

Few showed any interest in Joe. And those few that did looked at him pityingly, judging him crazy, he supposed, for being the only traveler on this highway who was not fleeing b'Kether Sabbat, but heading back towards it.

Musnakaff's Mistress was sitting in a bed so large it could, readily have slept ten, propped up on twenty lace pillows and surrounded by a litter of torn paper, which was so light that the merest breath of wind from window or hearth was enough to raise fty of the scraps into the air and make the sheets rustle like leaves. The chamber itself was absurdly overwrought, the smoke-stained ceiling painted with naked deities cavorting, the walls lined with mirrors, some cracked, the rest in severe decay. The same might have been said for the Mistress herself. Decayed she was, and plainly cracked. For fully five minutes Phoebe and Musnakaff waited at the end of her bed while she tore up pieces of paper into yet smaller pieces, muttering to herself as she did so.

What light there was came from the oil-lamps on the various tables, which were-like those in the rest of the house-turned down so that they barely glimmered, lending the whole chamber a troubled air. Its ambiguity did little to flatter the woman. Even by this subdued light she was a grotesque, her sparse hair dyed a lush black (which only served to emphasize her parchment pallor), her cheeks furrowed, her neck like a fraying rope.

At last, without looking up from her litter-making, she spoke, her thin lips barely moving.

"I could have used a woman like you, in the old days. You've got some meat on your bones. Men like that." Phoebe didn't respond. Not only was she intimidated by this crone, she was afraid her lack of sobriety would be all too evident if she spoke. "Not that I care what men like or don't like," the Mistress went on. "I'm past that. And it feels fine, not to care." She looked up now. Her eyes were rheumy, and roved back and forth in Phoebe's general direction, but didn't come to rest.

"If I cared," she said, "you know what I would do?" She paused. "Well, do you?" she demanded.

"I would dream myself a beauty," she replied, chuckling at the notion.

"I would make myself over as the most fetching woman in Creation, and I would go out in the streets and break every heart I could." The chuckled disappeared. "Do you think I could do that?" she said.

"I... I daresay you could."

"You daresay, do you?" the Mistress responded softly. "Well let me tell you: I could do it as easily as piss. Oh yes. No trouble. I dreamed this city, didn't I?"

"Did you?"

"I did! Tell her, my little Abr6!"

"It's true!" Musnakaff replied. "She dreamed this place into being."

"So I could dream myself a fetching woman just as easily." Again, she paused. "But I choose not to. And you know why?"

"Because you don't care?" Phoebe ventured.

The paper the woman was in the middle of tearing fell from her fingers.

"Exactly," she said, with great moment. "What's your name? Felicia?"

"Phoebe."

"Even worse."

"I like it," Phoebe replied, her tongue responding before she could check it.

"It's a vile name," the woman said.

"No it isn't."

"If I say it's a vile name, then vile it is. Come here." Phoebe didn't move. "Did you hear me?"

"Yes I heard you, but I don't care to come."

The woman rolled her eyes. "Oh for God's sake, woman, don't take offense at a little remark like that. I'm allowed to be objectionable. I'm old, ugly, and flatulent."

"You don't have to be," Phoebe said.

"Says who?"

"You," Phoebe reminded her, glad she'd had all those years of dealing with obstinate patients. She was damned if she'd allow the harridan to intimidate her. "Two minutes ago, you said@' She caught Musnakaff frantically gesturing to her, but she'd begun now and it was too late to stop. "You said you could just dream yourself beautiful. So dream yourself young and gasless at the same time."

There was a weighty silence, the Mistress's eyes roving maniacally. Then she began to chuckle again, the sound escalating into a full-throated laugh. "Oh you believed me, you believed me, you sweet thing," she said. "Do you truly think I would live with this"-she raised her skeletal hands in front of her-"if I had any choice in the matter?"

"So you can't dream yourself beautiful?"

"I might have been able to do it, when I first came here. f was barely a hundred back then. Oh I know it sounds old to you, but it's nothing, nothing. I had a husband whose kisses' kept me young,"

"This is King Texas?" Phoebe said.

The woman's hands dropped back into her lap, and she uttered a shuddering sigh. "No," she said. '-Mis was in the Cosm, in my youth. A

soul I loved far more than I ever loved Texas. And who loved me back, to distraction...... An expression of utter loss crossed her face. "It never passes," she murmured. "Me pain of losing love. It never truly passes. I'm afraid to sleep some nights-Abrd knows; poor Abr6-i'm afraid because when I sleep I dream he,s returned into my arms, and I into his, and the hurt of waking is SO great I can't bear to close my eyes, for fear the dream will come again." She was suddenly weeping, Phoebe saw. Tears pouring down her gouged cbeeks. "Oh Lord, if I had my way I'd unmake love. Wouldn't that be fme?"

"No," Phoebe said softly. "I don't think that would be fine at all."

"You wait until you've outlived all those you care for, or lost them. You wait till all you've got left is a husk and some memories. You'll lie awake the way I do, and pray not to dream." She beckoned to Phoebe.

"Come closer, will You?" she said. "Let me see you a little more clearly."

Phoebe duly moved to the side of the bed. "Abr6, that lamp. Bring it closer. I want to see the face of this woman, who's so in love with love. Better, better." She lifted her hand as if to touch Phoebe's face, then withdrew from the contact. "Are there any new diseases in the Cosm?" she said.

"Yes there are." "Are they terrible?"

"Some of them, yes," Phoebe said, "One of them's very terrible indeed." She remembered Abrd's phrase. "the Cosm's a vale of tears," she said.

"I would dream myself a beauty," she replied, chuckling at the notion.

"I would make myself over as the most fetching woman in Creation, and I would go out in the streets and break every heart I could." The chuckled disappeared. "Do you think I could do that?" she said.

"I... I daresay you could."

"You daresay, do you?" the Mistress responded softly. "Well let me tell you: I could do it as easily as piss. Oh yes. No trouble. I dreamed this city, didn't I?" "Did you?"

"I did! Tell her, my little Abr6!"

"It's true!" Musnakaff replied. "She dreamed this place into being."

"So I could dream myself a fetching woman just as easily." Again, she paused. "But I choose not to. And you know why?"

"Because you don't care?" Phoebe ventured.

The paper the woman was in the middle of tearing I-ell from her fingers.

"Exactly," she said, with great moment. "What's your name? Felicia?"

"Phoebe."

"Even worse."

,i like it," Phoebe replied, her tongue responding before she could check it.

"It's a vile name," the woman said.

"No it isn't."

"If I say it's a vile name, then vile it is. Come here." Phoebe didn't move. "Did you hear me?"

"Yes I heard you, but I don't care to come."

The woman rolled her eyes. "Oh for God's s@tkc, woman, don't take offense at a little remark like that. ['in allowed to be objectionable. I'm old, ugly, and flatulent."

"You don't have to be," Phoebe said.

"Says who?"

"You," Phoebe reminded her, glad she'd had all those years of dealing with obstinate patients. She was damned if she'd allow the harridan to intimidate her. "Two minutes ago, you said-" She caught Musnakaff frantically gesturing t to her, but she'd begun now and it was too late to stop. "You said you could just dream yourself beautiful. So dream yourself young and gasless at the same time."

There was a weighty silence, the Mistress's eyes roving Maniacally. Then she began to chuckle again, the sound escalating into a full-throated laugh. "Oh you believed me, you believed me, you sweet thing," she said. "Do you truly think I would live with this"-she raised her skeletal hands in front of her-"if I had any choice in the matter?"

"So you can't dream yourself beautiful?"

"I might have been able to do it, when I first came here. I was barely a hundred back then. Oh I know it sounds old to You, but it's nothing, nothing. I had a husband whose kisses kept me young."

"This is King Texas?" Phoebe said.

The woman's hands dropped back into her lap, and she uttered a shuddering sigh. "No," she said. "This was in the Cosm, in my youth. A

soul I loved far more than I ever loved Texas. And who loved me back, to distraction...." An expression of utter loss crossed her face. "It never passes," she murmured. "The pain of losing love. It never truly passes. I'm afraid to sleep some ni,,lhts-Abrd knows; poor Abr6-I'm afraid because when I sleep I dream he's returned into my arms, and I into his, and the hurt of waking is so great I can't bear to close my eyes, for fear the dream will come again." She was suddenly weeping, Phoebe saw. Tears pouring down her gouged cheeks. "Oh Lord, if I had my way I'd unmake love. Wouldn't that be fine?"

"No," Phoebe said softly. "I don't think that would be fine at all."

"You wait until you've outlived all those you care for, or lost them. You wait till all you've got left is a husk and some memories. You'll lie awake the way I do, and pray not to dream." She beckoned to Phoebe.

"Come closer, will you?" she said. "Let me see you a little more clearly."

