BOOK ONE

THE ROAD TO THE HILL

THE PATRON SAINT OF DAYDREAMS

I.

On a windless summer day in an uncertain year, more than a century after the founding of Cornell, a man who told lies for a living climbed to the top of The Hill to fly a kite. He was a young man, a surprisingly wealthy one even for a professional liar, and he lived alone in a gaudy yellow house on Stewart Avenue.

The liar (who was also known as a fiction writer) walked up Libe Slope at a brisk pace, so used to the incline that he barely huffed and did not puff at all. Halfway to the top he paused to check the sky; it promised rain, but not for a while. He continued his climb.

It was a Sunday, and he was on his way to the Arts Quad, which he unabashedly believed to be the heart of the University. During the year the Quad saw more activity than any other part of campus, from the Greek Festival in September to the burning of the Green Dragon in March, and besides, the Arts Quad was where it had all started. The first three University buildings to be erected—Morrill, White, and McGraw Halls—sat at the crest of The Hill like old grey men, keeping a weary eye on the town below. Just south of them the McGraw Chimes Tower poked at the sky from the side of Uris Library, another sentinel. The Chimes were a heartbeat to go with the heart, though that beat was sometimes off-key.

The Arts Quad was also one hell of a place to fly kites, even on a day with no wind.

Reaching the top of the Slope, the man who told lies for a living passed between Morrill and McGraw. Squat boxes, the two Halls were a tribute to Ezra Cornell’s total lack of aesthetics—and they also went a long way toward explaining why more artistically minded architects had been hired to design most of the other University buildings.

Once on the Quad, the professional liar saluted the memorial statues of Ezra Cornell and Andrew White, and sat down in the grass to assemble his kite. At this hour—the hands on the McGraw Tower clock stood at five past noon—he was the only person up here. Cornell was going through its annual hibernation, the hiatus between the time when the last summer students left and the first regular students arrived for the fall term. The largely residential North and West Campuses were ghost towns now; Central Campus was occupied only by a smattering of professors here and there, most of whom were still in bed, visions of research grants dancing in their heads.

The dogs were out, though. As always. Back in the late Thirties a man named Ottomar Lehenbauer, one of the original stockholders in the Ford Motor Company, had donated two million dollars to Cornell’s Engineering School. Because “Lehenbauer Hall” would have been a bumpy-sounding mouthful—and perhaps a bit too German-sounding for that day—the Board of Trustees convinced Ottomar to set a different condition on the donation. After thinking it over he created a codicil that granted free run of the campus to any and all dogs, “be they stray or otherwise, for as long as this University shall endure.” Due largely to the codicil, the canine population on The Hill had grown until it was now about three times the average for that part of New York State.

The man who told lies for a living looked up from his kite and saw a St. Bernard eyeing him from beneath a tree. He gestured to it, at the same time reaching into the Swiss Army bag that hung over his shoulder. He brought out a handful of dog biscuits and scattered them on the ground.

“You hungry?” he asked the dog. The Bernard got up, trotted over unhurriedly, and after a quick sniff ate the biscuits. Then it flopped down and allowed itself to be petted.

“Good boy,” the man who told lies for a living said, scratching the Bernard’s stomach. “It’s always nice to have some company. You want to hear a story about how I got to be rich and famous?”

The dog barked noncommittally.

“Oh, come on. It’s a good story, really. And it’s got a beautiful woman in it. Seven years’ worth of beautiful women, in fact. What do you say?”

The dog barked again, sounding more positive.

“Good! That’s the spirit!” the professional liar said. The liar’s name was Stephen Titus George, though on the cover of his first book this had been shortened to S. T. George. A critic—a very kind critic—had taken things one step further, referring to him as “St. George.”

This was more appropriate than anyone would ever know.

II.

“I never knew my parents,” George began, assembling the kite as he spoke. “I grew up with my Uncle Erasmus. Erasmus was sort of the family black sheep because of his profession, but he was also the only one who’d take responsibility for a kid that wasn’t his. He was a sculptor, talented, high on ambition, though actually he made most of his money selling concrete animals, which you’d think wouldn’t be too profitable but hey, we were living in New York City. Three days a week he’d drive his van out from Queens to Manhattan, set up a table on some busy sidewalk, five dollars apiece for solid cement squirrels, chipmunks, pigeons—Urban Jungle Art, he called it. Most impractical souvenir I’ve ever heard of—who wants to lug a concrete pigeon around the sights all day?—but the tourists were crazy about them, especially the Southerners. Never took Erasmus more than three hours to sell out his entire stock, and then he’d come home and fill up the molds again, make another batch. Left him plenty of time to do the sculpture he really wanted to do, and we never went hungry.

“He turned me on to the arts when I was still very young. ‘The thing to remember, George,’ he used to say, ‘is that artists are magical beings. They’re the only people other than the gods who can grant immortality.’

“That got me psyched, you know? Everyone wants to be like God, at least until they reach puberty. For a while I tried sculpting, but it wasn’t really to my taste. Then one day I had to write a short story for a sixth-grade English competition, and something just clicked. I went and asked my Uncle if he’d mind my becoming an author, and he gave me his blessing, bought me a ballpoint pen for my very own. So I started writing, slowly and without much talent at first, but—”

The Bernard raised his head and barked twice.

“I’ll be getting to the lady in just a minute,” George promised. “Be patient. Now as I was about to say, my biggest problem in the beginning was that I was too content with my life. Writers need anxiety to draw on for inspiration; if everything’s going peachy, you’re sunk. Fortunately in my case, puberty came early.

“In my sophomore year of high school, I fell absolutely and hopelessly in lust with a girl named Caterina Sesso. I’d like to say I fell in love with her, but I won’t lie to you: ‘lust’ is the honest term. She was an Italian, and in those days Italian girls were all the rage. Later on redheads came into vogue, and just now the fad is Asians, but in high school the state-of-the-art girlfriend was an Italian. All of which is racist and sexist as hell, but I’ve never actually met anyone who didn’t have a preference, have you?

“Caterina was Italian, but she was also Catholic (the two sort of go together), which was a bad break for me. Catholic girls are all taught to avoid lust, and things were made even worse in my case because I came from a semi-Protestant background. I tried all the normal approaches and she refused to have anything to do with me. Then, after torturing myself over her for weeks on end, I sat down with my pen and wrote her a story. Twenty-three pages. And it was good, too—best thing I’d written up to that time. I typed it up, Xeroxed it, and gave a copy to Caterina.

“Four months later, on my sixteenth birthday, she gave in and had sex with me.” (Here the Bernard barked again, and George nodded.) “I know. Surprised me too. It wasn’t just the story that did it, you understand, but that definitely opened the door, convinced her to give me the time of day. We went together for a while, and then the night I turned sixteen there was this party at my Uncle’s with all my friends. When that broke up around midnight, Caterina and I wandered over to Flushing Meadow Park. We sat and drank beer until two, and then we lay down underneath that big steel globe they built for the World’s Fair, and started making out, and just kept going.

“Next thing we knew it was sunrise, and someone had come along and stolen the leftover beer.”

The Bernard barked twice, questioningly.

“What happened then? Well, for a week I couldn’t write a single word. Life was perfect, not a care in the world, so I had nothing to drive me. That problem solved itself quickly enough, though—after her next confession Caterina decided that we’d committed a mortal sin, and broke up with me.

“I spent the next seven years, right up to today, trying to get back to that birthday night under the World’s Fair globe.”

Bark.

“Simple. My luck did a complete reverse. Maybe I broke a mirror without realizing it. All I know for certain is that every time I got near a woman after that I thought about how it’d been with Caterina and wound up trying too hard, scaring them off. But my writing style kept getting better and better, mostly from all the practice.

“When I was seventeen a woman I’d never seen before ran up and kissed me on Fifth Avenue, then took off before I even knew what had happened; I went home and wrote my first published short story. Just before the end of high school I saw a redhead tooling around the neighborhood in a Corvette and The New Yorker paid me three hundred dollars for the result. And then I came here.

“Sophomore year at Cornell I fell madly in lust again, this time with a Taiwanese punker. Incredible-looking woman. I wrote her a novel over Christmas vacation. Burned off four hundred pages in a month. I didn’t get to sleep with her, never even knew her name, but the book got published and it bestsold. So did the next two books . . .”

The Bernard stood up and shook itself furiously.

“Swear to God!” George told it. “Why would I lie to a dog? When I go home to Queens for visits my Uncle just smiles at me. ‘You sure took after me, didn’t you, George?’ he says. ‘It’s a good thing your father isn’t still around, or he’d probably accuse me of some funny business.’ I’m twenty-three years old, I have enough money to live off for the rest of my life, the critics like me, I’m graduated with extra honors, and now Cornell’s taken me on as a writer-in-residence. And all for the want of a steady girlfriend.”

Wagging its tail, the dog licked George’s hand. Whined.

“No,” said George. “Not unhappy. How can you be depressed in a world where a man makes a living selling concrete wildlife? Lonely, maybe. Sometimes. Restless all the time. But I have this theory, see, that Whoever’s in charge is setting me up for something big—Moby-Dick, Part Two, with wheels, say, a novel to change the course of history—and once I get it done, the Editor will ease up and let me have sex again, maybe even fall in love for real. Only, after about a month of perfect bliss, He’ll turn around again and give me something else to be anxious about . . .”

The kite was now fully assembled. George held it up so the Bernard could see. It was a traditional diamond shape, with the head of a dragon painted on a white background, and red rays projecting out from the head. A red and black tail trailed from the bottom.

“I just picked it up last night,” George said. “Let’s see how she flies, eh?”

He stood up and the dog began to bark again. There was still not so much as a ghost of a breeze in the air.

“I know, I know. Don’t you worry. I may not have much luck with women, but the wind and I are old lovers.”

And while the Bernard looked on doubtfully, George stared up into the sky, as if searching for a familiar face there. He began to turn in place, holding the kite in one hand and a spool of heavy twine in the other, facing first west, then north, then east, then south. Three times around he turned, smiling all the while, as if casting a spell that was as amusing as it was powerful. In a sense he was casting a spell, though whether it was fueled by magic or coincidence he could never have said. All he knew was that it worked.

He stopped turning and gazed deep into the face of the sky once more. “Come on,” George coaxed softly, and the wind began to blow. It came out of the west where it had been waiting all along, and lifted up the kite with unseen hands. The Bernard began barking furiously.

“Something else, isn’t it? Scared the shit out of me the first time I did it. Now that I’m used to it, though, it’s kind of fun.”

He stood and listened to the wind, the wind which probably would have blown anyway but which never failed to come when he called, not since his Uncle Erasmus had taken him to fly his first kite when he was twelve.

“Maybe it’s not so strange, eh?” he said. “Hell, in a book or a story I can make the wind blow just by typing a single sentence. And you figure the world, real life, that’s just another story, one that doesn’t need to be written down on paper.”

George laughed and winked at the Bernard, while above them the kite soared higher and higher, a dragon in a diamond cage trying its wings for the first time.

III.

“George is feeling lonely again,” Zephyr observed from where she stood in the McGraw Tower belfry.

“Is he?” her Grandfather Hobart said absently. Hobart was busy making his daily inspection of the chimes. “That’s nice.”

“It’s a very optimistic lonely,” Zephyr added, “but still lonely.” She sighed and rested one hand comfortingly on the hilt of her sword, which was actually a two-inch stickpin that had been set into a miniature ivory handle. Zephyr too was a miniature, only a half-foot tall and invisible to human beings, save for the very drunk and the very wise. There were many names for her race—elf, gnome, faerie, Little People—but sprite was the common term. There were well over a thousand sprites living on The Hill, anonymously helping the humans run things.

“I wish there was something I could do for him,” said Zephyr. It was part question, and when Hobart didn’t immediately offer any suggestions she whirled around, intending to be furious—but of course Hobart wasn’t the sort of person you could bring yourself to be furious with.

“Grandfather!” she whined, settling for mock anger. “Are you listening to me?”

“With one ear,” Hobart told her. “No offense, dear, but you’ve been repeating more or less the same thing for the past six months.”

“Do you think it’s wrong of me?” Zephyr asked seriously.

“To love a human being? No. If that were a crime, I’d be more guilty than you. I loved one too, in my time. Why do you think I’ve spent the past century taking care of these bells?” He looked affectionately at the chimes. “Dear sweet Jenny McGraw. How I do miss her.”

Zephyr leaned forward, interested. “Was she beautiful?”

“To my eyes, at least. Not, mind you, as beautiful as your Grandmother Zee, but very close.”

“Did she . . . did she ever see you?”

“On her deathbed I think she might have. Consumption took her while she was away traveling the world; she came back to Ithaca to die. I was her most constant companion during her final days, more constant than her own husband. And toward the very end, I think, when she’d really begun to slip away, she seemed to take notice of me.”

Hobart’s eyes grew distant, and a little sad.

“That’s the problem with loving a human being,” he said. “Most of them can’t see you except in extreme circumstances, and even then they don’t always believe what they’re seeing. Dear Jenny . . . I’m almost sure she thought I was nothing more than a hallucination.”

“I think George could see me,” said Zephyr. “I don’t think he’d have to be drunk or dying, either. He’s not crazy, but he . . . he has strong daydreams.”

“Strong daydreams.” Hobart chuckled. “And what if this daydreamer could see you, what would you do then? You can’t consummate love with a giant, dear. Several times I tried to imagine what it might have been like between Jenny McGraw and myself, and the picture I got was rather embarrassing, to say the least. Some things really aren’t meant to be.”

“But . . . if only there were something . . .”

“As for that,” Hobart went on, “why do you feel you have to do anything for him? You say he’s lonely, but look. He’s laughing down there.”

“But he was just talking to a dog. People never talk to animals unless they’re lonely.”

“Your own father used to hold conversations with ferrets.”

“Yes, but Father understood ferrets.”

“Did he really? It always seemed to me that if he’d really understood them, he wouldn’t have wound up being eaten by one. But perhaps I’m just too old and muddleheaded to see the truth of it.”

Zephyr lowered her eyes. “Now you’re making fun of me. You really do think I’m silly, don’t you?”

“No more so than the rest of us,” Hobart assured her. “It’s just that the best you can hope to accomplish is to find George a human woman to fall in love with. But that’s a job best left to Fate. I can tell you from experience that a sprite meddling in the personal affairs of a human almost always brings bad luck.”

“But we always—”

“Personal affairs. There’s a difference between helping the University Administration keep its files straight and playing matchmaker. Meddling in that area causes more trouble than it’s worth, Zephyr. Ask Shakespeare if you don’t believe me.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“Let him handle his own business. He’s got the wind on his side; he’ll do all right. And once you fall in love again—with a sprite, this time—it won’t hurt nearly as much as it does now.”

Hobart paused for emphasis, then added: “Puck’s been asking about you.”

“Puck’s an idiot,” Zephyr said automatically.

“Puck has his faults. He has his good points, too. You used to know that.”

“Maybe I’m not the same as I used to be.”

Hobart shrugged.

“As you wish,” he said, knowing that there was no point in arguing. “But I can tell you honestly, finding Zee was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“The best thing,” Zephyr repeated. “But you still tend Jenny McGraw’s chimes, don’t you?”

“Well . . .”

“When George leaves, I want to follow him in the glider. Is that all right?”

“I suppose,” Hobart said with a sigh. “But he’ll probably go down to The Boneyard. I don’t want you in there, not even flying overhead.”

“Fine. If he does go there I’ll just turn around and come back. I promise. OK?”

“All right,” Hobart agreed, uneasily.

He went back to his inspection of the chimes, while Zephyr stood at the edge of the open-air belfry, unmindful of the seventy-foot drop.

“Grandfather Hobart?”

“Yes?”

“What’s so bad about The Boneyard? What’s in there?”

For a long time he didn’t answer.

“Nightmares,” Hobart said finally. “Old nightmares.”

IV.

George stayed on the Quad for the better part of an hour. When he finally reeled in the kite and disassembled it, the wind did not stop. It blew steadily, summoning cloud after cloud until the sky was steely grey. The rain was much closer now.

“Give me an hour,” George petitioned the clouds. “I want time for a walk.” He cocked his head as if listening for a reply, then put the pieces of the kite back into the Swiss Army bag and started heading back the way he had come. “So long, buddy,” George said to the St. Bernard, which had wandered back under the tree. “Thanks for your company.”

As he passed Ezra Cornell he snapped another salute, smiling at the thought of the legend: it was said that if a true virgin passed between the Quad statues at precisely midnight, Ezra and Andrew would come to life and shake hands with each other. Oversized footprints painted on the path between the two statues paid tribute to the notion. But you’d have a hard time deciding what to do if I came by, wouldn’t you? George thought. Once as a teenager and then seven years of abstinence, a man’s virginity might spontaneously regenerate after all that time. Hell, some people develop a third set of teeth.

Pondering this, George left the Arts Quad behind him and hurried down Libe Slope toward The Boneyard, while in the sky the clouds took a vote and decided to hold their water a little longer.

V.

The glider, an ancient contraption of pinewood and gossamer, was stored in a secret hangar in the Tower peak above the belfry. Zephyr reached it by means of a hidden ladder and staircase. At the top of the stairs she pulled a lever in the wall, setting in motion a group of counterweights that opened the outer hangar doors.

Sitting in the farthest recesses of the hangar, the glider looked about as aerodynamically sound as a winged sneaker. Designed to be as invisible as the sprites, the glider’s pinewood frame was anorexically thin, and the gossamer wings—woven from Midsummer’s Eve lake fog—shimmered only slightly even in the brightest daylight. The single passenger rode in a narrow sling suspended beneath the main body of the craft, controlling direction by pulling on two threads . . . but it was the wind that did most of the steering.

Zephyr climbed into the sling without hesitation or fear. She loved to fly; it was certainly a more convenient method of transportation than walking or squirrelback. Why the great majority of sprites remained earthbound was a mystery to her.

Puck did a lot of flying, she knew—though his was a more mechanical and less magical bent—but she purposely tried not to think about that now. She had refused to see or speak to Puck for months since she’d caught him fooling around with Saffron Dey inside one of the display cases in Uris Library. Coincidentally or not, her feelings for George had first surfaced at about that time.

Zephyr launched the glider with a thought. Like George, she too was on intimate terms with the wind, and didn’t even have to bother spinning around to summon it. She merely called to it in her mind and a river of air flowed into the hangar, floating the glider gently out, like a cork leaving a bottle in slow motion. The hangar faced north, giving her a splendid view of the Quad as she entered the open air; then she banked to the right, descending in a series of wide spirals around the Tower.

“Be careful of the weather!” Hobart shouted to her as she passed the level of the belfry. “And remember—stay away from The Boneyard!”

Zephyr raised one hand to wave, not bothering to yell back that she’d understood, and then she was lower, circling the clock faces of the Tower. I love you, Grandfather, she thought, at the same time wishing that he wouldn’t worry about her so much. But old sprites seemed prone to worry, and at 172 years of age, Hobart was the oldest surviving sprite on The Hill (Zephyr, only 40, was just finishing adolescence), old enough to have seen action in the Great War of 1850 against Rasferret the Grub, the most terrible conflict in remembered history. Zephyr wished he would learn to relax.

She leveled out at an altitude of about thirty feet and flew after George, who had reached the bottom of Libe Slope and was crossing West Avenue into the temporary ghost town that was West Campus. She had closed more than half the distance to him when a low droning reached her ears. Recognizing the sound, Zephyr looked for cover to hide behind, but there was none close enough. A moment later a propeller-driven biplane pulled even with the glider.

“Hello, Zeph,” Puck called to her. His plane was a single-engine scale model, the type hobbyists build and fly by remote control. In this case, however, the miniaturized controls were located in the cockpit. “Long time no see. I’ve been hoping we’d bump into each other up here.”

“Goodbye,” Zephyr replied curtly, yanking the glider’s nose up. This slowed the craft’s speed considerably, and Puck, unable to copy the maneuver without stalling his engine, shot past her. The biplane began a wide U-turn while Zephyr lowered the nose again and headed for the bottom of the Slope, calling on the wind for extra speed.

“Come on, Zeph!” Puck pleaded. “I just want to talk to you!”

“I don’t want to talk to you!”

She sailed over West Avenue and under the arch between Lyon and McFaddin Halls, then hung a sharp right, hoping to lose Puck among the West Campus dormitories. George, who had also gone through the arch but continued on straight, paused in mid-step as the glider passed near, though of course he could neither see it nor hear it. He did hear the drone of Puck’s biplane a few seconds later, but dismissed it as a mosquito and kept walking.

“Come on, Zeph!” Puck shouted again. But instead of answering, Zephyr began weaving between buildings, pulling tight turns and other acrobatics in an attempt to shake him off. Puck brought the biplane up to full throttle and hung on. He was a good pilot, as good as she, and knew that eventually she’d have to give up.

But he’d forgotten about her tenacity, and her friendship with the wind. The wind kept Zephyr’s glider moving at an incredible speed, while giving no similar aid to the biplane; it was all Puck could do to keep pace with her. Then, after making a particularly tight turn, he saw Zephyr pass between two close-growing trees. Barely a hairsbreadth of space existed between them, but a convenient breeze spread the branches to make room for the glider. Zephyr passed through the opening, and Puck attempted to follow.

