Peeps (Parasite Positive)

(The first book in the Peeps series) Scott Westerfeld

 

Chapter 1 STAY AWAY, JOE

After a year of hunting, I finally caught up with Sarah.

It turned out she’d been hiding in New Jersey, which broke my heart. I mean, Hoboken? Sarah was always head-over-heels in love with Manhattan. For her, New York was like another Elvis, the King remade of bricks, steel, and granite. The rest of the world was a vast extension of her parents’ basement, the last place she wanted to wind up.

No wonder she’d had to leave when the disease took hold of her mind.

Peeps always run from the things they used to love.

Still, I shook my head when I found out where she was. The old Sarah wouldn’t have been caught dead in Hoboken. And yet here I was, finishing my tenth cup of coffee in the crumbling parking lot of the old ferry terminal, armed only with my wits and a backpack full of Elvis memorabilia. In the black mirror of the coffee’s surface, the gray sky trembled with the beating of my heart.

* * *

It was late afternoon. I’d spent the day in a nearby diner, working my way through the menu and waiting for the clouds to clear, praying that the bored and very cute waitress wouldn’t start talking to me. If that happened, I’d have to leave and wander around the docks all day.

I was nervous—the usual tension of meeting an ex, with the added bonus of facing a maniacal cannibal—and the hours stretched out torturously. But finally a few shafts of sun had broken through, bright enough to trap Sarah inside the terminal. Peeps can’t stand sunlight.

It had been raining a lot that week, and green weeds pushed up through the asphalt, cracking the old parking lot like so much dried mud. Feral cats watched me from every hiding place, no doubt drawn here by the spiking rat population. Predators and prey and ruin—it’s amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing.

According to the Night Watch’s crime blotters, this spot didn’t show any of the usual signs of a predator. No transit workers gone missing, no homeless people turning psychotically violent. But every time New Jersey Pest Control did another round of poisoning, the hordes of rats just reappeared, despite the fact that there wasn’t much garbage to eat in this deserted part of town. The

only explanation was a resident peep. When the Night Watch had tested one of the rats, it had turned out to be of my bloodline, once removed.

That could only mean Sarah. Except for her and Morgan, every other girl I’d ever kissed was already locked up tight. (And Morgan, I was certain, was not hiding out in an old ferry terminal in Hoboken.)

Big yellow stickers plastered the terminal’s padlocked doors, warning of rat poison, but it looked like the guys at pest control were starting to get spooked. They’d dropped off their little packets of death, slapped up a few warning stickers, and then gotten the heck out of there.

Good for them. They don’t get paid enough to deal with peeps.

Of course, neither do I, despite the excellent health benefits. But I had a certain responsibility here. Sarah wasn’t just the first of my bloodline—she was my first real girlfriend.

My only real girlfriend, if you must know.

We met the opening day of classes—freshman year, Philosophy 101—and soon found ourselves in a big argument about free will and predetermination. The discussion spilled out of class, into a café, and all the way back to her room that night. Sarah was very into free will. I was very into Sarah.

The argument went on that whole semester. As a bio major, I figured “free will” meant chemicals in your brain telling you what to do, the molecules bouncing around in a way that felt like choosing but was actually the dance of little gears—neurons and hormones bubbling up into decisions like clockwork. You don’t use your body; it uses you.

Guess I won that one.

There were signs of Sarah everywhere. All the windows at eye level were smashed, every expanse of reflective metal smeared with dirt or something worse.

And of course there were rats. Lots of them. I could hear that even from outside.

I squeezed between the loosely padlocked doors, then stood waiting for my vision to adjust to the darkness. The sound of little feet skittered along the gloomy edges of the vast interior space. My entrance had the effect of a stone landing in a still pond: The rippling rats took a while to settle.

I listened for my ex-girlfriend but heard only wind whistling over broken glass and the myriad nostrils snuffling around me.

They stayed in the shadows, smelling the familiarity of me, wondering if I was part of the family. Rats have evolved into an arrangement with the disease, you see. They don’t suffer from infection.

Human beings aren’t so lucky. Even people like me—who don’t turn into ravening monsters, who don’t have to run from everything they love—we suffer too. Exquisitely.

I dropped my backpack to the floor and pulled out a poster, unrolling it

and taping it to the inside of the door.

I stepped back, and the King smiled down at me through the darkness, resplendent against black velvet. No way could Sarah get past those piercing green eyes and that radiant smile.

Feeling safer under his gaze, I moved farther into the darkness. Long benches lined the floor like church pews, and the faded smell of long-gone human crowds rose up. Passengers had once sat here to await the next ferry to Manhattan. There were a few beds of newspaper where homeless people had slept, but my nose informed me that they’d lain empty for weeks.

Since the predator had arrived.

The hordes of tiny footsteps followed me warily, still unsure of what I was.

I taped a black-velvet Elvis poster onto each exit from the terminal, the bright colors clashing with the dingy yellow of the rat-poison warnings. Then I postered the broken windows, plastering every means of escape with the King’s face.

Against one wall, I found pieces of a shredded shirt. Stained with fresh- smelling blood, it had been flung aside like a discarded candy wrapper. I had to remind myself that this creature wasn’t really Sarah, full of free will and tidbits of Elvis trivia. This was a cold-blooded killer.

Before I zipped the backpack closed, I pulled out an eight-inch ‘68 Comeback Special action figure and put it in my pocket. I hoped my familiar face would protect me, but it never hurts to have a trusty anathema close at hand.

I heard something from above, where the old ferry administration offices jutted out from the back wall, overlooking the waiting room. Peeps prefer to nest in small, high places.

There was only one set of stairs, the steps sagging like a flat tire in the middle. As my weight pressed into the first one, it creaked unhappily.

The noise didn’t matter—Sarah had to know already someone was here— but I went carefully, letting the staircase’s sway settle between every step. The guys in Records had warned me that this place had been condemned for a decade.

I took advantage of the slow ascent to leave a few items from my backpack on the stairs. A sequined cape, a miniature blue Christmas tree, an album of Elvis Sings Gospel.

From the top of the stairs, a row of skulls looked down at me.

I’d seen lairs marked this way before, part territorialism—a warning to other predators to stay away—and partly the sort of thing that peeps just … liked. Not free will but those chemicals in the brain again, determining aesthetic responses, as predictable as a middle-aged guy buying a red sports car.

More tiny feet skittered when I kicked one of the skulls into the gloom. It rolled with a limping, asymmetrical ka-thump, ka-thump across the floor. As the echoes died away, I heard something human-size breathing. But she didn’t show herself, didn’t attack. I wondered if she recognized my smell.

“It’s me,” I called softly, not expecting any response. “Cal?”

I froze, not believing my ears. None of the other girls I’d ever dated had spoken at all when I’d tracked them down, much less said my name.

But I recognized Sarah’s voice. Even raspy and desiccated, as dry and brittle as a lost contact lens, it was her. I heard her dry throat swallow.

“I’m here to help you,” I said.

There was no answer, no movement of rats’ feet. The sounds of her breathing had stopped. Peeps can do that, subsist on pockets of oxygen stored in the parasite’s cysts.

The balcony stretched before me, a row of doors leading to abandoned offices. I took a few steps and glanced into the first one. It was stripped of furniture, but I could see the outlines of tiny cubicles imprinted into the gray industrial carpet. Not a terrible place to work, though: Iron-framed windows overlooked the harbor, the views magnificent, even though the glass was broken and smeared.

Manhattan lay across the river, the downtown spires lighting up as the sun went down, painting the glass towers orange. Strange that Sarah would stay here, in sight of the island she’d loved. How could she stand it?

Maybe she was different.

Old clothes and a couple of crack vials littered the floor, along with more human bones. I wondered where she had been hunting and how the Watch had missed the kills. That’s the thing about predators: They leave a huge statistical footprint on any ecosystem. Get more than a dozen of them in even the biggest city and the homicides show up like a house on fire. The disease has spent the last thousand years evolving to conceal itself, but it gets tougher and tougher for man-eaters to stay hidden. Human beings are prey with cell phones, after all.

I stepped back into the hall and closed my eyes, listening again. Hearing nothing.

When I opened them, Sarah stood before me.

I sucked in a breath and the most trivial of thoughts went through me: She’s lost weight. Her wiry body almost disappeared in the stolen rags she wore, like a child in borrowed, grown-up clothes. As always when running into an ex after a long time, there was the weirdness of seeing a once-familiar face transformed.

I could see why the legends call them beautiful: that bone structure right there on the surface, like heroin chic without the bad skin. And a peep’s gaze

is so intense. Adapted to the darkness, their irises and pupils are huge, the skin around the orbitals pulled back in a predatory facelift, revealing more of the eyeballs. Like Botoxed movie stars, they always look surprised and almost never blink.

For a brief and horrible moment, I thought I was in love with her again.

But it was just the insatiable parasite inside me. “Sarah,” I breathed out.

She hissed. Peeps hate the sound of their own names, which cuts into the tangled channels of their brains just like an anathema. But she’d said, “Cal…”

“Go away,” came the raspy voice.

I could see hunger in her eyes—peeps are always hungry—but she didn’t want me. I was too familiar.

Rats began to swirl around my feet, thinking a kill was coming. I stamped one of my rat-proof cowboy boots down hard to send them scurrying. Sarah bared her teeth at the noise and my stomach clenched. I had to remind myself that she wouldn’t eat me, couldn’t eat me.

“I have to take you out of here,” I said, my fingers closing on the action figure in my pocket. They never went without a fight, but Sarah was my first real love. I thought maybe.

She struck like lightning, her open palm landing upside my head, a slap that felt like it had burst my eardrum.

I staggered back, the world ringing, and more blows pummeled my stomach, driving the breath from me. And then I was lying on my back, Sarah’s weight on my chest, her body as sinewy as a bag full of pissed-off snakes, her smell thick in my nostrils.

She pushed my head back, baring my throat, but then froze, something fighting behind her Botoxed eyes. Her love for me? Or just the anathema of my familiar face?

“Ray’s Original, First Avenue and Eighth Street,” I said quickly, invoking her favorite pizza place. “Vanilla vodka on the rocks. Viva Las Vegas.” That last one scored, so I added, “His mother’s middle name was Love.”

At this second Elvis reference, Sarah hissed like a snake, one hand curling into a claw. The fingernails, like a corpse’s, keep growing as everything else is eaten away, and hers were as gnarled and black as dried beetle husks.

I stopped her with the password for our shared video store account, then rattled off her old cell-phone number and the names of the goldfish she’d left behind. Sarah flinched, battered by these old, familiar signifiers. Then she let out a howl, her mouth stretching wide to bare the awful teeth again. A dark claw raised up.

I pulled the action figure from my pocket and thrust it into her face.

It was the King, of course, in Comeback Special black, complete with leather wristband and four-inch guitar. This was my only keepsake from her

former life—I’d stolen it from under her roommate’s nose, dropping by a week after Sarah had disappeared, instinctively knowing she wasn’t coming back. Wanting something of hers.

Sarah howled, closing her fist and bringing it down on my chest. The blow left me coughing, my eyes filling with tears. But her weight was suddenly gone.

I rolled over, gasping, trying to regain my feet. As my eyes cleared, I saw boiling fur in every direction, the rats in a panic at their mistress’s distress.

She had started down the stairs, but now the anathema had taken hold of her mind. The Elvis memorabilia I’d placed on the steps did its job—Sarah twisted in mid-course at the sequined cape, like a horse glimpsing a rattlesnake, and crashed through the rickety banister.

I scrambled to the balcony’s edge and looked down. She crouched on one of the pews, glaring up at me.

“Are you okay, Sarah?”

The sound of her own name got her moving, gliding across the waiting room, bare feet silent on the backs of the benches. But she stumbled to a halt as she came face-to-face with the black velvet King poster, a horrible wail filling the echoing terminal. It was one of those spine-tingling transformations, like when a forlorn cat suddenly makes the sound of a human child, Sarah uttering the cry of some other species.

Rats swept toward me from all sides—attacking, I thought for a moment. But they were simply freaking out, swirling without purpose around my boots, disappearing through holes and into office doorways.

As I ran down the staircase, the metal bolts that held it to the wall yanked at their berths in a screeching chorus. Sarah darted from exit to exit, mewling at the sight of the King’s face. She froze and hissed at me again.

She knew I had her cornered and watched warily as I put the doll back in my pocket.

“Stay there. I won’t hurt you.” I slowly climbed down the rest of the swaying stairs. It was about as steady as standing in a canoe.

The moment one of my feet touched the ground floor, Sarah ran straight toward the far wall. She leaped high, her black claws grasping one of a web of steam pipes that fed a long radiator. Her long black fingernails made pinging sounds on the empty pipes as she climbed up and along the wall toward a high window I hadn’t bothered to cover. She moved like a spider, fast and jerky.

There was no Elvis between her and freedom. I was going to lose her.

Swearing, I turned and dashed back up the swaying stairs. A series of pops came from behind me, bolts failing, and just as I reached the top, the whole staircase pulled away, freeing itself from the wall at last. But it didn’t crash to the ground, just sagged exhaustedly, a few bolts still clinging to the upper floor like rusty fingernails.

Sarah reached the high window and put her fist through it, smeared glass shattering onto a jagged patch of gray sky. But as she pulled herself up into the window frame, a bright shaft of sun struck through the clouds, hitting her square in the face.

The rosy light filled the terminal, and Sarah screamed again, swinging from one hand, the other flailing. She tried to hoist herself through the broken window twice more, but the punishing sunlight forced her back. Finally she scurried away, fleeing along the pipes and leaping to the balcony, darting through the farthest doorway from me.

I was already running.

The last office was the darkest, but I could smell the rats, the main nest of her brood. When I reached the door they turned to face me in awful unison, red eyes illuminated by the dusty shaft of sunlight filtering in behind me. There was a bed in one corner, its rusty springs covered with rotting clothes. Most peeps didn’t bother with beds. Had it been left here by squatters? Or had Sarah salvaged it from some rubbish heap?

She’d always been a fussy sleeper, bringing her own pillow to college from Tennessee. Did she still care what she slept on?

Sarah watched me from the bed, her eyes half closed. It was only because the sunlight had burned them, but it made her look more human.

I approached carefully, one hand on the action figure in my pocket. But I didn’t pull it out. Maybe I could take her without any more struggle. She’d said my name, after all.

The motionless rats made me nervous. I took a plastic bag from my pocket and emptied it onto my boots. The brood parted, scenting Cornelius’s dander. My ancient cat hadn’t hunted in years, but the rats didn’t know that. Suddenly, I smelled like a predator.

Sarah clung to the bed’s spindly frame, which began to shudder. I paused to pull a Kevlar glove onto my left hand and dropped two knockout pills into its palm.

“Let me give you these. They’ll make you better.”

Sarah squinted at me, still wary, but listening. She had always forgotten to take her pills, and it had been my job to remind her. Maybe this ritual would calm her, something remembered, but not fondly enough to be an anathema. I could hear her breathing, her heart still beating as fast as it had during the chase.

She could spring at me at any moment.

I took another slow step and sat down beside her. The bed’s rusty springs made a questioning sound.

“Take these. They’re good for you.”

Sarah stared at the small white pills cupped in my palm. I felt her relax for a moment, maybe recalling what it was like to be sick—just normal sick--

and have a boyfriend look after you.

I’m not as fast as a full-blown peep, or as strong, but I am pretty quick. I cupped my hand over her mouth in a flash and heard the pills snick into her dehydrated throat. Her hands gripped my shoulders, but I pressed her head back with my whole weight, letting her teeth savage the thick glove. Sarah’s black nails didn’t go for my face, and I saw swallows pulsing along her pale neck.

The pills took her down in seconds. With a metabolism as fast as ours, drugs hit right away—I feel tipsy about a minute after alcohol touches my tongue, and I damn near need an IV to keep a coffee buzz going.

“Well done, Sarah.” I let her go and saw that her eyes were still open. “You’ll be okay now, I promise.”

I pulled the glove off. The outer water-resistant layer was shredded, but her teeth hadn’t broken the Kevlar. (It has happened, though.)

My cell phone showed one lonely bar of reception, but the call went straight through. “It was her. Pick us up.”

As the phone went dark, I wondered if I should have mentioned the crumbling stairs. Oh, well. They’d figure out how to get up.

“Cal?”

I started at the sound, but her slitted eyes didn’t seem to pose a threat. “What is it, Sarah?”

“Show me again.” “Show you what?”

She tried to speak, but a pained look crossed her face.

“You mean…” His name would hurt her if I said it. “The King?” She nodded.

“You don’t want that. It’ll only burn you. Like the sun did.” “But I miss him.” Her voice was fading, sleep taking her.

I swallowed, feeling something flat and heavy settle over me. “I know you do.”

Sarah knew a lot about Elvis, but she enjoyed obscure facts the most. She loved it that his mother’s middle name was Love. She searched the Web for MP3s of the B-sides of rare seventies singles. Her favorite movie was one that you’ve probably never heard of: Stay Away, Joe.

In it, Elvis is a half-Navajo bronco buster on a reservation. Sarah claimed it was the role he was born to play, because he really was part Native American. Yeah, right. His great-great-great-grandmother was Cherokee. And, like most of us, he had sixteen great-great-great-grandmothers. Not much genetic impact there. But Sarah didn’t care. She said obscure influences were the most important.

That’s a philosophy major for you.

In the movie, Elvis sells pieces of his car whenever he needs money. The

doors go, then the roof, then the seats, one by one. By the end he’s riding along on an empty frame—Elvis at the steering wheel, four tires and a sputtering engine on an open road.

As the disease had settled across her, Sarah had held onto Elvis the longest. After she’d thrown out all her books and clothes, erased every photograph from her hard drive, and broken all the mirrors in her dorm bathroom, the Elvis posters still clung to her walls, crumpled and scratched from bitter blows, but hanging on. As her mind transformed, Sarah shouted more than once that she couldn’t stand the sight of me, but she never said a word against the King.

Finally, she fled, deciding to disappear into the night rather than tear down those slyly grinning faces she could no longer bear to look at.

As I waited for the transport squad, I watched her shivering on the bed and thought of Elvis clutching the steering wheel of his skeletal car.

Sarah had lost everything, shedding the pieces of her life one by one to placate the anathema, until she was left here in this dark place, clinging to a shuddering, rickety frame.

 

Chapter 2 TREMATODES

The natural world is jaw-droppingly horrible. Appalling, nasty, vile. Take trematodes, for example.

Trematodes are tiny fish that live in the stomach of a bird. (How did that happen? Horribly. Just keep reading.) They lay their eggs in the bird’s stomach. One day, the bird takes a crap into a pond, and the eggs are on their way. They hatch and swim around the pond looking for a snail. These trematodes are microscopic, small enough to lay eggs in a snail’s eye, as we used to say in Texas.

Well, okay. We never said that in Texas. But trematodes actually do it. For some reason, they always choose the left eye. When the babies hatch, they eat the snail’s left eye and spread throughout its body. (Didn’t I say this would be horrible?) But they don’t kill the snail. Not right away.

First, the half-blind snail gets a gnawing feeling in the pit of its stomach and thinks it’s hungry. It starts to eat but for some reason can never get enough food. You see, when the food gets to where the snail’s stomach used to be, all that’s left down there is trematodes, getting their meals delivered. The snail can’t mate, or sleep, or enjoy life in any other snaily way. It has become a hungry robot dedicated to gathering food for its horrible little passengers.

After a while, the trematodes get bored with this and pull the plug on their poor host. They invade the snail’s antennae, making them twitch. They turn the snail’s left eye bright colors. A bird passing overhead sees this brightly colored, twitching snail and says, “Yum…”

The snail gets eaten, and the trematodes are back up in a bird’s stomach, ready to parachute into the next pond over.

Welcome to the wonderful world of parasites. This is where I live.

One more thing, and then I promise no more horrific biology (for a few pages).

When I first read about trematodes, I always wondered why the bird would eat this twitching, oddly colored snail. Eventually, wouldn’t the birds evolve to avoid any snail with a glowing left eye? This is a nasty, trematode- infected snail, after all. Why would you eat it?

Turns out the trematodes don’t do anything unpleasant to their flying host. They’re polite guests, living quietly in the bird’s gut, not messing with its

food or its left eye or anything. The bird hardly knows they’re there, just craps them out into the next pond over, like a little parasite bomb.

It’s almost like the bird and the trematodes have a deal between them. You give us a ride in your stomach, and we’ll arrange some half-blind snails for you to eat.

Isn’t cooperation a beautiful thing?

Unless, of course, you happen to be the snail…

 

Chapter 3 ANATHEMA

Okay, let’s clear up some myths about vampires.

First of all, you won’t see me using the V-word much. In the Night Watch, we prefer the term parasite-positives, or peeps, for short.

The main thing to remember is that there’s no magic involved. No flying. Humans don’t have hollow bones or wings—the disease doesn’t change that. No transforming into bats or rats either. It’s impossible to turn into something much smaller than yourself—where would the extra mass go?

On the other hand, I can see how people in centuries past got confused. Hordes of rats, and sometimes bats, accompany peeps. They get infected from feasting on peep leftovers. Rodents make good “reservoirs,” which means they’re like storage containers for the disease. Rats give the parasite a place to hide in case the peep gets hunted down.

Infected rats are devoted to their peeps, tracking them by smell. The rat brood also serves as a handy food source for the peep when there aren’t humans around to hunt. (Icky, I know. But that’s nature for you.)

Back to the myths:

Parasite-positives do appear in mirrors. I mean, get real: How would the mirror know what was behind the peep?

But this legend also has a basis in fact. As the parasite takes control, peeps begin to despise the sight of their own reflections. They smash all their mirrors. But if they’re so beautiful, why do they hate their own faces?

Well, it’s all about the anathema.

The most famous example of disease mind control is rabies. When a dog becomes rabid, it has an uncontrollable urge to bite anything that moves: squirrels, other dogs, you. This is how rabies reproduces; biting spreads the virus from host to host.

A long time ago, the parasite was probably like rabies. When people got infected, they had an overpowering urge to bite other humans. So they bit them. Success!

But eventually human beings got organized in ways that dogs and squirrels can’t. We invented posses and lynch mobs, made up laws, and appointed law enforcers. As a result, the biting maniacs among us tend to have fairly short careers. The only peeps who survived were the ones who ran away and hid, sneaking back at night to feed their mania.

The parasite followed this survival strategy to the extreme. It evolved over

the generations to transform the minds of its victims, finding a chemical switch among the pathways of the human brain. When that switch is thrown, we despise everything we once loved. Peeps cower when confronted with their old obsessions, despise their loved ones, and flee from any signifier of home.

Love is easy to switch to hatred, it turns out. The term for this is the

anathema effect.

The anathema effect forced peeps from their medieval villages and out into the wild, where they were safe from lynch mobs. And it spread the disease geographically. Peeps moved to the next valley over, then the next country, pushed farther and farther by their hatred of everything familiar.

As cities grew, with more police and bigger lynch mobs, peeps had to adopt new strategies to stay hidden. They learned to love the night and see in the dark, until the sun itself became anathema to them.

But come on: They don’t burst into flame in daylight. They just really, really hate it.

The anathema also created some familiar vampire legends. If you grew up in Europe in the Middle Ages, chances were you were a Christian. You went to church at least twice a week, prayed three times a day, and had a crucifix hanging in every room. You made the sign of the cross every time you ate food or wished for good luck. So it’s not surprising that most peeps back then had major cruciphobia—they could actually be repelled by the sight of a cross, just like in the movies.

In the Middle Ages, the crucifix was the big anathema: Elvis and Manhattan and your boyfriend all rolled into one.

Things were so much simpler back then.

These days, we hunters have to do our homework before we go after a peep. What were their favorite foods? What music did they like? What movie stars did they have crushes on? Sure, we still find a few cases of cruciphobia, especially down in the Bible Belt, but you’re much more likely to stop peeps with an iPod full of their favorite tunes. (With certain geeky peeps, I’ve heard, the Apple logo alone does the trick.)

That’s why new peep hunters like me start with people they used to know, so we don’t have to guess what their anathemas are. Hunting the people who once loved us is as easy as it gets. Our own faces work as a reminder of their former lives. We are the anathema.

So what am I? you may be asking.

I am parasite-positive, technically a peep, but I can still listen to Kill Fee and Deathmatch, watch a sunset, or put Tabasco on scrambled eggs without howling. Through some trick of evolution, I’m partly immune, the lucky winner of the peep genetic lottery. Peeps like me are rarer than hens’ teeth: Only one in every hundred victims becomes stronger and faster, with

incredible hearing and a great sense of smell, without being driven crazy by the anathema.

We’re called carriers, because we have the disease without all the symptoms. Although there is this one extra symptom that we do have: The disease makes us horny. All the time.

The parasite doesn’t want us carriers to go to waste, after all. We can still spread the disease to other humans. Like that of the maniacs, our saliva carries the parasite’s spores. But we don’t bite; we kiss, the longer and harder the better.

The parasite makes sure that I’m like the always-hungry snail, except hungry for sex. I’m constantly aroused, aware of every female in the room, every cell screaming for me to go out and shag someone!

None of which makes me wildly different from most other nineteen-year- old guys, I suppose. Except for one small fact: If I act on my urges, my unlucky lovers become monsters, like Sarah did. And this is not much fun to watch.

