Nineteen

It seemed to Gwyneth Charles that she had just settled into the steaming bath and briefly closed her eyes. When she opened them again Robin was there. In her bathroom, looking starkly down at her. She trembled involuntarily; his stealth was unsettling. For several moments the thought she might be dreaming him. She really didn't know if she was awake or asleep.

Just a few minutes alone, she thought. Is that asking too much?

"What do you want, Robin?" she said tonelessly.

"I got tired of waiting. What's taking so long?"

"Robin I need—a good soak, and a little goddamn privacy." The ice rattled in Gwyn's glass as she drank, swallowed the firebolt of whiskey in one lump. She waited nervously for it to do some good. The Wild Turkey bourbon quieted her muscles but not her nerves.

Robin hung on, she wasn't rid of him. Gwyn handed up the glass.

"Make me another while you're here? The bottle's on the drink cart. Wild Turkey."

Robin took the glass from her. He looked at it, then ran his tongue around the inside. He was so handsome tonight, Gwyn thought, in his dark blue suede shirt-jac, gray slacks, Gucci loafers. He licked and licked the glass. Ummmmmm-ummmmm. As usual Gwyn couldn't take her eyes off him even when she most wanted to. The dark look of hazard around his own eyes could hypnotize her.

Robin put a lump of ice in his mouth and knelt beside her. He kissed her, then passed the ice into her mouth.

Gwyn shuddered and drew away and spat out the ice. He sat back on his heels, frowning.

"I thought you liked to do that."

"I do enjoy it, in bed when we're f—" She quickly covered her face with wet hands: loathing was there for him to see, and make use of, in his incredibly complex, scheming way.

"Please, Robin," she said, in a voice that was squeaky tight, "get me a drink?"

The next thing Gwyn knew—it had begun to really frighten her, all the gaps in her attention span—he had the cap off the bottle and was pouring the expensive bourbon into the toilet.

"Robin!" She foundered but didn't climb out of the marble tub, which was nearly flush with the floor.

"I don't like it when you smell like this stuff," he said, eyes on the flowing amber tail.

"I won't drink any more tonight! Don't waste it!"

Robin turned the bottle rightside up before all the Wild Turkey gurgled away.

"Would you like me to do your back?" he asked pleasantly.

"I merely want—we've been together for days and days—you never give me—all right. Yes. Please do my back, lover."

He brought the bottle with him, placed it on the flat edge of the tub. Gwyneth glanced at the bottle with badly concealed longing. He'd put it well within reach to tempt her. But if she tried to steal a nip Robin would be infuriated, and she just couldn't stomach another of his man-child rages. So she straightened up and handed him a soapy loofah.

Robin peeled back his sleeves and scrubbed along her spine.

"I enjoy a drink once in a while," Gwyn explained. "I need it to relax. As you know I'm highly allergic to barbiturates, and I, I haven't been sleeping. Not well at all."

"You can't sleep?" he said, as if it was news to him.

"Not when you don't sleep. And you haven't closed your eyes for, it's been almost five days. I don't know how you can stay on your feet."

"I feel okay."

"Oh, Robin! You're in another world. You've pushed yourself almost beyond mortal limits. You don't seem to be aware that there are limits, but I know what's happened to you."

He shook his head, seeming puzzled—or was he taunting her? Gwyn felt too bleary to make a rational judgment.

"Nothing's happened to me, Gwyn." He put the loofah down and stood, towered over Gwyn in her sunken tub. Six-two and still growing. Youthful-sulky good looks that fascinated her so. Gwyn's fuddled desire for him seemed a monstrous thing, but imperishable: it grated inside her like broken bones. She slunk to the chin in her bath, eyes smarting.

Robin picked up the Wild Turkey bottle. He uncapped it again and sipped some bourbon. The taste was mildly disagreeable, but the after taste and expanding warmth obviously intrigued him.

"I've wondered why you drink this." He had another deep swallow, and savored it. "Okay, I guess."

"Robin, easy. That doesn't mix with your medication."

He drank again, ignoring her. There'd been a third of a quart left when she persuaded him not to consign it all to the toilet.

"You have been taking your medication?"

"Snowing hard now," Robin observed through a glass port above the bathtub. "Maybe later we could go out and play. We could have a real snowball fight."

"Robin, if you won't follow your schedule of medication, then we can't—you're caught up in a very destructive cycle, whether you realize it or not. You burn six thousand calories a day! You're on the verge of consuming yourself."

"Are you through with your bath?"

". . . Yes. What time is it?"

Robin looked at the solid gold, Rolex Oyster wrist watch she had given him for his fourteenth birthday.

"Ten after seven."

Gwyn sighed. "I need to dress. We're having company for dinner." She attempted a lighter tone. "Now don't drink any more of that; we don't want you turning into a teen-age alcoholic."

"Who's coming?" Robin asked, lowering the bottle after another belt.