The branches closed up in front of him.

“Terrific,” said Puck. He tried to pull up and succeeded only in stalling his engine; the biplane plunged belly first into the branches. For a few seconds all was tumbling and chaos, and then, by some miracle, the plane reemerged on the far side of the trees with its wings and propeller intact. It was still stalled, however, and immediately went into a dive.

“Terrific,” Puck said again, as the biplane stubbornly refused to level out. It was too heavy to glide effectively, and with the ground rushing up to meet him like a relative at a family reunion, there was no time to restart the engine. He was going to crash into the sidewalk.

“Terrific,” Puck said, for what should have been the third and final time.

The wind saved him. It billowed up underneath the biplane like a cushion, forcing it to straighten out, holding it steady. Puck wasted no time asking questions; he pounded the starter button until the propeller kicked over and began to turn. As soon as it did, the wind cushion faded, leaving him to fly on his own power again.

“Are you all right?” Zephyr asked. The glider was alongside him now, close enough so that they didn’t have to shout over the drone of the biplane’s engine.

“I’m still breathing,” Puck told her, not ready to concede anything more than that. “You are a nasty one when you get upset, you know that, Zeph?”

“It’s your own fault.” Now that it was clear that he was all right, some of Zephyr’s anger came creeping back in a muted form. “That thing’s a death trap, anyway. You should know better than to trust physics. If I hadn’t talked the wind into saving you—”

“Saving me!? You’re the one who got me into trouble in the first place.”

“Yes, well,” Zephyr protested in a lame voice, “you could have gotten into trouble yourself just as easily. And then where would you have been?”

“I have a parachute,” Puck informed her, although this, too, sounded a bit lame. They fell silent for a moment, banking left to avoid another cluster of trees. A sparrow looked up at the sound of the biplane and chirped.

“That’s another thing,” Zephyr said. “You’re too noisy and too easy to see.”

“Maybe. But human beings have a way of not noticing obvious things. Even that George character—”

“Don’t you say a word about George!” Zephyr warned.

“Fine. But people don’t scare me, Zephyr. They really don’t.”

“What about animals? They notice you. Most of them would probably be too scared to do anything, but a pack of crows, or an owl . . .”

“God, Zephyr, are you really that worried about me?” Puck grinned at her, and she gave him a black look. “Well listen, I was thinking about crows and owls myself, so I got Cobweb to help me rig something up.”

He brought the biplane up a few feet so that she could see two black cylinders that were mounted under the lower wings.

“What are they?” Zephyr asked. Like all sprites, she was fascinated with weapons.

“They’re mini-cannons. Cobweb hooked them up to an electronic firing circuit and loaded them with buckshot. Should be enough to stop an owl.”

“Or blow your own wings off.”

“Maybe. But there’s always my parachute . . .”

Zephyr looked at the cannons again. They certainly were an interesting idea—even if they were also dangerous—and she had to admit that no similar weapon could be mounted on the glider.

“Neat, aren’t they?” Puck asked, reading her thoughts.

“Pretty neat,” Zephyr admitted. “I—”

As if suddenly awakened from a dream, she realized that George was no longer in sight. Both glider and biplane had begun to drift out of West Campus in the direction of Fall Creek Gorge. Without bothering to say goodbye, Zephyr broke formation and began angling back in the direction of The Boneyard, where she knew George would be by now.

“What—?” Puck said, abruptly finding himself flying alone.

“Go home, Puck,” Zephyr called back to him. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Terrific,” said Puck, watching her speed away. He opened up the throttle once more and turned to follow her. “Jesus, Troilus, and Cressida—here we go again!”

VI.

The thing to remember, George, is that artists are magical beings. They’re the only people other than the gods who can grant immortality . . .

The Boneyard was located below Stewart Avenue, about halfway down the side of The Hill. George had discovered the place several years ago, and had visited it regularly ever since, using it for inspiration. He would walk among the tombstones, pausing frequently, reading names, dates, epitaphs, and asking himself questions: What was this person like? How did she die? It says here she was married; were they happy together? This one over here died young; did he enjoy what time he had? What did he do on his sixteenth birthday?

Hundreds of tombstones here; hundreds of stories, each individual one far too long to ever tell in its entirety. But every so often George would see something that would stick in his mind, maybe just an unusual name, and the next time he sat down to write, that person would become part of a new tale, one step closer to eternity.

Strangely, for all the time he had spent in The Boneyard, he was constantly discovering new things. On this particular day he came across two unusual stones that he had somehow never noticed before. One was a standard rectangular piece of marble that bore the words:

DEDICATED TO THE LOVING MEMORY

OF HAROLD LAZARUS

1912–1957

BY HIS ADORING WIFE

GOD GRANT HIM REST

The inscription was kind enough, even a little touching, but the embellishments were grotesque. Beneath GOD GRANT HIM REST was an etching that depicted some sort of demon with a bow and arrow chasing after a doe. More demon figures floated in the upper corners of the stone, and the whole was topped by an intricately carved gargoyle figurine that leered at the onlooker.

George shook his head, trying not to laugh. Poor Harold Lazarus. What had he done to deserve such a monument? Or had his wife just had exceedingly bad taste?

“What do you say, Harold?” George asked, crouching down beside the stone and taking out a notepad. “How’d you like to live forever?”

He made a rough sketch of the gargoyle, softening the features so that it looked unlucky rather than fierce. Underneath the sketch he wrote: “­LAZARUS—HAS ADORING BUT TACKY WIFE.” George had no idea what story might come out of it, but he would endeavor to give back some of Harold’s dignity.

The other stone had no humor in it. It was set on the top of a small rise, and in comparison to the stones around it—expensive, tall things that looked like scale reproductions of the Washington Monument—it was hopelessly crude. It didn’t even have a definite shape, but appeared rather as if someone had started with a boulder and knocked bits and pieces off until it was small enough to be used as a marker. Likewise, the inscription had been chiseled in the roughest manner, but was still legible. George stared at it for a long time.

HERE LIES ALMA RENAT JESSOP

BORN APRIL 23, 1887

DIED APRIL 23, 1887

HER FATHER LOVED HER

The sky continued to darken. The rain would not wait much longer, and George still wanted to visit a particular spot at the far north end of The ’Yard. But for a few moments more he stood before the stone, studying its rough, hammer-hewn surface, until at last he understood.

“You son of a bitch,” he whispered, awed. “You made it for her yourself.”

VII.

“This place is supposed to be dangerous, you know,” said Puck, trying to keep up with Zephyr as she weaved among the gravestones. They had landed the glider and plane back by the entrance to The Boneyard and begun following George on foot. Puck could no longer remember the reason for this, but reflected that it couldn’t have been an intelligent one. “It has rats in it.”

“You’re not afraid of rats, are you?” Zephyr asked him.

“No, of course not. Not if there are only a few of them, anyway. I know how to take care of myself.”

Zephyr laughed for the first time since he’d been with her that day. “If you’re hinting that I don’t know how to take care of myself,” she said, “just remember who taught you fencing.”

“Your Grandfather taught me. You were just a sparring partner.”

“Yes, but you never beat me in practice, did you? Not once . . . oh, come on, Puck! If you insist on tagging after me at least try to run a little faster.”

Puck grunted and tried to put on extra speed, but Zephyr moved extraordinarily quickly even without her glider. And Puck had a bigger load to carry—in addition to his sword, he also bore a needle-firing crossbow that seemed to gain weight with every step.

“Listen, Zeph,” Puck wheezed, nearly tripping over a blade of grass. “I’ve been meaning to ask you . . .”

“The answer is no, but what do you want?”

“Well, Cobweb and I and a bunch of others were thinking of holding another Lab Animal Freedom Raid in a couple weeks, and I was wondering if you wanted to—”

“No thank you,” Zephyr cut him off. “That’s just a big prank anyway, and you know it. Why don’t you ask Saffron Dey? I’m sure she’d love to go with you.”

“Look, Zeph, Saffron . . . Saffron’s a hell of a nice sprite, and all, and I have to admit that I was a little taken with her for a while, but when you get right down to it, she’s not even in your class!”

“You think so?” Totally disinterested.

“I know so! Look, I’m really sorry if your feelings were hurt, but I can’t believe you’re still upset . . .”

“Upset!?” She threw a look back over her shoulder that would have curdled root beer. “Upset! You were doing it with her in a display case, for God’s sake! How do you expect me to feel?”

“So it was in a display case, so what? Nobody could see us! Nobody except Cobweb, of course, and he traded me two thimblefuls of tequila so he could w—”

Puck trailed off abruptly, wondering not for the first time what wrong he had committed that his tongue should run so very much faster than his brain. Zephyr said nothing further, simply picked up the pace even more until Puck was nearly hyperventilating.

Ahead, a concrete walkway spanned a narrow, stream-filled gully. George was just crossing it, drawn by something on the other side. Zephyr hurtled after him, energetic as ever, while Puck plodded doggedly in her wake.

They both felt it at the same time.

It was a presence, a cold radiation that came at them from across the gully, as if a small black sun had been placed somewhere on the other side. Both sprites stopped dead in their tracks, sudden terror rolling over them like thunder.

“What is it?” Zephyr whispered, as if afraid of being overheard.

“I don’t know.” Puck had set down his crossbow and was shivering. “It’s bad . . . there’s something very bad over there.”

Across the gully, George continued to walk along unconcernedly.

“How can he stay over there?” Zephyr wondered aloud. She too had begun to shiver. “Can’t he feel how bad it is?”

“Maybe he can’t. And maybe if he can’t feel it, it can’t hurt him.”

“Do you think it knows we’re here?” Zephyr said.

As she spoke, two graveyard rats, big ones, sprinted out of hiding from behind a nearby tombstone. Puck saw them coming and scooped up his crossbow, managing to kill one with a shot that was more luck than skill. The other rat continued charging forward, leaping into the air at Zephyr as soon as it was close enough.

“Zeph!” Puck shouted. “Look ou—”

But she was already turning, sword in hand.

VIII.

George had found what he was looking for.

It was a plain white marble square laid flat against the ground, more a plaque than a proper gravestone, and weathered by many years. He had no idea why such an unremarkable thing should seem so special to him, yet it was true that he had never visited The Boneyard without coming by here to look. One strange thing he’d noticed—all the other standing gravestones in the area had sagged, seeming to lean away from this one like petals from the heart of a strange flower. Surely that was just coincidence, but it added to the illusion that this was, well, the center of something.

The stone bore no date, and only a single name, seven letters carved by some long-ago hand:

PANDORA

George hunched over the burial site, feeling nothing but a strange and inexplicable fascination. Zephyr or Puck, placed in the same location, would have died instantly of fright, but George merely thought to himself: What story does this one hold? It almost made him wish he could really resurrect the past, rather than just make up fictions. What story? I’ll bet you it’s a good one, whatever it is.

He ran his fingers over the marble surface, tracing each letter. Lightning flashed in the distance.

IX.

Zephyr cleaned her sword with a piece of a dead leaf. She had killed the rat in one stroke, sidestepping and piercing it through the heart as it finished its leap.

“You see?” she said to Puck when her sword had been resheathed. “I can take care of myself.”

“Sure,” Puck said, still shaken. The bad feeling from across the gully had subsided a little but remained in the background, like a lingering nightmare.

“There’s one thing I’m curious about,” Zephyr went on. “It doesn’t look like many people get buried here anymore, does it? Most of the space is already taken. But then why would there be rats? Don’t they need lots of fresh . . . you know.”

“I couldn’t tell you, Zeph. But there’ve always been lots of rats in The Boneyard. Always. It really isn’t safe to stay here. More of them will probably be coming this way soon.”

“Let’s go home, then,” Zephyr said, after a pause. “I want to go home now.”

She had lost all interest in tailing George, at least for today, something for which Puck was silently grateful. He didn’t delude himself, though, knowing that he still had a long way to go before he would be back in her good graces.

They scurried back the way they had come, keeping a sharp eye out for rats, and it was only when they were airborne again—Zephyr with the help of an uphill gust of wind—that Puck began to feel safe.

X.

George made it home just ahead of the storm. No sooner had he set foot on his front porch than rain began thundering off the sidewalks and car rooftops hard enough to raise mist. This was accompanied by an amazing electrical show.

It being Sunday there was no mail—thankfully; the flow of fan and hate mail was slow but steady, and it took a lot of time to read—but his landlord had left a note on his door:

TENANT,

PLUMBER COMING SOMETIME DURING THE WEEK TO INVESTIGATE LEAKS. WINDOW REPAIRMAN NEVER THERE WHEN I CALL; PERHAPS YOU COULD TRY. AS FOR THE OTHER, I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU MEAN BY “ROACHES IN KITCHEN.” WE FUMIGATED ONLY LAST JANUARY.

YOUR LANDLORD,

DENMAN HALFAST IV

George smiled ruefully and shook his head. Denman Halfast . . . he remembered one time when he had given the man a copy of one of his books. It had been returned a week later, with the same sort of impersonal note: “TENANT, TOO FANTASTIC AND TOO MUCH PROFANITY. YOUR LANDLORD . . .”

Perhaps it was time he gave up renting and simply bought a house in Ithaca; he had money enough. But he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of putting down roots here, even tentative ones. He was still young enough to consider himself a wanderer, and as Uncle Erasmus had once said, wanderers rent or flop, they never buy. Besides, this particular house was where he had been living—with three friends—back when his first book, The Knight of the White Roses, had been published. He had read the Times Book Review every Sunday on this very porch, watching his novel climb the bestseller list a notch at a time until it reached a peak at number three, outdone only by Jackie Collins and the latest Stephen King.

He got himself a Coke out of the refrigerator and came back out on the porch to watch the storm. The rain smelled fresh and clean, like the promise of an exciting new year. And though neither George nor anyone but a certain Mr. Sunshine could know it in advance, this year would be the most exciting Ithaca had ever seen.

Oblivious to this, George sat on his porch, and drank his Coke, and made daydreams out of the rain. He wondered about the book he would write this year, and he wondered—not too desperately—whether love would find him at last and let him rest for a time. But he smiled all the while he was thinking about it, because at the core he was happy enough just to be alive and watching the storm, and this one thing made him special.

In other places, both far and near, others had begun to turn toward Ithaca. New students, old students, vacationing professors, soon it would be time for them to come and bring Cornell out of hibernation, give it life for another year.

But not all who traveled the road to The Hill that late August came in search of learning, and not all of them were human.

LUTHER ON THE ROAD TO HEAVEN

I.

Blackjack crouched perfectly still in a dark corner of an abandoned basement. His breathing was soft and controlled; his whiskers did not move, his claws did not tap the floor, his tail did not twitch. He had, in fact, no tail at all.

The rat was about ten yards off to his left, still moving carefully, but beginning to believe that the coast was clear. Blackjack fought hard to control his eagerness. He had been waiting motionless for almost an hour now, and didn’t want to blow it with a stray sound or thought. Keep cool, that was the ticket. And when the rat had moved away from the wall, toward the middle of the floor where it was more likely to become disoriented, he would pounce.

A minute or so later the rat began to do just that. It picked up the smell of food, a rancid scrap of cheese lying amidst other debris left behind by some passing wino. There was cat scent in the air as well, which a more cautious rodent might have noticed, but the lure of the cheese was strong and by the time this rat recognized its peril it would be too late.

One uneven portion of the floor was awash with sunlight. The building above had been almost completely destroyed in a fire, and the sun’s rays leaked in through a gash in the basement ceiling. The rat paused at the shore of this bright lake, sniffing the air and making a final decision. The cheese was on the far side.

Wait, Blackjack cautioned himself, careful not to let the thought slip outwards. Wait until he’s in the light and blinded. Then creep up as close as you can and . . .

“Blackjack?”

The word came from the direction of the partially collapsed basement stairs. The rat froze, thought it over for perhaps a second, and bolted for home.

“Fuck.” Blackjack launched himself forward, knowing he was already too late. The rat caught a glimpse of the coal-black Manx bounding after it and put on an extra burst of speed, reaching safety with room to spare. Blackjack skidded to a halt in front of the rat hole and pawed at it in vain.

“Blackjack?”

The cat turned around, seething. A mongrel dog—a bitch—stood at the foot of the stairs, watching him.

“This had better be good, Riva,” Blackjack warned her. Had he been using speech, he would have been almost shouting. “You just cost me lunch.”

“Malcolm wants to see you,” she told him. His eyes widened just the tiniest bit, but his anger over the lost rat did not diminish.

“Malcolm wants to see me, eh? Good for him. You go tell him I’ll drop by when I get a chance. Like maybe next week.”

“Malcolm wants to see you now,” Riva insisted.

Blackjack considered another retort, but thought better of it. Cats—street cats, at any rate—had no fear of dogs, but Malcolm was the baddest of the bad in this neighborhood. It would not be wise to cross him, or his messenger. Likewise, he would not have sent for Blackjack unless something truly important had come up.

“Soon,” Blackjack relented. “I’ll be there soon. You go tell Malcolm—”

“I ain’t yours to order about!” snapped Riva, who had little patience with felines. “Malcolm says come back with me, so you come. Now.”

“What is it? What does he need to talk to me about?”

“Come and ask him yourself, damn it! You think I know?”

But Blackjack stared at her, and in a moment she dropped her eyes. “It’s Luther,” she told him. “Something gone wrong with Luther.” The Manx nodded, or performed the feline equivalent of a nod. The news did not surprise him; a lot of things had gone wrong with Luther lately.

“All right,” he agreed. “I’ll come with you . . . but Malcolm owes me a rat.”

II.

A word about animals, and telepathy.

Many storytellers, from Aesop to Richard Adams, have spun tales in which animals hold conversations with one another. There is little evidence of this in real life, however; while some animals can produce an amazing variety of distinct sounds, and some sort of basic communication is possible through this, the idea of two dogs barking back and forth about the meaning of life is a fairly laughable one. It is no wonder then—never having overheard two horses discussing their sexual difficulties—that most people view animals as less intelligent than humankind, if still lovable.

In fact, all living creatures—human beings included—are born with a latent power of telepathy. The power never develops in most humans, however, because speech takes the place of its main function. It is in those animals most closely associated with humanity—cats and dogs in ­particular—that telepathy becomes a refined and useful tool.

However, while cats and dogs are able to “think” to one another without difficulty, there are a number of important differences in their perception. One of these differences is that cats are, for some unknown reason, able to understand human speech, whereas dogs are not. Some cats also learn to read—another impossibility for dogs—although obtaining and manipulating books is obviously difficult for them.

A great dichotomy has sprung up because of this. Dogs, able to empathize with human emotions but not comprehending the complexity of human thought, have come to hold human beings in awe and think of them as at least partially divine. Cats, on the other hand, after witnessing the magnitude of human foolishness for centuries, have grown aloof and individualistic, dealing with human beings only—or so they think—on their own terms. Cats are also far less religious and superstitious than dogs; Blackjack was a hardcore atheist.

It might seem at first that such diametrically opposed groups would be forever at war. But, despite a general lack of respect, close friendships between individual cats and dogs do occur from time to time. Just such a relationship existed between Blackjack and Luther, and it was for the sake of that relationship that Blackjack went to see Malcolm right away that day, instead of delaying long enough to get even for the loss of the rat.

It was out of the same feeling of friendship, furthermore, that Blackjack ultimately wound up joining Luther on a quest, a quest to find something that the Manx did not even believe existed.

Heaven.

III.

Malcolm held court in the decaying shell of an abandoned church. (“Abandoned” was a word that could be applied to the majority of the buildings in this neighborhood, one of the poorest ghettoes of the South Bronx.) Riva led the way, though Blackjack knew it well enough. As they approached the church’s front steps, several lazing dogs—all of them mongrels—turned to look. At the sight of the Manx they all shied back a little.

One of the first things Blackjack had done after taking up residence in this area had been to get into a scrap with a notorious dog by the name of Fearless Bledsoe. Bledsoe was an avowed cat-hater, and upon first seeing Blackjack with Luther he had flown into a rage. As a result of the ensuing fight, Blackjack had a long scar etched permanently into his left flank. Fearless Bledsoe, however, now went by the name of No-Balls Bledsoe, and rumor had it that he had not so much as glanced at a cat since.

“You can all stop shaking,” Blackjack said (thought-said) to the dogs as he climbed the church steps, secretly proud of his reputation. After what he had done to Bledsoe, there wasn’t a stud within five miles who didn’t get nervous when he sauntered by.

Except Malcolm.

They entered the church. Most of the pews had been overturned by vandals; none were undamaged. Several fierce-looking mongrels crouched among the ruins, and at the head of the nave Malcolm himself lounged before the shattered altar, flanked by the four best-looking bitches in the neighborhood.

“Hello, cat,” Malcolm said. He was part German Shepherd, part Doberman, and part Mastiff . . . with a trace of timber wolf, if you believed the stories, which Blackjack didn’t.

“I have a name,” replied Blackjack. “Use it.”

