"Willis?"

"Yes, Mayell?"

They were sipping coffee on the heated, enclosed veranda of Trenton, watching bees busy themselves among the spring flowers of the garden. It was Sat.u.r.day, and the remaining servants were off. They could indulge in each other without gossipy eyes prying.

"Do you think I look any different?"

"Different? Different from what, darling?"

She looked uncomfortable. "I don't know . . . different from usual, I guess."

"More beautiful than ever." Seeing she was serious, he studied her critically for a moment. "You might've lost a little weight."

She half smiled. "Seven pounds, to be exact."

"And it troubles you?" He shook his head in disbelief. "Most women would find that a bit weird, Mayell."

She ran slim fingers through the tawny yellow brown coat of Saugen, a puffball of fur asleep in her lap. "I haven't changed my eating habits."

He smirked, leaned back in the lounge. "Could be you've been taking more exercise lately."

She laughed with him, seemed relieved. "Of course. I hadn't thought of that."

He looked at her in mock outrage. "Hadn't thought of it?" They both laughed now. "I guess we'll have to work at making it stick in your memory."

A concerned Willis led the scarecrow called Oakley up the curved stairway.

"If she's as ill as you think, man, why didn't you call me sooner!" Grit and Yankee stone, the elderly doctor mounted the steps without panting.

"She didn't call me. I told you, Doc, I've been in New York all week, making arrangements for the sale of the house and land. I didn't know she was this bad until I got back yesterday, and I called you right away."

"Kind of unusual for a gardener to negotiate the sale of an estate, isn't it?" Oakley had a naturally dry tone. "Down this hall?"

Sharp old birds, these country professionals, Willis thought. "Yeah, She trusts me, and she's suspicious of lawyers."

That struck a sympathetic nerve. "Got good reason to be. Sound thinking."

"This is her room." He knocked. A faint voice responded.

"Willis?"

They entered. The expression that formed on Oakley's features when he caught sight of the figure in the old plateau of a bed was instructive. It took something to shake an experienced general pract.i.tioner like Oakley, and from his looks now he was badly shaken.

"Good G.o.d," he muttered, moving rapidly to the bedside and opening his archaic black bag. "How long has she been like this?"

"It's been going on for several weeks now, at least." Willis looked away from the doctor's accusing stare. How could they explain that they wanted no strangers prowling the house, generating unwelcome publicity and maybe some dangerous second guessing questions? "It's gotten a lot worse since I've been away. "

He took the chair on the other side of the bed. The hand that moved to grip his was wrinkled and shaky. Mayell's once satin taut skin was dull and parchmentlike, her eyes bulging in sunken sockets. Even her lips were pale and crepe crinkled though neither dry nor chapped. She looked ghastly.

Oakley was doing things with the tools of the physician. He was working quickly, like a man without enough time, and his expression was grim, a dangerous difference from its normal dourness.

A fluffy fat shape landed in Willis's lap. "h.e.l.lo, cat," he said, absently stroking Saugen's ruddy coat. "What's wrong with your mistress, eh?" The tom gazed up at him, bottomless cat eyes piercing him deeply. With a querulous meow, he hopped onto the bed.

"Is he in your way, Doc?" Willis made ready to move the animal if the doctor said yes. Mayell put a hand down to stroke the tom's rump. It meowed delightedly, semaphoring with its striped maroon tail.

"No." Oakley hadn't paid any attention to the cat, was intent on taking the sphygmomanometer reading.

"Good Saugen, sweet Saugen," Mayell whispered. Willis was shocked, frightened to see how broomstick-thin her arm had become. She looked over at him, and he forced himself to meet her hideously protruding eyes. "He's been such a comfort to me while you were away, Willis. He kept me warm every night."

"You should've called the doctor yourself, Mayell. You look terrible, much worse than when I left."

"I do?" She sounded puzzled and oddly unconcerned, as though unable to grasp the seriousness of her condition. "Then I must get better, mustn't I?"

Oakley rose, looked meaningfully at Willis. They moved to a far corner. "I want that woman in the hospital at Montpelier. Immediately. Tonight. It's criminal she's still in this house."

