Howie moaned. The world was just out of sight. If he wanted to open his eyes it would be there, waiting for him. But Fletcher told him not to try too hard.

I've got you, he said.

It was true. Howie felt his father's arms surrounding him in the dark, wrapping him up. They felt huge. Or perhaps he'd shrunk; become a babe again.

I never had plans to be a father, Fletcher was saying. It was pretty much forced upon me by circ.u.mstance. The Jaff decided to make some children, you see, to have his agents in flesh. I was obliged to do the same.

"Jo-Beth?" Howie muttered.

Yes?

"Is she his or yours?"

His, of course. His.

"So we're not...brother and sister?"

No, of course not. She and her brother are of his making, you're of mine. That's why you have to help me, Howie. I'm weaker than he is. A dreamer. I always was. A drugged dreamer. He's already out there, raising his d.a.m.n terata- "His what?"

His creatures. His army. That's what he got from the comedian: something to carry him away. Me? I got nothing. Dying people don't have many fantasies. It's all fear. He loves fear.

"Who is he?"

The Jaff? My enemy.

"And who are you?"

His enemy.

"That's not an answer. I want a better answer than that."

It'd take too much time. We don't have time, Howie.

"Just the bones."

Howie felt Fletcher smile inside his head.

Oh...bones I can give you, his father said. Bones of birds and fishes. Things buried in the ground. Like memories. Back to the first cause.

"Am I stupid, or are you talking nonsense?"

I've so much to tell you, and so little time. Best I show you, maybe.

His voice had taken on a strained quality; Howie felt anxiety in it.

"What are you going to do?" he said.

I'm going to open up my mind, son.

"You're afraid..."

It'll be quite a ride. But I don't know any other way.

"I don't think I want to."

Too late, said Fletcher.

Howie felt the arms encircling him loosen their grip; felt himself falling from his parent's hold. This was the first of all nightmares surely; to be dropped. But gravity was askew in this thought-world. Instead of his father's face receding from him as he was released it appeared-vast, and growing vaster-as he toppled into it.

There were no words now, to reduce thought: only thoughts themselves, and those in abundance. Too much to understand. It was all Howie could do not to drown.

Don't fight, he heard his father instruct. Don't even try to swim. Let go. Sink into me. Be in me.

I won't be myself any longer, he returned. If I drown I won't be me. I'll be you. I don't want to be you.

Take the risk. There's no other way.

I won't! I can't! I have to...control.

He started to struggle against the element that surrounded him. Ideas and images kept breaking through his mind however. Thoughts fixed in his mind by another mind, that were beyond his present comprehension.

-Between this world, called the Cosm-also called the Clay, also called the Helter Incendo-between this world and the Metacosm, also called the Alibi, also called the Exordium and the Lonely Place, is a sea called Quiddity- An image of that sea appeared in Howie's head, and amid the confusion was a sight he knew. He'd floated here, during the brief dream he'd shared with Jo-Beth. They'd been carried on a gentle tide, their hair tangled, their bodies brushing against each other. Recognition calmed his fears. He listened to Fletcher's instruction more closely now.

-and on that sea, there's an island- He glimpsed it, albeit distantly.

It's called Ephemeris- A beautiful word, and a beautiful place. Its head was couched in cloud, but there was light on its lower slopes. Not sunlight; the light of spirit.

I want to be there, Howie thought, I want to be there with Jo-Beth.

Forget her.

Tell me what's there. What's on Ephemeris?

The Great and Secret Show, his father's thoughts returned, which we see three times. At birth, at death and for one night when we sleep beside the love of our lives.

Jo-Beth.

I told you, forget her.

I went with Jo-Beth! We were floating there, together.

No.

Yes. That means she's the love of my life. You just said so.

I told you to forget her.

It does! My G.o.d! It does!

Something that the Jaff fathered is too tainted to be loved. Too corrupt.

She's the most beautiful thing I ever saw.

She rejected you, Fletcher reminded him.

Then I'll win her back.

His image of her was clear in his head; clearer than the island now, or the dream-sea it floated upon. He reached for her memory and by it hauled himself out of the grip of his father's mind. Back came the nausea, and then the light, splashing through the foliage above his head.

He opened his eyes. Fletcher was not holding him, if indeed he ever had. Howie was lying on his back on the gra.s.s. His arm was numb from elbow to wrist, but the hand beyond felt twice its proper size. The pain in it was the first proof that he wasn't dreaming. The second, that he had just woken from a dream. The man with the pony-tail was real; no doubt of it. Which meant that the news he brought could be true. This was his father, for better or worse. He raised his head from the gra.s.s as Fletcher spoke: "You don't understand how desperate our situation is," he said. "Quiddity will be invaded by the Jaff if I don't stop him."

"I don't want to know," Howie said.

