ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT

by Nan Dibble

A three part series

Part 1

In a Dark Time[1]

Shoulders tucked tight against her roof's cold, Diana turned the three-colored candle in her chilly hands. Glancing up at Vincent, she remarked uncertainly, “Thanks, it's real nice. Hand-dipped, right?”

“It has a special significance,” Vincent responded, so patiently she knew she'd done something dumb again, missed something, in spite of having her huncher out at full stretch, trying to see everything, understand everything, so as not to ignorantly step on any of the sore places.

Which was impossible because he was a walking open wound and had been as long as she'd known him. Just able to hide it better now under the mask of good manners, formality, habit. Everything she said was wrong because nothing was right with him. And still he came, tapping on her skylight like a shy ghost; and therefore she still gritted her teeth and answered, then replayed every conversation twenty dozen times to note all the dumb, insensitive, ignorant things she'd said, hoping to do better next time. Hoping there'd be a next time.

Since Jacob's Naming and then the business about the Ashman, she'd seen him a total of three times. The computer file of her review notes, post-morteming each meeting afterward, now ran better than forty pages.

Vincent continued, “Each year, we invite our helpers to a special celebration. Honoring the light they have given us during the past year. We share with them the light we have, affirming that we are all part of one another, Above and Below. You certainly have been a helper to us, Diana. Will you come?”

What she didn't say was: Thanks a lot but I don't want any of your damn consolation prizes or guilt trips and Is it like the Fireman's Ball, that you're expected to make a donation at the door? and The hell with your gratitude and formal politeness.

What she said was, “Yeah, sure, I guess. When is it?”

“Tomorrow evening. I will come for you and show you the way.”

Just so I don't get the idea it's a date or anything personal like that.

“Sure,” she said, clasping her arms before her, trying not to let on she was shivering. “Anything I should do, or wear, or bring?”

“It's called Winterfest,” he said, oblivious of her question. Which was OK, she understood that: he'd worked out the whole script in advance, maybe practiced it, and stumbled a little over anything unexpected, anything that didn't fit the script. She thought keeping track of what he'd decided he should say or do was about as much as he could manage right now. Going through the approved motions, on guts and stubbornness alone. No more give to him than to a glass.

Medium silence. He specialized in those. Then he said, “It's a celebration. Brightness, in a dark time. You need bring nothing, do nothing except grant us the honor of being our guest.”

Great: a party. She'd have to dress up. Right then, she knew it was going to be awful.

“Okay, she said. “Thanks. Look, it's late. Why don't you come in and I'll fix us... fix us some cocoa before you have to hike...?”

He was already backing away. “I'm sorry. I have several other errands to attend to before—”

“That's okay, I just thought, you know, it's a long way.” With an effort, she bit off the babbling. Made a smile. Looked him in the face, though it was too dark to see much except that he was still turned toward her. “Good night, then.”

“Be well, Diana.”

Loping down her stairs, she checked her watch. Still an hour to go till midnight. But she didn't have the patience to hang around, do nothing, until it was time, so she changed into a warm sweater, pulled on her second-best Yankees jacket, grabbed her tote, and trotted out against a stiff winter breeze to hail a cab.

After letting her into his shack, George Avapoulos, the night watchman at St. Cleo's, started yanking out the legs of the rickety card table. “Some stake-out. They oughta get you some relief. Or else just pay you to watch the place, let me go home.”

Dragging the half-empty bourbon bottle and the battered deck of cards out of her tote, Diana flashed George one of her best grins. She unfolded the chair she always used and settled down to shuffle while George wiped and ceremoniously set out the two jelly jars that did duty as glasses.

At first she'd worried that George would see through her transparent story about maintaining a stake-out. Then she realized that he didn't care if it was a scam or not, so long as she was willing to keep him company and lose small bills at cut-throat gin rummy. As long as she was here, he'd play the game, stay put.

Maybe an hour later, as she was marking down twenty and two boxes on the score sheet, George paused in dealing, lifting his head. “There's that damn dog again.”

“Yeah.” Diana finished adding up the score with a steady hand.

George made no move to get up: nothing was ever disturbed, no gravestones tipped over, no graffiti. In fact, he'd admitted St. Cleo's had probably been less troubled by vandals this fall than any comparable city cemetery unprotected by high walls or gates locked at sundown. “Hear a noise like that,” he'd remarked after a similar agonized howl, “it don't exactly make you want to go meet what's making it.”

Now, completing the deal and politely waiting for her to pick up her hand first, he announced, “I got it figured out.”

“Yeah?” Diana responded, unworried.

“It's Chandler's dog. Somebody brings it. Enough snow yesterday, I found tracks today.”

“Yeah, maybe. Dogs get like that, sometimes.” Diana chose her discard and pitched it.

“Not a big dog, though: guy must carry it. Just the guy's tracks, I mean—nothing from the dog. Funny, you know: it sure don't sound like some pocket pooch.” When Diana didn't rise to that bait, George tried again, adding, “But it's weird, you know? That it still can tell it was her. Ground's frozen, good deep grave, solid casket, and all. Buried about three months now. So how the hell can it tell? I mean, what does it do: read the headstone?”

“You gonna talk, or you gonna play?”

George picked a card from the pile and rearranged his hand, frowning. “So, what: the cop shop gonna keep you out here through the holidays and all?” Judiciously, George discarded a jack of spades. “Don't like to tell somebody their own business, but it don't seem right. Nothing ever happens. How you gonna know when it's time to quit?”

“I'll know.” Diana took the jack, did quick addition, and inquired, “How you feeling?” showing all her teeth. George groaned in anticipation. “Knock with nine,” Diana declared, laying out the cards.

Only caught him eleven points' worth, but that was better than nothing.

*****

Vincent came for her, the following night, shortly after dark— barely 6:00. Meeting on the roof of her loft, he surveyed her nervously clasped hands. “Have you kept the candle?”

What's he think: I pitched it out? Oh, I'm supposed to have it, bring it, he didn't tell me, expected me to know....

“I'll grab it on the way through,” Diana responded, pulling her jacket tighter around her. “Meet you in the alley, right?”

They parted, and Diana feverishly yanked out drawers and then spun, staring, until she spotted the candle on top of her monitor, probably not a good place, the heat might have warped it. But it seemed okay. She held it carefully upright, waiting for the elevator to creak up from the ground floor.

Almost a bad mistake, she hadn't realized about the candle. And maybe another, he hadn't said if there'd be food or not, and she hadn't eaten since breakfast, but she guessed that probably didn't make any difference either, she was so tense she probably couldn't have kept anything down, so food didn't matter either.

Once Below, handing her down through a manhole, then walking from one caged utility light to the next, Vincent kept the conversation going by asking about her current case. She answered in generalities, positive he wasn't really listening, that it was just the politeness he'd worked up for tonight to fend off the silence and keep anything unexpected at bay.

But he surprised her, asking, “Had you considered simple envy as a motive?”

“What's to envy? Victim didn't have much of anything. Walk up flat, $237 in her savings account, no uncashed lottery tickets or anything.”

“Still, who profits from her death?”

“Well, her job's open now, but who could want that? And I suppose her flat will be rented....” All the same, that started Diana thinking along another line—about how little could seem worth killing for, if somebody else had nothing at all. It was scary, sometimes, how little that could be. People got mugged for pocket change.

Having nothing could make somebody crazy, reckless—because it also meant they had nothing to lose.

“Do you often go out on investigations,” he asked, “or is it more in the nature of research?”

“Depends. I generally like to check out the scene for myself, interview witnesses, that sort of thing. See what I can pick up. After that, well, I guess you could call it research. Generally I point the finger and somebody else gets the warrant and does the actual collar.”

“Good.”

“Why good?”

“You seek the violent and the desperate. To someone like that, yours could seem the face of the hunter— the lone threat which, once removed, would leave them and their guilty secret safe. It could be dangerous for you.”

Diana shrugged. “Sometimes it is. But I'm still here, all in one piece.” She didn't want to say anything about being hunted over the rooftops by Gabriel's goons, although she knew that was what was in Vincent's mind. She was real careful not to talk about that time, even though that was mostly what they had in common. Deliberately changing the subject, she asked, “So how's Jacob?”

“Amazing,” Vincent said softly.

That was a good topic: he never seemed to tire of it or find it uncomfortable. It carried them through until they reached the candle-lit corridors where other people were gathering by threes and fours. Vincent took her as far as a cave where the people from Above were shedding their coats and winter gear. Excusing himself, he left her in charge of a fresh-faced teenager named Jamie whom Diana vaguely recalled meeting a time or two before.

“I guess it's cold, up top,” Jamie remarked, clearly fishing for something to say. She was wearing a green sweater and a vest strung with about six colors of ribbon. Laying her jacket on the pile, Diana was scanning what other topside people were wearing: some bare shoulders, spangly wraps, but the men in a mix of business suits and only a few tuxes. Diana pushed up the sleeves and then tugged down the waist of the only cashmere sweater she owned, deciding at least she fit between the extremes, hadn't made herself conspicuous the one way or the other. Except for her hair, of course; and that, she couldn't do anything about. Red was red.

Everybody was holding one of the three-colored candles. Diana made sure she had hers in plain sight. Her ticket, she figured: her passport, showing she was entitled to be here.

Clearly not knowing what to do with her, Jamie passed her off to an old guy named Sebastian: white hair and mustache, red face, something of a drinker, Diana guessed. Apparently did cheap magic tricks at the stations and in the subways, dodging the transit police. But he had a great line of patter. That he paid her extravagant compliments and addressed her as “dear lady” only meant he was a harmless sort of phony. Walking down the dimly lit passages, clutching her candle, Diana only occasionally wanted to disappear into the walls and mostly was able to approximate something that could pass for a smile.

Noticing the wry face she pulled when he did a particularly corny routine of picking a coin out of her hair, Sebastian asked, “What is it, dear lady: have you no faith in magic?”

Diana shrugged. “I'm here. Guess that's about all the magic I can handle right now.”

“I know the feeling,” Sebastian confided. “No one believes less in magic than the magician. I need to come Below from time to time to renew my sense of wonder. Besides, William always lays a fine table for these occasions. And one must never discount the benefits of free food, eaten in good company. This can be a hard season for those of us who live by what wits we have, within the tolerated fringes of this great city.”

“Why don't you get a job?” Diana asked bluntly.

Sebastian made a shocked face. “My dear lady, I already have a profession. I surprise and delight weary travelers and sometimes succeed in prompting them to a smiling generosity whereby all benefit. I guide those without my surpassing expertise to places of shelter and warn them away from danger. I gladden many and harm no one. How many of those in more mundane employments could claim the same?”

“Guess I see what you mean.”

The procession had stopped. Diana lifted onto her toes to look over the heads of those lower on the torchlit stair. Down at the bottom, Vincent was doing what plainly was both a necessary and a ceremonial chore: lifting a bar the size, and probably the weight, of a railroad tie and setting it aside so two huge doors could be opened. He stood aside and the people started going in.

The stair was windy: grit blew in her eyes. Blinking and fending off a gust with an upraised arm, Diana asked Sebastian, “What else does he have to do?”

“Ah—you mean Vincent? Well, he has a part in the traditional recitation, before the candles are lit. After that, nothing, really. No duties. No one presides. It's very informal.”

Diana nodded and moved when everybody in front did.

Informal, she thought, wasn't great: formal, he could handle, methodically taking each expected step at a time. It was informal he had trouble with. Where the rules left off and getting from minute to minute involved choice, thinking, having to pay attention or at least put on a good enough show to pass.

So she wasn't surprised that when she reached the landing, Vincent fell in beside her. She was his guest, that was part of the drill. Maybe even why he'd asked her. Sebastian made a great fuss about having such a charming companion stolen away although only the brave deserved the fair and he conceded himself outclassed....

Neither Vincent nor Diana took the least notice, passing through the doors into the dark. He'd shed his cloak but still had his gauntlets on, she noticed, as a leather touch on her elbow guided her to a high-backed, heavy chair he settled her in, everything still dark, people bumping around, making excuse-me noises, and finding places. When it finally got quiet, the lame guy Vincent called “Father” lit one of the special candles at the head of the table and made a little speech about sharing light, that half a dozen other people chipped in on (including Vincent, whose part was about how the dark could be a source of fear). Then candles lit candles and several big candelabras were lit too and hauled up toward the ceiling. Diana looked around, finally getting an idea of where she was.

Bigger than the average airplane hanger, she thought, but not so big as a ballpark. Couple hundred people at a guess, less than half in topsider dress, all spreading out, milling around. Music started up: couple fiddles, a concertina, and, improbably, a flute—played by a serious girl who looked about ten. Polka music. Some people paired off to dance. Others stood talking in small groups. Children of various sizes, down to about knee high, scampered and dodged between the grown-ups, trailing fringe and ribbons.

Informal, Diana thought: right.

No full sit-down meal, it looked like. Buffet style, serve yourself off a couple long board-and-sawhorse makeshifts over by some stairs, hot stuff in several big stainless steel sinks serving as a steam table. People took plates, collected some food, and brought it back to the big tables to sit and chat.

“May I bring you something?”

Twisting, Diana found Vincent by her shoulder. “A jack,” she suggested, “to get me outta this chair...?”

That got a blink and then something very close to a smile as he helped her push away from the table. Mostly his eyes, she thought. Didn't get any farther than that. You had to watch, to see it at all. But better than nothing.

Because it seemed eating was in the script, she obediently started drifting with him toward the stairs and the buffet. Every couple of steps, somebody greeted him, said something either about Jacob or about it being good to see him again, not saying the C word. Vincent made the correct polite noises and introduced them to Diana, who made smiles and tried to pretend she'd remember the names longer than it took to say them. Meanwhile she noticed that whether people stopped or passed, they kept about a yard of open space between themselves and Vincent. She would have considered it insulting except that their expressions were so plainly friendly—even affectionate. So not stand-offish, she guessed: respectful, maybe, or conforming to a custom so habitual nobody even thought about it anymore. Not staying out of reach: giving him space.

She wondered if she was supposed to be doing that too. But when she moved off a tentative pace, Vincent moved with her, keeping her within the invisible circle. So she wouldn't get jostled, stepped on, maybe. Anyway, she concluded the polite, protective distance wasn't supposed to apply to her. Warmed by that realization, she did what seemed the natural thing: tucked her hand under his elbow, past where the gauntlet sleeve ended.

He instantly stiffened. His eyes went blank, staring at nothing. For the second it took her to yank her hand back, Diana honestly thought he was going to faint.

Almost, she patted his arm, realizing she shouldn't just in time and clasping her hands hard together instead. Looking anxiously into his face, she didn't say the words of concern that sprang into her mind. She watched while he took a long breath, blinked and swallowed hard, and forced the stiffness away. By the time he looked at her she was determinedly staring off in another direction—toward some tapestries hanging on the wall behind the stairs.

“Bet there's a story to those,” she hinted, pointing, careful not to make contact.

So they turned that way, slowly going partway up the stairs to inspect the exhibit, and Diana balanced herself in the little ring she was supposed to occupy: no farther than a yard away, but nothing inside six inches, either. She kept her elbows and hands close, tried to control her gestures, but waving and pointing was too much of a habit. As with most New Yorkers, cuff the hands and the mouth froze up, too. After a couple near misses she turned slightly away from him to keep from batting him by mistake.

So, she thought resignedly, I guess dancing is out.

That was okay, she could do without it. And anyway it was a little like dancing as it was, staying always close but not too close, each of them aware and watchful of each other's motions, eye contact, the intricacies of breath. Not the same dance as flirting, courtship. More like her rookie days, she and a partner going into some building where a shooter might be. The coordinated defensive moves of lead man and backup, shifting within specified ranges. The ingrained choreography of taking each potential hazard—corners, doorways, windows—by the numbers and together.

The hazards were different here, but the moves were pretty much the same: gliding easily past topics that proved awkward or strayed from the script of what he was prepared to handle, bridging over the silences, sometimes leading, sometimes following his lead—back down the stairs, more greetings, more people not saying the C word, passing up plate food for a piece of cake she could hold in one hand and a mug of punch to wash it down with.

Vincent, hands still encased in the gauntlets, took nothing. They drifted so Vincent could make appreciative noises to the flute player, resting between sets, and ask after the health of the concertina player's mother. Then on to watch Sebastian doing dumb stuff with two pieces of rope for an audience of children.

She thought they were both doing pretty good, actually. Shoulder-to-shoulder or back-to-back teamwork, looking outward rather than at each other. Then they were ambushed by marbles escaping from a Chinese checker game two teenagers were carrying toward a table. Marbles bounding and rolling everywhere. Definite hazard for the dancers. Blocking as many marbles as she could, Diana stooped to start collecting them. An instant's check from her companion. Then Vincent stripped off one gauntlet and bent to help.

The furred fingers. The claws.

She tried not to look, it was no news to her, kidding with the embarrassed teens scrambling around on the floor with them. But she could tell it was no good. Coping with the unscripted interruption had thrown him off. Somehow shedding the glove was losing necessary shielding. Having dumped maybe one palmful of collected marbles back in the can, Vincent rose slowly, staring off toward a wall where the shadows of dancers turned and coalesced. Both hands, bare and gloved, closed into fists.

Hastily dumping her collection, Diana straightened too, keeping the right distance, remarking lightly, “Can't have them losing their marbles. Right out in public.”

No reaction. Hadn't been real funny anyway, she admitted to herself. Deliberately, she closed her hand around his upper arm. Felt the jerk, the freeze, but this time didn't let go or back off.

Though nothing showed, he was shaking. Absolutely rigid with strain, except for the tremors running through him. Without turning, maybe to himself, he murmured, “I cannot do this.”

Diana's other hand lifted to bracelet his arm completely around, tightly. She thought, I'm a tourniquet. A splint. She said, “Sure you can. Got through Jacob's Naming. You can get through this too.”

He started drawing quick, gasping breaths. In another minute he'd do it, she thought: cut loose with one of those graveyard howls. She could practically feel it building in his chest, about to explode.

Glancing around frantically for anybody, anything, to distract him, Diana demanded, “Hey, did Catherine play checkers?”

He turned. Looked at her, though his eyes didn't focus. “What?”

“I said, do you play checkers? Not the kind with marbles. Just regular checkers. Bet I can beat you two games out of three. What d'you say?”

His head bent and some of the shaking tension let up under the tight grip of her hands. The stored breath slipped away in a long, aching sigh. “I'll try,” he said, and moved with her to the table where somebody had abandoned a game in progress. Diana turned loose of him to sort the checkers and get them set out in the right rows, skipping the proper squares.

She beat him the first game. But he took the second and third. For the fourth, he even took off the other gauntlet, laid the pair beside him on the table.

The game provided a built-in script. All you had to do was follow it, stay within it. Didn't have to feel, or even think—except about the game. And across the table was just about the right distance: not too close, not too far.

They didn't talk much, concentrating on the board. And people drifting by maybe stopped to kibitz a minute but didn't interrupt because that was the proper scenario for players so plainly absorbed in what they were doing.

About game ten, it got a little rocky. She thought, because of the music that was playing—waltzes, now. Slow, quiet. Romantic, even. Vincent kept his back to the wall where the shadows glided and merged. Diana pulled a double jump and kinged herself twice before he decided to make a fight of it after all. She got him in the end, but not by much. By game twelve, it was better again, more methodical. By game fifteen, he was walking all over her, laying clever traps, lining up a five-jumper that pretty nearly cleared the board in the one move.

Diana checked her watch. Past midnight now. They'd made it through.

Leaning back on the bench, Diana remarked ruefully, “I can see I'm way outta my class here.”

Vincent looked up at her, quiet-eyed, but didn't say anything. Too polite to admit the obvious, likely.

She added, “Had you on the run a couple of times there, though. Maybe I only need practice.”

Medium silence, stacking checkers. Then: “Might I make an observation?”

“Sure. Shoot.”

“You favor the right side of the board too much. It becomes predictable and leaves your left open to attack. And at times you're slow in deploying your back row. That hampers your play. We could reverse the board every five moves. As a handicap.”

“Sure, okay, we can try that.”

It was confusing, swapping the board around, but gradually Diana began to appraise his position as well as her own, getting more a feel for the board and for the game as a whole.

He beat her anyway.

“I definitely need more practice,” Diana commented, starting to collect the checkers into their box. “Most nights I break work about eleven, fix something to eat, goof off awhile. You up that late?”

“Often.” A flat, unemphatic word that meant he didn't want to talk about why, which was okay because she didn't want to ask. Didn't need to.

“Well, maybe sometimes, if you want, you could drop by then. Bring a board and checkers? I need a fighting chance here. Need some practice.”

“Perhaps.” Medium silence; the large, furred hands meditatively folded. Then: “Yes. Tomorrow?”

“Sure, tomorrow would be great.”

Looking her straight in the eyes, Vincent commented suddenly, “You are like a candle.”

“Yeah: bright red on top.”

“A light in a dark place. A dark time. Thank you.”

His left hand reached out, slowly, giving her plenty of time to dodge if she wanted to. But she held very still—for fear of scaring him off. The different cautions made brief contact: her hand on the table, his resting on it for an instant. Hardly a pat, much less a squeeze. But contact. Outside the script, she thought. Risky. Real.

What she could give him, what he could take, was quiet and time. So she gave him that.

Walking back with him to collect her jacket, clutching the candle stub he'd presented her with as a keepsake, Diana thought that midnight checkers would be a definite improvement over gin rummy.

And a whole lot better than nothing.

Helper

“Helper,” Diana muttered, twisting up her flaming hair, staring hard into her bathroom mirror to corral and tuck wild wisps into the knot before she pinned it solid enough to last all night, if she was lucky. “You're a helper,” she accused her reflection, poking hairpins blind, behind her head. “He said so. So help, already. Just what he needed: a wedding. Just what I needed. What do you care? He's gonna ask you, you're gonna go. So, enough about it, already.”

Making a tight-lipped, wincing face, she patted at the forest-mottled shawl draped crosswise over one shoulder and tugged to make sure the ends were solid under her belt, front and back, then leaned on the sink to check her image one last time, make sure she'd be presentable, fit in with whatever scarecrow finery people Below wore for a wedding.

Only a little emerald eyeliner, she wasn't trying to wow Maxwell at some staff meeting. Best brown slacks and a new silver shirt with full, soft, drapy sleeves that went tight at the wrists, all fresh from the dry cleaner's, boots she'd even polished—maybe she was crazy, but not crazy enough to try hiking three miles or so, each way, in mole-killer spike heels, not that she owned a pair anyway.

No perfume, no sparkly earrings a yard long, no slinky designer dresses, designer hairdos. Not her style.

Hard enough, his family's eyes all on her, making the inevitable comparisons. Be an out-and-out killer if she felt she'd phonied herself up, tried to fake being anything but what she was.

Trying to live according to somebody else's expectations, that'd just eat you alive. Like the fit her pop had when she decided to quit the Force to take a B. S. in Psych. Long as he'd lived, he'd never called it anything but her “bullshit” degree....

Never tried to kid anybody, now, about who she was. Didn't kid herself, either. Career cop's brat from the Bronx, that'd have to be good enough. Because she was fresh out of anything else.

Some kind of chip you got there, Bennett, she told herself, giving her reflection her best ice-pick stare. That go with the outfit, too? What is it, an insult, that the man asks you to go to a wedding with him? Quit winding up to sock somebody and get moving!

Snatching up her best Yankees jacket, the one with both elbows still intact, as she loped through the Great Room— Jesus, what a pretentious name for a plain living room!— of her loft, she stuffed her arm into one sleeve to clear a hand to grab the brightly-wrapped present from her kitchen island and hold it while she dragged the jacket the rest of the way on. She swung around to punch the elevator button, softly pounding at the wall next to the speaker grille until the elevator's steel door rumbled back.

His note had said seven, so that meant seven. He'd be there, waiting in the alley shadows to hand her through a manhole into a damn sewer, for Christ's sake, just as ceremoniously as though helping her into a stretch limo. One you had to really get down into.

She gave one short bark of a laugh and slapped the button to drop to the building's grungy foyer that looked like a shooting-gallery after a vice bust.

Just went to prove you couldn't go by the outsides of things. Her loft looked pretty good, she thought, whenever she'd consent to hit the “come-in” buzzer, let somebody through the security door to reach the elevator and then up to the top floor, where she'd maybe shove back the steel accordion gate and let them inside, and maybe not. Pretty good: lots of glass, skylights slanted so pigeons couldn't land, solid wood floors, no roaches, good location, no muggings, break-ins, anyplace on the block for weeks. Only five stories up, not eighteen, but what the hell, lots of people would kill for a five-year, rent-controlled lease on a loft like hers....

But he never came by the elevator, never rang the bell or used the speaker to beg admission. Never hear that voice coming out of her grille. Give her a heart attack if she did.... Tap, tap on one of the skylights, and there he'd be, damn near filling the whole window, looking down at her like God, quietly sure she'd come running, and by God, she did, every time, and what must he think of her? What in hell did he think of her?

She was a helper. A helper. And damn lucky to be that, she told herself, scowling, shoving the accordion gate open. Most men disappeared; but he could disappear, suddenly and for good, anytime, for any reason or for none she'd ever know, and there'd be not a damn thing she could do about it but stand on her roof and look and wonder....

No reason for him to come, or stay, what with his baby safe and Gabriel dead, except that he still came, still stayed, just often enough to keep her half-listening for that tapping every second she was home alone and awake, and often even in her dreams....

You had to give a man like that lots of space, hold him real easy and loose, supposing you could hold him at all....

The air outside was a shock, frigid.

He was where she'd known he would be, in the mouth of the dark alley across the way where he could watch her front door, see her come out. She wondered, sometimes, if he was ever there when she didn't know about it, or if he ever looked down through her skylights and didn't tap, just stood there, watching....

Dream on, Sweet Potato, she thought, and laughed a syllable of her infrequent, self-mocking laugh as she jaywalked quickly toward him across the icy street.

“Diana,” he said, as he always did: a formal greeting, acknowledging her presence, that seemed to be the customary style Below, where he'd been raised.

Imagine that. She often tried....

She lifted one palm: not quite a wave, more like an Indian salute from an old B Western. Her style, from the South Bronx, where she'd been raised. Micktown, Spudtown, before it went black, then Puerto Rican, then rainbow, and then was trashed, burned, and bulldozed into oblivion....

Hugging the wedding present tight against the Yankees emblem, she blurted, “Hi. Guess I'm ready. I'll dump the jacket as soon as I'm down, doesn't match the outfit and I know I won't need it Below, but it's freezing out tonight, tv says it's gonna snow, maybe....” She ended the non-sentence with a jerky, tight flip of a hand.

She was babbling, and knew she was babbling, and it didn't matter, he didn't mind, his shadowed, slanted eyes smiling at her in a way more felt than seen.

He said, “Come,” and enfolded her fingers with his huge hand, and they went down the alley together, and she'd pity any mugger they might meet...

“So,” she said brightly, dropping from the last cleat to the tunnel floor as, above her, he dragged the manhole cover back into place from underneath. Be awful if it was left open and a car hit it, take off a whole wheel. Some kind of vicious car-eating pothole, that'd be.... She held the present between her knees while she shucked off the jacket, ready to tuck it into a cleat as soon as he was down, and patted her scarf flat.

“So, who's this Lena? Anybody I met, anybody I should remember? And who's she marrying? Is he good news, or bad?”

*****

Her hair was coming loose in big, flopping chunks, her mouth was cottony from talking, and she hated weddings. Especially receptions. Especially receptions Below, where she was expected to greet a few hundred total strangers and pretend they were all family, which they maybe were to Vincent but not to her, and smile, and smile, and pretend that she understood everybody's old jokes and that her feet didn't hurt from so much walking and then standing around on very cold, hard stone.

Big events Below had all the worst qualities of Bennett family reunions in some awful Holiday Inn in Scranton or Seattle, someplace, with WELCOME BENETs on the sign outside, wearing crayoned name badges and being forced to kiss warty old Great Aunt Maeve, who you never'd been able to stand anyway because she pinched cheeks hard and mailed ugly, practical Christmas presents that always arrived broken, late, and with postage due.

Not that she actually was expected to kiss anybody Below: saints forbid! She was expected to mingle, around this vast barn of a Great Hall, maybe catching sight of Vincent's back once or twice in an hour.

Naming ceremony or christening, wedding or Winterfest, whatever they called it—always the same. It was the big, community things he invited her to, the events where lots of other helpers came too: nothing personal or private, except for the fact that he took the trouble to ask her, and walk all that distance to escort her safely, and then eventually guide her home again, and not so much as a goodnight kiss to reward her at the end of it.

Saints forbid.

Eyes slowly glazing over, she'd been cornered for at least half an hour now by some vastly fat man named William who seemed very interested in the pattern of her scarf...among other things. She'd have hauled off the scarf and given it to him if she'd thought it would have worked, and wanted to haul off and give him something else altogether, but she kept smiling and nodding and backing away as far as his hand gripping her elbow would allow.

Seeing, finally, a face she recognized, she reached fast and grabbed some sleeve fringe. “Hi, Mouse, what have you been up to? 'Scuse me, William, I have to find out.... 'Scuse me,” she said, and sailed away on the bent arm which shock-headed Mouse held rigid, as if he had a teacup balanced on his elbow.

As soon as they were well clear, Diana released his arm with a deep sigh. “Thanks, Mouse, for the rescue.”

Mouse beamed. “Built a thingy,” he announced, answering the question she'd been sure would get some response—enough, anyway, to get her away from William without having to swing a punch. She gathered it was always safe to assume Mouse had been up to something. “Box, to bring down food and stuff. Runs on a pulley. Want to see?”

“Really, Mouse....”

“Not far, just back in the kitchen...?” Mouse assured her anxiously.

“Then, sure, I'd love to look at your thingy.”

Replaying that comment in her head, she hoped to heaven nobody was taking notes because she didn't believe the things she found herself saying tonight. The mildly spiked punch, a tradition that extended to Bennett weddings, too, surely wasn't enough to account for it; and anyway she'd only had two or three cups, just to cut the thirst of saying such absurd things.

She wondered what William would have done, if she'd said the same to him. Or Vincent, for that matter....

Mouse's thingy was a sturdy-looking dumbwaiter Diana duly admired and watched in operation, lifting a stack of used plates and cups away, bringing freshly-washed crockery back from...from wherever the shaft led to, she wasn't quite clear about that and wasn't sure if she could stand an explanation.

“Always running short, before,” Mouse explained happily, dragging on the pulley rope to send the box back up empty. “Long way, to the Commons, back, forth. Fixed.”

“Looks real nice, Mouse. Bet it's real handy, too.” She twisted to look over her shoulder, back into the main hall. People were dancing. Couple of violins, an accordion.... “You see Vincent anyplace around lately?”

“Find him for you,” Mouse offered at once.

“No, no,” she responded, and made a smile, and patted his fringed arm. “Don't bother, I wanted to get some more punch anyway.”

Mouse promptly handed her a clean mug with NATHAN'S in curly letters on the side. Bemusedly turning and studying it, Diana drifted back out into the hall.

The bride was easy to spot: dressed something between a shipwreck and a twelfth-street hooker with ambitions to move up to Times Square as soon as she'd saved enough for a red rhinestone bra from Frederick's of Hollywood. Shipwrecked hooker, maybe. Waltzing along in the arms of a man about 35 wearing a three piece charcoal suit he'd probably borrowed from his younger, smaller cousin who'd have a name something like Angelo.... What was his name? Carlo? No, his name was Angelo, that was it: Angelo DeMarco, a helper, did something with retail hardware. The happy couple to be living Above, way the hell out in Brooklyn, Queens someplace, Canarsie?

Diana fished the information out of the confused haze of being introduced hours ago. She never really needed to take notes on things like that. The information always surfaced whenever she found need of it.

And the wispy blonde, pink-cheeked, child-faced bride, Lena NoLastName, Lena DeMarco now, claimed to be 18 (jailbait 15, more likely), hadn't lived Below very long, and had about a year-old baby girl, father not mentioned, named for Catherine, baby keeping company with little Jacob up in the nursery, wherever that was. At least far enough away to keep loud, demanding baby yells from getting through the voices and the music.

“Your cup empty on purpose?”

A lanky man stood before her: early forties, laughter wrinkles around shrewd grey eyes, clean-shaven. Tunnel clothes and hair unevenly trimmed—not a helper. She found a name: Cullen.

“Just headed that way myself, Cullen, thanks.”

“Take it for you, if you want,” Cullen persisted, but easily, not pushing. Maybe once a salesman, he had that way of waiting....

“You ever a salesman?” she asked suddenly.

Having started away, taking her silence as a refusal, he wheeled around, surprised. “Sure: encyclopedias, door to door. Somebody got a warrant out on me?”

“Not that I know of. Just wondering how much cotton had got in, that's all.” Diana thumped the side of her head with her knuckles. More hair came loose, flopped across her shoulder. She brushed it back, shrugged. “Figured, why speculate, why guess? This isn't billable time, here— meter's off. So just ask the man.”

“Sure, why not? Well, guilty as charged. A long time ago,” Cullen responded, with a slightly crooked, self-deprecating smile. “Wasn't much good at it, either. But it got me out in the air, anyway.... You're not one of the suits—I'd know that, even if Vincent hadn't told me.”

“Suits?”

“Office people. Uniforms. Like that.”

She decided she liked Cullen. “No. I freelance, sort of. It's a little hard to explain.”

“Punch first, or punch afterwards?”

“Oh, punch first, I guess. Or, how about punch while?”

They drifted off to the long buffet under the balcony and had a pleasant, rambling discussion of Diana's job with the NYPD, baseball, imported mahogany and cheap veneers (salesman once: carpenter now, Diana noted automatically, registering the characteristic callus patterns on his hands and fingers, old crisscrossing knife scars from carving), antique jewelry (her father's big ring, that she always wore: not antique, precious only to her), kites (both in favor), ice storms (both against), more baseball....

The kind of idle, unpressured, find-out-about-each-other talk she'd always wanted to have with Vincent, and never had. Maybe he didn't do small talk. She should ask him. Seemed like it'd been a long while since he'd come by to see how she was doing, the way he generally did....

Noticing her scanning the room, Cullen asked indirectly, “You dance any?”

“Only at funerals,” she responded with a grin. “'Scuse me awhile, Cullen. Got to see a man about a thingy.”

“It's just inside the main door, to the right.”

She grinned back at him over her shoulder. “Different kind of thingy. Thanks anyway. Always handy to know.” She strolled away, moving among the dancers, looking, smiling absently at the people who greeted her by name, ignoring the rest.

Doll-faced Lena, the bride, passed by at an angle, carefully holding a NATHAN'S coffee cup almost at arm's length in a way that suggested it was for somebody else. Diana's eyes, following her, at last located Vincent, sitting on a bench against a wall, long legs stretched out in front of him, so that Lena had to walk around to get near enough to hand him the cup.

Something about him, as he lifted his head, responding to whatever Lena was saying, something....

After a minute or two Lena moved away again, patting his chest familiarly and then waving as she went.

Well, well, well.

When the bride was definitely gone, Diana strolled over and shoved aside his folded cloak to clear a place for her to plop down on the bench beside him. Stretching her legs out too, she remarked, “Thanks for staking out a decent place to sit. My feet are gonna need major surgery.”

She waited, but he didn't turn. His thick hair— only a little less fire-red than hers, more bronze-toned in this light— fell so she couldn't see much of his profile but his chin.

“Seems like a good reception,” she offered next. “Or maybe I'm just getting used to this kind of thing. Your world.”

A long silence. Then he said, “Good. I had hoped that would be so,” in quite an ordinary voice...or at least as ordinary as that voice could ever be.

So he wasn't mad at her for some obscure reason. For talking to Cullen so long, for instance. No such luck. Anyway, she couldn't imagine Vincent getting into a petty snit about anything like that, some small social goof any outsider was bound to make, so ignorant of the customs here....

His world.

Diana took a deep breath, sighed, and stared up at the chandeliers that hung from the very high ceiling. After a good five minutes, he still hadn't offered any comment or moved, except to lift the cup once and then set it back against his knee again.

Still, something....

“I'd dance, if somebody asked me,” she remarked, and waited. Then she said, “In the South Bronx, that passes for a heavy hint.”

Long pause. “I'm sorry. What did you say?”

“Nothing. Just wondered if it was snowing yet, up there.”

Shorter pause. “I don't know. I remember, you said that....”

“Sure. Well, I'm gonna ask around. Maybe somebody knows.”

She didn't give a damn on a hot day about the snow, but she wanted an excuse to get up and look at him, really look at him. When she got up and stood in front of him, and he leaned a little to see around her, she didn't have to wonder any more.

Glassy-eyed, sit-down-before-you-fall-down drunk.

Well, of course, he was entitled and it was a wedding, after all, for God's sake, but Diana was still mildly surprised. It didn't seem his style, somehow. Didn't feel right. And she'd learned to trust those feelings.

And what was he watching, with such empty-eyed but steady attention?

Diana turned, checked back and forth a few times to get the right angle, then took a step to see if he'd move to see past her again. He did. Watching pretty little Lena, what else? Lena standing in her new husband's arms, turning this way, spotting Diana and going freeze-face still, then smiling up at her husband again.

Something very strange, here.

Dropping back onto the bench, Diana said, “Damn: out of punch again. Let me split yours—” She deftly slid the cup out of his hand. “—and I'll get us both some more in a minute, okay?”

She smelled the cup: a nothing, Kool-Aid smell. She tasted, squeezed her eyes shut a second and then opened them wide at the ceiling, which blurred, her eyes were tearing so bad. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Spiked, all right, but in reverse: 200-proof something or other, with just enough punch mixed in to turn it pink.

One good swallow and you'd never notice what the second tasted like. By the third, your damn toenails would have gone numb and you wouldn't be noticing much of anything. A coffee cupful, or two, or three....

“Thanks. Gonna get myself a refill.” She gave him her own nearly empty cup, certain he wouldn't know the difference, and hurried back through the dancers to find somebody she could consult about this.

She couldn't spot the lame, greying man Vincent called Father, which probably was just as well, since she didn't know if Vincent would have wanted her to. And she certainly wasn't going to grab some stranger....

Fringe, in fast motion: no, not Mouse, she decided, not quite sure why, but let him pass. She kept going, looking. Then, off toward the big doors, a back she knew, a beardless, quizzical face turning in profile. She moved fast and pounced, to be sure Cullen didn't leave before she could get to him through the crowd.

“Cullen, tell me something. What's Vincent like when he's been drinking?”

Cullen's beginning smile faded, and he looked at her as though she'd grown another head.

“Cullen, it's important,” Diana snapped, her voice gone tense and earnest. “What does he do—fight, go after every woman in sight, sleep, sing songs, burst into tears, what?” She'd seen every kind in her family, dealt with them all with no particular fuss. The sleepers, you put to bed, the weepers you stuck off in a corner someplace till they were over it, the skirt-snatchers you kept clear of and smiled....

But the fighters, the fighters.....

“But he doesn't,” Cullen responded, friendly, puzzled.

“He doesn't what? Drink? Not anything, wine, beer? Not ever?” Diana demanded, instantly reading each answer in the carpenter's face. Alarms were going off: her mind flipped into highspeed processing mode, long-fingered hands sketching out shapes of ideas, connections coming together, winding, poking at them to check the fit.

“Why? He's different, he's different, some people can't tolerate liquor, they have heart attacks, go into shock, Cullen, quick: why doesn't he drink?”

“I don't know, never asked him. Why?”

Diana shoved the cup, Vincent's cup, into his hands, saying shortly, “This is why. Where's Father, he's a doctor, right? Have to find Father—” She lifted onto her toes, intently scanning the room, as Cullen reacted with a head-jerk to what was in the cup.

“Somebody gave him this?”

“Yeah, our fine bride, listen: you find Father, OK? And get him over there, that bench, see? And I'll stick with him in the meantime. If it's something medical....” Before Cullen could say anything, she'd already spun around and started dodging back across the hall, thinking that she'd never known anybody who didn't drink something, not ever, and there had to be some good reason, maybe medical, maybe just some other way he was different, and Christ! that stupid little bitch! Why would she do such a thing, and at her own wedding....

Wedding. New husband. Those flirty little pats, that smile. Yeah— old boyfriend: Vincent. Something there. Something there: maybe nothing much, and nothing now, but something once.... So at her wedding to somebody else, hand old boyfriend a few nuclear goodbye drinks and watch him make a fool of himself, Lena's little screw you, buster nose-thumb on her married way out the door to Canarsie...or maybe even a nice little brawl: chance for new husband to look good, defending her against a rowdy drunk when she started yelling, and Oh sweet Jesus, what a stupid bitch she was, to try a thing like that! With Vincent!

Diana speeded up as she saw Lena trotting across the floor with a fresh cup, and gave her a look that would have fried ice, so that Lena veered off, looking vaguely around as though she hadn't meant to go anyplace near Vincent and had no idea why this red-headed person should be glaring at her that way.

Stupid bitch!

Slamming down on the bench, Diana grabbed up his cloak and stuffed her hands inside its folds to hide their shaking. Moronic doll-faced bitch hadn't seen what Diana had seen: Vincent concussed, likely delirious, and so wobbly he could barely stay on his feet, and still pretty well leaving her bedroom looking like something a wrecking ball had swung across; still poking through a solid door with one ferocious punch in a blind effort to get out of wherever he imagined he was, nothing you could talk to or reason with, and damn her, damn her for putting him in danger of anything like that in front of his own family—her own damned new husband, get his throat ripped out for God's sake!

Old boyfriend, hell: didn't Lena know this man at all?

“Diana, what is it, what's wrong?”

He'd looked around at her, and his voice was quick, perfectly clear: her shoulder and arm were against his, she realized, and he'd picked up on her fury, just from that contact. He'd never talked about it, how it worked, but just by watching she'd seen that touch sharpened it, whatever it was that he did, picked up from other people.

She slid a little away, started to pat his knee reassuringly, changed her mind—bad idea: more touch— and stuffed the hand back inside the cloak. “Nothing: lost my temper over....” She changed her mind again. Some people, you never could give less than the truth, no matter what. “Vincent, anything seem strange to you... like, you know, different? Inside? Like the way the lights look, how things sound, feeling, I don't know, feeling kind of slow and heavy? Anything like that?” Frantically she dredged her memories of the last time she'd gotten totally bombed... at a wedding, too, now that she thought about it. She was right to hate weddings, she thought fiercely.

“Yes,” he reported, puzzled, trying to focus. Long pause: he was settling down, no longer reacting to her anger; turning inward. “I thought....”

She saw Cullen coming, making way for Father, limping behind. “Well, you're just a little drunk, Vincent, that's all, fairly wrecked, is more like it,” she told him hurriedly, jumping up, “but it's okay, okay, nothing to worry about. It'll all be fine, but you just stay put a minute, okay? I'll be right back.” She leaned, trying to will sense into those desolate indigo-dull eyes. “Don't go anyplace, okay? Don't move, don't do anything, wait right here. Back in a second.”

She spun away to meet Father a few yards in front of the bench, and he didn't waste time on preliminaries, which made her like him a little better. “No, there's no medical problem I'm aware of. Merely that...he prefers to be...careful about what he does,” Father said, choosing his words, probably because Vincent wasn't that far off and likely could hear everything, though Father was keeping his voice low and the music and the voices were as noisy as ever.

“Great, that's fine, then,” Diana said, slapping a hand over her heart in relief. “Don't worry about it.”

“Young lady, don't tell me what to worry about.” The look Father aimed across the hall at the wobbly waltzing newlyweds promised something dire. “If Lena has—”

“Oh, don't, don't, he'd hate that,” Diana interrupted, grabbing Father's arm and turning him around, walking him away in the other direction while Cullen stood by. “He'd hate breaking up the party, spoiling it for Lena, that bitch, and everybody, like he wasn't old enough to be let out the door yet without a keeper, he'd just hate it, you should know that, you're his father, for God's sake, please don't—”

Father had shifted that same stern expression toward her, except that his head was tilted a little, as if she'd surprised him. “What do you propose to do, then, Diana?”

“Just get him out of here, get him home, no fuss, no fight, okay?” She pushed the problems away with crisp gestures.

“Home: you mean his chamber?”

“Anyplace, as long as it's not here. It's okay, I can handle it now, just as long as it's nothing medical....” She spun back, returned to Vincent. “Here, here's your cloak. Been a real long week, Vincent, it's goin' for midnight, and I'm pooped. Time to walk.”

If he could. And all those lousy stairs outside, with no railing or anything—

“Cullen, you're coming back our way, right?” she asked desperately, tipping her head at Vincent, who was slowly pushing to his feet, reaching for his cloak, that she let slide into his hands.

Taking his cue, Cullen agreed, “Sure, I'll walk along a little way with you.”

“No,” Vincent said, getting the cloak across his shoulders and something like straight. “Mouse.”

“Vincent, you sure?” Cullen asked, before Diana could.

“Yes. Ask Mouse...if he'll walk with me, to take Diana home.”

Whether she was somehow picking it up from Vincent or however, Diana knew he'd figured at least some of it out for himself, and he was mad. And Cullen, wise man, wasn't about to argue with him. Neither was Diana, although she'd have chosen a grown man over a very odd teenager, a tallish man with some heft over a kid who barely topped five foot two and weighed hardly more than she did. She knew how heavy Vincent could be, how hard it was to budge him if he went down; just lifting one of his hands, if he didn't help, was like hefting a pot-roast...

“I'll find him,” Cullen told Vincent, and headed off.

Diana stood trying to resist the urge to help Vincent find the cloak's armholes. He hated to be helped, fought it, denied it, gave in graciously only when he absolutely had no other choice, and then was grateful afterward even if it choked him. Or she wouldn't be here tonight. Or all those other nights.

Grateful.

She was sick to death of grateful.

“Why Mouse?” she asked, trying to keep her voice sounding normal.

He'd found one armhole, and twisted to poke for the other. “We know the dark. Mouse and I.”

From Mouse, he'd accept help. Maybe that would be a good thing to know, sometime. Maybe she could even talk to Mouse about it, next time she came Below...if he ever invited her back after tonight...and understand it all better, that strange steel pride that never bent, except when it did, and no knowing why or what had changed....

Mouse came running up, flapping with fringe, ducking a little to look Vincent in the face, because Vincent was slightly bent to one side. “Vincent? You OK?” Mouse demanded anxiously.

“Mouse,” Vincent greeted the teenager in turn. “Not altogether. I...I need some help...getting back to the Hub. On the stairs. To take Diana home.” Every phrase slow but deliberate, measured, carefully pronounced.

“Sure,” said Mouse at once, “I'll help. How?”

“Walk to the outside...of the stairs. You know.” Vincent made a vague gesture and only swayed a little. Diana couldn't have told, if she hadn't been watching so hard.

“Okay, good. Can do that,” agreed Mouse eagerly.

“Great,” Diana said, “wonderful. Now let's get the hell outta here.”

Vincent held out one long, furred hand, and Diana grabbed it. Mouse circled to the other side, and they started across the hall.

Diana would have gone around the edge to avoid having to dodge the dancers, but Vincent wasn't interested in going that way and towed them both along as effortlessly as kites snagged by a boxcar. His grip on her hand was becoming painful, but she bit her lip and kept still, realizing he was making a direct line for the happy couple. Direct enough that dancers got out of his way before he walked straight through them.

Diana kept quiet. She wouldn't have said anything, tried to argue or deflect him, not if her life had depended on it.

He'd known what he was doing about Mouse. He was on his feet, talking, moving almost normally. So she had to trust that he knew what he was doing about Lena. She wouldn't have questioned him now for all the world—his or hers. He was entitled. And she owed him one.

He stopped, found his balance with an even heavier pressure on her hand, leaning against her a little, so that she had to brace her feet to stay steady, so that he could too.

He looked better than poor old Mario, Antonio, whatever the hell his name was, whose hair was all over the place, face bright red, and wearing his cousin or whatever's secondhand worsted three-piece finery. And pussy-cat Lena doing her best not to look as if she was hiding behind big bad hubby.

If Vincent had swatted the bitch then, Diana thought she would have jumped up and down and yelled for him to do it twice. But he wouldn't. She knew him.

He did something even better.

Hubby said, “Vincent,” in a voice gone froggy and unsteady, and scowled.

Low-status one greeted high-status one first, except maybe for close friends and relatives, Diana noticed automatically. Vincent always greeted her first.... She hadn't known it for the courtesy it was. So much, so much she didn't know!

“Angelo,” Vincent acknowledged, in just his plain ordinary voice, that was like no other. “Lena.”

And so it was an insult for him not to have greeted Lena first: as the bride, she was supposed to be the most high-status person in the whole damn hall. But helper hubby and shyly beaming sly newcomer wifey didn't have the smarts to know they'd been insulted.

But outsider Diana did.

Oh, fine. Oh, very fine.

Diana squeezed Vincent's arm and hoped to hell she could keep herself straight against that leaning weight, like propping up a bookcase, her hair coming all loose and falling across her eyes, no free hand to brush it away but who cared, radiantly proud of him, no matter what he did now. He was mad as hell and wasn't going to let that bitch get away with it, that was all Diana knew.

Vincent said, “I'm seeing Diana home now, and so...won't be here when you leave. To say goodbye. We may not see each other again...for some time. I wish you both...very well. I would like to drink your good health and happiness...if Lena will bring me a cup.”

Lena backed off, looking Vincent in the eyes, then turned and scampered off through the crowd...not toward the punchbowl, but to her private cache off in the back someplace. Giving herself dead away, to anybody with the eyes to see. In a minute she came back, so demure Diana knew she hadn't even bothered to add punch for cosmetic value, and offered the cup to Vincent, who took it, emptied it, and hurled it sidearm so hard against a rock wall thirty feet away that it didn't so much hit as explode.

The next second, other cups went flying. She saw Cullen wind up and throw like a pitcher, and Vincent was satisfied then to turn and head toward the door under a rain of shattering crockery it'd probably take them years to replace....

No. She was going to buy it herself, if it took her whole vacation pay. It would be damn well worth every penny, to have been here, when this happened, and have been the one Vincent was willing to lean on.

*****

Of course the liquor hit him hard before he was even through the doorway. With Mouse bracing him from one side and Diana from the other, he got clear outside and then propped against the cliff wall beyond the backswung door panel: still on his feet but not much else.

“It's OK,” Diana said. “It was worth it.”

“It was childish,” Vincent contradicted in a blurred, soft voice, and then just stood there with his eyes shut and his head tilted back for a long while. Wind from the dropoff slapped and smeared the ends of his hair across the stone, pushed hers forward past her face—wind, underground: strange. “But it hurt no one. And only we know. Enough.” His chin came down, and he looked her level in the eyes, blinking slowly, looking more than ever like some huge, sleepy cat. “Diana...no need for courtesies...between us. I can stay here until.... Mouse, see her—” A vague, openhanded wave toward the seemingly endless staircase up the cliffside to Diana's left, wind-tugged torches spaced out as high as she could see.

“Not on your life, buster. In the Bronx, you leave with the man what brung you. If you need to wait, we'll wait.”

“A little, then....” he conceded.

His back slid down the rock until he was sitting braced with his legs bent up tight, cape bunched and folded all around. He let his head drop forward onto his knees.

Maybe he'd pass out. That was OK. No rush. No rush about anything.

Mouse plopped down crosslegged, fiddling with something small from a pocket and curiously looking over at her every now and again through his miscut bangs.

Vincent started saying something, and she went low, fingertips spread on the stone like a sprinter's crouch, trying to catch it.

“—wasn't what I was afraid it...again....”

“Sorry?”

“—coming back, losing myself...the cave....”

Mouse nodded matter-of-factly: he was following this. Made sense to somebody, anyway. Diana wasn't sure if it was worth a three way conversation, Mouse interpreting...Mouse interpreting!..to make this out or not.

She could stand ignorance, she decided.

“Buster....”

She caught that word plain, and Vincent raised his head and shook it hard, flinging hair both ways...as near to grinning as she'd ever seen him. Top and bottom fangs showing. Somehow, enough to break your heart. “I've never...been called ‘buster' before.”

She poked his arm with the sharp edge of a fist. “Oh, I got all sorts of surprises. Ask Joe Maxwell, he'll tell you. He thinks I'm psychic. Doesn't know I got friends in low places.” She patted his nearest knee. “So: how you doing, buster?”

He shook his head again, now only meaning no: no, don't say funny things.

“I'll have you know I get paid for this,” Diana insisted, because it was too sweet to watch him fighting the smile. “Inter-agency meetings, DA and NYPD, they're a regular stitch. I do funny voices, too, if the pay's right. I—”

She broke off because she had to get out of his way. Slowly shoving himself onto his feet, he reached for Mouse with one hand, held the wall with the other, and when he finally felt himself more or less secure, reached for her, pulling her around to the inside, against the cliff, with both him and Mouse between her and the drop. Protecting her, automatic, like of course, doesn't everybody? No, my heroes, they do not....

She got all choked up, and her eyes stung.

Feeling his arm come down like a log across her shoulders, she grabbed his wrist in front and held it hard, knowing they'd both hear her sniffing, and who cared anyway.

“Can't shut me up that easy, buster,” she declared, ducking to scrub her face against the shawl, as it lay over her upper arm.

“Shut up, Diana,” he responded placidly.

“Oh. That's different. Why didn't you say so in the first place?”

Lifting her free hand across her, she slid it under his, and the grip closed solidly. If he started to sag, she'd drag him inward, toward her, not let him bend away, toward the drop.

Going up, he faded every couple steps, losing track of what was going on, what they were doing. But pretty soon he'd notice, remind himself where he was—between Mouse and Diana—generally with his eyes shut. She still didn't understand it too well, but it was plain he knew them, just by the contact. Or maybe it was smell, a little, too....

She snorted a few swallowed giggles nobody asked her to explain, which was just as well. She wouldn't want to explain about the breath on the man: high octane, risky around candles....

About half buzzed herself, she guessed, just from tiredness, emotional backlash, and a fair quota of even semi-spiked punch. But she could always keep her mind set on what she was doing, never any problem about that. Focus just got tighter, sharper, the tireder she got; only the edge things apt to blur out.

During one of the swaying, shut-eyed pauses, maybe halfway up, he commented, “You're good at this.”

Not quite a question. Maybe not even a compliment.

“Should be,” she said, taking a fresh hold on his wrist. “Lot of Olympic class drinkers in my family. The Bennett men inherit the taste for it, and the Bennett women inherit knowing what you're supposed to do afterward.”

“Hardly...an equitable arrangement.”

“You're not Irish.”

“No.... At least, I don't think so....”

She burst out laughing, misstepped, and banged her shoulder hard against the rock. That studied, dubious tone—as though there could be the least chance in hell of his being Irish or any other recognizable nationality—made her imagine pictures so silly and impossible that she wanted to fall down and whoop. Vincent, with a clay pipe. Vincent, holding a large shamrock. Vincent—

“Quit that, Bennett!” She choked herself silent, concentrated on getting the bunch of them straight and headed up again, then told Vincent, “No, I know what you are.”

“What.”

That word had no laughter at all in it, not a bit; and she knew she'd thoughtlessly hit something sore, something beyond joking. Just the same, she went on, “You're a New Yorker. Like me. We come in all shapes and sizes. Just some of us have more hair than others.”

“Yes.”

Another bare monosyllable. Things not going at all well, at all. And it'd been such fun, there for a while, too. Pity. Amazing, to know he had any sense of humor whatever: she'd never have guessed. Amazing, to think how much else had gone missing, along with it....

All at once, without knowing how, she knew that he was thinking about Catherine. And although of course he claimed he thought about her always, and maybe it was even true, Diana knew the sharp edge of the loss was keener to him at some times than at others. No one thing in particular she could say, or see, but that didn't stop her from knowing, all the same.

Maybe Maxwell was right. Maybe she was psychic. Or a bit of an empath, anyway...which was what Vincent was (among other things): she'd looked it up.

She couldn't tell if he was picking up on something about her, her constant awareness, maybe, of how very different he was from anybody she'd ever known...or if she was picking up on his sadness about Catherine, that still lay like a hard stone on him, all the time, always, and between them, always, as well.

Maybe it didn't matter who gave and who took, who leaned and who was leaned on, which of them was sadly drunk and which, sadly sober.

Semi-sober, anyway....

At any rate, she was the one whose feet hurt like fury. She was damn certain of that.

“You sure threw that cup,” she found herself saying.

“Yes. I did.”

And that was their last conversation an hour or more. In the unchanging light of the tunnels, it was hard to judge time.

Eventually Diana noticed they'd been going more or less level for quite a long way, with tunnel walls on both sides, and hadn't had to stop for a good distance, either. Vincent was taking most of his own weight, not leaning so hard, so that the three of them were almost strolling along and just hanging on close for the fun of it, for the sake of the company.

And Mouse hadn't said Boo, that whole way. Vincent had been right, she thought: better Mouse than Cullen. It would have been a different journey, with Cullen pacing along on the far side. Better, this way.

She'd no sooner thought that than Vincent stopped, saying, “Mouse.”

Hesitantly, not certain what Vincent wanted of him, Mouse quit holding on and came around front to look him in the face.

Vincent said, “Thank you, Mouse.”

Mouse performed a complicated wiggle like praised pup, that somehow also managed to be uncomfortable at the same time. It ended with a shrug. “I remember. When, before, when we came that way. First time. Before I knew I was Mouse.” The boy spread his hands, as if no more explanation was possible, or maybe needed.

“Yes.” The single word, but gentle this time.

Again, Diana was left out, and yet not left out. Included, because neither of them bothered to tell her what they were talking about: explanation would have made her feel like an outsider, a stranger. Included, because what they were talking about, the facts of it, didn't really matter, after all. What was important was that these two, man and boy, had loved one another a very long time, and that was plain as pineapples to anybody just from standing there wearily under Vincent's arm and listening to them, hearing the way Vincent's voice resonated in his chest when he talked, his hair as much in her face as her own was, and you couldn't be much closer or more included than that.

You don't explain to family, she thought sleepily.

“Mouse, I can manage from here,” Vincent was saying.

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, good.” And with no more by way of discussion or leavetaking than that, Mouse turned and ran off along the tunnel the way they'd come.

Diana shook her head. Couldn't make out Mouse at all. Maybe sometime, she'd ask.

Vincent swung around, waited a minute to be sure of his balance, then started down a cross passage without any question she'd move with him, that they were going wherever together, and she guessed they were. Content to let him do the steering and focus on matching her steps to his, which wasn't hard, because they were pretty much of a height and took similar strides. And for the first time she wondered why, in spite of that, she always thought about him as being so big, as towering over her, when he couldn't be but an inch or two past six feet, and she was a rangy five foot ten. All she could think of to answer herself was that he felt big. Close your eyes, and he became enormous, like some museum statue whose eyes followed you no matter where you moved....

And besides, he was double, maybe triple, her weight—just as a statue would be, though not an inch bigger. Not fat, anything but: too many bones showing too plainly. No: he was somehow solider inside, that's all. Massive. More of him there, for the size, and more of him there more intensely, than anybody else alive, anybody she'd ever imagined....

She blinked stupidly at the wails and cries, then made the connection: he wanted to look in on the baby, on Jacob. So this had to be the nursery. Feeling how cold her shoulder was once Vincent took his arm away, she looked around, but it was only more stone to her, with half a dozen babies laid out crosswise on a bed, waving arms and legs like backflipped beetles, a few crying. A teenage girl set aside a book and rose from her chair, greeting Vincent by name, as the custom was.

“Brooke,” he responded, without looking at her.

“Do you want to collect Jacob?” The girl, Brooke, bent over the bedful of infants, still facing Vincent, so that her hair hung down sideways in a broad black wing.

“Not just now. Has it been a long wait?”

“Mary's coming back at two, so I won't miss all the dancing. It's nearly that now.”

“Good.”

Moving past the girl, Vincent carefully scooped up a baby and held it, and Diana shut her eyes hard a few times and looked closer, because it sure didn't look like Jacob to her: way too big, way too much fluffy blonde hair—

Vincent turned and tilted the baby a little, displaying it to her. “This is Catherine.”

After a stunned second, Diana made that jump: baby Catherine. Bitch Lena's child. Never know it, to look at her.

She didn't think she'd said it out loud, but Vincent gave her a look just as though she had, quiet and reproachful and a little amused, all at once, and it was amazing the different emotions she could read from a face so fundamentally strange. Mostly, she thought, it was his eyes. If you watched his eyes, you'd see it all. And yet eyes, by themselves, had no expression at all, as she knew from studying photographs in Psychology class. All a matter of context, then.

“Catherine,” Vincent said softly to the baby, whose waving hand caught a second at his hair and then came free again, “I won't be seeing you again for a long time. Perhaps never. But it's not your doing, your fault. I will always love you as much as the first time I saw you, when you were born, and the first time I was allowed to hold you, just like this, and was so afraid I'd drop you that I nearly did. You will always be a part of us. Goodbye, Catherine. Be well.” He held the baby higher, seeming to breathe her breath for a minute, or maybe just catching her smell, to remember it better. Then he kissed the baby on the forehead and laid her down.

The baby second from the right was Jacob. Vincent put the back of his hand against his son's cheek, and that casual caress seemed enough to content both of them: the baby smiled toothlessly and Vincent turned away, collecting Diana as casually with an arm behind her back.

“He knows all is well now,” Vincent commented, steering her out of the nursery, back into the passageway.

“The bond.”

“Yes.”

“Vincent...?” Diana stopped and turned to face him—nearly used enough, to the full attention of those intensely blue eyes, that she could meet them square without feeling compelled to dither or duck away anymore. “I don't expect you to take me home, really. I know where I am: a little way there, that's Father's place, where Jacob was named. Off that way, that's the Commons. Back of us, that's...well, I forget, but I know how to go, I can manage, you don't have to come.”

“I must tell you,” he said, steering her off a different way, “about how Lena came to us, about why she did what she has done tonight. She was bitterly unhappy and wished to die. Catherine, my Catherine, brought her to us. She—”

Diana lost the thread of what he was saying in noticing how easily he spoke Catherine's name, thinking about how totally free of self-consciousness he'd seemed, talking to the baby, to Mouse, even in the brief exchange with Brooke—all, in one way or another, his family. It'd been as if she, Diana, wasn't there at all and she was being allowed to watch him doing the most completely personal things just as they'd be happening if she was home in her loft and sound asleep by this time, no tapping but sleet against the skylights.

And what was so strange, she didn't feel at all as though he were ignoring her, not a bit. He simply didn't edit himself for her eyes, and she'd never known anybody who didn't do that: get careful about what they let show, knowing themselves watched—she did it, even with her own sister or niece, even with her mom....

Or it was as if, she thought, he was so perfectly and completely alone that whether she was there or not didn't make the slightest difference to his isolation....

Lifting her head, she found they'd stopped again and he was looking at her that same way—that wide open, direct blue gaze.

He said, “I thought you knew: I trust you, Diana. I told you I did.”

A note folded around a sinister ring: I give it to you with my trust.

She had to turn away, this time. She couldn't help it. But she put out a hand blind, and felt it taken, so he'd know perfectly well what she couldn't have said, ever. What she did say, shakily, was, “I didn't know you meant it. I didn't think anybody meant it. Throwaway lines, what everybody.... I— You are the most amazing man, Vincent....”

“Buster,” he suggested, and she thought she was going to fall apart, right there.

But she didn't, because he gathered her in against his chest with no stiffness, no hesitation at all, just the way he'd have done with Mouse—no more, but no less.

And she thought it might get to be very hard, to be trusted like that—without any reservations at all, nothing held back, absolutely. She didn't know if she could trust like that, nobody'd ever expected her to. She'd never expected herself to.

Not hard at all, though, to simply stand, close, her head tilted onto his shoulder and her face tucked warm against his neck, until he said quietly, “I cannot easily remember feeling worse than this in my life.”

She thought of a pointed crack, discarded it, and leaned away to get a good look. “Hangover, already?” He did look pretty green, correcting for the different skin tones to start with.

“If that's what it's called. I honestly don't think I could escort you home if your life depended on it. And do you really wish to walk back, all that way?”

“First I make you sick, then it's ‘your place or mine,' huh? Wish you'd make up your mind.” She'd meant to be a little flirty and fresh, maybe embarrass him a little, and then saw he wasn't embarrassed at all.

“Stay. Talk to me, or let me talk to you. Or both. I...am very much afraid that if I sleep now, I...will have very bad dreams. I would value your company.”

“Okay, okay, deal, provided I can get off my feet and I don't have to promise to stay awake.”

“Come,” he said to her, for the second time that night, and they leaned together, wandering past Father's place and approaching, passing into, the place that was his own. Diana was past surprise, past questioning, and not even very nervous.

When he'd lit a candle, he pitched some books off his bed and then pushed back the top quilt. “You may have it. I believe I'd be wiser to remain more or less upright.” He dragged a trunk for a footrest in front of a big wooden armchair and settled down there without watching to see what she was doing.

The first thing she did was sit on the edge of the bed, lever off those damned boots. Then she wiggled her toes and stiffly walked around on the layered carpets until the feeling came back in a standing wave of prickles. And all the while, a wonderful crazy feeling that whatever she did was perfectly OK, and nothing she did or didn't do could possibly be wrong. A feeling like space, like freedom....

She dropped both hands onto the chair arms, leaned forward to set her forehead against his. Presently, without any fuss, she kissed him on that strange mouth.

It wasn't passion, it likely wasn't even love, that unreliable word. But she was beginning to believe it, that he trusted her, and she very much wanted to start understanding how it would be to trust him.

“Women: innocently ask one home, stay the night, share your bed, right away they start getting fresh with you, right?” The lips under hers smiled, and there were fangs there, definitely fangs. She drew away a little to study his face. “Can I get you something, babe?” she asked softly. “Aspirin? Something?”

His head turned a little, back and forth. “I react badly to aspirin. And I don't feel much like experimenting just now. It will pass. Or so I've heard.”

“It does. If you can't trust a Bennett about a thing like that, you can't trust anybody. You only wish you were dead,” she said, and stopped, and was suddenly terrified of what she'd said, of not knowing how to be careful enough to be trusted like that—

“There is nothing you could say, that I have not already thought. Don't concern yourself, Diana.”

“I will if I want to,” she retorted crossly, and bounced down on the edge of the bed. A pillow slid off, and a book he'd missed thudded to the floor.

“Then you may.” He put his hand to his forehead, telling her without words that he had the grandaddy of all headaches. “Beginnings are always difficult. I seem to recall that I once wrecked your bedroom. You have my permission to do the same to mine. Only not tonight. Please.”

She caught herself in the middle of a yawn. Beginnings. That was a nice word, she approved of that word. “So what do you want to talk about?”

“Lena. And Theseus.”

“Did I meet him?”

“Theseus is a legend of ancient Greece,” he informed her, with dignity.

And then he proceeded to tell her a tale about Centaurs who were part horse and famous for being very wise, except that they got drunk at a king's wedding, and tried to rape all the women, and had to be killed, and everybody felt bad about it for a long time. Vincent seemed to feel bad about it himself. But except for the magic of conviction in his voice, she didn't believe a single word of it.

“It was that story,” Vincent said, settling a little deeper in his chair, “Father told the children, in his study, last Wednesday week. Lena was there. And so she thought of doing to me...what she did, tonight. But she took only the parts that appealed to her and so lost the point of the story: that Theseus considered the slaughter of the Centaurs forever a stain upon his marriage feast, and the marriage did not prosper.

“Father has always said that if one takes a story, one must be careful to take all of it, not merely part. Some things, swallowed in small, cautious sips, are deadly, whereas there is healing in draining the whole dose. Stories are such things, and the great myths. Grief.... And so I thought of doing what I did, and killed no one, hurt no one, and did not lose myself. And so it went well, after all.... Except for a great quantity of broken crockery. William will not be pleased.”

Nearly asleep, Diana made a muffled noise into the pillow at William's name. “And here I thought it was just another case of ‘Let's you and him fight.' There have been brawls, Vincent, time out of mind, at Bennett weddings. And bet you a dime against a donut, there's never a one of us who'd know Theseus from the postman's pig. Now, let me tell you one: how Uncle Billy-Me-Lad Sullivan, that's on my mother's side, went into the water three whole days, and yet came out alive, a breathing man.” Putting her voice into the remembered cadences, she began in the proper fashion, “Now, it was this way—”

Stories passed back and forth, long and short, some preposterous and some even true or mostly so, and some parts lost to sleep, for all that Diana thought she could lie in the dim, candle-lit dark, with her hair escaped all loose about her on the pillows and the quilts so warm, and listen to that voice a thousand years and never tire of it.

And Vincent had known himself well: when the chair thumped, and she blinked to find him suddenly on his feet and looking at nothing with eyes blind and terrorized with bad sleep, she knew she must lean out and touch him wherever she could reach, make contact. And he presently groped his way back to the chair and leaned into it without really having wakened.

After the candle had burned out, the nightmares came to him twice more. In one of those times, he called out Catherine's name so loud he woke himself, and found Diana there, and seemed completely lost and confused.

But she told him there was no harm in it, and touched him to make him know it was so, and again that helped.

The other time, he suddenly burst out, “But she's leaving,” as though that was the worst thing in the world.

“Who is, babe?”

“Lena. She's leaving. They all leave.”

“Hush, now,” Diana said, where she'd sooner have said good riddance, and she hoped the pair of them, Lena and Angelo, stabbed each other, painfully if not fatally, with the salad servers she'd missed her lunch to snatch up and wrap for them. “Hush, now: I'm here, anyway. For whatever that's worth.”

And it seemed to be worth enough, at least, to get him settled down again, though it was a long while before he was deep enough asleep to let go of her hand....

And maybe it wasn't love, she thought dimly, but it wasn't nothing, either. And there was no knowing what it might become. She was just beginning to discover what it could mean, to be honored with such trust as Vincent's, and to be a helper.

Yes.

Cat and Mouse

1: Stalking

“Well,” said Father, pushing the stack of maps away across his cluttered desktop, “it would appear that should conclude our business for this evening. Thank you all.”

To Vincent—at twenty-one, both the council's youngest and newest member—it had seemed the meeting would drag on forever. But before Vincent could fully rise, Cullen's lazy, sardonic voice inquired, “Hey, Sam—what about Kanin's lost lunch?”

“What's this?” Father prompted, turning to the white-haired master stonecutter.

Old Sam shrugged. “Nothing. Nuisance.”

“No, no,” Cullen contradicted, waving a finger. “Once, that's a nuisance. Three days running, that's a problem.”

“Figure it's rats,” Sam mumbled, apologetically.

Reaction was predictable and immediate. Alarm, shock, anger, all running together and colliding. Mary put a dismayed hand to her cheek, and William's broad forehead folded into a scowl.

“Rats!” Father exclaimed, and Vincent resignedly dropped back into his chair, his claws adding to the crosshatch of gouges on the underside of its thick wooden arms. Any rumor of rats would be good for at least another hour, he knew.

Father hated rats.