Dr. Rat showed up first, like she’d been waiting by the phone.

Her footsteps echoed through the ferry terminal, along with a rattling noise. I left Sarah’s side and went out to the balcony. Dr. Rat had a dozen folding cages strapped to her back, like some giant insect with old-lady hair and unsteady metal wings, ready to trap some samples of Sarah’s brood.

“Couldn’t wait, could you?” I called.

“No,” she yelled up. “It’s a big one, isn’t it?”

“Seems to be.” The brood was still behind me, quietly attending to its sleeping mistress.

She looked at the half-fallen staircase with annoyance. “Did you do that?” “Um, sort of.”

“So how am I supposed to get up there, Kid?”

I just shrugged. I’m not a big fan of the nickname “Kid.” They all call me that at the Night Watch, just because I’m a peep hunter at nineteen, a job where the average age is about a hundred and seventy-five. All peep hunters are carriers. Only carriers are fast and strong enough to hunt down our crazy, violent cousins.

Dr. Rat’s usually pretty cool, though. She doesn’t mind her own nickname, mostly because she actually likes rats. And even though she’s about sixty and wears enough hair-spray to stick a bear to the ceiling, she plays good alternative metal and lets me rip her CDs—Kill Fee hasn’t made a dime off me since I met Dr. Rat. And mercifully, she falls well off my sexual radar, so I can actually concentrate in the Night Watch classes she teaches (Rats 101, Peep Hunting 101, and Early Plagues and Pestilence).

Like most people who work at the Night Watch, she’s not parasite- positive. She’s just a working stiff who loves her job. You have to, working at

the Night Watch. The pay’s not great.

With one last look at the crumpled staircase, Dr. Rat began to set out her traps, then started laying out piles of poison.

“Isn’t there enough of that stuff around already?” I asked.

“Not like this. Something new I’m trying. It’s marked with Essence of Cal Thompson. A few swabs of your sweat on each pile and they’ll eat hearty.”

“My what?” I said. “Where’d you get my sweat?”

“From a pencil I borrowed from you in Rats 101, after that pop quiz last week. Did you know pop quizzes make you sweat, Cal?”

“Not that much!”

“Only takes a little—along with some peanut butter.”

I wiped my palms on my jacket, not sure how annoyed to be.

Rats are great smellers, gourmets of garbage. When they eat, they can detect one part of rat poison in a million. And they can smell their peeps from a mile away. Because I was Sarah’s progenitor, my familiar smell would cover the taint of poison.

I supposed it was worth having my sweat stolen. We had to kill off Sarah’s brood before it fell apart and scattered into the rest of Hoboken. A hungry brood that has lost its peep can be dangerous, and the parasite occasionally spreads from rats back into humans. The last thing New Jersey needed was another peep.

That’s the interesting thing about Dr. Rat: She loves rats but also loves coming up with new and exciting ways to kill them. Like I said, love and hatred aren’t that far apart.

The transport squad arrived ten minutes later. They didn’t wait for sunset, just cut the locks off the biggest set of doors and backed their garbage truck right up to them, its reverse beep echoing through the terminal to wake the dead. Garbage trucks are perfect for the transport squad. They’re like the digestive system of the modern world—no one ever thinks twice about them. They’re built like tanks and yet are completely invisible to regular people going about their regular business. And if the guys who ride on them happen to be wearing thick protective suits and rubber gloves, well, nothing funny about that, is there? Garbage is dangerous stuff, after all.

Rather than chance the ruined staircase, the transport guys reached into their truck for rope ladders with grappling hooks. They climbed up, then lowered Sarah to the ground floor in a litter. They always carry mountain- rescue gear, it turns out.

I watched the whole operation while I did my paperwork, then asked the transport boss if I could come along in the truck with Sarah.

He shook his head and said, “No rides, Kid. Anyway, the Shrink wants to see you.”

“Oh,” I said.

When the Shrink calls, you go.

By the time I got back into Manhattan, darkness had fallen.

In New York City, they grind up old glass, mix it into concrete, and make sidewalks out of it. Glassphalt looks pretty, especially if you’ve got peep eyesight. It sparkled underfoot as I walked, catching the orange glow of streetlights.

Most important, the glassphalt gave me something to look at besides the women passing by—trendy Villagers with chunky shoes and cool accessories, tourists looking around all wide-eyed and wanting to ask directions, NYU dance students in formfitting regalia. The worst thing about New York is that it’s full of beautiful women, enough to make my head start spinning with unthinkable thoughts.

My senses were still at the pitch that hunting brings them to. I could feel the rumble of distant subway trains through my feet and hear the buzz of streetlight timers in their metal boxes. I caught the smells of perfume, body lotion, and scented shampoo.

And stared at the sparkling sidewalk.

I was more depressed than horny, though. I kept seeing Sarah on that bare and rickety bed, asking for one last glimpse of the King, however painful.

I’d always thought that once I found her, things would uncrumble a little. Life would never be completely normal again, but at least certain debts had been settled. With her in recovery, my chain of the infection had been broken.

But I still felt crappy.

The Shrink always warned me that carriers stay wracked with lifelong guilt. It’s not an uplifting thing having turned lovers into monsters. We feel bad that we haven’t turned into monsters ourselves--survivor’s guilt, that’s called. And we feel a bit stupid that we didn’t notice our own symptoms earlier. I mean, I’d been sort of wondering why the Atkins diet was giving me night vision. But that hadn’t seemed like something to worry about…

And there was the burning question: Why hadn’t I been more concerned when my one real girlfriend, two girls I’d had a few dates with, and another I’d made out with on New Year’s Eve had all gone crazy?

I’d just thought that was a New York thing. Visiting the Shrink makes my ears pop.

She lives in the bowels of a Colonial-era town house, the original headquarters of the Night Watch, her office at the end of a long, narrow corridor. A soft but steady breeze pushes you toward her, like a phantom hand in the middle of your back. But it isn’t magic; it’s something called a negative-pressure prophylaxis, which is basically a big condom made of air. Throughout the house, a constant wind blows toward the Shrink from all directions. No stray microbes can escape from her out into the rest of the city, because all the air in the house moves toward her. After she’s breathed it, this

air gets microfiltered, chlorine-gassed, and roasted at about two hundred degrees Celsius before it pops out of the town house’s always-smoking chimney. It’s the same setup they have at bioweapons factories, and at the lab in Atlanta where scientists keep smallpox virus in a locked freezer.

The Shrink actually has smallpox, she once told me. She’s a carrier, like us hunters, but she’s been alive a lot longer, even longer than the Night Mayor. Old enough to have been around before inoculations were invented, back when measles and smallpox killed more people than war. The parasite makes her immune from all that stuff, of course, but she still wound up catching it, and she carries bits and pieces of various human scourges to this day. So they keep her in a bubble.

And yes, we peeps can live a really long time.

New York’s city government goes back about three hundred and fifty years, a century and a half older than the United States of America. The Night Watch Authority may have split off from official City Hall a while back—like the peeps we hunt, we have to hide ourselves—but the Night Mayor was appointed for a lifelong term in 1687. It just so happens he’s still alive. That makes us the oldest authority in the New World, edging the Freemasons by forty-six years. Not too shabby.

The Night Mayor was around to personally watch the witch trials of the 1690s. He was here during the Revolutionary War, when the black rats who used to run the city got pushed out by the gray Norwegian ones who still do, and he was here for the attempted Illuminati takeover in 1794. We know this town.

The shelves behind the Shrink’s desk were filled with her ancient doll collection, their crumbling heads sprouting hair made from horses’ manes and hand-spun flax. They sat in the dim light wearing stiff, painted smiles. I could imagine the sticky scent left by centuries of stroking kiddie fingers. And the Shrink hadn’t bought them as antiques; she’d lifted every one from the grasp of a sleeping child, back in the days when they were new.

Now that’s a weird kink, but it beats any fetishes that would spread the disease, I suppose. Sometimes I wonder if the whole living-in-a-bubble thing is just a way to keep the Shrink’s ancient and unfulfilled desires at bay. Summer days in Manhattan, when every woman in town is wearing a tank top or a sundress, I wish they’d lock me in a bubble somewhere.

“Hey, Kid,” she said, looking up from the papers on her desk.

I frowned but could hardly complain. After being around five centuries, you can pretty much call everybody “Kid.”

I took a seat, careful to stay well behind the red line painted on the floor. If you step over it, the Shrink’s minders take everything you’re wearing and burn it, and you have to go home in these penalty clothes that are too small, like the jacket and tie they force you to wear at fancy restaurants when you

show up underdressed. Everyone at the Watch remembers a carrier peep named Typhoid Mary, who wandered around too addled by the parasite to know that she was spreading typhus to everyone she slept with.

“Good evening, Doctor Prolix,” I said, careful not to raise my voice. It’s always weird talking to other carriers. The red line kept me and the Shrink about twenty feet apart, but we both had peep hearing, so it was rude to shout. Social reflexes take a long time to catch up to superpowers.

I closed my eyes, adjusting to the weird sensation of a total absence of smell. This doesn’t happen very often in New York City, and it never happens to me, except in the Shrink’s superclean office. As an almost-predator, I can smell the salt when someone’s crying, the acid tang of used AA batteries, and the mold living between the pages of an old book.

The Shrink’s reading light buzzed, set so low that its filament barely glowed, softening her features. As carriers get older, they begin to look more like full-blown peeps—wiry, wide-eyed, and gauntly beautiful. They don’t have enough flesh to get wrinkles; the parasite burns calories like running a marathon. Even after my afternoon at the diner, I was a little hungry myself.

After a few moments, she took her hands from the papers, steepled her fingers, and peered at me. “So, let me guess…”

This was how Dr. Prolix started every session, telling me what was in my own head. She wasn’t much for the so-how-does-that-make-you-feel school of head-shrinking. I noticed that her voice had the same dry timbre as Sarah’s, with a hint of dead, rustling leaves among her words.

“You have finally reached your goal,” she said. “And yet your long- sought redemption isn’t what you thought it would be.”

I had to sigh. The worst part of visiting the Shrink was being read like a book. But I decided not to make things too easy for her and just shrugged. “I don’t know. I had a long day drinking coffee and waiting for the clouds to clear. And then Sarah put up a wicked fight.”

“But the difficulty of a challenge usually makes its accomplishment more satisfying, not less.”

“Easy for you to say.” The bruises on my chest were still throbbing, and my ribs were knitting back together in an itchy way. “But it wasn’t really the fight. The messed-up thing was that Sarah recognized me. She said my name.”

Dr. Prolix’s Botoxed eyes widened even farther. “When you captured your other girlfriends, they didn’t speak to you, did they?”

“No. Just screamed when they saw my face.” She smiled gently. “That means they loved you.”

“I doubt it. None of them knew me that well.” Other than Sarah, who I’d met before I turned contagious, every woman I’d ever started a relationship with had begun to change in a matter of weeks.

“But they must have felt something for you, or the anathema wouldn’t have taken hold.” She smiled. “You’re a very attractive boy, Cal.”

I cleared my throat. A compliment from a five-hundred-year-old is like when your aunt says you’re cute. Not helpful in any way.

“How’s that going anyway?” she added.

“What? The enforced celibacy? Just great. Loving it.” “Did you try the rubber band trick?”

I held up my wrist. The Shrink had suggested I wear a rubber band there and ping myself with it every time I had a sexual thought. Negative reinforcement, like swatting your dog with a rolled-up newspaper.

“Mmm. A bit raw, isn’t it?” she said.

I glanced down at my wrist, which looked like I’d been wearing a razor- wire bracelet. “Evolution versus a rubber band. Which would you bet on?”

She nodded sympathetically. “Shall we turn back to Sarah?”

“Please. At least I know she really loved me; she almost killed me.” I stretched in the chair, my still-tender ribs creaking. “Here’s the funny thing, though. She was nested upstairs, with these big-ass windows looking out over the river. You could see Manhattan perfectly.”

“What’s so strange about that, Cal?”

I glanced away from her gaze, but the blank eyes of the dolls weren’t much better. Finally, I stared at the floor, where a tiny tumbleweed of dust was being sucked toward Dr. Prolix. Inescapably.

“Sarah was in love with Manhattan. The streets, the parks, everything about it. She owned all these New York photo books, knew the histories of buildings. How could she stand to look at the skyline?” I glanced up at Dr. Prolix. “Could her anathema be, like, broken somehow?”

The Shrink’s fingers steepled again as she shook her head. “Not broken, exactly. The anathema can work in mysterious ways. My patients and the legends both report similar obsessions. I believe your generation calls it stalking.”

“Um, maybe. How do you mean?”

“The anathema creates a great hatred for beloved things. But that doesn’t mean that the love itself is entirely extinguished.”

I frowned. “But I thought that was the point. Getting you to reject your old life.”

“Yes, but the human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side.” Dr. Prolix leaned back in her chair. “You’re nineteen, Cal. Haven’t you ever known someone rejected by a lover, who, consumed by rage and jealousy, never lets go? They look on from a distance, unseen but boiling inside. The emotion never seems to tire, this hatred mixed with intense obsession, even with a kind of twisted love.”

“Uh, yeah. That would pretty much be stalking.” I nodded. “Kind of a

fatal attraction thing?”

“Yes, fatal is an apt word. It happens among the undead as well.”

A little shiver went through me. Only the really old hunters use the word

undead, but you have to admit it has a certain ring to it.

“There are legends,” she said, “and modern case studies in my files. Some of the undead find a balancing point between the attraction of their old obsessions and the revulsion of the anathema. They live on this knife’s edge, always pushed and pulled.”

“Hoboken,” I said softly. Or my sex life, for that matter.

We were silent for a while, and I remembered Sarah’s face after the pills had taken effect. She’d gazed at me without terror. I wondered if Sarah had ever stalked me, watching from the darkness after disappearing from my life, wanting a last glimpse before her Manhattan anathema had driven her across the river.

I cleared my throat. “Couldn’t that mean that Sarah might be more human than most peeps? After I gave her the pills, she wanted to see her Elvis doll … that is, the anathema I’d brought. She asked to see it.”

Dr. Prolix raised an eyebrow. “Cal, you aren’t fantasizing that Sarah might recover completely, are you?”

“Um … no?”

“That you might one day get back together? That you could have a lover again? One your own age, whom you couldn’t infect, because she already carries the disease?”

I swallowed and shook my head no, not wanting the lecture in Peeps 101 repeated to me: Full-blown peeps never come back.

You can whack the parasite into submission with drugs, but it’s hard to wipe it out completely. Like a tapeworm, it starts off microscopic but grows much bigger, flooding your body with different parts of itself. It wraps around your spine, creates cysts in your brain, changes your whole being to suit its purposes. Even if you could remove it surgically, the eggs can hide in your bone marrow or your brain. The symptoms can be controlled, but skip one pill, miss one shot, or just have a really upsetting bad-hair day, and you go feral all over again. Sarah could never be let loose in a normal human community.

Worse, the mental changes the parasite makes are permanent. Once those anathema switches get thrown in a peep’s brain, it’s pretty hard to convince a peep that they really, really used to love chocolate. Or, say, this guy from Texas called Cal.

“But don’t some peeps come back more than others?” I asked.

“The sad truth is, for most of those like Sarah, the struggle never ends. She may well stay this way for the rest of her life, on the edge between anathema and obsession. An uncomfortable fate.”

“Is there any way I can help?” My own words surprised me. I’d never been to the recovery hospital. All I knew about it was that it was way out in the Montana wilds, a safe distance from any cities. Recovering peeps usually don’t want their old boyfriends showing up, but maybe Sarah would be different.

“A familiar face may help her treatment, in time. But not until you deal with your own disquiet, Cal.”

I slumped in my chair. “I don’t even know what my disquiet is. Sarah freaked me out is all. I think I’m still…” I waved a hand in the air. “I just don’t feel… done yet.”

The Shrink nodded sagely. “Perhaps that’s because you aren’t done, Cal.

There is, after all, one more matter to be settled. Your progenitor.”

I sighed. I’d been over all this before, with Dr. Prolix and the older hunters, and in my own head about a hundred thousand times. It never did any good.

You may have been wondering: If Sarah was my first girlfriend, where did I catch the disease?

I wish I knew.

Okay, I obviously knew how it happened, and the exact date and pretty close to the exact time. You don’t forget losing your virginity, after all.

But I didn’t actually know who it was. I mean, I got her name and everything—Morgan. Well, her first name anyway.

The big problem was, I didn’t remember where. Not a clue. Well, one clue: “Bahamalama-Dingdong.”

It was only two days after I first got to New York, fresh off the plane from Texas, ready to start my first year at college. I already wanted to study biology, even though I’d heard that was a tough major.

Little did I know.

At that point, I could hardly find my way around the city. I got the general concept of uptown and downtown, although they didn’t really match north and south, I knew from my compass. (Don’t laugh, they’re useful.) I’m pretty sure that this all happened somewhere downtown, because the buildings weren’t quite so tall and the streets were pretty busy that night. I remember lights rippling on water at some point, so I might have been close to the Hudson. Or maybe the East River.

And I remember the Bahamalama-Dingdong. Several, in fact. They’re some kind of drink. My sense of smell wasn’t superhuman back then, but I’m pretty sure they had rum in them. Whatever they had, there was a lot of it. And something sweet too. Maybe pineapple juice, which would make the Bahamalama-Dingdong a close cousin of the Bahama Mama.

Now, the Bahama Mama can be found on Google or in cocktail books. It’s rum, pineapple juice, and a liqueur called Nassau Royale, and it is from the

Bahamas. But the Bahamalama-Dingdong has much more shadowy origins. After I found out what I’d been infected with and realized who must have done it, I searched every bar I could find in the Village. But I never met a single bartender who knew how to make one. Or who’d even heard of them.

Like a certain Morgan Whatever, the Bahamalama-Dingdong had come out of the darkness, seduced me, then disappeared.

These searches didn’t evoke a single memory flashback. No hazy images of pinball machines jumped out at me, no sudden glimpses of Morgan’s long dark hair and pale skin. And, no—being a carrier doesn’t make you pale- skinned or gothy-looking. Get real. Morgan was probably just some goth type who didn’t know she was about to turn into a bloodthirsty maniac.

Unless, of course, she was someone like me: a carrier. But one who got off on changing lovers into Deeps. Either way, I hadn’t seen her since.

So this is all I can remember:

There I was, sitting in a bar in New York City and thinking, Wow, I’m sitting in a bar in New York City. This thought probably runs through the heads of a lot of newly arrived freshmen who manage to get served. I was drinking a Bahamalama-Dingdong because the bar I was sitting in was “The Home of the Bahamalama-Dingdong.” It said so on a sign outside.

A pale-skinned woman with long dark hair sat beside me and said, “What the hell is that thing?”

Maybe it was the frozen banana bobbing in my drink that provoked the question. I suddenly felt a bit silly. “Well, it’s this drink that lives here. Says so on the sign out front.”

“Is it good?”

It was good, but I only shrugged. “Yeah. Kind of sweet, though.” “Kind of girly-looking, don’t you think?”

I did think. The drink had been a vague sort of embarrassment to me since it had arrived, frozen banana bobbing to the music. But the other guys in the bar had seemed not to notice. And they were all pretty tough-looking, what with their leather chaps and all.

I pushed the banana down into the drink, but it popped back up. It wasn’t really trying to be obnoxious, but frozen bananas have a lower specific density than rum and pineapple juice, it turns out.

“I don’t know about girly,” I said. “Looks like a boy to me.” She smiled at my accent. “Yerr not from around here, are yew?” “Nope. I’m from Texas.” I took a sip.

“Texas? Well, hell!” She slapped me on the back. I’d already figured out in those two days that Texas is one of the “brand-name” states. Being from Texas is much cooler than being from a merely recognizable state, like Connecticut or Florida, or a huh? state, like South Dakota. Texas gets you noticed.

“I’ll have one of those,” she said to the bartender, pointing to my Bahamalama-Dingdong, which pointed back. Then she said her name was Morgan.

Morgan drank hers, I drank mine. We both drank a few more. My recall of subsequent events gets steadily worse. But I do remember that she had a cat, a flat-screen TV, black satin sheets, and a knack for saying what she thought— and that’s pretty much all I remember, except for waking up the next morning, getting kicked out of an unfamiliar apartment because she had to go somewhere and was looking all embarrassed, and heading home with a hangover that made navigation difficult. By the time I got back to my dorm room, I had no idea where I’d started out.

All I had to show for the event was a newfound confidence with women, slowly manifesting superpowers, and an appetite for rare meat.

“We’ve been over all that,” I said to Dr. Prolix. “I still can’t help you.” “This is not about helping me,” she said firmly. “You won’t come to

terms with your disease until you find your progenitor.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve tried. But like you’ve said before, she must have moved away or died or something.” That had always been the big mystery. If Morgan was still around, we’d be seeing her handiwork everywhere—peeps popping up all over the city, a bloodbath every time she picked up some foolish young Texan in a bar. Or at least a few corpses every now and then. “I mean, it’s been over a year, and we don’t have a single clue.”

“Didn’t have a clue,” she said, and rang a small, high-pitched bell on her desk. Somewhere out of sight but within earshot, a minder tapped away at a computer keyboard. A moment later, the printer on my side of the red line began to hum, its cartridge jerking to life below the plastic cover.

“This was recently brought to my attention, Cal. Now that you’ve dealt with Sarah, I thought you might want to see it.”

I stood and went to the printer and lifted with trembling fingers the warm piece of paper that slid into its tray. It was a scanned handbill, like they pass out on the street sometimes:

Dick’s Bar Is Back in Business!

— Seven Days a Week--

The Health Department Couldn’t Keep Us Down!

*The One and Only Home of the Bahamalama-Dingdong* Dr. Prolix watched me read it, steepling her fingers again. “Feeling thirsty?” she asked.

 

Chapter 4 TOXOPLASMA

Flip a coin. Tails? Relax.

Heads? You’ve got parasites in your brain.

That’s right. Half of us carry the Toxoplasma gondii parasite. But don’t reach for the power drill just yet.

Toxoplasma is microscopic. Human immune systems usually kick its ass, so if you’ve got it, you’ll probably never even know. In fact, toxoplasma doesn’t even want to be in your head. Trapped inside your thick skull, under assault by your immune defenses, it can’t lay eggs, which is a big evolutionary Game Over.

Toxoplasma would much rather live in your cat’s digestive system, eating cat food and laying eggs. Then, when kitty takes a crap, these eggs wind up on the ground, waiting for other scurrying creatures. Like, say, rats.

A quick word about rats: They’re basically parasite subway trains, carrying them from place to place. In my job, we call this being a vector. Rats go everywhere in the world, and they breed like crazy. Catching a ride on the Rat Express is a major way that diseases have evolved to spread themselves.

When toxoplasma gets into a rat, the parasite starts to make changes to its host’s brain. If a normal rat bumps into something that smells like a cat, it freaks out and runs away. But toxoplasma-infected rats actually like the smell of cats. Kitty pee makes them curious. They’ll explore for hours trying to find the source.

Which is a cat. Which eats them.

And that makes toxoplasma happy, because toxoplasma really, really wants to live in the stomach of a cat.

Parasite geeks have a phrase for what cats are to toxoplasma: the “final host.”

A final host is the place where a parasite can live happily ever after, getting free food, having lots of babies. Most parasites live in more than one kind of animal, but they’re all trying to reach their final host, the ultimate vector … parasite heaven.

Toxoplasma uses mind control to get to its heaven. It makes the rat want

to go looking for cats and get eaten. Spooky, huh?

But nothing like that would work on us humans, right?

Well, maybe. No one’s really sure what toxoplasma does to human beings. But when researchers collected a bunch of people with and without

toxoplasma, gave them personality tests, observed their habits, and interviewed their friends, this is what they learned:

Men infected with toxoplasma don’t shave every day, don’t wear ties too much, and don’t like following social rules. Women infected with toxoplasma like to spend money on clothes, and they tend to have lots of friends. The rest of us think they’re more attractive than non-infected women. In general, the researchers found that infected people are more interesting to be around.

On the other hand, people without toxoplasma in their brains like following the rules. If you lend them money, they’re more likely to pay you back. They show up for work on time. The men get into fewer fights. The women have fewer boyfriends.

Could this be toxoplasma mind control?

But that’s just too weird, isn’t it? There has to be another explanation.

Maybe some people always hated getting to work on time, and they like having felines around because cats wouldn’t go to work on time either, if they had any work to go to. These people adopted cats and then got toxoplasma.

Maybe the other half of humanity, the ones who enjoy following the rules, usually get dogs. Fetch. Sit. Stay. So, their brains stay toxoplasma-free.

Maybe these are two kinds of people who were already different. Or maybe not.

That’s the thing about parasites: It’s hard to tell if they’re the chicken or the egg. Maybe we’re all really robots, walking around doing the bidding of our parasites. Just like those hungry, twitching snails …

Do you really love your cat? Or is the toxoplasma in your head telling you to take care of kitty, its final host, so that one day it too will reach parasite heaven?

 

Chapter 5 BAHAMALAMA-DINGDONG

Dick’s Bar hadn’t changed all that much, but I had.

It wasn’t just my superpowers. I was older, wiser, and had lived in New York for just over a year now. I had grown-up eyes.

