Everville

PART SIX. THE GRAND DESIGN

It took Musnakaff an hour or more to prepare his mistress for the journey out into the chilly streets of Liverpool, during which time Phoebe was given permission to wander the house. It was a melancholy trek. The rooms were for the most part beautifully appointed, the beds vast and inviting, the bathrooms positively decadent, but there was dust on every surface and gull-shit on every window; a sense everywhere of the best times having passed by. There was no sign of the individuals who had lived in this house; who had admired the view from its windows or laid their heads on its pillows. Had they dreamed? Phoebe wondered. And if so, of what? Of the world that she'd come from? It amused her at first, thinking that the people who'd lived in these fine rooms might have yearned for the Cosm the way she'd yearned for some unreachable dream-place. But the more she pondered it, the more melancholy it seemed, that people on both sides of the divide lived in discontent, wishing for the other's lot. If she survived this journey, she thought, she would return to Everville determined to live every moment as it came, and not waste time pining for some sweet faraway.

When she emerged from one of the bedrooms she looked into a mirror in the hallway, and told herself aloud, "Enjoy it while you can. Every minute of it."

"What did you say?" Musnakaff asked her, stepping from a doorway along the passage.

She was embarrassed to have been caught this way.

"How long have you been watching me?" she wanted to know.

"Only a moment or two," he replied. "You make a fine sight, Phoebe Cobb. There's music in you."

"I'm tone-deaf," she told him, a little sharply.

"There's music and music," Musnakaff replied. "Your spirit sings even if your throat doesn't. I hear drums when I look at your breasts, and a choir when I think of you naked." She gave him the forbidding stare that had terrorized a thousand tardy patients, but it didn't work. He simply grinned at her, his decorated cheeks twinkling. "Don't he offended," he said. "This house had always been a place where people talk plainly about such matters.

"Then I'll talk plainly too," Phoebe said. "I don't appreciate you ogling me when my back's turned, and drums or no drums I'll thank you not to look at my breasts."

"Do you not like your breasts?"

"That's between me and my breasts," Phoebe said, realizing as the words came out how absurd they sounded.

Musnakaff erupted with laughter, and try as she might Phoebe could not help but let go a tiny smile herself, the sight of which only made Musnakaff gush further.

"I'll say it again," Musnakaff told her. "This house has seen many fine women, but you are among the finest, the very finest."

It was so nicely said, she could not help but be flattered. "Well....

she said. "Thank you."

"The pleasure's mine," Musnakaff said. "Now, if you're ready, the Mistress's bearers have arrived. I believe it's time we all went down to the water."

It took less than an hour of traveling on the road to b'Kether Sabbat for Joe to lose most of his sympathy for the refugees flooding in the opposite direction. He witnessed countless acts of casual cruelty in that time. Children more heavily burdened than their parents, whipped along', animals abused and beaten into a frenzy; rich men and women, hoisted up onto the backs of imperi ous cousins to the camel, cutting a bloody swathe through those careless enough to stumble into their path. In short, all that he might have expected to see in the Cosm.

When these sorry spectacles became too much, however, he simply set his sights on the city itself, and his weary limbs found fresh strength. The people who had lived in b'Kether Sabbat were as petty and barbarous as die citizens of any terrestrial city, but the edifice they were vacating was without parallel.

As for the wave of the lad, it seethed and divided, but did not advance. It simply hovered over the city like a vast' beast, mesmerized by something in its shadow. He only hoped that he could reach the city, and walk its streets and climb its blazing towers before the lad's interest staled, and it delivered the coup de grfice.

As he came within a quarter mile of the nearest ladders-the city looming like an inverted mountain before him-he heard a shrill shout above the din and an ashen creature dug its way through the throng to block his way.

"Affique!" he said. "Afrique! You're alive!" The creature laid his webbed hands upon Joe's chest. "You don't know me, do you?"

"No. Should I?"

"I was on the ship with you," the man said, and now Joe recognized him. He was one of the slaves Noah had seconded to crew The Fanacapan: a broad, burly fellow with sluggish, froglike features. His manner, now that he was once again his own man, belied his appearance. He had a quick, lively quality about him. "My name's Wexel Fee, Afrique," he said, covered in smiles. "And I am very glad to see you. Very, very glad." "I don't know why," Joe said. "You were treated like shit." "I heard what you said to Noah Su@a Sunimamentis. You tried to do something for us. It's not your fault you failed." I'll in afraid it is," Joe said guiltily. "Where are the others?" "Dead." "All of them?"

"All."

"I'm sorry." "Don't be. they weren't friends of mine."

"Why did you not die and they did? Noah said when he was done with you-"

"I know what he said. I heard that too. I have very sharp ears. I also have a strong will. I was not ready to die."

"So you heard but you couldn't act for yourself9"

"Exactly so. I'd lost my will to his suit." "So you were hurting."

"Oh yes. I was hurting." Fee lifted his right hand into view. Two of his six fingers were reduced to gummy stumps. "And I would have gladly killed the man, when I woke."

"Why didn't you?" "He is mighty, Afrique, now he's back in b'Kether Sabbat. While I am very far from home." He looked past Joe now, towards the sea.

"There are no ships, Wexel."

"What about The Fanacapan?"

"I saw it sink." He took the news philosophically. "Ah. So perhaps I did not outlive the others so that I could go home." He made the first smile Joe had seen on this woeful road. "Perhaps I tried to meet you again, Afrique."

"My name's Joe."

"I heard my enemy call you by that name," Fee replied. "Therefore I cannot use it. This is the etiquette in my country. So I will call you Afrique." Joe didn't much like the dubbing, but this was no time to offend the man. "And I will come with you, back to b'Kether Sabbat. Yes?"

"I'd certainly like your company," Joe said. "But why would you want to come?"

"Because there are no ships. Because I found you in a crowd of ten thousand souls. And because you may be able to do what I could not."

"Kill Noah."

"From your lips, Afrique. From your lips." caravan that descended the steep hill from the house on Canning Street was nine souls strong. Phoebe and Musnakaff, both on foot, Maeve O'Connell, traveling in an elaborate sedan chair, home by four sizable men, plus an individual leading the way and one tagging along behind, both of them very conspicu ously armed. When Phoebe remarked upon this Musnakaff simply said, "these are dangerous days. Who knows what's loose?" which was not the most reassuring of replies.

"Come walk alongside me," Maeve said as they went. "It's time you kept your side of the bargain. Tell me about the Cosm. No, forget the Cosm. Just tell me about my city." "First," said Phoebe, "I've got a question."

"What is it?"

"Why did you dream this city instead of another Everville?"

"I was a child in Liverpool, and full of hope. I remember it fondly. I didn't remember Everville the same way."

"But you still want to know what's happened to it?" Phoebe pointed out.

"So I do," Maeve replied. "Now tell."

Without knowing what aspects of Evervillian life would most interest the woman, Phoebe began a scattershot account of life at home. The Festival, the problems with the post office, the library annex, Jed Gilholly, the restaurants on Main Street, Kitty's Diner, the Old Schoolhouse and the collection it contained, the problems with the sewage system "Wait, wait," Maeve said. "Go back a little. You spoke of a collection."

"Yes-"

"It's about the history of Everville, you say?"

"That's right." "And you're familiar with it?"

"I wouldn't say-"

"Yet you didn't know who I was," Maeve said, her face more pinched than ever. "I find that strange." Phoebe kept her silence. "Tell me, what do they say about the way Everville was founded?"

"I don't exactly remember," Phoebe replied.

Suddenly, the virago started to yell. "Stop! Everybody stop!" The little procession came to a ragged halt. Maeve leaned out of her chair and beckoned Phoebe closer.

"Now listen, woman," Maeve said. "I thought we had a bargain."

'We do."

"So why aren't you telling me the truth? Hub?" "I... don't want to hurt your feelings," Phoebe said.

"Mary, mother of God, I've sufferings to my name the likes of which-" She stopped, and started to pull at the collar of her robe. Musnakaff started to say something about not catching cold, but she gave him such a venomous look he was instantly silenced. "Look at this," she said to Phoebe, exposing her neck. There was a grievous scar running all the way around her neck. "You know what that is?"

""It looks like-well it looks like somebody tried to hang you.

"they tried and they succeeded. Left me swinging from a tree, along with my child and my husband."

Phoebe was appalled. "Why?" she said.

"Because they hated us and wanted to be rid of us," Maeve said.

"Musnakaff? Cover me up!" He instantly set to doing so, while Maeve continued her story. "I had a very strange, sour child," she said, "who loved nothing in all the world. Certainly not me. Nor his father. And over the years people came to hate him in return. As soon as they had reason to lynch him, they took it, and took my poor husband too. Coker wasn't of the Cosm, you see. He'd come there for my sake, and he learned to be more human than human, but they still sniffed something in him they didn't like. As for me-" She turned her head from Phoebe and peered down the hill.

"As for you?" Phoebe said.

"I was what they wanted to forget. I was there at the beginning-no, that's not right-I was the beginning. I was Everville, sure as if it had been built of my bones. And it didn't suit the Brawleys and the Gilhollys and the Hendersons and all the other fine upstanding families to remember that."

"So they murdered you for it?"

"they turned a blind eye to a lynching," Maeve said. "That's murder, I'd say."

"Why aren't you dead?"

"Because the bough broke. Simple as that. My sweet, loving Coker was not so lucky. His bough was strong, and by the time I came out of my faint he was cold."

"That's horrible."

"I never felt love for any creature the way I felt love for him," Maeve said. As she spoke Phoebe felt a mild tremor in the ground.

Musnakaff apparently felt it too. He turned to his mistress with a look of alan-n. "Maybe it would be best not to speak of this," he said. "Not out in the open."

"Oh pish!" Maeve said to him. "He wouldn't dare touch me. Not for telling what he knows is the truth."

The exchange puzzled Phoebe, but she didn't let it distract her from her questions.

"What about your son?" Phoebe said. "What happened to him?"

"His body was taken by beasts. He always had a stench to him. I daresay he made a better meal than Coker or me." She pondered for a moment.

"This is a terrible thing to say about your own flesh and blood, but the fact is, my son was not long for this world one way or another."

"was he sick?" "In his head, yes. And in his heart. Something in him had curdled when he was a child, and I thought for the longest time he was a cretin. I gave up trying to teach him anything. But there was malice in him, I think: terrible malice. And he was best dead." She gave Phoebe a sorrowful look. "Do you have children?" she said.

"No." "Count yourself lucky," Maeve replied.

Then, abruptly shaking off her melancholy tone, she waved Phoebe away, shouting, "Rouse yourselves!" to her bearers, and the convoy went on its way, down the steep hill.

The state of the dream-sea had changed considerably in the hours in which Phoebe had been a guest in Maeve's house. The ships in the harbor no longer lay peaceably at anchor, but pitched and bucked, tearing at their moorings like panicked thoroughbreds. The beacons that had been burning at the harbor entrance had been extinguished by the fury of the waves, which mounted steadily as the party descended. "I begin to think I'll not be able to keep my end of the bargain," Maeve said to Phoebe once they were on flat ground.

"Why not?"

"Use your eyes," Maeve replied, pointing down towards the beach, where the breakers were ten or twelve feet high. "I don't think I'll be speaking to the 'shu down there."

"Who are the 'shu?"

"Tell her," Maeve instructed Musnakaff. "And you, set e down." Once again, the convoy came to a halt. "Help me out of this contraption," Maeve demanded. The bearers sprang to do just that.

"Do you need help?" Musnakaff asked her.

"If I do I'll ask for it," Maeve replied. "Get on with educating the woman. Though Lord knows it's a little late."

"Tell me who the 'shu are," Phoebe said to Musnakaff.

"Not who, what," Musnakaff replied, his gaze drifting off towards his mistress. "What is she doing?"

"We're having a conversation here," Phoebe snapped. "She's going to do herself some harm."

"I'm going to be doing some harm of my own if you don't finish what you were saying. The 'shu-"

"Are spifit-pilots. Pieces of the Creator. Or not. There. Satisfied?" He made to go to his mistress's side, but Phoebe caught hold of him.

"No," she said. "I'm not satisfied."

"Unhand me," he said sniffily. "I will not."

"I'm warning you," he said, jabbing a beringed finger at her. "I've got more important business than-" A puzzled look crossed his face. "Did youfeel that?"

"The tremor, you mean? Yeah, there was one a few minutes ago. Some kind of earthquakes'

"I wish it were," Musnakaff said. He stared at the ground between them. Another tremor came; this the strongest so far.

"What is it then?" Phoebe said, her irritation with Musnakaff forgotten.

She got no answer. The man just turned his back on her and hurried away to the spot on the cobbled stones where Maeve was standing. She could not do so without help. Two of her bearers were supporting her, and a third waiting behind in case she should topple. "We must move on," Musnakaff called to her.

"Do you know what happened on this spot?" she said to him.

"Lady-"

"Do you?" "No."

"This is where I was standing when he first came to find me." She smiled fondly. "I told him, right at the beginning, I said to him: There'll never be anyone to replace my Coker, because Coker was the love of my life@'

At this, the ground shook more vehemently than ever.

"Hush yourself," Musnakaff said.

"What?" said Mistress O'Connell. "Hushing me? I should beat you for that." She raised her stick, and swung at Musnakaff. The blow fell short of its mark, and Maeve lost her balance. Her bearers might have saved her from failing, but she was in a fine fury, and kept flailing even as she toppled. The stick struck the bearer to her right, and he went down, bloodynosed. The man who had been watching over her from behind stepped in to catch hold of her, but as he did so she took another stumbling step towards Musnakaff, swinging again. This time she connected, the blow so hard her stick broke. Then she went down, carrying the bearer to her left-who had not relinquished big hold on her for an instant@own with her.

As she struck the ground, her fall cushioned by the sheer profusion of her shirts and coats, the ground shuddered yet again. But this time, the tremor did not die away. It continued to escalate, turning over the unattended sedan, and sending the guard who had been leading the procession scurrying back up the hill.

"Damn you, woman!" Musnakaff hollered to Maeve as he went to help pick her up. "Now look what you've done."

"What's happening?" Phoebe yelled.

"It's him!" Musnakaff said. "He heard her! I knew he would."

"King Texas?"

Before Musnakaff could reply the street shook from end to end, and this time the ground cracked open. These were not fissures, like those Phoebe had skipped on Hartnon's Heights. There was nothing irregular about them; nothing arbitrary. they were elegantly shaped, carving arabesques in the paving, and everywhere joining up, so that within moments the entire street looked like an immense jigsaw puzzle.

"Everybody stay where they are," Musnakaff said, his voice trembling.

"Don't anybody move." Phoebe did as she was instructed. "Tell him you're sorry," Musnakaff yelled to...aeve. "Quickly!"

With the help of her two conscious bearers the woman had got to her knees. "I've got nothing to apologize for," Maeve said.

"God, you are a stubborn woman!" Musnakaff roared, and raised his arm as if to strike her.

"Don't," Phoebe yelled at him. She'd lost most of her patience with Maeve in the last half-hour, but the sight of her about to be struck brought back painful memories.

She'd no sooner spoken than the divided ground shook afresh, and pieces of the jigsaw fell away, leaving holes three, four, even five feet across in a dozen places. The chill out of them made the icy air seem balmy.

"I told you," Musnakaff said, his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. Phoebe's eyes darted from one hole to the next, wondering which one the lovelorn King Texas was going to emerge from. "We should never... never

... have come," Maeve was murmuring. "You talked me into it, woman!"

She jabbed her finger in Phoebe's direction. "You're in cahoots with him, aren't you?" She started to struggle to her feet, with the air of her bearers. "Admit it," she said, the words flying from her mouth along with a spray of spittle. "Go on, admit it."

"You're crazy," Phoebe said, "You're all crazy!"

"Now there's a woman knows what she's talk-in' about, " said a voice from the earth, and from every one of the holes rose a column of writhing dirt, which within seconds had climbed up to twice human height.

The sight was more remarkable than intimidating. Gasping with astonishment, Phoebe turned around to see that on every side the tips of the columns were already sprouting branches like spokes, which spread and knotted together overhead.

"Musnakaff?" Phoebe said. "What's happening?"

It was Maeve who replied. "He's making shade for himself," he said, plainly unimpressed by the display. "He doesn't like the light, poor thing. He's afraid it's going to make him wither away."

"Look who's talkin'!" said the voice out of the ground. "You wrote the book on witherin', love of my wretched life."

"Am I supposed to be flattered?" Maeve said.

"No the voice from the ground replied. "You're Supposed to remember that I always tell you the truth, even when it stings a little. And, sweetness, you look old. No, strike that. You look forlorn. Forsaken. Empty."

"That's rich, coming from a hole in the ground!" Maeve snapped.

There was laughter now, out of the earth; soft, ripe laughter.

"Are you going to show yourself," Maeve said, "or are you too ugly these days?"

"I'm whatever you want me to be, my little pussy-rose."

"Don't be crude, for once."

"I'll be a monk for you. I'll never touch myself. I'll-"

"Oh God, how you talk!" Maeve said. "Are you going to show yourself or not?"

There was a short silence. Then the voice simply said "Here," and up out of one of the holes between Maeve and Phoebe came a stream of muddy matter that began to congeal@ven before it had finished rising-into a vaguely human form. It had its back to Phoebe, so she had no sense of its physiognomy, but to judge by the dorsal view it was an unfinished thing: a man of dust and raw rock.

"Satisfied?" it drawled.

"I think it's too late for that," Maeve replied.

"Oh no, baby, that's not true. It's not true at all." He raised his arm (his hand was the size of a snow shovel) as if to touch the old lady. But he refrained from contact, his lumpen fingers hovering an inch from her cheek. "Give up your flesh," he said. "And come and be rock with me. We'll melt together, baby. We'll let people live on our backs and we'll just be down there, warm and cosy." Phoebe studied Maeve's face through this strange seduction and knew she'd heard (or read) these words countless times. "You'll never have another wrinkle," King Texas went on. "You'll never have your bowels seize up. You'll never ache. You'll never wither. You'll never die." He ran out of sweet talking there, and seeing that his words were having no effect, turned to Phoebe. "Now I ask you," he said (as she'd suspected, his face was barely sketched in clay), "does that Sound so damn bad?" His breath was cold and smelled of the underworld. Caves and pure water; things growing in darkness. It was not unpleasant. "Well does it?" he said.

Phoebe shook her head. "No," she replied. "It sounds ne to me."

"There!" said Texas, glaring back over his shoulder at Maeve but almost instantly returning his gaze to Phoebe. "She understands me. "

"Then take her. Write your damn letters to her. I want no part of you."

Phoebe saw a wounded look cross King Texas's unfinished face. "You won't get another chance," he said to Maeve, still studying Phoebe as he spoke. "Not after this. The lad's going' to destroy your city and you'll go with it."

"Don't be so sure," Maeve replied.

'Oh, wait now... " King Texas said, "can you be thinking of going back into business?" He swung his huge head round to peer at Maeve.

"Why not?" she said.

"Because the lad have no feelings. Nor do they have much between the legs."

"So you've seen them, have you?"

"Dreamed 'em," King Texas said. "Dreamed 'em over and over."

"Well go back to your dreams," Maeve said. "And leave me to get on with what's left of my life. You've got nothing I need."

"Oh that hurts," King Texas said. "If I had veins I'd bleed."

"It's not just veins you're missing!" Maeve replied.

The King's gigantic form shuddered, and he growled out a warning: "Be careful," he said.

But the words went unheeded. "You're old and womanly-2'Maeve said.

"Womanly?" Now the street rocked again. Phoebe heard Musnakaff muttering to himself, and realized it was a prayer she knew: "Mary, mother of God...

"I'm a lot of things," King Texas said. "And some of 'em I'm none too proud of. But wontanly-2' His head had started to sprout snaky shapes as thick as fingers. Hundreds of them, 1 running from his scalp in writhing streams. "Does this look womanly to you?" he demanded to know. His entire body was transforming, Phoebe saw, his anatomy bulging and rippling. As it did so he stepped out of the hole from which he'd risen onto solid ground, detaching himself from the flow of rock. He stood before Maeve like a shaggy titan, with a growl in his

11 throat. "I could take you all down with me," he said, reaching to seize the cobbled street. the way somebody might catch hold of a rug. "Let you see what it's like in my beautiful darkness." He tugged on the street, just a little. Musnakaff was thrown off his feet, and instantly slid towards one of the holes.

"Please God no!" he shrieked. "Mistress! Help me!"

"Just stop it!" Maeve said, as though speaking to a fractious child. Much to Phoebe's surprise, the tone worked. King Texas let go of the ground, leaving Musnakaff sobbing. with relief. "Why do we always end up arguing?" Texas said, his tone suddenly placatory. "We should be spending this time reminiscing."

"I've got nothing to reminisce about," Maeve said.

"Not true, not true. We had fine times, you and me. I built you a highway. I built you a harbor." Maeve looked up at him unmoved. "What are you thinking of?" King Texas said, leaning a little closer to her.

"Tell me, blossom."

Maeve shrugged. "Nothing," she said.

"Then let me think for us both. Let me love for us both. What I feel for you is more than any man ever felt for any woman in the history of love. And without it-"

"Don't do this," Maeve whined.

"Without it, I am in grief, and you-"

"Why won't you listen?" "You are forgotten."

At this, Maeve bristled. "Forgotten?" she said.

"Yes. Forgotten," Texas replied. "This city will be gone in a few hours. Our harbor, your fine buildings... " He waved his huge hands in the air, to evoke their passing. "The lad will wipe it all away. And as for Everville-"

"I don't want to talk about that."

"Is it too painful? I don't blame you. You were there at the beginning, and now they've forgotten you."

"Stop saying that! " Maeve raged. "Jesus and Mary, will you never learn? I am not going to be bullied or shamed or tempted or seduced into ever loving you again! You can build me a thousand harbors! You can write me a love letter every minute of every day till the end of the world and I WILL NOT LOVE YOU!" With this, she turned to the closest of her bearers. "What's your name?" she said.

"Noos Cataglia."

"Your back, Noos."

"I beg your-?"

"Turn around. I want to climb on your back." "Oh-yes. Of course." The man duly presented his back to Maeve, who with his help began to scramble up onto it. "What are you doing?" King Texas said quietly.

"I'm going to prove you wrong," Maeve said, grabbing hold of her mount's collar. "I'm going back to Everville."

For the first time in several minutes, Phoebe piped up. "You can't," she protested.

"You tell her," King Texas said. "She won't listen to me."

"You promised to help me find Joe," Phoebe went on.

"I'm afraid he's lost, Phoebe," Maeve said, "so let it go." She pursed her lips. "Look, I'm sorry," she said, though plainly the apology was hard. "But didn't I say to you, don't put your faith in love?"

"If you did I wouldn't believe you."

"Listen to this woman!" King Texas said to Maeve. "She's wise! Wise!"

"She's as much a fool for love as you are," Maeve said, her rheumy gaze going from Phoebe to Texas and back again. "You deserve each other!" Then she tugged on her mount's collar. "Move yourself!" she said.

As the poor man started away up the gradient, King Texas looked down at Musnakaff, who had cautiously scrambled to his feet during this exchange. "Woman!" Texas yelled to Maeve. "if you go, I'll kill your little boot-licker."

Maeve cast a glance over her shoulder. "You wouldn't be so petty," she said.

"I'll be whatever I like!" Texas roared. "Now you come back! I'm warning you! Come back!" Maeve simply dug her knees into Cataglia's flanks. "He has seconds left to see the sky, woman!" Texas yelled. "I mean it!"

Musnakaff had started to let out a pitiful mewling sound and was retreating from the closest of the holes.

"You are cruel!" Texas hollered after Maeve. "Cruel! Cruel!"

With that he seemed to lose all patience, and reached down to tug at the ground. "Don't-2' Phoebe said, but her appeal was drowned out by Musnakaff s shriek as he was thrown from his feet. He scrabbled at the cobbles as the street tipped beneath him, but his fingers found too little purchase and he tumbled towards the hole. Phoebe couldn't stand by and watch him go to his death. Yelling to him to hold on, she raced towards him, arms outstretched. He raised his head, a brief glimpse of hope appearing on his ashen face and reached out towards her.

Before her fingers could find his, however, he lost what hold he had and fell. For a fraction of a second their eyes locked and she saw how terrible this was. Then he was gone, screaming and screaming.

She retreated from the hole, letting out a sob of horrorand more, of rage-as she did so.

"Now, hush," King Texas said.

She looked up at him. He was just a looming form, blurred by her tears, but that didn't stop her speaking her mind. "You did this for love?" she said.

"Do you blame me? That woman-"

"You just killed somebody!"

"I was trying to make her change her mind," he said, his voice thickening.

"Well you didn't! You just made more grief-"

Texas shrugged. "He'll be safe down there. It's quiet. It's dark-" She heard him sigh, heavily. "All right. I was wrong." Phoebe sniffed hard, and wiped the tears from her eyes. "I can't bring him back," Texas went on, "but please, let me comfort you-"

He raised his vast hand as he spoke, as if to touch her. It was the last thing she wanted. She tried to wave it away, but in doing so lost her balance. She flailed, attempting to recover it, but her foot somehow missed the street cornletely. She looked down, and to her utter horror saw that the hole where Musnakaff had gone was there beneath her.

"Help," she yelled, and reached out for Texas. But his sluggish body was too slow to catch her. The sky slipped sideways. Then she was failing, failing, the last of her tears whipped from her eyes, but her cleared sight showing her nothing except darkness and darkness and darkness, all the way down.

As Joe and Wexel Fee emerged from the laddered tunnels of b'Kether Sabbat's belly into the incandescent streets of that city, Joe asked Fee, "What does b'Kether Sabbat mean?"

The man shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine," he replied. The fact of Fee's ignorance was curiously comforting. Plainly they would both be exploring the city new to its mysteries. And perhaps it was better that way. Better to wander here without hope of comprehending what lay before them, and instead simply enjoy it for the miracle it was. The basic elements of construction were not so different from those of an American city. There was brick and wood, there were windows and doors, there were streets and sidewalks and gutters and lamps. But the architects and the masons and the carpenters and the road-layers had brought to every slab and cornice and threshold a desire to be particular: to find some quality that made that slab, that cornice, that threshold unlike any other. Some of the buildings were of course stupendous, like the towers Joe had first seen from the trees beside the shore, but even when they were of more modest scale, as most were, they'd plainly been built with a kind of tenderness which made each of them a presence unto itself. Though the streets were virtually empty of citizens (and the winged Ketherians had almost all cleared from the skies) there was a strange sense, more comforting than eerie, that the creatures who had raised this miraculous place were still present, and would live on while their masterworks still stood.

"If I'd built even a little piece of this city," Joe said, "I couldn't leave it for anything."

"Not even for that?" Wexel said, glancing up at the churning wall of the lad.

"Especially for that," Joe said. He stopped walking, to study the wall.

"It's going to destroy the city, Afuque. And us along with it."

"It doesn't seem to be in any hurry," Joe said.

"True enough."

"I wonder why?"

"Don't bother," Fee said. "We'll never know what's going on inside it, Afrique. It's too different from us."

"I've heard that said about me more than once," Joe replied. "they didn't call me Afrique, but that's what they were thinking."

"Did I offend you? If I did-"

"No, you didn't offend me. I'm just saying, maybe it's not as different as we think it is."

"We'll never know which of us is right," Wexel replied. "Because we're never going to see inside its heart." With that, they moved on, wandering where their noses led, astonished at every corner they turned. In one square they found an immense carousel, turning in the wind without making so much as a creak. In place of carved and painted horses, however, there was a succession of figures that seemed to represent humanity's ascent from apehood and its subsequent return as the carousel spun; a loop of evolution and devolution passed before them. In another spot was a stand of several hundred columns, on the tops of which large geometrical forms that gleamed like polished copper hovered, trembling slightly. Though Joe had made a pact with himself not to ask what couldn't be answered, he here voiced his puzzlement nevertheless, and was surprised to find that Wexel was able to solve the mystery.

"they are the shapes behind our eyelids," he said. "I've heard the Ketherians deem them holy, because they are at the very heart of what we see when the world is shut out."

"Why would anybody want to shut out this place?" Joe remarked.

"Because if you wanted to build something of your own," Fee said, "you'd need to dream it first."

"I'm already dreaming just by being here," Joe said. "Aren't I?"

The complexities of this-being awake in a place his species only visited when sleeping-had baffled him from the outset, and continued to do so. This whole adventure was more than a dream, he knew that; but when he slept here, and dreamed, was he entering yet another reality, beyond this one, where he might also sleep and dream? Or was the Metacosm the other half of the world he'd left; the half people yearned after, prayed for, dreamed of, but only in moments of epiphany dared believe real?

"It's not wise to dwell on these mysteries," Wexel said, a little superstitiously. "Great souls have doomed themselves thinking of such things."

The exchange ended there, and on they went, altogether less voluble now. Indeed they didn't say more than a word or two until their wandering brought them to a bridge that looked to be made of porcelain, which arched over a pool so tranquil it formed an almost perfect mirror.

they gazed down into it awhile, Joe almost mesmerized by the sight of his own face laid against the billows of the lad. "it looks kinda comfortable," he said to Wexel.

"You would lie on it, huh?"

"Lie on it. Make love on it."

"It would swallow you up," Fee said.

"Maybe that wouldn't be so bad," Joe said. "Maybe there's something wonderful inside."

"Like what?"

Joe thought of their exchange among the columns. "Another dream, maybe," he said. Wexel didn't reply. Joe looked round at him to see that he was walking back the way they'd come. "Listen to that," he said. There was a murmur of shouts, and what seemed to be the clash of arms. "Hear it?"

"I hear it. You want to stay here or see what's happening?" Wexel asked him. Plainly he was going to do the latter; he was already off the bridge.

"I'll come," Joe told him, and took his reflection from the pool.

The elaborate construction of the streets made the sounds difficult to follow. Joe and Wexel were several times tricked by echoes and counter-echoes before they found the battle they'd heard from the bridge. When they finally turned a corner and came in sight of it they discovered their search had brought them by some obscure route back to the plaza of columns, which had become a battlefield in the little time since they'd walked there. The ground between the columns was littered with bodies, through which the survivors of this fracas fought, most of them armed with short stabbing blades. they were by no means all male. A goodly portion of them were women, fighting with the same mixture of finesse and brutality as their brothers. Overhead, swooping down between the columns to pick off their opponents, were perhaps a dozen winged Ketherians, the first Joe had been close to. they were frail creatures, their bodies the size of a human child of six or so, their bare limbs thin and scaly. Their wings were brilliantly colored, as were their voices, which rose in whoops and squeals and hollers sufficient for half a hundred species.