"Granny Sig. And—my uncle."

"I don't like him."

"I know," Gwyn said, stepping out of the tub and draping herself in a towel. "I can't help it. Anyway he's company. We never have company."

"Who else?"

"No one else. Robin, will you put that shitting bottle down?"

He wiped his lips on a comer of her towel. "Tongue gets numb," he said.

Warm and wet as she was from the bath, Gwyn could feel the heat Robin gave off. He was burning like a furnace. He helped her dry her body. A blue-eyed bruise peeked at him from beneath one breast.

"How did you get that?" Robin asked.

"Your fist."

"Hit you? When did I ever hit you, Gwyn?" His voice, still changing, unexpectedly climbed high. If she hadn't felt so badly she might have smiled.

"Quite often when we—let's not discuss it. May I have the towel?"

"Don't you want me to dry between your legs?"

"No." She was sure it would lead to sex. Four times today; a week of harrowing circus. The body in which she took so much pride had no resiliency any more. Robin had lost all control. When he thought of sex he had to do it, no matter where he was, or who else might be around. Two nights ago he had raped her in front of Granny Sig. A low point in Gwyn's life, by far.

Robin stepped back and, despite the disapproving expression on her face, he drained the bottle of bourbon, sucking out the last slow drops.

"It won't hurt me," he assured Gwyn. "Nothing hurts me." He was puffed up with boasting; his eyes, looking at her, were busy and clever. "Nothing hurts me. You could put poison in it, and it wouldn't hurt me." But he was sweating now. He nursed the empty bottle, turning the mouth of it around and around between his lips.

"Is that what you'd like to do?"

"What?" Gwyn said, drifting and vacant again. She reached for a dry towel.

"Poison me. Get me out of the way."

Something flared dangerously in Gwyn's head.

"For God's sake, what a miserable, stupid thing to say to me!"

"You wouldn't do it?"

"No. No!"

"But you lie to me. That's a kind of poison."

"I do not lie to you, Robin. And I'm tired of—accusations! Your sick demeaning possessiveness! Your taunts and brutality and—"

He turned smoothly and threw the empty bottle against a marble wall of the bath. Gwyn jumped and got gooseflesh.

"Smash," Robin said, without emphasis. He turned back to her and clamped a hand under her cunt. It was not a loving gesture. He showed a butcher's indifference to her crawling flesh. He thrust a fingertip against the nub of her uterus.

"GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME!" she screamed, finally past all endurance; and she spat in his face.

Robin's reaction was, weirdly, boyish shame. Tears welled up in his eyes. He let go of Gwyneth. His lips quivered.

"Because it isn't kind. It isn't loving. It's humiliating!" Gwyn's voice became a groan. She was weeping too. She used the towel to wipe away the slash of spit that divided his freckled nose. "Oh, God, Robin. Sweet, sweet Robin, what's happened? I loved you so. I want my boy back. I want my beautiful, loving boy." She put her hands on his head, groping blindly. He ducked and ran. He slammed the bathroom door. Gwyn stood there and shook from terror and passion.

When she went to look for him Robin wasn't in the bedroom of her spacious apartment, which took up nearly all of the third floor in the south wing of the house. The door to the living room stood open an inch. Gwyn heard soft music and Ken's murmuring voice. She smelled heavenly hot hors d'ouevres on the serving cart. Ken had come in and fixed a big log fire for her. Gwyneth sat naked and almost close enough to singe her hide, mentally immersing herself in the liquid-looking flames. For a few precious minutes she drew on the fire's heat for the strength to dress herself.

With her cheeks naturally reddened Gwyn added only a touch of lipstick, then shadowed her eyes in bosky green. She gave her hair a few swirling touches with the brush. She put on an ankle-length white wool skirt, white kid boots, a long-sleeved white blouse with a high, Gibson-girl collar, and a white wool bolero vest. She added no ornamentation, not even finger rings.

Ken knocked at the bedroom door and when she opened it he handed her a drink, Wild Turkey on the rocks. Gwyn gasped with pleasure and drank deep.

"Robin said he broke your bottle."

"Oh." Gwyn peered anxiously past Ken's shoulder but couldn't find Robin in the forty-foot living room. Ken pointed to a grouping of high-backed leather chairs near undraped windows; the storm outside was whirling against the leaded glass.

"How is he?" Gwyn whispered.

Ken held praying hands at the level of his breastbone; hishands flew apart in a mime which she was too brainless to interpret. Perhaps he meant that Robin's mood was acceptable; perhaps it was a warning. Do not touch.

"I see." Gwyn drank more whiskey. "Could you leave us alone for a few minutes? We, we had a little spat." The muscles on one side of her face jerked, telegraphing a wild laugh which she never uttered.

"Right."

"Hold—hold the others when they get here. I'll ring."

"Sure you'll be okay?"

