Sixteen

Thursday, January 12

At two-thirty in the afternoon the temperature at Psi Faculty was three degrees above zero. The sky was so blue and clear it hurt to look at it. But another storm was moving down out of Canada, moving fast. It was thirty-six hours away, and it threatened to be a big one. Already they'd had two blizzards since Christmas, two and a half additional feet of snow, drifts to seven feet. Snowplows were still at work on the back roads between the campus and frozen Lake Celeste.

A security caravan stopped in front of the administration building. Childermass, wearing a black astrakhan coat and hat, got out of the middle car. Gwyneth Charles, muffled to the bridge of her nose, waited for him on the steps. Her head was bent in contemplation, or weariness.

"Hello, kiddo," Childermass said.

He had last seen his niece a month ago. Now all he could see of her was eyes. In thirty days her eyes seemed to have aged at least ten years. They were slow to react; they reflected the bluedaylight but held no certain light of their own. He touched her. She was shivering inside her greatcoat.

"You've been working too hard," Childermass said.

"Hell, yes." Her voice was raspy, as if she had a bad throat. "We all have."

"And how's the Boy Wonder?"

Gwyneth didn't answer him. She stared for frigid seconds, eyes narrowed as if she suspected irreverence; then she turned abruptly and went into the Gothic building.

Childermass followed with his bodyguard and caught up to Gwyn in a windowless conference room. Granny Sig was there, fussing over the complicated sixteen-track audio and the color videotape equipment. Childermass, who loathed deviates because they usually meant trouble in his business, nodded perfunctorily. Granny Sig beamed at him and shut down the lights as Gwyneth was taking off her coat.

Childermass sat in an armchair facing a wall of ten television screens, the largest of which was nearly four feet square. In the semidarkness Gwyn lit a cigarette. He didn't miss the trembling of her hands.

"We thought you ought to see a rerun of his New Year's Eve performance before you see Robin himself. We'll show you Robin on the center screen. Relevant data will play back on the surrounding screens, and we've included full audio as well."

Gwyn looked at Granny Sig and dropped into a chair a few feet from Childermass. Granny Sig's fingers played over the console, punching buttons and turning knobs. Tapes rolled; pictures appeared with superimposed dates.

Childermass recognized the town square of Bradbury, Maryland, and the mesh-enclosed stock car. He smiled, imagining the discomfort—and, perhaps, the terror—of the VIPs locked inside. He cherished the memory of how his rival Byron Todfield had looked seconds after puking on himself; too bad there wasn't a record of their conversation as they waited in the dusk for the thrill of their lives.

Then he shifted his attention to an exterior view of a geodesic dome on the campus of Psi Faculty, the "cold lab" in which Robin Sandza did his extraordinary work. The dome was silvery in the waning light of the last day of December. Because of the power of the electromagnetic field which he generated when he was working, and its gory effects on the susceptible, Robin had been removed at least three hundred yards from everyone.

And there he was, on the big screen: four views. A closeup, with his face partly obscured by billowing breath; left and right profile; a full shot of him sitting in his padded pedestal chair, surrounded by equipment. Superimposed on the screen was the Fahrenheit temperature in the cold lab, just one degree above zero. Below that a light-emitting diode clock was splitting seconds -almost faster than the eye could follow. For protection against the cold and for ease in monitoring vital signs, Robin wore a space-flight suit without the goldfish-bowl helmet. Lighting in the dome was subdued. On one of the sound tracks Childermass could hear the boy breathing, and the voices of technicians became audible.

—Pulse 92, still dropping . . .

—Disturbance of the magnetic field during the PK trial was of astochastical character with a parametrical resonance on a frequency of five cycles . . .

— We now have differentiation between the P and T waves; heart action remains slightly artythmic . . .

The pictures on the screen jumped as a cut was made. The clock advanced two and a half minutes.

Gwyn's voice: Robin, we're putting the Bradbury circuits up on your screen. Do you want to give it a run now ?

Robin nodded. Childermass looked at the videotape of the stock car. He looked back at Robin, who was focused intently on the TV monitors in the cold lab, breathing clouds, suggesting the awesome power of a locomotive waiting in a train shed. Although he knew what the outcome was going to be, Childermass fidgeted impatiently in his seat. He looked curiously at an echoencephalogram of Robin's brain, wondering what it all meant to the experts.

—Activity increasing in the occipital lobe and reticular formations . , .

—Pulse rising . . .

— We're detecting spin waves in the fluctuating force field , . .

 —Pulse 180 and climbing rapidly . . .

—Gradient level 40 to 1 . . .

— We have a very strong electrostatic field fluctuation . . .

—Heartbeat, brain waves and force field fluctuations are in ratio . . .

—Pulse 240!

"He's there," Gwyneth murmured, reliving the event.

Robin was breathing explosively. On the Bradbury screen the stock car came to life, and Childermass laughed out loud. Gwyneth sat slumped in her own chair, fingers steepled. Childermass enjoyed the spectacle of the careening car for a few moments, and then he said:

"Do you know how he does it? From three hundred miles away? I mean, can you express it mathematically?"

"Not yet. But the distance involved is not important. Try thinking in terms of time and not of space. Time isn't propagated like light waves—it appears instantaneously everywhere. If you conceive of time as a form of primal energy co-effecting, known mechanical and chemical activity, the theory, at least, is easy to grasp."

Childermass grimaced and watched the rest of the action, almost leaping out of his seat at the near-collision of the car with the train. As the stock car came softly to a stop the Bradbury screens Went blank.

There were sounds of celebration and congratulation on the audio tape, but these faded swiftly; more screens darkened, leaving Robin alone and slumped in his chair, literally drunk: his eyes were wild but he laughed euphorically, pounding the console arm of his chair with a fist, turning lights on and off and on again in his freezing dome.

"What's the matter with him?" Childermass said, startled by the display of erratic behavior.

Robin giggled and gasped and moaned.

Granny Sig replied. "Euphoria; shock; pain. He's still fourteen years old. And he doesn't know how to handle it."

"Handle what?"

"Psychologically Robin is torn between the knowledge that he is both omnipotent and potentially lethal in the exercise of his powers. Then there's a more familiar dilemma. Our problems evolve quickly, but our bodies evolve slowly. And our emotions never change."

Gwyn, unable to look any longer at the spectacle of Robin on the screen, put her face in her hands. Granny Sig, taking pity on her, stopped all the machines and brought up the lights in the room.

"We'd better go now," Gwyn said. "I don't like leaving him by himself for too long at a time."

"I thought I was going to see some of the latest trials. Don't you have film?"