Phoebe duly moved to the side of the bed. "Abr6, that lamp. Bring it closer. I want to see the face of this woman, who's so in love with love. Better, better." She lifted her hand as if to touch Phoebe's face, then withdrew from the contact. "Are there any new diseases in the Cosm?" she said.

"Yes there are."

"Are they terrible?"

"Some of them, yes," Phoebe said, "One of them's very terrible indeed," She remembered Abr6's phrase. 'The Cosm's a vale of tears," she said.

It did the trick. The Mistress smiled. "There," she said, turning to Abr6. "Isn't that what I always say?"

"That's what you say," Musnakaff replied. "No wonder you fled it," the woman said, turning her attention back to Phoebe.

111 didn't-"

"What?" "Flee. I didn't flee. I came because there's somebody here I want to find."

"And who might that be?"

"My... lover."

The Mistress regarded her pityingly. "So you're here for love?" she said.

"Yes," Phoebe replied. "Before you ask, his name's Joe."

"I had no intention of asking," the Mistress rasped.

"Well I told you anyhow. He's somewhere out there at sea. And I've come to find him."

"You'll fail," the harridan said, making no attempt to disguise her satisfaction at the thought. "You know what's going on out there, I presume?" "Vaguely."

"Then you surely know there's no chance of finding him. He's probably already dead." "I know that's not true," Phoebe said. "How can you know?" the Mistress said. "Because I was here in a dream. I met him, out there in Quiddity." She dropped her voice a little, for dramatic effect. "We made love." "In the sea?" "In the sea."

"You actually coupled in Quiddity?" Musnakaff said. "Yes.

The Mistress had picked up a sheet of paper from the bed-it was covered, Phoebe saw, with line upon line of spidery handwriting-and proceeded to tear it up. "Such a thing," she said, half to herself. "Such a thing."

"Is there any way you can help me?" Phoebe said.

it was Musnakaff who replied. "I'm afraid-"

He got no further. "Maybe," the Mistress said. "The sea doesn't speak. But there are those in it that do." She had reduced the first sheet of paper to litter, and now picked up a second. "What would I get in return?" she asked Phoebe.

"How about the truth?" Phoebe replied.

The Mistress cocked her head. "Have you lied to me?" she said.

"I said what I was told to say," Phoebe replied.

"About what?"

"About the Cosm being a vale of tears."

"Is that not so?" the Mistress said, somewhat testily.

"Some of the time. People live unhappy lives. But not all the time. And not all of the people." The Mistress grunted. "I guess maybe you don't want to hear the truth after all. Maybe you're happier just sitting tearing up love letters and thinking you're better off here than there."

"How did you know?"

"What, that they were love letters? By the look on your face."

"He's been writing to me every hour on the hour for six years. Tells me he'd let me have this whole damn continent, if I'd only grant him a kiss, a touch. I've never answered a single billet-doux. But still he writes 'em, reams and reams of sentimental nonsense. And every now and then I take a day or so to tear them up.

"If you hate him that much," Phoebe said, "you must have loved him-"

"I told you, I've loved one creature in my life. And he's dead."

"In the Cosm," Phoebe said. It was not a question, it was a statement, plain and simple.

The Mistress looked up at her. "Do you read minds?" she said, very softly. "Is that how you know my secrets?"

"It wasn't much of a leap," Phoebe replied. "You said you dreamed this city into being. You must have seen the original once."

"I did," the Mistress said. "A very long time ago. I was a mere child."

"Did you remember much?"

"More than I care to," the woman said, "far more. I had great ambitions, you see, and they came to nothing. Well, almost nothing.. .

"

"What ambitions?"

"to build a new Alexandria. A city where people would live in peace and prosperity." She shrugged. "And what did I end up with?"

"What?"

"Everville."

Phoebe was flummoxed. "Everville?" she said. What on SEVEN earth could this bizarre creature have to do with safe, smug little Everville? The woman dropped the love letter she was tearing and stared into the flames. "Yes. You may as well know the whole truth, for what it's worth." She looked from the fire to Phoebe and made a tiny smile. "My name's Maeve O'Connell," she said, "and I'm the fool who founded Everville."

Until the early eighties, the route of the Saturday Parade had been simple. It had started at Sears' Bakery on Poppy Lane and proceeded along Acres Street to Main, where it had moved-in about an hour-to its conclusion in the town square. But as the scale of both the parade and the crowd attending it had grown, a new route had to be devised that would allow breathing room for both. After several six-to-Mid night meetings in their smoke-filled room above Dorothy Bullard's office, the Festival Committee had hit upon a simple but clever solution: The parade would describe an almost com plete circle around the town, setting out from behind the Town Hall. This almost tripled the length of the route. Main Street and the town square would still remain the prime sites for view ing, of course, but the spectators there would be obliged to wait somewhat longer for the show to come their way. For the impa fient then, or those with impatient kids, the streets closer to the starting-place were preferable, while for those folks who tluived on anticipation, and were happy to eat, drink, and swel ter for an hour and a half while the music grew tantalizingly louder, there was still no better place to be than on the bleach ers, fire escapes, and window-sills of Main Street.

"The band's never sounded better," Maisie Waits said to Dorothy as the two women stood in the sun outside Kitty's p Diner, watching the parade slowly make its way towards the crossroads. Dorothy beamed. She couldn't have been more proud, she thought to herself, if she'd given birth to every one of these musicians herself, and was about to say so when she checked herself. Wherever that notion had popped up from it was perhaps better left unspoken. Instead she said, "We all loved Arnold, of course," speaking of Arnold Langley, who had led the band for twenty-two years until his sudden death of a stroke the previous January, "but Larry's really worked on updating the repertoire."

"Oh Bill just thinks the sun shines out of Larry," Maisie remarked. Her husband had played the trombone in the band for a decade. "And he loves the new uniforms."

They'd cost a tidy sum, but there was no doubt the money had been well spent. Along with Larry Glodoski's recruitindrive, which had brought a number of new, younger players into the ranks (all but one of them from out of town), the uniforms had given the band a fresher, snappier appearance, which had in turn improved their marching and their playing. There'd even been talk of the band entering one of the big interstate competitions in the next couple of years. Even if it didn't win, the publicity would only help the Festival.

Not that it needed help, Dorothy thought, her gaze moving from band to crowd. There were about as many people here as the streets would bear; five or six deep in some places, their weight putting the barricades under considerable strain, their din so loud it drowned out all but the band's bass drum, which thumped away in Dorothy's lower belly like a second heart. "You know I really should eat something," she said to Maisie. "I'm feeling a little floaty."

"Oh, well that's no good," Maisie said. "We'll have to get some food inside you."

"I'll just wait until the band gets here," Dorothy said.

"Are you sure?" "Of course. I can't miss the band."

"I feel like a damn fool," Erwin said.

Dolan grinned. "Nobody can see us but us," he pointed out. "Oh come on, lighten up, Erwin. Didn't you always want to March in a parade?"

"Actually, no," Erwin replied.

they were all there-Nordhoff, Dickerson, even Connie, marching among the glittering ranks-all playing the fool.

Erwin couldn't see the joke. Not today, when plainly there was so much wrong with the world, Hadn't Nordhoff himself said that they had to somehow protect their investment in Everville? And here they were capering like chil-, dren.

"I'm done with thisf" he said sourly. "We should be after that bastard in my house."

"We will be," Dolan said. "Nordhoff told me he had a plan."

"Somebody taking my name in vain?" Nordhoff called over his shoulder.

"Erwin thinks we're wasting our time."

"Do you indeed?" Nordhoff said, swinging round, and marching backwards while he addressed the question. "it may seem like a pathetic little ritual to you, marching with the town band, but it's like that jacket you're wearing."

"This thing?" Erwin said. "I thought I'd given it away."

"But you found the pockets full of keepsakes, didn't you?" Nordhoff said. "Little pieces of the past?" @,Yes."

"It was the same for all of us," Nordhoff replied, plunging his hand into the pocket of his I, ess-than-perfect tux and pulling out a handful of bric-a-brac. 'Either Our memories or some higher Power supplied us with these comforts. And I'm grateful,"

"What's your point?" Erwin pressed.

"That we have to stay connected to Everville the way we stay connected to ourselves. Whether it's an old shirt or an hour with the town band, it doesn't matter. they serve the same function. they help us remember what we loved."

"What we still love," Dolan said.

"You're right, Richard. What we still love. You see the point, Erwin?"

4'1 can think of better ways to do it than this," Erwin growled.

"Doesn't a band make your heart strike up?" Nordhoff said, raising his knees a little higher with each step. "Listen to those trumpets."

"Raucous!" Erwin said.

"Jesus, Toothaker!" Nordhoff said. "Where's your sense of celebration? This is what we're fighting to preserve."

"Then God help us," Erwin said, at which reply Nordhoff turned his back, and picking up his pace marched off through the brass section.

"Go after him," Dolan told Erwin. "Quickly. Tell him you're sorry."

"Go to Hell," Erwin said, peeling off from the ranks and heading for the choked sidewalk. Dolan went after him.