Like so much else Joe had witnessed on this journey, the scene won a confusion of feelings from him. He'd grown out of his appetite for fighting a long time ago; the sight of wounding and death was simply revolting. But the furious passion of these people could not help but excite him a little; that and the spectacle of the winged Ketherians rising up with their pavonine wings spread against the dark wall of the lad. "What are they fighting about?" Joe yelled to Fee over the din of battle.

"The dynasty of Summa Summamentis and that of Ezso Aethefium have fought forever," he said. "The reason is deeply obscure."

"Somebody must know."

"None of these," Fee said, "that's certain." "Then why do they continue to fight?" Joe said.

Wexel shrugged. "For the pleasure of it?" he ventured. "There are as many dreams of war as of peace, are there not? It expresses something in the nature of your species that must be necessary."

"Necessary.. " Joe said, looking at the bloodshed in front of him. If it was indeed an expression of human necessity then perhaps his species had lost its way.

"I don't want to watch this any longer," Joe said. "I'm going back to the pool."

"Yeah-?"

"You stay, if it turns you on... I just don't want to spend my last minutes watching people killing each other."

"I will stay," Wexel said, a little awkwardly.

"Then I'll say goodbye," Joe said.

The sometime slave extended his hand. "Goodbye," he said.

they shook, and Joe headed back towards the bridge, but he'd gone less than ten yards when he heard a cry behind him, and turned to see Wexel stumbling towards him, clutching his belly. There was blood spurting between his fingers, splashing down his legs.

"Afrique!" he sobbed. "Afrique! He's here-"

Joe started back towards him, but the man shouted for him to keep his distance.

"He's crazy, Afrique! He's@'

At that moment, Noah appeared round the corner behind Fee. In his hands, a stabbing sword, soiled with blood. In his eyes, the pleasure of harm. His time in b'Kether Sabbat had brought him to full flower: his body had thickened, his limbs swelled.

"Joe... " he said lightly, as though the dying man did not stand between them. "I thought it must be you." He caught hold of Wexel by the back of his neck. "What were you doing with this?" he said. "He's probably got more fleas and sicknesses-"

"Leave him alone," Joe said.

"Run, Afrique@'

"I think he's afraid I'm going to do you some harm," Noah said.

"And are you?"

"He calls you Af7ique, Joe. Is that some term of endearment?"

"No, it's@'

"An insult, then?" He pulled Wexel's head back. "I thought so." In an instant he had the blade to Fee's neck. Joe started towards them, an appeal on his lips, but before he could finish Noah slid the sword across Wexel's neck. Blood came. Noah smiled, and let the dying man drop. "There," he said. "He won't insult you any longer."

"He wasn't insulting me!" Joe yelled.

"Oh. Well. No matter. Should I be calling you Afrique?"

"Don't call me anything! Just get the fuck out of my sight."

Noah stepped over Wexel's body and strode towards Joe. "But I want us to go on together," he said.

"Go on where?"

"to get what's owed to you," Noah said. "When I saw you across the plaza, I knew that was why you'd come. We have unfinished business, you and me. I promised you power, and then I lost you-I thought you were dead, Afrique-and now here you are again, in the flesh. I must assume our destinies are interwoven."

"I don't."

Noah strode towards him, until the blade was inches from Joc's belly.

"Allow me to prove it to you," he said.

"Isn't it a little late for this?" Joe said.

"Late?"

"The lad's going to come down on this city any moment."

"I think something's holding it back," Noah said. "Do you know what?"

"I have a suspicion," he said. "But I'll need you to help me confirm it." He studied Joe a moment. "Well?" he said. "Do we go as friends, or do I threaten you with this?" He jabbed the sword at Joe. "We're never going to be friends," Joe said. "But I don't need that either." Noah lowered his sword. "I'll come with yo u, if you'll tell me something."

"Anything."

"You're promising me?"

"Yes. I'm promising you. What do you need to know that's so important?" There was a twinge of anxiety in Noah's voice, which Joe took pleasure in hearing. "I'll tell you when I choose," he said. "Now, where are we going?"

On the far side of the plaza of columns stood a building that was in some ways the paradigm of Ketherian aesthetics. It was at first sight a simple two-story structure, but as Noah and Joe approached it, skirting the now-dwindling battle, it became clear that every stone of its unadorned walls had been chiseled to illuminate some particular felicity, so that each was in its simple way a different form of perfection. The sum was breathtaking: like a page of poetry, laid line on line.

But Noah had not time for the study of stone. He led them round to a simple door, and there, taking Joe by the arm, he said, "I promised you power. It's in there."

"What is this place?"

"A temple."

"to whom?"

"I think you know."

"The Zehrapushu?" Joe said.

"Of course. they like you, Afrique. If anybody is allowed access to this place, it'll be you."

"And what's inside?"

"I told you. Power."

"Then why don't you go in?"

"Because I'm not pure enough," Noah said.

Joe found it in him to laugh, even under these grim circumstances. "And I am?" he said.

"You're Sapas Humana, Afrique. Pure Sapas Humana."

"And the 'shu like that?"

"I believe they will."

"And if they don't?" Joe said, coming close to Noah now. "What happens?"

"Death happens," he said.

"Simple as that?"

"Simple as that."

Joe looked at the door. Like the wall into which it was set it possessed a physical beauty that took his breath away. What it lacked was a handle or a keyhole.

"If I open the door and don't get killed, you follow. Is that the idea?"

"Always so swift, my friend," Noah said. "Yes, that's the idea."

Joe glanced back at the door, and a wave of curiosity rose up in him to know what lay on the other side. He had looked into the eyes of the

'shu twice now, once on the shore and once in the weed-bed, and each time had felt touched by a mystery that he desperately wanted to solve.

Perhaps he could do it here. Concealing his eagerness, he turned back to Noah.

"Before we go in," he said, "answer my question."

"Ask it.,'

"I want to know what it is the families have been arguing about all these years. I want to know what's made them kill each other." Noah said nothing. "You promised me," Joe prompted him.

"Yes," he said at last. "I did."

"So tell me."

Noah shrugged. "What does it matter now?" he said to himself. "I'll tell you He looked back towards the battlefield once, then, his voice lowered to a whisper he said: "The dynasty of Ezso Aetherium believe that the lad exists because Sapas Humana dreamed them into being. That the lad are the darkness in the collective soul of your species."

"And your family?"

"We believe the other way about," Noah said.

It took Joe a little time to realize what he was being told. "You think we're something the lad Uroboros dreamed up."

"Yes, Afrique. That's what we believe."

"Who invented this crap?" Noah shrugged. "Who knows where wisdom comes from?" "That's not wisdom," Joe said. "It's fucking stupidity." "Why do you say so?" "Because I'm not a dream." "If you were, why do you suppose you'd know it?" Noah said.

Joe didn't try to get his head around that notion. He simply threw up his hands and said, "Let's just get the hell on with this," and turning his back on Noah he pressed against the door. It didn't swing open, but nor did he remain on the outside of it. Instead he felt a sudden ache through his body, almost like an electric shock, and the next moment he was standing in a buzzing darkness on the inside of the temple. He waited for the ache to subside, and then looked round for Noah. There was a motion in the murk behind him, but he was by no means sure it was his fellow trespasser, and before he could look again he heard somebody call his name.

He looked ahead of him, and saw that the dark ground at the center of the chamber was glittering, the light coming down upon it from a round hole in the roof. Joe crossed the floor to study the phenomenon better, and as he did so realized that he was looking at a pool, perhaps twelve feet across.

It was filled with Quiddity's waters, he had no doubt of that. He could smell the piquancy of the dream-sea, and his skin tingled with the subtle energies it gave off. But as he came to the edge of the pool he had further proof that this was indeed an annex of Quiddity. There, a little way beneath the surface, lurked a 'shu so large it could barely be containe in the pool, but was wrapped around itse in a tangle of encrusted tentacles, from the nest of which one of its eyes-which was from rim to rim a yard across, or morestared up and out, gleaming gold. Its gaze was not upon Joe, at least not directly. The creature was looking up through the roof of the temple, into the roiling wall of the invader.

"It's holding the lad Joe breathed. "My God. My God. It's holding the lad." He had no sooner spoken than he heard Noah from somewhere in the dark. "Do you feel it?" he said. "Do you feel the power in this place?"

"Oh yeah," Joe said softly. It was so palpable it almost felt like an act of aggression. His flesh ran with sweat, and every bruise and wound his body had sustained-back to the beating he'd taken from Morton Cobb-ached with fresh vigor, as though it had just been sustained. But still he wanted to get closer to the pool; to see what the lad was seeing, when it gazed into the 'shu's majestic eye. He took another step towards the water, his body wracked with shudders.

"Speak to it," Noah said. "Tell it what you want."

"It doesn't matter what we want," Joe said. "We're nothing here. Do you understand? We're nothing at all."

"Damn you, Afrique," Noah said, his voice closer to Joe now. "I've done all the suffering I intend to do. I want to live in glory when the lad's passed by." He drew closer still. "Now put your hand in the ivater-"

"What happened to all that talk about being buried in your own country?"

"I'd forgotten how fine it was to be alive. Especially here. There is no finer place in your world or mine than this city. And I want to be the one who heals it, after the cataclysm. I want to be its protector."

"You want to own it," Joe said.

"Nobody could ever own b'Kether Sabbat." "I think you're ready to try," Joe said.

"Well that's between me and the city, isn't it?" Noah said, moving to press the blade against Joe's back. "Go on now," he said. "Touch the waters for me."

"And if I don't?"

"Your body will touch the waters, whether there's life in it or not."

,it's holding the lad-"

"Very possibly." "If we disturb it@,

"The lad finishes its business here and moves on. It's going to happen sooner or later. If you make it sooner then you've changed the course of history, and maybe got yourself power at the same time. That doesn't sound so terrible, does it?" He pushed the blade a little harder. "It's what you came here for, remember?"

Joe remembered. The pain in his balls was a perfect reminder of why he'd made this journey: to never be powerless again. But in the Process of coming here@f seeing all that he'd seen, and learning all that he'd learned-the pursuit of power had come to seem like a very petty thing. He'd had love, which was more than most people got in their lives. He'd had physical pleasures. He'd known a woman whose smile made him smile, and whose sighs made him sigh, and whose arms had been an utter comfort to him.

they would not come again, those smiles, those sighs, and it was a worse ache than the sum of his wounds to think of that, but life hadn't cheated him, had it? He could die, now, and not feel his time had been wasted.

"I don't... want power," he said to Noah.

11 Liar," said the face in the darkness.

"You can say what you want," Joe replied. "I know what's true and that's all that matters."

The words seemed to dismay Noah. He made a little moan, and without another word of warning drove his blade into Joe's gut. Oh God, but it hurt! Joe let out a sob of pain, which only inspired Noah to press the blade home. Then he twisted it, and pulled it out. Joe entertained no hope of doing his killer damage in return. He'd invited this, after his fashion. He put his hands to the wound, hot blood running through his fingers and slapping on the ground between his legs, then he started to turn his back on Noah. The darkness was becoming piebald; gray blotches appearing at the corners of his sight. But he wanted to look at the Ishu one last time before death took him. Just to meet its golden gaze...

He started to turn, pressing both hands against the wound now, to keep his body from emptying. There was still pain, but it was becoming more remote from him with every heartbeat. He had just a little time.

"Hold on... " he murmured to himself.

He had the gaze in the corner of his eye now, and it was vast. A ring of gold and a circle of darkness. Beautiful in its perfection and in its simplicity. Round and round, gleaming gold, uninterrupted, unspoiled, glorious, glorious...

He felt something shifting in his head, as though he was slipping towards the golden circle.

Going, going...

And oh, it felt fine. He was done with his wounded flesh, done with bruises and bleeding balls; done with Joe.

He felt his body start to fall, and as it did so-as the life went out of it utterly-he fell into the circle of the 'shu's eye.

He was granted a moment of rest there: but a moment filled with such grace and such ease it wiped all the sufferings of the days that had brought him here, and of the years that had proceeded them.

There was no confusion, nor fear. He understood what had happened to him with absolute clarity. He'd died on the edge of the pool, and his spirit had fallen into the eye of the Zehrapushu. There, in that gilded round, it stayed for a blissful moment. Then it was gone, up and away along the line of shu's sight towards the cloud of the lad.

In the temple below him he heard Noah let out a cry of rage, and for an instant, though he had neither eyes nor head to put them in, his spirit saw quite plainly what was happening below. Noah had stepped over Joe's corpse and had plunged his blood-stained hands into the pool of Quiddity's waters. The 'shu had responded to the trespass instantly.

Its tentacles had started to flail wildly, and one of themwhether by intention or chance Joe would never know-had wrapped around Noah's arm. Enraged and revolted, Noah picked up the sword he'd just set aside and even as Joe watched he plunged the blade into the 'shu's unblinking eye.

A tremor passed through Joe's world. Through the gaze in which he traveled, through the temple below, and out, across the plaza of columns and through the streets of b'Kether Sabbat. He knew on the instant what had happened. The 'shu's hold on the Iad had slipped; and the great wave that had been frozen over the city began to curl.

Joe turned his spirit-sight up towards the Iad, and to his astonishment saw that he was almost upon it, flying like an arrow into its roiling substance.

Below him, the city shook itself into despair, and the island of Mem-6 b'Kether Sabbat fell beneath the lad's shadow.

And he, Joe Flicker, who had given up life but had not perished, flew into the heart of the city's destroyer, and lost himself there as surely as if he had died.

The S@ Motel was a modest establishment, set a quarter of a mile back from the road along what was little more than a gravel strewn track, barely wide enough to allow two cars to pass. The motel itself was a single-story, wooden structure built around two and a quarter sides of a parking lot, the quarter being the office, over which a fitfully illuminated sign boasted that there were NO VACANCIES. Apparently most of the occupants were out having a high time in Everville, because when Tesia drove in, the lot was empty but for three vehicles. One was a flathed truck, parked outside the office, one a beaten up Mustang, which Tesla assumed was Grillo's, and the third was an even more dilapidated Ford Pinto.

She had not even turned off the engine of her bike when the door of room six opened and a scrawny, balding man in a shirt and pants several sizes too big for him stepped out and said her name. She was about to ask him if they knew each other when she realized it was Grillo. There was no way to conceal her shock. He seemed not to notice, however, or perhaps not to care. He opened his arms to her (so thin! oh, so thin!) and they embraced.

"You don't know how glad I am to see you," he said. The frailty wasn't just in his body. It was in his voice too. He sounded remote, as though his sickness, whatever it was, was already carrying him away. Both of us, she thought, not long for this world.

"There's so much to tell you," Grillo was saying. "But I'll keep it simple." He halted, as though waiting for her permission to tell. She told him to go on. "Well... Jo-Beth's behaving really strangely. Some of the time she's so excitable, I want to gag her. The rest of the time she's practically catatonic."

"Does she talk about Tommy-Ray?"

Grillo shook his head. "I've tried to make her talk, but she doesn't trust me. I'm hoping maybe she'll talk to you,. cause we need some inside track here or we're tucked."

"You're sure Tommy-Ray's alive?"

"I don't know about alive, but I know he's around."

"And what about Howie?"

"Not good. We're all playing some kind of endgame here, Tes. It's like everything's coming together, in the worst way. 11

"I know that feeling," she told him.

"And I'm too old for this shit, Tes. Too old and too sick."

"I can see... things aren't good," she said to him. "If you want to talk-"

'No, he said hurriedly. "I don't. There's nothing worth saying anyway. It's just the way things go."

"One question?" "All right. One."

"Is this why you didn't want me to come see you?" tillo nodded. "Stupid, I know. But I guess we all deal with shit the best way we know how. I decided to hide away and work on the Reef."

"How's it going?"

"I want you to see it for yourself, Tes, if we come out of this." She didn't tell them she wouldn't; just nodded. "I think maybe you'd make more sense of it than I have. You knowmake the connections better." He put his arm around her shoulder. "Shall we go in?" he said.

Once, somewhere on the road, Tesia had contemplated setting the story of Jo-Beth McGuire and Howie Katz down for posterity. How in the sunny kingdom of Palomo Grove these two perfect people had met and fallen in love, not realizing that their fathers had sired them to do battle. How their passion had enraged their fathers, and how that rage had erupted into open warfare in the streets of the gilded kingdom. Many had suffered as a consequence. Some had even perished. But by some miracle the lovers had survived their travails intact.

(It was not the first time a story of ill-matched lovers had been told, of course, but more often than not it was the couple who suffered and died, perhaps because people wanted the perfect pair snuffed out before their love could lose its perfection. Better a murdered ideal, which at least kept hope alive, than one'that withered with time.)

While making her notes for this story Tesla had several times wondered what happened to the golden lovers of Palomo Grove. Here, in room six, she had her answer.

Despite the warning Grillo had given, she was not prepared to find the couple so changed: both gray-faced, their speech and action devoid of any spark of vitality. When, after some wan greetings had been exchanged, Howie began to describe for Tesla the events that had brought them to this sorry place and condition, the pair scarcely glanced at each other.

"Just help me kill the sonofabitch," Howie said to Tesla, the subject of the Death-Boy's dispatch rousing a passion in him absent until now. She told him she didn't have any answers. Perhaps the Nuncio had bestowed some form of invulnerability upon him (after all, he'd escaped the conflagration in the Loop).

"You think he's beyond death, right?" Grillo said.

"It's possible, yes-"

"And that's from the Nuncio?"

"I don't know," Tesla said, staring down at her palms. "I have a taste of the Nuncio myself, and I'm damn sure I'm still mortal."

When she looked up at Grillo again, she saw such despair in his eyes she could only hold his gaze for a moment before looking away.

It was Jo-Beth, who had added little to the exchange so far, who broke the silence. "I want you to stop talking about him now," she said.

Howie threw his wife a sour, sideways glance. "We're not done yet," he said.

"Well, I am," Jo-Beth said a little more forcibly, and crossing to the bed she picked up the baby and headed for the door. "Where are you going?" Howie said to her.

"I'm going to get some air."

"Not with the baby you're not."

There was a litany of suspicions in these few words.

"I'm not going far-2'

"You're not going a-a-a-anywhere!" Howie shouted. "Now put Amy back on the bed and sit down!"

Before this escalated any further, Grillo stood up, "We all need some food in our stomachs," he said. "Why don't we go get some pizza?"

"You go," Jo-Beth said. "I'll be fine here."

"Better still," Tesla said to Grillo, "you and Howie go. Let me and Jo-Beth sit and talk for a few minutes."

There was some debate about this, but not much. Both men seemed relieved to have a chance to escape the confines of the motel for a few minutes, and from Tesla's point of view it offered an opportunity to speak to Jo-Beth alone.

"You don't seem very afraid that Tommy-Ray's coming to find you," she said to Jo-Beth when the men had left.

The girl looked across at the baby on the bed. "No," she said, her voice as pale as her face. "Why should I be?"

"Well... because of what might have happened to him since you saw him last," Tesla replied, trying to put her point as delicately as possible.

"He's not the brother you had in Palomo Grove."

"I know that," Jo-Beth said with a tinge of contempt in her voice. "He's killed some people. And he's not sorry. But... he's never hurt me. He wouldn't ever do that."

"He might not know his own mind," Tesla replied. "He might hurt you, or the baby, without being able to help himself."

Jo-Beth simply shook her head. "He loves me," she said.

"That was a long time ago. People change. And Tommy-Ray's changed more than most."

"I know," Jo-Beth replied. Tesia didn't reply. She just waited in silence, hoping that Jo-Beth would talk about the Death-Boy a little. After a few moments, she did just that.

"He s been all over," she said, "seeing the world... now he's getting tired-"

"He told you that?"

She nodded. "He wants to be quiet for a little while.... He says he's seen some things that he needs to think over-"

"Did he say what?"

"Just things," she said. "He's been traveling around, working for a friend of his."

Tesla hazarded a guess. "Kissoon?" she said.

Jo-Beth actually smiled. "Yeah. How'd you know?"

"It's not important."

Jo-Beth raked her fingers through her long-unwashed hair, and said again, "He loves me."

"So does Howie," Tesla pointed out.

"Howie belongs to Fletcher," Jo-Beth said.

"Nobody belongs to anybody," Tesla replied.

Jo-Beth looked at her, saying nothing. But the look of utter abjection in her eyes was chilling.

Would nothing be saved? Tesla thought. There was Grillo, playing his endgame, thinking of the Nuncio as some last reprieve (but not truly believing it); D'Amour climbing the mountain to spend his last hours where the crosses stood; and this poor girl, who had been so blithe and so effortlessly beautiful, ready to be taken by the Death-Boy because love had failed to save her.

The world was turning off its lights, one by one.... A gust of wind shook the windowpane. Jo-Beth, who had turned from Tesla to tend to the baby, looked round. "What is it?" Tesia said softly.

There was another gust now, this time at the door, as though the wind was systematically looking for some way in.

"It's him, isn't it?" Tesla said. The girl's eyes were glued to the door. "Jo-Beth, you have to help me here@' Tesla crossed to the door as she spoke, and gingerly turned the key in the lock. It was a pitiful defense, she knew (this was a force that brought down houses), but it might earn them a second or two's grace, and that might be the difference between saving a life or losing it. "Tommy-Ray's not going to solve anything," Tesla said. "You understand me? He's not."

Jo-Beth was bending to pick up little Amy. "He's all we've got," she said.

JOL, EVEP.VILLE 471

The wind was rattling both the window and the door now. Tesla could smell it as it gusted through the keyhole and the cracks. Death was here, no doubt of that.

Amy had begun to sob quietly in her mother's arms. Tesla glanced down at the child's tiny, knotted face, and thought of what such innocence might rouse in the DeathBoy. He'd probably be proud of infanticide.

The floor was shaking so hard the key was rattled from its slot. And somewhere in the gusts there were voices, or the fragments of same, some speaking in Spanish, some, Tesia' thought, in Russian, one of them nearly hysterical, one of them sobbing. She caught only a smattering of their words, but the gist of it was plain enough. Come outside, they were saying. He's waiting for you...

"Doesn't sound all that inviting," Tesia whispered to JoBeth.

The girl said nothing. She just stared at the door, gently rocking the troubled baby, while the voices of dead pined and moaned and muttered on. Tesla let them speak for themselves. to judge by the look on Jo-Beth's face they were doing a far better job of dissuading her from stepping over the threshold than Tesla could have done.

"Where's Tommy-Ray?" Jo-Beth said at last.

"Maybe he didn't come," Tesla replied. "Do you... maybe want to slip out the bathroom window?"

Jo-Beth listened for a few second longer. Then she nodded. "Good," Tesla said. "Make it fast. I'll keep them busy."

She watched Jo-Beth retreat to the bathroom, then she turned and went to the door. The ghosts on the other side seemed to sense her approach, because their voices dropped to a murmur.

"Where's Tommy-Ray?" Tesia said.

There was no coherent response, just more distressing din, and a further rattling of the door. Tesia glanced over her shoulder. Jo-Beth and Amy were out of sight, which was something. At least now if the ghosts tried to break in "Open... " they were murmuring, "open... open,"and while they murmured they escalated their assault on the door. The wood around the hinges began to splinter, and around the lock too. "It's okay," Tesia said, fearful that their frustration would make them more dangerous than ever. "I'll unlock the door. Just give me a moment."

She stopped and picked up the key, slid it into the lock, and turned it. Hearing this, the ghosts were quieted, the gusts hushed. Tesia took a deep breath and opened the door. The cloud of phantoms retreated from her in a dusty wave. She looked for Tommy-Ray. There was no sign of him. Closing the door after her, she walked out into the middle of the lot. She'd written an execution scene in one of her failed opuses-a terrible screenplay called As I Live and Breathe. This walk put her in mind of it. All that was missing was the warden and the priest, She started to turn, looking for the Death-Boy, and her eyes came to rest on an area of stunted trees and ambitious weed on the far side of the lot. There were lanterns hanging in the branches, she saw, giving off a sickly phosphorescence. And somebody standing in their midst, more than half hidden. Before she could start towards the place a voice behind her said, "What the hell's going' on out here?"

She looked back to see the motel manager appearing from his office. He was sixty or more, with a bald pate, a gravy-stained shirt, and a can of beer in his hand. By his staggering step it was plain he was the worse for its influence.

"Go back inside," Tesla told him.

But the man had seen the lights in the thicket now, and he strode on past Tesia towards them. "You put them up?" he demanded.

"No," Tesia said, following after him. "Somebody very-"

"That's my property. You can't just go hanging'-" He stopped in mid-stride, as he came close enough to see exactly what these lanterns were. The can of beer dropped from his hand. "My God... " he said.

The branches of the trees and bushes had been hung with horrific trophies, Tesla saw. Heads and arms, pieces of a torso, and much else that was not even recognizable. All of them shone, even the scraps, charged up with a luminescence she assumed was the Death-Boy's gift.

The manager, meanwhile, was stumbling back the way he'd come, his throat loosing a series of panicked animal noises. Instantly, the cloud of phantoms rose up, excited by his terror, and moved to intercept him. He was swept off his feet and pitched ten yards or more, coming to rest a little way from his office door.

"Tommy-Ray?" Tesia yelled back into the thicket. "Stop them!" Getting no response, she strode towards the bushes, haranguing the Death-Boy.

"Call them off, damn you! Hear me?"

Behind her, the manager had started to shriek. She looked back in time to glimpse the man in the midst of the swarming cloud, sinking to the ground. He went on shrieking for a little longer, while they tore at his head. It was twisted left-, then right, then left again with such violence his neck ripped. The shriek stopped. The head came off.

"Don't look," the man in the thicket said.

She turned back and stared into the mesh of twigs, trying to see him better. The last time she'd laid eyes on Tommy-Ray McGuire, back in Kissoon's Loop, he'd been a shadow of his former glory, wasted and crazed. But it seemed the years had been kinder to him than anybody else in this drama. Whatever duties he'd performed for Kissoon, and whatever he'd witnessed (or perpetrated) along the way, his blond beauty had been preserved. He smiled at her out of his grove of lanterns, and it was a dazzling smile.

"Where is she, Tesla?" he said.

"Before you get to Jo-Beth-"

"Yes?"

"I just wanted to talk a moment. Compare notes."

"About what?"

"About being Nunciates."

"Is that what we are?" "It's as good or bad as any."

"Nunciates He turned the word on his tongue. "That's cool."

"Being one seems to suit you."

"Oh yeah, I feel fine. You don't look so good yourself You need to get some slaves, like me, 'stead of wandering around on your own." His tone was completely conversational. "You know a couple of times, I almost came to find YOU."

"Why would you do that?"

He shrugged. "I guess I felt close to you. Both of us having the Nuncio. Both of us knowing Kissoon-"

"What's he doing here, Tommy-Ray? What does he want with Everville?" Tommy-Ray took a step towards her. She had to fight the instinct to retreat before him. Any sign of weakness, she knew, and her status as fellow Nunciate would be forfeited. As he approached, he answered the question. "He lived there once," Tommy-Ray said.

"In Everville?" He was almost free of the thicket now. There were' blood stains on his jeans and T-shirt, and on his face and arms a gloss of sweat. "Where is she?" he said.

"We were talking about Kissoon."

"Not any more we're not. Where is she?"

"Just give her a little time," Tesla replied, glaring back towards the room as though she expected Jo-Beth to emerge at any moment. "She wanted to look her best." "She was excited?" "Oh yes."

"Why don't you go fetch her?" "She won't be-"

"Fetch her!" There was a mun-nur from the ghosts, who were still attending upon the headless body. "Sure," Tesla said. "No problem."

She turned back towards the motel and started across the lot, taking her time. She was about five yards from the door when Jo-Beth stepped into view, with Amy cradled in her arms.

"I'm sorry," she said to Tesla under her breath. "We belong to him. It's as simple as that."

From the lot behind her, Tesia heard the Death-Boy sigh at the sight of his sister.

"Oh baby," he said. "You look so fine. Come here."

Jo-Beth stepped over the threshold. Tesia made no attempt to stop her. She'd only lose her head for her troubles. Besides, by the look on Jo-Beth's face it was plain she was happy to be going into her brother's embrace. The wind, whether natural or no, had died away completely. Night birds had started to sing, and crickets to chirp in the grass, as though conspiring to celebrate this reunion.

As she watched Tominy-Ray open his arms to welcome his sister, Tesla caught sight of a pale form out of the corner of her eye, and looked round to see Buddenbaum's little girlfriend, the avatar, still dressed in white from bow to shoes, staring down at the manager's corpse. She didn't peruse it for long, but wandered in Tesia's direction, leaving her two companions@e clown and the idiot-to study it in her stead. The latter had found the dead man's head, and had it tucked up under his arm, The girl in white, meanwhile, was now close enough to Tesla to munnur,

"Thank you for this."

Tesia looked down at her with a mixture of confusion and disgust. "This isn't a game," she said.

"We know."

"People have died."

The girl grinned. "And there'll be more, won't there?" she said lightly. "Lots more."

As though her words had pressed the drama into a higher gear, the sound of a badly tuned engine reached Tesla's ears and Grillo's Mustang appeared on the dirt road leading into the lot.

Before it had even come to a halt the passenger door was flung open and Howie was out, gun in hand, screaming at Tommy-Ray, "Get awayfrom her!" The Death-Boy unglued his eyes from his sister and lazily stared in Howie's direction. "No!" he,,,aid.

Without further warning, Howie fired. His aim was pitifully poor. The bullet struck the ground closer to Jo-Beth than Tommy-Ray. Amy, who had been hushed so far, started to bawl.

A flicker of concern crossed the Death-Boy's sweaty face. "Don't shoot," he yelled to Howie, "you'll hurt the kid!"

At Tesla's side the girl in white murmured a long oh, as though she had new comprehension of what was happening here, and like two members of an audience, one prompted by the other into recognition of some wit or iron

, Tesla saw a connection here she had not vaguely suspected. A breath of something like to pleasure caressed her nape, seeing this bud on the story tree, ready to burst.

"What next?" the little girl said.

A little part of Tesla simply wanted to stand back and see. But she couldn't. Never had; never would.

