She was standing in the doorway, behind her mother.

"Are you ready to leave?" he asked her politely, for all the world like a boy inviting his girl out on a first date.

"You have to promise to leave Momma alone," Jo-Beth said.

"I will," Tommy-Ray replied, his tone that of a man wronged by accusation. "I don't want to hurt Momma. You know that."

"If you leave her alone...I'll come with you."

Halfway down the stairs Howie heard Jo-Beth striking this bargain, and mouthed a silent no. He couldn't see what horrors Tommy-Ray had brought with him but he could hear them, like the sound his head heard in nightmares: phlegm-sounds, panting-sounds. He didn't give his imagination room enough to put pictures to the text; he'd see the truth for himself all too soon. Instead he took another step down the stairs, turning his wits to the problem of stopping Tommy-Ray in the theft of his sister. His concentration was such he failed to interpret the sounds emerging from the kitchen. By the time he'd reached the bottom stair he'd got himself a plan, however. It was simple enough. To cause as much chaos as he possibly could, and hope that under its cover Jo-Beth and her mother could escape to safety. If in running wild he managed to deliver Tommy-Ray a blow, that would be the cherry on the cake; a satisfying cherry.

That thought and intention in mind he took a deep breath, and rounded the corner.

Jo-Beth was not there. Nor was Tommy-Ray; or the horrors he'd come here with. The door was open to the night, and slumped in front of it, face to the threshold, was Momma, her arms outstretched as though her last conscious act had been to reach out after her children. Howie went to her, across tiles that were gummy beneath his bare feet.

"Is she dead?" a gravel voice enquired. Howie turned. Pastor John had wedged himself between the wall and the refrigerator, as far from sight as he could get his overfed a.s.s.

"No, she's not," Howie said, gently turning Mrs. McGuire over. "Much thanks to you."

"What could I do?"

"You tell me. I thought you had tricks of the trade." He moved towards the door.

"Don't go after them, boy," the Pastor said, "stay here with me."

"They took Jo-Beth."

"The way I hear it she was halfway theirs anyhow. The Devil's children, her and Tommy-Ray."

Do you think I'm the Devil? Howie had asked her, half an hour ago. Now it was she d.a.m.ned to h.e.l.l; and from the mouth of her own minister, no less. Did that mean they were both tainted then? Or was it not a question of sin and innocence; darkness and light? Did they somehow stand between the extremes, in a place reserved for lovers?

These thoughts came and went in a flash, but they were sufficient to fuel his motion through the door to meet whatever lay in the -night outside.

"Kill 'em all!" he heard the G.o.d-fearer yell after him. "There's not a clean soul among them! Kill 'em all!"

The sentiment enraged Howie, but he could think of no adequate riposte. In lieu of wit he yelled: "f.u.c.k you," back through the door, and headed out in search of Jo-Beth.

--------------ii-------------- There was sufficient light spilling from the kitchen for him to grasp the general geography of the yard. He could see a bank of trees bordering its perimeter, and an unkempt lawn between the trees and where he stood. As inside, so out here: there was no sign of brother, sister or the force that had set its sights on both. Knowing that he had no hope of surprising the enemy, given that he was stepping out of a well-lit interior with a hollered curse on his lips, he advanced calling Jo-Beth's name at the top of his voice in the hope that she might find breath to answer. There was no reply forthcoming. Just a chorus of barking dogs, roused by his shouts. Go ahead and bark, he thought. Get your masters moving. This was no time for them to be sitting watching game shows. There was another show out here in the night. Mysteries were walking; the earth was opening, spitting out wonders. It was a Great and Secret Show and it was playing tonight on the streets of Palomo Grove.

The same wind that carried the sound of the dogs moved the trees. Their sibilance distracted Howie from the sound of the army until he was a little way from the house. Then he heard the chorus of mutterings and duckings behind him. He turned on his heel. The wall around the door through which he'd just stepped was a solid ma.s.s of living creatures. The roof, which sloped from two stories to one above the kitchen, was similarly occupied. Larger forms roamed there, shambling back and forth across the slates, muttering in their throats. They were too high to catch the light; just silhouettes against a sky which showed no stars. Neither Jo-Beth nor Tommy-Ray were among them. There was not a single outline in that clan that approximated the human.

Howie was on the point of turning away from the sight when he heard Tommy-Ray's voice behind him.

"Bet you never saw nothing like that, Katz," he said.

"You know I never did," said Howie, the politeness of his reply shaped by the knife point he felt p.r.i.c.king the small of his back.

