People Park

I

HEY WOULD ALWAYS remember the day their mama stopped believing in God, a hot August Sunday when Sam and Adine were seven. With the tower bells ringing the entire congregation was set free into the Cathedral parking lot, Sam and Adine held their mama’s hands, her grip went tight when they reached their parking spot: no car, just a sprinkling of what appeared to be beach glass. In her nice blue dress their mama sank down onto the curb, face in her hands. All around the bells chimed joy and past them flowed people in their Sunday best, smiling and saved. No one stopped to say anything or help.

Once everyone disappeared and the bells went quiet their mama stood and without a word started walking west, into the ruins of Lakeview Homes. Sam and Adine trailed behind her exchanging looks: What was happening, where was their car? They followed their mama in silence through the wreckage of buildings half-destroyed by diggers abandoned for the weekend, sitting there like the shells of larval bugs, and the spindly stalks of apple-tree saplings lined up along the fence that penned in the wrecking site.

The sun burned above and the asphalt of South Throughline burned below and the churned-up earth burned from somewhere deeper. The heat was brackish, stifling, they could taste the tarry smoke of it in their mouths. Their mama stopped at the fence: beyond it was the dug-out pit where A-Block 100 had once stood. All the A-Block residents had already been packed up and bussed across town, trucks had taken their things. As the demolition swept north into B- and C-Blocks, more and more people would be shifted to what people were calling the Zone, the westend neighbourhoods north of Lower Olde Towne. And when the bulldozers reached H-Block Sam and Adine and their mama would have to move too.

A Park Project diagram mounted on the fence showed how what had been A-Block would become a forest of poplar trees that stretched all the way to a campground at the lakeshore, where there would be a beach. Centre Throughline would be moved underground, tunnelled beneath the park all the way from the southside to the island’s northern shore, overtop of which would be a field and a pond. It was impossible to imagine what was pictured ever becoming real: Lakeview Homes looked as though a meteor had struck and incinerated its entire southern half, how could anything grow here, it was just a dead empty hole or a giant mouth gaping wider and wider until it swallowed the whole complex down.

Their mama took off her pumps and with one in each hand wiped her forehead with her sleeve and threw her shoes over the fence, one then the next plunging birdlike down into the shadows. The back of her blue dress was dark with sweat. Okay, she said, and barefoot continued home along what had once been sidewalks and now was just dirt. Sam and Adine followed her up Centre Throughline, north through B-Block and C- and D-, west along North Throughline into the 50s, then north again to their unit, H-54, wedged amid a row of identical units, where the screendoor smacked closed behind her.

If you had your car stolen you were supposed to call the police, yet their mama did not. She sat in the living room smoking cigarettes with the front curtains drawn until the matching ashtrays Sam and Adine had made her at school overflowed. After church their mama always fixed lunch but today there was no lunch. She got up only to take down the cross that lived above the kitchen sink and dump it in the trash.

From that day on their mama became a pinched-in version of herself: smaller, and taut, and when she talked her mouth barely opened. It seemed something was hiding inside her that she couldn’t let escape. Though sometimes whatever it was would claw to the surface and come stabbing out in screams and slaps. When she found Sam inside the living room armoire dismantling her hairdryer he cried not because it hurt to be hit, but because of the surprise.

By the time school started in September the demolition had swept into C-Block and everything changed. Their mama switched to nightshifts at the factory, so there was no longer time in the evenings, she said, to cook or say Grace. Instead she heated TV dinners from the freezer, slid the trays onto the kitchen table at her kids. Eat, she said, putting on her coat as they peeled off the tinfoil covers and folded the warm edges into the still-frozen centres. While Connie was at work Sam and Adine would watch TV until they couldn’t keep their eyes open, and in the mornings she’d often come home to them still sprawled head-to-toe on the couch. Go to school, she said then, and she would go to bed, and they would go to school.

In October Sam and Adine came home one afternoon and a bicycle was leaning against their front steps. Inside a hardhat sat on the kitchen counter and mud had been tracked down the hall to their mama’s bedroom, the door was closed. At dinnertime she came out with a man she told Sam and Adine to call Uncle Bruno, but he was no uncle of theirs, they called him nothing. Bruno never said much to anyone, and around him their mama spoke in a whisper like she was embarrassed or sorry for something. He drove the crane, they learned, that swung a big ball on the end of a chain into their neighbours’ units and turned the walls to dust.

As the weeks went on and the Park Project crept north Bruno moved in, frying bacon every morning that he never shared with anyone, at night he took over the TV with his workboots up on the couch. With their mama at work and nothing else to do Sam and Adine hid inside the armoire and told each other the stories of TV shows they’d watched, including the one with the terrorist who made a bomb from batteries he was going to use to blow up an airplane — before, of course, he was stopped. They were always stopped.

The day of the first snowfall of the year, Sam and Adine came home from school to their mama crying in the dark in the living room, two bits of bloody paper towel stuffed up her nostrils. The matching ashtrays were smashed on the living room floor and there were cigarette butts everywhere. Bruno was gone. Adine swept up and then she and Sam sat with their mama, one on either side of her on the couch, each holding a hand. That night in the armoire they made up a new story, and it was about bad strange people coming from the outside and ruining everything, and it ended with revenge.

The next morning, a Saturday, Sam and Adine woke up and their mama was still sleeping. As quietly as they could, they rounded up all the batteries in the house, emptying flashlights and smoke detectors and other various small electronics — and put them all in the tin can of bacon grease that Bruno had left on the ledge above the stove, and last of all dug a pack of matches out of one of the drawers. We need more batteries, said Sam, so they stole one small bill from their mama’s purse and went to Street’s Milk and from the Polyp behind the counter bought the biggest battery they could afford.

This was November, the Park Project was demolishing C-Block. Then work would break until the spring, when Sam and Adine and their mama were supposed to move to some new big building across the city. The workers took weekends off too, though their equipment — backhoes and diggers and tractors and bulldozers — remained onsite. So this is where Sam and Adine headed: through the fence, their makeshift bomb ready, toward the big tall crane and its wrecking ball, inside the shadows way down in the pit.

IN THE TRAUMA ward of City Centre Hospital, Sam stood beside his mama as the doctor explained what had happened to Adine’s eyes and when his mama said, So she might be blind, it seemed she was almost wishing it. There was a cold, white sharpness to her voice. The doctor said something about surgery, and recovery, and that it was good she was young — but Sam’s mama just said again, She’s blind, and rocked a little on her feet like she might fall. Sam put his hand on her lower back to steady her and at his touch she stiffened and wriggled away. Thank you, she said to the doctor, and sat down on the other side of the waiting room. The doctor looked at Sam and smiling in a soft kind way asked if he wanted to see his sister. Sam did not but he had nowhere else to go.

They went through two sets of doors and down a hallway and stopped outside a room. In a bed underneath a window slept a person that was almost Adine. Beside the bed was a chair. The doctor gestured at the chair and left. Sam didn’t move. Bandages hid his sister’s eyes. Across her cheeks were dark ridges and speckles of dried blood where gravel and battery acid had sprayed up from the ground. A big cut on her chin had been stitched with crude blue knots. Tubes ran from her arms to machines that beeped and hissed. Another tube ran to a box on the floor. Under the blankets Adine’s chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Sam leaned over the bed, watching his sister breathe.

What the fug are you doing, said his mama’s voice from the doorway, and Sam stepped away from the bed.

He didn’t know where to look or what to say. His insides felt hollow, scooped out.

You aren’t even going to cry, his mama said. You haven’t even cried.

She leaned against the wall in a small hunched way.

You did this to her and you can’t even fuggin cry?

Sam looked out the window: a pretty sunset over the city, big fat bands of gold and pink that darkened into mauve, indigo, all the way to black.

The last thing he’d seen before the explosion was Adine squatting over the coffee can, igniting the fuse, the fast sizzle of it, the thunder of the bomb blowing, a cruel ripping sound as the can sheared in half, and so much light.

It left a tone in his ears like when the TV went to coloured bars at midnight. He sat up, discovered Adine sprawled with her limbs at weird angles, the coffee can split and blackened between her feet. Sam went over. Through the thrashered mess of her face she seemed to be looking up at him for an answer. The gore was black in places, wet and raw in others. You couldn’t see her eyes.

On the taxi ride to the hospital his mama screamed Fug fug fug in the backseat with Adine’s head in her lap, his sister’s face not so much bleeding as just opened up, as if the top layer of skin had been wiped away. Sam noticed that he’d torn the knees of his jeans — and for a moment thought that this would be why he’d get in trouble.

A nurse appeared and whispered something to Sam’s mama. Outside the sky had gone purple. Okay, said his mama, Sam, we’re going home. There’s nothing for us to do here now. There’s nothing we can do.

At home Sam sat inside the armoire thinking about blindness, that his sister could be blind. He closed his eyes to see what a blind person saw: black. But still he could perceive a thread of light between the armoire’s doors, facing it the darkness behind his eyelids brightened.

He heard his mother shuffling down the hallway and called to her.

What do you want, said her voice. Why are you in that thing.

Mama, said Sam.

There was a pause and three short barks that was his mama coughing. And Sam looked and there she was, through the crack between the doors, her cigarette sparking orange in the dark and the light from the hall flooding in behind her. Don’t call me that, she said. Mama, don’t say that to me.

Sam scrunched his eyes so tightly they ached. Is being blind like this.

His mama’s voice was tight: You call me Connie, hear me. No more Mama.

Like this, said Sam, when it’s all dark. When I close my eyes it’s dark and —

Your sister can’t see nothing, his mama, Connie, said.

Nothing?

Nothing. You did it to her, and now she can’t see nothing at fuggin all, said Connie, and then she went down the hallway and shut herself in her room.

Sam sat there thinking about nothing. Nothing was a cold black space, an empty coffin. But then a coffin had walls so it was something. And a clump of smoke scudding over a field was something. And the deepest darkest depths of the ocean were something. And the farthest outlying nowhere of the universe was something. Even the air was something if it kept you alive, and even if not. The idea of nothing was impossible, it couldn’t exist because for it to exist it had to be something, which it wasn’t.

And Sam thought about what Adine’s world would be with eyes that saw nothing and it seemed too big to think of or too small. There were no words for what it was because every word was a thing and nothing meant no things. What was nothing if even the dark was something — if even black and empty had to be seen?

Sam tried to make his brain go blank so it was nothing but even the blank was something because he was thinking about the blank and it was a wide white disc. He scrunched his eyes as tight as he could and when he opened them they ached and the air sparkled the way the TV did when everything dissolved into static.

Maybe death was the only way there was nothing. Heaven was a place to go when you were dead but if you did not believe in heaven, if you’d stopped going to church, there was nothing. Then your life slipped from you like ash caught in a draft: it went swirling away and your body was left a hollow husk. Then instead of burying you your family pushed that body into a fire where it burned to ash and ash was something that could get caught in a draft and go swirling away and be gone.

THE NEXT DAY Sam began his mission to become nothing. He sat by himself on the frontseat of the bus and spoke to no one and kept his eyes closed and tried not to let his brain register the darkness he saw there or the jostling of the bus or the whoosh of cars passing by or the wind or the other kids shrieking. Sometimes the kids would come to him in pairs or in threes and call him Welfare or demand what he had for lunch, because instead of flats and apples he usually had crackers and a candy bar, and the kids would want his candy bar. Sometime he fought for it and sometimes he was too tired so he just gave it away. But today he was nothing so if they came they would come to no one. But they didn’t come. Somehow they knew.

At school all the kids spilled out of the bus and Sam slipped silently after them into the school and down the hallway to his classroom where he slid behind his desk. The desk made a noise when he opened it so he stopped and went slower, in increments, and stopped every time the hinges squawked and bit by bit opened it. He took his things out and laid them as softly as possible on his desk, his binder and pencils and workbook, and lowered the lid.

Sam did not put his hand up when the teacher called for answers even if he knew the answers. He did not laugh when a kid said something funny and the whole class laughed. He did his work in silence.

When the bell rang for recess Sam filed into the back of the line and glided out after everyone and then walked across the playground alone while the rest of the kids shrieked and hollered and chased one another around. From the ballfields came a mad scramble of voices cheering on other voices or disputing calls or championing themselves. Usually Sam hung around the ballfields, just in case someone asked him to play, but today he did not. He stationed himself by the parking lot and waited for the bell to ring, trying to clear his brain of everything.

Lining up to go back inside, sometimes the other kids would talk to him or about him but today he was nothing so they didn’t. Sam stared ahead and said nothing. Then everyone filed inside and back into the classroom and it was math and then lunch and at lunch Sam sat alone and ate slowly and on the playground once again retreated to his quiet corner and stood with his eyes closed and waited for the bell and back in school waited for the final bell and then he walked home, alone, through the crunch of autumn leaves he tried not to feel or hear and the vinegary smell of apples rotting on lawns he tried not to smell. And even though he’d been nothing all day he couldn’t believe that no one had asked him about Adine, not even one of the teachers, though by their quiet careful way he knew they knew. Everyone knew, yet no one said anything.

At home there was a bicycle against the steps. In the living room Sam found his mama, Connie, on the couch with her shirt hoisted to her neck and Bruno on his knees slurping at her breasts. Connie’s eyes were closed, her head tilted back. Bruno looked at Sam standing there in the doorway, then went back to sucking and licking and kneading. Connie moaned. Sam ran down the hall to the armoire and shutting himself inside closed his eyes and vowed to Adine, fiercely, that he would never open them again.

SAM OPENED his eyes. Out the basement windows the sunrise blushed the lawn. But he didn’t get up. He lay in bed and thought about the illustrationist — about those eyes, the emptiness in them. Sam tried to understand them but could not. He put on his watches, lined up on the bedside table, the final one still ticked. And yet, from time’s machine, silence. Though upstairs too there were clocks.

After listening to ensure that none of his housemates were awake and about, Sam headed up to the kitchen. The microwave said 7:09. He waited. It ticked ahead one minute. Good. He placed a nuclear breakfast in the microwave, and while it nuked his food Sam watched the bulbs gleam and the digits tick down, and lost himself in the light.

Time disappeared then. Where did his mind go? In a panic Sam caught the microwave only four seconds before 0:00 — very close. He opened the door, took out the meal, ate thinking about the towerclock and Raven and the work, took an apple from the fridge for later, went to the bathroom, and in there was a miracle.

It was the uniform worn by the men in charge. The full uniform — pants, shirt, jacket, everything a brownish yellowish non-colour, the colour of the sleep crust he knuckled from his eyes. Sam touched it: in places the material had gone crispy, and an orange stain yawned down the front of the shirt. But still: this was a gift, and a sign, it had been left for him. His face tingled with nervous joy, was he dreaming, he fingered the scab on his jaw and felt the real-world sting.

Back in his basement room Sam laid the uniform on his bed, the pants where his legs would go, the shirt and jacket overtop. For now though he dressed for the work: the black suit with the black shirt underneath, the perfect clothes for being unseen. And then, with all the other residents still asleep, he slipped out of the roominghouse, walked to the ferrydocks. Boarding the first island-bound boat of the day Sam thought he heard thunder, off in the distance, despite the clear skies and across Perint’s Cove the island trembling like a mirage in the bright morning sun of Good Friday.

II

ROM THE TOP of the Podesta Tower the Mayor surveyed the city — around and around the viewing deck had spun her, all night. She’d eventually killed the lights and spent the past six hours sleepless atop the dessert cart, perched there plantlike, the kindling of her legs piled on the cart’s lower deck, watching the island reveal itself beneath a steadily paling sky. When at last the sun rose it lit everything purple, then pink, then gold. In the blooming daylight a spattering of traffic grew into steady cords up and down the city’s main thoroughfares, the trains crawled out of the Whitehall Barns and began to whip around the city, and as the deck rotated east and the park came into view, coppery in the morning light, the Mayor, touch green, allowed her spirits to warm a bit.

The view swung south, to the Islet off the island’s southeastern corner, the first ferry chugging across Perint’s Cove to Bay Junction, then the Mayor was looking west along Budai Beach to Kidd’s Harbour and the mansions of the Mews lording over LOT, north to Mount Mustela and Upper Olde Towne, to Blackacres, to Whitehall again in the northwest, an industrial ghost town, its unused Piers, where no ships had docked in a decade.

Even from this distance she could sense the neglect, all those weeds sprouting through cracked cement, a riot of green wavering shoots. In a city, the Mayor believed, nature needed to be tamed, or it choked you. And this corner that escaped human control was irksome, the view seemed to linger, she waited impatiently to see something else. The tower obeyed, rotating for sightlines over the Narrows. With the city at capacity, the NFLM had closed the bridge to traffic. Until Monday, no one was allowed in or out.

And here again was the relief of People Park, its ordered borders of forest, the southside grid of poplars matching the orchard to the east, the ellipse of Crocker Pond (rowers lit out from the boathouse and skimmed across its surface) a watery yolk amid the greater ellipse of the common, the discipline of the gardens — or, best, the rigour of hedgerows: the nonsense of bushes carved into walls, made geometrical and sane. And on the park’s southern edge was Friendly Farm Automatic Zoo, a perfect square, and Lakeview Campground, the beach, the surf upon the beach, the lake.

But something dark and resentful slithered alongside her pride. Twenty-five Easters before, a collective exuberance had consumed the city, they’d come out by the thousands to be part of a new beginning. The Silver Jubilee was already less a celebration of People Park — or even the citizens, the people — than a forum for the whims of the dastard illustrationist. It felt symptomatic of a larger problem: her citizens were complacent, too comfortable, bored, and like dumb moths charmed by every flickering light.

SINCE STARTING ON nightshifts Olpert Bailie’s sleep schedule required a seven a.m. bedtime and rising in the early afternoon. Friday morning, at the hour he’d normally be tucking himself in, his walkie-talkie buzzed. The voice integrated into his dreams: here was Starx, chasing him through the clouds, Olpert breaststroking along with the city miles below. .

Bailie! Get the fug up! B-Squad’s gotta put in work!

Olpert rolled over, hit TALK: Hi, yes, I’m awake, okay.

I’m just leaving the Temple. Meet me in forty-five at Bay Junction.

Okay.

In the bathroom Olpert supported himself on the sink, head sludgy from the night before, throat raw, inspecting his face in the mirror: red-rimmed eyes, hair a brambled disaster. But looking past his reflection he felt his stomach drop. He was sure before bed he’d scrubbed and hung his NFLM uniform in the shower to dry — yet it was gone.

The bathroom hamper held only mildewed towels. Back in his room there was no sign of it either. What punitive humiliation might How We Do decree for misplaced khakis? Dropping four wriggling worms into Jessica’s terrarium, Olpert only hoped it would be quiet and private, something behind closed doors, nothing televised or broadcast or even, with any luck, seen.

His radio buzzed: Bailie, you on the move?

Starx, hi, I’ve got a little problem.

Didn’t have time to wash your duds? No problem. Your partner’s got you covered.

Olpert let the misunderstanding ride, thanked him.

That’s how we do, said Starx. Now hurry the fug up, you sack of nuts.

