Spilogale, Inc.
www.fsfmag.com

Copyright ©2009 by Spilogale, Inc.

NOVELETS
THE ART OF THE DRAGON by Sean McMullen
A TOKEN OF A BETTER AGE by Melinda M. Snodgrass
THE BONES OF GIANTS by Yoon Ha Lee
THE OTHERS by Lawrence C. Connolly
THREE LEAVES OF ALOE by Rand B. Lee
THE PRIVATE EYE by Albert E. Cowdrey
ESOTERIC CITY by Bruce Sterling

SHORT STORIES
YOU ARE SUCH A ONE by Nancy Springer
HUNCHSTER by Matthew Hughes
ICARUS SAVED FROM THE SKIES by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud

POEMS
OBSOLETE THEORIES by Sophie M. White

CLASSIC REPRINTS
THE GODDAMNED TOOTH FAIRY by Tina Kuzminski
SNOWFALL by Jessie Thompson

DEPARTMENTS
EDITORIAL by Gordon Van Gelder
BOOKS TO LOOK FOR by Charles de Lint
BOOKS by Elizabeth Hand
FILMS: SWATCHMEN by Lucius Shepard
COMING ATTRACTIONS by
CURIOSITIES by Patricia A. Martinelli

COVER BY CORY AND CATSKA ENCH

GORDON VAN GELDER, Publisher/Editor
BARBARA J. NORTON, Assistant Publisher
ROBIN O'CONNOR, Assistant Editor
KEITH KAHLA, Assistant Publisher
HARLAN ELLISON, Film Editor
JOHN J. ADAMS, Assistant Editor
CAROL PINCHEFSKY, Contests Editor
JOHN M. CAPPELLO, Newsstand Circulation

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (ISSN 1095-8258), Volume 117, No. 1 & 2, Whole No. 684, August/September 2009. Published bimonthly by Spilogale, Inc. at $6.50 per copy. Annual subscription $39.00; $49.00 outside of the U.S. Postmaster: send form 3579 to Fantasy & Science Fiction, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Publication office, 105 Leonard St., Jersey City, NJ 07307. Periodical postage paid at Hoboken, NJ 07030, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in U.S.A. Copyright © 2009 by Spilogale, Inc. All rights reserved.
Distributed by Curtis Circulation Co., 730 River Rd. New Milford, NJ 07646
GENERAL AND EDITORIAL OFFICE: PO BOX 3447, HOBOKEN, NJ 07030

There are several items of news to note with this issue.

First, the process of switching to a bimonthly schedule caused a glitch in our subscription system. Nobody's subscription was affected, but the mailing labels for April/May issue had the wrong expiration dates on them. I think it's fixed now, but if you're in doubt about your subscription expiration date, check the label on your March 2009 issue or contact us.

On a related note, we've had more reports of subscribers who have been deceived by subscription offers from rogue agents. These offers come through the mail and they're often designed to look like renewal notices, but they're not authorized by us. They usually have high rates and stringent terms (like charging a fee if you want to cancel a subscription). If you receive a renewal notice, check to see that its return address is P.O. Box 3447 in Hoboken, NJ. If it's not, the renewal notice is not authorized by us.

For ebook readers, the news here is that we'll be available for sale through Sony very soon (I think we'll be available by the time you receive this issue, but I'm not sure). Check our www.FandSF.com Website for more info. (And if you still have www.fsfmag.com as our site, please update your records. We sold that domain name to a fishing magazine earlier this year.)

The last news item is the most exciting. I don't know why we never tried this before, but F&SF is going to begin hosting a writing workshop.

We're fortunate to have the great Gardner Dozois running the show. I'm sure most of our readers know Gardner already, but just in case, he's the author of dozens of short stories (his most recent F&SF story is “Counterfactual,” which appeared in our June 2006 issue) and he edited Asimov's Science Fiction magazine from 1984 to 2004. He also has decades of experience with writing workshops and is widely considered one of the best story doctors in the field.

All F&SF readers should benefit from Gardner's workshop work, because he's going to have the option of selecting stories from the workshop for publication in F&SF. We're currently planning to run Gardner Dozois selections three times a year. (Writers, fret not: I won't be reading the workshop stories myself, so you can still submit your stories to F&SF regardless of what anyone in the workshop makes of the story.)

The workshop will be administered by Lisa Rogers, a former editor for Gollancz and Little, Brown.

Initially, the workshop will be available online only and the site will have a private message board to go with the critiquing.

Until the workshop is firing on all cylinders, we're limiting the membership to 100 people. You can find the membership prices and other information at www.FandSFworkshop.com.

Frankly, I'm very excited about the prospects for this new project and I think all of our readers will benefit from it.

Sean McMullen's most recent F&SF story was “The Spiral Briar” in our April/May 2009 issue. He says he is currently expanding that story into a novel. He is also collaborating with artist Grant Gittus on a children's fantasy book called Lost Toys. His new story concerns a man who was in the right place at the right time. Or is that the wrong place at the wrong time?

I was there when the dragon first appeared—and ate the Eiffel Tower. I was standing on the Quai Branly, taking a video of the tower from beside one of its legs, when there was a great gust of wind and the dragon swept into the viewfinder. It began at the top, biting off sections and gulping them down. It made no attempt to attack people, but neither did it make any effort to spare them. Two hundred and ten were crushed beneath its feet and tail, and seventeen were killed by falling pieces of tower. Another ninety were never accounted for, and were presumed eaten.

I stayed as long as I did through sheer paralysis. My camera was on a tripod, and continued to record while I stood gaping upward in disbelief as wreckage crashed down all around me. Every so often the dragon would snort clouds of dust into the air, and this settled on me like a fine, black drizzle. I do not remember deciding to run, but having done so, I recall thinking that I was doing something incredibly stupid. Surely the dragon would notice me and swat me like an insect, but it did not happen. I eventually stopped when my legs jellied from the exertion, and I fell headlong.

Forcing myself to look back was not at all easy. Were I to see the Eiffel Tower intact, I would know I was insane. All around me I could hear shouting, however, and the word “dragon” was being used quite a lot. This made it easier to look back. The thing was eating delicately and methodically, and by now had consumed half of the tower. I looked down at my hands, then rubbed some of the black dust between my fingers. It was gritty, like a very fine abrasive. The dragon continued to munch on the tower as helicopters began to circle. One fired a pair of rockets that exploded against its head. It ignored the attack. There were more rockets and explosions, but none had any effect.

I cringed as the dragon reared up and looked about, but humans did not seem to interest it. As it turned, the tip of its tail swept through the air above me, yet I was crouching almost a mile from where the tower had stood. It crossed the river, followed the road—more or less—then began to eat the Louvre. I tried to stand up, but felt strangely weak. Someone grabbed me beneath my arms and began dragging me back.

"Monsieur, vous devez aller à l'hôpital!"

Hospital? Only now did I realize that something had gashed my left arm, and that I was losing a lot of blood. I had noticed no pain at all.

On a television in the hospital's outpatients area I learned that the dragon had gone on to visit Notre Dame Cathedral, the Gardens of Luxembourg, and several other outstandingly beautiful places before flying away. Nobody on camera was talking about the fact that artwork was being eaten. I saw at least a minute of the dragon taken with my own camera. Gradually the picture deteriorated as dust settled on the lens, then the broadcast cut to an interview with one of the helicopter pilots. He was distraught, almost insulted, that the dragon had ignored his attempts to attack it. I asked about my camera, pointing out that a video I had shot was being shown on the television. A nurse promised to make inquiries. I tried to call my family in London to say I was all right, but the lines were jammed.

I discharged myself after another half hour. By now people with far worse injuries than mine were being brought in, and I doubted that I was likely to receive any more treatment for many hours. My arm had been sewn up, but they also had ideas about giving me a blood transfusion. Being a confirmed hypochondriac, that prospect had me close to panic. I had to stop to rest after every block, but eventually I reached the Gare du Nord. Even though I was expecting the worst, the trains were still running. I settled into my seat and watched Paris glide past beyond the window, ignoring the other passengers who were exchanging stories about the dragon. Apart from a large number of military helicopters in the air, all seemed normal. Beyond the city, the French farmlands were untouched.

On the British side of the Channel Tunnel everything seemed just as normal, but that did not last for long. The train stopped on the edge of Greater London, and there was an announcement that St. Pancras station had been eaten. Nobody seemed to know what to do with the passengers from my Eurostar train, which was meant to terminate there. After a dozen attempts to phone my brother, I finally got through.

"Scott, you're alive!” he shouted into the mouthpiece.

"Alive, yes, and I don't suppose I need to tell you about Paris?"

"No, course not. Big hero, you are, taking those vids from right under the dragon when it ate the Eiffel Tower. It's been on the television. They even interviewed me."

Someone must have found my name and email address etched on the underside of the camera, I realized.

"Charles, can you get on your scooter and pick me up?"

"You're not in Paris?"

"No, I'm back in London, somewhere near the Orbital. There are no trains, the busses and cabs are crammed solid, and even if I could get onto something with a motor, the roads are gridlocked."

"Why not just tell me where you are and they'll send a helicopter."

"A helicopter? And who are they?"

"Defense people, they're here now, in the house."

"What do they want with me?"

"You got the best close-up pictures of the dragon eating the Tower. That makes you an expert on it."

I was flown to some small, secure military base to the south of London, but was told nothing by those in the helicopter. Once on the ground I was taken straight to a briefing room. Here a team of interrogators questioned me very closely, going over the same questions again and again, each time phrasing them a little differently.

"So you arrived in Paris yesterday morning?"

"Yes, by train."

"Why did you go there?"

"I got my doctorate in art history last week. I was going to spend a weekend in Paris, looking at art for fun instead of study for a change."

"You have a Ph.D. in art history, yet you drive a delivery truck for a living?"

"Well, you try getting any other job with a Ph.D. in art history."

"Why were you taking videos of the Eiffel Tower at the very moment that the dragon appeared?"

My patience snapped.

"Well, you know how it is. Don't get to spend much quality time with the dragon, so I thought I'd vid some of those little domestic moments, like mealtimes."

"Mister Carr—"

"Doctor Carr to you."

"Your flippant attitude is not going to achieve anything."

"Neither are your damn aggressive questions! Are you saying that I summoned a two-mile-long golden dragon with a silly grin from Dragonland, or wherever dragons come from?"

"Er ... well, did you?"

I was finally given a break, and was shown into a room where my brother was waiting. We were left alone, and I flopped into a chair and closed my eyes.

"Charles, just what happened in London, apart from St. Pancras?"

"You're kidding! You don't know?"

"I've been told nothing."

"Well, a lot of stuff is gone. The station, the big museums and galleries, Tower Bridge, the Boadicea statue ... oh, and it scoffed Buckingham Palace, how could I forget? The British Library got pretty well trashed too, but they think that was an accident. You know, St. Pancras was so close."

"Where is the dragon now?"

"Last saw it in Amsterdam on the telly, just before the spooks arrived and asked about you."

We were being monitored, that was certain. Doubtless our conversation was a great disappointment to those listening.

"So what happens now?” asked Charles.

"The bad cop has had words with me, so I imagine it's the turn of the good cop."

"What are you going to say?"

"I'll say what the bad cop did not give me a chance to say. I hope he gets a kick in the arse and a demotion."

"Can you tell me?"

"Well, Charles, funny you should ask. The dragon is eating art."

"Art? You're daft. It's just doing a Godzilla on the big cities. If it weren't real, I'd say it was just a cheap movie. Did you see its silly grin? Spoils the whole effect."

"It's not only attacking works of art, it's choosing those of the greatest symbolic value and highest visibility. Just you watch. In every city that it visits, only the great cathedrals, palaces, galleries, and monuments will go."

"But why?"

"If I knew that, Charles, the spooks bugging this room would be treating me a lot more politely."

As it happened, the treatment given to me improved anyway, and I soon realized that I had been declared someone important. The dragon was eating art, I was some sort of authority on art, and I had been closer to the dragon than any other art authority who was still alive. I was taken to an operations room, where I was given a very detailed briefing while real-time pictures of the dragon eating bits of Berlin played on large screens. In the days that followed I spent much of my time here, being briefed about the dragon's position, and watching live coverage of what it was doing. The pattern was always the same. It arrived at a city, methodically munched its way through whatever prominent artistic works took its fancy, then flew on.

St. Petersburg suffered terribly, and there were tears on my cheeks as I watched the dragon devour the Church of the Saviour. From there it left for Moscow, and it was about halfway there and five miles above open farmland when it was struck by a missile with a one megaton warhead. The explosion had no effect whatsoever. By then I had been co-opted into a group of experts called the Dragon Advisory Committee, and within the hour we were shown coverage of the attack taken from a monitor jet that had been shadowing the dragon at a safe distance. Nobody tried to stop it after that.

Weeks passed, and I was astounded by how very quickly humanity adjusted to the idea of a two-mile-long dragon touring the world and eating artwork. Museums and galleries were avoided by everyone with any sense and general tourism dropped off as well, but airlines continued with reduced schedules. In some cities there were mass bonfires of paintings, while the prices of designer houses plunged. Martial arts academies were renamed martial skills academies, academies of fine arts just got their signs taken down, and universities expanded other faculties into empty arts buildings. Jackhammers were applied to pavement mosaics, murals were painted over, and public sculptures were either smashed or loaded onto dredging barges to be dumped at sea.

All the while the Dragon Advisory Committee studied the dragon, but the few facts that had been gathered together about it made little sense. All attempts to communicate, negotiate, or fight had been ignored. It was two miles long, with a wingspan of three. Measurements of the footprints put its weight at only a million tons. When the thing moved it made a metallic, booming sound. The conclusion was that it was both hollow and metal. The nature of the metal was a mystery. It looked like gold. If it were metal and hollow, then what was inside? Air, according to computer models. It was an immense shell over not very much. The dragon did not digest the debris of what it had eaten, it pulverized them, then exhaled the dust. This was determined by the way that its weight remained constant.

My next contribution was to compare our immense visitor to the dragon ships of the Vikings. During the centuries that politically correct historians no longer call the Dark Ages, the dragon ships brought fearsome Norse warriors to Britain. They looted treasures, took slaves, burned much of what could not be carried, then sailed home.

"So you think it's a ship?” asked the secretary of the Dragon Advisory Committee. “A spaceship, perhaps, shaped like a dragon?"

"It could be."

"Not a robot? Not a real dragon with metal armor?"

"You wanted theories, I am just giving you another theory."

"A dragon full of alien Vikings, perhaps?” asked a sociologist named Glenda.

"I can't say. It might be just an art-hating dragon."

"Does that mean it will go away once all the art has been eaten?” asked a major from the Special Air Service who always wore sunglasses and was only known by a serial number.

"I don't know. Some Vikings sailed away, but some settled here."

"A dragon? On Earth? Forever?” he gasped.

"Not the ship, but its crew,” suggested the secretary.

"So where are they?” asked the major. “The dragon is empty."

"They might be beings of disembodied data, who can experience artwork as its totality, not just form, color, texture, and whatever else,” I ventured.

"So they don't hate art, they just do a bit of damage when they appreciate it?” asked the major.

"Perhaps,” I guessed.

"So where are they?” Glenda asked me.

"I don't know."

"Well how do you know they exist?"

"How do you know the dragon's power plant exists?"

"It flies and eats,” said the secretary. “That takes a lot of energy."

"Well something is choosing what it eats, whether it's a crew or—or a dragon brain,” concluded the major.

True, aesthetic judgments were indeed being made. It had flown over Los Angeles, looked about, apparently decided that nothing was worth eating, then flown on without landing. Gradually it worked its way south in a zigzag spiral that encircled the Earth several times. Finally it stopped, settled itself on a beach in Australia's southeast, and apparently went to sleep. Within a half hour of that news arriving, I had been put onto a jet for Melbourne with the rest of the Dragon Advisory Committee—which had been renamed the British Dragon Advisory Committee.

The dragon was lying stretched out along a beach bordered by sheer cliffs near Cape Otway. It was one of those locations that would have been called wild and desolate until it became fashionable to call them beautiful and unspoiled. Boats that normally took tourists to watch whales were offering tours of the dragon, but the British Dragon Advisory Committee was taken to the beach by helicopter, where we joined several dozen other groups of experts. None of those with me had yet seen the dragon directly, and they were understandably nervous as we approached. We knew that it did not kill deliberately, but that was of little comfort to anyone who got under its feet. Fifteen hundred people had been killed by it, and two-thirds of those had died in Paris and London on the first day. After that, people learned to stay away from anything resembling art when the dragon was known to be approaching.

I stood on the beach beside an Australian military engineer, watching through binoculars as two men wearing camo balaclavas and overalls entered a nostril from a platform at the top of a mobile crane. They were trailing communications cables and carrying assault rifles.

"Dragon Team Recon,” said the engineer. “They're wired for sound and visuals."

"What do they hope to achieve?” I asked.

"Exploration. We know that the nostrils are not used for breathing. Our instruments show there's no airflow in or out of them."

"Except when it's snorting out pulverized artwork."

"It could be a robot, that's my theory. If so, we might find a soft spot."

"A soft spot? In a thing that survived a direct hit from a hydrogen bomb?"

"You don't understand. If that dragon was built by engineers, there's bound to be an access hatch somewhere for maintenance and repairs."

I noticed that various teams of people were pointing equipment at the dragon, and through my binoculars I could see a woman who was pressing her forehead and fingertips against the immense curve of golden metal that was its jaw.

"Who is the woman standing beside the mouth?” I asked.

"She's a psychic. She says she's channeling the aliens who are the crew."

"So what are they saying?"

"She doesn't understand the language."

"Do your instruments say anything more constructive?"

"Afraid not. Use whatever instrument you like, it's like taking a sounding of deep space. I think we—smoke!"

I immediately looked back to the nostrils, where a cloud of dark smoke had been puffed out. Cursing softly, the engineer keyed his phone into life.

"Scope six, this is Major Dekker. What was that smoke?"

Back at the dragon, someone at the top of the crane was withdrawing the communications cables. The men were no longer attached to them.

"Well, what do your spectrographs say?” shouted the engineer into his phone.

I stood waiting as he listened. Presently he rang off.

"The spectrograph team has made a preliminary analysis of that puff of smoke,” he said, more to himself than me. “It was mainly steam mixed with carbon, with some iron and lead, and traces of other elements like chlorine, calcium, and silicon."

"Was the estimated mass that of two humans, their weapons, and their surveillance gear?"

"He didn't say. There was about ten meters of cable played out when ... when the team vanished."

I caught myself just as my mouth opened to ask whether or not they were virgins. It was a stupid question, yet was it any sillier than the idea of a metal dragon two miles long that ate art? Were those two men the first human sacrifices that the dragon had accepted?

"I think anything that gets inside the dragon will be pulverized,” I said, musing aloud.

"What's that you say?"

"We are like members of some Stone Age tribe, trying to enter a battleship by climbing down the funnels. Its insides are incomprehensible and dangerous to us. I think that if you tried to drill into the belly, you would probably find that the end of the drill has sheered off and vanished."

"Funny you should say that."

"How so?"

"We did try drilling into it, this morning. We were successful, after a fashion."

"So not entirely?"

"No. The drill went straight in, but when it was withdrawn there was no hole. Most of the drill bit was missing as well."

"Did you have the shavings analyzed?"

"There were no shavings. As I said, the drill went straight in."

At this point he walked away to some people gathered around a truck bristling with equipment that I did not understand. I began to walk in the direction of the dragon. At first I thought one of the many guards with stubby assault rifles and helmets jammed full of communications gear would stop me, but I was allowed to keep walking. Distances can be deceptive when something as large as the dragon is involved, and my walk turned out to be half a mile.

Being the token expert from the arts, I had the rather contradictory title of generalist specialist. I was one of those people who had to devise theories for the utility specialists to check, and at this stage I was very short on theories. The one thing that I could do was touch the dragon. Why must humans touch? Before me was the most dangerous being ever to fly the skies or walk the Earth, yet I wanted to touch it.

The last few steps were the hardest. About fifty feet to the left, the medium was still alive and well, pressing her head and hands against the dragon. What would it make of me? The dragon ate art, and while I was no artist, I was an art historian with qualifications to prove it. Was I the first art historian to touch it? Could it read minds?

Trying to hold my mind blank, so that my better judgment would not be aware of what I was doing, I approached the immense jaw, extended my hand, and ran my fingers along the surface. It was like touching the hull of a large ship. The impression was not at all rational; it was as if I had decided that it would feel that way, and that I had been right. I rapped at it with my knuckles, but there was only the slightest suggestion of an echo. I stepped back, looked up, and tried to ... to appreciate the monster, as if it were a work of art. I failed. As I walked away from the dragon I was met by a group of several dozen people. They were dressed in assault camos, suits, lab coats, and even parade uniforms. Most of the British Dragon Advisory Committee was with them.

"What was it like?” asked the SAS major.

"Like a huge ship: hard, cool, absolutely unyielding."

Because I had not been reduced to a cloud of my component elements, most of the others now walked forward to touch the dragon for themselves. I had become friendly with Glenda, the sociologist, by now. She had a hard, pragmatic bearing, and a tendency to stand apart from other people as if determined not to follow the herd. Thus it was that we stood back together, watching the others having their photographs taken in front of the jaw.

"Just what is so special about art?” she asked, sounding as if she were tired of asking questions without answers.

"It can move people by being beautiful or confrontational,” I replied. “It can make our surroundings more pleasant, it can even be enjoyable to create. Sometimes it's inspirational, but often it's manipulative."

"That tells me nothing. Why is it special?"

"Well ... only humans produce it."

"Some birds decorate their nests with bright and colorful things like broken glass and plastic bottle caps."

I had not known that. I thought about it for a while.

"But is that art or decoration? Some apes use broad leaves to keep the rain off, but is that clothing? Birds use twigs to tease insects out of holes, apes and sea otters use rocks to break things open for food, but you can hardly say they make tools. Monkeys throw stones: does that mean they have invented projectile weapons?"

"Well, you're the expert in art history. When did humans invent art?"

"Necklaces go back about a hundred thousand years, but they are just ornaments. Cave paintings and sculptures have only been around for half that time."

"So that's real art?"

"Yes. I'd say art either evolved or was invented around forty thousand years ago."

"Then art is relatively new—no, wait! Chimps, birds, even elephants can learn to paint."

"They are taught to paint, they do not do it spontaneously."

"Neanderthals had art. They were not quite human."

"The Neanderthals did not produce artwork and decoration until they copied what humans were doing. Art did not exist until we humans invented it."

"So where does that leave us?"

"With another clue that we do not understand. Has the dragon destroyed any fashion houses yet?"

"No."

"Then it's drawing a distinction between art and decoration."

"We already knew that."

"Ah, but now it has been phrased in a different way."

At this point I noticed that people were descending from the top of the cliffs on rope ladders. They were all naked, except for a few wearing backpacks. Having assembled themselves into neat rows, they began to march toward the dragon. The guards did not challenge them.

"Do those guards stop anyone from doing anything?” I asked.

"They are only here to give the impression that the authorities are in charge,” said Glenda.

"How very Australian. So who are the nudists?"

"They are from one of the Dragonist cults. Their nudity symbolizes the rejection of art in general, and artistically inspired clothing in particular."

The Dragonists stopped not far from where we were standing, and their leader began a diatribe against art in all its forms through a bullhorn. He then took his followers through an oath in which they swore to wear only blankets for the remainder of their lives, and to destroy artworks wherever they could be found. Glenda and I hurriedly backed away when he exhorted the dragon to strike them down if their actions displeased it. The dragon did nothing. This led to scenes of relief and rejoicing. Those with backpacks began to distribute blankets.

"I almost expected them to sacrifice a virgin,” I said as the Dragonists prostrated themselves and sang an adoration hymn at the immense head.

"Adult virgins are not very common in this day and age,” said Glenda.

"Oh, I don't know. They turn up occasionally."

"Show me one."

"Not in public."

As lighthearted banter goes it was harmless enough, yet I would eventually learn that where religion is concerned, there is no such thing as harmless banter.

We stayed in tents for a few days while more tests were conducted on the dragon, but nothing significant was learned. For my part, I thought there was something familiar about the monstrous creature. Every morning I would stand before it, staring up at its golden, polished immensity and doing what I did best: grasping for impressions. It reminded me of the steampunk devices of late-twentieth-century fiction and film: intricate Victorianesque machines built of iron and driven by steam. They were enchanting in concept, impossible in practice, yet strangely alluring—like much art.

It was as I stood contemplating the dragon that Glenda approached me on the morning of the fourth day.

"The committee is moving to Melbourne,” she announced.

"But the dragon is here,” I said without turning.

"We study Mars without being aboard the Mars probes."

"True, but we would study Mars better by being there."

"If you want to stay, an exception can be made."

"On second thought, an apartment would be much nicer than the tent."

"You come here every morning and stare at the dragon's face. Are you trying to make telepathic contact?"

"No, I'm treating it like a painting or sculpture. There is an art to interpreting art, so I am practicing the art of the dragon. Nothing else has worked."

"You can't mean it's a work of art, can you?” She laughed.

"It could have aesthetic worth, even if it's meant to be something else. My master's degree dissertation was on war machines as art: the ornate Spanish war galleons of the Armada, the elaborate body armor of the renaissance knights, the Spitfire fighter planes of World War Two. They all have artistic merit of one sort or another, yet they were designed to fight and destroy."

"That can't be relevant. The dragon destroyed a lot of art, but only a high-profile sample. It's teaching humans to destroy art."

This was a common view among the Dragonists.

"But why art? Does it have alien masters who are planning to invade, and they don't like art?"

"Not aliens,” said Glenda. “Something greater."

We stood in silence for a while, both contemplating the dragon in our own ways.

"Nobody actually saw it approaching from space,” I said, wondering if this was significant. “Could humans have dreamed it up?"

"Humans?” exclaimed Glenda. “Humans could never build a thing like that."

"Not human technology as we know it, yet that silly grin looks like an oddly human touch."

"Do you think it's from the future?"

"I don't know what to think, but I keep asking myself why a dragon? Most human societies have legends about them. Dragons are huge. They inspire awe."

"But dragons were never real—until now."

"Oh, they were real in our stories and imaginations. Anyway, what about dinosaurs? We only know them by their bones, yet they still have a very similar allure because they were enormous. A human can only cower before something of that size."

"A human with a hunting rifle could kill the biggest dinosaur."

"True, but now comes a dragon, and a dragon so big and powerful that no weapons of ours can kill it. We can't reason with it, and it's not been open to negotiations about anything. Again we cower, just as we did in ... in fairy tales."

For a moment the wisp of an impression floated before me, then it vanished. I had been close to a very good guess about the dragon. It was meant to provoke a reaction from humans. Go back a million years, I thought. Lions, crocodiles, and cave bears were dragons to the defenseless protohumans. As we became better masters of our circumstances, the things needed to frighten us just became a lot bigger. Surely that dragon is a parallel, a lesson, an allegory....

The dragon's face loomed above me, still too large for my mind to encompass.

"Humans are great at winning, but what if the idea is not to win?” asked Glenda.

"There's no alternative, is there?” I replied. “If we surrender, the dragon wins. If the dragon surrenders, we win."

"We may be meant to worship it. Humans have always worshipped."

"I don't think it wants worship."

"You can't know that."

"The dragon destroys art, which is universally thought of as worthwhile. An invader would destroy our weapons, to demonstrate that resistance is useless. Instead this thing destroys the best and most famous of our artworks. It must be trying to tell us something about art."

"It might be an angel, sent by God."

"Are you serious?"

"Why not? The dragon is not part of reality as we know it. How else could it survive a hydrogen bomb?"

"A Neanderthal hunter might say the same thing after breaking his spear on a panzer, but that does not make the tank an angel or god."

"Look, just as an exercise, think of the dragon as a god. Would a god just say, ‘Hey, guys, I've got an important announcement'? Gods are above that sort of thing, and the dragon is above words. I think we could no more understand its agenda than the termites eating your floorboards could understand a request to move out or else you'll call an exterminator."

"But why art? Art is harmless, it's pleasing, it has value, it's good, it helps make us what we are."

"Well, it's obvious that the dragon does not like what we are,” said Glenda with the sort of absolute conviction that makes me shiver.

The British Dragon Advisory Committee moved to Melbourne that afternoon, but we continued to have little to do, other than discuss what we did not understand. Instead of watching the dragon on the beach, I watched a great deal of television in the weeks that followed. All across the world there were people moving out of ornate mansions and into the most ugly accommodation available. A number of projects were launched to record images of artwork before the dragon destroyed the originals, but Dragonist cults were destroying most artwork before it could be scanned. Other Dragonists were writing computer viruses to corrupt the databases of artwork scans that had already been done. Attempts to hide artwork generally met with failure, because there were big rewards on offer from the Dragonists to reveal where the art hordes were located.

As a member of the British Dragon Advisory Committee, I was given a serviced apartment in a building patrolled by security guards. I had broadband Internet, satellite television, and high-level communications links to realtime cameras trained on the dragon, along with terabytes of images of its earlier rampage. Every few days we would meet at Melbourne University. We did little else other than cover the same ground, but we did manage to look busy and write lots of reports. We also spent a lot of time in bars, getting drunk and hoping for inspiration.

"If I wanted to knock out an enemy, I'd knock out his communications, infrastructure, and surveillance capability,” sighed the SAS major as he nursed his drink. “The dragon's actions make no sense. It's left all our military smarts intact."

"Except for a few communications towers that were a little too aesthetically pleasing,” Glenda pointed out.

"But this is no way to fight an enemy."

"It's not our enemy,” I suggested, and not for the first time.

"It might be trying to intimidate us,” continued the major. “You know, destroy art, which is not useful, but leave the world's economy and defenses intact. That lets us know that fighting back is not an option, but the economy is okay and nobody gets hurt."

"Apart from a few art lovers who could not run fast enough,” I reminded him.

"And quite a few religious worshippers,” said Glenda. “That must be significant."

"That's not true,” I said. “A lot of famous churches, mosques, cathedrals, temples, and shrines were attacked and pulverized, yet only the worshippers who tried to be human shields were killed. It's letting us know that worshipping is okay, as long as we don't let a lot of art get in the way."

"In that sense the dragon is telling us quite a lot,” said the major. “We just don't understand it yet."

"I disagree,” said Glenda. “A lot of people already have the dragon's message. All around the world there are bonfires of art books, paintings, religious art, art archive tapes, computer graphics software, and even blank sketch pads. In the past people worshipped on the basis of faith in holy writ, but now we have two miles of invincible dragon that anyone can watch and learn from. There are already twenty-three thousand Dragonists living in tents along the cliffs, worshipping it continually. Some even sacrifice themselves by leaping from the cliffs and smashing against its body."

"They are going to look rather silly if it moves on.” I laughed.

"The faithful are sure that it will stay,” said Glenda emphatically. “It's a matter of symmetry: the dragon started in Paris with the Eiffel Tower, and it finished in Melbourne by eating the spire of the Victorian Arts Centre. Melbourne was once known as the Paris of the South."

"Is that true?” exclaimed the major.

"About a century ago, yes,” I agreed, standing up. “My round, who is drinking what?"

"Scotch, with ice,” said the major.

"White rum, with a dash of Coke,” said Glenda.

"I've been reading folklore stuff,” said the major. “Why all the business of sacrificing virgins to dragons? Why are virgins special?"

"I think you will find it's virgin girls,” I explained. “It's all symbolism. Fathers, brothers, suitors, all the warrior types are very protective about young and innocent girls. If a dragon can demand them as a sacrifice, it's won the ultimate symbolic victory over warriors. The dragon has not moved since the art-burning movements got going, so maybe it prefers art to virgins."

"Virgins are irrelevant,” Glenda agreed. “The dragon could be a religious oracle with a message about the waste and futility of art."

"That's hardly a sharing, caring religion,” I said as I waved for the barman.

"All religions sound extreme when they begin,” said Glenda.

"You sound like a believer yourself,” I observed.

"I'm just a method sociologist, don't worry.” She laughed, her expression suddenly changing as rapidly as a computer image being morphed. “You know, get right into the minds of those you study."

"The SAS has a similar approach,” said the major. “It's the only way to infiltrate convincingly."

"Now come on, confess, I had you fooled, didn't I?” she asked.

"Well, yes and no. I must admit I was getting a bit nervous about you, so I checked your background. You had a fine career in acting for about five years."

"I only went into acting so that I could do some fieldwork in method sociology."

In my experience, that sort of banter is a play for a night's entertainment in bed, so I pulled back from the conversation. On the bar's television I watched a news item about an artist being beaten to death in public while riot police stood by and watched. Such incidents were becoming ever more common. Artists were dying, either by mob violence or at the hands of individual murderers. The civil and military authorities could do little. It was like watching old videos of the Berlin Wall being demolished. The old Communist regime had lost power, yet nobody had been ordered to clean out their offices and leave, so they just watched. Many government opportunists even joined the Dragonists. The screen switched to a purification rally where artists were marching through a city square, beating themselves with whips while a pile of paintings from some gallery burned fiercely.

"Scott, you're still here."

Glenda sat down beside me, swayed slightly, then drained her glass.

"I am the genuine, original, non-virtual Scott,” I replied. “Accept no substitutes, they are all very inferior."

"The bar's about to close."

"Is it as late as that?” I said as I looked around. “Where's Mr. Special Air Service?"

"Already gone. He has to get up at dawn and run ten miles or something. What are your plans?"

"Go home, go to bed, think about dragons, go to sleep. Yourself?"

"Well, I'm a bit tired of trying to get into the heads of Dragonists. How are you with the dragon?"

"I'm a bit short on inspiration, as usual."

"Then we have something in common. How do you feel about some company at your place tonight? We'll declare it a dragon-free zone."

In a way I was rather flattered that I had something the SAS major did not, but I was not interested.

"Look ... don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not comfortable with that sort of thing."

"You mean you're gay?"

"No, no, it's just human contact that worries me."

"Human contact?"

"I'm ... squeamish. No offense, but ... like, it's about germs."

"Ah, I see! You wear gloves all the time, and only drink from bottles you unseal yourself. You go to meals in restaurants with the rest of us, but never eat. You're a hypochondriac, aren't you? A really extreme hypochondriac."

"It keeps me healthy."

"How fascinating,” she said with a very odd intonation.

What I had told her was true, but there was more. Much, much more. I returned to my apartment, changed into overalls, then went out again, this time to a municipal sanitary services depot. I had set up a double life. Three years earlier, a less than stable artist in London had paid me back for a bad review of his exhibition by hurling a beer bottle filled with petrol through my window. Fortunately the burning rag had come off in mid-flight, but ever since then I had been very careful about letting people know where I really live. Now I had a feeling that I might need to vanish into a new identity, and what more unlikely identity for a hypochondriac artist than one who drives garbage trucks?

More weeks passed, during which public order did not so much break down as modify itself to purge society of anything that the dragon might not like. That included certain people, and I was highly qualified in fine arts. On the day that Glenda left the British Dragon Advisory Committee and declared herself a Dragonist, I abandoned my government-sponsored apartment, broke all contact with the BDAC, and became a garbage truck driver with no artistic interests at all. There was always a lot of wreckage to clean off the streets of Melbourne, what with the ongoing art purges, so I had found a job easily. I worked night shifts, because it made me less conspicuous. My work involved collecting an ever-increasing number of bodies, and from time to time I recognized a famous face or Australian colleague.

Concentration camps, supposedly for the protection of artists, were established in the countryside near where the dragon lay dormant. Each of these had Protective Enclave for Artists written prominently on every roof and above the gates. Nobody said as much, but this was clearly to encourage the dragon to have a country picnic rather than cause destruction in the cities, should it decide to go on the rampage again. Pictures of the camps and large maps were projected onto huge screens before its face, but it did not so much as twitch. The reputations of some senior Dragonists in the government were beginning to look a little insecure. To maintain their authority, they needed the dragon's sanction, yet the dragon was putting its seal of approval on nothing. Soon they would resort to even more extreme measures, I was sure of that.

Every morning, after my night-shift ended, I would slump in front of the television and watch the news shows. Nearly every one started with a few seconds of live coverage of the unmoving dragon, then crossed to the latest anti-art riot, beating, or rally.

"Our minds are trapped by what we desire,” I said to the screen, which was displaying a bonfire of paintings in some anonymous-looking city square. “We prize memories, images, artifacts, and beautiful things, and art gives us all those. What else? Experiences, I suppose: we love the thrill of one's football team winning, the rush from seducing someone desirable, the satisfaction of owning the most stylish car on the block. Beyond that, security, wealth, and reputation, but where does all that lead?"

The screen had no answer, and neither did I. No matter how hard I tried to distract myself and let my subconscious produce a brilliant insight, my subconscious remained in bed with a pillow over its head. I made a salad washed in antiseptic for what was a sort of morning dinner, and arranged the individual pieces as the mosaic of a dragon eating an artist. It gave me no inspiration, so I in turn ate the image.

Having made a mug of coffee, I turned my attention back to the television. It was now showing a comedy skit set on the beach in front of the dragon. A man wearing the stylized badge of three brushes in an A shape that was now imposed on artists was being tied to a pole that had been erected in front of a wall of sandbags. The camera panned across to a firing squad of people dressed only in blankets. It returned to the artist, who was shouting and struggling, condemning all art and swearing that he had never touched a paintbrush in his life. The commentator read out his name, principal works, awards, and Arts Council grants. Somebody shouted, “Fire!” No special effects could replicate what I saw next.

"This is real,” I said aloud, numb with shock.

The camera panned to a queue of artists waiting their turn near the sandbags. Some were on their knees, praying, others struggled with their guards, and a few actually managed a display of dignity. Two guards untied the body of the late artist from the pole and dragged him away. Another artist was dragged forward. The sandbags behind the pole had been so badly flayed by bullets that the sand had mostly leaked out and the wall was sagging in the middle. The commentator asked us to stand by for an important announcement.

Suddenly my door was smashed in.

The strangest thing about the raid was that nobody spoke to me directly. Someone called out, “That's him!” and I was seized and secured by hands that had evidently become well practiced at this sort of thing. Every twist and wriggle that I attempted was easily countered. People with cameras and sound booms crowded into my apartment.

"Not only is he a highly qualified art critic and academic, he is also a virgin!” cried a journalist wearing a microphone headset who was bracketed by at least a dozen others with cameras.

On my own television I could see myself being held down and bound. I was symbolic, according to the journalist. I held the very last Ph.D. in art history to be issued before what was now being called the Age of the Dragon. He also kept saying I was a virgin, and from this I deduced that Glenda was involved. After that evening in the bar, she probably followed me for the whole night, learning about my secret identity's job and apartment.

"A virgin artist, ladies and gentlemen, I know it sounds like a contradiction in terms, but there you have it,” babbled the commentator. “He is to be sacrificed to the dragon itself as proof of—"

The one sure way to have the sound killed on a lunchtime TV show is to shout obscenities, and I now did precisely this.

I have little shame when it comes to staying alive. I was dragged struggling and screaming from my apartment, and continued to make an undignified fool of myself in front of several dozen cameras on the street outside as I was held down by eight men and strapped onto a medevac stretcher. I screamed and shouted myself hoarse with some very nasty language until one of my guards inserted a roll of bandage into my mouth. This allowed the television coverage to broadcast sound again, so the journalists returned and explained repeatedly about me being a virgin. Relief from the humiliation came when one of the helicopters hovering above let down a cable which was attached to my stretcher. I was winched up while other helicopters circled, doubtless transmitting high-definition images of everything to the television screens of everyone with an inclination to watch.

Being unable to struggle or scream, I now lay limp. The irony was that I was actually not a virgin. I had experienced a single sexual encounter at the age of seventeen, from which I had contracted NSU. Being a person with a phobia of contracting anything at all, this had put me off further sexual encounters. Obviously the prospects of getting a sworn statement that I was not a virgin were not good, however. I could not even remember the girl's name, only that she had been the nude model for a painting class.

On the other hand, distract yourself by screaming hysterically for long enough and your subconscious gets a chance to do some serious thinking. Perhaps my subconscious was just as averse to firing squads as I was, for I suddenly realized that I had the answer to the whole question of the dragon.

The helicopter landed. From the television, I already knew to expect the pole, the wall of sandbags, the line of men and women wearing blankets and holding automatic rifles, the man holding a ceremonial officer's saber, the naked Dragonist high priests, the television cameras, and the fluffy sound booms. Glenda was with the Dragonist priests, as naked as all the others but standing in front of them in some position of honor. Dragonist theology had now decreed that only those in the totally natural state could become saints of the dragon. I struggled as the guards began unfastening me. The camera crews crowded in: evidently this was good television.

My academic record and achievements in art history were read out, it was announced yet again that I was a virgin, then I was invited to confess my sins to the dragon. The roll of bandage was removed from my mouth. Now I had the undivided attention of the world's media, but I did not give them inane babble, abuse, or pleas for mercy. Hoping that my voice would carry, and hoping that the dragon was paying attention, I looked straight up into the enormous face and blank, black eyes.

"I know you,” I said with the defiance of one with nothing left to lose. “I know what you are. You are all of us. You have come from the combined subconscious of all humanity. We created you without knowing it. Our superconsciousness created you to tell us that art is a mistake. Humanity is on the wrong path! The glories of human art, everything artistic, all that we hold most dear, all of it is a terrible mistake."

I paused for breath. The man with the saber looked to the Dragonist priests. Glenda frowned, then nodded. The saber began to rise and the members of the firing squad released their safety catches.

"Forty thousand years ago we started painting on cave walls, but we were on the wrong path!” I screamed desperately. “For a third of humanity's existence we've been building an enormous playground. Now it's time to start again, to get it right."

"Take aim!” cried the man with the saber as I paused to try to remember what else I had thought of.

I remember a brilliant flash of light and a blast of heat. For some moments I was convinced that I was dead and having an enforced out-of-body experience, then I saw the patches of melted sand and metal where the Dragonist priests, guards, helicopter, firing squad, and man with the saber had been. Those with the cameras and boom microphones had been spared, along with myself.

There was a great, deep rumbling, akin to some giant ship grinding against a reef. The dragon's head began to rise, the neck extended, and its face approached me. For an eternity it loomed larger and larger, then it stopped. Had my hands been free I could have touched its lower jaw, yet its eyes were hundreds of feet above me. Moments passed. I remained alive. I had made a claim, I recalled. It was showing that it was interested.

"What do we do?” squealed one of the camera operators.

"Keep covering all this,” I advised. “I think the dragon wants the world to hear what I have to say."

Every camera turned away from the dragon's head and onto me. I collected my thoughts as best I could and took a deep breath.

"Why are humans special? Rats outnumber us. The krill have a greater biomass. Termites have survived at least a thousand times longer than humans."

Again I paused for breath, and the entire world watched me breathing. I had only one key point, and I had no idea whether it was enough.

"Our brains did not evolve specifically so that we could build a space station or hunt for microbes in the Martian permafrost. We can do those things, but we don't exist to do those things. We can produce beautiful art, but we don't exist to do that, either. We're like children who became so good at playing in the sandpit that we never left it. Now we're teenagers, and an adult has come along, kicked over our wonderful sand sculptures, and told us to get a life. Of course we're upset, of course we're confused, but that's tough."

I had no more to say, yet still the head the size of an office block loomed over me. For what? Was it waiting for me to tell the world what to do? If so, I was dead. Nothing was left to me but the truth, and the truth was that I knew nothing else. I prepared as best I could for vaporization.

"I don't know what the dragon wants us to do,” I confessed. “Maybe the dragon doesn't know either. Certainly the guy who throws the teenagers out of the sandpit doesn't know what they are destined to achieve, but sure as hell it's going to be way more than building sandcastles."

At these words the great rumbling began again as the head drew back and lowered itself to the sand.

"Someone really ought to release me,” I suggested.

There was an enthusiastic scramble to untie me. I walked to the patch of melted glass where Glenda had stood.

"This is what the dragon thinks of Dragonists,” I said, facing the cameras and pointing to the melted sand. “Stop the killing, disband your Dragonist cults, and find some proper clothes."

The authority of the dragon was behind me, so the carnage stopped that very hour.

Since then, the dragon has not moved. Every few weeks I make a pronouncement in front of it, and everyone decides that my words are true because I remain alive. I am a modern oracle, with all the advantages that come with such a position. Those who visit the dragon now are mostly tourists, although a few scientists still try to probe it with their instruments. Nobody has learned anything new, and I often wonder if they really expect to. Humanity has had some of its most cherished certainties shattered, yet people now seem oddly purposeful. Values cannot help but change while a two-mile-long, invincible dragon is monitoring what one does.

Nevertheless, in the privacy of my study I often gaze at photographs of the Eiffel Tower as if it were a dead lover. This may sound strange, coming from the dragon's oracle, but understanding what the dragon wants is not the same as agreeing with it. In a century or so there will be no more people like me, however, so nobody will miss what has been lost. Nevertheless, I think it will still be a recognizably human world because our superconsciousness chose to secure our attention and declare its message using a two-mile-long, invincible dragon with an annoyingly smug grin. That comforts me, because even though that vast collective mind cares nothing for our petty agendas and values, and is above even using language, at least it retains a very human sense of humor.

Cheek by Jowl: Essays, by Ursula K. Le Guin, Aqueduct Press, 2009, $16.

The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia, by Laura Miller, Little, Brown & Company, 2008, $25.99.

The Magicians, by Lev Gross-man, Viking, 2009, $25.95.

I sit at my desk, struggling to write in the endless shadow cast by Hope Mirrlees, J. R. R. Tolkien, T. H. White, C. S. Lewis, Jack Vance, M. John Harrison, Angela Carter, John Crowley, Gene Wolfe, George R.R. Martin, J. K. Rowling [gentle readers, insert your favorite authors here], serenaded by the fitful vespertine squeaks of Stephenie Meyer and her umbrous ilk. Maybe it's the lack of light; maybe global warming has finally starved my brain of oxygen.

But it seems to me an undeniable fact that we live in a post-fantasy world. Can there possibly be a single barren atoll left unpopulated by psammeads or simurghs, a rural corner of Dorimare undevas-tated by the world-building boom that brought us Gil'ead, Westland, Andor, Tarbean, and the Final Empire? Can there possibly be another golden city, far beyond the dim endragoned dreaming sea? Sisters and brothers, do you really need to read another freaking elf (dragon/wizard/daemon/shape-shifter/djinn/witch etc.) book?

Yeah, well, okay. Me too. As Ursula K. Le Guin notes in Cheek by Jowl, a brief, thoughtful assemblage of essays and addresses she's delivered over the last few years, “The only kind of fiction that is read with equal {if differing} pleasure at eight and at sixteen and sixty-eight seems to be fantasy and its close relation, the animal story.” Le Guin is preaching to the choir in several of these pieces—booksellers and editors and writers at Book Expo America; members of the American Library Association—and there's a certain amount of familiar, if gentle, necessary, knuckle-rapping in the form of reminders that great or even good fantasy literature is not cliché-bound, i.e., it doesn't have to be that “(1) the characters are white; (2) they live sort of in the middle ages; and (3) they're fighting in a battle between good and evil.” [Readers: remember this! There will be a test!]

The centerpiece of Cheek by Jowl is the long, marvelous title essay on animals in children's literature, which pays homage to the well-known (The Sword in the Stone, Dr. Dolittle, White Fang, The Wind in the Willows) in addition to the still well-known but now sadly less-read (Bambi, Black Beauty, The Incredible Journey), as well as the unjustly forgotten (the many works of Ernest Thompson Seton). My sole plaint is one that every reader will voice: the essay should be longer. Where is Beautiful Joe? and the Miss Bianca books? and The Wolf King? Rabbit Hill and “The Dark Gentleman” and the 101 Dalmatians and Knee-Deep in Thunder? and....

I had forgotten how many animal books I read and loved as a kid, until “Cheek by Jowl” reminded me. I'd also forgotten how many animal stories end in heartbreak—Ol’ Yeller; Mowgli's portion of The Jungle Books; The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and Daniel Mannix's achingly sad The Fox and the Hound (the novel, not the awful Disney cartoon), all steeped in the “ache of exile from Eden,” as Le Guin terms this particular melancholy. Elsewhere she provides a cold-eyed, feminist assessment of works she believes betray that Eden, namely Watership Down and the Redwall series—books I've never been able to read. Now I don't need to feel guilty.

Still, despite all the insights offered by her in this book and numerous others over the years, Ursula Le Guin has a lot to answer for. In “The Young Adult in YA,” another essay in Cheek by Jowl, she harks back to the origins of Ged and the Roke Island school of magic in A Wizard of Earthsea:

How did kids get to be old wizards? By being young wizards, evidently. Learning the craft, going to wizard school?
Huh. Hey. There's an idea....
The conception not just of a school of magic, but of a child gifted with an essentially unlimited power who needs—urgently needs—to learn how to know and control such power. That is a big idea. It reverberates. It contains worlds.

No kidding.

Le Guin doesn't take credit for this enthralling notion: she tries to pass the buck—"In The Sword in the Stone, T. H. White has Merlin say something funny about going to wizard school, and I'm sure there are other predecessors."

But I can't find the offending passage in White, so I'm going to blame Le Guin for what happened next ("next” being wizard-speak for “many years later"). Not the Harry Potter books, which I enjoyed, or even the Harry Potter phenomenon, which, as a parent of HP fans, I also enjoyed.

What irks me is the gentrification of fantasy (I'm a middle-aged bobo, therefore irked by gentrification in all its forms), which has grown so all-encompassing that I impatiently await Martha Stewart's contribution to the genre.

"The monstrous homogenization of our world has now almost destroyed the map, any map, by making every place on it like every other place, and leaving no blanks,” writes Le Guin in “The Critics, the Monsters and the Fantasists.” She's talking about our world, the “real” world here; but I fear she could be talking about Faerie, too. “No unknown lands.... No Others; nothing unfamiliar ... the enormously large and the infinitesimally small are exactly the same, and the same always leads to the same again....” Le Guin states that by reinventing our mundane world, fantasists (I'm unashamedly one of them) “are perhaps trying to assert and explore a larger reality than we now allow ourselves. They are trying to restore the sense—to regain the knowledge—that there is somewhere else, anywhere else, where other people may live another kind of life."

This is a consolatory gift of fantasy, as Le Guin goes on to note. Yet it is not the consolation, which is found only in the greatest kind of fantasy (Le Guin's among them), “the eucacastrophic tale, the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function,” as Tolkien famously states in “On Fairy Stories": “a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur."

It is this singular, once-in-a-lifetime, take-your-breath-away grace note that seems absent from much contemporary fantasy. Not because it's badly written—there may be more well-written fantasy around today than ever, perhaps due to the proliferation not just of university writing programs but of independent science fiction and fantasy writing programs such as Clarion and Odyssey—but because the self-referential, recursive nature of so much contemporary fantasy literature has made it increasingly difficult for a writer to deliver that grace note, without it sounding like it's been already been winded on someone else's ivory horn. Our marvels have grown commonplace. Fairy fruit's available at Costco now, and Whole Foods.

Laura Miller addresses this and similar issues in The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia, the best work I've ever encountered on the art and consequences of childhood reading. Miller, a co-founder of Salon.com, is a topnotch critic there and at the New York Times, among many other places. Along with Michael Dirda at the Washington Post, she's one of the few mainstream critics who has the chops and acumen to treat fantasy as serious literature. The Magician's Book tracks her childhood obsession with C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, and her subsequent efforts to square her love of those novels with the rebarbative, even toxic, effect that Lewis's Christianity can have on adult non-believers.

Reading fantasy is all about entering the land of heart's desire. In Miller's case, this desideratum centered on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:

I had found a new world, which at the same time felt like a place I'd always known existed. It wouldn't have occurred to me to be wistful about the fact that I'd never read this perfect book for the first time again. All I wanted was more.

Wanting “more,” of course, is what gets Edmund into trouble with the White Witch's enchanted Turkish Delight, and at times The Magician's Book reads like a Narnian Twelve-Step Meeting, à la Readercon's annual Bookaholic's Anonymous gathering. Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Franzen, Michael Chabon, Susanna Clarke all check in with their first and/or multiple encounters with Narnia. “Do the children who prefer books set in the real, ordinary, workaday world ever read as obsessively as those who would much rather be transported into other worlds entirely?” Miller wonders. “...I kept hearing stories, like my own, of countless, intoxicated readings.” My own childhood reading was, across the board, so similar to Miller's that my answer was No; an interesting subset of that question might be, How many children who read books set in the workaday world grow up to be mainstream writers?

Of course, children read all kinds of fantasies obsessively, especially series books—Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings (my childhood desideratum), A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Wheel of Time, the Eragon books, et al. But there's something particularly ironic in the devotion certain children have to Narnia. For Lewis, the obsessive desire to repeat a pleasurable experience (all that Turkish Delight!) is cognate with the Christian notion of Original Sin, at least in his 1943 science fiction novel Perelandra, the middle book in his Interplanetary Trilogy. Perelandra is the Edenic planet (Venus) where humanity's fall seems doomed to be repeated by its sole native inhabitants, the Green Lady and her male consort, and witnessed by a human visitor, Ransom. “He was now neither hungry nor thirsty,” thinks Ransom, who has just tasted the planet's fairy fruit.

