Chapter Fourteen
“Return to Omaha”

"'Fraid of flying?"

Norbert blinked into the vague, extroverted face of the woman sitting next to him.

"I beg your pardon?"

"My son-in-law's afraid of flying. Every time he comes to visit us, he gets off the plane petrified. I mean, when we meet him at the gate, he's still petrified. They must have to peel his fingers off the armrests when they land, that's what my husband always says." The refreshment cart clattered by, a sound of bones and loaded dice. "Buy you a drink?"

"No. Thank you."

"My son-in-law doesn't drink either. You...Yes," she told the stewardess. "I'll have another gin and tonic, miss. Thank you. No, no, no ice... You remind me of him. He went to Harvard." She paused respectfully after uttering the holy word and downed half her drink in one swallow. "You go to school?"

"I..."

"Say, do you always stare out the window like that?" She turned to the man in the aisle seat. "Looks like he's waiting for the engines to catch fire, don't it? Ha ha hahaha!" This last was a virtual bray. Norbert closed his eyes, giddy with juniper fumes. It was going to be a long flight. The odious woman leaned even further towards him, forcing him up against the window in an attempt to avoid contact.

"Don't worry, sweetie," she cooed. "Nothing wrong with a little fear of flying. Let me tell you what my son-in-law always says about it..."

The man on the aisle threw a sympathetic glance over the woman's shoulder at Norbert, who returned such a blank stare that the man immediately blushed and became hopelessly interested in his in-flight magazine. Satisfied, Norbert stared out the window, slowly relaxing as the woman's voice faded from a rasp to a buzz to a soft, soothing drone.

The plane, he realized, was not about to explode. No unexpected mechanical difficulties would force a landing. Everything was, as Alastair would say, copacetic. Damn Alastair anyway, with his nauseating California argot, his "brainstorming," and his "interfacing," and his "damage control."

I'm being permitted to leave, Norbert thought. The concept engendered in him neither fear nor relief. It floated lazily through his mind on a vain quest for any emotion to which it could become attached. It had a companion on this search, a comrade similarly bereft, which ran:

If she's not in Herschberg, I'm going to have to look for her in Utah.

Norbert combined these two thoughts, to see if in concord they might spark the sort of emotional resonance which individually they seemed incapable of rousing. It was useless. The only link he could find between them was an utter lack of associative value. It was Gary who had done this to him, no doubt, left him feeling numb, dissociated, at a loss. That, of course, and—

But, no. He was not going to think about that.

•

He had never been to Gary's house before—their relationship had never really extended quite that far—but it had been a simple enough matter to find out where he lived. Everyone in Nome knew "The Professor," as the locals called him. They regarded him as a lovable eccentric and never questioned the fact that he was constantly driving to and from the airfield in his battered old land rover with the darkened windows. After all, the Professor was a famous naturalist; it was only reasonable to expect that he would receive a number of out-of-state visitors. Gary Cabot had first arrived in Nome in his twenties, fresh from graduate school and eager to study the endangered timber wolf; he had still been there a decade later when he had been recruited by the Community. He was valued both for his established position among the locals and for his unquestioned loyalty: gratitude had its uses, and Gary always claimed that lycanthropy was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Norbert knew that Research and Development were still searching for a way to increase Cabot's life-span, but it was beginning to look like they weren't going to find one in time. It was a pity. He was going to be a hard man to replace and besides, Norbert liked him. He had even felt just the slightest bit guilty when he had stepped onto the dark threshold and jabbed the doorbell, three times hard.

Gary had been dressed in thermal underwear and a flannel dressing gown when he had opened the door, his silver hair stuck up at odd angles and flecks of matter lodged in the corners of his eyes. He had gazed expressionlessly at Norbert for a long time, taking in his muddy shoes, rumpled suit, damp hair; and then swiveled on one foot and walked away without a word, leaving Norbert standing awkwardly on the threshold.

"Well," he had said without turning, only when he was half-way down the corridor. "You may as well come in."

"Thank you." Norbert followed him cautiously. Something was clearly very wrong here. "You were asleep."

"No matter. Neither rain nor hail nor dead of night, and all that. The airfield, is it?"

"Yes."

"I received no notification."

"There's been a last minute change of plans."

"I see." Gary ran his fingers through his hair in a futile attempt to straighten it. "Sit. I'll be dressed in a moment."

Gary's house was much smaller than Norbert had expected, little more than an apartment, really. A cast-iron wood burning stove dominated the main room; on a shelf above it had been placed a series of framed photographs, all of them of wolves. Norbert looked them over, glanced at the battered sofa he had been offered, and then walked quickly down the hall to the door that Gary had closed behind him. He pushed it open without knocking.

Gary was sitting on an unmade sofabed, pulling a second pair of thermal underwear directly over the pair he was already wearing. He looked up, startled by Norbert's precipitous entrance. The coils of an electric space heater—the old, unsafe kind—glowed redly in the corner, and on a small night table, a digital alarm clock pronounced the time in blue. There didn't seem to be a telephone in here at all.

"Don't you knock?" Gary said.

"We're going to Fairbanks," Norbert told him. "Not Nome."

Gary reached for a pair of woolen trousers and began pulling them on over the two pairs of long underwear.

"To the airport," said Norbert. "I need to catch a flight."

He zipped his trousers and shed the dressing gown, then armed his way into a second thermal top and pulled it over his head. To Norbert, he seemed to be moving in slow motion.

"I'll take you to the airfield," he said, voice muffled from within the thermal. His head reappeared, hair newly mussed by static electricity; he batted at it ineffectually. "Louis can fly you to Fairbanks."

"There's been a power outage at Nome," Norbert told him. "An unforeseen complication. Nothing's leaving the ground."

Gary turned his back to reach for a fleece hanging in the closet behind him. He brushed carefully at the nubbles on the pile before unzipping it from its hanger.

"It's a matter of some urgency," said Norbert.

Gary turned around, holding the fleece in one hand. He eyed Norbert warily.

"You do know that Fairbanks is more than four hundred miles from here."

"I'm aware of that, Gary. And like I've said, it's urgent. So why don't you stop taking inventory of your goddamned wardrobe and get moving?"

Gary seemed to think about this for a minute. Then he tossed the fleece on the bed and shouldered his way past Norbert, crossing the room to kneel before a half-opened drawer of woolens. After some deliberation, he pulled out a thickly-cabled fisherman's sweater and shook it, twice.

"It's fifty degrees below zero outside," he said. "Evidently, you don't feel the cold. I do. Excuse me." He shouldered his way past again, pulling the sweater over his head as he stumbled his way into the kitchen. Norbert trailed him closely. Telephone on wall, next to coffee pot. Gary was rummaging through a drawer beneath it, looking for something. Matches, loose change, some spare keys. A pair of gloves.

"You're flying out of Fairbanks on a commercial carrier?" he was saying. "That's hardly your style."

"Orders. We make sacrifices."

