Samedi the Deafness

day the sixth

— I don't understand, said James. Your father orders these men to kill themselves, and they do?

Grieve was sitting in the window seat. James was dressed. She was not.

She smiled weakly and took his hand with both of hers. Her hands were very thin but warm. He could feel her through her hands. She wanted him to be with her, and that meant being with the others.

— He's a hypnotist, she said. The men believe mostly in what they're doing. But men are weak. At the last moment they turn against themselves, no matter how brave. His work helps them to do what they themselves want to do.

— But no one can be hypnotized to kill himself. It's not possible.

— Do you really believe that? asked Grieve. Why? Did you read it in a book somewhere?

The pattern in the carpet was very complicated. Whorls and lines, leaves and vines.

— I'm sorry, she said. I'm just. . I woke badly. Do you know when that happens, when you wake up and your sleep has gained you nothing? You've lost the time in which you slept, but you aren't rested, you didn't dream. You return to yourself with none of the customary gifts.

James nodded. He kissed her on the neck.

— Well, sleep some more, he said. I've got to go meet your father. It's ten minutes to seven.

— You'd better go, she said. Come back to me when you're done.

Her face was completely expressionless, but he felt a thorough affection surrounding him. He was moved by it. He touched her face with his hand.

As he went away, he thought, If they are in a conspiracy, how is it that they spend so much time just sitting around this house, doing nothing? But if they are conspirators, and everything has been set in motion, then there would be nothing to do but wait. Where better to wait than a wealthy man's country house? It did make sense after all. And furthermore, if they were not conspirators, then how were they employed, all the members of the little group? Did they all just live off Stark's wealth working in sinecure positions in the hospital? It would be the perfect cover.

He shut the door, looking through it as it closed at Grieve's pretty face smiling after him.

It was the second time he had gone to her father's chambers. He knew the way very well, and was soon on the stairs, and then before the door.

No one was there. He had expected to see Torquin.

He knocked. No answer. He tried the knob. The door was locked.

What could this mean? he asked himself. He knocked again, louder. Then he noticed a piece of paper taped to the wall beside the door.

james,

please do not knock or make any noise. i am considering certain matters, and can't afford to be disturbed. i'll be ready for your visit at nine. until then, please breakfast, or amuse yourself as you like.

my apologies

stark

James wished that he had seen the note before knocking. But there was nothing to be done about it. He hurried back down the stairs.

Where to go? How to pass these two hours? He did not want to go back to his bedroom. Grieve would be sleeping, and he did not feel like sleeping, or like disturbing her. The poor girl had been confused enough by her sister's return.

He turned down a hall that he hadn't been down before. After a while he emerged into an atrium garden, similar to the one in which he had first seen Stark. Two patients were sitting quietly on a bench while an orderly looked on. They did not start at his arrival.

He continued past. There was an archway and beneath it a passage to the outdoors. He followed it and, going through a set of doors, found himself behind the main house and hospital at the foot of a wooded hill.

I'll go to the top of the hill, he thought, and sit there awhile. That'll clear my head. I have to be clear when I speak to Stark. I have to find out what I can.

He reached the top of the hill in very little time. The woods were mostly pine, and had about them the silence of pines, the flat bed of needles prohibiting undergrowth, and the thick boughs shielding the ground from the sun. He found a place beneath one massive tree, and lay down.

When James woke, an hour had passed. He got to his feet, brushed the needles from his back and legs, and proceeded on down the hill. The day was glorious, and from the hilltop he could see the many houses and enclosures stretching away towards the city.

He wended his way through branches and trees, and came at last to the bottom, and then to the door through which he had come.

How I hate, he thought, to return the same way I came.

He walked around the outside of the house. As he did, he passed window after window, and was afforded many glimpses through, as the light pouring in from behind him suffused the rooms and their inhabitants. A small half porch had begun, and the ground-floor rooms all had French windows. Most were closed, but a pair ahead were open. As he approached he could hear moaning sounds and a sort of thrashing and thumping. He walked quietly closer.

As he passed the open French window, the noise increased.

— Oh, oh, OOOOH.

He could not help but look.

To his horror, there was Grieve, his Grieve, his Lily Violet, naked, her arms and legs wrapped around a man whose face he could not see.

— Grieve! he shouted.

She jumped up. The man stood up, naked, and came towards him. He was quite large and muscular. I'll kill him, thought James. I don't care.

But the man only gave him a reproving look and shut the French windows. James could hear a lock click into place. The man went back over to the bed and climbed on top of Grieve. The moaning began again.

James leaped onto the porch and started banging on the window, but it had no effect. The window wasn't even glass, he realized. It was some sort of plastic. He couldn't even break it. He could see Grieve's head laid back on the bed, her mouth open, her hands on the man's shoulders. They were ignoring him!

Ah, it was too much! In a blind rage, he ran around the back of the house to the back entrance and through. He would find the door. He would find the door and then he would kick it down.

As he rounded the atrium, he heard a voice calling out to him.

— James, James.

He turned.

It was Carlyle.

— James, what's wrong?

James's face was red. He was breathing hard.

— Grieve, he said. I left her this morning asleep in my room, and now I just saw her in bed with some man. I tried to get into the room, but they locked the windows.

Carlyle was smiling.

— That wasn't Grieve, you know.

— What are you talking about? asked James.

— No, it wasn't, said Carlyle. She's crazy about you. She wouldn't sleep with anyone else. It was her sister. Her twin sister.

There was a sinking feeling in James's stomach. Her twin sister. He hadn't been able to see her face in the darkness, but she had seemed like Grieve the night before. Hadn't he spoken to her as if she were? Oh, he had made a fool out of himself.

— I've been a fool, he said to Carlyle.

Carlyle put his arm around James and walked him over to the bench. They both sat.

— Don't worry about it, said Carlyle. Your feelings do you credit. In fact, Grieve will think it is all quite funny, although I doubt Grieve's sister will share in that. What did the man look like?

James described the man.

— Oh, him, said Carlyle. Very bad. He's one of the orderlies. Lara knows she's not supposed to be doing that. Well.

He had a quiet laugh that James liked very much. All in the air about the atrium there was a grand relief. It had not been Grieve; it had not been Grieve at all. But she had looked so much like Grieve. Exactly. It was a bit hard to believe. But he had met her, after all. He knew she existed.

— What time is it? asked James.

— Half past nine.

— Good lord, I'm late, I have to go. I've got to see Stark.

— I thought that was at seven.

Carlyle's face looked a little worried. Apparently it was not acceptable to miss one's appointments with Stark.

— No, it changed to nine. God damn it. I've got to go.

— I'll see you a bit later on, said Carlyle.

James rushed off down the hall.

— It's quite all right, Stark was saying. I was busy anyway. It's better that you came now.

— That's kind of you, said James, walking past him into the room.

He wondered if he should tell him about what had just happened. He decided it was better not to. What father wants to hear about a man having sex with his daughter?

Stark's office was quite lovely. The ceilings were high and plated with colored glass through which the sun shone. There was a ladder to a balcony with chairs and a table. The walls were lined with books. A gramophone stood in one corner.

Stark himself wore a long Chinese dressing gown embroidered with flowers that resembled dragons. It was a purplish blue and gleamed pleasingly in the light.

— I wanted you to come here because I think you have had a great misunderstanding. Also, certain people, I won't mention their names, think that it's funny to confuse you and lead you astray. They've actually been making a concerted effort to do so since you arrived.

He turned and looked off across the room.

— What can I say? They're my children. They cause me joy; they cause me some grief. There have been times when I have told them what to do. But now they're grown, and must be permitted, must be given their head. Isn't that what people say about horses? That sometimes they must be given their head?

James said he did not often ride horses.

— You came here, said Stark, confused in the first place by what Tommy, by what my son Tommy, had told you. He in turn had been confused and led astray by a man who used to be in treatment here, a man you know, or at least have heard of: Estrainger. Estrainger told Tommy that he was involved in a conspiracy against the government. The two spent a lot of time together. We don't know exactly what Estrainger told him, but we think he explained much of the scheme that he was a part of, without naming the other key players. Then, of course, Estrainger's treatment ended, and he went back to live in the city. Tommy's mind, not knowing who the other people in the conspiracy were, took to thinking that those of us in this house were a part of it. Imagine? It's insane.

