'And by the way, that gel is also a topical anaesthetic. Get yourself under the shower as quickly as you can. Your skin will begin to absorb it if you don't wash it off.'

Before Ace could reply the Doctor was out of the bathroom and gone.

She went back to the boy. Her arms were still shaking with the effort of getting him up the stairs and her shoulder was beginning to ache again.

The boy was sitting in a wicker chair between the sink and the shower unit, naked and pale. He had a towel under him to keep the chair safe from the gunk. The Doctor had been right. As usual. Ace's body was thoroughly oiled with the stuff after wrestling the kid up to the bathroom. She was still breathing hard.

If he'd simply been a dead weight, it wouldn't have presented much of a problem. She could have carried him, even with her bad shoulder. But part of the time he was completely slack, like his muscles were cut, then suddenly he'd move. Leaning against her and walking, staggering along like a drunk. Helping her out. He'd gone halfway up the stairs like that, a good boy, as if his body remembered staircases and how to climb them. Then, just as suddenly, the motor control had cut out and she'd had to grab him before he fell and split his skull.

He stirred now, slumped in the wicker chair. One hand spasmed, settling into an intricate movement at the wrist, fingers dancing. Like a onehanded keyboard player with an imaginary piano.

Then one eye opened, a startling blue, and orbited blindly in its socket before the lid drooped closed again. The kid's skin was bright red in bands across the soft meat of his thighs where the wicker chair made contact, as if blood was moving close to the surface. The rest of his body was still the white of fish meat and shining, greased with the barrel gunk. He smelled like Vicks VapoRub cut with chicken fat and pesticide. And after the odyssey up the stairs, so did Ace. As the Doctor suggested, she'd put on a swimsuit. If she'd been wearing her clothes they would have been a writeoff. Panting in the mirror now, in the bikini with her gleaming skin, she looked like a Filipino girl wrestler between rounds or something out of an unsavoury women's prison movie.

Ace leaned on the sink, catching her breath, bracing herself for the effort of hauling him into the tub. She remembered what the Doctor had said about the gel. Already she could feel, or imagined she could feel, the stuff taking hold. The skin at the base of her neck and along her spine had begun to tingle. Her shoulder was hurting but now the pain seemed distant, overlayed with a warm rippling. She felt a little sleepy and waves of slow heat pulsed across her ribcage and the inner surfaces of her arms, where she'd picked up the most gel.

The boy in the wicker chair suddenly gulped, opened his eyes and cleared his throat as if he was about to say something.

For a moment he stared directly at Ace, blank bright eyes locked on hers. Then he nodded, spat a fat wet slug of the preserving gel on to the floor between her feet, closed his eyes and subsided again.

Ace sighed and read the name off the boy's dogtag. 'Bathtime, Vincent.'

By the time she'd settled him into the tub, sitting propped up at one end, the big bath was about ready to overflow. She wrestled with the taps for a minute and finally wrenched them back to the off position. Hidden pipes shuddered and the flow of water slowed to a dribble then a steady irritating dripping. Ace looked at the boy. His eyes were puffy and squeezed shut. He looked authentically asleep. More than that, he looked sightless, blind, born blind like some pale marine creature. She dropped a yellow plastic duck into the water of the bathtub. Not a flicker. The duck bobbed and floated against the pale milky blue skin of the kid's chest as she stripped off her swimsuit, thoroughly soaked in the struggle to get Vincent into the tub. The heavy drenched fabric puddled at her feet. She hooked it with a toe and kicked it across the room. The swimsuit hit the side of the gla.s.s shower stall with a loud slap. Ace walked across the wet bathroom tiles and stepped under the shower. When the spray hit her she soaped her elbows and began to sing.

The boy, Vincent, remained sitting in the deep steaming bath, his head nodding slightly with the residual movement of the water. The old faucet dripped, slow beads of water from its mineralencrusted lip, gathering, hanging, falling into the hot water.

Under pale closed lids the boy's eyes were rolling.

The sound of liquid dripping.

Steady dripping.

Deep in his dreams Vincent saw the droplets gather, wait, fall. He heard the dripping sound.

Vincent dreamed and listened to the sound. It led him through his dreams.