And yet to repeat a pleasure so intense and almost so spiritual seemed an obvious thing to do ... Yet something seemed opposed to this ‘reason’ ... Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be a vulgarity—like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day.
The itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be enrolled twice or even made to work backwards ... was it possibly the root of all evil?

What would Lewis have made of our tweeting, twittering, endless YouTube-loop of a world, where pleasures (including literary ones) exist solely to be repeated, to the extent that one can feel trapped in a Möbius loop of cultural references, Middle Earth morphing into Narnia morphing into Hogwarts morphing into—

Lev Grossman's provocative, problematic, unput-downable The Magicians, a clever, beautifully written fantasy that flickers right on the border of greatness. Grossman's another critic (Time magazine) who gets fantasy right by “getting” it—he groks it, we'd say back in the day. His first novel, Warp, featured a twenty-something Star Trek fan flailing about as he confronts the usual issues of adult life: love, career, meaning, dilithium crystals. His second, Codex, ratcheted down the nerd factor slightly, by centering on a lost medieval manuscript and a malign computer game. Codex was a surprise bestseller, which gave Grossman the freedom to let his geek flag fly with The Magicians, a love letter to the fantasy genre that seeks to offer a gentle corrective to its escapist pleasures. Just as the Artemis Fowl books were marketed as “Die Hard with Elves,” The Magicians will be hyped as one of summer's big books: “Harry Potter for Grownups."

I propose a drinking game—let's all chug a pint of butterbeer every time we hear that catch-phrase used to describe The Magicians. It's what Grossman's protagonist, Quentin Coldwater, would do. Seventeen as the novel opens, Quentin is dispiritedly facing his college interview with an elderly Princeton alum, desperately wishing the cold streets of Brooklyn were the cobblestone ones of Fillory, the magical kingdom captured in the beloved series penned by Christopher Plover. “Only an American Anglophile could have created a world as definitively English, more English than England, as Fillory.” Plover died before completing the fifth novel in his sequence,* a book whose dissatisfactions deliberately echo those of Lewis's The Last Battle.

But before you can point your wand and shout Expeller adfectatus philologus!, a lost manuscript of The Magicians: Book Six of Fillory and Further, is thrust into Quentin's limp grasp. Before you can mutter narratus retexo!, it disappears; and before you can gasp “Rowling v. RDR Books” Quentin has stumbled through a portal and arrived at Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy.

Brakebills has nothing to do with Fillory: it's a real, live magical place where potential students must pass a demanding entrance exam that makes the SAT look like something out of Quizrocket.com. Googlemaps locates it in upstate New York, somewhere between Bard College, John Crowley's Invisible College, and Donna Tartt's Hampden College. But—there is no other way to put it—this is Hogwarts for grownups, or grownups who fondly recall their lost youth, anyway. The students swear, drink to excess, have sex (occasionally with their instructors) and otherwise misbehave the way we all did betwixt perfecting Fergus's Spectral Armory and Magic Missiles in the duller portions of Practical Applications class.

The novel follows Quentin and his friends through their years at Brakebills to graduation and beyond, when they settle, as one does, into magical slacker life in downtown Manhattan. Turns out that graduating with a degree in magic prepares one for real life about as well as a degree in comparative lit, or cultural anthropology. Though magic solves the problem of earning a living—the Brakebills equivalent of Rowling's Ministry of Magic provides dull-as-wishwater jobs. Or you can just use magic, duh.

But there are still the problems of Meaning, Love, Commitment, even Spiritual Belief—at one point, Grossman trots out a tedious Brakebills grad who's a Christian enchanter. The character and his argument for a Magical Prime Mover were unconvincing, but I appreciated Grossman's effort to present Another View. So Quentin finds that possessing one's heart's desire doesn't make one happy—even going to a magical college and learning to work real magic, having a real magical girlfriend and real magical sex, drinking magical shooters and taking magical drugs—none of it's enough. (Well it damn well would be for me, I thought, but I'm twice Quentin's age and flunked Practical Apps.)

But it's still not Fillory, the fictional Lost Domain that captivated Quentin and all his friends as children. And if for one New York second you didn't think that the Brakebills crew was going to end up there, well, have I got some prime land in the Dead Marshes for you!

Harold Bloom once rather alarmingly described David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus as “Through the Looking Glass as it might have been written by Thomas Carlyle.” The Magicians is Harry Potter as it might have been written by John Crowley. Over and above the Smokey Barnable-esque Quentin Coldwater and his innamorata Alice, whose names form a widdershins anagram of Little, Big's Alice Drinkwater, avid readers will enjoy getting all the Crowleyesque references to other classic fantasy novels—the Hogwartian instructors and spells; the Looking-Glass-World chessboard game that's Brakebill's answer to quidditch; the chapter in which Quentin and his cohort are turned into birds as part of their magical education, à la the Wart in the U.S. edition of The Once and Future King. There's little point complaining that The Magicians derives from Harry Potter, Little, Big, the Narnia books, The Sword in the Stone, and a zillion other novels—the borrowing is the point (though not the only one), along with Grossman's prose, which is luminous and will, I suspect, stand up to multiple readings by readers who cut their teeth on J. K. Rowling's books but are now ready for something more sophisticated—Grossman's target audience, I'm sure, and a vast one it is. It's all beautifully done, and it all fits seamlessly into Grossman's meticulously designed, overarching meta-narrative.

Yet I kept wondering why (apart from the marketing angle, which is one huge Because) Grossman didn't just write his own damn novel? He's certainly up to the task. Bloom published an homage to Lindsay's book, a novel titled The Trip to Lucifer, which he's since disavowed; The Magicians is a far more successful work than that, but it doesn't quite pull off the trick of being an original book composed of other fantasy novels, the way that Little, Big is composed of children's books. Part of this is that we've seen this trick before, in books and graphic novels like The Sandman, as well as films and TV series such as The Tenth Kingdom. Part of it is that Grossman embraces his original models and their conventions so tightly that he can't breathe much new air into them—the faux-Edwardian boarding school feel of Brakebills; the fact that sorcery and modern electronics don't mix (there is little texting at Brakebills); the fact that all the young protagonists are whip-smart, middle-class, educated sorts whose parents would almost certainly have shelled out for the Brakebills College Prep Course, had such a thing been available.

What makes this even more aggravating is that when Grossman focuses his energy and exceptional talent on original material, rather than a pastiche of White or Rowling, he creates truly spectacular set-pieces. The chapter where a Brakebills class is disrupted by the inadvertent summoning of a seemingly benign, even banal entity, is one of the most frightening and unexpected scenes I've read in years. The long sequence that begins as an homage to the avian shapeshifting in The Sword in the Stone develops into a glorious, strange, and powerfully moving paean to enchantment that is all Grossman's own. Ditto the exquisite, fractal transitional world that he summons late in the novel, when Quentin and his friends finally journey to Fillory.

A deeper problem, I think, is that in many ways The Magicians aspires to be both a critique of the fantasy genre, as well as a full-blooded fantasy novel. Grossman wants to have his potion and drink it too. Other writers have grappled with this, notably M. John Harrison in his Viriconium sequence and later short stories, and especially in his 1992 novel The Course of the Heart, a book that The Magicians sometimes resembles.

Harrison's solution is to deny his readers the solace of seeing what's on the other side of the enchanted wardrobe. He brilliantly constructs fantasy narratives, utilizing all the tricks at his disposal: he's like a master stage magician enticing his audience through the traditional steps in a magic show: the Pledge, or build-up; the Turn, where the trick is actually played; and finally the Prestige, where the disappeared object returns, the woman sawed in half bounds to her feet again, and so on. In fantasy terms, the Prestige is roughly analogous to Tolkien's eucatastrophe, but Harrison is having none of it. In an interview in Parietal Games: Critical Writings by and on M. John Harrison, he says

...the whole point ... is to bring the reader to the point where normally they would go through the portal, they would be allowed to go through the portal, encouraged to go through the portal.... Most of my short stories are kind of portal fantasies but you are not allowed through into the imaginary country, you're not allowed to believe in the fantasy. You're not allowed through, or it's undermined, or it's shown to be just as ordinary as what you left—which is actually the one I favor—mainly because what I'm trying to get the reader to do in that kind of story is this: if you run the reader as quickly as possible through the narrative with plenty of narrative push-through, plenty of speed, you get a crash at the end, you get a real sense of “Whoo! Why aren't I allowed through?” or “I walked through the door and there was no room on the other side” or “I just fell” or “the door was slammed in my face.” That is a violent collision.... What happens to the reader in that instant? What happens to the particular fantasy in that instant of coming off the rails?.... To actually see what makes fantasy work, especially how it transfers from our heads to a made narrative. Or at least to make the reader question both the nature of fantasy and the nature of reality.

I quote this lengthy observation because, for much of his wildly ambitious novel, it seems to be exactly what Grossman is about, too. But I think he loses it when the action shifts to Fillory, where, despite his best efforts, The Magicians relies on those three clichés against which Le Guin inveighed. The characters are white (though maybe I missed something; they all seemed like pretty bland white young urbanites to me); in Fillory, it's sort of the middle ages; and there's a battle between good and evil. And while Grossman gives lip service to the notion that Quentin and his friends aren't quite sure whose side they're on in the final showdown, it was pretty clear to me where the lines were drawn.

Finally, I didn't buy the ending, which seemed more a sop to readers’ expectations (and the possibility of a sequel) than anything else. Still, my caveats all stem from the fact that this is one of the best fantasies I've read in ages, and I wanted it to be, you know, perfect. I wanted more.

Turkish Delight, anyone?

*Although I counted six titles: not sure if this is an intended part of some mystery I have not solved or a printer's error in my Advanced Reader's Copy.

Nancy Springer reports that her fiftieth published book, The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline: An Enola Holmes Mystery, should be on the shelves by the time this issue hits the stands. Her latest story concerns a woman who does not, under most circumstances, like to make a fuss.

You could not be a more middle-aged middle-class middle-American menopausal woman. You know this because you are driving alone and dutifully to the funeral of a family member whom you never met, and you are counting your hot flashes to pass the time. (Twelve so far.) You know how middle-everything you are because you had trouble getting time off, and you have worked at the same bank for twenty-three years, and you are still a teller while a guy who trained along with you is now the vice-president, yet you process millions of dollars with your tastefully manicured hands and never sneak one for yourself. You have been married even longer, and you have never cheated at that job either, and know you never will, just as you know that when you sleep tonight you will dream—and even your dream is predictable. Nearly every night for years and years you have dreamed the exact same vivid dream, a night sweat of the mind, a hallucinatory hot flash to be disregarded like your other symptoms; nobody wants to hear about it.

The cell phone on the passenger seat next to you remains silent as you drive. During personal heat wave du jour number thirteen, a broiler, torrid enough to make you yearn to shred your navy blue suit, you see your exit and get off the interstate. You have planned ahead, made yourself a motel reservation, but several miles later you start to worry; was that perhaps the wrong exit? You are driving down the middle of a rudimentary road, a country lane in Nebraska, where you have never in your life been before.

You would swear a court deposition to that fact.

Yet, rounding a curve, you flash not hot but sweaty cold, for before you manifests the intimately, impossibly familiar.

The house.

You slam on the brakes.

You stare through your trifocals.

It is the house from the dream.

Your dream. Your repetitive nightly dream. Always the same, always eidetically clear, the dream in which you enter this house.

Not what one would usually consider a dream house. A modest dwelling—yet unmistakable. You recognize it in the holistic, coded-into-your-DNA way you would recognize your mother's face if she were alive, yet you would have just as much difficulty describing it. Except for disjunctive details. The gazebo. The sundial, the birdbath, the celadon-green gazing ball. Circular things. Over the front door, a stained-glass rose window. Somewhere inside, you know, is a spiral staircase. Every night in your dream you walk up the trapezoidal steps, wearing a soft gown that petals you as if you were a lily, barefoot—

A horn toots briefly, politely. Behind you, a local in a pickup is waiting for you to get out of the middle of the road.

You pull over in front of the house to let him pass, and thus decide that you are going to stop for just a few minutes, see whether anyone is home, ask questions. You get out of your car, telling yourself that there must be an explanation, that perhaps your parents brought you here when you were two or three, that you are having a déjà vu experience beyond conscious memory—but what would your parents have been doing here? In this state of Nebraska and confusion?

Although you don't like to call attention to yourself—no, it's more than reticence; admit the truth: you are irrationally afraid—although feeling spooked, you walk toward the house. In the navy blue business suit that absolutely does not petal you like any flower, you stride across the lawn before you lose your nerve. The place is neither landscaped nor unkempt. Bushes, inert and taupe now in winter, stand at random distances from one another, ovoid or globular. Husks of last fall's chrysanthemums flank the front door. You look for a doorbell; there is none. You knock. Solid wood, the door barely acknowledges. You knock again, harder, then hear footsteps within.

The door is opened by a rather short, unremarkable man, dark of hair and skin, perhaps Latino. Ordinary—and you cannot admit even to yourself how relieved you are to see just an ordinary man—except that when he sees you, the generous russet and olive tints of his face fade like old shingles to gray.

"Please excuse me for intruding,” you say, concerned by his reaction and trying to put him at ease, for you are the sort of person who is always thinking of others, “but I wonder if you would tell me something about this house. Is it yours?"

The man swallows twice before answering, “No, señora. I am the, how you say, the caretaker."

"Really?” You are surprised, for the residence seems middle-class, like you, not upscale enough for the sort of people who would have servants. “Do the owners live here only in the summer, then?"

"The owners live here not at all."

"What? Why not?"

"Because the gringos, they call it, how you say, haunted. But to my people—"

Involuntarily you echo, “Haunted?"

"Yes, señora."

"But—but what do you mean, haunted?"

"You should know, señora. You are the ghost."

Only yesterday you were joking with one of the other tellers about being invisible. Short, graying, and perhaps potty-trained a bit too early, you had stood unnoticed at a lunch counter while half a dozen other people rushed in front of you and were served. This sort of thing has been happening to you for years. Asked why you do not speak up, you say you don't like to make a fuss.

This is true. You are a very civilized person. So why, now, are you barking like a chimpanzee, “What? What did you say?"

Humbly the Latino man attempts to explain. “I have many times myself seen you on the escalera, señora. You are the ghost who—"

Why, now, are you interrupting? Shouting? “I am not a ghost!"

"Pardon, señora—"

"I am not a ghost!” Your fists curl, your head lowers, your chin juts, you step toward him. Yet, because you know your middle name is Meek, you are surprised when he yelps, says something prayerful in Spanish, and retreats, shutting the door. You hear the click as he locks it.

You now learn what it means to be “beside oneself.” Who is this woman pounding on the white door with both fists, shouting “Open up! I am not finished with you! I am not a ghost!” Beside yourself, you discover that you know how to curse. Beside yourself, you learn that shouting feeds upon cursing as you stamp back to your car, yelling, “I am not a ghost! God damn it all to hell! I am not a ghost!” Beside yourself, you spray gravel as you rev out of there.

In a few moments you reduce speed, cease shouting, and begin instead to weep. You now know that you are not, after all, going to your great-uncle whatsisface's funeral, but you have no idea why you are crying.

In the nearest town you find a cheap motel where you book a room, paying with cash. You do not bother to cancel your reservation at the other motel and save the money that will otherwise be charged to your credit card. Any such practical considerations seem to have flown out of a circular stained-glass window. Lying atop a linty chenille bedspread, you eye your cell phone, which remains silent. Your husband has not called. You will not call him. Many times he has made it clear that he does not want to hear about your “damn stupid dream.” He will not care whether you are a ghost or not.

You turn the cell phone off and let it drop to the floor.

You now stare at the ceiling. Cheap tiles. Square. No circles anywhere.

Menopausal heat comes and goes. You are a geyser that spouts sweat at irregular intervals; you are no longer keeping track of the eruptions.

In your cavernous gut, hunger crawls. But not the sort that food would satisfy. So you just lie where dust mites roam. For a long time. As day turns to dark.

And as you slowly, slowly go to sleep, making the transition so gradually that you become mindful of what you are doing.

Therefore, things are subtly different. This time, even though the dream is, as always, ineffably right—the starry night in which you can see without any other light, your lily-petal gown so soft, flowing to your bare feet that feel no cold, that stand upon the compass-rose tiled floor of the gazebo, where you always begin—even though this is perfection, you feel muted resentment, because you should not be a ghost. Why are you haunting? Yet as if you have no control of your own body—or no, not body, for you are floating, incorporeal, and you sullenly love your freedom from glands and heat and weight—as if you have no control over your being, you glide into the nightly ritual. Issuing forth from the encirclement of the gazebo, you circle the house, caressing the gazing globe the color of a luna moth, the birdbath, the sundial, and—

And it is winter; you are tired of winter; you want wild green grass and the heady fragrance of springtime blossoms. Since you are asleep and this is just a dream, why can't you have them? It's about time you had something you want. You touch a sere, bulbous bush, and it bursts into yellow bloom; forsythia. There. Under your feet, lawn like emerald fire springs up, and puffball mushrooms; you stand at the center of a ring of them fit for pixies to dance in.

The white puffballs are a gift; you would never have thought of them. But a gift from what? Or from whom? Bemused, you continue your rounds, wafting into the house through the rose of stained glass.

Inside, things are not professionally decorated but not a dump either, just tidy and boring except for the circular pedestal table with antique doily, which—as always—attracts you down to ground level, as if it were put there for that reason. This time, however, as you stand admiring the detail of the doily, an area rug springs up beneath your feet, its lilac-and-daffodil yang/yin circle quite at variance with the otherwise staid furnishings.

As is the stairway, its open spiral an unusual feature in a middle-class house like this. Drifting over there, you wonder what's upstairs. Even though you have climbed the spiral in a thousand dreams or more, you do not remember what you find at the top. The difference this time is that you know you are dreaming, so you know that you should know, and your own blankness annoys you. The mystery at the top of the spiral is, after all, the hub of the matter, and why did you not realize this before?

You begin to climb. You could simply waft up there the way you wafted through the rose window, but you enjoy the novelty of ascending the stairway without effort, unlabored by the mass of your own body, as if each bleached wooden riser were a springboard. With one hand clinging to the central pillar you swing, ascending, with your long weightless gown fluttering; you are white ribbon unwinding, unwinding up a maypole to—where? At the top of the stairs, you can see now, is a closed door, quite a curious and fascinating wooden door, painted shrimp pink, its arched top carved with a circular motif. Distracted like a child from play, you hurry the rest of the way. The carving on the door is rather like the doily on the pedestal table, radial symmetry at its most intricate and beautiful, but unreadable.

You try the door. It is locked. Which is not fair, because this is your room, you know with sudden ontological certainty. Don't the idiots realize that's the whole reason you keep coming here, to get into your room? How dare they try to—

Wait a minute. They can't keep you out. There's a carved circle on the door. You can waft right through, the way you flew into the house through the rose window. You're a ghost.

No. No, you're not a ghost. Not.

Suddenly furious, like a cop on TV you kick the door, meaning to break it down. Your bare foot feels no pain from the impact, for there is none. Instead, your impetus carries you halfway through the door. Your foot comes down inside. Your head stops approximately in the middle of the carved circle.

You are looking at your room.

Yes, it is your room.

Square.

Bare.

Windowless.

Colorless.

Unpainted, uncarpeted.

Small.

Low.

Empty.

Driving past the house the next day, you see a forsythia bush in full bloom, although winter reigns all around. You see a patch of emerald-green grass wearing its own white pearl necklace. You see the Latino caretaker standing in the front yard peering at these manifestations. And for the first time since you woke up weeping in the night, you begin to sense that you need not despair.

You begin to feel inklings of possibility.

You feel a heat in you, but it is not just another hot flash; it is white fire kindling at your core, so that the fountain can burst forth.

But this is daytime, and daytime is rife with doubt. Can you—will you truly do it? Any of it? Things you never knew you had within you?

As never before, you long for night, for sleep.

A few days later, driving past the house, you see that a cupola has sprouted, as round and sudden as a mushroom, from its roof.

Smiling, you drive in as if you own the place—which in effect you do—and park in front. The caretaker, when he opens the door, bursts into a torrent of distraught Spanish and tries to shut you out, but anticipating this move, you have, in time-honored style, inserted your foot, protectively clad in a hiking boot that goes with your new blue jeans and colorful nylon jacket. Gesturing with palms down, you gaze at the man with the expression of benevolent and competent concern that has served you well from behind the teller's window. You are a nice person. A civilized person. It is a shame for anyone to shout at you. The caretaker's spate falters, and you address him with great sincerity, “I believe we can help each other. Did I understand you to say that your people know all about ghosts?"

His passion wheels like a condor on a changing wind. “Sí! Sí, señora, in my lifetime I alone, four ghosts I have met. Mi tia, sister of my father..."

Some time later, inside, seated on the beige sofa and drinking an execrable South American brand of powdered instant coffee, you have learned that his aunt after dying at four in the morning had gone to sit on the beds of all the neighbors in her village, unwilling to leave. He is from Chile, where people live all their lives in the one village so poor. Here in the Estados Unidos he is rich, he has the automobile, he sends money home to his sisters. His grandmother after death had come back as a cold miasma terrorizing her family until all the babies were christened. Here in the Estados Unidos he lives in the house very nice and his employers are good to him; he does not know what to tell them about the new room upstairs. His mother, who died in childbirth, came back every night to pull the hair of his father sleeping.

"But I am alive,” you point out after a while. “How can I be a ghost?"

"How do I know that you are alive, señora?"

"You are sitting here talking with me."

"Stranger things have happened."

You explain to him about the sleeping, the dreams, the coincidence that led to your finding the house.

"It was no, how you say, coincidence, señora. Your great-uncle now dead, he led you here."

"But I didn't even know him. I was just going to his funeral because I thought I ought to."

"He led you here, maybe, same reason. Family is family."

"But I am not a ghost!” Seeing his face stiffen, quickly you soften your tone. “I do not want to be a ghost. Do you think your mother wanted to be a ghost?"

"No, señora, of course not. The ghosts, they, how you say, haunt, because they are unhappy."

"Oh,” you say rather weakly, because once again it is too true, although you have seldom acknowledged your unhappiness; discontentment, like larceny or adultery, you have allowed no mental compass.

"Why, señora, have you caused the circle room upstairs, with the bed in it?"

You do not tell him how the empty shoebox of a room made you wake up to find yourself in a cheap motel bed weeping, or attempt to explain the white fire fountain that ensued within your chest, the manifestations you yourself do not fully understand. Instead, you say, “When I sleep somewhere else, in my dream I come here and haunt this house, is that not true?"

"Sí, indeed I have seen it many times with my own eyes. So?"

"So if I sleep here, in my very own room, then what is there for me to haunt?"

Everything about your room makes you feel exalted: the dome ceiling with circular skylight, the countryside view from your six arched windows, the glass bubbles floating and emanating a firefly glow above your head, the soft round rug with its pattern ever gently shifting like a pastel kaleidoscope, the similarly changeful mandala mosaics on the walls, the flower-shaped pillows on which you will rest your head, the sheer undeniable reality that it is daytime yet you have climbed the spiral staircase and opened the arched door and there is your condign dwelling just as you have shaped it in your dreams.

The caretaker remains at the bottom of what he calls the “ladder,” the stairs. He will approach no nearer. Most reluctantly he has agreed to this experiment. “For one night only,” he repeats for perhaps the fifteenth time, shouting up from his distance, although he knows as well as you do that it will not be for one night only. “You need anything? I am leaving."

This raises your eyebrows. “Are you frightened?"

"But sí, yes.” He does not deny it the way an American man would. “Are you not?"

"No, not at all! I am very....” With astonishment you realize what you are saying, and how true it is. “I am very happy."

"Ay caramba!” Complaining to Madre Maria, he goes away.

You truly do not need anything from him; once more you do not require food. The bed, a great water lily, floats on its kaleidoscope carpet pad, and you wish only to recline into its white softness. You do so, lying like a compass pointing five ways, and you gaze, gaze up through the skylight, watching blue and white turn to puce, greige, twilight and night. Unsleeping, you have nevertheless passed into a state in which you know no time. You gaze at the indigo sky, and like your reflection in a dark mirror the moon gazes back at you, a middle-aged moon in all her full-circle glory, wheeling luminous into her waning.

You are such a one. Why, oh why, does the world find you invisible? The world must be sleeping.

You sleep. You do not realize you are asleep until you find yourself outside of a house. A development house, triangles on top of rectangles, taupe, of course. The new houses are all taupe unless they're tan or beige. And all the others on the street are dark except for their little Malibu lights ranked along their foundation plantings. But in this one, you are surprised to see the living room lights still on at this time of the night. You fumble your keys out of your purse—for some reason you are once again carrying the black purse, wearing the navy-blue suit—and attempt to let yourself in, but the lock does not respond. You step inside anyway, through the hollow-core door, blinking when you see your husband and teenage children sitting in their usual places, fully clothed, yet not watching the TV. They look bewildered and somewhat aggrieved.

"Hi, I'm home,” you say.

They do not hear you or look at you. Shrugging, you go on with your usual routine, your nightly ritual, hanging up your coat, setting your purse on the hallway table, glancing at the mail—junk, bills—then heading for the kitchen. The sink is piled with dishes. You open the dishwasher, find clean dishes still in it, and start putting them away in the cupboards.

You hear your husband talking to the children. “C'mon, guys, think. Where could she be that she's not using her credit cards?"

"Dead,” says one of the kids.

"That's stupid,” says the other. “Who would want to kill Mom?” They sound bone-tired and uncommunicative, as if returning from a sleepover.

"It's a possibility we have to face.” Your husband sounds the same way. “But until they find her or at least her car, I'd rather think she ran away. Where would she go? Did she ever say anything to you?"

"Just about that dumb-head dream of hers."

Meanwhile, handling the dishes, you notice what satisfying discs they are, what attractive circles in this otherwise angular place. And you like their stylized folk pattern, cornflower blue, but why in the name of the moon goddess must they all be the same? You would like each plate to be lovely and unique, like the mandalas—womandalas?—you have recently created in your dumb-head dream.

Dumb? You're dreaming now. You can do things.

And with the awareness comes resentment, mixing oddly with your joy as your mind caresses onto each plate its own radial symmetry, its unique primal pattern. As you ensoul each circle of pottery, you load the dishwasher, put detergent in it, slam it closed, and turn it on. No one hears, of course, or pays any attention, and why should they, when this has been going on for years and years?

Yet generally people do notice ghosts. The way slugs notice salt.

It's obvious, then, that what you have been saying all along is true. You are not a ghost.

"I can't see what her idiotic dream has to do with anything,” your husband is saying. “Well, I guess we might as well face it, the phone's not going to ring. Let's try to get some sleep."

"Good night,” you call automatically, and you drift into the living room to watch them trudge upstairs, wondering whether they will notice when they get up in the morning that you took care of the dishes for them.

Melinda Snodgrass is the author of Circuit, Runespear, and many other novels and stories. Along with her good friend George R.R. Martin, she created the “Wild Cards” series. Her most recent novel is The Edge of Reason and a sequel, The Edge of Ruin, is scheduled for publication next year. According to the bio posted on her Website ( www.melindasnodgrass.co ), she is also an accomplished singer, horse rider, screenwriter, and she manages a small natural gas company.
Her F&SF debut is set in the same universe as the “Edge” novels, but you don't need any extra background info in order to enjoy the tale.

"I'm going to be broken on a wheel of swords and then beheaded,” the man said in answer to the Centurion's question.

The Centurion was surprised. That was a high honor, a mark of respect. Well, at least the beheading part was, he amended. When he'd asked about the man's crime, he'd expected a story like his own—convicted and sentenced to fight in the arena until defeated and killed. But this poor bastard wasn't even being given the chance to fight. He was going to be tortured and then killed.

Another, closer look, revealed what the Centurion had missed with his first, cursory glance. Beneath the dirt and dried blood the tunic was fine wool and the man's boots were well made and hardly worn. The Centurion could see where decorations had been torn from the tops of the boots. He also saw where the skin on the man's arms was lighter, marking the places where armillae once rested.

The man was smiling at him. Genuinely amused. The Centurion tried to cover his confusion by blustering, “Ho, we have a patrician among us."

Some of the other prisoners in the dungeon beneath the arena in Nicomedia looked over at them, but most were uninterested, lost in their own troubles and terrors over what tomorrow would bring. In the dimness of the dungeon, lit only by smoking, flickering wall torches, their eyes glittered. It reminded the Centurion of the big cats in their cages that he had passed on his way to the dungeon, and he decided it was a good comparison. Most of the people in here were also dangerous killers. And the Centurion was no exception.

In addition to the gladiators there were a few frightened criminals who stayed in the corners, sniveling. The Centurion was a criminal, but he was also a soldier and he would not show such fear.

Near the stone bulk of a supporting pillar a handful of Christians droned their prayers. The emperor hated the Christians and had started another round of persecutions. So far their god hadn't appeared to stop him.

"So, what are they killing you for?” the Centurion asked.

"Saving a city.” The Patrician gave a sideways look from the corner of his eyes. Again he seemed amused. “And you?” he asked. “Gladiator?"

"No, no, I'm a legionnaire, a Centurion.” The leather straps of his lorica creaked a bit as his chest expanded, as if to say, I'm part of the greatest army in the world, and proud of it.

"Neither of those will get you condemned to the arena."

The Centurion deflated. “Sadly, I am also a thief."

"Ah."

It was suddenly important to the Centurion that this man know he had not been enslaved for his crime. He would walk into that arena a free man, and if he won every fight he would walk out—as a free man.

"I plan to be the last man standing tomorrow,” the Centurion said. “Diocletian will be watching, and I'll end up in his guard.” Most of it was bluster. He also hoped the brave words would disguise his fear.

"Wish for the first two. I'd avoid the third if I were you,” the Patrician said dryly.

"Know the emperor that well, do you?” The Centurion spit on the stone slabs of the floor and then regretted it. He shouldn't waste spit, he was going to need it, especially if the guards didn't feed and water them in the morning.

"I was in his guard."

In his experience bullshit always trumpeted, but this was said quietly. Like it was a fact. The Centurion was suddenly embarrassed by the way he'd pushed in on the man, as if being in this cell made them somehow equals and comrades. A hand closed on his wrist, strong fingers that brought an ache to the bones. The Centurion hadn't even realized he was moving away from the Patrician until that grip stopped him. The Patrician looked up at him. His expression was serious and calculating. With a wave of the hand he indicated that the Centurion should join him.

Nervous and flattered, he dropped down to sit next to the Patrician. Even through the rough wool of his tunic the hewn stone was cold against his haunches. He shivered briefly and wrapped his arms around his chest. The Centurion was suddenly aware that the other man's eyes were tracing the line of the biceps, and studying the tendons and muscles that wrapped his left wrist. The Centurion wondered if he was a boy lover, and felt his hand clenching into a fist. He would hate to waste his strength beating a catamite. But at the man's next words, he relaxed.

"You can fight with either hand,” he said. The Centurion nodded. “That should give you an advantage."

"For the first four or five. After that....” The Centurion shrugged.

"Let us talk through the night. I'll tell you my tale, and when you walk from the arena tomorrow you'll take the story back to my mother in Lydda."

The Centurion make a rude noise. “Look, I'm not getting out of this. It was just brag ... what I said."

"I think you might. I think your opponents won't be at their best tomorrow."

The Patrician touched the intricate buckle that held his wide leather balteus. The buckle was a strange thing, made up of curves and spirals and many shades of gray. His fingers slid through the loops, and stroked the glass-like material. The Centurion wondered why no one had taken it from him, but why would they when there was gold to be had, and this was a dull nothing? Still, there was something about the thing that made his scalp prickle.

"All right, but if the emperor changes his mind ... if you walk out, you must go to my mother in Luceria, and tell her what happened to me,” the Centurion said, and he tried to match the man's off-handed tone.

"Done."

They gripped forearms. The Centurion scooted back to rest his back against the wall, and settled in to listen. The man had a good voice, deep and soft.

The word had gone out that a serpent—no, it was more than that, a giant lizard, no, greater than a lizard, a dragon—was afflicting Cyrene. The tale flew up and down the coast, whispered in crossroads colleges, taverns, and marketplaces.

I paid attention to such tales. Most times they were just flights of fancy, concocted by bored and credulous people, but sometimes they brought us word that one of the Old Ones was abroad in the world.

It's beneath my dignity as a military tribune to loiter in taverns, marketplaces, and crossroads colleges, but the first two locales offered no impediment for my slave. I sent Scientius out among the people.

I waited for his return in the roof garden of the fat merchant's villa we'd commandeered to house the tribunes. The man's taste was atrocious, so very few of his possessions had been taken. It was a fortunate circumstance for him that he was a clod, less so for young tribunes trying to get ahead. While the sun sank, turning the waves of the sea to shivering flames, I sipped wine, tuned my lyre, and waited for Scientius's return. Even the tart/sweet scent of blossoming orange trees that shaded me couldn't hide the stink of the tanneries down by the docks. My troops called Cilicia “the shithole” and I couldn't disagree.

I've always savored this time of day. The breathless heat and the assault of the sun ended, and for a few hours I was treated to the soft cry of night birds, the squeak of bats, and the stars. Scientius showed me they are burning globes like the sun, but they are so far away they look like jewels....

The Centurion glared, thinking the Patrician was mocking him. Tales of wonder to hold the fear at bay were one thing, but this.... He was not a fool.

"Now that's a bunch of horse dung,” he said.

"No, I've seen them. Through glass lenses that Scientius constructed."

"Well, there's your mistake. Slaves are cunning and slothful. You've gotta watch them."

The Patrician smiled at the lecturing tone. “Mine is certainly cunning, but he's been right about many things."

My lyre gave a soft cry, a series of whispered notes. My slave had returned. He waited in the doorway until I motioned him forward, and he bowed when he reached me. We always observed the formalities. It wouldn't do for people to realize that the slave was actually the master. He's an interesting-looking man.

"And it's important that you pay attention and remember this,” the Patrician said, and his look was intense as he leaned in close to the Centurion.

"Why?"

"Because you must recognize him tomorrow when you leave the arena."

"I told you, it won't—"

"Have faith.” And a strange, almost bitter, little smile curved his lips.

Scientius is as powerfully built as a Gaul or a Goth, but his skin is Nubian black, and his eyes are akin to those of the people of Sinae.

"It's one of ours,” he said to me as he bent low to refill my wine cup.

His voice is deep and bell-like, and the chimes that hung in the trees shivered and breathed their music into the onrushing night, and mingled with the voice of my lyre. Scientius has this effect on instruments. I have a friend who is a musician, and he always wants my slave in the dining room when he plays. He swears the instruments sound better. I've always just smiled indulgently, and never indicated that what he's said is true.

I was sure Scientius was right about the dragon, but Cyrene was far away, and I was suddenly very comfortable in Shithole. “You're sure? This isn't the most convenient time for me to ask for leave."

He pulled a scrap of Egyptian papyrus from his sleeve and read, “They're reporting a stink that fills the air, and catches in the throat, an advancing darkness, otherworldly winds that filled the streets of Cyrene with ash, and there are voices in the winds and faces in the mirrors.” The papyrus was folded over several times and returned to the sleeve. “It's a tear in the world,” he said, and nodded for emphasis.

"I've lost track of how many relatives I'd sickened or killed just so I can get leave,” I complained.

Scientius tapped his temple to indicate he remembered, and then offered, “We're a reasonable distance from Lydda and your mother."

"I'm not going to say my mother is sick."

"She won't really be,” he said in that tone you reserve for the very young, the very old, and the very stupid.

"I know that, and I know there are no gods, but indeed this feels like tempting fate,” I said.

"Don't be superstitious. We'll have to pass through Judea on our way to Cyrenaica. You can actually visit her, not be a liar, and reassure yourself that your lies have no effect on the turning of the universe."

I contemplated the territories we have to cross before reaching Cyrene. Syria, Judea, Cyrenaica. “Maybe we ought to take a ship, and buy horses in Cyrenaica,” I suggested.

"Maybe we can ride to Lydda so you can see your mother, and then take a ship,” Scientius countered.

"That will take more time."

"You don't want to lie about your mother being sick, but you also don't want to see her,” Scientius said. “Why are humans so irrational?"

"We'll just get into another argument about religion."

"Lie. Tell her you're a Christian. Make her happy. She doesn't have to know the truth—"

"That, thanks to you, I don't believe in a damn thing?"

"Don't be so dramatic. While you may not believe in gods, you know these creatures are real, and you know they're monstrous."

"It was easier when I didn't know all these great truths."

"I never told you this would be easy. Ignorance is comfortable."

"So is the certainty of believing in the gods, but you've taken that from me."

"I showed you the evidence. You were smart enough to draw the right conclusion.” He started to leave, then stopped and looked back. “Go visit your mother."

"And did you?” the Centurion asked.

"What?"

"Visit your mother?"

"Yes, I visited my mother."

"Do you ever win an argument with this slave?"

"No."

The hiss and thwap of the water against the side of the ship was hypnotic. I leaned on the rail, breathing in the pungent scent of brine and seaweed, and watched the coast slip by. I felt like a well-packed barrel after a week of my mother feeding me at every opportunity. A school of porpoises played in our wake. I toyed with the idea that they really were pulling Neptune's chariot, but I released the fantasy. It really was silly that a big man with a beard lived on the bottom of the ocean and controlled the waves.

From Scientius I understood there were wind waves caused by friction between air and water, and tidal waves caused by the pull of the moon. I understood why lightning arced across the sky and it had nothing to do with another big man with a beard, only this one in the sky. I had seen planets circling our sun, and Scientius had shown me the tiny creatures that lived in a single drop of water, but there were so many more things I didn't understand.

It was all so much easier when I believed in the gods. Then I knew everything, and I had all the answers—Jupiter threw lightning bolts, Neptune controlled the waters, Sol pulled the sun through the heavens.... And my slave had created a new god woven out of myths and prophecies. A creation my mother now worshiped, and whose followers my emperor now persecuted because they would not render unto Caesar.

On the coast vague shapes resolved themselves into buildings and palm trees. Bare feet pounded across the wooden deck as the crew hurried to adjust the sail. The ship came around, and pointed her prow at the shore. Down in the hold the horses sensed that we were heading for landfall and began to bugle with both joy and desperation. I sympathized. I hated ship travel; it is the very definition of boredom. No doubt why I had turned to such pointless maundering.

The shore looked close, but it took hours before we, our gear, and our horses were standing on the dock in Apollonia. The stink of rotting fish, tar, and sweat pursued us as we rode deeper into the city.

Diocletian had made Apollonia the capital of a new province, Lybia Superior, and it seemed to be trying to live up to its newfound glory. The walls of the baths were freshly scrubbed, and scaffolding surrounded a palace under construction. At this distance the workmen, carrying stone blocks, looked like black ants climbing one of the massive anthills of Africa with bits of food in their mandibles.

Cyrenaica is another of those bizarre occurrences, like Bithynia, where the ruler, Ptolemy Apion, getting long in years and having no children, decided to bequeath his kingdom to Rome. Now, I grant you, we are a noble people, but it must be strange to wake up one morning and discover you're a Roman with all that entails, both good and bad.

The news of the dragon in Cyrene was everywhere.

From the barber who gave me a shave I learned that the populace of Cyrene was reduced to eating only bread because the dragon had consumed every sheep, goat, and ox. Even though Apollonia was only a few miles away, no one was offering help to the citizens of Cyrene.

In the marketplace I stood with a Berber caravan leader who told me that the dragon was now demanding people to assuage its hunger. The gargling grunts and moans of the camels provided a Greek chorus for this evil tale.

In a tavern, alternating between sips of sour wine and bites of strong roast goat and onions, Scientius and I learned that the king of Cyrene had begun a lottery to select each day's victim. The speakers’ voices were breathless with fear and horror, but their eyes told a different tale. They glittered in the smoky gloom, excited and titillated by the catastrophe that had overcome Cyrene. They were proud to be part of such momentous events, and oblivious to the fact that once every person in Cyrene had been consumed the Old One would come down the road to Apollonia.

The sun sat like half a gold coin on the horizon when we left. The air smelled of dust, fish, roasting meat, spices, and onions. The streets were cleared as people retreated behind the walls of their houses and onto the roofs to catch the evening breezes off the sea.

"I hate people,” I said. “Remind me again why I'm working to protect them?"

"No, you don't, and we protect them because you humans are worth it."

"Really?” I asked, but I was talking to the air. Scientius walked on ahead, up the steps of a temple.

It was small, and the stonework was rough, but the statue of some obscure eastern goddess that stood in the center rotunda was magnificent. Carved lions slept at her feet. Moon and stars surrounded her head. The folds of her stola were painted in stunning shades of blue. Rose paint and gold leaf adorned the marble hem.

Scientius pointed at her. “You're worth it because of that."

"The goddess?"

"No, idiot, the statue. Any creature that can make something that beautiful and make music and write poetry is worth saving. So, get your sleep. Tomorrow you're going to fight a dragon."

"You should beat him more often,” the Centurion averred.

"You can tell him that when you meet him."

The Patrician's smile was condescending and the Centurion rolled his fingers into a fist. “I'll let this do the talking when I meet your conniving slave."

"I wish I could be around to see that.” The Patrician sounded sad, and the reminder had the Centurion hurrying to add:

"Go on. Go on with the story."

But the dragon didn't grant me a restful night's sleep. I had begged hospitality in the home of a Roman merchant, not wishing to share my bed with bugs, or sleep with a knife to hand in order to ward off the human vermin I would encounter at an inn. I was awakened by screams and shouts from within and without the house.

I threw on a tunic and raced down the hall, gladius in hand, and came upon the mistress of the house moving like a sleepwalker. She held a hand mirror of silver and gazed into its reflective depths. She crooned endearments to the eyes that gazed back out of the mirror at her. I sheathed the gladius—such a human weapon was not going to serve—gripped the hilt of my real sword, and began to draw the blade from its hidden depths. Scientius stopped me.

"No, they must not know you are here. Surprise is our best ally."

I settled for just knocking the mirror from her hands as we ran to the great front doors. An oath and a threat and the terrified door slave threw back the bolts.

Out in the street the night was lit by waving torches and a full moon. I choked and coughed, but not from the smoke from the torches. The air reeked like burning oil and sulfur. The Old One flew across the face of the Moon so I got a very good look. It had way too many legs. I lost count at around thirty. It was also the size of the pleasure barge I'd once sailed down the Nile. Each beat of those scaled wings sent gusts of the poisonous air washing through the streets of Apollonia. The hairs on the back of my neck stood erect, and I wanted to draw the sword so badly. I knew this horror would stay away from me if I was holding the sword. Scientius sensed my terror, and he kept a grip on my wrist.

The household guards threw down the torches and fled screaming back into their masters’ houses. On one roof an old man, clad only in his night loin cloth and an ancient helmet, waved a gladius and screamed imprecations at the Old One. It shot down and seized the man in jaws like a river crocodile's. Curses became screams. Something wet and sticky pattered onto my upturned face and the bare skin of my chest. My sweat washed away the blood.

There was no more sleep that night.

In the morning we set out for Cyrene. A perfectly good Roman road ran between the cities, but riding up to the front door when you don't know where your enemy is located is foolish. And I had seen that thing. I did not want to come upon it unawares.

So Scientius and I set off across country instead. Dust puffed from beneath the hooves of our horses, coated our faces, and tickled sneezes from our nostrils. Gulls circled and called overhead. We met only a skinny goatherd and his flock as we traveled. The boy and his charges went hopping away, his bare, brown legs not notably thicker than the spindly limbs of his goats.

I knew from my talks with the caravan leader that Cyrene sat on a high plateau. It was one of the last green places before you reached the desert. The question was whether the Old One was actually in the city or had torn a hole elsewhere to enter our world.

We'd covered most of the distance when strange winds began to eddy and whirl around us. They lifted the dust into spiraling cyclones. The smell that had almost overwhelmed me the night before replaced the comforting, normal scents of sea, dirt, and horse. There were no more gulls. In fact no birds of any kind. The world was silent except for the hoofbeats of the horses. Around us the vegetation had died.

Scientius and I exchanged a glance—we were very close. We dismounted, and tethered our horses. They tried to graze on the dead grass, but soon gave up. I did a ritual check of my weapons—hilt, gladius, knife. Scientius waited patiently, and then we advanced on foot. Using rocks for cover, we headed north along the foot of the cliff. High above us five Muses looked out across the valley toward the sea. The sunlight made the marble blindingly white.

Keening cries pierced the silence. A girl's voice, crying in fear. We'd reached our destination. I unhooked the hilt from my belt and prepared to draw the sword. Scientius laid a hand over my wrist.

"Wait,” he breathed into my ear. “Let me find its exact location."

I nodded. He ghosted away through the brush and I sank down to squat on my haunches. I kept my left hand at the base of the hilt, ready to draw if Scientius came running back, pursued by the monster.

He returned a few minutes later. “There's a girl chained to the cliff. It's just sitting there contemplating her, feeding on her terror."

"Didn't it get enough last night?” I asked. Scientius just shrugged and led the way.

It's been my habit to always look through the tear before I engage the creature that made it.

"You keep saying that. A tear—what does that mean?” the Centurion asked. “Is this thing from Hades?"

The Patrician took the hem of his tunic and folded it over several times. “There are worlds that lie to either side and above and below our world. We can't see them, but sometimes the creatures that live in those worlds poke a hole through the material that separates the worlds, and come crawling through."

"How do you know they are different worlds?"

"Because I've seen places with three suns, and red skies, and vast plains of ice, and in this case...."

....It was night on the other side of the opening, and five moons sailed that alien sky. In my world the sun was hot on my back and the sweat trickling down my sides was a desperate itch.

And then it was time to face the monster. It had its back to me, wings folded like a mantis, and stared at a heavyset girl who slumped in her chains. She was young, fourteen or fifteen years old, with a bloom of pimples across her chin and forehead. Her family was obviously rich because every finger held a ring. A long necklace of gold beads and polished agate fell across her breasts.

There wasn't going to be a better opportunity to stab the dragon from behind—

"Wait a minute. You'd stab an enemy in the back?"

The Patrician smiled at the Centurion's outrage. “Absolutely."

"You're losing my respect,” and the Centurion folded his arms across his chest. “And this makes for a terrible tale."

The Patrician gave that secretive little smile again. “You still don't believe any of this is real, do you?"

Because I lack a certain humor that is present in almost all other humans, the monster couldn't sense me. But that was going to change the instant I drew the sword. When the blade appears out of the hilt it pulls music from the very air, and resonates in your chest like the beating of drums, or the chords of a great water organ. In the presence of Old Ones or great magic, it also wraps itself and me in a net of glowing lights. It's not a subtle weapon. Fortunately it only has to touch Old Ones and they die.

Alas, this Old One had a lively sense of self-preservation. The moment it heard the overtones, it leaped into the air with a thunder of wings and turned to face me. The girl screamed, the monster hissed; I yelled and ran to place myself between it and the tear in the world. I did not want it to escape, only to return to our world in some different and distant place.

"Empty One,” it said, making it a greeting, and warily eyeing the sword, it dropped back to the ground, but well beyond my reach. Those eyes were glassy red, but dark fires seemed to flare deep within them.

The Centurion was frowning. “What does that mean, Empty One? Why did he call you that?"

Once again the Patrician's hand went to his belt buckle and he traced its curving lines. Long moments passed as he considered. Finally he said, “You know how the Greeks say there are four humors—blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile.” The Centurion nodded. “Well, there is actually a fifth—magic. It runs in the veins of almost all people. But not in mine. I am empty of magic. The Old Ones feed on terror, hate, pain, and grief. Magic opens that pathway for them, but they can't feed on me. I am a cipher to them."

"Monster,” I said, and nodded in greeting.

"That's extremely harsh,” it said.

"Well, look at yourself,” I replied. “You might have inspired godhood if you'd taken a comely human form.” There was a chance I could goad it into changing its form before we engaged. They are often vainglorious and sometimes they like to interact with their prey.

"It takes so long to bring your kind through terror to worship while still keeping a bit of terror disguised as awe,” the Old One said in tones of mournful complaint. “Just plain terror is much easier and quicker.” It lifted up ten of its legs and clacked the claws together. The wings opened, and he gave them a shake with a sound like palm fronds in a high wind. “And I'll keep this form, thank you."

It had only been a small chance. I half-turned so I could still watch my adversary, but also see the tear. I set the point of the sword at the base of the opening, pictured it closed, and pulled the sword up the length of it. Dirt, rock, and dead plants cut off the view of distant moons. The dragon made a disgruntled noise.

"I'll have to kill a great many of your kind before I can reopen that,” the Old One complained.

I decided against any further conversation, and charged, hoping to take it unawares. The slightest touch.... But for all its bulk it was unnaturally quick. The wide jaws opened and it blew a gust of poisonous breath into my face. I faltered and it leaped into the air. It didn't take long to grasp its plan. The dragon seized a boulder from the cliff face, and flung it down at me.

I skipped sideways. The rock hit the ground with enough force that the earth shook, and a gout of dirt shot like a fountain high into the air. I was terrified that a veritable hail of stones would be coming my way, but for all its bulk and multiplicity of legs, it seemed to lack the strength to lift more than one large rock at a time. It did claw at the cliff face with hind legs, sending dirt and small rocks cascading down on the prisoner and on me, but they were too small to do much damage.

I dodged another boulder, and tried to think how to bring the fight to the Old One. The harsh stink from the creature had me gasping for breath, and my tongue felt too large for my mouth. The question was which one of us would tire first, or I would misjudge, and a very large rock would land on me.... An idea formed.

I waited until I saw one falling that didn't seem too huge. The dust was hanging in the air, and I hoped it would make it hard for the Old One to see exactly what was happening. Gritting my teeth I allowed the stone to clip my thigh. The shock of pain was so great that for a moment I feared I'd broken the bone, but was reassured when the leg could still bear my weight. Relieved, I fell to the ground and tucked myself close in around the boulder. I allowed the sword to roll out of my hand, and the blade vanished.

"You broke the blade? Deliberately?” the Centurion asked.

"You'll see,” came the reply, and there was again that cryptic smile.

"You're going to throw the broken blade like a knife, right?"

"You'll see."

The hilt lay between my outstretched hands. It would be a close thing and my timing would have to be perfect. The stink made my eyes water, and since I could only keep them open a slit, I was certain I would misjudge the distance and the moment.

The clatter of those bony wings almost drowned out my thundering heart. The Old One landed, and I saw a row of clawed feet. Two things happened simultaneously—I snatched up the hilt and drew the sword while the Old One's teeth drove into my back. It lifted me into the air like a hound preparing for the head shake that would snap the spine of a rabbit.

I screamed; its saliva burned like Greek Fire. It also gave a horrified cry when it heard the thrum of the sword. Its broad chest was directly in front of me as I hung in its jaws. I slapped the flat of the sword against the scales. The Old One dropped me, and I rolled feebly away before I was smothered by its bulk when it fell writhing onto the ground. I swear, the creature's dying cries could probably have been heard in Apollonia. I stuffed the folds of my cloak in my ears, and I felt sorry for the girl; she couldn't cover her ears. The silence, when it finally came, was almost as shocking as the noise.

Then Scientius's arms were around me, and he helped me to my feet. “Oh, well done, well done,” he said as he pulled the material of my tunic out of the wounds, and poured warm water from his waterskin across the bloody bites. The girl continued to alternate between sobs and screams. I waved Scientius toward her.

"I can't take much more of that noise. Get her down."

But the good citizens of Cyrene had done an excellent job on anchoring the chains. Scientius finally admitted defeat, and he galloped away to summon men with chisels. I limped off to retrieve my horse and shared my waterskin with Cleodolinda, for such was her name.

"You will be well rewarded by my father,” she said after I'd trickled a bit of water into her mouth.

"Good."

"He rules this city,” she added.

"Even better,” I said.

She cast me a look from beneath her lashes and added, “I'm of marriageable age."

"Oh,” I said.

"Hold it. A princess offers herself to you and you say oh?"

"First, her father was never going to marry her off to a military tribune, and second, she was far from a beauty. Money buys beauty, and I figured I'd have money coming."

"You'd stab your enemies in the back, and you're greedy for money."

The Patrician shrugged. “So?"

"I thought this was a story about you being a hero,” the Centurion said.

"I fought a dragon and saved a city. How much more heroic do you want?"

"You won by playing dead,” the Centurion argued.

"But I won."

"Well, it's still a poor tale. You should say you scaled the cliff, and leaped onto its back, and hacked at the wings, and—"

"I'll leave you to embellish it."

In due course the king and his guard arrived. The king's initial reaction was one of skepticism and suspicion, but softened as his daughter told the tale. Fortunately she'd been crazed with fear so her story bore no resemblance to the actual facts.

"Did she make it heroic?” the Centurion demanded.