His large face took on a look of profound sadness.

— Yes, Tommy had gone somewhat insane near the end. We had to keep him here and make sure he did not hurt himself. Our restraining of him only seemed like further proof that his theories were correct. He was sure that our family was the conspiracy Estrainger had spoken of. Even bringing Estrainger back, which we did, and having him tell Tommy that it wasn't true, that was no good.

He took a deep breath.

— Of course, at that time we didn't know that Estrainger was actually involved in a serious conspiracy. If only we had known then, we might have been able to stop whatever is happening in Washington.

He sat down in a leather chair by a massive window that overlooked the front lawn. He motioned for James to sit as well.

James sat.

— As time passed, his mania grew. He finally broke out, injuring an orderly, jumping the wall, and making off. We could do nothing but send out private investigators and such to search for him. I myself drove the streets in a car day and night looking for him. Oh, Tommy. Why did it happen?

Stark's hands covered his face a moment. James could see that his grief was a fresh thing, newly made, and not yet mediated by time or distance.

— It is a terrible thing, Stark said, to lose a son. A terrible, terrible thing. Words have little meaning in the midst of tragedy. I say terrible, but what does it mean? It means nothing, sheds no light on the expanse of Tommy's life, of all the things he did, the people he loved, the mornings when he would come into the room, into our bed, the bed where I and my wife slept. She has been dead five years now; Tommy has gone to her.

James felt a little embarrassed. He tried to think of something to say.

— I'm sorry, he said. I'm sorry about Tommy.

Stark's posture changed. He sat up.

— The killers were found, you know. Yesterday. That's why I couldn't see you. Two men. Apparently they robbed him, and when he resisted, they stabbed him to death.

His voice was full of anger.

— The men had been to prison before. Both had been released in the last month. What a terrible system it is. It makes men less able to live in the world. It changes nothing for the better. Ah, me.

He came to in a way and realized James was sitting there.

— But the main thing is, some people, McHale, Torquin, the others, their grief was allayed a bit by having you here and playing on your misunderstanding of the situation. Of course, I had you brought here so that we could learn of McHale's final hour. But when it was learned how Tommy's silly conspiracy ideas had gone into your head, well, they decided to confuse you still more. Also, my young friend, I have to tell you another thing, and you won't like it. Grieve was in on the whole thing as well. I'm sorry to tell you, but you would do well not to trust her too much. She is younger than the others, and spent much of her early life alone. Her imagination has a force that. . well, she often forgets that people can be hurt.

— She spent her early life alone? asked James. But her twin sister, didn't they play together?

— Her twin sister?

Stark's face looked confused.

— What do you mean? he asked. She has no twin sister. Her sister is six years her senior, and is far from being her twin.

James sat back in his chair. He felt like he couldn't draw breath. He'd been fooled twice. It had been Grieve. Good lord, she had been in bed with that man. He felt his heart beating fast, and a panic raced through him. What was he to do? And Carlyle. . Carlyle had deceived him. Carlyle must have been laughing at him all along.

— I have to go, he said.

— But we have more to talk about, said Stark. I wanted to offer you work here with us. You mustn't forget the trouble you're in, after all, that business with Mayne. Unfortunately, even if you didn't throw him out the window — which, by the way, can't be proved, as both Mayne's wife and his son say that you did — you would at least get manslaughter. After all, you were in the room holding a gun.

It was too much for James. His arms felt stiff against the leather. He was stuck here. What was he to do?

— I have to go, he said. I'm sorry. There's something. . there's something I need to see about. Can we talk at a different time? Tomorrow? Or later?

There was an odd glint in Stark's eye.

— Later, then. Later is better than tomorrow. Return at four.

— Thank you, said James. Thank you for telling me all this, and for shielding me from the police. You're very kind.

Stark nodded. He leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes, and drew his dressing gown tight about himself.

Grieve, thought James in anger. I have to find Grieve.

He walked slowly to the door of Stark's suite and went through it. Torquin was on the other side. He said nothing to the man, but walked quietly to the stair. As he began down the stair, however, his pace grew faster, and he was soon running. He reached the bottom and ran towards his room. Somehow he thought he would find her there. If she was as duplicitous as it seemed, she would be there. Yes, he thought. She had known he was going to be stuck with her father for an hour or so, and as soon as he had left, she had gone to meet that other man. Pure chance had delayed his meeting with Stark and made it possible for him to know her real nature.

He burst through the door into his room. Grieve was lying on the bed. She looked up at him.

— How could you? he said. How could you have done it?

— What are you talking about?

Her face wore an expression of complete surprise.

— I saw you downstairs. I'd have gone for you both if the window wasn't locked.

— What? You just left. I've been here, sleeping.

— You goddamned. . you. . aaaagh, aaaaagh!

James yelled and yelled at the top of his voice. He picked up the coffee table and threw it. It smashed into the wall and one of the legs broke off.

Then the room was quiet. Grieve was hyperventilating, curled against the wall.

— I should never have trusted you, he said. But I did, and you go off with somebody else.

At this Grieve began to shake violently and cry.

— You're crazy. I hate you.

— I saw you, he shouted. I was behind the house. I saw you.

Grieve rubbed her eyes. She stopped crying.

— You fool, she said coldly. That was my sister. My identical twin.

— Carlyle said that already. And I believed it.

James shook his head.

— What? Then why did you come here like this?

She started to cry again.

— Because of your father. Yeah, your father. I talked to him. He told me it was all a lie. You don't have a twin sister. Your little game is over, by the way. He told me the truth about the whole scheme, you goddamned rat. I can't believe I ever liked you at all.

He got up and went to the door.

— I never should have, he said again.

— James, she said, and her words came in gasps: He's lying. I don't know why. He's lying. You. . you've got to believe me.

James slammed the door and went off down the hall.

That was when he saw Grieve, dusting a table. He came up beside her and pretended to be looking at a painting on the wall.

— They've been tricking me, he whispered. You were right. They can't be trusted.

— We shouldn't talk here, she said. Too many people are around.

— All right, he whispered. If I need to tell you something, how do I contact you?

— You remember the maids' room? she asked. Where you came that time? In front of the door, there's a part where the carpet peels up. Put a note there for me.

She hurried away.

James stood now, actually looking at the painting. It was a portrait of a man holding a fowling piece, standing in the foreground of what looked like an Italian landscape. His face was very shrewd.

You've been in on it, too, haven't you? thought James. You should have warned me.

Just then a man came up.

— Excuse me, he whispered.

James looked at him. He recognized the servant as a man he did not like. The man had brought drinks when James had been playing rovnin, and had laughed when James made a bad move. Both of them had laughed, the man James was playing against and the servant.

He must be in on it, too, thought James.

— What do you want? he asked suspiciously.

— I just think you should know, said the man, be careful whom you talk to. That maid, Grieve, she's not to be trusted. She's not on your side. I've seen her talking to Stark and the others. They planted her so they could know what you're up to.

James couldn't believe his ears. How transparent. It was just like them to try to make him distrust the one person who had been true to him.

— I won't listen to this, said James. Your little trick hasn't worked.

Go tell your master, whoever he is, whoever she is, that I'm on to you.

He stormed off down the hall.

James walked in his anger out onto the lawn. He stood in the bright sun and felt how miserable he was. It was no good trusting anyone, he thought. What a fool they must think him. And he had been a fool.

He sat down in the grass and drew breath.

All this time he had been so sure something was going on. They'd just been fooling him. He would have to come up with a new plan for himself. It was no good being here. He would have to leave the country. Could he go to his firm for help? He wondered how far they would extend themselves for him. After all, they had a lot to lose by helping an accused criminal. The business ran on its reputation alone. No, they would not help him. He felt sure of it.

I could try to leave by myself, he thought. But who would drive the car? He wished that Grieve had not cheated on him. She had been so wonderful. He remembered what she had said about leaving the country together. How fine that would have been. He pulled the grass up with his fingers. The autumn had already yellowed it. The grass was all dying, all withering.