"We most certainly do. Look." A quick, apologetic smile. "This is just so highly irregular. I'm really going to need some authori—" He was reaching for the telephone. Norbert grabbed his wrist and held it.

"That won't be necessary, Gary," he said, softly.

Gary looked at him.

"I'll fill you out a form."

"There's glass on your sleeve," Gary said.

"A minor mishap."

"And your shoes are ruined. You come here, to my house—to my home, Ajax—on foot, in the middle of the night; you look like hell; you tell me that the Nome airfield is experiencing some kind of power problem and so you want me to drive you to Fairbanks? What do you expect me to—" He drew a sharp intake of breath as Norbert tightened his grip on his arm.

"I don't recall your job specifications granting you the right to question me, Gary," Norbert said mildly. "You need authorization?" He ratcheted his grip one notch tighter, not all that much, but enough. "I'm it. Let's go." He released him. Gary stumbled backwards, face pale, clutching at his wrist. He gazed up at Norbert, eyes wide, then looked down at the floor.

"Right," he muttered. "I'll just...get the keys, then."

•

It had not been until they had left the Seward peninsula behind them, some four hours later, that Norbert had felt the compulsion to whirl around and stare out the rear window begin to subside. For the first time, he risked a glance in the rear view mirror. He saw nothing but the sky, lightening imperceptibly behind them. Gary, in the driver's seat beside him, stared grimly out at the road. The two had not spoken since they had left Nome. Norbert felt a sinking sensation. He had panicked back there. This was not good. He took a deep breath.

"Gary," he said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

"Yes," said Gary. "You did. You meant to hurt me, and you meant to threaten me. You meant to intimidate and to silence me. You succeeded, admirably, on all counts. Why claim otherwise? To do so denigrates both your efficiency and my intellect. Don't do that."

"No," Norbert agreed, feeling obscurely relieved at the familiar arrogant tone. "All right."

An hour passed.

"I did overreact, though," said Norbert. "It was...disproportionate. Inappropriate to the situation."

"Indeed?" Gary thought about this for a moment. "Very well," he said. "Accepted."

"It's just..." Norbert stared out the window and struggled for a phrase. "I'm...I'm having a bad day, Gary."

"Norbert. I am already in your bad day. Please don't feel that you need to tell me about it as well."

"That power outage in Nome..." Norbert began. Gary silenced him with a gesture.

"Don't," he said. "Just... Don't. You remember, a little while back, reminding me that it was not my job to question you? We both recall that, yes? Well, you were absolutely right. And here's a corollary for you: it is not your job to tell me these things. I neither want nor need to know."

"Gary..."

"You. Do. Not. Tell me these things. I don't want to hear about it. Truly." He threw Norbert a swift, irritated glance. "Look. How long have we known each other now?"

"Oh, I don't know," Norbert answered absently. "A couple of years. Twenty, thirty, something like that. Why?"

"A couple of..." Gary shook his head. "Right. Okay. A couple of years. You know exactly what it is that I offer our Community. But have you ever noticed that in all of those couple of...decades, Norbert—we usually call ten years a decade—I have never once asked you what your job is, what precisely it is that you do? Have you never wondered about that? Do I strike you as, generally speaking, an incurious person? I assure you: I am not one. But you and your people scare the hell out of me. I don't like to think too much about what you do or what you might be capable of. As far as I'm concerned, when I drop you off to catch your flights, you cease to exist. That's how I manage to sleep nights."

Norbert was genuinely surprised by the intensity of the anger which surged through his system. What I'm capable of, Gary? he thought. Oh, you have no idea what I'm capable of. But when he spoke, his voice was very nearly calm.

"I serve the Community, Gary," he said. "That's what I and my 'people' do. And you and your 'people' reap the benefits. I realize that you may find this a little bit difficult to understand, given your limited perspective, but—"

"Oh, I see!" Gary shook his head in amazement. "Well! A touch, a touch, I do confess. My 'limited perspective,' is it? That's nice. Shall I explain something to you now, from my limited perspective? The people like me—the ones who serve you? the ones who follow your orders and reap the benefits of your noble efforts on our behalf? Not a one of us really wants to know a thing about it. Trust me on this: we really don't. So long as you keep the trains running on time, we are more than willing to place our absolute trust in you—or should I say, in your noblesse oblige? No matter. After all, as you yourselves are so often reminding us, those centuries, those onerous centuries of experience under which you labor render you far more qualified than any of us to make the Big Decisions. So. You don't explain, and you don't apologize. You command. We obey. We accept. We agree. We are grateful. Ignorance is bliss. But when things go wrong, you do not get to confide in us. So don't tell me any more about your power outage in Nome, Norbert. Shoulder up your White Man's Burden and keep your mouth shut. Suffer in silence. I. Do. Not. Want. To. Know."

The land rover hit a particularly gouged section of road. Gary swore under his breath and wrestled with the steering wheel. Norbert stared at him.

"Gee, Gary," he said. "I'm detecting quite a bit of uncharacteristic hostility coming from you tonight." His anger had dissipated, leaving behind only a kind of dumb astonishment. "And here I thought we were friends."

"Did you? You were mistaken. We are not friends. Friendship is something that happens between peers. It's about equality. It's about trust. It is also, probably far more than we like to admit, even to ourselves, about our fear of mortality. It is about limited perspectives. These are not things that the two of us share. I'm not the guy you hang out and drink beers with, all right? I'm the guy who follows your orders and takes you to the airport, and whom you feel you have the right to discipline when he forgets his place. A word does exist for that relationship," he concluded. "But that word is not friendship. Or can't you even tell the difference anymore?"

"We've gone out," Norbert said. "A few times. To drink beers."

"No, Norbert. We've gone out, but I've been the only one drinking the beers. You just paid for them. And then, afterwards, you went off somewhere to file your reports on precisely what I said during our pleasant little chats, particularly the ones where I've been one or two over my limit. I am very much younger than you are, yes. I am not stupid."

"Does that really matter so very much, Gary? My reports were always positive. I enjoyed those chats. I thought you did as well. You seemed to, at the time."

"I enjoyed them. You can be extremely personable when you want to be. When it suits your purposes. But then," he added. "I suspect that you know that already." His eyes were puffy, bloodshot, bleared. Norbert, looking at them, said:

"This was a lot to ask. I'd forgotten that you require sleep. You must be exhausted. I'm sorry, Gary. Why don't we pull over for a few hours so that you can rest. Then we can find you some coffee, and perhaps some food. You'll feel better for it." He bludgeoned his way through centuries of discipline to smile encouragingly at the driver. The few Herschberg students who ever noticed Norbert's presence would not have recognized him in that moment. It was a remarkably attractive smile. Or had been, once. It was really a damned shame about the fangs. Gary answered the smile with one of his own, which was expected. Then he chuckled, which was not expected. Then, still chuckling, he shook his head, slowly, back and forth. Which was absolutely not expected.

