400 Boys and 50 More

The early millennium, as anyone who lived through it can attest, was a time of almost constant crisis, social and political.

But enough about all that! I was having trouble writing videogames!

Half-Life had been well-received by the public, but behind the scenes it had felt like a desperate, last-minute salvage operation, barely cobbled together out of spare parts. Now I was floundering as I tried to figure out how we might develop a more stately, well-proportioned narrative for Half-Life 2. At some point, I realized that I could no longer tell if I was any good at the thing I was supposed to do. I wasn’t sure I could write anymore. I made several erratic attempts to return to my roots, to sharpen my tools, to flip through my life’s thesaurus.

I had given up any thought of writing another novel; game design had taken over that part of my brain. But it seemed like a reasonable self-compromise to write the occasional short story.

Anyway, as I said, it was a time of strife and crisis and videogames. “Sleepy Joe” was my response to 9/11, and I trust it did far less harm than invading Iraq, even though I undertook the story without the backing of any of my traditional allies.

Several stories written in this period simply channeled my idiot love of video games (“An Evening’s Honest Peril” is pure fanfic) or tried to capture the dizzying oddness of making them for a living (“The Vicar of R’lyeh”). “Sweetmeats” was the fulfillment of a long-held wish to express my debt to Roald Dahl’s Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, the novel that more than any other had made me want to be a writer.

Rudy Rucker’s self-published online zine Flurb was the perfect venue for stories I wanted to write but knew would be very hard to sell. Writing these, sending them to Rudy, felt a bit like sitting at the back of a stuffy lecture hall, cackling and drawing cartoons to share with your friend.

There was no thought of being respectable, and little thought at this point of ever again having a typical career as a writer. Hey, I was writing games for a living!

Whatever was in the air, it wasn’t typical.

SLEEPY JOE

The plan must have come to Rog fully formed that first morning, as he stepped off the elevator into the lobby of Szilliken Sharpenwright and saw the old soldier newly stationed there in his omnichair between the potted silk ferns and the coffee tables.

“Oh. My. God. I am in love.”

Megan, her arms loaded with Rog-House props and paraphernalia she hadn’t had time to ditch yet, said, “You say that an awful lot for someone who styles himself completely asexual. Not to mention atheistic.”

“There’s no conflict! He’s completely post-human!”

“Hm. You two even look a bit alike.”

“Oh please don’t say that. You flatter me.” He stalked up to the omnichair, tugging at the collar of his black turtleneck, adjusting his thick black plastic spectacles. Crouching down before the chair’s inhabitant, he put out a stick-thin finger, gingerly. “Can I touch him?”

Antoinette, the receptionist, said, “He’s not in yet, do you want his voicemail? Be my guest. I just wish he’d stop staring at me. Law offices.”

Megan watched Rog examining the old soldier. They did look alike. Rog was completely hairless. He scrubbed his head with some kind of depilatory agent that had eradicated even his eyebrows. The old vet, in the omnichair which hummed and slurped and quietly took care of all his hidden functions, was similarly shorn, although in a military style. Unlike Rog, he had eyebrows like bristly fiberoptic filaments with a faint orange light playing through them. And where Rog blinked continually behind his thick lenses, the old vet’s eyes were half-open, sleepy-lidded, and actual blinks came so infrequently that it would be days before Megan had a confirmed sighting. His face, in sharp contrast to Rog’s utterly unblemished pallor, was dark, creased, chapped—like a weathered boulder sharpened by the elements, instead of worn away. But there was nothing sharp about the expression. The brain inside could have been a lump of dough, to judge by the drowsy eyes.

“Could you turn him to face the elevators?” Antoinette called across the lobby. “Gives me the creeps, him staring at me. And he’s got some kind of smell. Law offices.”

Megan didn’t smell anything except perhaps a whiff of machine oil, which she supposed had something to do with the chair. But she took the handles of the chair and wheeled it around to face the elevator bank. On the back of the seat was a small embossed label: Property of Civilian Rehabilitation Foundation.

Rog stayed crouched before the chair, declaiming poetically under his breath, even as she shifted it. “Oh veteran of foreign wars unnameable, at least by me. Defender of this hoary law firm’s priceless horde of Fortune Magazines and rented modern art. I welcome you. I honor and appreciate all that you have done at great personal sacrifice to keep this country safe for me and my community access cable show, the Rog-House. As seen each Tuesday at 2 a.m. I hope I can someday prove myself worthy to call you a fan, as I am of you.”

“Rog,” Megan said.

“Hush a moment, we’re communing.”

“Rog, I need coffee.”

“Elixir of Mammon.”

She turned aside. “Whatever!” And halfway down the hall to her cubicle she looked back and saw him still gazing deep into the old vet’s eyes. “I’ll drop this crap on your desk!” she said. He waved her off with a distracted hand.

At that moment, Mr. Szilliken himself arrived, striding from the elevators with the look of extreme distaste he reserved especially for Rog.

“Get away from my sentry!” he snapped.

Rog straightened up like an odd black heron on stilts, stumbling backward, barely catching himself. “Sorry, Mr. Szilliken.”

“Show some respect and stay out of his face.”

Megan rushed back. “Hey, Rog, you said you Acco’d that full set of exhibits last night? I need it for a rush filing. Good morning, Mr. Szilliken.”

“Good morning, Miss Megan!” A smirky smile and a wink, saved especially for his favorite paralegals. She shuddered and knew it wouldn’t register. “I suppose you noticed the latest addition to the firm?”

“We were just admiring him. I think it’s great you volunteered for this.”

“Well, there’s a small fee involved, but it’s not much to pay for his eternal vigilance. I’m a vet myself, you know.”

“You mentioned. Come on, Rog. I already called a courier.”

She stuffed her load of kitty-cat ears and pig snouts on elastic bands into Rog’s arms, and hauled him away from Szilliken. She could feel the old name partner watching her ass all the way to the end of the corridor.

“Thanks for the rescue.”

“You owe me a coffee.”

“I owe you one anyway for keeping you up all night.” He untangled a pig’s snout from the supply in his arms, and cupped it over his nose.

“No, that I do gratis,” she said. “Pro bono. For the Rog-House.”

“Oh my God, Megan,” he said suddenly, sounding more nasal than usual under the pink snout. “I just had an amazing idea.”

“That’s because you’ve been awake for 24 hours straight.”

“I’m going to put him on my show.”

“Who… oh no. You can’t do that, Rog. It’s completely crazy.”

“All the more reason!”

“Rog… they’ll fire you. And worse.”

“You’ll see.”

Despite his protestations of post- or trans-humanity, Rog was a sloppy sentimentalist. Megan suspected he affected the robot thing for contrast. And although the old vet quickly slewed in status from waiting-room weirdo to office mascot, it was Rog who lavished actual affection on him, in the way of party hats and thrift-store scarves and doilies of only slightly yellowed lace for the arms of the omnichair. While an attendant from the Vets Administration came by twice a week (and hauled him away completely on weekends) to change the chair’s canisters and replace various tubes, Rog was a constant ministering presence. He propped magazines in the vet’s lap. He brought in CDs he thought the vet would appreciate and had Antoinette pipe them through the lobby. (Rog’s tastes were just old fashioned enough that it seemed quite possible the vet might have listened to, and even loved, such strained melodies in his youth.) All this gave him a semblance of life, to which some reacted badly—particularly Mr. Szilliken, who found all Rog’s attentions inappropriate.

“Roger!” Szilliken stepped out of the elevator, irritated to find Rog settling an embroidered sampler across the old soldier’s knees. He gave a wink to Megan, then instantly shut it off and turned back to Rog. “Get away from him! I’ve talked to you before about tampering with my property. By the way, I’m going to need you here tonight, pulling exhibits for my hearing tomorrow in Landauer. Megan can give you more information. She’ll be staying as well.”

Megan stiffened. It was the first she had heard about it. The assignment was clearly intended as punishment for Rog, though it was not entirely out of character for Szilliken to drop all-nighters on Megan just as she was preparing to head home.

Rog flashed her a desperate look.

“But… but Mr. Szilliken, I’m supposed to tape my show tonight. I’ve booked time in the studio already, and—and I’m going to need Megan there as well. She’s my right hand man.”

“You know what I say to that,” Szilliken growled. “If you can’t handle the responsibility of a paralegal career, I suggest you go find yourself some form of employment that doesn’t involve a framed certificate.”

Downcast, Rog chewed his pocked cheek. “No, I… I’ll stay and work with Megan.”

“Really? Are you sure? Because you’re welcome to go home any time you wish.”

“It’s no problem.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“I’m sure.”

Szilliken glared at him, making his contempt quite plain. Rog’s eyes flicked sideways to the old vet, and then away, as if he were embarrassed to be seen in such a light, humiliated by the lawyer. Rog was too well mannered or repressed to curse under his breath as Szilliken walked away, but the old lawyer glanced back once as if expecting to discover some treachery at his back.

“Sigh,” said Rog, instead of actually sighing.

“Sorry, Rog. I didn’t see that coming either. On the other hand, Landauer is a class action suit. We can order cordon bleu, eat like pigs, and put it on the public’s tab.”

“Oink,” he said dispiritedly.

Shortly after 8:30, just as they were digging through piles of documents and Rog was clipping sections of the Supreme Court Reporter for copying, Szilliken waltzed through the lobby and gave Megan a jaunty farewell. “See you bright and early!” And to Rog: “No sneaking in at eight fifteen.” He tapped the old vet on the shoulder as he waited for the elevator. “Keep an eye on ’em for me, Joe.”

Ding!

The elevator opened and closed, carrying off Szilliken.

“The nerve,” Megan said.

“What do you mean?” Rog said excitedly, shoving the law books aside. “I thought he’d never leave!”

“So we’re stuck here all night doing his damn work… that doesn’t bother you?”

“Not tonight it doesn’t, because as soon as a suitable period of mourning has passed, we’re getting out of here.”

“What? Where?”

“The studio, doll. Where else?”

“No way, Rog. That’s suicide.”

“Then it’s going to be a double suicide, lovey. Because I’ve got big plans for this one, and I can’t do it without you.”

“Not.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“There are forty-two parties to serve in this case. I’m going to be up half the night just stuffing envelopes!”

“Those can go out in the afternoon mail; we just need enough to send Szilliken off to court. We can do the show and get back here in time, and you know it.”

“No way. No way, no way, no way.”

“And not only that, but the old soldier’s coming with us.”

“You can’t do that. He’s here to protect the firm—night and day. What if, what if something happens while he’s out? He’s government property! You know what’ll happen to us?”

“Nothing will happen except… we’ll put together the best damn episode of the Rog-House the world has ever seen!”

Half an hour later, they were wheeling the old vet out to a waiting cab. The driver had apparently seen more than one omnichair in his day, because he handily undid the tubes and belts and clasps and Velcro fastenings, collapsed the chair with a liquid sound, and stuffed it into the trunk. Megan meanwhile manhandled the old vet onto the back seat, finding him light as a moth. She and Rog sat on either side of him, propping him up between them.

“So,” said the driver when they’d given directions, “I see you got yourself a Sleepy Joe.”

“He’s in rehab,” said Rog.

“I’ve been seeing them all over lately. Must be quite a backlog at the VA hospital. They’re getting more popular at banks and grocery stores. Saw one at Gas and Electric the other day when I was paying my bill. They must come cheap.”

“Well, our friend here is rather special. I’d go so far as to say he’s unique. And we’re planning to make a star out of him.”

“A star? Oh really.”

“I’m the host of the Rog-House. Perhaps you didn’t recognize me without my platinum wig.”

“Contrary to popular preconception, all cabbies don’t live to watch porno. I was just noticing that the fella you’ve got there seems wound pretty tight.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, he was a sentry wasn’t he? They shipped these guys off to some godforsaken hole, right? I mean, literally. Stuck them in a foxhole or a cave and then just kept them waiting there, wound up like an alarm clock, in hibernation basically, until some thing, whatever they’re primed for, set them off. You know, enemy movement… political target goin’ down the road…”

“Fascinating,” Rog said. “Did you know that, Megan?”

Megan looked more closely at the old vet’s craggy features. He jiggled as the cab jostled along, with the liquid reflections running over his unblinking eyes.

“No, I didn’t,” she said.

“Sure!” The cabby had inside knowledge. “They’d drop a Sleeper into some locale where they expected trouble someday… but no time soon. Where they needed Johnny on the spot and wanted to be sure and have someone on the inside extra early, to be ready for anything. Used a combination of drugs, wiring, whatever… kept them waiting indefinitely for the trigger. Some of these guys, I heard a lot about it on talk radio, they’d go into trances so deep it’s like time just came to a stop. And for lots of them, the action’d go by, right? The gov would extract them, maybe snap them out of it, maybe not. So in this guy’s case, and a lot of the other Sleepers, he never did snap. I mean, look at him. Doesn’t look like he ever snapped a pretzel. He’s still wound up. A lot of ’em, personally, I think they just burned out and they’ll never come out of it. This rehab thing is just for P.R. Supposed to make people feel good about the whole effort. But you’ll notice they stopped the program.”

“In other words, they don’t make them like this anymore,” said Rog with a touch of sniffy pride.

“Good thing, too. There’s probably more on the streets than in the banks. Hey, I’m a vet myself. I know how easy it is to get steamrollered if you’re not right in their face asking for what’s yours. Hell of an honorable discharge. They probably think if they give these guys a chair, they’ve done their duty by ’em. Cut ’em loose. Is it somewhere around here? Man, this neighborhood sucks. Don’t expect me to wait for you.”

“The studio’s right here. And we’re perfectly safe.”

Megan never felt safe until they were actually inside the studio. She stood on the slimy curb hugging herself while Rog opened up his wallet and thumbed through his cash, counting bills by the flickering light of a streetlamp on the edge of failure. The district was dark and empty. There was no obvious threat except maybe that of tetanus. But as always, she had the sense of someone watching from the shadows, bleary eyes waiting for them to make a false move.

The driver pulled the chair out of the trunk and they fit the old vet into it. She hurried toward the door of the warehouse, urging Rog to unlock it before the cab pulled away.

Inside, they passed through yet another locked door and into a cavernous room where quilted pads, and in some cases simple white sheets, hung from the walls. There was a row of rickety aluminum bleachers for any audience that might have been in attendance. Rog had been known to rope in a few other paralegals when his a capella group gave a performance, but usually it was just Rog and Megan and whatever guest they had managed to snare.

The first time Rog brought her to “the studio,” Megan had expected banks of monitors, busy technicians, a full-time staff. The reality was quite different. It was a shoestring operation, designed to be run single-handedly if necessary. Plenty of cable access programs were solitary endeavors, one person reading poetry or ranting about conspiracies before a fixed camera. There was a single camera, a computer with some basic editing software installed, and several monitors which Rog had to position so that he could see himself at all times. The edges of the room were piled with boxes full of crummy styrofoam props.

Rog switched on the few spotlights, then pulled a fat sofa chair into the brightest spot. Megan’s somewhat smaller chair, more patched with duct tape, went to Rog’s left. The old vet was granted the place of honor at Rog’s right hand.

While Rog set up the camera, and pulled his silvery Warhol wig into place, Megan paced nervously in front of the chairs.

“What are we going to do with him, Rog?”

“I was planning a Veteran’s Day special. It’d be good to have that in the bank.”

“But… what if someone recognizes him? I know it’s unlikely anyone will ever see this, but… just in case…”

“Never fear.” Rog produced several of the essential props he always carried with him. Cat ears and pig snouts, on elastic bands.

To the vet he said, “We’d be honored, honestly, if you would join us. I hope you don’t mind.”

He slipped the snout onto the vet’s knife-sharp nose and stood back to admire his handwork. “Magnifique!” he said, pronouncing the “g.”

Megan laughed behind her hand. Somehow it broke her sense of growing anxiety. They were doing the show; they were really doing it. This was going to be cool.

She took her own pig nose from Rog and put it on; and then the cat ears which she alone wore.

“Solidairnosh!” Rog proclaimed.

“God, Rog… just imagine what Szilliken would say!”

“Of all the people we don’t have to worry about watching the show. Places, everyone!”

Giddy, Megan took her seat. Rog made his last adjustments to camera, computer and wig, then came over and dropped into his overstuffed chair. Megan looked up to see the three of them on the monitor. They were well framed. It would have been nice to have an operator tonight, but these last minute programs never allowed for frills, apart from whatever Rog would add in the editor after the basic show was shot.

“Hello,” Rog said, primly folding his hands in his lap, addressing the camera. “And welcome once again to the Rog-House. I’m Rog, and this is my inseparable co-host, Miss Megan, and we would like to welcome a very special guest… direct from Civilian Rehabilitation… please extend a hearty howdy-do to our very own Sleepy Joe! Um… Miss Megan? Is that your cell-phone?”

Megan heard the muted chirping coming from out beyond the lights. She jumped out of her seat and grabbed her purse where she’d set it on a bleacher.

Still within the camera’s eye, Rog continued with his duties: “I can’t imagine who would be calling Miss Megan at this critical juncture, but let’s listen in, shall we? Miss Megan, be sure to speak up so we can all enjoy your conversation!”

Megan waved him to silence. “Hello?”

A grim voice squawked at her. “Megan? Where the hell are you? I tried reception and the conference room phone.”

“Oh, Mr.—Mr. Szillikin! Uh, we had to go downstairs for some folders…” She turned and faced Rog and made desperate, eye-bulging, throat-cutting, fish-out-of-water gestures at him. Rog went white. Whiter. “…wh-where are you?”

“I’m at home, but I’m heading back to the office. I just realized I left a whole load of horseshit on my desk that I need to get ready for tomorrow. I want you to get it organized for me before I get there… make a copy of everything. Are you taking this down?”

“Just a sec… I need to get a pen…”

Szilliken started unreeling instructions she could barely pretend to follow.

Rog was moaning. “Oh god oh god…”

“Give me… give me an hour and I’ll have everything ready,” she promised.

“Make sure Rog helps you. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

“Okay… see you…”

She stuffed the phone in her purse. “We have to get back. Now. Get ready, I’m calling a cab.”

Rog hurried about shutting off lights and powering down the computer. Megan waited on hold at the cab dispatch number, and finally got a human on the other end.

“We can have someone to you in forty five minutes,” she heard.

“Forty five? But we were just dropped off here ten minutes ago! Can’t we get the same guy back?”

Rog was already pushing the vet out the door. “We’ll flag someone down,” he called. “Hurry, Megan!”

“Yeah, hurry,” she said, stuffing the phone back into her purse. “As if I need you to tell me that.”

Outside, Rog was rushing over the sidewalk like a kid racing a shopping cart down the aisle of a grocery store. “Wait up!” He idled unhappily until she caught up. “Where are you going?” she asked.

She had thought the main street was dark. Rog pointed down an even darker one. “There’s a busy street about three blocks from here… plenty of traffic. We’ll have to cut through here to save time.”

“I’m not going in there.”

“You want to lose your job?” And he started off without waiting any longer.

She caught her breath and plunged after him. I shouldn’t be afraid, she told herself. There’s no one here. Who would haunt such a derelict district? Bums? You’d have to wait forever for a handout. Even muggers would find victims hard to come by.

Halfway down the block, she slammed into Rog, knocking his scintillant wig right off his head into the dark. He had come to a hard stop. Just ahead, as she strained her eyes trying to penetrate the gloom, she saw a few… shapes. Seated and waiting. Something about them was familiar. Seated figures, men in the dark. They were sitting very still. Then they started to rise.

The chairs. She knew those chairs. Omnichairs.

She couldn’t tell who was making the sound that came next. It seemed to be coming from the figures in front of them and from the old vet, at the same time. It was a low horrible growl that slowly grew louder and more shrill.

“Help!” Rog screamed. “Help us, somebody!”

They’d been ambushed. There would be no rescue. The whining, wailing sound suddenly exploded as Megan and Rog both screamed.

The old vet, at that instant, burst out of his omnichair. He was a blur in the shadows, but a blur of motion. The snarling was his. The others converged on him, drawn together into a solid clot of darkness. Megan’s stomach turned at the sounds of rending, the muffled shrieks and animal noises.

“Rog, come on!” She grabbed him by the hand, already running, past the commotion, down the dark street, toward the promise of traffic noises somewhere ahead. Seconds later, as they reached the first functional streetlight, Rog actually passed her. He was still pushing the chair.

“Get in!” he said.

“No way.”

“Megan, it’ll look weird if I’m pushing an empty chair, people will remember. We need to get back without… without drawing attention. Forget about the cab.”

“What’s happening back there, Rog?”

“I don’t know and I don’t want to know. Now get in the chair.”

He didn’t slow down for her. She had to drop into the seat while he was running. The chair sloshed as she sank into it, but there were hard things in the gelatinous pads, things that shifted as she moved and then reasserted themselves. She didn’t want to think about what the chair must do to take care of the old vet, day in, day out. They turned a corner and she saw a steady stream of cars, a block ahead. But Rog didn’t go that way. He kept on the parallel street, which was darker and depopulated and would eventually get them back to the offices of Szilliken Sharpenwright.

Megan closed her eyes, trying to decide if there was anything else she ought to be doing to save her own neck. But her thoughts were scattered all over. Those omnichairs back in the alley. More old soldiers? Sleepers? Did they wait there, drowsing in the cold and dark, like dormant ticks waiting for blood-warmth to draw near?

Something groped her from beneath.

“Jesus!” she cried.

“Stop moving!” He pushed down on her shoulder as tubes pressed up between her legs like intelligent, insistent catheters, trying to find their way in.

“No! It’s this chair! It’s… doing something to me…”

“Megan, sit still.”

“God damn it, no!” She gave up trying to fight off the chair’s advances, and jumped out completely.

Rog came to a stop. “What?” he said.

“You sit in it. Let me push.”

Sigh. “Don’t complain when you’re the one with sore feet.”

Rog dropped into the chair. His eyes widened. Then he shrieked and leapt back to his feet.

“You see? I’d rather have sore feet than…”

“Never mind! I’ll push.”

He took the chair handles again and didn’t say another word about anyone riding.

They ran through the night, toward the office towers. Megan tried not to think about the fact that Mr. Szilliken was bent on the same destination.

After awhile she realized that Rog was muttering something under his breath.

“What’s that?”

“He… he saved me, Megan. He gave his life for me.”

“He doesn’t even know you exist, Rog.”

“Yes he does. He knows me. He… he wouldn’t have done that otherwise. Sacrificed himself like that.”

“He just snapped because he’s programmed for it… it was something he knew. You heard the cabbie. He was all wound up.”

“It was more than that, Megan. He did it for me. Maybe for us. I’m sure of it. Sleepy Joe cares for us.”

“You’re slowing down,” she said.

As they approached the building, reality snapped into sharper focus, and she began to worry about their immediate situation. On the outside chance that they might beat Szilliken to the office, they had to get their story straight.

“We… we have the chair,” Rog said. “We’ll just put it back by the elevators and say, say, we were working away, we—”

“—we went downstairs, that’s what I told him,” Megan finished. “We went downstairs for some exhibit folders, and when we came up he was gone.”

“That’s good, that’s fine. Exhibit folders. And we didn’t call because…”

“Well, we freaked. We’ve been looking for him.”

“Freaked! That’s good. We can definitely pull that off.”

They rushed through the deserted street-level plaza beneath the building, boarded the elevator, and tried to catch their breath as the car rose 40 floors. Megan’s ears popped repeatedly.

Ding!

The doors opened.

She had prepared herself to find Mr. Szilliken waiting for them with a look of certain doom on his battleship grey face. But he wasn’t there, and for a moment she felt herself overcome by relief. The conference room was empty, the tables still piled with their unfinished tasks.

Then relief was replaced by shock.

There was someone in the waiting room, seated on the couch.

The old soldier had beat them to the office. He’d come home by some shorter route and resumed his sentry post at the elevator bank. He sat there with the same sleepy-lidded face he always wore. Eyes like raisins, face a lump of dough. Just as before. Except…

Now he was naked. A few tatters of his old clothes clung to his collarbone, fastened around his throat by the one remaining button. His pale, mole-ridden body was covered with colorless hair, streaked with grimy welts, blood smears and dark scabs. A huge gash ran like a gaping skull suture across his shaved scalp. Worst of all, his arms were glistening red all the way up past the elbows, and a butcher shop reek rose from the gore-clotted sofa cushion.

“Oh my god,” Rog said quietly. “I… I don’t believe it. We’re saved!”

He pushed the omnichair forward, and Megan, still speechless, joined him at the couch. Rog started to pull the vet up from the cushions.

“Give me a hand, let’s get him back in his chair.”

“Are you crazy? We have to get him cleaned up… and dressed! Where the hell are we going to find clothes for him? And look at these cushions! What are we going to do about…”

Ding!

“We are so… dead,” Megan whispered. That was the only sound for a moment.

She turned around slowly.

Mr. Szilliken stood there with his briefcase dangling. It slid to the floor after a moment, but the lawyer didn’t move; his finger remained crooked on nothing. His eyes went to the conference room table, taking in pile upon pile of unfinished work. Then they fixed on the old soldier. Ignoring the blood, ignoring the scarred naked frame, he seized upon the most outrageous detail: The rubber pig snout still clinging to the dreamy face. It must have been the simplest part of the scene to comprehend.

Szilliken crossed the lobby in three strides and snatched the snout from the sentry’s cheeks. The band snapped with a twang.

The lawyer spun toward Rog, waving the snout in his face.

“You!” he screamed. “How dare you abuse my property!”

“He’s not property,” Rog said quietly.

“Shut up! You’ll be lucky if I don’t kill you!”

“Please don’t say that,” Megan said.

“Do you hear me, Roger?”

But Roger didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

Behind Szilliken, the old vet was rising, straightening from the couch, shuffling forward slowly with a look of devotion in his warming eyes. When he spoke, his voice was creaky with disuse, like an ancient engine turning over, shedding flakes of rust.

“Don’t worry, kids,” he fondly croaked. “Let me take care of this.”

CELL CALL

He wasn’t used to the cell phone yet, and when it rang in the car there was a moment of uncomfortable juggling and panic as he dug down one-handed into the pocket of his jacket, which he’d thrown onto the passenger seat. He nipped the end of the antenna in his teeth and pulled, fumbling for the “on” button in the dark, hoping she wouldn’t hang up before he figured this out. Then he had to squeeze the phone between ear and shoulder because he needed both hands to finish the turn he’d been slowing to make when the phone rang. He realized then that for a moment he’d had his eyes off the road. He was not someone who could drive safely while conducting a conversation, and she ought to know that. Still, she’d insisted he get a cell phone. So here he was.

“Hello?” he said, knowing he sounded frantic.

“Hi.” It was her. “Where are you?”

“I’m in the car.”

“Where?”

“Does it matter that much?”

“I only meant, are you on your way home? Because if you are I wanted to see if you could pick up a pack of cigarettes. If you have money.”

“I’m on my way home, yes.” He squinted through the window for a familiar landmark, but considering the turn he’d just taken, he knew he was on a stretch of older suburban road where the streetlights were infrequent. There was parkland here, somewhere, and no houses visible. “But I don’t think there’s a store between here and home.”

“You’ll pass one on the way.”

“How do you know which way I went?”

“There’s only one way to go.”

“No there isn’t.”

“If you have any sense, there is.”

“I have to get off. I can’t drive and talk at the same time. I’m driving the stickshift, remember?”

“If you don’t want to then forget it.”

“No, I don’t mind. I’ll take a detour.”

“Just forget it. Come home. I’ll go out later.”

“No, really. I’ll get them.”

“Whatever. Goodbye.”

He took the phone out of the vise he’d made with jaw and shoulder. His neck was already starting to cramp, and he didn’t feel safe driving with his head at such an angle, everything leaning on its side. He had to hold the phone out in front of him a bit to be sure the light had gone out. It had. The read-out still glowed faintly, but the connection was broken. He dropped the phone onto the seat beside him, onto the jacket.

The parkland continued for another few blocks. The headlights caught in a tangle of winter-bared hedges and stripped branches thrusting out into the street so far that they hid the sidewalk. It would be nice to find a house this close to woods, a bit of greenbelt held in perpetuity for when everything else had been bought up and converted into luxury townhouses. If all went well then in the next year, maybe less, they’d be shopping for a house in the area. Something close to his office but surrounded by trees, a view of mountains, maybe a stream running behind the house. It was heaven here but still strange, and even after six months most of it remained unfamiliar to him. She drove much more than he did, keeping busy while he was at work; she knew all the back roads already. He had learned one or two fairly rigid routes between home and office and the various shopping strips. Now with winter here, and night falling so early, he could lose himself completely the moment he wandered from a familiar route.

That seemed to be the case now. In the dark, without any sort of landmark visible except for endless bare limbs, he couldn’t recognize his surroundings. The houses that should have been lining the streets by now were nowhere to be seen, and the road itself was devoid of markings: No center line, no clean curb or gutter. Had he turned into the parkland, off the main road? He tried to think back, but part of his memory was a blank—and for good reason. When the phone rang he’d lost track of everything else. There had been a moment when he was fumbling around in the dark, looking at the seat next to him, making a turn at a traffic light without making sure it was the right light. He could have taken the wrong turn completely.

But he hadn’t turned since then. It still wasn’t too late to backtrack.

He slowed the car, then waited to make sure no headlights were coming up behind him. Nothing moved in either direction. The road was narrow—definitely not a paved suburban street. Branches scraped the hood as he pulled far to the right, readying the car for a tight turn, his headlights raking the brittle shadows. He paused for a moment and rolled the window down, and then turned back the key in the ignition to shut off the motor. Outside, with the car quieted, it was hushed. He listened for the barking of dogs, the sigh of distant traffic, but heard nothing. A watery sound, as if the parkland around him were swamp or marsh, lapping at the roots of the trees that hemmed him in. He wasn’t sure that he had room to actually turn around; the road was narrower than he’d thought. He had better just back up until it widened.