"Why shouldn't I be?"

Ken smiled comfortingly and walked away across the living room, closing the outside door behind him.

"Robin?"

He didn't answer her. Gwyn couldn't tell, from where she was standing, which one of the deep chairs he occupied. She walked slowly toward the chairs, swaying slightly from fatigue, from the effects of the whiskey. It would be nice to pass out, she thought, and let somebody else worry about him for awhile. But she was possessed by an unreasonable fear: if she lost touch with Robin, even for an hour, she would never see him again.

"Robin, wouldn't you like something to eat?"

Gwyn saw him slumped, glowering, in the cold well around the exposed windows. His fingernails dug at the tough leather of the armchair. He still wouldn't speak or look at her. She heard the wind scream, and breathed raggedly in response. An unpleasant episode was definitely on the way. In the past when Robin had overloaded his circuits, narcolepsy resulted. During a narcoleptic phase, when he wasn't sleeping he was beautifully docile. She recalled weeks of bathing him, feeding him with a spoon, acts which she found enjoyable, soothing to both of them. Now he couldn't rest, and outbursts of violence were the norm. After the squalid rape episode, Granny Sig had recommended locking him up in a straitjacket. But Gwyn couldn't make herself believe it had come to that. Despite his tantrums and gross behavior, she couldn't betray their relationship so coldly. Robin would calm down; she'd find a way to appease him.

Gwyn leaned against the back of his chair and stared at his raking nails.

"Get away from me."

"Can't we make up?" Gwyn wheedled.

"You spit on me!"

"That was—I'm very sorry, won't you just try to understand the strain I'm under? I'm so worried about you."

Scratch, scratch. The sound of his nails gave her fits. Gwyn leaned over Robin, hair hanging against the side of his face.

"Stop," she pleaded, her voice low.

His hands froze into claws.

"Thank you, darling. Now please forgive me. Please, please— Gwyn wants you to forgive her. Gwyn's sorry she acted so terrible." She drew the long curtain of her hair back and forth across his face, stealing stage-struck glimpses of his precarious mood.

"You said we could get out of here. Go skiing, just the two of us. Now we can't go."

"My plans were changed. By a higher authority."

Gwyn was motionless, listening to him breathe. Lips pursed, she waited with a ripening, not unpleasurable apprehension for Robin to do his thing.

He surprised her by not commenting at all. She dared to touch him, and found him less rigid than she'd expected.

"Could we go some other time?" he asked, resigned and withdrawn.

"Well—I'm sure I could arrange it."

"Okay."

"Kiss?"

He allowed himself to be kissed. His nose was cold from sitting in the draft. Gwyn straightened up smiling, so relieved she thought she might float away. Robin put his hands in his lap. He was mercifully quiet: calmer than he'd been for days. His eyes were half closed.

"I just have to have something to eat," Gwyn said. And drink. She poured the shot of bourbon first, then approached the stainless steel serving cart Ken had parked a few feet in front of the fireplace. She was ravenous. She all but gobbled six large Swedish meatballs, using her fingers, then greedily uncovered the seafood au gratin.

Meanwhile Robin was up and around on little cat feet. Gwyn paid no attention to him until he locked the door.

"Why'd you do that?"

"So nobody can get in."

"But why don't you—Robin, what's the matter?"

"You know what's the matter."

"I honestly don't."

"It's Gillian."

"Gillian?"

"I told you I was all through with her, I don't want to see her ever again. I told her to stay away from here."

"When did you—"

Robin looked around the room, slow and watchful.

"But she's here," he said.

"That isn't possible. Gillian is somewhere in New York. She ran away from—"

Robin stared her into silence.

" 'Robin, Robin,' " he mimicked. "Don't you think I know her voice? Oh, she's here. Where did you hide her?"

"I don't know anything about Gillian."

Robin stopped prowling and stood on the other side of the serving cart. He leaned across it, staring at Gwyn.

"That's a lie."

"No, it isn't."

"She'll do all the things I can do. You won't miss me at all."

"Robin, what are you saying?"

He pointed at the round dining table.

"Company's coming."

"That's right."

Robin counted on his fingers.

"You. Me. Granny Sig. Childermass. Gillian. That makes five."

"But you can see we're not expecting anyone else. There are just four place settings."

"Four for dinner. I won't be here. I'll be dead. Gillian's taking my place after you poison me."

"That's rid—"

Robin erupted. He pushed the wheeled cart past Gwyneth and ran it into the fireplace. Logs blew up in fountains of sparks. The cart overturned and the stink of spilled and charred food quickly filled the room. Smoke rolled over Gwyn and she backed away, choking. Robin followed her. Gwyn, bending double as she coughed, fell into a chair. There was a scalding pain low in the back of her head, it felt as if she'd torn a muscle with her coughing fit.

