"Frustration. I haven't gotten to stomp or crush any bad guys lately.

Makes me irritable."

He said, "Hey, wait a minute. You're not being difficult."

"Of course I'm not."

"You're being me!"

"Exactly." She kissed his right cheek and patted his left. "Now, let's go back out there and take the case."

She opened the door and stepped out of the bathroom.

With some amus.e.m.e.nt, Bobby said, "I'll be d.a.m.ned," and followed her into the office.

Frank Pollard was talking quietly with Clint, but he fell silent and looked up hopefully as they entered.

Shadows clung to the corners like monks to their cloisters, and for some reason the amber glow from the three lamps reminded her of the scintillant and mysterious light of serried votive candles in a church.

The puddle of scarlet gems still glimmered on the desk.

The bug was still in a death crouch in the mason jar.

"Did Clint explain our fee schedule?" she asked Pollard.

"Yes."

"Okay. In addition, we'll need ten thousand dollars as advance against expenses."

Outside, lightning scarred the bellies of the clouds. bruised sky ruptured, and cold rain spattered against the windows.

VIOLET HAD been awake for more than an hour, and during most of that time she had been a hawk, swooping high on the wind, darting down now and then to make a swift kill. The open sky was nearly as real to her as it was to the bird that she had invaded. She glided on thermal currents, the air offering little resistance to the sleek fore edges of her wings, with only the lowering gray clouds above, and the whole huddled world below.

She was also aware of the shadowy bedroom in which her body and a portion of her mind remained. Violet and Verbina usually slept during the day, for to sleep away the night was to waste the best of times.

They shared a room on the second floor, one king-size bed, never more than an arm's reach from each other, though usually entwined. That Monday afternoon, Verbina was still asleep, naked, on her belly, with her head turned away from her sister, occasionally mumbling wordlessly into her pillow. Her warm flank pressed against Violet. Even while Violet was with the hawk, she was aware of her twin's body heat, smooth skin, slow rhythmic breathing, sleepy murmurings, and distinct scent.

She smelled the dust in the room, too, and the stale odor of the long unwashed sheets and the cats, of course.

She not only smelled the cats, which slept upon the bed and the surrounding floor or lay lazily licking themselves, but lived in each of them. While a part of her consciousness remained in her own pale flesh and a part soared with the feathered predator, other aspects of her held tenancy in each of the cats, twenty-five of them now that poor Samantha was gone. Simultaneously Violet experienced the world through her own senses, through those of the hawk, and through the fifty eyes and twenty-five noses and fifty ears and hundred paws and twenty-five tongues of the pack. She could smell her own odor not merely through her own nose but through the of all the cats: the faint soapy residue of last night's bath pleasantly lingering with the tang of lemon-scented shampoo; that always followed sleep; halitosis ripe with the ghosts of the raw eggs and onions and raw liver that she eaten that morning before going to bed with the rising sun. Each remember of the pack had a sharper ol factory sense she didn't, and each perceived her scent differently from what she did; they found her natural fragrance strange yet intriguing and familiar.

She could smell, see, hear, and feel herself through their senses, as well, for she was always inextricably linked with Verbina. At will, she could swiftly enter or disengage from minds of other lifeforms, but Verbina was the only other person with whom she could join in that way.

It was a permanence which they had shared since birth. She could never disengage from her twin. Likewise, she could control the minds of animals as well as inhabit them, but she was not able to control her sister. Their link was not that of master and puppet, but special and sacred.

All of her life, Violet had lived at the confluence of rivers of sensation, bathed in great churning currents of and scent and sight and taste and touch, experiencing the world not only through her own senses but those of surrogates. For part of her childhood, she had been so overwhelmed by sensory input that she could not cope; had turned inward, to her secret world of rich, varied, and found experience, until she had learned to control the quenching flood, harnessing it instead of being swept away. Only had she chosen to relate to the people around her, absolutism, and she had not learned to talk until she was six years old.

She had never risen out of those deep, fast current extraordinary sensation to stand on the comparatively dry of life on which other people existed, but at least she learned to interact with her mother, Candy, and others to a limited degree.