Sometimes Jessica would nose up from the soil to see what was going on. Today though there wasn’t time to coax her out, and Olpert left the house forgetting a thing people did called breakfast, and on the ferry ride across Perint’s Cove the dregs of the previous night’s wings and cider rose up acidly in his throat. When the boat docked he came reeling ashore — greeted by Starx, spotlit in a sunbeam, a bottle of some fluorescent orange liquid in one hand, a spare NFLM uniform draped over his arm.

Drink this, he told Olpert. Then put this on.

The drink was disgusting, carbonated in a tart, fermented sort of way, with a tinny, bloody aftertaste. Ugh, what is that?

Secret recipe. My wife’s hangover cure.

Wife?

Ex-wife. Long story. He reconsidered: Well, short story. A story for another time.

Olpert sipped, winced. And this will make me feel better?

Should, said Starx. There’s nothing orange in it. Just goes that colour, for some reason.

Olpert drank, handed the empty back to Starx.

Bailie, nice work last night! No way those dames’ll forget you anytime soon.

Kill me, said Olpert.

Kill you? No way! That, my friend? That’s what some of us call living.

Oh.

Though I’m feeling pretty rotten myself, thanks for asking.

Oh. Sorry.

Not much of a people person, are you?

I beg your pardon?

I mean, we’ve hung out two days now and I know everything about you, from your job to your living situation to your fuggin moles. What do you know about me?

Um. You were married?

People, Bailie — see, normally the way this goes is that I’d ask you something, you ask me something, and in such a fashion of reciprocated dialogue, we’d get to know each other, ta-da. Like fuggin magic.

Oh.

Starx’s expression was hard to read: not quite hurt — disappointed maybe.

Olpert said, What sort of work do you do?

Work? Thanks for asking. I’m in construction, Bailie.

Construction.

Right. Buildings. Or not exactly buildings. More roads. I have the same boss as you, Bailie — the city. We’re civil servants, servants of civics. Civilized.

What do you do?

You know how the road sort of sparkles? Well you think that happens on its own? When they’re tarring roads I’m the guy walking around with a little pouch of powdered glass who sprinkles it over the road. They call me the sparkle fairy.

You’re making fun of me.

Swear! I used to do more hands-on work but I got hurt on the job, they tried to put me in an office, no way. This way I still get to be outside. Sparkle fairy.

Olpert struggled to picture that giant body lumbering around with a pouch of pixie dust.

Starx smacked him on the back, handed him the clean uniform and their Citypass lanyard. Hop along little buddy, you can put your duds on in the car. First stop after we pick up Raven is We-TV Studios. Hey, maybe Wags’ll let us on Salami Talk?

Maybe, said Olpert carefully, and followed Starx, the asphalt glittering beneath their feet, to the first available Citywagon in the lot.

THE ELEVATOR DROPPED to the ground floor, fetched whoever was coming up the Tower, arrived with a thud at the viewing deck. Pushing away from the window, the Mayor smoothed her blazer and snapped the lapels straight, ready to face whoever it was.

Out stepped three Helpers in khaki: two luxuriantly moustachioed characters flanked a skittish-looking kid on crutches. Strapped over the boy’s shoulder was a callbox, its cord drooped in ringlets at his hip. A fat strip of ducktape covered the lower half of his face. His eyes were afraid.

To what do I owe, etcetera, said the Mayor.

We represent the NFLM, said the man to the cripple’s left, fingering his lanyard.

He’s Reed, said the other, and I’m Walters.

The cripple said nothing.

Mrs. Mayor, we realize you’ve been put in a compromising position, said Reed, so we’ve brought this Recruit here, Diamond-Wood, to be of assistance to you until. .

Until the Jubilee is over, finished Walters.

The HG’s really appreciate what a sport you’re being about this.

Sport? said the Mayor.

There’s talk, said Walters, of erecting a statue of you. We’re already talking to Loopy about it. How do you feel about solid gold?

Though you do have to admit, said Reed, it was spectacular — that illustration, I mean.

Three sets of eyes crawled over her body to the lower tier of the dessert cart.

Anyway, said Reed, Diamond-Wood here’s at your service. Anything you need.

A personal aide, if you will.

Not that you’d normally require such a thing. Just —

— in your —

— current —

— situation —

— we’re happy to provide logistical assistance.

And he comes with a portable phone, with a direct line to the Temple should you require anything else.

From the HG’s. They want you to know that you can —

— call anytime.

It’s a fax machine too.

Well touch green and colour me golden, said the Mayor.

Yeah! No problem!

We’ll leave you then, said Walters.

Lots to prepare for tonight! Sure you’ve got work of your own. .

And of course, Mrs. Mayor, as always, you’ll be the guest of honour.

VIP!

Obsequious goodbyes followed (two-faced fuggers, thought the Mayor), instructions were whispered to the cripple, and the elevator took the Helpers back down to ground level. Out the window, the view was of the park.

This is their idea of a joke, isn’t it? said the Mayor, and, turning away, missed the boy’s attempt, heaped over his crutches, at a vigorous and earnest shake of his head.

Make yourself useful. By the door is a keypad, see it? Enter this passcode: forty-five, ten, twenty-two, forty-four hundred, but before you go thinking you can come up here and mess around anytime you like, it changes every day.

From behind her: the tap of crutches, a pause, a digital, affirmative-sounding chirp.

Now hit STOP, she said. Solar-powered, you know that? Another of my initiatives.

Another chirp. The viewing deck shuddered to a halt.

Look at it, she said. People Park, a park for people, is how I pitched it to council. And here we are, twenty-five years later. I bet the park’s older than you are.

The cripple made a noise: Mmm.

And you know, don’t you, I hope you know — though who knows what they’re teaching you kids in school these days — that the park was all my doing? Of course engineers designed the amusements, and the actual building was taken care of by contractors. But the concept, the layout, the landscaping — all mine. I know people just think of me as a figurehead and nothing else. Most of you have no idea what I’ve done for this place.

Mmm.

I wanted a park for everybody. Young, old, handicapped, fat, whatever. Oh, some people criticized my greying measures — but how does a greenspace stand out without a little contrast? Look at it now, how it practically glows! Or will, touch green, in the spring.

Mmm, said Diamond-Wood, nodding.

Do you know what this city was before People Park? It was nothing. It was a nothing place. It was disconnected, all these neighbourhoods flung off in all the corners of the island, and in the middle was a cancer. That’s what it was, a cancer. But think of a city as a person — what should a person have in its centre?

She swivelled atop the cart: A soul. Before it had a cancer, and then it had a soul. I put the soul in. And People Park is the soul, the Mayor said slowly, of everyone. That was its purpose and what it remains. But here we are meant to be celebrating it — twenty-five years of this soul, keep in mind — and instead your organization has brought in an outsider, a fraudulent, ridiculous conjurer intent on humiliating us and stealing our souls. Because that’s what he’s here to do, make no mistake. I mean, look at me.

Diamond-Wood’s eyes were on the floor.

I said look at me.

He glanced up, quickly, then back down.

You can’t! This is your fault. It’s all your stupid organization’s fault.

The Mayor gazed out the window. I don’t think people know what they’re celebrating this weekend. They just want to be awed. They’ve forgotten. This magician — what does he have planned? Do you know? Speak, for fug’s sake!

He pointed at the ducktape.

So take it off! Oh. I bet those appleheads have some sort of regulation — well come here then, said the Mayor, and tore the gag from his mouth.

Ow, he said.

So?

Sorry, no idea.

Ah. Good thing I ungagged you then. She rubbed a hand over her face. So you have no idea what’s going to happen tonight.

Tonight?

Tonight. With the — what’s his face. Crowboy the Illuminator.

Raven? Honestly, I’m just a Recruit, hence the ducktape, and I certainly wouldn’t —

No idea.

None. The HG’s haven’t even been told anything. I don’t even think he knows. I guess he has to explore the city to figure out what he’s going to illustrate? Honestly, we’ve been told how to arrange the stage, and we’re working with Cinecity to make sure the live feeds are running, keeping the bridge blocked. That’s it. And I’m here with you!

The Mayor turned away. In the park preparations for the evening’s show were beginning: a cube van had arrived, cartons and crates of various sizes and shapes were being unloaded into the common.

Mrs. Mayor?

What.

It’s going to be amazing, I think. Tonight. It’s going to be —

Oh would you please just shut up.

The first spectators were arriving, staking claims with towels unfurled on the muddy grass. The Mayor sighed — and looked at Diamond-Wood.

Hey, she said. Come closer.

Sorry?

You enjoy magic? She beckoned with a finger. Let me show you a trick.

Diamond-Wood leaned in, wobbling on his crutches.

Closer, the Mayor whispered, closer, and once his face was near enough to kiss, she plucked the ducktape off the dessert cart, slapped it onto his mouth, smeared it flat, and announced: Ta-da.

GENTLEMEN, said Raven from the backseat, if I could request a detour.

It’s gone eight already, said Starx, wheeling out of the Grand Saloon’s driveway and south on Orchard Parkway. We’re supposed to be at the studios at half-past —

A brief detour. If you could take me to the bridge. Just to see it.

We’re heading south, said Starx. Bridge is north. Road’s closed anyway.

Ah, but my understanding is that it’s your people who have blocked off, what is it? Raven flipped through the CityGuide in his lap. The Topside Drive? And it seems that one can turn around at the bottom of this street, and really it’s not far from here at all.

Starx’s eyes moved between the road, steady with traffic, and the rearview. Olpert, Starx’s XXL shirt billowing around his body, checked the mirror: the illustrationist reclined in a pose both sanguine and erotic, one knee up, hands behind his head, grinning.

Might no one, he said, have more authority to traverse these blockades than us?

At the bottom of Orchard Parkway Starx merged onto the roundabout at Cathedral Circus, but didn’t exit onto Lakeside Drive, just went looping back around. Another Citywagon slid in ahead of them, peeled off toward Bay Junction.

Mr. Starx? said Raven.

Fine, but let’s keep it brief, said Starx, and from the drinkholder scooped the walkie-talkie, told Griggs what was happening.

Olpert’s hangover had found its way into his temples, where it thudded and stabbed. With each surge came flashes of the previous evening, shameful razory nicks — nevermind the great gaping wound of how he’d ended his night. As Starx turned onto Topside Olpert cracked the window, pointed his face into the breeze like a pet.

At the Guardian Bridge exit the Helpers ushered them through the barricades. Starx nodded officiously, pulled onto the shoulder, and killed the engine. The bridge arced toward the mainland. Beneath it the Narrows swept briskly to the east, twinkling in the sunshine.

Well here we are, said Starx, turning to the backseat. What can we tell him, Bailie?

IFC Stadium, where the Lady Y’s play — it’s just back that way.

He’s a fan, said Starx.

Olpert shrugged shyly.

Fine, fine, said Raven. Now, gentlemen? If you’ll give me a minute.

He swung out of the car, glided up onto the bridge.

Starx watched. What do you think he’s after? Wait, why’s he lying down?

Shhh, said Olpert.

You think he can hear us?

Starx, come on.

Look at him, what’s he doing? Is he smelling the road? Bailie? Can you tell?

I don’t know what he’s doing.

Oh shet.

From his knees, Raven was summoning them from the car. Gentlemen, he hollered. Please, I need your assistance and expertise.

Reluctantly they joined him.

Mr. Bailie! Mr. Starx! Tell me about this structure.

This. . bridge? said Starx. Sure. Well it’s called Guardian Bridge —

Delightful! Why?

Um. Bailie?

I don’t know, said Olpert. That’s just its name.

That’s just its name, enthused Raven. Fabulous, Mr. Bailie! What else?

Well, said Starx, it’s the only way on or off the island. Except by boat, or I guess plane.

Or helicopter, added Olpert.

They’ve been talking about building a second one from Whitehall for ages, but. . it’s not really happening. Whitehall’s sort of a disaster anyway.

Raven shaded his eyes with both hands, looked west. A disaster?

Yeah. It’s fugged up out there. People living underground, running amok. We do what we can to keep them in line. Isn’t that right, Bailie?

But Olpert was watching the illustrationist. He lay on his belly, stroked the pavement, licked his fingertips, nodded.

Yes, said Raven. Yes, yes, yes.

III

DINE WOKE TO the sound she’d fallen asleep to, or in spite of, or had kept her up all night, she wasn’t sure: Pop’s snoring. Despite Debbie having closed and Adine then locking the bedroom door, his snores drifted into their bedroom from the den in a phlegmy, spectral mist. It wasn’t yet seven a.m., her pillow was hot on both sides. Had she slept? Maybe she’d just dreamed of sleep, in some inchoate, semi-conscious state of dreaming. Though if she had slept, Pop’s snoring had found its way into her dreams too.

Overnight, Adine had learned this snoring like a song: the in-breath a gravelly scrape, a pause, a gleek and rattle, and the exhale contained a groan, a sputter, a cough, or a jammy smacking of lips, sometimes even the pasty slop of his tongue — and had at some point he cried out, Please, yes, oh? Adine hoped with all her heart she’d been dreaming.

She lay there in her shorts and T-shirt and blackout goggles, covers long flung off in a prickly fit. Beside her Debbie slept, she could sleep through anything, her breath swished in, out, in, steady as waves. Upon Adine’s feet she could feel Jeremiah, his little body rising and falling. It felt conspiratorial, the two of them slumbering so peacefully, while Adine had lain awake half the night, or all the night.

She dug an elbow into Debbie’s back until it elicited moans.

Ow, what are you doing, what time is it.

He’s out there, said Adine.

So?

I can’t see, remember. What if I trip on him or something. When’s he leaving?

Debbie pulled the covers over her face, said something muffled. Adine yanked them away. Do something with him, Deb. I had to listen to him snoring all night and —

Hi, said Debbie. Good morning. Are you going to ask me how my night was?

Oh. Do you want me to ask?

Yes.

Oh. How was it?

Thanks for asking. It was fine. We drank too much. I feel sort of ugh.

And. . your old colleague?

Teammate. Pearl.

Pearl.

Pearl is, I don’t know. The same but different. Or maybe it’s me who’s different. I mean, I know I’m different, but. .

What?

Pearl seemed tired.

Tired.

Like tired from her life. Not of her life — from it.

Her marriage. Her kids.

Maybe.

I don’t tire you, said Adine, do I?

Debbie smiled. No, you wake me up. Sometimes with violence.

Are you going to kick that guy out of here so I can go pee?

No, wait. That’s a good point. That’s the difference, right? Don’t you always want someone who wakes you up? Like even when things are lousy you’d rather be up, awake, than too tired to even. .

Adine’s eyebrows did a provocative bounce — up, out of the goggles, then back down.

No, not just that. A stimulant life, not a sedative life — isn’t that what you want?

I guess. I mean, once you guys head out I’m probably going to take a nap. .

Debbie shook her head, laughed, flicked the lenses of Adine’s goggles. I miss your eyes, she said. When’s this project going to be done?

Adine shrieked, Never! and with both feet pushed Debbie out of bed.

What are you doing today, said Debbie, pulling on her housecoat. You want to come down to the memorial protest, or?

Work.

Right, said Debbie.

Pop’s snoring intensified as the door opened — and faded as it closed. Adine scooped Jeremiah off her feet and hoisted him onto Debbie’s pillow, tried to find his face with her nose, felt a whisk of tail, and realized she was nuzzling the wrong end.

AT HOME MORNINGS to Pearl were the enemy. She treated those first few daylit hours as an adversary to tackle and vanquish and with the fierce resolve of a mad sergeant drove Gip and Elsie-Anne with bum smacks and handclaps from bed to breakfast and out the door. She seemed to be in three rooms at once, threatening, In the van in ten minutes or you’re walking to school! and when the garage lifted and Harry tore out of the driveway Kellogg invariably was left to drink the mug of untouched coffee she’d forgotten cooling on the counter.

So on Friday morning it was odd for Kellogg to be up with the kids, crouched over the camping stove with instant oatmeal dustily awaiting hydration in plastic bowls, while Pearl slept in the tent. Come on, Dad, let’s get a move on, said Gip, kicking his father’s feet, we have to get there early to get a frontrow spot. Remember yesterday? I don’t —

Hush now, said Kellogg, Mummy’s still sleeping, and he smoothed a bedheaded tuft of his son’s hair, it sprung up again in defiance.

Elsie-Anne sat at the picnic table in her pyjamas, her purse in her lap, a spoon in one hand and a blank expression on her face. From all over Lakeview Campground the sounds of other rousing families sifted through the trees: car engines growled, radios jangled, the patter of morning routines — dads, mums, kids, everyone starting their days, the big day, thought Kellogg, and the Pooles were part of it! Birds warbled and chirped, a gentle breeze came hissing up through the poplars from the lake, and if you listened close, beyond it, the shush of waves splashed the beach.

Kellogg only faintly remembered Pearl zipping herself into the sleeping bag beside him at some point after midnight — had he imagined the sickly smell of booze filling the tent? What if it had, she’d been with old friends, why not have a few? And so what if she slept in, it didn’t mean anything was wrong. They were on vacation. Maybe it meant things were going right.

Dad, whispered Gip, eyes urgent. We need to go.

Champ, hey, we’re a five-minute walk from the park. It’s barely gone eight. We’ll have some breakfast and when Mummy gets up —

Mummy? We can’t wait for Mummy.

No?

Do you want yesterday to happen again?

Kellogg stirred the water. Bubbles were just starting to percolate to its surface. Beneath it, the butane roared and blue flames battered the pot. No, he said. I don’t.

After breakfast and Kellogg had given Gip his meds and the dishes were washed up and everyone brushed their teeth at the communal tap (Not potable) and the kids put on clean clothes (No showers, Dad? asked Gip and Kellogg pulled a cap over his son’s jaunty hair and said, We’re on vacation!), it was almost nine and Pearl still hadn’t risen. Kellogg cocked an ear at the tent as a hiker might outside the cave of a hibernating bear. Gentle snores. He winked at his kids. Looks like Mummy tied one on last night.

Tied one what on, Dad? said Elsie-Anne.

Never you mind, Annie.

Should we untie her?

No.

Elsie-Anne, looking worried, pulled her purse over her head.

Along with Raven’s Illustrations: A Grammar Kellogg packed Gip’s knapsack with a blanket, snacks, juice, meds, sunscreen, mosquito repellent, a first-aid kit, a book of crossword puzzles, and waterproofs (the sky was cloudless), the guidebook got tucked in his backpocket. Then he wrote Pearl a note, wedged it under a pot lid on the picnic table, and told his kids, Okay, guys, Mummy’ll just have to meet us when she’s up. Annie, take that bag off your head, we’ve got to walk now.

His daughter emerged blinking. Familiar’s concerned about Mummy.

Dorkus, will you please shut up, Gip said. Mummy just got tied up. It’s not a big deal.

Shut up, Stuppa.

Mummy’s fine, said Kellogg. Though let’s not call each other names, huh?

Gip shouldered his knapsack, so stuffed the zipper puckered.

Kellogg looked at the tent. We’re doing the right thing, right, guys?

We’re doing the right thing, Dad, said Gip.

Oh, you think so, champ? Good. I think so too. I mean, ideally we’d all be together, but — she’ll meet up with us soon. Mummy, I mean. Right?

Right.

