The center of the web grew wider, the intensity of its light almost too painful to look at, so Martin began to close his eyes.

"Don't," said Jerry. "It's important that you see this. Otherwise you might talk yourself out of believing it later."

The glow spread farther, a bit less intense now, flowing across the floor, over the ceiling, and down the walls, swallowing the image of the gym like a slow cross-fade in a movie, and a few moments later Martin found himself standing in the center of a great structure whose interior dimensions were circ.u.mscribed by a roof and walls made from brightly-colored tarpaulin-a traditional circus tent, held upright by seven ma.s.sive wood beams placed at evenly-s.p.a.ced intervals around the gigantic center pole. The sawdust-thick three-ring floor was surrounded by bleachers that reached so far upward and back Martin couldn't see the top rows.

The interior of this tent was easily ten times the size of the gym-h.e.l.l, it was probably five times the size of The Center itself.

"What is all this?"

Jerry shook his head. "Man, you really do have to be slammed in the skull with a sledgehammer sometimes, don't you? This is-duh!-a circus, Einstein! You told Bob that you'd never been to one, remember?"

Martin shook his head. "No. I'm sorry, but . . . no."

"That's all right, you probably don't remember much about that day except buying the watercolor from him; but he remembered every detail of the twenty minutes he spent in your company: the things you said about his work, the hot dog and soda you bought for him from the street vendor, you're talking to him about wanting to be a writer, the stories you exchanged about DeVito's, but most of all, he remembered your kindness. He was not a man accustomed to being shown kindness, odd little fellow that he was. But that day meant everything to him. Everything. This is his way of thanking you . . . and of showing you what's about to be lost, if you don't help us."

"How the f.u.c.k am I supposed to help him? I can't even hold my own life together."

"Says you."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n right, says me."

"And now," said Jerry, ignoring Martin's protests and removing his hat with a flourish, then taking a deep bow, "allow me to introduce our performers; they are all that remain of the painter's imagination-and don't think it was easy gathering them all back from the ether. Now sit your a.s.s down and enjoy the show."

Martin stumbled back to the bleachers and sat in the first row. An elegant woman with the head of a horse, vapor jutting from the nostrils, glided by, handing him a cone of cotton candy and a paper plate bearing a funnel cake.

Martin bit into the cotton candy, reveling in its thick, sugary texture and sweet taste, then took a bite from the funnel cake and actually groaned, it was so delicious.

The air erupted with music from calliopes and steam organs and colorful Orchestmelochors puffing out a steady, rhythmic melody-oompah-pah, oompah-pah, oompah-pah-PAH-that Martin thought was as close as any sound ever came to capturing the essence of childhood in a few simple tones; under this sound emerged the thrum of tympani, the boom of drum, the crash of symbols and the ping of triangles wrapping their merriment around the silver gaiety of bell and chime; sunburst steel gongs resounded percussive laughter as swirling songs from whistle and reed were joined by cithara, syrinx, and flute; the bra.s.sy calls of horns and tuba flanked the bl.u.s.ter of bag-pipes whose five-drone bellow was a call to celebration, gathering the sounds into a wide, warm pair of hands that affectionately cupped Martin's face and said, "C'mon, let's have a grin."

Jerry moved to the front of the Center Ring. "I give you the Grand Entrance Parade of the Circus of the Mind and the Heart."

The pageant continued with triumphal and tableau cars, some with flat paintings on their sides, others with high-relief carvings interspersed with mirrors. The head car was a magnificent gallery unto itself; full-sized human and animal figures crowded its curved body, surrounded by profuse hand-carved ornamentation depicting scenes of myth and allegory ranging from Jason and the Argonauts to Mother Goose and The Brothers Grimm and countless tales between; emerging from the top of the car was a statue of Perseus riding high on the back of Pegasus while battling the scaly kraken. Vibrant banners fluttered from the corners of every wagon, trailing toy balloons made of goatskin bladder; broad-t.o.s.s.e.rs ballyhooed the camel punks & clockers; medicine-show mountebanks pitched to ponging kinkers and spanglers; gilly wagons of jossers and Pierrot clowns tossed flower petals and confetti; acrobats from Crete astounded the gajos, flatties, and yobs, while Ptolemy II's ropedancers waltzed effortlessly over the heads of all; there were exotic birds in cages of reed, cheetahs astride unicycles, elephants on velocipedes; hyenas and tigers, serpent and deer; zebra and dromedary, elk and lion; sorrels and pinto and bays; roans dancing the Two-Step; Italian funambuli; Roman mansuetarii; Libyan skiapodes; riders on horseback veering their routines between the militarial uber die Erde-making their horses spin into figures that caused all four feet to leave the ground-and the more elegant Auf die Erde style, the rider sitting immobile as the horse waltzed, side-stepped, then trotted forward, its mane flowing proudly; and at the rear of the procession, their heads at least four times too big for their squat, compacted bodies, with faces that were comically elongated, not so much walking as lurching from side to side on their stubby legs, a group of performers announced as The Tumblesands executed their specialty: collapsing sentient probability waves in a slapstick-agile manner that would have made Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton proud.