"Why don't you turn round, real slow," said Tommy-Ray. "The Jaff wants a word with you."

"More than one," came a second voice.

It was low-scarcely louder than the wind in the trees- but every syllable was exquisitely, musically shaped.

"My son here thinks we should kill you, Katz. He says he can smell his sister on you. G.o.d knows I'm not sure brothers should know what their sisters smell like in the first place, but I suppose I'm old-fashioned. This is too late in the millennium to be fretting about incest. Doubtless you have a view on that."

Howie had turned, and could see the Jaff standing several yards behind Tommy-Ray. After all that Fletcher had said about the man, he'd expected a warlord. But there was nothing ma.s.sively impressive about his father's enemy. He had the appearance of a patrician run part way to dereliction. An undisciplined beard grown over strong, persuasive features; the stance of someone barely concealing great weariness. Clinging to his chest was one of the terata; a wiry, skinned thing more distressing by far than the Jaff himself.

"You were saying, Katz?"

"I wasn't saying anything."

"About how woefully unnatural Tommy-Ray's pa.s.sion for his sister is. Or are you of the opinion that we're all unnatural? You. Me. Them. I'd suppose we'd all of us have gone to the flames in Salem. Anyhow...he's very keen to do you mischief. Talks about castration a good deal."

Upon cue Tommy-Ray dropped his knife blade a few inches, from Howie's belly to his groin.

"Tell him," said the Jaff. "About how you'd like to cut him up."

Tommy-Ray grinned. "Let me just do it," he said.

"See?" said the Jaff. "It's taking all my parental skills to hold him in check. So here's what I'm going to do, Katz. I'm going to let you have a head start. I'm going to set you free and see if Fletcher's stock is the equal of my own. You never knew your father before the Nuncio. Better hope he was a runner, eh?" Tommy-Ray's grin became a laugh; the knife point turned against the weave of Howie's jeans. "And just to keep you entertained-"

At this, Tommy-Ray took hold of Howie and spun him round, hauling his captive's T-shirt from his jeans and slitting it from hem to neck, exposing Howie's back. There was a moment's delay while the night air cooled his sweaty skin. Then something touched his back. Tommy-Ray's fingers, licked and wet, spreading to right and left of Howie's spine, following the line of his ribs. Howie shuddered, and arched his back to avoid the contact. As he did so the touches multiplied 'til there were too many to be fingers; a dozen or more on each side, gripping the muscle so hard his skin broke.

Howie glanced over his shoulder, in time to see a white, many-jointed limb, pencil-thin and barbed, pressing its point into his flesh. He cried out, and wrenched himself round, his revulsion outweighing his fear of Tommy-Ray's knife. The Jaff was watching him. His arms were empty. The thing that he'd been nursing was now on Howie's back. He felt its cold abdomen against his vertebrae; its mouthparts sucked at his nape.

"Get it off me!" he said to the Jaff. "Get it the f.u.c.k off me!"

Tommy-Ray applauded the sight of Howie, spinning around like a dog with a flea on its tail.

"Go, man, go!" he whooped.

"I wouldn't try that if I were you," the Jaff said.

Before Howie could wonder why, he got his answer. The creature bit down hard on his neck. He yelled out, falling to his knees. The expression of pain brought a chorus of clicks and mutters from the roof and kitchen wall. Agonized, Howie turned back towards the Jaff. The patrician had let his face slip; the fetus-headed thing behind was vast and gleaming. He had only an instant to glimpse it before the sound of Jo-Beth's sobs took his gaze to the trees, where she was in Tommy-Ray's grip. That glimpse too (her wet eyes, her open mouth) was horribly brief. Then the ache at his neck made him close his eyes, and when he opened them again she, and Tommy, and their unborn father were gone.

He got to his feet. There was a wave of motion going through the Jaff's army. Those lowest on the wall were dropping to the ground, followed by those higher up, the process ascending at such a rate the battalions were soon three or four deep on the lawn. Some struggled free of the crush and began towards Howie by whatever means of propulsion they possessed. The larger creatures were skipping down the roof to join the pursuit. With what little lead the Jaff had offered eroded with every second he delayed, Howie ran pell-mell for the open street.

Fletcher felt the boy's terror and revulsion all too clearly, but he labored to put it from his mind. Howie had rejected his father to go in search of the Jaff's wretched offspring, blinded no doubt by mere appearance. If he was suffering the consequence of such willfulness then that was his burden, and let him carry it alone. If he survived, perhaps he'd be the wiser. If not, then his life, whose purpose he'd flown in the face of the moment he'd turned his back on his creator, would end in as wretched a fashion as Fletcher's, and there'd be justice in that.