Okay! To People Park! Annie, come here, take my hand. And stop looking in your bag, you’ll fall down, you’ve got to watch where you’re going.

Here we come, Raven, said Gip, then deepened his voice: For tonight’s illustration will surely be a spectacle for the ages, one which nary a soul will soon if ever forget.

POP WAS TOO big for the couch, he’d opted for the floor, and there he was, right in the middle of the living room, a blanket clung to him like giftwrap, from his face came that sinusitic scraping. His clothes were everywhere, jeans draped over the recliner, a sock on the kitchen counter, another inside a stray teacup, the pale dead moth of his underwear splayed on the endtable — this Debbie’s eyes raced away from, a brownish tinge to the white cotton — and, by the door where he’d flung it the night before, his poncho, while in the closet dangled empty hangers. A high whiny fart arpeggiated a minor-C triad, Pop rolled onto his side, from within the sleeping bag came the gritty scritch of fingernails raking pubic hair, and then he was snoring again.

Even more than his sounds and things, it was above all Pop’s smell that had invaded: a musty, tangy odour reminiscent of stale cardboard boxes and humid cheese. Debbie pushed open a window. From outside came the growl of traffic, a train rumbled through Blackacres Station. Across the street, at the corner of E Street and Tangent 3, the owner of the laundrette was scrubbing her windows with a soapy mop: she’d been blackedup in the night.

Pop spluttered, turned, flopped an arm over his head, buried himself in his own body, and kept sleeping: snore, whistle, snore. Debbie edged by him to the bathroom, locked the door, dropped her robe, stepped straight into the shower.

When she emerged ten minutes later in a towel, Pop was at the stove, the element glowed orange beneath a pot of water. This is an alienated stove, he said, not turning to face her. I am habituated of one which flames.

Hang on, I have to get dressed, Debbie said, and slipped past into the bedroom, where Adine was sitting up in bed in her goggles.

Is he still out there.

He’s boiling eggs.

Amazing. We’ve taken in a refugee.

Refugee. You say it like it’s a joke, but that’s what he is. He’s homeless! What are we supposed to do, let him sleep on the street?

I mean, that’s his name, right? If he’d been born, say, Pop Apartment maybe —

Stop that. I need to lend him your housekeys. I mean, if you’re not going out today. .

What.

Come on, said Debbie. Just for the night. Maybe Sunday too. But on Monday we’re going to figure out what’s going on and get him home.

Great, said Adine, flatly.

You okay? said Debbie. She sat on the bed, put her hand on Adine’s leg.

But behind those goggles, it was impossible to tell what was happening.

CALUM JOLTED UPRIGHT, the garbage bags taped over the mattress crinkled. His sleep had been deep and leaden, coming out of it now felt akin to being chiselled from a concrete slab. At some point in the night the Hand must have released him, he hadn’t even stirred — anything could have happened and on he would have slumbered. On her empty side of the bed was only an apostrophe-shaped impression, where her body had curled against Calum’s. The supply closet’s only supply was a headless mop leaning in the corner. The dusty shelves were empty, the air stale, the stripe of light under the door suggested a world Calum wasn’t sure he had a place in.

From somewhere out there came voices, a silent pause, an explosion (of glass?) followed by laughter, cheers, hoots.

Calum unballed the hoodie he’d used as a pillow, pulled it on, then jeans, then sneakers. From beyond the closet came another crash and delighted whoops. He opened the door, light came searing in, he squinted, the swollen eyesocket ached. Everything was quiet. He felt himself being observed.

His eyes adjusted. Sitting on stools in the middle of the silo were two small figures in sunglasses. Near them, on the floor, was a pile of fluorescent tubes, frosted glass pipettes the length and width of saplings. Through the loading dock’s open doors poured water-coloured light, a choir of hoodies lined the threshold. On a couch against the far wall lounged a shirtless guy in a welding mask, the visor reflected the room. Someone lying with their head in his lap sat up — the Hand. Calum waited for a greeting. She yawned and lay back down.

The welding mask leaned in, seemed to whisper in the Hand’s ear.

The Hand laughed, sat up again. With her eyes locked on Calum’s she snuggled close to this shirtless, faceless person. Her fingers splayed around his bellybutton. The thumb snuck into the waistband of his pants.

Calum watched.

From within the mask a voice said, You want to play?

This prompted from the hoodies a squawk of sharp, mean laughter.

The Hand looped her arms around the masked guy’s neck, swung her legs onto his lap. In front of the couch was a table littered with papers and bottles and cans and packs of Redapples, a tin of corn-in-a-can overflowed with butts, burn marks pocked the tabletop. From a paper bag the masked character produced a flat, which he fed to the Hand: her lips caressed his knuckles, her tongue flicked and curled, all wetly pink. She giggled.

Calum looked away.

The kids on the stools seemed about Rupe’s age, faces expressionless behind those sunglasses. They perched with perfect, crisp posture, hands on their knees — ducktaped to their knees. At their feet was broken glass, a few glossy red dots that had to be blood.

The masked guy spread his arms, indicating a space into which Calum was now welcome — or implicated. Ready to take on my sister?

A bout of laughter, brief and dreary, lifted from the figures at the door and dispersed among the rafters like smoke.

The Hand came over, scooped up a fluorescent tube, smacked it into her palm, something inside rattled and tinked. She held another out to Calum, who took it but couldn’t meet her eyes.

The figures by the door crowded in. Their shadows stretched into the room, the light went patchy and sinister. From the couch the guy said, You think you can beat my sister? You know what she did? Last year? You know what this kid did?

Whooping from the hoodies.

This kid right here? She gets up on the struts under the tracks at UOT Station and waits for the night’s last train, it comes through slow, right, because of the construction, and when it comes she, get this, grabs one of the bars underneath the train! And rides it like that all the way to the Barns, just hanging there, we’re all running along underneath, and when it lowers she jumps off and is just like, What. My sister, man.

The Hand twirled the fluorescent, laughed a shrugging sort of laugh.

Calum had heard this story, everyone had. It existed in his imagination as a movie. Walking underneath the Yellowline he’d often look up and imagine the weightless thrill of being zipped along, how it might feel to pass through airspace that no other human body had ever troubled, parted, touched.

Now the story had a hero, and here she was: Let’s go, said the Hand. You versus me.

Terse, ironic applause.

You want to go first?

First?

The rules are this, said the Hand. You call a twin and hit it, you get to sit down. You call one and hit the other, you got to take their spot. You miss three lights in a row, you take the spot of the kid you called last. You hit the kid and the light doesn’t break, you got to break the light over your own head. Got it?

The shirtless guy called, Good luck! in a cheery, chilling way.

Everyone laughed again, a rhythmic swell and ebb that felt rehearsed, artificial. It left behind a vaporous sort of silence that swelled and pulsed in the still air of the silo.

I’ll go first, said the Hand. Watch me, I’m the best. She had barely prophesied, Left, before her tube was flying from her hand in spinning flashes of light — and exploded on the kid on the left’s forehead. He crumpled from the chair, sunglasses skittering across the floor. Everyone went crazy.

The kid rose to his knees with a spidery wound opening on his temples. He shook his head, droplets of blood scattered in a little arc, and in a gargly voice choked, Hit.

More cheers.

The boy took his spot back on the stool, swaying slightly. One of the figures behind Calum came forward with the stray sunglasses, slid them back onto his face, and retreated. The kid hawked a thick, gory splat of blood onto the floor.

Your turn, said the Hand.

The tube felt heavier now.

The Hand said, Which one.

Beneath all that blood the left one’s face was pale. The other kid waited in silence.

Right thinks she’s tough, said the Hand. Hit her. Now!

Calum lobbed the tube weakly — it landed a foot short of the stools, skidded, stopped unbroken. Amid boos the girl kicked it back at Calum.

I’m done, I won, said the Hand. Two more for you though or it’s you on the stool.

Come on, son, called the shirtless guy from the couch. The Hand went to him, he folded her into his arms. The visor was blank but Calum sensed a sneer beneath it, he felt mocked. And the way he was holding her, it was familiar. .

And he was back down below the night before, the darkness full of screaming, grabbed by those big strong hands, that humid skin against his own, the suffocation, Calum had felt so feeble — and the sense that whoever it was had no face: here he was now, in his mask, holding the Hand, who dreamily stroked his chest. He placed one hand atop her head, onto the pattern of hair, and confirmed what Calum feared: a perfect fit.

Calum’s next throw went pinwheeling wide and high. The intended target watched it sail overhead: the light landed, popped, loosed a dusty puff up from the warehouse floor.

Jeers, screeches, catcalls, whistles. Someone cawed. Someone mooed.

Calum took his final tube from the pile. His reflection warped in the cloudy glass. He could hear the Hand taunting him and the guy — her brother? — taunting him too. But he wouldn’t look at them. His thoughts blurred, their words became noise.

Behind the girl’s sunglasses were the faint shadows of eyes. But they were dead eyes. There was nothing in them. They were nothing Calum could understand.

Calum cocked his arm. From the depths of Whitehall came the rumble of a train pulling out of the Barns, clacking up onto the tracks, heading south into the city. As its sound faded the boy on the other stool collapsed, hitting the floor with a dull thud. Blood trickled from his headwound, drastic and crimson on the cement. Calum lowered the tube, waited. But nobody moved. If anything, the air went rigid with impatience.

Come on, said the Hand. Throw!

Calum tried not to register the kid passed out and bleeding on the ground.

Throw! roared a dozen voices.

So he threw.

IV

HE 10:30 MEMORIAL unveiling would not be covered by In the Know, or any We-TV correspondents. A small crowd gathered in a clearing in the southeast corner of People Park known as Circle Square. Surrounded by poplars, in its centre was an inactive fountain clotted with dead leaves and bounded by the Community Gardens, the Hedge Maze, and Friendly Farm Automatic Zoo, where, when activated, mechanical beasts (animaltronics) lurched into educational couplings.

The attendees comprised a few patrons of the arts in extravagant hats, a pair of cardigan’d archivists from the Museum of Prosperity, a shifty photographer, a curious family in Y’s paraphernalia on their way to the common. In the shade at the square’s southern edge a special area had been designated for protestors — Pop and Debbie — and though the sun arcing above the park was bright and warm, a chilly breeze whistled up from the lake. Debbie shivered. Lark, intoned Pop, peeling a hardboiled egg, a nip bequeaths the air.

Loopy, of course, was the belle of the ball. With her black-clad assistant at her side she waited impatiently for the Mayor to inaugurate the unveiling. Other than its materials (debris salvaged during the Homes’ revitalization), Loopy had kept quiet about the Lakeview Memorial. A white cloth draped over the sculpture suggested a ghost, six feet tall and hovering there starkly. Somewhere under that sheet was a plaque, Debbie knew. Pop had been consulted on the text, though he and the archivists had clashed over the word restribution, and in the end it comprised only the names of every resident of Lakeview Homes, 51,201 in all (It is I, claimed Pop, the extemporaneous one!). A tombstone of sorts, thought Debbie, though that seemed morbid. Better: a document and testament. It was, at least, something.

A few pigeons scrabbled and pecked at the cobblestones. With nothing else to shoot, the photographer pointed his camera at a passing cloud, which to Debbie resembled a vulture. She shivered again, and thought, with a bitter twinge, that she’d attended Loopy’s last opening too — she was becoming a regular Loopy groupie. As with most of Loopy’s exhibits, aside from the retrospective that consumed the second floor of the Museum of Prosperity, her previous show, Us:, had gone up that past September at Loopy’s Orchard Parkway gallery, Loopy’s, at which Loopy commandeered an underpaid, high-turnover staff of students from the Island Institute, her current assistant was one of these. Us: featured portraits of the most popular Faces of We-TV.

Even before it opened the project was celebrated on In the Know: What a diverse proclamation of municipal pride, Isa Lanyess had gushed. This truly is the best city on earth, and who better than Loopy to show the people of our beloved island to us, in all their and its glory. Loopy also guested on Salami Talk, flirting along to Wagstaffe’s inane questions. How do you like your sausage, soft or hard, he yucked. Oh, I like it hard — very hard, Loopy said, batting purple eyelashes, and they both took big bites out of rods of cured meat, and winked. At home, Adine threw the remote at her TV.

For divergent reasons (politics, indignation), Debbie and Adine decided to crash the opening. From the sidewalk outside Loopy’s they watched the city’s sophisticates congratulate each other for being there. Photorealist paintings wallpapered the room from floor to ceiling, art appreciation burbled out onto the street alongside a tinkle of inoffensive jazz.

Debbie hid behind Adine. What if we get kicked out? For sure Lanyess’s in there. We weren’t invited. I don’t want to —

Can you relax? said Adine, and by the elbow steered her inside.

Fifteen minutes later Debbie was following an irate Adine up to the rooftop patio of a pub above Cathedral Circus. A jug of cider arrived, they drank in silence, Debbie eyed Adine warily across the table while traffic wheeled through the roundabout below. Down in the park the poplars swished in the breeze, with the late-summer twilight just starting to settle over the city.

Debbie said gently, It’s nice here.

Except for all the people, said Adine. See, here’s the thing: people suck.

Aw, come on. They don’t.

And by people, I mean people in this city especially. They think the world ends at Guardian Bridge, and all a superdoosh like Loopy needs to do is hold a mirror up to their stupid insular world and they’ll love her for it.

Debbie listened. As far as she knew, Adine had never been off the island.

Was that art? No, art challenges people, but people don’t want that. They just want to be reassured, to see themselves, to see each other, to feel comfortable in the world. What kind of art only makes you comfortable? Paintings of We-TV? What the fug is that?

Well, said Debbie.

But Adine was on a roll: As if that whole culture isn’t inward-looking enough. You’d think if you were going to paint people from TV you’d, I don’t know, have something to say. But no, she just replicates what’s already there. And people love it!

Wait, inward-looking? Don’t you think that if people were a little more inward-looking then maybe —

You’re not hearing me: people suck.

But, Debbie said, wait. . Isn’t there merit in showing people that there are other people like them? Being a person’s lonely, what’s wrong with art that makes us feel less alone? To create a space where people can connect, with a common language —

No way. Adine tipped back her glass, swallowed. Whose common language?

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t love the show either, but don’t you think it was at least an attempt to show some diversity —

Diversity! That word’s a fuggin joke. If it was diverse then you’d have a diverse crowd. But everyone there, all those rich dooshmasters — what they were doing? Shopping. Patrons of the arts? Yeah right. They’re fuggin customers.

Debbie resisted defining the word patrons, instead reached across the table for Adine’s hands. She scowled, but offered one, which Debbie stroked. Maybe it’s your job then to make stuff that shows people something they haven’t seen or thought, that’s apart from their lives? That challenges what they think they know?

Right, I should be working. That’s what you think. You think I’m lazy.

No! I didn’t say that.

Fug that, said Adine. Fug that, fug you, fug everything and everyone.

Something hitched in Debbie’s throat.

Adine filled Debbie’s glass. You know what I mean. Come on, let’s get drunk.

Two hours later, with Adine asleep on her shoulder Yellowlining home, what had begun as a slight yelp of hurt burrowed down into Debbie’s guts and gnawed away down there, persistent and parasitic. She was sad — not at being attacked, that had passed, but at the chasm she felt opening between them.

Until that night, whenever Adine told her of any conflict — with neighbours, motorists, gallerists — Debbie had sided with her wholly: the world was wrong, Adine was right, and the unwavering allegiance helped stitch them together. But Debbie had enjoyed Us:, it’d been nice, inclusive, heartwarming. Of course she kept this to herself, and so at home in bed, feeling disloyal and duplicitous, Debbie did the only thing she could: took Adine in her arms and held her, as close and long and hard as she could.

THERE HE GOES, said Starx, turning on the car stereo — too far, too hard, the grind of distorted guitar filled the Citywagon.

Olpert watched Raven disappear into the We-TV building with Wagstaffe and a pair of pages while Starx banged away on air drums. This music wasn’t music, it was noise, Olpert looked at the radio, thought about turning it down.

We’ve got an hour to kill, screamed Starx. What do you want to do?

Do?

We can’t just sit here, can we? Let’s just drive around. Find some trouble.

But.

Your turn to drive though.

Drive? I don’t really —

But Starx, weirdly quick, had already circled the car, opened Olpert’s door, and now waited there massively on the sidewalk while a sax solo wailed from the speakers.

Though there wasn’t much traffic due to the holiday, navigating downtown’s one-ways, plus his hangover, plus his natural anxiety behind the wheel, plus Starx’s music, plus Starx with his seat slid into the backseat, thumping the dashboard, howling, Drag you down, drag you down, drag you mutherfuggin down, caused Olpert’s grip on the steering wheel to tighten into white-knuckled panic. As he turned onto Paper Street, the song climaxed in a commotion of cymbal crashes and throaty howling.

Olpert cracked his window.

What are you doing.

It’s, Olpert yelled, it’s just a little loud. The music, I mean.

It’s freezing out.

I don’t drive very often. I’m, Starx — I’m finding it hard to concentrate.

Not a Cysterz fan, I guess. Starx snapped the radio off. Better, princess?

Olpert pulled to a stop at Lakeside Drive. He turned, hand over hand, toward Bay Junction and the southern edge of People Park, while Starx played with the powerlocks: chunk, chunk. Chunk, chunk.

A barricade blocked the roundabout’s exit to Parkside West, two Helpers sat in lawnchairs arm wrestling atop a cooler. Olpert leaned out, displayed his khaki, was waved through onto the empty street.

Where are you going? said Starx.

You said just drive around!

By the park? What if the HG’s see us, figure we’re shirking duties? Think, Bailie!

Down the slope Crocker Pond shimmered in the sunlight. Spectators, already numbering in the hundreds, filled the common.

Hey, said Starx, I need to express myself. Pull over.

What?

Urinate.

Here?

Yeah here, I’ll go in the trees. Nothing quite like urinating in the open air.

Can’t you wait?

Bailie, what the fug, mine’s not your average flow. Starx clawed across the frontseat, grabbed the wheel, and yanked the Citywagon over two lanes toward the curb.

A thump — something smacked the windshield, something white and sudden from above. Instead of braking Olpert stomped the gas, the car shot under the Yellowline tracks, veered into the Citywagon lot, and with a succession of explosive highfives, tore the sideview mirrors from a row of vehicles parked along the median.

Bailie, whoa, what are you doing?

We hit a bird, moaned Olpert, we killed a bird.

Brake! Fuggin Bailie, brake!

I’m braking, I’m braking.

The car slowed, Olpert signalled, checked his blindspot, pulled over, stopped.

We hit a bird, said Olpert.

Yeah, I saw that. Quite a performance, Bailie.

The bird, he said, do you think it’s dead?

Starx got out of the car. Olpert trembled, tried to steady his breathing. The walkie-talkie crackled and Griggs, in a typically listless monotone, droned, Silentium. Logica. Securitatem — and before Prudentia Olpert clicked the thing off. In the rearview he watched Starx survey the debris, shake his head, move south.

Oh man, Bailie, he called. You gotta come see this.

Olpert joined him: at the end of a trail of shattered glass and plastic, lying in a heap of feathers against the curb, was a dove.

