"Thank you, Mister Jim." Peter handed the old man an-other dollar. The withered hand tucked it into a coat pocket as the ancient bellman left.

He stretched out on the bed to relax, and thought back to the day he had gone walking on the beach. It had been shortly after his father died, scarcely three months after he took the last whale. His mother had found him slumped in his chair in that darkened living room.

He had walked to Blind Point in search of adventure. He came upon an old shed, almost ready to collapse from the weatherings of wind, salt, and time. A row of large copper pots set on stones ran the length of the shed. The remains of a bleached skeleton lifted long, white ribs from the sand nearby.

He picked up some small rocks, threw them at the flat water, and counted their jumps. He sat on the warm sand, and listened to the small groundswell waves dying on the beach. He stared out over the vast gray ocean, and smelled the salt air. This was where he belonged. To the sea.

He rose without knowing why and gathered sticks and driftwood planks from the beach. He heaped them under the nearest pot. It seemed the thing to do.

His small hand pulled a clutch of kitchen matches from his pocket, and he started his fire with some dried seaweed.

The fire caught, and soon the sticks were burning furiously, smoke leaping into the afternoon sky. He sat down beside the pot, and stared at his fire. It was, somehow, right and good. His mother seized him from behind, and jerked him to his feet. "No!" she screamed, "the sea can't have you." She grasped his collar, and walked him quickly back to town.

She kept him in the house, with the curtains drawn, until they left Greystone Bay a week later. She never spoke of that day again.

Peter woke with an uneasy start. Where was he? What was this place? He stared up from the bed, and recognition came as he focused on the ceiling fixture. Yes, the SeaHarp. He must have dozed off for a moment. He needed to think about going downstairs and sampling the cuisine. Our goal is to make you a most enjoyable dinner. He smiled at the thought.

He crossed the dim room and looked out the window again. It was not yet totally dark, but the fogbank had covered the town. Streetlights had come on, piercing the fog in fuzzy points. The oaks outside were no longer a brilliant red, but dark brown, their withered, dying leaves rustling in the breeze. A car passed below, leaving dark tracks in the black street made shiny by the damp fogfall.

As Peter looked out the chill came back suddenly, clutch-ing his spine, moving into his belly. He trembled and stared at the floor, ashamed of the trembling, confused by the fear. Of what? What was here to be afraid of? Then he whim-pered, softly, so his mother, dead for ten years, wouldn't hear.

He had to do something. Had to find out what it was. He raised the window and leaned forward, listening. There. A dinging bell. Buoy marker probably. Ringing for any poor sailors caught out on an evening like this.

The fog swirled and he could see the ships, the black ships with their rotted sheets and lines, masts jutting up through the mist like markers for the dead.

He descended the wide stairway into the hotel's great hall. Nobody there. Sounds from inside the dining room told of meals being served. A large painting, browning with age like the leaves outside, showed a whaling scene, longboatrising over a black wave, a sailor in the bow hoisting a long harpoon as the gray whale looked up with fear. The lone, shielded lamp over the canvas cast a pale, yellow light that seemed to fall only on that red eye. Had that been there before? He couldn't remember.

He lit a cigarette, and pulled his jacket closer as he stepped down onto the sidewalk. It was cool, but the damp fog and light breeze made it seem colder. Or was it the fear again? He crossed the road and moved toward the docks, toward the old, tall ships. The second one, Mister Jim had said.

In the darkness he could barely make out the faint, gold-leafed outline of his mother's name painted on the bow. A lighter shade of wood showed where a carved maiden had once adorned the ship. Peter tested the ramp that led from the pier to the deck. Was it safe? Was anything safe?

He stepped down onto the deck, and felt the soft planks give under his feet. He walked aft, feeling his way along the railing he used both for guidance and support. He moved very slowly through the darkness that covered the three-masted ship.

