Ring ring. Ring ring, Ring ring; Ring ring, Ring ring, Ring ring; Ring ring, Ring ring, Ring ring...

"Yes."

It is him. He wants to know what is happening to her, to him, can he see her again he wants to see her again he must see her again he has to know what he means what she means. Any moment he is going to say it. He says it-where he stands.

"Not now, Saul."

"Enye... Enye..."

"No."

The telephone clicks down.

She is guided through the dripping, ringing levels of the old abandoned warehouse building by the information that all doors but the right ones are locked against her.

He is expecting her.

He has, he says, been waiting for her for a long, long time.

He is an aged, aged man, sitting, hands on thighs, on a tattered swivel chair. The vinyl upholstery has split; crumbling foam peers out. He is dressed in buckle sandals, gray slacks, and a grubby aran sweater. Face and hands are deeply eroded. He wears round, wire frame glasses like Samuel Beckett. The only light in the room is from the dozens and dozens of television sets. Wall to wall, floor to ceiling, stacked eight, nine, ten high, all designs from old mahogany veneer monochromes with fabric-covered speakers to flat-screen blacque-tech with full Dolby stereo. Televisions, dozens upon dozens; hundreds of images, all, Enye realises, different. Most of empty streets, the nova-glare of streetlights, puddles of neon and halogen, the cometary trail of red taillights. Punks roistering in a deserted rapid-transit station; street-cleaning trucks intimately connected with the city's gutters by pulsing umbilicals; delay-struck night-flyers bent, exhausted, over their suitcases in airport departure lounges; immigrant women skating vibrating polishing machines over the marble concourses of the capitals of industry; night watchmen, watched; prowl cars; waitresses in all-night coffee shops; the staff of pizza dens and burger stops packing up after another thankless night; drunks in doorways; road repair crews; taxi drivers; buskers. She stops at that one. The boy with the electric guitar and the punky, gymnastic girl in the ripped leotard-lovers; police, thieves.

The aged aged man on the rotting typist's chair notices her watching. "I wouldn't waste your time, if I were you. When you have been watching as long as I have, you'll come to realise there is nothing new under the sun. Every show is a repeat. We are condemned to play out the same trivial soap operas, the same tired and trite old cliches, the same clunking old plot mechanisms. You have no idea how glad I will be to see the final credits roll and the little white dot vanish in the middle of the screen. Come in, come close, you have absolutely nothing to fear from me. I am not an actor in this drama, I am the spectator in the gallery. Argus of the Hundred Eyes." He turns back from her to his flickering televisions. "I think it must be twenty years, judging by the seasons, since I came here, since I found myself in this room, with my televisions. Oh, not as many then-the technology was not so sophisticated. No memories of any place other than this, a life other than this, than watching the televisions. I concluded early that I was not as those I saw on the screens-that these screens were, indeed, no ordinary televisions. To this day I still do not understand what powers them, or where they come from-and come they do, I know the signs now, while my back is turned, and only while my back is turned, I feel a prickling along my hairline and I know that if I look back, there will be another television added to my collection. Models constantly updated, I'll say that. That one there-" he points, but they are all blue video shine to Enye, "that's high definition. Technology that's only just being made available. No off switch, though. On any of them. Another of my early realisations was that the channel I watch is the city, and the programme life. In a sense, I am the memory of the city, old Argus. I am the witness of its continued existence. You must have heard the solipsistic riddle of the tree falling in the forest. Does it make any noise if there is no one there to witness it? The old Berkelian conundrum, when a thing is unperceived, can it be said to exist? I like to think that without my constant observation and witness, the city would have disremembered itself and vanished into nothingness, for there must have been a time, even the briefest moment, the merest fraction of a fraction of a second, when I was the only one awake and aware of the whole teeming population. A conceit, or perhaps, when I am gone back to the state from which I came, one dark night the city will indeed unremember itself and dissolve like a forgotten dream. Oh, I have no illusions about myself-a man who never sleeps, never eats, never excretes, never tires, is never prodded by the goads of sexual longing; a man who has never, in at least twenty years, been able to set foot outside this building in which you find him because of the crippling dread that makes it impossible for him to leave this chair for more than a few minutes at a time. What else could such a man be but someone else's dream, someone else's nightmare?