"Something always seems to be wrong with our film; it's a common phenomenon in cases of materialization. We've tried three experiments so far, exciting, but all failures. Here's a rough analogy. Water has a simple molecular structure. Boil it at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, it turns to vapor, or steam. Chill and condense the vapor, and you have water again. Any child can do it. Robin, by electromagnetically disturbing the cells of, say, a hamster, can change it into something inanimate: the only limitations are his creative concepts. He can produce a woodcarv-ing, or a clay vase. But of course we don't get the hamster back. That's the part that defeats and frustrates him: composing a living entity from earth and wood. He succeeds in constructing facsimiles, actual fur and nails and skin on the outside. The insides are composed of amorphous squamous cells without genetic identity. The cells are idiot cells. Because they are unspecialized, without purpose, they're easily exhausted, and they quickly reach the Hayflick limit. After that—"

"I'd like to see one of his creations."

Gwyn shook her head. "No matter how carefully we preserve them, they dematerialize soon after dissection, like the entrails and tumors produced by the psychic surgeons of the Philippines during their healing rituals."

"Robin keeps trying, though."

"Oh, yes. He keeps trying."

In winter those employed at Psi Faculty commonly got around campus on snowmobiles or touring skis. Granny despised the snarling racket of the machines and, because of her bulk, skis were not a practical alternative. To solve her transportation problem she had purchased an antique sleigh. It was pulled by two black Morgan geldings that stood dropping rich turds in the icy sunlight at the foot of the steps of the administration building.

Childermass looked unhappily at the sleigh and said, "Don't you have a car?"

"I'm just an old-fashioned girl," the transvestite replied, largely because she knew it would annoy him.

"If I thought your asshole was as nimble as your mouth I'd marry you," Childermass said. They let it go at that.

A security man drove the sleigh. The passengers sat bundled in lap robes facing each other in twos: Childermass and his bodyguard, Granny Sig and Gwyneth. All eyes were impenetrable behind dark glasses. No one attempted small talk. They were conveyed like fugitive czarists along a glazed road between walls of snow. The Morgans ran with taut high heads. The day echoed bells. They were pursued by a flickering shadow-show; trees dropped crackling showers of ice as the sleigh flew by.

When they arrived at the house where Robin lived with Gwyneth they saw him on the far side of the lake, sprinting around the swept ice on his racing blades. Robin took no notice of them. They went upstairs to Gwyn's second-floor study and observed him from the bow window. Childermass used a pair of 15X Vixen binoculars, which effectively placed Robin in the room with him.

Gwyn didn't make a sound when Robin took a nasty spill, but she reacted as if someone had jerked her up short with a noose around the neck. He went spinning clockwise toward a pile of snowy rock, hitting hard. Fortunately he was well-padded. Childermass, lowering the glasses, glanced at Gwyn. She turned away from him, a hand going involuntarily to her face; she hid her anxiety as if it were a sty.

Robin got up slowly. Childermass studied Robin's face as he clawed at the rough ice. Rarely had he seen such anger. When Robin was upright he attacked the ice again, arms scything across his body as he raced along.

"How long has he been skating like that?" Childermass asked Ken, who was passing drinks around. . "About an hour and a half, sir."

Robin fell again. They heard him howl, not in pain but in rage. He smote the ice with a fist before rising. He began to skate again, stiffly and doggedly, putting a great deal of effort behind his desire for speed.

"Can't you calm him down?"

Granny Sig sipped her Calvados and said, "Every day he has three hundred milligrams of phenobarbital and fifty milligrams of Prolixin. On trial days we double that dosage."

"What the hell are you saying? That's enough to kill him!"

Granny Sig smiled ruefully.

"Psychopharmacology is an empirical science, based on a number of assumptions, the most important being that drugs can affect the normal and pathological functions of the brain at the synaptic level. But in Robin's case the psychological parameters influenced by drugs are sharply limited. The problem seems to lie in his cerebral cortex, where most of the normal functions of the ego take place. Tranquilizers don't have the desired effect on the hypothalamic area. Therefore—"

"His ego is monstrous," Gwyn said. "And his normal drives are affected. Hunger, sex—he overindulges or he has no interest at all."

"Yet he often behaves like a laboratory cat whose cerebral cortex has been removed—he can fly into a rage over nothing. In Robin's case, as you know, that's indescribably dangerous."

For the moment Robin was motionless on the ice. He had his hands on his hips as he glared at something.

"What is he trying to prove out there?" Childermass asked, looking through the binoculars again.

"He feels he should be able to go from one triumph to another," Gwyn said. "From miracles in the lab to a three-minute mile or a world speed-skating average. Even though he's a better-than-average athlete, he's not up to the demands he makes on himself. When he fails his frustration is intolerable."

"How does he do in bed?"

Gwyn helped herself to another drink. There were two harsh spots of color on her cheeks. Granny Sig watched Robin as he resumed skating, making a wide loop on the ice. He seemed to have some spectacular feat in mind, and Granny Sig frowned.

"Robin," Gwyn said clinically, "has frequent ejaculations. He usually remains fully erect between orgasms. He gets very little relief or gratification from the act, whether we perform orally or genitally. But he—" She turned away so Childermass wouldn't see a glimmer of tears in her eyes. "He wants very much to please me. That's something still in our favor. He needs me because he is—potentially schizoid, as we've said, and often frightened. He trusts me to help him—"

"In his better moods," Granny Sig noted. "But at other, times—"

"We fight," Gwyn said. "It doesn't mean anything. Robin feels compelled to test my loyalty."

She had moved toward the window. What she saw startled her so badly some of the whiskey in her glass slopped onto her hand. Robin was skating directly at piled rocks that rose nearly four feet above the surface of the lake.

"Oh, God!"

Even as she prayed Robin leaped. Snow flew from one of the rocks as a skate blade nicked it, but he was up and over, a fraction of an inch from taking a serious head-first fall. He landed hard but with his skates under him, came to a wobbling spinning stop.

Childermass felt sick to his stomach.

"He'll kill himself with stunts like that; I don't care what his mental problems are, you two better get a grip on him if you know what's good for you!"

Gwyneth, deeply galled, closed her eyes.

"He's been working under enormous pressure for the past sixteen months. He needs to get away from here. We've planned a ski vacation, just the two of us—"

"No."

"But I promised!" Gwyn said, her insistence touching on terror.

"You should know better. I can't prove it, but I understand there's a price of at least a million on Robin's head. The Langley gang has the contract, they're checking around, but so far even a million bucks hasn't attracted a nonaffiliate good enough to penetrate Psi Faculty and do the job. It's just plain suicide. Todfield knows that. Sure, he could put together a team strong enough to overrun our defenses. But he doesn't want to go to war with me, and that's exactly what will happen if he gets provocative. I'll destroy the effete son of a bitch!"

Childermass tasted some of the Calvados that Granny Sig was drinking. "I don't know if this is piss or vinegar," he muttered, and set it aside. He wig-wagged his head at Gwyn. "No, no, as long as Robin is here I can be sure he's untouchable. But if he leaves with you, in twenty-four hours you'll both be dead."

"A bodyguard—"

"I'd have to use twenty men—an army!—to protect him. And that would only attract unwelcome attention to Robin. No ski trip, Gwyneth. Try to find another way to amuse him, and take his mind off the daily grind."