“Little testy today, cat? Let’s see . . .” He concentrated for a moment. “Has somethin’ to do with a rat you didn’t catch, mayhap?”

“Yes,” said Blackjack uneasily. For the most part telepathy was only useful for discerning projected thoughts, but Malcolm was one of those rare animals who could actually probe into another mind—how deeply, only he knew.

“And mayhap,” Malcolm continued, “you think it’s my fault.”

“Oh, it’s her fault,” said Blackjack, indicating Riva. The bitch snarled at him. “She’s the one who scared the rat away. But since she was on your business, and since she seems to be your property—”

“My property? Oh, cat, you hurt my feelings. Bitches as property . . . that’s a ’Bred notion if I ever heard one. An old mix like me has got better things to do than own other dogs.”

Blackjack looked at the four bitches gathered around the altar. When their time of heat came, no stud was permitted to touch them without Malcolm’s invitation and approval.

“You’re so liberated,” Blackjack said.

“We-e-ell . . . nobody ever promised I was perfect, cat. But just so as you’ll know what a generous fellow I am . . .” He turned to one of the dogs among the fallen pews. “Get this tom something to eat.”

The dog vanished into what had originally been the church sacristy, returning a moment later with not one, but three dead rats dangling from his mouth. He deposited them on the floor at Blackjack’s feet.

“They’re a little stiff,” apologized Malcolm, “but they’re plump, too. Lot of plump rats around here lately.”

“What’s wrong with Luther?” Blackjack asked. A gift of three whole rats made him suspect the worst.

“He wants to go lookin’ for Moses.”

“Oh . . .” Moses was Luther’s sire. He was also deceased. A car had run him down three days ago, and just yesterday morning his body had been removed by two men in a sanitation truck. “He wants to go visit the garbage dump?”

“That’s what I thought at first,” Malcolm said. “But I looked him through real careful, and now I’m thinkin’ that mayhap he’s got a longer trip in mind. A much longer trip.”

“And how do I figure into this?”

“You’re his friend, cat. Closest thing to family he’s got now that Moses passed on. It’s your job to watch out for him.”

“My job . . .” Blackjack’s anger returned; he did not appreciate having responsibility forced on him. “Just roll that thought back, Malcolm. I like Luther, but I’m not going anywhere with him.”

“Talk him out of it, if you can. But if he walks, so do you, cat. The world’s a hungry thing; mayhap it wants to eat Luther for breakfast, and I don’t plan on lettin’ that happen. I owe Moses that much.”

“But I,” Blackjack insisted, as if explaining something to a retarded kitten, “I don’t owe Moses anything.”

Malcolm stopped lounging and stood up on all fours, facing him. For the first time the dog showed signs of losing his own temper.

“You listen, cat, and listen careful. I won’t repeat myself. You’re goin’, even if you got to walk Luther halfway ’round the world. Hell, that dog’s got no fight of his own. And he ain’t never been told about ’Breds—Moses didn’t want him to know. How long you figure he’d last without someone to watch his back? Now you, cat, you got fight enough for two or three.”

“Don’t try to flatter me,” said Blackjack. But he was softening.

“I ain’t flatterin’ you, cat,” Malcolm replied. “I’m just tellin’ you what I see. You’re like a glass to me, you know. The glass gets too cloudy to look through in parts, but those parts that I can look through . . . well, you ain’t quite worth flatterin’, but I wouldn’t be in an all-fire hurry to throw you on the junk heap, either. And Luther, he’s goin’ to need your help if he leaves this place.”

No response.

“You got your own tongue, cat?” Malcolm asked. “Or are you just noddin’ your head without movin’ it?”

“I’ll talk him out of leaving,” Blackjack said, more to himself than to Malcolm. “No need for either of us to go anywhere. I’ll talk him out of it.”

“You better eat those rats, then. His mind’s set tight, and you’ll need a full stomach to even budge it.”

But Blackjack had lost his appetite.

“Where is Luther, anyway?” he asked.

“Luther’s down the block, at that building where they used to have all the meat,” said Malcolm. “He’s on the roof.”

IV.

“Luther?”

Blackjack entered the former House of Morris Butcher Shop, one of the last stores in the neighborhood to close. There was a dog sitting just inside the doorway, but it was not Luther.

“Get out of my way, Isaac,” Blackjack warned, as the mongrel blocked the entrance.

“You get out,” Isaac commanded, shaky but possessing enough hatred to make up for it. Isaac and Fearless Bledsoe had come from the same litter. “Ain’t no need for you here, cat.”

“Malcolm sent me to talk to Luther,” the Manx told him. After a pause he added: “I would have come on my own anyway, sooner or later.”

“Malcolm sent you to talk to him? What is he, crazy?”

“Why don’t you go ask Malcolm that yourself? Look, my friend’s on the roof, so just get—”

Isaac bared his teeth . . . and reeled back, bleeding from a slash across his muzzle.

“Stupid,” Blackjack said, retracting his claws. Isaac scurried out of the way like a spooked puppy. “Don’t ever threaten a cat unless you mean business. That was your brother’s mistake.”

He walked on toward the back of the shop without another word, and Isaac gave him no further trouble. Blackjack sniffed the air, detecting the ghosts of Kosher Bacon and Liverwurst Past. The smell was even stronger in the back room, and Blackjack remembered pleasantly how the head butcher had used to feed him scraps. That butcher had been a capital fellow, for a human being—he’d never made Blackjack beg or do tricks for the food, nor had he ever tried to pet him. You could almost come to respect a human like that, one who let you keep your dignity and still eat.

He found the stairs leading up and began to climb, his stomach growling . . . now he wished he had eaten the three rats, or at least one of them. The stairs led to the roof, which had actually been the second floor once. The original roof had collapsed, and only one wall remained standing, the one overlooking an alley on the left-hand side of the butcher shop. Luther was there, gazing down at the alley through a jagged hole that had originally been a window. He was a medium-sized dog, his short-haired coat a confused mottle of black and white.

“Luther?”

“Blackjack,” Luther greeted him without looking up. He projected his thoughts softly and distinctly, as Moses had taught him to do. “You came. I knew you would.”

“It—it wasn’t actually my idea. I didn’t even know you were up here until Malcolm told me. Er . . . why exactly are you up here, Luther?”

“I was just looking at the spot where Moses died. He crawled into the alley after he’d been hit, you know.”

“Did he?”

“He spent his whole life,” Luther continued, the thought tinged with reverence and sorrow, “his whole life trying not to be a bother to anyone. In the end I think he didn’t want to leave his body lying in the street.”

“I doubt anyone would have cared,” said Blackjack, moving up to sit next to him. “Not in this neighborhood. I am sorry about it, you know. I know I told you that before, but I meant it.”

“There’s nothing for you to be sorry for. It’s not your fault he’s dead. Raaq’s the one to blame.”

“Who?”

“Raaq. The Deceiver.”

“Oh.” Blackjack was really not in a mood to discuss the canine version of Satan.

“He’s not the same as Death, you know,” said Luther, who was in a religious mood. “But the two of them do travel together. Death’s job is to collect all the souls. It’s Raaq who does the actual killing, though. Whenever a car hits a dog, Raaq is the driver. Oh, it’s a human—a Master—but for that one instant, he becomes Raaq. And the car becomes Raaq, too . . .”

“Luther,” Blackjack interrupted gently.

“. . . He makes dogs fight one another, makes them sick. He’s in the rabies. He makes litters come out stillborn. He—”

“Luther!”

“Huh!?” Luther jerked his head around, as if shaking off a particularly bad dream. “Wh-what did you say?”

Blackjack studied Luther’s eyes for a long moment. Luther did not look well. If dogs had been capable of crying out of emotion, his face would have been streaked with hysterical tears.

“It’s not fair, you know,” Luther said, and the thought was quiet, meek. “I was the only one in my litter to survive past the first month. And my mother, she just disappeared. Moses always thought the ’catchers had gotten her. Lately I’ve been wondering if it wasn’t something worse. What if she was out at night sometime, all alone, and she met up with Raaq in person?”

“Raaq isn’t real, Luther,” Blackjack told him patiently. “Raaq’s only a bad dream that some caveman put a name to. Then a cat overheard the caveman talking about it, and just for laughs he told a dog. And you’ve been scaring yourselves over it ever since.”

Luther listened to this with equal patience. Cats often said strange things, especially in reference to the Masters. A good dog nodded and took it all with a polite grain of salt.

“You’ll still be my friend, won’t you, Blackjack?” he asked, when the Manx had finished. “You’re all I’ve got left now that Moses is gone.”

“I’ll be your friend,” Blackjack promised. And because cats can’t hug, he bit Luther playfully on the ear. Then he said: “Now what’s this I hear about you going to look for Moses?”

“Well . . .” Luther lowered his eyes, embarrassed. “Even with you as a friend, you understand, I still miss him a lot. I want to see him again.”

“His body, you mean?”

“Oh no!” Luther looked frankly surprised. “Why would I want to see that? What good’s a body if nobody’s in it?”

“Then what—”

“I want to see his soul again, Blackjack.”

“His soul.” Blackjack shifted uncomfortably on his haunches. “And where might that be?”

“In Heaven, of course.”

Now Blackjack looked surprised. As he happened to glance down into the alley, a terrible thought struck him.

“I hope you’re not stupid enough to be thinking of jumping,” he said solemnly. “Even if suicide were a rational option, I can tell you right now that two floors isn’t high enough. It’ll hurt, but unless you land on your head it’ll probably just cripple you, not kill you.”

“I’m not going to jump, Blackjack. What made you think that? You don’t jump to Heaven. You walk there.”

“Pardon?”

“I had an idea,” Luther explained. “It came to me yesterday, right after they took Moses’ body away. I was down in the alley itself, sniffing around where he’d been lying, and I could still smell him.”

“Of course you could. The weather’s been clear, so there’s no reason why the scent should fade quickly. What does that have to do with Heaven?”

“Well,” said Luther, “I was standing there thinking, ‘If I can smell Moses’ body, I wonder if I could sniff out his soul.’ And then I thought, ‘What if I could sniff out Heaven itself?’”

“Oh . . .” Understanding was beginning to dawn.

“So I came up here, you see, to scent for Heaven. I suppose a taller building would have been better, but I like this spot, and Moses did too.

“Anyway,” he continued, “for a long time I didn’t get anything. All last night and this morning there was nothing but exhaust smell from the Lower City. And then, just a few hours ago, a breeze sprang up, and it brought a new smell. Very faint, but it was there.

“I smelled Heaven, Blackjack! It’s up north. Up north so far that I’m not even sure the world quite reaches it, but I think I can make it . . . or we can, if you want to come with me.”

Blackjack watched Luther nervously during this entire thought-speech, and soon realized that there was no way he was going to talk him out of making the journey. Every possible argument—that Heaven didn’t exist, that if it did exist there would be no way to reach it alive, that it probably wasn’t worth rushing to anyway—was blown away by the slightly romantic, slightly crazed look in Luther’s eyes. He realized also, grudgingly, that his own somewhat tarnished but still honorable conscience would not allow him to stay behind while Luther went out into a world he was too innocent to survive in alone.

“Tell me one thing,” Blackjack said, trying to resign himself to the idea of the journey and knowing he would get no sleep tonight.

“Sure,” replied Luther, wagging his tail. “What do you want to know?”

“This Heaven place. What did it smell like?”

“Like rain,” Luther told him wonderingly. “Rain and hills.”

“Gee,” said Blackjack. “That sounds just swell.”

V.

They left three days later. Most of the other neighborhood dogs, and some of the cats, gathered to see them off. Goodbyes were exchanged, good luck wished, and then they were on the move. Malcolm accompanied them for the first mile, reeling off some last-minute advice that was mostly intended for Luther.

“. . . Now remember that you don’t have collars, neither of you. That ain’t a bad thing at all, ain’t no man ever put a collar on me, but the ’catchers will know you for strays right off. Keep a sharp eye out for them, and remember that some of them can gun at you from a distance.

“Also,” he said cautiously, as if crossing thin ice, “you got to watch out for ’Breds.”

“’Breds?” asked Luther. “What are those?”

“Purebreds,” said Blackjack, keeping his eyes on the road ahead. “Purebred dogs.”

“What are—”

“Has to do with blood, mostly,” Malcolm told him. “Me, I got blood from three or four strains of dog in me. You, Luther, you got even more—so much that it’d likely take God and a helper to get it all straight. But a Purebred—that’s a dog with only one strain, or so much of one that he can pretend that’s all he’s got. It’s called havin’ pedigree, and they think it makes them better than those that don’t have it.”

“But how can you tell who has pedigree, if it’s just the blood? By smell?”

“Oh, you’ll know, Luther. Purebreds come in a lot of types, a lot of flavors, you might say, but all the ones of the same type look the same. Not exactly the same, mind you, but there’s a normal, a perfect, that they’re trying to be. And they hate dogs like us. Mixes.”

“Are all Purebreds like that?”

“No,” Blackjack interjected. “He’s exaggerating.”

“Not by much, cat,” insisted Malcolm. “Not by much at all. But you’ll know the really bad ones—the ones that want to kill you—by a thought in their minds. You’ll hear that thought clear as a bell, even if they’re tryin’ to cover it up with other thoughts.”

“What thought?”

“Mange,” Malcolm said. “That’s what they call us. Mange. You hear that thought in another dog’s mind, you feel it, smell it, taste it, then you’ll know that dog is your enemy. Get away from him as fast as you can, kill him if you have to.”

“Kill him?” Luther’s eyes were wide with shock. “A dog that kills another dog lets Raaq into his heart, Malcolm. You know that. You can’t—”

“Mayhap Raaq does get in. But as long as a dog’s still alive, he can still hope to get Raaq back out. A dog killin’ another dog happens all the time, Luther. And you know that.”

Luther said nothing. He knew it, all right, but he also knew, as Moses had taught him, that things didn’t have to be that way.

“Mange,” Malcolm repeated, with a distaste that he did not try to hide. “You remember that word, Luther. Write it on your heart. And listen for it.”

They had reached the outer limits of their home territory. Familiar smells faded into obscurity and were replaced by strange new ones. Other animals, other things.

“This is as far as I go,” Malcolm told them. “You all remember what I told you, though, and take care. I’ll miss you, Luther. Mayhap I’ll even miss you, cat. You’re no son of a bitch, but you do grow on a fellow.”

“I’m flattered beyond belief,” Blackjack said.

“Don’t say goodbye, Malcolm,” Luther said. “You never know, we might be back someday.”

“I don’t think so, Luther. Not that I don’t want it that way, but that ain’t how it feels.”

“Making predictions about the future now?” Blackjack chided him. “I suppose that’s appropriate, since we’re heading off to find a mythical place.”

“That’s one thing about you, cat,” replied Malcolm. “For a smart animal, you surely are stupid sometimes. How do you know I can’t read the future? Ain’t I read you pretty well? The future’s a darker glass, less clear, but it ain’t all secret.”

“And you don’t think we’ll be back?” Luther said, saddened.

“No,” said Malcolm. “You got big things ahead of you, Luther. Who knows, mayhap Heaven is waitin’ for you out there. But I doubt as we’ll meet again in this world.”

“If there’s another world besides this one,” put in Blackjack, “I’ll probably be in so much shock that I’ll even be glad to see your ugly muzzle again, Malcolm. You are a son of a bitch, but I suppose you grow on a fellow, too.”

“Take care then, cat. You too, Luther. Goodbye now.”

“Goodbye, Malcolm,” Luther said, and turned away. Blackjack followed at his heel.

Night was falling as they left. The sky was overcast but rainless, and the clouds glowed dully with the light reflected from Manhattan to the south. Malcolm stood at the edge of the home territory, his territory, and watched until both dog and cat had vanished into the gathering darkness.

As he walked back alone to the church, a light wind began to blow.

PRINCESS AURORA . . .

I.

On the morning that his daughter was due to leave for her last year of college, Walter Smith rose ahead of the sun, dressing quietly and slipping out into the chill Wisconsin morning before dawn could get a grip on the sky. Walt was a factory worker rather than a dairy farmer—and a retired factory worker at that—but his property bordered on one of the biggest cow pastures in the state. He headed there now, vaulting two fences and wading a shallow stream in defiance of his age. Arthritis had mercifully passed him over, for now, but he suspected that not even painful joints could have kept him indoors. Early morning was his time of rebellion. Especially this morning.

Hopelessly ordinary in most respects, Walter Smith’s life could have served as a definition for the word average. Born in the early Twenties to Lutheran parents who were neither rich nor poor, he had lived through the Great Depression, the Second World War, the McCarthy witch hunts, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate Era, national upheavals from which he felt barely a tremor. He married at twenty-five, settling on the outskirts of the sleepy Wisconsin town where he and his wife and daughter still lived. The next forty years of his life were spent working at a production plant for the Great Midwest Paint Company (and the most exciting event at the plant in those forty years had been the introduction of a brand-new line of wood stains—Great Midwest Wood Stains, they were called). Walt had become a recognized and respected face in town, not the sort of person you’d vote for for mayor, but one you’d be sure to invite to your church social. A good, run-of-the-mill type fellow.

That was what everyone thought, anyway. Not even Walter’s wife Prudence knew of his occasional habit of doing things that were, well, not quite so run-of-the-mill. These digressions, as Walter had come to call them in his mind, were never very frequent or large-scale. He knew in his heart that he was not cut out to be anything but regular, but over the years he had come to feel a deep appreciation for those lucky individuals who broke the mold. The digressions were a salute of sorts, a tip of the hat to rebelliousness, craziness . . . differentness.

Perhaps the impulse had always been in him, like a latent kidney disorder, but it had come into its own rather late in his life. Walter would never forget the day in 1955 when he had first fallen down the rabbit hole of unorthodoxy, driven to the breaking point by the ruthlessness of Dick Stark, an ex-marine and newly hired manager at the Great Midwest Paint plant, who must surely have numbered Attila the Hun among his ancestors. Walter’s Primal Digression was simple; it involved nothing more than jumbling the numbers on Stark’s weekly delivery manifest, the huge, pale green ledger in which the paint orders were logged. Pure chance brought Walt to Stark’s open and unguarded office, and he seemed to barely think as he performed his act of sabotage, but the results were wondrous to behold: over the course of the next two weeks, a Detroit funeral parlor under­going renovation received a triple order of cheerful Lemon Yellow Latex; the congregation of a newly built church in Ohio found itself awash in Electric Purple; a Great Midwest Paint store in downtown Milwaukee got truckload after truckload of Susan B. Anthony Pink . . . a shade not unlike that of the pink slip that Dick Stark was given, unceremoniously, at the end of the month.

Walter had spent a good deal of time worrying over his sanity after this stunt—it was the first time he had ever done something even remotely out of line with the Straight and Narrow (and what a first!)—but the incident also filled him with a strange sense of elation. For those few moments in the Delivery Office, frantically altering the manifest, Walter Smith had had a taste of the World of Unorthodoxy, and though it was not his world, it surely did feel grand all the same.

Large-scale “digressions” such as this had remained few and far between in the many years since then, but Walt had managed to pick up one or two daily quirks as well. One was the habit of getting up very early and going out to walk while the rest of Wisconsin—even the dairy farmers—still slept. And now, in the age of his retirement, he had discovered something else, something deliciously rebellious and perfectly suited for the dark, private hours of pre-dawn.

Sitting on a lonely tree stump at the border of the cow pasture, Walter Smith reached into his jacket pocket for a plastic ziplock bag. Inside the bag were four pre-rolled marijuana cigarettes. He bought them from an old factory buddy named Don Mezz for a dollar apiece, coming out to the stump and getting a buzz on on those mornings when the spirit moved him. Don had been completely taken off guard the first time Walter approached him to make a purchase, and Walt was particularly pleased with the memory of that reaction.

He took out one of the joints, placing the bag on the stump beside him. Lighting it with a tarnished Zippo, Walt inhaled deeply to get the coal going. He held the smoke in his lungs for as long as he could, exhaling a clean white column. He was getting good at this; he no longer coughed after each drag.

For the next twenty minutes Walter did nothing but smoke. Usually he limited himself to one joint, but this morning he went considerably further than that; this morning he was worried about his daughter. His one and only daughter, whom he had often prayed would turn out to be a true rebel, not just a part-timer.

She had come into the world on a seemingly endless night some twenty-one years ago. The labor had lasted thirteen hours, and at one point Walt had wandered out of the waiting room in a nervous fit, looking for something unusual to do. He wound up buying a pack of Marlboros from a nearby candy store—in those days the thought of marijuana had not even crossed his mind, but as he was a non-smoker, tobacco was digressive enough—and nearly choked to death on his first inhale. Then, walking back to the hospital, he had looked up at the night sky and seen a glow: the Northern Lights, come down from Canada for a guest appearance.

The baby girl was christened Aurora Borealis Smith.

II.