Verbina had never coped half as well as Violet, and probably never would. Having chosen a life almost exclusively by sensation, she exhibited little or no concern for the development of her intellect. She had never learned to talk, showed only the vaguest interest in anyone but her sister, and immersed herself with joyous abandonment in the ocean of sensory stimuli that surged around her. Running as a squirrel, flying as a hawk or gull, rutting as a cat, loping and killing as a coyote, drinking cool water from a stream through the mouth of a racc.o.o.n or field mouse, entering the mind of a b.i.t.c.h in heat as other dogs mounted her, simultaneously sharing the terror of the cornered rabbit and the savage excitement of the predatory fox, Verbina enjoyed a breadth of life that no one else but Violet could ever know. And she preferred the constant thrill of immersion in the wildness of the world to the comparatively mundane existence of other people.

Now, although Verbina still slept, a part of her was with Violet in the soaring hawk, for even sleep did not necessitate the complete disconnection of their links to other minds. The continuous sensory input of the lesser species was not only the primary fabric from which their lives were cut, but the stuff of which their dreams were formed, as well.

Under storm clouds that grew darker by the minute, the hawk glided high over the canyon behind the Pollard property. It was hunting.

Far below, among pieces of dried and broken tumbleweed, between spiny clumps of gorse, a fat mouse broke cover. It scurried along the canyon floor, alert for signs of enemies at ground level but oblivious to the feathered death that observed it from far above.

Instinctively aware that the mouse could hear the flapping of wings from a great distance and would scramble into the nearest haven at the first sound of them, the hawk silently tucked its wings back, half folding them against its body, and dived steeply, angling toward the rodent.

Though she had shared this experience countless times before, Violet held her breath as they plummeted twelve hundred feet, dropping past ground level and farther down into the ravine; and though she actually was safely on her back in bed, her stomach seemed to turn within her, and a primal terror swelled within her breast even as she let out a thing squeal of pleasurable excitement.

On the bed beside Violet, her sister also softly cried out.

On the canyon floor the mouse froze, sensing onrushing doom but not certain from which quarter it was coming.

The hawk deployed its wings as foils at the last moment abruptly the true substance of the air became apparent a provided a welcome braking resistance. Letting its hind quarters precede it, extending its legs, opening its claws, the hawk seized the mouse even as the creature reacted to the sudden spread of wings and tried to flee.

Though remaining with the hawk, Violet entered the mind of the mouse an instant before the predator had taken it. She felt the icy satisfaction of the hunter and the hot fear of the prey. From the perspective of the hawk, she felt the flesh puncture and split under the sharp and powerful a.s.sault of her talons, and from the perspective of the mouse she was wracked by searing pain and was aware of a dread rupturing within. The bird peered down at the squealing rodent in its grasp, and shivered with a wild sense of dominant and power, with a realization that hunger would again sated. It loosed a caw of triumph that echoed along the canyon.

Feeling small and helpless in the grip of its winged a.s.sailant in the thrall of excruciating fear so intense as to be strong akin to the most exquisite of sensory pleasures, the mouse looked up into the steely, merciless eyes and ceased to struggle, went limp, resigned itself to death. It saw the fierce beak descending, was aware of being rended, but no longer felt pain only numb resignation, then a brief moment of shattering pain then nothing, nothing. The hawk tipped back its head and b.l.o.o.d.y ribbons and warm knots of flesh fall down its gull. On the bed Violet turned on her side to face her sister. Having been shaken from sleep by the power of the experience with the hawk, Verbina came into Violet's arms. Naked, pelvis pelvis, belly to belly, b.r.e.a.s.t.s to b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the twins held each other and shuddered uncontrollably. Violet gasped against Verbina's tender throat, and through her link with Verbina's mind, she felt that hot flood of her own breath and the warmth it brought to her sister's skin. They made wordless sounds a clung to each other, and their frantic breathing did not beg to subside until the hawk tore the last red sliver of nourishing meat from the mouse's hide and, with a flurry of wings, threw itself into the sky again.

Below was the Pollard property: the Eugenia hedge; the grey blued, slate-roofed, weathered-looking house; the twenty-year-' old Buick that had belonged to their mother and that Candy sometimes drove; cl.u.s.ters of primrose burning with red and yellow and purple blooms in a narrow and untended flower bed that extended the length of the decrepit back porch.

Violet also saw Candy far below, at the northeast corner of the sprawling property.

Still holding fast to her sister, gracing Verbina's throat and cheek and temple with a lace of gentle kisses, Violet simultaneously directed the hawk to circle above her brother. Through the bird, she watched him as he stood, head bowed, at their mother's grave, mourning her as he had mourned her every day, without exception, since her death those many years ago.