"Very."

"Good.” He settled back against the wall, satisfied. “Me and the princess, we'll do this up right."

I was invited to the palace and graciously accepted. Usually Scientius hustles us away from the scene of an incursion, but this time he wanted to linger. My slave wandered through the madly celebrating citizenry. As for myself, I feasted, dodged the princess, and arranged with a bank in Apollonia to handle the upcoming reward.

Scientius found me in the mews one morning where I was trying to decide if I actually wanted to try hunting with an eagle rather than a hawk. The bird's flat, hateful stare and the weight of the thing made me decide against it.

"You need to get your ass out of the palace and down to some of the taverns."

"So I can drink cheap, sour wine, and fight off the fleas and bedbugs. No thanks."

Scientius ignored me. “They've drawn the exact wrong conclusion."

"About what?"

"About what defeated the Old One. They've decided it was the offer of women that did the trick."

I was stung. “What about me? I killed the damn thing."

"They say the offering of the maidens inclined the gods to listen, and they sent you."

"So, they're going to keep on sacrificing young girls in the hope of keeping a steady flow of heroes wandering through?"

"That pretty well captures the gist of it,” Scientius said.

I exhausted my vocabulary of curses in a couple of different languages, then said, “Why are people so damn dumb?"

"Because the world is frightening and you don't have enough knowledge to understand it, so you try to propitiate what are basically naturally occurring phenomena.” He paused and stroked a finger down the breast of a hawk, then added, “and nobody likes dying."

My gloves hit the bench, and the sharp sound had the birds screeching and beating their wings as they fought against their jesses. Feathers flew around us. “Well, they certainly are keen on killing."

"Absolutely, if they think it will keep them from dying."

So, I abused my palate and my gut in a series of taverns. I chatted with the women washing clothes at the city fountains. Shared war stories with soldiers in the guardroom of the palace. And finally I casually raised the topic with my host.

He waved a plump, pink hand, and nearly knocked the tray from the hands of a slave who was offering him slices of roast pig. “Yes, I have heard this, too. Some of the city fathers have petitioned me to find a way to raise the level of our sacrifices from birds, sheep, and oxen, because they have been pushed by their constituents who are always ignorant and often violent."

"You're not going to accede to this madness, are you?” I asked. “Rome will not be happy."

"But Rome is far away, and Diocletian has his own problems."

I had to admit that was true. Not all was well between his co-emperors Maximian, Galerius, and Constantius, and Diocletian chose to rule his quarter of the empire from Nicomedia, while still insisting he was the most senior of the four emperors. Would they even notice, much less care, that Cyrene had begun human sacrifice?

The king continued, “I can't cure their ignorance, but I can give them a little bit of blood and keep them from my door."

"Your own daughter was offered in sacrifice,” I said.

"That was because I made the mistake of a lottery. The priests will find a different formula."

"And which god will you feed with this blood?” He looked at me oddly and I realized that my phrasing was probably strange to a person who didn't actually understand the true nature of the world.

"I'll leave such matters of theology to the priests. It doesn't matter to me."

But it certainly mattered to me. There were some Old Ones whose power I did not want increased.

"Wait a minute. The monster you killed was an Old One. Now you're saying the gods are also Old Ones.” The Centurion rubbed at his scalp as if trying to force the idea into his head.

The Patrician gave a slow smile. “You see, I knew you were a clever man."

Of all things, the one that most distressed my slave was human sacrifice. Which is why I waited until we were in the caldarium, where the rising steam offered an obscuring veil. He possessed many more languages than me, and therefore an even more impressive vocabulary of profanity. Once he ran down Scientius reverted to Latin and said,

"You must stop this."

"How?"

"You could appoint yourself military governor,” he suggested.

"I'm a military tribune traveling with no entourage, just a disrespectful slave. No one is going to believe that tale. I might as well just kill the king, and crown myself ruler of Cyrene. I might last a couple of days before the captain of his guards decides that's a pretty good blueprint for advancement. And Attius would like to marry Cleodolinda."

"Perhaps the girl could appeal to her father. Beg him to spare anyone else from the terror she endured. He must love his daughter."

Despite being the most brilliant man I've ever known, Scientius has moments of breathtaking naiveté. “Her father chained her to a rock in front of an Old One. If he'd really loved her he would have refused, or hustled her out of the city, and told the citizens she died of a fever."

He paced, hands clasped behind his back. “I've worked too hard to wean your species away from sacrificing humans to appease vengeful deities. At least the animals don't feed the Old Ones. And I thought my fostering of a loving, merciful god was a master stroke."

"And it might have been if the poor, dumb Christians hadn't refused to offer libations to the emperor, and hadn't added in the gibberish about eating flesh and drinking blood,” I said as I climbed out of the hot water, and quickly slid into sandals so the heated floor didn't burn my feet.

"As hateful and murderous as you Romans are, you at least have the right attitude on cannibalism and human sacrifice,” Scientius said.

"Which we exemplify by killing Christians."

Scientius followed me into the frigidarium where I plunged into the marble pool and gasped as the cold water hit my overheated skin. “I think we let Rome handle this. I'll just take my reward, and tell them—"

My slave rejected that with a resounding, “No! Rome won't do a damn thing. We're in Cyrenaica. None of the four emperors will bother with this; they're too busy plotting against each other."

As I stepped out of the tub, my mind spun in frantic circles, thoughts bumping against each other like rudderless boats in a maelstrom. Scientius wrapped me in the Egyptian cotton towel and started to give me a vigorous rubdown, but I walked away, hating him for putting me in this spot. I had no idea what to do. I just knew that I never wanted to see another girl, face contorted in terror, betrayed by her loved ones, facing an Old One.

The answer came to me in a dream. That sounds mystical, but it was actually the result of overeating at the banquet, and the discussion of Christianity, both of which made me think of my mother. She had come to Christianity after the death of my infant sister. Mother viewed the Christian promise of resurrection as far preferable to Hades for Juliana, so the shrine to the household gods was torn out, and even the death masks of the ancestors were consigned to a storeroom. We had worshiped privately in the family quarters with only a handful of trusted slaves present.

When I'd followed my father into military service, I adopted Mars as a personal god, and made offerings to him, figuring a soldier could never have too many gods on his side.

That had been the state of affairs until I'd met Scientius at the theater in Epheuses. He had told me I was a special and unique person (and what man doesn't like to hear that), so I listened and thought him a madman when he told me that all the gods were monsters invading our world, and that he had created this amalgam god called Jesus to try and counter them.

I was perfectly happy to drink his wine and let him rave. Then he had me draw the sword, and I knew it was all true. There were no gods, just monsters. I had the ability to wield a weapon that could kill them. The only question was, would I do so, or flee back into comforting ignorance? I decided to see the world, not through a glass darkly, as Paul had said in his epistle, but face to face—even though the faces were often terrifying. I'm one of the few men in the world to possess such knowledge, and it's a lonely and isolating thing.

And now I was faced with a decision that would put me in direct conflict with the emperor I served.

"What in Hades’ name did you do?"

"Shut down the temples and take the treasure?” The king's tone was thoughtful, but there was a touch of barely suppressed excitement.

"You wouldn't have to finish construction on that massive temple to Hercules. Think of the money you'd save,” I offered, pushing but trying to keep from pushing too much.

We were in the king's study. It was an impressive space with hundreds of scrolls, all collected, he told me, by his grandfather. I noticed a layer of dust over most of them—apparently this current scion of the royal family was not a reader.

"The fucking priests are never satisfied. They're sucking the treasury dry,” the king said as he refilled my cup with good Falernian wine.

As I allowed the rich, sweet sip to roll around my mouth, I briefly considered whether life as Cleodolinda's husband would be all that bad. I could drink wine like this every day, and live in a palace.... A palace at the ass end of the empire, populated by provincial yokels, I reminded myself.

"But what am I going to have to give these Christians?” the king continued.

"Not much.” I took another sip. “For them it's all about poverty and meekness, and turning the other cheek."

"Absurd,” the king said.

I didn't mention that my slave had conceived of these ideas hoping to turn humans from war to peace.

"That's crazy,” the Centurion said “Humans like to fight."

The Patrician agreed. “That's exactly what I told Scientius. I think he gives us far too much credit. The Christians are already murmuring against the Mithrans, and the Jews, and our gods."

"Yeah, but look at them.” The Centurion gestured at the knot of sleeping Christians. “They're like sheep going to slaughter."

"But humans like to fight,” the Patrician reminded him.

The king had one last objection. “But how will we convince the nobles and the people that this is the best way to keep them safe?"

"We put on a show,” I said. “We gather in the throne room in front of as many worthy citizens as you can cram in. You offer me a reward and I say....” I stood and declaimed in the best Cretian fashion. “I will not accept your coin, oh, great king. The only reward I will accept is the knowledge I have brought Cyrene to the one true god. Without the power of Jesus the Christ I could never have defeated the monster. God sent me to you. God's only price is that you accept and love him. No blood is necessary to earn the love and protection of the Lord. His only demand is that you love each other. I did not come because you sacrificed your children. God sent me so that no more children need die.” I sat back down, wet my throat with another swallow of wine and shrugged.

"Do you mean that?” The cup executed a turn in the air, spilling a bit of wine onto the king's lap.

"What?"

"About the reward,” the king said.

"No. You're about to get the wealth of the temples. Don't be greedy."

"I could say the same of you."

"And did you get the money?” the Centurion asked.

"Would I have returned to be part of Diocletian's personal guard if I had?"

"How did you lose that much gold?"

"I wasn't going to lug gold across a thousand miles of stinking desert filled with bandits, or put it on a ship and risk the pirates. I took a bank draft,” the Patrician answered. “And the king made sure there was no money in the bank in Cyrene to back it."

"You were an idiot."

The man looked around at the stone walls. “Given my current situation, you are demonstrably correct."

"And how did you get here?” the Centurion asked.

"They threatened my mother."

Whenever you are close to power you have rivals. Factions form, people jockey for position, backbiting ensues. Mine was a little turd named Lucius Cornelius. He couldn't abide the fact that a provincial like myself was the Emperor's favorite. He felt that honor should have been his as Roman born, and as a member of a powerful family.

I was careful to guard my back in the physical sense, and since I knew Lucius was a physical coward I wasn't terribly worried. I hadn't counted on him being cunning rather than brave. He made it his business to find out everything he could about me and my family.

My mother is a dear woman, but like all converts she refused to be circumspect about her Christian faith.

Lucius picked his moment well. Diocletian was wroth over a fire that had broken out in the palace. Galerius, his fellow emperor and a fervent hater of this new cult, convinced Diocletian that the Christians had set the fire. Diocletian had ordered another round of arrests and persecutions.

We were at a banquet. I had been invited to join in as a guest, though I was seated well down the table. I saw Lucius enter, rapping the heels of his sandals against the marble floor in that way men have when they want all to know they are on important business. He bent down low to whisper in Diocletian's ear.

I returned to my conversation, and my first indication of trouble was how my tablemates suddenly fell silent, and some rose to their feet. I looked over my shoulder to see the Emperor bearing down on me. He's a tall, thin man with a hard mouth, and at this moment his lips were folded so tight that they seemed to have disappeared.

He seized me by the back of my toga, dragged me off the couch, and threw me to the floor at his feet. When you're manhandled by an emperor you acquiesce. I lay on the floor looking up at him.

"Your mother is a Christian. How can I trust that you are not also a follower of that troublesome cult?” the emperor demanded.

"Have I ever failed to make the proper obeisance to the gods?” I hedged.

"You can't trust what one of them says,” Lucius murmured. “They are sly, having wormed their way into your very palace."

It was cleverly done. The reminder of the recent fire had the blood surging into Diocletian's face. The man takes his architecture very seriously.

"You are dismissed, sir,” the emperor shouted at me and he spun away.

"And the mother,” Lucius pushed.

I came off the floor, my hand closing into a fist.

"Execute her,” my former lord ordered.

"How weak,” I said, and filled the words with drawling contempt and patrician disdain. “She is only a woman. What man fights with women?"

Diocletian is low born, very low born. The rumor is that his father was a freedman, a mere scribe. Diocletian became an emperor because the army made him one by acclamation. I had made him a plebe before his guests. Now I just needed to turn the full force of his fury against me.

"I'm your real enemy, Imperator. I brought an entire city to the one true god."

The Patrician paused, and seemed to be looking at something far away and long ago. “Within the hour I was condemned."

The Centurion reached out, and briefly gripped the Patrician's shoulder. “You are a good man."

"Despite backstabbing, lying, and taking bribes?” the Patrician said.

"Isn't that just being a good Roman?” the Centurion countered, and they shared a quiet laugh. The torches guttered and hissed, and the Centurion shuddered. In a few hours he would know his fate. “You are also a brave man."

The Patrician stood. “As are you. And now it's time to make certain you win today.” He held out a hand. The Centurion grasp his wrist, and was pulled to his feet. “But if I do this thing, you must make a vow."

"What? Another one?"

The Patrician nodded.

"All right, what is it?"

"You must seek out my slave.” The Patrician paused, and unhooked the strange buckle from his belt. “And give this,” he gestured with the buckle, “to him. Only to him. He will be waiting by the north gate. You remember my description?” The Centurion nodded. “Good."

He clapped the Centurion on the shoulder, and moved quietly toward the sleeping criminals. The Centurion kept pace with him, wondering what he was going to do. Throttle them all while they slept?

The Christians were huddled together. Some of them still had their hands folded even while they slept. The Centurion reflected on that level of dedication. And decided they were fools. If the tale the Patrician had told was true, there were no gods.

Perversely it made the Centurion feel better. It would explain why, despite all the sacrifices he'd made to the gods over the years, he had never been rich. Instead he'd been reduced to stealing, and now found himself in this dungeon. But of course the Patrician's tale was just that—a tale.

The Patrician stopped near a clot of sleeping men. He took the buckle in his right hand, and laid his left hand against its base, and pulled his hands apart. A dark, black blade appeared from the base of the buckle. The Centurion clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle the cry of shock and fear. It felt like he was being shaken from the inside, and there was a sound like the deep chords of a water organ. The Centurion had heard one once at the Colosseum on his one and only trip to Rome.

A few people stirred at the sound, but most were sleeping the deep sleep of hopelessness and exhaustion. The Patrician laid the flat of the blade on one man's thigh, on another's shoulder, on a third's arm. They all began to twitch and writhe like men with morbus caducus, the falling sickness. He moved quickly through the dungeon touching anyone who looked like a fighter with this magic weapon. People began to wake. A woman screamed at the sight of the convulsing men.

The Patrician quickly tossed the sword from his right hand to his left, and in midair, between one hand and the other, the blade vanished. He grabbed the Centurion by the shoulder and pulled him away, retreating until their backs rested against the cut stone.

"There,” the Patrician whispered. “That should give you the advantage. It will take them hours to recover from the shock."

"What did you do to them?"

"It would take too long to explain.” He glanced up at a slit high in the wall where pale sunlight was seeping through. “And I have no more time.” He began to thread the hilt of the magic sword back onto his belt.

"Hey, don't do that! I'm going to fight with that!” the Centurion cried.

"I doubt it. You probably have the magic in your blood. I don't, so I can use the sword."

"Doesn't hurt to check. I might be unique too,” the Centurion argued.

The Patrician shrugged, and handed over the hilt. The Centurion inspected it, but there seemed to be no lever to summon the blade. The Centurion repeated the motion the Patrician had made, but nothing happened. The futile tries continued until the Patrician finally lifted the hilt from his hands.

"It would have been too much to hope that you could replace me. Just remember your promise; give it into Scientius's hands. Only his hands.” He finished hooking it back onto the belt, and clasped the belt around the Centurion's waist. “Even without the blade, it's a potent weapon. It will protect you. You will win. You can't be defeated."

They turned at the sound of the bolts being thrown. “Why don't you use it?” the Centurion asked. “You could escape from here."

The great wood-and-iron-wrapped doors creaked open. The light was blinding, and the guards mere shadows against the glare. “The Emperor would be wroth. He has come today specifically to see me die. If I escape that fate, he will kill my mother.” The Patrician gripped the Centurion's forearms once more. “Remember your promises. Give the sword to Scientius. And tell my mother I love her."

He walked forward to meet the guards. His back was erect and there was no hesitation in his steps.

"Wait!” the Centurion called. The Patrician paused and looked back. “What's your name?” the Centurion cried.

"Georgius,” he said, and disappeared into the light.

Matt Hughes reports that Hespira, the third novel featuring Henghis Hapthorn (a character familiar to many of our readers), is due out in September.
This new story is not set in the Penultimate Earth where the majority of his tales occur, but it should be no less entertaining for being set in our world.

You'd think I'd remember the kid's name, but I never could. One of those “J” names that suddenly got popular back in the eighties, Jared, or Jeremiah, might even have been Jedediah. Doesn't matter now. We mostly just called him “the kid in Lee's basement,” except when he'd join us for Saturday night poker in Lee's garage. Then he liked us to call him “the Hunchster."

That was on account of the way he played. I mean, there are two ways to go with seven-card stud. You can either play the cards, look at what's in your hand and on the table, and figure the odds you'll get that fifth spade or that third queen. Or you can play the players, where you not only watch for the tells but read the personalities, so you know if a guy's got the balls to try running a bluff past you or if he's sharp enough to know when you're faking it with a busted straight.

The Hunchster, though, he had his own way of playing. He didn't look around the table at the cards, didn't look at the players. “I get hunches,” he said, the first time I asked him what was going on. He was raking in another heap of nickels, dimes, and quarters from the middle of Lee's old Formica-topped table out in the garage where we played most Saturday nights. We used to play in Lee's basement, until he put in the extra plumbing and started renting out the room.

If you're any kind of poker player, what I just put down here tells you something about Lee, and about the rest of us. We played for nickels, dimes, and quarters because that's all we could afford. And the reason Lee let this kind of weird-looking stranger live in his house was because the kid got a disability check every month. His dependable rent made up for the tips Lee didn't get when he drove people from the bus depot out to the IncarcerCorp prison so they could visit their inmate relatives. Most of them couldn't really afford the taxi fare, but it was a long walk out of town and the bus only ran twice a day.

Mitch and I, we were better off than Lee, but only just. IncarcerCorp paid three bucks an hour over minimum wage. No benefits, but the work was full-time and you could live on the wages—just hope you never got sick. Also, a prison generates a lot of other jobs, even when the outfit that runs it is so cheap it makes the inmates do their own laundry and swamp out the cell blocks. So, all our wives worked part-time for minimum wage in the kitchens, or in the in-house hospital—again, no benefits—and our families had enough to get by on. Just enough to keep the town alive.

But at least we had jobs and could count on keeping them. After what had happened with United PressForm and the Breithertz Institute, that was a big deal. We used to tell each other, “At least nobody's going to put crime out of business."

Stan and Ron were the other regulars at the table Saturday nights. Sometimes, they brought Ron's friend Dooley. None of them had been taken on when IncarcerCorp held its big hiring fair, but they got jobs with a wholesaler that supplied the prison with everything from dungarees to macaroni. Stan and Dooley drove truck and Ron operated a forklift in the warehouse. Word was that IncarcerCorp and the wholesaler were both owned by the same investment syndicate that was headquartered in the Bahamas or somewhere. Nobody was a hundred percent sure, but so what? Paying the mortgage and sending the kids to school—that was what mattered.

Now, with me telling you all this, you're maybe thinking that my mind is wandering, why don't I follow through on where I started: the kid in Lee's basement and his peculiar way of playing poker? But it all ties in.

"You're saying you just play hunches?” I said, that first time, while he sorted the nickels, dimes, and quarters into stacks and Stan dealt the first two down cards and one on deck for the next round.

He looked up at me. Actually, no—he never really looked at anybody. He'd look in your direction, sure, but never eye-to-eye. Instead he'd lock onto your nose, or your shoulder, or your forehead. And there was never anything to read in his eyes. He only used them for seeing.

"I am an intuitive,” he said. I remember the word because I used it right away, asking him, “What the heck is an intuitive?"

I should've known better. You asked this kid a question, you were going to get an answer. In spades. I didn't understand half of what he said, stuff about lateral connections and something that sounded like “snapses.” Then he was talking about a “brokers area,” which for a while I thought was somewhere around Corpus Cristi, except it turned out he was talking about some other place with a name like Corpus Clothes-um. Then he said they were parts of the brain, and his brain didn't work the way other people's did.

Lee told me later that the reason the kid got that monthly disability check was that he had a brain disease called Ass-burgers. I waited for the punch line, but he said it was a real disease, though it wasn't catching. Wayne Breithertz, who'd brought the kid over when they were all packing to leave, told Lee about it. The kid was a little strange, but harmless. And he had nowhere else to go.

So we're back to the poker table. Stan dealt out the first three cards and said, “Hunchster, your bet,” and just like that the kid stopped talking about brains. Right in the middle of a sentence. He picked up his hole cards, stared at them for a second, then put them down. He didn't look at anybody or at any of the cards on deck. Just pushed a quarter out toward the antes. A quarter was the maximum bet until all the cards had been dealt.

"Hunch?” I said.

He didn't look at me, just kept his peculiar eyes on his hole cards. “Uh huh,” he said.

I had a pair of sevens in the hole and a king showing, but I flipped the king over and shoved it and the sevens away from me. “Fold,” I said.

The kid was in Lee's basement because he got left behind when the Breithertz Institute folded. Wayne Breithertz was the nerdiest nerd our local high school ever produced. After eleventh grade he went off to some big college back east and next we heard of him he'd turned into one of those ten-day tycoons who made a pile off the dot-com bubble. Old Wayne had come up with some bright idea that everybody thought was going to change the world.

Until it didn't.

But for a while the money was flowing, and he was our local hero because he came back home and bought up the old UPF factory. He spent about a half a gazillion dollars turning it into some kind of research center.

You may not know the name United PressForm. But turn over the tinfoil plate next time you take a frozen pie out of the freezer, or the tray that holds a TV dinner. You'll probably see UPF stamped into the bottom. Their plant on Becker Road used to supply half the pie-and-TV-dinner makers west of the Mississippi. Another UPF factory in New Jersey supplied most of the east. My old man signed on with the company in 1953 when he came home from Korea and spent his whole working life in that building. Most of our dads did. After high school, so did me and Lee and the rest of us. UPF provided half the jobs in town.

Until it didn't.

In 1995, the company packed up the whole shebang and moved to Nogales. That's when we found out our dads wouldn't be getting any more pension checks—the directors had spent their money and everybody else's. Nobody can tell me that wasn't the bad news that brought on the heart attack and killed the old man.

But then Wayne came home, bought the vacant plant cheap, and remade it into some kind of combination open-plan office and supergeek playground. He brought in some pretty strange people, of which the Hunchster was by no means the strangest. We didn't know what all those newcomers were doing out there, but they had plenty of money to spend on everything from fancy coffees in paper cups to an even fancier condo development around a man-made lake that Wayne had dug out of what used to be pasture land south of town. And we all had jobs again, making sure the nerds stayed happy.

Until we didn't.

In 2001, the stock market yanked the rug out from under the Breithertz Institute. Trucks rolled in and hauled away all the computers and video game machines to sell at ten cents on the dollar. The condos emptied out and stayed empty. Last I heard, Wayne was teaching business math at some community college in Wisconsin. His collection of geeks went to wherever geeks go. Except for the Hunchster, who moved into Lee's basement along with a trunkload of electronic gear he'd built himself. Wayne said it would have just gone to the dump.

Ask the kid what he was doing down there all day, you'd get an answer. Not that it made a whole lot of sense. He had some theory involving string. He was interested in “where new treenos went” and how they got there. “Temporary recapture,” I thought he said once.

"Temporary recapture of what?” I said. The words had caught my interest because it was a week after the IncarcerCorp job fair and I'd been accepted for training as a guard. They'd already broken ground for the main block.

"Not temporary,” he said, “temporal. Temporal recapture."

As if that explained it all.

Then came another Saturday night and we were setting up in the garage: beer and taco chips and salsa. Lee went to the door at the side of the house that led down to the basement and asked the kid if he was going to play. I heard him call a second time, then he came into the garage and said, “He don't answer."

"He home?” I said.

"He's always home.” He paused, then said, “Some weird noises down there."

I was going to say, “What else is new?” but just then Ron came in and spoke over me, saying Dooley wasn't coming. Five was not enough for a decent game. I said, “We need the kid."

By now Lee had sat down and was breaking out the red, white, and blue plastic chips. “So go get him,” he said.

I went out of the garage and over to the basement entrance, down a half-dozen steps. The inner door was ajar. I rapped on it but got no answer. There was a combination humming-hissing sound coming from the basement suite, getting louder then softer, louder then softer. I pushed open the door.

The kid was sitting on a kitchen chair with his back to me, hunched over a table that was covered with all kinds of electronics and computer gear, connected by a mess of cables and wires. That's where the humming and hissing were coming from. In front of him was a wide-screen monitor and he was staring into it while reaching out with one hand to a control panel of knobs and switches that was off to one side. He'd turn one knob then try another, his eyes never leaving the screen.

I moved up behind him. The image on the monitor was distorted and grainy. He reached for another knob and twiddled it, and suddenly the shot came into focus. The colors were washed out but I recognized it: Lee's driveway, just outside, and the Ryder house across the street.

There was something funny about the picture, though it took me a few seconds to put my finger on it. Parked in front of the house was Jeff Ryder's old red El Camino, which he'd smashed up and sent to the wrecker's sometime back in the early eighties.

"What is this?” I said.

The kid didn't turn. “What I've been working on. Temporal recapture.” He pointed to a readout at the bottom right corner of the screen. It said: 05-24-1981 followed by a clock that was running in hours, minutes, seconds, and tenths of a second. Running backward. As I watched, Jeff came out of the house—he was walking backward—but this was Jeff without a pot belly and with way more hair than when I'd seen him yesterday. He got into the El Camino. A few seconds later, it drove away, in reverse.

"What am I looking at?” I said.

He turned toward me, looked at my IncarcerCorp belt buckle. “The past."

I took a deep breath. “A time machine?"

"But just for looking. Maybe hearing, too. I need to work on that.” He turned back to the equipment, adjusted another knob, the screen blurred then cleared, and I was seeing a farmer's field. Now the readout said: 04-15-1902. Into the frame, walking backward, came a man, then a plow, then a mule. “I also need to miniaturize the components and work out a better power source. Then you could take it anywhere."

I felt a hollowness in my chest, like the time I was at a party and tried breathing helium. “You could take it any place and see what happened there, anytime in the past?"

"Maybe not anytime. Probably not back to dinosaur times.” He twiddled the knob again. Now there was nothing but prairie. I didn't bother looking at the date. I was too busy thinking.

And what I was thinking was, Jeez, not again.

I went back to the garage. Mitch and Stan had shown up. I cracked a beer, drank half of it in one swallow, and said, “We got a problem."

The kid must've had a hunch. He tried to barricade the door, but there were too many of us. Afterward, when we were cleaning up, Mitch and Lee wanted to bust up the equipment and burn the notebooks.

"No,” I said, “that would be wrong."

So when the time comes, we'll do what we agreed to do, sitting there at the poker table, after I'd told them what I'd seen. When all our kids are out of school and able to stand on their own feet, we'll bring the sheriff down to Lee's basement. We'll fire up the Hunchster's equipment and roll back the date to that Saturday night.

We'll be the first criminals caught by his invention. And we won't be the last. But eventually, the Hunchster will be remembered as the guy who put crime out of business. Along with IncarcerCorp. And our whole town.

And like I said, just before we poured the concrete over him, “At least nobody's gonna forget your name."

Trying to select just one story for reprint is, it turns out, dreadfully hard for me. Even after picking two dozen stories for our forthcoming Best from F&SF anthology, I've still been waffling for months on this decision. Should I choose one of my many faves from my tenure as editor, like Lew Shiner's “Primes,” Bill Spencer's “The Essayist in the Wilderness,” or Claudia O'Keefe's “Maze of Trees” (to name just three)?

Or should I reprint one of the stories that I remember most fondly from when I first started reading the magazine? Standouts in that list include Mike Reaves's “Werewind,” Michael Shea's “Polyphemus,” John Kessel's “Another Orphan,” Damon Knight's “Tarcan of the Hoboes,” and Phyllis Eisenstein's “In the Western Tradition.” And Bob Leman's “Feesters in the Lake.” And I still live by something I learned in Richard Cowper's “Out There Where the Big Ships Go."

And then there are the stories that have never been reprinted, the buried gems like Arthur Jean Cox's “A Collector of Ambroses” or Brad Strickland's “Oh Tin Man, Tin Man, There's No Place Like Home” or Robert Abernathy's “The Year 2000"—should I pick one of those? (Even now, almost a decade later, I'm still mad at myself for not reprinting that last one in our Jan. 2000 issue.)

I considered reprinting a science column from the Good Doctor. I thought about remembering departed friends like George Effinger and Damon Knight with “The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything” and “Watching Matthew."

All right, all right. I know—if I like the magazine's stories so much, I ought to buy the thing and print my favorites every month or two, right?

So anyway, when the time came to pick one, I kept thinking of this story. It ran in one of my favorite issues (Oct. 2000), it has never been reprinted, and I've always felt it's one of those contemporary stories where the magic works—not just the fantastic element in the story, but the stuff you can't explain, the special, undefinable something that settles inside you and doesn't let go. The real magic.

Readers should know that the language is a bit coarse (as you might guess from the title), but it's true to the characters.

Tina Kuzminski hasn't published much since 2000—her best-known work, might be the chapter she contributed to the spoof novel, Atlanta Nights. However, she says she's currently working on a fantasy series as well as a few shorter pieces.

In the course of swapping emails and doing some online searches, Tina and I both came across a post from March 2007 in which someone quoted a passage from “Tooth Fairy” and said she'd reflected on it a lot and it helped her decide to get her first tattoo. Tina said, “I was amazed that the story played a part in her decision to embrace her identity and embellish herself with something so meaningful to her.” I felt the same way; for me, knowing that this story connected with a reader in so meaningful a way matters more than all the Nebulas and Hugos and other trophies awarded to F&SF stories. Awards are nice, but the magic that passes between writer and reader, that's what matters.

The Goddamned Tooth Fairy by Tina Kuzminski

Callie's got her hands in my face. Palms out, she's making square frames. She squints at her compositions of my nose and mouth and eyes. I want to say, “Sweetheart, Daddy's trying to look good for his first date since before you were born, so could you sit still and pretend you're no trouble at all until I get the lady out the door?” Callie's sitting on the kitchen table. Since I don't mind when nobody's here, I don't say anything about that, either.

Iris is winding her purse tight on its long strap and letting it spin out the kinks, over and over, while she looks at Callie's drawings taped on the fridge. Iris has real pretty brown hair, curly, but most of the time it's covering up her face which is even prettier. Her purse bounces on a perfect calf, leading up stretchy, snug pants to a shirttail that doesn't quite cover Iris's round little ass.

"And you know what else we learned in Art today, Daddy? Daddy?"

Callie kicks me lightly in the knees. She always was a stickler about quality attention. Ma said I spoiled her, but I just said she was mine to spoil.

"What, honey?” I say. I'm probably taking a drubbing in the Devoted to Date category, but maybe I'll pick up a few points on Is Kind to Children and Small Animals.

"Perspective.” Callie pronounces it carefully, proudly. She's aware another pair of ears is listening, another potential member for a captive audience. “You put a dot in the middle of your paper. That's where everything disappears. That's where the horizon is and you draw these lines from the dot to the edge of your paper. You can make buildings and streets and trees and telephone poles and buses and clouds and people and they all get bigger and bigger and bigger the closer they get."

I can tell she's just getting warmed up.

"Sorry about this,” I say to Iris. “Can I get you a drink or something?"

"No, thanks. I'm fine,” Iris says.

Shawna's late, which isn't unusual, but I told her if she was late tonight I'd have her hide. Shawna takes care of Callie quite a bit on the weekend when Best offers as much as twelve bucks an hour.

Callie's measuring tiny people, so small she can barely see them, with her fingers. Her straight blonde hair is sticking up in places like pampas grass. I smooth it down. She's got Iris in the little box between thumbs and index fingers so she can watch Iris on the sly.

I met Iris at Best Telemarketing. Only place I could find quick work at last summer when I moved up here from Kentucky. Me and Callie left when she got out of second grade. More than a quarter century's long enough to spend in one place, I think. Grew up in Powell County. Swore I'd never go back, but after my wife died, I took Callie and went home to Ma, stocked and bagged at her grocery store. At twenty-nine, I figured I was the oldest bag boy alive. I didn't want to hit thirty, still working for Ma and living at home.

So I loaded everything we owned in my pickup and said I was going as far as it'd get me. Ma said I was wrecking Callie's life. Ma had been saying that for years and Callie was the smartest child I'd ever seen, so I couldn't see how I was that bad an influence. Give me a few more years ringing up groceries for every old woman in Slade saying, “I don't want my bread on the bottom, now,” and I might be a right hindrance to myself and Callie.

The doorbell buzzes a couple minutes after I start grinding my teeth. I let Shawna in. She drops her backpack on the couch.

"Sorry, Mr. Blackburn, but Mom said if I didn't wash the dishes now and then I wouldn't be allowed to baby-sit no more for nobody and I got done with everything and she added these huge pots, but I hurried, Mr. Blackburn."

What Shawna's got to say depends on how much breath she has in her when she starts to say it. She's fourteen and Callie loves her. She puts kitty and smiley and heart stickers on Callie's shirts and lets Callie play with her makeup.

"That's okay, Shawna,” I say. “Better late than never."

She's peeping around me to the kitchen, checking out Iris. Shawna's eyes are opened wide behind her round, red frames.

"Your hair looks real nice today,” I say to Shawna.

Her hand immediately flies up to touch her hair, make sure it's still there. “Thanks, Mr. Blackburn. Mom put relaxer in it for me last night. She says I got the stubbornest hair alive and no way is it gonna look like Loki Smoki."

"You and your Ma did a great job,” I say.

I watch enough MTV to know what Loki Smoki looks like. Four big women, long black hair, sexy as hell. Me and Callie get cable for twenty-six dollars a month. That's a lot on my budget, but we don't get out much.

"Try and keep Callie out of trouble, Shawna. Me and Iris'll be back around midnight and I'll walk you home."

Shawna just lives in the next apartment building over from us, but I always see to it she gets in her ma's door if it's after dark when I get back from Best.

Callie's in the kitchen pestering Iris. Iris has on this belt that's got a big shell for a buckle and Callie's about to undress her to see the other side and make sure it's real.

"Callie, leave Iris alone, for Pete's sake."

"What'd the tooth fairy leave for ya, Cal?” Shawna asks.

"Nothing!” Callie tattles on me.

I'd forgotten all about paying up last night. Told her the tooth fairy had to take time off from work like everybody else, that Callie must have hit one of the Fairy Holidays. I said if she tried it again tonight, she'd probably get overtime pay.

Iris is smiling. “It's okay."

She's got her belt off and is showing it to Callie. The other side isn't polished and that convinces Callie it's a real shell. She's impressed now with the polished side, a mixture of blues and greens and black.

"It's called abalone,” Iris says.

"Ab ah loney,” Callie says, “and it really comes from the sea?"

"Well, I got it at the mall, but before that I'm sure it came from the sea."

"Let Iris get dressed, honey. We're gonna be late."

Iris is driving. Her car's parked on the street, taking two parking spots. It's a gold LTD, about a ‘78. My pickup's even older, a ‘72 Chevy, and it hasn't give out yet, but I got so bored crossing Illinois and Iowa that I stopped in Omaha anyhow.

I wait till Iris puts on her seat belt to put mine on. If she didn't wear one, I didn't want to look like I was scared of her driving.

"You've never been to the track before?” she asks.

I'm pretty sure she asked me that earlier today when we got off work, but I'm no great shakes at conversation, either. “Nope, never have been. I'd never heard of racing dogs before I saw them one night on TV."

"They play the results every night except Mondays on 42,” she says.

"You go a lot?"

Iris shakes her head and lodges some more hair over her face. I want to brush it back with my hand.

"No, not that much,” she says. “Thursdays, sometimes. That's half-price night."

April's come in warm, sixty-four the high today, and Iris has on a T-shirt. She always wears long-sleeved shirts at work. Iris keeps her hands on the bottom half of the steering wheel. She's got about a dozen bracelets on. Wood and brass and copper and shell ones. They clink and chime when she turns corners. While she's preoccupied with driving and talking, I watch her mouth, full and creamy red with lipstick, the way it moves, which side goes up first when she smiles. That T-shirt looks damned fine on her—just shy of a 38, I'd say, and in good shape.

We've got the windows rolled down and a strong coffee smell floats in as we cross the Missouri into Council Bluffs. It's the Butternut factory down the river, roasting beans. Always makes me think of Omaha as a good cup of black coffee.

"So how long've you worked for Best?” I ask Iris.

"Oh, two years or so. I'm taking night classes at Metro Tech in computer graphics. What about you?"

"Just since last July."

"Are you taking classes anywhere?"

"Nah."

I guess she wants to know if I'm going to be stuck at Best all my life. I have most of a B.A. in history which is about as useful as not having anything at all. But that's from the days when I was with Callie's mom. I don't want to get into that right now.

Iris isn't too happy with my answer, but I start talking about something else and she doesn't hold grudges.

At Bluffs Run, I look back at the car as we walk away. About five foot of the tail is sticking out in the lane. I notice most of the license plates are Nebraska, with Iowa plates next, and then a handful of Kansas and Missouri. We walk into this open area that has a glass front facing the track. There's a whole bunch of people standing around, as mixed a crowd as I've ever seen. Old black ladies with their reading glasses on, college boys with those spiky haircuts and hundred dollar running shoes, married couples in their forties knocking back a few beers, greasy-haired old geezers with steno pads and pencils stuck inside the earpiece of their glasses, tough cowboy types dressed more for a rodeo, and some scrawny kids that look underage.

Iris says she'll get us a program we can share, so I go to a hot dog stand and buy a couple of beers.

A voice on the intercom says, “Ladies and gentlemen, the dogs are on the track for tonight's third race. Please make your wagers early to avoid being shut out at the mutuel windows.” The man goes on to give each dog's name and weight. There's TV monitors everywhere you look, showing the dogs in their numbered jackets.

Iris thanks me for the beer, turns the program to the third race and hands it to me. “I'll show you how it works. There's eight dogs in each race, and you can bet on them in several different ways. Win, place, and show is first, second, and third, but that doesn't pay anything."

She takes a drink of beer and her bottom lip leaves a red crescent moon on the cup. “And the quiniela bet is where you pick two dogs to come in first and second, any order. Say you pick eight and one. It doesn't matter which one comes in first or second as long as both come in. An exacta's where you bet which order they'll come in. For the trifecta, you choose the three dogs that finish first, but it's really hard to get those. Shit, it's hard to hit quinielas."

"Then I'll stick with those, how about?"

"Two minutes till post time. Better hurry if you want to bet this race."

"I'll wait and do the next one,” I say. “See how it's done first."

"Okay,” she says. “I'll get in line. You can come with me if you like."

She explains while we're in line how to give the clerk your bet, first the amount, then the kind of bet you're making, and the number of the dogs you're betting on.

"Two-dollar quiniela, three and seven,” she says to the woman who punches it in and hands her a silver ticket. “That's all there is to it,” Iris says.

We go outside to sit down and watch the race. There's a strong wind chasing plastic cups and cigarette butts around the stands. It's too strong even to set your beer down and it blows Iris's hair up and out of her face. She's so pretty I feel like the wind stole the next breath I had coming. The dogs are led to the starting gate and the young handlers run back. One of them's a girl, and I hear some punks at the fence make loud comments about betting on a pair like that.

More lights get turned on. The electric rabbit starts squeaking its way around the rail. A guy behind me yells, “Here comes Rusty,” just before the announcer says, “Here comes Lucky,” the way Ed used to say, “Here's Johnny."

The dogs rip out of their stalls hell-bent on catching the sparking rabbit. A couple of them wipe out on the first turn. Seven's in the lead, but three's near the back. As they come around the bend, seven falls behind, and the number two dog passes him. Iris lets the wind grab her ticket and shrugs.

There's groans and cheers but mainly groans. I wedge my beer between my knees and study the lineup for the fourth race. Bust A Gut, Some Fine Day, Macy's Magic, PD's Lizzy Longjohns, Who Dr. Who, Iowa Dawn, Ain't Misbehaving, and Sweet So and So. I ignore the odds because I don't feel like getting too precise about all this and pick out Who Dr. Who and Ain't Misbehaving. Five and seven. Iris wants to follow the odds board a bit before placing her bet, so I drink my beer and watch the numbers change across the black screen behind the track. There's a big coffee cup in the distance on a pole. Novelty billboard. Has the word Oasis on it in big block letters.

I get in line behind Iris. She bets one and five. I say “Who Dr. Who” before I remember the clerk wants the number, not the name. I look down at the program and say, “Uh, that's five and seven."

The silver ticket looks somehow fragile, easily altered. I hold it in the palm of my hand, not folding it. We stand at the fence this time. I'm surprised by how my heart pounds when the dogs come out of the gate and I've got a personal stake in who's finishing first. My dogs are quick in the lead. I start yelling like everybody else.

Number four edges up as they're heading to the finish line and finishes a nose in front of Who Dr. Who. I glance down at the program. It was Lizzy Longjohns. Iris's number one dog, Bust A Gut, came in third.

We go to the bleachers to look over the next page in the program. What I really like is these dogs’ names. I'd like a job just thinking up names for all the new litters of pups. I like how the names are clever and mean something. I always thought a name should mean something, seeing as how I got named Ute. Once, I asked Ma what Ute meant and she said “You was named after Uncle Ute.” When I asked what his name meant, she said “He was named after Great Grandpappy Ute. What else you want to know?” I gave up on it. But me and Jenny named Callie after Calliope, the goddess of epic poetry. Soon as she discovered her lungs, though, I thought she took after the circus organ a whole lot more than some Greek goddess.

The fifth race has Cornflakesandmilk, Sassy Lass, Make Me An Offer, Just Sam, Uzifire, Shadowylady, PD's Betty Bikini,and See See Rider.

I choose Cornflakesandmilk and See See Rider. Iris goes for the dogs with the best odds—Make Me An Offer at five and two and Just Sam, seven and two. Iris says she'll walk the bets up this time if I'll hold her beer. There's about a swallow left in it, but I say sure.

She takes my two dollars. I drink the rest of my beer and set the cup on the concrete where the wind snatches it and rolls it around with all its buddies. A few early moths are cartwheeling around the spotlights.

An old man, with shrunken-in cheeks and a funny-looking chin jutting in front of his face, sits down next to me with a program and a green sheet in his hand. The green sheets are for sale in the front and predict which dogs are going to win.

"You want a tip?” he says.

"Sure,” I say.

"Marry that girl."

I laugh. “I hardly know her."

"Don't matter. She's the one for you."

"How's your luck on the dogs?” I ask him.

"Could be better, but it's been worse. I got a feeling about the eighth. It's a maiden race, so that's about all you can go on. A feeling.” He kind of chews around with his jaw while he's thinking.

The old man's got on a Goodwill kind of tweed coat, too heavy despite the wind. He smells like an old man, a hint of piss and tobacco and dry rot. I wonder if I should follow Iris to ditch him but decide he's harmless. This track's probably the codger's whole life.

"What's your feeling tell you?” I say.

"That three dog's a winner."

I flip through the program and read the eighth-race lineup. Texmex Tornado, Peekaboo, Dark Iris, Macy's Minefield, Snappy Heels, Dapper Danny, Bodhisattva, and Sleepytime Gal. I smile because number three is called Dark Iris. It's a neat coincidence.

"What would you bet for the quiniela?"

"Don't mess with ‘em,” he says. “I wheel a trifecta. Put me down for three, seven and eight. But, if you like them quinielas, you could box that instead."

"What's that?” I say. “This is about the first time I've done this."

"You put your money on any of three dogs to finish first and second, see. You box it. Three, seven, and eight. Any combination. Six bucks."

"Well, I just might do that, sir,” I tell him. “Thanks for the tip. Both of them."

Iris comes back with another couple of beers and pours the last drink into her new cup. The man must've skedaddled when he saw her coming because he's gone, and there's a young couple beside us juggling popcorn containers and spilling beer on themselves.

"Thanks, Iris."

"You're welcome, Ute,” she says.

She uses my name like Callie says “perspective,” careful to get it right. She gives me a big smile when I try to sneak an arm around her shoulders by first stretching my arm out along the metal bleacher. The lights go up. Iris drops our tickets on the program in my lap. She does it so quick, I jump a little bit. Spooked by foil paper. I'm one smooth operator.

I finally get my arm around her solid and say, “Next time I'm going to bet on the rabbit. Seems like it's the one that always wins.” The night wind is stealing what's left of the day's heat, and her arm is cool to the touch.

She laughs at my bad jokes even.

Make Me An Offer and Cornflakesandmilk come in first and second so between us we picked out the winners, but we didn't have them both on the same ticket.

"I think I'll sit a couple of races out. I got a plan,” I say. Actually, it's the old man's plan. “But I'll take your bets up if you like."

She smiles and does this pretty thing with her eyes, looking away, then looking back at me. I feel something akin to the dogs tearing loose from post position, like I got to get somewhere fast.

"Think I'll just wait a few out, too,” Iris says. “I'm bad luck for the dogs I pick."

"No way,” I tell her. “If you didn't bet on them, they'd come in last instead of third and fourth."

Iris rests her beer on my knee that's propped up, and I play with a bracelet.

"You were real nice to let Callie see your belt,” I say. “She's always been so curious. Sometimes she doesn't know when to quit."

"No, no. It was fun. I like her. She was being so sweet about it."

"You got any kids?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

"No husbands, either, I hope?"

She shakes her head fast and giggles. “I'm thirty-two, though. Mom thinks I'm over the hill. She doesn't even ask me anymore if I'm seeing anybody."

"Well, I will. Are you?"

She puts her face close to mine, nose almost touching my nose, and nods solemnly. She reminds me of Callie when Callie's putting me on about something.

"Who?” I ask, knowing it's a setup.

"You."

She's too close not to take a chance. I kiss her mouth lightly, and she kisses me back. We take a drink of beer just to have something to do.

Four minutes till post time in the eighth, I go up and stumble my way around asking the lady for a quiniela box on Dark Iris, Bodhisattva and Sleepytime Gal. I come back and Iris hands me my beer.

I show her the program. “Look, I put a bet on you. Dark Iris."

She examines the dog's previous race times. “Comes in sixth place a lot,” she says. “You'll be lucky if she doesn't fall down in the first stretch and take a nap."

"I've got a feeling,” I say. Might as well steal somebody else's lines.

We go to the fence and look down the track where the handlers are jogging toward us. People are getting louder as the night wears on. Several people yell when the rabbit swings around the loop and rattles past where the dogs are whining and scratching the gate. Number four gets an early lead and three is in the back. I holler some much needed encouragement to Dark Iris.

Several dogs collide in the first turn, and there's Dark Iris, near the front on the back stretch.

I'm jumping up and down, sloshing beer on my shoes. “Come on Iris, you can do it. Come on three. Come on."

Dark Iris hauls ass. She's running so fast I don't see her feet touch dirt. She tears by the finishing post and zooms on past. I was so intent on her that I forgot to see who came in second or third.

The numbers appear on the board. Three, eight, and five. Snappy Heels beat out Bodhisattva. The old man who gave me the tip probably lost this one. I look down at my ticket. Three, seven, and eight boxed quiniela.

"What did you bet?” Iris asks.

"I think I might have won,” I say.

She looks at my ticket and then back at the board and squeals. “You sure did. You won. Wait, there's the figures—quiniela—sixty-eight dollars. You won sixty-eight dollars."

We go up to turn my ticket in and watch a couple of races on the monitors. People brush by us to get to the windows. Iris hooks her right index finger in my back belt loop. I like the way it feels. Like I'm anchored.

Before the last races are run, we get a head start out of the parking lot. Bright yellow work horses are turned on their sides for barricades. They look like the A's on Callie's report cards out for a night on the town.

The Woodmen Tower's a lit up marker for downtown Omaha, a totem of steel and electricity. Long as you're getting closer to it, you know you're heading the right way. Iris turns on the radio and a singer is saying he understands about indecision. The beat seems to time the white dashes as they slip past Iris's gold LTD. I've always noticed that when you've got the radio on when you're on the road, the world starts acting like it's a movie for the music you're playing. People drive by you, pedestrians cross in front of you, cows graze and horses run, all moving in time to a song they can't hear.

Iris taps her fingers on the wheel.

I reach over and lightly caress the back of her hand. “I'd like to share my big winnings with you. Cheeseburger, fries, sound good to you?"

We pull up at the Thrill Grill, an all-night hangout full of college kids poking at the lava lamps on the tables. It's a ‘60s theme, I guess. There's wallpaper that looks like tie-dyed T-shirts and incense burners and psychedelic music playing. Can't smell the incense for the greasy burgers, but it all adds up to an atmosphere the twenty-something and under set feel right at home with.

One kid with a half-shaved head has a chicken wire and leather jacket with a chain hanging down his hip that's got to be rated heavy duty enough to swing a wrecking ball. A real pretty girl's wearing a flimsy blouse with one button buttoned right in front of her breasts. She's maybe seventeen. I know she didn't walk out of the house tonight like that. I stick it in the back of my mind what can be done to an outfit after it's passed parental inspection. As Callie gets older, I got to get smarter about those things.

I go through the cafeteria-style line while Iris scopes for a table. She finds one by the front window that's got about a hundred spider plants hanging in it. I forget the plastic pillows of ketchup and mustard. I pick up straws and napkins on my way back to the table. This date thing's got me rattled. But it sure has its good parts, too. Iris's got her hand up examining a spider plant baby, a fat little rush of leaves tiptoeing through the air on a dozen white legs. By the deadening blanch of red and yellow track lights above the table, I see these wide puckered scars, not across her wrist but down, following the blue veins. I scuff my feet and throw the condiment packets on the table like I just got back. She drops her hand. Her bracelets settle evenly as slats on a venetian blind. I don't know if she noticed that the scars showed.

I salt the fries and start eating my cheeseburger to keep from talking. I keep seeing those scars, thinking weird shit, like what they'd feel like to the tip of a tongue. I get this picture of Iris holding a butcher knife up B-movie slasher style. It makes me feel the same way I felt seeing Jenny in the morgue, only not nearly as strong, or my hamburger would have been moving in another direction. But I can't concentrate on eating and keep up a conversation at the moment. I just hope Iris thinks I'm not much of one to talk when I eat. She's quiet, too. Acts like she's checking out the nightlife around us.

I look around. The chicken wire boy and his one-button girlfriend are next to us. In one of them strange switches Generation X has pulled, he's wearing strappy sandals, she's got on combat boots. Behind Iris is a balding guy. I can't see his face, but I can tell he's the oldest guy in the place. What's more, if he wasn't, me and Iris would be in dead heat for the part. I feel my heart harden toward her. She's getting old in spite of herself. She wanted to quit. Tried to. She doesn't look so good to me all of a sudden.

I finally realize Iris is repeating my name. “What?” I say.

"Asked if you liked, if you and Callie liked, going to the movies. Is there something wrong?"

"No, why?” I lie, letting the right amount of confusion and injury mix in my tone.

"Oh, I just thought, oh it's nothing.” She puts down her half-eaten hamburger. “I'll be right back. Pit stop."

I sit there for ten or fifteen minutes watching the old man turn pages of a newspaper before my knee gets to jerking up and down. Some idiot's been pumping the jukebox with his pocket change to keep the same damn song playing over and over. I get up to stretch, wondering if Iris climbed out the bathroom window.

The old man folds his newspaper and looks around at me. The geezer from the dog track. What the hell was he doing here? We'd left early. I'd taken him for a die-hard who'd stick around till the sweep-up crew shooed him out.

"Sit down, Ute,” he said, waving a palsied hand at a chair.

Had he overheard Iris talking to me? I glance back at the curtain of beads that leads to the bathrooms, don't see Iris coming, and sit down. If she ducked out on me, maybe I won't look like such a rube if I'm sitting with the old man for a while. He rolls up the newspaper and stares down the tube he's made at the table. Whips it around on me like a gun scope. Then again, I think, if he's apeshit as a sock puppet, I'm going to look stupid after all.

"Ute,” he says. “I've been reading about you."

"What?” I say. “My girl's got a problem or something in the ladies, I got to go see—"

"And you didn't make the front page,” the old fart says, “hell, you didn't even make the front section."

His eyes are bloodshot, a nasty color of dull green, unblinking like a frog. He's shaking the paper in front of my nose. I can see dirt under his thick, yellow fingernails that looks like it's been there for years.

I get this numb feeling at the nape of my neck that spreads like a souped up version of gangrene.

"Best they could do to report on your little shattered world was page three of the Metro section,” he says and curls that bottom lip over his top.