Clasping her head tightly with both hands, she looked helplessly up at Robin. Her mouth creaked open, but she couldn't speak. The pain was very bad, and worsening. Her brains were coming to a boil.

"Remember?" he said, "I told you I don't have to touch you to hurt you. I'm hurting you now. Because I don't love you any more. I'm tired of you."

The heat from the fire seemed more intense. Thick tears welled from the corners of Gwyneth's eyes; her face had broken out with what she thought were beads of perspiration. Gwyn was stifling. She tore apart the high collar of the blouse, got up and snatched a napkin from the dining table. Shaking dreadfully, she pressed the linen napkin to her face. It came away crimson.

Gwyn screamed. Through a heat haze she saw Robin turn and walk idly away from her. His mind seemed to be on other things. Gwyn stared at the backs of her hands. She was bleeding from almost every pore, tiny perfect bubbles of blood merging, flowing. She smelled of wrack and weed, of the strong salty sea; she felt the running of a fatal tide through her disappearing skin.

Gwyn stumbled after Robin, coughing, no longer able to see him clearly. The tears she wept were tears of blood binding her lashes like glue. Gwyn flowed weightlessly on a rolling wave, spilled on the carpet. She got up gagging and lifted one slow foot, coughed another billowing wave and caught it perfectly, rode sensationally but without effort toward an unforeseen shore.

Robin looked up from his reverie when he heard pounding at the door.

"Gwyn! '

"Go away," he said, but not loudly enough to be heard through the thick door.

The room was stinking. He needed air.

The windows were casement-type, twenty inches wide. He opened three of them. Snow blew in, stinging his face.

Better.

All the doors in the house were solid oak and two inches thick. They'd had to get an ax. They were chopping now.

No place for him to go except into the bedroom, and from there into the bathroom. Two more doors. But they had their ax. It wouldn't take them long. Then what?

Robin shivered and breathed deeply. Night and cold and wind-driven snow. Snow was piling up on the inside ledge, flickering across the carpet. He saw big flakes melting on Gwyneth. She was all red where the white had been.

Chopping. The iron-hard wood. Resisting the blade of the ax.

They couldn't hurt him. Nothing could ever hurt him.

Little by little the ax winning.

In another half minute the door would be split in two, and he just didn't want to talk to them about Gwyneth. That was over with. What was there to tell? It would be boring.

But he found the snow exhilarating. The frigid night challenged him.

Robin moved quickly to the bar and picked up an almost full quart of Wild Turkey bourbon. He put it inside his jacket for safekeeping. Then he walked to the windows past Gwyneth. The bog in which she lay, limbs twitching in crisis, was spreading hugely on the gold carpet.

He climbed sideways through a window frame, tucking his face below the shoulder to protect it from the brunt of the wind.

The limestone ledge outside was six inches deep, with an icy edge. This side of the house was very close to the swimming lake. He had wondered, last summer, if he could dive from the ledge into the lake. But the water wasn't deep close to shore, and there were all those rocks at the edge of the veranda to think about. He knew he could have made it, but he let Gwyneth talk him back inside. Robin smiled now, remembering the expression on her face, the little drops of sweat that fell from her nose and chin.

Back then it was a lot more fun, being with her.

Robin looked down. He could see a faint glow from lighted windows. Otherwise nothing but the whirl wind, like a spectral white dog chasing its own tail. Sheer stone wall going down, thirty feet or more to the ground.

Going up would be easier. There was a fourth floor, little used, then an attic floor, slate roof not too steep, gables set in all along the roof line, and chimneys: five big chimneys in all. To his left, near the windows, was a well-anchored drain pipe. Little out-croppings of the stone wall went up as far as the copper roof gutter: an inch here, two inches there. Handholds. Everything was very slippery, of course.

But the door had broken at last. Looking in through the windows, Robin saw a gash in the oak panels half as wide as a man, saw a hand reaching to release the lock. Gwyn was almost still, just faintly twitching now, frail as a starved child on all that blotted carpet.

He wondered if he could galvanize her, as he'd galvanized dead animals in the lab, making them jump around. Maybe he could get Gwyn on her feet one last time to greet the door crashers. But it wouldn't fool anybody, even if he succeeded in getting her to do a flipflop kind of dance. Dead was dead. So let her lie there.

Robin took a deep breath and started climbing up the side of the house, the wind clawing at his back.

When Peter returned to the room at Shadowdown he found the balcony door wide open. The drapes were whipping wildly in the dark, and the room temperature had plummeted.

Gillian was outside clutching the railing, shivering uncontrollably.

She hadn't worn a coat out there. Her hair had frosted. Her eyebrows were a ridge of freezing snow. Peter pried her loose from the railing and carried her in, closed the thermopane door, kicked the heat high, wrapped her in blankets from both beds. She had vomited outside, and some of the mess was frozen like sequins on her sweater.

