ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT

by Nan Dibble

A three part series

Part 2

Touch and Go

1: SHARDS

Noon's blaze through the skylights of Diana's new loft had faded to a dull overcast. Still they continued as they had been: Diana sitting in a scoop chair, Vincent on the floor with an arm thrown across her knees and his head bent against it. Neither of them moving, except for abrupt waves of shuddering that passed through him; except for her hands steadily rubbing at his shoulders and the back of his neck.

His hair didn't end at the nape, she'd found. A thick strip continued down his spine. Not precisely hair, then: a mane. And that strip wouldn't lie flat. Erect, bristled with tension.

He wasn't resting. He was holding himself in place: about midway between somebody desperately hanging onto a moving train and somebody determined to lean against a hot stovetop. Brave, sure, but with an edge of craziness, too. An edge of danger and of pain.

She wished she could see his face. But she didn't lean to look. It was more important that she keep herself steady, her motions slow and consistent, offer nothing and expect nothing beyond presence, contact—in themselves, almost more than he could endure right now. Not only from her—from anybody.

Another fit of shuddering began—like something urgent and uncontrolled moving close under the skin.

“I want to kill them,” Vincent remarked—his voice, after so long a silence, merely meditative, announcing an unremarkable fact.

“The bowers,” she responded, not because she was in any doubt but because she hoped talking might help. Like what she'd read about snakebite: open the wound, draw the poison out.

So keep him talking, she thought. As long as he could talk and listen to her, nothing permanent would happen. To anybody.

“I want this very much,” he continued. Not an admission, merely a fact he was reporting, allowing her to know too. “Not for myself—I will learn how to bear that—”

“We will,” Diana corrected.

“Yes.” He stirred, finally: joining his hands, so that her knees were clasped in the circle of his arms. He continued, “It wasn't for this, that Ursula was brought away from a man who used children for shameful pictures; nor for this that Richard learned to dance in his blindness; nor for this that Geoffrey escaped the orphanage into the tunnels and ran such a fever with the chickenpox and learned to spell perimeter and gracefully comforted Catherine in her grief, when her father died.... Not to be chosen carelessly, quite at random, to provoke me into pursuit and capture and...and what came after.... They were no one's pawns, warriors in no battle. Merely children, Diana. Children, murdered casually. Sacrificed....”

Although Diana knew the facts of what he'd been drawn into, forced into by the bowers' raid, she was only beginning to grope toward what it meant—at all, and most particularly to him. Still, she knew enough to feel something of the special resonance that word, sacrificed, had gained for him. Enough to make her shiver.

“I killed...perhaps 25 of them,” Vincent added in that distant, unemphatic voice. “Twenty-seven, if one includes the ambush laid for Jamie, which found me instead.... That should surely be enough. Even for me. And yet....”

“Yeah,” Diana said, steadily kneading the knotted neck and shoulder muscles, deliberately not reacting to the flick of acid contempt turned against himself: time enough to deal with that when the rage cooled, when he was ready and able to listen to anything but its voice. “It's all still with you. I know.”

Again, he said, “Yes,” the single word all the recognition and affirmation he had within him at the moment: accepting her right to hurt with his pain, to be part of this, ugly as it was.

A different kind of trust than she'd ever imagined. More a challenge than a comfort, more like stone than silk; none of the sharp edges softened. A trust encompassing both the light and the dark, that he knew more directly and intimately than she could yet fully imagine.

The dark that she mistrusted: a large adversary, but one toward which she felt no fear, only a steady wariness. But a dark that she would not disavow utterly, because it was part of him, and she loved him: not only what was gentle and forethoughtful and fitted to the light, but what in him others turned from, preserving the polite fiction that it didn't exist, though they all knew it did.

After he'd killed, with maybe two quick slashes, one of a trio of druggies who'd jumped her at the Central Park threshold, he'd stood staring at her over the body. Then he'd remarked, with bitter resignation, “So: now, you've seen”: as though that were all there was to see, nothing left to know about him. Or as though he was certain that, having seen what she'd seen, it would be all she'd want to know.

Instead, that resignation had freed him—as if recognizing, since she already knew the worst, there was nothing left to lose, no assumed standard he should try to live up to. No reason to be, with her, anything but what he was—all that he was. Altogether open. And therefore altogether vulnerable.

How could you not love somebody like that?

A large trust, that he'd given her. As large, maybe, as the darkness itself. If she had the strength to bear it, be worthy of it. She was damn well going to try.

Presently he continued, “I cannot see the shape of it, this game he has summoned me into and I have no choice but to play, unless I would stand back and allow his evil to move freely against those I love... because I love them.” Vincent's arms tightened around her knees. At last lifting his head, he looked at her with eyes like dull steel. “I cannot see over the pain to the purpose. All I can see....” He didn't complete that thought and again bent his head onto his arm.

The shuddering came back: stronger under her hands.

Having seen it herself, afterward, she knew what vision still haunted him: a cave where 13 bower teenagers had been pulled apart in a fugue of rage and response to their focused and unanimous desires. A kind of mass suicide, with Vincent as the chosen weapon, with as little choice himself as a cocked pistol. They'd made a thing of him, and then sacrificed themselves to that thing, all according to some horrible, demented scenario formulated by the dead man who'd been their leader.

Paracelsus. Who'd claimed Vincent as his son. Who, like his followers, the bowers, worshipped the dark....

“Give it a little time, babe,” she advised. “It'll be better when you get some distance from it.”

“No.” Suddenly leaning away, he was on his feet and walking looping figures across her loft, fists clenched at his sides. “This cannot be ignored. Because it is not over. If I do nothing, make no answer, he will continue striking at those I care for. Unless I can see the shape of it, what he intends—”

“But he's dead,” Diana pointed out, feeling dumb at pointing out the obvious. She turned her head, following him the only way she could: her legs were dead from the knees down, her shins like two numb spikes his weight, at last removed, had driven into the floor. If she'd tried to get up, she'd have fallen flat on her face.

“That signifies nothing,” Vincent responded impatiently, over his shoulder. “Except that he has put himself beyond my further reach. What I could do to him, I have already done. With his consent. By his desire, his plan.... His intention lives. Carried out by the bowers, his agents. And I must know why, what it is, what it aims for, to know what I must do to answer the next gambit. No: to foresee it, prevent it.”

He wheeled, began another pattern, a loop that took him away down the length of the loft.

He said, “It may be that he means me to be wholly consumed by this rage and reply in kind: take what vengeance I will against the bowers. Make of myself an executioner of strangers. Pursuing a sole and arbitrary justice. Because I have the power to do it. Because I want to. Very much. And therefore I must not. I must unlearn the wanting. I do not wish to become a slaughterer of available strangers, be they willing or unwilling under my hands as I strike them down. The power to do a thing is not the right to do it. This is what he wishes me to forget. I must not.”

His compulsive pacing brought him toward her again. Moving along the back of the couch as if guided by radar, not eyes, he was slowed by some thought and stopped, lifting his head to look at her with an expression she'd never seen before—a speculative bitterness, blunt and uncompromising.

He said, “And yet, whatever I chose to do, who could prevent me? Who could even call me to account? Who would not find some way of excusing me, though the whole world be obliged to turn askew to make the action upright? Even you. Even you try to persuade me that there is no fault in what I have done....”

For a moment, his steady stare was an accusation. But before she'd decided what to say or whether it'd be a good idea to say anything at all, he'd looked aside, withdrawing the challenge. Withdrawn, too, within himself: another sudden change of mood.

No longer talking to her, just saying it, he commented, “Blake claimed that one law for the lion and the ox is oppression. But the ox lives by compulsion, by order. Who is to say what is law for the lion?”

Then he looked at her again, as though he really hoped for an answer.

Trying to be inconspicuous about hitching her legs in tighter— freed of his weight, the backs of her calves were full of flaring prickles, and her feet and toes were going absolutely wild—Diana found herself remembering Father's remark, a couple of weeks ago, to the effect that nobody Below could force Vincent to do, or not do, anything. That you had to win, and maintain, Vincent's consent. And that'd been Father: who made whatever passed for law, Below—law that was enforced chiefly by consent; but, if consent failed, by Vincent.

And Vincent knew it. And felt suddenly how light that restraint was, how easy it would be to shake free of the cobwebs of habit and custom and walk steadily his own way, taking no account of rules that finally could never hold him unless he was willing to be held....

Diana had seen and felt him balanced on that threshold more than once during his search for his son—most clearly when he'd confronted Gabriel with no bars between. Then, she'd been able to distract him, deflect him with concern for his son and he'd been able to turn away, leave Gabriel alive. For a few minutes more, until she'd shot the bastard herself, on Catherine's behalf and with Catherine's gun....

Yet the question, the issue remained—never settled, merely deferred until this new crisis. And it was a real and fair question: who had either the right or the power to hold Vincent to account or judge his actions? Not the world Above, which didn't even suspect his existence and whose statutes reached no deeper than grass. And, Father had made plain, not the world Below, either.

Why, she thought as she curled her sparking toes, was it okay for her to enforce vengeance, a private justice, against Gabriel, and absolutely wrong if Vincent had done it? Why did she feel so strongly that the issue was a door open on the dark, with the draft growing stronger, minute by minute?

Now that the immediate weight of the first shock had lifted, he was, she thought, as full of fiery, needling stabs as her overburdened legs—but with him, it would be all over: inside and out. Every now and again, he'd startle and glance around sharply with wide, spooked eyes, as though something had just zinged him and he couldn't tell where it'd come from or where it'd gone. Like being attacked by invisible bees. Drive you frantic. Make you want to do something, do damn near anything to make it stop, swat the source of the torment.

If he was aching to whack a few more bowers, who was to say he mustn't, or even shouldn't, after what they'd done to him and to Father's community and might well try to do again unless somebody preemptively convinced them it'd be a real bad idea? And if he went ahead and did it anyhow, no matter what anybody said, who was likely to stop him or even try?

Keep him here, she thought. Keep him talking. Listen. Try to see what he sees now. Try to understand.

Looking up into his eyes, she spread her hands. “I don't know the answer to that either, babe. Tell me one thing, though: were you proud of killing Paracelsus?”

The way his head jerked aside was all the answer needed. But he said, “It sickened me. To my soul, it sickened me. So that I am still not free of the shame of it. And yet Father and Catherine both commended it, said it was necessary, that he had earned such a death.... That he'd chosen it, that was plain. But earned it? Am I become Death's paymaster? A death, too, can be a weapon. An attack. I gather the Japanese know that: to commit seppuku, belly-slitting, upon another's ground, to thereby claim such injury has been done you that death is preferable...that is more than mere suicide. That is part of a dialogue of mortal gestures not ended by a single death. But in his case....” Vincent lifted his heavy, clawed hands, studying them. “In his case, he chose neither knife nor sword. He chose me. As his instrument of execution. And I obliged him. And I am still sick with it....”

And sick, Diana realized, that his sense of outrage had found no mirror, no echo, in those closest to him. Leaving him alone with it—with the sickness and the guilt. Isolation: that was part of it, part of the answer. She didn't know what to do with it yet, where it ought to fit. But she filed it, wouldn't forget it.

And simultaneously she thought, Another sacrifice, using Vincent as the weapon. Precisely as the bowers had done—if anything, even more profoundly. But a difference only of intensity and raw numbers, not of kind.

“So that's twice, he's done it to you,” she remarked soberly, cautiously stretching out one leg, then the other, finding the pins-and-needles sensation at last easing while he unspooled and examined the thought.

Setting both hands on the couch back, he leaned on it. “No: three times. I begin to see it now, the pattern. When first I spoke to him, ordering him to a more distant exile, he claimed to have knowledge of...of why I am as I am. I was tempted to listen to him, hoping finally to learn what I have always wished to know. And so was unprepared when he struck at me with a hidden blade. And even then I held back, merely avoided him and finally dragged him from the fire lest I lose the only answer I had ever been offered to the conundrum of myself. He never did reveal that secret...assuming it was not merely another lie. He had so many. But it comes to me that he has been trying to teach me what I am, ever since. I am what could kill an unarmed man for calling into my mind the recognition that I have killed before, and how it was to me. For speaking that truth, I killed him, which is no denial but confirmation.... I am what could kill 14 young bowers because they desired it of me, desired the profoundest intimacy which can only be between slayer and slain at the moment in which they become what they are. What cannot, now, even recall their faces—”

“Hey,” she interrupted, straightening in her chair, bracing. “Come back here.” He looked at her blankly, so she repeated her request: “Come back over here.” She patted her knees.

She figured she was ready for another round of being a bench now, if it would help. And the loss of contact was plainly affecting him. He'd gone pale again; and by backing off, he'd let himself slide away to the brittle edge of control where the dark was close and nothing in the shadows to sustain him. Running, she thought, merely on battery power: time for another recharge.

Besides, she simply liked holding him. Felt cold and insubstantial, flimsy without that weight solidly anchoring her. She'd have liked to hold him a whole lot closer than that, and experiment with the effects of friction....

Turning his face away, he responded almost inaudibly, “I cannot. Just now.”

“Sure you can. Can't keep me company from way over there. You get that far off, I start missing you. And I think you start missing me. Come on, give it a try.”

His claws were digging into the patterned fabric of the couch, that hadn't been all that great to begin with. “Diana. Forgive me but I cannot. I cannot make it come together, I cannot see—”

Realizing what she'd meant as encouragement he felt only as added pressure, she eased off, took another approach. “Then settle someplace, will you? I'm getting a crick in my neck, just trying to watch you. You told me once you liked my couch...?”

Because she wanted him to, and because he could, he did: he was like that. Circling the couch, he sat on the far end, stiffly balanced and ready to bolt.

It came and went, his ability to tolerate being close. Sometimes he could make himself stand the charge that moved between them, sometimes he couldn't; but either way, it never came easy now, never without an effort of will.

His wide eyes, glancing at her briefly and then sliding away, asked if she understood that, if she was angry or impatient or disappointed in him, that he couldn't meet whatever closeness she offered, even if that were nothing more intimate than closing the distance between them or the touch, perhaps, of hands....

So although she ached to hold and comfort him, she stayed where she was and let a peaceable stillness be her answer. And after a minute or two he sighed and tipped his head back, satisfied that he needn't be tense or guarded, that she was far enough away to be safe from whatever was trying to escape within him, marked by those intermittent sieges of shuddering.

Very close, it was. It came and went too. Shaking him with its heavy tread. Pacing the limits of the maze within him, its prison and occupation. Sometimes she caught it in his face or his quick, unconsidered motions. Sometimes, feral and dangerous, it looked, for an instant, out of his eyes. Too many inner walls had been cracked for him to keep it wholly out—or rather, wholly in.

All cracked, fractured, the massive calm—generally so characteristic of him—that might have let him deal with it.

Nothing would connect for him. She could tell by the way he'd seize on one idea and try to make sense of it and then lose it back into the confusion, and then be struck by another, and worry that for a little while, and lose that too, and whirl and snatch at a third, gone before he could fully grasp that either. She could feel it, almost see it: the way his hunting mind bruised and sliced itself against the jagged pieces, unable to make them come together and yet unable to be still, give them time to settle. Scattering them worse by the desperate snatching after sense.

But Diana knew that left alone, things converged. They wanted to be whole and would gather around any still center. Truth might be shy or shattered or lost for awhile, but it wanted to be seen. Like resonated with like and came together. What didn't belong eventually dropped out of its own accord—settling out, like the clearing of cloudy water. Often the best thing to do was wait, watch, collect, sift, and let the pieces start to match up on their own. When events were hot and fresh and full of sharp edges, big chunks still missing, all still spinning with the momentum of the initial shattering, that was sometimes all you could do....

That was her trade.

She remarked meditatively, “You said I was good at what I do. You still think so?”

“I know it to be true.”

“Well, what I do is collect all the broken pieces, sort of into a basket. Not really, that's just what it feels like...?”

His nod assured her he was following what, after several tries, she'd finally given up trying to explain to Commissioner Frankel, who was happier believing she was psychic, which at least slapped a label over the mystery so he could ignore it and complacently check off the results: another weird case, that nobody else would touch, settled, filed, forgotten.... It felt great, finally saying it to somebody who could nod matter-of-factly, as if it was the plainest thing in the world, and understand. Finally, for once, understand. She loved Vincent for that, too, and paused a minute, just smiling at him, simply for being himself.

He happened not to be looking and didn't notice. No matter. It still felt great: a nourishing, sustaining happiness that fed hope and confidence, full of peace.

She went on, “Then I shake all the scraps around awhile, see if any of them will match some way and stick together. I gotta come at this my own way, the only way I know. But I can't: I don't have even half the pieces here. So help me out, babe: you said three. Three times Paracelsus did something like this to you. I only know about two. What's the third? Don't worry if it'll only come in scraps, stuff that doesn't seem to fit. Don't try to make sense of it yet. Just tell me: like a story. So I can imagine my way into it a little. OK?”

She knew he liked stories and was skilled in telling them—full of finesse and measured pauses and dramatic intonations. A story was a basket you could put anything into and it'd have at least the basket's shape and maybe handles to hold onto it by, no matter what was inside.

Being cast into a story could make even the worst grief or horror manageable, bearable. She suggested it hoping it might be so for him.

And because she'd asked it of him, in the guise of help, and because there was no reason to refuse, he tried. Hands fisted between his knees, he thought for awhile, then began, “It was...about two years ago. I sensed alarm, fear from Catherine. And then, suddenly, nothing. I had no sense of her at all: nothing with which to locate her. I went to her terrace and there found a gold coin, bent and warped by great heat.... And by that token I knew that it was he who had taken her: Paracelsus....”

2: HELL REVISITED

They'd at last come clear of the pursuing smoke: Catherine reeling and stumbling through the acrid steams and fogs that mimicked smoke, Vincent unable to decide whether a renewed attack would be more likely to come from ahead, behind, up, down, or any of a thousand degrees of slant, a complete sphere of possible danger, and therefore taking five paces for every one of hers, circling, trying to be aware of everything, frustrated that his acuity was blunted by his own agitation, even by the exhausted euphoria flowing to him through the bond. Sweet as it was, it was a distraction and dangerous. He tried to sense past it and couldn't. This close, it was nearly impossible for him to be conscious of anything but her. Quite literally, Catherine became everything. And yet to keep her safe he had to somehow try to shut her out, find some way, within, to be apart from her. Which was likewise impossible.

His mouth was full of the taste of blood. He was frantic to get clean of the immediate awareness of it; but his final cache of supplies, including water, was still hours ahead, though not as far as the river.

At least his eyes hadn't betrayed him: he could still see the way he'd marked, keep scanning the maze of meeting passages, all the fissures and holes that might conceal some further attacker or Paracelsus himself—that sag-eyed, lugubrious face with its obscene golden mask, the pale mouth gabbling even more obscene declarations of love....

Love!

Remembering made Vincent almost as sick as the metallic taint of blood. With an effort of will he shut off the memory, concentrated only on the immediate task: guiding Catherine safely back to the light that was her proper place and her birthright...through the dark that was his.

At least in what would be, to her eyes, absolute darkness, she wouldn't be able to see the blood. That, at least, he could keep to himself and not trouble her with. He licked his lips uneasily, trying to look, sense, in all directions at once.

There was no way not to touch her, hold her. The fissures and drops he'd come down easily had become steeps and climbs he had to lift her up until she could find a foothold or bound first, kneel, and stretch an arm to draw her slight weight up tight beside him. There were chimneys too tall even for that, where the ascent couldn't be broken into stages. Then she clung to his back or side and he jumped and held one-handed because his other arm was around her back or even her waist.

He'd always been most careful in his approaches to her, limiting them to a touch too formal and brief to be termed an embrace, forcing nothing upon her that she might be uncomfortable about, or about refusing.

She, naturally less restrained because she'd never had to learn any need for caution, often leaned into him or held him in simple affection; and because it was her choice and her happiness to do so, that was acceptable. He would never hurt her feelings by drawing away or refusing such contact. That would have been the height of ill manners. So that much, in good conscience, he'd permitted himself to share and enjoy. But only once, and recently, had he ever initiated such contact and drawn her close. And he'd sensed in her no difference, no startlement or displeasure that he'd reached out first, not she. But to him, there was difference. Almost terror at his own daring, to find reinforced and heightened all that continually came to him through the bond: a stronger sense of her physical self, as well as the disembodied flow of mood and attitude. The touch of her skin, unthinkably soft and smooth. The scent, almost a taste, of her beautiful soft hair....

And now he had to grab and hold roughly, undoubtedly banging her sometimes against the stone. Sometimes she grunted and changed her grip, trying to disguise a flinch he still felt but couldn't react to, lest he drop her. There'd be bruises, and of his making. And the scent was of smoke and sweat and exhaustion, and yet still sweet and even more powerful, holding her so close in this strange place that surely was not her world but not his either, the path traveled only once and unfamiliar to him except for his own marks that he followed and the lingering blood-scent the giant had left, returning from the ambush: a scent Vincent could now discern only rarely because of the stronger and more immediate taste of that same blood on his teeth.... This rising terrain of steeps and edges was almost a place between, like her terrace: a place where there were no set limits and a certain familiarity was permissible....

It was becoming more than he could bear.

On a sheer ledge he stopped, judging them safe for the moment, trying to compose himself, dim his intimate awareness of her. But that was impossible: she sagged gratefully against him, her face against his chest, her small, sneakered feet dangling. In stillness, without even motion as a distraction, everything intensified a thousandfold.

“Have we lost them yet?” Catherine whispered.

“I don't know.” Honesty compelled him to add, “I do not know if we are pursued at all.”

A flash of annoyance, then worried caution, then pure spreading gladness and a deeper relaxation. As though she'd actually said it, he understood Then why have we been running like crazy? But we're not safe yet, anything could happen.... At least I can rest here, anyhow. Though he knew only her emotions, he'd come to know her so well that there were times it was almost as if he could read her mind, as well. And, disquietingly, times when it seemed as if she could read his.

He couldn't not hold her. She might fall. He couldn't allow that to happen. And after the desperate famine of his search, when the bond had gone silent so that he knew nothing of her except that she lived, he was simply unable not to savor it now: water to that terrible thirst.

This once, he decided, he could permit it. Until she was safely home. That long. Because after that, she'd be safe. This journey back would be his last chance to touch her and feel her response. Because once she was home, he'd resolved himself never to see her again.

“How far do we have to go?” she asked—her voice still soft, but no longer whispering. No longer in any way tense, completely confident of her safety because he was with her.

He knew himself unworthy of such trust, such blind willingness to ignore that it was on his account that she'd been kidnapped, held, tormented, and threatened with a hideous death by fire. To Paracelsus, she was no more than a pawn, to be moved or used or sacrificed as suited his purposes. Only a means of getting at Vincent, who alone barred his return to the tunnels from which he'd been exiled, the tunnel community he'd helped to found and whose rule he'd once shared with Father.

She'd been hurt on Vincent's account. His fault. That was intolerable. That must never be allowed to happen again. He'd known it from the first, taking up the warped coin: if he managed to find and rescue her, the only way to ensure her future safety was to leave her absolutely alone hereafter. Never visit the terrace. Never see her. Never touch. Close the threshold and change the passages, so she could never again, in misguided affection, careless of her own danger, come into the tunnels.

Their worlds must remain absolutely separate here-after, because a danger had reached out from his and touched her.

His fault.

But there were dangers in her world too. And how would he be able to feel that surge of sudden terror and not answer it? And how could he answer it, and protect her, when he must not see or touch her ever again like this.

His claws dug into his palms, to the point of pain, as the two horns of the insoluble dilemma pierced him from opposite and irreconcilable directions.

To keep her safe, he had to leave her. To keep her safe, he had to be there, come between her and whoever or whatever offered her hurt. There was no way he could do both.

“Vincent...?” Her fingers stroked down his cheek, across his mouth: seeking, blind, to know his expression. Curiosity. Concern. No fear. He shivered under the touch. “Vincent, are you hurt? I'm sorry, I didn't think—” she began to reproach herself.

“No,” he interrupted quickly. “I am uninjured. Except for bruises, some weariness....” Then he remembered her question, which had waited unanswered and made her wonder why. “We are perhaps three days' journey from your home. Another two hours to the river....” He felt her blank incomprehension, deduced that she'd noted no landmarks passed on her forced journey down.

Reading him in turn, she explained, “At first, I was unconscious. I don't know how long. And afterward, it was dark.”

“Of course.” How terrible for her, he thought, to be therefore altogether lost: to know that, even if she contrived to escape her imprisonment, the best she could hope for was to wander endlessly in the dark, to die eventually of thirst or a fall.... Unconsciously, his arm went closer about her and he felt the gentle warmth that always accompanied her slightly crooked smile, that was perfect because it was hers.

She said, “I don't mind being lost, as long as I'm with you.”

Such confidence. Such faith. It humbled him. He didn't deserve it, since it was solely on his account that she'd been dragged into this lightless maze to become lost in the first place. Rescuing her out of it was no virtue and no recompense for what she'd suffered. He knew he could never make it up to her. He could only leave her in the world she knew, where she knew her way, all the ways.... And still dared the unknown and the dark and walked among dangers, even there....

He couldn't imagine what he was to do.

“What is it?” she asked. “What's the matter?”

“We must continue,” he responded abruptly, drawing her up, scanning for the next handhold.

She tucked her hand obediently under his arm and hung on, and Vincent held her tightly as he began to climb. Rope. He should have thought to bring rope. But he'd thought only of the going, not considered the return. Except for Father's forethoughtfulness and that he'd begun with companions—Winslow, who'd died in the search, and Pascal, whom he'd sent back—he wouldn't even have thought to bring supplies. He often traveled fasting, subsisting on the trickles of seepwater he could always scent and find in the deep places....

Again, with the eerie way she often commented on something like his own secret thoughts, Catherine remarked, “All this steam.... Is there water anywhere, Vincent? Just a little, that would be enough....”

Again, he berated himself. Of course. Stressed, exerting herself almost to the point of exhausted collapse, and in stifling subterranean heat issuing from deep seams and fissures, the smell of her sweat clear to him from the first: of course, she was dehydrated. Desperately thirsty.

“The water here is not safe to drink. I'm sorry. I left a cache ahead, perhaps an hour. An hour for me,” he corrected. “Going alone. I could get it, bring it back—”

“No, please,” she interrupted hastily. “I can wait, it's all right.”

Of course. She didn't want to be left in the dark, alone, waiting for him. And he couldn't leave her undefended, certainly not on this side of the river. He should have carried the pouch of supplies with him, left it closer....

No use to that. He shut off the pointless self-recriminations, tried to think only of her...without intensifying his awareness of her. Which was impossible.

They reached a stretch that twisted but was relatively level. No side turnings from which an attack might spring. As his guiding arm relaxed slightly, Catherine straightened and scuffed along beside him—not groping or uncertain, walking freely despite her blindness merely by matching her pace to his and by staying beside him.

“So how was your day?” she asked lightly, and her courage and trust pierced through him like a sword.

How was he to leave her? How could he not?

Not yet, he reminded himself, and tried to adopt a like offhandedness.

“Very well. I've had only one better. Two. Or perhaps three.” He shook his head, and again felt her smile. She'd guessed his thought: the night he'd found her; the night he'd first gone to her terrace, and been welcomed, and stayed until dawn in spite of all prudence and his best resolutions; the night, Samhain, they'd spent together, Above, wandering the lighted streets, sharing the city without fear.

“I can count higher than that,” she responded, teasing, but with a steady, sober gladness underneath it all.

“So can I,” he admitted.

Not yet. So he allowed himself to pretend he'd invited her Below and was showing her the sights, as he'd wished to do so many times. Pretend that soon they'd come to the Whispering Gallery, where strange anonymous voices suddenly intruded from Above, and she wouldn't be afraid on the bridge that crossed the Abyss, because if it bore his weight it would surely bear hers and anyway he'd hold her hand, it would be necessary for reassurance and therefore he'd permit himself that liberty and she would be glad and excited and not afraid at all....

As she was now.

And his mouth was still foul with of the taste of blood and when they reached the water, he decided, it would all be for her. He was what he was. The hot taste of it in his mouth was no more than confirmation. As though any had been needed. Soon, it wouldn't matter. Details of his differences would begin to fade into memory as her recollection dimmed, over time, and she remade her life without him—the life she'd been born to live, in which this would become merely a strange and magical interlude. At first there'd be dreams. Perhaps even anger, loneliness, longing: he'd already permitted himself to entangle their lives too closely. Her ordeal was all the proof needed of that.

But he'd never truly entered her world. Her apartment was still free of him. It would carry no painful memories, no absence where she'd become accustomed to his company. At least he'd still been able to spare her that, knowing the time of parting would eventually come.

Soon. But not yet.

3. CELEBRATION

Diana asked suddenly, “When's the last time you ate?” and watching him try to remember was answer enough. Ignoring his predictable claim to be in need of nothing, she shoved out of the chair and headed for the kitchen end of the loft.

With her head poked into the refrigerator, taking stock, she called, “You got anything against day-old Chinese? Or I can send out for something...?”

He didn't answer and when she pivoted, stooping, to look, he was on his feet, slightly leaning in a way that told her he was thinking about leaving. Probably he'd noticed the light fading toward evening and maybe the increase of the traffic noise, evidence of rush hour beginning, and was upset that the whole day was gone and all of it preempted by him. He got perfectly absurd about things like that whenever he was feeling down: as guilty as though he'd broken in and held her at gunpoint, as though she wasn't perfectly capable of kicking out anybody who tried to waste her time when she wanted to be working.

Balancing back on her heels, she stared down the room at him with a steady skepticism that she meant to say she wasn't going to put up with any of that polite garbage from him and she'd thought they'd surely be past that now.

“Father will be concerned,” he offered—a lame excuse, and both of them knew it.

“He know where you are?”

“I told him I meant to consult you.... But that was—”

He had to stop again and think back. “—that was...last night...?”

“Well, if he'd figured I maybe mugged you, he could damn well come and ask, couldn't he? Or send somebody. Or whack on the pipes. And I haven't noticed he's done that yet. You notice anything like that?”

He shook his head and, she thought, very nearly smiled. Or it could just be wishful thinking because that kind of smile was mostly in his eyes and she knew she was too far off to really spot those small changes of expression that you had to watch for so hard, to follow anything of his thinking at all, past what he'd put into words. Which wasn't the half of what was generally going on behind that quiet blue, blinking reticence.

She lifted onto her toes to see if she could find anything more substantial in the freezer. Because he wouldn't go now: she'd shamed him out of it. And anyway, he didn't want to, because he was very much not looking forward to telling Father what'd really happened after he'd disappeared for hours, after the bower raid and the pursuit.

It was one thing for her to know—nothing, really, because she'd known it before he had: for a short, blessed while, his memory of cage and cave misplaced, forgotten. She'd gone and seen for herself, hunting him. He could bear having her know, since he couldn't do anything about it. But actually having to tell somebody, Father for instance, that'd be something else altogether. That'd be real rough.

He wasn't up to that yet. And it wouldn't be the first time he'd temporarily ducked some profoundly uncomfortable conversation with Father by hiding out in her loft....

She found a frozen steak, that she'd meant for the Anniversary—April 12th, last Thursday, that'd been so good and then gone so horribly wrong when he got the news of the bower raid. Just the thing. Shoving the freezer door closed, she carried the package to the table to work at the stubborn, rigid folds of the aluminum foil. It only wanted to tear off in tiny strips. She went to poke in a drawer for a fork. Turning, she found he'd silently come and was peeling off the foil with a thumbnail, no fuss.

She folded her arms. “Go ahead, be smug,” she commented, and this time was close enough to be sure of the almost-smile as he finished and held the rigid slab of meat out to her.

As she stuck the steak into the microwave and pushed the thawing code, he began methodically flattening the scraps of foil on the tabletop until they'd become a smooth, folded packet. Finding her incredulous stare on him, he explained, “Foil is useful. For many things. Non-conductive, impermeable. Mouse—”

“Take the whole damn roll, then, why don't you? It's on me. My God: saving tinfoil!”

“It is how we live,” he began seriously, just about apologizing, and Diana made a face at him before checking under the sink to find a couple of unsprouted potatoes.

When his touch was off, he was like that—literal, and so polite you wanted to give him a swift kick to knock him out of it. And at the same time she was laughing at him inside, and his face said he knew she was and didn't mind, didn't care if once in awhile she found him perfectly ridiculous and refused to take all that solemnity seriously.

It was good for him, she was certain.

Too many people took him much too seriously: himself most of all.

She was good for him, she thought with unashamed smugness as she continued the supper preparations. She hadn't eaten today either: she was ravenous. Everything looked good to her—even canned spinach. She hefted a bottle of bourbon—about a third down, another anniversary leftover—then decided against it and shoved it to the back of the counter without comment.

She felt like celebrating, but didn't want to make an issue of it because he was leery about drinking...and, she admitted, with good reason, at least sometimes. Well, she'd celebrate anyhow. Maybe ice cream: he liked that, and she had a gallon of double fudge chocolate safe in the freezer, stored just in case.

There was a lot to celebrate.

He was here, and pretty much OK, and they were going to get to finish what the bower raid had interrupted a week ago today. Or tomorrow, if you wanted to get technical about a.m. and p.m.... Enough to celebrate, even without the glowing satisfaction that he'd talked to her about Catherine for the very first time ever, at least in any detail, anything beyond generalized adoration or grief or simple factuality.

He'd let her get that close, opened up that far.

That, in Diana's mind, deserved celebrating. Although she had no intention whatever of telling him why.

She chose out the rest of the meal, adding everything he refused until he quit arguing and settled in one of the Windsor chairs at the table, silently watching her slap pans and pots around. And when she unexpectedly met that gaze, it went straight through her. The breath caught tight in her chest and she felt her face going hot and she hated blushing, she went into splotches and felt like an utter fool, and he'd done nothing but simply look at her, not even blinking, and there were no words to describe that look.

“You're safe,” he commented with that intense solemnity. “Paracelsus cannot have known of you. So he cannot have made you a part of this. He cannot do to you what was done to Catherine. You are beyond his ken...as, sometimes, you are beyond mine. At least, whatever comes, you will be safe.”

He seemed to take such satisfaction in the thought that she turned quickly to clap a cover on the boiling slab of green beans and wouldn't, for anything in the world, have told him that although Paracelsus had died too early to have had the pleasure of making her acquaintance, the bowers were under no such handicap.

Worse, to locate Vincent, she'd run a scam on them to force a guy she thought of as “Toothpick” to escort her Below into the separate tunnel system that went off from under the Bowery—your basic “Take me to your leader” scenario.

We know who you are, Toothpick had remarked, before she'd tidily sapped him behind the ear and ducked off to explore on her own. Diana rather thought he'd remember her. And not fondly. And they were certainly a mean, weird bunch, the bowers....

Oh, sure, sometime she'd tell him. About that and a few other loose ends. He was entitled to know. But now, or anytime soon, was definitely not the time. After a week, the bowers had made no further move. So likely there was no real threat and she'd be worrying him for nothing.

As he'd said, she didn't fit into the pre-scripted scenario. So likely the bowers would just continue on to phase two or three, whatever. Which was what she was trying to help him figure out: what would be the next move, based on what had gone before. That was what was important now, not maybes and imaginary threats that probably didn't amount to anything anyway. And tomorrow, Friday, the guy would come to put in the doorbells and speakers and install the motion detector on her stairs. She could take care of herself, and intended to.

When the broiler was hot enough she stuck the steak under, checking her watch to be sure she didn't let it burn. She wasn't really the domestic type. Not her style. But she'd turn handsprings, or try, if that seemed to be what was needed, if that was what he wanted....

But he was a pretty easy guy to please. All he wanted to do right now was sit and look at her and she sort of wished he'd stop and sort of didn't, and grabbed at a handle without a potholder and swore to find it so hot and generally rattled pots and stirred things around to take her mind off what he was doing and keep it on what she was supposed to be doing, the Jewish mama food is the answer to everything scenario, since the Irish version of the universal panacea, have a nice drink and you'll feel better about it all in the morning, didn't exactly seem to be on the menu tonight and actually hadn't turned out to be all that great an idea the last time she'd tried it....

“So do I have this right?” she remarked, checking on the revolving potatoes through the window of the microwave. “Paracelsus stole Catherine to get you to chase her way down, way off your own ground... so some big whale of a goon could wrestle you to death?”

Her skeptical question plainly surprised him. “Put that way, it does seem ... irrational,” he admitted.

“Babe, take it from me: even crazy people got reasons. Crazy people aren't even necessarily stupid, except if they were stupid to begin with. What you're telling me, that's about like building a tower, and then a platform, and then hiring a goddam diving mule to come leap off, to drive a nail. It's not just irrational—it's unthrifty! He knew you'd be coming. Likely even knew what ways anybody could take, to get there. He could have tucked in behind some handy wall and potted you between the eyes at 30 paces with any kind of middle-sized artillery he could get his hands on. No risk at all.

“Instead, he did everything except draw you a damn map: mysterious messages on the pipes, when Catherine didn't even know enough pipecode to signal her own name, much less yours. And in antique code besides, that your people haven't used for God knows how long. On a pipe that dead-ended miles from where he was keeping her. And then he sent his goon to hit and run, that killed your friend Winslow, then left a blood trail you could follow with your eyes shut, in case you might be getting discouraged and thinking about turning back. Keep things hot and interesting, so to say. Keep you coming. Didn't trust that the bait he had would be enough: cynical bastard....

“No: I don't buy it. He didn't care whether Catherine died or not, I go along with that, except maybe to annoy you, get you mad, losing her .... He knew you well enough for that, sure. But not to kill you. No. I don't buy it.”

Diana stuck a spoon in the gravy jar heating in a saucepan and tasted it with meditative caution.

“It doesn't hold together, babe. Something's still missing. So— let's recap: you got there, you killed the goon, you took Catherine out. But what actually happened? What did he do— Paracelsus?”

“Fled,” Vincent said, and then stopped and was silent a long moment, rejecting the obvious answer. “No— he spoke to me, where I was obliged to hear him.”

“About what?”

“About his love for me, when I was an infant. About how Father stole me from his care. Repeating what he'd said before: that Father had lied to me about my origins, that Father's love and care were somehow a betrayal of me. I took little heed, being concerned only with Catherine. But I remembered, when it later seemed that Father confirmed that claim and told me... told me things about myself and the manner of my birth... which made of all my life, and his, something dreadful. Something unendurable. And commended me, praised me, for the very things about myself that most shame me. Told me power was all. The power to kill, and to glory in it. Made me remember the, the taste of blood upon my tongue....”

His eyes said he'd gone off to a far, cold distance. Circling the table, Diana touched his cheek, and he jerked, startled, as though her fingers had carried a spark.

“Hey,” she said, and he shut his eyes hard and leaned against her hand.

“I have never killed so. Except that once. The man who was set against me. Who had already killed Winslow. The man who stood between me and Catherine with the flames rising about her. There was no other way. I was left no other way. I was neither quick enough nor strong enough to overcome him. Not in time. So I killed him that way. With my mouth. My teeth. As an animal would. And was, that moment, glad of it. It is a taste like hot copper, the taste of a life—”

“Hey,” Diana said softly, recalling him yet again.

She moved behind his chair and put her arms around him. Casually. Thoughtlessly. And felt everything in him jerk again and then freeze, hold tight, rigid as stone. Just then, the microwave dinged, giving her a fine excuse to end with a quick parting squeeze and turn away as though nothing had happened, commenting, “Just when we were getting someplace: wouldn't you know. All machines have it in for people. You gotta watch them, every minute, or they'll get you. Every time.”

Gotta to watch that, she thought. Gotta remember to let him come to me. God knows what that felt like, to him. Cattle prod? Whatever, it sure wasn't fun....

The one time she'd asked him, his reply had been the flat declaration, “You do not want to know.”

When she'd put everything onto plates and then brought them to the table, it was dark enough that lighting a fat red candle she'd bought for exactly that purpose cast just enough light that you couldn't look too hard at what you were eating—exactly right. Just like home, maybe.

The steak was a definite cut above shoe leather, and everything else, she judged, was pretty passable. Not bad, on short notice. She might, she commented, consider a career as a short order cook if the NYPD ever got sick of humoring her and kicked her out.

He didn't feel much like eating. Expecting that, she'd made the most elaborate meal her freezer and cupboards could support so he'd feel obligated to at least try a little of everything, just to be polite. Of course he saw through the ploy, but it worked anyhow, just as she'd expected. She was a whole lot better at things like that than at checkers. When it came to second guessing him, she was seldom wrong.

So she still couldn't believe Paracelsus, who plainly had known Vincent at least as well as she did, would have concocted such a screwy and overelaborate scenario as Vincent had described to her. That the intent was malevolent, that she'd buy. But nothing, she thought, as simple or direct as removing an obstacle. Nothing that really aimed at a killing. But if not that, what?

Thoughtfully stabbing green beans, she reflected that the bowers hadn't made any attempt to do Vincent any physical harm either, except for capturing and imprisoning him and then drugging him pretty well crazy.... And once he'd cracked open the cage they'd shoved him into, nobody seemed to have made any attempt to stop him getting out of their territory, either.

No. They didn't want Vincent dead, whatever he'd thought at the time, or since. Oh, they wanted him...vbad enough to die for it, they wanted him. But not dead: something else. She wasn't sure what yet, she only had the edge of that piece, but she filed it to see what would fit in with that hypothesis and give her a bigger piece to hold onto, a better grip on the whole thing.

She didn't want to take up again about the blood, that seemed to bother him so. Anyway, she figured that didn't really qualify as acceptable table talk. So she instead circled back to a loose end in what he'd just said: something about Father.

“So Father told you something about your birth...?”

He shook his head violently. “Not Father. I believed it was. But it was he: Paracelsus.”

“He could fool you about a thing like that?”

“Rage blinds. Terror blinds and deafens. And grief.... And shame. At such times, I know nothing of what others are feeling. I have no sense of them. For example, I have little sense, now, of you. Only flashes, instants. Then I lose you again—”

“Don't you ever believe it,” Diana said sharply and reached to thump his shoulder. Then she wished she hadn't, because he started looking at her that way again: like he didn't deserve to be breathing the same air she did, or something. Having listened to him, she made up a name for it: his Catherine look. And even named, it flustered her completely, because she still couldn't make up her mind if she wanted to be looked at that way or not.

And it occurred to her to wonder if Catherine herself had ever had that same ambivalence about it....

Jumping to a safer topic, she announced, “I got ice cream. Double-fudge chocolate. Any takers?”

When she'd pried out and served up two good-sized slabs, she circled farther back in the conversation to something she figured was both safe and fit for table talk.

“So here you were, all set to be disgustingly noble and leave Catherine alone for her own good and all, which we both know you didn't. And you're not going to tell her why, which I'd have given you a good one upside the head for, which we both know too. So what happened to change your mind? How'd she do it, when she didn't even know that was what you figured on doing?”

“Catherine... was Catherine,” he responded quietly, and paused to lick his spoon. “To her, such issues simply did not exist. She believed I had rescued her. As perhaps I had, although her jeopardy was my fault to begin with. Or at least on my account,” he corrected, because Diana had jumped him about that before.

“So it was, of course, unthinkable that I would rescue her only to abandon her. That was not how the story was supposed to go; therefore such a possibility did not exist. I tried to tell her. I did try. But to some things, Catherine could be... altogether impervious.”

“Used to getting her own way,” Diana suggested, trusting him not to take it wrong, or as criticism. “Stubborn. I know somebody like that.”

That won her a sidelong look— one she liked a lot— and the comment, “So do I,” which she also liked, so she supposed she'd let him get away with it, this once.

4. RESOLUTION

The closer they came to the river, the more depressed Vincent became. Because that would be the first milestone. First, across the river; then back past the periphery of the tunnel community; then, and last, to the brick threshold below Catherine's building, that he meant to close as soon as she was safely gone. There'd be a symmetry to that, which made it feel natural, almost inevitable: for he himself had made that threshold, broken that wall, to let her return to her world and there complete her healing. And he'd done it fully believing he'd never see her again then either.

Until a few days ago, it had never occurred to him that the door he'd opened between the worlds might be a means of admitting dangers undreamed of, Above.

Symmetrical, then, that he should shut it behind her and for all time, walling off both the bizarre threats and the bizarre hopes, neither of which had any place in the sunlit world which was her rightful place.

And as for dreams, they could dream just as well apart, as they did now; and thus, slowly, to fading, and memory, and acceptance. For her, at least. And that would have to be enough.

The river would be the end of all beginnings, and the beginning of the end.

It was appropriate, he thought, that Dante had, in imagination, inscribed the gates of hell Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. For that surely was what defined hell: the abandonment of hope....

He allowed them a rest when they reached the cache: there had still been no renewed attack nor any sign of pursuit. And although she hadn't complained, he knew Catherine wasn't far from collapse. It seemed a senseless cruelty to force her on without some compelling and unarguable threat. And there'd been nothing.

That continued to puzzle him.

Catherine emptied the water bottle with telling avidity. Even shook it, then upended it, to make sure no drop had been missed. Then she glanced toward him, and through the bond, her sinking dismay reached him keenly.

“Do not concern yourself, Catherine,” he said, before she could begin to apologize. “There is clean water not too far on now. Unlike you, I have eaten well and drunk my fill today.” Well was somewhat of an exaggeration. But in substance what he'd said was true. Thirst was not his problem. His problem, she'd never guess and he'd have quite willingly died rather than describe it to her.

“I'm not sorry I drank it,” she rejoined, leaning back against a boulder. “Without it, I couldn't go on. And we have to. I'm only sorry I didn't think to ask first. So I'll just thank you.”

“There is no need. I—”

Soberly, insisting, she said, “Thank you, Vincent.”

To further refuse would have been ungracious. And she wouldn't have understood — or perhaps understood too well. So he merely bowed his head and did not respond, letting her take that for acceptance if she chose.

Nibbling alternately on a wrinkled hot dog and a heel of rye bread, she murmured presently, “It's so dark....” making him recall her telling him that, as a child, she'd always dreaded the darkness.

“There is a lantern in the pack,” he admitted, “and I also have candles. But if you could bear it a little longer...? I fear lighting a beacon for enemies. When we reach the river, it will be safe to show a light.”

“It's all right,” she assured him. “I'm not scared of the boogeyman sneaking up. You'd know. And give him the fright of his life!” She finished with a gleeful chuckle, licking crumbs off her fingertips.

Then there was a silence between them and a strange, expanding peace that softly took his mind away and sent it floating.... And when he suddenly roused, and looked toward her, he found her asleep, curled up against the rock, her bright hair spilled on the sand.

And all he felt from her was serene, comfortable sleep. Her dreams must be pleasant, then. Even in such a place....

She didn't waken when he lifted her most carefully to slide his folded vest under her cheek, only nuzzled down into it with a smile glinting at the corner of her lips before her hair slid and concealed it. He eased back, then farther back again, watching her all the while. He hadn't the heart to wake her. And even if he had, she couldn't go on, not without rest. The alternative was to carry her; but he knew with absolute certainty that if he tried, the journey would have no good end, or perhaps no end at all, because then he wouldn't be able to force himself ever to be parted from her....

He was not even sure he could stay and watch over her sleep. He'd done it once— standing before her windows, as near to outside as he could get. Actually inside her apartment. But only once and in emergency: because she'd been wounded again, and in the face again, and could not take the rest she needed without assurance that he was there, so she could know, in her deepest heart, that she was completely safe. That he would not leave her alone in her pain and the renewed terror of the unimagined strength that could be in men's hands, turned against her. Striking at her. And so, of course, he'd stayed: leaning away, tense and rigid all night, refusing an inch more trespass than was absolutely required. Because she'd needed him again— as before: as at the first. So of course there could be no question of his going.

But now, she was easy and at peace. There was, he'd come to believe, no threat, either pursuing or ahead. This deep level was warm— indeed, sweltering in places: she'd have no need even of any covering over her, he reflected (but still laid his folded cloak near her, then backed off even farther than before, crouched and intent against the rock). So what excuse did he have to observe her, all quiet and unguarded, one hand lying slightly open like an interrupted gesture, her hand so small and the fingers so delicate....

Or, quite bluntly and unemotionally, what did he have to sufficiently distract him to make him think such a vigil could possibly be safe? What discipline did he have to keep him from reaching out, touching that hand, all unfelt?

Vincent, it is insanity: he heard what Father would undoubtedly have said, as clearly as though Father had been standing just the other side of some twilit stone, insisting, as Father always did, on telling him the uncomfortable truths he would have preferred to confront, if at all, more slowly and by degrees.

Vincent, said Father's voice in his mind, if your intention is, as you claim, to keep her safe, you certainly are choosing a most curious method of going about it. This is not a test of discipline. It is not even a justified sacrifice. This is self-indulgence and a willing blindness to what can only be described as temptation, if not intentional provocation.

Awake, the woman is, in all probability, safe from you. And you, from yourself. But to stay? Now? When you are still irrational with fear of her loss, and the taint of blood still in your mouth, from ripping out a man's throat with your fangs? If that constitutes your definition of guardianship, I would be interested in hearing you define willful self delusion, irresponsibility, and lust.

And there was no answering Father's accusation because it was, after all, perfectly true.

He ached to touch her.

Deeply. Completely. Until they were truly one.

And that, he knew, could never be.

Since he intended to leave her, now seemed an excellent time to begin. Not far: only to the next source of clean water. To have it for her, when she woke. That was a good reason to go. And she'd be quite safe: safer, by far, than if he were foolish enough to remain. And no harm or fear could come to her, even in sleep, that he would not know about. Even if he could do nothing to heal her dreams.

He would have to get used to accepting that.

He would have liked to write her a note, in case she woke and found him gone and was afraid. But he had nothing to write with; and in the dark, she could not have read a message anyway. So it was an empty wish. He'd just have to be alert to any change that would signal her waking and be ready to return swiftly when it came, whether he'd then completed his errand or not.

Moving down through a long fissure, balancing, feet and hands extended and an unknown drop below, a way he could not have taken her, he took advantage of her contentment to allow him to open fully to everything around him. Even his vision seemed more acute. He could hear the hiss of steams ahead long before he reached their outlets. They were rank with mineral salts, weeping long slimes down the stone. Nothing fit. He went on.

Then suddenly, like a voice, it arrested him: a cool smell sinking past him among the fumes. A spring flowing from a higher level, above the sullen subterranean heat. He turned abruptly, seeking. Following the flow, he climbed as no one else could climb, up the featureless side of a high ravine and then on, turning, hunting the small twist of coolness. And finally found it, patiently dripping from a seam in the stone. He piled stones until the bottle would remain upright underneath, filling a clinking drop at a time.

Perhaps he drowsed for awhile, waiting. He had no way to tell. But he found himself in the middle of a thought about danger, and Catherine, and how he might reconcile the two opposing prospects facing him. And the bottle was full and overflowing.

He removed and capped it carefully. Then he allowed himself to hold a rounded hand under the steady drip. The first three palmfuls he rinsed his mouth with and then spat out, until he finally felt he'd freed himself of the almost unendurable taste of the giant's life— no: of his death— and was fit to swallow the clean water and say clean words again.

He returned knowing what he was going to say, to ask of her.

Catherine was awake, sitting relaxed against the rock with his vest around her shoulders. She lifted her face to the slight, intentional sounds of his approach, calling softly, “Vincent?”

“Yes. Don't be afraid.”

“I'm not,” she said, and it was true: there was no fear in her. Not of the dark, nor of having wakened alone. And none of him. He couldn't have borne it, if there were....

But that was empty musing, for there was none and now never would be, and that was right and necessary.

“I found some water for you,” he said, and guided her hand to the bottle and held it steady until he was certain she'd grasped it.

She didn't open it at once. Instead, she moved the smooth, cool glass across her forehead, along her cheeks. “Why is it so hot here?”

“Perhaps because we are nearer the life of the earth. Perhaps because above us is the sea, which vents heat differently than does the land. I do not know. I have never been here before. I hope never to be here again....”

Unable to concentrate on such questions, he knelt by her. “Catherine, you must stop doing what you do. The work that you do, that takes you among such people and into such places. The work that threatens those who have easy recourse to violence and to whom you are a known threat. There is other good and necessary work to be done, that you could do instead. I once asked that you pull back, retreat; and you would not. And were shot, Catherine. In the back. And very nearly died. In spite of all I could do, tried to do....”

Remembering how small and fragile she'd looked in that hospital bed, he fisted his hands tight together for a moment, then spread them— both gestures of helplessness she couldn't see.

“I believe I have seldom asked anything of you. And I do not claim the right to command your actions. But this I do ask, most urgently and solemnly. For I know that one day, all I can do will not be enough. I am not large enough or strong enough to be the sole wall between you and death. You must not trust me so. Therefore I ask for your promise that when you return Above, you will give whatever notice is customary and stop that work. Live another life. A different life. With its own pride, its own satisfactions, its own challenges that nevertheless will not put you in continual jeopardy. Please, Catherine.”

While she'd heard him out, he'd felt in her a colliding blend of shock, anger, indignation: hot, sharp things, arising suddenly. No more than he'd expected. Then followed doubt, concern, a moment of intense sadness, and then quieter emotions, as she began thinking through his request. She reached out, found his shoulder and then the line of his arm, until she'd located his hand and curved her fingers quietly into his palm.

“You've taken such risks, to keep me safe. You always keep me safe. I didn't want you to come, I knew it was a trap. But I knew, just the same, that you would. And I was glad of it. Was I wrong, Vincent, to be glad?”

He felt as ineffectual as Prufrock's women, whining that whatever was said to them wasn't what they'd meant, wasn't what they'd meant at all. He took a deep, aching breath.

“Catherine, do not concern yourself about—”

“— about you? About us? Have we been wrong, Vincent, to try to keep the wolves away from those who have no other defense but the law, away from the wounded children and the good, honest men who live silently, in fear? Were we wrong to stand up to the hate and the cruelty, whatever the cost?”

He interrupted, “But there are other ways, Catherine—!”

“Should I sit in some office, pushing papers, safely away from suffering like Eric's and Ellie's, injustices like what was inflicted on Father? And the thousands of other wounds I drifted among all my life, unseeing, uncaring, until I finally realized it was real because it could happen to me?”

Her hand closed tighter within, around his and he felt the conviction in her, that she was trying to soften for him, because she was going to refuse him yet again.

She said, “Vincent, I'm not naturally kind, or thoughtful, or sensitive to others, the way you are. No, don't argue: listen. I've tried to learn. I want to learn. I want to feel: hurt with their hurt, accept it, heal it the way you do. The way you did for me. Sometimes it's seemed to me that I've almost accomplished that. But not from behind a desk, Vincent: I don't have that much imagination. I can only know what I can feel. What I can see and touch. I'm a lawyer. I fight with the law. It's what I know, what I do.

“Not for corporations. For people. I have to be where they are, see what they see, for them to be real to me. To be able to help them. To not give up. I have to come down from the umpteenth floor into the storefronts and the alleys, just as you can't help coming to those same storefronts and alleys though it's perfectly safe for you Below. At least most of the time.... And terribly dangerous for you, Above. All the time. And you still come, you still go there.

“Can't you see I have to do that too? Doing that, we almost share a life— the same work, the same concern? That our lives and our worlds can overlap, at least that far, in those black alleys where people are hungry and homeless and hopeless and afraid, only needing someone to reach out to them? We knew there were risks, Vincent, when we began it. And yet we did. Do you regret it?”

“No,” he said, because he had to, though he could barely find the voice to make words at all or breath to speak them. “No.”

He saw that, after all, he could not ask it of her.

He could not demand she change her life to suit his conscience or allay his fear for her. And whenever he felt her fear, as he inevitably would, he'd as inevitably go to her. She'd made her choice, that was hers to make. Therefore he made his. Or the only choice he could make, which perhaps was no choice at all.

“Then don't ask it of me, Vincent,” Catherine said in a voice nearly as choked and unsteady as his. “It would be like your asking me to leave you. Or my asking you not to come, not to follow, no matter where he'd taken me.”

Her tone, and the calm, singing bond, both claimed that those two things were the greatest impossibilities she could think of, used only as examples of what could never be. Someone else might have cited the failure of sunrise or the turning of the earth. She chose larger impossibilities: that she would leave him. That he would not come.

He found no voice, no words, no breath then, and simply held her, though it was every bit as irresponsible as Father would have said.

They'd begun it irresponsibly, not from prudence, but from a hope and a dream and an absolute unwillingness to be parted, though it was quite impossible they could ever be together. So they'd continue that way, whatever came of it.

“What made you ask me that, now?” Catherine asked.

“It is of no consequence. I was wrong to ask such a thing of you. I will never ask it again.”

As he held Catherine tight against him, something small and sharp jabbed into his ribs. And he remembered that he'd found her crystal, the gift from Below that he'd given her to commemorate their first anniversary. Removing it from the skeleton Paracelsus had tauntingly chosen it to adorn, he'd tucked it into the pocket of his vest, which Catherine now wore. Too much had happened: he hadn't returned it, hadn't even thought to tell Catherine he'd found it.

He'd wait until they were in the boat, he decided. When he'd lit the lantern, and there'd be light about them to rouse answering gleams from the crystal's facets so that her hands would flash, receiving it of him again: crossing the river that was no end, but only the start of a fresh beginning whose end he could now in no way foresee or even imagine, except that they'd find it together.

5. AFTERMATH

The food hit him as liquor never had. As Diana started stacking plates and shifting them to the counter at the side of the sink, he was already visibly drifting, eyes going vague and blinking longer and slower, head beginning to tip. A few times, she saw him catch himself— blink hard, maybe move or say something —and the next minute he'd start drifting again. By the time she had the table clear he was absolutely gone. Both elbows braced, one hand propping his forehead, the other forearm flat on the tabletop, long, furred fingers spread. Slow, deep breathing. No reaction to her motions or to the clicks and clanks from dishes and pans as she disposed of the leftovers.

That was out: that was gone.

Battery all run down, she thought. And no wonder: he'd been most of a week without sleep, except for a few cramped hours on her couch, last night; his last meal so long ago he couldn't even recall when it'd been. And the physical fatigue heightened by, and contributing to, the psychological stress and emotional exhaustion. No wonder, if his body enforced some downtime on him.

Leaning back against the full sink, she tried to decide whether to leave him alone or wake him, send him home.

Nice as it was, her couch had limitations as a bed for anybody his size; and she was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to talk him into crashing on her futon, not even in highly respectable privacy, much less anything more cozy and interesting ....

Some other time, she thought, and sighed, still regarding him with sympathy, fondness, and judiciousness.

Her first impulse was to let him sleep. But there were choices to be made that weren't up to her, matters at stake she was certain he'd weigh heavier than his immediate comfort. And over the last week or so, she'd gone about as far as she ever wanted to— and maybe farther than she should— in deciding, unilaterally, what was good for him and what wasn't, what he ought to know and what to keep to herself.

She decided to compromise: give it an hour or so, start her working notes on what he'd told her. If he was still out then, she'd wake him with something specific he could look over.

Soft footed in her stocking feet, she sidled past the table to the long rectangle, only partly partitioned off as yet, that was going to be her office space. When the computer was booted up and ready, she jumped to the directory BOWERS she'd established a couple of days back and started a new file she named PARACEL.FIL to organize the information. Setting up the usual categories, she started working through what she knew or guessed.

FACTS THOUGHTS

1. Paracelsus & Father founded community Below together, then F kicked P out. (Source: V; hearsay-- ask F for confirmation?) P wanted to oust Father, get back into power... but not by killing V. Something else. What? Why provoke V into killing him? What gain in that?

1. a P claimed to love V (infant at the time), angry about expulsion, claimed also to be angry about losing V: claimed to consider V his rightful son. (Source: V, eyewitness) Why not? V has no blood relationship with Father either. Kinship depends only on what claim V's willing to acknowledge. Accepting that he's P's son makes V damn near throw up. But he does acknowledge it. P's son too.

2. After being expelled, P founded or took over bower community, told the bowers to leave F's community strictly alone. (Source: V-- report, maybe hearsay-- from F? Ask V) Seems supported by long avoidance of serious provocation by the bowers until now. Check-- how?

3. 4/12, bowers attack F's people, kill 3 children, injure F (feint or serious attack?) draw V into a trap (at the cost of maybe a dozen lives), cage him, drug him, pull him into some cult rite set off by and including group-grope sex. Translation: rape, with V as focus/target/victim. Custom-tailored (damn the man!-- P) precisely to V's empathic vulnerabilities/sensitivities. Result: 12+ dead. (Source: me, eyewitness after the fact; V, memory maybe unreliable about some details.) Seems that afterward, bowers didn't try to hold him-- got more than they bargained for, or what they bargained for? No known action since (a week).

V wants to wipe them all out. Severe emotional trauma; initial fugue followed by catatonia, then recap flashes (visions, says V), finally more or less complete recollection of the experience: set off by olfactory cue (s o b's, using Catherine's perfume that way, and it must have cost P or somebody a ton at $200/oz, sloshed around like Gatorade). Uneasy integration of experience; guilt, rage, pathological sensitivity to touch (touch enhanced empath, after all-- and he's been burned bad!). All of it dead against his principles--and with V, that means something. The predictable rape psychological aftermath, though not at first recognized as such: V thought it was just him and his fault! Damn the man twice! (P) Self image impaired. In layman's terms, totally freaked.

Q: what on earth could they get, or hope to get out of such a thing, that's worth what it cost them?

Q: what's next on the agenda?

Retaliatory attack by V could be justified: it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you!

4. Each of 3 attacks involved some attempt to eliminate Father-- either F himself or V's loyalty to F. Attempt to turn V against F; impersonating F, then provoking V into killing him!!! (What did F and V find to say to each other after that???-- Ask V. On second thought, don't ask V: ask F) (Third thought: don't ask) Finally an attempt to kill F outright (the first? or were there others? ask V). P wants F dead. But not V!!?? Which would leave what? V effectively orphaned (as he's already effectively widowed), grieving, isolated and unable to oppose P's attempt to take power (but P's dead, dammit!)? Or: V, highly unstable and self-hating, no close ties left but Jacob (P dead first, couldn't have predicted that), setting off or prosecuting an ongoing war Below between the two communities? If F were dead or neutralized, who'd rule, Below? V? V!

The purpose of chess is to "kill" the king. That ends it. But off the chessboard it's the king is dead; long live

The roar from behind nearly made her fall off her chair.

Vincent was awake. Awake with a vengeance!

“Catherine!”

Spinning in the wheeled chair, Diana didn't know if his yell was from coming out of a nightmare, new recollection of the loss, what, except that it was sudden and loud.

To get up, Vincent didn't bother pushing the chair back: he shoved the table. As it skidded to thump against the edge of the sink cabinet, he was already on his feet and moving. Fast, purposeful. A stalking darkness headed down the length of the dim loft.

As he went by without a glance, Diana wheeled the chair, a little leery of getting in his path, and called, “Vincent?” It came out as something near a squeak.

He spun as if to meet an attack, then swung away again. A scoop chair was in his way. Another shove took care of that: it slid into the couch, the rug bunching up into wrinkled hills.

“Vincent, what the hell—?”

“It was not the abduction,” he burst out: a harsh voice, full of fury, with a growling undertone that wasn't human at all. “Nor the fire, nor the battle to reach her. It was the return. The aftermath.”

“Try that in words of one syllable, babe: I'm slow. All I got so far is a couple screens of notes —”

“The return was the attack. The purpose. He meant me.... He meant me to be in such fear of losing her that in, in rescuing her, and then the long journey back, no pursuit but the threat of danger and yet release, relief, I'd never been so near to. Everything before was merest prologue, preparation. Tightening the spring. That I seek her. That I kill his follower that way, the only way I could. That he put me in doubt of Father, who'd never accepted Catherine, never —”

As his words whirled and collided, so did he, ranging the loft, shoving aside whatever he found in his way as though he'd put a fist through a wall any second, a big, half seen outline in the faint green glow of the computer screen.

No longer drained, dull: damn well fully-charged, practically throwing visible sparks. Fueled by rage. The deep primordial heat always so close to the surface now, so ready to erupt and power him into goddam near anything.

Talking of Catherine, remembering the past and the absolute center of his being that the bond had been to him, had let him recover something like calm, that'd been with him through supper. But going back had left the door open for something else to explode forward into the present moment.

Such fury required more outlet than shouting. A vent: a target. And Paracelsus, that bastard, had made damn sure he was unavailable.

Watching and hearing Vincent storm through her loft, Diana knew what would follow: Paracelsus being out of reach, Vincent would turn toward the next best thing— the bowers. And give them the nearest to holy hell they'd ever be apt to see.

Not for himself. Or even the murdered children. For Catherine.

Even now, she thought. Even now.

Although Diana didn't have the whole tangle anywhere near all figured out yet, she couldn't believe that whatever came out of a blind, tearing rage like this would be anything but disaster. And her chances of arguing him out of it, much less stopping him, were absolutely zilch.

She couldn't outyell him. But she knew what could. She watched for her chance, then ducked across the loft to the stereo receiver. Turning up the gain as far as it could go, she winced one ear tight against her shoulder, slapped the on toggle, and then leaned away fast, clapping a hand over her other ear as the speakers cut loose with the most godawful crash that ever claimed the name of music.

An absolutely huge noise at 200 watts per channel. Fit to break windows or eardrums. A full throated orchestral howl like nothing rock music had ever aspired to, lifting and thudding and screaming fit to deafen a bat, growling like a monster over a raw bone. Crouched on the floor, her eyes uselessly squinted tight shut, Diana tried fingers, palms, arms, anything to keep out that awful noise.

She peeked, and Vincent was maybe two yards away. Standing there. Swaying just slightly in response to the intricate pulsing rhythms. You couldn't call it listening, not at that volume. Maybe floating in the noise, as in the powerful flow of a river. Or maybe just being a stone, letting it sweep past.

She didn't know how long that went on, except that it was too long and she couldn't stand it. Then there was a long moment of hissing silence—the speakers maybe drawing breath for another howl—and Vincent reached forward and delicately touched the toggle, turning the receiver off. All the tiny red and yellow lights faded.

He said something, but she wasn't quick enough unwrapping her head and caught only “— Beethoven.”

She made up words for what she was experiencing— audio stress—and somehow that made her feel better about it.

Pulling both arms down to a more normal position, she remarked hoarsely, “Now that I've got your attention....” His shadowed face turned, glinting eyes regarding her. “Would you please tell me what the hell set you off like that, so I'll know never to do it again?”

“It is nothing you have done. He did it: Paracelsus.” Vincent bent and settled crosslegged on the rucked up rug. “He meant... that I... assault her during the return. Betray her. Catherine,” he added, as though he seriously thought Diana might not make that identification.

He was still seething, but not so wholly wild with it.

“Catherine is dead,” he mentioned, as if Diana might have forgotten that fact. Or as though he had, which was likely nearer the truth. “And I did her no harm. Then. I brought her home safely. And we continued. And she still trusted me. To keep all harm from her. And I did. As long as I could....”

Diana kept still: letting him take whatever time he needed to draw free of the mesmerizing embrace of his ghosts, hated or beloved, relocate himself in time and space and let the past be past. Come back to her, across that distance.

“It is the third stroke, then,” Vincent went on grimly. “Not stroke or counterstroke: what comes after is his true weapon. When it seems the battle is done. I see it now. He provoked me beyond enduring; and I killed him.

“But the third stroke was what came after— madness, losing myself and releasing the Other which is within me; then withdrawal, and... and Jacob's begetting. It was, must have been, all she could find which would reach me, as I then was, in that terrible place.... And still I did her no hurt. A sharing. I must believe it was.... I wish I could remember!”

That burst out of him, another frustrated shout. Then he shut that down as he'd turned off the receiver. Dragging his mind back from the wildness; trying to think.

Eventually he continued, “And all of it the direct result of the death Paracelsus extorted of me. Except for Catherine's love.... Except for that, I could not, it would have been....”

Another check, another tight silence. Then, “His weapon is the aftermath. Therefore now is the dangerous time, Diana. It’s not the deaths that are past, nor some further provocation that I must counter. It is now— what I do now. When he has failed, it’s because of something he is blind to and therefore refuses to take into account: that Catherine would willingly embrace me, even as I was; that I would lose Catherine rather than do her harm; or die rather than fail to protect her. And you, Diana: who have given me your peace all this long day, so that I might begin to understand and accept what has happened to me, what I have done. He did not allow for that, for such a place or such a person as you, that I might turn to when all Below was only anguish, confusion, dread. He did not allow for love, Diana. And so we shall outmaneuver him and come free of this time.”

They were quiet together for awhile, occupied with their separate thoughts.

For it had suddenly come to Diana that all the while she'd been trying to get closer, to understand and become a part of his life and world, what he wanted of her and valued in her was exactly the opposite: that she was a foreigner, a stranger. Separate. Wholly alien to his world, as he was to hers. He needed her distance which, in crossing, enabled him to stand apart and be separate too, free of the places and relationships that enclosed and defined him, able to regard them all from a new perspective. With a stranger's eyes. What he needed from her was not more closeness but a reliable distance. A high door that opened on something like freedom. Something like escape.

And was that, could that be love? He'd thought so, with Catherine. He believed it was now. If necessary he'd die to preserve, protect her separateness. Or kill for it....

Whatever comes, you will be safe, he'd told her with that look of luminous joy, so intense that it wrenched at her even in memory.

But did she want to be? And at what cost? Whose cost?

She'd have to think it all through, figure it out—some other time. There were other and more immediate kinds of closeness she wanted to have with him. And different freedoms. Involving skin.

She hitched a little nearer, waiting to see if it'd be OK, then tucked in against his shoulder. After a minute his arm came around her back and his head leaned, his cheek against her hair. And that was good. That was, for this moment, enough.

“I'd keep an eye on Father, if I was you,” Diana mentioned eventually. “I'm not anyplace like through collecting the pieces, but that one thing jumps in your eye when you start looking. And it runs straight through: he wants Father dead or out of the way, no matter how. And you alone. In Father's place. So I'd look out for Father real hard from now on.”

”Father,” Vincent repeated in a soft, troubled voice.

“If you want,” Diana said diffidently, “I'll fill him in on what's happened. So you won't have to. If you want.”

Diana knew her guess about part of that trouble, anyhow, had been right by how long he was silent, thinking about it. Finally he said, “If I can bear to know it, remember it, he can bear to hear of it. And somehow I will find the courage to say it.... I thank you for the thought, Diana; but no. It is a matter of life Below and it must be determined Below. You must remain free of it. Safe.”

“Anything you say, babe,” Diana responded, and if he sensed anything of her mixed feelings about such safety, he didn't ask why.

Instead, changing the subject, he remarked, “It is an interesting sensation, to experience the Eroica at that volume. Even directly under the orchestral shell, it is not so clear, so direct. One feels it.”

“One does,” Diana agreed, grimacing. “Didn't it hurt your ears?”

“It was large,” Vincent conceded, “but within the range of the tolerable. Barely. It is large music. I wonder how the Bach D minor toccata.... I must try that again sometime.”

Diana twisted her neck to give him a dire look. “Not when I'm within two blocks of here, you won't.”

He shrugged. “On the headphones, then. Though that would not be the same.... Do you have a meeting of some sort, Diana, which will require you to be away? Soon?”

“Now, we have the truth: you don't give a damn about me, you just love my loft and playing with my gadgets,” Diana accused, and was glad to find he'd recovered enough that he didn't believe she meant it, not even for a second.

But of course they were touching. That helped. That helped a lot of things.

He said, “Of all I have seen Above, that which never fails to stop my heart with wonder, joy, and gratitude is the miracle of sunlight. You are more to me than that.”

Part of Diana's mind commented derisively, How absolutely cornball: let's have a rousing chorus of “You Are My Sunshine.” And another part heard his words within his unique context of darkness and stone and was shaken by the impact of being rated like that. Valued like that. Loved like that.

So she said nothing, after all. Just tucked herself closer. His arm still steady around her. His breath warm against her hair. If this constituted being a stranger, maintaining a necessary distance, she guessed was in favor of it.

About the same time as she yawned, Vincent said, “I should go now. I have left things undone, Below, which I must now attend to.”

“Gonna whack any bowers?” she challenged.

“I have not yet decided what I shall do. But not that. I must find a way to move outside his reckoning. Do a new thing, which is none of the predictable counter-moves to a particular gambit. Not merely react: act— freely, and of my own choice. I shall have to think about it further. But not that, Diana. Not that.”

She knew he had to go but still was reluctant to lose his company. She trailed him down the stairs, making cracks about his taste in music, to which he replied moderately, forgiving her ignorance.

They parted in the unlit, empty ground floor hallway. When the basement door swung shut behind him, Diana stood awhile, listening to the traffic noises that passed for quiet, thinking how different it was from the true stillness Below, in no hurry to return to her empty loft, up three flights of steep stairs. Finally turning, she idly noticed something stuck on her door below the sign she'd put up directing any visitor to KNOCK. She bent and peered to make it out.

The words on the sticker were too dim to read, but she could distinguish the design: a wide open white eye on a black background.

The logo of the PPA, the Providence Protection Agency. A topside front for the bowers.

We know who you are.

Diana yanked back inside, shot all the stiff new bolts, and got back upstairs in record time.

About 10, Friday morning, the guy came to put in the speakers, doorbells, and motion detector. Only then did she take out of her pocket the pistol she'd hung onto all night and tuck it away under her futon. Blearily watching the guy string wiring, she asked for a quote on a really firstclass silent alarm system.

She could afford it. If she won a lottery and gave up eating.

She'd manage. She had as much healthy interest as anybody in staying alive; but her safety would be on her own terms.

She absolutely wasn't going to let that cycle begin again. Not with her. Never.

Somehow she'd manage without a willing watchdog with a marvelous copper-gold mane, two inch claws, and a deep fondness for Beethoven played loud. Because the price of having such a watchdog was everything else he might be or become to her. And she wasn't going to give up that hope. Not for anything. Not if she died for it.

Somehow, she'd manage.

As on a Darkling Plain

Presence.

Having just stepped from the ladder below Diana's threshold, Vincent jerked, spun, trying to locate what had produced the sudden spark of contact which, out of nowhere, had startled him again. And again there was nothing. No one.

Never when he was ready, waiting. Only when his mind had drifted away to other concerns did the startling jolt come. Taking him each time utterly by surprise, so that his reaction was automatic, reflexive. Again scattering his concentration, leaving him standing blank and confused

Imagination? Hallucination? Was it nerves sparking randomly that produced the sense of someone abruptly close enough to touch, then instantly gone? Or was he, in his exhaustion, merely receptive to what would have been lost in the rush of ordinary impressions had he been more alert?

Entering a dark section of sewer conduit, Vincent asked softly, “Who is it?”

He waited, but there was nothing.

So. Not the Other, unless that within him was being uncharacteristically shy. Or playing something like a strange game of tag.

Attending within as he continued down the conduit, he thought that the Other was still occupied with the astonishing, sustained shout of music Diana had summoned: held in that novel experience and paying no attention to the present moment. They shared that, the tendency to become completely absorbed in music. He'd come to realize that they shared many things. And that if there was difference, it was often more one of degree than of kind.

He could accept that realization because Diana did, quite matter of factly: without shock or horror or condemnation. Sometimes, it seemed to him, even without displeasure.

They were now, somewhat uneasily, on speaking terms, he and the Other.

Once, they'd even fought.

Madness, Father had reluctantly concluded, when Vincent had told him about that conversation, that battle. And probably Father was right. Certainly it could be neither sane nor rational to experience physical disputes with the other side of one's nature. And yet―

Presence.

Jerk. Focus. Nothing.

It had been happening to Vincent all day. The scent of Catherine's perfume had broken something within him, some barrier to memory. And like the contents of a collapsing shelf or an overstuffed cupboard, it'd all crashed onto him, into him: the desire, hope, scathing disappointment, and rage he'd experienced in the bowers' cage and afterward.

Parts of it, he still couldn't contemplate steadily. How they'd greeted him ―suppliants formally begging the favor of a demigod or divine monster: in part, to him, merely a more elevated conception of freak; yet with mythic resonances, resonances that hinged on the very definition of what it meant to be human and alive in the world, the immense mysteries of Light and Darkness, which touched him profoundly even as he turned away from those who invoked them― perhaps in ignorance.

He had no such ignorance to shield him from the power of such a conception, such an invocation; for he knew not only lightlessness but the eternal Dark, not only day but Light― the very axis upon which his life turned. Not, to him, powers to be worshipped but nevertheless large, worthy of awe, never to be taken for granted.... How the suppliants had then carnally lost themselves in one another, believing it would please him. How―

But no: his mind flinched away, couldn't think about it. Nor even afford to feel it, lest he completely lose himself into the fury whose edge he still walked: a steep downward slope opening into the ancient, monster haunted Labyrinth no one left alive or unchanged.

Some parts flickered, their intensity striking him like images caught by spinning mirror shards. Not visions: afterflashes, Diana had called them. Very well, afterflashes... as though the drab name could render the experience innocuous as well. The cage bars, slick and cold: the last solid thing he could remember. The sinking dread when the luminous drug floated and spread, when everything began to flow and change about him, feeling the thudding approach of primal forces and knowing as his last sane thought that there was nothing he could do about it, no retreat possible. And still trying to retreat, resist, withdrawing more deeply into himself than he'd ever gone―

No. Not yet. Not that, either.

But part of it could not be kept out: an astonishment and a gift and a profound bewilderment. Because for an instant or an hour― there was no measuring out such experiences in clock time― the woman who'd come to him, who'd touched him so gently, so lovingly, and had so desired him to touch her in return... had been Catherine. Beyond reason, but also beyond question. And for that unmeasured time, it had been wonderful, a miracle both of the soul and of the senses, a complete intoxication with touch in which everything else, every thought, had gone wholly away.

It had been a dream; and in dreams, all things were permitted.

No play, no laughter in it but an intense solemnity full of intent, as urgent and unquestioned as escaping a fire except that the fire was not to be escaped but was ignited and reignited with each contact; a shared hunger for a deeper closeness; a driving need to reach out, fully touch; and then, explosively, a shattering release reflected and reduplicated, rebounding through all the levels of contact like entire worlds colliding, interpenetrant, fusing into one another so that there were no longer two, but one― opening, unfolding, alive....

And then she'd changed, and feared him, and struck at him, and therefore either it was not Catherine, or he was not himself, and he'd known dimly he'd been tricked and betrayed back into the bars, betrayed so deeply that it seemed to him the pain could have no limit and no end. And out of that pain he'd struck back at her or someone, and the hot reek of blood overwhelmed all other odors. In the red shifted haze of fugue and uncontrolled violence, it had begun to be awful. He'd gone out among them and done their will, and his, upon them. Like large music. Or like silence, that devoured all.

For in nightmares, all things were not only permitted but possible.

I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds....

Roaring its approach, clattering loudly and jarring the conduit with its close presence, then shrieking its way into a turn before gradually fading: a subway.

Dizzy and unsteady, Vincent swung against the tunnel's curved side and held it until the shuddering released him. Pale scrapes remained on the concrete where his claws had grated and then pulled away as he went on.

Yet not nightmare: real. Diana knew. Diana had seen it― at least as much as remained to be seen, could be seen merely with the body's eyes.