"All right then. But do this for me. Keep the girl in New York a while longer. Don't bring her up here, that could be disastrous for Robin."

"How so? He and Gillian are very close."

"Psychic twinship, yes—"

"He's been, what'd they call it, 'visiting' her—"

Gwyn nodded. "I know, I know! He doesn't often mention Gillian, though. He's jealous, I think. Call it sibling rivalry if you will."

Childermass chuckled; he found her diagnosis absurd. Granny Sig looked impassively at him, knowing her opinion was not desired.

"I'm warning you, uncle! Gillian's presence could cause big trouble. The competition might unhinge Robin completely—"

"I think you're jealous yourself. Of a fourteen-year-old girl."

"Oh, but that's idiotic. We just don't need her right now! Give me a week or two—"

"Because of what happened to her friend, Gillian is in a depressed state right now—in a frame of mind to accept our hospitality, to sever all connection with her family forever, so that she can't do them serious harm. Also she wants to be with her twin. She needs him, or thinks she does. No, I can't discuss it. The girl all but dropped in our laps. Now plans are in motion. We have to take full advantage of this opportunity."

Gwyneth bowed her head abjectly.

"If I disappoint him—and let Gillian take up my time—oh, don't make it impossible for me, there's so much more Robin and I can accomplish, uncle!"

"She'll be here before dawn tomorrow. Now not another word from you."

Gwyn bit her underlip. She was drawn to the window again. The amplified sun acted on her face like quicklime, melting it to bone and elemental terror. Around and around Robin skated, like a clockwork figure. Granny Sig drank, and studied Gwyn's anguished reflection, and drank some more.

In pale Virginia sunshine Peter Sandza methodically worked his way around the combat pistol range at the Plantation, firing, from fifty yards, three-shot bursts with a Smith and Wesson K-38 match revolver, using speed loaders following each six-round position; sitting, prone, left and right hand barricades.

"Fantastic," Nick O'Hanna said, following Peter's progress through the course. "Only three hits in the nine ring so far." O'Hanna was an expert shotmaker himself, and it was his match pistol Peter was using. "I doubt he's done much shooting in the past couple of years, but his grand agg is going to be in the low 570's"

Todfjeld yawned; gunplay bored him. . Woolwine looked on patiently behind his mirror sunglasses.

"One of the many benefits of hypnotic hyperesthesia," he said. "Peter's vision is keener than it ever was. All of his senses are finely tuned. If he was efficient and deadly before, he is virtually unstoppable now."

Peter fired his final six and went to collect his targets. He brought them back to O'Hanna, smiling over them.

"Look at this cluster, Nick! Not a trace of the X-ring."

"Great shooting, Peter. You haven't lost your touch."

Peter didn't look at the other men; he hadn't been told they were there, so in fact they didn't exist for him.

Peter handed over the K-38 to O'Hanna.

"You've done a lot of work on those contact surfaces," he observed. "No resistance at all. Real easy trigger, but the firing pin hit is solid every time."

"Well, you see, I didn't touch the mainspring, which is a common mistake. What I did was—"

A helicopter circled the compound at the river half a mile away. Todfield, who was standing only a few feet from Peter, turned to Woolwine and said, "Almost three o'clock. Time for Peter to be on his way."'

Woolwine nodded, checking his own watch.

"He's ready."

Todfield shifted his stance uneasily and said, "We could still change the game plan. We know the boy's exact location. We could set Peter down within five miles of him."

"He would not survive," Woolwine said curtly.

"I don't think he has much chance of succeeding the other way."

"The odds are better than you think given his courage, his daring, his genius for improvisation in the face of extreme danger. During the last few days I have spent nearly forty years with Peter Sandza exploring the instinctual life, the mythos of his emotional dynamism. We are all creatures of myth, shadowed by archaic images of life and death. I quickly discovered, behind the systematic amnesias, the deep-seated hysteria that has ruled his life. At the age of ten Peter accidentally shot his father to death while on a hunting trip. A classic archetype chillingly come true. His life from that moment was shaped by an act of unwitting violence. Having slain the godhead, Peter sought to atone for his error by undertaking a painful quest against what are commonly held to be the evils of the world. But the quest was largely a delusion proposed by the archetypal Black Magician, Childermass; it served as a time of testing and preparation. Peter compensated for what might have become a pathological monomania by marrying and fathering a son of his own, leading a 'normal' life at those times when it was necessary for him to lay down the banner and quit the arena for a while. Is this too complicated for you?"

"Aww, shit."

Woolwine smiled thinly. "I'll be brief. As we know, Peter's true quest involves the taking back of his son from the arch-villain, the Magician who so treacherously manipulated him. Mythologically it's an apt conclusion. But to hasten the processes by which Peter is working out his destiny would be a fatal mistake. The fortress in which the boy is held is terrifically well-guarded. You would hesitate to send even your best men in there. Peter is certainly well-motivated to succeed; his hiatus here has in no way interfered with basic drive activity. But, symbolically and psychologically, it would be wrong for you to step in at this time and effectively end his quest. That comes under the heading of supernatural interference. It would throw him off stride, confuse him, make him vulnerable and prone to errors of judgment. He is not prepared for sudden success. In a way, he hasn't suffered enough yet."

"My God."

"Oh, true."

"Then why did he come looking for our help?"

"But it wasn't help he craved, it was betrayal."

Todfield Shaded his eyes and looked hard at Peter, who stood talking obliviously with O'Hanna about gunsmithing. "Betrayal," Todfield repeated, perplexed and unsettled.

O'Hanna glanced at his boss, who nodded. O'Hanna touched Peter's arm.

"Peter, time for you to be going."

They walked past Todfield and Woolwine and got into a ranch wagon for the short drive to the helicopter.

In the wagon O'Hanna gave Peter a .357 magnum Colt Python revolver with a four-inch barrel, a silencer, a Bianchi holster and extra 210-grain loads.

"Your ETA at Westchester County airport is four thirty-seven," O'Hanna said.

Peter nodded. He took off his pigskin jacket and put the belt holster on.

"The car is a dark blue Cougar, New York license plate 776-WIH, registered to Richard Santry. It's in the second row of the parking lot as you walk out the door." O'Hanna pulled an envelope from his inside coat pocket. "Keys, credit cards, driver's license, two thousand dollars in fifties and twenties. I've packed a grip for you. Shaving gear, sweaters, shirts. Also tools of the trade: a Saber CM-300 Countermeasure System. That ought to come in handy."

"Right."

O'Hanna looked drearily out the window as they approached the helicopter.

"I—I wish there was more I could do, buddy."

"You've done a hell of a lot. I'll never forget it."

They shook hands just before Peter climbed into the Vought Gazelle.

"Well, I hope they keep biting for you," Peter said cheerfully.

"Yeh, hope so too."

Peter closed the copter door behind him. As soon as he fastened his lap strap he fell deeply asleep.

O'Hanna stood clear while the helicopter lifted off. There was a lump in his throat he couldn't swallow no matter how hard he worked at it. He felt a sense of outrage which he would never be able to express.