He stood up again. He would stay here as long as he had to. But he would have nothing to do with Grieve.

He went back into the house. Down the hall, he saw her. She must have come looking for him. She turned. She saw him too. He ducked down another hall. The last thing he wanted was to speak with her now.

Down this hall was the room where they played rovnin. He could hear voices. He opened the door and went in.

The young James undertook then a description of his own circumstances.

I am young, he wrote.

My youth is still before me. I live in a fine house among genial, indeed kindly, outspoken hills and dales. My mother is perished. My father as well. Did I have a brother? I did, but he was drowned by a felon. Who keeps me? An old couple, claiming to be my grandparents. I do not understand what this means, and so I cannot examine for myself the truth of their claims. Instead I go silent at supper or stare mornings through glassed windows and thinly paneled doors.

On bright days I go to play in the fields. If it is early and the sun is convincing, I go to the woods, where a darker watch is kept and mosses conspire with badgers' wakes and the tresses of muskrats. Believe me, I tell them, and they do. How many times I have been admitted to their companionship only to wake at the wood's edge with dusk laying a street over the hills, a street like a Roman road, stone for centuries, and myself beneath the hills, spurred by the touch of strange cloth.

And Cecily, and sometimes Cecily. Sometime-Cecily, sometimes she comes in and out the trees from that far house. We never arrange to meet, and never speak as though we've seen each other ever before. She holds my hands and I hold hers and we climb the climbingest trees and lie out upon thick branches. She says small things in small ways and talks mostly of the season and the coming night. She draws with her thin hands on the surface of water, and I swear to her — she makes me swear — that I can see the things she draws, though she never asks me what, and I would never say.

McHale and Graham were playing. James came over. They nodded to him. He sat. It was soon clear that they were both very skillful. The first man had not been lying about James having a miserable standing in the house. The whole thing was very surprising. He hadn't even met anyone in years who knew what the game was, and now he was in the midst of a slew of experts. Had they all been playing together for years? He supposed that it was so, and lost himself in the game, watching as move by move they interlaced their objectives, their assaults, defenses. Clearly McHale was the better of the two, but Graham was allowing nothing. There was a knock at the door, three knocks.

— Come in, said Graham.

The door opened. Grieve was standing there. Her face was covered in tears.

— James, she said. Come talk with me.

James turned his back on her.

— James, she said.

Graham and McHale had turned to stare at them.

— Come with me. Come talk with me.

— I won't, said James. Leave me alone.

Grieve burst out crying again and ran out of the room.

Graham and McHale exchanged glances. McHale got up.

— We can finish later, he said.

He gave James a disapproving look, and hurried off after Grieve.

Graham and James were left then together in the room.

— What was that? asked Graham.

James rubbed his forehead.

— I caught her cheating on me this morning, in bed with some man, someone from the hospital.

Graham's face had a puzzled look.

— I saw Carlyle earlier, he said carefully. He told me about this. He said he'd told you it wasn't Grieve; it was her sister.

He too seemed disapproving.

— You have to be gentle with Grieve, he said. She's very attached to you. You can't go doing this to her.

— It wasn't her sister, said James. Her sister is six years older and looks nothing like her; that's what Stark said.

Graham narrowed his eyes.

— Stark said that to you?

— Yes, said James. He also told me you've all been trying to trick me into thinking you're part of the conspiracy Estrainger was part of.

Graham drummed his fingers on the table and thought for a moment.

— James, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but. .

At that moment, a maid poked her head through the open door.

— Sir, she said to Graham. There's a man at the door, says he's a detective.

— Oh, dear, said Graham. This again.

He got up and left without a word.

An Addition to the Record

They permit me, these wards of mine, to go out where I will. They do not require school of me. They give me things, a butcher knife, a javelin, the poems of Keats in leather miniature. I say these to myself, my feet in water off the old dock. Grandfather says it was once an ocean, that all the plains and this were once beneath water. I look upward then through the water to the sky beyond. The only safety, I suppose, is to build one's house upon a mountaintop.

Do people who live on mountaintops live forever? Or only nearly so?

James returned to his room. Grieve had gone. Some of her things were still there, however, a dress laid over the back of a chair, a handbag, a notebook.

He picked up the notebook and opened it.

It had just been begun the day before. There was only one entry.

I can't believe how wonderful he is. The others like him, and it seems even he and my father get along. I'm looking forward so much now to this life. I have so many things to tell him. He doesn't mind my odd habits, my lying. I knew when I saw him in the diner. I knew we would be right.

James put the notebook down. There was more, but he didn't read on. He felt awful. Could it have been true? Graham seemed like he had been about to tell James that Stark was lying to him. But then he had gone.

James saw that a note had been slipped underneath the door. He must have walked over it when he came in.

He went over and picked up the note.

Three days ago, Estrainger came to the house. I was told to go and tell Stark that he was here. I did. Then Stark gave me a note to bring to Estrainger. It was a strange note. I copied it down to show you. It said:

Overthrows that are necessary cannot occur easily; secret plots must unfold of themselves, unconscious, like the multitudinous fan of a peacock. And like the peacock, it is never certain of the toll its passing has taken in the world. We must all die unconscious of the good, the evil we have done. That's why there's only hope, hope beyond good and evil.

When I gave it to Estrainger, he went away. I thought nothing of it, and decided not to show you this. But then Estrainger killed himself. And now, Stark has tricked you again. You can't believe them. Do you know the story of the kingdom of foxes? A man goes to live in the kingdom of foxes and he survives only by believing that which is not told him.

Stark had been lying! The police were downstairs. James could go there now. He could alert them. Even if he were dragged away too, there would at least be a chance that the plot could be stopped.

He ran out of his room and down the stairs. As he drew closer to the front entrance, he could hear through the foyer door the sound of voices.

He peeked through.

Stark was standing talking to a man in a suit. There was a bulge under the man's left armpit — that must be the detective, thought James.

— Yes, Stark was saying, Estrainger was a patient here. But we released him due to an overwhelming belief in his capability to live an independent life. We have a very strict system here, a very strict system. He had to pass three different boards of evaluation before he was released. What happened since then, whom he met, et cetera, I can't say. But when he left here, he was perfectly sane.

The detective said something that James didn't hear.

James pressed back against the wall. The man was so close. All James had to do was jump out and speak. Then he thought of Grieve. If Stark had been lying about Estrainger, he must have been lying about Grieve and her sister. They were twins. Why would he lie about that?

James thought of Grieve's face, of how wronged she looked. At the time it had filled him with hate, but now he was overcome by remorse. He thought of her crying, of her standing outside the rovnin room, calling to him. And him with his back turned. . It was more than bore thinking of.

He went back into the hall. He realized he could not give up Grieve's father, Grieve's family. By doing so, he would be betraying her. And he had hurt her so much already.

I have to find her and apologize, he thought.

An Item in the News

On the table in the hall, he saw the newspaper. He picked it up and glanced over the front page.

There had been another suicide. This time it had been a man dressed as a police officer, who had managed to penetrate the security surrounding the White House. The uniform had been traced to a District of Columbia station nearby, where it had been stolen from a storeroom.

Impersonating a police officer, the article noted, was a serious crime in its own right. This man, Spiers Jones, had been a prominent writer on civil liberties, as well as a noted lawyer in the Dallas area. His involvement in the conspiracy had sent waves through the liberal community.

The note he was bearing was the shortest yet. It was only one word long, and that word was Samedi.

James shook his head. He loved Grieve; he knew now that he did. But she was only one woman. How many people would die if James did nothing?

He turned back down the hall, and as he did, Stark and Graham came back in. The sound of a car engine could be heard in the background, then the noise of tires on gravel. The detective was gone.

Stark and Graham walked past James as if he were not there.

— Hey, he said. Graham! Graham!

But Graham did not turn. They continued down the hall.

It's completely unfair, thought James. It was Stark's fault that he had been confused about Grieve and her sister.

There was only one thing to do. First he would find Grieve and apologize. Then he would send a letter. He would send the maid, Grieve, with a letter to the police, explaining everything. She was allowed to leave the house, to leave the grounds.