That confirmation, that validation, Vincent had clung to all this long day, needing to grasp and reconfirm it from time to time, the one solid thing he could be sure of. Diana knew it had happened. She knew it of her own knowledge, independent of him. Therefore it had happened. It was real.

Not dream, then: memory.

So if it'd been real... could it somehow really have been Catherine, too? There at the first, when the experience had still been his soul's dream, his deepest longing fulfilled?

He did not want it to be true. He'd gone through so much to keep exactly such ultimate ugliness from her. And failed. And despaired. So even if it'd been a dream, he wanted no connection between Catherine and that cage or with what he'd been, and done, upon the bowers' ground.

The outer part of it, that'd been real. Diana said so. He could rely on that.

And the inner part, his sense of Catherine, had been so strong, so immediate that it was hard for him to doubt it, even now.

What was he to believe? Could Catherine somehow have come to him in that dreadful place and could they have shared what his every sense, in memory, insisted that they had?

Descending a stair of staples driven into the rock, his way took him into a crooked down sloping tunnel whose floor was silted for some distance, then sandy, softening the sound of his tread.

This wasn't, he'd known at once, a question for which he could look to Diana for an answer. Even as a speculation, such a thing would wound her too deeply. She believed one love could cancel another and that any deepening of his love for Catherine was necessarily at the expense of his different but no less cherishing love for her.

Diana.

In the Greek pantheon, Artemis: chaste goddess of the hunt, she who drew the bent bow of the crescent moon; fierce protector of all wild things.

Diana: his touchstone, confidante, and rescuer, his intrepid and steadfast center, his joy and his love....

Fearless though she was of all else, the thought of Catherine unnerved and intimidated her. And yet, endearingly, it never seemed to occur to her that the succession of those who'd been intimate with her, her lovers in ordinary understandable ways, could ever be a similar intimidation to him, who had to discipline himself so strictly against the loss of control, because not only the one powerful desire yearned and fought for escape within him....

No: he couldn't ask Diana. And certainly not Father. Then who?

Then he remembered a remark Father had made, when Vincent had been similarly struggling with a decision― whether to risk revealing himself to Elliot, to ask his help in finding Catherine's murderer and locating her child: all that was left of her in the world. Father's sharp challenge had been, “You have nothing of Catherine left within you?” And when Vincent, taken aback, had agreed that of course he did, Father had directed curtly, “Then ask her to make the right choice.”

Vincent hadn't taken the suggestion seriously. He'd too long accepted the silence of the bond, while Catherine yet lived, to put any reliance upon whatever slight remnants of Catherine might endure merely as a part of his own nature or fixed in memory, like a photograph, once she was dead.

But it was memory, the contents of that long locked cupboard, that was now at issue.

Surely Father had meant the remark only figuratively. But it suddenly struck Vincent as a hope, a real possibility―

But, the thought came to him, she is lost to me. She will not speak to me, or answer.

He knew: he'd tried. Tried desperately and been answered only by silence, absence.

And yet his sense of Catherine had been strong all day― indeed, stronger than at any time since her disappearance― except, of course, for their final instants of leavetaking on the rooftop, which had ended with her lifeless in his arms....

First, the trigger of scent, flooding through and rending whatever barrier had protected him from that agony of memory. Then finding refuge in the memory of the bond: discovering, in Catherine's terror and pain after that first attack and violation, a solacing mirror of his own. A connection that allowed him again to be, not a monster, but a man. And later, remembering and recounting for Diana their journey together, his and Catherine's: all of it suddenly fresh to him as yesterday, not something past and gone because present realization had shot back, retroactively, to change all that experience within him, alter its meaning and impact utterly and forever. Renewed, transformed, alive again.

Not a bond through which could flow present feelings, but a sense of closeness to her, nevertheless―

Contact! Presence!

Again jerking and turning in the cramped tunnel, Vincent banged his head. Recoiling, rubbing the bruise, he thought wryly, It is insistent. It might have waited for something as spacious, at least, as the high battlements of Elsinore....

Softly, aloud and within himself, he asked, “Who are you? What do you want?”

He now expected no answer and got none. But the sense of presence didn't wholly withdraw. He sensed attention, waiting. Perhaps imagination, because he was likewise attending, waiting. But then again, perhaps not....

Catherine? he asked― neither a shout nor a frantic appeal, merely a tentative question. The way he'd have called softly from her terrace to ask whether she was occupied in some room beyond his line of vision.

And he wondered, Was she silent? Or was it merely that I was demanding so loudly, so frantically, that I was incapable of hearing any answer?

He thought, Perhaps I am at last done with shouting. Perhaps I can now listen.

Quietly, he asked again, Catherine?

No response. Only that continuing impression of being watched― by what eyes, friendly or unfriendly, he couldn't tell. The attention itched along his spine, unchanging, no matter which way he turned. Unnerving. Intriguing.

But distracting him yet again from the vital question of how to answer what the bowers had done and forestall what they might yet do.

The bowers.

As he approached a junction, the lefthand passage led that way: south. Toward the sea and the bowers' ground. He stood at the crossing: shoulders slumped, head bowed, hands clenched tight at his sides. Wanting to turn that way, pulled, pushed, still standing. For that moment, holding himself in place took no thought― he couldn't think, only feel― but simply a bodily stubbornness of refusing to move.

And after a time he knew he wasn't going to go that way. Could choose not to. It became possible, again, to think.

And he reflected that the bowers' threat― down and to his left― was, in its way, another strong sense of presence: like the blaze of a bonfire seen, not directly, but only as a flickering overlaid upon everything else. Or, he thought― and was mildly surprised to find himself thinking― like the white hot disk of the noon sun: even in the cool seasons one knew where it was, felt its radiant power.

Once, that similitude would not have occurred to him. Or else it would have been merely a parroting of what he'd read, with no felt connection to his own experience. Now it did, and it had. Because of Diana. Such gifts, that she'd given him! Dawn, day, and rich, streaky sunsets of peach, vermilion, gold; music and a seemingly unending treasure of vibrant living images of the world Above― art, and wonderful stories, and places he'd never imagined he could ever see; sanctuary, humor, intelligence, warm solicitude and acceptance. All she had and was― as much as he was able to receive from her and more, freely offered, yet beyond. Boundless.

His son. His own life and sanity, many times over. Her peace. Love. Hope.

All without question or condition. Everything.

And what, other than disarranged and broken furniture, had he given her in return? Trouble, danger, anxiety, and none of it necessarily hers except that she chose to make it so and even refused, in the bluntest of language, to be shut out, spared any of it, ever. And would have laughed in his face, he knew, at his discomfiture over the disproportion....

He must think of a gift for Diana, something she'd accept from him, something which would have value for her―

Presence.

Yes, he said within himself. I'm here, I'm waiting. What do you want? How may I know it?

No answer. Attention.

A shiver ran down his spine.

The bowers. Diana. Catherine. Dreams. Visions. Rage, hope, fear, love. Phantom presence.

All whirling, crossing. The attempt to separate them like trying to unweave flowing strands of water.

Overtaken by a yawn, he sagged against the wall until the seizure passed. Then, quite unexpectedly, found himself sobbing― something that hadn't happened to him since the first hours and days of raw loss. He fought it, refused it, shaking his head, teeth bared, trying to swallow it down. Finally succeeded. Stood testing whether that seizure, too, was done. And he wondered dully, For whom, or what, do I now grieve? Or is it that I am merely stupid with weariness?

Straightening, choosing the righthand passage, he went on.

*****

Descending into the familiar, larger and candle lit tunnels that radiated from the Hub, Vincent felt as though he were wandering slowly through a thick, drifting fog, trying to see his way. Whatever he focused on was clear. But everything surrounding, everything more distant, and the center itself― whenever he ceased consciously attending― faded into a grey haze. The candles' flames were haloed, bloated and doubled, by streaming waves of heat become visible to him. All dull monochrome, leeched of color.

Not a good sign; but in itself only a presentiment like the stillness and electric tension that preceded storm. Not the storm itself, not yet. Only the first prickling warning of what always ended in a scarlet blur.

While he was with Diana, there had been color. The vividness of her flaming hair, her quick and lucent eyes, the fold and reach of her green sleeves as her hands moved in crisp gestures that divided the air, as her mind divided confusion, with such graceful precision. But away from her, he was returning, and knew himself to be returning, to the somnambulistic detachment in which he'd spent the last five days. Unable to pursue any thought to its conclusion, everything disjointed, disconnected.

Not altogether sure, lacking Diana's correction and confirmation, where waking consciousness ended and the twilight margin of dreams and visions began.

And moving only by the inertia peculiar to the extremity of exhaustion, that made it more trouble to stop than to continue.

I am very tired, he acknowledged to himself. And not thinking clearly anymore. I should rest. And I will, as soon as the urgent matters have been seen to, balanced at least well enough to await my waking without risking further harm. Then I can attend to what concerns me alone.

From habit, he paused to signal his return. The tapped acknowledgement added that Father was most anxious to talk with him. Not Pascal's brisk cadences, Vincent noted absently: Zach, then. Good, that Pascal at last could sometimes entrust his responsibility to another and enjoy some rest, some intervals that could be his alone. Something like a life of his own, supposing that after all these years he'd even know what to do with the freedom, now that he had it....

And at the same time Vincent was revolving that summons in his mind, wondering if he could stand to burden Father with what had happened, with so much of it still unsettled and whirling within him, bludgeoningly heavy and uncontrolled....

Father. Diana had said they'd go after Father next, and again. Until they were successful.

That decided him. Of course: he must go. And after that, he'd be free to try to seek out that which was so insistent upon gaining his attention.

He signaled that he'd heard and was coming.

Father looked up when Vincent appeared on the balcony, setting aside a book, waiting. Vincent didn't know how long he stood there, but when he finally started down the spiral stair, Father had already poured out a mug of tea and set it on the corner of his desk, handy to Vincent's chair.

But Vincent didn't take his usual place, couldn't stand so near an approach. Without thinking about it he veered aside and took one of the smaller, armless chairs at the empty chessboard instead, remarking, “There are too many doors here,” still worriedly scanning and evaluating.

Father cocked an eyebrow. “I believe there are the same number there have always been. Or have I overlooked something?”

“Four is too many. The balcony entry and the back door could be closed off, I think. You'd still have the front door and access to the emergency room. But that too has a door. Connects to the passage....” Vincent frowned, beginning his calculations all over again.

Rising, Father came around the desk, holding to things rather than bother with his cane, and dropped into the facing chair. Vincent found himself starting to lean away, refused the automatic reaction, and braced to remain where he was, though it was like sitting in front of the open mouth of a furnace.

Asking, “What prompts this sudden Poe-like interest in walling me up in my own chambers?” Father set a hand on Vincent's arm.

A natural enough gesture, but one which seemed to sear through sleeve and flesh to bone. In spite of Father's attempt to maintain a light tone and a decent circumspection, he was deeply upset and that all came in. Vincent managed to hold himself still, but something of the effort must have shown, or been felt: Father immediately broke the contact and sat back with folded hands.

“It's a matter of security, is it?” Father suggested soberly.

The scalding concern had deepened, but at least it was farther away. More nearly tolerable. Vincent pushed out the breath he found he'd been holding.

“Yes. We cannot keep the bowers from passing, not altogether. So this place is too open. There are too many ways―”

“Yes: too many doors. I suppose I see. But there's the question of access, you must remember. Much as I might enjoy the novelty of having a little privacy, people do have to reach me. And talk with me. And I, with them. It can't really become wholly a matter of trading messages on the pipes, I'm afraid.” Father swept an apologetic gesture, inviting Vincent to contemplate the book strewn study, then was waiting to meet Vincent's eyes as he turned back.

“A certain assured accessibility, and therefore a certain degree of danger, is... well, it rather goes with the job, Vincent. And it is necessary: such responsibility, in itself, is isolating enough. And sometimes, quite a bit more than enough....”

Pulling out a handkerchief, Father removed and began polishing his glasses ―usually prelude or accompaniment to saying something he knew would be unwelcome.

“I don't believe walling off half my doors would really be practical. Either politically or psychologically. I cannot re-tailor my manner of living, or this community, to accommodate hypothetical threats from our Bowery cousins. And Vincent― I can't help remarking that you don't look at all well. I've tried not to pry....”

“And evidently are about to fail.”

Forcing what perhaps was a smile, Vincent slouched deeper in the chair he was finding increasingly difficult to remain in. Trying harder to counterfeit ease, the more uncomfortable he became.

“Evidently. Well, having so conspicuously failed at subtlety, let me be blunt, then: what's the matter? I've been more and more concerned for you, this past week. You've seemed...distracted. As though something were weighing on your mind. Going only, I might add, by the little that I've seen of you. Or that anyone has.”

“Distracted,” Vincent echoed. “Yes, that's a good word: one with precise ambiguities. Diana would approve of that word. Yes, I suppose one might put it that way. Distracted.”

All at once, discipline was no longer enough: he shoved out of the chair and went to stand beside the staircase, rubbing the handrail.

“The threat... is more than hypothetical. It is acute. And continuing. And neither of us may live to see it ended. I have been discussing Paracelsus. With Diana. And she sees a pattern in our dealings with him.”

“We have had no dealings with him,” Father interrupted sharply.

Vincent raised and studied his right hand. “I have.”

“Very well, if you choose to call it that. In any case, the man is dead and there's no reason to attribute this late unpleasantness to―”

“Father. There is reason. And we cannot continue as we have done until now. Neither you nor I. Our chief protection has always been that our world was secret. With the bowers, that protection is lost. They know we are here. Even who we are, how we are organized. They may even have maps.

“Exposed to that degree, we are completely vulnerable, Father. We cannot retreat for a time to evade them, as we sometimes have done in the past to escape other threats: we could never come back without resuming the same jeopardy we find ourselves in now. And might well find these tunnels fortified against us, so that no return was possible. We cannot build walls and keep them out, for keeping this world intact has always been much like bailing a sinking boat. If we stop, we founder. We simply cannot afford to divert that much labor from the necessary work of simple survival, even if the extent of the needed walls were limited to a manageable number of accessways. And there are miles, Father: seven levels connect our system with theirs. It―”

“Pardon me, Vincent, but you may take as a given that I have studied, and restudied, the maps over the last few days. I agree that wall building is completely impracticable. There is no need of―”

“And to what conclusion did you come?”

“I concluded,” Father replied steadily, “that one incident, however unpleasant, in almost 40 years is insufficient cause for advocating, much less undertaking, any massive alteration in the way this community is constituted. I―”

“Forgive me, Father: you mean that you have admitted to yourself that there is no alternative save force, sustained and determined force, perhaps for years; and that is not acceptable to you. So you have determined to bury your head firmly in the sand and contend that the problem has thereby vanished.”

They stared at each other for a considerable time.

At last Father looked down at the chessboard, remarking, “Well, it seems we are embarked on rather more bluntness than I had anticipated. Or than is common, even between ourselves. I see we estimate the threat differently. On what is your judgment based?”

Presence.

In spite of himself, Vincent flinched and looked, and then found Father regarding him with a carefully noncommittal expression that did nothing to disguise waves of concern and a most determined skepticism. Vincent sagged against the stair.

“Father,” he said with weary stubbornness, ”I will keep this community safe. With your approval and aid. Or without it. But I still hope it will not come to that. I came meaning to try to explain what has happened, that you know nothing of. And I knew nothing of it either, except for a great uneasiness. For I had forgotten it.

“But... I cannot. Not when you are already seeking excuses to doubt me, listening, not for truth or even facts, but for symptoms. Not tonight. I cannot. I would spoil my case in arguing it. A longer strategy must wait, then. For the immediate moment, if you will not permit me to strictly limit access, may I at least reassign sufficient sentries to guard the approaches? I believe that rests within my duties and discretion....”

Father flipped a hand carelessly. “If it will reassure you, then by all means. I do not, for a moment, Vincent, question that your concern is real and that you believe it well-founded.

“But since you mention duties and discretion, there is another matter of more immediate concern to me, which I have set aside and set aside for months, now. Hoping it would pass without its needing to be openly raised between us. Sometimes things do pass if let alone, Vincent, and to be King Log is wiser, in the long run, than attempting to be King Stork. The more one tries to control, the more details one attempts to involve oneself with, the more unmanageable the effort becomes and the more potential there is of doing real harm when all which had been properly delegated, shared among many, descends like an avalanche upon one single authority.

“I have never aspired to be a dictator, to control every aspect of life Below. Quite apart from the issue of its being philosophically repugnant, it's impractical. Some things, even many things... I must let alone, and hope for the best. But that means being able to rely upon those to whom certain functions have been delegated. And finally, I find I must say it: it has been some considerable time since I, or this community, have been able to rely upon you, Vincent. Since Catherine disappeared, in fact. And of course, your search was urgent. And you were given all possible aid in it. For months. I believe you will concede that?”

“I had not realized,” Vincent responded slowly, feeling himself pass into a deadly calm, “the aid was grudged, so that I might ever be called upon to concede its thoroughness.”

“I will ignore the tone of that reply and merely take it as agreement, so that I may proceed to my next point. During all that time, you were― understandably, quite understandably― preoccupied with that concern. And quite understandably withdrew from your usual duties to concentrate upon it. So: that is one point. Is it disputed, or may I pass on to the next?”

“If you intend laboriously building toward the conclusion that I have been neglecting my duties, you may spare us both the trouble. I admit it. To what conclusion does that lead us?”

Father surveyed him soberly over folded hands. “I am not prepared to gloss over my peroration quite so quickly, I'm afraid. I have been too long in preparing it. Kindly bear with me a moment or two more.

“Your preoccupation in searching for Catherine, I wholly understood and supported. Your grief, when she died, was perhaps more of a devastation to those who love you than you will ever know. One could not expect otherwise. Your search for Catherine's child, and yours, I no longer dispute that... and perhaps for vengeance― I have never been altogether sure how to weight those two factors― I tolerated, although the disruption of, and danger to, this community was even greater. You dealt recklessly with topsiders, quite careless of the consequences to anyone, including yourself. And as a result, you were shot, Above; we were invaded; young Stephen's head was blasted very nearly off his shoulders and Old Sam died. Brooke's young life was shattered. And as a further result, you withdrew from us altogether. And at last, and with great joy, Jacob was brought among us. And at last you came home. And still I waited for matters to return to something like normal. For you to settle down with your child and recover something like the contentment you had, we all had, before Catherine Chandler was so unfortunate as to be cruelly attacked and then unwisely rescued.

“And I am still waiting, Vincent. You vanish for days at a time― to that Bennett woman's loft or to the Maze, it makes no practical difference, since you are alike unavailable in either place, though your attachment to Diana strikes me as... overswift and unseemly, not to mention unwise, considering that she is still a topsider.”

Suddenly finding himself meeting Vincent's level stare, Father sighed and lifted a hand to forestall whatever Vincent might say, continuing, “But let that be. I will stipulate Diana Bennett to be a true helper and a paragon of all virtues if you wish. But―”

“Diana's trustworthiness has never been subject to doubt. I believe it is mine you find unsatisfactory.”

“So stipulated. It is beside the point in any case.”

“Then why did you say it?”

“Enough, Vincent! My point is, finally, quite simple: this is your home. It always has been and always will be. When are you going to accept that? When can I expect you, finally, to come home? I have been waiting a long time. I have missed you. We all have. Your family and your work are here and both are suffering for lack of even minimal attention on your part. And this last week, I have had only the occasional sighting, if I may put it so, to assure me that you still regard yourself as residing among us and as being at least a nominal member of this community. I've yet to locate anyone other than myself who's actually spoken to you, or been spoken to by you.

“You haunt these tunnels like a wraith. You no longer teach classes. Indeed, you no longer have any scheduled, continuing contact with the children at all. Including Jacob, which appalls me. I lately learned there is at least one child who, never having had extensive contact with you, actively fears you: young Luke. It's come to such a state that I must regard you as more capricious, reckless, and undependable even than Mouse. You need not propose grandiose visions of turning this community into something resembling an armed camp for me to doubt their wisdom. I have become, and with some justice, I believe, just as skeptical of your promise to do something as simple as repair the Central Park junction door. It has now been seven months since it was shattered. Five months since you assigned yourself to the necessary chore of securing that most public and vulnerable of approaches. I occupied myself today with walking there to see how the work had progressed in all that time. I assume you know what I found.”

All Vincent's quick anger had faded. He hadn't the energy to support it. Moreover, all Father had said― and had clearly been aching to say for months, if not years― was perfectly true. And it was a fact that he hadn't thought about the junction door in... longer than he could remember. All true. And all wholly beside the point, except that he now wished his warning had someone else to speak it. For it was plain to him that Father was no longer listening to him and would not consider objectively anything that he said.

That had never happened before.

Afterflash, vision, or memory, it suddenly came to him: the kinesthetic recollection of shoving a man back across Father's desk, that very desk there... and disemboweling him with one powerful downward stroke. Believing, at that moment, it was Father. Or maybe, in that second, not caring who it was except the one who'd made him so hate himself and his life that the choice became to strike or to die. And he'd chosen not to die.

Vincent shut his eyes and thought, It began there. When I learned that under certain circumstances, no one was safe from me. No one. The lesson he so wished to teach me, I fully learned. And have never forgotten. Under some circumstances, I can be provoked into anything.

With difficulty, the man had torn off his counterfeit of Father's face. And then smiled, and bade Vincent, with sincere and benign solicitude, not to be afraid ―like the salutation of some malevolent angel: Fear not! And then commended Vincent as having, by that bloody and intimate transaction, by choosing survival, achieved full sonship. To himself: to Paracelsus.

And all the rest was aftermath. Even now.

Vincent looked again at Father and felt that they did not know each other anymore. Vincent had no sense of him: it could have been anyone, even Paracelsus returned, sitting by the chessboard and regarding him so. Wincing away from that thought, he turned and rested his forehead against the cool cast iron of the handrail. He felt scoured out. Numb.

“Father. I am more sorry than I can say to have disappointed you so. I offer no excuses. Nor can I promise to amend my ways. I cannot return to what I was before I met Catherine. I do not know what will become of me or my life Below. But it cannot be as it was. Please believe me this far at least: you are in great danger, and this world cannot survive without you. So please take, take all care― if not for yourself, for that. I cannot....”

Vincent shook his head, unsure what he'd meant to say. Perhaps nothing. He couldn't make any of it fit together or hold.

Presence.

He flinched, then hauled himself around to reach the bottom step and started slowly climbing toward the balcony, saying, “I will see to the sentries....”

Father called after him, “I would be interested in knowing how: you haven't looked at the roster in at least a month.”

That comment halted Vincent for a moment. Then he pushed himself on. “I know the posts, Father. I believe I can find them, nevertheless. If necessary, I will ask Pascal to help me. It will be done. You may depend upon it.”

He thought, It is true: I have tried him beyond all patience. And so Father no longer loves me.

It didn't hurt nearly as much as he'd always thought it would. The fact was that he didn't feel anything at all. Only a great weariness.

*****

Vincent prepared as for a journey.

In part, because that was how he thought of it; in part, because that set and sequence of habits was established, allowing him to be methodical without having to try to think out every contingency, every detail.

He would have liked to bathe, get thoroughly clean, but was quite sure that the first touch of warm water would send him into deep sleep; and then either this opportunity might be lost or he might find himself setting out sooner than he'd expected and unprepared, having made no provision for what was left behind. So he contented himself with a basin wash and then changing clothes. That made him feel better, and the routine calmed him.

He carefully slit out a back page from the journal Catherine had given him, tore it in half, and wrote two brief notes: one to Father and one to Diana.

The note to Father read:

I hope not to be away long. It is necessary. I go where I am called. Please know I have always tried

For several minutes, he was stuck at that point and found himself wishing for Diana's computer, where thoughts could be endlessly revised and yet show none of the indecisions or the labor. Finally he ended his uncertainty by adding a period and continued,

Diana knows what has happened. Her information is to be relied upon and her advice is always worth having; but the response you choose must, of course, be your own. I have always loved you and.

The note to Diana read:

Do not be angry with me, that I have not consulted you. Any argument, you would win, and the thing remain undone. In my life, there have been three four people who have accepted and loved me exactly as I am, with all my faults. One is Devin; one is Mouse; one, now, is Jacob. And you. I meant to tell you this but it was never the time. I hope there will yet be time to discuss this and much else. For I delight in our conversations and all that has passed between us.

He signed, folded, and addressed the notes and stood them upright against the candlestick.

Then he began collecting things into a leather pack, including a bicycle cable, several changes of socks and underwear, and a padlock. Next, he went to the Commons and took food that would keep, the usual staples of travel― three days' supply, or five with close rationing― and several large liter bottles of water. The soft drink bottles routinely discarded, Above, made excellent canteens and there was always a considerable stock on hand.

Strapping the pack closed, then slinging it over his shoulder, he recited to himself the order of things: Jacob. Pascal. Mouse. Narcissa. He made a steady litany of it, in rhythm with his steps. That way, he hoped to methodically attend to all the preliminaries and overlook none.

Jacob. Pascal. Mouse. Narcissa.

In the inner alcove of the nursery, Mary greeted him and smiled at him, moving aside and turning to let him see past her to the cushioned enclosure that protected the older infants from their own boldness in acquiring the new skill of walking.

From the far side of the low barrier came an insistent pounding and an enthusiastic shout of “Da! Da! Da!”

“I could tell you'd be coming,” Mary remarked complacently. “He always knows, and I've learned the signs. So I got him dressed. With no cooperation, either. You just can't hold him when he's like that.”

Letting the pack slide, Vincent went and bent over the barrier, but Jacob wasn't willing to wait to be picked up, seizing sleeve and then arm, hanging on tightly and crowing when Vincent lifted that arm high. A second later, Jacob had grabbed and shinnied farther and was straddling Vincent's left shoulder with both arms around Vincent's head, yelling, “Go! Go!”

“If he had claws like yours,” Mary commented, “he'd be up on the ceiling. He's practically up and down the walls as it is. I never knew such a child for climbing. But Father says you were just the same at that age. I wish I could have been here then. You must have been something.”

“Something,” Vincent echoed absently, trying to capture the small fist which was energetically hitting him in the eye.

Contact with Jacob was a trial and a liberation. The child operated at an unmodulated shout, eager to grasp, touch, taste, smell everything, always reaching, never satisfied. But through that contact the world felt very large and fascinating and mysterious, walls drawing back, ceilings receding out of sight, floors very solid and made for exploring. Colors achingly bright, banishing the grey surround.

Jacob pounded on the top of Vincent's head, still demanding, “Go! Go! Go!” He smelled of warmth, excitement, and happiness.

The noise had wakened several infants, who began announcing their own demands. Mary turned away to attend to them.

Vincent had vaguely intended to do the rounds of the nearest sentry posts, but instead decided to go directly to the pipe chamber and leave the matter to Pascal. Carrying Jacob through the passages, one spread hand bracing Jacob in place against incautious grabs and leans, Vincent found himself, as he always did, sliding more and more deeply into rapport with his son. With actual contact, it seemed to be unavoidable. And he was saddened to feel the child growing quieter and finally sagging against him, heedless exuberant wriggles and punches becoming a tighter and more anxious holding and small, tentative pats that attempted comfort.

Vincent turned his face against his son's body, breathing in his scent, and murmured, “I know: it is too large for you. It's too large for me, too. Soon, we will be a little more distant again, and you can concern yourself only with sorrows of a more suitable dimension. Father does not understand how it is with us. You must be patient with him. And not hit. You will find he is most particular about that. He wishes only what he believes best for you, though he does not know what that is. Nor do I. We, too, are something that has never been. But you are very much loved, and that will make everything as nearly right as it can be. Rely on that.”

The reply he sensed was quiet thoughtfulness as Jacob mulled over, not the words, but the intention and feeling that invaded him through the bond and the contact.

“You must have space,” Vincent told him, “and long silences to learn who you are. To find your separate self, when it all comes in, comes in, all confused, no one who knows how to speak softly, within you. Far too often, even I do not. My concerns are not yours to solve. Be free of them, my Jacob. Do not care so much. I am certain it cannot be good for you.... Hold tight, now, here is a low place. Fine. We are almost there.”

Jacob's comment was to lay his head against Vincent's and look quietly ahead as the tiers of the pipe chamber opened before them, vastly high and deep.

Vincent had forgotten Zach was currently on duty. When Vincent greeted him, the boy glanced over his shoulder, then quickly finished the current message and asked, “Is it something I can― I'll get Pascal, just a second―” and dashed off before Vincent had a chance to say anything more.

Vincent commented to Jacob, “Do you get the impression we are being less than subtle? Yes, I thought so, too.”

“Ah!” Jacob agreed emphatically, reaching to find out what a pipe felt like.

Vincent checked to make sure it wasn't a steam pipe, then moved closer to put it within Jacob's reach and enjoyed the relayed startlement at the novel combination of hard roughness and cool roundedness.

“Yes, Jacob. That's a pipe. But some of them will be hot. You must check first, to be certain.” Guiding Jacob's hand, Vincent brought it close enough to a steam pipe for the child to feel the heat, releasing when Jacob wanted to pull the hand back.

“Yes. You must be careful of those.” He was pleased when Jacob reached toward another pipe more cautiously, checking on its status as safe or not safe before closing fingers about it. “I know: it is a great deal to learn. But the fortunate thing is that you have time.... Pascal,” Vincent said, feeling the pipemaster's approach and turning. “I'm sorry to trouble you when you're off duty, but I have a favor to ask―”

Pascal nodded sharply at Zach, who dragged out the bench that was used to reach the higher bands of pipes. “Vincent, sit down and tell me,” Pascal suggested.

Vincent regarded him blankly. “It will not take that much time.”

“Sit down anyway, all right?”

Finding no reason not to, Vincent did, and Jacob turned and dropped like a sack of sand into his lap. Vincent was then free to brush back the hair Jacob's gyrations and grabbing had shoved awry. And only then did he notice that his cheeks and chin were wet and deduce that he must have been crying, unaware and unfelt, for some time.

With as much composure as he could muster, he wiped his eyes on a sleeve, the other arm occupied with holding Jacob, who'd decided to bounce, intrigued by the closeness of a less familiar adult.

“What is it?” Pascal asked, dropping into the comfortable crouch common among people who often didn't have a chair handy.

“I have Father's permission to change sentry assignments. To guard and, if necessary, defend all approaches to his chambers. To accompany him―  inconspicuously, if possible― when he is abroad in the tunnels. You know who's available and how the shifts can be arranged. Would you see to it?”

“Of course. The bowers?”

Vincent nodded. “I probably should add that Father believes there is no need and gave permission only to humor me. You may regard it in the same light, if you choose. So long as it is properly done.”

“He's like that: what can you do?” Pascal shrugged. “Any other changes in sentry assignments? Are you expecting something soon? Where will you be?”

Vincent also shrugged and lifted a hand in a small gesture. “I will be away. As usual. Leaving my work to others.”

“Is that...? Never mind, don't worry about it. At least it'll give me something to do. Zach needs the practice or he won't learn, but frankly, Vincent, I'd rather be assigned to pluck chickens again― remember?― as just stand around, listen to the messages come and go, and do nothing. I've been bored to death― What?”

Laughing softly, Vincent shook his head. “It only strikes me how little we know one another and how badly we judge what is to another's benefit.”

“Yeah. That strikes me too, sometimes. Don't let Father get you down. I know.... Well, I know, that's all. I'll take care of it, Vincent. Until you― not Father― tell me it's okay to quit.”

This time, Vincent could feel the tears starting. He rose with Jacob balanced on his hip. “Thank you, Pascal. Try not to annoy him with watchers. He is, I believe, feeling rather closely constrained already. Oh― When is the next council meeting?”

“It was tonight. Nobody expected you to make it, it's―”

“There's no necessity to make excuses for me, Pascal. The one can be as... as demoralizing as the other. When is the next session, then?”

“Next Friday. If nothing blows up till then.... But don't you mean a common meeting?”

Vincent found he could follow that thought well enough. Pascal was anticipating a major disagreement between Vincent and Father, when calling on the support of the whole community would keep the matter from being merely a clash of personalities. It was a tactic Vincent had used in the past.

Vincent responded heavily, “I hope... it will not come to that. I will attend the next council meeting. If I am able. And I will try to have something specific to suggest by that time. I am going to seek advice.” With an effort, he reached and clasped Pascal's shoulder, though the contact made him flinch and brought a small, surprised chirp, like a hiccup, from Jacob. “Thank you, Pascal. I have always been most fortunate in my friends.”

Pascal ducked aside, looking embarrassed. “Just another interesting round of tunnel politics, Vincent. You know I eat that up like popcorn.”

Walking away, Vincent wheeled to call, “Can you locate Mouse?”

Already engaged in sending out a message, Pascal tapped a wait signal, then turned and lifted both arms helplessly. “Try. Scarce, lately.”

Already, Pascal was thinking, talking, in terse pipecode bursts.

“If you can, ask him to meet me in his chamber. Soon.”

Vincent would have said in half an hour, allowing for travel time. But that would have meant nothing to Mouse. Soon was more likely to achieve the desired result.

Presence.

As Vincent startled, he felt Jacob simultaneously do the same. It wasn't objective confirmation― Jacob might simply have been reacting to Vincent's response, as with Pascal. Yet it was somehow comforting that they'd done it together.

“Soon,” Vincent murmured, as Jacob flopped over his arm to grab and chew the fringe of his vest. “Sometime soon, I must take you to visit Diana. She has a new home, close by. She can make wonderful loud noises with her machines. You'll like that. And the sunlight. We can be in it together, there. As warm as the bathing pool, except not wet. You'll like that too. I cannot promise. But I still hope.”

Ducking the low place again, Vincent headed back toward the nursery to surrender Jacob into loving hands.

And the litany with which he marked his paces had grown both shorter and longer:

Mouse. Narcissa. And then the cave.

*****

He waited in Mouse's chamber as long as he felt he could, until the fog had closed off everything short of a tight circle straight before him. Then he returned to the passage, trying laboriously to rethink what had brought him to choose Mouse as the one to whom he'd entrust the padlock's key, in order to select another. Diana's loft was too far now: Mouse's chamber was on the deep, isolated fringes of the community, abutting the Maze. Vincent could have given the key to Pascal, but hadn't thought of it then, having already settled on Mouse. And now he didn't want to return to the Hub and perhaps further disputations with Father. Or conversations with anyone. He could feel time getting short; and there was still Narcissa to be consulted....

He signaled that, should Mouse tap in or acknowledge, he was on his way to Narcissa and Mouse should find him along that route, which led down past the catacombs and finally into the unshaped rock where no pipes ran and no light was.

Away from the candles and torches, his vision seemed to clear somewhat. Or perhaps he simply wasn't able to notice the contrast as much. One didn't miss colors where no colors were.

Midway down a long, haphazardly cut stair where he had to slide one hand along the wall to assure his balance, he heard a distant shout bouncing and reechoing into eventual silence. Leaning and waiting, he eventually made out Mouse by the jerking beams of the flashlights attached to the boy's makeshift helmet.

“Slowly, Mouse: or you'll fall,” he called, and, by the way Mouse suddenly broke stride, panting, realized Mouse hadn't known he was there.

“Never fall― not Mouse!” Mouse scoffed, and then very nearly proved himself a liar, catching himself only at the last second and shoving himself tight against the wall. As Vincent began climbing toward him, Mouse blurted breathlessly, “Never see Narcissa except it's important. What, Vincent?”

“You might be interested in knowing Father considers you more reliable than I.” When Mouse grinned, Vincent added dryly, “I don't believe it was a compliment, Mouse.”

Still grinning, Mouse commented, “Stuff,” his current dismissal of things not worth considering.

“But I hold a rather different opinion.... Mouse, I often tried to find you, this last week. And somehow I never could. Why is that, Mouse?”

Mouse shrugged, suddenly wary and uncomfortable. “Busy. You know.”

“Yes, Mouse. I do know. Now.”

Mouse's eyes went very wide. “Tell Father?” he demanded anxiously.

“Not yet.”

“Going to tell Father?”

Slowly it came to Vincent that they were talking at cross purposes. “I am speaking of what happened on the bowers' ground.” Mouse's expression didn't change: still solemn and anxious. But when Vincent added, “To me,” Mouse's face immediately relaxed, then went tight and closed, frowning.

“Don't know about that. Don't want to know about that. Diana says find, so find. Knew you'd be in the Maze: where else? Good at finding.”

“Always, Mouse. Better than good.”

There was something he was missing, Vincent knew. But he was too tired to pursue the thought, leaving it merely as a confirmation of his suspicion that Mouse had been deliberately dodging him for days to avoid being asked about what he'd seen in Diana's company, as Diana's guide. Whatever else it was, that was eluding him, would have to wait. Vincent pulled the key, on its ring, from his vest pocket and displayed it on his palm.

“Mouse, I'm going to be...away, for a time. I want you to keep this key safe. This is... is Friday, now. Three days from now, Sunday, bring this key to the cave below the catacombs. You know the place.”

“Bad place: don't like it there!”

“Places are neither good nor bad, Mouse: you know that. Only the people there, what's done in them.... I'm trusting you to go there, on Sunday, with this key. It's important, Mouse.”

Mouse counted on his fingers. “Saturday, Sunday― two days, Vincent!”

“It's only just turned Friday, Mouse,” Vincent pointed out patiently. “Past midnight, now.”

“Oh: topsiders' time,” Mouse commented dismissively. “OK, good: go to that place...Sunday? Real Sunday or topsiders' Sunday?”

“Any time Sunday. So long as you don't forget.”

“Won't forget: Arthur gets cat food on Sunday. Likes cat food, in the cans. Get from William, every Sunday, one can only, so Arthur won't get fat, sick. Father said. Won't forget. Go on Sunday, take key... and do what, Vincent?”

“When you come, you'll know.”

“Treasure? Again?” Mouse inquired with a glum upward glance: he'd lost all his enthusiasm for treasure hunts some years ago.

“You'll know,” Vincent repeated. “Take great care, Mouse. And if no one asks you, don't talk about it, please.”

Mouse beamed. “Good at that!”

“I know you are, Mouse. That's why I trust you to see to this for me.”

Carefully passing over the key, Vincent watched it being safely stowed away and was content as he and Mouse parted, Vincent slowly continuing down the stair, Mouse ascending more briskly, soon gone out of sight and hearing.

So, Vincent thought, it all hinges on Arthur's ration of cat food. Why do I find that reassuring? He smiled slightly. Surely it is true, that genius is in the details....

Although the catacombs themselves were extensive, the portions of the pitted and cratered walls the community had utilized as burial sites were limited. Only a few hundred people lived Below; and of them, only a score or so had both died there and died in a way that the body could be recovered. Falls were a common cause of fatalities; and nothing came back from the Abyss.

Setting down his pack in the atrium, the central space, Vincent could see the niches of all the community's dead ranged about him. He stood for a time before that section reserved for children.

It was cool, Below: Father had delayed the service for the murdered children until Vincent had returned, last Sunday, so he could be present. He remembered almost nothing of it. He tried to review his memories of their adventures of growth and discovery, the traits special to each alone, things said and done, but found everything fading and his mind going blank.

So he turned from that section and walked along the base of the higher wall. Old Sam and Stephen were here, with whose deaths Father had reproached him; and Winslow. Vincent had later led a party back to remove the temporary cairn and bring Winslow home again, among his own. He remembered that Pascal had had a severe cold at the time and gone anyway, wheezing and sniffing the whole way....

And Pascal's father, and Grace, Devin's mother. And past that was the Wall of the Lost, into which were carved the names of those presumed dead. Father had wanted to have Devin's name cut there but Vincent had been so upset and so adamantly opposed that Father had left it undone, although Devin had formally been declared dead and mourned for the customary time....

Then Vincent found himself before the low, curved section where Paracelsus had been entombed beside his wife, whom he'd murdered with poison. The deeply- incised inscription read:

JOHN PATER

BELOVED HUSBAND OF ANNA

FOUNDER OF THE WORLD BELOW

Once Paracelsus was dead, Vincent reflected, Father could afford to be magnanimous and preserve a decent dignity. On Anna's stone, the marks of Vincent's claws were still visible: this was the changeless place. For a brief, agonizing while, he'd believed her to be his mother and come to seek answers where there were none to be had.

“Your dead are not here, Vincent,” commented Narcissa's chiding, strongly accented voice from somewhere behind him.

Though he hadn't felt her approach, he wasn't particularly surprised. Narcissa had a way of knowing things and appearing, for no known reason, at what proved to be particularly fortunate times.

Without turning, Vincent responded, “Catherine is buried Above.”

“No, not there, either. All here are gone, child. And Above, as well. Haven't I told you many times?”

“But you speak to them.”

“Ah, anyone can do that, Vincent! But the question is, will they answer you?”

And Vincent thought of the exchange from one of Shakespeare's Henry plays: GLENDOWER: I can call spirits from the vasty deep; HOTSPUR: Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call to them?

Yet Narcissa was not quoting. She knew such things of her own knowledge and had no need of secondhand tags of quotation.

He said, “I think perhaps they will. I am summoned here, Narcissa. To listen, perhaps. I do not know. To keep silence and attempt to listen, at least. I was not able to do that before.”

“I remember,” agreed Narcissa sympathetically, her many-layered skirts and petticoats whispering as she came nearer. “I could not help you, child. And I cannot help you now. But no, wait, you have no need of my help. If you are summoned, then either you will be met, or you will not. It is all according to what you seek.”

“Understanding,” Vincent replied quietly. “And.... Understanding. That would be enough.”

“Ah, you say that now. But when have you ever been satisfied, Vincent? When have you not stretched out to touch and hold, farther than you could reach? For I remember you, Vincent: always climbing, climbing. And to where?” Narcissa chuckled softly, comfortably. “And your Jacob the same, I have seen him in the waters. Why do you never bring him to visit me, Vincent? Do you believe he would be afraid of a crazy old woman like me?”

“Never. I would be glad for him to have your blessing, Narcissa. I will bring him, when I can.... Please tell me, what is the way? What must I do?”

“Your dead are within you, Vincent. If they summon you, and if they choose to speak, you will know it. And you already know the way. Shall I come, child, and watch over you?”

Vincent shook his head, then reflected that Narcissa, virtually blind anyway, could not see the motion and said, “No. Thank you, Narcissa. But it is my place. I must be alone there.”

As he stooped to pick up his pack and then started away, Narcissa added one further comment: “Remember, Vincent: you were born Above.”

He turned, but could not see her: both of them were accustomed to go lightless―he, because he could see; she, because she couldn't.

“Narcissa? Why do you mention that?”

But only her dim and distant chuckle, like the Cheshire cat's smile, floated in the air as an answer.

*****

The cave of his madness, the cave of Jacob's begetting, was long and twisting. Widening and narrowing by turns, a tube of rock. For part of its length, it was rough stone underfoot. But farther in, the floor was deep, coarse sand: there had been water here once. Perhaps it had been a flume channel of a lost underground river. Nobody knew how deep it went.

Once he and Devin had played at pirates here: probably some of the soft scallop marks in the sand were Devin's footprints, touched by no wind or intrusion for over 20 years. Other footprints, hardly larger, would be Catherine's....

Now nobody came but Vincent, and he rarely.

He moved cautiously, touching the walls, ducking where the roof swooped close, straightening where it receded again. In the first broad place that stretched beyond his arms' reach, he slowly set down his pack.

Here.

Three of his treasures, he kept here: Catherine's crystal; the ivory rose she'd given him; both small objects cupped by what appeared a large, broken metal ring attached to a few links of chain. One of the manacles in which he'd escaped Gabriel's prison, carrying Jacob: the true treasure and the fulfillment of quest.

The other cuff had been sawed off his wrist before he'd had time to think the matter out. But this one he'd endured until a helper who was a locksmith could come and open it. The job had taken at least a long, patient hour of small manipulations and scrapings with a probe. The chain, he'd broken with one massive pull, demonstrating to Gabriel that he'd come by choice, was no one's prisoner. But he'd been unable to break the cuff itself. Vincent therefore respected it and, in a way, trusted it.

Vincent unpacked all the supplies and set them out in a curve of the undulant wall away from the entrance. Then he took the bicycle cable and, with two long bounds and a spring, looped one end over a hook-headed spike he'd used a ladder to drive into the stone at a sharp downward angle, close under the ceiling. Then, very deliberately, he put the heavy manacle around his right wrist and snapped it shut. Locked. And he took the open padlock, threaded it through the end of the chain and the hanging loop of the bicycle cable. Locked.

He let out a long breath. Now, whatever happened, he couldn't possibly hurt anyone else. He knew precisely how far the combined shackle let him reach or move: not quite far enough to back off and jump to touch the angled spike, too high for him to reach from a standing leap; and no downward pull could dislodge it. Not quite far enough to reach the opening of the outward passage. Someone― Mouse ― could come in, and stand aside, and look, and still be well out of reach.

It didn't strike him as at all gloomy that he'd assumed he'd need this place again and made suitable preparations. It relieved him, knowing it was here, knowing he need do nothing but get to it if ever he again felt himself becoming a danger to those around him. It was a safe place. And private. And very dark.

Peaceful, in its way.

Not unlike a tomb.

Scooping up the rose and crystal and stowing them carefully away in his vest pocket― he no longer wore the pouch Catherine had made for him and indeed didn't know what had become of it― he mounded up sand to be a backrest and a pillow for him. Then he stretched out comfortably, glad to finally be still, with nowhere now he had to go, nothing he had to do, firmly shackled to the rock. He held his two treasures, talismans, and the third was cold and heavy about his wrist.

Quietly, he explored and reconfirmed his knowledge of crystal and rose by touch, then laid both aside on a ledge where they'd be safe. Illusory sparks and motes of light bloomed and faded as his eyes tried to adjust to what was very nearly absolute darkness.

He waited, sometimes following meandering thoughts, sometimes with no thoughts at all, until he'd lost all sense of how long he'd been here or of either what Mouse called “topsider” time or “real” time. As sometimes happened to him in the Maze, duration came to have no meaning and cause and effect quietly unshackled themselves from one another and drifted freely.

In a book lent him by Diana, he'd found the repeated image of waiting being a container that in some unspecified way became filled: “waiting is”; “until waiting is filled.” If so, Vincent thought idly, he himself was that container. Waiting to be filled with waiting. Everything looping back on itself without change or progression. Without Contraries is no progression.

For the first time in days, no visions came. And no sudden, haunting sense of presence. Only silence. Within and without. He felt empty, light: almost like what he imagined floating would be.

You already know the way.

But he didn't. All he knew was to be quiet, to be waiting. Float.

The drifting motes hung, mixing and separating like dust in sunlight. He'd seen sunlight, knew what that looked like. They had no pattern, except that they did, and two of the clusters were eyes.

The rest gathered and settled to dimly outline a crouched form balanced on one knee and a spread hand like... like a linebacker: someone braced to resist but at the same time poised to lunge suddenly forward with great force.

The shadow, the Other, said hoarsely, “Give it to me.”

Vincent said, “Take it.”

And like the slam of a door and with a sense of implosion, concussion, the cave went away.

*****

Vincent found himself standing in a vast flat landscape where silver knee high grass stood or stirred as far as he could see in any direction. It was dark, but only topside dark: a clear and detailed twilight to his eyes. At one edge of the sky, a thin, pale seam suggested evening newly come or morning soon to begin. No sound of insects or birds: so perhaps evening. But no sound at all. No stars.

No people were here: the cleanness of the air told him that. No least tinge of things burnt, which always tainted the air Above. If there were no people, there was no need for concealment. Pushing back his hood, he shook his hair free and stood a little longer, listening, breathing. Then he began walking toward the brighter horizon rim―the only visible landmark.

Presently he found himself on a footpath, bare ground only wide enough to set two feet together and concealed a few yards ahead by the overhanging grasses, so that he couldn't tell where it led.

Though it seemed to him he'd come some distance, that couldn't be so because he wasn't tired and the evening or morning seemed no more advanced than when he'd begun. He went on. Until he checked, stopped: a man was standing ahead, either on the path or beside it. The man turned, but was too far away for Vincent to discern his expression or anything about him except that he was standing there. And continued to stand there, looking toward Vincent, making no move.

He'd already been seen. And the grass was not high enough to conceal him unless he crawled....

Stay on the path.

He swayed, caught off balance by the flat command. Then he turned toward the man again, who still hadn't stirred. There was only one. And there'd been no lifted hand, no indication of a gun.... Vincent tugged his hood back up, figuring the light would be poor by normal standards, perhaps enough to let him pass without being seen clearly, provided the path wasn't actually blocked....

The silver grasses hissed against his legs as he went on, head bent but still watching intently for any sudden move. The man was young, perhaps 20, and painfully thin. Wearing a faded blue shirt and denim pants worn white at the knees. Long, greasy looking hair tied back with a string. Dark brows, a broad nose and wide cheeks, vaguely Amerindian looking....

The face suddenly registered. Vincent knew the young man. He'd killed him on a rooftop where he'd been crouched with a light rifle. Sniping randomly into the park. Torn his throat out and then been violently sick afterward.

The first man Vincent had ever killed.

Your dead are within you.

Lifting his head, Vincent approached steadily but warily, until he was near enough to tell the man was standing, not upon the path, but beside it.

No sign, now, of any wound. Face calm, not contorted. Eyes dark but clear, not bloodshot. A clean smell, moving along the facing breeze. Calm.

When Vincent was within perhaps six feet, the young man smiled at him, then slowly dropped to one knee, hands crossed over the other, head bowed, exposing the neck: the pose of one waiting for the fall of an executioner's axe or a guillotine. But not that. No tension. Simply the wordless smile of greeting and recognition and then waiting serenely for whatever Vincent was going to do.

Slowly, uncertainly, Vincent stepped forward, stretched out a hand, and laid it on the young man's head. And was alone on the plain. The young man had vanished.

Vincent was startled, yet not altogether surprised. There had been a formality in the waiting for touch, and then the touching, which spoke of something concluded. They had nothing more to do with one another than that, so the young man had gone. It wasn't reasonable, but it felt like sense.

As he went on, Vincent began to see other figures― some closer, some farther away, some very distant, merely darker streaks like posts standing in the grass. The close figures were all people he'd killed. As he came to each, that person repeated the same ritual as the first: smiling, then kneeling for what he gradually came to understand as either a blessing or a dismissal― perhaps there was no difference― and then instantly vanishing away like a touched bubble.

But the people in the middle distance stared and did not smile. Nor did they approach or move at all. They were merely there, and he began to know how far he'd come by how many he had left behind, no longer in sight when he turned and looked back.

The next figure ahead was a stout woman wearing a fringed scarf over perhaps three layers of clothing. Vincent slowly moved toward her with puzzlement, caution, and some uneasiness. Then he recognized her and moved more quickly, calling, “Dolores!”

She'd been stern mistress of the Commons when he'd been a boy. She'd collapsed one evening, coughing blood, and had died before Father could be summoned. Afterward Father had commented that it'd most likely been a massive hemorrhage and there would have been no way to help her anyway. But Vincent had tried, shoved aside a bench and held her so she could breathe more easily, seized by her terror and astonishment so that it almost had become his but not quite, he was not lost and frozen with it as she was, for he had a choice whereas she had none. Yet sharing it, a part of it, open to it: not turning away within or even trying to. The choice, the acceptance, made it bearable. Letting it be his own and pass through, pass away.

The first time he'd actually touched death as it was happening.

He'd felt the life go out of her and something within her pulling away, beyond where he could hold. Her eyes, staring into his, had suddenly gone fixed and empty and he'd sagged away, knowing she didn't need support anymore. Afterward he'd tried to describe the experience to Father, who'd then been silent for a long, long time, days it seemed. And as far as Vincent could remember, Father had never mentioned it again.

Dolores, always a strict and rather forbidding woman, smiled, showing missing teeth, and began to kneel. But Vincent stood back, deeply upset and shocked, wondering suddenly if, in trying to help, he'd somehow done the wrong thing and was responsible for her death.

Dolores' gap toothed smile dimmed. She straightened and folded her arms, scowling ― a far more familiar expression ― and directed, “Well, get on with it, boy: it took me long enough to make up my mind to come this far. Or do you have to have everything spelled out for you?”

Vincent asked, “Was it my fault?”

“Got no interest in fault. Get it over with. But I will say, a woman keeling over, spitting blood, most boys your age would be backing off so fast you couldn't see 'em for the dust. I appreciate it, that you tried. But I was too far gone. It was time.”

Because it was plainly expected of him, Vincent reached out and, feeling he was taking rather a liberty, touched Dolores' head. And she was gone.

Moving on along the path, Vincent reflected that it seemed not to be only those he'd killed who stood as sentries either along the path or farther away. Perhaps it was deaths he'd experienced, touched, held... and, in some unknown fashion, taken into himself. Accepted, if not the responsibility or the blame, at least the fact of it, that someone had died while he was touching them....

And so what was the difference between those near the path and those who were distant? He started moving more slowly, trying to discern faces. But they were too far off.

The next person waiting by the path was some distance ahead, so it was awhile before Vincent could make out any details. A short, dark, muscular man, perhaps 30, with curly hair, a wide mouth that would laugh easily or look very grim if pulled tight in anger. Rather embarrassed-looking eyes, cast down, lifting only for short glances.

“It was just a matter of business, y'know,” the man remarked reasonably. “Let them broads get outta line, first thing, zip, you're outta business and looking at the wrong end of a whole lotta hard time. Y'know how it is. Nothing personal.”

When Vincent had last seen him, he'd been brandishing a cut throat razor and Vincent had swatted him away from Catherine, who was sprawled at the foot of the stairs of an empty brownstone.

“Not like I really done nothing,” the man whined, risking a glance. “Not then, when you caught me, anyways. So: you gonna be the sort to hold a grudge? Or can you and me sorta shake hands, like, and that's it?”

Vincent looked at the man, who was hopefully going down on one knee but not quite sure enough to bend his head. As the man swiped a nervous wrist across his mouth, Vincent came to feel that though he in no way liked the man and thought it probable the man had deserved legal execution many times over, Vincent didn't hate him. Vincent wasn't really very interested in him at all, since he was no longer any threat to Catherine. So he tapped the man on the head and forgot about him almost as instantly as he vanished because those ahead, he knew even from a distance.

Nearly all of them, he'd killed for Catherine, to protect her. In chronological sequence. Standing only a few yards apart, at the side of the path. Quite a number of them. But Vincent didn't spend time reflecting on that but dismissed them almost wholesale, casually ― almost as impersonally as he'd killed them. They were nothing to him: only threats to Catherine by an unfortunate convergence of circumstances. And no longer even that. The faces registered, but almost automatically, and then were gone. Vincent began hurrying, wanting to get through with them, past them. And then he stopped short, because standing perhaps ten feet from the path and smiling at him benevolently was Paracelsus.

“Ah, no,” Paracelsus commented, as if responding to something already said. “You and I have not even begun to be done with one another. Did you enjoy my little surprise anniversary celebration? You must learn to be more generous with yourself, not hoard and waste your uniqueness.”

Stay on the path!

Caught by the abrupt command, Vincent rocked forward, then back. Paracelsus was out of his reach. Not quite near enough to strike at. Near enough to taunt.

Paracelsus continued, “My namesake was a seer, famed for his prophecies. I also try to see beyond the obvious and into the twisting maze of possibilities. Wouldn't you like to know what I foresee for you? I have such plans for you, Vincent! Such dreams!”

Stay on the path!

Vincent was a moment finding his balance again. He was panting, long canines bared, and gave voice to his frustration at being unable to get at the man.

Stay on the path!

Stiffly, Vincent began to move on, not turning his back for an instant, feeling the hair stiff and bristled all down his spine. But he went, and dismissed several of Gabriel's guards who'd been unlucky enough to get in his way, hurrying again, and then stopped because the man he was confronting was the gaunt white haired, black clad hunter Gabriel had dispatched into the tunnels.

Standing at ease, the hunter neither smiled nor knelt, but calmly surveyed Vincent as though appreciating the chance to finally see him plainly. He asked, “What's your name?” sounding merely curious.

“Vincent.”

“I thought so,” commented the man, and disappeared, untouched.

Vincent turned away slowly, trying to understand, then forgot the hunter because there was a small woman in pale blue jogging attire already kneeling at the side of the path only a little distance ahead.

When he came near, he almost reached out and then was afraid and clasped his hands tight together in a desperate attempt to remember not to reach out, not to touch, because then she'd be gone. He went to his knees before her in the dusty path.

“Catherine.”

“It's all right,” she said gently. “I won't break, you know.”

And reaching out, she evaded his attempt to duck and lifted back his hood.

Her hand brushed his cheek. And she was still there, kneeling, smiling at him. Her face more lined than he remembered it, fuller, no longer a girl's face: a woman's. But the same smile that tugged one side of her mouth slightly more than the other, the same changeable eyes that sometimes seemed green, sometimes grey....

Setting hands on thighs, she pushed to her feet and held out her hand in invitation. Rising too, still afraid she'd vanish, he lifted his hand slightly, and she took it, fingers curling into his palm with a remembered warmth. And she was still there, tilting her head to smile into his eyes, then leaning casually against him, so it became easy to release her hand and put an arm around her shoulders, and her hair still smelled not quite like grass and the faintest hint of perfume, never much, never enough to be more than a spice to the warm scent of her underneath it all. And the contact told him she was very happy and loved him very much.

“Come on,” Catherine said, turning and tugging at him, who couldn't have budged the big chair in his chamber, much less him, except that he gave with the tug easily, willingly, moving with her as she led off at an angle into the grass. There was no sudden warning to stay on the path; nor would he have heeded it. “I came to show you the way home.”

*****

Catherine's home was the turret of an otherwise ruined castle.

On such flat terrain, it should have been visible for miles. Yet it came as a complete surprise.

They'd been strolling along, Vincent overwhelmed with happiness and lost in the recovery of his sense of her, her presence. They'd been talking ― or, rather Catherine had been talking: Vincent was beyond conversation, beyond words at all ― of Jacob, cheerfully finding differences and similarities as compared to Vincent himself and to her own father. And Vincent, casually looking up, had found the tower there before them, brooding over the twilit plain.

When he checked, Catherine looked first to him, then to the tower, and commented, “Home.”

“Yours?”

“His,” Catherine admitted, brushing at strands of hair a breeze had flicked across her cheek and nose. “That you call ’the Other.' All this is his. But I'm not exactly a guest, either: I keep it for him. His chatelaine. Come on: I want to show you the view.”

Pulled forward, Vincent saw no door. Not even trodden grass, to indicate where people might come and go. But stepping away from him, Catherine determinedly set her shoulder against a section of masonry. It gave a little, opening a crack. That was enough to bring Vincent forward to set both palms against it for a steady push. It grated back, opening into a bare, dusty entry hall ― it was too large to be called a foyer ― lined with carved tables to either side guarded by standing suits of armor. Supports for pennant staffs projected at intervals along the walls; but all were empty. So were the wall sconces, that stood lower.

At the far end of the entry hall was a set of ornate doors sheathed in some silver metal with a dull lustre. Sculpted hunting scenes and ornamental curlicues framed the panels. The doors seemed vaguely familiar to Vincent ― perhaps a picture in a book, or some medieval stronghold toured in one of Diana's tapes. But that didn't seem quite right either....

Arriving before the doors, Catherine slapped the boss of a carved flower and was answered by a whine from beyond. A second later, the doors pulled back, revealing a clean and wholly modern elevator.

“He doesn't use it,” Catherine remarked, as they entered. “He's stubborn about things like that. I think he feels it spoils the overall consistency and the harmonious air of general ruin. But if I want it, I've got it, so I have nothing to complain about.” As the doors slid closed, she pushed a button labeled P and the elevator began smoothly to rise.

“You live here, then?” Vincent asked hesitantly. “With him?”

Hesitant in turn, she glanced up, clearly deciding to how phrase a delicate matter. “Not with him...not exactly. He's given it over to me and lets me do whatever I please with it. I keep it for him. In trust.”

“Then you're alone here?”

“Well, not precisely that, either. He comes. When it's suppertime, though that's arbitrary: whenever I get hungry, that's suppertime, and...well, it really would be easier to show you, I guess.”

She hit another button labeled R and an instant later, the doors opened on a huge dining hall: all carved dark woods and candelabras and chandeliers, with an immense dining table down the middle of it. When Catherine stepped out of the elevator, all the candles suddenly sprouted flame, fire puffed from logs in the vast hearth, and all the shadows pushed back. Large, dark portraits on the walls were partly overhung by colorful banners and pennants suspended from staffs or hung like tapestries.

It was like what the Great Hall would have been, if there'd ever been the money or the time for such extravagance.

Only two chairs were at the table ― one at either end, separated by perhaps 20 feet of polished mahogany ― and before them, place settings of flowered porcelain and silver and crystal. Only two.

Watching him survey the hall, Catherine commented, “He's a traditionalist,” in an amused, forgiving tone. “But the food's always good, and I never have to wash the dishes...?”

Aware of Catherine's eyes following him, Vincent went to stand behind the nearest of the great chairs, running a hand lightly across the carvings and over the spindles at the edges. This would be his chair, then ― the Other.

“Is it all like this?” he asked quietly, not looking at her. “Traditional? Does he ask you each night, at dinner... if you will marry him?”

“No,” Catherine replied, soberly, gently. “That was taken care of long ago. I accepted him. Although,” she added, in a more lively voice, “we're still getting used to each other, and it's not always perfectly harmonious, I admit. For one thing, the man has no conversation. I've gotten him to loosen up a little ― he talks a little now, hadn't you noticed? ― and sometimes he comes when it's not strictly, ceremonially necessary. Simply being sociable, like an ordinary person: not doing anything in particular. He's getting better about that. Sometimes he'll even listen while I read, although I've never seen him crack a book on his own, the two of you are different that way. Most of his time, he spends hunting the wraiths on the plain. Always bringing back trophies for me to admire. He leaves them in the entry hall. And they slowly vanish and reappear on the plain again, to be hunted again. Over and over. He does mean it well, as a gift....” She looked around vaguely. “Come on, let's go on upstairs. I've made a dent in that, anyhow.”

As they returned to the elevator, Vincent asked, with constraint, “What do you call him?” and Catherine glanced up at him, surprised.

“What do you think?”

“By...tradition, it should be Beast. La Bête.” The whole idea was unwelcome, unanticipated. It depressed him.

“Well, to be truthful, I don't have all that much occasion to call him anything. After all, how many people are there I could be talking to? And whenever I'm talking about him to somebody else, he, him, his, the usual run of pronouns, seem to communicate perfectly well. But that's not really what you asked, I know....  I call him Vincent,” Catherine concluded simply, as the elevator doors opened... on Catherine's apartment.

And yet, not quite. The walls were stone. Where windows should have been, there were what, for an instant, he took for drapes before realizing that they were tapestries. To one side, a TV and a stereo receiver, which he'd been mostly unaware of as part of her apartment's furnishings but recognized, now that he saw them again. Her two steel and glass etageres displaying her collection of crystal eggs and other small treasures... one of which he'd blundered into and broken, but restored here. Her absurdly small facing couches. And off to his right, the shut, louvered doors of her bedroom, which he'd also broken, whole again....

It was almost, but not quite, like looking in from the terrace. And as Catherine stepped from the elevator and the lights came on, on walls and cabinets and small tables, Vincent froze. Out of habit, as much as anything. She turned and looked back at him, arms folded, not unsympathetic. Not encouraging. Merely waiting.

After a moment, when he still hadn't moved ― the patient elevator doors waiting, as true elevator doors never did ― she said quietly, “Vincent, this is your own place. Everything in it is yours. I'm only the interior decorator. You have the right to be here. Please: come in.”

So, slowly and uncertainly, he did. Two steps. And nothing happened. Nothing changed. Nothing broke or fell.

Swinging away toward the kitchen alcove, Catherine remarked, “I'll get us some tea. Darjeeling. I told you: I can have anything I want.”

“Except life,” he said, probably too softly to be heard, looking around, not moving.

From long occupancy, the place was suffused with her scent, as he'd known it would be. Less like being in a room than somehow being inside her. An intrusion. In spite of himself, he glanced toward the louvered doors. Then, deliberately, he went toward them and pushed them back.

The bed was his. Large, covered with several layers of patchwork quilts, suede pillows balanced where the bed was set slightly into the wall. From the room, a cool draft flowed out, as from an open window. But there were no windows.

“He likes it that way,” Catherine commented equably, coming up behind him. “I generally make it warmer when I'm by myself, but I forgot when I got up because I knew you'd be coming....” Suddenly she threw her arms around him from behind, her face hard against his back. “Oh, Vincent. You came.” She began to cry.

So of course, though he didn't entirely understand, he turned and took her in his arms and held her close, sheltering her, until she at last lifted her tear streaked face again and told him, “It's all right, it just catches me at times. All those awful months, I knew you'd come. And you did.”

“Too late.”

“No: just right. Believe that, Vincent! Look at me,” she directed, standing away, holding out both arms and revolving for his inspection. “Am I some kind of dime-store angel, all gauze and filters, floating around at the edges of your mind? Always out of reach? Untouchable, sacrosanct, never to be approached too closely? Is this Saint Catherine, my dear Saint Vincent?”

No, he realized. She was a woman who'd suffered and borne a child in dread and pain and seen it taken from her without ever having held it ― he'd known instantly that Gabriel had lied about that; a woman who'd lain down in a sandy cave and loved something that then wasn't even remotely human, and faced him afterward without recriminations, only with smiling love and patience when he hadn't the grace to remember it or, at first, even her name....

Though never her face, he'd never forgotten that, or that he loved her to distraction, to madness, to silence, and beyond but must never reach out as a demand, never take, never fully touch....

“Exactly the right time,” Catherine insisted, fiercely staring into his eyes. “Sooner, and we both would have died. And Jacob. That horrible man, that Gabriel, would have killed us all rather than let us go. With me like that, in the final stages of labor, even you couldn't have brought us away, Vincent: we all would have died. And if you'd come any later, I would have been gone. Dead. And you would never have known about Jacob and that horrible man would still have him. Our son. And you'd have had only that damned idealized dime store angel to keep your tower for you all the rest of your life. You took me safe into yourself, everything I was in that moment, loving you so, and so afraid for you, because I knew you didn't understand. Just in time, Vincent. You came....” She swiped at her eyes, two sharp motions.

“Come on.” Reaching to clasp his wrist, Catherine drew him easily forward. “The tea's getting cold.”

*****

Some time later, as they sat together ― she on a couch, he on the floor in front of her, feeling her hands stir occasionally in his hair―he asked softly, “Are you real?”

“’What is real?' asked the rabbit, as they―” When he shifted to look around, the motion an unspoken reproach, she patted his shoulder. “That's not frivolous: that's true. It takes love to make somebody real.”

But that wasn't what Vincent wanted to know. “Are you real?”

She drew a finger down his forehead, down the fur of his nose, countering, “Are you?”

“Sometimes,” he responded, smiling slightly in spite of himself. “Some times more than others. Now... I don't know. This place: it's an amalgam, a collage, an analogue. Some pieces of it, I recognize. Other parts are scraps of legend, story, myth. A dream, perhaps. Or a vision. Is it real?”

“Are you?” she said again. “Because it's the same question. It's as real as you are. The heart's always an unknown territory.... Did you wonder if it was real when you blessed and forgave what had been between you and the people along the path and let yourself be free of them?”

“No.... Then, it didn't matter. Then, it wasn't you.”

Her eyes smiled, then grew pensive. “It was before I met you that I wasn't real. Every time I chose you, chose our love, I got more real.... And once you become real, you never can be unreal again.... That's true, you know? You don't: you can't just accept it ― that I'm here. And always will be. Forever.”

He shook his head. “I have been so long without you. So ― I have been much alone. It is always difficult, then, to know, and feel, that anything is real. Whether Below or Above. None of it touches me. I cannot even be with the children anymore. They feel it, that they are not real to me. It grieves them. And I cannot bear it, to feel them so grieved for me and for the loss of what they should be to me, wish to be to me, and are not. Cannot be: for they are only children. In such lack myself, I cannot reach out as I should, as others deserve of me....”

“I know,” said Catherine, and kissed his hair, and put her arms around his neck, leaning against his back. “But now you'll know that the tower stands, and that I'm keeping it for you, and you can never lose me, or yourself, ever again. And maybe then―”

“But I have. Already. The bowers....”

“I know. I knew.”

He felt her sadness, compassion, no blame or shock, and turned within her embrace to look into her eyes, see her expression. Which was calm, untroubled.

“Wasn't there,” she suggested, “something you wanted to ask me?”

He looked down, pushing a spread hand back and forth through the strands of her carpet. “For... some time, a little time, as it was only beginning .... Then, at the start, it seemed to me … that you came to me. That we loved, and were one. But that could not be: there was still the cage.”

“I did. We did.” As he regarded her doubtfully, she went on, “You had forgotten. I kept it for you, to give it to you whenever it became possible. You didn't want it, Vincent. Today's the very first time you ever wanted to remember―”

“But the cave was a week ago.”

“Which cave? Or is there more than one? Time's a funny thing. So is memory. It can run backward and change itself. You know that now.”

Slowly, Vincent nodded. Their return from the deeps, that he'd recounted to Diana, it had changed like that.

Catherine said, “You always had a right to it. But I couldn't reach you until then, to give it to you: the memory of what we'd shared. But there's a Samhain of the soul, too ― that makes the walls between the worlds grow thin. Between the dead and the living, past and present. In that cage, you'd gone deep within yourself and... were open to it, no longer refusing. I could reach you then, to give you what I'd held in trust. And rock and all, fear and all, it was beautiful, Vincent. We were beautiful. Now: are you going to ask me if that was real?”

“No. I knew it was. And so knew I had to seek out whatever stood so close, insisting on my notice.... I wish...you could have given it to me at another time, Catherine. I wish that could have been separate. Not part... of what happened. It was very ugly.”

“Things happen when they become possible. You know that. When it's time, it's time. And maybe that's when you needed it most. So the rest couldn't become altogether ugly to you. So you couldn't think of one without the other. No pun intended.”

With an effort, he answered her smile.

Twisting her legs under her, she scrambled out from behind him. “Enough of this glooming around. Let's go for a walk in the gardens.”

He thought about the vistas of unbroken grass. “There are gardens?”

“There are now!”

*****

The gardens were dark and soft with rustling foliage and the scent of roses. Tall green hedges surrounded them. Clean, pebbled paths wound among terraced beds of roses ― chiefly white and red, but other colors too: deep pink, and yellow, and impudent little climbing roses, with cascading scarlet blossoms the size of a thumbnail, that invaded and draped the hedge whenever the two were close enough for the roses to grab and hold. All surfaces silvered as by moonlight.

“Like the park? Or... like a dream?” Catherine inquired, plainly knowing what he was going to say and happy that they could have dialogues within dialogues, private hints and amusements.

“Better,” he said, because that was what came next, the proper reply. She laughed and shoved her arm more deeply through his and they went on.

In spite of her gladness and the garden's beauty, it was a conditional and equivocal place; and her company conditional too, only lent him. He felt the dark beyond the hedges, the wilderness of wraith haunted grass, and felt within himself a spreading melancholy.

“Do you like it here?” he asked her presently. “Are you content? You have no work.”

She swung around, surveying him with plain indignation. “There speaks a man: do you have the least notion what it takes to keep up a place this size? Even if all you have to do is imagine something for it to be there? Don't you think imagination is work?”

“I withdraw the question. The one question. But not the other. Are you happy here, Catherine?”

“It's where I belong. Away from here, I couldn't exist. And wouldn't want to. Think about it: isn't this where you always wanted me to be? At last, and quite literally, safe in your love?”

“I tried... to want whatever you wanted. For yourself. I was not always successful.”

“I know,” she responded dryly, and with a smile. “And I have other work, too. There's Vincent,” she said thoughtfully, and Vincent knew she was speaking of the Other. “Naturally we're devoted to one another, but we're not always precisely friendly about it. The differences still run so deep. He's so... downright. Things have to be absolutely one way or else he figures, then and there, that they're absolutely the other. We argue a lot. Or at least, I argue, and he doesn't walk out, right away. Like you and Diana.”

Vincent said nothing for quite a long while.

There was an arch in the hedge. Passing under it, they came into a further garden whose flowers were lilies of all colors and shades. Tall and graceful, swaying among their clustered leaves. Topiary birds spread wings above them.

“Father,” Vincent remarked finally, “does not approve. He considers it unseemly. And oversoon.”

Catherine made an unladylike noise. “If we'd waited for Father's approval, we'd still be seeing each other every six weeks or so, on business, at some threshold and wouldn't have progressed to holding hands for at least another 50 years. Like him and Margaret, may she rest in peace.... I couldn't help noticing that Father had her taken back to her house and let her be buried Above. As you did me. Why, Vincent?”

“Because, although he loved her, she was not of us. Her life was Above. And so it was fitting that her death should be, too. Yes,” he answered her question while it was still unasked.

She nodded and was quiet a while, strolling beside him. Then she said abruptly, “What would Father consider suitable? That you settle down to change diapers and mend pipes and go on alone, Below, as though nothing at all had happened? As though you hadn't changed?”

“I believe that he does,” Vincent confessed. “But I cannot. I have disappointed him greatly.”

“When I left Dad’s firm, he never quite understood why. He was disappointed, too. But he accepted it because it was what I wanted. Needed. Had to do. Father will come around.”

Vincent pushed aside the downswept wing of a topiary bird to let Catherine pass, then released it.

“Perhaps,” he responded sadly, unconvinced. “I only feel his disappointment. It is true, what he said, Catherine: I have been neglecting my responsibilities.”

“Show me somebody who lives for their responsibilities and I'll show you a drudge, a robot, or a saint. And you're none of the above. Where's the joy in that? Or the hope? Father may not understand, but we do: Though lovers be lost, love shall not.”

She waited. But those words, her voice, brought back the rooftop to him and her death. He shook his head and then, when she still waited, turned away.

“No. I cannot.”

“Yes, you can. You must!” As they stood together, Catherine gripped his arm and shook it, staring up into his face. “You held onto that poem, those lines, when you could barely speak at all. Repeated them, over and over, for three days, you were that desperate for me to hear them. Your gift to me. To me, Vincent: because you were certain you were going to die and what, oh, you dear man, what you were most concerned about was that the loss not cripple me. That I not go on grieving forever. It's the same thing, don't you see? The very same thing. On that rooftop, I told you, and you answered me. Answer me now! Let me give to you that same gift you gave to me: besides the memory of how we were, together, the only gift I can give you now. Answer me!”

Even in his mind, the remembered words scalded him. But because she demanded it of him and would not be denied, he made himself say it, though it was barely even a whisper: “And Death shall have no dominion.”

“Right!” Glad, triumphant, Catherine squeezed his arm tightly. “Love itself lives, whether we do or not. And it's not seemly, doesn't come only at appropriate times or go when it gets to be a nuisance. It just is. It comes. When it's time. Its time, not ours. For Father, it was on a street corner, spotting a total stranger. Was that seemly? And then he took up with Grace, and afterward Jessica. Was that oversoon?”

Drawing him into motion again, around a curve of the path, Catherine went on, ”What does he expect of you? And can you afford to even try to live up to that anymore, his expectations? Or even yours, the way they used to be? That you never get tired, or lonely, or want anything just for yourself?”

“I don't know if I can afford it. I only know I cannot do it anymore. If ever I could. I have tried. But I cannot continue like that.... Catherine,” he suddenly found himself saying, “may I stay? Here? With you?”

“You can,” she replied softly, and he noticed the distinction her words made, between may and can. “If you want to.”

“It all seems such a weariness to me. There have been times, not a few, when I thought it would be much simpler to die.”

“Or better if you had never been born?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes, still. There is so much pain, Catherine, and I cannot shut it out anymore. It all comes in, comes in.... I don't want to go back.”

Though he hadn't thought about it, that was another small private dialogue between them: he realized it the instant the words were out. It was what she'd said to him when she'd fled to the sanctuary of the tunnels, and of his love, when the grief from her father's death had become unbearable to her.

Very softly, she admitted, as he had then, “I don't want you to go back.... Oh, I was forgetting: I was going to show you the view!”

“You have no windows, Catherine.”

“What I have is better. Come on, let me show you.”

She began hurrying, dance skipping sideways along the path, pulling him along.

*****

When they returned to her apartment, Catherine pushed aside a tapestry, revealing a large mirror, ornately framed. Then she picked off the coffee table what looked like a video controller and started pushing buttons. In the mirror, the room's reflection faded into a slow scanning, from a great height, of the dim plain.

“Elliot had a setup like this,” Catherine commented over her shoulder. “But mine's better, because I can pick anything to look at that I want.”

When she looked around expectantly, Vincent obediently responded, “Is this Shallott, then? It has only one tower.”

She smiled, then turned back to the mirror, pushing buttons, remarking absently, “There are more. Any time I want them.... Damn.” The mirror's view remained the same. She pushed more buttons without visible effect. “Sometimes, I find myself wishing for Mouse. This controller....”

“I... have had some slight contact with them. Might I look at it?”

She passed it to him and he settled on a couch to study the device, trying to determine which buttons controlled the chief variables, like on and off and the view presented, and which were for fine adjustments like sharpness, depth, closeness. They were labeled with incomprehensible combinations of letters, like CR/LT, MF, and ROND. Shape and position, he thought, might be clues....

“What is that plain, Catherine? It comes from no imagining of mine. I think of the Elysian Fields, and the twilight place where Aeneas spoke to the shades of his shipmates who had died. Also, it's uncomfortably like Lewis' view of hell, although with fewer buildings.... But it's no image I have seen.”

When he looked up, Catherine was grinning broadly, plainly at a secret joke. “It's Kansas! You don't get it. Never mind.” She sighed.

“The Wizard of Oz. L. Frank Baum. Judy Garland was in the movie, pretending to be younger than she was....”

The grin returned, widened: as though Catherine were both surprised and immensely pleased with him. “And who else?”

Vincent thought back. That tape, Diana had rented to show him on Christmas Eve, after the usual festivities were over Below: except unconscious, after the explosion of the Compass Rose, the first time he'd spent a whole evening in her loft. Above. With films so new to him, the experience had seemed entirely magical. In retrospect, it still did.

“Ray Bolger played the Scarecrow. And... Jack Haley, Senior, the Tinman. And Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion. As well as the farmhands,” he finished, rather proud of himself.

Catherine applauded. “And the Wicked Witch of the―”

“Margaret Hamilton. I am told she was a kind woman in private life. But unfortunate in her features. She enacted her role very well. Very effectively.”

“And the wizard?”

Vincent tried, working over the controller, but finally had to admit he couldn't bring the man's name to mind. For some reason, that bothered him, saddened him.

“But the dog was named ’Toto.'”

“Half a bonus point for that, then. Oh, there, there, Vincent: you've got it. Don't touch a thing, that's it!”

Looking up, Vincent found, within the mirror's gilt frame, something akin to a very large, grainy black-and-white television picture, marred by zigzags, sudden flips, and “snow.”

Looking into Father's face. Extreme close up.

Without glasses, Father's eyes looked exposed and anxious. His expression was grim, perhaps angry. It was strange to see Father from such close range, as it seemed, and yet be able to feel nothing from him, not even presence, especially when he was so plainly agitated about something. As Vincent wondered what had happened to upset Father so, the image blurred and there was a loud buzzing sound. No: growling.

