'Start saying the states,' the black man ordered. He crossed his legs, shook out the fabric of his pants to preserve the crease, and brought a package of Winstons out of an inner pocket. Pearson realized his own cigarette was gone; he must have dropped it-in that first shocked moment, when he had seen the monstrous thing in the expensive suit crossing the west side of the plaza.

'The states,' he said blankly.

The young black man nodded, produced a lighter that was probably quite a bit less expensive than it looked at first glance, and lit his cigarette. 'Start with this one and work your way west,' he invited.

'Ma.s.sachusetts . . . New York, I suppose . . . or Vermont if you start from upstate . . . New Jersey . . . ' Now he straightened up a little and began to speak with greater confidence. 'Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois - '

The black man raised his eyebrows. 'West Virginia, huh? You sure?'

Pearson smiled a little. 'Pretty sure, yeah. I might have got Ohio and Illinois ba.s.s-ackwards, though.'

The black man shrugged to show it didn't matter, and smiled. 'You don't feel like you're going to faint anymore, though - I can see you don't - and that's the important part. Want a b.u.t.t?'

'Thank you,' Pearson said gratefully. He did not just want a b.u.t.t; he felt that he needed one. 'I had one, but I lost it. What's your name?'

The black man poked a fresh Winston between Pearson's lips and snapped a light to it. 'Dudley Rhinemann. You can call me Duke.'

Pearson dragged deeply on the cigarette and looked toward the revolving doors which gave ingress upon all the gloomy depths and cloudy heights of The First Mercantile. 'That wasn't just a hallucination, was it?' he asked. 'What I saw . . . you saw it, too, right?'

Rhinemann nodded.

'You didn't want him to know I saw him,' Pearson said. He spoke slowly, trying to put it together on his own. His voice was back in its usual spot again, and that alone was a big relief.

Rhinemann nodded again.

'But how could I not see him? And how could he not know it?'

'Did you see anyone else getting ready to holler themselves into a stroke like you were?' Rhinemann asked. 'See anybody else even looking the way you were? Me, for instance?'

Pearson shook his head slowly. He now felt more than just frightened; he felt totally lost.

'I got between you and him the best I could, and I don't think he saw you, but for a second or two there it was close. You looked like a man who just saw a mouse crawl out of his meatloaf. You're in Collateral Loans, aren't you?'

'Oh yes - Brandon Pearson. Sorry.'

'I'm in Computer Services, myself. And it's okay. Seeing your first batman can do that to you.'

Duke Rhinemann stuck out his hand and Pearson shook it, but most of his mind was one turn back. Seeing your first batman can do that to you, the young man had said, and once Pearson had jettisoned his initial image of the Caped Crusader swinging his way between the art-deco spires of Gotham City, he discovered that wasn't a bad term at all. He discovered something else, as well, or perhaps rediscovered it: it was good to have a name for something that had frightened you. It didn't make the fright go away, but it went a long way toward rendering the fright manageable.

Now he deliberately replayed what he had seen, thinking Batman, it was my first batman, as he did.

He had come out through the revolving doors thinking of only one thing, the same thing he was always thinking about when he came down at ten - how good that first rush of nicotine was going to feel when it hit his brain. It was what made him a part of the tribe; it was his version of phylacteries or tattooed cheeks.

He had first registered the fact that the day had gotten even darker since he'd come in at eight-forty-five, and had thought: We'll be puffing our cancer-sticks in the pouring rain this afternoon, the whole d.a.m.ned bunch of us. Not that a little rain would stop them, of course; the Ten O'clock People were nothing if not persistent.

He remembered sweeping his eyes across the plaza, doing a quick attendance check - so quick it was really almost unconscious. He had seen the girl in the red skirt (and wondered again, as he always did, if anyone who looked that good would be any good in the sack), the young be-bop janitor from the third floor who wore his cap turned around while he was mopping the floors in the John and the snack-bar, the elderly man with the fine white hair and the purple blotches on his cheeks, the young woman with the thick gla.s.ses, narrow face, and long straight black hair. He had seen a number of others he vaguely recognized, as well. One of them, of course, had been the good-looking young black man in the cream-colored suit.

If Timmy Flanders had been around, Pearson probably would have joined him, but he wasn't, and so Pearson had moved toward the center of the plaza instead, meaning to sit on one of the marble islands (the very one he was sitting on now, in fact). Once there he would have been in an excellent position to calculate the length and curves of Little Miss Red Skirt's legs - a cheap thrill, granted, but one made do with the materials at hand. He was a well-married man with a wife he loved and a daughter he adored, he'd never come even close to cheating, but as he approached forty, he had discovered certain imperatives surfacing in his blood like sea-monsters. And he didn't know how any man could help staring at a red skirt like that, wondering just a little if the woman was wearing matching underwear beneath.

