"When what is all over?" Janey asked.

"Umm, stuff."

"Janey," her mother said warningly, and the girl pouted.

"It's okay," Rob said. "I have kids of my own ..." Suddenly it was alien again, the dining room, the laden table, the faces young and old around it.

The fellow feeling switched off with an almost audible click. What am I doing here? he thought. Only common decency kept him from jumping up and running out of the house.

In the uproar of dessert, which was a Christmas cake decorated with sprigs of holly, he hoped his sudden silence would pass unnoticed. When they all pitched in to clear the table, though, Amy Phillipson drew him aside into the window bay. "I'm sorry," she said. "Janey touched on something hurtful, didn't she?"

"Not her fault," Rob muttered.

"Can we do anything to help?"

He shook his head, forcing himself to break out of the ice, to make a reply. "I-I got into a deep dark hole, and I have to work my way out. And it takes so long ..."

She gazed thoughtfully out the window at the leafless trees ringing the lawn, and quoted, " 'It is easy, the descent to Avernus. Morning and night the gates stand open. But to retrace the footsteps, to light again return, there indeed lies toil.' "

"Virgil," he said, surprising himself. "The Aeneid. I read it this summer."

"You are a very unusual person," she said, surprised in her turn.

"Is it ever really possible?" Rob asked her impulsively. "To return to the light?"

"Oh, never doubt it!" Her voice and eyes were full of certainty. "You can't do it alone, of course. But there are those who can build bridges, and unlock doors, and even plunder Avernus."

Out of his depth now, Rob said, "Edwin's good that way." She looked up at him, surprised but smiling. "I hadn't thought of him in that context, but you're right. He's an excellent representative. We always sing carols after Christmas dinner-you will too, won't you?"

Rob wanted to say no, but knew it would be a mistake. No half measures, he told himself. If I'm in the human race, I'm in all the way. "I can't carry a tune in a paper bag," he said. "But if you can live with that, then let's go for it." So the evening passed off fairly well after all. And whether it was the carols, or merely eating a large dinner with oyster stuffing, that night Rob slept.

CHAPTER 6.

On his return in the middle of January from another Atlantic City day trip Rob found three separate phone messages from Edwin waiting for him at the shelter. He called back right away. "Is something wrong?" he demanded.

"Of course not. I wanted to tell you I got a new toy."

"You and your toys! What is it, another CD accessory?"

"No, this one is really cool, Rob-an EEG machine. To record your brain waves, you know? I borrowed it from a friend at the Mental Institute, just for you."

"Ed, no needles, please!"

"There aren't any needles," Edwin said indignantly. "Just electrodes to paste to your scalp. This is as simple and as low-tech as you can go in brain studies, short of running mazes or doing pencil-and-paper tests. Oh come on, Rob, in the interests of research, aren't you wildly curious to see if your brain wave patterns differ from everybody else's?"

"I've never considered it," Rob said. "Haven't you had enough of the experiments?"

"Never! It won't hurt, Rob, cross my heart and hope to die. And if you want we can set it up right here in my office. You can recline in my desk chair."

Rob laughed. "I'm just having you on. Of course I'll come give it a try."

The following afternoon Rob rode the Metro to NIH and walked to Edwin's lab. Winter had set in at last. A powdered-sugar sprinkling of snow overlaid the grounds and made them a setting for a fairy tale. The heat thrown off by all the refrigerators and freezers in the hallways felt good.

"I'm going to have to bite the bullet and buy myself a heavier coat," Rob said as he came into the lab.

"I don't understand your attitude," Edwin complained. "You have the money-why not spend it?"

"I want to travel light, I guess. Until I get home. Is this the toy?" The machine sat on its own cart, taking up almost all the space in the small room.

"Yep. Come and take her for a spin."

Edwin's eagerness made Rob laugh. He obligingly sat in the chair while Edwin fussed with wires and connections, crawling under the desk to attach the cables to his computer. "Does microbiology involve work with EEGs?"

"Nope. But Maureen-she lent me the machine-coached me good."

"Oh great. You inspire confidence, Ed."

"It's not a complicated technology, I tell you, Rob. Now, quiet in the peanut gallery. I'm going to stick these electrodes on."

"You're going to put paste in my hair."

"At least I'm not shaving it off, right?"

It was not actually uncomfortable to be wired up with electrodes, but Edwin's inexpert fingers felt shivery on his scalp. Every now and then, being touched still brought the power snapping into unwelcome focus. But he didn't mention his difficulties to Edwin.

"See? Isn't that cool?" Edwin adjusted the colors on his computer monitor.

"That's you!"

To Rob they looked like eight ordinary sine waves snaking slowly across the screen. "What do other people's look like?"

"Here's some charts that came with. Let me adjust it down

here ..."

Edwin fiddled with the equipment out of sight below, while Rob flipped through old charts. He had no idea what the various lines signified at all.

So far as he could tell his brain patterns on the screen were very similar.

"Okay," Edwin said, re-emerging. "Now! Do some stuff."

"Like what?"

"Oh-how about the invisibility thing?"

"Fine. You don't see me."

Edwin rubbed his chin, his eyes narrowed to a green glint. "Now I know empirically that you're there in my chair," he said. "I can see the electrodes, even. And it's not that you're actually transparent. But it's hard to actually discern you somehow .. . Let me get a mirror. I've always wanted to test that." He fetched a square mirror from the lab next door.

"Now, how about that. I can't see you here either."

"Vision's mainly in your head, you know. The photons hit the retina, the optic nerve carries the signal, but your brain does the signal processing.

It's not that I'm invisible-I keep on telling you that. It's that you, the viewer, don't see me."