"You have a responsibility," Fletcher stated. "I wouldn't have fathered you if I didn't think you could help me."

"Oh that's very touching," said Howie. "That really makes me feel wanted."

He started to get to his feet, avoiding the sight of his injured hand. "You shouldn't have shown me the island, Fletcher-" he said. "Now I know what's between Jo-Beth and me's the real thing. She's not tainted. And she's not my sister. That means I can get her back."

"Obey me!" Fletcher said. "You're my child. You're supposed to obey!"

"You want a slave, go find one," Howie said. "I've got better things to do."

He turned his back on Fletcher, or at least believed he had, until the man appeared in front of him.

"How the h.e.l.l did you do that?"

"There's a lot I can do. Little stuff. I'll teach you. Only don't leave me alone, Howard."

"n.o.body calls me Howard," Howie said, raising his hand to push Fletcher away. He'd momentarily forgotten his injury: now it came into sight. His knuckles were puffed up, the back of his hand and his fingers gummy with blood. Blades of gra.s.s had stuck to it, bright green on bright red. Fletcher took a step back, repulsed.

"Don't like the sight of blood, either, huh?" Howie said.

As he retreated something about Fletcher's appearance altered, too subtle for Howie to quite grasp. Was it that he'd backed away into a patch of sunlight, and that it somehow pierced him? Or that a piece of sky locked in his belly came undone and floated up into his eyes? Whatever, it was there and gone.

"I'll make a deal," Howie said.

"What's that?"

"You leave me alone; I'll leave you-"

"There's only us, son. Against the whole world."

"You're f.u.c.king crazy, you know that?" Howie said. He took his eyes off Fletcher and set them on the route he'd come. "That's where I got it from. This holy fool s.h.i.t! Well, not me! No more. I've got people who love me!"

"I love you!" Fletcher said.

"Liar."

"All right, then I'll learn."

Howie started away from him, his b.l.o.o.d.y arm outstretched.

"I can learn!" he heard his father call from behind him. "Howard, listen to me! I can learn!"

He didn't run. He didn't have the strength. But he reached the road without falling down, which was a victory of mind over matter, given how weak his legs felt. There he rested for a short time, content that Fletcher wouldn't follow him into such open territory. The man had secrets he didn't want mere human eyes to see. While resting, he planned. First he'd return to the motel, and tend to his hand. Then? Back to Jo-Beth's house. He had good news to impart, and he'd find a way to tell it if he had to wait all night for the opportunity. The sun was hot and bright. It threw his shadow in front of him as he went. He fixed his eyes on the sidewalk, and followed his pattern there, step for step, back towards sanity.

In the woods behind him, Fletcher cursed his inadequacy. He'd never been much good at persuasion, leaping from ba.n.a.lity to visions with no proper grasp of the middle ground between: the simple social skills which most people were proficient in by the age of ten. He had failed to win his son over by straightforward argument, and Howard in his turn had resisted the revelations which might have made him comprehend his father's jeopardy. Not just his; the world's. Not for an instant did Fletcher doubt that the Jaff was as dangerous now as he'd been back in the Mision de Santa Catrina, when the Nuncio had first rarefied him. More so. He had his agents in the Cosm; children who would obey him because he had a way with words. Howard was heading back into the embrace of one of those agents even now. As good as lost. Which left him with no alternative but to go into the Grove on his own, and look for people from whom he might raise hallucigenia.

There was no value in putting off the moment. He had a few hours before dusk, when the day turned towards darkness, and the Jaff would have an even greater advantage than he had already. Even though he didn't much like the idea of walking the streets of the Grove for all to see and study, what choice did he have? Maybe there would be a few he could catch dreaming, even in the light of day.

He looked up at the sky, and thought of his room in the Mission, in which he'd sat with Raul for so many blissful hours, listening to Mozart and watching the clouds change as they came off the ocean. Changing, always changing. A flux of forms in which they'd find echoes of earthly things: a tree, a dog, a human face. One day, he would join those clouds, when his war with the Jaff was over. Then the sadness of parting he felt now-Raul gone, Howard gone, everything sliding away from him-would be extinguished.

Only the fixed felt pain. The protean lived in everything, always. One country, living one immortal day.

Oh, to be there!

VII.

For William Witt, Palomo Grove's Boswell, the morning had seen his worst nightmare become reality. He'd stepped out of his attractive, one-story residence in Stillbrook, which he boasted to clients had appreciated by thirty thousand dollars in the five years since he'd purchased, to do a normal day's real estate business in his favorite town on earth. But things were different this morning. Had he been asked to say what exactly, he couldn't have offered a cogent answer, but he knew by instinct that his beloved Grove was sickening. He spent most of the morning standing at the window of his offices, which looked directly across at the supermarket. Almost everybody in the Grove used the market at least once a week; it had for many the double function of suppliers and meeting place. William prided himself on the fact that he could name fully ninety-eight percent of the people who entered its doors. He'd been instrumental in finding houses for a good number of them; rehousing them when their families outgrew their first purchase as newlyweds; often rehousing those in middle-age when the children left; finally selling houses on when the occupants died. And he in turn was known by most of them. They called him by his first name, they commented on his bow ties (which were his trademark; he owned one hundred and eleven), they introduced him to visiting friends.