"Howie... " she said, "come away@'

"N-n-no-not without m-m-my wife," Howie said.

"You did good," Tommy-Ray said, "watching over 'em for me, but you're out of the picture now. They're coming with me."

Howie dropped his gun in the dirt, and raised his hands. "Look at m-m-me, Jo-Beth," he said. "I'm n-n-not going to m-m-make you do anything you d-d-don't want to-but baby, it's me-it's H-H-Howie-"

Jo-Beth said nothing. She simply looked down at the baby, as if deaf to Howie's appeals. He tried again, or began to, but he'd got no further than her name when Grillo put his foot down and drove directly towards Jo-Beth. Howie flung himself aside, going down hard, as the car skewed around, kicking up a fan of dirt. The Death-Boy let out a yell to his legion, but before they could come to order Grillo had brought the car to a halt and hauled Jo-Beth and Amy into the vehicle. Tommy-Ray made a move towards it, arms outstretched, and might have somehow checked Gfillo's escape had Howie not risen from the dirt and flung himself at the Death-Boy. His fingers went to Tommy-Ray's perfect face, and gouged at his eyes.

Grillo, meanwhile, was backing the vehicle up, yelling to Tesla, "Get in! Get in!"

She waved him on. "Go!" she hollered. "Quickly!"

She caught a glimpse of his face through the insect-spattered windshield: There was exhilaration in his eyes. He offered her a tight, grim smile, then he swung the car round and drove off. Howie, meanwhile, had done some superficial damage to Tommy-Ray, gouging several furrows down the side of his face and neck. There was no blood. There was instead a brightness beneath the flesh, like the phosphorescence with which he'd lit his lanterns. And it was to the thicket where those lanterns hung that Tommy-Ray now headed, casually pushing Howie to the ground as he did so.

Howie started to get to his feet again, plainly intending to assault the Death-Boy afresh, but Tesla held him back. "You can't kill him," she said. "He'll just end up killing you.

On the fringe of the thicket, Tommy-Ray turned back.

"That's it. You tell him." He looked at Howie. "I don't want to HI you," he said. "In,fact, I swore to Jo-Beth I wouldn't, and I don't break my word." Again, to Tesla, "Make him understand. She's nev@rfming back to him. Not tonight. Not ever. I've got her now, "d t, hat's where she wants to be."

With that he stepped into the thicket, whistling for the cloud of ghosts to come to him. they came, gushing across the lot, and entering the thicket to conceal the Death-Boy from view.

"He's going to go after her," Howie said.

"Of course."

"So we have to get to her first."

"That's the theory," Tesia said, already heading for her bike. Howie stumbled after her.

As she crossed the lot the girl in white called to her. "What's next, Tesla? What's next?"

"God knows," Tesla said.

"No we don't," said the girl's idiot companion, which much entertained all three.

"We like you, Tesla," the girl in white said.

"Then stay out of my way," Tesla said, climbing onto the bike. Howie hopped on behind.

As she turned the key in the ignition there was another gust of wind, and the Death-Boy's legion rose up out of the thicket, taking the lanterns and the man who'd lit them away in its billows. Tesla caught a glimpse of Tommy-Ray as the cloud passed by. He seemed not to be walking, but to be home up by the cloud, and carried. As for his face, it was already healing, the wounds closing to conceal the brightness that blazed behind.

"He's going to get to her first," Howie said, sounding close to tears.

"Hold on," Tesla told him. "It's not over yet,"

"Forgive me Everville-"

"That's what he wrote?"

"That's what he wrote." "The hypocrite," they were walking, Erwin and Coker Ammiano, along Poppy Lane. it was a little before nine o'clock in the evening, and to judge by the noise from every bar and restaurant along the lane, festivities were in full swing.

,,They forget so easily," Erwin said. "Just this afternoon@' "I know what happened," Ammiano replied. "I felt it.",,We're like smoke," Erwin said, remembering Dolan's first lessons in ghosthood.

"We're not even that. At least smoke can make people weep. We can do nothing."

"That's not so," Erwin told him. "You'll see when we find this woman Tesia. She can hear me. At least she could once. She's quite a woman, believe me. The way she acts, it's like she couldn't give a damn whether she lived or died."

"Then she's a fool.

"No, I mean, she's brave. When she was at my house, I told you, about Kissoon@' "I remember, Erwin," Coker said politely. "I never saw anything braver.",,You're talking like you're in love, my friend."

"Nonsense."

"I believe you're quite enamored. Don't be embarrassed."

"I'm... I'm not."

"You're blushing."

Erwin put his palms to his cheeks. "It's so absurd," he said.

"What is?"

"That I have no blood in my body@on't even have a body-yet I blush."

"I've had a lot of time to try and puzzle that out," Coker Ammiano said.

"And did you come to any conclusions?" "A few.

"Tell me."

"We invented ourselves, Erwin. Our energies belong to some great oneness-I don't care to give it a name or I'd be trying to invent that too-and we've used them, these energies, in the recreation of Erwin Toothaker and Coker Ammiano. Now those men are dead, and much of that power has returned to its source. But we hold on to a bit of it, just to keep our fictions alive a little longer. And we clothe ourselves in what's familiar, and we fill our pockets with things to comfort us. But it can't go on forever. Sooner or later"he shrugged-"we'll be done."

"Not me," said Erwin. "I saw what happened to Dolan and Nordhoff and-"

"What things look like from the outside and what they are on the inside can be very different, Erwin. Perhaps all that was happening at the crossroads was that Dolan was going back where he came from."

"Into your oneness?"

"It, s not mine, Erwin." He paused, musing on this. Then he said, "No, I take that back. I think it is mine. And you know why?"

"No. But I think you're about to enlighten me."

"Because once I'm there, I'm everywhere." I-le smiled, well pleased by this. "And the oneness is mine as much as it is anybody else's."

"So why haven't you just given in to it?" Erwin wanted to know. "I wish I had an answer to that. I think sometimes it must be some evil in me."

"Evil?" pp

"As in something done in error. Against what's good.

Erwin interrupted him in mid-flow. "That man!" he said, pointing across the street.

"I see him."

"He was with Tesla. His name's D'Amour."

"He's in quite a hurry."

"I wonder if he knows where she is."

"There's only one way to find out."

"Follow him?"

"Precisely."

D'Amour had put in a call to New York before he left the Cobb house. Norma had been pleased to hear from him.

"I had a visitor yesterday," she said, sounding more unnerved than Harry could ever remember her sounding before. "She just came in through the window, and sat down in front of me."

"Who the hell was it?"

"She said her name was Lazy Susan. At least at first. Then it changed its mind, and God knows probably its sex as well, and started calling itself the Hammermite-"

"Then Peter the Nomad?"

"It got round to him after a while," Norma said. "So is this thing what it claims it is?"

"Yes.

"It killed 14ess?"

"He was one of many. What did it want?"

"What do these things ever want? It crowed a bit. It did a dump on the floor. And it asked to be reminded to you@' "How exactly?"

Norma sighed. "Well... it started talking about how the Devil was coming, how we'd all be crucified for what we'd done. It harpe I d on that quite a bit. Gave me a brief history of crucifixion, which I could have done without. Then it said: 'Tell DAmour-"'

"Let me guess. 'I am you and you are love-"' He didn't bother to finish.

"That's it," Norma said.

"Then what?" "Nothing. It told me I had very lovely eyes, and it was sure they were all the prettier because they were useless. Then it left. I still can't get rid of the smell of its shit."

"I'm sorry, Norma."

"It's okay. I got some air-freshener-"

"No. I mean the whole damn thing."

"I tell you what, Harry. It made me think."

"About-?" "About our conversation on the roof, for one."

"I've thought a lot about that myself"

"I'm not saying I was completely wrong. The world does change, and it keeps changing, and I don't think it's going anywhere soon. But this thing, this Lazy Susan... The words fell away for a moment. All Norma could find to say was: "Horrible." Harry said nothing. "I know what you're thinking," Norma said. "You're thinking, why doesn't the old cow make up her mind?"

"No I wasn't."

"Truth is, I don't know anymore."

"Don't let it get you crazy."

"Oh it's too late for that," Norma said, the laughter coming back into her voice. "What is it with these demons anyhow? Why are they so damn excremental?"

"'Cause that's what they want the world to be, Norma."

"Shit." "Shit."

They'd talked on for a while, but it had been little more than chatter. Only at the end, when Harry said he had to be going, did Norma say,

"Where?"

"Up the mountain," he told her. "to see what the Devil looks like, face to face."

Now, an hour after that conversation, he was climbing, the trees so dense he was almost blind as Norma, and after all the pursuits and losses of recent times-Dusseldorfs death, the massacre of the Zyem Carasophia, the events in the Badlands, and the murder of Maria Nazareno-it was a relief that things were coming to an end.

He thought of the portrait Ted had made-DAmour in Wyckoff Street, with that black snake crushed under a hero's heel. How simple that seemed. How blissfully simple. The demon writhes. The demon withers. The demon is gone.

It had never been that way, except in stories, and despite what the child at the crossroads had said (leaves on the story tree), Harry had no expectation of a happy ending.

Despite his hectoring and cajoling, only four members of the band had turned up at Larry Glodoski's house: Bill Waits, Steve Alstead, Denny Gips, and Chas Reidlinger. Larry broke out the scotch, and laid out his interpretation of events.

"What we've got here is some kind of mind manipulation," he said. "Maybe chemical, maybe something put in the water-"

"Least it's not in the scotch," Bill said. "This is serious," Larry said. "We've got a catastrophe on our hands, gentlemen."

"What did everyone see?" Gips asked the room.

"Women," said Alstead.

"And light," Reidlinger added.

"That's what they wanted us to see," Larry said.

"Who's they?" Waits wondered. "I mean, we got over the Red Menace, we got over UFOS. So what the hell is it? Don't get me wrong, Larry, I'm not saying you're crazy,,cause I saw some shit too. I'd just like to know what we're up against."

"We're not going to find out sitting here," Alstead replied. "We have to go look for ourselves."

"And what are we going to defend ourselves with?" Waits wanted to know.

"Trumpets and drumsticks?"

At this uncture, Bosley Cowhick appeared at Giodoski's front door, wanting to be included in the ranks. He'd heard about the gathering from his sister, who was a close friend of Alstead's wife Rebecca. None of the five were at ease with Bosley's brand of glassy-eyed fervor, but with their ranks so woefully thin it was impossible to say no. And to be fair, Bosley did his best to restrain his apocalyptic talk, limiting it to a few remarks about how they were all in danger of losing the town to forces, terrible forces, and he was willing to die in its defense.

Which remark brought them back to the business of the guns. It was not a difficult problem to solve. Gips's brotherin-law up on Coleman Street had been fixated on what he called "killing sticks" since he'd first got his tongue around the words, and when the six-man posse turned up on his doorstep a little before ten, practically requisitioning the damn things, he was pathetically happy to oblige. Giodoski felt it only polite to invite the brother-in-law along on the venture. The man declined. He was sick, he said, and would only slow things down. But if they needed more guns, they knew where to come.

Then it was off to Han-tfick's Bar (this at Bill Waits's suggestion) to toast the venture with a scotch. Reidlinger was against it. Couldn't they just get on with doing whatever they were going to do (there was still debate as to what that might be), then they could all go home and steep? He was outvoted. The posse headed down to Hanifick's, and even Bosley was talked into a shot of brandy.

"People just don't care," Bosley remarked, staring around the bar. It was about as full as the fire department would allow, and everyone seemed to be having a good time.

"Thing is, Bosley," Bill Waits said, "nobody's quite sure what they saw. I bet if you asked people what happened this afternoon, they'd all say something different."

"That's the way the Devil works, Mr. Waits," Bosley replied, without a trace of self-importance. "He wants us to argue among ourselves. And while we're arguing, he gets on with his work."

"And what work would that be?" Bill said. "Exactly?" "@ve it alone, Bill," Chas said. "Let's just get out there and-

"No," Bosley said, his words a little slurred. "It's a legitimate question."

"And what's the answer, Bosley?"

"It's the same work the Devil's been doing since the beginning of time." While Bosley talked, Alstead put a econd brandy into the man's hand, and Bosley, barely aware he was doing so, drank it in one, then went on, "He ants to take us from God."

"I left a long time ago," Waits said. He wasn't joking.

"I'm sure God misses you," Bosley replied, with equal sincerity.

The two men stared at each other for a long moment, saying nothing.

"Hey, Bosley, give it a rest," Alstead said. "You're creepin' me out. And have another brandy." iv The bullet in Buddenbaum's brain had done nothing to subdue his fury.

"they are the most ungrateful, hypocritical, petty, paltry, witless, chicken-brained sons of bitches it's ever been my misfortune to work for," he raged, his hand clamped to his hdaling head." Oh, lay on another show for us, Owen. A nice assassination. A little crime passionelle. Something with children. Something with Christians." He turned to Seth, who had been standing at the window overlooking the crossroads listening to this tirade for the better part of thirty minutes. "And did I ever say no?" He paused, waiting for an answer.

"Probably not," Seth said.

"Damn right! Nothing was too much trouble for them. they wanted to see a president die? No problem. they fancied a massacre or two? It could be arranged. There was nothing they asked for I didn't supply.

Nothing!"

He strode to the window now, casually fingering the wound. "But the moment I fumble-just a little, tiny mistake-then they're sniffing after that cunt Bombeck, and it's, 'See you later, Owen. We'll take her off and talk about the fucking story tree."'

He stared at Seth, who stared back.

"You've got a question on your face," Buddenbaum said.

"And you've got blood on yours," Seth said.

"Has something changed between us'?"

"Yes," Seth said simply. "The fact is, every hour, every minute, I think something different about you." is

"So how would you have it between us?"

Seth pondered a moment. "I wish we could start again," he said. "I wish you were just coming up to me under the stars and I was telling you about the angels." Another pause. "I wish I still had the angels."

"I took them away from you; is that what you're saying?"

"I let you do it," Seth replied.

"The question-"

"Hub?" "You had a question on your face."

"Yeah... I was just wondering about the story tree, that's all."

"There is no tree, if that's what you're asking," Buddenbaum said. Seth looked disappointed. "It's just a phrase some lousy poet came up with."

"What does it mean?"

Owen's voice had lost its venom now. He leaned back against the wall beside the window from which he'd fallen two days before. "What does it mean?" he said. "Well... it means that stories are seeds. Stories are blossoms. Stories are fruit, picked and pressed and eaten. Then we shit out the seeds-!"

"Back into the ground?"

"Back into the ground."

"On and on."

Buddenbaum sighed. "On and on," he said. "With or without us."

"You don't mean us," Seth said softly. There was no accusation in this, just a melancholy statement of fact. Buddenbaum started to speak, but Seth cut him off short. "I was down there, Owen," he said, nodding at the street. "You were going to go without me, wherever it was."

"I got distracted," Owen said, "that's all. I've waited so long for this; I couldn't afford to let it slip."

"It slipped anyway," Seth reminded him. "It won't happen again," Owen replied tersely. "By God it won't."

::How will you prevent it?"

I need your help, Seth," Buddenbaum said. "And I promise-"

"Don't promise me anything," Seth said. "It's better that way." Buddenbaum sighed. "It's taken us so little time to grow apart," he said to Seth. "It's as though we've had half a lifetime together in forty-eight hours."

Seth gazed out of the window. "What do you want me to do?" he said.

"Find Tesla Bombeck, and make peace with her. Tell her I need to see her. Say whatever you have to say to bring her here. No, not here.... He thought of Rita, hair piled high. "There's a little cafe I went to. I don't remember the name. It had a blue sign@'

"The Nook."

"That's it. Bring her there. And tell her to keep the avatars out of earshot, huh?" "How will she do that?" "She'll find a way." "Okay.

And you want me to bring her to the Nook?" "If she'll come." "And what if she won't?" "Then it will all have been for nothing," Owen said.

"And I'll be wishing I had your angels to listen for." v When Harry emerged from the trees the night had become completely still. There was not a murmur in the air, nor in the grass, nor in the cracks of the rocks. Once he'd climbed far enough to he able to see over the tops of the trees, he order to evacuate had gone out, and he would see the town deserted. But no. The lights still burned; there was still traffic in the streets. It was simply that the mist that covered the door at the top of the slope soaked up every sound, leaving the area so hushed he could hear his own heart, beating in his head.

"This is where it happened," Coker Ammiano said to Erwin as they followed D'Amour across the slope towards the mist.

"The hangings?"

"No. The great battle between the families of Summa Summamentis and Ezso Aetherium. A very terrible day brought about by a child."

"You were there?"

"Oh yes. I was there. And I married the child, a little later. Her name was Maeve O'Connell, and she was the most miraculous woman I ever encountered." "How so?"

"Everville was her dream, passed down to her by her father, Harmon O'Connell."

"Harmon as in Heights?"

"The same."

"Did you know him too?" "No. He was dead before I met her. She was wandering here alone, and she came where she was not welcome. It was a simple mistake."

"And just by coming here she caused a slaughter?"

"By coming here and speaking."

"Speaking? "

"There was a wedding, you see, being celebrated up there"-he pointed towards the mist-"and it was the belief in the world from which the families came that silence was sacred, because it preceded the beginning. Love was made in silence. And anyone who broke such a silence was counted the enemy,"

"So why didn't they just kill the girl?"

"Because the families were old enemies, and each thought the child was an agent of the other. As soon as she spoke, they massacred each other."

"Right here?"

"Right here," Coker said. "If we wanted to, I'm sure we could sink into the earth and find their bones."

"I'll stay where I can see the sky," Erwin said.

"it is very beautiful tonight," Coker said, throwing back his head to study the stars. "Sometimes it seems I've been alone for a hundred lifetimes, and sometimes-tonight, for instance-it's as if we only parted glances a few hours ago." He let out a strange sound, and when Erwin looked at him he saw that tears were spilling down his cheeks. "Hers were the last eyes I saw. I felt them on me, as I was dying. And I tried to hold on to life, just a while. Tried to keep looking at her, to comfort her the way she was comforting me...." He had to stop for a moment to recover himself. "But the life went out of me before it went out of her. And when I came into this"-he opened his hands in front of him@'this life after death, her body had been taken, and so had my son's."

"No wonder you hated Dolan so much."

"Oh, I hated him. But he was human. He couldn't help himself."

:'Were your people so perfect then?" Erwin said.

'There's no difference between my people and yours," Coker replied.

"Give or take a wing or a tail. We're all the same in our hearts. All sad and cruel." He paused, wiping the tears away, and as he did, glanced up the slope. "I think our friend D'Amour is having a problem," he said.

In the last few minutes, during their tearful exchange, Erwin and Coker had dropped maybe fifty yards behind D'Amour, who was within a few strides of the mist. Plainly he had sensed the enemy, because he now fell to the ground behind a boulder, and lay still. Moments later, the problem Coker had spoken of emerged from the mist in the form of not one but four individuals, each of them of competitive ugliness: one a sliver, one obese; one bovine, one bilious.

The thinnest of them was also the most eager, and came down the slope twenty yards (passing by the place where D'Amour lay) sniffing the air.

"I think maybe it's us they're after," Coker said. "What the bell are they?"

"Creatures of Quiddity," Coker replied.

"Appalling."

"I'm sure they'd say the same about you," Coker remarked. The thin creature was heading on down the incline, and it did indeed seem that he was closing on the ghosts.

"What do we do?" Erwin said. The closer the creature got the more distressing he appeared to be.

"He can't do us any harm," Coker said. "But if they see D'Amour@'

The rake-thin creature seemed to be staring right @it Erwin, which he found deeply disquieting. "It sees me," Erwin said.

"I doubt it." "It does, I tell you!"

"Well you were carping about being invisible on the way up. You can't have it-Damn!"

"What?"

"They've found him." Erwin looked past the thin man, and saw perhaps the most brutal of the creatures catching hold of D'Amour and dragging him to his feet. "This is our fault," Coker said. "I'm damn sure it's us they came looking for." Erwin was not so certain, but there was no doubt that D'Amour was in serious trouble. One of the quartet had disarmed him, another was beating him about the face. As for the creature that had come down the slope, it had turned from Erwin and Coker, and was making its way back to join its companions, who were now dragging their prisoner into the mist.

"What do we do?" Erwin said.

"We follow," Coker said. "And if they kill him we apologize."

Last time Harry had climbed the Heights, Voight's tattoos had allowed him to reach the very threshold undetected. But the trick hadn't worked this time. He didn't know why, and in truth it didn't matter. He was in the hands of his enemies-Gamaliel the stick-insect, Bartho the crucified, Mutep the runt, and Swanky the obese. There was nothing to be done about it.

He didn't attempt to resist them, in part because he knew it would only invite violence, and in part because after fill he'd come up the slope to see what the Devil looked like an theyweretakinghimtothedoorthroughwhichit-would come, so why resist?

And there was a third reason. These creatures were cousins of the demon that had taken Father Hess's life. He didn't understand the genealogy of it, but he knew by their chatter and their frenzy and their stench that they were somehow connected. Perhaps then, in the final minutes before the lad's arrival, he might learn from one or other of these horrors what the message from Lazy Susan meant.

"I ani you and you are love-"

Even at the end, was love what made the world go round?

Pr FIVE

it wasn't dark in the belly of the lad Uroboros, nor was it light. There was only an absence@f light and dark, of height and depth, of sound and texture-that might have passed for oblivion itself had Joe not been able to list all that it lacked. The oblivion, he was sure, would be a thoughtless condition.

So what was this place, and he in it? was he a ghost of some kind, haunting the Iad's head? Or a soul, trapped in the flesh of the beast, until it puked him up or pefished? He felt no threat to his existence here, but he suspected his hold on who he was would quickly become slippery. it would only be a matter of time before his thoughts lost coherence, and he forgot himself completely.

That prospect had seemed attractive enough when he'd been standing by the pool in the temple. He'd lived his life and was ready to give it up. But now, as he floated (if a thing without substance could be said to float) in the emptiness, he i wondered if perhaps his presence here had been planned or predicted by the Zehrapushu. He remembered how hungrily the first 'shu he'd encountered, on the shore outside Liverpool, had studied him. Had it, or the mind of which it was part, been sizing him up for some role in events to come, peering beyond the flesh of him to see if he'd be worth a damn in the belly of the lad?

if s@if there was indeed a purpose in his being here then it was his duty to the 'shu, whose gaze was without question one of the most wonderful experiences of his travels, to preserve whatever part of him remained-his memory, his spirit, his soul-and not succumb to forgetfulness. Name yourself, he thought. At least remember that. He had no mouth, of course, nor tongue nor lips nor lungs. All he could do was think: I am Joe Flicker. I am Joe Flicker. Doing so had an instant effect. The featureless state convulsed, and forms began to become available to his soul's senses.

He had no way of knowing his true scale here, of course. Perhaps he was tiny in this formless form-like a mote seen in a shaft of sunlight-in which case all that was congealing around him was not titanic, as it seemed, but he, its witness, a fleck. Whichever was true, he felt insignificant in the presence of these cohering shapes. He turned his sight around, and in every direction, rising to the domed darkness above him, where ragged shapes moved as though it were the breeding place for men-o'-war, down to the pit-lined with heaving abstractions-below him, was a latticework of encrusted matter.

He was by no means certain that these sights were real the way the body lying beside the temple pool below had been real. Perhaps they were simply thoughts in the head of lad Uroboros, and he was present in the midst of some ladic vision of heaven and hell: a firmament of unfinished angels, a pit of nonsenses and in between a sprawling and infinitely complex web of knotted and corrupted memories.

There were places, he saw, where the strands seemed to become clotted, forming large, almost egg-shaped masses. His curiosity as to their nature was enough to propel.him; he'd no sooner puzzled over them than his spirit was moving towards the largest in his immediate vicinity. The closer he came to it the more its appearance distressed him. Whereas the encrustations on the web were organic, the surface of the egg was of another order completely. It was a mass of overlapping forms, like the pieces of a lunatic jigsaw, each failing to quite mesh with the one below, and each worked with an obsessively complex design.

Nor was its appearance the only source of distress. A sound was emanating from it; or rather, several sounds, warming together. One was like the whispers of children; was a slow, arrhythmical throb, like the beat of a failing art. And the third was a whine that wormed its way into Joe's thoughts as if to disconnect them.

He was tempted to retreat, but he resisted, and pressed his spirit on, more certain with every moment that there was great pain here; nearly unendurable pain, in fact. The surface of the form was a catalogue of lunatic motions: tics and spasms and twitches, the jigsaws pieces coming away in a hundred places like shed scales, while others, thorny and raw in their budding form, unfurled.

Off to his left, something iridescent caught his eye, and he looked its way to see that the shedding had momentarily revealed what lay beneath this maddened, whispering mass. He moved towards it, and for the first time since approaching the egg had the sense that his presence had been noted. The motions became more fevered the closer to the sliver of iridescence he came, and all around the place the scaly pieces oozed a dark fluid, as if to conceal the spot while they bred a more permanent cover. Joe was not deceived. He closed on the sliver, certain there was some vital mystery here, and in response the motions became more frenzied until suddenly the tremors seemed to reach critical mass and a dozen shapes rose from the surface, surrounding him.

None of them made much literal sense. He could not distinguish a limb, or a head, much less an eye or a mouth. But they gaped and twitched and swelled in ways that evoked a parade of abominations. Something gutted, but living; something aborted, but living; something decayed into muck, but living and living. Though he'd left his body behind him and thought himself free of it, these horrors reminded him of every wound he'd ever suffered, of every sickness, of every weakness.

He had come too close to the iridescence to be frightened off, however. Turning his sight from these manifestations he slipped through their net, and into the midst of whatever secret they concealed.

He was delivered into a curving channel, down which he flew. It rapidly began to narrow, and narrow, as though he were in an ever-closing spiral. The light that had called him here did not diminish as he traveled, but remained steady as the curves tightened, the channel so narrow now he was certain a hair could not have been threaded through it. And still it grew narrower, until he began to think it would wink out of existence completely, and perhaps take him along with it. He'd no sooner formed this thought than his progress seemed to slow, until he was barely moving. Even at a creeping pace, however, the spiral was here so tight he kept turning and turning on himself, until at last all motion ceased. He waited in the gleaming channel, puzzled. And then, slowly, the realization rose in him that he was not alone. He looked ahead, and though he could see nothing, he was aware that something was staring back at him.

He returned the gaze, without fear, and as he did so images began to erupt among his thoughts: beautiful, simple images of the world he'd left behind.

A field of lush grass, through which a tidal wind was moving. A porch, overgrown with scarlet bougainvillea, where a child with white-blonde hair was laughing. A doughnut shop at dusk, with the evening star above it, set in a flawless blue. Somebody was dreaming here, he thought; yearning for the Helter Incendo. And it was someone who had been there and seen these sights with their own eyes.

Human. There was something human here. A prisoner of the lad, he assumed, trapped in this gleaming spiral, and guarded by reminders of flesh and its frailties.

He had no way of questioning it; no way of knowing if it had simply folded him into its visions, had comprehended that it was no longer alone. If the latter, then perhaps he could liberate it; lead it out of its dreaming cell. He turned his curious spirit around, and began to make his way back along the channel, hoping that the prisoner would follow. He was not disappointed. After a few seconds of travel, the channel widening once more, he glanced back and felt the eyeless stare upon him.

The escape, however, was not without consequence. Even as he picked up his pace, fractures appeared in the walls around them, and the fluid he'd seen ooze between the scales when he'd first approached the channel trickled into view. It was not, he now comprehended, the blood of the lad, but rather its raw stuff, turning even as it appeared into the same wretched, sickening forms. But for all their burgeoning vileness, there was something about their spread that smacked of desperation. Did he dare believe that they, or the mind that directed them, was afraid? Not of him, perhaps, but of whatever came on his spirit-heels; the dreamer he'd woken with his presence?

The further the two spirits traveled, the more certain he became that this was so. The fractures were fissures now, the lad's mud spilling into their path. But they were quicksilver. Before the Iad could block their path with atrocities they were escaping the spiral, dodging between the entities that had risen from the prison in all directions. Some seemed to have fashioned wings from their flayed hides, others had the appearance of things turned inside out; others still were like flocks of burned birds, sewn into a single anguished form. they came after the escapees in a foul horde, their whispers rising to shrieks now, their bodies colliding with the strands and dragging them after, so that when Joe glanced back the web was shaking in all directions, and sending down a rain of dead matter, which beat upon his spirit like a black hail.

It rapidly became so thick, this hail, that he lost contact with the dreamer completely. He tried to turn back and find his fellow spirit, but the horde had grown apace, and came at him like a raging wall, pressing a gust of hail ahead of it. He felt himself struck over and over, each assault beating him back and blinding him as it did so, until he could no longer see the dome or the pit, or anything between. He reeled in darkness for a few moments, not knowing which way he had come, and then, to his astonishment, a blaze of light enveloped him and he was failing through the empty air. Below him he saw the dream-sea churned into a frenzy by the Iad's approach, and beyond it a city in whose harbor the ships were lifted so high they would soon be pitched into the streets.

It was Liverpool, of course. In the time he'd adventured in the lad's head or belly the creature had strode across Quiddity, and was almost at the threshold between worlds. He had time, as he fell in the midst of lad's hail, to look along the shore towards the door. It was still wreathed in mist, but he could see the dark crack, and thought perhaps he glimpsed a star gleaming in the sky over Harmon's Heights.

Then he struck the waters amid a hail of ladic matter, and before he could free his spirit of its weight a wave rose beneath him, and bearing him up amid a raft of detritus, carned him on towards the city streets, where it left him, stranded in the shadow of the power that had shit him out.

Six

"Lucky Joe," said the face looming over Phoebe. It was as cracked as Unger's Creek in a drought.

Phoebe raised her head off the hard pillow. "What about him?"

"I'm just saying, he's damn lucky, the way you talk about him."

"What was I saying?"

"Mostly just his name," King Texas replied.

She looked past his muddy shoulder. The cave behind him was vast, and filled with people, standing, sitting, lying down.

"Did they hear me?" she asked Texas.

He smiled conspiratorially. "No," he said. "Only me."

"Have I broken any bones?" she said, looking down at her body.

"Nothing," he said. "I'd never let a woman's blood be spilled down here."

"What is it? Bad luck?"

"The worst," he said. "The very worst."

"What about MusnakaflP"

"What about him?"

"Did he survive?" King Texas shook his head. "So you saved me but not him?"