He felt dirty all over.

As the helicopter flew away Todfield said to Woolwine, "What's the operative word?"

" 'Commander.' "

"Where'd you get it?"

"Peter was a lieutenant commander in the Navy. He often referred—still refers—to his boy as 'Skipper,' and when he does so Robin invariably replies with 'Commander,' a term of both affection and respect."

"I see. And so, assuming we aren't putting our money on a dead horse—"

"Have a little confidence."

"Assuming that much, when Peter and Robin meet, God knows how, and Robin responds with the operative word—"

"Peter, if he happens to have a gun in his hand, will promptly shoot him through the head. If he has a knife, he will cut the boy's throat. If Peter has only his bare hands, then he will kill with a blow to the solar plexus or the back of the neck."

"Provided your conditioning works."

"Haven't we proved to your satisfaction, with other subjects, that it always works?" Woolwine said snappishly. "It's so much hogwash that a man can't be made to perform acts that go against certain instincts. You simply provide him with a rationale that supports an instinct more powerful than the one you wish to override. Peter loves his son, yes, but we should not forget that Robin has acquired mythological status in Peter's unconscious, The circle is closing. Peter slew his father, Peter's son will grow up to slay him. This primal fear will allow him to assume, temporarily, his own father's role; he will defend himself as the father could not."

"And when he comes to his senses and realizes what he's done—"

Woolwine shrugged. "The consequences for Peter will be unimaginably dreadful; shattering. Are you concerned?"

"No. Only the boy is my concern."

"You must tell me more about him sometime."

The suite which Gillian occupied was on the top floor of Paragon Institute. It was furnished comfortably but with no attempt at style. There was a park and river view. Gillian spent the better part of her days in the sitting room, in a rocking chair that faced the windows, while the heavy-set woman who was assigned to keep an eye on her, a Mrs. Cunningham, did needlepoint and crossword puzzles and seldom spoke unless she was spoken to.

Gillian was tranquil but lucid on a combination of hypnotic barbiturates and antianxiety drugs. She was as tame as a bird in ajar. She thought about her parents but didn't miss them. She was able to talk calmly about Larue's death with Dr. Roth and his assistant Dr. Maylun Chan We. The thing that killed was in her mind, but they explained to her that the medicine quieted it; she couldn't hurt them nor anyone else. Gillian felt a subdued gratitude, but no emotion was very strong or persevered. The time passed comfortably for her. She listened to good music but was neither inspired nor compelled to play her flute.

There were two young women who spelled Mrs. Cunningham: a blonde whose hair was cropped as close as an alley cat's, another with coal-black and lustrous locks. Kristen and Hester —for a couple of days Gillian smilingly confused diem. But then it was Hester, the dark-haired one, who began coming often, who always brought the medication and stayed to chat while Mrs. Cunningham took a long breather. Hester became a friend. Gillian was distantly aware of the danger of ever having a real friend again, but she just couldn't help liking someone as sweet-natured as Hester.

Twice each day, in the morning and again in the evening before dinner, Gillian left her rooms in the company of Mrs. Cunningham for the ten-minute in-house walk that, along with simple calisthenics and plenty of rocking, Dr. Roth had prescribed to maintain muscle tone. They went slowly along interminable hallways and down flights of stairs, meeting no one on the way. The first three days it was hard going for Gillian, but each time out they ended up in the kitchen where the cook, a black woman named Mayborn, had prepared a treat especially for Gillian. Mrs. Mayborn doted on Gillian and was expert at catering to the girl's pallid appetite.

For her part Gillian appreciated catching her breath and being fussed over in the kitchen, which was long and narrow and a few steps below ground level. The floors were maple and the brick walls had been painted a creamy yellow; a wealth of copper utensils dangled from the beamed ceiling.

Just outside there was a kind of courtyard or alley; sitting at the butcher-block table in a nook of the kitchen Gillian could gaze out at piles of snow turning dog-piss yellow on the cobbles. People walked briskly by and cars drove in and out. It was a busy troubling world out there, forbidden to her.

On Wednesday morning, as she stared at the door—the Way Out—she suffered such a case of nerves that she dropped a cup and saucer on the floor. Mrs. Mayborn was solicitous and wouldn't let her help clean up the mess; Mrs. Cunningham noted this deviation from her usual behavior and reported it to Dr. Roth.

The next time Roth saw Gillian he asked her if anything was bothering her. Gillian smiled placidly and said she didn't think so. He patted her shoulder and asked her to please try and eat a little more because she needed to increase her strength. Gillian promised to try.

Rock, rock.

. The thing that killed was in her mind.

Then it was good to take the medicine, so the killing would never happen again.

She was aware of an emotion, a sense of suffocation and loss. It made her tense. She rocked patiently, certain that the emotion would drift away. But this time it didn't. It grew stronger, and tears seemed a possibility, although she scarcely remembered what it was like to cry.

But what happens to Gillian? she thought, rocking faster. When I take the medicine, I stop being Gillian.

Rock, rock.

The thing that kills is in the mind. It's in the mind. It's in the mind.

If I can't be Gillian, who can I be? What can I be?

Rock, rock.

The music on the stereo was Slow Down, a boogie number by Alvin Lee, which Hester had brought with her and asked Gillian to play. Hester liked it good and loud. Gillian looked on in mild astonishment as Hester, practically right under Gillian's nose, furtively but deftly emptied the capsules of diazepam and secobarbital into a damp Kleenex she held in the hollow of one hand. At the same time she kept a sharp eye on the hall door, which was standing open.

"What are you doing?"

Hester put her mouth close to Gillian's ear in order to be heard.

"I'm cutting you off completely tonight."

"Why?"

"Because I have to get you out of here soon," Hester said, secreting the wadded tissue inside the ribbed sleeve of her sweater. She handed Gillian the empty capsules and a cup of water. "Swallow them." she said.

"Why do you want me to leave?" asked the baffled Gillian.

Hester looked frightened, which made Gillian feel apprehensive too.

"Because if you don't get out of here," Hester explained as she bent over the rocker, "you'll disappear just like Robin Sandza did. I know that's what they've got in mind for you."

"Who?"

"Oh, Gillian, you're too fucking dopey for me to get anything across tonight! God, how am I going to pull this off?"

"Hester, don't be upset."

"I've gradually been taking you off the tranquilizers for the last two days, but your system is jammed with junk. Tonight you go cold turkey. It'll be a shock. But you've got to keep pretending that you're still—just smile and act vague no matter what you feel. Don't make them suspicious! I'll talk to you again in the morning, by then I should have it worked out, I'll know how to get you out of this place." Hester saw the sheen of tears in Gillian's eyes. "Honey, no, don't start bawling! Everything will be all right. Trust me! And above all don't let on you're not stoned. I am in a tot of trouble if Dr. Roth finds out I've been shaving your medication. Do you understand? You don't want to get me in trouble, do you?"

Gillian shook her head excitedly.