James paused in his search, midway along a hallway on the third floor. He had no idea where Grieve's room might be. He had asked the maids and servants he had come across, as well as a nurse and two orderlies, whether they had seen Grieve. None had.

He saw McHale at the far end of the hall, standing by a window, smoking a cigarette. He approached him.

— Thomas, he said. Do you know where Grieve is?

McHale turned to look at him. His face became scornful.

— We should never have helped you out in the first place.

— I just want to know where she is.

— She doesn't want to see you. Can't you understand that?

McHale threw his half-smoked cigarette out the open window and walked off.

James stood by the window, the smell of smoke still clinging to the air.

It came to him: she would be where she had first waited for him.

James paused in the hall. He took a piece of paper out of his pocket, wrote on it:

Meet me in my room at 3. Urgent.

He folded the note and tucked it under the carpet at the entrance to the maids' room. Then he went back, past the door of the man who had drawn him the elephant, through the next door and into the thin corridor. I wonder, he thought, if that man ever found the drawing. I never went back for it.

He came to the end of the corridor, turned, and went to the ladder. He listened carefully, to see if he could hear any sound of breathing. He could not.

Up the ladder he went, slowly. He could feel the roundness of the rungs, the closeness of this odd room. Grieve must be here. She must be. If she is Grieve, then she is here.

At the top, there was only darkness. Someone had pulled a shade across the window. In the dark, he could hear someone breathing.

— Grieve? he said.

He crossed the tiny room slowly and pulled the shade. Light fell through and he could see Grieve looking at him, Grieve pressed against the wall.

— I'm sorry, he said.

Her eyes were red from crying.

He moved towards her. She sat up, and he put his arms around her. He could feel her shaking.

Then a voice came from the ladder's top.

— Lara, what are you doing? Lara, don't you dare!

James turned, still holding Grieve tight. At the ladder's top, he saw Grieve looking at him, Grieve wearing the dress she had worn the day before.

He let go of the Grieve who was in his arms.

— No, James, she shrieked. She's lying. She's lying.

She began to cry again.

He looked at the Grieve on the ladder, and then at the Grieve at his side. How could he know which was the right one?

— James, said the one on the ladder, I'm sorry about what happened before. I should have told you more; I should have explained everything.

James fought to think. How could he know? He addressed the Grieve on the ladder.

— At the diner, how many pieces did you cut your ham sandwich into?

That Grieve answered immediately:

— Twelve pieces.

— That's not fair at all, said the first Grieve. Of course she knows how many pieces I cut my sandwiches into. She's my sister. We grew up together. Ask something that she couldn't possibly know, that only I would know.

— Don't listen to her, said the Grieve on the ladder. I answered the question. Ask her one. You know she's lying. She's the one you saw this morning in bed with the orderly.

James held up his hand.

— Quiet for a moment, both of you.

The Grieve he had been holding began to cry again.

— Don't cry, he said, just wait.

To the Grieve on the ladder, then:

— When you stole my wallet, which pocket of my pants was it in?

Grieve climbed the rest of the way up the ladder.

— Listen, she said, this is stupid. I love you. No more of these questions. I answered one already. She hasn't.

— Answer, said James.

The first Grieve's sniffling could be heard behind him.

— Answer, he said again.

Grieve on the ladder unbuttoned the front of her dress and opened it. She was naked beneath, and all was as he remembered it.

— Don't you recognize me? she said. Don't you remember me?

The other Grieve let out a wail.

— I hate you! I hate you.

— Answer my question, said James, backing away.

— The back pocket, she said. The right back pocket.

Aha!

— But it wasn't in the right back pocket, said James.

— I meant, right when I'm facing you, she said. Not the other way.

— It wasn't in my pants at all, he said, drawing the crying Grieve to him and putting his arms around her.

— It was in his coat, you bitch, said Grieve.

— God damn it to hell, said Lara, buttoning up her dress. Well, it was worth a try.

— I hate you, said Grieve. You always try to ruin everything.

She buried her face in James's shoulder.

Lara climbed back down the ladder. Her footsteps could be heard away in the corridor.

— Grieve, said James. I'm sorry about what I said. Your father confused me.

— Don't worry, she said. I forgave you while you were saying it.

James climbed underneath the root of the tree. It soon became dark. He pushed between other roots with his little arms and found his way into a sort of DEN. There was a little firepit with coals and a Dutch oven. The smell of fresh-baked bread rose in the thick dimness. But the light was kind and steady from the coals, and his eyes grew steadily clear and accustomed. He soon made out seven tiny shapes, animals seated and washing their paws in flat, high-rimmed water bowls.

— Come sit with us, they said.

And James did.

They took off his dandy little coat and gave him too a bowl of water.

— Wash, wash, said one.

— Wash, wash, said all.

James washed his hands.

Grieve said something quietly. James did not hear what she said. He asked her to repeat it.

— I'm horrified, she said, a little louder, by this drawing. It really looks like you.

James looked at the sheet in her hand. The elephants again.

— It does, he said. I want to bury it with the mask. You know, I hate that mask. You should never, if you're ever trying to catch a guy's eye, give him a convincingly made rubber mask of his own face. It's really not the right thing to do.

Grieve laughed, still sobbing a little.

— I know, she said, but I couldn't help it.

— And why, he asked, the threatening note that came with it?

She slid down and curled her head and shoulders in his lap.

— Because, she said, I was trying to be a part of what the others were doing. I knew they had sent someone else to do the job and talk to you and fetch you back, but I wanted to do it, so I went ahead anyway. That note was a bit silly, though. After all, we didn't want to scare you away; we wanted to bring you here!

James ran his hands through her hair.

— Your sister is a bit crazy, he said.

— Yes, said Grieve. Do you know how you can always tell which one is me?

— How? asked James.

— Because of this, she said.

She lifted her left ear.

— Look here.

He looked behind her left ear. There was a little tattoo there, a flower. But it was an odd-looking flower.

— I drew a lily and on top of it a violet, and blended the two, and then had it tattooed here. That's how you'll know it's me.

— I think, said James, she moves a little differently from you also. She moves like a weasel.

— Yes, said Grieve. Lara is a weasel. I've always hated her. The only happy week I had as a child was when she fell from the roof and went into a coma. She came out of it, though. Everyone was so happy.

— Is that true? asked James.

— No, said Grieve. But they would have been happy. Everyone thinks she's so clever. And I would be happy if she went away and never came back.

Another hour had passed. James was sitting in his room, holding the pistol in his hand. It was loaded still. A note had been wrapped around it, presumably by Graham or McHale. When the note had been put there, he could not say, as he hadn't looked at the gun in days.

The note said:

Better to dispose of this. It will look bad if you're caught with it.

James threw the note in a basket on the ground. The door opened suddenly, and Grieve came in. She was still wearing her maid's uniform.

— I'm a bit early, she said. What's urgent?

— This, said James.

He handed her an envelope.

— I want you to take this to the police.

He had come up with a plan and he intended to stick to it. Using the gun, he would escape with Grieve from the house and grounds. He was sure she would go with him. Her father and these others were so demented. She couldn't possibly stay. In the meantime, he would have sent the maid Grieve with a letter to the police, explaining everything. The police would come to the house, apprehend Stark and the others, and take them away. If Stark was out in the open and could not reach his shelter, he would act to stop the disaster, as he would certainly not want himself to be caught in it. Of course, he might have underestimated Stark's dedication, in which case, he and Grieve would be out in the world on the seventh day.

The maid took the envelope out of his hand.

— You want me to go right now? she asked.

— Right now, he said. It's important. And when you do, don't come back here. I don't know exactly how much you know about what's going on, but it's very bad. Things are going to get bad around here. You're better off gone.

Grieve looked at the pistol.

— Are you going to use that? she asked.

Her voice sounded concerned.

— Only if I have to, he said. They killed McHale, I think. They wouldn't flinch from killing me.

Grieve went to the door and paused, looking back at him.

— Then it's good-bye.

There was a tear in her eye.

— Good-bye, he said, but did not get up.

She came back across the room.

— I'm sorry, she said. I'm sorry, but. .