The view pulled back and turned. Vincent saw himself, hair matted, gathering in the slack of the shackle, plainly measuring it out, eyes flicking every few seconds toward where, apparently, Father stood. Trying to figure how to make the shackle stretch. Or give.

“He's not too fond of Father,” Catherine observed in a cool, judicious voice. “Which seems only reasonable, since Father's never treated him anything like fairly....”

Vincent set the controller aside and turned away from the image. “Catherine. Is this fair of you?”

“Oh, look: Mouse,” Catherine commented, unheeding. “My, doesn't he look upset. It's only a picture, Vincent. Showing no more than you already knew. Even a magic mirror can reflect only what truth is set before it.... Is that Diana? The reception's so bad―”

Vincent had to look, then. Diana, hair roughly yanked back and rubber banded, was sitting on her heels in front of Father and Mouse, intently saying something to what slouched against the far wall. No words came through, only the steady snarling noise. Diana gestured, open-handed, an appeal, then tipped her head to say something to Father, who managed a stiff nod. Looking around again, Diana suddenly jerked away from some unseen charge or swat and toppled backward. The image went into a series of flips, making it impossible to see anything clearly. When the image steadied, Diana was balanced again, still talking, still reaching out.

Vincent was desperately ashamed.

“A bit more public than what we had to put up with.” Catherine's tone was objective, like one noting evidence. “But at least, this time, you'd had a chance to make some preparations. And they have some idea, now, what they're dealing with. I'm not worried about him. He can talk, when he feels like it. So they'll take the shackle off. Let him walk free in the tunnels.

And with something to hunt,  he's happy. After wraiths, he'll probably find bowers an interesting change of pace. He doesn't like them any better than you do: hates to be caged. He'll enjoy hunting them ― no doubts, no hesitation, no guilt. And it will be a long time before he runs out of bowers and starts looking around.... And probably he won't hurt Diana. Much. And he's really quite attractive in his own way. Maybe she'll come to accept him.... He'll be all right. He survives. And it won't bother him, the way people will look at him. It's what he expects.”

Vincent had studied far enough to know what button ought to turn the mirror off. He depressed it, and after a moment's fading, a view of the opposite wall returned.

There was silence between them.

Looking at the floor, Vincent said at last, “Catherine. I must go back.”

“I know.” Abandoning both the determined gaiety and the judicious detachment, she'd dropped onto a small hassock, her head in her hands, face concealed by the fall of straight, soft hair the color of dark honey.

“Because I did. When it was time, when my grieving was done, I went where my life was, where I had to go, and you were very kind about it all. Not disappointed. Or so you said.... I'm disappointed. Because I may never be able to see you, talk with you again like this.”

“Is it... possible to visit?”

“Not without the same preliminaries. That much pain, desolation. So deep a withdrawal, so nearly into death.... I think,” Catherine said bleakly, looking up above a mask of spread fingers, “it would probably kill you, to go through anything like that again. How could I ever wish that for you? No. I'll treasure this time. But not wish it back, not at a price like that. Because the bond's the other way now, Vincent: what hurts you hurts me. Does it ever! So remember that: my dear love, be happy. As much as you can. However you can. Love Jacob for me. And know I'm here, and still keeping the tower for you, and know I love you and care what becomes of you and....”

He stood and opened his arms, and Catherine flung herself into them so hard they toppled backward onto the couch.

*****

They went back along the path together and it was no nearer dawn, no nearer night, the same thin seam of light at the sky's edge, too pale to cast any shadows before them.

No one stood either along the path or in the distance. Nothing disturbed their companionship except the fact that both knew it was the last walk they'd ever take together.

At one point, he commented, “I told Narcissa that I sought understanding. And would be content with that. She knew me better. And warned me against greed. And reminded me that I was born Above. Do you understand that, Catherine?”

“Maybe... to remind you that you have alternatives. That everything isn't Below. That you have a right to be Above, if you want to be, no matter what Father thinks or says.”

She kicked a stone, high away into the grass.

Presently Catherine began talking on about Jacob again and Vincent was pleased to have small stories, small adventures to recount to her about their son, demonstrating how loved and safe he was, Below.

Pausing, he asked her, “Are you dead?” and she grinned at him, enjoying being frustrating.

“Eighty percent of a woman's charm is in her mystery. Besides, you know the rules: that's somebody else's story. You never get to know any but your own.”

Then she reached out and pinched him. Hard. And demanded, “Was that real enough for you? Is that how dead people pinch?”

Then she ran when he would have pinched her back, and shrieked with laughter when, inevitably, he caught her.

Eventually, they went on.

The journey was neither long nor short. Long enough for the fact of their parting to settle between them, both a distance and a connection, for it would be they, and no others, who'd be parted. Short enough that the sorrow did not have time to harden into constraint and flowed gently between them: another connection.

Before them, beyond where the path disappeared into the grass, a deeper darkness stood upright in the air. Perfectly black. In the shape of a man. More or less.

As they came to the end of the path, Catherine stopped, turned. And then, without need of anything said, they embraced one another. Vincent felt the contact as a pain, the aching of a scar. But it was a sweet pain he wanted to neither evade nor reject, but claimed as his own and his right; and it was a scar that spoke of the mercies of time and the sure, slow healing of wounds: a scar he'd carry willingly as long as he lived.

At last Catherine stood on her toes to kiss him gently, solemnly. She stepped back, still holding his hand for a moment, then releasing it.

“Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know. And since you're a wise man's son, there can be nothing to fear, Vincent. No reason not to go forward. My dear love, it's time.”

Advancing to touch the shadow, Vincent found it cold and hard as glass. And as impenetrable. He looked around at Catherine. “What now? Do I click my heels―”

“―three times and repeat ’There's no place like home'? Not exactly. That's why I had to come. You let him take control freely. But he'll be less willing to let it go. I'll have to talk to him.”

Going past, she stood, hands on hips, confronting the shadow, looking very slight and small against it. And Vincent thought the dark, maned head turned slightly, almost infinitesimally, to regard her.

“Vincent, do you really want to be stuck there? With Father? Always?” she asked the shadow. “Do you want to mend pipes and fix doors and try to teach the children about Shakespeare? I've made a garden, Vincent. A different one, one you've never seen. And the controller is working again.” She waggled a hand urgently behind her. As Vincent clasped it, she continued, “And I miss you. Do you think I enjoy having nobody but a lot of dead people to talk to? And talking to you is always a surprise― I never know what you're going to say. Or if you're going to answer me at all, or walk off in that injured silence.... It's almost suppertime, Vincent. Do you want me to have to eat all by myself?”

The shadow moved then and took the hand Catherine offered it. And, shoved or pulled, Vincent moved into it, through it.

*****

And collapsed into yellow lantern light and toward the sand of the cave.

Father and Mouse both stood back. But Diana lunged forward fast enough to more or less catch him, ease his falling at least, so that they ended with his upper body across her lap.

Her intensity ignited along all his nerves but didn't hurt, passed through because he wasn't clenched against it. The fire of contact only made him know that, beyond question, she was real. And therefore he was, too.

“Babe, babe, it's okay, it's okay now.” More sharply, she demanded, “Get me some of that water, yeah, okay. He's okay, you can give it to me. Because I goddam well know him, that's how! Just give me―”

A wet cloth touched his forehead, began stroking carefully down his face. And he realized he was terribly thirsty. The next instant, the rim of a cup was against his mouth and he hitched up and shifted to swallow, reaching to support the cup, then reaching with it for more.

“Not too much, not all at once,” Diana advised, and Vincent let her take the cup from his hand and sank back against her again, feeling strengthless and inert, as after days of fever.

“But I brought water,” he thought or said, puzzled.

The cloth came back, patting along the line of his jaw, cooling his neck.

“Well, sometime early on, it seems you had a little trouble getting the caps off. And then got mad and stuck your claws into the plastic, which wasn't too good for the plastic. And most of what was inside ran out.... I got your note. And you should have told me. Told me it'd got that bad. I thought we told each other stuff like that now. And don't say you didn't want to worry me, until you're in shape to hit back, okay? 'Cause I hate hitting a man who can't hit back. Oh, babe....”

She put her arms around him from behind and hugged him close, rocking with him a little from side to side. Solid, against him. And her fierce protectiveness as solid as her embrace.

It all came in: the jagged agitation and concern, uncertainty, explosive relief, poignant joy― all discordant, no source aware of the others. And all found a different harmonic within him, that reconciled their varied resonances. Intense, strong, but no longer hurtful because he had chosen them, accepted them.

And attending within, he found, not the continual, disruptive pacing of the Other but the bond conveying a sense of his son, warm in contented sleep: alive, from moment to moment, within him. A constant presence.

Father awkwardly lowered himself to kneel in the sand, taking one of Vincent's hands and patting it distractedly, saying, “Of all the execrable timing ever committed, mine is unarguably the worst. I am so sorry, Vincent. I'd never have brought that up if I'd realized.... Why in God's name didn't you tell me?”

From which Vincent concluded that Diana had. He twisted a little to look back and around at her. She only nodded tightly, and reached again for the cup, holding it for Mouse to pour full. Then she steadied it for Vincent to drink, advising, “Just a little, okay? Not...yeah, that's enough, now.”

He then could find the voice to ask, “How long?”

“It's just turned Monday, babe. Three or four days. Something like that.”

“Came Sunday,” Mouse announced anxiously, over Father's shoulder. “Early! But you didn't, you weren't―”

“Yeah, Mouse: I think he knows. So: is that it for now? Think it's over?”

“Yes. I'm back from Kansas and I love you all very much.” Since to him, it seemed a perfectly sensible thing to say, it surprised him when Diana burst out laughing and even Father made a small choked noise and looked as though he wanted to.

Father was still holding and patting Vincent's manacled right hand. Leaning nearer, Father said soberly, “Vincent, I know you've always tried. And so have I. And sometimes one is not always right, and must hope that others can be forgiving. Please, Vincent. Will you forgive me?”

And of course Father loved him: it was in Father's eyes, and touch, and all the memories stretching backward forever. Vincent wondered now how he could ever have imagined otherwise. If that love wasn't perfectly patient or understanding or unshadowed by pain, that only was because it was real. And whatever was loved into being real never could become unreal again.

Vincent pulled his hand slowly away and, concentrating on the action, a little hesitant within himself, rested spread fingers on Father's head. Father didn't vanish. Vincent hadn't really thought he would.

Father understood the action, what it meant, and looked away. Then, with Mouse's help, he started to get to his feet, commenting, “I believe you can use that key, now, Mouse.... And then my bag, please, for the wrist abrasions....”

Bending lower, Diana whispered, “Kansas?”

“Or South of Oz. North of Shangri La.”

But she didn't know the reference, and shook her head in incomprehension.

That was all right: he'd tell her that story. Another time.

A thought occurred to him: “Who played the wizard?”

She regarded him bemusedly. “Frank Morgan.”

Vincent thought about it. The name registered, fit. Yes. That was right. He was satisfied.

“Diana.”

“What?”

But saying her name hadn't been a question. And was, itself, an answer. Silent, he combed two fingers through her hair as it lay in thick curves over her shoulder. The strand he held against his cheek didn't smell of grass. Only the clean scent of shampoo. And herself. Different. As it should be.

He was filled with tenderness toward her.

He'd gone deep into the wilderness of his heart seeking advice and gotten none. And all the problems remained as they'd been: he still was no nearer knowing what to do about the bowers, or Father's just summary of his alienation from the world Below, or Paracelsus' further dark dreams.... But within himself he found a peace he had almost forgotten could exist. For he finally knew that Catherine was safe, and loved, and literally alive in his heart, if nowhere else, but where she'd been dead before; and all else with her.

Perhaps now he could rest. And be satisfied, content. And come home. And not merely and hopelessly try to continue, but begin.

When the Pipes Were Silent

Lena was in the nursery helping Mary and Livvy give the youngest children their morning baths when the news came over the pipes. Of course Lena didn't understand it — just more of the continual clattering she'd gotten used to — but the way both the older women straightened, put hands to their mouths, and stared at one another, ignoring little Luke flailing at his bathwater, told her right away that the news wasn't good. And right after that, the pipes went silent: something Lena could recall happening only maybe once or twice since she'd lived Below — each time, an emergency.

The women didn't pay any attention to her questions. They seemed to have forgotten about her, Livvy bending her head and just repeating, “Oh, oh, oh,” as though she'd been punched in the stomach and couldn't get her breath; Mary turning and going through the motions of finishing Luke's bath but just out of habit, because she was staring straight ahead.

“But what is it? What's happened?” Lena asked for maybe the third time, fastening her daughter's diaper.

“Oh, my God,” Livvy said, and started to cry. “I can't believe it. After all that looking. After how hard he tried. I saw him last week, just passing, and I believe it, that he hasn't slept or eaten scarcely anything in a month, two months, oh, Mary....”

Mary lifted Luke and placed him on the waiting towel, still staring. “He has Father. And Father will know what to say, what to do.”

“I'll never forget when Paul died, my first husband. And nobody knows what to say or what to do. Because there is nothing to say or do that would make the least difference. I remember how he was when everybody thought Devin had died. Barely spoke a word for almost a year, couldn't stand to be near anybody—”

“Before my time,” Mary rejoined shortly. “Father's right: leave him alone until he's ready to come to us. You don't die, Olivia. You only want to. Maybe think you have, or will. But you don't. Somehow, you continue. And he'll have us. When he's ready. Pass me that powder now, please.”

Lena looked from one woman to the other. They'd forgotten her. As though she was a child, not a grown woman too: 17 years old, with a daughter of her own. So: she'd find out for herself.

Lena dressed her daughter in a long, warm smock, settled her in the carrying sling, and quietly left the nursery chamber, seeking Father's chambers along the passageways she'd come to know almost as well as streets. Father would know and take the time to tell her, explain to her.

But Father's study was empty. And when she returned to the passage, she found Mouse there, leaning against a wall and sobbing.

“Mouse, what is it? What's wrong?” Lena asked, patting Mouse's arm. She liked Mouse. She always felt he was sort of an outsider, the way she was, and he was easy to be around: always cheerful, busy, always willing to tell her stories about Vincent although his way of talking took a little getting used to. But he loved Vincent, so it was worth the effort of figuring out what he meant. Because she loved Vincent too and felt she could never know enough about him.

“Can't go there,” Mouse said, face all twisted up, as if he hadn't heard her question.

“Can't go where, Mouse? Please, tell me what's happened. Is it Vincent? Is he hurt?” That idea hadn't occurred to her before: her heart slammed once, and then felt as if it had stopped.

Mouse rubbed a sleeve across his face. “Catherine's dead. His Catherine.” As she started past him, he grabbed her arm hard, scowling at her. “Didn't you hear? Can't go there. All quiet: Father said.”

“But I have to,” Lena explained, trying to tug her arm away. “This is Catherine, too.” She nodded toward her baby. “He loves her. It will help him to hold her, have—”

“Loves all of us. No help. Not the same. Catherine's dead. Can't go there now. Be quiet, don't bother him. Hurts him worse, if we hurt too, too close.” Mouse looked at her then, tears dripping off his chin. “You don't know. How it is, here. Go, now. Later, maybe.”

Lena stole away, several backward steps before she turned. Padding back toward the nursery, she whispered to her daughter, who was also Catherine, “I do too know, and he shouldn't be alone now. He needs somebody now, to be with him. Somebody he can talk about Catherine to, who won't mind, who'll listen and just be very quiet. They won't keep me out! They won't!”

She tried to reach his chamber several times during the day, but there was always somebody in the passage, both directions, standing sentry duty, keeping everybody away, no exceptions. All men. What did they understand about somebody like Vincent, who wasn't a man at all, always so gentle, so thoughtful, wouldn't even cheat on Catherine when Lena had practically climbed into his bed and begged him, though he and Catherine weren't having sex with each other. Though at first Lena hadn't believed it, Vincent didn't have sex with anybody; and, even more incredibly, never had.

And slowly Lena had come to understand how different he was. Not a man at all. Something better. He knew how disgusting sex was, how it ruined everything between people. He'd been right to send her away: she understood that now. She had to learn how to love purely, wanting nothing back, the way he did. Then she'd be worthy. Pure. Loved.

So it wasn't right to keep her away from him, because she was the only one who understood how special he was, like nobody else in the whole world. Only she knew why he needed a baby to touch and hold, a baby who wouldn't try to talk or feel bad, only be there, alive, expecting to be loved.

Because Vincent was Love itself. Lena knew that. And if he didn't have somebody to love, he'd just curl up and die.

Nobody else knew that. Only her. And she couldn't let that happen.

During the evening meal, she slipped out of the Commons and found nobody standing watch in the passage. Hurrying, afraid the sentries were just changing shifts, she ran to Vincent's chamber ...and found it empty and dark, except for his window.

She waited a little while, hoping he'd return. Laying the baby on his big chair, Lena straightened the quilts on his bed and patted the pillows so they'd look nice. Next to the bed, she found a book that had fallen onto the floor, pages folded and bent, and he never treated books like that on purpose. She smoothed out the folds as best she could and stood the book with the others on the ledge in front of his window. That meant climbing over his bed, so the quilts needed straightening again. And he still hadn't come. She looked around, trying to think what else she could do.

There was already water in the pitcher. But no candles were lit. She could do that. She chose two fat ones that would take all night to burn down, so no matter what time he came back, there would be light to greet him, so he'd know that somebody was thinking about him, somebody who cared enough to light them.

Shaking out the match, she noticed another book lying open on his table and bent to see if it was something to leave or something to put away.

It had lines in it, like a notebook, and his beautiful handwriting, all the round letters open, all the spiky letters flowing. The page she was looking at had dates—the last week. And next to each date, the same single word, in that elegant handwriting: Nothing. Over and over. Nothing.

The last line was today, and the date. The writing was smudged and crooked. It said: Last night I found Catherine

She left the diary where it was.

She waited a little longer, but then got scared that the sentries would catch her and ask her what she was doing there, touching his things. So she picked up Catherine and left, very quietly.

Father didn't eat in the Commons. Peeking into his study, she saw he was at his desk with a newspaper spread out in front of him. But he didn't seem to be reading it, because he had the earpiece of his glasses in his mouth and was looking off toward the balcony.

“Father?”

Father jerked and turned. “Oh, Lena. Come in, child. How can I help you?”

Timidly descending the stairs, Lena hitched Catherine higher in the sling and made sure her skirt was straight. “I don't need help. I want to help. But nobody will let me.”

Father rubbed his eyes wearily. “So do we all, child. We all want to help. But sometimes Vincent feels he has to be alone. And we must honor—”

“But that's wrong,” Lena interrupted. “That's the worst thing of all, to be alone. When everybody else is doing things, going on with the cooking and taking care of the babies and the deliveries and everything, watching it, and you're not a part of it, you're just watching. He mustn't feel that way. We have to make him know we love him, and he's not alone, never alone—”

Father slowly put on his glasses and looked at her over the tops. “Your concern does you credit, Lena. It is a tragedy. Our world will be a much darker place without her. And how Vincent will bear the loss, I cannot conceive. But I assure you, he does know we care. And that he has only to reach out for any of us to offer whatever of comfort is within us. But he must be the one to reach out. We must not crowd about him, demanding his attention, his concern, so that we may feel better in the belief that we are helping him.”

“Oh, I don't want anything for myself,” Lena blurted. “Just for him, to help him!”

“Ah, yes. I'm sure.... And how is, is Catherine? Today?” Without waiting for an answer, Father went on quickly, “Lena, I don't believe your daughter, dear though she is to all of us, would bring ease to any of us just now. Her name has become very difficult to say. Perhaps you might let Mary care for her when you're out in the tunnels, as—”

“No: I want to bring him Catherine, let him hold her. So everything isn't ending, don't you see, Father? That's what he needs now!”

Father just looked at her. He seemed tired. “Lena, Vincent has a habit of defying all prediction. Including mine. Really, I believe we must wait. For him, first to learn, and then to communicate to us, what it is that he needs. Please honor this request, Lena. Discuss it with Mary. I'm sure she can explain better than I.”

Aware she was being dismissed, Lena nodded politely and left without arguing any more. Privately, though, she confirmed her fear that, wise though Father was, he was still only another man and was too used to Vincent to really appreciate how wonderful and special he was.

She would follow what her own heart told her to do, no matter what Father said.

She thought about the places Vincent liked to go, where she might find him. The nearest was the bridge across the Abyss, the Whispering Gallery. But he wasn't there. Next, she walked down to the Outlook by the falls, where she'd first seen him, although it was a very long walk, with Catherine getting heavier by the step and beginning to get cranky, too, because she'd missed her supper. But he wasn't at the Outlook, and Lena then had the same long walk back.

Unhappy and footsore, reaching the nursery, she listlessly fed Catherine her supper, listening to Livvy tell Mary a story about Vincent and the park carousel, from when Vincent was little, before Mary's children died and she came Below. But Livvy had been lucky enough to be born here and had known Vincent all her life, from the time Vincent was little too. That was hard to imagine: Vincent was so big.

Lena wished she could have been as lucky as Livvy. If she'd been born in the tunnels, she'd never have had to walk the hard streets or have sex with men she didn't even like and who hit her sometimes, or be polite to Brad, who was supposed to take care of her but who really only took most of her money, that she didn't dare not give to him because he would have hit her bad if she'd tried to hold out more than a little. Maybe he even would have cut her. She'd known other girls who'd been cut, though none of them were Brad's, that was true. He was more a hitter than a cutter. She could have done a lot worse than Brad.

Suddenly she had a wonderful idea, and cleaned Catherine up and put her to bed as fast as she could, then ran, and walked a little way, holding a stitch in her side, until she could run some more: through the passages, up the ramps, along the ledges, crossing the water tunnel in one headlong jump. She climbed all the spiral cleats of the big West Stair, where it scared her to look down so far. And at the top, she was rewarded by the sight of a big shadow pacing slowly toward her, down the square brick passage that led to the threshold of Catherine's apartment.

The second she thought of it, she'd been positive that's where he was.

She put on a smile for him, brushing back her hair and trying to catch her breath after the long climb. Then she thought maybe a smile wouldn't be the best thing and put on a solemn, concerned look instead, although men never liked women who looked gloomy, always wanted them to be smiling. But Vincent was different. Vincent would know she only wanted to look however he wanted her to look.

Maybe the solemn look had been wrong, though, because he went right on past where she was waiting and started down the steps without even seeming to notice she was there.

But of course he did, he noticed everything, so it must be that she'd done something wrong and was being punished. That was all right. She didn't mind being punished if that would make him feel any better, and besides she wouldn't do it again, just as soon as she could find out what it was. She scampered down the steps after him, trying real hard not to look down because it made her so dizzy, and was close behind him before they'd gone more than two turns. She hoped that meant he'd been going slow so she could catch up and wasn't really mad at her after all.

“I wanted to bring Catherine to you—” she began, and he wheeled sharply, staring directly into her eyes. They were the same height, because he was several steps down.

After that first rigid look, he turned aside with his eyes shut and started down again, saying, “Oh. Catherine. Of course. Forgive me, Lena. I cannot....”

“She misses you,” Lena offered, following. “She cried all day.” All the way to the Outlook and back, Lena thought, which was pretty much the same thing. And people liked to be told they'd been missed, when they'd been away.

“Yes,” Vincent said vaguely. After a minute, he added, “I wish....”

“What?” Lena asked eagerly. “Anything. Ask me anything.” Whatever it was, she wanted to give it, do it, make it be there for him.

She waited. But he wouldn't tell her. Maybe he didn't believe she really could, or really meant it.

But she did. She reached and touched his shoulder, meaning to say it plainer. But just then, he missed a step and lurched forward hard against the railing, barely catching himself from falling the rest of the way down.

“Lena. It.... Please do not touch me. Just now. It is.... Were you on your way somewhere, Lena?”

“No. I just want to be with you. I want to help.”

“I know. That you do.” He was leaning on the railing, holding it with both hands, turned in a way that kept her from seeing his face because she couldn't lean out that far. “Lena. I am poor company. Just now.”

“I don't mind!”

“Yes.”

“I love you. Everybody loves you. Especially Catherine.”

“Yes. And I love her, as well. But I cannot....”

Completely unexpectedly, he vaulted the railing and dropped into the dark. Lena went down the last turns hurriedly, afraid maybe he'd hurt himself, but nobody was there at the bottom of the stair.

Discouraged, she began the long walk home.

Next time, she thought, she'd bring Catherine. That was what she'd done wrong, why he'd left her standing there. Because Catherine, who'd been born practically into his hands, hadn't been there, to be a beginning he could touch and hold and know was real.

Lena walked faster, more confident the longer she thought about it. That was right: she was certain of it. Next time, she should bring Catherine.

Portrait by Flash Light

The freight elevator had stopped about a foot above the floor. Carefully stepping from the platform in high heels, Jessica set down a large leather case covered with colorful baggage stickers. Pulling off one glove, she stood expectantly looking around as six volunteer porters passed her to start unloading the pyramid of her crates, boxes, trunks, and luggage. She ignored them: none was who she was looking for. As her head turned, an ornament securing her hair in a French twist glinted in a thin shaft of sunlight.

Hands clasped tightly behind his back, Vincent took a step forward out of the shadows.

“Father—” he began dutifully, meaning to apologize for Father's failure to meet his guest. Jessica whirled, gloved hand slapped over where, under her tan fall jacket, her heart presumably was. Vincent retreated a step, startled in turn by the sudden motion.

Rather warily, they regarded one another: stylish woman and solemn, patchwork teenager. Then Jessica smiled warmly. “Vincent. You nearly frightened the life out of me!”

Her slight accent, like her linen suit, had crisp edges. It was very like Father's. Before Jessica had first come Below, the previous spring, Vincent hadn't known anybody but Father talked that way. It was as if the two of them shared some mysterious nationality, were fellow citizens of some country Vincent hadn't known enough to imagine. He'd thought Father unique and completely defined within his role Below. Father's inviting Jessica to move in Below, with him, had made Vincent realize there was a side to Father he hadn't suspected. That realization was vaguely disquieting. As was Jessica.

Uncomfortably shifting his soft-soled boots, he said, “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to surprise you.”

“Of course you didn't, my dear. I'm simply not accustomed to the dark yet. But I expect I'll acclimate myself soon enough. I was expecting... Father,” she said brightly: a question, with the implicit suggestion that she knew Father better than Vincent did, knew Father's true name, and was rather amused by the patriarchal designation.

To Vincent, Father had always been simply Father. Except for casual details, like having been to the top of the Empire State building, Father seldom mentioned any time before, 17 years ago next January, Vincent had been born. So Vincent had never reflected that in another life, Father of course would have had another name, as well. That, too, was disquieting to think about.

“A child fell,” Vincent explained. “Father asked me to convey his apologies for not meeting you, and to escort you safely—”

“Of course, how sweet.” Jessica had to take a step to dodge a pair of bearers, then turned again toward Vincent, making a sudden gesture toward his face he would have avoided if his back hadn't already been against the tunnel wall.

His impression was of long, red-painted nails coming at his eyes. Before he quite knew what was happening, her bare fingers had closed and withdrawn: she'd pinched his cheek.

Still smiling, a little tensely because of his reflexive flinch, Jessica announced, “And of course, you must call me ‘Mother.'”

Vincent contemplated the floor, and her feet. “Do you have any different shoes?”

“Shoes?” Jessica echoed blankly, then found she had to move aside to make way for another pair of bearers carrying suitcases on their shoulders; Frank, the rear bearer, also dragged a trunk. Distractedly, she asked again, “Shoes?”

“It's a long walk back to the Home Chambers,” Vincent explained patiently. “Your shoes... aren't very practical.”

“They're not made to be, dear boy. But I've crawled around archeological digs and a mountain or two without resigning myself to looking an utter frump. So I expect I'll manage Below, well enough. If my feet ache, I'll have only myself to blame. Would you please take my case, Vincent? I don't dare let it out of my sight.”

As Vincent obediently lifted the case, finding it unexpectedly heavy but no problem, Jessica added, “And please don't drop it down a hole or smash it against anything: it's my photographic oojahs and I'm very choice of it. But it's survived Tibet; I expect it will survive the tunnels, too.”

As they started after the porters, now distant except for the noise of the dragging trunk, Jessica continued, “I've been up and down like an absolute yo-yo, these past months: have I told you about Tibet yet, or not?”

Although Vincent had never before met anyone who'd actually been to Tibet, to the high mountains that Kipling's Kim spoke of, and normally would have been full of curiosity about what those upended vertical vistas looked like, smelled like, what the wind that would surely come off such peaks felt like in the passes that would channel it to a cutting, cold strength, he shook his head. “I'm sorry. I don't remember either. Perhaps... it was Father you told.”

“Well, you shan't escape, never you fear. Some quiet evening, this winter, we'll all sit down by a nice fire — surely it's possible for one to have a nice fire?”

“There are stoves,” Vincent offered, but could tell, from Jessica's expression, that hadn't been the answer she wanted. “There are also braziers. A fire could be made in one of those....”

Jessica clapped her hands. “The very thing. We shall have a brazier, then. And I'll show you all the snaps I took in Tibet, including one which won a prize!”

“That will be very nice,” Vincent responded politely, changing hands on her case to be certain he could reach and steady her quickly when, as he knew they inevitably would, the impractical shoes betrayed her on the uneven surface of the tunnel floor.

But she was still clicking along briskly enough, with a free, long stride that said she had no uneasiness about either distance or rough footing.

“Oh, we're going to have such wonderful times, Vincent,” Jessica exclaimed, radiating determined cheerfulness.

Rather, Vincent thought, like the advent of Mary Poppins must have been, although Jessica had no magical parrot-headed umbrella to smooth her descent. Only a groaning, rusty freight elevator that never stopped exactly where it should.

Like that famous and remarkable nanny, Jessica would be eager to arrange her quarters the way she wanted them, he guessed, and take charge of the household, although that was comprised of miles of twisty and mostly unmapped tunnels, level upon level deep, rather than being a proper British townhouse with a polished banister for sliding down, where fathers went to offices and everything was done according to schedule.

Father lived Below, in a comfortable cave designated a study, and never went anywhere; and few things happened on schedule.

“I hope,” Vincent said truthfully, “you'll be happy here. With us. With Father.”

“Of course I shall! How could I not? After all, the whole place is one enormous darkroom!”

Before Vincent could duck, she'd pinched his cheek again. The contact told him she meant it kindly, and he knew it was ill-mannered of him to flinch like that. But he couldn't help it. He'd never had to cope with anyone abruptly snatching at his face. He'd have to get used to it, he supposed. Anyway, he'd try. Because he wanted Father to be happy. And apparently Jessica made Father happy. So Vincent therefore wanted to do whatever would make her want to stay.

*****

“I think it's disgusting,” Lisa declared, swinging her feet over the Abyss as they sat together, she and Vincent, on the bridge that crossed the Whispering Gallery. She wrinkled her nose, making a disgusted face. “He's so old!”

If Vincent wrinkled his nose, the result looked like a snarl. So he never did that. But Lisa wrinkling her nose was an altogether enchanting sight. So he couldn't work up much indigation about her being critical of Father.

Besides, it was true: Father was quite old. Past 40. Almost 50, in fact. You didn't expect people to fall in love when they were as old as that. Especially Father. Especially with a relative stranger, a helper.

“I suppose he must have been lonely,” he responded, without much conviction.

“Everybody's lonely sometimes. That's no reason,” Lisa retorted, flipping one side of her long dark hair back over her shoulder — a graceful gesture. Everything Lisa did was graceful. She practiced in front of a mirror, in the studio.

Vincent didn't like the studio, because of the mirrors. But he went anyway, because Lisa needed him to lean on while she struck poses and practiced her leaps and low bows — arm sweeping down and away, wrist cocked just so, fingers precisely spread — until her shoulders were shiny with sweat and he could feel her exhaustion.

Lisa had the most discipline of anyone he'd ever known. His was the easy part: he only had to stand there, support her on pointe, catch her for the running leaps, and try to ignore the mirrors that continually showed him conclusive reasons why he and Lisa could never become anything other than the friends they were. Just as Father had repeatedly said. Especially of late....

Anyway, Lisa would soon be going Above. They'd agreed, long ago, that was the only possible course: otherwise, all the practice, all the discipline, would be wasted. Dance, like all beauty, was to be honored, served. Performed. Appreciated. As the excellent and disciplined dancer she had it in her to be, she would share the beauties of motion with hundreds, thousands of people. All over the world. Perhaps even kings, princes.

No one would have denied her that, the life she was so plainly destined for. Certainly not Vincent.

It was the only reasonable course.

So she'd be going. Soon: perhaps after Winterfest if, after Lisa's performance, Madame Sakova judged her ready.

Soon. But not yet.

Vincent realized Lisa had turned, one leg tucked under, patch- work skirt flared wide, concealing the strong legs, and was frowning at him in familiar exasperation.

“I'm sorry,” he said automatically. “I wasn't listening. What did you say?”

“I worry about you,” Lisa commented, frank and affectionate. “Someday you're going to get lost in some dream, like that, and walk off a serpentine. What was it this time?”

Vincent bent his head, looking down into what, even to his eyes, was endless darkness. “You. Going Above.”

Lisa smiled and both her arms shot up: stretching, reaching. “Oh, won't that be wonderful? And as soon as I can, I'll perform in the park, and then you can come and watch me, in a proper costume, all stiff gauze and tulle, and imagine me itching like mad and can't scratch—” She leaned toward him, they leaned together, both laughing at her prosaic future discomfort, that she so longed to suffer.

He was sorry when she sat straight again, clasping her folded knees, face radiant with her own waking dream of lights and floating costumes and exquisite motion precisely executed. Because touching Lisa was always easy, like dipping your hands into cool water. Dancing or still — and with Lisa, stillness was only another, slower dance — she was completely honest and direct, focused on the one thing, her self-consciousness completely impersonal, utterly without vanity. She existed to serve the dance, her body a supple animal she trained mercilessly, as a dancer had to.

And that had always freed Vincent, in turn, from his self-consciousness, horribly acute since he'd reached adolescence: sometimes almost crippling.

But Lisa was very serious about her dancing, very objective: when she practiced, Vincent was only the necessary support for the lifts, not part of them. Like a post, or a hoist. Fur and fangs didn't matter: only the lifts, bows, and leaps. What was important was that Lisa do them properly, before the mirrors, alone, or under Madame Sakova's critical eye, and that Vincent do whatever was necessary not to ruin them.

Wholly absorbed in motion, he could forget himself in concentration on keeping her balanced and letting her execute the whole series of moves without her ever having to worry about getting tipped or dropped or made to look awkward. So she, in turn, could forget him and focus only on the dance.

She was the essence and proof of Yeats' lines: O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Lisa was so delicate, and yet so strong. Holding her in the lifts, he always felt that she weighed scarcely anything, and yet was aware of the flex of the solid muscles of torso and thighs as she went through the poses, feel her determination to make one fluid line from fingertip to toe-tip, every second. Nothing uncontrolled or awkward. Nothing that wasn't beautiful.

If he could have been beautiful, he knew he'd have felt exactly the same way. He wouldn't have tolerated anything in himself that wasn't absolutely perfect.

But the bank of tall mirrors had long since told him there was no point in aspiring to such discipline. Enough to look at the beauty, give it the admiration that was its due, and help it: be a part of it that way, at least participate in it a little, to understand how to admire it better and more wisely.

Lisa was looking at him again, smiling that fond, exasperated smile. So she must have said something.

Vincent lifted a hand, admitting his fault, apologizing. “You're right,” he said. “I dream too much.... She wants me,” he added, carefully expressionless, “to call her Mother.”

Lisa clapped both hands over her mouth, radiating horrified glee. “No: really? Are you going to?”

Allowing himself an answering glint of a smile, Vincent responded, “No. I regard that post as already taken.”

“Who: Sarah?” Lisa rejoined incredulously.

“No.”

“Then who? Tell me!”

Vincent shook his head, abruptly feeling foolish, sorry he'd brought the matter up. “Merely another dream. Of no consequence.”

“What if Father says you have to?”

“I don't believe he would. And he will have... other things to think about now.”

“I imagine he will,” rejoined Lisa, just as drily. Then she nudged him and started giggling, and Vincent couldn't keep his face straight either, although he tried, because Lisa was staring straight at him and reporting wickedly in a nasal, radio voice, “That's two, that's five, I can see five, ladies and gentlemen, five teeth, oh, he's going to show the bottom ones too, the big ones, yes, that's seven, nine, he's done it, ladies and gentlemen, an actual smile demonstrated here—”

“Stop it,” Vincent directed, embarrassed, turning away, still smiling, not really minding the merciless teasing because it made her so happy.

He hoped Jessica made Father this happy and knew when to tease him and when to stop, as Lisa did. Hoped Jessica would come to understand that all Father's sternness and gruff manner was only the discipline of formality Father felt that leadership required of him, and that under it was the most steadfast, wise, and loving of hearts.

If she did, he'd call her anything she pleased.

*****

The hours between supper and bedtime were normally his time with Father: when they talked, played chess, or simply read in each other's company. But after communal supper in the Commons, Vincent returned to his own chamber, lit some extra candles, and continued his study of the Faust of Goethe. Having already read a good translation, he was tackling it in the original, switching back and forth among the two thick books and an even thicker German-English dictionary, quite intentionally picking up a working knowledge of literary German in the process.

He liked learning languages like that — in context, as it were — and found it very interesting how the process of translation inevitably changed the thought because no two idioms were exactly equivalent.

Father read only scientific German; so launching on this study was something Vincent was doing, for the first time, completely alone, without Father to look to for help or to challenge his interpretations.

He was deep in the exact terms of Faust's bargain with Mephistopheles when he felt presence and, a moment later, heard Father's voice ask, “Vincent, may I come in?”

“Of course, Father.” Vincent marked his place in each book in turn as Father settled into the smaller of the two chairs.

“I was expecting you to come tonight,” Father remarked inquiringly.

“I thought....” For a moment, Vincent wasn't sure how to continue. Pushing the books back, he said, “We've had nights before, and will again. But I thought tonight you might prefer to spend with Jessica.”

“That was thoughtful of you. But you might have asked me, Vincent.”

“I wouldn't wish you to feel obliged to make a choice. I can occupy myself.” Vincent gestured at the books, then folded his hands. “You're always remarking on how little privacy there is, Below. I thought... perhaps this was something I could do. A small gift of time.”

Father set a hand on Vincent's as though he, too, could know things that way. “Are you certain there was no other reason?”

“I want you to be happy, Father.”

Father's hand patted Vincent's. “I know you do. And inevitably, there will be changes. Adjustments. Things we have become accustomed to which will alter, now that Jessica is here. I want to assure you that nothing that truly matters will, or can ever, change between the two of us. There is no one Below whom I love as I do you. In Jessica, I have found a loving companion, and that is a great astonishment to me, a great joy. But you are my son, Vincent. And if ever you begin to feel that the changes are too sudden or too many, you must come and tell me, and we'll work it out together. Will you promise me to do that?”

“You need not concern yourself, Father. Although Jessica has visited before, it will be different, I think, to live here. She will find our ways strange. Herself one, and us many. It's Jessica who needs your reassurances, not I.”

Father cocked an alert eye. “Was that a promise?”

Vincent smiled, fairly caught in an evasion; and Father smiled with him. “Very well, Father: I promise.”

“And I'm sure you're right,” said Father, sitting back in his chair and rubbing his mouth thoughtfully, “about the strangeness. And there's a favor I planned to ask, when I saw you tonight. You have candle duty this month, as I recall.”

“Yes, Father.”

“I'd like you to take Jessica with you, on your rounds. To familiarize her with the nearer passageways, the places where one must take a certain amount of care, the places which look unremarkable enough but should be avoided, which we all take for granted. I would do it myself, but....” Father wryly slapped his hip, which always bothered him worse when the seasons were changing.

Vincent's folded hands tightened. “Might I do it in the morning, instead?”

“And disrupt your class schedule? Why? Moreover, the candles won't need replacing until afternoon — you'd have the same rounds to make all over again then.”

“I don't mind. It's no great distance. I do it quickly. Or perhaps Carlotta would be willing to exchange her time for mine—”

Father rubbed at his mouth again: smiling, uncomfortable. “I fear Jessica is not accustomed to early rising. It will take time, Vincent, for her to adapt herself to our routine.”

“Of course,” said Vincent absently, thinking hard.

“What, precisely, is the problem, Vincent?”

“It's only that... Lisa is preparing her performance for Winterfest. I promised to help her. As soon as I'd done my rounds. I do them very quickly.”

“I imagine you do,” Father responded thoughtfully. “I imagine you do. Still, I see no problem, Vincent: Jessica can come with you and act as audience. I'm sure she'd enjoy it — she's never had an opportunity to photograph ballet, and she's eager to determine what combination of...of shutter speed, film, and lens aperture—” Father chuckled and spread his hands helplessly at the arcane terminology. “— will best serve her, Below. An excellent opportunity for her to do both. And a chance for the two of you to know one another better, as well. Excellent: that's settled, then. And I hope you realize that there are not many people to whom I'd be willing to entrust her, on her first full day Below.”

“No, Father. That is, yes, Father,” Vincent said, trying not to sound glum.

“Jessica will be expecting you immediately after lunch, then,” said Father, rising.

“Yes, Father. Father... might you suggest that she wear some less, less uncomfortable shoes?”

“What? Oh, certainly, I'll try to remember to mention that, certainly. Then good night, Vincent.”

“Good night, Father.”

*****

It was, for Vincent, both an unsettled and an unsettling night.

As Father was accustomed to remark with wry acceptance whenever some awkwardness or dispute of a particularly personal nature arose within the tunnel community, choosing to live Below was not tantamount to a vow of celibacy.

No one knew that better than Vincent. The emotions associated with sex were particularly strong and coherent: they “carried” farther than did voices. Rock was no barrier: only distance. So from earliest childhood, Vincent had been accustomed to pass through waves of those feelings. A normal part of the emotional surround. There had never been a time he hadn't known them.

Except that they were powerful and invasive, and therefore hard to shut himself away from, they hadn't bothered him until he'd reached adolescence. And even then, he had only to avoid places favored by courting couples and keep to his own chamber, or Father's, after supper, to avoid trespass on someone's privacy.

To dispel whatever effect such feelings had on him, he had only to remind himself that they had nothing to do with him. That for better or worse, as Father had so often told him, they could never be part of his relationship with anyone Below. He only needed to regard such involuntary intrusions by others as merely another aspect of his lifelong effort to separate himself from the surround, know clearly what feelings were his own and which were external, and not lose himself into confusion.

Tonight, it wasn't that easy. Because it was Father: whose feelings connected strongly with Vincent's on every level; whom Vincent could not even want to shut out; whose study and private space, despite the apparent distance, abutted Vincent's chamber on an angle, with perhaps 15 feet of rock between and a high, curving passage connecting the two, as well as the outer tunnel.

He might as well have been in the same chamber, watching.

He'd thought it might be like that.

Taking his books and a candle, he went to the empty Commons. That was far enough away: he eventually was able to give his studies something like his full attention, though he was constantly aware of the time, thinking repeatedly, Is it long enough? Can I go back now?, feeling rather like some Dickensian waif abandoned or thrust into the dangerous unknown through no fault of his own.

Through sweater and quilted vest, he felt a pervasive chill like the spaces between the stairs were said to be: light, but only passing by; no warmth. From time to time he cupped his hands around the candle flame or absently tucked them under his arms as he tried to plunge ever more deeply into the sanctuary of words and large thoughts.

He'd twice fallen asleep over his books before deciding it surely must be long enough, considering Father's age. He cautiously retraced the way to his chamber and gratefully sought the refuge of his bed. All seemed quiet. He hoped it would continue so.

But what had been evaded, awake, returned full force once he was asleep. It was a red night: a hunting night. Things he fled, at first; then, after the dream went crimson tinged, things that fled him.

A purity of motion and intention he never knew, waking, except secondhand, through Lisa in her dancing. A sense that someone was trying to leave: escape him, vanish forever; and that must not be allowed to happen. The fugitive, racing before him through dark and labyrinthine passages, must be caught, punished, held so that such a terrible wickedness could never be done to him again. For without that faceless, beloved prey, he knew he'd surely die.

Hot-eyed, fury fused with desire.

The hunting was intense and culminated in explosions of wordless and nameless violence that were both satisfying and upsetting in the extreme because in the dreams, it wasn't himself who hunted and exploded. A shadow self did these things; Vincent seemed to float alongside, unable to affect the pursuit or the outcome, yet not wholly an onlooker because it all came in. He felt it all. Could not shut it out. Didn't want to. Was at last sated. Heavy. Content.

He woke, shivering and disoriented, in a disused spur of subway line nearly five miles from home. More exhausted than if he'd never slept, with the lingering sensation of running but no memory of having left his chamber.

Starting to make his shaken and rather wobbly way back, he tried to remember, although everything in him felt scattered, dissociated, and it was hard to focus on any single thought for long. This was the third time, he finally decided, this month. Unless it was the fourth....

He'd always managed to get home before breakfast. So no question had been raised.

His time sense told him that if he hurried, he might make it this time, too. Yawning, slapping at his dusty clothing, he tried to hurry.

*****

“What about those,” said Jessica, pointing, “over there?”

Vincent hitched the strap of the canvas sack of candles higher up his shoulder. As the sack lightened, it kept wanting to slip off. They were walking a ledge not far from the Mirror Pool. About 15 feet away, beyond a slice in the rock which ran from high above to deep below, a similar ledge was lit by candles at the usual intervals.

He paused to warm the base of a fresh candle over the flame of one which was nearly spent, then lit it and held it aside while blowing out the flame and cracking the old candle out of its collar of drippings. The last of its wax, he spilled into that collar, then set the new candle into it firmly, holding until he could feel that the wax had cooled and set. The transferred flame was upright and steady: it would neither drown itself nor spill wax, burn too fast, and go out before its replacement in the third quarter of the day. He put the disc of old candle in the sack and moved on toward the next small, winking light.

A sequence of actions so familiar he seldom thought about the individual steps but felt the whole process as one motion.

Glancing across the gulf, he replied to Jessica's question: “We'll go down a stair, and then through a passage which runs at an angle. And so come to them roundabout, from the other side.”

“That sounds like a long detour, when they're right there.”

“It is. But it's necessary.”

“Why, when there's a bridge?” Jessica responded, waving at the narrow span that ran from ledge to ledge, back the way they'd come.

“It's not safe anymore.” Reaching the next candle, Vincent began the automatic process of replacement. “Didn't you see the yellow rope? You must never go past a yellow rope, or into a passage rimmed with yellow or which has a yellow streak painted across the floor. Repairing this bridge is not high on Father's priority list: there are other, more urgent — Jessica?”

It was her silence, more than the diminution of his sense of her presence, that made him stop and turn: he'd been forcing himself through a weary fog all day, and his sense of her had never been more than dim and intermittent.

She was already some distance away, striding purposefully back toward the bridge, remarking over her shoulder in a teasing voice, “I'll wager, when not lumbered with women in impractical footgear, you don't trouble yourself with any such tortuous detours! I'll wager....”

“Jessica! Stop!”

She ducked under the warning rope, gripped the thick cable of hand-rope, and took a tentative step, remarking, “Well, this seems sound enough to me. No need to beat all about Robin Hood's barn, when we can— Oh!”

Vincent reached the bridge's anchorage just as the posts creaked, chips of rock cracked and fell into the gulf, and Jessica clutched the cable with both hands as the bridge perceptably sagged.

She was too far to reach, or be reached. And the bridge would never support him. Bracing, Vincent set his claws and his weight against the looser of the two posts. “Go. Now!”

“Oh. Oh, dear.”

“Now!”

“It's certainly....” Another lurch from the bridge finally got her moving, almost clambering hand over hand along the cable. Four more tiny, tiptoe steps, five, and she'd reached the opposite ledge.

The post tore out of Vincent's hands. He flung himself back, his claws gouging grooves, as the bridge broke free and fell, whacking hard against the cliff and dangling from its remaining mooring.

Jessica had likewise flattened herself against the opposite wall. “Oh. Oh, dear. I would appear to have broken it. Will Father be terribly vexed with me, do you think?”

When she raised her head to look across at him, Vincent realized she was, incredibly, smiling. Slightly rueful but mostly amused. Playful. Teasing.

Vincent's fear suddenly transmuted into anger. He made himself go away from it, ignore the heat that'd been icy cold a second before.

“Don't move. Stay precisely where you are. I'll come for you.”

Following him with her eyes, she called, “You don't mean you're actually going all that way.... You do mean. Incredible. Vincent? Vincent, toss me that sack, then: I might as well replace these candles while I'm waiting.”

He spun, and she was still smiling. As though it were perfectly absurd for him to be so upset about the fact that a moment ago, she might well have been killed.

When Vincent couldn't at once think of any words fit to say, Jessica moved away from the wall, absently straightening the scuffed leather bag she'd said held her camera, then setting her hands on her hips. Looking in both directions along the ledge, she remarked, “I'd swear that I smell fish....”

“Stay there,” Vincent ordered sharply, even as he fully realized he didn't dare trust her to do so, for all the time the detour would take. He just knew she'd wander off, blithely get herself in some dreadful trouble or other, before he could reach her. His decision locking within him, he scanned the two ledges and picked a place perhaps two yards to his left. From that spot, he leaped across, landing lightly, with almost no impact or unused momentum.

As he stalked toward her, Jessica remarked brightly, “So that's the way you usually cross, is it?”

He grabbed her wrist and yanked her around with him, headed toward the nearest opening in the rock. He intended to report the whole incident to Father and be free of responsibility for her.

“I wish I'd known you were going to do that,” Jessica continued, with what the contact told him was real regret, as he dragged her along. “I'd have got my camera ready. I don't suppose I could persuade you to do it again?”

That was too much. He wheeled on her. “Father forbade me. I never go that way.”

“Well,” Jessica insinuated, tilting her head, not quite smiling, “hardly ever...?”

That was too much as well, but in a different way. She simply refused to take her danger, from which he'd failed to protect her, seriously at all. Refused to take him seriously.

“Or truly never?” Jessica prompted, studying his face with what looked, and felt, like genuine solicitude. Felt like kindness and the reaching out of an uncertain but hopeful affection: as though, if he confirmed her question, she'd be sad.

He let his grip on her wrist go, as he'd let the post go. She let the arm fall to her side, not rubbing the wrist, although he knew he'd held it harder than he'd meant to. Again, he didn't know what to say.

So he told the truth: “Sometimes. Sometimes, when I'm hurrying.... But Father doesn't permit it.”

“Why, when you do it so beautifully?”

Vincent shrugged off what he took to be her teasing reference to beauty. She probably didn't realize how it stung. “It's dangerous. For others. And therefore for me. And I am not to do such things.”

“I'll wager,” Jessica remarked, her eyes soft, “you could leap twice that distance. Am I right?”

“Father says I must not.”

“But you could. Easily. With no danger at all.”

Vincent frowned into the deep cleft. “It's like stepping over a crack.”

Jessica folded her hands together around the strap of her camera bag. “Vincent, I'm sorry I alarmed you. But I've clambered around mountains higher than all of the world Below is deep, nearly all my life. Had the post given, you'd have seen me go up that cable like a bloody squirrel. You've seen squirrels?”

“In the park. Sometimes,” Vincent admitted. He couldn't help smiling a little at the image her description called up.

“That's better. Now I'll make a bargain with you: if you don't tell Father I've been naughty and foolhardy, I.... No. There is no bargain. You must move as you were meant to move, I will not bargain with that. I shall simply promise to pay the most serious attention to your good guidance from now on. This all,” Jessica added, lifting her face to scan the darkness above her, where the candles' small glows could not reach, “still doesn't seem quite real to me yet, I'm afraid. I feel a bit as though I'd fallen into a faerie hill. Where people do but die in jest, poison in jest—”

“No offense in the world,” Vincent finished the line, and stood thinking, no longer of his responsibilities, but of her. “But it's not so, Jessica. People have died here, and in many ways, none pleasant. Some slow, some dreadfully fast. There is only one mother here, and she is exacting and not always kind to us, her children....”

As he looked up, their eyes met. Quietly, Jessica asked, “What mother is that, Vincent?”

Vincent lifted his hand, the gesture more graceful and balletic than he knew. “She who is before all things. The Dark herself. What we come from, and go to....” He looked away, suddenly shy, awkward, never having admitted his fancy to anyone before and not sure why he'd done so now. “You're laughing at me.”

“At myself,” Jessica corrected at once. “At my presumption, my impertinence in thinking the world Below had been woefully in lack of my clear-eyed instruction all these years, and that I must bustle about at once to remedy that lack. I imagine you all have survived very well without me.”

“We’re all glad you're here,” Vincent offered, and she again looked at him in a way few others did — meeting his eyes, studying his unhuman face: a sober, objective inspection that somehow made him feel less, not more, self-conscious.

“I don't imagine I've yet done much to deserve that gladness. Don't you mean that you're glad for Father?”

“Yes. But I hope to be glad for you, as well. When I know you better.”

“That will do. That will suffice. And if you feel honor-bound to report my indiscretion to Father, I promise not to hold it against you. This is your place, and you must abide by the laws of faerie as you know them. As I must learn them, if I am to be enchanted too.”

“Please, Jessica: this is real. The danger is real. As real as the joy.”

“As real as...you?” she countered, and the teasing was back in her eyes. “Well, I must begin trying to learn how to believe that, then.” Looking across the cleft, she remarked, “There are a few candles we hadn't reached, on that side. Nearly burned down. Are we really going to have to walk around all that way? Or can I suborn you into...? When I have my camera...?” She sighed, amused at what she saw in his face. “No, I suppose not. Then lead on: I promise to behave myself.”

“Father says... that everyone behaves themselves. The question is, well or badly.” He risked a glance and found her frankly smiling.

“Quite right.” Her hand sprang toward his face, then stopped, withdrew. “Sorry, I see you don't care for that. Too familiar?”

Vincent shook his head. “Only the suddenness. It startles me. I'm not used....” He drew a breath. “I am seldom touched. It's the custom.”

“Then I will try to abide by it, difficult though it will be. Your face.... Cheeks like that were made for pinching. And such hair, for mussing. And now I've embarrassed you. Ah, well, my dear, it's only fair, since you have very thoroughly embarrassed me, who have richly deserved it. Come along, then, let's be about our work, or...what's her name?...will be very vexed with me, dawdling along—”

“Lisa.”

“Yes,” responded Jessica, with another penetrating look. “Who is a dancer, I believe?”

“Yes. It’s her discipline.”

It seemed to Vincent they might as well finish the side they were on before hiking the long way around and tending the candles he'd missed. While they went from candle to candle, Jessica prompted him with questions about Lisa, on the pretext that Father seemed especially concerned about the older girls, just coming into their full womanhood and needing to make great decisions about themselves and their lives.

“To tell the truth,” Jessica said, inserting her arm under his, “I believe except for that, I couldn't have wheedled myself an invitation to take up residence here. All honor to the Great Mother Dark, but she gives ambiguous advice at best. And it seemed I'd be needed. It's nice to feel one is needed. A kind of discipline, if you will.”

“Yours is photography,” Vincent responded, replacing another candle, storing the used stub to be melted down and reused. “Pictures are wonderful. They're all I know of the sea. Or mountains. Or the blue sky.”

“But surely you've been Above—?”

“Only when it's dark there too.”

“My dear boy, we must remedy that! Oh, whyever not?” Jessica said, reading his face with vivid concern and disappointment.

“Father would never allow it. It's too dangerous.”

“With no wheedling space? None at all? Dawn, perhaps: there'd be no one about...? Ah, I can see I shall be considered a bad influence if I keep on, shan't I? Well, we'll let that be, for the time. Yes, I suppose if a gadabout flutterbye like myself can be said to have any discipline whatever, it would be photography. I've certainly gained too many bruises in pursuing it for it to be regarded as play. And what's yours?”

Approaching the last candle on the ledge, Vincent shook his head. “I have none.”

“Reading, perhaps? Father has told me you're a great reader, a scholar in fact...? No?”

“That would be like regarding breathing as a discipline. How can one not read?” Vincent transferred the flame from old to new candle. “No, I have no discipline of my own. I help Father in his. But it's not mine. And Lisa in hers, but.... I thought, once....”

“Yes?”

“I thought...it might be climbing. But Father says that can't be a discipline.”

“I should introduce Father to a Sherpa of my acquaintance and have him say that!”

Vincent found the notion of Father confronting a Sherpa unexpectedly funny. Checking that the new candle was solidly upright, he put the stub away.

“In any case, he’s forbidden it. It's too dangerous. So I confine my climbing—” He stopped short, having almost said, to dreams. And was silent, willing away the smoky tang of forbidden pursuits which suddenly seemed to have drifted across him like the scent, both acrid and floral, of the scent Jessica wore (by his standards) too much of.

If Jessica noticed the abrupt silence, she didn't remark on it. She had a tact like Father's, Vincent thought, and hoped that would make their love easier. As they turned back toward the opening that would bring them to a passage, Jessica asked, “And what have you read lately?”

“I'm studying Faust.”

“All freedom, all knowledge, and immortality, in return for asking nothing more.”

“And at the price of his soul, should he ever once try to hold on to a single moment rather than let them all pass alike,” Vincent responded, pleased to find she knew the work. “Some versions of the legend that I've read have him redeemed at the end, the bargain voided, although he had violated both it and the usual restrictions of mortals.”

“Neatly allowing him to both have his cake and eat it,” Jessica commented acidly, and Vincent nodded.

“Playwrights seem to prefer to have him quite gleefully damned and yanked off to hell, usually onstage and in full view of the audience, so that they can be warned by his fate.”

“I've seen it staged that way,” Jessica said meditatively. “In Munich. There were effects: smoke, a blaze of really foul-smelling phosphorous, and a manufactured thunderclap I think would have deafened the poor actors, at the rate of a performance every weekday and two per day on weekends. The devils sent to fetch him did appear quite gloomy and probably had their ears plugged tight with cotton-wool. And yet, I get gooseflesh remembering a rather stout and prosperous-appearing Faust ogling Gretchen, portrayed by a somewhat undernourished blond, and damning himself by declaiming—”

“‘Stay, moment: thou art so fair.'”

There was a little silence between them. Then Jessica patted her camera case and remarked, “That's what I do, you know: freeze the moment. Hold it forever. Will I be damned for it, do you think?”

Vincent considered the jocular speculation with some seriousness. “Blake says,” he began, and then stopped, realizing what he'd meant to say might be construed as criticism.

“Yes? What was mad old Billy's view of photography? Oh, I've shocked you: is one not allowed to take Blake's name in vain?”

Blake had etched plates, made negatives and then positives: prints. So even though photography hadn't been invented during Blake's lifetime, he certainly would have understood the process. But to say so, Vincent thought, would have been pedantic.

“And Gretchen,” Jessica continued, tactfully turning the subject. “Was she worth the demons, do you think?”

“I've thought about that,” Vincent said, as they turned into the passage. “I don't believe Faust had any choice.”

“So do you favor the last-minute reprieve or the just deserts?”

“Oh, he was damned for it,” Vincent replied confidently.

“But why, if he had no choice?”

“He had made the bargain. Even though he couldn't keep it. He'd had everything he'd been promised. And wanted yet more. It wasn't right.”

“But human....” Jessica suggested.

“He was damned,” Vincent said firmly. “One must live with the limits one has.... What were you doing in Munich?”

“Taking snaps of the beer festival for a tedious magazine which had the cursed impudence to pay very well indeed. I've never seen so many unsightly, hairy knees in my life.”

“Lederhosen,” Vincent murmured, savoring the odd flavor of the word.

“Precisely. As bad as kilts.... What troubles Father so, with his hip? And can nothing be done about it? Is there no other doctor he could consult?”

“It's always worse in this season,” Vincent responded as they started down a stair.

Companionably discussing Father's hip, they went on.

*****

“But why?” Lisa demanded perhaps an hour later, agitatedly walking away from Vincent along the passage, then whirling and returning, wringing a twist of her skirt's fabric as though she wished it were Father's neck.

“Why punish me? Why did you have to tell him in the first place?”

“I promised not to make such leaps.”

Sternly miserable, Vincent leaned back against the tunnel wall, trying unsuccessfully to brace against Lisa's anger and indignation. Knowing he was the cause, knowing how he'd disappointed her, tore at him even worse than had Father's reaction.

Concluding that Vincent's haste to be done with his duties, to meet Lisa in the studio, had been the cause of his otherwise inexplicable neglect of Jessica's safety, Father had forbidden Vincent to go to the studio for an entire week.

And Lisa, understandably, was furious. At both of them. All of them.

Vincent went on, “I had disobeyed him, broken my promise. I had to tell him. It's important that Father know he can trust me.”

“Important to who?” Without waiting for an answer, Lisa flung her arms out and paced away again, refusing to look at him. “Oh, how can I practice? Why doesn't he punish her — it was her fault!”

“I believe Father will... discuss it with her. At some length. But the fault was mine, I should have been watching her more closely—”

“Garbage!” Lisa shot back.

“She's a stranger here, Lisa—”

Lisa swung around again, hands on hips and a glitter in her dark eyes. “Are you standing up for her?”

“A stranger. And a guest.”

“You don't care if my performance is ruined! In fact, you'd be glad: if Madame Sakova doesn't say I'm ready, I'll miss the try-outs and be stuck here another year. And by then, I'll be too old! I'm practically 16—”

“I know.”

“—and it will be too late, they'll say I'm too old to begin, and I'll have to stay here, and you'd like that.... Is that why you did it? Is that why you told him? You want to ruin everything for me?”

The accusation appalled both of them. Suddenly, Lisa dove against his chest and hugged him with desperate strength. He could feel both her fear and her remorse as she said, “Oh, I didn't mean it, Vincent, you know I didn't mean it. But the whole routine, everything I've practiced, depends on you. What are we going to do?”

“Father only said....” Vincent began hesitantly, and Lisa leaned away, regarding him eagerly. Her expectancy made him want to continue the thought onto what he knew to be dubious ground. “He only said I mustn't go to the studio. But the performance itself—”

“—will be in the Great Hall! And nobody said we couldn't go there! Yes!” To Vincent's immense relief, Lisa's unhappiness and disappointment vanished into jubilation.

As Lisa grabbed his arm and started dragging him down the passageway, turning and smiling every few steps so that it was almost like a dance in itself, Vincent added, “But the floor is stone: not wood, as in the studio. If I should drop you, if you should fall—”

“We won't try the jumps, then. Not at first. We'll be careful. And you'd never drop me,” Lisa added, with a singing confidence, as though the whole idea were silly anyhow.

Happy with her happiness, Vincent was also warmed by her trust, which had become very precious to him. It was very important to him to deserve it, never fail it, never reach too hard or hold too long and thereby spoil her motion as it spiraled steadily and inevitably outward — away from him and the tunnels.

It was as Blake had said: trying to seize a joy only ensured its destruction; one might touch the joy only as it flew past, not try to force it to stay. Then one would live in eternity's sunrise, always hopeful of new joys as yet unimagined.

Blake was very wise about such things; and that poem was very much in Vincent's mind, of late:

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity's sun rise

Vincent had never seen a sunrise. But he was certain it would be more beautiful than anything. Except, perhaps, Lisa sprinting toward him with her face alight, ready to spring into the air with utter trust that he would never let her fall.

It was hard to imagine anything could be more beautiful than that. Or that anything could be more precious than Lisa's trust. Even Father's.

*****

In the chill of the Great Hall and by the light of a single candle, Lisa commanded, “Don't look!” then pulled on several layers of cut-off long argyle socks below and presumably above her knees: for of course, honorably, Vincent didn't look, dragging the tables back, then pulling the heaviest of the carved chairs into the space thus opened. Using the chair's back as a barre, Lisa began the necessary stretching exercises and warm-ups, remarking over her shoulder that the stone floor certainly was hard and cold and that she couldn't wait until she could get a proper pair of toe shoes.

It was a familiar complaint.

Vincent liked the Great Hall better than the studio: there were no mirrors here.

Very tired, waiting for her to be ready, Vincent wandered off to the stairs against the wall where the tapestries hung and settled on the third step from the bottom. He tipped his head against the balusters of the handrail, thinking of nothing in particular. Although he'd shut the huge main doors that opened on the windswept Long Stair, sluggish air moved to and from the other entrances; he presently noticed that the draft moving past him was charged with Lisa's scent.

For of course, everybody had a personal odor, and Vincent knew them all. He doubted there was anybody in the whole tunnel community he couldn't have identified blindfolded, by scent alone, from ten feet away. Or farther, if the air was moving right. Often, he could tell who had recently passed, after they were gone.

Nobody talked about the fact that people had smells. Vincent didn't either, but for different reasons.

Smells, like tastes, like music, were almost impossible to render into words, except in terms of their effect. You could talk about how music made you feel, but not really about the music itself.

He found it very pleasant to sit quietly, watching Lisa lift and bow and stretch, dreamily aware of her personal flavors. Like being close and touching, and yet still far away, safe. Secret. He could enjoy Lisa's smell, and yet take from her nothing that was hers, nothing whose loss would diminish her at all. Like enjoying a painting, or the moon. A simple sensual enjoyment like the taste of cold, clear water scooped in a palm from a stream running invisibly through darkness in the deep places where no one else went.

Watching Lisa, bathed in her scent, Vincent didn't notice how his breathing had deepened and slowed, and it seemed natural to tip his head back to catch the smell more cleanly, more directly, although that meant letting his jaw fall a little open, exposing his lower canines — something he normally avoided.

Wholly forgetful of himself, he didn't notice or care that the rest of the chamber had dropped completely out of his awareness, that watching her through the spindles of the stair rail had become like looking at her down a long straight stretch of tunnel, utterly private. And the changes that came over him were pleasant changes: eliminating distractions, heightening his concentration, locking him into that absolute focus.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world to find himself wondering how her skin would taste. The film of sweat on it, and the soft hair, and then the skin itself. Like tasting music. Altogether beyond words.

And then it all exploded in a burst of blinding white light, as a woman's voice cried, “Aha! Caught you!”

Instantly, Vincent was ten yards from the stair. He whirled, heart pounding, hair rising along his spine, with no idea what had happened, seeing only dark throbbing bursts. The second explosion caught him faster than he could throw up an arm, and he was instantly somewhere else in an instinctive spring he'd never consciously chosen to make, locating himself at once by a mental map of the large chamber and everything in it, a map he hadn't known he had until he needed it, and someone was hitting him, struggling against him. But he didn't strike out because he knew it was Lisa. He only backed a step to press her against the wall, standing between her and the unknown threat, panting and shaking his head while trying to clear his dazzled vision.

“I wonder if that will have been light enough,” remarked the woman's — Jessica's— voice meditatively, and there was a clicking, ratcheting noise he located as near the rear entry that led to the Crooked Stair. “I shot off a whole flash bar, but I suspect I'll need faster film stock before I can get good snaps in this gloom....

“Oh, my goodness, did I startle you?” Jessica inquired cheerfully.

Vincent stood like a tree: vaguely aware of Lisa angrily wrenching free and then stooping; sharply aware of the scent of blood.

As Jessica remarked breezily, “Oh, do carry on: take no notice of me,” Lisa hissed, “My knee. You made me bang my knee, Vincent, look at it! I'll be stiff for a week!” and the smell of blood was very close, very strong. Nearly a taste. Unbearable.

Vincent did the only thing he could: he fled.

*****

That night, much later than anyone but sentries were normally abroad, Father came out onto the landing of the bridge that crossed the Whispering Gallery. Although Vincent knew he was there, had even heard Father's unmistakable halting cane-tapping steps approaching, he neither turned nor looked.

Vincent had waited awhile at the crossing passages near the studio, where he and Lisa often met. But when he at last admitted that she wasn't coming, he'd come here, to sit on the bridge and listen to the mysterious, intermittent scraps of conversation from the world Above. But the wind had apparently changed: for at least an hour, there'd been only silence. He'd found he preferred it that way.

Father stood awhile, then cautiously ventured out onto the bridge, remarking inquiringly, “I looked for you at suppertime.”

That didn't seem to call for any comment. So Vincent said nothing, drawing one knee closer to his chest and wrapping his arms around it.

Laboriously Father leaned and balanced and finally got himself down onto the bridge too, setting his shoulder against the next post.

“Lisa's knee,” Father commented presently, “did not require stitches. Merely a cut and some bruising. It will be well in a matter of a few days. Long before Winterfest....” When there was no response, Father prompted, “I just thought you would want to know.”

“Thank you, Father,” Vincent said automatically, without turning.

After some more silence, Father said, “I gather Jessica startled you. I'm sure she didn't intend to. She merely found it an interesting composition, I gather. She said the shadows of the spindles reminded her of bars, and she couldn't resist trying a photograph of it....”

Vincent said nothing.

Father offered a further opening, asking in a sympathetic voice, “Has it been a difficult day, Vincent?”

Vincent locked his fingers together, with no wish whatever to try to explain to Father either what his day had been or what he feared his night, still to come, would be. But Father wasn't going to leave until he got some sort of answer. So Vincent said stonily, “Jessica wishes to take photographs. That's her discipline. So of course, she must. To do so, she needs light. More than a candle. More than a lantern. I'll try to grow accustomed to it.”

“I confess that Jessica startles me, too, at times,” Father confided. “Her forthrightness. Her independence. She lights up the dark places. It’s so refreshing. She and Lisa are already getting on famously. Went right off after supper and took more photographs of Lisa striking poses.”

Able to think of nothing to say that wouldn't sound sullen, Vincent again kept silent.

“Vincent, when I forbade you to go to the studio, I assumed that we understood one another. It was not my intention to merely encourage you two to practice somewhere else. I fear that you allow Lisa to take advantage of your friendship, in her preoccupation with her coming performance. Your work and your studies suffer. You take careless risks because your thoughts are elsewhere. I know you're too kindhearted to refuse. So I have made clear to Lisa that she would best develop a dance she can perform without assistance. Since only she is to be judged, as it were, by it. By Madame Sakova. I believe it will be for the best.... Do we understand one another now, Vincent?”

“Yes, Father. I am not to help Lisa dance anymore.”

“Yes.... I had rather expected you would be — how shall I put it? More disappointed.” Father waited, then added, “Well, I'm glad you're not.”

“It's of no consequence. Lisa will be leaving soon in any case.”

“Certainly, that is so. I'm glad you're being so sensible about the matter. Vincent... is there something we should talk about?”

At last, Vincent forced himself to look around. “What, Father?”

“Well, for one thing, I've been obliged to be rather strict with you today. Do you feel it's unjust, that I feel I must punish you and not Jessica for this afternoon's escapade? I assure you, I have talked to her most sternly—”

“She is a stranger. And a guest. She knows no better. I was responsible for her. The fault was mine.”

“So you're not angry with me? Which would be entirely understandable—”

“Of course not, Father,” Vincent said quickly, emphatically. He never was angry with Father. Even the idea was ridiculous, unthinkable, and obscurely frightening. He shut it away. “I must learn to be more careful. So that no one is ever hurt on my account.”

“I'm concerned about you, too, Vincent. I don't want you hurt either.”

Father reached over far enough to pat Vincent's arm. Vincent stayed completely still. Father eventually took his hand away, beginning to make the complex effort of getting up.

Vincent couldn't ignore that. He immediately rose and held Father's arm until Father was steady on his feet, then stooped quickly to hand him his stick. Vincent walked with him as far as the landing.

There, Father turned to ask, “Have you had any supper at all, Vincent?”

“I wasn't hungry. I'll get something before... before I sleep. Will Jessica be accompanying me on the candle rounds tomorrow, as well?”

“She has been making a serious study of our maps,” Father responded, clearly approving of the project. “She found her own way down to the Great Hall, no small feat. If she wishes to go abroad again, I can have one of the middle children accompany her. No, Vincent, I don't believe it will be necessary.”

So he wasn't to be trusted with Jessica, either. Vincent nodded expressionlessly, accepting it. “I'll help Winslow, then. After my rounds.”

“Splendid idea.”

Having exchanged goodnights with Father, Vincent waited a little while, then went straight to the hospital chamber to collect a few blankets. He took them down to the broad ledge called the Outlook, overlooking the Chamber of the Falls, dimly revealed by shafts of faint moonlight. But he couldn't get settled there. So he instead followed the passage farther down to the spit of rock that poked into the churning, noisy water at the foot of the falls: the shore of the pool where children often swam.

He'd decided early that he wasn't even going to bother trying to sleep in his own chamber tonight. And the impersonal hissing of the falls, both everchanging and changeless, seemed to block out everything else and free his locked thoughts. Yet he still couldn't get settled. Finally, he moved the blankets into a tight alcove where nobody could approach without his knowing. Then, at last, he felt more secure and was able to relax.

At last he could stand to think about Jessica and about Lisa.

The fright Jessica had given him, his whole reaction, was disproportionate to the cause. He knew that. He was determined not to be angry with her, since she'd meant no harm. She was a stranger and a guest and thus deserving of a double measure of patience and consideration. And Father loved her. Vincent was determined to say nothing and do nothing to put any strain between them.

Yet he felt the terror still. And it was all tangled up with his feelings toward Lisa, and his automatic move to protect her, faster than thought, and the unendurable smell of her blood. And the sorrow of his forfeiting Lisa's trust and the loss of his excuse to be near her every day, close, touching her. He didn't know how he could bear that. But he'd have to.

He had to let her go. Hold his hand steadily open, let her lift off from it like a butterfly into freedom and bright air. Accept her destiny, and his own. Never once try to seize and bind to himself that delicacy, that joy, but kiss it only as it flew away into its rightful freedom and that unimaginable sunrise of new possibilities.

The necessary resignation, he found most difficult to maintain. But that did not excuse him, or make it any less necessary to honor the limits of the bargain he'd made — with destiny, or life itself, or the watching dark, he didn't clearly know.

But his heart knew the alternative: being yanked, forsworn and roaring, into a pit from which there could be no return, where the vengeful dark was absolute and without end.

But it might yet all be well, if he could continue to resist the impulse to stop time or say, even for the least instant, even within himself, the fatal phrase: Stay, moment: thou art so fair.

He thought, If it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.

All afternoon and all evening, he'd been trying to discipline himself to that readiness. As he'd been doing for months. But somehow, he'd do it. He had to.

Just as he'd have to swallow and somehow discharge his anger at Jessica, whom he no longer trusted at all nor even liked. He would learn to, because it was necessary.

He would simply have to discipline himself to it.

Suddenly, he flung off the blankets, stripped off his sweater and boots, and dove into the water, letting the crazy currents tumble him, surfacing only when his lungs ached for air. Then he doubled and forced himself deeper and yet deeper until he could whack the river's stone bed and push off.

Swimming and rolling in the current, he reached calmer water downstream where the cliff's outer curve bent the river. There he hauled up onto the thin rim of shore and began climbing a zigzag course, indifferently left or right as he found seams his claws could catch and hold, with no purpose but the climbing: using his strength against the rock, finding balance and validation in motion.

Perhaps 50 feet up, he turned and deliberately fell away from the cliff, hitting the water cleanly, then labored against the flow until at last he regained the stone spit — exhausted, but also purged.

He wasn't allowed to swim alone: nobody was. Nor was he allowed to climb. But tonight, he simply had to.

No discipline could be possible, otherwise.

He couldn't have explained it to Father. He didn't fully understand it himself. He only knew that something powerful and innate demanded expression. If denied one vent, it would find another, turning his nights into a red intoxication of pursuit and capture.

Shivering, stumbling and leaden with weariness, he rolled up in his blankets and within minutes was soundly asleep. Without dreams.

*****

The following day, Jessica shot him four times. Once as he left the hospital chamber, twice on his rounds, and he forgot what the fourth time was.

There was no predicting it. Out of nowhere, she'd pop out, camera already leveled, and detonate a glare of flashbulbs that left him blind for minutes afterward and shaken for much longer than that. He tried to watch for her, approach corners and doorways cautiously, but he'd always forget and be thinking about something else — generally Lisa, who was still angry at him —when the next ambush came.

He'd hear Jessica cranking her film, but by the time his vision cleared, she'd always be gone, leaving him to try to collect the scattered pieces of himself.

After the encounter outside the hospital chamber, when he could still think, he thought that being struck by lightning must be very similar. But with each ambush, he thought about it less. By the fourth, he didn't even flinch, just stood numbly waiting for the blindness to pass so that he could continue with whatever he'd been doing, as soon as he could remember what it had been.

Each time he felt he'd been caught doing something shameful. Worse than mirrors. Worse even than the danger of being caught Above, which he'd learned to dread above all things. The light accused, exposed, and left him obscurely guilty of having been seen.

Probably Jessica construed what perhaps looked like calm as consent. Perhaps she assumed, because he didn't object, that he liked being blinded and kept in a constant state of disoriented terror.

But objection wasn't in him. Nor moderation. Nor even rational argument. The only possible responses were either everything — losing control and striking out at her (which was unthinkable) or nothing. So he did nothing... except shut himself off, within, and grow steadily more numb and more silent.

By evening, Vincent felt as though he were spinning: either enormously fast or with such sidereal slowness that it might as well have been stillness. He couldn't tell which. He didn't know if it mattered. He didn't care.

Perhaps he slept that night. He wasn't sure. He found himself outside the pipe chamber as Pascal came out, and wandered along with him for no particular reason except that Pascal seemed to expect him to, and breakfast was being served in the Commons. So he supposed that meant it was morning, and he should get ready for his classes.

Routine could take the place of thought. He did whatever he usually did, whatever people seemed to expect, and if he seemed somewhat abstracted, that after all was nothing very unusual. But now it wasn't daydreaming. He supposed it was sleep.

If he leaned against a wall, he slept. Sitting at lunch, he slept. Probably only for a moment or two, because neither Pascal nor Winslow seemed to notice and he himself wasn't aware of it, of sleeping: only of waking abruptly with the disorienting sense he'd lost some vital beat of time that would have let him connect before with after, or with now.

One minute, Pascal was talking about baseball; what seemed like the next minute, he and Winslow were in the middle of a debate about whether people really had walked on the moon or if it was all a hoax. Then Sarah was suddenly there, arms folded, looking at Vincent as though expecting an answer, and it took some time to make out that she wanted to know if he'd be free to help dip the Winterfest candles that afternoon after he'd finished his rounds.

He wouldn't be helping Lisa practice today, he recalled. So there was no other claim on his time. So there was no reason not to agree. So he did, although Sarah had to remind him of that promise once he got to the candle works, dumped the stubs into a pan for remelting, and then turned to go because that was what he always did.

That seemed to be how it was now: he'd follow a conversation or an action for a few minutes and then be distracted by something like a sound he couldn't quite hear. By the time he refocused, he'd have forgotten what he was doing, what had been happening.

Sarah remarked that he'd been later arriving than she'd expected, and so they'd have to continue the job tomorrow. So he guessed his rounds must have taken longer than usual. He had no way of telling. But it seemed to be suppertime, so he went, leaving most of his food uneaten because he'd become lost in an attempt to remember whether Jessica had shot him three times today, or only twice. Once on his rounds, he thought. Or perhaps it was twice.... And then his mind veered away to an image of Lisa turning on pointe, arms curved at her sides at first and then pulled closer, tighter, as she spun faster and became a dizzying blur.... And with that vague sense of shock that was becoming familiar, he roused to find himself alone on the bench and almost everybody gone. So he supposed supper was over. It was time to leave.