"Yes, yes," he said. "You are good at that. Like I said: extremely personable. Amiable. Sympathetic. Compassionate, even. It's very nearly convincing. Or it would be, if I didn't happen to be the person who picks you up at the airfield when you arrive with your...I don't even know what to call them...your guests? Your companions with the dazed expressions. What do you think of them as to yourself, I sometimes wonder. I can't possibly imagine. To me, they're people. People just like me. There But For The Grace Of God people. So spare me, please. I know what you are. You didn't ask; you ordered. You had not 'forgotten' that I require sleep; you commented on the fact that I'd been sleeping when you first walked through my door this evening. You are concerned, yes, but primarily about my ability to drive this vehicle. Fear not. I will function satisfactorily for a few more hours yet. But thank you. For your consideration."

He stared blearily out at the road, then shook his head.

"No," he said. "No, I'm sorry. You can't possibly have a response to that, and I don't really expect you to. Don't mind me. I'm just reaching that dangerous age where everything starts to look like a bad bargain. I just turned sixty-five last week, you know. Landmark."

Norbert suppressed a smile. "Congratulations."

"Thank you. Research and Development say—"

"Please." Norbert quickly held up one hand, as if to ward off the breach of etiquette.

One of the first lessons the founders of the Community had learned—long before the lycanthropes, the Manitou, the ghouls and the boogies and the assorted long-legged beasties and things that went bump in the night had all been permitted in—was that contrary to expectations, there really were no set rules governing their existence. This had been discovered, rather traumatically, when a newly-awakened member, after long assurances from his mentor that sunlight was absolutely harmless, had stepped boldly into the light of day and been instantly disintegrated. The testing process had been instituted shortly thereafter, and by now it was honed to a science. Of course, accidents still happened, but not nearly as frequently as they once had. The range of diversity, even among the vampires, was staggering. Norbert had colleagues who sunbathed regularly, attended church every Sunday, primped in front of mirrors, and adored escargot. Then again, he knew others who...did not. Learning ones limitations was an essential initiation into the Community, but to share this information with others was...well, it was Simply Not Done.

Of course, Norbert already knew everything in Cabot's R&D file anyway. But this somehow didn't seem the time or place to make that fact known.

He needn't have bothered.

"Norbert," Gary said. "I know you've read my files. If you wanted to, you could probably access what I had for breakfast yesterday morning. Please. Don't insult my intelligence." He took a deep breath. "As I'm sure you know, R&D think that my life-span is normal. Human. That gives me around ten more years—what we mayflies like to call a decade. I may get more than that—I probably will—but only the next ten are likely to be good ones. Okay? Now, this may be difficult for you to understand, from your limited perspective..."

"Yes, all right, Gary," Norbert snapped. "I have come to regret the phrase. And I do know what a decade is." He was mildly surprised by the extent to which this breach of taboo was upsetting him.

"Good. You may find this difficult to understand, but I want those years. They're mine. They're mine by right, and I want them. A decade may be a drop in the bucket to you; to me, it is inestimably precious. Do you get that? Can you possibly understand that?"

"Sure, Gary." Norbert threw him a puzzled, disturbed look. "I get that. Gosh. Of course I get that."

They drove in silence for a time. Gary sighed.

"You were right," he said. "I am tired. Why don't you take the wheel for a while?"

"Sorry, Gary. I don't know how to drive."

"You don't know how to... Right. Of course you don't. Why would you ever have bothered to learn?"

"But if you really need to take a break..."

"Thanks. But for some crazy reason, I'm not feeling very much like taking a nap right now. Maybe that's due to whatever you've so ostentatiously not been looking at ever since we left Nome. Or maybe it's just nerves. You tell me, Norbert: is stopping the car really such a very good idea right now?"

Norbert said nothing.

"I do have some idea of the kinds of things that can cause unexpected power outages, you know," Gary told him gently. "And I also know who holds the Chairman's reins these days. I live in Nome, and I am not deaf."

"Gary..." Norbert began cautiously, but Gary cut him off.

"Things are leaking, Norbert. What goes on on that ship of yours is no longer the secret it once was. We were talking about your social obligations before, do you remember? Your obligation to keep us ignorant? You've reneged. You've not held up your end of the social contract."

"That an...interesting definition of the social contract, Gary."

"It's an honest one. I've never been a political person. I never cared about whatever power struggles went on in the back rooms of the Nosferatu, so long as I didn't even know of the existence of said back rooms. Now I hear about these things, and it scares the hell out of me. You're forcing me to become political, and I don't like that. And it isn't just me, either. People talk about it, they meet to talk about it. It worries me. The Wolves—"

"Stop." Norbert interrupted him. "That's enough. There are things you shouldn't tell me, you know, and you're headed straight for one of them. If that was your point, then you've made it. You've gone far enough."

"Oh, I've gone too far, actually," Gary agreed. "But somehow, driving down this road in the middle of nowhere and trying very hard not to look too closely into the rear view mirror, I find it hard to believe that it matters very much anymore. Or are you still going to feed me that line about the Dark being nothing but a 'passing fad?' What the hell was that, Norbert? The Party Line? Keeping Hoi Polloi Content? Not Discussing Our Problems In Front of the Staff? What?"

"No." Norbert leaned back into the passenger seat and closed his eyes. He was just so tired. "Nothing like that, Gary. I really just thought it was a passing fad."

"Terrific. When exactly was it that you people first began to accept Christianity as something other than a 'minor cult,' anyway? The fifteenth century? That's the problem with being immortal: it makes you a little slow to get with the program. Do you really believe for one moment that the Dark is going to be satisfied with coexistence? I've read their literature, those pamphlets they hand out on the Nosferatu to you and your friends. All of that 'Making the World Safe For Our People' rhetoric makes the Wolves a tad nervous, you know. We're not that far from human in the Dark's eyes. For that matter, we're not all that far from human in your eyes, are we? Not Quite Our Kind, Dear, as we used to say in Penobscot. How many crates of silver bullets are there stored on the Nosferatu these days, Norbert? Do you even know?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Norbert snapped. "The Dark supports the Law, just like everyone else. You know that."

"I also know that there are exceptions to the Law. That's something else you've failed to keep secret. What is the popular phrase? 'Individuals who present a clear and present danger…?'"

"You don't want to go there, Gary."

"And that there are people who are authorized to break the Law. When they're not in Minnesota."

"Gary. You really had better stop this. I am warning—"

"And now you're threatening me." Gary smiled sadly through the windshield. "Oh, Norbert. And you thought that we were friends."

"I...am...not...threatening you." Why was he rising to this sort of thing? "You just cannot have the slightest idea how irrational you sound, nor how deeply insulting you are being. I don't know what's got into you, Gary. I never thought you the type to listen to paranoid rumors."

"Paranoid rumors? Okay, how's this for a paranoid rumor? Rumor has it that there are special shipments coming in from Japan lately. Crates and crates. And they're not being stored on the ship; they're not even reaching the ship. They're going straight to some warehouses somewhere up above the Arctic Circle. Teak, very nice workmanship I'm told, crucifixes on the handles just for good measure..."