He twisted the key and heard nothing. Not even a solenoid click. He put his foot on the gas and the pedal went straight to the floor, offering no resistance. The brake was the same. He stamped on the clutch, worked the gearshift through its stations—but the stick merely swiveled then lolled to the side when he released it. The car had never felt so useless.

He sat for a moment, not breathing, the thought of the repair bills surmounting the sudden heap of new anxieties. A walk in the dark, to a gas station? First, the difficulty of simply getting back to the road. Did he have a flashlight in the glove box? Was he out of gas? Would he need a jump-start or a tow? In a way, it was a relief that he was alone, because his own fears were bad enough without hers overwhelming him.

He started again, checking everything twice. Ignition, pedals, gears. All useless. At least the headlights and the dashboard were still shining. He rolled up the window and locked the door. How long should he sit here? Who was going to come along and…

The phone.

Jesus, the cell phone. How he had put off buying one, in spite of her insistence. He didn’t care for the feeling that someone might always have tabs on him, that he could never be truly alone. What was it people were so afraid of, how could their lives be so empty, and their solitude of so little value, that they had to have a phone with them at every minute, had to keep in constant chattering contact with someone, anyone? Ah, how he had railed at every driver he saw with the phone in one hand and the other lying idly on the steering wheel. And now, for the first time, he turned to the damned thing with something like hope and relief. He wasn’t alone in this after all.

The cell phone had some memory but he’d never programmed it because he relied on his own. He dialed his home number and waited through the rings, wondering if she was going to leave the answering machine to answer, as she sometimes did—especially if they had been fighting and she expected him to call back. But she answered after three rings.

“It’s me,” he said.

“And?” Cold. He was surprised she hadn’t left the machine on after all.

“And my car broke down.”

“It what?”

“Right after you called me, I got…” He hesitated to say lost; he could anticipate what sort of response that would get out of her. “I got off the regular track and I was looking to turn around and the engine died. Now it won’t start.”

“The regular track? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that I, uh—-“

“You got lost.” The scorn, the condescension. “Where are you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Can you look at a street sign? Do you think you could manage that much or am I supposed to figure out everything myself?”

“I don’t see any,” he said. “I’m just wondering if something happened to the engine, maybe I could take a look.”

“Oh, right. Don’t be ridiculous. What do you know about cars?”

He popped the hood and got out of the car. It was an excuse to move, to pace. He couldn’t sit still when she was like this. It was as if he thought he’d be harder to hit if he made a moving target of himself. Now he raised the hood and leaned over it, saying, “Ah,” as if he’d discovered something. But all he could see beneath the hood was darkness, as if something had eaten away the workings of the car. The headlights streamed on either side of his legs, losing themselves in the hedges, but their glare failed to illuminate whatever was directly before his eyes.

“Uh…”

“You don’t know what you’re looking at.”

“It’s too dark,” he said. “There aren’t any streetlights here.”

“Where the hell are you?”

“Maybe I got into a park or something. Just a minute.” He slammed the hood, wiped his gritty feeling fingers on his legs, and went back to the door. “There are lots of roads around here with no lights… it’s practically…” He pressed the door handle. “…wild…”

At his lengthy silence, she said, “What is it?”

“Uh… just a sec.”

The door was locked. He peered into the car, and could see the keys dangling in the ignition. He tried the other doors, but they were also locked. They were power doors, power windows, power locks. Some kind of general electrical failure, probably a very small thing, had rendered the car completely useless. Except for the headlights?

“What is it?” she said again.

“The keys… are in… the car.” He squeezed hard on the door handle, wrenching at it, no luck.

“Do you mean you’re locked out?”

“I, uh, do you have the insurance card? The one with the emergency service number on it?”

“I have one somewhere. Where’s yours?”

“In the glove box.”

“And you’re locked out.”

“It looks that way.”

Her silence was recrimination enough. And here came the condescension: “All right, stay where you are. I’ll come get you. We can call the truck when I’m there, or wait until morning. I was just about to get in bed, but I’ll come and bring you home. Otherwise you’ll just get soaked.”

Soaked, he thought, tipping his head to the black sky. He had no sense of clouds or stars, no view of either one. It was just about the time she’d have been lying in bed watching the news; there must have been rain in the forecast. And here he was, locked out, with no coat.

“How are you going to find me?” he asked.

“There are only so many possible wrong turns you could have taken.”

“I don’t even remember any woods along this road. “

“That’s because you never pay attention.”

“It was right past the intersection with the big traffic light.”

“I know exactly where you are.”

“I got confused when you called me,” he said. “I wasn’t looking at the road. Anyway, you’ll see my headlights.”

“I have to throw on some clothes. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Okay.”

“Bye.”

It was an unusually protracted farewell for such a casual conversation. He realized that he was holding the phone very tightly in the dark, cradling it against his cheek and ear as if he were holding her hand to his face, feeling her skin cool and warm at the same time. And now there was no further word from her. Connection broken.

He had to fight the impulse to dial her again, instantly, just to reassure himself that the phone still worked—that she was still there. He could imagine her ridicule; he was slowing her down, she was trying to get dressed, he was causing yet another inconvenience on top of so many others.

With the conversation ended, he was forced to return his full attention to his surroundings. He listened, heard again the wind, the distant sound of still water. Still water which made sounds only when it lapped against something, or when something waded through it. He couldn’t tell one from the other right now. He wished he were still inside the car, with at least that much protection.

She was going to find him. He’d been only a few minutes, probably less than a mile, from home. She would be here any time.

He waited, expecting raindrops. The storm would come, it would short out his phone. There was absolutely no shelter on the empty road, now that he had locked himself out of it. He considered digging for a rock, something big enough to smash the window, so he could pull the lock and let himself in. But his mistake was already proving costly enough; he couldn’t bring himself to compound the problem. Anyway, it wasn’t raining yet. And she would be here any minute now.

It was about time to check in with her, he thought. She had to be in her car by now. Did he need a better excuse for calling her?

Well, here was one: The headlights were failing.

Just like that, as if they were on a dimmer switch. Both at once, darkening, taken down in less than a minute to a dull stubborn glow. It was a minute of total helpless panic; he was saved from complete horror only by the faint trace of light that remained. Why didn’t they go out all the way? By the time he’d asked himself this, he realized that his wife had now lost her beacon. That was news. It was important to call her now.

He punched the redial number. That much was easy. The phone rang four times and the machine answered, and then he had to suppress himself from smashing the phone on the roof of the car. She wouldn’t be at home, would she? She’d be on the road by now, looking for him, cruising past dark lanes and driveways, the entrance to some wooded lot, hoping to see his stalled headlights—and there would be none.

What made all this worse was that he couldn’t remember the number of her cell phone. He refused to call her on it, arguing that she might be driving if he called her, and he didn’t want to cause an accident.

Should he… head away from the car? Blunder back along the dark road without a flashlight until he came in sight of the street? Wouldn’t she be likely to spot him coming down the road, a pale figure stumbling through the trees, so out of place?

But he couldn’t bring himself to move away. The car was the only familiar thing in his world right now.

There was no point breaking the window. The horn wouldn’t sound if the battery had died. No point in doing much of anything now. Except wait for her to find him.

Please call, he thought. Please please please call. I have something to tell—-

The phone chirped in his hand. He stabbed the on button.

“Yes?”

“I’m coming,” she said.

“The headlights just died,” he said. “You’re going to have to look closely. For a… a dark road, a park entrance maybe…”

“I know,” she said, her voice tense. He pictured her leaning forward, driving slowly, squinting out the windshield at the streetsides. “The rain’s making it hard to see a damn thing.”

“Rain,” he said. “It’s raining where you are?”

“Pouring.”

“Then… where are you? It’s dry as a bone here.” Except for the sound of water, the stale exhalation of the damp earth around him.

“I’m about three blocks from the light.”

“Where I was turning?”

“Where you got turned around. It’s all houses here. I thought there was park. There is some park, just ahead… that’s what I was thinking off. But…”

He listened, waiting. And now he could hear her wipers going, sluicing the windshield; he could hear the sizzle of rain under her car’s tires. A storm. He stared at the sky even harder than before. Nothing up there. Nothing coming down.

“But what?” he said finally.

“There’s a gate across the road. You couldn’t have gone through there.”

“Check it,” he said. “Maybe it closed behind me.”

“I’m going on,” she said. “I’ll go to the light and start back, see if I missed anything.”

“Check the gate.”

“It’s just a park, it’s nothing. You’re in woods, you said?”

“Woods, marsh, parkland, something. I’m on a dirt road. There are… bushes all around, and I can hear water.”

“Ah….”

What was that in her voice?

“I can… wait a minute… I thought I could see you, but…”

“What?” He peered into the darkness. She might be looking at him even now, somehow seeing him while he couldn’t see her.

“It isn’t you,” she said. “It’s, a car, like yours, but… it’s not yours. That… that’s not you, that’s not your…”

“What’s going on?” The headlights died all the way down.

“Please, can you keep on talking to me?” she said. “Can you please just keep talking to me and don’t stop for a minute?”

“What’s the matter? Tell me what’s going on?”

“I need to hear you keep talking, please, please,” and whatever it was in her voice that was wrenching her, it wrenched at him too, it was tearing at both of them in identical ways, and he knew he just had to keep talking. He had to keep her on the phone.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Whatever it is. I won’t make you stop and tell me now, if you don’t want to talk, if you just want to listen,” he said. “I love you,” he said, because surely she needed to hear that. “Everything’s going to be fine. I’m just, I wish you could talk to me but—-“

“No, you talk,” she said. “I have to know you’re all right, because this isn’t, that’s not, it can’t be…”

“Sh. Shhh. I’m talking now.”

“Tell me where you are again.”

“I’m standing by my car,” he said. “I’m in a dark wooded place, there’s some water nearby, a pond or marsh judging from the sound, and it’s not raining, it’s kind of warm and damp but it’s not raining. It’s quiet. It’s dark. I’m not… I’m not afraid,” and that seemed an important thing to tell her, too. “I’m just waiting, I’m fine, I’m just waiting here for you to get to me, and I know you will. Everything will be… fine.”

“It’s raining where I am,” she said. “And I’m…” She swallowed. “And I’m looking at your car.”

Static, then, a cold blanket of it washing out her voice. The noise swelled, peaked, subsided, and the phone went quiet. He pushed the redial button, then remembered that she had called him and not the other way round. It didn’t matter, though. The phone was dead. He wouldn’t be calling anyone, and no one would be calling him.

I’ll walk back to that road now, he thought. While there’s still a chance she can find me.

He hefted the cell phone, on the verge of tossing it overhand out into the unseen marshes. But there was always a chance that some faint spark remained inside it; that he’d get a small blurt of a ring, a wisp of her voice, something. He put it in a pocket so he wouldn’t lose it in the night.

He tipped his face to the sky and put out his hand before he started walking.

Not a drop.

It’s raining where I am, and I’m looking at your car.

FLIGHT RISK

They brought Foster to the boy by a route of back alleys and parking garages, changing him from car to car several times, until eventually, although he’d thought he knew the city very well, he found himself uncertain of his whereabouts. They were near the airport, he knew that much. Condemned buildings, empty shops, and the rumbling pall of jet trails over all. A massive extension of the runways planned, this part of the city had known it was doomed; the exodus occurred before delays set in. A perfect place to hide the boy without seeming to hide him.

The final car, a black sedan with dented doors and fenders thinned by rust, drew to a stop at the rear of a building that had too many windows to be a warehouse, too few to be a residence. The man riding shotgun stepped out and opened the door. Foster slid from his seat in back, clutching his worn black bag to his gut. Along the alley, tips of garbage poked through humps of snow. There was just enough warmth in the air to carry a threat of the sourness and rot waiting beneath the ice. A black wrought iron gate swung open in the rear of the building, and a third man, large and heavy browed, appeared there, beckoning. Foster recognized features of gigantism, but felt no thrill at the fact that he was seeing his first giant.

As Foster passed inside, the door clanged shut, cutting the rumble of a jet engine to something felt rather than heard. Foster saw a dim hall with access to a slightly brighter lobby just ahead. The giant held back the accordioned bars of an elevator cage. Foster stepped in and waited for the giant to crowd in beside him.

“I’ll meet you up there,” the giant said, this voice thick with menace. “Don’t get off until I let you out.”

“No,” said Foster. “Of course not.”

The giant pressed a button and retreated, letting the doors clang shut. The elevator jerked and began a scraping ascent.

If the illuminated numbers above the door were to be believed, the elevator was skipping floors. More likely the lights were burned out. When the car finally ground to a halt, Foster knew only that he was somewhere above the seventh floor. He waited what seemed a full minute before he heard clanging, and then the giant appeared, hauling open the door and peering in at him. Out of breath and sweating profusely, he made scooping motions with his hands.

“Yes, yes,” Foster said, following him out and down the hall.

The giant stopped at a door with 909 painted on a frosted glass pane. He dug into his pocket until he found a ring with two keys on it. In the giant’s hand they looked like keys to a child’s diary or a toy padlock. He unlocked the door and pushed it open, making it clear to Foster that he should go in first.

Foster heard a hum of voices mixed with the rumble of another jet passing above. They stepped into what had been the waiting room of an office, more recently being used as a residence. The domestic touches were few: a small refrigerator, a microwave oven, a card table and several folding chairs. An old office desk butted up against a sofa bed. Pizza boxes, cereal cartons, dozens of paper coffee cups. A television with poor reception, volume almost inaudible–the source of the muted voices, probably.

There was another door on the far side of the room, frosted glass pane in its upper half. It was ajar, and through the gap he saw a mattress laid flat on the floor. On it lay small thin legs in parachute pants, bony feet in frayed socks.

The giant saw him looking, gave a shrug in that direction. “Go ahead. Look him over.”

The boy glanced up as Foster entered, wary and unsurprised, as if he had already seen many strangers come and go, Foster just another. A movement in the corner startled Foster. A second man stood up, tall and thin, so pale his face might have been a streak of light cast by headlights, sliding along the wall.

“Thank Christ,” the man said. “I can get the hell out of here.”

“He’s not your replacement, Gaunt,” said the giant, coming in behind Foster. “This is the doctor.”

“Doctor? So when do I get a break?”

“When this is all over.”

“When—“ Gaunt cut himself short, glaring at Foster. “What does he know?”

“I don’t know or care about your business,” Foster said. “I am here for the boy.”

The pale man laughed. “You’re not the only one. Wish the others were as prompt, though.”

“Shut up,” said the giant. “You need to learn patience.”

“That’s the doctor’s department. Go ahead with him, Doc. I think he needs a good worming myself. Where he comes from, they’ve got all kinds of crud. Little brat doesn’t know how good he’s got it here. No appreciation. All the toys we bought him, he just sits there.”

“Please,” Foster said.

“All right. I’m going out for some swill. Since the doctor’s here. If that’s okay with you.”

“Be quick,” the giant said.

The two men stepped out into the other room, leaving Foster and the boy all the privacy they were likely to have. The lock had been removed from the inner door. Foster knelt down next to the mattress.

The boy watched him carefully.

“I am a doctor,” Foster said. “Do you know that word? Do you speak English?”

The boy just stared. His hair was as much grey as brown, like the fur of a mangy wolf he’d seen in the zoo. His eyes were almost as feral, and far more aware of being caged. Foster tried to smile, but felt it might be misinterpreted. A smile could just as easily have foreshadowed cruelties in the boy’s recent past.

“Do… do you know if he’s had any inoculations?” he called back into the other room.

“What?” The giant’s shadow swam up beyond the frosted glass. “You mean, like, polio shots?”

“The usual vaccines. Measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus. Kid stuff.”

“They found him in an orphanage.”

“There must have been medical staff.”

“The place was a hundred years old. Rotting wood. A lot of the kids were sick from the same thing, but it was nothing you could catch. That plant in Belarus or wherever… the one where they had the leak…”

“Hell,” Foster said, leaning closer to the boy. “If that’s it, if he’s that sick—“

“No one’s expecting any miracles out of you. We just want to make sure he’s strong enough to make it until we’ve unloaded him. So you check him out.”

“If he’ll let me.”

“He won’t give you any trouble. Never has.”

Foster reached for the boy’s wrist, took his pulse. From his bag he took the stethoscope and listened to the boy’s chest through a thin sweater. The boy’s breath was warm and smelled of sugar and milk and something else, a smell remembered from youth, working on old radios and television sets. It was like the smell of electrical discharge, yet not quite ozone. And it was stronger, closer to the boy. He leaned in, nostrils flaring, and the boy reared back abruptly.

“Sorry,” Foster said. “Didn’t mean to—“

“Well?” It was the giant, having come up quietly behind him.

“He’s well enough. But he could use some fresh air, some exercise. It’s not healthy for a child to be shut up in a place like this.”

“It’s out of the question. He has toys, if he’d play with them.”

Foster hadn’t noticed the box full of jumbled plastic pieces pushed into one corner of the room. Decks of cards, sponge-rubber balls. No cars or planes or anything that would make noise. Nothing such a boy would be likely to have any interested in playing with.

Foster rose and walked to the window for a look at the icy day. He poked a few fingers through the dusty blinds. “Air,” he whispered.

The window ledge was brick, crusted with grime, mortar that had welled up like grey dough. Pigeons milled somewhere nearby; he could hear them cooing.

There was a very small playground across the street, between old apartment buildings, a few bare trees stretching up from muddy snow around climbing equipment the color of rust. Even looking at the iron bars put the tang of cold metal in his mouth.

“Down there,” he said. “There’s a playground. It’s totally deserted.”

“How do you think it would look, this boy, with the two of us?”

“I’ll take him myself. There’s nothing suspicious in that. He’s what… not even school age? No one will question.”

It was impossible to tell what the giant was thinking. His face gave no clue whether he was considering the situation, or had closed himself off to any possibility of compromise.

“I’ll take care of him,” Foster said. “You can watch from up here. And the other, your friend…”

“…eh…”

“Gaunt. He can watch from somewhere closer. In case you’re afraid the boy’s a flight risk.”

The giant made a dismissive gesture. “He has nowhere to run.”

Foster glanced over at the boy, who watched them intently, but seemed unable to decode their conversation.

“He speaks no English?”

“None. That’s another problem. How will you make him obey you?”

“How do you?”

The giant didn’t answer. There was no need. He was an irresistible force, albeit not as malevolent as he seemed. Because now he shrugged and opened his hands, palms upward.

“All right. But I’ll stay with you.”

“Fine.”

“We’ll be his uncles. If anyone asks.”

“Yes, good,” Foster said. “You have some warm clothes for him?”

The giant slipped away and returned with a heavy coat, dark and thick, brand new. The boy was worth that much investment, to someone.

“Don’t want him catching cold,” the giant said with a shrug, and thrust it at the boy. “Come on,” he said. “We’re going out. The doctor thinks you need to play.”

“He’s a child,” Foster repeated. “Of course he needs to play.”

In the deserted hall, they kept the boy between them. His small face was hidden in the folds of the thick hood. Foster started toward the elevator, but the giant shook his head, wagged a finger. “Not that way.”

“You think I might run?”

“With this boy, I take no chances.”

The stairwell was not much larger than the elevator car. The boy went first, down to a lobby of cracked marble that reeked of stale cigarette smoke. The giant opened the front door and looked both ways, then waved them through. There were few cars in sight. He motioned at the empty playground. “Go ahead. I’ll wait in here. I’d rather not be seen if I can help it.”

“Come whenever you like,” said Foster. “It will do him good, I’m sure of it.”

“Go.”

Foster put his hand out, and was both surprised and gratified when the boy took it without hesitation. They needn’t run, there was no traffic, but Foster felt like running all the same. On the far sidewalk, he stopped with a hand on the low gate that opened into the park. He grinned down at the boy and was rewarded with a small smile. A hint of color was coming back to his cheeks. Foster truly saw his eyes for the first time, and they were blue. Blue as the sky that hid somewhere beyond clouds grey as the underside of a trashcan lid.

“Go,” Foster said, swinging open the gate. “Go play. You know play? You know fun?”

He clapped his hands and gestured at the swings, a roundabout, a teeter-totter. No wonder no one played here. The playground was an anachronism, full of archaic devices considered unacceptably dangerous by insurance brokers. The toys of his own childhood, and that of his own children. Fearful mothers and city councilmen conspired to tear these places down.

The boy looked at him in disbelief, like a wild creature that has been caged and finds itself suddenly free. He stood staring up at Foster, then looked back at the ground-floor façade of the office building. The giant had drawn back inside. The boy spun around and ran toward a towering slide of buckled metal, undoubtedly a dangerous, rickety, tetanus-bearing thing. It took Foster a moment to realize the sharp sound he’d heard as the boy took off was a laugh.

The boy hurtled down the slide, sweeping snow off as he went. From there, leaping across the puddle of slush at the bottom, he rushed toward the swing set and threw himself into a frayed rubber seat, the swing chains grating as he began to push and pull himself into widening arcs. On the highest arc, Foster feared for a moment that the boy was about to hurl himself off into the sky. His face and chest and legs, every part of him strained upward, where the sun seemed to promise it would soon tear away the clouds. It was such a visceral certainty that he startled himself by taking a step toward the swing, as if to catch the boy.

Then down he came, slowing, slowing, slipping off. The boy rushed to the next amusement—the roundabout. He pushed it round and round and leapt on, then off, pushed it again and again until Foster grew dizzy from watching.

Methodically, the child extracted every bit of amusement from each toy. After a while, Foster looked for somewhere to sit. The snow had begun to melt and the benches were dripping. Mounds of brown sand revealed themselves through mounds of snow. He began to sweat inside his jacket, and loosened several buttons. The monkey bars clanged with a hollow sound as the boy climbed to the top. Foster had to suppress an urge he had not felt in many years: the urge to call out a warning. As a father, he had developed the less instinctive response: let the boy be. This was the best Foster felt he could offer the orphan child: the freedom to reach to the sky, proclaiming himself master of this small height, at least for this moment. Let the boy have it. It was little enough.

Across the street, the pale man was just returning from his errand with two paper cups. At that moment, the sun burned a hole through the clouds and set the street gleaming. Foster watched the men talking to each other in the doorway of the building, the giant taking one of the cups, then gesturing across to the playground. Gaunt’s confusion turned to anger. He came striding across the street, while the giant snarled something behind him.

Foster put up a hand as if to say there was nothing to be concerned about, but at that moment, he heard fluttering and felt a vast shadow spread over him from behind.

He turned in surprise and growing astonishment as the other men began to shout. Foster saw that the giant, as he came, had reached into his jacket and drawn a gun. But for Foster, that scarcely registered.

The electric smell which he’d whiffed earlier was a strong presence now, but that was the least of it. The boy still stood at the apex of the monkey bars with his hands outstretched, but now he was more clearly signaling, summoning, something. Making a gesture of desperate pleading and abandon, as if he were clawing at the sky, as if he were pulling it down to him, as if it were a curtain he would tear into rags. It was a child’s gesture, grasping and selfish and uninhibited, completely unaware of its strength.

And in response, came birds. Pigeons. Muted greys and browns and patched white, spiraling from their roosts on the surrounding buildings. They circled and swept in, drawn to the boy.

As Foster stared, something hit him hard from behind. The giant shoved him aside. Gaunt leapt snarling at the bars, trying to clamber toward the gathering cloud of wings. The bars were icy and slick. Gaunt immediately lost his grip and went down hard, banging his jaw. With a grunt, he collapsed into slush.

The giant began waving his hands in the air, heedless of the gun.

“No!” Foster said. “Put that away!” And lower, “You want someone to see?”

As if anyone would notice a mere gun.

The boy was barely visible now at the center of the birds. How quickly it had gathered. He was lost in there, all but hidden. However, in glimpses Foster saw his face, peaceful and beaming, eyes closed, grinning. Then the wings closed in again.

“Get down from there!” the giant shouted, and he pointed the gun into the mass of wings. Foster had the delirious impression that the whole swarm was shifting… pulling away from the bars… impossible, but…

“Please!” Foster said. “Let me—“

The gun went off. The sound was lost in another, louder sound that tore the atmosphere apart like a sonic boom, accompanied by a flash like that of lightning. The air seemed to crack and split, like a thin sheet of quartz shattering under pressure, firing sparks as it shattered.

Then the light failed and the sun was swallowed up in clouds again, and the sound was but an echo.

Whether it was the gunshot or the other shock that did it, the birds scattered, exploding from the scene as if flung in every direction. For a moment Foster saw the boy hanging in midair, several feet above the monkey bars Then he fell. His knees struck the bars with a bang. He went through them like a ragdoll, striking his head once as he went. He hit the ground just as Gaunt was rising to his feet with a hand cradling his jaw.

The ozone smell mixed with the dusty miasma of feathers. Foster rushed for the boy, pushing himself through the bars of the cage, lifting him from the snow. He moaned in Foster’s arms, beginning to shiver, soaking wet.

The giant put out his arms, and Foster carefully fed the boy to him through the bars. The gun was hidden again.

“He needs to get to a hospital,” Foster said.

“No way!” said Gaunt.

They ran across the street, Foster struggling to keep up. “He might be concussed. It is extreme neglect not to—”

“Your fault, doctor,” said the giant bitterly. “If anything happens to him….”

“He needs immediate care—“

“No hospital.”

The lobby door slammed shut behind them. This time the giant crowded into the little elevator with the boy, leaving Foster and Gaunt to climb the stairs. Because of me, Foster thought, not for the last time.

As they climbed, Gaunt stopped once to hold a rail and catch his breath. His teeth were chattering. Foster realized the other man was terrified. He struggled to regain control of himself, then grew rigid as he saw Foster staring at him.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

It struck him again: Because of me.

The boy had a broken leg, that was the only certainty. The giant made several calls, and supplies arrived soon after, then Foster set the leg himself. If there were other more serious injuries, hidden ones, he had to content himself with patching the ones he could see. He worried about the possibility of concussion, other complications, but there was nothing else he could do about them.

The boy had a mark on his brow which went from bluish black to yellow over several days, as the weather warmed and the snow receded and the streets began to stink. Foster spied the coming of spring from between the blinds, when he wasn’t watching the boy. Gaunt and the giant took turns prowling the outer room. They shared the couch with Foster. They would not let him leave. At this point it was out of the question.

He was glad, in a way, because he would have worried to leave the boy in their care. The blue eyes watched him come and go as he puttered about the room and sorted through the contents of his black bag. The boy lay on the mattress, mostly unmoving, and said nothing, only watched him, or the window. The TV muttered at the edge of perception, but he showed no interest in that—unusual child. He kept gazing toward the sky, his attention growing always especially rapt when the pigeons began to stir somewhere above, and when the shadows of winged things went flickering across the blinds.

When Foster smelled the ozone whiff from time to time, he worried, remembering the cyclone of wings.

At one such moment, the giant came storming into the room, scouring the corners with his eyes, as if searching for some traitor or enemy hiding there. His nostrils flared. He strode to the window and drew up the blinds; and there, startling Foster, was something to feed their apprehension.

The crumbling brick ledge was lined with pigeons. Several dozen of them milled about, curiously mute, staring through the cracked and grimy glass as if looking for the boy. The giant let out a yell. He unlocked the window and pushed it up, shedding flakes of ancient paint. The birds swirled away from the screaming giant. Then he slammed the window down so hard the glass cracked, leaving it intact but looking like a puzzle made of shards.

The giant stormed out of the room, then out of the suite. Gaunt paced about in the other room, his pale face swimming back and forth across the rippled glass of the inner door.

Foster sank down on a corner of the mattress and leaned toward the boy, who had learned to trust him enough not shy away.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish I could help you somehow. Do you know what they want with you? What use are you to them?”

The boy stared at him with eyes unblinking and undefeated. So young, Foster thought.

The giant returned less than an hour later, carrying shopping bags. He busied himself in the next room. Foster left the boy and wandered in to watch ominous preparations. The giant had a loaf of cheap white bread. He pinched out lumps of dough and rolled them into balls. The desktop was scattered with flour. The giant dropped a large box back into one of the bags. Not flour, he realized, for the box bore a skull and crossbones.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

“I have to protect my investment,” the giant said. “You don’t know what trouble I’m in if anything happens to that boy.”

“Yes but I don’t see—”

“No repeats of the other day. I can’t allow it.”

Filling his pockets with the dough balls, the giant opened the door to the boy’s room. The boy looked on with blue eyes unblinking.

The giant returned to open the cracked window. It opened easily now. He carefully arranged the balls of dough along the ledge, emptying his pockets. He lowered the window gingerly, and then the blinds.

He turned and saw the boy watching him, and brushed his hands together, smiling.

“Nice birdies,” the giant said.

By the next morning, the cooing above the casement had all but ceased. The dough balls were gone. In their place lay a solitary pigeon which must have died during the night and fallen from somewhere above. Crumpled and stiff, its glazed eye seemed to stare at Foster through the cracked pane. He stared back at the bird, feeling as if his own eye were equally crazed.

Behind him, a thud. An exhalation. The boy had risen, pulled himself from the bed. He limped up beside Foster, dragging his cast. When he saw the bird, the boy collapsed. Foster felt himself crumbling from within, but he found the strength to catch the boy. The boy had learned to cry soundlessly and without tears. Foster carried him back to the mattress, amazed by his self-control. In the other room, the giant had no clue what transpired in here. The rumble of jets masked whatever sounds they might have made.