Habit took him back to his chamber and his study of Faust. But he found he couldn't finish reading a page without two or three blurred gaps. The fourth (or perhaps fifth) time a debate among Wittenburg students dissolved into nonsense and unmeaning, he placed his bookmarks, picked up the volumes very carefully and set them on his shelf for a time when it would be possible to bring to them something more like the attention they deserved.

That night he took his blankets to a cluttered storage chamber where discarded materials collected Above were kept for eventual sorting and repair. A bowlegged horsehair couch full of reassuring warm smells, especially peppermint, proved a very pleasant place to sleep. But he woke in a blind tunnel full of broken loose bricks, soaking wet, with mud on his boots and hands and muddy green stains on his knees.

He puzzled about that, turning and inspecting his muddy hands as he slowly made his way back to the Home Chambers. Eventually, he decided it must be raining, Above. And he'd been out in the rain. In the park.

So that was all right: that made sense.

He supposed that meant he ought to get himself clean before breakfast, and resolved the problem by collecting clean clothes, then carrying them to the bathing pool.

A large cabinet outside held a folded miscellany of towels and sections of blanket too small for other use. Vincent gathered a stack, then pushed aside the canvas and went into the warm, steamy cavern.

He didn't bother lighting a candle; but he wasn't being very attentive, either. So he undressed and slid into the water without noticing a quiet shadow. Father's voice, speaking his name, was almost as great a startlement as a blast of light would have been.

Instinctively. Vincent ducked, swam underwater a few long, powerful strokes, then felt how foolish that was and surfaced again, shaking his hair back.

“Father. I didn't see you there.”

A striped blanket around his shoulders, Father was sitting in a dip of the ledge that put the water up to his waist.

Coming slowly to the obvious conclusion, Vincent added, “Is your hip bothering you?”

“A bit,” Father admitted.

When Father didn't say anything else, Vincent swam diagonally to standing depth near the pool's outflow, where the current would carry the soap away, and washed himself. As he waded up the slant to where he'd left the towels, Father's voice commented, “I looked for you as I was coming down. Hoping for some company. But you weren't in your chamber.”

Vincent hesitated, then resumed the process of squeezing and rubbing water out of his hair: until that was done, there was no use trying to dry the rest of himself. Unable to think of any response that wasn't obvious or unwise, he said nothing.

Father continued, “And though I claim little in common with Sherlock Holmes, it didn't appear to me that your bed showed any sign of use. I don't mean to pry, Vincent. It merely seems a little late in the season for a fit of spring restlessness.... Have you been Above?”

Recalling the grass stains and the mud, Vincent agreed uncertainly, “Yes....”

“Marjorie mentioned having seen you abroad quite late last night, as well. Is there... some particular reason you've been avoiding your chamber, Vincent? Particularly at night? Something we should talk about? We did have an agreement, you remember....”

Vincent stood a moment, head bowed, then stooped for a chunk of blanket large enough to wrap about himself.

“I've kept my promise,” he said finally. “I haven't been to the dance studio. Or the Great Hall. I haven't—”

“Come over here, sit by me: my hearing isn't as good as yours.” When Vincent reluctantly obeyed, circling the pool to settle on the ledge near the dip, Father prompted, “Now, what did you say?”

“That I haven't seen Lisa at all. She's angry with me. Because of her knee.”

“That wasn't the promise I meant, Vincent. And I believe you know that.... Your hearing, I know, is excellent. And I am aware that your gift can also provide an acute awareness of...your surroundings. Which acuity may sometimes be unwelcome. Which might seem an involuntary intrusion on matters that others, who do not know each other as well as we do, you and I, might assume to be safely private. Whereas they are, in fact, an unintentional intrusion upon you. Has there been...a problem of that kind, Vincent?”

Vincent bent forward, his hands folded on his knees. At last, in a voice barely above a whisper, he admitted, “Yes, Father.”

“Since Jessica came Below.”

“Yes, Father. I didn't mean—”

“Of course you didn't. There's no question of blame. It's simply a matter of courtesy. The situation is unprecedented; and I have been slow to appreciate all the ramifications.”

Father set his hand on Vincent's, and the loving and steadfast concern flowed in: past all blocks, to the still and spinning place, within, where Vincent had hidden himself. Abruptly Vincent found himself sobbing. And Father shrugged free of his blanket enough to clasp Vincent's shoulders and draw him to lean against Father's side, the striped blanket around them both.

Vincent found himself saying, “I don't want to be here anymore. But there's nowhere else to be.”

“Ah, Vincent—” Father said, and pulled him closer with a strong, fierce embrace.

Vincent felt a kind of grief, a kind of despair, and didn't know if it was his own or Father's. All barriers had collapsed and he was full of confusion.

Vincent went on brokenly, “I've tried, I have tried to like her, Father. For your sake, if not her own. I have tried, I don't want—”

“There, it's going to be all right. Truly. All right.” Still holding Vincent, steadily patting his back, Father reflected, ”How hypocritical it must have seemed to you, that on the one hand I lecture you on self-restraint and limits while myself indulging, on the other hand—”

“No, Father: for you, there are no limits. You're like other men, you have the right—”

“Do I? I have chosen this life, Vincent. I have chosen you. I will never repent of those choices. They are my life, my being. And they necessarily impose limits upon me too. I've been thoughtless and selfish. I have been wise enough, in the past, to know I must not try to impose on others what I would not willingly bear myself. And I made myself the excuse that Jessica would be a counterbalance to my limitations, being what I am...a man, and no longer young. For the young girls— no: women— who need and deserve guidance I know I am ill equipped to give them. Girls like Lisa.... I thought, in Jessica, and in her independent and adventuresome nature, they might find possibilities.... But I see that was a rationalization. Already, Jessica complains of my neglect of her. The endless meetings, schedules to be drawn up, supplies to be located and transported, repairs to be undertaken, patients to be attended to.... My life. And I wish no other. But there is not enough of me, or my life, uncommitted, that it would be right for me to expect anyone else to subsist on the scraps that are left. And it takes a toll on me, as well. I, too, have gotten very little rest, these last few nights. As perhaps you'd noticed...?”

Prodded by Father's self-mockery, Vincent nodded and felt the rueful laughter move between them, although there was no sound.

Finally both laughter and tears subsided into a kind of affectionate peace Vincent had almost always known with Father: the steady and harmonious ground upon which all else was elaboration and counterpoint. The fugitive melodies changed, came and went; the ground remained. And because of it, Vincent found he could protest softly, “But you love her.”

“So I do. But some loves are fated not to be, Vincent. One owes love in many directions. But an exclusive love, one which can exist only at the expense of all others.... I think that is not my destiny, after all. Even without it, I am very fortunate. And well content. As you will be. When Lisa is gone. There will be loneliness for a time, and regret, and sadness. But yet satisfaction, to have done what one knows is right, to part in love and gladness, wishing each other only well rather than clinging, in resentment and acrimony, to the dream of a life together which can never be.... There will be satisfactions, Vincent. I promise you. For both of us. This is our home, our life. A good one, I think. And we will be glad of it again. That, too, I promise you.”

“Yes, Father. Father... I've been climbing,” Vincent confessed quietly and was surprised at Father's snort of amusement.

“I shouldn't wonder. In your place, I should have been doing a great deal more than that, I imagine. Since you appear uninjured, this once I think we'll overlook it.”

“Yes, Father,” Vincent said, and yawned. It was so comfortable being held by Father that it was with regret that Vincent reminded himself that he was too big and too heavy now for such cuddling and sat up straight again.

“I think,” Father said, “if you'll help me up, we should both go to our chambers, or we'll risk taking a chill. And for today, you are excused all classes and all duties. Perhaps you might get some rest. In your own bed. And when you waken, come and take your leave of Jessica, who is enormously fond of you—”

“She likes to take pictures of me,” Vincent put in flatly, assisting Father in rising, then helping him put on his robe. “It's not quite the same thing.”

“Isn't it? Well, I suppose you would know. Would you hand me...? Yes,” said Father, taking his stick, “that will be fine. Now get yourself dressed and go rest. I promise you will not be disturbed... in that fashion again.”

“Yes, Father.” Vincent kissed Father's cheek and took the warmth of a one-armed hug back to where he'd left the clean clothes. By now, the community would be stirring: somebody might come for a morning bath. Vincent wouldn't want to cause anyone embarrassment.

When he'd been a child it had been different. Now, it was he who was different, and no longer in any way a child.

*****

When Vincent woke, his sense of the time told him it was late afternoon. He didn't at once push the quilts away, savoring the familiar look and smell of his own chamber, surveying the beloved objects. He liked the way the light from his window woke glints from the gold-stamped titles of books neatly lined up in their bookcase, his geode on its stand, a curved portion of a car's headlight on its shelf. All the quiet, warm colors.

His place.

He'd missed it more than he'd realized, and felt a rising sense of well-being and comfort merely to find himself here again, enjoying too the luxurious holiday awareness of not having to rise immediately and take up the usual daily routine.

Deeply comfortable, he blinked at his things, aware of them and of himself, and had almost allowed himself to doze off again, when he realized he was hungry.

So he rose and briskly dressed and scavenged for himself, in the Commons, a makeshift meal including a cold potato and two sandwiches of leftover ham, broccoli, and sliced onion. He washed it down with several glasses of the cider that was one of this season's special treats.

Then he went back along the passage to Father's study. He didn't expect the coming meeting to be pleasant; but he wasn't afraid of it, now that he and Father understood one another.

Father and Jessica were talking: Father seated at his desk, Jessica perched in the large chair that Vincent generally used. She was again wearing the beige linen suit, no longer so crisp and creaseless as when she'd come Below. There were scuffs on the impractical high-heeled shoes. Perhaps in compensation, she'd added a lavender silk scarf fastened by a silver brooch that matched her earrings.

Father was saying, “—come to Winterfest, of course? I hope that we may remain— Ah, Vincent.” Both Father and Jessica looked around as Vincent started down the stairs. “Did you rest well?”

“Yes, Father, thank you. Jessica.”

“Hello, Vincent. We'd begun to wonder if you were practicing for hibernation,” Jessica commented brightly, and didn't seem to notice the sharp glance that won her from Father, who didn't care for remarks of that kind: only animals hibernated.

Vincent didn't mind. Nothing Jessica could say could make him any more, or any less, what he was. Whatever that might be. He turned the battered wooden armchair whose burgandy velvet seat and back were worn almost bald and seated himself next to Father's table. Feeling some response was called for, he said, “I hope you've enjoyed your visit.”

Jessica's lips made a small smile, acknowledging the tactful way the situation had been recast. “Certainly, my visit has been most memorable. Parts of it, especially,” she added, with a sidelong look at Father which prompted Father to decide his glasses were in immediate need of cleaning.

Some tension, Vincent judged. Some awkwardness, sadness. But no anger that he could discern. Nothing he needed to brace against. He folded his hands comfortably in his lap.

“Jessica,” Father said, replacing his glasses, “there is one other thing. I gather you have been taking photographs of the tunnels. I should like to see them, please.”

Jessica looked aside, toward the baggage stacked against the ledge of the emergency surgery. “I've already packed them. And I've only had a chance to develop a few. Might I bring them back? At Winterfest, as you say?”

“I should like to see them now, Jessica. If you will point out the bag, I'm sure Vincent would be glad to assist you.”

“No, thank you, I can manage,” Jessica said, rising. Stooping by her baggage, she pulled out the much-stickered leather case and lifted it onto the tabletop, remarking, “When one travels as much as I do, one becomes quite methodical about certain things. And develops a typical spinster's fussiness about having one's things disturbed or put back in the wrong order.... Yes, here they are.” Holding a large manila envelope, Jessica turned with an expression of uncertainty, perhaps regret. “I meant to make them into an album for you,” she  confessed to Father, with another small, poignant smile. “A Winterfest present...?”

“We do not exchange gifts at Winterfest. But I thank you for the thought, all the same. Might I see them now, please?” Father held out his hand, making the request virtually a command.

When Jessica surrendered the large envelope, Father slit it and began shuffling through the photographs it contained, quickly scanning and sorting them into two piles. Then he took one pile and inspected each photograph more closely with the aid of a magnifying glass. One of the pictures, he set aside into the other pile. The rest, he squared and slid back into the envelope. He looked up then, regarding Jessica levelly. “Those, you may keep. These, I must ask that you leave with me.”

“But as I just said,” responded Jessica, puzzled, “I'll put them in an album—”

“These,” Father said firmly, setting his hand on the stack of loose pictures, “will remain here, Jessica. I know you would never willingly betray our secret. But accidents have been known to occur. And I cannot risk that. I should also like the negatives, please.”

Jessica shut the case. “But they're not developed yet. All my snaps of, of Sarah, making candles, Amelia at the loom—”

“I'm sorry, Jessica. I must insist. Vincent, please help Jessica find the negatives. They will be small cylinders with screw caps—”

As Vincent started to get up, Jessica shot him a cold, warning look. Snapping the case open again, she pulled, from loops on the case's lid, six yellow cylinders such as Father had described, then pivoted to slap them onto the desktop. Gathering them in, Father continued to look past her at the four yellow cylinders still remaining in the loops. Hands set on hips, Jessica declared, “The rest are snaps I took in Chinatown before coming Below.”

For a moment, Father sat considering. Then his eyes lifted and locked with Jessica's. “Of course, I accept your word,” he commented mildly.

Unscrewing all the tops, Father pulled out the strips of film, that uncurled like long black snakes. “Bring the brazier here, please, Vincent,” Father directed in an absent, matter-of-fact tone, as though asking him to retrieve a book from the balcony stacks. Jessica's face flushed, then went white. Plainly horrified, she stared but made no complaint as Vincent carried the brazier to the side of the desk and Father laid the film strips on the coals, where they crisped and vanished almost instantly.

“That,” said Jessica icily, “was a barbarity.”

“That,” Father replied, “is survival. I regret the necessity, Jessica, as keenly as you; but it is necessity. So I fear I cannot, in conscience, even apologize.”

Jessica leaned to retrieve the manila envelope, snatching it into safety and stowing it in the case, as though fearing Father might change his mind and burn that too. “Although I meant them as a gift, they are not your property.”

“The films and pictures are not,” agreed Father steadily. “But the image upon them is — not my property, precisely. But surely my responsibility and my concern. That it never fall into the wrong hands.”

Jessica gestured at the photographs remaining on Father’s desk. “Look at them: what do you see?”

Father didn't move, not even his eyes. “My son.”

“But you do not see. You merely recognize. And Vincent is even worse, because he sees only what you do. Never looks for himself, at himself, at all. I hoped....”

Jessica swung around, facing Vincent. “My dear boy, find a mirror, a pool, anything, and really look into it. You are not what you think you are. Nor what Father sees. Perhaps it takes a stranger, and a woman, to see what you all seem altogether blind to: that you are astonishingly, strikingly attractive, Vincent. Beautiful as great art is beautiful, beautiful in motion as any dancer, or as the tiger your beloved Billy Blake envisioned burning in the forests of the night. But one is not allowed to say so. One is not bloody well allowed—” Jessica made an abrupt, frustrated gesture at the loose pictures, and Father set a hand on them as if fearing she'd try to snatch them back.

She said to Father, “Look at the evidence of your own eyes, the evidence I've brought you. He is not merely your son, not merely Vincent. He is his own creature, unique in all the world, beyond your prosaic names and your casual recognitions, and you do not see him! None of you sees him. Not even himself. Will you not....”

She broke off, and there was silence. Horribly embarrassed, Vincent had backed away, turned away, pained to have become, after all, a cause of contention between Father and Jessica. It seemed a long time before anyone spoke.

At last Father said, “Winslow will escort you to the threshold, with as much of your impedimenta as four men can carry. The rest will be delivered by morning to wherever you specify.”

“Yes. Of course. Thank you. Well, Vincent, if you won't listen to me, pay close attention to your mother hereafter. Perhaps she will persuade you of what I cannot. Well, I suppose I'm off, then. Goodbye, Father. We must write.”

“Certainly. I shall enjoy that,” said Father, and then sent Vincent into the passage to signal for Winslow.

Vincent was glad of the excuse to absent himself from any further leavetaking.

Winslow must have been waiting, because he and the porters arrived almost at once, and Jessica was occupied with pointing out which bags and trunks she wanted taken immediately and which could wait until morning. Within a few minutes, the procession had departed, with only a final look and wave from Jessica from the steps.

Vincent didn't think he'd ever been so glad to see anyone depart. And though he avoided contact and intrusion upon Father's reaction, he thought Father felt much the same.

Settling back in his chair with a sigh, Father brushed a negligent hand across the photographs, spreading them out across the desk. “They're really very well done,” he remarked, in the tone of one resolved to be fair. “Wouldn't you like to look at them before...?”

“No, Father,” Vincent said at once, positively. He could think only of what their taking had meant to him: the shocking light, the dread, as though another piece of his soul had been trapped and triumphantly carried away.

“Well, then,” said Father regretfully, gathering up the pictures, and dropped them onto the brazier. As they flamed and curled, Father asked, “That remark about your mother, Vincent: what did Jessica mean?”

“Nothing, Father. An idle joke, something said as we were replacing the candles. Of no consequence.”

“I see. The moment she told me she'd suggested that you call her Mother, I had the most severe misgivings. For I knew that wasn't at all likely. But I had hoped you could at least become friends.... Ah, well.”

“I tried, Father.”

“I know that you did. So did we all. But sometimes the best will in the world simply is not enough.” Father shook his head. “It was too much to expect, that a topsider could ever have learned, and truly accepted, our ways. It’s nobody's fault, Vincent. And perhaps a good thing for us to have learned, to avoid making the same mistake again, sparing a similar disappointment to all concerned.”

“Yes, Father,” Vincent agreed fervently.

*****

That evening, at supper, Lisa made a particular point of taking a seat next to Vincent, even though that meant getting Pascal to move.

Her knee, she reported, had stopped aching, and didn't even hurt as long as she didn't try any deep bends. And in avoiding those positions, she'd come up with the core of a really different routine unlike anything she'd ever tried before. All up, and reaching, “—and I'm not going to tell you any more,” Lisa concluded with a quick, laughing glance as she licked her spoon.

Plainly, her temper had turned sunny again. She'd never been one to hold a grudge; as long as the dancing was going well, nothing else bothered her very much.

“Really, it's lucky all that happened,” Lisa went on. “Or I'd never have thought to try a solo routine. After all, I'll have to begin sometime.”

“Yes,” Vincent agreed, because it was true. He tried to be happy about it, because Lisa was.

“And this one will be secret. Nobody will have seen it 30 times already before I dance it. Not even Madame Sakova. Not even you! Well, maybe you.... I tell you what,” Lisa whispered, leaning close, full of happy excitement. “By the time you're allowed to watch me practice, I should have the whole thing nearly worked out. And then I'll show you. Just you. So at Winterfest, you'll be the only one who'll know what I'm going to do, what the dance is about. So it'll still be our dance, in a way. We'll still work on it together, and you can tell me any parts that look bad or ugly.”

“It's impossible.”

“Why? Father only said a week—”

Vincent shook his head. “Impossible for you ever to be ugly.”

Lisa beamed at the compliment, that was only truth. Then she abruptly sobered and moved away. Intently spooning custard, she said, “I missed you. You deserved it, dragging me around like that. But I still missed you. It's a wonderful dance, that I'm working out. Madame Sakova's sure to like it.... But it's not the same. Without you there. Sometimes I wish....”

“I know. But... don't let's talk about it. It can only make us sad.”

“You're right: I only want to think about the happy things!” declared Lisa, brightening. “Like Winterfest! Like itchy costumes, and colored spotlights, and the sound that hundreds of people make, just breathing. The way they always cough in the best parts of the pas de deux, remember?” Plunking her spoon into her cup, Lisa turned, directing, “So Sunday, right after supper, you meet me at the Great Hall, all right? Promise?”

“I promise.”

Smiling, Lisa swung her legs over the bench and walked away across the Commons, circling benches, dodging people carrying trays to or from the kitchen: every motion balanced, graceful. Vincent's eyes followed her all the way to the doorway because it wasn't possible that anything else in the world could be so beautiful.

Collecting the two trays, Vincent made up his mind to throw himself into finishing the candles, and all the other preparations for that special holiday, without thinking overmuch of what would come after. To live wholly in the present moment with no wish to push it faster or slow its passing. To follow Lisa's example and think only of the happy things. Which wouldn't be hard.

For Father was himself again, as Vincent had always known him. Had even allowed that, given reasonable caution, Vincent might now climb, if and where he wanted to. He could sleep in his own chamber again without fear of dark dreams, and resume his study of Faust. Jessica, with her disquieting eyes and ideas, and her wretched camera, had departed. And Lisa had forgiven him and was no longer angry.

It seemed to him he'd never been so happy.

Pawn’s Gambit

Rising from his chair, Vincent said, “It's time,” and Jamie put down her notes to pat, one handed, at her light brown hair, brushed smooth and tied back with a thong.

“Do I look okay?” she asked nervously, grabbing up her notes again.

She'd dressed soberly, even formally — over a flowered, loose sleeved shirt, blue on blue, a wool tabard, of a blue almost black, hanging to her dark trousered knees — for the council session. Her cast encased wrist, broken in a headlong leap to dodge the bowers' ambush two weeks ago, therefore stood out starkly, calling attention to the injury.

Perhaps a good tactic. The proof would rest in the result.

“You look,” Vincent said, and smiled, “determined. And that's a good way to look. Don't worry.”

Jamie responded to the smile with a wide eyed, scared expression as they left Vincent's chamber and went left down the passage toward Father's study.

“It has to work,” Jamie muttered. “We'll have Cullen and Pascal. And Mouse, he'll go along with whatever you say. And you, of course. That's a majority.”

“Perhaps. We will get a fair hearing. That's all we can expect.”

Privately, Vincent knew it would all rest with Father. Personalities were more important than numbers. And indirection was almost always better than confrontation.

Jamie's proposal had given Vincent a way to be indirect, to perhaps keep the matter from appearing what it was: a fundamental disagreement between himself and Father. And therefore, a major test of power.

Sticking her notes under an arm, Jamie tucked in her dangling lucky piece — a portrait pawn Cullen had carved of her for a set that had never been completed, which she wore on a chain.

Then she swung around to ask, “All this planning, who'll do what, how, and when: is this what chess is like?”

“Chess, like nearly all games, is about power. So to that degree, yes, I suppose any crisis resembles chess. You should let Father teach you the game.”

“Too boring,” Jamie replied with a quick, cheerful shrug. “I've escaped so far and mean to keep escaping. I'll leave the chess to you. You be the general. Let me be the army, for a change. It's about time somebody was!”

Vincent greeted the sentry, Richie Mayotte, that Father loathed — not personally, of course, but the mere fact of a sentry monitoring access to his chambers, or wherever else he happened to be — and then descended, with Jamie, to take adjoining seats at Father's large round table.

Looking up from his desk, Father said, “Jamie...?” partly a greeting and partly a question about her presence.

Vincent said, “I asked her to come, Father. Jamie has some proposals I think she should be allowed to present herself.”

“Well, if no one else objects,” Father responded. “But our agenda is quite full tonight, Vincent, and—”

“Jamie can speak in my place. And I believe I should have some unused time to my credit, considering how seldom I've attended, these last months.”

“There's that,” admitted Father, responding to Vincent's mild self mockery with a short, tight smile. “If you intend liquidating that balance, we could be here until Winterfest.”

“Nothing so dire as that, I assure you.”

Father gave Vincent a long, steady, loving look. “It's so good to have you back. For my part, you may have all the time till doomsday and I'd sit and hear you out.”

A phrase popped into Vincent's mind: And come out fighting, and may the best man win. What he said, instead, was, “Thank you, Father. Your graciousness almost makes a virtue of my neglect.”

Father's eyes turned toward Jamie, and he remarked, “Now you have got me curious. I can't wait, Jamie, to find out what has persuaded Vincent to forego his allotted time yet again, although on this occasion, while giving us the pleasure of his company and the honor of  his attention.”

Jamie leaned to whisper indignantly to Vincent, “That's a slam.”

Vincent murmured, “Only a preliminary gambit, which Father has graciously declined in favor of letting the game proceed. Peace, Jamie. We have not yet begun. Good evening, Pascal,” he added, as the pipemaster came to sit at his left. “We promise to try to be brief.”

“What it takes,” Pascal responded tersely, unsmiling.

Cullen came down the stairs, but declined to sit at the table and so present the appearance of being a visible bloc. Instead, offering a general greeting, he took a place next to the chair whose leather seat was visibly bowed from bearing William's weight. A subtle touch, Vincent thought, nicely carried out.

Mary came next, opening her bag and taking up her inevitable knitting. Then William, and finally Mouse, worriedly checking to see if he was late or early, if the meeting had begun without him. Spotting Jamie, Mouse looked surprised and waved, sat near Cullen, then changed his mind and dragged a chair over to sit at Jamie's right, asking, “What you doing here?”

“If you'd been anyplace around when I looked for you, you'd know,” Jamie responded tartly.

Mouse flapped his gloved hands in brisk vagueness. “Busy — you know. Sorry.”

“There's a lot of that been going around,” William put in, with a glance at Vincent.

Jamie started to make some hot reply, but shut her mouth when Vincent touched her arm, cautioning, “People speak their minds in council, Jamie. That is how it must be. But the price of that liberty is the occasional failure of tact. A small loss, and far better than an empty politeness that shies away from the difficult issues, the hard decisions.”

Sweeping a glance around the chamber, Father said, “We all seem to be here. As well as one visitor, by Vincent's invitation. Is there objection to Jamie's joining our discussions tonight? None? Then I believe we can begin. William, what is the status of our supply of staples? According to my notes, you mentioned, last week, that we were in danger of running short of flour.”

“I know everybody's used to bread at least once a day,” William responded, “but the fact is that pasta keeps better, is just as good for you, and it's a lot easier to cook. Even makes good leftovers. But if I try to switch off to bread every other day, or even cut down to a couple times a week, I know there'll be howls that'll carry clear to Ripley. So I think—”

“Ever try to make a sandwich,” Cullen commented, “with two slabs of lasagna?”

William leaned forward. “What law says you got to eat sandwiches?”

“A lifetime's worth of habit ought to count for something,” Cullen responded, and they were off on an intense dispute about the merits of pasta.

Jamie whispered to Vincent, “Is this what council's about?”

“Without food, the rest becomes academic. Be patient. By the usual rotation, and in the absence of an emergency, we are last in the priorities.”

“You mean Mouse gets to talk before you do?”

“Certainly. The physical integrity of the tunnels is a higher priority than their defense.”

“But—”

“Some of us,” Father commented, with a stern look, “are attempting to listen to William.”

“I'm sorry, Father. My apologies, William,” Vincent said. “Personally, I've always been quite fond of macaroni.”

“That's one vote, anyhow,” William responded good-naturedly, and proceeded in his argument.

Vincent thought, but didn't say aloud, that William's reaction demonstrated the other side of the blunt frankness that was the rule at council meetings: the determination not to take offense or take either opposition or criticism personally. Had it not been so, council sessions would have deteriorated into shouting matches and festering grudges much more often than they actually did.

After about half an hour's debate, the issue was settled — by compromise, as most things were: for a month's trial period, no bread would be served at the evening meal. Sandwiches would, however, continue. After the first month, bread for morning toast would be cut back severely, available only by special request, for a further month. Then council would reevaluate the experiment.

Cullen, and what was known by the all purpose term of “housekeeping,” was next on the agenda. But Cullen unexpectedly waived his turn in Vincent's favor, in honor of the rare occasion of his attendance. That roused a laugh, even from Mouse, and diminished the sense of something prearranged, which it wasn't.

Father said, “Does anyone else have urgent business that should take precedence? Then, of course: Vincent, you have the floor.”

Vincent folded his hands before him, waiting while he felt everyone's attention settle and focus. Then he said simply, “Jamie has asked to become my apprentice in what I do Below. And after discussion, I told her that I am willing she should.” He stopped for the expected barrage of exclamations of surprise and questions, letting Jamie field most of them.

Yes, she'd gotten her high school equivalency diploma, just last week; but No, she wasn't interested in college, even assuming that, like Michael, she could win a scholarship to help with tuition. Yes, she understood what an all embracing responsibility tunnel security was — that was why she wanted it, it was too much for Vincent or anybody to do all alone. Yes, she knew it could be dangerous (brandishing her cast enclosed wrist); but No, that didn't deter her. And No, she admitted she couldn't play chess, or move as fast or as silently or in pitch darkness as Vincent did, or have fangs or claws or the strength of berserker rage (though the question was more politely phrased) the way Vincent did. She'd manage just fine without them, using her own strengths of determination, forethought, courage; night sighted goggles recovered from the killer who'd come after Vincent Below; her thorough familiarity with the whole of the tunnel system, less only than that of Vincent and Mouse; an extended system of deadfalls, diversions, and traps she'd worked out; and, if they failed, the little crossbow bolts that could punch nicely through sheet steel — or bone: devastating, at close range. And Yes, all this in spite of the fact that she was 18, and a girl, and she didn't see what that had to do with it anyhow.

“They accept girls in the army now, even Above,” she pointed out.

“But not for combat, Jamie,” Father countered.

“That doesn't stop them from defending themselves or completing their assignment, no matter who gets in the way or tries to stop them.”

“But Jamie, dear,” said Mary, looking up from her knitting. “It could mean...killing.”

“No,” Jamie retorted, white faced but still keeping herself from shouting or tears, “where does it say that? Where does it say that security means killing people? It only means keeping us safe. Whatever it takes to do that. I think there's already been too much killing. Because there's been only Vincent. Because we've left him to do it all alone. If more of us would help him, all the time, maybe it wouldn't come to killing so often. Maybe we could find other ways and Vincent wouldn't have to go pull somebody apart every time some danger comes.”

“Jamie,” said Vincent, in the stiff, embarrassed silence that immediately fell, “it is a fair question. Sometimes, however one tries to avoid it, a confrontation becomes a matter of force. Of killing.”

“But, Vincent, we already talked about that,” Jamie protested.

“We did, you and I. But the whole community has a legitimate interest in your answer. We all have a right to know if you're prepared for that.”

“Are you prepared for that? I've seen what it's cost you — what it's done to you. Everybody's seen, but nobody does anything about it! Well, I want to. And I will. I'm prepared to fight, I've been in at least 20 fights already. If it comes to killing... well, we'd see, wouldn't we? Like the boy in The Red Badge of Courage. I'd try everything short of that first. And then we'd see. Killing, its gotten too easy, Vincent. Maybe we need somebody who thinks of it like it used to be — as a last resort.”

Looking up, taking in all the faces, Vincent remarked generally, “You see what interesting discussions we shall have, Jamie and I. Concerning things which are... uncomfortable subjects among us. And seldom spoken of. I am looking forward to them.”

Pascal said, “Why bring this up, Vincent? You don't need council approval to take on an apprentice. Zach just sort of hung around until I'd let him help, and things developed from there. The same with Mary and Livvy, Sarah and Rebecca.”

Vincent replied, “All our duties are important, vital to this community's health. But increasingly, over the years, mine are a matter of survival. As Jamie implied, it was not always so. When I was young, when I was given the responsibility for our community's security, that seemed a matter only of watching for mudslides and water, finding strayed children, and guarding against discovery from Above. And on a certain memorable occasion, taking care of what at first was believed to be a troublesome rat.”

Mouse grinned broadly and looked around, making sure everybody knew Vincent was talking about him.

Vincent said, “But year by year, our lives have become darker and the dangers greater. And slowly my role has altered from that of a combination constable, babysitter, and night-watchman” (some smiles) “to that of a police force and finally to that of a standing army, in my own person.” (All smiles fading, a few sober nods; Father's eyes, behind his glasses, level and expressionless.)

“And our recent experiences with the bowers have persuaded me that an army of one is simply not sufficient. That is why I wished Jamie's commitment to be understood and, at least implicitly, confirmed by council. For I believe that we are now, at this moment, at war, whether we know it, or wish it, or not. And I cannot ...”

“We differ there,” Father interrupted.

“I know that we do, Father. But I must say it as I find it. It is my duty.”

“If you judge it so, then I agree that you must. I will reserve my views until later.”

Vincent continued, “To explore Jamie's request, I asked her to investigate alternatives to warfare between or among communities which, like us and the bowers, are situated within striking distance of one another and have some history of friction, differences either of wealth, or philosophy, or advantage which put and keep them naturally at odds. And out of her researches, she has evolved a proposal I mean her to put forward for discussion in a moment. But first, two matters. May I take it that Jamie's apprenticeship is acceptable to you if it is acceptable to me? I would like a show of hands.”

Slowly, all hands went up but Mary's. Cullen said, “If we depend on you to call the turns, Vincent, that means we accept anybody you deputize to do parts of it. That's what happens in practice, in emergencies. So why not say so, and accept it? If you told Jamie, 'Go keep anybody from crossing the Gallery bridge', none of us would argue with you, or try to stop her. I don't see any difference between that and a formal, recognized arrangement. You can't be everyplace, do everything. It shouldn't be only on you: Jamie's right about that.”

Vincent's attention was on Mary, who eventually turned her knitting and said, “I can't agree to it, Vincent. Jamie's too young. Barely more than a child. And she should be busy considering having children of her own, like Brooke. Or Lena. Or Laura.”

“Mary,” said Jamie, “I'm not like Brooke. I never will be. This is what I want to do. I've been thinking about it for months and it's my decision, Mary. It's important to me.”

Mary made a brief, dismissing gesture. “Cullen said it: you don't need my permission. And even if it were a matter for council vote, I've been outvoted. But I don't feel right about it, Jamie, and I won't pretend that I do.”

As Jamie sat straighter, exultant, knowing they'd won, Father said, “Your dissent is noted, Mary.” Father then turned to Vincent. “And what is the second preliminary you mentioned?”

“My view,” said Vincent flatly. “Which we have discussed, and disagreed upon. Which must now be spoken openly and determined by us all.”

“I thought so. Even expected it. Will you permit me to summarize your position?” At Vincent's nod, Father continued, “Vincent believes the bowers' attack requires both reply and greatly increased security measures. He believes me to be in particular danger and has therefore encumbered me with bodyguards... whose services, I might add, have yet to be called upon. He proposes attacking the bowers in return, inflicting the greatest possible damage in proportion to the risk incurred, to convince them to return to their former policy of leaving us alone. Is that a fair summary, Vincent?”

“It is, Father.”

“I am, perhaps needless to say, utterly opposed to this course of action. I believe it best to mourn our losses and regard the bowers' action as an unprovoked folly they are doubtless already repenting, since their losses were much higher, though no more dear, than ours. Almost ten to one, in fact, by Vincent's own estimate, isn't that correct? Well, then. Surely, were a lesson needed, it has already been supplied. We may consider the ugly matter over. That is my position.”

Mary and William instantly launched into an argument, and Mouse leaned across Jamie to grab Vincent's arm and began an agitated objection, saying he shouldn't do that, it'd be bad, but offering no reasons or explanation when Vincent turned and looked at him steadily. Mouse always expressed himself with difficulty, but Vincent could feel that Mouse's alarm was strong and should be taken as much into account as Father's objections.

Vincent said, loudly enough to bring silence, “But there is a third course, between doing everything and doing nothing, which Jamie has developed. It has, historically, been effective, at least for a time. I believe it deserves a hearing. Jamie?”

Jamie spread her notes out on the table, checked that the pages were in the right order, then began her report just as she and Vincent had rehearsed it.

“In the Middle Ages, you had these baronies, these independent warlords holding land under a monarchy so weak that it might as well not have existed at all. And pretty much the same in feudal Japan, and some parts of Europe, especially Italy. City states going to war with their neighbors every time you turned around, and nobody in a position to stop them, just backing one side or another depending on where your own best advantage was. Sometimes the Pope arbitrated, or the Shogunate.

“But we don't have anything comparable, no central authority we both have to take notice of, so forget that part of it.” Jamie shoved two pages away from her, and tensely scanned the third.

“Anyhow, what they did, to keep from bleeding themselves white or having to fight all their neighbors at once, was trade ambassadors, first of all. Somebody to speak for the opposition, so some dumb mistake wasn't as likely to set off a war. And, secondly, they traded people. Called it fosterage, and mostly it was—training up each other's children in what passed for civilization in those days, which mostly meant court manners and effective fighting techniques. Some reading and writing, maybe. But the real point was that you had hostages you could execute, or threaten to execute, if the peace was broken. That's my idea: that we offer to trade ambassadors with the bowers. Find out what they're like, what they want, why they did what they did and maybe find out how to keep it from happening again. And then, if that works, trade some people for fosterage”

“Jamie,” Father broke in, “while your research is admirable and impeccable, the situations are simply not comparable. Such a course cannot be for us. Can you envision, under any circumstances whatever, our handing over anyone —children?— to the bowers' control and influence? And can you imagine, under any provocation, however severe, our even threatening to murder helpless children living among us, whatever their origins, as a matter of policy, in cold blood? Much less actually committing such an atrocity? No. It is as impracticable as Vincent's plan is distasteful and dangerous. I cannot support it.”

While Jamie clutched the final page of her report, that contained no rebuttal for that particular objection, Vincent commented, “There are degrees, Father. We could proceed only as far as an exchange of ambassadors and see what insight that brought us. Whether it then seemed prudent to proceed further. Can we compromise that far, at least?”

Father leaned forward across his desk. “Vincent, I have known these people, I have known Paracelsus, as no one else here has ever done. And I say none of them, not one, can be tolerated among us. And I cannot countenance that any of us should be forced, even as a volunteer, to subject themselves to bower practices in return. A case in point: are you aware, Vincent, that those people have actually practiced human sacrifice?”

“I cannot say that I am surprised,” Vincent responded distantly.

Cullen remarked, “We don't have to like them. But it looks like we're gonna have to get along with them, some way. If you want an ambassador, I'd go.”

“We do not have to get along with them!” Father declared. ”For 40 years, we have gone our way and they have gone theirs, and that is how it must continue!”

Cullen drawled, “That's supposing they'll let us.”

Scowling, William remarked, “I say, hit first and hit hard. Then, maybe, offer to talk. From a position of strength, not fear.”

Pascal commented diffidently, “Sometimes, fear is justified. Fear can make you careful. They know pipe code. We could start talking to them, anyway. With nobody going anyplace.”

“A reasonable opening,” Vincent agreed. “Thank you, Pascal, for that refinement. So, if I may restate the proposal: that we open communications with the bowers with a view to discussing, then bringing about, an exchange of ambassadors, as a first step to achieving stable relations with that community. Has it been clearly stated? Are there other points which should be brought out? Any further discussion before the matter is brought to a vote?”

Father said flatly, “I believe, Vincent, that I am chairing this meeting.”

Vincent bent his head. “Of course, Father. Forgive me. I was only attempting to learn whether a consensus had yet been reached, or whether the matter ...”

“I know what you were attempting, but I am quite capable of determining that for myself, thank you. I now put forward a counter motion: that this matter be tabled until such time as the bowers offer further provocation. I consider all this discussion premature. We have no certainty of threat. No need to split into factions over such a major decision, arising so suddenly, without opportunity for further thought, evolving still other alternatives which there has been no time to even consider. It is a change in the whole way we live which is being proposed here! I move that it be tabled for further study. Have I a second?”

The silence stretched, and then began to ache.

William said, “I think we've talked about this enough. Everybody understands what the choices are. I call for a vote.”

Jamie, silently exultant, looked up at Vincent. There was no determined opposition to the compromise save Father's. As they'd planned, Vincent's proposal was the stick, and Jamie's the carrot. Pascal sat at ease, chin on fist, and Cullen was smiling expectantly. Plainly, they had the votes: only Mary, who hated violence, hadn't committed herself and would surely support a compromise rather than face open warfare. With only one possible holdout, they'd won. All was proceeding as Vincent had envisioned. Yet Vincent's uneasiness had deepened.

Father took off his glasses and shut the ledger in which he kept the council's minutes.

“Before you vote, there is one further point to consider. I have, for almost 40 years, had the privilege of guiding this council, and this community, according to a particular vision of what we  are, should be, and can become. If my vision no longer suffices, it is plain to me that I must step aside and let another vision prevail.

“We cannot compromise in this and be what we have always been, what I believed we wished to become. We will be only another small polity, cynically dealing with others on the basis of advantage and power. Machiavelli shall be our model, not Plato. I cannot adopt such a vision, govern such a polity.

“Yet above all things I believe in consent: that each be free to choose. That there be no coercion. That this be, and remain, a happy cooperation of free individuals answering to their consciences, not to any threat of force, implied or actual. Accepting the restrictions of responsibility and mutual cooperation and mutual tolerance as the price of freedom to explore and create something nearer our dreams of how human beings should live together.

“If that vision is outdated, unfitted to present circumstances and harsh necessities, then it is time for another to guide this community according to another and, I trust, better vision, even if it is one I cannot share. So by all means, vote. But if this measure is passed, I will have no option but to resign from the council and become merely another citizen Below: helping as I can, in the capacity of physician, but no longer responsible for the acts of this community's governing body. Or for the consequences of those acts. I do not mean this as a threat. Merely to make certain we all are aware of how grave an alteration in our life and our vision we are now contemplating.”

There followed a silence in which Vincent sensed a fading dismay followed by determination, acceptance, even flares of satisfaction— simply, he thought, because large issues were afoot. That had an attraction, an excitement, in itself— the satisfaction of being part of a major event, a change of governance, quite independent of the personalities involved.

William said, “I call for a vote.”

And Vincent said, “I second Father's motion to table. That takes precedence. We shall vote upon that first. Any discussion?”

Everybody looked at him, startled and puzzled. Nobody said anything.

Vincent met all the eyes and waited for the startlement to settle. “Then let us have the vote on the motion to table. Show of hands, please. All in favor?”

At once, Mary and Mouse raised their hands. Jamie, of course, had no vote; and Father, by custom, had only the casting vote in cases when opinion was equally divided. Vincent also raised his hand.

Pascal said quietly, “You sure about this, Vincent?”

“Yes, Pascal.”

Slowly Pascal raised his hand; looking disgusted, Cullen followed suit. And finally William, who would have preferred honest, admitted war.

Vincent said, “The vote is unanimous: the matter is tabled. Thank you all for your attention.”

Father made an elaborate business of clearing his throat, resuming his glasses, and reopening the ledger.

“Then if we may resume our agenda, your report is next, Cullen. How is the work proceeding?”

It was a long minute before Cullen could wrench his eyes away from Vincent and turn back toward Father's desk, and longer before he could gather his thoughts sufficiently to begin his report on the repair of a much-used bridge.

The heat of Jamie's confusion, anger, and indignation reached Vincent even without touch. She leaned to whisper, “You just gave up! Why did you quit? We were going to win!”

“Someday,” Vincent whispered in reply, “I shall try to teach you why some victories come at too high a cost. It was a good proposal, Jamie: everyone accepts that. It was not wasted. But it is not, now, the right time to pursue it.”

“But we'd won! Why wouldn't you let us win?”

“We have not lost. We have merely decided to wait. I believe, Jamie— indeed I fear— that we shall not be allowed the luxury of waiting long. Events will compel us. But we shall wait for them together as one community. And then meet them so.”

Father said acerbically, “Vincent, if you and your guest cannot keep silent, I shall have to ask her to leave.”

“You don't have to ask me,” Jamie declared. “I don't have anything more to say, I might as well go, let you argue about macaroni and all!”

She ran among the chairs, Cullen hastily dragging in his legs, and disappeared up the stairs and out into the passage.

Reaching to gather Jamie's scattered notes into a neat stack, Vincent remarked, “It promises to be an interesting apprenticeship.” That won a few answering smiles before everybody turned back to the matter of bridge repair.

Vincent knew he'd never be able to justify to Jamie what she felt as his betrayal of the plan she'd worked on so hard and believed in so deeply. But what had come into his mind, in the silence before William had called for the vote, was Diana's voice saying, It runs straight through: he wants Father dead or out of the way, no matter how. And you alone. In Father's place.

And that was what he, and Jamie's wise and thoughtful plan, had very nearly achieved.

He hadn't seen it coming: but he'd known it, recognized the danger, just soon enough to retreat from the edge of that cliff from which, once passed, there could be no returning.

Listening to Cullen's report, Vincent thought, I must find another way than this. Some way which does not violate what Father believes we are, and must become. For even had Paracelsus not intended it, I have no wish to be alone in Father's place.

But he was sad because he knew Jamie wouldn't understand.

The first thing he should set about teaching her, he thought, was chess: so that she might, perhaps, become reconciled to the fact that a pawn, and a pawn's purposes, must sometimes be sacrificed for the sake of a longer strategy and to insure a favorable final outcome for the game.

Faith

“It's a vicious lie!”

Brooke and Stephen stared at Lena as if she'd gone crazy. But they were the crazy ones, believing and spreading a disgusting rumor like that. Lena knew how it was with them: hanging all over each other, right out in the public tunnels where anybody couldn't help but see: nothing but sex, sex, sex on their minds all the time.

“Vincent's different!” Lena declared.

Brooke smirked, which made Lena want to hit her. “Sure he is. But not that different.”

Brooke looked for Stephen's approval and he smirked too.

Lena smacked him, right across the face.

“Hey! I didn't—” Stephen protested, but Lena wasn't going to stay to hear any more filth about Vincent and Catherine, any more disgusting lies, and pounded off down the passage, choking and half blind with tears.

It was a lie. There was no baby. Or... or if there was, it wasn't Vincent's.

Father would put a stop to it, to the gossip and the lies.

When Lena reached the entry of Father's study, she saw he was talking with Mary and William but she didn't care, this was urgent, and barged down the stairs anyway.

“Father, I have to talk to you, you don't know what they're saying, about Vincent, about—”

Father caught her around the shoulders, then held her away, frowning into her face.

“Here, now—here, Lena, whatever can have happened to upset you so?”

“Father, they're saying, Brooke said that...Catherine had a baby!”

“Ah. Yes. William, Mary, perhaps we should continue this at another time.”

Father put an arm around Lena's shoulders and limped with her toward the big chair that was generally Vincent's. Lena sat down obediently, shoving furious tears from her eyes, staring straight at Father every second.

Father went around the desk and put his glasses on. It seemed to take forever.

Lena said, “You have to do something about it!”

Father gave her a glance over his glasses, then began fussing at his papers.

“Precisely what do you suggest that I do, Lena?”

“Make them quit telling such lies!”

“People will say what they will, Lena. I cannot control that. And... you're certain it's a lie, are you?”

“Of course!”

Father folded his hands. “Why?”

Lena blinked, angry and astonished. “Because they wouldn't, he wouldn't, that's all! You're his father: you should know!”

“It's... a bit more complicated than that, Lena. Since it's become a matter of public discussion in the community, I see no reason to attempt further discretion. So, yes: apparently there is, or was, a child. Which Catherine bore, moments before she died. Or so she told Vincent. Who of course believed her. Of course....”

Father was just looking off into space: Lena could tell he didn't care, didn't really care, the way she did.

“Well, I don't believe it! They were never together like that. So if there was any baby, it wasn't Vincent's!”

“It is... a bit difficult to understand,” Father commented distantly. “Babies do not commonly grow to term in six months. For surely that was the only time... the only opportunity, as it were, unaccounted for. When Vincent was so ill: you remember, Lena. When he felt obliged to withdraw from us. Certainly it cannot have been before that. Or he would not have become ill, or not in that way.... So it must have been then... if at all. If, as she claimed, it was Vincent's....”

Father shook his head— not at Lena but at something he was thinking. “And the physiology is so different. Even the blood is entirely incompatible.... Over and over, I have asked myself: could such a thing be possible? He is risking his life. He is risking all our lives, our entire world. And for what? For a phantom child he has never seen. Whom Catherine....” Father shook his head again.

Lena stared straight at him until he finally looked at her, met her eyes. “You know: it's not his. You have to say so.”

“Lena, it's by no means that simple.”

“Yes it is. Just say so. Say it's a lie. Make them stop talking.”

“Child, you do not understand. If it is a lie, it is Catherine's lie. How could I do that to him? Tell him Catherine... had so betrayed him? With Elliot, perhaps? Or some other of her many... friends? And if, as is a virtual certainty, he refuses to consider the notion of Catherine … consorting in that manner with someone else, I will be the liar, I will be the slanderer, in his eyes. And I don't believe he would ever forgive me. To what purpose, Lena? To what purpose?”

“It's not his. Vincent's not like that. You have to make them stop saying he is,” Lena replied, intently frowning, determined to make Father accept his duty.

With an effort, Father broke the locked glances and leaned back in his chair.

“Child, what good would that do? It's not the community I would have to convince. It's Vincent himself. It is he who says that there is a child. That it is his, though, I know that to be physiologically impossible. Yet Vincent believes it, on Catherine's word alone. On faith....”

Father chewed on his lip thoughtfully. “Now, a parthenogenic daughter, perhaps. That, I cannot completely rule out, though even that would be most unusual.... But no: a male child. A son. Which is simply and flatly impossible.”

Lena hadn't the least idea what Father was talking about. But it was plain to her Father wasn't really talking to her anyhow. Only to himself.

He went on, “Such a child could only be a miracle. But a greater miracle would be for me, with argument alone, to stand against Catherine's dying words. He would not listen. And the probable result would only be to make him more reckless, more determined to locate the child, whatever the risk to himself and to us all. To keep faith with Catherine, to uphold and prove her innocence by combat, as it were. To defend her the more fiercely in death for having been finally unable to do so in life. Chivalry has my greatest admiration, but only when it stops short of the suicidal.... No: he would not listen to me. I fear he would not listen to me ever again.... I understand your distress, Lena. I even share it, if for slightly different reasons. If merely speaking the truth could make the least difference, be assured I would already have done so weeks ago. You've seen only his gentleness and, of late, his sorrow. I don't believe you can have any conception of his tenacity. His stubbornness, once he is set upon a course. I have not the least hope of persuading him of what you, and I, believe to be true. So I'm afraid it's best to keep silence, and hope for—”

“You're afraid,” Lena echoed, making it an accusation. “I'm not. If you won't tell him, I will! That Catherine cheated on him, had sex with somebody and then—”

Father was no longer paying attention. Head suddenly lifted and turned aside, he was listening to a message coming over the pipes, muttering, “Jamie...park threshold...Vincent...has been shot! Oh, dear God, I knew it, I knew it, Mary! Mary, bring my bag at once, Vincent's been shot, Above!”

As Mary bustled forward, Father grabbed the bag with one hand and his stick with the other, continuing over his shoulder, “Prepare the surgery, have Pascal dispatch a stretcher crew immediately. The Central Park threshold. I knew it, I knew in my bones something like this would happen if he kept on! I told him Elliot was not to be trusted!”

Busy shouting and trying to haul himself up the steps, Father didn't seem to notice when Lena slipped up behind and took the doctor bag away from him.

Trotting quietly along in Father's wake, Lena faced the fact that Father wasn't going to be any help. She'd have to fight the lie all by herself. Against Vincent, if she had to. Because he wasn't that sort of person at all. He was different, better. Way too good for Catherine, who hadn't been any better than Lena, after all. Although Lena was disappointed in Catherine, even angry at her, that was nothing, except that Catherine had lied to Vincent, and people were lying about him now. And Vincent was being hurt by that lie: putting himself in danger because of it. And now he'd been shot.

Of course Vincent wouldn't die: he couldn't. Not from anything as ordinary as a bullet wound. Lena wasn't worried about that. It was the lies that were the real danger.

It all had to stop.

If Father wouldn't stop it, Lena would.

*****

Except for carrying Father's bag back from the threshold, Lena wasn't allowed to help. Mary and Judy Lo and Father crowded so close around the hospital chamber's biggest table that Lena couldn't even see what they were doing. And their talk was all medical talk: about tools or where the lamp shone, or the bleeding, that Lena couldn't tell was a good sign or a bad sign. There'd been a lot of blood in the tunnel.... All she could see of Vincent were his feet and, sometimes, one dangling arm when somebody moved.

She kept back in the shadows, unnoticed, until Father turned, still not seeing her as he pulled the mask away from his mouth, commenting grimly, “It's well that his recuperative powers are so phenomenal. Such wounds should have killed him, to say nothing of the blood loss. Which, assuming he survives it, will at least force him to remain in one place for a few weeks! I would never have thought I could be glad to see Vincent injured, but it's gotten to such a point....  Perhaps, now, he will finally see...!”

Father gestured to Marc, who'd remained by the door, and asked for the stretcher crew to transfer Vincent to his own chamber, where Vincent would rest better. With that much warning, Lena had plenty of time to get there first and tuck herself next to a cupboard in the deep shadows away from Vincent's bed. Nobody noticed her there. After Vincent had been put to bed and the stretcher bearers edged out, Father and Mary stood talking a minute, too quiet for Lena to hear. Then Father left.

Mary poured water in a basin and then sat on the edge of the bed, patting a wet cloth over Vincent's face. Lena moved quietly out of hiding.

Generally no matter how silently you came up on Vincent, he'd know— even asleep. But not now. He didn't stir when Lena stopped by the table to look at him. His face was very pale. His shut eyes were sunken and deeply shadowed, as if by old bruises.

Suddenly Mary jerked and turned, then steadied the basin, whispering, “Gracious, Lena, you nearly frightened the life out of me. Perhaps you didn't hear Father: it's far too early for visiting.”

“I have to talk to Vincent,” Lena whispered back.

“Vincent's far too ill to do anything but rest now. I hope he'll sleep through until morning.... And then he'll need to be quiet to make back his strength. I'm worried he may be developing a fever....”

“I can do that,” Lena said, pointing at the basin. “Let me help. I want to help.”

“Yes, of course you do. Maybe in a few days, when the fever passes. Then you can take a turn. But for now, he... mustn't be disturbed. If it's only me by him, that won't bother him. I've sat with him this way a dozen times: he's almost as used to me as to Father. He won't even notice.”

Mary dipped the cloth, wrung it out, and continued slowly smoothing it across Vincent's forehead and face: what Lena wanted to be doing.

But it was plain that Mary, having claimed her seat on the bed although Lena had gotten here first, wasn't going to surrender or share the privilege of taking care of Vincent. So Lena went silently away.

The next day, news was good: Vincent's fever was dropping and he'd managed to eat a little and keep it down. In the afternoon, Father was even going to let him sit up a little while, if he wanted to. But still no visitors were allowed. So Lena was all the more indignant to see Pascal leaving Vincent's chamber after lunch. It wasn't fair, wasn't right, that Pascal could visit and she couldn't.

Last night, she'd located the niche and short stair off Father's balcony that led to the upper entrance of Vincent's chamber. Now, with her daughter asleep in the carrying sling, Lena went that way. Sure enough, Vincent was sitting up in his chair. A book lay open on the table in front of him but he wasn't reading, just blankly staring off at nothing, at the dark. Though she made no sound at all, standing there, and neither did Catherine, it wasn't a minute before his head turned sharply and he saw her. Then he relaxed and looked away.

“I'm not supposed to be here,” Lena confessed as she climbed down the metal ladder. “But I saw Pascal come out and I thought maybe it'd be all right...?

“Thank you. For your concern, Lena.” His voice was even more whispery than usual: she had to listen hard to catch it at all. “Father tells me....” As she turned at the foot of the ladder, he blinked, and his eyes went soft and kind. “You've brought Catherine.”

Lena smiled: for weeks, now, she'd known that was what he needed, only she never could find him. He was gone, nobody knew where, all night, every night; most days he seemed to spend restlessly roving the tunnels, sometimes startling people at their daily chores. When or if he slept, nobody knew either. “You can hold her,” she offered, starting to lift her daughter out of the sling, but Vincent shook his head.

“No, she's asleep: don't disturb her. May I...?” He held out his hand. When Lena moved closer, he stroked the back of his fingers along the baby's cheek. He said softly, “She knows nothing of our troubles. Sleeps so deeply, so peacefully. I pray it may be so for my son. That he know nothing of the sorrow into which he was born, nor feel any lack, that I cannot yet be with him. That he does not wonder why I do not come, or fear himself abandoned, discarded.... I hope he is loved, where he is—even by that skull faced murderer. By someone. That somewhere he sleeps, like this, or wakes and finds himself warm, loved....”

His eyes were swimming with tears that started running down the creases of his face. He pulled his hand back to brush the tears away.

“Forgive me, Lena. I seem to weep so easily now. I cannot help it.... I think, perhaps I shall never find him. I wonder, were I to die in the search, if Catherine would reproach me with it. I think not. I think she would understand that I have tried, and forgive me.... And perhaps it would be better so, if he is not...as I am. Catherine said he is beautiful. So perhaps all will yet be well with him, though I never find him. Perhaps the man will now treasure him, having done...such things to obtain him. Perhaps it will be well with him, never to know what manner of...man his father is.” Vincent bowed his head.

“Elliot, he saw me. Last night. In the park, at the carousel. With a man's blood upon my hands. He saw me, Lena.... And I felt his shock and his loathing, that such a thing as I.... He also loved Catherine. And though not without faults, he is an honorable man. He has risked much. For Catherine's sake. In memory of his love for her. And I shall never forget it, the horror in his eyes....”

“Look at me,” Lena directed. As his face lifted, Lena carefully wiped away fresh tears from his eyes. Then her hand rested a moment at his throat and slowly stroked down the fur of his upper chest and stopped where the bandage began, over his heart.

Very soberly, she said, “Look at what you see in my eyes, Vincent. What's always been there, from the first minute. Remember that, believe that, what you see there: that's you. Not what some stupid topsider saw. Don't go Above any more. There's nothing up there worth all this hurt. Stay Below, with people whose eyes are glad, seeing you. People who truly know you. Mouse says it's getting cold, up top. Let it be cold. Stay where it's warm. Where the people are who love you.”

His eyes shut by stages, as if he was just too tired to keep them open anymore. Even his breathing sounded like work. And Lena stayed as still as still because she could feel him letting all the tension go and that was good, that was what she wanted.

After a long while, when Lena truly thought he'd slipped into sleep, he said, almost too soft to hear, “I cannot.”

“Yes you can. Because there's nothing left up there that's yours.”

“My son—”

“It's not. Maybe Catherine said so because she wanted you to rescue it. But it's not yours, Vincent. It can't be yours. You never had sex with Catherine. You know that's true. So the baby can't be yours.”

“....I don't remember. In the cave, what happened there. I've tried. But I cannot remember any of it....”

“Nothing happened there,” Lena said softly, positively, her hand still on his heart, feeling maybe the conviction could flow down from her into him. “Wouldn't she have said something, afterward, if it had? And did she?”

The least hint of a head shake, no words.

Lena pursued, “Did she act like anything had changed?”

Another head shake. Then: “Everything was strange to me then. I knew... what she was to me. But not what I was, to her. And then I remembered that there had once... been a bond.” Suddenly his eyes flew open, staring into hers. “No: he is my son. I felt him born!”

“Maybe you did,” Lena allowed calmly. She knew how special he was, that he could feel things that way. “I remember how bad it hurt, when my baby came. It hurts like nothing else, Vincent. Maybe that was strong enough to get at you, when nothing else could. But that doesn't make the baby yours. Did you feel anything afterward? Do you feel anything now?”

His eyes lost focus and drifted away. “No. No sense of him. I thought... I thought, at first, it was Catherine, that I felt....”

Hearing the unsureness in his voice, Lena offered her own certainty. “It was. Not the baby, only Catherine. And she's gone, and the baby's gone. And there's nothing left for you, up there. Let it be over, Vincent. Let it just be over, and come home.”

Lena touched his face again, gently stroking, the way he'd touched her baby. And his skin felt cooler, clammy. His forehead was wet, ridged into lines of stress. She set herself to smooth them away with steady, hypnotic caresses.

In that whispery, lifeless voice, he said, “It is all silence, within. All cold. I dreamed.... Or Mary said it was a dream. Only the fever. But the cold.... I still feel it. All ending. All still. Except for the rage... and when the rage passes, there is nothing. But Catherine has not given me leave to go. To end.”

“Catherine's not here. So I'll say it: you can stop now, Vincent,” Lena told him, most tenderly. “You can let it be over now. Let it end.”

“Yes.” Vincent blinked dull eyes at the candle flame. “It is all cold. And now that he has seen me, Elliot will no longer help. All my hope rested with him. And that is gone. Yes. I see it is ended. Only the cold remains. Only silence....”

Slowly he pushed out of the chair. Wavering, unsteady, he leaned on the table for a minute, then turned and wandered to his bed. Lena hustled and pulled back the covers as he bent to lie down. He was hurt and sick: he needed to rest. And it seemed to her that he was already asleep when, with loving pats, she tucked the quilt up around his shoulders.

She watched him for a few minutes, but he didn't stir, stretched out so still and heavy not even his breathing showed. So she blew the candle out and then went softly up the ladder, so as not to run into anybody in the passage. And she was happy because Vincent knew the truth, now. Because he'd accepted it. And as soon as he was feeling better, he'd make people like Brooke and Stephen quit telling lies about him, and finally know that the only truth was Lena's truth: that her eyes held the only image of him he would ever need.

*****

Lena didn't find out about the killer until the next morning: until Jamie burst in, exploding with the news he was already dead.

Lena hoped he'd died horribly and in torment because that'd been the last thing she'd expected, that a heavily armed hitman from the world Above would invade the tunnels and start shooting people, just when she'd persuaded Vincent it was all over.

Faced with danger right in the tunnels, a direct attack on his family, Vincent had somehow found the strength to lead the killer away. Lured him down into the Maze, that was too dangerous for any of the tunnel people, and killed him there. At least that was what Jamie said, still spitting mad that Father had forbidden her to take her crossbow and help.

Lena was mad too. She was just furious, but unlike Jamie, she kept it to herself.

She wasn't sorry for dead Stephen, not a bit: served him right, that danger had caught him unprepared when he'd been too busy fooling around with Brooke— on watch!— to notice before it was too late. And as for Old Sam, Lena couldn't remember ever having met him or talked to him. Dozens of tunnel people still were strangers to her. Of course it was too bad he'd been killed, but old people died. That was the way things were, and you had to accept it.

Changing Catherine's diaper, Lena asked anxiously, “And Vincent, how is he?”

Sitting on Lena's bed, Jamie made an abrupt gesture. “Fainted in the park. But Marc was on sentry duty and saw him leave after the all clear, signaled because he knew how sick Vincent was. So we spread out and searched, the ways he might take coming back. Zach found him.”

Jamie made a wincing face. “Bleeding almost as bad as when I found him by the junction door. He'd broken it all open again. But he wouldn't let anybody call for a stretcher, and you don't argue with him when he's like that. He made it all the way back to Father's study before he went down again. Father didn't say anything, just started doctoring, right there. I bet he's ashamed.”

Around the safety pin in her mouth, Lena asked, “Father?”

“Yeah, because he just gave up, let Vincent go after that son of a bitch all alone, like that's his job, to die for us. And it's not! If I'd died, everybody would be sorry and miss me, sure, but everything would go on pretty much the same. But if we ever lose Vincent....” Swinging a foot, Jamie scowled at the floor. “I should have gone anyway, no matter what Father said. He couldn't have stopped me! Next time, and I hope there's never a next time, I will: I swear it, Lena, I'll just go! If we ever lost Vincent....” Jamie's face screwed up and she flopped onto the bunched quilt, crying.

Lena made understanding noises, thinking that she could imagine all too well what it would be like to lose Vincent, because she knew what her life had been like before she'd found him.

After Jamie left, Lena went through the usual routine of giving Catherine her breakfast, then bathing and dressing her in the nursery, getting the story all over again from Livvy. Mary wasn't there. Livvy thought likely Mary was still asleep, having been up all that while, night before last, with Vincent, and then, last night, with Brooke....

“He knew,” Livvy remarked wonderingly, standing with a hand braced on her hip. “He knew it was coming, but Mary wouldn't listen. He knows things we don't. And can you imagine him, getting that assassin to chase him all the way down to the Maze? I would have been surprised to hear he'd been able to just walk that far. But times like that, the strength comes from somewhere, I guess. When you have to, you just do it.” Livvy bent, continuing her son Luke's interrupted breakfast.

“I know Vincent will blame himself that anybody got hurt. But the truth is, he kept the rest of us safe, and it's astonishing he could even do that. He can't be everyplace, do everything. I think we'd come to expect him to do just that, though... until Catherine died. That's when it struck me, anyhow: that he was only a man and yet everybody had been demanding miracles from him, perfection. And that he did, too. And it's not right, not fair. Nobody can be that perfect. So no matter how hard you try, it always feels like failing. He's only a man, after all.”

Although Lena knew different— Vincent was more than a man, better— she didn't say so because she had more important things to do than argue with Livvy. When she'd finished dressing her daughter, Lena left her in the padded play area, then hurried through the twisting passageways.

Generally, she would have stopped at the Commons for her own breakfast, but today she went past and didn't stop until she'd reached the opening of Father's study.

Father was fiddling with things over by the gas ring; Vincent was sitting in his chair, freshly bandaged, a blanket around his shoulders and no shirt, and trying, with two hands, to hold a cup steady while he drank from it.

Lena shot down the steps and took the cup from him, saying, “I can do that, let me do that.” But he would only accept another swallow or two, then said he didn't want any more, just now, and Lena set the cup of broth aside.

Instead of being pale, cold, he looked sweaty and overheated. Lena started to put the back of her hand against his forehead, to confirm that he was running a fever, but he ducked his head aside, remarking to Father, “I cannot abide much more recuperating.”

“You'll have to,” Father responded, limping around the desk. “Frankly, I don't believe you'll have any choice.”

“There's always a choice, Father. I'd appreciate it if you'd write a message for Bennie to take. I don't believe I can manage a pen yet. Not and produce anything remotely legible.”

Frowning, Father responded, “A message for whom?”

“For Elliot,” said Vincent, and they traded stares.

Finally, Father said, “I was under the impression you had thought better of that.”

“Despair is not thinking, Father. It is merely despair. What matter, what he thinks of me? What he does, he does for Catherine. And that is unchanged. Perhaps I credit him with too little tolerance. In any case, he has not refused further help for I have not yet asked him. Catherine had faith in him. Therefore I must try to, as well.”

Father stood with both arms braced stiff on the desktop. “Not today, Vincent.”

Vincent considered the refusal, blinking bright, fever-heated eyes. “If I must carry my own message, I will have to wait for nightfall. And perhaps, by then, you will have reconsidered. So I will let the matter rest, for now. But Elliot must be told: I know his name now, Father: Gabriel.”

There was heat in his voice, too: both anger and a hot satisfaction in the way he said that word, that name. As though he both hated it and treasured having it.

“But it's all over!” Lena burst out. “You agreed it was over!”

Vincent looked around at her. “Forgive me, Lena. But this does not concern you.”

“But you agreed, you can't. It's not even your baby! It can't be! Even Father knows. Father, tell him what you told me, about the blood and the parthe—, partheno—”

She was furious, not being able to remember the word. And then she noticed how they were staring at each other now, Vincent and Father.

Father settled into his chair as though he wasn't sure the seat was really behind him and he might fall straight to the floor.

“Well, tell him!” Lena demanded.

Vincent said nothing. Only stared with those too bright eyes. Father folded his hands in front of him. Just as Lena was ready to yell at him again, Father admitted, “Lena is quite right. I believe it to be a medical impossibility. For what I am convinced are good and sufficient reasons. Which I will enumerate for you, if you wish me to. Or you may take my unadorned word as a physician. As you choose. I assure you, this has not been comfortable knowledge to hold unspoken, these past weeks.”

Vincent responded evenly, “I appreciate the difficulty of your position. Yet your opinion has not gone altogether unspoken...has it?”

The glance Vincent gave Lena noted and dismissed her at the same time. All his attention was on Father. “It is also a medical impossibility that you are my father. Or that I am your son. And yet you are, and I am. There are truths beyond knowledge, Father. Beyond facts. The child is Catherine's. And is therefore mine, as Catherine was mine. My son— biology and medical fact notwithstanding. If I am to take someone's unadorned word, it will be Catherine's. What she said on that rooftop was said in love and in gladness. Giving me a gift, not making a confession. For that, you must take my unadorned word. You may, or not, as you choose. I will not discuss this further.”

Vincent stood, losing the blanket as it slid onto the chair. Then he had to lean heavily on the desk to keep from falling. But when Lena tried to take his arm, he pulled it out of her grasp.

“Lena, I know your concern for me. But what you mean as solace brings me only despair. The search for my son will be ended only when I myself am ended. What I will not discuss with Father, I will not dispute with you. Concern yourself, please, with the care of your own child. And I shall attempt to attend to the care of mine.”

That second, Lena knew she'd lost him into the lie, that he preferred to the truth of Lena's love. She knew he'd always choose Catherine, who'd cheated on him and borne another man's bastard, instead of Lena, who'd tried so hard to love him purely, the right way, the way he'd seemed to want, and all for nothing because he knew Catherine to be a worse whore than Lena'd ever been. Lena had never cheated on anybody because she'd never had anybody, except her daughter, who was hers, hers alone. And still he chose that dead uptown slut instead of Lena, who was here, and alive, and loved him so much.

And as much as Lena hated the lie, that second she hated Vincent worse and said, “I hope you die. I hope her baby dies, too. But if he doesn't, at least his father was a man!”

Then she turned and ran, because she hadn't the least interest in whatever Vincent might have said. And anyway, there was no going back after you'd said something like that, wished somebody dead.

She didn't care where she was going. She merely ran.

*****

Lena had run herself to walking, and then to walking and resting, and finally to a slow, miserable scuffing along rough, unlighted tunnels, so lost in unhappiness that she didn't bother to realize that she was also lost, in fact.

She thought about going back Above, leaving her baby to be raised by the tunnel people: the way she'd done once before. But in almost a year Below, she'd learned how awful it really was up there and how much better life was Below, where nobody hit you or expected you to have sex with whoever waved a wrinkled 20. She'd learned to know ugliness for what it was and even now, didn't want to go back to the way it'd been before.

Even without Vincent, Vincent's world was still better than anything she'd known Above. Even without the hope of pure and perfect love, she supposed she'd still get by somehow, though the dead dream and what she felt as Vincent's betrayal of her faith in him, continued to be a hard lump in her throat and under her ribs.

“What are you doing here?”

Mouse's challenge, unexpected and unexpectedly harsh, startled her. She thought she heard footsteps pattering away, but only for a second, so that she wasn't sure.

“Not supposed to be here!” Mouse declared, scowling, shifting from one foot to another.

“None of your business. Anyway what are you doing here?” Lena retorted, sheltering the flame of her candle behind her hand.

Mouse backed against the wall and looked in both dark directions. “Sentry,” he claimed, giving her a quick slantwise look to see if she'd swallowed it. Mouse was real bad at lying.

“Time to go now. Show you the way home,” he offered.

“I don't need any help, and who was that, that just ran off?”

“Nobody,” Mouse lied, backing off down the passage. “Lots of noises, water....” Then he turned and ran.

Lena didn't care, didn't want either his help or his company anyhow. If she was still within the sentry perimeter, she couldn't have come as far as she'd thought. Even the sound of the pipes was no more than a faint and occasional tapping—more like old plumbing than like messages. But the twisty passages and ramps and climbs must have fooled her into thinking moving around the world Below was the same as level distance. Probably walking in circles or spirals or something.

She wandered on past a junction where a sudden draft blew her candle out for about the tenth time. Groping in her pocket, she found four matches left. Then she sat down in the dark and cried for awhile, because she didn't want to go on, or back yet, either. Didn't really want to do anything, she was so unhappy.

But when she was through crying, nothing had changed: it was just as dark and she still had only four matches. Wearily, she got up and felt along the wall until she came to the junction and then went past it before striking her match. And then dropped it because a man was leaning casually against the tunnel wall and looking straight at her.

“Hey, little Lena, no need to be ascared of ol' Cookie,” the man's voice said, friendly in the dark.

“You made me waste one of my matches,” Lena said crossly, groping for another. As she struck the fresh match her wrist was seized and bent irresistibly aside to bring the match under the opened glass of a lantern. The wick took flame, and the light steadied.

Releasing Lena's arm, Cookie shoved the glass down, then held the lantern out while Lena hastily shook the match out before it burned her fingers. He said, “Now, ain't that better? Won't always be blowing out on you.”

Sullenly accepting the lantern, Lena said, “It's heavy.” She started away.

“No, that's not the way you want to go, little Lena,” Cookie told her, first pointing at, then walking to, another passage. “I best see you back to where the lights start.”

“I didn't ask—”

“Now, if I want to take myself a walk along this way, how you going to stop me, girl?” rejoined Cookie amiably.

Strolling in the lantern light, he was a lanky black guy, something upwards of 40, with a mustache and a thumb smudge of chin-beard. Deep creases around his eyes made them look at once sleepy and watchful. He wore a plain sweater, no fringe or anything, and blue jeans tucked into heavy boots you'd expect to make more noise than they did. Lena didn't recall ever having met him before, but she was always running into people she didn't remember, although they knew her.

“Heard on the pipes,” Cookie remarked presently. “Vincent, he got hisself shot some way, night or so back. Then here's little Lena, way away from the Hub, crying her pretty eyes out. Ain't got no fresh news since: ain't hurt bad, is he, Lord forbid?” For all the casual tone, Cookie seemed real concerned.

“He's all right. Probably tonight he'll be out looking again,” Lena responded bitterly.

“Looking? Thought that was all done with. She dead, his lady: even in the papers, with pictures and all. What's—”

“For the baby! That isn't his, but he won't admit that, and won't listen—” Lena found herself tugged around so sharply she almost dropped the lantern.

“What baby?”

“What does it matter, it's a lie, a wicked lie—”

As suddenly as he'd grabbed her, Cookie let go, flipping up both hands like surrender. “Why, sure it is, who say different?”

Finally finding somebody besides Father who'd agree with her, Lena couldn't get the story out fast enough, what everybody was saying and how Father wouldn't do anything about it and how Vincent wouldn't listen or admit what that made of Catherine, although it was just as plain as plain. And then the killer, mixing everything up that'd been all settled. And Cookie nodded and made shocked noises and agreed Lena'd been right to try to force the truth out.

“I wished him dead but I didn't really mean it,” Lena wailed.

“'Course not, you just put out, is all. Sure, anybody would be.”

“Because Vincent's not like that, he's better than that, better than anybody—”

“Sure he is, nobody else like him. Vincent, he one hellacious strong, powerful fighter. No topside shooter stand a dog's chance against him, Below, and that's a righteous fact. Ol' Jacob, Father, and all those folks, they might as well be blind. Near blind as topsiders. Too used to him to see what a Number One miracle they got right in front of them.”

While Lena nodded emphatic agreement, Cookie went on, “Time past, folks knew how to treat a walking, breathing miracle when they ran into it. Give it presents, sacrifices. Light special candles. Get its blessing, so to say. So's to get some of that strength and power to rub off on them, help them survive like he do. He ain't hurt bad, you said?” Cookie asked anxiously, and Lena's simmering resentment was warmed by the plain concern.

“I guess he lost a lot of blood. Fainted a couple of times. But Father's mad at him, and wouldn't be if he was really scared Vincent could die or anything.”

“Ahuh. Stands to reason, that do. You're a noticing kind of person, little Lena—thought so, right off. You see what goes on and you think about it, I can tell. Well, we got to do something about this baby business. I know it ain't so, but if there really was a child of his, wouldn't that be a thing? Wouldn't that be a wonder? 'Cause otherwise, it's all wasted, it all ends with him, don't you see? And that'd be a crying shame, girl. That kind of miracle ought to be preserved and passed along. Just stands to reason, don't it?”

“But he's not like that!” Lena protested.

“Sure, you're right, he's a right enough gentleman. But maybe there might be a way to... persuade him some. 'Cause you know, and I know, what he's been missing. Ain't all bad, is it, girl? Some fun there, if you got some lively company, right? Sure. And it ain't right that what everybody else in the world do, natural as breathe, he ain't allowed, 'cause ol' Jacob Wells don't think he ought, him being so different and all. While we know that's the reason why he should! Not fair or natural, neither one. And if anybody deserves a little party, it's him. Maybe, maybe, it just needs some different company someplace where ol' Jacob don't got to know nothing about it. What you think of that, girl?”

Lena hadn't considered it that way before, that it wasn't Vincent's own nature but Father's rules that made Vincent so stand offish with women. Looked at that way, Cookie was right: it wasn't fair. Vincent deserved the best. He deserved everything. Suddenly, Lena quit being mad at Vincent and was sorry for him, instead.

Cookie went on thoughtfully, “I don't precisely know what we can do about that. But maybe we could talk about it sometime, you and me. Sort of put our heads together, to find some way to get Vincent off that leash. For his own good. What you think?”

“I always wanted to help him,” Lena admitted, reflecting that if it was Father's fault, if it wasn't Vincent at all that'd made him send her away each time, then maybe, maybe there was a chance after all, that he could love her, that he'd let her love him the way she'd always wanted to, but had believed was wrong because he didn't want it. Now that Catherine was dead, there was nobody, nobody who loved him as much as Lena did. So why shouldn't he accept what she so deeply and fervently wanted to give him? It made her feel warm and shivery, just thinking about it. Almost shy.

Cookie said, “S'pose you think about it, and I think about it. And then you come out this way maybe suppertime tomorrow night and we talk about it some more. How about it: you going to help?”

“Sure. I want to help.” Lena smiled, suddenly happy and hopeful.

“Oh, that's a fine smile. I see we going to be fine friends. Oh— then you best not tell ol' Jacob we been talking. Or anybody: you know how gossip gets around, Below, what with the pipes, and all. All them lies, like you said before. We don't want to get us into trouble. Fact is, best not say you seen me at all, right?”

“Sure.” Lena brushed back her wispy blond hair. “I can keep a secret.”

“That's what I always heard about you, that you a girl can keep a secret. Just disappear youself so quiet, even Maurice didn't have no notion where you got to. Like you escaped right off the natural face of the earth. And damned if you hadn't done exactly that.”

“You know Maurice?” Lena asked, surprised.

“Maurice, he know pretty near everybody, everything that's happening on the streets. Maurice, he a real useful boy to know. So, 'course I know Maurice. Though he don't exactly know me....” Cookie chuckled.

Then he stopped and pointed out the lefthand branch of a fork ahead. “You go that way, about five minutes you come to the candles. Then a left, a right, up the stair, and pretty soon you come to the bridge with the strange echoes—”

“The Whispering Gallery?”

“That what they call it? Then sure. You know the way from there?”

“I can find my way all right,” Lena assured him.

Although Lena still had a candle stub and matches enough to take her to the lighted places, Cookie insisted she keep the lantern, just in case. He laughed, saying that there was no way he could get lost: he knew the dark. He and the dark, they were real old friends.

Going on alone, Lena started thinking how to apologize to Vincent about wishing him dead and making such a fuss about the baby, which really wasn't so important after all. Maybe even cry a little— that generally worked.

She also thought about Cookie. He liked her: a woman could always tell. For instance, she knew Angelo DeMarco liked her. Always finding excuses to visit her although she never let on she noticed him. No man liked a woman to be too eager, not that she was really interested in him anyway. Although a helper, Angelo was still only a topsider; besides, he didn't have a proper admiration for Vincent, like Cookie did. Sharing something as important as that, it was only natural they'd be friends.

