The truth of this struck Rob with the force of revelation. Of course! This wasn't a monstrous aspect. It was an emergency weapon. It had always been here, down in his unconscious. Newly armed this past year with the weirdness, this inner tiger was as dangerous as a nuclear missile. But like a nuke, this terrifying lurker had on occasion been a genuine asset.

Galvanized, Rob began to sit up.

Suddenly the drowned man spoke, with difficulty, a thick oleaginous voice.

"Who asked you, smart guy?"

"Rob asked me," Edwin said, disconcerted.

The words were like matches to gunpowder. With a wordless bellow the drowned man dove across Rob and seized Edwin's throat in both hands. The impact carried Edwin backwards halfway off the ledge. In the scuffle, the little knife squirted out of Rob's hand into the water and was lost. The button light also went flying, bouncing off the wall behind Rob's head.

Gibbering with rage, the drowned man straddled Edwin's chest and held his head under.

Fifty-five minutes, Rob recalled, fighting down panic. Ed's okay. He held his breath the other day for fifty-five minutes. Rob knew he had to use smarts, as he had against Gilgamesh, not force. Now was the time to start exerting that control he claimed. He scrabbled to find the light-thank goodness it hadn't bounced off into the water, too-and held it up to the manic dead-white face.

"You don't have to do this," Rob stammered. "Edwin's a friend, remember?"

Edwin's legs thrashed. His strong hands clawed at the drowned man's tattered sleeves, and with a final writhe he kicked free. He slid with a splash into the dark water. Sleek as a seal, his head immediately broke the surface, and he sucked in a huge furious breath. He trod water and croaked, "Try me fair, you trog!"

"Ed, cut it out." Rob kept his attention fixed on the cunning crazy face not six inches from his own, gleaming with wet in the tiny light between them. What could he say to calm the creature? Some glib and plausible fiction, anything! "You are me," Rob said insistently. "And I am you. I can exploit people for my own gratification. Lie without blushing. Threaten my friends, steal and cheat and kill. I am you."

Then Rob's heart almost stopped in his chest. Here in the depths he could not lie. What he had said was indeed true. His very intention, paradoxically, showed it-to placate the monster with tarradiddle. In desperate situations, under sufficient stress, there was no crime beyond him, no trough he could nor plumb. "You are me," he repeated, in a trembling whisper. "Brother. Self."

The drowned man sat back on his ragged haunches, a sardonic glint in his eye. "Thought I was old Gil."

At least the logical corollary to that came easily. "No, no," Rob said. "He was lying about that. I see it now, the old lunatic. You are the worst of me, and still you're miles better than him. Gil is the sort of real bad-ass we save the rough stuff for. You did a fine job on him in Kazakhstan, by the way."

The drowned man grinned wolfishly. "That was fun, wasn't it? When do we get to do that again?"

Edwin hoisted himself up onto the ledge again on Rob's other side. "How about right now," he wheezed. Rob glanced back in surprise at him. He had never known Edwin to be so aggressively hot-headed.

Suddenly, without the slightest warning, the button light died in his hand.

In the illimitable darkness Rob could only see blurry afterimages of Edwin sprawled on his left and the drowned man squatting on his right. Quickly, before he lost track of positions, Rob put both hands out to touch his companions. Edwin's furry arm was humidly warm, trembling with some strong emotion, but the drowned man's hand was boneless and cold, slick with wet.

"Oh Jesus," Edwin gasped, coughing. "Oh Jesus, where's the light?"

"You shouldn't've brought him," the drowned man grumbled. "This place is bad for his like. How come you take him around to all these dangerous places, anyway? He's a drag."

"No, he isn't," Rob said. "In fact, he mostly drags me!"

"Well, take him away, or he'll go buggy. I'll be in touch."

The drowned man pulled his icy hand away, and was gone. Rob could neither feel nor hear any trace of him. On his other side Edwin was panting unevenly, obviously in distress. Rob tugged gently on his hand and Edwin tackled him, a clumsy fumbling hug in the dark. Here no foolish shyness impeded Rob's tenderness. He held Edwin the way he would Davey or Angela, feeling the strong heart thudding desperately with fright under the deep ribs. The drowned man was right. Down here was no place for a child of the light. "Hang on, pal," Rob said. "We're out of here."

And they were rolling over and over together in the shallow warm water of the duck pond. The sun blazed down so high and bright in the sky that it must still be early afternoon. With an irritated quack, a mallard duck fluttered away from their flailing limbs. Rob stood up shakily in the knee-deep water. "Ed, are you okay?"

"Better now." Edwin wallowed over and clung gasping to the flagstone verge.

To his horror Rob saw ferocious crimson finger-marks sunk deep in Edwin's throat. "My god, Ed! Let me see-we've got to get you to a doctor. You're bleeding!"