Oh no. It isn’t.

Fuggin right it is.

No.

Have you ever seen any other doves in this city? In the wild?

It’s not a pigeon?

What, an albino? Come on, Bailie. You know exactly what and whose that thing is.

I didn’t — I didn’t even see it, it came out of nowhere.

At the end of the street, the two Helpers had their hands raised in identical exaggerated shrugs — like, What the fug?

Starx waved. Nothing to see here! Back to work!

Hey, don’t! What if they come look? What are we going to do?

Whoa. Hold on. We? This was all you, pencildick.

Me?

Yeah you. I wasn’t the one driving.

That’s — that’s not fair. You grabbed the wheel!

Which reminds me, said Starx, and he headed off into the bushes, unzipping.

Olpert crouched beside the dead bird. One wing was folded, the other splayed, the head tucked into its chest, the tiny gnarled treeroots of its claws. No blood. Though Olpert imagined the damage was internal, its organs pulverized to stew. Dead, dead, dead — and he had killed it.

Starx returned. He nudged the dove with his shoe. Then, in a single, swift movement, he scooped the little corpse under his toe, lifted it up, and launched it into the bushes.

There.

That’s where you peed!

Bailie. It’s dead.

Olpert stood. Still, some respect. .

Respect? Starx grabbed Olpert by the shoulders. Listen, you were driving, the bird should’ve been smart enough not to fly into traffic. Maybe that magician dopes his birds. Maybe he abuses them and they get suicidal. Whatever, it’s not your fault. The guy lets these things loose in the city? You figure he figures he’ll lose a couple. Partner, am I right?

Yes, but —

Hey hey hey. No buts. This is not a big deal. Dead bird? Who cares. A million of those things die every day crashing into skyscrapers.

Really?

Probably. Listen, why don’t I drive the rest of the day?

Will you?

Starx put his arm around Olpert and walked him back to their car, sweeping the broken sideview mirrors under the parked Citywagons as they went.

Sliding the driver’s seat back Starx said, Those Helpers won’t sell us out. Don’t worry.

Are they friends of yours?

Not really. . but silentium, right? It’s the first fuggin pillar.

Olpert looked over his shoulder: past the line of Citywagons, silver and symmetrical and identical, the two Helpers were taking turns putting each other in grappling holds.

And hey, Bailie, said Starx, what about that chick last night.

Debbie?

Yeah, that’s the one. Before your. . upset, I thought she seemed into you.

You think?

Sure. Just, next time? See if you can chat her up without puke-painting your khaki.

You really think she was into me?

You bet. Now let’s get out of here before that bird’s pals show up for vengeance.

POP LEANED IN and on a gust of eggy breath said, Lark! Birds.

A half-dozen pigeons had made their way to the foot of the sculpture. Get those stupid things out of here, Loopy told her assistant. The girl looked at Loopy, then the birds, and with a sigh tiptoed over flapping her arms. They scuttled around behind the sculpture, more aggravated than scared. The assistant followed at a crouch, clapping, and the pigeons hopped along, circled the sculpture’s base, and the assistant gently shooed them around again, around and around. Debbie watched with interest.

At the next pass Loopy went hurtling at the pigeons with the wings of her caftan spread wide, cawing and shrieking, and the flock ruffled up and came to rest on the lip of the fountain, cooing and cool. Returning to her spot by the covered sculpture, Loopy didn’t take her eyes off the pigeons, ready to pounce at the slightest provocation.

At last the Mayor arrived, wheeled by Diamond-Wood, who clattered behind on his crutches. Stop, she called, with a wary scan of the cobblestones. We’ll be fine here.

Those who had heard tell of Raven’s bisection gawked. Debbie wasn’t sure what she was seeing: a white sheet draped over the dessert cart gave the impression of an enormously wide-waisted skirt supported by a trestle the size of a writing desk.

Hello, good to see you all, said the Mayor. Now let’s get this shet-show on the road.

His ducktape gag peeled aside, Diamond-Wood offered a few hastily rehearsed words about the arts, the importance of community, and how firmly the New Fraternal League of Men were dedicated to these things, though the High Gregories extended regrets at not being able to attend personally. To Loopy Diamond-Wood said, Thanks, most of all, to our artist laureate for this wonderful sculptural work to commemorate our park’s twenty-fifth anniversary —

At which Pop growled, That’s not the point of it, evil one!

Diamond-Wood retreated to scattered, tepid applause, slid behind the Mayor, and retaped his mouth. All eyes fell upon their civic leader. Of the two white sheets hiding secrets, it was clear which one they wanted removed. The Mayor gestured irritably at the sculpture. Do it now, for the love of green.

Loopy bowed. I give you. . the Lakeview. . Memorial!

But before her assistant could perform the big reveal the pigeons came flapping at her in a ragged formation. Overwhelmed, the assistant tripped, grasped at the white sheet, which whisked away — and there was nothing beneath it. No pedestal, no sculpture, no plaque. Only emptiness. It was as if the cover had been floating there all along, inflated by some internal wind.

What the fug kind of art is that? said the Mayor.

That’s not it, shrieked Loopy. My work’s been stolen! Someone’s stolen my work!

Disgrateful, said Pop, shaking his head. A complete and utterful disgrate.

Debbie giggled. Which met with scowls from all around.

Hardly the time for humours, Pop chided.

Her smile faded. If only Adine were here, she thought. Adine would find this funny, would supplement the scene with the perfect wiseacre crack to tip Debbie’s amusement into hysteria. But if there’d been a humorous moment it was gone. She stood there awkwardly while Loopy wailed and, stonefaced, Pop demanded a detectivial assembly!

A noise disrupted everything then — a whooshing, a squawk, faces swung skyward and fingers pointed. Through the space where the statue should have been flapped what appeared at first another pigeon, but swooping back up over the trees it caught the light, blazing white against the blue sky. Through his viewfinder the photographer watched it loft higher and higher, zoomed in, at last snapped a picture.

Was that? said Debbie.

Yeah, said the photographer, lowering his camera. One of Raven’s doves.

V

HROUGH HANDS cupped to the window Calum looked into the Room: lights off, benches up on tables, Debbie’s deskchair wheeled back from her workstation, tilted at an angle that suggested a swift and drastic escape. And despite the CLOSED FOR LONG WEEKEND sign it seemed inconceivable that Debbie wasn’t puttering around in the shadows. She was always here. He pounded on the door, shuffled back to the window, blocked the light, and looked again: nothing, just grey stillness.

Overhead a Yellowline train went clattering south. Calum looked up at the underside of the tracks, at the flashing shape of it moving along, and thought of the Hand — suspended in space, the train ziplining her along.

The cuts on his forehead, where the Hand’s shirtless friend or brother had smashed the tube, were drying into a scabby acne, his left eye remained swollen shut. Moving away from the window Calum avoided his reflection for fear of what he’d see: a monster. But a very weak monster, weak as a slave, who’d stumbled bleeding and delirious out of the silos into Whitehall, and now found himself here, outside the Room, the slave who’d escaped, found the world too big, and dragging his chains returned to the only place he belonged.

But that was not the whole story. When his final throw had landed harmlessly in the girl’s lap the silo had gone silent. Uh-oh, said the Hand, and a great crest of laughter rose up and came crashing down, Calum felt useless and stupid, dumbly confronted with what he hadn’t done. The shirtless guy in the welding mask grabbed the Hand by the hips and pulled her onto his lap and said, Gotta break that thing on your head, those are the rules.

The rules. In shame Calum collected the tube from the girl’s lap. She was chuckling. Her twin brother (were they twins?) was coming to on the floor, making soft groaning noises. She said, Nice shooting, and everyone found this very hilarious indeed.

Yeah, nice shooting, the guy said, lifted the Hand’s shirt, his fingers scurried spiderlike up inside.

Calum’s fingers closed around the tube. He stared into the girl’s dark sunglasses, at the suggestion of eyes in there — he sensed scorn. Let’s go, called the guy from the couch. Crack that thing on your face, he crooned, my sister here’s dying to see it. Another surge of laughter — and Calum wound up and smashed the tube across the girl’s face.

She wilted from the stool and lay there twitching on the floor. Half the tube remained in Calum’s hand, the other half shattered into craggy bits. He tossed it, a faint tinkle of glass followed by a thick, brooding silence. And then there was a rush, like a flock of crows unleashed from a rooftop, and Calum turned, and, led by the guy in the mask, a faceless mob was descending upon him.

Now, moving down the laneway beside the Room, his vision kept clouding over, he had to shake his head to clear it. He reached the water, made fists, bashed his knuckles together in a hollow knock of bone on bone. Out on the lake someone’s sailboat, a little white A, tacked across Kidd’s Harbour. Calum watched until it moved out of view, then he headed back out to F Street. After a few steps the world reeled and swam, he staggered, had to regain his balance on a parked car. Halfheartedly tried the door: locked. Farther along was a payphone, which he checked for quarters. One sat in the slot.

Calum tossed the coin in the air, guessed heads — tails — flipped it twice more before he got heads, then fed the phone. But who to call? Not Debbie, he only had the number of the Room, not Edie, not one of their friends, not his mother. Not the Hand.

The money clunked down and was lost. He jiggled the cradle, no luck, took a measured step back, stomped the phone as hard as he could, his sneaker fell off on the backswing. Sullenly he fetched it. His stomach gurgled. He felt dizzy and sick. He leaned against the wall.

Where was Debbie? Calum thought about how giving she tried to seem, how generous and caring, yet she maintained a safe distance: he didn’t even know where she lived. Who was she, really, this person who wanted everything from him, that he talk and share and trust her, for him to be better — and she believed this was generous, just to listen.

Calum headed south down F Street, his head humming a muffled, cloudy sort of tune, with nowhere to go and no one to see, and nothing to do with them when he got there.

AN ARTIST SPEAKS only with her hands, said Loopy, and displayed them: palms, then backs.

The Museum of Prosperity archivists stared.

Likeways, to exfabulate upon my hands, Pop said, laying them on the picnic table: My hands are my words. And my words are my hands. Therein lives the paradox.

The Mayor used her own hands to hide her face.

But back to this travestation, said Pop, and whom we can be sure is gullible.

The archivists met his knowing, shrewd look with equal bewilderment.

Do I have to spell it for you? The illustrationaire!

And to think these hands once sculpted his likeness, moaned Loopy.

Moreover! To think he has now, poof, into thinned air, envanished the only remaining relish of Lakeview Homes!

One of the archivists blinked. The other said, Relish?

Prehaps you need an illustration of my own! Pop thumped the table, held up his fist, rotated it slowly, almost forlornly. How are we to take back the night if the moon — the fist’s rotations paused — has been conciliated by the irradiating sunshine — here he covered the fist in his other hand — of a forever-long day?

Pop concluded by exploding both hands outward, fingers fluttering, and then hid them under the picnic table. In his eyes was triumph.

Banished to the periphery among Friendly Farm’s animaltronics were Debbie, Loopy’s assistant, and Diamond-Wood. The latter’s walkie-talkie buzzed, he listened, whispered, hung up, and tapped his crutches against a pig, its metal hide clanging, and shot the Mayor an urgent look.

What, she said.

Diamond-Wood ungagged himself. My people think it’d be a mistake not to rule out certain parties known for vandalism around the city. We —

Pop snorted. Parties? Perhaps your own party wishes the city’s attentuations misguided? For was it not your party, sir, whom initiated the illustrationaire’s pretence?

Excellent point, said the Mayor. Touch green.

Diamond-Wood staggered forward, bumping the pigs — which activated their animations: one mounted the other and began to thrust. Though their lovemaking began gently, almost sensual.

Ignoring the carnal whinnies and jigglings, Diamond-Wood hobbled up to the picnic table. Please, he said, Mr. Street —

Don’t you please me! Aggregately, your organization has also empropriated my home! My home, Mrs. Mayor! You are savvy to this?

The Mayor said, Nope.

The mechanical coitus intensified, the pigs’ prerecorded ecstasy escalating into howls, metal clanged against metal. Debbie and Loopy’s assistant cowered behind a dromedary.

I can’t speak to that, said Diamond-Wood, though the proper procedures —

My home, Pop roared. First my home, a quartered century hencefrom, and now. . Once again, my home! Recurrently!

But —

As though time itself has too gone loopy!

Loopy leaned into the conversation, grinning benevolently.

But everyone’s attention had been diverted by the pigs. Their squeals reached a pitch both tortured and rapturous, one slammed into the other with force adequate to either resuscitate it from near-death or kill it for good. And just as the frenzied creatures seemed ready to rip free from the cement, with a final heave they lurched to a stop. Everything was still. The creatures’ eyes were stupid and oblivious.

Well, said Debbie, that was something, and everyone agreed.

HI ADINE. This is Sam.

Hi, said Adine. You’re about two and a half minutes early, buddy. Give me one sec?

Through the phone Sam could hear his sister’s TV, a voice was talking. He flipped around until his set’s sound matched hers: channel 73. It was a boring show, just a woman at a table telling the camera about her sadness. Through the phone Sam could hear his sister breathing in the steady, in-and-out way of someone sleeping. Then the woman said goodbye and thanks for listening and there was a rustle on the end of the line and Adine said, in a small voice, Hey, buddy, sorry about that.

Hey buddy, said Sam. Are we watching Salami Talk?

Oh man. I guess. That’s on 12, right?

That’s on 12 right.

In the Know was wrapping up in a fanfare of kettledrums and trumpets. The closing credits rolled over images of kids splashing in the waves at Budai Beach amid frothy green runoff from Lowell Canal, and they ended with the We-TV logo, the screen went black, and here was Lucal Wagstaffe’s mouth in extreme closeup, welcoming you to Salami Talk — and the mouth took a big bite of juicy sausage.

Today’s intro montage featured images of magic through the ages. Witches are being burned Adine, said Sam. They’re tied to tree trunks okay. But there’s a guy now hanging upside down over the water. His hands are tied okay. He’s escaping. There’s some —

Let me listen.

Sam closed his eyes, just to see: Wagstaffe’s was a voice you trusted. It wasn’t lying. It talked about the history of magic. It talked about religion. Sam opened his eyes: the pictures on TV were of cloaked bearded men and miracles in the desert, then some grainy footage of soothsayers performing out of covered wagons, then fidgety films of a stage magician whisking a tablecloth out from a dinner setting, while women in bikinis smiled. And then there was a sound of wings and the screen went black and the black took the shape of a bird, flapping away from the camera toward a big white moon in the night, and on the face of the moon appeared: Raven — Behind the Illustrations.

Now Wagstaffe was standing in a dim brown library lit by brass lamps with jade-coloured shades, the books stacked floor to ceiling, speaking in a voice of liquid gold. Sam tried to explain the scene but Adine hushed him: It’s Wagstaffe, I hate him, let’s see what dooshy things he has to say.

This morning, Wagstaffe was saying, join us at Salami Talk for our exclusive, one-hour interview with Raven, live, from We-TV Studios.

The screen is black, said Sam. Oh. The videos are of Raven now.

What’s going on?

He’s doing things with birds. Birds are appearing, disappearing. Everyone’s clapping. It’s in a place with rivers, boats, he’s on a bridge. They’re saying —

Shhh.

Sam waited, the scene shifted. They were back in the library and Wagstaffe was sitting in a big purple chair and in another was Raven. A fire crackled in a fireplace behind them.

Why is the TV telling me to live Adine? said Sam.

Sammy, no. It probably says live, said Adine, as in alive. Not liv, like. . liver.

The host introduced Raven. Raven is smiling, said Sam. His smile is odd Adine.

Odd, what do you mean? Odd how?

Just odd okay Adine.

The interview began. Wagstaffe asked, How are you finding the city?

Fine, fine.

And your accommodations?

Adequate. What I require.

For those not lucky enough to attend last night’s banquet, my colleague Isa Lanyess will be providing full coverage later today — you won’t recognize your Mayor by half.

Only the beginning, said Raven.

And that bit with the trunk? Reappearing at the hotel? Pretty remarkable.

Trunking. It’s a little. . theatricality, something I incorporate into every performance.

Could you trunk yourself anywhere?

With the proper image, yes, and the proper mental preparation.

So if you’d had a picture of a different hotel, you would have shown up there.

Exactly. The image I take with me into the trunk dictates where I will reappear.

Sammy, said Adine, you there?

I’m here Adine.

What about, said Wagstaffe, a picture of the moon?

Well then perhaps you’d find me on the moon.

Or my house, what if I put a picture of my house in there.

Then, Mr. Wagstaffe, you might very well come home to find me sitting at your kitchen table. With your wife.

That rattled him, said Adine, right, Sammy?

Sam was quiet.

And, because I’m sure our viewers are dying to know, continued Wagstaffe, can you tell us what you’ve got planned for tonight?

Ah. If I may be so bold: perhaps my greatest illustration yet.

Lucal Wagstaffe is staring at him, said Sam. But Raven’s looking into the camera. His head is very shiny. His eyes are. I don’t know what they are.

Odd?

Not just. More than that. Or maybe less Adine, maybe less.

Raven said, If I may? Let me explain not just this evening’s illustration, but the grand oeuvre of my work. What I do is not magic. Magic is based in illusion, and illusion is based in lies. Visual fictions and other illusions, Mr. Wagstaffe, worry people who seek certainty from sight. But what I create are not fictions. They are not lies. They are, instead, revelations. I illustrate simply what already exists, by removing —

Yes, we know, said Wagstaffe. The fog that obscures the truth.

Precisely. The way we perceive reality is imaginative. People forget this. One’s own imagination transforms what one sees into images, and then understands these images as things. We think of spectatorship as inherently passive, but it is in fact a highly engaged and active process. Your brain, for example, Mr. Wagstaffe, registers the pattern of light produced by this object you sit upon and translates it into some signifier, but this is not the lone process for your brain to understand it: chair. I do not wish to confuse that process, but merely to focus the brain, each of your brains —

He’s pointing at me, said Sam. At you Adine. At us.

— to a new way of seeing. I wish not to create illusions, but to illustrate. Illusions are about faith, which does not interest me. Faith is only that faculty of man to believe things he knows to be untrue. I am not interested in duping or cajoling my audience. Seeing is believing, and seeing depends on an imaginative use of ambiguities.

Sausage? offered Wagstaffe.

No, said Raven. Further, you see half of something, or the vague shape of something, the brain can still understand it as a whole. And so what if the world the eye sees, or which the brain tells the eye it sees — or which the eye tells the brain it sees — what if it is only a partial version? My illustrations are an attempt to excite those ambiguities and complete the partial version of the world which exists in viewers’ minds. Tonight, I wish to display a whole version of this city to everyone who lives here — the truth about this place, gentle viewers, where you live.

What is that nutcase talking about? said Adine. What whole version of this city? What truth? This is nonsense. It’s psychobabble. Meaningless. How does anyone buy this?

Lucal Wagstaffe chewed thoughtfully on some jerky.

What’s going on, Sammy?

Silence.

Sammy?

Yes.

You there?

Yes Adine.

You’re quiet.

I’m letting them talk Adine.

Everything okay?

Yes Adine.

You seem. . faraway.