“There, there,” Foster said, keeping a hand on the boy’s back as he shuddered with dry weeping. “It’s all right.”

The next day was warmer still. The suite began to grow uncomfortable, even suffocating. Foster asked the giant if they could open a window, although he knew the answer in advance. Gaunt and the giant were growing more impatient and nervous; their mood verged on paranoid. Foster gathered that some crucial deadline had come and gone; that someone they were counting on had failed to appear. There were numerous hushed, harsh phone conversations on their countless cell phones, but they were diligent about keeping him in the dark.

“Please,” he said, pleading the boy’s case, “just the one window, just an inch or so, to let some air in.”

“No. Nothing. You saw what happened.”

“Just a crack.”

Gaunt shot up from his chair, kicking it backward, lunging at him. The giant held him back. Foster retreated.

Foster’s only relief from the interior of the room, from the constant haunting of unanswerable questions in the boy’s eyes, was to stand at the window and see what passed outside. But always the bird came to dominate his view; his eye incessantly returned to the increasingly active colony it had attracted. The first flies touched down on the dead eye, then darted toward the rawness of flesh inside the gaping beak, and finally lost all caution and began to explore the carcass thoroughly, inside and out. Sometimes he thought he could smell a faint putrid odor, only as much as would have drifted through the fractured pane. But the one time he started to unlock the window, to nudge the bird out of his view and dispel the flies, he found that the giant had appeared at his shoulder.

“If you even touch that lock, I’ll break all your fingers.”

Foster laced his fingers behind his back and watched the flies touch down on the pale grey ruff of feathers and tap across the glass, tasting everything.

“I want that bird there as a reminder,” the giant said.

That night Gaunt and the giant spread an assortment of Chinese take-out containers across the desk, and sat on the sofa griping. So weary of their vigil that they had begun to betray bits of it, and to discuss it openly, ignoring Foster.

“—have to do something. They’re never coming.”

“We lose the money and the boy, is that what you mean?” said the giant. “Throw it all away?”

“The boy’s nothing to us except money. And if the money’s not coming…”

“You don’t waste something like what he has.”

“What does he have? What use is it?”

“That’s not a question we have to answer. We just have to find someone who’ll make the same deal.”

“You’re dreaming. It was hard enough to get this one in place.”

“There’s interest, believe me.”

“There’s also danger the longer we hold onto him… if he gets desperate or… or who knows what he’ll do. Those birds, they were nothing. What if he pulls down something else?”

“Like what?”

“Like what. How about something heavier than birds? Something to make a crater where we’re sitting.”

“That’s not his talent.”

“How do you know? You’re guessing. No one knows the limits exactly. It’s just potential right now. In Belarus, remember, the cluster of debris? Space junk… all in a small radius around the orphanage…”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“But if it’s not, if he gets upset enough—”

“He likes the doctor. He won’t let anything…”

The giant paused, looked over at the door to the boy’s room, saw Foster standing there watching them. He shook his head and stuffed a forkful of noodles into his mouth.

“It’s stupid to sit here and wait to be picked up. Admit it. The opportunity’s gone. Something happened to them and they’ll never—”

At that moment, one of their many cell phones rang. The giant found it among the scattered take-out containers. Foster watched his glum face shift almost imperceptibly. “Yes? Yes. All right, yes.” Then he switched it off and put it back down and simply stared at Gaunt.

“You’re kidding, right?”

The giant slowly shook his head.

“In the morning,” he said.

Foster sank back into the inner room. The boy was asleep, whimpering softly down in the dark. Foster stepped lightly to the window and peered through the blinds as if some new solution might offer itself. No fire escape. Barely enough room on the ledge for the pigeon’s fly-blown carcass. Even if he dared to unlock it, there was no escape here. If he could, he would have opened the window, he would have raised the boy up, he would have stepped off into space and taken them both away from here.

But he could do nothing. Nothing but watch through the night. The street was rarely busy, except for a brief time in the morning when a flurry of cars passed through on their way to other destinations. The sun came up among TV aerials and satellite dishes and ancient water tanks. The last trace of snow had melted, and the clear sky promised warmth. The flies were already busy, buzzing and bumbling about beyond the glass, nearly as loud as the voices from the other room as the giant and Gaunt roused themselves. Gaunt, in a rare good mood, volunteered to venture out for coffee and rolls.

Foster watched him walk away from the front of the building, nine floors below, and head off on foot. The sun began to beat at the glass, but the boy slept on. An ominous rumble from somewhere above the building made him flinch, then he realized it was only a jet; a tracery of contrails hung in the sky, dissolving. He saw no planes, but he could hear them. It sounded like many of them. With an eye to the sky, Foster traced the web of broken window glass; it was a useless web that couldn’t trap a single one of the flies on the far side of the glass. One of the vermin rose up from the flyblown corpse and lit upon the glass; clung there, separated from his fingertip by the thin pane. The thought of the filthy insect coming near the boy repulsed him, and he tapped the glass to frighten it away. Instead, there was a sharp crack, and a small shard tipped out and fell to the bricks with a sharp sound, shattering into bits of angular glitter. The sound of rumbling grew perceptibly louder, Foster’s hearing rendered hypersensitive by fear. It didn’t help to realize he’d opened the way for flies now; and that the giant might have heard the sound of breaking glass and would come to investigate, disturbing the sleeping boy.

His eye traveled past the ledge, caught by a black car cruising to a stop on the street directly below.

Foster turned away and looked at the boy, wondering if he should wake him.

To his surprise, he found the boy was awake and smiling at him.

“Run,” Foster whispered. It made him sound ridiculous in his own ears. His only excuse was that he knew the boy could not understand him.

The car doors opened, and a small dark figure stepped out, and then another. Men in black suits. From up here, they were not much bigger than the flies that had begun to swarm around the bird in the warming light.

The men walked out of sight below the window ledge. He pushed his brow to the glass, but they were hidden. He turned toward the boy, biting his lips, never having felt more helpless in his life. But for some reason, meeting the boy’s eyes, he felt suddenly released. It was as if he had had done all he could do, and the boy knew it; and although it amounted to nothing, although he had failed completely, still it had been enough.

But there must be something more, Foster told himself. Even if it meant throwing himself in their path, making some extreme gesture no matter how futile.

He put a finger to his lips and gestured toward the other room. The boy nodded. It was the most conspiratorial they had ever been. Foster put his hand briefly on the boy’s head, tousled his hair, then stepped into the other room. He made a great show of easing the door shut.

“No need for that,” the giant said. “He’ll have to wake up soon enough. This is his last day with us.”

Foster pretended surprise. “Really? Well… that’s a relief. It’s bound to be better for him, wherever he’s going.”

The giant looked at Foster as if he were impossibly naïve. “If you say so.”

Foster glanced back at the door. He had thought the murmuring came from out here, but now he realized it must be coming from another floor completely. It was hard to remember they were not alone in the old office building. Hard to remember, at times, that they were not alone in the whole world.

Out in the hall, he heard the elevator creaking. The giant looked perplexed. He rose to his feet and started toward the boy’s room, but Foster stepped deftly toward the hall and the giant had to veer to intercept him.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“I thought I heard someone at the door.”

The giant moved between Foster and the hall door. He opened it and looked out. The approaching elevator sounded clear and clangorous. The giant straddled the threshold, as if suspecting that Foster was looking for a chance to slam the door and lock him out.

The elevator stopped. The doors took their time squealing open. Foster peered out past the giant as two men he had never seen stepped out of the lift and looked around in the dimness. The giant beckoned them over and stepped back into the suite, forcing Foster in first.

Someone was talking urgently now in some room nearby. He could almost make out the voices. Foster wondered if the sound was making made the men apprehensive. They did not look like men who were ordinarily nervous about anything, but perhaps they knew a little about the boy—enough to fear him.

It occurred to Foster that he had never feared the boy, only feared for him.

“Where is he?” said one of the new men.

The giant said, “I’ll get him.”

“No,” Foster said.

The strangers turned to glare at him. One said, “Who is this?”

“Nobody,” said the giant.

“I’m the boy’s doctor,” Foster said. “He’s sleeping. He hasn’t been well. He had a blow to the head and he… he needs rest. He needs special care.”

Anger. “Is he serious?”

The giant shrugged. “He’s grown attached.”

They stared at Foster as if this were unfortunate and unnecessary. Foster had been about to plead his own case, to ask if they would let him come along to care for the boy, but he could see now the futility of such a request. He didn’t mind making a fool of himself, but there was little point in wasting his energy. There must be something else he could do.

The murmuring, though still indistinct, had grown louder. Foster realized where the sound was coming from an instant before the others did. He saw the giant’s eyes widen as he turned his massive head toward the inner door. The frosted glass was dark, darker than the room had ever been in daylight, even with the blinds shut.

The giant cast a malevolent look at Foster, as if he were behind this somehow, then he took a step toward the door. The two strangers looked on without a clue what they were witnessing.

At that moment, Foster heard banging in the hall and the outer door flew open. The strangers whirled with guns drawn out of nowhere, as Gaunt hurled himself into the room, gasping and out of breath from rushing up the stairs.

“Stop him!” he croaked, not even seeing the guns. He lunged at the boy’s door.

The giant beat him to it. Foster staggered back toward the hall. The giant hurled himself against the door, but although it could not be locked from within, it seemed to resist his heavy blows.

Gaunt fell in beside him, and the two men threw themselves at the door until the very frame began to crack. The frosted glass pane shattered and the door crashed open in the same instant, unbottling the darkness sealed within.

The room beyond was utterly black and thick and crawling and alive. It was filled with a million seething voices. The giant and Gaunt and the two strangers with their useless guns, all fell back from the demonic cloud with their mouths slowly moving, as if they were trying to mimic or interpret the sounds. But they were not words, not really. They were meaningless, incoherent yet full of expression.

“Get in there!” screamed Gaunt.

“You get in!” the giant cried.

Then Foster did a senseless thing. He turned on the strangers, about whom he knew nothing except that they were likely to be ruthless, and without a second thought he snatched the gun from the hands of the nearest. The man let out a shout, and they all turned to look at Foster. There were three guns pointing at him. They stared at him as if he were crazy, suicidal.

Foster turned toward the inner doorway. He could see the faintest glow from the far window. He fired into the mass, but it was like shooting into smoke. He was thrown backward, his shoulder wrenched by recoil, deafened by the gunshot, the weapon falling from his hand. Even through the shock of sound he could hear glass shatter, and it was the sound of release. From out of the horrible buzzing came a peal of high pure laughter.

The smoke that wasn’t smoke had already cleared by the time he regained his feet. It had thinned so much he could see the walls again, the blinds hanging limp and tattered, the window completely shattered from its frame, and the open sky beyond.

Foster ignored the fallen gun, ignored the guns still aimed at him, and walked alone toward the window.

He stared out into the morning.

Above the rooflines, still rising, still laughing, he caught sight of a dark coherent cloud that surged and gathered and regathered itself. And persisted.

Foster looked down at his hands, which rested on the ledge among strewn shards of glass. A fly spiralled down and landed on his knuckle. It took several steps, rubbed its forelegs together as if giving thanks, then kissed his skin quite tenderly. Foster raised his hand, meaning to lift it up until he could meet its eyes, wondering what he might find there–but the fly was only a fly after all, and too restless for such formalities. Casting itself onto the wind, it hurried to catch up with the rest of its legion.

Foster turned to face the other men, ready to accept their blame—whatever came.

Because of me, he thought. And was content.

JANE

The first we knew of the travelers was the tinkling of our falcon’s silver bell. She landed on our Father’s glove, and he leant his whiskered cheek against her beak. When he raised his head there was a look in his eyes I had not seen before.

He sighed and put his hand on my head and said, —Jane, go tell your mother we have visitors.

I walked across the wet grass to the house, and I heard him whispering to the bird as he clipped the leash to the silver varvels in her leather jesses. He climbed the porch and set her on her perch, and sat beside her in his rocking chair, oiling his glove and watching the bamboo thicket through the afternoon, while I stayed inside and played with little Anna to keep her out of mother’s way.

The sun was at five fists when the travelers appeared. They stood at the edge of the clearing, staring at the house as if they feared it, until our Father rose and crossed the grass to greet them.

Two men and a woman. Although I studied them so closely that our Father had to shoo me away, I never thought to ask their names nor anything else about them. I only listened to the questions our Father asked, and to the answers they gave, and in so doing I learned as many new things about our Father as I learned about the visitors. I learned he had once lived in the city, which surprised me greatly since he had never told us he knew its evils from experience. I learned he had once been a traveler himself, with intimate knowledge of the roads he forbade us approach. I learned he spoke languages I’d never heard him speak until that night, when the three travelers stayed and shared our supper.

I remember steaming crocks of stew; mother’s dense loaves of dark bread with cracked corn toasted into it; falcon-caught squab and squirrel, and wild pig my brothers had brought back from that day’s hunt. I remember the glow of the lantern light in the travelers’ eyes and the loudness of their voices as they drank our Father’s wine and then his brandy late into the night.

Somehow Anna and I were forgotten, we girls allowed to stay up and listen, as if this were a special lesson. We knew it was rare. Even our brothers, old as they were, had never seen visitors before. Sometimes while hunting they heard the sound of travelers on the far-off road, but our Father always hushed them and made them retreat in utter silence so as to betray nothing of our presence. It was for the same reason they hunted with crossbows and never a gun. And although our Father had once been a fine shot, he now relied completely on his falcon.

The travelers admired his falcon greatly and asked many questions as she perched near the table with the family. They remarked on the intricate designs on her polished silver bell and varvels, and I warmed with pride, for it was my task to keep the little cuff rings untarnished, although the designs etched in them meant little to me, being letters in a language I could not read. The lady traveler said the falcon was the bird of royals, to which my father replied, —Birds do not distinguish one type of man from another but will accept any master who treats them with dignity.

To prove his point, he took his huge glove and slipped it on my brother Ash’s hand, and the falcon flew to Ash and landed on the glove.

And the woman said, —But the son of a royal is still a royal.

Then I noticed one of the men staring very hard at the glove, and the emblem stitched upon it, which always fascinated me though I knew not what it meant. It was a hook like a question mark with a barbed arrow for a tip and a slanted line cut through it, as if the question had been struck out.

I had seen the emblem all my life, but it had never meant a thing to me until I saw the travelers looking at it with such wonder. Our Father must have seen them looking as well, for he sent Ash to take the falcon to her mews and then began to question how they had happened upon us.

They had lost the road, they said, in a night of rain. They should have stopped and made camp but had hoped to find an inn.

—What night was this? our Father asked, for it had been dry several nights now; but the travelers could not say how long they had wandered. They asked if we knew the way back to the road, and father nodded.

—My sons and I will see you there safely in the morning, he said.

This surprised me greatly, for our Father had commanded us to keep well clear of the road, my brothers most of all. I think he feared they would use it to escape, but in truth they were more scared of what lay at the ends of that road than of our Father.

At this time, Anna began to grow upset beneath her hood, which normally kept her so calm; and my mother bade me take her to bed. This made me angry, as I hated to miss any of the rare evening; but when the lady traveler made a comment about Anna being too old for such devices and said that the world no longer looked kindly on the practice, I rose and took Anna’s hand and led her away so that the woman would not see how much she had offended me, for my own hood had not been off for long at all.

Sometime later I found myself in my own bed, with Anna’s arms around me and voices coming from the next room where the firelight still flickered. I loosened Anna’s arms and went to see who spoke. The table had been cleared. I saw my parents standing over the sleeping forms of the travelers, wrapped in their bedrolls by the low-banked fire.

Our Father must have heard me, for he turned and gave me a look of grave concern and tenderness such as I had rarely seen on his hard, hard face. Then my mother followed his gaze and saw me watching. She crossed the room and turned me gently back toward my bed, but not before I saw that in our Father’s hands, its head full of warm orange light, he held an ax.

—Back to bed, Jane, she told me.

The sight of the ax meant less than the look of tender love. Nor did I fully wake to the sharp sounds that came soon after, while my mother stroked my hair and told me that our Father loved us more than anything and had taken every step to see we lived in safety, and would do whatever he must to make sure no one ever threatened that, or us.

We were his sweet, sweet angels.

That night I dreamt I was an angel, flying in the clear night air, and around my neck I wore a tinkling silver bell, and around my ankles leather cuffs with silver rings that bore my name. And in the morning, the travelers were gone. We found mother washing the floor and cleaning up after having fed them early and sent them on their way. She scrubbed the house so thoroughly that soon there was no sign they had ever passed through, and for once she did not insist that Anna and I share the chores but bid us go amuse ourselves outside. We went as far as the bamboo thicket, I leading Anna by the hand as she could not be unhooded until our Father’s return, since the hooding was always and only at his discretion. I thought to look for the departed travelers’ tracks. Then Anna said she heard something, and I stopped and listened with her. From far off we heard sounds that continued through much of the morning, rising and falling but never going any farther, never coming any closer until some time past noon when we heard our Father and brothers crashing through the jungle from a direction I had never associated with the road. We had been listening to them all along.

—We took the long way round, my brother Olin said. The river was in flood and forced a detour.

—Yes, our Father said. But we saw them off all right in the end.

Olin and father chuckled, but Ash looked angry and threw aside the machete he carried for cutting through undergrowth. He stormed off, with our Father glowering after him. We were all used to his moods.

Our Father scooped up Anna and unhooded her, to cover her rosy cheeks with kisses; and Olin took my hand; and we turned to see mother waiting on the porch, smiling as we crossed the grass. It was the kind of moment I had always known. It was as if the visitors had never come. But everything had changed without my knowing it.

For the next few weeks, our Father forbade Olin and Ash to hunt, although with winter coming on, this made no sense to me. Already there were fewer birds, the great migrations having passed; and the prey available to our Father’s falcon was scarce. Ash began to stomp about, and although he never spoke against our Father, his anger became a thing you could almost touch, though it would burn your fingers.

Our Father finally eased his restrictions when mother wept about the state of the larder. There were signs that winter would come early and harsh and outstay its welcome by many weeks. I was there at the edge of the clearing when he sent my brothers out with express instructions to hunt until the sun was at five fists and no lower. I was there when the sun sank to five and then four fists. It was almost night when Olin finally stumbled from the jungle in tears. He had argued with Ash, and they had fought; Ash had struck him in the temple with a broken branch and fled while he was down. Olin had followed as far as he dared. And our Father said, —How far was that? Through sobs Olin said he had seen Ash step onto the road and set off in the direction of the city.

That night, after hours of sorting through belongings and packing them into old canvas knapsacks from the shed, we left the house. Anna and I did not ask where we were going, or when we might return, but father put on his glove and fetched his falcon from her mews, and I knew we were going far and would be gone for a long time. Anna was hooded against the fearful shapes of the night, and it fell to me to take her hand; and I remembered when I had been much younger myself and how it felt to be led along through darkness, trusting completely in the hand that guided me; and the smell of the hood; and I almost wished for that same security now. But I was a girlchild no longer; I had left the years of hooding behind when our Father felt I was too old for it, so the sheltering blindness was Anna’s luxury and not mine. I tried to be a good guide, in spite of needing guidance myself. At first I thought we were heading to the road, in search of Ash, but Olin said no, the road was in the opposite direction. Sunrise proved him right. We were somewhere in the jungle I had never been, following a track the wild pigs and small deer must have made. Our Father knew it well enough to have guided us in the dark. My mother moved carefully, without complaining, though I knew her joints were swollen and always troubled her. When Anna began to complain, Olin picked her up and carried her, even though his pack was heavy. From that point on, I walked in front with our Father, holding his free right hand.

When I looked up at our Father, I saw the hardness there, and the worry; but in catching his eye, I also saw the love that drove him, and I felt such love in return that I never thought to question where we went, or why.

We rested as often as we dared. Our Father was mindful of Anna and me and solicitous of my mother’s pains. You never would have thought he’d had any infirmities himself; he strode along as powerfully as my brother. When we stopped to make camp at the end of the day, he built us a shelter against the night rain; then he sent up his falcon, and before long we heard her bell and she descended with a bright-plumed bird that we roasted over a small fire. Our Father joked that he should teach her to catch bats, and then we should be well fed. But he put out the fire as soon as we were done, and I heard him whispering to my mother that we dared not make another. The falcon took stand in a branch above our camp, where I could hear her wings rustling in the dark from time to time. Among all the noises of the jungle I found comfort in that sound.

The morning of the second day, we woke and marched, and that day was like a dreary dream. Anna could be carried, but I could not, and I wished that like our falcon I could fly aloft to take the weight off my blistered feet. Yet I tried not to complain, especially after looking upon my mother, who said not a word although you could see in her face that she thought of nothing but Ash.

The third day dawned in horror. We woke to screaming and woeful calls, which came from somewhere we could not imagine. Our Father needed not caution us to silence, for none of us would have made a sound against the awful cries. They seemed to fill the jungle, echoing from every shadow. And as the sun rose and filled the dark places with light, the sound grew stronger, moving now this way, now that, as if buffeted by the wind.

We crept through the woods, away, always away from our homestead, but the screaming trailed us. My mother wept silently, and Olin’s face was pale and our Father’s grim beyond belief. He must have known immediately what the rest of us did not, for it was hours before mother said, —It’s Ash! And he nodded only once.

We did not sleep that night. Nor did Ash by the sound of it, for the sourceless, ceaseless wailing roamed the dark, ragged and full of pain. On this night there was no rain, and the clouds kept back as if agreed the moon should shine on us remorselessly. We cowered in a clearing and tried to rest, and as I looked up at the moon I tried to make my peace with it and prayed it would keep watch over us somehow. I did not know what other power to pray to.

Then across the face of the moon, something drifted like a skeletal kite; but only the bars of the kite, with the sail itself all twisted and in tatters. And then I woke, thinking it was a dream, but did not wake, for it was not a dream. The kite drifted untethered, under its own power, and the thing that writhed upon it began to scream and beg for death and mercy. It cried out in my brother’s voice:

—Father! Mother! Anna! Olin!

—Jane! it called, for I was always his favorite. Jane!

We all lay still as it passed above. Something fell from it and splattered on my face like a raindrop, a tear, or more likely blood. I only stirred to check that Anna’s hood was fastened so she would not be too frightened, and then not a one of us moved. I saw that our Father had put his hand over mother’s mouth so that she would not make a sound and betray us. And though at first she wept and moaned, in time she grew quiet.

For hours it hung there. I could study every bared sinew in the moonlight. I could see how his skin had been peeled away, the muscles severed from tendons and separated strand by strand from one another. But I could not see how he lived, let alone cried out with such ferocity.

Near morning, as the moon sank, the wind rose and the clouds regathered, and a high breeze caught hold of the kite and moved it on. Both sight and sound of Ash faded away. Our Father took such a deep, shuddering breath that I could almost believe he had not breathed in hours. Then he said only, —They will pay for this in kind. The sky above the city will be full of kites!

Our Father took his hand away from mother’s mouth, then looked down and kissed her eyelids closed, and I saw how she had managed to lie so still through that terrible night as her firstborn hung flayed and screaming above her. Our Father’s hand had been firm inside his heavy glove; and though she must have wailed and wept, we remained undiscovered; and when I saw the blood and how the thick leather of the palm had been torn by teeth, I recalled her words when I woke in the night and saw the ax. I found new comfort in them now.

We had come to rocky country, where the land rose in shelves of tumbled stone. It was deep in one of these crevices that we laid our mother, covered in the brittle yellow leaves of bamboo, with rocks chinked in around her like a loose-fit wall. Olin would not speak, but he worked alongside our Father while I held Anna and watched. Olin carried Anna the rest of the day, and she did nothing but weep inside her hood, but my eyes were dry.

In the afternoon, we heard Ash again. This time our Father’s face grew dark, and he leant to his falcon and whispered something fierce that roused her. Then he cast her off.

We climbed farther then descended into a shallow valley, which was comforting for the shadows it held. I walked behind Anna and Olin and sometimes lifted her hood just enough to tickle her lips with a blade of grass, reminding her to smile. I felt the valley contained a magic that had cut us off from all unpleasantness, for all afternoon it was quiet. But then we heard something I had hoped we’d left behind: Ash’s screaming and pleading. The cries came on closer and faster than ever. Olin cried out and took off running with Anna, crashing deep into the jungle without looking back. But I clung to our Father’s hand, and he never trembled but stared at the broken sky through the trees as the sound grew louder and louder. Then down through the leaves came his falcon, with the sound of Ash’s torment circling round her, and I understood nothing—for how could a bird scream like a boy? She circled our Father’s head and dropped a ragged, bloody scrap from her talons to his hands. Then she settled on his wrist.

He held out his right hand so I could see the quarry. It was fleshy and clear, like yellowed glass with milky green shapes inside. It was veined and buzzing with botflies. And it screamed and screamed with my brother’s voice until our Father set it on a granite slab and crushed it under his heel.

We looked for Anna and Olin through the rest of the day and long after dark, not daring to call for them. Finally, our Father pulled me into a cave among the stones, very much like that in which we had left mother. He devised a perch for his bird inside the mouth of the cave, though I knew it pained him that she had no room to spread her wings, for several times I woke to hear him apologizing so deeply that he wept.

I woke to see distant light, jagged and raw, and heard the sound of voices, these not screaming but calling out with urgency, very brisk and efficient. Father crouched in the mouth of the cave, whispering to his falcon where she perched on his glove. Then he cast her off, and she was gone, with only the faintest sound of a bell. I wondered that he had not removed her bell, but I think the screams of Ash must have deafened him to many sounds. Then, still wearing his glove, father took my hand and tugged me quietly to the threshold, and as we looked over the broken stones we saw greenish fog creeping through the valley below. All sort of animals had struggled from their burrows to die there in the morning mist: marmots and rabbits and lizards, some still thrashing. A wind had begun to thin the shallow cloud, but it also pushed traces of the acrid mist uphill, and we hurried to climb faster than it could seep. His falcon charted our path from above, but although I sometimes saw her shadow or caught a silvery tinkling of her bell, she never came down to us again. And I wondered what my father could have told her to keep her away.

As we topped the crest and came down the other side of the ridge, we saw a farther valley where traces of the mist still lingered. And this time, among the small furry bodies, were two larger ones we knew on sight, flushed from their desperate burrow. It needed no closer inspection to know that Olin lay there, and many yards away lay Anna, just out of reach of our Father’s sheltering hand. I thought of how it must have been for Anna, wandering blindly without a guide, never thinking to lift the hood without father’s permission. That was the first moment I saw the hood as a hateful thing and knew it was only by chance that my childhood had not ended the same way; and I wondered if without it she might have escaped.

We kept to the ridge until we heard voices coming up from the valley to one side where a stream ran. Soon after that, I saw others moving far off among the bamboo staves, and the hue and flow of their garments reminded me of the three travelers, but there were many more of them.

To avoid being seen we went down from the ridge and sought a more choked passage, where sometimes we went on all fours and sometimes had to wriggle like snakes. From time to time our Father had to pull me over shelves of rock I could not climb myself; he had taken to using his gloved hand to help me, so I could not feel his fingers through it but only the thick, tough leather. It broke my heart, for it seemed he could not bear to touch me without the glove; as if he were already preparing to be apart. I felt almost relieved we were alone now, because my mother would have had no heart for this, and my sister not enough strength. Only I did miss Olin though.

In the afternoon, we stepped onto a spur of rock like a stone finger pointing straight out from the mountainside; and I saw more of the world in that one instant than I had seen in my whole life. The land fell away below us, sheer above a rocky slope that thickened into jungle down below. The jungle gave way to a wide plain, burned and bare and grey with the look of recent devastation. Beyond the plain, in a smoky haze, were unnatural shapes that could only be buildings, although the thing they most reminded me of was mountains. The stony finger pointed right at this place. When I asked my father if that was the city, he took his eyes away from it and said, —Yes, Jane.

And then he said, —I never showed you this. And I hadn’t meant to show any of you, although your mother knew, for we fled from there together. She carried Ash in her belly, while I brought nothing with me but my falcon.

I looked closer at the city, and in its jumbled center I saw something that puzzled me for seeming so familiar. It was a tall spire, the tallest of them. And at the very tip of that spire was a curved shape that looked like a crook or a question mark, though it ended in a barbed tip; and across it was a slash that seemed to cut through all the haze of distance so that I turned and stared at the emblem on our Father’s glove and saw they were the same.

—I have done all I can to keep you safe, our Father said. Almost all.

—Come to me, Jane. Do you understand what we must do? Come to me.

He stood at the edge of the rock and held out his gloved hand as he had all these days. His face was no longer hard, no longer the face of our Father. I could not see him in it anywhere. Yet I stepped up beside him, for I heard voices coming up among the rocks. I heard footsteps and scrabbling and harsh, panting breaths.

I hardly sensed his fingers through the thick leather; his hand felt insubstantial inside the heavy glove. Looking out at the city, I thought the air above it was full of dark vibrant motes, and I remembered what he’d said about a sky full of kites. I was not sure if they were present and real or a vision vouchsafed of the future. I only knew they depended on my eyes to see them, for my father’s eyes were lost and empty now, no matter what they had been the day before. It was as if he had pulled a hood over his own head and now expected me to guide him.

—Ah, Jane, he said.

And then we took a step together. But his was one step forward, and mine was one step back. I held fast to the glove when his hand went out of it. Then I knelt on the tip of the stone finger and watched him fall until green swallowed him.

Voices gathered in the air behind me and grew still. I heard footsteps settle at the edge of the rock. They came no closer.

A shadow brushed over me, and I heard my falcon’s bell. I slipped my hand into the glove and she settled on my wrist in a flurry.