"Steady—take it easy." Hester darted a look at the door. She snatched up a hairbrush and was smoothing Gillian's tresses over one ear when Mrs. Cunningham reappeared, wincing at the volume of the sound. Hester put the hairbrush in Gillian's own hand and tried to smile with real enthusiasm as she patted the girl's shoulder.

Gillian smiled whimsically back, and then a look of concern cut across her eyes like black thought, like a cat low on a fence.

"Be brave," Hester whispered, turning down the stereo. "Have a good night." And she got out of there, barely in time to make her futile seven o'clock telephone call from a windy toll station on York Avenue.

Okay. Two goddamn weeks without a word, and here she'd committed herself to a hasty course of action that was shaping up as a disaster. Peter had warned her often enough: don't be cute, don't play around with these people. If Peter was dead, then what good would it do to spring Gillian from Paragon Institute, provided she was dumb lucky enough not to bungle the job?

But dead—that was just too grim and awful and final. Hester refused to believe it. There was a very good reason why he'd let so much time go by without getting in touch. Peter had something clever up his sleeve.

If that was the case, then there was a good chance he didn't need Gillian any more.

Hester was ashamed of the relief she felt. The hell with what Peter needed or didn't need, what about poor little Gillian? What was going to happen to her in a matter of hours—a few days at the most?

Psi Faculty would happen to her. Whatever that was. Hester had risked her neck having another go at the computer. A number of cases—meaning, undoubtedly, real people—had been transferred from Paragon Institute to this other place. Hester knew no more than that about Psi Faculty; she knew it existed, somewhere, for the purpose of swallowing up gifted psychics like Robin Sandza and Gillian Bellaver.

So, all other motives aside, it was morally right for her to try to smuggle Gillian out of Paragon before she disappeared. Problems on top of problems: Hester didn't have the semblance of a workable plan, and supposing she eventually came up with something and succeeded, Gillian would be virtually helpless on her own. She couldn't be handed back to her parents; they'd put her in that place to begin with. Probably grateful to be rid of the unfortunate kid. Hester, with a conventional small-town, middle-class upbringing, had a low opinion of monied and prominent Americans. Being worshipers of the almighty dollar, they were all cold-blooded and essentially not very loving people. No, she couldn't risk returning Gillian to them with the hope they'd do the right thing.

But Hester knew she would be under considerable suspicion  at the Institute: she would have to weather their suspicions while protecting and looking after Gillian until Peter showed up. And what would Gillian be like once she was off the tranquillizers? Half mad, therefore unreliable and potentially as dangerous (through no fault of her own) as Bubonic Plague. Hester might need some protection herself.

Nine o'clock. Music on. Rock, then mordant blues from a twenties cotton-chopper with a voice thin and bitter as Louisiana coffee.

 

Oh, liver-rot me baby, treat me

To your death's head pearly smile:

Then you can ride me on down to your boneyard

In a twelve-cylinder automobile.

 

Hester, wondering how Gillian was getting along at this moment, had the shakes. If Gillian acted badly, if she gave herself away, then Hester was doomed. Bummer time. Each vague voice in the hall outside her door, every footfall, caused her to freeze and sweat, freeze and sweat. Nine-thirty. When she heard her friends the Bundys go out singing an old Cole Porter song, happy as clams, she wanted to rush downstairs and be swept along for a random and light-minded evening: a few drinks here, a few laughs there. She got as far as the door, but she didn't open it. No good. No use trying to duck out. If MORG wanted her, they'd find her. If not—

There was nothing else to do but prowl the neat three-room flat and get slowly potted on vintage woe, and dread the coming of morning when she would have to begin herding events already restlessly in motion toward the desired conclusion.

 

Turn down your sireen woman

You like a ambulance on the street

 

It was after two in the morning when she came up with her great idea: out of desperation, perhaps, because everything depended on Gillian's reactions once the escape began. But Hester liked the plan. It wasn't complicated; it depended for success on surprise and, hopefully, a half-minute of total confusion. Unfortunately, there was a potential stumbling block in Mrs. Cunningham. She didn't look like a woman who was easily confused, and she seldom strayed far from Gillian's side when Gillian was out of her rooms.

But Hester was all thought out; it was the very best she could do. All she needed now was a third party, a sweet dumb guy who would willingly do what he was asked to do without raising too many questions. She'd dated plenty of those, so Hester had already picked her man when she tottered off to bed and fell asleep in mid-yawn.

 

Casket-eyed baby

Pull them shades down to the floor

And hand me your blank check, honey

For my final signature

 

Gillian was restless after she went to bed, restless and vocal. Mrs. Cunningham looked in on her twice. She was thrashing and tugging at the covers, muttering through her teeth. The second time Mrs. Cunningham turned on the lamp by the door she saw Gillian's face glistening with sweat.

"This room. This bed. Robin's room. He—"

"What's that, dear?"

Gillian was suddenly quiet, gazing at her as if from a far corner of the mind.

"Would you be sick to your stomach, darlin'?"

"A little," Gillian croaked.

Mrs. Cunningham smiled to assure her that something would be done about it. She closed the bedroom door and, using the telephone in the sitting room, rang Maylun Chan We. Maylun prescribed an anti-nausea drug and a sleeping pill. Mrs. Cunningham then called the medical associate on night duty at Paragon; he brought the pills up from the dispensary.

When Mrs. Cunningham cracked the bedroom door again Gillian was lying on her side; she seemed peaceful at last. Mrs. Cunningham spoke softly to her. No response. Obviously Gillian's discomfort had eased. If she woke up later, the medicine was handy. Satisfied, Mrs. Cunningham went back to the sitting room and the bile, gall and bad blood of the nightly TV news, unaware that for the time being she was tending a shell instead of a sleeping girl—

 

Gillian had been lured elsewhere.

She has now a notion of horizon and winter

Laid on with a trowel snowfields moon

Burning in blunt weather

Deflected by too much brilliance, all motion

Discontinued according to laws of time and

Distance

She waits for a confrontation with his psychic's

Mind waits with an eye for the precious past,

An expectancy he is bound to fulfill.

"Robin?"

Following the line of least resistance, they Meet with no great shock of recognition Eyelocked burning, in snowfields windless as the grave.

Something quite formal between them, a new development—she is taken silent by the animus of his gaze.

"Come on," he says is off again highly combustible like starflash between the charring crosses. Sustained by the narrow and merciless vision of her trust, she follows in her skin of bridesmaid's tears to the bed of his whore:

(Slash

eyed

bushed

baby

featly boned

and throbbing

luscious

to blood's

tame purr

ing posture

all strung out &

affording

a lewd

glimpse

of asshole)

Whore-

, prancer Robin showing off riding her sideways upside down or feet on the floor You name it Blood's a cataract

Nerves fine black beneath the skin like waxed violin string's hum here he comes

His way of declaring himself shooting off Roman candles of confession creating galaxies of unrepented sins How do you like her Gillian ? Slow eyes sink wounds

Her smile curling like flame blackens the spirit, and he is (as he should be) terrified as well as amused, having full knowledge of the hereafter and heretofore

while his body, unequal to the strain of living everywhere at once

Threatens to disintegrate. "Now go away."