Of course there were reasons—the danger of disease, the loss of already carefully rationed supplies. The biggest harbor rats, the black Norwegians, could run fifteen pounds and three feet from nose to scaly tail-tip; one might attack a child. All sorts of good reasons, which Father now proceeded to enumerate, removing his glasses and gesturing with them to emphasize each point.

Vincent half-shut his eyes, having heard the speech dozens of times.

Even if there'd been no reasons, Vincent knew that in the end it all came down to the fact that Father hated rats. Feeling was always first; reasons came afterward.

“If it was a rat, it's probably dead already,” Cullen commented, slouching deeper in his chair. “Kanin's sandwich today was William's meatloaf.”

“I don't consider this at all amusing, Cullen.” Father put his glasses back on to shoot the lanky master carpenter a stern look over the lens tops, then shifted his attention again to Sam. “What, precisely, are the circumstances?”

The maps were dragged closer and sorted through, locating the site where Sam and Kanin, his apprentice, had been working when the lunches disappeared. Without looking, Vincent knew the place from the comments: the new stair that would link the Ripley Branches, under the river....

Scowling and therefore looking more than usual like Henry the Eighth (except for wearing layered, patchwork tunnel clothes), William asked to be put to the top of Father's priority list to be assigned help to make a new inventory and check for losses everything stored in all the various larders. Mary, poking ineffectually at wisps that had escaped her bun, could hardly be restrained from going to wake all the children in the dormitory and find out if there'd been any rat sightings nearer the Hub, the Home Chambers. Everybody, Cullen excepted, going through the predictable postures of worry, alarm, revulsion. Father shoving hands through his short, greying hair until most of it stood straight up.

Not a problem, Vincent reflected glumly: war. Two more hours, at least, just in the planning.

Quietly Vincent reached to touch Father's arm, to single out Father's reaction from the ambient swirls of emotion. There was some tinge of the alert satisfaction he'd expected...but that wasn't fair, he admitted to himself. He knew he was too apt to take whatever emotions he felt streaming off people as being directed at him personally. Maybe Father merely was glad to have the problem identified, or looked forward to a successful campaign. Maybe his satisfaction was unrelated to the fact that such a campaign had every prospect of locking his restless son solidly Below for days, maybe weeks, to come.

Noticing the touch, Father looked around inquiringly.

Vincent said, “I'll attend to it.”

He waited for someone to make the obvious joke about cats and rats. His steady blue eyes slid over to Cullen, who promptly discovered some novel fascination in the stained glass shade of Father's desk lamp. The exchange passed William by; Mary was muttering horrified details about a rat she'd seen once, not twenty feet from her chamber—two years ago, was it? or was it three?—to Sam, occupied in trying to force arthritic knees to push him upright.

Nobody had noticed either Vincent's challenge or Cullen's duck.

Nobody said anything about cats.

His foster brother Devin, Vincent reflected, would have picked up on it. But Cullen was a circumspect man: friendly enough but unsure of judging acceptable limits...as was always the way with former topsiders, compared to the few born Below. Only Devin would have had the self-assured irreverence to whoop with whole-hearted, gleeful malice, and say the thing out loud, council meeting or no.

Patting Vincent's hand, Father rejoined warmly, “Why, thank you, Vincent. Yes, I do believe that this matter would fall within your area of responsibility. What help will you require?”

“None.” Softening that, withdrawing, Vincent added, “At least for now. Until I know more.”

“Of course. Then we may expect a report...say, by Thursday?” At Vincent's nod, Father said, “In that case, thank you all.”

As Vincent caught up his cloak, and the other council members passed out through one or another of the study's exits, Father commented, “You're missing Devin again, aren't you?”

Vincent paused, head cocked. “How did you know?”

“Ah, how would I sustain my illusion of omniscience if I told you that?” Then Father's expression sobered. “Eleven years. The grief finally passes, Vincent, but the loss...that always remains, doesn't it?” Behind the glasses, Father's eyes seemed focused on something far away, or within. Rousing, Father gestured abruptly—at the cloak, Vincent knew: the undisguised evidence Vincent intended going Above. “It's late, Vincent. Surely there are more important things...?”

Vincent went up the stairs slowly and at a slant, thinking of what to say. Fully turning at the top, he responded, “I won't be long.” It was a statement, not an apology. “And after, I'll check the Ripley work site.”

“Come in and say goodnight, then, if I'm still awake when you return. I always sleep better, knowing that you're safely home.” Having finished re-rolling his maps, Father was reaching for a book when Vincent left.

*****

Darkness lay heavily over the park. Chilly February rain drifted through the leafless branches of the nearest sycamores, slanting into the cement culvert where Vincent stood. The surrounding skyscrapers were enshrouded in fog.

Not most people's idea of a pleasant night to be Above, he thought. But anything was better than the unchanging, weatherless confinements of life underground.

No sound, smell, or sense of anyone about. Only himself. Better that way. Vincent pushed back his hood and lifted his face to the rain's thousand soft, impersonal touches.

Better to volunteer, he thought, than to wait for the inevitable to be forced, however courteously, upon him. Better to end the meeting while there was still time to steal a quiet hour of space and free air before resuming duties which, increasingly, seemed the only limitless thing Below.

Idly and not for the first time, Vincent wondered if Father had intended it that way when he'd proposed Vincent for membership on the council almost five weeks ago, on the occasion of Vincent's twenty-first birthday.

Certainly Father wasn't displeased with the result: Vincent knew that much.

Vincent had been put in charge of security.

The assignment was reasonable, a good fit between the community's needs and the candidate's skills, knowledge, and natural inclinations. Even to Vincent, the evolution of his lifelong explorations into systematic patrols seemed natural, almost inevitable.

The patrols also gave him an acceptable excuse for spending long hours alone, away from the cacophony of needs, wants, angers, griefs, fears, and desires that assaulted him anywhere within an hour's run from the Hub, pungent and various as the smells that likewise surrounded him there.

He could close himself off from other people's emotions better, now, than in his adolescence. His control was better, as long as he avoided touch, direct contact. But control had a price: shutting himself off, inside, made the tunnel walls seem to press closer, the unmoving chill air Below become more stifling.

Not claustrophobia: he prowled meandering fissures deeper than light dared go, and was comfortable there. But more and more, the world Above drew him, too. He was drawn to both extremes, outward from the center: to anything that differed from the stifling sameness of the Home Chambers, where he sometimes entertained himself by predicting conversations three or four exchanges ahead, like chess moves, and found his predictions fulfilled with depressing frequency....

Of course Father knew: Father knew everything. And in council membership, Father had found an acceptable way to limit Vincent's widening explorations Above, that had begun to take him out through the alleys and into the never-sleeping, fascinating city of night whose glittering windows promised unimagined wonders, dreams edged with a thousand dangers....

They'd never talked of it, he and Father. There was no need.

“I am so proud of you,” Father had declared, setting aside his cane to grasp both Vincent's arms, after the common meeting at which Vincent's appointment had been confirmed by vote of the whole community. Father's sincerity, affection, and satisfaction had radiated as strong as smells, speaking direct to the heart. “This will be a benefit to us all, Vincent. And you're a grown man now: you need your own work to do.”

Somehow Vincent didn't think that what Father had been envisioning, on that occasion, was his son's becoming Chief Ratcatcher.

Well, Vincent thought with a sharp twinge of self-mockery, it's certainly different, anyway....

Again, acutely, he found himself missing his vanished brother. Chief Ratcatcher—Devin would have loved that! Devin would have whooped with delight and used it as a pin to poke his little brother for months on end. Devin wouldn't have tolerated his moping in the rain, either: there'd have been some jab, some rude comment, to turn to tussling, a mock-fight, or a chase....

Somehow, nobody could touch Vincent that way anymore. Probably his own fault: his habitual flinching away from touch had become—without even the need of tense body-language to enforce it these days—an unspoken but universally accepted prohibition: nobody touched Vincent without his consent. And only Father had that consent, without precondition or restraint. And that was the way Vincent wanted it. Nevertheless, sometimes....

He shook his head, then absently brushed away the wet, heavy copper-gold hair the motion had slapped, dripping, across his muzzle and chin. The furred backs of his hands were sodden too, the long, heavily ridged nails shiny with wet. Not much fun, being Above tonight. Anyway, he had work to do.

Turning back into the drainage pipe, he scuffed through the shallow standing water to the gate and the sliding metal door that readmitted him to the world Below.

*****

By his internal sense of time, Vincent reached the work site a little after midnight. The site was the first spiral turn of what would be a stair-sided well, a serpentine, connecting three levels extending under the East River. The air was dank: there was always seepage here.

So far, there'd never been actual flooding; but the smooth curves of the wall Vincent slid his palm across, beyond the timber-reinforced doorway, were water-carved: this slightly tilted, tall cavern was a section of the channel of a lost subterranean river. No one knew why or when the river had stopped flowing. The community's collective memory stretched back only a little longer than Vincent's lifetime—less than a blink, as counted by the infinitely deliberate clock of geologic time. Where a river had been, a river might suddenly return. The possibility of flood couldn't be ignored.

Despite possible future risks, the easy availability of fresh water, filtered clean through riverbed silts and the minute seams penetrating perhaps a hundred and fifty feet of bedrock, proved an irresistible attraction. At least four families and a dozen scattered individuals lived in the Ripley Branches despite the inconveniences of chronic respiratory problems and the tendency of patchy mildews to grow on anything practically while you watched. The council had therefore judged it prudent to connect the three blind tunnels to prevent their residents from being trapped by flood and to give the seepwater an easy means of flowing harmlessly away, to further etch the twisty complexities of the Maze, some two hundred feet below.

Harness and rope, a sling, still dangled against the wall: Vincent could smell the leather and the faint, acrid hay-scent of the hemp. He could also detect the slight outflow of air carrying the odor of the boiled cabbage so favored by the numerous Rogers brood, one level up in Middle Ripley, all of whom carried that characteristic familial taint on their clothing, even their breath.... By common practice, a temporary safety platform would stand out from the highest completed step to allow Kanin to carve away the rock-face in successive right-angled wedges while Sam, hanging above and a few yards beyond, the pressure off his bad knees, would continue scooping into the mudstone to create the needed head clearance.

Moving in dark silence, Vincent carefully explored each step, first with the smooth, hairless palms of both hands, then with a soft-soled boot, sweeping out to in, lest any tool or loose stone have been left behind to make the footing treacherous. Leaving debris or tools on any work site was strictly against tunnel regulations; but Vincent preferred not to take such things on faith. And although he carried in a pocket the usual bundle of candle stubs and matches, he didn't want to spoil his night-vision by striking a light. Besides, any light would let anything/anyone watching see him. The best reconnoitering was always dark and quiet.

No sign or scent of rats; but lots of holes. Passing his hand along the wall, he located half a dozen cracks or cavities big enough to put his fist into, and two large enough to admit his arm up to the shoulder. From the higher of the two holes, a faint waft of cabbage, that he supposed meant it probably carried through to the level above.

That hole seemed the most likely as the lunch-thief's route. If the scavenger had been drawn three times already by the lure of unwatched food, Cullen was right: it would be back, as long as the food held out.

Vincent settled two steps below the chosen hole, to let the intermittent downdrafts carry away his own scent, whose chief components were smoke, wool still damp from his visit Above, and candlewax. Patiently hugging his patchwork kneepads, he listened. Having made no sound he himself could hear, he was confident nothing he'd done could have alerted any creature listening and watching nearby.

Slowly, gradually, like meltwater invading stone, the peace seeped into him.

He liked the deepest places, the angles and edges that were, to his acute inhuman sight, distinct and crisp gradations of grey; the places where nothing but taloned fingers and toes, cat-fast reflexes and coordination, and strength beyond human limits would serve; places where anyone without a precise and unfailing sense of direction would have surely died of starvation, lost beyond any possible rescue; places where his differences became, not even advantages, but necessities; places where he could use, and be, all that he was with nobody to see or comment on the differences, nobody whose reaction he needed to brace against. Places where he could open himself completely and sense only silence, the endless tranquility of stone. Places where it was acceptable to be an animal.

Slowly, the sense grew on him of an alertness that wasn't his own, an indefinable wariness that likewise listened and waited. He turned his face by degrees, slowly drawing and letting out soundless, open-mouthed breaths, to locate in which direction the feeling came the most strongly.

Above, and to his left.

The hole's dim outline hadn't changed: nothing had poked out a head or reached with a tentative paw. Except for a vague directionality, the sense remained diffuse, unspecific: he thought the creature was huddled some distance up the shaft, checking whether food-stealing time had yet come around again.

The stone between shielded it almost completely from Vincent's perceptions.

He continued waiting by the hole, utterly still. The least scraping hiss reached him—something brushing against stone, maybe a tight turn—and then the presence withdrew and was gone.

After perhaps another hour without further sign, Vincent was content in his own mind that the scavenger meant to wait for lantern light and what must, by now, have become the familiar sound of hammering to serve as its dinner bell. He now knew the terrain, and had confirmed the existence of some small, sly intruder. That was enough for this first night's work.

Pushing to his feet, he gathered the edges of his cloak closely to make no sound as he passed through the timber-shored opening, then padded steadily up the steep grade into the different and more layered peace of the sleeping community. Passing Ripley Junction, he turned toward the Hub, some five miles distant.

At such times, as he felt the community enclose him in every direction—behind, ahead, above, below—he found in it a comfort and reassurance like that of being touched by warm, living breath. At such times, it was infinitely welcoming, and home.

Looking in on Father's study, Vincent found it empty. A lone candle flickered on the big mahogany sideboard that was the only flat surface, excluding the chessboard poised in mid-attack, free of Father's uncountable and ungovernable menagerie of books. Father must already have retired to his closet-sized sleeping chamber tucked under the balcony—the library having long since devoured all other nearby space, like the slow encroachments of a bibliophile desert.

There was no need to wake Father, merely to say goodnight.

Vincent stayed only long enough to draw water and set the filled pot on the gas ring, with tea-canister, infuser, and matches all laid handy and in plain view. With luck, they might well escape burial in some haphazard mausoleum of books, at least until morning....

Passing on to his own chamber, Vincent thought out the next details of the campaign. Tomorrow, he'd locate the upper exit hole. He'd carry a trap, and bait.

2: Hunting

Rising after a few hours' sleep—he generally needed little, and took less—Vincent shared a quick, companionable breakfast with Father, then collected a few things and started out to consult Cullen about building a suitable trap.

Because few chambers had doors, voices carried clearly into the passageways. Voices, and more than voices, grew stronger about him: the community was waking. Without thinking about it, Vincent lengthened his stride, moving faster toward the less settled fringes. Automatically, inner barriers lifted and tightened, first damping, then closing off, his awareness of the lives that surrounded and defined his own.

Cullen was already gone, his workshop empty. A question along the pipes— Vincent sometimes wondered if Pascal ever slept— brought word that Cullen was working somewhere around the Ripley Branches.

The familiar cadence of waltz-time hammering grew louder, clearer, regular as a triple heartbeat, as Vincent descended the slope of Low Ripley. He rounded the final turn and passed through the doorway to find the cavernous shaft, so still and spacious-seeming last night, now clangorous and crosshatched with harsh, lamp-cast shadows.

Seated in the high sling, Old Sam was fracturing chunks off the rock face: two quick blows to make a notch, then a final, angled strike on the chisel. At each heavy third stroke, another slab the size of a tea-tray flaked off and fell.

If the blows looked easy, almost casual, Vincent knew it was only because of Sam's absolute concentration: working rock was like climbing rock—you couldn't do either and think about anything else without risking severe injury. Sam had taught him that, in the bad time after Devin disappeared; it had helped....

It took several minutes for Vincent to get Sam to notice him standing on the steps below.

“Cullen?” Vincent asked over the last detonating echoes, that bounced down the shaft until, weakened, the silence devoured them. In addition to a lantern, Vincent noticed, a net sack swung from the scaffolding—the lunches, safely out of any scavenger's reach. Good.

“Next level, someplace,” Sam replied. “Drug Kanin off to fetch timber to brace the door on Middle Ripley.”

As Sam turned back to his work, Vincent considered. Low Ripley split off from Middle Ripley about half a mile back. A mile, going and coming, to reach a point perhaps twenty feet diagonally above where he now stood. Tantalizingly close.

Still considering, he displaced undecided energy into getting things ready. From a vest pocket he took a pouch and poked it into the higher of the two large holes. A quick look over his shoulder proved that the upper doorway was still there, hadn't moved at all. So he lit a candle stub and set it securely in a few drops of spilled wax between the pouch and the opening. The fist-sized bait of nearly petrified cheese, he bounced in his hand twice and then returned to his pocket: premature. And the doorway gash was still there— just as close, just as far.

Absently scrubbing his hand against his vest, he paced up the steps to the safety platform and stood frankly staring up at the narrow, jagged gash. A raw, sheer edge—nothing but the opening itself to hold to. Then he looked down...into a featureless gulf. Then up again, measuring, trying to distinguish hairline cracks from shadows.

Sam's hammering paused. “What'd I teach you about rock, boy?”

Vincent turned, sighed. “That it makes no allowances.”

“And it'd always just as soon kill you as not. Rock don't care. Good: thought for a minute there, you'd forgot.”

Vincent lifted a final glance toward the gash, then padded resignedly down to the landing and started retracing his steps to the last junction.

Alone and in darkness, he might have tried the jump. Not with eyes on him and not against the certainty that his reward would be two scathing lectures on recklessness—first from Sam, later from Father. Such a jump could be made only headlong, without thought of consequences.

He eventually came up behind Cullen and Kanin— a stocky, dark, bespectacled man about Vincent's age, who'd joined the community only a few months before— as the men maneuvered, around a tight corner, eight-foot railroad ties whose stink of tar almost overwhelmed that of cabbage. Vincent stood back until they'd cleared the corner, then moved alongside as the passage widened.

Vincent offered, “Change off?”

Though Kanin glanced back hopefully, Cullen shook his head. “You're too vulgar big, my friend: best keep the load level. Don't want to be playing pick-up-sticks with these babies.... Though they'd be just about the right size for your shoulder, at that....”

Thinking Cullen had changed his mind, Vincent bent to get his shoulder under the load, but Cullen freed a hand and pushed him away— only an instant's contact, muffled by the layered clothing everybody wore Below, but enough to tell Vincent what he'd mistaken as a request for help was instead a mild jibe about his defensive aloofness.

Vincent decided neither touch nor comment offended him: the one was blunt practicality, and the other was true.

Cullen added easily, “You'd be clipping tar-balls out of your fur for a week. Us donkeys can handle the grunt work okay while Fearless Scout goes hunting chipmunks or whatever the hell it is.”

Fumbling at his side, Cullen dragged around and displayed a slatted crate. A sliding gate had been set into one of the box's narrow ends, turning the crate into a trap.

“Whacked this together last night. Figured you'd want one. Wouldn't hold a river rat long...but long enough, I guess. Hey, ever eat roast rat, Kanin?”

When the younger man didn't reply, Cullen went on cheerfully, “Listen to William, and it may come to that. To hear him tell it, we're already missing enough to feed the Rockettes for life.... Hey—watch where you're going, why don't you?” This, sharply called after three racing Rogers children who erupted from a doorway, dashed under the beams without need to duck, and whirled away up the tunnel, their squeals and treble laughter echoing back.

Beyond the spaced candle-niches of the inhabited stretch of the tunnel, they came to the dim, raw walls and uncleared stone rubble of the recent extension of Middle Ripley gouged out to meet the stair. The men moved slowly, careful of the footing. The syncopated, triple-time hammering grew louder, closer, until brighter light from the cavern defined the crooked slit of the doorway to-be.

Cullen directed, “On three, let your end down easy: one... two...three.”

In spite of the tar, Vincent helped support the middle of the ties as the load slanted and then was lowered onto the tunnel floor with hardly a thump.

Straightening, the two men stretched and massaged the memory of the weight out of shoulders and backs. Then Kanin pulled hammer and chisel from his toolbelt and went to work enlarging the doorway, shaping notches to receive the supporting posts and thick lintel.

Having unhitched the cage and set it at Vincent's feet, Cullen squatted to untie one of the ropes binding the wooden baulks together.

“So how do you figure to work this?” he asked Vincent, looking up. He gestured at Kanin's back. “Till he's done, there's nothing for me to do but bore pegholes and pick splinters.”

Shrugging out of his vest, Vincent let it fall and moved away without replying. Now that he had a cage, the next step was to locate the outlet of the hole on the level below. For that he neither needed nor wanted any help.

He shut his eyes, concentrating, and began moving slowly along the lefthand side of the tunnel, sometimes lifting onto the balls of his feet, sometimes stooping, sifting the wandering air currents for the scent of camphor. It would have been better in the dark, he thought: quieter, fewer distractions, easier to open himself to every hint and nuance of his surroundings—

Sensing presence, he jerked around and found himself eye-to-eye with Cullen, sitting on his heels just behind him.

“Dowsing?” inquired Cullen, deadpan.

“Yes. For mothballs,” Vincent explained unwillingly. “I put a small bag in a hole beside the stair. It has an outlet here somewhere.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Turning from Cullen's bland gaze, Vincent moved on, trying to put aside self-consciousness at being watched, trying to get his concentration back.

He always hated getting caught at doing something different, regardless of whether he did it better or more awkwardly than others—whether having to allow for his long upper canine teeth while drinking from a cup or being able to chin himself one-handed to climb onto to a ledge, it didn't matter. It was all so nakedly different. But that wasn't Cullen's fault, or anyone's fault, and the present job was the important thing. He'd do it the best way he knew how, however it needed to be done, despite the audience and his defensive reactions.

He came too near his vest and for an instant was distracted by the lingering scent of camphor from the pocket. Swinging around, he moved away again, low to the wall....

There.

Tucked in behind a bulge was a hole his hand found and explored. Deeper and higher than he could reach at that tight angle, but full of the scent of camphor, lifted by the candle's warmth.

Presence, again. He jerked around to find Cullen patiently offering a flashlight. Instead of taking it, Vincent sagged to a seat against the wall, sharply conscious of the contrast between Cullen's persistent amiability and his own absurd and inordinate touchiness.

So what, if he was different? Did that entitle him to expect everybody Below to tiptoe around for fear of offending him? How useless and self-defeating, if his very self-consciousness about his differences made it impossible for anybody to ignore those differences even for a minute, rendering them all the more obvious and awkward.

It was a wonder, he thought, that any reasonable person would go to the trouble of putting up with him.

Instead of apologizing, which would only have made him feel a worse fool yet, he offered the friendliness that Cullen's good-natured tolerance had surely earned, asking, “How long is it, that you've been Below—two years?”

Cullen flicked the flashlight off and on a few times, then set it gently between them, accepting the truce, or indirect apology, or whatever it was. “Yeah, about. Three, next Winterfest. Hell of a place for a busted encyclopedia salesman.”

“Carpentry is your gift.”

Pulling off his knit cap, Cullen shook his head. “No money in it. Everything's plastic and damn Formica, up top. That's where the money is. Trust me: I know.”

“Isn't it better, though, to be doing what you do best?”

Cullen twisted the cap a moment, then spread his hands in their fingerless gloves and showed the edge of a sour grin. “It's a living, I guess. Ask me in ten years, when I'm crippled up with rheumatism from the damp and hobbling around on a damn cane like Father.”

Cullen's open, affable salesman's face waited for Vincent to rise to the bait, the vaguely slighting reference to Father. But Vincent was tired of himself, of being that predictable, and refused to be drawn.

Cullen's gaze dropped, and his smile deepened. “How about we catch us a rat?” he suggested.

*****

After a long, motionless wait on the stair accompanied by the counterpoint rhythms of Sam's and Kanin's hammering, it happened very fast.

Something poked from the hole. The lump of bait-cheese on the step rocked, and Vincent slapped out a hand as quick and hard as he could. He hit something but couldn't catch hold, it was too thin. As he lunged to reach deeper, people were shouting at him from the upper doorway, children, hollering to demand if he'd got it, got it, Kanin and Sam yelling too but at the children, to warn them back from the edge as two leaned out and, fainter, Cullen's voice suddenly exclaiming, “Yes!” and then a second later, “No!” and everybody up there turning to look away down the tunnel and the children still much too near the edge at their backs and not even watching now....

Two long strides took Vincent to the platform. The doorway gash came to him, fast, flying. His knees banged stone and his righthand claws sank into the upright tie Kanin had been setting in place. His left hand grabbed, caught. The wood started to tip, but the gash was still too narrow, it wedged, and that was time enough for Vincent to use his momentum to twist and swing inward, feet-first, shoving the children bodily before him. A flashing glance, as he landed and rose, established that Kanin and the wedged tie now solidly blocked the door-slit. Then he was off in pursuit of Cullen and a crowd of long-legged adolescents whooping behind, all vanishing around a turn.

“Damn it!” came Cullen's voice, cutting through the higher-pitched screeches, and Vincent broke stride to avoid barreling into the backs of the halted, hopping audience formed into a crescent that filled most of the tunnel past the turn.

Cullen was bent forward, head and a shoulder poked into a seam midway up the wall. As Vincent pushed through, Cullen emerged, the waving beam of his flashlight making surrounding faces and figures jerk into visibility and then vanish the next second. The tunnel was full of flickering shadows.

“It's gone down,” Cullen burst out. “Broke the damn cage and tore off, and now it's gone down. Not enough mothballs, Vincent—it had another hole. Had another damn hole. Gonna need a ton of mothballs,” he added, sweeping his light across the opposite wall and revealing hundreds of fissures, from fist-sized pockets up through holes big enough to pitch a dictionary through.

Vincent spread his arms, herding the audience before him. Then he scuffed forcefully across the width of the tunnel, kicking aside rubble with the side of a boot. Having cleared a strip, he turned and faced them all.

“No child is to cross this line, for any reason whatsoever, until this tunnel is officially declared open. By Father. Each of you, every one, is responsible for spreading word of this prohibition to your families and friends. Any child who crosses the line, after having been told not to do so, will be forbidden to go Above for a month. This is a work site. It's dangerous. You will all stay away from it until the work has been completed. Have I made myself clear?” Scanning the jerk-and-jump faces, he chose one. “Susanna?”

The fourteen-year-old responded, “Yes, Vincent,” while lower heads nodded dispiritedly and pokes and shoves were surreptitiously exchanged.

Noticing, Vincent added sharply, “Anyone pushed across the line will be held equally responsible with anyone who pushes. You are not to allow yourselves to be in a position near enough to be pushed.”

The shoves stopped and there was a general movement back from the cleared line. Satisfied, Vincent wheeled around toward Cullen, who was regarding him with an odd expression Vincent didn't bother trying to interpret. “What was it?”

“Didn't really see it, it—”

Assorted Rogers, Mayotte, and Jefferson children chorused, “I saw it, I saw it, Jimmy saw it, I nearly saw it, it was big, it was enormous, it had teeth, Vincent, honest—”

Swinging back as another thought struck, Vincent demanded, “Quiet. Quiet, now. Was anyone hurt? Was anyone bitten?”

“It nearly bit me,” a middle Jefferson boy wavered. “It tried, I—”

“Oh, shut up, Denzeel, it never,” exclaimed his sister Erletta scathingly, and tossed her intricately braided head. “Nobody hurt, Vincent. Honest. We all standing back from the cage, you know, and then it go so fast, zip, like that! Nobody anyplace near it. Shut up, Denzeel.”

“Is it going to come out when I'm sleeping?” demanded the youngest Mayotte fearfully.

Vincent shut his eyes a moment to think. “It will be caught just as quickly as possible. But anyone who's frightened may sleep in the dormitory until it is caught.” Mary wasn't going to like that, he reflected, but he saw no other alternative.

“Hey,” said a voice in the back appreciatively. “Stories. Popcorn!”

“Hey,” said another voice, “we'll build a barricade in the chamber doorway, and then, if it tries to get in—”

As the children began drifting away, Vincent traded a look with Cullen, who leaned away from the wall with a final thump at the edge of the hole and switched off the flashlight. They walked back toward the cavern opening.

Kanin met them halfway. Behind his glasses, his pale eyes were wide and furious as he confronted Cullen. “I told you to get those kids away, but no, you had to put on a show—”

Cullen halted, startled. It was the first time Vincent could recall seeing Kanin—generally so quiet it was hard not to overlook him—openly angry. “Well, I'm sorry, I—”

“Sorry doesn't do it, Cullen. I don't want those kids—”

“They'll stay clear now,” Cullen responded pacifically. “Vincent drew a line.”

Kanin glanced up at Vincent, then shrugged heavy shoulders. “Somebody better.” Trudging away, he kicked the wreckage of the trap in passing.

Cullen picked up the crate sadly. One whole side dangled from a bent nail; the sliding door fell off and bounced. He muttered, “If you don't tell Father I didn't shoo the kids off, like I should have, I won't volunteer any guesses about how you got up here so fast. Deal?”

“Kanin....” said Vincent dubiously.

“Oh, I can take care of Kanin. Kanin, he's a fuzzy chick, he doesn't know how things work down here yet. What nobody thinks to ask him, he won't think to spill. Sure, I'll talk to Kanin. Unless Sam tells, you're home free, my lad. Or maybe you can take care of Sam. Worked with him awhile—didn't I hear that someplace?”

“Yes. I did.”

“So, then: you have yourself a nice chat with Sam....” Cullen laid the broken crate down gently. “Think it's worth my building another one? Or maybe a pen—drive it in, some way.... Smoke bombs? No: that'd smoke out the whole shebang, there's too many holes....”

Vincent left him speculating, having no answers yet himself. For penance, he took the more sedate and roundabout route back to Low Ripley and stood awhile, unnoticed, on the landing, looking up at where Sam hung, steadily hammering.

Vincent took each step as slowly and deliberately as though it were a yard high. The bait was still in place, he noticed; and something lay beside it. He bent to pick it up: a Y-shaped stick broken off short where he'd struck it. And within the opening of the Y, some hanging scraps of string....

He delicately closed the claws of finger and thumb to pull out what was unmistakably a small net. The strings were uneven. Some were pieced together.

Their rat tied square knots.

Vincent glanced up toward Sam again for a moment, then turned back. There was no longer an option: Father would certainly have to be told.

******

“A child?” Father repeated incredulously. “Are you certain?”

Vincent laid the little net-stick across the book Father had been reading. Father picked up the tool, inspected it closely, then twirled it at arm's length as though that might change the inescapable conclusion.

“Yes,” Father said at length, heavily. “I see. Well, what's to be done, in your view?”

“There's something else....” Vincent admitted, settling into the large chair that'd been his own for so long that he could remember when his legs, stretched straight out, didn't reach the seat's front edge. Soberly he told Father about the line he'd drawn, the penalty he'd unilaterally imposed.

“Certainly. Exactly the proper course. Since I'd heard nothing, I gather you haven't yet asked Pascal to convey this information...?”

“No,” said Vincent. “I came straight here.”

“Naturally. But it should be done, Vincent, and at once: it won't be only the children in that section who'll be affected, once the news spreads. What they hear must be all of it—including the line, and the penalties. Otherwise, we'll have half the population—” Father's eyes again caught the stick he held and locked there. “But my goodness, Vincent...a child? What in heaven's name do you make of it? No, never mind: tell Pascal first. Then we must talk.”

Vincent nodded, accepting the logic but regretting the reprieve, the delay.

Even shorthanded, an explanation would have taken forever: he went down to the pipe chamber and sat hugging his knees under an old main he recalled Father once saying was the approximate diameter of a naval cannon, telling Pascal directly.

The wiry, jug-eared pipemaster continued his unending pivoting, reaching dance all the while, relaying and rerouting the messages that intermittently boomed, clanked, and clattered on the writhing interlace of pipes on all sides. But Pascal had no trouble processing fifteen kinds of information at the same time: Vincent knew Pascal was attending as closely as though they'd been sitting peaceably together by the Mirror Pool.

“Rat or child,” Pascal pointed out, head cocked to the sound of a tiny treble pipe overhead, “it's still stealing our food. You should have heard William. Now I know he wasn't an Army cook for nothing. I haven't heard language like that—” Lifting his two signaling bars, he rattled out a terse comment on the little pipe, then continued aloud with barely a break, “—since Devin lit the skyrocket and it ricochetted into Frau Muller's doll collection, remember? Amazing vocabulary: half of what that lady said, even Winslow'd never heard before.” Pascal slapped a single bong to his left and muttered something annoyed about idle chat on a priority pipe.

Watching Pascal often made Vincent feel as though his head had been invaded by bees. But in an odd way, it was restful, too. Vincent never had to wonder what Pascal felt or thought about him: they'd grown up together. Pascal took Vincent's differences as completely for granted as he did their friend Winslow's short temper, old Elizabeth's endless tunnel-painting, Narcissa's conviction that she conversed with spirits on a daily basis, or Father's fixed hostility toward the society Above. To Pascal, there were no differences—only a collection of personal idiosyncrasies, everyone's unique, none more remarkable than another.

“By William's tally so far,” Pascal went on, “things must have been disappearing steadily for months, judging by what's left...unless he's stealing in quantity and selling it Above?”

Vincent shook his head, waited out another interruption, then explained, “To fit through that hole, he can't be any bigger than Philip.”

“Five or six, then,” Pascal mused. They both knew all the children Below, and all their current ages and dimensions: only a name was needed to make any comparison complete and understood. “No, that's not likely, then. And now that I think about it, I don't expect there's much demand for day-old meatloaf sandwiches, Above. Not William's don't-even-ask meatloaf, for sure.... Is Father calling a common meeting tonight about it?”

“He hasn't said.”

“Let me know in plenty of time, if he expects me to contact everybody and get them there in time. I'd better get this out now, or half the world will be showing up out in Ripley to gawk....”

It was a dismissal, perfectly impersonal. Vincent left him twisting expertly and heard the message going out on the pipes that banded the Hub corridors he followed, returning to Father's study.

Father had made fresh tea. He set a full mug at the side of the desk, handy to Vincent's chair.

“And now,” Father asked, as Vincent settled in his place, “what's the rest of it?”

Vincent couldn't help smiling, though he didn't really feel like it. “Your reputation for omniscience is in no danger. Or has Sam been here?”

“Not at all. I'd be a poor parent if I couldn't spot an uncomfortable conscience at twenty paces. Tell me: was someone...injured?”

That was said with such restrained circumspection that Vincent wondered what Father had been worrying had happened. Best not to ask. “No,” Vincent responded, and sipped the intensely sweet tea. “Nothing dire, no one hurt. Not even me. But I took a certain risk...you would have preferred I not take. It seemed necessary at the time. In fact, I barely recall doing it. If I'd had time to think about it, I probably couldn't have.”

“What, precisely?”

So Vincent told him about the jump, omitting nothing except the pact of silence Cullen had offered. That was between Cullen and Father, or perhaps Cullen's alone. In any case, Vincent felt no obligation to confess anyone's transgressions but his own, provided no one was endangered by them. And he knew Cullen would be more careful about the children hereafter. So there was no need.

When Vincent finished and leaned back, Father was silent a moment, then said, “Well, I cannot say I approve. But I agree that in the heat of an emergency I might have done the same, supposing I were capable. Which I indisputably am not, even disregarding this.” He ruefully slapped his bad hip—an old injury, aggravated by arthritis. “Despite my known inclinations to turn into a mother hen at a moment's notice, Vincent, I believe that both of us must trust your judgment about such things now. In accepting council membership, you have put yourself—and all your abilities...all, I say—at the service of this community. And of that, I heartily approve. It therefore follows that when such situations arise, you must do whatever you must, whatever you can, to fulfill that duty. It would be utter foolishness for me, sitting here, to imagine myself in any position to estimate either the risks or your methods of meeting them. You must do as you think best. Vincent, do close your mouth. It's unmannerly to gape, even when one has teeth of quite modest proportions.”

Vincent did as he was told, with an audible click. His astonishment was mingled with a curious sense of loss. “Then who am I to answer to?”

“To us all. To yourself. I believe that should be enough. And if it is not, Vincent, that's all there is...with the arguable exception of divinity, in whose favor, as you know, I maintain a quite unreasonable prejudice. There is nothing else. Accept my warm welcome to the ranks of the chronically uncertain.”

Slowly, Vincent returned Father's wry smile and the strong grasp of the hand Father held out to him.

“And concerning our ‘rat,'” Father added, disengaging to stir his tea. “Dispose of the matter as quickly as possible, please. I suspect there may be trouble and bad feeling about this if it's allowed to drag on for any considerable time. Child or rodent, he is not a member of this community. We are fully justified in defending ourselves against theft, whatever the source. Or such is my opinion, for whatever that's worth....”

“I always will take your opinions most seriously, Father, on all matters not involving chess,” Vincent responded gravely, and was rewarded with a mock-indignant look followed by a chuckle. Vincent added, “Pascal wondered if you intend to call a common meeting. He wants enough notice—”

“I think not,” Father interrupted firmly, deciding. “No. Nothing's worse, in carrying out a simple action, than roughly two hundred contradictory sources of pigheaded advice. No, leave the issue as it is, for now. You volunteered to attend to it. I have every confidence you will do so.... Not involving chess, indeed! Have you forgotten I beat you last week?”

“Once,” Vincent conceded.

“Well, I did!”

“You certainly did. Once.”

Father looked around slantwise, trying not to laugh. “Out of how many—42 games, is it?”

“Sixty-two, since Winterfest. If one happened to be counting.”

“Oh, that's terrible, disgraceful. Either you've improved remarkably or I'm due for senile decline in a matter of hours. It's about time I resigned you to your own care and conscience, Vincent. Really, time and past time, judging by your chess, at any rate.”

Setting aside his empty mug, Vincent leaned to reach over to the chessboard. Removing a pawn, already captured and out of the battle, he rolled it slowly between his long hands. Then he leaned the other way, across the desk, to collect the stick-net the intruder had made to snare food. Tiny, tight, square knots. “If only everything were as simple as chess.... Pawns don't bleed, Father.”

Vincent was thinking about a small boy huddled in a tight, lightless crawlspace somewhere, hungry for the lack of a lump of cheese or a stale meatloaf sandwich, perhaps licking water off the walls to control thirst, alone in the mothering dark. The image bothered Vincent for reasons he could put no name to.

*****

Shoulders stooped and head bent, Vincent scuffed toward Father's chambers. Rubbing at an eye with the back of a fist was like using sandpaper: dimly surprised, he flattened the hand out before him near a candle-niche and found the golden fur covered with a grey paste of rock-dust mud, dried as gritty and hard as concrete. Surveying himself further, his clothing, he found similar blotches at elbows and knees, a long tear in one sleeve, and dark, discolored stains halfway up the legs of his patched bluejeans. His boots were in a state beyond description.

He'd had no idea. It'd been a long time since he'd been in the light.

Weaving slightly, he halfheartedly tried brushing at the dirt, but it was no use—the mud was set hard. And he was too tired. And the tapped message that had met him on the way back had been most urgent and specific: Father wanted him now.

He resignedly scuffed on to the top of Father's stair, overlooking the study, which seemed empty. “Father? I'm sorry if I'm late, I—”

“Vincent?” Father's voice brought Vincent's head up, and he located Father on the balcony, shoving off a stool and starting in great haste down the spiral iron staircase. “Vincent? Where on earth have you been?”

“—I was below the pipes,” Vincent continued, patiently explaining. “I suppose I've missed the council meeting....”

Reaching level floor, Father changed hands on his stick and hurried nearer like a short, limping storm. “Vincent, the council meeting was three days ago! And no sign, no answer—”

“I was down below the pipes,” Vincent said again.

“I've been worried sick!” Father burst out, staring up at him accusingly.

Three days, Vincent thought, as Father's comment slowly penetrated. And two days, anyway, before. Five, all together. Unless it was six....

That made sense, then, he supposed, looking at a grimy, torn sleeve. There'd be time enough to get this dirty in six days.

“I lost track of the time. I'm sorry.”

“You lost....” Father didn't seem able to find words adequate to his anger. “Vincent, come down here at once!”

As Vincent did, leaning a little on the handrail, Father propped along beside him, grabbing his arm, steering him around the desk. As Vincent dropped into his chair, Father brushed aside his bangs to lay the back of a hand against Vincent's forehead. Each contact transmitted to Vincent anxious, furious jolts like as many hard slaps. Involuntarily he leaned away, and discovered that the motion pulled at something painful in his left shoulder. His hand went up automatically to hold and investigate the pain.

“What is it?” Father demanded, and Vincent tried to think back.

“Oh. When he kicked the ledge down on me. That must be it.”

That was all right, then: it made sense.

“When who...?” Looking vexed, his lips pulled into a tight line, Father backed against his desk and sat crookedly on the edge, stick held crossways over his knees, and stared down at Vincent with the expression that had intimidated several generations of children. “Vincent. Begin at the beginning, please.”

Vincent found a position that let the shoulder pain ease to a dim ache, mechanically repeating his apology. “I'm sorry about being late. I was down below the pipes, I lost track of the time....”

There was no time, that deep—no hours, no division of days, nothing but an ongoing, endless now. But Vincent had no words to explain how that had been. It was somehow deeper than words.

“Yes, yes, never mind that now,” Father interrupted with a grimace. “Simply tell me what you've been doing, to get yourself into such a state.”

“Hunting.” But that wasn't the right word for the timeless interval. Vincent shut his eyes, trying to find a better one. Then he jerked when Father touched him to call his attention to a mug of steaming tea that hadn't been there before. Vincent stared at it blankly, wondering where it'd come from.

“You say you were hunting,” Father prodded. “The so-called rat, I presume? Did you...settle the matter?”

Vincent shook his head, carefully gathering in the mug with both hands. The tea smelled very good. “Never saw him. I found some of his places, though. He's been using the Maze....”

The tea tasted very good, too.

Father nodded stiffly, angrily. “The Maze. And of course you went in after him...? Alone? Into that warren of rotten rock?”

“It was where he went,” Vincent explained.

“Naturally. And what then?”

“He's little. And he's fast. He can climb where I can't, slide through where I can't go. And Father, he knows the Maze better than I do. Blind, by touch alone. He must have been down there....”

Vincent had been going to say for years, but that wasn't right: there were no years down there, no time, no light. Only rock water-eaten into huge buttresses and spires, spiky cathedral slopes that crumbled and collapsed and wouldn't hold his weight; cold, dripping crawl-spaces and vents that went nowhere; endless waits, each of them aware of the other, quietly breathing, no sound but the irregular plink of drops falling unimaginable distances, until one or another of them moved and started the chase again: up immense walls that tore away in chunks and sent tumbling, into the maw of the dark, rockslides whose roaring alone could collapse ceilings and drop stone daggers larger than a man, with no warning but the sudden concussion of their fall; across stagnant pools whose level surface hid potholes or unexpected ledges; all without light or words, and utterly intent....

Father said something, and Vincent's jerk slopped cold tea onto his leg.

“He's better at being an animal than I am,” Vincent confessed wonderingly.

It had been that profoundly startling realization that had made him finally turn back, come home.

“Vincent, don't ever say that. You are not an animal.”

Father always said that. And Vincent never was wholly persuaded.

Accepting it meant denying the truths of what he knew and felt within himself—taking Father's assertion in place of his own inner reality. That, he'd never been quite able to bring himself to do.

But this once, he didn't argue...not merely because he was too tired, but because his own certainties had been thrown into confusion. He'd found a child, indisputably and fully human, more fitted than himself to the absolutes of darkness and stone, the great mysteries to which Vincent had always believed himself uniquely attuned.

He was still filled with an unfocused astonishment.

“Whatever I am, then. Whatever I am, he's better at it.”

“You are my dear son. No one can be better at that than you.”

Vincent shook his head, sad with an old sadness: Father just didn't understand. “He went through things. Wherever he ducked through, I had to go around. I never even got close. I'll have to try another way, when....”

Trying to think out other ways, Vincent didn't hear Father's rejoinder and never knew when remembering the dreamlike pursuit through the Maze became dream in truth.

*****

It wasn't only that Vincent eventually woke so sore that merely getting out of bed (which he had no memory of having gotten into) was a gradual, wincing process that took some while and represented a considerable test of fortitude and determination. Every inch ached. But no bones had been broken, and he always healed quickly. The discomfort would be endured, and would pass.

And it wasn't only that Father was still deeply shaken, and angry about being shaken, and angrier still that he'd pledged to leave his son to whatever methods Vincent chose and therefore couldn't allow himself the release of giving Vincent the tongue-lashing that would have made them both feel much better. Father bit back criticism and therefore continued to simmer with things unsaid, so Vincent could sense only the tension and the anger, none of the love and relief they sprang from.

He and Father had been uncomfortable with each other before. However painful, such divisions had always passed and always would.

And it wasn't only that everybody Vincent met, over the next few days, seemed to take one of two attitudes: either they found the failed hunt hilariously funny, a great joke on Vincent, that he was incapable of catching an undernourished six-year-old; or else they questioned, silently or aloud, what kind of security their newest council member could provide if so simple a first challenge already proved beyond him.

And it wasn't entirely that nobody understood what it'd been like, down in the Maze or that, after a few attempts unsatisfactory even to himself, Vincent stopped even trying to tell them. Some experiences, of their nature, were incommunicable; Vincent accepted that this was one of them.

He could shut out, avoid, or—at the worst—ignore the ridicule, doubts, and incomprehension. But the price was silence, and a growing sense of isolation. And, slowly, an icy and implacable anger.

The child now generally called “Rat” had done Vincent a complex injury—consisting of no one thing, but devastating in all its ramifications. As the outer bruises faded, the inner ones went deeper, toward the heart, affecting Vincent's most basic sense of who he was and of what he was to everyone around him.

As soon as he could move easily, he returned to the Maze and spent two days systematically destroying every cache of food he could find—dozens of little lairs tucked into caves or perched on ledges, provisioned with pitiful mounds of sprouting potatoes, mold-fuzzed fruit, scraps of meat. He also found bits of cord and rope, a hinge sharpened into a workable knife, two stolen screwdrivers, three marbles, half a skateboard, a few bottles and jars, and various ragged blankets and other articles of makeshift clothing.

Such caches couldn't scamper away from him up a slope or dart through a slit and force him to turn aside, go around. He found them by smell. What he didn't smash or toss irretrievably into pits, he burned. Standing revealed in the firelight, he was perfectly aware he was being anxiously watched, feared, and intensely hated from some vantage point not very far away.

There had been a fey playfulness in the hunt before, a tacit agreement to chase and be chased, as though the two of them might at any moment change roles and run the hunt the other way, with Vincent acting out the role of the quarry. The fire broke that implicit pact. When a stone hit him in the back, he didn't even bother to turn: a six-year-old couldn't throw hard enough to hurt.

After dousing the last coals and permitting the darkness to return, he took great care with his footing and kept, wherever he could, to the center of caverns: a six-year-old could start rockslides or set snares or deadfalls...at least, a six-year-old who could tie competent square knots, fashion tools, and survive, unnoticed and unsuspected, on the fringes of the tunnel community for so long.

Vincent respected his adversary. They knew each other now. It was going to be war. That was what the fire had said. Vincent had brought light and time to the deepest level Below: time that said This will end.

As he'd planned, he arrived at the Hub early enough to wash away the caked rock dust, change clothes, and be sternly presentable for the scheduled council meeting.

Instead of taking his usual place by the side of Father's desk, he drew one of the armless chairs up to the chessboard, currently at peace between games. While the reports and requests were made and discussed, Vincent occupied himself with rearranging the figures in configurations impossible in the two-dimensional combats of chess but charged with private significance. For instance, he visualized the black queen as standing in defense of the white king against a lone black pawn at the opposite side of the board.

Mary was the first to bring up the matter of Rat, in an indirect way. The overcrowded dormitories were becoming rowdy, Mary said, and children weren't getting their proper sleep. Mary therefore intended sending those children with families back to their own quarters.

“A few are still fearful and having nightmares, but after all, there's no real danger,” she said crisply, and turned her knitting to begin a new row. “Since we know there's no real rat out there, the children will be perfectly safe in their own beds.”

“In my book,” William commented heatedly, “it's worse than a rat: it eats three, four times as much...and now a knife has gone missing. Who wants something like that prowling through the tunnels in the dark, and no door to lock to keep it out of where you're sleeping? Who knows what's safe and what's not? I say, this Rat's still dangerous. And as far's I can see, nothing's being done about it.”

Vincent felt William's scowling attention but didn't look up, busy gathering, across the width of the board, all the remaining figures to form a barrier open only at each end. To approach its goal, the black pawn would have to go around.

William went on, “I say, if it acts like a rat, treat it like a rat. Set out some bait and put a little something in it. That'll—”

“William,” Father broke in, “I must have misunderstood. You're not seriously proposing to poison a child?”

“Well, not poison, maybe, but something that'd make it damn good and sick, make it go steal from somebody else for a change. Plenty of garbage cans, up top, that it could be breaking into—”

“He doesn't go up top.” Because Vincent had been so silent until offering that quiet comment, everybody looked at him. “And if he should be too sick to forage, he'll starve: I've destroyed virtually all he'd managed to store.... Father, I'll need everyone's cooperation for perhaps a week.”

“What do you have in mind?” Father responded, folding his hands before him.

“Without access to food, the Maze is uninhabitable. Could everyone eat only in the Commons for a week, with nothing even remotely edible taken away or stored in any of the chambers? I've checked all the larders and pantries, and driven staples across any hole large enough to allow access. A sentry, at each of them, should be enough—”

Cullen interrupted, “You mean, starve him out?”

And simultaneously William protested, “You mean you want me to feed everybody for a whole week?”

Father patted at the air. “William, that's a matter of simple logistics, merely a question of how our resources are allocated. Of course no one would ask you to prepare meals for the entire community...not without help. But Vincent,” Father went on, turning, “what you're proposing would entail a considerable disruption for everyone.”

Father proceeded to enumerate those disruptions: sentries reassigned; work schedules thrown off; considerable distances to be walked, for meals, by those who lived or worked in the community's perimeters. These were not, Vincent understood, objections—merely necessary considerations. The objections came from the others. But all the objections essentially boiled down to too much inconvenience.

“You must judge,” Vincent responded, keeping his voice carefully neutral. “How much inconvenience is it, to have an interloper coming and going at will through our community, taking what he pleases, doing what he pleases, and then retreating beyond anyone's reach?”

“Beyond your reach, you mean,” William said truculently.

“Yes,” Vincent admitted, still without inflection.

Thoughtfully polishing his glasses, Father suggested, “Suppose a secondary dining area were set up in the Great Hall, to minimize the distance for those in the perimeters: would that be feasible? William?”

Another round of discussion followed, but that was only a matter of settling details. William mainly wanted to complain and be certain his complaints had been heard. That requirement satisfied, William was more determined than anyone—except Vincent himself—that the Rat be dealt with. Grudgingly, William allowed himself to be persuaded to accept Father's compromise.

The pawn would be forced to go around. Far from the Maze, and safety. Forced out into the light...where Vincent intended to be waiting for him.

*****

Two days passed. Three.

Vincent threw himself into the usual round of activities—escorting an expedition of children assigned to collect fresh produce donated by a helper who ran a grocery off Union Square; delicately peeling oranges for Father's six flu-struck patients; working with Winslow to install a series of new access doors; attending young Randolph's evening recital of Baroque solo flute pieces. The mismatch between Randolph's earnest abilities and Scarlatti's octave-leaping trills made Vincent shut his eyes and long for spring. He always found being deprived of real music from August to late May, when the park concerts resumed, one of winter's most severe hardships.

He finished Carlyle's book on the French Revolution, deciding that on the whole it was too mannered and reductive, and began a thick historical romance set against Napoleon's early career. These last few months, he'd been steadily working his way through French history—his self-appointed course of study—and wondered, if he were to tackle written French, whether helpers would be able to furnish enough books in that language to make the investment worthwhile.

He ate, at odd hours, in the Commons. He wrote in his journal, slept, listened to Father and Morris Stern, a visiting helper, argue recent Mid-east politics, and won two unremarkable games of chess against a fiercely solemn seventeen-year-old named Franklin Wu.

All quite as usual. He took up the human side of his life just as if he'd never known or wanted any other. He didn't go near the Maze, except in dreams.

And each day, he extended his patrols to note where little, narrow footprints had crossed one or another of the patches of flour he'd dusted at the openings of the direct routes up from the Maze. Rat was used to dark, and only stone underfoot: the notion of leaving footprints hadn't occurred to him, as Vincent had guessed.

Rat would have found his forays unprofitable: there was no food to be stolen anywhere in the periphery. The fourth morning, all of the flour patches remained unmarked. Rat would be growing more anxious, now: whatever caches Vincent had missed would be exhausted. Either Rat had pulled back to reconsider his options...or he'd taken another route into the inhabited tunnels.

“Maybe the kid just quit,” Winslow proposed, as they wrestled the door—formerly three cars' roof panels Winslow had hammered flat and riveted together—into position before the opening it would both secure and conceal. “Went thieving up top, where the pickings are easier.”

“No.”

“So how do you know?” Winslow challenged, big fists on hips. “You seen him?”

Vincent shook his head. “I can't explain. I only know.”

“You make me sick with that, you know? Like you got some damn crystal ball hid away someplace, that nobody else gets a peek at. I don't believe you know half what you think you do.”

“Perhaps.”

Vincent had given up arguing with Winslow long ago. Like William's grumbling, Winslow's combativeness was simply part of who he was. They'd always—or nearly always—remained friends in spite of it.

“Don't you perhaps me, neither. Since you got on council, you ain't been fit to talk to, you know that? Won't even answer a man straight. Look down that nose at me—”

“Could we just finish the door? It will be a long walk to lunch.”

“And whose fault is that?” Satisfied, at last, to have made a point, Winslow consented to heave up his side of the door so Vincent could guide the leaves of the hinges together. Then Winslow held the door level while Vincent dropped the hinge pins and pounded them into place.

It was a long walk to lunch. Because they were nearer the Great Hall than the Hub, they hiked inward to reach the straight, switchback stair that hugged one wall of the immense Chamber of the Winds. The currents on the Long Stair were fitful today: sudden updrafts made the torches flare in their wall mounts and tugged Vincent's fair hair off his shoulders and sent it streaming to one side or another, or straight ahead. His eyes were stinging by the time he and Winslow reached the ceremonial main doors of the Great Hall, left unbarred and wedged ajar today to let even the youngest children come and go freely.

The largest habitable cavern Below, the Great Hall was usually reserved for special occasions, gatherings of the whole community. It conveyed a festive feeling even when, as now, people sat at only three of the long tables and only a single pulley-hung chandelier was lit. Voices and quick laughter echoed, and children played screeching tag among the tables, as Winslow and Vincent went back to the makeshift steam table under the balcony to collect dishes and food.

Finding the inner noise as raucous as the outer, Vincent pulled farther into himself, wholly closing off his sense of the place. He also took his bowl to an empty table by a wall and sat with his back to the others: he was never comfortable eating in public, always catching people sneaking glances at the long upper and lower fangs not even the most discreet table manners could keep fully concealed.

Intent only on spooning up and swallowing enough macaroni and stewed tomatoes to keep him going through the afternoon, he didn't notice when the chamber's mood changed. Nor did he pay any attention to the reverberant thud of the main doors being pulled fully closed. When Cullen's hand landed on his shoulder, he was so startled he nearly choked.

Swinging around indignantly, he found Cullen wasn't even looking at him but blankly staring off at nothing. But from the contact came a prickly, urgent sense of warning. Becoming still and watchful, Vincent scanned the other tables, finding nothing strange, nothing amiss. The loud tangle of intersecting conversations seemed unchanged, unalarmed. But Winslow, massively scowling, stood with his shoulders set against the main door. Definitely trouble: but what?

Then, among the lifted voices, Vincent caught it: the spaced taps of longstyle pipecode, struck by a spoon against a ceramic mug or bowl, spelling out a word, letter by letter—R-A-T. A moment's pause, then again: R-A-T.

Vincent located the signal as coming from the end of the table farthest from him, a table occupied by a scattering of children, children all sitting in uncharacteristic quiet.

When Vincent's attention locked fast, Cullen gave his shoulder two quick, parting pats and ambled off toward the steam table—and the door beyond. Vincent came off his bench and moved with an unthinking, gliding walk among the tables, not looking toward the children but at the gathered adults, to judge whom he could call on.

With Cullen and Winslow in place, three doors remained unblocked.

Choosing two sentries and a plumber, Vincent dropped a hand on the nearest man's back—the gesture unusual enough to bring surprised glances from the people sitting opposite—and bent to murmur, “Matthew: the kitchen door. Quietly. Keep it shut.” Passing along the bench, he similarly sent Tirzah sidling toward the Crooked Stair door. Everybody at both adult tables was looking at him now, with expressions variously puzzled or worried. Conversations were going silent. Any wild thing would notice and take alarm any second....

Passing the plumber by, Vincent started with lengthening strides toward the balcony stair, to close off escape in that direction himself, just as a child bolted off the far bench. Vincent got a flash of a face—wide blue eyes under a whirl of dirty blonde hair—before the boy became a moving blur partially hidden behind the balusters.

Everybody was in motion then—a crash as a bench went over, voices shouting. Finding Cullen close, Vincent slapped the carpenter's back and directed, “Go,” as the fleeing boy pounded invisibly away along the balcony above them. Grabbing the handrail, Cullen took the steps four at a time, and there were half a dozen others now headed in the same direction. Letting them pass, Vincent whirled toward the Crooked Stair passageway.

Going down that tight switchback in sheer jumps, from landing to landing, Vincent was calculating in three dimensions to predict the course of the chase and locate the possible ways down along that path. The boy would be trying to go down: back to the Maze, with his boldly gulped bellyful of stolen macaroni.

Hitting level corridor, Vincent raced on, marveling at the audacity of it. Finding food scarce, the boy had instead stolen clothes and tried to pass himself off as having as much right to a hot lunch as anybody. For at least a few minutes, he'd even gotten away with it...until some other child had known him for an interloper and astutely sounded an alarm no stranger could understand.

Visualizing himself caught in a comparable situation Above was so unsettling that Vincent instantly shoved the thought out of his mind and simply ran.

The first intercept point was only a seam in the rock...but large enough for a scrawny child to wiggle in and bumpily slide to the level below. Within minutes after reaching it, Vincent heard the chase approaching from his left. But he was standing in the open: the boy spotted him half the corridor's length away.

With brighter light behind him, Rat was only an outline—crouched, feral. Thin arms, one cocked wide with the sudden halt, the other tight across his chest; small, tense body already leaning away. Tangled fair hair flew out like a flag as the boy spun and dashed back the way he'd come. Sounds of confusion and struggle, several angry yells, then the diminishing thud of feet: the boy had surprised the pursuit, scrambled and fought his way through, and taken off in another direction.

Again, Vincent visualized a probable course away and down, and moved to intercept it. A series of shortcuts and reckless descents brought him out midway down the massive East Serpentine. He crouched, listening for sounds of the chase anywhere above him. Hearing nothing but his own harsh breathing and the blood pounding in his ears, he was relieved: the spiral courses of a serpentine were noplace to stage a foot race.

Well, if they hadn't come this way, they'd gone on: down, and east. Vincent went several levels deeper, then followed a large, smooth-sided tunnel, once part of the subway system and still lighted at regular intervals by caged bulbs.

After about a mile the subway tunnel ended, but a concrete service passage continued at an oblique angle. Running stooped over, Vincent soon came into a wide, shadowed, dirt-floored space: the Ripley Junction. Beyond this intersection, the way forked into two candle-lit rock tunnels. The lefthand tunnel rose to a set of broad steps, curving off around a boss of rock: the beginning of Top Ripley, still a dead end. The righthand, descending tunnel was Main Ripley, which divided, farther on, into Middle Ripley and Low Ripley.

Pacing, catching his breath, he had no warning when Rat burst out of the service passage and ran straight into him.

The boy screamed, and Vincent felt as if he'd seized raw fire.

Through the contact blazed the absolute terror only a child could know or endure—overwhelming primal dread that blanked the mind. Burning inward, the pain seared through thick protective scarring to reach profound spiritual wounds Vincent had nearly managed to forget.

For an instant, two sets of blue eyes locked in mutual horror. Then the boy tore free and raced away down Main Ripley.

It took the noise of feet and voices reverberating in the service passage to break Vincent's shocked paralysis. He didn't want anybody to catch him like this. He wouldn't, couldn't, bear to explain how the boy had gotten past him. He fled into Main Ripley at a shaky jog, caught in a vision of eyes, other eyes, staring into his with fear, and he didn't want to think about that, he never thought about that, and his heart was slamming so hard he felt as though he were about to explode.

Children's shouting drew him on past the sharper slope where Low Ripley split off. Donna and Susanna Mead, and Richie Mayotte, were hopping and calling into the dark passage beyond. Spinning around, Susanna accused, “Vincent, he crossed your line, he crossed—”

“I know. It's all right,” Vincent responded distractedly. “Go home now.”

“But we want to—” the Mayotte boy blurted as Vincent passed.

“Shut up, Richie!” directed Donna and Susanna together.

Turning a bend, Vincent saw Rat silhouetted against the opening of the finished doorway—the same small, wary outline he'd seen in the upper-level passage, except that the boy was more winded, drawing short, whistling breaths. They stared at one another for a moment wordlessly. Then the boy glanced behind him and faced sharply around again, scraping a quick arm across his face, a gesture both hopeless and defiant.

As Vincent took a step forward, Rat took a step back, maintaining the distance. There could be no second step. Only the cavern and the unfinished serpentine lay beyond. And Vincent knew, with intuitive, inexplicable certainty, that any sudden move or grab would send the boy over the edge.

Carefully, Vincent sank to one knee, to meet the haunting eyes more on a level and present less of a threat. “You can't live down there. Nobody can. Not alone. Not even a rat, not forever. The dark wants too much, takes too much. Come with me, to Father. No one will hurt you—I promise.”

No answer, no reaction of any kind.

Then adult voices came bouncing up the tunnel. The boy scowled and stooped for a rock, making a singsong, guttural sound deep in his throat—a sound that had nothing to do with words, with language of any sort.

Somehow Vincent wasn't surprised. The dark was jealous and ate all bright things, words and light together. Vincent didn't love the dark less, for knowing that. But it was different, should be different, for a child who'd become an animal only by chance and necessity, who'd merely been born and then somehow survived....

Vincent pivoted and stood, intending to block the pursuit if he had to. But the stumbling and the swearing faded out short of the turn: assuming the child would choose any path leading down, they'd turned off into Low Ripley. There was still time.

Bent low and hugging the wall, Vincent leaned around the turn far enough to determine that nobody now stood watching from behind the line. Straightening, Vincent braced and slowly wrenched out the two iron staples he'd driven into the rock to bar the hole that led down.

Tossing the staples aside, he walked steadily away across the line, back toward Main Ripley. He didn't look back.

3: Taming

About an hour before the council meeting following Rat's escape, Vincent stopped by the pipe chamber. He found Pascal in a rare quiet moment: sitting crosswise in his hammock, eating an apple, and reading a newspaper folded and propped beside him.

“Pascal?”

“Oh, hello, Vincent.”

“I have a favor to ask,” Vincent said, and Pascal looked up curiously. “I'd like you to be there tonight.”

Although Pascal had, in effect, inherited his father's place on the council almost a year ago, Pascal the Elder having died in a fall, he seldom attended except on urgent occasions. And even then, he fidgeted, finishing his business at the first possible moment so he could dash back to the pipe chamber and whatever emergency signals he might have been missing.

Pascal remained quiet for a long, thoughtful minute, still looking up. Then he said simply, “All right. You want to tell me about it?”

“No.” Insuring Pascal's attendance was bad enough: trying to influence his vote would be unconscionable.

Pascal nodded calmly and dropped to his feet. “Might as well walk back with you anyhow.”

As they went along the passage, Pascal's close-cropped head about level with Vincent's shoulder, Pascal remarked casually, “Winslow, he's mad nobody's asked him to be on council, you know? He figures blacksmithing ought to be as important as carpentry, anyhow. Nothing against Cullen, but how long's he been Below: two years?”

“Three, next Winterfest, he told me.”

“So, there you are. Still practically a topsider.... It's just us three left—Devin gone, Molly married and moved up top, Lisa famous, Ike dead, and Mitch—” Pascal made a wry face. There was no need for either of them to say what they thought of Mitch, long gone and unlamented. “Only us three, that have Below as our birthright and were here almost from the beginning. With us on council and Winslow not, it doesn't feel fair to him, you know? Like we don't depend on him, trust him.”

“I think Father's afraid every meeting would turn into a brawl.” Vincent rubbed a cheekbone abstractedly.

Pascal shrugged. “Winslow gets things done, Vincent. Nobody works harder. Or cares more, if it comes to that. You know how he takes everything to heart.”

“I know.... Then you ought to speak to Father about it.”

“Father would listen better if it came from you.” When Vincent didn't reply, Pascal glanced up at him alertly. “Or don't you think so? Or don't you want to?” With thumb and smallest finger, Pascal mimed holding a telephone. “Calling Saturn, come in Saturn.”

“I'm sorry, Pascal. What did you say?”

“About Winslow, about the council. Will you ask Father?”

“Perhaps later,” Vincent said absently, after a long pause. “Or you ask him, Pascal—I'm sure he'd consider the matter on its merits, no matter who raised it.”

“All right. Maybe I will. So: that's my bit of arm-twisting. What's yours? Or do you still not want to talk about it? No,” Pascal answered himself. “So, what do you think might actually come to a vote, that you'd find yourself on the short end of? I haven't heard anything.... But no, you're off on Saturn, you don't want to talk about it. Fine with me, I can wait.”

“I'm sorry. What?”

“Nothing, never mind.”

Sam generally arrived first, and tonight was no exception. Within a few minutes Mary drifted in as though she'd misplaced something, wasn't sure what, and had decided to take a chair and knit while she thought about it. Perched like a visiting elf on the cleats of the spiral staircase, which perhaps had a comforting resemblance to pipes, Pascal traded small talk with Father until Cullen and William, a Laurel and Hardy pair, offered each other precedence through the door and then threw themselves into their usual seats.

Vincent stood, not pacing, observing with a fraction of his attention while the remainder frozenly contemplated the fact that he was going to force Father into a public confrontation over something which, in private, Father had made quite plain he wanted nothing to do with. Vincent's claws dug into his palms. He was quite frankly terrified.

“Well,” Father said, collecting everyone with a deliberate, sweeping look over the tops of his glasses, “I believe we can begin.”

It didn't take long for William to work around to the subject of Rat.

“Four days of disruption and hard work, and what do we have to show for it? Bites, some skinned knees, and kicked shins. And egg all over our faces.”

“Yes, and about eggs—” Father tried to interrupt, but William wasn't about to be sidetracked.

“I don't see that anything's changed since we talked about this a week ago, and Vincent had his brilliant idea. Well, I'm not satisfied.” William folded his arms and lifted his chin challengingly. “My idea was to put out bait, and unless I hear a better one, that's—”

“I do have a proposal,” Vincent admitted, clasping hands hard behind his back.

“Now what?” William demanded, scowling.

“Now, we mustn't allow ourselves to become upset about this,” advised Mary, her knitting needles busily clicking. “We're all friends here, and we mustn't—”

Father said, “The present subject of discussion is getting supplies—”

Cullen straightened from his slouch to put in, “Sure, I'm game for another steeplechase, maybe another bite or two.” He cheerfully displayed his bandaged wrist. “Let's hear the new idea.”

“I'd like to hear it too,” Pascal mentioned softly from the stair, his chin pensively resting on folded hands.

Father swept around another look, plainly annoyed. “Very well, the digression will be tolerated. Vincent, you have the floor.”

“I recommend,” Vincent said in what he hoped was a steady voice, “that we accept the child into the community.”

For a minute, nobody spoke. Cullen sat forward with a pleased, expectant expression, as if waiting for the punch line. When it didn't come, he checked the puzzled faces around him, then blurted, “Oh, that's fine, that's swell: kid can't be stealing from us, because we're giving it away. Sure. We declare a victory, just like that, and the problem magically disappears. Tricky Dick tried that one, and even he couldn't make anybody swallow it.”

Everybody looked at Cullen blankly.

“That's a reference of some kind to the Southeast Asian conflict,” Father inquired, a scholar seeking to pin down the source of an obscure citation.

“Sure, yeah....” Cullen responded, disconcerted, fiddling with his cap. “Declare the war won and everybody pick up their marbles and come home. Yeah. Nobody bought it.”

“Quite understandably. To bamboozle public opinion, convenient fictions cannot be quite so patently self-serving, quite so demonstrably false. Even Above.” Turning from Cullen, Father went on, “Vincent, how could we even pretend to accept the child, when he does not even live among us? We might as well confer citizenship upon...upon—”

“The Dalai lama?” Cullen offered.

“—the Dalai lama—thank you, Cullen—who would neither comprehend nor have use for the honor thus speciously conferred. Citizenship bestowed where no citizenship can be can only be a farce or a willful untruth. However well intended, Vincent, it would have the effect of turning the very thing we value most into base coin—it would diminish us all. Just as calling a dog's tail a leg does not make it so, our calling that child a member of the community would not alter the fact that he is not, and cannot be.”

“Elizabeth lives apart,” Vincent pointed out, nervous fear fading into a clenched stubbornness, now that he was openly committed. “Narcissa lives apart. And yet we count them as a part of us, and share freely with them.”

“Apples and oranges: the cases are not at all comparable.” Father's sweeping gesture dislodged a book that slid off its pile and hit the floor with a sharp thud. “Elizabeth and Narcissa are normal, rational human beings....” Father paused momentarily, as though harboring doubts about the word rational, as applied to Narcissa, which he decided were beside the present point and best left unmentioned, after all. “Whereas what we are speaking of here is a feral child, Vincent: without conscience, reason, or moral responsibility to govern whatever impulse might impel him to do; a child who, you have told me, neither speaks nor understands speech, incapable of sensible discourse. He might as well be the rat he's now called!”

Father took off his glasses and swung them, exasperated. “I honestly don't see how I can put it any more plainly. Even laying aside, for the moment, the issue of exposing the council to justified ridicule by proclaiming such token citizenship and the prospect of debasing citizenship itself, this child cannot be a part of us: he is simply incapable of being part of a human society. And if he were, by...by some miracle...to be captured and brought among us, he would be ungovernable—a danger to us all. How could such a child be made to understand the necessity of our world remaining secret? Not only that, he— No. It's simply impossible, Vincent, and I cannot understand why you persist in putting forward such an absurd suggestion.”

“Father, consider.” Finally pacing—to the stair, then back to the corner of Father's desk—Vincent held Father's eyes with his own, and spread both hands earnestly. “You founded this world as a sanctuary, a safe place for those who had no other. No child could be in more desperate need of such a place. And as for endangering us, how long has he been quietly foraging and no one ever hurt, no one even aware, until now, that we had suffered any loss? Which of us has been half so successful in avoiding discovery by the world Above, as has this child in evading our notice? He endangers no one. Let him come, if he will; and if he will not, at least consent to let him live by our free generosity. Our world—”

“—is a haven for civilized human beings, not a menagerie for every stray....” Realizing what he'd said, and had plainly been about to say, Father made a great fuss about getting the bows of his glasses back over his ears properly and then sorting through a stack of papers for some scrap he couldn't seem to locate. Without raising his eyes, he said, “Very well, Vincent, I accept that you are making a serious proposal and one about which you feel strongly. That is your right. And if the matter is put to a vote, it is your responsibility to accept the result, whatever it be, and thereafter consider the matter closed. Agreed?”