“—so Brian said he thought that was a pretty sick thing, having magazines like that for sale in a family store where kids can walk right up and look at them, and Mr. Garfield said maybe that was true, but it wasn’t Brian’s store, and Brian could take his business elsewhere if he didn’t like it. Then Brian asked him what he’d do if a lot of people started taking their business elsewhere. That’s when it really started heating up. Mr. Garfield started talking about the First Amendment, and Brian whipped out his Bible, and they were arguing for the next hour or so—”

She was tall, pale, with blond hair that hung almost to her shoulders. Her lips were thin and pleasant, her cheeks well formed, her eyes bright blue like the noon reflection on a lake, or a cornflower in the lapel of a Duchess. Everything was nearly just right, as if she needed only one more ingredient to take her from pretty to beautiful.

Walter Smith watched Aurora as she made breakfast, not really hearing her words. Mrs. Smith was still in bed, suffering through her annual Cornell sick-in. At the beginning of Aurora’s freshman year they had all driven out to Ithaca together, and their first sight driving into North Campus had been that of two women, standing on the East Avenue bridge above Fall Creek and exchanging an open-mouth kiss in broad daylight. Furthermore—as if God were trying to emphasize some point—they were an interracial couple, in addition to being homosexual. Walter had conceived great hopes for Cornell’s radicalizing potential as a result of this, but his wife Prudence had nearly fainted. Now she grew violently ill every year as the beginning of the fall term approached, and had refused to set foot on the campus again until Aurora’s graduation day.

“—afterwards we walked around and talked for a while. I wasn’t really feeling too good about what had happened. Brian was right, of course, but scaring an old man like Mr. Garfield . . . well, you’ve got to think about him, too, not just about some kids who might pick up a Penthouse. I mean, somebody must buy them for him to have them in the first place, and maybe he thinks he needs the business—”

Walt was still playing touch-and-go with reality. He’d overdone it on the stump, smoking two joints and getting a good start on a third, not realizing until too late how hard it was going to hit him. He felt numb all over, his thoughts heavy-limbed; the most annoying property of a marijuana high was that it became impossible to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, and even that one thing had a way of slipping out from under you.

Aurora scrambled eggs and went on about her date last night, while Walter’s mind pinwheeled back to the past. To his sons. Aurora had come along very late in the game, a surprise package of a birth, but earlier on Walter and Prudence had made two boys together.

Ed, the eldest, was a straight arrow, more run-of-the-mill than his own father (Walter had watched him carefully for any signs of the occasional digression, but there had been none). He lived in Minnesota with a sedate Methodist wife and two children of his own, worked as a consultant for an insurance firm, and sent a card every Christmas, Mother’s, and Father’s Day.

The other boy, Jesse, had come out of the womb only after a long and drawn-out delivery, screaming bloody murder. A world-beater from the very first. During the Vietnam War Jesse had been at Berkeley, marching in protest, getting arrested on an average of once a month. He had written home frequently about his exploits, sending newspaper clippings, and once his face had appeared briefly in a crowd on an evening newscast. Toward the end Walter had begun to suspect that Jesse had a boyfriend out there, as well. This had never been confirmed, but Walt had felt a touch of pride over it all the same—it would have been wonderfully unorthodox, though what Prudence might have thought . . .

Four days before his graduation, Jesse had been struck and killed by a car just outside of campus. The driver had not been drunk, merely looking the wrong way at the wrong time, and to Walter that seemed the cruelest thing of all—that there should be nowhere to lay blame, no one to shake a fist at, except perhaps Fate. He had cried a long time over Jesse, in a way, he had to admit to himself, that he could never have cried over Ed. And he might have proved inconsolable if not for something that Aurora, barely five at the time, had done for him.

She had stolen him a bouquet. Not just gathered it, but stolen it, crawling under fences and sneaking into private gardens all over town—and in one instance, according to her story, playing hide-and-seek with a very big Doberman Pinscher—to bring back a diverse collection of flowers: roses, marigolds, tulips, daffodils, peonies, others he couldn’t even name. She gave him the bouquet and told him all about how she had come by it, and told him he could stop being so sad now, everything would be all right. He still had every one of the flowers, pressed between the pages of a hardbound copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that lay in his bottom dresser drawer. He also still had the kernel of hope for her that had been born in him that day, for she’d had Jesse’s look in her eyes, dormant but there all the same, waiting to be brought to life.

If only it hadn’t been for Brian Garroway.

“—so Brian said—”

Brian was Aurora’s steady boyfriend, had been since high school. To be brutally honest, he was her fiancé, in everything but name. All that remained was the buying of a ring and setting a date, a formality that would probably be taken care of by Thanksgiving break, Christmas at the latest. And then . . . then it would be too late.

“—and Brian—”

Walter was quite aware that to most parents, Brian would have seemed like perfect son-in-law material. He was a good fellow, clean-cut, about to graduate with a degree in Hotel Administration from one of the better universities in the country. Brian was also a born-again Christian, a steadfast believer who had no patience with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, or pornography. Or world-beating. To see Brian marching in support of a liberal protest, Walt was convinced, would be a sure sign of a coming apocalypse. A nice kid, all things considered, one who would never break the rules, one who would marry, take his place as a productive member of society, raise a nice, average family, and never do anything noteworthy in his entire life.

“—and we—”

We. That was another thing about Brian: he seemed to be in love with the first person plural. We this and we that. If you let him, he’d do your talking (and even your thinking) for you. Walter feared this especially, that Brian would wear away to nothing, out of the best of intentions, whatever remained of that little girl who had once stolen him a bouquet.

The marijuana high (actually more of a low) tinged all these thoughts with a deeper sense of paranoia and desperation than usual, and as Aurora set a steaming plate of scrambled eggs and bacon before him, smiling unsuspectingly, he resolved to talk openly with her before she was off to Cornell and beyond his reach. As she got her own plate of eggs and sat down at the table he caught her glance, held it, making it perfectly clear just from the look on his face that he had something of the utmost importance to say to her. Walter opened his mouth to speak, but his state betrayed him, and the words that came out were perhaps not the best:

“If you ever were to decide you were a lesbian,” he told her in all seriousness, “I’d understand.”

Because she did not, in fact, have any plans of becoming a lesbian, and because it wasn’t the sort of subject she thought about regularly, Aurora’s response to this was perhaps predictable: the one-word question “What?” either blurted out, stuttered, or spoken calmly. It took her a moment, though—as it might have taken many people a moment—for her ears to run a test and make sure they’d heard correctly.

“What?” she said, splitting the difference between blurting and calm speech.

Walter looked at her across the table, his eyes red and watery—and not all of that was from the pot.

“Daddy,” she said, her voice still uncertain how to compose itself, “Daddy, what’s wrong?”

His tongue froze on him. He balled his hand into a fist and struck his thigh as one might strike a defective tape recorder, forcing himself to concentrate, and the words came out in a flood:

“Jesse. I was just thinking about your brother Jesse, how he . . . how he had this smile, this special smile about him. One of the clippings he sent us during the War protests, I still have it, it shows these two policemen dragging him away after he screamed out that Lyndon Johnson was a pig. They were dragging him away to a special police bus, and one of the cops had just clubbed him, but he was smiling, smiling and shouting all the same, as if it were the greatest thing in the world. That smile, it was an I’m alive smile, I guess you’d call it, because he was alive . . . he . . . he . . .”

The words faltered again, and Aurora shook her head, still struggling.

“Daddy, I don’t—” she bit her lip. “Are you trying to say that Jesse was gay, or . . .”

“No, no!” Walter burst out. “No! I mean, he might have been, you can always hope, but that’s not the point, the point is . . . the point . . . it was the smile, the smile! Jesse never tried to conform, he was different, different in a dozen ways, and that being different made him alive, made him smile. Ed, he smiles and laughs too, but never that way. Not everyone is meant to smile that way, maybe. Oh, but if you’ve got it in you, the potential, and you don’t . . . don’t . . .”

He reached across the table and took one of Aurora’s hands, clasping it tightly.

“I can remember,” he continued, “I can remember two years after Jesse died, and we took a trip to Minnesota for Ed’s wedding. At the reception all the bridesmaids were lined up like birds at one side of the hall, with these big yellow bonnets on their heads, and you got one of Jesse’s I’m alive smiles on your face and asked me what would happen if someone went and started knocking those girls’ hats off. And I . . . I would have let you do it, you know, let you try jumping up and knocking hats off. But your mother overheard, she was already upset over some of the relatives she’d had to talk to, she told you to behave and stop thinking things like that. When . . . when did you start listening to your mother, Aurora?”

“Daddy, what . . .”

“I just don’t want you to wake up thirty years from now,” he told her, squeezing her hand almost tightly enough to hurt, “and realize that your chance to have more of a life, your chance to smile the way Jesse smiled, all the time, has gone by. I don’t want you to feel that loss. Do you see? Do you understand?”

III.

“Don’t worry about the damage, Mr. Smith,” Brian Garroway was saying. “The left headlight’s out, but the engine’s fine and we won’t be driving after dark. You can thank my younger brother for this, by the way. His sense of responsibility belongs in a Crackerjack box.”

Brian carried Aurora’s bags to the back of his station wagon, which was parked in the Smiths’ driveway. The wagon had a bumper sticker that said “JESUS IS MY BACKSEAT DRIVER.” It also had a pronounced dent in the left side of the front fender; the headlight was mortally wounded.

“Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” Aurora asked her father in a low voice, as Brian unlocked the back of the wagon. “I swear I thought you were having some kind of a nervous breakdown at breakfast.”

“I’ll be fine,” Walter said. She studied him uncertainly, and noticed for the first time how very red his eyes were. A thought struck her, one which she dismissed immediately as ridiculous.

“What would you say,” Walter went on, “if I offered to drive you?”

“Drive me where, Daddy? You don’t mean to Ithaca, do you?”

“The car’s in the garage,” said Walter. “Tank’s almost full. We could go a fair piece down the road before we even had to stop. And we could talk, just you and me, about anything you want. My ‘nervous breakdown,’ for instance.”

“Daddy . . .”

“I mean it. Back at breakfast I wasn’t too clear-headed, but I’m feeling better. I might like to rest a little bit more before we take off, but I will drive you. Really.”

“But . . . well, what about Brian?”

“Let him drive his own damn car,” Walter replied, and Aurora would have laughed at this if it were not for the fact that he was dead serious.

“Daddy,” she said again, “Daddy, you’ve got to realize how silly this is.”

Walter lowered his eyes, nodding.

“It is pretty silly, isn’t it? Pretty damn silly, yes . . .” He looked up again. “But what do you say?”

For the briefest instant—only an instant, mind you—Aurora considered accepting his offer, letting him drive her all the way to Ithaca if it was that important to him. And maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t only for his sake that she considered it.

“Let’s go, Aurora!” Brian called, breaking the spell.

“I love you, Daddy,” Aurora said, kissing Walter on the cheek. Then she was hurrying to the station wagon, pausing to yell back over her shoulder: “I’ll call as soon as we get there, all right? . . . I promise.”

Walter nodded again, and had to fight hard to keep his fists from clenching. He felt worn out, beaten.

“You take care now,” Walter said.

Aurora opened her mouth to speak, but Brian Garroway said: “We’ll be fine, Mr. Smith. Don’t worry yourself.”

The two climbed into the station wagon, slammed the doors. “Seat belts,” Brian said automatically, even as Aurora was reaching for hers. He turned on the engine, put the station wagon in reverse, and began to back gingerly down the driveway. Walter waved from the house and Aurora waved back . . . and as they approached the end of the driveway, she reached over to the steering wheel and honked the horn twice.

“Cripes!” Brian said, startled. His nervous system did a few quick jumping jacks. “What’d you do that for?”

“Just saying goodbye,” she told him.

“Well please do it some other way. I’m in a very edgy mood about this car right now.”

Aurora made no response to this and waved to her father one last time. Then the station wagon was moving down the road, leaving home and parents behind. There was silence in the car for the next few minutes.

“This is going to be a good year,” Brian finally said. He smiled and squeezed her hand. “Maybe the best year so far.”

“I hope so,” Aurora said. She smiled back, and Brian never even noticed how forced it looked. “I really hope so.”

She suddenly wished very badly that she’d taken her father’s offer.

IV.

As for Walter Smith, his morning ended in prayer. Not the orthodox, “Lord we beseech thee” style of prayer, but something much closer to true conversation. Walter had not been to church in some years—though Prudence still went regularly, and Brian Garroway frequently urged him to do the same—but he still retained a fair amount of faith; surely the world could not have become so wonderfully mixed-up without a guiding, jester’s hand.

When the station wagon was out of sight, Walter sat down on his front porch and stared at the stretch of driveway where Brian had been parked.

“Listen,” he began. “I need a really big favor, I think . . .”

. . . AND LADY CALLIOPE

Day ran on into night again, and that evening, in Delaware, the most beautiful woman in the world left the capital city of Dover and walked north on U.S. 13. Her name was Calliope, and on the long road behind her she left a string of carefully broken hearts, like diamonds cut to a finer shape by a master lapidary.

Cut to a finer shape . . . she too was finely shaped, custom-made in a sense. In the city she had just left there lived an out-of-work mechanic, a man of little ambition and even less courage. Shy but possessed of a depth of passion that was his one strength, this mechanic favored women with fiery red hair, milk-white skin, and silver eyes, women of medium height whom he could kiss without stretching or stooping; Calliope fit this description exactly, more exactly than might have been believed possible. Even for those whose fantasy lover was different, Calliope had a heart-catching edge to her, a perfect, irresistible something. That she walked tonight was a fact of her own choosing; no motorist, regardless of their hurry, would have denied Calliope a ride had she desired one. But she did choose to walk, wanting to be alone for a time, as she always did after an Exit.

Back in Dover, the mechanic would soon return from a day’s wandering to find his lover Gone. Not gone, but Gone. Photographs of the two of them together now showed only one person, him; a jacket saturated with her scent now smelled only of must; their bed was made, as if never slept in. He would search for her frantically, and when he realized that she was truly lost forever, the Hurt would begin. Calliope had seduced him well; he would Hurt so badly that at first he would think he was going to die. But when death did not come, he would find himself being transformed by his Pain, and in the end for the sake of lost love he would be drawn into an act of great heroism, of consequence. Exactly how this was to come about and for what purpose Calliope could not have said . . . she knew only that it had something to do with a Story. As always. But she was not the Storyteller; she was part of the Tale.

Calliope turned her thoughts ahead, to the next Meeting. This upcoming Love promised to be an important one, and more complicated than the last. She cleared her mind and walked, duffel bag slung over her shoulder, a tiny silver whistle hanging from a chain around her neck.

There was no moon that night. Calliope traveled far, in darkness. By eleven forty-five she had reached the small town of Talbot’s Legacy, some twenty miles outside of Dover. The road was deserted, and she passed through the town’s center with no company except for the scant streetlamps that cast faint circles of light on the asphalt every thirty yards or so. And the wind, of course. The wind was always with her.

The Turning began at exactly twelve o’clock.

Far to the north, so many miles distant that no natural creature could have heard it from here, a set of tower chimes marked the passage of one day into another as the clock touched midnight. Calliope’s ears perked up at the sound.

A moment later she walked beneath one of the streetlamps, and her hair was longer. Longer, and darker—it covered her ears, nearly touching her shoulders. And that was not the only thing different about her, though for a moment it was the most noticeable.

Thirty-some paces in the shadows, and another streetlamp captured her. Her hair, black as the new moon, now hung halfway down her back. Her skin had taken on color, and her eyes were phasing from silver to dark brown.

More paces, more changes. Calliope’s entire stature began to change, becoming shorter, thinner; her skin continued to color, taking on a rich olive cast; her breasts grew smaller, more compact, but still perfectly proportioned; her nose widened.

The entire metamorphosis took perhaps five minutes. When it was done, Calliope stopped under another streetlamp and looked at her reflection in a nearby storefront. It had been a long time since she had been Asian; she liked what she saw.

“I’m on my way, George,” said Calliope, executing a graceful pirouette in the lamplight. “I’m on my way.”

A SIDETRIP THROUGH HELL

I.

For Luther and Blackjack, New York City had become a memory left far behind. Led by the mongrel’s nose and the Heaven scent, they had been traveling for some days now, in a zigzagging but roughly northwesterly direction. This particular morning they had come upon a town, the name of which they never learned. They had passed through a residential area—rows of neat houses, each with its own well-kept yard and garage—and were now nearing its center. Blackjack was unusually calm after their stroll through the peaceful neighborhood—which had been mercifully free of petting children and hose-spraying old men—but Luther found himself growing suddenly tense. His anxiety took a quantum leap when he saw a white van cross through an intersection about two blocks ahead.

“I can feel Raaq in this place,” Luther began to say. “Maybe we should—”

“Oh, hell!”

“What is it?” said Luther, thinking that Blackjack must have smelled danger too, or seen something.

“Heat,” Blackjack told him. “Just caught a whiff of it. There’s a puss in heat around here. A street puss, if I’m lucky.” He looked at Luther hopefully. “It’s kind of tempting, you know. Would you mind if I just nipped off for a moment and . . .”

“There’s danger here, Blackjack,” Luther replied. “Can’t you feel it? Raaq . . . Raaq’s somewhere close.”

“Raaq,” the Manx repeated, unimpressed. “Well listen, Luther, isn’t Raaq only supposed to bother dogs? I mean, he’s your devil, not mine. So I don’t have anything to worry about. And if he does show up, I’ll hit him broadside while he’s concentrating on you and knock him senseless.” A poorly constructed chain of logic, but Blackjack was in a hurry to get laid now and didn’t want to waste time arguing over nonsense.

Luther looked away, disappointed. “OK, Blackjack,” he said. “You go ahead, if you want to think I’m being superstitious. I’ll wait here for you as long as I can. But if something does happen—”

“Please, please don’t try and make me feel guilty, Luther. I came with you on this trip, didn’t I? And I promise I’m going to stick by you until we find your Heaven, but right now I want a little heaven of my own. That’s not too much to ask, is it?” He began backing away in the direction of the heatscent, all the while looking at Luther with wide, imploring eyes. “I’ll be back before you know it. Cats don’t take that long anyway and I can be fast when I’m pressed for time. I’ll be right back.”

“Go on, then,” Luther said flatly. “But it’s a mistake, Blackjack. This is a bad place.”

“We’ll be gone soon enough,” Blackjack called back, vanishing into an alley.

Luther crouched nervously beside a telephone pole, not at all reassured by Blackjack’s words. He watched the street, wondering from which direction Raaq would come at him, and in what form.

Directly above him, a handbill had been stapled to the pole. Luther glanced at it once and then ignored it. Perhaps Blackjack could have made sense of it, but to him it was just a meaningless collection of symbols.

The handbill read:

ATTENTION

Town Ordinance #101-bb

passed 4/13 this year:

Due to a large number of incidents involving stray animals,

a revised leash law has been passed by City Hall. Any dog or cat

discovered roaming free within the town limits will be taken

to the Animal Shelter. If the animal has a collar with proper

identification, the owner will be contacted and a fee imposed

for return of the animal.

Unclaimed animals, and those without any identification,

will, after a period of thirty (30) days, be either sold or destroyed.

LEASH YOUR PET—IT’S THE LAW

II.

Half an hour later, Blackjack had still not returned. Luther found himself caught in a great dilemma, for trouble had arrived, and though he wanted to run, he was not at all certain that he could find Blackjack, or that the Manx would be able to find him. But to stay here much longer might bring even worse consequences.

Luther remained crouched beside the telephone pole. Across the street, two German Shepherds lounged—not too casually—in front of a vacant lot. They were watching him. A Boxer had been with them earlier, but he had hurried away down a side street as soon as Luther had been spotted.

Now, at last, Luther understood what a Purebred really was. The Shepherds did look alike, and their coats were sharp and clear, as opposed to the random, muddied coloration of the mongrels Luther had grown up with. He could see how such dogs might develop a certain pride in themselves—they were beautiful, no denying that.

But Raaq was in them, or he had been in them before and left a mark on their hearts, and that dimmed their beauty to nothing. Have you killed others of your kind? Luther would have asked them, had he not been so afraid. Other dogs? I think you have. And that thought that Malcolm had warned him about—Mange—filled the Shepherds’ minds like poison as they watched him.

Luther looked at the alley, wondering how far Blackjack had had to go to find the puss.

“Blackjack?” Luther said with sudden hope, as he heard a noise in the alley. But it was only a newspaper blown by a light breeze. Then the breeze died, leaving the paper scattered on the sidewalk like a dirty white shroud.

Blackjack, Luther thought to himself. Blackjack, where are you?

And where were the people? Surely some kind Master would save him if the Shepherds chose to attack. But there were no people on this street, no one coming in or out of the stores.

It was as if someone—Raaq?—didn’t want him to escape.

More noise from the alley. It was definitely an animal this time, and Luther knew he had waited too long, because it was a big animal, too big to be Blackjack.

A Great Dane padded out of the alley. The Dane stood almost three feet high at the shoulders, more than a foot taller than Luther.

“Hello, mange,” it said.

Luther began to move then. He walked along the sidewalk, away from the Dane, and the big dog did not attack him. It simply followed him, at a distance of about ten feet. Across the street the Shepherds had stopped lounging, and they too were trailing him.