With a simple motion of his hand she is swept, brief as a gnat, through time.

Excited by his cruelty insatiable

he turns again to drowsy Gwyneth. He is

eager for accolades,

and the absolution that is sure to follow.

 

When Hester reported for work at eight on Thursday morning Roth and Maylun were already there. Apparently they'd had a long conference. Something was in the air, undoubtedly involving Gillian. Hester didn't have a clue. But at least the girl was still at Paragon: she'd been afraid they might steal away with her in the middle of the night.

At eight-twenty she accompanied both doctors upstairs. Gillian was awake and sitting up in bed, gazing out through frost-stippled windows. There was a bland smile on her face, but her eyes were puffy and humid and seemed, unless Hester was over-empathizing, distressingly sad. Hester held her breath when Gillian glanced her way, but Gillian's smile didn't change, and her manner was indifferent. Hester couldn't decide if the indifference was studied or real. If real, then without a doubt sometime during the night they'd shot her full of shit, and that did the trick, that just totally wrecked the plan right there.

Hester asked Gillian what she would like for breakfast, and Gillian said, "I don't eare," and then Dr. Roth examined her. Gillian's blood pressure had climbed and her pulse was faster than it had been twenty-four hours earlier. Roth seemed to feel that was encouraging.

"I'd like to take a bath before I eat," Gillian said.

"Surely," Roth said.

"Could Hester stay and shampoo my hair?"

"Don't see why not. Hester?"

"I'd be happy to," Hester replied, trying not to study Gillian's mood. Maylun left medication and vitamins for Gillian and the doctors withdrew, heads together, talking in low tones.

"What sort of day is it?" Gillian asked, looking out the windows again.

"Cold." Hester shuddered for emphasis, then smiled at Mrs; Cunningham, who was laying out a dress for Gillian. "You could have your breakfast while I'm doing Gillian's hair."

"That's a fine idea."

"I'd like jeans today, Mrs. Cunningham," Gillian said.

"When you have all those lovely dresses?"

"I feel like jeans."

"Whatever you say, darlin'."

Hester went into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar. She ran Gillian's bath water, and when the big tub was half full Gillian came in. She didn't look at Hester. She took off her nightclothes in a corner, carelessly pinned up her hair, then stepped into the hot water and stood looking downcast at her body, which, though it needed replenishing right now, was elegantly structured and revealed modest curves that would round gloriously into womanhood. She was a ewe-necked beauty, five-feet nine with shady good looks and flaky lips—she'd probably never have a pimple, Hester thought wistfully. Gillian settled down to the breastbone, knees wide apart, and began to soap herself. Then, almost without warning, she went to pieces.

Hester stood rigid with anxiety as Gillian tried to smother big sobs in the washcloth. Then she used her head and switched on the noisy exhaust fan in the ceiling, hoping that the microphones she knew had to be in the bathroom wouldn't pick up the sounds of grief which they'd drug-programmed Gillian not to feel.

That much accomplished, Hester, in a mothering twitch, knelt by the tub and put an arm around the slippery girl.

"Oh, Hester, it's the end of the world!"

"Gillian, Gillian."

"I want to get out of this place!"

"It's practically all set. Shh, shush, now. I'll take care of you."

Covering her mouth with her two hands, Gillian stared unbelievingly at her.

"But we can do it: I know we can."

"When?"

"This afternoon."

"H-how?"

Hester kneeled facing the door, watching in case Mrs. Cunningham appeared surreptitiously. She started Gillian's shampoo, and while she lathered she whispered in an ivory ear.

When she had finished laying out the plan all Gillian said was, "Mrs. Cunningham has a gun."

"Oh, God! Are you sure?"

"It's in a pocket of her cardigan sweater."

"But she wouldn't shoot you."

"She might shoot you. " Gillian couldn't control her tears, and her nose ran too.

"This will positively work, Gillian, and don't worry. Nobody will be hurt."

"I'm afraid, Hester; I know I'll do something really stupid and —where should I go again? I forgot already! My mind just gets blank."

"You'll be okay, I wrote it down for you."

When Gillian was out of the tub and robed Hester took a round Band-Aid from her pocket. She reached inside the robe, which startled Gillian, and pasted the Band-Aid high on the inside of one thigh.

"It's all written out. If you forget anything, just tear the Band-Aid open."

Gillian's teeth were clicking. Hester went to work on her wet head, rubbed until die scalp was a newborn pink. Gillian's head bobbed with the massage. She yawned and slowly went slack in Hester's capable hands.

"Hester, I can't stay with you, no matter what."

"We'll worry about that later."

"I'll have to be alone. Alone! For the rest of my life. Robin hates me, there's no place I can go now. He m-must hate me, to do what he did."

Hester was eager to ask questions about Robin. But the phone had rung in the bedroom, she had to answer it. Mrs. Cunningham. Gillian's breakfast had been prepared, and perhaps she'd like to eat in the Morning Room for a change. Hester promised to bring her right down.

She hung up, and remembered to pocket the medication that was on the little tray beside the bed. The vitamins she fed to Gillian.

Mrs. Cunningham should have walked upstairs to fetch Gillian herself; was she getting just a little lazy and careless? A good sign. Hester helped Gillian to dress warmly. Too much clothing for indoors, but she'd just have to endure it.

Further serious conversation was out at this point, so Hester prattled about movies and fashions and the difficulties a working girl had making ends meet in the Big Apple. Gillian listened without comment, her head fallen forward; she appeared to be in a rueful daze.

For Hester the remainder of the day was the meanest sort of torment. Trouble lay in her stomach like a small ticking bomb. It was Kristen's day off, so she had a heavy work load. Her mouth was constantly dry, no matter how much water or coffee she sipped. Her bowels quaked often, and that meant a lot of trips to the bathroom. She couldn't find items she had filed two days ago. She dialed wrong numbers and couldn't seem to handle simple sentences during dictation. Dr. Roth was hard-pressed to conceal his irritation.

Even with all these difficulties four-thirty arrived too soon. Suddenly there it was, on the clock in front of her. What had happened to three-thirty? Her lunch hour? Four thirty-one. Hester compensated for her panic with a mad rush. She gathered all the outgoing mail from the various offices; a lot of parcels today, almost enough to fill two shopping bags. Her coat, her hat, her gloves. Lugging the shopping bags, she all but ran down the stairs to the kitchen. Her face was bright red, her pulse too rapid to count. If it didn't happen now, she knew*she would pass out.

Gillian, following her afternoon constitutional, was sitting at the butcher-block table a few feet from the door, nursing a cup of cocoa. Mrs. Cunningham and Mrs. Mayborn were smacking their lips over something that bubbled in a pot on the stove.

"Here comes the pony express," Hester said, breezing on through, not daring to look directly at Gillian. But out of the corner of her eye she saw that Gillian had raised her head.