"Oh, I have watched you on my televisions. I have seen what you have done, and I knew that in time you would come for me. Because of what I am, because there are questions you have that only I may answer. I am Argus of the Hundred Televisual Eyes. More than that, at my last count, which was some while ago, I must admit. Surely I must have seen who it was murdered Dr. Hannibal Rooke, who it was destroyed the Midnight Children? I would help you if I were able, but even with my slightly over one hundred eyes, changing channels every two seconds, it takes me over a year, a year, to look into the hearts of every soul in this city. There is so much that passes me by. I have no factual evidence to give you, all I can do is advise, and pray you continue with your own search. It is not the place at which you arrive that is important, but the way you come to it." The aged, aged man turned again to face Enye. The light from the televisions deeply engraved the lines in his face. "Understand realities: your swords, your computer, your drug. Do not think I am ignorant of them. I have been watching your progress through the nightlands of the city. They are no more real, or necessary, than I. Symbols. Your war is a war of symbologies, a battle between ghosts, spirits, mythologies, at once both the most real and the most unreal of entities. Any power they possess is from you, your own power, your own ability to cross the Earth/Mygmus membrane and shape its substance according to your own personal mythologies, your own hopes, and wishes, and fears. That is why the Way you go is more important than the place you arrive, because while you are on the way there is hope for change, and growth; to arrive is to enter changelessness and stasis.

"I advise you as some of us exist in this world knowing our nature and longing for our return to the Mygmus, so there are those that love the lives they have scraped out, and will hold tightly to them.

"Just because I am an old man, without defences, without strategy, who can therefore do nothing but welcome you, do not imagine that we will all be equally helpless. We know each other-how can we not?-for we are all of one substance with each other. By now they will know of you, and will be preparing themselves. I tell you this: beware the Lords of the Gateway.

"There. Now. I have warned you. Now, kindly deliver me from this impotent existence of watching and return me to my true domain."

He sits upright in his chair, palms flat on grey flannel trouser legs, sandalled feet flat on the floor. His head is held erect, his expression sublime, like a saint or windswept tree, or some other intensely present object. She has read that in the Middle Ages women were executed like this, seated in a chair.

"Ya!" The lesser kiai. Chudan No Kame, the middle attitude, culminating in the Men cut, the neck stroke, the perfect stroke, most difficult of all strokes to master.

For the first time, she understands what it is to treat one's enemy as an honoured guest.

The screens of the banked televisions are all swept by a sudden blizzard of video snow.

Even Jaypee asks, didn't you wear that outfit yesterday? People in QHPSL notice things like that.

He regards the transparent plastic bottle on his desk with the suspicion he normally reserves for government letters in brown envelopes.

"It's quite simple," says the Blessed Phaedra on one of her rare progresses through the Glass Menagerie, bestowing grace and favour and transparent plastic bottles with firmly fitting screw tops. "Just fill it."

"What? From here?" Jaypee doubles up in music-hall laughter. Enye, tarnished and groggy and vaguely nauseated, leans back in her chair, rolls her plastic bottle around the desktop with her stocking feet-pedal self-massage.

"You get that, MacColl?"

"MacColl got that."

"Words is throwing a strunt this morning, Phaedra, darling. It's either a man or a period."

"It's always either a bloody man or a period to you men."

"Whoa whoa whoa, pulcherina."

"Piss off, Kinsella."

"What a good idea."

The Blessed Phaedra passes on her way. When Jaypee returns, he holds the bottle up to the light.

"Chateau Mouton Kinsella; an insouciant little number, but I think you'll be titillated by its braggadocio. If I'd known this was scheduled for this morning, I'd never have had the cream of asparagus soup." Judi-Angel from Traffic cruises past, little plastic bottle in hand. "Oh, Judi-Angel," Jaypee sings, "do you know if you drink a glass of your own piss-no one else's, mind-you'll have a complexion like a baby's bottom?"