I grab the paper he's jabbing in my face and slap it down, check the date. That rotten sensation grips my whole body, nowhere tighter than in the groin. The date across the top is the day after Jenny was killed. There'd been a photo of a state official indicted for embezzlement on the front of the paper that day. I'm looking at a picture of the same fucker now. Everything had pointed to him siphoning off close to a hundred thou of tax dollars, but he never saw a day behind bars. In the dark months after Jenny was gone that seemed to sum up what I felt about the world. The bad don't necessarily pay for what they do, the good pay and pay and some bastard robs the war chest when the money's bloody enough.

The old man's sitting there nodding his head. My mouth is open, but I can't get words to come out of it.

"It's all in your perspective,” he says and holds up thumb and forefinger of each hand and looks at me through the frame.

Just like Callie had done.

I'm shaking with fear or anger or, more like it, both. Is he some old pervert who's been following Callie around, finding out everything about her he could? Is Callie okay with Shawna or had he killed the girls early on in the evening then come to torment me before I found out? I'm halfway out of my chair when his left arm snakes out and he grips my sleeve, that bottom jaw sawing back and forth.

"Sure, it's a risk, Ute. Win, lose, or die,” he says, biting each word in a mean way, “it's a chance you take. You might be throwing your money away. Or your heart. You might get buried yourself. But sometimes you get lucky for a few years. You get to live with your woman, raise a baby, spend them long nights fucking each other until your knees can hardly get you to the john. This Iris girl, you're going to write her off without knowing a damned thing about what she's been through. You think maybe there's been women who looked in your eyes and saw hurt and death and decided they wanted nothing to do with you?"

I sit back down. So he was hanging around because of Iris. He could be her father for all I know. The whole family could be psycho. He'd just been snooping around the track to see how Iris's date was going, then he followed us here. For the sixth or seventh time, the Doors are whining about riders in the storm, and I'm about to take apart the music machine or the asswipe operating it.

I glare over my shoulder. The chicken wire guy is laughing like a hyena, chomping into his hamburger, and yelling at a guy across the room with his mouth full. I feel grim as a sonofabitch, but I'll play along with Iris and this old dude's game for a few more minutes. Then I'm going to forget tonight ever happened.

"You know, Ute,” the old man says, “you haven't got many more chances. Jenny wouldn't want you to pass up one good as this."

"You don't know fuck about my dead wife,” I say. Playing along's not the same as buying it.

"I can't guarantee you a happy ending, you know. I don't see into the future too far,” he says. “But I got a gut feeling you won't get a better opportunity to make one happen."

Chicken wire boy throws a fry at his buddy giving him the finger from over by the cash register. It hits one of those cheap bank calendars with just one scenic picture for every blessed month. Lands to the right of a ketch sailing past a sun bigger than life on the horizon.

"She was raped by her stepdaddy,” he says. “Right before she did that surgery on herself."

"I don't want to know,” I say.

"And it'll be a long time before she'll tell you her reasons. Don't have to read tea leaves or innards to predict that."

"You're one messed up old fucker,” I say.

"But I'm telling you now. You got to trust the world again, Ute. Callie's trying to help you. She wants more out of life than you hiding like a hermit crab in that dingy, half-buried so-called garden apartment."

My heart jackknifes—he knows where I live, he's been there—but he keeps on talking.

"I know I should mind my own business, and I do, day after day. But I get worn down now and then and have to point a few things out. Things that might get missed and when they're such little things and might mean so much....” The old geezer coughs.

I haven't got a clue what he's going on about and I don't give a shit. I've got that tired feeling I get sometimes, like I just want to lie down and sleep forever or until the world blows up, whichever comes first. The jukebox stops for the count of nine, then the lizard king is retelling the sob story about people dumb enough to pick up hitchhikers. My heart's beating like murder. I yank around to see if I can spot the asshole monopolizing the airwaves. Nobody's standing by the jukebox. Chicken-wire boy is still spewing out his hamburger—he'll end up amusing himself to death when he chokes on it.

The one-button girl shifts her head and runs shiny red fingernails along her collarbone. The gesture reminds me of something. A strange feeling gets in the pit of my stomach. They don't look around at me even though I've been staring at them for longer than's socially acceptable. I'm breathing kind of heavy, watching them, ignoring the old man, waiting for something to happen but not knowing what the hell it could be.

When chicken-wire boy kicks back his chair to aim a fry, I look over at the cash register, at the guy holding his wallet in one hand, middle finger thrust up on the other. The fry flaps against paper, inch and a half from the ketch.

Not giving a shit what anybody thinks, I run to the calendar and see the oily smudge where the fry hit. I touch it and feel the grease between my fingers. Nobody's looking at me. I walk around the tables like an idiot, and nobody looks up at me. I go to the table chicken-wire boy is sitting at and eat one of his fries. He's rocking his chair on its back legs. I'm right in front of him, pawing in his fries for one salted just the way I like, and he's staring through me.

I lift the basket of fries and dump them on the floor. The white paper lining the basket flutters after the scattered fries. Chicken-wire boy doesn't notice. One-button girl brushes her hair back and looks bored.

I slump back in the chair by the old man and hold on to the edge of the table.

"Iris hasn't been gone long as you think, see. But she feels bad as you figured on. She's afraid you saw the scars. If she tells you about that, she's worried sick what else she'll have to tell you. And after you start talking about some of the ugliest shit in the world, people start sidling away from you.” The old man scratches his shiny forehead. “You think about it. I got to head on out."

He's almost to the door.

I shout, “Wait a minute. Hold on."

He waits for me to cross the room.

"Who are you?” I say, although it's not the only question I have or even the most important one.

"I'm the goddamned tooth fairy,” he says. But he says it gentle like. He sounds tired, too.

I don't know how to answer him. I watch him leave. I'm standing right by the guy who flips chicken wire boy the bird. Chicken wire boy puts his hand where the basket of fries used to be and snaps a piece of pure air across the room. Nothing hits the calendar this time.

Nerves shot to hell, I go back to the table me and Iris had been sitting at. What else could I do? I didn't want to try that door out of the Thrill Grill and find I couldn't open it.

I count eight seconds of silence after the Doors finish their parable of roadkill.

Nine.

Grace Slick is singing about pills.

"Shit,” the chicken-wire guy says. “How'd I do that?"

He picks up the french fry basket, cursing.

I let out a long breath that I didn't know I was holding in. I look over at the table where the old man had been. There's no newspaper on it, but I don't remember him taking it with him. I shiver.

Iris gets back and, holy fuck, I feel like blood's running through my veins again. I make damned sure I talk to her. About anything. I think I rattle on about Callie's fascination with some kids’ TV show for ten minutes or so, but Iris is smiling again.

She gets a serious, scared little look on her face and says, “Can I ask where Callie's mom is?"

"Sure. She hasn't moved around much lately.” I try to laugh. “She's dead. Jenny died when Callie was just a few months old.” I know Iris is going to want to know more than that, so I launch into the short version.

"We were in our sophomore year at college when we met. Fell in love. Got married after we found out she was pregnant. Jenny said she'd sit out school until I had a good job and the baby was a few years old. We didn't have much money and moved into a run-down apartment building with some weird characters living in it. One day some nut from next door broke in, and Jenny must have fought with him because the place was a wreck. He dragged her out on the street and beat her to death with a piece of copper pipe. There were witnesses. Nobody stepped in. Afraid, I guess."

I stop and focus on the traffic light you can see from the glass front of the grill. It's staining Dodge Street with the only three colors it knows. I watch it turn to yellow and take a deep breath.

"He just walked away after she stopped moving. Went to this bar down the street called Subby's. I got back from class right after the ambulance left. Some old woman told me they'd said Jenny was dead. My Jenny, my girl of spitfire and sweetness."

Iris's eyes are bright, watching me. This time the traffic light paints the street with its palette twice before I can go on. Iris just waits. A willingness to allow some white space in a conversation is rare in a woman. Yellow. Red.

"The old lady described the guy with the pipe. When she mentioned this funny long scarf, I knew who it was. The guy wore that everywhere. Even in summer. His door was standing wide open, apartment empty. I took a chance he might be at that bar I'd seen him in a lot. Tried to wrap that scarf so tight around his neck he'd choke. He ran when a bunch of guys pulled me off, but the cops chased him down. I moved back home after that. Bagged groceries in this town that's got one traffic light. And you know what? Shitty things happen there, too."

I refill the sugar caddy that I hadn't even realized I'd been emptying down to the last packet. I stack them back up again. Sugar in white on one side, something that promises it's sweeter than sugar in a pink wrapper on the other. Finally I smile at Iris the best I can. It's not a story I like to tell. But I'm glad it's out of the way.

Iris doesn't say anything even then for a minute. Then she says, “God, that's awful, Ute."

We finish up our meal talking about stuff that's safe—kids, work, TV.

She pulls her car into the parking lot at my place, switches off the ignition, and slips her hands around the wheel like she's still driving.

I want her to tell me about the scars on her arms. I don't want to ask. Jenny was so full of life and she was killed. Iris, somewhere along the way, didn't want to live. Nothing makes sense to me. The only peace I ever get is when I admit to myself nothing makes sense and from what I'd studied of history nothing ever has made sense. People keep living and dying in a world where the facts don't add up to a Grand Unified Theory of jackshit.

When you get lucky, though, the facts are pretty, the way Dark Iris was pretty, partly because the old man told me about the dog, partly because Iris was with me, partly because Dark Iris accidentally came in first. But what kind of luck are you having when a jukebox gets stuck on the same song? A hamburger joint gets stuck on the same three minutes while some ugly old geezer dishes out advice you don't want to hear?

"I'm so sorry,” Iris says.

"What?” I say.

"About Jenny."

"Well, it was a long time ago,” I say. “I'm just thankful Callie was such a little baby that she didn't remember anything."

Iris jangles the keys in her hand and sighs. “Yeah, it's funny how memory works. Your cells are supposed to completely change in seven years’ time, except for brain cells. So you're carrying around memories of a body that doesn't exist anymore. I read that somewhere.” She laughs. “I don't remember where."

A man out walking his dog goes by the car. The dog's sniffing every spot of grass that's been peed on this week and the man's wearing a Walkman. The black cord hangs down his chest like a dropped leash.

"What I don't get, if that's true,” she says, “is why scars don't disappear. If cells are gradually replaced, that is, with new ones."

Taking the time to think on that for a minute, I crack my knuckles and then catch myself. Most women I've met would rather listen to their cat hack up a furball than hear a guy make his hands sound like they're breaking. Iris doesn't act like it bothered her. I get the feeling she's this close to telling me about her dance with death if I don't blow it.

I clear my throat. “Maybe the scars are replaced with cells that remember what it is to be scarred. New body, new person, but a history recorded in the skin,” I say. “The scars are like home movies, proof that it happened, embarrassing to have somebody else see, but not very important to what you are five, ten years later."

Iris starts taking her bracelets off. “I shouldn't do this. I should wait until I'm sure you like me—"

"I like you, Iris—"

"—before I tell you, but then I'll just dread you finding out."

Bracelets fill the dashboard, and she reaches over my head, flips on the courtesy light. She matches her wrists together, both with their old, wide scars.

"You meant business, huh?” I say.

Her wrists are so small they fit in the palm of my hand.

"I was seventeen and I was mad at the world. My mom had remarried this jerk, I didn't have any friends I could talk to, and nothing looked like it'd ever work out. I did it one night when they went out to dinner, but Mom came back for theater tickets she'd forgotten and decided she had to pee before she left."

"Saved by a full bladder,” I say.

Iris starts laughing and covers her mouth with a hand. I want to cover her mouth with mine.

She sobers up again. “Yeah, I guess I was. Saved. And you're right about the home movie part—because this,” she turns her wrists out and up in a motion that's graceful as a swan turning its head, “isn't me anymore."

She sifts through the bracelets on the dashboard until she finds one made out of that blue and black shell. “Give this to Callie for me, would you? Maybe I don't need all these bracelets."

I kiss her on her right ear. It's warm from her hair falling over it, warm like the underneath of a bird's wing. I want to hold her. I don't know how to get from here to where I want to be. But I think Iris is patient. The old man said Iris was my best chance. He was right about Dark Iris crossing the finish line. The odds are better than even, me and Iris can find a way together. It's all in your perspective. How hard can it be? Up close and far away, the little stick figures of the people you love and the people you'd like to kill, the boat and the big sun on the horizon, evil shit and good things, all mixed up on that same sheet of paper like a kid's drawing of reality.

When I get back from walking Shawna home, there's one thing left to do before calling it a night. In Callie's bedroom of little girl frills, I sneak up to her pillow like a thief. Only I'm going to leave the big handful of change and the bracelet Iris gave me for Callie and steal nothing more than a kiss. I slide my hand over the cool sheet, blue in the dark, but white with pink flowers in the light, and lodge the bounty near her head.

Something colder than the fabric touches my palm and my fingers find it. Maybe Shawna hadn't trusted the tooth fairy to do her job tonight and had left a trinket after Callie had fallen asleep.

I pull the thing out, a locket trailing a long chain.

A heart locket.

The street light edging its way around the lacy curtains glints on the silver. Every hair on my head prickles. I slip behind the curtain to see better, wedging the locket open with a thumbnail.

When I'd buried Jenny, she wore a locket like this around her neck. It was the only piece of jewelry I'd ever gotten her aside from her wedding band. She loved it, wore it all the time.

I get the locket open and breathe a sigh of relief—inside was a picture of me and Callie. Not the baby picture of Callie that had been in Jenny's locket. A picture of Callie now. Asleep. A beautiful photo. The nightgown has a bow on it, a little worn, a little catty-cornered.

I know it before I lean over to check. I know it. Callie's got on the gown that's in the photo. I've never taken a picture of her in that nightie. I tilt the locket to see the photo of me—I'm in a plaid shirt. I usually am. A big smile. I never smile like that when I got a camera gunning me down. To the side of my head is the white curve of something. It takes me a minute to puzzle it out. Looks like a giant tea cup. The coffee cup billboard at Bluffs Run. My hand is shaking like I've just downed a whole pot of coffee. I manage to pry up an edge of the photo. A tiny inscription is on the back of the white heart—love, the goddamned tooth fairy.

For a long time I stand there with my forehead touching the glass of Callie's window, watching nothing happen in the alley, holding that locket like a fat silver ticket.

Yoon Ha Lee's last F&SF story was “The Unstrung Zither” in our April/May issue. Now she regales us with an exotic and elegant fantasy.

Whatever else might be said of the sorcerer who ruled the rim of the Pit, he had never been able to raise the bones of giants. The bones lay scattered in the rimlands, green-gray with moss and crusted with crystals, whorled with the fingerprints of desperate travelers. The bones did not easily surrender fingerprints. The locals considered it bad luck to leave their marks on the giants’ bones.

Tamim was sitting in the lee of a rock and had raised his gun to his head when the giants’ bones embedded in the hill shook themselves free of earth. He knew that the gun wasn't going to be of any use against the bones. He knew of only two ways to destroy ghouls: lure them past the rimlands’ borders so they would crumble into dust, or pierce them through the heart with jade.

The border was days away. Tamim had used the last of his jade bullets escaping a vulture patrol.

His finger hesitated on the trigger.

"You shouldn't do that,” a girl's voice, or a young woman's, called from the other side of the rock.

He shouldn't have let his guard down, even for a suicide attempt. Maybe especially for a suicide attempt. The sorcerer's Vulture Corps was always happy to collect corpses.

Tamim edged around the rock. He didn't like leaving bones at his back, but they were taking their time assembling themselves, as though unseen ligaments were growing at each joint. Their clattering made him jumpy. Assess the threat, he reminded himself, then decide.

The girl was in plain sight. She had brown skin like Tamim's own and long black hair in tangles down to her waist, too long to be practical, the kind an aristocrat might have. No aristocrat, however, would have been caught in that high-collared black coat.

Tamim knew the rimlands’ sumptuary laws, knew what the black coat meant: vulture, and necromancer besides. He aimed and fired.

He must have made some noise to alert her. She ran toward him, ducking at the right moment. The bullet missed her by inches; a lock of hair drifted free. “I'm not what you think, boy,” she said breathlessly. She barely came up to his shoulder. Her hand, surprisingly strong, caught his and twisted the gun to point at the ground between them.

Five bullets left, but he wanted to save one for himself. Admittedly, at this range he was more likely to shoot himself if he tried again. That wasn't even taking into account the girl's reflexes. “What are you, then?"

"I'm no vulture,” she said. “I'm alone out here. I need help, and I'll take what I can find, whether it comes in the shape of a giant or a boy who looks half-ghoul himself.” She stared directly into his eyes as she released her grip on the gun.

Tamim made a frustrated noise and holstered the gun. A soldier wasn't supposed to feel curiosity, but today he had forfeited any claim to being a soldier. “You're the one raising the bones,” he pointed out.

He had been wrong about the skeleton. There were two of them, not one, entangled oddly from aeons in the earth's embrace.

The girl took her attention off Tamim for a moment. She laced her fingers together, then pulled them apart. In a rush, the bones separated into two skeletons. Loam, uprooted grass, and glittering gravel showered both Tamim and the girl. Dust swirled in the shape of grinning skulls, then settled. The girl paid it no heed. Apparently she was as accustomed to the rimlands’ behavior as he was.

"There,” she said with evident satisfaction. “What do you think? One's yours, of course."

He stared at her stonily.

"It's not like I can ride two of them at once,” she said, as if she made perfect sense and he were the slow one. “You haven't run screaming yet. That's always useful."

Clearly the world had plans for him other than suicide today. “I was reared by the undead,” Tamim said. His mother, a woman with a brilliant smile and an aristocrat's long, slender hands, had given him into the care of a company of ghouls, reasoning that it would prepare him to survive in the rimlands and eventually take up her cause. But one by one his caretakers had fallen apart, rotting teeth and decaying eyes, a toe here and a loop of shriveled intestine there.

His mother had died attempting to assassinate the sorcerer when Tamim was a child. The undead did not fall apart immediately upon their creator's death, but lingered for a span of years proportionate to the creator's skill. Tamim's mother, for all her ambitions, had not been a particularly skilled necromancer. He had a dim memory of crying when the last of his caretakers ceased to move, even the mindless, instinctive creeping of a rotted finger toward the hand. It had been the last time he cried.

The girl nodded as though his childhood was unremarkable. Perhaps it was, from a necromancer's point of view. “Right or left?” she said.

Involuntarily, Tamim looked up at the giants. The one on the left had a long, narrow skull and cracked teeth. Curiously, spurs extended from the back, as though wings had been broken off. The one on the right had a broader visage and no spurs, and its left arm was longer than the right.

"I don't know your name,” Tamim said. “Why should I take up with a necromancer?” He hadn't known that any necromancers remained in the rimlands who did not serve the sorcerer. The Pit was death, and the sorcerer controlled the Pit: ergo necromancers served he who ruled death. The rest had fled to the lands beyond the Pit, or died in a hundred small rebellions. The sorcerer was not notable for his sense of mercy.

"I'm Sakera,” she said. “Pleased to meet you, I'm sure. I'll make you a bargain, O soldier"—her eyes alighted briefly on the gun—"who wishes to die. Help me bring down the sorcerer, and at the journey's end I will give you the death you desire."

The gun was an unbalancing weight at his hip. He had lived with such things all his life. “How long a journey?” Then, realizing that he was actually considering it, he added, “I don't need your help to kill myself."

"Months,” Sakera said. “But I've seen what happens when you miss with a gun. You might live out the rest of your days as a mangled thing with less mind than a ghoul. With a necromancer, death can be certain. It can even be swift."

"I'm not that incompetent.” He had long years of practice killing.

"No, I imagine not.” Her voice was brisk. “Let's put it another way, then. There can't be many necromancers left in the rimlands. If you're no vulture-friend, I may be your best chance of getting rid of the sorcerer."

"I don't trust you,” Tamim said. Tact had never been one of his strengths. Among other things, it was wasted on ghouls.

"You don't need to trust me,” Sakera said. “You just need to believe me."

It disappointed him that she wanted to kill the sorcerer. Tamim had no fondness for the man's reign, but he suspected that Sakera meant to replace the sorcerer. Some traitorously sentimental part of Tamim had expected better from this girl, for all that he had met her only minutes ago.

Sakera made a fist, rotated it, then opened her fingers. The lopsided skeleton knelt before her. She clambered up the bones and sat on one of the kneecaps, legs dangling. “Or I could leave you to die in the giants’ shadow, before I take this one away,” she said. “Your choice. But I hope you come with me. It will be a lonely journey to the sorcerer's palace otherwise."

"What is your grievance with him?” Tamim said, on the grounds that he might as well be certain.

"He raised my family as ghouls,” she said. “They're still not at rest."

It sounded plausible. Maybe she was a good liar. “You came here for the giants’ skeletons."

"Yes."

"How did you know I'd be here?"

"I may not be a vulture,” Sakera said, “but I can smell death on the wind."

"I could have used your help when I was fighting the vultures,” he said. The company of ghouls had taught him how to fight—his mother, a pragmatist in her way, had sought out the corpses of veteran soldiers—but it had still been one against several.

Sakera grimaced. “If only. A necromancer is only as useful as the bones she can call to her service. I promised myself I would only touch giants, who are long gone from the world, and whose families will not miss them."

"That's an inconvenient promise,” Tamim said, without approbation.

"I came here for the bones. I'm glad you came, too. Most people are afraid.” She waved down at him. “Over here."

Tamim craned his head and regarded her skeptically.

"Oh, that's right.” She made another gesture. The giant began lowering her to the ground, but her hand spasmed. The giant lurched. She somersaulted clear and rolled to safety, swearing in a language he didn't recognize.

Tamim helped her get up, more out of curiosity than politeness. Both her hands were shaking. “How long has that been going on?” he asked.

"Long enough,” she said, embarrassed. “That's the other reason I need an ally. I can't draw the patterns by myself anymore."

Patterns? “You'd better show me how to work the—” What should he call it? “—the giant.” As though it were a set of tools. “Why do you need patterns?” He didn't recall that his mother had ever drawn anything.

"Do you know how the sorcerer came to power?” Sakera asked.

Tamim shook his head. His mother had told him gilded tales of the sorcerer's court as though it had always existed, a place where enemies’ skulls were made into banquet cups and musicians played upon lyres of bone or tortoiseshell.

"In the old queen's court, he was her most trusted general and a master calligrapher. First he conquered the Pit, which is death. Perhaps he made some terrible bargain there. Then, in the palace archives, he discovered some scrolls on ancient fighting forms, and applied those to the corpses he raised. Thus even ghouls who were once farmers and potters and prostitutes can fight, because they are aligned with the necromancer's patterns.

"As for the sorcerer, he had become smitten with his queen. When she refused to marry him—well. You can guess the end of that story."

Tamim was thinking of the patterns. “This implies that if you draw other fighting forms, you could apply those to the ghouls as well. Am I correct?"

Sakera nodded. “But you have to have an accurate hand and a knowledge of inner anatomies. Writing is troublesome for me, and drawing is impossible."

It didn't surprise him that a necromancer would be literate. Tamim had learned the alphabet from his mother, and could read and write, if shakily. He hadn't had much opportunity to practice. “Teach me,” he said.

Her face lit. He had never seen anything like it, on the dead or the living. Carefully, she repeated the motion that had caused the giant to kneel. Although her hands shook a little, Tamim could tell what the gesture was supposed to look like. He did it several times until Sakera nodded her satisfaction.

"How do I get the giant to respond to me?” Tamim said. “Surely it doesn't move every time you twitch your hands. The ghouls I knew just followed orders. They didn't require constant guidance."

"Give the giant a name,” Sakera said, “and use the name to address it in your mind. As for guidance, it's a thing of memory. The recent dead remember who they were, after a fashion. They remember how to do the things they did in life, for a time. Or they're instructed by patterns. The giants have been dead so long that they do require constant guidance."

When he died, would she raise his bones and—

"No,” Sakera said. “I wouldn't do that. I am a necromancer, yes, but I made a promise. I told you, the death you desire.” Her tone was almost cheerful. “Come on, give it a try."

Tamim looked at the giant with spurs. Ifayad, he thought, which meant bird of prey. He could see the letters in his head: iro-fel-alim-yod-alim-dirat. Then he made the gesture Sakera had shown him.

The giant knelt. He climbed up and up, into the skull, along the ridge of an abraded tooth in the open mouth. He wondered what it smelled like: earth, probably, and crushed flowers, and the tang of minerals newly exposed to air. His sense of smell was deadened from so many years among ghouls, and his adolescent years among the few remaining resistance fighters had not restored it.

If something went wrong and the great jaws closed, he would be crushed. It comforted him. “Now what?” His voice echoed oddly in the space of the skull.

"How are you supposed to see anything from in there?” Sakera said. He couldn't tell whether she was laughing or exasperated. “Come down again and we'll learn to ride the giants properly. Then, when we have paper, I can show you how to scribe your own patterns."

Tamim lingered a moment longer, drawn to Ifayad in spite of himself. Despite the restricted field of vision, he appreciated that the skull would provide protection against enemy fire.

Tamim climbed down, bemused at himself for having any sort of faith in the necromancer. She would betray him in the end, and surrender to the sorcerer, and he would have to kill her. Until then, he would learn what he could.

Tamim had always been quick with his hands, quick of reflexes, even as a child. It had taken him a while to appreciate this. He had thought it was something ordinarily true of people, as opposed to ghouls.

Ghouls were unrelenting once they had a goal, but dexterity was not one of their virtues.

Sakera was methodical in her lessons. They started with stances and moved on to simple motions—an arm lifting, a hand opening, a foot shifting—then compound motions. Familiar with the precepts of arms training, Tamim accepted this as necessary. They did everything slowly: gesture followed by the giants’ motion. Tamim's hands became callused from clutching Ifayad's ridged teeth to keep from rattling around inside the skull.

He and Sakera went hunting together. Sakera was good at tracking animals, even the tricky, shadow-colored animals that lived in the rimlands. “Every life is a potential death,” she said when he asked her about it, since she didn't seem to pay much attention to the usual cues, such as tufts of fur snagged in the rimlands’ scraggly foliage, or scat, or scuffed tracks in the dirt. Tamim was good at making snares, although a certain percentage of the animals that he caught that way were half-ghoul themselves, and had to be released. The problem had only grown worse over time.

Between the two of them, they often had a full stew-pot. Sakera tended to pick at her food; sometimes he wasn't sure she ate at all. When he pressed her on the topic, she ate the better portion of a rabbit, just to show him she could.

"I've been thinking about our rides,” Tamim said to her over this night's stew. “Have you ever ridden a horse?"

Sakera shook her head. “No,” she said. “Hasn't it been a long time since the rimlands saw anything but ghoul-steeds?"

"Probably,” he said. “I wasn't thinking about the horses themselves, but of harnesses. Do you think we could create some kind of harness for riding the giants? That way, if something goes wrong"—he couldn't help but think of Sakera's unsteady hands—"you won't be thrown."

"Interesting,” she said.

"Something with buckles, maybe?"

"We'd have to find a smith,” Sakera said drily. They had approached a settlement last week, leaving the giants behind, crouched behind some hills. The settlement's buildings had been intact, but corpse-colored fungus grew from all the doors, releasing pale spores. They had retreated in haste. Sakera had been withdrawn for the rest of the day. “I don't have any power over metal. Maybe we're better off with some carefully chosen knots."

"With your hands?” Something else occurred to him: he had once seen a trader trapped under a fallen horse, back in the days when horses were to be found in the rimlands. “You'd want to be able to get out in a hurry, in case something went wrong."

"A slipknot of some sort?"

He considered it. “It might work."

Unfortunately, Sakera was not any good at finding trees. It took them several days to track down a stand of widely separated willows by following one of the rimlands’ black rivers. Sakera drank the water fearlessly, although she grimaced at its taste.

Tamim showed Sakera how to strip the bark and plait it into cords. Once they had enough rope, it took them more time to devise a system of knots that would work on the giants. Sakera knew an amazing number of knots. “They're a kind of magic from the sea-folk,” she said. “I don't suppose you've ever seen the sea."

Supposedly there was a black sea on the other side of the Pit's boundary, with ships of rotting timbers and ghost-fabric sails. “No,” he said. “There's nothing magical about knots, either, no more than a gun is magical.” He still had five bullets, although they were of iron rather than jade. Death and undeath were the only magic he recognized.

Sakera flexed her fingers, grimacing. Her skin was torn from working the bark. She washed her hands in the river, then dried her hands on her coat. “If only things were that simple,” she said.

They made more rope, just in case, and took the opportunity to bathe and wash their clothes. Sakera's coat was beginning to look more gray than black. Tamim suspected it was losing its dye. Sakera insisted on going around in a ragged blanket while the coat dried.

"Do you really get that cold?” Tamim said.

"Death is cold,” Sakera said. “It's the absence of warmth and the absence of light."

All Tamim could think of was the grave he had dug for the last of his caretaker ghouls. All virtue had gone from their bones, and no necromancer would raise them again. But he had wanted to do them that honor anyway, to offer them the peace that his mother had denied them. He had wanted to lower himself into the grave, too, but then no one would have been left to cover them with earth.

"These are not entirely bad things,” she said, more kindly. “What would day be without night, a candle without the shuttered room?"

"It's been years since I've seen a candle."

"There we go, missing the point,” she said, but she didn't sound offended.

It wasn't until Sakera was satisfied with Tamim's control over the giant that she began to teach him the alphabet. He had been looking forward to this until he realized that the shapes she was showing him didn't resemble the ones he knew. “They're wrong,” he said stubbornly as he stared at the two figures she had drawn in the dirt.

Blood welled up in the letters, as though she had cut them into the flesh of some sleeping beast. It bubbled briefly, then soaked back into the dirt. It was not an uncommon phenomenon, this deep in the rimlands, away from the sections that the sorcerer had reclaimed for human use.

Sakera, who was crouching next to him with her coat hitched up over her knees in an unsuccessful attempt to keep it from getting soiled, sighed. “There's more than one alphabet in the world. There are even things more complicated than alphabets."

Tamim tried to look receptive to the idea of learning something more complicated than an alphabet.

Sakera burst out laughing at his expression. “You're quick-witted. A little practice is all it would take."

"Thank you,” he said dourly.

"As to why this alphabet and not another: it's the oldest one in the rimlands. It was used by priests to gods now unnamed."

He leaned back and scowled. “How is it that you say the most preposterous things as if you knew them absolutely?"

"Because I do, of course.” She grinned at him. “Really, Tamim, what kind of necromancer would I be if I didn't gather knowledge?"

"If my mother had spent more time gathering knowledge,” Tamim said thoughtfully, “maybe she would have been better prepared when she tried to assassinate the sorcerer."

"Come on,” Sakera said, clearly deeming it better to skirt the subject, “alphabet. The sooner you start, the sooner you'll have it memorized."

Tamim drew an awkward copy of the first one.

"No, no, no,” Sakera said, laughing again. He didn't mind it as much as he thought he would. “There's an order to these things."

"I can't see why it makes any difference, so long as you get the shape right."

"Hit me,” she said.

"What?” Sometimes he wondered about her sanity.

"It won't land,” she said, “if that's what you're worried about. Come on, hit me."

He got up, settling his balance solidly over each foot, then threw a punch. He kept his fist several inches away from her even at full extension.

"Oh, Tamim,” she sighed, “you don't have to be so careful. But you see? Notice how all the parts of your body moved in a particular order, the way you twisted your fist at the end and not the beginning? There is a logic to these things."

Tamim should have known that complaining about it would elicit one of Sakera's incomprehensible explanations. “Just tell me how to get it right."

"If you'd rather,” she said. She drew the letter again, slowly, imitating his strokes. “You went from left to right, and it's right to left. That's the first thing to remember.” And again, except this time from right to left, as she had said. “Do you see how it's shaped, how the strokes flow into each other?"

He tried a few more times until he could feel the flow that she spoke of: not so different from the alphabet he knew, even if the direction was different. “Shouldn't it have a name?” he said. The letters of that other alphabet had names.

"This one is tilat. If we spelled out your name, it would be the first letter."

"Tilat,” he repeated. “What's the other one?"

Sakera showed him how to write it correctly. Dirt collected under her fingernail. “Meneth,” she said. “Tilat-meneth-meneth spells your name."

Tamim frowned. “Aren't there letters missing, the breath-sounds?"

"Vowels, you mean? You don't write them in this alphabet."

"That sounds terribly confusing."

"There is power in empty spaces,” Sakera said. “Call it another part of the lesson."

Tilat-meneth-meneth. Tamim wrote it three times so the letters aligned, forming a three-by-three figure. “Show me—show me how to write your name.” He had a good memory. He would prove it to her.

She showed him senu, and kor, and ras. If he looked at all the letters sideways, he could see a faint resemblance to the ones of his childhood alphabet. Were they related somehow?

Tamim didn't write the name he had given his skeleton, Ifayad, for he had a premonition that it would alter some necessary relationship. Power in empty spaces, Sakera had said.

Numbers came after letters. This time the numerals looked more similar to those he already knew, and the lessons went more quickly.

Sakera was in the middle of teaching him yush, one hundred, when the ambush came. Their days of training in the hinterlands had made them careless. The rimlands had never been friendly to human existence. Under the sorcerer's reign, they had become less so. The sorcerer might have built edifices of slate and dark marble and delicate bone, but each year fewer and fewer people were willing to dwell under the banner of the vulture. So it was that Tamim and Sakera had not run into travelers or traders. Thanks to the giants’ conspicuousness, they had also gotten into the habit of avoiding villages.

Tamim was watching Sakera's hand draw the numeral in the dirt when she made a fist. “What's wrong?” he asked.

"Run!” she said in a low, fierce whisper. Her hands went through a sequence of motions punctuated by pauses, like a language in itself. The ground thundered as her giant hauled itself out of the nearby copse of trees and walked toward her. The trees’ limbs knotted themselves around the giant's arm. It pulled free. Hand-shaped leaves flew everywhere, writhing and clutching at the air. The giant crouched down so Sakera could vault up to its rib cage. She climbed until she reached the safety of its skull, then guided it back toward Tamim.

Tamim had Ifayad pick him up and place him in its eye socket. His stomach lurched as he climbed down, into the harness. He hated the moments of absolute helplessness as he secured himself. He could practically hear his heartbeat echoing in the skull.

Through Ifayad's open maw, he could see the vultures’ red banner. There were six vultures: two necromancers in their black robes and four gray-fleshed ghouls in dull armor. The necromancers gaped at the moving giants. Even with its massive limbs, Sakera's was faster than the ghouls, although Tamim was far from reaching her level of control.

Sakera's giant loomed over the vultures and swept the banner to the ground, crushing it under one foot. Then it stopped. Tamim guessed that her hand tremor had started up again. The necromancers scrambled out of the way, out of his field of vision, shouting orders.

The ghouls were armed with repeating crossbows. Tamim heard an initial burst of bolts clattering against Sakera's giant, and cursed all the small gods of the rimlands. He got Ifayad moving. A sweep of its forearm knocked two ghouls to the ground. One ghoul leapt for Ifayad's hand and clung to a finger. He heard it laughing creakily. Tamim pivoted Ifayad and smashed the ghoul against a tree. Its arm separated from its body and the ribcage collapsed.

Tamim lifted Ifayad's arm. It probably looked ridiculous from the outside, but he had to see—there it was: the ghoul's severed arm was climbing toward Tamim. He didn't fancy the thought of struggling with it while trying to control Ifayad.

He tried for a tense minute to use the giant's fingers to pry the severed hand off and fling it away before he realized he knew no commands that would accomplish that end.

Cursing, he raised Ifayad's arm to bring the target closer and put the giant in a stable stance. Then he unknotted himself from the harness and reached for his gun. Five bullets left.

The ghoul's hand continued its relentless climb.

He crouched against the base of Ifayad's jaw. It was lucky for him that the giant's teeth, besides being chipped, had irregular alignment.

He aimed through the gap between two teeth. Fired. The ghoul's hand was blown backward and landed on the ground, twitching, before righting itself.

Four bullets.

However feebly, the hand was scrabbling toward him. But at least it wasn't on Ifayad.

Sakera had gotten her giant to respond again. In a display of entirely characteristic ferocity, it intercepted one of the necromancers and stomped. The sound of crunching bone was palpable.

The necromancers meant them no good; no one who served the sorcerer could. He retied the harness and set off after the second necromancer. Ifayad's hand closed around her.

"Kill her!” Sakera said.

The necromancer wheezed out something.

Tamim hesitated for a long moment.

The necromancer said rapidly, “I can tell you of the death at your heels—"

He had agreed to support Sakera, not to ask questions. He took a deep breath, then pinched his thumb and forefinger against each other.

The giant's fist squeezed tight. The necromancer screamed.

Tamim didn't stop until the screaming cut off. Then he dropped the body.

Sakera had dismembered the rest of the ghouls. “That will hold them for a while,” she said. “We can travel faster than they can."

Tamim turned Ifayad to face Sakera's giant. “That wasn't so difficult,” he said.

"Only two necromancers and their ghouls for now,” she said. “We don't know how long they were following us. We haven't exactly been subtle. That's my fault. I thought—” Her voice sounded hollow. “This place has been my home for so long. I thought it would protect me, somehow. But I should have known better. It's not as if land has any loyalty."

Tamim focused on the part of her speech that had made sense. “So we should expect more pursuit. Let's get our gear and run."

"We can only run so far,” Sakera said. “We'll end up at the gates of the sorcerer's palace with the undead nipping at our heels. There's no help for it."

"We could head out of the rimlands instead,” Tamim said. He was accustomed to the idea of dying, but surely Sakera felt differently. The thought of her felled by the vultures made him ache in a way he had no name for.

"No,” Sakera said firmly. “This has to be done."

Two villages later, Tamim discovered why Sakera was so desperate to take down the sorcerer.

This far into the rimlands, they had expected the village to be abandoned. Tamim had suggested that they might be able to find cloth or soap or needles left behind, small necessities. “Unless it bothers you to scavenge,” he added.

"Not at all,” Sakera said. “If they've left, they've left."

They paused at the crest of a hill to peer down at the village. There were no cook-fires burning, and the crops in the nearby fields had withered. Yet people walked around the village's perimeter and through its streets.

The pattern they traced was chakath, one of the letters of the alphabet, except with the beginning and ending points joined.

"They're ghouls,” Tamim said, looking at Sakera for an explanation. “But why—?"

"The vultures didn't raise them,” Sakera said. “They're too practical to have ghouls spelling out alphabet lessons. No: something came to this village and killed its people, and the people simply failed to die."

"What force moves them, then?"

"The sorcerer's control of the Pit is not a natural thing,” she said. “It is affecting the balance of life and death in the rimlands. Necromancy is one thing: it too has its limits. It's another matter for everything that dies to rise on its own. We must kill the sorcerer before he warps the purpose of the Pit any further."

"I can try to go salvage what I can,” Tamim said. “Or would that catch the ghouls’ attention?"

Sakera watched the ghouls walking, from stoop-shouldered old men to children dragging shapeless dolls. “As long as you don't interrupt their chakath. We'll go together."

"All right.” For the purposes of walking past the ghouls, her hand tremor shouldn't make a difference.

The procession of ghouls had gaps in odd places. It was simply a matter of seeking out the gaps and slipping past. The ghouls’ rotted eyes tracked them, but the ghouls themselves did not deviate from their path.

Together, Sakera and Tamim raided the village for luxuries they had not seen in their time together: fruit preserves, bolts of ramie dyed in muddy colors, beeswax, hemp slippers. No guns or bullets, but that would have been too much to hope for. Tamim found some reasonably intact sacks for them to carry away their haul in.

They stepped outside with two sacks each. Tamim froze. “The pattern's changed,” he said. “They're no longer going down that trail to the left. It's now the one to the right."

"I wonder what letter of the alphabet they're tracing out now,” Sakera said. “We'd better leave."

They dashed for the giants. There was no pursuit. Tamim would have felt better if the ghouls had come after them. He understood enemies that stared you in the face and fought you. He didn't understand this business of ghouls that—

"Sakera,” he said as they loaded up, “most people in the rimlands can't read."

"Mmm?"

"And they especially wouldn't be able to read this strange old alphabet you taught me. Of which chakath is the sixth letter, or that's what you said."

They gazed down at the ghouls’ new letter, liyut. The seventh.

Tamim said, “What happens when they make it all the way to the end of the alphabet?” In his mind's eye he traced the strokes that comprised qaref.

"What do you think?” Sakera said. “Qaref is also the word for ‘end’ in various dead languages."

"How much longer before we reach the sorcerer's palace?” Tamim asked.

"A while,” she said. “He isn't the only one with a citadel deep in the rimlands."

"Someone else to fight?” he said, both dismayed and determined.

"No,” she said. Her smile was crooked and not a little rueful. “Mine. Or did you think we were going to find paper and ink by raiding the villages of people who never had the fortune to learn to read?"

In actuality, Sakera's citadel was a small fort atop a hill deep in a tangle of woods and vines. Tamim was astonished by the proliferation of vegetation. “Is any of this safe to eat?” he asked, especially after he saw the half-dissolved bones of birds beneath one tree with lush purple fruit.

"The fruit's all safe,” Sakera said offhandedly. “It's getting it without making the tree angry that's the problem.” To demonstrate, she threw a rock at one of the trees.

The wood splintered open with a screaming sound at impact, and fingers of barkless wood stroked the stone before hurling it back toward them.

"Don't catch it!” Sakera said, as if Tamim had to be told. Streaks of sap marred the stone's surface.

"What good is a fort without guards?” Tamim said, uneasy that they had had to leave the giants back a little ways. He supposed the trees were worth something, but....

"So maybe I exaggerated when I called it a citadel,” Sakera said. “It's more like a supply depot."

He sighed.

Sakera drew out a key of blackened iron and opened the fort's gates. It was built of concrete and dark granite, which had to have been brought from somewhere else. Sakera lit a small candle—one of their spoils—and led the way to a room down the end of the hall. She opened it with a smaller key.

Inside the room were stacks and stacks of paper, and in one corner, an escritoire. “This,” said Sakera, “is where you are going to learn to draw your own patterns."

"Why is this necessary?"

"Do you remember the encounter where you couldn't get rid of the hand?"

"You noticed?” he said.

"Please,” she said. “It was a dead thing climbing up another dead thing. I couldn't help but notice. If we can draw the necessary motions, that won't happen again. We must prepare as many maneuvers as we can think of."

"It's been years since I've used a brush and ink,” Tamim said.

"I taught you to use the giant, didn't I?” Sakera said.

He looked pointedly at her hands. “The tremor's getting worse."

She averted her eyes. “I know. But food first. I bet you're famished."

They made a meal of leftover pemmican and fruit preserves. Then Sakera went to give herself a sponge bath with water from the cistern. Tamim waited patiently. Her long hair took forever to wash, and he knew that when he returned from his own bath, she would still be working out the tangles with a broken-toothed comb.

Tamim kept watch while Sakera drowsed in the sun outside the fort, letting her hair dry. At last she got up and danced across the ground, arms outflung, face lifted. “Time to learn drawing,” she said.

After learning the alphabet and numbers by drawing them in the dirt, Tamim felt frustrated at returning to the beginning. Sakera was relentless, however. She made him review the basics: how to hold a brush, how to make perfect single strokes. Then she made him learn each letter all over again, with the initial, medial, and final forms that she had omitted the first time around.

"Couldn't you have taught me all the forms to begin with?” Tamim said.

"You wouldn't have sat still for it,” she said.

When she deemed him ready, Tamim wrote out a passage she dictated to him, words that had no meaning to him and probably had no meaning to anyone but Sakera.

"It'll do,” she said when the ink had dried and she had a chance to inspect it minutely. “We're running short on time. I hope you have a good eye for motion."

She brought out a chart of the human body, except it was boxed off and marked with numbers. “What do you make of this?"

At first he was bewildered by the sheer number of lines and curves. Then, as he studied the chart, pieces came clear: notes on the proportion of head height to body height, head width to shoulder width, the range of motion of the major joints.

"I can memorize this,” Tamim said.

"You have to do better than memorize,” she said. “You'll have to draw. This is the kind of thing you'll have to produce.” She brought out another chart—no, a sheaf of drawings on translucent paper—and showed him how to flip through them. Each paper in the sheaf was numbered.

The drawings showed something very simple: a man—no, woman, from the wider pelvis—walking, the motion depicted in painstaking detail, from the lift of the feet to the shift in balance.

Tamim closed his eyes and visualized Sakera walking, although she had a peculiarly straight-hipped stride for a woman. How would he draw a diagram for Sakera? He opened his eyes. “We can already make the giants walk,” he pointed out.

"That's true,” Sakera said, “but walking is the fundamental thing. If you can master walking, the rest will follow."

"Do we have time for this?"

"We have to make time. I don't want to take any chances with the sorcerer.” She bit her lip. “I've already underestimated him once; how do you think I got this tremor?"

Tamim bent his head, studying the diagram some more. He didn't miss Sakera's hum of satisfaction.

In the days that followed, Tamim learned to draw the human form with graphite sticks. He grew accustomed to having greasy, gray-smeared fingers. “Does it matter whether I'm drawing the living or the dead?” he asked.

"You're showing the giants the pattern of the motion,” Sakera said. “That's what matters."

He stared down at his latest tracing of one of Sakera's beautifully inked drawings: a woman in the midst of a leap. The vast quantity of her papers was daunting, but when he wasn't drawing—everything from butterflies to murderous trees to doomed birds, everything but Sakera herself—he was studying them. “How do you decide the interval of motion?” Sometimes the difference between two drawings in a sequence was fractional, and he had to hold both up to the sunlight to see what had changed.

"Think of it as equal intervals of time,” Sakera said. “You don't need to be this meticulous to draw the motion for the giant; you'll be mediating the action through your hands. All it needs are the distinguishing moments. But it's useful to know the motion's rhythm."

"How many drawings like this does the sorcerer have?"

"Too many."

"You can't just burn them?"

She gave him a pained look. “Once they've been painted in ink—anything permanent—by the necromancer's own hand, they're available to every ghoul he raises. He's probably burned them himself, to keep others from stealing his knowledge."

"Ink,” Tamim repeated.

"Why do you think I've been having you work in graphite even though your calligraphy's passable?"

"I had been wondering, yes."

"You can start working with ink tomorrow,” Sakera said, as though she were granting him a favor. “Try not to mess it up."

"I wish I could do something for your hands,” Tamim said.

She grimaced, and he regretted bringing it up. But she said only, “I can still do most necessary things. But a brush is sensitive to small motions. I can't risk it anymore. Why don't we organize the sketches that you want to do in ink, so we can increase your giant's range of motion?"

"How much longer do we have?"

Sakera looked away, her eyes distant. “You remember that village? They're on uth."

Three to go. “You should have pushed me harder,” he said. “How often do they change the letter?"

"About once a week,” she said.

He could have asked earlier, and he hadn't. “How far is it to the sorcerer's palace?"

"From here? A week's hard journeying."

"Let's start organizing,” Tamim said.

Tamim was never going to get all the ink out of his fingernails from painting maneuvers. Then again, it was cleaner than grave-dirt. Sakera's fingernails weren't much better, although Tamim had done his best to trim them for her. He missed the days of sketching with graphite. He had even attempted a portrait of his mother. It hadn't come out very well, but considering that he hardly remembered her face, that was only to be expected.

They had re-rigged the giants’ harnesses using their best rope, their most cunning knots, loaded up the giants with supplies. “Once we're out of the immediate area,” Sakera said, “expect more of the vultures’ patrols. We are not concerned with their total defeat. They'll know we're coming. The point is to get to the palace as quickly as possible."

"The ghouls will swarm us,” Tamim said.

"I know,” she said. “Once we get close enough, your job will be to distract the sorcerer's armies as long as you can. I—” She hesitated. “I may have to go in alone, if he doesn't come out to greet us."

"How are you going to keep them from tearing you apart?"

"I'll be fast,” she said.

"You call that a plan?” he said incredulously.

She grinned.

"I will never understand you,” Tamim said.

"You will someday,” she said. “It's time to go."

Forever after, Tamim remembered that week in nightmare snatches, despite an ordinarily orderly sense of time. They passed statues that had been overgrown by violet-gray crystals that luminesced in response to the giants’ footfalls, roads that liquefied into vortices of glittering sand. The wind muttered at them, perhaps in words from extinct languages, perhaps in the universal language of nightmare. They passed more villages, some inhabited by the living, who fled their approach, others inhabited by ghouls marching the alphabet's path in its countdown to qaref.

Curiously, there were few vultures. When asked, Sakera said, “They've probably been recalled to the palace for the sorcerer's protection."

"Does he fear the giants?” Tamim asked.

"Wouldn't you?” She sounded cranky. It seemed sleep deprivation could affect even her.

At last they reached the sorcerer's high road, paved at the sides with dark, gleaming stones. An army of ghouls awaited them. The banner of the vulture flew high in the distance, along with the standards of individual companies. Tamim had Ifayad crane its head back so he could glimpse the black-and-iron palace high on its hill.

"Do we charge?” Tamim said.

"Wait,” Sakera said implacably.

The ghouls parted. Down the road came the sorcerer, mounted on a blood bay horse with a skull for a head, although no other part of it had decayed. The sorcerer was tall, and he wore ornate lamellar lacquered red and black.

The ghouls bent their heads to the sorcerer in unison. For his part, the man removed his helmet and shaded his eyes, looking unerringly at Sakera's giant. “You are brave to return, Sakera,” he said. He had a low, resonant voice, and he sounded respectful but unintimidated.

"I have an ally this time,” she said.

Tamim said, “Ghouls may require jade bullets, but he's only human. Let me shoot him."

The sorcerer raised a spyglass and fixed it on the giant's maw. Tamim held still; he had nothing to hide. “You must be Liathu's son,” the sorcerer said, almost fondly. “It's in the shape of your face. She was brave, too, in her way."

To Tamim's dismay, Sakera had the giant lower her to the ground. It took her a while to disentangle herself from the harness. “It's been a long time,” she said.

"You are destroying the realm I would have built,” said the sorcerer. “What good is the Pit when everything in the rimlands is becoming an extension of death? This could have been a prosperous realm, if not for your revenge. I did not think even you were so cruel."

Sakera's revenge? What revenge?

"Not death,” Sakera said, “but undeath. You misunderstand the nature of the problem. There's only one way to reverse what has happened to the rimlands. Abdicate. Else there are two giants, and there will be more. All the old bones of the land will rise up against you, extinct though their race may be, when the ghouls write qaref."

"You know better than to expect me to listen,” the sorcerer said, “especially after you took away the woman I loved."

"She was not yours to have, not that way,” Sakera said quietly. “A ghoul can do as it is told, but it cannot love, not the way the living do."

Tamim didn't want to hear any more of the sorcerer's history. He sliced his hand through the air. Ifayad's hand moved correspondingly.

The sorcerer said, unfazed, “Has it never occurred to you, son of Liathu, to wonder why I didn't raise the giants as ghouls myself? Do you know who it is you have been allied with all this time?"

Tamim stopped. The hand stopped short of the sorcerer and his uncanny mount.

Once it would not have mattered. But if he didn't find out now, he would never know.

"Go ahead,” Sakera said to the sorcerer. “Tell him.” She raised her chin as if in challenge. Her hands were trembling. For once, Tamim thought it was out of anxiety.

"It is perhaps unforgivable that Liathu's child should be so ignorant of necromancy,” the sorcerer said, “but she was never much of a teacher. A necromancer can only raise people who died during his life-span. And the giants became extinct before any humans came into being. They were possibly the first to walk the world. What does that tell you about the woman you have been traveling with?"

Sakera was certainly no giant.

Then he knew. “Death,” Tamim said. “Death is the oldest necromancer of all."

"Would you rather be ruled by Death,” the sorcerer said to Tamim, “or by someone who is likewise human?"

"The Pit was never meant to be ruled by mortal man or woman,” Sakera said. “Did you think your conquest solved anything? There must be a place in the world where Death has a home, and that is the Pit, else there is no rest for anyone when the last breath flees, when the heart finally stills."

"Choose,” the sorcerer said harshly. “Choose by numbers, if nothing else: fight and fight though you may, even after my death, the Vulture Corps will track your every footstep.—Do you make no argument, Sakera?"

"It has to be a real choice,” Sakera said. “His choice, because he is a child of life and death both."

Tamim didn't believe in facing violence with his eyes closed. He knew what he had seen, all his life in the rimlands, the unclean animals and the countdown ghouls, bleeding earth and ashen fruit. Once he would not have had the courage to imagine something better—if not for himself, then for whatever generations might follow.

He twisted both hands and stabbed his fingers into his right palm. Ifayad's hand lunged down. The sorcerer spurred his mount, charging slantwise forward. Tamim moved Ifayad to block him; Ifayad swept the sorcerer from his mount.

The sorcerer screamed as he fell. His rage shook Tamim, even though Tamim was safe inside Ifayad. The man landed upon the spears of his own ghouls, despite their efforts to move aside. They were too densely packed.

Tamim stared down at the man's broken body, thinking, Was that all?