"I told you, I was in New York. I didn't know. The last of the regular servants left three weeks ago, and we were going to do the same at the end of the month. She wasn't nearly this bad when I left." Despite the reasonable excuse, Willis still felt guilty. "What's wrong with her?"

Oakley studied the floor and chewed his upper lip before looking back at the bed and its sleeping skeleton.

"I don't know that I can give a name to any specific disease, or diseases, since I think she's suffering from at least three different ones. She's terribly sick. Can't tell for certain what's wrong until I get her into the hospital and run some tests. Acute anemia, muscular degeneration of the most severe kind, calcium deficiency probably caused by reabsorption . . . that's what's wrong with her. What's causing it I can't say. She can't have been eating much lately."

"But she has been," Willis protested. "I know. I checked the refrigerator and pantry this morning when I made my own breakfast."

"That so? Then I just don't know where those calories are going. She's burning them up at an incredible rate. Daywalking, mebbee. People don't consume themselves by lying in bed." He checked his watch.

"I'll want to travel with you to the hospital. It's after five. You have her ready by eight. I'll want to prep the ambulance team. We're going to put her on ma.s.sive intravenous immediately, squirt all the glucose and dextrose into her that her system will take. Try to get her to eat something solid tonight. A steak would be good if she can keep it down. And a malted with it."

"I'll take care of it, Doc. Eight o'clock. We'll be ready."

It was hard to keep himself busy while he waited for the ambulance to arrive. He checked the window locks and the alarms. If they were going to be away for a while, best to make certain no one broke in and carried off their valuable furniture. He was still worried about Mayell, took some comfort from the fact that Oakley told him on departing that she would probably recover with proper medication and attention. She had to recover. If she died, his own hopes for an easy life would die with her.

Not unnaturally, his overwrought mind turned to thoughts of some sinister plot against them. Could someone, some disgruntled relative left out of the will, be poisoning Mayell in a fashion similar to the way in which they'd polished off Hanford? That was crazy, though. The house had hosted no visitors who might qualify as potential murderers while he'd been there, and Mayell had begun to deteriorate well before he'd departed for New York.

Besides, if he recalled the will correctly, in the event of any recipient's death, that portion of the inheritance was to go not to others but to several of Hanford's favorite charities. He remembered the faces present at the reading of the will, could not consider one capable of killing solely out of spite.

Saugen tried to keep him company, meowing and hovering about his legs as he kept an eye on the steak. He glanced irritably down at those fathomless feline eyes. Gently but firmly, he kicked the sable shape away. It meowed once indignantly and left him to his thoughts.

Some plot of Hanford's, maybe? Had he suspected what was being done to him, there at the last, and hired a vengeful killer to exact a terrible revenge?

There was the dinner to fix. Potatoes were beyond him, but he did right by the meat, and heating the frozen peas was easy enough. Recalling that honey was supposed to give one strength, he dosed her tea liberally.

As he mounted the stairs toward her room, the clock chimed seven times in the hallway below. An hour would give her enough time to eat.

"Mayell? Darlin'?" She didn't respond to his knock, so he balanced the tray carefully in one hand and turned the k.n.o.b with the other.

It was dim in the room, lit only by early moonlight and the single small bulb of the end table night light. She was still asleep. He moved toward the other side of the bed. There was a pole lamp there. As he fumbled for the switch, he noticed a familiar shape on her ribs. It meowed, an odd sort of meow, almost a territorial growl.

Saugen moved, lifting to a sitting position on his mistress's chest. Willis thought he saw something glisten and looked closer, one hand on the light switch.

The carpet m.u.f.fled the clang of the tray when it hit, but it was still louder than expected. Peas rolled short distances to hide in the low s.h.a.g, and the juice from the still steaming steak stained the delicate rose pattern as Willis stumbled backward. He fell into the lamp, and it broke into a thousand gla.s.s splinters when it struck the floor. Funny, half verbalized noises were coming from his throat as he tried to give voice to what he was seeing, but he could do no more than gargle his fear.