"All right. You were insulting me. Now you're trying to frighten me. Why?"

"Because I'm frightened!" Gary yelled at him. "Because I'm lonely and want company! Because I don't believe that you have ever been frightened so much as once in all of your very long life, and I want to see exactly how it looks on you. Because I'm freezing my ass off here in every article of clothing I own, while you're just slouching there in some Armani suit. Is that petty enough for you?"

"That is pretty petty," Norbert agreed cheerfully.

"Is it? Then try this. Because in thirty-five years of our acquaintance, you have never once called me by anything but my first name, and you use it every single time you address me, as if you think that I'm your goddamned dog. You woke me up in the middle of the night, you hurt me and humiliated me and bullied me, and then you had the unmitigated gall to make me feel churlish when I refused to let you apologize for it. You sit there with that bland expression on your face, spouting those phony 1950s Midwesternisms and talking to me about friendship, of all things, while all the time we both know that you are using me, and doing it as ruthlessly and with as little regard as you use the people you batten upon. And because in spite of all this, you still want me to believe that you are nice.

"You are not nice, Norbert. You are a monster who feeds on the blood of the living, and perhaps that isn't your fault, but you are also inconsiderate and thoughtless and manipulative, and those things are. Even your loneliness, which is one of the few things about you that I believe to be sincere—your rather pathetic need to talk to someone about your 'bad day'—is simply appalling in its carelessness. You have compromised my position and you have endangered my life—my life, don't you understand?—which means less than nothing to you, but which I happen to value beyond all measure—and you have done this to me for no better reason than that, although you are centuries old and going to live forever, you are nonetheless so lazy, and so arrogant, and so accustomed to being served that you have never even bothered to learn what sub-intelligent teenagers teach themselves for fun: how to hot-wire and drive a goddamned car!

"Frighten you? Insult you? Norbert, if I thought for a minute that I could get away with it, I would happily murder you for involving me in this!" He slumped back in his seat, breathing hard.

"Well, sure, Gary," Norbert said comfortably. "But don't hold back on my account. Why don't you come right out and tell me how you really feel?"

Gary stared at him, opened his mouth, took a deep breath, and then laughed helplessly.

"Oh," he gasped. "Oh, and you are infuriating. How have you managed to live as long as you have?"

"I have no idea." Norbert settled back in his seat and closed his eyes. "Honestly, Gary. This suit I am wearing is not an Armani. There are other designers in the world. You have a very short life-span, and you are spending it in Alaska. That is still no excuse for having the dress sense of a bag lady." He tried to force back his irritation, but failed. "You know," he snapped, "if I really had as little regard for you as you seem to think I do, I would hardly have been willing to sit here tolerating your abuse for the past hour. You know what I can do. You know what I am authorized to do. You don't need your free will to drive a car, Gary."

"No," Gary agreed grimly. "I don't need it. But it's a long drive to Fairbanks, and you're lonely. That much is obvious. You're desperate for someone to talk to, and as poor as my company may be this evening, it still suits you well enough. Even if you were planning on killing me once we reach Fairbanks—which I am not altogether sure you are not—you would still want me driving this car in my own good mind, just so that you could tolerate my abuse." He snorted. "'Tolerate my abuse.' You love my abuse. You know that you do. But I'm not egotistical enough by half to flatter myself into believing for a minute that that changes anything."

Norbert opened his eyes and gazed at him thoughtfully.

Well, I'll be damned, he thought. He does know what I'm capable of.

"Gosh, Gary," he said, after a long pause. "Have you really been sitting there all this time worrying about that? You're a trooper. You really are. But forget about it, will you? Have you seen Fairbanks? I wouldn't ask my worst enemy to die in Fairbanks."

Gary didn't crack a smile. He looked a bit pale.

"Seriously," Norbert told him. "Forget that. I don't need you dead. I know you think that I'm terribly careless, but I'm not that careless. Really, I'm not. And I wouldn't enjoy it. So please put it out of your mind. I do value your life, no matter what you may think. I don't value it as much as my own, but surely you can't expect that of me? Why on earth should I? Noblesse oblige? It doesn't extend that far, Gary, not by a long shot. I'm not immortal either, you know. I can be hurt. I can be killed. And I can fear death every bit as cravenly as you can. Even more so, actually, because I've had years more experience at it. And also because for me, it isn't inevitable. So cut me some slack, will you? You think that you've never seen me frightened?" He laughed suddenly. "Bless you for that, Gary. For that alone, I would have spared your life, even if I had been planning to kill you in Fairbanks. You have got to be the only person in the entire state of Alaska who doesn't know exactly how frightened I am at any given moment in time. I have a pulse. And glands. You can't imagine how awkward it is for me. What the hell is the matter with you, anyway?"

"What, I'm supposed to be able to read your pulse now?" Gary muttered. He seemed to be regaining his color. "What do you think I am, a stethoscope?"

"You're a werewolf. Can't you smell it on me?"

"Adenoid operation."

"Oh." Norbert thought about that for a moment. "Gee. That has got to suck."

"It can be difficult. Sometimes. But at least I know how to control my pulse. For God's sake, Norbert, I've known college students who have taught themselves to do that. College freshmen. Eighteen-year-olds. They know how to drive cars, too," he added darkly, then sighed. "No. I'm sorry. I realize that you must have been low on options. But I wish that you'd found someone else to drive you to the airport. You were just about the last person I wanted to see on my doorstep at two in the morning. I was warned about you, you know."

Norbert stared at him, heart pounding in his chest. He willed it to stop, thinking of college freshmen. It didn't work. But then, he had not been finding college freshmen terribly comforting things to contemplate of late.

"About me?" he said. "What about me?"

"That you weren't exactly a...healthy person to know. Anymore." Gary glanced over at him. "I'm sorry."

"You're sorry? Gary, who has been saying this about me?"

"Everyone has, Norbert, don't you understand? I've told you that people are talking. They talk about you, too. They're saying that you're no longer on the Chairman's A-list. That part of the reason he's been working you so much lately is to keep you out of Alaska. And that you're getting old. Old and unreliable. And weird. 'It takes some of them that way,' is the usual phrase. Word has it that your work has become erratic. Sloppy. Careless. And from the tone of voice in which this is usually pronounced, I'm rather left with the impression that in your line of work, carelessness is just about tantamount to treason. People do talk about treason these days. Maybe you didn't realize that. You haven't spent much time in Alaska these past few years, and I'm starting to get the impression that you've been a little...slow to adjust to the new climate. You're on your way out, Norbert, that's what they're saying about you. And you didn't have the slightest idea?" Gary shook his head. "You're centuries old, and you're a babe in the woods. I really wish that you hadn't shown up on my doorstep last night. I do like you, and I'm sorry that you're in trouble, but I wish you'd just stayed the hell away from me."

"How long?" Norbert asked, more harshly than he'd intended.

"How long?"

"How long have people been saying these things about me?"

"I don't know. Two years or so? I think it was about two years ago that someone first mentioned to me that the day was fast approaching when you might cease to be an...advantageous person to know."