It turned out that Dick’s Bar didn’t get a lot of female patronage. Not much at all. Just a lot of guys playing pool in their leather chaps, drinking beer and swigging the occasional Jell-O shot, listening to a mix of country and classic disco. A typical West Village bar.

It was a relief, really. I could hang out here without having to stare into my drink, trying to avoid contact with any hot girls. Even better, any woman who was a regular would stick out like a banana in a highball glass. Surely someone would remember a tall, pale-skinned creature wearing a long black dress and picking up wayward Texans.

“Drink?” the bartender asked.

I nodded. A little stimulus for my fugitive memories wouldn’t hurt. “A Bahamalama-Dingdong, please.”

The bartender raised an eyebrow, then turned to ring a bell over the bar. A few guys playing pool in the back chuckled, and something dislodged itself from the cloudy sky of memories inside my head.

Ding! said my brain, as I recalled that whenever anyone ordered a Bahamalama-Dingdong, they rang a special bell. Hence the “dingdong” part of the name.

Well, partly. I watched the bartender take a banana from the freezer. He put it in a tall highball glass and poured rum over it, then mystery juice from a plastic container marked BID, and finally a careful layer of red liqueur across the top. I detected a scent like cough medicine rising up.

“Nassau Royale?” I asked.

The bartender nodded. “Yeah. Do I remember you?”

“You mean, from before the Health Department shut you down?” I asked. “Yeah,” he said. “You don’t look so familiar, though.”

I nodded. “I’ve only been here once, actually. But I had a friend who used to come all the time. Named Morgan?”

“Morgan?”

“Yeah. Tall, dark hair, pale skin. Black dresses. Kind of gothy?” Pause. “A woman?”

“Yeah.”

He shook his head. “Not ringing a bell. You sure you got the right place?” I looked down at the Bahamalama-Dingdong, the Nassau Royale-stained banana looking back at me like a bloodshot eye, and took a sip. Tropical fruit sweetness poured over my tongue, textured by strips of rind shedding from the frozen banana. That night of more than a year before began to flood back

into my mind, carried on pineapples and the burnt taste of dark rum. “I’m positive,” I said.

There wasn’t much to do but get drunk.

The bartender asked around, but no one remembered Morgan or even vaguely recalled a gothlike woman who had hung out here in the old days. Maybe, like me, she’d randomly wandered in off the street that night.

On the other hand, if her inner parasite had been pulling her strings, making her desperately horny, then why had she chosen a gay bar, the place she was least likely to get lucky? (Had she been as clueless as my younger self? Hmm.)

I let the drinks take hold, ringing more bells, bringing back stray fragments of memory from that night. There definitely had been a river involved; I recalled reflected lights rippling in boat wakes. All the Bahamalama-Dingdongs that Morgan and I had drunk had put a little stumble into our step. I’d been worried she’d go over the rail and I’d have to leap into the cold water to save her, even though I wasn’t fit to walk a dog.

We had strolled out to the end of a long pier and stood looking at the river. The Hudson or the East River, though?

Then I remembered: At some point I’d checked my compass and announced that we were facing northwest, which made her laugh. Definitely the Hudson, then. We’d been looking at New Jersey.

What had happened next?

I tried to press the hazy memories forward in time, but my mind was stuck on that image of New Jersey reflected in the river—Hoboken already teasing me from across the water. No matter how hard I concentrated, I couldn’t recall a single step of the route we’d taken back to Morgan’s apartment.

A guy came up next to me, back here in the present.

It took a few moments to pull myself out of my Bahamalama-Dingdong reverie, but I could tell from his scent that he’d just come back into the bar from catching a smoke outside. His leather vest was cow-smell new, and he wore an intrigued expression. Maybe he’d heard I’d been asking about Morgan.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey. What’s your name?”

“Cal.” I reached to shake his hand.

“I’m Dave. So … what are you into, Cal?” he asked. I paused for a second before answering.

I couldn’t tell him what I was really into: finding the woman who had turned me into a superhuman freak, taking the next step in destroying my bloodline—dealing with my progenitor, then hunting down any more peeps she had created, and then delving further into the endless, knotted tree of the parasite’s spread. So I cast my mind back to the homework I’d been reading in the diner that morning as I’d waited for the clouds to clear.

“Hookworms,” I said.

“Hookworms?” He took the seat next to me. “Never heard of that.” I sipped from my third Bahamalama-Dingdong.

“Well, they burrow in through your feet, using this enzyme that breaks down skin tissue, then travel along the bloodstream till they get into your lungs. They mess up your breathing, so you cough them up. But you know how you always swallow a little bit of phlegm?”

One of his eyebrows raised, but he admitted he did.

“Well, a few hookworm eggs get swallowed along with the phlegm and travel down into your intestines, where they grow to be about half an inch long.” I held up my fingers a hookworm’s length apart. “And they develop this circle of teeth in their mouths, like a coil of barbed wire. They start chomping into your intestinal wall and sucking your blood.” I realized I was going into drunken detail here and paused to check if he was still interested.

“Really?” His voice sounded a bit dry.

I nodded. “Wouldn’t lie to you, Dave. But here’s the cool thing. They produce this special anticlotting factor, kind of like blood antifreeze, so the wound doesn’t scab over. You become a sort of temporary hemophiliac, just in that one spot. Your intestines won’t stop bleeding until the hookworm gets its fill!”

“Hookworms, huh?” he asked. “That’s what they’re called.”

Dave nodded gravely, standing back up. He grasped my shoulder firmly, a serious expression on his face. His thoughtful features seemed to reflect for a moment the hard road I had in front of me.

“Good luck with that,” he said.

I figured seven Bahamalama-Dingdongs would do the job.

That was probably more than I’d drunk my first time at Dick’s, but these days I was older and more superhuman. I did a professional job of getting off my stool, and my feet got into a pretty good rhythm after shuffling a bit at first. My metabolism may be peeped up, but there’s only so much rum even my body can process before it starts to sputter. All in all, I’d managed a pretty fair reconstruction of my first really wicked buzz in New York City.

I headed off to retrace my stumbling path from a year before.

The bartender watched me go with an impressed-looking nod, and Dave waved from behind the pool table. As the evening had progressed, he’d sent

some of his friends over to ask about hookworms, and they’d all listened attentively. I’d thrown in some stuff about blood flukes, too. So it hadn’t been like drinking alone.

Outside Dick’s Bar, the streetlights wore coronas of orange, and the glassphalt shimmered like sugar crystals on top of lemon meringue pie. My breath curled out steamy, but the warmth from inside Dick’s still saturated my jacket, its fingers nestled around me like a cluster of liver worms.

Okay, bad image. But I was a little drunk.

My feet carried me toward the river automatically, but I wasn’t remembering the route to Morgan’s yet. It was just gravity doing its job.

Skateboarding around the city, I’d noticed the Hump, how the ground rises in the center of Manhattan and falls away toward the rivers, like the slippery back of a giant whale emerging from the harbor. A really giant whale: The slope is barely perceptible—you only feel it on a board or a bike, or if your stride is lubricated by seven or so Bahamalama-Dingdongs.

My feet had wheels, and I rolled toward the water effortlessly.

Soon I glimpsed the river at the end of the street, sparkling as it had that night. A walkway stretched along the water. By instinct, I turned north. It was a little tricky staying between the pedestrian lines, though. A few bikers and skaters whirred around me, leaving annoyed comments in their wake. I commented right back at them, my words a little slurred. Outside the warm company of Dick’s Bar, my Bahamalama-Dingdongs had made me antisocial.

But my mood lifted when I saw the pier.

It stretched out into the water, as long as a football field. Mismatched beats from various boom boxes echoed across the water from it, and bright lights beamed down from high posts.

Was that the same pier Morgan and I had stood on that night?

There was one way to find out. I shambled to the end of the pier, trying to ignore kissing couples and a group of very cute roller-dancing girls, and pulled my trusty compass out. The needle steadied itself to magnetic north.

I was facing northwest, the exact reading I’d taken a year before.

I breathed in deeply, tasting ocean salt, green algae, and motor oil in the air, all familiar from that night. This had to be the place.

But what now?

I gazed out onto the river. On either side of me, the timbers of abandoned piers rose up from the water like rotting black teeth. More pieces of my memory were falling into place, like a blurry picture downloading in waves, gradually becoming clearer.

Then I saw the dark hulk of a building across the Hudson, its three giant maws open to the river. The Hoboken Ferry Terminal. Without knowing it, I’d had a glimpse of my future that night a year before.

My peep-strength eyes caught a flicker of lights in its second-story

windows. Dr. Rat was still up there, probably with a dozen or so of her colleagues from Research and Development, studying the nesting habits of Sarah’s brood. Weighing and measuring poisoned alpha rats and punks. Maybe looking for a rare “rat king”—a bunch of rats with tangled-up tails who travel in a pack all tied together, like dogs being walked by a professional dog walker, ten leashes in hand.

With Sarah gone, her brood would be disintegrating over the next few days, scattering into nearby alleys and sewers like runoff from an autumn storm. I wondered if the rats would miss her. Did they get something more than leftovers from their peeps? A sense of belonging?

The thought of all those orphaned creatures depressed me, and I turned back toward Manhattan.

My heart drunkenly skipped a beat.

Before me, just across the highway, a razor-thin high-rise stood.

Buildings get their personality from their windows, just like people express themselves with their eyes. This building had a schizophrenic look. Its lower floors were cluttered with tiny balconies, but along the top floor stretched floor-to-ceiling windows, wide open with surprise. I remembered Morgan pointing the building out to me, giggling and squeezing my hand…

“That’s where I live!” she’d said, thus marking the exact moment when I had been absolutely positive I was going to get laid.

How the hell does anyone forget a moment like that? I wondered. Shaking my head in amazement, I stumbled back up the pier.

The first trick was getting in.

Funny. I hadn’t remotely remembered that Morgan lived in a luxury building: river views and duplex penthouses, a lobby encased in marble and brass, the uniformed doorman watching six TV monitors.

Give a boy the loss of his virginity and much else is forgotten.

I watched from across the street, hiding behind a cluster of newspaper boxes, waiting for just the right bunch of residents to follow through the door

—my age or so, a little bit drunk, and enough of them for me to follow along unnoticed.

Of course, if I was really lucky I’d see Morgan herself. But what was I going to say to her? Hey, do you know you’re carrying vampirism? What’s up with that?

The minutes passed slowly, the night growing steadily colder. The wind roaring off the river stopped being invigorating and veered over into cruel. My Bahamalama-Dingdong buzz began to wear off, and soon my system started demanding more blood sugar. It occurred to me that the only solid food I’d had for dinner was seven frozen bananas, not enough for my voracious parasites.

Bad host. Hungry parasites can provoke crazy behavior.

Worst of all, I felt like I was being the stalker now, stuck between anathema and obsession.

Just after midnight, I spotted my ticket inside.

They were three girls and two guys, college-aged, dressed for a night out. They shouted jokes at one another, their voices still pitched for whatever loud bar they had spent the evening in.

I left my cover and started across the street, timing my move to reach the outer door just as they did.

They hardly noticed me, still arguing about what kind of pizza to order. “Lots of cheese. Hangover helper,” one guy was saying. The others laughed and voted their way to a split ticket of two large—one mushroom and one pepperoni, both with extra cheese. Sounded pretty good to me, after all those drinks. As we approached the door, I tried to look interested in the conversation while hanging at the back of the pack.

Through the glass, the doorman looked up with a smile of weary and indulgent recognition, and the inner door buzzed as one of the women reached for its handle. Warm air rushed over us, and I was inside.

As we crossed the lobby toward the elevators together, the woman who’d opened the door glanced back at me. A questioning look troubled her expression. I returned her gaze blankly. With four friends around her, she shouldn’t be so nervous about a stranger, but sometimes normal humans get a weird feeling from us predator types.

Of course, I was getting a weird feeling about her too.

She wore a leather jacket over a short plaid dress that left her knees bare to the cold. Her hair lay across her forehead in a jet-black fringe that had grown out too long, ending just above her dark brown eyes. It took me a moment to realize that in the days before I lusted after all women all the time, this girl would have been my type.

She kept watching me as her friends prattled on, her expression more thoughtful than suspicious. When she ran her tongue between her lips in a distracted way, a little shudder went through me, and I tore my eyes away.

Bad carrier, I scolded myself, snapping a mental rubber band against my wrist.

The elevator dinged and opened, and the six of us crowded inside. I tucked myself into the corner. The pizza consensus had become unglued, and everyone besides the girl in the leather jacket was arguing again, the reflected sound from the shiny steel walls sharpening their voices.

Then a smell reached me—jasmine shampoo. I glanced up and saw the girl pushing her fingers through her hair. Somehow, the fragrance cut through the cigarette smoke clinging to their clothes, the alcohol on their breath; it carried her human scent to my nose—the smell of her skin, the natural oils on her fingers.

I shuddered again.

She pressed seven, glanced at me. “What floor?”

I stared at the controls. The array of buttons covered one through fifteen (without the thirteen), in three columns. I tried to imagine Morgan’s hand reaching out and pressing one of them, but my mind was in turmoil over the smell of jasmine.

The Bahamalama-Dingdong memory injection had finally let me down. “Any particular floor?” she said slowly.

“Um, I uh…” I managed, my voice dry. “Do you know Morgan?”

She froze, one finger still hovering near the buttons, and the rest of them fell into a sudden silence. They all stared at me.

The elevator meeped away a couple of floors. “Morgan on the seventh floor?” she said.

“Yeah … I think so,” I answered. How many Morgans could there be in one building?

“Hey, isn’t that the—?” one of the boys asked, but the other three shushed him.

“She moved out last winter,” leather-jacket girl said, her voice controlled and flat.

“Oh, wow. It’s been a while, I guess.” I lit up a big fake smile. “You don’t know where she lives now, do you?”

She shook her head slowly. “Not a clue.”

The elevator slid open on the seventh floor. The doors stirred the air, and I caught something under the cigarettes and alcohol on their breath, an animal smell that cut through even the jasmine. For a moment, I smelled fear.

Morgan’s name had scared them.

The other four piled out efficiently, still in silence, but leather-jacket girl held her ground, one fingertip squashed white against the Open Door button. She was staring at me like I was someone she half recognized, thinking hard. Maybe she was trying to figure out why I set her prey hackles on fire.

I wanted to drop my eyes to the floor, sending a classic signal from Mammal Behavior 101 I don’t want to fight you. Humans can be touchy when they feel threatened by us, and I didn’t want her telling the doorman I had snuck in behind them.

But I held her gaze, my eyes captured.

“Guess I’ll just go, then.” I settled back against the elevator wall. “Yeah, sure.” She took one step back out of the elevator, still staring.

The doors began to slide closed, but at the last second her hand shot through. There was a binging sound as her leather-clad forearm was squeezed; then the doors jumped back.

“Got a minute, dude?” she asked. “Maybe there’s something you can explain for me.”

Apartment 701 was full of déjá vu.

The long, narrow living room had a half kitchen at one end. At the other, glass doors looked out onto a tiny balcony, the river, and the ghostly lights of New Jersey. Two more doors led to a bathroom and a small bedroom.

A classic upscale Manhattan one-bedroom apartment, but the devil was in the details: the stainless steel fridge, sliding dimmers instead of regular light switches, fancy brass handles on the doors—everything was sending waves of recognition through me.

“Did she live here?” I asked.

“Morgan? Hell, no,” the girl said, slipping off her leather jacket and tossing it onto a chair. The other four kept their coats on, I noticed. Their expressions reminded me of people at a party right after the cops turn the lights on, their buzz thoroughly killed. “She lived down the hall.”

I nodded. All the apartments in the building must have looked pretty much the same. “So you know her?”

She shook her head.

“Lace moved in after,” one of the boys volunteered. The rest of them gave him a Shut up! look.

“After what?” I said. She didn’t answer.

“Come on, Lace,” the boy said. “You’re going to show him the thing, aren’t you? That’s why you asked him in, right?”

“Roger, why don’t you call for the pizza?” Lace said sharply.

He retreated to the kitchen muttering. I heard the manic beeps of speed- dialing, then Roger specifying extra cheese in a wounded tone.

The rest of us had filtered into the living room. Lace’s three other friends took seats, still keeping their coats on.

“How well do you know Morgan?” Lace asked. She and I remained standing, as if faced off against each other, but out of the confines of the elevator, her smell was more diffuse, and I found it easier not to stare so maniacally.

To distract myself,T cataloged the furniture: urban rescue, musty couches and other cast-offs, a coffee table held up by a pair of wooden produce boxes. The tattered décor didn’t go with the sanded floorboards or the million-dollar views.

“Don’t know her that well, really,” I said. She frowned, so I added, “But we’re related. Cousins.”

Kind of a fib, I know. But our parasites are related, after all. That has to count for something.

Lace nodded slowly. “You’re related, but you don’t know where she lives?”

“She’s hard to find sometimes.” I shrugged, like it was no big deal. “My

name’s Cal, by the way.”

“Lace, short for Lacey. Look, Cal, I never met this girl. She disappeared before I got here.”

“Disappeared?” “Moved out.”

“Oh. How long ago was that?”

“I got in here at the beginning of March. She’d already been gone a month, as far as anyone knows. She was the weird one, according to the other people in the building.”

“The weird one?”

“The weirdest on the seventh floor,” she said. “They were all kind of strange, people tell me.”

“The whole floor was strange?” Lace just shrugged.

I raised an eyebrow. New Yorkers don’t usually bond with their neighbors, not enough to gossip about former tenants—unless, of course, there are some really good stories to tell. I wondered what Lace had heard.

But my instincts told me to back off for the moment. The five of them were still twitchy, and there was something Lace didn’t want to say in front of the others. I could smell her indecision, tinged with a weird sort of embarrassment. She wanted something from me.

I opened my hands, like I had nothing to hide. “In the elevator, you said you had a question?”

Lace bit her lip, having a long, slow think. Then she sighed and sat down in the center of the couch. The other two girls scrunched into its corners to make room for her.

“Yeah, maybe there’s something you can tell me, dude.” She swallowed and lowered her voice. “Why am I only paying a thousand bucks a month for this place?”

When the shocked silence finally broke, the others were appalled.

“You told me sixteen hundred when I stayed here!” Roger screamed through the kitchen doorway.

Lace rolled her eyes at him. “That was just so you’d pay your long- distance bill. It’s not like you were paying any rent!”

“A thousand? That’s all?” said one of the girls, sitting bolt upright on the couch. “But you’ve got a doorman!”

Hell hath no fury like New Yorkers in someone else’s cheap apartment. And what with the elevator, the doorman in his marble lobby, and those sunset views across the river, I reckoned the place should be about three thousand a month at least. Or maybe four? So far out of my league I wouldn’t even know.

“I take it this isn’t a rent-control thing?” I said.

Lace shook her head. “They just built this place last year. I’m only the second tenant in my apartment, like everyone else on the seventh floor. We all moved in around the same time.”

“You mean all the first tenants moved out together?” I asked. “From all four apartments on the seventh floor. Yeah.”

“A thousand bucks?” Roger said. “Wow. That makes me feel a lot better about the thing.”

“Shut up about the thing!” Lace said. She looked at me, rolled her eyes again. “It never made any sense. I spent all last winter sleeping on my sister’s couch in Brooklyn, trying to find a place to stay closer to school. But everything in Manhattan was too expensive, and I was way over roommates.”

“Hey, thanks a lot,” Roger said.

Lace ignored him. “But then my sister’s super says he’s got a line on this building they’re trying to fill up fast. A whole floor of people totally skipped out on their rent, and they want new tenants right away. So it’s cheap. Way cheap.” Her voice trailed off.

“You sound unhappy,” I said. “Why’s that?”

“We only signed up to finish the previous tenants’ leases,” she said. “There’s only a couple of months left. Everyone on seven’s talking about how they’re going to raise the rent, push us out one by one.”

I shrugged. “So how can I help you?”

“You know more than you’re saying, dude,” she said flatly.

The certainty in her eyes silenced me—I didn’t deny it, and Lace nodded slowly, positive now I wasn’t some long-lost cousin.

“Something happened here,” Lace said. “Something the landlords wanted to cover up. I need to know what it was.”

“Why?”

“Because I need leverage.” She leaned forward on the couch, fingers gripping the cushions with white-knuckled strength. “I’m not going back to my sister’s couch!”

Like I said: hell hath no fury.

I held up my hands in surrender. To get anything more out of her, I was going to have to give her some of the truth, but I needed time to get my story straight.

“Okay. I’ll tell you what I know,” I said. “But first … show me the thing.” She smiled. “I was going to anyway.”

“The thing is so cool,” Roger said. They’d done this before.

Without being told, the other two women turned off the lamps at either end of the couch. Roger flicked off the kitchen light and came through, sitting cross-legged in front of the white expanse of wall, almost like it was a TV screen.

It was dark now, the room glowing with dim orange from distant Jersey streetlights, accented by a bluish strip of night-light from under the bathroom door.

The other guy got out of his chair, scraping it out of our way, turning around to get his own view of the blank white wall.

“Is this a slide show?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Roger said, giggling and hugging his knees. “Fire up the projector, Lace.”

She grunted, rooting around under the coffee table and pulling out a fat candle and a pack of matches. She crossed the room carefully in the darkness and knelt beside the blank wall, setting the candle against the baseboard.

“Farther away,” Roger said.

“Shut up,” Lace countered. “I’ve done this more than you have.”

The match flared in her hand, and she put it to the candle’s wick. Just before the scent of sandalwood overpowered my nostrils, I detected the human smell of nervous anticipation.

The wall flickered like an empty movie screen, little peaks of stucco casting elongated shadows, like miniature mountains at sunset. The mottled texture of the wall became exaggerated, and my peep vision sharpened in the gloom, recording every imperfection. I could see the hurried, uneven paths that the rollers had followed up and down when the wall had been painted.

“What am I looking at?” I asked. “A bad paint job?” “I told you,” Roger said. “Move it out a little.”

Lace growled but slid the candle farther from the wall. The words appeared…

They glowed faintly through the shadows, their edges indistinct. A slightly darker layer of paint showed through the top coat, as often happens when landlords don’t bother with primer.

Like when they’re in a big rush. The wall said:

so pRetty i hAd to Eat hiM

I crossed to the wall. The darker layer was less noticeable up close. I ran my fingertips across the letters. The cheap water-based paint felt as dry as a piece of chalk.

With one fingernail, I incised a curved mark in the paint, about the size of a fully grown hookworm. The dark color showed through a little more clearly there.

I brought my fingertip to my nose and sniffed. “Dude, that’s weird,” Roger said.

“Smell is the most sensitive of our senses, Roger,” I said. But I didn’t mention the substance humans are most sensitive to: ethyl mercaptan, the odorant that gives rotten meat its particular tang. Your nose can detect one

four-billionth of a gram of it in a single breath of air.

My nose is about ten times better.

I also didn’t mention to Roger that my one little sniff had made me certain of something—the words had been painted in blood.

It turned out to be more than blood, though. As I incised the wall again with my steel-hard fingernails, breathing in the substances preserved under the hasty coat of paint, I caught a whole range of tissues from the human body. The iron tang of blood was joined by the mealy smell of ground bone, the saltiness of muscle, the flat scent of liver, and the ethyl mercaptan effluence of skin tissues.

I believe the layman’s term is gristle.

There were other, sharper smells mixed in—chemical agents used to clean away the message. By the time they’d found it, though, the blood must have already soaked deep into the plaster, where it still clung tenaciously. They had painted it over, but the letters remained.

I mean, really: water-based paint? What is it with New York landlords? “What the hell are you doing?” Lace said softly.

I turned and saw that they were all sitting there wide-eyed. I tend to forget how normal humans are made uncomfortable by the sniffing thing.

“Well…” I started, searching for a good excuse among the dregs of rum in my system. What was I going to say?

The buzzer sounded.

“Pizza’s here!” Roger cried, jumping up and running to the door. “Sounds good to me,” I said.

For some reason, I was starving.

 

Chapter 6 SLIMEBALLS

Ants have this religion, and it’s caused by slimeballs.

It all starts with a tiny creature called Dicrocoelium dendriticum—though even parasite geeks don’t bother saying that out loud. We just call them “lancet flukes.”

Like a lot of parasites, these flukes start out in a stomach. Stomachs are the most popular organs of final hosts, you may have noticed. Well, duh— there’s food in them. In this case, we’re talking about the stomach of a cow.

When the infected cow makes a cow pie, as we say in Texas, a passel of lancet fluke eggs winds up in the pasture. A snail comes along and eats some of the cow pie, because that’s what snails do. Now the snail is infected. The fluke eggs hatch inside the unlucky snail’s belly and then start to drill their way out through its skin.

Fortunately for the snail, it has a way to protect itself: slime.

The sliminess of the snail’s skin lubricates the flukes as they drill their way out, and the snail survives their exit. By the time the flukes escape, they’re entirely encased in a slimeball, unable to move. They’ll never mess with any snails again, that’s for sure.

But the flukes don’t mind this turn of events. It turns out they wanted to be covered in slime. The whole trip through the snail was just evolution’s way of getting the flukes all slimy. Because they’re headed to their next host: an ant.

Here’s something you didn’t want to know: Ants love slimeballs.

Slimeballs make a delicious meal, even when they have a few hundred flukes inside. So sooner or later, some unlucky ant comes along, eats the slimeball, and winds up with a bellyful of parasites.