"There will be no rest for—” said the ghouls in one voice.

Sakera knelt and pounded her fists against the ground. All the ghouls fell silent, then shuddered and collapsed. It seemed to Tamim that the clattering sound went on halfway to forever.

"You couldn't have done that before?” Tamim demanded.

"Not while he ruled the Pit, no,” she said. She stared out over the fallen bones. “That was your part. Do you know how many his vultures killed?"

Tamim almost said, I didn't think it would matter to you. But she was Sakera. He had come to know her. Of course it mattered to her.

In no hurry at all, he made Ifayad lower him to the ground so he could stand next to her. “Now what?” he said.

She raised her face to him. The expression in her eyes was uncharacteristically solemn.

I will give you the death you desire, she had promised. In their time together, he had forgotten his original purpose.

Sakera was Death, the Pit made flesh. There was one promise Death always kept.

Tamim squared his shoulders. “I'm ready."

"Silly,” Sakera said affectionately, standing. “I never said the death you wanted had to be right now."

"I was going to kill myself."

"Why do you think I came for you, out of all the people in the rimlands?” she said. She stretched up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. Her lips were cool, though not unpleasantly so. “You may not know my face when I come for you next. But I will come, at a time of your desiring."

"I don't know how to live."

"But you do,” she said. “It's all about the distinguishing moments. It's about going from one to the next, no matter how small the interval of time, or how long. As for me, I have a home to return to. You can't follow me yet."

"I could—” Tamim stopped. Did he want to follow her?

"I think the hesitation is answer enough,” Sakera said.

"The giant?"

"That's up to you,” she said. “Choose wisely."

"Good-bye, then,” Tamim said.

"Good-bye, Tamim,” she said. Her hands shook, but less than they had. Or so he liked to think. She returned to her giant. It strode off into the horizon beyond the palace, toward the Pit.

Tamim stood for a long time, watching. Then he wrote Ifayad's name on its right tibia with his fingerprints. “Just a little longer,” he said, “and you can go to your rest.” He reentered the giant and began the long task of burial, a grave for the fallen—but not for himself.

Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is one of the leading French fabulists of the last thirty years, with a score of books to his credit. While none of his novels have been translated into English yet, A Life on Paper: The Stories of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is in the works for publication next year. His translator, Edward Gauvin, specializes in comics and the French fantastic.

The ironies of fate are infinite. Shortly after turning twenty and deciding to steer clear of both doctors and women, I met Maude, then a surgical intern, and at her pressing request became her lover.

Don't go thinking I've ever borne the slightest ill will toward the medical body, much less a woman's body. My prejudice extends only to the physician or female likely to see me naked, discover my misfortune, and make it even crueler to bear.

It all comes down to character, they say. In my place, someone else might've rejoiced at what seemed to me a catastrophe. After all, if I'd wanted at any price to rise above the human herd or leave my mark on the world, I certainly could've. But I didn't give a flying fig about being thought original or unique; my only ambition was to blend in with the crowd, flank to flank with my brethren and fellow creatures in the cozy stable of the species. Alas! I was a brother to no man, and no creature was my fellow. In the course of a few days I sprouted wings or, rather, wingbuds. At first naked, pinkish, coarse, and altogether repugnant, these excrescences were soon covered in a chick's yellow down. Thank God for small favors. When I craned my neck to see my back in the bathroom mirror, the down honestly made those extra extremities easier on the eye.

On my first date with Maude, my appurtenances weren't too cumbersome yet. Unfurled, they spanned about seventeen inches. Folded and pressed flat by a tight undershirt, they could be hidden beneath roomy coats or large, loose-fitting sweaters. My profile suffered a little, but I didn't care. Given the choice, I'd probably have preferred a hunchback's honest hump to these wings which seemed no less suspect for having fallen from the sky, so to speak. What did the heavens want with me? I admit to being terrified. I hid myself away from the world. A rare breed of beginner bird, I feared in every doctor the fowler, if not the taxidermist. Wouldn't they commit me to be studied at their leisure, exhibit me at conferences and, why not, even wind up dissecting me to find out more? As for women ... I'd just turned twenty. At an age when people still hesitated sometimes to show themselves as nature made them, where would I have found the courage to show myself as it should never have made me?

It turned out I didn't need courage; Maude took care of everything. Not long after we'd gotten to know each other—that too, was her doing—she said she'd seen in my eyes when our gazes first met that I wasn't like the others, that “I had something.” As it happened, she wasn't far off. I had wings. Her reaction on seeing them played a great part in the continued happiness of our relationship, which lasted for quite some time.

She called me her beautiful bird and, chirping sweet nothings after making love, smoothed my budding feathers. We didn't go out much, nor did we miss it. I felt uncomfortable in public and she hated the half-pitying, half-repulsed looks I got for my apparent hunchback.

"Idiots! They think you're handicapped,” she raged. “If they only knew!"

"Please don't get all worked up, sweetie—people will stare.” I tried hard to drag her toward a deserted square or a quieter side street.

"Promise me you'll show them who you really are one day!"

I sank my head into my hunched shoulders. Who I really was? Did I even know? A cripple? A monster? A future carnival freak? An angel in the making? All I wanted to be was the plain old harmless and ordinary me from before my fateful election.

"One day you'll soar into the light,” said Maude, pressing herself against me.

"Yeah, sure.... Let's go home, okay?"

My wings got bigger. Maude was constantly measuring them and sometimes lost patience with how slowly they grew. They were twenty-three inches across on our wedding day, and thirty the day our son was born. Soon they were pushing thirty-five which, while respectable for a buzzard or a seagull, was pathetic for a man. Worse yet was when Maude noticed they'd mysteriously shrunk a few inches. Not only surprised by the decrease, she was truly disappointed by what I, to the contrary, saw as a remission, or even the beginning of a recovery. This was the reason for our first real fight. Tired of hearing her repeatedly call my spontaneous shrinkage abnormal, I pointed out with some bitterness that the initial growth had been no less sudden. One word led to another, and soon we were quarreling in earnest. It wasn't long before I accused her of being more fascinated by my deformity than in love with me. To this she snapped back that I had the wingspan of a waterfowl and was birdbrained to boot.

She'd scored a point there and, beating a hasty retreat, I went to sulk in my office. For reasons fairly easy to grasp, I'd given up teaching to turn toward translation. I spent the better part of my day alone at home. In the days after the fight, I often stopped working right in the middle of something to measure my wings with a folding ruler and some painful contortions.

At first the trend Maude had noticed continued. My aberrant protuberances lost almost an inch a day: half an inch per wing. The next day I calculated that at this rate, taking into account the four inches already resorbed, in nineteen days everything would be back to normal.

I started getting my hopes up. In three weeks I'd be able to go out in short sleeves. Next summer I'd go to the shore again, and swim and sunbathe just like any other vacationer. And if, one of these days, someone else besides Maude were to show interest.... A poor way to thank the woman who'd taken me as I was at the worst moment of my life, but my own underlying ingratitude reassured me at heart: I took it as proof I wasn't on my way to being an angel.

Two more days went by, and my wings lost two and a half inches. The fifth, sixth, and seventh days my condition stabilized, just as it had for long periods before. Then the eighth day landed like a cleaver on the forehead of a lamb: I'd grown back almost an inch. The next day I grew back another, and the third an inch and a half. That night, when Maude came back from the hospital, I didn't even come out of my office to greet her. She respected my dejection, I must admit, without sharing it. Certain that I'd wind up giving in to her, she didn't insist on examining me. Yet the conflicting hopes we nourished no doubt did their part in digging the chasm that would later divide us.

This relapse—the first in a long series—left me exhausted and bitter. I'd thought I was “healed.” Far from it. I had to face facts: my “disease” was progressing. Or whatever it was—my notion of it remained quite vague. At worst, I was beginning to dread that my misfortune, though still secret, was doomed over time to be obvious to everyone. If my wings kept on growing, the day would inevitably come when I'd no longer be able to hide them beneath tight bandages and a big overcoat. Just how big would they get, anyway? Were they destined to uproot me from the Earth one day in the near or distant future? Even I saw myself as repugnant and laughable, my giant wings keeping me from walking.

One night, with tears in my eyes, I asked Maude to cut them off. She let out an exclamation.

"How hideous! And how misguided! An amputation would be a crime against science. You're unique, you—"

Beside myself, I put a stop to the noble words I knew were coming.

"As a doctor,” I shouted, “all you did was measure my disfigurement from shoulder to phalange! Please, Maude: I'm not asking you to understand, I'm asking you to save me."

She stared at me incredulously. “Save you? By operating on you? Your wings are a gift, an incredible gift—"

"Oh really? For years I've lived completely shut away, I wait for night to go out for some air, I've wasted the best years of my life translating fairy tales—are those gifts? Can you tell me how any of that is a gift? What good are these accessories that weigh me down, itch constantly, and keep me from sleeping on my back?"

An unfamiliar smile spread over Maude's face. We were husband and wife, and I'd seen her happy before, but at that moment she was transfigured. Her eyes shone, and I seemed to hear in her voice what I could only call ardor.

"Patience, my love. You have to wait, take the burden on yourself and bear it all, and one day you'll use those wings to fly!"

"But I don't want to!"

"You don't?"

"Not for all the world! I get dizzy just standing on a stepstool! Don't leave me like this, Maude, I'm begging you: cut them off!"

Her reply came, determined and irrevocable. “Never."

"Then I'll go see someone else. There are plenty of surgeons in the world."

She shrugged. “You wouldn't dare."

She was right. I didn't dare. Many years passed without me ever seeking out another surgeon. I grew old with my wings. At their largest, around my fortieth year, they measured four feet seven inches. Four foot seven! It was pathetic—clearly not enough to save a 170-pound man from Earthly forces. It was, however, enough to slow his fall a bit, if need be. My wings saved my life. Maude and I were on vacation in the Alps. For several months after I'd begged her in vain to cut off my wings, I feared she'd leave me, but she didn't, though we started sleeping in different rooms. I knew I'd let her down. She quite simply no longer believed in me. We carried on an odd relationship, no longer in love but unable to decide what to do next.

For hours we'd been making our way along a steep and sunny mountain path. The August sun had just passed its height, and I was bathed in sweat. Few people know just how hot a pair of wings can make you, especially under a polo shirt. The path led along a deserted ridge. I wound up taking my shirt off. I was walking in front. Without turning to Maude, I fluttered my wings for a moment, congratulating myself aloud for having taken off my shirt. It was delicious: the air ran through my feathers, cooling my back. At the very moment when, overcoming my lifelong fear of the void, I leaned over to see the edelweiss Maude had said she'd spotted, she shouted in my ear, “Fly, damn you!” And sent me hurtling forward with a forceful shove.

My body shattered, I survived a fall that only I could've. Maude understood as much. Since that day, not in order to be forgiven, but out of love (a love grown stronger for having been cast into doubt and confirmed), she has dedicated herself to me, and administers all the care my condition requires with a boundless devotion.

Larry Connolly says he has been busy. He is publishing two books this year: Visions, which collects his science fiction and fantasy stories, and This Way to Egress, which assembles some of his horror fiction. His recent novel Veins has inspired an album's worth of music and you can find this soundtrack at www.VeinsTheNovel.com. Meantime, his next novel, Vipers, is coming along.
"The Others” is a direct sequel to “Daughters of Prime,” which first ran in our July 2007 issue and is reprinted on our Website this month. These stories concern several incarnations of Cara Randall, who has been sent to observe a distant planet with intelligent life.

A predawn downpour pelted the thatch roof, soaking the support beams and seeping down the walls. Aching dampness radiated from the floor, and even the fire, burning in a stone-rimmed pit in the center of the room, seemed to cramp beneath the chill.

Long-Eyes sat before the flames, neck arching from the raised collar of his tunic. He looked like a goose in a loose-fitting robe, but with arms in place of wings. He glanced at the dripping skylight, clucking idly at the drops falling through the smoke. Then he turned, abruptly swinging his head around to look at the damp cloth that hung across the door. “They're coming,” he said, speaking in the native tongue—all clicks and whistles.

"They?” Cara asked, trying to get the inflection right. This was only her third day of using the language without prompts from the orbiting database, and pronouns could be tricky. “Who is coming?"

"The others."

"My sisters?” Cara listened for the sound of approaching rovers but heard only the falling rain and crackling fire. “Are you sure?"

Long-Eyes raised a three-fingered fist, a sign of affirmation. “The first one is already inside the village wall."

Cara stretched her wounded leg and climbed from the bed of dried grass and matted leaves. Her ankle twinged as it took her weight, flexing stiffly.

Long-Eyes turned a dilated ear toward the door. “She is riding faster than the others.” He paused, listening. “Almost here."

Cara heard it now, the hum of an engine racing toward the hut, the splash of a single wheel braking outside the door.

"It is the tall one,” Long-Eyes said. “She is carrying something heavy.” He lowered his face, listened carefully, then added: “She is carrying you to it."

"Carrying me?” Cara asked. “Carrying me to what?"

Long-Eyes sometimes spoke in riddles. Was this one of them, or had she misunderstood?

"Not you to it,” he said, speaking more slowly, letting her hear the glottal tones that trumped word order. “I said that the tall one is bringing something to you. I do not know what it is. But you will see for yourself in a moment. She is almost—"

The damp cloth swung back, sending a misty spray into the hut as Epsilon stepped into view. She carried a full load on her back, a bundle of field supplies that included a spare uniwheel rover in latch-down position. The rover weighed nine kilos. The pack added another two. But Epsilon stood tall, assuming the straight-backed posture that always made her appear larger than she was. “You're up,” she said, lowering her hood. Her face was identical to Cara's: square jaw, narrow cheeks, wide-set eyes. But Cara barely noticed such things. It was the differences that put her on edge.

Epsilon gestured toward Long-Eyes. “Is he still taking care of you?"

"More or less,” Cara said. “Mostly he just keeps me company."

Epsilon stepped away from the door. “I was afraid you might be sleeping."

"Can't sleep,” Cara said.

"Pain keeping you awake? Is it your leg?"

"No. Not really.” Cara stepped into the light, trying to appear strong.

"Your arm, then? Those bandages look loose.” Epsilon rounded the fire, dragging her rover by its control shaft, its single wheel leaving a muddy streak on the clay floor.

Long-Eyes stepped aside, making room.

"I thought I'd wrapped those bandages tighter than that."

"Too tight,” Cara said. “I had to take them off, reapply them on my own. I think—"

Epsilon raised a finger. “One moment.” She cupped her ear and turned away. “Go ahead, Alpha. I'm listening."

Three days earlier, Cara would have listened as well. Now, with her cybernetics down, she waited in silence.

"All right,” Epsilon said. “I'll ask her.” She turned to Cara. “Alpha wants to know if you think the wound's infected."

"No. I gave the burns a good look before replacing the bandages. The scabs appear healthy. No abnormal discharge. And I don't feel warm. I think I'm fine.” She realized that such observations were less reliable than a full-system diagnostic, but they were all she had.

Epsilon nodded. “Guess we'll have to take your word for it.” She unslung the pack from her shoulders, dropped it and the spare rover onto the floor at Cara's feet. “This gear is for you."

Cara frowned. “The rover, too?"

"Yes. Provided you're strong enough to ride it."

"And the pack?"

"It's standard issue: rations, meds, field suit. Alpha transmitted it an hour ago. You need to get out of that native tunic, come back into service."

"But I'm off-line."

"Right, but it's your experience that matters ... provided you can ride."

Two more rovers splashed outside the door.

"Where are we going?” Cara asked.

"I'll tell you, just as soon as—"

The door cover slapped back, making way for Delta and Zeta, each identical to Epsilon in form but different in manner.

Delta's gait conveyed tension as she rounded the fire, turning her head just enough to make eye contact with Cara. We need to talk, the eyes said. But not here. She glanced at Epsilon, then Zeta. Not around them.

Zeta was less guarded. She drew up next to Epsilon, standing close enough to be her shadow. “Everything okay?"

"Yes,” Epsilon said. “She says she can ride. I guess you could have stayed at the base after all."

"No problem,” Zeta said. “I wanted to come.” She peeled back her hood to reveal a fresh abrasion on her forehead: a wide, scabby streak that might have come from a swinging branch, as if at some point she had been following Epsilon too closely through the forest. “Did you tell her what we're doing?"

"Not yet,” Epsilon said, keeping her eyes on Cara. “I want her to start suiting up first."

Cara glanced at the others, reading their expressions, intuiting the reason for their predawn return to the village. “You've found it, haven't you?” she said. “It's the nesting site, isn't it? You've found it."

Delta nodded.

Cara turned away. “Long-Eyes!” She called his name in the native tongue, looking back to where he had been squatting by the fire. “My sisters have—"

Long-Eyes was no longer in the room.

Cara looked toward Delta. “Did he leave?"

Delta shrugged. “I wasn't watching him."

Cara looked toward the door, the cloth cover swaying in the predawn wind.

"Maybe he went to wake the Elders,” Epsilon said. “He probably wants them to know we've come back."

"But I have to tell him—"

"What you have to do is get ready. Alpha's predicting a break in the weather, clear skies at dawn. If you're going to help us, it has to be this morning."

Cara glanced once more at the door, then knelt beside the fresh gear, favoring her wounded leg as she lifted the new rover from its harness. She set it aside and broke the seal on the field pack. The contents were all newly integrated, form-fitted into a near-solid mass of plastic shells and folded fabric. She lifted out one of the latter, a compressed cybernetic unitard. “What I need is information.” She set the unitard on the floor and removed her tunic. Her skin, imprinted with cybernetic conductors, flashed in the firelight. “Tell me about the nests. Where are they?"

"Eastern shore,” Epsilon said. “There's a ledge overhanging the sea. The wall beneath it is honeycombed with caves. Access is through a pit that opens near the edge of the forest. I climbed down it yesterday morning. The fang-claws are there. Hundred of them. When the young hatch they'll be thousands."

"X-eeÑa,” Cara muttered, using the native name for the animals. Pronounced as a glottal click followed by a nasalized whistle, the name could be tonally inflected to be either singular or plural. Roughly translated, it meant fang-claw. Like most native words and names, it was aptly descriptive. “Thousands of X-eeÑa?"

"They'll decimate the island,” Epsilon said. “It'll set the mission back a year if we don't do something."

Cara unfolded the unitard, opened its dorsal seam to reveal a lining embroidered with microcircuitry. “You've got a plan for dealing with thousands of those things?"

"I do.” Epsilon turned to Delta. “Show her the markers."

Delta unslung a field pack from her shoulders, reached inside, and pulled out four transmitters, each mounted to a spring-loaded rock anchor.

"Delta's going to mark the target with those,” Epsilon said. “Then the two of you are going to stay on site, making sure the target stays marked until Zeta takes out the nests."

Delta returned the transmitters to her pack. “You get the picture?"

Cara's mind raced, putting the details together, filling in the blanks as she slipped her arms and legs into the unitard. “You're talking about using the lander, aren't you?” The unitard's lining tingled as it slid along her skin. For a moment she thought she felt the rush of cybernetic current, the heat of her personal system powering on, but it was only the residual warmth of the fabric, still fresh from integration. Her circuits remained dead. The unitard would keep her warm and dry, but her senses would remain off-line. “You're going to crash the lander into the nests?"

Delta grinned at Epsilon. “I told you she'd figure it out. She might be off-line, but she's still one of us."

Cara frowned. “Let me get this straight—"

"You're getting it just fine,” Zeta said, furrows forming behind the scratches on her brow. “We've moved the lander's remaining fuel into the forward tanks and primed it to ignite after I power-dive into the nests. The collapsing fuselage will seal the opening, forcing the energy down into the caves.” She spoke softly but forcefully, with the stoicism of a disposable fieldworker, someone trained to serve a brief term on the planet before yielding to a freshly integrated copy from the orbiter's digital files. That was the way things were supposed to work: one fieldworker at a time. “When it's all over,” Zeta said, “the mission goes back to following protocol."

"You're saying all but one of us will be retiring this morning?"

"It makes sense,” Epsilon said. “There'll be no need for multiples once we take out the nests."

"So it'll be you, then?” Cara said, speaking to Epsilon. “The rest of us retire. You continue the mission. May I ask who made that decision?"

"No one.” Epsilon extended a hand to help Cara to her feet. “We drew lots back at base camp."

"The luck of the draw?"

"No. Not luck. Duty. This mission was never about a single worker.” She squeezed Cara's hand, but the pressure was anything but reassuring. “We're all in this together ... and we're all expendable. You know that, Gamma."

Cara winced. Gamma. She wasn't used to hearing that name spoken aloud, but there it was, her sequential designation, the label that identified her as one in a series of identical fieldworkers, each transmitted from the orbiter to the base camp's integration chamber.

"Something wrong?” Epsilon asked.

Before the additional fieldworkers had arrived, Cara had found it easy to think of herself as unique. But now—in the presence of Caras Delta, Epsilon, and Zeta—everything was changing.

"You look tense,” Epsilon said.

"It's nothing.” Cara reached down with her good arm and lifted the field pack from the floor. “Just a little stiff, is all. I'll be fine.” She didn't dare say otherwise. Among the field-pack's standard-issue supplies was a retirement kit containing a lethal dose of morphine sulfate. Any fieldworker who found herself unable to advance the mission was expected to inject that dose, retire herself, and make room for a replacement.

Epsilon was right about one thing. Retiring in action would be better than overdosing on a bed of matted leaves.

"So you want me and Delta to stay on site, make sure nothing comes along to dislodge those markers?"

"That's right,” Epsilon said. “But the local wildlife tends to steer clear of the nests, and most of the fang-claws will already be underground after sunrise. At most, you'll only have to worry about a straggler or two."

"In which case, you'll want me to distract them."

Epsilon shrugged. “Nothing you haven't done before.” She grinned. “You know their moves. You wrangled one and lived to tell about it.” Her grin broadened. “But this time staying alive isn't a concern. The stragglers can catch you once Zeta locks in on the signal."

Cara nodded, turned away, and reached into the pack once again, this time lifting out a field jacket and a pair of lightweight boots. She put them on, then realized she might be needing one more thing before the morning ended.

The pack's medical compartment held a mix of supplies—some chemical based, others cybernetic. Among the latter was a piece of hardware known innocuously as a dorsal plug. Sealed in a hard-shell container and emblazoned with a code-red label, the plug was as potentially lethal as a dose of morphine. “I might need this,” Cara said, slipping the case into her pocket.

Epsilon frowned. “I thought you said you were feeling better."

"I am.” She lifted the field pack over her shoulders. “Better than I was.” She tightened the straps and picked up the rover. It was still in latch-down position: riding shaft collapsed into the chassis, wheel locked on its gyro-balanced hub. She held the handgrip, extending the shaft and freeing the wheel with a swing of her arm. “I'm ready.” She turned to the door, realizing as she did that she no longer heard the patter of rain. The room seemed oddly still. “Maybe we should find Long-Eyes, tell him the plan."

Epsilon glanced left, checking her in-eye clock. “No time,” she said. “You need to go."

"But the Elders will want to—"

"I'll take care of the Elders,” Epsilon said. “This is my post now.” She stepped toward the fire, making a show of warming her hands over the flames. “The database will prompt me with the language. Alpha will advise me on the customs.” She spoke with the authority of one who had already claimed the field as her own.

Not like me, Cara thought. My face, my body, my training—but the arrogance is all hers.

"Something wrong?” Epsilon asked.

Delta rounded the fire, stepping toward Cara. “We need to go,” she said, her eyes once again conveying the dark weight of things unsaid. “The nests won't keep. We do this now or not at all."

Epsilon grinned. “You need to trust me.” The flames played across her face, pooling in the hollows of her cheeks. “Trust me, Gamma.” She turned away. “It should be as easy as trusting yourself."

A palisade wall surrounded the village. Within it stood a mass of densely packed huts interspersed with dirt trails and clay courtyards. At the center of everything, on a rounded hump of land, a great hall spewed smoke from dormer vents.

"Something's going on,” Cara said. “They're lighting fires, getting ready for something."

Zeta nodded. “So are we.” She mounted her rover and took off toward the palisade.

Cara and Delta followed, their running lights cutting the predawn darkness.

The villagers seldom left their huts before sunrise, especially during the cool, rainy mornings that followed the harvest. Still, Cara couldn't shake the impression that the hovels looked unoccupied: no billowing smoke, no faces peering from cloth-draped doors as the rovers raced by. She wondered if everyone had gone to the great hall, leaving their homes as abruptly as Long-Eyes had left his—the entire village responding to some unspoken cue to convene with the Elders. She shivered, realizing yet again how much there was to learn about these people....

The path remained clear until they reached the palisade. Here they found the resident gatekeeper standing beneath a thatch awning. The villagers called him Always-Ready.

Cara waved to him as they approached, giving him the formal greeting: a clenched fist with the thumb tucked beneath the fingers.

He returned the gesture, hunched his neck, and walked out to where a sliding gate rested in wooden runners.

"The huts are quiet this morning,” Cara said.

Always-Ready lowered his fist and reached for the gate.

"They're lighting fires in the great hall. Is something—” Her words gave way to the rasp of the gate sliding in its runners, moving back to reveal a narrow pass between overlapping sections of wall.

Zeta and Delta rode through.

Cara held back a moment. She considered asking Always-Ready for more information, but he seemed anxious for her to leave, as if he had something to do ... someplace to be. She raised her fist and leaned on her control shaft, speeding out onto the harvested field that stretched between the palisade and the tall, dark face of the surrounding forest.

The rain had stopped, but low clouds still churned overhead, flickering with lightning, riding a stiff wind toward the eastern shore. And there was something else, a strange glow flashing above a familiar sheer-walled mountain to the northeast.

The mission's base camp occupied a ledge near the top of that mountain, hidden in a clearing behind cliff-side trees and camouflage netting. Until three days ago, the camp had been Cara's home. She had worked there alone, studying the village, eavesdropping with powerful microphones, learning the ways of the natives. Through it all, she had been careful to keep the camp dark. Evidently, her sisters no longer considered that a concern.

"What's going on up there?” Cara asked.

"Modifications to the lander,” Delta said. “Epsilon had Alpha send us another worker."

"Eta?"

"That's right. Integrated yesterday afternoon. She's up there now, getting things ready. When she's done, she'll serve as Zeta's copilot."

"Two in the cockpit?” Cara tried picturing that. The lander, designed for the sole purpose of ferrying the mission's integration chamber from the orbiter, had a cockpit barely large enough for a single pilot.

"We've modified the design,” Delta said. “Taken out some hardware, made room. Crashing the lander means flying with the higher functions disengaged. No fail-safes. No autopilot. Epsilon says that kind of flying is going to take two pilots."

"Epsilon says a lot of things, doesn't she?"

Delta leaned forward, speeding away as if she hadn't heard the comment, hurrying after Zeta who had already reached the wall of trees.

The forest rang with invertebrate songs—the whistles of worms, squids, and carrion moths—all clearing the way as the uniwheels hurtled forward.

The sisters rode together until Zeta's course veered toward base camp. After that, Cara and Delta continued on, finally slowing their pace near the remnants of a deserted village. Here the forest became a riot of creepers, vines, and weeds—all contending for dominance among a jumble of leaning poles. But something had recently cut through the site, leaving a wide swath of sheared-off stubble that glistened with the mucus of grazing pseudopods.

Delta followed the stubble, wheeling along a curve of rising ground to pause beside the doorframe of a fallen hall. Cara pulled alongside her, looking east to where the trail widened along a stretch of level ground, finally ending at a stand of trees. And there, at trail's end, a line of grassy hillocks rose from a band of silver mist.

"Snails?” Delta pointed toward the hillocks. “That's what they are, right? Giant snails."

Cara nodded. “The villagers call them moving-hills. You've seen them before?"

"A couple times. At first we thought they were natural formations."

"It's the camouflage. They cover their shells with grass and moss, glue it on with spit that hardens like glass.” Cara raised a hand, showing a scar on her thumb. “I touched one once. Not a good idea."

"What about going through them?” Delta asked. “Because that's the direction we need to go.” She pointed toward a section of forest beyond the center of the herd. “Can we do that? Is it safe?"

"Safe enough if we don't startle them,” Cara said. “When they sense danger they close ranks, lock shells, stay that way until the threat passes."

"Should we go on foot?"

"That'd be my suggestion, provided we have time."

Delta looked left, consulting her in-eye display. “I planned on stopping here anyway, waiting a few minutes before moving on.” She stepped from her rover. “If we start walking now, we'll be fine.” She pushed her riding shaft into the chassis, latched it down, and fastened the collapsed rover into her shoulder harness. Then she turned away, cupped her ear, and spoke to the orbiter. “Alpha, I need five minutes off-line.” A pause, and then: “Yes, Alpha. Right now. I'm taking five minutes.” Then she blinked, straightened up, and looked at Cara. “We need to talk.” She started walking. “It's about Epsilon. I've got concerns. I need to know if you share them.” She drew closer to Cara, speaking softly as they entered a band of mist at the foot of the rise. “We've got five minutes, Sister. Talk to me."

Cara frowned. “You want to know if I have concerns about Epsilon taking over the mission?” Her voice sounded flat within the mist, more like thoughts than spoken words. “I guess I don't feel all that good about it. I mean, she doesn't seem to have the temperament for fieldwork ... and she's not particularly good with the villagers. Long-Eyes calls her ‘the tall one.’ Did you know that? He thinks she's prideful."

"So even Long-Eyes sees it?"

"I think so."

"So that's three opinions,” Delta said. “All agreeing that Epsilon is different."

Cara winced.

"Something wrong?"

"Maybe.” Cara sighed. “Listen ... it might be easier if I didn't say this, but we need to consider it.” She turned toward Delta, looking into eyes that were partly her own, partly those of a stranger. “What if it isn't just Epsilon who's different? What if it's all of us?"

"I don't follow."

"No? Surely you've noticed we're not identical. Maybe we were at first. At the moment of integration we were perfect copies of Cara Prime, but working together has changed us. To function within our group, each of us has assumed a role. You turned quiet, secretive. Zeta became a devoted follower. Epsilon became—"

"Arrogant and devious."

"That's harsh."

"It's true."

"Maybe. You've been with her since she integrated. I'm sure you know her better than I."

"That's right. I've seen things. Did you know she rigged the drawing we did back at base camp? She hid the short straw in her palm. I saw her do it. I would have said something then, but I figured it best to play along: deal with the nests, then deal with her."

"You saw her palm the straw?"

"I did. And I don't think behavior like that has anything to do with healthy social order. Her differences are deeper than ours, more troubling. What do you think?"

"What do I think?” Cara slowed her pace, lowering her voice as she and Delta moved among the grazing snails. “I think you're begging the question, that you want me to say that Epsilon's differences are ingrained, that perhaps something went wrong during her transmission from the orbiter's data files."

"All right,” Delta said. “You think that's possible?"

Cara shrugged. “Maybe. It might be, but the odds are against it."

"Forget the odds,” Delta said. “Consider the evidence. You see it and I see it.” She stepped ahead of Cara, moving away from a pivoting snail.

Cara moved with her. “You need to talk to Alpha about this, not me."

"I plan to,” Delta said. “But not yet. We have work to do. I'll talk to Alpha after we place the markers. Then, once the nests are gone, I'll head back to the village.” Her expression turned stern in the moonlight. “I have no intention of retiring, Sister. I'll leave you on site and tell Alpha I need a private link, just her and me."

"That's going to make Epsilon suspicious."

"There's no preventing that. The important thing is that Alpha hears our concerns."

"They are your concerns, Sister."

"And yours, too. And those of Long-Eyes. You've just confirmed it. Epsilon's not fit to assume control of the field. And I'm thinking maybe Alpha's got the same suspicions. When I lay it out, she'll understand."

"And then what? You'll go back to the village? Confront Epsilon?"

"That's right, confront her and hope she listens to reason. Best-case scenario, she retires voluntarily and leaves me in charge."

"And worst case?"

"That could be—” Delta flinched, averting her eyes, looking left. “Yes ... yes, Alpha. I'm here.” Delta stopped walking. “Say again, Alpha. Are you sure?"

Cara looked up, noticing a clear patch of sky overhead. The orbiter hung at zenith, a bright speck among the predawn stars.

"Show it to me, Alpha.” Delta's gaze turned inward. “Show me what you're seeing."

Cara heard something moving behind them: a shifting of the forest canopy, the rhythmic thump of heavy footsteps.

"Delta,” Cara said. “We should—"

Delta raised a hand, gesturing for Cara to wait a moment. “Show me infrared, Alpha. Zoom in."

The thumping grew louder, reverberating through the ground, alarming the snails.

Cara turned in place, shifting on her good leg, looking back at the forest behind them.

"All right,” Delta said, glancing down, still focusing on the view from the orbiter. “I see it! I'll tell Gamma!” Then she turned, blinking to clear the in-eye image.

But Cara didn't need to be told. She already saw it for herself. Fifty meters behind them, above the jagged backs of the snails, a cloud of flying slugs jetted from high branches on the edge of the field. A moment later, a head emerged from the trees, three meters above the ground, staring at Cara with cold, milky eyes. It was one of the fang-claws, a straggler returning from the central forest.

"What now?” Delta asked.

The fang-claw reared back, brushing the trees with its reptilian head. But unlike a reptile, it had no lower jaw. Instead, a pair of arms sprouted from the base of its skull, thrusting forward along the face so that the claws curved like fangs across the snout: fang-claws.

"What now?” Delta asked again, reaching for her rover. “Do we ride out of here?"

The snails were closing in.

"No,” Cara said. “Hold your ground.” She flexed her knees, hoping her bad leg wouldn't fail. “We have to climb."

"Climb?” Delta turned in place. “The shells?"

"Get on top, but watch out for those jags."

The glass-like projections flashed in the moonlight, poking from tufts of camouflaging grass and moss.

"Climb!” Cara pointed. “That one! Go!"

Delta responded, scuttling up along one of the shells as Cara turned to find herself standing a step away from a pair of pulsing eyestalks. She pivoted on her bad leg, dodging the sweeping arc of the snail's razor-sharp tongue. The snails were still feeding, scraping up anything that came in reach. Flesh or grass, it was all the same to them.

Cara sidestepped, away from the snail's head, toward the grass-covered spiral at the side of its shell. Then she climbed, pulling herself up, reaching the top as the phalanx closed. Shells collided. She felt the impact through her hands and knees: hollow thumps followed by the grind of meshing jags.

Delta knelt a few meters away, hands bleeding, eyes going wide as two more fang-claws emerged from the trees. They came up behind the first, then the three of them raced forward, approached like wingless birds: bodies cantilevered across pulsing hips, heads counterbalanced by ridged tails.

"Find the center,” Cara said, looking along the shells. “There!” She pointed. “Go there!"

Delta stood and started running, bounding across the shells. The closest fang-claw tracked her, head swinging like a derrick, mandible arms spreading wide, exposing the toothless mouth at the top of its throat.

"Stay put,” Cara shouted. “You're out of reach. Just stay—"

Something moved to Cara's left, a second fang-claw reaching for her, talons splayed. She leaped back, rolled, and dropped into a gap between shifting shells. The talons clicked above her, closed on empty air, and drew away.

Delta called to her, voice shrilling.

Cara didn't answer. It was all she could do to cling to the jags, fingers slipping as blood bubbled from her palms, cuts deepening as she pulled herself up to peer across the shells.

The fang-claws circled, focusing on Delta.

"Hold on!” Cara unslung her harness, removed her rover. “You brought me along to wrangle these animals.” She crouched, ready to sprint along the shells. “Here goes.” She took off, powered by panic and adrenaline.

The fang-claws pivoted, tracking her as she leaped toward the ground, landed on her good foot, and yanked her rover out of latch-down. Then she mounted the pedals, snapped on her headlamp, and took off so fast that she nearly overpowered the stabilizers. Gyros whined, correcting her balance as she hurtled along at a forty-degree angle, wheeling away in a tight arc that carried her back toward the nearest fang-claw.

The animal's eyes flashed in her headlamp, then went dark as she shot between its hips. Clawed feet shifted, turning, nearly clipping her before she sailed out beneath a swinging tail. A moment later she was racing away, crashing through grass that whipped around her knees. The forest lay dead ahead, a dark wall of trunks and leaves. Above her, a school of flying squids reeled in jetting arcs, flocking toward high branches to await the inevitable kill....

Cara cut her speed and turned to see Delta stumbling atop the shells. But the snails kept shifting beneath her. She lost balance and fell—first to her knees, then to her hands, and then sideways to vanish between the shells.

"Delta!” Cara raced back through the high grass, watching the locked phalanx of shells until a hand emerged, bloody and groping, climbing up along the jags. A moment later Delta was back on top, crawling now, slicing open the legs of her unitard as she reached the outer edge of the herd. Then she fell, slammed the ground, and tried getting up. She almost made it, rising on one foot, but falling again when she tried putting her weight on a leg that now ended in a bloody stump. One of the snails had taken her foot.

The fang-claws raced toward her, converging so fast that Cara barely made it past them in time to grab Delta by her shoulder pack. She held on, riding full throttle, trying to drag Delta clear as the beasts closed in.

Something popped, the sensation reverberating through Cara's wrist like a snapping tendon, and suddenly she was moving faster, overtaxing the gyros and crashing into a sideways skid. She looked up, expecting to see one of the fang-claws reaching for her. But the animals weren't there. Nor was Delta. The pop she had felt was the pack's straps letting go. She had dragged the pack to safety. Delta had remained among the fang-claws.

Across the field, the animals fed, heads together, tails waving in the air until one turned away. A piece of field jacket fluttered like a tattered flag from its mandible claws. An instant later the beast was running, coming toward Cara as she got up, lashed Delta's battered pack across her shoulders, and accelerated out of the field and into the forest.

The ground angled downward. She took the descent at full speed, crashing onto a level stretch that might have been the remnants of an ancient road. Here, still riding full tilt, she unclipped the rover's headlamp and held it high, letting the fang-claw fix on it. She didn't look back. Didn't need to. She felt its head looming behind her, angling forward, closing for the kill....

She threw the lamp and pulled her feet from the pedals. The light shot away, streaking like a meteor as her rover's gyros cut out. She crashed to the ground. The animal kept moving, following the streak as it curved into a stand of weeds. She waited until she heard the animal thrashing through the leaves, digging for the light. Then she got up, leaped onto the rover, and rode into darkness.

Dawn broke in the distance, appearing as an indigo haze beyond the trees. She rode toward it, bracing herself against the control shaft as the aching thunder of her wounded leg, bandaged arm, and lacerated hands intensified. She needed to rest. “Soon,” she told herself, and kept moving.

The ground angled upward. She followed it, accelerating until a ledge came into view beyond a stand of ferns. And then, too late, she saw the pit.

She pulled back, trying to stop as her wheel skidded over the edge. Gyros whined, cutting out as she slipped into empty air. Nerves took over. She released the shaft, threw out her arms, and spun around to grab the edge of the hole. Her hands slapped hard against the rock. She stopped with a jolt, chest and knees slamming the pit wall. Something popped in her shoulder, but she held on, legs dangling as her rover landed below her with an echoing thump. She looked down. Saw nothing. Only darkness. The rover was lost. She couldn't get it back. What mattered now was climbing out of the pit and back onto level ground.

The pack that she had taken from Delta shifted on her back, dangling from where she had lashed it to her rover's harness. The weight put her off balance, and her hands kept sliding on the shale, leaving bloody streaks until her fingers grabbed a break in the rock. She pulled ... a moment later she was crawling ... a moment after that she was facedown amid the ferns, panting, too weak to move.

She slipped both packs from her shoulders and tried sitting up. No good. The best she could do was prop herself on a throbbing elbow.

Something sharp dug into her hip. It was the hard-shell case, the one she had placed in her pocket before leaving the village.

"Get it out,” she muttered. “Use it."

On the back of her neck, beneath the no-longer-functioning transmitter in the base of her skull, a pressure-release cover protected a slot in her C-3 vertebrae. Her good arm twinged as she reached for the cover, pinched it, and pulled it free. It slipped from her fingers, falling down into the bed of ferns. She didn't bother looking for it. Odds were she'd never need it again.

Then she pulled the case from her pocket and broke its code-red seal. Inside lay a dorsal plug, dermal pad, and wristband monitor. She hesitated, wondering one last time if she could get through the next quarter hour without using them. Perhaps she should try standing, take a few steps, see if things loosened up. But her back flared as she moved. “I'm wasting time.” She looked at the contents of the open case. “Just do it!"

She picked up the plug, careful not to touch its gold-plated end. Then, using one arm to steady the other, she inserted the plug into the slot.

Next she took the dermal pad, pinched it to activate the adhesions, and pressed it into place over the plug.

The monitor came last. She lifted it from the case, wrapped it around her wrist, and remotely activated the plug by pressing a sensor on the monitor's side. Relief came at once, washing over her so fast that she fell sideways, landing hard on her bad arm. She felt the impact, sensed the cold hardness of the ground, but not the pain of collision.

All pain was gone.

She was halfway there.

Among her pack's cache of chemical meds was an injector with a code-orange seal. She pulled it out, uncapped it with her teeth, and jammed the needle into her thigh.

Then she waited, giving the first wave of time-release catecholamines time to burn through her, holding herself steady as exhaustion yielded to a rush of power. She leaned forward, hugging her knees, holding herself in place as she considered the dangers of what she had just done to herself. Energized and freed from pain, she could now harm her body in ways that would have been impossible a few moments earlier. Muscles and bones could now be pushed to catastrophic failure. She would need to be careful, keep her eyes on the wristband monitor, and remember that her euphoric sense of power had nothing to do with her true condition.

She stood up and turned in place among the ferns. Her knee popped painlessly as she gave it her weight. Bones shifted in her lower back. Nevertheless, she was ready.

Delta's pack lay at her feet. She opened it, pulled out the markers, and jammed the first one into the rim. Her shoulder creaked. She kept moving, placing the other markers, realizing that she could now see her rover lying in the bottom of the pit. A few minutes ago it had landed in darkness. Now it lay in a pool of golden light.

She crouched on the edge. The glow looked like sunlight, but the sun was still too low on the horizon to be shining into the pit. The light had to be coming from another source—from a cave that opened on the seawall below the ledge.

And if that light came from a cave, and if she climbed into it, she would probably be able to glimpse the nests.

Her thoughts raced.

Somewhere, deep inside herself, in a dark space that still lurked beneath her catecholamine-induced high, she feared her newfound sense of reckless courage. A few moments ago she had nearly fallen into the pit. Now she believed she could climb to its floor and back again. And why not? There were plenty of handholds among the rocks. And even if the climb entailed risk, the fact remained that there were at least three fang-claws in the forest. If they arrived before the lander, she'd find it hard to wrangle them without a uniwheel.

She turned, pulled the rover's harness from the back of her field pack, and strapped it over her shoulders. Then she returned to the pit, gripped the edge, and started down.

A moment later she entered the glow. It was indeed sunlight, warming her as she turned to find herself peering through the oval entrance of a long, funneling cave. The sun was there, rising out of the ocean, shining through a break in the seawall.

She shielded her eyes and looked at the sides of the cave. The walls seemed to be covered with blisters, translucent sores that quivered in the light. She moved closer, her eyes adjusting. The blisters were gelatinous sacks, hammock-like nests full of twisting shadows. The young had hatched.

And all through the cave, moving like giant birds, the adults went about the business of tending the nests and feeding the young. Some worked at repairing the sacks, reinforcing them with saliva that they drew into threads with their mandible hands. These saliva weavers were smaller and grayer than the hunters, with fingers that ended in pads rather than claws.

And the hunters worked too, disgorging meat that they dangled above the nests, encouraging the young to leap and grab....

The hatchlings were strong, agile, perhaps only days away from leaving the nests.

Cara grabbed the rover, latched it down, and lashed it to the harness. Then she climbed out, her legs and hips stiffening by the time she reached the top. She checked the monitor on her wrist, flinched, and looked away. Something was wrong with her lower back. A pulled muscle? A cramp? The bar graphs didn't specify. They merely showed that the pain was nearly off the chart. Now that she had the rover, the best thing to do would be to sit and wait, rest her limbs until one of the fang-claws arrived ... or until the lander came to blast her into retirement.

But she couldn't rest, not with the catecholamines coursing through her. She was buzzing. She needed to move.

Turning toward the sound of crashing waves, she walked along the ledge until sandstone gave way to misting air. Looking straight down, she realized the extent to which the ledge overhung the wall beneath. Even leaning out as far as she dared, she could not see the vertical face below.

To her left, however, the view was different. There the slope of a partially collapsed wall curved beyond a narrow channel of mist and waves. Weeds grew along the slope, angling down to a hanging forest of windswept trees about thirty meters below.

Nowhere on the adjacent mass of rock were there signs of caves like the ones that riddled the wall beneath her. Was it possible that the X-eeÑa nests were to be found only in one place on the entire island? Long-Eyes had assured her that it was so. But why? And where did the X-eeÑa come from? And where did they go when their spawning period ended? So many questions. So much to learn.

"I want to learn it,” she said, speaking aloud, almost shouting.

The pounding surf shouted back, echoing up from the inlet between the seawalls.

"I'm still capable,” she said, speaking louder. “I know this island. I know its people. They know me.” Her mind raced. Perhaps she should walk some more, burn off the endorphins. But she stayed put, her thoughts flashing to things Delta had said about Epsilon. A moment later, she came to a conclusion that crashed louder than the waves: “I have to go back!"

Echoes thundered in the narrow inlet, rising between the seawalls, reverberating through her. She lifted her face to the orbiter, its amorphous hull appearing as a point of fading light in the brightening sky. “I need to go back!” She exaggerated the words, enunciating them in hopes that Alpha might read them on her lips. “Tell Epsilon. Tell her I'm not retiring. I need to talk to her, and you need to listen in."

There had been times, before the age of cybernetics, when people had carried handheld communicators. In those days, hardware, not people, had been expendable. When a device failed, it was discarded for a new one. Life was easier, simpler. Perhaps, if Alpha transmitted the parts, Cara could assemble an external communicator that would enable her to resume control of the mission—provided she had not by then damaged her body beyond repair.

She glanced at her wrist. Pain had spread to her good leg. What did that mean? Nerve damage? And if that were the case, could she even make it back to the village? “I'll take it slow,” she said, resolving to head into the forest and keep watch from there. That way, when the lander arrived, she would be clear of the blast. It was a good plan, but again she hesitated, realizing deep inside herself—at a level beneath her energized confidence—that she was in no condition to make such a plan. “I need to stay the course,” she muttered, not believing a word of it.

Behind her, a shrill whistle rose from the trees, the sound of squids jetting from high branches. Their bodies shimmered in the sunlight, banking overhead, gliding down to the hanging forest on the adjacent wall. They flew like arrows, piercing the treetops, vanishing beneath the leaves. She recognized the behavior. Danger was coming. She heard it, too. The predators that had killed Delta were returning home. And something else. Another sound from farther away. She cocked her head, listening.

"The lander!"

She unslung her rover, extended the riding shaft, and mounted the pedals as the first fang-claw emerged from the forest. Sun struck its face, reflecting in its eyes. She suspected it was the one that had chased her into the forest. But it looked different. Sunlight revealed sagging skin, scarred flanks, and broken claws that had not been visible in the darkness. And its eyes looked dead, milky with cataracts, thickened with age. She wondered if this old male had a nest to care for in the caves below. Or did it live alone, going through the motions of a life that no longer mattered?

She rolled toward it.

The animal stopped, watching her as its two companions appeared behind it.

She accelerated, jumped the pit, and kept moving—weaving between their legs as she headed for the forest.

They turned with her, crashing together, giving chase.

She would lead them into the trees and lose them there. They would survive the explosion, but that wasn't a problem. A few confirmed survivors would work to her benefit once she returned to the village. She was the X-eeÑa wrangler, the person who knew their moves better than anyone, the logical choice for assuming control of the mission.

The plan flashed through her. It felt like destiny. But then an animal leaped in front of her, cutting her off. She changed course. Another animal came at her. She swerved again. Claws swung. She ducked and turned once more, and suddenly she was racing out along the southeastern side of the ledge—the side that rose above the hanging forest of gnarled trees.

The animals followed.

The lander roared closer, changing pitch, entering its dive.

She pogoed, throwing her weight upward and spinning through a 180-degree turn. Her wheel smoked as it hurtled her back the way she had come, but this time one of the fang-claws caught her, clipping her with a swinging leg and throwing her sideways—first across level rock, then out into empty air.

She flew over the inlet, arcing down to crash into cliff-side weeds on the adjacent wall. Then she slid down to where the slope ended above the hanging forest. Leaves spread beneath her. She struck them hard, crashing through. Boughs snapped. Or was it bones? She rolled, grabbing at branches, finally holding on to one as the lander hit its mark. She felt the explosion more than heard it, a deep concussive shifting in her bones. She gripped the tree, looked toward the adjacent seawall, and waited for the landslide....

Nothing happened.

Something had gone wrong.

She scuttled back along the branch, then down the trunk to level ground. In that instant, as she collapsed among the cliff-side trees, the lander finally exploded.

The wall shivered. Dust flew from the caves, followed by swarming animals who raced out along the vertical rock. She watched them, amazed by their movements—as agile on the vertical wall as they were on level ground. And then, with a roar loud enough to drive her breath from her lungs, the wall calved, belched dust, and folded into the sea. And when the air stopped ringing, when the haze of airborne grit gave way to cleansing mist, she found herself looking down toward the remnants of the fallen wall. Dark shapes lay amid the rubble. On one of the rocks, a hatchling stood on spindly legs, stretching mandible arms toward empty sky.

Cara's legs finally failed as she neared the village. Her back cracked a final time, and she went down, falling onto a wedge of sloping ground.

Then she crawled.

The village came into view, dark beneath heavy clouds. Thunder roared, reverberating as a figure emerged from the gate. It waddled like a goose in a knee-length tunic.

It was Long-Eyes.

He was alone.

She reached for him. “The tall one?” she asked, garbling the words. “I need to see her."

He cocked his head. “The other?” he said. “You are asking about the one you left behind?"

She raised her fist.

"In the great hall,” he said. “I will bring you to her.” He gripped her arm, swung it around his shoulders, and started walking.

"The X-eeÑa,” she said. “They're gone ... maybe not all of them ... but enough. You'll be safe now."

"We know,” he said, holding her tighter as they slipped through the gate, past rows of silent huts, and toward the sound of chanting voices.

"Everyone is in the great hall,” Long-Eyes said. “We received the signal before dawn, when you were meeting with your sisters.” He swung his long neck around, looking deep into her eyes. “The signal came from X-ah."

He pronounced the last word as a glottal click followed by a breathy sigh. A simple enough word, but one that Cara had not yet been able to translate. It seemed to refer to some kind of higher power, probably a deity, possibly a kind of collective consciousness.

They walked on, following a muddy trail until the great hall appeared before them, smoke rising from roof vents, voices chanting within. She tried making out the words, and realized she was hearing a single word being chanted over and over—the same word that Long-Eyes had just spoken: X-ah!

Higher power ... deity ... collective consciousness?

The entrance to the great hall lay through a passage that curved back on itself before opening into a wide fire-lit room. The air reeked of burning wood, boiled meat, and steeping tea. The latter produced a strong narcotic effect that would serve her well when her dorsal plug stopped functioning. For now, however, she resolved to have none of it. She would need her wits when she confronted Epsilon.

The crowd parted as Long-Eyes led her through the center of the hall, toward a raised dais that held a wooden chair, its height and depth contoured to accommodate the human form. Colored stones adorned its sides. Atop its backrest, a bright jewel flashed in the firelight.

Was it Epsilon's chair? Her throne? Cara shivered. “What has she done?” She spoke the question in her own language, muttering it aloud as if addressing Alpha. And then she blacked out.

A three-fingered hand gripped the back of her head, lifting her up, pressing her lips to a steaming bowl.

"No!” Cara pulled back. “No tea!" She opened her eyes to see Long-Eyes staring at her.

"It is not tea.” He pushed the bowl toward her, letting her smell the brothy steam. “You're weak,” he said. “You need this. You—"

She didn't need to be told again. Instinct took over. She was famished. She drank, gripping the bowl.

"You haven't eaten since last night, and then hardly anything at all. You need your strength."

She finished and eased back, realizing that a figure now sat in the jeweled chair. Cara glimpsed an embroidered shoulder, the edge of a tall form in an ornate robe.

"I need to talk to her,” Cara said. “Take me to her ... now ... please. Take me to her!"

Long-Eyes arched his neck, a sign of confusion. “Take you? What do you mean?"

"You said you would take me to her."

"No.” He gripped her hands, pulling her to her feet. “I never said that.” He stepped aside, giving her a clear view of the gleaming chair and the robe she had glimpsed earlier. But Epsilon was not wearing the robe. No one was. Its broad shoulders draped the back of the chair. Its sides hung open, waiting.

It dawned on her then. She grabbed Long-Eyes’ arm, holding on. “What did you say?” She squeezed his hand. “In the field, what did you tell me? Say it slowly."