"I warned her, didn't I?" he said, almost petulantly. "I said I'd kill him if she didn't turn back."

"He wasn't to blame."

"And neither am I," Texas said. "She's the trouble. Always was."

"So why don't you just put her out of your mind? You've got plenty of company."

"No I don't."

"What about them?" she said, pointing to the assembly on his back.

"Look again," he said.

Puzzled, she sat up, and scanning the assembly, realized her error. What she had taken to be a congregation of living souls was in fact a crowd of sculptures, some set with fragments of glittering ore, some roughly hewn from blocks of stone, some barely human in shape.

"Who made them?" she said. "You?"

"Who else?" "You really are alone down here?"

"Not by choice. But yes."

"So you made these to keep you company?"

"No. they were my attempts to find some form that would win Mistress O'Connell's affections."

Phoebe swung her legs off the bed and got to her feet. "Is it all right if I look at them?" she asked him.

"Help yourself," he told her, standing aside. Then, as she walked past him he murmured, "I could forbid you nothing."

She pretended not to hear the remark, suspecting it would only open a subject she was not willing to address.

"Did she ever see any of these faces?" she asked him, wandering between the statues.

"One or two," he replied, somewhat mournfully. "But none of them made any impression upon her."

"Maybe you misunderstood-" Phoebe began.

"Misunderstood what?"

"The reason she doesn't care for you any longer. I'm sure it's nothing to do with the way you look. She's halfblind anyway."

"So what does she want from me?" King Texas wailed. "I built her highways. I built her a harbor. I leveled the ground so that she could dream her city into being."

"was she beautiful?" Phoebe said.

"Never."

"Not even a little?"

"No. She was antiquated even when I met her. And she'd just been hanged. Filthy, foul-mouthed-"

"But?"

"But what?"

"There was something you loved."

"Oh yes... " he said softly.

"What?"

"The fire in her, for one. The appetite in her. And the stories of course." "She told good stories?"

"She's got Irish blood, so of course." He smiled to himself. "That's how she made the city," he explained. "She told it. Night after night. Sat on the ground and told it. Then she'd sleep, and in the morning what she'd told would be there. The houses. The monuments. The pigeons. The smell of fish. The fogs. The smoke. That's how she made it all. Stories and dreams. Dreams and stories. It was wonderful to watch. I think I was never so much in love as those mornings, getting up and seeing what she'd made."

Listening to his reverie, Phoebe found herself warming to him. He was probably a fool for love, just as Maeve had said, and clearly that had made him a little crazed, but she understood that feeling well enough.

There was a rumbling now, from somewhere up above them. A patter of dust fell from the cracked ceiling.

"The lad has arrived," he said. "Oh my God."

His pebble eyes rolled in his sockets. "I think it's overturning her city," he said. There was a calm sadness in his voice.

"I don't want to be buried down here."

"You're not going to die," he said. "What I told Maeve is true. The lad will pass over, but the rock will remain. You're safe here with me."

The tremors came again. Phoebe shuddered. "Come into my ar7ns if you're nervous," Texas said. '

"I'm okay," she replied. "But I would like to see what's going on up there."

"Easy," he replied. "Come with me."

As he led her through the labyrinth of his kingdom@n the walls of which he'd configured and reconfigured his face ten thousand times, rehearsing it for a love scene he'd now never play-he meditated aloud about life in the rock. But with the turmoil from above escalating with every stride she took, and the walls creaking and stones pattering down, she caught only fragments of what he was saying.

"It's not solid at all," he said at one point, "everything flows, if you watch it for long enough...

And a little later: "A fossil heart, that's what I've got... ut it still aches and aches... "

And later still: "San Antonio is the place to die. I wish I had flesh still, to lay down in the Alamo... Finally, after maybe ten minutes of such bits and pieces, he led her into a sizable chamber, the entire floor of which was raked and polished. There, in the very ground beneath her feet, was a periscopic reflection of what was going on above ground- It was an awe-inspiring sight: the seething darkness of the lad's body invading the streets of the city she'd been walking in just hours before, carrying before it remnants of the places it had laid waste on its way here. She saw a head lopped from some titanic statue rolling down one of the streets, felling entire buildings as it went. She saw what looked to be a small island deposited in the middle of a city square. Several ships had come to rest among the spires of the cathedral, and their sails had unfurled as if to bear it away before the next wind.

And among this debris, in numbers beyond counting, were creatures trawled from the depths of the dream-sea by the lad's passage. The least of them were fantasias on the theme of fish: gleaming shoals of visionary life, thrown up in waves above the city's roofs, then falling in glorious profusion. Far more extraordinary were the creatures drawn up, Phoebe supposed, from Quiddity's deepest trenches, their forms inspired by (or inspirations for) the tales of mariners the world over. was that glistening coil not a sea-serpent, its eyes burning like twin furnaces in its hooded head? And that beast wrapping its arms around the masks of a grounded cutter, was that not the mother of all octopi?

"Damn it," King Texas said. "I never liked competing with that city of hers for her attention, but this is no way for t to end."

Phoebe said nothing. Her gaze had gone from the debris to the lad itself. What she saw put her in mind of a disease-a terrible, implacable, devouring disease. It had no face. It had no malice. It had no guilt. Perhaps it didn't even have a mind. It came because it could; because nothing stopped it.

"It's going to destroy Everville," she said to Texas.

"Maybe.

"There's no maybe about it," she protested.

"Why should you care?" he said. "You don't love it there, do you?"

"No," Phoebe said. "But I don't want to see it destroyed either."

"You don't have to," Texas said. "You're here with me.

Phoebe pondered this a moment. Plainly she wasn't going to get him to intervene on her behalf. But maybe there was another way. "If I were Maeve-2' she began.

"You're too sane." "But if I were-if I'd founded a city the way she'd founded Everville, not with dreams but with plain hard work@'

"Yes?"

"And somebody protected it for me, kept my city safe-2'

She let the notion trail. There was fifteen seconds of silence, while Liverpool shook and trembled under their feet. Then he said, "Would you love that somebody?"

"Maybe I would," she said.

"Oh my Lord-" he murmured.

"It looks like the lad's giving up on the city," she said. "It's starting to move along the shore."

"My shore," King Texas said. "I'm the rock, remember?" He crossed the mirror to where she stood and laid his mud hand upon her cheek. "Thank you," he said. "You've given me hope." He turned from her, saying,

"Stay here.

"I don't@' "Stay, I said. And watch."

During the voyage to Mem-6 b'Kether Sabbat, Noah Summa Summamentis had spoken of the lad Uroboros's power to induce terror by its very proximity, but until now-when Joe entered the streets of Livetpool-he had seen no evidence of that power. In b'Kether Sabbat the lad's malevolence had been held in thrall to the 'shu, and by the time it had been unleashed Joe was a spirit, and apparently immune to its influence. But the survivors who wandered through the shaking desolation were plainly victims, shrieking and sobbing for relief from the madness overwhelming them. Some had succumbed to it, and sat in the rubble with blank faces. Others were driven to terrible acts of self-harm to stop the horrors, beating their heads against stones, or tearing at their chests to still their hearts.

Powerless to help them, Joe could only wander on, determined to at least be a witness to what the lad perpetrated. Perhaps there was some higher court in which its crimes would be judged. If so, he would testify.

There was a large bonfire burning in the street ahead, its flames brightening the filthy air. Approaching, he saw that it was attended by perhaps twenty people, who were circling it hand in hand, praying aloud.

"You who are divided, be whole in our hearts-"

Surely they were appealing to the 'shu, he thought.

"You who are divided-"

Their prayer apparently went unheard, however. Though the lad had left off its destruction of the city there were remnants of its shadow presence haunting the streets, and one such portion, no more than a dozen feet tall, and resembling a pillar of darkness, was approaching the fire from the far end of the street. One of the group, a young woman with a mouth that resembled a fleshy rose, broke the circle and started to retreat from the fire, shaking her head wildly. The worshipper to her left caught hold of her hand and proceeded to haul her back to the fire.

"Hold on!" he said to her. "It's our only hope!" But the damage had been done. The circle, once broken, ad lost any chann it might have possessed, and now each of the worshippers succumbed to the lad's baleful influence. One of the men pulled out a knife and proceeded to threaten the air in front of him. Another reached into the flames, searing his hand and yelling for some horror or other to keep away from him.

As he did so, he looked up through the fire, and his agonized face suddenly cleared of its confusions. He pulled his hand out of the fire and stared at Joe.

"Look... " he murmured. Joe was as astonished as the man witnessing him. "You see me?" he said.

The man failed to hear him. He was too busy yelling for his fellow worshippers to "Look! Look!"

Another had seen him now; a woman whose face was a mass of bruises, but who at the sight of him broke into an ecstatic smile.

"Look how it shines-" she said.

"It heard," somebody else murmured. "We prayed and it heard."

"What are you seeing?" Joe said to them. But they made no sign of hearing him. they simply watched the place where his spirit stood, and wept and gaped and offered up thanks.

One of their number looked back down the street towards the approaching lad. It was approaching no longer. Either it had been recalled into the body of its nation, or else it had retreated from the force of joy that suddenly surrounded the fire.

The young woman who had first broken the circle now approached Joe. There were tears running down her cheeks, and her body was shaking, but she was fearless in her desire to touch this vision.

"Let me know you," she said as she raised her hand towards Joe. "Be with me forever and ever."

The words, and the need in her eyes, disturbed him. Whatever had happened here, it was nothing he comprehended, much less sought. He was still Joe Flicker. Still and only.

"I can't. he said, though he knew they couldn't hear him, and willed himself away from the place.

It was harder to leave than it'd been to arrive. Their. gazes seemed to slow him, and he had to struggle to free himself from them.

Only when he was fifty yards away down the street, and their desire no longer held a claim over him, did he dare look back. they were in each other's arms, weeping for joy. All except the woman who'd tried to touch him. She was still looking down the street in his direction, and though he was too far from her to see her eyes he felt her gaze upon him, and knew he would not readily be free of it.

"Texas!" Phoebe yelled. "Damn you, can you hear me?"

She had long ago vacated the mirror chamber for the very good reason that it was close to collapse. Now, in a tunnel lined with his faces, she stood and demanded his presence. He didn't come, however. Remembering how much the thought of a woman's blood being spilled here had distressed him, she dug through the rock shards underfoot until she located something sharp, pulled up her sleeve, and without giving herself time to think twice, opened a four-inch cut just above her wrist. Her blood had never looked redder. She squealed with the pain of it, but she let it flow, and flow, sinking back against the wall as her head spun. "What are you doing?"

Almost instantly he rose before her in the form of liquid rock, raging.

"I told you: no blood!"

"So get me out of here," she said, chilly with a sudden sweat "or I'll just keep bleeding."

The shaking was getting worse by the moment. In the walls there was a grinding sound, as though some vast engine was slipping its gears.

"I am the rock," he said.

"So you keep saying."

"If I said you were safe, then safe you were."

The wall behind her shook so violently several of his rejected faces cracked and fell to the ground. "Are you going to take me up, or not?" she said.

"I'll take you," he said, unknitting his feet from the floor of the passage and approaching her. "But you must come with me on my terms."

She looked at him through a throbbing haze. "What... are... your terms?" she said. His face was cruder than she'd previously seen it, she realized, like a mask hewn with a dull axe.

"If I take you," he said, "then it must be here." He opened his arms.

"For your safety, you must be cradled in the rock. Agreed?"

She nodded. It was not such a terrible idea. He was a King, he was a rock, and he had a heart for love, even if it was a fossil. "Agreed," she said, and clamping her hand to her cut arm to stem the flow, let him gather her into his embrace.

Grillo was no expert when it came to babies but he was damn sure the sound coming from the child in Jo-Beth's arms wasn't healthy.

"What's wrong with her?" he said.

"I don't know."

"It sounds like she's choking."

"I think maybe you should stop."

The baby seemed to be having minor convulsions now, and with every bump in the road they were worsening. Grillo slowed down a little, but Jo-Beth wasn't satisfied. "Stop!" she said. "Just for a minute or two,"

He glanced down at little Amy, who was making a pitiful sobbing sound. Reluctantly, he pulled over and brought the car to a halt, "She wants her Daddy," Jo-Beth said.

"He'll catch us up."

"I know," the girl went on. The child's sobs were subsiding now. "Why don't you leave us here?" she said. "He won't come looking for you, as long as he's found us."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"I know you did what you thought was right. But it wasn't. Amy knows it and so do I."

"You're talking about Tommy-Ray-" Grillo said softly.

"We have to be together," she said. "Or we'll die. We'll all of us die."

Grillo looked back down at the child in her arms. "I n't know whether you're mixed up, fucked up, or just lain crazy, but I'm not trusting you with Amy any longer." He reached down to take the baby from her. She instantly drew the child tight to her body, but Grillo wasn't about to be denied. He dug his arm down around the bundle and pulled Amy out of her mother's arms.

to his surprise, Jo-Beth didn't attempt to reclaim her. Instead she glanced back down the road.

"He's coming," she said, reaching for the handle of the door.

"Stay inside."

"But he's coming-"

"I said@'

Too late. She had the handle down, and was pushing open the door. He grabbed for her arm, and caught it momentarily, but she slipped him and stumbled out into the road.

"Get back in here!" he yelled.

A gust of wind rocked the car. Then a second, more violent than the first. Jo-Beth was standing in the middle of the road now, turning on her heels, and lightly touching her breasts. Again, the car rocked. This time Grillo knew he couldn't wait for her. If he got out to fetch her, she'd outrun him, and all the time her beloved Death-Boy was getting closer,closer.

He gently laid the child on the passenger seat and was reaching over to pull the door closed when a blast of bitter, dirty air hit him in the face, sending him sprawling across the seat. The back of his skull hit the window hard, but grabbing the wheel he started to haul himself up again, reaching for the baby with his free hand as he did so. The dust was filling the interior, forming fingers to scrabble at his eyes, and reaching down into his throat to choke him.

Blinded, he kept reaching for the child, as the car's rocking became steadily more violent. He found the blanket, and began to pull it towards him, but as he did so the ghosts pushed the car over onto two wheels, where it teetered, its metalwork creaking. He inched the blanket towards him, fearful that at any moment the dusty dead would claim the baby from its folds, while the legion threw its will and wind against the car, plainly determined to overturn it. Perhaps some of his tormentors had been summoned to help, because the fingers tearing at his eyes and throat had retreated. He wiped his face against his shoulder to clear his sight, and opened his eyes only to find that the blanket in his hand was empty. Grabbing the dashboard he hauled himself up towards the open door, determined to get Amy back. The windshield shattered as he climbed, and through the dust he saw the abductors' faces, four or five of them, carved of the dirty air, and leering at his desperation.

"Bastards!" he yelled at them. "Bastards!"

The sound of his voice brought a sob, not from the ghosts but from Amy. They'd not taken her after all; she'd slipped between the front seats, and was lying, as yet unharmed, on the floor behind him.

"It's okay," he said to her, forsaking his handhold to reach for her. As he did so the car's teeterings reached the point of no return, and it was flung over onto its side. Through the din of breaking glass and concertinaed metal he heard the voice of the Death-Boy, roaring, "Stop!"

The order came too late. The car was pushed over onto its roof, which buckled under the impact. The remaining windows blew inwards, the glove-compartment spilled its contents. Tumbling in a hail of trash, Grillo's instincts overtook his conscious thought, and he drew the baby into his arms as he fell. His frail body snapped and tore. He felt something in his belly and chest, like a sudden dyspepsia.

Then the vehicle rocked to a halt, and there was something close to silence. For a moment he thought the child was dead, but it seemed she was simply shocked into silence, because he heard her ragged breathing close to him in the darkness.

He was upside-down, his legs akimbo, and something hot was running down his body from his groin. He smelled it now, sharp and familiar. He was pissing himself. Very gingerly he tried to shift himself, but there was something preventing him doing so. He reached up to his chest and his fingers found a spike of wet metal sticking out of his body a few inches behind his left clavicle. It gave him no pain, though there was little doubt he was skewered from back to front.

"Oh Lord he said to himself, very softly, then bly reached out towards the source of Amy's breathing. motion seemed to take an age. He had time, while he ached and reached, to think of Tesla and hope she would be spared the sight of him like this. She had endured so much and after all her searching and suffering had gained so very little.

His fingers had found Amy's face, and inch by inch he passed his hand over her tiny body. His hand was becoming numb, but as far as he could gather she was not bloodied, which was some comfort. Then, as he once again reached up to her face she took hold of his finger and grasped it.

He was astonished at her strength. Delighted too, for it surely meant she'd not sustained any significant harm. He demanded his body draw a little extra breath, and his muscles obliged him. He drew a sip of air into his seeping lungs, enough for a word or two.

He used it wisely.

"I'm here," he said to Amy, and died so quietly she didn't know he'd gone.

Even before they rounded the corner Tesla heard the ghost's cacophony: a rising wail of complaint. She pulled the bike over, and parked on the curve, just out of sight.

"Whatever we find around that corner," she told Howie as they dismounted, "keep control of yourself."

"I just want my wife and baby back."

"And we'll get them," Tesla said. "But Howie, brute force isn't going to do us any good. One word and we're both dead. Think about that. You're not going to be much use to Jo-Beth and Amy dead."

Point made, Tesla headed off round the corner. There were no streetlights along the road, but there was enough light from moon and stars for the scene to be plain enough. Grillo's car sat battered and overturned. Jo-Beth was standing clear of it, apparently unharmed. There was no sign of either Grillo or the baby.

As for Tommy-Ray, he was disciplining his troops, the ghosts gathered around his feet like a pack of beaten cuts.

"Fucking stupid!" he yelled at them. "Stupid!"

He reached down into their shifting substance and hauled two ragged handfuls of it up towards his face. It hung from his fingers in tatters.

"Why don't you learn?" he raged.

The murmurs of the ghosts grew more panicky. Some of them turned their wretched faces up towards him in supplication. Others hid their heads, apparently knowing what was coming.

Tommy-Ray opened his mouth, wider than any natural anatomy allowed, and put the muck-laced ether between his teeth. Then he literally inhaled it, sucking the dirty air into his body. Tesla saw two phantom faces, sobbing and gasping, disappear down the Death-Boy's gullet, while the next in line scrabbled to avoid joining them. But the lesson was apparently over, because now he grabbed the strands of matter that hung from the corners of his mouth and bit down on them, grinding them between his teeth. The ether dropped away from either side of his chin. He let the severed ends drop.

The survivors murmured their gratitude and shrank away.

The whole episode had taken perhaps fifteen seconds, during which time Tesla and Howie had halved the distance between the corner and the wreckage. they were now no more than twenty-five yards from the car, and in danger of being seen if Tommy-Ray chanced to look in their direction. Luckily, he had another distraction: Jo-Beth. He had gone to her and was speaking to her face to face. She didn't retreat from him. Even when his hands went up to her face-stroked her cheek, her hair, her lips-she stood unmoving before him.

"Christ... " Howie murmured.

Tesia glanced over her shoulder. "There's something alive in there," she said, nodding back at Grillo's car.

Howie looked. "I don't see anything," he said, his gaze returning to the dalliance between the twins.

"He can't do that," he growled, and pushing past Tesia, started towards them. He was gone so fast Tesla had no choice but to act out at the same time. She moved off towards the car, scanning the dark snarl of metal for further evidence of life. She found it too; a tiny motion. She was perhaps a dozen yards from the car now, the stinging smell of gasoline filling her head. Bending low and moving fast she moved round the far side of the vehicle, putting the wreckage between her and Tommy-Ray. Though she tried to tune out his voice, snatches of what he was telling Jo-Beth drifted her way.

"There'll be more... " he murmured. "Lots more...

She knelt in the pooled gasoline and peered into the wreckage, using Tommy-Ray's talk to cover her calling: "Grillo-?"

As she spoke her eyes began to make sense of the tangled forms in front of her. There was an upturned seat; a litter of maps. And there among them, oh God, there, was Grillo's arm. She reached out and touched it, whispering his name again. There was no response. Ducking her head through the broken window she started to pull at the debris blocking her way to him. A drizzle of oil fell in her hair and ran down her face. She wiped it away from her eyes with the back of her hand and attacked the wreckage afresh. A portion of the seat came away this time, which she shoved to the side, offering her a fuller view of him. His face was half-turned towards her, and seeing him she said his name again, knowing in the same moment that her breath was wasted. He was dead, pierced by a spike of metal. Despite the horror of this it seemed from his expression that he'd not died in anguish. His worn face-which she had reached up to touch-was almost serene.

As her fingers grazed his cheek, something moved in the darkness beyond him. Amy; it was Amy! Tesla inched into the creaking wreckage until her face was inches from Grillo's pierced chest and peered over him. There was the baby, her eyes wet and wide in the murk, her hand clutching the index finger of Grillo's left hand.

There was no hope of moving the dead man, Tesla was certain; he and the vehicle were inextricably connected. Her only hope-and Amy's-was to reach over the body, past the spike that had skewered Grillo, and ease the child between the ragged metal overhead and the corpse below' She crawled as far into the wreckage as space would allow, and stretched her arms across Grillo's body-her breasts pressed against his sticky torso-to take hold of the infant.

- I - - @. - - @ @ A. JL As she did so she heard Tommy-Ray's voice,

"Dead - -. " he was saying.

This time there was an audible response. Not from JoBeth, but from Howie. Tesla caught only a few of the words; enough to know he was addressing Jo-Beth, not her brother.

"Keep talking," Tesia murmured. The longer Howie kept Tommy-Ray distracted, the more hope she had of getting the child out.

With some gentle persuasion she succeeded in loosing Amy's hand from Grillo's finger, and now began to lift her over Grillo's body, shimmying backwards as she did so, belly to the roof of the car. The baby was eerily quiet throughout. Shock, Tesla presumed.

"It's okay," she cooed, attempting a Smile of reassurance. Amy looked back at her blankly.

they were almost free of the wreckage now. Certain that she would not lay eyes on Grillo again, she took a moment to study his face, "Soon," she promised him. "Very soon."

Then she knelt up, gathering the baby to her body, and started to et to her feet.

On the other side of the wreckage, Tommy-Ray was yelling. There was a complexity in his voice Tesla had Dever heard before, as though he had assembled a chorus of the dead he'd devoured, and they were weaving their voices with his.

"Tell him-" the voices were saying to Jo-Beth, "tell him the truth-"

Clear of the wreckage now, Tesla dared to stand, assuming (correctly)

the Death-Boy would be too preoccupied to look in her direction. He was standing a little way behind his sister, his hands on her shoulders.

"Tell him how it is between us," the voices out of him said.

Jo-Beth's features were no longer a blank. Face to face with her husband, whose distress was all too apparent, she could not help but be moved. Tommy-Ray shook her a little. "Why don't you just spit it out!" he said.

Finally, she spoke. "I don't know any more," she said.

At the sound of her voice, the baby in Tesla's arms began crying. Tesla froze, as three pairs of eyes were turned towards her.

"Amy!" Jo-Beth sobbed, and breaking from her place between the two men, she started towards Tesla, arms outstretched.

"Give her to me!"

She was a yard or two from the wreckage when Tommy-Ray yelled, "Wait!"

There was such vehemence in his voice she obeyed on the instinct.

"Before you touch that kid," Tommy-Ray demanded, "I want you to tell him who it belongs to."

Tesla could see Jo-Beth's face; the men could not. She could see the conflict written on it. "W-w-what are you t-t-ttalking about?" Howie said.

"I don't think she wants to tell you," Tommy-Ray said. "But I do. I want you to know once and for all. I came calling quite a while back, just to see how my little sister was doing, and we-got together, like you wouldn't believe. The kid's mine, Katz."

Howie's eyes were on Jo-Beth. "Tell him he's a liar," he said. The girl didn't move. "Jo-Beth? Tell him h-h-he's a liar!"

He had taken the gun out of his jacket-Tesla had seen him drop it in the parking lot; he'd obviously snatched it up again before climbing on the back of the bike-and he waved it in Jo-Beth's general direction.

"I w-w-want you t-t-to tell him!" he yelled at her. "H-hhe's a liar!" Tesla's gaze went from his face to the gun to Jo-Beth to the wet ground, and images of the Mail in Palomo Grove filled her head. Fletcher, soaked in gasoline and eager for death by fire. The gun, clutched in her own hand, ready to strike a spark Not again, she prayed. Please God, not again.

Tommy-Ray was still ranting.

"You never had her, Katz. Not really. You thought you did, but she goes deeper than you could ever get." He jiggled his lips as he spoke.

"Real deep."

Howie looked down at the gasoline around his enemy's feet, and without hesitation, fired. The whole sequence of events-the looking and the firing@ould only have occupied three or four seconds, but it was long enough for Tesla to wonder what place synchronicity had upon the story tree.

Then the spark came, and the flame followed, and the air around Tommy-Ray turned gold.

Howie let out a whoop of triumph. Then he turned his gaze on Jo-Beth.

"You still want him?" he yelled.

Jo-Beth let out a sob. "He loves me," she said.

"No!" Howie yelled, striding towards her now. "No! No! No! I'm the one who loves you-" He stabbed at his chest with his finger. "Always did. Before I met you I loved you-,, As he approached her the fire that had bloomed around the Death-Boy moved across the ground in her direction-. She didn't see it. She was too busy yelling at Howie to Stop, please stop "Howie!" Tesla yelled. He looked her way. "The fire, Howie-"

He saw it now. Dropped his gun and raced towards Jo-Beth, shouting to her as he went. Before he'd halved the distance between them the flames that had obscured the Death-Boy parted like a curtain, and Tommy-Ray strode into view. He was blazing from head to foot; fire spurting from his mouth and eye-sockets, from his belly, from his groin. His immolation seemed not to concern him overmuch, however. He advanced upon his sister with an almost casual lope.

She had seen his approach, and would surely have run from him, but the ground at her feet was alight, and as she retreated the flames ignited her dress. She began to shriek, and beat at the fire with her hands, but it quickly consumed the light fabric, leaving her nearly naked for its play.

Howie was a couple of yards from the flames now, and without hesitation he plunged into them, arms outstretched to claim his wife. But the Death-Boy was a yard from him, and caught hold of his jacket collar in his fiery fist. Howie halfturned to beat him back, grabbing at the shrieking Jo-Beth with his free hand. The fire had reached her long hair, and it suddenly ignited, a column of fire rising off her scalp. Howie reached for her, plainly intending to carry her out of the fire. Her arms were open, and as he took hold of her, they closed around him.

Tesla had witnessed horrors apienty along the road that had brought her to this moment, but nothing-not in the Loop, not at Point Zero-as terrible as this. Jo-Beth was no longer shrieking now. Her body was jerking around as though she was in the throes of a fit, her spasms so violent Howie could not carry her out of the fire. Nor could he detach himself. Her blackened arms were molded around him, keeping him a prisoner in the midst of the pyre.

Tommy-Ray had started to shout now: a shrill, lunatic din. He started to tear Howie away from Jo-Beth, or at least tried to, but the fire had spilled from wife to husband, and their bodies had become a single column of flame and flesh. Jo-Beth's spasms had ceased. She was surely dead. But there was life left in Howie still. Enough to raise his hand behind his wife's head, and let it loll on his shoulder, as though the heat were nothing and they were slow-dancing in the flames.

This tender gesture was his last. His withered legs gave out, and he went down onto his knees, carrying Jo-Beth down with him. He made no sound, even to the last. The couple seemed to kneel face to face in the flames, Howie's hand still cradling Jo-Beth's head, Jo-Beth's head still laid upon Howie's shoulder.

As for Tommy-Ray, he now retreated from the bodies towards the far side of the road, where his ghost-legion lingered after their punishment. Whether at his instruction or no, they came to him, and rose around him, blanketing him. The flames were smothered, and he sank down into the midst of his entourage. Sobs escaped him. So did his sister's name, repeated over and over.

Tesla looked back at the fire around Howie and Jo-Beth. With its fuel almost devoured, it had quickly died down. The bodies were shriveled, but it was still possible to make out their arms, wrapped tightly around one another.

Behind her, Testa heard somebody sob. She didn't bother to turn. She knew who it was.

"Satisfied now?" she said to the little girl. "Going to go home?"

"Soon-" came the reply.

This time it was not the floating voice of the child who replied. Puzzled, Tesia looked round. There was a grassy slope behind her, with perhaps half a dozen large bushes planted upon it, all dead. The three witnesses were perched upon the uppermost branches, but so lightly it seemed unlikely they had any weight whatsoever. they had put off their previous appearances in favor of what Tesla assumed were their real faces. they reminded her of porcelain puppets, their heads small, their features simple, their skin nearly white. they were cocooned, however, in garments of papal excess, layer upon gilded layer. There was very little variation among their appearance, but she assumed the individual closest to her had been little Miss Perfection, by the' way she now addressed Tesla.

"I knew we chose well," she, he, or it said. "You are all we hoped you'd be."

Tesla glanced back at Tommy-Ray. He was still blanketed in mist, still grieving. But he'd come for the child sooner or later. This was no time to be quizzing her unwanted patrons in depth. Just a few questions, and she'd have to go.

"Who the hell are you?"

"We are Jai-Wai," the creature replied. "And I am Rare Utu. Yie and Haheh you already know."

"That doesn't tell me anything," Tesia replied. "I want to know what the fuck you are."

"Too long a story to tell you now," Rare Utu replied.

"Then I'm never going to hear it," Tesia said.

"Perhaps it's better that way," Yie replied. "Better you go on your way."

"Yes, go on," the third of the trio said. "We want to know what happens next-2' "Haven't you seen enough?" Tesla said.

"Never," said Rare Utu, almost sorrowfully. "Buddenbaum showed us so much. So much."

"But never enough," Yie said. "Maybe you should try getting involved," Tesla said.

Rare Utu actually shuddered. "We could never do that," she said.

"Never."

"Then you'll never be satisfied," Tesla said, and turning from them, she started back towards her bike, casting glances at Tommy-Ray now and again. She needn't have worried. He was still smothered in the mists of his legion.

She broke a couple of bungee cords out of the tool box and carefully secured the baby to the back seat. Then she started the engine, half expecting the sound to bring the legion scurrying to find her. But no. When she rounded the corner the Death-Boy and his ghosts had not moved. She drove on past them, glancing back once to see if the Jai-Wai had gone from the slope. they had. They'd had the pleasure of the triple tragedy here, damn them, and moved on to find some other entertainment.