Eyes bright and burning tracked him as he staggered toward the door. A penetrating meow started his vertebrae clattering like an old woman's teeth. He could still see the fur on Saugen's stomach wriggling of its own accord as dozens of the thin, wormlike tendrils reluctantly withdrew from the drained husk of what had once been Mayell. They reminded Willis of tiny snakes, all curling and writhing as though possessed of some horrible life of their own. The hypodermic size holes they had left in the wasted skin closed up behind them. Willis thought of the spiders he'd seen so often in the gardens, liquefying the insides of their victims and sucking them empty like so many inflexible bottles. The glistening he'd seen had been caused .by moonlight reflecting off the myriad drops of red liquid still clinging to the tip of each unhair. He retched as he finally found the door and rushed out, thinking of how many nights the cat thing had spent seemingly asleep on the girl's chest when all the while it had been silently feeding.

"Keep him contented and well fed," the will had stated. Ah, d.a.m.n the old man, he'd known!

Nothing in the house looked familiar as he half fell, half stumbled down the stairs. His thoughts were jumbled, confused. The full bowls of cat food left untouched in the kitchen these past weeks, the privacy whenever Hanford had fed his pet, the regular visits of poor women from the city who had come expecting to fill one normal desire and who had left, their eyes darting and fearful, never to return a second time.

Somewhere in the gardener's shed there was a gun, a pistol he kept to ward off thieves and trespa.s.sers. He sought the front door. Oakley would be there soon with the ambulance and its crew. They wouldn't believe, but that didn't matter, wouldn't matter, because he would get the gun first and . . .

He stopped in midbreath, frozen as he stared forward, paralyzed by a pair of deliberate, mesmerizing yellow orbs confronting him. He tried to move, fought to look elsewhere. He couldn't budge, could only scream silently as those fiery fluorescent eyes held his swaying body transfixed.

Its belly fur flexing expectantly, the plump crimson cat left its place by the door and padded deliberately forward.

RUNNING.

I always liked running. It's just that I was never any good at it, and I'm not any better now. Weak lungs have a lot to do with it, the product of severe bouts with infantile scarlet fever and adolescent tracheal bronchitis.

Nevertheless, I liked it. And I tried. There was something about the wind rushing past you, the world becoming a pastiche of impressionistic shapes and colors. Maybe I was trying to find the subways of my infancy.

Trouble was, my body wouldn't cooperate. The pain would arise shortly after I began to move, intensifying until my lungs felt like newspaper in a fireplace: little crumpled sheets of blackness twisting and darting as they ascended up the chimney. 1'd have to slow down and gasp for air while others, seemingly without breathing at all, would rush past me, their arms and legs functioning in perfect harmony, their feet never touching the earth.

As time pa.s.sed, running somehow became "jogging." I think I know what jogging is now. It's running, only in designer clothes. Its emblem is a set of shoes that cost only slightly less than a good color TV; shoes that can be bought at K Mart without a ridiculous name st.i.tched on the side for one tenth the cost of a pair with a name. Its flag is a set of compact headphones, attached to a portable tape player blaring music the runner is too exhausted to hear. Jogging is a world inhabited by strange, misshapen creatures who unsmilingly haunt the countryside and city while insisting that they're having a wonderful time. A strange basis for a society.

Running seems to me more honest.

The woman in bed with Jachal Morales was not his wife. That honor belonged to the portly gentleman who had just unexpectedly entered the simply decorated bedroom.

The eyes of the hausfrau snuggled contentedly in Jackal's arms expanded from somnolent to terrified as she espied her husband. Reflexively, she wrenched the covers up tight about her neck. This had the effect of completely denuding Jackal. The sight of his lithe, naked body further inflamed the thoughts of the already apoplectic man standing in the doorway.

Calmly Jackal sat up, slid out of the bed, adopted his most ingenuous smile, and approached the older man with a comradely hand extended in greeting.

"I apologize for this, citizen Pensy. Quite honestly, things are not what they seem to be."

How odd to finally use that line without lying, he mused. Unfortunately and expectedly, citizen Pensy did not believe a word of it.

Even worse, the poor old fool had a gun.

"You rotten, dirty blaspet," he sputtered, shaking with fury. "I'm going to kill you. They'll have to sc.r.a.pe you off the walls of my house!"

"That'd be a foolish thing to do, sir. Bad for both of us."

"Worse for you." His finger tightened on the trigger.