He did, and this time she heard it—the glottal declension that trumped word order.

Her gut knotted, heaving weakly, producing only a dry cough as two strong-armed males pulled her to her feet.

"I brought her to you,” Long-Eyes said. “And now she is being brought to everyone."

Looking around the great hall, Cara saw bowls being passed hand to hand.

"It is a wondrous morning,” Long-Eyes said. “You die but live. We consume you, and yet you remain. You consume yourself ... and become stronger."

Cara glanced at the bowl in her hand.

Long-Eyes stepped back, raising his voice. “The great champion. The immortal champion!” He held the bowl higher. “X-aha ö X-ooh ee-ö X-ah!"

The final exclamation went through her like a thunderbolt.

"X-aha ö X-ooh ee-ö X-ah!"

The first word wasn't a native word. It was her name rendered in native phonemes: X-aha. In sound and tone, it was nearly identical to the final word in Long-Eyes's statement, the elusive X-ah.

The crowd chanted it with him, louder, stirring the smoky air as they walked Cara toward the robe-draped throne.

"Cara!” they chanted. “Cara the champion from X-ah!"

"You can't do this!” She dug in her heels, trying to stop them from leading her onto the dais. “My commander won't let this happen.” There was no native word for commander, so she spoke it in her own language, the strange consonants reverberating like a feral roar.

How could she explain to these people what would happen now? They stood no chance of grasping it. And yet it was real, as real as the force that had blasted the X-eeÑa into the sea.

Alpha would now have no recourse but to transmit a new Cara—Cara Theta, eighth integration of Cara Prime. But unlike the others, Theta would never set foot in the village. She would remain at base camp, studying from the safety of that sheer-walled mountain.

"Do you realize what you've done?” Cara roared. “You've destroyed a great opportunity."

"No,” Long-Eyes said, leaning close as she mounted the dais. He peered into her eyes, gazing deep as if reading her thoughts. “No more Caras will come. You are the last.” He backed away, gesturing toward the glowing jewel atop the throne.

She blinked at it, noting how it caught the firelight, reflecting the flames on its mirrored surface.

"Our X-ah told us where to find it,” he said. “We climbed the steep mountain after your sisters flew away. We took it and brought it here. For you. For all of us.” He lifted the robe from the chair. “Please trust us, Cara. Believe in us. It is better that way."

She felt herself moving again, yielding to the hands that gripped her arms. Then they released her. She teetered forward, catching herself on the armrests and staring at the shining object that crowned the chair. It was the optical guide from the base camp's integration chamber—the piece of hardware that made it possible for Alpha to transmit supplies and personnel to the planet's surface.

"It is the best way,” Long-Eyes said. “The best way to make sure you are our final champion."

"But I'm crippled."

"We will heal you."

"No! You don't understand! We need someone here who can communicate with—” Once again, she found herself groping for words that did not exist in their language. “We need someone here who can communicate with my X-ah.” She pointed upward. “Do you understand? I need—"

"That isn't necessary,” Long-Eyes said. “Now that your voice is dead to your X-ah, we will teach you to communicate with ours. You will see. You are blinded now, cut off from the truth—but that is the way to realize who you are ... why you are here ... what you must do."

"What I must do?” She spoke the words in her own language, considering them as she gripped the throne. What she needed to do was heal, gather her strength, and then return to base camp. She would take the optical marker from the back of the throne and reattach it to the integration chamber. Then her replacement would come. And then, at last, she would retire.

She leaned forward, staring at her image reflected in the marker's right-angled mirrors. Multiple reflections stared back, gazing with the eyes of many Caras—Caras beyond number. But she could not take the marker now. She needed to heal before the dorsal plug's power supply ran dry and she found herself paralyzed with pain.

Something hissed along her back, pressing down, warming her. It was the robe. Long-Eyes hooked it into place as she collapsed into the chair. And now the storytellers launched into a synchronized song, one that sounded rehearsed even though it detailed the destruction of the nests on the eastern shore.

She looked upward, toward the smoky ceiling and the vent that stood open to a gathering storm. She couldn't see the orbiter, but it was up there.

"I can fix this!” She mouthed the words, wishing Alpha could see her through the skylight, through the smoke and gathering clouds. “I can fix this. Trust me.” And so she prayed in silence to her other self in the sky, mouthing the promise as the song of her exploits rose around her.

Rand B. Lee has lived and worked in Northern New Mexico since 1987. His father, Manfred B. Lee, co-authored the Ellery Queen detective novels, and was close friends with Anthony Boucher, the first editor of this magazine.

"Amrit Chaudhury! Kindly report to the supervisor's office. Amrit Chaudhury!"

Amrit looked up from her workstation and sighed in frustration. Around her rose the chatter of a hundred women's voices, the ring of telephones, the clatter of fax lines. She was a small young woman with a heart-shaped face and large, intelligent black eyes perpetually clouded with worry. She had been laboring on the telephones at Mumbai-Astra Telecom, Ltd. for the better part of a year, and this day, which had not gone well thus far, was looking to become much worse.

"Amrit?” The undersupervisor, fat Shraddha Singh, was looming over her. “Madame needs a word,” she said. “At once, please."

"What is it this time?” asked Amrit. Her tone held more spice than was perhaps prudent, and the undersupervisor raised an eyebrow. “I'm sorry! It's just these Americans.” She pulled off her headset and let it fall with a clatter on her desktop. “They're so suspicious. And they hate parting with their money so. I can be as sweet and as polite as one can wish, but it avails nothing. Three-quarters of the time they hang up before I've finished saying, ‘Hello, Mister Wayne, my name is Maggie Jones.'” She punched log-off to indicate an excused break, and pushed back her chair. At least, she thought, they have proper chairs here. The last place she had worked there had been only inverted oilcans to sit upon.

"'Maggie Jones.'” Singh grunted in amusement. The women's eyes met, and both fell simultaneously into a fit of giggles.

"'Maggie Jones!'” cried Amrit helplessly.

"'Bobbi Grant!'” chortled the undersupervisor, similarly irrigated.

"'Jane West!'” Amrit put her left hand over her heart and fanned her right hand weakly. “I mean to say, it isn't as though they can't tell by our voices that we're Not From Around These Parts.” She spoke this last in an exaggerated American accent, which set them both off afresh.

"Amrit Chaudhury! To the supervisor's office at once!"

The women sobered quickly, and followed each other down the main work-aisle toward management offices. “Madame sounds angry,” said Amrit. “Do you know what this is about?"

"Your daughter, I think,” said Mrs. Singh, puffing to keep up with the younger woman's quick strides. Amrit stopped dead and threw her a terrified look. “No, no! She's fine, she's fine! It's just the school. I overheard Madame talking. A fight with one of the other girls, which I gather your Meera won rather spectacularly. They have ‘concerns’ which they wish to express to you, that's all."

"Not again!” groaned Amrit, and doubled her pace, adjusting her sari as she ran. When she reached the door of the supervisor's office, she knocked timidly, then opened the door a crack and stuck in her head.

"It's Amrit, Madame. You called for me?"

"It's about time. Come in, come in! Don't hang about in the hall.” Amrit entered quickly, shutting the door behind her, and stood with her back to it. Whenever she was called into Madame's office she felt as though she were nine years old and back in school, facing the headmistress. Madame Kattungal had steel-gray hair, a prominent caste mark, and deceptively grandmotherly features. Today she was wearing a Western business suit, and when Amrit entered, she was just slamming down the phone. “You took long enough, girl. This is Mister Mehta, whom I believe"—this last heavily weighted with sarcasm—"you know."

"Well, Mrs. Chaudhury! We meet again!” Vice-Principal Mehta's lean figure rose from its chair near Madame's desk and, smiling broadly, extended a hand. Amrit shook it gingerly. “I am so terribly sorry to trouble you at your place of work, but I thought it expeditious to come here directly rather than summon you to the school. Is there a spot where we might chat in private?” This last he addressed to the supervisor.

Amrit said hurriedly, “How is my daughter, Vice-Principal?” Aside from the lavatory, they were standing in the only private room available in the large, barnlike structure that made up the main headquarters of Mumbai-Astra, Limited. And Amrit had no desire to be alone with Mehta. She had several times been forced to endure his caresses in return for his leniency with her daughter Meera, and she had vowed to immolate herself rather than endure them again.

Madame gazed upon the thin man expectantly. He shrugged. “Very well. Meera quarreled with one of the upper form girls this morning. The other girl started it, I believe—some altercation over a cell phone of which your daughter was in possession. The quarrel escalated into fisticuffs. Your daughter possesses an admirable right hook, Mrs. Chaudhury. Perhaps the school ought to consider instituting a girls’ boxing team so as to make better use of her talents."

"I'm so sorry, Vice-Principal Mehta,” said Amrit. “I've told and told Meera that fighting is not acceptable behavior. I can't think what's come over her.” She added, “Will the other girl be all right?"

"Oh, right as rain,” said Mehta cheerfully, “save for a loose tooth.” Amrit groaned. “The cell phone, however, is unsalvageable.” He drew it from the pocket of his suit jacket and handed it over to her. Amrit groaned again. It was her Mumbai-Astra phone. All the employees were issued one so that they could be on call at a moment's notice to fill in gaps in the phone banks as they arose, and it had been missing for three days.

"Is it your habit to permit your daughter the use of your company phone, Amrit?” Madame asked with asperity.

"No, Madame."

"A replacement will be issued immediately. Its cost will of course be deducted from your wages."

"Naturally, Madame. And I'm sorry. It won't happen again, I promise."

"That's as may be.” As if they were linked telepathically, at that moment Undersupervisor Singh knocked on the door, opened it, and looked at Madame inquiringly. “Ah, there you are, Singh. Issue Mrs. Chaudhury a new phone, charged against her weekly.” With a sympathetic glance at Amrit, the fat woman nodded and withdrew. “Will there be anything else, Mister Mehta? Amrit must return to her post."

"I'm afraid so, Madame Kattungal. You see,” said the Vice-Principal, “at the Gupta Academy we have a policy, borrowed from the Americans, of ‘Three strikes and you are out.’ This is the fourth occasion upon which your daughter Meera has demonstrated an inability to coexist on cordial terms with her fellow students. Our normal course of action—and one which we are for many reasons loath to pursue except in times of dire necessity—would be to expel Meera forthwith, for mastering one's temper is a skill crucial to the workings of a civilized society (as I am sure you will agree)."

"Expel her?” gasped Amrit. “Oh, no, Vice-Principal!” She had worked so hard to get her into the school, despite opposition from Meera's paternal grandmother, who felt that too much education was bad for a girl, leading to late night parties, pierced eyelids, heroin addiction, and prostitution. “Is there nothing that can be done?” She opened her eyes as wide as she could and gave him a look so beseeching it might have melted the heart of a stone Buddha.

"Well, perhaps,” said Mehta, eyeing her back, stroking his bearded chin. “Perhaps we can discuss, ah, terms. But until such time as we come to some further understanding, the Academy will consider keeping Meera on only if you consent to have her outfitted with a nannychip."

"A nannychip?” Madame Kattungal had been sitting silent during this interchange, impatient to have them out of her office so she might return to her appallingly busy schedule. But this last had startled her to fresh attention. “Is Meera Chaudhury such a menace to your scholastic society, then, Vice-Principal? I was under the impression that nannychips were most commonly used among potentially violent prison populations."

"You surprise me, Madame Kattungal,” Mehta replied jovially. “I had assumed, considering your place of employ, that you would be more conversant in what the Americans are so fond of describing as the ‘cutting edge’ technologies. There are many types of nannychip nowadays. We are speaking here not of electronic lobotomization, but of the temporary outfitting of the girl with an aggression-inhibiting nannychip to ensure her cooperativeness over a predetermined and limited period, as a method of bringing home to her the importance of learning proper skills of social interaction. We've done it before with problem students, and the experiment has been met with much success, particularly in Germany.” He winked at the appalled women, then. “A much more humane method, you will agree, than caning, to which we were forced to resort in former days. And I assure you that Mrs. Chaudhury's willingness to cooperate will go far in assisting the Board in envisioning a long-term future for Meera at the Academy."

"Never,” said Amrit. She walked up to the Vice-Principal and stood so close to him that he was forced to take a step backward. “I will never consent to such a procedure. It is monstrous. It is inhumane. Why, you admitted yourself it was the other girl's fault!"

"Four times now it has been the fault of the other girl,” said Mehta placidly. “Four times, Mrs. Chaudhury. If your Meera does not learn to master her temper, her prospects for success in this altercation-ridden world look bleak indeed."

"What of the other girl? What of her prospects for success? Will she, too, be outfitted with a nannychip to curb her excesses of aggression?” Amrit heard her voice rise. She knew her face was red and her fists were balled, and that everyone in the outer office could hear her, but she did not care.

"That is a matter for the Board to decide,” said Vice-Principal Mehta. “I see that you are upset. Take time to think over the matter before you make a final decision we might all regret. Now if you will excuse me; I have another appointment. I came here only as a courtesy.” He attempted to step around Amrit, but she blocked his way.

"Where is she? Where is my daughter now?"

"Mrs. Chaudhury, calm yourself.” The supervisor had risen. Her quiet voice cut through Amrit's mind-whirl. Tossing her head, she stepped aside to let the Vice-Principal pass. Mehta bowed to Mrs. Singh and paused, his hand on the office doorknob.

"I apologize again for having interrupted you ladies’ workday. Mrs. Chaudhury's daughter should by now have arrived at their place of residence. I instructed the Assistant Vice-Principal to shepherd her safely home. And I am afraid that is where she must stay until such time as other arrangements can be agreed upon.” He smiled again at Amrit. “If you change your mind about the chip, do ring me up, Mrs. Chaudhury. That ought not to be difficult for you to do, now that you have your cell phone back.” And with that he closed the door behind him.

When Amrit got home that night to the apartment she shared with the elder Mrs. Chaudhury (her late husband's mother), Amrit's paternal uncle Saavit, his far-too-young-of-a-wife Gloria, their six-year-old son Dakota, Dakota's pregnant and gender-inappropriately named rat-shrew Ganesa, and Amrit's criminal progeny Meera, Amrit was in no mood for compromise. She marched right past her mother-in-law's squawking complaints; through Uncle Saavit's cloud of in-the-process-of-being-hurriedly-extinguished cigar-smoke (Gloria was still crosstown, at the Internet café where she worked long hours); pushed open without knocking the door to Meera's little room (not much more than a converted closet, really); tore the earphones off the head of the closed-eyed, finger-tapping, unread-schoolbook-open-before-her fourteen-year-old, and said, “Meera. Put on your coat. We're going out."

"Ma!"

"Now."

And then reversed the process, this time with Meera in tow (earphoneless, eyes now fully open, shrugging into her Adidas knock-off, still wearing her school uniform underneath), past Ganesa (who waffled her nose at them as they went by), past Dakota (who was plugged into his M-box and wouldn't have noticed an atomic bomb if it had exploded under his nose), past Uncle Saavit (who had once been a professional boxer but now was huffing, “What is the fire alarm now, Amrit?"), past the elder Mrs. Chaudhury, whose complaint-squawking had not slowed one monosyllable either in Hindi or English, and out the apartment door again, nearly slamming it shut on Meera's braid.

"Ma! Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

And then down the six flights to the busy Mumbai street, where Amrit stopped to get her bearings. Around them, cars honked, bicyclists careered, motorized rickshaws put-putted, chapati sellers waved fragrant pancakes and called out to passersby, signs advertising Microsoft computers, Toshiba implants, and permanent waves ("Be mistaken for a film star!") blinked on and off, and skinny pickpockets trailed camera-festooned Brazilian tourists. In the far distance, she could hear the rumble from the Mahim Railway Station. “This way,” she said.

"Ma, I won't do it again! I promise!"

The fear in her daughter's voice brought Amrit up short. The child was looking at her the way a mongoose observes a cobra that is beginning to rear. Amrit felt a pang. She did not wish her own daughter to fear her—not beautiful, bright, long-fingered Meera, remnant of her brief happy marriage, her only concrete contribution to the world's future. But if fear was what it took to stop the child from throwing her life away, Amrit would harden her heart and use that fear for the child's own good until she could find something better with which to motivate her. So all she replied was, “I want to show you something, Meera."

They walked to the bus stop past beggars, businessmen, newspaper vendors, police. On the bus, which was nearly filled with after-work shoppers and evening-shift workers headed for cleaning jobs in the offices and apartment buildings round about, they sat side by side, Amrit still holding tight to Meera's hand, as though she feared losing her, as though any moment she might declare her independence, run off to a party, get drunk, get her face pierced, take drugs, enter upon a life of prostitution. At the Mahim Railway Station, they got off the bus. As they mounted the steps into the station, still hand-in-hand, Meera asked, “Are you sending me away?"

"Don't be foolish. Of course not. I said I wanted to show you something."

"She started it!” The girl planted her feet, stared up at her mother (up? no, truth be told, only very slightly up, they were nearly of a height now; how could Amrit have not noticed that before?). “She called me a thief, Ma! She said I stole the cellphone, that it was her phone, that it could not possibly be my phone because we could not possibly afford anything so toff, and that I must give it back at once or she would tell the Vice-Principal. I told her it was not her cellphone, that it was our cell-phone, that I was not a thief, and that Mother Kali could pluck out her lying tongue and feed it to her for breakfast, for all that she was of the Kshatriyas and very nearly a Brahman.” Her daughter gulped, caught her breath. “And then she slapped me. So I struck her the way Uncle Saavit showed me."

"Are you finished?"

Meera nodded. There were tears in the corners of her big eyes, and her cheeks were flushed with passion, but there was no remorse at the corners of her mouth at all. “Then come,” said Amrit. “It's only a little farther, this thing that I wish to show you."

There were high brick walls between the back of the railway station and the thing Amrit wished to show her daughter, but Amrit knew every square inch of this area from childhood hours spent staring up at it from the other side. They threaded their way unnoticed through the knots of waiting commuters, sellers, and alms-seekers, past a group of saffron-clad Buddhist monks wearing sunglasses (at seven o'clock at night?), past a magazine rack sporting lurid film-star magazines, and finally to the spot she had remembered: a narrow doorway with a chain across it saying ABSOLUTELY NO ENTRY in seven languages. “We are going up there?” inquired her daughter querulously, peering up into the dimness.

"We are,” said her mother firmly, and lifted the chain. “For what I have to show you may only be viewed conveniently from the top of this stair."

"But,” said Meera, and that is all she said, for Amrit was half-pulling, half-pushing her onto the staircase with her.

The stairs were made of wood and smelled of old urine, chapati grease, stale cigarettes, and ancient durian. A faint light filtered down the stairwell from someplace high above, but it was very dark, and the stairs were littered with trash left by squatters down through the years. Twice Meera stumbled. The first time her mother was able to arrest her fall, but the second, Meera ended up on one knee on the stair, narrowly escaping being stuck with a discarded hypodermic needle. In later years she would recall this upward passage as the most horrific experience of her young life, yet in the end they attained the top of the stair and emerged onto an open causeway under a Mumbai night sky that had somehow become overcast during their million years in the dark.

The women paused to catch their breaths. Meera was surprised to realize how far they had climbed. Behind and below them through pollution haze stretched the Mumbai they had just left: the railway station, apartment buildings, office blocks, tooting thoroughfares. Meera could see the tracks for the Western Railway stretching away into the distance, where they crossed the Mahim Sion Link Road; beyond that, she could see the filthy black waters of Mahim Bay. “Turn around,” said her mother. Her voice sounded distant, like a goddess's. Meera turned, and found herself looking down onto a vast, confusing jungle of silent, swampy slum. “Do you know what this is?” her mother asked, sweeping her arm outward to encompass the world before them.

"Of course, Ma. Dharavi.” She could not keep the contempt from her voice.

"And what is it, this Dharavi? What do you know of it?"

"It is where the poor people dwell.” The wind picked up, bringing with it from Dharavi the scent of sewage.

"What sorts of poor people? Specify."

"Well, potters,” she said. “Furniture makers. People from the provinces who can't afford to live anywhere else. Tailors, people like that.” Meera found the contrast between the hooting hum of the Mumbai behind them and the deep quiet of the slum before them deeply unsettling, and she looked uncomfortably around her. They were alone on the causeway. “They all look dead from up here,” she said.

"They are not dead, child. They are resting, those who are not sewing garments all night for less income than the beggar outside our sweetshop makes in three hours. One and a half million persons living in a reclaimed mangrove swamp. No sewage treatment facilities. Uncertain electricity. Water of such poor quality that one considers oneself fortunate merely to contract dysentery from it.” Amrit looked thoughtfully out over the maze of little lanes and thoroughfares. “But see the temple, there? And the mosque? And those buildings, that school, there? Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Jains. Recycling everything, because one cannot afford to buy anything new. Your father was born there"—she stabbed the dark with her chin—"off Ninety Feet Road, not far from Kumbharwada."

"My father? Born in Dharavi?” She could not believe what she was hearing. Meera did not remember her father; she knew him only from the holos on her mother's old e-album, a small man, small like her mother, with ropy-muscled arms, large knuckles, and intense dark features. “You said he was from Rajasthan!” Meera's tone was accusatory.

"I never did. I said his people were from Rajasthan. They were weavers and textile-painters. His parents came to Mumbai after the great famines, and settled in the Potters’ District. When I met your father, he was living with ten other young men in a garage, refitting automobiles for resale.” She had literally run into him, having ducked into the garage in an attempt to evade an irate fruit vendor from whom she had swiped three small green mangoes and a bar of chocolate. She had been eleven, a little girl; he, fifteen, nearly a man; out of pity he and the boys had hidden her, and afterward he had walked her home. When next she had encountered him, at a Kumbharwada street festival, nearly three years had passed, and neither he nor she had thought of her as a little girl any longer. He had known her at once. “Why, it's the little thief!” he had cried upon seeing her again.

She had laughed in his face, giddy with the news she had just received in the post: that she, youngest daughter of a factory worker and a dockhand, had been the first female student to be accepted as a trainee computer specialist at the newly revamped and expanded Bandra-Kurla Complex. He had bought her sugared wafers, under the watchful eye of her three older sisters; and that summer, at the height of the worst dysentery outbreak Dharavi had endured in several years, they had kissed for the first time in the pouring rain.

Standing with her daughter on the border between light and darkness, Amrit turned to Meera and said, “Listen to me, girl. No, listen. The Kshatriya girl? The one who called you a thief? She was speaking the truth."

"No, Ma!"

"The cellphone was not yours to borrow. Nor was it mine to loan, though had it been I would have loaned it to you for the asking. It belonged to the company for which I work. Today I had to purchase another cellphone to replace the one that was broken in the altercation between you and the Kshatriya. The cost of that phone will be deducted from my wages."

"I'm sorry!"

"It is too late for sorrow.” Harden your heart, she reminded herself. “The Vice-Principal from your school came to see me at work today. I suppose you know this?” The girl nodded miserably. “Do you know what he said to me?” Meera shook her head. “He told me that in light of the four violent quarrels in which you have been engaged this term, unless I agree to have you outfitted with a nannychip to curb your aggressive response tendencies, he will see that you are expelled from the Academy."

Having hurled her bomb, Amrit watched it hit home and burst behind the girl's eyes. She had not let go of her daughter's hand the entire time they had been in the street, and it was well that she had not, for the moment comprehension dawned in Meera's young face, the child turned and lunged for the nearest guard-rail.

Amrit yanked her, pulled her back. “What are you doing?” she cried. “What are you doing?"

"Let me go! A nannychip? I would die, rather!” Her mouth was an open wound. Howling, Meera reversed direction and barreled into her mother, sending her staggering backward. “I hate you! A nannychip? I hate you, I hate you!"

"Stop it! I did not say that I had agreed!” Amrit slapped the girl's face. Meera cried out, once; then stood stock-still, hands over her eyes, thin shoulders shuddering in the thin jacket of pirated ripstop nylon, sobbing raggedly.

"What is going on up here?"

Amrit turned, clutching Meera to her protectively. A man had come up the stair and was shining a flashlight in their faces. “You are not permitted on this causeway! Did you not observe the sign below? What is going on here?"

"We were just,” said Amrit, and for some reason she was having a hard time summoning enough breath to form the words, so that they came out in puffs, like Uncle Saavit's cigar-smoke, “we were just, just, seeking the, view!” And then she was pushing past the man, half-carrying her daughter, half-dragging her, tumbling down the stair as fast as she could, while the man shouted, “You are not permitted! You are not permitted!” over and over again.

When they returned to their flat, they found that Dakota had been pried from his electronics and sent to bed, and that Gloria had returned and was huddled in fierce consultation with Uncle Saavit and the elder Mrs. Chaudhury. These three looked up as Amrit and Meera came in. To their questions Amrit replied not a word, but marched Meera past them and into her little room. Less than a minute later, Amrit emerged from the room, sans her progeny, shutting the door firmly behind her. Then she went into the tiny kitchen to fix a pot of tea.

Gloria followed her into the kitchen and stood silently, waiting, her arms crossed over her chest, while Amrit filled the teakettle and lit the pilot light on the ancient propane stove. Gloria was nearly half Uncle Saavit's age, and would have been a beauty, thought Amrit, had it not been for her absurd adoption of the latest youth styles from China: LEDs imbedded in her forehead and chin and chop marks tattooed on her neck. Gloria, Mumbai born and bred, had been working as a waitress in one of the new holo-discos when she had met Saavit, and Amrit was not blind to the effect Gloria's excruciatingly modern presence in the house was having upon impressionable young Meera. Young! Amrit thought, waiting for the water to boil. In the old days, at fifteen Meera would already have been married a year, with a child on the way. She herself had married Meera's father at seventeen, and now here she was, a widow at thirty-two, with a dead-end job and no romantic prospects, certainly. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, she chided. You speak of the old days? In the old days, you would have been expected to have flung yourself upon your husband's funeral pyre. At least you have a job.

The kettle sang. Amrit had readied the tea leaves in the next-best steeping pot; she poured the boiling water over them until the steeping pot was filled, then replaced the kettle on the stove and put the lid on the pot. Only then did she turn round and smile at the waiting Gloria. “Would you like some tea, Auntie?” Amrit asked.

It was an old joke between them. When first Uncle Saavit had brought his fiancée home, Amrit had judged her an opportunist fishing the river of senility, and had said as much to Saavit in so many words. But over the weeks and months, and after the wedding when a pregnant Gloria had moved in with them, Amrit had come to appreciate her probity, practicality, and intelligence; and she was certainly a hard worker, contributing to the communal treasury through long hours at the e-café a substantial portion of the revenues that Saavit's ailing limousine service failed to provide. So Gloria and Amrit had taken to calling one another “Niece” and “Auntie,” and usually it eased the tensions that occasionally cropped up between them.

But this time Gloria did not smile. She said, “Saavit and Parvati just told me what has happened.” For reasons unclear to Amrit, Gloria was the only one in the household suffered to address Amrit's mother-in-law by her given name.

"And how would Saavit and Mrs. Chaudhury know?"

"The Assistant Vice-Principal told them when he brought Meera home this afternoon."

"Ah. Of course. No tea?” Gloria shook her head. In the dim kitchen, her LEDs were pinpricks of light. “Then you all know that Meera faces suspension for quarreling."

"Yes. It is so unjust!” The words came out slowly, almost thoughtfully. “It was the other girl's fault. Saavit says that the Assistant Vice-Principal admitted as much."

"Nonetheless. Meera knew the rules. This was her fourth offense. She must take her share of the responsibility.” Amrit turned away, took down a teacup, saucer, and tea strainer from the shelf, and removed a teaspoon from the kitchen drawer. She noticed that her hands were trembling. She set the tea things on the little kitchen table to await the completion of the tea leaves’ steeping. Without looking round again, Amrit said, “Did the Assistant Vice-Principal also inform you under what circumstances Meera would be permitted to remain at school?"

"It happened to me."

Shocked, Amrit turned. Though her expression was calm, tears were running down Gloria's beautiful brown cheeks. “Sit,” Amrit ordered. The girl sat down at the table. Amrit sat down on the chair next to her. “What do you mean, it happened to you? What happened to you?"

"The nannychip. Saavit knows about it, but there are other things he doesn't know about, and would not understand if he did.” Gloria glanced toward the parlor. “Promise me you will not tell him what I am about to tell you."

"I promise.” Amrit pulled a handkerchief from a sleeve and handed it to her. Gloria took it and dabbed at her eyes. When she spoke, it was precisely and with an odd detachment, as though she were reading from a teleprompter.

"It was when I was at Girls’ Reformatory. They were just experimenting with them then, the chips. I was thirteen and a half. I had been sent to Reformatory for selling pirated Mufti HDs at school."

"Mufti?” said Amrit. “The singing group?” She had heard of it, vaguely, a neo-Raj rock band that had enjoyed a brief and shocking vogue in the Sixties.

The girl nodded. “My older brother had me sent there. It was a Christian school; very strict. He said I needed a lesson; that I had gone wild since our parents had died; that he couldn't cope. The sisters were demons. Nothing one did was right. I fought back, so I was targeted for extra remedial discipline.” She looked up at Amrit, black eyes glittering. “They brought in the chips program. They had been tested in the prisons and were just then being reconfigured for less violent offenders. It was a government sponsored project. My brother signed the permission papers; Sister Kamala showed them to me. Then they made us go through with the operation."

"Oh, Gloria.” Amrit took the girl's hand. “What was it—how did—?"

The hand beneath Amrit's balled suddenly into a small, hard fist. “There were six of us. They gave the chip to each of us. They implanted it here,” she said, pointing with her free hand to a spot on her skull. “We were kept awake for the operation; we had to be, for the testing: everyone's brain is different, they told us; one's chip had to be fine-tuned, they said. They touched us here and here and here and said, ‘Can you feel this, Miss? What about this, Miss?’ And, ‘What do you see now? What do you smell now?’ for the chips, they sometimes cause hallucinations."

"Yes,” said Amrit faintly. “Yes, I read that. Auditory and olfactory hallucinations. Visual ones as well, if the chips are not adjusted correctly."

Gloria's fist did not unclench. “Do not misunderstand me,” she said. “The operation did not hurt. The doctors were not unkind. We were treated with great politeness. And of course we were not the only ones."

"I read that also,” said Amrit. “The second-generation chips were tried in over sixty reform schools throughout India. Mostly state-run schools, but some religious institutions as well. There was no official pronouncement made; rumors on the Internet, that is all. Not until the change in governments, when the scandal broke.” She kissed the girl's fist. “Oh, Gloria. I had no idea. I am so terribly sorry."

"But wait,” said the girl. “I have not told you the best part of the story.” She did not seem young, now. Her voice, though still pitched low, had both cooled into ice and sharpened into steel, and her gaze was so intense that it was all that Amrit could do not to look away. “At first, the first week after they implanted the chips, none of us felt much different. I felt rather good, actually: calmer, insulated, as though I were wrapped in cotton wool. The others, they felt the same. We would meet in the lavatory and talk about it. When someone, one of the unchipped girls, would make a nasty remark, instead of flying into a rage I would simply laugh and walk away. It was as though nothing could trouble me, not even Sister Kamala."

Her lips quirked into a small smile. “That was the best part of it, actually: feeling as though nothing that demon bitch might do could reach me. It drove her and the other sisters insane. You would have thought they'd have been pleased that their little hellions had been becalmed, but it seemed to disappoint them instead. I think they thought we were playacting. So they used extra humiliations in an attempt to make us angry, so they would have an excuse to punish us again. But it didn't work. We simply didn't react, beyond, ‘Yes, Sister. No, Sister. At once, Sister.’ The other girls and I, we said to one another, ‘This isn't half bad, really.’ It was as though our chips were our friends: better than drugs, because they didn't ruin our lungs or spoil our concentration. We could still study our lessons. In fact, our minds felt clearer than ever they had before. Relaxed, but clear, the way the yogis say meditation makes you feel if you bother to practice it long enough.

"At the end of that first week, when they herded us into the center again for our first check-up, the doctors and sisters seemed very pleased. The technician who examined me joked that if the chips made everybody feel as good as ours were making us feel, perhaps everyone could benefit from an implant.” She laughed again, a hint of bitterness in her tone. “Then it changed."

Amrit waited for a moment, then said, “I have read—that some of the second generation chip recipients—began displaying symptoms not unlike those suffered by autistics."

"I suppose you could put it that way.” Gloria stood up abruptly, pulling her fist free from Amrit's hands, and crossing her arms again, uttered her next remarks with her back half-turned and her hair half-mantling her face. “By the third week two of us were dead—suicide; one of us was in hospital suffering from concussion—self-induced; and two of us had gone straight round the bend: full-fledged delusional—UFOs, past-life recall, bloody Krishna and the shepherd girls, what have you. Or was that Vishnu and the shepherdesses? I can never bloody remember."

"That makes five,” said Amrit. “You said there were six of you implanted. Were you—"

"Was I the concussion victim or one of the nutters? None of the above, Niece. I was the success."

"The success?"

"That's right. The success.” Her profile was beautiful and still, a statue's profile. “Throughout it all—Pinnai leaping from the chapel roof, thinking she could fly; Fatima setting herself afire so she might free herself from the wheel of karma; Varali trying to pound the voices out of her skull—I felt nothing."

She looked at Amrit then, the LEDs shifting the shadows on her brow. “Do you understand me, Amrit? I felt nothing. Nothing at all. I saw these things—I was there when Pinnai jumped—and it was as though I were watching a thriller on the telly. None of it reached me at all. I even helped Sister Kamala clean up the mess in the chapel yard. By that time, I couldn't even hate her. And now we come to the part you mustn't tell my husband."

"I don't understand,” said Amrit. “I thought—the reformatory—"

"No. Saavit knows about that. He knows about the chip as well. I told him, the night before the wedding. I thought it was only fair, considering his kindness to me. But I was afraid to tell him everything."

"No, Gloria, wait.” Amrit found herself upon her feet. Suddenly she felt terribly afraid. “Perhaps—perhaps it would be best not to tell. Not to tell me."

The girl's face was implacable. “But I must. Because if I do not, your decision concerning Meera will not be a fully informed one. And I care about Meera, in my way; she reminds me so of myself at that age. Well, of myself as I would have been had I reached that age intact.

"What I need to tell you, Amrit, so that you know precisely and without a shadow of doubt the possible repercussions of chipping your daughter, is that the detachment the chip gave me? It never went away."

After a moment Amrit said, “I do not understand. They took the chip out, didn't they? I mean to say that I have seen you: angry, sad, happy. I have seen you with Saavit. You seem happy with him. They did remove the chip?"

"Yes. They removed it,” said Gloria. “They removed it. And yes, I could feel things again. The entire range of human emotion was available to me once more. But I found that I no longer cared. My body cared: it experienced revulsion, and lust, and terror, and comforts. But I did not. I feel all those things—I watch my body experience all those emotions—but at the core of me, there is nothing.

"It's all right,” she added, smiling at Amrit. “I'm used to it, now. I do care for Saavit, as much as I can care for anybody; he has been very good to me. And for Dakota, of course. And for all of you. I am very grateful to be a part of the family,” and somehow the way she said it made Amrit wish that the girl would shout, and curse, anything other than what she was doing, which was simply standing there, speaking of those closest to her as though they were very distant relatives she had read about in a history book. “And that is why I spend so much time working at the café, I suppose. I do it, not only because by doing so I am contributing materially to the family's welfare, but because there I do not have to pretend to have a self. I can lose myself, in the Net, in the graphics programs, whatever it may be. I become—information, if you will.” She cocked her head. “Perhaps I am not putting it very clearly."

"Do you mean,” said Amrit desperately, “that you experience a disconnect with the feeling part of yourself? As in post-traumatic stress disorder?” Even as she said it she knew that it was not what Gloria had meant at all. Her horror mounting, she looked at her uncle's young bride again, and it was as though she were seeing her for the first time. So that, when the girl said, “No, this is what I mean,” and picked up the pot of barely cooling tea, and lifted it over to the kitchen sink, and held out her slim-wristed hand with its long lacquered fingernails, and calmly poured the scalding tea over it with no trace of concern upon her face. Amrit watched the skin redden and the fingers twitch in agony and thought, She is not human. She is not human anymore. And nearly laughed, because was not this supernal recognition of nonexistence what the Buddhists always seemed to be striving for? The enlightenment of no-self? Was not this what the Christians meant when they said, Not I, but Christ in me?

Then she had grasped the girl's wrist, and had knocked the teapot from her grasp; and, as quickly as she could, was turning on the cold-water-faucet and holding the girl's hand beneath the resultant flow. Gloria made no attempt to resist. She simply observed the process, as though it were not her hand at all, but someone else's, despite the fact that the pain must certainly have been very great indeed.

"What has happened? We heard a crash!” Mrs. Chaudhury appeared at the door, Uncle Saavit close behind her. At a glance she noted the teapot, which had shattered upon the floor in its fall; the spreading pool of hot tea; the sodden detritus of steeped leaves; Gloria's reddened wrist. “My God! Are you all right? Here, girl, let me. Saavit, get the mop!” She interposed herself between Amrit and Gloria and took the girl's hand into her own. “Amrit, the aloe.” Dumbly Amrit turned and left the kitchen, pushing past Saavit's concerned bluster. In the windowbox on the fire escape, aloe plants were growing; Amrit snapped off three large leaves and hurried back with them.

Meera had come out of her room and was standing in the middle of the parlor. She looked pale, but red around the eyes, as though she had been crying. “What's wrong?” she asked. “What's wrong, Mama?"

"Nothing, Meera,” Amrit said over her shoulder. “There's been a little accident, that is all. Return to your room; I shall be with you momentarily. I wish to speak with you.” She went back into the kitchen. Saavit was busily mopping up the spilled tea and rounding up pieces of broken pot, but otherwise the tableau was the same as when she had left it: her mother-in-law bent over Gloria's raw wrist, laving it, while Gloria looked on, placidly unconcerned. “The aloe,” Amrit said.

Mrs. Chaudhury did not look up. “Thank you, Daughter. If you would be so kind as to split the leaves and scrape the gel into a bowl."

"Yes,” Amrit said, “Mother.” She took a knife from the drawer, sat down at the kitchen table, and carefully halved the aloe leaves, revealing their glistening interiors. Scoring the gel with the knife, she took the spoon from her saucer and used it to scrape the innards of the leaves into her teacup. Then she conveyed the cup to her mother-in-law, who took it from her without comment. Amrit stood there for a moment, uncertain what to do next; then she turned and left the kitchen.

Meera had left the sitting room. In the hallway outside of Meera's closet, Amrit hesitated, then knocked. “Meera?"

"I'm here, Mama."

She sounds so tired, thought Amrit. She pulled the door ajar. Meera was sitting crosslegged on her carpet. A schoolbook lay opened upon her lap. She looked up, saw her mother standing there, and burst into tears. Amrit went over to her and sat down on the carpet beside her. “I'm sorry, Mama,” Meera said. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Don't let them chip me. Please, Mama, don't let them, please don't let them, I'll be good, I'll do anything, only don't let them chip me, please please."

"Hush now, hush.” Amrit took her daughter into her arms and pressed her head against her chest. “Hush, now. Nobody's going to let anybody chip anybody."

"But Assistant Vice-Principal said—"

"The Assistant Vice-Principal can go suck a mango,” said Amrit, “and for that matter, so can Vice-Principal Mehta. No one is going to nannychip my daughter, and that is the end of it."

"But he said—they will expel me—and you work so hard—"

"Yes, yes, your mama works so very hard in her foolish pride to give her daughter the opportunities she was too timid to seek for herself. There are other schools, perhaps not as famous nor as fine. What of it?"

"But, Mama—"

"That is the end of it, Meera. There will be no nannychipping and that is that.” She kissed her daughter upon the top of her sweet head. Then she placed her lips close to Meera's beautiful ear. “Do not stop feeling, Meera,” she whispered fiercely. “It is good to feel, however inconvenient those feelings may happen to be. For if you cease to feel, you are as good as dead, bugger the bloody Buddha. Do not forget, Meera. Promise me."

"I won't forget, Mama, I promise,” said her daughter, who, though perhaps not quite understanding, showed no signs of inclination to break the embrace they shared. So Amrit continued to hold her, for the longest time, thinking in her own mind how many forces in her own life had conspired to deaden her own passions. Then she had another thought, which made her pull herself from Meera's grasp and hold her at elbow's length. “However,” Amrit added, in a fierce voice, “if you are going to quarrel with every bully who accosts you, you had best become more proficient at fisticuffs. While we are seeking another school in which to place you, you will resume your boxing lessons with your Uncle Saavit. Am I understood?"

"Yes, Mama!” cried her fierce young troublemaker. “Yes!” And they held one another again until old Mrs. Chaudhury came into the room, took in the scene, and asked in a very mild tone if, now that the storm of crises appeared to have passed, anyone in this madhouse would mind if she attempted to make another pot of tea.

In our last issue, Albert Cowdrey took us deep into outer space. His new story stays closer to home, but in its own way, it's just as far out. Mr. Cowdrey notes that inhabitants of southern Louisiana will immediately recognize the (late) model for Sheriff Chew, but the rest of the story is pure invention.
Or so he would like us to believe.

Sometimes fame comes unexpectedly, to unexpected people. That was certainly the case with Jimmy John (JJ) Link.

JJ's hometown of Bougalou, Louisiana, was once the obscurest of hamlets—so quiet that when he was six, and the first stoplight appeared at the intersection of Main Street and Huey Long Avenue, he'd sit on the curb all day to watch the colors change. But then on- and off-ramps were built to nearby Interstate 12, truck stops appeared on both Main and Huey, and the air brakes and shifting gears of the big rigs hissed and gnashed at all hours. A few more years, and hurricane refugees swarmed into the Parish of St. Genevieve from the squashier regions to the south, bringing with them casinos, hookers, meth labs, battered-women shelters, fast-food outlets, and the inevitable Wal-Mart.

Urban culture had reached Bougalou, and everybody was affected in one way or another. JJ's Daddy copped a FEMA contract and profitably filled his Ox-Bow Trailer Park with formaldehyde gas chambers housing the homeless. JJ's Mama ran off with an Atlas Van Lines driver, severely traumatizing her son, who was already a practicing eccentric but became more so after her desertion. JJ dropped out of college and began to hang around the new casino, the Shore-Win, where he was amazed to discover that he could read the face of a card while looking at the back. He cleaned the clocks of several men older and richer than himself, used his winnings to buy a big shiny Winnebago that he parked at the Ox-Bow, and began making plans to leave the parish and see the world.

Meanwhile Bougalou's social elite had formed a krewe called Fortuna, and in 2008 gave the town's first carnival ball on Lundi Gras, or Fat Monday, in the lobby of the Delta National Bank. Well-to-do men with red faces and large hands rented formal attire from a new shop called Tux for Bucks, while their ladies bought flashy gowns from Clothes for Does. The bank's CEO, T. Christian Rapp, reigned as King, and his newly acquired Internet bride Marsha (who resembled Dolly Parton in her heyday) as Queen. The Bayou Stompers provided zydeco music until the wee hours of Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, when the most durable revelers took off with a screech of tires and headed for New Orleans.

They were still nursing hangovers on Ash Wednesday when news began to spread of a crime never before seen in Bougalou. JJ was dressing to visit the casino when his Daddy burst into the Winnebago to tell him that Rapp's twelve-year-old daughter Sarah had been abducted and was being held for ransom.

"But don't you worry none,” he assured his son. “Big Russ'll take care of it."

He was referring to Sheriff Russell Chew, a 300-pound Chinese-American whose wide form, sharply pressed uniforms, and brushed-back white hair embodied law and order in the Parish of St. Genevieve.

Between killing deer in and out of season and having his wife convert them into andouille, a kind of Cajun sausage he much preferred to sweet-and-sour anything, Sheriff Chew rode herd on the urbanization crisis. Though every year the crime statistics shot up, people reelected him again and again, saying, “Just think what things'd be like if we didn't have Big Russ!” When the local media (meaning the weekly Bougalou Bulletin) harassed him about the number of murders, he growled, “Ah'm just an ole slant-eyed country boy doin’ his best.” People loved that line. Whatever Sheriff Chew's faults, such as incompetence and rampant corruption, he was not politically correct.

But now folks expected him to solve Sarah's kidnapping, do it quick, and if possible kill the kidnapper to make sure no slick lawyer from New Orleans or Baton Rouge got the sucker off. For the first time in his long tenure, Sheriff Chew had to produce results in a major case. That was expecting rather a lot, and a week went by with no visible results, while Sarah's parents—after posting a reward on their own—barraged him with demands for action.

That same week JJ had a personal disaster that brought him his first taste of fame. In a letter to the editor of the Bulletin, he complained that the Shore-Win Casino had banned him on a charge of card counting, when in fact he merely had ESP, and was that fair? The editor was a relative—second cousin to the husband of JJ's Daddy's half-niece—and for that reason the letter appeared on the Op-Ed Page under the headline Has ESP, Says Banned Bougalouan. There Big Russ noted it. And reached for his phone.

It was ten in the morning. JJ was in the Winnebago, wallowing in his bunk and comforting himself for the casino fiasco in a manner that was habitual with him. Cursing softly, he wiped a fragrant film of Aloe Vera Thick ‘n’ Creamy Skin Lotion from his right hand, flipped his bleating phone open, and heard an unmistakable gravelly voice ask, “That you, JJ?"

"Yes, suh,” he replied.

JJ's education had ended after three semesters at the University of South Louisiana (Sorrento), whose acronym USLS was pronounced “useless” by its graduates. Yet he was no fool. Knowing where the power lay in St. Genevieve, he added still more subserviently, “What can Ah do for you, suh?"

"Come on down and see me,” the sheriff growled. “Maybe you can he'p me out. Like the Latinos say, Ah got me a problema, so to speak."

Since the Rapp case had been the town's sole topic for a week, JJ was able to review the basic story while cleaning up and dressing. Every afternoon a chauffeur driving the family's enormous SUV picked Sarah up at the door of St. Mary's Academy to take her to ballet or riding class. On Ash Wednesday the familiar vehicle arrived, she parleyed for a few moments with the driver—a dim figure wearing a billed cap—then obligingly got in. And that was it. No more Sarah. The chauffeur, an elderly black man named William Wood who'd been with Mr. Rapp approximately since the dawn of time, was found lying in the banker's vast garage between the Cad and the BMW with a concussion and no memory of who had slugged him. A gardener named Alferd (sic) W. Finch was missing, and hence presumed to be the kidnapper.

Later on, the Bulletin reported that Mr. Rapp had paid a substantial ransom by wire transfer to a numbered account in a Cayman Islands bank, whence it vanished into cyberspace. But the information he'd purchased about his daughter's whereabouts turned out to be false. Sarah remained missing, and the FBI—which by now had been called in—assumed that the banker was being set up for additional payments. Or that Sarah was already dead. Or both.

In short, the situation was more than a problema: it was an impending disaster. Though baffled as to how he could help, JJ hastened to the grim redbrick building that housed police headquarters in front and the jail in back. He entered the sheriff's opulent office—with its broad desk, draped flags, bronze plaques, framed photos of Chew with dead beasts and live notables, and an autographed pre-incarceration portrait of former Gov. Edwin Edwards—and listened with a sinking heart as the sheriff informed him that his mystic powers were the last hope for finding Sarah Rapp alive.

"You got you a talent, JJ, and it's time you used it for somethin’ worthwhile, stead of just knockin’ down,” said Big Russ (whose whole life had been devoted to knocking down).

"Suh, Ah never done nothin’ like this before,” JJ protested. The sheriff cut him no slack.

"Well, Ah think you better do it now,” he said, fixing the younger man with a basilisk gaze.

He assigned JJ a small office filled with battered green metal furniture. Across the hall on a folding chair he planted a deputy named Wade Garmish, who'd missed a career in an SS Death's-Head Unit solely by being born too late, and in the wrong country. Garmish had orders to keep JJ where he was until he came up with something useful.

For the best part of an hour, balancing precariously on a busted swivel chair that dumped him twice before he got the hang of it, JJ tried to figure how on God's Earth he could go about finding Sarah. After all, being able to spot a king of hearts through the bicycle pattern on the back of a playing card had nothing whatever to do with locating a missing twelve-year-old. Fortunately, he spent a great part of his existence watching the Sci Fi Channel, with its eclectic cargo of starships, aliens, ghosts, zombies, vampires, and werewolves, and sometime or other had seen a story about a psychic who found missing persons by fondling clothing, shoes, etc. that were saturated with their aura.

Hmm, thought JJ. He rose cautiously and opened the door. Deputy Garmish raised his eyes from a copy of Penthouse and gave him the sort of glance a hammerhead shark bestows on a human leg.

"Ah need somethin’ that was close to Sarah,” JJ told him. “Say a piece of her clothes."

"So's you can jack off with it, Ah guess,” said Garmish, a remark that for him was practically a bon mot.

"Maybe,” JJ suggested, “Ah should talk to the sheriff. Maybe he can get me what Ah need."

Wade growled—literally: like Grrr—but rose and lurched away, the size-twelve feet he used for treading on suspects thundering upon the linoleum-coated plywood floor. An hour passed during which JJ lay on the desk in his office leafing through Penthouse and wishing he had a tube of Aloe Vera with him. Then the door crashed open.

"Sarah's Mama, she thinks you're crazy as hayull,” said Garmish, slamming a cardboard box down on the floor. (Meaning, of course, Sarah's stepmother, her own mother being with Jesus.)

The deputy snatched back his magazine and stomped out again. JJ went through the box slowly and carefully, fondling an array of pathetic child's attire, no less pathetic because the little dresses and whatnot had been expensively purchased in Houston and New Orleans at upscale shops for fashionable pre-teens. Every item had been meticulously cleaned, and not one emitted the slightest frisson. Then at the very bottom of the box he found a teddy bear—a surprisingly old and beat-up bear. Maybe a favorite that Sarah just couldn't sleep without? He touched Teddy and—wow! It was like touching a live wire.

He balanced on the swivel chair and held Teddy against his chest with both hands. He'd never felt such intense longing. Somewhere Sarah was alive but in fear, maybe in the dark—yeah, he felt certain she was in the dark—terrified, needing her security bear as never before. Intermittently fear gave way to rage, when she thought about Alferd W. Finch. The son of a bitch, back when he was weeding rose beds and gaining her confidence, had often given her flowers. “They nearly as pretty as you are, Honey,” he'd say—she remembered that. Remembered with hatred. And this little lady, JJ realized, knew how to hate.

Yet Alferd hadn't acted alone. That was something JJ hadn't known until now. As soon as he and Sarah were well away from the school, they stopped and a bulky ski-masked man entered the SUV. He smelled of Brut and tobacco and he overpowered her, wrapped her in a rug, laid her on the floor, and sat with his feet upon her. There she lay for a long, long time, maybe hours. The rug was stifling hot and dusty—JJ sneezed half a dozen times, so vivid were her memories—and eventually Sarah had been obliged to pee on herself. She'd felt such embarrassment and rage that if she'd been telekinetic both her kidnappers would have been vaporized, as they richly deserved to be.

Eventually Alferd stopped in a wilderness area, unwrapped her, and gave her a drink of iced tea while the accomplice stood guard. She darted several glances at the guy in the mask, enough to memorize the fact that he was short and wide and his Nike knockoffs were also short and wide, as if they contained the feet of a very large duck. Then—the tea must have had some kind of drug in it—she fell into a deep sleep, and woke some unknowable amount of time later lying on hard wooden planks in the dark. Feeling around, she touched a plastic bottle of water and a loaf of bread. She thought she was in a cabinet—she could feel the lid over her head. It was hot and stuffy in there, and the only fresh air seeped in through a flexible hose. From time to time she either slept or passed out; her head ached unbearably; she began to fear she'd die by slow suffocation.

JJ was fearing it too. This was not the first time he'd been inside somebody else's head. That strange experience had been happening at unpredictable moments since he was maybe four or five. But being in the dark prison with Sarah was different by several orders of magnitude. In the first place it was agonizing, and in the second place her life depended on him. Yet he couldn't tell where she was, because she didn't know herself.

In his distress JJ unbalanced himself and the chair deposited him on the floor again. He scrambled up, still holding Teddy, and began to stumble around the room, bouncing off the walls and banging into the old green furniture, totally disoriented and completely at a loss.

And then he noticed something. The intensity of Sarah's anguish wasn't exactly the same everywhere in the office. Near the north wall the sensation was a tad stronger, near the south wall a bit less. It was like playing one of those children's games where somebody says, “You're getting warm; you're getting cold."

Hah!

He exited the office. Deputy Garmish was absent from his post—toilet, probably, since the Penthouse had vanished too. JJ headed down the hall, found an outside door, and started weaving in and out among the big gleaming cruisers in the parking lot. The sensation fluctuated more noticeably. No doubt about it now—Teddy wasn't just a lightning rod for Sarah's emotions, he was a compass pointing to her whereabouts.