She leaned down over the chair where he sat and, before he knew what was happening, had kissed him on the lips.

— Grieve! he said.

— I'm sorry, she said. Good-bye.

Her face was bright as she stepped out the door.

Now, thought James, Lily Violet will come back here to meet me and the two of us will bust out. He looked the gun carefully over and wished he could test it to make sure it worked. He clicked the safety off. He clicked the safety back on.

He waited ten minutes. He waited twenty minutes. And still she did not come.

There was a knock on the door. He slipped the gun into his waistband and went over.

They can't have seen me through the observation post, he thought. I've blocked that. But maybe there are other windows, other false doors. There was a mirror on the wall. He went over and took it down. But there was nothing behind it, no camera, no window from another room.

He went back to the door and slid it open a crack. No one was in the hall. He took the note from off the shelf.

We caught Grieve trying to leave the house.

You shouldn't have done it.

A panic ran through him. He pulled his coat on, hiding the gun, and went out the door. If he had to, he could force them to let her go.

He got onto the stairs. He could hear a conversation at the foot; it sounded like McHale and Carlyle talking, but when he reached the bottom, they were gone. He heard the sound of a girl's crying in the front room by the entrance, the room in which he had first met the second McHale.

As he reached the door, the crying intensified. He went through and saw Torquin standing over Grieve, not James's Grieve, but Grieve the maid, who was lying on the ground, sobbing.

— Torquin, he said. What's the idea?

Torquin turned to look at him.

— No, James, Grieve cried. Get away!

Her face was bruised all over, black and blue and yellow. Her dress had been ripped nearly in half.

The door slammed shut. Another man had been hidden behind it, one of Torquin's accomplices from the first day. Torquin came towards him.

— Don't try to get smart, he said.

James pulled out the pistol and leveled it at Torquin. He unlevered the safety.

— Don't, he said.

Torquin kept coming.

James gulped. The room drew in on him. Torquin swung a fist. James ducked. He stuck the gun in Torquin's face and pulled the trigger.

The gun did not go off.

Torquin was on top of him.

Furious, James tried to throw him off. They'd fixed the pistol. Of course, they'd fixed the pistol. He was such a fool.

He fell over with Torquin on top of him, but his elbow caught the bigger man in the face. Torquin rolled away, clutching his nose. James jumped up and ran for the door. The other man stood in front of it. Wielding the pistol like a tomahawk, James swung at the man's head. The man threw up his hand, but was too slow. The heavy pistol butt caught him above the eye, and he dropped to the ground like a sack of flour. James turned. Torquin was rising.

James opened the door and ran out. There was nothing to do now but find Grieve and escape.

It was a long, far distance down the well, a long distance down the slope beside it. Who would build a well at the top of a steep and narrow hill? thought James. He seated himself with his small back square against the well's wall, took out a small wooden figure, and began to carve. And off before him the whole of that country.

Yes, once I touched her face, my Cecily's. We had gone into a sett, for we had observed the badger on his way elsewhere, wherever badgers go in early hours. Down into the sett on hand and knee, along a warm tunnel, and then in the dim fastness she was beside me, and we lay close together, still, our faces touching. We lay so long I do not think the rest has any bearing, all this life since. I mean to say, I am still lying there, and feel about me as much the brown-kept walls of the sett as I do this light of afternoon.

Down one hall, then another. Grieve had told him where her room was, on the landing below her father's suite. He took the stairs two at a time. He reached her door, no. 3. It was unlocked. He went in,

and instantly was struck by how much it reminded him of her. Some people have rooms that are consumed by utility, others by elegance or decoration. Hers reflected clearly some essential part of her character. It was a fine room, thought James, looking at the bed, which was built into the wall like children's beds in old Scandinavian drawings. Scenes of animals, trees and plants, flowers and stars, had been carved by hand into the walls, and stood there in relief.

On racks her clothes hung. And on the table, a rovnin set.

Then he remembered why he had come.

He looked around the room for signs that she had been there recently. The basin before the mirror bore traces of water. And in the basket by the door there was a note.

Come in fifteen minutes. The nasturtium room. I have something to say to everyone.

Damn it, thought James. The nasturtium room? He went out the door warily. But no one was outside. Plainly, he had lost Torquin in the halls.

A nurse was coming up the stairs. James pulled the bell out of his pocket and rang it. She froze. They counted slowly to fifteen.

— Where is the nasturtium room? asked James.

— Second staircase, third landing, fifth room from the end.

James thanked her.

When as a boy, he went often to the trees

where he could not be found

he thought of his owl, who had one day ceased to join him, ceased to go about on his shoulder. This is the trouble, he had realized, the trouble with an invisible owl. When he does not care to come, he cannot be found. So then there were two of them that could not be found, he and the owl, and though they were not beside each other in truth, they were beside each other in this.

The saddest thing, of course, and he cut it with a knife into the bough of the tree in which he sat:

Ansilon was pledged to be his only friend. Now he might never have another, and he had lost the first.

And he thought too that Ansilon most probably had not gone away on purpose, but had become lost in a storm or a fire. He pictured the little owl's tiny form on the forest floor. Would it have, he wondered, become visible at last in death?

He went through the house, looking around each corner before attempting passage. Soon he was up the stairs and before the door of the nasturtium room. His hands were trembling. He listened at the door, and this is what he heard.

—. . and so there's nothing else to be done?

— Nothing except to wait and go into the bunker. We have all been waiting some time, I know. But we must only wait one more day.

The first voice had sounded like Carlyle's. The second was Stark's.

Stark spoke again.

— You all must remember that what we do is a gift. It is a difficult gift, but a necessary one. Henceforth such gifts must be occasionally be made, or history will not flow as it should. No longer do we allow rivers to go where they like. We dam them, we lay them into canals, we run them through pipes, and take of them in our living rooms. Why then should history, should the course of events be left loose like an untended line?

There was quiet in the room. A long pause. Stark began to speak again, but his voice had changed slightly, as voices do when reading from a book.

— All our learned teachers and educators are agreed that children do not know why they want what they want; but no one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod. And yet it seems palpably clear to me.

Another pause then.

— Men govern each other not through regimes, not through dynasties. These are the housekeepers of history. They tidy up eras, and maintain ideas that have been made for them by other, better men. Who are those who truly govern history? The makers of the great religions, the greatest of the scientists, the greatest of the theorists. It is by thought alone that history is altered. By thought, and by its commensurate physical example.

James tried to understand what it was Stark meant. He seemed to want what he was saying to be understood by his children. It mattered to him that the world continue. Whatever he does, thought James, is at least done with good intention.

At that moment, James was struck from behind with a blackjack. He dropped useless to the ground. As his vision swam, he saw two figures standing over him: Torquin and the maid, Grieve. She was holding the blackjack and her face was clear and pale, not bruised at all.

James came to in Stark's chamber. He recognized first the painted glass above. Then he smelled a smell he knew: Grieve's skin. She was beside him. She smiled down, and as he looked up at her, she touched her ear with her hand and winked. He nodded.

— Has he woken? asked a voice.

It sounded very far away.

He could hear Grieve reply. She sounded far away, too, but he could feel her hand on his arm.

— Yes, I think so.

The voices came closer together, in a pair, winding and intertwining. He thought of colors in a string, and how light wasn't really what they said, wasn't really a ray, but more a substance, like water, that could be gathered and kept.

— James, James.

Grieve was shaking him.

He opened his eyes again.

— Hello, he said.

— I'm sorry, said a woman's voice. I hit him a bit harder than I should have.

— Next time, said a man, you leave that to me.

— Yes, said Stark. Leave all knocking down of people to Torquin. He is our expert.

— Some expert, said the woman, who he realized was Grieve.

They had really tricked him, he thought, making her up like she'd been knocked around.

— Hey, you, hey.

It was his Grieve now.

— Wake up.

He could feel her lift him up. He drew a breath and opened his eyes again. He looked across the room. Stark was there, and Grieve, the maid, and Torquin.

She mustn't have been a maid at all.