She felt nothing but contempt for them. Plainly they were of some higher order of being, but their vicarious interest in the spectacle of human suffering sickened her. Tommy-Ray couldn't help himself. they could.

And yet, for all her rage towards them, the phrase they had repeated over and over kept returning, and would, she supposed, until death deafened her.

What next? That was the eternal inquiry. What next? What next? What next?

"Are they planning to crucify you, D'Amour?"

Harry turned from the crosses in front of which he stood, and looked at the monkish fellow who was emerging from the mist. He was a study in simplicity, his dark clothes without a single concession to vanity, his hair cropped until it barely shadowed his scalp, his wide, plain face almost colorless. And yet, there was something here Harry knew, something in the eyes.

"Kissoon?" The man's blank expression soured. "It is, isn't it?"

"How did you know?"

"Untether me and I'll tell you," Harry said. He'd been tied to a stake driven into the ground.

"I'm not that interested," Kissoon replied. "Did I ever tell you how much I like your name? Not Harold; Harold's ridiculous. But D'Amour. I may take it, when you're up there." He nodded towards the middle cross. Gamaliel and Bartho were in the midst of taking down the woman's body.

"Maybe I'll have a hundred names," Kissoon went on. Then, dropping his voice to a whisper: "And maybe none at all." This seemed to please him.

"Yes, that's for the best. to be nameless." His hands went up to his cheek. "Maybe faceless too.You think the lad's going to make you King of the World'?" Harry said.

"You've been talking to Tesla."

"It's not oing to happen, Kissoon."

"Are you familiar with the works of Filip the Chantiac? No? He was a hermit. Lived on an island, a tiny island, close to the coast of Almoth's Saw. Very few people dared go there- they feared the currents carrying them past the Chantiac's island and washing them up on the lad's shore-but those who did came back with fragments of his wisdom-"

"Which were?"

"I'll get to that. The thing is, Filip the Chantiac had been the ruler of the city of b'Kether Sabbat in his time, and he'd been all the things we pray for our leaders to be. But even so there was dissension and violence and hatred in his city. So one day he said, 'I can't deal with the taint of Sapas Humana any longer,' and took himself off to his island. And at the end of his life, when somebody asked him what he wished for the world, he said, 'I dream only of an end to courage and compassion and devotion. An end to human strength, and to human endurance. An end to brotherhood. An end to sisterhood. An end to defiance in grief, and consolation in laughter. An end to hope. Then we may all return to fishes, and be content."'

"And that's what you want?" Harry said.

"Oh yes. I want an end-"

"to what?" "to that damn city for one," Kissoon replied, nodding down the mountain in the direction of Everville. He came a little closer. Harry scrutinized his face, looking for some crack in the mask, but he could see none. "I spent a lot of time sealing up neirica across the continent," he said. "Making sure that when the lad finally came through it would be over thiv threshold they came."

"You don't even know what they are-"

"It doesn't really matter. They're bringing the end of things. That's what's important."

"And what'll happen to you?"

"I'll have this hill," Kissoon said, "and I'll look down from it on a world of fishes."

"Suppose you're wrong?" "About what?"

"About the lad. Suppose they're pussycats?"

"They're everything that's rotted in us, D'Amour. They're every fetid, fucked-up thing that feeds on our sbit, and waits to be loosed when nobody's looking." He came closer still, until he was just out of Harry's range. His hand had gone to his chest. "Have you looked into the human heart recently?" he said.

"Not in the last couple of days, no."

"Unspeakable, the things in there-"

"In you, maybe."

"Everyone, D'Amour, everyone! Rage and hatred an' d appetite!" He pointed back towards the door. "That's what coming, D'Amour. It won't have a human face, but it')] have a human heart. I guarantee it."

Behind Harry, the body of Kate O'Farrell was dropped to the ground. He glanced back at her, the agony of her last moments fixed upon her face.

"A terrible thing, the human heart," Kissoon was saying. "A very terrible thing."

It took Harry a moment to persuade his eyes from the dead woman's face, as though some idiot part of him thought he might learn some way to avoid her suffering by studying it. When he looked back at Kissoon, the man had turned away, and was heading up the slope again. "Enjoy the view, D'Amour," he said, then was gone.

As Joe left the city streets to follow the lad along the shoreto witness, if nothing more, to witness-the ground began to shudder. to his left, the dream-sea threw itself into a greater frenzy than ever. to his right, the highway that ran along the edge of the beach cracked and buckled, falling away in places. The mass of lad, which was now within two hundred yards of' the door, was apparently indifferent to the tremors. It had resembled many things to Joe in his brief time knowing it. A wall, a cloud, a diseased body. Now it looked to him like a swarm of minute insects so dense it kept every speck of light and comprehension out as it seethed towards its destination, The door had grown considerably in the hours since 'd first stepped through it. Though its lower regions were till wreathed in mist, its highest point was now several hundred yards above the beach, and rising even as he watched, cracking the heavens. If there were angels on the other side, he thought, this would be the time for them to show their faces; to swoop and drive the lad back with their glory. But the crack went on growing, and the lad advancing, and the only response was not from heaven, but from the earth on which his spirit stood The rock's convulsions did not go unfelt on Harmon's Heights. The tremors ran through ground and mist alike, causing some measure of alarm amongst Zury's faction. Harry couldn't see them, but he could hear them well enough, their songs of welcome-which they had only recently begun@ecaying into sobs of fearful expectation as the violence in the rock escalated.

"Something's happening on the shore," Coker said to Erwin. "We should stay away," the lawyer counseled, casting i fearful look up at the crosses. "This is worse than I thought."

"Yes it is,,' Coker said. "But that doesn't mean wt, should be cowards!"

He hurried on, past the crosses and the tethered D'Amour, up the slope, which was rolling in mounting waves. Reluctantly, Erwin followed, more out of a fear that he would lose his one companion in this insanity than from any genuine urge to know what lay ahead. He wished-ah, how he wished-for the life he'd led before he'd found McPherson's confession. For pettiness, for triviality; for all the little things that had vexed him. Digging through hi,; fridge for something that smelled bad; finding a stain on hi,, favorite tie; standing in front of the mirror wishing he hat] more hair and less belly. Perhaps it had been a bland life. puttering on without purpose or direction, but he'd liked its banality, now that he was denied it. Better that than the crosses, and the door, and the whatever was coming through it.

"Do you see?" said Coker, once Erwin had caught up with him.

He saw. How could he not? The door, stretching up through the mist as if eager to pierce the stars. The shore on the far side of it, every rock and pebble upon it rising in a solid wave. And worst of all, the swarming wall of energies approaching across that shore "Is that it?" he said to Coker. He'd expected a more pal-, pable manifestation of the hann it brought. A devourer's tools, a torturer's smm, a lunatic's frenzy: something to advertise its evil. But instead, here was a thing he could have discovered by closing his eyes. The busy darkness behind his lids.

Coker yelled something over his shoulder by way of reply, but it was lost in the tumult. The shore beyond the threshold was convulsing, as though it were a body in the throes of a grand mal, each spasm throwing boulders the size of houses up into the air; and up, and up again, the scale of the seizure increasing exponentially as Erwin watched. Coker, meanwhile, strode on, the ground around him growing increasingly insolid, stones, dirt and plant life melted into filthy stew. It had mounted up to his waist now, and it seemed even his phantom body was subject to its currents, because he was twice thrown off his feet and washed back in Erwin's direction.

He wasn't daring the tide simply to get a better view of the quaking shore. There were two other figures in the grip of this liquid earth-an old woman hanging on to the back of a man who looked to be in the last moments of life-and Coker was struggling to reach them. Blood ran from a grievous wound on the side of the man's head, where something-perhaps a rock-had sheared off his car and opened his scalp to his skull. Why Coker was so interested to study these unfortunates was beyond Erwin, but he strode into the melted dirt himself to find out.

This time he heard what Coker was hollering.

"Oh Mary, mother of God, look at her. Look!"

"What is it?" Erwin yelled back.

"That's Maeve, Toothaker! That's my wife!"

The escalating turmoil had not dissuaded Bartho from his task. The more the ground swayed and shook the more attentive to his duties he became, as though his redemption lay in finishing the business of crucifying D'Amour.

He was bending to the task of untethering Harry to bring him to the cross when one of Blessedm'n Zury's acolytes-a creature with a round, piebald face, and the bow-legged gait of a midget-rolled into view and picked up Bartho's hammer. The crucifer instructed him to put it down, but instead the acolyte rushed at him and struck him in the face, the blow so fast and fierce the bigger man was felled. Before he could get up again the acolyte struck him a second and third time. Pale fluid sprayed from Bartho's cracked skull, and he let out a rhythmical whoop.

If it was a call for help, it went unanswered, or perhaps unheard, given the din that was shaking earth and air. With his whoop failing him Bartho started to rise, but the hammer was there to meet him, and this time cracked his face from chin to brow. He sank down, the blood gushing from him, and lay twitching under the empty cross.

Harry had meanwhile been working at his knotted wrists with his teeth, but before he could free himself the acolyte tossed the bloodied hammer away, pulled a knife from Bartho's belt and waddled over to free the prisoner.

"Doesn't take much, does it?" the man said to Harry, his voice a nasal whine. "One rope and you're reduced to an animal." He worked at the knot with the blade, his back to the crack. "What's going on over there?" he wanted to know.

"I can't make out." The rope was cut, and fell away. "Thank you," D'Amour said. "I don't know why-"

"It's me, Harry. It's Raul." "Raul?"

The round face beamed. "I finally got a body of my own," he said.

"Well, not quite. There's something else in here with me, but it's virtually cretinous."

"What happened to Tesla?"

"I was separated from her, at the threshold. The power there, it's overwhelming. It pulled me out of her head."

"And where is she now?"

"She went to look for Grillo, I think," Raul said. "I'm going to go look for her, before it's all over. I want to make my farewells. What about you?"

Harry's gaze went back to the maelstrom around the door. "When the lad comes-" Raul said.

"I know. It'll take hold of my head and fill it with shit." There were already signs of the lad's proximity in the air. Harry's eyes were stinging, his head whining, his teeth aching. "Is it the Devil, Raul?"

"If you want it to be," Raul replied.

Harry nodded. It was as good an answer as any.

"You're not coming then?" Raul said.

"No," Harry replied. "I came up here to see what the Enemy looks like and that's what I'm going to do."

"Men I'll wish you lucV,,, Raul said, as another wave of shudders Passed through the ground. "I'm out of here, D'Amour!" With that, he turned and stumbled away between the crosses, leaving Harry to continue his interrupted ascent. There were fissures gaping in the ground around him, the widest of them a yard across, and growing. A viscous mess of liquefied earth was rolling down from the area around the crevices, and running off into them.

And beyond it, the neirica itself, which was now fully thirty yards wide, offering Harry a substantial view of the shore. It was no longer the seductive place he'd glimpsed from the chambers of the Zyem Carasophia. The lad's titanic form blocked out the dream-sea, and the shore itself was a rising hail of rock and dirt. It didn't block the lad's influence upon his mind, however. He felt a wave of intense selfrevulsion taint his thoughts. It was a sickness in him, the taint told him, wanting to see this abomination face to face: a disease from which he would deservedly die, He tried to shake the poison from his head, but it wouldn't go. He stumbled on with images of death filling his mind's eye: Ted Dusseldorf's body on a gurney, covered by a sheet; the mangled flesh of the Zyem Carasophia, sprawled around their chamber; Maria Nazareno's corpse, slumped in front of a candle flame. He heard them sobbing all around him, the dead, demanding explanation.

"You never did understand." He looked off to his right, and there, wedged in a fissure, his arms trapped at his sides, was Father Hess. He was wearing the wound Lazy Susan had given him all those years ago, and they were as fresh as if he'd just received them.

"I'm not here to accuse you, Harry," he said. "You're not here, period," Harry said.

"Oh come on, Harry," Hess said, "since when did that matter?" He grinned. "It's not reality that causes the trouble, Harry. It's illusions. You should have learned that by now."

That was all this was, Harry knew: an illusion. He was conjuring it up. Every word, every drop of blood. So why couldn't he just tear his eyes from it and move on? "Because you loved me," Hess said, as though Harry had asked the question aloud. "I was a good man, a loving man, but when it came down to it you couldn't save me." He coughed, bringing up a gruel of bilious water. "That must have been terrible," he said. "to be so powerless." It stared at Harry pityingly. "The truth is, you still are," he said. "Still looking to see the Enemy clearly, just once, just once."

"Are you finished?" Harry said.

"A little closer@' Hess begged.

"What?" "Closer, I said." Harry approached the martyr. "That's better," Hess said. "I don't want this spread around." He dropped his voice to a growl. "It's all done with mirrors," he said, and suddenly his arms sprang from the fissure and seized hold of Harry's lapels. Harry wrestled to escape the illusion's grip, but it dragged him down, inch by inch, and as it did so the flesh of its face seemed to slide away in ribbons. There was no bone beneath. Just a brownish pulp.

"See?" it said, its mouth a lipless hole. "Mirror-men. Both of us."

"Fuck you!" Harry yelled, and pulling himself free of Hess's grip he stumbled backwards.

Hess shrugged and grinned. "You never did understand," he said again.

"I told you over and over and over and over-"

Harry turned his back on the pulpy face.

"And over and over-"

And looked back towards the door. He had a second, perhaps two, to realize that the lad, or some part of it, was no longer in that world but this. Then the ground around the Uroboros rose up in a solid wall and all that had gone before-the din, the tremors, the revulsion-seemed like a dream of perfect peace.

It was the ride of Phoebe's life: cocooned in a stony womb, and carried in the grip of the rock as it rose to block the lad's way. Texas had promised she'd be safe, and safe she was, her capsule home through the convulsing ground and up on fountains of liquid rock with such ease she could have threaded a needle had she wished to take her eyes off the sight he was showing her. The rock was a protean face, shaped and driven by his will. One moment she was plunged into grottoes where the Quiddity ran in icy darkness, the next the strata were dividing before her life so many veils, the next she seemed to he in the midst of a vital body, with liquid rock blazing in its veins, and the King's fossil heart beating like thunder all around.

Sometimes she heard his voice in the walls of her womb, telling her not to be afraid.

She wasn't. Not remotely. She was in the care of living power, and it had made her a promise she believed. The lad, on the other hand, for all its motion and its purpose, reminded her of death. Or rather, of its prelude: of the torments and the hopelessness she'd seen death bring. As it approached the door, and the earth rose up to block its passage, the rock pierced it and clusters of dark matter, almost like eggs, spilled from it, @-di the fouler for their glittering multiplicity. Even if they @vere eggs, Phoebe drought there was death in every gleaming one. When they struck the shore they burst and their gray fluids raced over the stones as if nosing out the darkness beneath.

Wounded though it was, its appetite for the Cosm was not dulled. Besieged by the rock, it continued to advance, thouah the very shore it was crossing had become a second sea, a surf of stone rising up to drive it back.

It was difficult for Phoebe to make out quite what was happening in the chaos, but it seemed that the lad had pressed @i portion of its body towards the threshold and was in the act of crossing over when Texas raised a wall of earth with such speed that he severed the questing limb from the main. The lad let out a sound the like of which Phoebe had never heard in her life, and as it was reeling in its anguish the whole landescape laid before her-highway, dunes, and shore-was Sim ply upended. She saw the lad topple, bursting in a thousand places, spilling its substance, as what had been horizontal moments before rose in a vertical mass above the enemy. It teetered there a long moment.

Then it descended upon the lad-a solid sky, failing and falling@ving the wounded mass into the pit where the shore had been. Even as this spectacle unfolded, Phoebe felt the cocoon shudder, and she was carried away from the maelstrom at speed, deposited at last close to the city limits, where the shore was still intact. She had no sooner come to rest than the cocoon cracked and deteriorated, leaving her exposed. Though she was perhaps two miles from the doorway, the ground was shaking violently and a hail of rock fragments was falling all around, some of the shards big enough to do her damage. Texas had exhausted all his strength, she assumed, to do what he'd done. She could not expect his protection any longer. She got to her feet, though it was difficult to stand upright and, shielding her head with her hands, she stumbled back in the direction of the city.

She returned her gaze along the shore once in a while, but the rain of dust and stones went on relentlessly, and she could see very little through the pall.

Nothing of the lad, certainly, nor of the door through which she'd stepped to come into this terrible world.

Both had disappeared, it seemed: enemy and door alike.

iv The first casualty on the Heights was Zury, who had been standing at the threshold when the shore on the other side k. erupted. Caught by a blast of frac@ rock he was thrown back into the liquefied ground. His acolytes went to dig him out while the lad's vanguard, severed from the main by the wall, thrashed in its fury, stining earth and air alike into chaos. Overturned in the dirt, the Blessedm'n's rescuers drowned along with their master. As for the lad, though it was but a small part of the invader, it was still immense: a ragged, roiling mass of forms, spilling its blood in the neirica's vestibule. The crack convulsed from end to end, as though the violence done in its midst was unmaking it. On the far side, earth and sky seemed to switch places. Then a storm of stones descended, the crack closed like a slammed door, and all that was left on the Heights was chaos on chaos.

Harty had been flung to the shuddering ground before the lad appeared and, certain he would be flung down again if he attempted to rise, stayed where he was. From this vantage point he saw Kissoon walk on the liquefied rock towards the wounded lad. He seemed indifferent to the tremors, and fearless, his head thrown back to study the invader in its frenzy. It seemed to be unraveling. Pieces of its substance, ten, fifteen feet in length were spiraling skyward, trailing sinew; other fragments, the smallest the size of a man, the largest ten times that, were circling in the air, as though hungry to devour themselves. Others still had dropped to the fluid ground, and were immersing themselves in the dirt.

Kissoon reached into his coat, and pulled from its folds the rod Harry had seen him wield in the Zyem Carasophia's chamber. It had been a weapon then. But now, when he raised it above his head, it seemed to offer a point of focus for the lad. they closed upon it from all directions, their torn bodies spilling their filth upon him. He raised his face to meet it as though it were a spring rain.

Harry could watch this no longer. His head was awash with images of the dead and death, his eyes stinging from the sight of Kissoon bathing in the lad's filth. If he didn't go now, despair would have him. He crawled away on his belly, barely aware of his direction, until the crosses came in sight, stark against the sky. He had not expected to see them again, and his aching eyes filled with tears.

"You came back," said a voice out of the darkness. It was Raul. "And

... you stayed," Harry said.

Raul came to his side and, crouching, gently coaxed Harry to his feet.

"I was cufious," he said.

"The door's closed."

"I saw."

"And the lad that's here-"

"Yes?"

Harry cleared the tears from his eyes, and stared up at the cross where he'd come so close to being nailed. "It bleeds," he said, and laughed.

in Evervflle, the denial had stopped, and so had the music. Not even those so drunk with liquor or love they'd forgotten their names could pretend all was well with the world. There was something happening on the mountain. It shook the sky. It shook the streets. it shook the heart.

Some of the celebrants had come out into the open air to get a better look at the Heights and exchange theories as to what was at hand. Some of the proffered explanations were rational, some ludicrous. it was an earth tremor, it was a meteor crashing. It was a landing from the stars, it was an eruption from the earth.

We should get out of here, said some, and began their hurried departures.

We should stay, said others, and see if something happens we'll remember for the rest of our lives...

Alone in the now-vacated Nook, Owen Buddenbaum sat and obsessed on Tesla Bombeck. She had been a late addition to this drama but now she was beginning to look distressingly like its star.

He knew her recent history, of course. He'd made it his business. She hadn't proved herself any great Visionary, as far as he could gather; nor had she shown evidence of any thaumaturgical powers. Tenacious she was; oh yes, certainly that. But then so were terriers. And@enough it didn't please him to grant her this@he had a measure of raw courage, along with an appetite for risk.

There was one story about her that nicely illuminated those aspects of her nature. It had Bombeck bargaining with Randolph Jaffe in or under the ruins of Palomo Grove. By this stage of events Jaffe had failed in his aspirations as an Artist and was reduced, so the story went, to a volatile lunatic. She had needed his help. He had been loath to give it. She'd goaded him, however, until her handed her one of the medallions like that buried under the crossroads, and told her that if she comprehended its significance within a certain time period she would have his help. If she failed, he would kill her.

She'd accepted the challenge, of course, and had succeeded in decoding the cross; thus making the Jaff her ally, at least for a time. The fact that she'd worked out what the symbols meant was not of any great significance in Buddenbaum's estimation. The fact that she'd put her life on the line while she grappled with the problem was.

A woman who would take such a risk was more dangerous than a visionary spirit. If Seth brought her to him, he would have to be ready to dispatch her at the flicker of an eye Tesla was halfway down the path to Phoebe's front door before she saw the figure rising from the step.

"I've been looking all over for you," he said. It was the boy from the crossroads; Buddenbaum's sallow apprentice. "I'm Seth," he said.

"What do you want?"

"It's not really what I want@'

"Whatever you're selling, I'm not interested," she said, "I've got a baby here needs tending to." I'@t me help," Seth replied. There was something almost pitiful in his appeal. "I'm good with kids."

She was too exhausted to refuse. She tossed the keys in his direction.

"Pick 'em up and open the door," she told him.

While he did so she cast a glance up at the mountain, which was just visible between the houses opposite. There was a smoking spiral of mist around the summit.

"Do you know what's going on up there?" Seth said.

"I've got a pretty good idea."

"It's dangerous, right?"

"That's an understatement."

"Buddenbaum says-"

"Have you got the door open yet?"

"Yeah." He pushed it wide.

"Put on the light." He did so. "I don't want to talk about Buddenbaum till I'm sure the kid's okay," she said, stepping into the house.

"But he says-"

"I don't give a shit what he says," she told him calmly. "Now, are you going to help me or are you going to get out?"

Harry and Raul were almost at the tree line when Raul stopped in his tracks. "Somebody's talking@' he said. "I don't hear anything."

"Well I do," Raul replied, looking around. There was nobody in sight.

"I heard voices like this before, when I was sharing Tesla's head." "Who the hell is it?" "The dead, I think." "Hmm." "Aren't you bothered?"

"Depends what they want." "He's saying something about his wife, finding his wife@'

"He hears me!" Coker yelled. "Thank God! He hears me!" Erwin looked back up at the mountaintop, thinking again of what Dolan had said, standing outside his candy store: We're like smoke. Maybe it wasn't so bad as that, being smoke, if the world was going to be overtaken by what he'd seen up there, coming through a crack in the sky.

Coker, meanwhile, was still talking to the creature ho'd saved D'Amour, directing him into the trees...

There were two people there in the shadows. One a woman of some antiquity, sitting with her back to a tree trunk, drinking from a silver flask. The other a man lying face-down a few yards from her.

"He's dead," the woman said as Harry leaned over to examine the man.

"Damn him."

"Are you one of Zury's people?" Harry asked her.

The woman hacked up a gob of phlegm and spat on the ground inches from Harry's foot. "Mary Mother of God, do I look like one of Zury's people?" She jabbed her finger in Raul's direction. "7hat's one of his!"

"He may look like one," Harry replied, "but he's got the soul of a man."

"Thank you for that," Raul said to Harry.

"Well, and are you man enough to carry me down?" the woman said to Harry. "I'd like to see my city before the world goes to Hell."

"Your city?"

"Yes, mine! My name's Maeve O'Connell, and that damn place"@he pointed down through the uses towards Everville@'wouldn't even exist if it weren't for me!"

"Listen to her," Coker rhapsodized. "Oh Lord in Heaven, listen to her." He was kneeling beside the harridan, his bestial face covered in bliss.

"I know now why I didn't go to oblivion, Erwin. I know why I waited on the mountain all these years. to be here to see her face. to hear her voice."

"She'll never know," Erwin said.

"Oh but she will. This fellow Raul will be my gobetween. She's going to know how much I loved her, Erwin. How much I still love her."

"I don't want your hands on me!" Maeve was roaring at Raul. "It's this man's back I'll be on or I'll damn well crawl wn there on my hands and knees." She turned to Harry. Now are you going to pick me up or not?"

"That depends," said Harry.

"On what?"

"On whether you can shut your mouth or not."

The woman looked as though she'd just been slapped. Then her narrow mouth twitched into a smile. "What's your name?" she said.

"D'Amour."

"As in love?"

"As in love.'

She grunted. "That never got me any place I wanted to go," she said.

"She doesn't mean that," Coker said. "She can't-"

"People change," Erwin said. "How many years has it beent'

"I haven't changed," Coker said.

"You can't be the judge of that," Erwin replied. "It's no use breaking your heart over this."

"Easy for you to say. What did you everfeel?"

"Less than I should," Erwin replied softly.

"I'm sorry," Coker said. "I didn't mean that."

"Whether you meant it or not it's the truth," Erwin said, turning his gaze from the woman-who was now clambering up onto D'Amour's back-and again studying the Heights. "You think there's more time than there is," he said, half to himself. "And there's always less. Always."

"Are you going to come with us?" Coker said.

"I'm glad for you," Erwin replied. "Seeing your wife again. I'm really glad."

"I want you to be part of it, Erwin."

"That's nice to say. But-I'm better, staying here. I'll be in the way."

Coker slipped his arm around Erwin's shoulder. "What's to see here?" he said. "Come on-they're leaving us behind."

Erwin glanced round. The trio were already twenty yards away down the slope. "Come see the city my sweet lady built," Coker said. "Before it disappears forever."

After the tumult, silence.

The rain of stones dwindled to a drizzle and then ceased altogether. The sea calmed its frenzy, and came lisping against the shore, its waters thickened into mud. There was no sign of life moving in its shallows, unless the glistening remnants of lad's eggs, bobbing in the filth, could be called life. Nor were there birds.

Phoebe sat amid the rubble of what had once been Liverpool's harbor, and wept. Behind her, the ships that had once swayed at anchor here were smashed in the streets; streets that had been reduced to gorges between piles of smoking debris.

What now? she thought. Plainly there was no way home. And little or no hope of finding Joe, now that she'd lost her guides in this wilderness. She could bear the idea of never separated from Joe forever was unendurable. She would have to hide that likelihood from herself for a while, or else she'd lose her sanity.

She turned her thoughts to the fate of King Texas. Could rock die, she wondered, or was he simply lying low for a while, to recover his strength? If the latter, perhaps he might show his face again and help her in her search. A negligible hope, to be sure, but enough to keep her from utter despair.

After a time, her stomach began to rumble, and knowing hunger would only make her weepier, she got up and into the devastation in search of sustenance.

Just a couple of miles from where she wandered, Joe stood in the veils of dust still falling where the door had been, and turned over the significance of all he'd witnessed. This was not, he knew, a total victory; not by any stretch of the imagination. For one, some portion of the lad had found its way over the threshold into the Cosm before the shore rose to annex it. For another, he was by no means certain the greater part, which now lay buried somewhere under his spirit's feet, w as dead. And for a third, he doubted the continent from which this force had come was now deserted. The invasion party might have been defeated, but the nation that had sent it out was still intact, somewhere beyond the Ephemeris. It would come again, he knew. And again, and again. Whatever the lad were-the dreamers or the dreamed-whatever ambitions they nurtured, they had today sent a force into the Heiter Incendo, where it would doubtless be able to prepare for a larger and perhaps definitive, invasion.

Whet@er he would have any part to play in the defense of the Cosm he didn't know and, for now at least, he didn't much care. He had the more immediate of his own identity to solve. It had been a fine adventure that had brought him in a circle back to this spot: the voyage on The Fanacapan, that sweet reunion with Phoebe in the weeds, the journey to b'Kether Sabbat, his final encounter with Noah and his discoveries in the belly of the lad-all of it extraordinary. But now the journey was over. The Fanacapan was sunk; Phoebe was somewhere in Everville, mourning him; b'Kether Sabbat was presumably in ruins; Noah dead; the lad buried.

And what was he, who had taken that journey? Not a living man, for certain. He'd lost all that he could have identified as Joe, except for the thoughts he was presently shaping, and how certain were they? was he then some function of the dream-sea? Or a sliver of the Zehrapushu? Or just a memory of himself, that would fade with time?

What, damn it, what?

At last, exasperated by his own ruminations, he decided to make his way back into the street in search of the fire watchers who had seemed to see him in the form of their answered prayers. Perhaps if he discovered one among them who understood the rudiments of life after death he might find some way to communicate, and learn to understand his condition. Or failing that to simply come to peace with it.

Phoebe returned to Maeve O'Connell's house on Canning Street more by accident than intention, though when she finally found herself standing before its gates she could not help but think that her instincts had brought her there. The house was in better shape than most she'd passed, but it had not survived the cataclysm unscathed. Half of its roof had fallen in, exposing both beams and bedrooms, and the path to the front door was littered with slate, guttering, and broken glass.

Once inside, however, she found the lower level almost exactly as she left it. With her stomach demanding its due she went straight to the kitchen, where mere hours before she'd got herself tipsy on moumingberry juice, and made herself something to eat. This time there was no judicious sandwich construction. She simply heaped cold cuts and pickles and bread and cheese and a variety of fruits into the middle of the table and set to. Her stomach was tamed after ten minutes or so and she slowed her rate of consumption somewhat, washing her food down with a spritzer made of two parts water to one of the juice. After half a glass of this a pleasant languor crept upon her, and she allowed herself to muse on the subjects that had earlier brought tears.

Perhaps, after all, she had a few things to be grateful for. She wasn't dead, which was a wonder. She wasn't crazy. She'd never again sleep and wake in the bed she'd shared with Morton all those years, nor turn up to work on a drizzling Monday morning and find half a dozen flu-ridden depressives dripping on the step, but was any of that cause for sorrow or self-pity? No. She had followed her best hope for happiness through a door that had slammed behind her. There was no way back, and it was no use sniveling about it.

The wind had risen while she was eating and was blowing dust against the kitchen window, darkening the interior. She t up and found an oil lamp, which she lit and carried stairs, lighting lamps as she went. It was a little eerie. The pty passageways, the empty rooms, the paintings on the walls-which she'd really not noticed when she'd first explored the house but which were almost all risqu6-staring down at her. Every now and again the rock beneath the city would growl and settle. The walls would creak. The windows would rattle.

Eventually she found her way up to Maeve O'Connell's suite, the ceiling of which was still intact, and feeling like a thief (and enjoying the feeling) she examined the contents of the three wardrobes and the chest of drawers. There were clothes in abundance, of course, and hats and books and perfumes and bric-a-brac, endless bric-a-brac.