I’m here Adine. The big clock is stopped but I’m still doing good communication Adine. I’m doing the work, he said, and he stared into Raven’s hollow dark eyes and scratched the crust on his jaw until something jammy came dribbling out.

THROUGH THE PARK Debbie walked Pop back to Street’s Milk & Things. Near the base of the Slipway, something white lay off the path amid the bushes. A shopping bag, or a sheaf of paper.

Lark, all these bins and still people strew refuse, lamented Pop.

Debbie moved closer: whatever it was flapped slightly, maybe caught in the breeze. She crouched. The white was feathers, the flap was the feeble lift and collapse of a broken wing. And here was the glossy black pebble of an eye, a beak. It’s a bird, she said. It’s hurt.

Don’t touch it, said Pop. It’s probably aswim with germinations.

Debbie knelt, placed her fingertips on the bird’s side, felt a heartbeat as urgent as a drumroll. The whole creature seemed to be one trembling, feathery heart.

It’s one of his, the magician’s, said Pop, let it die.

It’s a living thing! Can we take it to your store?

I’ve no time for resuscitations, I have telephonic appellations to dilate. My house, recall, has been abscondered. Though what make of revolutionaire are you, whom is more concerned with enfeebled birds than motorizing the wheels of restribution? Cause for disbarment from the Movement, prehaps?

We have to save it, said Debbie.

But Pop was lumbering away up the path.

In a nearby trashbin she found Havoc’s placard — FUG THIS SHET PARK — discarded the day before, imagined him lisping his way through this slogan, suppressed a chuckle. She folded the cardboard into a little crib, lined it with crumpled IFC wrappers, and tucked the dove inside.

Pop was gone. Debbie imagined him in his store, ranting into the telephone. The thought exhausted her. So instead of joining him she climbed the slipway to Parkside West Station, boarded a Whitehall-bound Yellowline train, which she rode, with the bird in her lap, all the way home.

HOW ABOUT A little tour of the city? asked Starx, starting the engine.

As you wish, said the illustrationist, resuming his seductive pose in the backseat. Perhaps you could cool the air, though. I find it hot.

Starx cranked the dials, swung the Citywagon onto Entertainment Drive. Where to do you think, Bailie?

But Olpert was listening to the A/C. From it came a strange fupping sound. What is that noise, he said.

It’s the car, Bailie, said Starx. And to Raven: This guy, eh — bit of a nervous bird.

Yes, said Raven.

How about a quick tour to the eastend? Maybe a jaunt through Greenwood Gardens and Bebrog, a stop for lunch in Li’l Browntown. Or we could head out to the Institute, go for a walk around the campus?

I’d prefer, said Raven, to first pay another visit to the bridge.

Guardian Bridge? Again?

Yes.

Whatever you say, said Starx. He turned onto Trappe Street and headed north toward Lowell Overpass. He glanced at his partner. Bailie, you all right?

The sound inside the dashboard was like paper rustling. From the vent what appeared to be a snowflake blasted out on a waft of A/C, performed a little loop-de-loop on the updraft, and settled on Olpert’s thigh: a feather.

He closed his hand over it, shut the vents. The sound died — but Starx turned the fans back on. You deaf, Bailie? Our guest finds it hot.

Indeed, said the illustrationist.

The sound returned: the purr of playing cards threaded through a bike’s spokes.

Don’t you think it sounds weird? said Olpert. Maybe we should turn it off.

In the backseat Raven attended to his manicure with a nailfile. I’d rather not, he said.

See? said Starx. And what do you know about cars anyway, Bailie?

The sound grew louder, more urgent. A second feather came sailing out of the vent. And then another, and another — and with a mighty cough the vents spewed a sudden blizzard: hundreds of feathers swirled into the car in a white squall.

Starx yelled, What the fug!

Olpert was overwhelmed by the scratch and tickle of feathers, a swarm of clawfooted moths. One flew in his mouth, he gagged, batted at the air, and brushed madly at his face.

Starx pulled onto the shoulder and killed the engine. The fans died. The feathers settled. The car’s interior suggested the aftermath of a to-the-death pillowfight.

Wow, said Starx. Weird.

Olpert swept a layer of down onto the floormats.

Most intriguing, said the illustrationist from the backseat.

These wagons, said Starx, they’re communal, never know what other drivers have got up to in them. Maybe the last person tried to roast squab on the carburetor.

Ah, said Raven.

They sat for a moment before Starx restarted the engine, tentatively. Olpert kicked the feathers into a little pile on the floormat and placed his loafers overtop.

Hey, said Starx, mind if we crack the windows now instead?

Fine, said Raven thinly. Though such an episode does raise certain questions, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Bailie?

Olpert made the mistake of checking the rearview: Raven’s eyes were splashes of black paint eddying down a drain.

It’s interesting, continued the illustrationist, holding Olpert’s gaze, to consider how these situations might have come about, to speculate and wonder. Though I would argue it will be more interesting to see how they influence what comes next.

How’s that then? said Starx, merging onto the Overpass.

Oh, just that any anomalous event — he twirled his hand absently — might have much larger ramifications than one might expect.

Like what? yelped Olpert.

Oh, Mr. Bailie, who can say? Raven looked out the window: Guardian Bridge rose into view. Who can say, ever, what might happen, to whom, and when.

VI

T STREET’S Milk & Things the doorchimes dinged as usual, but instead of Pop lunging at Sam for a handshake, a thin, hesitant voice wondered, Who’s there?

Two men Sam had never seen before stood with Pop at the counter. One was short, his eyes went two different ways, the other tall and thin and from whose neck sprouted a silky yellow beard. Spread upon the counter was an ICTS System Map. Something was wrong.

Just entreating some friends, said Pop. Please, whatever you need, it’s on my house.

If you had a fuggin houθe, growled the thin man, and the little one sneered.

In the back of the store the MR. ADEMUS’S THINGS shelf was empty, surrounded by sawdust and building supplies and various junk. Sam dug through the pile, found a hinge, pried it back and forth, listened to it squeal.

At last Pop came over. Barely done?

Do you have locks? And those loops for locks. To hold locks okay.

Is this a constructional project?

Sam leaned in, whispered, I’m going to trunk him. But I need locks.

Pop pulled out a combination padlock, which hung open. I don’t know the code, he said, so unless you’ve an intuitional mind, once this locks, it’s locked.

Sam was careful not to close it. The suspicious men watched. Sam pointed at them. Don’t spy on me okay, he said. I’m just doing the work.

He’s just doing the work! screamed Pop. One of my loyal customers, no one to dubiate, gentlemen, carry on. Once he’s outfat he’ll be on his way. And you — Pop lowered his voice — Mr. Ademus, recall: once that locks it will stay locked.

It will stay locked, said Sam. Forever?

Prehaps. Now, for further requirements, you should retail to the dumpster, you’re welcome!

Pop walked Sam to the door, ushered him into the parking lot, and waved, grinning — but once the door closed his smile disappeared and his fat fingers trembled as they flipped the OPEN sign to NOT. And with heaviness and resignation Pop faced the cagey, tense men inside his dirty store.

BY MID-AFTERNOON People Park was bustling. Helpers draped the gazebo in black curtains, erected scaffolding rigged with floodlights and huge videoscreens, constructed a catwalk that jutted out to the barricades. Since Raven required more power than could be supplied by generator, the NFLM ran cables up the Slipway and through downtown to Municipal Works, where they tapped right into the grid. Meanwhile the common filled steadily with people, joy sparkled in the air, and the sun shone down upon it all.

A Helper strode to the end of the catwalk with a video camera. Its recording light came alive, and onto the screens, hazy in the daylight, appeared an image of the growing crowds. One family stationed front row, dead centre, jumped up together and began waving, pointing at their projected selves upon the bigscreen. While other families jostled for attention this one was especially boisterous: the son, in a red cap, leapt up and down, his father hooted, coaxed the mother into a funny jig, while the small girl in the shot’s periphery stood numbly with her face pointed into her purse.

The Helper zoomed in on the happy threesome. Even the wife seemed into it now, flashing little gunshot flourishes, blowing imaginary smoke from her fingertips, while the dad glared in triumph at the other, ignored families. Over his head the boy hoisted a book — Raven’s Grammar — and even without sound anyone could guess whose name he was chanting.

Sam observed this wobbling down the path behind Street’s Milk & Things, lumber stacked in his arms, a bag of supplies in each hand. Quickly gravity took over: his strides lengthened and gained a momentum of their own, the wood clattered, the bags swung, and as he reached the common Sam broke unwillingly into a full-on run.

Past the boathouse at Crocker Pond he sprinted, another ten yards and his feet could no longer keep up. He pitched forward: everything slid from his arms, one of the bags burst and its contents — tools and brackets and little packs of screws — splashed forth, and the other bag fell from his hand and spilled everywhere too.

Lying in the mud, surrounded by stuff, Sam raised his chin and saw before him a pair of pink leotarded legs. A little girl in a dress, holding a handbag, regarded him blankly — and then a screaming woman was upon them.

Elsie-Anne, are you okay? she cried, and shot Sam a scolding look, which shifted into confusion. Her eyes darted back to the girl, where they sharpened again. You could have been killed, said the woman — the one who’d been hotdogging on the big TV. My daughter can be a little out of it, sorry, she said, and took the girl by the hand and led her away.

Sam’s supplies were everywhere. One of the bags was split and useless, he’d have fill his pockets. But when he stooped for a handful of screws, pain spiked his lower back and his neck felt stiff and wooden.

Now appeared a fatfaced child in a red cap — the son of that woman, the one who’d been chanting, still clutching his book. My dad told me to help you, he said. So here.

The boy held out a single lugnut, which Sam accepted and dropped in his pocket.

Are you building something, said the boy. What are you building?

It’s for the work okay.

What’s that on your face? He picked the combination lock out of a puddle. It had closed. Sam’s stomach went hollow. The boy said, Oh, let me show you a trick, and held the lock to his ear, twisted the dial listening intently. Then, with a grin, the boy yanked the shackle — it didn’t open.

That’s okay, said Sam, and began stacking two-by-fours.

Let me try again, said the boy. It’s hard to hear with all this noise here in the park, why do people need to make so much noise, gosh. He narrowed his eyes, the pink tip of his tongue appeared between his lips, and he set to twisting the dial again. He pulled and it didn’t open. He pulled again. Nothing.

Sam put out his hand.

Hey wait, said the boy, opening the Grammar. I did something wrong, you’re supposed to listen for clicks, I thought. He leafed to the back of the book, then from back to front.

Does Raven’s book tell you how to break locks?

Ha, not break. Solve. You don’t want to break them, silly. Haven’t you seen Raven escape that time he went in space in zero gravity with almost no oxygen and eight or maybe twelve locks? But he got free. He always gets free. What’s on your face? Is it a scar or leprosy or something? It looks like mushrooms. I had an abscess once, in my mouth.

He always gets free, said Sam.

We’re on vacation here from faraway. We missed Raven’s arrival but we got frontrow centre seats today so there’s no way we’ll miss tonight’s show. Mummy’s from here though. Originally. She was tied up but now she’s back. She’s sick though. Allergies.

Sam nodded.

Now hush, I can’t hear the clicks with all this talking!

A man came up, smiling and rubbing his hands. Gibbles, hiya. Everything okay?

I was helping. I was —

The man turned his smile upon Sam. Sorry if my wife was short with you. She tied one on last night is all.

My bag broke okay, said Sam. He poked his hand through the jagged hole, waved at himself. That’s good communication, he said.

The man’s smile faltered — and returned, blazing. He looked around the park, at the families and the trees and past everything, to the sky. Heck of a nice day, he said, isn’t it?

Yes, said Sam. It’s a nice day isn’t it.

Gip leapt to his feet. I did it!

The lock hung open.

Wait, said Sam. How? What did you do?

The boy closed his eyes and in a low, sonorous voice said, I have removed the fog of obscurity to reveal the truth. I have only illustrated what you have always known to be true.

VII

HE PHONE RANG and rang. Sometimes this happened, Adine knew, the connections on the Islet were dicey, when lines went down hours would often pass before workers and the proper equipment could be shipped out, plus whatever time it took for repairs. But there’d been no storm, it was late afternoon now, and Adine had been trying Sam since lunch.

The door opened.

Adine hung up.

Debbie came over, kissed Adine’s forehead. You left all the bedding out?

Can’t see, said Adine, tapping her goggles.

Right. Can’t put the bedding away, can’t clean the mousetraps —

Adine sniffed. It smells in here. Your friend left his scent.

Debbie moved into the kitchen. Cupboards were opened, pots and pans clanged and rattled. Adine turned on the TV.

Where’s that big casserole dish? called Debbie.

You’re making a casserole? Is that my dinner?

More banging around.

What are you doing in there?

Adine felt her way to the kitchen. It smells even weirder in here. Are you cooking?

Nope.

Then?

It’s probably the bird.

The. . bird?

Yeah.

What, you bought a bird? To what — roast?

No, I found one. It’s hurt.

Oh man. First that snoring monster, now this. It better not sing all night, because I can’t take something tweeting and twittering —

No. I told you, it’s hurt. I’m making it a bed.

And then?

And then we’ll nurse it better.

Nurse it. At your bosom? Should I be jealous?

No reply. Adine felt they were on a raft with a slow leak. She stepped forward, groped, found Debbie’s elbow.

I was just trying to be funny.

Were you?

Wasn’t I?

The air shifted: she sensed Debbie facing her now, imagined those wide eyes all wounded and withering. She rubbed Debbie’s arm, up and down, mechanically.

The arm slid out from under Adine’s fingers.

I’m putting the bird here by the window. So watch out for it.

Adine said, Okay, and went back into the den. On the NFLM station was pingpong: the knock of the ball struck back and forth, a third man commentating — she pictured him clutching the table, watching almost greedily. Check out these dooshes, said Adine. Hey, Deb — help me out here. Does the third guy look like, greedy?

Debbie sat down beside her, the cushions split, Adine slipped into the gap, had to dig herself out.

So the protest? said Debbie. A bit of a bust.

I saw on In the Know about the statue. I’ll flip to it, only the UP button works, hold on.

Yeah. That was sort of awesome actually.

Was it you guys?

No. This was important to Pop. He wouldn’t have sabotaged it.

As the channels climbed higher the programming became more inane: a humming couple convinced they’d discovered an overtone that linked the universe, a man hosting a telethon to support his telethon, the Bookland channel where the shop’s mousy proprietor whispered reviews of novels no one would ever, ever read.

So this thing I went to, said Debbie, last night. This thing they’re doing in Whitehall.

What? You went to Whitehall?

Sure. It’s fine, I don’t know what the big deal is. People think —

At night?

Not alone! With Calum, from the Room. I thought maybe I could write about it, but.

About what? What would you write about?

Well this is the thing. They’re doing something out there, those people — I don’t know how to describe it. Like a noise. . show. Sort of.

At channel 0 the set burst into static.

Hey, said Debbie. Don’t change the channel, it’s just like this —

But Adine kept flipping, the screen came alive with music and words, brief lucid flashes until she paused on channel 12, and Isa Lanyess.

Anyway, said Debbie, you need to see it. Or hear it. Or just come. I can’t stop thinking about it. I hated it sort of but I want to go back — maybe tonight.

And you want me to come. Tonight.

Not want. Well sure, want. But more I think it’s right up your alley. And also there’s that potluck earlier in Bebrog? We could go there first, then —

Can’t.

Why?

Tonight’s Raven’s big illustration. I mean, fug if I care, but it’s important to Sam. He’s out there all alone on the I. He hasn’t got anybody else.

A rigid silence fell between them.

It’s important to him, said Adine. He’s my brother.

She let the words hang, knew they boxed Debbie into a corner.

I have to go, Debbie said, standing.

Well thanks for stopping in.

In the kitchen the fridge hummed, from down on the street came a mother’s shout and a shrill reply from her child, and in the subsequent quiet Adine heard a sharp intake of a breath, either the inhalation of unspoken words or a stifled sob.

Fug, Deb! Are you crying now? What are you crying about?

I’m not crying! She paused. Adine? Please take off those glasses.

Adine laughed, turned up the TV. Isa Lanyess was interviewing Loopy about her missing statue: You must be destroyed, said Lanyess, which Loopy confirmed: Destroyed.

Adine? Please, come on. Take them off. It’s enough.

Enough what? Enough me doing my job? I don’t ask you to quit. . helping.

I miss you.

Right. You pop by to drop off a dead animal, then head right back out, now I won’t see you till tomorrow morning. Seems like your heart’s just bleeding to spend time together. Adine felt the current of her words hurtling her forward, she’d no idea what she might say next. Here it was, coldly: Are you sure you need me at all?

A jangle of keys, the deadbolt clopped open. As always, Debbie had locked them in.

That’s it? You’re leaving?

I have to go, Adine. People are waiting for me. I didn’t even have time to make anything, I’m showing up to this potluck without any food —

Stick your new pet in the oven for fifteen minutes, howbout?

The door opened. Into the apartment seeped the faintly fecal odour of some other tenant’s cookery. Adine, sensing Debbie hovering in the doorway, told her, You know what you do? You look for holes in people and you just burrow your way in to fill them up, you’re this little helpful worm. You need to start finding home in yourself, you need — Adine was interrupted by a great commotion coming from the TV. Loopy was livid: Of course I’ll always have the idea, but you can’t show people your ideas! It’s the thing that matters! And no one ever got to see the thing!

You hearing this? Adine said. Unbelievable. Eh? Deb?

The apartment felt emptied — or, more, the apartment emptied itself into Adine.

Fine! she called. Leave me. I don’t care!

Somewhere down the hallway, in another unit, someone sneezed. Adine was left with Isa Lanyess and Loopy, beseeching viewers to share with them, for one full minute, a ceremonious moment of hope and silence.

IS HE WALKING all the way across?

What? said Starx.

I can’t see him anymore. Can you? He went out on the bridge and now he’s just — gone.

Bailie, I don’t know, maybe he’s expressing himself over the side.

Peeing? You think?

No. No I don’t think.

Then? What’s he doing out there?

You’re so curious, go see.

They’d parked again by the onramp to Guardian Bridge. Above the Citywagon the bridge opened up: the crosshatch of beams and girders, all that black-painted steel, the setting sun carved through it in coppery spears. The bridge looked unfinished, a skeleton yet to be draped with skin.

No, I’m okay, said Olpert. I’ll wait here.

Me too, said Starx.

It was that time of day when the light seemed to slow and loosen before it collapsed into evening. Olpert always found this hour melancholy, maybe even nostalgic: before dusk, before nightfall, for a few careful moments the day took stock of what it had been.

He turned to Starx: What’s your favourite season?

Why, thanks for asking, Bailie! Starx faced him from the driver’s seat, the great bulk of him heaped there, head scraping the ceiling, arms wrapped around the steering column for lack of anywhere else to fit them. He seemed to be considering, his breath came in whistles and gasps. Finally he spoke: I think probably winter.

Winter. Why?

Oh, I don’t know. Probably because I’m packing such a massive heater — Starx nodded toward his lap — and the cold makes it easier to heave this monster around.

I like fall.

I’m kidding, right? Bailie? That was a joke?

I like fall because it feels like the end of the day, all the time.

