"You wanted the truth."

"I'm not saying I believe you."

"That other place is the Metacosm. That species is the Iad Uroboros. They exist."

"And the appet.i.tes?" she said, not certain she really wanted to know.

"For purity. For singularity. For madness. "

"Some hunger."

"You were right when you accused me of not telling the truth. I told a part of it only. The Shoal did stand guard at the sh.o.r.es of Quiddity to prevent the Art from being misused by human ambition; but it also stood to watch the sea..."

"For an invasion?"

"That's what we feared. Maybe even expected. It wasn't simply our paranoia. The profoundest dreams of evil are those in which we scent the Iad across Quiddity. The deepest terrors, the foulest imaginings that haunt human heads are the echoes of their echoes. I am giving you more reason to be afraid, Tesla, than you could hear from any other lips. I'm telling you what only the strongest psyches can bear."

"Is there any good news?" Tesla said.

"Who ever promised that? Who ever said there'd be good news?"

"Jesus," she replied. "And Buddha. Mohammed."

"Fragments of stories, ma.s.saged into cults by the Shoal. Distractions."

"I can't believe that."

"Why not? Are you a Christian?"

"No."

"Buddhist? Muslim? Hindu?"

"No. No. No."

"But you insist on believing the good news anyway," Kissoon said. "Convenient."

She felt she'd been struck, very hard, across the face, by a teacher who'd been three or four steps ahead of her throughout the entire argument, leading her steadily and stealthily to a place where she could not help but mouth absurdities. And absurd it was, to cling to hopes for Heaven when she poured p.i.s.s on every religion that pa.s.sed beneath her window. But she reeled not because Kissoon had scored a solid debating point. She'd taken her lumps in countless arguments, and come back to give worse. What made her sick to her stomach was that her defense against so much else he'd said was forfeit at the same moment. If even a part of what he'd told her was true, and the world she lived in-the Cosm-was in jeopardy, then what right did she have to value her little life over his desperate need for a.s.sistance? Even a.s.suming she could find her way out of this time out of time she couldn't return to the world without wondering every moment if in leaving him she'd lost the Cosm's one chance for survival. She had to stay; had to give herself over to him, not because she entirely believed him, but because she couldn't risk being wrong.

"Don't be afraid," she heard him say. "The situation's no worse than it was five minutes ago, when you were quite the debater. You just know the truth now."

"Not much comfort," she said.

"No," he replied softly. "I do see that. And you must see that this burden has been hard to carry alone, and that without a.s.sistance my back'll break."

"I understand," she said.

She'd stepped away from the fire, and was standing against the wall of the hut, both for its support and for its coolness against her spine. Leaning there, she stared at the ground, aware that Kissoon had started to stand up. She didn't look at him, but she heard his grunts. And then his request.

"I need to occupy your body," he said. "Which means, I'm afraid, that you must vacate it."

The fire had dwindled to almost nothing, but its smoke was thickening. It pressed the top of her skull, making it impossible for her to raise her head and look at him even if she'd wanted to. She started to tremble. First her knees, then her fingers. Kissoon continued to talk as he approached. She heard his soft shuffling.

"This won't hurt," he said. "If you just stand still, and keep your eyes on the ground-"

A slow thought came: was he making the smoke heavy, by some means, in order to stop her looking at him?

"It'll be over quickly-"

He sounds like an anesthetist, she thought. The trembling intensified. The smoke pressed more heavily upon her the closer he came. She was certain now that this was indeed his doing. He didn't want her looking up at him. Why? Was he coming at her with knives, to scoop out her brain so he could slip in behind her eyes?

Resisting curiosity had never been one of her stronger points. The closer he came the more she wanted to push against the weight of smoke, and look directly at him. But it was difficult. Her body was weak, as though her blood had gone to dishwater. The smoke was like a lead hat; its brim too tight around her brow. The harder she pushed, the heavier it became.

He really doesn't want me to look, she thought, that thought feeding her pa.s.sion to do so. She braced herself against the wall. He was within two yards of her now. She could smell him; his sweat was bitter and stale. Push, she told herself, push! It's only smoke. He's making you think you're being crushed, but it's only smoke.