He climbed four steps and ducked as a line brushed against his forehead. Here was where the wheel would be, and the binnacle. But they were gone to the same thieving salvagers who'd stolen the maiden. He crept to the high stern, and looked out into the dark fog. The buoy dinged again, swaying softly in the undulating water. It was so quiet. He could have been at sea, becalmed. Waiting for help, or salvation. Or understanding. So still.

He thought of his father, gone to sea too much of the time. Now gone forever. He had wanted his father's hand on the rudder of his childhood. Had his father loved the sea more than him?

A great black shape rose up from the dark water. Peter jumped back, and a scream died in his throat. The black head spouted mist into the air. The air hole shut, but the dark shape did not move. Water oozed down its sides, flowing along old scars.

Peter stared down at the whaleshape in the darkness. The whale squeaked a low, sad sound that ended on a lower note. It squeaked again, louder. Then it shrieked a cry of pain that forced him back from the rail.

He stumbled over unseen debris as he ran back toward the gangplank. A board cracked beneath his foot, and he caught himself on the railing. The ramp sagged under his feet as he jumped from the ship.

He ran along Harbor Road through the dark fog, past the SeaHarp without noticing, and on along the waterfront. No cars passed. No voices. Not a soul, anywhere that he could see. A wind off the ocean freshened and blew against him.

The calf! That had been his father's crime. The whalechild had been too young to survive without its mother. He had killed it as surely as if he had speared it in the heart.

Peter slowed to a walk, caught his breath, and felt the freshening wind. A storm was coming. He had not noticed the last building where the sidewalk stopped, but he moved over to walk in the street. Only his soft footsteps, and the rising surf bothered the night.

It was as if no time passed. He walked on, trying to think, to shake off the chill that still held him like a cuttlefish grip-ping its victim, awful maw ready to devour. The pavement ended, and he continued along the dirt road that wound its way near the shore.

He heard the splashing of waves. The wind blew the fog apart, shredding it. His soul trembled. Oh, God, he thought, why was he here? He saw an irregular shape in the darkness ahead, and he ran toward it.

It was a fallen-down shed, the remains of old timbers stick-ing up out of the beach sand like the black skeleton of some great, dead animal. And a row of large, round pots. He moved closer, reached out slowly, and touched one. He stuck his clammy fingers into his mouth, and tasted the oxides of copper mixed with the metallic taste of fear.

Then he knew why he was here.

He knew why his mother had taken her seven-year-old son away. Away from all boats. Away from the bay. He knew why she had taken him far inland. Why she had settled him down in a small town far from the sea, and the whales.

He ripped a plank from its anchoring beam, and heaved it under the nearest great copper pot. He grunted as he worked, squinting in determination as he groped in the darkness for sticks of driftwood. Panting, he moved from one timber to the next, grabbing the smaller boards and ripping the half-rotted wood from the nails.

Lightning tore the black sky. Rain was coming. He had to hurry.He threw off his jacket and added it to the fuel under the pot. His shoes were next. He tore at his shirt, and then his trousers and undergarments.

His lighter sputtered against the wind, but the sheltered fire caught. The flames danced under the pot, then leaped up its sides.

He stood naked in the darkness, thrust up his heaving chest, and tilted his head far back. When he lowered his head and opened his eyes he saw the great shape again, mounding above the surging black water.

The fire licked the huge pot. It was ready.

The first raindrop struck his face, slid down, sizzled against hot metal. He shouted against the gale that whipped the waves into frenzy, but his words were lost in the raging storm.

Another raindrop struck his shoulder. Glided down. And sizzled.

AQUARIUM.

by Steve Rasnic Tem

In the orphanage they'd had an aquarium. A wooden model of the ancient, sprawling orphanage itself, open at the top, had served as a frame for the ordinary glass aquarium inside.

The orphanage was always receiving unusual gifts like that-giant gingerbread men, dolls with some president's face, doll houses modeled after some famous building. There'd be an article in the paper each time with a picture of the donor and his gift, surrounded by dozens of children with practiced smiles.