Luther walked, slowly gaining speed as panic took him.

“Hello, mange.”

The greeting came from a vacant lot on his right. He had thought to turn in there, but saw that a Golden Retriever and two Schnauzers were waiting for him. He kept on straight past the lot. The Retriever and the Schnauzers fell in beside the Great Dane.

Now it was worse. Now they were talking about him.

“Kind of runty-looking, isn’t he?” This from one of the Schnauzers, who was actually a good bit smaller than Luther.

“Sort of,” the Great Dane agreed. “But I’ll bet he’s got some fight in him.”

“All manges do,” said the Retriever. “Where do you suppose he came from?”

“It doesn’t matter. Manges are everywhere. There’s too damn many of them.”

“What do you think Dragon’ll do with him?”

“That isn’t hard to figure out.”

“I’d feed him to Cerberus, if I were Dragon.”

Forced to listen to them, Luther suddenly heard other words, deeper down in his mind where his best memories lay. Moses’ words.

“You don’t ever kill another dog, don’t ever even fight with one. A day may come when you feel pressed, when you feel there ain’t no other way out, but remember that a dog that lets Raaq into his heart is dead anyhow.”

“But Malcolm says—”

“Don’t you listen to Malcolm. Malcolm ain’t anything special, nothing special at all. Just think how easy it is to give yourself over to hate, and then remember that the easy thing is never the right thing. Never. And that’s what Malcolm’s all about.

“You mark me well, Luther. God gave a dog four legs so he could run, and he gave him a mind so he could pick the right way to run. You know which way that is?”

“Any way but Raaq’s way.”

“That’s right. You keep that well.”

“—stupid mange, I wonder if he’ll beg as much as the last one.” Luther quickened his pace still more. Up ahead was an intersection, and if he bolted at just the right moment he might yet escape. They had him flanked, but so far the Shepherds hadn’t tried to cut in front of him. A quick zigzag into a convenient alley and he could—

The Boxer, the one that had been with the Shepherds before, appeared on the sidewalk at the intersection, panting heavily. He was followed by a Dalmation, an Irish Setter, and a Bull Terrier.

There was no way out, now. The Shepherds crossed the street, closing the ring tightly around him. Luther backed up against a storefront—a butcher shop, it happened to be—and waited as the other dogs moved in toward him.

“Hello, mange,” the Boxer said.

III.

“State your pedigree, Booth.”

The Cocker Spaniel cowered in the center of a narrow courtyard which had been formed incidentally from the placement of several connecting buildings, most of them warehouses. No windows overlooked the courtyard, and the only exits were one padlocked back door and two alleyways, one of which was blocked off by a chain-link fence. The air in the place was still and hot, and the walls and ground were stark in the noon sunlight. A pack of various kinds of Terriers had arrayed themselves along one wall like a jury, and two Bull Mastiffs stood guard at the open alleyway; various other Purebreds stood or crouched in random places. At the far end of the court, three Doberman Pinschers ringed a high mound of gravel. Sitting atop the mound was the dog that had just thought-spoken—an Irish Wolfhound, the largest of the breeds. It measured nearly seven feet from nose to tail, and stood a yard high at the shoulders. Its coat was pure white, and unlike some of the other dogs in attendance, it wore no collar.

“Booth!” the Wolfhound exclaimed when the Spaniel did not answer immediately. “State your pedigree!”

Still the Spaniel hesitated, and a Bulldog with only one ear ran up and nipped at his flank.

“Dragon’s given you an order!” the Bulldog said, barking furiously at the same time, “Answer him!”

This only terrified the Spaniel further, and the Bulldog began snapping at his flank again, driving him around in a circle. The other dogs watched this with great amusement.

“Judas!” the Wolfhound finally said, and the Bulldog came to immediate attention. “Leave him be.”

“Of course, Dragon. As you wish.” The Bulldog gave one more bark and backed off. The Spaniel was now bleeding from a tear in its hind leg.

“Now, Booth . . .” the Wolfhound began.

There was a disturbance at the entrance to the courtyard. A new pack of dogs had arrived, led by a Boxer and a Great Dane. Luther was in the pack, forcibly hidden in the center. He was to be a surprise. The guards allowed the pack to enter, and after a quick glance the Wolfhound paid no attention to them.

“. . . let’s make this simple,” he continued. “I asked you for your pedigree, but we both know it, don’t we? Your sire and dam were both Purebred Spaniels, correct?”

“Y-y-yes,” the Spaniel said. He was not terribly bright, and close inbreeding had given him a peculiar mental defect—the telepathic equivalent of a stutter.

“What was that?”

“Y-yes, Dr-dr-dragon.”

“And your grandsires? All Spaniels?”

“Y-yes.”

“How many generations back? How many that you know for certain?”

“Seh-seh-seven. M-maybe eh-eight.”

“That’s pretty good,” the Wolfhound told him. “Eight generations. That’s even better than old Judas, there.” The Bulldog glowered at this, but did not protest. “You’re a real Purebred, Booth. And tell me, what is the law for Purebreds?”

“N-n-n-not . . . n-not t-t-to . . .”

“Not to what?”

“N-not to m-m-mate outside the br-br-br-br—”

“Breed! Breed!” snapped Judas.

“—br-br-breed.”

“Very good, Booth.” The Wolfhound showed teeth that were nearly as white as his coat. “And what is your crime?”

The Spaniel did not reply.

“Come on, Booth,” the Wolfhound cajoled him, warning back Judas with a glance. “What is your crime?”

“I-I b-broke the br-br-breeding l-law. I . . . huh-huh-had re-luh-lations . . . w-with a b-b-bitch outside m-my br-br-breed.”

“‘Had relations.’” The Wolfhound pulled the corners of his mouth back so far that he seemed to be smiling. Then, with sudden fury: “You impregnated her, you idiot! And by impregnating her, you forced me to destroy what was otherwise a perfect animal.”

“Destroy?” Luther said, trying to see better over the dogs that surrounded him. “What does—”

“Shut up, mange,” the Great Dane said sharply.

In the center of the courtyard, the Spaniel had begun to cringe again. “Dr-dr-dragon,” he tried to say. “Dr-dragon, i-i-it—”

“You broke the breeding law, Booth,” the Wolfhound overrode him. “You broke the highest law there is. Now tell us, tell everyone here, what is the penalty for breaking the highest law?”

“I know!” Judas piped up. “A dog who breaks the breeding law, who risks the creation of manges, has betrayed the entire Purebred Order as well as his own breed. For this treason he shall be torn apart, even as he sought to tear apart the foundations of decency.”

The Wolfhound nodded.

“Cerberus,” he said.

At the word, the three Dobermans stood up as one. Luther caught a clear view of them and immediately noticed something strange, both in the way they moved and in the way their eyes looked. He watched them stride forward and circle the Spaniel. Even when the three were not making identical motions, they seemed to be moving eerily in tandem with one another . . . almost as though they were possessed of a single mind.

“Dr-dragon!” the Spaniel pleaded, pawing vainly at the ground as if to dig a hole to hide in. “Dr-dr-dragon, p-please! W h-when Assa d-d-died, you pr-promised t-t-to g-g-get m-me someone n-n-new: Y-you pr-pr-promised: I-I-I-I c-couldn’t w-wait any-muh-more: I-is th-th-that s-s-so bad? I-i-is th-th-tha—”

“Gut him,” ordered the Wolfhound. The Dobermans fell on the Spaniel from all sides.

Luther closed his eyes and turned his head away. This did not prevent him from hearing the sounds, but fortunately the execution took only a moment. During that moment, a strange thing happened; Luther felt his fear slipping away, to be replaced by an oddly spiritual calm. Moses’ words began echoing in his mind again.

“Enough!” the Wolfhound commanded, and the Dobermans backed off, their teeth and muzzles bloody. What was left of the Spaniel did not much resemble a dog, or any other animal for that matter. The Dobermans returned to their places surrounding the mound, and one of the Bull Mastiffs came forward to drag away the carcass.

“So,” said the Wolfhound, “what’s the next order of business?”

The Great Dane in front of Luther barked tentatively.

“Hello, Aleister,” the Wolfhound greeted him. “You have something for us?”

The Dane and the other dogs who surrounded Luther moved aside, revealing him to the crowd. The Wolfhound’s eyes widened, and the Dobermans began barking in earnest.

“Mange,” said the Wolfhound gleefully. “Aleister, you’ve found us a mange.”

“Oh, well, it wasn’t just me,” the Dane disclaimed, trying to seem modest. The Boxer and the two Shepherds looked at him in irritation. “I had help capturing him.”

“We shall have to reward all of you, then. Where did you find him?”

“Right out in the street,” the Boxer interjected before the Dane could reply. “He was just sitting there, like he was waiting for something.”

The Wolfhound digested this. “Could he have been waiting for another mange? Or a group of them?”

“I don’t know, Dragon.” The Boxer looked nervous, as if he were afraid of being punished for the oversight. “I suppose it’s possible. I’m sorry, we didn’t wait around to see.”

“We’ll have to make a search later on, then. After we’ve taken care of this one. Can’t have manges wandering loose in the town.” He focused his attention on Luther. “Step forward, mange.”

Still inexplicably calm, Luther did as he was told, moving to the place the Spaniel had occupied. Blood stained the ground before him.

“What is your name, mange?” the Wolfhound asked.

“They call me Luther.”

“You say ‘they’—were there others with you before you were captured?”

“I’m the only . . . the only ‘mange’ . . . that I know of in this place.”

The Wolfhound squeezed his eyes down to slits, concentrating.

“You’re lying,” he said. “No, not exactly . . . but you are hiding something. You were traveling, traveling with a companion. Who was it? What type of animal?”

He can see into me, Luther realized. Just like Malcolm. But his sight isn’t as strong as Malcolm’s was.

“Why don’t you figure it out for yourself?” Luther challenged him. “If you can.”

“Do I detect a touch of impertinence? Or is that a show of courage?”

“You mean to kill me,” Luther replied. “I don’t have to look into your mind to see that. You’ll fancy it up and make a big deal of it, maybe, just so you can have some fun, but in the end it’ll still be dog killing dog. Raaq is in your hearts, all of you, and I guess it doesn’t make any difference if I’m ‘impertinent’ or not.”

Several of the Terriers howled in amusement at this, while the Dobermans growled continuously. The Wolfhound merely nodded.

“Impressive speech. My name is Dragon, if you haven’t already gathered that. I am Pack Leader of this domain. I don’t suppose I have to tell you your crime, do I?”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“You are a mange. An unnatural and disgusting intermingling of breeds meant to be kept forever separate. Under our law, your very existence is a crime.”

Now Luther barked mirthfully. “If you mean to say that I committed a crime by being whelped, you must think I’m God. Creation is His responsibility.”

“The crime,” continued the Wolfhound, “is punishable by destruction.”

“Destruction is God’s responsibility too. Dogs can only murder. That’s what you really meant, isn’t it?”

Dragon studied him. “You have spirit, mange. Much more than Booth did. Can you fight?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You can’t, or won’t? I somehow find it hard to believe that you’re a coward.”

“I won’t join you in killing. Raaq may take my life, but he won’t have my soul in the bargain.”

“Not a coward, then. Merely stupid. That’s another mange quality. You see now why we have to be so stringent in our breeding regulations.”

“Booth didn’t look all that smart,” Luther observed.

“Booth was a sad exception to the rule,” replied the Wolfhound. “But in a way that’s your fault, too. The more manges in the world, the fewer Purebreds, and the smaller each Purebred line. Booth’s ancestors were forced to breed too closely, due to a shortage of Spaniels in the area.”

“And it backfired,” Luther pressed him. “So maybe it’s not such a good system.”

“Oh, mange. Even a crippled Purebred is infinitely superior to your kind, don’t you understand that?”

But Luther refused to be baited. “If that’s true,” he said, “then you must have to check out every new member of your Order carefully, to make sure his ancestors were all all right . . .”

“Pedigree,” said the Wolfhound. “All Purebreds must have a clean pedigree going back at least five generations. We have ways of making sure they’re telling the truth about it.”

“But only five generations?” said Luther, feigning surprise. “That’s hardly anything. Where I come from, the Purebreds have to check out to twelve generations.”

This stunned all of them, in a way Luther would not have imagined possible. More than a few of the Purebreds started to get very nervous, as well.

“Twelve?” exclaimed Judas, twitching uncomfortably. “Twelve, that wouldn’t be right, not at all. How could you expect any dog—”

“He’s lying!” the Wolfhound said, probing Luther’s mind. “The pesthole he comes from doesn’t even have Purebreds.”

“But why are you so jumpy?” Luther inquired. “You’re Pack Leader, Dragon. You could trace back twelve generations, couldn’t you? Or is there a stain somewhere in your pedigree?”

“My pedigree is flawless!” Dragon insisted. “And you, mange, you’re dead. Slowly and painfully.” He glanced at the Dobermans. “Cerb—”

The command was interrupted by a new thought-voice, loud and frightened, which came from the unblocked alleyway.

“. . . missa dog, ya don’t wants to botha me. I’s jes an ol’ cat, an ol’ puddy­cat what don’t botha nobody, nobody ’t’all. Ya ain’ts gonna wanna hurt ol’ ’Jack, is ya? I sho do hope—”

“Move it!” ordered another.

A black cat with no tail tumbled past the guards into the courtyard, followed by an angry-looking Malamute. It took Luther a moment to realize that the cat was Blackjack, because the Manx was moving and holding himself in a way that he had never seen before. Luther finally put his paw on what it was: Blackjack was acting humble, and a scared humble at that.

“What do we have here?” asked Dragon.

Judas barked joyously. “It has no tail! Look at that! A cat with no tail!”

Blackjack crouched low to the ground, not hissing or defensive, but appearing to be more terrified, if that were possible, than the Spaniel had been. “I found this . . . this tom,” the Malamute explained distastefully, “wandering in the street. It asked me if I’d seen a mange named Luther. I thought you’d want to know about it, Dragon.”

“So,” the Wolfhound said, making the connection, “this is your traveling companion.”

The Malamute seemed perplexed for a moment, then growled as it caught sight of Luther.

“Move the mange off to the side!” Dragon ordered. “We’ll do the cat first, and let him watch!”

It was no sooner thought than done. Luther was hustled to the sidelines by the Great Dane and the Boxer, and Blackjack was shoved violently forward until he occupied the spot where the Spaniel had been killed.

“What’s goin’ on?” the Manx asked, shuddering. “What’s y’all plannin’ to do? I’s jes an old puddycat, ya don—”

“Stop your whining!” the Malamute snapped.

“Cerberus,” said Dragon. The Dobermans rose. “You are at your own discretion, Cerberus—but make it entertaining.”

Blackjack’s fur stood on end as the Dobermans approached him. He tried to back away, but the Malamute set up a fierce barking that scared him out of his retreat.

“Please, missa dog,” Blackjack groveled, prostrating himself. “Please, ya don’t wants to hurt me, does ya? I’s never done nothin’ to a dog, never would do nothin’, no, not this puddycat . . . ”

“Now I know where you get your courage, mange,” Dragon said. “You must have stolen his.”

Luther made no reply. He was studying Blackjack, wondering what in hell had happened to him. Could something have driven him mad?

“Please, missa dog, please . . .”

The Dobermans encircled him now. They spent a few moments snapping at him, teasing him and driving him back and forth. Then one of them, one that was slightly larger than the other two but otherwise identical, moved in until he and Blackjack were almost nose to nose. Like Dragon before, the Doberman’s lips were drawn back so far that he seemed to grin. Saliva dripped from his exposed fangs.

“I bet he’s going to take his balls,” Judas offered. “Hey cat, he’s going to take your balls!”

“Really?” said Blackjack, sliding his claws out and locking them. “I’m afraid he’ll have to do it by smell.”

“Cerberus!” Dragon warned, too late. “Cerberus, look out!”

The last thing the Doberman had been expecting—the last thing any of them had been expecting—from the panicked cat was an attack. As a result, the dog did not even have a chance to defend itself as the Manx reached past its muzzle and calmly and professionally tore out its eyes.

“Much too easy,” said Blackjack. The Doberman whipped its bleeding head back and howled in agony . . . as did the other two Dobermans.

Blackjack began to run. The two unwounded Dobermans regained their composure a moment later, and leapt blindly for the spot where the Manx had been. Not finding him, they began to bite and tear at each other instead.

“That,” said Blackjack, looking back over his shoulder, “is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever seen. Luther! Come on!”

Luther heard the call and ran for it, momentarily unimpeded. The sight of the ruined Cerberus held the Purebreds entranced. Luther caught up with Blackjack, and the two of them had actually gotten almost two-thirds of the way to the alley before Dragon awakened to their escape.

“Stop them!” the Wolfhound ordered. “Tear them apart!”

Now the other dogs all rushed forward, and it might have seemed that Blackjack and Luther had no chance. But if there was one thing that the Manx had learned long ago, it was that a task that can be performed easily by a few often proves impossible for an army. The air was already heavy with a blood smell, and this drove a number of the Purebreds into a killing frenzy—or perhaps the spirit of Raaq entered them. Those that did not immediately find their intended victims in many cases turned and attacked one another.

Luther somehow slipped through the initial wave of attackers. Later he would suggest to Blackjack that God or Moses’ ghost had aided him, and out of politeness Blackjack would say nothing. Once through this front wave he was caught in a press of dogs, all straining to get into the fray. He was bitten any number of times—the frenzy had spread to all the Purebreds by now—but none seemed to realize that he was the dog they were trying to get to. Little by little he began to work himself through the crowd toward the alleyway, which was now unguarded.

Blackjack saw two German Shepherds coming at him from the front, a Great Dane and a Malamute from the right, four assorted Terriers from the left, and an unruly and uncountable mob from behind. He picked the tallest approaching dog, stayed low, and shot right under it. Taking advantage of the ensuing chaos, he too skirted around toward the alleyway, disabling any dog that attempted to stop him.

Dragon shoved his way through the throng, searching. Two big dogs reared up on their hind legs in front of him, grappling with one another. He separated them, then dove on an animal he thought was Luther. It was not; it was the Boxer who had helped bring Luther in. Dragon had picked it up by the neck and worried it to death before realizing his mistake.

Then, by chance, he glanced at the alleyway, just in time to see Luther and Blackjack scurrying away. No one else had noticed their departure.

“No!” he cried. “They’re escaping! They’re escaping! Stop fighting each other and go after them! Stop fighting each other . . .”

But it was a while before he could get the Purebreds to listen to him.

IV.

“What happened to you, Blackjack?” Luther asked as they scrambled out of the alleyway. “You were gone so long I thought something had gotten you.”

“Something almost did,” the Manx told him. “’Catchers. A pair of goddamned ’catchers in a big van. They got the puss. I had her spotted and was just about to make my move when they came along and nabbed her. A minute later and I guess they would have gotten me too—caught me in the act, so to speak.”

“Did they see you?”

“That was why I was gone so long. One of them came after me on foot. Ran pretty fast for a two-legged. He was shooting at me with some funny kind of gun and once he almost hit me. By the time I shook him and found my way back, the ’Breds had already grabbed you. So I found that Malamute and let him grab me.”

“You did a good job acting scared, Blackjack. You almost had me convinced you’d lost your mind.”

“It wasn’t that hard to act,” the Manx admitted. “I’ve never run into a group of dogs like that before, but if there are more of them scattered around the countryside, I can see what Malcolm’s so paranoid about.”

They zigzagged through the streets, following no definite path but being careful not to double back. Luther scented for Heaven, but could find no whiff of it in this place.

“I can’t find Heaven, Blackjack,” Luther said. Blood ran from a dozen wounds on his body, all of them minor. “What are we going to do?”

“Get out of this town as fast as we can, is what,” Blackjack replied. “We can worry about Heaven later.”

A grey-haired man with a cane spotted them as they turned the next corner. He noticed that they were without leashes or collars, and, remembering how a stray cat-and-dog team had torn up his garden two months earlier, he went to the nearest pay phone and called the Animal Shelter.

V.

“Well, Lucrezia?”

The Bloodhound bitch sniffed the ground carefully, then the air. “North,” she said finally. “They’re heading roughly north from here.”

“Good,” said Dragon. “That’s what I think, too, but I wanted to be certain. They’ve got a good lead on us, but the way they’re going they might just blunder into the Maze, and that should delay them long enough . . . all right, then. Lucrezia, Aleister, Perdurabo, and Manson come with me. Judas, you go back to the court and tell the others to disperse and head home. No more patrols today. We’ll have another meeting tomorrow to discuss all that’s happened.”

“But . . .”

“But what?” the Wolfhound snapped impatiently.

“Well . . . it’s just that I kind of wanted to come along too, and I’m sure most of the others would—”

“No. No packs roaming the streets. It’s afternoon, there’ll be more people out, and we’re in enough trouble with the ’catchers as it is. If you have no word from me by tomorrow, tell Therion that he’s in charge. And start looking for a replacement for Cerberus.”

“Yes, Dragon,” said Judas, still visibly disappointed. “As you wish.”