Norbert stared out the window and watched the taiga streak past.

"Was I an 'advantageous person to know,' Gary?" he asked, finally.

"I did try to tell you, didn't I?" Gary smiled at him, pityingly. "Didn't I try to tell you that we were not exactly friends?"

They drove in silence for a long time.

"There's something that you ought to know," Gary blurted suddenly, just as they passed the first sign for Fairbanks. "Shortly after you left for Minnesota last August, I was asked to take two people to the airfield to catch a flight. I caught a glimpse of their tickets. They were going to Minneapolis."

"In August?"

"Yes. To my knowledge, they're still there."

Norbert felt a surge of indignation. Really, he had not expected to be observed. Not after so many years. Then he saw Gary's expression and knew that there was something else here.

"Two?" he prompted.

"Two. Manitou."

Norbert concentrated very hard on the road signs. Gary, watching him out of the corner of his eye, nodded. A strange, slow smile was spreading over his face

"Yes," he said quietly. "They're stronger than you are. And much older. And they don't share your needs, or your vulnerabilities. And they can hypnotize you if they want to, can't they? They can override your will. What must something like that think of something like you? You wonder sometimes, don't you? No," he said sympathetically. "No, it really isn't a very nice feeling at all. Is it, Norbert?"

"Don't gloat, Gary," Norbert snapped. "It's unattractive. You just made up that rumor about the stakes shipped in from Japan, didn't you?"

"No, sorry, I didn't. But it's probably just a rumor. It didn't come from a very reliable source. But how about those crates of silver bullets on board the Nosferatu? They really are there, aren't they?"

"They've been there since we first brought the lycanthropes into the Community," Norbert conceded. "A safety measure. I hadn't even thought about them in ages. If they've been increasing the supply in recent years, no one's told me about it. But then," he added, bitterly. "I guess that isn't surprising. Since I'm so old. And weird."

It was not until they nearly reached the airport that Norbert thought to ask.

"I'm beginning to get the impression that you 'just happen to catch a glimpse of' a lot of plane tickets in your line of work, Gary," he said. "There was, at one time, a good deal of traffic to and from Utah. It tapered off around five years ago. I've got a vague idea that it might have started up again, quite recently. Perhaps in the past year?"

It was a long time before Gary answered him.

"If you know to ask the question…" he said.

"All right," said Norbert. "Thank you."

Gary's hands had trembled slightly on the wheel when they’d parked at departures. Norbert had looked away and smothered a smile.

Like hell you can control your pulse, he’d thought. But he had taken care to move slowly and deliberately on his way out of the land rover.

"Enjoy your ten years, Gary," he had said, wincing at the tension in his leg muscles as he unfolded himself from the passenger seat. "Find a pay phone and call Central. Just tell them what happened. They'll send Louis or someone to pick you up. Don't even think about trying to lie to them: you're not good enough at it. And get some sleep, will you? You look terrible."

Gary had smiled faintly.

"Don't send me any postcards, Norbert," he’d said. And then he had driven away.

Very, very quickly.

•

I'm being permitted to leave.

Again, Norbert tried to find some emotion to attach to this concept.

And I'm so very, very tired. So I should be glad that I'm being permitted to leave. Relieved. It's a good thing. Really.

He remained unconvinced. The woman sitting next to him had fallen asleep on his shoulder, and now she was beginning to snore. He pressed himself further against the window, flesh recoiling helplessly at the feel of her warm breath.

I may be getting soft, he thought. But not that soft. If she drools on me, I'll kill her.

This, too, was unconvincing. He checked his watch, then glanced out the window nervously. This flight had better land on time: he was cutting it much closer to sunrise than he liked. He fleetingly wished that he hadn't been forced to abandon his briefcase in Nome. Some of those action figures had been collector's items. It would cost him a fortune to replace them. Also, he was pretty sure that the Chewbacca had belonged to Elgin. That was awkward. He'd have to think of some reasonable explanation...

Oh, right. Like it mattered.

They were right about him. He really was getting weird.

It was Herschberg, he thought bitterly, that had done this to him, no matter what Cabot and his mysterious 'they' had been saying about him for the past two years. There had been nothing wrong with him, damn it—nothing—until he had been sent to Herschberg. He hated that town.

So why are you going back there?

Norbert didn't really know. It seemed a bad plan, but he wasn't quite sure what a better one might be. He was discovering, and very late in the game it was, too, that he was one of those people who are most comfortable following someone else's orders. He found this embarrassing. Even more embarrassing was the realization that he had spent that entire drive from Nome desperately hoping that eventually Gary would just give in and tell him what he should do. And wasn't that just about as pathetic as it got? Almost as pathetic as—

Back away from it, Ajax.

—as the way he had followed Jill home from the library that night...

Back away. He didn't want to think about the Manitou right now. The shape-shifters. The Gaunt Man's pets. He was not going to think about them. The important thing to think about was Utah. What was going on in Utah?

And why would they send two of them, anyway? What could possibly be happening in Herschberg to warrant the attention of two Manitou? Surely it couldn't have anything to do with his mission, the simple abduction of a bio-chemist, a professor at some rinky-dink, second-string Midwestern University. The milk run. That he'd been sent on because he wasn't trusted. And that he hadn't even managed properly. He'd made a mess of it, Alastair had been right about that. No, it couldn't have anything to do with that, even if it did seem a bit strange for there to be two operations going on simultaneously in a town the size of Herschberg Minnesota. Still. It had to be something completely unrelated. Need to know basis. He didn't know about them; they didn't know about him. Standard procedure. But—

He had followed her to the dorm as if in a trance...

No, Utah. Focus on Utah. That was a strange thing. Alastair had called that operation off years ago. They'd given up on the whole Doorway idea. Case closed, dossier shut, filed and indexed. So why didn't he believe it? Just because of that girl? Pretty flimsy, and yet—

He had followed her to the dorm as if in a trance...

It had been more than the blood, it must have been. Even after three months, he would not have lost his head like that. Not even if he were getting old. And weird, damn Cabot all to hell and back. If it weren't so utterly absurd, so entirely ridiculous, he might almost think—

Connections. Make connections. Why were two shape-shifters sent to Herschberg? And why had his hypnotism rolled off of the Joplin girl like rain off of vinyl?

"They can hypnotize you, can't they?" Gary had said. Smirking at him, the insolent little puppy. Even among the vampires, Norbert's powers of mental domination were respected.

But the Manitou were stronger.

Why two? Norbert had a strong suspicion that one of them was masquerading as the Joplin girl in End of the Line, Utah, at this very moment. And probably wondering what in God's name he had been doing in the Greyhound bus station. She had hugged him when he had said goodbye, he remembered queasily. He really wished she hadn't done that. That had been...mean. Contemptuous.