"Well?" said Jerry, suddenly at Martin's side. "You digging this?"

Martin was so overwhelmed he could barely find his voice. "I can't . . . I can't fathom that one man's mind came up with all . . . all this!"

"There was a thousand times this much before Gash came alive-a thousand-thousand times this. What you're seeing here are the sc.r.a.ps, the broken bits, the damaged goods."

"They're . . . amazing." Until this moment, Martin Tyler had never been in the physical presence of anyone or anything that he would have called miraculous; now, with his unblinking gaze locked on the sights before him, he thought without any cheap sentiment that he might be seeing a glimpse of Heaven as he'd imagined it to be as a child.

"You're not that far off the mark," said Jerry. "Thinking that."

"How did you know what I was-?"

"I told you, Gash is sleeping for the moment. We've-Bob and I-we've got a little time and a little more power than we'd have otherwise."

Everything seemed to be spinning, rising, expanding; the calliope music growing faster, happier, the singing more joyous: the sound of sweet summer laughter released from a jar.

"So it's not going to last, is it?" asked Martin.

"Nothing much does, in the end-but that doesn't mean it has no value, no consequence."

The musicians and performers began to move into place; for what, Martin didn't know and couldn't possibly guess . . . but he sure as h.e.l.l wasn't going to miss it. "Earlier today, when you told me how you managed to escape, how Bob '. . . called on some superhuman reserve of will' that you couldn't comprehend . . . you lied to me, didn't you?"

"'Lied' is such an ugly term," said Jerry. "Let's just say that I rearranged the facts to form a more palatable truth."

"You lied."

Jerry shrugged. "I lied."

Martin looked at him. "What are the Onlookers?"

Jerry took off his mask and smiled. "That is not the question I was expecting."

"Happy to disappoint you. Well?"

"They are the watchers through whose eyes G.o.d witnesses what we create and what we destroy. I suppose a simpler way to put it is, they're G.o.d's art critics, and humankind is the work in progress. Doesn't do to underwrite an artist who never keeps trying to expand his or her creative horizons. Os Anjos de Percepco; Die Engel der Wahrnehmung; Angely Vospriyatiya; Los angeles de Percepcion-"

"The Angels of Perception."

"Retained a little Spanish from high school, I see."

Martin looked back out at the circus. "Is Bob human?"

"More or less."

"Oh, that clears things right up, thanks."

"I'm trying to explain this in the simplest terms possible, work with me, okay? And stop worrying that you're living in your own private Idaho, all right?"

"Okay."

Below, the baccha.n.a.l of performers swirled: One thing became many: a white rhino, grains of sand.

Many things became one: an antelope herd, an emerald wheel.

"Have you ever read Atlas Shrugged?" asked Jerry.

"Yeah. It got a little wordy, but I liked it."

"What if-and this may require a great leap of faith and imagination for someone of your endearing but nonetheless limited capabilities-what if it were possible to simply will the world to stop spinning on its axis? Only you would have the power to do it, and no one else could notice until you said so."

"The planet would go hurtling into the sun and we'd all be vapor in a millisecond."

"That is one cheery outlook you're walking around with. No, it would not go hurtling into the sun, not if you didn't want it to. Try getting into the spirit of this, it'll go faster."

"All right, fine-I can stop the world on its axis and prevent it from going into the sun and no one knows this but me. Then what?"