She mouths F.U.s at him. He swivels in his chair, sings out the open office door in fifties doo-wop style, Judi-Angel, I love you, don't you see?

Judi-Angel, though you smell somewhat of pee.

For your skin, soft and lovely, I so much want to kiss.

Is so smooth, 'cause each morning, you drink a glass of piss.

Judi-Angel, doobie doo-wah, Judi Angel, dum dum dum dum..."

A thing like a hostess trolley with telescopic steel whiskers comes whining through the Glass Menagerie.

"Cup of chamomile, perchance?" Jaypee asks.

"What happened to Mrs. O'Verall?"

"The Blessed Phaedra happened to Mrs. O'Verall. Advances in office automation, and all that."

"God help Mrs. O'Verall."

"God help us all, and you especially, Enye MacColl."

"Why?" asks Enye, dexterously turning the bottle upright with her toes.

"You been backpacking in Munchkinland, pulcherina? The Blessed Phaedra's attempt to come clean with her conscience, or, I rather suspect, acting on the express instruction of Oscar the Bastard. QHPSL puts its hand to its heart to stand with Nancy Reagan and Babs Bush and Superman and Wonder Woman and Mandrake the Magician to declare itself drug-free. We're being dope-tested."

It's Christmastime. Cuttin' down trees. Puttin' up reindeer, singin' songs about feedin' the world, and Wishin' It Could Be Christmas Every Day (can you imagine, all those pairs of slippers and holly-leaf boxer shorts and perfume you don't like, spending the rest of your life watching reruns of The Wizard of Oz in a rising pall of silent hot fermented turkey fart) and dreamin' of a "White Christmas" and "Dashin' through the Snow on a One-Horse Open Sleigh" and "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, Jack Frost Nippin' at Your Toes" (Stays pretty green around here, didn't snow last year, probably won't this. Warmest winter since records began. Something to do with global warming). Fattenin' up credit cards. Stunnin' turkeys with five hundred volt shock probes before guillotinin' them with automated shears; pullin' technically drunk corpses from wrecked hot hatchbacks; January sales startin' on Christmas Eve; Christmas trees up since the end of November; Christmas Muzak in the hypermart since the end of October; Santa Claus arrivin' at his Enchanted Ice Grotto in the suburban malls since the end of September; and someone sent a letter to the paper claimin' to have seen the first Christmas card in the shops the end of August.

Saul gave Enye a present. He leaned, head cupped in his hands against his pillow, and watched her, kneeling on the end of his bed in a "Save the Rain Forests" T-shirt and panties that were nothing more than a postage stamp stuck to a piece of elastic, turn it over and over and feel its bumps and listen to its rattles and rumbles and harmonics with her ear and rub it against her cheek and taste it with her tongue, lick its wrappings, its bitter adhesive tape, with oohs and aahs and a childlike glee he found deeply erotic, tearing off the wrapping and tearing open the box and tearing away the transparent bubble wrap.

"It's an electronic personal organiser. Like a portable computer. Address, telephone numbers, calendar, diary, planner, appointments, memos, personal information, watch, alarm, thesaurus, pocket calculator, currency exchanger. It's got add-on ROM packs, and there's a twenty-pin adapter to connect it to a micro or a mainframe, and an interfacer so you can squirt numbers out of the memory straight into the telephone. There's even an add-on printer..." She was already lying on her back with it held over her face, pressing buttons.

"Oh, hey, here's yours."

While he tore off the Hokusai print wrapping paper and walked about in front of the mirror in his wardrobe, admiring himself in the real silk Japanese yukata, her fingers played the buttons.

"Saul, look." She held it out to him. "Merry Christmas, Saul" marched, Fascist black on grey, across the display. Elsewhere, the radio news reported that the search area for wreckage from the transatlantic jumbo that had crashed four days before Christmas had been widened to cover a fifty-mile-diameter circle across the Southern Uplands of Scotland.

Here is the rundown for the penultimate Christmas of the decade in L'Esperanza Street. Kids get skateboards and jackets with Australian soap stars on the back. Dads get camcorders, or, a lucky few, satellite dishes. Mums get sweet things, smelly things, and underwear they'll never quite have the courage to wear.