But today, as he watched from his window, he took no joy in the ritual. Was it simply the fact of Buddy Vance's death, and the tragedy that had come as its consequence, that subdued folks so mightily; that kept them from greeting each other as they pa.s.sed on the parking lot? Or was it that they, like he, had woken with a strange expectation, as though some event was in the offing that they'd neglected to write in their diaries, but at which they'd be sorely missed were they not to attend.

Simply standing and watching, unable to interpret what he saw or felt, dragged his spirits to their knees. He decided to go on a round of appraisals. There were three houses-two in Deerdell, one in Windbluff-that needed looking over, and prices determined. His anxiety didn't diminish as he drove over to Deerdell. The sun that beat on the sidewalks and the lawns beat to bruise; the air above shimmered as if to dissolve brick and slate: to take his precious Grove away entirely.

The two properties in Deerdell were in very different states of repair; both required his full attention as he went through them, totting up their merits and demerits. By the time he'd finished with them, and begun towards the Wind-bluff house, he'd been long enough distracted from his fears to think that maybe he'd been over-reacting. The task ahead, he knew, would afford him considerable pleasure. The house on Wild Cherry Glade, just below the Crescents, was large and desirable. He was already creating the Better Homes Bulletin pitch as he stepped from the car: Be King of the Hill! The perfect family home is waiting for you!

He selected the front door key from the two on the ring, and opened up. Legal wrangles had kept the property empty and off the market since the spring; the air inside was dusty and stale. He liked the smell. There was something about empty places that touched him. He liked to think of them as homes in waiting; blank canvases upon which buyers would paint their own particular paradise. He wandered through the house, making meticulous notes in each room, turning seductive phrases over in his head as he went: s.p.a.cious and Immaculate. A Home to Delight even the Choosiest Buyer. 3 Bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, with Terrazzo floors, Birch panelling in formal living room, kitchen fully equipped, covered patio...

Given its size and location the house would, he knew, command a good price. Having made a circuit of the lower floor he unlocked the yard door and stepped outside. The houses, even on the lower parts of the Hill, were well spread. The yard was not overlooked by either of the neighbors' houses. Had it been, they might well have complained of its condition. The lawn was shin-high, patchy and sere; the trees needed cutting back. He walked across the sun-baked ground to measure the pool. It had not been drained after Mrs. Lloyd, who'd owned the property, had died. The water was low, its surface encrusted with an algae greener than the gra.s.s which sprang between the tiling at the pool's edge. It smelt rank. Rather than linger to measure the pool, he guessed its dimensions, knowing his practiced eye was virtually as accurate as his tape. He was jotting the figures down when a ripple started in the center of the pool, crawling over the sluggish surface towards him. He stepped away from the edge, making a note to get the Pool Services up here soonest. Whatever was breeding in the filth-fungus or fish-could count their teeming tenancy in hours.

The water moved again; darting motions that put him in mind of another day entirely, and of another body of haunted water. He put the memory from his head-or at least tried to-and, turning his back on the pool, began towards the house. But the memory had been too long alone; it insisted on going with him. He could see the four girls-Carolyn, Trudi, Joyce and Arleen, lovely Arleen-as clearly as if it were just yesterday he'd spied on them. He watched them in his mind's eyes, stripping off their clothes. He heard their chatter; their laughter.

He stopped walking, and glanced back at the pool. The soup was once more still. Whatever it had bred or was a bed for had gone back to sleep. He glanced at his watch. He'd been away from the office only an hour and three quarters. If he picked up his pace and finished here quickly, he could slip back home for a while, and watch a video from his collection. The notion, fuelled in part by the erotic recollections the pool had stirred, took him back into the house with renewed zeal. He locked up the back, and started upstairs.

Halfway up, a noise from above brought him to a halt.

"Who's there?" he demanded.

There was no reply, but the noise came again. He made his demand a second time; a dialogue of question and sound, question and sound. Were there children in the house, perhaps? Breaking into empty properties, which had been a fad some years before, was once again on the increase. This was the first time he'd had the opportunity to catch a culprit in the act of trespa.s.s however.

"Are you coming down?" he said, giving as much ba.s.so profundo to his question as he could muster. "Or am I coming up to bring you down?"

The only reply was the same skittering sound he'd heard twice already, like a small dog with unclipped nails running over a hardwood floor.