He had barely gotten moving when the newcomer had turned the corner of the building and begun mounting the plaza steps. Pearson had caught movement in the corner of his eye, and under ordinary circ.u.mstances he would have dismissed it - it was the red skirt he had been concentrating on just then, short, tight, and as bright as the side of a fire engine. But he had looked, because, even seen from the corner of his eye and with other things on his mind, he had registered something wrong with the face and the head that went with the approaching figure. So he had turned and looked, canceling sleep for G.o.d knew how many nights to come.

The shoes were all right; the dark-gray Andre Cyr suit, looking as solid and as dependable as the door of the bank vault in the bas.e.m.e.nt, was even better; the red tie was predictable but not offensive. All of this was fine, typical top-echelon banker's attire for a Monday morning (and who but a top-echelon banker could come in at ten o'clock in the first place?). It wasn't until you got to the head that you realized that you had either gone crazy or were looking at something for which there was no entry in the World Book Encyclopedia.

But why didn't they run? Pearson wondered now, as a raindrop fell on the back of his hand and another fell on the clean white paper of his half-smoked cigarette. They should have run screaming, the way the people run from the giant bugs in those fifties monster movies. Then he thought, But then . . . I didn't run, either.

True enough, but it wasn't the same. He hadn't run because he'd been frozen in place. He had tried to scream, however; it was just that his new friend had stopped him before he could throw his vocal cords back into gear.

Batman. Your first batman.

Above the broad shoulders of this year's most Eminently Acceptable Business Suit and the knot in the red Sulka power-tie had loomed a huge grayish-brown head, not round but as misshapen as a baseball that has taken a whole summer's worth of bashing. Black lines - veins, perhaps - pulsed just below the surface of the skull in meaningless roadmap squiggles, and the area that should have been its face but wasn't (not in any human sense, anyway) had been covered with lumps that bulged and quivered like tumors possessed of their own terrible semi-sentient life. Its features were rudimentary and pushed together - flat black eyes, perfectly round, that stared avidly from the middle of its face like the eyes of a shark or some bloated insect; malformed ears with no lobes or pinnae. It hadn't had a nose, at least none that Pearson could recognize, although two tusk-like protuberances had jutted from the spiny tangle of hair that grew just below the eyes. Most of the thing's face had been mouth - a huge black crescent ringed with triangular teeth. To a creature with a mouth like that, Pearson had thought later, bolting one's food would be a sacrament.

His very first thought as he stared at this horrible apparition - an apparition carrying a slim Bally briefcase in one beautifully manicured hand - was It's the Elephant Man. But, he now realized, the creature had been nothing at all like the misshapen but essentially human creature in that old movie. Duke Rhinemann was closer to the mark; those black eyes and that drawn-up mouth were features he a.s.sociated with furry, squeaking things that spent their nights eating flies and their days hanging head-down in dark places.

But none of that was what had caused him to try that first scream; that need had come when the creature in the Andre Cyr suit walked past him, its bright, bug-like eyes already fixed on the revolving doors. It was at its closest in that second or two, and it was then that Pearson had seen its tumorous face somehow moving below the mottles of coa.r.s.e hair which grew from it. He didn't know how such a thing could possibly be, but it was - he was watching it happen, observing the man's flesh crawling around the lumpy curves of its skull and rippling along the thick cane-head shape of its jaw in alternating bands. Between these he caught glimpses of some gruesome raw pink substance that he didn't even want to think about . . . yet now that he remembered, it seemed that he could not stop thinking about it.

More raindrops splattered on his hands and face. Next to him on the curved lip of marble, Rhinemann took a final drag on his cigarette, pitched it away, and stood up. 'Come on,' he said. 'Starting to rain.'

Pearson looked at him with wide eyes, then looked toward the bank. The blonde in the red skirt was just going in, her book now tucked under her arm. She was being closely followed (and closely observed) by the old party with the tyc.o.o.n's shock of fine white hair.

Pearson flicked his eyes back to Rhinemann and said, 'Go in there? Are you serious? That thing went in there!'

'I know.'

'You want to hear something totally nuts?' Pearson asked, tossing his own cigarette away. He didn't know where he was going now, home, he supposed, but he knew one place he was most a.s.suredly not going, and that was back inside The First Mercantile Bank of Boston.

'Sure,' Rhinemann agreed. 'Why not?'

'That thing looked quite a lot like our revered Chief Executive Officer, Douglas Keefer . . . until you got to the head, that is. Same taste in suits and briefcases.'