"Relax," he murmured; the anesthetist again.

Instead she put one last surge of effort into raising her head. The lead hat dug into her temples; her skull creaked beneath the weight of the crown. But her head moved, trembling as she fought the weight. Once begun, the motion became easier. She lifted her chin an inch, then another two, raising her eyes at the same moment until she was looking straight at him.

Standing, he was crooked in every place but one, each joint and juncture a little askew, shoulder on neck, hand on arm; thigh on hip, a zig-zag with a single straight line prodding from his groin. She stared, appalled.

"What the f.u.c.k's that for?" she said.

"Couldn't help myself," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Oh yeah?"

"When I said I want your body, I don't mean that way."

"Where have I heard that before?"

"Believe me," he said. "It's just my flesh responding to yours. Automatic. Be flattered."

She might have laughed, in different circ.u.mstances. Had she been able to open the door and walk away, for instance, instead of being lost out of time, with a beast on the threshold and a desert beyond. Every time she thought she had a grasp of what was going on here she lost it again. The man was one surprise after another, and none of them pleasant.

He reached towards her, his pupils vast, crowding out the whites. She thought of Raul; of how there was beauty in his gaze, despite his hybrid's face. There was no beauty here; nothing even vaguely readable. No appet.i.te; no anger. If there was feeling at all, it was eclipsed.

"I can't do this," she said.

"You must. Give up the body. I have to have the body or the Iad wins. You want that?"

"No!"

"Then stop resisting. Your spirit'll be safe in Trinity."

"Where?"

Momentarily he let something show in his eyes, a spark of fury-self-directed, she thought.

"Trinity:'" she said, throwing the question out to delay his touching and claiming her. "What's Trinity?"

As she asked this question several things happened simultaneously, their speed defying her power to divide one from the other, but central to them all the fact that his hold on the situation slipped as she asked him about Trinity. First she felt the smoke dissolving above her, its weight no longer bearing her down. Taking her chance while it was still available she reached for the handle of the door. Her eyes were still on him however, and in the same instant as her release she saw him transfigured. It was a glimpse, no more, but so powerful as to be unforgettable. He appeared with his upper body covered in blood, splashes of it reaching as far as his face. He knew she saw, because his hands went up to cover the stains, but his hands and arms were also running with blood. Was it his? Before she could look to find a wound he had control of the vision once again, but like a juggler attempting to hold too many b.a.l.l.s in the air catching one meant losing another. The blood vanished, and he appeared before her unscathed again, only to unleash some other secret his will had kept in check.

It was far more cataclysmic than the blood splashes: its shock wave striking the door behind her. Too powerful for the Lix, even if they were ma.s.sed, it was a force Kissoon was clearly in terror of. His eyes went from her to the door itself, his hands dropping to his sides and all expression gone from his face. She sensed that every particle of his energies was being put to a single purpose: the stilling of whatever raged on the threshold. This too had its consequence, as the hold he'd had upon her-bringing her here, and keeping her-finally and comprehensively slipped. She felt the reality she'd left catch hold of her spine, and pull. She didn't even attempt to resist. It was as inevitable a claim as gravity.

The last glimpse she had of Kissoon he was once more bloodstained, and standing, his face still drained of expression in front of the door. Then it threw itself open.

There was a moment when she was certain whatever had beaten against the door would be waiting on the step to devour her, and Kissoon too. She thought she even glimpsed its brightness-so bright, so blindingly bright-flood Kis-soon's features. But his will got the better of it at the last moment, and its glare diminished at the very moment the world she'd left claimed her and hauled her through the door.

She was flung back the way she'd come, at ten times the speed of her arrival, so fast she wasn't even able to interpret the sights she was pa.s.sing-the steel tower, the town-until she was miles beyond them.

She wasn't alone this time, however. There was somebody near to her, calling her name.

"Tesla? Tesla! Tesla!"

She knew the voice. It was Raul.

"I hear you," she muttered, aware that through the blur of speed another, darker reality was vaguely visible. There were points of light in it-candle flames perhaps-and faces.

"Tesla!"