Inside the ant, the lancet flukes quickly organize themselves. They get ready for some parasite mind control.

“Do ants even have minds?” you may ask. Hard to say. But they do have tiny clusters of nerves, about midway in complexity between human brains and TV remote controls. A few dozen flukes take up a position at each of these nerve clusters and begin to change the ant’s behavior.

The flukey ant gets religion. Sort of.

During the day, it acts normal. It wanders around on the ground, gathering food (possibly more slimeballs) and hanging out with the other ants. It still smells healthy to them, so they don’t try to drive it off as they would a sick

ant.

But when night falls, the ant does something flukey.

It leaves the other ants behind and climbs up a tall blade of grass, getting

as high as it can off the ground. Up there under the stars, it waits all night alone.

What does it think it’s doing? I always wonder.

Ants may not think anything ever. But if they do, maybe they have visions of strange creatures coming along to carry them to another world, like X-Files geeks in the Roswell desert waiting for a spaceship to whisk them away. Or perhaps Dicrocoelium dendriticum really is a religion, and the ant thinks some great revelation will strike if it just spends enough nights up at the top of a blade of grass. Like a swami meditating on a mountain, or a monk fasting in a tiny cell.

I’d like to think that in its final moments the ant is happy, or at least relieved, when a cow’s mouth comes chomping down on its little blade of grass.

I know the flukes are happy. They’re back in a cow’s stomach, after all. Parasite heaven.

 

Chapter 7 OPTIMUM VIRULENCE

I didn’t really sleep that night. I never do.

Sure, I take my clothes off, get into bed, and close my eyes. But the whole unconsciousness thing doesn’t quite happen. My mind keeps humming, like in those hours when you’re coming down with something—not quite sick yet, but a bit light-headed, a fever threatening, illness buzzing at the edge of your awareness like a mosquito in the dark.

The Shrink says it’s the sound of my immune system fighting the parasite. There’s a war in my body every minute, a thousand T-and B-cells battering the horned head of the beast, prying at its hooks along my muscles and spine, finding and destroying its spores hidden inside transmuted red blood cells. On top of which there’s the parasite fighting back, reprogramming my own tissues to feed it, tangling up my immune defenses with false alarms and bogus enemies.

This guerrilla war is always going on, but only when I’m lying in silence can I actually hear it.

You’d think this constant battle would tear me apart, or leave me exhausted come daylight, but the parasite is too well made for that. It doesn’t want me dead. I’m a carrier, after all—I have to stay alive to ensure its spread. Like every parasite, the thing inside me has evolved to find a precarious balance called optimum virulence. It takes as much as it can get away with, sucking out the nutrients it needs to create more offspring. But no parasite wants to starve the host too quickly, not while it’s getting a free ride. So, as long as it gets fed, it backs off. I may eat like a four-hundred-pound guy, but I never get fat. The parasite uses the nutrients to churn out its spores in my blood and saliva and semen, with enough left over to give me predatory strength and hyped-up senses.

Optimum virulence is why most deaths from parasites are long and lingering—in the case of a carrier like me, the time it takes to die happens to be longer than a normal human life span. That’s the way the older peep hunters talk about it: not so much immortality as a centuries-long downward spiral. Maybe that’s why they use the word undead.

So I lie awake every night, listening to the gnawing, calorie-burning struggle inside me, and getting up for the occasional midnight snack.

That particular long night, I found myself thinking about Lace, remembering her smell, along with another flood of details I hadn’t even

known I’d spotted. Her right hand sometimes made a fist when she talked, her eyebrows moved a lot beneath their concealing fringe, and—unlike girls back in Texas—her voice didn’t rise in pitch at the end of a sentence, unless it really was a question, and sometimes not even then.

We’d agreed to meet in my favorite diner at noon the next day, after her morning class. Neither of us wanted to discuss things in front of her friends, and something about the aftertaste of pepperoni doesn’t go with talk of gristle on the wall.

Normally, I don’t like to torture myself, hanging around with cute girls my age, but this was job-related, after all. Besides, maybe a little bit of torture is okay. I didn’t want to wind up like the Shrink, after all, collecting old dolls or something even weirder.

And I figured it would be nice to hang out with someone from outside the Night Watch once in a while, someone who thought I was a normal guy.

So I stayed awake all night, thinking of lies to tell her. I got up early and reported to the Night Watch first.

The Watch’s offices are pretty much like any other city government building, except older, danker, and even deeper underground. There are the usual metal detectors, petty bureaucrats behind glass, and ancient wooden file drawers stuffed with four centuries’ worth of paperwork. Except for the odd fanatic like Dr. Rat, no one looks remotely happy to be at work there, or even slightly motivated.

It’s a wonder the whole city isn’t infected.

I went to Records first. In terms of square footage, Records is the biggest department of the Watch. They’ve got back doors into regular city data, and also their own paper trails going back to the days when Manhattan was called New Amsterdam. Records can find out who owns what anywhere in the city, who owned it before that, and before that … back to the Dutch farmers who stole it from the Manhattan Indians.

And they’re not just into real estate—Records has a database of every suspicious death or disappearance since 1648 and can produce a clipping of pretty much every newspaper story involving infectious diseases, lunatic attackers, or rat population explosions published since the printing press reached the New World.

Records has two mottos. One is:

The Secrets of the City Are Ours

The other:

NO, WE DO NOT HAVE PENS!

Bring your own. You’ll need them. You see, like every other department in the city, Records runs on Almighty Forms. There are forms that tell the Night Mayor’s office what we hunters are doing—starting an investigation, ending one, or reaching various points along the way. There are forms that

make things happen, from installing rat traps to getting lab work done. There are forms with which to requisition peep-hunting equipment, from tiger cages to Tasers. (The form for commandeering a genuine NYC garbage truck may be thirty-four pages long, but one day I will think of some reason to fill it out, I swear to you.) There are even forms that activate other forms or switch them off, that cause other forms to mutate, thus bringing newly formed forms into the world. Put together, all these forms are the vast spiral of information that defines us, guides our growth, and makes sure our future looks like our past— they are the DNA of the Night Watch.

Fortunately, what I wanted that morning wasn’t quite DNA-complicated. First, I requisitioned some standard equipment, the sort of peep-hunting toys that you can pull off the rack. Then I asked for some information about Lace’s building: who owned it, who had originally rented all the seventh-floor apartments, and if anything noticeably weird had ever happened there. Getting answers to these simple questions wasn’t easy, of course. Nothing ever is, down in the bowels of a bureaucracy. But after only three hours, my paperwork passed muster with the ancient form-dragon behind the bulletproof glass, was rolled into a pneumatic-tube missile, and was launched on its journey into the Underworld with a swish.

They’d call me when it came back, so I headed off to meet Lace at my favorite diner. On the way, I realized that this was my first date in six months

—even if it was only a “date” in the lame sense of being an arrangement to meet someone. Still, the concept made me nervous, all my underused muscles of dating anxiety springing into action. I started checking out my reflection in shop windows and wondering if Lace would like the Kill Fee T-shirt I was wearing. Why hadn’t I put on something less threadbare? And what was with my hair these days? Apparently, Dr. Rat, the Shrink, and my other Night Watch pals didn’t feel compelled to tell me it was sticking out at the sides.

After two minutes in front of a bank window, trying to stick it behind my ears, I despaired of fixing it. Then I despaired of my life in general.

What was the point of a good haircut when nothing could come of it anyway?

Lace sat down across from me, wearing the same leather jacket as the night before, this time over a wool dress. Under a beret that was the same dark brown as her eyes, her hair still smelled like jasmine-scented shampoo. She looked like she’d had about as much sleep as I had.

Seeing Lace in the daylight, both of us sober, I realized for the first time that she might be a few years older than me. Her leather jacket was brown— with buttons, not black and zippered like mine—and the rest of her outfit looked like something you would wear to an office job. My Kill Fee T-shirt felt suddenly dorky, and I hunched my shoulders together so my jacket would fall across the screaming demon on my chest.

“What up?” she said, feeling my scrutiny, and I dropped my eyes back to the table.

“Uh, nothing. How was your class?” I asked, spattering some more Tabasco over my scrambled eggs and bacon. Before she’d arrived, I’d already consumed a pepper steak to calm my nerves.

“All right, I guess. Some guest lecturer yakking about ethics.” “Ethics?”

“Journalistic ethics.”

“Oh.” I stirred my black coffee for no particular reason. “Journalists have ethics?”

Lace cast her eyes around for a waiter or waitress, one finger pointing at my coffee. She nodded as the connection was made, then turned back to me. “They’re supposed to. You know, don’t reveal your sources. Don’t destroy people’s lives just to get a story. Don’t pay people for interviews.”

“You’re studying journalism?” “Journalism and the law, actually.”

I nodded, wondering if that was an undergraduate major. Somehow, it didn’t sound like one. I revised Lace’s age up to the lower to mid-twenties and felt myself relax a little. Suddenly, this was even less a date than it had been a moment before.

“Cool,” I said.

She looked at me like I might be retarded.

I tried to smile back at her, realizing that my small-talk muscles were incredibly rusty, the result of socializing only with people in a secret organization who pretty much only socialized with one another. Of course, if I could just steer the conversation to rinderpest infection rates in Africa, I knew I’d blow her away.

Rebecky—at sixty-seven and three hundred pounds, my favorite waitress in the world to flirt with—appeared and handed Lace a cup of coffee and a menu.

“How’re you doing there, Cal?” she asked. “Just fine, thanks.”

“You sure? You haven’t been eating much lately.” She gave me a sly wink.

“On a diet,” I said, patting my stomach.

Her standard response: “Wish that diet worked on me.”

Rebecky chuckled as she walked away. She’s amazed by my appetite, but her repertoire of where-does-Cal-put-it-all jokes had shrunk to the bare minimum over the last months. As a guy with something to hide, there’s one thing I’ve learned: People only worry about the uncanny for about a week; that’s the end of their attention span. After that, suspicions turn into shtick.

Lace looked up from her menu. “Speaking of funny diets, Cal, what the

hell happened in my building last winter?”

I leaned back and sipped coffee. Evidently, Lace wasn’t up for small talk either. “You in a hurry or something?”

“My lease is up in two months, dude. And last night you promised you wouldn’t jerk me around.”

“I’m not jerking you around. You should try the pepper steak.” “Vegetarian.”

“Oh,” I said, my parasite rumbling at the concept.

Lace flagged down Rebecky and ordered potato salad, while I crammed some bacon into my mouth. Potato salad is an Atkins nightmare, and more important, the parasite hates it. Peeps prefer protein, red in tooth and claw.

“So tell me what you know,” she said.

“Okay.” I cleared my throat. “First of all, I’m not really Morgan’s cousin.”

“Duh.”

I frowned. This revelation hadn’t provided the same oomph that it had on my mental flowchart of the conversation. “But I am looking for her.”

“Again: duh, dude. So you’re like a private detective or something? Or stalker ex-boyfriend?”

“No. I work for the city.” “Cal, you are so not a cop.”

I wasn’t quite sure how she’d come to this assessment, but I couldn’t argue. “No, I’m not. I work for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Sexually Transmitted Disease Control.”

“Sexually transmitted?” She raised an eyebrow. “Wait. Are you sure

you’re not a stalker?”

I reached for my wallet and flopped it open, revealing one of the items I’d picked up from the Night Watch that morning. We’ve got a big machine that spits out laminated ID cards and badges, credentials for dozens of city agencies, both real and imaginary. This silver-plated badge was very impressive, with the words Health Field Officer curving along the bottom. In the ID case next to it, my photo stared grimly out at her.

She stared at it for a moment, then said, “You know you’re wearing the same shirt today as in that picture?”

I froze for a second, realizing that, yep, I hadn’t changed since that morning. In a brilliant save, I glanced down at my Kill Fee T-shirt and said, “What? You don’t like it?”

“Not particularly. So what’s that job all about? Do you, like, hunt people down and arrest them for spreading the clap?”

I cleared my throat, pushing my empty plate away. “Okay, here’s how it works. About a year ago, I was given a disease. Um, let me put that another way—I was assigned a specific carrier of a certain disease. I tracked down all

his sexual partners and encouraged them to get tested, then I tracked down their sexual partners, and so on.” I shrugged. “I just keep going where the chain of infection leads me, informing people along the way. Sometimes I don’t get enough specific information about someone, so I have to poke around a little, like I was last night. For one thing, I don’t even know Morgan’s last name.” I raised my eyebrows hopefully.

Lace shrugged. “Me neither. So let me get this straight: You tell people they’ve got STDs? That’s your job, dude?”

“No, their doctors do that. All I’m allowed to do is tell them they’re at risk. Then I try to get them to cooperate and give me a list of people they’ve slept with. Someone’s got to do it.”

“I guess. Wow, though.”

“So far I’ve spent a whole year tracking down the offspring—or rather, the infections from that one carrier.” I smiled at my cover story’s cleverness. Nifty how I worked the truth in there, huh?

“Wow,” Lace repeated softly, her eyes still wide.

Now that I thought about it, the job I’d chosen for myself did sound pretty cool. A little bit of undercover work, some social consciousness, an air of illicit mystery and human tragedy. One of those careers where you’d have to face life’s harsh realities and be a good listener. By now, she had to figure I was older than nineteen—more like her age, and probably wise beyond my years.

Her potato salad arrived, and after a fortifying bite of carbs, she said, “So what’s your disease?”

“My disease? I didn’t say I had a disease.” “The one you’re tracking, dude.”

“Oh. Right. I’m not at liberty to say. Confidentiality. We have ethics too.” “Sure you do.” Her eyes narrowed. “And that’s why you didn’t want to

talk in front of my friends last night?”

I nodded. My cover story was sliding into place perfectly.

She put down her fork. “But it’s one of those sexually transmitted diseases that makes people paint stuff on the walls in blood?”

I swallowed, wondering if perhaps my cover story might have a few loose ends.

“Well, some STDs can cause dementia,” I said. “Late-stage syphilis, for example, makes you go crazy. It eats your brain. Not that syphilis is what we’re talking about here, necessarily.”

“Wait a second, Cal. You think all the people on the seventh floor of my building were shagging one another? And going all demented from it?” She made a face at her potato salad. “Do you guys get a lot of that kind of thing?”

“Um, it happens. Some STDs can cause … promiscuity. Sort of.” I felt my cover story entering the late stages of its life span and suppressed an urge to

mention rabies (which was a little too close to the truth, what with the frothing and the biting). “Right now, I can’t be sure what happened up there. But my job is to find out where all those people went, especially if they’re infected.”

“And why the landlord is covering it up.” “Yeah, because this is all about your rent.”

She raised her hands. “Hey, I didn’t know you were all into saving the world, okay? I just thought you were a stalker ex-boyfriend or a weird psycho cousin or something. But I’m glad you’re the good guys, and I want to help. It’s not just my rent situation, you know. I have to live with that thing on the wall.”

I put down my coffee cup with authoritative force. “Okay. I’m glad you’re helping. I thank you, and your city thanks you.”

In fact, I was just glad the cover story had made it through the worst of Lace’s suspicions. I’d never really worked undercover before; lies aren’t my thing. She frowned, eating a few more bites of potato salad, and I wondered if Lace’s help was worth involving her. So far, she’d been a little too smart for comfort. But smart wasn’t all bad. It wouldn’t hurt to have a pair of sharp eyes on the seventh floor.

And frankly, I was enjoying her company, especially the way she didn’t hide her thoughts and opinions. That wasn’t a luxury I could indulge in myself, of course, but it was good to hear Lace voicing every suspicion that went through her head. Saved me from being paranoid about what she was thinking.

On top of which, I was feeling very in control, hanging out with a desirable woman without having a sexual fantasy every few seconds. Maybe every few minutes or so, but still, you have to crawl before you can walk.

“Dude, why are you scratching your wrist like that?” “I am? Oh, crap.”

“What the hell, Cal? It’s all red.”

“Um, it’s just…” I ransacked my internal database of skin parasites, then announced,

“Pigeon mites!” “Pigeon whats?”

“You know. When pigeons sit on your window and shake their feathers? Sometimes these little mites fall off and nest in your pillows. They bite your skin and cause…” I waved my oft-pinged wrist.

“Eww. One more reason not to like pigeons.” She glared out the window at a few of them scavenging on the sidewalk. “So what do we do now?”

“How about this? You take me back to your building and show me which apartment used to be Morgan’s.”

“And then what?” “Leave that to me.”

As we passed the doorman I made sure to catch his eye and smile. If I came in with Lace a few more times, maybe the staff would start to recognize me.

On the seventh floor, she led me to the far end of the hall, gesturing at a door marked 704. There were just four apartments on this floor, all the one- bedrooms you could squeeze into the sliver-thin building.

“That’s where she lived, according to the two guys upstairs. Loud and freaky in bed, they tell me.”

I coughed into a fist, again damning my fugitive memories. “You know who lives here now?”

“Guy called Max. He works days.” I knocked hard. No answer.

Lace sighed. “I told you he wouldn’t be home.”

“Glad to hear it.” I pulled out another of the items requisitioned that morning and knelt by the door: The lock was a standard piece-of-crap deadbolt, five tumblers. Into its keyhole I sprayed some graphite, which is the same gray stuff that gets on your fingers if you fiddle with the end of a pencil, and does the same thing to locks that Bahamalama-Dingdongs do to repressed memories—lubricates them. Two of the tumblers rolled over as my pick slid in. Easy-peasy.

“Dude,” Lace whispered, “shouldn’t you get a warrant or something?”

I was ready for this one. “Doesn’t matter. You only need a warrant if you want the evidence to stand up in court. But I’m not taking anyone to court.” Another tumbler rolled over. “This isn’t a criminal investigation.”

“But you can’t just break into people’s apartments!” “I’m not breaking. Just looking.”

“Still!”

“Look, Lace, maybe this isn’t strictly legal. But if people in my job didn’t cut a few corners every now and then, everyone in this city would be infected, okay?”

She paused for a moment, but the ring of truth had filled my words. I’ve seen simulations of what would happen if the parasite were to spread unchecked, and believe me, it’s not pretty. Zombie Apocalypse, we call it.

Finally, she scowled. “You better not steal anything.”

“I won’t.” The last two tumblers went, and I opened the door. “You can stay out here if you want. Knock hard if Max comes out of that elevator.”

“Forget it,” she said. “I’m going to make sure you don’t do anything weird. Besides, he’s had my blender for four months.”

She pushed in past me, heading for the kitchen. I sighed, putting my lock- pick away and closing the door behind us.

The apartment was a carbon copy of Lace’s, but with better furniture. The shape of the living room refired my recognition pistons. Finally, I had found

the place where the parasite had entered me, making me a carrier and changing my life forever.

It was much tidier than Lace’s apartment, which might be a problem. After seven months of living there, an obsessive cleaner would have swept away a lot of evidence.

I crossed to the sliding glass doors and shut the curtains to make it darker, trying to ignore the clatter of pots and pans from the kitchen.

“You know,” I called, “you’re the one who’s going to have to explain to Max how you got your blender back.”

“I’ll tell him I astral-projected. Butt-head.” “Huh?”

“Him, not you. He had my blender all summer. Margarita season.”

“Oh.” I shook my head—infection, cannibalism, blender appropriation.

The Curse of 704 was alive and well.

I pulled out another little toy I’d picked up that morning—an ultraviolet wand—and flicked it on. The demon’s eyes on my Kill Fee shirt began to give off an otherworldly glow. I swept the wand across the same wall that, back in Lace’s apartment, had held the words written in gristle.

“Dude! Flashback!” Lace said, crossing the living room. She smiled, and her teeth flickered as white as a radioactive beach at noon.

“Flashback?”

“Yeah, your teeth are glowing, like at a dance club.”

I shrugged. “Don’t go to clubs much since I … got this job.”

“No, I guess you wouldn’t,” she said. “All that sexual transmission just waiting to happen.”

“Huh? Hey, I don’t have anything against—” She smiled. “Just kidding, dude. Relax.” “Ah.” I cleared my throat.

Nothing glowed on the wall in the ultraviolet. I held the wand closer, casting weird shadows across the stucco mountainscape. No pattern of a hurried paint roller appeared. I cut into a few spots at random with my fingernail, but nothing bright shone through.

The other walls were just as clean.

“So does that thing make blood show up?” she asked. “Blood and other bodily fluids.”

“Bodily fluids? You are so CSI.” She said this like it was a cool thing, and I gave her a smile.

“Let’s try the bedroom,” she said. “Good idea.”

We went through the door, and my déjá vu ramped up to another level. This was where I had lost my virginity and become a monster, all in one night.

Like the living room, the bedroom was impeccably clean. Lace sat on the bed while I scanned the walls with UV.

“This goo you’re looking for, it isn’t still … active, is it?”

“Active? Oh, you mean infectious.” I shook my head. “One thing about parasites—they’re great at living inside other organisms, but once they hit the outside world, they’re not so tough.”

“Parasites?”

“Oh, pretend you didn’t hear that. Anyway, after seven months, you’re totally safe from catching it.” I cleared my throat. “As am I.”

“So, what’s with the glow stick?”

“I’m trying to see if the same thing happened here as in your apartment.” “The wall-writing dementia festival, you mean? Does that really happen a

lot?”

“Not really.”

“Didn’t think so. Lived in New York all my life, and I never saw anything like that on the news.”

I shot her a look, the word news making me wonder if her journalistic instincts were kicking in. Which would be a bad thing.

“What disease is this again?” she asked. “Not telling.”

“Please!”

I waved the wand at her, and several luminous streaks appeared on the blanket underneath her.

“What’s that?”

I grinned. “Bodily fluids.” “Dude!” She leaped to her feet.

“That’s nothing compared to the skin mites.”

Lace was rubbing her hands together. “Which are what?” “Microscopic insects that hang out in beds, feeding on dead skin cells.” “I’ll be washing out my blender,” she said, and left me alone.

I chuckled to myself and turned the wand on the other walls, the floors, inside the closet. Other than Max’s blanket and a pair of underwear under the bed, the UV didn’t get a rise out of anything. Picking at the stucco didn’t help; nothing had been painted over in this apartment.

Max was a lot neater than most single men, I’d say that for the guy. Or maybe Morgan knew not to eat where she slept.

Suddenly, my ears caught a jingling sound. Keys in a lock.

“Crap,” I said. Max was home early. “Uh, Cal?” Lace’s voice called softly, her vocal cords tight.

“Shh!” I flicked off the wand, shoved it into my pocket, and ran into the living room. Lace was standing there, clutching her wet blender.

“Put that down!” I hissed, dragging her toward the glass doors that led to

the balcony.

I heard the lock’s bolt shoot closed. A lucky break—I had left the apartment unlocked behind us, so whoever was coming in had just relocked the door, thinking they were unlocking it.

Muffled Spanish swearing filtered through, a female voice, and I realized that Max’s apartment was spotless because he had a cleaner.

I yanked the sliding glass door open and pushed Lace out into the cold. When it was shut behind us, I watched the thick curtains swing lazily to a halt, hiding us from the living room. Pressing one ear to the icy glass, palming the other to mute the roar of traffic, I listened. My heartbeat was ramped up with excitement, adrenaline making the parasite start to churn, my muscles tightening. Through the glass came the sound of a graphite-lubricated dead- bolt shooting free, and the door creaked open.

“Mio!” an annoyed voice muttered. Fingers fumbling for a light switch. The apartment was too dark to work in—she would probably be opening the curtains in a few moments.

I turned to Lace, whose eyes were wide, her pupils huge from the excitement. On the tiny balcony, we were only a foot apart, and I could smell her perfectly—the jasmine hair, a salt smell of nerves. We were too close for comfort. I pulled my eyes away from her and pointed at the next balcony over. “Who lives there?”

“Um, this girl called Freddie,” Lace whispered. “She at home?”

Lace shrugged.

“Well, let’s hope not.” I jumped up onto the rail and across. “Jesus, dude!” Lace squeaked.

I turned back to look down through the two-and-a-half-foot gap, realizing I should at least pretend to show fear, if only for Lace’s sake. The parasite doesn’t want its peeps too cautious; it wants us picking fights, complete with the biting and the scratching and other disease-spreading activities. We carriers don’t mind a little danger.

Lace, though, was fully human, and her eyes widened farther as she stared down.

“Come on,” I whispered soothingly. “It’s just a couple of feet.” She glared at me. “A couple of feet across. Seven stories down!”

I sighed and jumped back up, steadied myself with one loot on each rail, and leaned back against the building. “Okay, I’ll swing you across. I promise I won’t drop you.”

“No way, dude!” she said, her panic breaking through the whisper.

I wondered if the cleaner had heard us and was already calling the cops. My Health and Mental badge looked real, and if a policeman called the phone number on the ID, there would be a Night Watch employee sitting at the other

end. But Lace had been right about the whole illegal entry thing, and if someone went looking to complain to my boss in person, they would find only a bricked-up doorway in a forgotten basement of City Hall. The Night Watch had cut most of its official ties two hundred years ago; only a few bureaucrats remained who knew the secret histories.

I leaned down and grabbed Lace’s wrist. “Sorry, but…”

“What are you—?” She squealed as I lifted her up and over, setting her down on the next balcony.

When I jumped down beside her, Lace’s face was white.