"Nordhoff s not a very forgiving man," Dolan said.

"I don't care," Erwin said. "I'm not going to abase myself" He stopped, his gaze fixed on somebody in the crowd.

"What is it?" Dolan wanted to know.

"There," Erwin said, pointing to the bedraggled woman moving through the crowd.

"You know her?"

"Oh yes."

Testa was about a hundred yards from the crossroads when she realized where she was. She halted. It took Harry just a second or two to catch up with her.

"What's the problem?" he hollered to her.

"We shouldn't have come this way!" she yelled back.

"You know a better one?"

Testa shook her head. Perhaps with Raul's aid she'd have been able to plot an alternative route to Phoebe's house, but from now on she'd have to start working these problems out for herself.

"So we just have to plough on," Harry said.

Testa nodded, and did just that, plunging on into the press of bodies with the abandon of an orgiast. If only there were some way to harness the power of this communion, she thought; to turn it to practical purpose instead of letting it evaporate. What a waste that was; what a pitiful waste.

Caught in the grip of the crowd, unable to entirely control her route, nor entirely concerned to do so, she felt curiously comforted. The touch of flesh on flesh, the stench of sweat and candy-sweetened breath, the sight of oozing skin and glittering eye, all of it was fine, just fine. Yes, these peo pp pie were vulnerable and ignorant; yes, they were probably crass, most of them, and bigoted and belligerent. But now, right now, they were laughing and cheering and holding their babies high to see the parade, and if she did not love them, she was at least happy to be of their species.

"Listen to me!" Erwin yelled at her.

The woman showed no sign of hearing, but the expreS7 sion on her face gave Erwin hope that maybe she could be persuaded to hear. Her eyes had a lunatic gleam in them, and there was a twitching smile on her lips. He could not feel her temperature, but he was certain she was running a fever.

"Just tune in, will you?" he hollered.

"Why are you bothering?" Dolan wanted to know.

"Because she knows a damn sight more than we do," Erwin told him. "She knew that thing in my house by name. I heard her call it Kissoon."

"What about him?" Testa said to Harry, throwing the question over her shoulder.

"What about who?" Harry replied.

"You said Kissoon." "I didn't say a word."

"Well somebody did."

"She heard me!" Erwin whooped. "Good girl! Good girl." Dolan was intrigued now. "Maybe she'd hear better if we said it together," he suggested.

"Not a bad idea. After three...

This time Testa stopped. "You didn't hear that either?" she said to Harry. He shook his head. "Okay," she said. "No big deal."

"What are you talking about?"

She pushed through the crowd to an empty doorway, with Harry following. The store-a florist's-was closed, but the scent of flowers was powerful.

"There's somebody talking to me, Harry. Besides you. His name's Toothaker."

"And... where is he?"

"I don't know," she said. "I mean, I know he's dead. I was in his house. That's where I saw Kissoon." She kept scanning the crowd while she spoke, hoping to catch a glimpse of the presence, or rather presences, she'd heard. "He's not alone this time. I heard two voices. they want to get through to me. I just don't know how to tune in."

"I'm no help, I'm afraid," Harry said. "I'm not saying they're not here@'

"It's okay," Tesla told him. "I just have to listen-2'

"You want to find somewhere quieter?"

She shook her head. "I might lose them."

"You want me to step away?"

"Don't go far," she said, and closing her eyes, tried to shut out the din of the living and listen for the voices of the dead.

Dorothy caught hold of Maisie's arm, very tight. "What's wrong?" Maisie said.

"I really don't... I don't feel too good at all Dorothy said. Her surroundings had started to throb in rhythm with the band, as though everything had a heart sewn inside it (even the sidewalk, even the sky), and the closer the band came, the harder those hearts beat, until it seemed they would surely burst, every one of them burst wide open, and tear a hole in the world.

"Shall I get you something to eat?" Maisie said. The drums were louder with every beat: booming and booming. "Maybe a tuna salad, or-"

Without warning, Dorothy bent double and puked. The knot of people in front of her parted-not quickly enough to keep themselves from being spattered, but fast-as she heaved up what little her stomach contained. Maisie waited until the spasms had stopped then tried to coax her out of the sun into the shade of the diner. But she wouldn't go, or couldn't.

"It's going to burst," she said, staring down at the ground.

"It's all right, Dottie

"No it isn't. It's going to burst!"

"What are you talking about?"

Dorothy shook off Maisie's grip. "We've got to clear the street," she said, stumbling forward. "Quickly!"

"What's going on down there?" Owen said, leaning out of the window. "Do you know that woman7'

"The one who just puked? Yeah. It's Mrs. Bullard. She's a real bitch." "Extraordinary," Owen said.

Dorothy was pushing and shoving her way through the crowd. She was yelling something, but Owen couldn't catch it over the din of the approaching band.

"She looks really upset," Seth said. "That she does," Owen said, leaving the window and heading for the stairs.

"Maybe she saw the avatars!" Seth yelled after him.

"The same thought occurred to me," Owen said. "The ve same-"

Dorothy Bullard's warning had not gone unheard by the crowd around Kitty's Diner. As she strode forward they cleared a path for her, in case she intended to puke again. One girl, perhaps a little worse for drink, failed to get out of her way fast enough and was shoved aside as Dorothy charged the barricade. It fell before her, and she ran out into the middle of the crossroads, waving her hands wildly.

At the head of his shining ranks, Larry Glodoski saw the Bullard woman flailing in front of him, and was presented with a choice. Either he brought the band-and thus the parade-to a halt in the next ten seconds, or trusted that somebody would have the presence of mind to gei the bitch out of his way before there was a collision. In truth, it was no dilemma at all. She was one; they were many. He lifted his baton a little higher, and marked the beats with sharper motions than ever, as if to erase the woman from the street in front of him.

"I'm listening," Tesla murmured, "I'm listening as hard as I can." Every now and then she heard what might have been a munnur, but her mind was whining with hunger and heat. Even if it was the ghosts speaking she could make no sense of the sounds.

And now there was yet another distraction: some kind of brouhaha up at the crossroads. The crowd had become more frenzied than ever. She went up on her tiptoes in the hope of seeing what was happening, but her sight was blocked by heads and balloons and waving hands.

Harry had the scoop, however. "There's a woman in the middle of the street, yetting@'

"Yelling what?"

Harry listened for a moment. "I think she's telling people to get off the street@'

An instinct she would once have called Raul's had her out of the doorway in a moment, back into the swelter and stench of the crowd, pushing Harry ahead of her. "Clear the way!" she yelled to him.

",my?"

"It's the crossroads! it's something to do with the fuc@ing crossroads!"

"Do you see them?" Seth said, as he and Owen carved their way to the front of the crowd. Owen didn't answer him. He was afraid if he opened his mouth he'd cry out: in hope, in pain, in expectation. He ducked under the barricade and out into the open street.

This was the most dangerous of moments, he knew: when everything could be gained or lost. He hadn't expected it to come upon him so suddenly, Even now, he wasn't certain this wa. s f moments, but he had to act as though it indeed the moment o were, The sun suddenly seemed merciless, beating on his bare head, softening his thoughts, and On the bare street, softening that too. It would flow soon, the way it had in the vision he'd shared with Seth; flow into the place where flesh met flesh, and the Art ignited

"Get away!" Dorothy yelled, turning to appeal to the crowd. "Get away before it's too late!"

"She has seen something," Owen thought.

There were people converging on the woman from all sides, intent on silencing her, but Owen put on a burst of speed to reach her first.

"It's all right!" he yelled as he went, "I'm a doctor!"

It was a trick he'd used before, and as before, it worked, He was given clear access to the crazed woman.

Larry saw the doctor wrap his arms around poor Dorothy, and offered up a little prayer of thanks. Now all the guy had to do was get the Bullard woman out of the way-but quickly, quickly!-and the rhythm of the band would not be broken. He heard somebody in the ranks calling, "Larry? We gotta stop!" Larry ignored the cry. they still had another ten strides before they would reach the spot where the doctor was talking to Dorothy.

Nine, now. But nine was plenty. Eight

"What are you seeing?" Owen demanded of the woman. "It's all going to burst," she said to him. "Oh God, oh God, it's all going to burst!"

"What is?" he asked her. She shook her head. "Tell me!" he yelled at her. "The world!" she said. "The world!"

Harry had no difficulty clearing a way through the crowd for Tesla. Now he lifted the barricade and she ducked under it, out into the open street, delivering her into the arena. There were perhaps a dozen players-ahead of her-excluding the band-but only three were of significance. One was the woman at the very center of the crossroads, another the bearded man who was presently talking to her, the third the WI young man a few yards ahead of her, who was calling out:

"Buddenbaum!"

The bearded man glanced round at his companion, and Tesia had a clear look at his face. The expression he wore was grotesque; every muscle in his face churning and his eyes blazed.