“Now,” Dragon said, as the Bulldog padded away, “let’s go take the mange. And that damned cat.”

VI.

“Damn it! This is the third time we’ve been through here.”

“The streets are all tangled, Blackjack.”

“I don’t care how tangled they are, we should be able to find our way out. Getting lost is for people.”

“I have a feeling Raaq doesn’t want us to get away. At least not me. And who knows, maybe he can hurt cats.”

“Forget Raaq and help me figure out—Wait! Look over there!”

Luther looked. A man in overalls had just come out of a nearby house. He paused at the front door, saying an affectionate and extended goodbye to a half-dressed woman within. Parked at the curb was a green flatbed truck, on the side of which were painted the words: BEATRIX, INC.

“What do you think?” Blackjack asked. “We could hop in the back and hitch a ride. If he drives back the way we came then we get out in a hurry, but if he heads out of town—”

“Yes!” Luther said, as if he’d just had a revelation. “That’s it, Blackjack! That’s how we get out!”

The overall-clad man still tarried at the front door. He and the woman were hopelessly absorbed with one another, and neither noticed the mongrel dog and the tailless cat scrambling up the back bumper of the truck. A tarpaulin had been tossed carelessly into one corner of the flatbed, and Luther and Blackjack hid themselves under it.

Blackjack felt something poking his side and turned slightly. He saw a large metal box with the word “Phillips” stamped on the top, and by the dim light seeping in under the edge of the tarpaulin was able to make out the further inscription:

With love and affection during

those lonely nights on the road.

My thoughts are always with you.

—Your Pookie Bear

“A tool box,” Blackjack said, and would have snickered had he been capable of it. “What a touching gift.”

“What?” Luther asked.

“Never mind. I have a feeling this truck is leaving town, though. Who knows, maybe it’ll even take us closer to your Heaven.”

“I think it will,” Luther replied.

VII.

“We have them!” Dragon said triumphantly as he led the others into the web of curving streets known as the Maze. “How far do you think, Lucrezia?”

“Not far,” the bitch assured him. “Smells like they got just deep enough in to get lost.”

“We have them!” Dragon repeated, quickening his pace. “We have them!”

The sound of an approaching engine grew behind them. Dragon charged onward, oblivious to it, but Perdurabo turned to see what was coming.

“Hey Dragon . . .” he said.

“The cat’s going to be the only problem,” the Wolfhound briefed them on the run. “We’ll fall on it from all sides and kill it straight out . . .”

“Dragon, I think . . .”

“. . . the mange shouldn’t put up much of a fight. We can take our time with him. I’m going to—”

“Oh, hell!” Perdurabo exclaimed, as a white van came roaring into view. “ ’Catchers! ’Catchers!”

“What?”

Dragon finally turned to look, but it was almost too late to do anything.

VIII.

“Say hey, Dante, look at that!”

The glassy-eyed, battle-scarred, World-War-II-veteran-turned-dogcatcher hunched over the steering wheel and grinned at what had just been pointed out to him.

“Hah-um,” he said.

“Five dogs, Dante!” his companion went on gleefully. “Five, and not a single collar! That beats shit out of a stray cat-and-dog pair any day of the week in my book!”

“Hah-um.”

“Check out that big one in the front, there. Ain’t he a beauty? Virgil’s gonna have himself a happy fit when he sees what we brought in.”

Dante’s companion, still in his teens, reached behind his seat like a kid rummaging under the Christmas tree and brought out a pistol with the word “Lethe” stamped on the grip. Placing the pistol on the dash, he reached behind again and brought out a rifle, similarly stamped. Neither the pistol nor the rifle were supposed to be used except in emergencies—and certainly not while the van was in motion—but to the young and the shell-shocked life is a continual emergency.

“Hold her steady, Dante!” the rifleman cried, leaning out the passenger window.

“Hah-um.”

“Whooooo-haaah!” He pulled the trigger, and a small dart struck the closest dog in the flank. Perdurabo, whose name meant “I will endure to the end,” stumbled more from shock than from the immediate effects of the tranquilizer, and was crushed under the front wheels of the van.

“Hah-um!” Dante cried triumphantly.

“Oops,” said the rifleman, sounding a bit more concerned. “I don’t know if Virgil’s going to like that.” Then, with renewed spirit: “But what the hell! This is fun, ain’t it, Dante?”

“Hah-um!!!”

“All right, good buddy. Floor it!”

Dante floored it. As the van accelerated he began to hum La Forza del Destino.

IX.

“Raaq’s near!”

“Jesus, Luther, don’t worry about it. We’re moving. Nothing can get at us now—not unless Purebreds can fly.”

The flatbed moved steadily along, bouncing with the occasional pothole but otherwise riding smoothly. Then without warning it slowed, as a weak barking reached their ears.

“That sounds like Dragon,” Luther said.

“Jesus,” the Manx repeated. “Wait a minute! Luther, don’t!”

But Luther had already crawled out from under the tarpaulin. He lifted his head up high enough to see over the side of the flatbed.

He hardly knew how to react to what he saw. It was as if some great avenging angel had come tearing through here, leaving ruin in its wake. Farthest up the street, Perdurabo lay dead like a torn rag doll. Perhaps fifteen yards in front of him was another lump of roadkill that had once been Aleister the Great Dane. Lucrezia had been a bit more fortunate—though struck by a dart, she had managed to move out of the van’s path before collapsing. Nearest of all, Dragon stood shakily in front of the now idling van, two darts sticking out of his side. The ’catchers had stepped out of their vehicle and were trying to throw a net over him.

You watch, Luther. Raaq ain’t to be trusted. Sometimes he turns on his own.

So Moses had said, and so it seemed. Only Manson had escaped.

“You brought this on yourselves,” Luther thought, trying not to feel too much pity for the dead. “You would have been happy to see us run down.”

“Wh—” Groggy, Dragon intercepted the thought. He looked up and saw Luther riding past in the flatbed. “MANGE!”

The Wolfhound launched himself forward, a leap that would, under normal circumstances, have carried him up into the truck. Drugged, he only went about three feet, falling heavily on the concrete. As the flatbed sped away and the ’catchers moved in, he fired a parting threat at Luther, fragments of a thought like shrapnel:

“. . . kill you, mange . . . find . . . I . . .”

Then he faded into greyness.

“Well,” said Blackjack, joining Luther, “looks like there is some justice in the world after all. How about that?”

Luther made no reply. He was staring at the remains of Perdurabo as they cruised past.

“Don’t lose any sleep over them, Luther,” Blackjack advised. “They deserved what they got. And this way you don’t have to worry about fighting them.”

Still Luther made no reply. He crawled under the tarpaulin and did not speak again for several hours. The truck rolled on, passing through a short tunnel at the edge of town and beginning a long ascent out of the valley.

They were back on the road to Heaven.

THE RIDE OF THE BOHEMIANS

I.

If some peace-loving millionaire were someday to sponsor a search for the quietest quiet little town in all Pennsylvania, one of the runners-up in the competition would almost certainly be the town of Auk. (The winner of such a competition would, without question, be Thanatos. Officially incorporated in 1892, Thanatos, which is located thirteen miles outside of Scranton, is literally a graveyard. The town’s one living resident is Desmond Emery Sargtrager, a groundskeeper, and he does not even snore.)

Though Auk can never hope to surpass the perfect serenity of Thanatos, on a good day it comes very close. No major highways pass within ten miles of it; the surrounding countryside is plain Pennsylvania forest, without a single cave, ski slope, waterfall, or other potential tourist attraction. The sole industry is the manufacture of jigsaw puzzles, surely one of the world’s less action-packed businesses. Perhaps the finest demonstration of Auk’s peaceful nature, however, came during the town’s hundredth anniversary, which was celebrated in a calm and orderly fashion just a few years before the time of this story. There were no fireworks, no marching bands or parades, and only one speech, which lasted for exactly two minutes and thirty-seven seconds, making it shorter than the average FM pop tune.

While outsiders might consider this a boring state of affairs, the people of Auk—many of them senior citizens or at least middle-aged—are quite content with their lives. They need no change of pace, thank you very much, and if they feel a need for high adventure they can always subscribe to cable television, which has been available for some months now.

But nobody ever gets what they want, not all the time. Two days after Luther and Blackjack had their run-in with Dragon, the town of Auk received a century’s worth of excitement in the space of two hours. It was an event that Auk’s citizens still talk about—and fear the repetition of—to this very day.

The incident was born out of a mad tea partier’s recipe of travelers who arrived in Auk one after the other, like succeeding waves of an assault group: three hunters, two bear cubs, four nuns in a renovated limousine, one full-grown bear, seven and a half refugees from a Rhode Island motorcycle gang war, and two vacationing Methodists, one of whom was suffering from hemorrhoids.

And, caught right in the middle of things, Cornell University’s self­appointed guardians of non-conformity.

The Bohemians.

II.

For Jed Cyrus, the town Constable, it started out a very ordinary day. He woke up promptly at 6:00 A.M., showered, shaved, dressed, kissed his wife on the right cheek as she continued to sleep, and left the house at precisely 6:20. He walked up Cherville Drive, one of Auk’s four side roads, until he reached Main Street and turned left toward the center of town. That was at 6:25. If things had continued on in the usual way, he would have stopped at the Canterbury Café at 6:30, spent fifteen minutes sipping lazily at a cup of black coffee—he always drank half of it and threw the rest away—and then gone on to the station house to begin the morning’s paperwork at 6:55.

The first sign that things were not going to go so routinely came when, during his walk down Main Street, Constable Cyrus got a pebble in one of his boots. They were tight-fitting boots, snug and comfy, and how a pebble ever managed to get into one of them was something of a mystery, but it lodged itself behind his heel and became impossible to ignore. By the time he removed it and got his boot back on, he was two minutes late to the Canterbury.

A small thing, you might think, and of course you’d be right. But later, when they were cleaning up the debris, Constable Cyrus’ mind kept going back to the pebble and wondering if it hadn’t been some sort of omen, a warning to turn around and go back home to bed.

Jankin Badewanne and his wife Alison, Auk’s most elderly—and ­earliest-rising—couple, were playing checkers on the porch in front of the Canterbury Café when the Constable arrived.

“Morning, Jed,” they said in unison, without looking up. The Constable tipped his hat to them, as he did every morning, and then paused on the porch steps. He took a quick look up and down Main Street to make sure that none of the buildings had disappeared overnight. None of them had, not even Farrell’s Bar and Grill, which always looked ready to blow away at a moment’s notice. Satisfied, he tipped his hat to Jankin and Alison one more time and went into the Café.

The big clock that hung behind the counter read 6:32 as he came in. Perry Bailey, the proprietor, took one look at the Constable and hurriedly set the clock back two minutes.

“Morning, Jed,” said Bailey, handing him a ready-made black coffee. Constable Cyrus gave him thirty cents and a tip of his hat. Then he went over to a table by the front window and sat down. He sipped his coffee contentedly, thinking that this was surely one of the nicest parts of his day.

The hunters showed up five minutes later, and the Decadents were not far behind.

III.

The Risley Hall Bohemians had left their summer lodgings in SoHo just over a week ago, crossing New Jersey along the back roads and cutting through Northeastern Pennsylvania on their way to Binghamton, New York. At present there were only six of them on the move, but their number would triple once they reached Binghamton, and quintuple by the time they finally rode into Ithaca.

The temperature had been cool for a summer week, which was fine with them. A Bohemian’s clothing is important, and the hint of fall in the air had allowed them to wear their longcoats comfortably during the journey, at least during the early and evening hours of the day. They made a colorful procession coming into Auk.

Lion-Heart, the reigning King of Bohemia, rode in front on a magnificent black stallion whose mane had been clipped in Mohawk fashion and dyed bright purple. The horse was a certified Thoroughbred, foaled in England, but Lion-Heart himself was much more difficult to classify. Due to an extremely liberal-minded set of ancestors, he had genes and features from just about every race on earth: dark brown skin, tight-curled red hair that he kept very short except for a single long braid-tail in back, green, almond-shaped eyes, sharp nose, thin lips, narrow jaw, and long, well-muscled arms and legs that were almost hairless. He was not handsome by any usual standard, but he was so refreshingly different that this went unnoticed. As befitted his status as King, his longcoat was as purple as his horse’s mane.

Myoko and Fujiko, the Grey Ladies, rode beside Lion-Heart on horses that were no less magnificent than his. Both women were mixed Asian, but while Fujiko was small and wore her red-tinged hair trimmed above the ears, Myoko stood near six feet and had hair cascading like black midnight halfway down her back. Their longcoats, naturally enough, were grey.

Ragnarok, the Bohemian Minister of Defense, and Preacher, the Bohemian Minister of Ministry, rode side by side behind the Ladies. Ragnarok, blond and light-skinned, was the only Bohemian not mounted on a horse. He drove a jet black motorcycle instead, patiently keeping pace with the others; he wore a black vinyl trenchcoat and dark sunglasses, even at this early hour when the sun was barely above the trees. Preacher, a tall, heavy-set black, wore a white longcoat and rode a white stallion.

Z.Z. Top, the Minister of Bad Taste, was a study in soiled leather. Bringing up the rear on a grumpy burro (a San Diego Padres baseball cap had somehow been affixed to the animal’s head, which did not improve its temper; neither did the personalized plastic Disneyland license plate—CHICO 69—dangling from its tail), he looked like the cloned offspring of James Dean and Fidel Castro after a quick trip through a garbage disposal. He gave the impression of seldom having bathed in his lifetime, and this impression was not incorrect. One of the Great Unwashed, the Top had filled his saddlebags with can upon can of the most loathsome beer money could buy: Black Label Light, Iron City, Utica Club. God bless this swill. He was kind to children, though.

The Bohemians entered the Auk town limits at about half past six. They had been on the move since four that morning, hoping to cross the border into New York by mid-afternoon. A quick breakfast was first in order, however, and as they moved through the still-sleepy town they kept an eye out for a restaurant or café.

By the time they found the Canterbury, the mad tea party had already begun.

IV.

At 6:35, Constable Jed Cyrus was still sipping his coffee, but he had stopped thinking how this was one of the nicest parts of his day. Instead, he stared out the window of the Canterbury Café at the three men who had pulled up in front of Wayne’s Texaco, wondering if he ought to go and arrest them. Crises of responsibility like this one always gave him an upset stomach; he could feel the coffee turning to acid already.

The three men—hunters, by the outfits they wore—looked both ugly and stupid enough to have been children of incest. They stood in front of the gas station, scratching their heads in puzzlement. Every so often one of them would reach inside the pickup truck they’d come in and honk the horn for service. Apparently they hadn’t bothered to read the five-foot-high sign that said WAYNE’S TEXACO / OPEN 8 A.M. to 10 P.M.

The Constable couldn’t have cared less about their dubious parentage or their lack of intelligence. These things were not crimes, at least not the sort that you made arrests for. What did bother him was the makeshift steel cage trailer that the hunters had attached to the back of their pickup. There were two live bear cubs in it. Now Constable Cyrus was no hunter, and not terribly familiar with the latest gaming regulations, but he felt reasonably certain that late August was not bear season. Even if it was, he had a sneaking suspicion that capturing live cubs might not be legal.

He was weighing the moral consequences of simply letting them go, letting the police in the next town take care of the arrest and the associated paperwork, when his morning suffered a further bad turn. All at once the air was filled with the buzz of approaching motorcycles, and the three ugly hunters looked around as a pack of even more unsavory men on Harley machines rode into view.

Constable Cyrus had never seen a bike gang outside of the movies before, and was not overjoyed to have this status quo revoked. They were not Hell’s Angels, but looked relatively fearsome all the same—shoulder patches on their leather jackets identified them as THE RHODE ISLAND DECADENTS. Constable Cyrus did not ask himself what such people were doing out of New England; he was too busy trying to keep his knees from knocking.

The bikers numbered seven. In the grand scheme of things their true names are unimportant—call them Sleepy, Sneezy, Sleazy, Grumpy, Dopey, Bashful, and Doc (a further patch on Doc’s jacket proclaimed him DUKE OF THE DECADENTS). Ravenous after an all-night ride, they drew up in front of the Canterbury, their grit-spattered Harleys the most menacing vehicles Constable Cyrus had ever laid eyes on. A sidecar was attached to Sleazy’s bike, and in it rode a bound trunk topped with a funeral wreath. Scrawled on the trunk’s side was the epitaph: FRED—NO BRAKES, TOUGH SHAKES.

As the Decadents hopped up onto the Café porch, the Constable took a moment to mourn the fact that he was not carrying his revolver. In truth, the weapon had been left locked in his desk drawer at the station house since he had first taken office ten years ago. He wasn’t sure he would have had the courage to use it anyway, but at this point in time it would have made him feel a lot better.

“Hey, hey,” said Sleazy, stepping up beside Jankin and Alison Badewanne as they continued to play checkers. He snatched a black piece off the board and bit it neatly in two, spitting the checker halves into the street. Both Badewannes looked up angrily, saw the tire chain Sleazy held coiled in his right hand, and said nothing.

“Hey, hey,” said Grumpy as he slammed open the Café doors and strode inside. The sight of Constable Cyrus brought him up short.

“Hey, hey,” said Duke Doc, joining Grumpy. At this point Constable Cyrus made the great mistake of standing up; Doc noticed immediately that he wore no sidearm and began to smile.

“Hey, hey,” Doc repeated, bringing out a switchblade and pressing the stud. Eight inches of steel sprang forth, gleaming dully. “Good morning, officer.” In contrast to the weapon his voice was polite, almost cultured.

Perry Bailey stood frozen behind the counter, praying silently that he would be ignored. The Constable swayed a little on his feet, and sputtered: “I . . . I . . .”

“What’s that?” Doc asked, running his fingers lovingly over the knife blade.

“I . . . c-c-could . . .”

“Please, sir,” said Sleazy, stepping into the Café with the tire chain wrapped around his fist. “Please speak up.”

“I-I-I-I . . .”

The other four Decadents crowded inside, weapons out.

“Officer?” asked one of them. “What are you trying to say?”

The Constable pursed his lips, and with great effort shouted at them: “I could have stayed home this morning!”

That said, he fainted dead away.

“What a shame,” Grumpy sighed. “No spine.”

“Fucking tragedy,” Sleazy agreed.

“Tell us,” asked Doc, glancing over at Perry Bailey. “Does he always collapse under strain?”

Perry Bailey began to do some stuttering of his own, but he was spared a fainting spell by the passing of the four previously mentioned nuns in the limousine. Like the pebble in the Constable’s boot, the nuns were nothing spectacular—they drove straight through Auk without stopping, looking somewhat out of place in the big car, which had been donated to their convent by a rich miller in the hopes that God would forgive him his wealth—but they did have some small effect on the course of events.

The Decadents moved back out on the porch to watch the nuns go by. They waved, and one of the nuns waved back, giving them a quick blessing out the car window. Then, as the bikers watched the progress of the limo up the street, their collective gaze was drawn for the first time to the Texaco station, the hunters, the pickup truck, and, most interesting of all, the bear cubs in the steel cage trailer.

Doc took one look at the cubs and forgot all about Perry Bailey and the unconscious Constable.

“Hey, hey,” he said softly.

V.

The street outside the Canterbury was soon littered with broken glass. When the Decadents first advanced on the Texaco station, one of the hunters foolishly reached into the cab of the pickup for a shotgun. Four bikers disarmed him and knocked him senseless. Grumpy went running up the street shooting out windows; when the last shell had been fired, he tossed the empty shotgun through the glass front of Farrell’s Bar and Grill, demolishing a neon sign that foretold THE BUD SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH.

“Where’d you get the cubs?” Doc asked one of the two hunters who were still standing.

“It was Fred’s idea!” the hunter said fearfully, pointing at his fallen companion.

“Fred?” Doc smiled, and looked affectionately over his shoulder at the trunk in the cycle sidecar. “Fred, meet Fred.”

“He said we could sell ’em!” the hunter babbled on, his eyes wide. “We found out where they lived, tracked them to this cave, and Fred, he had a what-do-you-call, a trankilizer gun—”

“A trankilizer gun,” Doc repeated.

“A trankilizer gun,” echoed the other Decadents in unison.

“We knocked ’em out,” the hunter continued. “Knocked those cubs right out. But it was dark as hell, and they were awful heavy carryin’ back to the trailer. And then the mother bear showed up . . .”

“The mother bear,” said Doc.

“The mother bear,” echoed the Decadents.

“Yeah . . . yeah, the mother bear. She showed up, but we got away with the cubs anyhow and shit mister are you gonna kill us or what?”

“We’ll see,” Doc replied. “Pick up Fred here and get into the middle of the street, please.”

“W-what?”

“Get into the middle of the street. Both of you. And Fred.”

After a moment’s hesitation, the two hunters lifted up Fred and dragged him into the middle of the street with them. Four Decadents mounted their cycles and began circling the hunters like sharks. Sleazy and Bashful jumped up on the back of the trailer and began yanking on the triple-padlocked door of the steel cage. One of the cubs stuck a paw out at them and Sleazy whipped it back with his tire chain.