'What a surprise,' Duke Rhinemann said.

Pearson measured him with an uneasy eye. 'What do you mean?''

'I think you already know, but you've had a tough morning and so I'll spell it out. That was Keefer.'

Pearson smiled uncertainly. Rhinemann didn't smile back. He got to his feet, gripped Pearson's arms, and pulled the older man forward until their faces were only inches apart.

'I saved your life just now. Do you believe that, Mr. Pearson?'

Pearson thought about it and discovered that he did. That alien, bat-like face with its black eyes and cl.u.s.tered bunches of teeth hung in his mind like a dark flare. 'Yes. I guess I do.'

'Okay. Then do me the credit of listening carefully as I tell you three things - will you do that?'

'I . . . yes, sure.'

'First thing: that was Douglas Keefer, CEO of The First Mercantile Bank of Boston, close friend of the Mayor, and, incidentally, honorary chairman of the current Boston Children's Hospital fund-drive. Second thing: there are at least three more bats working in the bank, one of them on your floor. Third thing: you are going back in there. If you want to go on living, that is.'

Pearson gaped at him, momentarily incapable of reply - if he'd tried, he would have produced only more of those fuzzy whuffling sounds.

Rhinemann took him by the elbow and pulled him toward the revolving doors. 'Come on, buddy,' he said, and his voice was oddly gentle. 'The rain is really starting to come down. If we stay out here much longer we'll attract attention, and people in our position can't afford to do that.'

Pearson went along with Rhinemann at first, then thought of the way the black nests of lines on the thing's head had pulsed and squiggled. The image brought him to a cold stop just outside the revolving doors. The smooth surface of the plaza was now wet enough to reveal another Brandon Pearson below him, a shimmery reflection that hung from his own heels like a bat of a different color. 'I . . . I don't think I can,' he said in a halting, humble voice.

'You can,' Rhinemann said. He glanced momentarily down at Pearson's left hand. 'Married, I see - with kids?'

'One. A daughter.' Pearson was looking into the bank's lobby. The gla.s.s panels in the revolving door were polarized, making the big room beyond them look very dark. Like a cave, he thought. A batcave filled with half-blind disease-carriers.

'You want your wife and kid to read in the paper tomorrow that the cops dragged Da-Da out of Boston Harbor with his throat cut?'

Pearson looked at Rhinemann with wide eyes. Raindrops splattered against his cheeks, his forehead.

'They make it look like junkies did it,' Rhinemann said, 'and it works. It always works. Because they're smart, and because they've got friends in high places. h.e.l.l, high places is what they're all about.'

'I don't understand you,' Pearson said. 'I don't understand any of this.'

'I know you don't,' Rhinemann returned. 'This is a dangerous time for you, so just do what I tell you. What I'm telling you is to get back to your desk before you're missed, and roll through the rest of the day with a smile on your face. Hold onto that smile, my friend - don't let go of it no matter how greasy it gets.' He hesitated, then added: 'If you screw up, it's probably gonna get you killed.'

The rainwater made bright tracks down the young man's smooth dark face, and Pearson suddenly saw what had been there all along, what he had missed only because of his own shock: this man was terrified, and he had risked a great deal to keep Pearson from stumbling into some awful trap.

'I really can't stay out here any longer,' Rhinemann said. 'It's dangerous.'

'Okay,' Pearson said, a little astounded to hear his own voice coming out in normal, even measures. 'Then let's go back to work.'

Rhinemann looked relieved. 'Good man. And whatever you see the rest of the day, don't show surprise. You understand?'

'Yes,' Pearson said. He didn't understand anything.

'Can you clear your desk early and leave around three?'

Pearson considered it, then nodded. 'Yeah. I guess I could do that.'

'Good. Meet me around the corner on Milk Street.'

'All right.'

'You're doin great, man,' Rhinemann said. 'You're going to be fine. See you at three.' He entered the revolving door and gave it a push. Pearson stepped into the segment behind him, feeling as though he had somehow left his mind out there in the plaza . . . all of it, that was, except for the part that already wanted another cigarette.

The day crawled, but everything was all right until he came back from lunch (and two cigarettes) with Tim Flanders. They stepped out of the elevator on the third floor and the first thing Pearson saw was another batman . . . except this one was actually a batwoman wearing black patent-leather heels, black nylon hose, and a formidable silk tweed suit - Samuel Blue was Pearson's guess. The perfect power outfit . . . until you got to the head nodding over it like a mutated sunflower, that was.

'Hullo, gents.' A sweet contralto voice spoke from somewhere behind the harelipped hole that was its mouth.

It's Suzanne Holding, Pearson thought. It can't be, but it is.

