"I won't."

"I hope she finds her way here. Not that I could do much now. The carca.s.s..." He looked down at his withered body, "...has seen better days. But I could look. I like to look. Even at you, if you don't mind me saying."

"What do you mean, even?" Tesla said.

Kissoon laughed, low and dry. "Yes, I'm sorry. I meant it as a compliment. All these years alone. I've lost my social graces."

"You could go back, surely," she said. "You brought me here. Isn't there a two-way traffic?"

"Yes and no," he said.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning, I could, but I can't."

"Why?"

"I'm the last of the Shoal," he said. "The last living preserver of Quiddity. The rest have been murdered, and all attempts to replace them brought to nothing. Do you blame me for keeping out of sight? For watching from a safe distance? If I die without somehow re-establishing the tradition of the Shoal, Quiddity will be left unguarded, and I think you understand enough to know how cataclysmic that could be. The only possible way I can get out into the world and begin that vital work is in another shape. Another...body."

"Who are the murderers? Do you know?"

Again, that subtle shadow.

"I have my suspicions," he replied.

"But you're not telling."

"The history of the Shoal's littered with attempts on its integrity. It's got enemies human; sub; in; ab. If I started to explain we'd never be finished."

"Is any of this written down?"

"You mean, can you research it? No. But you can read between the lines of other histories, and you'll find the Shoal everywhere. It's the secret behind all other secrets. Entire religions were seeded and nurtured to distract attention from it, to direct spiritual seekers away from the Shoal, the Art and what the Art opened onto. It wasn't difficult. People are easily thrown off track if the right scent is laid down. Promises of Revelation, Resurrection of the Body, that sort of thing-"

"Are you saying-"

"Don't interrupt," Kissoon said. "Please. I'm getting into my rhythm here."

"I'm sorry," Tesla said.

It's almost like a pitch, she thought. Like he's trying to sell me this whole extraordinary story.

"So. As I was saying...you can find the Shoal everywhere, if you know how to look. And some people did. There were several men and women down the years, like Jaffe, who managed to look through the shams and the smoke screens, and just kept on digging up the clues, breaking the codes, and the codes within the codes, until they got close to the Art. Then of course, the Shoal would be obliged to step in and act as we thought fit on a case-by-case basis. Some of these seekers, Gurdjieff, Melville, Emily d.i.c.kinson; an interesting cross-section, we simply initiated into a most sacred and secret adepthood, to train them to take over in our stead when death depleted our numbers. Others we judged unfit."

"What did you do with them?"

"Used our skills to blank all memory of their discovery from their heads. Which often proved fatal of course. You can't take a man's search for meaning away one day and expect him to survive it, especially if he's come close to finding an answer. It's my suspicion one of our rejects had remembered himself, or herself-"

"And murdered the Shoal."

"It seems the likeliest theory. It has to be somebody who knows about the Shoal and its workings. Which brings me to Randolph Jaffe."

"It's hard for me to think of him as Randolph, " Tesla said. "Even as human."

"Believe me, he is. He's also the greatest error of judgment I ever made. I told him too much."

"More than you're telling me?"

"The situation's desperate now," Kissoon said. "If I don't tell you, and get help from you, we're all lost. But with Jaffe...it was my stupidity. I wanted someone to share my loneliness with, and I chose badly. Had the others been alive they would have stepped in, stopped me making such a cra.s.s decision. They would have seen the corruption in him. I didn't. I was pleased he'd found me. I wanted the company. Wanted somebody to help me carry the burden of the Art. What I created was a worse burden. Someone with the power to get access to Quiddity but without the least spiritual refinement."

"He's got an army too."

"I know."

"Where do they come from?"

"The same place everything originates. The mind."

"Everything?"

"You're asking questions again."

"I can't help it."

"Yes, everything. The world and all its works; its makings and unmakings; G.o.ds, lice and cuttlefish. All from the mind."

"I don't believe you."

"Why a.s.sume I care?"

"The mind can't create everything."

"I didn't say the human mind."

"Ah."