But why would they send me the note about Estrainger? That didn't make any sense. And then he remembered: that note had not been in the pillowcase like the others. It had been under the door. Someone else must have given it to him. Then he remembered the servant who had told him not to trust Grieve. Oh, he should have listened to him. What had he said? Something mean. All along he'd conducted himself in the worst possible way, never thinking about the consequences of things, or who was behind what.

He leaned back against Grieve. Stark had come over and stood now in front of him. He was a large man, especially in that overcoat.

— Why are you going to do it? he asked Stark.

It was a useless question. He knew the answer.

— Come now, said Stark. You've read that book, the one you took down from the ceiling. There's no need for further speech.

He was right. James nodded.

— We've been holding back on you. It hasn't been fair, but we were testing you in some ways, and passing the time in others. You must wonder, why have you been brought here? Why didn't we just dispose of you? If I could order my own son killed, then why would I hesitate with you? It's an interesting question, and one that you must have considered.

Stark picked up a cane that was leaning against a table. He twirled it in his hand. With his long black coat and high collar he looked vaguely like a priest.

— The truth is, there is one major reason you are here, and it is not, as you may have suspected, because my daughter is in love with you, although plainly she is. That was not part of the plan. In fact, she was not to have anything to do with you. Yet Grieve does as she likes. History will observe that my greatest failing was in my tolerance of my own children.

Grieve laughed. He could feel her laughter all through her body, as he leaned against her.

— The reason you were brought here, and entertained, kept here so long, is simple: we were on the brink of making history, and I wanted this period in the life of our house to be recorded. But how to record all the moments of this life, all this time, how to record it in a manner that lends it easily to retrieval? You might say put it down in writing, or film it, photograph it, put it on a disk from a computer. But after that which we intend, it is not clear that any of these methods will be easily brought out of this country into the one to which we go. Any such account could easily be found out. No, no, I decided, having thought long on the matter, that a mnemonist would be the perfect device. You were watched; you were observed. We knew you went on Sundays for your walks to the park. Your seizure had been intended, so that you might accompany us in our last week. Then when Tommy escaped, and Torquin caught him right in that neighborhood, when Tommy became violent in escaping again, and his unfortunate death occurred, the masterstroke occurred to me. We would place you in the midst of it immediately, by dropping Tommy's body close by you in the park.

James felt Grieve's hands, cold for once against his own. He had felt before in his work that others considered him a kind of machine. But events had moved so fast. He had never supposed that it was because of what he could do that they had brought him to Stark's house.

Stark had turned away and was leaning on his stick, thinking of his next words. He was obviously picking them carefully, imagining that James would remember them all.

Grieve whispered in James's ear:

— I love you.

— Don't lie, said James quietly.

Grieve pinched him.

— Does your head hurt?

It was a long, dull pain that came and went.

Grieve kissed him on the back of the head.

Stark twirled his stick, came over, and knelt again by James and Grieve. Torquin and the maid were still by the door.

— I want to explain to you, said Stark, exactly what's to happen.

You must be curious. It has already long ago been set in motion. There's nothing anyone can do to stop it now, so you can give up for good any ideas of heroism. Besides, you should see as I do, as we do, the rightness of our actions.

He smiled. It was a bold smile, full of confidence and majesty.

— The rod. You heard through the door, didn't you? Biscuits, the rod? Yes, we are going to set the rod upon the populace of this nation such as has never been done. Fifteen years ago, I came upon a method, a scientific method for accomplishing a particular design. That design I will reveal in a moment. At the time it seemed too drastic to me, and the consequences certainly unknowable and dire. But as time passed and my ideas progressed, I came to see that what had to happen, what I would cause to happen, would be of benefit, if not to this nation, then to all others.

— I don't understand what you're saying, said James.

— But you will remember it? said Stark, a question in his voice.

— Of course, said James. Of course I will remember it.

— There is a sort of gas, said Stark, that when released in the upper atmosphere creates clouds that will extend outward to cover an assigned distance of geography. These clouds emit a tone, as certain chemical processes occur amidst their gases. The tone is not one that human beings can hear. It is so high-pitched, in fact, that dogs and others who hear high pitches cannot hear it either. It addresses, in fact, a different sonic range entirely. What I discovered was that in this sonic range there was a particular range that complements and mimics the range of our hearing. By creating a cloud that would sing, that would emit the note I wanted, it seemed I could broadcast the tone across whatever landscape the cloud hung then above. The note is so high-pitched that it is not stopped by conventional walls, or even by ordinary soundproofing.

— But what does the sound do? asked James. What's the point of it?

— The point, said Stark, and James could feel Grieve stiff against his back, is that the sound destroys the ability of any human being to hear. Anyone caught beneath this cloud will be made permanently deaf.

Stark rose to his feet. His face took on a faraway countenance.

— Those who have been deaf to suffering will now be deaf in truth.

— But what about airplanes? asked James. What about airports? What about in the cities? People driving cars? No one will understand what's happening. Millions of people will die.

— Millions will die, said Stark. Within a hundred years they would all be dead anyway. And no one has ever proved that a long life is better than a short one. In fact, the evidence is much to the contrary.

— If that's true, said James, then why don't you kill yourself now? Why didn't you go to the White House? Instead you sent others with your warnings, your little notes.

— I would have, said Stark, but for the fact that there were many who wanted to do this thing for me. It was right that they go, because it was a thing that they could do, while there is a thing yet that I can do, that they cannot.

— What is that? asked James.

— To interpret the disaster to the world. Part of that, of course, is in your keeping. You are to have the record of it all. In the floor of this building there is a stair down beneath the ground. It leads to my cellar, where the wine is kept. Beneath that, there is another stair that leads to a bunker. I have built this bunker so that we may preserve our hearing and emerge, in three days' time, to find the clouds abated. You will stay with me this day, and memorize all that I need you to memorize, and then in the morning we will all go down into the ground together. Do you see?

Stark put his hand on James's shoulder.

— Do you see that you have been singled out from the rest to be saved?

James looked from Stark to Torquin to the girl. Torquin and the girl were looking at him with a kind of awe. How lucky he was, they seemed to be thinking.

There was something hypnotic to Stark's rhetoric. James spoke.

— I haven't got a choice. I will do what you say, if only because of Grieve. You should know, though, that luck has played a part in your plan. It's because of her that I'll help you.

— Luck is the key to every plan, said Stark.

James leaned back against Grieve. He could feel the side of her face against his. He looked up. Through the colored glass, he could see clouds moving and changing with the wind.

They sat a moment and Torquin came over. He asked James if he would have a word with him.

James got up, in much uncertainty. He followed after the man to the far side of the room. Torquin was looking at him in a somewhat menacing manner. Then all at once Torquin stuck out his hand for a handshake, and a smile broke across his blocky features.

— I didn't know what you were made of, said Torquin, but when you pulled the trigger on me, I knew you were the right sort, even if the gun didn't go off. I like a man with guts.

James shook his hand.

Torquin leaned in closer and said in a whisper:

— Some of them around here couldn't paddle a baby. You'd be disgusted if you saw how spineless they can be.

He laughed in a conspiratorial kind of way, stepped back and spoke again in an ordinary tone of voice.

— Anyway, I wanted to say there's no hard feelings on my part. We're going to be in close quarters for a while now.

James smiled.

— That we are.

Torquin gestured to the maid.

— Her name's Margret. I don't want any bad blood between the two of you either. She's a good girl, was just doing her job. Matter of fact, we're engaged.

James agreed that it was so; she had just been doing her job. He smiled at Margret.

Torquin nodded and went out the door. Margret came over. She stood very close.

— You know, she said. Don't tell him about how we. . I mean. . I was just acting, but he wouldn't like it, you know.

James assured her he would say nothing about anything to anyone.

— Thanks so much, she said, almost curtsying. I'm going now. I'll see you later — I mean, tomorrow, I suppose.

— James!

Grieve was calling.

Margret left and James went back across the room.

— Come back in an hour, said Stark. There's much for you to do.

He gestured at the desk on which sat various papers, leather ledgers, and assorted books.

James nodded. Grieve took his hand and led him out.

The hospital was empty. Much of the work of the past few days had been the transfer of the truly afflicted liars to other institutions.