"Mine!" he yelled, his voice shrill, and swung back towards the woman, who was in some delirious state of her own, her eyes rolling in her sockets. She started to pull herself free of Buddenbaum, and in doing so her blouse tore open from neck to belt, exposing bra and belly. She scarcely noticed, it seemed. But the crowd did. A roar rose from all sides-gasps, wolf-whistles, and applause all mingled. Flailing, the woman stumbled away from Buddenbaum Larry couldn't believe it. Just as he thought things were in hand Dorothy pulled away from the doctor-practically showing her all to the world in the process-and reeled round, straight in front of the band.

Larry yelled "Halt!" but it was too late to prevent catastrophe. The Bullard woman collided with him, and he staggered backwards into the trumpet section. Two of the band members went over like bowling pins, and Larry fell on top of them. There was another roar from the spectators.

Larry's spectacles had come off in the melee. Without them the world was a blur. Detaching himself from the knot of trumpeters he started to search the ground, patting the warm asphalt.

"Nobody move!" he yelled. "Please! Nobody move!"

His plea went unheard. People were moving all around him. He could see their blurry forms; he could hear their shouts and curses.

"We're all going to die," he heard somebody sob nearby. He was sure it was Dorothy, and good man that he was, forsook his search a moment to comfort her. But when he looked up from the street to seek out the blur that most resembled her, something else came into view. It was a woman, but she was not blurred; far from it. He could not have wished for a vision more perfectly in focus. She was not standing in the street, but hovering a little distance above it. No; not even hovering, stan&ng; she was standing in the air, with a silk robe loosely knotted around her. Very loosely, in fact. He could see her breasts-they were glossy and full-and a hint of what lay between her legs. He called out to her,

"Who are you?" But she didn't hear him. She just moved off, climbing the air as though ascending a flight of invisible stairs. He started to get to his feet, wishing he could follow, and as he did so she looked back, coquettishly, not at him, he knew, but at somebody whom she was coaxing to follow her.

Oh how she smiled at him, the lucky bastard, and plucked at her robe to tease him with a glimpse of her beautiful legs. Then she continued to climb, and a few steps up the flight, seemed to encounter another woman-this one descendingthe contact briefly illuminating the second beauty.

Larry-?"

What was he seeing?

"I got your spectacles."

"Hub?"

"Your spectacles, Larry." they were thrust in front of him, and he fumbled for them, not wanting to take his eyes off the woman.

"What the hell are you looking at?"

"Don't you see them?"

"See what?"

"The women."

"Put your damn spectacles on, Larry."

He did so. The world came into focus around him, in all its confusion. But the woman had gone.

"God, no-"

He pulled his spectacles off again, but the vision had escaped him into the bright summer sky.

In the midst of this confusion-Dorothy Bullard escaping, Buddenbaum going after her, the band falling down like tin soldiers-Tesia had made her way to the center of the crossroads. It had taken her perhaps five seconds to do so, but in those seconds she had been assailed b a legion of sensa'Y tion,,, her spirits lifted one moment and dropped the next, her body wracked and caressed by turns, as though whatever lay at the heart of the crossroads was testing her wits to breaking point. Clearly the town woman had failed the test. She was bawling like an abandoned child. Buddenbaum, however, was made of sterner stuff. He was standing a couple of yards from Tesla, staring down at the ground.

"What the fuck's going on?" she yelled to him. He didn't look up. Didn't even speak. "Can you hear me?" "Not. Another. Step," he said. Despite the cacophony, and the fact that he spoke in a near-whisper, she heard him as clearly as if he'd murmured in her ear.

A terrible suspicion rose in Tesla, which she instantly voiced.

"Are you Kissoon?" she said.

This certainly got his attention.

"Kissoon?" he said, his lip curling. "He's a piece of shit. What do you know about him?"

That answered her question plainly enough. But it begged another. If he wasn't Kissoon, but he knew who Kissoon was, then who was he?

"He's just some name I heard."

His face was quite a sight: a mass of bulges, about to burst. "Some name?" he said, reaching for her. "Kissoon's not some name!" She dearly wanted to retreat from him, but a part of her was irrationally possessive of this contested ground. She stood it, though he took hold of her by the neck.

"Who are you?"

She was afraid for her life.

"Tesia Bombeck," she said.

"You're Tesla Bombeck?" he said, plainly amazed.

"Yes," she said, barely able to get the words out from under his thumbs.

"Do you mind... letting go-"

He drew her closer to him. "Oh God," he said, with a twisted little smile on his face. "You're an ambitious little bitch, aren't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh you don't, huh? You came to take away all I've worked for and "

"I haven't come to take anything," Tesla gasped.

"Liar!" Buddenbaum said, tightening his hold on her neck.

She reached up to his face and jabbed her finger in his eye, but he wasn't about to let go.

"Me Art's mine," he yelled. "You can't have it! You can't."

She had no breath left to contest her innocence, not much strength to fight him off. The world began to throb to the rhythm of her pulse, pulsing with every heartbeat. She kicked at his legs, hoping she might knock him off his feet, but he seemed to feel nothing, to judge by his unchanging face. He just kept saying: "Mine... Mine... " though his voice, like the whole world, was growing paler and thinner', preparing to disappear completely.

"Don't we know that woman?" somebody said nearby.

"I believe we do," came the reply.

She couldn't turn to see the speakers, but she didn't need to. She knew them by their voices. The leader of the phantoms she'd met in Toothaker's house was here, and not alone. Buddenbaum's face was barely visible now, but just before it flickered out completely she saw him raise his eyes, looking past her at something nearby. He spoke, but the words were white noise. Then there was burst of heat, and a red mark appeared above his fight eye. She squinted hard, trying to make sense of it, but before she could do so his fingers relaxed, and she slipped from his grasp. Her legs were too weak to bear her up. they folded beneath her, and down she went. She drew a breath as she collapsed, and her grateful brain rewarded her with a sliver of comprehension. Buddenbaum had been shot. The mark on his face was a bullet hole.

She didn't have a chance to take satisfaction in the fact. When she struck the ground her thoughts flickered out.

One shot, and the crowd was in turmoil. Cheers turned to screams, laughter to panic. Suddenly people were running in every direction, except towards the gunman and his victim.

D'Amour slipped his gun into his jacket and started towards the middle of the street. The man he'd shot was still standing, despite the blood flooding from his brow, which fact supported the suspicion that there was magic here. Despite the sun, despite the crowds, a suit had been worked and was still being worked, in fact. The closer he got to the place where Tesla was lying, the more his ink itched.

There were other signs, too, that he did his best to keep at bay. The ground under his feet seemed to brighten and shift when he looked at it, as though it was trying to flow towards the middle of the crossroads.

And there was a brightness in the air; gossamer shapes moving across his field of vision, shedding beads of light. There was more here than an invocation, he knew; far more. Reality was soft here, and getting softer. Things meeting, intersecting, trying-perhaps-to flow together.

If so, he had no doubt as to who was masterminding the affair. It was the man he'd just shot, who now, with consummate indifference, had actually turned his back on Harry and was studying the departing crowd.

Harry turned his gaze on Tesla, who was lying quite still. Don't be dead, he said to himself, and almost closing his eyes completely to fend off the blandishments of sky and street he stumbled on towards her.

The avatars were here. Owen knew it. He could feel their eyes upon him, and it was a feeling like no other he knew. Like being spied on by God. Terrible and wonderful at the same time.

He wasn't the only one feeling such confusions, he knew. Though the crowd scattering around him did not possess the knowledge he possessed, they were all of themeven the dullest and the dumbest-sensing something untoward. The shot that had wounded him had wounded them too, in a different fashion: loosed a flood of adrenaline rather than blood, thus alerting their staled senses to signs they would have otherwise missed. He could see the recognition in their faces, wide with awe and terror; he could read it off their trembling lips. It wasn't the way he'd intended things, but he didn't care. Let them gape, he thought. Let them pray. Let them tremble. They'd have to do a lot more of that before this Day of Days was done.

He gave up on looking for the avatars-as long as they were there, what did it matter what shape they'd taken?-and went down on his haunches to touch the ground. Though there was blood running into his right eye, he could see better than he'd seen in his long life. The ground was turning to ether below him, the medallion buried far below him blazing in its bed. He pressed his hand against the ground, and let out a low moan of pleasure as he felt his fingers slip and slide down into the warm asphalt, towards the cross. There were phenomena on every side. Voices speaking out of the ether (revenants, he thought; and why not? The more the merrier), vague, wispy forms riding on the air to left and right of him (too perfect for the past, surely; perhaps the future, coming to find the moment when it ceased to matter), agitations in the ground and sky (he would paint the heavens with stone,' when he remade the world, and make the earth sprout lightning). So much happening, and all because of the object that lay inches from his fingers, the cross that had accrued the power to change the world, buried here at the crossroads.

"You're beautiful," he murmured to it, the way he might have cooed to a pretty boy. "So, so beautiful."