Father shot Vincent a sharp glance, and it took no great discernment to tell that he was deeply anxious to know if Vincent had picked up on the word “menagerie.”

And Vincent, staring mostly at the carpet, felt he would die rather than embarrass Father publicly about so private a matter. It was only a word, after all, chosen carelessly in the heat of argument. Father always tended to overestimate the power of words.....

“I agree the matter should be voted on,” Vincent said, very quietly, and noticed Pascal's sympathetic gaze moving from him, to Father, and then back again. Cullen was also aware of the tension, because he was busily scratching at his bandage as though the bite underneath had suddenly become a major annoyance. Mary was knitting at a great rate. Sam yawned.

None of them that hard to read, even though Vincent's own agitation prevented him from receiving any direct sense of their moods or attitudes. They all were equally as opaque to him at that moment and equally distant.

“Very well,” said Father brusquely. “Those who agree with Vincent's proposal will please so signify.”

Sam, William, and Cullen all turned in their chairs to face toward one or another of the walls. Too bad: Vincent had hoped Cullen, at least, might be won over.... Only Vincent, Pascal, and Mary remained facing the desk, Mary brightly blushing over her knitting but her lips pulled thin and resolute. Vincent had been certain that, presented with a plain choice, Mary could be depended on not to refuse any child, no matter how strange....

Father took in all the poses, then nodded stiffly. “It appears I am left with the casting vote. It is not...is not the position I would willingly have chosen. But I am left with no option....”

“I understand,” Vincent responded gravely, as Father faced away and gave Vincent his back. “And perhaps you all will understand that I also have no option. With all respect and regret, I resign.”

He heard both Father's voice and Pascal's calling after him as he strode across and then out of the study. He didn't turn or respond. He was already late for another meeting he had no intention of missing, one with no talk at all.

Maybe Pascal would take the opportunity to suggest Winslow as a candidate for council. There was now a vacancy. All things considered, Vincent thought Winslow's prospects would fare better without his advocacy just now, and for some time to come.

*****

Carrying an unlit lantern and a plate, Vincent followed a steady downward course—past all the candles and the last wall-mounted torch, into the varied, lightless greys which to anyone else would have been utter darkness; past the pipes and the messages they carried; and at length past where stairs gave way to rough ramps and then to twisting, irregular shafts and crevices in the unshaped stone, where he had to duck and edge his way with care.

At last the narrow way opened out into a cavern. Vincent laid the plate on the barrel-like base of a broken stalagmite, a natural table that stood about fifteen feet from an immense, crooked forehead of rock deeply scarred by a diagonal cleft.

Setting aside the cold lantern, Vincent lit an inch of candle stub and put it beside the plate. The strengthening flame striped the rougher, more striated expanse of rock to the left of the seam; the smoother, concave portion to the right retreated into featureless shadow as Vincent's eyes reacted to the light.

Part of the fissure went through, into the Maze. But nowhere was it wide enough to let Vincent pass. That was why he'd chosen this place. On the other side, the boy could feel safe.

But the boy hadn't come yet tonight. The boy didn't understand time, and he hadn't connected Vincent's two previous visits to this cavern into a pattern that could be projected into the future.

Once the boy had noticed a pattern, he'd have to learn that it could be relied upon not to fail or change. Finally, he might come to look forward to it: to depend on the arrival of one small, temporary light at the same time, which would therefore become evening, and which would unfailingly bring food.

When the child took part in the pattern, it would become custom—no longer something Vincent did alone, arbitrarily, but something he and the boy would be sharing by common, if unspoken, agreement.

It was important to be consistent when taking on the responsibility for such large matters as light, time, and custom.

Vincent sat with his back against the broken stalagmite, hoping to sense presence. But when the candle flame began to flare and waver, he regretfully transferred it to the wick of the lantern: it was time to leave. As the candle had made him visible as he waited, the lantern would mark his progress as he left. Everything would have to be done plainly, in the light—no tricks, traps, or subterfuge. From the very first, he wanted to begin as he meant to continue.

Tonight, he'd found the stone table empty: yesterday's food—and plate—were gone. Vincent was both relieved and concerned: although his own evening meal was his to do with as he chose, now that he'd resigned from council and no longer considered himself bound to honor the vote which had gone against him, a plate was not his sole property. He'd have to think this out further.

In the days that followed, he refined the custom a little. If he felt presence as he waited, he left the whole meal as it was. If he did not, he laid the food out on the stone table and took the plate with him. By that first week's end, he'd lost three plates, and took on extra Sunday work to make up the cost without explaining to anyone the balance sheet he was keeping in his head.

The next week, he lost another three plates, but those were the last. Returning Thursday evening, he found Wednesday's food gone but the plate in place on the stone table. That he'd taken plates with him showed they were valuable. The boy had figured out that the food, not the plate, was the gift.

The first small contact, the first agreed custom.

Always thereafter, Vincent tried to take each time, from the Commons' hodgepodge of crockery, a plate of the same size and pattern—undecorated, except for a blue border—to be the special plate on which the boy could expect to find the gift food. He was trying to maintain consistency in every way possible, to build reliable expectations. To build trust.

Whenever he could, he brought fresh fruit and raw vegetables as a part of the meal. One Wednesday, about a week later, in early March, a chunk of orange peel had been left on the plate. Vincent interpreted this as a request for more. So he bartered William two days of dishwashing for more than his own share of the limited stock of oranges and brought one every other evening. The boy saw the pattern and only left peel alternate evenings as well, though that meant saving a piece each day for later use.

Good, Vincent thought: they were developing something like a language.

He tried to collect more of a variety, in smaller portions, to let the boy try out flavors, to let them both learn what he preferred and disliked. And a custom, a language, gradually developed about this, too: any food remaining on one side of the plate meant No more of this; a scrap to the other side meant This is good, bring this. Vincent honored the requests as often as he could, and wrote them down in his journal so he wouldn't forget what the preferences had been.

For Mary's birthday in April, a helper gave a gift of chocolate. Vincent saved his piece for the boy and was touched, the next day, to find the smallest fragment still on the good side of the plate, asking for more.

“I'm sorry,” Vincent told the unseen, waiting presence on the other side of the cleft. “I have no more chocolate to bring you.”

It was the first time he'd spoken in the cavern. His voice bounced and reechoed. Continuing, he pitched his voice lower, softer, and the surrounding dark swallowed it more peaceably: “I'll bring you some hard cherry candy tomorrow, though. Perhaps that will be an acceptable substitute.”

Most mornings, he had lessons with the older children—chiefly English literature and a smaller class in spoken French—but on Saturdays he had the younger children in a more unstructured class on folklore and myth. Really, just storytelling. And one of those children, Rebecca, could be relied upon to have a cherry candy stuck in her jaw during the entire session, despite Father's warning lectures about the future state of her teeth. Her source of candy was secret and apparently unending; Vincent suspected Elizabeth had something to do with it, but had never said so aloud.

So before dismissing the class, that Saturday, Vincent asked Rebecca to remain. She pulled on her braids uneasily, probably expecting a lecture about kicking Jerome in the middle of Beowulf. When the chamber had cleared, which never took long, Vincent settled down on his heels by the girl and offered a bargain: one cherry candy, every Saturday, in return for being allowed to make her choice among three possible stories proposed for that day. The bargain was eagerly accepted, with three weeks' worth of choices paid for in advance. No problem there: as long as it was kept dry, the candy would keep almost forever.

So instead of an unchanging succession of days, he and the boy now acquired a week: from Saturday to Saturday. Cherry candy day. And it was on a Saturday that the boy first ventured beyond the cleft.

It was late May, and Vincent had gone to the tunnel near the park's orchestra shell to listen to the first concert of the season. Among the selections had been Mozart: excerpts from “The Abduction from the Seraglio.”

Though Vincent had been firmly persuaded, years before, that his singing voice was unfit for civilized ears, and therefore never sang where anyone else might hear him, one of the tunes from the opera stuck with him—Monostratos' aria. Without thinking about it, he hummed the vocal line as he traveled to the perimeter of the Maze—trying to get the pacing and phrasing right, at least, even though the some of the rapid jumps and profound bass notes were, he knew, beyond him.

Settling for his allotted, candle-measured time, he worked over the tune, liking the way the sound resonated in the enclosed space. Then he found some notes acquiring a thin, soprano echo that continued when he stopped. He didn't turn around, didn't look. But the solo had become a sometime duet. Way off key. He didn't care. He started again from the beginning, slowly, and when he reached the part he'd been practicing, the echo came back. Vincent reached over his head for the edge of the plate and, still humming, set the plate at arm's length behind him as far as he could lean. When it was time to leave, the round red ball of cherry candy was gone.

So after that, cherry candy day was also singing day. Before long, they had the tunes of three songs in common: “Home on the Range,” “Good Night, Irene,” and “I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” Vincent had the satisfaction of knowing he'd found someone even more incapable than himself of staying on key. And the plate never went onto the stone table, on singing day, but instead was set in the middle of the open space, on the ground. Sometimes Vincent took it back empty when he left. But he never turned, never looked, before the candle had burned down and the lantern was lit for his departure.

Wednesday became reading day. Vincent went through Kipling's Jungle Books, but he soon found that poetry was more favored: more cadenced, more like music. For the boy still had no speech, couldn't understand the words. But he'd accompany any established meter with a steady knocking of stone on stone. Kipling was still good, and Tennyson was acceptable. But Vachel Lindsay's “General Booth Enters into Heaven” was the best of all and always called for an encore.

By the end of June, each day had acquired its distinctive marker and activity.

Of course, four months of skipping one meal a day had exacted a certain price. Vincent had lost at least twenty pounds, and tired more easily than he was accustomed to. And at the end of every day's work, when the community had settled down for the night, he had about a ten mile hike, round trip, still ahead of him.

Naturally, Father noticed, when Vincent was as apt to fall asleep over the chessboard as make a move.

“Vincent,” Father began, startling Vincent suddenly awake and immediately worried about the time.

“Excuse me, Father, what did you say? I was thinking of something else.”

“You were asleep,” Father rejoined bluntly. “I think you've been taking on too many extra jobs lately. I've been looking back through my assignment log and you've had sixteen, just in the last two weeks.”

Barter, trading work assignments in exchange for various small items including a wooden flute and a small mirror that sent flashes and slow, exploring glows around the cavern. Vincent wanted the boy to learn some of the interesting things that light could do.

“A change of work can be pleasant,” Vincent responded.

“A change, yes. Double the work seems excessive. Is this something we should discuss?”

Vincent spread a hand. “Perhaps it's merely spring restlessness.”

“Spring? I believe you mean summer. When was the last time you were Above?”

Thinking back, Vincent found he couldn't remember. “I hear all the concerts.”

“That's not my point. If you're that restless, that anxious for a change, why don't you get out more, these warm evenings— No, I'm quite serious—”

Vincent couldn't help it: he burst out laughing. Father, encouraging him to go Above. Still chuckling, he pushed out of the chair and kissed Father's forehead, remarking dryly, “Good night, Father. I don't think I can bear more than the one astonishment in a single night. Should you actually succeed in winning this game, I'd be overcome for a month.”

“But Vincent, don't you think—”

“Good night, Father.”

Returning to his chamber for the supper plate, Vincent found yet a further surprise: an apple and a chunk of meatloaf, with a printed note that read FOR THE RAT, the R's charmingly facing different directions. Vincent studied the note for several minutes, trying to identify the handwriting. Michael, he thought: from whom he'd gotten the flute. Michael was never too sure about his R's.

In many ways, children were more observant and shrewd than adults, with more time to watch and compare notes. Plainly, his secret was known.

He wondered what he should do. He could forfeit a meal with few consequences worth noting. But a growing child was different. On the way down, he decided to thank Michael but discourage both any more donations and any further spreading of the secret. And from time to time, that evening, he found himself chuckling over Father, of all people, earnestly trying to persuade him to go Above.

The next day, he talked to Michael, but the boy denied being the author of the note. Nor would he admit knowing what Vincent was talking about. And that night, a boiled potato and a large stalk of celery had somehow made their way into Vincent's chamber, in company with a note in another hand which read, forthrightly, RAT. This time, Vincent hadn't even the remotest guess who the author might be.

“I seem,” he reflected aloud, “to have instigated a conspiracy. And unintentionally encouraged theft and lying. Now, what's to be done about this?”

He found no immediate answer. And later that night, his exercise in knotcraft, the Monday activity, was accompanied by the steady crunch of celery.

Day by day, the donations grew more numerous and varied, until Vincent could find no justification for skipping his own meal, since the total food was more than the boy could reasonably eat and since, plainly, no one child was doing without. He compromised by eating lightly; and the headaches which had begun to bother him, the last few weeks, came less frequently and finally not at all.

The notes also changed. One donor, apparently disliking the common designation, marked her (judging by the script) note FOR THE MOUSE. And all undiscussed by adults, a consensus was apparently reached. Every note thereafter, with some imaginative spellings, named the beneficiary as “Mouse.”

For some time, Vincent refused the designation: no child deserved to be named for an animal of any sort. To him, “Mouse” was only marginally better than “Rat,” which had preceded it. Besides, naming was a solemn thing, not to be left to the whims of children.

Yet there was a symmetry to it. From opposite ends, they met, he and the boy, on the plane of the feral, the animal.

Here was Vincent, so plainly feline in many aspects of his appearance and nature, nevertheless named for a saint—about as human as a name could be. Member (even if a resigned one) of the governing council of a complex and numerous community, and foster son of its leader. An avid reader, a scholar, something of a linguist. And here was this child, so plainly human, nameless, without language of any kind, learned only in the barest survival skills acquired by trial and error, as isolated as though born of the rock itself and so far from being a social being that Father was convinced any attempt to include him in the society Below would be both shameful and disastrous, a historic civil embarrassment like the Emperor Caligula, on a whim, appointing his horse to the senate of Rome.

Surely, a balance there, if the human child should bear an animal name, to complete the symmetry. And not merely any animal name but specifically a complimentary one: Mouse, to Vincent's Cat (which no one, anymore, called him within his hearing or, he thought, often out of it, either). A balance acknowledging that each of them, in his uniqueness, was nevertheless closer to the other than to any other living creature Below.

Blue-eyed, fair of hair and skin; man and boy, large and small: on the plane of the feral, they met, overlapped.

Mouse, Vincent thought, and the word came to have a pleasant sound in his mind. Yes, perhaps. Mouse. At least for now: at least until he has the words and the understanding to choose another.

So each evening, when Vincent lit the candle and, later, the lantern, it became, “Good evening, Mouse,” and “Good night, Mouse.” The name became comfortable and accustomed. Saying it called into Vincent's mind a creature intrinsically harmless, small, shy, frightened, resourceful, skilled at being inconspicuous, and fragile—very much in need of protection. It carried, in short, the respect, affection, kinship, and protectiveness that Vincent now felt toward the child himself.

Toward Mouse.

One Monday in early July, Mouse had engineered a really remarkable knot. Vincent poked at it for fully an hour without being to identify how all the curves and loops ran. Yet it was a true knot: it didn't pull loose, no matter which way or how hard he pulled at it. He finally untied it and left the string loose, admitting defeat. To win, he had to fully untie the knot and then reproduce it to Mouse's satisfaction, as demonstrated by loose string lying on the table the following night. As he was lighting the lantern, he heard a burst of very substantial coughing behind him. Deep coughs: chest cold.

He worried about it all the following day, and bartered for two extra oranges. He also took two more blankets down with him when he went, for Mouse to add to his nesting supplies. The cleft greeted him with heavy coughing, and most of yesterday's food was still on the plate, pushed apologetically to the top, which was neither the more nor the less side.

Setting everything down, Vincent lit the lantern rather than the candle and put it to burn on the table.

“Forgive me, Mouse, for varying our custom. But this cannot continue unattended to.”

He was answered by a damp sniff and another burst of coughing from the cleft.

He walked the miles back to the Home Chambers and found Father still awake, reading.

“Father, one of the children living by Low Ripley has a severe chest cold. Might I take back whatever is appropriate to treat it?”

Father set a marker and then closed the book. “If it's that severe, perhaps a stay in the hospital chamber—”

“Not that severe,” Vincent corrected hastily. “It seems best to leave the child at home, for the time being. Less upsetting.”

Rising to get his bag, Father asked over his shoulder, “Is he running a fever?”

Vincent figured that was a safe assumption. “Probably. There's considerable congestion.”

Father turned, holding a vial and frowning. “Current opinion on aspirin seems contradictory. How old is the child?”

“Six. He's six.”

“Well, let's try decongestants first, and expectorants to loosen the congestion. Hold off on the aspirin, for the time being,” Father reflected. “Other than that, the usual regimen: rest, warmth, plenty of fluids, citrus juices. If the fever isn't down by tomorrow—”

“Thank you, Father.” Vincent quickly took the vials and left before he had to think of answers to any more awkward questions, like what the boy's name was.

It was an exasperating night. Mouse wanted nothing to do with the pills, having probably bitten into the first one and disliked the bitter taste. Time and again, Vincent almost turned but made himself keep his distance, knowing that if frightened, Mouse could slide away through the cleft, be no better off, and lose the work of months of establishing routine, custom, and something approaching trust.

Finally Vincent thought of breaking the pills up in doses of the lemonade he heated in a saucepan over a small fire. Mouse liked the lemonade, once it was heavily sweetened with that scarce commodity, refined sugar; and the pills didn't seem to affect the taste enough to make him reject it.

Vincent stayed all night, listening to the miserable sniffing and bouts of coughing, frustrated at his inability to make actual contact with the child. But he knew that if he once tried and missed, he wouldn't get another chance anytime soon. He might forfeit Mouse's tenuous trust forever and leave the boy in worse straits besides.

Sitting by the fire, resolutely facing away, Vincent said, “Mouse, I'm so sorry you don't feel well. I wish I could do more. The Maze is no place for a sick child. For any child. I wish we'd become good enough friends by now that you'd let me take you home with me. The children like you already. They've formed a very reliable conspiracy to make sure neither of us starves. I'm sure that if he knew you, Father would like you too. When you were well again. Eventually. Especially if you showed him your knots. Nobody else Below can make knots like that. They should surely be useful for something. It's only a matter of determining what.”

When Vincent's inner sense of time told him it was nearly morning, he said, “Mouse, I'm going to leave the lantern burning. I may come back early, if I can manage to get away. I've left the rest of the lemonade here for you. Keep warm. I hope perhaps you'll feel better by the time I can return.”

No response but silence. Perhaps Mouse was asleep. Perhaps he'd retreated to his nest, somewhere in the Maze. With great effort, Vincent kept himself from looking around until he reached the far side of the cavern. Then he saw a small, blanket-wrapped figure casting a shadow in the circle of firelight.

Perhaps, he thought as he headed home, he should have made the fire and then left at that point, so Mouse could have had that warmth too. But then how would the pills be prepared or administered? And what if Mouse got worse, with nobody to continue the dosage through the day? What if pneumonia should develop? Or pleurisy? Should he consult Father openly, and what would he do if Father refused to bestow the community's scarce supply of medicine— particularly antibiotics— on a boy he'd made so plain he could not regard as one of its members?

Worrying about such things, Vincent turned a corner and walked directly into Winslow, who shoved him to both arms' length, scowling.

Bluntly, Winslow said, “Pascal says you been gone all night. I don't think you got a girlfriend, all of a sudden, so it has to be that damn Mouse. What's the matter: he sick or something?”

Vincent leaned wearily against the nearest wall. He might have known: no secret lasted long without Pascal's becoming aware of it. And whatever Pascal knew, he generally confided to Winslow, lifelong friend and the newest council member, sooner or later.

“Yes.” Vincent found it a relief to finally be able to admit his concern. “A chest cold, by the sound. I'm worried it might become pleurisy or pneumonia.”

“By the sound? You mean you can't tell?”

“It's...complicated.”

“I guess so. So complicated you can't just fetch him back, pour him full of soup, let Father take a look at him? You know he ain't going to shove out a sick kid, no matter if he was carrying plague.”

Wordlessly, Vincent shook his head.

Arms folded, Winslow demanded, “How long you been messing around with that boy?”

“Since I lost him in Middle Ripley.”

“Man, that's months ago! What you doing with him? Trying to housebreak him? Got yourself a pet, have you?”

Vincent sighed. “I think we were becoming friends.”

“After all this while, I should hope so. So who's going to tend your friend while you're off hammering on a new door for the park junction today, supposing you don't sleepwalk off a serpentine and bust your neck?”

“I have no answer for that.”

“Well, suppose I go, take a shift. Where you got him hid out?”

Vincent tried to think it through, think if somehow that could be made to work, but found himself too tired. All he kept visualizing was Winslow trying to grab the child, and Mouse retreating where neither Winslow nor anybody else could catch him, however good their intentions.

He abruptly turned and started back down the tunnel. “Please tell Father I'm...occupied with a project and may be gone several days. Ask him to convey my apologies to my students. If someone could bring food, later today—noon, perhaps?—to the Ripley Junction, I'd appreciate it. And perhaps two more blankets or quilts. And lemonade,” he added, over his shoulder. “What I brought is nearly gone. And a lantern, or more oil, either one.”

“How 'bout a featherbed?” Winslow called after him, sarcastically.

“If you can find one, by all means.”

“I'll see what I can do.”

At the top of the cavern path, Vincent stopped to look. The fire was almost gone, no more than an intermittent wink of coals, and he hadn't thought to bring any more fuel with him. Well, it couldn't be helped, right now.

He called, “Mouse, I'm here. I'm coming down now. Don't be afraid.”

When he reached the cavern floor, he couldn't distinguish Mouse from any of the other shadows, and found nobody by the fire when he approached it. But his sense of presence told him Mouse was close, beyond the cleft. He turned the lantern to a lower flame, conserving fuel, then settled in his usual place, facing out into the cavern with his back against the stone table.

“Perhaps company will be some use,” he reflected aloud. “I'm afraid that's all I have to offer, right now. And not much of that, actually. I doubt I can stay awake much longer. Perhaps I should tell us a story....

“There was once, long ago, a very strong young man named Herakles, named for Hera, the queen of the gods they knew then. When he was not yet a man but only a child, two snakes attempted to attack him where he lay sleeping under the care of a nurse who should have been watching him much more closely. They were very large snakes. Very poisonous. They came up to Herakles very quietly, hissing in their soft snake voices. But Herakles heard them and closed one baby fist around each of their necks; and since snakes have scarcely anything but necks, in a manner of speaking, he was careful to catch them just behind their jaws, so that they were unable to bite him. He squeezed their necks until they were very sorry indeed that they had ever approached him. Perhaps they tried to tell him so, but he did not, at that time, understand the language of snakes. So he killed them, well and truly, merely with the grip of his hands. And as he grew older....”

*****

When Vincent was awakened by several loud, reechoing sneezes from the cleft, it felt like nearly noon. His stomach let him know it was much too nearly noon, and it didn't favor skipping lunch as well as breakfast. He blew out the lamp and lit a candle stub.

“Mouse, I'll be back before this candle has burned down.”

He worked his way up all the cracks and chimneys, climbing more than walking, until he reached a place he could drop through the roof of the abandoned subway spur. Following the service tunnel, he came to the Ripley Junction. It was full of people—Mattie Mead and her daughter Susanna, standing in identical poses, arms folded. And around them, at least a dozen children of varying sizes, sitting or standing around a pile of stacked blankets, hampers, baskets. Vincent's eye caught the black cylinder of a kerosene stove. Everybody turned and grew quiet as Vincent came out of the service tunnel.

Mattie said bluntly, “This has gone far enough, Vincent. Too far, if the boy's sick. Bring him up and I'll take care of him. And if Father doesn't like it, that's just too bad.”

Vincent said, “I can't.”

“Why not? We talked it over, this morning—Barb, Royette, Ruth, and me. Most of the neighborhood. If the council wants to Silence the bunch of us, then let 'em. Take us a week to notice.”

People in the Ripley Branches, so far from the Hub, always had been a society within a society—quite clannish and independent, and solidly matriarchal. What Mattie was proposing was virtual secession.

Father would never tolerate Mouse, if the boy provoked such a break. Not to mention how angry he'd be at Vincent, if Vincent permitted it.

Vincent said, “We are misunderstanding each other, Mattie. I cannot move the boy. I cannot reach or touch him. He tolerates my being near, no more, and it's taken months to reach even that point. I—”

Davie Rogers broke in, “Is Mouse sick? Is he gonna die?”

“Shut up, Davie,” responded Erletta Jefferson automatically, and gave the boy a poke.

But looking around at all the solemn child faces, feeling the anxiety, Vincent could tell Davie had spoken for more than himself. Dropping into a crouch, sitting back on his heels, Vincent said, “David, it's true that Mouse is sick. I want to do what I can to help him feel better. But I can only help him in ways he's willing to be helped. All he knows is that where he is has always been safe. No one has ever hurt him there. It's his home, and he's not ready to leave it yet. When you're sick, you don't feel much like having adventures. You want to stay home, and be quiet. That's what Mouse wants to do. We must understand how he feels and respect it.”

Softly, Jen Mayotte asked, “Is he down there all by himself? Is he all alone there?”

“Yes, except when I am with him.”

“Could I go visit him? Keep him company and read him a story, like he was in the hospital chamber?”

“Perhaps later,” Vincent responded. “Although you mean to be his friend, he would see you only as a stranger; and strangers can be frightening. You know that yourself. Remember the time you went Above, into the park, and the woman asked you why you weren't in school? She can have meant no harm, yet she frightened you. Mouse feels like that, about us. He doesn't know us yet.”

Looking sternly around at the children, Mattie Mead commented, “And nobody's going to sneak down and try to find him, either. Nobody's allowed below this level: that's the same absolute rule it's always been. It's not safe down there. No exceptions, and no excuses. I mean it!”

“Is it dark down there?” asked Denzeel Jefferson, scuffing a foot uneasily back and forth.

Vincent responded, “Not anymore. Not unless I am away too long now, and the candle burns out.” He straightened, surveying the pile: several trips' worth.

Heavy steps, more than one person, coming down the stairs from Top Ripley. They appeared around the last curve: Kanin, glasses off, wiping a sleeve across his forehead; and behind him, Cullen, briskly rubbing his hands together, catching Vincent's eye, calling, “What's everybody standing around for? Let's get this show on the road! Come on, you kids: get a move on! Hi, Mattie.”

As Vincent looked on, the children began dividing up the supplies, testing this and that for weight, shoving a little, glad to be doing something. Vincent felt surrounded by hope, concern, affection: almost solid enough to touch, lean against. Be supported by. Like an embrace.

As Cullen picked up the kerosene stove and came to stand by him, Vincent asked him, “Is there anybody Winslow didn't tell?”

“Oh, quite a few. Pascal, he told some. And I told Mattie, who told the whole Ripley neighborhood, seems like.” Thoughtfully scratching his chin, Cullen added, “Personally, I doubt anybody's told William....”

“Father?”

Cullen shot him a sidelong look. “Are you kidding?”

After a minute, Vincent observed, “This will not please him.”

“Look at it this way, Vincent: if you can get that kid to a common meeting and propose him for acceptance, he's OK. He's in. Rat, Mouse, whatever, he's in. By general acclamation. Whether Father likes it or not.”

Vincent shook his head. “I don't like going behind his back, going against his plain wishes this way.”

“Oh, come on now: who is it, that's been sneaking down ten, twelve levels every night for nearly six months? You ask Father's permission to do that?”

“No. But that, that was only me. This is different.”

“You bet it is. You got a sick kid down there. Amazing, how people will rally to a thing like that. Great PR. You should have had him get sick three months ago, saved yourself all that trouble.”

All the hampers and bundles had been picked up by somebody. Kanin was marshalling the children into rough lines, smallest first.

Vincent shook his head again, feeling rather overwhelmed. “They can't go the way I came. Not so many. Not children.”

“Then we'll go around the long way.” Cullen made a bow that left him posed with an arm stretched toward the service tunnel. “Lead on, Macduff.”

“‘Lay on,'” Vincent corrected automatically, turning.

*****

What had been isolation had now become no worse than benevolent and voluntary quarantine. Twice a day, Vincent met someone—generally Kanin—in the rock seam just beyond the top of the cavern path. Vincent exchanged an empty hamper for a full one, traded news, and requested whatever he and Mouse needed or were running short of.

Light burned continually on the stone table, which was surrounded by relative warmth from the kerosene stove. There was always hot water to make lemonade, brew tea. Returning along the path, Vincent always got the sense that the space in front of the frowning wall had become a campsite on one of the long journeys he sometimes took Below. But it was better equipped and more comfortable than any of his campsites: he never took quilts or a stove with him when he traveled.

At first, and as best he could, he'd tried to resume the usual routine of the days; but the activities had been designed to occupy only an hour, not whole days of odd, isolated companionship.

So he went back to reading aloud, from books requested through Kanin. The Wind in the Willows, where Rat and gentle Mole saw the Great God Pan and were afraid, despite their loving awe. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, where a child fell into a strange world underground, and a Dormouse became dormant, thereby missing out on the delightful skewed logic of the Mad Tea Party. All accompanied by intermittent sniffles and coughs from his unseen audience.

On the fourth day, Vincent was comfortably stretched out on a folded quilt on his side of the stone table, reading from The Little Prince:

“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me....”

“What must I do, to tame you?” asked the little prince.

“You must be very patient,” replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me—like that—in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day—”

He interrupted himself with a sneeze and lost his place.

It didn't matter, he supposed: Mouse didn't understand the words anyway. But no: one had to be scrupulous about such things, out of respect to the story. He read silently until he found where he'd left off.

The next day the little prince came back.

“It would have been better to come back at the same hour,” said the fox. “If, for example, you came at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o' clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you.... One must observe the proper rites.”

“What is a rite?” asked—”

Another sneeze, and then one that caught him completely by surprise, so that he dropped the book. Collecting and reopening it, he went on, “‘But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall—'”

No, that wasn't the right place. As he was scanning, his eyes began to feel tight, behind, and then a fourth sneeze rocked him forward.

He shut the book and tried to think what he was going to do. Beyond any question, he'd caught Mouse's cold.

Vincent was seldom sick. Father had conjectured that one welcome aspect of Vincent's differences was a natural immunity to most of the contagious diseases to which others were susceptible. That was fortunate, because Vincent had severe reactions to many of the usual treatments for those diseases. He could not, for instance, tolerate aspirin at all. And because he was so rarely ill, a whole pharmacopeia of other medicines had never been tried, since Father wouldn't engage in experimentation for its own sake, just to find out what the effect might be. That had too much a flavor of laboratory animal to be acceptable to either of them.

But Vincent's immunity wasn't absolute. Possibly months of borderline exhaustion and malnutrition had left Vincent's resistance abnormally low. But by whatever freak conditions, Vincent knew he was sick. And he had no idea of how to go about treating the illness.

By evening, he was thoroughly miserable. The full spectrum of symptoms: headache, joint aches, nausea, congestion, coughing, and a general inclination to lie still and do nothing more strenuous than breathe. Just the same, he shoved to his feet when it was time and trudged to the top of the path, because if he didn't, Mouse would get no supper tonight and no breakfast, tomorrow morning.

For himself, it didn't matter. He didn't feel at all like eating.

Kanin was concerned. “You ought to go let Father take a look at you.”

“That's not possible,” Vincent responded wearily. “There'd be no one to take care of Mouse.”

“Who's going to take care of you? Look, I'll leave the stuff up here, with a light burning. Anybody who can figure how to steal lunches through a crack can figure that out too. He won't starve. Come on—”

Kanin, newcomer that he was, tried to put his arm around Vincent's back, and his solicitude came blasting in like wind. Vincent slid away, opened a distance. His head was pounding.

“No. It will pass. Father no more knows how to treat this than I do myself. Don't trouble him about it, please.” A bout of coughing made him lean against an upright stretch of stone. He was very tired of this conversation, and took the handle of the hamper to conclude it.

Back at the camp, he laid Mouse's supper out on the plate and reached without looking, in the proper fashion, to set it in the open space. Then he sank back onto his own bedding and wished he could let it be dark here again. The light hurt his eyes. But that would ruin all the routines, all the customs. He could endure the light. He put his arm across his eyes and it was almost like darkness.

After a long while, there was a sound behind him. Soft, off-key humming. Eventually, he was able to make out the tune—“I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.”

When it was over, he said, “That's very nice, Mouse, but I'm afraid I don't feel like singing with you tonight. Another time.”

Some silence. Then the flute, the whistle, screeching random notes. Mouse hadn't altogether figured out how the flute worked yet, or its relationship to humming. Or to music of any sort.

It was awful. The high notes, particularly.

Hard as he tried to tolerate it, the impromptu concert showed no signs of ending. Finally he said, “Mouse. Please. Not now,” and tucked a fold of quilt over his head.

Apparently Mouse got the idea: the piping stopped. Vincent dozed a little then, until he woke himself, coughing. Settling back, he heard brisk noises—clinks, scrapes, metallic sounds—behind him and dully wondered what Mouse had found to occupy himself with now. He hoped it would be quiet.

A sharp ding, right beside him. Startled, he opened his eyes, turned his head.

The boy was standing about three feet away, holding a saucepan—hot: a bit of fabric was wrapped around the handle. He'd struck the side of the pan with a spoon. Scowling through his tangled hair, Mouse carefully poured the contents of the saucepan into a mug, set the mug on the ground, and then was gone between one dazed blink and the next.

Slowly, Vincent sat up and reached to collect the mug, already knowing what was in it from the smell: hot lemonade.

Vincent's eyes burned with tears.

“Oh, Mouse. Mouse, thank you.”

Through all that night, the routine was reversed. Mouse tended the lantern, collected what needed to go back into the hamper, supplied hot lemonade at intervals announced with a peremptory bang of a spoon against the saucepan, twice startling Vincent out of a sound sleep. But it was customary: the proper way of doing things. Vincent thanked him, each time, and drank the lemonade. It tasted good, and eased his throat.

In the morning, when it was time to meet Kanin, Vincent found Mouse tensely balanced at the edge lamplight, holding the hamper and staring at him with a fierce, sullen expression.

“No, Mouse. I can manage,” Vincent assured him, then turned aside to cough. When he'd recovered his breath and started to get up, Mouse was still standing there, looking back and forth between Vincent and the distant top of the path, where a small spark meant that Kanin was already waiting.

Deciding, Mouse made a shoving gesture at Vincent, together with a harsh, wordless noise that plainly meant, “You: stay put.” Then he darted away into the dark.

Vincent hoped Kanin wouldn't have a heart attack or do something foolish, like try to grab the boy. But apparently the transfer went off without major incident. Mouse came running back, obviously pleased with himself, and started investigating what the new hamper held. He stopped, then removed something small, very carefully. With a wary glance at Vincent, he reached and laid the something on the ground between them: a round piece of hard cherry candy.

Eyes stinging, Vincent shook his head and waved the offer away. “You keep it. I'm not particularly fond of cherry candy.”

Mouse tilted his head, scowling hard, to be sure Vincent really meant the refusal. Then he snatched the candy back and popped it into his mouth. After a few minutes, clattering noises back by the kerosene stove announced that Mouse was making tea. And it was good tea, with not a single leaf that Vincent could find. Mouse had strained it, too.

It was hard to imagine, but by simply watching, Mouse had not only understood all the actions of keeping a camp but could accurately and competently reproduce them. Not even the new additions, like the stove, presented any problems a few minutes of frowning thought couldn't solve. Vincent couldn't think of any six-year-old in the whole community he'd trust with adding kerosene to the reservoir of a burning stove. When Mouse undertook the job, Vincent barely noticed until it was done, and the kerosene can's spout was tightly capped again.

No problem.

Finally seen, observed, the boy had a refreshing and even obstinate otherness. You couldn't ignore him, predict him, or ever leave him out of account. Devin had been like that. And nobody since.

Plainly disliking the kerosene smell that remained on his hands, Mouse went off, presumably to wash, since he came back wet, his tangled hair streaming dark blotches onto the roughly slitted chunk of grimy blanket that was all he wore.

Vincent almost offered to dry and braid his hair for him, but instead kept silence. He didn't know if he could make the offer understood. But, beyond that, although Mouse now moved freely around the camp, carelessly in and out of Vincent's sight, he'd never yet ventured into reach.

Vincent knew he'd have to be patient a little longer. There'd be no contact until Mouse was willing to initiate it.

Of all people, Vincent felt he should understand about respecting people's necessary distances.

The problem was that, although Mouse plainly knew within inches how far Vincent might be able to grab, he seemed to have no concept of contact that wasn't tied to either attack or retreat. Through the day, he showed no least interest in getting any closer, maintaining the wary minimum distance he considered safe.

He talked, though. Not in words, of course, but in a considerable repertoire of grunts, squeaks, startling chuckles, glances, scowls, smiles. Unused to being observed, he'd never learned to guard his expression. As a result, much of what he was thinking showed on his face, if one took the trouble to watch. He also had a considerable vocabulary of gestures and postures that also spoke.

A downward gesture was no—disagreement or refusal. An attentive, steady look was yes or acceptance. A head tilt, eyes lifted, was a question.

In that fashion, they had an argument about the merits of Mouse's disassembling the stove. Even after finally accepting Vincent's no, Mouse continued to turn and look at the stove yearningly, then shoot a quick glance, head tilted, at Vincent to ask if he'd changed his mind. No. Mouse's slumped shoulders and lowered eyes commented, Oh, well, if you're going to be that way about it.... All right.

For it was plain Mouse didn't want to break the fragile truce between them any more than Vincent did. As long as Vincent didn't grab, and Mouse didn't take the stove apart or play too long on the flute, they could stay on friendly terms.

Knots were safe. They had a knot-tying competition, sitting across from each other only Mouse's safe distance apart. It was more interesting, watching the knots in the making rather than being presented with the finished product, but finally tiring: Mouse's fingers moved so fast, and it was hard to remember the third bend when one was watching the sixteenth.

Vincent finally conceded defeat with a string left limply unknotted between them and settled down for a nap.

When he woke, the lantern had gone out, and Mouse wasn't anywhere around. Nor did he answer Vincent's call.

Vincent's mouth was dry, and each bout of coughing jabbed a sharp pain under the ribs on his left side and left him breathless for long minutes afterward. The breaths that finally came wheezed and rattled. He was afraid the cold was settling lower and suspected he was running a fever. His time sense seemed to have deserted him: he had no idea how long it would be before someone should go to meet Kanin, or if Kanin might already have come, waited, and gone.

He began to worry that Kanin had done something to frighten the boy, then lost him, and that Mouse had dodged off somewhere deep in the Maze. But no: then Kanin would surely have come down to tell him so.

But what if Kanin was still chasing the boy, someplace up in Ripley, as before? Vincent couldn't decide if that was likely or not. He realized he wasn't really thinking, only worrying and getting nowhere. He did the sensible thing: refilled and relit the lantern.

Mouse wouldn't just go off—he was almost sure of that. The transferred cold had been a link Mouse had plainly grasped and imagined. What he'd felt, Vincent now felt. Vincent was convinced Mouse understood that. On a purely physical, animal level, the illness made a commonality between them that had broken the stalemate of months. And all day, and all the night before, Mouse had been systematically tending Vincent as Vincent had first tended him. That was too plain to misunderstand. So whatever Mouse was doing, it was understandable and necessary in his own context. He wouldn't just forget, and go away. The sensible thing to do was therefore to wait for him, since there was no alternative. Even healthy, Vincent hadn't been able to catch Mouse in the Maze when Mouse chose not to be caught.

He was uneasily asleep again when he felt the touch, startled, and roused. Mouse was sitting beside him and silently weeping, patting at Vincent's face. Each touch conveyed sharp shocks of concern and fear—not of him but for him, and for Mouse himself. And a negative, a denial: no no no no.

Vincent rolled onto an elbow and slowly, carefully touched the boy in return, brushing a knuckle under each wet, shadowed eye, smoothing back the long, tangled hair. “What is it, Mouse? What's frightened you so?”

no no no no afraid afraid alone.

“I won't leave you alone, Mouse. Never.”

afraid alone.

Against the most momentary resistance, Vincent pulled the boy's head in against his shoulder and held him through a seizure of deep coughing. At the first cough, the boy's emotions grew more intense, more fearful, and didn't ease until after Vincent's breathing did. Mouse held onto Vincent's vest with both fists. There was a clean and uncomplicated directness to his feelings, conveyed by the contact, that gave them immense power.

no no no no together afraid alone.

Mouse was terrified that Vincent was going to die.

Vincent held the boy a little away, to meet his eyes. “Can we go now, Mouse?” he asked solemnly. “Will you trust me, go with me?”

confusion anger confusion question, the head tilt, the blue, blue eyes. Mouse didn't understand, and was furious at himself for not understanding.

Never breaking the contact, Vincent got his knees under him, then slowly got to his feet. One hand on Mouse's right shoulder, Vincent waved up to the top of the path, then turned to look a question at the boy.

Steady upward attention, blue eyes meeting blue. yes.

Vincent gestured again, describing with his hand the turns and chimneys and finally tunnels leading up beyond that. Again, question.

No blink, steady looking, then looking upward at the rock roof: considering or visualizing the way Vincent's sketched diagram described. All the way up, into the tunnel community itself.

afraid afraid yes afraid afraid together?

Vincent's answer was a measured pressure and release to the boy's thin shoulder. “Yes. Together, Mouse.”

Upward look, then down: surveying the campsite, the table, the stove, the two piles of disorganized bedding. Then upward look again, steady. yes.

Then Mouse pulled away and collected into the hamper what he figured they'd need or didn't want to leave behind: the flute; the mirror; the string; the two plates. After a quick glance back at Vincent, the four books Vincent had laid aside, within reach of his bedding. Then Mouse looked up again, asking all? anything else?

“No, Mouse. We can come back for it. Or someone will bring it. We can go now.” An extended arm invited Mouse to join him, accompany him.

Mouse took the offered hand, swinging the hamper as they started up the path.

They left the lantern burning behind them. Neither of them needed it.

About halfway up the path, Vincent sensed a surge of worry, alarm in the boy, who started tugging him a different way. And it was something their limited shared language couldn't explain, except that Mouse knew it was important, necessary. Vincent's head felt as though it might crack into two halves any minute, and he'd begun to feel dizzy, but he turned obediently and went the way Mouse was pulling him.

It was a long detour. They descended and left the cavern by a broader slit in the overhung wall. Then they passed through a low, crooked channel a stream had cut, chilly water ankle-high as they waded along its course. Whatever nebulous boundaries there were, they'd passed: this was the Maze itself.

Vincent could see dimly, but Mouse must be quite blind. Yet the boy was sure of his way, patting walls, listening, whistling from time to time to check the echoes. Once, he started to duck through a tube hardly more than a foot across. Then he backed and straightened with a vexed expression, plainly realizing Vincent couldn't follow him that way, and turned, searching out a better route they could both take.

The place they came to at last was truly dark. Even Vincent could see nothing but a few dim outlines, and Mouse, leading the way, was only a sense of motion rather than an actual shape.

It was a large place, miles across, filled with the treble echoes of thousands of single drops falling great distances. Recognizing the sound, Vincent therefore knew the place: he'd always thought of it as the Cathedral. It was one of his favorite places Below: a vast, domed basin where drops and sinuous small curls of water collected into a broad, still lake.

They walked along its edge, then up a slope. Then they climbed: a series of narrowing ledges like immense steps. At last, Mouse stopped, turned, and made a soft sound. The contact of clasped hands conveyed sadness and an odd kind of urgency.

“What is it, Mouse? I don't understand.”

“Onnie.”

A definite word, this time. Perhaps a name.

Mouse bent forward, touched something, straightened. Again, urgency, appeal. “Onnie.”

Vincent knelt, bent down carefully, and reached out.

Bones. Loose bones. A skull—too small to be an adult's, too large for a child's. And around the bones, a collection of objects Vincent could distinguish with concentration: several marbles; some balls of tightly squeezed tinfoil; pebbles, collected from some stream that had tumbled them smooth; pieces of wood in strange, water-eaten shapes. A shrine, with the small offerings of treasures Mouse had brought here over the years. Things with interesting surfaces; things that had bright colors or could flash in the light.

A gravesite.

“Onnie,” Vincent agreed. “I understand.”

Some brother, sister, or friend had brought Mouse, then probably an infant or toddler, here to the Maze. That the older child had cared for the younger, Mouse himself was evidence. No child so young could have survived alone. They'd survived together at least until Mouse had been old enough to begin to forage for himself. Mouse's response to Vincent's worsening illness suggested the older child had then sickened and died; but there was no way, now, of knowing, unless Mouse himself could someday tell that story.

Plainly Mouse had never forgotten the shock and terror of finding himself entirely alone in the dark, familiar world. And he'd never forgotten he'd once known love, and caring touch. Such things were fundamental and needed no words.

Mouse was fumbling in the hamper. At first Vincent thought the boy meant to collect the bones, and asked, “What do you want us to do, Mouse? Should we take Onnie with us?”

The fumbling ended. Mouse laid a new treasure on the grave offerings: the mirror. To be a memory of light. Then he shut the hamper and pushed lightly at Vincent, indicating that that was enough, that they could go back down now.

Onnie was not to be disturbed, then. The bones were to be left to the peace and protection of the unchanging, mothering dark. That was for Mouse to decide.

Mouse simply hadn't wanted to leave without saying goodbye.

It was, Vincent thought, the civilized thing to do.

He knew then that he need have no fears, after all, about how Mouse would fare with Father or, ultimately, the whole of the tunnel community.

Finding footholds, handholds, Vincent slowly worked his way back down to the Cathedral floor. He knew his way, from here—ways he could take, to reach the Ripley Junction. Ways he and Mouse could take, neither leading, both together and deeply content in each other's company.

Dialogues

I do not like these books.

Read them anyway.

No. They discuss abnormal ways of feeling.

Who knows what's normal for you? The books are truthful accounts of some people's experience. You're not the first to make an emotional connection between sex and death, Vincent. You need to know that.

I already know that. I have read Donne. Also Poe. Who write better.

Don't give me literary criticism of textbook prose. Read the books. I flagged the places.

What is a flag?

The yellow squares stuck to the pages, and quit trying to change the subject. Read the books, dammit.

If I read them, will you be content to drop the subject?

Not on your life, babe.

I thought not.

Terrycloth robe loosely tied over the T-shirt and sweatpants she slept in, Diana leaned over her computer, sipping from the coffee cup in one hand while pushing the cursor key with the other, scrolling through the most recent exchanges in the ongoing argument.

She thought she caught a touch of dry, resigned humor in Vincent's last comment, that he must have added after she'd gone to sleep.

Good, if he'd recovered a little perspective about this weird form of conversation, maybe even about its subject. And the three fat Psychology texts were finally gone, after almost two screens' and a week's worth of wrangling back and forth about the issue. Double good.

It'd been a spur-of-the-moment idea: since he'd flatly refused to discuss his obvious hangups, she'd suggested one evening, about a month ago, that he write her an essay on “What Sex Means to Me” in 100 words or less, like a contest, prize to be announced at a later date. And his response had been more amused, less rigidly hostile, than she'd expected.

Pouncing on that apparent chink in the wall she'd run dead into every time she tried to bring up what was rapidly becoming “The Subject,” she'd towed him over to the keyboard, showed him how the cursor, backspace, and delete keys worked, and left him to it.

Having dismissed the rolling typing chair as too small and unstable after one dubious glance, he'd begun typing standing up, with long pauses to locate the keys and muffled, annoyed noises as he learned that too much or too sustained pressure on a key made it repeat, or as his large finger failed to come down squarely and depressed another key besides the one he wanted. His claw made a distinct clicking every time his middle finger hit.

He wrote left-handed, she knew; but he'd first approached the keyboard with a tentative right-hand touch, and had continued that way since. Maybe it was just a matter of meeting something that established habit patterns didn't cover. Or maybe for him there was a darker significance: lots of people reacted to computers as a threat, on first meeting; and she knew his right was his preferred striking hand, for things like ripping out somebody's throat....

Maybe the righthand involvement in the process was a part of why, though there'd been long lapses, days at a time with nothing added, the onscreen conversation had never entirely stopped. It sometimes went by bursts during days when she was working at home and he was here—each of them wandering occasionally, casually, to the computer shelf to check the last comment and add a new one. Sometimes it went slow, line by line, with hours or days separating comment and response, when he came either in the early evening or when she was already asleep in the adjoining room.

She left the roof door unlocked, now: he could come and go whenever he pleased. Announcing it, she'd said, “If I get mugged in my bed by some weirdo wall-climber, it'll be your fault for not being here.” She'd waited for him to make the sensible suggestion that he be given a key to that door; but so far he hadn't, and she hadn't offered.

When he wanted a key, and the assumption of a stable, continuing relationship having a key implied, he'd ask. So far, he hadn't.

But if the way was left open, he'd come.

He'd never had the chance to develop, about her loft, the absolute inhibitions that had apparently kept him from entering Catherine's apartment except on one occasion when his lost love had been surprised by intruders and punched up pretty severely, and another when he'd been too deep in fugue for his self-imposed limits to keep him out.

He'd never chosen, that first time, to enter Diana's loft. The decision had been hers, seeing him collapse, unconscious, across Catherine's grave. Diana had managed to bring him home and he'd eventually wakened here, with no idea where he was or how he'd come: a strange place, a safe place, without any agonized associations; a place where nothing bad had ever happened except for furniture and a door he'd broken in his delirium, long since put to rights with no fuss. Nobody dead, nobody even hurt. No bad memories, nothing to fear or regret. And something about this new place, or about this caring stranger who'd known his name without telling, had freed him to speak openly of personal things— pain, loss, guilt, sorrow—that Diana suspected he'd never been able to voice to people closer to him... relationships in which the habit of reticence was too firmly set to be broken now.

He said to her what he wouldn't say to Father. And what he wouldn't or couldn't say, he was sometimes willing to commit to the impersonal computer screen.

Apparently he was a lifelong diarist; maybe that habit of mind had simply carried over—finding, once the initial strangeness wore off, not that much difference between words committed to paper and words keyed onto a screen. The same sense of saying true things for your own eyes alone, extended into an equally frank dialogue open to them both alike....

He no longer required an invitation to enter her loft, accepting that she meant her blanket “anytime” welcome. Nor did he always make a point of announcing himself anymore, as was the custom Below. Working, reading, sleeping, she'd look up and find he'd silently come, and greet him casually, and go back to whatever she'd been doing. He was very good, undemanding, quiet company, never finding any trouble in entertaining himself until she could break out of the absolute mindlock that seized her when she was working.

Sometimes he'd choose out a videotape and watch it, especially the travelogues she'd bought for him (though she'd never told him that), freezing some view of Chartres cathedral or some painting in the Prado and gazing at the image until the VCR startled them both when the pause went off and the TV blared back onto whatever station it was set for. Or he'd listen to music on her new headphones—a particular luxury, he'd told her, since the park concerts wouldn't be starting again for months.

He'd be so silent and still then she could forget he was even there and be jolted to rediscover him: sitting rapt, eyes shut, against some wall or piece of furniture. Once, she'd damn near tripped over him. If, back in October, somebody'd told her she'd ever be in the same room with this man and completely unaware of his presence, she would have thought they were crazy. The other side of that, of course, was that anytime she pulled back from her absorption, she'd find herself automatically looking for him, missing him when he wasn't there, which was most of the time....

If she was between cases or temporarily stumped on the one she was working on, he'd sometimes get out the checkerboard—his contribution, from Below—and lay out wooden counters worn almost innocent of paint.

Checkers was such a basic game that the complex strategies of chess were next to useless. She could clobber him solidly at least often enough to keep her interested in playing, and he never suggested that the game was too simple or that they should move up to chess. Checkers was enough. In that, as in so many things, he was content to leave matters as they were.

And if he came before dawn, as he occasionally did, she'd wake to find him golden in the light of her bank of tall windows, quietly looking out across the sunlit city, a view he never seemed to tire of although it was sad to him too: he and Catherine had never been able to be together in the sunlight, as she'd so deeply wanted, and here was sunlight for the asking, and empty, and too late. And yet the sunlight still was beautiful, just as Catherine had always said....

He'd tell Diana things like that, completely without self-consciousness. He'd tell her almost anything, no matter how personal, no matter how painful, volunteering whatever he was thinking or feeling in response to no more than an inquiring glance or an attentive silence: she didn't even have to ask.

But he wouldn't talk about The Subject. Flat-out wouldn't. And he wouldn't ask for a key.

What was left open for him, he'd enter. And what was shut, within him, he intended to keep shut.

Which had driven her to begin their onscreen dialogue.

On impulse, she hopped ten pages back to the beginning of the file and read that first exchange.

i do nott see 3why this sssubject must bediscussded at all.i thinkk m matters are vetry well asthey are.andd best ;left alone/.i donot like this machinne,.the ;lighted letters havve nocharacter as does writing with a pen.it seems so impersonal.and the buttons are too small.

She'd responded:

Maybe impersonal is better. Don't tell me: tell the damned idiot computer.

Reading that, he'd added:

i made m6y peace about this very long ago.i am content to continue as i am.i hope you will come to accept it,, as well.

To which, she'd commented:

There's a little matter of a five-month-old son. Where'd he come from—you find him under a cabbage?

And he'd replied:

how i found him, you know. where he came from-out of the everywhere into the here, as do all chilldren.as for the rest, i have no memory of that.it is best sso.

The hell you don't! And the hell it is! she'd thought to herself, but let the assertion stand without further discussion. And the next day, she'd bought a big industrial keyboard, with keys an inch square. If he noticed the change, he didn't comment on it.

Part of the rules seemed to be that neither of them said anything aloud about the onscreen dialogue or referred to it in any way...almost as if it could exist and continue only through not being openly acknowledged. The right hand tapped out halting messages on the keys, but didn't tell the left hand what it was doing....

Now, absently gulping down the last of her coffee, Diana jumped back to the end of the file and typed in simply:

Well?

She left the computer turned on and the monitor screen lit, although she knew he wouldn't come before dark today and maybe not then.

And could he really have forgotten what, incredibly for a man in his mid-thirties, was apparently his sole experience of sex? She had to believe him: he'd keep silence, rather than lie. And yet, however deep in fugue he'd been, however lost in unconsciousness, wouldn't there still be some bodily memory, perhaps beyond his reach...? Assuming he reached at all, which he plainly didn't. No, he shoved it as far away as he possibly could.

Still mentally poking at the problem, she dressed and began the day's business, involving a blackmailing case that had grown into several murders. At four she had to go uptown for a staff meeting, and it dragged on until past seven, as those things generally did. It was after eight before she wearily dragged herself out of the elevator and shoved the accordion gate shut.

He wasn't there, but on her kitchen island was a covered dish of macaroni, sauce, and cheese, all ready to stuff in the microwave. Next to it, a note in his large, self-assured handwriting: More plumbing, then council meeting tomorrow until late. Saturday, perhaps. V—

He'd told her yesterday that he was part of a crew working on a nasty, many-holed leak in a water main, trying to get it patched before a city crew came down to investigate the pressure drop. Sounded like a real stinker of a job, cold and wet....

When she'd dumped her bag and shoved the dish into the microwave to reheat, as she looked idly across the room she instantly noticed that two of the Psych books were back, stacked on the corner of the computer shelf. She loped over to look, and sure enough there was a new comment on the screen:

Farben's discussion of asphyxia was interesting. I did not know that. It seems a foolish game, like beating one's head against a wall merely to savor the satisfaction of stopping. Russian roulette is empty risk, quite pointless, but at least has the advantage of harming no one else except by accident or ineptitude. But Walters/Green are wrong about blood loss. It is not enjoyable. It is thirsty and makes one's head ache. And fainting is not so common as they believe. I do not think there are any true vampires, however widespread and historically persistent the delusion, although my experience is admittedly limited. Father is of the same opinion.

The microwave buzzed but she continued frowning at the screen, trying to decide what to make of the entry and what to say in reply. When, after five minutes, she still hadn't decided, she went back and shoveled down the meal he'd left for her with such casual thoughtfulness—lefthand stuff—and continued trying to figure out what the right hand was being so objective and civil about.

Although this was Thursday and it seemed he wouldn't see any answer before Saturday, she was impatient to get her own thinking in order. Circling back to the keyboard, she typed:

This isn't a damn seminar. I didn't ask for a book report on Farben. You're what I want to know more about. What does it feel like, to you, to kill somebody? What is it like, for an empath and a man so sensitive to touch, to kill with your hands?

She deleted the blunt entry twice and restored it twice before she made up her mind to leave it staring from the screen until whenever he next came. Then she saved the file out of habit, although if the power should fail, the program's automatic save function would have preserved it.

Friday, she added:

Is it unpleasant while, or only after--a backlash, once you start thinking about it? It must be an emotional charge of some sort and if you deny it I won't believe you.

Saturday morning, she woke to find the third book sitting on the monitor and half the screen filled:

What do you want of me? Admission that I am strange, peculiar? I admit it. How should I not? I confront it every day in any reflective surface, including the eyes of others. Surely this cannot be news worthy of such persistence. I ask nothing of you but friendship and shared trust. Why cannot that be enough? Why do you insist on pursuing this? I will read no more of your books. I see myself dissected on every page, with footnotes. This is intolerable. Yes, some part of me takes pleasure in killing. Yes, it is the kind of pleasure you will suppose it to be, the kind your books anatomize in such exacting detail. What is it, to me, that the phennomenon has been observed among butchers, hangmen, and other such slaughterers? Is it less abominable for being so thoroughly documented? What possible satisfaction can it give you to know this? Merely the satisfaction of being right? If so, I wish you joy of it.

Ouch, she said to herself. Also Wow. Struck something with that one, sure enough. He'd been so mad he hadn't even bothered to go back and correct “phennomenon.” She wasn't positive how it was spelled, only not like that.

Maybe the books had been a bad idea. She knew what it was to suffer the “symptom disease” you caught from medical texts—finding evidence you had every horrible illness you read about. Maybe the Psych books had been too much for him to take, all in a lump like that. She tried to imagine.

She recalled his telling her how a couple of geek anthropologists from Columbia had once gotten hold of him, and how he'd damn near died of it...as much from despair as any actual mistreatment. Maybe the books had been like that too, in a way—“dissected on every page, with footnotes.” Becoming a thing, interior life turned into just more data to be observed and recorded. Right hand wouldn't like that, not a bit. Right hand had chewed her out royally.

Biting her lip, meanwhile wondering if she'd see anything of him today, after this, she keyed in her reply:

If all you know about building up, then releasing, a sexual charge is what you feel in killing, I don't think you can tell the difference between desire and rage anymore. I think because of that mistake, you deny yourself what's most human in love. And that frustrates the hell out of me, if you want to know. Except for a couple of months when I was eight, I never figured to set up shop as a nun.

Her message shone, unread and unanswered, all through that weekend and Monday, as well. Tuesday morning, she woke to find it gone, the screen dark, and the computer's plug decisively yanked out of the socket.

Muttering coarse words learned at her father's knee, she replugged the computer, booted up, entered the word-processing program, and saw that he'd been busy last night: he'd deleted the whole file.

She checked the automatic backup, figuring that if he didn't know how to exit the program properly, it'd still be safe. But he'd plainly been into her user's manuals: backup gone too.

“Well, I know a trick worth two of that, babe,” she murmured intently, and ran a utility program that recovered accidentally trashed files...and there it was: dialogue.fil, good as new.

Calling the file up on screen, she jumped to the end to find what had set off such determined electronic destruction.

And right below her crack about nuns, there it was— a single, stark line:

There is no difference anymore.

Diana slowly leaned back in her chair, then straightened her legs to roll the chair away from the shelf. Even that wasn't far enough: she slid out of the chair and backed against her desk, all the while staring at the screen.

Noplace in her loft or the whole world to let her shove far enough away to keep that flat declaration from burning in her mind.

No difference. No difference between the emotions of passion and those of uncontrollable murderous fury. Either transmuting into the other. Love, death—no difference anymore.

Quickly, with determined pokes, she saved the file onto an old floppy diskette full of archives from shut cases and renamed the file sphinx.fil as camouflage. Then she again wiped it from the hard drive, in case he checked.

He knew how to get around the directories and menus now, in and out of programs, that was plain. And she didn't want to provoke him into something extreme, like reformatting the hard drive or ripping out the computer's guts to be really sure the file was gone.

Tossing the floppy among dozens of others in her desk drawer, she again stared at the appalling message he'd left and then done his considerable amateur best to destroy.

And because he'd never see this file again, she typed:

Oh Catherine, how could you love this man and yet let him go on killing for you, over and over, year after year? After you learned once and forever exactly how bad things can get and you couldn't make it stop and it didn't stop and you damn near died of learning it, did you find his strength and his protection, that he couldn't help but give, you couldn't help but take? Did it finally feel like being safe, to know your fear had become a death sentence? Did you start to get a charge out of it too, that close and together over the bloody sacrifice he'd given you again? Did sharing it lock this godawful fusion into him through the bond? Did it feel like love, or did it feel like killing, or by that time couldn't you tell the difference either, so there could be no other sharing, the trap closed tight and no way left but fugue and nearly death and finally death itself? What did you bring to this man and what did you leave him with, to live the rest of his life? Oh, Catherine, he may forgive you, and does, and he'd likely rake half my face off rather than admit there'd ever been anything to forgive. To make you perfect, he has to be the one who's wrong. But forgive me, Catherine, because it's going to take me longer. How dare you let the man worship you that way? You're not perfect, and I'm a dumb mick cop in way over my head and scared to death of hurting him worse and I don't know what the hell to do now

Then, numb and near tears, she went through the proper stages of exiting the program and finally hit the toggle switch, turning the computer off.

The whine died. The screen went blank and dark. Except for the floppy she'd saved, all the words were gone.

Then she had three cups of coffee and shoved the whole business out of her mind to concentrate on identifying which, of five suspects she hadn't yet ruled out, was a blackmailer pressured into killing his “clients” before any could expose him and connect him to the first murder in the string. Nice, tidy, cold-blooded crime, complex in its way but without complications. Nothing she'd bolt up sweating in the middle of the night, dreaming about....

And she spent the necessary hours on the phone: asking questions, assigning legwork or research, taking reports and finally reporting in turn to Seymour Weiss of homicide, who was heading this investigation, to eliminate two more of the possibles on grounds of psychology and probability and to suggest how best to drive one of the remaining three into betraying himself without either of the semi-innocent others getting dead in the process. All cool routine.

Hanging up, she simultaneously noticed it was dark and felt Vincent behind her—smelled him, actually: the smoke and candle odor of his clothes. So he'd come, after all. Rubbing her eyes, she asked without turning, “You eaten yet, babe?”

“No.” Nothing special in the voice, the single word.

She flung an arm behind her, over the couch back, and after a hesitation so brief she wasn't sure there'd been any, felt her hand lightly enfolded. The contact would tell him she wasn't mad, anyhow. Just tired, now, and sad...and he often found her that way, at day's end. Nothing special there either. Nothing changed—just the way he liked it.

She set the phone in her lap and began punching numbers. “So, how about if I send out for pizza, huh? You hate anchovies, right?”

While she was ordering, both those huge hands settled onto her shoulders. Knowing he could break her neck like a carrot, she didn't flinch, didn't even think about flinching, she wasn't afraid of this man, not since she'd put the pistol away that first night, absolutely not. She'd rather die than flinch.

Feeling no withdrawal, the thumbs dug in, working out the stiffness they found. After she hung up the phone, she leaned gratefully back into the pressure, making a soft noise of satisfaction, and it was still all right between them.

“So, you done with the plumbing, and was it as bad as I think it was?”

“Merely uncomfortable. And then there were other things.... Pascal told me there's...an exhibition game?..on tonight. I thought you might want to watch it...?”

Offering to watch baseball, which she knew bored him half out of his mind, and which he knew she loved with the same intensity she brought to her work. To everything. By way of apology for the pulled plug, the trashed file, that they absolutely weren't going to talk about.

“Who's playing?”

“I don't know,” he admitted.

“Sure,” she decided. If she said no, he'd think she wasn't willing to accept his apology. An acceptable sacrifice: nobody dead, not for her. Once, already, but never again, by God.... “Exhibition, that's like poker for pennies, but why not? Watch all the fat guys trying to make like they haven't been loafing around all winter, the blown catches, flubbed pitches, the weird haircuts, beards and stuff, that the managers'll make 'em get rid of before the season starts. Sure, might be fun. And if it gets too embarrassing, we can see what kind of old trash movie they're running on five.”

So after the pizza came and she went down to the foyer to collect it, they watched maybe an hour of inept pre-season baseball before she figured that should be penance enough and clicked over to a Greta Garbo movie on one of the unnetwork channels. Pushing the pizza box aside, Vincent slid onto the floor and sat crosslegged in front of the couch, no longer just pretending to be interested: he was partial to Garbo. Anything sweet, sappy, and tragic.

“You're just a sucker for romance.” She tugged at his hair, and he glanced around with his rare smile, then gave Garbo his full attention again.

Actually Diana didn't mind the strange old broad herself. Great eyes. And knew how to keep her distance, give a man space.

When not completely entangled with pizza, she rested a hand on his shoulder, just quietly keeping contact. And after awhile she even managed to forget the small voice in the back of her mind that kept up its unsettling idiot litany of no difference. no difference. That was only the computer's voice and what did a computer know anyway.

Ignore it, forget it. Let everything be how it'd been before.

Wildlife

Diana stumbled pigeon-footed out of her bedroom, rubbing sleep from her eyes and intent only on coffee, and then banged into the side of the refrigerator and stared, because Vincent had come.

He was standing with his back to her, across the width of the room: looking out her windows at the winter dawn. And just that second, the sun either cleared the rooftops or came free of a cloud, and he blazed golden in the first sunlight.

Heart-stoppingly gorgeous. Diana felt as if an ice pick had thumped in just under her ribs, a pang of desire so severe she was sure she'd die if she couldn't have him that instant—on the floor, backed against her kitchen island, balanced on the sink, anyplace. Anyplace at all.

And at the same time, she sagged against the refrigerator knowing that even if she managed to shove him into that particular corner, left him no option and noplace to dodge, he'd ease her aside as gently as possible and leave and never come back and then she would die, and not just figuratively. Losing the only true miracle she'd ever known, there'd be nothing left worth the effort of opening her eyes to see.

She gulped out, “G'morning,” to his back, ducked into the bedroom to grab her robe, and fled to the bathroom. Long shower. Cold water. And it didn't do a bit of good because every inch of her skin was awake and aching, every hair attuned like a compass seeking north; the water's touches only seemed to heighten her awareness, and toweling off was worse. She was shaking all over and breathing in shuddering gasps. Even her damn toes felt swollen and hot.

Robe wrapped around her, she dove back into the bedroom and snatched on some clothes and scuffed into jogging shoes without bothering about the laces. Then she risked a raid into the Great Room (Omygod, still there: both palms aching to stroke down the sides of his face, the hair there like soft yellow wire, and then, and then....) just long enough to grab her Yankees jacket off the couch. Then, through the unlocked sheet steel door he'd come in by, she escaped to the roof. Fists stuck in pockets, shoulders hunched against the mid-February cold, she paced and watched her breath steaming as though she were a dragon, all fire inside. Which was precisely how she felt.

Dragonlady, she thought, and chopped out part of a laugh that hurt her ribs. No dragon, no unicorn: only Vincent, more wonderful than either because he was real. And she was nobody's lady in any way, shape, or form.

Since he'd come so early, he'd be here all day (all day! going through this all day!, part of her mind shrieked at her in ecstatic horror) because the nearest way Below was two blocks off plus the length of the alley. So he was willingly stuck here until dark (all day! all day!), and depending on whether or not she could get and stay reasonably sane, it was going to be either the best or the worst day of her life. And, she recollected, she had an autopsy to observe at ten. Great: just the thing. If anything could cool her down, that should be it.

Shooting critical glances at the sky, she waited until the sun had slid behind the slate edge of a substantial slab of cloud that would take a while in passing, then rattled down the stairs and banged back inside, trying to act as if nothing was happening or had happened at all.

And he was just Vincent, looking out the window.

“Hi, babe, didn't expect you,” she said breezily, shucking the jacket, not daring to look at him except in quick side glances while she dumped water in the coffee maker and then dropped a sealed pillow of coffee on top, slid the pot underneath, and hit the switch. Then she started slapping cabinets open, dragging out drawers, and peering into the refrigerator to see what was around from which to put together a patchwork double breakfast. “To what do I owe this pleasant surprise, huh?”

Without turning he lifted his right hand like signaling hi, and there was a thick white bandage around it, crisscrossed around his wrist, as well. “Small matter of a pipe,” he said. “Ceramic doesn't bend particularly well. I tried to force it.”

Concerned, she came quickly around the kitchen island, and he dutifully turned to surrender his hand into both of hers, for her inspection. Creases and folds in the bandage; raw, torn edges on the strips; two fat knots: not Father's precise doctorly workmanship. He'd done it himself.

“So,” he continued, “finding all my projects unexpectedly suspended and the day mine to dispose of....”

A dark bloodstain had soaked through the bandage where wrist met palm: he'd broken the wound open again, getting to her roof. If he was going to be here all day, the dressing would need changing. As she tried to think whether her miscellaneous medical supplies would do or whether she ought to pick up some more while she was out, her nose went hyperacute on her. She caught his smell. Not merely the accustomed smoke and candle odor of his clothes: himself.

And it was ice-pick time, all over again.

Worse than before, because closer, more familiar—as though they'd been lovers forever, as though they'd been doing bedroom calisthenics all night and it would only be a fresh engagement of bodies already warmed and fully fitted to one another, no sharp edges, no awkward beginnings, simple as breath.

She hung onto his hand and wrist merely to keep from falling down and he knew it, he had to know it, her intense sensual awareness surging through the contact between them. She simultaneously wanted to hold on, to infect him with this sweet, aching contagion, and to let go, back off, run. It seemed at once possible, necessary, to grab harder and wrestle him down (yeah: you and what 20 lumberjacks?), and insane, knowing the simplicity was the same simplicity by which a lifelong drunk managed to convince himself one more drink wouldn't hurt at all.

With easy strength that made nothing of her locked muscles and her conflicts, he put his arm around her and gathered her gently against his chest, her bent head tucked under his chin, just as though comforting her in sadness or any other sort of pain. The full contact, shoulder to heel, that should have made everything worse, somehow didn't, because he was so relaxed in holding her, so steady. Unstirred, or stirred only to sympathy with what was her problem, her awareness, alone.