"The real world goes on, oblivious to this wonder you've performed, so . . . you perform another. You go into Fountainhead mode and do a Howard Roarke, build the most astonishing building, a fantastic piece of architecture that hasn't been seen since the Tower of Babel, then you tear it down because it isn't perfect and you build another one, a better one-only in this case, since no one can consciously register what you're doing, you re-create the whole effing world, turning it into this fabulous, breathtaking, mind-blowing work of Art. Think about it! You could destroy and re-create the world a million times over and no one but you would know it until you decreed otherwise."

"And by then it would be too late for anyone to stop you."

"But why would they want to? When the real world gets too horrible, then the real world must be altered."

Martin laughed but there was no humor in it. "And whose job is it to make these covert alterations that the rest of us don't notice?"

Jerry said nothing, only stared at him in the same way a patient parent will stare at a child as they wait for it to realize something on its own.

"Oh, no," said Martin. "Huh-uh, no way, not buying it, nope, sorry."

Jerry pointed toward the Center Ring, where ballerinas pirouetted on the backs of marble manticores, starlight and meteor dust flowing from their fingertips; where dwarves with leopards' heads leapt over one another, becoming the base equations of infinite mathematical theorems; where selachian angels, their luminous wings the pectoral fins of stingrays, arose from the bosoms of tigers; where scores of young lovers emerged from velvety chrysalides, bringing forth all their past and future generations in an unending procession; where a black hawk wearing a feathered headdress and calling himself Golgi tamed the Wild Machines; where a turtle named Kobios, the Master of Notion Games, wore a large-brimmed fedora like some private eye from a Forties detective movie and made the sawdust sing; where the circus historian, Voices Carry, dressed in a clattering bone robe into which were carved the faces of all who had performed in the Center Ring, conducted the musicians with a wand made from second thoughts; and where a gla.s.s owl called Patience Worth flew around filling its belly with the stray bits of distraction that might interfere with anyone's performance.

Martin jumped to his feet, flinging away the cotton candy and dropping the funnel cake. "So I was nice to him, so what? That doesn't make me anything special."

"It does to him. To us."

"What is he? And don't give me that 'more or less' human s.h.i.t, I need to know."

"Why?"

"Because I . . ." He felt the tears forming in his eyes and hated himself for being so weak yet again. "Because I need something to believe in. I need to believe that I'll be at ease in my own skin one day, that something I've done matters, that I can still fall in love with . . . anything-a woman, a song, an idea! I need to believe that there's more than just breathing and taking up s.p.a.ce and collecting a paycheck every two weeks. I need to know if . . ."

"If what?"

". . . nothing . . ."

"Say it."

"f.u.c.k you."

"Ever the eloquent one-say it."

Martin balled his hands into fists and pressed them against his legs, his body shaking. Oh, yeah-you're living in your own private Idaho, all right.

"Fine," said Jerry. "Then let's see if we can't jog a little something loose, shall we?"

He rose to his feet and lifted his right hand.

The performers in all three rings froze in place, and from the very center of the Center Ring a ripple appeared in the atmosphere and one of the Onlookers stepped through, the ripple closing behind it (for a flash Martin saw the wall of the gym, then it was the circus again). It leaned forward, opening only one of its bra.s.s half-sphere eyes, projecting a beam that solidified a few feet from where Martin stood.

He was looking at the image of himself talking to Dr. Hayes, who was saying: ". . . if you will tell me, to the best of your recollection, where you were and what you were doing when you first made the decision to start planning your own death, we'll call it a day and take up at that point tomorrow, all right?"

Martin looked down and shook his head. "This isn't fair."

"Oh, give me a break!" said Jerry. "Is that the best you can come up with? 'Fair' is for six-year-olds playing with marbles or horseshoes; the stakes are a bit higher here."

Martin looked back to himself and Dr. Hayes. His projected self was saying: "I'd stripped the floor in one of the second-floor women's rest rooms and was re-waxing it. I started in the toilet stalls and worked my way out-that's how you do it if you don't want to wax yourself into a corner. But when you start in the stalls, you have to do it on your hands and knees, with rubber gloves and a sponge and the wax in a bucket. You dip the sponge in, then spread it on the floor, being careful not to splash any on the toilet base or the wall tiles down there. It's kind of like painting, and it takes a while.