His fingers were almost there. Another foot and a half, no more Erwin had followed Tesla as far as the edge of the crowd, but then-seeing the chaos in front of him-had held back. It was no use trying to speak to her in the midst of such tumult, he'd realized. Better to wait.

Dolan had not been so reluctant. Ever eager for fun, he'd slipped through the barricade and out across the melting ground. He'd been inches from Dorothy Bullard when her blouse tore (cause for much hilarity), and had actually stood in the path of the bullet that had struck Buddenbaum, amused to see it pass straight through him.

Suddenly, the clowning had ceased. From his place on the sidewalk, Erwin saw Dolan's expression becoming troubled. He turned to Nordhoff, who was bending over the fallen Tesla, and let out a moaning word,

"Whaaat-?"

Nordhoff didn't reply. He was staring down at the wounded man, who was plunging his hand into too solid ground. And as he stared, his face grew longer, as though he was about to be transformed into a dog or a camel. His nose lengthened, his cheeks puffed up, his eyes were sucked from his sockets. "Oohhh Heilli.. Dolan moaned, and turning on his heel started back towards the sidewalk. It wasn't safe terrain. Though Erwin was a good deal farther from the source of this phenomenon, he too felt something plucking at his selfinvented flesh. The pockets of his coat were torn off, and a number of the keepsakes carried away towards the epicenter; his fingers were growing longer; his face, he was sure, the same.

Dolan was in even worse condition. Though he was further from the hub than Nordhoff, Dickerson and the rest, the claim of whatever force had been unleashed there was irresistible. He dropped to his knees and dug his nails into the ground, hollering at Erwin for help as he did so, but his matter had no purchase on the asphalt, and he was dragged back towards the hub, his body growing softer and longer, until he began to resemble a stream of melting flesh, coursing across the street.

Erwin covered his ears to shut out the din of his shrieks, and retreated back down the rapidly emptying street. It was hard going. The power at the hub of the crossroads was growing apace, and with every step he took it threatened to overwhelm him and drag him to his destruction. But he resisted its claim with all his will, and after twenty yards he began to outpace it. After thirty, its hold on him was dwindling rapidly. After forty, he felt sufficiently confident to slow a little and look for Dolan. He'd gone. So had Nordhoff, so had Dickerson, so had they all; all melted and run away into the ground.

The sound of sirens drew his gaze off down the street. Jed Gilholly was getting out of his car, along with two of his officers, Cliff Campbell and Floyd Weeks, neither of whom looked very happy with their lot.

Erwin didn't wait to see what the trio made of the forces awaiting them at the crossroads-or indeed what those forces made of them-but instead slipped away while the going was good. He had believed in the law once; valued it, served it, and trusted its power to regulate the world. But those certainties belonged to another life and, like that life, had slipped away.

When Telsa opened her eyes, d'Amour was already hauling her to her feet.

"We've got more problems," he said, nodding down the street.

She started to follow his direction, but her gaze was distracted by the strange sights surrounding them. The band members, crawling away on all fours like beaten animals. The remnants of the crowd, many of them sobbing uncontrollably, others praying the same way, standing or kneeling in a litter of forsaken belongings: purses, hot dogs, baby carriages. And beyond all this, the police, approaching the crossroads with leveled guns.

"Stand still!" one of them yelled. "All of you, stand still!"

"We'd better do it," Tesla said, glancing back towards Buddenbaum. He had both hands in the ground, up to his elbows, and he was working them in and out, in and out, with a motion she could not help but think of as sexual; easing open this hole in the solid world. The air around them all was as hazy as ever, and its contents as incomprehensible.

"What the fuck is he doing?" D'Amour murmured to her. "He's after the Art," Tesla said.

"You two, shaddup!" the lead officer yelled at them. Then, to Buddenbaum, "You! Get up! I want to see your hands!"

Buddenbaum showed no sign of even hearing the order, much less obeying it. The order came a second time, with little variation. Again, it was ignored.

"I'm going to count to three-" Jed warned.

"Go on," Tesla muttered. "Shoot the fucker." "One-"

Jed continued his steady advance as he counted, his officers keeping place with him.

"Two-"

"Hey Jed?" Floyd Weeks said.

"Shaddup."

"I don't feel so good."

Jed glanced round at Weeks. The man had gone the color of a urinal, and his eyes were swiveling up into his sockets. "Don't do this!" Jed ordered him. This order was no,, more obeyed than that he'd given Buddenbaum. The gu@ ' fell from Weeks's trembling fingers and he let out a aspjhat was as much pleasure as it was capitulation. Then he murmured. "Oh God, why didn't... why didn't anybody tell me?"

"Take no notice of him," Jed said to Cliff Campbell.

The man obeyed, but only because he had delusions of his own to deal with. "What's going on, Jed?" he murmured. "Where'd these women come from?"

"What women?" Jed said.

"They're all around us," Campbell babbled, turning as he spoke. "Don't you see them?"

Gilholly was about to shake his head when he let out a low moan. "Oh my Lord," he said.

"Are you ready?" D'Amour murmured to Tesla.

"As ready as I'll ever be."

Harry went back to watching Gilholly, who was fighting to keep a hold on his senses. "This isn't happening... " he murmured, glancing over at Campbell for support. He got none. His deputy had fallen to his knees and was laughing to himself like a crazy. In desperation, Jed pointed his gun at the forms drifting in front of him. "Stay out of my way!" he yelled at them. "I mean it! I'll use this if I have to."

"Let s go, arry sal, 'w i e 's istracted, and he and Tesla started away from the middle of the street.

9 he fell to his knees. "I never knew Jed saw their escape attempt.

"You! Stay-" He faltered in the middle of the order, as if he'd forgotten the words. "Oh Jesus," he said, his voice trembling now,

"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus... "

Then, finally, he too dropped to his knees.

In the middle of the street, Buddenbaum let out a howl of frustration.

Something was wrong here. One moment the crossroads had been melting beneath him, power flowing into its heart, the next the taste he'd had in his tongue had soured, and the dirt was hardening around his arm. He pulled it out. It was like extracting his hand from the bowels of something dead or dying. A shudder of revulsion coursed through him, and stinging tears sprang into his eyes.

"Owen-?"

The voice was Seth's of course. He was standing a yard or two away, looking fretful and afraid. "Has something gone wrong?" Buddenbaum nodded. "Do you know what?"

"Maybe this," Owen said, putting his hand up to his wounded head. "Maybe it simply distracted me-"

"Come away," Seth said.

Owen raised his wounded head and studied the air. "What do you see?" he said.

"The women, you mean?" Owen squinted. "I just see bright shapes. Are they women?"

"Yes."

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

"Then it's some kind of conspiracy," he said. He reached up and grabbed hold of Seth's arm, pulling himself to his feet. "Somebody put them there to block the working."

"Who?"

"I don't know," Buddenbaum said. "Somebody who knows-" He halted, turning his gaze in Tesia's direction. "Bombeck," he murmured. Then shouted: "Bombeck!"

"What's his problem?" Harry said as Buddenbaum started towards them.

"He thinks I'm here to take the Art."

"Are you?"

Tesla shook her head. "I saw what it did to the Jaff," she said. "And he was ready for it. Or thought he was."

Buddenbaum was closing on them. Harry went for his gun, but Tesla said:

"That's not going to stop him. Let's just get the hell out of his way." She turned from Buddenbaum only to find that in the seconds she'd been looking back a little girl had stepped into their path and was studying them gravely. She was absurdly perfect: a petite blonde-ringleted five year old in a white dress, white socks, and white shoes. Her face was rose pink, her eyes huge and blue.

"Hello," she said, her voice sweet and cool. "You're Testa, aren't you?"

Tesla wasn't in any mood to be chatting to kids, however perfect they were. "You should go find your Mommy and Daddy," she said.

"I was watching," the child said.

"This isn't a good thing to watch, honey," D'Amour said. "Where are your Mom and Dad?"

"They're not here."

:,You're on your own?"

'No," she replied. "I've got Haheh with me, and Yie." She glanced back towards the ice cream parlor. There, sitting on the step, was a man with the face of a born comedianjug-eared, wall-eyed, rubber-mouthed-who had six cones of ice cream in his hands, and was licking from one to another with a look of great concentration. Beside him was another child, this a boy, who looked nearly moronic.

"Don't worry about me," the little girl said. "I'm fine." She studied Testa carefully. "Are you dying?" she said.

Testa looked at D'Amour. "This is not a conversation I want to have right now."

"But I do," Miss Perfection said. "It's important."

"Well, why don't you ask somebody else?"

"Because it's you we're interested in," the little girl replied gravely. She took a step towards Testa, Lifting her hand as she did so. "We saw your face, and we said: She knows about the story tree."

"About what?"

"The story tree," the child replied.