JJ slammed his way back inside and barged into the big office where Sheriff Chew sat conferring with half a dozen sleazy-looking characters who collectively formed St. Genevieve's governing Police Jury. JJ didn't care. Clutching Teddy to his breastbone, he gasped, “Ah need me a driver. Ah think Ah can lead you to Sarah Rapp."

He'd never seen a 300-pound man move so fast.

The rest of the story soon became famous throughout St. Genevieve and even beyond. How the sheriff dragged Deputy Garmish out of the john and ordered him to fire up a growler. How the three of them took off, with JJ still gripping Teddy. How Garmish essayed one scornful remark, only to be met with Chew's rejoinder, “Shut yore friggin’ mouth and drive."

How they wended in and out among the tangle of narrow blacktop roads crisscrossing St. Genevieve Parish, JJ muttering, “Left here. Right there.” How they wound up facing the Dry Branch Dump. How they were all temporarily baffled, until the sheriff—his small, slanted hunter's eyes darting over the ground—spotted a nearly invisible trail circling the dump with SUV tracks in the mud.

How JJ tumbled, Garmish leaped, and Chew rolled out of the police car. How they followed the tracks into possibly the most godforsaken bit of scrub forest in the Western world. How they fought their way through thickets of thorny vines and brush and found, projecting from a patch of disturbed and sunken earth, a piece of garden hose marking Sarah's grave. How a backhoe hastily summoned by the sheriff unearthed the little girl lying inside her coffin—a stout packing crate—still alive, though just barely.

The rest of the story unfolded while Sarah, holding Teddy to her heart, recovered in a Baton Rouge hospital. The SUV tracks led to blacktopped LA 1313 and vanished from sight. An APB was already out on the vehicle, sightings of which had been reported from Nome to Patagonia, so there was nothing more to be done along that line. Then a fisherman idly floating in a pirogue on nearby Lake Bocage—one of the oxbow lakes left behind when the ever-restless Mississippi changed its course sometime in the Pleistocene Epoch—noted unusual activity in a school of croakers. He paddled closer and found the well-named fish flickering in and out of a submerged SUV, where they'd been lunching off what remained of Alferd W. Finch.

A week later the parish coroner reported that the corpse had lost its eyes and hair, but as compensation had acquired a 9 mm slug that lingered in the gooey remnants of its brainstem. The phrase “execution style” leaped to the lips of a dozen TV talking heads, as did the obvious follow-up question: Who was Alferd's homicidal accomplice?

Wade Garmish gave JJ his thoughts about this loose end during a confidential chat at headquarters. How, the deputy asked, did JJ know where to find Sarah? Obviously, because he was the accomplice. Then why did he lead the sheriff to her? To grab the reward money as well as the ransom. JJ was beginning to wonder uneasily where this line of thought was leading, when he detected in the deputy's tobacco-colored eyes a glint of—was it possible?—admiration.

Laying a heavy hand upon his shoulder, Wade said, “JJ, you fuller of shit than a constipated pig. But Ah gotta tell you, son—you are some smart. Now, next time you decide to pull a job, you lemme in on it, okay? But no bullet in the back of the head, okay? Ah ain't no Alfie Finch, and Ah ain't a-goin’ out that way."

JJ left headquarters thinking, So that's what's wrong with fan clubs. You never know who might join.

One morning a week or two later, he was home in the locked Winnebago, lolling on his bunk with Aloe Vera and a clean towel beside him, when his Daddy used a key JJ'd unwisely given him to enter unannounced. Noting with a frown what his son was up to, he said, “JJ, you drop that damn thing of yours rat now and put on some pants and come in the office. The FBI wants to talk with you."

JJ was unhappy over the intrusion, and not only because he had to finish what he was doing in a hurry. He'd intended that very day to take off, both to see the country and to escape the consequences of fame.

All he really wanted from the world, he now realized, was privacy so that he could do what he, uh, did privately. But ever since he found Sarah, people just wouldn't let him alone. Sheriff Chew's story of the small-town mystic who'd helped him save a kidnapped child had proved irresistible to the media. The Times-Picayune and the Baton Rouge Advocate had written JJ up. Bloggers debated ESP on the Net. Sarah's dad, though he noticeably avoided shaking JJ's hand, gave him fulsome thanks and a five-thousand-dollar check at a ceremony in Sheriff Chew's office, while a young black man hefting an enormous camera recorded the scene for Channel 4 News. Sarah's stepmama bestowed a raspberry kiss upon him, and Sarah—a solemn young lady with a pale face, neatly divided brown hair, and large Madonna eyes—took his rejected hand in both of hers, saying in a clear, cool voice from which almost all traces of the local accent had been laundered out, “Thank you so much for saving my life, Mr. JJ."

Later, when the camera was gone, she added confidentially, “You're just like I pictured you when I was in that awful box. I felt you in there with me, and I knew you'd help"—a fantasy that he found touching.

The reward check gave him the means of escaping. JJ figured that he could stop and gamble at Indian casinos from time to time, cautiously replenishing his assets by winning just a little money, but not enough to get himself banned (or scalped). It seemed like a good plan, but now the damn-blam FBI wanted him. Sighing deeply, he washed his hands, got decent, and appeared as commanded in the trailer park office.

The federal agent was as neat and anonymous as he'd expected, but much shorter. JJ reckoned that if he happened to be standing on a corner when a fire truck pulled up, he'd be in real danger of having hoses inserted into his ears. This nubbin of authority displayed his ID and introduced himself as Agent Hickey.

"You are James John Link?” he inquired, peering with small round brown eyes, which diligent training at the FBI Academy had rendered almost perfectly expressionless, like well-worn pennies.

"No, suh. Mah official name is Jimmy John. People most generally call me JJ."

Agent Hickey frowned. Nobody was supposed to be named Jimmy John officially. “The media have reported that you gave Sheriff Chew valuable assistance in the discovery and recovery of Sarah Louellen Rapp. Is that correct?"

"Uh ... rat."

"I've spoken at some length to Miss Rapp, and her description of Finch's accomplice—we call him Suspect Alpha—doesn't match you.” His gaze flickered over JJ's lank knobby frame and long narrow feet. He frowned. “What I'd like you to tell me is this: Exactly how did you know where the victim had been buried?"

JJ felt the jaws of a trap beginning to close because, just like at the casino, he knew too much for his own good. Voice trembling a bit, he proceeded to lay the truth on Agent Hickey who, of course, did not believe him.

"I must tell you, Mr. Link—” that seemed more formal, and therefore better, than saying Jimmy John “—you've just handed me the biggest load of hogwash I've encountered since the last time I attended a session of the U.S. Senate. You better think of something more likely to convince a rational man, or accept the fact that you're a person of interest in the abduction of Sarah Rapp."

"Ah spose you tryin’ to scare me."

"Yes,” said Hickey, obviously believing he'd done a good job of it, in which he was dead right. So JJ blurted, “Spose Ah he'p you find Suspect Alpha—would that git me off the hook?"

"I'm not authorized to make any deals, Mr. Link. However, your cooperation with the authorities may well be viewed positively by the U.S. Attorney's office in New Orleans. Exactly how,” he continued (the man loved the word exactly), “do you propose to help us?"

"Bring me somethin’ belonged to Suspect Alpha, somethin’ he had some kind of connection with, and Ah'll lead you to him."

Hickey looked at him like a medical researcher gazing at a lipid-coated virus, then—tightly smiling—drew out of his right-hand coat pocket a small tape-wrapped package and placed it on the table.

"There's an object inside this, Mr. Link. Since you have preternatural powers, you won't need me to tell you what it is."

Feeling he'd just been called when bluffing with four hearts, JJ reluctantly touched the box, and—wow! Messages began to tickle his fingertips. Surely he couldn't have done this even a week ago? Yet now he knew—didn't just think but knew—that the object was ... hard ... cool ... round ... hollow ... smooth.

"It's a ring,” he said, and didn't need ESP to pick up Hickey's reaction. “Not a weddin’ ring. Too big. An athaletic ring? Oh Lord, it's a Useless ring, one of those things they give the jocks after a good season."

Hickey cleared his throat. “That's a rather remarkable trick,” he admitted.

JJ ignored him. The ring's owner was bothered. Knew he'd lost it, but didn't know where. Surely not at the ... the excavation? JJ felt his stab of fear.

"So,” he murmured. “Where was it at—buried in the mud at the bottom of the hole? Maybe y'awl went over the crime scene with a metal detector, and that was how you found it?"

This time Hickey merely stared. Talking mostly to himself, JJ continued teasing the story out of the flickering wi-fi messages that he alone could snatch from the firmament. His drawl became thicker with excitement.

"He uh, uh, uh, uh, took it off when they was wrasslin’ the box into the hole. He put the ring in his shirt pocket. He must of bent over—he don't remember this, he's guessin’ too—and it fell out, and they dropped the box on top of it. Then they went to grab Sarah, and in all the excitement he forgot about the ring until after he'd done Alferd in. Finally he remembered and looked in his pocket, and it wasn't there. Now he'd give his left nut to find it again, and that's the reason for the pull Ah'm feelin'."

Hickey sat there with his small round eyes as blank as the two worn buttons with which Teddy gazed at the world. Then abruptly he surrendered.

"Can you take me to him?” he whispered. “I have to tell you, Mr. Link, the Bureau's up a tree in this case. There's nothing to go on except this ring, and it hasn't led us anywhere. Mr. Rapp's a prominent Republican contributor, and we've got the Governor, two congresspersons and a particularly nasty Senator on our backs."

At last understanding the reason for this whole charade, JJ replied coolly, “Well, suh, Ah guess Ah can try."

In the agent's bland tan Ford, Hickey took the box from JJ, opened it with a penknife, and extracted the ring—a garish lump of gold-washed pewter and blue bottle glass encircled by the proud words USLS 2005 Champoins. (JJ figured the misspelling had gone undetected because the athletes to a man were functionally illiterate, and the coach nearly so.)

"Put it on,” Hickey said. “This is unofficial, of course, but if you lose it, I'll shoot you. Now: which way do we go?"

"Thataway,” said JJ, deliberately playing the rustic, and pointed down Huey toward the I-12 on-ramps.

While they drove, Hickey filled him in on the crucial clue. “That ring went to sixteen guys on the basketball team in ‘05, after they won the championship of whatever piss-ant league they play in."

JJ nodded. “The Cottonblossom League. That was the year our guys beat Hattiesburg Tech, 107-106. Ah seen it on TV. There was a big fight on the court and twelve people got tasered. It was a great game."

"Sounds like it,” Hickey said dryly. “Well, we've tracked down fifteen of the athletes, including a couple who are in jail for drug-related offenses. We headed out to pick up the sixteenth guy, only to learn that a tree fell on him during Hurricane Katrina. His mother states that the ring was not recovered with the body, so a looter stole it off the corpse. Another dead end."

He sounded bitter.

The interstate consisted of two concrete ribbons with clumps of trees in the median and clotted traffic surging east toward Florida and west toward California. JJ indicated the eastbound side, and Hickey inserted the Ford into a gap between two roaring double tractor-trailers with the contemptuous ease of a man trained to conduct high-speed chases. Exits flicked past—Hammond, Pontchatoula, Madisonville, Covington, Mandeville—with the glories of Slidell yet to come. They whisked by shopping centers, Best Buy after Best Buy, Petco after Petco, the endless ‘burbs of the White Homeland, safely separated by twenty-five-mile-wide Lake Pontchartrain from black-and-tan New Orleans to the south.

"Off next exit,” JJ commanded, happy to issue orders to the FBI.

Here urban traffic clogged what had been a back road as recently as JJ's teen years. Behind a thin screen of surviving trees, gated communities with names like Forestview and Bois de Boulogne appeared, each inhabited by tract houses of daunting similarity. JJ ran down his window and sniffed the rich odor of toasting Bunny Bread. The ring was buzzing like a captive bumblebee.

Signs appeared at roadside directing those who were lost—and, more important, those who were willing to lose—to the Shore-Win Casino. To JJ, this was familiar territory, and he ordered Hickey to turn onto an arrow-straight four-lane ribbon of concrete that went slashing across the marshlands to the lake's verge, where a faux riverboat lay moored. Hickey steered into a spacious parking lot, half full even at noonday, and a uniformed rent-a-cop directed him to a vacant slot.

Inside the riverboat, all was flash and glitter from banks of slot and video poker machines where pensioners were depositing their Social Security checks a dollar at a time. The ceiling winked with multicolored stars, and crude murals portrayed Rhett Butlers in white suits gambling their way to fortune while hoop-skirted Scarletts looked on admiringly. Neon signs directed the thirsty to the Bourbon Street Bar and the hungry to a seafood buffet called We Got Crabs. In the center of the casino a plastic oak tree dripped plastic moss.

JJ looked around and sighed. He felt like Adam gazing back at the Garden from which he'd been banned forever. As if in answer to his thought, a broad-shouldered man in a short-sleeved shirt and blue bowtie approached. He had black fur on his muscular forearms, a button mike stuck in one ear, and a palm-sized electronic box of some sort filling his breast pocket. He took JJ by the elbow.

"Out,” he said succinctly.

"Look at this,” said Hickey, slipping the leather folder with his credentials out of his pocket. The bouncer glanced down and released JJ.

"This man's not here to gamble,” Hickey assured him in a voice so soft that not even the closest players, who were probably hard of hearing anyhow, could have listened in. “He's assisting our inquiries in a case that involves kidnapping and murder. I assume you wouldn't want to be charged with obstructing the Bureau."

"You better talk to the boss,” said the bouncer, inclining his head slightly to the left. He and Hickey moved to a door overlooked by security cameras; it opened noiselessly, they passed inside, and the door closed behind them.

Meanwhile JJ circulated, guided by the throbbing of the ring. At this time of day, the action was slow but by no means dead; the roulette wheel lay immobile, but on three tables dice were bounding like frisky terriers across fields of green felt. Beyond the plastic oak tree one blackjack table was in use. The dealer's name tag said Phil; the sole player was a fat man displaying two fives and a deuce.

"Hit me,” said the fat man, and JJ—seeing what was coming—almost groaned aloud. The dealer flicked the guy a ten, and he busted out with twenty-two. He slipped off his chair, grunted, "You try the goddamn game,” and waddled away in the direction of the bar.

Phil paused in the act of sweeping the gambler's chips into a slot and stared transfixed at the ring, which responded by biting JJ's finger like a sand fly. He took the warm naugahyde seat and he and Phil looked at each other.

"I seen you on TV,” said the dealer. He had a flat, nasal Midwestern accent. “You're the guy found that kid."

He was wide and pudgy. He smelled of Brut. His fingers were nicotine-stained. JJ couldn't see his feet behind the half-moon table but felt pretty sure that they resembled a duck's. So this was the guy who'd buried a little girl alive! JJ didn't usually approve of torture, but decided to make an exception for Phil.

"Ah seen you admirin’ my ring,” was his opener. “Don't look like much, does it? But it's worth a lot."

"Oh yeah? How much you think it's worth?"

"About ten K."

Phil's eyes bulged. Maybe this was his first experience at being on the wrong end of extortion. JJ began to enjoy himself. “But I don't suppose you'd want it,” he went on.

Phil, trying to sound casual, said, “I used to have a ring that was sort of like it. When I lost it, people noticed. Nobody looks at a dealer's face, but everybody watches his hands. ‘Where's your big ring, Phil?’ they say."

JJ nodded. “Ah guess if they ever knew where this one was found at, they might connect the dots. Maybe you better think about buyin’ it, after all."

"I don't have ten K."

"Sure you do. With this job, you could skim that money inside a week."

"Only if I wanted to end up in the crab cage. We gotta chef puts his soft-shells in there to fatten up. Most generally he feeds ‘em spoiled chicken, but crabs ain't particular eaters. They'll take anything, including me."

"Come on,” said JJ, lowering his voice confidentially. “Ah know you got all that money out of old man R—"

Suddenly he stopped. Gasped. He'd caught a glimpse into Phil's mind. “Damn blam. So she's the one that got it. Go and tell Marsha Rapp you need a loan."

Phil looked scared. “Jesus,” he whispered. “So you can do what they said on TV. Look, I don't have a chance of getting it out of her. She paid me two K and I took the one she gave Alferd, making three. I already spent most of it. Her husband's got the big bundle, and she's prob'ly on her way to meet him right now."

"Rapp had his own daughter kidnapped?"

Now Phil looked disgusted. “And here I thought you really had ESP! No, butthead, her husband. He lives in Grunj, Croatia, where she comes from. It's a town where all they do is raise goats and work Internet scams. He runs a bunch of these beautiful-Third-World-gals-hot-to-marry websites and peddles her off to the best offer. She marries the guy, figures out how to bleed him, finds local talent to do the dirty work, and her husband—guy named Slivovitch—manages the money transfers so nobody, not the FBI, not nobody, can trace where it goes to. He's a computer genius.

"Take a card,” Phil added, flipping one across the table. “While we talk, we better look busy."

"Hit me,” said JJ, without glancing at the seven-spot. “Sounds like you really got to know her, she told you all that. Hit me again."

"That was after I begun to poke her. We met over this exact table and I seen right away she was too much woman for a needle-dick like old man Rapp. Well, you know how some women babble when you screw ‘em."

As a matter of fact, JJ didn't. But he did know cards—front and back. “Hit me,” he said again and again until he had seven-six-trey-deuce. “One more time."

"You sure?"

"Yeah.” Phil hit him with another deuce.

"Son of a bitch,” he said with dawning respect. “Five Card Charlie. If we was playin', you'da won."

"Ah do it almost every time,” said JJ. “That's why they banned me. Look, Phil, there's no percentage for me turning you in. But since Ah can't gamble no more, Ah need the money. So you figure out a way to get it, every damn penny, or you in deep shitsky, son."

He slid off the stool, thinking, That'll make the bastard sweat. Hickey was still among the missing, so JJ wandered outside and stood on the deck where he could watch the gangway, just in case Phil tried to run for it. In the parking lot he could see the rent-a-cop sitting on a folding chair, asleep in the shadow of a big SUV. He was wondering whether to go and wake him up, when a soft voice spoke in his ear.

"We gonna walk,” said Phil, “around the deck to the other side. When we get there, you gonna gimme that ring."

JJ did not need ESP to know the nature of the hard object jabbing his ribs. “You can't shoot me out here in public,” he protested as they moved to the starboard side of the Shore-Win. “Somebody'll hear you."

"A gambler wouldn't hear nothing if I shot the guys both sides of him,” Phil said. “That's how they are. And the house staff, they all watching the players and each other. Now gimme the goddamn ring. I'm on break, so I don't have all day."

JJ twisted the ring, pretending it was tight on his finger. He was trying to read Phil's mind, trying to find out whether the dealer actually would kill him right out here in the sight of God and everybody. What he picked up was only the threatening phrase crab cage.

He looked for help and found none. The lake stretched away, glimmering, to a leaden horizon. He wished he'd waited for Hickey. He wished he'd recognized that Phil had nothing to lose by killing him. He wished he'd gone to see the country when he had the chance. Squinching his eyes shut, JJ pulled off the ring, ready to throw it into shallow water where the FBI might be able to find it again. He knew Phil would shoot him if he did, but JJ had a strong feeling that for him, death was—so to speak—in the cards anyway.

Then he heard a dull sound, like whump! The dealer staggered, sagged against him, slipped to the deck. The gun clattered on the boards. JJ took an enormous breath. Hickey at last! The Federal Bureau of Investigation! The U.S. Cavalry! Weak with relief, he spun around.

Sarah Rapp was standing there beside an aged black man—leather face, blue chauffeur's uniform, billed cap over cottony hair—who was holding a tire iron and gazing down at the man sprawled on the deck.

"See how you like having a concussion, sucker,” said William Wood.

After handing Phil and the ring over to Hickey, JJ and his two saviors rode back to Bougalou in the Rapps’ big new SUV, headed for Sheriff Chew's office to make formal statements. Sarah revealed they'd encounter the bigamist Marsha there, because she was under arrest.

"How'd you know she was in on it?” asked JJ. “And hey, how'd you find me?"

"The same way you found me,” replied Sarah. “I never liked Marsha. You know how girls usually are about stepmothers, especially stepmothers with big bazooms. And when I was lying in that box thinking, suddenly it came to me that she was back of it all. I've always had a little ESP, not like yours, but there in the dark it started really developing because that was the only way I could reach the outside world. Today I found Marsha in her walk-in closet packing her bags, and I knew right off she was just about to run. So I locked her in and called the sheriff and told him to come and arrest her."

"And he did what you told him to?"

"He always does what the Rapps tell him to,” Sarah answered with cool self-assurance. “Marsha was screaming and banging on the closet door, so I lied and said I'd let her out if she told me who the man with the duck feet was, and she said he was a blackjack dealer at the Shore-Win. Suddenly I had this feeling that you were walking right into terrible danger from the same man, so I left her in the closet still screaming and called William and we took off without waiting for the law. You know, Mr. JJ, back when you saved my life, I fell in love with you."

"You did?"

"It's the most tremendous experience of my life, up to now, anyway. Tell me, how old are you?"

He looked uneasily at the Lolita seated beside him. Her dark eyes were luminous, intense, and he had no difficulty at all in seeing the steely willfulness that lay behind them. He mumbled, “Twenty-four."

"We won't be able to marry for a while,” she said thoughtfully. “But in six years I'll be eighteen and you'll be, um, thirty. That's really old. But it's okay, I like older men. So we'll get married then, and have a bunch of children."

JJ croaked, “Children??"

"It's our duty to the gene pool,” Sarah informed him. “I got the idea from the Sci Fi Channel. I mean, how many people can there be with a gift like ours? I think it'll be terribly interesting to breed a super race, don't you?"

"Uh—"

"Daddy won't like it, of course,” she went on, musing. “He'll want me to marry some dreary old lawyer or doctor or something. But if he makes trouble I'll just remind him how he married Marsha off the Internet for her big bazoom and almost got me killed. That ought to shut him up."

Solemnly she took JJ's hand and held it with both of hers. “I could marry at sixteen with Daddy's permission, but I don't think we ought to rush into things, do you? I'll probably be quite silly then, because of all the hormones, and you're too mature to like that. Anyway, I want to have some sexual experience before I marry, and I think boys my own age will be fine for learning the ropes. Virginity is so silly, don't you think? I mean, once you're nubile."

Even through his shock, JJ heard William chuckle, up in the driver's seat. Apparently Sarah's managing ways were an old story to him. For the rest of the journey they rode in silence, with Sarah's firm, strong young hands holding JJ's limp one.

At the sheriff's office, a final surprise awaited them. Glowering like a giant enraged Foo Dog, Sheriff Russell Chew informed them that Marsha had escaped. “Ah sent that ass—that butt—'scuse me, Miss Rapp. Ah sent Wade Garmish to pick her up, and near as Ah can figure, she conned him into runnin’ off with her instead."

"Interpol will track them down,” promised Hickey, bustling in. His prisoner was safely in the grip of several of his larger colleagues, ready to face both local and federal charges whenever he woke up from the bashing William had given him.

"You feds can have first crack at them kidnappers,” growled Big Russ, “just so's Ah git Wade all to myself. There's a little thing they used to do in China Ah want to try on him. It's kind of like waterboarding, only slower, and it hurts more."

Out in the parking lot, among the police cruisers, Sarah told JJ au revoir. William had the SUV purring and sat at the wheel, waiting for her.

"Good-bye for now, JJ,” she said, skipping the mister for the first time and giving him a chaste peck on the cheek. “I have to go to my ballet class. I'm supposed to get up en pointe today, and it's hard but terribly exciting. Just remember our plans for the future, and don't go wasting yourself on other women in the meantime. I wouldn't like that a bit."

When they'd gone, JJ stood looking after them for a long, long time. Wait six years for a bossy pre-teen to grow up, so he could spend the rest of his life begetting and rearing paranormal children? In a daze he set off walking toward the Ox-Bow Trailer Park. Then he began to run.

Two weeks later, JJ sat down in his dust-caked Winnebago in a mobile-home park outside Flagstaff, Arizona, to write a note to Sarah. It worried him that he'd left without saying good-bye, and he didn't want her to grieve for him.

Dear Sarah, he wrote, crossed that out and wrote Dear Miss Rapp, crossed that out, chose a new piece of notepaper and wrote, Dear Miss Sarah, I am alright and hope you are alright too. I am seeing the country for the first time and there is sure a lot of it. I hope you enjoy learning to toe dance as it is a nice thing for nice young ladies to be able to do. Personally I have never been sure which foot of mine is the left one, ha ha. I hope you grow up and meet a nice young doctor or lawyer and marry him. As for me, I have met a nice young lady name of Vera and we will get married in Reno. Wishing you all the best always I am, Sincerely yours, Jimmy John (JJ) Link.

He walked down to the gate of the mobile-home park and dropped the letter into a mailbox. It was a splendid evening, with a vast desert moon rising in a fluorescent sky. For a time he lingered, feeling vaguely romantic and a bit lost. He decided to phone Daddy as soon as he had a permanent address and ask him to send the Bulletin, so he could follow Sarah's doings on the Society Page and return to Bougalou once she was safely wed. Traveling was educational, but he'd come to realize he was basically a homebody.

He felt good, having a plan. Tomorrow he'd visit an Indian casino to replenish his money supply, but as for tonight—well, tonight he had a date with Vera. Smiling, he turned and headed back to the Winnebago.

Three days later, Sarah read JJ's note while William was driving her to the riding stable where Empress, her favorite mare, awaited her.

"He thinks!" was all she said before crumpling the note and throwing it out the window. William knew that tone of voice and said nothing, but drove on in silence, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.

SWATCHMEN

About a hundred years ago, a considerable degree of controversy attended the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's ballet, The Rite of Spring, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Fellow composer Camille Saint-Saëns was so offended by the use of the bassoon in the ballet's opening bars that he stormed from the theater. A portion of the audience became inflamed by the use of discords, boos contended with cheers, and the arguments between the work's detractors and supporters soon escalated into fistfights and, eventually, a full-blown riot. A century later, Watchmen opened on almost four thousand screens across the United States, a movie with the potential to provoke a controversy relating to similar minutiae, sending legions of fans of the Alan Moore-Dave Gibbons graphic novel on which it was based rushing to their computer keyboards to complain about this or that omission, to tear their cyber-hair and declare a fatwah on director Zack Snyder. Go to YouTube, for instance, and you will find thousands of such people debating the use of each song in the soundtrack. To compare Stravinsky's masterpiece with either Snyder's film or its source material may seem excessive, but Watchmen was chosen as one of the Greatest One Hundred Novels in English from 1923 to 2005 by no less persuasive an entity than Time magazine, and while this might be seen as the Time-Warner corporation throwing the geeks a bone, it seems to warrant an elevation in the way we look at the film.

Watchmen opens with a credit sequence marvelous for its economy, a photomontage that establishes the alternate world of 1985 in which the movie is set, a world in the grasp of an apparently endless Nixon presidency that is on the verge of nuclear Armageddon; a world in which a group of masked superhero vigilantes called the Minutemen appeared in the late Thirties/early Forties, to fight injustice, later replaced by a younger group of superheroes known as the Watchmen; a world in which JFK was assassinated by one of their number, the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a full-blown crypto-Nazi thug, and in which the U.S. won the Vietnam War with a crucial assist from fellow Watchman, Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a physicist transformed by a lab accident into a blue post-human with godlike powers and six-pack abs who goes on incessantly about feeling disengaged from everyone, and babbles some garbage about time and how nothing ever ends (I worried for a while he was speaking about the movie), and wanders around naked on Mars, in Antarctica, and elsewhere with his tackle box on full display; a world in which, for reasons left unstated, masked superhero vigilantism has been declared illegal and, forbidden from practicing their avocation, many Watchmen have lives that travel a downward spiral. Unfortunately, this sequence also provides a foretaste of one of the film's grievous flaws, beginning each section of the photomontage with a freeze frame that gives the impression you are looking at waxworks in a museum (this feeling of visiting the Watchmen Museum is further enhanced by having actors playing ‘80s icons—Nixon, Lee Iacocca, Andy Warhol, Ted Koppel, etc.—do cameos in horrid wigs and prosthetics).

The story proper kicks off with the murder of the Comedian by a mysterious masked assassin. The Comedian was not what you'd call a nice guy (in addition to shooting JFK, he blew away his pregnant Vietnamese girlfriend, attempted to rape the original Silk Spectre, and espoused fascism, as do others in the group), but the creepy, rat-like presence of Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), a sociopath who has stayed true to his calling and refuses to knuckle under to the laws making vigilantism illegal, and whose journal entries comprise the film's voiceover, perceives the murder to be an attack on all the Watchmen and decides to investigate. It's at this point that the movie goes astray, becoming for much of its remaining two-hours-plus a tedious, soap opera-ish compilation of back stories leavened here and there with a dash of ultra-violence. Absent the layers of information (for instance—Rorschach's mask was made from the fabric of a dress made for Kitty Genovese, one she never picked up) and the sidebar stories that Moore crammed into a sequence of twelve comic books, material in which the core issue of Watchmen was embedded, i.e., our relation to comics, why we read them, what they are, et al.... Absent that, it all comes across as bleak silliness.

Of course this is partly Moore's fault.

Despite the insistence made by some that pop culture be taken seriously as high art, Watchmen remains a superhero comic (if it were something else, it would not serve its author's purpose), and as such, its vision of history and its take on human relationships are adolescent and simplistic, and its profundities are merely quasi-profound; its themes, variously interpreted as everything from political satire to the death of the hero, are essentially a juvenile nihilism embroidered with masked musclemen and their melon-breasted mamas. It seems the work of a precocious sophomore whose reading of philosophy ended with Nietzsche and whose literary obsessions (Jack Kirby, Raymond Chandler, and so on) have produced an absurdly pretentious style of noir, a style that has since proliferated and that I've come to call the It's-Always-Raining-Where-I'm-Drinking (high) school of creativity, usually defined by rundown urban settings rife with graffiti and rainy streets awash with obsessed loners and women in tight and/or revealing clothing. Labeling it one of the great novels of our era doesn't change the fact that you could probably make a list of a hundred better novels written by authors whose surnames start with the letter Z. It's a seminal work in the comic book field, a genre-expanding work, but the genre it expands, superhero comics, targets a demographic composed mainly of adolescents and adults clinging to their adolescence (I make no implicit judgment here—I'm clinging like all get-out to mine), a vast percentage of whom are prevented by an R rating from seeing the movie.

Jackie Earle Haley makes an impression as Rorschach (since he's the most violent character, Snyder pays him special attentiveness), but otherwise the acting ranges from the awful to bland. Bland is embodied by the relationship between Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson), who wears a Batman-like costume and is as shy as Clark Kent, and the va-va-voomish Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman, whose thespic skills will someday soon land her a gig on one of those has-been reality shows like The Surreal Life or Celebrity Apprentice). Their romance is consummated aboard Nite Owl's airship while Leonard Cohen wheezes out “Hallelujah” for hopefully the last time ever on-screen and Ms. Akerman displays a talent for flaring her buttocks. Who most embodies Bad? Well, it's so hard to choose, but I'd go with Matthew Goode, who plays Adrian Veidt and his alter ego Ozymandias, the world's smartest man. Of course Goode isn't afforded much of a chance to put his smarts on display by the script, which—though as faithful as possible to the comic book—gives him and the rest of the characters short shrift. A character as integral to the outcome of the story as Veidt, however, should have had more screen time. It doesn't help that Goode plays him like a refugee from a 1920s British stage production of a play about polite society, Auntie Mim's dissolute and distracted nephew wandering about the ruins of a party where he has drunk one too many champagne cocktails and performed some unspeakable indiscretion, wearing costumes (notably a purplish number accessorized by a gold Roman headband-type thingey) that would suggest he's on his way to becoming the world's smartest cross-dresser.

I bet you've heard the phrase “the visionary director, Zack Snyder” in the avalanche of TV commercials that preceded the film's opening. Well, it's apparent that “visionary director” is the new “soulless hack.” What Watchmen needed was a director who could reinvent the comic, not just transpose it, and Snyder is best known for his faithful reproduction of Frank Miller's art in 300, something he also does in Watchmen, replicating frame after frame of Dave Gibbons's work. His slick slow motion, jump-cutting style is inappropriate to the über-gritty feel Moore and Gibbons brought to their down-and-almost-out alt-America. He appears far more interested in the action sequences than in the characters and thus the pacing of the film feels erratic, with long stretches of snooze-inducing dialog between men and women you're unable to care about punctuated by severed limbs and slo-mo bullet strikes and scenes like the one in which the relentlessly grim Rorschach tracks a pedophile to his lair, discovers the man's dogs fighting over the bones of his tiny victim, and proceeds to slam a meat cleaver over and over into the perp's skull. None of this has the least emotional impact. When millions die in a nuclear exchange, we're so disconnected from the reality of the event that we feel nothing of the human tragedy and only are engaged by the special effect.

Despite a few scenes that work and some striking visuals, Watchmen fails on almost every level because it begs to be treated as a story about superheroes as real people, yet neither the comic nor the film provide a single character that is more than a cartoon. To make Watchman as it should be made, as a picture about comic books, you would have to restore the self-referential material and pare down the detective story to a sliver ... in which case you might as well lose the masked superheroes entirely and make a completely different film that's a meditation on the genre and has nothing to do with Watchmen. Of course if you did that, you'd never get the money to shoot it, and no one would want to see it.

20th Century Boys, based on the bestselling manga by Naoki Urasawa, deriving its title from a Marc Bolan song, has been described as the Japanese Watchmen, and though it explores a different territory, one populated by rock stars and giant killer robots, it also takes place in a nihilistic milieu. Like Watchmen, it was presumed to be too large in scope and complexity to be filmed; but now 20th Century Boys, the first of a planned trilogy, is out on Region 1 DVD. As with Watchmen, the adaptation suffers from being too literal a take on the original material, has flashy visuals and even more disjointed a narrative, much of the story being told in flashbacks and flash forwards; yet the humorous side of the manga does survive, something Watchmen does not achieve.

In 1969, a group of children build a secret hideaway and begin writing the Book of Prophecy, an illustrated notebook that seems to be a fantasy about the future of mankind. Thirty years later, Kenji, the main creator of the book, is the manager of a convenience store and is looking after his sister's daughter, Kanna. A religious cult is growing by leaps and bounds in Tokyo, spreading across the world, led by an enigmatic figure known as Friend, and on a local university campus there have been a number of gruesome deaths from spontaneous blood loss. When Kenji and his friends meet at a school reunion they realize that the cult's symbol is exactly like one they created for their childhood club. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that a global apocalypse is in the offing and that whoever is plotting to destroy civilization is using the Book of Prophecy as a template for their plan. Kenji is close to discovering the identity of the mysterious Friend, when the cult frames him for terrorist activity and he is forced underground.

20th Century Boys is less ambitious than Watchmen as to its depth, if not its scope—it spans a period of fifty years, and the first film in the trilogy suffers from a cliffhanger ending and having to establish so much in the way of back story. Yet when all three films are available, it might turn out to be the more enjoyable viewing experience. As they stand, though, the question that occurred to me after seeing both the Watchman and 20th Century Boys pictures was, Why the hell did they bother?

Ah, yes, he said with a sigh. Tony and Mick's brainchild; their greatest conception. I have been with F&SF as long as this magazine has been with itself. A sting longer than any of its grand and great editors. I bought the very first issue, in 1949, soon after the death of my father. It was known, for that issue only (if memory serves after only sixty years) as The Magazine of Fantasy. It was a photo cover, and not a terribly prepossessing one, because the great designer George Salter would not take over till issue number 2.

In the sixty years of writing and selling the gold and detritus swishing around in my pan, of the almost 1800 stories, essays, columns, and minutiae that have found a paying home, this periodical has published more than any other single venue. This magazine is as much an icon of my life as, well, Jiminy Cricket. The task of selecting one story from F&SF, from every issue ever published, is a ball-buster; a task assumed not lightly. And yet, as it turns out, less a conundrum than I had imagined when Gordon asked me to contribute such a selection's Classic Reprint introduction.

Dozens of them began rising like wraiths from my mental porridge. I knew most of the authors well, some were my closest friends; a couple who are gone are still rotting in hell; long ones and short ones and serials ... all of them gently spiraled up from memory, the edges softened, but the joy of their acquaintance still potent. So which one would it be?

Avram's “Or All the Seas with Oysters” or Ted's “The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast” or Ward's “Bring the Jubilee” or...

(Between 24 July 1951 [I had just turned seventeen] and the date he relinquished hands-on editorship of F&SF, Tony Boucher rejected my pathetic attempts at joining the pantheon thirty-two straight times. He told me, years later, that it was the most obstinately endless unbroken string of bounces in his career as an editor. Yet when my freshman short story collection was published in 1958, the first review I received was from Tony in The New York Times Book Review. It was a good review for an awkward first collection.)

...or Dick Matheson's unforgettable “Born of Man and Woman” or one of Sprague's and Fletcher Pratt's Gavagan's bar comedies, or Howard Schoenfeld's “Built Up Logically” or Reg Bretnor's “The Gnurrs Come from the Voodvork Out” or Phil Farmer's “Father” or Kurt's “Harrison Bergeron” or...

No. Just calm down, kid. The object of this piece is to introduce something grand and unique, not to recap the moments of brilliance on paper this magazine replicates issue after issue for more than half a century. That's no-price. Stay on topic. Do not thread-drift, as one with the geez you are becoming. Tell them, already, the story that popped to mind

in

an

instant

overriding Leiber and Anderson and Manly Wade Wellman and all the other furlongs-in-the-lead choices that presented themselves unbidden. Who could overpower Blish and Bradbury, Catherine Moore and Henry Kuttner, Sheck—? No! Dammit! It is impossible to stop listing them, the hundreds of them, that F&SF has gifted us year after year. So consider how improbable is my choice as the most unforgettable one in a lifetime of this periodical, in a lifetime of this writer:

It is a small, perfect, as-burning-bright wee piece, that (for me) towers over all the tsunamis and skyscrapers and Everests F&SF has raised. It is Ms. Jessie Thompson's “Snowfall” from the September 1988 issue, her first published story.

Matheson's “Born of Man and Woman” was his first published story, the first one submitted to Tony and Mick. Jessie Thompson's first submission to F&SF was “Snowfall.” Both are brilliant, flat-out astonishing: I was rejected thirty-two straight times. Don't tell me there's a “God"!

...or Poul's “Three Hearts and Three Lions” or Margaret St. Clair (as Idris Seabright)'s “The Listening Child” or the tragic Walter M. Miller's breathtaking “A Canticle for Liebowitz” or Cliff Simak's “How-2” or I'm drifting again ... this damned magazine is like a bag of baked potato chips ... one cannot stop piling remembrance after glee upon memories. Jessie Thompson. “Snowfall.” Yes, I'm going, stop shoving!

When it appeared in 1988, I wrote Ms. Thompson an unsolicited note that read, in part, “...having read ... a vast amount of the words available on this planet, it is not often one suffers the joy of having read a ‘first published’ story that can bring tears of pleasure.

"Ed Ferman spoke conservatively when he called it a ‘superior story.’ It is more than that. It is a jewel. I hope you won't think me intrusive for having called both Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, editors of The Year's Best Fantasy Anthology, to enthuse over ‘Snowfall’ and to urge them to include it in their best-of-1988 collection ... I welcome you to the ranks of those who write with love of the language and talent so fine and obvious that it brooks no criticism. Long may you indulge your art."

And when Gordon said, “Pick a story as your best reading from F&SF,” after I eliminated all of my own, I called Ms. Thompson, whose byline has been little-seen since “Snowfall,” and I asked her for a few brief words of bio. She was demure and hesitant, as if she were, say, a baby fox peering out from under hedges. But she seemed okay with me passing along these bits of her past:

She quit working for Chevron at age forty, and sent her first story, “Snowfall,” to F&SF at the same time. She was forty; I guess that would be ‘88. At age forty-one, she told me, she suffered from such deep anxiety, and a chemical imbalance, depressions so intense that they put her in what she haltingly called “a kind of hospital.” Between 1991 and 1992 she was “in” three times. Prozac, and the usual nightmare that accompanies such case-histories. She said she'd been clean for fifteen years, but in 2005 the anxiety came back; 2006—electroshock therapy.

She is married now, and living in California.

I think she said she was working as a horticulturist.

She doesn't write anymore.

Listen, I may have some of the foregoing screwed up. I was hardly unflustered by the emotional freighting of what Ms. Thompson was so calmly investing in someone who was no more than several steps up from a totally unknown repository for such secrets. I think I got it right, but even after years as a journalist and interviewer, used to taking notes as fast as I could, well, I was damned near incapacitated by the swiftness and seriousness of her words. I think I got it right.

And I asked her several times if she was sure she didn't mind my setting this out in public. She said, ever so sweetly, “No, I don't mind. It was my life."

And this, faithful readers, lovers of great writing, kindly and compassionate each of you ... this is Ms. Jessie Thompson's most wonderful moment. “Snowfall."

22 February 2009

The snow just falls and falls, white and silent and cold as frozen fox bones. The girl watches from her bedroom window, thinking of baby foxes, hot-blooded and soft-furred, running and burrowing under the dark pine trees behind the farmhouse.

"Cindy! Supper.” Cindy doesn't answer. Her mother shouts up the stairs again. The radiator hisses as darkness captures another corner of the twilight room. Cindy hides the tiny fox skull, then rises from her bed and goes downstairs, her foot pausing in the air above each step.

One part of her mind is listening for the danger sounds that mean he's home. But mostly she's thinking about bright-eyed baby foxes.

The kitchen is hot and steamy. The windows are fogged over. Jack and Danny tumble like puppies in the corner, their squeals shredding the silence. Smaller, quieter noises come from her mother, crying at the stove. Cindy's heart contracts. Her mother is banging pots and spoons to hide the choked-off little gasps of pain, but Cindy's hearing is acute. I'm like a fox, she thinks. I have fox ears. I watch like a fox, and I can smell trouble coming.

He comes in. He stinks of cow shit. The boys stop tussling, but not fast enough. A slap on the side of the head catches Danny by surprise, and he cries out. Jack grabs his cowboy gun, the knuckles on his pudgy baby hand turning white. “Bang!” he shouts. “Bang! Bang!” The gun flies across the room as a rough hand yanks him into the air. He hits the wall and slides down into a wailing heap. Danny, face flushed, rolls over to cover him, holds him tight.

The big man's face is red, too; he's leaning forward, stepping closer. “Don't you ever point that gun at me again, mister. You hear?"

Cindy glances at her mother. Her face is pale, and her jaw muscles are squeezed tight. She doesn't look up from the stove.

Under Danny, Jack is whimpering. “Put him in his chair. Sit. You too, girl.” He glares at Cindy. She sees a strange flicker pass through his eyes. She's seen it a lot lately. She doesn't know what it means. His eyes drop away.

"Let's eat, for christsakes. Jesus. I work myself ragged all day to come home to this bullshit?"

He takes a beer out of the refrigerator and thwunks the door shut. It springs back at him, and he kicks it closed. “You damn well better do something about these kids, Claire. If they get any wilder, I'm sure as hell not going to work my butt off to feed the little bastards."

Cindy slides into her chair and spreads her napkin on her lap. She studies the brown crack in her plate. Her mother turns from the stove. Outside, the snow is falling. They eat. He complains.

In the night, she dreams. She dreams she's in the woods, playing chase with baby foxes. She's hiding in a gopher hole on the edge of the field, peering out, snout snuffling cold air, eyes darting around mischievously, laughter rising in her throat.

She wakes to darkness, can smell snow still falling outside. Her mother's high-pitched voice wails up and down like a mournful siren, furious words lost in sobbing. A loud slap, and the sobbing stops. The radiator starts to bang, over and over, bangs and bangs and thrums through the house. Cindy's heart is pounding in her ears. She thinks of baby foxes. Her breathing slows, and she falls asleep.

She sleeps and dreams of foxes in the pines, and then the monster comes. The huge white beast finds her hiding in the woods, sleeping with the foxes on a bed of warm snow. It looms over her, whispering that it won't hurt her. It says it loves her. She knows it lies.

She tries to scream, but whiteness covers her face, presses against her mouth. A sharp pain stabs her belly. The beast is breathing hard, hissing foul breath. Pain shoots up her belly in cramping spasms. Hot monster slime trickles down her clenched throat.

She thinks of her friends the foxes, and they poke their noses out from behind the logs and bushes, watching with bright eyes as she struggles not to choke and slip into darkness. The monster is heavy on her, squeezing out the last of her air. It's just snow, she thinks. I've fallen asleep outside, and the snow is burying me. Under the snow, it's warm and soft and silent. Her muscles relax, and she surrenders to the whiteness. When it melts away into the night, she wakes up wet and sweating. There's a funny smell in the air.

She sits at the table with a woman in an apron and a man in dirty, faded blue overalls. Two little boys climb into chairs across the table from her. She sees them glance at the man sideways, fear in their bright eyes. Little foxes. Ready to dart away. Cindy can't remember what she's doing at this table, with these people.

A shadow, huge and white, crosses her mind, but she doesn't grab it in time. Snow falls on it and covers its tracks. “Cindy,” the woman says. “Eat your food, hon.” Cindy thinks of foxes, how they tickle her ears with their snouts, and she forgets to puzzle out the woman's words.

A sweet-smelling, warm, safe burrow. Hours pass, unnoticed. Night drifts down, quiet as the snow. The huge white beast-thing comes again.

Morning. She sits at a table with the smell of eggs and frying bacon in her nose. Outside, it's blue. Bright, blinding blue pouring in the windows and the open door. Diamonds glitter in mounds on the windowsills. Bacon, eggs, table. Puzzled, she considers each item separately and then all together. The room is familiar. But the creatures make no sense. Since when do snow monsters eat bacon and eggs?

The one at the end of the table is huge. It's the color of old, dirty snow. A clump of pine needles tops its head like hair. The monster glares at a smaller, very white monster standing at the stove. Both have black cinders where eyes should be. The monsters are wearing her parents’ clothes.

Suddenly the big monster stands up, rocking the table. Loud, angry noises pour out of it, out of a gaping hole that rips the bottom of its face apart. It throws a bowl down, hard. The smaller monster starts to wail, face hole splitting wider and wider until its black eyes disappear. Holding a frying pan high, it comes rushing toward the table.

Cindy notices for the first time the two little foxes sitting across the table from her. They grab each other and twitter and yap in fox voices, then slide from the table and run out the open door.

Cindy gets up to leave, too, but a hot, snowy monster grabs her shoulder. She winces with pain. The big monster picks her up and thrusts her in front of the frying pan, which slams into her back with a crack. She's dizzy. The room is getting dark. The monster holds her up in the air now with one paw, holds her by the throat, roars something that sounds like, “Your fault—your fault...."

And then, suddenly, the monster's belly turns the color of dirty snow when you pee on it, and Cindy's underpants feel warm and wet. The monster hurls her to the floor, she's down on her knees, crawling through the door, heading for the bright blue air. Crawling across the cold snow into the pine trees, where she's sure the little foxes must have gone.

A booming noise is coming closer.

She hears the baby foxes yipping in the woods, and crawls toward them. The air shakes and roars. Her throat tastes like firecrackers. Two booms, and the frantic yipping stops. Another boom, and the smaller monster is right above her, spraying red all over the snow, crumpling to the ground. The big monster rushes toward Cindy, boom stick waving. It stops, frozen now, staring down at her with cinder eyes.

A truck is screaming down the long gravel road, horn blaring. The monster stops, turns around. Slowly, slowly, the short double stick goes into its own mouth hole. One more boom. There's a roaring in Cindy's ears. The blue sky darkens. Stars explode. And snow begins to fall.

Low sun. Hot white walls. Cindy squats on her haunches, staring out the window. The pine trees are gone. Something clicks on, hums and buzzes. Cool air lifts the short hairs on her neck. Cindy strokes the little fox skull hidden in her gown; rhythmically polishes it. Her paw slips in and out of the eyeholes.

A door opens behind her. “Cindy, it's time to eat. Come with me, honey.” The young woman approaches. Reaches out a gentle hand. Cindy crouches lower, ready to spring. A growl rises from deep in her throat. The woman yanks her hand back, turns abruptly, and leaves the room.

Cindy's snout itches. She smiles and scratches it and stares with bright, feral eyes at the man in overalls watering the lawn outside. He sees her watching him, and smiles back. There's the smell of cut grass in his smile, and maybe a whiff of cow shit. She bares her teeth and glares at him until he turns away.

Slowly, slowly, she moves toward the window. Her paw fumbles with the rusted lock. Frustrated, she tries her teeth. The window snaps open with a crack like the crack of a gun. Startled, she jumps. Pain shoots through her tail as it catches on the jagged sill, but she yanks the tail free and scampers across the wet grass. The man in overalls shouts.

Cindy crouches under the bushes, peering out, eyes laughing. A young woman runs across the lawn toward the smelly man in overalls. His arm waves wildly in Cindy's direction. Behind them, a man in white bends over the windowsill. He holds up something red. Cindy grins. The pain in her tail is already gone.

Hunkered down, she backs out of the bush and into the warm, dark woods, yipping a greeting to the chuckling foxes. Above the shocked and frozen humans, the spray from the sprinkler rises higher and higher and turns to snow.

Bruce Sterling's most recent novel, The Caryatids, was published earlier this year. His addictive blog (at blog.wired.com/sterling) includes recent posts about telepathy, e-book readers, psychological warfare, and an effort to turn “spam” into wallpaper. And his most recent story, which we are pleased to present herewith, takes us to the city where Vermouth was born.

Was that the anguished howl of a dying dog? Or just his belly rumbling?

Cold dread nosed at the soul of Achille Occhietti. He rose and jabbed his blue-veined feet into his calfskin slippers.

In the sumptuous hall beyond his bedroom, the ghost-light of midnight television flickered beneath his wife's door. Ofelia was snoring.

Occhietti's eyes shrank in the radiant glare of his yawning fridge. During the evening's game, elated by the home team's victory over the hated Florentines, he'd glutted himself on baked walnuts, peppery breadsticks, and Alpine ricotta. Yes, there it lurked, that sleep-disturbing cheese: glabrous and skinless, richer than sin.

The fridge thumped shut and the dimly shining metal showed Occhietti his own surprised reflection: groggy, jowly, balding. The hands that gripped the crystal cheese-plate were as heavy as a thief's.

A blur rose behind Occhietti, echoing his own distorted image. He turned, plate in hand.

A mystical smoke gushed straight up through Occhietti's floor. Rising, roiling, reeling, the cloud gathered earthly substance; it blackly stained the grout between his kitchen tiles.

Occhietti's vaporous guest stank powerfully of frankincense, petroleum, and myrrh.

Resignedly, Ochietti set the cheese plate on the sideboard. He flicked on the kitchen's halogen lights.

In the shock of sudden illumination, Occhietti's mystic visitor took on a definitive substance. He was Djoser, an ancient Egyptian priest and engineer. Djoser had been dead for three thousand years.

Flaking, brittle, and browned by the passing millennia, the mummy loomed at Ochietti's kitchen table, grasping at the checkered cloth with ancient fingers thin as macaroni. He opened his hollow-cheeked maw, and silently wagged the blackened tongue behind his time-stained ivories.

Occhietti edged across the ranks of cabinets and retrieved a Venetian shot glass.

Using a sharp little fruit knife, Ochietti opened the smaller vein in his left wrist. Then he dribbled a generous dram of his life's blood into the glass.

The mummy gulped his crimson aperitif. Dust puffed from his cracked flesh as his withered limbs plumped. His wily, flattened eyeballs rolled in their sockets. He was breathing.

Occhietti pressed a snowy wad of kitchen towels against his tiny wound. It really hurt to open a vein. His head was spinning.

With a grisly croak, Djoser found his voice. “Tonight you are going to Hell!"

"So soon?” said Occhietti.

Djoser licked the bloodstained dregs of his shot glass. “Yes!"

Occhietti studied his spirit guide with sorrow. He regretted that their long relationship had finally come to this point.

Once, the mummy Djoser had been lying entirely dead, as harmless and inert as dried papyrus, in the mortuary halls of Turin's Museo Egizio—the largest Egyptian museum in Europe. Then Occhietti, as a burningly ambitious young businessman, had occultly penetrated the Turinese museum. He had performed the rites of necromancy necessary to rouse the dead Egyptian. An exceedingly dark business, that; the blackest of black magic; a lesser wizard would have quailed at it, especially at all the fresh blood.

Yet a shining lifetime of success had followed Occhietti's dark misdeed. The occult services of an undead adviser were a major advantage in Turinese business circles.

The world's three great capitals of black magic (as every adept knew) were Lyon, the City of Heretics; Prague, the City of Alchemists; and Turin. The world also held three great centers of white magic: London, the City of the Golden Dawn; San Francisco, the City of Love;—and Turin.

Turin, the Esoteric City, was saturated with magic both black and white. Every brick and baroque cornice in the city was shot through with the supernatural.