I leant to put my cheek against her feathers, for she deserved my respect more than any of them. More even than he had.

When I had made them wait long enough, I left off whispering. I slowly turned to put the city at my back. In the slant evening light, I made sure they saw my face, and I held up the glove so they could all see the emblem upon it.

At the sight of that, they stared. Then they knelt and bowed their heads, and some lay face-down flat upon the rock.

—I am Jane, was all I said, and all I had to say.

SWEETMEATS

At first little Hugh thought it was rats. Rats in the wall by his head, down low on the floor where his mattress lay. He had seen them often enough, darting down the hall to the kitchen, coming upon their nests in the narrow crawlspace where he sometimes went for privacy. He imagined their curved teeth gnawing away, almost the same stained yellow color as the crumbly plaster they chewed.

His sister had always feared they would come in at night and eat them, but she did not wake to see if her dream would come true. Hugh alone watched and watched the spot where the sound was coming from. He watched until the wall began to tremble, and a piece of it bent sideways and opened like a little door, hinged on the wallpaper.

Out came not a rat, but a little brown man. Very little, very brown. His head barely reached the lower ledge of the windowsill.

“Is this your house?” the little brown man said. “You live here?”

Hugh twisted and looked over his shoulder to make sure his sister was still sleeping. She was. The rest of the house was quiet as well; his parents often fell into a stupor long before Hugh could find his way to sleep. Some nights he never even closed his eyes, but lay awake with his head so empty that the darkness inside him and the darkness outside were exactly the same. That was very restful. But now, except for Hugh and this little intruder, everyone was asleep.

“Who are you?” Hugh whispered.

“I asked you a question.”

“I’m sleeping in it, aren’t I?”

“Right,” said the little man, and turned to peer back at the hole he’d made. “You won’t fit through this.”

“Why would I want to?”

“We need to get you out of here, under the house. Right away.”

“Keep your voice down,” Hugh said, “you’ll wake my sister. And I’m not going anywhere with you. Not… not unless you tell me who you are.”

“No names until we trust you.”

“You trust me? Why should I trust you?”

“Do you know Mbe’lmbe?”

“Umbaylumbay? Who’s he?”

“Foo. But it is not your fault you are such an ignorant child. If you knew the name, you would know that you can trust me. We have had secrecy forced upon us for so long, the world has forgotten us. Answer me this, boy. Is there another way under your house?”

“The crawlspace.”

“You get there how?”

“There’s a piece of screen under the porch. I peel it back.”

“Very well. Put on your shoes and go there. I will meet you and then we proceed.”

“I’m not that crazy.”

“You can wear your pajamas—it’s warm enough where we’re headed. But shoes you may need. Now hurry.”

Hugh plucked at the flannel pajamas that had been his solitary Christmas present, his solace on these bitter nights in the drafty little house. When he looked up again the flap of wallboard was swinging back into place. The little brown man was gone.

Hugh’s dilemma. For the moment, he was free to do as he chose. Surely such a little man couldn’t force him to do anything he didn’t want to do. It was up to Hugh himself whether he crawled into the cobwebby dark beneath the porch, or fell back into his pillow and tried to sleep.

A moment later, the pillow was cooling and the sheets lay thrown back. The bed was empty, Hugh’s decision made.

“Well done, little man,” the little man greeted him from darkness as he scraped through the wire mesh. Hugh kept a candle stub and book of matches in his crawlspace nest. As the light flared, the man’s pupils glared briefly golden like a cat’s. “Now make haste with me. Our time is short.”

In the middle of the crawlspace floor, the raw dirt had been pushed up in a gaping crater, a mole mound dug up from beneath. Into this, now, the little man lowered himself. One hand thrust up and beckoned back to Hugh. “It’s narrow here, but soon widens.”

It was also dark. Putting his face above the opening, he felt a breeze coming up, strong enough to make the flame flutter. He expected the subterranean wind to carry a tomb smell, something as musty as the suffocating damp beneath the house. Instead, the breeze was redolent of unexpected sweetness. Cinnamon. Mint. The rich, dark, intoxicating scents of coffee, vanilla, and above all else, chocolate. The passage was crudely hewn by pick and shovel, hardly fit for a grave-tunneling ghoul, but the smell disarmed him. He dropped down easily, rock shards digging into his knees and palms. The candle went out during the descent.

“This way,” said the voice in the dark, calling from the direction of the smells. “You won’t need the light. There is no false turn you can make. And soon you will see well enough.”

He followed the scrabbling sounds of toes and knees in earth. It was hard to breathe, with his head tucked low so that he wouldn’t bang his forehead on the ceiling. When he stopped to catch his breath, the vapors that filled his nose and lungs were intoxicating. An intense miasma of candyshop smells: Licorice and lemon, caramelized sugar, a marshmallowy sponginess to the air. It was growing more humid, rich with scents to drown out the raw smell of the earth they stirred up as they scrambled. At last he realized he could see the silhouette of the little man ahead of him. The light was very dim and sourceless, and it stayed that way for the longest time, like twilight in a dream where it is always twilight. Even when it brightened, it could hardly be called bright, being only barely lighter than the palest dusk. And in that subterrene glow, he realized the little man was standing upright now and urging him to do the same. With his hand on his head like a protective cap, Hugh raised himself to full height, and found that the ceiling was now higher than he could reach. Their journey through the narrow passage finished, he wondered what kind of place he’d come to.

“Where are we?” he asked. “Why have you brought me here?”

“We are home.”

“Whose home?”

“Are you not a lonely, lonely child?”

He sensed he was in some kind of sunken forest. As his eyes adjusted ever so slowly to the gloom, he saw looming shadows, blurred shapes like enormous trees that stirred not at all in the gentle sweet-scented wind. He reached out to touch a tall trunk, and his fingers sank into velvety softness until they reached something cold and hard as glass. He put his fingers to his nose, wondering if this was the source of sweetness, but the softness reeked of mildew, rot and mold, a trillion fetid spores disturbed by his questing fingers. He sneezed and stepped away. Was this the source of the velvety light that seemed to emanate from the very walls? Did mold blanket every surface? But what… what had lain beneath the mold before it grew? Why did the shapes cloaked in damp grey matter seem far too complex and convoluted to be explained away as the stalagmites and stalactites of even the most fantastical cavern?

Again, he asked, “What is this place?”

“Not yet, little man. Sad little mad little ignorant little man.”

He sighed, exasperated, ready to refuse to budge. But at that instant, something lurched from the grey folds of moldy dimness. A chuckling sound turned whining and insistent. Sudden puffs of upset spores, far off in the dark, came steaming closer, like the chuffing plume of a grey locomotive rushing at them. His guide let out a muffled shriek and seized his hand and first pulled, then rushed around behind and shoved him forward.

“Run!” the little man hissed. “Run, run, run, run, run!”

The thing behind them advanced almost soundlessly, but Hugh could hear a gathering of soft explosions like puffs from a huge mouth. A blast of mold dust robbed him of sight. He shut his stinging eyes and staggered forward, only to find himself falling. Thick tepid mud enveloped him, acrid and foul, and also riddled with mold. He came up gasping, as beside him his sputtering host insisted, “Swim and we’ll be safe! Push on! It has never yet dared to cross the great river!”

So he swam. Struggling through thickness, he came at last to a crusted slope where the mud had hardened into cracked plates, where he could fit his fingers into crevices and drag himself ashore. It was scarcely a relief when he heard, “We’re safe.”

In the grey distance behind them, that immense puffing came again and again, then settled down as if sobbing itself to sleep. He tried to imagine what could make such a sound: so soft and yet far-reaching; so full of disappointment and dismay.

Now he and the little brown man were exactly the same shade of muddy. The stuff was cold and sticky, as well as foul-flavored, obliterating whatever pleasure the sweet scented air might have brought him. His host, muttering something about making themselves presentable, pulled Hugh to his feet and dragged him on, casting worried glances back at the density of darkness behind them. He thought he heard something sigh, and gather itself. He felt his host’s urgency quicken.

Hugh had lost his shoes in the suction of the river. Now they trod a carpet of brittle grass that crunched and crumbled underfoot; he walked on splinters of broken crystal, but they did no damage, seeming to dissolve as his full weight came down upon them. Each step produced a range of icy tinkling notes.

“So this is your home,” he said, “but who are you?”

“I told you before, we are mbe’lmbe. The last of our kind, and I am our king, although such titles mean nothing in our slavery, for they mean nothing to him.”

“Him? Who is he?”

“The Successor. The Factor. Our Master. Now, in here, quickly.”

His host, the King, opened a door into a place that was slightly less grey and dim than the grim bank they had surmounted. Hugh stepped onto cold concrete and a shiver went through him. One yellow bulb burned blearily, far away down a corridor whose walls were spotted and stained with age and ooze and the salts of the earth, crusted and nitred and yet somehow still smelling sweetly. A corroded fan spun overhead, creaking in the sugary breeze. That sweetness poured from a vent near the corridor ceiling, and the vent was caked with dusty white grit like that which formed on the battery terminals of an old car.

The King tried closing the door behind them, but it was warped and Hugh could see that it was rarely used. Leaning against it with all his weight, the little King managed to slide the latch home, and left the crooked door straining against a darkness that seemed alive enough to ooze around its edges.

The King scurried down the passage, his bare feet slapping the stained cement. Tiles of white and black, chipped and broken, sometimes missing entirely, gave the sense of grander days—an immaculate past, when such things must have mattered to someone. They passed another vent, spilling forth such a richness that Hugh was caught short by it, and hung there gasping and gaping like a fish hooked on the wondrous vapors.

“What… what is that smell?” he asked. “Where is it coming from?”

“From the only part of this place that still functions as it should,” replied the King. “The Factor’s reactor.”

They had left the lone bulb far behind when another door, much smaller than the other, appeared on one side of the hall. The King opened it for Hugh and waved him through with some ceremony. For a moment, it was dark, and then a light sprang on.

This room was strangely prosaic, so ordinary that it struck him as completely out of place.

There was a bed pushed into one corner, a small bureau, and a porcelain sink with dripping taps. A few books sat piled on the bureau, all covered in dust, with gilded titles in Latin and French, some bound in leather, still others in yellowed horn. Above that was a mirror in which he saw himself, completely covered in the filth through which he’d swum.

The King pulled open the topmost drawer, and inside Hugh saw a plain white shirt, a pair of short pants, a rolled up pair of socks. A flattened cap sat neatly atop this pile. The King toed around beneath the bed and pulled out a pair of shoes that seemed as if they probably would fit.

“Whose room is this? Whose clothes?”

“All were his, at one time, but he has forgotten this place exists. Those clothes should fit you, since you are now his age when he came here. I will leave you alone to groom yourself, and then we must make haste.”

The King bowed and withdrew, leaving Hugh alone with the distinct impression that he had better not take a single moment to wonder what was happening to him.

He stripped out of his pajamas and ran water from both taps until they ran clear after twin bursts of rust. The soap was an antique yellow sliver, but he used it sparingly, and it almost lasted till the end. It was quite some time before he felt he was really clean. He sponged himself with a washcloth that hung from a rack by the sink, then dried with a towel hanging from a peg. A black plastic comb sat on the rim of the sink, and as he lifted it, he became transfixed by the sight of one golden hair tangled in its broken black teeth. He set it down, feeling that to run it through his hair would have been like brushing his teeth with a stranger’s toothbrush.

The clothes smelled of cinnamon and cloves, and were surprisingly soft, although ragged. As the King predicted, they all fit, though the pants were large in the waist. He used a coil of soft cotton rope, discovered in a drawer, to belt them. A jacket hung on the back of the door. Last of all, he settled the cap on his head to hide his bedraggled curls, and found that fit him too.

Curious about the room’s former occupant, he turned to the books on the bureau. Some were volumes of history, dictionaries, and medical tomes. The horn-bound books were written by hand, as if copied out by monks, yet appeared to be cookbooks of some sort. Flames and loaves of bread were represented there; minutely observed drawings of exotic herbs and berries. Other of the books proved to be journals. One of these sat by itself in the middle of the desk. He picked it up and opened it to a page marked with a slip of gold foil.

The penmanship was neat and disciplined, yet something about it told him it was a child’s handwriting.

—so much responsibility, thrust on me so fast, and I’m unsure I am worthy of it, tho He thinks I am. I mainly worry how I can continue once He’s gone, as He says He soon must be. He says I have much promise and will have many Helpers and will surely discover my own talent though it seems all hidden now. He says the hands and wisdom of all the Helpers are also mine to command, tho really that does not seem right. Why should anyone should have to do whatever I—

“Little Master, we must be off!”

The door stood open. The King waited expectantly. In the interim, he also had cleaned and groomed himself. Hugh, without a second thought, closed the small journal and slipped it into a pocket of his jacket, feeling as if it belonged there, as if the pocket were stretched in exactly that shape from constant carrying.

He was beginning to feel very odd indeed.

The King of the Mbe’lmbe nudged him sideways out of the passage. He tried looking back the way they had come, to the far off door by the muddy river, but it was all black down there now, and he couldn’t tell if lights had gone off or if the tunnel had simply filled up with darkness. A new light winked like a baleful subterrene Polaris from far off in the yet untravelled dark. It beckoned him. The complicated smells of rust and nitre had begun to exert a hold on his curiosity as strong as—and even stranger than—the syrupy fumes that were so much a part of the atmosphere.

They proceeded through what had been a sculpted arch, once no doubt quite ornate, now a sad affair of whitewashed beams and broken plaster that had mostly crumbled away. Dragging his fingers along the wall, he caught a few flecks of the stuff, and brought it reflexively to his mouth and then his tongue. Sweet. It was sweet as sugar yet stale as old pastry, like a sacrificial wafer from a mummy’s tomb.

And thinking mummy thoughts, he was wholly unsurprised when a boat emerged from the cavernous gloom, and he found himself at the shore of a rancid Styx. There was no oarsman, no one to take the helm of the high-prowed ship, and in fact they were not to board the weathered craft. It lay canted against a splintered wharf, tied to stanchions striped like faded barber poles, and so thickly furred with lint and dust that he believed they must be ancient candy canes. The oars lay piled within like broken bones.

“Once, but no more,” the King murmured with mixed regret and relief. “The very essence of efficiency, it took its toll.”

They hurried past the ruined ship and down the dark sweet throat from which the candyshop scents issued, the stagnant river lapping at their side. It was hard to imagine what stirred the river now. There was no wind, no current, yet thick little waves tracked them for a time, as if the boat were rocking to the motion of its hidden cargo, or as if something immense had lowered itself into the scum and begun to swim. Not far along, the little King caught sudden hold of Hugh’s wrist. Hugh wondered why this should be until he saw, in mounds of darkened earth, glittering white crosses running parallel to the river’s course, row upon row like sharks’ teeth layered back into the darkness. Some of the little graves were set with delicate candy skulls, and the crosses themselves must be sugar. So many… a holocaust down here in the darkness… the graves so small and close-set that at first he thought they must all be the graves of children, until he felt the King’s trembling and realized these were all his people. Not a single marker bore a name.

He counted a hundred paces along the river’s edge, with a grave for every pace; and that was only in the nearest row. He forced himself to stop counting, but the graves went on unnumbered. They grew more irregular, spaced farther apart, as if the things they held were increasingly large. The earth looked split and dried, like a cake that had baked too long, the doughy interior swelling up from beneath.

The King had closed his eyes and clung to him, his brow damp, his lips moving in feverish prayer.

Finally they were past that dreadful place, and Hugh thought he might ask a simple question, but the King’s eyes sprang open and stopped him from even considering it.

“Do not concern yourself with them,” he said firmly. “It is my burden alone—I, who brought them here. You are here for the sake of the living.”

“But…” The question he had been burning to ask. “Why me?”

“Why? It is the only way open to us now. Once there was another way, but in his madness he forsook it. Crazed and companionless, he has forgotten all goodness. He has forgotten life. Sugarbirds once sang here, but they have fallen silent. He has been too long without others. I did not show you all the graves.”

Hugh swallowed, assuming he should be grateful for this mercy. The King’s eyes were terrible.

“Now here,” he said, “say nothing. Do not show pity or contempt or anything untoward. Especially not fear! Keep your thoughts shut up close. There must be no commotion.”

They had arrived at another unexpected door, the appliqué letters pale and peeling. Once they had read SWETESHOPPE, though applied all askew with an unsure hand. The King clenched the knob and opened it into a smell such as Hugh had never imagined.

It was sweetness mingled with sweat, smells of toil and grief, vanilla and excrement, odors of violet and urine, butchershop blood and confectioner’s sugar. He caught himself at the threshold, unwilling to take a single step inside, until the King tugged at his wrist and he knew he must come. He started to put a hand to his mouth, but the King sensed his intent and slapped his hand down. He went forward smiling and bowing and beckoning at Hugh to stay beside him.

All about them towered piles of glazed cooking pots, spiraling copper coils, gauges with needles trembling, steam spouting from high pipes, cages. Everywhere cages. He could not quite see what was in them, apart from the eyes, but that was enough. Eyes like boiled sweets, rolling and watching them, disembodied orbs with bright candy centers that shook and rattled and stared as they passed. That was only for starters. The cages grew larger, the air more rank and humid, the sugary sweetness more cloying and more fetid. There were things in the cages, short and dark, which might have been people once, though now they were little more than enormous mouths with tubes going into them, and rich thick liquors bubbling through the tubes, and even greater richness straining the dark skins to bursting. In some places they had stretched until they split, and raspberry liquors oozed out between the cracks.

“Show respect,” the King whispered, bowing and turning to all sides as they advanced.

“But were they, are they, people?” Hugh whispered in return, although to do so meant he must inhale uncontrollably.

“No… not quite… never. Not these. Not alive, exactly. Without constant irrigation, they would expire immediately. But He… He has not the strength to end their misery. He starts but never finishes. The creator who cannot also understand the need for death should never have been given such power in the first place. Theirs is an endless suffering.”

“If they aren’t alive than how can they suffer?”

“Look at them. Look into their eyes and see if you can still ask such a question.”

But he could not. He couldn’t even be certain where to find their eyes without straining close into the dimness of the cage, which was not something he felt strong enough to do.

“Please,” he said, “I don’t like it here.”

“I’m not sure which are more to be pitied,” said the King. “These, or the ones that have achieved a kind of existence… the ones that have managed to escape.”

Hugh recalled the sound of the soft puffing mouth, the stirring of the stagnant river. He began to retch.

“Now, now. We are almost through.”

At the far end of the room, a door showed through a jumble of nut husks and toppled cages; the floor was deeply grooved and scratched where it had been hauled open countless times. As the King released him to haul on the door, Hugh looked back and saw the caged things watching him, desperately sad, as if waiting to be eaten, wanting it, fearing it, knowing it was never to be.

“Steel yourself,” said the King.

But as the door flew open in a warm waft of wind, it was hard to know how this could be worse than what he’d just seen—how it could be anything bad at all. The buttery smell of chocolate was so intense it obliterated all other odors. Instead of dimness, there was light; instead of cloying humidity, the warmth of a friendly kitchen; instead of screams and despondent sighs, the cheer of sputtering pots and hissing kettles. Blended scents of cinnamon, dark cherry and sweet cream, orange essence and pistachio, rosewater, lime and sugar on the edge of burning but not quite. All these and more wondrous odors came cutting through the chocolate, mixed with it, set his mouth watering. He realized he was ravenous. In the world above it must be morning now—breakfast time. Thinking perhaps the light and warmth had been decanted down through pipes and mirrored shafts from the world above, he squinted up toward the source of that golden radiance, but it was too brilliant to behold directly. He saw the mouth of an immense oven, a furnace that burned his eyes, forging vision into something simultaneously bright and dark.

“Look away,” the King urged him. “It will blind you! Look down low and you will see him.”

Afterimages of the furnace sizzling on his eyes, he scanned the wide expanse of the chamber, searching till he saw movement far out on a distant plain. A man, tall and thin, almost skeletal. Hugh saw a top hat, a long black coat with tattered tails, a face white as chalk with a sharp white beard and sunken eyes.

The face saw him and reeled him in… he felt himself drawn across the spotted, stained and sticky floor. The figure reared up to its full height.

The white face with its stiff goatee gazed severely at him with eyes mismatched, one crazed and cracked like a faded gumball, the other blue as a robin’s egg, bright and quite alert. It whipped swiftly down and sideways to aim a silent reproach at the King, then up it lashed toward Hugh.

“Huh-hullo,” he said.

Stained blueish lips peeled back from teeth so impossibly foul and decayed that Hugh’s jaws began to ache with sympathetic pain. They were broken stumps, ground down to nothing, splintered and eroded. Those that were not entirely grey were yellowed like antique ivory. It was an overly generous grin, most of it gum, and the gums even worse than the teeth because they were so clearly in distress.

“And you are?” said the reedy voice from that terrible, reeking mouth.

Hugh would have staggered back, but the King of the Mbe’lmbe put a shoulder hard to the back of his thigh and pushed him forward. But without abandoning him, for the King held hard to Hugh’s hand and thrust it up as if for that gumball eye’s consideration.

“He is your successor,” stated the King.

“I need none.”

“Master, your time has ended. All who know you know this for the truth. Pass on the work that was passed to you.”

“What I have learned, cannot be passed along. I need no apprentice, and I have no heir.”

“But this is he! There is none worthier! None so pure! None so sweet!”

“Sweet, you say?” The gumball eye, looking as if it had been worn by repeated sucking, spun toward him. “You… boy… you do look familiar.”

“As well he should.”

“Still, he means nothing to me. Why do you say I should know him, eh?”

The top-hatted figure of the old Master thrust forward to catch at Hugh’s collar and cuffs, muttering all the while: “…is sugar… is life…” The fingers, he noticed, were sticky with honey and butter and chocolate. The white beard was stained with chocolate; bright red dabs of jam gleamed at the corners of the awful mouth. Louder now, the muttering, and closer in his ear: “Life is sugar and sugar is life.” The fingers roamed his body, feeling his ribs, “You need fattening up. You need sweets. Nice sweets. You need this.”

Hugh blinked. Beneath his nose, a bar of chocolate appeared as if from the thin man’s sleeves. He started to take it, but the King hauled down his arm by the elbow, with a whispered, “No!”

The thin man laughed down at the little King. “What do you fear? That he will eat and never want to leave?”

“You know that is not what I fear!”

The white face leaned closer to Hugh again, bent down like a jack in the box on a wobbling spring. “Go ahead… take a bite…”

The chocolate so close, beneath his nose, smelled delectable. Only the King’s fear held him back. There was something here he did not understand. He clamped his jaws shut and shook his head.

“Well, then… save it for later…” The long white fingers drifted toward his pockets, pulling them open ever so slightly, dropping the chocolate bar in, patting the pocket to make sure it was safely ensconced.

And then, “What’s this?”

The hand retracted, sticky fingers pinching the bound journal he’d carried with him all this way. “What… where did you find this?”

The brown King looked mystified, as baffled as the old white man.

The old gent opened the book to the page with its golden marker, and his lips began to move. Hugh thought he was reading the journal entry there, but in fact his eyes were not upon the page. He plucked out the golden bookmark and his eyes grew watery and distant. He turned his gaze to the handwritten pages, and flicked his eyes over several lines. His lips trembled. He looked up at Hugh, then gazed with growing rage at the King of the Mbe’lmbe. His rotten teeth gnashed; flecks of spittle sprayed from his foaming mouth. He tore the top hat from his head and hurled it down upon the floor.

“Why show me this?” he began to scream. “Why cast me back upon that shore?”

“I… I… it was a mistake,” the King began. “Please, Master…”

“After all I have done for you? Wretched imp! Is this how you show gratitude? Sacre sucre! I have come too far to be tripped up here!”

“Master! Master, you are forgetting what you put in place! Let me help you remember!”

Hugh found his arm gripped ever more firmly by the King.

“Remember, Master? Remember?”

Looking down, he caught the glimmer of a knife in the King’s hand.

How quickly it had appeared! Where had it come from, and why?

He struggled to move away—so sharp! But the Mbe’lmbe held him tight.

“Do not be afraid,” said the little King soothingly. He found himself unable to resist. He wanted to trust the King. He saw his small white hand held almost tenderly in that much smaller brown one. He clenched his hand into a fist, but the King deftly uncurled his pinky finger and held it so it stuck straight out.

With a sharp swift slice, he lopped off Hugh’s fingertip.

Hugh bit his lip. He did not cry out, both because he feared to show fear before the hungry gumball eye, and because he felt no pain.

The King of the Mbe’lmbe stepped forward with Hugh’s fingertip extended. Hugh looked at that and not his hand. He saw a round pink stub with a soft moonshell of fingernail, still quivering, still unaware it was no longer part of him.

The old Master took the offering and held it up to the fierce oven light, regarding it from all sides, uncertain. He gave the little King a most curious questioning look, to which the King responded with a firm nod.

The old man licked his lips with a dry grey tongue, then popped Hugh’s fingertip into his mouth.

Hugh gasped as if feeling the old man’s rotten teeth in his flesh.

The old Master shut his eyes. He bit down once, and Hugh heard a brittle crunching. He bit down twice, and Hugh heard the juices squirting. The Master’s eyes opened, rapt and delirious, delighted, a broad smile spreading over his face, transforming it in an instant into the face of very old and wizened child.

“My God!” he crowed. He rolled his eyes.

“I tried to tell you, Master,” said the King.

The old man rushed toward Hugh and caught him up beneath his arms—caught him and threw him high into the air. He felt the furnace breathing over him, felt it might gape and swallow him whole.

“Yes, that taste, that wonderful taste… it comes back to me! Oh, sweet victory! Oh, ecstatic sweetness, sacre sucre! The taste of sunlight to the leaf! My boy, my dear boy, what a terrible misunderstanding! Oh happy day! Oh joy to you, joy to us all!”

He set Hugh down, and patted him tenderly on the head. “But… do you not see, my boy?”

He fluttered the golden bookmark, and on it Hugh saw scratches of writing, thin letters incised in the foil and glinting. The lines were short and broken, like lines of poetry, like something else. Like… like…

“The recipe!”

“For what?” Hugh asked.

“When I first drew you from the oven, ah, so small…” He held his fingers to show a mere pinch of boy. “So pink! Yes, yes! Dusted in pink sugar, my marzipan boy… so warm and fresh and sweet, with the raspberry coursing through you. Why, I could have eaten you whole!”

The old confectioner’s eyes gaped, bulged, oozed sugary tears, staring at something beyond.

“Come with me, my boy. Come now… this way… while the mood is upon me, while change is in the air, quickly now, quickly!”

Hugh realized, as the old man’s hands led him firmly along, that the glazed eye was fixed on the enormous oven. Above them burned an orange sun of flame, bright enough to have lit this and a hundred other underworlds; but that was the top of the chimney. At floor level, coming closer, was the door of the oven.

“This way! This way! Right along here! Your heritage, my boy… your birthright, and your birthing place. Exactly as intended, yes, I remember it now. Exactly! You were to take this burden from me when I was too weary to carry it. You were to be raised at my side to continue my work, taught from my books, fed from my fingers… And look what time it is! We must be quick, lad, quick!”

They paused at the gate of the immense furnace. Thick glass barely held back the volcanic fires within. Intense heat caused the oven door to bulge and blister toward them. The old confectioner reached out to twist a silver knob, and just like that the flames died down to nothing, and went out.

“Here, lad, have no fear! It’s completely cool! Put your hand upon it!”

Hugh put out his hand and touched the glass. The furnace roar was less than a whisper, and the heat had died down completely. The flame still burned somewhere in the heights, but down here it was cool.

“You will learn such secrets now, the mysteries of the oven will be yours… come up, come up!”

The oven door drew up like the portcullis of a castle. He reached unbelieving into the cool interior, black walls speckled with grey, long racks that seemed to continue for miles back into darkness, the mouth of a spotless cave…

And suddenly the hand in his back pushed firmly. He lost his balance, tipped and plunged. The King of the Mbe’lmbe shrieked and reached out for him, but they were both lost in that instant. Hugh fell hard on the spotless floor. As he felt the King’s hands on his arms, trying to pull him back, he heard the whirr of oiled hinges and the deafening boom of the oven door sealing shut.

He rose and turned. The King lay weeping on the ground, crumpled by failure and betrayal. Hugh could see the old confectioner, a shadow beyond the tinted glass, something made of smoke. The old man raised his hand to the silver knob by the side of the oven door. Then the glass began to fill with light. It felt to Hugh as if the sun were rising at his back.

He scarcely minded. It was a pleasant warmth, something familiar and almost comforting about it, as if he might melt away with a smile upon his face.

But it was otherwise for the King of the Mbe’lmbe. Hugh only slowly realized what he was hearing, and what it meant.

The little man was screaming.

He turned and hammered his fist on the glass, making a rhythmic pounding to which the twisted figure beyond the glass seemed to dance an antic jig. He was certain he saw the top-hat tossed high into the air and caught again. The old man was dancing out there.

“Please!” he cried. “Please help! Please, somebody, help him!”

His hands left sticky bubbles on the tempered glass. He could hear the sizzling of flesh behind him, then came a burning smell unlike any that oven had ever known or should have known. Flesh…

Beyond the glowing pane, something greater moved. A spot of darkness swiftly expanded and swelled, glistening, gleaming, becoming immense. Against it, the small shape of the old confectioner stiffened, grew tense, began to back away. The old man retreated until he was pressed against the glass of the oven door, separated only by that thin hot sheet from Hugh’s clawing fingertips. The old man turned to the glass, his face directly opposite Hugh’s, but all unseeing, blind with fear. Then the old face went awash in blackness, smothered in it. A gluey brown wave drenched the glass, washing over it like a thick and sticky tide that eventually, reluctantly, subsided. In drawing back, it flailed decisively at the silver knob, and the flames abruptly died.