"What the fuck is she talking about?" Testa said to D'Amour. "Never mind," came another voice, this from behind them. Testa didn't need to look round to know it was Buddenbaum. His voice was curiously hollow, as though he were speaking from an empty chamber. "You should have kept out of my business, woman."

"I've no interest in your business," Tesla said. Then, suddenly inquisitive, she turned to him. "But just for the record: What is your business?"

Buddenbaum looked terrible, his face more bloody than not, his body trembling. "That's for me to know," he said.

At this, the little girl piped up. "You can tell her, Owen," she said. Buddenbaum looked past Testa at the child. "I've no wish to share our secrets with this woman," he said stiffly. "But we do," the child replied.

Testa studied Buddenbaum's face through the odd exchange, trying to decode its signs. Plainly, he knew the girl well; and equally plainly was somewhat nervous of her. Perhaps wary rather than nervous. Once again, Testa missed Raul's incisive grasp of such signals. Had he been with her she was certain he could have armed her with insights for whatever encounter lay ahead.

"You look sick," Buddenbaum said.

"You and me both," Testa replied.

"Ah, but I'll mend," Buddenbaum went on. "You, on the other hand, are not long for this world." He spoke lightly enough, but she couldn't miss the threat in the words. He was not simply prophesying death, he was promising it. "I suggest you start making your farewells while you can."

"Is this all part of it?" the little girl said. Testa glanced back at her. She was wearing a coy little smile. "Is it, Owen?"

"Yes," Buddenbaum said. "It's all part of it."

"Oh good, good." The child shifted her attention back to Tesla. "We'll see you later then," she said, stepping aside to let them pass.

"I don't think that's very likely," Testa said.

"Oh, but we will," the girl said, "for sure. We're very interested in you and the story tree."

Tesla heard Buddenbaum mutter something behind her. he didn't hear what, and she was in no state of mind or to make him repeat it. She simply returned the child's sweet smile and with Harry at her side left the crossroads, with the sound of the officers' bewildered worship floating after them on the summer breeze.

Though it was next to impossible that news of what had happened at the crossroads had already reached the ears of every man, woman, and child in Everville, the streets Tesla and Harry walked to get back to Phoebe's house were pretematurally quiet, as though people had read the trembling air, and judged silence the safest response. Despite the heat, doors were closed and windows shuttered. There were no children playing on the lawns or in the street; not even dogs were showing their twitching noses.

It was doubly strange because the day was so perfect: the air candied with summer flowers, the sky flawless.

As they turned the corner onto Phoebe's street, out of the blue Harry said, "God, I love the world." it was such a simple thing to say, and it was spoken with such easy faith, Tesla could only shake her head.

"You don't?" Harry said.

"There's so much shit," she said.

"Not fight this minute. Right this minute it's as good as it gets." \

\1

"Look up the mountain," she said.

"I'm not up the mountain," Harry replied. "I'm here@,

"Good for you," she said, unable to keep the edge from her voice.

He looked across at her. She looked, he thought, about as frail and weary as any living soul could look and still be living. He wanted to put his arm around her, just for a little while, but he supposed she wouldn't thank him for the gesture. She was in a space all of her own, sealed off from comfort.

It took her a little time fumbling with the spare keys Phoebe had given her before they gained access to the house.

Once inside, she said, "I'm going to go get some sleep. I can't even think straight."

"Sure.

She started up the stairs, but turned back a couple of seconds later, staring down at D'Amour with those empty eyes of hers. "By the way," she said, "thank you."

"For what?"

"For what you did on the mountain. I wouldn't be here-Lord... you know what I'm saying."

"I know. And there's no need. We're in this together."

"No," she said softly. "I don't think that's how it's working out."

"If you're thinking about what the kid said to you-"

"It's not the first time I've thought about it," Tesla said, "I've been pushing myself to the limits for five years, Harry, and it's taken its toll." He started to say something, but she raised her hand to hush him. "Let's not waste time lying to each other," she said. "I've done what I can do, and I'm used up. Simple as that. I guess as long as I had Raul in my head I could pretend I was making sense of things, but now... now he's gone"-she shrugged-"I don't want to carry on any longer." She tried a tiny smile, but it was misbegotten. She let it drop, and turning her back on Harry traipsed up to bed.

Harry brewed himself some coffee, and sat down in the living room among the out-of-date copies of TV Guide and the overfilled ashtrays, to think things through. The coffee did its job. He was wide awake, despite the exhaustion in his limbs. He sat staring up at the ceiling and turned over the events that had brought him to this confounded state.

He'd gone up the mountain under the cover of mist and Voi@ht's tattoos to search for Kissoon, but he'd not found the man: at least not in any form he recognized. Children, yes; the Brothers Grimm, yes; a Blessedm'n, three crucified souls, and Tesia Bombeck, yes. But the man who'd murdered Ted Dusseldorf and Maria Nazareno had evaded him.

He thought back to Morningside Heights-to that squalid room where his enemy had slept-wondefing if perhaps there'd been some clue to Kissoon's present form that ad seemed inconsequential at the time. He recalled nothing seful. But he did remember the deck of cards he'd found re. He dug in his jacket pocket and brought them to light. was there a clue here, he wondered, in these images? He cleared the coffee table and laid them out. Ape, moon, fetus, lightning Potent symbols, every one. Lighting, hand, torso, hole But if it was a game, then he didn't know the rules. And if it wasn't a game, then what the hell was it?

Barely conscious of what he was doing he arranged and rearranged the cards in front of him, hoping some solution would appear. Nothing did. Despite the power of the symbols, or perhaps because of it, there was no clarity; just a sense that his mind was too lightweight to deal with such issues.

He was in the midst of these musings when the telephone rang. The Cobb household did not believe in answering machines, it seemed, because the ringing went on uninterrupted until Harry picked up.

There was a well-worn voice at the other end of the line. "Is Tesla there?" the man said. Harry paused before replying, during which time the man said, "It's urgent. I have to talk to her."

This time Harry recognized the speaker. "Grillo?" he said. "Who is this?"

11 "It' s Harry.

"Jesus, Harry. What are you doing there?" "Same thing Tesla's doing."

"is she around?" "She's asleep." "I have to talk to her. I've been calling all day." "Where are you?" "About five miles outside town."

"Which town?" "Everville, for God's sake! Now can I talk to her?"

"Can't you call back in an hour or so-"

"No!" Grillo yelled. Then, more quietly, "No. I need to talk to her now." "Wait a minute," Harry said, and putting down the phone he went up to wake Tesla. She was slumped on the double bed fully dressed, a look of such exhaustion on her sleeping face he couldn't bring himself to deny her the slumber she so plainly needed. It was a good thing. By the time he got back down into the hallway the line was dead. Grillo had gone.

In sleep, Tesia found herself walking on an unearthly shore. Snow had lately fallen there, but she felt none of its chill. Light-footed, she wandered down to the sea. It was thick and dark, its turbulent waters scummy@ and here and there she saw bodies in the surf, turning their stricken faces her way as if to warn her against entering.

She had no choice. The sea wanted her, and would not be denied. Nor, in truth, did she want to resist it. The shore was drear and desolate. The sea, for all its freight of corpses, was a place of mystery, It was only once she was wading into the surf, the waves breaking against her breasts and her belly, that her dreaming mind put words to what place this was. Or rather, one word.

Quiddity.

The dream-sea leapt up against her face when she spoke its name, and its undertow pulled at her legs. She didn't attempt to fight it, but let it lift her off her feet and carry her away like an eager lover. The waves, which were substantial enough at the shore, soon grew titanic. When they raised her up on their shoulders she could see a wall of darkness at the horizon, the likes of which she remembered from her last moments in Kissoon's Loop. The lad, of course. Mountains and fleas; fleas and mountains. When they dropped her into their troughs, and she plunged below the surface, she (,Iiinpsed another spectacle entirely: vast shoals of fish, moviii,, like thunderheads below her. And weaving between the shoals, luminous forms that were, she guessed, human spirits like herself. She seemed to see vestigial faces in their light; hints of the infants, lovers, and dying souls who were dreaming themselves here.

She had no doubt as to which of the three she was. Too old to be a baby, too crazy to be a lover, there was only one reason why her soul was journeying here tonight. Miss Perfection had been right, Death was imminent. This was the last time she would sleep before her span as Testa Bombeck was over.

Even if she'd been distressed at this, she had no time to feel it. The adventure at hand demanded too much of her attention. Rising and falling, on shoulder and in trough, she was carried on towards a place where the waters, for some reason she could not comprehend, grew so utterly calm they made an almost perfect mirror for the busy sky.

She thought at first she was alone in these doldrums, and was about to test her powers of self-propulsion in order escape them, when she realized that a light was flickering beneath her. She looked down into the water, and saw that some species of fish with luminous flesh had congregated in the deep, and was now steadily rising towards the surface. When she raised her head from the water again she found that she was not alone. A long-haired, bearded man was casually crouching on the water as though it were as solid as a rock, idly creating ripples in the glassy surface. He had been there all along, she assumed, and she'd missed him. But now, as if roused from some reverie by her gaze, he looked up.