Jackal had no more time for diplomacy. He feinted to his left and, as the gun swung shakily to cover him, kicked up and out with his right foot. The little pistol went flying out of the banker's hand. It struck the floor at his feet, where it had the extreme discourtesy to discharge.

Banker Pensy slowly looked down toward the little hole in his jacket, which was framed by a slowly expanding circle of red. Jackal gaped at the gun. Likewise banker Pensy's wife, who promptly stumbled out of bed to embrace her collapsing husband. She cradled his head in her lap and turned a shocked stare on her almost lover.

"You've killed him. Musweir man, I should never have listened to your sweet words. You've killed my poor Emil. "

"Now just a minute, lissome, I . . ."

At that point it occurred to her that it might be useful, not to mention seemly, to scream. She did so with admirable energy, her anguished wail echoing around the room and doubtless out into the rest of the apartment complex.

Ignoring her as well as the unlucky banker slowly expiring in her arms, Jachal turned and dressed quickly. The second floor window opened onto a broad dirt street. Too broad, but it was a cloudy morning, and most of the populace would be at work.

Closing the curtain of her screams behind him, he gauged the drop and jumped. His legs stung with the shock of contact, and his hands touched the ground to give him balance. Dark eyes darted right, then left. He had to get out of sight and fast, before the banker's wife, now more siren than siren, alerted the entire community.

Caution never insured against bad luck. He'd been telling the truth to the poor, dead Pensy. The banker should have been at work this morning, preparing to fleece some farmer, not returning home at just the wrong moment.

Jachal had been in quest of information, not s.e.x. Specifically the control codes that would have given him access to the central credit line of the fiscal computer controlling Pensy's small bank. The banker had caught him in the act of theft, all right, but not the kind the poor man had thought.

Jachal blended into the shadows of the small street he turned into, six feet of man, lean and dark as cured lumber, black of hair and eyes. He did not think of himself, even as he ran, as a bad man. He never worked to break the law as much as he did to circ.u.mvent it. Bad timing, the bane of a precarious existence, had finally caught up with him.

He forced himself to slow to a fast walk. He was out of range of the distraught widow's screams. The sight of a stranger racing through the streets would attract unwanted attention.

Embresca was a new town, growing slowly but steadily via an influx of bucolic types who sought to make a fortune from the incredibly productive soil of Dakokraine. Jachal wove his way through streets lined with prefabricated buildings imported from manufacturing worlds. They were not a luxury but a necessity, for Dakokraine was nearly devoid of useful building materials.

Stone and adobe were not fashionable.

In any new community of modest size word traveled quickly. Jachal was doing his best to keep ahead of it as he maintained a steady march toward the airport, where he had a chance of losing himself among the flow of goods and settlers from the northern dispersal points. No one had stopped him yet. Perhaps his luck was returning.

It had been an accident. If anything, he'd acted in self-defense. Cuckolding someone was not grounds for shooting. Self defense, sure . . . and naturally the bereaved widow would testify on behalf of her would be seducer. Sure she would.

Jachal walked a little faster.

Rounding a corner, he caught sight of the cl.u.s.ter of armed men blocking the single entrance to the airport facilities. They carried a variety of weapons and made agitated gestures with them.

He didn't hesitate but turned and headed back through town. The airport was sealed off, along with his future. If the locals were determined to get him, he'd never have a chance to plead anything. He'd go down "while fleeing from arrest." He'd seen that obituary on the graves of too many acquaintances to wish it for himself.

If they would leave it open to him, he had one chance left. A slow suicide instead of a quick lynching by gunfire. He opted for it instantly.

Two of Dakokraine's three moons were high in the evening sky when he approached the towering electrically charged fence that ringed the town of Embresca. Barely visible to the left and right were automatic gun emplacements. He ignored them. They were programmed to watch for something else, not for him. Their lethal, transparent barrels pointed outward.

Outward over the rolling, world girdling plains that formed most of Dakokraine's surface, out over the green and brown ocean that the settlers fought to tame. Out over topsoil measured in depths of many yards, which supported an endless sea of gra.s.ses and grains that was mined by the settlers as tenaciously as any precious metal to feed the exploding and ever hungry population of man.