"Rob, this is me, remember? Give me ten minutes in the sun here, and I'll be fine." He rolled over onto his back in the water and leaned his head on the verge. Rob climbed out and lay prone on the sun-warmed stone. For a long time they rested, panting. Then in a stronger voice Edwin said, "Besides-if we went to the emergency room-I bet these marks would match your fingers, bud. I wonder what a passerby would have seen."

The thought made Rob gulp in dismay. "Oh yeah. I'm glad this is a quiet park." A brief silent struggle, and then Rob went on, "It was me, Ed. I can't shove the responsibility off onto anybody but myself. I just tried to rip your head off. I'm really sorry."

"Nonsense, Rob. Perfectly okay. I can take it, thanks to you. Maybe I shouldn't have pushed you so hard to let me in. I didn't realize how-how deep we were going to go. I was intruding, so I deserved some hassle."

"No-it was okay. You did good." Rob had to smile at the shy, inadequate words. Out here he could say little more, entrenched once again behind his reserve. It was just the way he was-he could never change.

After some consideration Edwin added, "I will say though, that I never want to do that again. The next time you need help with your psyche, I'll give you advice from the outside."

Rob sighed. "I don't know quite what I've achieved just now, Ed. Except that-I know I'll always have to stay in control. Keep a tight hold on my temper, my impulses. With great power comes great responsibility, you know."

Edwin raised his head. "I've heard that someplace before. Who said it, Virgil?"

"Believe it or not, the Amazing Spider-Man."

Edwin snorted with laughter. After another long reflective pause he said, "I don't know why I began to lose it in there. That's unusual for me. And here's a good question: what happened to my stuff? The notebook, the light, the Swiss Army knife-they're not in my pocket now. I dropped them in your head. So where are-yeowtch!"

Rob started, bumping his chin on the flags. "Ed, what is it?"

Edwin rolled over and heaved himself splashing out onto the flagstones. "A duck bit my toe, right through the sneaker!"

Rob laughed. Suddenly his heart was absurdly light. Somehow, from the dark below the bridge, he had brought back some smatch of that inner joy and serenity. "Let's take the hint, and get moving."

The canvas grocery sack was still on the bench. "I wonder if we just sat there on the bench awhile," Edwin mused, "and then fell forward into the water?"

Rob noticed that the savage red marks on Edwin's neck were nearly gone.

Amazing! He said, "Maybe you should tell Carina we were just horsing around, and fell in."

"What, lie to her?"

"It's the truth-you'd just be leaving out some details. On second thought, let me do the talking. When you lie you always look like a guilty baby. You can take our clothes downstairs to the laundry room instead." Whether from the duck pond or the Tidal Basin, their clothes exuded a growing swampy reek in the hot sun.

With relish Edwin declared, "If you're going to walk from the laundry room up to my apartment, and pitch a story to Carina, all without a stitch on, I want to see it."

Rob laughed at the picture. "No, I guess that wouldn't work!"

In the end they both went upstairs, sneaking into the apartment like naughty schoolboys. A heavenly smell of chicken mole made Rob's mouth water. Carina was sitting out on the balcony, chattering rapid-fire Spanish into a cordless phone.

"Suppose you take first whack at the shower," Edwin said. "Towels are under the sink, the shaving stuff in the cabinet." He snatched a blue terrycloth bathrobe off the hook behind the bathroom door.

Rob dove into the bathroom and stripped off his wet casino clothes for Edwin to wash. After a thorough shower he spent a long time painfully and clumsily shaving. Rob had last handled a razor a year ago almost to the day. The face that emerged from the final toweling was not the same as the one in the bathroom mirror in Fairfax. He looked older and thinner. Pain and madness had etched their lines around his eyes and mouth. Threads of gray contributed to the new butterscotch brightness of his hair. The icicle-blue glint in his eyes was new too, and his chin was pasty pink against the rest of his weathered face. But overall he thought the family would recognize him, and that was all he cared about.

He put on a fresh set of clothes, the heavy jeans and a plain white Salvation Army T-shirt, and snatched up his bags. He ran downstairs, intercepting Edwin near the mailboxes.

Edwin stared at him. "Holy Mike, is that you, Rob? I've never seen you without the beard. You look so, so ordinary!"

With a self-conscious grin Rob said, "I shouldn't have let it slide for so long. I better leave you to it, Ed. It'll take me a couple hours to get home by Metro and bus."

"That's right, leave me holding the bag. Could it be that my bride makes you nervous?" Edwin set the box of laundry detergent down on the stair and rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. "I suppose you can pick up your clean clothes any time. Rob, will it be all right? You think you should maybe phone ahead?"

"Of course not," Rob said confidently. "Everything'll be great." He held out his hand, and Edwin took it in a firm grip. "Look, Ed ... I was thinking. You're right-what you said by the cherry trees. It is a miracle.