His face was scrawny-his bones sharp, his black eyes sharper-but the smile he offered was so sweetly tentative, as though he was a little embarrassed to have been caught unawares, that she was instantly charmed. He rose, the water dancing around his feet, and ambled over to her. His watersoaked robes were in tatters, and she could see that his torso was covered with small, pale scars, as though he'd been wrestling in broken glass.

She sympathized with his condition. She too was scarred, inside and out; she too had been stripped of all she'd worn in the world: her profession, her self esteem, her certainty.

"Do we know each other?" he said to her as he approached. His voice lacked music, but she liked the sound of it nevertheless.

"No," she said, suddenly tongue-tied. "I don't believe so.

"Somebody spoke of you to me, I'm certain. was it Fletcher perhaps?"

"You know Fletcher?"

"Then it was," the man said, smiling again. "You're the one who martyred him."

"I hadn't thought of it that way-but yes, I guess that was me."

"You see)' he said. He went down on his haunches beside her, while the water buoyed her up. "You wanted connections, and they're there to be found. But you have to look in the terrible places, Testa. The places where death comes to take love away, where we lose each other and lose ourselves; that's where the connections begin. It takes a brave soul to look there and not despair."

"I've tried to be brave," she said.

"I know," he said softly. "I know."

"But I wasn't brave enough, is that what you're saying? The thing is, I didn't ask to be part of this. I wasn't ready for it. I was just going to write movies, you know, and get rich and smug. I guess that sounds pathetic to you."

"Why?",

"Well, I don't suppose you get to see a lot of movies."

"You'd be surprised," the man said with a little smile. "Anyway, it's the stories that matter, however they're told."

She thought of the child at the crossroads We saw your face, and we said: She knows about the story tree.

"What's the big deal about stofies?" she said.

"You love them," he said, his gaze leaving her face and slipping down to the water. The glowing forms she'd seen rising from below were within a few fathoms of the surface now. The water was beginning to simmer with their presence. "You do, don't you?" he said.

"I suppose I do," she said. "That's what the connections are, Testa."

"Stories?" "Stories. And every life, however short, however meaningless it seems, is a leaf-2'

"A leaf."

"Yes, a leaf." He looked up at her again, and waited, unspeaking, until she grasped the sense of what he was saying. "On the story tree," she said. -He smiled. "Lives are leaves on the story tree."

"Simple, isn't it?" he said. The bubbles were breaking all around them now, and the surface was no longer glacial enough to bear him up. He started to sink into the water; slowly, slowly. "I'm afraid I have to go," he said. "The 'shu have come for me. Why do you took so unhappy?"

"Because it's too late," she said. "Why did I have to wait until now to know what I was supposed to do?"

"You didn't need to know. You were doing it."

"No I wasn't," she said, distressed now. "I never got to tell a story I gave a damn about."

"Oh but you did," he said. He was almost gone from sight now.

"What story was that?" she begged him, determined to get an answer before he disappeared. "What?"

"Your own," he told her, slipping from sight. "Your own."

Then he was gone.

She stared down into the bubbling water, and saw that the creatures he'd called the 'shu-which resembled cuttlefish as far as she could see, and were congregated below her in their many millions-were describing a vast spiral around the sinking man, as though drawing him down into their midst. The vortex made no claim on her spirit stuff, however. She felt a pang of loss, watching him disappear into the bfiglit depths. He had seemed wise, and she had wanted to speak to him longer. As it was, she had something to take back with her: the observation that the story she'd told was her own. It meant little to her fight now, but perhaps if she succeeded in carrying it into the waking world it would comfort her, And now, as the spiral of 'shu faded into the depths, there was news from that world. A telephone ringing, and then the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

"Tesla?"

She opened her eyes. Harry had his head around the door. "It's Gfillo," he said. "He needs to talk to you. He's called once already." She vaguely remembered hearing a telephone ring as she'd wandered the snowy shore. "Sounds like he's in bad shape."

She got up and went downstairs. There was a stub of pencil beside the telephone. Before she spoke to Grillo she wrote I told my own story on the telephone directory, in case the conversation drove the dream from her head. Then she picked up the receiver.

Just as Harry had said, Grillo sounded to be in bad shape; terrible shape, in fact. Like her, like D'Amour, like the water-walker in her dream. It was as though everybody around her was winding down.

"I'm at a place called the Sturgis Motel," he explained, with Howie, Jo-Beth, and their kid Amy."

"Where?"

"A few miles outside Everville."

"What the hell are you doing there?" "We had no choice. We had to move quickly, and I knew we were going to need serious help."

"to do what?" "Tommy-Ray's coming after Jo-Beth."

" Tommy-Ray?

Grillo began to relate to her the events of the last few days. She gave all but five percent of her attention to the account, the remaining portion dedicated to holding onto the dream from which she'd awaken. But the images of terror and night that spilled from Grillo steadily supplanted her memories of the becalmed sea, and of the man who had known Fletcher.

"I need your help, Tes-" Grillo was saying. She clung (o the memory of the water-walker's face for a few desperate moments. "Tes, are you there?" Then she had no choice but to let it go.

"Yeah, I'm here-"

"I said I need some help."

"You don't sound so good, Nathan. Did you get hurt?"

"It's a long story. Look, give me your address. We'll drive into town." She flashed on the swathe Tommy-Ray the DeathBoy-along with his army of phantoms-had cut through Palomo Grove. Hadn't he brought down his own house in his enthusiasm for destruction, with his mother inside it? If he was unleashed in Everville, especially at a time of mass exodus (which couldn't be far off) the death toll would be appalling.

"Stay where you are," she said. "I'll come to you.

Grillo didn't argue. He was clearly too desperate to have her with him as soon as possible. He gave her the motel's whereabouts and urged her to be quick. That was that.

Harry was in the kitchen, burning toast. She told him all that Grillo had said. He listened without comment, until she got to the part about her leaving.

"So Everville's my baby now?" he said. "It looks that way."

She wanted to tell him that she'd dreamed her final dream, and that he should not expect her to return, but that sounded hopelessly melodramatic. What she needed was something pithier; a throwaway line that would seem blasd and wise when she was gone. But nothing came to mind. As it was, Harry had a farewell of his own to offer.

"I'm thinking I might go back up the mountain after dark," he said. "If the lad's coming through I may as well get a ringside view. Which means

... we probably won't be seeing each other again."

"No. I suppose not."

"We've had quite a time of it, haven't we? I mean, our lives, they've been-"

"Weird."

"Extraordinary," Harry said. She shrugged. It was true, of course.

"I'm sure we've both wished it could have been different. But I guess somewhere deep down we must have wanted it this way."

"I guess."

The exchange faltered there. Tesia looked up and saw that Harry was staring straight at her, his lips pinched together as though to keep from weeping.

"Enjoy the sights," she said. "I will," he replied.

"You take care."

She broke the look between them, went to pick up her jacket, and headed outside. As she reached the front door she almost turned round and went back to embrace him, but she resisted. to do so would only extend the agony. Better be gone, now, and off on the open road.

The parade-watching crowds had long since vacated Main Street, but there were still plenty of people out and about, shopping for souvenirs, or looking for somewhere to eat. The evening was balmy, the sky still cloudless; the party atmo sphere a little subdued by the fiasco of the afternoon but not vanquished altogether.

An earlier Tesla might have brought her Harley to a screeching halt in the middle of Main Street and yelled herself hoarse trying to get people to leave before the lad came. But she knew better than to waste her breath. They'd shrug, laugh, and turn their backs on her, and in truth she could scarcely blame them. She'd caught her reflection in the bathroom mirror just before she'd left Phoebe's house. The lean woman she'd admired a few days before-the woman marked by he' journey, the woman proud of her scars-was now a bag of bones and despair.

Besides, what use would such warnings be, even if they were attended to? If the lad was indeed all it had been promised to be, then there was no escape from it. Perhaps these people, celebrating in the shadow of death and snuffed out before they even knew what force had snuffed them, would he thought the lucky ones in time. Gone too quickly to fear or hope. Worst of all, hope.

Though it was a detour to return to the crossroads, she did so, just to see what clues, if any, remained to the mysteries of the afternoon. Though the streets had been given back to traffic, there were very few cars passing in either direction. There was foot traffic however, and plenty of it. People lingering outside the diner, and in front of the crossroads. A few even had their cameras out to immortalize the spot. Of the people Tesia had last seen on their knees here, praying to the visions they were witnessing, there was now no sign. They'd gone home, or been taken.

As she was putting her helmet back on, she heard a shout from the opposite side of the street, and turned to see her nemesis from Kitty's Diner, Bosley the Righteous, striding towards her.

"What did you do?" he yelled, his face blotchy with rage.

"About what?" she said.