“You … I could have…” she sputtered. Her mouth was open, and she was breathing hard. On the tiny balcony, my senses started to tangle up with one another, smell and sight and taste, the parasite pushing its advantage. Excitement radiated from Lace; I knew it was only fear making her pupils expand, her heart pound, but my body responded in its own blind way, construing it all as signs of arousal. My hands were itching to take hold of her shoulders and taste her lips.

“Excuse me,” I squeaked, pushing her away from the balcony door.

I knelt and pulled out lock-picking equipment, desperate to get off that balcony and inside, anything to be a few feet farther away from Lace. My fingers fumbled, and I banged my head against the glass on purpose, clearing my brain long enough to squirt the keyhole with graphite.

Seconds later, the door slid open.

I stumbled inside Freddie’s apartment, away from Lace’s smell, sucking in the odors of industrial carpet, recently assembled Ikea furniture, and a musty couch. Anything but jasmine.

When I managed to get back under control, I put my ear to the wall. The welcome roar of a vacuum cleaner rumbled back and forth next door. Taking another deep breath, I collapsed onto the couch. I hadn’t kissed Lace and the cops weren’t on their way—two near disasters averted.

Without catching Lace’s eye, I looked around. Another clone of Morgan’s apartment, the walls innocently white. “Might as well check in here too.”

Lace didn’t say a word, staring at me from where she stood just inside the balcony door. Her expression was still intense, and when I switched on the UV light, the whites of her eyes glowed fiercely. She was rubbing her wrist where I’d grabbed it to lift her across.

She said calmly “How did you do that?” “Do what?”

“Pick me up. Swing me like a cat.”

I attempted a cavalier smile. “Is that how cats are swung?” She snarled, revealing a flash of ultraviolet teeth. “Tell me.”

I realized she was still angry and tried to channel Dr. Rat’s lecture voice. “Well, the human body is capable of great strength, you know. Mothers

whose babies are in danger have been known to lift cars. And people high on PCP can snap steel handcuffs or even pull their own teeth out with pliers.”

This was a point often made in Hunting 101: Peeps aren’t stronger than normal people in any healthy sense—the parasite just turns them into psychos, setting their muscles at emergency strength, like a car with its gas pedal stuck down. (Which would sort of make carrier peeps controlled psychos, I suppose, though nobody at the Night Watch ever put it like that.)

“So which category do you fall into?” Lace said. “Concerned mother or insane drug addict?”

“Um … more like concerned mother, I guess?”

Lace advanced on me, stuck one stiff forefinger into the center of my chest, her smell overwhelming me as she shouted, “Well, let’s get something straight, Cal. I am not… your… baby!”

She spun on her heel and stomped to the apartment door, unlocking it and yanking it open. She turned back, pulling something from her pocket. For a second, I thought she was going to throw it at me in a wild rage.

But her voice was even. “I found this in Max’s kitchen trash. Guess Morgan never bothered to get her mail forwarded.”

She flicked it at me after all, the envelope spinning like a ninja’s star.

I plucked it from the air and turned it over. It was addressed to Morgan.

Just a random piece of junk mail, but now I had a last name. “Morgan Ryder. Hey, thanks for—”

The door slammed shut. Lace was gone.

I stared after her for a while, the echo of her exit ringing in my exquisite hearing. I could still smell the jasmine fragrance in the air, the scent of her anger, and traces of her skin oil and sweat on my fingers. Her departure had been so sudden, it took a moment to accept it.

It was better this way, of course. I’d been lucky so far. Those moments on the balcony had been too intense and unexpected. It was one thing sitting across a table from Lace in a crowded restaurant, but I couldn’t be alone with her, not in small spaces. I liked her too much, and after six months of celibacy, the parasite was stronger than I was.

And once she thought about my cover story a little more, she’d probably figure I was some kind of thief or con man or just plain freaky. So maybe she’d steer clear of me from now on.

I let out a long, sad sigh, then continued sweeping for bodily fluids.

 

Chapter 8 LICE AGE

A long time ago human beings were hairy all over, like monkeys.

Nowadays, however, we wear clothes to keep us warm.

How did this switch happen? Did we lose the fur and then decide to invent clothes? Or did we invent clothing and then lose the body hair that we no longer needed?

The answer isn’t in any history books, because writing hadn’t been invented yet when it happened. But fortunately, our little friends the parasites remember. They carry the answer in their genes.

Lice are bloodsuckers that live on people’s heads. So small that you can barely see them, they hide in your hair. Once they’ve infested one person, they spread like a rumor, carrying trench fever, typhus, and relapsing fever. Like most bloodsuckers, lice are unpopular. That’s why the word lousy is generally not a compliment.

You can’t fault lousy loyalty, though. Human lice have been with us for five million years, since our ancestors split off from chimpanzees. That’s a long run together. (The tapeworm, for comparison, has only been inside us for about eight thousand years, a total parasite-come-lately.) At the same time we were evolving away from monkeys, our parasites were evolving from monkey parasites—coming along for the ride.

But I bet that our lice wish they hadn’t bothered. You see, while the chimps stayed hairy, we humans lost most of our body hair. So now human lice have only our hairy heads to hide in. On top of that, they’re always getting poisoned by shampoo and conditioner, which is why lice have become rare in wealthy countries.

But lice aren’t utterly doomed. When people started wearing clothing, some lice evolved to take advantage of the new situation. They developed claws that are adapted for clinging to fabric instead of hair. So these days, there are two species of human lice: hair-loving head lice and clothes-loving body lice.

Evolution marches on. Maybe one day we’ll have space suit lice. So what does this have to do with the invention of clothing?

Not long ago, scientists compared the DNA of three kinds of lice: head lice, body lice, and the old original chimp lice. As time passes, DNA changes at a fixed rate, so scientists can tell roughly how long ago any two species split up from each other. Comparing lice DNA soon settled the question of

what came first—the clothes or the nakedness.

Here’s how it happened:

Human lice and monkey lice split off from each other about 1.8 million years ago. That’s when ancient humans lost their body hair and the lice we inherited from the chimps had to adapt, evolving to stick to our heads.

But head lice and body lice didn’t split until seventy-two thousand years ago, an eternity later (especially in lice years). That’s when human beings invented clothes, and body lice evolved to reclaim some of their lost real estate. They got brand-new claws and spread down into our brand-new clothing.

So that’s the answer: Clothes got invented after we lost our body hair. And not right away; our primate ancestors ran around naked and hairless for well over a million years.

That part of human evolution is written in lousy history, in the genes of the things that suck our blood.

 

Chapter 9 UNDERWORLD

Just as I finished Freddie’s apartment (finding no glimmer of bodily fluids), my phone buzzed. One of the Shrink’s minders was on the other end, saying that she wanted to see me again. My stack of forms had returned from Records, chock-full of enough intrigue to bounce all the way up to the Shrink. That was always a sign of progress.

Still, I sometimes wished she would just talk to me on the phone and not insist on quite so much face time. But she’s so old-school that telephones just aren’t her thing. In fact, electricity isn’t her thing.

I wonder if I’ll ever get that ancient.

I took the subway down to Wall Street, then walked across. The Shrink’s house is on a crooked alley paved with cobblestones, barely one car wide. It’s one of those New Amsterdam originals that the Dutch laid down four centuries ago, running on the diagonal, flouting the grid in the same grumpy way that the Shrink ignores telephones. Those early streets possess their own logic; they were built atop the age-old hunting trails of the Manhattan Indians. Of course, the Indians were only following even more ancient paths created by deer.

And who were the deer copying? I wondered. Maybe my route had first been cut through the primeval forest by a line of hungry ants.

One thing about carrying the parasite—it makes you feel connected to the past. As a peep, I’m a blood brother to every other parasite-positive throughout the ages. There’s an unbroken chain of biting, scratching, unprotected sex, rat reservoirs, and various other forms of fluid-sharing between me and that original slavering maniac, the poor human who was first infected with the disease.

So where did he or she get it from? you may ask. From elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Most parasites leap to humanity from other species. Of course, it was a long time ago, so the original parasite-positive wasn’t exactly what we’d call human. More likely the first peep was some early Cro-Magnon who was bitten by a dire wolf or giant sloth or saber-toothed weasel.

I kicked a bag of garbage next to the Shrink’s stoop and heard the skittering of tiny claws inside it. A few little faces peeked out to glare at me; then one rat jumped free and scampered a few yards down the alley, disappearing down a hole among the cobblestones.

There are more of those holes than you’d think.

When I first came to the city, I saw only street level, or sometimes caught glimpses of the netherworld through exhaust grates or down empty subway tracks. But in the Night Watch we see the city in layers. We feel the sewers and the hollow sidewalks carrying electrical cables and steam pipes, and below that the older spaces: the basements of fallen buildings, the giant buried caskets of abandoned breweries, the ancient septic tanks, the forgotten graveyards. And, struggling to get free underneath, the old streambeds and natural springs—all those pockets where rats, and much bigger things, can thrive.

Dr. Rat says that the only creatures that ever come out onto the surface are the weak ones, the punks who aren’t competitive enough to feed themselves down where it’s safe. The really big things, the rat kings and the other alpha beasties, live and die without ever troubling the daylight world. Think about that for a second: There are creatures down there who’ve never seen a human being.

The laden sky rumbled overhead, and I smelled rain.

History. Nature. Weather. My head was pounding, full of those big, abstract words that have their own cable channels.

But it was the sound of those tiny scratching feet inside the garbage bag that followed me into the Shrink’s house and down the corridor to her session room, pushed along by an invisible wind.

“Most impressive, Cal.” She leafed through papers on her desk. “All it took was a few drinks to get you back to Morgan’s house.”

“Yeah. But it was an apartment, Dr. Prolix. Not many houses in Manhattan these days, you might have noticed.”

The guy from Records in the other visitor’s chair raised his eyebrows at my tone, but the Shrink only folded her hands and smiled. “Still glum? But you’re making such progress.”

I chewed my lip. The Shrink didn’t need to know what I was bummed about. Not that it mattered anymore, the whole stupid way I’d had Lace help me. Even if she’d gone on believing me, hanging out with her would have just gotten more and more torturous.

Worse than that, it had been dangerous. Lace hadn’t showed a bit of interest—not that kind of interest anyway—and I’d still come close to kissing her.

Never again. Lesson learned. Move on. I was back in lone-hunter mode now.

“Yeah, gallons of progress,” I said. “You saw what I found on the wall?” “I read your 1158-S from this morning, yes.”

“Well, I went back there today but didn’t find anything more on the creepy graffiti front. Or much else. Morgan moved out at least seven months, ago. Not exactly an oven-fresh trail.”

“Cal, eight months is the blink of an eye for Records. To find out where Morgan has gone, perhaps we should look at where she came from.”

“What do you mean?”

“The history of that property has proven interesting.” She turned to the Records guy and waved her pale hand.

“When the landlords in question filed their initial rent-control forms,” he began, “there were four residents on the seventh floor.” His voice quivered slightly, and once or twice as he read, his eyes darted up to the creepy dolls, confirming that he wasn’t comfortable in the Shrink’s office. Not a hunter, just an average working stiff with a city job. His chair was backed as far away from the red line as it could go. No typhoid germs for him. “We ran the names of these individuals through the city databases and hit a missing persons report from March this year.”

“Only one?” I asked. “I figured they’d all be missing.”

He shook his head. “More than one missing person from the same address, and we would have already filed an MP-2068 with you guys. But there was only one hit. NYPD has no leads, and at this point it’s pretty much a dead investigation.”

Given what I’d seen in Lace’s apartment, that wording was appropriate. “So let me guess: The guy who lived in 701 is gone.” So pretty I just had to eat him.

The man from Records nodded. “That’s right, 701. Jesus Delanzo, age twenty-seven. Photographer.” He looked up at me, and when I didn’t say anything, he continued, “Apartment 702 was occupied by Angela Dreyfus, age thirty-four. Broker.”

“Where does she live now?”

He frowned. “We don’t exactly have an address for her. Just a post office box in Brooklyn, and a cell phone that doesn’t answer.”

“Rather anonymous, don’t you think?” the Shrink said.

“And her friends and family don’t think it’s weird she lives in a post office box?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” the Records guy said. “If they’re worried, they haven’t filed with the NYPD.”

I frowned, but the Records guy kept going. “A couple lived in the other apartment—703. Patricia and Joseph Moore, both age twenty-eight. And guess what: Their mail forwards to the same post office box as Angela Dreyfus’s, and they have the same phone number.” He leaned back, crossed his legs, and smiled, rather pleased to have put such a juicy coincidence on my plate.

But his last words hadn’t even gotten through to me yet. Something else was really wrong.

“That’s only three apartments. What about 704?”

He raised an eyebrow, looked down at his printouts, and shrugged. “Unoccupied.”

“Unoccupied?” I turned to the Shrink. “But that’s where Morgan lived.

Her junk mail is still showing up there.”

The Records guy nodded. “The post office doesn’t forward junk mail.” “But why don’t you have a record of her?”

He leafed through his folder as he shook his head. “Because the landlord never filed an occupancy form for that apartment. Maybe they were letting her live there for free.”

“For free? Fat chance,” I said. “That’s a three-grand-a-month apartment.” “Actually, more like thirty-five hundred,” the Records guy corrected. “Ouch,” I said.

“The rent is not the most unsettling thing about that building, Cal,” the Shrink said. “There was something else Records didn’t notice until you prompted them to look.”

The guy glanced sheepishly down at his papers. “It’s not anything we usually flag for investigation. But it is … odd.” He shuffled papers and unrolled a large set of blueprints across his knees. “The building plans show an oversize foundation, much deeper and more elaborate than one would expect.”

“A foundation?” I said. “You mean, the part that’s underground?”

He nodded. “They didn’t have the air rights to put up a tall building, because it would block views of the river. So they decided to make some extra space below. There are several subbasements descending into the granite bedrock, spreading out wider than the building overhead. Room for a two-floor health club, supposedly.”

“Health club in the basement.” I shrugged. “Not surprising in a ritzy place like that.”

The Shrink drew herself up. “Unfortunately, this health club is not in a particularly healthy location. They excavated too close to the PATH tunnel, an area where the island is very … porous. That tunnel was only finished in 1908. Not everything stirred up by the intrusion has settled yet.”

“Not settled yet?” I said. “After a hundred years?”

The Shrink steepled her fingers. “The big things down there awaken slowly, Kid. And they settle slowly, too.”

I swallowed. Every old city in the world has a Night Watch of some kind, and they all get nervous when the citizens start digging. The asphalt is there for a very good reason—to put something solid between you and the things that live underneath.

“It’s possible that this excavation has opened the lower environs,” the Shrink said, “allowing something old to bubble up.”

“You think they uncovered a reservoir?”

Neither of them said anything.

Remember what I said about rats carrying the disease? How broods store the parasite in their blood when their peeps die? Those broods can last a long time after the peeps are gone, spreading the disease down generations of rats. Old cities carry the parasite in their bones, the way chicken pox can live in your spinal column for decades, ready to pop out as horrible blisters in old age.

“The health club, huh?” I said, shaking my head. “That’s what people get for working out.”

“It may be more than a reservoir, Cal. There may be larger things than rats and peeps to worry about.” The Shrink paused. “And then … there are the owners.”

“The owners?” I asked.

The man from Records glanced at the Shrink, and the Shrink looked at

me.

“A first family,” she said.

“Oh, crap,” I answered. One thing about the carriers of the Night Watch:

They have a special affection for the families after whom the oldest streets are named. Back in the 1600s, New Amsterdam was a small town, only a few thousand people, and everyone was someone’s cousin or uncle or indentured servant. Certain loyalties go back a long way, and in blood.

“Who are they? Boerums? Stuys?”

The Shrink’s eyes slitted as she spoke, one hand gesturing vaguely toward the half-forgotten world outside her town house. “If I remember correctly, Joseph once lived on this very street. And Aaron built his first home on Golden Hill, where Gold Street and Fulton now meet. Mercer Ryder’s farm was up north a ways—he grew wheat in a field off Verdant Lane, although that field is called Times Square these days. And they had more farmland in Brooklyn. They were good boys, the Ryders, and the Night Mayor has kept up with their descendants, I believe.”

I found my voice. “Ryder, you said?” “With a y,” the Records guy offered softly.

I swallowed. “My progenitor’s name is Morgan Ryder.” “Then we have a problem,” said the Shrink.

The guy from Records, whose name was Chip, took me down to his cubicle. We were going over the history of the Hoboken PATH tunnel, which was a lot more exciting than you’d think.

“The first incident was in 1880, killed twenty workers,” Chip said. “Then another in 1882 killed a few more than that. They were supposedly explosions, and the company had the body parts to prove it.”

“Handy,” I said.

“And leggy,” he chuckled. Out from under the soulless eyes of the

Shrink’s doll collection, Chip was a certified laugh riot. “That brought the project to a halt for a couple of decades. Those incidents were in Jersey, but on this side of the river we never bought the cover story.”

“Why not?”

“There are ancient tunnels that travel through the bedrock, all around these parts. And around the PATH train, the tunnels are … newer.” His fingers drifted along the tunnel blueprints on his desk. “Check it out, Cal: If you add up the weight of all the plants and animals that live under the ground, it’s actually more than everything that lives above. About a billion organisms in every pinch of soil.”

“Yeah, none of which is big enough to eat twenty people.”

He lowered his voice. “But that’s what happens after you’re buried, Kid.

Things in the ground eat you.”

Great, now Records was calling me Kid. “Okay, Chip,” I said. “But worms don’t eat people who are still alive.”

“But there’s a food chain down there,” he said. “Something has to be at the top.”

“You guys don’t have a clue, do you?”

Chip shook his head. “We have clues. Those tunnels? They’re a lot like the trails of an earthworm through the dirt.”

I frowned and dropped my eyes back to the blueprints for Lace’s building. The fine-lined drawings—precisely scaled and covered in tiny symbols— showed only the shapes that human machines had carved from the soil. No hint at the environment surrounding our descent into the earth. “So you think there are giant worms down there? I thought you guys in Records were a little more … factual.”

“Yeah, well, we read a lot of weird stuff.” He pointed his pen at the edge of the level labeled Health Club, Lower. “This is what somebody should have noticed—and then filed a great big ST-57.” The pen tapped. “The excavation goes too deep for comfort; it’s only a few yards above part of the exhaust system for the PATH tunnel. Any variation from these plans, and they’re connected.”

“Connected to what?”

“You ever seen those big exhaust towers by the river? The fans are about eighty feet across, sucking air all day. Bad.”

“Air is bad?”

“They’re pumping oxygen down there!” Chip shook his head, tossed the pen disgustedly down onto the plans. “That’s like pouring fertilizer on your weeds. Lack of oxygen is the growth-limiting factor in a subterranean biome!”

“Ah, so things are growing. But those ‘explosions’ in Jersey were a hundred and twenty years ago, after all. We’re just talking rats these days,

right?”

“Probably,” Chip said.

“Probably. Wonderful.” Standing there in the gloom, I realized that Chip and I were underground right now, tons of bricks and mortar piled up over our heads. The squeaking ceiling fan labored to bring oxygen down to us; without the flickering fluorescents it would be too dark even for my peep eyes to see. Down here was hostile territory—a place for corpses and worms, and the bigger things that ate the worms, and the bigger things that ate them…

“But our guys at the PATH say that there are a few places under the exhaust towers that their workers have abandoned,” Chip added. “They aren’t officially condemned, but nobody goes down there anymore.”

“Great. And how close is that to Morgan’s building?” “Not far. A couple hundred yards?”

My nose wrinkled, as if a bad smell had wafted into the cubicle. Why couldn’t I have just lost my virginity the normal way? No vampiric infections, no subterranean menaces. “Okay, so what’s the best way for me to get down there?”

“Through the front door.” Chip ran a finger across the building plans, pointing out a set of symbols. “They’ve got major security all over the joint; cameras everywhere, especially in the lower levels.”

“Crap.”

“I thought you had an inside line. That girl you mentioned in your 1158-S, the one who lives there now? Tell her you want to check out the basement.”

“She had an attitude problem. I’d rather break in. I’m good with locks.” Chip raised an eyebrow.

“Or a Sanitation badge,” I flailed. “Maybe a Health Inspector of Health Clubs?”

“What happened between you and her?” “Nothing!”

“You can tell me, Kid.”

I groaned, but Chip fixed me with his big brown eyes. “Look, it’s just that she… We had this…” My voice fell. “There was a Superhuman Revelation Incident, sort of.”

“There was?” Chip frowned. “Have you filed an SRI-27/45?”

“No, I haven’t filed an SRI-27/45. It’s not like she saw me climbing up a wall or anything. All I did was sort of… lift her up, and only for a second.”

“And?”

“And swing her from one balcony to another. Otherwise we were going to get caught breaking and entering. Just entering, I mean—nothing was broken.” I decided not to get into the Grand Theft Blender issue. “Look, Chip, all I need are some traps and a Pest Control badge. Catch a few rats, let the Doctor test their blood, see if we’ve got a running reservoir. First things first.

No big deal.”

Chip nodded slowly, then looked down and continued detailing the lower depths of the Hoboken PATH tunnel, letting his expression say it all.

“Pretty late, isn’t it?”

“Tell me about it,” I grunted at the doorman, willing him not to look too closely at my face. He was the same guy from that afternoon, but now I was dressed in a standard city-issue hazmat suit, a wool cap pulled down to my eyebrows. My oven-fresh Sanitation badge was flopped open in his face. In more ways than one, I was presenting a different picture than I had nine hours before.

“Yeah, I’m on till midnight myself,” he said, his eyes dropping from my face as he pulled out a desk drawer. He hadn’t recognized me. The clothes do make the man, as far as most people are concerned.

He yanked out a clattering ring of keys, and we headed to the elevator. “Did you guys get a complaint from one of our tenants? I never heard

nothing about rats here.”

“No, just some problems nearby. Population explosion by the river.” “Yeah, the river. Always smells damp down in the basement. Kind of

fishy.” The elevator door opened. He leaned one shoulder against it, blocking its attempts to close while he counted through the keys until he found one marked with a green plastic ring. He slipped it into a keyhole marked B2 at the bottom of the controls and gave it a half turn.

“You ever heard of a tenant getting bitten here?” I asked. “Maybe a year ago or so?”

He looked up at me. “Didn’t work here then. No one did. They hired all new staff early this year. The old guys were running some kind of payroll scam, I hear.”

“Ah. I see.” I made a mental note to run all those doormen’s and janitors’ names through Records.

He pressed the B2 button, keeping one hand on the door’s rubber bumpers. “Not that hardly that many people use it down there. Only a few diehards. Like I said, smells funny. By the way, when you come back up, don’t forget to mention you’re leaving to whoever’s on the door. It’s supposed to be locked up down there this time of night.”

“No problem.” I lifted my duffel bag in weary half salute.

He smiled and let the door close. The elevator took me down. It did smell funny.

There were about fifty kinds of mold growing down there, and I could smell the rot of wooden beams behind the walls, dried human sweat on the padded weight benches, assorted shoes decaying behind the slats of locker doors.

But behind the health club smells, something else was brewing. I couldn’t

quite figure out what. Smells are not as easy to place as sights and sounds. They’re like suppressed memories: You sometimes have to let them bubble up on their own.

I let the elevator close its door and glide away, not switching on any lights. I didn’t want the doorman watching me on the security cameras. I was hoping he would forget I was down here and go off his shift without mentioning me to the next guy.

Once my eyes adjusted, the red glow of the thermostats and exercise machine controls were enough to see by. For a few minutes, though, I just stood there, listening for the sounds of tiny feet.

It didn’t seem a likely spot for a rat invasion; there wasn’t any source of food down here, not even a candy machine. In any case, street-level garbage eaters weren’t the only issue here. I was looking for big alpha rats—and, if Chip was right, unnamed other things—bubbling up from below. Things that had never heard of M&M’s.

All I could hear was the refrigerator in the juice machine, the hiss of steam heat, and a distant steady rumble. I knelt and pressed one palm flat against the floor, feeling the vibration spreading into my flesh along with the chill of the cement. The rumble was cycling slowly—maybe it was those eighty-foot fan blades that gave Chip nightmares.

But I didn’t hear any rats, or any of Chip’s monsters, for that matter. I moved among the dark shapes of machines, the red eyes of their controls winking at me. The smell of chlorine rose from a covered Jacuzzi. That other scent, the one I couldn’t identify, seemed to grow stronger as I moved toward the back wall.

Then I felt a draft, the slightest hint of cold. I swept my eyes across the baseboard behind the radiator, searching for a rat-hole letting in the autumn chill of the earth. Rats don’t need much space to crawl through; they can break down their own skeletons and squeeze through holes the size of quarters. (We peeps can supposedly do that too, but it hurts like hell, I’ve heard.)

There weren’t any openings along the floor. The fittings around the steam pipes were tight. I didn’t spot any doors to slip under, no loose tiles in the ceiling. No way for anything to bubble up from the depths.

But in the farthest corner of the gym, the paneled walls themselves radiated cold.

I gave the wall a thump. It was hollow.

Hearing the empty sound, I realized something about the darkened health club—it didn’t have any stairs down. The second level promised in the blueprints didn’t exist. Or it was hidden.

My duffel bag clanked against the concrete floor. From a pocket, I pulled

the plans that Chip had printed for me, checking my compass. According to the blueprints, the sub-basement stairs were only a few yards away, on the other side of the wall.