Gillian clung to him, chattering.' He examined her fingers for patches of frostbite and didn't find any, but he knew when her circulation returned to normal she would be in pain. As he held her close one of her ears felt hard as porcelain against his cheek.

"What happened to you, Gil?"

She tried, but she couldn't sound her words. A free hand drummed helplessly against his back. Mindful of hypothermia, Peter laid her down and wrapped her more snugly. In the bathroom he plugged in the courtesy coffee maker. When coffee was ready he supported Gillian with an arm around her waist and made her drink half a cup. Her violent shaking dwindled to random jitters.

"Owwww, my hands, my hands!"

"You could have lost a couple of fingers. How long were you on the balcony? And what the hell were you doing out there without a coat?"

"I lost track of time. I went outside because—cold makes it easier for us to get in touch."

Someone thumped the door of their room and Peter looked around, but it was just another impromptu party traveling up and down the halls.

"Come out, come out, whoever you are," a jolly girl said, and someone else laughed. Then the voices faded.

"Did you get through to Robin?" Peter asked Gillian.

Gillian's eyes looked as if she might fly to pieces again.

"Robin's in trouble. He k-killed her, I think."

'What? Killed who?"

"The woman. I don't know who she is. Robin lives with her. Robin bled her out. He did it deliberately. My God. He did it deliberately. Can you get to him? I think he'll die if you don't. I feel him freezing—freezing."

Gillian bent at the waist, hugging herself tightly, crying from the pain in her cold hands, or from the pain she felt for Robin.

"Where is he now?"

"At the house on the lake."

Peter left Gillian crying on the bed. He changed into his snowmobile boots and took the helmet down from a shelf.

"Take me!"

"It's too dangerous, Gillian. Frostbite would be the least of your problems. Lock the door and don't leave this room. I'll be back. If I don't come back stay put until you hear from your father."

"Peter!"

Someone passing by in the hall was trying to sing a lusty German brauhaus song. Another voice picked it up. Peter paused with his hand on the knob for a last look at Gillian. Then he let himself out of the room.

Three revelers were propping up the wall opposite his door, passing a bottle back and forth and trying to sing three-part harmony. They were hairy, husky young men in striped ski sweaters. With them was a snow bunny who wore a bright yellow band on her dark head. She'd made a mistake with the headband, it caught Peter's eye just when she needed an unobserved moment to dip into her shoulder-strap bag. The skiers were not skiers at all, and the party was for him.

Peter didn't hesitate, although he knew it was near to hopeless. The first man off the wall intercepted the arc of the heavy, high-impact plastic helmet with his chin, and his jawbone snapped in two places. Peter pivoted in the unfamiliar, awkward boots and kicked Hairy Two full in his bulging groin. He had to get to the snow bunny, but she was backing off coolly, some sort of weapon in her hand.

"Jerry!" she barked at Hairy Three, who had come between her and Peter. He dived for the carpet, leaving Peter wide open. Snow bunny fired. Her aim was accurate. The barbs from the Taser struck him in the face. With the circuit closed, a rocketing high-voltage shock pitched him blind against the wall. The electrical current, which could climb rapidly to fifty thousand volts, had disrupted his nervous system and he had no muscular control. As he slumped on to the floor, twitching and jumping, he saw her coming closer, thin wires dangling between them. The pain was unendurable.

Turn it off, Peter thought. Off, off! But he was aware of how much she was enjoying it.

Sometimes Robin could hear voices, up there where the snow and wind were wild and haunting. He knew he'd caused a lot of excitement tonight. They'd turned on all the outside floodlights. Dark where he stood above them all, but it was like looking down into a shifting, eerie, golden sea. When the wind slackened briefly and the snow curtains parted he could see bundled figures on the ground. They were still trying to find him with binoculars and hand-held spotlights that flickered across the many dormers, parapets and chimneys. But the light never touched him. He was too quick and agile.

For a while the powerful bullhorn voice had pleaded with him. He ignored it. Then two men had come out from the attic to try to bring him in. The roof was narrowly flat at chimney level, like a catwalk but roughly slated. And always there was the treacherous ice. The men moved nervously and with great caution, not like him. Robin, mildly contemptuous, wasn't in a sporting mood. From his best hiding place within the waist of a figure-eight chimney Robin got around behind a tall man in a blowing trench coat and gave him a shove.

The tall man took the other man with him, a long flailing slide down. One of them, lucky or quick witted, grabbed and hung on to a copper gutter for a time. Others tried to rescue him, but he was virtually inaccessible and scared stiff. Finally fear got the best of him, or else his fingers froze in their gloves, and he dropped off too. After that the bullhorn voice was angry. Robin laughed quietly to himself, threw down snowballs and dodged the sizzling beams they threw back up at him.