These patients are particularly undesirable in psychiatric institutions, but Stark's hospital had been dedicated solely to them. It was the only institution of its kind in the world.

They wandered through the empty halls, looking in rooms and running together in a sort of anxious glee. James felt a lightness in his soul. The disaster was impending, and it horrified him, but the fact that he knew he would slip it, that he would escape it, and that Grieve would as well, gave him a joy like mercury that ran through his limbs and legs. I want her to be happy, he thought, and he looked at Grieve, skipping beside him. He felt too a gladness in knowing the extent of what was true and what was not. He had been plagued for days by versions of things, which had yielded enormities of misunderstanding and difficulty. Now at least he knew something, and he could hold on to it.

Grieve drew him down onto a bed in a long white room full of pallets. Thirty white pallets in a row, and on one they lay together. His head still swam in a slightness of pain from the blackjack, but he felt Grieve about him and in him, and he in her, and the immediacy of what was to come gathered them up like cloth lifted at the corners. The room was lifted like cloth at the corners and carried in a haze of motion. James held Grieve in his arms and she held him. What more could there be?

A dozen minutes passed, a dozen more, an hour, and the light had gone out of the windows, gone long into the corners and edges of the room, making shadows of the beds, and shadows of the hung linens.

— We are for each other, said Grieve. How fine that is, how perfect. Do you know that my father was an adviser once to the king of Siam? He learned all the king's secrets, and then controlled the king like a puppet. He does so still today. That's where we're going after the clouds come.

— It's not even called Siam anymore, said James. But do you know where we're going? Will we leave the rest and go, just you and I somewhere?

— Let me have at least one secret, she said, and they left the room and the bed, leaving it unmade, one unmade bed in the midst of thirty.

And, of course, the birds all fell immediately from the sky. Afterwards one would exclaim often relating a new observation to this long-ago occurrence; it was in that day that all the birds fell from the sky. Here and there in the street you would see them, lying in long rows sometimes, their having toppled off a telephone line or out the eaves of six companionable neighboring houses. Of course, none of us could hear then, so it was not so much the sound of the birds that we missed, but the sight of them, their fluttering at the corners of sight, their taking up happily all the little incidences, all the little portions of architecture, making use of tree branches, of far-flung high places where no one else could go. There is a feeling things have when use is not being put where it might. Shall I say the world soon bore this feeling? Yes, the world bore this feeling like a loose scarf that flaps insolently against one's perhaps too frivolously jacketed shoulder.

And so as evening came, James sat with Stark, and Stark spoke of intentions. He gave James documents and journal entries to memorize, the which he would, after James's perfunctory nod, immediately destroy in the fireplace. Grieve stayed in the room, roaming about from one side to the other, coming over at times to rub James's shoulder or whisper some comment in her father's ear. It seemed to James that she wanted to remain close to him in all the hours to come. He thought then of her room, and of how happy he had been to find it. He wondered if they would ever have the chance to lie together there. For, on the day they emerged, would they not try to leave the country? Indeed, it didn't make very much sense to James that Stark had stayed in the country if everything had already been set in motion. Why not leave now, while it would be easy? After the inevitable disasters, nothing would be certain, least of all travel out of the country.

Supper was brought them by a servant, the man who had told James the truth, whom James had wronged. He did not look the man in the eye. He felt embarrassed, and also did not want the man to be found out. Why did the man help me? he wondered.

The material that James held mnemonically was Stark's contraband body of work, his revolutionary writings on what he called The Starkian Play, the act of altering history with a monumental object lesson.

The volume of the writings was large, perhaps six hundred pages of somewhat technical theoretical writings. Ordinarily, James would have given himself far longer to memorize the work, but he knew he was equal to the task of committing it in one night. There was a fear among mnemonists, a fear of stretching the mind to the point where it would actually be broken by stress. It was a fact in chess playing. In certain exhibitions, a grand master would play twenty or thirty games at once, keeping his eyes closed, keeping all the pieces on all the boards separate in his mind, and making in turn his move on each board. Soviet Russia had banned these simultaneous blindfold exhibitions because they shortened the careers of great players.

The door opened. The servant entered again, carrying a tray with a pot of tea, two cups, a tiny milk pitcher, and a plate of sugar cubes.

James looked up from his work and realized he was almost done. The pile at his side had vanished. He closed his eyes and could see the trailing strands of all the books, all the papers. It was a feeling like flying to carry oneself off along these strings of thought and memory and see in long parades of swirling letters all the words, all the pages. He felt confident. He had it all. But there was an odd feeling too. He was preserving the work of a lunatic, of someone who, if the danger was real, would turn out to be one of the most reviled men in history. Did Stark even realize that? Did he expect the world to preserve him and raise him up? If the truth was ever known, he would be vilified, harried from nation to nation. Who would take him in?

— Stark, asked James. What is the plan for when we come out of the bunker?

Stark chuckled to himself.

— Wondering about that, are you? he said.

He went back to the letter that he was in the middle of writing.

— Really, said James. Is there a plan?

— Of course there's a plan. Have you read Boulinard's Strategem?

James confessed that he had not.

— Well, Boulinard was a medieval French priest. His writings were discovered only in the last fifteen years. It turns out that in the fourteenth century he had come up on his own with a body of work dealing with probability and chance that exceeds not only the work which had been done up until that time but, in fact, all the work done in the centuries since. He's thought of by academics and scientists as probably the smartest human being who ever lived. The discovery of his work was a revelation and spurred a small sort of scientific leap. He's thought of as the founder of modern probability theory, even though his work is in some ways enormously experimental and recent.

Grieve put down the magazine she was reading and came over.

— Where was the work hiding? she asked.

— He wrote it in the margins of illuminated manuscripts, working it into the design so that his writing was imperceptible unless you knew what you were looking for. Once you did you could see that the pages of the Bible were lined with other pages, page after page that he had written. The three Bibles lined with this work had been in a vault unlooked at, save when the occasional high-ranking priest or medieval researcher wanted to look at a sample of original illuminated manuscript.

— How could they look at it and not know? asked Grieve. If it's probability, that's math. Don't the numbers look odd in the midst of the scripts and figures?

Stark went over to a bookshelf, looked for a moment, and pulled down a large volume. He brought it over and laid it flat on the desk, open to a page somewhere in the middle. It was a facsimile of one of Boulinard's Bibles. James looked carefully at the ornament all around the page. At first he couldn't make out anything, but then the figures, the numbers began to appear.

— It's like looking at a carpet, he said.

— The point, continued Stark, is that Boulinard also wrote about plots and strategies. He organized a system that might be used in the creation of conspiracies and coups, and outlined general precepts and guidelines for the administration of such a system. One of those precepts, James, is that, in general though not always, someone who doesn't need to know sensitive information should not be given sensitive information. You will find out where we are going when we go there. Just be glad you are to be saved.

Grieve patted James on the cheek.

— Sometimes you learn more from my father saying no than you do from his yeses.

Stark laughed.

— My daughter loves to tease. How sad I would be if you hadn't been born.

Grieve wore her winningest smile.

— You would be a nomadic horse lord who encamps each night in a tent city far larger than the faces of seven earths unsewn and stretched side by side.

Stark threw back his large head and laughed.

— My daughter, he said, is one of the great fabulists. But she does not like to be found out.

Grieve pretended to pout.

Everything from now on in is a leavetaking, James thought.

— What do you think will happen? he asked Stark. Tomorrow and in the days after?

Stark leaned back in his wide leather chair.

— At first, enormous pandemonium. The populace will discover all at once the fate that has befallen it. Millions of people will make their way through cramped, crammed streets to hospitals, causing untold devastation in motor accidents. Mobs will cause enormous damage. The hospitals, of course, won't be functioning: there is no cure for this. And furthermore, all the workers in the hospital will have gone deaf as well. The fact is, going deaf is the least of the troubles. It will be the lasting effect, and certainly the moral, but the worst danger will be in the economic collapse. The other nations of the world will be in a strange position. It will be interesting to see how they act.

Stark's face was grim, but set in a strange expression of curiosity.

— It will be seamless.