Other benefactors hosted special events. The SeaHarp used to throw parties for the children of the orphanage every year, parties that sometimes lasted for days, with the children sleeping in the hotel. Michael knew he had attended several of them, but he had been so young at the time-not more than four or five-he really couldn't remember them.

The aquarium had had a little brass plaque: "Gift of Mar-tin O'Brien." Michael had heard that the fellow had been some sort of fisherman, and himself an orphan. Many of the gifts were supposedly from former residents of the orphan-age. But Michael never actually believed that there was such a thing as a former resident; the place marked you forever. Sometimes he would wonder what he would give to the or-phanage when he got old and successful.

Sometimes the fish would swim up to the tiny model win-dows and look out. One of the older boys said that fish could barely see past their mouths, but they sure looked like they were peering out at you. As if you were a prospective parent and today was visitor's day. That's the way the children al-ways looked on visitor's day, Michael thought: staring wide-eyed out the windows and moving their gills in and out nervously. Trying to look like whoever these prospective par-ents expected you to look like. Trying to look like you'd fit right in to their family. Sometimes when the light was right in the aquarium room you could see your own reflection in these windows, superimposed over the fish. Looking in, and looking out. Waiting.

In the orphanage Michael used to dream that he had no face. He was waiting for someone to choose a face for him.

Until then, he had the open-mouthed, wide- and wet-eyed face of a fish.

Now, in Greystone Bay, Michael got into a green cab that said "Two Crazy Brothers Cab Co." on the door. He won-dered if that meant there were two identical cabs, a brother driving each one, or perhaps only one cab with which they alternated shifts-Greystone Bay was, after all, a relatively small place. Or perhaps there were dozens of such cabs, and the brothers didn't drive anymore, being president and vice-president of the company, or perhaps co-vice-presidents, their mother or father taking the largely honorary presidential post. It was difficult to know exactly who his driver was, and what he expected from him.

"Not many go to the SeaHarp this time o' year," the driver said.

Michael glanced at the rear-view mirror and fixed on the driver's eyes. Seeing just the slice of face holding the eyesbothered him. He'd never been able to tell much from eyes-people's eyes had always seemed somewhat interchangeable. Seeing just that cut-out of someone's eyes led him to imagine that they were his own eyes, transplanted somehow into someone else's shadowy face. A social worker at the orphan-age had once given him a toy that rearranged slices of faces like that, a chin, a mouth, a nose, eyes, hair, all from differ-ent characters mixed and matched. After a while the partic-ular arrangement hadn't seemed to matter. It was the very act of changing which had been important.

"You must like a quiet holiday," the cab driver said.

Michael looked at the mirror eyes which might have been his own. He wondered what the driver's mouth was like, whether it conveyed a message different from that of the eyes. "Why do you say that?"

"Like I said. Before. Nobody much comes to the SeaHarp this time of year. Thanksgiving through Christmas, right up 'til the party on New Year's Eve. Then the whole town turns out. But up 'til then, that's their dead season. People are home with their families, not in some hotel."

"Well, I don't have a family, I'm afraid."

The driver was silent a moment. Then, "Didn't think you did."

Michael held himself stiff, eyes motionless. They always seem to know. How do they always know? Then he forced himself to relax, wondering what it was the cab driver might like to see. What kind of passenger he might like and admire. Just like a good orphan. He could feel the themes of inde-pendence and "good business" entering his relaxed facial muscles, his posture.

"Too busy building a career, I guess." He let slip a self-amused chuckle. "A fellow my age, his career takes up most of his time."

"Your age?"

"Twenty-five." He'd lied by twelve years, but he could see in the mirror eyes that the driver believed him, apparently not seeing all the age signs (hat made that unlikely. People be-lieved a good orphan. "I'm an architect."

"A sudden, new respect in those mirror eyes. "Really? They planning to expand up there at the SeaHarp? Maybe they know some things about money coming into the Bay us reg-ular working folk don't?"