Violet did not mourn. Her mother had been as much a stranger to her as anyone in the world, and she had felt nothing special at the woman's pa.s.sing. Indeed, because Candy was gifted, too, Violet felt closer to him than she had to her mother, which was not saying much because she did not really know him or care a great deal about him. How could she be close to anyone if she could not enter his mind and live with him, through him? That incredible intimacy was what welded her to Verbina, and it marked the myriad relationships she enjoyed with all the fowl and fauna that populated nature's world. She simply did not know how to relate to anyone without that intense, innermost connection, and if she could not love, she could not mourn.

Far below the wheeling hawk, Candy dropped to his knees beside the grave.

MONDAY AFTERNOON. Thomas sat at his work table. Making a picture poem.

Derek helped. Or thought he did. He sorted through some magazine clippings. He chose pictures, gave them to Thomas. If the picture was right, Thomas trimmed it, pasted it on the page. Most of the time it wasn't right, so he put it waside and asked for another picture and another until he gave him something he could use.

He didn't tell Derek the awful truth. The awful truth that he wanted to make the poem by himself. But he could hurt Derek's feelings. Derek was hurt enough. Being dumb really hurt, and Derek was dumber than Thomas. Though Derek was dumber-looking, too, which was more hurtful.

His forehead sloped more than Thomas's. His nose was flatter, his head had a squashy shape. Awful truth.

Later, tired of making the picture poem, Thomas and Derek went to the wreck room, and that was where it happen Derek got hurt. He got hurt so much he cried. A girl did it. Mary. In the wreck room.

Some people were playing a game of marbles in one corner. Some were watching TV. Thomas and Derek were sitting on a couch near some windows, Being Sociable when any came around. The aides always wanted people at The home to Be Sociable. It was good for you to Be Sociable.

When one came around to Be Sociable with them, Thomas and Derek were watching hummingbirds at a feeder that hung outside windows.

Hummingbirds didn't really hum, but they zip around and were a lot of fun to watch. Mary, who was at The Home, didn't zip around and wasn't fun to watch, she hummed a lot. No, she buzzed. Buzz, buzz, buzz, all the time.

Mary knew about eye cues. She said they really mattered, eye cues, and maybe they did, though Thomas had never heard of them and didn't understand what they were, but then a lot of things he didn't understand were important. He knew what eyes were, of course. He knew a cue was a stick you hit b.a.l.l.s with because they had a pool table right there in the wreck room, near where he and Derek were sitting, though n.o.body used it much. He figured it would be a bad thing, real bad, if you stuck yourself in the eye with a cue, but this Mary said eye cues were good and she had a big one for a Down's kid.

"I'm a high-end moron," she said, real happy with herself, you could tell.

Thomas didn't know what a moron was, but he couldn't see a high-end to Mary anywhere, she was fat and mostly droopy all over.

"You're probably a moron, too, Thomas, but you ain't high-end like me.

I'm almost normal, and you ain't as close to normal as me." All this only confused Thomas.

It confused Derek even more, you could tell, and in his thick and sometimes hard to understand voice, Derek said, "Me? No moron."

He shook his head.

"Cowboy." He smiled.

"Cowboy." Mary laughed at him.

"You ain't no cowboy or ever going to be. What you are is you're an imbecile." They had to ask her to say it a few times before they got it, but even then they didn't really get it. They could say it but didn't know what it was any more than they knew what one of these eye cues looked like.

"You've got your normal people," Mary said, "then morons under them, then imbeciles, wh.o.r.e dumber than morons, and then you got idiots, wh.o.r.e dumber than even imbeciles. Me, I'm a high-end moron, and I ain't going to be here forever, I'm going to be good, behave, work hard to be normal, and someday go back to the halfway house."

"Halfway where?" Derek asked, which was what Thomas wondered too.

Mary laughed at him.

"Halfway to being normal, which is more than you'll ever be, you poor d.a.m.n imbecile." This time Derek realized she was looking down on him, making fun, and he tried not to cry, but he did. He got red in the face and cried, and Mary grinned sort of wild, she was all puffed up, excited, like she'd won some big prize. She'd said a bad word-d.a.m.n-and should be ashamed, but she wasn't, you could tell. She said the other word again, which Thomas now saw was a bad word, too, "imbecile," and she kept saying it, until poor Derek got up and ran, and even then she shout it after him.

Thomas went back to their room, looking for Derek, but Derek was in the closet with the door shut, bawling. Some of the aides came, and they talked to Derek real nice, but he didn't want to come out of the closet.

They had to talk to him a long time to get him to come out of there, but even then couldn't stop him from crying, and so after a while they had to Give him Something. Once in a while when you were sick, like with the flu, the aides asked you to Take Something, which meant pill of one shape or another, one color or another, big or little But when they had to Give You Something, it always was a needle, which was a bad thing.