Now the water is dripping from the sponge in his mother's hand. Vincent is ten years old and he has a fever. Nothing seems quite real. His face and forehead are hot. The water drips from the sponge as his mother wipes it gently across his skin. Noises ring around the house in a strange way. They seem to be part of his fever dreams. They echo and the echoes make him feel sick. But they aren't part of his dreams. The sounds are real. They're coming from the living room downstairs. The sounds are voices. His father's voice, loud and piercing. His mother's voice low. Vincent's father shouldn't be here. He said he was going back to university. Going to finish his degree this time. He said he'd never come home. Vincent was holding him back. Vincent's mother was holding him back. Without them he could make something of himself.

But now he's back and the voices are unbearable as Vincent walks down the stairs like a sleepwalker into the living room. His father shouting at his mother. His mother trying to be rational. Father's voice like something wild let loose in the room. Let loose in Vincent's head. His mother's voice like something small, trying to escape. Vincent walks into the living room, walking in his fever dream, just as his father hits his mother. And then his father sees him.

And grabs him, shakes him. Suddenly Vincent is dizzy with the fever.

And that's when it happens.

That's when the Bad Thing happens.

But it must be just part of Vincent's fever dream, because when he wakes up he is back in his bed, the fever still heavy over him like a damp sour blanket. There are voices now, but they are low and quiet. He walks down the long wooden hall to the bathroom where the voices are coming from.

He sees water.

Water dripping from a sponge.

His mother is using the sponge to clean the deep cut in his father's head.

Now Vincent is standing in the doorway of the bathroom and his father is looking up at him. Water, mixed with blood, dripping from his father's chin.

His father looking up at him with fear.

Water dripping.

Water flowing.

Vincent's memories are flowing like the water. Water running into Mrs Kielowski's swimming pool as he finishes cleaning it. Vincent is fourteen years old now. Sometimes he remembers the fever time and what he did to his father. The impossible thing. Sometimes he even gets the fever feeling. But he represses it, buries it deep. Tries to forget about it. Rain is beginning to fall again, here in Mrs Kielowski's backyard. Drops of it spread ripples in the smooth surface of the swimming pool.

The tyres on Vincent's bicycle had sliced through rain puddles on the way home. His new bicycle, the red tenspeed. Its tyres hissed on the wet road surface.

The shopping mall was on Windacott Avenue, just across from the ruins of the old munic.i.p.al library. Vincent always stopped there on his way home from school. It was a small development, just the Seven Eleven, a hairdresser's and eight or nine other stores.

But one of those stores was Smartt Software and another was a drugstore with a large magazine and paperback section.

Vincent got his allowance every week on Friday morning. His mom gave him cash from her wallet before she went to work. 'Make it last, okay?' she'd say. Then she'd always smile and he'd always smile back. They both knew the twenty dollars was unlikely to survive that first trip home from school, via Wendacott Avenue. His mother had given up asking Vincent to promise he wouldn't come home that way. It wasn't the money she was worried about, it was the other things. But Vincent was big enough to look after himself now and his mom was just being panicky. She just got spooked whenever she parked in that mall and looked across at the gutted hulk of the old munic.i.p.al library, so close. Vincent had promised her that he'd never go in there there, although even the library wasn't that bad these days. It hadn't been really bad since the riots two decades ago, unless you were stupid enough to go in there at night and try sleeping inside or something. They said that Bobby Prescott still went in there sometimes. At night.

Smartt Software was in a row of stores on the outside edge of the mall, opposite Seven Eleven. Vincent chained his bike up outside and automatically looked at the police posters stuck on the inside of the windows of McCray's drugstore, including the latest Bobby Prescott fax. No matter how boring the police department tried to make the Prescott faxes, they were lucky if one stayed up for more than a day before a highschool kid swiped it to put up in his bedroom. Vincent even knew Gameboys who had posters of Prescott up above their consoles. Somewhere in their minds they must know that if Prescott ever found them in an arcade or on a public access terminal, or just walking home wearing a Sega backpack, he'd go after them. But they still got a kick out of having his face up on their wall, looking down on them as they played their computer games, staring out of an official police Wanted fax.

Inside Smartt Software it was airconditioned and smelled of plastic. Some special kind of plastic they used for shrinkwrapping the games. For Vincent, the excitement always began with that smell. It was Friday and school was over for the weekend. It was June and all the teachers were winding down. No homework. In a couple of weeks there would be two whole months of summer vacation. And now he stood in Smartt Software, listening to the Brian Eno they always played and smelling that smell. A crowd of older boys stood around the counter, sn.i.g.g.e.ring at the manual for the latest release of MacPet. He casually eavesdropped and heard a couple of names he recognized. Rebecca c.o.x and Betty Kampinski. Girls at school who had a certain reputation. Vincent edged past them.