You like the end of the day? Why?

Why? Olpert searched his thoughts: he was sure, as the sun painted everything golden, that he felt in these cautious, delicate moments most at home in the world. He tried to explain this to Starx, but when the words came out they sounded inadequate, even false, and when Olpert looked out again over the Narrows the light seemed cold and harsh.

I’m a nighttime fella myself, said Starx. And the reason why is that’s when I’m at my awesomest. But you? I can see it — the fall, twilight. They’re like in-between. You’re an in-between kinda guy.

Olpert pointed up the bridge: He’s coming.

Back down toward the Citywagon Raven was moving swiftly, twirling his whip at his side, a self-satisfied smirk plastered across his face.

What I’m saying, Bailie — Starx started the car — is that you’ve gotta start living. This in-between shet? It’s just waiting to die, man.

But you like the winter, Olpert said quietly. Doesn’t that mean you’re already dead?

Starx shifted into reverse. Shut your yap, Raven’s here, he said.

Gentlemen! cried the illustrationist, sliding into the backseat. One final question, Mr. Bailie, a most simple question. May I ask what it is you want?

I. . want?

Yes! What you most desire, Mr. Bailie — what is it?

Um. What do you mean?

In life, in love!

In love?

Mr. Bailie, would it be presumptuous to suggest that you are a man without desires? And, Mr. Starx, what about you? What about anyone here, in your nice-looking city?

Starx drummed the steering wheel. What do I want? Quite a question. I mean —

Nevermind! Raven was gleeful, bouncing around in the backseat. You and your fellow citizens are in for a visionary performance! Such a people of longing! Now, let’s go.

Sure, said Starx, backing the car onto Topside Drive.

Mr. Bailie, please, activate your radio device. There are certain preparatory measures that I require. And then, my friends, all will be revealed.

What’s that then? You wanna give us a little sneak preview?

Ah, Mr. Starx, you impatient rogue! I’ll tell you only this: the people of this city strike me as wanting to wall up infinity. And you’re afraid to look on the other side of that wall.

Gotcha, said Starx.

Olpert checked the rearview: Raven was swivelled in the backseat, watching Guardian Bridge recede from view. So you’re going to show us, said Olpert, what?

Raven turned, caught Olpert’s eyes in the mirror, and held them. Why, he said, what you have always known to be true, Mr. Bailie. Only the truth. And nothing more.

WITH THE TV chattering Adine tried her brother again — no response. She flicked channels, ended up back at In the Know. In her telejournalist’s cadence, that exaggerated lilt only spoken on TV, Lanyess was amping the night’s festivities. With We-TV eyes on every corner of the island, she cooed, Cinecity is going to be the place to be. And don’t forget Saturday night’s premiere of All in Together Now — the movie made by you, for us.

These vocal undulations faded into sinewaves, a boring music that had little to do with words. Adine’s thoughts drifted to Debbie: she imagined her now arriving at some dim brown apartment that smelled perennially of stew. Around the dining table would be a bunch of sloppy moccasin’d creatives who subjected each new arrival to hugs, one of them would stroke Debbie’s hair. The food: waterlogged salads and congealed sludgy putties flavoured with great ladles of cumin. And for flouting the rigour of cookbooks these ungodly repasts entitled Debbie’s friends to an unearned, manic pride.

Oh, and the eye contact — incessant and creepy, and palpable behind every unblinking stare was a brain instructing: eye contact, eye contact. Like having dinner with a roomful of those portraits that seemed always to be watching you. Everyone was doing great, each self-celebratory anecdote was met with weirdly vicarious joy. Or, in the rare case of a grievance, a spectacular show of empathy — chests were clutched as though stabbed, then came the hand-pats and aphorisms: Well you’re safe now — You’re good though you know that right? — You are special, you are loved.

These people confused bohemianism for authenticity, homeliness for inner beauty, prolonged, distraught embraces for a communion of souls. And this blind faith in one another stitched their collective mediocrity into a tapestry of the somehow unique, the debatably valuable, the dubiously good. It all spoke to a shared hunger to believe they were loved, they were good, they were surrounded by good. And so when Debbie came home from these dinners Adine had to read the sated look in her eyes as a false light.

Though it was this hunger that Adine had first found attractive, and then fallen in love with. Debbie kissed with a passion approaching fury. In the middle of the night if Adine, overcome with some licentious urge, nudged her out of sleep, she was ready, right away, as though she’d been awake the whole time waiting for it. Her life seemed spent anticipating intimacy — at any chance to be loved, her whole soul sparked and blazed.

Sometimes this was nice. Sometimes it was what Adine wanted too, what she needed even. But quickly Adine learned that Debbie was like this with everyone, and their intimacy started to feel cheap. Just once, she wanted Debbie to say, Not now. Or: Ew your breath is gross. It never mattered if Adine’s breath was gross or she had a little shred of food in her teeth or if Debbie was in the middle of something — a shower, making dinner, work. She returned Adine’s kisses without hesitation, stopped only when Adine pulled away, and even then in her face burned a pleading look, craving more.

She never seemed to feel the frustration or invasion that Adine felt, sometimes, when Debbie snatched her hand or worked a knee between her thighs and Adine’s mind was doing its own thing — contentedly, necessarily alone. Depending on her mood Adine would either ease away or bark, Not now. Rejected, Debbie would wilt a bit and Adine’s frustration would dwindle into guilt, and back to anger for being made to feel guilty, so she’d kiss Debbie with quiet resentment sizzling through her body, and the kiss would feel empty — yet Debbie would still be going for it, all ardour and tongue.

There was something sad about Debbie’s hunger, something desperate and grasping and tragically lonely, lonelier even than being alone. What if she were alone? Without Adine, what would she do? Throw herself into the arms of anyone? Those slipshod hysterical people at her potluck — they’d be there for her, always — and come away smelling of unessential oils? Fine, thought Adine. If that was what she’d rather, a great unwashed orgy of moaning ravenous kisses, a stewy kind of love, then she could have it.

Here was Jeremiah, the judder of him hopping up onto the couch. Adine reached across the cushions to pet her cat, though she couldn’t find him, sensed maybe he was avoiding her hand. On TV some Institute kids were arguing about which bars poured the best cider — though of course their city comprised only the southeast corner of the island, plus maybe the Dredge, one daring young man suggested a spot in Bebrog and was mocked. Adine sprawled onto her stomach, called, Jer? grasped, snapped, clicked her tongue. From somewhere came a faint mewling. But her fingers swept empty air.

THE ARMOIRE WAS six feet tall, baroque and quadrupedal, its legs curled into calligraphic hooves, fronted with a pair of doors whose mirrors had long fallen off. Sam set to cleaning it out — a pair of dusty shoes, the bar from which four coathangers hung, a stray sock, he put everything in a shoebox. On the armoire’s floor he laid an inch of yellow newsprint and a blanket, with a pillow at one end this made a decent bed. Next he drilled a hole in the top and dangled a bare bulb inside, ran it through an eyehook in the ceiling to an outlet by his bed. The light would just stay on, he figured, until bedtime. This is what they did in prison, yet this wasn’t a prison. More a guestroom.

Next he sawed a rectangular hole at chest height in the door, laid runners so a drawer could be inserted to pass his guest essentials and messages. When this was accomplished Sam felt quite pleased with himself, how easily the drawer slid in and out, with a compartment for food and drinks. Above it he drilled a peephole, and looking in he felt proud, it really was like a little bedroom.

Collecting his tools he secured the outside, hammering two-by-fours over the doors, wrapping the whole thing in heavy chains, then produced the combination lock the boy had magically reopened, slid it in place, pinched it shut, and twisted the dial. Sam tried the doors. Solid. No escape. Yet the boy’s words echoed: He always gets free. .

The last stage was making the image. Sam got out the unused drawing pad and pencils that Adine had given him many, many birthdays ago — You were such a good artist as a kid, she’d said, you should do stuff. Finally he had something worthwhile to draw, though this picture needed to look as close as possible to the real thing, so Sam was careful and precise — the shadows, the woodgrain, the doorhandles’ coppery gleam. .

And then it was done. Sam folded the image into the breastpocket of the khaki shirt which he’d found in the shower, and which lay, ready and waiting, upon his neatly made bed.

CALUM STOOD APART from the crowd, first in line in the yellow bevelled waiting area, hood up, his monstrous face concealed. From below came the knock of horsehooves on the cobblestones of Knock Street, Calum pictured a happy couple cuddled up in the carriage and hawked, watched his spit go arcing up and disappear between the tracks — maybe it hit them, maybe not.

From his pole position Calum was first to witness the white dot of the train approaching from UOT, the golden glowing strip above it that indicated the line (Yellow) — a cyclops with a caution-tape eyebrow swimming out of the dusk.

The gate opened, the moving sidewalk swept into motion, Calum stepped onto it as the train’s hull formed around its headlight. A hiss of brakes, a blast of air, the train slowed to match the movator’s speed as it eased into the station. The doors slid open with a singsong chime and people began to climb aboard from the moving sidewalk, everything synchronized and obedient.

No one debarked, everyone was heading to People Park. Calum found a spot inside the doors and the crowd oozed in behind him, bodies melted into one another, the air zinged with shared exuberance and joviality, there was nowhere to hide from it. Though the car was packed still more people piled into it, wedged into non-existent spaces. Calum, sandwiched between a man and a woman, cringed at the heat and tingle of strangers’ bodies. Nearby two old ladies in matching Islandwear jackets had taken the Special Needs seats. Oh it’s so nice to see all these people supporting their city, said one, and the other cawed, It sure is, it sure is.

The train hadn’t yet exited the station, the doors hung open, though the platform was empty and the movator had stopped running. It would be a long, slow, hot trip to Bay Junction. And though they weren’t yet moving, a man, pink-faced and grinning stupidly, reached over Calum’s shoulder to clutch the handrail, squeezing them face to face. Calum shrank inside his hood.

Beside Calum was the ICTS map: all that city between Blackacres and People Park, a long way to ride with this guy in his grill. Squirming, trying to eke out a little space for himself, Calum thought he heard a woman saying something about him, about his hood being up: Not supposed to have hoodies on here, he thought he heard, but wasn’t certain, everyone was talking, the air was a muddle of words. And then that gay little chime sounded and the robotic warning said to please stand back, the doors were closing, and the pink man announced, We’re off! and everyone in the car but Calum cheered.

As the train picked up speed the pink man pressed even closer, his nose almost touched Calum’s. A rubbery pink neck disappeared into a white shirt, collar yellowing, stained a deeper yellow in splotches at his armpits, a few stout black hairs investigated the outer world from his nostrils, the maroon crescent of a razor’s nick scabbed his chin, his odour was sickly and moist as rotten fruit.

Then he spoke: You excited?

Calum’s stomach lurched.

But it was the woman behind Calum who replied, You bet, speaking to the pink man not just over but through Calum, as if he weren’t even there.

My wife and kids have been in the park all day, said the pink man, saving a seat for me, and the woman said, My boyfriend too, and someone else said, Lucky you guys, and people laughed and the laughter all around him made Calum feel hateful and small.

The train rocked along the elevated lines above Lakeside, to the south the smoke-coloured lake caught the setting sun in purple and pink streaks. Next stop, Budai Beach, announced the train. Budai Beach Station, next stop. And there was another cheer — from which a Ra-ven chant evolved, first a few voices and then the whole car in chorus, feet stomped and hands clapped. Calum’s head throbbed, he looked down, the pink man’s galoshes were toe to toe with his floppy sneakers, his breath drifted outward in a sweet-sour wash.

Amid all that joy Calum imagined the pink man saying something like, Young man, you’re not joining us? You aren’t excited for the big show tonight? And when Calum said nothing the pink man would say, Here’s a young man who’s not excited for the big show tonight, and at this the whole car would boo — and Calum would sweep off the hood, show them his ruined face, his monster’s face, and smash the pink man’s head through the window.

A fantasy. Instead the chanting eased as the train slowed into Budai Beach Station, and Calum hid inside his hood.

There was no more room, the stranded commuters swept past on the movator, faces dumbfounded, while the train slunk through the station. Next train, see you at the park, cried the pink man, and everyone laughed. At this a scream rose up in Calum — he swatted the pink man’s hand from the handrail. An air leak of a voice said, Hey, and another said, Come on, kid, you can’t just hit people. Meanwhile the pink man was puffing himself up, trembling. Animals, he muttered, animals. .

Animals? Calum laughed a little gunfire laugh.

But no one joined in. He felt an entire traincar’s worth of eyes turning on him, everyone on the pink man’s side, who was saying, They’re just animals — and did this elicit a murmur of agreement? Many faces glared at him. Calum laughed again, a lonesome yelp into the crowd. White stuff foamed at the corners of the pink man’s lips. You animal, he growled, emboldened, you’re just a animal, you’re all animals, and Calum laughed again, but the laugh sounded forced and desperate, and his face was burning, and voices were saying, Get this kid off the train.

Hands fell upon him, he was guided to the exit doors, where a final shove sent him staggering onto the platform. He backed away staring at the people on the train, who stared back: all those eyes loathing his sad two own. The doors chimed, thumped closed, and the train sped out of the station. Across the tracks upon the westbound platform a few dozen commuters observed Calum with mild curiosity. He felt on a stage, humiliated.

And so he ran. Down the steps, into Mount Mustela, east along Paths that curled between houses and duplexes, along Crescents onto Trails and Ways, finally released into the open, lamplit swath of Mustela Boulevard. Here he headed north, passing the fur shops and Bookland, his sneakers slapped and echoed, his lungs burned, he couldn’t stop. Through the Necropolis, he skirted the edge of the dump, climbed the pedestrian walkway over Lowell Overpass, took the stairs back down alongside the canal, which he followed in the growing dark, and at last emerged onto Topside Drive. Up ahead, in a golden ribbon, twinkled the lights of Guardian Bridge.

VIII

ROM THE SPOT he’d procured, front row, dead centre, Kellogg gloated as more and more people arrived to increasingly poor views of the stage. Spectators swelled up the hills to the north, east, and south, and beyond, onto the streets that circled People Park. Despite a handmade NO SPECTATION sign the parking lot of Street’s Milk & Things hosted a tailgate party: in the houseboat’s former site men dug ciders from a cooler and young mums suckled babies at their breasts. Latecomers packed the western hillock out back of the gazebo — though they’d see nothing, not even the videoscreens, at least they could claim having been there.

Look at these poor saps, proclaimed Kellogg, gesturing around the common. Not like us earlybirds, we got the worm! And by worm I mean the best seats in the house. He gave a thumbs-up to Pearl who sat with Elsie-Anne on their little blanketed claim, and landed a triumphant smirk on some lesser father a few rows back.

Gip took his father’s hand. I know, Dad. Thanks.

The wild, panicked fervour that had the boy careening around the park all day had tightened into tenser, almost pensive anticipation. He seemed subdued, or at least focused, leaning there on the guardrail, eyes on the trunk from which Raven would appear at nine.

The sun went down, the crowd pressed in, Pearl and Elsie-Anne joined Kellogg and Gip at the barricades. Gazeboside Helpers flitted around, walkie-talkies crackling: Keep your positions and maintain order — B-Squad ready? — Silentium, Logica, Securitatem, Prudentia — Absolutely retain order. . The messages sputtered, all those bodies on the common disrupted the frequencies.

So, Gip, said Kellogg, any guesses what Raven’s going to do? — a question he’d asked since noon to no avail. Might there be clues in your book? Want Mummy to get it out of your bag?

It wouldn’t be in the Grammar, Dad, said Gip. As if!

No insights? Being his biggest fan and all?

Can’t you just wait? You’re so impatient. Gosh!

There’s something to be said for surprises, said Pearl, handing Gip the day’s final round of meds and a box of apple juice. No grape? he said, and Pearl said, They don’t have grape here, only this. He washed down the pills, Pearl stashed the container in Gip’s knapsack and dropped it at her feet. This is fun, she said. What a view! Thanks, Kellogg.

But Kellogg was distracted. At the back of the gazebo lurked one of the men in khaki, apart from the rest. Someone’s cameralight, scanning the stage, shone upon him momentarily: a skittish character with a facial abrasion — the man from earlier, the one who’d nearly crushed Elsie-Annie with an armful of lumber. Kellogg waved, the Helper saw him and shrunk into the shadows. Who’s that? said Pearl. He’s. . Kellogg began, but wasn’t sure what to say.

WHILE A YELLOWLINE train swept from City Centre into Parkside West Station, at the head of the southbound platform a lone traveller sat motionless with a duffelbag between his feet. Dressed in black from head to toe, face concealed in a balaclava, this person watched impassively as the train slowed and unleashed a pack of Jubilee merrymakers and then slid off, evacuated and empty, toward Bridge Station.

Once the crowd had cleared, two figures — one tall and thin, the other stocky and manic, both in leather — approached the seated man. After an exchange of shifty nods, some furtive looks up and down the platform, and a few minutes of contrived estrangement, amid a clatter and screech and a funnelcloud of trash swirling up from the tracks, the PA announced a Whitehall train, the movator started up, and the men assembled to board.

In the first car the trio took seats adjacent to but not exactly beside one another. Hissing, the train eased alongside the empty platform. Through its open doors came the noise from People Park, an oceanic murmur, lunar and tidal and ancient. Then the doors played their song and closed and the PA said, Next stop, City Centre. City Centre Station, next stop, and they were heading off south into the evening.

In a low voice Pop said, Thank you for adjoining me.

Tragedy shook his fist. Fuggin justice, man.

Will be θerved, added Havoc, spat, and smeared the jiggling wad into a wetspot with a generic black sneaker.

BEHIND THE GAZEBO, at the edge of Crocker Pond, B-Squad stood guard outside the boathouse. A light glowed inside this ersatz greenroom: prior to each show the illustrationist required an hour, alone, to prepare himself with visualizations.

So, said Starx, I’ve been meaning to tell you — that dream you said you have?

Olpert was confused.

That dream you told him. . Starx nodded at the boathouse.

Oh.

I have it too. Exactly the same. It was like you were telling him stuff from my own brain, Bailie. Superweird.

Well, said Olpert, that wasn’t really my dream. I think he. . put it there.

Whatever, right? I hate this shet about how dreams are supposed to reveal secrets. If you lie to yourself when you’re awake, who’s to say you don’t lie to yourself in your dreams? So your dream, my dream, who cares. It’s all made-up anyway, probably. Me, the only thing I like about dreams is they put me to sleep.

What do you mean?

I mean, if I lie there thinking about the day, or something that’s already happened, I can’t get to sleep. But as soon as I let my brain go off and make stuff up — fantasies or whatever — it shifts into dreams. Like I sort of dream myself to sleep. You?

I don’t know. Olpert looked away, looked back, opened his mouth, closed it, and looked away again.

Something on your mind, Bailie? You’ve been weird all day. Still hungover?

No, it’s just. I was. I don’t know.

Talk.

Okay, said Olpert. Okay, I was just thinking about something. Or I’ve been remembering something. Because of what happened last night, at the bar. With. . Debbie.

Yeah?

It’s a long story sort of.

What else are we going to do, twiddle each other’s dicks?