Had the old woman dreamed all this into being, Phoebe wondered, the way King Texas had described her dreaming the city? Had she spoken the clothes, then slept and woken to find them hanging here, ready to be worn and fitting perfectly? If so, Phoebe was going to have to learn the trick of it, because nothing in these wardrobes was faintly suitable, and her summer dress had been reduced to filthy tatters. And while she was dreaming things up, maybe she'd supply herself with a few luxury items. A television (would she have to dream the programs too?

if so, they'd all be reruns), a modern toilet (the plumbing in the house was primitive), perhaps an ice cream maker.

And maybe, eventually, a companion. Why not? If she was going to live the rest of her life here-and it seemed she had no choice in the matter-then she was damned if she'd spend those years alone. Sure, she'd seen some survivors in the ruins on her way here, but why look for solace among strangers when she could conjure up somebody for herself.9

At last, having searched the room from one end to the other, she realized that she hadn't opened the drapes and, with much effort (there were several thicknesses of fabric, and they'd not been moved, she guessed, in many years), she managed to haul the drapes apart. She was not prepared for the splendor of the sight that awaited her. The window that the drapes had concealed was huge. It offered her a panorama of what had once been the harbor, and beyond it, Quiddity, its once-crazed waters placid. Though there was no sun in the sky, there was nevertheless a pinprick clarity to the scene. If she'd had the desire and the patience she could surely have counted every ripple on the face of the dreamsea.

Gazing out over the waters, she remembered with a sigh her meeting with Joe, in the bed of weeds. Remembered how she'd almost lost herself into the bliss of formlessness, while he, and they, had pleasured her. was it possible, she won-. dered, to dream Joe? to close her eyes and raise from memory the man she had lost? It wouldn't be the real thing, of course, but better some semblance of him, like a treasured photograph, than nothing at all. Perhaps he might even share a bed with her.

She put her hand to her cheek. She was hot.

"You should be ashamed, Phoebe Cobb," she told herself with a little smile.

Then she dragged a coverlet and a pillow off Maeve's four-poster (she couldn't bring herself to sleep among the litter of King Texas's love-letters) and, making a bed for herself in the glittering light off the dream-sea, she lay down to see if she could bring herself a likeness of the man she loved.

"There's somebody outside," Seth said.

they were in the kitchen, Tesla at the table trying to coax Amy into eating a few spoonfuls of cereal mushed up in warm mi@ Seth eating baked beans cold from the can while he gazed out at the dark yard. "You think it's the avatars?"

"Probably," Tesla said. She glanced up and stared out into the gloom. She couldn't see them, but she could feel their gaze. "Owen told me@' Seth said.

"OwenT'

"Buddenbaum. He says we're like apes to them. When they watch us, it's like us going to the zoo."

"Is that right?" Tesia said. "Well, for what it's worth I've been taught a thing or two by an ape in my time."

"You mean Raul." She looked at the boy. "How do you know about RauIT'

"Owen told me all about you. He knows everything about who you are, where you've been, who you've hooked up wi@'

"Why the hell would I be of any interest to him?"

"He said you were... you were-2'

gist'll do."

"A significant irrelevancy," Seth beamed. "Mat's what he said exactly. I asked him what that meant, and he said you being here was all an accident, because you don't belong in this story-2'

"Fuck the story."

"I don't see how we can," Seth said. "Whatever we do, wherever we go, we're still telling the story."

"Buddenbaum again."

"No. Seth Lundy." He set down his can of beans. "Here," he said. "Let me have a go at feeding her."

Tesla didn't argue. She let Seth relieve her of the baby, who had so far refused her ministrations, and headed out into the backyard, where she guessed she'd have a view of the Heights. The guess was good. She had to wander twenty, twenty-five yards from the house before the summit cleared the roof, but when it came into view there was much to see. The mist circling the summit had become ragged, and when she studied the holes she glimpsed large, clotted forms moving there.

"The lad's here," she announced.

"We didn't know until now," said a voice out of the darkness.

She didn't bother to look round to find the speaker. It was one of the trio; which one of them was academic.

"Buddenbaum didn't tell you?" Tesia said.

'No.

"Strange."

"We're not certain he knew, " said another voice. This she recognized as that of the little girl, Rare Utu.

"I find that hard to believe," Tesla said, still studying the mountain. What were they doing up there? Nesting? "You're here. The lad's here. That's no accident."

"You're right," came the reply. "But that doesn't mean it was planned. The history of Sapas Humana is filled with synchronicities."

She turned to them now. they were standing on the darkness a dozen yards from her, barely delineated by the light from the kitchen windows.

Looking at them now she realized they were not as indistinguishable from one another as she'd thought. Rare Utu stood a little way to the right, her face carrying just a trace of the girlishness she had pretended.

Some distance from her was the individual who'd passed himself off as a jug-eared comedian, Haheh. Again, though the signs of his public face were subtle, they were there to be seen. And closest to Tesla, his features the most plainly tainted by his assumed personality, was the moronic child, Yie. Of the du= it was he who regarded Testa with the most suspicion. "You seem to know human beings very well," she said.

"Oh yes," Haheh replied. "We never tire of seeing the Great and Secret Show played out."

"My she said, "were you in Palomo Grove?"

"Regrettably no," Rare Utu told her. "We missed that one."

'-Mat was the beginning of our discontent with Owen, truth to tell," Hahch said. "We were growing tired of the same old slaughters. We had an appetite for something more@ow shall I put it?'

"Apocalyptic," Yie prompted.

"So he arranged this@'Tesia said.

"So it seems," said Haheh. "But his genius has deserted him. This afternoon, for instance. It should have been a triumph, but it just fizzled out. We were very disappointed. That's why we came after you. We want another Palomo Grove. People driven mad by their own nightmares."

"Have you no sympathy?" Testa said.

Of course," said Rare Utu. "We suffer a great deal at the sight of your suffering. If we didn't why would we seek it out?"

"Give me that again," Testa said.

"Better to show her," Haheh said.

"Are you sure that's wiset' Yie said. His beady eyes had narrowed to slits.

"I trust her," Haheh replied, descending the shadows and bypassing Yie to stand a few yards from Testa. As he did so his cocooning robes unfolded. they were more magnificent inside than out, the garments freighted with gems whose colors she could put no name to. Some were the size of fruits-peaches and pears-all overripe, all oozing liquid light.

"Mis one," Habeh said, gesturing to a jewel the size of an egg with his vestigial arm, "I got it in Des Moines, watching the most terrible tragedy. Three generations, or was it four-?"

"Four," Rare Utu said.

,,Four generations killed in one night in a gas main explosion. An entire family name, wiped out. Oh, it was piti u. And this one"-he said, indicating a gem that had more shades of amber than a Key West sunset-"I got in Arkansas, at the execution of a man who'd been wrongly convicted of murder. We were watching him fry, in the knowledge that the true culprit was smothering infants at that very moment. That was hard, very hard. Sometimes I see a milkiness in the blebs, you know, and I think it's there to remind me of the babes-" While he maundered on, Testa realized that the finery he'd unfurled was not a garment at all: It was his body. The gems, the blebs as he'd called them, were indeed a kind of fruit, grown from flesh and sorrow. Part remembrance, part decoration, part trophy, they were gorgeous scabs, marking the. places where he'd been pierced byfeeling.

"I see you're amazed," Rare Utu said. "And revolted, I think," Yie said.

:'A little," Testa said.

'Well," Rare Utu replied appreciatively, "that's something to savor." She stared hard at Testa. "Buddenbaum was always very careful never to let us know what he felt. It's a consequence of his inversion, I think, the ease with which he conceals himself."

"Whereas you-" Haheh said.

"You are so naked, Testa," Utu said. "Simply being with you is a show unto itself."

"We could have such times," Haheh cooed.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Testa said.

"What's that?"

"When you first met me, you said you knew I was going to die. And as it happens I know for a fact that's true."

"Details, details," Rare Utu replied. "Life is in our gift, Testa. Why you've seen for yourself how Buddenbaum outruns death. He took a bullet to the head this very afternoon, and by now he'll be nearly mended."

"We can't confer immortality upon you," Haheh said.

"Nor would we want to," Yie pointed out.

"But we can offer you our extended fifespan. Considerably extended, if we find our relationship productive."

"S(@if I say yes, I get to live, as long as I create experiences for you?" "Precisely. Make us feel, Testa Bombeck. Give us stories to wring our hearts."

While Rare Urn was speaking, two contrary voices in Tesia's head. "Take it!" one yelled. "It's what you ere born to do! This isn't churning out movies for popcomgobbling imbeciles! You'll be writing life!" The other voice was equally adamant. "It's grotesque. They're emotional leeches! Work for them and you throw you humanity to the wind!"

:'We need an answer, Tesla," Haheh said.

'Explain one thing to me," she said. "Why don't you just do this yourselves?" "Because we must not become involved," Rare Utu replied.

"It would dirty us. Taint us."

"Ruin us," said Yie.

"I see."

"Well?" said Haheh. "Do you have an answer?"

Tesia pondered a moment. Then she said, "Yes, I have an answer."

"What?" said Rare Utu.

She thought a moment longer. "Maybe," she replied.

When she got back inside the house she found Seth had taken Amy into the living room, and was sitting on the sofa, gently rocking her.

"Did she eat anything?"

"Yeah," he said quietly. "She's okay." He looked down at Amy fondly.

"Sweet little face," he said. "I heard you talking to them out there. What do they want?"

"My services," Tesla said. "In place of Owen?" Tesia nodded. "He figured that's what they were up to."

"Where is he now?"

"He'd said he'd wait for you at the Nook. It's a little restaurant off Main Street."

"Then I shouldn't keep him waiting any longer," Testa said.

Seth got to his feet very slowly, so as not to disturb Amy. "I'll come with you. I'll watch over the baby while you deal with Owen."

"You should know something about Amy-"

"She's not yours, is she?"

"No. Her mother and the man I thought was her father are dead. And the guy who may be her real father will be coming looking for her."

"Who is he?"

"His name's Tommy-Ray McGuire, but he prefers to be called the Death-Boy." While she was explaining this her eyes went to the cards spread out on the coffee table. "Are these yours?" she asked.

"No, I thought they were yours." She knew at a glance ' what they represented, of course. Lightning, cloud, ape, cell: all stations of Quiddity's cross. "Must be Harry's," she said, and sweeping them into a little pack pocketed them and headed for the door.

Two-thirds of the way down the mountain slope, passing through a patch of trees more thinly spaced than elsewhere, the woman on Harry's back said, "Stop a moment will you?" She surveyed the terrain. "I swear-this is where my daddy was murdered."

"was he lynched too?" Raul replied.

"No," she said. "Shot by a man who thought my daddy was a servant of the Devil."

"Why'd he think that?"

"It's a long story, and a bitter one," the O'Connell woman said. "But I found a way to keep his memory alive."

"How did you do that?" said Harry.

"His name was Harmon," she replied, and as they moved on away from the place she told Harry and Raul the whole bitter story. She told it without melodrama and withOut rancor. It was simply a sorrowful account of her father's last hours, and of how he had passed his vision of Everville to his daughter. "I knew it was my duty to build a city, and call it Everville, but it was hard. Towns don't just spring up because people dream them-well, not in this world, at least. There has to be a reason. A good reason. Maybe there's a place on a river where it's easy to cross. Maybe there's gold in the ground. But my valley just had a piddling little creek, d nobody ever found gold here. So I had to find some other ason for people to come here, and build houses and raise lies. That wasn't easy even at the best of times, and these weren't the best of times. See, the man who killed my daddy became a preacher in Silverton, and he used the pulpit to spread all kinds of rumors about how there was a hole to Hell right here on Hannon's Heights, and devils flew out of it at night.

"So, after a couple of years of being almost alone here, I decided to take myself off to Salem, where maybe I'd find some people who hadn't heard what the preacher Whitney was saying. And one day, I'm talking to this man in a feed store, and I'm telling him about my valley, my sweet valley, and how he should come look at it for himself, and suddenly he digs out a silver dollar and slaps it on the counter and says to me: Show me. And I say to him: It's quite a ways from here. And he puts his hand on my leg, and starts to pull up my skirt and he says: No, it's real near.

"Then I realized what he was talking about, and I called him every kind of name under the sun and I took myself off in a high old fury. But as I was walking home, I got to thinking about what he'd said, and I thought maybe the best way to bring men to my valley was first to bring women-"

"Clever," said Raul.

"Men don't always follow religion. they don't always follow common sense. But women, they follow. Women they'll suffer every kind of privation for. This has been proved, over and over." She tapped Harry on the shoulder. "You've been stupid for women, have you not?"

"It's been known," said Harry. "So, you see, I had my method. I knew how I would bring men to fill up my valley. And once they were there, they'd start to build my daddy's dream city for me."

"I get the theory of it," Raul said. "But how did it work?"

"Well, my father had been given a cross, by a man called Buddenbaum-"

"Buddenbaum?" Harry said. "It can't be the same man-"

"You've heard of him?" "Heard of him? I shot him this afternoon."

"Dead?"

"No. He was very much alive when I saw him last. But like I said, it can't be the same Buddenbaum."

"Oh I think it could," Maeve said. "And if it is@h, if it is-I have some questions I want that bastard to answer."

Larry Glodoski and his soldiers had staggered out of Hamrick's Bar feeling ready to take on anything that crossed their path. they had guns, they had God, and they could all whistle Sousa: What more did an army need?

The civilian population was not so sanguine, however. A lot of people-particularly the tourists@ad decided that whatever was happening on the mountain, they'd prefer to see it on tomorrow's news than experience it in the flesh, and they were beating a hasty and disorderly retreat. More than once, as the men made their way down Main Street, they had to step aside to let a carload of vacationers careen by.

"Cowards!" Waits yelled after one such vehicle had almost mounted the sidewalk to avoid them.

"Let them go," Glodosid slurred. "We don't need bystanders. They'll only get in the way."

"You know what?" Reidlinger said, seeing a sobbing woman bundling her kids into a RV, "I'm going to have to leave you guys to it. I'm sorry Larry, but I got kids at home, and if anything happened to them-2'

Giodoski gave him the fish-eye. "Okay," he said. "So what are you waiting for?" Reidlinger started to apologize again, but Glodoski cut him short. "Just go," he said. "We don't need you." Reidlinger made a shamefaced departure. "Anybody else want to go, while the going's goodt' Larry asked.

Alstead cleared his throat, and said, "You know, Larry, we've all of us got responsibilities. I mean, maybe we're better leaving this to the authorities."

"Are you deserting too?" Giodoski wanted to know.

"No, Larry, I'm just saying@'

Bosley interrupted him. "Well now he said, and inted down the block at the two people coming in their direction. He knew and despised them both. The woman for r foul mouth, the youth at her side for his sodomitic ways.

"These two are dangerous," he said. "They're accomplices of Buddenbaum's."

"There's not two of them," Bill Waits observed, "there's three. Lundy's carrying a baby." "Stealing children now," said Bosley. "How low will they stoop?"

"Wasn't she the one at the crossroads?" Larry said.

"She was."

"Gentleman, we've got work to do," Larry declared, stepping past Bosley.

"I'll front this. You just keep your eyes open."

Tesia and Seth had seen the quartet by now, and were crossing the street to avoid them. Giodoski stepped off the sidewalk to intercept them, demanding as he approached, "Whose kid is that?" His inquiry was ignored. "I'm not going to ask again," he said. "Whose baby have you got there?"

"It's none of your damn business," Tesia said. "What are you going to do with it?" Bosley said, his voice shrill.

"Shut up, Bosley," Larry said.

"They're going to murder it!"

"You heard him, Bosley," said Tesia. "Shut the fuck UP."

Now Bosley overtook Larry, pulling out his gun as he did so. "Put the baby down," he squealed.

"I said I'd deal with this," Giodoski snapped.

Bosley ignored him. He strode on towards Tesia, leveling his gun at her as he did so.

"Jesus," Tesla said. "Haven't you got anything better to do?" She jabbed her finger in the direction of the Heights. "There's something coming down that mountain, and you don't want to be here when it arrives."

As if to punctuate her warning, the streetlamps began to flicker, and then went out. There were cries of alarm from all directions. "Do we run?" Seth murmured to Tesia.

"We can't risk it," she said. "Not with Amy."

A few lights came back on again, but they were dim and fitful. Bosley, meanwhile, had stepped in to claim the baby from Seth's arms.

"You've got no right to do this," Seth protested.

"You're a cocksucker, Lundy," Alstead said. "Fhat gives us all the right we need."

Bosley had a grip on the baby now, but Seth refused to relinquish her.

"Alstead!" Bosley hollered, "give me a hand here."

Alstead didn't need a second invitation. He came around the back of Seth, and grabbed hold of his arms. Larry, mean-' while, had taken out his own gun and had it leveled at Tesla, to keep her from intervening.

"What's going on up there?" he said to her, nodding in the direction of the Heights.

"I don't know. But I do know we're all in deep shit when it gets here. If you want to do some good why don't you evacuate the people who need help, instead of baby snatching?"

"She's got a point, Larry," said Waits. "there's a lot of old folks-2'

"We'll get to them!" Glodoski blustered. "I got it all planned."

Amy began bawling now, as Bosley wrested her from Seth's arms. "She's missing your tits, Lundy," Alstead leered, reaching out to paw his captive's chest.

Seth responded by jabbing his elbow in Alstead's belly, hard enough to drive the wind from him. Cursing, Alstead spun Seth around and punched him in the face, twice, ffi= times, solid blows to nose and mouth. Seth stumbled backwards, his legs betraying him, and fell to the ground. Alstead moved in to kick the youth, but Waits held him back.

"C'mon. Enough!"

"Little cocksucker!"

"Leave him alone, for Christ's sake!" Waits hollered. "We didn't come out here to beat up kids. Larry-?"

Giodoski glanced over at Waits, and as he did so Tesla ducked beneath his arm and flew at him, intending to disarm him. She failed. There was a brief, ragged struggle@e gun twice discharged into the air@fore he caught her a backhanded blow. She reeled before it.

Waits, meanwhile, was hauling the bloodied Seth to his feet, while yelling at Alstead to keep his distance, and Bosley was fumbling for his own -uii, which he'd pocketed before snatching the child.

"Tesla-" Seth hollered, "1.)ok out!"

She shook the blotches from in front of her eyes in time to see not one but two weapons being leveled at her.

"Riiii! " Seth told her.

She had a moment only in which to decide, and her instinct carried the day. Before Giodoski or Bosley could get a bead on her she was away, pelting down the block. Behind her she heard Glodoski yellin-. Then he fired. The bullet carved a niche in the sidewalk a ytrd to her right.

"Larry, stop!" Waits was shoutin-. "Are you crazy?"

Glodoski simply fired again. This time the bullet shattered a store window behind her. She made the corner without a third shot being- fired, and glanced round to see that Waits had caught hold of Glodoski and was attempting to wrest the weapon from him. She didn't wait for the outcome, but darted out of sight and range.

She bitterly regretted losing Seth and Amy, but the encounter had served a purpose Giodoski and his bully-boys would regret. If there was power to be begged, stolen, or borrowed from Buddenbaum then she'd have it, and damn the niceties.

iv As Harry, Maeve, and Raul crossed Unger's Creek the lights in the streets ahead, which had been flickering for a quarter of an hour, gave up completely. The trio halted for a moment, their other senses attenuated in the sudden darkness. There was no comfort to he had from them, however. they heard only panicked cries from the city, and from the thicket and trees silence, as though every nighthird and insect knew what Sapas Humana did not: that death was coming, and the loudest would be found first. As for the other senses, their news was no better. For all the balm of the summer air, it carried that tang Harry had nosed entering the building at Ninth and Thirteenth: rotten fish and smoking spice. It was on the tongue too, tempting the stomach to rebellion.

"They're coming," Raul said.

"It had to happen."

"Will you hurry yourself, then?" Maeve said. "I want to see my city before we all go to Hell."

"Anywhere in particular?" Harry said.

"Yes, as you're asking," Maeve replied. "There's a crossroads-"

"What is it about those damn crossroads?" Harry said.

"It's where I lived. Where we built our house, my husband and me. And let me tell you, that house was a glory. A glory. Until the sons of bitches burned it down."

"Why did they do that?"

"Oh, the usual. Too much righteousness and too little passion. What I would give for a taste, just a taste, of the way it was at the beginning, when we still had hope... "

She fell into silence for a few moments. Then she erupted afresh: "Take me there!" she hollered. "Take me there! Let me see the ground where it all began!"

Tesia found Buddenbaum sifung in the Nook, as Seth had told her she would. The little coffee shop was deserted, and dark but for the fire Buddenbaum had started on a plate in front of him, feeding it with scraps of menu.

"I was about to give up on you," he said, with a smile that was very nearly sincere.

"I got waylaid." "By some of the locals?"

"Yes." She came to his table, and sat down opposite him, plucking a napkin from the dispenser to moo the sweat from her face. Then she plucked another and blew her nose.

"I know what you're thinking," Buddenbaum said. "Oh, do you?"

"You're thinking: Why should I give a shit about these fucking people? They're cruel and they're stupid, and when they're afraid they just become more cruel and more stupid."

"You're exempting us from this, of course."

"Of course. You're a Nunciate. And I'm-"

"The Jai-Wai's man."

Buddenbaum grimaced. "Do they know you've come here?"

"I told them I was going walkabout, to think things through." She dug in her pocket, and pulled out the cards. "Ever seen these before, by the way?" She laid them on the table. Buddenbaum regarded them almost superstitiously, his mouth tight.

"Whose are they?" he said, his fingers hovering over them but not making contact.

"I don't know."

"They've been in powerful hands," he said appreciatively.

Testa went back into her pocket in pursuit of a stray card, and brought out the remains of the reefer she'd confiscated from the crucifixion singer. She sniffed it. Whatever it contained, it smelled appealingly pungent. She plucked a spill of burning cardboard off the plate, and putting the reefer to her. lips, lit it.

"Will you work for them?" Buddenbaum said.

"The Jai-Wai?" she said. He nodded. "I doubt it."

"Why not?"

"They're psychotic, Buddenbaum. they get a buzz out of seeing people suffer."

"Don't we all?" "No." She inhaled, just half a lungful. Held the smoke. "Oh, come on Bombeck," Buddenbaum replied. "You wrote for the movies. You know what gives people a thrill." She exhaled a breath of lilac smoke. "The difference is: This is real."

Buddenbaum leaned forward. "Are you going to share that?" he said. She passed the joint over the fire. It had induced some subtle visual hallucinations. The flames had slowed their licking, and the beads of sweat on Buddenbaum had become crystalline. He drew on the joint, and spoke as he held his breath. "What's real to us isn't what's real to the rest of the world. You know that." He turned his gaze towards the dark street. A family of five was hurrying along the sidewalk, the children sobbing. "Whatever they're suffering," he said, exhaling now,

"and I don't mean to diminish them in saying this-it's an animal response. that's not real in any absolute sense. It will pass. All things pass, sooner or later." She remembered Kissoon, in Toothaker's house. This had been his wisdom too.

"The life of the flesh, the animal life, is transient. It melts, it fades away. But what's hidden in the flesh-the enduring spirit-that has permanence, or at least the hope of permanence. It's up to us to make that hope a reality."

"Is that why you want the Art?"

Buddenbaum drew on the joint again, passed it back to Tesia, and leaned back in his chair. "Ah... the Art," he said.

"I was there when the Jaff got it. You know that?"

"Of course."

"He didn't exactly flourish."

"I know that too," Buddenbaum said. "But then he was weak. And crazy. I'm neither. I've lived two and a half lifetimes, preparing for what's about to happen here. I'm ready to handle power."

"So why do you need me?"

Buddenbaum rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "This ganga's good," he said. "The truth is, it's not you I need, Tesia."

"It's the Jai-Wai."

"I'm afraid so."

"Do you want to tell me why?"

Buddenbaum considered this for a moment.

"If you want my help," Tesla said, "you're going to have to trust me."

"That's difficult," Buddenbaum said. "I've had so many solitary years, keeping my secrets."

"I'l I make it easy for you," Tesla said. "I'll tell you what I know. Or what I've guessed." She picked up the cards, and shuffled them in the firelight, her eyes on Buddenbaum as she spoke. "You buried one of the Shoal's medallions at the crossroads, and over the years it's been gathering power somehow. And now you're ready to use it, to get you the Art."

"Good... " said Buddenbaum, "go on.. - "

She pushed the fire-plate aside, and started to lay the cards out on the table, one by one. "The Jaff taught me something," she said, "when we were together under the Grove. I was looking at the cross he had, trying to work out what the symbols meant-these symbols"-she waved the cards. "And he told me: to understand something is to have it. When you know what a symbol means, it's no longer a symbol. You have the thing itself in your head, and that's the only place anything needs to be."

She looked down at the cards for a moment. When she glanced back up at Buddenbaum his gaze was icy. "Everything dissolves at the crossroads, doesn't it'? Flesh and spirit, past and future, it all turns into mind." She had found all the cards picturing the body spreadeagled at the center of the cross, and now proceeded to assemble them.

"But for you to access the Art, you need to have all the possibilities there in the stew. There at the crossroads. The human pieces. The animal pieces. The dreaming pieces-" She stopped. Stared at him. "How am I doing?" she said.

"I think you know," said Buddenbaum.

"So-where was I?"

"Dreaming pieces."

"Oh yes. And the last pieces, of course. The pieces that complete the pattern." She had the very card in her hand: the symbol at the top of the vertical arm. She turned it to him. "The pieces of divinity."

Buddenbaum sighed.

"The Jai-Wai," she said, and tossed the card down onto the table.

There was twenty, maybe thirty seconds of silence. Finally Buddenbaum said, "Can you imagine how difficult it's been to arrange this? to find a place where I had a hope of all these forces coming at some point or other? This wasn't the only spot I buried a cross, of course. I put them all over. But there was something about this place-"

"And what was that?"

He considered a moment. "A little girl called Maeve O'Connell," he said.

"Who?" "She's the one who buried the cross for me, back before this little burg existed. I remember hearing her father call her name-Maeve, Maeve-and I thought, this is a sign. The name's Irish. It's a spirit who comes to men in their dreams. And then when I met the father, I realized how easy it would be to inspire him. Make him build me a honeypot of a city, where every manner of creature came, and there in the middle of it, my little cross could be gathering power."

"Everville's your creation?"

"No, I can't make that claim. The inspiration was mine, but that's all. The rest was made by ordinary men and women going about their lives."

"So did you keep an eye on it?"

"For the first three or four years I came looking, but the seed had failed to take. The father had died on the mountain, and the daughter had married a damn strange fellow from the other side, so people kept their distance."

"But the city got built anyway?"

"Eventually, though I'm damned if I know how. I didn't come back here for a long time, and when I did, what do you know? There was Everville. Not quite the Byzantium I'd envisaged but it had its possibilities. I knew that wanderers from the Metacosm came here now and again, for sentimental reasons. And they crossed paths with Sapas Humana, and they went their way, and all the while the medallion gathered its powers underground."

"You waited a long time." "I had to be ready, in myself. Randolph Jaffe isn't the only one who lost his wits thinking he could handle the Art.

As I said before, I've lived several lifetimes, thanks to Rare Utu and her buddies. I've used the years to rarefy myseIL"

"And now you're ready?"

"Now I'm ready. Except that one piece of the puzzle I need has deserted me."

"So-you want me to bring them to you."

"If you'd be so kind," Buddenbaum said, with a little inclination of his head.

"If I succeed you'll help me keep the lad from destroying the city?"

'-Mat's my promise."

"How do I know you won't just piss off into your higher state of being and let the rest of us go down in flames?"

"You have to believe I won't break the last promise I made as a mortal man," Buddenbaum replied.

it wasn't an airtight offer, Tesla thought, but it was probably the best she was going to get. While she was turning it over, Buddenbaum said,

"One more thing."

"What's that'

"Once you've brought the Jai-Wai to the crossroads, I want I you to get out of the city."

'Why?" "Because this afternoon, when I had everything in place, the working failed because of you."

"How'd you work that out?"

"There was no other reason," Buddenbaum replied. "You're a Nunciate. The power couldn't choose which of us to flow to, so it stayed where it was."

"All right. So I'll get out."

"Now I'm the one who needs the promise."

"You've got it."

"Good enough," Buddenbaum said. "Now-why don't you bum the cards?"

"Why?"

"As a... gesture of good will."

Tesla shrugged. "Whatever," she said, and gathering them up she tossed them into the slow flames. they caught quickly, flaming up.

"Pretty," said Buddenbaum, rising from his chair. "I'll' see you at the crossroads then."

"I'll be there."

She felt the presence of the enemy the moment she stepped out into the street. Memories of Point Zero came flickering back into her head-the desolation, the dust, 4nd the lad, fising like a seething tide. they would be here soon, bringing their madness and their appetite for madness, turning over this city, whose only crime was to have been founded in the name of transcendence.

And once it was trampled, what then? Out into the Americas, to find new victims, new adherents? She knew from her years of wandering that it would not go unwelcoined. There were people across this divided nation hungry for catastrophe, plotting to welcome the millennium in with bloodshed and destruction. She'd heard them at diner counters, muttering into their coffee; seen them at the side of highways, raging and raging; brushed by them in busy streets (passing for sane, most of them; dressed and polished and civil): people who wanted to murder the world for disappointing them.

Once the lad arrived they wouldn't need to talk to themselves any longer. they wouldn't need to berate heaven, or put on smiles when all they wanted to do was scream. they would have their day of wrath, and the power she'd seen unleashed at Point Zero would be suddenly inconsequential.

God help her, in her time, she might have numbered herself among them. he didn't have to go far to find the Jai-Wai. A hundred yards from the Nook she heard a great commotion, and seeking out its source found the chief of police, along with two of his officers, attempting to calm a mob of perhaps fifty Evervillians, all of whom were demanding he do something to protect their city. Many of them had flashlights and had them trained on the target of their are. Ashen and sweaty, Gilholly did his best to calm them, but circumstances were against him. The lad's influence was getting stronger as they descended from the Heights, and the already demented crowd was steadily losing its grip of reality. People started to sob uncontrollably or shriek at the limit of their lungs. Somebody in the throng began speaking in tongues.

Realizing he was losing what little grip he had, Gilholly pulled out his gun and fired it into the air. The crowd simmered down a little.