The wood paneling didn’t give at all when I pushed; there was something solid behind it. Of course, my duffel bag was full of drills, hacksaws, bolt cutters, and a crowbar, or I could have just put my fist through the wall. But I still had to come back in my Sanitation costume to reclaim any rats my traps caught, and the staff doesn’t like it when you break their building.

I moved along the wall, pressing and thumping. The echoes were muffled, which meant that lots of crisscrossed S beams supported the paneling. The stairs were solidly sealed off as well, with no easy way in. Had they just abandoned a whole subbasement down there?

The wood paneling ended at a row of lockers—too heavy to move, even with my peep muscles. I tapped the floor with my feet, wondering what was hidden beneath. From the ceiling, the red eyes of security cameras glowed mockingly in the darkness.

Then I realized something: All of the cameras were pointed more or less at me. Were they tracking me?

I moved a few yards, back into the cold corner, but the cameras didn’t follow. They all stayed pointed at the same target—the row of lockers. Whoever had set the security system up didn’t care what happened in the rest of the health club, as long as they could watch that one spot.

I walked along the lockers, running my fingers against them, smelling the dirty socks and chlorinated swimsuits inside. The metal grew colder as I went. In the center, one locker was icy to my touch, and through its ventilation slats that half-familiar scent—the one I couldn’t quite identify—floated on a draft of chilled air. I looked up at the cameras; they were all pointed directly

at me now.

The padlock was an off-the-shelf Master Lock, though with four tumblers instead of the usual three, more expensive than the others. I knelt, cradling it like a cell phone to my head. As the numbers spun left, then right, I heard the tiny steel teeth connecting, the tumblers aligning … until it sprang open, as loud as a gunshot in my ear.

Sliding the lock off the hasp, I opened the door.

There was nothing inside—nothingness, in fact. No hanging clothes, no hooks or shelves, just a black void that consumed the dim light of the gym. A chill wind came from the darkness, bearing that same half-familiar smell, sharpened now.

I reached into the locker. My hand went back into the darkness and cold, disappearing into nothingness.

Let me get this straight about my night vision: When I’m at home, the only light I keep on is the red LED of my cell-phone charger; I can read fine

print by starlight; I have to tape over the glowing clock face of my DVD player, because otherwise it’s too bright to sleep in my bedroom.

But I couldn’t see jack inside this locker.

There is something called cave darkness, which is ten times darker than sitting in a closet with towels stuffed under the door, covering your eyes with your hands—basically darker than anything you’ve ever experienced except down in a cave. Your hands disappear in front of your face, you can’t tell whether your eyes are open or not, random red lights seem to flicker in your peripheral vision as your brain freaks out from the total absence of light.

“Great,” I said.

Hoisting my duffel bag, I slipped through into the void.

The standard Night Watch flashlight has three settings. One is a low-light mode designed not to burn out peep night vision. The second setting is a normal flashlight, useful for normal people. The third is a ten-thousand-lumen eyeball-blaster intended to blow away peeps, scare away rat hordes, and generally indicate panic. Held a few inches from your skin, it will actually give you a suntan.

Switching on the tiny light, I found myself in a narrow hallway, squeezed between the foundation’s cement wall and the back side of the maniacally reinforced wood paneling. The floor was covered with little globs of something gooey. I knelt and sniffed and realized what I’d been smelling all along—peanut butter, mixed with the chalky funk of rat poison. Someone had laid out about a hundred jars of weaponized extra-crunchy back here. The bottom of the false wall was smeared with it to prevent the wood paneling from being gnawed through.

I stepped carefully among the gooey smears, and the hallway led me back to the corner where the missing stairs should have been. An industrial- strength metal door stood there, reinforced with yards of chain and generous wads of steel wool stuffed into the crack beneath it.

Steel wool is one thing rats can’t chew through. Someone was working conscientiously on the rat issue. Hopefully that meant Chip was crazy on the giant monster issue, and all there was down here was some peep’s long-lost brood.

The chains wound back and forth between the door’s push-bar handle and a steel ring cemented into the wall, secured with big, fat padlocks that took keys instead of combinations. To save time, I pulled bolt cutters from my bag and snipped the chains. As taut as rubber bands, they snapped loose and clattered to the floor.

Funny, I thought, chains don’t keep out rats.

Ignoring that uncomfortable fact, I gave the door a good hard push; it scraped inward a few inches. Through the gap, the promised stairs led downward into smellier smells and colder air and darker darkness. Sounds

filtered up: little feet scurrying, the snufflings of tiny noses, the nibblings of razor-sharp teeth. An all-night rat fiesta—but what were they eating down there?

Not chocolate, was my guess.

I pulled on thick rubber gloves.

The gap was just big enough to squeeze through. As I descended, I kept one thumb on the flashlight’s eyeball-blaster switch, ready to blaze away if there was a peep down here. I couldn’t hear anything bigger than a rat, but, as I’ve said, parasite-positives can hold their breath for a long time.

The rats must have heard me cutting the chains, but they didn’t sound nervous. Did they get a lot of visitors?

At the bottom of the stairs, my night vision began to adjust to the profound darkness, and the basement eased into focus. At first I thought the floor was slanted, then I saw that a long swimming pool dominated the room, sloping away from me. The paired arcs of chrome ladders glowed on either side, and a diving board thrust out from the edge of the deep end.

The pool contained something much worse than water, though.

Along its bottom skittered a mass of rats, a boiling surface of pale fur, slithering tails, and tiny rippling muscles. They scrambled along the pool’s edges, gathered in feeding frenzies around piles of something I couldn’t see. All of them had the wormy look of deep-underground rats, slowly losing their gray camouflage—and ultimately even their eyesight—as they spent generation after generation out of the sun.

A fair number of ratty skeletons were lined up on one side of the basement, bare ribs as thin as toothpicks—as if someone had put out glue traps in a neat row.

There were a lot of smells (as you might imagine) but one stood out among the others, raising my hackles. It was the scent mark of a predator. In Hunting 101, we had been taught to call it by its active molecule: 4-mercapto- 4-methylpentan-2-1. But most folks just call it “cat pee.”

What the hell was a cat doing down here? Sure, there are feral felines in New York. But they live on the surface, in abandoned buildings and vacant lots, within paw’s reach of humanity. They stay out of the Underworld, and rats stay away from them. When it comes to rats, cats are on our side.

If one had stumbled down here, it would be lean pickings by now.

I forced that last image from my mind and reached into the duffel bag for an infrared camera. Its little screen winked to life, turning the horde of rats into a blobby green snowstorm. I set the camera on the pool’s edge, pointing down into the maelstrom. Dr. Rat and her Research and Development pals could watch this stuff for hours.

Then I realized something: I didn’t smell chlorine.

With my nose, even a swimming pool that’s been drained for years retains

that tangy chemical scent. The pool had never been filled, which meant that the rat invasion had happened before they’d finished construction down here. I looked at the pool: The black line at water height had been half started, then abandoned.

I remembered Dr. Rat’s standard checklist: My first job was to figure out if this brood had access to the surface. I began a slow walk around the edge of the basement, flashlight still set low, moving carefully, looking for any holes in the walls.

The rats hardly noticed me. If this was the brood that had infected Morgan, they would find my scent comforting—our parasites were closely related, after all. On the other hand, true Underworld rats might behave this way with anyone. Never having seen a human being before, their little pink eyes wouldn’t know what to make of me.

The walls looked solid, not even hairline cracks in the cement. Of course, this building was just over a year old—the foundation should have been rat- proof for another decade or so.

I peered over the edge. In the deep end, right where the drain should have been, was a boiling mass of rats. Pale bodies struggled against one another, some disappearing into the mass, others thrashing their way up and out. The brood did have a way out of this basement, I realized, but it didn’t go up to the surface…

It went down.

I swallowed. The Night Watch would want to know exactly how big this opening was. Merely rat-size? Or were bigger things afoot?

I walked slowly back around to the shallow end of the pool and picked up the infrared camera. With it in one hand and the flashlight in the other, I put one tentative foot into the pool.

The sole of my boot didn’t make a sound. A layer of something soft was strewn across against the bottom of the pool, fluttering beneath the claws of darting rats. It was too dark to see what.

Something ran across my boot, and I shuddered.

“Okay, guys, let’s observe some personal space here,” I said, then took another step.

Something answered my words, something that wasn’t a rat. A long, high- pitched moan echoed through the room, like the sound of a mewling infant…

At the very end of the diving board, two reflective eyes opened, and another annoyed growl rumbled out.

A cat was looking at me, its sleepy eyes floating against invisibly black fur. A host of big, gnarly alpha rats sat around it on the diving board, like kingly attendants to an emperor, when they should have been running for their lives.

The eyes blinked once, strangely red in the flashlight’s glow. The cat

looked like a normal cat of normal-cat size, but this was not a normal place for any cat to be.

But cats didn’t carry the parasite. If they did, we’d all be peeps by now.

They live with us, after all.

My eyes fell from the feline’s unblinking gaze, and I saw what the rats were eating: pigeons. Their feathers were the soft layer lining the pool. The cat was hunting for its brood, just like a peep would. And I heard a sound below the ratty squeaks—the cat purring softly, as if trying to calm me down.

It was family to me.

Suddenly, the floor began trembling, a vibration that traveled up through my cowboy boots and into my muscle-clenched stomach. My vision began to shudder, as if an electric toothbrush had been jammed into my brain. A new smell rose up from the swimming pool drain, something I couldn’t recognize

—ancient and foul, it made me think of rotten corpses. It made me want to run screaming.

And through it all, the cat’s low purr of satisfaction filled the room. I squeezed my eyes shut and switched the flashlight to full power.

I could only hear (and feel) what happened next: a thousand rats panicking, pouring out of the pool to race for the dark corners of the room, flowing past my legs in a furry torrent. Hundreds more scrambled to escape down the drain and into the darkness below, their claws scraping the broken concrete as they fought to flee the horrifying light. Bloated rat king bodies flopped from the diving board and landed on the struggling mass, squealing like squeaky toys dropped from a height.

I fumbled a pair of sunglasses out of a pocket, got them on, and opened one eye a slit: The cat was unperturbed, still curled at the end of the diving board, eyes shut against the light, looking like an ordinary cat lying happily in the sun. It yawned.

The trembling of the floor had begun to fade, and the traffic jam of escaping rats was starting to break up. The drain hole looked to be more than a yard across; the deep end of the pool had cracked open, crumbling into some larger cavity below. The rats were still roiling, disappearing into it like crap down a flushing toilet.

Squinting up at the cat again, I saw that it had risen to its feet. It was stretching lazily, yawning, its tongue curling pink and obscene.

“You just stay there, kitty,” I called above the din, and took another step toward the drain. How deep was the hole? Cat-size? Peep-size? Monster-size?

I only needed one glimpse and I was out of there.

Between my blazing flashlight and the squeaks and scrambling feet echoing off the sides of the pool, I was almost blind and practically deafened. But the weird smell of death was fading, and just as the last rats were finally clearing out, I caught the slightest whiff of something new in the air.

Something close …

A sharp hiss sounded behind me, someone sucking in air. As I spun around, the flashlight slipped from my sweaty fingers…

It cracked on the swimming pool floor, and everything went very dark.

I was completely blind, but before the flashlight had died I’d glimpsed a human form at the edge of the pool. Following the bright image burned into my retinas, I ran the few steps up the slope and leaped from the pool, raising the camera like a club.

As I swung, I caught her smell again, freezing just in time.

Jasmine shampoo, mixed with human fear and peanut butter… and I knew who it was.

“Cal?” Lace said.

 

Chapter 10

MONKEYS AND MAGGOTS…OR PARASITES FOR PEACE

Howler monkeys live in the jungles of Central America. They have a special resonating bone that amplifies their cries—hence the name “howler monkey.” Even though they’re only two feet tall, you can hear a howler monkey scream from three miles away.

Especially if they’ve got screwworms.

Meet the screwfly, which lives in the same jungles as howler monkeys. Screwflies look pretty much like normal houseflies, except bigger. They aren’t parasites themselves, but their babies are.

When it comes time to have baby flies, screwflies look for a wounded mammal to lay their eggs in. They’re not picky about what kind of mammal, and they don’t need a very large wound. Even a scratch the size of a flea bite is plenty big.

When the eggs hatch, the larvae—also known by such charming names as “maggots” or “screwworms”—are hungry. As they grow, they begin to devour the flesh around them.

Most maggots are very fussy and only eat dead flesh, so they’re not a problem for their host. They can actually help to clean the wounds that they hatch into. In a pinch, doctors still use maggots to sterilize the wounds of soldiers.

But screwworms—screwfly maggots—are another matter. They are born ravenous, and they consume everything they can get their teeth into. As they devour the animal’s healthy flesh, the wound gets bigger, luring more screwflies to come and lay their eggs. Those eggs hatch, and the wound gets even bigger…

Eww. Yuck. Repeat.

At the end of this cycle is a painful death for many a howler monkey. But screwflies also bring a message of peace.

Like all primates, howler monkeys want mates, food, and territory—all the stuff that makes being a howler monkey fun. So they compete with one another for these resources—in other words, they get into fights.

But no matter how angry they get, howler monkeys never use their teeth or claws. Even if one of the monkeys is much bigger, all it ever does is slap the other one around and (of course) howl a lot.

You see, it’s just not worth it to get into a real fight. Because even if the smaller monkey gets its monkey ass totally kicked, all it has to do is get in one tiny scratch, and the fight becomes a lose-lose proposition. One little scratch, after all, is all a screwfly needs to lay its eggs inside you.

Many scientists believe that the howler monkeys developed their awesome howling ability because of screwworms. Any monkeys who resolved their conflicts by scratching and biting (and getting bitten and scratched in return) were eaten from within by screwworms. Game over for all the scratchy and bitey howler monkey genes.

Eventually, all that was left in the jungle were non-scratchy monkeys.

Survival of the fittest, which in this case were the non-scratchiest.

But there were still mates and bananas to be fought over, so the non- scratchy monkeys evolved a non-scratchy way to compete: howling. Survival of the loudest. And that’s how we got howler monkeys.

See? Parasites aren’t all bad. They take primates who otherwise might be killing one another and leave them merely yelling.

 

Chapter 11

MAJOR REVELATION INCIDENT

“What are you doing down here?” I yelled.

“What are you doing down here?” Lace yelled back, grabbing two blind fistfuls of my hazmat suit in the darkness. “Where the hell are we anyway? Were those rats?”

“Yes, those were rats!”

She started hopping. “Crap! I thought so. Why did it go all dark?” “I kind of dropped my flashlight.”

“Dude! Let’s get out of here!”

We did. I could see only leftover streaks etched into my retinas by the flashlight, but Lace’s eyes weren’t as sensitive as mine. She pulled me stumbling back up the stairs, and as we squished through the poisoned- peanut-butter hallway, my vision began to return—light was pouring in from the health club through the open locker door.

Lace squeezed out, and I followed, slamming the locker shut behind me.

Fluorescents buzzed overhead, and the basement looked shockingly normal. “What was that down there?” Lace cried.

“Wait a second.” I pulled her away from the security cameras and over to a row of weight benches. Sitting down, I tried to blink away the spots on my vision. Lace stayed standing, eyes wide, nervously shifting from one foot to the other.

“What the hell?” was all she could say.

I stared at her, half blind and still astonished by her sudden appearance. Then I remembered the doorman setting the elevator’s controls, leaving them unlocked so that I could return to the ground floor.

I hadn’t paid close enough attention. It was all my fault. I’d blown the first rule of every Night Watch investigation: Secure the site. But I was positive I’d closed the locker door behind me…

“How did you get down here?” I sputtered. “I thought the health club was closed at night!”

“Dude, you think I came down here to exercise?” She was still shifting from foot to foot. “I was headed out and Manny said, ‘You know that guy you came in with this afternoon? He’s here spraying for rats.’ And I’m like, ‘What?’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, did you know he was an exterminator? He’s down in the health club right now, looking to kill some rats!’ ” Lace spread her open palms wide. “But you told me you were looking for Morgan. So

what the hell?”

I didn’t answer, just sighed.

“And when I came down here,” she continued in a breathless rush, “the lights weren’t even on. I thought Manny had lost his mind or something. But when the elevator closed behind me, it was totally dark.” She pointed. “Except suddenly that locker was doing this … glowing thing.”

I groaned. On its killer setting, my Night Watch flashlight had been visible from up here.

Still hyperventilating, Lace continued. “And there was a hidden hallway, and the floor was covered with weird goo, and there were stairs at the end, with this insane squeaky pandemonium coming up from below. I called your name, but all I heard was rats!”

“And that made you want to go down the stairs?” I asked.

“No!” Lace cried. “But by then I figured you were down here, somewhere, maybe in trouble.”

My eyes widened. “You came down to help me?” “Dude, things didn’t look so good down there.”

I couldn’t argue with that. No one else could have messed this up quite as totally as I had. Things were bad enough, with a great big rat reservoir bubbling up from the Underworld, along with a weird peeplike cat and something big enough to make the earth shudder. And right smack in the middle of it all, I’d managed to insert Lace—a Major Revelation Incident.

I was screwed. But I found myself staring at Lace with admiration.

“All those rats…” A note of exhaustion crept into her voice as hysteria subsided. “Do you think they’ll follow us?”

“No.” I pointed at her shoe. “That stuff will stop them.”

“What the …?” She stood on one foot, staring at the bottom of her other shoe. “What the hell is this crap anyway?”

“Watch out! It’s poisonous!”

She sniffed the air. “It smells like peanut butter.” “It’s poisonous peanut butter!”

She let out a sigh. “Whatever—I wasn’t going to eat it. Note to Cal: I do not eat stuff off my shoe.”

“Right. But it’s dangerous!”

“Yeah, no kidding. This whole place should be condemned. There were, like, thousands of rats in that pool.”

I swallowed, nodding slowly. “Yeah. At least.”

“So what’s the deal? What are you doing here, Cal? You’re not an exterminator. Don’t tell me that you investigate STDs and spray for rats.”

“Um, not usually.”

“So does this building have the plague or something?”

Rats and plague did go together. Would Lace believe that one? My mind

began to race.

“No, dude,” Lace said firmly, rising to her feet and putting a finger in my face. “Don’t sit there making shit up. Tell me the truth.”

“Uh … I can’t.”

“You’re trying to hide this? That’s nuts!”

I stood and put my hands on her shoulders. “Listen, I can’t say anything. Except that it’s very important that you don’t tell anyone about what’s down there.”

“Why the hell would I keep quiet? There’s a swimming pool full of rats in my basement!”

“You just have to trust me.”

“Trust you? Screw that!” She set her jaw, and her voice rose. “There’s a disease that makes people write on the walls in blood spreading through my building, and I’m supposed to keep it a secret?”

“Um, yes?”

“Well, listen to this, then, Cal. You think this should be a secret? Wait till I tell Manny what I saw down there, and Max and Freddie and everyone else in the building, and the New York Times and the Post and Daily News, for that matter. It won’t be very secret then, will it?”

I tried to pull off a shrug. “No. Then it’ll just be a building in New York City with rats in the basement.”

“Not with that thing on my wall.”

I swallowed and had to admit she had something there. With Morgan’s gristle graffiti added into the mix, the NYPD would have a reason to reopen apartment 701 ’s missing persons case, which might lead them in all sorts of uncomfortable directions. The Night Watch was usually pretty good at making investigations go away, but this one would be tricky.

Which meant I was supposed to call the Shrink right now and tell her what had happened. But the problem with that was, I already knew what she’d tell me to do. Lace would have to disappear forever. All because she’d tried to help me.

I stood there in silence, paralyzed.

“I just want the truth,” Lace said softly. She sat down heavily on a weight bench, as if her nervous energy had run out.

“It’s really complicated, Lace.”

“Yeah, well, it’s pretty simple for me—I live here, Cal. Something really hideous is going on under our feet, and something insane happened right in my living room. It’s starting to freak me out.”

On those last words, her voice broke.

She could smell it now. With all she’d seen, Lace could feel the capital-N Nature bubbling up from below—not the fuzzy Nature at the petting zoo, or even the deadly but noble kind on the Nature Channel. This was the appalling,

nasty, real-world version, snails’ eyes getting eaten by trematodes; hookworms living inside a billion human beings, sucking at their guts; parasites controlling your mind and body and turning you into their personal breeding ground.

I sat down next to her. “Listen, I understand you’re scared. But knowing the truth won’t make it any better. The truth sucks.”

“Maybe. But it’s still the truth. All you’ve done is lie since you met me, Cal.”

I blinked. She didn’t. “Yeah,” I said. “But—” “But what?”

At that moment, I knew what I really wanted. After six months of the natural world getting steadily more horrible, of my own body turning against me, I was just as scared as Lace. I needed someone to share that fear with, someone to cling to.

And I wanted it to be her.

“Maybe I can explain some of it.” I breathed out slowly, a shudder going through me. “But you’d have to promise not to tell anyone else. This isn’t some journalism class project, okay? This is deadly serious. It has to stay secret.”

Lace thought for a few seconds. “Okay.” She raised a finger in warning. “As long as you don’t lie to me. Ever.”

I swallowed. She’d agreed way too fast. How could I believe her? She was studying to be a reporter, after all. Of course, my only other choice was the phone call that would make her disappear.

I stared into her face, trying to divine the truth of her promise, which probably wasn’t the best idea. Her brown eyes were still wide with shock, her breathing still hard. My whole awareness focused itself upon her, a tangle of hyped-up senses drinking her in.

My guess is the parasite inside me made the choice. Partly anyway. “Okay. Deal.” I put out my hand. As Lace shook it, a strange thing

happened: Instead of shame, I felt relief. After keeping this secret from the whole world for half a year, I was finally telling someone. It was like kicking my boots off at the end of a really long day.

Lace didn’t let go of my hand, her grip strengthening as she said, “But you can’t lie to me.”

“I won’t.” My mind was clearing, beginning to work logically for the first time since the earth had started to tremble, and I realized what I had to do next. “But before I tell you, I have to sort out a couple of things.”

Lace narrowed her eyes. “Like what?”

“I need to secure the basement: Chain up that big door behind the wall and lock that locker.” I could leave my duffel bag downstairs, I realized. The rats wouldn’t steal it, and I’d need the equipment right where it was the next

time I went down. But there was one last thing I had to get before we left. “Um, do you have a flashlight? Or a lighter on you?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a lighter. But Cal, tell me you’re not going down those stairs again.”

“Just for a second.” “What the hell for?”

I looked into her brown eyes, wide with rekindled fear, but if Lace wanted to know the truth, it was time she found out how nasty it could be.

“Well, since we’re already down here and everything, I really should catch a rat.”

“Okay, I’m tracking a disease. That part of my story was true.”

“No kidding. I mean, rats? Madness? Bodily fluids? What else could it be?”

“Oh, right. Nothing, I guess.”

We were up in Lace’s apartment. She was drinking chamomile tea and staring out at the river; I was cleaning poisonous peanut butter out of my boot treads, hoping the task would distract me from the fact that Lace was wearing a bathrobe. A rat called Possible New Strain was sitting under a spaghetti strainer held down with a pile of journalism textbooks, saying rude things in rat-speak.

I’d caught PNS at the top of the stairs, snatching him up in a rubber- gloved hand as he sniffed one of Lace’s peanutty footprints.

Lace cleared her throat. “So, is this a terrorist attack or something? Or a genetic engineering thing that went wrong?”

“No. It’s just a disease. The regular kind, but secret.”

“Okay.” She didn’t sound convinced. “So how do I avoid getting it?” “Well, you can be exposed through unprotected sex, or if someone bites

you and draws blood.” “Bites you?”

“Yeah. It’s like rabies. It makes its hosts want to bite other animals.” “As in ‘So pretty I had to eat him’?”

“Exactly. Cannibalism is also a symptom.”

“That’s a symptom?” She shuddered and took a sip. “So what’s with all the rats?”

“At Health and Mental they call rats ‘germ elevators,’ because they bring germs that are down in the sewers up to where people live, like this high-rise. A rat bite is probably how Morgan, or someone else up here, got infected in the first place.”

I saw another shudder pass through the shoulders of her bathrobe. Lace had taken a shower while I’d called Manny and told him to lock up the health club. Her face looked pink from a hard scrubbing, and her wet hair was still giving off curls of steam. I turned my attention back to my boots.

At the mention of rat bites, she lifted her feet up from the floor and tucked them under her on the chair. “So, sex and rats. Anything else I should worry about?”

“Well, we think there used to be a strain that infected wolves, based on certain historical … evidence.” I decided not to mention the bigger things that Chip was worried about, or whatever had made the basement tremble, and I cleared my throat. “But as far as we know, wolves are too small a population to support the parasite these days. So, you’re in luck there.”

“Oh, good. Because I was really worried about wolves.” She turned to me. “So, it’s a parasite? Like a tick or something?”

“Yeah. It’s not like a flu or the common cold. It’s an animal.” “What the hell kind of animal?”

“Sort of like a tapeworm. It starts off as a tiny spore, but it grows big, taking over your whole body. It changes your muscles, your senses, and most of all, your brain. You become a crazed killer, an animal.”

“Wow, that is really freaky and disgusting, Cal,” she said, cinching her bathrobe tighter.