"Running late, Hester," Mrs. Mayborn commented.

"It's just been one hell of a day, Felicia."

"I know; the boss almost snapped my head off over nothing."

Hester bolted up the short flight of steps—six in all—to the back door, which was secured by a Medeco lock. The ultrasecurity lock required a special key. Hester put down the shopping bags and got out her copy of the key and opened the door. The cold air felt good. She turned and kicked over one of the shopping bags.

Envelopes and brown paper packages cascaded down the steps.

"Oh, well, shit," Hester mumbled, scurrying down the steps after the mail "Don't bother," she said, waving off Cunningham and the cook. All too soon she had the mail picked up, and Gillian hadn't budged. Hester looked frantically at her. Gillian seemed witless and paralyzed, as if her nerve had failed.

"For the love of God, Hester thought, move your ass!

And Gillian rose belatedly, creating no stir. She approached the steps mousy-meek and bent over.

"Here's one you missed," she said.

"Oh, thanks Gil—"

Then like a shot Gillian was out the door and running. She had remembered to give Hester enough of a shove so that Hester, rebounding, didn't have to fake a well-timed shoulder into the midsection of Mrs. Cunningham, who, for all her size, was fast on her feet in an emergency.

Mrs. Cunningham, speechless and winded, still had enough strength to pitch Hester like a toy against the nearest wall. She stumbled up the steps, fumbling in a pocket of her cableknit sweater.

The gun, Hester thought, horrified; but it wasn't a gun, it was a walkie-talkie.

"Security!" Mrs. Cunningham bawled as soon as she was on the sidewalk outside. "The girl is running. The girl is running. All units, 86th westbound. Redline it! Redline it! Topguy One and Topguy Two, get your glasses on her!"

Hester was just out the door when someone else, running hard from the house, bumped her in passing and almost knocked her down. It was Maylun Chan We. Hester had no idea where she'd come from. But she was the fastest woman Hester had ever seen: even before Hester recovered her balance Maylun had sprinted around the stalled Cunningham, who was still yelling into her walkie-talkie, and around the back end of a fuel truck that was parked across the mouth of the mews and pumping oil for the apartment building; she headed up the street after Gillian.

There was plenty of other activity around Paragon Institute. Two ordinary looking sedans parked at the other end of the mews erupted with hidden flashers and bold sirens. But the oil truck had the exit blocked. Hester ran for her life, pursuing the fleet Maylun.

Rush-hour traffic had begun on 86th, which would slow down other chase cars trying to move west from positions beside the park on East End, but Hester realized in an instant that Gillian, fast as she was and with a twenty-second head start on the long block, could not elude Maylun. Heads turned, other eyes clocked the race. Who would have thought the demure Chinese doctor was a former track star? Hester, running, was a battle with herself. Behind her sirens screamed for clearance on the clogged street. A car jumped up on the sidewalk and jumped back again.

Just make it to the comer, Hester pleaded in silence. Her lungs, already, were roasting like chickens on a spit. Gillian turned half around and looked shocked when she saw Maylun barely fifty feet behind her, running with long dependable strides. Go! Hester demanded, but Gillian needed no warning. Jumping over a taut dog leash, she made York Avenue and ducked to her right around the corner. Moments later Dr. Maylun Chan We followed her.

Hester was a faltering third. She came to the corner limping and gasping and thoroughly frightened.

Gillian had made it into the back of the boxy Checker cab, but Maylun had one hand on the door and leaned in as if to pull her out of the seat. Gillian shrank into the opposite corner. Hester tried to scream at Maylun, to distract her, but she was too concerned with sucking wind to utter a clarifying sound.

Then Maylun stepped back, slammed the door and turned away as the cab pulled out from the curb and soon became anonymous in an uptown burst of traffic.

Maylun was obviously surprised to see Hester leaning on a lamppost observing, but she kept her poise.

"Your idea?" Maylun said.

Hester stared open-mouthed at the doctor, then astonished herself by nodding.

"Wha—Maylun, why did you—"

"Because there are things I just can't .make myself accept," Maylun explained:

"I know wha—"

"Yes, well, do you also know what our lives are worth if you don't keep quiet?"

Hester managed a nod.

"Whoa—won't say a thing."

"Good," Maylun said, and she quickly pressed Hester's hand, sealing the conspiracy, just before they were caught up in a wave of MORG security teams.

When he heard Gillian retching in the back seat, Hester's friend Walter, the cab driver, said, "Use the Kraft paper sack to heave in."

Gillian put her head half in the sack and emptied her stomach. Walter turned on 91st and drove as far as Park Avenue before the lights changed. Then he uncapped a thermos and poured a styrofoam cup full of hot tea, which he handed back to Gillian. She was sitting upright and pale against the maroon seat back, pale with a strange luminescence; her skin was like neon. She accepted the tea.

"Hester said you might be sick from all the running," Walter said. He had prematurely gray hair curling over his ears, a kind and ugly face like a Disney dwarf's. "She told me about the bad situation you have with your boy friend. I can sympathize. Listen, don't worry about the sack. I'll throw it in the trash next red light. Like some music? How about QXR?"

"Okay."

Walter drove down Park, moving peaceably in the midst of the rush-hour madness so as not to jar Gillian's touchy stomach. She swallowed half the smoky tea, sipping slowly whenever a chill threatened to dislocate her bones and cause more retching.

"Here we are."

Gillian had been totally unaware of the blocks going by. The sun, too, had set: there were just a few windows alight in the fair open sky, high spots above the blur of the fast-paced lower city. Street levels were junked in shadow and the air was filled with gritty blowing things. Gillian's head roared at its own pace.

"Where?"

Walter indicated the theatre. They were on Thirty-Third, near Lexington. The theatre was called the Director's Chair. It showed revivals, double-and-triple-billed classics of the silver screen.

"Here," he said, smiling. He handed her a ticket of admission.

Gillian sat numbly holding it. She didn't know what to say or do.

"Goodbye and good luck," Walter told her. It seemed final. Gillian opened the door and got out. The wind traveled through her as if she were an empty cage.

"Don't forget your coat." Walter handed her a wool parka through the window. Then he drove off. The olive parka had a plaid lining. Gillian had never seen it before, but she put it on.

She looked uneasily up and down the street. She was nowhere she recognized. The wind climbed inside her coat, bit her ear-lobes and froze her neck before she did up the drawstrings of the hood. She turned round and around, eyes streaming neon. Gillian felt overcrowded by the occasional passerby, she was lashed to a sinking weight of the unfamiliar and the unasked-for. Simple to remember what Hester said, if only she put her mind to it. That would come. The tea she'd drunk had not fully satisfied her thirst, and her throat still rasped from vomiting, from breathing the wind in wrong. God oh God, my name is Gillian. A man with a mustache like a blackened bottle brush and dizzy tufted hair and a prop cigar regarded her with an indescribable passion from a poster in front of the movie house.