One going to Utah, why he did not know. And the other—

He had followed her to the dorm as if in a trance. They had barely spoken. He had knelt before her, he wasn't quite sure why, it had just seemed...polite? Respectful. At the time. But was it just his imagination, or had there been a flicker of cold amusement in her eyes when he had done that? And she hadn't even flinched when he had slit her throat. Did it really seem likely for a nineteen-year-old, for a journalism major, no less, to show that kind of courage? That wasn't normal, not in Norbert's experience.

No. No, no, no, no, no. It was out of the question. The primal taboo, the one absolute Law. It was inconceivable. It was unthinkable. It was also utterly nauseating.

(Gary Cabot, whose societal taboos and moral strictures had only had sixty-five years to harden into place, would have been astonished at the depths of revulsion Norbert felt at the thought of feeding off of a member of the Community. For a moment, he wondered if he were capable of being sick.)

I am a respecter of the Law, he thought, desperately.

But the Law was a function of the Community. And the Community...

Oh, he was in very big trouble here. And she had asked for it, that was the thing. Why? And what in God's name did he think that he was doing going back to Herschberg, anyway?

Norbert didn't know. He just didn't know.

•

Janis Joplin sat behind the counter of P TE'S E TS, smoking furiously and trying to catch the eye of the waitress for a refill of coffee. This procedure was complicated by the fact that Janis' face had frozen into a perpetual scowl over the past few days. Waitresses in diners named after people named P TE did not service people who scowled. Scowling wasn't friendly-like. Out-of-towners who scowled were clearly bad news.

The diner was both air-conditioned and open 24 hours and as a result, Janis had been spending far too much time there. She had holed up in a motel outside Provo the night before, but it had done her little good. Her thoughts had perversely returned to End of the Line, and so eventually she had given in and followed them here. Of late, she had developed a fascination with the diner's damaged neon sign, flickering balefully now in the mirror behind the counter. P TE'S E TS. There was a gnostic air to the letters, Janis thought, and to the way that the sounds repeated if read out loud. Backwards, it said ST E S'ET P. It was a kabbalistic ward, a cypher, a mantra. It was one of the Nine Billion Names of God.

It occurred to Janis, not for the first time, that she might well be losing her mind. This seemed unfair, given how little of her mind she had been allowed to keep in the first place. When she wasn't dwelling on P TE'S E TS, she was replaying endlessly that scene in Number One's warehouse. Jill, sleeping peacefully on the bed. Her joy, unexpectedly intense, at finding out that she was alive after all. Her longing to wake her up so that they could talk, mixed with the almost maternal desire to let her sleep. And then her fury, cold, clean and brilliant, when she had touched her friend's hand and realized that Number One had been toying with her. That thing on the bed was not Jill.

It was this last, her anger, that had been keeping her awake nights. Janis had never before given much thought to the question of whether or not she was capable of murder. She had been kidnapped, and she had been held hostage, and both her memory and her childhood had been stripped from her, but she had never seen much point in holding a grudge about it. It wasn't as if she could remember it, and besides, she had seen the videotapes that had been released on her birthdays for all those years: the girl in the videos had looked happy, and Janis supposed that was good enough for her. Very few of her friends claimed to have had happy childhoods. She figured she was lucky to have had one, even if she couldn't remember a damned thing about it. She had never before felt angry enough to murder; consequently, she had never before wondered if she were capable of it.

But maybe she really had been pretty angry about it all along. Because when Number One had ushered her out of the warehouse with that smug smile on his face, thinking that he had pulled one over on her all right, Janis had felt an utter lack of surprise at the thought that had crossed her mind:

Just keep smiling, and he'll never know. And then he'll never see you coming.

She was accustomed to learning new things about herself and the world she lived in. And here was yet another new and astonishing tidbit of information: she was more than capable of contemplating murder.

It had been appallingly easy to purchase a handgun in Provo. Eighteen years old, operating under an assumed name, FBI file a mile long. A wad of cash under the counter. No problemo, kiddo, and you want ammo to go with that? That was Utah for you.

Apparently, she was also capable of planning murder.

The next thing to learn was whether or not she was capable of committing it.

Still scowling, Janis threw a quarter on the counter and stormed out of the diner. There was just no point in thinking about it anymore. She would go and either she would do it or she wouldn't, and then either way, she would go home. If she had to lose what little was left of her mind, Janis reflected, it sure as hell wasn't going to be in fucking End of the Line, Utah.

The warehouse door was, once more, unlocked. Janis pulled the gun out of her grimy backpack, took a deep breath, and then threw the door open violently, relishing the cacophony of sheet metal suddenly confronted by heavy steel.

The first thing she noticed was that the bed was empty. The thing that had looked like Jill was gone.

Ears still ringing with metallic echo, she took two steps forward and tripped over something that made a hollow clang as she sprawled on top of it. Twisting, sitting up, thanking god or whomever that the gun had not gone off, she saw that it was an old oil can, nozzle pressed to the floor, sides dented and rust-streaked. Its sheer incongruity, in the middle of that vast space, stunned Janis to stupidity. Staring at it, she could only think:

We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz. I want to ask him if he can get me back to Kansas. Do you think the wizard might give me a heart? Or me a brain? Or me some courage? Or me my memories? Or tell me if I have what it takes to kill? Well, why don't you just ask him? It's very simple—you just follow the yellow brick—

Janis caught her breath. There was a trail of blood leading off from the bed. Towards one of the partitioned corners of the warehouse.

She stood up and walked slowly, very slowly, across the empty room. She reached the bed and then, turning awkwardly on one foot, straddled the blood trail and crab-walked along it, unwilling to put her feet in it, yet feeling obscurely as if it were important to follow it in a proper and formal fashion.

Otherwise, I might get lost, she thought. And then I'll never get back to Kansas.

When she reached the partition, she reached up with one hand and pulled it, hard. It came down. Behind it there was another bed. And a lot more blood. And other things.

Someone beat me to it, Janis thought, and staggered off to one side, struggling to keep from being sick and wishing desperately that she had not had pea soup for lunch. Another question answered: she wasn't cut out for murder, or at least not for its aftermath. And another thing learned: the next time she was going to stumble across something like this, she would not eat first. Better yet, she would arrange not to be there at all.

"My dear child."

Janis straightened and whirled around. She realized that she had somehow dropped the gun somewhere.

The bed in this corner of the room was nothing like the canopied monstrosity on which the thing that had looked like Jill had lain. It was an aluminum cot, the sort that folds up into the linen closet, with a mattress little thicker than a cigarette pack. What was left of him had been leaning weakly against it, as if he had been thrown there. But now his eyes were open, and he was looking at her, pallid and wincing, one hand clutching ineffectually at his bowels. Janis tasted pea soup again and swallowed, with determination. It occurred to her that to be sick right now would be the grossest imaginable violation of etiquette.

"You're..." She swallowed again. "You're... How can you be... I mean..."

"You made it in time for the third act. I'm so pleased."

"I'll..." She took a shaky step backwards. "I'll...call an ambulance?"

"Hardly necessary. It would be a futile gesture, and I think that, aesthetically, it might well spoil the scene. Don't you agree?"