The oven door hissed and opened slightly. Hugh stumbled forward, then stopped and turned back to find the King limping toward him, his hair singed and smoking, his skin a mass of developing blisters.

Together they stared across the sticky waste.

The floor was like the shore of a sea of molasses at low tide. A crumpled top hat floated in the middle of the flood. There was no other sign of the old confectioner.

The doorway to the Sweteshoppe swung ajar, and slowly came to rest.

The King croaked in an urgent hush: “My farewell to you, young master. The sugarbirds again will sing in the rafters, but I will not linger here to hear them. I will not allow myself to come to hate you as I grew to hate him. I have sung my death song already. I go to lay myself among my people.”

The sadness of the King’s words overwhelmed him and Hugh began to weep. Great sugary tears rolled down his cheeks and he flicked them aside with his tongue, trying to take no pleasure in so doing. The King of the Mbe’lmbe, last of his kind, clasped his hand with finality, then turned and walked over the Sweteshoppe threshold. Within, a great darkness gleamed as if welcoming the King. Then the door shut and Hugh was alone.

Absently, he put his severed finger in his mouth and began to suck.

And sucking, tasted sugary sweetness, raspberry jam, a touch of caramel, and the almond softness of marzipan.

Sugar.

The stuff of life.

The taste of sunlight to a leaf.

If a mere man, with all his indigestible impurities, had whipped up such sweet life as he from scratch, then what might he, a boy of sugar, dream of making? What radiant creatures of unsullied sweetness might issue from that titanic oven and soar out to dust the world with powder from their wings?

With visions overwhelming him almost to bursting, he realized he was nibbling the very slightest bit from his finger.

He forced himself to stop, although it was difficult.

No more! He must find other sources of nourishment. He must make himself last as long as possible.

It would be a struggle, a constant temptation.

After all, he was so incredibly sweet.

EVALUATION OF THE HANNEMOUTH BEQUEST

CAVEAT RE ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE:

This report is provided for purposes of oral history only, as much of the evidence contained herein is purely anecdotal, and unverifiable at this point. Incomplete copies of insurance and expense reports relating to the loss of a company car were found in the files of IBM’s Northrop Account Liaison, dated mid-1970’s, however it is impossible ascertain whether the car might have been lost some ordinary way (either stolen or abandoned under awkward circumstances), or whether it came to harm as alleged in the documents. These notes were compiled from an informal oral history, namely the oft-recounted tales of Charles Messraunt, a colorful former employee of IBM who was eventually released from employment after increasingly common episodes of erratic behavior, poor mental health, and allegations of substance abuse. Messraunt’s official notes of the Hannemouth Bequest Self-Configurable Array are no longer to be found in any known record depository, if they were ever filed in the first place; and Messraunt himself faded from the historical record after several sightings as a street-person in the Northern California town of Garberville.

THE RECORD:

In approximately 1975, the Dean of a small private Northern California university made an informal request of Messraunt, who was temporarily stationed at the campus as an on-site contractor, training the staff in the use and maintenance of a new academic record-keeping system after having overseen its construction. The Dean requested Messraunt’s expertise in inspecting and evaluating a bequest that had been made to the university by a private donor, once a professor at the university, recently deceased. The bequeathed property was identified as the Hannemouth Self-Configurable Combinatorial Array, and Messraunt believed it to be some form of experimental computing device, undertaken at great expense by the late Professor Hannemouth, and developed entirely with private funding flowing from royalties from various of Hannemouth’s successful patents.

The Dean’s request was apparently greeted warmly, although it must have been kept an informal matter, judging from the lack of contemporary records to support Messraunt’s claim that he proceeded with IBM’s express authorization. When Messraunt asked to see the device, he was told that it was too large to transport, but that a short trip would soon bring them to it. This was by no means unexpected, considering that the university’s state of the art records system, considered to be the very height of compact efficiency at the time, had required construction of a three-story building adjacent to the Academic Affairs building. Hannemouth’s array being somewhat older, and probably dedicated to more complex computing operations, would no doubt occupy a sizeable footprint.

Several hours’ drive brought Messraunt to the gates of Hannemouth’s secluded estate in an old-growth redwood forest. A bulky keycard device gave him entry, and he soon found himself driving through what appeared to be an extensive if dilapidated campus, larger than the university itself. Hannemouth’s wealth and eccentricity were obvious at every turn, as was his apparently prolonged absence. For while the Dean had painted the old inventor as a solitary man, the grounds of his estate were lined with avenues of dormitories, as if this had once been a thriving community. An hour of driving about the complex left Messraunt feeling as if only a fraction of the place had been explored, but he was mindful of his duty, which was to give a cursory inspection of the device itself, and return with recommendations for further study, and in fact whether the university should accept the bequest or make other arrangements.

With the aid of a poorly labeled map, Messraunt parked his car in what appeared to be a small staff parking lot near one of the more formidable buildings at the center of the complex. Stepping out of the car for the first time, he discovered the abandoned complex had the nature of an unkempt park, with squirrels everywhere, and the rooflines festering with crows. Messraunt had been provided with keys to the main building, and he soon found himself in an equally shabby lobby, where the destructive activities of rats were much in evidence. Unpromisingly, there was no electricity, and the elevators proved unworkable, which did not bode well for his ability to judge the Self-Configurable Combinatorial Array except in its most superficial aspect. (Imagine evaluating the performance of a modern personal computer with nothing to go by but the blank metal case.) His instructions led him to believe the seventh, topmost floor was his destination, and he made his way through dark stairwells clogged with rat droppings and crow feathers. Everywhere was the rustling of vermin. Messraunt wondered how long ago Professor Hannemouth had abandoned the device.

The seventh floor, fortunately, was well-lit thanks to panoramic windows which gave a view of the entire campus complex. Several of the windows had been shattered by the elements, and a number of crows fled squawking from the room when he first entered. The carpets were stained from storm leakage, and Messraunt worried for the integrity of any sensitive device that had been stored under such conditions. But the view momentarily occupied him, and took his breath away, as he looked out on the campus held in its bowl of wooded hills. From here he was able to see the entire length of the avenues lined with the grey, almost featureless dormitory buildings—evocative of grim Soviet-style apartment blocks. In the distance, across a glittering river he had managed to miss in his cursory tour of the estate, he could see the cold smokestacks of a small physical plant which must have generated power and warmth for the campus and its erstwhile inhabitants. Messraunt faintly perceived some sort of pattern behind the layout of streets and buildings, but after the initial wonder at the sprawling vista faded, he found himself more concerned by the absence of anything he could identify as the Hannemouth Self-Configurable Combinatorial Array.

There was nothing in the room except a console of moderate size, being not much larger than a Steelcase office desk typical of the era, with several built-in keyboards and monitors. Messraunt’s initial impression was that if this was the device, it could have been easily relocated to the university by a professional moving crew, thus saving him the bother of the trip, which at this point was threatening to turn into an overnight venture, for he had misjudged the shortness of daylight in the northern part of the state, and now found it further exacerbated by the steep crowding peaks all around. He did not much wish to be caught here in darkness, and he promised himself he would be down those seven flights of stairs and out of the complex well before nightfall.

Despite the unpromising state of the console, which was only slightly less bulky than the card-punch machines in the academic records office, Messraunt seated himself in the spring-shot office chair and found the small operator’s key which the Dean had given him. With little hope of access, he nonetheless found the ring-shaped slot in the console control panel, inserted the key, turned it, and waited in resignation for nothing to happen.

And in fact, no sound came from the console, and nothing in the room gave any sign of responding to having been unlocked. It was not until several minutes later, when he rose from the still cold console and walked to the window to see if he could spot his car in the small lot below, that he noticed puffs of smoke drifting from the distant stacks of the physical plant. They were so infrequent that he wondered if they had always been there and he had simply not noticed them before; but after several minutes he convinced himself they were thickening, growing more constant. Within ten minutes, white plumes drifted steadily from the several stacks and showed no signs of tapering off. Somewhat more agitated now, Messraunt inspected the console and discovered that a single cursor had begun to throb on one of the monitors. He tapped a key on the keyboard but to no effect. Somewhere far away he thought he heard a dim whining sound, and then the lights came on.

Through the panoramic windows he saw the whole complex come to life. The huge dull dormitory buildings, with their slits almost too narrow to be windows, held a cold glow deep within. An unpleasant light to study by, he thought. The avenues and walkways between the dorms were cleverly lit by narrow strip-lamps embedded in the paths and walkways, as if to provide safe paths for students or workers hurrying home at night. But hurrying from where? And who exactly would inhabit this complex or campus? The narrow road that brought him here through the mountains was hardly up to the task of supporting a steady flow of student traffic; and in the entire complex, he had seen nothing but the one small lot where he had parked his own car. At any rate, this rush of light had the unwelcome side-effect of deepening the gloom around the valley, and he thought it was going to be harder than ever to judge exactly when it might be best to leave. This fearful premonition could not have been more wrong.

In the glare and gloom, Messraunt thought another transformation had come over the campus—one whose reality he found impossible to judge. To him it looked as if the streets themselves had begun to retract. The paths between the dormitories looked like deepening grooves. At first he attributed this to the raking light, which made small depressions look like black canyons, but then he received unexpected confirmation from his senses. A flurry of disturbed specks, the agitated black bodies of rats and squirrels, began to flood from the buildings and across the streets, rushing about in blind panic, the more survival-oriented or level-headed among them heading for the sheltering woods. The crows remained strangely silent, hunched and clinging to the rooftops without lifting a feather.

The console gave a bleep, calling Messraunt back from the window. There was now a command awaiting his attention:

USER NAME:

Messraunt sat. With trembling fingers, he entered: HANNEMOUTH

The machine accepted this, then offered up its challenge:

PASSWORD:

Slowly, Messraunt copied a long string of characters from a sheet the Dean had provided.

The car, he said later, was probably destroyed the instant he pressed the ENTER key, although he was not to verify this until his headlong flight down the seven sets of stairs had ended with him rushing out of the main building, treading on the tails of a swarm of terrified rats. His account of that mad descent is fragmentary at best, and made little sense even to those who had the patience to force him to repeat it. He spoke of the stairs themselves shifting, spinning, folding in and interlocking on themselves like bits of an Escherean puzzle. The central stairwells, he suggested, changed positions several times as he plunged between floors; and he felt himself fortunate not to have been crushed in the moments of vast change. He realized halfway down that the seventh floor might have remained stationary, an unaltered seat for its pilot or programmer, yet by that time there was no thought of return, no matter what might lie below.

What he saw from ground level was if anything even more harrowing than what he had seen from above, when the tower blocks had begun to slide along the grooved streets and clash together, then swing ominously toward his position. From ground level, those huge blocks he had mistaken for dormitories, had if anything begun to accelerate, crashing together, locking and unlocking, forming configurations he had not the leisure nor the desire to study at such close range. Such immensities should not move at such speeds! The sound of reconfiguration was like mountains crashing and calving. And the tall shapes, closing in, pulled the darkness even closer. All at once he recognized the wisdom of the embedded light paths, for between the colliding titans shapes it was impossible to tell which trails were safe to tread. They lit and darkened with a pattern that only seemed illogical or indiscriminate to a terrified mind, and gradually he realized that only reason would see him through this madness—that all this was, in fact, by design, and could he but comprehend it, he might drive out of here unharmed.

The sky was still luminous, traced with violet, as he turned to find his car and discovered instead a solid wall where it had been, and some occluded champing action taking place in the shadows there. Moments later, as the immensity retracted, he saw a wafer-thin glimmer of something where rubber and metal mingled, hugely compressed, and the humble imprint of a General Motors hood ornament was all that remained to identify his car.

At that point, a newly devout pedestrian, he ran.

The luminous trails were reliable only as long as they lasted, and Messraunt claimed that somehow he knew he was in a battle of wits with the Hannemouth Bequest. If there was any sense to them, it was something deeper than logic—something closer to an animal wit, more like the flashing luminosities by which cuttlefish communicate. It was as if he were watching neurons firing in a vast brain, synapses at macroscopic distances. He was running along ganglia, with dark and incomprehensible thoughts clashing above him, threatening at any moment to “forget” him altogether. He felt this battle of primal wits was all too evenly matched: One small brain (his) against the entire complex and its strange synthetic process. More worrisome than a battle of wits, however, was the thought that this brain might be diseased or even (he knew nothing of its maker) essentially mad. How long had the Hannemouth Bequest lain abandoned? Its ruination had rendered it unreliable. Consider the rats. Consider the squirrels and crows! Twigs, hair, feathers, fragments of eggshell, animal droppings, detritus—such organic matter had clogged the works and slowed the processes to such an extent that the machine could hardly be called efficient. And yet it could hardly be argued that it was doing… something. Grinding on, pursuing its processes, with a harsh new grating sound that reminded him of nothing so much as a grinding clutch, a gear that had somewhere slipped. He heard a spine-cringing sound that reminded him of metal being filed from a damaged brake-drum. Something, somewhere, was stuck; and pushing up against something larger. Two behemoths crunching and grinding against one another until one must give. His teeth almost shattered from the sound.

Messraunt felt the ground shake in a new way. He sensed a new color of light, and saw his shadow cast before him on the gate that had come up suddenly, with the shaggy woods beyond. Turning at the threshhold, he was in time to see a ghastly pall of explosive light flare up from the direction of the physical plant. That was bad enough, but silhouetted ahead of that light was something worse—an incomplete form which the massive structures had been shaping, like a half-formed thought, an incomplete gesture, loaded with intention but falling (barely) short of actual expression. He hid his eyes from that, and from the molten light that began to pour out of it, and ran out through the gate, into the mercy of the woods.

Somewhere down the road, dragging to a halt, he realized that he had been expecting the final punctuation of an explosion, yet none had come. It never crossed his mind to turn back. He was entirely done with the Hannemouth Bequest, and his recommendation to the Dean of the university would be brief.

Yet the Hannemouth Bequest was not yet done with Messraunt, nor apparently with us. For as he stumbled through the woods and reached a clearing where the last light of day still held some influence on the sky, he heard wings flushing out of the night, and looking up saw a flock of silent, purposeful crows winging between the trees, heading in the very direction in which he was headed. It was not their silence that always ended Messraunt’s account of his investigation. It was their formation. For bedraggled as they were, singed and smoking from whatever conflagration they had fled, they flew with sinister purpose, each holding a specific point as if positioned there by some inconceivable dot-matrix printer. Some were missing. There were gaps in the message. Messraunt often spelled it out precisely, for emphasis.

Here is a sample scrap of paper attributed directly to his hand.

HELL_ WOR_D

AN EVENING’S HONEST PERIL

Sitting at the entrance to the Tomb of Abomnis, dangling her legs like tempting morsels over the dark and moaning stony mouth, Jinrae thought she saw the head of a black-haired man rise into view at the crest of the hilltop behind her. She leapt to her feet with her sword drawn and ready.

Echoing her startled cry, a raven swept up and over her, flapping twice and then gliding toward a distant tumble of faint brownish buildings in the middle distance.

Stop jumping at shadows! she told herself.

Settling back down, she watched the black fleck merging with the evening sky. The sun had just gone down beyond the town of Cowper’s Rest, pulling daylight after it, triggering lights in the villas. The ravenspeck circled and landed somewhere in a farmer’s field. Scattered red flowers nodded in unison, bowing to a breeze she couldn’t sense herself. In the far, far distance, an olive smudge gave little hint of the horrid marsh it heralded.

Groans came from the tomb, groans and the rattling of chains to greet the coming night, but they struck no answering note of fear in Jinrae. Once the sound would have chilled her, a weirdly welcome pang, but these days, even in the worst places, she rarely found anything strong enough to cut through the numbness that enwrapped her. Vague dreads wrestled in the back of her mind, ones she didn’t care to name. She felt she was seeing the seams of the world tonight.

Someone was coming. A silvery glint on polished mail faintly limned a figure stalking across the plain at a pace that would have maddened her if she’d had to tolerate it. Thankfully, they would not be travelling any great distance on foot tonight—although if it came to that, she had sufficient scrolls to quicken even the slowest feet. Aye, she carried boots of speed and hasty syrup and portalismans; besides which, numerous powerful friends would come to her summons, although she intended to rely on no resources besides her own at this point. It was hard, alone, but better in the long run. The last few days had taught her a great deal about her vulnerabilities, skills she had neglected through too much reliance on others. Or, at least, on one other. Hard lessons, late in coming, but not lost on her.

Now here was a fresh face, an adventurer in unblemished silver armor. It was Aynglin, just as she had seen him last, a bright orange plume bobbing from his helmet’s crest. He had not put by his violet trousers, nor the green slippers with curling toes; and she couldn’t fault him for it, since it lent him a quite distinctive (if not distinguished) appearance. She would be able to pick him out in almost any crowd.

His coat, however, was another matter: dark and oily, clearly stripped from a greater gullock, but with patches of long greenish fur still clinging to the seamed hide.

“Hi,” said Aynglin as he came to a stop at the entrance of the tomb. His eyes were the same shade of violet as his pants. “I mean, hail. Hope I’m not late. You said to meet you at twilight, right?”

“Well met,” said Jinrae. “You’re right on time. You’ll have to lose that gullock hide, though. It would only bog you down where we’re going.”

The ends of Aynglin’s mouth turned drastically downward. “Really? I heard this was the best.”

She couldn’t suppress a laugh. “I hope you didn’t pay a great deal for it.”

“No, I… I found it.”

“Well, that should tell you something of its value. Someone didn’t think enough of it to lug it along or even throw it on their mule. A perfect hide is well worth its weight, but that one’s imperfectly tanned. See the hunks of fur, never quite scraped away? It’s the work of a not particularly promising apprentice. In the hands of an expert, this would have made a coat I wouldn’t mind wearing myself.”

He mumbled a glum, “Oh.”

“Anyway, let’s see what I’ve got that you can use.”

She reached into a pack she’d dropped on the terraced hillside, and pulled out a cloak of sheer material, supple as silk but silvery as the scales of some freshwater fish swimming in light. She leapt down next to Aynglin, eliciting hungry moans from the lurkers in the tomb. Aynglin took a backwards step.

“Don’t fear,” she said. “They’re bound within. Now put this on. It’s meadowshark.”

“Really?”

“You can keep that. And I’ll give you matching pants later, if you accompany me back to Cowper’s Rest. They’re not violet, though. They won’t match your eyes.”

“That’s okay! I—these were just temporary till I found something better.”

“Everything’s temporary. Don’t get attached to anything. That way you won’t suffer when you lose it. Which you will.”

“Okay. I guess I’m ready.” The gullock coat lay in a heap on the gravel path. “Is this it? Just the two of us?”

“It’s for the best,” she said. “You’ll progress much faster.”

“But where’s your partner? Isn’t he…?”

“Not anymore. Let me see your sword.”

Aynglin unsheathed his blade and held it out to her.

For a moment Jinrae felt painfully disoriented.

The pommel held a faceted orange gem, inlaid with a rune of fire. The curved white blade was gnarlphin horn, lightly glimmering with imbued magic.

She knew this sword. It was, if not unique, then one of a very few.

“Where did you get this?” she asked.

“From a stranger,” he said.

“Masked? Anonymous?”

Aynglin nodded.

“May I touch it for a moment?”

Aynglin hesitated, and she couldn’t tell if it was indecision or merely ignorance that held him back.

“I only need to touch it in order to divine its properties,” she said. “You needn’t fear handing it over to me.”

“I trust you,” he said simply.

She put a gloved hand on the hilt, and turned so that the twilight gleamed along the blade. There was no inscription where she had feared to find one. But that meant nothing. Engravings melted away with the proper words muttered over them. Entire histories could be erased that way.

Still, it hinted of something more than chance, and she knew the mystery would haunt her until she solved it.

At that moment, the first star pierced the deepening twilight. A wolflike wind began to wail through the hills and the moaning in the tomb grew louder.

She nodded at Aynglin and took her hand from the sword. “Keep that out,” she said. “You’ll need it. I’ll enter first and make sure there’s nothing nastier than I expect.”

“Right behind you.”

She stepped through the tomb entrance, into darkness deeper than at first seemed possible. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the distant flicker of torches. Aynglin shouldered past her before she could stop him and kept going, blundering on without yet realizing that she had come to a halt. She hurried up behind him in the narrow passage, in time to see him hesitate before turning to look back for her.

“Oh, there you are.”

“Go on,” she said.

At that, he rushed forward. But there were already things rushing to meet him.

They came on in a cluster, sliding and jostling in the passage that seemed too small for them. Wicked yellow eyes abulge, catching the torchlight; flattened catlike faces with venomous fangs and exposed claws like hypodermic needles. Aynglin raised his sword and slashed, first at one, then another. He hardly seemed to feel the claws that tore into him. Jinrae knew that as yet he had no concept of his own frailty. After twenty seconds, he was on the edge of death. By twenty five he would be gone, unless she intervened.

With a quick word, she raised her hands and cast a sphere of healing and protection over him. A second incantation, and Aynglin’s sword flared with a sharp red light. He was like a mercurial spirit now, slashing his way through the denizens of the tomb as if they were wraiths without substance, offering scarcely any impediment to his progress. Jinrae followed in his wake, sidestepping littered limbs and dislodged eyes, continually hurling potent protective devices at her protégé’s silhouette. This close to the surface, they had little to dread. She tried to find a rhythm that would serve her well as the evening’s onslaught grew more dreadful.

It was in a chamber on the second level, where the ceiling was encrusted with encysted shapes of winged sleeping things, that Aynglin, in the midst of slicing through a hoary tomb spider, suddenly stiffened and flared, casting off brilliant showers and spirals of light. When the seething fires had subsided, he seemed to stand taller, fuller and brighter in every detail. He barely nicked the next spider and it curled up instantaneously into a ball of ash, hugging itself with its wiry crisping legs. The arachnid dissolved into ashes and crumbled away.

“Congratulations!” Jinrae called. Aynglin turned and raised his sword, victorious, thereby scraping the ember-colored chrysalis on the ceiling. His upturned face went green, flooded with the sickly radiance of unfolding wings. The hatchling dropped straight down onto him.

Jinrae leapt forward with her blade out, slashing through the larval demonid. It expired with a putrid belch, but not before its myriad kin had been roused from their hibernation.

“What now?” Aynglin asked, struggling up from beneath the crackling membranous corpse.

“This is good,” Jinrae said. “Keep your ground and I’ll watch over you. We’re lucky to have found such a chamber this early.”

“Are you sure?”

But there was no time to answer; the awakening was too swift. She barely had time to form her own shield of immiscibility, which would hold for as long as she remained immobile. From that vantage, she began to cast spells upon young Aynglin.

The first wave of demonids clattered against her hastily erected barrier with the scraping sound of chitinous iron-taloned wings. They swarmed the young swordsman, who stood waving his blade as if carving patterns in the air. In this case, the air was solid with wings and claws, and as he carved he could hardly help but open demonid veins. The room began to fill with a churning bloodcloud, as if he had tapped some atmospheric source of scarlet gore.

While the cries of the awakened demonids were deafening, and grew worse as their injuries increased, Jinrae gradually became aware of another sound. It was sharp and shrill, hysterical—and somehow, she felt, juvenile.

It took her several moments to recognize that a third human had entered the chamber; small and quick. In a manner reminiscent of the demonids themselves, it pounced on one of the flyers and bore it to the ground, tearing off the fanged head in one practiced twist. A gloved hand reached and caught a scaly wing, pulling another demonid from the swarm. And then another. Jinrae suppressed her irritation, trying to keep her concentration on her shield. Even so, her attention had become divided, and she feared that Aynglin would suffer for it if she did not deal with the interloper immediately.

“We thank you for your aid,” she called with forced politeness, “but it is completely unrequired.”

Naught but a feverish laugh was heard in reply.

The air was beginning to thin of the predators, and she sensed Aynglin beginning to falter. He had been close to another metamorphosis, but now he teetered on the brink, disrupted by the new arrival. He was just becoming aware of the newcomer.

“To repeat, we do not require your aid. I am assisting this young one, and I have things well in hand.”

This time, the intruder’s response was more direct.

“Fuck you!”

Unsurprised, Jinrae drew in her shield, exposing herself to talon-blow and wing scourge. She dipped her hand into the wallet at her belt, slipping on a ring she knew by touch. It was highly polished, twisted once along its band: a moebius ring.

She raised her hand and tightened her fist, as if grasping some invisible fabric and twisting it, wringing energy from raw aether.

A violet jolt shook the room, briefly illuminating all the demonid flyers from within. Skin, scale and chitin grew transparent; skeletons leapt out clearly, luridly aglow. The savage skeletal flock swerved and locked its knobbled ends into a single mass, moving with a collective will, a shifting puzzlebeast of bone and fang.

Their exclusive target was the foul-mouthed intruder.

In a shrieking cloud they congealed around him, cutting off the shrill and mocking laughter at a stroke. An instant later they thinned and dissipated, resuming their strident attack on Aynglin, albeit without their scaly hide this time. He dispatched the remainder of the bony flock with something less than his former verve, but before he was quite finished, another lightning bolt of transformation shuddered through him. Jinrae grinned with pleasure to see him climb another notch in stature and in heft. But Aynglin seemed disoriented, odd. Instead of rejoicing over his growth, he shuffled through the mass of demonid bones and corpses, and gazed down at the fallen stranger’s clean-picked skeleton.

“Harsh,” said Aynglin.

“I gave him fair warning,” she said. “I will not tolerate his kind.”

An engraved token lay among the bones of the uninvited guest. Aynglin bent and picked it up, scanned it, handed it to her.

“p00ter,” she read aloud. “Alas, I fear poor p00ter won’t be missed. And better him than you, I might add. I expected to perform a few resurrections tonight, but this would have been far too early. I don’t wish to tarnish my reputation as a teacher.”

“But… what did he want?”

“To sow discord. To disrupt your growth and steal what he could of your glory, little though he needed it. You could see how easily he took down the demonids. There are plenty of other chambers deeper down and in neighboring tombs, filled with horrors to keep him occupied… if he were looking for an evening’s honest peril instead of craven mischief, that is. Now, don’t trouble yourself. He’s inconsequential, and we’ve far to go.”

Her pupil shrugged and tossed the token back into the bone pile, then strode on deeper into the crypt. She stood watching him for a moment without following. Something about him reminded her of another swordsman, one not so young but just as eager. She had felt something like this when she’d watched him in the midst of the swarm, slicing scaly wings with an ease that seemed more than natural: practiced.

“Aynglin,” she called, catching up to him, “I never asked this before, but… are you new here? Have you traveled here before in other guises?”

He turned and faced her, his eyes shifting in the torchlight, but unreadable. She realized how little she knew of him. But that had not troubled her until now. Why was she suddenly wary?

“What makes you ask that?” he said.

“You seem too good to have just started out tonight.”

He allowed himself a smile. “Well, thanks, but… I am new here. I’ve had practice in other realms, maybe it carries over. I knew enough to seek you out, or someone like you, and ask for help. Thanks, by the way. I do appreciate it. I’m getting a lot of experience. I wouldn’t say we make a great team, because I’m nowhere near being useful to you, but… it would be nice to get that far eventually.”

She felt herself withdraw from him a little, and a chill set in. “Well, keep at it and I’m sure you can go as far as you want—as far as I have anyway. But you’ll soon reach a point where I’m not much use to you. You’ll want to pick other partners if you wish to keep advancing at speed.”

“Who says I want that? Isn’t it nice to just find a point that’s good enough and forget about forging ahead? Isn’t it good to find friends and journey with them, helping each other, even if it means you won’t get the full glory all to yourself? Didn’t you do that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought you had a partner. I mean, I heard back in Cowper’s Rest, they said you were always with someone named Venix. Actually, I was expecting two of you tonight.”

Ah. The source of the chill.

“We formally disbanded,” she said. “I travel alone now, when I’m not in great need. And I have plenty of other friends I can call on when I am in need.”

“And the same goes for Venix, I suppose?”

“He no longer inhabits this realm.”

She realized that they had been standing a long time in an open chamber without attracting enemies. The dead time had lengthened beyond the usual bounds. Perhaps that was why she found herself wanting to end this conversation. Her eyes continually darted to the shadows among the splintered beams and stone pillars that seemed to support the uneven ceiling mined of greenish rock.

Suddenly Aynglin laughed. The sound nearly brought her back to herself.

“What is it?” she said.

“It just occurred to me… the reason you’re suspicious. I mean, if he left and then I suddenly showed up out of the blue, you might think….”

Grudgingly she said, “It’s not inconceivable.”

“I know, but…”

“And it doesn’t help that you’ve found yourself a sword the twin of his.”

“I told you, a stranger gave it to me.”

“After you announced your intention of joining me tonight?”

“No. Before. In fact… well, perhaps your suspicions aren’t so unfounded after all. It was the same man who told me to look you up when I was asking about a teacher.”

“Ah, Gods,” she said, and turned away from Aynglin. “Damn it all.”

She didn’t need his help, his patronage, or any more reminders of his presence. He had meant it as a farewell gesture, no doubt, and it ought to have comforted her, since it was a sure sign he had no intention of returning. He would never have given away the sword otherwise. But the end result of his farewell was that he might as well never have left. Because of his damned gift to this beginner, she was stuck with him after all. There could be no more blatant continual reminder.

She felt betrayed, and it didn’t help that her student wouldn’t have known he was being used to get at her. She could turn away Aynglin, but she’d contracted with him for the evening. She must keep her word or suffer harm to her reputation. She might be able to convince Aynglin to discard the sword, but he was unlikely to find a better one at any price, and she had nothing equivalent which he would be able to wield. And she wasn’t yet ready to plead and bargain for her peace of mind.