They never had to Give Something to Thomas because he was always good.

But sometimes Derek wasn't nice as he was, got to feeling so bad about himself that he couldn't stop crying, and sometimes he hit himself, just hit himself in the face, until he broke himself open and got blood on himself, and even then he wouldn't stop, so they had to give Him Something For His Own Good. Derek never hit anyone else, he was nice, but For His Own Good he sometimes had to be made to relax or sometimes even made to sleep, which was what happened the day Mary the high-end moron called him an imbecile.

After Derek was made to sleep, one of the aides sat beside Thomas at the worktable. It was Cathy. Thomas liked Cathy. She was older than Julie but not as old as somebody's mother. She was pretty. Not as pretty as Julie but pretty, with a nice voice and eyes you weren't afraid to look into. She took one of Thomas's hands in both of hers, and she asked if he was okay. He said he was, but he really wasn't, and she knew it.

They talked a while. That helped. Being Sociable.

She told him about Mary, so he'd understand, and that helped too.

"She's so frustrated, Thomas. She was out their in the world for a while, at a halfway house, and she even had a part-time job, making a little money of her own. She was trying so hard, but it didn't work, she had too many problems so she had to be inst.i.tutionalized again. I think she regrets what she did to Derek. She's just so disappointed that she needed to feel superior to someone."

"I am... It was... It was out there in the world once," Thomas said.

"I know you were, honey."

"With my dad. Then with my sister. And Bobby."

"Did you like it out there?"

"Some of it... scared me. But when I was with Julie and Bobby... I liked that part.".

On his bed, Derek was snoring now.

The afternoon was half gone. The sky was getting ugly stormy. The room had shadows everywhere. Only the desk lamp was on. Cathy's face looked pretty in the lampglow. Her skin was like peach-colored satin. He knew what satin was like. Julie once had a dress of satin.

For a while he and Cathy were quiet.

Then he said, "Sometimes it's hard."

She put her hand on his head. Smoothed his hair.

"Yeah, I know, Thomas. I know." She was so nice. He didn't know why he started to cry when she was so nice, but he did. Maybe it was because she was so nice.

Cathy scooted her chair closer to his. He leaned against her. She put her arms around him. He cried and cried. Not hard terrible crying like Derek. Soft. But he couldn't stop. He tried not to cry because crying made him feel dumb, and he hated feeling dumb.

Through his tears, he said, "I hate feeling dumb."

"You're not dumb, honey."

"Yeah, I am. Hate it. But I can't be nothing else. I try not to think about being dumb, but you can't not think about it when it's what you are, and when other people aren't, and they go out in the world every day and they live, but you don't go out in the world and don't even want to but, oh, you want to, even when you say you don't." That was a lot for him to say, and he was surprised that he had said it all, surprised but also frustrated because he wanted so bad to tell her how it felt, being dumb, being afraid of going out in the world, and he'd failed, hadn't been able to find the right words, so the feeling was still all bottled up in him.

"Time. There's lots of time, see, when you're dumb and can't go out in the world, lots of time to fill up, but then there really ain't enough time, not enough for learning how to be not afraid of things, and I've got to learn how not to be afraid so I can go back and be with Julie a Bobby, which I want to do real bad, before all the time runs out.

There's too big amounts of time and not enough, and that sounds dumb, don't it?"

"No, Thomas. It doesn't sound dumb."

He didn't move out of her arms. He wanted to be hugged.

Cathy said, "You know, sometimes life is hard for everyone Even for smart people. Even for the smartest of them all."

With one hand he wiped at his damp eyes.

"It is? Sometimes is it hard for you?"

"Sometimes. But I believe there's a G.o.d, Thomas, and that he put us here for a reason, and that every hardship we have to face is a test, and that we're better for enduring them."

He raised his head to look at her. Such nice eyes. Good eyes. They were eyes that loved you. Like Julie's eyes or Bobby's.

Thomas said, "G.o.d made me dumb to test me?"

"You're not dumb, Thomas. Not in some ways. I don't like to hear you call yourself dumb. You're not as smart as some but that's not your fault. You're different, that's all. Being.. different is your hardship, and you're coping with it well."

"I am?"

"Beautifully. Look at you. You're not bitter. You're not sullen. You reach out to people." "Being Sociable."

She smiled, pulled a tissue from the box of Kleenex on the worktable, and wiped the tears from his face.