Probably they thought he would get tired, or freeze or something. But the high chimneys provided warmth and adequate shelter. When his fingers became numb he climbed up and thawed them in hot wood smoke. For serious chills the bottle of bourbon he'd brought along was just the thing. It stopped the head-to-toe shakes right away. Unfortunately he'd drunk most of it. There was only a swallow or two left. When the bourbon was gone he sensed that all the fun would be gone too.

Granny Sig helped herself to another glass of Calvados and looked across the second-floor study at Childermass. He was using a walkie-talkie, communicating imperiously with MORG's forward observation post high in the attic. Granny Sig glanced at her watch. It was twenty minutes past nine: Robin had been on the roof for nearly two hours. Outside the temperature had dropped to three degrees below zero, and the wind-chill factor might very well be incalculable.

As Granny Sig saw it, Robin had two choices. He could come in and take his medicine. Or he could stay out there and, inevitably, cavort beyond his means, tumble down and break his neck. All the attention was a blissful narcotic: it inspired him to attempt feats of daring that would confirm his belief in a superhuman prowess. Granny Sig had tried to persuade Childermass to damp all fires, turn off the lights and go to bed. After a while cold and boredom and curiosity might prompt Robin to crawl back inside to find out why he was not the center of attention any more.

Childermass thought that was a lousy idea. Considering the' source it had to be lousy. Granny Sig sipped her potent brandy and smiled wryly at Childermass's back.

Well, honey, I'm all you've got right now. But her bravado was, God knows, pathetically hollow. She began to shudder and shake as if in the familiar act of laughter. Instead she produced two large tears, at the outer corner of each eye. They hung there like second sight. Now that Gwyn, Granny Sig's champion and protector, was gone, she had again become unemployable in her profession. If Robin^-the wretch—died as well, very likely her life was in real danger. Something had to be done about that, but Granny Sig was at a loss to know what.

She produced more tears, a raining volume. They splashed into her glass.

"What the hell is the matter with you?" Childermass said, walking toward her.

"Just crying the blues, I guess."

"You goddamn flippy queen. We've got a problem here. Get yourself together."

Granny Sig nodded, then sniveled and sniffed until control and tranquility were restored.

Childermass lifted up his eyes.

"He's like a young goat up there. Fifty feet off the ground in a howling blizzard. Can anyone get through to him? I'd like a professional opinion, care to take a hack at it? What's his mental condition? Is he stable or deteriorating?"

"He's quite insane."

"Don't give me the bad news all at once. What do you mean, insane?"

"Haven't you had a close look at Gwyneth?" Granny Sig said in a fulminating rage. "Don't you realize what he did to her? Given his disposition and unique abilities, still it took concentration. It was an act of premeditated murder. Those two smashed men were pushed off the roof. He's turned into a homicidal maniac."

"Is that treatable? Well, what the hell am I supposed to know! I'm not a psychiatrist. Sane or insane, Robin is still incredibly valuable. I'll leave it to you to deal with him once we get him in."

Ken entered the study. "The cars from Shadowdown are here."

"Where the devil have they been, on the scenic route?"

"Bad roads tonight," Ken said.

"Get 'em up here," Childermass said, and Ken withdrew.

On Childermass's face there was a naked look of anticipation and savage hunger that made Granny Sig feel squeamish and vulnerable, and, when he went all glassy-eyed and groped his aching stump, she wanted to vomit. Didn't, quite. Childermass's breath whistled like doom through his teeth.

"Get me a neat Scotch," he said, eyes on the open door.

He didn't move or speak after that, just stared at the door, waiting. Granny Sig had to put the glass in his hand. They both heard voices. Then Peter Sandza and Gillian Bellaver were brought into the study by a cadre of tough young MORGs.

Peter wasn't standing too well on his own. He looked to be in mild shock. One side of his jaw had been burned by the Taser current. His left arm hung badly. But his eyes were steady as he faced Childermass, and he had his other arm protectively around the frightened girl.

Childermass approached them. For the moment all his attention focused on Gillian. He had a smile for her. That was a kindness she hadn't anticipated; she bit her lip and bowed her head.

Then his eyes slid past her to Peter.                         

No one else in the room moved or spoke. It was like a wake, for someone who wasn't quite dead yet. Premature feasting would have been tacky. They all watched Childermass for a clue as to how to behave.

Childermass smiled at Peter too: because his smile was so unexpected it seemed ghastly as a gunshot.

"Welcome back, Ace," Childermass said. "Maybe you could give us a hand with something."

Robin was disgruntled. It had all begun to seem pointless to him.

Apparently they didn't want to play any more. He hadn't heard the bullhorn's urgings for a long time. They'd stopped beaming lights at the roof, trying to illuminate his hideaways. No matter how boldly he exposed himself now, he just couldn't get anyone's attention.

And his feet were cold. He hadn't wanted to think about it, but they were really cold. He couldn't remember when he'd last felt his toes. Toelessness made him a little clumsy, and clumsiness upset him.

"Rob-in!"

Oh, shit. Now who was that?