And that made her mad. Why should she have to disown and deny her own arousal, that she absolutely knew to be natural and legitimate, as though she were some gland-intoxicated teenager lusting after a priest? Why did she have to be embarrassed and frustrated and halfway falling apart, get patted on the head and dismissed, or held and dismissed just the same, and be so painfully alone where she felt most connected?

Because he didn't feel it as she did. Oh, it registered, it surely registered, but nothing within him answered it. He really had shut any such awareness so thoroughly away that she couldn't reach it, touch it, wake it in whatever dark place it slept.

There was a word for that: innocence.

And just as abruptly as it had come, her anger faded and she found in herself a sudden and profound sympathy toward Catherine, who must have gone through exactly the same thing, over and over again, year after year, slamming head-on into the unyielding, compassionate wall of his innocence. How had she ever endured it?

Easy, Diana thought. She loved him. And so do I.

And he knew that too: had to. No need of talk. And she thought he likely loved her back as much as he could, just now, everything considered. In his own fashion, he was a very loving man. Not hot; but warm, definitely warm. And absolutely steady.

Diana let herself be held, resting against him. He began rocking, shifting his massive weight slightly from foot to foot, so that it felt almost like a very, very slow, quiet dance that went nowhere but still continued and would continue as long as the unheard music lasted.

And she was proud of herself: she didn't cry.

Presently she tipped her head back, looking into those solemn sapphire eyes at a distance of maybe six inches. “I gotta go watch a corpse get cut up at ten. And what would you like for breakfast?”

His eyes smiled. The upper fangs even showed a little. And she thought that the truly inhuman thing about him was his damned self-control.

He proposed, “I'll do eggs, if you have eggs, and you do the bacon, if you have bacon.”

“Traditionalist,” she accused, swinging away at the coffee maker's buzz. She wanted coffee. Lots of coffee.

*****

He couldn't pick up the grocery bags from the elevator floor but he could carry them, once she set them in his arms.

“So,” she said, briskly stacking jars, boxes, sacks on the kitchen island for disposition, “you want to know how I spent my morning? No, I didn't think so. Got some beautiful ham, look at it, have it for supper or even lunch, if you want...? Supper, then. And wine, a little won't kill you, c'mon, be a sport.”

“‘Sport' has other meanings,” he responded, headed away toward the TV stuck in pause on what looked like one of the early comedy tapes she'd gotten, from a list he'd given her—Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd, she couldn't tell which, from the present still frame. “A sport is a freak.”

“Oops.” She ducked to shove a box of macaroni into a low cupboard under the island, then resurfaced. “What's bit you, Sunshine?”

He gestured righthanded, more or less a shrug. Then his arm immediately tensed, elbow to shoulder: working the joints, trying to shrug out pain. He settled back where he'd been when she'd returned—on the floor, leaning against the front of the couch, one leg stretched long, the other bent at the knee and tucked tight. He used her furniture only for occasional politeness, apparently finding it either too small, too fragile, or too confining in one way or another.

Locating the VCR controller, he sent Buster Keaton back into his battle with a locomotive.

Kneeling to stack packages in the freezer, Diana grinned, because all at once, she knew. His hand was bothering him; and his change of mood was the delayed reaction to her fit of the hots, this morning. So it did touch him: it just took a while to ooch its way past all the blocks and through whatever cracks had opened up in that wall of unawareness and flat refusal.

You never could afford to quite forget that he had a six-month-old son who had not been conceived by miraculous means, unless you counted fugue and unconsciousness— the corner Catherine hadn't exactly shoved him into but had certainly taken prompt advantage of— as miraculous. Unusual, yes; supernatural, no. But what must it feel like, to him, to know that his impulses were so skewed that intimacy with him was safe only if he was too out of it to know anything about what was going on, much less enjoy it?

Freak, she reflected soberly, filling with warm water a bowl shaped to look like a cabbage. Somebody's said that to him once, or a lot of times; and now he says it to himself. That's rough. But a good thing for me to know....

She balanced the bowl, deciding whether to take it to him or not, then thought that would likely end up with at least some of his clothes wet and drips on the rug. So she set it on the island, next to the pile of medical supplies she'd picked up. Locating her small, sharp scissors, she called, “Okay, sport, come on: doctor time.”

He looked around, thought about it, then put the pause back on the VCR and heaved up from the floor. He stood patiently, without comment, by the island while she carefully sliced through and then unwrapped the old bandage, apparently made of a torn section of cotton sheet and therefore likely not all that sterile to begin with.

When she got through the binding and lifted the wad of blood-glued fabric underneath, her face went tight. She glanced up sharply, but he wasn't looking at her or anything in particular.

The deep, ragged cut ran clear across the length of his palm, zig-zagging from the base of his fingers and extending an inch or so into his wrist. As soon as the bandage seal was broken, the gash began, slowly, to bleed.

“Nasty,” she commented in a neutral voice. “Sure that doesn't need stitches, babe?”

“No. As long as it's bound to keep the edges of the wound together, it will heal well enough.” He laid his left hand palm-up beside the injured right and asked, “What do you see?” After a few seconds' close inspection, she shook her head because she could see nothing worth his showing her. He told her mildly, “About a year ago I caught a machete blade. Edge first.”

Diana winced, imagining it, and looked harder. But there was no scar—not even a mark, except the ordinary fold-lines of his hand.

“Whatever you say, then,” she conceded. Towing his wounded hand, without resistance, over the bowl of water, she looked for permission before dunking it.

He dunked it himself, and only flinched a little.

When the wound was clean and thickly spread with carbolic salve GOOD FOR MAN OR BEAST, according to the jar's lid, that she'd stuffed under a dishtowel), she padded and rebandaged it, not too loose and not too tight. Finishing with a neat, flat knot, she clipped the ends and waited for his verdict.

He held the hand up and carefully tilted it, but didn't try to close it into a fist. “Father could have done no better.”

She found herself absurdly pleased by the praise. “Girl Scouts never forget.”

He wandered back to the TV, but only to turn it off and stop the tape. Leaning on the clear end of the island, the side nearest the windows, he chose hamburgers from the available menu and watched while she cleared away the first aid kit and started to assemble the makings of lunch.

Curious ever since he'd made out the list of requested tapes, she now felt comfortable enough to ask him why those tapes, in particular, with the private conviction that several were certified dogs, grade Z movies mostly from the late 60s, early 70s. The Thing from Bat Cave, Vampire Cheerleaders, Six-Gun Revenge: that sort of stuff. It didn't seem his style at all.

He told her those were all the titles he could remember of movies the other tunnel kids had gone Above to see and then told him about, afterward. His childhood, she thought: when he hadn't been allowed to go Above at all. When he'd never seen blue sky.

Patting a burger into shape, she asked him, “Well, was it worth the wait?”

He thought about it, one forefinger drawing idle circles on the countertop. “No,” he admitted, with just the shadow of a smile.

“Boys have different tastes, different expectations. I think they chiefly liked the popcorn fights. Sometimes Devin would bring back some for me, if he'd already eaten himself sick, and then I'd have to decide whether I wanted more to throw it or to eat it. It didn't taste very good, cold. So I usually threw it.”

She grinned, delightedly visualizing that, and his answering smile became plainer, less constrained.

“Will I ever get to meet Devin?” she asked, deeply curious about Father's other son, Vincent's brother in all but genetics.

“I can't say. I hope so.” He looked around toward the windows, then turned to survey her loft more generally. “I'd like it if it were possible sometime for you to invite him here. I'd like to see him sometime, Above....”

“Show off, you mean: that you're a big kid now and you can come Above, see lousy movies, anytime you please.”

His eyes found her again: wide, candid, achingly blue. “Of course.”

“Of course. I got microwave popcorn: want me to make some?”

“Perhaps later.” The smile went deeper yet, and was shared.

As she started slapping burgers down on the pan, he went on, “To be fair, the Keaton holds up well. The Lloyd, I've only seen three times through, so I haven't yet made up my mind. I suspect that film may not have been his best work, so perhaps I shouldn't judge him by it.”

Quickly scrubbing her hands on a towel, she went prospecting around the loft, crouching and poking into bookcases, until she located what she wanted: a fat paperback guide to movies onTV. Returning, she thumped the book down on the island in front of him. “Read up on it, make me a new list, and I'll see what I can find. Most of that old stuff is out on video these days.”

He took her suggestion with such interest that his first burger got cold before she could drag his nose out of the book long enough to pay attention to anything else. Diana was tolerant. She was exactly the same way when she was working.

Every once in awhile, as now, it struck her sharply how much alike they were despite all surface differences, despite the equal differences of experience and upbringing.

Both supersensitive to the emotions and attitudes of others—Vincent directly, Diana through imagination and insight, but with much the same effect and the same resultant tendency to either stay aloof, distant, or get right in somebody's face. No moderation: full-tilt or nothing. Clearly the same sense, often, of being a well-disposed but alien observer from someplace like Andromeda, noting with mingled amusement, horror, disgust, and fascination, what these absurd creatures called humans did to themselves and one another. And most fundamental of all, they were both hunters.

Catherine Chandler, Diana thought as she judiciously selected, among the heaped french fries, the one that was exactly the proper shade of golden brown, had gone a long way toward making a hunter of herself after she'd first met Vincent. Quit corporate law, joined the DA's office. Became one of their top investigators. Diana had read up on her record. But quite a lot of that had been either poring through documents and trial transcripts, or basic legwork, or charming witnesses into giving evidence. Research skills. Hostess skills. Truly being a hunter, she thought, was something else: something you couldn't learn; something in the blood.

She proposed this thesis to Vincent, giving examples, citing recent experience, and was rolling right along when she realized he hadn't said anything in a long time, not one word. Her argument stumbled and stopped, half a french fry poised in midair.

He was looking at her with no expression at all. After a dreadful long minute, he considerately ended her misery by returning to his study of the movie guide.

He said nothing at all. But Diana knew if she ever once tried again to draw comparisons favorable to herself, as against Catherine Chandler, she should be boiled for a fool and served to the dogs for dinner.

She meekly offered, and he accepted, a third hamburger; he changed the subject to what effect the advent of sound had on movie making, and she promised to rent Singin' in the Rain as an excellent case in point, and the moment blessedly passed.

*****

By evening, his hand was bothering him visibly, to the point that he found it impossible to keep it in one position more than a few minutes at a time. The way he shifted, hitching his shoulder tight, then letting it go, showed that the pain was running all the way up his arm.

Stowing away the remains of supper, Diana watched and kept still as long as she could stand it, then suggested maybe it was time to change the dressing again. He agreed without argument. When she stripped off the last pad, she found the wound puffy and swollen but plainly healing: not only had it quit bleeding but the raw edges of the wound were linked by delicate new skin already forming. She shook her head and bit back any show of astonishment over the unnatural speed.

Only a light pad was needed, some more salve to keep the dead skin from hardening before it was ready to slough off, and then a couple turns of gauze to hold the pad in place. Tape would have done as well, but it would have been wretched getting off, given the mid-length fur on the back of his hand and up his wrist.

So changing the dressing didn't help at all.

“Eventually, it will start itching,” Vincent told her, turning down the sleeve of his ribbed white sweater while Diana began putting the first aid stuff away again.

“Will that be better?” she responded hopefully.

“No,” he admitted, with a not-quite-smile that meant he'd been waiting for her to play straight man. “Different, though.”

She set both elbows on the island, thinking. “Look, I know you can't tolerate aspirin, but what about Tylenol, ibuprofin, the other pain-killers?”

“I have no idea. I don't even recognize the names. And I hesitate to experiment without first getting Father's opinion. It would be awkward for you if I went into fits on your floor.”

It was said soberly enough, but she could tell he was teasing a little.

“Wouldn't be the first time,” she shot back, and got a touché look in return, to say she'd scored one for her side. She went on, “Then how about the wine? Oldest pain-killer there is.” The gallon jug had stayed unopened through supper. “Look, we know that's not gonna be a medical problem, at least. And you'd likely have to hog the whole jug to even get the start of a buzz. What the hell, Vincent?” Watching him, she could tell he still wasn't comfortable with the idea. “Look, scout's honor, I promise to sit way over there and not even make a small pass, OK?”

Long silence. Then, tightly: “I'm not familiar with the phrase.”

“‘Scout's honor'? ‘Sit over there'? Or ‘make a pass'?” He just looked at her. She sighed. “Like this morning, babe,” she said gently. “I only get crazy once a day. House rules.”

“It's late,” he said, looking off toward the small hall that led to the roof door.

“The hell it is: eight o' clock is late, all of a sudden? And you're going down my wall, tear that hand wide open, have this all to go through again tomorrow? Let's get real, here. The way that's going, it'll be damn near healed by tomorrow. Why don't you let it alone like a sensible person, have a nice glass or two of this very nice cheap wine I bought on special, and quit behaving like a scared freshman at a frat- ernity party trying to remember if she took her pill or not?”

He shook his head, not following that burst of references either, but didn't ask for an explanation.

She remembered Father's comment that Vincent preferred to be careful of what he did. She also knew that, until a couple of months back at a memorable wedding Below, he'd never swallowed anything stronger than tea..

She shrugged. “Okay. You don't want to, you don't have to. You're entitled. I'll watch you fidget and twitch and hurt as long as you please and never say another word about it.”

“Diana....” he said in an exasperated voice.

“No, it's okay, it'd be wrong to try to talk you into doing something you disapprove of,” she responded primly, both hands raised as a disclaimer, and watched him out of the edge of her eye.

“It's not disapproval. I simply prefer not to. You go ahead, if you wish.”

“Gee, thanks!” she said, as though his comment were the most amazingly novel and courteous invitation she'd heard since the autopsy surgeon asked if she had a preference about the initial cut. “I do believe I will.”

Since he hadn't accepted her proposal, she saw no reason to sit way across the room and tucked up on the floor next to him, with the jug and two thick water tumblers, one of which sat conspicuously unused, just the way she figured it would. On PBS there was a play he'd never seen acted out by professionals, one of the “thee,” “forsooth,” and “should'st” kind, and Diana waited it out without her eyes glazing over too plainly and didn't say word one when Vincent periodically shifted, trying to find a way to make the hand give him some peace. She just moved when he did, then settled back against his side, breathing his nearness and enjoying his solid warmth, suffering only occasional impulses to mug him or otherwise interfere with his interest in the play.

When the last skewered body had hit the floor and the credits were rolling, she proposed checkers and, to set the board in place, thumped the empty tumbler out of the way but still within easy reach. And about halfway through the second game he stuck out his left hand and held it there, saying nothing. She put into it her own glass, newly recharged, and then filled the spare for herself. For jug wine, it wasn't bad at all.

They hadn't bothered to turn the TV off. Contemplating a dangerous double jump that would leave an open alley he might exploit if he got a counter into it before she could block it, next move, she idly noticed that some nature documentary had come on. Africa, some jungle, something. When next she looked, the narrator was going on about predators, the balance between hunters and hunted, and so she watched with maybe a third of her attention and lost three of her remaining five counters as a result, bang, bang, bang, just like that. And he'd already kinged once. She didn't have a chance in hell unless she made the world's best race to the back row and he couldn't hit her before she got there and kinged herself. He hit her three rows out. One forlorn piece left. She thought about teaching him poker.

She looked up, and then abruptly down, checked her watch. Still forty minutes to go, and by the look of it, the whole program was about predators and this was the part about their love life. Cats: big ones. A pair of them, going at it under a large, wilted-looking tree. In color. In close up. This was too good to pass up.

Refilling her own glass, then swapping again with Vincent—he wouldn't reach for himself, but he'd accept what she handed him—she remarked casually, “That's interesting.”

He caught something in her voice, because he glanced at her first, then away in the direction she was looking. And his reaction surprised her: after watching about a minute he smiled a brief, quiet, private smile, then turned unhurriedly back to the board and clobbered her last checker. “Three out of five?” he proposed, starting to set the counters out in their rows again.

“Let me catch my breath from the last massacre,” she replied, because she wanted to watch him, understand that twitch of a smile.

She'd expected him to be embarrassed, maybe even shocked. Instead, absently rubbing the bandage where it crossed the back of his hand—he hadn't been fidgeting nearly so much in the last fifteen minutes or so—he leaned back against the couch, one arm crooked at ease across the cushions, and paid the documentary the same serious attention he'd focused on the play.

“I suppose, if I'd ever thought about it, I would have guessed people would film such things,” he remarked matter-of-factly after a few minutes. “I hadn't realized it would be broadcast... and at an hour when children might well still be watching. I had the impression standards were more rigid.”

“It's PBS. And animals are automatically educational. No matter what they're doing.”

“I see,” he replied, and went right on watching.

And because he wasn't doing anything interesting but sit there, she ended up watching too. There was a section on cheetahs, all sinews and rangy speed, and then they were back to lions again, yawning and lolling in dappled shade, cuffing good-naturedly at one another in passing, as though it would be too much trouble to actually fight. A long, talky pledge break. Then fights: two lionesses settling dominance; a black-maned challenger against a larger male; a succession of chubby kittens rolling and boxing, pouncing awkwardly from behind bushes, mewling fiercely and wrinkling cleft lips back from needle fangs. Then a mating fight: first a pair of males having it out, then the main event for the winner—hardly less bloody. Some solid-looking neck-biting going on, snarls and slashes not only as preliminaries but during and afterward. Parting abruptly, the sometime lovers went separate ways and proceeded to somberly lick clean what the next shot made plain were some serious wounds. The shot after that showed a male who'd lost an eye; then a female whose flank wound turned infected and who later went lame and then died as a result.

On that inspiring note, the station broke away to let a fat, bald guy with glasses beg for more money to support such fine educational programming. Vincent went back to arranging the checkers on the proper squares.

Diana remarked, “When they fool around, they sure don't fool around.”

Vincent glanced toward the TV, then back to the checkerboard. He wasn't anything like drunk, not on two water glasses of jug wine; but he'd gone quieter, and his attention had pulled inward. And what he said was, “People are so fragile.”

That offhand and vaguely wistful remark haunted Diana all through the next game, which she lost in near record time. It fit somewhere, she knew it did, but she couldn't think how or where. And then suddenly it came to her and she grabbed his arm and hung on hard.

“Vincent, it's not you, it's us: the rest of us. It's not pathology, I was all wrong about shoving those Psych books at you, I'm real sorry about that, honest. It's just that whatever you are, you're damn well a hunter, a predator, and they play rough, that's all. All that weight, all that fast strength, and built-in weapons and reflexes they can't shed when playtime comes. Automatically defending against that one time of absolute, dangerous vulnerability. You heal so fast, if I was what you are, I could take it and not blink. God, it's so plain, why didn't I see it?” She turned loose to smack her forehead in annoyance. “You're no freak: you're a perfectly normal whatever-you-are, even if there's just one of you. It's not mixed up at all, it's plain, skewed a little, maybe, because there's nobody you can really cut loose with, nobody.... But don't you see?” she demanded earnestly, because he hadn't reacted at all, just sat looking at her.

And slowly he smiled that twitch of a private smile, the same one. So sad, it'd break your heart. And then she saw it, what she'd still been missing—that he knew, and it didn't make a damn bit of difference because they were still what they were, and knowing didn't change anything. Not anything at all.

And Diana burst out laughing, because it hurt and because it was funny, how she'd watched him so hard and come to her great enlightenment and none of it any news to him whatever.

Not innocence. Brutal experience, brutally learned, and forced into gentleness and willed unawareness because stronger than anything was his desire to protect those he cared about.

And although he tried to keep his face straight, pretty soon he started laughing too, big fangs plainly exposed, the sound of it like controlled thunder as she flung herself hard against his chest and he put both arms around her, holding her solidly against him no tighter than she could stand.

Outlook

When Vincent finally succeeded in getting away from Father's doctoring, he found Pascal anxiously waiting in the passage to find out how much, and what, Vincent had admitted. Sixteen and Vincent's elder by almost three years, Pascal felt fully entitled to conduct an interrogation.

“So: what'd you say?” Pascal demanded, turning down the passage alongside the younger boy.

Vincent held up his thickly bandaged right hand.

“And that's all? Nothing about Winslow?”

Vincent shook his head. “Father didn't notice.”

“Guess the bruises don't show much, under the fur,” Pascal deduced, relieved.

Vincent shrugged, uncomfortable at the mention of one of the ways he was different, even though he knew Pascal, unlike Winslow, didn't mean any criticism by it.

Just now, even without Winslow's taunts, Vincent would have been thoroughly sick of being different. For one thing, shrugging made him conscious of how tight his shirt was across the shoulders. It was a perfectly good shirt. It should have lasted him another season, at least. But he'd already split the seams twice, climbing or simply reaching, and Sarah had been annoyed at him, and it wasn't his fault, he couldn't help it. But maybe he should be able to help it, but didn't know how. He didn't know what to do.

“Heard you got hurt in the Commons,” Pascal continued. “How'd you do that?”

Vincent shrugged again. “After lunch. A pile of plates, cups and things. It started tipping. When I tried to hold onto the top, a cup broke. Then they all fell. All broke. Dolores is angry with me. Hauled me off to Father. Now he's angry with me too.” Vincent tugged at a sleeve that wouldn't stay down around his wrist, where it belonged. “Because no one else would have me. Because I'm clumsy. Break things. The second time this week. Now Dolores told Father she doesn't want me back there either.”

Fishing in a pocket, Pascal came up with two rather wrinkled hot-dogs and offered them silently. After no more than a second's hesitation, Vincent accepted the gift and disposed of it in two bites followed by almost no chewing. He was very hungry. He was always very hungry. And with Pascal, a favor like that wasn't some mysterious bribe you'd find yourself having to pay back later.

Besides, it was a long, long time until supper.

“And what did Father say?” Pascal asked.

“He said he'd consider what alternative assignments were available.”

“You mean, he stalled.”

Reluctantly, Vincent nodded. He didn't like anybody being critical of Father, but the truth was the truth and Father had stalled.

Vincent had sensed how annoyed and impatient Father was with him, and knew Father had put off acting until he could think out objectively the fact that nobody was willing to have his strange, different son assigned to them anymore.

“That means you lose clean-up privileges, too,” Pascal reflected, and Vincent nodded unhappily. They both knew what that meant: losing first chance at the leftovers. Pascal smuggling out the occasional hot-dog wasn't going to begin to make up for that. “You ought to tell Father,” Pascal advised, as they stopped in front of the doorway of Vincent's chamber.

Vincent looked at him levelly. “About what?”

And Pascal wouldn't meet Vincent's eyes, because they both knew Pascal was afraid of what kind of dreadful trouble Winslow would be in, whenever Father learned what had been going on. Pascal wasn't precisely trying not to take sides: he was trying to be on both sides at once, and that wasn't working very well. Sometimes Vincent wondered why Pascal still bothered trying to be his friend, when it plainly made the older boy so uncomfortable. Other times, Vincent was simply glad to have one friend left, anyway, and didn't worry about the reasons.

Pascal said, “You know: about being hungry all the time.”

“No. I get my fair share, just like everybody. That ought to be enough.”

“It isn't,” Pascal responded factually, reasonably.

“It should be.”

“It isn't. It's real dumb, Vincent. You're not like everybody.”

“I should be.”

“You're not. Should doesn't come into it. You're just not, that's all. Tell Father.”

“No.”

Grimacing at such stubbornness, Pascal went on then, and Vincent turned into his chamber and flopped onto the bed, wondering what Father would decide.

When Father thought things over, something usually got settled. When Vincent thought things over, nothing was changed, nothing got any better. Vincent figured that probably proved he wasn't any better at thinking than he was at the other jobs he'd ruined, over the last few months. He wasn't even fit to clean tables in the Commons, couldn't manage a stack of plates without breaking something, hurting himself.

But within three days, by Monday—when Winslow would have come and then returned Above—Vincent's hand would be healed as though nothing had happened, and that was different too. Unwelcome. Vincent wished he could take aspirin and spend ten days healing, like everybody else, instead of having to hurt a lot for a little while, and have Father marvel all over again at how fast the skin grew together without even a scar.

Different. Freak, exactly as Winslow said. And then thumped him for it. And unlike cuts, the bruises lasted and ached for a long time. Before they quit aching, Winslow would be back to add some more. And there was no getting away from him because Vincent wasn't allowed to go Above except with somebody, when it was dark up top too, and then no farther than the edge of the empty park.

Winslow should be happy, being able to spend all week up top, where there were all sorts of interesting things: weather, chocolate, sunlight, buildings, birds, clouds, cars, movies, striking clocks, ice cream, airplanes...and people who might do unexpected, interesting things or speak other languages or have stories to tell about places they'd seen far from New York, the way some of the helpers did, except that Vincent knew all their stories by now.

Instead, Winslow came back each weekend filled with a smoldering anger that was, all by itself, like a blow: that hurt almost worse than the blows, so that Vincent tried to back away from Winslow even before the big seventeen-year-old had warmed up past using words to hit out at him.

Winslow wouldn't let him back away or keep away. If Winslow didn't find Vincent within a few hours of coming home, he'd go looking for him and be more angry than ever when he found him, accusing Vincent of trying to dodge him, which was, of course, perfectly true.

Maybe tonight. Sometimes Winslow stayed Above on Friday nights, sometimes not. But if not tonight, tomorrow for sure. And the old bruises from last week hadn't completely faded yet. By tomorrow night, there'd be new ones, Vincent reflected with a steady resignation. Because he wouldn't hit back, defend himself.

After what had happened with Devin, when Vincent had laid his brother's cheek open with claws other people didn't have and didn't have to be so careful of, Vincent had made up his mind that no matter what anybody did to him, he wouldn't hit back. Never. And for three years, he'd kept that private promise. That was his penance for driving Devin away.

He wouldn't hit back, no matter what Winslow did. Which somehow seemed only to make Winslow angrier. Pascal complained about not understanding either one of them—why Winslow hit, or why Vincent wouldn't. Vincent didn't blame Pascal for being perplexed.

Vincent didn't know what he'd done to make Winslow so angry at him. All he could think was that, by going Above, Winslow had at last realized how different Vincent really was and didn't want to be his friend anymore. All very plain. Even reasonable, understandable. But what Vincent didn't understand was why Winslow felt compelled to pound his dislike into Vincent's ribs every time he got a chance. Maybe just being what he was, so different, was all the provocation needed. He'd always been warned people Above would do awful things to him if they ever saw him, caught him—simply for being. Maybe Winslow, apprenticed Above to Central Park's blacksmith, had come around to that way of thinking, too. Or maybe, like Devin, he simply couldn't tolerate knowing Vincent was around but, unlike Devin, wasn't willing to run away.

Vincent had given up trying to figure it out weeks ago. Now, he merely waited, with a kind of numb dread, for the next Saturday to arrive, and with it Winslow, and the next beating. Only two days, a weekend: he could stand that, rather than feel what he'd felt, striking out at Devin...and afterward. And ever since. Because different was bad, different was dangerous. Different had lost him a brother as surely as if he really had killed Devin, as some people had muttered—though never in Father's hearing—when Devin had disappeared.

The too-large, too-empty chamber was still full of Devin's absence. And Father was still so upset about Devin's leaving that he wouldn't discuss it and gave off such bad feelings whenever Vincent mentioned Devin that Vincent didn't do that much, anymore, and tried hard to keep his loneliness to himself.

Nothing had been right since Devin left. And the last few months, since Vincent had started bumping things and breaking things, since he'd turned so awkward and clumsy, since the only time he wasn't hungry had come to be when he was asleep, and since Winslow had turned on him with such inexplicable bitterness, that had been absolutely the worst of all.

As he contemplated that discouraging thought, he noticed that blood from his cut hand had soaked into his sleeve, and he knew he'd be hearing from Sarah about that too now, and it was simply too much. He rolled to his feet, yanked off his vest and the shirt, then bundled the shirt up and flung it hard into the corner by the foot of the bed, where Sarah might not notice it for quite some time. Then he grabbed the wardrobe handle...and it came off in his hand.

He stood looking at the piece of crooked brass while the wardrobe door swung slowly open because the chamber floor was slightly tilted, it was hard to get floors perfectly level, and the door never would stay shut unless it was closed exactly so, and the handle had just come right off, and it didn't make any sense at all. Inside him, it felt like going away, seeing things from a great distance, so that Father had already asked permission to come in, and actually entered, before Vincent could break the trance of bewilderment enough to notice.

“Ah, you're here, after all,” Father said. “I have a small favor to ask.”

Chucking the handle into the wardrobe, Vincent grabbed the first thing he saw, a white sweater, and hastily pulled it on, afraid that fur or no fur, Father might notice the bruises. There'd been no need to remove the shirt, for Father to bandage his hand.

Unlike shirts, sweaters at least had a little flexibility: feeling more at ease, Vincent turned up the cuffs one fold as he faced around.

Sitting down on the bed, Father continued, “Louis has been having trouble with his long division. I was thinking that some tutoring might help. Would you be willing to work with him a few mornings?”

“Of course, Father,” Vincent replied, reflecting glumly that the assignment was about the only conceivable one in which nothing could possibly get broken. He expected Father would shortly come up with some other names of children in sudden need of extra instruction, enough to fill up Vincent's mornings. Although Father was politely pretending it was a favor, he certainly wasn't bothering about being subtle.

“And I also was thinking—” Father began, looking up, and then stopped. “That's one of Devin's sweaters. Isn't it.”

“Yes....” Vincent admitted, not sure whether Father's reaction meant he wasn't supposed to touch or use Devin's things.

Rising, Father said, “Vincent, come to my study for a moment, please.”

Nervously trailing along behind, Vincent touched Father's elbow too lightly to be felt, just for an instant, just long enough to confirm that Father wasn't angry. What Vincent sensed was surprise, curiosity, and a faint undertone of sadness, likely set off by the sweater itself. Maybe he shouldn't have taken the sweater, but all of what Devin had left behind was still in place in the chamber the brothers had shared, and it seemed a waste not to use any of it or ever touch it, just as though, after three years' absence, Devin might suddenly return and be furious at Vincent for disturbing his things....

Laying aside his cane and then settling into his desk chair, Father reached for his glasses, remarking, “There's something in Jones' Adolescent Development I'd like to check. Would you please bring it to me? I imagine you know where it's shelved....”

Vincent looked from Father toward the balcony, then back again. Jones' Adolescent Development was the book with the pictures, the one the older boys talked about and the younger ones weren't allowed to look at, always shelved out of reach in the balcony stacks, among the medical texts nobody was allowed to touch either without specific permission. Suspecting Father had suddenly been moved to give the traditional lecture on reproduction, which Vincent had heard about from several of the older boys, and wanting to spare Father both the effort and the embarrassment, Vincent said, “I don't believe you will need it, Father. There are other sources on that subject. I've read several.”

Father looked up sharply and then, surprisingly, laughed: genuinely amused, though Vincent had no idea why. “No, no, you've misunderstood me.” Then, as suddenly as he'd laughed, Father sobered, with a small, brief smile following like an afterthought. “No, in spite of your extensive readings, I imagine we'll still find something to discuss on that topic when the time comes. Which, blessedly, is not quite yet.... Simply bring me the book, please.”

Going up the spiral stair, Vincent looked around for something to stand on, something not so wired and taped together that it might contrive to break. Father's high reading stool didn't qualify. And he saw nothing else. So he surveyed the shelves and presently located the requested book's faded blue binding on the second shelf from the top. A glance down toward the desk informed him Father didn't seem to be paying any attention. Vincent turned back toward the shelves and looked up again, balanced, and jumped just high enough to catch the bottom of the book's spine with two claws. By some miracle, the binding didn't rip. A second careful jump and pull moved the book far enough out that it tipped and fell into his hands. By another miracle, he didn't drop it.

He carried it back down the stairs and put it on the desk.

Father patted the cover in an affectionate way but made no move to open the book. Removing his glasses, he remarked, “I don't believe I've ever explained my strategy concerning this book. Have I?”

“No, Father.”

“Some years ago, I decided that any child tall enough to reach this book was old enough to know what's in it. I have used that shelf, and this book, as a sort of milestone ever since. I am trusting you not to give away my secret: I don't want ten-year-olds thronging the passageway, wearing stilts.”

“No, Father.”

Father patted the book again, then leaned back, surveying Vincent. “I swear I can't see any difference. But perhaps a parent is the last to notice. I believe you've grown, Vincent.”

“No,” Vincent denied, more quickly and sharply than he'd intended. “I didn't reach, I jumped. To get the book.”

“Vincent,” Father pointed out gently, “you're wearing a sweater made for a reasonably tall fourteen-year-old.”

“It's too big. I had to turn the sleeves back. I'll take it off—”

Father's voice caught him on the stairs. “Vincent, may we finish our talk first? It's impolite to race off when one is having a conversation.”

Slowly, Vincent turned back and sat in the big chair Father nodded toward, kicking his heels against the crossbar that joined the legs.

Father surprised him by changing the subject, meditatively twirling his glasses by one earpiece, then letting them dangle and looking at them. “I've often thought that living Below, as we do, contributes to nearsightedness. There are no vistas, discounting the Abyss, which after all presents one with no particular view to contemplate. One looks a few feet, a few yards, and is presented either with a wall or with the featureless dark. There is nowhere one can stand to secure an overview, to put one's immediate surroundings and situation in perspective. When I was a young man, I used to enjoy taking the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building— have I ever mentioned that?”

“Yes, Father. The Observation Platform.”

“Yes. Sometimes, I would look down and see flocks of pigeons wheeling far below. Sometimes I could see small airplanes circling, hardly higher than my vantage point. Once, I even saw a dirigible, a blimp—have I told you that?”

“Yes, Father. You thought it was on course for New Jersey.”

“Quite so. Quite so.” Father tilted the glasses, still inspecting them, and the lamplight flashed in the lenses. “So I've obviously also said that living Below, I sometimes miss having a view.”

“Yes, Father. I believe I've heard you say that. Once or twice.”

“Or every Friday, you mean,” responded Father, with a glance and a smile. “Nearsightedness may also be figurative, but no less real. We become accustomed to things being, and continuing, a certain way and are terribly distressed if they change, even if that change proves ultimately to be for the better. Have you noticed that?”

Listening to Father talk about the Empire State Building and the lack of a view, Below, was like listening to a comforting, familiar story. Always the same details, the same observations. Vincent had mostly forgotten his nervousness. “Sometimes,” he admitted cautiously. “When the bypass was cut, across the loop on Third Level, Elizabeth complained it was too noisy, everybody coming and going along the shortcut, raising dust that spoiled the way her paint dried. Yet she no longer had to walk more than a mile to the nearest water. She still complains about the dust.”

“So she does. I must remember to visit Elizabeth again. One of these days. We see so little of her.... Provincial. All of us, provincial, short-sighted. So little changes, Below, Vincent. Our day and night are arbitrary, chosen merely for convenience. Blow out the candles and the lamps, and it would all become endless night.... We lack even the correctives of seasons and weather to intrude on our accustomed routines. Except for our holidays, one hardly even notices the passing years. So it is too easy, perhaps, to assume that everything will continue forever as it is, unchanging.... We tell the same stories, and often forget that they are not new—”

“I like the old stories!” Vincent protested loyally.

“And I commend that liking. But we must never forget there are new stories, as well. And new lives, just beginning to be lived. Not yet set into the dulling routines that make every day, every year, the same. Without children, I believe that we adults would very quickly find this changeless life unendurably stale and boring, and that our community would soon evaporate into individuals scattered to the far ends of the earth. Everywhere—”

“—south of Oz and north of Shangri-La,” Vincent supplied, very quietly, before he thought, and then found Father's eyes steadily on him.

“Just so. Or east of the sun and west of the moon. So, very literally, Vincent, children are our hope. Our only hope. And we must be glad of all their capacity for change and sudden impulse, the fierce, brief interests and dislikes, the sheer...appetite for life. Without them, we would become like Swift's Strulbugs: all static intellect without bodies. Without hearts.”

Putting on his glasses, Father again patted the blue-bound book. “But past a certain point, change can be overwhelming, and the delicate balance between spirit and body can be temporarily overset. Particularly at your age. If you've read as much as you claim, you'll know that most people find adolescence a particularly troubling time.”

“Yes, Father,” Vincent agreed, constrained again because the pleasant digression was over. He could tell: they were back to the sweater, the damned broken cup, and the threat of growth.

“Simply in the abstract, all a father can do is try to notice which way the balance is tipping and try to provide compensating weight on the other side. How do you think I could best do that, Vincent?” After waiting a minute for a comment, Father went on, “Well, to begin with, it might help if I could understand how things have changed for you, of late. From your own perspective. Simply for the sake of discussion, and for future reference.”

Vincent closed both fists together and stuck them between his knees: Father didn't like his habit of absently digging gouges in the furniture, and clasping his hands tight helped keep him from forgetting. He studied the pattern of the top carpet, of the many layered on the floor of Father's study.

“Things break,” he said slowly, softly. “I hold them too hard. I reach for things and reach too hard, and knock them over. Or move too quickly and bang into them. And then they break, too. The wardrobe handle came off in my hand. I broke it. All of a sudden, it was simply there. In my hand. Just now.”

“I can see how that would be very frustrating,” Father commented matter-of-factly.

Vincent felt nothing from him but attention, generalized interest. No humiliating sympathy, no annoyance. So he continued, “And if somebody pushes me, I'm afraid to push back. I'm afraid...well, they might break, too.”

“Who has been pushing you?” Father asked sharply. A flare of suspicion and true anger went with the words.

Vincent only shrugged: he wouldn't tattle. That was what his final fight with Devin had been about: Devin's belief that Vincent had tattled to Father about the forbidden jackknife. But Vincent hadn't. Even then, he'd known he had to settle such things for himself and confess only his own sins against Father's rules.

He knew Pascal thought he'd eventually cave in and go whining to Father about Winslow hitting him, and then, for better or worse, it would be settled. Stopped. Pascal was both scared he would, and hoped he would. Vincent could always sense Pascal feeling both contradictory ways about it. But Vincent wouldn't complain to Father. Not ever. That was part of the penance.

He said, “Anybody. People push, sometimes.”

“Yes....” Father's anger faded to watchfulness shaded with resignation—like slow, edgy music that was almost too soft to hear, but you could still feel it, it hadn't quite ended. “Well, you've always been quite strong for your age. I can see that controlling, directing that strength might become a problem, once you were no longer a child—”

“I'm not growing. I'm the same as always. Except that things break now.”

“Yes. I do see. And I must confess, I don't yet note that you've grown any taller.”

“No,” agreed Vincent, imperceptibly relieved.

As long as he and Father both agreed he wasn't growing, then it had to be true; and the freakish hunger was merely something that would pass if he ignored it long enough and hard enough.

Father pulled another book toward him—a black clothbound ledger Vincent recognized as the assignment log—and opened it, licking a thumb and scanning the most recently filled pages, one by one. “I seem to remember...yes. Old Sam has been requesting help opening up the spring that feeds the Mirror Pool, and then cutting a small channel to supply a cistern down in the Great Hall. Won't that be splendid? But channel-cutting means working at close quarters in wet conditions; and you know how the damp bothers Sam's arthritis. Someone small and strong would be very helpful. Even an unskilled worker could rough out the main conduit to the point where the piping would commence. Do you think that would an assignment you might volunteer for?”

Vincent shrugged. “If you wish, Father,” he said without enthusiasm.

Old Sam—so-called to distinguish him from Sam Denton, a helper—was well known for having one of the foulest tempers Below, and a tongue to match. Rumor had it that the master stonemason worked alone, not because he preferred to, but because no one would put up with him for more than a few hours at a time. Worse, he was a perfectionist, severely criticizing any mistake because “Stone don't allow mistakes, stone don't take no excuses.” Vincent could easily imagine how Old Sam would welcome “an unskilled worker” with a bad habit of breaking things....

“Shall I put you down for it, then?” Father persisted, looking at Vincent over the tops of his glasses.

Vincent could feel that Father wanted him to agree. And Vincent didn't want to refuse anything Father wanted, so that Father would keep on loving him, in spite of his differences and incompetence. “All right. Yes.”

“Fine. You can begin Monday: give that hand a chance to heal a bit. For today, let me see, what do we have available? Yes, of course: the very thing. This morning, a helper sent a message that a shipment of eggs has been abandoned in a dockside warehouse. A labor dispute of some kind, the wrong paperwork, some topside nonsense or other. In any case, the shipment is already spoiling, and neither the seller nor the consignee can be located to remove it. A hundred dozen eggs. Offered to us simply for the labor of removing them. A party is already en route and should have started on the trip back, by now.... Vincent, how would you like to sort eggs?”

Vincent sat tighter. “They'll break.”

“If some do, no matter. Most should be hard boiled, to keep longer. The rest will be a feast for the whole community. Perhaps we might even persuade Dolores to undertake an angel-food cake. Or two. Or five. I can't remember the last time we had such an extravagance. Do you?”

“My fifth birthday,” Vincent offered hesitantly. “She made one then. It had red candles on it. It was very good.”

“Did she? Well, it's long past time for another. You see, Vincent, the issue is not whether some few eggs are broken, so long as most remain intact, because even an excess of gluttony on our part cannot dispose of so many fresh eggs, uncooked and without refrigeration, before they turn bad. No, the issue is which ones are bad already and must be discarded—preferably intact, because of the smell. Would you undertake to determine that?”

“How?”

“I believe I'll leave that up to you. I'm sure you'll find a way. Break as few as possible. Particularly the ones which have gone bad. That will be sufficient.”

“But Dolores....”

“Dolores what? A sentence requires a verb, Vincent.”

“Dolores said I couldn't come back,” Vincent burst out.

“That was an entirely different matter. Dolores was merely concerned for you, because you'd been hurt. This, however, is a special task you're undertaking for me. For the whole community, in fact. I believe I can assure you that Dolores will be delighted to have your assistance.”

With neither enthusiasm nor confidence, Vincent said, “If you wish me to...I'll try.”

“Fine. That's settled, then,” Father declared and shut the book.

*****

Sorting eggs went from awful, to satisfactory, and back to awful again.

The eggs were in square cardboard trays of a hundred eggs apiece. Unstacked, the dozen trays covered three of the Commons' large trestle tables.

Just in being transported, some eggs had been broken and lay, in fragments of shell, in their cardboard nests. And some of those broken had already spoiled. The Commons was full of the sulfur smell of rotten eggs, and Dolores' predicted delight seemed to consist of a desperate eagerness to get everything cleared out of the dining hall before people started arriving for supper. She already had water boiling, to cook up the first batch Vincent could deliver to her intact. A quartet of smaller children came and went, helping with the kitchen chores, waiting to lay the tables, forming a shifting audience.

Feeling Dolores' impatience and conscious of all the eyes on him, Vincent at first tried to hurry, which made everything worse. He broke nearly half a tray from either holding the eggs too tightly or holding them so carefully that they slipped, fell, and so broke. Sometimes they fell on the tray, and broke other eggs, too. Vincent was so angry at the eggs, and at himself, that he scarcely was able to keep from bolting.

Instead, he backed off and sat on a clear table for almost half an hour, until his young audience lost interest and left him alone to stare at the wretched trays and try to think things out.

The plain difference between a good egg and a bad one was the smell. Although Father surely knew that, he'd been polite enough not to say so, since probably only Vincent could tell the difference without breaking the egg first.

So the problem was that there was too much bad egg smell. It took him too long, and too much handling, to decide about an individual egg. Every second he held one made it more likely that, one way or the other, he'd break it. He needed a way of getting rid of the bad egg smell, and a way of isolating and handling each egg only briefly, for the shortest possible time.

Both his hands were already egg-coated. That certainly wasn't helping any. Besides, it itched. Trying to ignore Dolores' questions and steaming cauldron, Vincent washed off the egg-slime in the kitchen's wet sink, then considered the sink itself—a big tin tub, set in a frame with legs. He lifted it a little by its corners to find out how heavy it was: not very. And the drain hole wasn't connected to any piping—just a bucket underneath.

“What on earth...!” Dolores exclaimed, as he picked up the sink and started back into the dining hall with it.

“I'll put it back,” Vincent promised.

It took him two carries and stops, but he got the sink out into the middle of the hall, put in the plug, and then used the bucket to fill the sink with water: deep enough to cushion any egg that fell.

Then, trying to be very patient and systematic, he moved the remaining eggs from the partial tray into the sink and left them while he completely rinsed the tray clean, to have a place to set the good eggs after sorting.

Five tables separated the sink from the remaining trays—far enough to tell ambient smell from immediate smell. He sorted the eggs in the sink, putting the good ones into the clean tray and the bad ones in the bucket. None broke.

Going back for another batch, he thought that towelling might be as good a cushion as water. So he lined a shallow wicker basket with several dishtowels and used it to transfer eggs from their tray to the sink, ten at a time.

It was on that second batch that he noticed whereas most of the eggs sank, a few floated. Picking up a floater with extreme care, he smelled it: bad. The second floater was bad too. And the third.

To every craft, its proper mystery, Vincent thought. It was a most complete and satisfying revelation: rotten eggs floated; good eggs sank. The water could do the sorting for him. Elegant.

After that, he actually had a system: move ten eggs, dunk ten eggs. Wait, watch to see which settled and which didn't. Remove the floaters to the bucket, then carefully put the rest in the good tray. An elegant system, in spite of the fact that it required him to handle each egg three times.

If an egg broke, it generally broke right away: glued, by dried eggwhite, to the cardboard too firmly for Vincent to pick it up without shattering it in the process. At least the mess didn't go far, and he had the satisfaction of judging the breakage unavoidable. It certainly wasn't his fault that some of the eggs were glued down. Anybody would have broken them. He pointed this out to ten-year-old Mark, who shrugged and said he guessed so.

Vincent's system went perfectly, for a while. Then, with ten trays successfully sorted, his cut hand began to bother him. Injuries like that never hurt very much, at first. There'd be a few hours' grace. Then the stunned nerve-endings always gathered themselves for a mighty yell as healing actually commenced. First by bursts. Afterward, the pain would become continuous until the nerves were satisfied. Then it would fade to itching.

It was the bursts that broke the eggs.

All the careful, tense work had tired the muscles of his arms and hands. That, in turn, affected his coordination and control. If he was holding an egg when a burst hit, he either closed his fingers too hard and crushed the egg, or had the opposite reaction, and dropped it. The tub became a stinking cauldron of egg-insides and broken shells, and the eggs exploded all over everything. All over him, too. If he was bending when the egg shattered, it unfailingly got him in an eye with a sharp piece of shell. And the inside squirted, generally at his chin. Some of the eggs smelled terrible. Soon, so did he.

Julia and Olivia giggled. Mark made suggestions. Little Randolph stood on a bench to have a better view.

Somehow, Vincent finished the last two trays.

Then, having emptied and dragged the sink back where it belonged, he took the bucket and mop Dolores grimly pointed out to him and proceeded to make the dining hall fit for supper.

He guessed that, all told, he'd broken perhaps a quarter of the eggs.

Broken them irrevocably, irretrievably. Good and bad alike. Three hundred. All that wasted food.

If there had only been two fewer trays, if only his hand hadn't picked that time to go into spasmodic pain, his system would have worked very well. He could have done the job properly and Father would have been proud of him.

As it was, the children's amusement, combined with Dolores' stony expression and the “I thought so” feeling he got from her, suggested that the egg-sorting was as much a disaster as the stack of broken crockery. Vincent desperately wanted to get away from the fiasco and get clean.

A wash-basin wasn't going to be enough. Nor even a bath. It would have to be the Falls, the underground river gorge. But people would be there—mainly children, splashing and playing in the Falls basin as long as they could stand the frigid water. Vincent absolutely didn't want to go in among them. Not the way his clothes were. Not the way he was, under those clothes.

Except for more hirsute strips along his arms, legs, and spine, his body hair had always been downy and inconspicuous. But lately the dense strips had gradually spread. Merged. Into precisely what Pascal, with his usual amiable, impersonal candor, had named it: fur.

Coarser, longer, wherever it'd been dense before; shorter, softer, almost everywhere else. But definitely very all-overish. Though even naked Vincent was now, in effect, more modest and better covered than any of the other children, he wasn't comfortable with the idea of shedding his clothes and swimming with them anymore.

Being conspicuously different was the true nakedness.

But there was another place, that he alone knew. Some considerable distance downriver from the basin. Near where the river dove back into the rock, over an underjaw of sharp, projecting stones. A place Father wouldn't approve of, if Vincent had ever been silly enough to tell him about it.

The fact was that Father would have had a particular fit if he'd known that was what Vincent generally meant, this last year, whenever he said he'd been swimming in the Chamber of the Falls.

But what Father didn't know, he couldn't get upset about. And if Father wasn't upset, there was plainly no reason why Vincent should worry about it either. All very simple, really.

Anyway, Father had never specifically told him not to climb up or down that particular cliff.

Instead of following the passage that led down toward the basin, Vincent turned aside. In a niche, he slipped off his boots, listened a moment, then shed the sweater, too: it might catch on something, hang him up before he was in a place where he could fall cleanly, if he had to drop. Besides, it was eggy and smelly and awful and he badly wanted to be free of it.

Then, quickly, he went almost straight up what appeared a dead-ended wall, a jump and a pull, and was sitting in what he thought of as “the window”: a crooked opening just wide enough for him to balance on and eventually slide through.

He was perhaps a hundred and fifty feet above the river. The window was a little past midway up a crooked rock face that stretched to the ceiling of the huge cavern and down to the water. Fissures in the ceiling always let light in: by moonlight, the river gorge was particularly beautiful—all haze and floating, almost luminous, spray. But it was still daylight, up top, so the haze was golden, cut by stronger slants of nearly direct sunlight.

To every craft, its proper mystery. His craft plainly wasn't handling eggs or crockery, not today. Perhaps it could still be climbing.

He wiped his hands clean and dry against his thighs, turned a little, and reached with his right foot for the seam he knew was there. A minute later and he was out on the rock face, arms and legs spread wide, fitting claws into the handholds and footholds nobody else could have found, much less used. There was, could be, no one to see him, not all the way from the basin, not through the drifting haze. This was his place, and only his. Here, he could be perfectly alone, and in a way he somehow never could be in his too-empty chamber back in the Hub.

Maybe climbing was his particular mystery. He reached with clawed hands, moved along the seam with clawed toes, and held himself tight against the rock with muscles that had always been stronger than any boy's should be, that flexed and slid under the russet-gold fur.

Lithe and sure, he went down.

He was descending almost one-handed, since he didn't dare trust the grip of his right hand, clumsy with the bandage and as apt to relax as to tense whenever a flare of pain hit. He used it to locate holds, but did most of the work with his feet and steady momentum, that helped keep him moving to the side, a continual compromise with gravity.

Finally, the seam broadened into something like a ledge, just wide enough to set his whole foot on. That was the place where it was safe to let go, push off, turning as he fell, and hit the cold, quick water straight and headfirst.

The chill water always tried to play a game with him, persuade him to drift too near the projecting rocks or stay too long in the currents swirling back and forth across the canyon. It tried to make him think he could float on the water’s motion. He couldn't: denser bone structure, Father had conjectured, combined with a higher proportion of muscle to fat. All of which meant Vincent had to swim every second or he began to sink. But the gliding water tried to persuade him otherwise.

Quite impersonally, it touched him all over and tried, in the most objective possible way, to drown him, meaning no harm whatever.

He liked the game. So far, he'd always won.

The egg-slime wasn't really thick except on his hands, face, and hair, and it wasn't hard to soak and groom it out. Finally clean, the cold water dimming the hurt of his hand and his bruised ribs, hearing faint echoes of distant children's voices from the basin, he stroked along the narrow strip of shore, happy, thinking ahead no farther than supper.

*****

Vincent had just finished getting dry and changing clothes in his chamber when Father came in to suggest that they have supper together. Vincent was both delighted and uneasy, because he assumed Father had some particular reason for making the suggestion. Talking about eggs, for instance. Or some other uncomfortable subject. Because they never had supper together anymore.

Although they still usually had breakfast in each other's company, the custom of sharing other meals had gradually lapsed, over the last few years. Lunch was a hurried, variable interval between classes or work assignments, grabbed and forgotten. And supper was a convenient time for Father to schedule council meetings and other meetings: it wasn't yet too late, and people were free and therefore relatively easy to call together.

But that wasn't why.

The custom had lapsed after a few too many long, silent meals after Devin had gone. Vincent had noticed how more and more often, meetings somehow lasted through supper or began at that time, and had drawn his own quiet conclusions.

And eating at the Commons wasn't so bad. It was, after all, the same food. So it hardly ought to have made any difference where one ate it, except that people did tend to stare at his teeth....

But after they sat down at the large table in Father's study, Father didn't say anything about eggs, or Devin, or growing. He didn't even mention Vincent's hand, which was still in the intermittent-burst stage, so that Vincent could forget it too for several minutes at a time.

Somehow they got onto the topic of the visionary poet Blake and resumed a long-discontinued examination of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, debating what each of the odd, gnomic proverbs really meant, busily flipping pages, thinking up examples or constructing analogies to illustrate such declarations as “What is now proved was once only imagined” and “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees” and “Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.”

The shared hunt for sense, the attempt to pin the universal down to particulars—events and people actually seen and known—was almost as much fun as climbing, and as absorbing. So it was a while before Vincent realized all the serving dishes were empty and most of what had been in them had ended up on his plate and been inattentively stuffed away in the excitement of the discussion.

He'd eaten his share, and most of Father's, and likely some besides. He must have: for the first time in months, he wasn't hungry.

He fell silent, embarrassed and ashamed beyond words to have so given himself away.

“Now, here's one,” Father remarked, peering at the book, apparently noticing nothing else. “Not with the proverbs proper, but I think it falls within the scope of our discussion. Except for the coda, Blake's final word on the subject, it would seem. ‘One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression.' How shall we apply that, Vincent? Can you think of a case in point?”

Sitting as small in the chair as he could, Vincent caught himself digging at the arms with his claws and immediately jammed his hands together between his knees. He tensed as a burst hit, didn't relax when it passed. Head bent, he said, “No, Father.”

“Oh, come now, I'm sure— My goodness, look at the time,” Father said abruptly, turning to inspect the large wind-up clock on his desk. “You must forgive me, Vincent. Past ten already. I'm sure you're tired.”

“No, Father. Really.”

“It's so easy to get carried away in these discussions and lose all sense of the time. But it's been so enjoyable. We must somehow find a way of doing this more often. It seems it's been months since we've had a really good talk like this. Much too long, in any case. But the community is growing, there's always so much to be debated, and debated, and debated, and even, occasionally, decided....” Wry smile fading, Father propped his chin on a fist, frowning thoughtfully. “I tell you what, Vincent: since the dinner hour is generally spoken for, why don't we make a point of getting together afterward, each evening. You're old enough to keep somewhat later hours, I believe, without suffering unduly. We could talk. Perhaps even have a game of chess, now and then. Or simply review the day, or read in each other's company. Perhaps a small evening snack, something to sleep on. I would enjoy that so much. Do you think we might do that?”

And suddenly the broken eggs and crockery didn't matter, or Winslow, or the hurt hand, or being caught eating more than his share, or the frightening notion of growing even more different than he was now. Not even the prospect of a fourth meal each day, though Vincent felt that too like a reprieve from an endless, dull misery.

All that mattered was that Father loved him. Vincent didn't even need to touch to feel the love radiating out like warmth from a stove. Beyond reasons, beyond words. Beyond anything. As long as Vincent could feel Father's love alive between them, reaching out to him, nothing else could be deeply wrong as, without it, nothing could be fully right. And more than anything, Vincent wanted to somehow make Father know, as simply and directly, how much Vincent loved him.

So he burst out of his chair and Father was ready, Father always knew such things even though Vincent couldn't recall the last time he'd asked for a hug or been offered one, and Vincent hugged Father almost as hard as he could, and nothing broke, nothing went wrong at all.

Father pulled, moved, and it was easy for Vincent to settle across Father's lap, tucked close and held close, his cheek against Father's chest and hearing the steady heartbeat.

Patting Vincent's hair, Father said presently, quietly, “We're not going to be able to do this very much longer. You're becoming altogether too heavy.” But Father wasn't upset, wasn't even worried, and wanted Vincent to stay just where he was: Vincent could tell.

So Vincent said, “I know.”

And Father said, “We'll manage something.”

“Yes.”

*****

Saturday morning, Vincent was in his chamber, watching nine-year-old Louis try to make the jump between multiplication and long division, when he heard Winslow's voice out in the passage. It wasn't difficult: Winslow had never been given to soft talk. And Vincent had been listening for that voice, with at least part of his attention, for several hours. Because his hand had reached the continuous-throbbing-hurt stage, that left very little of his attention for Louis' grappling with the basic principle of carrying successive columns of figures.

Winslow's voice passed on: Nobody would intrude, unasked, on anybody's private chamber. But Vincent couldn't stay here all the time: Father would have noticed and wanted to know why. And explaining would have been tattling. Vincent couldn't imagine what to do. And he'd have to leave his chamber sometime.

“But why does the four go there?” Louis wanted to know, and Vincent turned back to the table and tried, not very successfully, to concentrate.

Torn between the desire to duck trouble and the impulse to get the inevitable over with, Vincent continued the lesson for the full time although he doubted Louis was getting much out of it. Then he grabbed the first book he saw and headed for the hospital chamber with the intention of reading to the current patients and coincidentally putting himself somewhere else Winslow would find it difficult to start anything. Only when Vincent got there did he realize that the book he carried was an introductory hydraulics manual. So he sat and talked instead, rather distractedly, until Father came for his midday check on his patients and took the opportunity to change the dressing on Vincent's hand. Also seizing an opportunity, Vincent picked up Father's bag and accompanied Father back to his study.

In the passage, they went by Pascal and Winslow, quite obviously arguing, except for as long as Father was in earshot and except for returning Father's greeting. Though Vincent was careful not to look aside, or back, he plainly caught the word freak when Winslow probably thought they were too far away to hear. Or maybe Winslow was confident that nobody but a freak could have heard it. Certainly Father didn't know anything was amiss, preoccupied with the question of whether to begin the delicate and circumspect process of sending a patient Above to have an ugly-looking fracture X-rayed before attempting further treatment.

Father interrupted this one-sided debate to ask Vincent, “And your hand: has the itching begun yet?”

It was an indirect way of asking if the worst of the pain had subsided, without obliging Vincent to sound as though he were complaining. Vincent never failed to admire Father's tact.

“No, Father.”

“Well, the cut is closing nicely. I'm sure it won't be bothering you much longer.”

“Yes, Father,” said Vincent, busy thinking of where else he could go where Winslow probably wouldn't want to come after him.

“I may have a surprise for you, this evening,” Father added. “The aunt of a helper proves to have a most interesting skill. I have initiated an approach to determine whether she might be willing to offer instruction in her discipline. I hope to know by evening.”

Vincent knew he was supposed to be intrigued by the mystery, but he couldn't really manage to work up any enthusiasm right now for some helper's aunt offering another series of demonstrations or lectures on something like tole painting or dollmaking, even though such handicrafts were unarguably useful in making things which could be sold or bartered Above. He expressed what he hoped was polite interest before parting with Father to have lunch in the Commons. Or rather, to collect lunch: Vincent didn't stay. Instead, he took the two meatloaf sandwiches down to the rickety rope bridge that crossed the Whispering Gallery, a place he knew Winslow heartily disliked.

Pascal wasn't all that fond of heights either. Stepping off the stone landing onto the bridge, he held onto the guard rope with both hands and only reluctantly let go to settle crosslegged, with obvious care, in the middle of the bridge slats, in talking distance of where Vincent sat with both feet dangling over the drop. Vincent could not only feel Pascal's nervousness—he could smell it, too.

“I found out,” Pascal said, without preamble. “I finally got him to tell me.”

Vincent waited, knowing that the unidentified pronoun in this case referred to Winslow.

“Mr. Reynolds, you know, the blacksmith Winslow wanted to learn from? That shoes the horses, owns the riding stable? Well, he's been giving Winslow a hard time. A real hard time, because Winslow doesn't want to make horseshoes, what use are horseshoes, to us? He wants to learn hinges, how to straighten out car parts, welding, that kind of thing—and Reynolds doesn't really know that kind of stuff. He just wants the cheap help. So they've been getting into arguments. You know Winslow, he doesn't keep things to himself.”

“I had noticed,” Vincent commented, looking out over the Abyss.

And in the abrupt way of this place, a woman's voice suddenly shouted, “You lousy thief! If you ever go—” The last of the complaint was gulped by the silence, and Pascal jerked and looked around uneasily, finding the anonymous voices from Above unsettling.

“Anyway,” Pascal went on, “the way Winslow tells it, Reynolds finds fault with everything Winslow does. Breaks it, half the time, and makes Winslow do it over. Claims Winslow is too stupid to learn plain farrier work, so he couldn't learn all the other advanced stuff Winslow really went there for in the first place. And then he started, Reynolds, making blacksmith jokes. And Winslow started really getting mad.”

“Why? Reynolds himself is a blacksmith.”

“Not...the way Winslow is.”

Vincent shook his head, not following whatever point Pascal was trying to make.

“Look, Winslow's black, OK?” Pascal spread his hands, plainly feeling awkward at having to state the obvious.

Vincent waited for an explanation, because he still didn't see what Pascal was getting at. Winslow wasn't precisely black but more chocolate-colored, but even assuming one accepted the inaccurate designation, Vincent didn't understand why jokes about it should make Winslow angry at Reynolds, much less come home and hit Vincent every chance he got.

“Look, it's not the same Above as it is here,” Pascal said, more uncomfortable yet.

“I know that,” Vincent responded, and disposed of the final half sandwich in two bites.

“No, you don't, Vincent. You can't. And what Father says, that isn't the half of it. Look. What it is, Reynolds started calling Winslow a nigger. And the regulars, the ones who come to rent horses or board their own with Reynolds, they picked up on it. So....” Pascal trailed off, seeing in Vincent's face that Vincent still had missed the point. “Vincent, being called a nigger, that's real bad. Worse than swearing. It means you're nobody, you're worthless.”

Vincent stared at Pascal. “Winslow's angry because some topsider has been calling him names?”

It was the most ridiculous thing Vincent had ever heard of. Reynolds was an adult, and Winslow was seventeen and as big as most adults and bigger than some. And all this was because of name-calling, like a couple of five-year-olds?

“Look, you just have to take my word for it, it's a real bad thing to get called. It means...it means about the same as when Winslow calls you a freak. And I know that hurts. I know it does. Winslow knows it does, too: that's why he says it. That's what they're calling him, up top, Vincent. Another word that means ‘freak.' And it hurts.”

Vincent tried to think it out. “But he's not,” he responded simply.

“You know that, I know that. Mostly Winslow knows that. Except when he's mad. When he's put up with it one too many times, week by week, and he's mad at himself for putting up with it—”

“Pascal, if this man Reynolds has been hurting Winslow, and not teaching him what he needs to know, what he agreed to teach him, Winslow should tell Father. Father will find someone else skilled in metalwork and welding, someone—”

“Vincent, it's not that simple.”

“Why not?”

Pascal was so embarrassed that Vincent could feel it even across the distance between them. “Vincent, there's this girl, see? And Winslow, he likes her a lot. And sometimes they go out on Friday nights and she lets him.... Well, they do grown-up things, all right?” Pascal was blushing furiously, both his prominent ears bright red at the tops. “And Winslow, he doesn't want to leave, or work for somebody else, because then he couldn't see this girl, all right?”

“Does the girl like Winslow?” Vincent asked carefully.

“Well, she must, doesn't she? I mean— Yeah, I guess so.”

“Then what does it matter where Winslow works? He'd still be Above, all week. Couldn't they meet and do their grown-up things anyway?”

“It doesn't work like that. You just have to believe me, Vincent. She doesn't like him that much. She owns a horse, and comes to ride in the park. And Winslow's there. Handy, sort of. If he wasn't, she wouldn't. Like him. Enough to meet him someplace else. Vincent, you're a kid. You just have to take my word—”

“I understand well enough. Winslow likes a topsider girl who doesn't care if he humiliates himself to be around when she happens to want to do grown-up things with him. I don't think,” Vincent said coolly, “she's a girl worth Winslow's caring about. I think Winslow should leave there and ask Father to find him another teacher.”

“Don't you think I've tried?” rejoined Pascal, exasperated. “I knew about the girl, but not about this...this nigger thing. And I thought, pretty soon the weather will turn cold, up top, and it won't be so much fun being around in the park anymore, and maybe she'd just go away, see? And there's not much blacksmithing work in the wintertime, maybe it would all be over, all by itself, see? Because if Winslow loses this girl because of anything I do or say, he's never going to forgive me. Winslow can hold a grudge a real long time, you know that. And he'd just never forgive me. I couldn't make sense of it, why he was hitting on you and all. But it's this nigger thing.”

Vincent admitted, “I still don't understand, about that.”

Pascal flipped a hand. “Well, here's Winslow, getting called a word that means different, pretty much, up top. And then he comes home, and here you are, and you're a lot more different than he is, and...and you're not getting yelled at or punished for it, treated just like everybody else, and it doesn't seem fair to him. Vincent, I'm not saying he's right. He isn't. None of this is your fault. And I can't see how you put up with it, I really can't. I thought, one way or the other, it would have stopped, or been stopped, weeks ago. I promised him I wouldn't tell, but I had to. So you wouldn't think it was your fault. I've just been sick about it,” Pascal confessed frankly. “And I still don't know what to do. If you'd just once fight back, maybe that would end it. But you just take it, and take it, the same way he does, up top, and that makes him even madder. Just take one good swing, you're—”

“No.”

“What's he going to do to you, that he's not doing already?”

“That's not the issue.”

“So then what are you scared of?”

Vincent shook his head. “No. I won't. I promised. And my promises, I keep—even if they're made only to myself. What Winslow calls me is true. I cannot be angry about that. I am not. But he has no right to hit me for being what I am. That's not right.”

“I know it isn't! But what—”

“Couldn't wait to blab, could you?”

For a second, Vincent thought the interruption was just another of the disembodied voices. Then he caught Pascal's alarm, and looked up, and there was Winslow, standing just beyond the end of the bridge, fists clenched at his sides, scowling.

Winslow demanded, “Did you blab to Father, too? Or did you have to run tell the freak first?”

Pascal turned and stood up, holding hard on the rope. “Vinent has a right to know. So I told him. But I didn't tell Father. And I won't.”

“Hell, that doesn't matter—Father's pet freak will be off like a shot anyway, to tell Father Winslow's got a white girlfriend, up top, that's too choice to keep to himself and anyhow he tells Father everything. Don't you?” The glare passed by Pascal to center on Vincent.

Vincent turned away and looked into the Abyss. “She doesn't sound like a person you should be loving. But I won't—”

Vincent felt the bridge rebound from Winslow's weight and was conscious of Pascal hurriedly getting out of Winslow's way.

“Say that again,” Winslow challenged.

“I won't tell Father. You should—”

“Not that: the other. Go ahead, tell me I ain't got no right to—”

Vincent had known Winslow was going to hit, but he didn't expect the blow just then. And he especially didn't expect to be hit so hard in the temple that everything dimmed, a sick pain blooming behind his eyes. Reflex alone made him sweep out a hand as he tipped, striking and getting a moment's grip on the post he'd been leaning against, claws sinking into the punky old wood. But it was his bandaged right hand, that hurt all the time and hurt worse if he tensed it. And the post split. He had the sense of falling away into the dark.

And that feeling continued even when he realized he was stretched out flat with stone underneath him. He felt presence, dimly identified Pascal, whose panic made Vincent feel even more dizzy, sick, and disconnectedly falling, so that he tried to roll away, but Pascal hung onto him, full of even more frantic alarm.

“Damn it, damn it, Vincent, stay still, or you'll be off the edge again. Oh, please, keep still, please—”

All Vincent could think about was that Father didn't approve of swearing and he was glad Father wasn't here, or Pascal would get into trouble. Pascal was merely upset, that was all, and no wonder, when Vincent had almost fallen off the bridge or maybe had fallen off the bridge and his face hurt so bad, he wondered dully what he'd broken this time. And then he smelled blood. And tasted it. Instantly recognized it as his own. And he slumped down, cradling his hurt face in the bend of his elbow, knowing Father was going to be absolutely furious this time.

Pascal yanked at him but he didn't want to move. Pascal was demanding to be hit, and that couldn't be right, that was crazy. Anyway, Vincent just wanted to lie still, not hit anybody. Even if he hadn't promised.

“Please, Vincent, hit me. Not claws or anything, just make a fist, hit me.”

That really was what Pascal was saying. Vincent rolled over, just far enough to see the older boy, though not very well. Pascal looked at him and said, “Oh, damn. Damn it, all right,” and then swung around and smacked his own head against the edge of the door opening so hard he sat down afterward and bent his head into his hands.

“Why did you do that?” Vincent asked, but Pascal didn't explain, just started dragging at him again, making him get up although he really didn't want to, and the passageways bent and tipped as Pascal partly shoved and partly carried him along, complaining that for a skinny kid, Vincent sure weighed a lot but that wasn't fair, Vincent couldn't help it, and he was still bewildered by hurt and a continual sense of falling.

*****

Father was furious, after he quit being scared. It was as much as Vincent could do not to pull away, which Father wouldn't have understood, and Vincent didn't see how he could explain that Father touching the rapidly swelling eye felt like getting hit again, because then he would have had to explain how he'd gotten hit and he couldn't do that. He'd promised.

When Father had patted off the blood and shone a light in Vincent's eyes, which Vincent didn't like either, Father turned his attentions to Pascal, pressing the purpling lump on Pascal's forehead, which made Pascal wince.

Turning, standing where he could look at them at the same time, Father said coldly, “Really, I am astonished. And most displeased. What on earth could have started a fight between you two?”

“I'm sorry,” Pascal muttered. “I didn't mean it. It was my fault. I won't do it again.”

And Vincent understood then what Pascal had wanted Father to assume and what Father had assumed—that they'd hurt each other. And Pascal expected Vincent to go along with the lie. Or at least keep silence. And so lie by omission. Pretend he'd fought, hit back, broken his promise, when he hadn't. Vincent felt terribly betrayed.

Father said, “That is not an explanation. Vincent. I am still waiting.”

Vincent turned his head away, so as not to have to see either Father's face or Pascal staring at him so desperately. Vincent tried, but finally could find nothing to say.

“Could I please have my punishment,” Pascal said, “and go? My father will be expecting me—”

“You will both remain here until I have a full and satisfactory explanation,” Father responded, and Vincent heard Pascal's chair creak as Pascal settled glumly back into it.

It was all rapidly becoming more than Vincent could take. He was lying to Father, who was angry with him. His face hurt, his hand hurt, and when he reached to rub away pooling tears, he found that his arm hurt too. And Father, noticing his flinch, remarked, “I see that the visible damage is not all. Vincent. Please remove your sweater.”

Finally Father had to come and help him like a baby, because Vincent couldn't lift his right arm far enough to do it for himself and by now was frankly sobbing, totally humiliated and overwhelmed.

Of course Father saw the bruises right away. Through the contact, Vincent plainly felt the startlement and dismay. But Father didn't say anything right then, instead probing the arm and determining how far Vincent could move it before it hurt bad enough to make him stop.