Olpert recoiled. Ew, no.

Then?

Okay, Olpert said, and sighed deeply, as if to refuel himself for what he was about to say. Then he spoke: When I was in fifth grade, a scientist came to our classroom. In, you know, one of those white coats? A real scientist. Anyway what he did was, and he probably did some other stuff first, some other experiments or told us some facts or something, but then he pulled a container out of his bag, a black medical bag, and he was very careful with it. It was that really cold stuff?

Dry ice.

No. A chemical, not nitrous oxide but. .

Starx waved his hand: whatever.

So he opens the container and the stuff inside is steaming, there’s fog coming out of it. Like a beaker in a mad scientist’s lab on TV, like a TV version of science. Or witchcraft.

Right.

Then he, the scientist, asks if anyone’s got a piece of fruit in their lunch. I put up my hand, and I don’t know why because everyone, right away, all the kids, started going, Olpert’s got fruit, Olpert’s got fruit.

Starx snorted: Fruit.

And the thing, this is the main thing, so pay attention, okay? The main thing is I’ve got a huge crush on the girl I sit behind, who’s in sixth grade, Katie Sharpe. I stare at her back all day long. Not even a crush, Starx. I love her. But back then that one year makes so much difference. Like she’s on the other side of a river and there’s no way across? But she has no idea I’m on the other side of the river, or there even is a river? I love Katie Sharpe and she has no idea I exist. The ground could fall away at my feet and I could get sucked into that river and drown and she’d — she’d have no idea.

Where is she now?

I don’t know, married probably. Probably happy. But anyway, now you know about Katie Sharpe. So she’s sitting in front of me and the scientist pulls out a pair of tongs and starts clacking them and goes, Okay, son, bring that fruit on up here, which was an apple.

Better than a banana.

So I took my apple up to him. And he takes the apple in his tongs and he does it all dramatic, he holds it up, he takes the apple and lifts it for the class to see, which is agonizing, Starx, especially because of Katie, and then he slowly dips the apple into the container where the fog is coming out of. And he holds it in there for a bit. And I’m just standing there the whole time, waiting for my apple back. Then he pulls the apple out.

How’d it look?

Maybe a bit white but otherwise the same. Then the scientist pulls a hammer, a little reflex hammer, out of his bag and hands it to me, and holds the apple in the tongs and he tells me to tap the apple with the hammer. So I do.

Hard?

No, regular. And it shatters! Like it’s made of glass the thing breaks into little pieces all over the place — my apple! And I don’t even hit it hard, just a little tap, and it just. . It explodes. Everyone cheered. I remember that, how everyone clapped and I rushed to sit down, even Katie was clapping. I was so humiliated. All I could think was, that was my apple, that was my apple. I felt stupid and, I don’t know. . small.

Small. Yeah.

And a second or two went by, and I can feel it coming, but instead of going to the bathroom I open my desk and put my head inside, and then, can you guess?

No.

I puked, said Olpert. Splash, splash, splash, all inside my desk. And the room went really quiet and I know everyone’s looking at me, and then Katie says, Are you okay, Olpert — and that’s just too much. I run. I run, Starx, trailing puke through the room and down the hallway, I run out the school doors and keep running until I get to Bay Junction, and I ride the ferry across the Cove, and then run across the Islet, all the way home. My grandpa’s out front raking leaves and he sees me, but he doesn’t say anything. So I lie down on the lawn and tell him to bury me in leaves. And he does. He just piles them on top of me. It’s cool in the leaves, peaceful. I don’t remember much else after that.

AS THE POTLUCK wound down, to avoid the towers of stew-crusted dishes Debbie’s friends put together an outfit to camouflage her in Whitehall. A game of dress-up: obediently she tried on an assortment of coats and blazers. Masks. A handkerchief tied around her face in the manner of bandits. And at last in the very back of the hall closet someone found a coal-black anorak, and they put it on and pulled up the hood and Debbie’s face disappeared and everyone agreed: perfect.

Her last-ditch attempts to get them to come along were shrugged off — No, this is your thing, Tell us how it went, Just be safe — and Debbie hugged each one of them long and hard, her people, her community, she loved them, and they wished her well and she stepped out onto the street and the door closed behind her and she stood breathing the chilly night air of Bebrog for a quiet, still moment.

She was tired, the whole night had been tiring. When she’d arrived the potluck’s hosts had made her tour their house, she hadn’t been for a while, they’d amassed a small collection of Mr. Ademus originals. Aren’t they great, she was told, and she had to agree, despite visions of Adine shaking her head in dismay and disgust. The whole night, really, she’d been thinking of Adine.

Throughout dinner the way they’d parted nagged her, she felt the tug of it from across town. What if now she just went home? No, she’d go home after: Adine would be there, she’d always be there, goggled and hermitically waiting, they’d make jokes and/or love, it’d be as if the fight never happened.

Debbie walked to Greenwood Station, transferred at City Centre, and Yellowlined past her stop at Knock Street and up into the Zone. In Blackacres she emerged again into the cold still night, looked north up F Street, back south — a fifteen-minute walk home. But she needed to see. So she flipped the hood of the anorak and crossed into Whitehall, down the murky serviceways to the silos and, finally, underground.

She’d forgotten a flashlight, had to fumble into the tunnel toward that ghastly screaming at its end, a factory of screaming down there in the dark. Along she went, bracing herself — and then with a sudden roar the cavern opened up, a formless howling washed over her, and she stared into the blackness and had to resist the urge to flee.

Noise was everywhere, shrieking, blistering, industrial, the grind and wail of some ruined machine. It stabbed into her ears and buzzed through her face, tingled down her limbs and collected throbbing in her hands and feet. Her skin seemed to surge with it, to expand and contract as though it were an organism apart from her, breathing. But this wasn’t just noise, it was some sort of human music — she had to think of it as music.

As she might enter some black and churning ocean, Debbie stepped between two towers of electronics into the cipher. And here were people. Someone pushed against her, something electric zipped up her arm. Her instinct was to pull away but the person pressed closer. She waited tensely while their bodies touched, her skin humming. And then this person, whoever it was, released and drifted off into the crowd.

It had all been so intimate: contact, lingering, separation. The music suggested violence but among the people there was none. Everyone moved languidly, almost sleepily. She thought, They’re all figures lost in the same dream. And wanting to join the dream Debbie unclenched her fists, tried to relax. The song, or whatever it was, had changed — now vaporous and airy, like, she thought. . like what? No words came.

Debbie moved deeper into the group, she was prodded and fondled, the sound transformed. Her emotions tumbled from fear to comfort to pleasure, someone stroked the back of her neck, and now she felt shy, though this person slid away and she was overcome with loneliness. Another step, everything changed again: a rotary saw tearing through metal, a shower of sparks. Hands were tugging her down. She crouched alongside someone who nuzzled into her, and she caressed this person, this faceless stranger. Whoever it was, their body was warm.

ON THE STREET outside City Centre Station people stood around with the awkward spacing of strangers at a bad party, watches were checked and checked again, toes tapped, exasperation and impatience abounded. Yet when a train arrived each face brightened: finally, the laggard might be here! And should this person come hustling down from the platform, all apologies and performed bluster, the other would sigh and tell them: It’s fine, the park’s full though, we’re just going to have to watch in Cinecity.

Yet in Cinecity, with live coverage projected on the bigscreen, you were guaranteed a view not just of the stage, but of everything. All those cameras afforded perspectives unimaginable for a single human being, from aerial panoramas atop Podesta Tower to intimate handheld shots wobbling through the crowds. And in the theatre each set of newcomers delighted to discover revelry and anticipation equal to what they imagined down on the common, among those witnessing — or about to witness — the real thing.

The night’s events were hosted gamely by Lucal Wagstaffe and Isa Lanyess, lofted over People Park in the basket of a crane-type apparatus. Trained on their faces was a camera at which Lanyess beamed and Wagstaffe tilted his head ponderously. The crane’s arm swung at an elbowjoint and held We-TV’s preeminent Faces in its fist, and in their own fists they held microphones, the bulbous foam tips pressed to their lips.

The atmosphere here at People Park is electric, said Wagstaffe, and Lanyess grinned a set of horsey teeth and whinnied, Just the sheer size of the crowd! It’s — I don’t have the words for how it feels out here! and Wagstaffe said, I’ve never seen anything like this in our city before. And we still don’t know, added Isa Lanyess with a coy note of mystery, the answer to the question everyone’s asking: what will Raven do?

Blow himself up, let’s hope, said Adine to her TV. She picked up her cordless and hit TALK: only the dialtone. Where was Sam? Adine tapped the antenna on her teeth, felt her way over to the refrigerator, neither hungry nor thirsty, just to point her face at the cool air inside. A funny smell — though not from the fridge. Debbie’s sick bird, she remembered, dying upon the window sill.

Just look at the number of people, cried Lanyess. What a turnout!

Simply amazing, said Wagstaffe. Everyone’s here.

On the little TV in their kitchen Cora and Rupe were treated to a grandiose dollying shot over the common.

Rupe said, How come we can’t go there too, Ma?

Hush now. We can see everything fine at home.

But this wasn’t true: the picture was too small, identifying faces was akin to picking out raindrops from a monsoon.

Do you think Calum’s there?

Hush.

If he still hasn’t come home, Ma, don’t you —

Cora swatted at him. I said hush!

Ma? Is that him? There! Is it —

There’s just so many people, said Cora softly. There’s too many people to tell.

THE NEXT DAY, said Olpert, the walk to school was the saddest walk of my life.

Yeah?

The whole way from Bay Junction I thought about that apple, the way it just exploded, and I thought — and don’t laugh at me here, I was a kid — that my heart felt the same way. Like it had just. . shattered. But with such a soft little tap.

Fug.

And, Starx? Is love like that? I figure it’s that stuff, that steaming stuff, and you soak your heart in it, and then someone pulls out a hammer and smashes everything to pieces. And then you feel so so so so so so small.

Starx stared at him. He didn’t say a word.

The light inside the boathouse clicked off. Raven didn’t emerge. Instead, moaning: a mantra or a dirge.

Olpert turned back to his partner. Am I crazy?

Love’s crazy, Bailie. Though Starx seemed to be talking to himself — No, thought Olpert, more a memory of himself. Love’s a fuggin punt to the grapes for sure, he said.

BY QUARTER TO NINE People Park and its adjacent neighbourhoods were filled to capacity, there was nowhere else for anyone to go. And while Gip focused unwaveringly on the illustrationist’s trunk, spotlit at the front of the stage, Kellogg was more interested in the shifty guy with the thing on his face, who emerged from the shadows every so often to examine the crowd. And each time he did Kellogg drew his family a little closer.

Everywhere people trained video cameras on one another. Eyebrows lifted, fingers pointed, lenses reflected lenses to infinity. There you are, people said, waving, Good to see you — Say something to the camera — I don’t know you but hi! What boundless cheer, thought Kellogg, how good and decent a city could be. He wrapped his arm around Pearl, who hoisted Elsie-Anne on her hip, and she hugged him back while Gip chanted Ra-ven under his breath — what a champ! Had the Pooles ever had such a perfect, happy time? Not as a family, together, never. And the show hadn’t even started yet.

NFLM Helpers moved through the crowd handing out sparklers. Go on, Annie, said Pearl, and warily Elsie-Anne shouldered her purse and took a sparkler and held it at arm’s length, hypnotized by the flaring tip. That’s not how you do it, Dorkus, said Gip. He snatched the sparkler and whirled it through the air: RAVEN, RAVEN, RAVEN. Easy now, said Kellogg. I just wanted to show her, said Gip, though he’d already lost interest. The sparkler was discarded, it fizzled on the ground into a dead tin stick.

IN MATCHING BLACK outfits Havoc, Tragedy, and Pop descended from Knock Street Station into Lower Olde Towne. At the station’s entrance Pop removed his balaclava and glared into the security camera. I am whom I am, he howled. Envision me!

Tragedy elbowed into the shot, wonky eye shooting off lakeward, to shake a masturbatory gesture at the lens. Restribution, he said. Right?

Restri-fuggin-bution indeed, agreed Pop. Now let’s get our moves on.

Lower Olde Towne was devoid of life, the tourist shops and artisanal craft stores closed, the B&B’s along Knock Street seemed to be sleeping. From the station the trio pushed north, over cobblestones mottled with mats of hay masking paddies of horsedung. But the horses were stabled in Kidd’s Harbour, their drivers downtown for the big show — along with, it seemed, everyone else.

The trio assembled under the awning of an Islandwear boutique. Pop opened his duffel, removed a can of spraypaint, puffed a bright green burst onto the wall.

Fuggin yeah, said Havoc, that’θ a θtart.

I’ve crafted a text, said Pop, removing a sheaf of papers from his pocket. He handed a section each to Havoc and Tragedy. I’ve divisioned it into chapters, one to each of us.

Tragedy leafed through the pages. Wow. We got enough paint?

Pop spread the bag open: it was full of cans. Absolutesimally, he said.

YOUNG PEOPLE occupied the common’s eastern hillside. Most were drunk. Voices hooted, ciders made the rounds, empties were pitched into the orchard, bottlecaps flicked and forgotten. A small group started a lethargic and half-ironic Ra-ven chant, abandoned to apathy. The booze had them grasping at heedlessness and rebellion, despite curfews and homework in the backs of their minds.

Edie shared a flask of schnapps with a boy from school. He got hold of a sparkler, wrote, FUG, and a mum racing by with her daughters shielded their eyes.

Laughing, Edie handed him the flask.

Where’s Calum, he said.

No idea, said Edie, I haven’t heard from him since yesterday. Though if he wants to ruin his life, whatever, it’s his problem, she said, watching the boy drink. He doesn’t care about his future? Fine. I tried to help him, but you can only do so much, right?

What? the boy said.

Nothing, said Edie, and reclaimed the flask, and took another drink.

LESS THAN A MINUTE, said Wagstaffe, and Isa Lanyess neighed, The countdown’s begun!

Adine checked the phone again — no Sam, no one. From the TV, kettledrums rumbled and a brass section belched its way through a melody that suggested some imminent triumph. She imagined spotlights dancing, the crowd tensing, the conjoined anticipation of cuddled-up couples. With this came thoughts of Debbie — so Adine reached for the remote and turned up the sound.

Isa Lanyess said, What a magnificent celebration of twenty-five years of this beautiful space, and Wagstaffe clarified, The park, yes, let’s not forget — only thirty seconds to go!

Adine stared into the blackness of her goggles, images of Debbie flitting in her mind’s eye: surrounded by friends, someone else holding her, an insipid snuggly orgy —

On TV the drums were intensifying. Isa Lanyess screamed, Ten seconds, and We-TV’s co-hosts roared in chorus, Nine, eight, seven, six, five. .

Four, shouted everyone in Cinecity.

Three, said Rupe and Cora.

Two, thought Adine, grudgingly.

One, whispered Gip.

The drums stopped.

The lights went out.

Every clock and watch froze at once: it was nine.

From somewhere a lone trumpet wailed a single, sad note. The Podesta Tower searchlights swung over the crowd, illuminating thousands of expressions of rapture and wonder. The videoscreens came to life in a grey mess of static, which organized into a shuffle of photographs meant to mimic movement. A ten-second, grainy loop played on repeat: the silhouette of a raven flapping across a colourless sky.

The trumpet paused. Into the silence pattered a drumroll, not just suspenseful but militaristic — a reveille. As it crescendo’d the birds on the videoscreens flew faster, faster.

Here we go, whispered Wagstaffe, and Kellogg, and hundreds of other dads.

The Podesta Tower searchlights, twirling like streamers in a gale, whipped together into a single spot upon the helicopter on the Grand Saloon’s roof. The fat white band dragged through the orchard’s drunk youngsters, down into the common, all the way up, slow as a sunrise, to the gazebo: the trunk opened and in this pillar of light stood Raven.

A roar rose up that Adine heard not just on TV, but through her windows, the whole island felt rocked by a seismic explosion. And the subsequent applause was the gallop of hot magma, thundering down.

Beaming at his public, arms wide to accept their adulation, Raven stepped from the trunk onto the catwalk. The stagelights came up. His tracksuit glowed, his baldhead was incandescent, he waved and blew kisses and grinned.

Yes, he cried into a headset microphone. Welcome!

Here he is, said Wagstaffe. Here’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for.

Holy shet speak for yourself, said Adine, though no one heard her but Jeremiah.

WAY OUT IN Whitehall all Debbie could hear was a droning roar, changing as she moved through it, as she bumped against and slid away from strangers who fondled her and now she was fondling them back, and when a pair of lips came out of the dark and pressed to hers what could she do but return the kiss? For a moment she felt guilty, what about Adine —

But these thoughts were too distinct, too literal: they skidded away from her, lost in all that sound. She reached into the darkness for someone to touch. Hands found and passed her, one set to the next. And somehow the screaming began to disappear, to fold inside itself, becoming at once somehow bigger and smaller than silence.

The other people began to disappear inside it too: Debbie became pure sensation, she tingled and shivered, she was hot and cold and awake and asleep, all at once, and she knew that everything anyone had ever known could be found trapped inside this moment, this sound that was no longer audible, but something else.

Everything was here, everything was now. How could there ever be anything but this?

She felt her voice welling up. She too could make this sound, she understood at last how to make this essential sound, this non-sound, it gathered and swelled inside her and she opened her mouth to give it life —

And that was when the power went out.

ALL THE LIGHTS in People Park surged at once: the place glowed as if daytime had descended from the night sky. Kellogg reeled. Whoa, he said, that’s bright! But Gip stared into it, wide-eyed and trusting.

Look at you, laughed Raven, indicating the screens on either side of the stage.

Upon them appeared the crowd, alive in that blaze of light. And from the crowd hundreds of cameras pointed at the screens, and cameras shot the people shooting themselves shooting the screen and on the screens everyone saw themselves and roared in one voice: Ra-ven, Ra-ven, Ra-ven.

Look at you, said Raven, you’re beautiful, thank you!

ADINE TRIED EVERYTHING: when the remote failed she felt her way to the TV and twisted the volume, changed the channel, turned the set off and on — nothing. She picked up the cordless phone, hammered the buttons, listened. . It was dead too.

THE LIGHTS DIMMED. Raven compelled silence. And so there was silence.

People! he said, speaking the word as an imperative. Tonight we have come to bear witness to something truly spectacular. I must admit I have never attempted anything this ambitious before, and I am honoured to try it, here, in your city — not great, indeed, but well built.

This elicited a dubious and scant ovation.

But, people! What is most important is that I have discovered a truth manifest in this land. By means of your solitary situation I fear you are to yourselves unknown, apt enough to think there might be something supernatural about this place. Am I wrong?

He quashed a Ra-ven reprise with an impatient wave.

No, no indeed. What I need from you, from everyone in your fair city, is to know you are the right sort of people — are you? Are you the right sort of people?

They were sure about this: Yes! hollered the crowd.

Raven’s eyes widened. Are you really? Do you believe?

Yes! (Really! misspoke Kellogg.)

Because this will not work without the right sort of people — people who believe, people who are willing to open their eyes and look. None of us knows what the fair semblance of a city might conceal. Is it no better than a brushed exterior? A white sepulchre? Or perhaps rather illustrative than magical?