He had to do something to keep from being bored, so he conceived the idea of racing from one end of the long L-shaped roof to the other, just to see how fast he could get there. Skipping over dormers and running that risky high pitch, the icy spine of the roof—probably even a squirrel couldn't do it at night without falling.

Might be fun at that, to fall and fall, float down into a drift for a deep tidy nap. He felt as if he could sleep now, oh really sleep if he—

Later. First he would run. But he had to do something about his feet.

He uncorked the Wild Turkey bottle and drank the last mouthful of bourbon, leaning against a chimney that had been hot earlier, but which now had cooled off. He imagined fires going out one by one down below. They'd had the brilliant idea of trying to freeze him into submission. They wanted him begging at the attic window where he'd had glimpses of faces watching. Let me in, let me in. Like a little kid. I'm thorry. Bullshit. He wasn't going in yet, and when he did he would pick his own window.

"Robin! Robin!"

Fuck off, mister. Or fall off.

No feeling in his feet, the strangest feeling of all. Robin sup-ressed a giggle and belched instead.

Probably he shouldn't have thrown his shoes away, but he never could have made the vertical climb to the roof in a pair of Gucci’s. The wool socks had protected his feet for a while, even when they became wet and then stiff as chainmail. Now he had to find another way to warm his turned-off toes.

"Robbbbinnnnnn!"

The man's voice was nearer still, and spookily familiar though distorted by the wind. Wind, shut up! Robin listened. He didn't hear the man again. Well, right now he didn't care to be bothered. Keep coming, Robin thought; see what you get. Walk right on by this chimney and step down. Way down.

Robin set the bottle carefully on the slate behind him (might have missed a drop or two), and laboriously peeled the frozen socks from his feet. He unzipped his pants. He pissed jerkily at first, then produced a satisfying flood backed by the nearly full quart of bourbon he'd drunk during the last two hours. Pissed hard on his frozen feet, which he couldn't distinguish from the pieces of slate he was standing on.

Flashlight, its snow-crazed beam just touching him.

When the beam flicked away Robin wedged himself deeper in the waist of the chimney.

"Robin? Where are you? Please answer me!"

I'll kill you, Robin thought. Don't think I can't do it.

The room to which Gillian had been escorted by Granny Sig and Lana, the black-haired girl with the yellow headband and the deadly Taser, was a spacious end bedroom on the third floor. East-west windows and a big north fireplace wall. A fire on the hearth was burning low. Granny Sig turned on lights. Gillian stood shivering.

"O-open the windows," she begged.

"Lamb, you're shaking to pieces already," said Granny Sig.

"He's up there! Right up there!" Gillian pointed to a corner of the ceiling. "Please open the—"

Granny Sig looked at Lana, who moved her tough little jaw over a wad of gum. Lana shrugged.

"It's only your ass," she said. "Freeze it off if you want to."

Gillian snatched at the drapes of the east-facing windows.

Peter slipped and fell to his hands and knees. The steel flashlight he'd tied to his right wrist banged against the slate roof, but the faceplate was unbreakable glass and the light didn't go out.

Jesus, he thought, sweating inside his clothes despite the cold.

He stood up cautiously, a hand going to the nylon cord looped around his chest and waist. The line to the attic window he had climbed out of minutes ago was taut. He signaled curtly for slack. Just as he got it the wind, reversing abruptly, almost picked him off again. Snow felt like ground glass on his face. He crooked his left arm with difficulty and cleaned his lashes with the gloved back of one hand.

"Robin?"

But maybe the watchers had been mistaken, and hadn't seen him on this end of the roof after all. Robin could be a hundred and ninety feet away on the other side of the house, crouched in the lee of another chimney, unable to hear him. Certainly he wouldn't be able to see much better than Peter, and Peter felt nearly blind up here.

Or Robin might have fallen, soundless and unseen, some time ago. In the morning, sun breaking orange over the vast white fields, they'd find him half-buried in a drift gone hard as rock during the subzero night.

The wind changed again and Peter smelled something unmistakably human: urine.

He brought his light to bear on the big chimney ahead. There was nothing beyond it but the dark and the streaming snow. Nothing in front of the chimney, either. But he moved closer, playing the light back and forth over the several facings of the double-octagon chimney.

Something was reflecting light in die deep dividing niche—it reflected high as lurking eyes. Oh God. He took another step.

Another.

"R-Robin?"

A face emerged warily from deep shadow. He was wedged in there sideways, although the niche scarcely afforded room for an average-sized boy. Peter could see that Robin was far from average. He'd grown tall, taller than his father. Peter doted on the red, snow-encrusted sprawl of curls on the manly forehead. Oh beautiful! Peter sobbed aloud. So familiar a face, yet dauntingly strange. He lowered the light so it wouldn't blind his son.

"Robin—Robin!"