Tell me about it, I thought, but didn’t say anything. I might have promised not to lie to her, but my personal medical history was not her business.

“So,” Lace said, “does this disease have a name?”

I swallowed, thinking about the various things it had been called over the centuries—vampirism, lycanthropy, zombification, demonic possession. But none of those old words was going to make this any easier for Lace to deal with.

“Technically, the parasite is known as Echinococcus cannibillus. But seeing as how that takes too long to say, we usually just call it ‘the parasite.’ People with the disease are ‘parasite-positives,’ but we mostly say ‘peeps,’ for short.”

“Peeps. Cute.” She looked at me, frowning. “So who’s this we you’re talking about anyway? You’re not really with the city, are you? You’re some sort of Homeland Security guy or something.”

“No, I do work for the city, like I said. The federal government doesn’t know about this.”

“What? You mean there’s some insane disease spreading and the government doesn’t even know about it? That’s crazy!”

I sighed, beginning to wonder if this had been a really bad idea. Lace didn’t even understand the basics yet—all I’d managed to do was freak her out. The Shrink employed a whole department of psych specialists to break the news to new carriers like me; they had a library full of musty but impressive books and a spanking new lab full of blinking lights and creepy specimens. All I was doing was haphazardly answering questions, strictly amateur hour.

I pulled a chair over and sat down in front of her. “I’m not explaining this right, Lace. This isn’t an acute situation. It’s chronic.”

“Meaning what?”

“That this disease is ancient. It’s been part of human biology and culture for a long time. It almost destroyed Europe in the fourteenth century.”

“Hang on. You said this wasn’t the plague.”

“It isn’t, but bubonic plague was a side effect. In the 1300s, the parasite began to spread from humans to rats, which had just arrived from Asia. But it didn’t reach optimum virulence with rodents for a few decades, so it mostly just killed them. As the rats died, the fleas that carried plague jumped over to human hosts.”

“Okay. Excuse me, but what?”

“Oh, right. Sorry, got ahead of myself,” I said, knocking my head with my fists. The last six months had been one big crash course in parasitology for me; I’d almost forgotten that most people didn’t spend days thinking about final hosts, immune responses, or optimum virulence.

I took a deep breath. “Okay, let me start over. The parasite goes way back, to before civilization even. The people I work for, the Night Watch, also go way back. We existed before the United States did. It’s our job to protect the city from the disease.”

“By doing what? Sticking rats in spaghetti strainers?”

Release me! squeaked PNS.

“No. By finding people with the parasite and treating them. And by destroying their broods—um, I mean, killing any rats who carry the disease.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense, Cal. Why keep it a secret? Aren’t you Health Department guys supposed to educate people about diseases? Not lie to them?”

I chewed my lip. “There’s no point in making it public, Lace. The disease is very rare; there’s only a serious outbreak every few decades. Nobody tries to get bitten by a rat, after all.”

“Hmm. I guess not. But still, this secrecy thing seems like a bad idea.” “Well, the Night Watch up in Boston once tried what you’re talking about

—a program of education to keep the citizens on the lookout for possible symptoms. They wound up with nonstop accusations of witchcraft, a handful of seventeen-year-olds claiming they’d had sex with the devil, and a lot of innocent bystanders getting barbecued. It took about a hundred years for things to settle down again.”

Lace raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, we did that play in high school. But wasn’t that a long time ago? Before science and stuff?”

I looked her in the eye. “Most people don’t know jack about science. They don’t believe in evolution because it makes them uncomfortable. Or they think AIDS is a curse sent down from God. How do you think those people

would deal with the parasite?”

“Yeah, well, people are stupid. But you wouldn’t keep AIDS a secret, would you?”

“No, but the parasite is different. It’s special.” “How?”

I paused. This was the tricky part. In my own debriefing, the Night Watch psychs had presented all the science stuff for hours before talking about the legends, and it had been a solid week before they’d uttered the V-word.

“Well, some fears go farther back than science, deeper than rational thought. You can find peep legends in almost every culture on the globe; certain of the parasite’s symptoms lend themselves to scary stories. If we ever get a major outbreak of this, there will be hell to pay.”

“Certain symptoms? Like what?”

“Think about it, Lace. Peeps are light-fearing, disease-carrying cannibals who revel in blood.”

As the words left my mouth, I realized I’d said too much too quickly. She snorted. “Cal, are we talking about vampires?”

As I struggled to find the right words, her amused expression faded.

“Cal, you are not talking about vampires.” She leaned closer. “Tell me.

You’re not supposed to lie to me!”

I sighed. “Yeah, peeps are vampires. Or zombies in Haiti, or tengu in Japan, or nian in China. But like I said, we prefer the term parasite-positive.”

“Oh. Vampires,” Lace said softly, looking away. She shook her head, and I thought for a moment that the slender thread of her trust had broken. But then I realized that her gaze was directed at the wall where the words written in blood many months before showed through.

Lace’s shoulders slumped in defeat, and she drew the robe tightly around her. “I still don’t see why you have to lie about it.”

I sighed again. “Okay, imagine if people heard that vampires were real.

What would they do?”

“I don’t know. Freak out?”

“Some would. And some wouldn’t believe it, and some would go see for themselves,” I said. “We figure at least a thousand amateurs would head down into the bowels of New York to look for adventure and mystery, and they would become human germ elevators. Your building is just one acute case. There are dozens of rat reservoirs full of the parasite down there, enough to infect everyone who takes the time to look for them.”

I stood up and started to move around the room, recalling all the motivational classes in Peep Hunting 101.

“The disease sits under us like a burned-down camp-fire, Lace, and all it needs is for a few idiots to start stirring the embers. Peeps were deadly enough to terrorize people back in tiny, far-flung villages. Imagine massive

outbreaks in a modern-day city, with millions of people piled on top of one another, close enough to sink their teeth into any passing stranger!”

Lace raised her hands in surrender. “Dude, I already promised. I’m not going to tell anyone, unless you lie to me.”

I took a deep breath, then sat down. Maybe this was going better than I’d thought. “I’ll be handling this personally. All you have to do is sit tight.”

“Sit tight? Yeah, right! I bet Morgan was sitting tight when she got bitten. There’s probably some little rat tunnel that leads all the way up here from the basement!” Her eyes swept the apartment, searching for tiny cracks in the walls, holes that could let the pestilence inside. Already the old fears were stirring inside her.

“Well, maybe a year ago there was,” I said soothingly. “But now there’s steel wool stuffed under that chained-up door, and a ton of peanut butter behind the false wall. The disease is probably contained for the moment.”

“Probably? So you’re asking me to trust my life to steel wool and peanut butter?”

“Poisoned peanut butter.”

“Cal, I don’t care if it’s nuclear peanut butter.” She stood up and stomped into her bedroom. I heard the scrape of vinyl across the floor, the sound of zippers, and the clatter of clothes hangers.

I went to her doorway and saw that she was packing a bag. “You’re splitting?”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Oh,” I said. The sight of her packing had sent a twinge through me. I’d just shared my biggest secret in the world with Lace, and she was leaving. “Well, that’s probably a good idea. It won’t take long to clear things up downstairs, now that we know what’s going on.” I cleared my throat. “You should tell me where you’re going, though, so I can keep in touch. Tell you when it’s safe.”

“No problem there. I’m coming to your place.” “Um … you’re doing what?”

She stopped with a half-folded shirt in her hands and stared at me. “Like I told you last night: I’m not going back to my sister’s couch. Her boyfriend’s there all the time now, and he’s a total dick. And my parents moved out to Connecticut last year.”

“But you can’t stay with me!” “Why not?”

“Why would you want to? You don’t even know me! What if I … turn out to be a psychopath or something?”

She returned to folding the shirt. “You? Every time I think you’re talking crazy, I remember what I saw down in the basement, or what’s in there.” She nodded toward the living room, where the thing on the wall lurked. “And nuts

or not, you’ve got the inside line on a huge story. Did you really expect me to go off and read textbooks tonight or something? Why do you think I went into journalism anyway?”

My voice went up an octave. “A story? What about keeping this a secret? You promised. Aren’t you supposed to have journalistic ethics or something?”

“Sure.” She smiled. “But if you break your promise and lie to me, I can break mine. So maybe I’ll get lucky.”

I opened my mouth and a strangled noise came out. How was I supposed to explain that I was a psycho, that a raging parasite inside me desperately wanted to spread itself by any means possible? That just standing here in the same room with her was already torture?

“Besides,” she continued, “you don’t want me staying anywhere else if you want to keep this a secret.”

“I don’t?”

She finished folding the shirt. “No, you don’t. I talk in my sleep like crazy.”

By the time we left her apartment, it was the dead of night.

I stabbed the button for the health club repeatedly as we rode down. It didn’t light up.

“Dude, don’t do that.”

“Just making sure Manny locked the elevator.”

Lace shifted her suitcase from one hand to another. “Yeah, but it’ll be open again tomorrow, won’t it?”

“Not for long.” I could requisition a fake court order in the morning, enough to shut down the lower levels for a week or so. And as soon as possible, I was going down there with Dr. Rat and a full extermination team, carrying enough poison to exterminate this particular slice of the Underworld halfway to the earth’s core.

The doormen had changed shifts, and the new guy looked up at us through thick glasses as we crossed the lobby, reflections of the little TVs on his console flickering in them. It gave me an idea.

“Talk to him for a second,” I whispered. “About what?”

“Anything.”

“Like what’s in your bag?”

I will be avenged! came PNS’s muffled squeak. He was trapped between the spaghetti strainer and a dinner plate, duct-taped together and wrapped in a towel for silence, the whole thing shoved inside the Barneys shopping bag in my hand. I figured his little rat lungs had another minute of oxygen left before I’d have to take the towel off.

“No. Just distract the guy. Quick.”

I steered Lace over to the doorman’s desk, elbowing her until she launched into a rant about her water taking too long to heat up. As the doorman tried to placate her, I eased around to where I could see his security monitors.

The little screens showed the insides of elevators, hallways, the sidewalk outside the building’s entrance, but nothing from the floor below. That was why no one had noticed our comings and goings—the cameras downstairs didn’t work anymore.

Or did they? I remembered their red lights glowing in the dark. This building was owned by an old family, after all. They hadn’t simply walled up the rat invasion; they’d left a secret passage through the locker and turned the cameras to face it. Someone was interested in what was going on downstairs.

There could be videotape of us somewhere, waiting to be watched… “Come on,” I said, pulling Lace away in mid-sentence.

The air outside was cold and damp. I paused to unwrap a corner of PNS’s cage to let him breathe. He squeaked vengeance and rebellion, and Lace glanced at the bag and took a step back.

“You owe me a plate and a strainer, dude,” she said. “You owe me an earth-shattering secret history.” “I’d rather have a spaghetti strainer.”

“Fine, take mine when you leave.” I pointed east, up Leroy Street. “We can catch the B on Fourth.”

“What? Take the subway? Go underground all the way to Brooklyn?” Lace shuddered. “No way. We’re cabbing it.”

“But that’s like twenty bucks!”

“Split two ways, it’s only ten. Duh. Come on, we can grab one on Christopher.”

She started off, and I walked a little behind her, realizing that my lifestyle was already changing, and my guest hadn’t even set foot in my apartment yet. I’d considered giving Lace my keys and taking PNS downtown for immediate testing, but the thought of her tromping through my personal space alone had killed that idea—there were books lying around that detailed the few Night Watch secrets I hadn’t already spilled. I’d promised to tell her the truth about the disease, not teach a college course on it.

As we walked up Leroy, I glanced at the loading docks of the big industrial buildings, wondering if any of the brood had found a way up to street level. A couple of rats sat atop a glistening pile of plastic garbage bags, but they had the furry look of surface-dwellers, not the pale greasiness of the brood in the basement.

Then I saw another shape, something lean and sleek moving in the shadows. It had the stride of a predator—a cat.

I couldn’t spot any markings, only a dark silhouette and the shine of fur.

The cat in the basement had also been solid black, but so were about a million other cats in the world.

Suddenly the animal froze, looking straight at me. Its eyes caught a streetlight, the reflective cells behind them igniting with a flash. My stride slowed to a halt.

“What is it?” Lace asked from a few yards ahead. At the sound of her voice, the cat blinked once, then disappeared into the darkness.

“Cal? What’s wrong?”

“Um, I just remembered something I didn’t tell you, another vector for the disease.”

“Just what I was hoping for. Another thing to worry about.”

“Well, it’s not very likely, but you should be careful of any cats you see in this neighborhood.”

“Cats?” Her gaze followed mine into the shadows. “They can get it too?!’ “Maybe. Not sure yet.”

“All right.” She pulled her coat tighter again. “You know, Cal … the guys upstairs from Morgan said that she had a cat. A loud one.”

A shudder traveled through me, another memory from that fateful night. There had been a cat in Morgan’s apartment, greeting us as we came in the door, watching as I dressed to leave the next morning. But had it been the one down in the basement?

Or the one watching us right now?

“That reminds me, Lace,” I said. “Are you allergic to cats?” “No.”

“Good. You’ll like Cornelius.”

“You have a cat? Even though they spread the disease?”

“Not this one. Rats are afraid of him. Now let’s get out of here.”

Cornelius was waiting for us, yowling from the moment my keys jingled in the lock, demanding food and attention. Once the door was open, he slipped out into the hall and did a quick figure eight through my legs, then darted back inside. We followed.

“Hey, baby,” I said, picking Cornelius up and cradling him.

Save me from the beast! squeaked PNS from his Barneys bag.

Cornelius’s claws unsheathed as he climbed painfully up my coat and down my back, leaping to the floor to paw the bag and yowl.

“Um, Cal?” Lace said. “I’m seeing a possible vector-thingy here.”

“Huh? Oh.” I whisked the bag away from Cornelius and across the room to the closet. Kicking aside a pile of dirty laundry, I deposited PNS’s entire containment system on the floor inside and shut the closet door tight.

“So that’s enough?” Lace asked. “A closet?”

“Like I said, the parasite has to be spread by biting,” I explained. “It’s not like the flu; it doesn’t travel through the air.”

“Ynneeeeow!” complained Cornelius, and sounds of ratty panic answered from inside the closet.

“But we’re going to be listening to that all night?”

“No. Watch this.” I picked up a can of cat food and ransacked the silverware drawer for a can opener. “Nummy-time!”

As the opener’s teeth incised the can, a million years of predatory evolution was sandblasted from Cornelius’s brain by the smell of Crunchy Tuna. He padded back over to the kitchen and sat on his haunches, staring raptly up at me.

“See? Cornelius has priorities,” I said, spooning the tuna into a bowl. “ ‘Nummy-time’?” Lace asked.

I swallowed, realizing that I wasn’t used to filtering my cat-to-owner gibberish. Lace was the first guest ever to set foot in this apartment. Between peep hunting and parasitology textbooks, I hadn’t had much time for socializing. Especially not with women.

The whole thing made me nervous, like I was being invaded. But I kept reminding myself that I wouldn’t lose control like I almost had on the balcony. That had been a moment of fear and excitement in a very small space.

I was considering, however, putting another rubber band around my wrist. “It’s just a thing Cornelius and I do,” I said, placing his bowl on the floor. Lace didn’t respond. She was touring the apartment, all one room of it, stretching from the kitchen to the futon squished into one corner. It was the same size as most, but I was suddenly self-conscious. Scoring an apartment in

a fancy building had probably dampened Lace’s enthusiasm for slumming.

She was inspecting my CD tower. “Ashlee Simpson?”

“Oh, wait, no. That was an old girlfriend’s obsession.” Actually, more of an anathema, lately. When I’d tracked Maria—the unfortunate girl I’d made out with at a New Year’s Eve party—to an abandoned 6-train station below Eighteenth Street, I’d brought a boom box full of Ashlee for self-defense. “I’m more into Kill Fee.”

“Kill Fee? Aren’t they, like, heavy metal?” “Excuse me, alternative metal.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. But you realize that having a girlfriend who’s into Ashlee Simpson isn’t much better than liking it yourself.”

“Ex-girlfriend,” I said, moving around the room and putting away my books from the Night Watch library. “And she wasn’t really… It was a short- term thing.”

“But you stocked up on tunes she liked? Very smooth.”

I groaned. “Listen, you can stay here, but you don’t have to snoop.”

Lace glanced at a T-shirt on the floor. “Yeah, well, at least I didn’t bring

my ultraviolet wand.”

“Hey that was for work. I don’t usually seek out bodily fluids.” I crossed to the futon and pulled it out straight. “Speaking of which, I’ll put clean sheets on this. You can have it.”

“Listen, I don’t want to kick you out of your bed.” She looked at my run- down couch. “I’ll be okay there. It’s not like I’m sleeping that close to the floor again ever, especially not with an infected rat about ten feet away.”

I glanced at the closet, but apparently PNS had no comment. “No, I can take the couch.”

She shook her head. “You’re too tall. You’ll wake up crumpled.”

She sat down, her houndstooth-check coat still wrapped around her. “And I’m too tired to care; I’m even too tired to worry about your pigeon mites. So keep your bed, okay?”

“Um, sure.” At least the couch and the futon were a decent distance apart. Lace’s jasmine smell was already filling the apartment, making my palms sweat.

She lay down, coat and all. “Just wake me up before ten.” “Aren’t you going to brush your teeth?”

“I forgot to pack a toothbrush. Got an extra one?” “No. Sorry.”

“Man, I forgot pretty much everything. That happens when things scare me.”

“Sorry.”

“Not your fault, dude.”

She closed her eyes, and I went into the bathroom, trying to be silent, every sound I made rattling my super-hearing. I hid my toothbrush, just in case Lace got desperate in the morning. It’s not a good idea to share a toothbrush with a positive, seeing as your gums bleed a tiny amount every time the brush scrapes across them. Not a very likely vector, but it could happen.

When I emerged, Cornelius had finished eating and was eyeing the closet. I knelt to stroke him for a while, building up a good purr. He wasn’t strong enough to open the closet door—but I didn’t want him and PNS yelling at each other all night. As always, I saved the fur that shed from his coat in a plastic Ziploc bag.

I went to bed in my clothes. Lace hadn’t stirred since closing her eyes. She looked pretty crumpled herself, huddled there, and I felt guilty for having the almost-real bed, and for having blown up her world.

It took a long time for silence to come. At first, I was too aware of Cornelius purring at my feet and the panicky short breaths of PNS as he shivered in his metal prison. I could smell cat food and Cornelius dander and even the scent of infected rat with its weird hint of family. I could also smell

Lace’s jasmine shampoo and the oils in her hair. From her breathing, I knew she wasn’t asleep yet.

Finally she stirred and pulled her coat off.

“Cal?” she said softly. “Thanks for letting me stay here.” “That’s okay. Sorry for messing up your life.”

She made the slightest movement—something like a shrug.

“Maybe you saved it. I knew that damn apartment was too good to be true. But I didn’t think it would try to kill me.”

“It won’t.”

“No, thanks to you.” She sighed. “I mean, I always figured one day I’d be a fearless reporter and everything, but your job? Going down into that basement knowing what might be down there? Looking for those peep thingies instead of running away? You must be really brave, dude. Or really stupid.”

I felt a flush of pride, even though she didn’t know the pathetic truth. I hadn’t really chosen my job; I’d been infected by it.

“Hey, you followed me down there,” I said. “That was pretty brave.” “Yeah, but that was before I knew about the cannibals, you know?” “Mmm,” was all I said.

“Anyway, I don’t think I would’ve slept at all tonight, if I’d been alone.

Thanks.”

We fell silent, and the glow inside me from Lace’s words stayed for a long time. Her smell was intense, all around me, and I seemed to be expanding as I breathed it in. I really did want to get up and kiss her good night, but I don’t think it was the parasite that wanted her. Not entirely.

And somehow, that made it easier to lie there, unmoving.

After a while, Lace’s breathing slowed. My ears grew accustomed to the stirrings of cat and mouse. The rattle of steam heating and the rush of passing traffic gradually faded away. Finally, all that was left was the unfamiliar sound of someone breathing close to me. It was something I hadn’t heard since the Night Watch had informed me that any lovers in my future were guaranteed to go crazy.

It kept spinning around in my head that Lace trusted me, a guy she’d only met the day before. Maybe it was something more than trust. Before the parasite, I’d wondered every few minutes if one girl or another liked me, but it had been a long six months since I’d entertained the question seriously. The fact that the answer was worthless didn’t stop my brain from turning it over and over again. It was pure torture, but in a funny way it was better than nothing. Better than being alone.

I listened for hours as Lace drifted deeper into sleep, rose up slowly, almost breaching the surface of consciousness to utter a few words of some imagined conversation, then descended again into dreamlessness.

Even those sounds faded as I reached my own half-waking slumber, trapped alone inside my head with the rumble of the beast, the hum of the never-ending war raging inside me, the keen of optimum virulence … until something strange and wonderful happened.

I fell asleep.

 

Chapter 12

THE MASTER PARASITE

Meet wolbachia, the parasite that wants to rule the world.

Wolbachia is tiny, smaller than a single cell, but its powers are enormous. It can change its hosts genetically, tamper with their unborn children, and create whole new species of carriers … whatever it takes to fill the world with wolbachia.

No one knows how many creatures on earth are infected. At least twenty thousand insect species carry it, and so do a lot of worms and lice. That’s trillions of carriers as far as we know. And every new place scientists look, they find more.

So, do you have to worry about wolbachia? We’ll get back to that later.

Here’s the strangest thing about wolbachia: No living creature has ever been infected with it. That’s right, you don’t catch wolbachia; you are born with it.

Huh?

You see, wolbachia is like one of those scrawny supervillains with a big brain. Wolbachia is a wimp: It can never leave its host’s body, not even in a drop of blood. At some point in its evolutionary history, wolbachia gave up the whole jumping-between-creatures thing and adopted a strategy of staying in safe territory—it spends its whole life inside one host.

So how does it spread? Very cunningly. Rather than risk the outside world, wolbachia infects new carriers before they’re born. That’s right: Every infected creature gets the disease from its own mother.

But what happens when wolbachia is born into a male host? Males can’t have children, so they’re a dead end for the infection, right?

This is the evil genius part.

In many insect species, wolbachia scrambles its male hosts’ genes with a secret code. Only other wolbachia (living inside a female) know how to decode the genes and make them work right. So when an infected insect tries to mate with a healthy one, the kids are born with horrible mutations, and they all die.

Over hundreds of generations of breeding only with one another, the infected insects slowly evolve into a new species. This species is one hundred percent infected with wolbachia and dependent on its own parasite to have children. (Insert evil laugh here.)

And this isn’t wolbachia’s only species-altering trick.

In some kinds of wasps, wolbachia has an even more power-crazed solution to the male problem. It simply changes all its host’s unborn children into females. No boys ever get born. Then wolbachia gives these females a special power: They can have kids without mating. And of course, all of those kids are born female too. In other words, males become completely irrelevant. Because of wolbachia, some species of wasp have become entirely female. All the boys are dead.

In fact, some scientists believe that wolbachia’s tricks may be responsible for creating a big chunk of the insect and worm species on our planet. Some of those species, like parasitic wasps, go on to infect other creatures. (That’s right, even parasites have parasites. Isn’t nature wonderful?) In this way, wolbachia is slowly remaking the world in its own image; without ever leaving the safety of home.

So what about you? You’re not an insect or a worm. Why worry about wolbachia?

Meet the filarial worm, a parasite that infects biting flies. It happens to be one of wolbachia’s big success stories. All of these worms are infected. If you “cure” a filarial worm with antibiotics, it can’t have kids anymore. It’s dependent on its own parasites—one of many species genetically engineered to be wolbachia carriers.

So what happens when a fly infected with filarial worms bites you? The worms crawl into your skin and lay eggs there. The eggs hatch, and the babies swim around in your bloodstream, some of them winding up in your eyeballs. Fortunately, the baby worms don’t hurt your eyes. Unfortunately, the wolbachia they carry sets off a red alert in your immune system. Your own immune system attacks your eyeballs, and you go blind.

Why does wolbachia do this? What is its evolutionary strategy in blinding human beings?

No one knows. One thing is for sure, though: Wolbachia wants to rule the world.

 

Chapter 13 HOPEFUL MONSTERS

“Dude, get up.”

My brain came awake slowly, appalled at the interruption of its first real sleep in ages. Then I smelled Lace’s jasmine hair, heard Cornelius’s claws scratching the closet door, felt the rat’s infection in the air… and all of yesterday’s memories crashed into place.

There was a deadly reservoir bubbling to the surface near the Hudson River. The parasite had jumped to a new vector species. I had betrayed the Night Watch, risking civilization as I knew it. And the most important thing? For the first time in six months I had spent the night with a girl, if only in the most narrow, technical sense.

Suddenly, I was awake, and feeling pretty decent.

“Come on, dude,” Lace said, stabbing my shoulder with the toe of her shoe. “I’ve got class, but I want to show you something.”

“Okay.” I pulled myself from the bed, eyes gummy, my slept-in clothes clinging to me. Lace had already showered and changed, and a wondrous smell filled the apartment, even more wondrous than hers. “Is that coffee?”

She handed me a cup, smiling. “You got it, Sherlock. Man, you sleep like a dead dog.”