Cheers.

What you will see tonight will not be deception, nor an illusion, nor some spurious trick of the light.

More cheers.

It will be the truth! That is why I am here, that is what I plan to illustrate to you — humbly, of course. For many such journeys are possible. This is only one.

Again, in a single voice, the crowd performed on cue.

I’ve spent now two full days in your city. When I arrived I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. But, fortunately, I had some excellent guides who showed me around, and taught me some important lessons as well. .

Backstage, Olpert felt a twang of anxiety that the illustrationist might mention him by name. He actually felt faint, swooned a little. But Starx caught him — Whoa there, Bailie! — and guided him pondside into a deckchair branded Municipal Works. You okay, pal? Starx asked, kneeling. If you’re going to barf again, at least do it in the water.

Raven continued: But here we are! And what a perfect opportunity to reveal something deeply fundamental to what — I think, at least — this city is all about.

The crowd was buzzing now.

Wagstaffe said, Raven’s making hints about what’s to come, though at home in Laing Towers Rupe and his mother didn’t hear this, Cora was smacking the TV to coax a picture back. But the set was out. The whole Zone was out.

What sounded like a bomb went off on the common. Olpert nearly fell into the pond.

Easy, buddy, said Starx. No war on yet.

Right, said Olpert. Just the show.

You want to go watch?

Do you?

Hey, said Starx, you make the call. We’re B-Squad, right? Can’t split up B-Squad!

B-Squad, agreed Olpert. Then: Do you mind if we just stay here, Starx?

I do not.

They gazed out over Crocker Pond, a sheet of glossed ebony.

I should pitch a fifth pillar, said Starx. Fidelititum, or something. Because isn’t that what’s most important, Bailie?

Fidelititum?

Exactly.

From the common, another roar. The illustrationist’s voice echoed: Yes, yes!

So here’s my story, said Starx, pulling up a deckchair. I told you I used to be married?

You did.

Well. So. My wife, my ex-wife, she ran this bookshop in Mount Mustela — Bookland.

She ran that?

Still does. Inherited it from her parents. Anyway she’s working late one night. Just doing inventory or whatever. And man, I told her I don’t know how many times it was a bad idea to be there all alone so late. Even though it’s east of the canal.

I work alone late.

I know you do, pal. Listen for a sec though? So this one night she’s there, this is two years ago, it’s probably midnight or something, and she looks up and those people are doing that thing where they paint the windows black —

In Mount Mustela?

My lady, god love her, she’s a tough bird, she goes right out front and is like, what are you doing to my store, I’m right here! There are maybe a dozen of those fuggin animals. And, sure, they stop painting. But then they just close in on her.

Oh no.

Starx stood, started pacing. I would have killed them, he said, wheeling at Olpert and brandishing one of his little fists. If I’d been there, I mean. You hear me?

What happened?

What the fug do you think happened?

I don’t —

What happened was that she came home and told me, she’s crying, and I’m — Bailie. I don’t know what to do. I can’t even describe this feeling. Not even angry. It’s something way beyond that, like having some crazy evil part of yourself open up. Your brain starts shooting off in all these directions. I’m picturing finding these people, these animals, and tearing them apart with my bare hands. Just ripping them apart. You know?

From the common the Ra-ven chant started up again.

Starx continued: This lady of mine, Bailie, she was a fuggin spitfire. Lakeview-raised, the whole bit. But after this, after they interfered with her, she’s half that person. I don’t know what to do, so I call Griggs. He tells me to bring her right away, but she wants to take a shower. She goes into the bathroom and locks the door and I’m out there screaming we have to go, she can’t do this — so what do I do? I break the door down.

Olpert thought, Interfered. What did that mean?

My logic is that we have to preserve all the evidence, so the HG’s can do what they need to, so I can’t let her shower. Right? And, Bailie, this is not a woman who anyone lets do anything. Nobody didn’t let her do anything, ever. She just did or didn’t. But now she’s barely there, she’s limp, there’s nothing in her eyes. So I pick her up and carry her outside and — Bailie, it was horrible, horrible. I’ll never forgive myself for that.

Starx stopped pacing. He stood at the pond’s edge watching the water, his back to Olpert. Telling Starx about Katie Sharpe and the frozen apple seemed a terrible mistake now, so indulgent and pointless. The big man’s whole world seemed coiled around that singled word — interfered — and when he’d spoken it everything had come unspooling: he appeared now smaller, drained, and spent.

From the common came another roar. Raven cried, Who will help me, who will help me, who among you will join me onstage and help me, here, tonight?

POP HANDED HAVOC and Tragedy a can of spraypaint each. He zipped the duffel, slung it over his shoulder, and flapped his manifesto. Restribution, he said, saluted, and crossed Knock Street at a low scuttle. While Pop stole around the side of the Temple, Tragedy pulled a radio from his jacket, held it to his face, and spoke: Griggs, it’s Pea and Dack, the squab’s in the oven. A reply came crackling back: Good lookin out. Bring him in.

KNEELING ON THE RUG by the dead TV Adine became aware of a stillness that extended beyond her apartment. A blackout, she said, aloud. She moved to the window, opened it, listened. Her neighbours were pouring onto the streets, Adine was struck by how many they seemed. Their voices were loud and curious, almost bold, and amplified as though seeking echoes. You without power too? asked someone and someone else replied, Yeah, right in the middle of the show, and Adine thought, Me too, but didn’t call down to them, just listened as the two of them decided to head together to Cinecity. Adine closed the window, sat in the nook, pulled a pillow onto her lap and stared into the goggles. As always, everything was dark. But in a blackedout world, she wondered, what if anything did being blind mean?

SWELLED TO GARGANTUAN proportions on the videoscreens was the face of the boy, pudgy and astonished, the eyes of someone woken from a dream to live that same dream.

Yes, you, my friend, said Raven, you in the red cap.

With needless help from Kellogg (a hand on his son’s rear), two Helpers lifted the boy onto the catwalk.

From the right sort of people, said Raven, the right sort of boy!

The crowd went berserk with envy and vicarious joy.

Please, now, silence, said Raven. Come, son. Yes. On the ducktape X. Your name?

Gip Poole.

Hello, Gip Poole! Now, Gip Poole, are you the right sort of boy? Do you believe?

Gip looked at his parents. Kellogg shouted, Say yes!

Yes, said Gip.

Raven snapped three times. From the white trunk flew doves, he extended his arms, three landed on the left, two on the right. His expression clouded. He motioned with his fingertips, glared at the trunk. No sixth bird appeared. Snapped three more times. Nothing. The crowd shifted uneasily, the lack of symmetry was unsettling.

With a shrug, Raven lifted his hands over his head, the doves exploded into a shower of sparks. Kellogg screamed and lunged, a Helper straightarmed him behind the barricade. But Gip seemed less frightened than delighted: all around him fire came sizzling down, and he spun happily as though basking in the year’s first snowstorm.

THE AIR IN THE cavern felt diluted, sapped. Debbie was bumped from behind. This time the touch didn’t feel sensual, but urgent. People seemed to be congregating with new purpose, someone pushed her — and the whole group heaved and she was swept up, into the tunnel, bodies pressed around her on all sides.

And now they were running.

Down they went, zagging left, a hard right — starlings wheeling in a massive flock. No one said anything. The tunnel descended, swerved, Debbie tripped but she was caught and bolstered, there was no room to fall: a mad, wordless stampede down through the dim warrens of the city.

On they went, and then the tunnel seemed to angle upward again. Debbie’s feet met stairs. She climbed, she was lifted. Ahead a shaft of light shone from some window or opening, and they reached it and burst into the night. The air felt sharp and cool. She looked around: they’d surfaced inside the gates of the Mount Mustela Necropolis.

Pushed up from underground — disinterred — here they were, a faceless horde, their numbers inestimably fading into the shadows. Everyone had gone still. The only movement came from a shirtless guy in a strange helmet, hoisting a lithe figure atop the roof of a little crypt. This person rose to her feet and swept back her hood: the girl with the handprint haircut.

Everyone pressed in close, leaving Debbie behind. The Hand moved to the edge of the crypt’s roof, a pastor facing her parish. No one said anything. The silence reminded Debbie of that dreadful empty moment between a screech of tires and the explosion of steel and glass.

The Hand spoke: Look!

She pointed east, where a brilliant gloriole floated above People Park — the stagelights fanning up from the common in a silky wash. Then she pointed west: the entire Zone was cast in darkness, lights out all the way from Whitehall to Lowell Canal. And, finally, south: in LOT the Dredge Niteclub glowed in purple strips around its rooftop, the Mews sparkled and gleamed, Mount Mustela glittered like a circuitboard.

Here it’s just darkness and damp cold, preached the Hand. There it’s all sunshine.

Voices swelled in dissent — shouts, jeers, someone barked, someone squawked.

The Hand hushed them, beckoned them closer.

Debbie, abandoned on the periphery, realized the Hand was whispering. She caught a few chilling words — All their good deeds and dreams won’t save them — and backed away, ducked behind a gravestone, crawled into a scraggle of shrubs, and lay there in the cool wet earth, her pulse throbbing through her entire body, while the Hand murmured instructions Debbie couldn’t hear to the mob among the graves.

PLEASE, SAID RAVEN, Gip, reach into this trunk and pull out everything you find.

Gip produced a straitjacket, a half-dozen locks, various harnesses and clasps, leather straps, a length of chain that unravelled, yard after yard, into a pile. While this collected at Gip’s feet, a Helper shuffled onstage — the sketchy character with the facial growth.

Raven covered his microphone, hissed, Get out of here.

The guy went scuttling past the trunk and off into the shadows.

Did that man drop something inside that box? said Kellogg. Pearly? A piece of paper? Pearl?

Pearl squeezed Kellogg. Pure delight lit her eyes. How about our boy up there, she whispered. Look at him! He’s so happy. Have you ever seen him so happy?

The chain’s end wriggled clanking onto the stage.

Kellogg, for the benefit of anyone within earshot, hollered, That’s our boy!

Raven knelt. Gip, please install me in these restraints. Go on. Begin with the straitjacket. Yes, one arm here, the other here. Now these buckles, there you go.

Gip did as he was told. Closeups appeared on the videoscreens. Everyone watched.

Now test the clasps, said Raven. Make sure they’re tight. How old are you, Gip?

Ten and one quarter, said Gip, yanking at an errant cord. Nearly two.

Ten and two quarters! Is that more or less than ten and a half?

Obediently, the crowd laughed.

Gip straightened. They’re all done.

Good, Gip! Good. Yes, they’re very goodly tight indeed.

Isa Lanyess wondered, An escape trick? and Wagstaffe scoffed, You can bet he’s got something a lot more exciting in store than that, and those watching had to agree. Those not watching included Cora and Rupe, flushed into the lightless courtyard of Laing Towers with a dozen co-residents: no one had any power, what was there to do?

Now, Gip, if you could just step back about five feet — yes, that’s it, a bit farther. .

Onto the stage came two Helpers (not the weirdo, noted Kellogg, he’d disappeared) to lower the bound illustrationist into the trunk. A camera swooped overhead and Raven appeared on the videoscreens, a mummy in its sarcophagus.

While my illustration transpires, said Raven, I will be in seclusion. Let good Gip be your guide. And remember: that which we see with our own eyes is the only true miracle.

From somewhere: drumrolls, a splash of cymbals.

The truth is nearly upon you! screamed Raven. I will reveal it from here, like this. Gip, good man, shut me into this box, lock it surely.

Gip closed the lid. The two Helpers swept up the chains, wound them around the trunk, helped him slide the locks in place. The crowd cheered.

Kellogg nudged Pearl. That’s our boy!

Over the loudspeakers came Raven’s muffled voice: Thank you, Gip! Everyone, a round of applause for Gip. Now, if I can direct your attention to the videoscreens. .

FROM ITS ONRAMP Guardian Bridge reminded Calum of a woman, knees up and spread, and he smiled a little at the thought of a retreat down the birth canal — what a perfect way to start a new life. Lights ran along the suspension cables in lilting rows reflected shivering below in the water. Above: a starless sky, a faint moon like a pearl lodged in mucky riverbed. Across the Narrows was the mainland, so close.

From the loudspeakers in People Park Raven implored, Believe, believe. .

With a great boom, the bridge disappeared. Where its outline had been traced in lights now hung only the night. For a moment Calum felt he might be falling — but the road remained steady under his feet. He was not floating in space. The bridge wasn’t gone at all. The lights had merely been turned off. He stepped forward: solid ground.

Calum took another step, another, each one met pavement, and now he was walking out along the pedestrian concourse, gaining confidence. In fact this darkness abetted his escape. He even laughed, though nervously, it was eerie to be moving through such pitch.

A dozen paces out, twenty, fifty. He reached the bridge’s midpoint — halfway there.

And back on the island the drums started up again.

Calum stopped. He turned. People Park glowed.

My friends, said Raven, his voice echoing, with the guidance of good Gip Poole, and bolstered by your nature, are you ready to believe?

The crowd roared.

Do you believe?

From the thousands in People Park came a frenzied bawling, beastly and primal, hungry and desperate. It chilled Calum. He couldn’t move.

Then, please, believe, commanded Raven. Believe!

The drums became thunder — then silence.

Raven howled, Believe!

And Calum was swimming in light.

ON THE VIDEOSCREENS the searchlights swung over the water, the Narrows flowed obliviously along. No structure connected the island to the mainland. No craggy fragments jutted out of Topside Drive, the rest dynamited or concealed. Waves slapped the base of the cliffs on either side. Guardian Bridge had vanished, disappeared — it was gone.

At first the applause came almost tentatively. Gip, alone onstage, waved. People, emboldened by this, cheered. He climbed atop the white trunk and did a little dance, they looked from him to the screens — there was no Guardian Bridge! — and at once the whole park erupted with joy. People whistled and squealed and roared, the crowd thronged, Kellogg and Pearl fell grinning into each other’s arms — their boy was a star! With little inward flicks of his fingertips Gip enticed the crowd’s worship. Yes, he cried. Now you see the truth! Now you truly believe!

And here were the fireworks: the skies came alive with streaks of colour that ruptured in monstrous luminescent spiders of blue, green, red, purple, gold. More went up, great sparkling pinwheels, rockets, and rainbows, the reds volcanic, the whites like bursting stars, aquatic blues unleashed from the sea floor into the heavens. When the sparks fell tinkling down, everyone’s attention returned to the videoscreens.

Raven’s done it, said Wagstaffe. Oh my, said Lanyess. Oh my!

As he came into his unit Sam checked his third watch. The hands were stuck at right angles. Before he could turn on the TV, the phone rang. He picked up. Adine?

But Adine was fumbling her way down the stairwell and onto E Street, where the night air hit her face and the world seemed at once to tumble away and close in. She sensed her neighbours out there engaged in a sort of befuddled dance, moving one person to the next to confirm that, yes, the power was out, what had the illustrationist done, no one knew, they should all go to together to the park and see.

Gip continued to grandstand atop the trunk, ignoring NFLM commands to get down and move offstage. Though few people were watching him now — another burst of pyrotechnics was received with oohs and ahhs. Even his parents failed to notice two Helpers approaching the boy from the wings at a low, menacing crouch.

Hello? said Sam to the empty line. Time’s machine is broken Adine. Hello?

A hand fell upon Adine’s arm and she surprised herself by asking, Debbie?

But no, it was a man, an old man, the hand a gnarled and bony claw. We’re going downtown, he said, the Yellowline’s out, everyone’s walking. Do you need help?

Adine shook her head. No, she said.

But, said the man, can you see?

Yes, she said. I can see.

He released her. Adine sensed him waiting. Out there was darkness, she knew. Though what was the difference between that and this private darkness? Her work seemed so vain now, so misguided and confused. Fug it, she said. And she took off the goggles. No light came searing in. The street was a sludge of dim, shuddery shapes — a crowd, she realized, squinting. People.

What a fantastic lightshow the NFLM are treating us to here tonight, said Wagstaffe. Truly a special night for the city, said Isa Lanyess, and a wonderful way to celebrate. And what an honour for us to share it with all of you, watching at home or in Cinecity.

Hello? said Sam again. No reply. Not even breathing. But the silence was that of a coma, secreting a dreamlife in another world.

The Helpers scooped up Gip and deposited him, squirming and reluctant, into his father’s arms. Wow, champ, said Kellogg, you were amazing. But the joy in the boy’s eyes had dimmed, replaced with a deadened gloss.

From the vacuum in Sam’s phone emerged a voice, echoey and faraway. Hello? it said. Sam’s breath caught in his throat. And the line went dead. Sam sat on his couch with the receiver in his lap. Slowly, he turned to look at the armoire, its doors barred and locked, and listened for any sound within. Nothing. Not yet.

Meanwhile as Adine joined the convoy trooping east from the Zone, and on the roof of the Temple Griggs and Noodles and Magurk cheersed schnappses to a job well done, and Cora dragged Rupe up the inoperative escalator into Blackacres Station, and in his cell in the Temple’s basement Pop hung his head as Havoc — Dack — told him, Enjoy your θtay! and Tragedy/Pea added, You dumb fug, and Olpert and Starx sat numbly watching the fireworks’ reflections shatter in Crocker Pond, and at last the hoodied mob disappeared — back underground? — and Debbie crawled out from the bushes, freed her face from the anorak’s hood, looked across the city and saw the sky was on fire —

ABOVE IT ALL SPUN the Mayor in her tower, around and around and around.

IX

HAT IS WAKING, waking is being born. The sky is pale, not the sky of day or night or dusk or dawn, not clouds, but more a lack of sky. A sky that isn’t there. Or maybe this is what exists behind the sky, now Calum sees what has been there all along. Staggering to his feet he looks up and down the bridge, the road narrows to twin vanishing points in each direction, these distances feel infinite, the horizons look unattainable, as though they’d keep peeling back and away and on forever.

Calum goes to the railing, looks down. Below shrouded in mist might lie a river, if it is a river it disappears into thicker fog beneath the bridge. If it is a river then the river mirrors the sky, which is to say, colourless. If it is a river its surface is still. There is no current. Were Calum to fling his body off the bridge it would fall in silence and hitting the water not make a splash, if there is water, if not it would fall forever, tumbling end over end, a satellite dislodged from orbit in space.

So Calum steps back into the middle of the bridge.

And sits cross-legged on the yellow dividing line, and breathes short hollow breaths. And lays his hands on the knees of his jeans and looks at the palms of his hands, ridged with lines that mean, somehow, fate and love and health and life. He runs the fingers of one hand along the lines of the other. Squeezes the top knuckle of his right thumb. The flesh engorged with what should be blood does not swell purple, and when released no blood retreats, a rosy hue does not return.

Hello, Calum calls. The word disappears: no echo, no trace, it is as if another mouth has pressed to his mouth and eaten the word, swallowed the word.

Was there never a word?

Calum looks at the sky that isn’t quite sky, along the bridge that stretches forever, down at his hands, into the fog that hides what might not be a river.

Hello? says Calum or does he. Does he say then, Hello?

Does he say hello does he not say hello has he not then ever said: hello.