He handed over a bottle, and she struck it on the step the way he had. The top flew; the beer foamed.

"So what made you want to run?" she said, when she'd slaked her thirst.

"I don't know," Clem replied. "Fear of what's coming, I suppose. But that's stupid, isn't it? We're here at the beginning of something sublime, just the way Tay promised. Light coming into the world, from a place we never even dreamed existed. It's the Birth of the Unconquered Son, isn't it?"

"Oh, the sons are going to be fine," Jude said. "They usually are."

"But you're not so sure about the daughters?"

"No, I'm not," she said. "Hapexamendios killed the G.o.ddesses throughout the Imajica, Clem, or at least tried to. Now I find He's Gentle's Father. That doesn't make me feel too comfortable about doing His work."

"I can understand that."

"Part of me thinks . . ." She let her voice trail into the silence, the thought unfinished.

"What?" he asked. "Tell me."

"Part of me thinks we're fools to trust either of them, Hapexamendios or His Reconciler. If He was such a loving L G.o.d, why did He do so much harm? And don't tell me He moves in mysterious ways, because that's so much horse s.h.i.t and we both know it."

"Have you talked to Gentle about this?"

"I've tried, but he's got one thing on his mind-"

"Two," Clem said. "The Reconciliation's one. Pie 'oh' pah's the other."

"Oh, yes, the glorious Pie 'oh' pah."

"Did you know he married it?"

"Yes, he told me."

"It must have been quite a creature."

"I'm a little biased, I'm afraid," she said dryly. "It tried to kill me."

"Gentle said that wasn't Pie's nature."

"No?"

"He told me he ordered it to live its life as an a.s.sa.s.sin or a wh.o.r.e. It's all his fault, he said. He blames himself for everything."

"Does he blame himself or does he.just take responsibility?" she said. "There's a difference."

"I don't know," Clem said, unwilling to be drawn on such niceties. "He's certainly lost without Pie."

She kept her counsel here, wanting to say that she too : was lost, that she too pined, but not trusting even Clem with this admission.

"He told me Pie's spirit is still alive, like Tay's," Clem was saying. "And when this is all over-"

"He says a lot of things," Jude cut in, weary of hearing Gentle's wisdoms repeated. ; "And you don't believe him?"

"What do I know?" she said, flinty now. "I don't belong * in this Gospel. I'm not his lover, and I won't be his disciple."

A sound behind them, and they turned to find Gentle standing in the hallway, the brightness bouncing up from the step like footlights. There was sweat on his face, and his shirt was stuck to his chest. Clem rose with guilty speed, his heel catching his bottle. It rolled down two steps, spilling frothy beer as it went, before Jude caught it.

"It's hot up there," Gentle said.

"And it's not getting any cooler," Clem observed.

"Can I have a word?"

Jude knew he wanted to speak out of her earshot, but Clem was either too guileless to realize this, which she doubted, or unwilling to play his game. He stayed on the step, obliging Gentle to come to the door.

"When Monday gets back," he said, "I'd like you to go to the estate and bring back the stones in the Retreat. I'm going to perform the Reconciliation upstairs, where I've got my memories to help me."

"Why are you sending Clem?" Jude said, not rising or even turning. "I know the way; he doesn't. I know what the stones look like; he doesn't."

"I think you'd be better off here," Gentle replied.

Now she turned. "What for?" she said. "I'm no use to anyone. Unless you simply want to keep an eye on me."

"Not at all."

"Then let me go," she said. "I'll take Monday to help me. Clem and Tay can stay here. They're your angels, aren't they?"

"If that's the way you'd prefer it," he said, "I don't mind."

"I'll come back, don't worry," she said derisively, raising her beer bottle. "If it's only to toast the miracle."

A little while after this conversation, with the blue tide of dusk rising in the street and lifting the day to the rooftops, Gentle left off his debates with Pie and went to sit with Celestine. Her room was more meditative than the one he'd left, where the memories of Pie had become so easy to conjure it was sometimes hard to believe the mystif wasn't there in the flesh. Clem had lit candles beside the mattress upon which Celestine was sleeping, and their light showed Gentle a woman so deeply asleep that no dreams troubled her. Though she was far from emaciated, her features were stark, as though her flesh was halfway to becoming bone. He studied her for a time, wondering if his own face would one day possess such severity; then he returned to the wall at the bottom of the bed and sat on his haunches there, listening to the slow cadence of her breath.

His mind was reeling with all that he'd learned, or recollected, in the room above. Like so much of the magic he'd become acquainted with, the working of the Reconciliation was not a great ceremonial. Whereas most of the dominant religions of the Fifth wallowed in ritual in order to blind their flocks to the paucity of their understanding-the liturgies and requiems, charts and sacraments all created to amplify those tiny grains of comprehension the holy men actually possessed-such theatrics were redundant when the ministers had truth in their grasp, and with the help of memory he might yet become one such minister.

The principle of the Reconciliation was not very difficult to grasp, he'd discovered. Every two hundred years, it seemed, the In Ovo produced a kind of blossom: a five-petaled lotus which floated for a brief time in those lethal waters, immune to either their poison or their inhabitants. This sanctuary was called by a variety of names but most simply, and most often, the Ana. In it, the Maestros would gather, carrying there a.n.a.logues of the Dominions they each represented. Once the pieces were a.s.sembled, the process had its own momentum. The a.n.a.logues would fuse and, empowered by the Ana, burgeon, driving the In Ovo back and opening the way between the Reconciled Dominions and the Fifth.