“A simple strain, I believe,” Father commented finally. Without turning, he added, “Pascal, lying is never justified. We will discuss this later. You, and I, and your father. Who is now undoubtedly expecting you.”

“But I—” Pascal began, until Father's glance skewered him into silence. With a look toward Vincent which was both pleading and stricken, Pascal left.

Father went slowly around the desk and sat in his chair. And took off his glasses and laid them on top of a book. And said nothing. And presently the silence, and all of it, became more than Vincent could bear.

“Father, I'm sorry. I didn't want, want to upset you....”

“Vincent, if you say you were trying to spare my feelings, I believe you. I have always found you a truthful boy. So what I find, and see, now perplexes me all the more. Allowing someone else to lie for you is worse than lying yourself.”

“Yes, Father. I know.”

“Then would you please explain to me how you come to have such severe bruises, yet have said nothing to me of how you came to injure yourself so? I thought I had your confidence.”

“Father, I—” Vincent turned his face against the cool leather of the chair. There was no way out, nothing to say. Even silence was a lie. “Father, please don't be angry with me.”

“I am simply trying to understand. Have you been climbing again, Vincent?” Father asked calmly, quietly.

Almost, Vincent blurted indignantly I didn't get hurt climbing: I'm the best climber Below! But he couldn't. Because if he said that, then the bruises must have come some other way, and Father wouldn't be content until he'd found out how. And Vincent had promised Winslow.

So he said simply, “Yes, Father. I have.” Because that, at least, was true.

“Would I know the place?”

“Yes, Father. In the Chamber of the Falls.”

“But that's not.... I see. The cliffs, at the falls, was it? I can see how they'd be a temptation. But I wonder that no one has—”

“No, Father. Not those cliffs. Farther downstream.”

“Oh. That cliff. Yes. I quite see why you'd be reluctant to mention that. And I surely would have been upset, had I had any inkling you were doing something so dangerous. I fear I am upset now. But I assume you know that.”

“Yes, Father.”

“You will not climb there anymore, will you.”

“No, Father. If you say I must not. But it is very beautiful there, Father, if you saw it you'd know why—”

“Vincent, you will not climb there anymore.”

Vincent curled smaller in the chair. “No, Father.”

“And hereafter, before you climb, or jump, or otherwise contrive, in whatever fashion, to get yourself suspended over a drop which could conceivably kill you, you will come to me and ask permission first. Is that understood?”

Vincent nodded, swallowed, and managed to find his voice after all. “Yes, Father.”

“Then nothing more need be said about it. About the lying, we will talk another time. I'm sure you'd like to lie down and rest now. There's a council meeting tonight, as you know. But when it's concluded, I'll tell you, and we'll have our time together and speak only of pleasant things.”

“Yes, Father.” Finally, Vincent could push out of the chair and drag back to his chamber the insupportable weight of knowing that he was never going to be allowed to climb again. That he'd lost his only true craft and its proper mysteries. The only thing he was truly good at. And all because Winslow wanted to do grown-up things with some topsider.

Lying on his bed with no candle lit, no light but what dimly shone from his window, Vincent began to be angry.

*****

Later that afternoon, as Vincent was in the middle of reorganizing his chamber, he heard Winslow's voice out in the passage.

“Vincent. Can I come in?”

Vincent straightened from the open trunk. “Go away.”

“Look, I want to tell you—”

“Go away.”

“—that I'm sorry, I didn't mean—”

“Go away.”

“—to hit you that hard, or that way. I got mad. And I'm sorry.”

“That's no excuse. Go away. I don't want to talk to you. Or listen to you. I don't know you.”

It was unthinkable that anybody would actually come into somebody's personal chamber when they hadn't been given permission, much less been told plainly and flat-out that they weren't welcome. A no was as good as a shut door; and both of them, he and Winslow, were children of the tunnels, raised to that custom. Winslow made a few more noises, but Vincent didn't answer him again. Eventually Winslow went away, and Vincent continued hauling out everything that had belonged to Devin and pitching it into the middle of the floor.

When he'd found everything, he began sorting it into two piles: what he could use, and what he'd give to Father, to either put into general supplies, make gifts of, or discard—whatever Father pleased. Vincent didn't care.

By then, Vincent's left eye had swollen completely shut and he was crying again: he could barely see what he was handling. That didn't matter. He knew it all, every item, by touch and smell alone. Because he could know things that way. Because he was different. So he'd be different. Trying to pretend otherwise was just foolishness, or else a lie. One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression. Well, he wasn't going to put up with that kind of oppression anymore.

“Vincent.”

Pascal's voice, right inside the chamber— high. Oh: the upper entrance, at the top of the ladder. Technically outside, but as good as inside, because anybody standing there could look down and see everything.

Kneeling on the floor, Vincent started to tell Pascal to go away but instead hurled a book into the discard pile and grabbed for the next thing.

“Vincent, he feels real sorry about what happened. I couldn't have kept you from going over, by myself. He's the one who hung on, who got you off the bridge. Scared him almost white....” When Vincent didn't respond to the joke, just grimly went on sorting, Pascal continued, “He got mad, that's all. Didn't think. You know how he is.”

Devin's slingshot got pitched onto the discard pile. “I do not know how he is. I don't know him.”

That was serious. That was worse than Silencing. Not knowing somebody meant you were going to treat them like a stranger from now on. When the whole community decided not to know someone, they had to leave. Such a drastic measure had happened only once in either boy's memory—to another tunnel child, Mitch Denton. And he'd had to leave.

Pascal's voice went on, “I told Father it was my idea to hurt myself, so nobody else would get in trouble. I told him you didn't tell me to, or know why I'd done it.”

A broken toy helicopter clanged onto the discard pile, followed by two tin trucks. “I don't care. Father thinks I hurt myself climbing. I'm good at climbing. I never hurt myself that way. Hardly ever. And now I can't climb anymore. Ever.”

“Vincent, I'm sorry. Too.”

“I don't care.”

“So you're not going to accept Winslow's apology?”

“I don't know him.”

“Will you accept mine?” Pascal asked, as if that really mattered to him.

Vincent rubbed a sleeve across his eyes, so he could look up and more or less make out his friend crouching at the top of the ladder. “It wasn't your fault. You were trying to help. I accept your apology.”

Pascal didn't say anything right away, and Vincent went on with the sorting. A Tale of Two Cities: that, he'd keep. He liked that book anyway, and it was sort of his—a Winterfest present from Devin. So he guessed he'd keep that. Books couldn't help who they belonged to, it wasn't the book's fault. So he changed Treasure Island from the discard pile back to the keep pile. And then took back all the other books, too. One by one, smelling them a second, being careful of his claws on the bindings. Blaming a book wasn't fair, and books were always valuable, just by themselves. He'd keep them all.

“What are you doing?” Pascal asked after awhile.

“Sorting.”

“Yeah. That's what I thought. What it looked like. You want any help?”

“No.”

“Vincent, Devin was my friend, too.”

Vincent thought about that for a minute. “But he was my brother. And he's gone. He doesn't live here anymore. And I don't need...his old stuff everyplace. This is my chamber now.”

“Sure it is.... You want me to go away?”

“I don't care.”

“I guess I'll go, then.... Vincent, you can't not know Winslow. We've been friends too long.”

“Friends don't hit you in the face, knock you off a bridge, call you a freak. All because of some topsider. I don't know him.”

“Okay, I'll go. We'll talk about it some other time.”

Vincent didn't answer, and Pascal's presence withdrew.

By suppertime, Vincent had the sorting completed and had put away everything he was going to keep—mostly clothes and books. All the discards were stacked by the door. Vincent would have liked to take them, right then, to Father's study and dump them, but the council meeting would be going on and he wouldn't interrupt that. But Vincent wanted all those things gone. Out of his sight. Gone.

He contented himself with carrying the discarded things into the passage, deciding he'd tell Father about them later. Then Father could ask Sarah, or somebody, to come collect them. Father wouldn't even have to look at them, if he didn't want to. That would be better, Vincent decided. He wasn't angry at Father.

Then he went to supper, and everybody commented on his eye. They all seemed to think it was funny. Vincent didn't think it was funny at all. Neither did Pascal or Winslow, eating three tables away, looking around at him every few minutes. Once, Winslow got up and turned in Vincent's direction, but Pascal plainly talked him out of it and Winslow sat down again.

As it turned out, Vincent didn't even have to tell Father about the discards. Father saw them for himself, coming to tell Vincent when the council meeting was over, and even figured out, without telling, that they were things intended for redistribution through the community. Father said he'd see to it and Vincent merely nodded. Neither of them mentioned Devin.

It was a quiet time they spent together, that night. As he'd promised, Father tried to bring up pleasant topics, but Vincent didn't feel at all like talking and presently Father suggested they just be quiet and read together, which was better. Vincent sat on the floor, against Father's chair and partly against his leg, wanting and needing the contact. Not quite as good as hugging, but almost; and sometimes Father would drop a hand down and absently pat Vincent's shoulder or stroke his hair, and that was good too.

If Vincent tipped his head a little, he could see the pages well enough and eventually was able to more or less lose himself in the story.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Father said, shutting his book and looking down. “The arragements have been made. Madame Sakova, Deborah's aunt, has consented to offer instruction, once a month, in dancing. Classical ballet. Madame Sakova once danced with the Kirov Ballet. In Russia, Vincent. Won't that be wonderful?”

“It's a change,” Vincent responded, “from tole painting.”

“Yes. It certainly will be. And extremely good training in coordination and balance. More difficult, in its way, than climbing. A very useful discipline, even if one has no intention of seriously taking up dance. The first class will be next Tuesday evening. Do you think you might want to attend?”

Vincent could tell Father wanted him to. For himself, Vincent didn't care. Nothing was like climbing. Father didn't understand. But that was all right: nobody else did either. Father couldn't understand everything. Nobody could expect someone to understand everything, even when they loved you.

Vincent said, “It will be a change. I'll try.”

“Good. Fine,” Father said, very pleased, and they went back to reading.

*****

By Monday, Vincent's hand had no bandage and didn't even itch anymore; he could see out of both eyes, though the left one was still tender to the touch; he could lift his right arm past shoulder-high, if he didn't do it too quickly or at any strange angle. And he'd acquired three more students to tutor—two in mathematics, one in grammar and composition. Between his students and his own studies, that would account for his mornings from now on. Vincent felt he was watching things happen, observing it all from a distance.

But one of the things that happened was both surprising and enjoyable: Monday afternoon, Vincent started working with Old Sam, the critical tyrant, on cutting a channel into the rock at one side of the Mirror Pool. Vincent enjoyed it. And he liked Old Sam. Well, not exactly liked him—more admired and respected him. Because Old Sam knew exactly how stone should be cut, and insisted it be done exactly right, and knew the difference between right and wrong.

Acidly, profanely, Old Sam pointed out, in scathing detail, anything less than perfection; and, since Vincent didn't know yet what he was doing, just about every motion he made was imperfect. But that was all right, because Old Sam wasn't in the least angry at him. None of the criticism was personal at all: Vincent could tell. Old Sam merely had a proper respect for the mysteries of his craft, and had no tolerance at all for indifference or incompetence. He had discipline. And discipline made sense of everything—gave order, shape, and purpose to what was otherwise chaos and confusion.

Vincent had never before encountered discipline so entirely stripped of conventional politeness, the necessity of trying not to hurt someone's feelings, and found such bluntness clean and liberating. He valued, and was inclined toward, absolutes. Stone was such an absolute: with darkness, one of the unchanging givens of life Below. Vincent had always respected, and valued, both.

He listened attentively to Old Sam's criticisms and watched very hard when Old Sam showed him, for the seventh or eighth time, how to make a proper undercut, so that the stone flaked out cleanly and did some of the work itself.

As Old Sam put it, “Don't bang holes, whack at the goddam stone any old how like a fuckin' woodpecker. Got to undercut. Let the stone do some of the work, or you ain't got a chance in hell. Can't fight stone. Stone don't care. Stone always wins. And don't you ever forget it. Got to get the stone on your side, working for you, or you got no chance at all.”

Vincent could see that was so. And it came to him that the intractability and indifference of the stone was actually a healing thing: stone didn't care what your intentions were, or that there'd been no chance for you to really learn this work yet, or that hammering, crouched in about three feet of water, was hard, awkward labor. Stone didn't care if the hands that held chisel and hammer were white, black, yellow, brown, or sported freckles, fur, or inch-long claws.

Neither did Old Sam. All either reacted to was angle and force. If one hit the chisel and spaced the cuts right, one was rewarded with tidy, palm-sized chips of the proper thickness. A bad stroke was a waste and made you bang every inch out because you couldn't chip, then: shattered stone left a bad surface that wouldn't fracture properly.

It was as difficult, and as simple, as that.

Working, trying not only to learn but to digest that learning, let it flow out into every muscle because body-knowing was an important part of knowing, too, Vincent thought about what it would have been like if Old Sam had hated, not just bad craftmanship, but him personally. If he'd been made to feel that every mistake showed that he was stupid and useless, instead of merely ignorant and inexperienced and doing his solemn, determined best to become neither. And he thought about enduring such abuse because if he didn't, somebody he loved, who didn't love him, wouldn't be willing to know him anymore. And still staying, and enduring that, and knowing that.

In spite of what he'd told Father, Vincent knew that he understood little about reproduction beyond the bare mechanical facts involved. But loving somebody who wouldn't or couldn't love you back, that he understood, and he believed it couldn't be that different for grown-ups than for children. Love was love. Only some of the details would be different, he thought. Only a slight difference in outlook: viewing the same brightness from a slightly different angle.

And he thought about what Father always said about nearsightedness, and views, and how if Father could only see how wonderful the river gorge was from high on the cliff, he'd surely understand why it was a splended, and relatively safe, place to climb. But Father couldn't climb even to look out the window, not with his limp and his stick, much less get into it, to be able to see the golden or moonsilver haze....

Vincent liked stonecutting. Partly for the precision and the discipline; partly for the fact that he could hit as hard as he could, and all that mattered was the angle. And partly, he liked it for the long silences, the chance to think, and the chance to not think but simply do. In that way, it was almost like climbing. To do it properly, you had to concentrate, become a part of the motion, focus entirely on the moment. And that was a liberating thing, too.

Vincent was surprised when Old Sam called a halt for the day, surprised to realize it must be nearly suppertime.

“May I borrow these tools?” he asked Old Sam before they parted. “I promise to take good care of them and bring them back tomorrow.”

“What you want 'em for?”

“A project. Something I'd like to try.”

Reluctant, untrusting of anybody else to take proper care of tools, Old Sam nevertheless gave his grudging permission. And both before and after a snatched supper, Vincent made a start on enlarging, into a door, the window that overlooked the gorge: digging out a channel that, when carved through on all four sides, Vincent hoped would let him shove out the stone in the center, let it topple down the cliff into the river. And when that was done, he could begin on the ledge he'd begun imagining that afternoon—long enough to let one walk around, wide enough to make one feel safely far from the edge: a place to sit and look far out into something other than darkness.

What is now proved was once only imagined. Having imagined it, Vincent intended to prove his ledge, his outlook. As a gift for Father. Preferably a surprise, but a gift, all the same.

That first evening made him know it was going to be slow work: he completed less than five inches of channel and realized he'd have to take the stone down gradually, in several complete passes, rather than try to cut through as he went. When the channel became too deep, the stone wouldn't flake right and it became inefficient woodpecker work: banging out every inch, trying to fight the stone.

He had blisters on both hands, but he didn't mind. Surface injuries like that healed practically overnight. Before long, he'd have developed calluses, but he wasn't impatient. He healed quickly.

That night, he told Father about the discipline of stonecutting, and Father, pleased that Vincent had enjoyed his day, discussed the similar discipline required of dancers. Vincent began to vaguely look forward to Tuesday and the advent of Madame Sakova.

*****

When Vincent started, that night, toward the exorcised chamber that was now only his own, he found Pascal waiting in the passage.

In his usual abrupt way, Pascal said, “He's done it: he's quit. He's back. Tomorrow, he'll tell Father. About the nigger stuff—not the rest of it. Not the girl. And he wants to know, is that enough? Enough to make up for it? Enough that you'll admit you know him again?”

Vincent's good mood was gone. He looked and down by the next turn, past where the candle light reached, he saw a big outline. So. So Winslow had sent Pascal, knowing Vincent would have walked right by and refused to talk to him; because shoving somebody, or not letting them pass, would be very stupid if what you were doing was trying to make peace. Therefore, Pascal.

Vincent said, “I don't see why he should care whether a freak knows him or not. He didn't care before.”

“Look,” Pascal said, and then stopped. “Look, are you going to hold a grudge? Is that how you're going to be? He's said he's sorry. He's quit working up top. He's not going to see that girl anymore. What else do you want him to do?”

“I don't want him to do anything. What he does is not my concern.”

“Look,” said Pascal again. “I'm your friend, right?”

“Yes,” Vincent admitted.

“And I'm his friend too. And I can't keep on being in the middle like this. It's too hard. Look, will you name something? Something he can do, that you'll be satisfied with? As a favor—to me.”

The word satisfied triggered a thought. Vincent looked off down the passage again, considering. “Very well. I am the injured party. I demand satisfaction. I challenge him to a duel, tomorrow morning, before breakfast. In the Great Hall. Nobody will be there, that early. There will be no need of seconds.”

“Duel— are you kidding? With what for weapons?”

“That is his choice to make. But I say, none. Let him hit me again. As he's been doing. Let him try.”

Pascal studied him soberly. “You mean it.”

“Yes. Whatever happens, I will be satisfied, and know him. And you will judge who has won. Those are my terms.”

“You're really serious. And you won't get mad, afterward.”

“I may. But I will still know him.”

Pascal directed, “Wait a minute, OK?” and dashed off down the passage. His voice, and Winslow's deeper voice, carried to Vincent, enough for him to know Winslow was having trouble believing it too. After a few minutes, Pascal came running back.

“OK, it's on. No weapons. Before breakfast, in the Great Hall. But what are we going to tell Father, afterward? You're already—”

“What I tell Father is my concern. What you tell or don't tell Father, is yours. Good night, Pascal.”

*****

When Winslow and Pascal dragged open one side of the Great Hall's main doors, Vincent was already there, waiting. He'd already prepared the area by dragging tables away to leave an open space about twenty feet on a side, and then used a piece of slate to chalk a line one long pace inside that. On each of the four corners, a lantern burned.

He was wearing one of what had been Devin's sweaters, but stripped it off: it would be no news to either of the others, that he had fur. And Vincent didn't want anything that would restrict his motion or be something Winslow could grab onto and hold him. Methodically, he also took off his soft boots and socks, for better traction on the stone floor.

“I got to take my boots off?” Winslow demanded, and Vincent ignored him.

Sighing, Pascal repeated the question, and Vincent said, “He can do as he pleases.”

“OK, then,” Winslow responded, having taken off vest and shirt too. “So what's the rules here?”

This time without being asked, Pascal relayed, and Vincent pointed out the chalked line, saying, “Whoever puts a foot across the line, loses.”

“That's fair,” Pascal judged, and Winslow nodded. Pascal added, “And if nobody does, or somebody says quit, or I think it's gone on long enough and it's a draw, then I say it's over. I'm the judge.”

“Yeah, all right,” Winslow agreed, and Vincent nodded. Winslow went on, “But what's the rules? About kicking, biting, stuff like that?”

Vincent looked up at Winslow. “The rules are, you try to hit me. If you can.”

Pascal stood in the center of the cleared space, and Winslow and Vincent stood about arm's length away on either side of him. They'd all read the same books: they knew how this was supposed to go.

Pascal said, “Vincent, no matter if you win or not, you'll accept Winslow's apology and it's all over, right?”

“Yes.”

“And Winslow, no matter if you win or not, you apologize, right?”

“Already apologized, but he won't—”

“Right?” Pascal demanded, with the proper authority of an official judge.

“Right,” Winslow agreed.

“Then when I'm clear, you start, OK?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

Pascal backed off and left them staring at each other. Winslow was about a foot taller and half again as broad. Vincent merely stood and waited, knowing it would start slow and end fast. Because however reluctant Winslow was now, he'd inevitably lose his temper and start hitting for real, the way he had on the bridge.

Winslow poked out a hand, rather tentatively, to see what Vincent would do. He wasn't even in reach: Vincent did nothing. Winslow poked harder, leaning. Vincent simply leaned away, just enough to let the big fist pass.

Winslow set fists on hips, scowling. “Look, you going to do this, or not?”

“You have to hit me. You haven't done that yet.”

“Well, hell, if that's—” Winslow began, and threw a punch.

Vincent slapped the approaching fist openhanded and as hard as he could. Surprised, Winslow spun partway around and had to take a step to keep from falling. While Winslow was getting ready, Vincent slapped out again, deliberately just short of Winslow's nose. And eyes. Startled, Winslow leaned back after the slap was already past and Vincent was standing and waiting again. Then Winslow started gathering himself. You could see the big shoulder muscles bunch, the arm tense. Winslow took a step nearer and hit out. Vincent slapped again, full-force, and that punch, too, went wide.

“What kind of fighting do you call that?” Winslow demanded heatedly.

“Freak fighting,” Vincent replied. “I'm different. So I'll be different. But nobody has the right to hit anybody, just for being different. If somebody hits me, after today, I hit back. And I'll make them as sorry as I can.”

“Yeah, well,” said Winslow, and tried to grab him.

Vincent twisted, slid away, and whacked Winslow twice across the face, backhanded, one hand and then the other, faster than Winslow could react. It could have been his eyes that time too. Or his throat. But it wasn't, because Vincent had held his hands a little folded, keeping the claws from making contact.

It got busier then. When Winslow hit, Vincent slapped his hand away. Every time. When Winslow grabbed, Vincent slid away, but not always before Winslow could hit him a time or two, when they were too close for Vincent to slap or avoid the blow. So Vincent started making contact too, backhanding across Winslow's face, trying to maneuver the bigger boy where one good shove might push him across the line. Within a few minutes, Winslow's nose started to bleed, and that odor gave Vincent the strange feeling he didn't like, the one he remembered from when he'd slashed Devin. A kind of breathlessness that felt something like terror, something like rage. A feeling that, since, had become the vortex core of Vincent's most intense nightmares.

But it didn't have to be that way.

He didn't have to lose control, lose himself into the rage, to win. All he had to do was stay on his feet and weave around the blows it seemed to him he could see coming whole minutes ahead, everything gone slow for him, everything balanced and easy. As simple as climbing. Maybe even a little like a dance, all the motions flowing together, at once fast and slow.

Of course Winslow was angry by that time, at how Vincent wouldn't stand still and just hit back and forth, the way Winslow thought Vincent should, although Vincent knew he'd have been very foolish to do that. And there was a bad moment when they were tussling close and Winslow's elbow happened to slam into Vincent's head just where Winslow had hit him before, on the bridge. For a second, Vincent had that bad, sick sensation of falling, things blurring and tilting around him. And the reflex action was to strike out, grab. But his claws missed Winslow's throat and only scored his shoulder, glancingly, without much power behind the stroke. Instead, Vincent wrapped both arms around Winslow's body and held on. Then, setting his feet, Vincent heaved. Not expecting anything like that, Winslow came completely off the ground.

In that instant, poised that way, Vincent found everything had steadied again. He could again distinguish between Winslow's emotions and his own, despite all of it bursting in through the contact. And he could realize that the anger was all Winslow's: that he himself wasn't angry anymore. He knew Winslow, and knew himself.

For it was impossible that he not know Winslow: who'd been his friend all his life; who'd stayed with him, and held him, through weeks of nightmares he'd been too ashamed to admit to Father, after Devin had abandoned them; always hot, passionate always, in anger or in love. Winslow could never be a stranger or fit quarry of the nightmare rage.

Vincent realized he'd found out what he'd needed to know and was now, at last, satisfied.

So instead of trying to pitch Winslow across the line, Vincent dropped him back onto his feet and started away, intending to leave the chalked space himself. But Winslow didn't know that and came charging after. In the act of crossing the line, Vincent dropped flat and let Winslow trip over him to skid, full-length, under the nearest table.

“It's over,” Pascal shouted at once. “It's a draw.”

And because Pascal was the judge, that was final.

*****

That evening, Vincent was very disconcerted to find himself the only boy who'd showed up for Madame Sakova's first dance class. It was a different sense of being different, one he hadn't been at all prepared for.

He hadn't realized, either, that Madame Sakova would require that even a makeshift dance studio be supplied with several full-length mirrors. Vincent couldn't stand anywhere in the open floor without being confronted with his own reflection. That made him dreadfully self-conscious.

To her credit, Madame Sakova hadn't flinched or recoiled as much as most people did, at seeing him plainly for the first time. Obviously somebody had warned her, and pretty specifically, too.

Vincent always hated first meetings, but forced himself into them because otherwise one would never meet anybody new.

And in some respects, Madame Sakova reminded him of Old Sam, although he imagined both of them would have resented the comparison. But all the same, the similarity was there: they were both people of discipline, who didn't care in the least what you looked like provided you went through all the motions properly.

Generally Vincent liked that sort of person. But the mirrors still made him uncomfortable.

Hanging back against a side wall while the six girls began learning the proper foot positions, Vincent had almost made up his mind that stone cutting was enough discipline for now and that he didn't really want to learn dancing, after all, and Father would understand after he'd explained, when one of the girls started complaining to Madame Sakova about having to start out with the baby stuff instead of real ballet: the leaps and turns, all on the toes.

“Like this,” Lisa said, flinging out both arms and rising up onto her bare toes, like the figure on top of a music box. She looked quite awkward, but very earnest and determined.

“For that,” Madame Sakova responded, with an accent Vincent couldn't quite place, “one needs much practice.”

“I'll practice,” Lisa promised, dropping out of the stiff pose.

“And, eventually, for the advanced work, an appropriate partner.”

“Oh, Vincent will help.” Lisa ran across the floor, quite graceful, actually, grabbed Vincent's arm, and started towing him back toward the mirrors. “What does he have to do?”

The contact, Lisa's fingers on his arm, made him know how much it meant to her, how desperately she wanted to learn the discipline of dance, be transformed by its mystery and magic. Even though he'd decided he didn't, that touched very close to what he felt himself, about other disciplines. And he was somewhat relieved when Madame Sakova admitted all he'd really have to do was stand still and be appropriately leaned on, more or less like a post the girls could steady themselves against while “on pointe.” When Madame Sakova agreed that he could keep his back to the mirrors, if he preferred, Vincent found he had no compelling reservations left.

After all, it was only once a month. He didn't see what harm it could do. Father would be pleased and, besides, it would make Lisa happy: they'd always been friends, as much as one could be friends with a girl almost a whole year younger than oneself. And such intense longing as Lisa's had its own power to persuade.

After the class, as he was adding a few more inches to the groove around what would become the Outlook door before going on for his shared time with Father, he found Winslow standing in the passage, watching him.

“What the hell you doing?” Winslow inquired. One whole side of his face was scabbed over. Vincent didn't know what explanation he'd given Father, except that it wasn't the true one, because Father had shown no sign of being aware of the duel, the times Vincent had casually encountered him during the day.

Vincent said, “Cutting a door.”

“A door to where?” Winslow demanded suspiciously, as though he thought Vincent was trying to make a fool of him.

“The country east of the sun and west of the moon. To a place that exists only in my imagination. A place to stand and look far away.”

“Come on: tell me. Are we friends, or not?”

Vincent paused in his hammering and looked around. “It's the truth. But it's also a secret.”

“Making a noise like that, and you figure it's a secret?”

“Perhaps not,” Vincent admitted, turning back to his groove, beginning a fresh undercut with sharp, clean blows. “But as long as I can keep it so, I will. It's not so much a secret as a surprise. For Father.”

“Cutting a door,” Winslow repeated, to make sure he had it right.

“Yes.”

“Going to take you forever, at that rate.”

“Perhaps. I'm still learning how to do it. And patience is part of the discipline.”

“Bet it'd go faster, with two.”

Vincent stopped and looked back at Winslow again, considering, balancing time against the pride of having done it all himself. And time won. After all, Father was pretty old—over forty. The important thing was that Father be able to enjoy the view before becoming too nearsighted to see it.

And after the door, there'd still be the ledge to cut.

“Yes,” Vincent decided. “It would. I'll bring extra tools, tomorrow.” He hit two more strokes, then paused to say, with sober offhandedness, “That girl....”

“What about her?”

“I'm sorry...if you won't see her anymore,” Vincent commented, with delicacy. “Are you going to miss her a lot?”

“Hell,” Winslow responded roughly. “Her and me, we weren't even friends. Didn't hardly know her, to tell the truth. Not really.... Should have known better than to get myself mixed up with topsiders. They're the ones who are different: can't trust 'em, depend on 'em, like you can people down here. But some way, you get caught up in things,” Winslow continued meditatively. “Can't think straight. End up hurting the people you really do care about. Gets all crazy. You're lucky that'll never happen to you.”

Nodding solemn agreement, Vincent began a new undercut.

Winslow said abruptly, “Look, you're doing that all wrong. Here, I'll show you how to really hit.”

Shoving into the tight space, Winslow commandeered the tools and started energetically pounding the rock, punching crooked woodpecker-holes, sending chips and dust flying.

*****

The following month, after the dance class, a few chosen people gathered for a ceremony. Pascal formally wished that everyone who used the Outlook might do so in health and happiness and several other high-sounding, suitable things. Then Winslow and Vincent took care of the practicalities and shoved the door out over the cliff.

After perhaps five seconds, there was the sound of an immense and very satisfactory splash.

And the Chamber of the Falls was before them, radiant with moonlight.

“We better put up a railing,” Winslow remarked to Vincent. “Or somebody's going to gawk too far, and fall out, and then we'll surely be in trouble.”

“Yes,” Vincent agreed absently, caught up in how amazing and different familiar faces looked, bathed in the silvery, diffuse light.

“Oh, Vincent, it's wonderful!” Lisa exclaimed, hanging onto his arm and then leaning out, completely without caution.

But it was all right. She knew he wouldn't let her fall.

Changes

March 3, 11:30 pm. Five days, now. Nothing.

March 6, 2:10 am. He came tonight, about nine. Played checkers: 1 game. I won. Don't think his mind was on it and he looked tired. He says Jacob's been sick, didn't sound too worried, though. So that's not it. Limping, stiff: says a load of timbers fell, banged him up some, nothing to worry about. Guess it isn't, then—not somebody two bullets in the chest couldn't keep down a whole day.... So that's not it either. Gone by ten. He doesn't explain, I don't ask. But the silences are getting louder than anything he says.

March 8, 4:00 am. That damn dream again.

March 12, 9:03 pm. A week, this time, and I didn't even see him. Just a note, there when I woke up this morning, said pretty much nothing. They're extending some damn tunnel, someplace the hell off under the Bronx, busy with that now. Nothing. Guess it's true, I don't believe he'd lie to me, but still it's nothing. Why even bother to leave the damn note? Does he think he has to be polite to me, make excuses? I could take this better if I just knew WHY.

March 15, 5:50 pm. Buzzer from downstairs, and it was Father. After I picked my eyeballs off the floor, I let him up. I rate his second‑best coming Above suit: the gray one, with the lapels. Worst tie ever: blue, with stripes. Lectured me on taking up so much of V's time and don't I realize he has responsibilities Below, and so on etc. Said I was sorry, I hadn't realized. Kept my damn mouth shut. So whatever it is, he hasn't told Father either. I asked after Jacob. Father said he's fine now, except for the cough. Said I was glad to hear that. Questions in Father's eyes but I'm fresh out of answers and he didn't come right out and ask anyhow. And the questions I'd ask aren't for Father. Not up to me. Father's worried enough that he walked all that way here, and the same back. Unless he took the subway. Or the bus. Cab, even. Keep forgetting all the rest of them can come Above anytime, and do sometimes, even Father. V alone can't. Not while it's daylight out. Lately, not after dark, either. Now I'm worried too.

March 17, 10:25 pm. Looked back through the file: last time he was here in daylight was February 22. Wonder if that means something: the sunlight was always special to him. And to me, with him in it. Can't push. Leave the roof door unlocked, wait. Let the man alone. If he's free to come, he's free not to come. Easy to say, hard to abide by. What you try to grab, that's what you can't get.

March 18, 3:10 am. Tried to read some more Wm. Blake, that he thinks so much of. Either the guy was a total nutso or it's over my tiny head. Likely both. Don't even understand the footnotes. City College Psych courses did NOT prepare me for this. WB also punctuates funny. Best I can make out, though, WB's in favor of sex, unless it's all symbolic or something. So I'll try some more. Ammunition. Something to do. Six days since the note.

March 19, 1:00 pm. Plugged into city data. April 12 will be the third anniversary: when C got mugged, cut. When everything changed.

March 20, 11:02 pm. Wrecked: up all night, after that dream. Damn white room. "And something awful moving in the middle of it...." (FORBIDDEN PLANET) Thought on the couch might be better. It wasn't. Total brain lock: actually watched game shows all am. This pm, HQ meeting dragged on till nine, commissioner's annual pep talk. Frantic all the while that he was here while I wasn't. No sign of him when I got back, of course. Not even a note. Getting crazier by the day, Bennett. The 12th will be a Thursday. Just before a Friday the 13th. Is V superstitious? Doubt it. Have to ask, next time I see him. (JOKE) Scared, now, he will come, and I'll make such a fool of myself he'll really take off for good. I think about going Below, asking him what the hell is going on, but I don't, I don't. Can't. Almost wish I believed he had some girlfriend stashed over in Brooklyn. That's not what he's doing. What the hell IS he doing?

March 21, 4:00 am. Headache remedy: six aspirin and quit beating your head against the wall. Fifteen days, now, if you don't count the nothing note.

March 22, 2:00 am. I'm scared. It feels like smothering. Is it that he doesn't want to see me, or that he doesn't want me to see him? Has he killed somebody? Going after pushers again? Nothing in the databank: morgue or hospitals, nothing. The usual, of course. But nothing his style. Maxwell would have spotted it too, like a shot, and been on my back about it again. So it's not that either. Ideas going around and around, going nowhere. Why this awful feeling about the 12th? Wonder if ...

The downstairs buzzer started going off. Intent on the screen, Diana broke off, blearily wondering who in hell would be leaning on her buzzer past 2:00 in the morning.

There'd been sirens outside. In New York, there were always sirens outside. You never paid any attention.

Only this time, she had to pay attention. The voice downstairs claimed to be a fireman warning her that the building next door was on fire and her building was being evacuated like now, grab and go.

She spun away into the middle of the room, staring around her loft at all the things that were too big to take. All her plants. Catherine's rosebush. Suddenly lurching into motion as if somebody'd kicked her, she grabbed a big canvas totebag with rope handles and started scraping things into it: her last set of backup disks, with all her cases current through last Monday; all the archive disks, her shield and gun— just yank out the desk drawer, dump everything; the checkerboard and tin can of counters; a stack of spiral pads; a silver-framed photo of her pop and a boxed volume of Shakespeare's sonnets off her bedside table.

The buzzer going off again. Stubbed her toes on her bedroom chair: she was in her stocking feet. Grabbed a pair of loafers waiting to go for new heels, dumped them in the tote, then hauled a heavy gray sweater with charcoal zigzags off the coat tree by the elevator and held it clutched in a floppy bunch, anxiously staring around as she heard the elevator starting to come up.

As the door rolled back, two big slickered firemen inside, she suddenly whirled and skidded around the couch to break off two branches of the rosebush.

“C'mon, lady! Roof's started to catch,” yelled one of the firemen, heading for the roof door while the other one held the elevator open.

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Diana said, but somehow couldn't move, staring at the blood on her fingers where the thorns had stuck her.

The fireman came and forcibly walked her across the floor, stuffed her into the elevator, and hit the button to send her down. As the door shut it occurred to her that her wallet was still on the kitchen island and she slammed the UP button. But by then it was too late. The elevator was the dumb kind that'd only take one set of directions at a time, and it was going down.

*****

By three in the morning, there were five fire units, hoses on the street thick as snakes in the Egyptian tomb in the whatever, the Indiana Jones movie, and water shooting high in the air from power hoses, sawhorse barriers up and the flashing lights of the fire and patrol units strobing over everything, and her building was still going up like Atlanta in whatever, Scarlett O'Hara, she remembered that but not the damn movie's name, flames bursting out of the third floor windows now and everything above that just a roar and choking smoke and walls collapsing, with huge muscular ropes of water flexing over the top. Rent wouldn't have been so cheap if the building hadn't been a firetrap, no fire escape even, and no stairway, nothing but the elevator: nothing but an old warehouse hacked into apartments, for God's sake, and even if the fire vanished this very second, nothing of hers would be left anyhow, that part was all gone, sure, that was it: Gone with the Wind. So that was all right.

The air wasn't much above freezing, and spray from the hoses hung and drifted everywhere. By four she was pretty thoroughly drenched, the sweater sleeves drooping wet and heavy around her wrists. Hair sticking to her forehead. Cold to the bone. But she kept pacing back and forth in the alley across the street, behind the barriers, with the totebag slung mostly across her back because she didn't dare set it down, have that gone too. Most of the time she could keep her eyes off the fire because what she was worried about would come in the other direction, out of the dark.

She was waiting for Vincent. If she wasn't here when he came, something terrible would happen.

Somebody had handed her a paper cup of coffee and she nursed it, pacing, keeping awake and on her feet, reminding herself it would be light soon and then she could go wherever, phone somebody, no wallet so no change, go wherever anyway, she'd think of something once it was light.

An outside wall caving in made her turn. Her eyes, already stinging and blurred from the smoke, were dazzled to near-blindness by the leap of sparks and flame set off and revealed by the disintegrating wall. So she missed the disruption off near the corner. But she swung around at a cop's distant shout and made out a big triangular silhouette moving fast across the cleared space inside the barriers and damn it, his hood was even back, hair and face plain to the light, and more yelling now, and he hadn't come the way she'd expected. She flung away the cup and started running.

Digging into the tote, she found her shield by touch and flashed it at whoever tried to hold her back or get in her way, yelling his name, but he was intent on the fire and didn't hear her, didn't turn, gone on the wrong side of one of the big pumper units, and somebody yelled there, too.

Playing crazy hop-scotch among the tangled hoses, she raced around the front of the unit just in time to see a slickered man go down from a casual swat, and three uniforms coming from the barriers at the corner, guns drawn but having trouble with the hoses too, slow enough to let her run straight into him, yank him around, displaying the shield high and shouting, “Okay, it's okay, I'm a cop, it's okay!” while she dragged him into the shadow of the pumper cab and then, together, across the open space, between the sawhorses and safe into the fractured dazzle-dark of the alley.

Her heart banging thirty to the dozen and then things started to go strange on her—a buzzing in her ears and dizzy as hell, no breath left to breathe. She stumbled into him and rebounded against a garbage can that went over with an awful crash. Suddenly rubber-kneed and disconnected from her feet, she tried to keep the totebag from falling while she shoved her shield back inside before she lost that too, compulsively sobbing and she was not going to have hysterics, she was not—

Tote handles secure over her wrist, she started yanking at him because he had to get out of here, there'd be uniforms spilling into the alley any second, but she might as well have tried to tow a streetlight off its base.

His face was still locked into the terrible blank carelessness, the same as when he'd gone straight at the fire through whatever was between. He was breathing in harsh, aching grunts, jaw dropped, bottom fangs showing. Motes of spray jeweling his rough mane and the finer hair of his lower face and muzzle; eyes gone indigo-dark and hugely dilated, looking not into hers but lower.

Nothing to talk to in that face; at least nothing that would answer. Nothing human in that face at all. And yet amazing, wonderful, a strange warrior splendor implicit in him always, now fully roused and undischarged.

Diana felt in him, through him, the force that was neither quite rage nor quite desire but an inseparable fusion of both. And as it drove him, it drew her.

As his right hand tightened over her shoulder as though the clawed fingers would crush the joint and meet through her bones, she saw the upper fangs show too in what was not a smile, the head tilting, blue eyes wide and fascinated, seeming almost blind. Quite unsurprised and with a dreamlike sense of floating, she thought, I am going to die here and It's okay, I got all the files and there was in her no fear at all, only an immeasurable wonder.

Then, from the street, feet hitting in rough cadence, the sound carrying ahead down the alley. Vincent spun her with him into the gap between a dumpster and a noisy, vibrating ventilation shaft. The dark cloak curved around and behind her like a concealing wing, and his spread left hand cupped the back of her head, drawing her close. As they stood, heads bent together, breathing each other's breath, it was as if he'd willed them invisible: the two cops trotted past without pausing.

As the footfalls diminished, he said softly, “You're hurt.”

“No, I—”

“Yes,” he said, and released the awful pressure on her shoulder to draw out her right arm, breaking her frantic grip on the totebag's loops as though it was nothing. “Yes, there's blood, I can.... I can smell it.” His voice went flat, and his painful hold suddenly eased, only finger and thumb encircling her wrist now; and, a second later, even that gone as he withdrew hard, his back thudding against the metal side of the dumpster, arms hanging loose at his sides.

Dazedly trying to inspect her arm, she could see nothing but dark, feel nothing but the fading pressure of his grip, but it must be the branches, she thought: when she'd gone grabbing for her shield, the thorns must have caught her again. She could feel stinging lines now, up the underside of her wrist, across the back of her hand. Automatically bringing her knuckles to her mouth, she tasted fresh blood, so sure enough, he was right. She had a sudden crazy impulse to extend the hand to him, to show him he'd been right, and then somehow didn't and instead scrubbed it against her hip with a confused sense of something lost, something missed....

“Anyhow, I'm okay and you gotta go, get outta here, I got

out everything I could but I'll give it to you later, sometime, come the Central Park way maybe, a day or two, just as soon as I figure out—”

He drew her aside, tight against the wall, and a second later she heard it too, the slower footfalls coming back, and they became magically unseeable and unhearable again while the returning cops went by.

“Come,” he said, scooping her forward with an arm behind her back, but because he wasn't holding on she could slide away, next to the rattling ventilation ductwork.

“No, I gotta do things, phone people—” She broke off, remembering she didn't have any change, thinking how to borrow some, get things started anyhow....

“Tomorrow. Come Below tonight.”

“You're crazy, it's nearly sunup, it's tomorrow already, and you gotta go—” She shoved his chest, slamming him with the totebag in the process, and it was like trying to shove a tree. He didn't even lean.

“Diana, come Below.”

Eyes downcast, she shook her head. She coughed in a drift of smoke, then looked up into his face. And then aside, unable to meet that steady gaze. “Really, I'm OK, you don't have to worry, rescue me or anything, see?”

“I understand. But you must do this for me. I must know where you are, and that you're safe. I must have this. Please.”

She shook her head again, but when his guiding arm came back around her she moved with it, not arguing anymore, no arguments left because she knew how bad she'd scared him, how awful it'd be for him knowing he'd have been too late anyhow.

She'd known it even before she'd first hit the street, that he'd be coming the instant he heard, with no bond to warn him when anything was wrong or tell him whether she was alive or dead, and that would be hurting him too, not to be able to know: too many desperate echoes of a time not nearly long enough ago to have done more than lightly scab over, and all of it ripped wide open again.

She would have done anything to spare him that, but there'd been nothing. Nothing except to wait and hope to intercept him, coming headlong and with no thought of caution, just as she'd known he would.

But not from the direction she'd expected.

From the habit of curiosity, not curiosity itself, she remarked as they emerged from the alley, “Thought you'd come through here. You always did before.”

“I was in a hurry. I took another way.”

She had the sense he was looking at her, deciding what to say about some awkward subject. So she prompted, “What way?”

“The subway.”

She swung, stared at him, but it was too dark to read his face at all. “You're not kidding: the subway? How?”

Two paces of silence. Then: “I catch hold of the roof. It's quicker.”

“Bet it is.”

“I've done it since I was a child.”

“Well, if you say so.” Trying to imagine it, she shook her head: sounded pretty dangerous to her. But she figured he'd know how much risk was too much. Normally, anyhow....

She still had the feeling he was trying to duck something she was too totally beat to pick up on. So she tried another line. “How'd you hear?”

“A helper, Jillian, works in a diner. She saw a news report about the fire on the television and recognized the address because...because she lives about three blocks from here. All our helpers nearby know you now, including many you haven't met. I have asked them—”

“To spy on me,” she deduced flatly, figuring that was it, what he'd hoped to dodge.

“To be mindful of you,” he corrected, pulling her closer to drape the right side of his cloak mostly around her; she was shivering, but that was no news— she'd been shivering for hours.

He continued quietly, “As a favor to me. I know you have no need of me. But I still needed to know that you were well. If that offends you, I apologize.”

She turned, yanked away to walk backward, staring at him. Somewhere a dog began barking. “You mean that's what it's been about, all these months? You checking on me? Is that what it's been? All the damn notes left when I was asleep, playing damn checkers till midnight, before dawn and stay all day, all that talk, checking on me?”

He stopped, and they were near enough to a streetlight that she could see his face: closed, unreadable.

“I needed to know how you lived, whether you were safe, content. What dangers you were apt to move among. I saw that you live in your work, from a distance. You hunt with your mind, your pictures on the wall, your computer, your telephone. There seemed little danger that those you hunt could know you as the hunter and turn upon you.”

“And that's it?” she demanded, all sense of caution, of quietly escaping, lost in overwhelming fury.

“And when you were satisfied I was all tucked up safe in my nice safe loft, you quit coming, just like that, a note ten days ago and that's it? Is that what you're telling me? Jesus! Who the hell do you think you are?”

A cab came by, luckily from behind him. Startled, he at last tugged his hood up over his hair—awkwardly, one-handed— and edged away from the streetlight, nearer a store's corrugated security gate.

“Diana, could we discuss—”

“No, and is that what you think you are, or ought to be, to me, some kind of a German Shepherd or maybe a pit bull, wolfhound, guard dog? Jesus, Vincent! Is that the best you can do?”

“Yes,” he replied, and the way he said it, completely cold, shut her up instantly. “And I'm aware the best I can do leaves something to be desired, but somehow I live with that, I still live with that, and if you insist on finishing this argument here—”

It came to her then: where they were, what she'd been doing, and they had to somehow get down a manhole in the middle of the damn street almost two blocks away, traffic starting already and the sky getting light: the buildings' tops had become a series of black posts against it. “Jesus!” she shouted, whirling, starting on in long strides, slinging the tote up over her shoulder, still sore where he'd gripped, so she swung the tote down again, banging against her knees.

“Jesus H. Christ, Vincent!”

She couldn't think what she wanted to say, she was so mad, clenched, wounded. She wanted to hit him, make him stop or make him start, stop what or start what she didn't know clearly, except how bad it hurt now and she just couldn't take this! Absolutely couldn't take this, not with everything she owned, and most of it his, whacking against her shins.

No. No.

And it all started going strange on her again, exhaustion like pulling a plug and letting everything run out that kept her going, so that she was barely aware of Vincent moving up beside her or the arm going around her, steering her when she stumbled to one side or the other. It was simply good to lean: without leaning, she couldn't have kept moving at all.

She stood numbly in the middle of the street while he yanked the manhole cover off, and was only vaguely surprised when he slid into the metal-rimmed hole first, although he'd always waited for her to go down, before. But she knelt on the pavement when he told her to, and found the first staple with her reaching foot. His shoulder and bent arm against her back kept her from falling as she descended. A second after he'd yanked the cover back into place, a car's wheels thudded over it, and she supposed that was lucky. She groped, leaned against the sewer wall, everything pitch black.

When she felt him close to her, she started shaking her head. “Can't do it. Can't walk all that way, I'm sorry, I just can't”

“I know. Only a little way on, five minutes, there's a side branch. Then you can rest.”

She didn't bother answering, just started walking, and his arm kept her from veering into one or the other of the walls she couldn't see. She dimly wondered why he didn't just pick her up and carry her, anybody who could haul a dead body up seventeen stories could surely manage that, but since he didn't, she kept walking until he said she could stop and drew her down against something padded, that breathed, and she noticed how everything stank of smoke and it wasn't the kind of smell you'd expect, since it was a sewer, after all. And she still was hanging onto the totebag, she hadn't lost it, so that was good, and she'd remembered to save the checkers, she distinctly remembered grabbing the can, so it was all safe: nothing important had been left behind.

And that was the last she knew about anything, sleep without dreams.

*****

Diana woke groggy and disoriented in what seemed like an acre of bed, slapping for the edge, not finding it. She shoved at quilts ridged with patchwork seams, blinking in the quiet, foggy golden light, clambering toward where some edge ought to be, but the moment she sat up, she was so dizzy she tipped sideways onto the piled pillows. She knew where she was, then. Also there'd been a real heller of a headache waiting for her to be awake enough to notice it.

As she tried to nudge her head down to a better angle, she found that her left shoulder felt broken and that moving her right arm below the elbow didn't seem such a great idea either. She flexed her right hand experimentally, noticing long welts and scratches across the back, then laid the arm down by her face with extreme care.

“I can give that wrist some support, if you'd like. But I assure you, nothing is broken.” Father, regarding her from Vincent's big chair.

The fire. She remembered now, and propped up high enough to spot her totebag, conspicuously set out on the octagonal table. So that was okay, she hadn't lost it. She squinted, confirming her impression that nobody was here but Father, then sagged carefully back against the pillows.

“Preliminary diagnosis: exhaustion coupled with moderate malnutrition,” Father commented the way doctors did, like they'd gotten the word straight from God. “Young lady, you haven't been taking proper care of yourself.”

Diana shut her eyes, pushing her face deeper into the sueded pillows that smelled like him, like Vincent. “So what else is new?” she responded in a raspy voice, then had to cough: too much smoke. Have to quit that, it could kill you. She laughed. Neither her shoulder nor her head liked that much.

What in hell had she done to her shoulder, she'd just been waiting around, not getting into fistfights.... Oh. She remembered that too, now. And the dazed, hungry look in Vincent's eyes.... Fragments drifting back, sliding into place, reconstructing her own life for once instead of somebody else's.

“And I now realize,” Father continued, “that I have misinterpreted matters and drawn conclusions in advance of the evidence. If apologies are due, you may consider them offered. I gather you have not been the cause of his absences, as I believed.”

When she looked, he had his gloved hands clasped and was looking back at her over them like an alert squirrel. But although she wanted to, and although he was waiting for her, she wouldn't do it: wouldn't ask. She would not discuss Vincent's personal life with anyone else.

Checking herself downward—sweatshirt, decent enough, she guessed—she made the effort to shove upright against the pillows by laborious, wincing stages.

“Have I offended you, Diana?” Father asked soberly and, she felt, quite sincerely. “I surely never intended to. At the very least, I owe my life to your discernment, your imagination, of which Vincent always speaks so highly.”

“Yeah. Well. Everybody owes everybody, OK?” Diana rubbed at her sore eyes with the heels of both hands. “After the first time, let's just figure it's square all around and forget about it. I'm not too keen on gratitude—going or coming. And no, you never did anything to get me mad. It's just how I am, some people take it that way.” She almost shrugged, thought better of it, and contented herself with scraping what felt like a yard of sticky, tangled hair away from her face. Smoke again, she figured. Teeth tasted truly awful. “I'd appreciate about half a dozen aspirin, though.”

“Two,” Father amended sternly, and rationed them out into his gloved palm. She took them with a cup of water Father poured from a carafe, then slumped back, hoping they'd work fast and wondering how long it'd take her to get to civilized places where you could ruin your digestion any way you pleased.

Setting the carafe aside, Father said, “Naturally, you're most welcome to stay as long as you wish, Diana, and let me say I'm very sorry for your loss. I should be the first to sympathize with someone who's lost everything—”

“Not everything. I got the important stuff out. The rest, maybe I'll replace sometime, maybe not. I knew it was a firetrap when I moved in. After that, you just take your chances and keep the insurance paid up.”

“Yes. Well.” Snagging his cane, Father rose. “Do you feel up to joining us for a late lunch, or should I have a tray—?”

The us did it. Pushing back the quilts, she found out she was decent enough below the waist too, though only sweatpants, nothing to cheer about. Nothing to keep her warm, either: she was always halfway freezing, Below. “You see a sweater anyplace,” she asked, looking around vaguely, “kinda gray...?”

“It was apparently...snagged on something. It's being repaired. I'll ask Mary to bring you a substitute. One thing we'll never suffer a shortage of is sweaters, as long as Mary's with us.”

“Sure, thanks.”

She knew where the nearest bathroom was—no mirror, naturally, but soap and chilly water from a pipe— and managed to at least feel cleaner and inspect the extent of the bruising on the front of her shoulder. Big livid thumb mark, the kind she'd seen on strangulation victims, and a small patch of purple hematoma below it, where the claw had sunk in. Although she couldn't twist far enough to see, there'd be four more marks just like it, in back. But nothing broken, it seemed, and in spite of being sore, her wrist wasn't visibly bruised at all: the thick sweater sleeve had been some protection there. So she guessed she'd gotten off easy, considering. Considering....

No strapless gowns for awhile, she guessed, and smiled to herself wryly.

Thinking idly about branding and other more pleasant ways of marking living property, she went back to Vincent's chamber where she found Mary, who tch-tch'ed about Diana's bruises, apparently believing they'd happened in escaping the fire. Diana resigned herself to smiling bravely, being fussed over, and saying nothing to make Mary think otherwise.

With Mary's help, she managed to pull on an enormous pale blue sweater that hung to her knees, though the sleeves were all right with a few turnups. The sweater was decorated with rows and rows of multicolored ribbon, woven in and ends hanging as fringe, that she could have done without, but at least she escaped the matching skirt, which should count for something. And with Mary's help, she managed to do something about her hair: brush out the worst of the tangles, then tie it back with some blue yarn.

Feeling sore but presentable, she let Mary steer her the right way to Father's study.

Getting down the metal stairs took some doing and concentration, trying to look as though she were going slow because she found Father's tumbled, crowded junkyard of books so fascinating. She didn't want to behave any more like a total cripple than she could help. And it was all for nothing because there was Vincent standing by the desk and doing his damndest to look casual with his left arm in a sling and strapped tight to his chest. They traded guarded glances, came to a mutual decision not to discuss either set of injuries here or now, and settled down to be fairly comfortably uncomfortable over lunch, letting Father carry most of the conversation. Diana managed some soup and crackers, then ran out of appetite and just sat, wishing for coffee, sipping tea in hopes that it would help the rest stay with her long enough to do some good.

When Father and Vincent had about finished, Cullen wandered in to say hi to Diana, offering furniture condolences and promises of something nice in rosewood when she'd found another place. And a few minutes after Cullen wandered out again, Mouse came, and then other people that she'd come to know, a dozen or more of them, all offering more sympathy than she wanted, so that she began to feel pretty overpeopled.

But from the general talk she learned one thing she'd wanted to know: Vincent had been forcibly retired from the tunnel project, and from all active labor, for the time being, to wait out the healing of a broken collarbone and shoulder muscles torn in a fall. Fat William, in particular, seemed to find that hilarious, since Vincent apparently had a longstanding reputation as somebody who could climb anything, anywhere, and, if there was a problem, always land on his feet. For once, he hadn't, and the injury therefore became a source of unsubtle family jokes at his expense, mostly involving cats.

Vincent took it all with good manners but she noticed that his eyes never changed or stayed long on whoever he was talking to. He wasn't enjoying this any more than she was.

And she was a little surprised, and then thoughtful, to notice that in all the joking, nobody referred to the accident with the pile of shoring timbers or the time a bad section of ceramic pipe had shattered in his hand and sliced into his palm about two weeks before that, toward the end of February. And now that she thought about it, he'd been around her loft more than usual, too, about then. She wished she could check her personal file, her journal, but she couldn't get at it now: it was on disk. All the same, it seemed to her that she'd had his company for two whole days, and he'd been able to shed the bandage and use his hand pretty near normally before he'd left.

That piece acquired a shape and clicked into place: besides checking up on her, he'd been hiding out. She knew about some of the injuries; people Below knew about others. And nobody able to add them up and know the whole score.

But the broken collarbone and torn muscles, he hadn't been able to keep to himself: couldn't fake it, hide it, or wait it out in her loft. Because he was stuck: couldn't climb. He hadn't been able to get to her damn roof, reach the unlocked door, for about a week! Another piece clicking in, and Jesus, was that a relief: it wasn't because of something she'd done or hadn't done, that he'd stayed away so long. Only a simple broken bone.

The relief was on one level. On another, alarms were going off: that made three bad accidents, in under a month. And maybe more: Father had been trying to locate him, thought Vincent had been at her place when he hadn't. So where had he been? Healing up from something else, something he didn't want her to know about either, knowing her life and work consisted of putting together small random details and shaking them around until some of them seemed to stick together, start forming a pattern....

Their eyes locked a second. Then he looked away, as though to pay attention to something Jamie was leaning on the arm of his chair to tell him. No change in his face that Diana could see; but if he'd had the right kind of ears, she thought they'd have slanted back a little then. What he knew wasn't only what he saw or heard, any more than it was for her, though her method didn't involve touching people but sitting back and watching, collecting, sifting.

You live in your work, from a distance....

That still stung; but however blunt, it was still true.

And, she thought, Vincent lives through his, through what he can do for other people: close up, touching. Trying to become whatever he senses they most need because that's all he knows how to do, be needed, useful.... Close enough to get hurt anytime he's not very, very careful. And lately, he hasn't been careful enough, or at all: hurt three times, about once a week....

She got up, making as little fuss about the process as she could, commenting, “I got a bunch of phone calls to make, start doing something about a new place, report in, that kind of thing. Walk me out someplace I can get to a phone, huh?”

Mouse and Jamie each instantly volunteered, but Diana kept her eyes steady on Vincent, adding, “There's stuff I have to sort out, of what I took in my tote, that's back in your chamber....”

After a pause that would have been rude if she hadn't understood it perfectly, he nodded, accepting the request, or challenge, or whatever it was. And as he had last night, he went to her left instead of her right, the way he usually did, to have his right arm free to guide and steady her, going up the stairs.

*****

Scuffing toward his chamber, she drew fingertips along his left arm, elbow to wrist, where the sling ended. Mouth corners turned down tight, she shook her head, didn't say anything.

“It's nothing.”

“It's not nothing. You know it and I know it. Thought you trusted me. You could have told me, sent a note. Something.”

“I didn't want to worry you.”

She gave a laugh that was half a cough. “Sure. Worry me. Oh, Vincent, if you knew the week I've had....” Again, she shook her head, then took a deep breath, trying to get the tightness out of her throat.

He moved his arm from behind her and laid fingers on her sore shoulder: the lightest touch and gone. Two paces, then huskily: “I didn't know. I.... I'm sorry.”

“Course you didn't. Accident.” If there was one thing in the world she was sure of, it was that he'd had no idea whatever how hard he'd clamped on. Hell, she hadn't known, herself: too fogged. And they'd both had other things very much on their minds.

Although sitting hadn't been too bad, moving started her head pounding again. God, she felt awful.

As an afterthought, she said, “Could have happened to anybody.”

“Not anybody.”

“Honest, it's okay.” She held up a stiff hand, swearing to it. “I've done worse myself, dropping a can of peaches on my foot. Don't...worry about it.” Finding herself echoing him, she glanced around, intending to share wry awareness of how similarly they were stuck in their disclaimers and concerns. But he wasn't having any.

“It will not happen again.”

“Yes it will.”

“No.”

She looked at him curiously, repeating, “Yes. It will.”

“No. I will not allow it.”

“Babe, counterfeiters get acid burns. Carpenters get chisel scars. Programmers get eyestrain. The ordinary wear and tear. People, things, they all got sharp edges. If you hang around with them, there's gonna be some damage. I'm allowed to play with the big kids, honest. No big deal. If I'm not having hysterics about it, I don't see why you should get all bent out of shape.”

But he wasn't having any of that, either. He didn't argue, but he didn't answer, and still hadn't said anything else when they came to the door opening of his chamber.

Going in first, Diana carefully upended the totebag over the table and started shoving the stuff into two piles, her things to one side, the rest to the other, commenting, “There wasn't much time but I think I got everything Damn.” She lifted one branch of the rosebush: after almost a day without water, pretty rubbery and pitiful looking. Velvety red petals came loose, cascaded over the checkerboard. And the other branch no better, shedding bruised white. “Damn. Well, I tried. Couldn't handle the whole thing, it weighs a ton, all that dirt. But I thought maybe you could press a couple of the flowers, something.... Oh, well. But I got all the...all the checkers...?”

Her voice trailed off because he'd brushed past her and picked up the book of sonnets, petals spilling off. Then he set that aside and touched a checker that had come to rest balanced on edge. As it clicked over flat, he put his clawed fist on it, knuckles down. Rigid arm braced against the tabletop, he bent forward, head bent too, fair hair hanging so she could no longer see his face. But she could hear the rough, choked breathing. He was crying.

Lots of people were funny about that, hated to be caught at it. She didn't know if he felt that way or not, it'd never happened before. Figuring it'd be better to let him handle it than to push, she patted the hard, locked muscles of his back, got no reaction, then went and sat on the edge of the bed, resting her sore shoulder against the pillows, feet tucked up, gazing at the broad arc of the amber and blue window.

Rich, warm colors. Softened the surrounding rock and everything the window's light fell on. Almost as though there might really be another world, daylight, beyond the window instead of some narrow crack that let in lamplight from another cave, small local exceptions to the twin eternities of stone and darkness.

She didn't know for sure, but she suspected only Vincent had such a window. Maybe a long time ago, Father had figured his strange son was the one who needed it most. You couldn't keep on, she thought, without even the dream of someplace beyond where you were and what you were, without any hope of light....

He'd been quiet awhile now. Without turning or moving at all, she said softly, “You're right out on the skinny edge, aren't you. All the time. One wrong move, and it cuts you. Again.”

Long silence. Then: “I am trying,” as if she'd accused him of something. Not being perfect, maybe.

“Sure you are, babe,” she said wearily, rubbing her forehead. “But it's like watching your feet, going down stairs: surest way there is to land on your tail. Type and watch your hands, you're sure to hit the wrong keys. Out on the edge, nothing comes easy and nothing goes right. You can't outstubborn it. Can't watch everything. Harder you try, more it gets away from you. And it's a dangerous world. Pretty soon, something's gonna go wrong, and you won't be quick enough getting out of the way, that's all. And it's gonna kill you.”

She looked around then, coolly, and saw in his eyes that he knew it as well as she did, that there was no trying that could be enough.

It was sad, that it had to be that way. But he was entitled. No way back from the edge except returning to the center, resting there. And she couldn't make him do that. Not if he didn't want to, or wouldn't. He was allowed to play with the big kids, too. Even if it killed him.

He stood facing her, his back against the table, arm propped behind him. After what seemed like a long while, he looked away, the tension going out of his stance, and passed fingers across what was on the table. “It is beyond kindness, that you brought these things when so much more was left behind, that”

“Nothing important.”

“To think of you gathering up these things, at such a time....”

She didn't say anything, only continued steadily looking at him; and that or something threw him off again and he couldn't finish what he was saying. He picked up a few of the spilled checkers, righted the coffee can they belonged in, and dropped them in, one at a time.

“I thought,” he said finally, “it would be better, once Jacob was safe. Once all that was over with. Perhaps not good, but better. And for a time, it was.”

Maybe, subconsciously, she'd noticed before. Now, it registered: the sturdy carved cradle, that had stood near a tall cabinet, was missing. She looked a sharp question.

“Some weeks ago,” he responded, “I was holding him. He...leapt suddenly in my hands, as babies do.... And I was startled. And. And I dropped him.” Answering her look of shock, he continued, “Only there, where you're sitting. Only as far as the bed. He was not injured. Not even frightened. He is generally much more absorbed in the miracle of himself, just now, than in whatever he senses from me. He.... He considered it a most exciting experience and was willing that we... that we repeat this new game.”

“Hey. Hey.” Diana unfolded abruptly and hugged him hard as far around as she could reach. For a moment he accepted the hug and the intense sympathy the direct contact would carry to him. Then he pulled away, circled the table, and began pacing there.

“He is well cared for. A happy child. Much loved. Father indulges him shamefully.... Now that the bond has been made, he does not need me always so near.”

Fine, great, Diana thought, listening him try to talk them both into believing Jacob could get along perfectly well without him. Which might even be true: compared to adults, children were almost infinitely resilient. So he'd withdrawn from his son, from that connection to life and a future. Because he could no longer trust himself not to harm the one he probably loved most in the world, now that Catherine was gone.

That part of the center walled off, leaving only the edge.

“And last night,” he went on, and something of that strange, blank expression came back: she knew what he was remembering. “I only knew you were not lost, after all. You were there, close. And I felt.... And then.... I never meant to hurt you. But I did. I I don't know what I meant.”

“Yes you do.”

“Perhaps.” Not an admission. Only defeat: being too exhausted to argue. “I don't remember such times very well. Afterward. It isn't the same kind of thinking. Like trying to describe music after it's over.... I can't say what it's like.”

He turned and continued pacing, as though the fact and the sense of motion were, in themselves, some kind of an answer for him, proof that he hadn't stopped trying.

“In any case, you were hurt. And that is unpardonable. No, listen: last night you were angry, indignant, that I had wanted to know how you lived. But I had to see: I had to have some confidence, at least, that you were well, and safe, when I could not be there to know for myself. I soon saw you had no need of protection. I should have been satisfied then, and gone. But I did not. In part I was, quite simply, curious. At first. Everything so new, so strange, the way you live, Diana. Your machines, and what they do, and what you do with them; watching you work; watching you think, the way your mind moves; watching you move, or be still; sleep.... And beyond that, there were other things: the sunlight, and...and so much I have never known. I had never thought it possible I might ever come that close to...to knowing what it might be like, having a life Above. As others do.... As others can.... But that had to end. Once I admitted to myself that...the greatest danger in your life was me.”

Diana grinned at him, a big, slow grin that seemed to take him utterly by surprise. “So,” she remarked. “It's finally said. Finally. So how about we start from there, babe?”

“Start what?” he rejoined, rather warily.

“Just start. Whatever you please. Whatever I damn well please.” Thinking hard, she stared for a second at the ceiling: had to get it right, first try. “‘Damn braces, bless relaxes.' That's Blake,” she declared, as though challenging him to dispute it.

“I know it is.”

“Damn right. I looked it up.”

Now he really did look disconcerted. He didn't know what the hell she was up to.

Good, she thought: keep him guessing. Give him something to think about besides how none of his life made sense to him anymore, besides trying so hard and so hopelessly to continue that he'd surely die of it if nothing changed.

“‘He who desires but acts not'”

“‘breeds pestilence,'” he finished, “and yes, I am aware that is also from Blake, who was a very wise man but who also drew the portrait of a flea's ghost and was convinced he daily conversed with angels. Not unlike Narcissa, whom I think you have not yet met. Although I honor Blake's poetry I do not follow his advice. He had no care for consequences. I must.”

Knowing herself outgunned and having lost the advantage of surprise, Diana dropped poetry for a more direct approach.

The way you look at it, I don't need you for anything, right? Well, that's true enough, if what you mean is a sort of a big watchdog with a taste for pepperoni pizza. Got no need for that whatever. But, babe, there's other things to be.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“I cannot be what you want. I would kill you.”

It cost him, to say that.

“Maybe,” she responded steadily. “Maybe, now. But there's time. And sometime, maybe not. And in the meantime, we live. And that's a place to start. So you made up your mind you'd never come back to my loft, right? What the hell, Vincent won't either, now. It's gone. Have to make a change, get a new place. Whole new ballgame. Now, I'm gonna tell you something. I'm glad there's no bond between us. That was Catherine's, and fine then, I guess, but not for now. Not for us. Because if you want to know how I am, you'll damn well have to come and see, won't you? Which means I get to see how you are: keep tabs on the slings and the bandages, stuff like that. And keep score on the bruises.” She was grinning again. “I don't heal as fast, but I'll bet I'm tougher than you think.”

“Diana”

“Shut up, this is my turn.”

She lost the grin into a kind of fierceness that was straight from the heart. “I'll tell you another thing: maybe you're right. Maybe we'll both die of it. But I tell you what: I don't give a damn. You're gonna die soon, we both know that, right? Third anniversary coming up in a couple weeks: that'd be a great time for it. You'll have a lot on your mind then. It could happen real easy, so quick you'd never know. One wrong step off one of your damn twisty staircases that hang over a whole lot of noplace, and you're gone, babe, it's over. Don't tell me you haven't been thinking about it, because I know better. I've been thinking about it too... only I didn't know, right at first, that's what it was.... So, fine, you're dead, you're out of it. And maybe Jacob would be pretty much okay. Father would look out for him; and I expect I'd keep going. But I wouldn't want to. And pretty soon I'd start to get careless, not watch the traffic, lean too far out a window, reach from the shower for a towel and stick my finger in a socket, I don't know, something. You gotta be careful in this world, to keep alive. I know about that. In my work, you look at a whole lot of dead people who weren't quite careful enough. And I know you've seen a few yourself.... I don't take that good care of myself as it is, eat all kinds of junk, keep bad hours. Ask Father.”

“I don't need to ask Father. I'd already noticed.”

Good. Something like a smile, coming back at her. Mostly his eyes. She could still reach past the despair, touch something. Good.

“So look at it straight on, Vincent— nobody kidding themselves, nobody sugaring it over: just what in hell does either of us have to lose? If we're both gonna be dead anyhow, why not take our chances, and live?”

Diana faced him across the table, leaning forward over the floppies, the dying roses, and the scattered checkers, both arms solidly braced. “When things change,” she told him, “they don't just change in a spot or two, or around the edges, or for awhile. They just change. Everything. For good. I tried to tell my sister once. How the people look different in the street and it's different how you feel in the morning, what you dream about at night. Even the air is different. And you get different: to yourself. Everything. She didn't know what I was talking about. But you do. Don't you.”

A long, long look. Finally a slow blink. “Yes. It is all, all changed utterly.”

“Is that you,” she demanded suspiciously, “or is it poetry?”

“Both. What matter, if it's true?”

“Okay, okay, I guess. So like that, then: it's changed, Vincent.” She snapped her fingers to show him how fast it could be.

“Back before I even saw you: when I was trying to get my mind around what was going on, what the hell had happened, and started to know it was like nothing else in the world, ever, and I had to find you, had to. Just knowing you were possible and alive in the world, that made everything change. So now I gotta figure how to live with how things are now. Can't make you careful, know better: anybody who'll jump a subway roof with a broken collarbone and only one arm in working order, you're not gonna make him careful. Can't lock you in, safe. Can't keep you from getting hurt. But whenever you get backed smack up against the edge, you're gonna know that there's a door open and that all you have to do is walk through. My door. You take your own chances, and I take mine.

“Because it's changed, babe. You can't be alone in this, keep it just to yourself, because I'm part of it now. No matter what you do. Whatever this is, we're stuck in it together. And don't come whining to me later that I didn't give you fair warning.”