"You had a hand in this abomination," he said. "I saw you, right in the middle of it." He halted a couple of yards from her, as though fearful she might infect him with her godlessness. "I know what you're up to."

"You want to explain it to me?" she snapped. "And don't give me some shit about the Devil's work, Bosley, because you don't believe that any more than I do. Not really."

He flinched. And she saw such fear in him, such a profundity of dread that the rage went out of her, drained away from her all at once. "You know what?" she said. "I think I met Jesus this afternoon." Bosley looked at her warily. "At least, he was walking on water, and he had a lot of scars, so... it could have been him, right?" Still Bosley said nothing. "I'm sorry, we didn't get round to talking about you, but if we had I'd have said He should drop by your place sometime. Have a piece of pie."

"You're crazy-" Bosley said.

"You and me both," Tesla said. "Take care of yourself, Bosley." And with that she put on her helmet and drove off.

Once she was outside the town limits she gunned the bike, certain that the chief of police and his awestruck deputies would not be watching out for speed freaks tonight. She was right. With an empty road and no law keepers to flag her down she roared on her way as though to meet with Grillo, though the embrace that awaited her at the end of this ride was colder and more permanent than human arms could ever offer.

For Larry Glodoski, it was not pills that were keeping the memories hazy, it was beer, and plenty of it. He had been propped up at Hamrick's Bar for two and a half hours now, and he was finally getting to feel a little better. It was not what he'd seen at the crossroads he was dulling with alcohol, it was the pain of their departure. The women on the stairs had given him a glimpse of bliss; he'd thought his heart would crack with loss when they faded and disappeared.

"You want another of those?" Will Hamrick asked him.

There would be other years, Dorothy Bullard thought as she sat in a mildly sedated haze beside her living room window. Other festivals, other parades, other chances for things to be perfect. She had a mercifully confused memory of what had happened at the crossroads, but she'd been assured by a number of kind folks that it had not been her fault; no, not at all. She'd been under a lot of pressure, and she'd done a fine job, a wonderful job, and next year, oh next year"It'll be perfect."

"What did you say, dear?" Maisie had just come in with some fluffy scrambled eggs and a little bran muffin. "Next year, everything'll be perfect, you'll see."

"Let's not even think about next year," Maisie said. "Let's just take things as they come, shall we?"

"Keep 'em coming.

"You want to talk about it?"

Larry shook his head. "None of it makes much sense," he said.

Will passed another bottle down the bar. "I had a guy in here day before yesterday, really spooked me," he said.

"Like how?"

"It was just after Morton Cobb died. He was saying how it was better that he'd been killed that way, 'cause it was a better story."

"A better story?"

"Yeah. An' I was a-what the fuck did he call me?-a disseminator, I think that was it, yeah, a disseminator, and people liked to hear really brutal stories... " He lost his way in the midst of his recollections, and threw up his hands. "I don't know, he just seemed like a sick sonofabitch. He had this voice-it was kinda like a hypnotist or something."

The notion rang a bell. "What did he look like?" Larry asked.

"'Bout sixty, maybe. Had a heard."

"Broad guy? Wearing black?"

"That's him," Will said. "You know him?"

"He was there this afternoon," Larry said, quickly. "I think he was the one who fucked everything up."

"Somebody should talk to Jed about him."

"Jed@' Larry growled, "he's no damn good to anyone." He chugged on his beer. "I'm going to talk to some of the band. they were really pissed with what happened this afternoon."

"Be careful, Larry," Will advised. "You don't want Jed on your back for taking the law into your own hands."

Larry leaned over the bar until he was almost nose to nose with Will. "I don't give a shit," he slurred. "Something's going' on in this city, Hamrick, and Jed's not got a handle on it."

"And you have?"

Larry dug in his pocket and tossed three tens over the counter. "I will have soon enough," he said, pushing off from the bar and heading for the door. "I'll give you a call, tell you when we're ready for action."

Elsewhere in town, a fair appearance of normality had been reestablished. In the town hall the first partners for the Waltz-a-thon were already wanning up. At the library annex, which had only been completed two months ago, Jerry Totland, a local author who'd made a nice reputation for himself penning mysteries set in Portland, was reading from his newest opus. In the little Italian restaurant on Blasemont Street there was a line of twenty customers waiting to taste the glories of Neapolitan cuisine.

There were mutterings, of course; rumors and gossip about what had brought the parade to a halt that afternoon, but by and large they simply added a little piquancy to the evening's exchanges. There was little genuine unease, more a mild amusement, especially among the visitors, that the event had gone so hopelessly awry. It would be a story to dine out on, wouldn't it, when they got back home? How Everville had overstepped itself and fallen flat on its ambitious face?

After the horrors of the afternoon, Erwin had not known what to do with himself. He had lost, in one fell swoop, all the friends he'd had, as surely as if they'd been massacred at the dinner table.

He had no real comprehension of what had happened at the crossroads, nor did he really want to know. Death had shown him some strange sights in the last few days, and he'd quickly learned to take them in his stride, but this was beyond him. He wandered the streets like a lost dog for a couple of hours, looking for some place to sit and listen to a conversation that did not remind him of his fear. But everywhere he looked for solace, he found people talking in whispers about the things that discomfited him.

Few of these exchanges were overtly concerned with the events of the afternoon, but all of them had been inspired by it, he was certain. Why else were people confessing their sins to their loved ones tonight, asking for forgiveness or understanding? they had smelled their mortality today, and it had made them maudlin. He passed from one place to another, looking for solace and, finding none, he returned at dusk to only place he was certain to get some peace and quiet: cemetery.

There he wandered among the tombs as the sun set, idly perusing the epitaphs, and turning over events that had brought him to this sorry state. What had he done to deserve it? Wanted a little fame for himself? Since when had that been a capital crime? Dug too deep into secrets that should have been left to lie? That was no sin, either; not that he knew of. He'd simply had a patch of bad luck.

He took a seat, at last, on a tombstone close to the tree where he'd first met Nordhoff and the rest. His gaze fell on the stone in front of him, and he read aloud to himself the inscription there.

What Thomas doubted, I believe: Thatfrom Death's hand there is reprieve; That I, laid here, will one day rise, And smell the wind and meet the skies. My hope is tender though, and must Be keptfrom harm by those that dust Has blinded. So I pray: deliver me from Thefaithless kin of Doubting Tom.

The simplicity and the vulnerability of the words moved him deeply. As he reached the end of the poem his voice thickened and tears came, copious tears, pouring down.

He buried his face in his hands and rocked back and forth, unable to stop weeping. What was the use of living in hope of life after death if all it amounted to was this absurd, empty round? It was unendurable!

"Is the poem so bad?" said a voice somewhere above him.

He looked over his shoulder. The tree was in its last lushness before autumn, its branches thick with leaves, but he caught a glimpse of somebody moving up there.

"Show yourself," he said.

"I prefer not to," came the reply. "I learned a long time ago that there's safety in trees."

"Don't kid yourself," Erwin said.

"What's the problem?"

"I want to be back in the world."

"Oh that," said the man in the tree. "It cannot he had, so don't break your heart wanting it." There was a shaking of the canopy, as the man adjusted his position. "They've gone, haven't they?" he said. "Who?"

"The fools who used to gather here. Nordhoff and Dolan"-he practically spat the word Dolan out-"and the rest. I came down the mountain to finish my business with them, but I don't see them and I don't smell them-"

"No?"

"No. All I see is you. Where did they go?"

"It's difficult to explain," Erwin said. "Do your best."

He did. Described all that he'd seen and felt at the crossto ads, though his lawyerly vocabulary was barely adequate. It was the unburdening he'd sought, and it felt good.

"So they were whisked away, huh?"

"That's what it looked like," Erwin said. "It was bound to happen," the occupant of the tree said. "There was a bloody business started here, and it had to be finished sooner or later."

"I know what you're talking about," Erwin said. "I read a confession-"

"Whose?"

"His name was McPherson."

The man loosed a guttural growl that made Erwin shudder. "Don't speak that name!" he said.

"Why not?"

"Just don't!" the man roared. "Anyway, it's not his atroc ities I was referring to. There was another slaughter up on Harmon's Heights, before it ever had a name. And I've waited a long time to see its consequences."

"Who are you?" Erwin said. "Why are you hiding up there?"

"I think you've seen enough strangeness for one day," the man replied.

"Without laying eyes on me."

"I can deal with it," Erwin replied. "Show yourself."

There was silence from the tree for a few moments. Then the man said,

"As you wish," and the foliage sighed as he clambered down into view. He wasn't so strange. Scarred, certainly, and somewhat bestial, but he resembled a man.

"There," he said, when he reached the bottom of the e. "Now you see me."

"I'm-glad to know you," Erwin said. "I was afraid I was going to be alone."

"What's your name?"

"Erwin Toothaker. And yours?"

The wounded beast inclined his head. "I'm pleased to meet you," he said. "My name is Coker Ammiano."