He'd led a career most car executives would envy, but Achille Occhietti did not flatter himself that he ranked with the greatest wizards ever in Turin. Nobody would rank him with Leonardo da Vinci ... or even Prince Eugene of Savoy. No, Occhietti was merely the head of a multinational company's venture capital division, a top technocratic magus at a colossal corporation that had inundated Europe with a honking fleet of affordable compacts and roaring, sleekly gorgeous sports cars, a firm that commanded 16.5 percent of the entire industrial R&D budget of Italy. So, not much magic to marvel at there. Not compared to the concrete achievements of, say, Nostradamus.

Having bound up his wounded wrist, Occhietti offered the mummy a Cuban cigar from his fridge's capacious freezer.

Smoke percolated through cracks in the mummy's wrinkled neck. The treat visibly improved the mummy's mood. Tobacco was the only modern vice that Djoser took seriously.

"Your Grand Master the Signore, he whom you so loyally served,” Djoser puffed bluely, “has been dead and in Hell for two thousand days."

Occhietti wondered. “Where does the time go?"

"You should have closely watched the calendar.” This was a very ancient-Egyptian thing to say. “Your Master calls you from his awful lair. I will guide you to Hell, for guidance of that kind has been my role with you."

"Could I write a little note to my wife first?"

Djoser scowled. A master of occult hieroglyphics, Djoser had never believed that women should read.

With a sudden swift disjuncture straight from nightmare, Occhietti and Djoser were afloat in midair. Occhietti drifted through the trickling fountains of his wife's much-manicured garden, and past his favorite guard dog. The occult arrival of the undead Djoser had killed the dog in an agony of foaming canine terror.

The two of them magically progressed downhill. The mummy scarcely moved his rigidly hieratic limbs. His sandal-shod feet left no prints, and his desiccated hands did not disturb the lightest dust. As they neared Hell, his speed increased relentlessly.

They skidded, weightless as two dandelion puffs, down the silent, curving streets of Turin's residential hills. They crossed the cleansing waters of the sacred Po on the enchanted bridge built by Napoleon.

Napoleon Bonaparte had drunk from the Holy Grail in Turin. This stark fact explained why an obscure Corsican artillery lieutenant had bid so fair to conquer the world.

The Holy Grail, like the True Cross and the Shroud of Turin, was an occult relic of Jesus Christ Himself. Since the checkered Grail was both a white cup and a black cup, the Holy Grail belonged in esoteric Turin. The Holy Grail had been at the Last Supper: it was the cup that held the wine that Jesus Christ transformed into His blood. The Holy Grail had also been at Golgotha: where it caught the gushing blood from Christ's pierced heart.

The Shroud of Turin was a time-browned winding cloth soaked in the literal blood of God, but the blood that brewed within the Holy Grail rose ever-fresh. So that magical vessel was certainly the most powerful relic in Turin (if one discounted Turin's hidden piece of the True Cross, which never seemed to interest wizards half so much as the Shroud and the Grail).

The Emperor Constantine had drunk blood from the Grail. Also Charlemagne ... Frederick the Second ... Cesare Borgia ... Christoforo Columbo ... Giuseppe Garibaldi ... Benito Mussolini, too, to his woe and the whole world's distress.

In 1968, an obscure group of students in Turin had occupied the corporate headquarters of Occhietti's car company, demanding love, peace, and environmental responsibility. There the wretches had discovered the hidden Grail. The next decade was spent chasing down terrorists who kidnapped car executives.

Occhietti and the mummy floated through the moony shadow of a star-tipped Kabbalist spire, which loomed over Turin's silent core. This occult structure was the tallest Jewish spire in Europe. Even with a Golem, Prague had nothing to compare to it.

The mummy drew a wide berth around the Piazza Castello, in respect for the Pharaoh who reigned there. This stony monarch, wielding a flail and an ankh, guarded Turin's Fortress of Isis.

At length the flying mummy alit, dry and light as an autumn leaf, in the black market of the Piazza Statuto: for this ill-omened square, the former site of city executions, held Turin's Gate to Hell.

Hell's Gateway lurked under a ragged tower of blasted boulders, strewn with dramatic statues in sadistic Dantean anguish. This rocky tower was decorously topped by a winged bronze archetype, alternately known as the Spirit of Knowledge or the Rebel Angel Lucifer. He was a tender, limpid angel, very learned, delicate and epicene.

As Djoser sniffed around the stony tower, seeking Turin's occult hole to Hell, Occhietti found the courage to speak. “Djoser, is Hell very different, these days?"

Djoser looked up. “Is Hell different from what?"

"I had to read Dante in school, of course...."

"You are afraid, mortal,” Djoser realized. “There is nothing worse than Hell, for Hell is Hell! But I served the royal court of Egypt. I'm far older than your Hell, and Dante's Hell as well.” The mummy groped for Occhietti's pierced and aching wrist. “Lo, see here: below we must go!"

Clearly, modern Italian engineers had been hard at work here in Hell. The casings of Hell's rugged tunnel, which closely resembled the Frejus tunnel drilled through the Alps to France, had been furnished with a tastefully minimal spiral staircase made of glass, blond hardwood, and aircraft aluminum.

A delicate Italian techno-muzak was playing. It dimmed the rhythmic slaps of Occhietti's bedroom slippers on the stairway.

Light and shadow chased each other on the tunnel's walls. The walls held a delirious surge of spray-bombed gang graffiti, diabolically exulting drugs, violence, and general strikes against the System—but much of that rubbish had been scrubbed away, and Turin's new, improved path to Hell was keenly tourist-friendly. Glossy signs urged the abandonment of all hope in fourteen official European Union languages.

"Someone took a lot of trouble to upgrade this,” Occhietti realized.

"The Olympics were in Turin,” Djoser grunted.

"Oh yes, of course."

Turin was an esoteric city of black and white, so its Hell was a strobing, flickering flux, under a chilly haze of Alpine fog. Being Hell, it was funereal; the afterlife was an all-consuming realm of grief, loss, penitence, and distorted, sentimentalized remembrance.

The Hell of Turin was clearly divided—not in concentric layers of crime, as Dante had alleged—but into layers of time. The dead of the 1990s were still feigning everyday business ... they were shopping, suffering, cursing the traffic and the lying newspaper headlines ... but the dead of the 1980s were blurrier and less antic, while the dead of the 1970s were foggy and obscured. The Hell that represented the 1960s was a fading jangle of guitars and a smoky whiff of patchouli.... The 1950s were red-hot smokestacks as distant as the Apennines, while the 1940s, at the limit of Occhietti's ken, were an ominous wrangle of sirens and burning and bombs.

Smog gushed over glum workers’ tenements, clanking factories, bloodily gleaming rivers and endless tides of jammed cars. The cars looked sharp and clear to Occhietti, for he knew their every make, year, and model; but their sinful inhabitants, the doomed and the damned, were hazy blurs behind the wheels.

As an auto executive, Occhietti had always surmised that his company's employees would go to Hell. They were Communists from some of Europe's most radical and militant labor unions. Where else could they possibly go?

And here, indeed, they were. Those zealots from the Workers’ Councils, self-righteous hell-raisers passionately devoted to Marxism, had all transmigrated down here. Their afterlife was one massive labor strike. The working dead were clad in greasy flannel, denim, and corduroy, cacophonous, boozing, shouting in immigrants’ dialects, a hydra-headed horde of grimy egalitarians ... packed like stinging hornets into their worker's-housing projects. They passed their eternal torment watching bad Italian TV variety shows.

"Dante's Hell was so solemn, medieval, and majestic,” Occhietti lamented. “There's nothing down here but one huge Italian mess!"

"This is your Hell,” his spirit guide pointed out. “Dante's Hell was all about Dante, while your Hell is all about you."

"They claimed that the afterlife would be about justice for everybody,” said Occhietti.

"This is an Italian Hell. Did you ever see Italian justice?” The mummy was being reasonable. “I can assure you that all the most famous and accomplished Turinese are here.” He pointed with a time-shrunken finger at a busy literary café, a local mise en scène that boiled with diabolical energies. “See those flying vulture-monsters there, shrieking and clawing both their victims, and one another?"

"With all that noise, they're hard to miss."

"Those are dead Italian journalists and literary critics."

This certainly made sense. “Who's that they're eating?"

"That's the local novelist who killed himself over that actress."

"Fantastic! Yes, that's really him! The only writer who truly understood this town! Can I get his autograph?"

The Egyptian raised his hierophantic hand in stern denial. “Humanity,” he pronounced, “is steeped in sin. Especially the human sins that are also human virtues. That manic-depressive novelist boozing over there, who understood too many such things, despaired of his own existence and ended it. But to kill oneself while lost in life's dark woods is the worst of human errors. So he stinks of his own decay; and that is why his vultures eagerly feast on him."

They tramped Hell's stony flooring to a space that was garish and spangled. The smartly hellish boulevards were crowded with famous faces. All manner of local celebrities: film stars, countesses, financiers, art collectors, generals.

These celebrities shared their Hell with the grimy underdogs of the Workers’ Turin. Yet, since this was Hell, the Great and the Good were no longer bothering to keep up their public pretenses. Human experience had ceased for the dead; their hazy flesh cast no shadows. Indifferent to futurity, with the post-existential freedom of nothing left to gain or lose, these ghosts were haplessly angry, gluttonous, slothful, and lustful. They were embezzlers, wife-beaters, brawling scoffers. Sullen depressives who'd gone to Hell for being insufficiently cheerful; moral fence sitters who'd gone to Hell for minding their own business.

Gay and lesbian Sodomites whose awful lusts were presumably enough to have their whole city incinerated; cops in Hell for the inherent crime of being cops, lawyers for the utter vileness of being lawyers, firemen for having goofed off on some day when a child burned to death, doctors in Hell for malpractice and misdiagnosis....

Italian women in Hell for flaunting busty decolletage that tempted men to lust, and women who had tragically failed to tempt men to lust and had therefore ended up lonely and sad and crabby and cruel to small children.

"Can you tell me who's missing from Hell?” said Occhietti at last. He was jostled by the crowds.

The Egyptian shrugged irritably in the push and shove. “Do you see any Jews down here?"

"The Jews went to Heaven?"

"I never said that! I just said the Jews aren't in this Turinese Italian Catholic Hell!” The mummy fought the crowd for elbow room. “There were no Jews in my afterlife, either. And believe me, compared to this raucous mess, my afterlife was splendid. My nice quiet tomb had fine clothes, paintings, a sarcophagus, all kinds of wooden puppets to keep me company.... You'd think the Jews would have changed in three thousand years, but ... yes, fine, the Jews changed, but not so you'd notice."

They clawed their way free from the pedestrian crowds of dead. The mummy was abstracted now, seeking some waymark through the dense and honking urban traffic. “I must usher you into the presence of your dead overlord. This ordeal is going to upset you."

Occhietti was already upset. “I was always loyal to him! I even loved him."

"That's why you will be upset."

Occhietti knew better than to argue with Djoser. The mummy's stringent insights, drawn from his long historical perspective, had been proven again and again. For instance: when he'd first asked Djoser about marrying Ofelia, the mummy had soberly prophesied. “This rich girl from a fine family is a cold and narrow creature who feels no passion for you. She will never understand you. She will make your home respectable, conventional, and dignified, and cramped with a petty propriety.” Occhietti, considering that an overly harsh assessment, had married Ofelia anyway.

Yet Djoser's prophecies about Ofelia had been entirely true. In fact, these qualities were the best things about Ofelia. She was the mother of his children and had been his anchor for thirty-eight years.

Occhietti's Signore was one of a major trio of the damned, three bronze male giants, stationed in the center of a busy traffic ring. These mighty titans loomed over Hell like office buildings; the cars whizzing past their ankles were like rubber-tired rats.

The heroic flesh of the titans was riddled through and through by writhing, hellish serpents. These serpents were wriggling exhaust pipes that cruelly pierced the sufferers from neck to kidneys, chaining them in place. Being necromancers, the auto executives had always derived their power from the flesh of the dead: from fossil fuels. In Hell, this hideous truth was made manifest.

A hundred thousand people in Turin, weeping unashamedly, hats in hand, had filed their way past gorgeous heaps of flowers to pay the Signore their last respects. Yet, even down here in Hell, the brazen fact of death had not relieved this giant of his business worries.

Here the Signore stood, gathered to his ancestors, who looked scarcely happier than he. The Signore's father blinked silently, forlorn. Bloody sludge dripped from his aquiline, titanic nose. The Signore's father had quaffed from the Grail with the Duce. He had died in his bed with a gentleman's timing—for his death had saved his company from the wrath of the vengeful Allies.

The Signore's grandfather, the company's founder, was an even more impressive figure; great entrepreneur, primal industrial genius, his colossal flesh was caked all over with the blackened wreck of bucolic Italy: pretty vineyards paved over with cement, sweet little piping birds gone toes-up from the brazen gust of furnace blasts.... He was a Midas whose grip turned everything to asphalt.

As for the Signore himself, he was the uncrowned Prince of Italy, a Senator-for-Life, a shining column of NATO's military-industrial complex. The Signore was dead and in Hell, and yet still grand—after his death, he was grander, even.

"Eftsoons he will speak unto you,” warned the mummy formally; “stand ye behind me, and do not fear so."

"This pallor on my face,” said Occhietti, “is my pity for him."

In truth, Occhietti was terrified of the Signore. It was always wise to fear a wizard whose lips had touched the Holy Grail.

The Signore opened his mighty jaws. Out came a great sooty gush of carbon monoxide, lung-wrecking particulates, brain-damaging lead, and the occult offgassings of industrial plastics. Earth-wracking fumes fit to blister Roman marble and tear the fine facades right off cathedrals.

The Signore found his giant, truck-horn voice.

"Hail friend, unto this dreadful day still true,
Who harkens to your master's final geas!
Most woeful this of many deeds performed
In service to the checkered Lord of Turin."

Ochietti felt a purer terror yet. “He's speaking in iambic pentameter!"

"This is Hell,” the mummy pointed out. “And he's a Titan."

"But I'm an engineer! I always hated poetry!"

The mummy spread his hands. “Well, he was a lawyer, before he became like this: dead, historic, gigantic, and in the worst of all possible circumstances."

The Signore awaited an answer, with eyes as huge and glassy as an eighteen-wheeler's headlamps.

Occhietti drew himself up, as best he could within his scanty night-robe and flat bedroom slippers. “Hail unto thee, ye uncrowned Kings, masters of the many smokestacks, ye who coaxed Italians from their creaking, lousy haywains and into some serious high-performance vehicles.... Listen, ye, I can't possibly talk in this manner! Let's speak in the vernacular, capisce?"

Occhietti stared up, pleading, into the mighty face that solemnly glared above him.

"Listen to me, boss: Juventus! Your favorite football team: the Turin black-and-whites! They kicked the asses of the Florentines tonight! Wiped them flat out, three-zero!"

This was welcome news to the giant. The titan unbent somewhat, his huge bronze limbs creaking like badly lined brakes.

"'Wizard’ they call thee, counselor and fixer;
Trusted with our sums that breed futurity;
Loyal thou wert, but now the very Tempter
Lurks a serpent in your homely Garden!"

"Does he really have to speak like that?” Occhietti demanded of the mummy. “I can't understand a single damned thing he says!"

Nobly, the mummy rose to the occasion. “He must speak in that poetic, divinatory fashion, for he is a dead giant. You are still alive and capable of moral action, so it is up to you to resolve his ghostly riddles for him.” The mummy straightened. “Luckily for you, I always loved the riddles of the afterlife. I was superb at those."

"You were?"

"Indeed I was! The Egyptian Book of the Dead: it's like one huge series of technical aptitude tests! At the end, they weigh your human heart against a feather. And if your guilty heart is any heavier than that feather, then they feed your entrails straight to the demonic hippopotamus."

Occhietti considered this. “How did that trial work out for you, Djoser?"

"Well, I failed,” said Djoser glumly. “Because I was guilty. Of course I was guilty. Do you think we built the Pyramids without any fixes and crooked backroom deals? It was all about the lazy priests ... the union gangs ... and the Pharaoh! Oh my God!” The mummy put his flaking head into his withered hands.

Occhietti gazed from the three damned and towering industrial giants, slowly writhing in their smoky chains, and back to Djoser again. “Djoser: your Pharaoh was your God, am I right? He was your divine God-King."

"Look, Achille, since we're both standing here stuck in Hell, we should at least be frank: my God-King was a scandal. Like all the Pharaohs, he was in bed with his sister. All right? He was an inbred, cross-eyed royal runt! You could have broken both his shins with a papyrus reed."

The mummy gazed upward at the damned industrialists. “This gentleman's dynasty came to a sudden end after one mere century ... But at least he was in bed with some busty actresses, and was driving hot sports cars. As a leader of your civilization, he wasn't all that bad, especially considering your degraded, hectic, vilely commercial Iron Age!"

The mighty specter seemed obscurely pleased by the mummy's outspoken assessment; at least, he thunderously resumed his awesome recitation.

"He comes to ruin everything we built!
The empire that we schemed, we planned, we made,
In toil, sweat, tears, and lost integrity,
Imperiled stands in your new century,
When Turin's Black and White turns serpent Green!
If ever you would call yourself ‘apostle’
Your footsteps stay, and keep your heart steadfast!
The Devil's blandishments are subtle,
Reject them without pause all down the line!"

"He's warning you that you will encounter Satan,” the mummy interpreted. “I take it that he means Lucifer, the Shining Prince of Darkness."

"Meeting Lucifer is not in my job assignment,” said Occhietti.

"Well, it is now. You will have to return to your mortal life to confront the Devil in person. That's clearly what this hellish summons is all about."

Occhietti could no longer face the writhing torment of the doomed giants, so he turned on the mummy. “I admit that I'm a necromancer,” he said. “I draw my magic power from the dead—but Satan? I can't face Satan! Satan is the Black Angel! He's the second-ranked among the Great Seraphic Powers! I can't possibly defeat Satan! With what, my rosary?"

"Your Lord of Turin can't speak any more plainly,” Djoser said. “Look how he folds his mighty arms and falls so silent now! As your spiritual guide and adviser, I would strongly suggest that you arm yourself against the Great Tempter."

All three giants had gone as rigid and remote as public statuary. Occhietti was speechless at the desperate fate that confronted him.

"Come now,” coaxed the mummy, “you must have some merits for a battle like this. Not every necromancer visits Hell while living."

"I'm completely doomed! I might as well just stay here in Hell, properly damned.” Occhietti's shoulders slumped within his scanty robe. “Everyone who matters is here already anyway. There's no one up there in Heaven except children and nice old ladies."

"Don't be smug about your own damnation,” counseled the mummy, taking his arm and leading him away through acrid lines of whizzing traffic. “That is the sin of pride."

It brought profound relief to flee the dire presence of the three agonized giants. The mummy and Occhietti flagged down a taxi. Suddenly they were roaming Turin's vast and anonymous mobilized suburbs, which were all tower blocks, freeways, assembly plants, and consumer box stores.

"My employer just tasked me to face Satan.... Him, the finest man I ever knew....” Occhietti leaned his reeling head against the taxi's grime-stained window. “Why is he down here in Hell? He was truly the Great and the Good! All the ladies loved him! He even had a sense of humor."

"It's because of simony,” pronounced the mummy. “He—and his father, and his grandfather—they are all in Hell for the mortal sin of simony."

"I don't think I've ever heard of that one."

"For ‘simony,’ Achille. That's the mortal sin named after the great necromancer, Simon Magus. Simon Magus sought to work divine miracles by paying money for them."

"But I do that myself."

"Indeed you do."

"Because I'm in venture capital, I'm in research-and-development! I have to commit that so-called sin of ‘simony’ every damn day!"

"You might consult your Scripture on that subject. Nice letters of black and white, very easy to read.” Djoser was something of a snob about his hieroglyphics.

Occhietti banged his fist against the rattling taxi door.

"Everybody in the modern world is an industrial capitalist! We all raise cash to work our technical miracles! That's our very way of life!"

"You won't find any words of praise for that in your Bible."

Occhietti knew this was true. As a wizard, he had the Bible, that most occult of publications, poised always at his bedside.

There was scarcely one word inside the Bible that you'd find in any modern Masters of Business Administration course. Not much comfort there for the money-changers in the temple. Plagues, curses, merciless wars of annihilation—the sky splitting open apocalyptically: the Bible brimmed over with that.

Occhietti lowered his voice. “Djoser, my entire modern world is beyond salvation, isn't it? The truth is, we're comprehensively damned! For our mortal sins against man and nature, we're going to collapse! That apocalypse could happen to us any day now, plagues of frogs, rivers of blood...."

All alert sympathy, the ancient mummy nodded his dry, flaking head. “Yes, they're very harsh on us ancient Egyptians inside that Bible of yours. The press coverage that our regime got in there, I wouldn't give that to a dog."

Occhietti blinked. “Did you read the Bible, Djoser?"

"I don't have to read it, stupid! I was there! I was alive back then! We were the Good People and the Jews were our working class! You should have seen their cheap, lousy bricks!"

Occhietti was numb with despair. Then he read a passing sign and was galvanized into frenetic action. “Driver, pull over!"

Occhietti and the mummy entered a men's suburban clothing store. The damned soul manning the cheap plastic counter was a genuine Italian tailor. As a punishment for his sins, which must have been many, he was being forced to retail prêt-à-porter off-the-rack.

Occhietti examined the goods with a swift and practiced eye. This being Hell, this store-of-the-damned featured only the clothing that his wife Ofelia wanted him to wear. Thrifty, respectable suits that lacked male flair of any kind. Suits that were rigidly conventional and baggily cut, thirty years out of date. Suits that were shrouds for his burial.

Given the circumstances, though, this sepulchral gear was perfect, and far better than his nigh -robe. “Don't stand there,” he told the mummy. “Get yourself dressed. We have to attend a garden party."

The mummy was startled. “What, now?"

"I don't always forget to watch the calendar,” Occhietti told him. “Today is my wife's birthday."

The mummy pawed with reluctance through a rack of white linen suits. “How exactly do you plan to pay for this?"

With a wizardly flick of the fingers, Occhietti produced a platinum American Express card. It belonged to the company, so it never appeared on his taxes.

Their exit from Hell was sudden and muddled: one harsh, aching lurch, a tumbling, nightmarish segue, and suddenly the two of them were riding inside a taxi, in downtown Turin, alive and in broad daylight.

They might have been two businessmen in bad new suits who'd spent their night carousing. Shaken survivors of tenebrous hours involving whores, and casinos, and mafia secrets, and sulfurous reeking cigars. But they were alive.

Djoser wiped sentimentally at his dry, red-rimmed eyes. “Shall I tell you the sweetest thing about being raised from the dead? It's the sunlight.” Clothed in modern machine-made linens, the undead mummy closely resembled an aging Libyan terrorist. “The beautiful, simple, honest sunlight! Blue skies with golden sun: that is the greatest privilege that the living have."

Released from the morbid, ever-clutching shadows of guilt, remorse, and death—for the time being, anyway—Occhietti felt keenly what a privilege it was to live, and to live in Turin. A native, he had never left his beloved Esoteric City, because there was no other town half so fit for him. This Turin so beloved by Nietzsche, this cool, logical, organized city, brilliantly formal and rational, beyond Good or Evil.... How splendid it was, and how dear to him. One living day strolling under glorious Turinese porticos was worth a post-mortem eternity.

The taxi's driver was a semi-literate Somali refugee, so Occhietti felt quite free in talking openly. “We'll make one small detour on our way to my wife's garden party. For I must seize the Holy Grail."

"That's daring, Achille."

"I must make the attempt. The Grail has baffled Satan before. Salvation was its purpose. That's right, isn't it? I mean ... I may be right or wrong, but I'm taking action, I will get results."

The mummy accepted this reasoning. “So—do you know where it is?"

"I do. It must be where the Signore's son-and-heir abandoned it—before he jumped off the bridge and drowned himself in the River Po."

The mummy nodded knowingly. “He wouldn't drink."

"No. He was much too good to drink. He was a hippie kid. A big mystic. He didn't want any innocent blood on his conscience. Whitest necromancer I ever met, that boy. Very noble and pure of heart.” Occhietti sighed. “He was insufferable."

The taxi backfired as it rattled across Napoleon's stone bridge. Occhietti ordered a stop at the swelling dome of the Church of the Great Mother. He paid the doubtful cabbie with his AmEx card, then climbed out into sunlight.

The mummy stared and scowled. “Don't tell me the Holy Grail is hidden in that place."

The Grail was inside Turin's ancient Temple of Isis. “I know it's somewhat ecumenical.... We Turinese do tend to dissolve our oppositions into ambiguities ... that's how we are here, we can't help that."

This news visibly hurt the mummy's feelings. The mummy had once worshipped Isis. Furthermore, it clearly offended him that the Grail's hiding place was so obvious.

The ancient Temple of Isis—currently known as the Church of the Great Mother of God—featured a paganized statue in classical robes. She casually brandished a Holy Grail in her left hand, as she sat on the Temple's stoop and faced the sacred River Po. A neon sign couldn't have been more blatant.

However, the crypt below her Church was a death trap for the carelessly ambitious. The basement of the Great Mother was Turin's mortuary for the Bones of the Fallen. The men interred within had sacrificed their lives in the Sacred Cause of Italy. It was they—the bony, the fleshless, the bloodless—who surrounded and guarded the bleeding Grail.

"I can't go in there with you,” said the mummy, tapping his hollow ribcage, “for my body has risen through an act of black necromancy, and that is a hallowed ground."

Occhietti sensed the implied reproach in this remark, but he overlooked it. To seek the Grail was a quest best taken alone.

A veteran necromancer, Occhietti had once boldly ransacked the Egyptian Museum—(which was itself a makeshift tomb, and already made from ransacked tombs). Still, Occhetti would never have perturbed the holy shades of the Italian fallen. His respect for them was great. Furthermore, they were notoriously violent.

Yet, in this great crisis, he deliberately made that choice.

Occhietti enchanted his way through the sacred portal that guarded the slumbering dead. As a willful, impious intrusion, he forced himself among their company.

As furious as trampled ants, the ghosts of the battlefield dead rose and came at him, a battalion's charging wave.

Bones: the soldierly dead were a torrent of clattering bones. Bones heaped over centuries of Italian struggle. Their living flesh was long gone, but the skeletons themselves were cruelly hacked and splintered: with the slashing of cavalry sabers, careening cast-iron cannonballs, point-blank musketry blasts. These were fighting men who'd bled and perished for Italy, combating the Austrians, the French, the Germans, Hungarian hussars, elite Swiss mercenary guards, and, especially and always, fiercely combating other Italians.

With a snare-drum clashing of the teeth in their naked skulls, the noisome skeletons clawed at his civilian clothes and mocked his manhood. A lesser magician would have been torn to shreds. Occhietti stoutly persisted in his quest. If Hell itself couldn't hold him, it could not be his fate to fall here.

At length, pale, sweating, stumbling, with fresh stains on his soul, Occhietti emerged under the blue Italian sky, a sky which, just as Djoser had said, was truly a blessing, a privilege, and a precious thing.

Occhietti clutched a humble string-tied bundle wrapped in crumbling, yellowed newspapers.

The mummy cringed away at once.

"This hurts, eh?” said Occhietti with satisfaction. He brushed bone-dust from his trousers. Despite the horror of his necrotic crime—or even because of it—he was proud.

"Your mere modern Christian magic can't hurt an Egyptian priest, but....” The mummy lunged backward, stumbling. “All right, yes, it hurts me! It hurts, don't do that."

The string-tied package was unwieldy, but it weighed no more than a beer-mug. The old newspaper ink darkly stained Occhietti's hands.

Together, they trudged uphill. Justly wary of the packet, the mummy trailed a few respectful paces behind. “You plan to use that to confound the Great Tempter?"

"That is my plan, if I have one,” said Occhietti, “although I might be better-advised to put this back and jump into that nice clean river."

"I have no further guidance for you,” the mummy realized. “I don't know what to tell you about this situation. It's entirely beyond me."

Occhietti tramped on. “That's all right, Djoser. We're both beyond that now."

Embarrassed, the mummy caught up with him, then stuck one dry finger through his unaccustomed collar. “You see, Achille, I was born in the youth of the world. We never lived as you people do. Your world is much older than my world."

"You've come along this far,” said Occhietti kindly. “Why not tag along to see how things turn out?"

"My own life ended so long ago,” the mummy confessed. “Like all us Egyptians, I longed to hold on to my life, to remain the mortal man I once was.... But the passage of time.... Even in the afterlife, the passage of time erased my being, bit by bit."

Occhietti had nothing to say.

"When time passed, the first things to leave me,” said the mummy thoughtfully, “were the things I always thought were most important to me, such as ... my cunning use of right-angled triangles in constructing master blueprints. Every technical skill that I had grasped with such effort? That all went like the dew!

"Then I remembered the things that had touched my heart, yet often seemed so small or accidental, like ... the sunrise. One beautiful sunrise after a night with three dancing girls."

"There were three?” said Occhietti, pausing for a breath. It was a rather steep climb to his mansion. He generally took a chauffeured company car.

"I'm sure that I cherished all three of those girls, but all I remember is my regret when I refused the fourth one."

"Yes,” said Occhietti, who was a man of the world, “I can understand that."

"As my afterlife stretched on inside my quiet, well-engineered tomb,” intoned the mummy, “I rehearsed all my hates and resentments. But those dark feelings had no power to bind me. Then I gloated over certain bad things I did, that I had gotten away with. But that seemed so feeble and childish.... Finally I was reduced to pondering the good things I had done in my life. Because those were much fewer, and easy to catalog.

"The last things I recalled from my lifespan, the final core of my human experience on Earth, were the kind, good, decent things I'd done, that I was punished for. Not good things I was rewarded and praised for doing. Not even good things I'd done without any thought of reward. Finally, at my last, I recalled the good things I'd done, things that I knew were right to do, and which brought me torment. When I was punished as a sinner for my acts that were righteous. Those were the moral gestures of my life that truly seemed to matter."

As if conjured by the mummy's dark meditations, a sphinx arrived on the scene. This sphinx, restless, agitated, was padding rapidly up the narrow, hilly street, lurking behind the two of them, as big as a minibus. She was stalking them: silent as death on her hooked and padded paws.

Her woman's nostrils flared. She had smelled that humble package Occhietti carried. The all-pervading reek of bloodshed.

Occhietti turned. “Shoo! Go on, scat!"

The sphinx opened her fanged mouth to ask her lethal riddle, but Occhietti hastily tucked the Grail under one suited armpit and clamped both his hands over his ears. Frustrated, the sphinx skulked away.

They trudged on toward Occhietti's morbid rendezvous with destiny. “I know what the Sphinx was going to ask you,” the mummy offered. “Because I know her question."

Occhietti nodded. “Mmmph."

"Her riddle sounds simple. This is it: ‘How can Mut be Sekhmet?’”

"What was that, Djoser? Is that really the riddle of the Sphinx? I don't know anything about that."

"Yes, and that's why the Sphinx would have eaten you, if you had hearkened unto her."

Occhietti walked on stoically. He would be home in just a few moments, and confronting the horrid, hair-raising climax of his life. Could it possibly matter what some mere Sphinx had said? He was about to confront Satan himself!

Still, Occhietti was an engineer, so curiosity naturally gnawed at him.

"All right, Djoser, tell me: how can Mut be Sekhmet?"

"That's the part I myself never understood,” said the Egyptian. “Not while I lived, anyway. Because Mut, as every decent man knows, is the serene Consort of Amun and the merciful Queen of Heaven. Whereas Sekhmet is the lion-headed Goddess of Vengeance whose wanton mouth drips blood.

"Day and night, black and white, were less different than Mut and Sekhmet! Yet, year by year, I saw the goddesses blending their aspects! The priests were sneaky about that work: they kept eliding and conflating the most basic theological issues.... Until one day, exhausted by my work of building Pyramids ... I went into the temple of Mut to beg divine forgiveness for a crime ... you know the kind of crime I mean, some practical sin that was necessary on the job ... and behold: Mut really was Sekhmet."

"I'm sorry to hear about all that,” Occhietti told him. And he was sincere in his sympathy, for the mummy's ancient voice had broken with emotion.

"So: the proper answer to the Sphinx, when she asks you, ‘How can Mut be Sekhmet?’ is: ‘Time has passed, and that doesn't matter anymore.’ Then she would flee from you. Or: if you wanted to be truly cruel to her, you could say to the poor Sphinx, ‘Oh, your Sekhmet and Mut, your Mut or Sekhmet, they never mattered in the first place, and neither do you.’ Then she would explode into dust."

The mummy stopped in his tracks. His seamed face was wrinkled in pain. “Look at me, look, I'm weeping! These are human tears, as only the living can weep!"

"You took that ancient pagan quibble pretty badly, Djoser."

"I did! It broke my heart! I'd committed evil while intending only the best! I died soon after that. I died, and I knew that I must be food for that demon hippopotamus. So, I went through my afterlife's trials—I knew all about them, of course, because the briefing in the Book of the Dead was thorough—and they tossed my broken, sinner's heart onto that balance beam of divine justice, and that beam fell over like a stone."

"That is truly a dirty shame,” said Occhietti. “There is no question that life is unfair. And it seems, by my recent experiences, that death is even more unfair than life. I should have guessed that.” He sighed.

"Then they brought in a different feather of justice,” said the mummy. “Some ‘feather’ that was! That feather was carved from black basalt and it was big as a crocodile. It seemed that we engineers, we royal servants of the God-King, didn't have to put up with literal moral feathers. Oh no! If that cross-eyed imbecile whose knees were knocking was a sacred God-King, well—then we were all off the hook! The fix was in all the time! Even the Gods were on the take!"

There was no time left for Djoser's further confidences, for they had reached the ornate double gates of Occhietti's mansion.

Normally his faithful dog was there to greet him, baring Doberman fangs fit to scare Cerberus, but alas, the dog was mortal, and the dog was dead.

However, Occhietti's bride was still among the living, and so were her numerous relatives. Ofelia's birthday was her signal chance to break all her relations out of mothballs.

They were all there, clustered in his wife's garden in the cheery living sunshine, her true-blue Turinese Savoyard Piedmontese Old Money Rich, chastely sipping fizzy mineral water—Cesare and Luisa, Emanuele and Francesca, Great-Aunt Lucia, Raffaela, his sister-in-law Ottavia ... a storm of cheek-kisses now: Eusabia, Prospero, Carla and Allesandra, Mauro, Cinzia, their little Agostino looking miserable, as befitted an eight-year-old stuffed into proper clothes.... Some company wives had also taken the trouble to drop by, which was kind of them, as Ofelia had never understood his work.

His work was Ofelia's greatest rival. She had serenely overlooked the models, the secretaries, the weekend jaunts to summits on small Adriatic islands, even the occasional misplaced scrap of incendiary lingerie—but Ofelia hated his work. Because she knew that his work mattered to him far more than she had ever mattered.

Ofelia swanned up to him. She had surely been worried about his absence on her birthday, and might have hissed some little wifely scolding, but instead she stared in delight at his ugly and graceless new suit. “Oh Achille, bel figa! How handsome you look!"

"Happy birthday, my treasure."

"I was afraid you were working!"

"I had to put a few urgent matters into order, yes.” He nodded his head at the suit-clad mummy. “But I'm here for your celebration. Look, what lovely weather, for my consort's special day."

No one would have called Ofelia Occhietti a witch, although she was a necromancer's wife. The two of them never spoke one word about the supernatural. Still, when Ofelia stood close by, in the cloud of Chanel #5 she had deployed for decades, Occhietti could feel the mighty power of her Turinese respectability closing over him in a dense, protective spell.

Occhietti had spent the night in Hell, and was doomed to confront Satan himself in broad daylight, and yet, for Ofelia, these matters were irrelevant.

So they did not exist. Therefore, it had just been a bad night for him, bad dreams, with indigestion. He had not fed any blood to the undead; that deep cut in his wrist was a mere accidental nick, not even an attempt at suicide. He had not received any commission from the undead Lord of Turin to combat Satan. Decent people never did such things.

He was attending his wife's birthday party. Everyone here was polite and well brought up.

Maybe his dog was not even dead. No, his beloved dog was dead, all right. A necromancer had to work hard to raise the dead; death never went away when politely overlooked.

"Amore,” Ofelia said to him—she never called him that, except when she needed something—"there's such a nice young man here, Giulia's boy ... You do remember my Giulia."

"Of course I do,” said Occhietti, who remembered about a thousand Giulias.

"He is just graduated, he's so well-bred, and has such bright ideas.... He's one of ours, the Good People. I think he needs a little help, Achille.... Maybe a word of career advice, the company, you know...."

"Yes! Fine! We're always on the lookout for fresh talent. Point him out to me."

Ofelia, who would never commit an act so vulgar as pointing, gave one meaningful flicker of her eyes. Occhietti knew the worst instantly.

There he was. Satan was standing there, under the roses of a whitewashed pergola, sipping spumante.

Satan was a young and handsome Turinese in a modishly cut suit. Magic was boiling off of him in sizzling waves, like the summer sunlight off molten tar.

Digging deep within himself, Occhietti found the courage to speak to his wife in a normal tone. “I'll be sure to have a word with that young man."

"That would be so helpful! I'm sure he's meant to go far. And one other thing. Amore—that ugly Libyan banker! Did you have to bring that nasty man to my birthday party? You know I never trusted him, Achille."

Occhietti glanced across the garden at the seam-faced, impassive mummy, who was pretending to circulate among the guests. The mummy could pass for a living human being when he put his mind to it, but his heart clearly wasn't in the effort today.

In point of fact Djoser's heart was in Turin's distant Egyptian Museum, inside a canopic jar.

"My treasure, I know that foreign financier is not a welcome guest under your roof. I apologize for that—I had to bring him here. We've just settled some important business matters. They're done! I'm through with him! After this day, you'll never see him again!"

Ochietti knew he was doomed: the awful sight of Satan, standing there, brimming with infernal glee, was proof of that. But he was still alive, a mortal man, and therefore capable of moral action.

He clung to that. He could do his wife a kindness. It was her birthday. He could do one good thing, a fine thing, at whatever cost to himself. “My darling, I work too much, and I know that. I've neglected you, and I overlooked you. But ... after this beautiful day, with this sunshine, life will be different for us."

"'Different,’ Achille? Whatever do you mean?"

Occhietti stared at Satan, who had conjured a cloud of flying vermin from the nooks and crannies of Ofelia's garden. Bluebottle flies, little moths, lacewings, aphids.... Lucifer smiled brightly. The Tempter crooked a finger.

"I meant this as my big birthday surprise for you,” Occhietti improvised, for the certainty of imminent damnation had loosened his tongue. “But, I promise ... that I'll put all my business behind me."

"You mean—you leave your work? You never leave Turin."

"But I will! We will! We have the daughter in London, the daughter in San Francisco.... Two beautiful cities, beautiful girls who made fine marriages.... You and I, we should spend time with the grandchildren! Even the daughter who keeps moving from Lyon to Prague.... It's time we helped her settle down. She was just sowing wild oats! There's nothing so wrong with our little black sheep, when life's all said and done!"

Tears of startled joy brightened his wife's eyes. “Do you mean that, Achille? You truly mean that?"

"Of course I mean it!” he lied cheerfully. “We'll rent out the house here! We'll pick out a fine new travel wardrobe for you.... A woman only gets so many golden years! Starting from tomorrow, you'll enjoy every day!"

"You're not joking? You know I don't understand your silly jokes, sometimes."

"Would I joke with you on your birthday, precious? Tomorrow morning! Try me! Come to my room and wake me!"

He accepted an overjoyed hug. Then he fled.

After a frantic search, he found Djoser lurking in his bedroom, alone and somberly watching the television.

"A fantastic thing, television,” said Djoser, staring at a soap ad. “I just can't get over this. What a miracle this is!"

"You fled from Satan, like I did?"

"Oh, your Tempter is here to destroy all you built,” shrugged the mummy. “But I built the Pyramids—I'd like to see him break those.” Djoser reached to the bedroom floor and picked up a discarded garment. “Do you see this thing?"

"Yes, that is my night robe. So?"

"Your robe is black. This morning, when you were wearing this night-robe in Hell, it was white. Your robe was the purest, snowy white Egyptian cotton."

Occhietti said nothing.

"Your robe has magically appeared here, from where you abandoned it, there in Hell. As you can see, your robe is black. It is black, and the Prince of Darkness has entered your garden. You are beyond my help.” The mummy sighed. “So I am leaving."

"Leaving?"

"Yes. I'm beyond all use, I'm done."

"Where will you go, Djoser?"

"Back into my glass case inside the Egyptian museum. That's where I was, before you saw fit to invoke me. And before you say anything—no, it's not that bad, being in there. Sure, the tourists gawk at me, but was I any better off in my sarcophagus? Mortality has its benefits, Achille. I can promise you, it does."

The mummy stared at the flickering television, then gazed out the window at the sky. “It is of some interest to be among the living ... but after a few millennia, time has to tire a man. All those consequences, all those weighty moral decisions! Suns rising and setting, days flying off the calendar—that fever of life, it's so hectic! It annoys me. It's beneath me! I want my death back. I want the dignity of being dead, Achille. I want to be one with God! Because, as Nietzsche pointed out here in Turin, God is Dead. And so am I."

This was the longest outburst Occhietti had ever heard from the mummy. Occhietti did not argue. What Djoser said was logical and rational. It also had the strength of conviction.

"That's a long journey to the Other Side,” he told the mummy. “I hope you can find some use for this."

He handed over his company's platinum credit card.

The mummy stared at the potent card in wonderment. “You'll get into trouble for giving me this."

"I'm sure that it's trouble for me,” Occhietti told him, “yet it's also the right thing to do."

"That's the gesture of a real Italian gentleman,” said the mummy thoughtfully. “That truly showed some sprezzatura dash.” Without further fuss, he began to vaporize.

Occhietti left his bedroom for the garden, where Satan was charming the guests.

Satan looked very Turinese, for he was the androgynous angel who topped that hellish pile of boulders in the Piazza Statuto. Satan looked like a Belle Arte knockoff of one of Leonardo da Vinci's epicene studio models. He was disgusting.

Furthermore, to judge by the way he was busily indoctrinating the guests, Satan was a technology wonk, a tiresome geek who never shut up.

"The triple bottom line!” declared Satan, waving his hands. “The inconvenient truth is, as a civilization, we have to tick off every box on the sustainability to-do list. I wouldn't call myself an expert—but any modern post-industrialist surely needs to memorize the Three Main Components and the Four System Conditions of the Natural Step. And, of course, the Ten Guiding Principles to One-Planet Living. I trust you've read the World Wildlife Fund's Three Forms of Solidarity?"

None of the guests responded—they were more than a little bewildered—but this reaction encouraged Lucifer. “If you expect our Alpine bioregion to escape a massive systemic overhang and a catastrophic eco-crash,” he chanted, “so that you can still name and properly number the birds and beasts in this garden.... Then you had better get a handle on the Copenhagen Agenda's Ten Principles for Sustainable City Governance! And for those of you in education—education is the key to the future, as we all know!—I would strongly recommend the Sustainable Schools Network with its Framework of Eight Doorways. That analysis is the result of deep thought by some smart, dedicated activists! Although it can't compare in systemic comprehensibility with the Ten Hannover Principles."

Seeing no further use in avoiding the inevitable, Occhietti steeled himself. He confronted the Tempter. “What did you do with your wings?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your feathery angel wings, or your leathery bat wings. They're gone."

Satan was taken aback, but he was young and quick to recover. “Our host has heard that I've sworn off air travel,” he said. “Because of the carbon emissions! I take public transportation."

"No cars for you?” said Occhietti.

"Denying cars is not, in fact, part of my Green gospel,” said Satan primly. “We have never schemed to deprive consumers of their beloved private cars; electric cars, hybrid-electric cars, cellulosic ethanol cars, shareable cars connected by cellphone, wind-powered nickel-hydride cars, plastic-composite hydrogen three-wheelers powered by backyard vats of anaerobic bacteria; we offer a vast, radiant, polymorphic, multi-headed, pagan panoply of cars! All of them radical improvements over today's backward cars, which have led to the ongoing collapse of our global civilization."

Occhietti cleared his throat. “It's a fine thing to find a young man with such an interest in my industry! Let's go inside and have a cigar."

Beaming with delight, the Devil tripped along willingly, but once inside he refused tobacco. “A menace to public health! With today's aging European population, we can't risk the demographic hit to our lifespans. Not to mention the medical costs to our fragile social-safety net."

Deliberately, Occhietti trimmed and fired a cigar. “All right, Lucifer—or whatever you call yourself nowadays—now that we're out of my dear wife's little garden, you can drop your pretenses. Go ahead, brandish your horns at me, your barbed tail—you're not scaring me! I have been to Hell, I've seen the worst you have to offer. So put your cards on the table! Say your piece! What is it you want?"

Satan brightened. “I'm glad to have this excellent chance for a frank exchange of issues with a veteran auto executive. Though I must correct you on one important point—I'm not Satan. You are Satan."

"I'm not Satan. I'm an engineer."

"I'm an engineer, too—though certainly not of your brutish, old-school variety. I have a doctorate in renewable energy. With a specialty in cradle-to-cradle recycling issues."

"From what school?"

"The Turin Polytechnic."

"That's my school!"

"Have you been there lately?"

Occhietti had no time to teach engineering school. The local faculty were always asking him, but.... “Look, then you can't be Satan! You're some crazy kid who's possessed by Satan. You are a wizard, right?"

"Of course I'm a wizard! This is Turin."

"Well, what kind of necromancer are you, black or white?"

"Those are yesterday's outdated divisions! I'm not a ‘necromancer,’ for I don't draw any power from the dead! I'm a ‘biomancer.’ I'm Green."

"You can't be Green. That is not metaphysically possible. You can only be Black or White."

"Well, despite your aging, Cold War-style metaphysics, I am a Green wizard. I am Green, and you, sir, are Brown. You don't have to take my word for that. Go to Brussels and ask around about the Kyoto Accords! Any modern Eurocrat can tell you: left, right, black, white—that's all deader than Nineveh! In a climate crisis, you're Global Green or you're crisp brown toast in a hellish wasteland!"

Occhietti blinked. “A ‘hellish wasteland.’”

"Yes,” said the Green wizard soberly, “all of Earth will become Hell, all of it; if we continue in our current lives of sin, that's just a matter of time."

Occhietti said nothing.

"So,” said the Green wizard cheerfully, “now that we have those scientific facts firmly established, let's get down to policy particulars! How much are you willing to give me?"

"What?"

"How many millions? How many hundreds of millions? I have to reinvent your transportation company. On tomorrow's Green principles! Every energy company must also be reinvented. In order to become Green, like futurity, like me, me, me—you have to cannibalize all your present profit centers. You must seek out radically disruptive, transformed, Green business practices. All the smart operators already know there's no choice in that matter—even the Chinese, Saudis, and Indians get that by now, so I can't believe a modish Italian company like yours would be backward and stodgy about it! So, Signore Occhietti, how much? Pony up!"

Occhietti scratched at his head. He discovered two numb patches on his scalp. Hard, numb patches.

He had grown horns.

Occhietti buffed the talons of his fingertips against the ugly lapel of his suit. “From me,” he said, “you will get nothing."

"How much?"

"I told you: nothing. Not ten Euro cents. Not one dollar, yen, ruble, rupee, or yuan.” Occhietti put the paper-wrapped bundle onto the kitchen table. “I still control my corporation's venture capital. As a loyal employee: I refuse you. I refuse to underwrite my company's destruction at your hands. I don't care if it's white, black, brown, green, or paisley: nothing for you. I have too much pride."

Using a small but very sharp fruit knife, Occhietti cut the strings and peeled the paper away.

The Green wizard stared. “Is that what I think it is?"

Occhietto plucked the barbed tail from the loosening seat of his pants. He sat at the kitchen table. He crossed his hooves. He nodded.

"But the Grail is just some cheap clay cup!"

"He was never a Pope, you know. He was a Jewish carpenter."

Occhietti's kitchen filled with the butcher's scent of fresh blood.

"I suppose that you expect me to drink from that primitive thing! It's made by hand! Look how blurry those black and white lines are."

"No, you won't drink from the Grail,” said Occhietti serenely. “Because you've never had the guts. I've heard fools like you trying to destroy my industry for the past fifty years! While the rest of us were changing this world—transforming it, for good or ill—you never achieved one single, useful, practical thing! I was at the side of the Lord of Turin, breaking laws and rules like breadsticks, while you were lost in some drug-addled haze, about peace, or love, or whales, or any other useless fad that struck your fancy."

Occhietti grinned. “But to ‘save the world'—you would have to rip across this miserable planet like Napoleon. A savior, a conqueror, a redeemer, and a champion might do that—but never the likes of you. Because you're feeble, you're squeamish, and you lack all conviction. You're a limp-wristed, multi-culti weak sister who does nothing but lobby nonexistent world governments."

"Actually, there's a great deal of truth in that indictment, sir! Our efforts to raise consciousness have often fallen sadly short!"

"And that's another thing: being neither black nor white, you're always pitifully eager to agree with your own worst enemies."

"That's because I'm a secular rationalist with an excellent record in human rights, sir. Grant me this much: I am innocent! I'm not eager to submerge our world in a tide of blood, building my New Order on a heap of corpses."

Occhietti smiled. “And you call yourself European?"

"That remark is truly diabolical! Why are you tempting me? I represent tomorrow—as you know!—and I'm as capable of evil as you. You know well that, once I taste the blood in that cup, there will be hell to pay! You should never have offered me that. Why do that? Why?"

What did he gain by offering the Grail? Necessity.

The Grail was a necessity: beyond good and evil. The Grail was an instrument. An instrument was not a moral actor, it did nothing of its own accord. Some engineer had to make instruments.

The Grail was the cup of the sacramental feast, and also the cup of judicial murder. Those two cups, the blackly good and whitely evil, were the very same checkered cup.

That cup had been carried hot-foot from the table of the Final Supper, and straight to Golgotha.

So who built the Holy Grail? Some fixer. Only one man, one necessary man, could have known the time and place of both events. That man was a trusted Apostle; the most esoteric Apostle. Judas; the two-faced Judas, the wizardly magus Judas, he of the bag of cash.

It was thanks to Judas that the fix was in.

"You are only playing for time, and the time is up,” said Occhietti. “The calendar never stops, and treason is a matter of dates.” He shoved the ancient cup across the table. “Do you drink, or don't you?"

BOOKS-MAGAZINES

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MISCELLANEOUS

If stress can change the brain, all experience can change the brain. www.undoingstress.com

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American Gals—follow the adventures of Bobbi Grant, Maggie Jones, and Jane West as they find love and laughter in the wacky world of telemarketing.

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In 1870, Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote The Coming Race, a science fiction novel based on the “hollow earth” theory, which was then the topic of serious debate in many countries. Bulwer-Lytton created a world beneath the surface peopled by a superior race known as the Vril-ya. Their civilization was powered by a multi-purpose energy source called Vril, derived from the Black Sun, which radiated at the center of the Earth. After an unknown hero from the surface accidentally discovered their world, he soon became enthralled by the Vril-ya and their technologically advanced culture. In the end, he wondered what would happen to humanity if the Vril-ya ever decided to explore the surface of the world.

Bulwer-Lytton is best known today as the author of that infamous phrase, “It was a dark and stormy night....” Despite his florid writing style, his novel remained popular into the twentieth century. In fact, some saw it as more than just a story. In Berlin, Germany, its followers included the Vril Society, the Vril Lodge, and the Society for Truth, which was formed specifically for the purpose of finding Vril. When the Nazis sprang into power, they reportedly tried to prepare for an eventual meeting with the Vril-ya by training German youth to become “Supermen.” Today, a belief lingers that the Nazis discovered a passageway to the underground world, gaining access to superior technology that was used during the war. In 2001, Kevin and Matthew Taylor wrote The Land of No Horizon, about the possible existence of life beneath the surface, while a website, www.thehollowearthinsider.com, weighs modern scientific concepts against early theories about the Earth.

—Patricia A. Martinelli

If Welteislehre is correct,

Our all-ice moon inches closer

Until it kisses our atmosphere,

Flooding us with water volumes

Unseen since Noah's day.

If the Expanding Earth theory is right,

Our world gets more and more obese

As new crust erupts from mid-ocean ridges

And no material returns to the magma.

If these are true,

Which would happen first?

Will we feel the moon's chilly kiss,

Or will our bloating home

Bump into the ice?

Next month marks our sixtieth anniversary, our diamond jubilee, the big six-oh. How will we celebrate it? Why, how good of you to ask!

We'll have new stories by Carol Emshwiller, Ron Goulart, Joe Haldeman, and Kate Wilhelm. New novelets by Elizabeth Hand, Charles Oberndorf, M. Rickert, and Robert Silverberg. We'll have a new novella by Lucius Shepard. We'll have columns and cartoons and a David Hardy cover and a few surprises....

In short, we plan to bring you a whopping big issue packed with everything that makes F&SF the magazine it is (and has been since 1949). Subscribe now and you'll get this big anniversary issue—and we've got lots of great stories lined up for the subsequent issues, too!