"And you say this guy is you." Edwin pointed at the cover, which showed a bas-relief of a rather sticklike ancient warrior holding a lion up by a hind leg in either hand.

"No, not exactly. But read it, and tell me what you think." Rob leaned his seat all the way back and closed his eyes. He felt more nervous than he wanted Edwin to see. I'm getting nearer, he thought. Getting to the bottom of this. My life has been upside down since last May. Now I might find out how and why. He had been looking backwards so long, back to an old life as perfect and complete as the jewel in the bezel of a ring. Now he looked forward, and the future was unknowable, blank. He could not imagine what they would find in Aqebin, but surely it was unlikely to lead him back to his old happy life in Fairfax County. He would never be able to return completely even if he found a cure there. He himself had changed too much.

Even his shirt size had gotten bigger. He'd noticed that at Edwin's outdoor store-probably from doing so much physical labor. He fell asleep thinking about the fun Julianne would have choosing new clothes for him.

It was a long flight, more than thirteen hours. Edwin had managed the bookings, because he had the credit cards to clinch reservations. "But even American Express isn't all-powerful," he said. "I predict glitches."

"I thought we had tickets, paid for in hard currency."

"I talked to folks who had to bribe the pilot to take off in Novosibirsk."

"At least we won't have that problem," Rob said smiling.

"Weren't you going to give up muscling people?"

"Ordering innocent folks around is one thing. But if I buy and pay for something, at an agreed price, and the guy welches so as to screw more money out of me-then I think a little push might be in order."

Moscow was deep in snow and bitterly cold. At the Aeroflot desk they learned that their flight to Samarqand had been cancelled. "You've got to be kidding," Edwin said. "There's only four a week, and you cancel one?"

The pretty airline clerk shrugged one shoulder, uninterested. "Fuel shortage."

"I bet that's what you tell all the guys." He turned to Rob. "You want to spend a few days seeing Moscow, till the next flight?"

"No." Rob leaned an arm on the counter. "Could we speak to someone in higher authority?"

The clerk's big eyes got bigger. "How well you speak Russian!"

"I do?" Rob recovered fast. This was a perfectly reasonable extension of the weirdness. "I'm anxious to get to either western Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan. Can you help?"

"Your accent is perfect! That's rare in an American." She gave him a flirtatious half-smile. "I will call my superior. He will know."

Edwin nudged him as she vanished into a side room. "You understand her?"

"It sounds like English to me. And she just said my Russian accent is perfect."

"What about written Russian? That sign over there-what does it say?"

Rob shook his head. "Sorry, Ed. Maybe the meaning has to jump from a living brain to mine."

Edwin stared into the distance, a look of dreamy abstraction on his face.

"After all this is over I'm going to write a paper about it."

"How about 'Superhero Sidekick Tells All'?"

Edwin laughed. "I never thought of that! No, it'll be more on the order of 'Glossolalial Behavior as an Aspect of the Lewis Phenomenon.' "

The supervisor was an entirely bald man in an ill-fitting blue suit. "No flight to Samarqand today," he announced.

"But I have tickets." Rob passed them over.

The supervisor flipped through them, clicking his tongue in annoyance.

"Very sorry for your inconvenience, but if there is no plane, what can be done?"

"Are there other flights to the area? We can be flexible."

"Probably no."

"Anywhere in Uzbekistan, how about that?"

"Let me see."

He disappeared into the back. Edwin said, "So what's happening?"

"We may well see the sights of Moscow after all. This guy says there's no plane, and he believes it's true-no question about greasing him. I wanted to get close to him to be sure."

"Oh, come on!" Edwin slumped exhausted against the counter. "Can you, you know, do anything?"

Rob sat on one of Edwin's bigger bags. "Sure. I could twist his arm, push him into overdrive, get him to pull some other plane or something. But should I do it? The problem is, Ed, the stronger I get, the less casual I can be about using this thing. In fact, if you carry the logical progression to the very end, you could imagine a time when I'm totally all-powerful-and can do absolutely nothing."

"Sounds real Zen. And boring. You really think you'll come to that?"

Rob stared out through the foggy window at the dull gray tarmac and wintry sky. If he couldn't get a grip on the weirdness, if the monster inside became impossible to keep down . . . "If I have to," he said. "But maybe it'll be like traveling near the speed of light-I'll approach it, but I'll never get there."

"Good. Navel-gazing is not your style."

"You got the map? They might be able to route us through some of these smaller towns. There's nothing set in stone about Samarqand, right?"

Edwin pulled a map out of the side pocket of his briefcase and unfolded it.

He had marked their destination on it in pen. The northern swathe of the old USSR, now labeled the Russian Federation, swept across the large-scale map from the Baltic to the Sea of Japan. Cuddled beneath this enormous mass was Kazakhstan, itself the size of a third of the US. South below that dangled the smaller breakaway republics, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikstan. The Aqebin site was on the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

"The big hassle is, there's no there there," Edwin said. "The Brits were digging in the middle of the Kyzylkum Desert, a couple hundred miles from any settlement. The Intourist people were going to have some sort of car for us at Samarqand. If we go anywhere else we'll have to dredge up wheels ourselves. So don't commit us to too long a drive." He compared the distances by measuring with the edge of the paperback novel.

They waited for almost an hour before the pretty clerk returned.

"Zarafshan, all right? It's not on the Intourist lists at all, so we usually don't send Westerners there. But you won't have any problems!"

Edwin stared expectantly at Rob, who consulted the map. "Close enough," he said, pointing the town out to Edwin. "All right."

Distances here were so tremendous that Rob's expectations were confounded.

The flight would take ten hours, but that seemed far longer than their crossing from America to Europe. The old Tupolev-154 plane did not inspire confidence as it labored through the air. The wintry tan and white landscape below was endless, a continent broader than many an ocean. "And it's so old," he said, looking out. "People have been crossing these plains since-since when, Ed?"

Edwin was valiantly clicking away on the laptop. "Oh, probably ever since we started walking upright. Couple million years or so." After twenty-four solid hours awake, he was running on empty, nodding as he sat. When he dozed off at last Rob reached over and powered the computer down, to save the battery. Then he leaned back in the uncomfortable seat-designed for a shorter passenger-and took out his pocket notebook.

He headed the list Questions, and began marking off sections, leaving space for further additions: Origin. Control. Dealing with Regular People. After some thought he added, Other Place.

When he wrote this down it struck him. Had his private kingdom been invaded, spoiled forever by the mysterious visitor? Suddenly it really worried him. The inside place had always been there, part and parcel of the power. He had forgotten it for weeks together, taken it entirely for granted as it had developed and changed inside his head. Now the prospect of its loss hit him with something like panic. He closed his eyes and dove within.

The important thing was not to get drawn into the dead-end paper landscape.

He was obeying, going to Aqebin, so the unknown arrogant commander had no beef. Besides, if he went into another seizure Edwin would get upset.

Whether because of his deliberate effort or not, all went well. He found himself in a deep window alcove lined with books. "A library!" Rob exclaimed aloud.