She was snarled in the possibility of duplicity. More vague suspicions. It was maddening. Nothing was overt enough for her to subdue with any certainty.

“Come on,” she said, shoving past Aynglin, wishing to immerse herself in action. Battle was the one thing over which she could still exert her mastery, a dynamic she completely understood, where nothing was hidden and all threats were in plain sight.

“I’m sorry if I—”

“Just come on.”

But as she forged on, she realized that somewhere along the way, in the last few minutes, she must have let Aynglin lead them around an unfamiliar turning. They had come into a wide chamber she did not recognize, one where the crypts themselves lay shattered, slab lids cracked or cast aside, the open vaults full of broken skulls and scattered bones, completely plundered. She had expected the tomb to be more densely defended; the quiet was ominous. Once again, the rhythms of danger felt strange tonight.

But action was what she needed, and there was nothing here that would take her mind off her troubles. A quick survey showed that of four passages heading out of the room, two led sharply down.

And it was a sure formula that danger always lay deeper.

“This way,” she said.

“Lead on!”

She reminded herself that it wasn’t his fault. He’d been played into this, just as she had. But his enthusiasm now threatened to become an annoyance.

At the bottom of the ramp, the passage forked. The path to the left was unlit, so she headed right. At the next fork, torches lit the left hand path. She chose that one, although she had a growing sense that this was too obvious and could be an attempt to lure them into a trap.

Before she could reconsider, or retrace her steps, she heard whispers and scrabbling, then a sharp squeal. She turned to see Aynglin with a large rat impaled on his sword. Several more were coming down the corridor behind him, gliding along as if impelled by wheels hidden beneath their shaggy flanks.

She didn’t believe the rats would give him much trouble, but it was impossible to be sure. They could harbor unexpected wickedness. She put a warding spell around him, flung some extra potency into his blade, and watched him dispatch them handily. They gave out muffled squeaks as they died.

As the fourth one collapsed with a high-pitched wheeze, something enormous and not very far away let out an answering squeal that was more like a bellow—like something a rat the size of a haywain might produce under duress. She cursed her poor perception. The unlit passages should have tipped her off earlier. Down the corridor, beyond the quivering rat corpses, the torches began to go out one by one, paired with the snuffling advance of a lumbering blackness whose only details were the even blacker gleams of liquid eyes that drank in the darkness as the torches expired.

“Back!” she cried. “Behind me!”

Aynglin barely made it; but once he was behind, he kept on going. She heard his slippered feet padding away down the passage behind her, while she stood fast to face the oncoming horror. She glanced back to see if he was safely out of range, and discovered that behind her the passage forked again. Both paths were pitch dark, hiding her protégé completely.

“Aynglin, stop!” she cried.

Then the rat mother struck her.

She turned to give it her full attention, spinning a swirling shield of stars around herself, and driving ice magic into her blade. The torches behind the monstrous rat were extinguished now. If it hadn’t been for the radiance of her aura, the darkness would have been total. Her blade clashed against bared teeth. A fang fell and hit the stone floor; blood streamed over black rubbery lips. She attempted a sideways slash across the whiskered muzzle, but the cramped passage shortened her stroke until it was a hacking blow more suited to an axe. Resorting to stabbing, she plunged her blade into one of the inky eyes, and this time the rat recoiled with a scream.

Less concerned about finishing off the rodent than with finding Aynglin before he lost himself completely, she turned and ran, leaving the rat hunkered in a pool of blood, shaking its head and wheezing.

“Where are you?” she called.

His reply came echoing from nowhere in particular. “…dark…”

The tomb proved an absolute honeycomb of passageways, dead-ends, claustrophobic cells. There was no point in trying to ask him to retrace his route, especially not in the blackness. She tried to recall if she was carrying anything that might help him—something which would allow her to reach out and pull him to her side. But she had left all such tokens back in Cowper’s Rest, along with her mule.

The horrid wheezing of the injured rat came closer, and she realized that although it posed very little hazard to her, it was potentially lethal to her student. She couldn’t tell at this moment if it was truly near by, or if the acoustics of the tombs created a false impression. She held very still to avoid attracting the rat’s attention, while trying to pinpoint its location.

“Jinrae!” came a panicked call.

“Quiet!” she called back. She wanted to communicate the importance of silence at this moment, but there was no way to explain in detail… not without risking further harm.

“Jin—” And then a scream.

It was horrible but it didn’t last long. Barely enough time to allow her to determine the rat’s location with certainty. She hurried down two short lengths of corridor and burst into a silk-shrouded vault in time to see the mammoth rat burying its bloody snout in the remains of her pupil.

While the rodent was distracted, she plunged her sword into the back of its neck beneath the skull. The creature slumped into an immense slack bag of bloodied fur.

As the creature died, the torches in the room came alight, replacing the faint glow of her aura. With a sigh, and a booted foot, she shoved the carcass aside and retrieved Aynglin’s copper wristband from the gnawed pile on the floor. Apart from his flesh, everything was intact. She held the band aloft and slipped a resurrection ring onto her right ring finger, speaking the words that went with it.

The air churned with diamond light. A shadowy shape thickened. An astral arm materialized inside the battered copper band, gaining density. Jinrae released the band as Aynglin reappeared, now fully fleshed and formed. Her young pupil, completely restored, although far more modestly dressed.

“Whew,” he said, with a dazed expression. “Thanks.”

“I apologize,” she said. “I should have been paying better attention.”

He stooped and reclaimed his gear and weapons. “I didn’t know rats came that big.”

“Oh, they come bigger, but not usually this near the surface.” Jinrae cleaned her sword on a dusty silken tatter that draped the stone wall. “This place seems strange tonight. I have a feeling changes have been made to this tomb since I last visited. I should have scouted a bit before bringing in a novice. Finding our way out again is going to be hit or miss, I’m afraid.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “I have most of the night. Unless you want to turn back now.”

“I think we’d better, at least until we get our bearings again. I’ll need to find something I remember from before… a landmark.”

Her doubts proved well founded. All the passages were fully lit again after the death of mother rat, and they were just as confusing as they would have been in total darkness. She fell back on following the left hand wall, and kept this up for quite some time without encountering any ascending passages. Every intersection led to downward tending passages. It was very strange. She was positive they had descended to this level, but she could find no steps leading up again. It was as if the place had altered since they entered it.

She didn’t think that physical alteration of the tomb was likely, but there were sorcerous ways of making a victim think the world had changed, which had the same effect. But that would require a mage of some power, and who would want to target the two of them with vexing spells?

Who indeed?

As if reading her thought and answering it, Aynglin said, “Uh oh. It’s him again.”

That shrill childish cry, like the laughter of a hyena, echoed around them. They walked forward into a vast room, its dimensions and its ceiling hid in shadow. Directly above the entryway was a broad stone balcony incised with a gruesome frieze. The laughter fell from above, and its maker capered and gestured obscenely in the heights, emoting malice and mischief.

“Looks like p00ter came back with some of his pals,” Aynglin said.

True enough. He was no longer alone. Four figures stood flanking him, wrapped in dark robes, their faces veiled in fog.

At first she saw no reason this should worry her. She took a few steps away from the wall, to get a better view of her adversaries, and at that moment she saw the archway vanish as if it had never been. She ran to the wall but hit solid rock. No seam, no keyhole, no latch, no sign that there had ever been an entrance.

Somewhere off in the shadows, she heard the sound of rusted iron grates and chains, and a ratcheting noise of gears. Skittering footsteps teetered on the edge of audibility, bony and chill. It could have been any sort of skeleton ambling toward them, but instinctively she suspected the worst.

“I’ll show you, bitch!” came the hissing voice above her. “You and your freshmeat are bonefood!”

p00ter’s face fairly glowed with gleeful evil, but his companions betrayed nothing. She assumed they were mages of some skill, judging by how easily she had been befuddled and led into this trap. Only potent mages could have summoned the undead legions now imminent. How p00ter’s ilk managed to gather powerful friends she had never quite understood, but it was not an uncommon alliance. From the fact that p00ter’s associates were unreadable, only barely visible at all, she had some glimmering sense of their power—and the trouble she was in.

As the first of the skeletal stalkers strode into the weak fringe of torchlight cast from the balcony, her worst fears were confirmed. It was a Foulmost Banebone, fully armored but with empty hands—which meant it would rely on magic only, hurling attacks all but impossible to anticipate.

Behind it, in rank and file, were more of its kind. And some similar number was coming upon them from the opposite end of the chamber.

She turned to Aynglin, grateful that she would have someone to watch her back, since she could wrap them both in a spell of deflection and add his power to her own. But it would require some quick study on his part.

“Now quickly,” she said, “you must do exactly as I say.”

But Aynglin wasn’t listening.

“Uh, sorry, I gotta go,” he said. “Later.”

Putting his hands together in a posture of prayer, he vanished.

p00ter’s laughter went up the scale, but she scarcely noticed.

Abandoned, betrayed… what next? She slipped a shortcut ring onto her finger and held it up to see if she could escape that way. It gave off a dull grey light, signalling its uselessness. They had sealed her in. Once she had fallen in battle, it might take hours to win back her remains, and she would need help to do it—especially with Banebones posted above her corpse.

With that thought, she realized what she had to do. As the foremost Foulmost Banebone rubbed its fleshless palms and began to mold a spiral of smutty light, she threw back her head and sent out a Clarion Call. Two answering Calls came almost instantaneously, and moments later she thought she heard a faint third response. But by then there could have been a sympony of Calls and she wouldn’t have noticed. She was too deeply caught up in battling for her life.

The first of the bony attackers sent its whipcord spiral swirling around her, a barbed line of wicked light that attempted to entangle and immobilize her. She stepped free of it, slicing the lines with her charmed blade.

Whiplight wasn’t a terrible spell in itself, and one Banebone was no more than an irritant. It was the sheer quantity and variety of attacks that would soon, inevitably, draw her down. For while the first Banebone followed its attack with another of the same, it was joined by its opposite, who had chosen a completely different attack.

Her motions slowed as the second wave of spells struck her from the opposite side of the hall. This spell was like green glue crawling over her, changing every powerful sword slash into a lazy swipe. She had one ring with which to counter the Viscous Flume, but she’d not had it charged in some time, and she had no idea how long it would hold out—especially if another skeleton flung a similar attack.

As the ring took effect, she tried to make the best of it. She lunged out at the source. Her blade bit deep into bone, but it was like hacking at metal. She managed to throw the Foulmost off its casting for a moment, by sending it staggering backward.

A toothed mesh of spiralwire looped down around her head and arms. As soon as she had freed herself of that, she turned to the second skeleton again, this time barking out a powercry as she hacked at a bare bit of vulnerable vertebrae below its gleaming helmet. Her laugh as the skull cracked against the floor for a moment rivalled that of p00ter, still howling from the ledge above.

This kill had an unexpected benefit, for as the scattered bones hit the floor, Jinrae flared with inner fires bright enough to cast the shadows of the oncoming Banebones onto distant walls of the cavern. The nearest skeletons were scorched by the glare of her new-claimed power. In the accompanying rush of energy, she clove the lead whipmaster through mid-torso, and continued to spin out into the midst of the legions like a raging top, her sword like a scythe slashing dry wheat. But not a single Bonebane actually fell, and those in the rear were beginning to cast healing spells on the advance guard.

The Banebones regrouped quickly. And her rush of gleeful energy had cost her dearly. She had forgotten the need for conservation. What she had just done in a moment she would have to do again ten times over if she wished to survive… and already she was nearly drained.

“Yeah, bitch, I know what you’re thinking. You hit me when I was alone… now how do you like it?”

She looked up toward the simpering figure on the balcony above, and suddenly she realized exactly who stood mocking her from among the safety of his sinister friends.

He had taken on a new name, to suit the regression in his personality.

He had revealed himself to be a vicious vengeful child, striking out in the only way he knew how.

What was worse, she had left herself open to be hurt. She had actually allowed this battle to matter to her.

She didn’t know whether to give up utterly, as Aynglin had done, or perform some explosive suicidal act in order to take him down with her. She had the ability to touch off an intense explosion that would obliterate every creature in the room in a single burst. But have done that, Jinrae as such could never return to the realm in this guise. It would be a truly final exit from this place.

She considered the ploy, then dismissed it.

She would not let him believe his victory mattered to her. She would play the game as if it were only that—a game.

Win or lose, she would not give him the satisfaction of thinking he had made her care.

Jinrae went back to her gory work with a will, counting each blow she gave and received, calculating exactly how long she could still hold out, watching the deadline loom.

In one hand she conjured orbs of buzzing flame and sent them streaming into the healers at the rear. The nearest ones she fended off with her blade. She put her back to the wall, which meant losing sight of the hateful form above her, but that was just as well. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She focused her attention on the skeleton army, and measured her way down the steepening slope to oblivion.

Suddenly she heard a ragged croak with some faint kinship to p00ter’s laugh.

The vile fighter’s form went hurtling from the balcony and crashed down hard in the midst of the Banebones.

Dazed, still holding her attackers at bay, Jinrae watched p00ter stagger to his feet. The fuddled form rushing in her direction, saw her sword swing toward him, then turned and tried the opposite tack. Several of the Foulmost reached lazily to snag him; there were many bony fingers already twisting in the hems of his fringed cloak.

p00ter fell quite still and bowed his head, realizing that there would be no escape by regular routes. He put his hands together in prayer, striving for a swift exit, but an instant before he could pale and vanish, his bowed head was torn from his shoulders. His body exploded in a cloud of smoke and gushing sparks that looked like burning motes of blood.

The token bearing his ridiculous name landed at Jinrae’s feet.

“Farewell, p00ter,” she told it, and kicked the tag across the floor, hoping it would fall into some dark chasm, forever irretrievable.

An instant after p00ter’s death, three figures leapt down to touch the floor where he had fallen. At first she thought them his wizardly allies, but they were not. These bore mace and massive axe and luminous staff. Their faces were bright and clear, well known to her, personas of shimmering power armed with magic weapons.

“Woohoo!” they cried.

With screams of glee they laid waste to the Banebones. Jinrae’s exertions were all but unnecessary in this final melee; which was just as well, since her resources were almost completely drained. Even if she had been fully rested, any one of the three could have bested her easily in single combat. They swung their blades and hurled devasting spells at the skeleton mages. The towering monsters toppled like tenpins, smouldered and melted, pooled into wailing puddles of dust.

In no more than three minutes, the chamber was cleared of even the Leastmost Banebone. As for the wizards on the balcony above, they figured not at all in the final sweep, and made no further appearance. She suspected they had departed the instant the tide began to turn. So much for the friends that p00ter’s sort could assemble.

When they had finished, the rescuers formed a triangle with Jinrae at the center.

“Let’s blow,” said the one other woman, a youthful amazon with tattooed markings that made her look like a feral cat, and pointed ears tipped with a lynx’s tuft. She stood lithe and strong, wearing scarcely any visible armor.

“Right,” said the man to her right. He was completely armored. In fact, there was not the least bit of skin visible anywhere. His entire form was silver metal chased with moving figures.

The third was a short and bearded dwarf, clad in a cloak that dragged on the stone flags. He raised his staff and from its tip emitted a transport field that engulfed them all.

The dark air of the catacombs gave way to luminosity. Deep purple light with green underfoot, and a swollen orange sun shimmering up from the edge of the world.

They were standing outside, at the crest of the hill the tomb. Red flowers bobbed in the dawn breeze. Lights were just shutting off in Cowper’s Rest, as the sun’s rays groped at the distant brown buildings.

“Well, that was fun,” said the young lynx woman, Nyryx. “Can’t we leave you alone for one night without having to bail you out?”

“I was doing just fine,” Jinrae said.

“Then why the Clarion Call?” said the staunch little dwarf, Bloafish by name.

“We have troubles of our own, you know,” said the completely armored man known as Sir Candham.

“Anyway,” Nyryx pressed, “when are you coming home? You’ve been out a lot longer than any of us.”

Jinrae ignored the insinuation. She had more a pressing matter to bring up with them.

“I hope you know who was behind all that.”

“What?” Nyryx bristled. “Who?”

“p00ter… Venix… whatever he’s calling himself now. Your father hit a new low tonight.”

“What?” cried Bloafish. “No way.”

“I know you don’t like to see him this way, but I’m telling you—it was him. He set up that ambush, and you saw for yourself how it almost finished me. I should have known something like this was coming.”

“Don’t embarrass yourself,” declared Sir Candham forcefully. “It’s totally impossible.”

“I know him well enough to recognize him in any costume.”

“And we’re telling you you’re wrong,” Sir Candham said.

“How do you know?”

“Because,” said Nyryx, “we’re with him right now. We’ve been over here all night. He’s making us grilled cheese sandwiches.”

“What?”

“Well… it’s not like you noticed or anything. It’s not like anyone’s been able to talk to you. What’d you expect us to do?”

“Come off it, Mom.”

“Really. It’s time.”

“We’re telling you, he’s completely out of it. You’re imagining things. Get real.”

Jinrae stood speechless, her mind on the edge of grinding to a halt. She saw the pattern of suspicion underlying everything she’d believed that night. It was like her pain, a constant background to everything she felt. An undertow that continually pulled her in.

But if she was wrong… if her suspicions were unfounded. That meant there was a bottom to the pain. Maybe she had finally found that place. The three of them had shown it to her.

“Come on,” Nyryx said again. “It’s time to get going. Don’t you remember you said you’d pick us up in your car?”

“Oh god,” she said. “I’m sorry. I feel so…”

Sir Candham put up an admonitory silver hand. “Hey. Don’t. Just get going.”

Jinrae sighed. Nodded.

“Cool,” said Bloafish. “See you soon.”

The four of them bowed their heads, put their hands together, and stood very still. The unfelt wind toyed with the bright red flowers of the plain, but there was no one left to notice, and no one to hear the cries of dawn echoing from the mouth of the tomb.

THE VICAR OF R’LYEH

Glorious afternoon, warm and breezy among green hills dotted with sheep. Looking down from his sylvan lounging spot upon the village with its twin spires, Geoffrey heard a mournful bell coming from the towers of Barchester Cathedral, and almost immediately thereafter noted a small dark shape making its way across the dewy grass from the open doors of the church. A faint distortion followed the pedestrian, as if air and earth were curdling in its wake. He blinked away the illusion, but the feeling of oppression grew until he clearly saw that yes, ‘twas the vicar coming toward him with some message he suddenly felt he did not wish to hear. Meanwhile, the tolling of the bell had grown appalling. As the little man struggled up the hillside, he seemed to expand until his shadow encompassed the town itself. Abruptly the vicar stood before him, the pale features of the meek country parson tearing into soft and writhing strands like the points of a wormy beard. The vicar scowled, revealing five segmented ridges of bone, teeth akin to the beak of a sea urchin. Geoffrey did not wish to hear the vicar speak, but there was no stopping his ears.

“You up, Geoff?” The voice, its accent inappropriate, was first wheedling, then insistent. “R’lyeh’s rising!”

He forced his eyes open. Somehow the phone had lodged itself between his cheek and pillow. The voice of his boss went on.

“Geoff, are you there? Did I wake you? I know you were here late, but we’ve got an emergency.”

“Mm. Hi, Warren. No. I was… I was getting up.”

(7:43 by the clock.)

“Calculations were off. Fucking astrologers, right? Anyway, we’ve got to throw ourselves into it. Marketing’s in a tizzy, but let them be the bottleneck. I think if we dig in—”

“Give me…” Shower, skip breakfast, grab coffee at a drive-through, traffic. This was bad. “…forty-five minutes?” Very bad.

“You’re a pro, Geoff.”

Very bad. Cancel all plans. Forget about rest until this thing was done. Already resigning himself to it. Exactly how off were the calculations? He’d soon find out.

Forty-eight minutes later, panicking over his growing lateness, Geoff spiraled down through increasingly lower levels of the parking lot. He was late, but he was worrying more about the dream. What did it mean? That he was becoming polluted? That his pure visions had become contaminated by the foul effluents in which he labored daily? It seemed more urgent that he get away. Finish this job and get back to what he loved. Put all this crap behind him. If he could just get through it.

As he descended, the fluorescent lights grew dingier and more infrequent; fresh white paint gave way to bare, sooty concrete; the level markers were eroded runes. Even at this hour, he found not a single free parking space until he reached the lowest level. At the end of the farthest row, he found a retractable metal gate raised just over halfway. Beyond it, a promising emptiness, dark.

His car scraped under the gate with half an inch of clearance. He found himself in a cavernous lot he had never seen before, darkness stretching beyond the reach of his headlights. This lot was anything but crowded. A mere dozen or so cars parked companionably in the nearest row of spaces. He pulled in beside them and shut off his engine though not yet his lights. Stairs? Elevators? He saw no sign of either. The safest course would be to walk back under the gate to the main level.

Slamming the door killed the light from his car, but enough flowed from the gateway to show a layer of dust on the adjacent Volkswagen. Geoff peered through the passenger window, shuddering when he saw a row of tiny plastic figures perched on the dashboard, winged and faceless except for tentacles and the keyhole eyes of superintelligent cuttlefish. The toys were self-illuminated, in the manner of their kind, and pulsed with faint colors that signaled their intentions to those who could read them. Scattered over the seats were piles of sticks and matted weeds. Also a fallen stack of books, and a spiral notebook open to a page covered with scribbles he took for treasure maps. What kind of treasure seeker plundered the recesses of a not very ancient parking garage?

Fearing he might be mistaken for a prowler, he straightened up, tugging his backpack over his shoulders. On his way toward the gate, he glanced back and saw that the car bore an all too popular bumper sticker: HE IS RISEN.

The sudden grinding of the metal gate called up terrors of confinement, though in fact the gate was opening the rest of the way. Blue-tinged headlights came down the ramp, blinding him. He threw up a hand to shade his eyes, and saw a long black limo cruising through the entryway. It came to a stop, fixing him in its headlights, the engine thrumming so deeply that he felt the throbbing through his shoes.

“Come forward!” piped a voice, thin and irresistable.

Geoff walked around the side of the limo. One of the doors was open. Inside, a luxurious compartment of oxblood leather and recessed lights comfortably contained Warren and another man unknown to him.

“Geoff? What are you doing down here?”

“Who is this?” came the reedy voice that had bid him approach.

“Uh… this is Geoffrey Abbott, our lead designer.”

“Really? Come in, young man.”

Warren gave an uncomfortable smile, then waved him in. Geoff sat, balancing his backpack on his knees. As the car purred forward, Warren nodded toward the other man, a small fine-boned figure in a grey suit, dark of complexion, with curly black hair cropped close.

“Geoff, I’d like you to meet Emil Calamaro.”

Geoff held back his hand a moment. He had never heard Warren say the name in anything but scorn; yet he was obviously awed by the actual presence of the owner of Aeon Entertainment.

“So,” piped the small man, “you are tasked with R’lyeh’s rising, is that not so?”

“Only in the Commemorative Simulator,” Warren said.

There was a chitter of laughter. “As if it could be otherwise!” said Calamaro.

It was several seconds before Geoff realized what Calamaro was talking about. Everyone on the team had a slightly different pronunciation of “R’lyeh”–from Warren’s “It’s really, really, Real-yeah,” to the broad “Ruh-lay” to the completely lazy and obnoxious “Riley.” But Calamaro’s take on the name was especially odd: It seemed to come bubbling up from his gullet through a column of thick liquid, less a word than a digestive sound.

“Geoff’s got the job for now,” Warren said quickly, covering Geoff’s confusion.

“And you think him more suitable than the previous designer?”

“We’ve got a lot of faith in Geoff,” Warren said. “He created the Jane Austen Mysteries.”

Calamaro sank back in his seat, making a faint hissing sound and baring his teeth at Austen’s name. Out of Egypt, Geoff thought, and now owner of an extensive media empire. Not always a hands-on sort of owner, Calamaro took an active role in producing only a select few of the titles in the endless run of Cthulhuvian flicks and tie-in games that Aeon cranked out on a seasonal basis. Calamaro’s dark, slender fingers clenched the head of a walking stick that was somehow both leopard and crocodile. On the seat beside him sat a cylindrical box, tall and golden, fastened with a clasp.

“I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but the authenticity of those levels, and Geoff’s ability to make them lively and action-packed without sacrificing the integrity of the source material… well, we think it’s a great fit. No one originally thought you could set Jane Austen to work solving crimes in the world of her own books, but Geoff’s team did a fantastic job.”

“I designed the Bloody Trail of Lord Darcy,” Geoff said, compelled to rise to his own defense, knowing that Warren had not actually played any of the Austen thrillers. “I was looking forward to starting in on Pride and Extreme Prejudice when this came along. Eventually I think Thomas Hardy will be a fertile source of—”

“I would like to see the work so far.”

“Absolutely!” Warren said.

“Sure.” Geoff hoped none of his terror showed in his face.

The limo stopped. The driver opened the passenger door. Calamaro indicated that Geoff should go first.

He could no longer see the gated entrance. Ahead of the car, held in its headlights, was a doorway. Calamaro stepped into the beams, his shadow staggering out across the hard-packed floor and then the wall. He supported himself on his walking stick, hugging the golden cylinder close to his chest with the other arm. Warren hurried to open the door. Beyond was an elevator and a flight of stairs. The elevator waited, but when Geoff tried to enter, Warren held him back. “Why don’t you take the stairs, Geoff? We’ve got some business to discuss. We’ll catch up with you upstairs. Give you time to get the demo ready.”

“Uh… sure.” Geoff held back and watched the doors shut. Calamaro’s eyes glittered like obsidian lenses in the mask of a sarcophagus, refracting the overhead lights into a vision of endless night full of fractured stars.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d stood there before he remembered to look for stairs.

By the time Geoff reached the office, everyone was buzzing determinedly through the halls as if they had some other purpose than to catch a glimpse of the man who had set them all in motion. Lars Magnusson, one of the programmers, intercepted Geoff en route to his cubby: “Guess who’s making the rounds this morning?”

“I know,” Geoff said. “Calamaro. I rode in his limo with Warren.”

“Calamaro?” said Lars. “Really? No, I’m talking about Petey Sandersen!”

If this news was meant to lift his spirits, it barely raised an eyebrow. More evidence (as if any were needed) that he did not fit in on the Simulator project; that in fact his loyalty to the whole Aeon Entertainment enterprise was suspect.

Petey Sandersen was a legendary figure – an idol to those who had grown up suckling on the thousand media paps of the Black Goat of the Woods. He had formulated (or packaged) the original rules and invocations, the diagrams and tokens that everyone had once taken for the arcane paraphernalia of an elaborate role playing game. But while Petey had become revered as the Opener of the Way, the Wedge by Which They Widened the Weft, Geoff had spent his adolescence trying to put as much distance as he possibly could between himself and the massively overhyped eldritch invaders.

With Sandersen and Calamaro on the premises, this was shaping up to be a day for high-powered executive reviews. Careers were made or casually ended on days like this. Nice of them to warn the peons in advance.

Geoff slung his backpack under his desk and fired up ABDUL, their proprietary level editor. It was hard not to panic, considering that Warren had volunteered him to show off work that was by no means ready for a demo. About all he had time to do now was check for obvious errors and send the map for a full compile. That, and pray that during the night no one had checked in changes that would break the work he’d done the previous day. Reviewing the morning’s round of check-in notices, he didn’t spot any midnight code changes that would affect his map, but that didn’t mean he was in the clear. Artists were notorious for quietly making an ill-advised change to one inconspicuous model, thereby wreaking havoc on the entire world. Most of them were contractors, prone to exceedingly short lifespans at Aeon, rarely in place long enough to be trained in the brutal realities of their resource management software, dubbed ALHAZMAT. Anyway, there was no way around it. He started his compile and prayed for deliverance.

There was certainly no shortage of divinities in attendance on his prayers. His cubicle was lined with figurines: a mottled green plastic Cthulhu hunched upon a pedestal with leathery wings peaked above its tentacled face; a translucent vinyl Faceless Idiot God containing a congeries of odd shapes that sparked and swarmed like luminous sealife when you squeezed it; a pewter Shub-Niggurath, a goodly number of whose thousand young had fallen behind the desk to be sucked up by the night janitor’s vacuum. The eldritch figures seemed to leap, leer and caper at the corner of his eyes while Geoff bent close to the monitor. On the long late nights when his tired eyes were burning, he thought they did worse things than that. These were not his Cthulhu-Kaiju figures, not his maddeningly cute Li’l Old Ones. They were a constant reminder of the indignity of his situation. They belonged to the previous occupant of the cubicle—a designer who could return at any moment, depending on the whims of upper management. Aeon shuffled and recombined its design teams as if they were packs of Pokemon cards—and not particularly rare ones at that.

Geoff bore no love of Elder Gods, but as much as he would have liked to, he couldn’t get rid of the vinyl monstrosities. He didn’t dare dump them in a drawer and set out his own beloved, hand-painted, resin-cast garage-kit models of Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey. As long as he sat here and accepted the paycheck that came with the keyboard, he must pretend a devotion to the Cthulhuvian pantheon in all its manifestations. Including Warren, who sprang up on the far side of his partition, waggling fingers for him to follow.

Entering the conference room on Warren’s heels, Geoff found the other managers enthralled by the spectacle of a portly cherubic man holding forth at the end of the monolithic onyx slab that was their conference table. He was in the midst of an anecdote that ended, “–so I said, I don’t think of Petey as a Ted Klein reference. I think of Ted Klein as a Petey reference!”