Little things he'd said and even the way he'd said things hinted that Cookie wasn't part of the main tunnel community. Like Narcissa, that you hardly ever saw but everybody talked about; or like Elizabeth, whom Mouse had taken Lena to visit to look at her own picture painted just like life on the curved wall, almost like magic because Elizabeth, who was incredibly old, had never actually seen her before that, as far as Lena knew.

There was something like magic, something a little spooky and different, about Cookie, too— how he'd suddenly been there and startled her into dropping her match, as if he'd somehow solidified out of the tame darkness already knowing her name.

But after that first instant, she hadn't been nervous at all because Cookie lived Below. There were topsiders, that you shouldn't trust, and then there were the safe and friendly people of Father's community in the tunnels. And what else was there to be?

Simonetta

The last day of April was a Monday. At what Diana considered an ungodly hour, her doorbell rang and it was the self styled carpenter brownies— Cullen, a taciturn helper named Moe, and (on and off) Mouse— ready to finish the partitions, shelves, and cabinets of her loft.

The work was noisy beyond belief, everything shoved aside, tramped through, the asthmatic wheeze of saws. So, although Diana was already desperately behind on her current case and beginning to feel rather desperate on general principles, she escaped to the 'Y' and took a few laps on the running track. Because she never used the pool, she then basted awhile in the old steam room lately dignified by a pretentious sign proclaiming it a sauna.

Diana's neighbor, one bench down— a sleek, sepia greyhound of a woman, like something from an Egyptian frieze— offered chat about the gay/lesbian coalition and the problems of the sexually disenfranchised. When Diana waved off the chat with a tight smile and a lifted straight palm, the greyhound nodded amiably and left her to her sweat and her thoughts.

Things would settle down now, Diana thought, mopping her face, then letting the spare towel hang between her spraddled, knobby knees. Going for three weeks since the Anniversary and the raid, and not another peep out of the bowers. No further sinister stickers on her door. No more upsets Below, either, so Father had successfully tabled the matter, over Vincent's protests. And those protests, she thought, hadn't been all that forceful or determined, by Vincent's own account.

He didn't seem real good at worrying, these days: spent practically every minute, awake or asleep, with Jacob, and he'd gone back to what apparently were the usual round of classes that he used to teach before. And all the other chores. So Father, presumably, was ecstatic.

So she was lucky to get a few minutes' visit with him last week at all, and that'd been by hiking out, with Jamie as a guide, to where he was working, Saturday morning. He'd been polite, said she wasn't interrupting, was always welcome. Glancing every minute or so at the junction door he and two other guys were fixing, and the other pair and Jamie standing around and waiting. No trouble at all, he assured her, Jacob hanging in a kind of swing contraption and twirling himself into delighted, dizzy knots Vincent had to go untangle every now and again, smiling then, silent, intent as his son spun, kicked, and crowed. So, fine. Great. No intrusion at all.

He was okay, finally trying to get on with his life. Time for her to do the same, as soon as she could get the carpenter brownies cleared out and her case squared away and generally start making some sense of what she used to think was a pretty good life. She could hardly remember what'd made her think so, but it was what she had, and she ought to be getting on with it.

He loved her: he'd said so. He'd come visit again, she was sure. As soon as he could find some spare time....

One thing to be said for sex, she thought: at least with sex, you knew what you were after and didn't have to wonder if you'd gotten it or not.

Love, though, that was a whole different ballgame....

Sometimes she thought she didn't have the right scorecard. Sometimes she thought she didn't have a clue.

So, fine: he's happy, you're griping about it. What are you, a crisis junkie? And here you just passed up a great chance to talk sexual disenfranchisement! Get a life, Bennett!

Sweat it all out, she thought, glumly swiping at her face.

*****

She had lunch at a stand up diner and then detoured to refresh her memory of the maybe murder site— where a prosperous stockbroker had turned up under the cover of his patio hot tub. Maybe slipped, fell; maybe pushed, held under. Maybe real handy for his grieving widow due for a ton of money, depending on how things went. Afterward, Diana stuck a thumb into her spare ear and used a street phone to check in with the guy doing the investigation from the insurance side, and next the investigator for the tub manufacturer, which the widow's team of shark lawyers were suing for a second ton. Lastly, she made sure she'd get a copy of the autopsy, which had been done while she'd been occupied with Kansas, or wherever.

They never shoved the easy ones her way. And in spite of the heavy duty motive, Diana was inclined to believe the widow, who mostly seemed dazed about it all and kept obsessively dithering on about the friends they'd invited to share the tub, that hubby had supposedly been getting it ready for....

No more than a gut feeling. But that was what the department kept her on the payroll for— her gut, and what she could document, afterward, by following those intuitions and impulses. If she'd used voodoo or a Ouija board, Commissioner Frankel wouldn't have cared, or even wanted to know. All he cared about was results. That was what she peddled: her gut and her mind, her imagination. As long as she delivered, Frankel kept out of her way.

And that was the way she liked it: nothing she hated worse than somebody kibitzing over her shoulder, second guessing her or distracting her, when she was trying to work. Mark had learned to stay out from underfoot, those times. She'd had him trained just about right when he'd blown up at her, accused her of not opening up enough— Jesus, what did the man expect? A two hour explanation for every five minutes of breathing? Wasn't sleeping with him open enough, for God's sake?— and walked out on her. Idly, she wondered what Mark was up to now, whether he'd made any start on the picket fence place in suburbia that'd been his ideal.

What's my ideal? What the hell do I want, here? she asked herself. Somebody around all the time, having to be listened to, talked to, continually taken into account? Somebody who's going to knock my life haywire, days, weeks at a time, so I can't work, can't think, at least about anything else? How can I expect him to read my mind when even I don't know what I want? More? Less? How much would be enough?

Checking the change box (empty), she swung away from the phone stand and surveyed the traffic.

It was, she was surprised to notice, a perfectly gorgeous day: sunny, mid-spring warm, even the gutters looking almost clean from a rain recent enough to have left a few puddles, and a lifting breeze. So without really having decided against a cab, she started walking, looking around, trying to appreciate the fact that she could walk down a busy Manhattan street on a sunny afternoon, dodging people, bumping a few, standing aside to let a skateboarding black kid barrel through making motorcycle noises, pigeons wheeling about three stories up but not bombing at the moment, nobody giving her a second glance.

She generally hated having a crowd around her. Made her edgy, nervous, with a smothery feeling, that got stronger if it was noisy as well. Didn't take much to make her start feeling seriously overpeopled. But not today. No jackhammers or sirens going, no wackos accosting her at corners to shove pamphlets proving the world was going to end next Tuesday at 3:17pm. Not even any lost bagpersons mumbling to themselves or any grey-skinned, desperate beggars cadging quarters, whose hating eyes always gave her the feeling that, come nightfall, they'd no longer be asking. Everybody apparently attending to the serious business of enjoying this great day.

As she stood waiting for the walk light to come on, somebody behind her stumbled and put a shoulder into her back. Jarred forward nearly into the hood of a cab, Diana leaned wildly aside and then was shoved back against the lamppost by a skinny guy on a bicycle, who screeched the footbrakes and turned to scowl at the oncoming cars, daring them to sideswipe his bike, that bristled with mirrors and horns and baskets and fiberglass banner poles and other pointy things that would require a whole paint job afterward for anybody who messed with it, while horns blared and three lanes of traffic tried to shoehorn into two before the light could turn and lose them maybe two whole minutes on their urgent way to noplace.

“You okay, lady?” the bicycle guy asked her, chomping gum, steadying the bike as a barrier, pulling back one earpiece of his headphones as Diana let go of the lamppost.

“Yeah, fine,” Diana responded automatically, scanning the people who'd already started to stream forward across the now gridlocked intersection, more confusion, yelling, somebody paying off a cab and getting out, right in the middle of the street, joining the flow. Nothing to see, backs, all in motion, veering in and out among one another trying to get that extra step on the opposition, reach the far curb before the traffic could start up again and turn the crossing into a sprint for their lives.

Nothing unusual, she decided. Happened all the time.

Straightening the bike, the skinny guy came down heavy on the top pedal.

“Tell Vincent, Bennie said ‘Hi,'” he said, and was already pumping off between the stuck cars before the remark sank in and Diana spun and stared after him.

Helper, she thought, halfway glad and halfway indignant, because she instantly suspected Vincent of having her watched again. But that was just paranoia: she'd seen him, seen how fully occupied he was in his life Below, and was intuitively certain that possible threat to her was the farthest thing from his thoughts right now. If he'd so much as suspected, he'd have done a whole lot more than this.

She wondered what you called it, the uneasy feeling that people were conspiring to do you good.

So just a lucky chance, following an unlucky chance. Coincidences did happen. You had to believe that, or you'd be looking for conspiracies every time a pigeon bombed you.

Another dinosaur fan, she thought, deciding it was just luck, this time.

*****

Trudging up the long single flight, three floors high, that led to her loft, she heard only silence and hoped that meant the carpenter brownies were all finished and departed. When she reached the top, everything looked quiet, too.

Everything seemed done.

Office area all partitioned in, glass block wall facing this way, with a little slit left open so she could look out, see anybody coming. Bedroom area enclosed too: facing side plasterboard, cornering to a glass block wall opposite the office partition, making a broad corridor between them into which the round oak table had been moved to make room for a utility island in the middle of the kitchen space. And all that divided from the big, long living area by two sections of church rail, warm and honey colored in the indirect glow of the bank of north facing skylights.

Everything just the way Cullen had promised her.

These things she noticed only in passing, hurrying toward her office space to hit the cancel code of her silent alarm before it could start flashing, turn red, and dial the nearest precinct house with an SOS.

“So, how do you like it?”

Grabbing at her heart, she wheeled. Cullen: sprawled out in one of the scoop chairs, slouched so low his head hadn't showed over the back. Without answering, she spun away and finished her dash to the keypad next to her computer keyboard. But the little green light hadn't switched to red. It wasn't even on: the alarm system had been disabled. Now she remembered: she'd done it herself before leaving, so that Mouse's comings and goings from the threshold, Below, wouldn't set it off and bring unwanted and unneeded aid.

Goings wouldn't have bothered the motion detector: only comings. Movements up the staircase, from the middle to the top. Start flashing for one minute, buzzer optional, then go to Code Red and send the cops a yell after a decent further delay of one more minute, to give time to punch in the cancel. Amazing, how discriminating such gadgets had gotten to be. At least, when they worked right: she was going to have somebody look at this one, which had developed a habit of going off by itself, for no apparent reason....

She punched in the enabling code, and the green telltale lit. Then she had time and attention to really look around. Shelves, unpainted as yet, went three high up the brick outer wall, for her manuals, software, and reference books. The computer now stood, not on a folding bridge table, but in the middle of a custom desk. On either side of a cutout for her knees, drawers and cabinets for her floppies and her files. The front was open to the kitchen area; and through the window slit, she had a clear view all the way down the loft. In spite of the slit and the open space, the office area was shadowed, a solid plasterboard partition cutting off nearly all the blaze from the skylights. No glare. And that partition would be a good place for her corkboard, too.

“So?” Cullen said again, coming around from the kitchen side to lean against the partition.

“It's goddam gorgeous,” Diana admitted, running fingers along the smooth wood.

“Don't do too much of that,” Cullen advised. “It isn't sealed or stained yet, and the marks will stay if they're not sanded out. I gotta do one more chore, Below— one of Father's bookcases finally collapsed—”

“Any fatalities?” Diana shot back: she'd seen Father's bookcases.

“They were still sifting through the rubble, last I knew. Anyhow, I figured this was enough disruption for one day. How's Wednesday, to finish? Whyn't you take Wednesday off, go to the zoo, buy yourself a balloon?”

Cullen's eyes were quiet, very friendly, asking no questions but the one question: if there could be anything beyond friendship between them; and that, she'd already answered for them both, and for all time, as far as she was concerned. And he knew that. And his eyes were still quiet, and smiled at her.

She turned away, looking out the slit, and made an abrupt gesture.

“Sure. Wednesday's fine, I guess. Hey, you know a skinny guy name of Bennie? Rides a bike, with—”

“Sure, Bennie's a helper. Does carry in lunches to maybe a dozen buildings. Why?”

“Sort of ran into him, that's all. Wanted to double check he was okay.” Diana shrugged. “He knew me, I didn't know him. That always makes me want to check up, afterward.”

“That alarm setup tells me you're security-minded,” Cullen commented. “It was as much as I could do to make Mouse keep his hands off it. But I didn't know you'd gone quite this far—”

She felt his fingers touch her shoulder and, as she turned, there was a ripping noise. He was holding a sticker he'd just removed from the back of her jacket: white eye on black background, and the words PROTECTED BY THE PROVIDENCE PROTECTION AGENCY.

Diana stared at it. The street corner: when she'd been shoved. That had to be it.

“Damn,” she said fervently.

Snatching the sticker off Cullen's fingertips, she wadded it up and looked for a wastebasket. Finding none, she pushed by to throw it in the kitchen can. Following, Cullen opened a tall cupboard in the island, showing her where the can lived now. She poked the sticker in and slapped the cupboard shut.

“A little late for April Fool,” Cullen commented inquisitively. Plainly the logo, the name meant nothing to him.

“Damn kids,” Diana said, because it was okay to lie to Cullen, he wasn't Vincent, wouldn't necessarily believe whatever she said. Cullen, he could take his own chances. She made an embarrassed grin.

“Thought they were after my tote. Was that all it was? Dumb kid tricks? Hell, maybe it's safe to walk the streets after all.... Well, I got to admit, it looks pretty great here. I figure I owe you brownie types at least one dinner when it's all done.”

“I'll hold you to that,” Cullen warned, leveling a finger at her as he turned away to leave.

And when he was gone, when she finally had the loft all to herself, she couldn't work, couldn't think about anything except the damn bowers. After half an hour or so, she'd decided there was no way out of it: she'd have to research the goddam Providence Protection Agency, even though she was pretty sure they'd know that she was checking, or that somebody was and then follow it back to her, which worked out about the same in the end. Damn well poke a stick into that hornets' nest: what she'd been carefully avoiding doing for two weeks now, figuring what came out might well be more than she wanted to know or could realistically hope to deal with on her own....

She booted up the computer— she never left it turned on anymore to avoid finding little notes on the screen from the loft's resident spook— and went to her big file of PI's she'd worked with. She started scrolling through the names and the comments she'd made on each, trying to decide who had the needed skills and who she could be nearly absolutely, positively sure wouldn't have any connection to the bowers or even be one of their helpers.

Damn!

She sat looking blankly at the screen. She hadn't felt this edgy since she'd started seriously poking after information about that bastard Gabriel....

She had to judge, chewing on the side of her thumb, that it hadn't been a serious attack. Not that if the cab had squashed her flat, they would have gone into mourning or anything. But if they'd wanted her dead, there were easier ways. Whoever had shoved her could just as easily have slid a knife between her ribs, or shot her in the ear, or half a dozen other things people could do to other people with the right motive and means, that she'd seen the results of in morgue lockers.

No, more in the nature of a warning— like the sticker on her door: a heavy nudge pointing out what they could have done if they'd really wanted to, or might do if she ever gave them cause.

So was it a good idea, after all, to go poking at them, however discreetly? Should she—

“May we come in?”

That voice: Vincent.

“Sure,” Diana called absently, still deep in her own thoughts, keeping an eye on the keypad to hit the cancel as soon as the light started flashing. After a minute she heard him moving on the far side of the partition and realized she'd never seen him pass. And the alarm button was still green: not blinking. So how the hell—?

When she went to the doorway to look, Vincent was kneeling on the carpet and patiently getting his son disentangled from a canvas chest sling that had JACOB lovingly embroidered in red across the top and teeny yellow stars and flower-puffs done in wool all down the shoulder straps. He looked silly as hell, grown men always did, messing with too twee for words baby gear, the alternatively disconcerting and disgusting messes.

Then she was ashamed of herself, because he so plainly felt none of the foolishness: happiness was positively coming off him in waves, as though he'd been caught in a downpour of it and was dripping it all over her carpet.

She lifted her eyes to the open skylights, and a sudden guess became a certainty. “You've been on my roof!”

“It's very pleasant,” he agreed, at last able to lift Jacob free of the sling and deposit him on the rug, where the baby began enthusiastically rolling like a pup let loose in warm grass. Well, it was green, anyhow.

“In broad daylight,” Diana realized, gaping upward again, abruptly struck by the magnitude of the risk he'd run.

“It's quite sheltered. Nothing overlooks it, close by. And there's an open space between the chimney and the angle where the skylights begin, where the sun comes down....”

When he looked around, she noticed that his upper face was... not precisely tanned, but warm with healthy color, a greater contrast to the copper gold hair hanging across his forehead, his upslanted brows, and the downy fur of his nose; and his eyes were almost totally blue, all iris. Blind with the light. Pretty nearly drunk on it, she realized, and lost all her tension, and smiled on him with a wrenching fondness that left no room to consider risks.

“Would there be space for a telescope? If I got another one? But there's no stairs: how could I get up there?”

Instead of answering, he straightened, scanning the loft and plainly checking that there was nothing Jacob could get into or vice versa, then moved away. Following, she noticed that the last skylight in the line was open farther than the others and visualized him, a couple of minutes ago, dropping through— eight, ten feet to the floor— so softly, despite all that weight, she hadn't heard or felt any jar of landing.

Looking around for something to block off the stairs, he picked up a blank stretched canvas from the screened corner, tested its rigidity, then wedged it in place across the top step. A nod said he'd decided it would do well enough.

“I think Kristopher will allow such a small liberty, as it's one he hasn't yet begun,” he remarked, almost a question.

“Take the damn thing,” Diana responded flatly. “I'm ready to pitch that goddam spook's easel and junk into the street.”

“I wouldn't do that if I were you. After all, you're his guest, in a manner of speaking. It was his home before it was yours; and he has fewer choices about living arrangements, if that would be the proper way to put it....”

Without visible preparation, Vincent sprang upward. Sudden, effortless: one second here, next second there, balanced in a hands/knees crouch on the edge of the window casing, under the slant of the open skylight. As her startled eyes located him, he gazed down at her, head tilted, waiting.

After a blank instant Diana looked around for something to stand on, yanked a cabinet away from the wall, and clambered up on it, holding both arms high. A smooth pull and she was perched on the sill, where he'd been, looking over a low parapet of brick openwork down three stories to an alley, and he'd already released her and moved on, dropping out of sight past where she would have assumed the roof ended.

Bracing one knee against the parapet and the other against the slant of the roof, she worked her way forward and found him waiting to help her down into a triangular space like a high patio: pebbles over tarpaper, maybe ten feet on a side, enclosed by the chimney, the butt end wall of her loft, and the parapet facing the windowless side of the adjoining brownstone.

As he released her, she looked around, either infected by his happiness or her own delight growing. She couldn't tell which and it made no difference anyway, because the place was just about perfect.

Open, yet sheltered. Airy, yet warm. Even hot, when the breeze went still. Like a private sauna.

Maybe a helicopter might spot somebody up here. Or somebody ten blocks off, with high-powered binoculars. Not altogether safe. But the edge of risk made the place more secret, more special. Hidden in plain sight.

“I gotta get myself one of those rope and rung ladder things, fire escapes,” she muttered to herself, imagining it, climbing up here anytime she wanted. Wonderful sun. And maybe a beach umbrella or some kind of awning, for shade.... She liked her new loft and all, more space and more light than her old one, that'd burned down... but as the weather warmed she'd started really missing having a roof, a secret place, a place to stand and look down or high or far away....

Bending back the plywood of a boarded over window, Vincent took out a folded, much patched blanket, mostly blue, and began shaking it out.

And it came to her then: “You been up here before!”

“Several times,” he confirmed, kneeling to smooth out folds. “Last Wednesday was the first. Merely exploring. But sunset began and I remained to watch it. It was splendid: chiefly cerise—”

“Why in hell didn't you tell me?”

“You were working. Occupied. And I've already taken up far too much of your time, of late, with my concerns, my problems. I didn't want to intrude. Cullen said he meant to work here today, so I knew I wouldn't be disturbing you if I brought Jacob for...a sunbath,” he concluded, plainly creating the phrase on the spot, having no words, except by invention to speak of what they'd been doing, he and his son.

While, seeking something like the same warmth, she'd been off at the 'Y'. Diana shook her head wonderingly, contemplating the endless and layered ironies of life.

Then she spread her arms wide, directing, “Come here, babe. Life is crazy, and I need a hug real bad.”

“No,” he responded, settling down on the blanket. “You come here.”

And so she got her hug after all, and he didn't flinch or draw away, only looked at her steadily with those sun struck eyes that he presently shut, leaning back with her still cradled against him, baking in the warmth with the happiness so thick about them she could practically touch it. Or maybe was touching it. She could smell the sun on him, in his hair, and it was almost scary, how much she loved him.

He didn't say anything, just quietly slid his hand down her back, then followed her arm to the elbow and then lifted her hand so his could rest inside it, under it, not holding on hard but close, so damn close, and so different than it'd been.

Raising up a little, she commented, “Kansas was good for you...?”

“Hush,” he said, and drew her back down, and the Y didn't begin to have anything to compare. If she could have bottled it, this joy, she'd have made a fortune, quit, and moved to Nevada. No: she'd have bought the brownstone, evicted its importunate ghost (whatever it took to do that), and stayed right where she was. Forever.

*****

She got maybe 15 minutes: until the first wail drifted up through the open skylights and Vincent abruptly sat up, alert, concerned, and was off almost before Diana had fully taken in that he'd moved. Figuring whatever infant upset had happened, he could deal with, she set about refolding the blanket, taking her time, and hugged it against her before stowing it back behind the plywood.

This was going to be a good place, she thought: a real good place. She'd almost decided where she was going to put her telescope.

Then she made her way along the parapet to the skylight and sat with her feet dangling until Vincent distractedly noticed her and came back to help her with the drop. In an emergency she might have tried it, but a sprained or broken ankle was a complication she felt she really didn't need right now.

While she was shoving the cabinet back, Vincent returned to where Jacob was squalling on the rug, remarking worriedly, “Perhaps some kind of fever...?”

Following, it took her just one look. She poked knuckles into Vincent's back and met his glance with a small grin she just couldn't resist. “Sunburn, babe.”

Vincent looked down again at his screaming son's suffused, red, blotchy face. In an utterly deflated tone, he said, “Oh....”

It had never occurred to him.

Diana laughed out loud.

“Father always warns the children, when the park draws them, when they first go Above after winter passes, that they mustn't stay too long. But it had done me no harm, the sun, and we were there such a little time....”

He glanced around at her, guilty and nonplussed. “Is it serious? Does it pass quickly?”

It was as plain as plain: he was divided between concern for Jacob and reluctance to admit to Father what they'd been doing, he and Jacob. Because Father, without question, would have a purple fit.

Diana slapped a hand across her mouth, still fizzing, and her reaction plainly both embarrassed and reassured him, because she wouldn't be finding it so funny if Jacob were really, seriously sick.

“I'll run some cool water in the sink,” she told him, heading off to do it. “That'll help. Make him feel better. And then we'll slather on some Noxema. Maybe that'll be enough. And he'll end up just healthy pink by the time you get home. Me, I come all out in freckles, look like a giraffe, ugliest thing you ever saw.”

“I doubt that,” he replied, starting to get Jacob's clothes off.

The sink bath went okay: at least Jacob quit screaming. And Diana had the chance to learn what she'd been curious about but wouldn't have asked for worlds, that to the eye, at least, Jacob was a perfectly normal baby boy, except for being unusually strong and coordinated for his age, twisting to reach for the faucet or grabbing onto her wrist with what could be described only as a grip. He kicked pretty enthusiastically, too. She grunted as a wet foot caught her square in the left breast. Maybe she didn't qualify in the Dolly Parton finals, but that kick hurt.

“He swims, a little,” Vincent commented proudly, prudently standing back from the splashing and the mess, which wasn't as chicken as it seemed because there really wasn't room for more than one by the sink and two sets of hands, holding a baby, was always one set too many.

“That puts him one up on me. I think we're ready for a towel now— Ow! Let go, you little toad! Ow! Big yellow towel, back of the bathroom door—”

Busy getting her hair free of that determined baby grip, Diana decided on a strategy of tickling and was rewarded by giggles, more splashing, and a wide, wet grin that showed the beginning tip of one small tooth. In the middle. No telling from that what the rest would be like, the one way or the other....

While Vincent held the towel, Diana scooped Jacob into it. Then Diana retreated to her bedroom, now decently enclosed, to change into dry clothes. When she came out, Vincent was sitting on the couch with Jacob, a yellow terrycloth parcel, in his arms. She looked at them a long minute, then shook loose of the trance and went to inspect the parcel's contents.

“Yeah, that's better, isn't it, tadpole? Got him dry yet? Then time for a little Noxema. I'll get it, just a second, and Father will never have to—”

“Diana. Why is there writing on your bathroom mirror?”

The question caught her halfway there. She stopped dead, then stalked on determinedly. Sure enough: written in soap diagonally across her mirror was Please Please Please Please. On the last one, the writer had run out of space, and the final letters sprawled onto the tile.

Grabbing a washcloth, Diana smeared the words with furious strokes, then opened the medicine chest, grabbed the Noxema, and slammed the mirror shut. Stomping back out to the living room space, she shoved the jar into Vincent's hand, then flung herself into the other corner of the couch wondering how long it would take her to get her stuff packed up, find another place.

Because this was it. This was too much.

She caught Vincent looking at her and burst out, “I don't care. I'm not putting up with it! I'd punch his damn face, if I could find it. If he has one. If he wasn't dead, I'd kill him. Either that creep goes, or I do. And you can goddam well tell him so!”

Vincent didn't say anything, just continued smoothing the white grease over Jacob's wriggling body.

Diana punched the side of the couch a couple times, sure Vincent thought she was having a fit over nothing, but she didn't care. And then she did, and looked across at him, stiff faced, biting her lip.

“It is Kristopher,” Vincent observed, and she nodded jerkily.

“How many spooks you think I got here, scribbling up my refrigerator, leaving me damn notes on my computer—!”

“What has he done, to so offend you?”

She gave the couch arm another good whack. “Wants to paint my damn picture.”

“I see.” His tone said he didn't see at all but didn't think arguing would be a good idea right now. “And you don't wish him to.”

“Hell, no! Have it put on sale, everybody looking at it, deciding if it's cheap enough for them, auction it off maybe, hang it over some fat guy's TV to cover up the crack in the wall.... Hell, no! People would see it!” Diana exclaimed, expecting him to understand, he always seemed to, but this time he didn't and lowered his eyes.

“I feel your distress, your dread and certainty of humiliation. But I don't see the cause. I gather that Kristopher is regarded as a competent painter, though perhaps only of the second rank, not to be classed among the masters of the age. But his work commands considerable sums. It's no longer a problem to find galleries willing to exhibit and sell his work. I don't understand your reluctance.”

“What, are you itching to get your picture painted by some spook? Fine: then you do it.”

“In my case,” Vincent said carefully, “there is a certain question of prudence. However, it is also a fact that Kristopher has already painted me.”

“What?”

“I confess that I don't quite understand the mechanism of it. He neither asked my consent nor received it. But he.. .included me in the portrait, nonetheless. However, it is evident, by his determined pursuit, that Catherine's consent was required for him to begin....”

“Catherine? Catherine sat for that damn spook? And you let her?”

“There was no question of ‘letting' her. As I say, my permission was neither asked nor, apparently, necessary to either party involved.... Have you attempted to discuss your refusal with him?”

“Discuss it with him? How? I can't see him or hear him and I have only crazy old Smyth's word for it he's even here! That and some scrawls on my refrigerator or the bathroom tile—”

“You have my word, also,” Vincent mentioned moderately. She shot him a look but decided she'd done more than enough yelling and therefore didn't say anything.

“I'll show you the portrait, if you'd like,” Vincent offered, still quietly. “It's Below. A gift. I had put it away for a time. After Catherine's death. But it is easily found.”

Diana stared at him, then asked in a dangerous voice, “I sort of get the idea you want me to do it. Right?”

“I want to understand your distress. Ease it, if I can. The rest lies between you and Kristopher.”

Diana felt her face heating, as though she were the one with the sunburn.

“The rest is down the toilet, as far as I'm concerned. And you can tell him, for me, that if he doesn't quit about this, I'm outta here: gone. I moved once, I can move again. And not trouble Cullen this time, or anybody, you don't have to worry, I'll find something, no trouble to anybody.”

Vincent looked off toward the armoire that stood against the stair wall.

“Kristopher, it is at least plain that Diana neither welcomes nor appreciates your interest. Perhaps it would be better, for the sake of peace, if you chose another subject.”

Then he was quiet, plainly listening, and a strong shiver ran down Diana's spine.

“Nevertheless,” Vincent said, after a minute, clearly in reply. “You are only succeeding in upsetting her and I must ask— Art surely does not grant a universal license to exercise bad manners and force your attentions upon those to whom they are unwelcome! And I don't consider Botticelli sufficient precedent. No. Kristopher, to persist beyond a certain point is not only ill mannered but futile. Yes, I do see the resemblance, but that is entirely beside the point. You require her consent. She refuses to grant it. That should close the matter!”

Listening to Vincent's side of the conversation told Diana two things: that although he might not understand her reasons or agree with her, Vincent wasn't going to side with a ghost against her; and that he was beginning to get seriously annoyed at said ghost, on his own account. And if she were a certain Kristopher Gentian, that would be starting to make her real nervous.

And then words came into her mind, like the voices you thought you heard when you were almost asleep. A wheedling male voice that said 'If you sit for me, I won't tell him about the stickers'.

Diana went rigid. “You goddam spook, that's blackmail!”

No answer, and Vincent looking around at her inquiringly, which meant it'd been a private exchange, just between her and the spook.

“You're right,” Diana told Vincent hastily. “I guess we ought to talk it out, not go off all half cocked about this. We'll work something out, babe. Sorry it even came up. Forget about it.”

“What has he threatened you with?” Now, the danger was in his voice.

“Nothing that's got anything to do with you—”

“Whatever touches you concerns me,” was the flat reply. Addressing the armoire, Vincent said, “Kristopher, I believed you a person of honor. It seems I was mistaken. This harassment will stop.” Whatever answer he got, he didn't like and swung around toward her again. “Diana, there is no compromising with threats. And despite what you say, it does concern me, and therefore I consider that I have a right to know it.”

“It's nothing, it's—” She was on the point of saying the threat was to report something that'd been said, or happened, between her and Cullen. And she just froze up. Couldn't do it. Because if she said it, Vincent would believe her. Which was what she wanted, of course. Yet she couldn't say it, or think of any other plausible reason fast enough. Come right down to it, she hated the notion of lying to him at all. Even though that seemed the best thing to do. It just seemed a hell of a way to treat somebody who trusted you, even if it was for his own good. No. She couldn't.

But she was also damn well terrified what would happen if he found out about the stickers.

She got up, walked a few paces, and stopped with her back to Vincent.

“It's something I want to keep personal. For now,” she said in an even voice. “Like the roof space, that you didn't tell me about until you'd checked it out, made up your mind about it. It's nobody's business but mine. Okay, spook, you win. Do what you damn well please.”

She thought she'd resigned herself to it. But standing there, she suddenly burst into tears and was instantly aware of Vincent rising to come to her. She flung out a stiff arm, a fist.

“Let me alone, I'll handle it, I'll goddam handle it!”

Biting her bottom lip, clenched all through, she fought her way back to silence if not to calm. Then she went to the bathroom and slapped cold water on her eyes and patted them dry, folding the towel with fanatical precision before hanging it back on its bar.

She didn't really want to go back out and face him, but hiding would have been worse. And he made it as easy for her as he could: occupying himself getting fresh clothes, from a pack, onto a now sleepy Jacob, not looking her way as she flung into a scoop chair and tried to make stillness pass for composure.

After awhile he said, “I accept your right to keep your own counsel when you choose. I have done the same. We shall speak about this more when we feel it is time. It's a delicate matter. But I cannot accept that you be coerced into something you so dread, knowing I am somehow what you are threatened with. Yet having no voice in the matter myself. That's not right. And I don't understand why the prospect of being painted is so terrible to you. Will you tell me that much, at least?”

She shook her head: not a refusal, just resenting, with a deep indignation, the tendency of her face to collapse into a bawling mask like Jacob's had been.

“Just damn vanity, babe. Pride. Likely be better off without it. Who the hell cares.”

“You do. So I do.... How is your pride compromised, Diana? Do you fear you will be pictured unflatteringly?”

Something not very much like a laugh escaped her. She stuffed her knuckles against her teeth to keep another noise like that from getting out. Said nothing.

Presently he said, “Jacob is asleep. Sunset is beginning. Will you come back to the roof and watch it with me?”

“You go on, babe. I'm rotten company right now.”

He came and settled on the carpet maybe six feet off. Facing the stereo receiver in the corner created by the church rail. Being where she'd see him but not forcing her to meet his eyes, a distinction of such implicit kindness and thoughtfulness it just about did her in, all by itself, without counting the sunset glow across his shoulders, the burnished hair, the strong profile like something you should find on a valuable gold coin.

Knots on knots behind her eyes: a migraine starting.

He spread his hands, then let them fall.

“You are in great distress. You will not tell me why. You will not allow me to know it or be any comfort. Or even try. When you have been comfort and friend and so much... for which I find no words, now... to me. What do I lack, that I can return none of this to you. Why—?”

That got to her as maybe nothing else could: that she was hurting him, and he wasn't complaining or fighting back. Just hurting and not knowing why. Figuring it was some way his fault.

She couldn't take that.

She flung her head back, staring at the streaky sky. After a minute she rubbed her eyes hard. Then went on staring.

“No big deal. Pictures are weird, that's all. Like being put on display for people to stare at. Like you think you're so great, everybody ought to look at you. Or that everybody will think that's what you think. Bothers me.”

She shrugged. “Had a picture in the highschool yearbook. Everybody does. Tried to get out of it, even got sick trying to get out of it. No dice. No excuses allowed, the Bennett family wasn't going to be represented by a blank square. So okay, I got the goddam picture taken. It looked like shit. Everybody saw it. Told me so, how bad it looked. Some people, they just don't take good pictures. Maybe okay other ways, just not that way. The truth is, it was a good picture. Accurate. Still had the braces, then. Cost a ton.”

She shook her head again, with the sense of trying to shake something off, shake herself out of something. Escape.

“Braces. Getting called Metal Mouth, that's about all the good they did. Still got a mouth like a squirrel.” Absently, she licked her lips, then her teeth. “Real good on the eyes, too. Accurate. Looked scared to death. I was. Popeyes: like saucers with a raisin dumped in the middle. Good color photo, too: book cost 25 dollars, you had to buy one. To help pay for all those color pictures. Got the hair just right, like somebody's fright wig. Orange. Goddam red. Like a clown. Make people laugh. Pop, he said it looked like the Bride of Frankenstein. Rent you that tape, sometime. Then you'll know....”

She sat awhile, caught up in the picture in her mind, almost forgetting there was anybody in the loft with her.

Abruptly, she laughed. “Pop, he was something. He was great. When we got the proofs... great word, that is: proofs. Anyhow, when we got the proofs, to pick the one that would be in the book, my pop, he saw right away how awful they looked, wasn't going to put up with it. Said surely we could do better than that. He got this professional photographer to shoot another session. Ma dragged me off to a hairdresser. New dress. The works, trying to make me look good. All the while we were down to this photographer's studio— studio: looked like a place to buy a nice, cheap abortion, you shoulda seen it— my pop, he tells me with what those braces cost, I oughta be proud to show them off and let's see a bigger smile, here, Sweet Potato, just smile some more, you're not trying here, darlin'.... Hellbent to get a picture he could be proud of. Show a Mick cop's kid was as good as anybody. Pop, he was great: one terrific fighter.... And when those proofs came, I guess they must have looked like shit too. He took one look and pitched 'em. Even he had to give up on it. Went with the school photographer's after all. And the book came out. Like I said. You had to buy one. Everybody did.... I forget what I did with it. Prob'ly it went up in the fire, back at my old place. No loss. The hell with it.”

She looked around then, almost lazily, because it all was so dumb, so useless. And she smiled again, because it was easy, after all.

“Look, everybody can't be Elizabeth Taylor, right? So no big deal. So if you got popeyes, maybe it's so you can you look at things harder and longer than anybody else. See what they don't. And damn well get paid for it. Think harder than they do, make a few bucks, and you don't gotta apologize to anybody, ever, about anything. Somebody doesn't like how you look, they can look some other way, it's a free country. But no problem: all they care about is results. So give 'em damn results: they don't care how or who, just shove money at you and tell you go do it again, and how'd you do that anyway and then not listen if you're fool enough to try to tell 'em.

“And so what if you got a figure like a stick? Pop, he was wrong about that: always said I'd never catch anybody with a figure like this, might as well be a cop.... But the truth is, guys don't care if you're built like a ladder so long as you'll let them climb. So long as you're good in bed. And I'm damn well good at that too, although you gotta take my word for it so far, maybe sometime I'll get to show you what I'm really good at. 'Cause it's a skill. Like looking. Like seeing. You can learn it. You can learn anything if you try hard enough....”

Casually, she met Vincent's eyes, and she couldn't read his expression at all, except how hard and steadily he was looking at her. But it didn't matter, just a dumb kid story, she guessed everybody had one.

She sighed. “So let the damn spook do his damn picture. Who cares? If—”

“Who has said these wicked things to you?” Vincent broke in, startling her.

“I don't get you.”

“These names you call yourself,” Vincent said, intent, impatient. “‘Squirrel mouth'. ‘Popeyes'. Why do you say such things?”

“Look, the names don't mean anything, babe. It's just a way of living with it. If you can't change it, might as well laugh at it. Can't take that kind of thing seriously.”

She was trying to be patient, but it wasn't working.

“You believe yourself ugly. Unworthy of a picture.”

She straightened in the chair, elbows on knees.

“Look, there's no believing about it. It's just a plain fact. You got eyes: who's kidding who, here? Gonna tell me this isn't red?” She tugged at a hank of her awful hair. “Gonna tell me this face is a ringer for Marilyn Monroe or for Garbo, that you like so much? Or some old bag's gonna wave a wand and turn this into a Playboy centerfold? Turn this scarecrow giraffe into a petite doll about five foot two? Get real.”

She looked away, full of the sick dizziness that always accompanied her migraines.

“And when it comes to ‘worthy,' last week I saw a picture some guy was trying to peddle, up on 42nd. Pair of beat up old sneakers. He made a painting of that—holes, torn laces, dirt, the works. What's to be worthy of? So I'm a dumb Mick, don't understand Art. Let's say so and be done with it. Look, I guess you're trying to make me feel better, sympathy and all that, great, but I hate to tell you, babe: you're really starting to get on my nerves.”

“And if someone were to tell you that you are beautiful—”

“They'd be crazy, blind, or trying to run some scam, and let's drop it now, okay? I didn't want to talk about it and if I'd known you'd make such a thing about it, I wouldn't have. I'm okay, I get by just fine. Look, you take Jacob on home, will you? That sun gave me a hell of a headache and I think I just want to go lie down.”

As she pushed out of the chair and started stumbling toward her bedroom, one hand holding her pounding forehead, he remarked, in a tone of discovery, “You have no mirrors here.”

She swung around. “You blind or forgetful or something? That's what got all this started, that spook writing on my damn mirror!”

“Which is small and fixed to the wall. Which is an automatic part of such a place. Difficult to remove. But you, yourself, have no mirrors. Nor were there any at your other home. I saw, but didn't see. Perhaps you're right: perhaps I am blind. Or forgetful.”

“Look, I'm sorry, all right? I didn't mean it like that, I just— Oh, hell. Babe, I don't know what we're arguing about. I was just telling you why I'm not real crazy about that spook doing a picture of me, that's all. You wanted to know. I told you. So can't we just drop it now because I feel real lousy and.... Oh, hell. Go home, Vincent, I'm not worth anything when I'm like this. I'll take a few aspirin and lie down a while, I'll be okay. Really.”

As she swung around the door casing into her bedroom, she heard him comment, “I also have no mirrors.”

That's right, she thought. I noticed that right off. So why doesn't he understand, and just leave off about it?

But the migraine was really closing in now and she couldn't deal with the question. So let him have the last word: who cared?

She flopped onto the futon and didn't even bother about the aspirin, just yanked the comforter up over her head.

*****

When she woke, the lighted dial of the clock on the orange crate read 3:07. The migraine had let up, but her forehead felt tender, brittle, like something any shock might shatter. She cradled it in a palm, contemplating the silver glow streaming in through the skylight over her head.

Moonlight.

On a hunch, she wandered out to see if the spook had started his goddam picture yet. And banged into the church rail, that hadn't been there yesterday. And then, once she was past that, stubbed her toe on what she made out, after a second, as a large, thick book, lying open on the living room rug. Three or four other books were spaced out in front of the couch. One had a sheet of paper on top. Not quite bright enough to read; but enough to recognize the handwriting as Vincent's.

She took the note back into the kitchen and left it on the island she didn't quite bump into, while putting together the makings of a pot of coffee. Then, wincing in anticipation, she flicked on the overhead fluorescent and waited with shut eyes for the light to become tolerable. Like a hangover, she thought, with no fun, even, to look back on. It didn't seem fair.

Leaning on the island, she read the note.

“Once I read several books whose subject was unwelcome to me, because you felt it important enough to insist. And despite my distaste, I learned much and gained insight. Now I ask the same of you. Consider, with all your formidable objectivity, the pages I have flagged. Can you say, in simple honesty, that you see no resemblance? And then ask yourself whether all these great artists can have been so mistaken, so blind, and all the generations since them, to choose such models to exercise their genius upon. If my insistence is unwelcome and an intrusion upon private matters, my excuse is that it hurts me to know you have been persuaded of such a cruel delusion about yourself. Not merely because I love you, although I do, but in honor of the truth, I wish you to find yourself as beautiful as you deserve and as you are. We shall talk of this.

—V.”

“Dammit,” Diana muttered, wearily slumping, dropping her fragile forehead onto her arms. Then she mouthed soundlessly, We shall talk of this, and made a snarling, defiant face.

But fair was fair: he had read the damn Abnormal Psych books (and blown up at her afterward), so she guessed she had to do the assignment, with the option of throwing them at him when she was done. She lugged the thick books by twos out to the island and studied them standing, drinking coffee, trying to be objective, as he'd asked.

All the books had PROPERTY OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY stamped in them, and little manila sleeves and cards that showed they hadn't been checked out anything like legally. Turning pages, dutifully going from flag to flag, she wondered if she should turn him in for that, or warn the big, lion guarded book mausoleum on 5th Avenue that they had something a lot larger than mice coming and going in their basement....

The paintings in the first book were centuries old: Michelangelo, a seated and rather muscular sibyl from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, shoulders on her like a fullback; a painting called “The Madonna of the Rocks”; Botticelli, “The Birth of Venus,” in which a woman coyly clutching the crucial areas was being served up, standing, on the half shell; another with two people, a man and a woman, sprawled rather dissolutely across a broad rectangle, attended by fat flying babies.

The flag on that one had a note on it:

“Her name was Simonetta Vespucci, and she was one of Botticelli's favorite models; Kristopher contends Botticelli also was in love with her, although she loved another. Historical sources are too scanty to prove or disprove this. Kristopher, however, is in no doubt. He is not inclined to doubt at any time. It is your resemblance to Simonetta which chiefly has made him determined to attempt your likeness. As you have already found, he is not easily discouraged. Nor is he in the habit of becoming fascinated by giraffes, metal mouths, clowns, or anything more bizarre than myself, concerning which I leave you free to draw your own conclusions.”

As she flipped pages, flagged and unflagged, she began to be able to spot the woman, muttering to herself, “Simonetta, Simonetta, fat cow in a sheet, Simonetta, fat cow bathing, fat cows dancing with ribbons, Simonetta....”

And she thought, No wonder this spaghetti bender was crazy about her: only woman he could find to paint who weighed less than a Mack truck.

But fair was fair, and there was definitely a resemblance. Same ropes of flaming hair, though the paintings generally softened it to a respectable auburn; same big, blank saucer eyes, the lower lids as prominent as the upper; same naked dishpan curve of forehead, tiny little squirrel mouth that showed the front teeth as often as not; same gangly, bony figure. She took the book into the bathroom and gaped in the smeared mirror in between gulping down what felt like the proper quantity of aspirin. Give the man his due, and the spook, too: they were right, there was a resemblance. Same number of arms, legs, heads, and so forth, no question about it.

Back at the island, she started on another book, and the pictures were a tad more recent: only a century or so. “Pre-Raphaelites,” whatever the hell that meant. And pictures showing Simonetta, who therefore was probably a vampire and thus immortal: twirling around a tree, holding a bonnet, getting into improbable and lascivious intertwinings with miscellaneous curving furniture.

And another book, this century even, Art Nouveau. Posters by somebody who signed himself Mucha, who also hung around with Simonetta— definitely a vampire!— and did ads with her smoking a cigarette, holding up leaves in representation of autumn, rapturously squeezing draperies around her skinny midriff while contemplating the sky, that kind of stuff....

There: she'd read them. Looked at every single one, faithfully noted and removed every damn flag. So they were even, now, about the Psych books: she could quit feeling guilty about it.

She stacked the illegally borrowed books on the island. Then she charged for the bathroom and threw up. When she was finished with that, she stuffed all the books in her tote, shouldered it, grabbed a flashlight, and clomped down all the stairs to the basement threshold with the firm intention of dumping them on Vincent, wherever they'd make the most forceful impression.

*****

He was asleep. So was Jacob: the crib was back in front of the wardrobe. No worse than pink, showing minimal evidence of his adventure Above, Jacob had most of a fist in his mouth. Vincent hadn't gone quite that far, but his hand was curled practically against his nose, as though he'd thought about it and decided not to, after all.

Diana soundlessly switched off the flashlight and suddenly wondered why she'd come, what was the point of it all. Why did she feel mortally insulted, offended, even threatened: prepared to defend to the death her conviction that she had all the riveting charms of Lily Tomlin, when the man simply loved her enough to be willingly blind to the evidence of his eyes?

It wasn't him, she thought. It was that creep spook: his fault. Kristopher. It'd be okay, she thought, except for the picture, that'd be put up in front of God and everybody as though she'd agreed to it, wanted it....

Well, she had agreed to it. Blackmailed into it, the creep, but she had. And if the creep kept his part of the bargain, she'd damn well keep hers. Anything, to watch Vincent sleep like this, quietly, maybe dreaming of sunlight or maybe even of her, instead of the fitful and nightmare-haunted sleep she'd so often watched him through since it had begun between them, since she'd dragged him, both literally and figuratively, out of a graveyard.

She set the tote down quietly, figuring either she'd collect it some other time or he'd return it to her, and that'd be the end of it.

“To what conclusion have you come?”

She spun, and of course his eyes were open, although not very far, blinking at her sleepily. But she should have known she couldn't actually sneak up on him... or out on him... without his noticing.

She leaned against the wall by the bronze statue.

“That in the dark ages before spandex, people had some pretty weird notions of what looks good. Fat cows. Funny looking hair, like a nest of snakes. Skinny women like the after from a concentration camp. I don't know, Vincent.” She shrugged, tired of fighting about it. ”But I did, I looked at them, fair and square.”

“And yet remain unpersuaded,” he responded: softly, so as not to waken Jacob.

“Take a lot more than some pictures to convince me against what I know, against the evidence of my own eyes, babe. That's my stock in trade. Take a lot, to persuade me against that. You want to be crazy, okay, that's your business. I suppose it's a kind of compliment, that you feel that way. But don't ask me to be crazy with you. Because I can't.”

She started away.

“Wait.”

“Look, I really don't want to talk about this—”

“Wait for me in the passage. There is something... you should see.”

So she put her flashlight down carefully and waited, unsure why except that he'd asked her, and it was only a minute or so before he joined her, and he looked it. Just a loose white cotton shirt over pants, socks, and something pretty much like thongs or sandals. The least she'd ever seen him wear, considering that he usually went to layers on top of layers. But not much difference, really, because this get up left only his hands and face exposed: the usual. The impression of haste and maybe carelessness was probably from his hair, rumpled with sleeping, and the fact that he was yawning as he came out.

“Look, if you figure to show me that picture of you and Catherine, I'd—”

“No,” he said, putting a guiding arm around her shoulders. “Another thing than that.”

They passed Father's quiet study and then took a righthand fork that sloped down.

“Look,” she said, no longer whispering because the tunnel was bare, without openings that would mean somebody trying to sleep inside, “can't we not make a thing about this? Can't we just leave it? I'm not trying to make any point and I'm real sorry I ever tried to explain, if it's gonna mean I have to keep going on about it every time I see you. It's a kind of a sore subject with me, and the best thing you can do is let it alone.”

He didn't argue or even answer, only squeezed her shoulder a little tighter for a second as he steered them into another righthand fork that sloped even more steeply. His arm was warm around her; but he was shivering, maybe from being wakened out of a sound sleep by some screwy woman who didn't want to talk and yet wouldn't shut up.

He paused to take a candle from a wall niche, then led her through an opening leading into what felt like a damp, big space, warm after the chill of the passage. The candle flame was reflected off water. Quite a lot of water. The stone floor sloped down to its edge. Reaching aside, Vincent pulled loose a big canvas tarp that flapped down across the door opening. He fastened it in place with a couple loops of a thong through an iron ring set into the wall.

“We won't be disturbed here,” he remarked, leading her along a ledge that ran around the right side of the pool.

Bending to spill a puddle of wax, he set the candle carefully upright in it. “This is the bathing pool. The warmth seems to help Father's hip. Also, the steam eases those with respiratory infections. There are usually many people here. But not at this hour. I don’t come here except late, like this. Or early, depending on how you wish to look at it....”

As he spoke, he sat down and took off the sandals and laid them aside. Then his socks. His feet were narrow, long, furred. Each toe ended in a thick, pointed claw.

“There was a time,” he continued, “when I came with the others. When I was a child. But when I ceased to be a child... many things changed.”

Without hesitation, perfectly methodically, he tilted back on his elbows and lifted enough to slide the waistband of his pants over his hips. He pulled the pants off, one leg at a time. Then he folded them and turned to set them behind him, on top of the sandals and socks.

Diana felt her jaw hanging open and shut it just soon enough, because he lifted his face then and looked at her piercingly, asking, “What are you thinking? In this moment?”

“That one of us has gone crazy and it isn't me. About all the months I tried to think of ways to get you to do what you just did. That you're built like a dancer, a runner, an athlete. Just like I thought, what I thought. And that any other man alive would have taken off his shirt first.”

He cocked his head, and the slight stirring of his hair told her he was still shivering. “Why?”

“Because.... What it tells me, Vincent.... What it tells me is that in spite of being the most fanatically modest man I've ever run into, you have no intrinsic sexual awareness at all. No one place you hide— just all of you. All the same to you. My God.”

She sank down on the ledge, staring at him. And he, naked below the waist, bent his head, maybe thinking.

The fur on his legs was thicker along the shins, sparser and finer down the muscled thighs and calves. Mahogany— brown with a reddish cast— in this limited light. Pubic hair dense but not completely concealing: he was not aroused. Still shivering.

“Yes,” he commented meditatively. “That's so. And others are more... localized? One more difference, then: one I wasn't even aware of. Is it important, do you think?”

“God, yes. Because it means all touch is potentially sexual touch, to you. A fully diffuse awareness. No: not diffuse— equally acute. No wonder you can't stand too much, being too close, because none of it's casual to you, or neutral. It'd be like... like being goosed every time you shook hands, or bumped somebody or.... No wonder you had to shut it down, shut it off, not feel it. Otherwise, you'd be in a constant state of arousal. With no outlet. Drive anybody crazy, that would.”

“I knew I could depend upon you to explain it to me,” Vincent said, and she really had no idea whether he was kidding her or not and gulped one breath of a laugh and then slapped her mouth shut, desperately afraid he'd take it wrong.

With a sudden wrench he pulled the shirt over his head and made himself follow the same routine of folding it neatly, turning, and setting it behind him.

“And what are you thinking now, this minute?” he asked, not looking at her, not moving at all.

“That I can't imagine why you're doing this or what kind of courage it's taking for you to... to give up your concealments, let yourself be looked at. What trust it takes, to let me see. That you're damn well scared to death. And shouldn't be, because you're the most gorgeous thing I ever set eyes on. Man,” she corrected, before the careless word could sink in, or come back at her.

He stood then and in that same motion dove. She had a moment's image of him, arms extended, long body arched to meet the water. Then a moderate splash. A moment later he surfaced near the middle of the pool, stroking to either side, shaking the wet mane back and then revolving to locate her.

And he said to her, “Come.”

Before she knew it she'd scuttled, crabwise, back against the wall and was shaking her head in violent negation. And then was almost as astonished at herself as she'd been at him. And then shook her head some more, because she was not about to strip and go into that pool, no way. She never swam, didn't even own a bathing suit, not that any was required right now. Didn't even know how to swim, for God's sake. She'd drown. She'd die.

Steadily stroking, he looked at her, and she knew what she was doing was awful, the confirmation of everything he was afraid of, and what she was proving to him was that words like gorgeous didn't mean anything, that her claims of love and trust didn't mean anything, that when it came right down to it, he was too different and she couldn't stand the idea of being naked with him, and she was damned if she'd let him think that, feel that about her, about himself, and she could feel the migraine rousing again but the hell with it, the hell with it.

She started snatching off clothes, nowhere as neat as he'd been, just dragging them off any old how and flinging them into a bundle, goosebumps from head to foot, and she thought she was probably going to throw up. The hell with it: then she'd throw up, that's all.

She flung herself into the warm water, touched bottom with a toe and pushed off hard enough to grab some air before she started to sink again. Flailing around her in complete panic, she grabbed desperately at something solid that came within her reach and felt her grip broken, certain she'd die now, wet and terrified and horrible like what washed up, sometimes, down at Coney Island, and then there was bottom again under her feet. She could have stood up, except that she was coughing so bad, and crying, and trying not to throw up, being turned around and then held solidly so there was nothing to be scared of after all, except there still was so much deep water all around her and only the small candle flame to light the big space.

And in between choking and crying, she was insisting over and over again, “He did, he loved me, my pop loved me, he did!” fighting the embrace, that if released would have left her to drown, but that didn't matter, she had to fight it off, kicking and twisting, hitting indiscriminately.

And because Vincent didn't fight back, just steadily held her, she eventually accepted that he wasn't going to let go, no matter what she did, and gave up and just cried, wracking sobs, tangling her fingers in the fur of his chest and patting incoherent apologies he didn't reply to either, but only held her and she was so grateful for that strength, that silence, that it made her cry worse.

Not touching bottom anymore. Only suspended in the warm water that wasn't going to drown her after all because he wouldn't let it. No longer standing, even: legs afloat, lifted, weightlessly reclining and cradled close, all the splashed surface returning to stillness.

She didn't dare look at him, she felt like such a fool. But at least she hadn't broken faith with him, had returned him trust for trust. At least she'd been able to do that. So maybe it'd be okay to look at him after all.

She couldn't see much, his back was to the light. Just slanted shadows, the planes of his face, the wet mane streaming down his chest and vast shoulders.

He said then, very softly, “It is surely a terrible fear, that one might forfeit the acceptance of those one loves. Though that acceptance be bought at great cost. In childhood, such abandonment can mean death. It was nearly so for me: discarded among the refuse in a frigid alley. I have long known that fear.... To all the world, you may be as you choose. But will you permit yourself to be beautiful to me? May I be your mirror, Diana? As you have become mine.”

That set her off again and she hung on, hoping maybe he'd figure out those spastic jerks were nods, which was about all she was up to right now.

“Then don't trouble yourself any more,” he said, “about the picture. For no one but I shall see it. Kristopher is not, fortunately, an artist much concerned about fame. Much less money. I believe, once it's done, he will lose interest in it and not care overly where it is displayed. So perhaps you will be able to better reconcile yourself to the bargain you made with him.”

More spastic nods and such relief, so much gratitude if nobody would see it but Vincent, who didn't count, or who counted a lot, but not that way. Whose gaze would never humiliate her or insist she make unendurable choices, sacrifice what she could not bear to lose, to gain what would mean nothing to her, compared to the loss.

Vincent understood: she could not be both Simonetta and her pop's homely and disappointing but beloved Sweet Potato. So Simonetta could just go drown.

Belatedly, it came to her what a chance she'd been ignoring, just the two of them, in absolute privacy, stark naked. Naturally, when every hormone in her body had gone on strike and her libido had short-circuited, so that cuddling seemed to provide a deeper connectedness than more energetic foreplay ever had. Naturally. Likely because he was furry. There was something comforting about hugging something furry, that took you back to an age before you'd ever heard of words like libido or foreplay.

She sighed, then smiled a small, private smile, thinking about the stimulating qualities claimed for bearskin rugs. Not everything furry was childish. Not hardly, when there were muscles like that under the fur....

He said, “Once, when I was a child, Father assigned me to sort eggs. They broke. All over me. All over everything. I—”

He broke off for a moment, because she'd started laughing, imagining it: the frustration and the eggy mess in his fur, imagining how he'd have hated that.

Smiling, enjoying her laughter, he went on, “I had almost despaired when the thought came to me to sort them in a tub of water. It still did not go well: my discipline was inadequate to the task. I was not, then, to be trusted with fragile things.... But the water still cushioned many eggs which otherwise would surely have broken. Water accepts all things,” Vincent continued meditatively, holding her close, seemingly without effort.

“Buoys some, cushions others. Offers an utterly impartial reflection.... Like all elemental powers, it is not to be lightly regarded; but accepted in turn, it offers unfailing support and protection. I trust the water. Not to be kind, but to instruct me in its disciplines. I would like to share that trust with you, Diana. So that we may see truly: put a true value on what we are, what we do, and learn how we may no longer be afraid. I would like to teach you to swim.”

“Here?” she gulped. “Like this?”

“It's where the children are taught. It is a place for beginnings, you see.”

“Sometime,” she agreed, sleepily tucking her nose into the hollow of his neck. “Sure, sometime. But I'm not up to any heavy duty experimenting this minute, sorry.”

“I know. Nor am I. There is time, Diana,” he responded serenely, and she thought about it— what a perfectly great idea that was.

Time, she thought. Imagine that.

In the aftermath of the migraine and an emotional blowout of megaton proportions, she found herself quite content to float, cradled so gently by the water and by him: exhausted, wrung out as though they'd already spent the whole of the night making love.

It sure wasn't sex. But maybe it was love. Maybe that was what she needed to learn, more than swimming. But swimming could be a place to start.

Bimbo

About two in the morning, as Diana was cross-connecting and color coding files involved in her current case, papers spread all over the floor, Vincent dropped through a skylight. Before she knew what was happening, she'd been grabbed, yanked up, and swung around so fast her toes didn't even touch. As suddenly, he set her down, guilty and self-conscious, but that was only a second. The next, the exuberance captured him again and he hugged her, showing the most completely open and unconstrained grin she'd ever seen.

Completely infectious, too: startled, spun and then hugged half breathless, still knowing nothing of the cause, she was grinning too, trying to get an arm free enough to scrape her disordered hair out of her eyes.

“I know it's late, I apologize for disturbing you but I couldn't wait, it's—”

Breaking off the babble, Vincent hugged her even tighter as though believing the happiness could pass directly from him to her by osmosis. Wanting so urgently to share it that words were too slow: only motion and contact would do. He swung her around again, folders kicked aside, papers scuffed into total disarray.

She started laughing. She couldn't help it. And loved being held so strongly, the whirlwind giddiness of being swept up so literally in his joy. Loved the joy for him, whatever its cause, loved the impatience that wouldn't let him wait to share it with her. Loved him, altogether and completely— as captured by that as he, by his joy. And felt wildly drunk with it as he bumped into the couch, teetered, and didn't try very hard not to fall onto it, the couch rocking with the shock of that much weight, threatening to spill them over backward, both of them laughing fit to burst.

The couch thumped back onto its front feet and maybe that was a signal to settle down, but she didn't want to, never wanted to, sprawled against him with her ribs aching until she felt that if they could keep it going only a little longer she'd turn completely inside out and there'd be no more outsides at all, just insides touching everywhere and then the joy would go on forever.

But he quieted, and held her quietly, his cheek against her hair, and that was good too. So she accepted that they weren't going to turn inside out together quite yet and slid to something like sitting, gasping for breath, willing now to listen to the words if it was time for that.

He said, simply, “Devin's back.”

“Tell him to go away.” She watched the puzzled frown start before adding, “So he can come back every night and make you this happy.”

He smiled then, his eyes still shining. “He needs no excuse to go. I fear he will not stay long now. But he may. This time, perhaps he may, Diana.”

It still hummed off him, the happiness and the hope. He continued, “A letter Father sent him almost a year ago just reached him, through many hands, many addresses. He arrived expecting to do personal battle. For me. For Catherine. For us all.... There is a family Charles— I told you about Charles?— had grown attached to, and they to him. In Montana.... Devin sold the van, then gave all the money he had to ensure they would not be in want, although Charles had found work as a... a phone solicitor? For an agency that assists the disabled. Devin had to hitchhike. Part of the way, he came in a boxcar. Almost like riding the subways. We used to do that, Devin and I.... And he may stay, Diana. Even though that emergency is now past and Catherine beyond all our help. He has left Charles content, and well provided for.... He's thunderstruck at Jacob. I don't think he altogether believes Jacob is mine, even now. That it's possible. Sometimes, when Jacob is asleep and I consider him, I don't quite believe it myself. You have a sister, do you not? And are an aunt?”

“Sure.”

“Devin is an uncle. I don't think he has completely accepted it. Is your sister older than you, or younger?”

“Two years younger.”

“Ah. So you have never been the baby of your family. And therefore expected to be, somehow, the baby forever. Devin is older than I. By almost four years. I don't believe he thinks me competent to do anything so complex as care for a small child, even my own. Especially my own....”

“Or father one in the first place?” Diana inquired, finally pushing her hair back, and got a quiet look in response.

“Just so,” Vincent admitted, and smiled. “Forgive me: it's late. But I couldn't wait and hoped you might still be awake, you sometimes work late, I know—”

“Never gets too late for news this good. I'm real glad you came to tell me. Because it gives me time to figure what to have for supper tonight. I remember, you wished he'd come, and that I'd fix supper for him, back before my old place burned down—”

“You needn't. That was only dreaming—”

“Then it's even more important,” Diana rejoined firmly, sliding her arm under his and giving a good squeeze. “We gotta see that dreams come true, when we can. Who else will, if we don't? Right?”

His eyes, steady and warm, met hers. “If it would not be too much trouble....”

“What it takes, babe. I want to do this for you. And I been dying to meet him. Forever. At least five months.” She quirked a smile because that was about how long it'd been since Vincent had mentioned that Father had another son, a son by blood as well as by choice. Vincent's brother.

Put that way, it seemed like a short time. And yet it wasn't much longer, that she'd known Vincent. Really known him, not merely imagined him, dreamed about him. Eight months? No, not quite eight.

As though he'd picked up on her thought, he put an arm around her and drew her closer, remarking, “The important things are not measured that way.”

“No,” Diana agreed, subtly reassured without having quite identified the source of her momentary uneasiness. “So tell me what he hates, what he likes, and should I ask a couple more people to give him somebody else to tell all his adventures to, or—”

“Just ourselves. If you would not mind...?”

“I want it to be however you want it. Anybody who can make you this happy, I like already. I do chicken fairly well, has he got anything against chicken?”

“I happen to know he is particularly fond of chicken. And baked potatoes? We seldom got those Below: mashed, they go farther. I'll help.”

“You'll do no such thing. You'll play him a nice tape, something maybe you've seen and he hasn't, and show off with the controller, and maybe fix him a nice drink, and have one yourself, and let his eyes slowly fall out of his head at what his kid brother's up to now. Right?”

He gave her one of those looks: the sort that somebody blind from birth would give their first glint of a sunbeam. That always embarrassed her and made her feel like all her bones had just turned to jello.

“Your kindness is beyond words.”

“Tell me that after you tasted my chicken. That's when it'll mean something.”

After he left, she knelt on the rug trying to get the scattered files back in some kind of order. Made three stacks, then tried five. Finally gave the mess a shove and just sat grinning like an idiot, replaying it all, from the sudden drop to the easy leap that was like the same motion played in reverse— magical, like flight. Even seeing it, she still didn't quite believe it... And replaying, too, everything in between those startling brackets, because once wasn't nearly enough.

It was nice about Devin, sure. For him. But Devin still was only a name, to her. What stuck with her was the freedom, the lack of constraint. That was new.

A happy side-effect, she thought, of the four swimming lessons he'd given her so far. Nothing like being naked with somebody on a regular basis, holding and being held, to put a hearty dent in the most ingrained of inhibitions.

She could float, now; and so didn't freeze and panic as easily. And he'd become less afraid to reach out, touch, hold. The water offered pretext and distraction: protecting her from it seemed to eclipse his more diffuse anxieties about protecting her from himself. It gave him sanction and confidence in touching her. And that, along with how great he looked, was worth any amount of wet flailing around, regardless of whether she ever learned to swim a stroke.

The bathing pool spoke differently to their different fears but soothed them both alike. And she thought the swimming lessons were probably the greatest idea he'd ever had.

Onions, she thought, and pulled a pen out of her hair to jot notes on the back of a folder, flopped over it like a teenager with a movie magazine. The big fat kind, chopped up fine and fried just to the edge of yellow but some bounce left. And sweet red peppers, for color. Maybe some white wine, too, simmer the chicken in it after the outsides of the pieces were seared golden. Yeah, definitely: Zinfandel would be good. Paprika, she had. She chewed the pen, then added mushrooms for a touch of something tunnelish. Candles, of course.

The list grew.

She was going to make this the best damn dinner Vincent's brother had ever had.

*****

Occasionally looking up from the frying pan, Diana could see the resemblance. A rackety-looking sort of guy, Devin, and thin as a rail; but the eyes were like Father's eyes, the same trick of opening them wide in assumed surprise, the same habit of looking aside before making a joke, though he didn't have glasses to fiddle with, to complete the mannerism. The same broad brow and smallish, uncertain-looking mouth she suspected could lock fast with the same kind of stubbornness. Same crisp, dark hair, no grey in it yet.

Built like Father, too: the slump-shouldered stance that in Father looked scholarly and in Devin looked casual, shiftless, like somebody out of work hanging around a streetcorner and idly watching whatever passed by. Except that Devin was taller: as he and Vincent stood together, Devin with his back to her and leaning against the church rail, there wasn't but two or three inches difference.

The resemblances to Vincent were more subtle. The casualness of a stiff, spread hand poked into Vincent's chest to make a point. The glances traded, full of memories and private references she didn't have to know to recognize. The way Vincent's eyes were always right on the edge of smiling, and hopeful, and warmly unguarded in a way she seldom saw them except, sometimes, when he was with Jacob. Constantly attentive, wanting to catch everything, remember everything, lose no instant of this rare companionship. The way he unconsciously mirrored Devin's stance and echoed his brother's small gestures in a way neither of them was probably aware of, a head tilt or a shift of weight, arms folded or relaxed at the sides, a hand lifted for emphasis or in dismissal: first Devin, then a second or two later, Vincent. The slow dance of body language characteristic of people so closely related that whatever one did affected the other on multiple subconscious levels as well as in more overt ways.

Though Devin was slight, dark, and mercurial and Vincent massive, fair, and solemn, you couldn't watch them together for five minutes and not know them for brothers.

Not even counting the scars— three diagonal ridges across Devin's left cheek, plain evidence of the angle of strike. Vincent's hands had been smaller, then; and he'd had to reach.

Talking about Devin, Vincent had never mentioned those scars. She'd done a bit of a double-take, first seeing them. Instantly knowing them for what they were, she'd had sense enough to keep her mouth shut. The thing spoke for itself, needed no comment. She was pretty sure Vincent bore scars as deep and as enduring from Devin's abruptly wrenching himself away from the tunnel world; they just didn't show. He didn't talk about them either.

Idealist that he was, Vincent thought people shouldn't leave marks on each other that way. Diana had no trouble with it. To her, some damage was inevitable whenever you got that close: within touching distance. If you wanted the rose, you took the thorns, too. That was how roses were. And Vincent knew it as well as she did and accepted the damage as long as it was to him. It was only leaving his own mark he couldn't reconcile himself to.

He loved his brother. To know that, all you had to do was watch.

Whenever Vincent looked aside and said something to her, she grinned and replied briefly, then got busy with stirring something, checking something. She knew he was aware of her silence and wanted to include her in the conversation. But this was their time— his and Devin's. She was happy just providing a context, a different place for them to explore the changes absence had worked on them both— find the strangenesses, gauge their weight and dimension, and then finally set them aside or go around them to again discover and be reassured by what never changed.

Quite deliberately, Diana wanted to leave them free to discuss, without constraint, the greatest change of all— that Catherine was gone.

Devin kept bringing it up, mentioning Catherine's name, probing to find out where the raw grief was and what had healed, confident of a brother's prerogative to get in-your-face personal about anything, anytime. And it was making Vincent uncomfortable— not for himself, Diana thought, but for her, for any awkwardness she might feel, listening to what Devin asked and he replied. And she loved Vincent for that, enough that any implicit comparison couldn't hurt, or not enough to matter.

She damn well would have bet Catherine never had fixed Vincent a meal like this, with her own two hands, not just prefab gourmet take-out junk. Couldn't even get him into her apartment. A small point to make, but enough for Diana. She didn't have to score cheap shots to make up for being second.

Maybe Catherine had given him a son, but she'd never had swimming lessons or spent the odd hour gloriously sunbathing together, or ruthlessly trying to annihilate each other at checkers. Everything it was possible for them to share, they did. As Catherine had. You couldn't ask for more than that.

These were different times now. Like Devin's scars, self-evident: needing no words. Diana was content to cook and let the point make itself, with no desire to rub it in.

After glancing at her soberly every couple of minutes, Vincent came through the gap in the church rail and circled the table to stand behind her, asking, “Are you sure I can't help?” and setting a hand on her shoulder as though it were casual, or a coincidence, which she knew it wasn't. He was concerned and checking on her.

She waited a second, to give him time to know she'd arranged things this way on purpose, was doing what she wanted, then scrubbed her hands on her apron and leaned to yank open the microwave door and start popping potatoes onto the rack.

“Almost set,” she said, offering a quick grin as she finished punching in the time and started the potatoes on their carousel ride. Uncovering the big frying pan, she grabbed kitchen tongs and began removing the pieces of chicken onto a platter.

“Time to make the gravy. Another ten minutes. How about you open another bottle. I hate wrestling with that corkscrew when I know you can do it just like nothing.... Glass for the cook, okay? And then maybe light the candles. I expect you know how to do that...?”

“Allow me,” Devin commented, producing a butane lighter. Starting with the table, then heading down the loft, he lit, with absurd flourishes, every available candle. “Got to get back in practice. Hey, what's this?” He was down by the screened-off corner. By the easel.

Immediately, Vincent left wine and corkscrew and went, quicker than it looked, to head his brother off, remarking, “A friend of Diana's— his work. It's not ready to be viewed yet. A previous tenant, but he... still visits. From time to time.”

Steering Devin back, Vincent continued, “This loft was constructed as an artist's studio, hadn't you noticed the windows? All north light. But there's a place on the roof which receives direct sunlight. Through a gap in the buildings, one can watch the sun sink almost to the horizon. Each day different, marvelous. I'd like to show you, some time.”

“You go out on the roof?” Devin responded, putting the lighter away as he surveyed the skylights. “In daylight?”

“The vantage point is sheltered. There's little danger of being observed, at least from near enough to distinguish anything in detail. And at noon—”

“The old man know you're hanging out on sunny rooftops?”

“I have seen no need to discuss with Father what I do Above.”

“I guess not. He'd be purple! What else have you been doing, that you haven't told the old man about? Come on: you know me, I'm not going to squeal on you.”

“Father has quite enough concerns without my causing him needless anxiety,” Vincent responded, evading the question. “It has been a difficult time for him, as well. I've been of little help to him. He recently informed me that he judged Mouse more reliable.”

“Mouse? Oh, that weird kid, crazy about gadgets, that Charles hurt by mistake. Yeah, I recall. I sort of get the impression that wasn't a compliment then.”

“That was my impression, too. Life Below is more complex now,” Vincent said, as they came into the kitchen area and he finished uncorking the bottle, up at the counter at the side of the sink. “There are easily twice as many people as when we were boys, and commensurately more problems of supply and creating dwelling space. And there are not enough hours in the day, or the night either, for him to attend to all of it—”

“What about the council?”

“As much is delegated as is possible,” Vincent conceded, “but the world Below is Father's creation. Finally every issue comes back to him, to be decided. He expected to be able to pass much of the daily administration on to me. But that hasn't been possible. And of late, it seems we are more often opposed, concerning some course of action, than in agreement. Energy is devoted to argument that should be applied to—”

“I can believe that. And if you're on the outs with the old man, how can anybody else hope to get along with him?”

“I don't want to be the cause of factions—”

The microwave buzzed. With a potholder, Diana yanked the chicken platter out of the stove's oven, slapped some gravy on it, and pivoted to slide it onto the table, announcing, “Soup's on. Hand me that bowl, babe— no, the little one. Right. Other one's for the potatoes, maybe you could...? Yeah, thanks.”

Pouring gravy into the bowl, Diana thought that for once, the microwave's timing was about right. Though she was determined not to stick her nose in, she didn't like to hear Vincent putting himself down like that. When the food was set out and they'd all taken chairs, she opened a new topic, asking Devin where he'd been, in all his travels, that was most unlike the tunnels. She settled back to listen, content to have steered the conversation away from personalities and troubles for awhile.

Devin liked to talk, liked to tell stories— another family trait. So she heard about the African safari gig, and the carnival gig, and the let's meditate in Lhasa gig, and refused to rise to the bait of what natural redheads sold for in Marrakesh, either by the hour or for life, and how the dealers established the “natural” part.

Just smiled placidly and responded, “Imagine that. Wholesale or retail?” while Vincent looked on benignly, reaching for the potato bowl, then offering it to Devin, who took seconds too. And then more chicken all around, Vincent holding the platter steady while they decided which piece to stab. Eight pieces left now. She'd figured a whole chicken per person, double the usual amount, and by the look, she'd guessed about right.

Maybe it was mean, she thought as she spooned gravy, not to let herself be shocked, as Devin so plainly wanted her to be. He probably liked to think of himself as some wild item, but she'd seen wild and Devin didn't come close to qualifying.

Devin, she thought, was the sort of guy who was happiest in contention, finding something to bounce off, react to. Because maybe otherwise he wouldn't know what to do with himself, having no natural motion or direction of his own.

Throwing around incomprehensible tags of quotes, poetry, she was used to from Vincent. Merely the way he thought: no snub intended. And, she assumed, Devin the same, when he did it. Vincent seemed to catch all the references, so she filed the custom as just a more literary form of the private codes every family developed over time. But it was kid stuff, Devin's bragging about all the places he'd been— to Vincent, who couldn't go to any of them. One-upmanship. Pure showing off.

Devin was going on about someplace in Egypt and his difficulties with a particularly uncooperative donkey, when Vincent inquired, “What did you think of the mosaics?”

“What mosaics?”

“In the Roman bath that was unearthed... I believe three years ago. In El-Ashuf. Fine work, almost undamaged. Depicting wrestlers, and a competition of chariots. Nothing like the garishness in Ben-Hur: chiefly blues, greens. I particularly liked the impression of motion the artist was able to convey, the sense of weight poised for a moment at a balance point.”

Vincent neatly cut meat off a chicken leg, slid the rounded back of his fork under it, European style, and put it in his mouth, meditatively chewing. He ate pizza that way too.

“Unfortunate, to have been so close and yet missed them. You should make a point of seeing them if you're ever nearby again.”

Somehow Diana kept her face straight. After a blank second, Devin leveled a finger, accusing, “Picture book.”

“No,” Vincent responded.

“Postcard, then.”

“Not a postcard, either. Diana has a very interesting assortment of videotapes. Several are travelogues. If you'd like, and with her permission, I'll show you the one on El-Ashuf after supper.”

“Yeah,” Devin said slowly— looking, not at Vincent, but at her. And slowly smiling. “Yeah, that'd be great.”

Peaceably licking her fingers, Diana said nothing. And Devin didn't seem interested in recounting any more of his exotic adventures.

It was Vincent who brought up the tunnels again, remarking on how primitive conditions really were, how it was always patchwork and make do.

“In addition to the already demanding role of physician, Father must be counselor, teacher, engineer, strategist, judge, and six dozen other things. It's too much for him. And I confess I haven't been able to fully attend even to my own usual duties. It's hard, Devin....”

Listening, chin on fist, as Vincent went on, Diana thought that if he said something twice, it wasn't by accident. And it wasn't his style to complain for complaining's sake. And pretty soon, she saw the pattern.

What he came back to, over and over, from different angles, was how overburdened and disappointed in him Father was and how unable he himself was to change any of that. How shaken by the last year's events, how unable to cope. Asking Devin's advice on this or that idea, declaring the matter solved no matter how preposterous the resulting suggestion. Making plain, without actually saying anything directly, that the one thing lacking Below was a certain footloose teenager approaching 40, gifted at assuming a diversity of roles, gifted at winning trust. Adaptable. Resourceful. Familiar with their ways and their problems. Someone who'd keep alive the dream of a society built on cooperation, respect, and trust.

Someone, by implication, to be Father's heir.

Diana choked on a swallow of wine and had to wave off Devin's immediate willingness to do the Heimlich maneuver, or whatever inventive first aid he had in mind. Vincent wasn't perturbed, blinking at her mildly, undoubtedly having picked up on her realization. He was real quick about that kind of thing. And a poker face that would have been the despair of Las Vegas. But the game wasn't poker.

Coughing into a napkin, she finally got her throat clear enough to ask, “I was wondering, Devin— you play chess?”

“Sure: learned in Moscow. Well, I did! Why?”

“Just wondered, is all,” Diana responded, her eyes on Vincent, who was composedly buttering half a roll.

She thought again, Father's heir. That was what, with decent circumspection, Vincent was patiently angling for, the prize he was offering. With the implied bonus that Vincent would step aside and let Devin be first, as well, in Father's love. Or... or maybe as Devin already was, and Vincent offering him his due as the firstborn child, however prodigal? Vincent maybe knew what it was to be second, too....

Anyway, one of them sure did.

A lot of bitterness there, she thought. In Father. A lot of failed hopes. She didn't recall Father's ever saying word one about his elder son. But maybe the depth of the hurt was also the depth of the love. And only Vincent could know such things for sure.

Was he angling for a big brother bailout, or trying to bring about a full reconciliation between quicksilver son who evaded any grasp, and Father, who knew only how to hold on, endure?

She decided it didn't matter. Because she remembered last night's exuberance and Vincent's eyes when he'd hoped that this time, Devin might stay. That kind of joy needed no explanations, no excuses. If that was what Vincent wanted, then that was what she wanted too, dubious though she was about Devin as heir presumptive to the rule of the world Below.

People could change. And anyway, it probably was about time for Devin to settle down, grow up. Not many people were given the option of doing that in the role of the crown prince of a very real kingdom, no matter what they called it; looked up to and accepted by a couple hundred thoroughly civilized and humane souls....