'h.e.l.lo, Suzy darlin,' he heard himself say, and thought: If she comes near me . . . tries to touch me . . . I'll scream. I won't be able to help it, no matter what the kid told me.

'Are you all right, Brand? You look pale.'

'A little touch of whatever's going around, I guess,' he said, astounded all over again at the natural ease of his voice. 'I think I'm getting on top of it, though.'

'Good,' Suzanne Holding's voice said from behind the bat's face and the strangely motile flesh. 'No French kissing until you're all better, though - in fact, don't even breathe on me. I can't afford to be sick with the j.a.panese coming in on Wednesday.'

No problem, sweetheart - no problem, you better believe it.

'I'll try to restrain myself.'

'Thanks. Tim, will you come down to my office and look at a couple of spread-sheet summaries?'

Timmy Flanders slipped an arm around the waist of the s.e.xily prim Samuel Blue suit, and before Pearson's wide eyes, he bent and planted a little kiss on the side of the thing's tumor-raddled, hairy face. That's where Timmy sees her cheek, Pearson thought, and he felt his sanity suddenly slip like greasy cable wound around the dram of a winch. Her smooth, perfumed cheek - that's what he's seeing, all right, and what he thinks he's kissing. Oh my G.o.d. Oh my G.o.d.

'There!' Timmy exclaimed, and gave the creature a small cavalier's bow. 'One kiss and I am your servant, dear lady!'

He tipped Pearson a wink and began walking the monster in the direction of her office. As they pa.s.sed the drinking fountain, he dropped the arm he had hung about her waist. The short and meaningless little peac.o.c.k/peahen courting dance - a ritual that had somehow developed over the last ten years or so in business relationships where the boss was female and the aide was male - had now been performed, and they drew away from Pearson as s.e.xual equals, talking nothing but dry numbers.

Marvelous a.n.a.lysis, Brand, Pearson thought distractedly as he turned away from them. You should have been a sociologist. And almost had been - it had been his college minor, after all.

As he entered his office he became aware that his whole body was running with a slow slime of sweat. Pearson forgot sociology and began rooting for three o'clock again.

At two-forty-five he steeled himself and poked his head into Suzanne Holding's office. The alien asteroid of her head was tilted toward the blue-gray screen of her computer, but she looked around when he said 'Knock-knock,' the flesh on her strange face sliding restlessly, her black eyes regarding him with she cold avidity of a shark studying a swimmer's leg.

'I gave Buzz Carstairs the Corporate Fours,' Pearson said. 'I'm going to take the Individual Form Nines home with me, if that's okay. I've got my backup discs there.'

'Is this your coy way of saying you're going AWOL, my dear?' Suzanne asked. The black veins bulged unspeakably on top of her bald skull; the lumps which surrounded her features quivered, and Pearson realized one of them was leaking a thick pinkish substance that looked like bloodstained shaving cream.

He made himself smile. 'You caught me.'

'Well,' Suzanne said, 'we'll just have to have the four o'clock orgy without you today, I guess.'

'Thanks, Suze.' He turned away.

'Brand?'

He turned back, his fear and revulsion threatening to turn into a bright white freeze of panic, suddenly very sure that those avid black eyes had seen through him and that the thing masquerading as Suzanne Holding was going to say, Let's stop playing games, shall we? Come in and close the door. Let's see if you taste as good as you look.

Rhinemann would wait awhile, then go on to wherever he was going by himself. Probably, Pearson thought, he'll know what happened. Probably he's seen it before.

'Yes?' he asked, trying to smile.

She looked at him appraisingly for a long moment without speaking, the grotesque slab of head looming above the s.e.xy lady exec's body, and then she said, 'You look a little better this afternoon.' The mouth still gaped, the black eyes still stared with all the expression of a Raggedy Ann doll abandoned under a child's bed, but Pearson knew that anyone else would have seen only Suzanne Holding, smiling prettily at one of her junior executives and exhibiting just the right degree of Type A concern. Not exactly Mother Courage, but still caring and interested.

'Good,' he said, and decided that was probably too limp. 'Great!'

'Now if we could only get you to quit smoking.'

'Well, I'm trying,' he said, and laughed weakly. The greasy cable around that mental winch slipped again. Let me go, he thought. Let me go, you horrible b.i.t.c.h, let me get out of here before I do something too nutso to be ignored.

'You'd qualify for an automatic upgrade on your insurance, you know,' the monster said. Now the surface of another of those tumors broke open with a rotten little chup! sound and more of that pink stuff began to ooze out.

'Yeah, I know,' he said. 'And I'll give it serious consideration, Suzanne. Really.'