Warren waited for a hitch in the laughter and beckoned Geoff forward. “Petey, this is Geoffrey Abbot, our lead designer.”

Petey leaned forward and put out a hand. He was loud, aggressively jovial, with a gleam in his eyes that was pure evangelist: “Have you heard the good news?” The hand was chubby, somewhat clammy, but the grip was firm enough to take his measure. “He is risen!”

“Well… rising,” Warren said defensively. “We still have a little time, I hope.”

“Not little enough, if you ask me! What do you think, Geoff? I’ve heard splendid things about you. Are you ready for the rapture?”

“I… build maps,” Geoff replied.

“I’ve done a bit of that. A little bit of everything as needed. You look like a dreamer, Geoff, and that’s what we need right now. Good strong dreamers. How’re your dreams of R’lyeh lately? Have the Deep Ones been welcoming?”

“Well, I—”

“It’s kind of vague, isn’t it?” Petey said. “You could use a bit more focus, to be honest. We’ve been looking at your map, and frankly… well…”

“What? My map?”

He hadn’t noticed at first because the huge wall-mounted monitor at the far end of the room was trained on darkness. Suddenly the image lurched and they were looking out over a blue-grey sea, far from land, an ocean cold and desolate and surging with the promise of nightmares. It was his ocean, beneath his bleak sky. They were running R’lyeh Rising – A Commemorative Simulator.

Warren put a hand on his shoulder and with a forced smile said, “We pulled them off your share, Geoff. We were just running through them and—”

“Those are yesterday’s, they’re not even—”

“But they’re fabulous, Geoff!” Petey was in his face again. “The only problem we’ve seen, really, is something we can easily take care of. We don’t bring this out for everyone, you understand, but you’ve already shown you’re worth the extra investment. Emil, will you do the honors?”

Emil Calamaro rose from the end of the conference table with the cylindrical golden box in his hands. He set it in front of Geoff and threw the clasp. Petey Sandersen reached inside and lifted a glittering nightmare over Geoff’s head. Geoff ducked clear to get a better look.

It was something like a cross between a crown and a diving helmet, a rigid cap that rounded off like the narrow end of a squid. Pale, beaten gold, chased with obscene motifs, set with green stones that rippled like dark aquatic eyes.

“Am I supposed to wear that thing?”

“The Miter of Y’ha-nthlei is an honor and a privilege,” said Petey eagerly.

“And a grave responsibility,” said Emil Calamaro.

“Geoff will take good care of it, we’ll see to that,” Warren assured them, pushing Geoff forward to receive the miter.

It fastened to his head with a distinct sensation of suction. Petey stepped back, beaming. “Voila!”

He felt ridiculous.

And something else…

A cold, drawn-out tingling like needles probing his scalp. An intense pressure building within, as if he were developing a sinus infection. His head filled with phlegm.

“Let us study the map again,” said Emil Calamaro.

As the Egyptian spoke, Geoff found himself drifting forward to take control of the scene. He sat down and pulled a keyboard toward him. He began to type commands. He knew what they needed to see.

Out on the sea of pale beaten gold, the waves began to roil for no apparent reason.

Petey said, “I’ve been out there, Geoff, and it’s remarkable how well you’ve captured it.”

“I don’t know,” said Calamaro. “I’m not convinced.”

“Have you been to the spot?”

“You know I don’t care for open water.”

“Well, how can you criticize?”

“It’s not what I pictured.”

“Don’t listen to him,” said Petey, leaning closer. “So far it’s perfect, it’s fine. There’s no problem at all until… well, you have to bring it closer to the surface. I mean, a melding of minds. You need to let yourself be dreamed. Let it come through you. That’s why we’re lending you the miter.”

Geoff brought them in over the area of greatest activity. He accelerated the Simulator, putting it through its paces well ahead of schedule.

The ocean appeared to be boiling. Even through the turbulence you could sense a massive darkness about to break through.

He typed “entity_trigger rlyeh_rise_01.”

R’lyeh breached the waters.

The dripping rocks were encrusted with monstrous tubeworms, their guts bursting out after the pressure shock of the tremendous ascent. Slick scaly bodies writhed in raw sunlight, suffocating in air, caught by the rising of the monolithic city and perishing now before their eyes. Up it rose, a place of eldritch angles, tilted towers, evil… wrong…

So utterly, terribly wrong.

Geoff took his hands from the keyboard and covered his eyes, trying to contain his despair. It was wrong and he knew it. Everything was fine until the full hideous glory of R’lyeh rose into view, and then the illusion collapsed. There was nothing majestic about it, nothing that conjured up the horror of its arrival. It was only tilted rocks and a few cheap, generic effects. His heart wasn’t in it, and it showed.

“It still needs work,” he said, aware that he had better show a pretense of caring for something more than his paycheck.

Without speaking or moving, Calamaro radiated near-lethal levels of distaste and disappointment. Warren had gone pale, afraid to speak either in defense or reproach of Geoff’s work. Only Petey Sandersen appeared untroubled. He slapped a hand on Geoff’s shoulder.

“It’s only to be expected,” he said. “It’s partly our fault. We’ve been remiss. In our defense, we wanted to make sure we had the right guy. I think, this time, we’ve got him.”

Petey gave a nod and a wink to Warren, who visibly relaxed. Color flooded his cheeks. Geoff suddenly remembered the unnamed designer he’d replaced. “…this time…”

“We’re going to leave you with the miter, Geoff. I think you’ll find you can remedy all deficiencies. You’ll get R’lyeh right this time. You’ll get on the Dreamer’s dark side, and all will be well.”

“We haven’t much time,” said Calamaro.

“With a dedicated designer like Geoff here, I’m not worried in the least. Are you worried, Warren?”

“Wha… no! Not at all. Geoff’ll burn both ends till we’re done with this guy. That’s why he makes the big bucks.”

The miter had begun to feel heavier. He must get back to his desk and plunge into his work. He hardly heard what the others were saying. Ideas were coming, strong and vivid. They must be captured. He must surrender to them, bring them to life.

The others must have sensed that he was no longer following the conversation. Warren stood up, signaling that it was Geoff’s turn to do the same. Petey squeezed his hand. Emil Calamaro merely bent slightly at the waist, gripping his cane.

Geoff found himself in the lobby.

Lulu, the receptionist, regarded the glittering headpiece in awe. “Wow…”

She must have seen something in his eyes that silenced her.

Geoff strode toward his cubby, the prickling sensation still strong, but turning to something cold and liquescent, an icy tendril that held his will and gave him marching orders.

What am I doing?

He dragged to a stop in the elevator lobby, determined not to surrender. This was a job, only a job. He shouldn’t have to compromise his inmost thoughts, his imagination, his dreams. He would finish the damn map because it was the only way to get back to his own project, but that was all. Beyond that, he would resist.

Elevator doors rumbled open and a small group of programmers, returning with coffee, stumbled off and stared at Geoff with a mixture of amazement and respect. He pushed past them, into the small car, just as the doors closed, and stabbed the button for the ground floor. At that moment, the watery tendrils turned to knives of ice. He put his hands on either side of the wretched miter and tried to twist it off, but it clung tight. The car plummeted past his chosen floor. The car slowed but did not stop. It had entered realms for which there were no markers. The miter had some power over the elevator, even as it fought for power over him. He half expected to step off into a cavern of watery light where Byakhee waited to wing him away to dismal festivities.

Instead, the doors opened on a concrete cell, familiar from that morning. There was the stairwell where Warren had dismissed him, and a door into the vast dark garage.

The miter tightened like a fist, as if sending a final warning, and then it relaxed its grip. He was free.

It took five minutes, at a limping run, to reach the huddled cars, his own seeming vulnerable at the edge of the row. He dug into his pocket for keys. Once he was clear of the building, he would find a way to shed the miter, using a crowbar if necessary. After that, his greatest fear was that Petey and Calamaro would find a way to blackball his career. All he wanted was to get free of this cursed project and back to something he cared about.

As he turned his key in the lock, he heard a sound that stopped him. He waited for it to repeat. It must have been an engine coughing to life on some floor far above. Nothing on this level stirred. The other cars were empty, as he proved to himself by peering through the window of the adjacent Volkswagen. The same clutter of papers on the seat; the same collection of tiny dashboard idols; the same pile of sod and sticks thrown about like yard waste interrupted on its way to the dump.

The sound, as if aware of his attention, played again.

He bent closer. Crumpled sketches littered the seat. Waves of tingling swept across his scalp. His pupils felt impossibly huge. Among the sketches he could make out a fragment of coastline, an ocean expanse, an X in the midst of the sea.

R’lyeh.

The other drawings suddenly made more sense. The tilting oblongs… a poor draftsman’s attempt at non-Euclidean geometry… a massive door… a model ship…

The miter caressed him warningly, as if an octopus could purr.

They were maps. Levels. Attempts to sketch out the very same areas he was building for the Simulator. Very poor designs, he had to admit, by a less than skilled designer.

Whose car was this?

Reluctantly, he recognized the kinship between the collection of dashboard dolls and the vinyl creatures that lined his desk.

And an even less welcome connection: The broken brown twigs were tangled with black rags that bore the Aeon Entertainment logo.

The sound came again. This time, unmistakably, it came from inside some car in this row. It sounded less like an engine noise and more like something clearing its throat.

He eased his door shut, slipped the keys into his pocket, and began to back slowly toward the distant elevator.

The miter, satisfied that he understood, regained its grip.

You haven’t won, he told it. I’ll get through this and move on.

It’s only a job.

He fought from the first, in his own way.

He fought from his desk, in front of his monitor, keyboarding until his eyelids trembled and the urge to sleep became all but impossible to resist. But all his other sleepless nights on the Austen project had given him the resources he needed to stay upright and conscious through the deathmarches of crunchmode. The Dreamer worked through him, but he fought back. Subverting the Dark Advent would not have been possible had he not already finely honed the ability to resist sleep; for a game designer it was second nature, a matter of instinct, ingrained.

The first line of defense was a visible act of defiance. Out came every last one of his vinyl Jane Austen figures. He set them to run lines of interference between the figures of eldritch power. The population of Casterbridge mingled incongruously among Whateleys and Peaslees and the entire Arkham establishment.

These small personal touches, injecting something of himself, were minor sorties in the main battle. But they brought a very real satisfaction and sense of resistance.

To resist outright was a doomed proposition. His sanity was at stake, after all. There were limits to how much he was willing to sacrifice just to make a point. Direct opposition would only lead to failure, madness, and the unemployment office. If he could just get through this, there would be other opportunities in store for him. With all the glory attendant on the Second Rising, he would be free again to pick his assignments. He could push his Trollope project. Or finally develop The Bronte Sisters Massacre.

Such thoughts did not sit well with the miter, which struck back by clenching down so hard that his brain felt like a raisin. Even through stifling pain, he clung hopelessly to his passion.

Warren dragged a cot into an empty office, dedicating it to Geoff for the duration. Yet to lie there, to sleep, would have been to surrender himself completely.

Beneath the waves, in the lightless depths of his map, the city took shape. Geoff modeled shapes in ABDUL, shapes unlike any he had created before. They were direct projections from the Dreamer; they prefigured the Dark Advent. Even as he built them, he knew they were true. Before this, he had merely imagined R’lyeh; he had improvised, glibly making shit up. This was utterly different. These creations were not of him; he was simply a conduit for the Dreamer’s own excretions. What that made of him, he felt all too keenly.

Yet, while his hands hewed R’lyeh from deformed terrain, his heart took shelter in a green imagined England. It was not mountains of madness that filled his mind, but hillocks of happiness. While fluorescent light throbbed down upon his mitered head, he imagined it was the sunlight of a hot August afternoon; he sought respite from the fields of baled hay, finding Tess the dairymaid (loosely of the D’Urbervilles) waiting for him in the sultry shade, her breasts white as the cream she churned to butter. This was a vision of loveliness no Elder God could threaten. It was not unknown Kadath that shimmered in the distance like a phantasmagoric tapestry, but a stolid grey manor house holding dominion above a manicured lawn. It was not distant witless piping in a cosmic void that filled his ears, but the silver peal of church bells ever ringing through a lilac-scented evening. The pastor walked out among his flock. Roses grew on old white lattices and nodded their heavy heads at the coming night, willing him to sleep… sleep… all would be well if only he would… sleep. Not surrender, merely… merely…

“Geoff? Geoff! Wake up, man, it’s coming! It’s time!”

Groggily aware that something was wrong, Geoff lurched into consciousness. When had he lapsed? What had he lost?

In sleep he had laid himself wide open to the Dreamer. He’d given up everything he valued. He had been party to atrocities. He must delete his work! It was the only way to keep the monster from leaking into the world.

Warren stopped his hand. “You’re done. Come on, we’re in the conference room.”

“Done? But—”

“Don’t worry. The map’s compiled, it’s built, it’s beautiful. Petey and Calamaro couldn’t be happier. Timing’s perfect. We’re not the bottleneck, Geoffrey. Retail can sweat the rest of it. We did our part and we’re done. Now come watch the Rising.”

Stepping into the conference room, he experienced double vision and disorientation. Twin monitors showed the same scene. It took him a moment to realize that one was the simulator and the other was a live broadcast from ships and news helicopters far out at sea. The similarity between the two scenes was uncanny.

Heads swiveled toward him; he tried to smile. Emil Calamaro and Petey Sandersen were plainly delighted to see him. Petey took his hands off the keyboard, where he had been tinkering with the R’lyeh simulation, and, supporting himself on the edge of the table, leaned toward Geoff with his hand out, shouting “He is Risen!” with evangelical fury.

Geoff mumbled his reply.

“We want to thank you and honor you. What you’ve done is beyond amazing!”

Calamaro was rising, his dark sneer full of satisfaction. He too pressed in close to Geoff. “Indeed, it is completely astonishing. You have greatly eased the Rising. We have watched the ascent again and again, and it is most pleasing. Those who did not witness this day firsthand will be able to witness it over and over again for ages to come. It will be as it was.”

On the live screen, the tossing sea had only just begun to tremble; but in the simulator that commemorated the occasion, the ocean had become a frothing stew of green slime belched from the depths. Dark angular towers began to thrust from the waters, black windows gaping, doors opening like the mouths of the abyss. To gaze upon the exhumed city was madness—even he, its author, could hardly bear to look. Then again, he felt he was no more its author than author of what the networks were transmitting.

Petey pulled over a keyboard and paused the simulation. It began to tick backward, then ran forward again at greater speed. R’lyeh was swallowed by the waves, vomited out, swallowed up again. Warren shook his shoulder. “Good work, Geoff. I mean it. Outstanding. You’ve really outdone yourself.”

Meanwhile, the actual rising would not be rushed; it could not be paused or reversed. If only!

The news cameras drifted over the open sea. Its gentleness filled him with dread.

“All right,” Petey said. “Plenty of time for this later.”

As he spoke, the simulated R’lyeh had just crested the false waters. The great stage door to the false dreamer’s lair, the tilted slab, had begun to gape. The shape within, waking, was caught by the stroke of a key. Paralyzed. Not dead. Not even sleeping. On hold.

Petey pushed the keyboard aside and picked up a remote. He pointed it at the live monitor and turned up the volume.

First you heard the thrum of helicopter blades. After a moment, seeping through, a deeper sound like the tolling of drowned bells vibrated out of the television and filled the listeners in the conference room with the solemnity of the moment. Geoff sank into a chair. He had seen all this before. He had dreamed it, lived it, fought it. Failed. His sense of defeat was complete.

Water slithered and eddied from the dark complexities beneath. Huge mounded shapes. Cruise ships and luxury liners had come close for the occasion, while keeping a respectful distance from the turbulence. The cameras showed their decks and rails thronged with wealthy golden worshipers. Several aircraft carriers waited on the horizon in case of international incidents. But only one incident mattered now, and it transcended all merely “international” concerns.

The bells tolled louder, and at a slowly rising pitch. Something in Geoff thrilled at the sound in spite of himself. He had dreamed this. He had been down there in the depths. He had met the Dreamer mind to mind and been utterly defeated, and yet… and yet…

The waters surged. The chopper pulled closer. From far down in the foul foam came something shining and angular, all points and slopes and corners, upthrusting towers and turrets, and still those bells, so wrong, so infinitely wrong.

Petey and Emil turned to one another, worried looks flitting.

Something gleaming, something of brilliant shining ivory whiteness, suddenly breached the surface. A gasp went through the room.

The helicopter lurched as if the pilot had lost control, caught by a vicious gust from below.

As the chopper recovered, the view stabilized. The distant television crew was shouting about the near disaster, distracted from the inevitable one. They were closer to the water now, closer to the immensity that continued rising into light and air. Gargantuan bluffs of black dripping stone, chiseled shapes covered with slime and ancient marine encrustations. And atop all this, the greatest monstrosity, the holiest of holies…

A church.

Exactly that. A small old-fashioned English country church with a single perfect spire. Sparkling white and dripping wet, it perched atop the squalid rocks as if it had been lifted whole from Geoff’s reveries and transplanted in this unlikeliest of spots.

Geoff himself could only stare as seawater flowed from the bell tower, as the pealing bells grew louder, clearer, cheerier.

They filled the room until Petey and Calamaro had to clamp their hands over their ears. The two men whirled on Geoff with their eyes bulging, mouths flapping but unable to speak.

Geoff backed away with both hands on the miter, trying desperately to pry it off, to throw it down and run, even though he knew they could not harm him now. He had given birth to this thing. He and it were one and the same. Minds had mingled in the depths, and now…

Onscreen, the TV screen, the doors of the church swung wide. The timbre of the bells deepened abruptly, sounding a sour and dismal note. Petey and Calamaro, pierced by sudden rapture, whirled to take in the sight.

The church was not empty—hardly that. The white outer shell, the churchlike carapace, had transfigured the softer thing inside, and decidedly not for the better.

It lashed out, and the helicopter went down in an instant. Green water closed over the lens. For a moment that monitor showed the bubbling surface of the sea from underneath. Sunlight flared across the screen, but shadows were spreading. Somewhere, the cruise ships were being pulled under one by one. You could hardly hear the screams above the bells, which tolled and tolled. They would stop for nothing and nothing could block out the sound.

Not even Warren: “You’ve done it, Geoff!”

Not even Emil Calamaro: “Big, big congrats!”

Not even Petey Sandersen, conveying the last words he heard or wanted to hear: “Don’t take the miter off! The job is yours! Forever!”

LENG

Aug. 3

No adventurer has ever followed lightly in the footsteps of a missing survey team, and today’s encounter in the Amari Café did little to relieve my anxiety. Having arrived in Thangyal in the midst of the Summer Grass Festival, which celebrates the harvest of Cordyceps sinensis, the prized caterpillar fungus, we first sought a reasonably hygienic hotel in which to stow our gear. Lodging accomplished, Phupten led me several blocks to the café—and what a walk it was! Sidewalks covered with cordyceps! Thousands of them laid out to dry on tarps and blankets, the withered little hyphae-riddled worms with their dark fungal stalks outthrust like black mono-antennae, capped with tiny spores (asci). Everywhere we stepped, an exotic specimen cried out for inspection. Never have I seen so many mushrooms in one place, let alone the rare cordyceps; never have I visited a culture where mushrooms were of such great ethnic and economic importance. It is no wonder the fungi are beloved and appreciated, and that the cheerful little urchins who incessantly spit in the street possess at their tongue-tips (along with sunflower hulls) the practical field lore of a trained mycologist; for these withered larvae and plump Tricholoma matsutake and aromatic Boletus edulis have brought revivifying amounts of income to the previously cash-starved locals. For myself, a mere mushroom enthusiast, it was an intoxicating stroll. I can hardly imagine what it must have been like for my predecessors, treading these same cracked sidewalks ten months ago.

Phupten assured me that every Westerner in Thangyal ends up in the cramped café presided over by the rosy-cheeked Mr. Zhang, and this was the main reason for our choice of eatery. Mr. Zhang, formerly of Lhasa, proved to be a thin, jolly restaurateur in a shabby suit jacket, his cuffs protected from sputtering grease by colorful sleeve protectors cut from what appeared to be the legs of a child’s pajamas. At first, while we poured ourselves tea and ate various yak-fraught Tibetan versions of American standards, all was pleasant enough. Mr. Zhang required only occasional interpretive assistance from Phupten, and my comment on his excellent command of English naturally led him to the subject of his previous tutors—namely, the eponymous heads of the Schurr-Perry expedition.

Here, at a moment that could have been interpreted as inauspicious by those inclined to read supernatural meaning into random events, the lights dimmed and the power went out completely—a common event in Thangyal, Phupten stressed, as if he thought me susceptible to influence by such auspices. Although the cafe darkened, Mr. Zhang’s chapped cheeks burned brighter, kindling my own excitement as he lit into a firsthand account of the last known days of Danielle Schurr and her husband, Heinrich Perry.

According to Mr. Zhang, Danielle and Heinrich spent several weeks in Thangyal last October-November, preparing to penetrate the Plateau of Leng (so-called, in fanciful old accounts, the “Forbidden Plateau” (Journals of the Eldwythe Expedition (1903)) (which I mistakenly thought I had packed, damn it)). Thangyal still has no airstrip of its own, and like me they had relied on Land Rover and local drivers to reach it. Upon arrival, they encountered great difficulty in arranging for guides and packhorses to carry their belongings beyond vehicular routes, and had been obliged to wait while all manner of supplies were shipped in and travel arrangements made. During this wait, Heinrich had schooled our host in English, while Danielle had broadened his American cuisine repertoire. (I have her to thank for the banana pancakes that warm me even now.)

The jovial restaurateur tried many times to talk them out of their foray—and not merely because of winter’s onset. Were there political considerations? I asked. For while the Chinese government has relaxed travel restrictions through some border zones of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, stringent regulations are still in effect for Westerners who wish to press into the interior. Many of these stipulations (as I know firsthand) exist mainly to divert tourist lucre into the prefecture’s treasury by way of costly travel permits. But in the case of Leng, there seem to be less obvious motives for the restrictions. Despite assurances that I would never repeat his words to any official, Mr. Zhang refused to elaborate on what sort of benefit the Chinese government derived from restricting access. Leng is hardly a mineral rich region; there has been little or no military development there, which indicates it is strategically useless; and recent human rights reports declare it devoid of prisons or other political installations. It remains an area almost completely bypassed by civilizing influences, an astonishing anachronism as China pushes development into every last quarter of Tibet. As a zone set apart from the usual depredations, such resource conservation seems distinctly odd; but perhaps they have other plans for its exploitation. Mr. Zhang’s warnings were sufficiently vague that I could easily picture my predecessors brushing them aside. Once he realized that it was my intent to follow them, he directed the same warnings at me. Any request for permission to enter the plateau region would be met with refusal, he said; thus confirming my decision to file no such requests, but depend on the remoteness of the region to lend me anonymity.

When he saw it was my fixed purpose to follow the Schurr-Perry trail, Mr. Zhang got up and shuffled back into the kitchen—now lit solely by a gas stovetop. He returned with a dog-eared ledger and said something in Tibetan which Phupten interpreted as, “Guestbook.”

Mr. Zhang opened the ledger, spread it flat on the checkered tablecloth, and guided us backward through the entries—past colorful doodles and excitable notes from the Amari’s many international diners—notes in English and German and French. Here were mountaineers bragging of climbs they had just made or climbs just ahead of them, penniless wanderers hoping someone might forward a few million yuan, laments of narrowly missed rendezvous.

Mr. Zhang stopped flipping pages and directed our attention to a ragged strip where one sheet had been ripped from the book.

“Here,” he said. “Heinrich and Danielle? They write thank you Mr. Zhang. They say, we go Leng. Bu Gompa. Anyone follow, they read this note, say wait for them in spring. But… no come back.”

I speak no Tibetan, but I recognized a few words I have heard many times recently, albeit in different context. The locals are always making pilgrimages to their various gompas, by which they mean a temple or monastery. And bu I know from Yartse gunbu, the local name for the caterpillar fungus. Its precise meaning is “summer grass, winter worm,” which is a colorful (if backwards) way of describing the metamorphosis of the cordyceps-inoculated caterpillar, which overwinters as a worm, only to sprout a grasslike fungal stalk, the fruiting body or stroma, in early summer (once the fungus has entirely consumed it from within).

I clumsily translated the name as, “Templeof the Worm?”

Mr. Zhang said something urgently to Phupten, who listened, nodded, and turned to translate.

“Yes, monastery. Bu Gompa sits in the pass above Leng Plateau. Very old temple, from old religion, pre-Buddhist.”

“A Bon temple, you mean?”

“Not Bon-po. Very much older. Bu Gompa for all that time, gateway to Leng. Priests are now Buddhist, but they still guard plateau.”

Mr. Zhang was not done with his guest book. “This page, when my friends not return, two men come. Say they look for Heinrich and Danielle. Look for news of expedition.”

“This was when?”

“In… January? Before they supposed come back. No one worried yet. Tibetan men, say Heinrich friend, ask see guest book. I very busy, many people in restaurant. Think no problem, they look for friends. I go in kitchen, very busy. I come out, they gone. Oh well. Book still here. Later I see page gone!”

“The one Heinrich and Danielle wrote in, you mean? Saying where they were going?”

“Yes.”

“These men were Tibetan, you say?”

“Yes. I not see them in Thangyal before, but so many in town. Not only Yartse Festival. Many travelers. I worry they take page, get money from Heinrich and Danielle family.”

“Blackmail,” said Phupten.

I assured Mr. Zhang that we had heard of no such attempts. I explained that I had followed Heinrich and Danielle’s trail after reading a series of letters and articles published in the Journal of the Mycological Society in advance of their departure. But all of Mr. Zhang’s information was new to me; and that regarding the gompa was particularly interesting, as it suggested where I might next seek news of their whereabouts.

At about this time, the power was restored and a fresh flood of festival attendees pushed into the café. Thinking it right to clear the table for new customers, we bid farewell to Mr. Zhang, thanked him for his kindness, and stepped back out onto a sidewalk now almost completely covered with fungi. I stopped to watch some old gentlemen playing mahjongg on a table they’d set up on the sidewalk, and was hardly surprised to discover that in place of cash or poker chips, they were betting with Yartse gunbu.

Aug. 6

This morning, having finally reached the end of the tortuously stony road beyond Thangyal, we climbed from the Land Rovers and found an entire village sitting out in the sun to await our arrival. Our ponies should have been waiting for us, but apparently the drivers had expected us a week ago and turned them loose to graze in the high meadows. Even so, you might have thought the whole village had sat on the streetside, patiently waiting out the week, as if our arrival were the highpoint of the season and well worth any delay. To mark the moment with a bit of ceremony, I passed around biscuits and let the assemblage pore through my mushroom atlas, which was handed about with amazement and appreciation by the entire community. They pointed out various rare species, giving me the impression that many could be found in the region—however, Phupten was too busy remedying the horse situation to interpret, and I soon reached the limits of my ability to communicate with any subtlety.

Phupten eventually signaled me that immediate arrangements had been made, and that we could set off without further ado. The horses would follow once they had been retrieved and laden with supplies offloaded from the vehicles. With a camp-following of dogs and children, we plunged onto a muddy footpath among the houses. As we passed to the limits of the village, we encountered a number of mushroom hunters returning from their morning labors with plastic grocery bags, wicker baskets, or nylon backpacks bulging with shamu—the local term for mushrooms of all varieties. Phupten helped me interview the collectors, making quick inventories of local names, edibility, and market prices they earn from the buyers who scour these remote villages for delicacies. One cannot underestimate the value of mushrooms to these people. Species that grow abundantly here are prized in Japan and Korea, where they absolutely resist cultivation. Although the villagers receive a pittance compared to supermarket prices in Tokyo and Seoul, the influx of cash has completely transformed this previously impoverished land. The mud houses are freshly painted in bright acrylics; solar panels and satellite dishes spring up plentiful as sunflowers. The young men dash about on motorcycles as colorful as their temples. Since a study of mushroom economics had been the announced purpose of the Schurr-Perry expedition (although I suspected the unstated motive force was more likely a desire to discover and name some new species found only in Leng), I decided to see if this might be a path already taken. I showed each collector a photograph of Heinrich and Danielle, copied from the dust jacket of their landmark Fungi of Yunnan, to see what memories the image might jog loose. One group of giggling youths remembered them well; the adults were harder to pin down. I found reassurance, however, in the innocent recognition of the children, and now feel I am definitely on the right trail—although the chance of losing it remains tremendous in the narrow defiles of the only land route into Leng.

Beyond the village, we crossed a river by way of a swaying cable bridge. Keeping close to the west bank, working our way upriver, we spent the morning traversing damp meadows further dampened by frequent cloudbursts. Our gear, now swaying awkwardly on the backs of four ponies, caught up with us in the early afternoon. Not long after, we crossed back to the east bank, on a much older bridge that put me in mind of a stockade. The blackened timbers were topped with protective shapes that again served as reminders of the mushroom’s ancient significance. The more stylized carvings were clearly meant to represent shelf fungi, tree ears, king boletes. The bridge also marked the point at which I felt we had crossed a divide in time. I saw no more hazardous electric lines strung between fencepost and rooftop; no dish antennae were in evidence. The mudbrick walls were topped with mats of cut sod, which made them wide enough that small dogs could run along the heights, barking down at us. Children followed us through streets that ran like muddy streams. Eventually, at the edge of a walled field, we left them all behind, flashing peace signs and shouting after us, “Shamu-pa! Shamu-pa!” Phutpen laughed and said, “They call you ‘Mushroom Man,’” which sat very well with me. Our guides grinned and set the horses on at greater speed.