"Now listen up!" Gilholly yelled above the murmurs and sobs. "If we just stay calm we can ride this out. I want everybody to go to the Town Hall, and we'll wait there until help arrives."

"Help from where?" somebody asked.

"I got calls out all over, don't you worry," Gilholly replied. "We'll have support from Molina and Silverton in the next half hour. We're going to get the lights back on and-'

"What about what's going on on the mountain?"

"It's all going to get taken care of," Gilholly said. "Now will you please clear the streets so when help gets here nobody's hurt?" He pushed through the crowd, beckoning for folks to follow. "Come on, now! Let's get going."

As the mob began to move off Tesla glimpsed a white dress and, making her way towards it, found Rare Utu, her girlish guise as flawless as ever, watching the scene with a smile on her face. It broadened into a grin at the sight of Tesla.

"They're all going to die," she beamed.

"Won't that be fun," Tesla dead-panned.

"Have you made up your mind?"

"Yes," said Tesla. "I accept the offer. With one proviso."

"And what's that?" said Yie, stepping out of the retreating crowd wearing his human face.

"I don't want to be the one to tell Buddenbaum. You have to do it."

"Why do we even need to bother?" Haheh said, emerging at Yie's side.

"Because he served you all those years," Tesla said. "And he deserves to be treated with some dignity."

"He's not going to perish the moment we leave," Haheh ' pointed out.

"He'll have a quick decline as the years catch up with him, but it won't be so terrible."

"Then tell him that," Tesla said. She looked back at Rare Utu. "I don't want him coming after me with a machete, because I took his job."

"I understand," the girl said.

Yie scowled. "This is thefirvt and last time we accede to your desires," he said. "You should be grateful to be serving us."

"I am," Tesia said. "I want to tell you wonderful stories and show you wonderful sights. But first@'

"Where is he?" said Habeh.

"At the crossroads."

"Thank God for the darkness," Maeve said as they made their way through the murky streets. "I swear if I saw this ugliness in the plain light of day I'd weep." She demanded to be set down in front of the Hamburger Hangout, so that she could be appalled. "Ugly, ugly, ugly," she said.

"It looks like something made for children."

"Don't break your heart over it," Raul said. "It won't be standing much longer."

'We were going to build a city that could standforever," Maeve said.

"Nothing lasts that long," said Harry.

"Not true," said Maeve. "Great cities become legends. And legends don't die." She scowled at the Hamburger Hangout. "Anything would be better than this," she said. "A pile of rubble! A hole in the ground!"

"Can we get a move on?" Harry said, glancing back wards the mountain. They'd been meandering through the treets for maybe twenty minutes now, with the O'Connell woman confidently giving directions back to the place where she'd lived, though it was increasingly plain that she was lost.

Meanwhile Kissoon and his ladic legion had been descending from the Heights. Their tangled mass was now no longer visible, which surely meant they'd reached the bottom of the slope. Perhaps they were already in the city, and the demolition Maeve so relished underway.

"It's not far now," the old woman said, making her way unaided to the nearest intersection and looking in all directions. "That way!" she said, pointing.

"Are you sure?" said Harry.

"I'm sure," she said. "It was at the very center of the city, my whorehouse. The first house that was ever raised, in fact."

'Did you say whorehouse?"

'Of course they burned it down. Did I tell you that? Burned down half the neighborhood at the same time, when the fire spread." She turned back to Harry. "Yes, I said whorehouse. How do you think I built my city? I didn't have a river. I didn't have gold. So we built a whorehouse, Coker and me, and I filled it with the most beautiful women I could find. And that brought the men. And some of them stayed. And married. And built houses of their own. And"-she opened her arms, laughing out loud-"lo and behold! There was Everville!" iv Laughter? Bosley thought, hearing Maeve's amusement echo through the streets. How pitiful. Somebody had lost their mind in all this chaos.

He was sheltering in the doorway of the Masonic Hall at present, to keep himself (and the baby he was still carrying) out of the way of people and vehicles. Ten yards down the block, Larry had the Lundy kid up against the wall and was interrogating him. He wanted to know where the sodomite Buddenbaum was hiding out, but Seth wasn't letting on.

Every time Seth shook his head Larry traded him a blow: a tap sometimes; sometimes not. Waits and Alstead hung around at a distance. Waits had broken into Dan's Liquor Store on Coleman Street, and got himself a couple of bottles of bourbon, so he was quite happy watching the interrogation over Larry's shoulder. Alstead was sitting on the sidewalk, with his shirt hiked up, examining the abrasions he'd suffered during the earlier skirmish with Lundy. He had already told Larry that when the questioning was finished he would be taking over. Bosley didn't give much for Lundy's chances.

Quietly, he began to pray. Not just for his own salvation, and that of the child, but so that he could explain to the Lord that this was not the way he'd intended things to be. Not remotely.

"I just wanted to do your will," he said, doing his best to ignore the sound of Seth's moans, and of the blows that kept landing. "But everything's got so confused. I don't know what's right any more, Lord... "

A fresh chorus of cries rose from somewhere nearby, and drowned out his pleas. He closed his eyes, trying hard to keep his thoughts coherent. But with one of his senses sealed he became aware of information the others were receiving. There was a smell in the air; like the garbage behind the diner in a heatwave, only tinged with a sweetness that made it all the fouler. And along with the stench there was a sound, deep in his head, as though somebody was testing a tuning fork against his skull.

He couldn't bear to stay where he was any longer. Without announcing his departure to the others he slipped from the doorstep, and down the block, turning the first corner he came to, which delivered him into Clarke Street. It was completely deserted, for which he was grateful. From here he could get back to the diner, keeping off the main streets. Once there, he'd take a quick rest, then load a few belongings into the back of the car, and get out of the city. As for the baby, he'd take her along; protect her in the Lord's name. He was crossing the street when a gust of cold wind found him. Instantly, the baby began to sob.

"It's okay," he murmured to her. "Now hush, will you?"

Another gust came, harder and colder than the first. He w the child closer to his chest and as he did so something ved in the darkness on the opposite side of the street. Bosley froze, but he'd already been spotted. A voice came out of the shadows, as comfortless as the wind that carried it.

"You found her-" it said, and the speaker shambled out of the deepest shadow into plainer view. It was burned, profoundly burned. Black in places, and yellow-white in others. As it approached, a carpet of living dust lay down before it. Bosley started to pray again.

"Don't!" said the burned man. "My mother used to pray. I hate the sound of it." He opened his arms. "Just give me my little girl."

Bosley shook his head. This was the final test, he thought; the encounter for which the incidents with the virago and the sodomites had been preparing him. This was when he discovered what his faith was worth.

"You can't have her," he said determinedly. "She's not yours."

"Yes she is," the burned man said. "Her name is Amy McGuire and I'm her father, Tommy-Ray."

Bosley took a backwards step, making calculations as he went. How far was it to the corner? If he shouted now, would Glodoski hear him above Lundy's moans?

"I don't want to do you any harm," Tommy-Ray McGuire said. "I don't want any more death... " He shook his head as he spoke, and flakes of matter dropped from his encrusted face. "I've seen too much... too much... "

"I can't give her to you," Bosley said, striving to sound, reasonable.

"Maybe if you can find her mother."

"Her mother's dead," Tommy-Ray said, his voice cracking. "Dead and gone."

"I'm sorry."

"The baby's all I've got now. So I'm gonna find some place where me and my little girl can live in peace."

My little girl. Lord God in Heaven, Bosley thought, take this poor man's insanity from him. Relieve him of his suffering and let him rest.

"Give her to me," the creature said, moving towards Bosley afresh.

"I'm afraid... I can't... do that Bosley said, retreating to the corner. Once there, he loosed a yell"Glodoski! Alstead!"-and pelted back down the block, grateful to find them still tormenting Lundy.

"Where the fuck did you go?" Larry demanded.

Bosley felt a chill wind at his back, and glanced over his shoulder to see McGuire rounding the corner, with the carpet of dust rising around him.

"Christ Almighty!" Larry said. "Keep runnin'!" Alstead hollered.

"It's closing' on you!"

Bosley didn't need any encouragement. He fled towards the men, the dust swirling around his legs now, as if to trip him up.

"Out of the way!" Larry yelled, racing towards him. Bosley changed direction, and Giodoski fired at McGuire, Who stopped in his tracks. The dust kept coming however, flinging Glodoski against the brick wall. He started to sob for help, but he got out no more than a word or two before his pleas were choked off. In an instant the dust had enveloped him, and his body was lifted off the ground, still pinned against the wall.

Alstead, who had only reluctantly given up his assault on Seth, now let the boy slide to the ground and went to Glodoski's aid. But the dust had done its work. In a matter of ten seconds, if that, it had dashed

@'s brains out against the brick; now it turned on Alstead. He started to back away, raising his hands in surrender, but the dust was on him like a rabid dog and would surely have slaughtered him too had Bosley not begged Tommy-Ray to call it off.

"No more death!" he said.

"All right," said McGuire, and called the dust back to his feet, leaving Alstead sobbing on the sidewalk a few yards from Waits, who had passed out in the gutter and remained there comatose.

"Just give me the kid," Tommy-Ray said'to Bosley. "And I'm gone."

"You won't hurt her?" Bosley said.

"No." "Don't-" Seth murmured, hauling himself to his feet. "In God's name, Bosley@'

"I've got no choice," Bosley replied, and proffered the child.

Seth was on his feet, and with a broken cry in his throat stumbled towards Bosley. But his bruised body couldn't carry him fast enough. Tommy-Ray claimed Amy from Bosley's hands and gathering her to his burned body whistled for the killing cloud to follow him down the street.

Seth was abreast of Bosley now, sobbing out his frustration.

"How could... you... do... that?"

"I told you: I had no choice."

"You could have run."

"He would have found me," Bosley replied, staring blank-eyed into the darkness that already enveloped Tommy-Ray.

Seth didn't waste his breath arguing. He had little enough energy left in his bruised body, and it was a long trek from here back to the crossroads, where all of tonight's journeys were bound to end.

At the crossraods Beddenbaum stared down into the ground, into the dark where the medallion lay, gathering power.

The end's almost here, he thought. The end of the stories I've made and the stories I've manipulated, and those I wandered through like a bit player and those I've endured like a prisoner. The end of all my favorite clich6s: tragic mismatches and farcical encounters; tearful reunions and deathbed curses. The end of Once upon a time and Now we shall see and Can I believe my eyes? The end of final acts; of funeral scenes and curtain speeches. The end of ends. Think of that.

He would miss the pleasure of stories-especially those in which he'd appeared in some unlikely guise or other ut he'd have no need of them very soon. they were solace for the rest of humanity, who were mired in time and desperate to glimpse something of the grand scheme. What else could they do with their lives but suffer and tell tales? He would not be of that tribe much longer.

"I have nothing but you, my sweet Serenissima," he said, turning on his heel, surveying the streets in all directions. "You are my sense, my sanity, and my soul " The pain in these words had moved him in the past, many, many times. Now he only heard the word-music, which was pretty in its simplicity, but not so pretty he would miss hearing it again.

"Go from me now and I am lost in the great dark between the stars-" As he spoke he saw Tesla Bombeck approaching down the street. And coming after her the girl, the fool, and the cretin. He went on declaiming: "And cannot ever perish there, for I must live until you still my heart." He smiled at Tesla, at them all. Opened his arms wide in welcome.

"Still it now!

She looked at him with puzzlement on her face, which he rather enjoyed.

"Still it now! " he said again. Oh, but it was fine, roaring over the din of screams and sobs, while his victims came wandering towards him.

"I beg thee, still it now, and let my suffering cease!

Doing her best to conceal her nervousness, Tesia looked back in the direction of the lad. She could see nothing of the invader itself, but two fires had started in the streets closest to the base of the mountain, and flames from the larger of them were leaping up over the roofs, seeding sparks. Whatever their originsdesperate defense measures or accidents that were goiti,,, unchecked-the fires would surely spread. In which case the invader would be lording itself over a city of charcoal and ash by morning.

She returned her gaze to Buddenbaum, who had given up his theatrics and was now standing in the middle of the crossroads with his hands behind his back. She was still thirty yards from him, and, the only light being that of the distant conflagrations and a few uneasy stars, she could not confidently read his expression. Would he give her a signal, she wondered, when she'd brought the Jai-Wai close enou,,h that she could retreat? A nod? A wink? She silently berated herself for not prearranging some sign. Well, it was too late now.

"Buddenbaum?" she said.

He inclined his head a little. "What are you doing here?" he said.

Not bad, she thought. He was pretty convincing.

"I came to say... well, I guess to say goodbye."

"What a pity," Buddenbaum replied. "I'd rather hoped we'd have a chance to get to know each other."

Tesia glanced back at Rare Utu. "It's up to you now," she said, studying the Jai-Wai's face in the gloom. She could see no sign of suspicion, but that didn't mean much. The features were a mas@ after all. "Maybe I should just head off and leave you to it," she suggested.

"If that's what you'd prefer," Rare Utu replied, walking on past Tesla to Buddenbaum.

"I think she should stay," Yie said. "this isn't going to. take very long."

Tesla looked back at Buddenbaum, who seemed to be staring at his feet. His hands were at his sides now, and tightly clenched. He's holding something down, she thought, he's suppressing some evidence of what's going on here.

He wouldn't be able to do so much longer. Haheh had by now wandered on past Tesla, sloughing off his human form as he did so, and he seemed to have become aware that the street was simmering.

"Do you have some kind of surprise for us, Owen?" he asked mildly.

"I'm... always trying my best to... to keep you diveri.ed," Buddenbaum replied. The stress of his attempts at containment were audible in his voice. It had lost most of its music.

"You've done well for us over the years," Rare Utu said. She sounded almost sorrowful.

"Thank you," Owen replied. "I've always tried my best. I'm sure you know that."

"we also know that great stories have a shape to them," Utu went on.

"they bud, they come to flower, and then... inevitably-"

"Get on with it, will you?" Yie said from behind Tesla. She turned her head an inch of two, just glimpsing him from the corner of her eye. He had also given up his human skin in favor of his fleshy cocoon. Even in the murk, the blebs his empathy had nurtured gleamed. "We don't owe the man any niceties," he continued. "Tell him the truth and let's be done with it."

"What have you come to tell me?" Buddenbaum asked.

"That it's over," Haheh replied gently. "That we have body new to show us the wonders of the story tree."

Buddenbaum looked incredulous. "Just like that?" he aid, his voice rising a little. "You're replacing me without o much as a word of warning? Oh, that simply breaks my heart! "

Be careful, Tesla thought. The line about his heart breaking sounded a tad phoney.

"It was inevitable," Rare Utu said, taking a couple of steps towards Buddenbaum. Finally she too was giving up the illusion of humanity, her childish body swelling and glistening as it retrieved its strange divinity. "There are only so many stories in one head, Owen, and we've exhausted your supply."

"Oh you'd be surprised," Buddenbaum replied. "Amazed, even, if you knew how much I haven't shown YOU."

"Well it's too late now," Haheh said. "Our decision's made, and it's final. Tesla Bombeck will be our guide as we approach the millennium."

"Well, congratulations," Buddenbaum said to Tesla sourly, and as he spoke took a step towards her, sliding between Haheh and Rare Utu. He was close enough now that Tesla could see his face plainly, and she read the look in his eyes. He wanted her gone, and quickly.

She retreated from him, as though his proximity distressed her. "It wasn't planned this way," she protested. "I didn't seek this out."

"Frankly," he replied, "I don't care one way or the other." He reached out and casually caught hold of Rare Utu's frail arm as he spoke. This was plainly an unusual, perhaps even unique, contact, because the Jai-Wai shuddered, staring down at his hand in some distress. "What are you doing, Owen?" she said, the folds of her bejeweled flesh shuddering.

"Just making my farewells," Owen replied. Haheh's gaze was approaching the spot that Buddenbaum had vacated. The asphalt there was brightening and softening.

"What have you been up to?" he said, staring down.

Behind Tesla, Yie murmured, "Keep away but Haheh was deaf to the warning. He took another step, while the street continued to brighten. Rare Urn was meanwhile attempting to shake off Buddenbaum's hold, but he refused to let her go. Eyes fixed on Tesla, he smiled through clenched teeth and told her, "Goodbye."

She started to turn but as she did so the ground on which Haheh was standing suddenly blazed, and he was enveloped. Rare Utu loosed the word Owen like a shriek, and started to pull at her captor, while Haheh's body ran like butter in a furnace, the blebs bursting in wheels of colors and pouring off into the street.

Tesla had already seen too much. It was dangerous to stay, lethal, probably. But she'd never been good at averting her eyes, whatever the wisdom of it. She kept drinking down the scene in front of her, until Buddenbaum screamed, "Get the fiwk out of here!" and as he did so pitched Rare Utu back into the light that had claimed Haheh. She went shrieking, but her cry was cut short once the light sealed itself around her. Throwing back her head, she opened her arms as though surrendering to the sensation.

"I said. Go!" Buddenbaum yelled at Tesla, and this time she tore her eyes from the spectacle and turned, only to meet a rush of sour, cold air, and Yie, coming at her.

"You tricked us!" he said, his voice like scalpels. It cut her courage to ribbons. She froze, staring into his doll-like face, while at her back Rare Utu uttered a shivering sigh and murmured, "This... is... wonder.fuL"

"What have you done to her?" Yie demanded. The questions was directed at Buddenbaum, but he caught hold of Tesla as he asked it, and hauled her close to his body. His limbs were far from strong; she could have broken the hold if she'd wanted to. But she didn't. The influence of this flesh was like peyote. She felt it invade her, Lifting her out of her fear.

"Set them free!" Yie said to Buddenbaum.

"I'm afraid it's too late for that," said Owen.

"I'll kill your woman if you don't," the Jai-Wai warned.

"She's not mine," came the reply. "Do whatever you need to do." Dreamily, Tesla glanced back over her shoulder at Buddenbaum, and by the light pouring from the ground saw him plainly for the first time. He was pitifully cold; his humanity consumed long ago in the effort that had brought him to this place. No doubt all he'd boasted in the Nook was true: The years had made him wiser than the Jaff. But his wisdom would do him no good. The Art would break him the way it had broken Randolph. Snap his reason and melt his mind.

Beyond him, in the blaze, Rare Utu had almost disappeared, but even now, with her substance pouring off into the ground where Haheh had already gone, she spoke.

"What happens next... ?" she said.

"Take her out of there!" Yie yelled to Buddenbaum.

"I told you: It's too late," he replied. "Besides, I don't think she wants to go."

Rare Utu was laughing now. "What's next?" she kept saying, her laughter growing insubstantial. "What? What?"

The ground at her feet was as soft as she, ribbons of brightness running off along the streets.

"Stop this!" Yie demanded again, his din so brutal that this time Tesla's body simply surrendered beneath its assault. Her legs failed, her bladder gave out, and she stumbled from Yie's grip towards the blaze.

"No you don't!" Buddenbaum snapped, retreating across the incandescent earth to protect the spot where Rare Utu had stood. "The Art's mine!"

"The Art?" Yie said, as though it was only now he understood the purpose of this trap. "Never, Buddenbaum... " his voice was rising with each syllable. "You will not have it!"

His lacerating din was too much for Tesla's beleaguered body. She felt something in her head break; felt her tongue slacken in her mouth and her lids fall. Saw, as darkness came, the bright ground divide before her And there it was, shining in the dirt: the cross of crosses, the sign of signs. In the long, slow moments of her dying fall, she remembered with a kind of yearning how she'd solved the puzzles of that cross; seen the four journeys that were etched upon it. One to the dream world, one to the real; one to the bestial, one to the divine. And there at the heart of these joumeys-where they crossed, where they divided, where they finished and began-the human mystery. It was not about the flesh, that mystery: It was not about hanging broken from a cross or the triumph of the spirit over suffering. It was about the living dream of mind, that made body and spirit and all they tookjoy in.

Remembering the revelation now the time between that moment and this-the years she'd spent wandering the roads of the lost Americas-folded up and fled. She had glimpsed the vast eternal sitting in the earth beneath Palomo Grove, and now she was dying into it, her lids closing, her heart stopping.

Somewhere far off she heard Yie shrieking, and knew the power here had claimed him as it had claimed the others.

She wanted to tell him not to be afraid; that he was going into a place where the future of being lay in wait. A time out of time when the singularity from which all things came would be whole again. But she had no tongue. No, nor breath. No, nor life.

It was over.

Harry, Raul, and Maeve O'Connell had just come in sight of the crossroads when Tesia slid from Yie's grasp, and stumbled forward.

Though they were a hundred yards from the spot or more, the light was exquisitely particular, and kept no detail of the expression on Tesia's face from Harry's eyes. She was dead, or dying, but her slackening features carried a look of strange contentment.

The luminous ground was no longer solid where she fell. It received her like a shining grave, and she was gone.

"Oh Jesus Harry breathed. "Oh Jesus Chnst in Heaven... "

He picked up his pace and raced towards the intersection, following the braided rivulets of light that ran in the ground beneath his feet.

Behind him, Maeve had started to shout.

"I know that man!" she hollered. "That's Buddenbaum! My Lord, that's Buddenbaum! That's the bastard started all this!" Wresting herself from Raul's custody, she started to hobble after D'Amour.

ill you please stop her?" Coker yelled in Raul's ear.

Raul was too distressed by Tesla's disappearance to reply. Coker yelled on until Raul said, "I thought you'd gone."

"No, never," Coker replied. "I was simply silenced by her bitterness. Now I beg you, my friend, don't let her be taken from me. I want her to know what I feel for her, just once."

Raul swallowed a sob. So many people already taken, and this last the most unthinkable. Tesla had survived a bullet, Kissoon, and enough drugs to fell a horse. But now she was gone.

"Please," Coker said. "Go after Maeve."

"I'll do my best," Raul said, and started in pursuit of the old woman. For all her frailty, she'd already covered quite a distance.

"Wait!" he called after her. "Somebody wants to talk to you!"

As he caught up with her, she scowled. "It's him I want to talk to!" she said, nodding in Buddenbaum's direction. "He's the one!"

"Listen to me a moment," Raul said, catching hold of her arm. "It wasn't an accident we found you. Somebody led us to you. Do you understand? Somebody who's here, right now, beside us."

"Are you crazy?" Maeve replied, looking around.

"You don't see him because he's dead."

"I don't give a shit for the dead," Maeve snapped. "It's the living I want answers from! Buddenbaum!" she yelled.

It was Erwin who piped up now. "Tell her who you are!" he said to Coker.

"I wanted it to be a special moment," Coker replied.

"I wasted my life waiting for the special moments," Erwin told him. "Now is all we've got!" So saying, he pushed his fellow phantom aside to get access to Raul's ear. "Tell her it's Coker! Go on! Tell her!"

"Coker?" Raul said aloud.

Maeve O'Connell stopped in her hobbling tracks. "What did you say?" she murmured.

"The dead man's name is Coker," Raul replied. "I' in her husband," said Coker.

"He says he's-"

"I know who he is," she said, and drawing a gasping breath she said,

"Coker? My Coker? Can this be true?"

"It's true," Raul said.

Tears came, but she didn't stop saying his name. "Coker oh my Coker... my sweet Coker...

Harry heard Maeve sobbing behind him, and looked round to see her with her head flung back, as though her husband was raining kisses on her and she was bathing in them. When he returned his gaze to the crossroads, Buddenbaum had dropped to the ground where Tesla had vanished, and was beating his fists violently against the now-solidified street. He was on the verge of apoplexy, sprays of spittle, sweat, and tears erupting from his face. "You can't, you bitch!" he shrieked at the street. "I won't let you have it!"

Energies were still pouring up out of the ground, spirals and filigrees rising around him. He tried to snatch hold of them in his bloodied hands, as if they might still transfigure him, but his fists extinguished those he caught, and the rest simply climbed on out of his reach and faded into the darkness above him. His fury and frustration mounted. He began to swing around, unleashing a solid scream of rage,

"This can't happen! It can't! It can't!"

Behind him, Harry heard Maeve O'Connell say, "Do you see this, Coker? At the crossroads?" "He sees it," Raul replied.

"That's where I buried the medallion," Maeve went on. "Does Coker know that?" "He knows."

Maeve had come to HarTy's side now. Her face was wet with tears but her smile was unalloyed. "My husband's here... she said to Harry, rather proudly. "Imagine that...

"That's wonderful."

She pointed down the street. "That's where we had the whorehouse. Right there. It's no coincidence, is it?"

"No," said Harry, "I don't think it is."

"All that light, it's coming from the medallion."

"It certainly looks that way."

Her smile broadened. "I'm going to see for myself"

"I wouldn't if I were you."

"Well you're not me," she said sharply. "Whatever's going on there's my doing." She calmed herself a little, and the smile crept back on to her face. "I don't think you know what's going on any more than I do, am I right?"

"More or less," Harry conceded.

"So if we don't know what's to be afraid of, why be afraid?" she reasoned. "Raul? I want you on my left side. And Coker, wherever you are, I want you on my right."

"At least let me go first," Harry said, and without waiting for her permission, headed on towards Buddenbaum, who was once again berating the asphalt. He saw Harry coming from the corner of his eye.

"Keep your distance," he gasped, his breathing raw. "This ground's mine. And I've still got power in me if you uy to take it from me."

"I'm not here to take anything," Harry said.

"You and that bitch Bombeck, plotting against me."

"Mere was no plot. Tesla never wanted to be a part of this-"

"Of course she did!" Buddenbaum replied. "She wasn't stupid. She wanted the Art the same as everyone." He looked round at D'Amour, his fury decaying into self-pity. "But you see I trusted her. That was my mistake. And she lied!" He slammed his wounded palms down upon the solid ground. 'This was my ground! My miracle!"

"Listen to the shit he speaks!" Maeve hollered. Harry stood aside, to let Buddenbaum see her. "You're the liar!" she said. "that land was, is, and always will be mine."

Buddenbaum's expression turned from fury to astonishment. "Are you... are you what I think you are?"

"Why do you look surprised?" Maeve said. "Sure, I got old, but we can't all do deals with the Devil."

"It wasn't the Devil I dealt with," Buddenbaum said softly. "I might have more to show for it if I had. What are you doing here?"

"I came to get some answers," Maeve said. "I deserve some, don't you think, before we both go to our graves?"

"I'm not going to my grave," Buddenbaum said.

"Oh are you not?" Maeve replied. "My mistake." She waved Raul away, so as to proceed unaided to where Buddenbaum knelt. "Do you want another hundred, hundred and fifty years?" she said to him. "You're welcome to them. I'm off, after this. Somewhere my bones don't ache."

While she was speaking, one of the luminous ribbons risin- from the ground strayed in her direction. She reached out towards it and instead of avoiding her grasp it woye between her arthritic fingers. "Did you ever see the house we built here?" she said, as she watched the ribbon at play. "Oh it was such a sight. Such a sight."

The ribbon went from her fingers now, but several more strands and particles were rising from out of the earth towards her.

"What are you doing, woman?" Buddenbaum said.

"Nothing," Maeve shrugged.

"Even if the land isn't mine, the magic is."

"I'm not taking it from you," Maeve said mildly, "I'm too old to be possessive about anything. Except maybe my memories. Those are mine, Buddenbaum... " The motes were getting busier all the time, as though inspired by what she was saying. "And right now they're very clear.

Very, very, clear." She closed her eyes for a moment, and a new wave of luminosity broke from the street, rising to graze her hands and face before darting off. "Sometimes I think I remember my childhood more clearly than yesterday... " she went on, extending her hand. "Coker?" she said. "Are you there?"

"He's right here," said Raul.

"Will you take my hand?" she said.

"He says he's doing it," Raul said. Then, after a moment. "He's got tight hold of you."

Maeve smiled. "You know I believe I can feel it?" she said.

Buddenbaum caught hold of Hany's sleeve. "Is she

?" crazy

"No. Her husband's ghost is here."

"I should have seen, I suppose," he said, his voice a monotone. "Final acts... they're a bitch...

"Better get used to it," Harry said.

"I never liked the sentimental shit," Buddenbaum replied.

"I think it's more than that," Harry said, looking up at the motes and filaments that had touched Maeve's skin. they were not extinguishing themselves in the night sky as those that had gone before had done, but were roving purposefully, like bees in a field of flowers, mazing the air as they went about their purpose. Where they traveled they left trails of light, which, once loosed, proceeded to elaborate themselves, describing a multitude of forms in the warm night air.

It was Raul who spoke what he saw first. "The house-2' he said in amazement. "You see it, Harry?"

"I see it."

"Enough," said Buddenbaum, waving the sight away as if nauseated. "I'm done with the past. Done with it!"

Covering his head with his hands he stumbled off as Maeve's memory raised her whorehouse out of light and air: walls and windows, staircase and ceilings. Off to Harry's left a passageway led to the front door, and the step beyond. to his right, through another door there was a parlor, and through another, a kitchen, and through a third a yard where the trees were blossoming. And everywhere, even as the floors were laid, the rooms were being filled with furniture and rugs and plants and vases, the sheer proliferation of detail suggesting that once the process had been initiated these objects were coming back into being of their own accord. Their solid selves had gone to dust decades since, but these, their imagined forms, remained encoded at the spot where they'd existed. Now they came again, remembering themselves in all their perfection.

None was so solid, however, as to keep Hany's eyes from wandering in any direction he wished. He could see the picket fence that bounded the backyard and the fine Spanish tile on the front step. He could see up the graceful staircase to the second and third floors, each of which boasted two bathrooms and half a dozen well-appointed bedrooms.

And now, even before the roof had appeared on the house, the souls who had occupied it began to appear, gracing its rooms.

"Ah... " Raul cooed appreciatively, "the ladies." they appeared everywhere. On the landings and in the bedrooms, in the parlors and in the kitchen, their voices and their laughter like whispering music.

"There's Bedelia," Maeve said, "and Hildegard and Jennie, oh my dear Jennie, look at her... "

It was not such a bad place to be, Harry thought, come the end of the world, surrounded by such memories. Though only one or two of the women would have been judged pretty by current standards, there was an air of ease and pleasure here, of a house as much dedicated to laughter as to erotic excess.

As for the clients who'd patronized the establishment, they were like the ghosts of ghosts, gossamer forms passing up and down the stairs and in and out of the bedrooms and bathrooms, their dress and flesh gray.

Once in a while Harry would catch a glimpse of a face, but it was always fleeting, as though the house had conjured the furtiveness of these men, rather than the men themselves; caught them turning from scrutiny, ashamed of their desire.