"I really couldn't say . . ."

"Or maybe they're going to remodel. You gonna give that old lady a facelift?"

"Really. I couldn't."

"Hey, I get ya. I understand." One of the mirror eyes half-winked.

The driver offered to carry his bags up the steps to the hotel, but Michael told him that wasn't necessary. "Travel light in my business." The driver nodded as if he knew ex-actly what Michael was talking about. Michael gave him a generous tip anyway; he had to. Walking up the steps he wondered if he had enough expense money left.

In the dark, the SeaHarp was magnificent. Its classical lines flowed sweetly into the shadows left and right; its silhouette climbed smoothly out of the porchlight with very few of the architectural afterthoughts that spoiled the proportions of so many of its type. Outside lighting had been kept to a mini-mum, forcing the night-time visitor to focus on the win-dows-so many windows-exaggerating the width of that first floor.

But then most old buildings looked impressive in the dark. He hoped it lived up to its promise in the less forgiving day-light. That's when you could tell just how much of the SeaHarp's budget had been alloted to maintenance and repair over the years. By mid-morning he'd be able to spot any dry-rot or sagging wood. He could already tell the SeaHarp had been fitted with Dutch gutters in spots-the downspouts went right up into the enclosed eaves-a real problem with water damage if they hadn't been refurbished recently.

Something bothered him about the windows. It was silly, and these little naggings he was prey to now and then made him angry; he didn't like to think of himself as irrational. Rationality had always meant safety. All the kids he'd grown up with in the orphanage and all their dreams-it had given them nothing but a crib of pain as far as he could see.

And yet he took the few steps up onto the porch and stopped, compelled to examine these windows beforeenter-ing.

The glass was extraordinarily clean. A good omen. In fact the glass was so clean you'd hardly know it was there. It was an invisible barrier separating what was in-the contents, the atmosphere of the hotel-from what was out.

Michael imag-ined the heavy pressure of that atmosphere-the accumulated breath and spirit of all those visitors over all those years- pushing mightily against that glass which had to be so strong, so finely crafted. Like an aquarium.

He stepped closer to the glass. Inside, the furniture and the carpets were of sea colors, blue and blue-green, the wall-paper a faded blue. The guests moved slowly from setting to setting. As if asleep. Or as if underwater. Their faces, blue and green, pumping the heavy, ancient hotel air. Michael wondered if they could see him outside the glass, peering into their underwater world, seeing his own face in the faces of all these fish.

He walked gingerly to the main door and opened it, took a deep breath. The moist air quickly escaped, pushing over the porch and wetting his face and hair. Stepping inside, he pulled the door tightly, sealing himself in.

He forced himself to remember who he was and the nature the task he had been hired for. He was pleased to see that much of the furniture in the lobby and other public areas dated back to the original con-struction of the hotel; whether it was original to the SeaHarp itself, of course, remained to be seen. And there was so much of it. On impulse he crouched as low as possible for a child's eye view, and peered along the floor at a sea of Victorian furniture legs: rosewood and black walnut with the charac-teristic cabriole carving and rudimentary feet supporting a Gallic ornateness of leaved, flowered, and fruited moldings and upholsteries. Here and there among the Victorian legs there were the occasional modern, straight-legged anachro-nisms, or, stranger still, legs of curly maple and cherry, spi-rally reeded or acanthus-leaf carved American Empire pieces, or, going back even further, Sheraton mahogany with satin-wood. Michael wondered if the original builder-Bolgran he believed was the name-had brought some older, family pieces into the hotel when he moved in.