Hard thoughts, but Fletcher did his best to keep them in focus, summoning up the image of his son's reflection every time he felt the boy's pain. It was not enough, however. Try as he might to expunge Howie's terrors, they demanded a hearing, and he had no choice, at the last, but to let them in. In a sense they completed this night of despair, and had to be embraced. He and his child were interlocking pieces in a pattern of defeat and failure.

He called to the boy: Howardhowardhowardhow- the same call he'd put out after first rising from the rock.

Howardhowardhowardhow- He sent the message out rhythmically, like a cliff-top beacon. Hoping that his son was not too weak to hear, he turned his attention back to the end-game. With the Jaff's victory looming, he had one final gambit available to him, a hand he didn't want to tempt himself with, knowing how strong his desire for transformation was. It had been a torment to him all these years, being morally bound to stay on this level of being in the hope of defeating the evil he'd helped create, when an hour didn't pa.s.s without his thoughts turning to escape. He wanted so much to be free of this world and its nonsenses; to unhitch himself from this anatomy and aspire, as Schiller had said of all art, to the condition of music. Could it be that the time was now ripe to give in to that instinct, and in the last moments of his life as Fletcher hope to s.n.a.t.c.h a fragment of victory from near inevitable defeat? If so, he had to plan well, both the method of self-dispatch and its arena. There could be no repeat performance for the tribe who occupied Palomo Grove. If he, their rejected shaman, died unnoticed then more than a few hundred souls would be forfeit.

He had tried not to think too hard of the consequences of the Jaff's triumph, knowing that the sense of responsibility might well overwhelm him. But now, as the final confrontation approached, he'd bullied himself into facing it. If the Jaff secured the Art, and through it gained free access to Quiddity, what would it mean?

For one, a being not purified by the rigors of self-denial would have power over a place kept from all but the purged and the perfect. Fletcher did not entirely understand what Quiddity was (perhaps no human could), but he was certain the }aff, who'd used the Nuncio to cheat his way out of his limitations, would wreak havoc there. The dream-sea and its island (islands perhaps; he'd heard Jaff once say there were archipelagos) were visited by humanity at three vital times, in innocence, extremis, and love. On the sh.o.r.es of Ephemeris they mingled briefly with absolutes; saw sights and heard stories that would keep them from insanity in the face of being alive. There, briefly, was pattern and purpose; there was a glimpse of continuity; there was the Show, the Great and Secret Show, which rhyme and ritual were created to be keepsakes of. If that island were to become the Jaff's playground, the damage would be incalculable. What was secret would become commonplace; what was holy, desanctified; and a species kept from lunacy by its dream journeys there would be left unhealed.

There was another fear in Fletcher, less easily thought through because less coherent. It centered on the tale the Jaff had first presented him with, when he'd appeared in Washington with his offer of funds to pursue the riddle of the Nuncio. There had been, he'd said, a man called Kissoon: a shaman who'd known about the Art and its powers, whom the Jaff had finally found in a place that he'd claimed was a loop of time. Fletcher had listened to the account not really believing much of it, but subsequent events had spiralled to such fantastical heights the idea of Kissoon's Loop seemed small beer now. What part the shaman, with his attempt to have the Jaff murder him, played in the grand scheme, Fletcher couldn't know, but his instinct told him it was by no means finished with. Kissoon had been the last surviving member of the Shoal; an order of elevated human beings who had guarded the Art from the likes of the Jaff since h.o.m.o sapiens began to dream. Why then had he allowed a man like Jaff, who must have stunk of ambition from the outset, access to his Loop? Why indeed had he been in hiding there at all? And what had happened to the other members of the Shoal?

It was too late now to pursue answers to these questions; but he wanted to put them into somebody else's head besides his own. He would make one last attempt to bridge the gap between himself and his own. If Howard were not the recipient of these observations then they'd go to nothing when he, Fletcher, made his exit.

Which brought him back to the grim business ahead; its method and its setting. It had to be a piece of theater; a spectacular last act that would coax the people of Palomo Grove away from their television screens and into the streets, wide-eyed. After some weighing up of alternatives he chose one, and, still calling his son to him, started towards the site of his final liberation.

Howie had heard Fletcher's call as he fled before the Jaff's army, but the waves of panic that kept breaking over him kept him from fixing their place of origin. He ran blindly, the terata on his heels. It was only when he felt he'd gained sufficient lead to take a breath that his confounded senses heard his name called clearly enough for him to change his route, and follow the summons. When he went, he went with a speed in his heels he'd not believed himself capable of; and even though his lungs labored he squeezed from them sufficient breath for a few words in answer to Fletcher.