Janis stared at him, feeling her anger return. Dying people, she thought, do not talk like that. He's playing me. He's playing me again.

"Oh, right!" she snapped. "Like I'm really supposed to believe that you're dying. Just like I was supposed to believe that...that thing was my friend Jill! I don't know how you managed the special effects, Number One, but I'm not buying it this time either. Christ, you must really think I'm stupid!"

"Stupid," he repeated numbly. "Yes. I have been stupid. What a terrible, terrible miscalculation." He stopped then, stared at her. "You knew?" he asked. "You looked at her, in that bed, and you knew? And you didn't say...you didn't tell me..."

"You didn't know?"

"I should have known," he murmured, as if to himself. He stared past Janis, at the wall, breathing shallowly. "She came so willingly. A girl, that age. I should have known. I wanted to believe that she would understand. A conceit. You see? The angel appears to Mary, bearing wondrous news of the child she carries. A scene I wanted so badly. I wanted her to come willingly. I wanted to believe—" He gasped, stiffened. In spite of herself, Janis knelt by his side.

"Can I do anything?" she asked. "Are you in pain?"

Number One let out a long, shuddering sigh.

"Not...bad," he breathed.

"Well, you should be!" she yelled, suddenly furious. "God damn it, you deserve to be." She sat down, hard, on the one corner of the bed which was not drenched in blood. "So where is the illustrious freshman class, anyway? Was it what did this to you?" He did not answer her. "Talk to me, damn it! Tell me something for a change!" There was still no response. Desperately, she grabbed his shoulder, shook it. He cried out. "Say something!"

"I..." he gasped. "I am rendered speechless. I am...overwhelmed by your compassion."

"Oh shut up." Janis released him violently. He moaned softly and doubled over. "You've never shown me any compassion. So you're dying. So what? Do you want me to hold your hand?" She jumped up off the cot. "How can you be alive like that? How can you? You're...you are so fucked up."

"I am," Number One told her. "Something that takes a great effort to kill."

"What? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? You're saying that you're going to walk around like that now? Maybe you'll just get up in an hour or so and play a round of golf?" He curled up, half under the cot, ignoring her. "Don't do that!" she screamed. "Don't you ignore me!" She aimed her foot square at his abdomen, whirled at the last minute and kicked the cot. It skittered across the floor. "You can feel pain," she snarled. "So you had better not ignore me. I want answers."

He pulled himself up on one elbow, opened his eyes and looked at her, coolly, appraisingly.

"You won't get them," he told her. "Not that way." He held out a bloodied hand. "Help me up."

She hesitated, then went to him. It took a bit of doing to get him propped up again, and she felt her throat hitching sickly as her clothing began to cling, warm and sticky, to her body.

"You threatened to torture me," Number One reminded her. "And now you're squeamish? If you're going to be sick, Jane, do it elsewhere."

"I will not be sick," she told him through gritted teeth, and shoved him roughly into place. "There. Happy? You can die sprawled against the wall, instead of lying down on the floor. I don't know why you care. It's not exactly dignified either way."

He stared at her, then nodded weakly.

"Yes," he murmured. "Cruelty. We were never able to remove that strain utterly. The inevitable corruption. The necessary taint. We came closer with you than with most."

"What are you talking about?" Janis cried. "I am not cruel!" The instant she said it, it sounded absurd, even to herself. "After all you've done to me, you can call me... I am not—"

"Jane," he whispered. "Jane. Your roommate. Jill. Her life is in danger. Terrible danger."

"God!" Janis stalked stiffly across the room. "Don't you ever read the news?" She laughed, an ugly laugh. "No, I guess you don't, do you? Current events were never your forte. Jill's dead." She said it watching his face, hoping to see him flinch, but he merely closed his eyes.

"Her child?"

"Her child? Fuck her child! I don't care about her child. I imagine her child's dead too; she wasn't that pregnant. Who gives a shit? She was going to get an abortion anyway. You son of a bitch, Jill was one of my best friends, and now she's dead, and all you care about is her goddamned child?"

"You have my condolences."

"You can go to hell. You may as well have murdered her, you and whatever freak organization you work for. How many of you are there, anyway?"

"None." His breath was coming unevenly, eyes still closed. "No one...no one left. I was the last. The Dark hunted us down, one by one,. I thought...even alone, with the child, I could... Our last chance."

"So." Suddenly, standing beside him, Janis felt very calm. She listened to her words as if they belonged to someone else. "Let me see if I've got this right. You're the last one. And now you're sitting there in your own blood, dying hard, and your 'freshman class,' your 'last chance,' has been murdered in embryo, and all you're stuck with is some old defective experiment who just happened to wander by. Your entire plan is just disastrously ruined, isn't it? That's sad, Number One. That's just fucking heart-breaking." She felt an unpleasant smile tighten across her face. "You know what this sounds like to me? It sounds to me like you've failed your Finals, friend."

It was a long time before he answered.

"You always were a vicious child."

"Was I? How nice to be told such things. Another mystery revealed. You're Number One, and this is a hat, and that is the sky, and I was a vicious child." She was shaking, beginning to cry. "Look, are you going to die or not? I have a bus to catch." She fumbled in her jacket pocket for a cigarette. "Want one?"

Number One shook his head.

"You know," Janis told him, half laughing and half crying. "That's what upset my parents the most? I mean, isn't that ridiculous? Here's your daughter, whom you haven't seen in eleven years, and she's just suddenly reappeared with no memory, after having God knows what done to her, and all you can worry about is that sometime in her absence she's taken up smoking? I didn't even know at first, you know? I was going through nicotine withdrawal, and I didn't even know what it was. I just felt crappy all the time, and then one of the Feds lit up, and I wanted it, and—"

"Jane."

"What?" she screamed. "What do you want from me?"

"Desk. Top right. Envelope."

Janis eyed him suspiciously, then walked slowly to the desk. There was only one envelope in the top right drawer. She brought it back and held it out for him. He made no move for it.

"For me?" she asked. He nodded.

Janis picked at the flap with her fingernails, then froze.

"What's in it?"

"Eleven years."

She stared.

"You...Oh." She bit her lip. "Oh. I think I get this. I don't want it." She threw it down onto the cot as if it were a live snake. "I don't want it."

Number One smiled at her, tolerantly.

"Take it. Take it with you. Decide later."

"Why?" Janis cried. "Why? Because you know that I'll never be able to resist opening it? You son of a bitch, it's too late for you to manufacture your messiah or whatever, and so you've decided that I'm better than nothing? Is that it?" She snatched up the envelope and held it in one hand, lighter in the other. "Open your eyes, damn it. I want you to watch this." It took her three tries to get the flint wheel to spark.

"Please," he said, when she had finally got a flame. She hesitated.

"If you must..." he said.

She raised an eyebrow.

"After I am dead," he concluded. "It's...it's a last request."

"Uh-huh." Janis sighed and put the lighter down. "Yeah, okay," she muttered. "I guess I'll honor that."

"Most kind."