Her ticket was accepted at the door. It might be all right with Hester if she sat down for a little while; maybe, for all Gillian knew, she was supposed to do just that. An old-fashioned popcorn machine stood in the lobby and, watching the crisp white stuff spill from the kettle, she hungered. But she had no money. She promptly put her hands in the pockets of the parka and found a new five-dollar bill in each pocket. Hester made miracles. Breaking one of the fives, Gillian bought popcorn and chewing gum to clean her teeth after the popcorn. They didn't sell soda. She had a long drink of tepid water at the fountain, then went down into the cubbyhole dark toward the lisping center of the screen. Pandemonium. Three fey clowns. Gags whizzing by almost faster than the ear could follow. Cocoanuts. There were perhaps a dozen dedicated old-movie buffs in the small theatre lapping it all up. Gillian sat right in the middle of the house, three seats in from the left-hand aisle.

Groucho said: Now over here—on this site we're going to build an eye and ear hospital. This is going to be a site for sore eyes.

Then he said: Love flies out the door when money comes innuendo.

And later he said:

But by then Gillian had finished most of her popcorn, and she had settled down half asleep inside her warm and hooded coat. To wait. Wait for Hester to produce more of her miracles. God oh God I am Gillian. I was Gillian. It was almost the end of the world, but perhaps not too late for miracles. If not, then nothing left to do but die: die.

If only she knew how.

Hester had decided before she set foot in Roth's office that the best defense was a whopping case of hysterics, which Roth unexpectedly touched off himself—there was a look in his own eyes that could only have been inspired by the nearness of the headsman's ax. Dr. Irving Roth was in deep shit. So were they all, in a sense, but the ultimate responsibility for Gillian's escape was his.

"Hester, Hester—stop it now, we're not blaming you."

"If you blame anyone," Maylun said fearlessly, "blame me. I prescribed for Gillian. She shouldn't have been able to run like that. Shouldn't have occurred to her."

"She's a very unusual girl," Roth said bleakly. "But we'll find her. Could you for God's sake do something about—?"

Maylun bathed Hester's face in ice water. The phone on Roth's desk was ringing. Phones were ringing all over Paragon Institute. Roth selected a line at random. It was Avery Bellaver returning an urgent call.

"I wonder if you could come over here right away?" Roth said.

In the MORG helicopter flying south over the Hudson River valley one of Childermass's executives put the receiver of the scrambler phone on the hook and said to his boss, "No trace of the girl yet."

It was not a thing easily said to a man infamous for the way he took bad news; but Childermass, in his shirt sleeves, just leaned way back in the lounge chair, his one hand lax behind his head. He looked out at the dark of night seeking rumors of the moon.

"Inside job."

"Yes, sir."

"Solve it, we'll know where Gillian is."

"I think so."

"Tell them it sounds like the Chink to me. Tell them not to be subtle down there. Tell them no time for fucking subtleties, put her yellow tit in the old cider press."

"What about the other one, Hester?"

Childermass didn't like being presented with an alternative.

"Here I am giving you a million dollars' worth of advice, and you're listening less than a nickel's worth." He turned his thumb down decisively. "I met her. Not a brain in her head. Know your enemy. It's the Yellow Peril every time. Somebody give me a smoke."

He sat languidly with his cigarette, toe-tapping, thinking, whistling. Other men in the helicopter sent ugly coded messages, and were terrifying on the phone.

"Finny, fanny," Childermass said under his breath. "Double whammy. Stars are falling on Alabamy." His forehead creased deeply. He spat out a mouthful of smoke. "And falling. And falling."

Gillian awoke in the movie house feeling stuffy, and there was perspiration on her upper lip; she was too hot in the parka. She fumbled with the drawstrings of the hood and unzipped the coat. When she laid the hood back she discovered that someone was sitting in the seat next to her.

"You almost dropped your popcorn," he said. "I saved it for you." He handed her the container. By now the popcorn wasn't any good, but Gillian smiled anyway.

"Thank you." On the screen a bum had accosted Harpo. Could you help me out? he said. I'd like to get a cup of coffee. Whereupon Harpo reached into a pocket of his commodious trousers and handed the bum a cup of piping-hot coffee. The young man next to her laughed and laughed. Gillian, benumbed, wondered what movie she was watching.

"I don't know how many times I've seen Harpo do that," the young man commented, "but I always find it funny."

Gillian looked politely at him, but he was already familiar. She'd spent her life around young men just like him. Given two guesses, she could have named his prep. Then—Princeton, of course, wasn't he wearing a Princeton ring? Hands folded on top of the expensive cashmere topcoat in his lap. His nails were manicured and gleaming. His hair had been modishly styled to give dimension to a rather small but handsomely boned face. Even his choice of shaving lotion was predictable. He was trying to raise a mustache. He had to be older, but he looked about nineteen.

"My name is Bradford," he said.

"Gillian."

"Hello, Gillian."

He laughed again as Groucho swindled a bartender. Gillian stirred in her hard seat and sighed. Bradford looked at her patiently for a long time. Gillian slowly crushed the popcorn container and picked part of her lower lip raw and then acknowledged him again by raising her eyes.

"Would you like to go home with me now?" he asked.

She felt a shiver of excitement, pleased that she didn't have to sit there any longer in league with ghosts whose jokes were dated and whose humor seemed irrelevant, reflecting a life style as remote as the chanson de geste. Still she was inclined to be cautious.

"Hester sent you?"

Bradford's smile was fully reassuring.

"Of course," he said.

Hester, after her ordeal, couldn't bear riding the bus home, so she took a cab to the corner near her flat and did some necessary shopping at the superette. Then she picked up something for her head and something for her stomach at the drugstore, called for a package of laundry and fought the bitter wind to her doorstep. By that time she was starey-eyed and unsteady on her feet.

It was already after seven and she was damned worried about Gillian, but Gillian would be safe where she was for hours longer —until shortly after midnight, according to the theatre schedule. Meanwhile Hester had other worries. Even though the men from MORG had been surprisingly gentle with her, asking only a few questions, it was not unlikely they'd followed her home. And why had Maylun disappeared so suddenly, leaving Roth to dissolve in his own grease? She'd never seen a man so shaken. Hester was suspicious and frightened. MORG was the enemy now, and MORG was powerful.

A note on her door from Meg Bundy: Scrabble tonight? Give us a buzz. Hester felt badly. She'd turned down their invitations so often of late they were going to think she was standoffish. As she unlocked her door she tried to frame a reasonable excuse. Can't make it tonight, I'm harboring a fugitive. But thanks anyway.

Hester opened the door an inch, blocked it open with a foot, stooped for an armload of packages. She backed into her apartment, finding the wall switch by the door with a free finger. A lamp went on next to the sofa in the living room. The door slammed shut.

Hester turned around and all but died; groceries and laundry thudded to the floor.

Peter Sandza was standing in the middle of her living room, holding up a hand-printed sign. Printed with her lipstick.

DON'T TALK, the sign said. THEY ARE LISTENING.