And, she thought with something like an inner thud of a heavy fact falling into place, that'd be a development Paracelsus could never have anticipated. One that would put the whole situation clear off the known maps and secure the succession, no matter what happened to Vincent.

Ramifications on top of ramifications. No wonder he was damn near unbeatable at chess. Like tunnel clothes: layers on layers. But under it all, still the simple joy and hope that this time, Devin would stay.

She tried to think how to help him, then decided not to stick her oar in. Intimate family stuff like that, and first time she'd met the man, and hadn't known Vincent that long either, for all that she felt she knew him inside and— since the swimming lessons— absolutely out.... No, she'd stay out of it. He hadn't asked for any help, and likely didn't need it, either. He could finesse a situation faster than she could figure it out.

Patting gravy off her her chin and picking up the conversation, she realized that everything so far had been just preparation for the heavy stuff: Vincent had turned the topic to the bowers, which Devin didn't seem to know much about, though Paracelsus' name seemed to ring a dim bell, by his expression. And Diana practically held her breath, wondering if Vincent was actually going to bring up the raid, and cage and cave, as table talk. She just couldn't imagine it.

And she was right: he didn't. Stopped short of that, just mentioned that the situation had grown more strained of late and that he could no longer be confident of Father's safety, although Father didn't agree with him.

“Yeah, I bet he doesn't,” Devin rejoined. “I noticed there was some guy hanging around, giving me dirty looks when I was going toward the study. Nobody I knew.”

“You do, though,” Vincent responded. “Tonight, that would have been Douglas Mayotte.”

“From Ripley? One of Barb's kids? That was little Dougie? Never would have known him.”

“I'm not surprised, since the last time you saw him, he was about six. People change a good deal in over 20 years.”

Devin gave his brother a long look, rejoining lazily, “Some people. Sometimes. Right?”

Vincent's quiet smile meant that'd been something private, between them. “Yes.”

Devin laced fingers together and put his hands behind his head, stretching.

“I never would have guessed: Dougie Mayotte, on guard duty. Bet the old man hates that.”

Vincent's smile showed more plainly. “You would win that bet.”

“Acted just like a cop. So: Diana. You're a cop, right? How'd you get into that line of work?”

“Just lucky, I guess,” Diana said, surveying the dishes, then started collecting dirty silverware in the empty potato bowl.

“Anybody for more seconds of anything? No? Then who's for chocolate cake? Made, not bought, I might add, so the fingerprints in the icing just add authenticity.” Rising with the bowl, she added, over her shoulder, “And there's ice cream, if anybody wants. Three flavors to choose from: Oreo chip, pistachio fudge swirl, and boring vanilla I grabbed by mistake. No,” she said to Vincent, following her with a stack of plates and bowls, “don't bother, just dump everything in the sink. I'll take care of it later, babe.”

“Later,” he said firmly, “I'll help. I am an experienced dish-dryer, with good credentials from William. I rarely break anything anymore.”

“Hey,” Devin called from the table, “do you remember the time when the mouse got into the Commons and that scary old lady, almost no teeth, what was her name—?”

“Dolores.”

“Yeah, her. Hey, you know what dolores means in Spanish? Means trouble! And was she ever! Anyway, remember how she went after it first with a broom, and then—”

Returning to the table to collect the final dishes, Vincent said, “Actually, it would be closer to misery. Or sorrow. And she was kind, after her own fashion: saved leftovers for me when I began growing and was always hungry. Except for her kindness, and Pascal's, I believe I might have starved.... And yes, I remember.”

“Yeah,” Devin responded, satisfied merely to have touched the base, wakened the memory.

Cutting cake at the kitchen island as Vincent came back toward the sink, Diana studied Devin, thinking that for all his bravado and ebullience, he looked lonely. On impulse, she asked, “Do you miss Charles?”

Who by all accounts was a one-man horror show, and yet who, by the bitterest of ironies, could still walk the daylight streets as Vincent never would. And whom Devin, in the most transparent of substitutions, had befriended to salve his conscience over having abandoned Vincent. As Vincent surely knew, couldn't help knowing. And whom Devin had now left too, however good the excuse....

Looking around in reaction to her question, Devin responded, “Sure.” Then, more strongly, “Sure I do! Charles, he's one great guy!” as if he'd heard what she was thinking.

But likely it was only that the same sequence of thoughts had come to him, as well. No clairvoyant, Devin. Never get two like that in a single family.

Arranging plates so they wouldn't tip, Vincent remarked quietly, “A wonderful dinner, Diana. Thank you. There are things... it's better not to discuss Below.”

She leaned her head back to slant him a look. “I sort of figured that.”

“I know that you did. Again, thank you.”

“No charge. It comes with the service. Hey! Get outta here, you thief!” she yelled after him as he retreated with an entire fingerful of chocolate icing, turning and grinning around it absolutely like a kid, and circled behind Devin, who started laughing and swore to protect him if Diana came after him with a broom.

Decent dinner, Diana thought comfortably, thumbing a blob of icing for herself: more authenticity, that's all. Pretty good icing, considering it'd come out of a can. It wasn't cheating, to cut corners on the small stuff, the kind that didn't show.

*****

I'll be back.

That uninflected promise, along with Vincent's best deadpan stare, was what kept her wandering around her loft, nursing a post-dishes, pre-bed glass of wine. She'd protested that he shouldn't, he and Devin would want to talk, but no, he'd turned on the stairs and mouthed that famous exit line a second time, and so she knew he meant it. He'd come.

It still made her grin and took some of the sting out of his trading obscure quotes, and obscurer tags of memory, with Devin all evening. Only a certain amount could pass straight over your head before you began to wonder if maybe you were out of your depth and ought to start worrying about drowning.

But he just liked to connect things. Form contexts, a lattice of correspondences. That's how he was. Making no intrinsic distinction between Shakespeare and Schwarzenegger, especially if one would communicate in a given situation and the other wouldn't. And if his total context was like Yankee Stadium compared to a teacup, as against hers, there was now enough overlap at the edges that he could generally catch all her references and pitch some back: just the taglines and all the rest implied, understood— a kind of cultural shorthand. And she treasured that overlap, even though she knew it proved he was a whole lot quicker at picking up modern pop culture than she was at assimilating the more enduring things that were his constant touchstones.

She'd recognized one quote from Blake tonight. One. Recognized it; didn't understand it. What the hell did 'He who binds to himself a joy Does the wingéd life destroy' mean?

Sometimes she got very discouraged.

She finished the wine in the glass and poured herself some more, which finished the bottle. Good, that he was coming: she was strung too tight to have rested anyway. And Vincent likely the same, only there was no use saving Zinfandel for him, he had his own ways of unwinding. Probably walk it off, do a few chin-ups on some lamp post. Something.

Hell, you'd think she'd been entertaining the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir, not one rackety and pretty good-natured prodigal. But she'd wanted so much to do it right, have it be what Vincent wanted, keep still, stay out of his way, not be a complication. And she thought she'd mostly done that, that he'd been pleased, that it'd gone well. But she was tired now, and let down— keeping that still took a lot of effort— and she wasn't so sure anymore. She wondered—

She spun at a soft thud behind her, and Vincent didn't say anything, just opened his arms and let her lean gratefully into them, so glad he was here and nobody else, nobody besides.

Then she pulled away, turned away suddenly, scraping at her eyes, directing, “Don't pay any attention, it's dumb, it's just dumb, I'm just tired, babe, don't—”

“Come up to the roof. It's warm, and there's a smell of rain on the wind....”

She laughed, shook her head. “I better not, I'd trip over the parapet headfirst and you'd have to catch me.”

“I could do that.”

She looked around at him and managed something like a real smile, only a little wobbly at the corners.

“I know you could. But let's not and say we did, okay? That's what my pop used to say. That covers a lot. Covers damn near anything: let's not and say we did. So. You got big brother all tucked up warm for the night?”

“I ceded him what has become my chamber. Which was ours. I thought perhaps it might be pleasant for him....,” he responded blandly, and all at once her tension let go and smiling got easier.

She flopped onto the couch and swung her feet straight out a few times as he sat down beside her in a more dignified fashion.

She remarked, “You are the sneakiest man I ever met.”

“Thank you. I think.”

“And what's next on the agenda: a petition from the five-year-olds explaining how they'll all pine away if he's not there to wipe their noses for them?”

“I hadn't thought of that,” Vincent admitted. “Do you think it might help?”

Again, she laughed and shook her head, but it meant something different this time, and she relaxed in the confidence that he'd know that, he always knew.

“Somehow I don't think Devin's heavily into hip-high people. No reason, just an impression I got.”

“As a boy,” Vincent said, pulling her closer, “Devin was always the leader. The oldest. The most daring. But also responsible, after his own fashion. Which was not always Father's fashion. But he kept faith. Never a bully. Never let the littlest ones fall so far behind that they might go astray or become lost. Made us all hold hands....

“Below, in those years, becoming lost was a real danger, Diana: few ways were completely mapped, beyond the Home Chambers, and there were many pits and slides which have now been closed off or bridged over. A lost child might easily die— a terrible, dark and solitary death— before being located, rescued. It has always been dangerous Below; but now, the dangers lie less in the place itself than in the people; and in that we have come, despite Father's firm intention, to resemble more closely the world Above....”

Medium silence, then: maybe thinking back to those simpler dangers. Or maybe, like her, simply tired and glad of the peace of silence for awhile.

Presently he went on quietly, “I think he is lost, Diana. Lost his anchor of hands and gone on too far alone into the unmapped places. And doesn't know how to find his way back to us. I believe, had Father's letter reached him sooner, he would have seized upon that crisis, and met it. Perhaps better than I could, or did.... At least Father would have been able to rely upon him, as he could not upon me. And Devin would have known himself needed, and clearly seen and felt the hands reaching out to him, for his guidance and his help, which he would have offered gladly. Given, and found strength in the giving. As before. As when we were children together and crossing the dark places....”

Diana leaned a little away to look at him. “So what's wrong with the crisis you got, babe? Nice little undeclared war with the bowers?”

He sighed. “What's wrong is that it is undeclared. That we are already divided over it, I and Father. And I cannot— must not— put Devin in the position of having to choose between Father's view and my own. Father says there is no crisis. If that be true, there is nothing to hold Devin with us. If my view is the correct one—”

“You end up with you and Devin siding against Father. Yeah. I get it.”

“I cannot do that. To either of them. But they have such need of each other, Diana. Father needs Devin's support and energy; Devin needs Father's vision and sense of purpose, which gives meaning to all he does. To at last hold fast to something, belong to something other than his sole self. He is so various. He could do so much, achieve so much. But without discipline, it is all wasted, empty.

“He has played at this and that. Even begun fine things. But only begun. He is always beginning. He has never persevered through the dry time, the difficult time that separates play from mastery. And without a purpose beyond itself, even play palls in time.... I can feel it in him, Diana. His disappointment that the challenge he expected to face is already behind. And his relief that he will not, after all, have to call upon that within himself which would have enabled him to meet it. He is ready to begin again. I fear that he will. And— Why do you smile?”

“Oh, babe, you're too many for me. I thought I had the onion peeled, all the layers pegged out and labeled. And there's still more onion underneath. So it's Devin, himself, that you're worried about.”

Another medium silence, his eyes fixed far away. Eventually he said, “I cannot find words that might convey to you how I've missed him. When we were children, he was my hope. I have wondered, since, if I was his fear. Of living always Below, forever far from the light, always within walls, within limits....”

“I think maybe,” Diana commented hesitantly, knowing that volunteering opinions about people's relatives was dumb by definition, “he's the one with the limitations. It isn't a matter of just space, is it? I mean, it's the kind of choices you got, how much satisfaction you can take in your life. What you can accomplish. Hell, I only met him one night, what do I know? But it seems to me that if you just count the things that matter, your world's a lot bigger than Devin's, regardless of the square footage. Way bigger than mine, for sure: I've known that a long time. So don't let all the name dropping, Lisbon, Paris, whatever, get you down. There's wide, and then there's deep. You just got deep, that's all. No pun intended.”

“Deep... Oh. As in tunnels. As in Below. Yes. 'The world stands out on either side no wider than the heart is wide.'”

He looked around at her, showing a slow, big smile that warmed all her uncertainties away.

“’But East and West will pinch the heart that cannot keep them pushed apart; and he whose soul is flat— the sky will cave in on him by and by.' I knew there was some reason I should return. Perhaps it was so you could reassure me of the distinction between width and depth. Or perhaps... might there be any cake left? It was extremely good.”

She stared at him. “Don't tell me you're still hungry!”

“I might manage another small slice.... But truthfully, I thought I might ask the favor of taking a piece back. For Father.”

She shoved herself off the couch and onto her feet. Offering her hand, she felt that by asking for something simple, something she could give him, he was the one who'd given her a gift— one beyond all measuring. Felt he was just wonderful, a miracle, adoration burning so strong she was suddenly near tears again. It hit her like that sometimes.

“Let's go look, babe. If it's there, you got it. It's yours. It was all for you anyway.”

“I know.”

*****

The bad thing about it, the reason it hit her so hard, Diana thought afterward, was that she'd had no warning. Just out of the blue— or rather, out of the black, because she was Below, talking to Cullen, as it happened: he thought he'd found a buyer for the antique sideboard he'd found and dickered for, and she'd bought.

The buyer, a professional dealer, would pay six times what Diana had— $3,000 was the offer. But now that she had the sideboard, a genuine antique, Diana wasn't all that sure she wanted to sell, after all. Cullen thought she was crazy, the whole idea was to buy cheap and sell high and think of all the great things she actually did want that she could buy with $2,500 profit, just like picking it up in the street. And so they were walking along, amiably wranging and not paying much of any attention to anything else, when it came out of a doorless doorway they were passing:

“—Chandler at least had some class. How could a bimbo like that ever get her claws into him?”

A slap in the face couldn't have stopped her faster. Her first reaction was shock: her mouth dropped open and she involuntarily turned toward the doorway, really the last thing she wanted to do, she simply couldn't help it, and so continued to be an unwilling audience to the next exchange:

“—mouth on her like a gutter.”

“Diana does tend to express herself forcefully,” rejoined Father's tolerant voice. “If with a certain degree of repetitiveness.”

“Forcefully?” came Devin's scathing response. “If I'd used that kind of language, I'd have been spitting lye soap for a month.”

Diana rocked a second, unable to think what to do as, beside her, Cullen inquired calmly, “You want to punch his face in yourself, or is it okay if I do it?”

She gave him a wild-eyed look and ran a couple of paces, then wheeled, feeling as though she had laser beams for eyes and making a stabbing You: come here gesture. As Cullen approached, she grabbed his arm and dragged him, fast, as far as the next junction, where she couldn't overhear any more and couldn't be overheard, either.

Turning loose of him, she bent her head and started thumping a fist rhythmically against her forehead, maybe trying to get something moving in there, maybe some other reason, she didn't really know why she was doing it, she simply had to, jerking away when Cullen would have embraced her. She didn't want anybody touching her, anybody around anyplace until she'd found some way to handle this.

“You say... word one about this. To anybody. So that it gets back to Vincent. To anybody. And I swear on my father's grave. I will never speak to you again. You got that?”

Leaning away from her hot stare, Cullen spread his hands in mild disclaimer, suggesting, “Let's talk about it a—”

“Not word one. You swear. On your wife's grave.”

“I'll swear by whatever you want, but don't you think—”

“No. I don't think. Now get the hell away from me.”

When Cullen was gone, she still stared at the place where he'd been because she didn't dare move until she had a better hold on herself. Then she scanned the passage, scared somebody would come, see her, ask why she was standing spraddle legged like a light-dazed deer. No answer she could give if they did. Her mind seemed to have turned to stone.

She started running toward the nearest threshold she knew of. Ran maybe two minutes, then suddenly froze again, staring at the ground, automatically hammering at her forehead, trying to make something come together. Can't just take off, she thought, but the thought stopped there. She couldn't think what should come next.

Why? she asked herself.

There's sentries near each threshold. They'd see. Report. No. Can't just run. Can't go home. Where?

Have to go home. Leave a note. Then get out. What kind of note? Damn it, think, Bennett! Say I went to, to visit my sister, that's way the hell off in Jersey, he'd never come looking for me there. Doesn't know where she lives anyhow. Yeah. Write a note. Then get out. Before he comes.

She took one slow step back the way she'd come, then halted, off-balance, like some spastic ballet move, frozen again because there was something wrong with that plan, something she wasn't taking into account. She knew that, but not what it was. Didn't make any difference, first things first. Had to get out of here. She nodded to herself, confirming it, giving herself permission to move.

She headed for home but her mind wasn't on it, wasn't on anything except swinging like a wrecking ball, over and over, into the wall of Devin's contempt, Father's tacit agreement. Couldn't get through it or smash it down. Couldn't stop swinging at it.

Couldn't afford to get angry because then she'd do something, she knew she would. And then Vincent would hear about it. But if she didn't get angry there was nothing she could be but hurt, and she didn't know if she could stand up to that kind of hurt, she already felt as though she were shattering into sharp, crooked shards all collapsing inward.

But that didn't matter, so long as she could get out of here, get where he couldn't find her, wouldn't know anything was wrong and go on with his hopeful courtship of his brother. And if it worked, if Devin stayed, she didn't know what the hell she'd do then because she'd never be able to look the man in the face again without wanting to hit him and Vincent would pick up on that, the first instant, and that meant she'd never be able to come Below again, never any more swimming lessons, never the closeness, and the silence between them because she'd never be able to explain why. But that was OK, she'd worry about that when she had to, when maybe she could, better than now, anyway.

Because she was not going to hurt him like that. That was the one thing that'd been absolutely clear to her from the first instant, the unwavering determination behind the spastic stops and starts. She was not going to have any part in spoiling his joy or his hope, no matter what she had to do, no matter what it cost her.

If he hadn't been so damn quick, picking up on things, it would have been easier. She could have put on a good face, lied a little, passed it off. But you couldn't do that with Vincent. He'd know. He'd—

Finding herself on the point of blaming Vincent, just to have someplace for the fury to go, she hauled herself up short again. No. She wasn't going to do that. Because what Devin said was true. If it hadn't been, it wouldn't hurt the way it did.

She was no replacement for Catherine Chandler. Not even close. Somebody like Catherine might have given her a dollar to park her car. She wasn't half as polished, a tenth as gorgeous or educated, never an item in the Society columns, not that she'd ever given a damn, but a fact was a fact....

Gutter mouth. Now that one, that really cut her right down to the ground. Because everybody she knew talked that way. Everybody Above, anyhow. It showed you were no delicate lily, you could hold your own in a rough city, a rough job. If she hadn't talked that way, the guys would have absolutely hung her up to dry during her rookie years. But the fact was, she did talk that way, always had and, because she thought that way, probably always would, no use even trying to change, because that was just the most obvious sign of what was the matter with her, which was everything.

No class.

Style, sure: everybody had some kind of style. Muttering bag ladies had style galore. But no class.

If she hadn't helped about Jacob, Vincent wouldn't have been grateful. Felt obliged to put up with her. Probably if she hadn't pestered him to death, he'd have quietly eased out of her life months ago. He'd tried to once and she'd made such a stink he just hadn't been able to go through with it. Only said he loved her when she was on the point of walking out herself, when nothing less would have held her. Maybe he'd meant it, then. Hadn't said it lately. Maybe it was just one of those things you said when you got into a situation you didn't know how to get out of any other way, when you were left no courteous escape.

Maybe he'd thought, if he was patient, she'd improve. God, he was patient. Drove her damn near crazy, all by itself, that patience, which showed she hadn't improved a bit, didn't know how to appreciate, much less benefit from, the good example he showed her. What was the phrase?— Noblesse oblige. She'd looked it up. People with class showed it by being patient with those without it. And in that, as in so much else, Vincent showed he had class galore.

Because he was royalty, dammit! The hell with titles, 13th century bed-hopping and all that: Vincent was a goddam prince, and behaved like one: if there was any meaning to the word nobility at all, he was what it applied to.

The bowers thought he was some kind of god, and likely they knew him better than she did because she sure didn't understand him: Jesus, he quoted goddam Aristotle and people she'd never heard of, let alone read, let alone memorized, and how had she ever thought a goddam cop's brat from the Bronx could stack up against a Park Avenue princess slumming in the DA's office? Even dead?

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what the hell had she been thinking of, tagging around after somebody like him, no thought in her head except how to drag him into bed, like the cheapest goddam tramp on 42nd Street? Only thing she was good for and he didn't even want it, and that was all there was, all she had, best she could do and it was trash. She was trash. Common as dirt. Couldn't even listen to the music he liked without yawning. Pathetic. Goddam pathetic, that's what she was.

It took falling halfway down a twisty staircase to make her realize she didn't know where she was. Navigating the tunnels took concentration, and she knew only the direct routes between specific landmarks. Had to count turnings and doorways and cross-passages to find her way even then. So naturally, like the dumb potato-head she was, she'd zigged someplace where she should have zagged and gotten herself completely turned around.

If there was anything worse than being pathetic, it was being pathetic, helpless, and lost.

The candles spaced along the tunnel walls meant she was still within the Hub. No matter how she went, she should eventually spot something familiar or run into somebody who'd point her in the right direction, without her having to whack her predicament over the pipes and beg for rescue, for everybody to hear and snicker at. Goddam stupid outsider, topside bimbo, managed to get herself lost again.

So she went on, still not really looking where she was going, head down and muttering to herself at a great rate like a street crazy, until she walked straight into the one person she wanted to dodge. Banged into him, looked up in a kind of frozen panic, then turned right around to head in the opposite direction. Walked into him again: he'd moved. Still in the way. Wouldn't let her go around. Couldn't go through. It wasn't fair.

As Vincent irresistibly gathered her against his dusty vest, she objected peevishly, “What are you doing here? I didn't call you.”

“Did you think you could be in such distress, Below, without my knowing it?”

“I don't give a good goddam what you know. Let me alone.”

But she didn't even try to push away, knowing it was useless and anyhow she didn't want to. He seemed the only solidity left in the world. Concern, and quiet, and healing were in his touch, like the legends about royalty in the bygone times.

As deep reassurances flowed in, her mouth, on automatic, continued, “You go on back to whatever you were doing, I'll be fine, I was just going home and sort of got turned around, you don't have to bother—”

“I love you.”

“—I don't want to be a nuisance, just let me alone—”

“I love you.”

“No you don't, you just got caught on the rebound when you were feeling down, it's okay, happens to a lot of people, it's not a goddam contract or anything, you don't have to—”

“I love you.”

Clasped against him, not looking at him, she said dully, “No you don't, I got nothing you even want, it's just a habit you got into. I'm common, common as dirt—”

“Here we stand, in my home, much of which is a sewer. And the rest, earth and stone. And you, a citizen of that bright city Above, are in awe of these pauper's shifts and make-dos? Don't be absurd.”

“No, it's you: I don't rate somebody like you, never have, never will, might as well admit it once and for all.”

“And here I am,” Vincent rejoined, calm amusement layered above other feelings which were neither calm nor amused, “with that selfsame dirt under my claws and in my fur: whom Father would not even allow into his study in such a condition. Who, even were I clean and in my finest attire, would be shot or caged as a freak or monster were I ever caught Above.

“And this is what you claim yourself to be unworthy of— you, whose acceptance does me such honor as I have no words to tell you? Again, it is an absurdity, Diana. You are as beautiful as the day and gracious as the evening. You are my heart's own life and I love you.”

Finally she held on: the way she did sometimes in the bathing pool when the dread of drowning got too strong for her. Eyes shut, pulling herself against him as hard and as tight as she could, desperate fingers digging in.

“One more time.”

“As many times as you wish. I love you. You are never to doubt this. It is the rock upon which both our lives now rest. It will hold. And so long as we hold to it, they can only kill us, Diana. No lesser harm can signify.”

Though his voice was still calm, his arms were like iron around her. An unbreakable circle locking them together, locking everything else away. A cleansing certainty stronger than any doubt or fear.

“Yeah,” she said, on what breath hadn't been squeezed out of her. “Yeah.... Then it's okay, I guess. Because I love you so much sometimes I get a little crazy with it.”

She risked looking at him then: just a quick glance, then snuggling close against his chest again.

“Don't know why you put up with a crazy like me.”

“I believe it is so, at times, for all lovers. Overtaken by love's humility, finding themselves unworthy of such glorious treasure, feeling it cannot ever be merited. Many times I wish to give you what I cannot, and become angry at myself, and feel I offer nothing in return for all you give me so freely. And there is no answer for it but to say to myself, And yet, she loves me, and accept that it is so. We are both absurd, Diana. And there can be laughter in that, and peace. And no fear to be sometimes foolish, knowing at once it is forgiven.”

Solemnly gazing into her eyes, he asked, “Are we done with this foolishness now? Or may I say once again that I love you, and you are dear to me above all others and worthy of all kindness and regard, and that even when you are unhappy and feel yourself unlovable, I still love you then? May I tell you how—”

“Yeah, enough, already,” Diana responded, shrugging uncomfortably, itchy with embarrassment. To her, love was something you felt or made, not something you talked about. And yet she felt it, his unshaken affection: warm and solid as he was, close as he was. Holding, being held, she tried to feel bad about disrupting his day and needing rescue but couldn't even work up a good guilt about that. And yet, she thought, he loves me. He does. God knows why, he could do a lot better, but I guess it's true.

“Then if that issue is now disposed of,” he said, “may I at last ask what has afflicted you with such severe self-doubts?”

It was what she'd been dreading. In her loftiest tone, she borrowed his phrasing: “We're not gonna discuss it.”

“According to the pipes, you came Below to meet Cullen,” he reflected. “Did Cullen say or do—”

“I mean it, babe: we're not gonna talk about it. Done. Over. Sorry I made a big deal of it.”

“A big deal of what?” he pursued: a hunter's tenacity.

“Nothing. It was nothing. Got a flat in my soul and the sky caved in on me, like you said, okay? Let it go. Please.”

After a long, evaluating look, he nodded. “If that is what you wish....”

“Yeah. Just forget about it. That's what I want. Absolutely.”

“Very well. Then we will not speak of it.”

She looked at her watch: almost two in the afternoon. Then she stiffened: she had a meeting uptown at three, that was what she'd been forgetting in her half-formed plan to hide out at her sister's.

Vincent had already begun to release her when she started to push away, explaining, “Dammit, I got a case review in about an hour, I don't even have my notes together for it, I gotta go now, will you point me in the right direction?”

He insisted on escorting her, but he could move fast when he wanted to: too fast to allow conversation, which she really didn't want anyhow. He wanted her to promise to come back Below as soon as she returned from the meeting, but she got away with a vague, “Yeah, maybe,” escaping along familiar passageways toward the twin sanctuaries of work and routine.

She'd had enough of the world Below, and everybody in it except one, to last her for quite some time.

*****

That night she went to a movie, out past midnight. And yet, with a heavy sense of inevitability, found Vincent waiting for her when she got home. She dodged a swimming lesson with the excuse her hair took forever to dry, he ought to know how that was, got the pillow all wet unless she dried it first and she wouldn't get to sleep before four.

All of which was true, but grieved her to use as an excuse. Passed off her disappointment at missing the chance by suggesting they strip down in her loft and pretend the water: predictably, he declined, both of them grinning, no bad vibes.

In lieu of water games, they played checkers and she beat him, which only proved his mind wasn't on it, he generally beat her nine games out of ten. Had, the whole time, the sense that he was watching her— stalking her. Or rather, stalking the cause of her upset that afternoon, though neither of them spoke word one about it. But she knew, all the same.

Once he got hold of a thing like that, he'd never let up on it: that was why she would never admit the stickers to him, or that her motion detector had started going goofy, giving false signals, almost from the first day it'd been put in. She'd had to shut it down because after the first couple false alarms, they fined you, and there was the risk of cops showing up sometime they absolutely shouldn't. So she now had an expensive alarm system that was no use at all.

Attempts at repair— the system was still under warranty— showed nothing wrong. When the guy tested, everything worked perfectly. So she suspected Kristopher had something to do with the malfunctions. A little research supplied the fact that motion sensing gadgets were particularly likely to go bonkers around paranormal phenomena. A resident and apparently quite active ghost, for instance. Maybe caught the spook coming back from the deli or the Museum of Modern Art, who knew? That's why such gadgets were widely used in psychic investigations.

Stuff like that, she could handle. Stuff that was just between herself and Vincent: part of the ongoing, loving struggle between his tendency to go into watchdog mode at any hint of a threat to her, and her flat unwillingness to keep him as a pet, even a dangerous, intelligent, and courageous one. Her implicit and absolute refusal to have him as anything less than a lover, even if the closest they'd gotten so far were swimming lessons and a couple of seconds here and there, over the months, when he'd let his control slip and something had almost happened. But that was okay: she could be patient too.

That was the true game they played, underneath everything else. But the business with Devin was separate, and the familiar rules didn't apply. She wasn't part of that game at all, and didn't want to be. Even if, for a time, that meant keeping yet another secret and putting another constraint, another layer of distance, between herself and Vincent.

A few really obvious yawns were enough to shame him into leaving after that one game. So she was temporarily off the hook until the following evening, when Vincent's recital of the news Below included the fact Devin apparently didn't remember the tunnels as well as he'd thought and claimed to have fallen down a ladder. There was so much unemphatic spin on the word claimed that she guessed instantly that had always been boys' perennial explanation for limping around or sporting bruises when they'd been fighting and didn't want Father to know.

And she thought, Cullen. As certain as if she'd seen it. Wanted to strangle the man, except that she'd have to go Below to do it, and could almost hear him claiming righteously that he'd only promised not to talk, not to refrain from punching Devin's face in on her behalf, the first chance he got.

Goddam it, she thought, partly exasperated and partly pleased, now am I gonna have to worry about Cullen, too? Like a bunch of goddam kids: playground hassles. Doesn't any of them have any sense at all?

“And what have you decided,” Vincent said, glancing across the loft, “about the sideboard?”

He did that sometimes, picked up with spooky accuracy on at least part of what she was thinking. This time, it startled her so much that she slopped her tea, and maybe covered it by making a fuss about cleaning up the spill, and then got busy microwaving popcorn for him to take back as a convalescent present for Devin, the way Devin used to bring back theater popcorn for him when they were both kids and Devin got taken to movies Above that Vincent couldn't go to.

And Vincent didn't return to the topic of the sideboard, so she thought she'd gotten by with the distraction. And stowing the popcorn into a brown paper bag was enough to make him cut his visit short: as she pointed out, and they both knew, popcorn wasn't nearly as good cold.

When he was gone, Diana leaned on the kitchen island, wrung out with tension. But she crossed the day off on a mental calendar: another day she'd kept her mouth shut, another day she hadn't had to flat-out refuse to go Below. Another day Devin had stayed. If she could just go on like this, taking it one day at a time, she thought everything would eventually work out.

Lots of people couldn't stand their in-laws, and the world didn't collapse. If Devin considered her a bimbo, that was Devin's problem, not hers. Not anymore.

Vincent saw it all, but valued it differently. For instance, he genuinely liked red hair. Said it reminded him of sunsets, which she knew he really did love. So although there was a lot wrong with her, Vincent still managed to see her as beautiful, generous, wise. And she tried to be those things for him. And no matter what anybody else said or thought— even herself, sometimes— that was good enough for her.

She hoped Devin liked the popcorn, which was the good kind, with real butter. She also hoped he choked on it and had to be Heimlich maneuvered until he turned blue.

Anyhow, she'd had to admit that the insult wasn't anything he'd done on purpose to hurt her. Just bad timing. Accident. Everybody knew that eavesdroppers heard no good of themselves, and she'd become one only by unlucky chance. If she ever had to face Devin again, she expected he'd be as nice as pie to her. As polite as when she'd been playing hostess, in her own inimitable bimbo style. And maybe she'd be able to best-behavior right back at him, nothing showing at all.

Sometime. Just, she hoped, not soon.

*****

Her reprieve lasted two more days, though the dodging got harder and, she feared, more obvious. Then she got an offer she couldn't refuse: a reciprocal supper invitation, that same evening, for which Vincent had established in advance she neither had particular plans, except watching baseball on TV, nor yet fixed any food for herself, since she'd proposed sending out for pizza.

Nothing elaborate, he said: only the ordinary meal William fixed for everybody; only the four of them— her, Vincent, Father, and Devin. They often ate this late, he said, because of the way Father scheduled meetings.

Vincent was still the sneakiest man she knew, but his face gave no clue he knew how neatly he'd boxed her.

Finding no way out of it, she gritted her teeth in what she hoped would pass for a smile and said, “Sure, babe. That'd be nice. Just give me a few minutes to get something like presentable.”

“You look fine, just as you are,” he responded, as though suspecting she'd go scrambling out a skylight if he let her out of his sight one second.

She gave him a look. “Come on, give me a break here. I probably got ink on my nose.”

“On your cheek,” he admitted. He let her get cleaned up without further argument and declined her invitation to pick what she ought to wear and watch her putting it on.

“Okay,” she rejoined, grinning at him over her shoulder, “then I'll surprise you.”

“Why does that make me uneasy?” he rejoined, rhetorically, she assumed, but it cheered her up anyway.

And she mostly held to her resolution not to try to go beyond presentable. No party blouse, nothing lacy or frilly, just a pale blue knit shell fresh from the dry cleaner's, darker blue slacks that fit pretty well, knee-hi nylons and brown loafers she'd polished only a day or two ago. Then, having brushed her hair until it crackled, she sat on the couch so Vincent could braid it up smoothly for her: something she knew he liked doing and she liked, too— a lot.

So what with one thing and another, she'd gotten herself something like calm, and in something like a good mood, before she snatched up her favorite warm grey sweater and preceded Vincent down the stairs, chatting about the persistent myth of vampires and what people apparently found appealing about the notion: harmless chat, but close enough to the linkage of love and death to give it an edge, keep it full of interesting undertones.

The meal was meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and canned green beans— as plain as he'd promised. Devin had no bruises she could see and stayed sitting the whole time, so she couldn't tell if he was still lame or not. She guessed Cullen had prudently hit him only where it wouldn't show.

All settled around the big table in Father's study, they stayed with vampires awhile, then veered off on a few scrapes Devin had gotten into when he was a kid, but Devin didn't like that, not in front of Father, and turned the conversation to the bowers, which gave Father a chance for a fullscale speech about how some people were exaggerating that situation all out of proportion. Some people had even encumbered him with personal bodyguards. Some people meanwhile shut up and poked at his green beans.

When Father finally seemed to have run down on that topic, Vincent brought up something safely exotic: India, and the caste system there, and what it constituted in practice though now illegal in principle. Father and Devin both leaped on that one, Father castigating such arbitrary and formalized discrimination, Devin chipping in with vivid details of things he'd actually seen—people who wouldn't eat what somebody else had cooked or even touched, actions that were still judged automatically unclean, and the people who performed them, as well. Vincent got in on it too, about how there seemed to be some innate need for people to categorize one another: designate someone to whom they were superior, someone else they could envy.

And Diana said, “And whoever's on the bottom can make bricks without straw and believe they'll be reborn next time as somebody high-class. Maybe a social worker.”

Father laughed at that, agreeing that social workers, as a group, were as arrogant as any he could name, with the possible exception of doctors. Surgeons, in particular. Who had even less excuse, being better educated and unreasonably well paid.

“Cops do a good job of it, too,” Diana commented. “That's one of the reasons I quit, went to night school a few years. Couldn't see myself rousting some bum in a doorway or off a park bench, all the time it'd take until I could make sergeant. A lot of harassment goes on that nobody sees, except the poor bozo on the receiving end. Little stuff, mostly. But sometimes somebody gets dead, and there's a stink, headlines, internal affairs, big hoo-hah, and everybody watches their manners for awhile. Then it starts again. Everybody knows it. So some scared rookie can be macho, or some flatfooted bull counting down to retirement can prove to himself he's still one up on the street soldiers. All part of the street games.”

She shook her head. “Not for me. Not a whole lot of noblesse oblige between the Bowery and the Bronx.”

Looking up, she found Devin's eyes on her. He remarked, “I guess you had some cops in your family, to go into that yourself, right?”

Father's study always felt chilly to her. But she buttoned two extra sweater buttons, feeling the temperature had dropped about 30 degrees, just like that.

“Yeah,” she confirmed with no emphasis, picking at a pilled place on a sweater cuff. “My pop was a cop. Pretty nearly all his life. Beat cop: never even made sergeant. To protect and serve practically tattooed across his forehead. Some people can get unreasonable about the protecting part, but there's worse things to try living up to.”

Some people picked that minute to reach over and touch her hand: when she was just about shivering with rage, knowing if Devin said word one against her pop she was going to give him one where it damn well would show. And the rage drained off somehow, and somehow she knew it wasn't going to be a problem after all. At the same time, though, her heart dropped into her loafers because of how quiet that person, beside her, had suddenly gone, folding up his napkin with ridiculous precision although there was still food on his plate, as though the meal was over, he now knew everything he'd wanted to know and there was nothing more to stay for.

So she immediately threw in a topic she'd kept in reserve, asking Father about the set of samurai swords he kept as a wall decoration, wondering if they were a souvenir of World War II, which didn't seem likely because he didn't seem old enough, which was true even though he wasn't displeased to be judged too young for anything, nobody was, over the age of maybe 20.

The swords, it developed, had been a gift from a patient. Or rather, a patient's father, the patient being a girl whose ailment Father had diagnosed as radiation sickness from the bombing of Nagasaki, in whose ruins, in after years, the family had rebuilt a home, so little being known then of the way radiation lingered in the ground.

“My research had brought me to estimates which the then administration found most uncomfortable,” Father explained grimly. “And I arrived at conclusions which, spoken publicly, were more intolerable yet. My data were suppressed or falsified. But the resulting revocation of my security clearance and my subsequent disgrace generated a certain amount of publicity. And during all that, Mr. Suriyama sought me out and begged, literally begged, me to examine his daughter, Yuki. A lovely child. She died, of course. There existed no effective treatment, and bone marrow transplants were then nothing but a dream. But some time later, before I had gone, quite literally, to ground, as it were, those swords were delivered to my lawyer, my friend, with a note expressing Mr. Suriyama's gratitude and the sentiment that at least he now knew whom to blame.

“How he could find satisfaction in that, I confess I still do not comprehend. But I keep them to remind myself that apparently some good did come out of that research and that miserable time, although in that case, I could neither protect nor serve, except by stating the inevitable, like some bearded Cassandra who bears only unwelcome news. Apparently the Suriyamas relocated, and I hope no other of his children was stricken.”

Devin asked Diana solicitously, “You know about Cassandra, right?”

A blatant put-down.

Diana laid her fork beside her plate and planted both elbows firmly on the table.

“No, I haven't made that person's acquaintance, though I figure it'd be a good guess that it was a woman and another that she's dead.”

“Two for two,” Devin congratulated her, smiling like a shark. “Want to try for three?”

“Thanks, I like to quit while I'm ahead.”

“Come on, where's your sense of adventure?”

“I like to keep adventure and supper separate, thanks.” Turning to Vincent, who wasn't paying a scrap of attention to her, locked tight on Devin, she added, “Babe, it's getting late—”

“Babe?” Devin repeated delightedly, grinning even wider. “Hey, that's cute: babe. As in the Blue Ox? Or is Paul Bunyan another story you didn't get around to yet, like the Iliad? You mean nobody's made a classic comic, condensed version, out of it?”

“It's a dumb name,” Diana allowed pleasantly, “but he puts up with it, knows I don't mean any harm. Charity, most likely. Because I goddam well don't know any better. I'll make you up a nickname sometime, Devin, if you want. When I know you better.”

She couldn't believe it: some way, she was keeping her temper. Maybe because she could feel how close some people was to losing his.

“Wouldn't want to overtax your vocabulary. Anyhow, nobody knows me that well,” Devin responded. “I move too fast.”

Vincent sighed then, looking at Devin across the table, and commented, “If it's vocabulary at issue.... Fellow, I know thee.”

Devin's scarred face went blank a second. Then he responded, “What does thou know me for?”

“A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a—”

Laughing, Devin started waving his hands, trying to interrupt, “All right, I get the point, I—”

But there was no cutting through that rolling, annihilating catalogue, delivered in that voice: “—lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that would be a bawd in the way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the lest syllable of thy addition.”

“Why,” Devin came back with what was plainly the answering line, “what a, what a monstrous fellow art thou, thus to...harp on one—”

“Rail on,” Father corrected. As Devin formally waved his napkin in defeat, Father continued, “For really mouth-filling malediction, I know no speech more apt than that.”

“We curse,” Vincent commented, rising, “according to what we are stocked with, and the custom. The less long- winded version has arguments in its favor: Fuck you, and would you like to try for the other side?”

Diana knew then that some waft of the accusation, gutter-mouth, had reached him; and this was his considered and deliberate reply.

Probably the best demonstration of noblesse oblige she'd ever see.

“Crude,” Father admitted, oblivious to nuances, “but expressive, after its fashion. But the latter part, I confess I have somehow managed not to encounter, though that hardly seems possible, considering what the children bring down.”

“Perhaps an allusion,” Vincent suggested levelly, “to Carroll. One side of the mushroom makes one grow larger, and the other smaller. Diminish, in fact, completely out of sight.”

Getting up as Vincent pulled her chair back, Diana knew that last part had been no kind of quotation. The other side in question was the unmarked side of Devin's suddenly pale face.

The three of them knew it then, even if Father didn't: Devin wasn't staying.

All the way back to her place, Vincent said next to nothing, and Diana kept still too, sad for him, proud of him, finding nothing much to say.

Reaching the foot of the ladder that led to the level above and her basement, Vincent stopped, plainly not wanting to come up tonight, and she didn't blame him, and she expected he knew that.

“It would not have worked well in any case,” he remarked abruptly. “He enjoys advantage too much. He would not be patient with William, whose nature is to be contentious. Nor would he wait to hear Mary out, which sometimes takes considerable time. To say nothing of the children. You were right, Diana: he has no innate fondness for hip-high people. I watched him with the children today. He lacks the temperament for it.”

Diana turned and hugged him. “Babe, I'm so sorry—”

“You mustn't be. It was always his choice to make. And I believe he's chosen. I know that I have. I hoped for too much. The error was mine. Forgive me for putting you in such a position. But I had to know.”

“Yeah.... Yeah. Well, don't worry about me, I'm fine. Honest. What was that, you were throwing at each other?”

“Two servants, trying to pick a quarrel. A petty moment in a great play about the unwise division of a kingdom. King Lear. I didn't believe he could get through the following speech. It was the phrase monstrous fellow he stumbled over. I didn't think he could say it at all. Because he loves me and would not say such a thing, even in contentiousness, even as a game. He tried. But having once stumbled, the words never come right. So we never did get to whoreson cullionly barbermonger, a rich phrase we have bandied about, he and I, and all children since.... Good night, Diana.”

“Sure you don't want to stay awhile?” she asked gently as he started away.

“He will be going soon, I think. So I must take what I can, in the time I have.”

“Yeah. Then okay — good night.”

*****

The epilogue consisted of two notes in her mailbox. One, the following day, was from Vincent, stating the unadorned fact that Devin had left that morning, destination unspecified. And when she next saw Vincent, that evening, they didn't talk about Devin at all, which seemed to be the way he wanted it just now.

He was very quiet. They watched a tape about ruined, overgrown castles.

The other note turned up in her mailbox two days later. An opened envelope, stamps much cancelled, addressed, after three forwards, to somebody named Fred Sawyer in Phoenix, Arizona. Inside were two letters. Turning the envelope perplexedly as she went up the stairs, Diana removed the letters. The first one read:

June 17, 1989

Deer Dev

Willie is writting this on accont of I cant. A leter came yesstiday from yr father and it seems ther is a lotta trubbel ther you know wher I meen. So Willie is sending it on to wher you said you was goin and I hope it reeches you okay becus its abut yr bruther Vincent and I know you wd want to get it quick. Becuse he is yr bruther. I have a pupy. Hes lerning to use the paper but I walk him he is verry litul and dont know eny beter. His name is Eddie. Hes a verry fine pupy. I take care of him good. Pepul pet him and are not afrid at all. Maxine sends hr love to.

Yr friend, Charles Loomis.

Folded into that letter was another she read only far enough to determine it was from Father, dated in May, 1989. About a month after Catherine's disappearance. Describing Vincent's increasingly more desperate attempts to locate her, asking Devin to come home....

Diana folded the inner letter at that point, figuring the rest was none of her business. Then looked at the envelope again. The final cancellation was August 12.

Devin had already left Charles in June. He'd almost certainly received the forwarded letter no later than August. And at last answered Father's summons in May: nine months later, when everything was long over. Nothing expected of him, no emergency to rise to. Nothing left to do but listen to the story. A textbook case of let's not, and say we did.

Because he'd blown it. Totally and completely blown it. The sky had been caving in, and he'd panicked and hid. Nine months' worth.

That kind of evidence drew life sentences every day. She only had to show it, without comment, to either Vincent or Father, or simply leave it where they'd find it. As Devin had done. No comment needed. The dates spoke for themselves.

Devin couldn't just leave, she thought. Didn't have the guts to face Vincent's hopes and stamp them flat. But couldn't stay, either, or be what Vincent wanted him to be. Didn't have the temperament to be royalty, try to protect everybody, serve everybody, get eaten alive by the responsibility as Vincent and Father were.

Had to get himself as good as thrown out. Couldn't confront the real issue. So he'd finessed a quarrel with a stranger— Diana— over some non-issue until he'd finally provoked Vincent into dreaming smaller dreams. Until the dreams, and Devin, could diminish completely out of sight.

Didn't lack guts altogether, though: leaving her  evidence like this, as good as a confession, giving her the option of letting everybody Below know how he'd let them down, that was a pretty handsome apology. Something like class. Devin could do things— just couldn't face up to the people afterward. Never stuck around long enough to fail, or face the consequences.

The wonder was that he'd come at all.

Diana knew what it was to try to live up to somebody else's expectations, fulfill their hopes. Try and then fail. And then turn and refuse. And then have to look them in the eye afterward. Her pop; Mark. She knew what it was to try to fill a hole she knew, going in, she never could fill. And she couldn't honestly say she'd made that much better a business of it than Devin. Louder, maybe; not better.

You did what you could, and tried not to hurt the people you loved any more than you could help. Took your scars, and went on.

She carried the evidence to the sink and burned it, then washed the ash down the drain.

She'd write Devin a letter, she thought. Let him know that, whenever he wanted to come, he'd still have a home waiting for him, people who missed him when he was gone and were glad to see him whenever his irresponsible, random way brought him back again to share his new crop of outrageous stories.

Father probably had some forwarding address. Her letter should reach him eventually.

Mirror, Mirror

Wednesday night, Diana met Vincent by the Mirror Pool a little after 10 o' clock. Over the past couple of weeks, they'd gotten into the habit of meeting there: an easy five minute walk for each of them, about the same angled distance from his chamber as from her loft; generally a quiet place after the tunnel community had settled down for the night. A time, free of the different duties that claimed their days, for them to be together.

When she came out of the passage, he was already there: sitting by the pool, a dim, unmoving shape like a boulder. He'd put out all but one of the candles to reveal, glimmering in the perfectly still water, the reflections of stars.

Bending to settle next to him, she kissed his forehead lightly, asking, “Swimming lesson?”

“Not tonight.”

She smiled, tucking in against his side.

He added, “You're doing very well.”

“Sure: I've progressed to slow drowning,” she rejoined, and felt his soft chuckle.

“You're not disappointed?”

Her smile broadened. “There are compensations,” she rejoined dryly. “Anyway, I always liked looking at the stars, you know that.”

“That's so,” he said, and both of them pretended he hadn't just put his arm around her.

She was smiling because she'd figured out why some nights there were swimming lessons and some nights there weren't. It depended on how impersonal he felt he could be. How aware of her he was. So she'd come to appreciate the non-lesson nights, when they both stayed fully clothed, even more than the nights at the bathing pool when there were no clothes but everybody stayed as perfectly polite, as though she were one of the tunnel children he was instructing with Father for audience and chaperon.

Now, he wore his loose sleeping shirt, as if it were only a convenient coincidence that it let her reach up inside and start skritching the hair along his spine without having to fight through 15 layers first. He liked that, and she knew he did, and nobody said anything about it.

And it was likewise coincidental that, before coming down, she'd unbraided her hair, removed two forgotten pens, and spent 15 minutes brushing out the tangles: as if there'd been no tingling anticipation of the feel of his fingers on it, in it.

More and more, she was aware of happy things unspoken between them. Small premeditations, understandings. Something, she thought contentedly, would come of that.

He asked about her current case, the disappearance of a young man conjectured to be maybe a witness in a separate prosecution, and she told him where it stood. His question wasn't just politeness, because he really listened and offered two suggestions that, as usual, were insightful, surprising, and well worth exploring. In turn, he reported the community's varied news.

Jacob was fretful with teething; although Jamie had recently received her high school equivalency diploma, she'd decided against college; Samantha's marigold seeds had sprouted and would soon be ready for planting in the park; Laura and Jerry were expecting their first child, as were Lena and Angelo; a helper's grocery had burned and several craft projects were being planned to help finance the family in starting over; Peter Alcott, learning that, in upgrading its equipment, a small clinic was about to discard an X-ray machine, proposed to arrange its delivery and installation. Succumbing to greed at the prospect of acquiring the long needed diagnostic tool, Father had authorized a further tapping of Con Ed lines to power it. A court order in reaction to chronic prison overcrowding meant that Kanin would be released in less than a week, instead of the expected months: Livvy, his wife, was beside herself with anticipation. Michael was worried about performing well on his sophomore-year finals— needlessly, Vincent was sure.

Diana was pleased at how many of the names now brought faces to mind, how much of the large interwoven tapestry of tunnel dwellers and helpers she'd come to recognize: seeing how a tug here would almost certainly produce a reaction there.

A whole lot more interesting than the evening news. And Vincent plainly enjoyed sharing it all with her. But as usual, his account managed to cover about everybody but himself. An automatic and unconscious self-effacement, generous and loving; but also, she sometimes thought, a mark of his separateness, taken for granted by everyone around him and by him, most of all. There was everyone else, and then there was Vincent, observing, never seen or known the way he saw and knew others. Like the only grown up among a multitude of beloved children who loved in return but finally did not, could not, understand....

She'd known that feeling. Forever, it seemed to her. Had even accepted it, assumed the distance to stretch ahead forever, too, unbridgeable. Until Vincent. Until Vincent. And some way, somehow, she was going to find a way across to him, be to him something like what he was, and was still becoming, to her. Be two grown ups, together.

“Next time,” he said, pulling her out of her reverie, “I'll remember to give you the brief version.”

She shook her head, then rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “I like to hear you tell it, babe. All those people. Makes me feel like a damn hermit by comparison. There's more people living just on my block than in the whole of the world Below, and yet I don't know a single one of them and don't really want to. All the same boring grey lives, except once in awhile, when they take a notion to kill one another.”

“That's because you envision them en masse, as an army of strangers. Friendships are made one by one. As you come to know them, your neighbors, you will find their lives and their concerns as vivid as anything Below. One must simply have the patience to be unhidden with them, when chance brings you together, and invite them to become unhidden, as well.”

“Is that how you do it?”

“Those Below are my family, my friends,” Vincent responded. “And so, never wholly strangers.”

“But there have been strangers, new helpers, people who have come Below. We were strangers, once—”

“No. Never. There was a time before we knew one another. But we have never been strangers.”

“How come?”

“I don't know how. Only that it is so.”

She waited for him to elaborate. When he didn't, she said, “Well, Mouse started out as a stranger, then. Even....”

“Catherine,” he concluded, accurately guessing her thought. Small silence, while he considered. “That’s so. I suppose what I do is hope to wait through the strangeness and to find a friend, once it has passed. Is that not what you do with your cases, each time?”

It was her turn to stop and think. “I guess I do,” she agreed, “though I never thought about it like that. And when I get done, what I generally end up with is somebody I know real well, who's dead. So I guess I got a whole bunch of corpses for friends. I wonder if I been going at this whole thing backward. What do you think, babe?”

“I think you have been too long content to love those who cannot return your love or be grateful for your concern and friendship.”

“But they're the ones who need it most,” she rejoined reflectively, with a twitch of a grin. “It's a long reach, but who's gonna, if I don't?”

“Are you an exorcist, then? Or a medium, to offer a voice to those who must be otherwise silent?”

“A gravedigger, more like. Or a bookkeeper, getting the totals right so it'll all add up and come out something like even. I expect your way's better, to reach out while they're still alive, when maybe you can help. But what I do, that feels like helping too. And it's what I know. Sounds crazy, I know, but—”

“To every craft, its proper mystery.” Vincent's hand lifted, stroked spread fingers through her hair. “I do not disparage your craft because it differs from mine. I only regret, sometimes, that it is necessarily such a lonely one for you.”

Stirred and touched by the comment, she leaned and looked into his eyes. “Not anymore.”

And there could have been nothing more gentle than the look, and the slow smile, which he returned to her.

“No,” he agreed, and though they didn't move an inch, either of them, they were somehow much closer than they'd been and sat quietly for a time, looking at the stars while they found a fresh balance in this deeper rapport.

“And you,” Diana prompted after awhile. “What have you been doing?”

“Feeling fortunate. I assume I worked, ate, talked to people today.... But what I remember is being invaded, for no particular reason I know, by the sense of how fortunate I am.”

She bumped him with an elbow. “So it's all luck, is it? Nothing you have rightfully coming to you?”

“It’s a gift, Diana. Not to be earned, I think. Have you no moments like that, when you suddenly are filled with wonder at some simple thing and feel it to be a treasure beyond any deserving?”

“I guess. Now, for instance.”

As she resumed rubbing his back, she was reflecting dreamily how nice it'd be, to have the bathing pool and him this receptive, both together.

“Yes.” Not an affirmation. Curt, uneasy: almost a dismissal. He could put more spin on a monosyllable than anybody she'd ever known. As though noting the change of tone, he went on, trying to amend things, “And Kristopher: how does his work progress?”

Not a good choice, for a change of topic. She finished with a parting pat and pulled her hand back.

“No idea. Look for yourself sometime.” Her turn to be short. Reacting to his stiffness, feeding it back at him.

He rose suddenly, remarking, “It’s too long since I’ve seen the true stars, not merely their reflections. Will you walk with me in the park for a little while?”

“Okay,” Diana responded, abruptly amiable again, willing to go along with whatever he wanted. And she wasn't generally like that, changing moods from one second to the next.

As they went along the passage that, after a long distance, would bring them to the park threshold, Diana barely felt his arm go around her again, puzzling at her own reactions and absorbed in that concentration. Then his fingers stroked the back of her neck. She stopped, utterly arrested, looking up at him and very much wanting to be kissed.

He said something but all she was aware of was his mouth, how it moved to shape the words, already half imagining how his lips would feel against hers, the taste, the invasion of his breath....

“Diana—”

She blinked, lost focus, and found herself standing in a dark tunnel and not quite sure why or how she'd gotten here.

He backed off a step, saying uncertainly, “Perhaps it was a poor suggestion. Perhaps another time....”

“No, you promised me the park, and I'm gonna hold you to it.” She shoved her arm through his and locked her hands together. They went on, falling automatically into step.

Into step, she thought, against an undertone of worried puzzlement. Feeding it back at him. And then it came together in the thought, feedback loop.

She laughed aloud, and felt the worry lift into relief, curiosity.

“Why do you laugh?” he asked.

“One step forward,” she said, taking it, then halted and drew him into reverse, “and two steps back. There's more to this mirror business than I realized.”

Facing him, she threw both arms around his waist and lifted a little on her toes to look him straight in the eyes.

“I know, but I forget: you're a goddam empath. And you're picking up on whatever I feel. And that, on top of whatever you're feeling, gets to be too much real fast, doesn't it? A goddam feedback loop! Overload: blow every circuit you got. So the more interested I get, the more you're gonna back off, and how the hell are we ever gonna get anything going like that, babe?”

“I don't know,” he admitted softly. “Most things, I can deflect or let pass now. But not you. It's... it's very strong, tonight.”

“Tell me about it,” she invited, challenged.

“Another time,” he requested, turning, and she turned with him, not arguing.

After a few paces he silently offered a hand. She slanted him a look, skeptical and amused, but took the hand anyway. His grip closed not quite hard enough to hurt, but strong enough that she couldn't have pulled away if she'd wanted to. Which was, all things considered, okay by her. But it had its funny side, that he wouldn't settle down for a nice long kiss, but he wouldn't— maybe couldn't— back completely off, either. Had to be touching, the need stronger than habit or prudence.

She'd known guys who just couldn't keep their hands off a woman, but that wasn't the problem she'd had, or expected to have, with Vincent. In fact, the opposite. She mentioned that.

“‘You say I contradict myself. Very well, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.' Yes,” he added, before she could accuse him of poetry. “Walt Whitman. And I do not begin to know what I contain, except inconsistencies and restlessness. Perhaps that constitutes ‘multitudes.' Please don't be angry with me. It's not deliberate.”

She grinned at him. “You know perfectly well I'm not mad.”

“It's very strange, Diana,” he responded meditatively. “At some moments, I feel I am quite alone. Closed off, though I don’t intend it so. At others, I am aware of you. And then there are still other moments when it’s again as though I am alone, but swept and buffeted by feelings which...which trouble me. They are not alien, they are my own, yet... I seem to be standing apart while something happens in my absence. It's very strange. Not altogether unpleasant...but—”

He shook his head and came back to the same word again. “—strange. I don't know what to do, suddenly pushed, pulled, this way and that. It's very strong, tonight,” he said again, puzzled and a little anxious, stroking a thumb across the back of her hand and (she was positive) not even aware he was doing it.

“Jacob: you said he's fine, right?”

Medium pause: Diana knew he was checking back along the bond, simply because she'd reminded him. “Except for teething, he is well.”

“And Father?” Diana pursued. “He's okay too?”

“Father is well. Why do you ask?”

“Because all of a sudden I got the strongest hunch something shook you up today. And hunches are my stock in trade.”

Watching his face, seeing his eyes turn aside, she knew instantly that she'd been right, still not knowing what or why, only knowing it was so. Working back from the intuitive certainty, she saw the pattern: the moments of causeless contentment and heightened sensitivity part of the same reaction— his way of dealing with some psychological threat. Bouncing high, in reaction to some real downer.

“What is it: the bowers?” Her eyes, reading his face, told her no, not that, not exactly, so without waiting for his answer, she said, “Then what? And when did you figure to tell me: next month? Sorry, never mind that, it just came out. Let's start over: what's happened?”

She could practically feel the weight of his reluctance. The sigh that followed was the effort of lifting that weight and deliberately setting it aside.

“This morning,” he said, “a helper relayed, in all innocence, a letter. Addressed to me. I don’t know the hand. But...the scent, I knew at once. One does not forget such things.”

He reserved that controlled, expressionless voice for only one thing she knew of: “Paracelsus. Sent you a letter? And you haven't opened it, right?”

He shook his head. “No need, to know what it contains: poison. No matter what the words may say, it is poison. I haven't yet decided whether to burn it unread or risk the poison for the sake of what I may learn. A predictable reaction. One I'm sure gave him amusement, imagining the letter's delivery....”

She stopped and took his other hand in hers. “You trust me, right? Then let me read it, babe. Whatever poison is in it was made for you, not me. It can't hurt me. So let me read it for you.”

He looked away, thinking. Eventually he said, “It's in my chamber.”

“Then let's go there—”

“I somehow don't like the thought of opening it Below. Go home, Diana. I will bring it to you there.” But his hands did not release hers: he'd changed his mind. “Nor is it, I think, a thing to read in darkness, either. I’ll come about noon tomorrow, if that's convenient.... It isn't,” he said, picking it up from her some way.

“Got a damn meeting uptown at 10, and notes to put together first,” Diana admitted. “But I can get back by 1:30, for sure— is that good enough?”

“Yes,” he said, and she could tell he still didn't like the notion of involving her, however indirectly, with anything Paracelsus had so much as touched.

“And you'll come, right? Promise?”

“I’ll come, Diana.”

“Then for now, you're right: don't let's think about it any more. Come on. Let's have our walk in the park.”

They didn't stay long in the park, or go far: Vincent hadn't worn his cloak, and the moon was bright and clear. But it still was something, to see him standing in the open, looking up, his face and hair all silvered with moonlight, his outline like something scratched, in quick strokes, on a background of deepest, softest black. Diana understood then how some people could go crazy for paintings of Elvis on velvet, which she'd always regarded as terminally tacky, like plastic pineapples with lights inside.

At first she took it for caution that he hung back a pace or two. Then she noticed he wasn't tense, or edgy, or doing anything besides look at her with the same wide eyed intensity with which she found herself gazing at him. And it came to her he was standing off to see her whole and watch the changes the light worked on her as they moved, in and out from beneath the shadow dapples of the newly-leafed trees.

At once, she became desperately self-conscious and started tripping over roots, grass clumps, bare spots, the edge of the concrete path, her own feet: whatever was handy. The fourth or fifth time that happened, his hand slid under her arm and there was no use stumbling, after that, because he'd know it before she did and lift just enough to smooth out any jolt. It was no longer possible to fall. It began to feel more like floating than like walking. Moonlight could be like that, sometimes— an equal balance of bright and dark, everything blurred and dreamlike.

As far as she could remember, afterward, their only conversation was her saying, “It's a great night out. I didn't know the park could be like this. I think Central Park, I think muggings and people beating up on joggers with pipes. Not this,” and his saying, simply, “Yes.”

That moonlight packed a charge. Even when they turned back to the culvert and returned to the tunnels, she seemed to see the same shimmer on him and feel it within herself. And the same silence continued, too: exchanging touches instead of words. Small leanings, the contact of hands, a suddenly renewed sense of how damn big he was and yet how easily and gracefully he moved, all so fluid and effortless that you could almost forget it, so natural, so much a part of him. An electric awareness building and deepening with every contact, every automatically matched stride, as though synchronized walking should be an Olympic sport and they'd be in heavy contention for the gold.

Quite suddenly, he turned and hugged her close, and she was glad because she'd been wishing he'd do that very thing so she could hug him back, just as hard she could, so that she wasn't sure if her bones were going to crack first, or melt.

But she discovered that embrace had been an end, a leavetaking, even though they continued on together. Some way, the spark was gone; and she knew it'd gotten too strong for him again, and he'd had to pull back, find stillness within himself. It was as though she could feel him doing it, moving away.

Understanding, she sighed and still was happy, and found him looking at her so very quietly that she felt a little shy with him, and laughed out loud because that was altogether crazy but still true. And seeing the gentle solemnity in his eyes, she knew that the dialogue of gestures, the pull and push within the rapport, hadn't ended after all but only become slower and quieter, like people on the drifting edge of sleep and yet still aware of each other's presence, the warmth still there but resting now, like the rhythms of breath, sometimes out and sometimes in but all breath alike.

And she thought maybe it would never end from now on, but only get better and better as they got more attuned to each other's rhythms, and not even need touches or the meeting of eyes but only being there and alive. No longer something you did: something you were.

And she stopped then, so he stopped too and turned toward her; and she kissed him then, because she had to and it was time. No big deal, not asking for anything or in any way pushing, just friendly love. And when she was done, she smiled into his eyes and was willing to walk on.

That was enough, nothing to fuss over or worry about.

They passed a cross tunnel and started down a stair, Vincent taking a torch from a sconce, then moving to be on the outside, between her and the drop, lighting the way.

About halfway down, he said, “There is something... I meant not to speak of.”

Not Paracelsus: not anything like that. She could tell, from his tone.

After five or six more steps, when she'd responded only by attentive listening, Vincent went on, “I have begun.... There are times....” Hung up there, he looked back around at her, maybe hoping for assistance, but she just waited for him to find the words.

In that wordless suspension, they left the stair and Vincent set the torch aside: no longer needed, because they'd reached the lighted precincts of the Hub. Vincent chose a descending passage that led past larders and storage chambers— like a warehouse district— rather than through the more settled tunnels where they'd inevitably have run into somebody, even this late. The pipes sounded intermittently. A distant subway approached and receded.

Finally Vincent continued, “I dream of you now. At times. Often.”

Diana gave him a glance and a quick grin. “That a fact.”

“Yes.”

Likely it embarrassed the hell out of him. But she wasn't sure, couldn't read him anymore. “And are we doing anything I'd approve of, in those dreams?”

“Sometimes,” he admitted, so soft she could barely hear him. “And sometimes not. Sometimes...you die, Diana. We are together. Close. And you die. Of it.”

“You mean you kill me,” Diana clarified bluntly. No answer at all to that. But the silence itself was confirmation. “Look,” she said, “so we both know you're scared of that. That's no news.”

“You do not know. How it felt. It is,” he said distantly, “a kind of exultation. And a hunger. That makes no distinctions. That feeds, and is indiscriminate in its feeding. That gives nothing, only takes. Until it is satisfied. The two dreams are the same dream, Diana. Until I wake. And know it. And begin, again, to fear. But in the dreams, there is no fear. Only the hunger.”

Diana thought about it. No question, it shook her up a little too. Or maybe she was imagining, picking up on, how the memory upset him. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.

“In those dreams,” she asked suddenly, “am I scared?”

“No. I don't think so.... I cannot tell. You come to me willingly. But afterward... I don't know if you're willing or not. All that the hunger knows is the rage to be fed, ended. It cares nothing about the means. I am not always sure it is you, that I am with. Sometimes... there are bars. But I want what happens. Whatever happens. Very much. Until I wake....”

She turned and hugged him, immediately noticing that this time he didn't trust himself enough to return the hug. He'd pulled way back, inside himself.

She said, “That's gonna be with you a long while, what happened in that cage. Maybe you wish you could shrug it off and have it be like it never happened. But that'd only be stuffing it out of sight. It'd still be there. You gotta feel it, babe: work your way through it. That's why they call it trauma. It's latched onto some of the deepest feelings you got. Opened doors you always kept shut. All sorts of doors. And it spills out into dreams— you gotta expect that. Doesn't mean it's real or it's gonna happen again, with you and me.”

“The death I dream is not real. But the feeling... that is real,” he replied desolately. “I don't want to feel that way toward you.”

“If you do, you do. Start from there. We'll get it all sorted out, I promise. You can't quit starving all at once. It goes a little at a time, till you come to a balance, take the worst of the edge off. Then it'll be okay from then on out. And we're gonna have a hell of a lot of fun together, when that time comes. I'm gonna damn well wear you out so you can't remember such a thing as hunger ever was. You believe me?”

Finally his arms closed around her, a measured pressure. “I try to. But... if you come to know you must leave me, let it be soon, Diana. For I cannot, anymore, choose to leave you. Or even be parted from you for very long. Don't wait too long, Diana. Or I won't be able to let you go at all.”

And it was almost too strong for her, then: the tenderness, sympathy, and blazing admiration. The humility: how willingly he'd be hurt, or even hurt himself, rather than hurt her. How plain it was that he'd given her his heart to hold, with no protections, no conditions. Barely even any hope.

For no protestations that she'd never leave, always be there, could be enough: he'd learned all promises could fail, and princesses die, however faithful, lovely, and adored.

And it came to her that this was his way of stumbling and being uncertain. And needing something like a steady hand, in his turn.

So she just held him, in silence: being here now, close, choked up and feeling, with a kind of fierceness, how much she wanted to be here with him, just as they were.

And when, presently, the intensity faded and that moment was past, she remarked as they went on, “Babe, you dream of me any damn way you want. So long as I'm there, that's good enough for me. And you can come into my dreams anytime: standing invitation. Or even horizontal. I kind of think I'll dream about you tonight....”

“Yes.”

*****

Thursday afternoon, it was pouring rain. Returning home after the staff meeting, Diana had just time to change to dry shoes, turn up the heat, and take care of a few chores before Vincent came. Given the downpour, he didn't take his preferred way, through the skylight she generally kept a little open. Instead, the whole routine of doorbell, announce, respond, lock disengage, and coming slowly, deliberately, up her stairs. No need to turn off her motion detector, still on the fritz and disabled.

Circling out of the office, she greeted him, “We topsiders call it ‘weather,'” but the try at humor splatted like an overturned bowl of jello when she saw in his face, and read in his stance and manner, the reluctance, tension, dread. Cloaked: large, dark, like a messenger from some netherworld. In his hand, an envelope.

And suddenly, she was scared too— not of anything in particular, just a fit of the free-floating collywobbles that sent shivers down your spine.

Immediately, Vincent wheeled around, poking under the cloak for a wooden match he reached to strike on the brick wall, commenting, “We were mistaken. I'll burn it—”

“The hell you will.” Snatching the letter, she held it close: refusing to be intimidated and facing him challengingly. “It's only words, babe.”

Shaking out the match, Vincent looked for a place to discard it. Choosing the saucer of a corn plant decorating a bookcase, he responded evenly, “It was for speaking words that I killed him.”

Last night's easy companionship was gone as though it'd never been. He was all sternness, distance, control, making no move to take off the cloak. For the first time, Diana really noticed its combination of heavy, shieldlike left sleeve and no right sleeve at all, leaving the striking arm free. Not merely clothing or even just concealment, but a sort of armor: fighting gear. And under the cloak, lots of clothes, today, with straps, buckles; a vaguely military looking vest of smooth brown leather, with brass buttons and chains across, and the broad belt that fastened with steel rings and a large steel clip that looked as if it'd come off a leash for maybe a bear or a tiger. Solid boots you could have stomped nails with. Layers on layers.

All strapped together tightly to keep from coming apart, keep anything from getting through. In or out. All walls, formality, armor.

She shook her head, declaring, “I hate it, that he can do this to you. No, dammit, don't apologize, it's not your fault—”

She started to reach out, but with the hand that held the letter and could almost feel him  starting to wince away. She pulled the hand back, thinking, Let him alone: he needs those walls. But it hurt to feel herself so far from him, and she hated Paracelsus for that, too. Trying to reach him a different way, she said with forced lightness, “Should I ask how your dreams went, last night?”

“No.”

“Me, too. Scrap that, then. A nice stiff drink, maybe?” Silence, likely searching for a polite refusal. She said, “Okay, scrap that too. I know: why don't you make us up a nice pot of tea? You know where everything is, right?” She wasn't that crazy about tea, but knew what an elaborate business he made of preparing it. That should keep him occupied a good 10 minutes.

“And the meeting ran long, I missed lunch. I got some tuna salad, plastic bowl in the fridge. Maybe a couple sandwiches...?”

Eyes fixed on the letter, he said abruptly, “I feel as though I had handed you a snake. Neither rational nor sensible, I admit. Nevertheless.”

She felt a wave of protectiveness, fondness, a little exasperation. “It's my trade, babe— just another piece of evidence. The guy's been dead, what, about a year? Long before you started turning up in my dreams. So nothing in this letter can be any danger to me and there's no need for you to go all watchdog on me. St. Patrick gave all the Irish power over snakes. Everybody knows that's why there's not a damn one left. You see about the tea and tuna— okay?— while I look this over.”

As he approached, she thought for a second she was going to get a hug, at least. But he passed by into the kitchen. Accepting that, she took the letter back into her office.

Dropping into the wheeled chair, she examined the envelope, knowing she'd ruined it for fingerprints, but that wasn't an issue, they knew who'd sent the damn thing: Vincent could recognize the scent, even now. That confirmation was good enough for her. She tried to pull objectivity around herself like a cloak.

Vincent's name on the envelope in large, assertive handwriting: each letter given its due space, no crowding, with strongly accentuated verticals, all the pointed letters sharp, the 'i' dotted exactly over the upstroke, the 't' slashed through with a short, tight line, ruler straight. Methodical, precise. Black felt-tip pen.

Having made a thorough external check, she slit the envelope and, despite an itchy reluctance, extracted three sharply folded sheets of good quality notepaper watermarked Excelsior, Faber & Stein. Flattening the pages, she angled the light the way she wanted it, took a deep breath, and started reading.

My beloved son,

Allow me to be the first to congratulate you: our little experiment has been crowned with success. In a few months' time, you are to become a father.

Diana leaned back as though the words had physically shoved her away. Half a dozen unregarded facts thudded solidly into place. Fit. Formed a pattern. She felt suddenly cold and sick.

From the kitchen, Vincent demanded sharply, “What is it?”

She'd wanted to reach him, touch him. But not like this.

She called, “We weren't expecting sweet nothings. I barely started. Give me a few minutes, here.”

Hearing him come to the open side, feeling his anxious attention on her back, she set elbows on either side of the letter so he couldn't possibly see past her, with the sense she'd thrown herself on a live grenade.

“Shall we burn it now?”

“Let me alone, let me read the damn thing. And don't watch me: it makes me nervous,” she said, trying to control jagged agitation, thinking, Jesus, this is gonna kill him. It'll start all over again, Jacob all over again....

“You don't have to do this. I shouldn't have asked you.”

“It was my idea, remember? I wanted to. So clear out and let me goddam well do it.”

When Vincent retreated, she bent and read on:

I was certain that Providence could not be so cruel as to condemn such uniqueness to sterility, and that, with the proper setting and impetus, you would discard the petty constraints which have enslaved you. Jacob Wells and I founded only worlds: you have done the greater thing and founded a race. For a world is nothing unless it is peopled. How did Blake put it? “Where Man is not, Nature is barren.” That barrenness now is ended. Again, congratulations! I am well pleased with you.

Do not be concerned if some bloodshed formed a portion of this ceremony: that is your nature, your glory. It is so with all births; and blood is the final seal upon all bargains. As it was between us. The bowers are ignorant cattle. My cattle; your legacy. Now that it is begun, you may visit them any time you wish, for whatever purpose, and meet no opposition. Do with them as you will. They ...

“Sonofabitch,” Diana muttered, turning the page. “Sonofabitch. You didn't kill that bastard quick enough, Vincent: you should have whacked him the first chance you got—”

“Diana—”

“In a minute, let me do my goddam work here,” Diana snarled, and then replayed that to herself. Shoving from the chair, she dodged out to check on him, feeling scared and awful and guilty.

Two mugs of tea on the table. A paper towel with a sandwich on it.

Vincent was standing by the couch, still cloaked but the hood at least pushed back, vacantly looking up at the sheets of rain sliding down the skylights. So withdrawn he didn't budge when she put her arms around him and leaned against him because she couldn't stand the distance anymore.

She said, “I'm glad I said bring it to me, babe.”

“You’re not glad. Nothing like glad.” Not arguing, merely saying it.

“Yes, I am. Honest. Maybe you can't feel it, but I am.”

“I am trying,” Vincent responded in that flat, factual voice, “to feel nothing at all. But I know that what so sickens and enrages you could not touch you, except for me. I know—”

Diana held on harder, the vest's chains cold and hard against her face. “Quit that. None of this is your fault.”

“Had I been...an ordinary child, he would have taken no interest in me. The friendship between him and Father would not have been broken. Anna, his wife, who was so unwise as to take me from a frozen trash heap, would not have been poisoned. Had I not been different—”

“And if fish had wheels, they'd be bicycles. Quit it, babe. Right now. That's what he wants. Don't let him do this to you.” Long silence, that she finally broke because he wasn't going to. “Have your tea, it's getting cold.”

“I cannot.”

It was intolerable to know that, even armored as he was, her reactions were still getting through to him. A failure of objectivity, of professionalism. She'd offered expert help for his problem and yet couldn't seem to keep from demanding that he notice her, comfort her, reassure her that what she was doing was useful and appreciated. She felt angry, ashamed to know she was making everything harder for him, at the same time trying to stifle the anger and shame, and then was doubly frustrated because she couldn't, had never needed any control beyond physical distance. Then she'd damn well learn, that's all.

Releasing him, standing apart and trying to fight back to calm, she offered, “I'll try to get through the rest of it fast. Then we can talk about it.”

“I have no wish to talk about it. Or to know anything but what I must, to keep those I love from harm.”

She realized the best thing she could do was get it over with. So she turned away to finish reading the letter, feeling that if she waited any longer, she might not be able to make herself face doing it alone.

The second page read:

are your cattle now. Since your imagination has been awakened to these new possibilities, the inadequacies of Jacob's limited conceptions, that require you to disavow and blind yourself to your true nature, will become more and more apparent to you. They cannot contain you. He does not know what you are— has never known. Nor does the Chandler woman, whom I foresee will die of giving you a child.

The Bennett woman, however,

Shocked, Diana thought, This is crazy. This is impossible. The bastard died over a year ago! and rummaged in the drawers for a magnifying glass. Then she pulled the light closer and compared the pages in detail, fixing on instances of the single word the. Finally nodding, satisfied, she read on:

seems promising. A neurotic recluse, she nevertheless offers access and insight into the insane and suicidal modern world which is your true enemy, our shared enemy. She will also, and necessarily, constitute a threat to Jacob's influence over you, since he will be as intolerant of her as he is of all who threaten his absolute control. Therefore, as a valuable irritant, she may be allowed to live for a time, as suits our convenience.

After a suitable interval, another ceremony like the last will be scheduled. You'll be given due notice. If you attend willingly, the Bennett woman and certain others to whom you have formed attachments will not be harmed. If, however, you require persuasion, persuasion will be ...

Bastards! Diana hissed to herself, Bastards! Her confidence of immunity had been ignorance, arrogance. Poison enough for everybody. Shoving the second page away, she also shoved away, for the moment, the bitter and terrifying knowledge of what she was going to have to do. Yet there was a kind of relief in knowing that she was damn well down in the dirt with everybody else— that she had a legitimate right to fight for her own life too and wasn't just standing aside like some umpire with no intrinsic stake in which side won or lost. Now, and beyond question, it was her fight too.

Ordering herself, Don't feel: think!, she read the final page:

provided until you arrive at a more realistic appraisal of your options.

The time will come when you will thank me for this, and bless my name, as I now bless yours, my beloved Vincent.

Your devoted father, here and hereafter,

Paracelsus

PS: A duplicate of this letter was delivered three days ago to the man you insist on calling “Father.” Has he shown it to you or spoken of it to you? No? How odd. Could it be that he does not trust you with such dangerous knowledge?

PPS: Considering Jacob's immense talent for ignoring the perfectly obvious, I still wonder he hasn't long since realized that the boy “Mouse” was bower born. Should Mouse ever decide to visit his family, who still live among us, he will of course be welcomed. Or has he already begun to do so? You may wish to ask him.

Absolutely: poison enough for everybody.

She forced herself to go through the letter again, noting every venomous nuance. Then she simply sat and thought for an unknown, unregarded time. When she was ready, she started punching the keyboard:

If the handwriting on the envelope and first page is Paracelsus', the second page is a fake, forged to give the impression he predicted things that happened after his death, that everything's going according to some inescapable plan. That's why it gets so talky-- to bridge between the first page and the third, both authentic. The change in the pitch of the e's is especially distinctive, and the increased slant of the t's. The way pages break suggests that Paracelsus himself intended part of the letter to be spurious: a genuine beginning and end framing a middle sheet filled in later by somebody else imitating his handwriting and style. Cheap trick, for psychological effect.

That doesn't mean the threats aren't real-- just that they aren't Paracelsus'. Somebody else is running the show down there now, but still carrying on with whatever scenario Paracelsus set running before he died.