Enjoying her one night of self-company apart from the Cuba Libre limbo of advertising parties, lawyer parties, dojo parties, friends' parties, friends of friends' parties leading up to the grand bacchanalia of New Year, Enye was barefoot and cat-curled on the sofa listening, half hypnotised by the soft-focus highlights of her Christmas decorations, to Madam Butterfly.

There was a knock on the door, a small, hard musket ball of intrusion into her treasured privacy.

She let them knock again. She was not expecting anybody; anyone who would be knocking she did not want to see.

And again.

And again.

She surrendered on the fifth knock.

They were the kind of people her mother had told her not to open doors to. Two men, anonymous, forty-wise; something in accounts somewhere, or the marketing of uninteresting but essential components for machine tools. Dressed in matching black suits two sizes too small, over white polo-neck sweaters. All they needed to be apprentice Men from U.N.C.L.E. was to take pens from their pockets and whisper "Open Channel D." One carried a small briefcase, held high in front of his chest. They seemed uncomfortable, ill-fitted to themselves, like novice door-to-door evangelists.

"Mizz MacColl? We're from General and Far Eastern Electronics. We believe you recently became the owner of a Sony-Nihon Mark 19 Hakudachi Personal Organiser?" They peered around the door into her apartment. A card was proffered and accepted. Enye studied the smeary black typeface.

"We've been receiving a number of complaints from owners of Sony-Nihon Mark 19 Hakudachi Personal Organisers about a number of faults and my company has decided to recall the last batch. If you could, would it be possible for us to see your Sony-Nihon Mark 19 Hakudachi Personal Organiser?"

"What sort of problems?"

"Oh, this and that-small, irritating things."

"I haven't had any problems with mine."

"They tend to take a while to show up. General and Far Eastern Electronics thought it simplest to recall the entire batch."

The second man, Mr. Accounts-something, was fiddling with the brass catches of his glintingly new briefcase as if he had never seen them before. Mr. Uninteresting but Essential Components continued, "Ah, the Sony-Nihon Mark 19 Hakudachi Personal Organizer?"

"I'll get it, but I don't really think..."

"Would it, ah, be possible for us to come inside? Just for a moment? There are a couple of tests we'd like to run."

"If you must." Though it was the last thing she wanted to do. Inside, they stood helplessly, apparently confused by the geography of her apartment.

"A seat? Sit down?"

"Oh no, thank you, we'd rather stand."

Mr. Accounts-Something had managed to open his briefcase. As she went to the bedroom to fetch the personal organiser, Enye observed how keen he was for her not to see what was inside. Mr. Uninteresting but Essential Components took the Sony-Nihon Mark 19 Hakudachi Personal Organiser, passed it without comment to his colleague, who set the briefcase on the carpet by the door and knelt in front of it. Mr. Uninteresting but Essential Components was very careful to keep himself between Enye and his colleague. Washes of coloured light lit the kneeling Mr. Accounts-Something's face. He closed the briefcase, having had some difficulty with the catches, and stood up.

"Um, my organiser?"

"Oh. Sorry. One of the defective units. Quite unmistakable, once you know what to look for. General and Far Eastern Electronics will supply a suitable replacement as soon as new stocks arrive."

"I've got information and stuff in that. Personal stuff."

"I'm sorry, but General and Far Eastern Electronics will supply a suitable replacement as soon as new stocks arrive-"

They backed out of the door, bowing, getting in each other's way. Mr. Accounts-Something had not spoken a word in the entire exchange. Mr. Uninteresting but Essential Components had sounded-the simile came to Enye and struck her with its appositeness-like a ham actor delivering poorly learned lines.

Of course, the number on the smeary business card returned the data space white keen of Number Unobtainable. Of course, directory inquiries could find no reference for a General and Far Eastern Electronics. Of course, the electronics shop that had sold Saul the Sony-Nihon Mark 19 Hakudachi Personal Organiser did not list General and Far Eastern Electronics as a supplier, had never heard of a General and Far Eastern Electronics.