No one appeared to be watching, so Michael went down to his knees, lowering his head to scan the floor even better. And then he remembered: four years old, and all the legs and furniture had been trees and caves to him, as he raced across the lobby on hands and knees, so fast that Mr. Dobbins, the supervisor that day, had been unable to catch him. Every time Dobbins had gotten close Michael had hidden under a partic-ularly well-stuffed item, sitting there trying not to giggle while Dobbins called and pleaded with increasing volume. Dob-bins' tightly-panted gabardine legs-old, stiff, a bit crooked-seemed like all those other legs of the forest while he was still, and once he moved it was as if the whole forest of legs moved, and when other adult legs joined the search, it felt like a forest in a hurricane, legs sliding across the floor, crashing to the floor, old voices cracking with alarm. At the time he'd thought about staying in that forest forever, maybe grabbing a few of his friends and living there, but then Dob-bins had lifted the chair from over him, there was daylight and thunder overhead, and Michael was lifted skyward.

He stood up, dusted off his pants, and headed toward the desk. Still looking around. No one had noticed. Good. He made himself look professional.

Numerous secretaries and writing desks lined the far wall of the lobby, including two excellent drop-fronts of the French secretaire a abattant type, built all in one piece, which must have been brought up from New Orleans at no small expense. He couldn't wait to open them up and examine the insides.

He continued to the registration desk, his eyes alert for the odd detail, the surprise.

Victor Montgomery sat motionless on the other side of his desk. He seemed strangely out of place, and yet Michael could not imagine this man being anywhere else. Perhaps it was the clothes: all of them a size too large, including the collar. But the knot of the tie was firm and tight, and the suit wasn't particularly wrinkled from enclosing a body too small for it. It was as if Montgomery had shrunk after putting the suit on. The desk appeared too large for him, as well.

As did the black phone, the blotter, the desk lamp with the green glass shade. They seemed huge to Michael. And Victor Montgomery seemed an infant, forcing his small wrinkled head out of the huge collar, his baby face glowing red from the exertion, his small eyes having difficulty focusing.

"There is quite a lot to catalogue," Montgomery said, his baby eyes straying. "The furniture in all the rooms, the pub-lic areas, the storage cellars. As well as all the art and ac-cessory items, of course. You will not be inventorying the family's private quarters or the attics, however, nor will you be permitted access to a few odd rooms. But those are locked, in any case. If there is any question, I expect you to ask."

"I can assure you there will be no problem completing the inventory in the allotted time. Perhaps even sooner."

Mi-chael permitted just a hint of laughter into his voice, thinking it might show enthusiasm.

Montgomery looked like a baby startled by a sudden noise. "I did not expect there would be.""No, of course not. I just thought that if you were leaving the family quarters, the attics, or any other areas off my as-signment for fear of the time they would take, I should re-assure you that they would be no problem as well. I have done a number of these hotel inventories and have become quite efficient, I assure you."

"Any furniture in those off-limit areas I wanted invento-ried has already been moved into rooms 312 and 313. You will evaluate each piece, make recommendations as to which should remain part of the Seaharp collection-whether be-cause of historical interest, rarity, or to illustrate a particular theme, I do not care-and which might be sold at auction. Any marginal items of dubious functionality should be dis-posed of as quickly and inexpensively as possible.

Most im-portantly, I want a complete record and evaluation of all items in the hotel. I am quite sure we have been pilfered in the past and am determined to put a stop to it."

Michael nodded, doodling in his pad as if he had recorded every word. The infant's head was frighteningly red.

"May I start tonight?"

"If you wish. In fact I would suggest that you do much of your work at night. That will avoid distracting the help from their work, not to mention attracting their curiosity."

"And that would be a problem?"

"I do not want them to think I distrust them. Although, of course, I do. You will be eating Thanksgiving dinner here."

Michael didn't know if that was a question or an order. "I had planned on it, if possible."

"What of your family?"

"I have none. And no other place to go this holiday."

The infant looked vaguely distressed, as if it had filled its diapers. "I am sorry to hear that. A family is a great source of strength. It is important to belong." Michael waited for him to say something specific about his own family, but he did not.

"I feel I am a member of the family of man," Michael lied.

The infant looked confused. "An orphan?"

"Yes, in fact the children of the orphanage came here over a number of years for a kind of holiday. Even I . . ."