There are almost certainly more letters to come, written to fit about any imaginable situation. The bowers will just pick the one that most nearly fits and write the middle page accordingly. Expect this.

The main claim, that Vincent's got some damn bower girl pregnant, is probably true. By my count, there were 13 kids left in that cave, not the 14 Vincent says there should have been and thinks there were. But by the time I came, one girl was missing. All the boys were issued condoms. Now I know why: so that any child conceived in that hellish mess could only be Vincent's. That's why they've been so quiet: waiting to find out, themselves, if they'd caught anything or not with that trap. If it's true, I can't see anything to do about it or any use in Vincent's knowing. But I don't think we can keep it from him indefinitely. I don't think the bowers will let us. And they know pipe code. Damn them all anyhow.

And don't take what's said about Mouse too seriously. You of all people should know where a person's born shouldn't matter, only who they are. You're all his family and always have been. That's what matters.

Vincent hasn't read either the letter or this note. I'll only have discussed with him the parts that have to do with me. The rest is for you to make up your mind about. I'll go along with whatever you decide. The letter is trying to split us all up, turn us against one another, so Vincent won't know who or what to believe, who to trust. I won't let it. Try not to either.

Diana.

While her note printed out, she folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. Then she wrapped the printout, face down, around the envelope, fastening the packet with two staples through the middle. Going back into the outer loft, she found Vincent had settled at the oak dining table, very still, hands folded, like somebody waiting in a dentist's office for root canal. Cloak unlatched, pushed half off over the chair back. Tea untouched.

She slapped the packet down in front of him. “Give it to Father. I threw in some comments. Leave him alone awhile to look at it. Then ask him what he thinks you need to know, and talk out what to do, the two of you. That's the best advice I got.”

He didn't touch the packet or even glance at it, only looking up at her. Checking, she thought, for signs of snakebite. Knowing, somehow, that there was more, that she wasn't done. His eyes followed her as she wandered off and flopped into a scoop chair.

Older she got, the more she hated big, emotional confrontations. But on things that mattered, she still didn't duck them, just braced and flung herself into them headlong and full speed, although they generally racked her up with headaches and crying jags, sometimes for days. Couldn't back off, couldn't dodge the important stuff, not and live with herself afterward.

She flipped up both hands in an angry, frustrated gesture, a surrender to necessity.

“Yeah, there's a problem I wanted to handle on my own, keep to myself. But it's in the letter, and if you're gonna hear about it, it's gonna be from me.”

Taking a long, tense breath, she said, “The bowers know about me. Who I am. Where I live. That I got some connection to you, more than just another helper.”

As unemotionally as she could, she described the scam she'd run to get into the bowers' tunnels, hunting him. Guessing there'd been some deal between Paracelsus and John Moreno— guessing right, because it'd worked— she'd pretended to be a go-between for Joe Maxwell, claiming Joe would bring the covert but considerable wrath of the DA's office down on the bowers if they didn't play ball with the new administration.

“And since, there's been these stickers,” she went on, and told him about them too and her conclusions about them: not attacks, only tries at intimidation. She ended, “I know you'll say I should have told you but each time. I couldn't. You need someplace, somebody, away from all that. I couldn't stand taking that away from you. And... some other reasons.”

The cloak slid off, across the chairback, as Vincent came from the table and dropped onto one knee beside her chair, gazing into her face. In the muted and shadowless light, his face seemed unlined, younger; his eyes rain-colored and anxious.

“Diana, you must let me help. You must tell me what I will have to know, to protect you. I must know.”

She bit her lip, looked away. “And have you go back into watchdog mode again? I'm more scared of that than of the bowers, babe. You're too good at protecting. It comes too easy to you. That's not what I want you to be. That's not what I want us to be. I'd sooner take my chances.”

“Diana.... Diana, if what I am is of no use, if I cannot protect those I love, then what am I? What use am I, if I cannot even do that? You must not shut me out. I share the risk. Whatever happens to you also happens to me. You know that to be so.”

Eyes stinging, she extended her hand, fingers spread, and felt his fingers lace between hers, the claws slight but distinct points of pressure on the back of her hand.

“I know, it's almost the last thing I'd want to happen to you. I almost wish you didn't care, that nobody could get at you through me. Which is what they're doing. It's you they're trying to get at, we both know that. I'm nobody, to them—”

“We don't know that. And in any case, I do care. And I am vulnerable through you. And I am responsible: you would be in no danger, save for me. I am involved. Cannot stand aside. Any risk to you is a risk to us both, and I therefore must protect us both. You must allow me to do so. Whatever happens, whatever comes, we must share it!”

It was as though she could feel all he'd been trying to keep controlled and armored, flaming out through the breach of that central vulnerability. And felt all her attempts at calm objectivity shatter as well on that same paradox— that she couldn't feel herself separate from him and yet dreaded hurt to him more than injury to herself.

The identical concern, fear, love, need, demand, exploded within the rapport, reflected, rebounding.

Meeting his eyes was like looking directly into a searchlight: suddenly blind to anything else, all motion arrested, suspended. Her heart seemed to twist within her, and she couldn't breathe, couldn't remember she needed to.

It wasn't so much leaning as falling, being pulled, into a kiss unlike any she'd ever known— less a doing than a being: like being asleep, or being drunk or feverish. A state of awareness to which the kiss was both key and door, beginning to open beyond and within, a threshold past which one would become touch, become connectedness in a way that past experiences of sex were only the merest and most limited shadow.

But this was the light itself: becoming light, a terrible brilliance that blinded her as fully as any darkness could have done but the door only beginning to open, yet not a door either but something alive, something they were alive and opening within, something as vast as dawn that any instant would explode....

And then she was sundered from the light, separate: yanked tight against Vincent's chest, his spread hand cupping the back of her head so hard that she couldn't have moved if she'd wanted to, but she didn't want to, stunned and dazed, gasping, “My God, Vincent, what was that?” knowing by the pressure and his harsh, shuddering breaths that he'd felt it too and was as shaken with it as she was.

He suddenly released her, drawing back, but she wasn't having any of that, oh no, and flung both arms around his neck and yanked herself close again, hanging on like a terrified child and feeling at nape and temples the tingling, fragile sensation that was a migraine's first warning.

Her whole weight rested on him: if she'd let go, she would have fallen flat on her face. And she demanded again, “What was that?”

He wouldn't hug, wouldn't hang on. Wouldn't move at all— rigid, except for breathing. As good as paralyzed.

She slid until she was sitting on the floor with her back against the chair, both of them kneeling on the rug.

She blurted, “That scare you half as much as it did me?” and then had to grab him or he'd have bolted— except for once, as totally freaked as she'd ever seen him. She said, “No, look, we scared each other. Because I felt that, babe! So what was it?”

He was pale, blank-eyed, not yet able to wholly focus on her. Then his head bent lower— down against her shoulder, then past, until he was bent fully double, forehead touching the floor, his voice muffled as he said, “Forgive me, Diana.”

Then she knew, and already knowing, squinting against the migraine she could feel bearing down on her like a subway, asked very gently, “Was it like killing?”

“Yes.” Slow breath, drawn in, held achingly long. Discharged in an abrupt sigh. “No. The... rapport of killing, the death, is not like anything else. This was not like anything else. Nor was it quite like the killing, either. I cannot explain. I— Diana, I am very ashamed.”

“Hey,” she said, batting at his shoulder, forcing contact. “Look at me: in maybe five minutes I won't be worth much, got a heller of a headache coming on, but I'm still here— not dead, not even scratched. Only very, very surprised. Whatever that was, it's not the killing. Close, maybe, but not the same: you said so. And don't you forget that.”

At last, he lifted his head and looked at her— sad, and still spooked.

“Now, I say there is a difference. I hope there is. But within it.... Within it, there is only itself and nowhere to stand apart from it, to make distinctions. It is... very large. And what I know of it is only the killing. It may be... that I truly know nothing of it either. That both my fear and my hope are utterly mistaken.”

She'd never had a migraine come on this fast. Already closing in like two fists pushing hard at both sides of her head. Her damn teeth beginning to ache. Everything starting to smear out at the edges like heat ripples— what was the word: aura?— so that Vincent looked as though he were kindling into flame.

This one was going to be a record-setter.

She got up, staggering because her balance was going, and knew she had to get him out of here fast, or else he'd be blaming himself for this too and it was nothing to do with him, she'd always had headaches, generally after some major upset or argument.

She tried to tell him to go, that she needed real bad to be alone, and quiet, but somehow it didn't come out right and trying to replay it in her head only made her miss why he was refusing to leave, something about the bowers, she couldn't quite make out what except that he was terribly agitated about it and concerned about her.

But her answering concern and agitation were lost into a roar like downtown rush hour or a home run and the whole stadium on their feet and shouting. Like about ten subways bearing down on her at once. She leaned heavily on the arm of the chair, the whole loft tilting and swaying around her and the pressure still increasing until all she could think of was that she had to get away or she'd be crushed.

As she sensed Vincent coming up behind her, everything collided. She felt the concussion. And nothing after.

2

Vincent felt something like a blow. Something like an explosion or being shot. First the impact and numbness, confusion, everything gone slow and all focus turned inward as the body attempted to comprehend its injury. Then would come the searing pain, the sudden weakness, the icy beginnings of shock. Then it might become possible to fight back.

But as he stood swaying, waiting to brace against the pain, it didn't come. Instead, the impact dissipated, faded. Attending within, he realized he was uninjured, and the confusion intensified on waves of adrenaline that made his heart hammer and his pulse sing in his ears.

He couldn't understand, couldn't take it in.

Then his vision cleared and he saw Diana sprawled forward, unmoving, on the rug. And the confusion was worse because he was thinking explosion again, blankly scanning the loft for damage and finding none— no broken glass, no smoke, everything as it'd been. That was one second. The next, he'd dropped down beside her, brushing her bright hair aside then carefully stroking, trying to find the injury. Finding nothing. Sensing nothing, either: no sense of contact, presence. If her back hadn't moved with shallow breathing, he couldn't have been sure she was even alive. Utter and complete absence.

She'd spoken of a headache— some kind of stroke? Or had she merely fainted? And why couldn't he reach her?

Stirring to a more systematic confusion, he turned her wrist, removed her watch, then timed the pulse. Perhaps a little slow, but regular, steady. The color in her cheek normal, neither flushed nor livid.

He wet a washcloth and, kneeling, carefully raised her to lean against his arm, cooling the pulse points at wrist, throat, temples. More to be doing something than because he thought it served any particular purpose. Expecting, any second, she'd rouse and open her eyes. But after five minutes, by her watch, there'd been no change.

Then, like an aftershock, he remembered his own sense of impact and thought to connect it with Diana's unconscious body. Whatever it'd been, it'd glanced off him but struck her fully. And then like a second shock, he remembered her astonished exclamation, I felt that!

And then he began to know.

All the hunches, that were her life and her livelihood. The times, more and more frequent, when it seemed she answered before he asked, commented on what he hadn't fully said. The sudden insights based on the most fragmentary details or sometimes on nothing at all: the inexplicable knowing. Her often-stated dislike of crowds, how much she hated being “overpeopled.” How easily they understood one another— immediately, without need of explanation— about things neither had been able to convey to another living soul. And a hundred other similarities he'd been blind to because of how large his differences loomed in his imagination.

Of course, he thought. Of course.

Diana was an empath.

Teetering on an inner threshold, but balanced there securely until he'd come into her life. A life whose every detail proclaimed a unique sensitivity attempting to shelter itself and yet giving of itself to others in the only ways it could bear. A life of almost cloistered isolation and discipline, lived within careful limits. He heard himself saying of it, just last night, I only regret, sometimes, that it is necessarily such a lonely one for you; and saying, not many weeks ago, You live in your work, from a distance; and saying, Let me be your mirror. As you have become mine. And saying, The greatest danger in your life is me.

Ironies scalding enough to suit even Diana's robust sense of humor, far stronger than his own. He hugged her close, wracked by the realization and wishing beyond all things that she'd wake so he could tell her and hear her laugh at how blind he'd been.

But there was nothing. No response. No awareness. Limp and inert in his arms. Only the aching absence that made him know how deeply and fully her presence had become a necessary part of him.

Afraid for her, he'd envisioned only physical threats. His claws. His strength, which always had to be kept under such tight control. But never his gift, which he'd barely learned to control at all, even now, believing it could be a blessing or a torment only to himself.

He'd been disastrously wrong.

He'd warned her a hundred times— but never against this, against overload. So she hadn't defended herself. Probably didn't even know how. No awareness, even, of how involvement with a fully functional empath was affecting her. She'd been used to flashes, instants— never anything prolonged or shared. So there'd been no misgivings while the contact had been steadily heightening her sensitivity, rendering broader and deeper the rapport between them, drawing her so lovingly past the balance point that, not quite consciously, she'd constructed her life to maintain. She'd reached out eagerly. Knowing no danger. And now fallen— how far, and how hard, he could barely begin to imagine.

He'd done this. This was the gift he'd tendered her, with his love.

Blind, he thought. Criminally, inexcusably blind.

He kissed Diana's brow, then tipped his head back and rigidly gazed at the skylights, thinking, Suppose this were I. Or Jacob. What would help? What should be done?

And the first answer, the answer to almost everything down through the years, was Ask Father.

Since he was now certain Diana's injury was not primarily physical, there was no reason not to do what he now did— slide an arm under her knees and rise, holding her. An instant of kinesthetic memory struck him then, of Catherine's limp weight resting against him exactly this way— an unexpected shaft of pain. But he'd come to terms with that, and went steadily on, turning to descend the narrow staircase.

*****

“Vincent, do stop pacing,” Father requested, still bent with his stethoscope over Diana.

Vincent obediently halted, staring at the rough wall before him, and then was in motion again across the widest open stretch of the hospital chamber, unaware of it, automatically avoiding wheeled stands and the metal edges of empty cots.

“She spoke, last night, of a ‘feedback loop,'” he said abruptly, having recovered the term from his memory on the way down.

“I see.”

“Do you, Father?”

He wheeled to find Father faced around, stethoscope no longer in use and one earpiece tapping thoughtfully at his mouth

Father responded judiciously, “As much as one can, having never experienced such a thing firsthand. I grasp the concept, at least: energy multiplying in force, into a destructive overload, as it repeatedly flows back and forth between two connected sources. That would be the theory. But the reality? Describe it to me, Vincent, as best you can.”

“It affected me. Powerfully. Last night. I was obliged to withdraw, within. Several times. But I do not believe she was then receiving it back from me, if I understand the process. Her limited awareness still protected her, I think. And the fact I did not allow it to continue. Broke the loop. This afternoon... my control was less good. And the, the force stronger. There was a physical effect, Father: a physical impact. Beyond her tolerances. Almost beyond mine.

“The physical symptoms are, I believe, secondary— the outward sign of an inward injury and retreat. Which we have known, you and I. But unlike me, she may be responsive to medication. I hope she may. For the only other treatment we have found is to wait and to hope. And she has not my endurance, Father. Should it progress into seizures, catatonia, the... other stages you have observed in me....”

“Medication should at least be tried, certainly. And perhaps consultation with Peter. He has been working with children born addicted to narcotics— horrible even to contemplate— and has mentioned to me that new drugs have been developed to treat certain kinds of hypersensitivity and profound withdrawal in such infants....”

Turning back to Diana, Father added, “Perhaps, while I'm occupied here, you might arrange for a message to be delivered to him.”

“I'll send Richard—” Vincent said, reflecting that there was no need of a sentry since he himself was here.

“Vincent, write it yourself. In my study or your chamber, it makes no difference. Somewhere else.” Father's expression, in profile, showed exasperation.

“Must I be blunt? Go away, Vincent. If there's a change, or if I need further information, I'll let you know. But if Diana's condition was, as I understand, produced by an excess of strong emotion, what is to prevent its being worsened by your very undisciplined presence? I have asked you four times to stop pacing. Judging your agitation by your motion, I think your most useful contribution would be to find something to do elsewhere.”

Again, Vincent halted. Leaned on a stand. “There may be signs, Father. Too subtle for ordinary detection. I would know.”

It was, he thought, a solid, legitimate reason. Not merely that her absence was so upsetting that he couldn't face having her out of his sight, on top of it. Needed the reassurance of seeing her ribs steadily rise and fall with her breath. Her shut eyes, which almost allowed him to imagine she merely slept.

“Vincent,” said Father sternly, “since Jacob came to us it has been among my greatest fears that I would someday have to treat him for some form of severe injury or illness. And I have given serious thought to what could be done to restrain you, considering the probable effect upon you both. And each of you upon the other. If, as you conjecture, Diana is empathically sensitive, I consider this present situation comparable. For anyone else, I would recommend a sedative. For you, the most constructive alternative might be to render yourself incapably intoxicated, preferably at least until morning. I already have one patient. I have no wish to attempt to treat two. And I certainly am not going to allow you to endanger the health of the patient I already have, whom you have delivered into my care. Have I made myself sufficiently clear?”

“Yes, Father.”

But it was another long minute before Vincent could make himself know he might still be endangering Diana and, beyond that, to make that knowledge matter, set against his own absolute reluctance to budge from this chamber.

No discipline. No discipline at all. Father was perfectly right.

As Vincent strode toward the passage, Father added, “And Vincent....” When Vincent turned to meet Father's sober eyes, Father continued, “There is another matter... I've put off discussing with you. As soon as Diana is well, or at least stabilized, will be soon enough, though. Sufficient unto the day. Now see to contacting Peter, please.”

It took perhaps five minutes to compose the note and summon a runner to deliver it. As Vincent sat at Father's desk contemplating the rest of the day stretching intolerably before him, William came in wanting to know where Father was because the food needed to be settled.

“Food?” Vincent responded vacantly.

“For the feast. Tomorrow. For Kanin!” William said impatiently, fists on hips.

“Oh. Yes.” The celebration of Kanin's return had completely vanished from Vincent's mind. “Father's busy now. With a patient.”

“Well, if he expects cake, we're going to need a whole lot more sugar, and that'll be the whole month's ration for everybody, I hope you realize that—”

“You must discuss it with him, William.”

Vincent escaped through the back doorway just in time to run, almost literally, into Mary: also seeking Father, to determine who'd be taking care of little Luke while Kanin and Livvy were occupied...? After their long...separation? Pink cheeked and happy, Mary looked up at Vincent as though expecting him to volunteer.

“Perhaps the nursery?”

Mary tipped her head and peered at him. “Why, Vincent, what's wrong?”

“Diana,” Vincent said, with effort, “is ill.”

Mary clapped a hand to her cheek. “My goodness! Nothing serious, I hope?”

“I also hope. I—”

“The hospital chamber, of course? Oh, I'll go right away and see if there's anything I can do,” Mary declared, and ducked into Father's study as a short cut.

Looking after her, Vincent was resentful and sharply envious, in that moment, that Mary could go where he'd been all but forcibly expelled. But that wasn't reasonable. Mary presented no danger. Only him. Only him....

No discipline. None. And what was to be done about that? When, if, Diana recovered? Because he would not give her up. Not unless she forbade him to see her; perhaps not even then. Not that he seriously imagined she would, after all the risks she'd insisted on snatching, her adamant refusal to be protected. But no discipline, added to no defenses, was a combination profoundly dangerous in itself and whatever was to be done?

And what should be done about the sly, indeterminate threats the bowers kept presenting her with?

Turning suddenly aside into a cross passage to avoid a trio of excited children, led by Samantha clutching a bouquet of large orange paper flowers, apparently headed for his chamber because he overheard mention of his name, Vincent found himself going, and thinking, south. Toward the bowers' ground.

But no. That was only frustrated energy and anger he'd been able, so far, to control but never forgotten. But the thought came to him that although his blindness and carelessness were certainly the cause of Diana's collapse, and he held himself fully responsible, it was the issue of the bowers' implicit threats that had been the trigger. Except for that, he might have realized the danger and closed himself off soon enough to prevent the crisis. Perhaps have even begun to teach her, as he was already beginning to teach Jacob, how one might erect defenses and not be wholly at the mercy of others' uncontrolled emotions. Except for the bowers, it might yet have all been well....

Except for Paracelsus' letter.

He realized then that he'd left it behind, in Diana's loft. And his cloak. That was something constructive he could do now: retrieve them. And the thought was welcome to him because he knew that if he remained Below, there'd be no way to avoid becoming involved in the preparations for the celebration; and although Kanin surely deserved a celebration, Vincent wasn't able to think about that now, or tolerate either the ambient happiness, or the prospect of making others feel guilty for feeling it, or undertaking the all but hopeless task of explaining why Diana was ill, what'd happened, what he'd done.

Father tried; Jacob was still far too young. Only Diana really understood.

Having tapped a notice of his destination, he turned and headed, by a roundabout route, back to Diana's building. Not chancing the stairs and the alarm guarding them, he instead cut through the vacant second floor apartment, thence to the rain-slashed roof. He tapped on a skylight until he caught the attention of Kristopher, who slipped the latch so Vincent could lift the skylight and drop through, careful to miss Kristopher's easel.

As Vincent straightened from the crouch of landing, Kristopher finished cranking the window shut and turned, asking hopefully, “Is she going to be gone awhile? There's hours and hours of daylight left!”

“I think she may,” Vincent responded, making the effort of patience.

Kristopher immediately dove past him and started rummaging in cabinets for brushes and other equipment, exclaiming, “Great!”

Vincent generally liked the young man and appreciated the tact whereby Kristopher confined his activities to times when Diana wouldn't be obliged to notice them. Sharing living quarters with someone of very different interests required a certain amount of consideration, and Kristopher seemed to have appreciated that from the first. But Vincent couldn't help feeling that Kristopher's open glee at having the loft all to himself in daylight showed a fundamental lack of sensitivity.

“It's coming great,” Kristopher announced enthusiastically, as Vincent went to the front of the loft to collect what he'd left behind. “Want to see? She won't even look in this direction. Some models have no esthetic sense, Picasso had that problem. But it doesn't matter. All she has to do is be beautiful. You don't expect a lily to appreciate Georgia O'Keefe making a sketch of it that'll be looked at a hundred years. Two hundred. Who knows, maybe forever! Come on, see how great it looks!”

Vincent swept up his cloak, then scanned the table and laid the cloak aside again to empty and rinse the tea mugs. He wrapped the tuna sandwich in foil, methodically crimping all the edges, and stored it in the refrigerator.

Turning, he noticed that the screen of Diana's computer still glowed green: she'd left it on. The screen was full of text— undoubtedly her comments on Paracelsus' letter. He averted his eyes and looked only at the keyboard while he carefully chose the right keys first to save the document under a temporary name, then to clear the screen, and finally to exit the program. But as he was about to depress the power switch, the thought came to him that it was only Thursday. Since Diana reserved only Sundays to herself, two working days remained in the week, and it was highly unlikely Diana would be able to return by tomorrow, at least judging by his own experience. It might be weeks before she was well again—any other outcome, Vincent refused to consider. And in that time, there would be no progress on her case. That, he was certain, would have troubled her. Even had he not valued and respected Diana's work for its own sake, as he did, its importance to her would have made it deserving of separate consideration.

When Catherine had needed, for whatever reason, to be absent from her work, she'd simply called Joe with some excuse. It had always seemed sufficient, and she and Joe had remained very close. Standing over the computer, Vincent wondered if he might initiate such an excuse for Diana. He and Joe had met once, not on particularly friendly terms; but in the time since, Joe had given no sign of bearing a grudge nor made any further inquiries about the tunnel system he vaguely knew existed.

Catherine had always trusted Joe, and even though he and Vincent had sometimes been at cross-purposes, Vincent believed Joe had acted from the best motives and a quite understandable ignorance. And Joe would see that the case was not neglected.

That decided him.

He knew Diana's system of keeping her files, and easily found the directory which held material on her current case. Restarting the word processing program, he pulled up her case log— a record of meetings, reports assigned and received, and interviews— and scanned quickly through it to assure himself it included no comments of a personal nature she wouldn't want anyone else to see. As he'd expected, there were none: Diana was very systematic and professional about her work, and the last entry was dated today, reflecting what had happened at the morning meeting. She must have updated it immediately upon returning home. The other files included transcripts of depositions, profiles of the people involved, and a detailed breakdown of suspects' locations at crucial times— some validated, some not.

Finding a suitable disk in a drawer, Vincent checked that it was empty, then copied the pertinent files onto it, omitting only Diana's working notes, which he knew she'd consider private and kept for her eyes alone.

After shutting the system down properly and turning the power off, he looked up the phone number for the District Attorney's office before noticing it was already entered as one of the preset labeled numbers her phone could dial for itself. That was welcome: the phone's buttons were very small and he'd been concerned he might hit the wrong ones and reach someone else altogether. He didn't know if such mistakes were common: he'd never used a phone before, though he'd often watched while Diana did so. Intruding on some stranger would, at least, be awkward and embarrassing.

Diana sometimes remarked, laughing, that nobody could hit you over the phone. Or see you, either, Vincent reflected, tensely waiting through about twenty rings.

A woman Vincent thought might be black, with a crisp, cultured voice, identified herself as Mr. Maxwell's secretary and said that Mr. Maxwell was in a meeting and who should she say had called?

Vincent thought a second, was asked if he was still there, and admitted, “Vincent.”

“May I have your number, Mr. Vincent, and Mr. Maxwell will—”

Vague noises, voices, his name spoken, and then suddenly, loud, Joe's voice demanding, “Is this who I think it is, and what the hell do you want? Hello?”

“Yes.... Diana is ill. I thought you should be told. So that her work would not go unattended. Her files are current. I can have them delivered to you—”

“What? She's sick? What hospital? What happened?”

“She is not at any hospital, but she is being well cared for. The files will be—”

“Look, you can't just call up and tell me something like this and that's it, here's the files, so long. I'm picking up those files myself. You where I think you are? Where her files are? Hello?”

“I will have the files delivered to your office. They are on a disk. I assume you have computers which can read them,” Vincent said, enforcing patience. “She will be concerned about her case, which involves an abduction, and—”

“I damn well know what it involves, and I'll be there in 15 minutes. What? Make it 20. And you better still be there, you got that?”

A harsh clack, and then a buzzing noise he assumed meant the conversation was over. He set the receiver down carefully, properly, thinking that he should simply have sent the disk with a note. But then Joe might not have believed it and started a concerted hunt for Diana which might have created awkwardnesses. And explanations required from Diana, afterward, which would have created more awkwardnesses. So perhaps it was better, after all, to do what he'd done.

He decided he didn't care much for telephones. One could have no sense of the person to whom one was talking, and what he considered extremely rude interruptions were evidently customary.

A phone did have advantages, however, in its ease of conveying messages.... Following a related thought, he opened the big phone directory again, located Peter Alcott's number, and dialed. The woman who answered referred him to another number, that of a midtown pediatric hospital, and after a lengthy process of something called “paging,” he was rewarded with Peter's familiar voice. As Vincent explained the situation, there were no interruptions and Peter didn't once say hello? in an annoyed, complaining voice.

“I thought,” Vincent added, “with greater understanding, you might be able to bring appropriate medicines with you.”

“Certainly,” Peter's voice replied. “I have something to finish here, but it won't take long. I'll come as quickly as I can. I have too many vivid memories of what you went through at 17 and then again, last spring. Anything else? Then I'll see you soon.”

“Thank you, Peter.” Vincent hung up reflecting that it wasn't only a question of using a phone: some people simply had better manners than others.

He still had ample time to be gone before Joe arrived. But he found he didn't particularly want to. Whatever the telephone's virtues of speed and convenience, there were some things better conveyed face to face.

None of the lights of the alarm's keypad was lit. He assumed that meant Diana, for some reason, had turned it off. So there should be no problem about letting Joe in. Collecting the diskette, he put on his cloak and slid the letter into an inner pocket, then went to reposition the folding wooden screen to afford Kristopher's art some privacy: no matter what the painting looked like, he was certain Diana wouldn't want anyone else seeing it.

Kristopher showed no signs of minding or even noticing, working on a streaky, indeterminate darkness in the upper third of the painting.

Most of the painting was dark— an earthy mix of blacks, umbers, deep blues, dull clay yellow, greys. The surfaces of the oil paint, laid on thickly with a palette knife, gave a vertical texture and imparted a roughness cut through by slick glints that suggested water, seepage. Though it was all darkness, it was a distinctively tunnelish darkness, enclosed and damp. Deep, Vincent thought: below the pipes. Where sounds echo or die without seeming reason or consistency. Where no light comes.

Yet there was light— from the lower righthand corner. Vincent stood a little aside to look. Seeming very small, in contrast to the large areas of abstract dark, was Diana holding a lantern up before her, poised at a slight angle as though she were just about to step beyond the margin of the canvas.

Without having really thought about it, he'd expected a more traditional portrait—a bust, perhaps, or a figure study of Diana seated in a chair. He'd assumed a smile. Instead, the face was still just a pale smear of the right shape, except for the wide eyes looking straight ahead, seeking something unseen beyond the confines of the canvas. Her beautiful hair was another smear, brick-colored, the loose, descending curves only suggested. But considerable attention had been paid to detailing the scuffmarks on the shoes and the dirt smudges on the knees.

The overall impression was of intense concentration, purposefulness.

Then Kristopher bent lower and Vincent noticed, to the left side of the picture, an area darker and more coherent than the rest. Diana's shadow, spilled out behind her against the rock wall. It took attention to distinguish the shape against the surround; but the outline seemed taller, broader than it had any right to be.

Then it came into focus, and he realized that the shadow was his own.

Diana, hunting alone in the large darkness, casting his shadow.

At last seeing the picture whole, Vincent stared, strongly affected by the image but not knowing yet whether he liked it or not. Somehow it didn't seem to be a thing that asked for his liking, one way or the other. There was a stubbornness about it, an intransigent factuality like a tree's, or a stone's, that seemed to say with or without his approval, they were themselves, regardless.

Without looking around, Kristopher asked diffidently, “You like it?”

“I’ll have to think about it.”

The outside door buzzer rang and Vincent returned to the office to hit the proper buttons to let Joe in.

Hands in wet trenchcoat pockets and rather out of breath after the long climb, Joe halted just past the top of the stairs— scowling, uneasy. For a long minute, he and Vincent surveyed each other. Then Vincent laid the disk on an orange crate serving as one of the couch's end tables, straightened, and retreated a step, waiting.

“I could have 20 cops downstairs this minute,” Joe announced belligerantly. Vincent merely looked at him. As though the steady gaze were a fresh provocation, Joe added, “I could have snipers across the way and on the building next door.”

Vincent gestured at the disk. “Those are her files. I think she would wish you to have them as quickly as possible, to make the least interruption in the effort to find the young man, Frank Silvio.”

Joe looked at the disk, scrubbed a hand across his mouth, then glanced up sharply. “Is she dead?”

“No!” Vincent was shocked to think he might have conveyed that impression. “She has suffered an injury. How serious is not yet determined.”

“What kind of injury, exactly?” Joe's expression made plain his suspicion that whatever it was, it was Vincent's fault.

As it was. “It is difficult to explain—”

“Try,” Joe directed grimly. “I got time.”

“She has sometimes mentioned that she is generally regarded as some kind of psychic...? It is so. But these strengths, these gifts, carry their own unique vulnerabilities. It’s... a spiritual injury. Or a psychic one, if you prefer that term.”

Joe's mouth twisted into a derisive grin. “What, are you claiming somebody put a curse on her or something?”

“I have explained as best I can,” Vincent responded evenly. “I hope she’ll be recovered soon; but I don’t know. So I thought it best to contact you, so that no questions would be raised. Catherine trusted you, when private matters arose suddenly.”

“Yeah. I guess she did. And never told me a damn word!” Joe said with a rising bitterness. “I suppose it didn't matter, just a dumb yuck from Westfield Law, he'll swallow anything, good old Joe!”

“It wasn’t like that. She trusted you. But some secrets were not hers to tell. She had given her word. And kept it. To the last. She always spoke of you with great affection.”

“And she never spoke of you at all. And that's what I can't get over, that she'd get mixed up with....” After a sharp upward glance, Joe didn't finish, which Vincent supposed was tact of a sort, and therefore an improvement. Pulling a hand from his pocket, Joe gestured and shifted his weight.

“Look. Vincent. I'm the acting District Attorney of the City of New York. And for all I know, you're getting me involved in some mess that could ruin me for life. I killed the warrant like I promised, but some things don't get legal just because there's no law against them. You're not legal! What the hell are you?”

“One who loves Catherine. Jacob's father. Diana's friend.”

“Yeah, friend!” Joe said sarcastically. Then his face turned puzzled and he studied Vincent again with a hardening expression. “I'm not buying into this on your say-so. I got to see her— Diana. I got to know this is on the up and up.”

Vincent considered. Joe already knew the tunnels existed, but had not betrayed that knowledge. He'd seen Vincent. What secret remained to be kept?

“Would you consent,” Vincent asked at last, “to being blindfolded?”

Considering in his turn, Joe met Vincent's eyes again, deciding with a slow nod. “Yeah. If that's the way you want it, if that's how it's got to be, then yeah, I'll go along with it. On one condition. That you finally tell me what the hell's been going on all this while!”

“Concerning Gabriel?”

“Concerning goddam everything! From the beginning. Look, I'm in this deep, at least I should know what it is I'm getting into!”

It was, Vincent admitted, a reasonable request. And a rather sad one, full of bitten-back frustrations that undoubtedly went back years— a sense that Catherine had not been open with him, that she'd deliberately misled him and then used his loyalty and affection for purposes he'd known nothing of. Though Vincent was too upset, himself, to sense much about the man, he could easily imagine Joe's indignation and sense of betrayal. Joe was owed something.

“Very well. Ask what you will. As we go, I will tell you what I can.”

Joe bobbed forward to scoop up the disk and stuffed it in his pocket as he turned back toward the stairs.

Following him, Vincent thought that escorting Joe would at least provide an excellent excuse for returning to the hospital chamber. Father would be so occupied with shock at Vincent's bringing such a visitor Below that other concerns might well be forgotten for quite some time.

******

At the foot of the first ladder, Vincent signaled a summons to Jamie and then led Joe on. At the moment, a blindfold would have been an absurd encumbrance: had Vincent not kept a steady hold on his arm, Joe would have walked into walls or stepped into the first hole they encountered.

Vincent's dispassionate account of how he'd found Catherine in the park and taken her Below occupied the journey as far as the Mirror Pool, where Jamie was waiting for them. She looked from Joe to Vincent in astonished inquiry. And Joe surveyed her with plain relief.

Answering the implication, Vincent said, “I am the only such one Below. Or anywhere, as far as I know.” When Joe made no comment, Vincent went on, “Jamie, this is Joe Maxwell, a friend of Catherine's. Lend him your arm, please.” Folding the cloth Jamie had brought, Vincent turned Joe and set the blindfold across his eyes, adding, still to Jamie, “It may mollify Father slightly if we observe at least some of the forms of security.” Fastening the knot, he asked Joe, “Is that uncomfortable?”

Joe released a tense, nervous laugh. “Running around the sewers and you ask if I'm comfortable? Sure— fine, great.” As Jamie slipped her cast-bound arm under his, Joe said absently, “Thanks... Jamie? Yeah, thanks.” Turning his head blindly toward Vincent, Joe went on, “How about Burch? You kill him?”

“It was a trap. Meant for both of us. He was shot—”

“The Compass Rose, right?”

Joe's habit of interrupting was plainly not confined to phone conversations. “Yes. I tried to shield Elliot from the explosion; but once in the water, I couldn’t find him. I believe he must have drowned.”

“You lived through it,” Joe retorted. “And no body was found. What's to say he didn't live through it too?”

They passed a sentry post— a wall with one brick inconspicuously ajar and the general darkness hiding the watcher. But with both Vincent and Jamie escorting the stranger, no alarm would be given.

The pipes' current messages reported Cullen's attempt to recruit help in dealing with water pooling in the Great Hall, Mary's summons to Samantha, and notice that a barrow of cabbages was approaching from the 33rd Street threshold and could use help getting down the serpentine, each message rendered distinct through the pitch of the pipe that carried it and the individual cadences of the sender. Without thought, Vincent recognized Pascal's hand in the report about cabbages.

Replying to Joe's challenge, Vincent said, “I survived through Diana's intervention. There would have been no one to help him... and the current flows fast there and the piers themselves are a danger.... I hope you may be right. But I know nothing of it beyond what I have told you.”

“Okay. And this Gabriel: who the hell was he?”

“Of that, I know as little as you. Probably less. Of him, I know only that he was a cruel and powerful man who prized rarities. And considered our son such a rarity. One he wished to possess. When he had his prize, he murdered Catherine as being no further use. Rather than lose Jacob, he would have murdered him as well. That,” Vincent concluded curtly, “is what I know of Gabriel.”

Joe was silent as Jamie, leading, guided him down a stair, numbering the steps. Vincent, behind, kept a steadying hand on Joe's shoulder until they reached level passageway again. The contact confirmed his impression that Joe was uneasy, nervous, but not seriously afraid.

As they went on, Joe prompted, “And that cage, in the basement...?”

“I was imprisoned there for a time, yes. It was necessary. Jacob was ill, and needed me. Surrender was my only means of getting close.”

“Jesus,” Joe remarked in a low voice. “Ill. Like Diana's ill, now?”

“An illness of the same kind,” Vincent agreed meditatively, not having thought to compare the two instances before. “Not of the same nature, I think. But of the same kind. In his case, a lack. In her case, an excess. Jacob needed my presence. Whereas Diana.... We are trying to understand it, so that we may help her.”

“And who's we?”

“Vincent,” said Jamie, steering Joe around a turn, “where are we going?”

“The hospital chamber. Joe wants to assure himself that my account of Diana is accurate.”

Joe said again, “Ill. Is it catching?”

“It affects only those with certain... sensitivities. I believe you are quite safe.”

“Thanks a lot.” Joe smiled sourly.

Not a stupid man, Vincent reflected. Merely impatient. And perhaps somewhat lacking in imagination. Astute enough to employ and depend upon Diana to remedy that lack. Joe bore the blindfold well, more intent on filling three years' worth of gaps than on his immediate circumstances. What he pursued, he focused on steadfastly, with singleminded determination. Vincent could understand why Catherine had relied upon him.

As they passed Father's chambers, Jamie asked, “Mr. Maxwell, are you really the District Attorney? For the whole city?”

“Yeah. Why: you need a parking ticket fixed?”

“No, nothing like that. I just never met a District Attorney before....”

“Like they said to me when I sat down in John Morino's chair, ‘Enjoy it while you got it, 'cause it may not last long. There's a thing called an election in a couple months. You hear of elections, down here?”

“We have elections,” Jamie responded proudly. “In the common meetings, everybody gets to vote.”

“Well, good for you. So, next election, I may be right out on my... ear. And looking for work. You use lawyers down here?”

Vincent said, “Catherine taught us much. About how to best deal with the world Above.”

“Yeah. I can see that, I guess,” responded Joe thoughtfully as they rounded the last turn and arrived at the hospital chamber.

Backs to the door, Father, wearing a surgical gown, and Peter, in a business suit, were conferring over Diana's cot. Glancing to get Vincent's approval, Jamie removed Joe's blindfold. As Joe rubbed his eyes, Father turned and showed predictable astonishment. The surprise, to Vincent, was that Joe seemed equally astonished.

“Mr... Wells, wasn't it?” Joe said, advancing to shake Father's hand while Father glared past him at Vincent. Jamie backed off against the wall, prudently staying out of whatever awkwardness or dispute might ensue. Looking up into Peter's gaunt countenance, Joe added, “And don't I know you? Weren't you our expert witness on that molestation case that Cathy...sure, Cathy. I get it. Dr. Alcott, right?”

“Below, ‘Peter' will do,” Peter replied amiably. “Hello, Joe.”

“Mr. Maxwell,” Father said stiffly, recovering his hand as though suspecting Joe of carrying germs. “I certainly never expected to see you again. What momentous occasion brings you among us?”

“I was worried,” Joe said simply, “about Diana. How's she doing?”

Father's glance promised words about this, later, with Vincent, who didn't care, easing past to get to the head of the cot. Shutting his eyes, he laid the back of his hand against Diana's cheek, concentrating, hungry to feel any stirring, any response. He opened his eyes to find himself under Peter's saturnine, sympathetic inspection.

“Any change?” Peter asked.

Vincent desolately shook his head. “Except, perhaps... that she seems a little colder.”

“You're right: two degrees subnormal. And dropping. Jacob and I have been discussing stimulants. But Vincent— is it really the best thing for you to be here?”

“I’ve been away over two hours,” Vincent rejoined angrily. Not angry at Peter, merely at the circumstances: Peter, of course, would understand. “And in that time, her condition has worsened. So what purpose does my absence serve?”

“It keeps a considerable distraction,” Peter commented mildly, “out of the doctors' hair...”

“The doctors will have to arrange their hair as best they may. Until I have indisputable cause to believe my presence endangers her, I will remain.”

Having crossed Father in the matter of Joe, it somehow became easier to defy him concerning the larger issue. Father broke off his conversation with Joe to trade a bleak glance with Peter.

“He has a point, Jacob,” Peter commented.

“It is against both reason and common sense—,” Father began heatedly.

Quietly stroking Diana's hair where a coil lay across her shoulder, over the sheet she'd been draped with, Vincent said, “I'm sorry, Father. But this is not open to discussion. I am no longer ten years old and to be sent to my chamber for obstinacy. I have remained away as long as I can bear.... Joe ...”

Looking up, he found Joe's expression not unlike Peter's— solemn, but with a quizzical edge, as though he found some source of amusement in the disagreement between Vincent and Father.

“ ...when you are content all is as I represented it, Jamie will escort you to a convenient exit.”

Surveying Peter, Joe remarked, “Dr. Alcott, I know you're legit. So I guess that's okay.” His glance shifted to Father, bluntly skeptical.

Father managed to hold his temper. “I also am a physician, yes. In the most general of general practice. Having no proofs to present, Mr. Maxwell. I offer the observation that you should have that knee seen to. As you grow older, it will probably prove increasingly troublesome. I understand such surgery can be done on an outpatient basis. If you frequent a chiropractor or someone of that ilk, I'm sure Dr. Alcott can arrange a referral.”

Joe had gone bright red. “It's nothing, I don't need surgery, and how the hell do you know about that?”

Father gave him a stern look over the tops of his glasses. “A matter of compensating balance. Uneven heel wear. A characteristic set of the shoulders. I assure you, I am fully qualified to diagnose a neglected kneecap, Mr. Maxwell.” He faced around toward the cot, giving Joe his back.

“Yeah,” said Joe, rather weakly. Father often had that effect on people. “Well, since you're both doctors, I guess it's all kosher, then,” he added, more briskly. “So, I'll take care of things. Say I put her on special assignment, undercover, or something. I can do that. But I expect to hear how she's doing, every day.”

When neither Father nor Vincent offered a comment, Peter said he could arrange that, and Joe wandered uncertainly off toward where Jamie was waiting by the door.

As Jamie started putting on the blindfold again, Joe said something to her, and she called, “Vincent? Mr. Maxwell wants to know if it's okay if he visits Jacob while he's here. Just for a little while?”

Vincent glanced up sharply. For it was in an attempt to extort custody of Jacob that he and Joe had first met. Joe pushed the blindfold up on his forehead to return the look steadily. For an instant, Vincent was torn. Then he reflected that Jamie would be there, and that no harm could come to Jacob Below without his knowing it instantly. And Jacob loved meeting strangers: a visit from Joe would break the monotonous discomfort of teething.

“I have no objection,” Vincent said, and returned his attention to seeking any response from Diana's still and cooling body.

Joe and Jamie left to the accompaniment of several children going through the passage singing rounds of “Frere Jacques,” high, sweet voices inquiring dormez vous? dormez vous? until the song faded into silence.

Bending closer to Diana's face, Vincent whispered, “Dormez vous, Diana? Where are you? Why can I not reach you? Where have you gone, and when will you return? What can I do to call you back?”

Behind him, he heard Father remark, with asperity, to Peter, “Very well, then. Let him stay, for the time being, since he's determined to remain. So: tell me again what you were saying about probable side  effects, at adult dosages.”

*****

Peter had to leave about four o'clock.

Diana's temperature began going up at six; by seven, it had reached 105° and she was in the grip of a series of convulsions that continued almost without intermission for over an hour. In spite of Father's regrets and Vincent's protests and best efforts, they had to employ straps: every muscle, every limb went into spasm and even Vincent couldn't restrain them all simultaneously. As Father secured her lower body, Vincent sat on the cot and supported Diana's head and shoulders against his leg until Father shouted at him and finally made him draw, sullenly, farther away.

Hastily wiping his brow after fastening the chest strap, Father pointed out that it would do Diana little good if Vincent's attempts at help broke her neck—not a remote possibility, since Father could quite plainly see the spasms running through both of them.

“I can control it,” Vincent insisted.

“Vincent, at this point you cannot control—” Father bent his head, biting his lip. “Vincent, if you insist on remaining, you will observe. Merely observe!”

“No.” The refusal bared Vincent's teeth. He pushed Father aside and closed a hand on Diana's elbow. And again, beyond the straining muscles and violent surges, beyond and apart from them, she was there: unthinking, sparked by flailing nightmare terrors, clenched to resist, flinging to leap away from conflicting forces that threatened to tear her very soul apart. But there.

And Vincent accepted it, shared it, let it all come in, being part of it until he lost all sense of the place or Father moving beside him, around him. For he could endure it and still reach past it to touch her, make contact. But not hold fast. She eluded him, drew away in some manner he had no words to describe even to himself. She didn't recognize him or know the contact could be a secure place for her, apart from the body's throes. To her, the contact was only another chaotic intrusion, indistinguishable from those attempting to rend her every joint apart.

Eventually he lost her. Eventually the seizures quieted into steady shivering. Slippery with fever-sweat, her porcelain skin cooled under his hand.

Kneeling at the side of the cot, Vincent slowly bent his head against the metal tubing at its edge. He became vaguely aware of movement in the passage—people leaving the Commons after supper. The familiar sensations of dispersal, no longer localized in one strong central core. Shutting the awareness away, he removed the rolled leather tube Diana had bitten into deeply, then felt for a pulse at her throat. Found it. Slower than before. He let the bite-roll fall away into the folds of the crumpled sheet.

“Vincent?” Father asked cautiously, and Vincent made the necessary effort of attention. Father said, “I fear that was a side-effect of the stimulant. I've administered an anti-convulsive. Which well may act as a depressant. It's beginning to seem we have only a choice of extremes. On the whole, the comatose state seems the lesser danger.... The medications have some effect. But I have failed to stabilize her. I don't know if she will survive a second siege like that. It places such a terrible strain on the heart.... Advise me, Vincent.”

“It's like trying to grasp smoke.”

“I don't understand.”

Vincent shook his head. “Can the straps be loosened now?”

“While she's quiet, they won't hurt her. If the seizures resume....”

Dully, Vincent accepted the sense of that. “I touched her. But I could not hold. And now she is gone again.”

Father studied him solemnly. “Does she know what is happening to her?”

“No. She merely suffers it. She's so afraid, Father....”

Pushing to his feet, Vincent went to a cupboard, gathered blankets, and laid them over her one at a time, tucking the edges where he could, in the spaces between straps. Then he looked around until he located the kerosene heater, dragged it nearer, and groped for a match to light it. Touched paper: drew out the letter, forgotten again until that moment. Thought of pitching it into the heater. But no: that would waste the pain and thought Diana had spent on it.

He held out the packet, not looking, and felt it taken. “It’s from Paracelsus. Diana said... Diana said it would be best to give it to you and ask, later, for your judgment and advice. I haven’t read it. Only Diana. The outer note contains her thoughts.”

He didn't bother watching Father work out the staples. He had no interest in the letter. His only concern was Diana, shivering with cold.

He lit the heater and presently the room began to warm. Diana still shivered. Her lips were pale. He smoothed her wet, matted hair away from her forehead with impersonal care, not prolonging the contact. For she was no longer there.

Father remarked, with unexpected feeling, “She is a remarkable woman.”

When Vincent looked around, Father was seated on a stool with Diana's note open on one bent leg but no longer reading, instead blinking thoughtfully at the ceiling. “I had not realized.... I agree with her conclusions, Vincent: that now is not the time to take up such matters.”

“When you will, then,” Vincent responded indifferently, pouring fresh water into a metal basin he then set on the heater to warm.

Refolding the printout and slipping it into the envelope, Father began, “Vincent, if I was short with you, before—”

Vincent cut off the apology, saying, “We both wish to help her. And neither of us knows how. I'm so afraid of losing her, Father....”

He tested the water in the basin, but it was still too cool. Father's clasp around his shoulders startled him. Then he relaxed into the familiar affection and concern.

“I need to write a note to Peter,” Father said after awhile. “Let me know if there's any change.”

Before Father reached the doorway, Vincent remarked absently, “It would be faster to phone. There's a phone on the corner, a few yards from the 14th Street threshold. Cullen knows how to use such things. And I know the number.”

“A good thought. Thank you, Vincent.”

A short while later, Jamie came in with supper on a tray, and asked for Peter's number.

“Cullen's not your apprentice,” she commented, with a stubborn lift of her chin. “And I want to help.”

“Of course,” Vincent responded, and recited the number from memory. Jamie repeated it silently a few times, then nodded and left. Vincent didn't worry she'd forget it: she'd memorized the whole of Portia's “quality of mercy” speech after one reading, as part of a Winterfest entertainment, and this spring had been busy adding Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portugese to her already well-stocked mental library.

Because Jamie had put a mug of tea in his hand, he sipped it once, then set it aside and forgot it.

Over the hours that followed, people came and went: Mary; Cullen, twice; William, uncharacteristically concerned and gruff, twisting his hands in a towel; a deputation from the younger children, asking if they could help. Then Jamie again, perching on a cot to ask questions about Joe, and about how Joe and Diana worked together, that Vincent absently responded to as best he could, from limited knowledge. To all visitors Vincent tried to reply courteously, as their concern deserved; but he would get lost in his own concern along the way, each time, and eventually look up and be surprised to find the chamber empty again, except for himself and Diana. He hoped the others would understand.

Diana was still so cold. He put bricks on the heater for a time, then wrapped them thickly in flannel and set them around her wherever there was space. He couldn't tell if they helped or not. The shivering continued.

Father returned and without comment set about checking Diana's vital signs. Vincent didn't need to ask the result: he knew. Heartbeat slow and increasingly irregular; temperature depressed; respiration shallow and often labored. Diana was growing weaker.

“We need to get some fluid into her,” Father remarked, almost asking permission, and Vincent nodded heavily and moved to the farthest corner of the chamber while Father prepared a saline drip and inserted the intervenous needle into Diana's wrist. For a moment the scent of blood reached Vincent faintly before being overcome by the acrid odor of alcohol. The smell of blood always affected him powerfully; it was several minutes before he could recover enough calm to turn and go back to the cot. Father already had the tubing connected and the needle bound in place with tape.

“Peter advises against any repetition of the anti-convulsive,” Father mentioned quietly. “The danger of further depressing her system is too great. There is so little margin: I wish she took better care of herself—”

“She burns on her own substance. Like a candle. A torch. It has nothing to do with this.”

“But it has everything to do with her ability to endure it. Another session like the last....”

“I know.”

They spoke in soft, nighttime voices, with no need to look at one another.

Vincent said presently, “I gather we're left with waiting and hoping.”

“It would appear that we are,” Father confirmed. “I suspected from the first that it would be beyond the bounds of medicine. But it had to be tried.... I'll stay with her, Vincent, through the night.”

“No need. I wouldn’t rest in any case. Go to your own bed, Father. If there's any change, I’ll know.”

“I was also,” said Father, “thinking of you. You will do her no good by becoming ill yourself. One must preserve a certain detachment, Vincent.”

“Yes.... But I don't believe that in this case objectivity is the answer. Or even possible. She's so frightened, Father. And feels herself so alone.” Vincent laid the back of his hand against Diana's cheek, confirming her continued absence. Then he shut his eyes wearily.

“Over and over, I have wondered: why is there no bond between us? What is lacking? Surely not love. Nor willingness. If there were a bond, I could reach her, even now; however lost or ill, she would at least know herself not to be alone. I could recover her even out of death.... The price I paid for Jacob's begetting was the loss of my connection to Catherine. I know that now, as much as one can truly know anything about what one does not understand. At least, I believe it.... Does my bond to Jacob exist at the cost of all other connections I might ever have? Had it been possible for Catherine and me to have other children, would they be condemned to be strangers to me? It doesn't seem right. It doesn't make sense, Father. Such limits contradict everything I have ever known or felt of love—that the capacity to love grows with loving. Becomes larger, stronger, better able to reach out with a wider concern and compassion. Yet I do not find it so. I've tried to be reconciled, but I cannot understand or accept it.... Diana has told me, with laughter, that I sometimes intrude upon her dreams. How I wish it were in my power to go where she now is, into this terrible dream of fear and isolation, and be with her there!”

Father leaned against Vincent's side, his head tilted against Vincent's. “Now you know how I have felt, time and time again. For you. And what connects us, Vincent, you and me, is only the haphazard kind of loving of which most of us are capable. And that has been enough, has it not? All there is has to be enough, or we are all lost. Perhaps this illness is merely a stage those of such sensitivities must pass through to attain the fullness of who they are destined to become. You survived the trial. I hope she may, too. For it would be cruel to impart such a gift and yet withhold the strength to endure it. Milton went blind, Beethoven deaf. And yet. And yet, what beauty they still made! It must be late: I'm philosophizing.”

Father chuckled softly, steadying himself on his stick. “But again, Vincent: don't be tempted so far in trying to reach her that you can neither help her nor return yourself. Second only to Diana's illness, that is what I chiefly fear.”

“I know, Father. I will take care.”

“See that you do.”

After Father left, Vincent turned out the harsh electric lamp over the cot and instead lit a candle, to have a more peaceable light upon his vigil.

*****

Having pulled up a chair, Vincent undid the strap securing Diana's right arm to the cot and clasped her hand in both of his. His head leaned against her shoulder, he fell into a sort of trance of meditation, reflecting on how remarkable she was, what courage it must take to accept and digest so much sadness and ugliness when, given her sensitivities, it must wound her so terribly. To let her imagination be wholly absorbed by one person's story despite knowing, from the first, how that story was to end. As she had with Catherine. And with every case she'd thrown herself into so entirely, with such ferocious and unswerving compassion, before and since.

He contemplated the irony that her intuitive gift, used but never wholly recognized, should also be her greatest vulnerability. Or perhaps not ironic, since her gift of imaginative identification with others was born of love; and love was always both strength and vulnerability. At least, in his life, he had found it so....

Although the hospital chamber was now quite warm, Diana continued to shiver. He heated a cluster of bricks to replace those which had cooled. He bathed the fever-sweat from her pallid face. But nothing seemed to ease the chill, which came from within.

Putting aside the basin, he settled back into the chair and resumed the contact of hands. His cheek drawn to the soft strength of Diana's upper arm, he explored again the signs, so obvious to him now, which he'd nevertheless remained blind to:

The comfort he'd always felt in her presence. No strangeness at all, not even in the first semiconscious haze, so that he'd believed the dimly seen woman could only be Catherine and couldn't comprehend her denial. Even afterward, when he'd seen her plainly and remembered his loss, he'd still felt as if he'd always known her: unsurprised, until he thought about it, that she'd reacted with no shock, no startlement whatever, to his appearance. Carelessly ascribing it to the time she'd had to become accustomed to her freakish guest before he'd become fully aware of her. But that didn't account for his own reaction.

An immediate affinity, unquestioned and largely unexamined. Full and unconditional trust. Acceptance.

Simply there. Between them. From the first.

And then the fact that he'd felt, so many months ago, a formless uneasiness that had pulled him to the park threshold in time to prevent her murder by vagrants. He'd been near, approaching, long before he'd heard the commotion from beyond the shattered door. Before she'd even arrived. Because her decision to seek him out again, her refusal to be excluded, had already reached him, summoned him. He'd known, not exactly that she was coming, but that he was expected somewhere other than where he was. So he'd gone, not quite intentionally, to meet her. Drawn, by a rapport he'd had no conception of and didn't want to recognize. But the fact was that he'd been there.

On some level he'd known, and acted on that knowledge. Yet he'd put the knowledge away, half formed, and then forgotten it because he was so certain, in his deepest heart, that his differences set him absolutely apart, that any seeming resemblance could only be partial and accidental.

I think too much about my differences, he mused. Diana's is the better way: she looks only for the likenesses, that connect, rather than the divergences, which divide and isolate. Have I grown proud of my differences, so that I refuse to acknowledge the commonalities?

It had come to the time he normally liked best: when the whole tunnel community had settled down for the night and only scattered sentries were wakeful. When the pressure of the discordant emotions had all stilled with the pipes, and the tunnels seemed to him filled with a sleepy peace, as with a fog.

In this quietest of times, Diana's head turned on the pillow and she muttered fretfully, “Hurts—”

“Diana!”

In an instant, Vincent was up and leaning over the cot, at the same time fighting to discipline the force of his reaction. Be glad only as Mary would have been glad. Relieved only with a relief like Father's, to find a patient responding. Touch her as gently as air, as breath, so that the contact couldn't possibly hurt her.

“New record,” Diana commented groggily, eyes squeezed tight shut. “... headache in your damn knees? What's—”

“Diana, you've been ill. Very ill. Be quiet now, I'll call Father—” But her hand's weak clasp held him in place, and her surge of fear at being left alone, however briefly.

“...Some awful dreams, babe. Hope you never....”

He felt himself losing her again, felt the connection weakening. Her pale lips moved slightly, making the word cold.

In deliberate haste, he yanked all the straps free, detached the intervenous tubing, and gathered her, blankets and all, in his arms, spilling bricks as he spun toward the door. He carried her swiftly around the bends of the passage, descending. Ducking through the entryway of the bathing pool, he strode directly into the water, the enveloping warmth.

When the water was up to her chin, her hair floating free, he felt her presence rouse and strengthen slightly. Made out the mumbled question, “...Swimming lesson?”

“Not tonight. Hush.”

“'Kay. Tired anyhow. Sorry.” She absorbed his reassurances of loving concern and simple physical closeness. He felt her feeling that solace. Like moonlight conveyed between facing mirrors. Flowing softly, warmly, between them in diminishing arcs that ended in repose.

His sense of her faded, but not altogether, not into absence: she was merely asleep. No longer shivering.

And two things which had lain in his mind, separate and unregarded, suddenly became fused and full of significance, certainty.

Because she'd roused when she had, in the most still hour of the night, he remembered her convulsions had coincided with the busiest hour of the evening, when people gathered for supper. He thought, overpeopled. Their inward clamor all coming in. Unbearable. Overwhelming.

Even he often had to raise barriers against it. And she had no barriers at all.

Therefore her next siege of convulsions would begin in about two hours: dawn Above, rising and breakfast, Below. Unless she was immediately removed to a place where nothing could reach her: where the stillness was infinite, absolute, and unbroken.

Taking a firmer grip on the sodden blankets and holding her tightly against him, he waded out of the pool. He paused at the hospital chamber just long enough to bundle her in dry blankets, then carried her on with long strides: east and down. To the place that had always been his refuge when the pressure of others' lives, or his own, became too great to bear.

To the Maze.

The immense cavern he thought of as “the Cathedral” was surrounded by smaller bays and caves etched by trickles converging, over eons, to form the vast, shallow lake at its heart, a mirror that reflected nothing, blindly facing the vaulted darkness. He laid Diana, still sleeping, in one of those sheltered bays and left a candle for company while he foraged for something to fuel a fire. Prowling the edge of the still lake, he presently found a makeshift raft drawn up on the rock, the boards dry enough to serve. He yanked the raft apart and broke the boards over his knee. Carrying back as large a bundle as his arms would hold, he built a compact fire at the front of the bay: where the heat would warm the rock but the smoke would rise to hang, perhaps forever, in the unseen crenellations above.

His clothes had partially dried on the journey down; and the layers, even damp, still kept the chill from him. He was not uncomfortable, settling crosslegged within reach of the fire, to tend and replenish it from the stock of wood laid aside. In fact, with nothing else he could think to do, the familiar and measureless peace of darkness and stone seeping into him, a benign anesthesia, he found it impossible to maintain alertness. A pine knot bursting would rouse him for a moment to check the fire with a heavy-lidded glance and Diana with a brief and careful touch. Then the inertia of stillness would reclaim him, suspended somewhere between sleep and waking.

With no startlement, he found the Other regarding him: resting at ease in a vertical cleft the firelight made dark. The Other had gone hunting through his dreams the previous night; and all day, Vincent had felt him close. So it was no surprise to see him, a more coherent shadow among the thousands clustered here.

The Other let his eyes slide away to Diana, disdainful, sardonic, then turned back to meet Vincent's again. He said, “Congratulations.”

Vincent said nothing. But he felt his back hair trying to rise against the clammy shirt. His lips drew back from his teeth.

As if in reply, the Other said, “Oh, I wouldn't think of spoiling your... idyll. Didn't think you had it in you. But then, she showed us Phantom of the Opera: you'd never have thought of it, otherwise.”

Vincent glanced around, visualizing more than seeing the huge dim cavern, the lake, and realized he was being accused of, or congratulated upon— it amounted to the same thing— having abducted Diana as the deformed and hideous Phantom had abducted the young singer who was his protegé and his beloved.

The comparison stung him into retorting, “It was to save her life!”

“Of course,” responded the Other blandly. “I take it back: you probably did think of it yourself. Or at least dreamed it....”

That shook Vincent, because it was true. These deep places, he'd always claimed as his own. They held for him profound, never-spoken meanings—freedoms and secret solaces. Places beyond rules, beyond propriety, where he could be, and do, as he chose, answering to nothing beyond impulse and need. The natural country of his dreams.

He'd dreamed of Catherine with him here, and of Diana. Sometimes bars intruded, which in dreams he broke; for the instinctual hunger tolerated no barriers between itself and the fulfillment of its desires.

His breathing deepened; and within him, a coil of tension stirred that was the tension of dreams, the intent and heedless wanting. He turned more fully toward the shadow, consciously putting his back toward Diana with the sense of protecting her, sheltering her behind him.

“No rush,” commented the Other comfortably. “There's tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. Because, of course, she's stuck here: if you take her back Above, she'll go into fits. Probably die. She can't even stand the world Below. It's down here or nothing. Convenient, but just a happy coincidence, I'm sure. So many of those, lately.... So you two can enjoy yourselves as long as you want. No work, no duties here. A permanent vacation. Better word than prison....”

In spite of himself, Vincent looked around toward Diana. Startled, finally, and afraid. Because the idea both appalled and attracted him. Here, it would be possible to keep her perfectly safe. They'd have no lives separate from one another. They'd be together here as they could never be anywhere else, except fleetingly and for a measured time. For Diana, even more than Catherine, was a woman whose true existence lay Above. Whatever half formed hopes he'd entertained of Catherine's forsaking everything and moving Below became quite unthinkable in regard to Diana.

As well ask Lisa to abandon dance, or Jessica, her photography. An accustomed life might be set aside; a discipline, never. A discipline was who one was.

She never would. And he would never ask it of her.

But if she couldn't go back, if no life were possible anywhere else....

“I will teach her,” Vincent stated harshly. “How to armor herself, not lose herself into the confusion and the pain—”

“Of course you will. How long have you been trying to teach her to swim? Two weeks? Three? So of course it will be a simple matter to convey to her what you've been trying to learn, yourself, all your life: how to block off whatever you don't like to face, hate it, cage it up. You might even do it. Six months, a year. Two. Assuming by that time, you'd still want to....”

Vincent's breathing quickened and his fear increased. For he knew he lacked the discipline to endure such a time as that. Without reaching out as the hunger impelled him, and taking her life from her— the life Above, that was rightfully hers. That, at least. And perhaps her life in literal truth. For the hunger was not gentle in its feeding. As the bowers had found....

The greatest danger in your life is me.

He'd said it. And it was so.

It seemed to him he could feel behind him, where she lay, the rhythms of her breath, not quite synchronized with his; and her pulse, a beat ahead or a beat lagging, like complex music yearning toward resolution and a harmony in which they'd unite and become reconciled, indistinguishable. Touching could do that. Deep touching. So easily....

He took a deep breath. Held it, trying to separate himself from the intimate syncopations. But his heart continued beating. He could not control that. It was impossible to control everything, to cease to feel her there, alive, so close behind him. Nor did he want to.

The held breath escaped in a sigh.

The Other regarded Vincent almost pityingly. “But why talk of years? You cannot answer for yourself even as far as tomorrow morning. The needle worked loose: there's blood on her wrist, have you noticed? Such a... fascinating, intriguing smell. Hot. Salty. More would smell even better, and imagine the taste—”

“Be still.” Vincent didn't clearly visualize to whom that was addressed. “It is of no consequence.”

With studied casualness, the Other mentioned, “Of course, blocks could be set. Imposed. Without teaching. She'd never even have to know.”

At once, without thought because thinking was dangerous, Vincent said, “She does not wish me to protect her.”

“Does she wish to be like this? Who broke the blocks she had, that were enough until now? Who drew her into a love that's likely to cost her life? Seems only fair to mend what you broke. But do as you please....” Head cocked, the Other regarded him slyly, sidelong.

Vincent knew he couldn't leave her— not here, alone, in this eternal midnight. His mind offered the fact that although one could live here for a time, the barren Maze couldn't support life. But that wasn't why. The heart had other reasons—even more persuasive.

Nor could he tolerate the consequences of remaining.

But if there were a way her vulnerability could be armored, fortified like a well-defended city or a walled garden, so that she could return to her sunlit life Above....

Finally Vincent asked, “How?”

Grinning with a flash of fangs, the Other shook his head.

“If you know it, then I know it,” Vincent declared. “For you are myself.”

The grin froze into an expression of rigid hatred. “Thanks,” said the Other, bitterly. “Many thanks for that concession. Once, I would have given much to have it. Now, I don't need it. I don't need you at all. Think as long as you like. You'll never hit on it: you shut all such knowledge in with me; and what I have, I keep. And even if I told you, you wouldn't do it. I would. I will. For a price.”

“What price?”

“Same price as always: everything. Give it to me!”

“No. You destroy.”

“I also defend. Remember? You have used me for that, put up with me for that. Like Father. What I have defended is mine. I paid for it with rage, and blood, and pain. Give it to me!”

“No!”

“I'm patient,” said the Other, easing back in his niche and becoming one with the darkness. “There's time. You'll have to bargain with me. There's no one else. If you don't... I'll get it anyway. You cannot keep me from it. The cage is broken. The world is my only prison now.”

No longer able to discern the Other, Vincent reached and slowly added another board to the fire. Then he sat clasping his knees. Trying not to breathe, not to feel. Desperately afraid. Shivering.

3

Before she even came awake, Diana knew something was wrong. Or maybe the wrongness was what dragged her up out of the comfortable place where she'd been. Into darkness dimly lit by a heap of tinkling coals, so the angles and planes of the rock close around her were visible only as dull smears of a red almost black. A red reflected by eyes, regarding her steadily. The eyes only, and dull glints of hair and metal as, stretched long on the stone floor, he shifted to lean on a bent arm.

Vincent. So that was okay then. Still, she felt all out of whack. Something wrong.

A complex of impressions: warmth, and the smell of woodsmoke; acres of still, dank, stale-smelling air; larger acres of absolute darkness; the distant intermittent plink of drops falling a long way into water. And another complex, from within herself, simultaneous: a shaky sense of exhaustion; aching in every joint, every inch of skin— even her damn hair felt sore; and a strange sense like the fading effects of migraine only more so— a dullness, as if some part of her she couldn't quite identify had been shot full of Novocain. Like a numb lip, but not that. Something as fundamental as her sense of balance, but not that, not precisely, as she pushed away blankets and shoved herself up to rest against the wall. Like that, but not that, just numb someplace she couldn't touch because it was numb....

She couldn't seem to take it in, make the impressions fit together or yield sense. The last thing she remembered was trying to get Vincent to go home. In her loft, the rain whacking down across the skylights. And now, this lightless void, the plinking drops, a place it seemed to her she should recognize but couldn't, except that it was plainly Below....

“You're better,” Vincent's voice informed her.

“If this is better, I hate to think what worse was. Got any aspirin, babe? About a dozen?”

“No.”

“So I guess no chance of coffee, either...?”

Silence was confirmation.

She rubbed her face, making sure everything was there, trying to figure out where the numbness was. And then was startled to her bones, taking the hand away, to find him right in her face, an inch away and closing. Her head was knocked back against the stone from the pressure of a forceful and unhurried kiss she was too surprised to enjoy or contribute much to. Her bottom lip caught against her teeth and got banged where his big lower canines made contact.

When he drew away, she couldn't decide what to rub first, her mouth or her head, and so used two hands to do both, still shaken by the suddenness. Not displeased, but damn surprised. And then thought back, remembered, and realized there'd been no bizarre bells and whistles, this time: no sense of doors opening, no breathless pressure of strange becoming. Not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed, she groped around inside for what she did feel: only surprise, being sore all over, and the sense of numbness, as though she'd suddenly gone deaf or blind, but that wasn't it either. She could still see his eyes plainly, although nothing of his expression, and hear the distant, hollow watersounds.

“That mean you're glad to see me, or is there some occasion I'm missing?”

“I wanted to. And an... experiment.”

“That so,” she said blankly. It was crazy, but the rhythms of his talk were off: as though he had to stop and hunt for the words. Everything off: his body language, reactions she was used to predicting without even thinking about it. Not awkward: faster. Lithe, sudden. And the words slower, fewer. Everything out of sync with her expectations.

Her touch was really off. Couldn't read him at all, the way she was used to.

“How long was I out?” she asked.

“I don't know.”

“Can we narrow it down a little, at least?” she said, trying for a light touch. “Couple hours, a day, a week?” No answer. “A year? Declared missing, presumed dead? Am I going to have to lie like hell to keep from getting fired? Are they looking for me, like I'm supposed to be looking for Frank Silvio?”

Medium silence, that she waited through with increasing anxious puzzlement. Then he said, “That's been seen to. Joe Maxwell has your files.”

“He what?” Diana demanded, and then clutched her head and wished she hadn't. Carefully, trying to be calm, she said, “You telling me that you gave Joe my files?”

“Not your notes.”

Oh, great, she thought, wondering what kind of mess she was in with Joe and what could have possessed Vincent to give away her case files. But it was done, and she didn't feel up to chewing him out about it. Undoubtedly, he'd had what he considered a compelling reason....

That thought made her ask again, more uneasily, “How long have I been out?”

“I don't know.”

“Yeah, well. That's where I came in, no use rerunning it all again, like ‘Who's on First.' Got anything to toss on that fire?” she asked, abruptly wanting to see him plain, see more of his expression than that disconcerting maroon stare.

Even that small feedback was cut off as he turned his head, a pose of considering. Then he leaned backward, reached, and popped onto the coals something heavy enough to send sparks bouncing and flying. After maybe a minute, a few small flames licked tentatively, liked the taste, and expanded.

As the light strengthened, surfaces became visible. He was dressed in what he'd worn to bring the letter, except that his shirt was wrinkled and smudged around the sleeves and drooped loose, in places, below the vest: no belt. He was sitting crosslegged, arms relaxed against his knees, gazing at her with a blank, casual attention, as if he'd be looking in that direction whether she was there or not.

There was blood on his chin.

“There's blood on your chin,” she commented in a small voice. “No: other side.”

He explored the place with the back of a hand, then licked the hand and groomed away the smudge. And then licked the hand again— the most unselfconsciously catlike gesture she'd ever seen him make. And the most disquieting.

“Better?” he inquired. “No mirror.”

“Yeah. You got it, that time.” She wondered if the weird numbness wasn't her at all, but something she was picking up from him. Because something was absolutely off. “You gonna tell me what's happened, what we're doing here?”

A slow, fanged smile, also disquieting. “Nothing. Now.”

All of a sudden, he unwound and was on his feet, one motion, and walked away down a slope she could only guess because he got smaller and lower. He stooped and then was coming back again, both hands rounded and tight together at the edges. Full of water, as she realized as he dropped down by her. He expected her to drink out of his hands. While she stared at him, the water dripped away, blotching the blanket. He flicked the wet off his hands and rubbed them dry against his thighs.

“No cup,” he commented, straightening. “Not far, the water. There's wood here.”

He bent and scooped up his cloak, and it suddenly came to Diana that he was on the point of leaving. Was already leaving, strolling out into the open as she shoved the blankets back and scrambled to her (bare!) feet, finding herself in some sort of long flannel nightgown or something and so dragging a blanket with her and trying to throw it around her shoulders, as she started jogging after him across the smoothly undulating stone, lame as all get-out, scared she'd bang her toes on something because she could see almost nothing now, just hear the whisper of his cloak as he drew it on, the almost soundless pat, pat of his steps even in those heavy boots.

Her hand touched him, fastened onto his left arm— or, rather, the shielding sleeve: thick, hard to hold a grip on— and she demanded, “What the hell, Vincent? You just gonna go off and leave me here? In the dark?”

“Dark? Oh. Your eyes,” he responded, as though it was her fault, not being able to see. He halted, she hung on. “Light a stick,” he directed tersely. “Go to the nearest pipe. Signal. Someone will come. Eventually. And show you the way back to your own place.”

She balanced from one frigid foot to the other, open mouthed and incredulous.

“Nearest pipe? How do you figure I ought to go about finding that, babe? When I haven't got the least damn notion where I am or what the hell I'm doing here? Or what the hell is going on!”

“I'm no babe of yours. Nor anyone's. And you know this place: you took him out of it. Found your way then, well enough.”

“Him?” Diana repeated blankly, thinking dark, water dripping, big space and suddenly did recognize the place, the huge dark cavern with the lake, that she and Mouse had hauled Vincent away from, after the awful business with the bowers. In the Maze. And she said again, “Him?” and suddenly began to know what company she was in.

Not frenzied with thirst, this time; not chained to a wall and intent on whacking anything dumb enough to get within reach. Not shackled at all, pulling easily free of her again and continuing away.

She felt a dumbfounded shock, as though she were a cartoon character who'd yanked on a rope and found a grizzly on the other end, stupidly staring at the rope instead of running like hell in the opposite direction.

Down here, she didn't even know which direction would be opposite, and anyhow he was headed steadily away.

Gripping the blanket around her, she stood on the cold stone wondering if she should count her blessings and leave well enough alone. Then she lunged after him and caught up, although it would have been easy enough for him to dodge her in the dark. Grabbing on again, she swung around and got ahead of him. A boot crunched her toes. She yelped and hopped, and he stepped back, waiting for her to make whatever nuisance she intended to make and then get out of his way.

“Look, I've wanted to talk to you such a long while,” she babbled, rubbing sore toes against the calf of her other leg, “so what's the hurry, ba—” Gulping the familiar endearment, she went on, “What's the sense of dragging me the hell off to the black pit at the bottom of the world like this, Phantom of the Opera stuff, and then you won't even hang around to talk about it, gloat, or anything...? What?”

He'd chuckled. In the dark, it wasn't a comfortable sound. He said, “I'm innocent: I didn't bring you here. He did.”

Innocent: that was a great word, she thought. Innocent, he was not, unless the word meant something different to him than it did to her. She said, “Anyhow, you're the one who's here now and I can't find my way out of this damn hole by myself. Help me out, okay?”

“Why?” he asked, with what seemed a perfectly honest curiosity— as though he couldn't imagine a reason to spend any more time or thought on her than he already had. And when she couldn't think of a response, he moved off, leaving her gaping a second time.

She reached for a hunch, something to tell her how to play this, but nothing, not a spark. Closest she'd come to anything like this was that first night she'd found him, but that had been straight garden-variety delirium, not being confronted by a whole second self, who'd stayed until she woke up but figured, with that, any duty to her was through and he was free to go on about his business.

What duty? What business? Why had Vincent brought her here? And what had gone so desperately wrong with him that it'd left the Other in control? And why was there tape on her wrist?

She gathered a determined fistful of blanket and pursued the fading sounds of his motion, calling, “Why is there tape on my wrist? And where are you going?”

The reply came, “Because Father put in a... an intravenous tube. And where I go, or what I do, is nothing to you.”

It was a long enough comment to let her locate him and catch up again. Careful of her toes, this time she didn't try to block his way, just kept jogging alongside.

“What the hell do you mean, it's not my concern? You get yourself into some damn mess and leave Vincent holding the bag, you better believe it's my concern!”

“That's backward,” he responded, not sounding very interested. “He's kept my cage, not I, his. But no more.”

It was awful, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers: finding a dangerous stranger in place of somebody you loved. Unnatural, a kind of insult, not so much to her as to the love that should be there and wasn't. And it was awful— frustrating, frightening— to feel she couldn't make contact: get through to him, or have any idea what he meant or intended, how he felt toward her. Like meeting a big, fierce-looking dog that just stared at you and you weren't sure what it'd do if you tried to pet it or back off, either one.

“Vincent loves me. Don't you care anything about me at all?”

She heard the swish of the cloak, felt him turn. Long silence. She felt looked at. Then he remarked, “You'll leave.”

Having passed that icy judgment, he moved on, but she stood there, feeling as if a door had slammed in her face. That dismissal had been beyond bitterness, beyond accusation. A fact: one he believed utterly. And that comment clicked together with an anguished cry— months ago, after Lena's wedding, out of troubled sleep: She's leaving. They all leave.

Vincent's cry.

So no matter what it felt like to her, it wasn't altogether a stranger, steadily pacing away from her around the edge of the lake. There were still connections, threads linking the Other with the Vincent she knew.

She's leaving. They all leave.

If there was any thread, however slight, that still led to Vincent, she could grasp it with the lightest touch, follow it, work along it to wherever he was.

He was there somewhere. Walled in somehow, behind the hateful changeling. If she just reached hard enough, or at the right angle, there had to be some way to get through, make contact. If that meant going after the Other with the equivalent of a sledgehammer, to break a way through, then she'd damn well do that.

Taking up the pursuit again, she misjudged the edge of the water and damn near fell in, but staggered back onto the dry rock in time and hustled on, one arm stretched out, blind, calling belligerently, “You can't get rid of me this easy, buster!”

She banged into a stone wall. Tried to comfort her bruised nose with her bruised fingers. Listened: heard only silence. Looked: saw only dark. Couldn't even make out the fire anymore. Maybe looking in the wrong direction, who the hell knew? Who the hell could tell?

She bent against the wall and began, silently, to cry.

“Come.” Nearly a growl. She spun, reached, touched dangling laces that meant her hand had found his shoulder. His disgusted voice continued, “I'll take you as far as the first pipe.”

His hand closed around her arm and she moved obediently, trying to be no trouble so he wouldn't simply walk off like that again. But when the stone underfoot slanted more steeply upward, and she thought maybe they'd left the cavern, she asked, “Why do you bother with me at all, then?”

“I made...certain promises.”

“What promises?”

No answer.

She said, “Will you wait by the pipe until somebody comes?”

“I have other interests.”

“What interests?”

Long silence. She waited.

“I am interested...in bowers.”

“Oh,” she said, “yeah. Naturally, what else? Should have known. Silly me.”

*****

She was cold, hungry, cotton-tongued, miserably scared, wearing a blanket over a nightgown, and felt like she'd gone ten rounds with an angry garbage truck. And as good as blind. So of course, once her monstrous companion had tapped out a message that would bring something like rescue and left her in one piece, she hesitated maybe ten seconds before pattering after him on her bare, cold feet.