Tipping the totebag on its side, she started scooping the floppies into it, then the spiral pads, then the framed photo and her shield in its leather case. When she started looking around for her pistol, she found Vincent silently offering it on the tray of his palm, that made it look as tiny as a toy.

As she nodded thanks and took the gun, he said, “Diana, I cannot be trusted. I cannot trust myself.”

“Well, if trust was all we had going for us here, we'd be in deep shit, wouldn't we?” she rejoined, looking him straight in the eye. “Good old Faith, Hope, and Charity. And maybe a miracle or two. It happens. I know.”

As she checked the safety catch and stowed the gun away, he picked up one of the wilted rose branches and studied it.

“I have known such changes,” he commented very quietly. “Three times— each beyond all expectation. I found Catherine. And she loved me. And she died. All changed utterly. Forever. And then a fourth: Jacob. And now. So I also know.”

He set the dying branch aside. Intent, absorbed, he brought his right hand up to brush away from her face a long strand of flaming hair that had escaped the yarn: a gesture of great gentleness and delicacy that ended with the tips of his claws resting against her neck. She shivered, then instantly grabbed his hand as he started to snatch it back.

“It tickled,” she explained simply. “And...just for a second, I could see Jacob in your eyes. Exactly the same look. Spooky.”

She held on, refusing to let him withdraw his hand until she was sure he believed her; then she allowed it to slide away.

Turning, he settled heavily on the bed—faced half away from her, head wearily bowed. “Of all gifts, such gallantry as yours must be the most rare and precious. I wish I could answer it as it should be answered. Since so many changes have already come to me, it should be possible to dream, at least, of miracles.... But I am afraid for you, Diana.”

She made a rude noise, accompaniment to zipping the totebag shut. “Dreams: don't get me started on dreams. I been having one, these last couple weeks.... No, I'm not even gonna tell you, it'd get you all depressed again, and anyway nothing like that is ever gonna happen, not if I have anything to say about it.”

“I've noticed you have something to say about most things.”

“Damn straight.”

Standing so long had tired her. She thumped down on the bed, resting against him just enough to make contact, holding the totebag across her knees. In spite of the dull hammering behind her eyes, she frowned and started thinking.

Presently she said, “Help me out with this, babe.” When he looked around inquiringly, she went on, “I can't afford to live around the park, I don't pull down that kind of money. Way too rich for my blood. So where should I start looking, that won't be such a hell of a hike? Someplace with lots of big windows, lots of light. Private, in case of company. Someplace, maybe, with a basement?”

Ghosts

The sixth address on Diana's list was a used bookshop in the Village. The first five she'd checked out—two on Friday, three this morning— hadn't been impressive. All either too small, too dark, too pricey, bugs, bad wiring, something. Looking up from the sidewalk, Diana found the upper floors of 777 - 10th Street didn't look very promising either: windows either boarded or painted over as though that part of the building was used for warehousing. But since the place was on the list Vincent had given her, Diana shrugged her still-sore shoulder and pushed the door open, setting off a hanging bell.

No counter, no register, but a man who looked like a cross between an owl and Santa Claus— 50s, beard, pudgy, snub-nosed, glasses—stood writing at what looked like a church pulpit. Seeing nobody else, Diana went up to him, saying, “Hi. You the guy who's got an apartment to rent?”

The man put a marker in the ledger, then surveyed Diana with a deliberate, nearsighted stare. “I might have. If the present tenant has no objections.”

Diana shot him a look. “I don't want a place I have to share, Mr.—”

“Smyth, and there's certainly no harm in scheduling an inspection. It hasn't been rented for some months.”

“But you said—”

“Just a moment,” said Smyth, turning away. “I'll have to find the keys, if they're...ah, here they are. Splendid. They often go missing for whole days at a time, such a nuisance. Shall we take a cab?”

More perplexed by the minute, Diana shook her head. “I thought maybe we'd just go up the stairs, if—”

Smyth chuckled, collecting an overcoat from a stool and pulling it on as he headed toward the door. “Oh, it's not here, young lady. No, there's no room for anything but books, up above.” As Diana followed Smyth out onto the street and watched him lock up, he continued, “It's a property I bought about a year ago. In the nature of an investment, you might say. But I'm afraid it hasn't proved profitable. Tenants simply are not as reliable as they once were, I'm afraid. Always flitting about. So I've realized very little on my investment. Not that the former owner's asking price was high; quite the reverse, or I couldn't have afforded it on the proceeds.... Were you at the sale, may I ask?”

“What sale?”

Smyth peered at her. “Didn't you say you were a friend of Catherine Chandler's?”

Startled, Diana couldn't think of anything to say but, “No. I didn't.”

“Odd, I could have sworn.... Well, it must have been some other young lady with titian hair. One sees so many more, these days, than genetic distribution would seem to allow, haven't you noticed? In any case, I really would recommend a cab, this damp weather does get into one's joints so....”

Bewildered and slightly exasperated, Diana decided she could spring for a cab and at least look at the place, though she was beginning to think her would-be landlord was a certifiable dingbat. Smyth gave the cabbie an address a few blocks away on Bleeker, over in the East Village, then settled back and started chatting companionably about rental property and the unreliablility of tenants.

“Look, you mentioned Catherine Chandler,” Diana interrupted.

“Did I?”

“What made you think I had any connection with her?”

“Someone must have told me, obviously,” Smyth said placidly.

“Well, I guess you could say I'm a friend of hers. At least we know some of the same people.... But I never knew her when she was alive.”

Smyth beamed. “Some of the finest friendships begin that way. I've become a great friend of Shakespeare's, for example. And I'm beginning to feel that the liking is reciprocated. I've always said that a good writer really values a sympathetic reader.... But you didn't attend the sale? Pity. Perhaps we ought to have another. Then you could attend that one.”

“Sale?”

“You're quite right. The proper term is ‘show,' maintaining the honorable pretense that art is above such mean things as profit. I stand rightly corrected.”

“I mean, what got sold?”

“Nearly everything,” responded Smyth smugly. “Very successful, if I say so myself. Well worth repeating. I shall have to consider making the appropriate arrangements, taxes have become so unreasonably high these days.... Ah, here we are. If you would be so kind as to satisfy our charioteer....”

As Smyth bustled ahead, Diana paid the cabbie, then followed. It'd taken her half Friday afternoon to identify herself to the satisfaction of her bank and draw some temporary walking-around money; but it was the credit cards that were going to be the real hassle....

The building was a narrow three-story brownstone—concrete front stoop and a single, shuttered window to either side: nearly identical to the rest on the block. Smyth wrestled with the key, then gave the door a solid kick and tried again. This time, it opened, creaking.

“Take no notice of the obstructions,” Smyth advised, leading her into a square foyer full of lumber and stacked gallon paint cans. “The lower floors are still in the process of renovation, but the loft is quite livable, I assure you. It has its own entrance, its own stair....” Shoving aside some lumber, Smyth laid firm hold on a door  and dragged it outward far enough to edge through the gap. “If you'll follow me...?”

The staircase was straight and steep, like a ladder tilted from the front of first floor to the back of the third. Diana visualized climbing it with a good load of groceries or going down lugging a garbage can and was even more prepared to dislike the place than she'd been before.

But the farther she climbed, the brighter it became. Finally laboring up the last steps, Diana was dazzled. Half the slanted ceiling consisted of windows, skylights. Even dirty from smog and neglect, they blazed with a peculiar, even brilliance.

“North light, of course,” commented Smyth. “Are you yourself an artist, may I ask?”

Diana didn't really hear him, shading her eyes under a hand to look around. The room was huge, running the full length and width of the building. Maybe sixty or seventy by thirty, all under the dazzle of those amazing skylights. Three pull-chain paddle fans were spaced down the center of the ceiling. No sign of an air-conditioner. But that might be fixable....

“I gather not, then,” Smyth answered himself. “Well, each of us has different gifts. What line of work are you in, Miss—”

“I'm with the NYPD, 210 unit, look, what's all this junk?” She waved at the piles of crates, sagging cardboard boxes, elderly steamer trunks, worn-out couches and other furniture.

“The property of the previous tenants, I'm afraid. They appear to have left in some haste.” Smyth turned, surveying the loft with as much interest as if he'd never seen it before either. “It might have to do with their being two months in arrears on the rent. A pity, but those things do happen, you know.”

Diana was trying to visualize the place empty and clean, with a few screens and maybe glass block partitions at the front end where she could see a tilted refrigerator with its door hanging open. Still have lots of space, even more than her old place. She checked the nearest baseboard until she found a wall socket—fitted for three-prong plugs: the wiring was recent. “110?”

“220,” Smyth replied proudly.

“All on one fuse, though?”

“Circuit breakers. Six, supporting fourteen outlets. I have accomplished some rehabilitation since I assumed ownership. Although I must confess the fuse box is off in the basement, somewhat of an inconvenience....”

Diana shrugged, chiefly interested in the mention of a basement—one of her absolute requirements. “Heat?”

“Steam, and quite cosy. Some banging when it's coming up, but that's only to be expected, considering the distance.” Circling a mound of trash, Smyth reached up to tap one of the big, slanted windows. “All thermal glass and insulated casings, or whatever they're called, newly installed. Frost and steam are such impediments to proper light. Mustn't have any of that. No, I'm proud to say I've never had any complaints about the heat.”

Smyth's tone made Diana wonder what he had had complaints about. But going at such things directly never got you anyplace.

“How much are you asking?”

Smyth tapped his front teeth with a thumbnail. “Usually, I ask eight fifty, for the location alone. So convenient, to the subway and all, and in such a quiet neighborhood.... But inasmuch as you're a friend of Catherine Chandler's, I might be persuaded to accept five.”

“A week?”

“Oh, no— a month is the usual term. Although if you're in straitened circumstances, some system of installments might be arranged.... Heat is included, but not electricity. Of course I'd ask a month's deposit in advance, that's customary. That would be a thousand dollars, all told.” Smyth beamed at her.

Diana scowled at him. “You can't get a closet anyplace downtown for five bills a month. So what's wrong with it? You got bugs, roaches, is that it? I won't have bugs, what they do to computers isn't—”

“No, no, no, I assure you, no roaches. I have the exterminator in once a month, but merely because the city health code requires it. No, roaches will be no problem whatsoever....”

Again, that odd, indeterminate tone.

“Then what is?” Diana demanded. “What's the problem? No plumbing?”

“The bath is new. Quite commodious, in fact. I trust you don't object to a small pun?” Smyth waved toward the front. “Would you care to—”

“Look, I just want to know what the catch is: why can't you keep a place like this rented?”

“Well, you have me there,” admitted Smyth shyly. “I suppose I'll have to tell you. It's not bugs— it's ghosts. Or rather, one ghost. But it's only one, and hardly any trouble at all, provided you don't disturb his easel....”

Diana stared at the man, then burst out laughing. “One of us is crazy, and I don't think it's me. Thanks a lot, Mr. Smyth, for the tour, but I think I already got all the ghosts I can handle. Thanks, but no thanks.” Shaking her head, she started jogging back down the stairs.

Behind her, she heard Smyth complaining, “Why will no one believe me? What are young people coming to, nowadays, the utter lack of imagination...! Please do reconsider, Miss Bennett—!”

Diana slid through the lower door and was past the outer one before it occurred to her that she didn't remember ever having given Smyth her name.

But by that time, she had another problem that put the strange Mr. Smyth and his haunted loft completely out of her mind. As she went down the front stairs, a patrol unit drew in to the curb. The passenger-side cop rolled down his window to call, “Yo, Bennett.”

Danny Martinez. She'd been a rookie with his older brother, Al.

Diana shoved her hands in the pockets of her borrowed coat. “Yeah, Danny, what you want?”

“Captain Willis, he's been trying to locate you like all day, man. The DA's on his back, wants you like yesterday. Does 210 mean you never got to check in?”

“I checked in Friday. My place burned down Thursday.”

“Yeah, and this is Saturday. A whole new work day. Work—you ever hear of that? Come on, we're suppose to give you a lift.” Martinez popped the lock on the back door.

Diana stayed on the sidewalk. “I got personal time coming and things to do. Didn't even get the insurance settled yet. So what's Maxwell want, that I'm supposed to drop everything and race up there?”

“Gotta ask him youself, man. They don't tell us grunts no-thing.”

Diana pulled out the list and unfolded it. Only three addresses left. Ought to be able to hit them all this afternoon. Although she guessed the hospitality of the tunnel community was okay for a day or two, she was still a guest and had to put up with everybody's unwanted sympathy, people always talking to her or expecting her to talk to them. No privacy, no healing solitude, there at all. She was really desperate to make a start on getting a place of her own again. But she supposed she'd have to take care of this first, find out why Maxwell wanted her so badly he'd put out what was practically an APB on her.

“Cheaper than a cab, man,” Martinez persisted, grinning. “Got a siren, too. You wanna hear?”

“You're such a jerk, Danny. Same as your brother. Keep expecting to hear you signed up for the K-9 Corps at the skinny end of the leash.” Deciding, Diana yanked open the door and slid in.

*****

“So I'm here,” Diana told Joe, shoving his partly open door back so hard it whacked against a filing cabinet. “So what's so important that you—”

Joe turned from the window with a cold, angry expression that sent warning shivers all down her back. He pointed at a chair. Taking her time, she sat in it, trying not to get caught glancing at the upside-down IdentiKit composite drawing almost falling off the near edge of his desk.

Joe slapped the paper and shoved it at her. “Go ahead, Diana. Take a good look.”

She took her time about that too, although almost from the first second, she'd known what it was: a recognizable drawing of Vincent. Nobody who knew him or loved him would have drawn him that way—downplayed those marvelous eyes into squinty, slanted triangles or emphasized the unique mouth to show about twice too many fangs. But it was Vincent, all right. It said so, in Joe's squared-off printing, across the bottom of the drawing.

When she looked up with her best noncommittal stare, Joe was steadily watching her, as she'd known he would be. He reached behind him, dragging forward the kind of cassette recorder that was used to take statements, and hit the play switch.

A male voice, middle-aged, heavy Bronx accent, trying at first to sound formal, official: Suspect is male, Caucasian? God, I don't know what to— Yeah, okay. About six-foot two, maybe two hundred pounds, two twenny-five, atheletic build. Blond hair, down past his shoulders; light eyes, green or blue, I couldn't.... Jesus, can we start this over, I...? Okay okay. Suspect appears to be in his thirties, that's a guess, who the hell knows, something like that? Jesus, Mr. Maxwell, nobody's going to believe this, they're gonna claim I was on the sauce and there goes my pension—

Joe's faint voice in the background, making soothing noises.

Then: Suspect appeared to be wearing some kind of a goddam animal mask or something, but the teeth, I'd swear on my mother's grave the teeth were real. Oh, and fur. On his hands. What? Oh, regular hands, four fingers and a thumb, just regular hands. But big, you know? Like a basketball player's. And, and on my mother's grave, claws: like them kind of press-on fake things, way out past the end of the fingers, but tough, you know? Like, thick. What am I talking about here, look, I'm sorry I ever said anything about it, it was dark, like, and all the fire going on, I don't wanna get in more trouble with my captain—

Still staring at her, Joe fast forwarded for a second or two, then hit play again, and a different, younger male voice, probably black, said: —her building, sure, it was me who rousted her outta there. Same one. Wouldn't mistake that red hair. You say Bennett, I guess so. Yelling how she was a cop, waving a badge, I could see the flash when she swung it but I wasn't close enough to tell for certain if it was a real badge or not. Anyhow, sure, when Roy went down, this big guy in the dracula cape just swatted him like that, you know, and here she comes running up waving what looks like a badge, like I said, grabs onto dracula-cape, and they both take off past the pumper, I didn't see no more, and I hear Roy's got two busted ribs and that ain't right, we was just fighting the damn fire....

Joe turned off the tape with a precise, controlled push. Then he folded his hands over one knee.

“So,” Joe said in a deadly quiet voice she'd only heard maybe once or twice in the time she'd known him. “Let's talk about Vincent.”

When Diana didn't say anything, just stared back at him poker-faced, Joe leveled a forefinger at her like a pistol barrel. “You are finally going to tell me what the hell has been going on all this while. Who Vincent is. What he is. Where he is. Before you clammed up on me, you were talking about tunnels. What tunnels? Don't think you're going to dodge this, Diana, put me off with some cockamamie story that he doesn't exist, that Cathy made him up 'cause she was so crazy after she got cut she imagined herself some freak with fur, and fangs, and two-inch claws, Diana, as ‘the perfect man.' Because I'm not buying that shit from you anymore. I got witnesses now. I got a fireman in the hospital with claw marks across his chest. So you tell me: is that what that guy Gabriel kept in that big cage in his basement? Was that thing the father of Cathy's child?”

Diana's mind had gone as icy as Joe's voice, tapping all the walls of the box he'd put her into, trying to find a weak spot, some way to run out and let it collapse behind her. But there was nothing. She flipped both hands wide, carelessly. “Who's gonna believe that?”

“I believe that. And since I'm the DA, that's all it takes. Because there's a warrant out on him. And you know where he is. You're protecting him. That's called aiding and abetting a fugitive, Diana. And that's all I goddam well need to have your shield, your job, your pension, the whole nine yards, and slap you in jail until you damn well rot.”

Each threat thumped into her like a solid body-punch. She pushed out of the chair and swung her totebag across her shoulder that still, under jacket and shirt, bore the purpling marks of Vincent's fingers. Striding toward the door, she said flatly, over her shoulder, “You go to hell.”

Not moving, Joe said, “You'll never make the street.” When she swung around, despairing, he added, “You know how long ex-cops last in prison? We're talking days here, Diana. Not weeks. Days.”

She looked through the doorway into the outer office: empty. At least somebody wasn't working on the weekend, listening with built-in secretarial radar. All the same, Diana grabbed the edge of the door and slowly eased it shut, then turned with her shoulders propped against the glass. “So what's the bottom line, here, Joe? You looking to put somebody in jail, close the file on the drug warehouse, what?”

It would never happen. They'd never get Vincent into a jail cell, never even succeed in arresting him. He'd die first. But before that, he'd get as far away from the tunnels as he could, to keep that final secret safe, at least. He'd make a stand in some alley in the daylight, or in the glare of roof-mounted searchlights. And he'd die that way. It was so clear to her, she could almost see it happening.

“Where's the baby, Diana? What happened to Cathy's baby?”

She thought a long while, braced against the door, hoping that the shivering didn't show. “He's safe,” she said finally.

Joe leaned forward and blew out a breath. “So it's alive. And a boy, right?”

Diana nodded.

“And is this thing, this Vincent, the father?”

Diana stood solider, setting both feet. “You're not talking to me here, Joe. You're talking to Cathy. And if you ever called Vincent a thing where she could get at you, you'd have no more eyes, Joe. You hear what I'm saying to you? Just consider, Joe: suppose it was Cathy standing here, instead of me. Would you ask her that? And if you did, would you expect her to answer?”

Joe stared at her incredulously. “What, did you inherit the damn thing? What, did Cathy leave it to you in her goddam will, ‘Oh, and please take care of Vincent'?”

“Vincent takes care of himself. And I'm still waiting to hear your proposition.”

Joe propped both arms wide, hands flat on the desk top. “Does it talk?”

Diana twitched a smile. “Endlessly.”

“Then I want to talk to it. Him. And I want the baby. Cathy's child is not going to be raised by some goddam freak.”

Diana's smile was all gone. She felt cold to the bone, colder than when she'd paced in the alley while her building burned down, waiting for the inevitability that was Vincent. “No, Joe. Never gonna happen. What he went through to get that baby back, he's never gonna give it away to anybody else.” She reached in her tote, found her shield by touch, and tossed it to him underhand. Then she took out her pistol and set it on the rug. “Might as well put the cuffs on now, because it'll never happen, never in this world.”

“Tell him. When I get the baby, I kill the warrant. And no charges brought against you. And it's all over, as long as he can keep his goddam claws off the civilians from now on.”

“It was never civilians, Joe.”

“I got a guy in the hospital who thinks different.”

Diana absently rubbed her shoulder. “Accident. Or your civilian wouldn't still be alive.”

Joe again pointed that steady, accusing finger. “You tell him. Or you're gone, Diana. Nobody will even know where to look to find the pieces. If nothing's happened by Monday, you're gone.”

*****

Of course she was being followed. One pair on foot, ahead, walking a dog, all very casual. Long raincoats, easy to change, to have a different appearance. A pair changing off behind, one of them rumpled old Mort Zuckerman, that she knew like her own uncle, looking pretty sheepish but stubbornly tagging her, just the same. And a pair in a blue Chevy, she thought, or maybe it was the old beige Plymouth. Standard procedure, for a real heavy tag.

She had to get down, Below, and didn't know how in hell to do it. Couldn't very well go back to the wreckage of her old place, sprint two blocks, yank open a manhole and pop in, all in broad daylight. Might as well post signs, as do that. And the only other way she knew, through the park, would be just as plain, right out in the open. She thought she remembered Mouse saying they'd solidly walled off the way to Catherine's basement, so....

Basement. She strode a couple of blocks to a hardware store, bought a prybar short enough to hide in her tote, then took a cab to the next address on her list, as though she were going on with the process of apartment hunting. But she gave the place no more than a quick once over. When the lady didn't pick up at all on several pointed uses of the word helper, Diana thanked her and then went straight back to the bookstore, setting the bell madly swinging.

“Hey, could I borrow the keys a little while,” Diana blurted to Smyth, “take a few measurements? Maybe I'd be interested after all. But I gotta see if my stuff would go up that staircase.... Thanks, thanks a million, I'll get 'em right back to you, honest—” Stuffing the key ring into her pocket, she danced backward a few paces, then spun and ducked back into the cab she'd left waiting. Giving the cabbie the address, she thumped the seat impatiently as he got going.

It was the beige Plymouth. Still solidly on her tail. And she was getting as weird as Smyth, her for asking for the keys that way, him for giving them to her with hardly a blink and no questions at all.

At the brownstone, she slapped a five into the cabbie's hand, then nervously tried to jam the first key on the ring into the lock before the Plymouth came around the corner. The door swung back: Smyth must have carelessly left it unlocked when he'd gone. She locked it behind her, then tried the lefthand door, getting the right key on the third try. Nope: that was the first floor apartment, all scaffolding and half-peeled old wallpaper drooping down everyplace. Two doors on the right, one narrower and slightly ajar. Inside, scuffed wooden steps leading down.

And she suddenly had the strong feeling of being watched—not in a threatening way, but with great curiosity. She whirled, scanned the foyer: nothing, nobody. But Smyth claimed the place was haunted....

“Look,” she found herself blurting, “it'd be real great if anybody watching thought I was still here, hadn't gone anyplace else, see? An hour, two at the outside. It's real important. It's about Cathy's baby. Okay?”

No answer, of course, but the sense of being watched suddenly flicked out. The hair at her nape started to prickle, but she had no time to think about that kind of craziness now and slammed down the steps, cursing softly at herself for not having thought to buy a flashlight while she was at it.

Which wall? She thumped a few, thought she got the hollowest sound on the street side, which made sense: most of the upper-level tunnels ran the way the streets did. She started chopping between the bricks with the prybar and pretty soon saw a faint light on the other side.

The brickwork was old, the mortar dry and crumbly. It didn't take much before she'd cleared a hole big enough to slide through into a tunnel so low she had to stoop almost double to move. But a long way ahead, there was light. She went toward it.

Nothing, just a dim work light at a junction where another black tunnel went off to her right. She went on into the darkness and almost fell into a hole where iron staples went down. Deeper was better. She felt her way down, found that this shaft was at least high enough to let her stand straight.

As she groped along the rough rock walls, her hand smacked a pipe. It felt rusty, old, disused. But if she was lucky, a pipe was a pipe, and Pascal would hear or somebody would hear, and relay, if she understood at all how the tunnels' communication system worked.

Although she didn't know pipe code, she figured any regular signal would be investigated. With the prybar, she started banging out three long, three short, three long, and a pause: over and over again. When her wrist got tired, she changed hands and kept the signal going. After at least half an hour, she thought she heard a rustle someplace ahead of her and prayed it wasn't rats.

“Look,” she called, “if somebody's there, please somebody be there, it's Diana Bennett, I'm a friend of Vincent's, please get him here or get me to wherever he is, it's real important—”

A spark, a tiny wavering flame. And Jamie, her loaded crossbow turned aside, holding a match to a candle stub that caught after a second. “Hi, Diana,” Jamie said, looking up soberly. “Vincent can come here quicker than we can go to him...? Okay.” Passing the candle to Diana, Jamie took a short section of pipe from a pocket and started tapping out a rapid, complicated series. Then she stood on tiptoe to put her ear against the wall pipe, and they waited. Presently a signal came back. Jamie nodded and relaxed. “He's heard. He's coming.”

Diana sagged down to sit against a wall and set the candle between her feet: wax had been dripping onto her fingers, and that was no fun at all.

Looking at her, Jamie said carefully, “I don't want to push, but is it anything I can help with?”

Diana managed a brief smile. She liked the kid. “God knows, Jamie, I don't. I just gotta talk to Vincent.”

“Sure. Well, he'll find you. Okay—you want me to stay till he comes?”

“Whatever. If you got someplace to be....”

“My turn for sentry duty, I should get back.”

“Go ahead then. I'll be fine.”

“Here.” Jamie stooped to hand Diana another candle stub, just in case, then went off sure-footedly into the dark.

Diana tipped her head back against the stone and shut her eyes. Yesterday's headache was returning in slow, tentative throbs. She wanted about half a dozen aspirin. She wanted to shoot Joe Maxwell, preferably in the face, but she'd left her gun on his rug. She was scared, clenched tight.

Vincent was almost as soundless as Jamie, when he came. Just the whisper of the cape to mark the long strides. He sat on his heels on the other side of the candle, reaching out hesitantly, righthanded, to touch her upper arm and then close his hand solidly, learning whatever touch could tell him, asking, “Diana. What is it?”

“Joe Maxwell. He's got a warrant, and witnesses. You were seen, Vincent—at the fire. He wants to talk to you. Vincent, he wants Jacob. To keep.”

“No,” Vincent said quietly, simply.

“I know, but he knows something about the tunnels, I told him back before, before I started being careful, knew I needed to be careful. I don't—”

“We will withdraw, then, for a time. To the deepest levels, and throw up walls behind us. We have done it before, in extremity. How long do we have to prepare?”

“The deadline's Monday.”

Vincent thought a minute. “It will be enough. If they come, they will find nothing.” Then he tilted his head, considering her. “And what else?”

Her mouth pulled tight: she was angry with herself. “I'm not the brave sort, I suppose I ought to just keep still—”

“Diana, I have never known anyone more brave than you. Nothing will ever change my opinion. Tell me.”

She took a deep breath, then swallowed in hopes of keeping her voice steady. “Babe, it's my job. And my life. If I don't set this up. I suppose I could try to hide out with all of you, but....”

“No. You can't do that,” he confirmed at once, without any doubt at all. “Your life is Above, even more than Catherine's was. Let's think about this, then.” Releasing her arm, he settled crosslegged, and the candle flame flickered in his eyes. “Two things occur to me. First, my carelessness is what has brought you into this danger, and—”

“That's nothing,” Diana interrupted.

“It is not nothing. It couldn't be helped. But it's not nothing. I'm responsible for whatever Joe threatens you with. Because you waited, and called me aside. We will not discuss this. It is merely true. And, second, we must consider Joe himself. He was Catherine's friend. She trusted him. I once thought of contacting him, then settled instead on Elliot, who had, I judged, the greater freedom of action, which only great wealth, or nothing whatever to lose, can grant. Elliot answered to no one, was not bound by laws. I hoped we might find enough common ground, through Catherine, that he would help me in my search.... But now it's Joe we must consider. He may not be killed.”

Diana stared at him, and he returned a level look, remarking, “It's the obvious course of action. I also thought of killing Elliot, at a time when I believed him to be responsible for some...difficulty Catherine and I were having with a persistent reporter. But I suspected my own motives, and so delayed long enough to discover that we had been mistaken, misled: that Elliot was not behind the matter after all.... In any case, no: Joe is not to be killed. He believes that in this he keeps faith with Catherine, does he not?”

Wordlessly, Diana nodded.

Vincent continued, “I know where he lives. I will visit him tonight, and we'll talk. Perhaps I can find common ground with him, as well, and make him see why he cannot do this thing.”

“How, babe? Go knock at his door?”

“No, I'll—” Vincent met her eyes with chagrined amusement in his own, and patted his sling-bound arm. “I'd honestly forgotten. I cannot climb. Very well, then. You will set up a meeting, as he demands. We must decide where. I don't think the carousel would appeal to him very much, considering.”

She shot him a glance, but apparently he meant his last remark quite seriously. “No, I don't guess it would.... Vincent, there's no good way to say this. But I have to.” She leaned forward and put her hand on his knee, wanting to soften the hurt, knowing she couldn't. “The thought of you, the way you look, horrifies him.”

“Naturally. What is your point?”

“He's also jealous as hell. Babe, he'd shoot you and not blink.”

“I can understand that,” Vincent responded judiciously.

“And finally, he doesn't really care about you, shies away from thinking about you, because of you and Catherine. Together. And now, a baby. That bothers him real bad.”

“I can understand that too. It troubled Father, as well, for a considerable time.”

“He's willing to scrap the warrant and let you alone if you don't force him to do otherwise. It's the baby, Jacob, he's concerned about. I think he feels about that baby pretty much the way you did, when Gabriel had him.”

“Then I must teach him differently.”

“Words ain't gonna do it: you'd have to bring Jacob. And likely as not, Joe'd shoot you, take Jacob, and that's the end of it. You can't do that.”

“No.” Vincent sat thinking for several minutes. The candle was nearly gone, a scrap of wick in a puddle. Diana waited, watching him anxiously. Finally he said, “Yet he is owed something, because he was Catherine's friend. And because he believes he honors her now.” Deciding, he told her, “You will arrange the meeting, for tonight. Where would you suggest? How did you come Below?”

“Broke through the basement, brownstone in the East Village that guy Smyth owns? The one on the list you made me, with the bookstore?”

He hitched himself tighter, straighter, regarding her with plain interest. “Did you like it?”

“What, the loft? Lots of light and everything, cheap like you wouldn't believe, but that guy Smyth is a real nutso. Claims the loft's haunted.” Expecting to see her own incredulity returned, Diana was startled to see it wasn't. “Oh, come on now: haunted?”

“I've met him. Kristopher. Kristopher Gentian. A talented young man, if a bit scatterbrained and preoccupied with his own concerns. Probably part of being an artist: our Elizabeth strikes some people that way. Not to mention Mouse.... Yes. We will meet there, then. What time is it now?”

Diana bent to hold her watch close to the light. “Three thirty. But Vincent, a ghost? This is all getting too weird for me. It's starting to sound real crazy, and I don't think you've been judging risks real well lately. If—”

“For myself, only,” Vincent returned stiffly. Then his eyes turned aside. “And for you, evidently. But you can trust me in this, Diana. I will never put Jacob at risk.”

“Jacob's not mainly what I'm worried about, babe.”

“There is no help for that.” He went on thoughtfully, “I must speak to Father...since if I fail, the whole community may have to withdraw on short notice. It would be better if it were tomorrow night—more time to prepare—but that would put you at additional risk, coming and going, and that is not acceptable.”

“I take my own risks, babe. I thought we had that all out yesterday.”

Vincent considered soberly. “Very well. Tomorrow night, then. Say, ten o'clock? No: midnight. There may be a use in that. And if not, no matter. About the loft: are the lower floors occupied?”

“No. All kinds of scaffolding, ladders, junk like that. They're remodeling.”

“Workmen?”

“Nobody. Shutters are closed.”

Rising and then holding out a hand to her, Vincent said, “Show me.”

*****

Late Sunday night, Diana sat tense and silent while Joe drove. A thin mist of rain sparkled on the windshield every time they passed under a streetlight. The wipers creaked steadily.

She'd coerced, from a casual woman cop acquaintance, a bed Above last night, on the strength of being pitifully burned out and homeless: no right-thinking person could very well resist that. So that'd been all right, hadn't called any extra attention to the tunnels. And so far, no cops had shown any particular interest in the brownstone, accepting that it was just one of the places she was considering renting. No sign of the beige Plymouth, when she'd cautiously come out, yesterday afternoon. Only old, effective Mort Zuckerman plodding along the sidewalk across the street, patiently waiting for her to come out and taking up the tag when she did. She'd waved at him, and he'd returned a sour smile. Nothing personal, that smile said. Just rules: the way it was. All cops understood that.

So it seemed their luck had held, so far. But now, with Joe, that would be the kicker: make or break. And Diana had no idea whatever how it would be apt to go, once he'd seen Vincent plain.

Finding no space in front of the brownstone, Joe pulled up by a fire plug, switched everything off, got out, and slammed his door. He turned up his overcoat collar as he joined Diana on the pavement and waved her ahead of him. He had his pistol loose in his pocket, Diana knew: he'd made a great point of making that plain to her. Of course it wouldn't have helped at all, hadn't helped Moreno, the DA before Joe, and crooked, whom Vincent had pulled to bloody pieces at the park carousel. That was probably what they were both thinking about as she led the way back to the brownstone, Joe nervously scanning the shadows next to each set of front steps, every parked car, expecting something big and fast and dangerous to leap out at him any minute.

Diana just kept walking, poking in her pocket for the duplicate set of keys she'd had made so she could return the originals to Smyth yesterday as promised.

Before she could even reach for the door, it opened: Mouse stood there holding it, looking surprisingly ordinary in a plain blue sweater and dark pants. Looking surprisingly hostile, too, scowling past Diana at Joe. And just plain surprising, because as far as Diana knew, Mouse wasn't supposed to still be here at all. Either the plan had changed, or more likely Mouse had flatly refused to go back Below when the preparations were complete, and Vincent hadn't been able to talk him out of staying.

Very few people could outstubborn Vincent; but Mouse was one of them.

Anybody could see Mouse didn't have a gun, but Joe refused to go a step inside without patting him down, which Mouse considered a great indignity and instantly backed away from.

“Mouse,” Diana warned, pointing at the threshold, and Mouse sullenly came back and let Joe assure himself the teenager was no more armed than Diana was.

It was dark inside the first floor apartment.

“Get some lights on,” Joe ordered.

“The power isn't hitched up,” Diana replied, and then suddenly bumped into Mouse, who'd stopped. Joe in turn bumped into her, swore, and backed off warily. Mouse banged his heel hard, twice, on the floor, and was answered by the muted noise of the generator starting up, down in the basement. Moving away from Diana, Mouse did something that made a click. A brilliant light came on— rectangular, straight ahead of them, everything else still dark. A mirror whose elaborately carved frame enclosed the reflection of an equally elaborate thronelike chair standing alone.

Again, Diana had the acute sense of presence, of being watched: but this time, the attention glanced by her like an accidental bump from someone passing through a crowd, to fix delightedly on the mirror— at once picture and stage.

As, behind her, Joe muttered, “What the hell—?” Vincent moved into the reflection and deliberately sat down in the tall chair, seeming to look directly at them.

The angle was exactly right. The floodlight in the kitchen didn't show at all from here. There was nothing but the mirror, and the immense reflection. Vincent looked about ten feet high.

Unhooded, cloak laid aside, he wore one of the archaic ruffled white shirts he often chose for ceremonies, a wide black leather belt with dull gleams of silver buckles, and black pants tucked above the knee into high boots. His heavy golden hair spilled over his shoulders, and his eyes were steady and terribly blue. Diana had expected him to put the sling aside, but he hadn't.

Reflected in the mirror and protected by the angle from any startled shot, he appeared to be the guardian of a gate where no one passed without his permission or even approached without misgivings: absolutely confident in his authority; the mirror a gate to a place of unearthly and absolute night.

From noplace at all, as Diana gazed at the powerful image framed within the glass, a phrase popped into her mind: Lord of the Hollow Dark. And the voice saying it wasn't her voice, nor any voice she knew.

The total effect was maybe diminished a little by Mouse fiercely scowling and leaning against the wall as if daring Joe to try to get past him. But Joe probably didn't even notice. The mirror had all his attention.

Vincent said, “If you attempt to approach, the lights will go out and you will find nothing.”

Joe jerked, as if astonished to hear words coming out of that inhuman and unmistakably fanged mouth. Or maybe it was just the voice itself— the steel and the silk of it, resonant, strong, beautiful. Diana found herself remembering what it'd been like, to hear that voice for the first time. It went right through you and vibrated in your bones, your soul.

Joe snapped, “Cheap magic tricks. Mirrors.”

“It is not for my protection.” Undoing the straps, Vincent slid his arm from the sling with care, and pain, that he made no attempt to conceal. Deliberately admitting that he could be injured, that he was mortal.

Out of the dark behind him, Brooke appeared like some medieval handmaid, and the huge, furred hands lifted to accept from her what she carried: Jacob, wrapped in a blanket of blue and white patchwork. As the baby— so plainly human— settled with obvious pleasure against his father's chest, Brooke didn't withdraw but stood defiantly beside the chair, looking straight out at them, her hand moving to rest on Vincent's shoulder. Diana doubted that either of them was aware of the contact. Vincent was busy making absolutely certain no sudden motion, and no need for sudden motion, could possibly allow Jacob to fall.

Finally satisfied, he looked up. “This is Catherine's child. My son. You cannot have him. I honor your concern for him, and the affection you bore Catherine, whom I shall love all my life and beyond, if that is possible. He is well, and happy, and much loved where we live. You need have no concern for him. But if you wish, from time to time, to assure yourself of his wellbeing, an arrangement can be made. I will never forbid you sight of him; nor, when he is older, his company, when we have come to know one another better and I have confidence you would not try to remove him from his family in the belief you would be doing him good. There is nowhere he could be, nowhere you could take him, that I would not know it. And I would come for him. As I came for Catherine...but too late. And then it would become impossible for us ever to be the friends Catherine would have wished us to be, for the sake of the love we both bore her and the light each of us knew, for a little while.”

Joe stood rocking on the balls of his feet, as if it took him a minute to shake free of the impact of that exquisitely formal, solemn speech. Then he leveled a pointing finger at the mirror and said, “Look, you goddam freak. All the cheap theatrics in the world doesn't change the fact that you're a freak, and that you kill people, and that there is no way I'm leaving any kid of Cathy's with you. No way. Whatever you got for women, it damn well doesn't work on me. Your little girlfriend, there, she brings the kid here in one quick hurry, or else I'm walking. And then you better look out, because I'm going to find whatever hole you hide in, and dig you out of it, and give that kid a decent home someplace where he'll never have to know or admit he's got a killer freak for a father. Maybe I can find a place for you in some zoo that's not too particular. And your other girlfriend, here, Bennett, she's gone. Just gone. You hear me? I'm counting five. One—”

Looking aside, seemingly at someone unseen beyond the mirror's frame, Vincent said, “Kristopher, I do not ask for myself this time. I accept that it is either not permitted or not possible, for me. I ask for all those here who deserve well of her, that I may not be forced into this choice. If she will not or cannot speak to me, let her speak to Joe, to tell him that he is mistaken: that what he demands of me is not what she would wish.”

And when Joe said, “Four,” he jerked and stepped away two paces, blurting disgustedly, “Oh, come on, what do you think I—” And a pause, then, “Sure, anybody can fake a voice, it's—”

As Diana turned and stared at him, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, she heard him mutter what sounded like “Chocolate cheese nuggets?” In the light reflected from the mirror, Joe's face twisted into a very peculiar expression: skeptical, angry, and embarrassed, all together. He said, “Now, look, Radcliffe, I—” and then he shook his head hard, as though trying to shake loose of having said it.

Almost, Diana looked toward the mirror. But she didn't. Because she didn't want to see and remember whatever might be in Vincent's eyes just then. That was his business, and Catherine's. And what she might see would have haunted her more unendurably than any spectral voice only one person could hear.

Quietly, she moved to join Mouse against the wall, to not intrude on Joe's private discussion with the dead.

After an unmeasurable time, Joe blew his nose. Loudly. Diana figured maybe it would be safe to look then and found only Vincent in the mirror: Brooke and Jacob were gone: down the servants' stair, back into the basement and beyond, into safety. Vincent was sitting with his elbows braced on the chair arms and fingers interlaced in a tight knot his forehead was bent against.

“So okay,” Joe said, and Vincent slowly raised his head. His face was perfectly empty. Joe continued, “So maybe I was wrong. I'd still rather be wrong than what you are. Wrong, you can get over. Wrong, you can make right.”

Vincent just continued to look at him with the same desolate, blank expression, simply waiting for him to be finished and go away.

Jittering uncomfortably, Joe pulled his hand out of his pocket and seemed surprised to find a gun in it. Stuffing the gun away, he turned to Diana and announced, “To you, she says ‘Thanks.' For what, I don't know, and maybe I don't want to. But ‘Thanks.'” Then Joe wheeled back toward the mirror. “And to you, she says nothing. Zip. Nada. And Bennett, if you haven't checked in square on time on Monday, then... then you won't get your shield back, will you?”

Satisfied he'd finished one up on everybody and therefore able to back off without losing face—was that the reason for Catherine's cruel silence to Vincent, or was even indirect communication between them not permitted, impossible, for reasons only a ghost could know?—Joe turned on his heel and jauntily followed his shadow out the door.

Mouse stamped twice, and the floodlights went out. In the sudden dark, his voice asked hopefully, “Good, right?”

Diana reached, going past him, and patted what she thought was his chest. “Great, Mouse. Just wonderful. Perfect, even.”

She knew the layout, and so didn't have any trouble finding her way around the angle to the kitchen in the dark. As she stubbed her toes against the chair, Vincent's low voice was saying thickly, “Thank you, Kristopher.”

Diana grabbed onto his arm, the one he'd hurt but it couldn't be helped, it was the one she could reach right now from where she was. He didn't move. She guessed he was afraid of misjudging any answering grasp and maybe crushing her hand.

He said, “We will not speak of this.”

“Anything you say, babe. Anything at all.” Still hanging on, she settled down by the side of his chair and just stayed there until the shaking went away.

Stumbling by, reeling in wire, Mouse asked, “Okay, Vincent?”

“Better than good, Mouse,” Vincent replied dully. “Leave the generator and the lights for now. Father must be told: there will be no need to evacuate. Send word at once, on the pipes. And help Brooke and Jamie getting home. There are some climbs....”

“See to it, sure,” Mouse assured him and found the servants' stair mostly by loudly falling a good way down it. His voice called up, “Okay, going, right now, going....”

After a long time and as if resuming a conversation, Vincent commented, “After all, it is nothing I did not already know. She is lost to me. She loves her son. And she wishes you well. I knew that. No need of words, between us, anymore....” His right hand came over and closed, very carefully, around Diana's wrist.

For a long time after that, Diana said nothing, content to sit in the dark and be completely still and maintain that contact. What she finally found herself saying was, “Does he snore?”

“What?”

“Kristopher: does he snore? Because that would kill it, right there. There's nothing worth that. Not even five hundred a month.”

Vincent sighed. “Is that a great deal?”

“Sure, it's a great— Oh, you mean, is it a lot to pay,” Diana translated for herself hastily, having momentarily tripped on the ambiguities between slang and formality. “No, it's next to nothing. So: does he snore?”

“I have no idea whatever of Kristopher's personal habits. I gather he's clean, except for the occasional painting in progress. Obviously... obviously, he's loyal. And resourceful. I myself know that. Certainly unobtrusive. I know nothing whatever against him, unless the prospect of sharing a loft with a ghost offends you in principle.”

“If he doesn't bother me, I won't bother him,” Diana decided, already calculating where the furniture she still had to buy was going to go, and who she was going to get to carry it, up all those stairs.

Moves

As Diana finished puffing up the stairs of her new loft early Tuesday morning, she stood staring. The long room was utterly empty. All the junk was gone.

“What, have the brownies paid me a visit?” she wondered out loud. “Or did I get burglarized before I even got a chance to move in?”

“This loft,” said a man's voice unexpectedly, and Cullen leaned away from a wall to her right, “has been officially declared a salvage site. Open for the pickings. Us brownies work fast.”

He grinned at her. She grinned back, then turned to stare again. “I guess so.” She started walking down the long, bare room. “God, even that clapped-out refrigerator—”

A sudden piercing whine, very loud. Diana smacked both hands over her ears, then made out Mouse crouched over a drill, boring holes in her floor. Cullen moved past her and nudged Mouse a couple of times. The noise quit.

“What?” Mouse demanded, very loud.

Cullen pointed significantly at his own ears, and Mouse looked puzzled, then understood and pulled out whatever he'd been using for earplugs. In the process, he noticed Diana standing there, and grinned his usual warm-hearted, slightly goofy grin. “Hi, Diana! Thanks for the refrigerator! Good motor, lots of good, soft steel to make sheathing, heavy wheels, hinges, tubing—”

“Yeah, Mouse, enough,” said Cullen, interrupting what promised to be an endless list of valuable salvageable parts. “How about you quit that now and finish the threshold door.”

“Almost done,” Mouse argued. “Seven holes, three to go.”

“Later, Mouse. Too noisy.”

“Is noisy,” Mouse admitted, regarding the drill fondly. “But only three more holes to go, Cullen...?”

“Later,” Cullen responded firmly.

“Okay, good: later. Everybody complains I never finish, but later, OK, later.” Withdrawing the drill from the hole, Mouse bent to blow out sawdust, then began a systematic fullscale procedure of unplugging, unchocking the bit, and storing the various parts of the drill in a metal toolbox.

“Us brownies are tidy, too,” Cullen commented, drawing Diana away a few steps as Mouse trudged by, trailing drill-cord. “Never leave tools laying around.”

“So what's with the holes?”

“Place this size, it needs partitioning,” Cullen said, scanning back and forth, and he was right, it was true: empty, the place did look about the size of a skinny football field. “Civilization, that's divisions, names, borders. Settle the wasteland. Own it, make it yours.” Catching Diana's amused glance, Cullen held up hands sheathed in fingerless gloves. “I'm not quoting Father or anybody, I swear. Ex-encyclopedia salesmen are allowed to philosophize too. But that's what the tunnels are, after all: except for building places, naming places, it's just a big, long, complicated hole in the ground. Instead, there's the Great Hall, and Father's study, and the Outlook, and the Long Stair.”

Diana smiled, touched by his earnestness. “That's either geography or poetry.”

“Sure: the tunnels are that, too.” Still holding her elbow, he started walking her along the lefthand wall. “First, the kitchen. Then your room back here on the window side, right? Close to the bathroom, where else? And away from the only entry, away from the stairs. Private space. So we got partitions here and here, maybe glass block, let in some light?”

“Sure, I like glass block. Or did you know that?”

Cullen looked away, down the room. “Yeah,” he admitted in an oddly flat voice. “I asked Vincent. What your old place looked like.” More briskly, he continued, “And you do a lot of work on a computer, right? Right. Well, skylights are just fine, but that light's gonna drive you blind and crazy without some protection. So along here, where you got lots of outlets and a phone jack comes in, this is your office, ten by twenty. Fix you up some bookcases, shelves the right height, enclosed on three sides but open on the front so you don't start feeling like you're shut in a box—”

“When I'm working, I honestly don't notice stuff like that.”

Cullen looked at her a minute, smiled, shrugged. “As easy to do the thing right as wrong, at this point. And the holes are already drilled....”

“Okay, no argument. You win. That's gonna take lumber, though— where's that coming from?”

“Lumber, I can get. I know a fella, barter work with him on and off for what we need, Below. The glass block, though, and some tools, that you're gonna have to buy. I can give you a list...?”

“Hell with that,” Diana said, and began poking in her bag. “What'll it take—a couple, three hundred? Five? Okay, so I give you three, it's all I got on me, let you get started, anyhow. I'll get you the rest later.”

She held out the wad of bills, but he didn't take the money right away. She looked him a question, but whatever his reluctance was, he didn't want to talk about it, merely took the money and quickly stuffed it in a vest pocket as if afraid somebody might catch them at it, or as if doing it fast made it all right.

“And back here,” Cullen continued, moving on into the middle of the room, “that's living area, whatever you want to call it. Leave this all open, lots of space, lots of light, right? Keep the furniture low, too—heavy, solid; and dark, solid colors. Don't try to argue with that great ceiling: cathedral, isn't that what they call it? Yeah, cathedral. I never had any training in architecture, interior design, but I read a lot of books. And living Below, you get a lot of respect for space, light....”

He seemed to want reassurance that she had confidence in him, in all the planning he'd done without consulting her. She patted his arm and smiled at him. “It all sounds great so far. I'm the sort of person, I like to eat, hate to cook. Like to live a certain way, don't know a whole lot about how to get it so I'll like it. Doesn't sound as if I'll need to, you got it all figured out for me. I'll just trust you, okay? So what else you got cooked up? What's going back here?”

She turned, and he had a peculiar expression on his face, like trying to swallow a smile. He said, “Kristopher's easel...?” as if the whole idea tickled the hell out of him.

They traded a long look. Then they both burst out laughing.

“Sure: the easel,” Diana said. “First thing you'll see when you come up the stairs: that I share a loft with a ghost who paints.”

“No, no, give the poor spook some privacy.” Cullen warily looked around—at the ceiling, at empty air. “You there, spook? Nope, guess not. Anyhow, some kind of screen, good light, a few cupboards and shelves ought to make him happy. And if he isn't, I kind of think you'll know about it.”

“I kind of think I will. God, how weird! First time I was invited Below, for Jacob's Naming Ceremony, all I could think about was Alice in Wonderland. I didn't begin to know then how crazy things really were gonna get.”

“Yeah, I remember that,” Cullen said. “Father'd seen you, Jamie'd seen you, seemed like damn near everybody, but all I could find out was that you had red hair. And then...and then I got to see for myself. No, don't,” he said as, embarrassed by mention of her awful, carroty hair, she turned and yanked at the braid she'd drawn it into, sort of trying to hide it. “No, it's great hair. You ought to wear it loose....”

“No, this is enough. Enough to poke people in the eye with a sharp stick—I don't have to twist it, too.”

She was touchy enough about her awful hair to refuse to cut it or dye it some less violent shade, challenging anybody to say word one about it. But somehow Cullen's comment didn't make her mad. Instead, she felt awkward, shy about it, like being praised for a limp, or a really big wart.

Thumping started up from the bottom of the stairs. First came the top of a tall ladder; then Jamie, and Mouse behind, carrying it. Cullen took the ladder away from them before it could swat a blade of one of the big paddle fans and took it over by the windows.

“Hi, Diana,” said Jamie, brushing at sweaty, straight bangs, watching Cullen and Mouse open and brace the ladder. “It was some fun, getting that around the turns. The threshold shaft's wide enough now to let me shove the ladder up through, but not wide enough for me: I had to go clear back to the next junction, then come back.”

All quite matter-of-fact, as though work undertaken for Diana was no different than any normal job Below. Diana put an arm around the girl's shoulders for a quick hug, and Jamie glanced up at her, pleased but uncertain what she was being hugged for.

“That's for being a great kid. It's worth getting burned out, to find I got friends like this.”

“It's for Vincent, too. We like him, he likes you, so.” Jamie shrugged, as if the conclusion was obvious. “And there's never a whole lot you can actually do for Vincent, even when you want to, you know?”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Not that we don't like you too,” Jamie added hastily, fearing to be misunderstood. “But Vincent, he's....”

“Special. Sure, I know. Do I ever.”

Jamie smiled, a slow smile that warmed as it grew. She was really a pretty kid, Diana thought. And not an ounce of fluff about her.

“What's your chore?” Diana asked, and Jamie waved upward.

“Clean the windows, then get started on the floors. Oops—got to go back for the pails.”

As Jamie wheeled, Diana kept hold of her arm, so that they swung once around together. “Hold on, hold on. Hey, everybody? I tell you what: how about if I help Jamie get the windows done, then we all break for lunch, my treat. I got to check in with my office, but I can phone, for today— I got a week's personal emergency leave here. And afterward, Mouse can finish his damn noisy holes while we go shop for furniture. Solid. Low. Dark colors, that won't fight with the ceiling. Cheap. Cullen, you got the time to help me choose out some stuff like that, tell good from bad?”

And Cullen smiled a smile like Jamie's, as if Diana was the one doing him the favor. “Surest thing you know, lady. You absolutely got yourself a deal.”

As Diana and Jamie began clattering down the stairs, Jamie commented over her shoulder, “That's a real great place. I never saw anything like it. And it's just for you?”

“And any friends I can con into coming to visit me. Like you, for instance. And the odd ghost.”

“Really? I can come?”

“If you don't, I'll come Below after you, and don't think I wouldn't, either.”

Jamie thought that was funny. “You'd get lost in two seconds!”

“Then I got to get somebody to show me the way, now don't I? You know anybody who could do that?”

“I could do that.... If you wanted.”

“You got yourself a deal.”

*****

Furniture shopping was hilarious, educational, and impressive: Cullen took charge. Systematically going from one junk shop to the next along the five-block stretch of the Village called “Secondhand Row,” with Jamie and Diana as admiring audience, he distinguished the good stuff (generally old) from the trash (mostly new). Wrestling pieces upside down to inspect the frames, he pointed out what hopeless-looking old wreck of a chair was fixable, needing no more than a couple new pegs, regluing, or some fresh fabric or a throw, and expressed contempt for factory-made joints and upholstery with raw, thready edges showing underneath instead of proper seams. Bandying about words like Stickley, Grand Rapids, and mission oak, he got into long, incomprehensible discussions with the stores' proprietors, who seemed first disconcerted, then hostile, then, finally, grudgingly, friendly to find themselves confronted by somebody who really did know good from bad and yet insisted that the good was worth only a fraction of the already absurdly low asking price.

Cullen's unvarying excuse was that the piece in question “needed a lot of work” that he, unlike most potential customers, was ready and able to supply. It was, Diana thought, a pleasure to watch a real pro at work.

Within two hours, SOLD stickers had been slapped on a slightly warped, round, pedestal-supported, dark oak table practically big enough to skate on; two matching upright chests Cullen called “armoires”; a long, carved bench and two twelve-foot sections of church rail (”Just have Mouse drill some more holes, peg it right in”); five Windsor chairs with lovely turned spindles forming the backs; 15 cabinet doors without cabinets (”I can make you better than you can buy”); a pair of huge, squatty armchairs—removable cushions in scooplike solid wood frames (”Look at that: bolted and cross-strapped. That's not gonna fall apart on you”); a roll-top desk (”Don't worry about the broken slats, fix that in five minutes”) with a wonderful assortment of drawers, cubbyholes, and slots, and all solid brass pulls; and a chest of drawers (”Blond mahogany, Art Deco, thirties stuff: nobody will touch blond mahogany any more, practically giving it away”).

Once, Cullen actually consulted her: “What's your budget here?” muttered while looking away, as if they were cons in a prison movie.

“I still got the insurance money coming,” Diana whispered. “But I also got to eat, once in awhile. Depends on what it is.”

“You see that sideboard?” Pointing just with his chin at a long half-visible shape with a pile of sprung wickerwork on top. “Honduras mahogany, Jos. Williams & Co. of Boston, 1840, absolutely no later than 1862 because the firm went bust on account of supply problems during the Civil War. Gorgeous piece, beautiful joinery, everything mitred, dovetailed. Not a butt-joint anyplace in it, even the drawers. All original hardware. Doesn't even need stripping, be a crime to strip it, you'd raise the grain. It's earned every nick, and that kind of varnish gets that way, over time. Just like a patina. Refinish it and you'd lose the authenticity. Worth a bundle. Guy doesn't know what he's got.”

“How much?”

“He's talking five fifty. Think I can get him down to four.”

“Do I need a sideboard?”

“You need that sideboard. Worth buying, even to resell—eight, ten times the price, just in the turnaround.” Hunkered down on his heels, Cullen looked around: hopeful, disarming. “Come on: Kristopher's gonna love it, great old piece like that. You gonna do your roommate out of a genuine antique?”

Jamie giggled.

While Diana tried to make up her mind, Cullen pushed, “You gonna let a certified national treasure get away from you? Piece of history? Hey, you gonna trust me or not?”

Diana sighed and made a wry, resigned face. “Lucky I never ran into you when you were selling encyclopedias. I'd be stuck with the calf bindings and gold leaf edition, and all the supplements through 2010. He take credit cards?” She started to dig in her bag, but Cullen's hand landed on hers—something between a pat and a slap.

“No, no, no, never look eager. Got to let the man talk us into it, drag us into accepting four hundred.”

Rising, he started dickering for the rotten-looking wickerwork, that nobody wanted, to have an excuse to haul it off and “discover” the sideboard, that he eventually conceded maybe might be useful, cut up with a chain saw into a pair of end tables.

The final price was $350. Cullen positively glowed, but nothing showing, except for the deepening of the lines around his eyes and the exuberant bounce in the way he moved, sidling back toward them through the heaps of furniture. You'd have to know him to tell.

Diana and Jamie got up from the broken-backed couch where they'd been waiting and watching. Diana mentioned, “I still need a couch.”

“Oh, you got one, didn't I say? Guy two places back threw it in as a bonus if I'd take that great church rail off his hands. Got a trundle underneath, pull-out hinges busted, but who cares? Solid support for the frame, cushions never go sprung on you. You could do anything on that couch.”

Cullen's eyebrows did a Groucho Marx wiggle, and he waved an imaginary cigar. Jamie giggled some more. Rubbing his hands briskly together, he added, “Ain't this fun? Great sideboard: you won't be sorry. Now: what'd you have in mind for a bed?”

Diana felt herself blushing, though the question was perfectly straightforward and there was nothing at all suggestive in Cullen's calmly inquiring expression. And she was sort of mad and sort of uncomfortable: she never blushed, she came out all in patches and spots, like a disease of embarrassment.

“Something with posters?” Cullen prompted, as though he hadn't noticed. “Or a canopy? The kind that just slowly slides down in the middle of the night and smothers you while you're asleep?” His hands mimed the descent of the fatal canopy, and Diana had to laugh, the bad moment past.

“I can tell we watched the same awful movies,” she commented.

“Yeah.” His quizzical eyes were very quiet, sympathetic.

“I thought,” Diana said hesitantly, “one of those futon-things, that go on the floor, or in a frame...?”

“Not a water bed?” Cullen responded, all innocence, and Diana knew they both had instantly started imagining what a certain set of very sharp claws would almost certainly do to a water bed. She started blushing again. This time, though, she shoved him, and he collapsed back onto the facing couch, clutching his heart and declaring that the injury would surely be mortal.

“You clown,” Diana accused fondly, hands on hips.

“At your service.” Cullen bounced up, so that he could make an elaborate bow.

As they left the store, walking together along the windy sidewalk, Diana started tallying up all they'd bought, wondering how she was ever going to get it all to the loft. Home.

“Oh, don't worry about that,” Cullen assured her. “Five minutes on the phone is all I need. I know a fella with a van. Big van. And two good-sized sons, all helpers. You and Jamie go shop for a futon, you don't need some guy watching you try them out, right? And you're talking retail there: no dickering allowed. And by the time you get back, the brownies will have taken care of everything.” Reacting to Diana's incredulous expression, Cullen put on a hurt look. “Would I lie to you?”

“Clown,” Diana said again.

This time, he didn't comment, just stopped and let them walk on and leave him behind, waving as he turned to head down the street in the other direction. A minute later, Diana spotted him expertly jaywalking through the traffic, exchanging graphic insults with passing drivers who had to brake to avoid killing him, and arriving safe on opposite side of the street.

And it occurred to her that she would never see Vincent do any of those things. Or any of what she'd been watching Cullen do, with such zest, for the past two or three hours. The reflection wasn't particularly sad, but it made her thoughtful.

Striding along beside her, Jamie looked up and confided, “I think Cullen likes you.”

And that made Diana more thoughtful. “I think maybe you're right.”

“I like you too,” Jamie commented. “But that's not the same, is it? Like, Mouse likes me, but he doesn't like me, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah. I guess I do. And what do you think about it, hey?” Diana punched Jamie lightly in the shoulder. “You want him to like you?”

The teenager shrugged. “Sometimes. When you grew up together, it's kind of hard to change, you know? Sometimes I just like it that we can do things together, no hassle, no complications.”

“Yeah— complications.”

“Now Brooke, she's different. Itching to get her hands on a baby every minute, loves taking care of Jacob. Thinks it means Vincent trusts her that much, doesn't think about it at all from Vincent's point of view. But I know if he doesn't keep Jacob with him anymore, just visits, there's something wrong...?”

Meeting Jamie's worried, inquiring look, Diana almost said something about the scare Vincent had given himself by dropping the baby. After all, Jamie was family, you didn't have to be so careful all the time with family. But she found she couldn't. Not for any reason she could name, not because she didn't trust Jamie or didn't think Vincent trusted her. She couldn't, simply because she couldn't.

She said, “I guess he's busy right now, hates to leave Jacob alone all that while, nobody watching him. Maybe he's got too much other stuff on his mind.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Jamie kicked a squashed soda can into the gutter. “Anniversary's coming up. That's going to be hard for him this year.” She glanced around to see if Diana understood.

“Yeah. I know. Well, we'll just have to look out for him extra hard then, won't we?”

“He doesn't let you do that, much. I wish—”

After a minute, Diana nudged, “What?”

“Oh, nothing. Hey, you really want me to visit sometimes maybe, when your place is all fixed? I'd help you clean, wash stuff, anything you need doing...?”

Diana hugged her, and held on afterward. “Honey, don't ever think you have to pay your way with me. All you have to do is be. I like you. Maybe not like you, but we don't need that kind of complication, now do we? Hard enough, just getting along with men. Start chasing after girls, too, you got nobody left to just be friends with.”

“Yeah,” Jamie agreed, leaning happily close.

*****

Even though they detoured to let Diana look at computers—the City owned her system and would spring for the cost of whatever replacement she chose, as long as it didn't have too many frivolous bells and whistles—and stopped at a nice deli for excellent hot pastrami sandwiches, the moving brownies were still all over the sidewalk when, lugging the rolled futon between them, they rounded the corner onto Bleeker. The brownstone's front door was off its hinges and standing against a lamp post, and a battered blue truck with Giacametti & Son's Haulage crookedly hand-painted on the side was pulled up in front. Stuff was piled all over. Down on hands and knees, Cullen was unbolting the pedestal from the round oak table. The armoires and desk stood waiting to be disassembled too.

Some things apparently wouldn't make the angle between the two doorways; others wouldn't fit into the narrow stair well.

And meanwhile, a constant stream of big, fat Giacamettis came and went. There seemed to be about a dozen of them, all hairy men in white undershirts, with thick caterpillar eyebrows that met across their noses, so that Jamie speculated in a whisper that they were all werewolves.

Figuring what would be most useful, Diana used a street phone to order twenty pizzas with everything and then trotted half a block to a little Vietnamese grocery that at least sold cold beer in brands she'd heard of.

Slowly, the sidewalk and the pizza boxes emptied, and Cullen disappeared upstairs to start putting things back together again. About the same time the streetlight came on, a younger Giacametti tucked the front door under his arm, swung it past them politely, and started resetting it on its hinges, setting the hinge pins with a thump of his fist. Diana and Jamie refolded the futon they'd been sitting on, brushed it pretty well clean, and edged past descending Giacamettis to carry it up the stairs.

The loft was now an empty room with furniture—like a warehouse not picked quite clean. Cullen had the table together—beer cans, empty and full, all over the top—and was working on the second armoire as Diana and Jamie toted the futon to the front and dumped it in the area Cullen had designated as the bedroom to-be.

Diana stood looking around. No stove. No refrigerator. Electric hooked up, but no stereo receiver or TV. But a multitude of small lights winking, shining, coming on, away out above the clean skylights. Maybe, sometimes, she might even see stars.

She decided to sleep here tonight.

“Can I take some of this home with me?” Jamie asked, balancing a stack of pizza boxes with her chin on top. “There's a lot left.”

“Sure. Does Father like pizza?”

Jamie only giggled, heading off toward the stairs.

Diana collected a fresh beer for herself, flopped the cushions into one of the scoop chairs, and sat listening to Cullen swear under his breath, trying to find the right screws and pegs to fasten the armoire's lower shelves into place. It was already too dark to see much but shadows.

“I know what we forgot,” Diana commented after awhile.

“What?”

“Lights. Not a light bulb in the whole damn place.”

“Well, hell: nobody's perfect.” Cullen leaned back, and something thumped on the floor. She heard him moving toward the front of the loft, then the noise of a pop-top coming off a can of beer. Then there was a light: candle. Cullen put it on a saucer from God-knew-where, every vacant apartment seemed to have at least one. He carried it back and put it on the floor while setting the cushions in the other chair. Sitting, leaning back, he commented, “One good thing about hanging around with people who live in a hole in the ground: they always got a candle or two tucked away.... I'll get you some kind of cheap something, lamp, before I go.”

“Don't worry about it. I'm a big girl, I can do without a night light, one night, anyhow.”

Long, companionable silence.

“That was fun,” Cullen remarked eventually. “Amazing what you can do if you got money.”

“Hey, don't think I'm pulling down any thirty bills a month, here.”

“Money,” Cullen said meditatively. “Any money. I guess it's OK, too, making something out of damn near nothing.... But sometimes, unless you start with something good to begin with, it's gonna end up junk and patchwork no matter what you do.”

“I guess it has its hard side, living Below...?”

“Wouldn't be anyplace else. But there's some times, I don't really feel like I was cut out to be a pioneer. Ought to have a wagon, maybe a couple mules, go from one little town to another, selling pans, kettles, mirrors the size of your hand. Beads for the Indians. And then come home and...you know, I've never seen color TV except in a store window? I'll see something, and then say something, and everybody down there will look at me like I'm crazy, like there's nothing worth knowing about except what's Below and stuck in the Stone Age....”

“Not Mouse, though,” Diana suggested.

“No, not Mouse,” Cullen agreed readily. “You know, he's itching to build a laser, got himself a stack of technical manuals yo high, Father's absolutely forbidden him even to try it, and I suppose that's right, but....”

“It gets hard to live with the limits. The same Above as Below. Just different limits, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Cullen said, and finished the beer, because when he set the can down, it sounded hollow, empty. “Speaking of limits. I've been waiting for a good chance to say something, and I think maybe this is it. Some of it...well, will you hear me out?”

“If it's what I kind of think it is, maybe you better not.”

“I appreciate that. But if you've been thinking anything along the same lines, so you could guess what I'd say, then maybe we better. Don't take any account of me, just for yourself, all right? Because I'm pretty damn sure—” Instead of finishing what he'd been going to say, Cullen got up and before Diana was really certain why, she'd been quite soundly kissed.

Cullen sat back on his heels, his face a soft patchwork of shadows, and looked levelly into her eyes. “Now, that wasn't too bad, was it? And I'm pretty damn sure it's been a long while, hasn't it?”

“You think that makes me easy pickings?” Diana shot back, and scrubbed the back of her hand across her remembering mouth.

“I think that makes you about half as lonesome as I am. Because there's been nobody for me since my wife died, before I came to the tunnels. Going on sixteen years. Never anybody I wanted to get that close to. You can live without it. It's not like food, water, that you die for the lack of. But I never forgot what it's like, waking up at night, reaching over, and there's somebody you love there, asleep, warm....”

And the bad thing was that she couldn't feel separate from him, couldn't turn off the liking she felt for him. The other bad thing was that she couldn't, didn't, pretend she hadn't been aware of him that way all day—not quite speculation, merely awareness; and he knew it. The third bad thing was that she couldn't help knowing it wasn't just a come-on, trying to put the right moves on her: he really meant it.

And it had been a long time. It seemed like forever.

While she debated uncertainly within herself, Cullen leaned forward and kissed her again, taking his time, one hand stroking down her arm, that came alive under the touch. And she couldn't have claimed she wasn't kissing him back or really wanted it to stop when, eventually, it did.

They looked at each other. Then he set his hand on hers, on the chair arm, slowly rubbing back and forth with a thumb, so that there never was a second she wasn't aware of him, of the touch.

“It could happen,” he said. “It could be good. Real good.”

She took a deep breath, feeling things twisting inside her that she didn't want twisted, didn't want to feel at all, or not this way. Not now. She said, “There's Vincent....”

“I know that. And I know where the limits are—his, mine, yours. It's all right. I could live with that.”

She scrubbed at an eye, looked away. “I don't know if I could live with that.”

“If you can't, then that's that. But we don't know you can't. Look, I like doing things for you, you already know that. And you're the most classy broad it's ever been my privilege to know. First time I saw you, I knew. Lady Diana, will you accept my hand, or any other part you happen to take a liking to, for as long as you want, as long as it's good for you, and not a minute more?”

“Cullen, I can't. Vincent—”

“You don't have to worry about that. There's hardly anybody I'd like less to be on the outs with than him, and you can believe me absolutely. He won't miss what he doesn't want. And I can get by on the corners and the edges: whatever's left over. I wouldn't say so if I wasn't sure. I've been thinking about this a long while. Before the wedding, even. A long while. Somebody can love two people. I have. Father did. Even Vincent has, in his own weird, polite way.”

“Yeah, sure—but not at the same time!” Then Cullen's last remark sank in, and she couldn't resist asking, “You think he loves me?”

“If you still have to wonder about that, he's even weirder than I thought.”

She didn't comment, suddenly ashamed of having asked. It was none of Cullen's business...unless she let it be. Pained, things still twisting, she blurted, “I can't carve myself up like that, Cullen. I'll walk out on a man, or kick him out...but I'd never cheat on him.”

“Wouldn't be cheating. Nobody to say what's OK for us except us. The three of us. Nobody else's business in the world. Above or Below.”

“Three...you mean he'd know?”

“Course he'd know, no avoiding it. That's why I cleared it with him first. Like I say, I never want to be on the outs—”

Diana shoved herself hard, as far back in the chair as she could go. “You mean you asked him? And he said he didn't care if we screwed each other blind, all very polite, of course? Is that what you're telling me?”

“He said,” Cullen responded patiently, carefully, “that I should ask you. So I am.”

And Cullen wasn't Vincent, to know by touch alone that the heat within her had suddenly changed to a different heat, that her eyes felt as though they were going to melt the sockets any second now. Not Vincent in any way, shape, or form.

“Yeah.” Somehow, her voice still worked. “Well, it's a real compliment, and maybe if we'd met some other way, some other time, it could have been good. But no, Cullen. It's not gonna happen. Does that mean I gotta fix my own shelves?”

Face tight as wax melted hard on a finger, she was trying desperately to pass the thing off easily, with no hard words, because what was boiling in her to be spoken wasn't for Cullen. She wanted to keep it tight to herself until she got hold of Vincent.

Straightening, Cullen looked around the loft. “Of course not,” he said quietly. “It wasn't a bribe then, and it's not a bargain now. I told you: I like doing things for you. And if you want, I won't ever bring this up again. I'm not some dumb kid, gonna drag around in my own private cloud, trying to make you feel guilty, until you can't stand the sight of me and wish I'd have the basic smarts to get out of your sight. I want us to be friends, stay friends. There aren't enough friends in the world, either, that I can afford to lose even one.”