He hunted through the bargain bins at the front of the store. It was all cheap Korean stuff. He didn't find anything. He never did, but it was part of the ritual, delaying the pleasure. Finally, when he couldn't wait any more, he walked to the back of the store and went straight to the top twenty rack and pulled it down. They must have had a hundred copies of it. The new Cthulhu Gate strategy software. Not just a supplement or new scenario but a special AI plugon. You just installed the strategy module in your games folder with all your other Gate software and the next time you played it woke up and started working. Vincent had the twenty dollars his mother had given him plus another ten which was the remains of last week's allowance plus money he'd saved by skipping school lunches.

The strategy module cost $24.95. The box went into the bag with his schoolbooks and then Vincent went into McCray's for a Pepsi and a bag of munchies. That took care of his remaining five dollars and change.

It was only after he'd spent his last cent that he saw it.

It was on the magazine rack rather than among the comics. Vincent later worked out that this was the reason it was still there. If it had been in its proper place someone would have found it and bought it weeks ago. But there it was, among the wrestling and weaponry magazines. A copy of Talons Talons number one. number one. Talons Talons was the official Cthulhu Gate tiein comic from Caliber. It was written and drawn by the Gilbert sisters and it was the hottest new comic of the year. Despite an initial print run of half a million it had sold out everywhere, literally within minutes. And everybody who was lucky enough to score the comic was holding on to it, waiting for the soaring collectors' prices to level out before they sold. Even Calvin Palmer, with all his parents' money, hadn't been able to pry a copy loose. was the official Cthulhu Gate tiein comic from Caliber. It was written and drawn by the Gilbert sisters and it was the hottest new comic of the year. Despite an initial print run of half a million it had sold out everywhere, literally within minutes. And everybody who was lucky enough to score the comic was holding on to it, waiting for the soaring collectors' prices to level out before they sold. Even Calvin Palmer, with all his parents' money, hadn't been able to pry a copy loose.

Vincent didn't have a copy. He didn't know anybody who had a copy. And here it was, red and silver cover shining between Indonesian Mercenary Indonesian Mercenary and and Heavy Metal Heavy Metal.

He picked it up. It was in mint condition. The price on the cover was $5.95.

In his pocket he had two quarters and a nickel.

Vincent pedalled home as fast as he could and as soon as he got home he started knocking on doors. Most of his neighbours had kids of their own and didn't want to pay anybody for yard ch.o.r.es. But Mrs Kielowski at number thirtyseven was a widow and childless and needed her swimming pool cleaned. Two hours of sweat and chlorine sting with autumn leaves falling around his head and Vincent had earned five dollars. He found another forty cents down the back of the couch in his mother's rec room. McCray's drugstore closed at nine. Vincent got there at seven fortyfive.

The mall was empty, one last car pulling away from the Seven Eleven. Smartt Software was closed. The streets were dark, solid autumn darkness promising winter despite the hot winds. Vincent thought he was pedalling his bike as fast as he could but as he pa.s.sed the ruins of the old munic.i.p.al library he found himself going even faster. The parking lot lights of the building gleamed on poles, casting long shadows of the old iron railings across the road. Vincent shivered as he signalled to turn left into the mall.

When he got into McCray's drugstore the copy of Talons Talons number one was gone. number one was gone.

He'd hidden the comic behind a stack of gun magazines where no one else would spot it. All the gun magazines were gone. He asked the guy working in the pharmacy section and he directed Vincent to a woman working on a computer in the stockroom. The woman told him that the gun magazines were out of date. They'd been returned to the distributor. The next issue would be in on Monday as if Vincent gave a d.a.m.n about Small Arms Collector Small Arms Collector.

He went back and searched the entire rack. Looking behind every magazine and inside, too, opening them up to check whether the comic had somehow got folded inside. It took him an hour. By the time he was finished the girl at the checkout was clearing her throat and giving him dirty looks. Vincent knew the comic was gone. Two minutes before the store shut Vincent gave up. He walked out. His route out of the store took him past the comic rack. He glanced automatically at the rack and there it was. The red and silver cover. Someone had found it among the magazines and had put it back where it belonged. Vincent just stood staring, unable to move. The girl at the checkout said something sarcastic and looked pointedly at her watch. Vincent jerked out of his paralysis. He paid, taking the money out of his wallet with trembling hands, and put the comic carefully into a plastic bag which he put inside his shirt. He pushed through the door of the drugstore and stepped outside.