"I hear you," he said as he ran, "I hear you. Father...I hear you."

XI.

--------------i-------------- Tesla had told it right. A lousy nurse she was; but a very capable bully. The moment Grillo woke land found her back in his room she told him plainly that suffering in an alien bed was the act of a martyr and became him all too well. If he wanted to avoid cliche he should allow her to take him back to L.A. and deposit his sickly frame where he could be rea.s.sured by the scent of his own unwashed laundry.

"I don't want to go," he protested.

"What's the use of staying here, besides costing Abernethy a heap of money?"

"That's a start."

"Don't be petty, Grillo."

"I'm sick. I'm allowed to be petty. Besides, this is where the story is."

"You can write it better at home than lying here in a pool of sweat feeling sorry for yourself."

"Maybe you're right."

"Oh...is the great man conceding something?"

"I'll go back for twenty-four hours. Get my s.h.i.t together."

"You know you look about thirteen," Tesla said, mellowing her tone. "I never saw you like this before. It's kind of s.e.xy. I like you vulnerable."

"Now she tells me."

"Old news, old news. There was a time I'd have given my right arm for you-"

"Now?"

"The most I'll do is take you home."

The Grove could have been a set for a post-holocaust movie, Tesla thought as she drove Grillo out towards the freeway: the streets were deserted in every direction. Despite all that Grillo had told her about what he'd seen or suspected was going on here, she was leaving without getting so much as a glimpse.

Hold that thought. Forty yards ahead of the car a young man stumbled around the corner and raced across the road. At the opposite sidewalk his legs gave out beneath him. He fell, and seemed to have some difficulty getting up again. The distance was too great and the light too dim for her to grasp much of his condition but he was evidently hurt. There was something misshapen about his body; hunched or swollen. She drove on towards him. At her side, Grillo, whom she'd instructed to doze until they reached L.A., opened his eyes.

"Are we there already?"

"That guy-" she said, nodding in the hunchback's direction. "Look at him. He looks even sicker than you do."

From the corner of her eye she saw Grillo sit bolt upright, and peer through the windshield.

"There's something on his back," he muttered.

"I can't see."

She brought the car to a halt a little way from where the youth was still struggling to get to his feet; and still failing.

Grillo was right, she saw. He was indeed wearing something. "It's a backpack," she said.

"No way, Tesla," Grillo said. He reached for the door handle. "It's alive. Whatever it is, it's alive."

"Stay here," she told him.

"Are you kidding?"

As he pushed the door open-that effort alone enough to set his head spinning-he caught sight of Tesla rummaging in the glove compartment.

"What've you lost?"

"When Yvonne was killed-" she said, grunting as she dug through the detritus "-I swore I'd never leave home unarmed again."

"What are you saying?"

She pulled a gun out of hiding. "And I never have."

"Do you know how to use that?"

"Wish I didn't," she said, and got out of the car. Grillo went to follow. As he did so the car began to roll backwards down the mild incline of the street. He pitched himself across the seat to the handbrake, an action violent enough to spin his head around. When he started to haul himself up again it was almost like tripping: total disorientation.

A few yards from where Grillo was clutching the car door, waiting for his high to pa.s.s, Tesla was almost at the boy's side. He was still attempting to get to his feet. She told him to hold on, help was coming, but all she got in reply was a panic-stricken look. He had reason. Grillo had been right. What she'd taken to be a backpack was indeed alive. It was an animal of some kind (or of many kinds). It glistered as it battened upon him.

"What the f.u.c.k is that?" she said.

This time he did reply; a warning wrapped in moans.

"Get...away..." she heard him say, "...they're...coming after me..."

She glanced back at Grillo, who was still clinging to the car door, his teeth chattering. No help to be had there, and the boy's situation seemed to be worsening. With every twitch of the parasite's limbs-there were so many limbs; and joints; and eyes-his face knotted up.

"...Get away..." he growled at her, "...please...in G.o.d's name...they're coming."

He'd turned giddily to squint behind him. She followed the line of his agonized gaze, down the street from which he'd pelted. There she saw his pursuers. Seeing, she wished she'd taken his advice before she'd locked eyes with him, and all hope of playing the Pharisee was denied her. His plight was hers now. She couldn't turn her back on him. Her eyes-tutored in the real-tried to reject the lesson they saw coming down the street, but they couldn't. No use trying to deny the horror. It was there in all its absurdity: a pale, muttering tide creeping towards them.