“Sure. We're both grown-ups, we can handle it.... Cullen, do me a favor?”

“Anything. Anytime.”

“Let me walk back with you, just till I come to someplace I know, get my bearings. That'll be enough.”

“Be a pleasure.” He bent and blew the candle out.

Stumbling down the stairs, Diana had stopped thinking. She just knew that she had to keep enough control to get there, until she could get on with the urgent business of having his goddam furry hide off in strips.

*****

Having shed Cullen's company at the Mirror Pool, the first landmark she recognized, Diana made the straightest possible line to the cluster called either the Home Chambers or the Hub, systematically checking off turnings and junctions, holes in the rock that were doors to where somebody lived.

No trouble seeing: fat candles every few yards, standing on small ledges or stuck into sconces hitched to the tunnel walls. She went from fire to fire with the unexamined sense that she collected each flame into herself: the larger interior blaze sucking in the smaller sparks and leaving the way behind her dark. She didn't turn back to look. She looked only ahead.

Vincent's chamber: empty. But his cloak tossed over the back of his big chair. So he hadn't gone Above, was around down here someplace. Check.

Out again, left, straight, and right: the opening of Father's study. Voices inside, and a comment in that voice. She made the final turn almost at a run and charged down the metal steps. Her eyes caught Vincent in the act of rising from a chair—left arm out of the sling because he was holding Jacob, and that was all that kept her from hurling herself directly at him like an immense stone rumbling with its own momentum. Instead, she shoved aside another chair that was in the way, then stood holding its back, swaying with the suddenly arrested motion.

“How dare you? How goddam dare you? You figure if you send enough of your friends to service me, that lets you out of it, gets you off the hook? God damn you, Vincent, there's a name for that, and what does that make you? And what does that make me?”

Brooke was there, because Vincent handed Jacob over to the girl with deliberate care. And Mary was there, because Vincent passed the little woman as he came around the table. Only dimly aware of such peripheral figures, Diana turned and grabbed his bad arm as he went past her. He didn't turn or pause or flinch, just kept moving, towing her stubborn, braced weight as though he didn't even feel it. She was yanked around and then dragged: three staggering steps, four. And the metal steps weren't wide enough for both of them.

For an instant she held on, the butt end of the railing driving into her ribs. Then she was simply scraped off, left holding nothing, bent gasping over the railing, and he was gone.

She shouted after him, “Coward!” and then locked her hands tighter around the railing because she had to hold onto something. The pain in her chest seemed so much a part of the moment that she was vaguely surprised when merely pushing back made it ease.

“Diana....” Father's voice: at once uncomfortable and stern.

She turned, and saw them all staring, and so the hell with it, she'd made a scene, big deal. She was still too full of rage to cry, by God she wasn't going to do that, wasn't going to let Vincent do that to her.

Brooke scuttled by with the baby, who was beginning to howl; sure, keep the baby safe at all costs from this crazy woman.

And Mary said, “Father, I think I'll just....” as a prelude to scurrying out a door hole away on the other side of the room, past a spoked steering wheel from an old ship, the kind with masts, stuck bizarrely on a post poking out of the floor. Or maybe that was the way Father steered everything, kept the tunnel community on something like the course he'd set and off whatever rocks he sighted in its passage through the years.

Standing on the far side of his desk, Father said again, “Diana....”

“The hell with all of you.” She yanked herself around the railing, started up the stairs, to go after Vincent.

Father's voice stopped her: “You can't do it that way. No one Below could force him to come unless he were willing; or prevent him from leaving if he chose to go. No one. Not even myself. I long ago had to accept that one cannot force Vincent to do, or refrain from doing, anything. One must win, and maintain, his consent. There is no other way.”

And she knew that was true, he was right. Vincent had just made that as plain as it ever needed to get. Probably not even a twelve-gauge shotgun would have made the slightest difference. At least right away.

She stood with her back to the room, her upper body twisted to lean crookedly against the railing.

Father's voice went on, “It's plain that something dreadful has happened between you. Perhaps if I understood better, I could help. I would like to help. Will you tell me what's wrong?”

Diana slowly twisted farther, looking back, and saw no fit target for her anger. Father stood looking up at her perfectly calmly, except for the concern plain in his eyes. Not taking sides, not blaming her for making such a godawful scene that his hulking coward of a son wouldn't even face her, wouldn't do anything except run.

Father: all scraps and ties and patchwork clothes, brisk dark hair already more than half gray, beard and hair only as neatly trimmed as scissors and his own patience would allow. Arms swathed in at least three kinds of cloth and laced around with laces, as though they were outsize sausages in danger of escaping their casings. Snip-glove hands leaving the desktop, reaching for his crooked shillelagh of a stick, that rested against one of the innumerable stacks of books, piled everywhere, each stack almost as high as his head, as though they were somehow his measure, that they were tall but he was taller. And yet no great height, not like his alien son: standing level, she would still have been looking down into his eyes.

Diana wondered how it was that she'd never seen him so plain before.

And she thought: But he's not MY father! as though that were something he was either guilty of, or innocent of— she didn't know which.

Father said, “I have, from time to time, been as angry with

him as that myself, although perhaps I expressed my displeasure in less colorful language. But he will not tolerate a public confrontation, under the scrutiny of others. Not even ours. I gather that the impact of our reactions, added to whatever emotions are implicit in the dispute itself, becomes quite literally unbearable for him. An overload. Beyond what he can endure or control. One must go roundabout, choose circumstances in which a degree of privacy is possible—”

“Roundabout, hell!” Diana blurted fiercely. “The man doesn't live I'll tiptoe around that way. He can stand and fight like the rest of us.”

“And if he will not? Cannot? For one can never afford to quite forget that he is not precisely ‘like the rest of us'.... Or forget the fact that he must ‘tiptoe' around those differences in himself, in ways none of the rest of us can ever fully know....”

Diana's head drooped, because that was certainly true: Father was right again.

Father continued, “Won't you try to tell me what's happened? I gather it's sexual, and therefore an uncomfortable topic to take up with a comparative stranger. But am I still, after all these months, to be considered on that footing? Come, sit down. Have a cup of tea, until you're calmer, and tell me—”

“I don't want to get calmer, and I don't want your damn stinking tea. And I can't.” Diana looked across at him again, and his image blurred and swam. “I want to. But I can't. And I can't tell you why because I don't know. I just can't. And I can't call you Father, either. Chokes me right up, every time I do it.” She scrubbed at her hot, downcast eyes. “I gotta talk to him. And he's gotta talk to me. Now. Gotta tell him so. The pipe chamber. Don't know how to get there. Could you ask somebody to maybe show me the way?”

“I'll show you myself.” Limping more heavily than usual, Father came across the room and waved her up the stairs ahead of him.

She'd heard about the pipe chamber, never been there before. And Pascal was mostly a name to her, attached to a vague, brief memory of jug ears and an intense abstraction like Mouse's, when Mouse was working on something. Or like Vincent's, intent on a game of checkers. Or on anything.

Life Below, she thought, tended to permit and even encourage that kind of absolute focus, the process of becoming one thing, one set of possibilities, a role, a function, rather than a person with all the messiness and contradictions that were generally part of the package. So far Jamie, and Cullen too, were the only ones she'd noticed who seemed to have pretty much dodged or escaped that narrowing process; but Jamie was still young, and Cullen had lived most of his life topside and come Below only as a grown man. It was hard to change, hard to make yourself change even if you wanted to, by that time: after fifteen years, Cullen plainly still hadn't altogether managed to fit in, feel that he wholly belonged....

On Pascal's own ground, Father greeted Pascal first, she noticed automatically. So it was a territorial thing too, not just status. More complex than she'd realized.

“You know Diana,” Father continued, and the little bat-eared man nodded and greeted her by her name.

“Pascal,” she responded politely.

Father explained, “Diana needs to communicate with Vincent, and we're not precisely sure where he may be. Still, probably, within sound of the pipes, at this point.”

“I'm going,” Diana said slowly, thinking it out, “back toward my old place, that burned. I know the way. He... he better meet me there. That's the message. And I want to know he's heard it.”

She didn't think she could get Vincent onto her own ground, her new loft, that wasn't really hers yet anyhow, although today, she'd made a start on claiming it: naming spaces, establishing the boundaries, as Cullen had said. The way back to her burned building, the way along which Vincent had escorted her so many times, was as close to a place Below over which she could claim authority as she was likely to come. He'd owed her courtesy there, and protection, and guidance. Now, he damn well owed her some answers and an industrial-strength apology. Still his ground more than hers, but it was the best she could think of. And what she'd do if he didn't come, refused the summons, she couldn't even begin thinking about. If it came to that, if it ended like that, she'd deal with it however and whenever she had to.

They stood waiting a long time. She looked down from the sort-of balcony where they stood to all the rows and rows of pipes below— like peering into some huge boiler room or factory—and wondered how Pascal could get at all the pipes down there, to transmit and receive messages. Maybe the hundreds up here were the main river, and the thousands below were the branches spreading out: she'd heard mention of “the master pipes”....

She didn't hear anything, but Pascal did. He banged out a short, stuttering series on a pipe diagonally above and to his left, then turned. “He's down near the Outlook. He acknowledged. That was all.”

Diana nodded.

Father asked her, “You're sure you know the way?”

“From the Hub, yeah.”

“Then we'll go back, and you can find your own path from there. If you find yourself gone awry, signal on the nearest pipe. I'll have someone come to guide you.”

“Don't bother,” Diana responded. If she got lost, if Vincent didn't come, she didn't care whether she ever found her way out of the dark again or not.

*****

Father had insisted on giving her a lantern and a hand-length piece of pipe to carry, either for signaling or bludgeoning into submission any stray rats or muggers she might meet, she didn't know or care.

Vincent had a lantern too. First, just a point of light; then his unmoving figure, small with distance, down a long straight section of tunnel. To Diana, the approach felt like being a bullet moving slowly along the inside of a rifle barrel.

Arriving first and waiting, he'd put his lantern on the tunnel floor and was sitting beside it, one leg tucked under, the other in front of him and bent at the knee, a familiar pose.

In the time it'd taken her to come from the Hub, Diana's rage had already started to cool into hurt. Trudging down the long tunnel toward what was undoubtedly going to be a very ugly meeting, she began to feel almost as scared as angry, wishing the confrontation could be avoided. She wondered if he'd planned it that way: dodged out to give her time to get cold feet. She might have chosen the war, but he'd chosen the time and the battlefield. And he was such a damn good strategist, he'd recognize any possible advantage, and take it, almost without having to think about it.

When the light-circles from the two lanterns touched and fused, he didn't greet her, didn't move, except to look at her.

That was mad.

He said, “You have humiliated yourself and me in front of my family. That is intolerable. If you ever do so again, I will not know you. You wished me to come. I am here.”

Not an inch of give or apology in any of it. She'd never seen him this mad—not at her, at any rate— as if the only injury worth considering was his. Another piece of strategy: already, she felt on the defensive. But that didn't signify he didn't mean every word. The afternoon she'd taught him poker had made her know one thing: he never bluffed, and he couldn't be bluffed. That pretty much shot poker, right there.

Chess was his game; or, failing that, checkers: where intentions and attitudes mattered only as made actual, concrete, by moves of pieces against one another across a board.

He was just about killing mad, and sitting to resist the impulse to whack her down. It was in his eyes, gone so dark, staring up at her. It was in the tension of his hands, locked around his bent knee—the tendons standing out like cords under the fur.

Well, she wasn't bluffing either, and wasn't about to back off.

“You gave Cullen permission to be my backdoor man. What, do you figure to pass me around among your forty closest friends? Mouse? Father? I bet they could use a good lay—”

The bluntness got him, or the image it called up in his mind, or her rekindling fury. He looked aside. “No. And you do not believe that.”

“I don't know what to believe, babe. I've known a few men, but I never had one pimp for me before, without my even asking him to. This is all new to me. Maybe you should tell me about it, how you do things like this down Below. I'm just a damn topsider, don't know your customs all that well. For all I know, this is going on all the time, down here. There's barter, and then there's barter. Some tribes sell furs, others sell their women. Or rent them. Lena was a hooker, right?— still is, for all I know, that bitch. What, did she give lessons? People gotta live, isn't that so? And the world survives, right?”

“This is not about Lena, or about the world Below. It is about you, and me.”

“And Cullen, apparently. The happy threesome. So tell me: was this just gonna be a special surprise for me, so I'd shut up and finally quit trying to haul you into bed, leave you alone, so we could stay just good friends, like we never were and never will be till the stars play banjos and the moon turns green? Shall we talk some nice friendship crap, and how you're so scared you're gonna break me in two if we so much as hug? How you're so scared you'll hurt me?

“Well goddam it, you're doing a real fine job already, no blood, even, and you can take it from somebody who knows, sex is a whole lot more fun than this, babe. If this is how you think people go about it, you're even more goddam ignorant than I thought. It's not trying to think up new ways to make each other miserable. If both of you aren't having fun, you just quit: say Fine, nice try, goodbye, and walk away. And unless I get an apology right here, right now, that's exactly what I'm gonna do, and you're on your own, from here on out: you won't need to worry about me any more, because I won't know you.”

“You will get no apology. Because you are wrong.”

Still no give. Flat refusal.

Swinging the lantern, she started pacing back and forth across the width of the tunnel. “Oh, fine: I'm wrong. So explain it to me, babe, and I'll listen. Cullen didn't come to you and ask if it was OK by you if he and I screwed around a little, just every once in awhile, where you didn't have to watch or anything disgusting like that? And you didn't say OK, go ahead, my blessings upon you, my dear old friend? Have I got that wrong?”

“Not the facts, though your account deliberately distorts and parodies them. Only the interpretation.”

“Fine: we're into interpretation now. The footnotes I've been overlooking, in my vulgar concentration on who sleeps, and doesn't sleep, with who. Excuse me, whom.”

“Diana, do not do this.”

She stopped, whirled. The section of pipe was in her hand and for a second they both thought she was going to throw it at him. “Do not do what? Did I ask for this? Did I ask you to hunt up some capable volunteer to help this crazy uncontrollable nymphomaniac get through a few more nights?”

“You never set up shop to be a nun....”

The phrasing didn't sound like his style, and then she recognized it: her own words, from their onscreen dialogues of months ago, about which no word had ever been said aloud before now.

“No,” she said coldly, “I never did. But I can be one if I have to, at least when it comes to the so-called and underpracticed virtue of chastity, if that's the price of keeping what I got. What I thought I had. What I thought meant something to you. Although God knows you never said so, so I actually caught myself asking Cullen—Cullen!— if he thought maybe it was remotely possible you might love me, just slightly, sort of around the edges once in awhile, because it's gotten way too weird for me, babe: I don't know what's going down or what anybody means to anybody, anymore, not since this. Just tell me one thing: would you have done this to Catherine?”

She could see that one hit. He actually flinched.

“No.”

The flat admission came back stronger than anything she'd thrown. It was as if she could feel her life bleeding away inside. That was it. That was the ballgame.

Tossing the section of pipe in no particular direction, she turned and started away. But it was a long, straight tunnel: his resonant voice easily overtook her, though he hadn't raised it and his tone was no more than conversational.

“It is not a hard word for me to say, but a hard one for you to hear, one you have never trusted or sought. Or said, I think. You expect actions to be everything, but the one action you accept as proof, I cannot give you. And the one action you would give, instead of words, I cannot take. I meant not to say it— to leave you free and unencumbered by anything beyond trust, which makes few demands and easily bears partings. But I will say the word, all the same, because I see now that I must and because it is true: I have loved you a long time. I will never stop. I have entrusted to you my life, and my son's life, and the lives and safety of everyone Below who is dear to me, and never had cause to regret it.

“You have never been other than gallant, wise, caring, and indomitable in any trouble, under any threat. You shine like flame on a sword. But I do not love you for reasons, but because I do. Perhaps you will believe me: you know me not to be a man... not to be one who is changeable in his affections.”

It was that telling slip of the tongue, the corrected phrasing, that made her falter, slow, stop. Not anything else, she was certain. That kind of words, the ones that snuck out unintended, those were the only ones she'd ever felt she could really trust. Except the ones that hurt, of course. Those, she believed.

His voice continued, “If it were not so, I would not fear for you as I do. And it would not hurt me so, to know your hurt, your need, that I feel and cannot, dare not, answer as it should be answered.”

She turned back, and she guessed he was still sitting there, just where he'd been. She couldn't see all that well, to be certain. But that was where it was brightest. Anyhow, she went in that direction, because the only other direction possible was away.

She stopped, seeing only a wet golden blur, her lantern dangling. “But not like Catherine.”

“There are never two loves the same,” he responded meditatively. “And they are not the same even while they live. They change, grow, or else they die. They have their own life, their own seasons. Catherine was springtime to me: I, who never knew spring here Below, who never thought spring possible. Who imagined all love to be a gentle thing, a thing of the soul only, because that was all I believed I could hope to offer or to receive, looking as I do, being what I was— a man in nothing but thought, and the faculty of speech, and in my love of the beautiful things which are most human and which it is most human to love.

“And for her part, Catherine learned in our springtime to face her fears of whatever was larger than herself, and powerful, and beyond her control, and capable of doing her hurt; and chief among those fears was me. Always. And I always knew that. And feared it in turn, knowing better than she how much besides gentleness was within me, so that I could no longer tell her fear from mine. Nevertheless, she faced that fear when I could in no way ease or gentle it for her, when no protection at all remained. For her or for me. When I was as little like a man as we both had always feared I might become. And nevertheless she loved me. And embraced all that I then was. And am. And of that embrace and that love came a miracle, a son. And when at last I came to know that, I finally knew myself, despite all appearances, to be irrevocably a man.... I shall never know such a season again.”

His head had been bowed. Now he lifted it, regarding her steadily. “There can yet be honor, Diana, in difference. Difference is not necessarily wrong, or less. It is merely different, and to be cherished and celebrated for being so. I say this. I, in all my difference, say this: I believe I have the right. You need fear no comparison which could diminish you: there is none. Love cannot be weighed against love. Each is immeasurable. Infinite. I do not love you as I did Catherine, for you are not she. Nor am I, anymore, who I was in that springtime. I love you differently, being now different myself, through her gift. It may have seemed to you that we have met in Catherine's shadow. It is not so: we meet, and still abide, in her light.”

Slowly, Diana sat down, not very close, but his arm reached out to gather her in anyway. He had such long arms, and sliding her a few feet across the concrete flooring was no effort at all.

She said softly, “I've never been afraid of you, except when you broke my door that first night: when I could tell you didn't know where the hell you were, you were just trying to get out, wherever out was to you. The Compass Rose, maybe. I knew if I got between you and out, I was gone. And that's the only time. No credit due: I simply wasn't. Never occurred to me.”

“I know. You have never failed to do me the honor of treating me precisely as you would have treated any man. Making no allowances. Seeking, and seeing, the commonalities that underlie the differences.”

“Not any man. Nobody ever got far enough under my skin to hurt me this bad. And you still did to me what you wouldn't have done to Catherine.”

“Between us,” Vincent said, and stopped. Then he turned, leaned, and changed the pressure of his encircling arm until they were looking each other in the face. “Between us, there is no bond. I have not the privilege or the curse of sharing what you feel, when we are apart. So I thought perhaps I might be able to bear it,” he finished simply. “If that was what you wanted. Needed. I would have tried. I did not give you away to Cullen. I told him to ask you. And I would have borne your decision as best I could. I thought.... I knew...that there was warmth there, between you. Affection. Attraction. Reciprocated. Even without a bond, even ignorant as I am of everything between the brute facts and the poetry, I know such things. Whether I choose to, or wish to, or not.”

“Listen, you don't just hop into bed with every man you're attracted to....” She replayed that, listened, rephrased. “I mean, I don't—”

“I know. But if you had chosen to accept him...into intimacy...at least I would not have had to be afraid for you, and would have known that when I could not be with you, someone would be who cared for you and would have tried to keep you safe.... And perhaps I could have lived with that. I would have tried.”

She got her face right up into his, noses touching. “You never, never do anything like that again. You're still thinking like a Doberman, like a damn watchdog, and you got this sacrifice business all blown up into something crazy, like it's something you can do to people, never say, never ask. Next time you get some crazy idea about what you think would do me good, at some horrendous cost to the both of us but I'm not supposed to know that, I'm just supposed to smile and say O thank you Sir! and trip along my merry way like the dumbest bimbo west of Canarsie, the next time that happens, here's what we do: we talk about it. You damn well ask me, and then we decide what's worth it and what's not, and to who. Whom. I don't take your chances for you, and you don't make my choices for me. Not when it comes to us, anyhow. You got that, buster?”

“I told him to ask you,” Vincent reminded her mildly.

“It wasn't Cullen I was supposed to be talking to, about a thing like that. It was you. Cullen's not the one I love.” In spite of herself, she felt stupid and foolish saying it, as though there should be some better way, some other word. But it was a real good word on the hearing end, so maybe it was OK anyhow, no matter how dumb and trite it sounded from her, to herself.... She added, “And I still want an apology.”

Still right up close, he had the gall to blink and think about it. “On one condition.”

“What?” she responded ominously.

“That you... promise to try, at least, to keep whatever arguing needs to be done, between us alone.”

It all seemed a little ridiculous to her now, that fit she'd thrown in Father's study, but she could tell he meant it, really meant it, just the same. She leaned away, more comfortably.

“I promise. To try. But don't let's forget you're talking to a red-headed spud-digger Mick here, daughter of a long line of the same, and more than a few bare-knuckle brawlers in the pack and not all of them men, either; and try doesn't walk much of a straight line between the pub and the churchyard, like my pop always said. I got a temper, and the easiest way will be if you remember that beforehand and don't give me cause.”

Finding that belligerant declaration met by no argument or visible opposition, she added, “And I apologize for embarrassing Brooke and Mary. And Father. And you, assuming what I saw was embarrassment.”

“We will not discuss that,” said Vincent firmly. “I apologize for whatever hurt my decision caused you. I had not realized you might see the matter that way. I am still very ignorant.”

“Inexperienced.”

“Very likely that too.”

“I'll take care of that. Trust me.”

“I do. After my fashion.”

Tucked against his chest, she heard, felt, him chuckle. “What?” she inquired.

“You'd be angry.”

“Tell me anyhow. I promise to listen, and not hit till afterward.”

“I was visualizing the conversation if I'd done as you ask, and told you I would be willing to try to endure it, if you chose to accept Cullen's proposal. And I wondered, if I'd consulted you, would it really have been so very different than it's been? Somehow I cannot see it as a cool, reasoned discussion.”

“You got a point. A definite point. But like I said, that goes with taking up with a redhead. Would have been quicker, anyhow.”

“Perhaps.”

“Now I'll throw you one: if I'd said What a great idea, and Hello Sailor! would you really have been able to put up with it? The truth.”

She assumed the long silence meant he was thinking about it. What he finally said was, “Do you know how it is, when you've been in one position for a long time, how some joints become stiff and you may even lose feeling in a hand or a foot?”

“Yeah, it goes to sleep, but what's that got to do with—”

“And do you know how it feels when the circulation begins to come back?”

“Pins and needles, sure. Hurts like fury.”

“And have you ever wished, just for a time, that you had chosen not to move and not had to suffer the hurt of life returning?”

“Yeah.” She saw where he was going now. “But eventually you gotta move, or you end up with gangrene, atrophy, other nasty stuff like that. You can't not move forever.”

“Yes. Now imagine it's not your hand, or your foot, but your whole body; and everything you feel, everything you know, everything you think of or hope for. Imagine one specific portion of it has been cut off from awareness, separated, numb. Imagine that the lack of sensation has not been any discomfort. Quite accustomed. At the worst, mildly inconvenient at times. But you have made your peace with it, with not feeling as others do. What others do. You think, what is this one small difference, which at least keeps life tolerable, among so many great ones? And you think, perhaps it's dead, and best so. And then, when you first attempt to move, the gangrene and atrophy are only possibilities. Someday things. But the pain is real, and immediate, and there seems to be no natural end to it, no time when it will not be so.”

So it hurt like that, coming alive. Coming awake. She wasn't sure she could imagine it. She wasn't sure she wanted to.

“And lastly,” he said, “imagine that part of the pain is an awareness of hunger that cannot be satisfied, must not be satisfied, until the pain ends and choice becomes possible. Starvation is not particularly painful, after a certain point: it's eating that hurts. And I have thought, what baby, if given a choice, would not remain in the safe dark it has always known, rather than face the pain, the light, and the overwhelming terrors and strangeness of birth? It is no wonder its first act is to cry out in protest. That thought is not original to me. But I believe no one has felt it as I have. As I do.... And as to your question: I don't know if I could have borne it. I don't think so. I could only have tried. For your sake.”

She shook her head, pulling closer yet, choked up all over again. “Nothing's worth that, babe. There's nothing could ever be worth that.”

He tipped his head, looking down at her curiously. “Why is it, that you like to call me that?”

“What: babe? I don't know, I always....” She shoved her braid back, rubbed her nose, suddenly embarrassed. But she wouldn't dodge the answer. “It's what I got in the habit of calling whoever I cared most about, right then.”

“You have called others so?”

“Yes. A few. Yes.”

“There is an appropriateness to it. I accept it. I am trying to accept the prospect of being born. If it comes to be, it will be a very great miracle. Miracles are always worth everything. And love is always a miracle. Don't you think so?”

“I don't know a damn thing about it, babe. I guess I'm trying to learn how to be born too.”

“One does not learn it. It merely is. It happens, in its own time. The only choice is to accept it or to turn away.”

Watching how his eyes looked as he said that, so certain, wide-open, and infinitely calm, she couldn't find any answer worth making. Maybe caterpillars' eyes were like that, contemplating rumors of butterflies.

Those were the eyes that could read a line like For Everything that Lives Is Holy and know what it meant and believe it. For herself, she couldn't see it. But that minute, she could see him seeing it.

When she got a chance, she thought, she'd have another try at reading Blake. Or, better, get Vincent to read some to her. Then maybe she could begin to understand.

A long quiet while after that, she said soberly, “I want you to promise me something.”

“If I can. Of course.”

“Come to my place, on the twelfth. My new place. Don't wait till then, come when you want in the meantime.... But come then, that night. For the anniversary.... After the fire, you said you needed to know I was in one piece, and where I was, and that I was safe. You had to know it, for yourself. Now I need that same thing. For myself. Will you come?”

“I promise.” Releasing her, he moved, starting to get up. Then he froze, settled back. “It's hard to replace the sling, and my shoulder aches. Will you—”

Before he could even finish the question, she'd turned and started helping him ease his left arm into the support. Then she fastened the buckles she could tell would be hard to manage, one-handed.

“Better?” she asked.

“It will be. Presently.” He finished getting up, then held his right hand down to her. “Come: let me show you the way home.” With his only good hand occupied, he left his lantern to light the dark behind them.

“And come in, a few minutes? See all the stuff we found today? The antique sideboard? The great couch?” Falling into step, she added inducements: “No bad climb, only a few staples going up: the shaft Mouse drove through from the level below to the basement threshold, that cuts out the stretch where you practically had to crawl.... And then the stairs...? Oh, damn: no lights.”

“I believe I can manage, nevertheless. I see very well in what others say is darkness. There is your lantern. And I also have candles.”

She looked down, and sure enough, there was a lantern hanging from her fist. Real dumb, but she'd never have thought to connect it with anything topside, realize it'd work just as well there too. Her contexts, she thought, were way too narrow. Getting as bad as the rest of them down here. Have to do something about that: entertain some new possibilities.

“Yeah. Then that's OK, I guess,” she said. “One good thing about hanging around with people who live in a hole in the ground is that they always got a candle or two tucked away.”

“You find that amusing. Why?”

It wasn't the fact, but who'd said it—Cullen—and that she was repeating it to Vincent, who didn't know the source. She found herself thinking about another fact—what neither she nor Cullen had quite said, about the hazards of water beds—and saw Vincent's inquiring expression grow more plainly quizzical. She decided she didn't want to explain that connection to him either. “Sometime, I just might tell you. Maybe when I know you a little better. Maybe when we're born.”

“That could be a long time.”

“I got time. I got nothing else. Something else. A lot else. Never mind.”

She leaned against his good side and they went on that way, along the tunnels toward home.

You, Darkness

Vincent came, that Thursday, in the last of the twilight—when the sky was still bright but buildings had faded to dark silhouettes against it—and something had changed.

At first Diana thought it was just another of the downswings that had been alternating with periods of random and unfocused restlessness as the anniversary night approached.

Tonight. Three years ago, tonight, he'd found Catherine Chandler slashed and bleeding in the park. Tonight: the first April 12th since Catherine's death. And, as he'd promised, he'd come to spend it with Diana in her new loft rather than Below, so thickly latticed with painful memories like as many tripwires, where a moment's carelessness could be fatal. At least here she could keep an eye on him and know he was safe.

She expected nothing, wanted nothing of the night except to get through it. Except to see dawn with him in one piece, alive.

He wasn't interested in TV or her six new tapes or even the stereo receiver, the classical music he could still lose himself in for hours even when the grim inertias were at their worst. He opted for checkers, that they both played with ferocious attention and generally in near silence; and presently Diana got the impression that was why he'd chosen it. He felt like company, but not like talking right now; and checkers was the easiest way to hit that balance. And that wasn't the sort of economical manipulation he tended to think of when he was simply feeling down.

So it was something else. Quietly, Diana began watching him.

He'd been able to shed the sling two days ago and was leaning on that arm, stretched out full length on the large square of thick green carpet that marked off her living room: just the bent left arm propping him high enough to have a good angle on the disposition of all the checkers. He seemed abstracted, thoughtful: probably planning eighteen moves in advance, as if this were grandmaster-level chess instead of the absurdly simple strategies that were about as complex as checkers could ever get.

Generally she concentrated that way too—she had to, to have even a fighting chance—but now she was watching him and made moves inattentively, seeking only immediate advantage, knowing it would mean his longer view would catch up with her in the end. Didn't matter. It was more important to watch him.

Over the past two weeks or so, since the blow-up about Cullen, she'd learned that knowing Vincent loved her made surprisingly little difference, and all the difference in the world. Everything close up was the same. She still got annoyed whenever she felt he was patronizing her; he still kept quiet more than he talked and forgot about her anytime he discovered something interesting.

And there was so much he found interesting, that she'd never considered worth a second thought and generally still didn't. Why eggbeater blades didn't bang into each other, for instance. Or that sparrows were trying to nest on a windowsill half a block away, that she could barely see even with binoculars. In daylight.

But everything in the background, the context, had changed.

She was no longer afraid she'd say or do something wrong and, just like that, he'd be gone and she'd never see him again. Whatever happened, he wouldn't just vanish. If there was a problem, his or hers, thy'd either fight it out or wait it out. There'd be time—for winding up, and for letting down. Love, to her, had become a gift of time. And that freed her.

So when she watched him, she watched him differently now: not to judge him, or find reasons either to like him or get mad at him, to spark some response, or to make guesses about what he thought of her, but with uncomplicated concern and unending fascination.

Now, she could get out of her own way and simply watch.

He was heavy, a little slow in deciding, moving; idly gathering the jumped counters to one side and arranging them in neat stacks of three while she contemplated her next move.

She tried out words, made distinctions, seeking the best fit between each idea and what faced her across the checkerboard. She tried and discarded lazy, relaxed, tired, withdrawn, quiet, sad. Each was close, but none precisely matched the feeling she got from him.

If he'd been somebody else, she'd have guessed he was about one drink past the line or had been smoking something mildly illegal. Not stoned, just a little drifty....

She wondered, but didn't ask, if catnip did anything for him. He wasn't into intoxicants, common or exotic— she already knew that.

They both studied the checkerboard. She made a move and thought some more.

Again, if he'd been somebody else, her next guess would have been that he'd been doing high-impact aerobics with a very close friend (who'd shortly be found dead of manual strangulation, and Diana would take over the investigation, which would end inconclusively), and now was enjoying the afterward. Spent wasn't precisely the right word either. Maybe sated....

And that instant, she knew, and was shocked and cold with the knowledge: he'd killed.

He insantly picked up on her realization, and their eyes met, locked a second. Then he looked away and started stacking the dead checkers six high, remarking, “You might charitably be described as a mediocre checker-player. But you're very good at what you do.... I believe it's your move..”

Kneeling, knuckle-down, Diana continued to study him, reviewing all the things she wasn't going to ask. Finally she did ask, “You okay?”

He nodded. “I was very careful, considering. You would have approved.”

“I don't guess you want to talk about it...?”

As he tried to put two stacks of six together, they collapsed into individual bouncing checkers. He made no attempt to stop them. Some rolled onto the board and fell among the pieces still in play. So: this game was over.

He said, “There's nothing to talk about. Jamie surprised some thieves, who in turn surprised her. They are dead or fled, and Jamie escaped serious injury. I regret nothing but the necessity.”

“And you're really okay about that?”

Again, he nodded. “Only a little weary of myself just now.”

And shaken, she thought, and some other things they basically still didn't talk about, not even on a computer screen; and more than a little drifty, disconnected, with a night other than this so heavily on his mind, that they weren't going to talk about either, unless he opened the subject....

She'd been right, she thought, to make him promise to come tonight. What with one thing and another, he wasn't in any kind of shape to be let loose in traffic. Here, there was nothing to fall off higher than four feet, and that was a risk she was prepared to take—for both of them.

She patted his hand and announced, “I know what's good for that,” and hopped up, going back into the kitchen area at the front of the long room. She didn't yet have much by the way of dishes, pots and pans, that sort of stuff, but she'd made a point of picking up six sturdy water tumblers, the kind used at diners. Collecting two, she poured each half full of bourbon and carried them back to the living room. Kneeling, she set one of the tumblers by Vincent, who regarded it doubtfully.

“C'mon: damn braces, bless relaxes, babe.” When he still made no move to take it, she looked at him sidewise, challenging, “I dare you.”

And he took it, tasted, thought about it. “Not wine,” he decided.

“Nope. What my pop called ‘sipping whiskey.' Comes with a guarantee against hangovers—double your money back.” Realizing he believed her, she quickly added, “No, that's a fib, babe: nobody really does that. I was just kidding. But it's a fact I never knew anybody to get seriously hung over on it.”

“Interesting taste,” he commented, and set the tumbler aside as though he meant to leave it there.

“Interesting: now, that's a deadly word. Don't you like it?”

He met her eyes levelly. “I don't believe it would be wise. Just now.”

As seriously, Diana responded, “Babe, I think this would be a real good time. Tonight, and here, I don't believe you got any reason at all to worry about what's safe or what's wise. Only what feels good. Trust the time.”

He reached, but it was for the old coffee can. He started collecting the checkers and putting them away.

“It's hard,” he said, “to refuse anything sincerely asked of me or offered to me. I can feel you wanting me to drink that, the clarity of your concern, your wish to comfort me...and I have no strong feelings either way. Only a thought, which has little power. Only a habit of caution.... I have always found it hard to deliberately disappoint anyone I feel close to. That's a weakness, I think.”

Anyone I feel close to. Said so quietly, so matter-of-factly. Unguarded. Honest. Diana finished her swallow quickly, feeling herself starting to get choked up. And at the same time, her mind was spinning back to another occasion, months ago, December: to the noisy, cheerful chaos of a wedding reception in the Great Hall, Below. And she said, “Lena.”

Vincent looked up briefly, then paused, thinking about it. “Yes, I suppose so. Having refused her, most painfully, both when Catherine was alive and afterward, I did not want to do so again over what then seemed such a little thing, so little, to please her....”

“This once, please yourself, babe. That's what I want.”

The corners of his strange mouth moved in a near-smile; but his eyes didn't change. “A kindly thought. But I don't know how to do that.”

“So, learn. Try. Find out. Then choose.” She waved her glass at his, still sitting there. “That, that's not choice. That's fear, babe.”

“I have cause to be afraid. I killed, tonight.”

“And that's what makes it safe,” Diana rejoined earnestly, certain as she said it. “That's all burned out, for now. It's done its thing, it's happy, it's asleep. So you and me, we've never been safer in our lives.”

His expression told her that was a new thought, to him. And that changed to a listening, inward look, as though he were examining, inside, the state of what he kept so tightly controlled... except when he didn't: except when it woke, roaring.

And presently he said, reported, “Yes.” Very quietly, as though the beast were truly asleep and a soft enough voice wouldn't waken it.

“I told you: trust the time. I tell you what. I finally have a decent-sized couch. You're used to floors okay, but my... well, let's just say I'd sooner be sitting someplace else.” Suiting action to words, she plopped herself at one end of the oversized, second-hand couch that'd been so wretched to get up the stairs. Crossing her ankles on the bench serving as a coffee table, she patted a spot beside her. “You bring that glass, and when it's empty, I'll tell you something funny I thought of yesterday about you, me, and Catherine.”

“Funny?”

“I swear, funny.”

When her conditions had been met, some few minutes later, Diana delayed to refill the glasses—bringing hers back to half, pouring his full. He metabolized the damn stuff so fast, practically burned it off before it could have any effect, that a tumbler-full for him was about like a shot for anybody else. And that reminded her of something.

Putting the bottle on an upended orange crate doing duty as a side-table and settling again beside him, she remarked, “You remember the big whale of a Turk or whatever he was, in Raiders? The one who got into a drinking contest with that emaciated five-foot nothing flea of a heroine?”

“I think he was supposed to be a Sherpa.”

“Whatever. Anyway, that—”

“Actually, he was Russian,” Vincent mentioned.

“What?”

“Russian. More specifically, Ukrainian. The actor playing the Sherpa. I noticed the accent.”

“God, I might as well try having a conversation with Mouse,” she complained, poking him in the ribs with an elbow.

He looked around, surprised, peaceful, as though she'd paid him a compliment. “I'm sorry. What was your point?”

“My point,” Diana said, with determination, “is that it's impossible, that scene. By body mass, she'd be drinking the equivalent of three or four shots to each one of his. She'd have gone into cardiac arrest and brain death before half those empty glasses hit the table, while he was still warming up. And that's how it is with you: you could drink two of him under any table east of Cairo. Cop who saw you by the fire guessed your weight as about two hundred, which is reasonable, from your build. How much do you really weigh?”

“Something like three. I think.”

“So my point, babe, is that you've been careful all these years for nothing. At that wedding you put down a good half gallon of the worst home brew moonshine I—”

“That's William's,” Vincent mentioned, and Diana sighed hugely at this fresh interruption.

“What's William's?”

“He has a still. He makes it. Potato-based: you'd like it. What was it, that was funny about Catherine?”

“In a minute, let me finish.”

“I'm sorry,” he said again, and Diana felt as though her heart had turned inside out. She set her glass on the orange crate, then turned to hug him hard.

“Babe, don't you be sorry. You just gotta get used to dealing with a woman with a one-track mind. If a brick won't work, try a two-by-four. That'll generally get my attention.”

“And to get my attention, you need only mention Catherine.” He laid the side of his face against her hair. “That's very tedious of me. And predictable. You're very patient. And generous.”

“I owe Catherine more thanks than she ever could owe me. And I don't forget it, either.” His glass was far enough down that it seemed okay to refill it in the process of collecting her own.

Putting the bottle aside again, she went on, “Now: about what's funny. If I've got it right, that last time you went into fugue, you broke Catherine's louver door, right?”

“You have...a strange idea of what's amusing.”

“I'm not done yet, wait. And then you shoved a hand through my door, at my old place: broke half the panel apart, cracked pieces falling everyplace. I won't forget that anytime soon. So, listen: you broke down Catherine's bedroom door trying to get in, and did. And you broke down my bedroom door trying to get out, and didn't. Isn't that funny?” She waited expectantly.

After a slow, discouraging minute, he said, “I don't remember either occasion very well. Perhaps it would be more amusing to an onlooker.”

“No, just the fact of it,” Diana insisted. “Not what it felt like, just the goddam symmetry. That's what's funny.”

“No,” he said. “What's funny is you trying to explain how you find laughter in something so painful. Trying to explain it to me, who have no objectivity to see it and probably no sense of humor capable of appreciating such fine gradations of irony. What's funny is that you still try. That's what's funny.”

She leaned away a little to look at him. “Then why aren't you smiling?”

“I am. It doesn't always show. You're right: this is a good couch.”

So she invited him to stretch out and really appreciate it, sliding off to make room. She grabbed a cushion from the nearest chair and nudged it close to perch on. Whereupon the notion of cushions reminded him and he launched into the tale of a princess reported to be so delicate that she could be seriously bruised by a pea tucked under ever so many mattresses.

Leaning on his chest, his right arm cradling her there, she nodded wisely and said, “Carol Burnett.”

“What?”

“Carol Burnett was in the stage version, before she got famous. My mom always liked her, saw it on Broadway. Some song about ‘The Call of the Swamp.' My mom knows it by heart, with these awful swoops from high to low, that Burnett does.” Since he didn't know Carol Burnett, Diana attempted to demonstrate, which made them both laugh.

Neither of them ever sang, they discovered. In her case, it'd been her pop telling her unoiled jackhammers had more music in them; in his case, it'd been Devin first, then apparently a universal consensus, after his voice had changed.

Diana was indignant, telling him he had the most musical voice of any man alive, with the possible exception of James Earl Jones, not counting Darth Vader, of course, and maybe Orson Welles— no relation, right?— before his had gone all strange and lardy, and she bet his singing voice was just as wonderful, no matter what the tin ears claimed.

“You haven't heard it,” he responded mildly, and refused to demonstrate.

Instead, starting on a refilled glass, he went back to the original, non-Broadway, story, telling her how the princess came out all right in the end, as princesses always should.

She had a damn good guess what he was thinking about or maybe simply feeling, but she left it alone, didn't push it. If his memories of Catherine were to be acceptably diverted into princesses, then princesses it would be; and Diana wasn't about to make any blunt analogies concerning bruises or scars, or comment on how princesses sometimes did not get on at all well and might even die.

It was, after all, only a story.

That was what he truly liked to do, she recalled, realized. A step or two over the line of absolute, watchful control, he liked to tell stories, and listen to them. A genuine, soul-deep liking, not anything he thought he ought to do. Something he could lose himself in, and take someone else with him, and be with them when it was their turn, an equal sharing; something fundamental that made irrelevant, for the moment, who had fur or fangs, and who didn't. And music the same, except that she'd never learned to enjoy the kind he liked. Never really heard much of it. But maybe he could teach her, so they could have that unguarded country between them too....

His next story was Irish, a tale of the beautiful Dierdre, whom no mortal man ever held long. He told it beautifully, with all the proper flourishes and digressions, and appropriate poignance. The next story concerned a boy of the great Shoshone nation whose protective totem spirit, a bear, taught him how to outwit death even while dying, saving his people from a flood. And the story after that one presented a novel insight into how the Bowery had earned its unsavory reputation.

“There have always been people Below who are not of us— who live in the deeper levels and under another law. They are called different things— trolls, trogs, Morlocks...from the story ‘The Time Machine,' by H. G. Wells? And no, Mr. Wells is not a relative.... Father disapproves of such names. Father says they represent the sort of derogatory slur we'd never tolerate among ourselves, but feel free to apply to those whose chief fault, in our eyes, is that we dislike and mistrust them. Anyone different, whom we wish to diminish. He points out that they are only people, much like ourselves.... I think, too,” Vincent added meditatively, “that Father has always guarded against any intolerance for my sake— for fear I would become its eventual target.”

Because he paused, Diana answered “Mmm,” and that seemed to be enough, which was lucky, since she hadn't been listening all that hard.

All the while since the unpossessible Dierdre, Diana had been doing something she normally didn't even dare try: petting him. Just slowly stroking fingertips down the line of his jaw, tracing the cords of his neck, feeling the resilience of the flat pads of muscle under his shirt, below the healed collarbone—nothing too intimate, urgent, or distracting. Only a continuing warm, familiar touch: because she wanted to, because she enjoyed being that close. So far, he hadn't even seemed to notice, which was OK, which was fine.

Since he'd inattentively accepted either his fifth or sixth glass—she'd lost track herself, but they were working on the second bottle—his sentences had become longer and more formal, with slow, deliberate cadences she could feel even when she wasn't following the sense. Definitely settling, now: his attention and ideas moving outward rather than turning in on, or against, himself. Forgetting himself, and the time, and what went with that time. Just being here, now, drifting, letting the words come as they came rather than forcing them through exacting filters of caution, courtesy, and judgment.

He seemed wholly to have accepted her conviction that tonight, and with her, there was no need for caution.

When he occasionally turned his head to check whether some point had been clear or not, she could see that his eyes had gone wider, darker, and slightly, softly unfocused, and that was okay too. Very okay.

Dreamily attending, she listened more to his voice than the words as he explained that the neutral term, which Father was willing to countenance, was bowers because the Bowery was where that separate, deeper tunnel system branched off, slanted away into the bedrock below New York harbor. That region south of Wall Street, that grimy, narrowing fingertip of the island, known for centuries as a place where some people were mysteriously found dead and others as mysteriously disappeared, was the bowers' ground: their only access to the surface, where they scavenged, stole, hunted, and sometimes killed. Their lifeline. Anybody they caught there was liable to attack.

But under the ill-famed Bowery, the two tunnel systems interconnected along a broad front and on several different levels. The interface was too extensive to be effectively defended or walled off. Neither side could completely keep the other out.

As a result, the lower reaches of Manhattan were a dangerous no-man's-land. Father didn't allow settlement there and heavily discouraged travel in that direction.

“I was trapped Above there, once,” Vincent told her. “I barely survived. There are only two ways down which do not lead one directly into the bowers. You may judge the hazard by the fact that although severely injured and all but blind, although hunted close, I nevertheless remained Above until I could reach one of those two. I still preferred the risk Above to the risk Below: the risk of being caught, alone and helpless, upon the bowers' ground.... Father now uses my ordeal as an object lesson demonstrating how reckless and foolish it is to venture there. He is right. I do not mind being used as a bad example if it keeps our more adventuresome youngsters from an experience remotely like my own.”

Diana hummed the end of the song “The Bowery,” whose words vowed, I'll never go there anymore.

Vincent knew the song, because he responded, “Exactly so. I will not, if it can in any way be avoided. Yet for all that, they do not often trouble us, or venture farther than they can quickly retreat. For one thing, we are the more numerous and better organized, with the pipes to coordinate a defense simultaneously on many fronts. For another, I am...known to them, after a fashion. Whatever report of me they may have heard, whatever they may have seen or imagined, they have never wished to know me better...on my own ground....”

In his eyes, something quietly feral, something like amusement, glowed for a moment and then faded.

He continued, “And it seems there was yet a third reason of which, for a long time, I knew nothing. The man who for years was accepted as their leader apparently persuaded them that any open confrontation with us would be disastrous. He was called Paracelsus. He was....”

Long silence, during which Diana wondered whether how close, safe, and loving she felt was carrying over to him at all, and how much closer she might get before he noticed and pulled away. Or tonight, maybe didn't....

Finally Vincent said, “He is dead, and that is another story. Best told in daylight. We do not know who leads them now, if indeed any does....

“Normally, then, we have little contact with the bowers. They prefer to prey on topsiders and then vanish Below, rather than risk what we might do, who are tunnel-wise and could pursue them into their own places if sufficiently provoked.

“Except at winter's end. Then, when all supplies Below are straitened—theirs as well as ours— a few bower thieves always slide past our sentries and attempt to take for themselves from the little we have. Commonly these are haphazard forays: no serious threat except for the loss of the food itself, only a great nuisance. Like an annual plague of rats.”

Diana shivered at the mention of rats, which she detested, and his arm came tighter around her back, thoughtlessly protective. So she shivered again, on purpose, but that didn't work. Likely, to reach him, you had to really feel it.

Vincent continued, “Tonight, Jamie surprised such a bower thief as I just spoke of. She sounded an alarm and pursued him as he fled. He led her into an ambush laid at the foot of a serpentine. Five ran; the other two, I killed. And I don't like it.”

“'Course not,” Diana said automatically, only now realizing in a fogged sort of way that this hadn't been just another story: he'd been telling her about the killings.

“No, not that,” Vincent responded seriously. “What troubles me is that two stood and fought. And I don't like the ambush: too deliberate. Father disagrees. We will take it up at council. But—”

A radiator exploded into a staccato clanging like a fire-alarm.

Unceremoniously released, almost dumped, Diana burst out, “What the hell?” as Vincent shot to his feet, listening intently. The frantic noise went on at least a minute, then stopped, and Vincent looked down at her with eyes that seemed wholly black.

“On no account are you to come into the tunnels. Not for any reason. Do you understand?”

“Hell, no, I don't— Vincent, what's wrong?” she yelled as she scrambled onto the couch, kneeling to look over its back as he moved away fast down the loft's length, like a figure receding in a shadowed mirror. “Damn it, what's—”

Off at the head of the stairs, he forced himself to pause, saying, “It's my fault. I should have known better. The bowers have come in force and Father's been—”

His head jerked as the radiator started up again. He immediately spun and vanished down the stairs. Diana could hear him, though—the rapid creak, clatter, bang of his descent. Not taking the staircase in three or four long bounds, touch and jump, but one hurried step at a time: he was having to watch his feet, watch even his balance with strict and magnified caution.

And he'd be going into a fight that way, distanced and disconnected from himself, on this night of all nights: because he'd listened to her, trusted her, trusted the time.

Diana's hands closed into tense fists gripping the couch back. To the sudden, icy quiet of his absence, she whispered, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph— what have I done? What have I damn well done?”

*****

All night, nothing. Diana paced and thumped walls and kicked the chair cushion around the couch and back again, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing she could do. She tried whacking on the radiator pipe with a screwdriver handle, but after an hour there'd been no response. She wouldn't have understood one if she'd heard it, but at least it would have been something, and maybe somebody actually down in the basement, on the other end of the pipe, to tell her what the hell was going on and was he hurt, was he lost, had he slid into fugue again, what.

He'd forbidden her to go Below, and however hard that was, she had to respect it. That was his expertise, and he didn't need some topsider blundering around blind, needing to be led by the hand and protected from just the ordinary hazards, much less the running fight along the passageways she was sure was going on right now, if it wasn't over already, in which case why hadn't he come? You didn't need a bond to figure out she was crazy-sick with worry. Or why hadn't somebody come to at least tell her he was OK and what the hell was happening?

She'd found out, after the fact, that on her first solo exploration Below, armed with a chunk of chalk, a pistol, and an almost infinite ignorance of what she was getting into, she'd narrowly missed blundering into the path of a killer armed for elephant, stalking Vincent with all kinds of snooping and peeping enhancements that brought him about level with what Vincent had been born with. When, months later, Vincent had matched times and stories and realized what had damn near happened, he'd been quietly furious about it for days. She wasn't going to repeat her dumb heroine act because now she had no excuse: she knew better.

Knew better: that's what he'd said. He'd known better, but he'd trusted her, let himself be persuaded, so whatever happened was her fault, for not remembering that the world was a dangerous place and merely deciding on a quiet evening together didn't alter the thoroughly documented facts of pushers, pimps, terrorists, hideously abused children, and all the ugly statistics she always sort of assumed she could keep at a safe distance, just data on a screen. The world, unlike the grave, was not a private place and anybody who assumed it was, was almost as big a fool as she'd been.

Her fault. Next time she tried to take his risks away, she'd better be damn sure that she knew what they were and that she could handle them a tenth as well as he could.

Next time....

When she'd finished throwing up for the second time (a terrible waste of good bourbon), she looked at her watch, found it was past four, and knew she wasn't accomplishing anything but making herself crazy and useless for anything tomorrow. So she chugged down the stairs into the mild night and got her prescription for sleeping pills refilled at an all-night drugstore two blocks away. Nobody tried to hold the place up while she was there. Nobody tried to mug her on the way home. It didn't seem fair.

She'd never felt so helpless or useless in her life, except when her pop had been dying of cancer and didn't want to know about it, so nobody told him, just tried to act as if he was getting better and coming home soon, but it'd been like a fire, all through him before it'd even been diagnosed, and rather than lie, she'd kept away, and kept away, and one Saturday morning the phone call had come saying there was no use keeping away any more because he was gone.

She got back to the loft just soon enough to throw up again, and then drank some water, hoping that would help keep the sleeping pills down, anyway. Opening the bottle, her hand jerked and threw damn near half of the pills into the sink, onto the floor. Then she broke down and cried so hard she could barely see well enough to pick them up. She caught herself counting them as she dropped them back in the bottle, calculating dosage, brand new bottle, full up.... She froze, staring into the mirror at her chalk-pale face.

Maybe sometime, she thought. Not now. Be real rotten for him to find me like that and him pretty OK, just stuck, delayed some way or other. That sort of dumb thing only has style in plays. Actually, it's just dumb. Wait. Know what you're dealing with here first. Maybe it's OK.

But she knew it wasn't.

She counted two (two) pills into her hand and downed them. She got as far as the still-unpartitioned bedroom and flopped onto the futon before sleep came down on her like a hammer.

And she found herself in that godawful white-room dream again.

Things hazed out from the center, but there was a sense of steel surfaces, flat things that would ring if you struck them. On something between a hospital gurney and a steam table, Catherine Chandler was laid out as if for viewing: arms neatly folded, hair all smoothly arranged, wearing a white, low-cut ball gown that covered her to her bare feet. On the usual big toe was a tag.

Catherine was heaped with rose petals that slid, a few at a time, to the tile floor and made a puddle there—the only thing moving in the room; the only thing that wasn't white. The petals were a red that yelled. Every breath pulled in the overwhelming stink of roses.

In surgical greens, Diana approached at a steady pace carrying a rose branch with the impression she was going to place it on the pile. But when she reached, the branch had become a scalpel so she did the obvious thing and started the autopsy, brushing rose petals out of her way. It was like cutting tissue paper. The skin came off easily, in two neat halves, like footie pajamas. The dress came with it, naturally.

You had to wash up after an autopsy: Diana stooped to the vibrant red puddle and scrubbed herself all over with the petals. They wrinkled down like tissues and vanished away in her hand. When one bunch was used up, she took another, until she was sure she'd done the job thoroughly. She was clean enough now. She shook out the skin carefully and put it on. A touch closed the seam. She was perfect now. She could look for him now.

The way from the white room sloped down and grew darker. Sometimes she could see and sometimes she couldn't. But she could always feel the pitch of the tunnel leading down. Finally she came to the shattered junction door and daintily stepped across, careful not to catch her hem on the jagged metal edges. A stone with his name on it marked which way she should go.

He was sitting against the tunnel wall. His back was turned, and the hood of his cape was drawn up. Lifting his head as she came nearer, he asked, “Catherine?”

“Yes,” she said, because it was true. She'd gotten herself perfectly clean first, so she was entitled to wear the skin. She was very happy, being Catherine for him.

It turned darker, so she couldn't see, but it didn't matter because it had all become touch. They were making love on something soft that cradled her, so she could stand the weight, the explosive pressures. She could contain him, enfold all of him safely so that nothing would ever hurt him because she'd be between, and she loved him so much she thought she'd burst.

She did. The seam opened and through it sprang a light. The skin was a cocoon, ready to be discarded. She would be wonderful, beautiful, shrugging the drying husk away. But in that light, he saw her and accused, “You're not Catherine!” In the light, he had no face. No eyes.

As the husk fell away from her arm, he tore off that arm. She saw it fall. When the husk began to slide off her shoulders, she tried to hold it in place but it crisped and wrinkled like dried rose petals. The membrane was peeling back from her face. As it did, the razor-clawed hand struck out and sliced—

Diana woke with a jolt, shattered and clogged with tears, and pushed past somebody to dive blindly for the bathroom. She threw up there. Dry heaves. Nothing to bring up but an awful taste. From the back of her neck, branches of throbbing pain spread to enfold her temples, circle her eyes. She leaned to put her forehead against the cool tile.

From outside the open door, a man's voice: “You gonna be OK?”

Cullen.

She whirled, shoved herself as far as the door and hung onto the casing. Intense light blazing down through the skylights fell on Cullen, sitting back on his heels next to the futon, looking at her. Unshaven. Face slack with weariness.

“Where is he? Is he all right?” Diana demanded—dully, because she already knew. It was going to be bad. She shut her eyes to keep the room from going around. Looking at it had felt like falling.

“We can't find him. It was real crazy, there at the last when the lights went out. Father won't say so, but he thinks maybe the trolls took him. We're still looking, nothing definite yet.... But I thought somebody ought to come tell you.” Cullen's voice got closer as he spoke, and then his arm came around her back. “Come on, sit on something—”

“Hell with that,” Diana said, pushing by, and got as far as the round table, leaned a minute there, then went on to start slapping together the pieces of a pot of coffee. Then to the bathroom medicine chest for aspirin, shaking them out into her hand until it felt like six, and tossed them down with a couple of palmfuls of water. She rubbed her wet hand across her face and that felt good. Hair smeared all over, but who cared.

Pushing back to the kitchen, she asked over her shoulder, “How's Jacob?” When she didn't get an answer right away, she wheeled around, squinting against the light. “Damn it, how's Jacob? How's he reacting? Is he crying, quiet, what?”

“Yeah,” Cullen said, finally catching it. “The bond. I don't know. I'll find out.”

Diana dragged open the refrigerator and stood swaying there, forgetting what she'd meant to look for, thinking how she had no use for stupid people, none whatever, and no energy to waste right now on politely pretending different. Milk, that was it: lousy for the migraine, but maybe keep her gut quiet. Down the length of the room came the sound of Cullen hammering on the radiator pipe. Her head didn't like that noise at all. Tough. She pried open the spout of the milk carton and drank from it. When she'd had as much as she thought she could stand, she shoved the milk away, elbowed the refrigerator door shut, and dragged out one of the Windsor chairs to slump at the round table, fists propping her shut eyes.

That damn dream. Did it to her, every time. Totally wrecked.

When she heard Cullen coming back, she said, “Well?”

“Can't signal from here. Nobody's picking it up. I'll go Below, try again.”

“Wait! I want a couple runners and a current city map of downtown with as much detail of the tunnels as possible. Maybe Con Ed. I want whoever knows the most about the goddam trolls, bowers, and whoever was in a position to see what happened, when you lost track of him. I want Jacob here, where I can see for myself what he's doing. And I want Mouse, with phone patch cable and a spare phone. Use the dedicated modem line. I can get what I need off City data first. Yeah.” She raised her head, blinked at him blearily. “You got that, or do you need it written down?”

Cullen was looking at her as though she'd just done something cute, which annoyed the hell out of her: she had no time for that kind of crap now. “I got it,” he said quietly, turning away.

She looked at her watch: 11:07 am. Have to phone in, make some excuse. Maybe Maxwell would cover for her. He should be used to it by now, after Catherine....

“Hey!” she shouted after Cullen, who reappeared at the top of the stairs. “When did this go down? How long has he been missing?”

“Five, six hours. Guesstimate.”

“What, you don't know?”

“Not real big on watches, down there. And we blew some time, looking....”

The coffee-maker buzzed, and Diana got up to drag a used cup out of the sink, thinking five hours, maybe six. About dawn. But not Below. No sunrise down there. Not ever.

She turned to yell something else at Cullen but found him already gone. Good. Get things rolling.

She'd find him. She could find him. She was good at that. Good at what she did: even Vincent said so.

Coffee, first. She poured a cup, added enough sugar to maybe make her sick, maybe keep her going, and snatched an ice cube out of the freezer to pop in so she'd be able to drink it straight down. She hauled out the chair in the office space and finished the coffee while the computer booted. Then she punched open the hookup to CityNet and began a search to download what she was going to need, absently wishing those damn aspirin would kick in.

Coffee: that was the answer. More coffee.

*****

Somebody was noisily, laboriously starting up her stairs. Diana shoved away from her computer and sprinted to the other end of the loft. By the time she could look, she already knew what she'd see: Father. And not in his visiting, topside clothes. He'd walked. Not so far as to her old place—maybe ten minutes, out from the Hub. Walking distance, even for Father.

Dropping to one knee, looking down, she called to him, “You need a hand...?” although there really wasn't room for two people, together, on the narrow staircase.

Father paused, raised his head. “Oh, hello, Diana. It seems a bit late to ask if I may come in, but there was no way—” He glanced around and down, and she knew he meant there was no speaker, no buzzer, like in her old place. Not even a doorbell, and she couldn't hear a knock. She just kept the street door locked, hers unlocked. The way from the basement threshold wide open.

“Mouse is, was going to fix something up for me, but then he got busy, I guess. You know anything?” she blurted hopelessly.

“I certainly hope so, or I've wasted a great many years.” If that was supposed to be a joke, it died in record time. Holding to the handrail, Father stood looking up at her somberly. “I believe I am the one you wished to speak to, about most of the matters you outlined to Cullen. For the rest, Zach is bringing my maps. By no means complete but better, I believe, than anything you can find Above. Or I sincerely hope so. He'll soon be joining us. Brooke is bringing my grandson, though I myself find the indications there inconclusive. Pascal is still attempting to contact Mouse.”

“That's OK, never mind about that. Won't need him, after all.” If Mouse was missing, she knew where he was, or at least what he was doing: hunting Vincent. Somehow that made her feel marginally better. If Vincent was anyplace in the known tunnels, Mouse would absolutely find him and absolutely never quit until he did.

Nobody had to tell her that. It was just the sort of thing you knew, if you knew these people at all. And then she was dimly surprised that Father didn't seem to have already come to the same conclusion.

Then she noticed how utterly exhausted Father looked, worse even than Cullen. And she remembered that all these people had been up, and maybe fighting, most of last night, and searching since, and as sick with worry as she could ever be. So no wonder if a few stitches got dropped along the way. That was OK. That meant there was at least a chance they might have missed something she might find. It wasn't over yet.

By the time Father was settled, choosing a place at the table rather than an offered scoop chair, and provided with coffee, young dark-haired Zach had come, carrying a broad, shallow drawer like a table in itself, except for the lack of legs. The drawer, plainly yanked out and brought just as it was, held Father's maps.

Starting to search through the maps, Father directed, “Zach, please inform Pascal there's no longer any need to summon Mouse. And we shall want someone up here to relay— Eric, perhaps. Yes, Eric. Best to give him something useful to do.”

As the boy jogged away, Father commented, “Zach has become, for all intents and purposes, Pascal's apprentice. He is more than competent, by any standard other than Pascal himself. Zach will stay at the threshold and pass on any additional need of ours for information. For anything.” Father shut his eyes hard for a moment. Then, resettling his glasses farther down his nose, he continued systematically poking through the sheaf of maps.

Diana settled slowly into a chair, looking at him. “You gonna make it?” she asked gently.

“What? Oh, I'm accustomed to emergencies. Some are merely larger and more frustrating than others.... Yes, here we are, I think.” Father pushed aside the drawer so he could spread a map out flat—a yellowing City schematic, heavily altered and annotated. “This goes back a few years, but our cousins in the Bowery system have never been much interested in excavation. I believe it should still be accurate.”

For the next half hour or so, Diana shuttled back and forth between map and computer, correlating between the known bower thresholds and patterns of reported muggings, thefts, break‑ins, and anomalous murders over the last forty years—as far back as had yet been fed into the police databank.

Two particular spots emerged: not places where things had happened, but places where things had conspicuously not happened. Places left clear, to minimize the risk of unwanted investigation. The main bower thoroughfares. Their principal gateways between Above and Below.

Father tapped one of the places with his folded glasses. “That will have been destroyed by the construction of the World Trade Center. A fate our upper levels almost suffered, due to one of Elliot's planned projects, fortunately aborted.... The other, however, would have access to the South Ferry terminus points of both BMT and IRT subway lines.”

Standing behind him and looking over his shoulder, Diana nodded, following the thought: quite a few people in motion at all times of the day and night. Nothing strange about a few more people coming down, going up, maybe dressed a little funny... or maybe not: seemed as though bowers depended on the surface more than did Father's community. Less self-sufficient...yet at the same time, maybe more isolated, with most of the system inaccessible under the harbor.

She thought of a long, thick slug stretched upside-down, with a single, sucking mouth firmly attached to the surface.

The bowers, she thought, would have their helpers, too....

Eric, quite a small boy with thick glasses, arrived then, in company with Brooke, carrying Jacob; but that idea didn't pan out. As an oracle, the baby was a dud, as Father had implied. Oh, the baby was reacting, all right— alternating between normal behavior and sudden intervals of tense withdrawal when he didn't startle at noises; when those acutely blue eyes, that hurt Diana to look at, wouldn't follow the motion of bright objects held or shaken before him; when he was unresponsive to touch. Afterward, he'd go into thin, gasping sobs Diana found real hard to listen to. But no way to know what it meant: whether the cause was something from Vincent, reaching the baby through the bond, or Jacob's own anxiety at finding a vacuum where there should be presence, contact, reassurance.

No help there.

Patting the baby, Diana commented absently, “I know, you'd tell us if you could. Thanks, Brooke— you can take him home now.”

Diana didn't think she could stand to listen to that crying.

When she'd poured out more coffee, she settled back across from Father, propping her elbows on the tabletop. “Okay, I got the territory pretty straight, I think,” she said. “Now tell me about the raid. From what Vincent said before he went, I sort of thought you'd been hurt.”

Father pushed the drawer of maps farther aside. “Poisoned, actually. They've adopted the Oriental throwing-stars as their weapon of choice. Quite effective at close range, which is all that's normally available in the confines of the tunnel systems. No danger from ricochets.... And for further effect, the weapons' edges are poisoned, so that the first wound need not necessarily, of itself, be fatal to incapacitate an opponent. It takes effect quickly. A liquified form of an experimental nerve gas stolen from the military storage depot at Fort Wadsworth. We had the devil of a time, Peter Alcott and I, breaking the hellish stuff down, identifying the components and therefore the source, then demanding and finally extorting sufficient information from Washington to formulate an antidote.

“I despise dealing with the military,” Father commented with offhanded but plainly sincere venom.

“Fortunately, that source has, quite literally, dried up: the storage facility was ordered closed, and its contents were destroyed, some fifteen years ago, due to public alarm over the threat of hazardous leaks or willful release by possible terrorist attack. Also fortunately, our cousins have since been diluting it, husbanding what remains.” Father took off his glasses and began polishing them. “At that low concentration, I was able to administer the antidote myself before paralysis set in. However, I was not...able to reach all of the affected children in time.”

Diana felt as though somebody had shoved her. “Children...?”

“Oh, yes,” Father responded in a tight, factual tone. “That apparently was the true target of the raid. Not the larder which was broken into. Nor myself. Our children. Those in the dormitory. The children of the community at large, without immediate families of their own. Asleep, of course, at that hour. I lost three. Richard, he was seven. Ursula, six. Geoffrey, ten. And a half, mustn't forget the half.... They'd gone into respiratory arrest before I could....” Leaving that sentence unfinished, Father replaced his glasses. “Sheer malice. Terrorism. I see no other motive, no other purpose. We had done nothing to provoke it.”

Elbows propped, Diana sipped cold coffee. “Vincent killed two of them last night,” she pointed out.

“Thieves, on our ground,” Father shot back, angrily. “Who'd already attacked a sentry, Jamie. Are you suggesting—”

“Not suggesting anything. Just trying to understand. The pair who got killed, maybe somebody's parent, child, buddy...?”

Father's abrupt gesture dismissed that possibility. “Such skirmishing has been a fact of life as long as I've lived Below. More serious provocations have never produced such a concerted or violent response.”

“But that,” Diana commented, “was when Paracelsus was alive. And it seems like he wanted you left alone....”

Father shot her a quick, unfriendly glance. “What do you know of Paracelsus?”

“Nothing much, just the name, and that Vincent doesn't like talking about him either. But maybe we should.”

“There can be nothing to the purpose. As you say, he's dead.”

Diana picked up a spoon, quietly stirred what was in her cup. “And Vincent killed him, right?”

Father leaned back in his chair. “It's a good deal more complex than that. And revenge for John Pater's death can hardly be the motive, after all these months. Only the present bower leadership could concern us. And since I cannot say who he, she, or they may be, I see no purpose in pursuing that issue.”

“Who'd know? Who, in your community, has contact with the bowers?”

“No one,” Father said flatly. “We have no dealings with them whatsoever.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Diana laid aside the spoon.

Either Father was kidding himself, somebody was kidding Father, or likely both. You couldn't have two large communities nose to nose for over thirty years and not have contact, however hard those in charge tried to prevent it. You'd still have the occasional trade of something valuable or scarce, accidental meetings that produced unlawful friendships and feuds, Romeo and Juliet stuff. But if Father didn't want to hear it, Diana saw no use trying to tell him. No information to get there anyway. And there were other things to talk about without getting Father mad at her.

Other people might get results by bullying witnesses. But it wasn't her style.

She said, “Okay. So, tell me about the raid. First, the diversion, the break-in at the larder, right? Send everybody running that way, lot of noise on the pipes, hogging the communications channels. Distraction while another bunch got into the Hub area, tried to take you out. And then they went after the children?”

“No. The children were attacked by a third group. Well after both initial alarms had gone out.”

Diana kept her face calm, neutral. “The bowers know pipe code?”

Father didn't like to hear that either. After a long minute he confirmed, “A near certainty. John knew, and undoubtedly taught others. And, however faintly, at least some of our messages might have been monitored, over the years, from that far away. So that the new codes, the shorthanded system developed after John left us, might well have been deciphered.”

“John: Paracelsus.”

Father's answer was a stiff nod.

Diana noticed the phrase left us, but filed it without comment, instead pursuing, “So they'd understand the alarms. They'd know they hadn't run into Vincent yet, and they'd know Pascal was calling him for all he was worth. But they didn't back off then, start running: that's when they went after the children.”

Father thought about that awhile with his eyes shut. “Oh, dear God. Yes.”

They both knew it, then.

The target of the attack hadn't been food, or Father, or even the children. Its purpose had been to draw Vincent into a pursuit he wouldn't abandon as soon as the raiders had retreated onto neutral ground, as would have been the case if it'd been just another annual food raid.

The target had been Vincent. Killing mad. On the bowers' ground. There'd be nothing that could have set him off worse than the murder of children. All calculated. Maybe even the first thievery, too—the one Jamie had run into. There'd been an ambush, then, not big enough to work: all but two had been forced to run. Maybe a bigger, better ambush, later?

Cheek leaning on a fist, Diana asked, still quietly, “Did he go after them alone?”

“Of course not,” Father replied curtly. “We are not totally incapable of our own defense. There were sentries. And people like Cullen, already responding to the alarms. As I understand it, Vincent intercepted the pursuit just beyond the south serpentine. As soon as he'd evaluated the situation, he ordered the lights shut off farther along. The bowers of course had lights with them, chiefly flashlights, but darkness would be some protection for our people, since the bowers would need to direct their lights ahead, to find their way. Some of them—three, I understand—did have other weapons. Guns. Forcing the pursuit not to follow too closely. Vincent divided our people into several groups, some blocking off potential ways the bowers might have circled and come back at us from another direction while the Home Chambers were virtually undefended. Others, including Cullen, he kept with him, to maintain the pursuit and force the bowers onward.”