"Don't mention it." She sat down on the cot, suddenly exhausted. "I came here to kill you, you know," she told him. "But I guess I'd already done it, in a way, hadn't I? I really did. I did it. I killed you. I murdered you."

She contemplated this for a moment.

"I didn't mean for it to be so messy," she said.

"You wouldn't have been able to," he told her gently. "Not with a gun."

"Why am I sitting here like this?" Janis asked. "I should just leave you here."

He smiled. "You won't."

She didn't. He stopped breathing at a quarter past three. Janis smoked another cigarette, stared at the wall for a while, and then tottered into the center of the warehouse and threw up. Then, feeling better, she lay down on the great four-poster bed, just for a minute.

"I AM OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL!" the great glowing green oil can said. "LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR!"

"You're an oil can," Janis told it. "I don't despair on behalf of oil cans." She raised her hands to her eyes to remove her green sunglasses, but when she took them off, there was another pair beneath them.

"You can't take off your glasses," the oil can told her, a bit peevishly. "This is the Elementarald City. Everyone here has to wear their Elementarald glasses. It's Elementarald, my dear Toto."

"I am not Toto," Janis said indignantly.

"You most certainly are. Why have you returned? I told you not to return until you had the Wicked Jill's head."

"If you're so Great and Powerful," Janis asked it, "then why don't you go get the Wicked Jill's head yourself? I don't think you're a Great and Powerful Oil Can at all. I think you're just an empty, rusty, dented old oil can from Omaha."

"Don't denigrate Omaha," Jill told her. "My child is going to be born in Omaha."

"It's the WICKED JILL!" the oil can bellowed. "Go get 'er! Sic! Sic! Sic!"

"Sic, sic, sic," Jill repeated, lying on her pyre. Aeneas' ship was sailing away in the distance. She plunged his sword into her breast.

"Identify," Number One demanded.

"The Aeneid," Janis answered dutifully. "The death of Dido."

"Book?"

"I don't know. Who cares? I'm tired."

"What book? Come now, Jane. It's very simple. What book of the Aeneid contains Dido's death scene?"

"I don't remember. I need the envelope."

"The envelup, puh-lease!" the oil can urged. "For the category of best Jill imitation for 1990. And the third runner-up is—"

"What sort of a classics major are you, anyway?" asked Jill, opening one eye from her pyre. "You don't even know who Woody Allen is!"

"I'm sorry!" Janis screamed. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

The warehouse was dim with evening light. This was obvious, although there were no windows. A white cat with a liquid stare strolled through the room, tail high and waving. Omaha. Was it dancing? It stopped, half-way to the bed, and stared at Janis.

Janis stared back at it. She was cold, cold with a chill that went beyond mere temperature, the same chill she had felt when she had touched the Jill Thing lying in this very bed.

"You're not the Good Jill," she said. "You're the Wicked Jill."

The cat melted, shimmered, formed itself into a tall thin man. Janis looked up to the Number One before her, down and across the room to the Number One against the wall. The quick and the dead.

"I'm not dreaming this," she whispered.

"Caulfield," the cat said. "You came back."

"You are a sloppy assassin," Janis told it, because it was all right to say such things in dreams. The cat shrugged gracefully.

"The heart is a well-protected organ," it said. "And it struggled." It moved towards her. Janis shrank back.

"Don't," she choked. "Please don't."

"It's all right," the cat assured her. "You're only dreaming."

"I know."

"I have no orders concerning you whatsoever. I am not...bloodthirsty by nature."

"I just want to go home to Omaha," said Janis.

"Omaha?"

"I mean Kansas. No, I mean Minnesota."

"I see." The cat regarded her solemnly. "You'll need a balloon to get to Omaha," it told her. "And even then, Toto will jump out, and you'll have to run to catch him. You always do."

"I'm Toto," Janis said. "The oil can told me. Everyone tells me." The cat smiled and stepped towards her. Janis shuddered.

"Please don't. You're so cold."

"You feel that? Impressive."

"No." Janis felt that this was a very important point. "No, I'm not impressive. I'm Toto, damn it. I'm just Toto. I'm no one. No one important. No one important at all."

"Oh, but Toto is important. He knocks the screen away and reveals the Wizard, remember?"

"Oil can. The oil can."

The cat glanced behind it, to the oil can on the floor.

"As you wish," it said. It reached out and touched Janis' face. Cold. Raised her chin and met her eyes. Cold. Its eyes were colorless, colored, deep...

"Stop that," Janis said. "I don't like that."

"Very impressive. They came closer with you than they realized."

"No. Please. Not impressive. Not impressive at all. I failed my Finals. I—"

"How deep does it go, the taint?" the cat asked her. "Did you drink its pain as it died?"

"I am not cruel," said Janis. "Angry. And wronged. Not cruel."

"Tell me what you see," the cat said, and then for the longest time there was nothing. And nothing. And nothing. And nothing.

Janis became aware that she was crying.

"What a terrible nightmare this is that you are having," the cat told her, with a kind of dreadful compassion. "It's a good thing that you'll wake up soon."

"Yes." Janis sniffled. "I'd very much like to wake up now, please."

"Such a pity." The cat smiled at her. "You came so close to being something other than cattle."

"Close only counts in horseshoes and oil cans," said Janis.

"How very true. Go back to sleep. But be sure you get up soon. The weekly bus to Minneapolis leaves soon, and you don't want to miss it, do you?" It caught itself. "To Omaha, I mean."

"No. Yes. Kansas. Omaha."

"We may meet again." The cat turned. "'Till then."

Janis shuddered. When she woke up, the body was gone. As was the blood. And the desk, and the gun. And the oil can. And all of the partitions. She lay alone on a four-poster bed in the very center of a spotlessly clean prefabricated warehouse. She glanced down at herself. Her clothing had been laundered, and her hair was damp. There was the faintest smell of disinfectant in the air. Beside the bed, her backpack sat waiting. An envelope was resting on top of it. Blinking, she sat up, reached over, and opened it. Inside was a one-way airline ticket. To Minneapolis.

Janis stood up, crammed the envelope in her pocket, and shouldered her backpack. Then she paused, thinking back. She swung the backpack back around and unzipped the front pocket. There, just where she had shoved it, was another envelope, still stained with smears of blood, one corner slightly frayed where it had caught in the zipper. Janis looked at it for a long moment.

"I do not have a normal life," she said, to no one in particular.

Then she left. To catch the balloon to Omaha.

•

Jill lay in the hospital bed, unconscious, oblivious, uncaring. She was watched by four FBI agents, two doctors from Washington, and a furtive man in a business suit. She had stunned the medical community. She had also stunned her friends, who were gathering to celebrate her revival, such as it was, in a lounge of Saki dorm. None of them had been allowed to see her. No one had been allowed to see her, aside from the aforementioned seven people. The press had not even been allowed to see the seven people. And thus, no one had yet discovered that during her week in purgatory, Jill had been given, for reasons that eluded all concerned, a very professional Caesarian Section.

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