Robin bared his teeth like a dog. Peter came up short and signaled impatiently for slack in the nylon line. They gave him another two feet.

"It's Dad, Robin."

Robin remained very still, but his eyes narrowed.

"I know—they told you I was dead. They lied! I've spent the last eighteen months looking for you. I never gave up, I—what's the trouble, Skipper? Don't you recognize me? Can't you say hello to your old man?"

He realized,-belatedly, how stupid that sounded. Because he was standing behind the flashlight, Robin couldn't possibly make him out. To Robin's dazzled eyes he was just a vague shape in the near-dark.

Smiling, Peter turned the light on himself.

"Here I am, Skipper. It's no joke. I'm not a—"

Robin's charge took him completely by surprise, but at the perimeter of light he was casting on himself he saw the flash of a bottle aimed at his head and jerked his left shoulder high to take the crippling blow. It ended what little feeling he still had in the length of his arm. Slipping, falling, he clutched at Robin with his right hand and pulled the boy off balance. Then they both stepped off the flat of the roof and onto the slant, which was twelve feet of greased lightning.

They plummeted in a tangle to the gutter shelf and hung there. The two men at the other end of the nylon rope were jerked up against the inside of the attic window by the combined weight of Peter and Robin, and they lost valuable line, which branded their hands smoking hot and deep as the bone.

Outside, Robin went over the edge, hand in hand with Peter. He dangled face-up in the biting wind, eyes wide and a clean, celestial blue in the light from the dangling flashlight, his mouth almost a perfect O of surprise. Peter, with the lower half of his body on the roof and the looped cord strangling him at the waist, tried to reach out with his left hand to reinforce the precarious hold he had on his son.

There was no response at all. His left hand lay cramped and useless beneath him.

"PULL US UP! FOR GOD'S SAKE PULL US UP!" It took all the breath he had, but the wind shrieked louder.

Peter felt a sawing on the line; they slipped another two inches. Robin, still gazing at him in rapt attention, gasped but didn't struggle.

"Reach up," Peter said. "With your other hand. Get hold of the shoulder of my parka. Climb up over me. I'm—God—tied down, I can't fall. Come on, now. Do it. Before I pass out."

Robin reached up slowly, very slowly. His left hand touched the down-filled parka. He looked deeply into Peter's eyes. His hand moved on, touched Peter's face. Tears fell on the back of his hand.

"Oh, Skipper," Peter mumbled. "Come on; just come on. Grab hold."

Something joyous broke through the rigidly neutral expression on Robin's face.

"Ahhhhh—" he said, secure in that moment of vital recognition. "Help me, Commander!"

He smiled.

Then he fell, released by Peter.

Fell down and down, and smashed into the rocks at the edge of the lake.

The wind prowled over him. Men ran and lifted his body, and there was a dark blot where his head had split open. Peter, hanging head down from the edge of the roof, looked on with somber inquiring eyes, betraying no understanding of the sudden tragedy. His expression of earnest inquiry didn't change when the one-armed man appeared in the snow to rant and curse him. It didn't change when the rope squeaked and slackened and he was lowered off the roof. Easier for him to go down than up. He momentarily lost consciousness when his legs swung down and the blood rushed from his head.

Peter was lowered another ten feet. When he lifted his head he saw Gillian's stunned face at a window. Grief took him by the throat.

"Oh, girl," he said—or thought he said. "How did it go so wrong?"

Peter wondered if she'd heard him. But he couldn't bear to go on looking at her. His eyes filmed over and he slumped, his head nodding forward. He swayed in the wind at the end of the crushing rope.

Childermass ran through the bedroom and pulled Gillian away from the window. He leaned out, batting the snow from his eyes.

"Peter! Peter, you son of a bitch!"

Peter's head was caked with snow. It drifted down his silent, doted face.

"You let him go! I saw it! You killed your own son! Why! Goddamn you, Peter, I know you're not dead! Give me an answer!"

He seemed to have seriously misjudged Peter for the last time. But then slowly, very slowly, Peter lifted his head until he was staring into Childermass's furious eyes. Granny Sig, looking on, thought she saw Peter smile. Perhaps not. But the gesture he made was unmistakable. Right hand lifted, rigid index finger extended.

Childermass turned away from the window, seized the nearest MORG agent and said, "Give me your piece."

"No!" Gillian screamed. She was dragged to the floor before she could place herself between Childermass and Peter.

Childermass was handed a .44 Magnum revolver. Six rounds of high-velocity, hollow-nosed ammunition. Taking up his shooting stance at the window, Childermass blew a great deal of

Peter away with the six shots. Set him twirling fiercely in a lull. He had the decency to pull the drapes immediately after.

Lana was sitting on Gillian in order to keep her under control. Gillian's eyes rolled hysterically as Childermass kneeled beside her.

"Well, I don't have Robin any more," he said. "You'll have to do."

He threw the hot revolver on the bed and left the room.