“And as soon as it was dark, Vincent, he went after the gunners, right?”

Asking that, Diana could imagine it so clearly, and it was wrenching to imagine, because Vincent had so plainly been trying to be sensible, careful, let others take some of the risks. Evaluating. Ordering. Following at a distance, merely preventing the raiders from doubling back. Somehow controlling what surely would have been nearly overwhelming sadness and rage over the dead children.

Until the pursuit reached where the candles ended and moved into the dark. Until the advantage of his night-sighted eyes became too useful to ignore. No good strategist could afford to throw away a potentially decisive advantage like that, leaving his forces in preventable danger that limited their effectiveness.

With rage and caution finally giving him the same answer, he'd gone after the greatest threat, the guns, himself. Like a samurai.

Instead of confirming her certain guess, Father remarked, “I know what you're thinking.”

Startled, Diana responded, “What?”

“You're thinking of Kyuzo: the master swordsman in Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai. Who went after the bandits' matchlock rifles.”

Slowly, Diana nodded. It wasn't often somebody else could read her mind like that. “I rented it for him. On tape. He tell you about it?”

“Actually, I had spoken to him of the film before. Recounted the story. Many times, over many years.”

Vincent hadn't mentioned that, only expressed an interest in seeing the classic action film. He'd watched, barely moving, silent, the whole three-plus hours. Diana recalled that she'd found his absorption a little spooky.

Now she told Father, “Afterward, he said he saw how there'd been a time when it was still possible for warfare to be honorable.”

Father sighed. “He's a person of another era.”

Diana slanted him a glance. “He was watching a film made halfway around the world and nearly forty years ago—on TV, on a VCR. A film representing a modern director's view of medieval Japan. A director whose direct experience of warfare included Hiroshima, Nagasaki. I think that entitles Vincent to get counted in with the rest of us.”

In her book, viewing Vincent as a quaint, romanticized anachronism was about one step above viewing him as a freak. She didn't like it and wouldn't pretend she did. Not to Father, who of all people should know better.

Not disputing the matter, Father returned to her original question: “No, he didn't charge the guns. Not at first. According to Cullen, Vincent went after their lights, instead. Drawing back, he then allowed them to shoot blindly at one another for several minutes, making certain...sounds to startle them into firing. Then he went after the guns.”

Diana had no trouble imagining those sounds. And she was sure that, in spite of adding his own modification to adapt the classic story to the present time and place, Vincent had been thinking about Kyuzo, the swordsman, at the time. At first, anyway. Until he got too busy with the honorable work of warfare....

It was after that, in the violent and absolute darkness, that Cullen and the rest had lost him.

“What happened—they get too far behind, separated?” she asked.

“Never out of hearing. Had he simply been shot, we would have found him by now, even if he wasn't able to come to us.”

“Not,” Diana said evenly, “if the bowers took him with them.”

“Why would they do such a thing? Burden themselves so? To be blunt, have you any idea how much Vincent weighs?”

Diana found she had no slightest inclination either to blush or to smile. “Pretty close, I think. Had to haul him out of a graveyard once.”

“Of course. I'd forgotten. A foolish question, forgive me. I imagine I dislike hearing put into words what I've been most afraid of all this time—that he's in their hands; and, if they've been able to hold him, obviously severely injured. Or worse.”

“Yeah. Well, I think I got the picture pretty well now. Good as I can, from here.” She shoved away from the table, got up. “You ought to get some rest, yourself. Or you won't be good for anything later.”

“Is there any more assistance any of us can offer? What do you plan to do?”

Diana shrugged. “What I can. I got one thing going for me that you don't: I'm a cop.”

*****

The third place on her list was a Bowery liquor store all done up like Fort Knox: a night gate, not fully retracted, that looked as if it could stand up to an atomic blast and could be dropped real fast, like a guillotine; alarm circuit on the door that buzzed loudly when she opened it; security cameras pointing every way except up; ceiling-high glass booth (presumably bulletproof) surrounding the register; white-on-black stickers everyplace declaring the place under the round, watchful eye of some organization called the Providence Protection Agency.

The last place, a pawnshop, had displayed those same stickers. It was a striking graphic: see it once, you didn't forget it.

Regardless of the PPA, whoever they were, she had a strong notion all the security wasn't the reason CityNet said the store had never been held up. Never. Not even a failed try. As far as CityNet was concerned, the place had no sheet at all. Nothing reportable had ever happened here.

The location was right. The pattern was right. And the clerk, or owner, or whatever, had been staring at her from the moment she came in. If he treated his customers to a scowl like that, no wonder the place was empty.

Walking toward the booth, she got her shield out of her trenchcoat pocket, flipped it open, and began, “I'm—”

The man interrupted flatly, “We know who you are.”

Paydirt. Definitely paydirt. The pawnshop had checked up on her, verified her connection with the NYPD, and phoned a warning ahead.

That was good. The shivers down her back, she could ignore.

Diana said, “Fine, then we can cut the crap. I'm talking for Joe Maxwell, here. I got a message for whoever is in charge down there now.”

She matched the man stare for stare, just as if she'd been telling the truth. The man had red-rimmed, boiled looking eyes, watery blue. He hadn't shaved lately. L-shaped scar, left temple. He took a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and started poking at his back molars.

“You can give me the message. I'll see it gets delivered.”

“That's not how it works,” Diana responded with patience she didn't feel. “I only talk to the man himself. I get an escort, and a meeting, or you got the city health and fire inspectors at your door on Monday morning. I bet you got twenty violations you didn't even know about. You and twenty other places I got on my list, here. And on Tuesday, all the South Ferry subway stations get shut down for repairs. You know how those things go, what with the unions, Con Ed arguing with Transit, City Hall saying something different altogether, just the usual: might not get the stations reopened before Christmas. Let commuters hike a few blocks. Good exercise. Their own fault, living the hell out in Staten Island to begin with.”

She tapped her shield in her other palm a few times, then slid it back into her pocket, adding, “You think you had trouble when the World Trade Center went up? You don't begin to know what kind of misery you all could be in for, without the right friends. In this town, it pays to play ball with the DA's office. Paracelsus knew that, and there was no trouble, no interference. Everybody knew the rules. But he's dead, and John Moreno's dead. All the old deals are off: whole new ballgame. It's Joe Maxwell you got to deal with now, and he doesn't owe the Bowery a damn thing— Above or Below.”

The boiled eyes had blinked when she'd named Paracelsus. Bait definitely taken. She'd been accepted as legitimate, so her threats, that were all bluff, might be too.

The man said, “Somebody will get back to you,” and turned away.

“That's not how it works either. Got to get this all locked down by five, today. That's my orders. Or Monday, you all got trouble like you wouldn't believe. Might even be some offshore drilling starting up, out by Liberty Island. Maybe the City Geologist's office submitted a report last month claiming there maybe could be oil out there.”

That had to be the bowers' biggest terror: that there could be a leak, something that would let the seawater come flooding in and drown them all like rats.

The man pulled out the toothpick and inspected it for at least a minute. Then he put his thumb on a button. The sheet steel security door came down bang, just like that, and all the lights went out except one over the register.

Unlocking the booth, the man came out and started trudging toward the rear. Hitching the handles of her tote higher over her shoulder and making sure the gun was easy to hand in her trenchcoat's other pocket, Diana followed.

Stairs descended to a basement stockroom. The man led her back to the front of the building and onto a freight elevator, the sort with side arches and two metal doors on top that would open on the sidewalk to let trucks unload. But when the man reached around onto the wall and hit a switch, the platform started going down.

Pitch black. The elevator rattled, creaking down by inches.

The man's voice said, “You're all toast, you topsiders. When it comes, you'll have noplace to go. You're nothing but a bunch of walking corpses.”

“When what comes?” Diana asked, but got no answer, just the rattling of the descent mechanism and the steady wheeze of the man's breathing. Chronic sinusitis, by the sound. Half New York had it.

“You got a name?” she asked, simply to break the unsettling silence. Getting no answer, she said, “Look, I can find out from the liquor permit, tax records. Why be a jerk about it?”

“That's not my name.”

That clicked. Secret names. A public one for Above and another, the true name, for Below. John Pater/Paracelsus. A more elaborate, more formal secrecy than Father's community practiced. Probably had weird handshakes, too, and degrees of membership, like some screwy perversion of the Masons. Initiation ceremonies. No outsiders allowed. Outsiders, topsiders, they were all just toast anyhow, so it was OK to mug them, rob them, kill them, whatever, because corpses had no rights, couldn't own anything, practically had no lives to lose.

The bowers, they'd be the only ones who'd be saved, when whatever the hell it was came.

Testing that guess, Diana asked, “Were you born saved, or did you see the light afterward?”

“It's not the light, that we see,” Toothpick responded in a bored voice, as though holding a conversation with a corpse was a waste of time, since they'd never understand anyhow.

The more Diana thought about it, the spookier it got. What did they think was coming? Flights of H-bombs and Mutual Assured Destruction, MADness for short, and the hell with glasnost and revolutions in full retro gear? Or Armageddon, the wrath of God descending on Babylon-on-Hudson? The word had been toast: so whatever the bowers were expecting, it was hot. It had light. Light was death.

Only the darkness was safe. Only the dark protected. White on black, an eye, wide open: the stickered logo of the Providence Protection Agency. It's not the light, that we see. No. The initiation would be into the mysteries of darkness. She had a vague memory of running into something like that in a Intro Anthropology course...but nothing modern. Old Greeks, Caiman Islanders, something. Way too weird for her. Have to look it up, assuming she ever got out of here....

The platform hit bottom. A series of clicks, a wheel or dial going around, muffled thumps...like the sound of the tumblers of a combination safe being opened, Diana thought. A vague crescent of dim light around the edge of a round, heavy door as Toothpick pushed it slowly back on soundless hinges. Another round door, ahead: airlock. Bomb shelter.

Toothpick tapped at the inner door—obviously a signal, a code of some sort.

The inner door opened. Brighter light, there—no matter how much you thought of the dark, you had to be able to goddam see. Every cult made its compromises.

The sentry frisked her, took the gun. Expecting that, she'd sneaked out one from the evidence locker downtown, from a dumb holdup three years back. It had no firing pin and the barrel was warped. But it'd have looked funny if she hadn't been carrying. And she absolutely didn't want to leave any gun registered to her in the bowers' hands.

After she'd surrendered the dud pistol, Toothpick got a battery-powered lantern from a bunch on a rack and lit the way ahead.

The way led down. Not that different from Father's tunnels. The higher ones were straight concrete tubes banded with pipes, just the same, except that there were a lot more cables here— electrical lines, she thought. Maybe telephone lines, too. No sound on the pipes, but after a few minutes she heard the characteristic screech of a subway making a slow, agonized turn and remembered the South Ferry terminus, where some lines stopped short and others made return loops, had to be someplace close.

Because she was scanning ahead at whatever Toothpick's lantern revealed, she spotted the two black footprints at a junction where another tunnel crossed at right angles.

Following Toothpick across the junction, she looked quickly both ways along the line of prints. Long stride. Running. She stepped aside, matching her shoe to a print for a second. The mark was half again the length of her foot. Black, like tar, only not as thick.

Blood looked like that, in bad light, after it had dried.

Reaching behind her head, she unfastened her barrette. Pulling free the flexible six-inch sap she'd bound into her hair, she whacked Toothpick neatly, just hard enough, behind the ear. As he folded forward she grabbed the lantern before it could hit the floor: this would be a hell of a place to get stuck in the dark.

Dragging Toothpick a little farther on, she stuffed him against the tunnel wall where he might not be spotted right away, then ran back to the junction and trotted along the line of footprints she was sure in her gut were Vincent's.

The marks weren't clearly defined, pretty much the same shape at both ends: she couldn't tell if she was following or backtracking. Rounded concrete underfoot became rough stone and pockets of sand, that showed no track. But there were no side-turnings, and the way stayed straight as it descended. So she knew she must be still going right.

Ahead, something shone when the lantern beam wasn't on it. She clicked off the light, moving toward the puddle of dim luminosity— as though a few million fireflies had been crushed there. She first saw stripes, then made out a barred gate that had been yanked off its hinges and left lying on the tunnel floor.

The tunnel ended here: had to be either the way out or the way in.

The luminous stuff was a powder: soft, light as talcum or fine ash. It stirred like smoke and drifted in the air she moved while picking her way across the gate.

Beyond the gate frame was another gate, maybe eight feet between them. Two ends of a cage, set into the rock: they'd caged him. The inner gate was still in place, but ajar, unlocked. Going slowly forward, no light except what drifted around her, knee-high, hip-high, Diana stumbled, looked at the ground. A naked body, face-down. Or most of one, anyhow: stooping for a better look, she saw that the whole right arm was missing. Torn off at the shoulder. Long blonde hair, mostly matted to the stone. Hips barely wide enough to know it'd been a girl. Narrow, bare back, long adolescent legs striped with blood in partial curves and slants that meant she'd been laying on her back when it'd happened. Fifteen, maybe sixteen.

Diana straightened, deciding she didn't need to turn the corpse over after all, muttering Omygod. Omygod, what's happened here? to herself like a litany. Omygod. Omygod.

She began feeling very strange. Lights started blinking at the edges of her sight like tiny flash cameras she couldn't focus quite fast enough to catch. She stepped over the body. Beyond was a slaughterhouse.

A rock cave, maybe fifteen feet square. Bodies everywhere, dully glowing with the luminous powder that had settled over the contorted limbs. Kids: teenagers—none looked past twenty. Simply ripped to pieces. Blood everyplace, but dried into black puddles. The smell bodies had when what was inside was spilled, splashed, ripped out.

From what they were wearing, or not wearing, it was plain what'd been going on here, at least some of the time. Your basic underground orgy, pick a partner, any partner. Go ahead, kids, have fun. But not too much fun: as far as she could tell, all the boys had been issued condoms. After four, she was willing to take the rest on trust. And the girls had been issued garlands made out of crêpe paper and string. Some were broken, but enough were still in place that she could tell what they were. Great: a new form of aphrodisiac. Crêpe paper garlands.

Diana blinked hard and shook her head, trying to keep focused, and dug into her tote for the zip-shut bags she always carried, a home-made evidence kit. The powder stirred slowly around her knees as she bent to collect a broken piece of garland. A string of crude flowers. She held it to her face, but only for a second: it stank of a heavy, floral perfume. Overpowering, this much and this close. Aphrodisiac? Sure wouldn't turn her on. She stuffed the garland into the bag, then had trouble with the zip closure, her fingers felt clumsy and numb; but she finally got it shut and stowed the bag away.

What else should she be doing? What was the crime scene drill? Sample of the powder, sure. She edged the opening of another bag along a dead leg, not attached to anything, and was pretty sure she'd collected some. She got that bag shut too, after a couple of tries, and safely put away.

The twisted, intertwined bodies had become very far off, and not upsetting at all. She felt pretty good, actually, except that she was worried about losing her tote. Couldn't lose that: that was evidence. She looped it harder around her shoulder and held on with both hands. And she remembered she hadn't done a proper accounting. Commissioner Frankel would have her head, any sloppiness and he'd come right down on her, and that was the way it was supposed to be. She made weird jumps sometimes, but that was okay, Frankel would put up with that as long as on paper, everything was by the book.

She couldn't remember where she kept the book, to know what the next thing in the drill ought to be. She thought about it, swaying, hanging onto the tote, her one clear thought how important it was not to let go of it.

Reconstruct, that was it—what she ought to be doing. Reconstruct the scenario. There were, what, about a dozen kids? She lit the lantern, counted. Then she counted again, because she couldn't make the total come out right, or even, and she didn't like the number. But the count kept coming out that way: thirteen. Seven boys, six girls. And, yes, that was including the one back in the cage. Seven and six. Some poor kid had died lonesome, hadn't been issued a partner. That didn't seem fair.

Anyway, they'd been here first, right, shut behind the inner gate. All equipped and full of adolescent hormones, whatever. Having fun, though rock made a hard bed. Should be softer, that would cradle you.... And, and then, right, he'd been dragged or driven in, the tunnel outside was narrow enough for that and dead-ended here: that could work if he'd still been on his feet by that time. Then they'd closed the cage on him. And the kids had gone on with whatever they were doing, having a hell of a good old time, all safe sex, everybody protected and participating: warm everybody up for the main attraction. No way to be or stay unaware, total empathic overload, arousal— to rage or whatever, no matter, no difference: control blasted to hell and gone either way. Anyway, arousal.... Until the kids felt it wasn't fair for him to be stuck all alone like that, and opened the inside gate of the cage. And invited him to share the fun, join the party. Or... or gone out to him, one by one, wearing the paper garlands that stank of... of expensive perfume, no light anywhere but what drifted so soft from the powder, here already or tossed in by the bucketful through the bars, all of them completely stoned out of their skulls by then of course, only phantom outlines, faceless. And then or soon but sometime, the killing and the blood....

All of it as plain to her as a movie she could pause or run or reverse at will. Ghosts of sounds, ghosts of gestures overlaid upon present silence and stillness. Ghosts of roaring, screams....

Part of her mind knew that the luminous powder was a drug— inhalable, euphoric and probably hallucinogenic, all checked off on a neat mental list—and another part hadn't a clue. Leaving the two parts to argue about it, she said to herself, I am very drunk, and wondered about that for awhile. I am drunk out of my tiny mind,  and that's not right, I missed the whole party. She couldn't figure it out and it probably wasn't important anyway, it'd never gotten in her way before. Just ignore the arguing voices, focus tighter, think.

One of the corpses sat up and explained regretfully, “I wasn't Catherine.”

Recoiling, Diana banged into the gate, and shoved it farther out of her way. It slammed the sitting corpse in the head, so that she toppled over backward. Her throat had been ripped out.

Another corpse rolled over. A jerk of the lantern beam showed nothing much below the ribs. She held up what was left of her garland. She commented, “It isn't fair. We were all clean, we did everything right. We were entitled to wear it.”

The corpse in the cage chimed in, “It was supposed to be wonderful. They're all toast, up top. When it comes, there'll be nobody left but us. Below, we'll survive in the holy dark. Our fur will keep us warm. Our claws will keep us safe forever. We'll be the new people. We have his undying promise. But I wasn't Catherine.”

Clutching the tote hard against her, Diana turned and ran toward the junction, along the line of bloody footprints.

*****

She wasn't sure what, in her nightmare panic, she was running from or running to, but the tracks supplied her route. They eventually took her through a broken strapwork door into more tunnels beyond, then deserted her in an unending darkness through which she whirled like a ball in a black pinball machine until she collided with someone, full-force, and landed on her rear.

She instantly started striking out, kicking, trying to roll back onto her feet, but there was too much weight on her legs and first one of her wrists, then both, were being held, locked tight, and she was going to die like that, her face ripped off and her throat torn out, no way to even know who she'd been. Except for fingerprints, they could tell from the fingerprints, came into her mind, her first sane thought for a long while, and another voice registered:

“Quit! Okay, okay, won't hurt you! Quiet! Mouse, only Mouse—”

She lay panting, her cheek tight against the stone. Pitch black. Tunnels. Not the white-room dream, that she could wake from. Real tunnels.

“Mouse...?”

Some of the pressure came off her legs as he leaned forward to whisper, “Not safe here. Quiet.”

“Yeah. Right.”

The weight came completely off, and she was being helped to sit. She found she still had the battery lantern in her hand, and clicked the button. Nothing. She must have whacked it against something. Maybe against Mouse....

“Mouse, I'm real sorry. I thought—”

“Quiet,” Mouse hissed again. “Come on, this way.”

Pulled up with more strength than she'd have expected, she was dragged along, stumbling, blindly ducking when Mouse said duck, going slow when he slowed, turning when her outstretched arm pulled her a different way, totebag swinging, she still had it, so that was all right.

“Okay, now,” Mouse said, letting her sag, breathlessly, against a wall. “Nobody close, now. Did you find him?”

Diana's head hurt. She rubbed her forehead and her fingers came away wet. Blood. That set off a moment's flare of the craziness, but it passed when she thought that she'd simply run into something in the dark. Dark. But Mouse had been leading her, damn near at a run—

“Mouse, am I blind, or is it dark here?”

“Dark, sure! Did you find him?”

“Then how can you see?”

A rustling. Then something was shoved against her face—goggles, a mask. Everything went darkroom red. She could see shapes, angles, a tunnel forking into a Y a few yards away. Mouse, scowling at her impatiently, again demanding, “Find him?”

She dropped the useless lantern, freeing a hand to hold the mask in place, slowly looking around. Being able to see helped her get her thoughts something like straight again.

She whispered, “Where are we?”

“Bowers' ground. Dangerous.”

“Their tunnels?” She gestured, then realized Mouse couldn't see the motion.

“Edge. Middle ground. Still dangerous. Don't tell Father.”

She stood thinking and didn't resist when Mouse pulled the mask away, leaving her blind again. “You mean we're outside their tunnels?”

“They come here. Same thing.”

No, she thought: not the same thing at all, and dimly remembered a broken door. “I was following his track. Behind him. Hours behind him.... But he cracked the door I came through: he got out, Mouse!”

“Then where?” Mouse demanded. “No signal, nothing. No: still inside.”

“Mouse, he isn't. He got out. He was running.... But he hasn't signaled, didn't go back?”

“Pipes say, still searching.”

Absently Diana again touched her bruised forehead, again touched blood. Another lingering crazy flash—to what she'd seen in the cave. What Vincent had left there. Everything inside her contracted, wrenched tight. Of course. He'd be totally freaked, after that. Worse than she'd been, only seeing it afterward. The last thing he'd do would be stroll into Father's study, back among people, his family....

He'd want to get as far away from people as he possibly could.

“Mouse, where would he go if he wanted to be absolutely sure nobody could find him? Where did he go, a couple weeks back, about the same time as he hurt his shoulder? When Father thought he was at my place and he wasn't? What's the deepest, darkest place Below, where nobody ever goes?”

She felt Mouse turn. “Okay, good,” he said in a tone of decision. “Come on. This way.”

The blind steeplechase started again, but slower now, more cautious, generally a steady walking pace. After about an hour, Mouse stopped and passed her the mask, which connected to a battery pack small enough to slide into her tote. Settling the strap, able to see again, Diana asked, “Where'd you get this?”

Mouse shrugged. “Found. Fixed. Good, in the dark.”

Following as he started on again, Diana asked, “But don't you need it?”

Mouse looked around with a wry grin that said the question was silly; and after a few minutes, it was plain that it was, that he didn't need the mask at all. On home ground now, he knew where to turn, where to duck, where steps began and ended. He trailed a hand along the wall, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, plainly finding small landmarks that let him locate himself without hesitation or doubt. Sometimes he stopped and listened, or groped for a loose stone and tossed it, considering what echoes came back to him.

Diana had never seen or imagined anything like it. Without asking, she knew this performance wasn't a commonplace among the tunnel community. Likely nobody but Vincent, with his night-sighted eyes....

Suddenly she knew what she was wearing, knew where the mask had come from: it'd been part of the snooping gear carried by the killer she'd blundered past, by sheer luck, on her first exploration Below. And she also found herself remembering Vincent saying, We know the dark. Mouse and I.

Now, she began to know what that meant. Though she wore the mask, Mouse still went faster, getting ahead and then having to turn and wait for her with plain impatience.

What surrounded them was no longer a tunnel. It was a raw seam in the rock, an underground canyon with sides that sometimes pulled close, so they had to edge through, climb, or even crawl, and sometimes pulled back too far for Diana to see. No sound of pipes or subways, only the occasional drop and flow of water. No candles perched on niches nor any torches propped in sconces, waiting to be lit and carried. Only wet limestone pillars like the trunks of redwoods and so broad she and Mouse could not have linked arms around them.

These were the true tunnels: unshaped, unchanging, offering no compromises to human dimensions or limitations. And the true dark, that had never known light, in whose absolute domain the bowers believed themselves safe from the fire to come. The protection they sought. The mystery they worshipped.

The totebag hung up on a spur and jerked Diana around. She swore and freed herself, then hurried to catch up.

“What is this place?” she whispered, not precisely sure why she was whispering except that all sounds were loud in such silence.

“The Maze,” Mouse replied, getting a knee up to scoot over an obstruction. Not a whisper, merely quiet: a church voice, respectful. “Not supposed to come here. Not supposed to be here. Don't tell Father.” He dropped out of sight on the other side.

“I won't if you won't,” Diana promised, following with more difficulty. Her pop always said she had a figure like a stick, but this was teaching her different. Mouse slid through places that she found too tight in very uncomfortable spots. Both hipbones would be solidly bruised for days, she knew that already. Not to mention her knees and elbows. Not to mention....

Finally shoving through a really tight squeeze on the third try, she asked, “Could Vincent really have come this way?”

Mouse looked around soberly. “Some places, he's too big. Then he climbs.”

“Oh,” Diana responded, tilting her head to survey crooked, close walls with nothing to hold to she could see or even imagine.

“Or goes around,” Mouse admitted, and then dropped flat to skid himself into a hole.

Diana looked at the hole a second, bit her lip, and dropped flat too.

It was a chute that tumbled and banged her, out of control. She threw an arm across her face to protect the mask, trying to get her legs tucked in close, the way you were taught to fall in unarmed combat. She slammed into Mouse at the bottom. He took no notice except to catch his balance, already standing, rubbing an elbow.

The space was immense. Collecting herself, getting up, Diana couldn't see the far side or any ceiling. Water plinking in every direction like whole tiers of wind chimes. But the air was absolutely still. Somehow stale, too. Old air.

“You got candles, right?” she asked.

“Not here.... Need the gizmo now. Bring it back, promise.”

It wasn't easy to surrender the mask and battery pack, return to utter and absolute blindness. But she did it. She groped her way to something about the right height to sit on, listening to at least a million plinks, feeling hours had gone by, beginning to think, uneasily, of rats. Beginning to think of all the terrible weight of rock over her head. Beginning to think, if Mouse stepped off some ledge and broke his neck, she'd never get back, never see the light again. Beginning to get scared.

The least whisper of sound, but loud to her starved ears.

“Mouse?” she called anxiously, then felt her hand taken and folded around the now-familiar contour of the mask. She immediately jammed it up against her eyes. It was as if she'd been holding her breath and finally been given permission to breathe again.

“Here,” said Mouse, and led her as she awkwardly jerked her tote around to jam the battery pack inside.

“Did you find him?”

“Found him,” Mouse confirmed. No happiness in that voice, and none in his expression, either.

“Is he...is he alive?”

“Don't know.”

They went down a slope toward a stretch as flat and featureless as a concrete slab. Diana didn't recognize it as water until Mouse stepped in it, shook his foot in distaste, then stepped in it again: locating himself by keeping contact with the division between stone and water. Not six inches deep, at least out here on the edge, and utterly still except for the widening ripples from Mouse's steps.

They walked for maybe a mile along the smoothly undulating shore of the underground lake. No loose rocks, here: anything loose had long since fallen in, or been slowly, slowly washed flat from underneath, like melting sugarcubes. So what she dimly made out ahead at the water's edge wasn't a boulder.

She started running: Vincent.

He was lying on his side, one arm in the water up to the elbow. The mask's uniform darkroom tint gave her no colors and would especially filter out red. He was therefore black. Head to foot. Hair thick and clotted with it. Torn shirt glued into folds by it.

Having seen the cave, she knew what it was.

Kneeling, she hesitated a second, then shifted the inert weight of his left arm and peeled back the sodden sleeve to find a pulse. As Mouse learned where she'd stopped by lightly kicking her, she found it: slow. Real slow. As she set his arm against his chest, she could feel no motion of breathing, it was so shallow. And touching his cheek was like touching stone, he was so cold.

“Alive?” Mouse asked, very softly.

“So far.”

“Good.” A world of relief, in that word.

“Yeah, good. If we can keep him that way.”

No way of knowing whether any of the blood was his—whether he'd been hurt in any of the more ordinary, physical ways, too. Have to get him clean, before she could be sure....

As she sat back on her heels, she realized his eyes were open. Exactly the same locked stillness as Jacob's; the same blind gaze.

Almost, she said his name, then swallowed the word and snatched her hand away. Last thing he needed were more uncontrolled emotions invading his own. Last thing he needed was to be reawakened to what he'd gone into profound shock to escape. She didn't even dare risk touching him again. But then how—

Straightening, she took Mouse's arm and towed him aside, up the slope. She whispered, “Mouse, how long, to get to the Hub and back here? You, by yourself?”

Mouse shrugged, and she understood: there was no measuring time here. You just kept going until you arrived, and then you were there. Time didn't come into it. Mouse was always late for everything, Diana recalled.

But he had to go. He was the only one who could.

She said, “You gotta tell Father.”

“Get in trouble....” Mouse responded uneasily, looking around— for all the world as though he could see.

“Go as far as the first pipes, send a message.”

Mouse nodded, relieved: at least he wouldn't have to confront Father face to face, admit the forbidden things he'd been doing. At least not right away. And any time that wasn't now was the same meaningless distance off.

Diana looked back to the shore, bracing herself. “We have to knock him out for at least a couple of hours. Out cold. Long enough to get him cleaned up, get him out of here. He can tolerate....” She had to pause and brace again, to get the words out: “He can tolerate animal tranquilizer. I know that, so Father must too, he's the doctor. So tell Father...tell Father I need enough of a dose to put him out as long as possible. No reasons, no argument. Tell him I said so. We just need it, absolutely need it. And clean clothes.... We can't take him the way we came: how can we move him, Mouse? How can we get him out of here?”

Mouse turned to survey the lake he couldn't see. “Slope, off there. Wider, easier, going up. But a long way around.... Make a raft. Take him that way, across. Easy.”

Her hug startled him because he hadn't known it was coming. “Mouse, you're a wonder.” Pulling off the mask, she passed it to him, and then the pack. “Tell Father to make it fast. But nobody else is to come here. Not Father, not anybody, until I say. Just us.”

“Sure.” Mouse's tone was a little indignant, as though that was too obvious to need saying. Maybe it was.

She didn't know he'd moved away until she heard wading noises. He was cutting directly across the lake. It must be that shallow.

Before the noises faded, while she still could use them as a reference point, she found her way back to the water's edge and sat there. You could get lost real easy in a place like this: so no wandering around, no exploring. Just stay put and wait.

She knew Vincent was nearby, to one side or the other, and that was as close an approximation as she needed. Although she wanted to reach out, she wouldn't until she could be sure that wouldn't mean waking him into the full horror of what had happened. What he'd done. What had been done to him.

If they were lucky, maybe he'd blanked out early, slipped into fugue. Maybe he wouldn't remember things clearly, or at all. But if he did....

The chill penetrated slowly but steadily, now that she was no longer moving. She wished she'd thought to ask Mouse to add an extra sweater to the list of what they needed. Too late now.

Arms wrapped around her knees, shivering in bursts, she thought about what she should do when Vincent started to come to himself, if he started to remember. Because she knew he'd take it real bad. Real bad. Because it'd been real bad.

Because he hadn't been simply a watcher, or even simply a killer. He'd been a player. When the party had been in full swing, he'd been in it. A player. Like the rest.

She knew it in her gut: nothing less would have freaked him as bad as this. Overcome, overwhelmed, and drugged pretty well out of his mind, he'd been pulled into it all and cut loose without restraint; and people were so fragile. Which would have freaked him worse, mad at them and mad at himself and flashing back and forth between rage and desire until there came to be no difference, and it'd finally been just killing in the end. Until he'd been the only one left alive and he'd realized, in a dim, freaked-out way, that the party was absolutely over. That it was time to go absolutely anyplace but home.

Whoever had set that up had known him, she realized. Known how to draw him out to the skinny edge, the limits of control, and then known how to angle the push to shove him off into the Nothing that lay beyond. Even known when to do it: choosing the anniversary, the date so full of deep resonances for him that allowed events to strike those same strings, tuned so tight, and make with them a different and more discordant music. Known him inside and out and therefore known how to create the worst nightmare he'd ever had, his own personal white-room dream, and him in the middle of it, having to live it out, maybe knowing there could be no waking, no way to get free of it afterward. That would be the final horror: the one that would last.

That kind of wound could be crippling. That kind of wound could kill.

Nothing could possibly be the same afterward. Once he felt it, and knew it, it would change everything....

Don't think about the damn garlands, the tumbled husks of corpses. Think about Vincent. About how to give him a way to live with it, with what had happened. How to live in spite of it.

Otherwise, the dark would have won.

She didn't know precisely what she meant by that. She only knew that it was true.

She listened around her, to the dark that had no sound of its own, and knew that it was neutral. It meant nobody harm. But it meant nobody good, either: it cared nothing for people at all, for joy or suffering or anything in between. A vast, unknowing indifference that was ignorant light could ever have existed. And this was its place, that he'd come to— the final refuge. Where nothing meant anything. Where there could be neither feeling nor knowing.

She didn't think he'd especially intended to die here. She didn't think he'd cared, one way or the other. He'd just wanted to be away, and this was as far away as he knew how to get.

He'd come to a state where not hurting any more was the best thing he could imagine.

Here, there was only cold and quiet old air: only darkness. Its rule was absolute. That was so simply evident that it hadn't occurred to Mouse to give her a candle to keep by her while she waited. And it hadn't occurred to her to ask.

It was both a long time and no time at all when she heard Mouse returning through the shallow water. It had been precisely time enough. Just enough time to let her think it all through and know what she had to do: lie, and keep on lying, and lie some more, to buy enough time to put some life and sunlight between that godawful cage and cave, and Vincent's awareness of them. A cushion. As thick, in hours and days, in closeness and love, as she could make it.

That was what she'd do: this time, this once, she'd lie.

*****

Once he was solidly out, they moved him on the makeshift raft Mouse had made and dragged across with him, returning. The water, when she went into it, was numbingly cold, but never more than waist-deep; eventually they found the other side.

Then they washed him, she and Mouse: with him still on the raft and pretty well soaked through by that time anyhow. Mouse kept the mask and allowed her to help— do arms, shoulders, the matted, tangled hair, safe stuff like that— but insisted on taking care of the more personal stuff himself. Touched by Mouse's absurd modesty and protectiveness, Diana didn't argue or really mind not being able to see. Touch was better, closer. She was simply glad finally to be able to make immediate contact with Vincent again, finally pet and ease the slack muscles, smooth back his hair from his face, kiss him whenever she wanted to.

By that time, she couldn't feel the cold much and was beyond shivering. By that time, under her hand, Vincent's flesh and clean fur felt warm, if only by contrast.

Sensibly, Mouse had ignored her idea of trying to dress Vincent again. He'd instead brought quilts, still dry and piled farther up the slope. They spread one out and, between them, managed to haul and roll Vincent onto it. Again, Mouse proved to be stronger than Diana would have expected.

When Vincent was fully cocooned, Mouse went off to guide the others Father had waiting by that time. Mouse didn't object that they brought their lanterns, although Diana could tell it made him edgy: he kept looking around with sudden, spooked glances, as if expecting the dark to make some devastating objection before they could get well clear.

But Mouse wasn't in charge any more. Father's orders determined things now.

For herself, Diana was glad of the light.

For a stretcher, they'd put poles under a door. Six men on it. Diana wearily trailed along behind, up the slope, thinking that it looked a whole lot more like a burial than a resurrection, and not even a wake with a whole lot of good, stiff drinks to look forward to.

But she'd underestimated Father. Past the slope and the narrow places where it was hard to make the turns, out in what finally and unmistakably was a tunnel, lots of torches and more lanterns and a considerable crowd waiting but everybody very quiet, Father came to her with a sweater, her very own sweater mended again since the fire, and helped her pull it on. It felt real good. Then a blanket around her shoulders, over everything, and finally a silver-cased flask of something that smelled perfectly wonderful.

“Brandy,” Father commented gruffly. “Purely medicinal.”

She took two good swallows, felt them going down, then paused. “We have to go far?” she asked in a small voice.

“I'm not going to even attempt to get him home,” Father replied firmly, turning to follow the stretcher but staying with her too, not going any faster than she could move. “The Ripley Branches are close, and the Meads have volunteered their chamber for as long as is necessary. What's needed now is warmth, and food, and rest. Tell me—”

“Don't ask me anything. He went missing in the fight, and we found him here and got him home, and that's all anybody knows. Because that's all there is to know.” Her look at Father was both a plea and a challenge.

Father nodded. “If you think it best, then I must bow to your judgment.”

“And Father... please don't tell him how we knocked him out. The... the animal tranquilizer. I don't know how he'd feel about that. If he doesn't ask, don't tell him.”

“As far as I'm concerned, it's simply medicine: what was, in my judgment, the appropriate and necessary treatment. Nothing more need be said than that.”

“Good. Thanks.”

Father glanced at her sharply, as though she'd said something odd, but she didn't know what and was past caring.

After tunnels, and a couple uphill twists of that miserable, scary kind of stair called a serpentine, and more tunnels again, she found herself aimed at the most welcome sight, except Vincent himself, that she could remember— a bed. She fell into it as into deep water, dimly surfaced some unknown time later to be poured full of hot, strong broth, then another deep headfirst dive. When she woke, a woman who introduced herself as Mattie Mead said it was Sunday and Diana figured it probably was. Having totally lost count of the time and the days, she had no better guess to offer.

It seemed like a lifetime since Vincent had been stretched on her couch, tolerantly listening to her imitation of Carol Burnett impersonating a princess.

She'd almost drifted off again when she smelled it: coffee.

She sat bolt upright as Vincent came in carrying a tray, and there were cups on it, and a saucepan from which rose wonderful steam.

“Boiled, I'm afraid,” he apologized, and she somehow kept her hands still while he made a formal business of pouring the coffee into a cup through a tea strainer to separate the grounds. But the instant he quit, she grabbed.

The coffee was much too hot, too strong, and oily from boiling in the grounds, of which a few crunchy flecks remained, in spite of the strainer. In fact, it was awful. She drank it anyway.

Sticking the cup out for more, she shoved her hair back from her forehead, intent only on the filling cup.

“Your machine,” Vincent commented, setting the tray aside, “needs electricity and there's none available this far out. Placing it on a fire didn't seem...prudent. So this is the best we could do.”

Diana swallowed twice, sighed. “Yeah. Well, it's great. Thanks.”

“You are owed the thanks. I gather.”

Almost, automatically, she said Forget it. Then she remembered the Maze and sat very still, many things suddenly coming together. She couldn't move until she had all the pieces in place.

“What is it?” Vincent asked, and when she looked, there was concern in his eyes...and something else. He was watching her, the way she'd often watched him. That, plus a wariness, a reserve.

Physically, though, he appeared to be OK: no new slings or obvious bandages, and he seemed to move easily and naturally. No wounds that showed....

“You scared me real bad, babe.” It was true, and it was good enough.

He glanced aside, considering a chair he might have drawn up, decided against it. But first, he'd glanced aside. “I'm sorry. It couldn't be helped.”

She would have reached, but he was just a little too far off. Her hand dropped onto the quilt. “I'm real sorry about the kids.”

Longer pause than usual. “Yes. As are we all. Father especially.”

And she thought, For a second there, he wasn't sure which kids I meant—the three who were poisoned...or the other kids. He remembers something...but he's not sure. And there's nobody he can ask but me because nobody else knows. He's not sure I know. That's why he's watching: to find out.

She rubbed her forehead. This was going to be rough. But she hadn't expected lying to him would be easy.

“Hey,” she said, “if it's Sunday, I got a hell of a lot to do before tomorrow. If we're all done saving this world for a day or two, I gotta get home and see about saving mine.” She started pushing back the quilt, and he immediately turned and left: bolted like a skittish teenager scared of seeing something he shouldn't. She looked to check: nothing much. Nothing missing but her shoes. All decent, sweater to sweatsocks. But maybe he didn't know that. And he sure as hell didn't want to find out.

She called after him, “Hey, anybody see my totebag?”

From the next room, his voice answered, “It's here. When you're ready, I'll show you the way back.”

“Babe, that's miles. Just point me at a way up and I'll take a cab.”

“I'm afraid even that will be some distance. We're under the river.”

And the bowers were under the sea.

Diana shivered, then grabbed a shoe, finding it freshly polished, greased, something—all the stiffness from being soaked worked out, anyway. She wished she could do the same for her elbows, knees—all the pointy places were bruised, skinned, and protested when she moved. She felt as though she'd spent a few days tumbling in a dryer and figured she ought to be done by now. But home, and a bath, and some aspirin were the answer to that. The only answer she was really sure of.

All the way to the nearest threshold, she could feel him watching her. But he never took her arm or touched, although that knowing was sharper, clearer. He avoided it, avoided her as much as walking together along twisting rock tunnels would allow. Deeply withdrawn, distant; and both of them trying to pretend that he wasn't, that nothing had changed.

“I know you told me to stay Above,” Diana said apologetically, “but I just couldn't. Anyway, what Father told me meant everything was all over by then, and I didn't get anyplace near the bowers' ground. And I had Mouse with me, he knows what he's doing. Hope you're not mad...?”

“No. I am grateful you came.” Automatic politeness, nothing more.

“You were real lucky to get clear with no worse than a faceful of pixie dust.”

Medium silence. “What?”

“This.” She hauled out her bagged sample of the drug, still palely shining, being real careful not to get the garland bag by mistake. “Brushed some off the rocks, by where Cullen and the rest lost you.”

He glanced at the bag a second warily, plainly didn't like looking at it, so she put it away.

“That is not,” he said slowly, “how I remember it.” Frowning, he groped inward. “The last few, retreating. Past a narrow place...an ambush. Then too many. A net. I think. Wire mesh.” His big hands flexed: a tactile memory.

She said quickly, “Faceful of this, you could remember tap dancing with a pink-spotted snake wearing a bow-tie and playing a harmonica. Must have breathed a little, collecting it, and I was still getting technicolor flashes an hour later. Must be the newest thing in designer happy dust. Anyhow, you always say your memory takes a detour through the Twilight Zone, times like that.”

Long silence that wasn't really silence, but a sense of suspension. She could almost feel him working at it, way away on the far side of his distance— the different scenario she'd given him and whatever he felt or partly remembered. Trying to fit the mismatched pieces together, trying to join them into a bridge he could trust his weight to, so he could come back.

So she chattered on, “And I was so worried you might get hurt because you'd listened to me, had a drink or three. Or five. Honest, I was just sick about it. And I mean literally.”

“There was no way you could have known.” Automatic considerateness. “And you meant well. It was my choice to make.... My choice.”

“So maybe you can imagine what a relief it was to see nothing worse wrong with you than being slightly stoned out of your mind.” She paused a moment for a comment that didn't come, then added, “Lucky Mouse figured out that you'd head for the Maze, anytime things started to get crazy, inside or out. Anytime you wanted to be by yourself. Get someplace quiet: that makes sense. It's real quiet, in the Maze.”

“Yes. I have always found the dark peaceful.... Mouse knows me very well. And I am fortunate you found me there. When I had so lost myself....” That, too, all automatic. Then abruptly, across the distance, a real question: “I did not appear in any way... different to you, then? When you found me?”

“Besides being totally out of it and soaked through, you mean? No, not specially. Why?” She actually looked around at him: casually curious, a little puzzled. Both fists clenched around the totebag's handles.

For a second, their eyes met. Almost instantly, his dropped. He continued pacing along beside her, only seeming close, but really light-years away. “No reason. I suppose. Perhaps...perhaps I dreamed it, then.”

“Dreamed what?”

“It is of no consequence.”

“If you say so, babe.”

The threshold led to a stair he said would take her to an alley near the east side docks. Not a great neighborhood, but it was early yet, on a Sunday morning. She should be all right, he said, plainly trying to convince both of them.

The threshold was dark, with gleams of sunlight stabbing in from above. Pausing with a foot on the bottom step, Diana turned and said, “I can tell, something about this is still eating at you. You're still not right about it—what it means, or what you had to do, or maybe only this dream, whatever it was. I don't want to push. But maybe tonight, you could come by. And if you want to, we'll talk about it. And if you don't want to, we won't. How about that?”

“Perhaps. If I can,” he responded dully, no more than automatic, and was gone into the deeper dark before she'd even gone up the stairs.

So she wasn't too surprised when he didn't come that night. Her sense of suspension continued as a background to everything she did, over the next couple of days.

First thing Monday morning, she called a courier service to deliver the zip bags for analysis, but after five minutes changed her mind and cancelled the pickup. And finding a cab so handily sitting across the street, not doing anything, motor running, did nothing to make her feel less spooky: Toothpick's comment, We know who you are, had stayed with her; in retrospect, it seemed vaguely menacing.

As Vincent had once said, there was generally no way for her targets to identify her as the hunter. But she'd given up that anonymity, going after him the way she had. She wasn't worried about anything in particular. Merely the fact of being known was enough to make her feel exposed, vulnerable.

Maybe the bowers felt the same way about her, since they didn't like being known either. And there were a hell of a lot more of them than there was of her. No telling what people like that might do to make sure she kept silent about their secret. Dead silent.

Taking the subway somehow didn't really appeal to her very much, once she started to think about it. So she took a bus most of the way uptown and walked the rest of the way to personally hand the zip bags into the large, acid-stained hand of Ben Honeywell, chief forensic chemist and an old pal of her pop's.

They talked old times, what a mess the City was in, why her mom had never remarried, when he could expect to attend Diana's wedding: the usual. She left satisfied that nothing odd would happen to the samples and that she alone would see the report, to be delivered in duplicate, with the samples, by police courier, no later than ten Wednesday morning, barring something really exotic.

Once home, she phoned a locksmith she'd dealt with before, to fit her downstairs door with a full set of locks and deadbolts. He agreed to come that afternoon. Then she called an electrician to get response doorbells, with two-way speakers, wired—one for the front door, one for outside her door. She also got a quote on a motion detector for her staircase. That job was scheduled for Friday morning.

That was about as secure as she knew how to make herself. She tried to put both suspension and nervousness out of her mind and take up her life where she'd dropped it, last Thursday night.

Nothing to do, now, but wait. Sometime, Vincent would come to her for another dose of lying reassurance that there was really nothing wrong, reassurance nobody Below could give him. He'd have to.

After the locksmith had come and gone, Diana taped a big sign, KNOCK, on the door, figuring that would serve until she could get the doorbells and speakers installed.

It didn't work. Discovering, about two on Wednesday morning, that she was nearly out of aspirin, she decided to duck out to a drugstore and found Vincent sitting in the dark hall. Tripped over him, in fact, and scared herself into almost shooting him.

“It was locked,” he explained, after they'd sorted themselves out.

“Been some things in the neighborhood I don't like....” she began, hastily trying to think up a convincing story, but then trailed off because he'd already slid past her, up the stairs.

“May I come in?” came back to her.

She looked blankly around the hall— have to get a light in here, couldn't see the sign: she hadn't thought about that— then around up the staircase, already empty. “Sure,” she called, following, trying to get ready for whatever might come.

Distracted didn't begin to describe it. He was in perfectly awful shape, and after a couple of very strange conversations on topics of no interest whatever to either of them, she got out of him that he hadn't slept since coming to, sometime late Saturday night. And he'd apparently been having visions, on and off, ever since.

“It happens, sometimes,” he explained, uncomfortable for a second before he forgot and slid back into the same eerie calm that had accepted locks without surprise or need of excuses. “Blake had them all the time,” he added, as though that should make it all OK.

Sitting in a scoop chair, watching him wander around by the bookshelves, she propped her chin on her fists. “You want to tell me about it?”

He thought about that. “Yes,” he decided finally. “That's why I came. Father doesn't...listen too objectively to such things, although he tries, although he knows they happen. They happen sometimes.... To me.”

“I guess. So, tell me.”

She'd pretty well guessed what she was going to hear, and she did: disconnected and highly expurgated flashes of cage and cave.

When he finally seemed to have finished, she took a breath, braced herself, and asked, “What do you think it means?”

While describing the visions, he'd settled on the far end of the couch. He looked around at her question, the first direct look he'd given her practically since he'd arrived. It lasted maybe a second and then flicked away, as if even meeting her eyes had become too nearly like contact, and a threat. She'd never seen anybody look so lost, desolate. Her nails dug into her palms with the effort of swallowing the truth, knowing that telling it would only make everything worse.

“I don't know. I don't like it,” he said simply. “I wish it would stop.”

Another breath, another brace. Then she declared, “Nightmares.”

“But I haven't been asleep, Diana,” he pointed out patiently.

“You have. You just don't know you have, that's all.”

“I don't think so.” But he wasn't altogether sure, even of that.

Some part of him knew. The rest didn't want to. They weren't talking to each other, the two parts. The part that knew wouldn't risk getting too close to her: backing off, keeping away, too scalded-sensitive to risk contact, touch. It signaled its distress by channeling fragments of memory into eruptive visions. The other part didn't have a clue.

He was tearing himself apart.

“It's that damn pixie dust, babe,” she said. “Afterflashes. Happens with a lot of the hallucinogens—LSD and stuff. Scrambles stuff up for a while, but you'll eventually get it all sorted out, what's real and what isn't.”

She made her voice sound easy, reassuring, as if that prediction were a comfort to her.

“It wasn't like this before,” he responded, hands fisted together and stuck between his knees, all pulled tightly into himself, staring unseeingly straight out down the loft.

“Before, when? I don't follow you.”

“I was...attacked this way once before. By Paracelsus, who made the drug.... The same effect. Disconnectedness. Visions. Rage.... But when it passed, I remembered. Remembered it all. What I'd felt, seen, done.... When it passed, I was free of it. I cannot seem to get free of this, Diana.”

“It's just nightmares and afterflashes. Don't worry about it.” She stretched, yawned, as though she didn't have to unclench her jaw to do it. “It's late: I'll make us some cocoa, how about that?”

He didn't answer, but she didn't expect him to and didn't wait for his agreement. Having heated everything in the microwave, she took up the cups and started back. That was when she realized he was asleep on her couch, tucked tight in the corner, head awkwardly pillowed on a bent arm.

He'd be lame when he woke. But she wouldn't have touched him or spoken to him, even to suggest that he stretch out, for all the world. He damn well needed the sleep more than he needed to be comfortable.

Carrying one cup, she folded into one of the scoop chairs to watch him sleep, wishing all hurt, fear, and pain away from him, exactly as she'd done during the first nights and days she'd taken him home and watched him lying unconscious in her bed. Somehow that time and this seemed one time, one unchanging solicitude and wonder that had only deepened and grown more acute with the months between. Because now she knew him. And loved him enough even to lie to him if there was no other way to give him something like the peace he needed.

Dawn woke her, stiff, but her last three aspirin and some coffee took care of that. He'd moved a little, settling lower, stretching partway out along the couch, but otherwise still seemed deeply asleep. She padded around the loft in her socks and hoped to heaven Father didn't start wondering where his son had gotten to and come asking, or send somebody to bang a summons on the basement pipes. Struck by the thought of another danger, she unplugged the phone before it could ring and felt disaster escaped by seconds.

The loft heated as the day progressed. When the traffic noises quieted down about as much as they were going to, after nine, she cranked a few of the skylights partly open to let the heat out, air in: even with smog and exhaust fumes in it, the air still was moving, alive. Completely unlike the air in the Maze....

Then suddenly she looked at her watch and realized her delivery from the lab should have been here already, might be coming any minute, and tiptoed frantically down the stairs to sit on the front step and intercept the courier before he could push the street door's buzzer. She only had to wait five minutes, and trudged back upstairs with a deepened sense of escape because those were all the loud noises she expected before rush hour this afternoon and maybe shutting the skylights back up would guard against them too, if he slept that long.

Noise pollution police, she thought, and smiled. And then watchdog, and smiled a different smile.

Sitting with more coffee at the round table, she flipped through the report. About what she'd expected. The garland was impregnated (interesting word) with a this-and-that unpronounceable double subscript organic blend that went by the brand name Joy. Diana popped the zip to see whether $200 an ounce perfume, in extravagant concentrations, really smelled as bad as she remembered. It did.

The powder, which she had no inclination whatever to sample again, was a fungal hybrid hallucinogen identical to a sample analyzed a little over two years ago in relation to a drug case that was never resolved, in spite of the fact that a cop had been killed during the investigation, which always put everybody into high gear.

Checking out the accompanying hunches, she logged onto CityNet and downloaded the case file on the drug fiasco. Sure enough: one Catherine Chandler had actually gone undercover during that one, on loan from the DA's office: the connection Diana had expected to find. Catherine, to Paracelsus, to Vincent—the predictable triple play. And from her own files on Catherine's murder, Diana called up the inventory of the contents of Catherine's apartment and had just found the right place when Vincent's voice surprised her, saying, “Good morning. It would appear.”

She instantly blanked the screen, then wheeled the chair around, smiling. “Close enough. Almost lunch time.”

“I'm sorry if I inconvenienced you.”

Again, she caught herself before she'd quite said Forget it. “No trouble at all. And it's kind of fun, watching you sleep. Maybe I'm getting used to it. We better watch out or it could get to be a habit.”

Sitting up, leaned forward and not entirely awake yet, he tilted his head at the teasing and remarked, “Nuns have habits. I don't believe it would suit you.” She couldn't tell if he was looking any better— all tousled and folded from sleeping on the couch—but he certainly sounded better. He went on, “I wonder if I might—” and then his head came up, and then the rest of him came up. He took two steps forward and then stood frozen, staring at the round table.

Odors bypassed the mind, went straight to the gut. And she'd read that smell-memories were the most vivid of all.

From twenty feet off, he'd picked up on the residual scent, on the scrap of paper garland, of Joy: Catherine Chandler's brand of perfume.

He backed until he hit the couch, blundered clear, and kept on backing.

Torn for a second between going after him and getting rid of the damn evidence bag, Diana spun out of the chair, choosing the latter. Grabbing, she disposed of the bag the quickest way— by throwing it through the nearest open skylight. Then she went after him.

He backed against, then knocked over, the folding screen and the easel. He ended in the corner because there was nowhere farther to go. Groping behind, finding nothing but wall, he slid onto the floor, everything pulled in as close and tight as it could go. He was breathing quick, unnatural breaths and she saw the blindness starting to come up in his eyes. He'd gone so pale that the fair hair on his lower face and muzzle, normally next to invisible, stood out plainly.

Reaching him and dropping down, she grabbed him hard. No response. Neither putting an arm around her nor drawing away, but there was noplace to draw away to. Except inside. She hammered on his shoulder, to make him know she was there, like pounding on a shut door, saying, “Babe, stay with me this time. It's gonna be okay. None of it can get at you here, there's nothing to be scared of. It's all done, over. Hey! Vincent! Listen to me, here!”

“I killed them all.” Hardly even a whisper, but she heard it.

“They set you up, Vincent. You had no choice at all. Maybe they got more than they figured on and the party turned rough, but they weren't citizens, innocent bystanders. Not innocent, absolutely. Don't let's lose track of who's the target, the victim, here. Hey! You're not going into shock on me, you hear?” She hammered his chest, like emergency first aid to a cardiac case. No reaction. “Listen, listen, babe. When you get a little distance on it, it'll be better, I promise. That's all I wanted, so you could get a little distance, a little time—”

“I killed them all. Didn't I.”

She grabbed his chin, forced his face around toward her, but he still wasn't looking at her. Or anything. Yet he'd said something: he knew that he wasn't alone, that she was there. Better than nothing. Better than catatonia.

Carefully, she said, “Everybody I saw in there was dead. Yeah.”

“You saw it?” Suddenly, the blue eyes were focused, with a more immediate horror. Then he yanked his head so she couldn't see his face. She couldn't prevent him.

“Look, you see me running? You see me anyplace but where I am? I've seen worse, babe. I've seen airport bombings. Nothing you could do could even come close to what's left after that. People spread all over—” She bit her lip, making herself stop. More graphic details weren't what he needed right now. What he was remembering or imagining was surely enough for him to handle— supposing he could even handle that. Shake sex together with death and you always had an explosive combination. And the detonator had been Catherine's scent— then, as now.

Sliding a little aside, she grabbed his upper arm with both hands and tugged, trying to get him to settle against her. But he was too heavy, too locked into himself for her to budge.

“Come on,” she said, “you gotta cooperate here. I can't do this all by myself. Come on, babe: give a little.”

He looked around, and it was plain that he hadn't the least notion what she was talking about. Or maybe that she'd been talking at all.

He said again, “I killed them all,” but it meant something different this time. It was almost a question, and the emphasis was on the last word.

And Diana hadn't a clue what the right answer ought to be. So might as well fall back on the truth. “Yeah. They were all real dead. And had been for a while, by the time I got there.”

Long pause. As she was trying to decide if it was time to hammer some more, he said, “How many?”

The memory came back to her: seven and six. That made thirteen. Maybe a bad number. Maybe a real bad number.

She said, “I couldn't stay but a couple minutes, it started to get real strange on me. That pixie dust, that's something you don't want to stay around for long....” She took a breath, then stated, “It was a little hard to tell.”

“How many?”

The number was important, then: she'd been afraid of that. Deliberately brutal, she responded, “Look, I didn't exactly make a count of parts. About a dozen, something like that. What's the difference?”

“There should have been 14. To make the number.”

“What number?”

He tipped his head back into the corner and shut his eyes: the first change, the first easing, the first intentional action other than all-out retreat, utter panic and horror. “The ritual number. Seven youths and seven maidens were the annual sacrifice to the Minotaur of Crete.”

“What's that, in English?”

Long silence. Breathing slower, though.

She prodded, “Come on, help me out a little. What ritual? Are you talking about some kind of cult?”

“Some kind,” he echoed, and finally looked at her, actually saw her. “Of cult. I suppose so. Yes. I...I have been sacrificed to, Diana. As a god. Or a divine monster. I don't—” He jerked, flinched, then went on, “Apparently I have...participated in the ceremony. Accepted the sacrifice. How. How does one live. With such a thing.”

With no idea whatever what he was talking about, not even sure he knew, she tugged at his arm again, saying, “Come on, let's have a little give here,” and this time he didn't resist, came with the pull, so that his head and most of his shoulders were resting in her lap.

She smoothed his hair away from his face. His skin had a little color now; and the blindness in his eyes was a different blindness—not blank unknowing but abstraction, thought. Maybe she'd bought him enough time, after all. Maybe it was going to be all right. She leaned and kissed him on the forehead. When he didn't move or object, she did it again and stayed bent, her cheek against his hair.

After a long while, he said, “Theseus.”

She remembered that. From Lena's wedding reception. “He was the one with the whatchamacallits—the Centaurs.”

“That was afterward. First was the maze, and the Minotaur. The cursed and sacred monster. Someone has made the myth live again. For me. In me. Why?”

“The question is who?”

“No,” he said. “That is not a question. I know who.”

She waited, then prodded, “You gonna share that secret?”

“My father.”

She sat up, staring at him. “What? You're telling me that Father—”

He shook his head. “Paracelsus. There are many ways to be a son. And many ways to be a father. That was how...how they greeted me. Hailed me, in my cage. As his true son. As he had called me. At the last. When he knew that he was dying. That I had killed him, with no provocation, no attack, except through words.... By that act, I became his son, and heir to all he was. And now I have been... worshipped for it.”

His lips pulled back from his fangs, an expression of violent distaste. “They...desired that which is dark, within me. They invoked the monster which is at once beast and man. Such a summoning... such desires... they have power. That which they called for... came. I was one with them. I accepted those garlanded for the sacrifice.”

His head moved again, a flinching, convulsive jerk that ran all through him like the beginning of a seizure; as if unaware of it, his voice continued, “Oh, I do not know how I am to live with this. I cannot. They—”

She lost him then. The breathing changed to a rough panting that shook him but he didn't know it, the eyes fixed, empty. He yawned— another kind of seizure, abrupt and reflexive as a sneeze— and then was still again, except for the panting. And she knew what she'd lost him into, what the wide, blind eyes saw: what still had the power to pull him back.

It was as if she could feel him spinning against her, as she held him—like thread whirling off a bobbin that rattled and shook with its going; and she was caught up in the motion too, the steady panting rocking both of them now, a simple, dreadful rhythm. Another yawn, all the big fangs showing. His head began to turn, the eyes still locked, seeing nothing, seeing only what they saw. And somehow Diana knew that if her eyes met his, the way he was now, they were both gone.

Folding almost double, she shoved her face into the hollow join of his shoulder and neck, preventing his head from turning any farther and herself from waiting, in suspended fascination, to see what he saw, when their eyes should meet. Breathing him, holding him, his cheek fever-hot against hers, she began a different rocking— slow, a caress of motion—idiotically crooning against his ear, “It's okay, babe. We're okay,” over and over, as if it was true or saying it could make it so.

She held him like that, slowly rocking, repeating her nonsense, until he finally moved, turning more fully against her: slack, moving now only with her motion. Breathing gone at last quieter. And it wasn't hard to release him, lean back, because she didn't want him that way— mindless, driven. Not for herself and absolutely not for him. Better never, than like that.

She looked at him, and he was back with her again: merely thinking, blinking occasionally, face registering as ideas came and passed, just as though there'd been no interval of madness between. And for him, she thought, there hadn't. Only she knew.

He shifted suddenly, pushing up on an elbow and turning to face her, demanding, “I did kill them all? All 14?”

Now, what was important to him was that he hadn't missed any. And Diana couldn't find it in herself either to lie or to tell the truth— that the count was one girl shy. Lowering her eyes, making a vague, helpless gesture, she said softly, “Babe, there were pieces all over.”

He twisted, got his legs under him, and started to stand, all abrupt, separate motions, saying, “I must be certain. I must go back and see—”

She hung onto his wrist as he started to move, and he came down too easily, banging against the wall, nearly falling on her. Then his knees gave and he folded onto the floor again. Chalky pale again, too. But the breathing was still OK and there was sense in his eyes.

She told him, “Babe, you're not thinking. That's just crazy. You can't walk back onto the bowers' ground. And besides, it's been four days: way too late. Nothing left there to see. It's all done. Over.”

That seemed to sink in. Then he pulled away, rising. This time, more balanced, he made it and started pacing an aimless pattern across the loft as though he had to be in motion, couldn't bear stillness anymore. “But why has he done this? And why am I left alive to know it? Is it—”

His shoulders settled, sagged. “Is it that I somehow serve his purposes now merely by remaining alive, tainted by such an abomination? Has some inevitable thing been set moving that I permit, unknowing, merely because my heart has the dumb stubbornness to continue beating and does not know to stop, as it should?”

He wheeled, faced her. “I should have died with Catherine. Taken her, and simply stepped out instead of walking the edge. I should—”

“No!” Diana jumped up, meaning to grab him, but suddenly found herself past, slamming against the wall. He'd moved aside, dodged her too quickly for her to react.

“No,” he told her as she turned. “That cannot be.”

“What cannot be?” She took a step, and he was balanced, ready to fade whichever way was necessary to avoid her. She let her weight settle, and they looked at one another.

He said quietly, “You must not touch me anymore. No one must touch me. Ever again.”

“That's garbage.” With deliberate steps, Diana walked toward him until she could throw both arms around his neck in a fierce hug, hard against him from head to heel. Lifting a little onto her toes, she kissed him just as fiercely, just as hard, full on the mouth. Through the intimate contact, she tried to feel and to convey all the love, all the acceptance: how welcome he was to her, how ready she was to meet him more than halfway in any touch, any closeness, so long as he was wholly with her.

He stood enduring it like a tree. A tree wracked by lightning strikes. Deep muscles jerking in spasms of aborted, arrested motion. Then rigidly still.

Finally lifting her face and looking, she found that his eyes were shut and his expression was unreadable.

“Come on,” she said, “that's not so bad, is it?”

Slowly, deliberately, he disengaged and stepped back just beyond reach. Very flatly and finally, he said, “You do not want to know.”

She stood a long time, looking at him across that distance, and started having trouble with her own breathing. “Are you mad at me, babe? For lying to you?”

He looked aside. “No. I understand. A small mercy of time. A great and difficult kindness. But it is ended now.”

“Then don't you...know me anymore?”

“I do not know myself. What I feel...has been poisoned. What I think, see, know...all of it, all poisoned. At the source. I hope that you cannot imagine it.... Therefore what I feel for you can never become what...what we had hoped it might. I can never be a part of anyone. That dream is done. I must try somehow to free myself of this and make peace with myself again.” With plain effort he turned back and forced himself to meet her eyes. “If you are in need of a watchdog, that you may have. Or a friend. But I am what I am...and cannot change. I know that now. It would be foolish, cruel...and dangerous to dream otherwise. Do not dream, Diana. That is only pain. Seek your own happiness. Don't look to me for it: I have none to give.”

She said nothing, having no answer but touch for such despair; and that, he would no longer accept from her. And if she insisted, she'd know she was giving, not comfort, but only worse pain.

And the longer she held back, the longer she waited, the more fully he would have retreated again into the willed unknowing and unawareness from which he'd begun, however hesitantly, to venture. Returning to what, at first, she'd taken for innocence but now knew, with absolute certainty, to be only another darkness and a part of the Maze.

But maybe that was what he needed now, to be able to accept being alive. To reconcile himself with not having died of sorrow—from Catherine's death, and from all the terrible hits he'd taken since. There came a time, and a magnitude of pain, when the kindest thing you could do was simply let go, stand aside. Not try to hang on to what could no longer be gladly held. When it quit being fun for both, then quit: say goodbye and walk away. The same as she'd told him so furiously during their fight about Cullen— angry, but honestly meaning every word.

And she looked at him in the brilliant, diffuse glow that fell through the skylights, and he was still the greatest miracle she could ever hope to see. Despairing, deeply wounded as he was, with no happiness or hope even for himself, much less to share, he was still altogether amazing, wonderful. Under such weight, he still stood upright; he still took thought for her before himself; and there was still no end to the generosity or the strength of his spirit. Looking at him, she knew there could be no letting go, no turning away.

And she'd be damned if she'd let the Maze have him.

She backed off and dropped into a scoop chair. The action said, meant, that she wasn't going to grab him or jump him; and, with no room for two, wasn't even going to invite him.

She said, “Show me: how close can you get, before it starts getting bad?”

Her heart contracted when, instead of coming nearer, he increased the distance. Taking her seriously, though: a slow retreating step at a time, testing, needing another, until he was clear back by the table, a good twenty feet away. One further step, to check, but no, no more improvement. So one step ahead again. His face showing nothing, except eyes she found she couldn't stand to meet.

“That just me?” she managed to ask, her voice strange in her own ears.

Slowly, silently, he shook his head.

That wasn't just distance: that was absolute isolation. Quarantine. Separation, not only from her, but from all human contact. Nobody could live like that. Not and stay human.

Which maybe was also part of Paracelsus' layered intention: to drive him into withdrawing into an internal Maze, and monsterdom, for all time. A fit object for the bowers' worship.

And that wasn't fair, wasn't right: Vincent wasn't the only person to have closeness turn agonizing, the only person to suffer—

She demanded suddenly, “Define rape.”

He took that seriously too: thought about it first. “It's when a man—”

“No.”

A twitch of annoyance at the interruption, as though he thought she was splitting hairs. “—a male—”

“No.”

She waited, but he wasn't playing this game any more, simply waiting for whatever bizarre thing she might demand next. “Two words,” she prompted, like charades, holding up two fingers. Folding one down for each word, she said, “Forced sex. Okay? Any argument? You, my large and dearest man, have been raped. You—”

Almost, she launched into arguments, analogies, examples, having a ton of them easy to cite—arguments about provocation, victim's guilt, relative helplessness, justified degrees of violence in defense. But she saw his face, and didn't. She shut herself up absolutely, so he could work it out for himself. However long that took.

After a minute or so he pushed one of the chairs slowly away from the table and sat on it, all without looking at it, or her, or anything. Moving only as much as was necessary to put his back to her. After maybe ten minutes, he set both elbows on the table.

Except for that, no motion at all for most of an hour.

Without knowing names, she knew there were people Below— adults and kids both, and kids who'd since grown into adults— who'd suffered traumatic abuse of every kind imaginable. He'd know that, know it more immediately than anyone else possibly could. He'd know the stages of terror, wanting to die, and thinking it must have been your fault because such a total loss of control was as great a trauma as the assault itself and fault at least implied choice, that you might somehow have done something different, done something instead of just suffering such violation. The loss of autonomy. The loss of self.

He'd know what vast and unhealed emotional wounds remained afterward, how everything seemed to connect to that one central pain and how therefore no touch, no closeness but brought a flinch, an automatic avoidance because it hurt too much.

Until now, he'd known it at one remove—as a healer, a friend. Now he'd have to be healer and friend to himself. Because no one else could, unless he let them.

After awhile she unbuckled her watch and set it aside. Even thinking about measuring such experiences in units of time was presumptuous, arrogant. Like birth, death, love, they were outside time and beyond measurement. Things could happen in seconds, whose results could last forever.

She leaned her head back and shut her eyes.

Sometime, no time, his voice said, “Yes.”

She rubbed her eyes, looked. He hadn't moved. She waited, listened.

Presently he said, “Catherine.”

Of all the explosion of thoughts that set off, Diana chose to say, “She was? That didn't get into the report.”

A hand lifted, fell. “Perhaps not technically. Nor even by your definition. But yes. Yes.”

Good, Diana thought: if that was where he could connect—with the outrage, horror, and terror that Catherine had felt after the attack and that he'd felt too, with her, through all its stages, through their bond—then good. Hard to imagine anything that could be closer to him, more real and immediate to him, than that. Maybe that would be something he could identify with, connect to. Because he damn well had to connect with something, somebody....

She sat up straighter. “That gonna be any help, you think?”

Finally, he swung around, looked at her across the distance. “It means...it is not merely because of...what I am. That.” Long pause, eyes fixed on the floor. “That I....” Silence. Then he shook his head. “I cannot speak of it.”

Diana guessed at something like That I am neither a freak nor a monster. Or maybe it would have been simply That I am not alone. Or maybe the two guesses were really the same, and one truth.

She locked her fingers together and stretched her arms forward as far as they could go, then slowly bowed her head between them— pushing the tension away with different tension, so she could release, slump back, relax.

Perfectly calmly, she said, “I love you. I think you're just great. Sometime I think we're gonna have really phenomenal sex together and be happy for a real long time. Any of that bother you?”

His answer was to push out of the chair and slowly, deliberately, retrace the steps he'd taken. Against some high inner wind that tried to push him to either side or back. Like trying to force the wrong ends of two magnets together: they'd go any way, rather than touch.

Reaching the place he'd been standing when she'd hugged him, he balanced there a second because it was so hard.

The last three steps were absolutely uphill, but he made them and dropped down onto the rug, against the chair: an arm thrown across her legs, leaning on it, face turned away, storms of shuddering running through him. But his weight settled, all the same. Solidly there. Connecting. Touching. No matter how it hurt.

Touch couldn't take the hurt away. But it could make it worth bearing and possible to be borne.

She spread both hands. One went onto his back. The other, into his hair, slowly rubbing the back of his neck, working at the braced tension there.

They stayed like that a long time. Under the skylights. In the light.

And something changed.

End of Part 1

Notes

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This story originally appeared in Huntress. But it belongs here.