"If you listened more closely you wouldn't ask so many questions."

"But you want me to understand, or you wouldn't be spending all this time."

"Time out of time. But yes...yes, I want you to understand. Given the sacrifice you'll have to make it's important you know why."

"What sacrifice?"

"I told you: I can't get out of this place in my body. I'll be found, and murdered, like the others..."

She shuddered, despite the warmth.

"I don't think I follow," she said.

"Yes you do."

"You want me to get you out somehow? Carry your thoughts."

"Near enough."

"Can't I simply act for you?" she said. "Be your agent? I'm good out there."

"I'm sure you are."

"You brief me, I'll do what it takes."

Kissoon shook his head. "There's so much you don't know," he said. "So vast a picture, I haven't even tried to unveil. I doubt your imagination could cope with it."

"Try me," she said.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Well, the issue here isn't simply the Jaff. He may taint Quiddity, but it'll survive."

"So what's the big problem?" Tesla said. "You give me all this s.h.i.t about needing sacrifice. What for? If Quiddity can look after itself, what for?"

"Will you not simply trust me?"

She looked hard at him. The fire had sunk low but her eyes were by now well used to the amber gloom. Part of her wanted very much to put her trust in someone. But she'd spent most of her adult life learning the danger of that. Men, agents, studio executives, so many of-them had asked her for her trust in the past, and she'd given it, and been f.u.c.ked over. It was too late to learn a new way now. She was cynical to the marrow. If she ever stopped being that she'd stop being Tesla, and she liked being Tesla. It therefore followed-as night, day-that cynicism suited her too.

So she said: "No. I'm sorry. I can't trust you. Don't take it personally. I'd be the same whoever you were. I want to know the bottom line."

"What does that mean?"

"I want the truth. Or I don't give you anything."

"Are you so sure you can refuse?" Kissoon said.

She half turned her face from him, glancing back, tight-lipped, the way her favorite heroines did, with a look of accusation.

"That was a threat," she said.

"You could construe it that way," he observed.

"Well, f.u.c.k you-"

He shrugged. His pa.s.sivity-the almost lazy way he regarded her-inflamed her further.

"I don't have to sit and listen to this, you know!"

"No?"

"No! You're hiding something from me."

"Now you're being ridiculous."

"I don't think so."

She stood up. His eyes didn't follow her face, but lingered at groin height. She was suddenly uncomfortable being naked in his presence. She wanted the clothes that were presumably still back at the Mission, stale and b.l.o.o.d.y as they'd be. If she was to get back there, she'd better start walking. She turned to the door.

Behind her, Kissoon said: "Wait, Tesla. Please wait. The error's mine. I concede; the error's mine. Come back, will you?"

His tone was placating, but she read a less benign undertow. He's riled, she thought; for all his spiritual poise, he's p.i.s.sed. It was a lesson in the facilities of dialogue to hear the bristle beneath the purr. She turned back to hear more, no longer certain that she could get the truth from this man. She only had to be threatened once to doubt.

"Go on," she said.

"You won't sit?"

"That's right," she said. She had to pretend she wasn't afraid, though suddenly she was; had to think of her skin as fashion enough. Stand, and be defiantly naked. "I won't sit."

"Then I'll try to explain as quickly as I can," he said. He'd effectively smoothed out every ambiguity in his manner. He was considerate; even humble.

"Even I, you must understand, don't have all the facts at my disposal," he said. "But I have enough, I hope, to convince you of the danger we're in."

"Who's we?"

"The inhabitants of the Cosm."

"Again?"

"Fletcher didn't explain this to you?"

"No."

He sighed.

"Think of Quiddity as a sea," he said.

"I'm thinking..."

"On one side of that sea is the reality we inhabit. A continent of being, if you like, the perimeters of which are sleep and death."

"So far, so good."

"Now...suppose there's another continent, on the other side of the sea."

"Another reality."

"Yes. As vast and complex as our own. As full of energies and species and appet.i.tes. But dominated, as the Cosm is, by one species in particular, with strange appet.i.tes."

"I don't like the sound of this."