He took a deep breath. Beneath the desk, James could see his hands clench and unclench. A good person, which he may be, thought James, must be torn apart by doing what he's doing. Has any man ever believed he was this right?

Stark was still talking. James realized he had drifted off; he had not been listening.

— We have balloons hidden in hundreds of caches across the country. They will be released up into the atmosphere mechanically, from a remote location. When they reach the proper height, they will burst, and the gas inside will disperse and alter, as it meets with the atmosphere. Then the clouds will form. They will begin to drift and sing. The entire continental nation will be affected. The clouds will maintain themselves for two to three days, long enough to affect the greater part of the population.

Grieve and James were silent for a minute, then another minute, watching him.

Finally, James spoke.

— How do you know how it works? Have you tested it?

— On one person, said Stark. My partner in the laboratory. Morris, Andrew Morris. We drew straws. I would have done it if I had drawn the straw. But he was the expert. He was the one who made the gas.

He smiled vaguely, unsettlingly, as though he were looking at something far away.

— I have his description of the experience, of what it's like to hear the tone from the cloud. In fact, it's the last thing I wanted you to memorize. I've been looking for it all day. I just found it.

He held up a transcript.

— I'll read it aloud.

— And then we'll be done? asked Grieve.

— Then we're done, said James.

What was to come felt so vague and unreal that he did not feel any guilt yet at being a part of it. He remembered McHale's death. That had been real. These people had done that. He remembered the picture of Estrainger in the newspaper. How could he have been such a fool? He had been standing there outside the building talking to Estrainger himself, and hadn't known it. He could still see the scornful turn to Estrainger's lip. Where had all his scorn gone now?

Stark began:

— Eight February, nine P.M. Test of the effects of Gas E-thirty-eight. I was tied to a chair in the clean room. All precautions were taken to limit the sound to that room alone. The duration was one hour. As soon as the gas was released a visible cloud formed near the ceiling of the room. I heard nothing at first, but after a while had a feeling of dizziness. This feeling grew. If I had not been strapped to the chair, I would have lost my balance and fallen to the ground. A noise began, a quiet tone, like a single harp string. It grew in volume, but then faded. Colors swam in my sight. The dizziness was overwhelming. I began to vomit and a shuddering pain came in back of my eyes. The colors in my sight blended together and I began to hear a sort of music. It sounded like voices singing, voices underwater. I realized what it was, abstractly, but was drawn away from my own thought, and took up the sound again. The music was the memory of past sound filling the sudden void made by my loss of hearing. As the hour passed, the music faded and was gone, and I was left in a silence more profound than any I had known. I have lived with that silence nine days, and know now I shall never hear again.

At the Small Ferris Wheel Abandoned in the Woods

James blinked in the harsh light. Where was Ansilon? He felt along his shoulder with a free hand. Yes, the owl was there.

Ansilon strained slightly against his hand in greeting. Both were deathly quiet, for had they not come at last to the Small-Ferris-Wheel-Abandoned-In-The-Woods of which they had so often heard?

There it was on the far side of the clearing, all rusted and bent. The clearing was in a deep, deep depression of land, and the trees around were all very old, so although the Ferris Wheel was in fact of an incredible height, it did not rise above the highest height of trees, but stood among the treetops, veiled from any distant sight.

— Up we must go, said Ansilon.

and also,

— My friend, I have brought a gift for you, a final gift of my friendship.

For indeed, James had not seen Ansilon for many a year, he having been presumed dead and most certainly gone away.

— What is it? asked James. I have got something for you, too.

Ansilon laid on the ground a little piece of hay woven into a ribbon.

— Tie this in among your locks of hair and you will know the sound of lying when you hear it; you will know the sound of truth.

James took it and tied it in his hair.

— What then for me? asked Ansilon.

And James sang quietly a little rhyme for owls that have gone away. This Ansilon took gladly into his heart, and he perched happily on James's shoulder, sometimes moving this way and sometimes that.

Then up they climbed on the Ferris Wheel, sometimes out onto a tree limb and up and back onto the wheel, so complicated proved the ascent, yet after some minutes of climbing, they found themselves far above the ground seated in a lovely iron car.

— Here we are, said Ansilon, and here we'll stay.

— What ever do you mean? asked James. I must go back after a little while.

Must you? asked Ansilon. Must you?

And James knew then that all children at some time mistake themselves and choose to leave childhood. Yet once it is done, it cannot be undone, for it is a very small door that shuts in a long, long wall.

— Good-bye, said James.

— Good-bye, said Ansilon.

And then it was pouring rain, and James was standing in the street with his grandparents, wearing a rain slicker, many years later, and he felt clearly that he had lost all that was best.

But who has the means to preserve such as that? he thought. And the world continued.

James and Grieve were standing in the hall. They had left Stark still seated at his desk, just a single lamp lit in the long room.

— What happened to Andrew Morris? James asked.

Grieve turned away from him; her face stiffened.

— He was a sort of uncle to us. It was partly his idea, the whole thing. He's the one, he's. .

— What? said James, turning her by the shoulder back towards him.

— He's the one, James. Right now, he's waiting in a hotel room in Washington. Tomorrow is his day. He has the final message.

A Burgeoning Sense of

grayness was the gift of the greatest draftsmen. In a way they saw color as a series of progressing grays, gray moving to black, to white, gray in blue, gray in yellow, gray in purple and green. The direction of lines provoked the imagining of color, the sweep of shading. James was no good at drawing, but he loved master drawings, and went often to the museums as a young man.

He didn't care for painting. It was too easy, too mannered. In drawing, there is the pencil and the paper. Two things, distinct. There is the black of the lead, and the white of the page, and together, anything can be created, can be called to mind. Painting was like a flourish, an unnecessary flourish thrown back in the world's teeth. There isn't time, thought James, for everything to be drawn, but only once all things in the world had been drawn, that would be the time for painting to begin.

James stood outside Grieve's door. She had asked that they sleep there, and he had wanted to. She had asked that he stay outside the door a moment, for what reason he did not know.

The halls were quiet, the stairwell long. He went to the landing and looked down and up. Mirrors were on the ceiling at the top, and on the floor at the bottom, so that the stair appeared to progress forever farther into itself.

A place for ridding people of chronic lying, thought James. It was scarcely that. He had never met such a bunch of liars in his life.

The man had said, a kingdom of foxes. In a kingdom of foxes, you must believe only what you are not told.

Grieve opened the door to her room. She was standing there in a long nightgown, with the straps loose on her arms. Her shoulders were bare, and her mouth was parted slightly.

He stepped forward.

— I'm sorry, but—

He caught her chin in the palm of his hand and turned her head to one side. With his other hand he lifted her ear. There was indeed behind her ear the lily-violet.

— Am I proven? she asked.

He shut the door with his foot.

— There are fifteen lies, and you can tell them all, he said. I will listen carefully.

Then they sat together by the window where she had lain as a child, and she told him many of the things she had thought and done. For in the gathering of hours towards this seventh day, it was clear that whoever they would be together, they would not be the same, and could never say to each other the things they might say now. For things go out of the world and things come into it, and one cannot account for, suppose, or presuppose these vanishings and their whereabouts. One can only speak slowly all the things one has thought while out drowsing in a world broken up not as we think, into places, separated by space, but broken up solely by time, which moves fast then slow then fast again, while all else holds still.

As he sat her words, her lies, her hopes ran through him, ran beside the running of Stark's words, the thousands which were strung up fresh and wide and somewhat cruel, the Ss like sickles, the Is like gun barrels. Violence, thought James, what is the change. I don't see how violence is any change at all. And Grieve's words blended into a sort of song, and he felt his life, his responsibility was not to the larger world, but to this small one, this thing they were creating. Her words came again, came and went, came again, lies and wishfulness. He peopled the space between her words with things he thought could compose a day. Who could compose a day? A day in all its intricacy, a day like a polished wooden toy made long ago and left in its perfection in the window of a shop. . And Grieve was with him, and her hands were cold. Her hands were cold; her hands were thin. Who was she? What could it be to them, this catastrophe? There was no doing of things for them, only undoing, only gathering together and bringing forth again.

In such thoughts they lay, speaking, murmuring, drowsing, and passed into sleep.