'Hi, Vincent.'

Standing beside Vincent's bicycle was Calvin Palmer. If Vincent's mind hadn't been on the comic book he might have realized that there was something strange about the other boy's voice. Calvin's face was pale in the drugstore neon. But Vincent was excited and he was pleased to see Calvin.

'Hey, wait until you see what I've found.'

'Sure. Just come around here a second.' Before Vincent could reply the other boy was gone. He followed him around the corner of McCray's to the section of mall parking lot that was reserved for delivery trucks and employees' vehicles. It was a quiet enclosed square surrounded by the rear walls of stores on three sides. As Vincent walked into it he was only a hundred metres from the main road, maybe twenty metres from his bicycle.

Too far.

Calvin was standing there, waiting for him. There were four other people there, three men and a woman. Vincent didn't recognize the woman or two of the men. The third man he knew immediately. Vincent had reached inside his shirt and drawn out the comic. He was holding it, ready to show to Calvin. Now it dropped from his fingers, cover fluttering open. It lay on the ground, a meaningless flat square of colours. Oil from the asphalt bled into the corner of the cover. Vincent made no move to pick it up.

The third man smiled. 'You've recognized me, haven't you?' he said. He was coming closer. 'I guess you've seen the posters,' said Bobby Prescott.

The other men and the woman moved around behind Vincent, blocking the only way out. 'In case you don't know why I'm up on those posters, it's because of the things I do with kids,' said Bobby Prescott.

No one was paying any attention to Calvin and he began to edge away towards the pile of cardboard boxes and garbage cans behind McCray's. Vincent saw Calvin's bicycle parked there. An expensive Ryohin Keikaku shaftdrive model. Calvin was moving towards it.

'I don't do those things with all kids. Just the ones like the Gameboys or the Crows. You know. The ones who play on computers all night.' Bobby Prescott pointed at Vincent. 'Like you.'

Calvin was climbing on the Keikaku now.

'And the ones who ride around on bicycles all day.'

Someone ran past Vincent from behind. The woman. She was on Calvin, pulling him off the bike and throwing him to the ground at Bobby Prescott's feet. 'Like your friend,' said Bobby Prescott. He knelt down beside Calvin. 'We promised your friend that we'd let him go if he found someone else for us. And he found you. But I don't think we will let him go.'

Calvin was crawling away from Bobby Prescott, dragging himself towards Vincent. His head was hanging down and Vincent thought he was crying. But now he looked up and Vincent saw his face and he looked too scared to cry.

'I'm sorry,' said Calvin, crawling towards him.

'It's okay,' said Vincent.

'Before we get started, I'd just like to introduce my friends,' said Bobby Prescott. 'This is Sally and Eliot and Lyndon.' But Vincent wasn't listening to him. Memories were stirring in his mind, like things moving through deep water. Things he'd been unable to face. Memories he'd buried in wasteland in his mind, then flooded with years of innocent thought like deepening water. He'd hoped to keep the memories buried forever, under old water, under heavy ground.

But now they were surfacing.

Vincent was remembering that day when he was ten and he had the fever. Memories coming up from the depths. The big wooden house on Leonard Crescent, echoing with a little boy's fever dreams. Memories surfacing fast. How he'd come downstairs, following the echoing voices. Looking into the living room and seeing his dad hit his mom. Memories and the truth, coming into the light. How his dad had looked up and seen him in the doorway and bellowed with rage. How he'd grabbed Vincent. And how the Bad Thing had happened. Memories coming into the light. Vincent finally able to look at the truth after all these years.

How he'd made made the Bad Thing happen. How his dad had grabbed him and at the moment of the touch he'd done it. the Bad Thing happen. How his dad had grabbed him and at the moment of the touch he'd done it.

His father's one big fist had grabbed the shirt of his pyjamas, pulling the cloth up so Vincent's belly was bare and cold. The other big fist in his hair, pulling it hard. Vincent's mother crying over by the table. The mirror and the razor blade flat on the table, the way they always were when Dad got like this. And at his father's touch Vincent had struck back.

The mirror had come flying off the table, skidding through the air like a hockey puck slammed full force. Smashing into his father's head and cutting it open. Laying a big flap of skin bare and then the blood starting. His father crying out and letting go of him. The mirror falling to the floor and smashing, no longer driven by the force that had moved it.

The force from Vincent. From inside his mind.