"The flow of things is towards success," the mystif had said, speaking from a better time. "It's the natural instinct of every broken thing to make itself whole. And the Imajica is broken until it's Reconciled."

"Then why have there been so many failures?" Gentle had asked.

"There haven't been that many," Pie had replied. "And they were always destroyed by outside forces. Christos was brought down by politics. Pineo was destroyed by the Vatican. Always people from the outside, destroying the Maestro's best intentions. We don't have such enemies."

Ironic words, with hindsight. Gentle could not afford such complacency again, not with Sartori still alive and the chilling image of Pie's last frantic appearance at the Erasure still in his head.

It was no use dwelling on it. He put the sight away as best he could, settling his gaze on Celestine instead. It was difficult to think of her as his mother. Maybe, among the innumerable memories he'd garnered in this house, there was some faint recollection of being a babe in these arms, of putting his toothless mouth to these b.r.e.a.s.t.s and being nourished there. But if it was there, it escaped him. Perhaps there were simply too many years, and lives, and women, between now and that cradling. He could find it in him to be grateful for the life she'd given him, but it was hard to feel much more than that.

After a time the vigil began to depress him. She was too like a corpse, lying there, and he too much a dutiful but loveless mourner. He got up to go, but before he quit the room he halted at her bedside and stooped to touch her cheek. He'd not laid his flesh to hers in twenty-three or - four decades, and perhaps, after this, he wouldn't do so again. She wasn't chilly, as he'd expected her to be, but warm, and he kept his hand upon her longer than he'd intended.

Somewhere in the depths of her slumber she felt his touch and seemed to rise into a dream of him. Her austerity softened, and her pale lips said, "Child?"

He wasn't sure whether to answer, but in the moment of hesitation she spoke again, the same question. This time he replied.

"Yes, Mama?" he said.

"Will you remember what I told you?"

What now? he wondered. "I'm ... not certain," he told her.'Til try."

"Shall I tell you again? I want you to remember, child."

"Yes, Mama," he said. "That would be good. Tell me again."

She smiled an infinitesimal smile and began to repeat a story she'd apparently told many times.

"There was a woman once, called Nisi Nirvana...."

She'd no sooner started, however, than the dream she was having lost its claim on her, and she began to slip back into a deeper place, her voice losing power as she went.

"Don't stop, Mama," Gentle prompted. "I want to hear. There was a woman ..."

"Yes..."

",.. called Nisi Nirvana."

"Yes. And she went to a city full of iniquities, where no ghost was holy and no flesh was whole. And something there did a great hurt to her...."

Her voice was getting stronger again, but the smile, even that tiniest hint, had gone.

"What hurt was this, Mama?"

"You needn't know the hurt, child. You'll learn about it one day, and on that day you'll wish you could forget it. Just understand that it's a hurt only men can do to women."

"And who did this hurt to her?" Gentle asked.

"I told you, child, a man."

"But what man?"

"His name doesn't matter. What matters is that she escaped him, and came back into her own city, and knew she must make a good thing from this bad that had been done to her. And do you know what that good thing was?"

"No, Mama."

"It was a little baby. A perfect little baby. And she loved it so much it grew big after a time, and she knew it would be leaving her, so she said, 'I have a story to tell you before you go.' And do you know what the story was? I want you to remember, child."

"Tell me."

"There was a woman called Nisi Nirvana. And she went into a city of iniquities-"

"That's the same story, Mama."

"-where no ghost was holy-"

"You haven't finished the first story. You've just begun again."

"-and no flesh was whole. And something there-"

"Stop, Mama," Gentle said. "Stop."

"-did a great hurt to her...."

Distressed by this loop, Gentle took his hand from his mother's cheek. She didn't halt her recitation, however; at least not at first. The story went on exactly as it had before: the escape from the city; the good thing made from the bad; the baby, the perfect little baby. But with the hand no longer on her cheek Celestine was sinking back into unthinking slumber, her voice steadily growing more indistinct. Gentle got up and backed away to the door, as the whispered wheel came full circle again.

"So she said: I have a story to tell you before you go."

Gentle reached behind him and opened the door, his eyes fixed on his mother as the words slurred.

"And do you know what the story was?" she said. "I want... you ... to ... remember... child."

He went on watching her as he slipped out into the hallway. The last sounds he heard would have been nonsense to any ear other than this, but he'd heard this story often enough now to know that she was beginning again as she'd dropped into dreamlessness.

"There was a woman once ..."

On that, he closed the door. For some inexplicable reason, he was shaking, and had to stand at the threshold for several seconds before he could control the tremor. When he turned, he found Clem at the bottom of the stairs, sorting through a selection of candles.

"Is she still asleep?" he asked as Gentle approached.

"Yes, Has she talked to you at all, Clem?"

"Very little. Why?"

"I've just been listening to her tell a story in her sleep. Something about a woman called Nisi Nirvana. Do you know what that means?"

"Nisi Nirvana. Unless Heaven. Is that somebody's name?"

"Apparently. And it must mean a lot to her, for some reason. That's the name she sent Jude with to fetch me."

"And what's the story?"

"d.a.m.n strange," Gentle said.

"Maybe you liked it better when you were a kid."

"Maybe."

"If I hear her talking again, do you want me to call you down?"

"I don't think so," Gentle said. "I've got it by heart already."