“Hey!” the wide-eyed hunter called to them, eager to do anything that might improve his chances of survival. “Hey, I got the keys to that if you want ’em!”

“That won’t be necessary,” Sleazy said, continuing to yank at the door. All three padlocks were beginning to give.

Doc got back up on the Café porch to watch the festivities. This was the most fun he’d had since being chased out of Providence by the Firedrakes, a rival gang. Looking into the Café, he saw that the Constable was still out cold, though Perry Bailey was doing his best to revive him.

“Good,” Doc said to himself. If the Constable was typical of the Auk citizenry, they should have at least another half hour before someone heard the commotion and got up enough courage to call the State Police. The bikers could be safely across the line into New York before the first trooper showed up.

The four Decadents tightened their circle around the hunters. One cyclist broke formation entirely and cut down the middle, slapping the wide-eyed hunter lightly on the shoulder and getting a shriek out of him. Doc laughed at this, and as he did one of his thighs struck the Badewannes’ checker board. He suddenly realized that the two old folk were gone.

“Oh hell,” he said. They were nowhere in sight; it didn’t take a genius to guess what they’d gone to do. Breaking into a light sweat, Doc looked up the street, half expecting to see the State Police sneaking up on them. He saw the Bohemians instead, and they were somehow more disturbing.

“What . . .”

“Good morning!” Lion-Heart greeted the Rhode Island Decadents in a strong, clear voice. The cyclists stopped circling, and all eyes turned to the Bohemians. They were strung out across the street in a line, all on foot now with the exception of Ragnarok, who revved the throttle of his motorcycle patiently.

Lion-Heart continued: “Any of you who don’t belong in this town should feel free to leave. Right now.”

The Decadents looked at him in disbelief. Grumpy searched for an ethnic slur to use on him but couldn’t choose among the many possibilities. He finally came out with: “What the fuck did you say, asshole?”

“GOOD MORNING!” Lion-Heart repeated, louder and slower this time, pronouncing each word carefully. Preacher and Z.Z. Top echoed his words in sign language for the benefit of the hearing impaired. “YOU CAN ALL GO NOW.”

“Who the fuck are you?” In a burst of rage, Grumpy revved his cycle and accelerated down the street toward the Bohemians, swinging a chain.

“Fuji,” Lion-Heart said calmly. Fujiko, who had taken a collapsible Lucite quarterstaff from her saddlebags and assembled it, stepped forward into the path of the biker. The Decadent came right at her, realizing too late that her reach was longer than his.

The riderless motorcycle continued down Main Street almost fifty feet before crashing into a mailbox and stalling.

“Who’s next?” Fujiko asked. She stood over the fallen Grumpy, who was trying to rub the bump on his head and the bump on his ass at the same time.

“Holy goanna jism,” Sleazy whispered. “She took him down.”

Both bear cubs threw themselves at the cage door just then. The padlocks gave completely, and Sleazy and Bashful were hurled to the ground.

“Holy fuck!” Sleazy yelled. He rolled out of the way just in time to avoid being squashed by an escaping cub.

Chaos resumed; the Bohemians broke formation and moved in, as did the three remaining cyclists. Sleazy and Bashful scrambled to get to their own bikes, while both Doc and the bear cubs seemed momentarily at a loss for what to do. The two unarmed hunters ran for the safety of the pickup truck, dragging Fred behind them.

The mad tea party hit full stride:

Two more cyclists charged Fujiko. One of them changed his mind at the last moment and swerved away; the other kept coming, hefting a long crowbar, planning to run Fujiko down. Lion-Heart came at him from the side, hauling him off his bike and body-slamming him before he knew what had hit him;

Z.Z. Top, ignoring the melee around him, headed off to make the acquaintance of the bear cubs. He was halfway there when a biker turned and bore down on him. Almost casually, the Top picked up a chain that one of the other Decadents had dropped and threw it into the spokes of the biker’s front wheel, catapulting him head over heels onto the asphalt;

Bashful ran for his cycle and came face to face with Myoko. Like all Grey Ladies she had an inner glow that made her beautiful, and in the roselight of early morning she looked angelic enough for Bashful to momentarily forget that they were on opposite sides. “Hello,” he breathed, fighting a blush. “Hello,” Myoko replied sweetly, and, like the angel in the Bible who wrestled with Jacob, she touched the hollow of his thigh and dislocated his left leg;

With a Confederate yell another biker tried his luck against Fujiko, and lost;

Constable Cyrus, revived at last from his faint, staggered onto the porch of the Canterbury Café and looked in disbelief at what was happening in his peaceful little town. The one sight that remained clearest in his mind years later was that of Z.Z. Top shambling up to the cubs with a big smile on his face. “Hello, bears,” he heard the Top say, and then the Top began to pet them;

Sleazy, mounted and moving at a fair clip, was jumped simultaneously by Lion-Heart, Fujiko, and Preacher. The cycle and sidecar spun out of control and flipped over, spilling Fred’s trunk into the street. Mercifully, the trunk remained closed;

The three hunters began to cheer from the cab of the pickup. At the same time, a number of Auk residents, some still dressed in their nightclothes, began drifting into the area to see what was going on. In the distance, the sound of approaching sirens could be heard;

Finally, in desperation, Duke Doc of the Rhode Island Decadents—the only member of the gang still up and about—leapt to his cycle, planning to get the hell out. He raised his switchblade and waved it about as a warning to anyone who might try to stop him, but the Bohemians had cleared off the street.

All except Ragnarok, who still sat patiently astride his own bike at the end of the block.

“You get out of my way, now,” Doc said, a tremor in his voice. Ragnarok coolly removed his sunglasses, wiped them with a black handkerchief, and put them back on. Then he reached down to a small tubular rack on the side of his bike and took out a carved black rod. It looked like a scepter or a short cane, but served equally well as a mace.

“Come and get me, partner,” Ragnarok said evenly.

Doc thought it over for a minute. The growing noise of sirens decided him.

“All right!” he snapped, laying one hand on the bike throttle and brandishing the switch with the other. “All right, here it comes for you, then!”

They gunned their engines at the same time, flying down the street toward one another. As the gap closed, Doc began to smile, because he’d done this sort of thing before—in fact, he’d taken out the Second Lieutenant of the Firedrakes in just such a contest, in the days when the Decadents were still holding their own. Long before he reached him, he visualized in his mind how the knife would cut into Ragnarok’s coat and beneath it, sending him twisting and screaming off his cycle. Doc smiled with the satisfaction of it before it ever happened.

He was still smiling when Ragnarok swung the mace up gracefully, catching him on the wrist and knocking the knife out and away. As the bikes passed parallel to each other, the Bohemian Minister of Defense kicked out with one black boot and struck Doc in the thigh, knocking him off balance.

The Duke of the Rhode Island Decadents toppled off his motorcycle and bounced once, twice, three times. His bike slid, struck sparks against the ground, and came to rest beneath a NO PARKING sign.

“Jesus H. Christ on a Yugoslavian water buffalo,” Constable Cyrus said, summing things up.

Ragnarok slid his mace back into its holder as the first State Police car came into view. The trooper car was tooling along at a fair pace, and the screech of its brakes was very loud as it swerved to avoid a white Buick sedan that cut onto Main Street off a side road. A bumper sticker on the Buick’s front fender read: “WE ARE METHODISTS AND DAMN PROUD OF IT.”

“What now?” Perry Bailey moaned, huddling by the Badewannes’ checker set.

The sedan stopped short in front of the Café; three fishing rods fell off a rack on the back and clattered in the street.

“It’s the damnedest thing!” the driver shouted at the Constable, squirming uncomfortably in his seat. “The damnedest goddamn thing!”

“What is?” Constable Cyrus asked fearfully. But the answer was already in sight—a full-grown bear had appeared, coming from the same direction as the Buick, and was presently attacking the trooper car.

“The den mother!” one of the hunters cried. Z.Z. Top moved hastily away from the cubs. The hunter tried to start the pickup to drive away, but the engine only wheezed and hitched.

Constable Jed Cyrus looked over his shoulder at the clock in the Café. It was now 7:05. Half an hour ago he had been contentedly sipping his coffee.

“Jesus Herbert,” he said, recapping his summary.

“You OK, man?” someone asked. It was Preacher, walking up the steps of the porch.

The Constable took one look at him, worked his jaw up and down a few times, and asked: “Who the hell are you people? Some kind of Lone Ranger outfit?”

Preacher smiled innocently.

“No sir,” he said. “We’re Bohemians.”

A PEEK AT MR. SUNSHINE’S LIBRARY

The Library was, like Mr. Sunshine himself, a Greek Original. It stood on the top of a hill far taller than The Hill, a hill without rain, where the season was always summer and the time always just past noon on a Saturday, a good time for a bottle of retsina or perhaps some hemlock tea if you were in a more philosophical mood. A gentle breeze wafted the scent of laurel through the open windows of the Library, and from outside could be heard the lowing of cattle and the occasional chord from a distant lyre.

Mr. Sunshine sat in the Library’s Composing Room, at his Writing Desk, laboring over his latest Manuscript, a Story tentatively entitled “Absolute Chaos in Chicago.” Despite the name, Mr. Sunshine’s Writing Desk was not at all similar to an ordinary writing desk; likewise, the Manuscript was unlike any manuscript that Stephen George had ever produced. Stephen George told lies for a living, but all of Mr. Sunshine’s fictions were true, and though he sometimes checked his spelling, his Stories were not Written on paper. The finished Volumes of his work were not bound like ordinary volumes; and the Books in the Library were not catalogued or shelved like ordinary books. It was all very abstract, but not really.

If you could take a peek at Mr. Sunshine at his Desk, and if your mind was such that you could comprehend his work, you would understand that “Composing” really meant “Meddling.” For a fictitious fiction story, the kind of lie that Stephen George told, requires the hard labor of its author to be completed; but a true fiction, such as those that Mr. Sunshine dealt in, will, like a watch already wound, tick along quite nicely by itself without any further help. Mr. Sunshine’s Storytelling, to extend the metaphor, consisted of occasionally—or more than occasionally—moving the hands of the watch, and seeing what interesting forms of mayhem this resulted in.

Because his Stories went on without him, he could switch from one work in progress to another without falling behind in either of them. Those works he tired of for the time being he gave to the Monkeys.

The Monkeys, all blind, deaf, and mute, yet dissimilar to any ordinary handicapped monkeys, were arrayed around Mr. Sunshine’s Writing Desk in vast (but not infinite) ranks. Each Monkey sat at a Typewriter, which was of course unlike any ordinary typewriter, and Meddled. Because they had not the slightest clue what was going on, however, the Meddling of the Monkeys was entirely random and generally meaningless. That was all right; the Stories went on regardless, and once in a while they did hit on something. A Monkey puttering over “The Life of Catherine the Great” had chanced to insert a bit about a horse that had put Mr. Sunshine in stitches for days, though Catherine herself probably did not find it nearly so funny.

The Monkeys labored; the afternoon breeze wafted. Mr. Sunshine paused to check a word in his Dictionary, and then, suddenly remembering something, he set “Absolute Chaos in Chicago” aside for a moment. He got up from his Desk and strode out among the Monkeys, checking working Titles, searching for one in particular. In between “World War Three: The Prologue” and “The Life of Anita Bryant” he found it: “Fool on The Hill,” an odd piece he had started more than a century ago and whose Plot was finally starting to cook. There had been major Meddling already and more yet to be done—after which he might just go down and take a ringside seat to watch the climax—but for now, only a few touches were needed.

First things first. Taking the Monkey’s place at the Typewriter, Mr. Sunshine Wrote:

A fine cottage awaits Her arrival; champagne & feta in fridge.

And then:

George bumps into Aurora early one morning. Wouldn’t they make a much nicer couple than Aurora and Brian?

Satisfied, he let the Monkey take over again and returned to his Desk. Concentrating once more on Chicago, Mr. Sunshine took his Dictionary and flipped toward the back.

“Let’s see now . . . T-R-I-S-K- . . .”

AT HEAVEN’S GATE

I.

The first to return to Cornell, some as early as mid-August, are the Orienta­tion Counselors and Residence Advisors, those whose job it is to make the army of newcomers feel at home and see them safely through their first year. Then on August twenty-third the dorms open, and the Freshmen begin to arrive, wide-eyed and unsuspecting. They have one free week in which to sample the pleasures of Ithaca—swimming in the gorges, hiking the countryside, drinking in the Collegetown bars if their phony I.D. is good enough, drinking in the dorms if it isn’t—and once again the brick and cinderblock of West Campus echo with the pitter-patter of little Nike-clad feet. On North Campus there is a smaller-scale parody of this, most of the noise coming from Mary Donlon and Clara Dickson Halls (and, of course, Risley, the Bohemian dorm).

That August twenty-third, and the twenty-fourth and -fifth also, it rained hard most of the day, as if Ithaca were making a special effort to acquaint the Freshmen with its climate. During those three days, when the showers were interspersed with periods of heavy mist, Stephen George went for long walks in the town proper as well as on the campus. He sorted through the faces he passed, searching for old friends, making a few new ones. He flew his kite often, regardless of the weather, and only once did the wind fail him. That time, the early afternoon of the twenty-third, he gave up no more than ten minutes before a monster thunderstorm swept through the area. Two Ithaca men who had chosen the wrong day to go sailing were struck by lightning and killed on Cayuga Lake, but George was safely indoors, sipping tea in the Temple of Zeus in Goldwin-Smith Hall.

On the morning of the twenty-fourth he wandered down to The Ithaca Commons at the foot of The Hill and stopped for breakfast at McDonald’s. While he sat in meditation over three pancakes in a beige styrofoam tray, a grizzled old man with an Eddie Bauer T-shirt came into the restaurant. The old man was obviously a McDonald’s regular whose name, it quickly became apparent, was Wax. The women behind the counter nearly fell over themselves greeting him and presenting, with much fanfare, “Wax’s morning coffee.” George craned his neck to see if the coffee were black or with cream (for as a writer, such minor details held great significance for him). Wax accepted the styrofoam cup, bowed deeply, and found a seat alongside a chubby woman who looked to be in her seventies.

“Howdy,” he said to the woman, who was a librarian in decline. “My name’s Wax. Know why they call me that? ’Cause I’m so slick . . .”

Two minutes and he had her giggling like a schoolgirl. Three minutes and they were sharing hotcakes and sausage.

True love, George thought, and caught sight of a familiar face two booths down from where Wax was putting on his moves. “Stay here,” he told his pancakes, and went over to say hello.

“Hey, lady.” Aurora Smith looked up and smiled as George slid into the booth.

“Hi, George,” Aurora returned the greeting. They had met two years earlier on the Arts Quad, George literally knocking Aurora off her feet as he moved to avoid a Bohemian on a runaway mare, and become good friends. They got along well, although George had never been completely comfortable with Aurora’s boyfriend. “How was summer? Write any more stories for strangers?”

“One,” George admitted. “I whomped something up for my landlord’s daughter, of all people. Short novella. The editor of a fiction magazine over in Vermont wants me to make a serial out of it. Oh, and then there’s this.”

“What is it?” Aurora asked, as George took a folded envelope out of his pocket.

“Claims to be from a professor of Eugenics at the University of Iowa. She liked my first novel and wants to breed me with some of the women from the Writers’ Workshop there.”

Aurora laughed, louder than she might have in the presence of her boyfriend. “Are you going to take her up on it?”

“Nah.” George shook his head. “I’m too much of a wimp. No stamina. U. of Iowa has a big Writers’ Workshop. Maybe if I had Mormon blood . . . Anyway, how about you? How was your summer?”

“Oh, you know . . .” she trailed off, shrugging. It was a common gesture with her; George got it almost every time he asked her something even remotely personal. “Life is good. I’m happy.”

“Yeah?” George said.

“Yes, really . . . hey, I finally read one of your books!” She brightened. “The Knight of the White Roses. I found a copy of it in a Milwaukee bookstore when we drove up there in July.”

“What’d you think of it?”

“I loved it,” she told him honestly. “How did you ever come up with the idea for th—”

“What are we all talking about?” said Brian Garroway, appearing suddenly. The McDonald’s men’s room was located in the darkest reaches of the building, and Brian, so to speak, had been on safari.

“My action-packed literary career,” George replied, as Brian sat down beside Aurora and put an arm around her. “Aurora was just telling me about how she read one of my books.”

“The Knight of the White Roses?”

“That’s the one. You read it, Brian?”

“I skimmed it.”

“And what’d you think?”

“You have a fair writing style,” Brian granted him. “It’s good in an unpolished sort of way. Other than that I thought your entire premise was far-fetched—a New Wave Camelot?—and there was way too much profanity. The whole thing struck me as being too romantic, too, by the way.”

George was impressed. “All that from just a skimming? You missed your calling, Brian. You should have been an English major.” He looked at Aurora. “Did you think it was overly romantic?”

“Well . . .” Aurora said. She shrugged automatically, inadvertently throwing off Brian’s arm. “Not really. It was all supposed to be a little exaggerated like that, right?”

She shrugged again, then went back to picking at her hash browns. Brian laid a hand lightly on the back of her neck. A moment later he said:

“You about ready to go? I’m supposed to be up at Dickson pretty soon to talk to Michael Krist.”

“Sure,” Aurora said, putting her fork down. “I’m done.”

“Good. Let’s go.” He stood up. “Sorry to rush off like this, George.”

“That’s all right. You’ll probably be seeing me around on campus this semester.”

“I hope we will. You’re teaching this year, right?”

“That’s right,” George agreed. “I get to pass along some of my unpolished writing style. Should be fun.”

Brian laughed politely. “Good luck. See you around, George.” Aurora stood up, gave George a small wave. “You take care,” she said. He nodded to her, and then Aurora and Brian were on their way out of the restaurant. As the front door swung shut after them, a voice spoke up behind George. “Now there’s an unhappy marriage shaping up.”

George looked back at the sound. The ever-popular Wax was sitting alone while his newfound librarian went to powder her nose.

“What do you mean?” George asked.

“The expressions on their faces,” Wax explained. “The look in their eyes. It’s subtle, you understand, but it reminds me just exactly of my brother and my sister-and-law before they tied the knot. Bad shakes, my young friend.”

“What happened to your brother and your sister-in-law?”

“Too much tension. Made for a bad match. Third night of the honey­moon she got fed up and shot him in the leg. Hell of a thing; he hasn’t walked straight since.”

Wax shook his head and sighed, then turned away. “You want to be a Good Samaritan, young man?” he added, giving his coffee a stir. “Steal that woman’s heart away for yourself—save that boy from a lifetime of limping.”

“Right,” said George. He too shook his head—grinning—and a moment later went back to his pancakes.

II.

“How do I look?”

“Absolutely ridiculous, if you want the truth.”

“I’m serious, Blackjack. Do I look like a Purebred?”

“You look like a neurotic dog who went and dipped himself in a mud puddle. Which proves that looks don’t always deceive.”

The flatbed had taken them upstate, to the vicinity of a town the humans called Watkins Glen. Now they were walking due east, with only a short march left until they would be at the site of what Luther still insisted was Heaven.

“Funny, I was expecting a much longer trip than it’s been,” Blackjack said. “But if Heaven is so close, Luther, then why even bother trying to disguise yourself? If it’s what you say it is, you won’t have any trouble with Purebreds there.”

“This is just in case,” Luther told him. “You never know, Raaq might have some sort of guard around it, to keep dogs from getting in.”

“But if Raaq’s guards kill you,” Blackjack pointed out, “won’t you wind up in Heaven anyway?”

“Well . . .” The thought was unsettlingly logical, but Luther didn’t want to give up his disguise. “Well, I might, but there’s no sense taking chances.”

“As you like it, then. But I think it’d take a pretty stupid Purebred not to notice there was something unusual about you, Luther.”

Luther did, as Blackjack had said, look like he’d just been dipped in a mud puddle. He’d rolled in one, actually a thick brown pool left by recent rains. Two squirrels had watched him curiously as he’d done it. Now his coat stuck out and curled in odd ways that bore no resemblance to natural hair growth, but at least the color was uniform. On a good day he might have passed for a Terrier of some sort, a Terrier who had just bulled his way through a dirt wall.

“I just feel more comfortable this way, Blackjack,” Luther said. “If Dragon were to walk by now, I bet he wouldn’t even recognize me.”

“You’re probably right. Not that I plan on seeing him again, the way those ’catchers were treating him. But you smell like shit. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some in that puddle.”

“I don’t care about my smell. I can still smell Heaven, stronger than ever, and that’s what counts. We’ll be there soon, tomorrow maybe, and then everything will be fine. It’ll be so good to see Moses again . . .”

Blackjack said nothing for a moment. Part of him, the carefully guarded part where he kept his conscience and sympathy hidden, was beginning to wonder what would happen if they didn’t find Heaven. Obviously, the cat thought, they couldn’t find it, not the traditional Heaven anyway, and it was equally impossible that Moses would be there. The events of the journey had done nothing to dispel Blackjack’s atheism. If anything, the run-in with Dragon had strengthened his disbelief; surely no just God, or gods, would allow such mindless prejudice to exist.