"Almost there," she gasped. "Almost there. Almost there."

Now the desert was being subsumed; the darkness took precedence. She opened her eyes wide to see Raul more clearly. There was a wide smile on his face as he went down on his haunches to greet her.

"You came back," he said.

The desert had gone. It was all night now. Stones beneath her, stars above; and, as she guessed, candles, being carried by a ring of astonished women.

Beneath her, between body and ground, were the clothes she'd slipped from when she'd called her body to her, recreating it in Kissoon's Loop. She reached up to touch Raul's face, as much as to be certain she was indeed back in the solid world as for the contact. His cheeks were wet.

"You've been working hard," she said, thinking it was sweat. Then she realized her error. Not sweat at all; tears.

"Oh, poor Raul," she said, and sat up to embrace him. "Did I disappear completely?"

He pressed himself to her. "First like fog," he said. "Then...just gone."

"Why are we here?" she said. "I was in the Mission when he shot me."

Thinking of the shot, she looked down at where the bullet had struck. There was no wound; not even blood.

"The Nuncio," she said. "It healed me."

The fact was not lost on the women. Seeing the unmarked skin they muttered prayers, and backed away.

"No..." she murmured, still looking down at her body. "It wasn't the Nuncio. This is the body I imagined."

"Imagined?" said Raul.

"Conjured," she replied, scarcely even aware of Raul's confusion because she had a puzzle of her own. Her left nipple, twice the size of its neighbor, was now on the right. She kept staring at them, shaking her head. It wasn't the kind of thing she'd make a mistake about. Somehow, on the journey to the Loop, or back, she'd been flipped. She brought her legs up for study. Several scratches-Dutch's work-that had adorned one shin now marked the other.

"I can't figure it," she said to Raul.

Not even understanding the question he was hard-pressed to reply, so simply shrugged.

"Never mind," she said, and started to get dressed.

Only then did she ask what had happened to the Nuncio.

"Did I get it all?" she said.

"No. The Death-Boy got it."

"Tommy-Ray? Oh Jesus. So now the Jaff has a son and a half."

"But you were touched too," Raul said. "So was I. It got into my hand. Climbed up to the elbow."

"So it's us against them."

Raul shook his head. "I can't be of use to you," he said.

"You can and you must," she said. "There's so many questions we have to have answered. I can't do it on my own. You must come with me."

His reluctance was perfectly apparent without his voicing it.

"I know you're afraid. But please, Raul. You brought me back from the dead-"

"Not me."

"You helped. You wouldn't want that wasted, would you?"

She could hear something of Kissoon's persuasions in her own, and didn't much like the sound. But then she'd never experienced a steeper learning curve in her life than in the time she'd spent with Kissoon. He'd made his mark without so much as laying a finger on her. But if she'd been asked whether he was a liar or a prophet, a savior or a lunatic, she couldn't have said. Perhaps that ambiguity was the steepest part of the curve, though what lesson she'd gained from it she couldn't say.

Her thoughts went back to Raul, and his reluctance. There was no time for involved argument. "You simply have to come," she told him. "There's no getting out of it."

"But the Mission-"

"-is empty, Raul. The only treasure it had was the Nuncio, and that's gone."

"It had memories," he said softly, the tense of his reply signalling his acceptance.

"There'll be other memories. Better times to remember," she said. "Now...if you've got people to say goodbye to, say it, because we're rolling-"

He nodded, and began to address the women in Spanish. Tesla had a smattering of the language; enough to confirm that he was indeed making his farewells. Leaving him to it, she headed up the hill towards the car.

As she walked the solution to the puzzle of the flipped body appeared in her head, without the problem being consciously turned. In Kissoon's hut she'd imagined herself the way she most often saw herself: in a mirror. How many times in her thirty odd years had she looked at her own reflection, building up a portrait in which right was left, and vice versa?

She'd come back from the Loop a different woman, literally; a woman who'd only ever existed as an image in gla.s.s. Now that image was flesh and blood, and walking the world. Behind its face the mind remained the same, she hoped, albeit touched by the Nuncio, and by knowing Kissoon. Not, in sum, negligible influences.