"Sounds to me as if you've been conned out of one Sony-Nihon Mark 19 Hakudachi Personal Organiser," said Jaypee, more than a little frayed at the edges on his fifth straight night parrrrrtying.

"Sounds to me like a classic M.I.B. phenomenon," said the Bryghte Younge Thynge in the black net tutu who had been trying most of the evening to chat Jaypee into concupiscent intrigue. Saul was elsewhere, an innocent abroad among the danceables and drinkables, the smokables and sniffables and screwables; Enye discovered an ingrowing talon of mild jealousy to which she had never suspected a vulnerability. She did not know, no one knew, under whose auspices this End of Year Bash had been thrown, but the same old faces that graced every other in-between day function could be found in abundance, liberally salted with Bryghte Younge Thynges making their social debut.

"M.I.B.? A British Secret Service agent stealing a Russian fighter?" inquired Jaypee.

Black net tutu and legs that went all the way to her you know you know had a laugh like cars being crushed.

"No no no no no. Men in Black. M.I.B. Classic Youfoe events. Someone has a Youfoe experience and then these funny men come around, from the air ministry, or something like, and they ask like these really gauche questions. They always go in twos, and they usually either dress in black or drive a black car or carry black briefcases or something like. Never seem to know exactly what they're doing, sort of like confused, like people who've been brought in off the street and asked to play bit parts in a movie. Classic pattern. Your two sound like classic Men in Black events. You had any experiences of Youfoe consciousness lately?"

"Nothing classic."

"You mean flying saucers and all that?" asked Jaypee, who did not much want to enter into concupiscent intrigue with black net tutu legs, etc. "Atlantis and power crystals and out-of-body experiences and channellers, who take all major credit cards and claim to be in contact with thirty-thousand-year-old entities? One wonders what priceless pearls of wisdom one might get from a thirty-thousand-year-old entity when one crosses its palm with plastic? Watch out for sabre-tooths, and don't eat the plants with the blue flowers if you don't want to be shitting yourself for a week?"

"Jeez, like you're so gauche."

Bryghte Younge Thynge flurried off in high, rustling dudgeon to spend the remainder of the year being chatted up by a man who claimed to have had carnal knowledge of a Pointer Sister.

"Gauche being the opposite of classic?" Enye asked as the old year passed away and the new arrived.

That Ufology and all its attendant corpus of faith should be a facet of mythoconsciousness did not surprise her. Of greater concern was that two ostensible phaguses had found her, entered her house, and taken a piece of her property In the morning, with the statement from the credit card company, was a brown paper parcel laboriously wrapped in string in that way that looks so inviting but no one can be bothered to do anymore. Nestled in tissue paper in a green cardboard carton: a Sony-Nihon Mark 19 Hakudachi Personal Organiser with a compliment slip written in a large, loose, childish hand: General and Far Eastern Electronics wishes you the compliments of the season and every happiness with your new Sony-Nihon Mark 19 Hakudachi Personal Organiser.

She did not know whether to switch it on or hit it with a hammer.

She fetched the hammer from under the kitchen sink.

And switched it on.

Words and symbols too fleeting for human comprehension flickered across the liquid crystal display. Lines meshed and intermeshed, formed Op Art moire patterns. The screen cleared, then flashed the words, silver on grey: DISRUPTOR LOADED.

She was thumbing through the instruction manual when the screen cleared to proclaim a new message.

PRESS 8 TO CONTINUE.

As instructions not contained in any manual scrolled across the screen, she understood. Like seed crystals in supersaturated solution, her subconscious cry for help from beyond comprehension had precipitated into Men in Black. She had created, and as ignorantly dissolved back into the unsubstance of the Mygmus, her first phaguses, bearing a gift of wonder and puissance.

A weapon.

Mr. Mooney of the antiques restoration firm who undertook the servicing and sharpening of Enye's swords had been horrified at what the small, sallow, black-haired woman had wanted him to do to a Murasama blade. But he had done it. The intensity of the small, sallow, black-haired woman compelled him.

That night she watched the silver disruptor glyphs swarm from the habaki and meld with her blade. She swung the katana through the Five Attitudes. It sang for her, a new song that no ear but hers could hear.