Now Vincent stood in the shadow of the Wendacott Avenue mall, near enough to hear the traffic on the road but a world away. On three sides the blank back walls of stores sealed him in. On the fourth side, in back of him, three strange grownups stood. In front of him stood Bobby Prescott. Vincent's life was about to end and the shock of it brought the memories up. The truth was breaking surface.

Inside him was a power. He could cut and wound with it. It was so big it frightened him. But there was no time to be afraid now. There was no more time for the lies he'd told himself, the years of falsified memories. He could reach out with his mind and touch the world. He could fight.

On the ground Calvin moaned with fear. Bobby Prescott stood looking at them, smiling.

Vincent smiled back at him. Within himself he made an acceptance. He turned around. The other two men and the woman were closing in. The woman was holding on to Calvin's bicycle. Behind them was the open s.p.a.ce of the mall's parking lot. Beyond that, Wendacott Avenue and freedom. Calvin was moaning louder now. 'Let's do it,' said Bobby Prescott.

Vincent reached deep inside his mind and felt the power there, just where he'd always known it would be. Waiting to be used. Vincent reached down and scooped the power up. He embraced it, feeling drunk with the immensity of it. It rose up like hot air rushing up from a tropical ocean. Rising and stirring into turbulence. The seed of a storm. Vincent let the stormseed spin and whirl in his mind. Spinning like a top. Then he let it loose.

The storm erupted in his mind like thunder exploding over the prairies. Behind his eyes was lightning and the scream of storm wind. Vincent let it sweep upwards from the deepest pit of his mind, moving forwards, gathering speed. He aimed it straight at the two men and the woman, a storm swelling into something bigger. It swept up behind his eyes with hurricane force.

Vincent held his breath, the power transforming, ready to take any shape at all, to perform any act, a ball of pure energy. The Bad Thing was straining at its leash, ready to happen.

But Vincent held on to it, letting the power build, his head snapping back with the effort of restraining the release, the power ready to pour out of him. Bobby Prescott's people were hesitating, as if they sensed something was wrong.

Vincent closed his eyes and aimed it straight at them. He clenched his teeth.

Now.

And he let it go.

And nothing happened.

Vincent opened his eyes.

'What are you waiting for?' said Bobby Prescott, coming up behind Vincent. Vincent heard Calvin dragging himself away from Bobby Prescott. 'Let's get started.'

Calvin made a small crying sound and reached up to touch Vincent. Maybe to apologize. Maybe just to feel some human contact before he died. The two men and the woman were starting forward. Calvin's hand groped blindly forward and touched Vincent's foot.

The touch was like lightning striking. Everybody felt it. The two men gasped. The woman dropped the bicycle. Bobby Prescott said something and stepped back. Calvin closed his eyes, not wanting to watch. He heard the metal sc.r.a.pe of Calvin's bicycle moving across the ground. Then a strange tearing noise.

And then the Bad Thing happened.

'First of all, are you sure Bobby Prescott was there? Are you sure it was him?'

'Listen, if you're going to start doubting what I'm saying then we might as well quit now.' The drugstore girl fumbled in a pocket of her jacket and took out a pack of Camels. 'Because you really aren't going to like what comes next.'

'Okay, okay,' said the second policeman, glancing at his partner. 'Let her tell her story in her own way.'

'It was definitely Bobby Prescott. Right, kid, you saw him?' The drugstore girl looked at Vincent. Vincent nodded. He shifted on the hard metal chair. It wasn't comfortable, but it wasn't meant to be. This was the backroom of the drugstore where they took you if you were caught shoplifting. They sat you down in these chairs and sat themselves down behind the desk and proceeded to frighten you as much as they could before they phoned your parents. Vincent had been in here once before, years ago, for stealing a gaming paperback. Maybe he'd even sat in this chair.

The girl who worked at the cash register in McCray's sat beside him now, in the other folding metal seat. The cops were sitting at the desk.

'So what happened to him?' said the first cop. 'Where did Bobby Prescott go?'

'He made it to the fence in back of the mall. He was real quick.' said the girl. 'He got away. He was the only one who did.' She bent forward as she lit her cigarette and the microphone on the police tape recorder moved on the desk, automatically tracking with her.

'I'd prefer it if you didn't smoke,' said the first policeman.

The girl inhaled a deep lungful of smoke and flashed a look up at him. 'You'd what?' The second policeman looked quickly at the first one. Even to Vincent her voice sounded a little funny.