“Listen, Luther,” he began, “if . . . if Heaven really was only a short distance away from here, wouldn’t there be some sort of sign by now?”

“Sign?”

“Like the lights from the City reflecting off the clouds. Heaven ought to be bigger than Manhattan, at least, but still we haven’t seen any sign of it, any change. Oh, the air’s cleaner here, but it’s been that way for days. There’s no change in the countryside, no sign that we’re leading up to something big. And don’t you think there should be, if we’re so close?”

“What you’re trying to say is, you still don’t believe Heaven exists?”

Blackjack stared down at his paws.

“And,” Luther went on when he made no reply, “you don’t want my feelings to be hurt when we don’t find it?”

“Luther . . .” Still he did not look up. “Luther, you’re a good friend, and you know I don’t want to see you hurt, but . . . I can’t believe such a place is real. Not some big doghouse in the sky, full of angel-dogs or whatever and the souls of the dead. It’s too much like something you’d see in a dream, and it’ll take more than a short march for this landscape to melt into something dreamlike.”

“Why did you come with me, if you didn’t believe we’d find Heaven?” Luther asked. The question was emotionless; Blackjack couldn’t tell if Luther was angry.

“Because you’re my friend,” Blackjack replied, as if ashamed to admit his own emotions. “And maybe . . . maybe because I thought the journey might be worth it. Not that I minded living in the slums, you understand, that’s good ratting territory, but I could get enthusiastic about settling somewhere with real trees, and grass that doesn’t just grow up in the sidewalk cracks. I’m sure this place we’re going to is nice, Luther. Maybe even nice enough to justify this damn trip. I know your nose wouldn’t lead you completely wrong. But Heaven . . .”

“You don’t believe we’ll find Moses, either, do you?”

“No,” Blackjack said, as gently as he could. “I don’t think Moses exists anymore, except as a memory. That doesn’t lessen him any, though, because we’re all going to cease to exist sooner or later . . . sorry to be so blunt, but I don’t want you to be too disappointed when we don’t find him. I hope you aren’t angry with me.”

“Angry?” Luther sounded surprised. “You’re just saying what you feel, Blackjack, and after all, you’re a cat. Even if you turn out to be right, that won’t be your fault. I know you don’t want Moses to not exist anymore.”

“No, I don’t,” Blackjack agreed. “I want us to find him. But when we don’t—”

“If we don’t,” Luther insisted. “Let’s say if, until we’re actually there. Who knows, it might still turn dreamlike. Maybe we’ll have to do something special, yet, before we’re really there. Like . . . I don’t know, like a cross a magic river, or climb a mountain. It smells like it’s got big hills, at least. You should really try to be more optimistic, Blackjack,” he said as they started off again. “I think things are definitely improving.”

“This from a dog who looks like something out of a swamp.”

“Blackjack, you—”

And so it went, the two of them arguing back and forth good-naturedly as they made their final approach to Heaven.

III.

“Am I dreamin’?”

Just past seven on the morning of the twenty-fifth. An Ithaca Police patrol car was idling by a downtown intersection, watching an army on horseback ride up West State Street in the direction of The Commons. The rain had taken a short rest break, and the Bohemians appeared out of the mist like a phantom parade.

“No, you’re not dreaming,” said the officer behind the wheel of the car. She was a slim black named Nattie Hollister; her partner, Samuel Doubleday, was pale, middle-aged, and had a remarkable rash of freckles on his cheeks.

“They sure are colorful, aren’t they?” added Hollister.

“Who are they? What are they, I should say.”

“They call themselves Bohemians.”

“Is that some new kind of Communist thing?”

“Not exactly. They’re a good bunch, really. Never had to run one in.”

Doubleday hawked and spat out the window. “Maybe they just never got caught. I don’t like ’em.”

At that point Ragnarok cruised in front of the patrol car on his bike. He saw Hollister through the windshield and raised a hand in salute.

“God bless all Ithacops!” he cried.

“Hail, Caesar!” shouted some of the other Bohemians.

“You see? You see?” Doubleday growled. “Just like those fags down at The ’Wave. No respect for authority.”

“Oh, they respect us,” said Hollister. “They just show it in a unique way, that’s all.”

“That one there,” Doubleday went on, as Z.Z. Top trotted by on his burro, “Marxist or child molester. No question.”

“Don’t trouble yourself over it, Doubleday. They’re harmless. You want to cruise over to the State Diner and pick up some coffee?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure. As soon as this damn intersection is clear, that is.” His mouth was drawn down in an angry bow; Hollister was beginning to wonder if the man ever smiled. “Ah, hell!”

“What now, Doubleday?”

“It’s raining again!”

Hollister threw back her head and laughed.

IV.

“Let’s hear it for the rain!” Lion-Heart cried as they rode through The Commons, and the downpour received a solid round of applause. They had been applauding everything from woodchucks to Greyhound buses for the past five miles, so happy were they to be back. For many of them, including Lion-Heart, this would be their last year at Cornell, and they wanted to start off on as positive a note as possible.

Lion-Heart still led the way, Fujiko and Myoko flanking him, the other Bohemians and Grey Ladies following in a disorderly fashion. Sweeping through The Commons they cheered the row of stores, cheered the McDonald’s, cheered the sidewalks beneath them. In front of Iszard’s department store—which stood on the site of the old Ithaca Hotel—they encountered George, who had risen very early that day.

“Morning, storyteller,” Lion-Heart said, nodding to him. He held up a hand, and the procession halted. “What brings you out? I thought we were the only ones crazy enough to beat the sunrise.”

“What sunrise?” George said pleasantly, glancing up at the clouds. “Besides, I figured it was about time for you to be coming back. Got a welcome-home for you.” He hoisted a bottle of Midori up to Lion-Heart.

“Well now,” the Bohemian King said. “Can’t help but respect a man with good taste in liquor.”

“Hey George,” cried Z.Z. Top, trotting up to the front of the line. He held a newspaper in one hand. “Got a good one for you. You heard the latest from Chicago?”

“No. What gives?”

“All right,” the Top said enthusiastically. A fan of The Knight of the White Roses, he loved sharing odd news items with George. “Dig it, there’s this guy out to the Windy City owns a huge house in the suburbs, he comes home two days ago and the place is burning up. There’s not a fire truck in sight, and his kid, who’s been left home alone, is screaming out a top-floor window for Daddy to come save him.

“So he’s a concerned father, he ought to just run in and see if he can save the kid, right? Only thing is he’s got this mental problem, he’s a what-do-you-call, a tri— . . . a trisko— . . . ah, fuck!”

“Triskaidekaphobe,” Myoko offered.

“Right! Right, that. Triskawhatever. Which basically means his asshole goes into toxic shock over the number thirteen. And there’s smoke pouring out of exactly thirteen windows of the house.”

“He counted them?” George said skeptically.

“Hey man, it’s right here in the paper, inquiring minds want to know. This guy’s house, it’s a special effects representation of the number thirteen, and his sphincter starts to get all tight . . .”

“Nice, Top,” said Fujiko.

“. . . and there’s no way in hell he can make himself go in, not even with his own child in line to be a barbecue. So he goes back to his car, see, gets a spare gas can out of the boot, grabs a pop bottle from the gutter, rips a strip off his Brooks Brothers suit, and makes himself a suburban Molotov cocktail. Lobs it into a part of the house that hasn’t been touched yet, whoosh, fire, smoke, the number thirteen becomes the number fourteen, his asshole simmers back down and now he can be a hero. Gets the kid out fine but the fire guts the house, and the final kicker is the insurance company doesn’t want to pay off because the guy committed arson, technically. They’re going to have one hell of a time in court with that one.”

“Quite the tale.”

“No shit. But if you put that sort of thing in one of your novels, zap!, into the penalty box for lack of realism.”

George shrugged. “Can’t beat real life for suspension of disbelief.”

“No shit. Lots of weird stuff going down in Chicago lately. We’ll have to get together for some beers, pop a few Black Label Lights while I tell you about it.”

“Need a lift up The Hill, storyteller?” asked Lion-Heart, when Z.Z. Top was through.

“No thanks,” said George. “Think I’ll hang out here a while longer.”

“As you like. Hey, you got a woman yet?”

George reddened the tiniest bit.

“’Fraid not,” he admitted. “I’m still trying, though.”

“Yeah, well I got something for you, make us even for the Midori.” He brought out a velvet pouch, and from it produced a fortune cookie which he tossed to George.

“What’s this?”

“Open it, storyteller. Don’t ask questions.”

George cracked the cookie open. He took out the slip of paper inside and read it aloud.

“Beware the Ides of March,” he read, looking puzzled. “I don’t get it.”

“Huh?” said Lion-Heart. “Shit, I must have given you the wrong one.”

He rummaged again in the pouch and got another cookie. “Here.”

This time the slip of paper inside made more sense.

“‘Redeem for one (1) Woman of Your Dreams. This coupon void where prohibited by law.’ Wow. Just what I needed.”

“Those are magic fortune cookies, storyteller,” Lion-Heart informed him. “I had this Wicca chick in SoHo make ’em up special for me. If that doesn’t help you, you might as well give yourself up as a lost case.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Li,” George said.

“You just take it light, storyteller.” The Bohemian King gave his horse’s reins a shake and got moving again. “Come up Risley way and visit us sometime soon.”

“I will,” said George. He moved out of the way and watched them go by, waving at those Bohemians that he knew, blushing when a Grey Lady named Kiri smiled at him. Soon they were all past, making a slow-motion charge up The Hill, first to the Cornell stables and then to Risley.

George folded both fortune cookie messages carefully and placed them into a dry part of his wallet.

Then he hunkered down under a storefront awning to watch the rain.

V.

Calliope arrived in Ithaca sometime during the rain, though only she could have named the exact hour. A small cottage awaited her in a grove along Triphammer Road, north of North Campus. It was cozy and suited her perfectly, though she knew she wouldn’t be needing it for long.

After putting away her few possessions she showered, washing away the smells of the road, almost polishing herself until her skin glowed. Clean, she investigated the cottage’s refrigerator and found the champagne and cheese, smiling at the discovery. Thoughtful of him. She ate and drank while the sun went down, its descent hidden by the cloud cover.

Long after sunset she dressed in a pair of moccasins and a curious silver-threaded robe that looked like a cross between a kimono and a long cloak. She went out into the night.

The rain had once again given way to mist, this time for good, and in her robe Calliope was nearly invisible. Three times she passed strangers on the road. None of them saw her, but each paused in her wake, feeling a deep sadness as if some great love had just been lost to them.

Prudence Risley Residence Hall stood on the north edge of Fall Creek Gorge, to the left coming off the East Avenue bridge that led to Central Campus. The residents were holding a Mist Party in the rear courtyard, and the whole building blazed with light.

Lion-Heart mingled and drank at the party for about an hour, then staggered out onto the front lawn to get a break from the music, a non-stop stream of “alternative” rock bands. Not that such groups weren’t good—most of them—but they were feeling, paradoxically, a little too trendy lately. Now that disco was officially dead, it might be a good idea for the Bohemians to resurrect it, just for the shock value.

Sipping Midori from a shot glass, Lion-Heart stared drunkenly at the dorm. Erected in 1913 as a women’s dormitory, Risley had gone slowly radical over the course of the late Sixties and the early Seventies, eventually becoming a co-ed haven for misfits. Three years ago a conservative element had begun to creep in, and Lion-Heart, then a Freshman, had formed the Bohemians to combat it. True, much of what the Bohemians did was not original—Lion-Heart had freely borrowed clothing styles from the Greenwich Village neighborhood where he had grown up, as well as borrowing from his parents’ considerable Old World fortune to finance the cavalry aspect of the group—but the sight of a purple-garbed rider on a purple-maned horse was still different enough, even at relatively liberal Cornell, to raise eyebrows and restore Risley to its former reputation.

But while history might be made to repeat itself, it never stopped moving. With most of the hard-core Bohemes graduating this year (including Lion-Heart and his bankroll), he had begun to wonder how long it would take before the remainder drifted apart, or collapsed into a clique. He wondered about the dorm, too, how it would fare without such wonders as Z.Z. Top’s electronic Jew’s Harp.

Even as Lion-Heart pondered Bohemia’s role in Risley and larger society, Calliope appeared out of the mist, revealed for a moment in the glow from the dorm.

“Ho . . .” Lion-Heart gasped, frozen by the sight of her. The shot glass dropped from his hand and the ground lapped up the rest of the Midori.

“Ho?” Calliope caught his gaze and smiled, tearing his heart. For she was the loveliest woman he had ever seen, ever would see, and yet he suddenly knew with an iron-clad certainty that she was not to be his. When she teasingly blew a kiss at him, Lion-Heart lost all control of himself.

“Who are you?” the King of the Bohemians demanded, springing forward to catch her. “At least tell me who you are . . .”

“I’m just a dream on a lonely night,” said Calliope, laughing. As he reached out to grab her she spun, the cloak/kimono slipping easily through his fingers, and then she simply wasn’t there anymore. He stumbled and fell hard to the ground.

“Wait!” he called into the mist, not sounding very much like a King now. “Wait . . .”

Her laugh echoed once in the distance—she sounded as if she were crossing the bridge—and faded. Lion-Heart thought about chasing after her and soon rejected the idea, knowing he could never catch her unless she wanted him to. And besides, he was just drunk enough to believe that something bad might happen to him if he became too persistent and annoyed her.

“Go easy on him, though,” the Bohemian King said thickly, struggling to his feet. “Whoever it is you did come here for.” No sooner was he standing than Myoko came around to the front lawn looking for him, and Lion-Heart thought he had never been so glad to see anyone.

“Are you real?” he asked her, still dizzy from the fall.

“What?” Myoko glided up to him. “You been into something heavy tonight, Li?”

He didn’t answer, but reached out gently to touch her, as if fearing that she too might whirl and vanish. He clasped her hand in his, marveling at the feel of solid flesh and bone; he brushed his fingertips against her cheek.

“What is it?” Myoko asked, surprised and flattered by the expression of awe on Lion-Heart’s face. He’d gone through a cold phase recently, being short on affection in the past week or so; now it seemed to have passed.

“You are real,” Lion-Heart said, taking her in his arms and kissing her. And so they remained, clasped together with the faint sounds of the party drifting over to them from the courtyard, for the better part of an hour. When at last they ended their embrace and turned to go inside, all memory of Calliope had been erased from Lion-Heart’s mind. He had seen no one that night but Myoko, and he loved her.

VI.

The Arts Quad was deserted when Calliope got there. It shouldn’t have been; even with the majority of the night’s activities—wild parties in particular—taking place at the dormitories, fraternities, and sororities, there should have been a few scattered individuals passing through Central Campus at any given time until well after midnight. But the Lady was in a mood to dance, to dance but not to be seen, and so all those who would otherwise have walked through the Quad suddenly got it in their heads to take a different route to wherever they were going.

She skipped along playfully, pausing beneath a cluster of trees in the northeast corner of the Quad, where mist and shadows mingled freely. She drew out her whistle, gently clutching the tiny charm in one perfect fist, and blew. It made no discernable sound, but the area before her glowed hazily, the mist forming itself into a phantom image of George.

“So that’s what you look like,” said Calliope, smiling. Physical appearance meant nothing to her emotionally; her eyes were such that she could see any person as perfectly attractive, just as she, with her special magic, could appear perfectly beautiful to them. But she did want to get a glimpse of him before actually seeking him out, for curiosity’s sake if nothing else.

Done looking, she waved the apparition away and strode across the grass until she stood on the walkway between the two Quad statues. Andrew D. White gave her a stern look as she threw off her robe and stood naked except for the moccasins. These too were kicked away as she began to dance, a wild, Dionysian ballet the like of which had never been seen on any stage. Before long the wind began to blow, sighing a melody among the branches of the trees and beneath the eaves of the buildings. The wind did not part the mist and so none could see what was going on, but a number of the sprites heard the wind-song and wondered what it could mean. Zephyr’s Grandfather Hobart remained frozen at the top of McGraw Tower throughout the performance, frightened for some reason he could not fathom. The wind blew around George’s house as well, and he too paused to listen—but not in fear.

How long the dance went on is as uncertain as the hour of Calliope’s arrival, but it ended at midnight. She landed back between the statues with a great somersault just as the Clock began to strike. While the chimes tolled out the change of days, Calliope looked from Andrew to Ezra, as if daring them to make a move. They did not. Then the chimes ceased and she quickly gathered up her robe and shoes, laughing as she ran back the way she had come.

“I’m here, George,” she called to the night. “I’m here.”

VII.

“Is this dreamlike enough for you, Blackjack?”

“It’s interesting, I’ll grant you that.”

It was mid-dawn on the morning of the twenty-sixth, and Luther and Blackjack moved through a world of white, a thick fog that was the last gasp of the preceding three days’ weather. Even at that moment the rising sun was beginning to burn the fog away, but for the time being it was like part of a dream, like moving through a tunnel to a hazy world that was slowly being brought into focus.

The two animals had walked most of the night, entering Ithaca under a dark gloom that almost prevented them from realizing they’d come to a town. Passing through the deserted Commons, the air had been rich with Luther’s “Heaven smell,” and as they reached the foot of The Hill the mongrel had proclaimed joyously that they were almost there, almost there. Once again Blackjack had been patient and polite in his response, but somehow he’d expected the Divine environment to be better lit.

Now, in a moment of perfect stillness, a gateway loomed up ahead of them. “Heaven’s Gate!” exclaimed Luther. “It’s the Gateway to Heaven, Blackjack! We found it!”

“St. Peter must still be sleeping,” Blackjack observed quietly. Luther paid him no mind, running up to the Gate and barking in glee.

“We’re there! We made it!”

“Are you sure?” asked Blackjack, examining the Gate closely. It was a rather plain construction of stone, with a wrought-iron span across the top. Not a trace of pearl.

While Luther barked and capered beneath the arch, Blackjack went over to the wall on the left side of the Gate. The fog was thinning rapidly, and the Manx was able to make out the words on a plaque:

SO ENTER

THAT DAILY THOU MAYEST BECOME

MORE LEARNED AND THOUGHTFUL

SO DEPART

THAT DAILY THOU MAYEST BECOME

MORE USEFUL TO THY COUNTRY AND TO MANKIND

Intrigued, Blackjack crossed to the other side of the Gate and examined the companion plaque:

THIS STRUCTURE DEDICATED

TO THE CONTINUED SUCCESS

OF THE CORNELL UNIVERSITY

BY ITS PRESIDENT

ANDREW D. WHITE

1896

“University?” said Blackjack. “Luther, this is—”

“We made it! We made it!”

The Manx could not go on. It took no great power of empathy to see how ecstatic Luther was over their arrival at “Heaven”; Blackjack would not rob him of this brief happiness. He would be forced to face the truth soon enough on his own.

Or so Blackjack thought.

“Listen!” Luther said suddenly, ceasing his barking. Now that he took the time to notice, Blackjack realized that there was water running nearby. And that wasn’t all—somewhere up ahead, chimes had begun to play.

“The angels need music lessons, I think,” Blackjack couldn’t resist saying, as a bad note disrupted the melody. Once again Luther paid no attention to him.

Together they passed through the Gate and padded around the great bulk that was Cascadilla Dorm. Following the music, they crossed over Cascadilla Creek Bridge into Central Campus.

“I smell dogs,” said the Manx. “Lots of them.”

“Of course you do, Blackjack. But don’t worry, there can’t be any trouble here, not in this place. Do you smell Moses at all?”

“How could I . . . I mean, no, I don’t smell him.”

“Neither do I. But there are so many . . .”

A strong scent of approaching dogs up ahead. Blackjack tensed automatically. Luther glanced into a puddle and noticed for the first time that the rain and damp had washed away his mud-disguise.

“Oh no! I’m—”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of in this place, remember?” Blackjack said soothingly, casually sliding his claws out.

“But it just occurred to me, Blackjack. What if God’s a Purebred?”

“I thought God was supposed to be more like a human being. Like one of the Masters, you’d say.”

“Well . . .”

They topped a rise, and saw two dogs coming toward them. Luther relaxed immediately; one of the dogs was a mongrel, the other a Purebred, and they were not hostile to one another. The Purebred, a young Beagle, seemed very high-strung for some reason, jumping about as though the damp sidewalk were too hot for him, but it had nothing to do with antagonism. The thought-word mange was nowhere in his mind, not that Luther could see.

“Hello there,” said the mongrel, nodding to them.

“Hiya!” piped the Beagle pup, whose name, they soon learned, was Skippy. “Hey, I’ve never seen you guys before. You new around here? Huh? And hey, Mr. Pussycat, what happened to your tail? Huh? Huh?”

“Hello,” Blackjack replied to the mongrel, retracting his claws halfway. He eyed the Beagle reservedly.

In front of them, the last of the fog melted away all at once, and the light of the rising sun struck McGraw Tower, for an instant wreathing it in a halo. Luther caught his breath at the sight.

“We made it,” he said once more.

With a discordant clang, the Chimesmaster shifted into her second song for the morning.