He spun around so fast she bumped into him. No hand reached to steady her, so she fell. Banged her knee. Stayed real still, reciting submissive posture, submissive posture inside her head like a protective mantra and thanking PBS for every show on predator behavior she'd ever watched.

Because that was damn near the only thing she knew for sure about the Other: he was a predator, a hunter. The profile would start with that.

“Go back. Wait. Someone will come.” Definitely a growl, this time.

If she claimed to be scared of the dark, he'd shove a handful of candles at her and keep walking. So she said, “I'm scared to wait alone, blind. Anybody could come up on me—”

“No one comes here.” Small pause, then a change of tone: “Are you asking for my protection?”

Subconscious alarms went off. “No, thanks.”

“Why not?” he rejoined, as if she'd insulted him. “I have defended you before.”

“You have not!” she snapped, before she thought, and immediately crouched lower, thinking submissive posture, submissive posture, dammit! at a frantic rate.

“I have killed for you. At the park threshold.”

“That doesn't count.”

“How can a death not count?”

She replied pointedly, “Gabriel.”

A grunt— she had him there: they were still even in the defending department. Then he turned away.

She followed, staying just a pace or so behind, trying to guess what kind of personal space an empathic predator would consider enough, not interpret as encroachment, challenge, threat. Vincent liked people to keep their distance—hated to be touched, she knew, by anybody except the equivalent of immediate family. And sometimes not even them. The Other likely shared that trait, with fewer exceptions. Maybe none. She didn't dare crowd him; but she had to stay close, or she'd lose him. Balancing act: walking the skinny edge of what he'd tolerate, what wouldn't set off a reflexive swat.

Straight Alpha male drill: Honorable Other-san, until she knew better what she was dealing with. And slather on the flattery with the biggest trowel she could manage.

She rattled on, “It's just that I'd hate to miss the chance to get to know you. Find out how you're different, you and... him.”

“Different.” He said it like a swear-word.

“What you're like, then— okay? Talk to you. Because you're so... special.”

He swung around again, but she'd been waiting for that and stopped too, ready to duck, not that it would have done a hell of a lot of good. Those enormous hands gripped her waist, lifted, and deposited her about two paces back. But it wasn't a neat carry. He stepped on the trailing corner of the blanket, they both were pulled sideways by it, and he ended up sort of pitching her away. She landed solidly on her rear, hanging onto the blanket's edge and glaring up at where she thought he was.

“Stay there!” he shouted, so loud that echoes bounced it away down the crooked canyon.

She scrambled up and yanked on the blanket until he took his foot off it. Wrapping it around her shoulders with as much care as though it'd been a sable wrap, she shot back, “Till you defend me, with my okay, don't you give me orders, buster!”

Another grunt. He moved off, up a drift of loose rocks. She followed.

So much for Other-san. Some way, she just couldn't make herself do it. Not her style.

If he'd been going to whack her, he would have done it already, she thought. Either his promise or (she hoped!) some vestige of Vincent, kept him from just hauling off and removing half her face, as he probably wanted to. He wasn't used to being talked back to, that was plain. Now that she thought about it, he probably wasn't used to talking, or being talked to, at all. Much more into doing than talking, she thought, and stored that piece, another scrap of the profile.

She'd read that with cases of multiple personality, it could be real useful to know when the split had taken place, identify the original trauma. So she asked him, in the most casual way, “Weren't the two of you together once?” No response. “I mean, how far back do you go—do you know?”

“Always.”

“Like five years old? Six?”

“Always.”

She didn't believe it. But maybe he was like the tribes that counted one, two, three, many. Maybe the problem was inadequate terminology. Trying to narrow things down, she asked, “What's the first thing you remember?”

Long silence. Usually she could tell the times Vincent was thinking about something from the times he didn't intend to answer at all. But either the numb place still wasn't working, or the signs she picked up on, with Vincent, were different with the Other or absent altogether. And the darkness made the cues of body language hard to catch: the only things she had to work from were his pace, his tone of voice (when he'd talk at all), and the fact she hadn't annoyed him quite enough for him to whack her yet.

When she'd just about given up and was trying to think of another approach, he said, “Cold.”

Not a comment on the subterranean weather, she hoped. Maybe an answer. She prompted in an interested voice, “Yeah?”

“Cold. Dying. Alone. I remember that.” Some more silence. Then: “He does not. I do. I am stronger than he. Because I remember. And yet survive.”

Diana kept still. If that was what she thought it was, his claim was true: he'd been there always— from birth. For she took that to be an echo, down all the years, of a newborn baby tossed in a garbage can in frigid weather. Vincent had mentioned that, a time or two, with no special emphasis. So she'd nodded and stored it merely as a fact, a lucky chance that he'd been found and that was the end of it. Now, quite unexpectedly, she found herself locking onto that child the same way she locked onto the victim in a case when she decided to take it on. No: when it compelled her to notice it and she had to do something about it. When it stopped being a fact and became wholly, intimately real to her. As though it were still happening, this instant, and would keep on happening until she could somehow stop it.

Suddenly, she was imagining that child, imagining how it would be to be desperately hungry (she was) and lost (she was) and losing all hope anybody would ever come (she had), and all the world offering only the icy awareness of having been discarded. Left to die.

They all leave.

She murmured, “So afraid....”

“No: angry. Fear stops the breath, helps the cold. Fear is death. Rage makes the heart beat fast, breathe to shout louder. Rage keeps one alive.” Four paces, five, then: “Father, however, does not approve of rage. If Father is displeased, if he discards us, we will die. Therefore, we seek always to please him. Hide what makes him angry or draw away from us. I hide. Father knows nothing of me or my anger. Father loves him. Is pleased with him. We do not die.”

Diana was silent, her mind turning over at about ten thousand rpm's. Imagining the Other: born in trauma, fractured from the total personality and then maintained as a separate self, burning with the primal rage that fought off death and the intolerable solitude. Like a child's imaginary playmate, only for real and in deadly earnest. Repository and hiding place for everything unacceptable, dangerous. Whatever Father couldn't tolerate.

He said, “They all want me not to be. But I am. I don't need them. I don't need him anymore. I need no one.”

“Jacob...?” she suggested, and got a snarling noise for a reply. “But isn't he your son too?”

“I searched. To find, protect the child. He freed me to do that: we hunted together. But. But when I was lost, no one searched for me, protected me!”

He was jealous of Jacob. Bonded into love, rescued, welcomed, treasured: as the toughest part of a more conspicuously different infant never had been.... Diana could imagine how powerful that resentment would be. How it would have soured what should have been a victory. Following that thought, she guessed, “And Vincent won't let you anyplace near the baby now.”

“He tries to keep me caged. As before. But I am stronger now. No bars will hold. The child is mine: I have suffered to protect him. Brought him safe away.... But he was still taken from me. It’s not right!”

“Yeah,” Diana agreed thoughtfully— touched, in spite of herself, by the pain in his voice. “I can see, that'd be real rough. You've had it real hard—”

“Always. But keep your pity: I have no need of it. I need nothing that is yours.”

Diana reacted with anger because it had seemed he was confiding in her, giving come-on signals, and then suddenly turned on her and slammed that door of mistrust and dislike, get-away signals. The abrupt rejection hurt and confused her. But that wasn't his fault: plainly, she'd been reading him wrong, projecting her expectations onto him and then getting mad when they didn't fit. Needed to back off, be objective. Stop assuming and listen. Think.

Maybe what she'd taken as confiding was no more than the absolute directness the Other's actions had all shown. Impulse translated immediately into act; maybe speech was the same. Maybe she looked for complications, subtle negotiations of approach and retreat, where there simply weren't any. Likely, he was so used to hiding that he'd never developed the ordinary social concealments and repressions that came from growing up among people. She'd noticed that same openness in Vincent. But Vincent could afford it: he kept all the really unacceptable stuff blocked off, caged up. From childhood on: dumping all that garbage to his dark, secret twin, who fed on it because there was nothing else and it was that or die. And the Other's sole reason for being was the absolutely uncompromising drive to survive. He'd eat anything. And turn it all into rage....

She'd begun to imagine the worst cases of abuse she'd ever run into: children raised in cupboards, tied there, for years; children so starved for stimulation that they'd monotonously bang their heads against walls until the blood came, simply to be feeling something; children tortured as a form of amusement.

And the profile she'd begun to put together of the Other was more terrible than that. Because he felt it all, had suffered it all. From the first: forever. And remembered. And still was living it.

Imagining what that must be like made her want to either cry or hit somebody. Or both.

Didn't mean she was going soft on the damn changeling. Lots of the guys she'd gone after, and collared, had really hideous childhoods too. Had suffered almost unimaginable cruelties. That hadn't stopped her then, and wouldn't now. But you had to call the thing as you saw it; and wounded children, you could never leave out of the account.

Vincent felt the same: harming children was the one thing you could absolutely guarantee would set him off. Even the bowers had known it. Over and over, he'd taken awful risks to rescue some injured, brutalized child... except the one he kept locked inside him. Compensation, maybe? Guilt?

But that was history: her companion, who'd forced that bruising kiss on her, was certainly no child. Not anymore.

She asked carefully, “What... did you think of Catherine?”

“We loved her.” The response was immediate— and the growl was back, stronger than before. “But he would not let me touch her. But Catherine was mine: I defended her. He had no right to keep me always from her. Open the cage only then, to defend her, and shut it again upon me. For that, I was revenged upon him.”

“Was that when he caged you? After you found Catherine?”

No answer, walking steadily along. After a few minutes, she thought that this time, he meant the silence. So she kept pace, trying not to notice how cold, hard, and uneven the stone was under her feet, how much she really wanted a long hot bath: one that would last maybe a week. Later. When this case was resolved.

Trying another approach, she asked, “How old are you?”

“17.”

“Was that—”

“Yes. When the cage shut. Why do you ask so many questions?”

“Because I want to understand. I want to know you—”

“That is a lie,” the Other rejoined harshly. “You want to learn my weaknesses, to force me again into the cage. You're his ally, not mine. You refuse my protection.”

Impulsively, she slid her arm under his. “I'm sorry, I just can't. It costs too much. It keeps the war going, you and him. There's got to be some other way than that. I don't know what it is. Just not that.... What happened, when you were 17?”

“We touched a girl,” said the Other sullenly. “Lisa. Hurt her. Father was angry. She was afraid. Hated me. Left. So he hated me. And made the cage. I fought. But he forced me into it. Denied me. Wanted me not to be. Wouldn't let me touch Catherine. But I did. Touching her, I first felt my lack of words. I needed none, before. So it is changed, now. She loves me now. She cannot leave.”

“Now?” She knew he'd taken it wrong, personally, when she felt him starting to turn. “I only meant, I didn't know. I was surprised. Can't you tell? I didn't know, I mean, that dead people—”

Slight relaxation; no turn. “Whatever I once have, I keep. Time is different, in the cage. In Kansas....”

Now, she was the one who wheeled, staring. With the result that her arm slid away from beneath his as he kept going.

Take up Kansas later, she advised herself, hurrying before she lost him into some dark side passage.

They came to a stair she thought she remembered having come down, with Mouse, returning from the bowers' ground. About halfway, she guessed, between the cavern and the outer edge of the bowers' system. Climbing, she kept one hand tight to the wall and carefully held up the blanket with the other, afraid of tripping: because she was on her own. Her companion didn't take the outside. Did, automatically, for a few steps, then made a bounding stride and was ahead again. As plain as words, refusing to give, unasked, the protection she refused to accept. And she couldn't ask. But she would have appreciated it, that solidity between her and the drop....

When they came to the top and a rising passage, she said, “The bowers: what do you have against them?” She knew the cause of Vincent's anger but wasn't sure if it applied to the Other or not.

He responded, “They caged me. And I want to.”

“They'll be waiting for you. Been waiting for weeks, expecting you to come at them. I figure you know that?”

“No matter. They cannot defend so well as I can hunt.”

“But they caught, caged you once. And if they're prepared, ready...?”

“No matter. You wish to prevent me. Why? What kindness have they ever shown you?”

“That's not the point. This is exactly what Paracelsus wants!”

“He's dead. I care nothing for his purposes. Among the bowers, I can do as I want. Whatever I want. I don't answer to you. Or to anyone. What do you fear? That I will die? Or that I won't?”

She tugged the blanket straight and didn't answer. Because she didn't know. She sure didn't want him to die. But considering the reception the bowers had given him before, she had a deep uneasiness about what their hellish ingenuity might have prepared for him this time. It could be worse than death. A lot worse.

“You only want him back,” the Other accused. “Like all the rest. You want me caged, gone, forgotten. You hate me.”

“No, I—” Diana began, and then groped forward. Found nothing. Spun around, reaching. Still nothing. Slapping a wall, whirling, she shouted, “Where are you?”

From someplace above her, a chuckle. But the amusement didn't carry into his voice: “Continue as you are going. Upward. When you see the first light, call for a sentry.”

Sand and pebbles sifted onto her as he moved, in that higher passage he'd leaped into, where she couldn't follow. And she realized he'd been putting up with her just long enough to reach this point, where he could ditch her.

She was furious. Scared. Alone.

He'd understand that well enough, would Other-san.

*****

Diana turned in place, trying to locate a faint tapping. Slapping along the tunnel wall, high, low, she found a pipe running about ankle level. Then she scuffed until she found a loose rock to bang it with.

Not wanting to be as helpless as some people she could have mentioned, she'd learned about a dozen phrases in pipe code including her own name, Vincent's, and a few that covered most of the predictable situations she might find herself in that would require signalling. Although none of them exactly described her present situation, she knelt and started hammering out ¡Emergency! ¡Emergency! Diana>Father ???: lost/sendhelp ¡Emergency! «End»

On the second repeat, she heard other tappings stop in deference to an emergency signal. So the acknowledgement burst came through clearly: Pascal>Diana: hearyou/ responding/ Vincent ??? «End»

She banged back, Diana>Pascal: ¡Vincent/emergency! Vincent ??? / Diana ??? «End»

Pascal>Diana: Diana sick/hurt Vincent sick/hurt ??? «End»

Diana>Pascal: Diana unsick/unhurt Vincent ??? «End»

Pascal>Diana: understood working/fixing/doing respond respond «End» «End» «End»

Diana>Pascal: understood «End» «End» «End»

She continued to tap out her own name, counting a hundred between bursts, so Pascal could get a precise fix on her position. She'd only done three repeats when she heard a distant shout, “Diana?”

“Here!” she yelled, straightening, and a leaping light started descending from the top of the slope— Jamie, with a lantern.

Out of breath, Jamie set the lantern down, pulled two short pieces of pipe from a pouch hung from her belt, and stooped to signal something too fast and compressed for Diana to catch. Then Jamie looked up, waiting to translate, relay.

Diana tried to think what she could say that wouldn't alert any eavesdropping bowers and wouldn't send a rescue squad racing toward the bowers' ground, maybe resulting in a pitched battle and everything worse at the end of it.

“Tell Father,” she dictated slowly, “that I'm fine, just got separated from Vincent while he was taking me home. Tell him it's okay now, I'm seeing to it. Tape at 11. I mean, I'll fill in the details later. That's all.”

Jamie tapped it out, then listened. “Pascal wants to know what's the emergency, then. He's strict about claiming emergency when there isn't any.”

“Can you tell him, ‘Trust me'?”

Jamie grinned, then bent again to the pipe. Diana caught Pascal's terse understood; and maybe it was even true.

“Oh, and it might be a good idea to sort of add some security. For a while. On the downtown side, if you see what I mean. Is there a way to say that without saying it?”

Jamie looked up with open, sober curiosity. “Vincent already did that. Sentries doubled up on the south perimeter. In the signal he sent from Low Ripley.”

“Yeah. Well, I guess that's okay, then,” Diana responded, thinking that was probably why Vincent generally beat her at checkers. She was always one bounce behind. Hadn't really listened to what he'd tapped out: other things on her mind. And she could only follow the slow stuff, anyway.

Jamie continued, “Cullen went down, answering the signal, and said there was nobody there. Father's been upset all day. What's going on? Where's Vincent? I'm glad you're feeling better.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Diana said absently, lost in logistics involving cabs, therefore money, therefore clothes— especially shoes. “How far are we from my place?”

“Four levels up, then over—maybe 20 minutes.”

Diana grudged the time, the lead that would give him. Still one bounce behind. But if she took a cab, she might still be able to bounce ahead of him— unless he decided to hop a subway. Best she could do, anyway. Diana tossed aside the blanket and started up the slope, summoning Jamie, with a sharp gesture, to tag along, guide her.

She found she couldn't run very fast, because of how lame and sore she was, or for more than a few minutes at a time, because of a sick dizziness that overtook her in waves. So she settled for the best possible mix of running and staggering she could manage, until she spotted a junction she knew and stopped, puffing, leaned forward with her hands braced on her knees. “Okay,” she panted to Jamie, “thanks. Okay from here.”

“You can tell me,” Jamie responded. “I'm his apprentice now.”

“Yeah? That's great. That's... real great. Yeah.” Pushing herself on into the passage that led toward her loft, Diana made up her mind. “Okay, then come on. Vincent's... well, he's gone a little strange, you know? Like when he chained himself in that cave, a few weeks back? Yeah. Only he's not tied down now in any way, shape, or form. And he's gone after the bowers. And if we're not real careful, we're gonna set off the war Below, phase two. Or maybe it's already started. Dammit. He just took off, I couldn't—”

“My God,” Jamie commented, looking appalled.

“Yeah: me, too. Because odds are, they're laying for him.” Diana coughed something like a laugh. “Maybe literally. Never mind.”

Ponytail bobbing, jogging so easily that Diana felt like an arthritic grandmother, Jamie glanced around, then faced straight forward again. “You were down in the Maze? With him? Like that?”

Diana wasn't sure if Jamie was referring to Diana's nightie or Vincent's “strangeness.” Maybe both. “I guess so. Don't know much about it. He doesn't like me a whole lot, but that's nothing.”

Another glance: that wasn't what Jamie was curious about, but wasn't going to ask if it killed her.

Diana's mouth tightened into a weary grin. She started to say nothing interesting had gone on, like Jamie was undoubtedly imagining. Then she frowned instead, thinking things she had no intention of discussing with Jamie.

They got up the final ladder into Diana's basement, then up the stairs to the ground floor hallway.

Her door was locked. Of course. No key. Of course.

Diana stood a second, then pounded on the door and yelled, “This is your big chance, spook. Do something useful, for once: open this goddam door!”

After she'd pounded a while more and leaned on the bell a few times, a male voice asked cautiously from inside, “Who is it?”

She'd never heard that light baritone plainly before. But she recognized it.

“You know goddam well who this is! If you don't open this door in two seconds flat, I'll get a locksmith and—”

“Say ‘please,'” the voice interrupted.

I will murder you, she thought. “Please.”

“And you'll look at my picture.”

“I will light candles before your goddam picture every night for a month—!”

The release buzzer sounded and Diana seized the doorknob. It turned. She yanked open the door and pounded up the stairs.

As they reached the top, Jamie stood staring around, plainly looking for Kristopher, who'd gone, or remained, coyly invisible. Diana kept going, yanking the nightie off over her head as she went back to the bedroom. She wondered for a second if the spook was watching and decided if he got an eyeful, who cared. Nothing he wouldn't have seen before. Anyway, he was an artist and they hung around with naked women all the time, big yawn....

She shoved hurriedly into the first things she found, a grey sweatshirt with one elbow out and black jogging slacks with yellow stripes down the outsides of the leg, like she was a sportscar. As she groped under the comforter for a spare pair of sneakers, Jamie called from outside, “May I use your phone?”

“Sure, help yourself. In the office.”

Knotted laces didn't want to come undone. She slowed down, managed it, got the sneakers on. Dodging into the bathroom, she dumped aspirin into her hand and washed them down with three glasses of tapwater that was the greatest thing she'd ever tasted. Still feeling hollow, dizzy, she went prowling the kitchen for something she could grab. When she yanked open the refrigerator, the first thing she saw was a neat foil packet, all the edges nicely crimped. The damn tunafish sandwich. She took it out gently, imagining Vincent wrapping the stupid thing— the serious, methodical, absurd thoughtfulness— and suddenly felt like falling down and bawling.

Deciding to eat while she went, she stuffed the sandwich into the front pouch of the sweatshirt and then dove into the office space and hauled out a drawer to collect her shield and gun. Jamie, one ear plugged shut with a palm, was talking to somebody on the phone. Diana took no notice, heading back to the bookcase where she thought she'd left her totebag, to collect her wallet and check that there were enough bills inside for cab fare. She stuffed the wallet in with the sandwich.

And a flashlight, didn't dare forget that. Back into the office space, another drawer, Jamie still on the phone.

Checking that she had everything she could think of needing, Diana paced the living area a couple of turns and happened to notice that the screen that blocked off Kristopher's corner had been folded back against the wall. Angled back on an easel was a goodsized canvas braced by wooden stretchers.

Fair's fair, she thought grimly: he'd opened the door. She trudged up to the thing and stared at it.

Streaky black smears were all she saw, at first. Then a small figure she guessed was supposed to be her— skinny, lanky, anyway; brick-red hair hanging next to a blob of a face, so who else was it likely to be?— down in the righthand corner. And finally, she noticed the shape of the shadow. Knew it instantly. Wheeled right around and leaned over the back of the couch with her eyes burning.

Because it'd finally hit her that she didn't have the least clue what she wanted to do, down there on the bowers' ground, once she got there. Help Vincent? But it wasn't Vincent who'd gone hunting there. Stop the Other from whacking somebody? Fat chance. Drag his furry hide out of there, no matter who he was? Double fat chance: her and what battalion of marines, if he didn't like the idea?

What did she know about Below, that qualified her to stick her nose into the middle of a war? What could she do that would be a damn bit of use to anybody, herself included? The likeliest thing would be that she'd get just far enough into the middle to get herself killed by one side or the other (no pun intended), because nobody had invited her, nobody wanted her there. She couldn't cog herself to it, imagine herself as part of it.

No matter how you sliced it, it was none of her damn business.

Something glinted on the floor, catching her eye. She went around the couch, bent, and found her watch. She slid it around her wrist and buckled it, thinking absently that it was a miracle she hadn't stepped on it, or somebody, Vincent, when he'd come to collect her files and wrapped up the dumb sandwich....

And she thought, Vincent would have a fit. But whatever's happening, it's awful. Even if he stays alive, it'll be awful. I love him. That gives me the right. And if I mess up, or die, at least I will have tried.

She looked at her watch: 4 pm. May 25th. Friday. Somehow it steadied her, knowing that. Things seemed to fall into place.

She went back, looked at the picture some more. Herself, in the dark. The companion shadow. She thought, yes, without bothering to worry what that was an agreement to, affirmation of. Simply yes.

“Jamie?” she hollered impatiently.

Jamie looked out the back of the office space, through the slot. “I have to wait.”

“What?”

“I have to wait. Meet somebody. Maybe you should—”

“Hell with that. Name me a place I can get down, someplace like Broome, Canal, someplace that's not right on top of them.”

Jamie stared at her for a second, then said rapidly, “South Ferry IRT station. Back along the tracks, about 30 paces, past where the tiles end. West side of the tracks, incoming. A maintenance perch, where somebody working on the line can get off to let the trains go by. Push on the back. It's a door. But if you wait—”

Diana wasn't going to wait to discuss it, not when he had about 20 minutes' lead on her already. She thudded down the stairs and headed for the corner, waving her wallet over her head as an inducement to the first cruising cab to pick up a fare who was in a screeching hurry.

*****

The back panel of the service perch gave with a groan of unoiled hinges, the noise covered by the din of an approaching subway growling into its final turn. Diana slid through into the dark.

She didn't know what she was looking for, except trouble. So she guessed it didn't matter which way she went. She followed her flashlight beam, quietly, holding her breath to listen better. What with the aspirin and the sandwich she'd munched in the cab, she was feeling less shaky. But the weird unlocatable numb place was still numb. She tried to forget about it.

Hearing a scuttling noise, she thought about rats. Then, with determination, stopped thinking about rats. No use, and no time.

Passages ran into other passages: big drainage pipes with rounded concrete sides. Once in awhile, a dim work light burning in a wire cage above a junction. She crossed those places fast, feeling exposed. Dark was safer. Yeah: think like a bower, she encouraged herself. If you were a bower, running for your life, where would you go? But that wasn't any use either, because she didn't know what places there were to go.

She found a hole, with staples leading both up and down. Likely up would be a manhole cover and the street. Down seemed better: she was still high enough to catch traffic noise, the occasional blare of a horn. She tucked her gun back in the sweatshirt's pouch to free a hand for climbing.

The level below tilted off and down. She wished for a compass, to keep her directions straight, but she didn't own one anymore and couldn't recall, from her Girl Scout days, if a compass could be expected to work underground. She couldn't see why not. But she didn't know. Navigating sewers had never come up, in those days of braces and training bras, as something you could take a merit badge in. Anyway, she didn't have one, so the hell with it.

Declaring left to be south, she consistently took the lefthand forks when faced with a choice. The way spiraled down into stone walls and dry, powdery dirt underfoot: she scanned for footprints. Found lots, not that she was any the wiser for it. None she saw seemed to match up with about size 16 boots.

She thought she heard a sound and immediately switched off her light. Someone ran past her, right to left across a junction farther on. Then nothing. She switched the flashlight back on, found the junction, took the cross passage that led left.

Another five minutes or so brought her to a Y fork, no obvious choice between the alternatives. Left hadn't been doing her much good; this time, she took the righthand way. And presently thought she heard whispering. Light off, she went on around a bend, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other. Definitely voices, exchanging whispers. Setting her feet, she held the flashlight up at shoulder level, aimed herself and the gun in the right direction, and turned on the light. Caught two astonished, gaping faces. She barely kept herself from shooting as the flashlight was batted out of her hand and the two dashed past her.

She hollered, “Mouse, get back here!”

From farther down the passage, she heard the breathless question, “Who?”

“Diana, dammit.” Her foot found the flashlight. She picked it up, tried it: broken. Great.

“You're better,” said Mouse's voice ingratiatingly, slowly approaching.

Diana thought, Everybody says that: I must have been just about ready for the meat wagon, before.

Mouse continued, “Pipes said, you went home. Everybody looking for you, before. Father—”

“Bring her, too,” Diana directed sternly. She'd had time to sort her final image: the face that wasn't Mouse's had been, incongruously, that of an old woman. Long, loose silver hair.

“Nobody. Only Mouse.”

“Mouse, I saw her,” Diana responded implacably. “Light a candle. Right now.”

A match flared. Revealed Mouse, head sheepishly tilted. And behind him, blinking eyes as crimson as those of a rabbit, a preternaturally pale, elfin face surrounded by a veil of perfectly white hair. If she'd had that kind of imagination, Diana would have been thinking vampire.

Maybe 16: an albino.

Meeting those ruby eyes, Diana demanded, “What's your name?”

The eyes disappeared as the girl shyly hid her face against Mouse's back.

Mouse glanced up a second, then contemplated the ground. “Bianca.”

The worship in his voice told Diana about all she needed to know. But just to pin it all down, she said, “And she's a bower.”

“Survivor,” Mouse corrected, in a mutter. “She likes numbers. Never been Above. Light hurts. Blow out the light now? Not safe.”

“Yeah, okay,” Diana agreed wearily, having already seen more than she really wanted to. She thought about Paracelsus' revelation and the stink this added complication would raise. This illicit romance ranked somewhere between hysterically funny and tragic, she wasn't quite sure where to draw the line.

When Mouse had blown out the candle flame and the impersonal dark returned, Diana asked, “What have you and Bianca the Survivor been doing? As if I had to ask.”

“Nothing! Talking about drainage. Slope, how much to how far, to keep the water moving without a pump, bring water down—”

“Yeah, okay, Mouse, I get the idea,” Diana interrupted, imagining it: tenderly holding hands, as they'd been in that first instant, and deep in a passionate whispered discussion of drainage systems and degrees of slope.

It was Mouse: she believed it.

“She's real good at numbers,” Mouse insisted earnestly. “Better than good. Better than me! Best! Helped with the conduit I built last year, figured all the ratios for drilling.... You going to tell Father?” he ended miserably.

“Mouse. It can't go on like this. You know it.”

“No! As long as Father doesn't know, no problem!”

Another voice, soft: Bianca. “It's all that's possible. Please don't tell.”

“I gotta think about it,” Diana temporized, reflecting on the fact that Father already knew enough to question Mouse's loyalties, and probably was already doing so, even without this. Another case of no use, no time.

“For now, Mouse, you take Bianca as far away from here as you can get. Understand? Because Vincent's around here someplace and he isn't apt to be real choosy what he goes after.”

“Saw him,” Mouse admitted uncomfortably. “He saw us. Maybe. Didn't say anything. But he won't tell: he's my friend! Shouldn't be here, anyway,” Mouse added righteously.

“Yeah. I guess.” Visualizing that near encounter made her shiver for what somehow hadn't happened. Some angel passing over, that bestowed undeserved blessings on fools and lovers. An angel who always seemed off duty when she got into a jam herself.

“Which way was he headed, Mouse?”

Bianca's soft voice offered, “Toward the Sevenways. He's come to us. As we were promised.”

Diana tried to take in those final awe-stricken comments, then shook them off. No use, no time.

“Can you tell me how to get there?”

“Can't tell,” said Mouse derisively. “You're a topsider! Have to show. Come on.”

A small, cool hand slipped into hers, drawing her forward. Then she stopped. The Other had passed Bianca by once: Diana didn't want to risk that angel's being handy a second time.

“No: just tell me. If I get lost, it's my fault.”

“Topsiders always go wrong, Below,” commented Mouse, amused that Diana might suppose otherwise.

“Lots of things go wrong, Below,” Diana muttered to herself.

*****

Following the way outlined by the crude map Mouse had scratched in the dirt of the tunnel floor, Diana heard a distant sound and turned to follow it. A single note, but somehow discordant, like the shrill, irritating carrier whine you sometimes got from a radio that wasn't tuned right. She took what she found was a wrong turning, because the sound faded. Retraced her steps, took the other passage, and it got louder. Steady. Piercing.

The passage narrowed to a horizontal slot that showed dim light. She dropped flat, elbowed forward, got her head and shoulders through.

She found herself on the lip of a ledge overlooking a kind of crossroads where several passages came together. The three, opposite, slanted up. Each was full of people holding votive candles in small glasses. She leaned farther to look directly below her. Saw the openings of four more passages and people there too. Dozens of flickering tiny lights.

Ten, 12 deep, they ringed the circumference of the crossroads. All humming. The sound was magnified by the walls, the domed ceiling, echoes and voices blending indistinguishably. The sound moved as different parts of the bowers' circle raised the volume, as the echoes' angles shifted.

In the middle of that circle, the Other was crouched in an open space maybe 15 feet across: just a little too far for him to reach any of them without a leap or a lunge. And he was gathering himself, with plain difficulty, to make just such a lunge. It all seemed to happen in slow motion— almost by tokens, symbols, because the motions involved were so small. The lunge was no more than pushing himself into a step and a lean— slow, weighted. Just enough to put him off balance, needing a second step to keep him from falling. And, still slow, it was as if he'd come up against something invisible but solid and was rebounding, turning, hands clasping his head in a gesture of shielding, pain, as he recoiled and bent away, as though the contact with that unseen wall had hurt him, wounded him, and he had to draw himself together to recover from the impact.

Back into the center. Crouched. Swaying. Looking around with fierce, glazed, sick eyes, while he summoned the strength for another token attempt at attack or maybe escape, there was no knowing which. Because each labored try wavered, stopped short, hit the barrier and recoiled, sent him reeling back to the center.

It was, Diana thought, like watching some animal that had been darted, that was fighting the drug but inevitably failing, growing weaker. And the hunters keeping their distance, waiting until their quarry was helpless and immobilized before closing in. And it was plain that they wouldn't have to wait much longer. Another lunge and retreat left him on one knee. Then a spread hand went down to brace him. His head bent, the copper-gold hair spilling forward to conceal eyes at once furious and oddly vacant.

Some way, they were holding him. Some way, controlling that primal rage, beating it back, beating it down. Something, Diana thought, in the humming. Or rather, the unheard, orchestrated accompaniment to the humming: the simple, unified desire to win, to beat him—  like the ferocious partisanship, so strong you could practically touch it, that streamed off a crowd watching a playoff game. Wanting him to give up, lose. All of them. Raw desire. She could see it in their faces.

It was always hard for Vincent to disappoint people: he felt it all. Sincerely ask or simply want, and he'd generally do it, or try, or feel bad about not being able to or refusing. And whatever else the bowers were, Diana was certain they were damn well sincere. Set that unity against his lone will, and they could sincere him to death. Or to whatever they pleased.

Like a mother's expectations, a father's hopes, a sweethearts' dream of always, a child's trust that the world was kind and she would live forever. Like the desire to see promises kept, prophecy fulfilled: He's come to us. As we were promised. Like them, but multiplied a hundredfold. Not to be touched or measured; but the strongest cage there was.

Still his head dropped, until his forehead touched the dust.

A tall, thin man in a blue work shirt and jeans stepped cautiously into the open. He carried a set of leather cuffs connected by a short chain. And a larger, wider leather circle: a collar.

For Diana, that was beyond enduring.

She wriggled through the slot, turned, and slid until she was suspended by her hands. Let go, dropped six feet or so. Didn't land on anybody. Took out her gun and turned, edging between backs. The bowers were too intent on the drama of capture in the center ring, too busy with humming to take any notice of who was brushing past. Reaching the inner edge, she locked there a second, halfway expecting the sincere ensorcelment to hit her too. But there was nothing, only humming: that hypnotic single note that got on her nerves but had, for her, no other power.

As the man moved a wary step closer to the center, holding the cuffs and plainly judging his chances of putting them on, Diana gulped a breath and dashed into the open, ending in a dusty, knees-first slide that put her beside the captive, risking a swat while she pointed her pistol at the man, waggling it to make sure he saw it, shouting, “Freeze: police!”

The man laughed— a black guy, forties; strong, square teeth; mouth enclosed with mustache and goatee—and straightened, replying mildly, “What's in your mind to do, missy? Arrest us? All? Your ownself? That's cute, but it ain't sense. This ain't your party. You back off and we talk about it some other time.” He lifted his hand, and the humming, that had faltered, resumed and steadied.

“I mean it.” Groping behind her, she hit laces, then light cotton sleeve. Hung on, knuckles hard against his arm. Warning the guy, “You make one more move, you're history, buster,” she felt something stir behind her, a rumbling growl. Didn't turn. Let go her twist of sleeve to set the flat of her hand against his arm, increase the area of contact, muttering, “You know me, babe. You know me. Steady. It's okay, just me.”

A flick of motion to her right, something glinting: thrown weapon. That was all she had time to see before she was yanked over, slammed flat on her back. Her gun went off, and there was a bellowing roar. The next second, her shoulder was grabbed by clawed fingers, big hand lifting, and she was on her feet again, sort of: locked upright by his left arm across her throat, like holding a hostage from behind. Took her a second to realize that it wasn't attack, that the heavy leather sleeve was shielding her, enveloping her from the neck down. She got her toes solid on the dirt, pushed a little, and the bruising arm gave her a little slack so she could stand.

In her ear, so close she felt his breath, that voice inquired, “May I defend you?”

“No, dammit.”

A chuckle. The arm didn't release her, didn't budge. Like a log across the front of her shoulders. As she fumbled with the gun, wrapping fingers around the trigger guard to prevent accidents, something zipped past her nose. She was lifted, swept into a bowing bend, a spin. Then level dirt jarred under her feet again and she straightened her knees to stand, facing a different direction. Couldn't see the black guy anymore.

Another sudden move, and it was like being a department store dummy, roughly lifted, swung around, and plopped down again as he shifted her to dodge whatever the bowers were throwing at her. His strength was fully back: easy and sure. And she realized it was the contact. He was holding to the contact between them to block out the bowers' compelling siren song. Alone, he couldn't stand against it. But as long as there was contact, he wasn't alone and he stood just fine. And moved. One dodging step at a time, toward a passage. And took her with him, protecting her body with his because they didn't want him dead: just tamed. A glorified mascot you could drag around on a leash. That would never quote Blake, be fascinated with Samantha's marigold seeds, wrap stale tunafish sandwiches with absurd, beloved care, or name the stars.

Half strangled and dizzy, she tried to anticipate his moves and move with them, as though they were engaged in some knockabout, passionate dance.

As if on a signal, the tone of the humming changed. A different note. Some overlap, both notes sounding together as old echoes died, as the change spread. Then only one note again, unified, growing stronger. Tiny lights stirring as people moved, turned to touch and embrace one another.

And the dance of escape changed, slowed to small motions. The imprisoning, protecting arm drew her more tightly against him, shoulder to heel; she felt a quiver run through him. Warm breath on the back of her neck, then the electrifying touch of his tongue, that startled her rigid. Her head nudged aside by his, bending. Four points of pressure: his canines, lightly closing on the side of her neck. His tongue again: hot, soft, delicately tasting. Both arms around her now, moving her more fully before him, immovably clasping her against him within the cloak. He was aroused.

The bowers were using the contact against them. Turning it into something even closer but with no purpose beyond itself, beyond sensation. Diverting the desire to escape, powered by closeness, into a desire to become closer still. A different dance. The oldest dance of all.

And it wouldn't have been so bad except for all the eyes, all the winking candles. Except for knowing that it wasn't his own desire or not altogether, but what the damn bowers were projecting at him, surrounding and smothering him with, that he couldn't shut out and still be normally aware and continue to protect her. Because the minute he let go, she knew she was gone. They'd be on her like rats. But if he didn't let go, if she let it get to her as it was starting to, it would happen the awful way he'd dreamed it. The teeth on her neck, not bearing down yet, no more than a warning tingle on either side of the carotid artery, told her that. Don't move, they said. Don't resist. You are under love's great harrow: if you move, you'll die. This is death. This is life. They are touching you. Your life beats between the tines. Feel it. Now.

Intimately embracing in the center ring.

She shouted, “My love life is not a circus act!”

No answer but the echoing, reverberant humming. No reaction but his hand stroking slowly down her side to close for a moment around her hip, then rubbing the sweatshirt band up from her waist to find the inevitability of skin against skin. And she was reacting, feeding it back at him: she knew she was, had to be, and didn't know how not to feel, how not to react with the very specific languor and tension that had started flowing through her, sensations expanding from the knowledge that she couldn't have broken this embrace with a crowbar; from his massive solidity; from her awareness of his arousal and her own beginning to answer; from his softly, steadily exploring hand.

A breathlessness. An aching. It had to stop. But she didn't want it to. She had no control over what she wanted.

Her mind was indignant, furious; her body had other sentiments. And those sentiments would be what he'd pick up on, what were feeding back to him.

The pressure of his teeth on her neck, of his body against hers, said, Don't move. Except together. As we move.

Words— protests, denials— weren't a hell of a lot of use against that. Never had been, never would be.

So she shot him.

Using both unsteady hands, she made sure the muzzle was aimed where she wanted it: the side of his right arm, above the elbow. Then, tensing her neck, scared he'd bite down just in reflex, clenched all through, she pulled the trigger.

His whole body reacted, snapped backward, dragging her with him as she closed her hands around the gun again, halfway fainting and tangled up in the cloak, shaking her head free just in time to see the spread, clawed hand coming at her face. Jerked her head aside, against his shoulder, resigned to some damage but maybe not permanent, utterly cold with dread.

At the same time she heard Joe Maxwell's voice, bullhorn-loud with the echoes, shout, “Okay, let's break this up here! Right now!” she felt the hand settle like a helmet's weight against the back of her head, a steady clasp. And she sighed out all the sudden terror, sagging bonelessly against him.

Hands in pockets, Joe roughly elbowed a way out of a righthand passage, followed by Jamie wearing a visored helmet and what, in bad light, might pass for a uniform, all blue anyhow, swinging a blinding light— halogen spotlight, Diana's mind supplied numbly— around, pinning this and that segment of the now-silent crowd.

Joe declared, “We've had all of this I'm going to put up with. You people play ball, or I'm going to shut you down hard. You're not taxpayers: you better start shaping up, or this city's going to give you a whole bunch of grief. Detective Bennett warned you— Diana? You okay?”

The spotlight swung, picked them out where they stood, pinning them there. Pushing hair out of her eyes, Diana looked around and nodded shakily, then was pulled to face another direction, as Vincent automatically flinched away from the glare.

Joe demanded, as though it were just a usual question, “Vincent, you're in one piece?”

A silence. Then, huskily, “Yes.”

That taken care of, Joe went on grimly, “I don't want to have to come down here again. And I don't think any of you want me to come down here again. Who's in charge here?”

All the while since Joe's first shout, candles had been going out, and the people in the passages had been surreptitiously fading away. All that were left were maybe two dozen in the crossroads area, blowing out their lights, too, as fast as they could, but not moving yet because all the exits were still congested.

“I s'pose,” said a voice casually, and the spotlight swung to zero in on it, glaring on the skinny black guy (no sign, now, of cuffs or collar) sitting back on his heels, “you might as well talk to me as anybody. You Mr. Joseph Maxwell, are you? Mr. Acting City District Attorney, that right?”

“Yeah. And who are you?”

“Mostly called ‘Cookie'—”

“Legal name?” Joe cut in, in his best cross-examining voice.

“S'pose that'd be Theodore Frederick Cook, topside. If I went topside. Which I don't.... We talk some, Mr. Acting City District Attorney. Some other time. Could be I might phone you. And then we talk.”

“We talk right now!” Joe said. “Far as I'm concerned, this is just another street war, even down here, and I'm not going to put up with it! You people are going to obey the law—”

“You on our ground now,” commented Cookie mildly, and flicked his wrist. Something hit the spotlight, which went out. Pitch black.

Vincent's voice directed, “This way,” and nobody argued. Joe and Jamie came, and they all backed off together, Joe muttering curses, everybody else silent. Walls closed in around them, too close for anybody to get at them from either side. Jamie moved to the point position, leading the way, calling, “Back to the Beaumont?”

“Yes,” replied Vincent's voice, behind.

Grabbing Diana's arm, Joe said grimly, “Bennett, you owe me for this one. Chasing around, sewers, running the biggest goddam bluff of my life— Who the hell are those lunatics? What the hell is going on down here?”

“Bowers,” Diana said distractedly, trying to look, listen behind her. Too dark. Then she heard his cape brush the rock. So it was okay: he was still with them, coming. “Survivors. Trolls. Take your pick. I'll tell you sometime.”

“Like now.”

“Like sometime, tomorrow, okay? So, I owe you, yeah. Thanks, Joe. Never expected to see you down here. Since when do you run around the tunnels?”

“Since I get a call, 4 in the goddam afternoon, in the middle of a goddam meeting with the mayor, saying if I don't get my butt down to a decrepit old wreck of a place on Canal, you're dead meat. And Vincent.” Diana felt him shrug. “Little Pumpkinhead, up there, with the cast: Jamie. Says all hell's broken loose down here, need somebody who can play at flexing some official muscle. So okay, I'm certifiable, I leave the mayor standing and I come. So tell me, Bennett: is that as dumb as I think it is?”

Diana leaned and kissed him, was shoved off the next second with indignation. She said, “I think it's just great, Joe. I think you just got promoted to helper.”

“Promoted? I'm not even in the goddam army!”

“If you say so. But things have a way of sucking you in.... You'll find out.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” Joe rejoined, glowering. Then he glanced at her, rubbed his forehead, and added, “Before you hit the street, Bennett.... You really look like hell.”

Diana's mouth quirked. Joe: always the gentleman. “Thanks, Joe. Everybody's been telling me how much better I look. Wouldn't want it going to my head. Oh, and I want my files back.”

“We closed it,” Joe informed her. “Fished Frank Silvio out of a Jersey swamp at 7 this morning. Dog found him. Black Labrador. Jersey has jurisdiction now. So you're off the case because there is no case, okay?”

“I can live with that,” Diana responded, beginning the process of putting away all the speculations, concerns, and worries tied to the case. It wasn't as hard as she generally found it, when a case was over. That meeting, yesterday morning, seemed a year ago; and since then, other more urgent concerns had intervened. She'd given it all she had; now, thanks to the detective skills of a black Lab, it was over.

It was always a little like grief, letting the hopes die. But when a case was finished, she buried it and never looked back.

There was dim light ahead, and loose bricks to be stumbled over. They came past a creaking metal door into a big, old smelling basement, lines of boilers, huge pipes overhead, all grey, shadowy, silent.

Stopping by the door, Jamie pulled off her helmet and shook her hair free, remarking, “You can go back with Mr. Maxwell, Diana.”

“Nothing doing,” Diana said at once. Looking over her shoulder, she finally made out a deeper darkness standing against the brick wall on the far side of the door. He made no move to come out, join them.

Jamie explained, “We'll have to wait for dark....”

From the passage, Vincent's voice remarked quietly, “You should all go. I will take another way.”

“Nothing doing,” Diana repeated.

Jittering impatiently from foot to foot, Joe said, “Whoever's coming, come, because I have things to do, like a life to take care of, okay?”

“Jamie's coming,” Diana said, giving the teenager a firm push. “Tell Father it's settled for now, and we'll be along in awhile.”

Jamie swung an uncertain look to Diana, then Joe, and finally back to the passage, plainly expecting different orders. When none came, Jamie nodded. She and Joe walked away and disappeared between two of the immense boilers. Diana heard their voices reechoing faintly as she returned through the door.

He was leaning back in an angle of the brickwork, blood blotching the loose right sleeve.

Diana said, “I'll see to that arm now. Got something I can use for a pad?”

He didn't move. “I am not... who you think.”

“I know. Your arm's still bleeding.”

Getting no encouragement, but no opposition, either, she pulled loose a few laces from the roll at his cloak's shoulder, freeing the material, and from that tore enough cotton batting to serve as a pad. She felt his eyes on her while she pushed up the sleeve, baring a neat flesh wound, not bleeding very hard. She set the pad in place and knotted the laces to hold it there. Started carefully rolling down the sleeve. Stopped.

Asked in a small voice, “You mad at me, babe?”

“It's nothing. I also... do not choose to be a circus act. But I am not he.”

“I know,” she said again.

“Then why did you—”

“Is there a way back, that doesn't cut through bower country?”

“No. Not from here, not now. With darkness, there is a place. Some six blocks away. One may go up, then return Below. But you should go.”

She looked him in the face then. Met his expressionless eyes. Couldn't read him at all. Guessed it didn't matter.

“You're not going after them again. Not now.”

“No,” he said, and shivered. “They—”

She waited.

Eventually he said, “They want me. Very much. Very strongly. All of them. What they want of me... I don't like. But could not keep myself apart from. Because they wanted me. Me.” His wide eyes were the color of rain. “I didn't know it could have such power. To be wanted. To be loved. Even in such a fashion. It is....” He turned away, facing back down the passage.

She waited. Finally she said, “I saw the collar.”

“Yes.”

Long silence, that she broke, asking, “What will you do now?”

“It's no concern of yours.”

“Yes. It is.”

His back against the bricks, he slowly slid until he was sitting on the floor. “Wait for darkness.”

“And then?”

“Go somewhere. Below. There are deep places. Forage Above, at night. I, we— I have done it before. I cannot go among them,” he said abruptly, answering her unspoken question.

“Father's people.”

“I cannot. I promised. I have no place there. Anywhere.... I don't need them. I don't—”

“Yeah, sure, you don't need anybody,” Diana finished for him and knelt down on the concrete. “Well, that's okay, if that's how you want it. You're entitled. But you got a place: mine. Anytime. Any way you come. It's okay by me. Maybe you can keep that goddam spook in line.”

He shut his eyes, turned away. She grabbed his hand, to make contact, so he'd know.

“Look, I mean it. Anytime you're lost, I'll come looking for you. Anytime you're hurt— even if I did it,” she admitted with a flinch of a smile, “I'm gonna be there. Anytime. So you be whoever you want. You're not so different as you think you are. But that's okay, babe, you play it however you have to. That's up to you. For me, there's just you: Vincent.”

They were quiet awhile then: he wouldn't talk, and she'd said all she wanted to, all there was to say.

“Jamie,” he said finally, in a voice that broke. And stopped, tried again. “Jamie was very brave. And discerning, to see in Joe an outside authority to whom she might appeal, who might intervene effectively. Lacking the Pope, Joe Maxwell. A portion of a plan of hers. Which was tabled. A good plan. Someone should tell her this. That she did well.”

“You tell her.”

“I cannot. I—”

“Yeah, I know: you promised. But promises you make to yourself, I figure you can bend a little if the situation changes. Who's gonna yell at you, babe: you? And no matter what you need, Father needs you. Always has, even if he won't admit it. Jacob, too. How is he, by the way?”

Small silence, then, “Better. Perhaps the tooth has broken through....”

She had an aha! feeling, like she'd caught him fair and square. He looked around then, admitting without words that the bond still held, that whoever he thought he was at the moment, he was still Jacob's father.

She tipped her wrist, squinted at her watch. “7. Should be almost dark. By the time we get up to street level, it will be. What do you think: give it a try?”

He pulled his hand away, but only to help balance, getting up. He went to the door, listened a minute, then decided it was safe and went through. The bottom of the cape swayed with his steps. She caught up and fell in alongside, not sure she'd persuaded him to return to the Hub, but she guessed she'd find out. And there was time for him to think it out, feel it out, before the decision had to be made.

Either he'd go, or he wouldn't. When she knew, she'd play it from there.

They climbed ramps and stairs and traversed grungy hallways. Finally crossed a big, empty ballroom with wallpaper peeling down, walls lined with cracked mirrors too grimy to cast a reflection. He was silent, that whole way. So she was, too.

The street door was slightly ajar. He waited there a minute or two before deciding it was dark enough and edging through, reaching to slide and shrug his hood into place, shadowing his features, as they hit the street.

As they headed toward the corner past rusty fire escapes and boarded-over windows, graffiti'd brick walls, he lifted his head and looked around, remarking, “I was hunted here....”

“Yeah, you told me about that. I thought it was a story.”

“It happened. I remember.” Without looking at her, he added, “I love you.”

“I kind of figured. Something's still not working right, but that sort of simple stuff, I can still work out for myself.”

Offhandedly, he added, “You'll still leave.”

Startled, a little hurt, then wryly amused, she made no reply. Found herself smiling at him, and him smiling back, knowingly. The kind of look they'd sometimes traded across a checkerboard, when she'd made some move she knew was risky but still didn't want to take back. A comfortable, appraising silence.

That was all the conversation for a few blocks, passing maybe a dozen scattered people, mostly cruising, footsore hookers with no interest in somebody dressed funny who already had female companionship, and a few hoody guys in insignia satin jackets who wisely decided not to mess with anybody that size. He and Diana turned aside into dark doorways of shut stores, pretending to be fascinated by cheap plastic dolls, sex paraphernalia, and collections of hubcaps behind steel security grilles, until the street soldiers had wandered by.

Watching the traffic and the sequence of lights, he chose his time, then went quickly into the middle of the street and yanked up a heavy iron grate. Looking down, Diana saw no steps, only dark. He went in fast, hung by his hands, dropped. Then called to her, “Come.”

She swung a quick look around, found nobody watching, slid in and dropped. Was caught, held, quickly lowered to her feet. Then, with a couple of impossible jumps, he snagged a corner of the grate and dragged it back into place.

The sewer ran straight, offering choices only to the right and to the left. She had her bearings pretty well: uptown, toward the park, would be to the right.

While he stood, not moving, she said, “It'll be okay.”

“They will not want me. They have never—”

“If you don't tell, I won't tell.” Almost, she urged him to trust her; but that would have been pushing it. She looked at him slantwise. “I dare you.” That would generally tip Vincent at least 50 percent of the time. She tugged the arm she hadn't put a bullet through. “Come on, sport.”

“Sport. A sport is a freak,” he mentioned equably, turning with the pull. Turning right.

“Oops. Forgot.” She offered her right hand, felt it taken, and asked, “Your arm hurt much?”

“We must go quietly. They come this far, at times. The bowers.”

“Double oops,” she whispered, and shut up, walking blind, but that didn't matter, because he knew the way.

*****

She hadn't expected they'd walk into the middle of a party. She loathed parties. Especially big parties. Especially big parties when she was wearing a grubby sweatshirt with an elbow out and the rest looked as though she'd spent the last couple of days rolling around in the dirt, which was pretty much true.

There'd been no warning, except that the pipes seemed unusually quiet and they didn't meet anybody in the passages; since she was used to being abroad in the Hub fairly late, that alone hadn't been enough to seem strange. If the Other had noticed, or even known about the party, he hadn't said. He was real good at that.

They'd run into Cullen, who'd immediately hugged her and then gone on and on about how worried he'd been about her. That won him steady sidelong looks from the Other that should have made him nervous, but didn't because Vincent was always forbearing about such things. But the Other didn't like it, and Diana passed it off with a joke and drew free, with no fuss, from Cullen's embrace. Then Rebecca joined them and, at the next cross passage, somebody named James whom Diana didn't know well, all of them going along, full of animated talk. So by the time anybody mentioned the party, they were practically on top of it and there was no good way to back off.

Although it was apparently centered on the Commons, it spilled out halfway to the Mirror Pool, double or triple the usual number of candles and people everywhere: children running, trailing long crêpe paper streamers; couples dancing to unheard music, right out in the passages; people clutching slabs of cake and evidently hunting a quiet corner to eat, or deep in conversation, needing a nudge before they'd notice and move. Total chaos; but happy chaos.

“What's the occasion?” Diana hollered in Cullen's ear.

“Kanin,” Cullen leaned to yell in reply. “Kanin's back.”

She vaguely remembered mention of Kanin: serving a sentence for DWI, vehicular homicide, and jumping bail, from the time before he'd come to the tunnels, become a stonemason. Livvy's husband; Luke's father. “Thought you had parties in the Great Hall?”

“All that rain,” Cullen responded. “Two solid days of it. Storm drain backed up, burst, and more leaked down through a crack that runs that way. We got eight inches of water down there. No harm— it'll all have drained off into the Abyss by tomorrow. So we moved everything up here. Better anyway: just us, just family. It's—”

Jostled away by people passing, Diana didn't hear the end of that. Considering the congestion, continually being bumped, she looked around with a certain anxiety to check on the Other. But even in the party overflow, they were all tunnel people and used to encountering that big dark silence pacing along the passages. However they had to back or dodge, they somehow kept from colliding with him— with grins, greetings as they twisted aside or stopped cold to let him by, keeping clear as a matter of friendly, respectful habit. So he moved at a steady, deliberate pace, nodding to acknowledge the greetings, sometimes saying a word or two, but with eyes that didn't thaw or turn. And Diana wondered if this had been such a great idea after all.

She weaved, ducked, and got next to him again. Put her hand on his arm and found it stone-hard with tension. She maintained the contact, and his head came around, quick. Then he recognized her and settled. She asked, “How you doing, babe?”

“Well enough. Why should I not? It is all family....”

That comment had a sour, sardonic edge she didn't find reassuring. “Yeah. Sure,” she said, trying to read that closed, immobile face. “Well, we'll pay our respects and then get right out, okay?”

“Why? This is mine: what I've fought for. Kept safe. Why should I wish to leave?”

Bitter, she thought; and sad. It wasn't turning out the way she'd meant, and she began to wonder what would happen if somebody seriously crossed him.

She didn't know him yet, this other side of Vincent. But she was beginning to. And whatever he was, he was neither tame nor safe. But he had a strong, skewed sense of humor.

So she said, “You got 'em all fooled. And it's got some style, showing up disguised as yourself.”

He smiled at her. “You don't trust me.”

“Not an inch,” she agreed, trying to give him that same sort of edged smile back, although she didn't have the right kind of teeth for it.

His eyes locked on hers, suddenly sober, searching. “Yet you came. Sought me out....”

“This defending thing is catching. When you care about somebody, you do what you have to.”

“Including shooting them.”

She shrugged. “I didn't think ‘unhand me, you brute,' was gonna cut much ice. And that wasn't the time or the place. Was it?”

“I was thinking,” he rejoined, “of another thing than that,” but didn't say what. But he put his arm around her, granting her his own immunity from being jostled. They went on that way, Diana still uneasy and knowing she looked like something Goodwill would pitch out but proud, too, because Vincent had never made so public a gesture of affection. The feeling of people's eyes on her was a different feeling, moving within that casual but strong embrace that so conspicuously claimed her.

Passing his own chamber, he suddenly pulled away from her and went in. Standing blankly in the passage, Diana thought that if he changed clothes, she'd shoot him again, or at least give it serious thought. But in less than a minute he came out and walked on without saying anything. When they came to Father's study, it was the same, but this time Diana could watch. He stood stiffly at the top of the stairs, not touching anything, not even the railing, throwing quick glances at the desk, the table, the overflowing bookshelves, the balcony, as though he'd lost something and was trying to remember what, or where. Then, abruptly, he wheeled and reclaimed her, his face inscrutable.

“Vincent! Vincent!” Samantha, exempt from the prohibition against touch, barreled into them, then set hands on hips, a picture of eleven-year-old asperity. He stopped and looked down at the girl as Samantha continued, all in a burst, “Where were you? I've been looking everywhere! You missed my recitation!”

He bent his head and offered the sole apology Diana had heard from him: “Forgive me, Samantha. I'm certain it went well.”

“But you didn't hear it,” Samantha pointed out indignantly. “I'd practiced and practiced. Listen:

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?

O, stay and hear; your true-love's coming,

That can sing both high and low;

Trip no further, pretty sweeting;

Journeys end in lovers' meeting

Every wise man's son doth know.

“Kanin liked it!” Samantha ended. “He said so.”

“I'm certain he did. It's a pleasant thing to believe, and you recite it well. Do you know where he is, Samantha? I would like to greet him. Prisoners,” he added to Diana, as Samantha claimed his right hand, drawing him on, “should greet one another on their homecoming, don't you think?”

Diana slid her arm around his waist, under the cloak, and felt his cheek rest for a moment against her hair.

In the Commons, maybe half the size of the Great Hall, things were slightly less chaotic. Big trestle tables had been dismantled and stacked against the walls, except for a few to the left, near the kitchen, where food was laid out and maybe two dozen people were gathered, talking and eating. In the open space, people were dancing boisterously to the accompaniment of a harmonica, a concertina, and a violin— a polka, at the moment. Samantha would have led them right through the dancers, but the Other pulled away from his guide and turned aside.

“Thanks, Samantha,” Diana called, as they left the girl perplexedly standing.

Approaching the tables, Diana recognized Livvy. So she guessed the man with her— very much with her— had to be Kanin. A tall man but solid enough you didn't really notice the height. And as he turned toward them, his wide-set eyes were startled, naked-looking: like those of a dismayed child. Not a reaction to anything present, Diana decided after a second— just his ordinary expression.

Kanin and the Other greeted each other solemnly, then stood silent, studying one another.

“It's been a real bad year,” Kanin commented finally. “For both of us. All of us. Everybody's been telling me.... I guess the blessing is that it's over.” He clasped Livvy, smiling and dazed-looking, closer against him.

“You have been missed,” said the Other. “And perhaps there's a comfort in knowing you can never be sent away or caged again.”

“Yeah. Yeah, there is.” Kanin smiled a little, looking around him wonderingly. “Can't really take it in yet, that it's over, I'm home. Not hiding out here, not running from anything. Just home.”

“Yes. You have endured your exile honorably. And now it's past.” Because Kanin's eyes had stopped on Diana, the Other introduced her, adding, “She has made the peace, that you return to, possible.”

Diana said hi, and Kanin said hello, both of them awkwardly aware, she thought, that she wasn't Catherine. But somehow that awareness no longer stung. Maybe because of the steady pressure of the Other's arm still around her. If Diana wasn't who she should have been, neither was he. And that somehow made it all right. Or as nearly all right as it would ever get.

And to her surprise, it continued to be okay: the music and voices no less noisy, bunches of people she knew, didn't know, knew slightly, brushing by or stopping to greet her, talk to her. But none of it got to her, the way she was used to it doing. She wasn't on edge every second, didn't feel that if she had to exchange politeness with one more person she'd scream. Didn't feel the icepick thrust of eyes on her, judging her, all the time. Diana felt comfortably, then puzzlingly, then happily ignored, or included— it amounted to the same thing. Everything casual, easy, so that she didn't really notice, in the middle of a conversation with Mary, when the Other slipped away and left her on her own.

Because other people claimed her, wanted to let her know they'd been concerned about her when she'd been sick and were now glad she was well. Didn't care what she was wearing, or how awful she looked. Just were glad friends, offering and sharing company, laughter, happiness. Diana stood, talking, or drifted among them with a sense of unreality, as though any second the magic would fade and everything would turn into pumpkins, and she into a scullery maid again. But while it lasted, she'd damn well enjoy it.

She didn't even mind when William came out of the kitchen and grabbed her into a bruising hug. Stiff for a second, startled, then amused and tolerant, because William was so plainly in harmless earnest and started talking about his sister, whom he plainly loved very much and missed a lot, because she lived in Poughkeepsie and running the tunnel kitchens left him no time to get away, even for a visit. Diana discovered she liked William, which she'd never have expected in a million years. And when the music changed, and William begged the favor of a dance, she accepted with no sense of incongruity or doing anything strange.

Then Cullen cut in, and it was another dance, less rambunctious, more formal. And Cullen was a pretty good dancer, serious about it, taking her easily through the glides and turns. Two dances with Cullen, and idle conversation on no particular topic, and a couple glasses of medium-proof punch she didn't really need because she was floating already and, she admitted to herself with untroubled perplexity, having a perfectly great time.

Reality returned, after a fashion, with Father, taking her arm and drawing her aside, regarding her with a diagnostic frown.

“How are you, Diana? I was most concerned when I discovered Vincent had... taken you elsewhere.”

Diana shrugged. “Seems okay now. Sorry to have been so much trouble. Never had a migraine come down on me that way before.”

“Ah. Yes,” Father said, with a deeper frown, and looked out across the room, rubbing his mouth. “I see. But you are quite recovered?”

“Guess so. Sure.”

“And Vincent— is he well? I was concerned for him: the ‘feedback loop' effect you had observed? I gather that has not recurred?”

“No,” Diana responded, reflecting that with the Other, the problem was exactly the opposite. Couldn't read him, pick up on him at all. And not just him, she reflected: everybody seemed to be keeping a better distance now. Even dancing with William had been fun. She'd never enjoyed a party this much. Or at all.

“I've been wanting to speak with him, but I can't seem to locate him— Mouse?” Father called sharply, and the teenager jerked around with an expression so plainly uneasy that he and Father froze for a second into poses of accusation and guilt, that Father was the first to stir from, asking moderately, “Mouse, have you by any chance seen Vincent?”

“No. Haven't seen him.” Mouse stuffed both hands into his pockets, shoulders hunched and head bowed, staring at Father through his roughly cut hair. Body language still shouting defensiveness, guilt. He shot a transparently pleading look at Diana, to which she responded with a slight headshake. Mouse stood a little straighter and grinned at her, relieved.

“Went off with Narcissa, maybe.”

Never any problem, she thought, about reading Mouse.

“Narcissa? I had no idea she had joined us. Well, if you do see him,” Father said, “will you please tell him I would like to speak with him?”

As Mouse bounced off, Father added, “And there are other matters, Diana, I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss with you. Privately. Before taking them up with Vincent. Concerning Mouse. And other things. As well.”

“Sure,” Diana said, knowing he meant Paracelsus' letter. Flinched away from the thought: couldn't handle that now, not tonight. “Sometime. A couple of days, okay?”

“Of course. Oh, there he is: Vincent!” Father called, starting toward the far side of the chamber where the parting of a cluster of people revealed what he took to be his son, leaning with one leg bent and braced on the wall behind him, arms folded. Diana tagged along, not knowing what might happen, but figuring it might go better if she were close.

But coming from another direction, from the passage, a stout black woman dressed like Aunt Jemima, kerchief and all, trudged sturdily along, carrying a plainly heavy bundle that, by waving arms, resolved into a child wrapped in a blanket and wearing blue footie sleepers.

As the dancers parted for her, Father muttered, “What can they be thinking of: she's virtually blind!” and moved more quickly, but the black woman still reached the Other first.

He straightened, tense, shaking his head in response to something the black woman said to him. Smiling, insistent, she held out the bundle and his arms lifted, reluctantly, to accept it from her.

Diana knew then: Jacob. She sprinted the last few yards, leaving Father behind.

“—your right, child,” the old black woman was saying, and then faced around, presenting broad features and eyes almost white with cataracts. She grasped Diana's arm, commenting with a strong, singsong Caribbean accent, “Do not be concerned, child: he will never hurt what is his own.”

“But he—” Diana said, trying to get past but momentarily anchored there by the old woman's unexpectedly strong grip.

“What has been taken from you may be restored,” the woman continued. “But only at a price. Yet all things have their price, do they not? Safety, love, even these very tunnels all around us, they all have their price, is it not so? Do not be concerned. It is little enough, of what he deserves....

“Father, you are surprised to see me,” the woman remarked comfortably to Father, moving to block his way without letting go of Diana.

“I am always surprised to see you, Narcissa. I gather that is how you prefer it. But what is the occasion?”

The old woman, Narcissa, at last released Diana's arm to gesture broadly. “The homecoming, of course! Prisoners freed, returned to those they love. And those who love them. Do you wonder—”

Diana lost the last of Narcissa's comment, coming to stand before the Other, not sure if there was any problem or what she'd do if there was, but feeling she ought to be there anyway, try.

They were regarding each other soberly, searchingly, the Other and the baby: now nine months old, with a full head of reddish-gold hair streaked with glints by the candlelight, as was the longer, coarser hair of the man who held him. Then, hitching the child to a better angle, the Other offered a furred, clawed finger. The baby immediately clamped onto it, grinning broadly and displaying three square little teeth, and loudly proclaimed, “Da!”

The wash of relief and other emotions, less easily named, made Diana lean against the wall.

“Vincent, I've been wanting to— You've been injured,” Father interrupted himself, fixing on the blood patch on the right sleeve.

Holding his son, the Other met Father's eyes levelly. “Nothing of consequence. And it has already been attended to. What did you want?”

Father folded both hands over the top of his stick. “Chiefly to assure myself that you were well. And to confess that I was mistaken. Refused to acknowledge a legitimate threat which must be addressed. Simply, to say that you were right, and I was wrong. At the next council meeting, I will ask Jamie to propose her compromise again. Discuss and refine it, surely. But then move for its adoption, with my full support. Ignorance of our enemy is a luxury we— I— can no longer afford. That a truth is painful or unwelcome is only the more reason to examine it closely. We must understand the bowers. I know that now.”

“I believe Jamie's plan offers the best hope of stabilizing the situation,” responded the Other, carefully removing a fistful of laces about to be stuffed into Jacob's mouth. “I now know it is not a problem I can hope to address alone.”

“Nor would we ask it of you. Whatever we do, we must have the whole community's support. And then implement it accordingly. I assure you, Vincent, you are no longer alone in your concern.”

“That's good to hear,” commented the Other, with a tightening around the corners of his mouth that wasn't quite a smile. He pushed away from the wall, saying to Father, “Excuse me. Jacob should be returned to bed. And then I will see Diana home.”

Expressionless blue eyes collected her, and she trailed along, calling, “G'night, Father. G'night, everybody,” and getting assorted waves and farewells in response.

“Great party,” she commented, in the passage, and stifled a yawn.

“I am glad you enjoyed it.”

She looked around at him. “Didn't you?”

He was occupied with helping Jacob clamber onto his shoulder. When his son was securely settled, he said, “It's one of those things better to have done than in the doing, I think. It was not for me. None of it, for me. For Kanin, and rightly; and for him. It might be a pleasant and a comfortable lie, for a few hours; but a lie, all the same. They are mine. But I am not theirs. They don't know me. I am a stranger, hidden behind a familiar face. As was Paracelsus, on more than one occasion. Jacob Wells is not my father. Paracelsus was. And he is gone. And my legacy from him, the bowers' love, is a love I cannot endure. A love which would destroy me.”

“I know you,” Diana commented, making almost a question of it, asking if that helped.

Slowly, he nodded. “And Narcissa, who is accustomed to converse with spirits and the powers of the Abyss. No outward seeming, fair or ill, can deceive her.

And Jacob.” He turned his face for a moment against his son's body as the child bounced, fists clutching the already tumbled mane. “He knows the difference. But to him, it's somehow not a difference that matters. That's strange, Diana: to find the difference clearly known but regarded as unimportant. Whereas I feel it so keenly. I always—” he began, but didn't finish the thought.

Jacob was deposited in the nursery, in Brooke's care. Then the Other turned to ask Diana formally, “May I escort you home?”

Covering a fresh yawn, Diana gave him a look. “You can follow me home anytime,” and was rewarded by an unconstrained answering smile. No edge, this time. Almost calm.

They followed a roundabout way that veered wide of the party, the same detour she and Vincent had followed, returning from the park, not talking much. Suddenly, Diana felt every bruise, every sore muscle— the aspirin had long since worn off, and a couple of glasses of punch weren't enough to make up the difference. She could have stretched out and slept, right where she was, except for the surety of a nice, padded futon and soft comforters waiting for her at the end of this path. And water. Hot water. Lots of it.

And she thought her companion was tired too. The tense energy, the fluid, feral suddenness that was the Other's style, had become just deliberate, steady motion. Comments, when they came, had relaxed into something more like Vincent's formal, thoughtful cadences, less like the declarative staccato she'd been listening to since she woke.

If Vincent could lose himself into fury, she suspected that the Other could likewise lose himself into calm. Nothing to fuel the rage, no enemy to fight, nobody in need of protecting. Nothing to support the effort of believing the split between his twin selves truly mattered and was worth the labor of maintaining. Since he'd held Jacob. Faced Father.

Many times, over the months, she'd felt the Other close, seeking release; now, there were moments when it could have been Vincent's arm around her, Vincent patiently pacing beside her, Vincent's thoughtless courtesy that took a torch to light her way and chose the outside edge of the descending stair.

Somehow she didn't think the Other would fight to keep control. He'd been used to erupting at the last second, living only the exciting parts and then gone, caged. Not slogging through the dull, everyday stuff that was 99% of existence. So no great battle for dominance. When the moment came, it would be simple, natural— like curling up in sleep, fading back into latency, letting go. Into quiet. Peace. Repose.

At the foot of the last ladder, she paused. “You'll come up, right? Check that nothing's hiding under the bed, not that anything could fit, because I left the whole place open, unlocked. And maybe a nightcap— a drink?”

There was a second when she thought he was going to back off, turn away. Then he set his hand on the ladder, and she knew it was going to be okay, after all, and began climbing the rungs knowing that he would follow.

She used the handrail to drag herself up the long, steep flight to the loft. Near the top, she asked, over her shoulder, “What do you figure you'll—” breaking off because she'd spotted a votive candle glass on the floor. For a scared, startled second, she was thinking bowers.

Then she burst out laughing, remembering her promise to the spook, and asked, “Babe, you got a match?”

Still laughing, she struck the match and stooped to light the little candle so pointedly placed before Kristopher's painting. Then she folded her arms and regarded the picture, aware of the Other standing right behind her.

“Not nearly as bad as I expected,” she commented. “You can hardly see me at all. Nobody could recognize that blob as me.”

“I could.”

“Oh, you, sure. But not anybody else. Could be worse,” she granted, and moved on down the loft, turning on a few lights.

The Other went off at an angle. When she looked, he was sitting on his heels by the stereo receiver, hand extended, looking for her permission.

“Yeah, sure, go ahead.” Still he didn't move, waiting. And then she figured out what he wanted, and sighed, scuffing on through the gap in the church rail, into the kitchen. “Sure, be my guest— crank it up as loud as you want.”

Hauling out a pair of tumblers, she remembered that subjectively, he was only 17; and all teenagers liked loud music. She flinched when the speakers cut loose, but it was only a few instruments— chamber music. Like the painting, not as bad as it might have been. She could still stand to be in the same room with it.

She grabbed the bourbon bottle and poured both glasses halfway full, not sure he'd take it but determined to offer because she damn well wanted, needed a stiff drink herself. That, to begin with.

He'd found a place he liked, sitting on the wood floor past where the carpet ended, likely where the audio dispersion of the speakers was the most concentrated. She took a good swallow from her glass, then carried the spare to him. He looked at it.

“Nightcap, babe.” She set the glass on the floor. “If you want to, have some. If you don't, don't.”

“Do you have anything else? Anything that hasn't been opened?”

“Bourbon's not like beer or pop— it doesn't go flat,” she commented, mildly exasperated, but he still just looked at her. So she went back into the kitchen and poked into cabinets to see what might be around. Under the sink she found a bottle of raki. She'd bought it under the impression it was Japanese, like saki, but found out afterward it was Turkish. He'd never mentioned any special fondness for Turks, whereas he was very interested in all things Japanese, samurai and stuff, which was why she'd bought it, for him to try.

She got a fresh glass and poured some in. It looked like motor oil, but the smell was straight, raw alcohol. She carried it dubiously out into the speakers' blaring convergence, half a dozen violins sawing away like mad, remarking, “You take your own chances, with this.”

He tasted it, considered, then took a fair-sized swallow. Guessing that meant it was acceptable, she turned back to the bathroom to take care of her aspirin deficiency. As she downed the pills, she found the claw-footed tub calling her, offering irresistible promises of hot water.

Ducking back out, she knelt on the floor by him, asking, “You okay for a few minutes? Because I'd really like to have a shower, just a shower, not a bath, get at least some of this crud off...?”

He nodded, looking perfectly comfortable and peaceful where he was, enjoying the music, so she didn't feel too guilty leaving him on his own while water just this side of scalding beat on all the sore places. Soaping and scrubbing carefully, she found black-and-blue patches in places she didn't know anybody could get bruises. And the water felt great: better than the tepid bathing pool. Better than anything. She couldn't resist washing her hair, too, with the music still playing, loud even through the shut door: everything sounding fine out there.

A towel wrapping her head and another around her, she made a serious, determined business of brushing her teeth, thinking about what she could get out of the freezer for a midnight snack. At the party, she'd had some cake and a couple of little cubes of what she'd guessed was meatloaf, decorated with sliced olives; but that and a tunafish sandwich hadn't begun to fill up the hollow places.

And as far as she knew, he hadn't eaten anything at all. As if that would have been accepting more hospitality, on false pretenses, than he felt comfortable with. But at least Jacob had known him. And loved him. Maybe that, she thought hopefully, might be a start....

The bourbon tasted much better with your mouth clean. And between that and the shower, she finally felt warm all over, inside and out, for the first time all day. The tunnels were a nice enough place, she guessed, friendly and all— at least at the Family end— but she really didn't know how people put up with it, day after day, month after month, always being right at the edge of shivering.

Leaving the steamy bathroom, rubbing the towel around her hair one-handed, she said, “Babe, how about if I make us some....”

The music was still going. But except for the flickering votive down by the easel, the lights were all out. She looked around for him, then went out past the church rail and bumped the stereo toggle with her knee, cutting off a flute in mid-squeal. “Babe? You here?”

Nothing. She looked both ways, up and down the loft. Still nothing. He'd gone.

She settled, and felt, flat-footed. Disappointed, though she hadn't had any specific expectations or planned anything in particular. Had just hoped they could have a little time together, nobody mad or hurt or going anyplace in a rush. To end the day that way, as she'd come to like and deeply value.

Oh, well.

As she turned back toward the kitchen, vaguely debating coffee, she noticed, on the big oak table, something that reflected the votive's glimmer. Two bottles of different shapes, balanced upright, nose to nose: the square raki bottle and the round bourbon bottle on top, both empty. And a torn piece of computer paper underneath. Setting down her glass and removing the bottles, she bent to read the note. In squared-off, rather labored printing, it said: I HAVE LEFT YOU A GIFT IN RECOMPENSE OF WHAT I TOOK.

She turned on one of the overhead lights and wandered around the loft, looking for anything different, whatever he'd left. Found nothing. And tried to figure what to make of the empty bottles and speculated on how they'd been emptied. She couldn't have been in the shower more than 15 minutes or so: hardly time for him to get bored enough to leave. Had he decided raki wasn't so great after all and poured it down the sink? Then what'd been wrong with the bourbon? And what had he meant about a present? Or something he'd taken?

Simple things were okay, but this was a puzzle she'd just have to leave alone, tonight. Until the numb place came back online, started talking to her again. She was just too bone tired to deal with it.

Flipping off the overhead and unwrapping her wet hair, she headed into her bedroom. And froze in the doorway. Nothing could hide under her futon. But there sure as hell was something on it. As her eyes adjusted to the dim city glow that came through the skylight, she made out a long, furred body stretched on one side. Wearing nothing but socks. The rest of the clothes dumped in a careless pile against the partition.

She backed against the doorjamb, breathing, “What the hell...?” Then, in a normal conversational voice, she asked, “Is this supposed to pass for a subtle hint?”

No answer. No reaction at all. Heavy, deep, slow breathing. Sound asleep. Or—

Struck with a surmise, she ventured near enough to set a careful hand on his shoulder, give a slight push. Didn't rouse. Didn't even stir. “Babe?”

Then she spun back to the doorway, both hands over her mouth and stuffing towel into it to muffle the whoops of laughter. Because she'd figured out, finally, what the present was: Vincent. Stripped and passed out drunk. In her bed.

She leaned on the table, laughing so hard she had to sit down. A mean trick, for the Other to toss all that down and then leave Vincent to cope with the hangover. And it was going to be a beaut: bourbon on top of raki. Made her shudder, just imagining it. The sort of crude prank a malicious teenager would play on his twin. Guy stuff. Really a wretched thing to do.

But somehow she couldn't stop laughing, muttering to herself, “That, that—” but unable to come up with a term awful enough to suit the situation.

And what about the situation?

Finally getting the whooping down to occasional fits of giggling, she thought about what she should do with her present. No chance at all of budging him: she'd learned that long ago. He was there to stay, until he could move under his own power. Then what? Not embarrass him, waking? Do the decent thing and sleep on the couch tonight?

She got up and tested the couch cushions with a few thoughtful pokes, then had to lean for a few seconds because she'd broken up again, thinking about how thoroughly miserable he was going to be tomorrow, no matter what she did. Couldn't even take aspirin. That was awful. And those socks. It set her off, all over again.

Do the decent thing? Hell, no.

Because he was lying on top of the covers, she got a spare comforter out of a cabinet and stole back into the bedroom. Pitched both wet towels. Flipped the spare comforter over everything, then slid in underneath. Warm. Wonderfully soft, easing all the sore places, everywhere.

Knowing a brass band wouldn't disturb him now, she still edged up carefully until she was spooned against his back and lay quietly, feeling his steady breathing, his warmth. Feeling it, at last, as a real gift, to be able to hold him close, whatever it came to cost either of them. Because as Narcissa said, even love had its cost, its price.

Her part of it, Diana knew she'd pay willingly for as long as it took, as long as it could last between them. Maybe forever, if there could be such a thing as forever in this dangerous world.

Cuddling even closer, she pressed a quiet kiss against his shoulder. Whispering, “G'night, babe. Sweet dreams,” she shut her eyes.

End of Part 2