There was little evidence of shame among the women. they went bare-breasted on the stairs, and naked on the landing. they chatted to one another as they shit or passed water. they helped each other bathe and douche and shave their legs and what lay between. "There, said Maeve, pointing to a prodigiously ample woman sitting in the kitchen, taking fingerfuls of pudding from a porcelain bowl, "that's Mary Elizabeth. You got a lot for your bucks with her. She always had a waiting list. And up there"-she pointed towards a slim, pale girl feeding a parrot from between her teeth-"that's Dolores. And the parrot, what was the parrot's name?" She glanced round at Raul. "Ask Coker," she said.

The answer came in an instant. "Elijah."

Maeve smiled. "Elijah. Of course, Elijah. She swore it spoke prophecies."

"Were you happy here?" Harry asked her.

"It wasn't what I'd expected my life to be," she said. "But yes, I was happy. Probably too happy. That made people envious."

"Is that why they burned the place down?" Harry said, wandering to the stairs to watch Mary Elizabeth ascend. "Because they were envious?"

"That was some of it," she said. "And some of it was eer self-righteousness: they didn't want me and my busiss corrupting the citizens. Can you imagine? Without me, without this house and these women, there wouldn't have been any citizens because there wouldn't have been any city. And they knew that. That's why they waited until they had an excuse-"

"And what was that?"

"Our son, our crazy son, who was too little like his father and too much like me. Coker was always gentle, you see. But there was a streak of the lunatic in the O'Connells, and it came out in Clayton. Not just that, but we made the error of teaching him he was special, telling him he'd have power in his hands one day, because he was a child of two worlds. We should never have done that. It made him think he was above the common decencies; that he had the right to be barbarous if he chose, because he was better than everybody else." She grew pensive. "I saw him once, when he was maybe ten or so, looking up at Harmon's Heights, and I said to him: What are you thinking? And do you know what he said to me? One day, he said, I'll have that hill, and I'll look down on a world of fishes. I've thought so many times, that was the sign. I should have put him out of his misery right there and then. But it had taken Coker and me so much pain and effort to get a child... "

While part of Harry's mind listened to the story of Clayton O'Connell's begetting-how Coker's charms and suits had kept Maeve preternaturally young, but slowed her ovulations to a trickle; how she was almost seventy when she gave birth to the boy-another part turned over what she'd said previously. The child's notion of looking down from Hannon's Heights on a world of fishes rang some vague bell.

"What happened to Clayton?" he asked her, while he puzzled over the problem.

"He was hanged."

"You saw him dead?"

"No. His body was taken by wolves or bears...

And now, thinking of wild beasts up on the mountain, he remembered where he'd heard the words before. "Raul?" he said. "Stay here with Maeve, will you?"

"I'm not leaving." Raul smiled, his face flushed with voyeuristic pleasure.

"Don't you go," Maeve said, as Harry left the bottom of the stairs.

"I'll be back," he replied, "you just keep remembering," and heading off down the hallway he slipped through the unopened front door onto the street.

"Lives are leaves on the story tree," the man who walked on Quiddity had told Tesla. to which she'd replied that she'd never told a story she'd given a damn about.

"Oh, but you did," he'd said. "Yourown... yourown...

It was true, of course. She'd told that story with every blink of her eye, every beat of her heart, with every deed and word, cruel and kind alike.

But here was a mystery; that now, though her heart was no longer beating and her eyes could no longer blink, though she would never again say or do anything in the living world, cruel or kind, the story refused to finish.

She was dead; that much was sure. But the pen moved on, and kept moving. There was more to tell it seemed...

The brightness into which she had fallen was still around her, though she knew it wasn't her eyes that were seeing it, because she could see her own body some distance 1from her, suspended in the light. It lay face-up, arms and legs spread, fingers splayed, in a posture she knew all too well. She'd assembled this image in front of Buddenbaum, half an hour ago: It was the pose of the figure at the center of the medallion. Now it was her dead flesh that took that pose, while her mind drifted around it with a kind of detached curiosity, mildly puzzled as to what all this meant, but suspecting the answer was beyond her comprehension.

In the ground a little way beneath her body-the source of the energies that had transformed the solid ground into a kind of incandescent soup-was the cross itself, and when her spirit looked its way it transported her thoughts in four directions at once, out along the bright paths that ran from its arms. In one direction lay the human journey; a record of the countless men and women who had come to and crossed at this intersection, all of them carrying their freight of dreams. In the opposite direction came a procession of creatures who resembled humanity, but only remotely; exiles from the Metacosm, come to EverVille as a place of pilgrimage, and led by their prophetic marrow to this spot. From a third route came the animals, wild and domesticated alike. Leashed dogs sniffing for a place to piss; migrating birds wheeling overhead before they turned south; the flies that had been a curse to Dolan in his candy shop, the worms that had massed here in their many millions just the summer before. Aspiring forms, even the lowliest.

And finally, the most remote element in this conjunction: the divinities whom she'd helped ensnare.

"What happens next?" Rare Utu had waited to know as the blaze had consumed her. It was a question that no longer vexed Tesla. She had her bliss here and was perfectly content. If her consciousness finally caught up with the facts of her demise and flickered out, so be it. And if the pen continued to move, and the story continued to be told, she would accept that too, willingly. Meanwhile, she would hover, and watch, while the ground ran with brightness in every direction, and the steady processes of decay began their work on the body she'd once met in the mirror.

iv Harry was two blocks from the crossroads, heading off towards the place where the lad was at work, when he heard Buddenbaum calling to him.

"Help me, D'Amour!" he said, stumbling across the street. He had not, it appeared, left the site of his working completely bereft. A down of luminescence clung to his face and hands, an inconsequential reminder of all that he'd failed to acquire. "I don't blame you," he said, backing along the middle of the street ahead of Harry. "She was a friend of yours, so you had to conspire with her. You had no choice."

"There was no conspiracy, Buddenbaum."

"Whether there was or there wasn't, you can't leave her down there, can you?" He was attempting a tone of sweet reason.

"She's dead," said Harry.

"I know that."

"So wherever she's buried, it's academic. Will you just get the hell out of my way?"

"Where are you going?"

"to find Kissoon."

"Kissoon?" Buddenbaum said. "What the Hell good can he do you?"

"More than you can."

"Not true!" Buddenbaum protested. "Just give me a few minutes of your time, and you'll never took back. There'll be no past to look back to. No future either. Just-"

"One immortal day?" Harry shook his head. "Give it up, for God's sake. You had your chance and you blew it."

He turned a corner now, and there, at the other end of the street, was the enemy. He halted for a moment, to try and make some sense of what he was seeing, but the closest of the fires was several streets away, and what illumination it offered only confounded his gaze. One thing was certain: The lad was no longer the chaotic, panicked thing, or things, it had been on the mountaintop. Even from this distance and with so little light he could see that the enemy had sloughed off its ragged coat and moved in th e air like a serpentine engine, its immense form in constant, peristaltic motion.

Harry pulled up his sleeves, to expose his tattoos. Who knew what good they'd do him, probably very little. But he needed all the help he could get.

"What are you going to do?" Buddenbaum wanted to know. "Challenge it to a fistfight? You don't have a chance. Not without some power to wield."

Harry ignored him. Drawing a deep breath, he started down the street towards the lad.

"You think you're being heroic, is that it?" Buddenbaum said. "It's suicide. If you want to do some good, we can help each other. Dig for me, D'Amour."

"Dig?"

Buddenbaum raised his hands in front of him. they were a sickening sight. In his frenzy to reclaim what he'd lost, he'd beaten his flesh to a bloody pulp. Several fingers were askew, their bones broken. "I can't do it myself. And by the time they heal it'll be too late."

"It's not going to happen," Harry said.

"What the fuck do you know about what's going to happen and what isn't?"

"If you were going to act the Art it would have come to you back there. But it didn't."

"That was because of Tesia@'

"Maybe. And maybe you just weren't meant to have it."

Buddenbaum stopped in his tracks. "I won't hear that," he said.

"So don't," Harry replied, stepping around him.

"And I won't be denied what's mine!" Buddenbaum f said, layino, one of his broken hands on Harry's shoulder. "I don't haveomuch in the way of suits left in me," he said, "but I've got enough to cripple you. Maybe even kill you." "And what good would that do you?"

"I would have laid one of my enemies low," Buddenbaum replied.

Harry could feel a pulse of neuralgia pass through his shoulder from Buddenbaum's palm, lending credence to the threat.

"I'm going to give you one more chance," Buddenbaum said.

Hany's tattoos started to itch furiously. His guts twitched. He knew he should run, but the will had gone from his legs. "What are you doing, Owen?" somebody said.

The itch was an ache now, and the twitches almost convulsions. Harry tried to turn his head towards the speaker, but it wouldn't move. All he could do was shift his eyes, and there on the periphery of his vision he saw the boy from the crossroads. His pallid face was bruised and bloodied.

"Let him go, Owen," he said. "Please."

Buddenbaum made a sound Harry couldn't'quite interpret. was it perhaps a sob? "Stay away from me, Seth," he said.

"What happened?" the boy wanted to know.

"I was cheated," Buddenbaum replied, his voice thickening with tears. "I had it in my grasp-"

"And this man took it?"

"No!"

"So, what? You're just killing anybody who gets in your way? You're not that cruel."

"I will be," Buddenbaum said. "From now on, no mercy, no compassionate'

"No love?"

"No love!" he yelled. "So you stay away from me or I'll hurt you too!"

"No you won't," Seth said, his words a gentle certainty Harry felt the pain in his body easing, and the power over his muscles was returned to him. He made no sudden movements, for fear of inflaming Buddenbaum afresh, but slowly turning his head he saw that Seth had lifted the man's hand off Harry's shoulder and had drawn it up to his lips.

"We've all been hurt enough for one lifetime," he said softly, kissing the broken hand. "We've got to start healing, Owen."

"It's too late for that."

"Give me a chance to prove you wrong," the boy replied. Harry looked round at Buddenbaum. His ragc had passed, leaving his face drained of expression.

"You'd better go," Seth said to Harry.

"Will you be all right with him?"

"Sure," Seth replied gently, slipping his arm around Buddenbaum's shoulder. "We'll be fine. We go way back, him and me. Way back." There was no time for further exchange. Leaving the pair to make what peace they could, Harry headed on down the street. In the minute or so since he'd last looked the lad's way it had advanced against the largest building in the vicinity: either the courthouse or the Town Hall, Harry guessed. The site was no more than a hundred and fifty yards ahead of him, and now with every step the lad's pernicious influence grew. He felt its needles at the base of his skull, and the corners of his eyes; heard its witless noise behind the din of the world.

It was almost welcome, that witlessness, given the alternative: the shrieks and screams coming from those trapped in the besieged building. He was puzzled as to why the victims didn't escape out the back until he saw Gamali6l running down the side of the building with something that looked like a human head in his hand. If Gamaliel was here, so were his brothers, and probably the surviving members of Zury's clan too: all here to enjoy the spectacle.

So where was Kissoon? He'd masterminded this night of retribution; he was surely here to witness it.

Shouting for Kissoon as he went, Harry broke into a run. It sounded strange to be calling a man's name in the midst of such utter bedlam, but hadn't it been Kissoon himself who'd said that whatever the lad looked like they'd have a human heart? Men were not nameless. Every one of them had a past; even Kissoon, who had spoken so fondly of being nobody: just eyes on a mountain, looking down on a world of fishes...

The walls of the Town Hall were cracking, as the great wheel of the lad pressed against it. The closer Harry came to the place, the more the lad's name made sense. Uroboros, the self-devouring serpent, encircling the earth while it ate its own tail. An image of power as a self-sufficient engine: implacable, incomprehensible, inviolate.

This time there were no hallucinations in its proximity-no Father Hess accusing from a makeshift grave, no demon spouting enigmas-just this ring of malice, cracking the shell that kept it from its victims. He saw it more clearly all the time. It seemed to him it was displaying itself, tormenting him with the fact that despite the clarity there was no comprehension to he had; no place where its intricacies resolved themselves into something recognizable: a head, a claw, an eye. Just shapes in nauseating abundance, flukes and scraps and scabs; hard forms of indeterminate color (bluish here, reddish there, or neither, or nothing); all soul less, all passionless.

There was, of course, no human face here either. Only repetition, like a scrawl caught between mirrors, its echoes looking like order, like meaning, but being neither.

He had to find the heart. That was his only hope: Find the heart.

The noise in his head had grown so loud now he was sure it would burst his skull, but he kept walking towards its source, and the closer he came-sixty yards, fifty, forty@e more clearly he heard a whisper beneath the din, It was calm, this whisper.

It's nothing to be afraid of... he was telling himself.

He was surprised at his own courage.

Nothing you haven't seen before... Surprised and reassured.

Just let it embrace you... Wait, he thought; where did that idea come from?

There'll only be the two of us, very soon...

That isn't me. It's the lad.

Oh, but there's no way to divide us... the whisper replied, receding now that it had been identified, you know that, in your heart... it said, in your human heart...

Then it was gone, and he was ten yards from the vast, slow wheel, the screams from the building drowned out by the mindless noise in his head. Off to his right he saw Gamaliel striding in his direction. It would slaughter him on the instant, he knew. No prayer, no hesitation. Just the killing stroke.

He had seconds to live. Seconds to bring Kissoon to him.

He drew a deep breath, and though he could no longer hear his own voice, yelled into the bedlam. "I'm looking for Clayton O'Connell!"

There was no response at first. The wheel kept moving, senseless form upon senseless form passing in front of his exhausted eyes. And then, with Gamaliel a yard from him, its hands stretched to fip out his throat, the lad's motion began to slow. Some unheard order must have gone out, because Gamaliel stopped in mid-stride, and then retreated a little way.

The din in Harry's head retreated t@though it didn't disappear-and he stood before the lad gasping like a prisoner whose restraints had been loosened enough to let him breathe. There was some movement amid the lad's anatomy. It unknotted itself, parted. And there, enthroned in its entrailswhich were the same incomprehensible stuff of its outward appearance-was Kissoon.

He looked much as he had on the mountain: simple and serene.

"How did you work out who I was?" he said. Though there was a considerable distance between them, his voice sounded as intii-nate as the lad's whispers.

"I didn't," Harry said. "I was told."

"By whom?" Kissoon wanted to know, rising and steppino out of the living sanctum down onto the street. "Who C, told you'?"

"Your mother."

The face before him remained impassive. Not a twitch.

Not a flicker.

"Her name's Maeve O'Connell, in case you've forgotten," Harry said, "and she was hanged on a tree, alongside your father and you."

,,You talk to the dead?" Kissoon said. "Since when)'

"She's not dead. She's very much alive."

"What kind of trick is this?" Kissoon said. "You think it's going to save anybody?"

"She escaped, Clayton. The bough broke, and she found a way through to Quiddity."

"Impossible."

"The door was always up there, open just a crack."

"How could she have got through it?"

"She had suits of her own, didn't she? And the will to make them work. You should see what she's done at the crossroads." Harry glanced back over his shoulder. "That light. - - " he said. There was a noticeable glow in the sky around the region of the whorehouse. "That's her handiwork."

Kissoon gazed at it a moment, and Harry had the satisfaction of seeing a flicker of doubt upon his face. A tiny flicker, to be sure, but it was enough.

"I... don't know... about you, D'Amour. You keep surprising me.

"You and me both."

"If you're lying about this@'

"What would he the point?"

"to delay me."

"Why would I bother?" Harry replied. "You're going to do what you're going to do sooner or later." "And I still will," Kissoon said. "Mother or no mother." He stared on at the glow in the sky. "What's she doing?" he said.

"She reconstructed the whorehouse," Harry said. "For old times' sake." Kissoon mused on this for a few moments. Then he said, "Old times? Fuck old times," and without further word he strode off down the street towards the crossroads, leaving Harry to follow after him.

Harry didn't need to look back to know that the lad had left off its assault on the Town Hall, and was also trailing after Kissoon, as though for all its legendary malevolence it didn't have the will-or perhaps the desire-to act without instruction. The noise in Harry's head had dwindled to a murmur, and he took a moment to turn over the options that lay ahead, assuming that the lad was by now indifferent to his thought processes.

Plainly, the possibility of his mother's survival had done nothing to mellow Kissoon. He was going to meet her, it seemed, more out of curiosity than sentiment. He had his agenda; he'd had it since childhood. The fact that the woman who'd brought him into the world had survived her lynching would not dissuade him from wanting that world filled with fishes. Harry entertained a remote hope that in the midst of the reunion Kissoon might lay himself open to attack, but even if he did, what weapon would touch him? And while an attempt upon his life was being made, would the lad simply stand by and let it happen? Unlikely, to say the least.

"It's not what you expected, is it?" Kissoon said as they turned the corner. "The lad, I mean."

Harry watched the great wheel appear behind them, its forms spilling and curling as it came, like a wave perpetually threatening to break. it seemed almost to usurp and transfigure the air on its way, turning the very darkness to its own purpose.

"I don't know what I expected," Harry replied.

"You had any number of Devils to choose from," Kissoon pointed out. "But I don't think this was one of them." He didn't wait for confirmation or denial. "It will change, of course. And change. And change. The one thing it will never be is dead."

Harry remembered Nonna's wisdom about the world. was that true of the lad too? Changing, but inextinguishable?

"And of course it's just a tiny part of what's waiting on the other side." ive ar er

"I'm glad I won't be here to see it," Harry said.

"Are you giving up then? That's wise. You don't know up from down any longer, do you, and that fills you with terror. Better to surrender. Go watch TV until the 'end of the world."

"You hate the world that much?"

"I was taken from a tree by wolves, D'Amour. I woke up in the dark with a rope around my neck being fought over. And when I'd gutted them-when I was standing among the bodies, drenched in their blood-I thought: These were not my enemies. These were not the creatures that took me naked from my bed, and hanged me. It's their blood I have to bathe in.

It's their throats I have to take out. The question was: How? How was a half-crazy nobody, with a brothel-keeper for a mother and a drunken freak for a father to find a way to take out the throat of Sapas Humana?" He stopped. Turned. Smiled. "Now you know."

"Now I know."

"One question for you, D'Amour, before we get there." "Yes?"

"Tesla Bombeck."

"What about her?"

"Where is she?"

"Dead."

Kissoon studied Harry for a little time, as if looking for some sign of deception. Finding none, he said, "She was quite remarkable, you know. I look back on our time together in the Loop almost fondly." He made a tiny smile at the foolishness of this. "Of course finally she was a featherweight. But disarming, in her way." He paused, staring past Harry at the lad. "Do you know why it eats its own tail?" he said.

"No." "to prove its perfection," Kissoon replied, and turning his back on Harry strode on to the next intersection. Turning it, they finally came in sight of the crossroads, and of the house that Maeve had built there. It looked almost solid; like a drawing made of light, worked over and over and over again, obsessively. A figure added here, a window there; some steps, some guttering; memory upon memory. Kissoon made no audible response to the spectacle, but proceeded towards it, his stride somewhat slower than it had been.

"Where's my mother?" he wanted to know.

"Somewhere inside, I suppose," Harry replied.

"Go fetch her for me. I don't want to go in."

"It, s just an illusion," Harry said.

"I know that," Kissoon replied. was there a subtle tremor in his voice? Again he said, "I want you to go fetch her for me."

"Okay," Harry replied, and walked on past Kissoon to the front steps.

The door before him seemed to stand open, and he slipped through it into a kind of erotic wonderland. The walls were covered with brocade now, and hung with paintings., most of them titillative works passing themselves off as classical subjects: The Judgement of Paris, Leda and the Swan, The Rape of the Sabine Women. And all around him, the feminine flesh so lovingly daubed on these canvases rendered in light, seemingly more real than when he'd left. Women in their camisoles and knickers, chattering in the parlot. Women with their hair unbraided, bathing their breasts. Women lying in bed, their hands between their legs, toying and smiling for their phantom clients.

Moving down the thronged passageway in search of Maeve, Harry's spirits rose, despite all that reason dictated. Doubtless life had been hard here. There had been disease and brutality and bastard children. Doubtless these women had endured the contempt of the very men who'd paid for their services, and longed, while they plied their trade, to escape. But that was not recorded here. It was the joy of this house Maeve had chosen to remember, and though Harry knew none of this was permanent it didn't matter. He accepted the pleasure this illusion offered him with gratitude.

"Harry?"

There, in the kitchen, idling in the midst of a group of chattering women, was Raul. "Where did you get to?" "I went to find Maeve's offspring. Where is she?"

"She's out back," Raul said. "Did you say offspring?"

"Kissoon, Raul," Harry said, heading on towards the back of the house.

"He's Clayton O'Connell." Raul came after him, forsaking the company of the women.

"Does he know?" he said.

"Of course he knows! Why wouldn't he?"

"I don't know, it's just... it's difficult imagining Maeve's kid being the one who murdered the Shoal, or created the Loo@,

"Everyone begins somewhere," Harry said to him. "And everyone has their reasons."

"Where is he now?"

"At the front of the house," Harry replied, "with the lad." He was out the back door now, into the garden. Maeve had remembered it the way it must have looked some distant spring, the cherry trees heavy with blossom, the air as heady as liquor. She wasn't alone out here. One of the women was sitting on the grass, star-watching.

"Her name's Christina," Maeve said. "She knows all the constellations."

"I've found Clayton," Harry told Maeve.

"You've what?"

"He's here."

"Impossible," she said. "Impossible. My son's dead." 11 "It might be better for us all if he was," Harry replied. "He's the one who brought the lad through, Maeve. It's his revenge for what happened to you all."

"And... are you expecting me to teach him some compassion?"

"If you can."

She looked away. First to the star-watcher, then up to the stars. "I was having such a time out here. It was almost as though I'd never left-"

"He wants me to bring you to him."

She looked towards Raul, who was standing on the back doorstep. "is my Coker here?" Raul nodded. "So he knows?" Again, Raul nodded. "And what does he think?"

Raul listened for the dead man to speak. "He says be careful; the boy was always wicked." "Not always," Maeve said quickly, moving back towards the house. "He wasn't wicked in my belly. We taught him, Coker. Lord knows how, but we taught him."

She stepped inside, her face stony, and refusing Harry's aid made her way back through the kitchen and the parlor towards the front door.

It was still open. Mssoon was at the threshold, and by the stare on his face it was clear he'd been watching his mother for some time, through the veils of the whorehouse. The monkish face he'd worn was tainted now. He looked pinched and bitter.

"Look at you," he said, as Maeve approached the door.

"Clayton?" she said, halting to study him.

"How sick you look," the sight of her frailty apparently giving him courage. He stepped inside. "You should be dead, Mama," he said.

"So should you."

"Oh," he cooed, "I am, Mama. All that's left alive is the hate in me." He was picking up his speed, raising his left hand as he closed on her. In it, the rod he'd wielded twice before, the murderous rod.

Yelling a warning, Harry raced to intercept the blow, but Kissoon was too quick. He struck his mother's head with the rod, and down she went, an arc of blood splashing on the carpeted ground.

In the bright grave below, Tesla felt the murder like a second death. Her spirit shaken, she looked up to see a stain spreading across her sky, while a woman's voice unleashed a sob of agony....

Harry caught hold of Kissoon's arm, and @ to pull him away from his mother, but the man was too strong. With a simple shrug he flung Harry off him, sending him stumbling through the gossamer walls to land on his back beneath the kitchen table. As he got to his feet he saw Raul throw himself upon Mssoon, but his assault was of such little consequence Kissoon didn't bother to dislodge his attacker. He simply fell to his knees beside Maeve, his rod raised to finish his matricide. Once, twice, three, four times the weapon fell, the house shaking with each blow as the mind that had conjured it was snuffed out By the time Harry reached Kissoon it was over. Spattered with Maeve's blood, his eyes spilling tears, he hauled himself to his feet. He wiped his nose like any backstreet thug, and said to Harry, "Thank you. I enjoyed that."

Tesla didn't want to hear. Didn't want to move. Didn't want anything but to float here as long as this limbo would have her.

But the cruelty came down from above, loud and clear, and try as she might she couldn't keep the anger from burgeoning in her. Her agitation informed the ground around her, and its motion drove her back towards her floating body. The closer she came to it the more frenzied the energies surrounding her became. they were eager for this reunion, she realized; they wanted her returned into her flesh.

And why? She had the answer the moment she slid back into the space behind her eyes. It wanted to make her heart leap. It wanted to make her lungs draw breath. And most of all, it wanted to come into her living body, and let that body be the crux of all that flowed here. A place where the mind could make sense of the flesh's confusions. A place where beasts and divinities could be dissolved, and get about the work of oneness.

In short, it wanted to give her the Art.

And there was no refusing it. She knew the moment it passed into her that the gift was also a possession. That she would be changed in ways that were presently unimaginable to her, changes that made the difference between life and death look like a nuance.

There was perhaps a moment between the first heartbeat and the second, when she might have rejected the gift, and fled her body. Let it die again, and wither. But before she quite realized the choice was hers, she'd chosen.

And the Art had her.

"What is this?" Kissoon said, watching as the ground on which his mother's body lay was pierced and a thousand pinprick shafts of light broke from it.

Harry had no answers. All he could do was watch while the spectacle escalated, the old woman's corpse withering where it lay, as if the light-which gave off no discernible heat-was cremating it. If so, it was as adept a creator as destroyer, for even as Maeve O'Connell's corpse went to ash, another form, another woman, was resurrected in the midst of her pyre.

"Tesla?"

She looked like a tapestry sewn from fire, but it was her. God in Heaven, it was her!

Harry heard the drone of the lad in his skull turn to the lowing of a fretful animal. Vissoon was retreating towards the front door, clearly as spooked as his faceless ally, but before he could reach the threshold Tesla called to him by name. Her voice was no more mellifluous for her transfiguration.

"This is unforgivable," she said, the fire threads embers. now; her body almost her own. "Here, of all places, where both of us were born.11

"Both of us?" said Kissoon. "I am born here and now," she said. "And you are a witness to that, which is no little honor."

The troubled din of the lad was continuing to escalate through this exchange, and now, staring past Kissoon into the darkness beyond the faltering walls, Harry saw its abstractions unknitting, its wheel fragmenting.

"Are you doing that?" Harry said to'Tesia.

"Maybe," she said, looking down at her body, which was more solid by the moment. She seemed particularly interested in her hands. It took Harry only an instant to work out why. She was remembering the Jaff, whose hands had blazed with the Art. Blazed, then broken.

"Buddenbaum was right," Harry said.

"About what?"

"You and the all."

"I didn't plan it this way," she said, her tone a mingling of puzzlement and distress. "If he hadn't shed blow-"

She looked up from her hands, back at Kissoon, who lead retreated to the place where the door had once stood. its conjured memory was barely visible now. As for the lad, its lornis turned in the air behind him, drawing the darkness into their loops as they circled, sealing themselves in shadow. Soon, they were just places where the stars failed to shine. Then not even that.

"This is the beginning of the end," Kissoon said,

"I know," Tesia replied, with a ghost of a smile on her I'-,ice,

"You should be afraid," Kissoon told her.

"Why? Because you're a man capable of killing his own mother?" She shook her head. "The world's been full of scum like you from the beginning," she said quietly. "And if the end means there's no more to come, then that's not going to be much of a loss, is it?"

He stared at her for a few seconds, as if searching for some riposte. Finding none, he simply said, "We'll see... " and turning into the same darkness that had taken the Iad, he was gone. There was another silence then, longer than the one before, while the walls of the whorehouse grew ever more insubstantial. Harry went down on his haunches, his eyes pricking with tears of relief, while the last dreg of the lad's drone faded and disappeared from the bones of his head. Tesia, meanwhile, wandered a few yards from the place where she'd appeared-which now looked like any other spot in the street-and stared towards the fires. There were sirens whooping in the distance. The saviors were on their way with hoses, lights, and words of reason.

"How does it feel?" Harry asked her. "I'm... trying to pretend nothing's happened to me," Tesla replied, her voice a gravelly whisper.

"If I take it slowly... very slowly... maybe I won't get crazy."

"So it's not like they say-?"

"I can't see the past, if that's what you mean."

"What about the future?"

"Not from where I'm standing." She drew a deep breath. "We haven't told that story yet. That's why." There was a peal of laughter from the direction of the garden. "Your friend sounds happy," she said.

"That's Raul."

"Raul?" A tentative smile appeared on Tesla's face. "That's Raul? Oh my Lord, I thought I'd lost him...." She faltered, as her gaze found Raul, standing among the last of the blossoming trees. "Look at that," she said.

"What?" said Harry.

"Oh, of course," she said, "I'm seeing with death's eyes." She pondered for a moment. "I wonder... ?" she said finally, raising her hand in front of her, index and middle fingers extended. "Do you want to try something?"

Harry got to his feet. "Sure."

"Come here."

He came to her, a little trepidatiously. "I don't know if this is going to work or not," she warned. "But who knows, maybe we'll get lucky."

She laid her fingers lightly against his jugular. "Do you feel anything?" she said.

"You're cold."

"That's all, huh? Okay, let's try... here." This time, she touched his forehead. "Still cold?" she said. He didn't reply. Just winced a little. "You want me to stop?"

"No," he said. "No, it's... just... strange-"

"Take another look at Raul," she said.

He turned his eyes in the direction of the trees and a gasp of delight escaped him.

"You can see them?" "Yes," he smiled. "I can see them."

Raul was not in the fading garden alone. Maeve was standing close by him, no longer wrapped in drear and mist but clothed in a long, pale dress. The years had fallen from her. She was in her prime; a handsome woman of forty or so, standing arm in arm with a man who surely had lion in his lineage. He too was dressed for a summer evening, and gazed upon his wife as though this was the first hour of their courtship, and he hopelessly in love.

There was a fourth member of this unlikely group. Another phantom-Erwin Toothaker, Harry supposeddressed in a shapeless jacket and baggy pants, watching from a little distance as the lovers exchanged their tender glances. "Shall we join them?" Tesia said. "We've got a few minutes before people start to come sightseeing."

"What happens when they do?"

"We won't be here," Tesla replied. "It's time for us all to put our lives in order, Harry, whether we're dead, living, or something else entirely. It's time to make our peace with things, so we're ready for whatever happens next," she said.

"And you don't know what that'll be?"

"I know what it won't be," she said, leading the way into the garden.

. "And what's that?" he asked, following her through a spiraling shower of petals.

"Like anything we've ever dreamed."