"I'd laid the first two coats in all the stalls, and was just starting to lay the last one when I stopped, sat back, and really looked at it. It was a good job, the corners were sharp, nothing on the base or the walls, the coats were smooth . . . and it occurred to me that this didn't matter! I'd just spent forty minutes doing something that no one except maybe the building manager was going to notice or care about. And I got to thinking about something Dad used to say after he'd had a really rotten day at the plant-and there were a lot of those: 'At least it's honest work, there's no shame in that.' But I could tell, every time he said that, I could tell that he didn't really believe it, that he felt ashamed, because who gives a d.a.m.n about the person who cuts the blades for the saws you buy at the hardware store, or who waxes behind the women's toilet? I sat there looking at this smooth job, asking myself what else I could have done with those forty minutes if I had them back, and . . . I couldn't come up with anything. My whole G.o.dd.a.m.n life was right there in that freshly-waxed corner behind the toilet: a lot of careful effort put into something that was ultimately meaningless. I watched my parents work s.h.i.t factory jobs their entire lives, sometimes coming home so sore and tired they could barely force down some dinner, and all it did was lessen them, diminish them in their own eyes, suck the joy out of them until they'd finally put in enough years to retire, and by that time they were both so f.u.c.king sick they couldn't enjoy it. So I looked at that perfectly-waxed corner and decided, screw it; you're forty-four years old, if you were going to do anything of value or importance with your life, you'd have done it by now, so why drag this out?

"That's when I decided to do it. Happy now?"

Dr. Hayes smiled and leaned forward, patting Martin's shoulder. "You probably don't know it, but you've told me an awful lot today. Thank you."

The Onlooker closed its eyes and the image vanished.

Martin whirled around to face Jerry. "And the point of that little stroll down Happy Moments Lane was . . . ?"

"To remind you of the one thing you most need to believe."

"Which is?"

Jerry shook his head. "You tell me."

"We're back to that?"

"Say it."

"f.u.c.k you squared."

"Say it."

"Fine-I need to know that my folks died believing their lives had some value, okay? I need to know whether or not I was . . . s.h.i.t-a failure in their eyes. If I could just know that, if I could've known that . . . maybe that G.o.dd.a.m.n waxed corner would've just looked like a waxed corner. Jesus does it sound ridiculous, saying it out loud like that. But I can't . . . can't help wondering, you know?"

"Dr. Hayes was right, you know, when she said that some peoples' spirits bleed to death from thousands of small scratches they aren't even aware of. Just so you know, yours hasn't bled quite to death yet."

"Go p.i.s.s up a rope-your turn: what the h.e.l.l is Bob?"

Jerry looked away for a moment, his eyes focusing on something only he could see as he considered how to phrase the reply. "The Onlookers are G.o.d's art critics; the human race is, for lack of a better term, the work in progress; Bob is one of those rare people who has been entrusted with the duty of re-creating the world on a daily basis."

Martin stared at him, blinked, then said: "I think I just slipped a gear-come again?"

"The world as you know it is kept in existence by a group of beings whose number is quite small when compared against the whole of humankind. Some are painters, others are composers, poets or storytellers, but most of them, Martin, most of them are the brick-layers, the auto mechanics, the laborers, those who cut the saw blades, who wash the dishes, who wax the floors. The only difference between them and you is that they know the value, the necessity, the beauty of what they do and what they are. There is as much majesty in a perfectly-cleaned window looking out on a winter's night as there is in the entirety of the ceiling in the Capella Sistina.

"The Universe is constantly bombarding human senses with images and ideas like these-" He pointed toward the circus performers. "-but most people can't pick up on, let alone interpret, them. Bob has been receiving them for all his life, non-stop, just like the others of his kind-and just so you know, they are called Qui Constructum, Tunc Constructum Iterum: 'Those Who Build, Then Build Again.' Some very ancient texts refer to them as the Substruo, which means 'to build beneath, to lay a foundation.'

"They are the ones who must revise and re-create reality; who destroy and re-build the world-"

"'-because when the real world gets too horrible, then the real world must be altered.'"

Jerry nodded. "Exactly."

"And they do this somewhere underneath our perception?"

"Yes."

Martin rubbed his eyes. "You're telling me that these beings, these Substruo, destroy and then re-create the world every day?"