After that, all other habitations were simpler and more temporary affairs. Phupten brought us to the black felt tent of a yak herder, where an elderly nomad woman cut squeaking slices of a hard rubbery cheese and sprinkled it with brown sugar; I was grateful for the butter tea that washed it down. But it was the large basket of matsutake that held my interest, each little bud wrapped in an origami packet of rhododendron leaves.

Regretfully, as we ascend we are bound to leave such woodland curiosities behind. The higher elevations are more secretive with their treasures. Consider the elusive cordyceps–notoriously hard to spy, with its one thin filament lost among so many blades of real grass.

Late in the day, we came in sight of the massif that guards the pass into Leng. The late afternoon light made the barrier appear unnaturally close, sharp and serrated as a knife held to my eyes. Such was the clarity of the air that for a moment I felt a kind of horizontal vertigo. I imagined myself in danger of falling forward and stumbling over the rim of the mountains into a deep blue void. When a violet translucence flared above the range, it edged the snowy crests as if auroral lights were spilling up from the plateau hidden beyond them. I suppose this strange, brief atmospheric phenomenon may be akin to the green flash of the equatorial latitudes, but it also made me more aware than ever of the imminent onset of altitude sickness, and the ominous tinge of an incipient migraine. I was grateful when our guides, immediately after this, announced it was time to make camp.

We spread our tents in a wide meadow between two rivers. The rush of rapids was almost deafening. One of our guides, doubling as cook, filled pots and a kettle from one of the streams and soon had tea and soup underway. From a bloody plastic grocery bag, he produced rich chunks of yak and hacked them up along with fresh herbs and wild garlic he had gathered along the trail. I offered several prize boletes of my own finding. We ate and ate well in the shadow of a tall white stupa, also in the shape of a mushroom, adorned with a Buddha’s eyes, and I was reminded of another interest of Heinrich’s and Danielle’s. They had read conjecture in The Journal of Ethnopharmacology that the words Amanita and Amrita had their nomenclatural similarity rooted in a single sacred practice. Amrita is the Buddhist equivalent of ambrosia, or the Sanskrit soma, a sacred foodstuff; and it has been suggested that certain Buddhist practices may have been inspired, or at least augmented, by visions following ingestion of the highly psychoactive Amanita muscaria. The Schurr-Perrys had stated a desire to be the discoverers (and namers) of Amanita lengensis, should such exist. In this way the mycological world resembles the quantum world, in being a realm so rich and various that simply searching for new forms seems to call them into creation; where labels may predate and even prophesy the things to which they are eventually applied; in which scientists now chart out the psychic territory known as Apprehension.

When I asked which species we might find beyond the pass, I was surprised to learn from Phupten that our guides had only visited Bu Gompa once or twice in their lifetimes, and had never actually set foot in Leng. Such pilgrimages are not undertaken lightly. Leng is held in such reverence and awe, as a place of supernal power, that they believe it unwise to venture there too often.

Sharing our interest in all things mycological, the horsemen related a tale of a stupa-shaped mushroom that had bloated to enormous size and died away to puddled slime in the course of one growing season. This had occurred in their childhoods, but pilgrims still visited the spot in hopes the Guru Shamu might reappear. With what in retrospect seems arrogant pedantry, I found myself explaining that the fruiting body they saw, impressive as it might have seemed, was still only a comparatively tiny eruption from a much vaster fungus, the real guru, growing unseen and unmeasured beneath the soil. They looked at me with disappointment, as if I had just declared them retarded. In other words, this was hardly news to them. I eventually succeeded, through Phupten, in apologizing. I explained that in the West, extensive knowledge of mushrooms is considered bizarre at worst, the mark of an enthusiast at best. We shared a good laugh. At last I am among kindred spirits. So much about our lives is different, but in our passion for mushrooms we are of one mind.

Aug. 8

A day of astonishment—of revelation. Almost too much to encompass as I sit here typing by the light of my laptop, wrapped up in my sleeping bag as if under the stars, but with my gear pitched instead in a chilly stone cell. I should sleep, I know. I am exhausted and the laptop battery needs charging; but I fear losing track of any detail. I must write while this is all fresh.

After yesterday’s slow progress and mounting disappointments, we were relieved to sight the Leng Pass by late morning. We had ascended to such an altitude that even now, in midsummer, snow comes down to the level of the trail in numerous places. Blue deer capered on the steep ragged scree above us, lammergeier were our constant observers, and once we startled a flock of white-eared pheasant, large as turkeys, that hopped rather than flew away through the boulders. The occasional stinkhorn, fancifully obscene, was still to be found among the thinly scattered pine needles, but my desire to forage had receded with the elevation. Grateful to have woken with a clear head, and not at all eager to trigger another migraine, I resolved to conserve my strength. But it was hard to slow down once I saw my view of the sky steadily broadening, with no further mountains moving into the notch above.

We passed cairns of engraved stones and desiccated offerings that seemed neither plant nor animal but something in between, and entered a long flat valley, sinuously curved to match the river flowing through it. The valley floor was high marshland, studded with the medicinal rhubarb we have seen everywhere. This was all picturesque enough, but above it on a slope of the pass, just at the highest point where snow laced the scree, was the most wonderful sight of the journey. Its prayer flags flying against the clouds seemed triumphant banners set out for our welcome. We had reached Bu Gompa, which straddles and guards the entrance to Leng.

Thunder rumbled; rain fell in grey ribbons. Phupten said the monks were bound to read this as an auspicious sign, coupled with our arrival. Our horsemen quickened their steps, and even the ponies hurried as if the object of their own private pilgrimage were in sight. The monastery loomed over us. Above it, among shelves of rock on the steeper slopes, I saw the pockmarks of clustered caves like the openings of beehives. Then we were through a painted gate and the place had consumed us. Happily lost among tall sod-draped walls, I breathed in the musty atmosphere of woodsmoke, rancid butter and human waste that I have come to associate with all such picturesque scenes in this country.

Several boys, young monks, were first to greet us, laughing and ducking out of sight, then running ahead to alert their elders. We climbed switchback streets, perpetually urged and beckoned to the height of the pass. At last we entered a walled courtyard. A wide flight of steps soared to a pair of immense doors, presumably the entrance to the main temple. As Phupten conversed with a small contingent of monks, I tried these doors and found them locked. It seemed propitious to leave an offering of ten dollars to show our good intentions and dispose the monks toward our cause. Meanwhile, our horsemen laid themselves repeatedly on the flags of the courtyard, in prayerful prostrations, aligned along some faded tracework of symbols so ancient I could detect no underlying pattern. Although the walls were bright with fresh paint, this monastery seemed remote enough to have escaped destruction during the Cultural Revolution.

I retreated down the steps to find Phupten perplexed. The monks, he said, had been expecting us. They led us around the side of the building, skirting the huge locked doors, and entered the main hall by a small curtained passage.

We had seen many fantastically colorful temples along our route, lurid to the point of being day-glo. This one impressed by its warm burnished hues. Rich russets, silvery greys, pallid ivories. Everywhere were exquisite thangkas, hand-painted hangings in colors so subdued they evoked a world of perpetual dusk. There was light in these paintings that seemed to emanate from within and could hardly be fully explained by the shifting glow of the numerous butter lamps. Bodhisattvas floated among sharp mountains, hovering cross-legged above vast emerald seas from which radiated gilt filaments painted with such skill that they seemed to vibrate on the optic nerve, creating the illusion of swaying like strands of golden grass. Most of the traditional Buddhas and Bodhisattvas had grown familiar to me after so many recent temple visits but Phupten pointed out one figure new to me, and quite unusual, which made numerous appearances throughout the room. Pre-Buddhist, and predating even the ancient Bon-po religion of Tibet, Phupten thought this to be the patron of those original priests of Leng. Where Buddhist iconography was highly schematic, drawn according to regular geometric formulae, this figure harkened back to an older style, one unconcerned with distinct form and completely innocent of the rules of perspective: amorphous, eyeless, mouthless, but not completely faceless. Having noticed it once, I began to spy it everywhere, lurking within nearly all the thangkas, a ubiquitous shadow beneath every emerald expanse.

I noticed our horsemen moving about the room in clockwise fashion, lighting incense and butter lamps, leaving offerings of currency at several of the shrines. Having taken up this practice myself, as a matter of courtesy rather than devotion, I began to follow their example; but Phupten took my arm and for the first time in our journey, told me to hang back. When I asked why, he pulled me into a corner of the room and whispered, with curious urgency, “If you look, you see no pictures of His Holiness.”

It was true enough, and remarkable, given the common appearance of the Dalai Lama in every temple we had visited across the eastern fringe ofTibet.

“Not good. Old disagreement. They do practice here, very old, from Leng. His Holiness say very bad. Three years ago, the priests of Leng, they speak out against Dalai Lama, that he is suppressing their religion. He says, their protector deity is like a demon—“

“I thought all the old Bon spirits were demons once.”

“Yes, but this one never enlightened. False wisdom. So, a very big fight, and even a man who try to kill his Holiness in Dharamsala. They said it was Chinese assassin behind it, but many believe it was ordered by monks of Leng.”

“So… no offerings,” I finished.

“Yes.”

“But what about our guides? Don’t they know?”

Before he could answer, our inspection of the temple was interrupted by the arrival of several more monks. Two were elders, dignified men, strong but gentle seeming. The third was younger, with strongly Caucasian features. In his monastic garb, with head shaved, and given the fact I had only seen him as a lecturer, at a distance, at one or two mycological conferences, I suppose I can be forgiven for not having recognized him until he came up to me, put out his hand, and said, “You don’t recognize me, do you? Heinrich Perry!”

Ten minutes later, we were seated in the courtyard enjoying a sun break, sipping tea and chewing dumplings of tea-moistened tsampa. It seemed that all the monks of Bu Gompa had turned out to get a look at me. They laughed and posed for photographs, until their various duties took them off again, for meditation or debate. Heinrich said news of our coming had preceded us up the passes; he had been expecting us since our visit to Mr. Zhang, although he was surprised anyone would have followed in his footsteps. The Schurr-Perry expedition was anything but lost. He had already found more than he ever expected to find, without even crossing into Leng. His wife had ventured onto the plateau and made discoveries of her own, but Heinrich had not set foot across the threshold.

“And where is Ms. Schurr?” I asked.

Heinrich gestured airily in the direction of the surrounding slopes. “She is in retreat.” Leaving me to infer some transcendental meaning in this statement, he must have seen my glazed expression, for he laughed and elaborated: “Above the monastery are many old caves used for meditation. She has been there since her return from the plateau.” He leaned forward and said confidentially, “She has been recognized as a superior practitioner, while I scrub pots and chop wood!”

So our predecessors, far from lost, had simply gone native. And their mycological survey? Their dreams of discovering new species in Leng? It was hard to believe they had given up on their passion.

Heinrich said, “Not at all. I would say we have embraced it. The Leng Plateau is a treasure chest of rarities, previously unknown. Once you attain the plateau, it is impossible to describe the wealth of discovery that awaits. But… once I reached this spot, such things lost their importance. Danielle has never been one to hold back, but I… I feel fulfilled as a porter at the gate. All Leng lies before me, but I know myself not yet ready for what it has to offer.”

This seemed like a shame, and I said as much, for Perry’s reports had always been received eagerly by mycological society. In a profession which had yearly become more and more the domain of geneticists, more partitioned into microscopic domains, Perry and Schurr had been unafraid of bold strokes and sweeping statements. Their papers, while thoroughly grounded in empirical observation, never shied from leaning out over the thrilling edge of speculation. Their gift of synthesis was to couple personal reportage with ecological insight; their reports, while botanically rigorous, did not neglect the social and economic implications of their finds. Yet apparently the line between devout ethnomycology and monastic assimilation had been porous. I considered it a shame, but then felt awkward and ashamed of myself for harboring critical thoughts of this pair, whom I knew not at all. If they had found personal fulfillment in casting aside purely academic concerns and embracing the spiritual, then who was I to judge them? If anything, I felt a keen resolve to work even harder in order to compensate for the loss of Schurr-Perry’s ongoing contributions to the field. The success of my foray into Leng seems more crucial than ever.

By now it was early evening, and we walked out to stand on a temple balcony, looking out across the very threshold of Leng. The serried peaks opened before us like a curtain of violet ice pulled back to reveal a sea of rolling green that broke against the misty edges of infinity. The most evocative passages of the literature of Leng came rushing back to me—from the lush descriptions of Gallardo’s Folk and Lore of the Forbidden Plateaux (1860) to the spare journal entries of the tragic Eldwythe misadventure of 1903, made all the more macabre and ironic by its innocence of the repercussions it would inevitably have on British and Russian relations. “…lost land of unnameable mysteries… beauty beyond reach and beyond utterance… effulgent as the evenstar’s radiance alight on the breast of earth, enflaming the mind and senses…” Although I had always thought such descriptions must have been flights of fancy, my first sight of Leng simply made me sympathetic to the self-avowed descriptive failings of all previous writers.

It was no wonder Perry had stopped here, I thought, for to descend into that remote wilderness was to risk stripping it of the intense mystery that gave rise to its fantastic beauty. While I knew that on the morrow we would put one foot before the other and gradually make our way down to that strange green plain, I regretted the thought of taking any action that would lessen Leng’s magic while heightening its reality. It struck me as a dreamland, suspended in its own hallucination of itself, impervious to the senses. And yet such bubbles—how readily they burst. I feared this was a delusion of the evening, of the twilight air, doomed by the threat of morning. But there was nothing for it. I tried to hold on to a sense of anticipation, reminding myself of what Perry had hinted: That new discoveries awaited us below.

Horns resounded deep within the monastery, amid the clanging of cymbals and bells, and several boys came to fetch us back. Just before we turned away, the first stars appeared above the misty plains, and I sent up a fervent wish that I would never forget the feelings that had accompanied their arrival. Needless to say, these impressions will make no appearance in my published survey notes. In fact, I hope I can word my reports in such a way that none of my colleagues feel compelled to follow my trail and impinge upon this mystic land. It is such a strange feeling, as if I have been entrusted with a secret rare and exquisite, one that seems to blow up from the plateau on scented winds. I feel it would be wrong, shameful, to blunt it with too many perceivers. I am of course committed to sharing the knowledge I find here, and in no danger of falling into the trap that claimed the Schurr-Perry party. But I find myself certain that those Tibetans who visited Mr. Zhang and tore the entry from his guestbook must have been sent at Heinrich Perry’s request, in an understandable attempt to cover up his trail.

During dinner, we spoke only of plans for the journey ahead. Phupten dined with the drivers, so I relied on Perry for interpretation. It seemed strange to me that they would have embraced him as a lama when his only real expertise, to my knowledge, was in the area of mycology. Likewise, how had Danielle managed to distinguish herself so swiftly among this group of lifelong spiritual practitioners? It was one thing to rush ahead fearlessly, as Heinrich had suggested was her wont—and quite another to convert that mortal zeal into an act of transcendence.

These questions were hard to frame while my hosts plied me with such a remarkable meal. Knowing my interest in local mushrooms, the monk chefs contrived a meal of savories that grew within range of the temple, prime among them a delectable red fly agaric, or chicken egg mushroom—Amanita hemibapha (once incorrectly known as Caesar’s mushroom (or, I would imagine, ‘Gesar’s mushroom’ in these lands), viz., Amanita caesarea, but delightful whatever its name). In my tea I found a special additive—a wrinkled grub, perhaps three inches long, like a sodden medicinal root. Heinrich confirmed my suspicion that it was nothing less than cordyceps, and a most prized variety, being collected along the edges of the grasslands that blanket the plateau. Like the worm in a bottle of tequila, it bobbed against my lips as I drank. In tropical climes, where insects are rife, the invasive cordyceps comes in many forms, to encompass the wild variety of insect hosts; but in these high cold climes, its hosts are few and unprepossessing. Whatever traits might have distinguished Cordyceps lengensis from the more common variety were not at all obvious to my eye; in fact, soaked and swimming in tea, it looked more like a shred of ginseng than anything else. Heinrich said the monks called it phowa bu, which I hesitate to translate. “Death Worm” gives the wrong impression altogether and “Transcendence Worm” is not much better. Phowa is a ritual done at the moment of death, intended to launch its practitioner cleanly into the Pure Lands through his crown—to be more precise, through the fontanelle at the top of the skull. Heinrich claims that in true practitioners of phowa, a blood blister forms at the top of one’s head, and a hole opens there. This channel is just wide and deep enough to hold a single stalk of grass—and in fact, this is the traditional test used by lamas to gauge an initiate’s readiness. With its single grasslike stalk, the shriveled cordyceps serves as a humble reminder of the sacred practice.

I asked Heinrich if I might see fresh specimens of Cordyceps lengensis before my departure, but he demurred—and there I caught a glimpse of the old academic, cagey and wary with his findings. “Of course,” I quipped, “you have yet to publish!” And was gratified to hear him laugh. I’d struck truth! For all his monastic garb, he is still a mushroom hunter through and through–protective of his private foraging grounds!

Although the sun had barely set, I found the cumulative exertions of the last few days, and the effects of the altitude, had overcome me. The cordyceps infusion seems to have some medicinal properties, for tonight as I lay down to make these entries, I found my breathing easy. Normally these past few nights, I have felt a crushing weight on my chest, exaggerated when I recline, and I wake many times before dawn, gasping for breath. Something tells me that tonight I will sleep well.

Stray thought—Heinrich’s research re Amanita/Amrita. Must ask in the morning. Where that led him; what he found, if anything. Cordyceps aplenty, but no sign of Amanita lengensis. I’d like to charge the laptop before I go, but I couldn’t ask them to run the generator all night. Low on power.

Undated Entry

Phupten is dead. Or worse.

I believe our guides may have met a similar fate—I cannot call it an end, although it might be that. I will do my best to explain while I still have power, in hopes this laptop may be found by someone who may benefit by my warnings. I cannot flee back across the pass. The only other path is a trackless one, forward across the plateau. Leng. There are good reasons not know it any better than I do already.

Two nights ago? Three? Phupten woke me in the dark monastic cell, with a flashlight in my eyes and fear in his voice. He said we were at risk of losing our guides to the gompa. Whether they had planned it from the start, or merely found themselves seduced by the monastic order upon arrival, he was unsure. They had mentioned childhood vows that needed renewing, but apparently things had gone too far.

I was already dressed inside my sleeping bag, so I scrambled out and followed him along dark halls, taking nothing but the few valuables in my backpack. We passed under timbered passages and starry gaps, and eventually came to the side door of the great hall. Inside, the monks sat chanting in row upon row with our guides now among them. Phupten held me back, as if I would have plunged among them—but I was not inclined to interrupt that ceremony.

Both guides stood at the head of the temple, close to the central altar. Incense fumes shrouded them, as if they were being fumigated, purified in sacred smoke. The smoke rose from a fat grey mass, as large as a man’s torso, that smoldered but did not seem to burn. A lama stood near the men, his face hidden behind a richly embroidered veil of yellow cloth shot through with gold and red. He held a long wooden wand, possibly a yarrow stalk, which he used to softly prod and poke at the lump, stirring up thick billowing clouds of the odorless incense with each touch. I realized I was seeing a tangible version of the icon featured in so many thangkas—the local protector deity made manifest, squatting in the place that should have been occupied by a Buddha or Bodhisattva.

Sensing our arrival, the lama laid down his wand and walked toward us, stripping off his veil as if it were a surgeon’s mask. I was much surprised to find Heinrich leading a ceremony of such obvious importance. Without a word, he took me by the arm and steered me toward the side door. I looked around and discovered that Phupten had already crept away.

“Your guides have elected to stay,” he said.

“If they wish to take monastic vows it’s no business of mine,” I said. “But they should first fulfill their obligation to the survey. You know the importance of our work, Heinrich. Once you were as devoted to mycology as anyone on earth. Can’t you ask them to postpone this sudden bout of spirituality for a few weeks? I’ll be happy to leave them with you on my return from the plateau.”

Rather than argue, Heinrich led me away with a gentleness that later seemed more forceful than sympathetic.

“I understand your point of view, but there is another,” he said patiently. “When Dani and I first arrived here, our survey seemed more pressing than anything on earth. I remember my eagerness to catalog the contents of Leng. But there is a faster way to that knowledge. A richer and deeper kind of knowing.”

We were moving up the mountainside along a rough path. The hollow eye sockets of caves peered down without seeing us. The cloistered buildings fell below.

“Speak with Danielle,” Heinrich said. “She can explain better than I.”

Starshine through the frayed clouds was all the light we had, but on the snowy flanks of the mountains it was almost dazzling. Heinrich brought me to a black throat of darkness. Small icons sculpted of butter and barley flour were arranged at its mouth; there were shapes like spindles, bulbs, ears. We stepped inside. My first impression was of choking dryness and dust. I saw a grey knot, far back in the cave, bobbing in the guttering light of a single butter lamp that burned on the ground before it. I could make out a figure wrapped in robes, with head bowed slightly forward. All was grey—the face, the long hair cleanly parted down the middle. I supposed it was a woman, but she did not speak, nor stir to greet us.

“This is Danielle,” Heinrich said. “She has answers to all your questions.”

I was not sure what to ask, but I swore I heard her answering already. Deeper into the cave I went, stooping as the ceiling lowered, until my ears were very near her mouth. The sound of speech was louder now but still indecipherable, like mumbles inside which something was gnawing. Thinking it might help to match mouth to syllable, I watched her face until I was certain her mouth never moved. When I stepped back, a faint grey filament stirred in the breeze I’d made. It jutted from her scalp like a stalk of straw. The mark of the phowa adept. It seemed incredible she could have attained such a transcendent state in so little time. Was this why they had decided to remain? Could the monks of Bu Gompa offer a short path to enlightenment? Was there something about Leng itself, something in the rarified air, in the snowy mountains and the rolling misty grasslands, that provoked insight? I thought of how I had felt looking out over the fields—as if perpetually on the verge of understanding, of merging with a mystery that underlay all existence. But I had hesitated then and I hesitated now, even as I teetered on the brink. Doubt assailed me, and I have been trained to rely on doubt. Was enlightenment invariably good and wise? Was it possible that some forms of enlightenment, more abrupt than others, might be more than a weak mind could encompass? Were there not perhaps monks who, at the moment of insight, simply went mad? Or in a sense shattered?

Heinrich had been joined by others. Dark shapes clustered outside the cave, with the stars beyond them looking infinitely farther than stars had ever looked to me before. There was some aspect of menace in the silent arrival of the monks, and I suddenly felt myself the victim of a fraud. Doubt drove me entirely now. In a last bid to assert my rationality, to make all this as real as I felt it needed to be, I turned back to Danielle Schurr. It was time to end all deception. My fingers closed on the blade that jutted from her crown. Far from a dry grassy stalk, it proved to be pliable, rubbery, tough. I thought of the lure of a benthic anglerfish—something that belonged far deeper than this cave extended. As I pulled it from her scalp, or tried to, the top half of her head tore away in my hand, hanging from the end of the stalk in shreds, like a wet paper bag. The rest of her, what was left of her, exploded like a damp tissue balloon packed with grey dust. If you have ever kicked a puffball fungus, you might have some idea of the swirling clouds of spores that poured like scentless incense from the soft grey body—in such quantity that the dry husk was instantly emptied and lay slumped across the floor, inseparable from its robes.

I knew I must not breathe till I was far from the cave, but of course I already had gasped. Thus the shock of terror plays a critical role in the inoculation. I backed away, expecting to be caught by Heinrich and his cohorts. But no one stopped me. All stood aside.

My descent was a desperate and precarious one, especially once I abandoned the trail and cut off along the only available route—the pass leading down into Leng. The thought that I might accidentally blunder back into the monastery filled me with terror. By starlight, and some miracle, I found my way off the treacherous rocks and onto a stable path. An enormous clanking shape lurched toward me, matching my wild imaginings of some shaggy supernatural guardian that had descended to track me down. It proved to be one of the pack horses, bearing an ungainly bundle quickly assembled from our belongings, and led by none other than Phupten. He was as startled to see me as I was to meet him, for he had understandably thought only of saving himself. He said the path in the other direction had been gated off, the far side of the monastery impassable; so he’d had no choice but to flee toward Leng.

Behind us came the drone of horns, and I half expected the baying of hounds in pursuit. But though cymbals clashed and bells clanged and chanting rose up to the stars, nothing but sound pursued us down through the pass toward the unknown plateau of Leng, which became less unknown with each step. We fled through icy mountain fogs so luminous that I thought several times the sun must be rising, but each time found myself deceived.

At last, in exhaustion, Phupten pegged the ponies and dragged down blankets, and built a fire among the roots of a tree to give us some shelter against a miserable rain. We made plans for the morning, plans that have since evaporated. We debated whether we should wait till the following night to try and sneak back the way we had come. I dreaded the thought of returning to the monastery; it seemed impossible that we could ever creep unseen through the narrow maze of lanes; and who knew what the monks would do if they apprehended us? But Phupten insisted this was the only way back. For ages, it had been the one route into and out of Leng. There in the cold night, knowing that Leng was close, I regretted ever seeking it out. I wanted nothing more than to have remained ignorant of its mystery.

We slept there fitfully, shivering, and I dreamt fearful dreams of something wary and watchful toward which we fled. Small white buds were stirring among the roots of the tree, growing swiftly like plasmodium in a stop-motion film; they bulged from the soil and then opened, staring at me, a cluster of bloodshot eyes.

I jerked awake in a frozen dawn, hearing Phupten calling my name. But he was nowhere to be seen. The ponies waited where he had tethered them, so I thought he must have gone off for water or more wood.

I waited there all morning.

The mist veiled the mountains as if urging me to forget them. In the other direction, endless rolling hills of grass emerged. Alluring terrain, yet the notion of venturing there seemed madder than going to sea without a compass or the slightest knowledge of celestial navigation. I clung to the misty margin and watched the grasslands through much of the day, noting the way the light shifted and phantom sprites sometimes moved through the air above the rippling strands, auroral presences like the vaporous dreams of things hidden below the soil. I wondered if the Chinese suspected what dreamed there—if they hoped to harness it somehow, to tame or oppress it. Or had it managed to hide itself from them—from all controlling powers? Was it not itself an agent of utter control? Maddening insights flowered perpetually within me, the merest of them impervious to transcription. I wondered if there were degrees of immersion… or infection. Danielle had rushed out to meet the powers of the plateau… I continued to hold back… I felt on the verge of exploding with insight; as my mind quickened, I felt it ever more incumbent upon me to hold very still. A horrid wisdom took hold. These thoughts were only technically my own. Something else had planted them. In me, they would come to fruit.

I realized my eyes had closed, rolling back in my skull to point at a hidden horizon. With an effort of recall that felt like lurching disappointment, I disgorged a memory of Danielle Schurr’s final, meditative posture. This drove me to my feet. I stamped about, remembering how to walk. I felt emptied out. Cored. I foraged among the packs for food, hoping nourishment would abate my unaccustomed sense of lightness. Altitude still explained a great deal, I told myself. But something else was wrong. Almost everything.

In the afternoon I finally saw Phupten, far out on the sea of grass. He would not come close enough for me to read his features, nor did I dare walk out to greet him. Maybe he had been there all along. He stood with his face turned in my direction, and I began to hear mumbling like that which had filled the space in Danielle’s cave. I could not resolve words. The tone was plaintive, pleading, then insistent. Phupten walked off some distance, sat down, and grew very still. I believe night came again, although it might have been a different kind of darkness falling. My head swarmed—swarms—with dreams not my own. Leng stretches out forever, and beneath its thin skin of grass and soil waits a presence vast and ancient but hardly unconscious. It watches with Phupten’s eyes, while he still has them. I dreamt it spoke to me, promising I would understand all. It would hold back nothing. I would become the mystery—the far-off allure of things just beyond the horizon. The twilight hour, the gate of dreams. All these would be all that is left of me, for all these things are Leng of the violet light. I felt myself spread to great immensity. Only the smallest leap was needed—only the softest touch and form would no longer contain me.

I woke to find myself walking out onto the plateau. Onto the endless green where Phupten waited. I crossed the threshold. The veil parted. I beheld Leng.

The plateau spread to infinity before me, but it was bare and horrible, a squirming ocean beneath a gravelled skin, with splintered bones that tore up through the hide, rending the fleshy softness that heaved in a semblance of life. A trillion tendrils stirred upon its surface, antennae generating the illusion that protected it, configuring the veil. This was Leng. Is! A name and a place and a thing. Leng is what dreams at the roof of the world and sends its relentless imaginings to cover the planet. The light that shines here is not the violet and orange of twilight or dusk. It is the grey of a suffocating mist, a cloud of obscuring putrefaction, full of blind motes that cannot be called living yet swarm like flies and infest every pore with grasping hunger. A vastness starving and all-consuming that throws up ragged shadows like clots of tar to flap overhead in the form of the faceless winged creatures that wheel away from the plateau to snatch whatever hapless souls they find beyond the gates of nightmare and carry them back here, toward a pale grey haze of shriveled peaks so lofty that even though they rise at an infinite distance, still they dwarf everything. And having glimpsed the impossible temple upon those improbable peaks, I know I can never return. Even though I took but the one step across the threshold and then fell back, I cannot unsee what I have seen. There is no unknowing. The veil is forever rent. I cannot wake. And though I write these words because I am compelled, because Leng’s spell is such that others will read this and be drawn to it, I pray for an end to wakefulness and sleep. I cannot stop my ears or eyes or mind from knowing what waits. Leng’s vision for Earth is a blind and senseless cloud that spreads and infects and feeds only to spread, infect and feed. And its unearthly beauty—we are drawn to it like any lure. I pray you have not touched me. I pray the power has