“Huh. Guess I needed it.” I gulped the coffee, strong and welcome, while crossing to the fridge and pulling out a package of emergency franks. My parasite was screaming for meat, having missed out on its usual midnight snacks. I ripped the plastic open and shoved a cylinder of cold flesh in my mouth.

“Whoa,” Lace said. “Breakfast of crackheads.”

“Hungry.” It came out muffled through the half-chewed meat.

“Whatever wakes you up.” Lace sat at the tiny table that separated the kitchen from my living room and pointed to a piece of paper on it.

Cornelius was screaming for food, winding around my feet. On autopilot, I opened a can.

“So I got this out of your coat pocket,” Lace said. “And I noticed something weird.”

“Wait. You did what?” I looked over her shoulder—spread across the table were the building plans Chip had printed for me. “You went through my pockets?”

“It was sticking out, dude. Besides, you and I have no secrets now.” She

shuddered. “Except that food; close your mouth while chewing.” I did, managing a necessary swallow.

“This is the basement of my building, right?” Lace continued. “No, don’t open your mouth. I know it is.” She stabbed at one corner of the printout. “And this is the rat pool below the health club. Did you get these plans from city records?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Very interesting. Because they don’t match reality. They don’t show a swimming pool at all.”

I swallowed. “You know how to read blueprints?”

“I know how to do research—and how to read.” Her fingers traced a grid of little squares that filled one corner of the page. Next to it, the words Storage Units were neatly written. “See? No pool.”

I studied the plans silently for a moment—remembering what Chip had said the day before. The pool was a few yards deep, just deep enough to reach the Underworld. Because someone had added a swimming pool, Morgan had been infected. Then me and Sarah and Maria …

“A simple little change,” I said softly. “How ironic.”

“Dude, screw irony. I just wanted you to see how clever we journalism students are.”

“You mean how snoopy you are.”

Lace just grinned, then ran her eyes across my crumpled clothes and up- sticking hair. “Dude, you are bed-raggled.”

“I’m what?”

“Bed-raggled. You know, you’re all raggled from being in bed.” The gears in my head moved slowly. “Um, isn’t it bedraggled?”

“Yeah, no kidding. But my version makes more sense, you know?” Lace checked the time on her phone. “Anyway, I’ve got to run.” She swept up her bag from the table and headed for the door. Opening it, she turned back to face me.

“Oh, I don’t have any keys to this place.”

“Right. Well, I might get back pretty late tonight—I’m already behind schedule today.” I cleared my throat, pointing at the fruit crate by the door. “There’s an extra set in that coffee can.”

Lace stuck her fingers into the can, rummaging through laundry quarters until she pulled out a ring of keys.

“Okay. Thanks. And, um, see you tonight, I guess.” I smiled. “See you tonight.”

She didn’t move for a moment, then shuddered. “Wow, all the discomfort of a one-night stand, with none of the sex. Later, dude.”

The door slammed shut as I stood there, wondering what exactly she’d meant by that. That she was uncomfortable with me? That she hated being

here?

That she’d wanted to have sex the night before?

Then I realized something else: I had trusted the biggest secret in the world to this woman, and I didn’t even know her last name.

“There’s actually a form for that?”

“Well, not for cats specifically.” Dr. Rat tapped a few keys on her computer. “But yeah, here it is. ZTM-47/74: Zootropic Transmission to New Species.” She pressed a button, and her printer whirred to life.

I blinked. I had imagined a citywide Watch alert, an extermination team scrambling and heading for the West Side, maybe even a meeting with the Night Mayor. Not a one-page form.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“Look, it says, ‘Process immediately’ at the top. That’s not nothing.” “But…”

“What are so you worried about, Kid? You secured the site, didn’t you?” “Um, of course. But does this happen a lot? A whole new species getting

infected?”

“Don’t you remember Plagues and Pestilence?” Dr. Rat said, disappointment on her face. “That whole week we spent on the 1300s?”

“Yes. But I don’t consider once in the last seven hundred years to be a lot.”

“Don’t forget werewolves, and those bats in Mexico last century.” She leaned back in her chair, staring up into the mysteries of the squeaking row of rat cages.

Dr. Rat’s lair sort of freaks me out, what with all the rattling cages of rodents, the brand-new textbooks and musty bestiaries, and the shiny tools lined up to one side of the dissection table. (There’s just something about dissection tables.)

“You know,” Dr. Rat said, “there might even be some history of a cat- friendly strain. The Spanish Inquisition thought that felines were the devil’s familiars and barbecued a whole bunch of them. Their theory was that cats stole your breath at night.”

“I can see where they got that one,” I said, remembering how often I’d woken up with all fourteen pounds of Cornelius sitting on my chest.

“But it’s paranoid to focus on a handful of transmissions, Cal,” Dr. Rat said. “You’ve got to keep your eye on the big picture. Evolution is always cranking out mutations, and parasites are constantly trying out new hosts— some kind of worm takes a crack at your intestines pretty much every time you eat a rare steak.”

“Oh, nice. Thanks for that image.”

“But most of them fail, Kid. Evolution is mostly about mutations that

don’t work, sort of like the music business.” She pointed at her boom box,

which was cranking Deathmatch at that very moment. “For every Deathmatch or Kill Fee, there are a hundred useless bands you never heard of that go nowhere. Same with life’s rich pageant. That’s why Darwin called mutations ‘hopeful monsters.’ It’s a crapshoot; most fail in the first generation.”

“The Hopeful Monsters,” I said. “Cool band name.”

Dr. Rat considered this for a moment. “Too artsy-fartsy.”

“Whatever. But this peep cat looked pretty successful to me. I mean, it had a huge brood and was catching birds to feed them. Doesn’t that sound like an adaptation for spreading the parasite?”

“That’s nothing new.” Dr. Rat threw a pencil in the air and caught it. “Cats bring their humans little offerings all the time. It’s how they feed their kittens; sometimes they get confused.”

“Yeah, well, this peep cat looked healthy. Not like an evolutionary failure.”

Dr. Rat nodded, drumming her fingers on the top of PNS’s cage. She’d already drawn the rat’s blood and attached the test tube to a centrifuge in the corner of her lair. It had spun itself into a solid blur, rumbling like a paint mixer in a hardware store.

“That’s not bad—given how many parasite mutations kill their hosts in a few days. But evolution doesn’t care how strong or healthy you are, unless you reproduce.”

“Sure … but this brood was really big. Thousands of them.”

“Maybe,” she said, “but the question is, how does this new strain get into

another cat?”

“You’re asking me?” I said. “You’re the expert.”

She shrugged. “Well, I don’t know either, Kid. And that’s the deal- breaker. If the new strain doesn’t have a way back into another kitty final host, then the adaptation is just a dead end. Like toxoplasma in humans, it’ll never go anywhere.”

I nodded slowly, wrapping my brain around this. If this new strain couldn’t find a way to infect more cats, then it would die when the peep cat died. Game over.

I looked hopefully at Dr. Rat. “So we might not be facing a civilization- ending threat to humanity?”

“Look, cats would be a great vector for the parasite to jump from rats to humans, I’ll give you that. A lot more people get bitten by cats every year than rats. But it’s much more likely this is a one-off freak mutation. In fact, it’s even more likely you just got spooked and didn’t know what you were seeing.”

I thought of the rumbling basement, the awful smell—maybe that had been a hallucination, but the peep cat I really had seen. “Well, thanks for the pep talk.” I stood. “Hope you’re right.”

“Me too,” Dr. Rat said softly, looking down at PNS.

I pulled the ZTM-47/74 off the printer. There would be many more forms to fill out that day; my writing hand was sore just thinking about it.

I stopped at the door. “Still, let me know what you think about that video. It looked like the peep cat was being worshipped by its brood of rats. Seems like that dynamic would take a few generations to evolve.”

Dr. Rat patted the videotape I’d brought her. “I’m going to watch it right now, Kid.” She gestured at the centrifuge. “And I’ll let you know if Possible New Strain is a relative of yours. But I have one question.”

“What?”

“Does he smell like one?”

I paused to take one last sniff of PNS, catching the little fluffs of joy the rat gave off as he consumed the lettuce she’d given him. Dr. Rat knows a lot about smells, which chemicals give each fruit and flower its distinctive aroma

—but she’ll never have the olfactory sense of a predator. Her nose has to live vicariously through us carriers.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “He smells like family.”

“Well, your nose probably knows what it’s smelling. But I’ll call you when I get firm results. In the meantime, here’s a little something that might come in handy.” She tossed me a little vial of yellow liquid. “That’s Essence of Cal Thompson. Your smell. Might be useful if that brood is related to you. Just use it carefully. You don’t want to cause a rat riot.”

It looked like piss in a perfume bottle, and holding it gave me an equally unpleasant feeling. “Gee, thanks.”

“And one more thing, Kid.”

I paused, half out the door. “What?”

“Why did you use a spaghetti strainer? Don’t they give you guys cages anymore?”

“Long story. See you later.”

Walking down the halls of the Night Watch, I started to feel guilty.

While I’d been talking to Dr. Rat, I hadn’t felt so bad about my indiscretions of the night before. We were pals, and I could almost believe she’d understand if I told her about spilling the beans to Lace. But as the implacable file cabinets rose on either side of me on my way into Records, I could feel the weight of my Major Revelation Incident growing with every step. It had made sense the night before, with Lace threatening to go to the newspapers, but this morning I felt like a traitor.

On the other hand, there was no changing my mind. I still didn’t want Lace to disappear.

When I reached Chip’s office, he looked up at me with a gaze that seemed somehow reproachful. “Morning, Kid.”

“Hey, Chip.” I cleared my throat and brushed away the guilty thoughts. “I

found out what happened. They added a swimming pool.” “Who added a what?”

I pointed at the blueprints for Lace’s building still spread across his desk, half obscured by stray papers and books. “A swimming pool a few yards deep, right on the lowest level. That’s how the rat reservoir came up.”

Chip stared at the blueprints, then at the yellowing plans of the PATH tunnel, his fingers finding the spot where the two intersected.

Finally, he nodded. “Yeah. If the pool had a drain, that would do it.” He looked up at me.

“There was a big hole in the deep end,” I said. “And I smelled something pretty bad coming from it. And felt a sort of… trembling. Like something big going under me.”

“Like a subway train?”

I raised an eyebrow. That explanation hadn’t occurred to me. “Maybe. But anyway, that hole is where the rats all disappeared when I cranked up my flashlight.”

“The flashlight you broke?”

“Yes, the one I broke. Who told you that?” He shrugged. “I hear things. Have you—?”

“Yes, I’ll file a DE-37.” I waved the growing stack of forms in my hand.

He chuckled, shaking his head. “Man, you hunters. I break a pencil and there’s hell to pay.”

“I can see how that’s deeply unfair, Chip. Especially if that pencil should try to kill you with its teeth and claws, or launch its brood of a thousand deadly paper clips against you.”

Chip chuckled again, raising his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Won’t say another word against hunters. But don’t say that Records never helped you out. We got some interesting data about your seventh-floor tenants this morning. I think you’ll find it useful.”

“You know where they are?”

“Afraid not. They’ve disappeared completely.” He pulled out an envelope and removed five photographs. “But this is what they look like, or did last year anyway. Probably thinner now, those of them that are still alive.”

I recognized Morgan, her dark hair and pale skin, eyebrows perfectly arched.

“Thanks.” I took the photos from him and slid them into my jacket pocket. “And one more thing,” Chip said, unfolding a printed T-shirt across his

chest. “This is for you.”

I stared at the smiling face, the sequined guitar, the good-natured belly overlapping his belt: Garth Brooks.

“Um, Chip, am I missing something?”

“It’s an anathema, Kid!” He grinned. “We found some online posts by a

couple of your missing persons—Patricia and Joseph Moore. Both big Garth Brooks fans.”

“And you went out and bought that thing?”

“Nope. Believe it or not, Hunt Equipment had it on file.”

My eyebrows rose. “We had a Garth Brooks T-shirt on file?”

“Yeah. You know that big outbreak on the Upper West Side eight years ago? Couple of those guys were really into country music.” He tossed the shirt to me. “Wear it next time you go down. Just in case our missing persons have gone subterranean.”

“Great.” I stuffed the T-shirt in my backpack. “Anything else?” “Nope. But don’t worry, we’ll keep looking.”

“You do that. And if you find out that Morgan was into Ashlee Simpson, don’t worry—I’ve already got it covered.”

Dr. Rat had been right about the ZTM-47/74—it was a form that made things happen. Unfortunately, they weren’t the things that I’d wanted to happen. Instead of a well-armed extermination team heading for Lace’s building that afternoon, there was only me.

I was not empty-handed, though. I had a vial of Dr. Rat’s Eau de Cal, a Ziploc bag of Cornelius dander, the Garth Brooks T-shirt on under my hazmat suit, a new flashlight and some other equipment in my duffel bag, and a work order signed by the Night Mayor himself, instructing me to capture the alleged peep cat. That last one was why I was flying solo. Apparently, a big squad of poison-wielding attackers might scare kitty away, and kitty was needed for testing.

So that meant me alone.

On my way across town, I stopped at a grocery store and bought two Crunchy Tunas and a can opener. Dr. Rat’s experimental Cal extract might attract the peep cat, but I prefer the classics.

Manny was back at the door; he gave me a knowing wink. “You going upstairs or downstairs, my friend?”

“Down, unfortunately.” I slapped a fake By-Order-of-Sanitation document on his desk. Manny’s eyes widened as he scanned it.

“Whoa, man. You’re telling me we’re getting shut down?” “Just the health club. We found rats, a whole bunch.” “Oh, that’s bad.” He shook his head.

“Hey, there’s no reason to make a fuss. You can say whatever you want about why it’s off limits. Tell the tenants there’s a gas leak or something.”

“Okay.” He exhaled through his teeth. “But the landlords aren’t going to like this.”

“Tell them the extermination won’t cost anything. The city will handle it all.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I’ve personally got it covered. Just one thing, though.” He looked up from the document.

“I’ll need the keys to the elevator,” I said. “All of them. We don’t want anyone wandering around in the basement. Not even building staff.”

“Really?”

I leaned closer. “These rats … very dangerous.”

Manny looked doubtful about surrendering his keys. But after calling the fake phone number on the fake Sanitation order, he found himself reassured by a fake city official that everything would be okay as long as he cooperated. Soon I was headed down into the darkness again.

First, I dealt with the security cameras, sticking a piece of black tape over each of their lenses. Easy-peasy and some useful information might turn up for my trouble. If anyone bothered to fix the cameras, at least I’d know someone was paying attention.

Opening the locker, I stepped into the cave darkness, flicked on my new flashlight, and crept down the hidden hallway. Lace’s and my footprints were still there, preserved in peanut butter, but no new ones had appeared.

I cut open the chained-up door again, and this time when I closed it behind me, I jammed wedges into the cracks, restuffing the steel wool underneath.

The site secured, I descended the stairs, flashlight in hand. The swimming pool was almost quiet.

In the soft red glow I saw only a few dozen rats and the picked-clean skeletons of pigeons, sitting undisturbed. Apparently it wasn’t feeding time. The peep cat wasn’t in sight.

I found my abandoned duffel bag and I transferred a few necessary items to my new one, then stepped into the empty pool. My boots trod softly across the pigeon feathers. The few rats perching on the pool’s edge watched me descend toward the deep end, mildly curious. A big fat one leaned his chin over the diving board, looking down at me.

Without a thousand panicking rodents in the way, I could see the drain much better. The concrete around it had collapsed, and through the jagged hole was a deeper darkness that offered up a damp and earthy smell. No scent of death.

The hole was big enough for a slender human body to slip through. Hunkering at the edge, I opened a can of cat food. The smell of Crunchy Tuna infused the air, and I heard little noses sniffing around me. But nothing came to investigate.

Dr. Rat has a word for what rats are: neophobic. In other words, they don’t like new things. Related to them or not, I was something new in their environment, and Crunchy Tuna was too.

I pushed a chunk of Crunchy Tuna down into the hole. A liquid splat

came from below. The space down there was big; I could hear its size in the echoes.

After a few minutes of waiting, I switched off the flashlight completely. Blind in the darkness, I hoped my ears might begin to listen harder. The few rats around me continued going about their business, cleaning themselves and squabbling. A few got up the courage to dart past me and down into the hole. They sniffed the dollop of cat food below, but I heard no little teeth daring to take a bite. They were a cautious bunch.

Rats send chemical signals to one another, emotions carried by smells. One nervous individual can make a whole pack of rats anxious, fear spreading through the population like a dirty rumor. And sometimes, a pack will suddenly abandon a place all at once, collectively deciding that it has bad vibes.

I wondered if the peep cat’s brood was still jittery from my flashlight blast the night before. Maybe they had left this basement forever, fleeing far down into the Underworld.

Then I heard the meow.

It reached me from a long distance, sleepy and annoyed-sounding, through a prism of echoes. The cat was still down here.

But it wasn’t coming to me; I had to go to it.

The concrete was brittle—a few solid kicks opened the hole enough for me to climb through. I lowered my duffel bag as far as possible, then dropped it. The clunk of metal told me that the floor was about ten feet below.

Holding onto the flashlight carefully, I slipped through and let myself fall. My boots hit solid ground with a crunch of shattered concrete that echoed like a gunshot.

I switched my flashlight on low again.

A tunnel stretched away into the darkness, extending as far as I could see in both directions. Decades of dust had settled in here, filling the bottom with a loose dirt floor. It was lined with uneven stones, century-old mortar barely holding them together. They were cold and wet to the touch—the tons of dirt over my head squeezing the groundwater through them like a fist around a wet rag.

A slight breeze moved through the passage, carrying the smells of rats, earth, and fungus. Still, nothing as foul and horrible as what I had scented the day before.

The breeze felt fresh; it had to be coming from some sort of opening at the surface. I decided to move upwind. With the air blowing into my face, I could smell whatever was in front of me without it smelling me.

I’ve been in a lot of underground spaces in New York—subway tracks, sewers, steam pipe tunnels—but this one was different. There were no stray bits of paper, no garbage, no smells of piss. Maybe it had lain undisturbed by

human beings for the century since it had been built, carrying only air, rats, and the occasional peep cat beneath the city streets. The tunnel inclined slightly as I walked, a winding stain in the center of the floor showing where rain had trickled down the slope for the last hundred years.

Then I smelled something human on the breeze. Well… half human.

Peeps have a subtle scent. Their feverish bodies consume almost everything they eat, leaving few smells of waste. Their dry skin exudes none of the salty sweat of a regular person. But no metabolism is perfect—my predator’s nose detected a hint of rotten meat and the whiff of dead skin cells, like fresh leather hanging on a boot factory wall.

The breeze died and I froze, waiting for it to come again. I didn’t want my scent to drift ahead of me. A moment later, the air moved again, and the intimate smell of family washed over me.

This peep was a relative.

As softly as I could, I laid the duffel bag on the ground and pulled a knockout injector from the zippered pocket of my hazmat suit.

I switched off the flashlight and began to crawl, a wave of nerves rushing through me. This was the first peep I’d ever hunted who was an absolute unknown. The only anathema I had was the Garth Brooks T-shirt, which somehow didn’t seem equal to the task. The darkness seemed to stretch forever before me, until a hint of light played across the blackness. Gradually I was able to make out the stones in the passage walls again, and my hands in front of my face … and then something else.

What looked like tiny clouds were rolling along the floor, carried by the breeze. They glided toward me, silent and insubstantial, and when I waved a hand close to them, they stirred in its wake.

Feathers.

I took a pinch and held it up to my eyes. This was the soft white down from a pigeon’s breast. As the light grew longer, I saw that the whole tunnel was carpeted with downy feathers; they clung to the ceiling stones and to my hazmat suit, rolling across the floor like a slow, ghostly tide.

Somewhere ahead, there were a lot of dead birds.

Larger feathers began to appear, the dirty gray and blue of pigeon and seagull wings, trembling in the breeze. I crawled silently across the carpeted dirt floor, feeling the softness under my palms and trying not to think of pigeon mites.

Ahead I could hear breathing, slow and relaxed for a peep.

The tunnel ended at a shaft that went straight up—light pouring down from above, a rusted iron ladder driven into the stone wall. A pile of feathers had collected at the bottom. A few whole birds lay on top of it unmoving, their necks twisted.

I froze, watching the breeze stir the feathers until a shadow moved across

them. The peep was at the top of the ladder.

With the chill autumn air flowing down the shaft, it still couldn’t smell me. I wondered why it was nesting up there, instead of hiding down here in the gloom. Placing my flashlight on the floor to free up my hands, I crawled to the end of the tunnel and peered up, eyes slitted against the sunlight.

He clung to the ladder twelve feet above me, staring out at the world like a prisoner at a cell window, the reddish light of late afternoon softening his emaciated face.

I lowered myself into a crouch, gripped the injector, and jumped straight up as high as I could.

He heard me at the last second, looking down just as I reached up to jam the needle into his leg. He twisted away, the injector missing completely. My hand grasped the ladder but the peep screamed and flailed his foot at me, landing a kick in my teeth. My grip loosened … and I was falling.

I reached out to grab a passing rung and swung inward, bouncing against the stone wall and holding on for a bare second, the breath knocked from me. Then the peep was dropping toward me, hissing, teeth bared. His body struck me broadside, wrenching my fingers from the ladder rung. We fell together, landing in a crumpled heap on the pile of pigeon feathers, his wiry muscles writhing against me.

Black fingernails raked across my face, and I scrambled free and jumped away into the tunnel, cracking my head against the low stone ceiling. Dizzy from the impact, I spun to face him, hands raised.

The peep leaped up in an explosion of feathers, his black claws lashing through the air. I held up the injector to ward him off, and felt his flailing hand connect with it, a brief hiss sounding before the injector flew away into the darkness. The peep’s next blow struck my head, knocking me to the ground.

He stood over me, silhouetted by the sunlight, swaying a little, like a drunk. I scrambled backward, crab style. He let out another scream…

Then tumbled heavily to the ground. The injection had knocked him out. That good old peep metabolism, fast as lightning.

I blinked a few times, shaking my head, trying to force the pain away. “Ow, ow, ow!” I said. I rubbed at a bump already rising on my scalp.

“Stupid tunnel!”

When the pain had faded a little, I checked his pulse. Slow and thready, but he was alive—for a peep, anyway. The injection would keep him out for hours, but I tagged him to be certain, handcuffing him to the lowest ladder rung and sticking an electronic bracelet around his ankle. The transport squad could follow its signal here.

Finally, I sat back and grinned happily, letting a rush of pride erase my pain. Even if he was family, this was my first peep capture outside my own

ex-girlfriends. I turned him over to look at his face. Thinner than his photograph, his cheekbones high and hair wild, this was a barely recognizable Joseph Moore. He looked way too skinny for a seven-month-old peep, though, considering the pile of feathers he’d accumulated.

What had he been doing at the top of the ladder, up there in the sun?

I pulled myself up the ladder, noting how smooth the walls of the shaft were. Too slick for a cat to climb, or even a rat—only a human being could make use of it.

At the top, the afternoon light slanted through the steel-grated window. The view was the Hudson River, from only a few feet above the water level. From just overhead I heard laughter and the hum of Rollerblades.

I was inside the stone bulwark at the edge of the island, I realized, right below the boardwalk where people jogged and skated every day, only a few feet from the normal daylight world.

Then I saw the broken black column in front of me, a pylon from an old pier, a rotting piece of wood just big enough for a pigeon or a seagull to perch on. There was bird crap all over it, and it was just within arm’s reach.

Joseph Moore had been hunting.

Then a realization swept over me, and I gripped the ladder rungs with white knuckles, remembering the picked-clean pigeon skeletons and feathers back in the swimming pool. Joseph Moore was too skinny to have eaten all those birds at the bottom of the shaft; most had been carried away. He had been hunting for the brood. With his long human arms, he had brought them food that they couldn’t reach.

But unlike most human peeps, Joseph Moore wasn’t at the center of the brood. He’d been stuck out here on this lonely periphery, the hated sunlight shining in to blind his eyes, forced to give up his kills for the pack to eat.

He was nothing but a servant to the brood’s real master. “The cat has people,” I said aloud.

 

Chapter 14 SLIMEBALLS SAVE THE WORLD

Okay, remember those slimeballs? The ones with lancet flukes in them? It turns out that they do more than just infect cows, snails, and ants. They help save the world.

Well, okay, not the whole world. But they do make sure that the corner of the world where ants and cows and snails live doesn’t come crashing down. Here’s how it works:

When cows are looking for something to eat, they stay away from grass that’s really green. Green grass is good for them, but it’s green because of the cow pies fertilizing it. Now, these cow pies don’t cause problems in themselves—cows are smart enough not to eat them. But cow pies have lancet flukes in them. Thus, there are fluke-infected snails nearby, which means that there must be flukey ants sitting atop stalks of green grass, waiting to be eaten.

So cows have evolved to avoid bright green grass. They don’t want to get infected with lancet flukes, after all.

But a problem arises when there are too many cows and not enough grass to go around. The cows wind up eating the green grass, and getting lancet flukes in their stomachs. Less grass to go around, more sick cows. And, it turns out, sick cows have fewer calves. The cow population drops, and there’s more grass for everyone.

Get the picture? The parasites control the population. They’re part of nature’s balance.

So what happens if you get rid of the parasites? Bad things.

Not long ago, some cattle ranchers decided to increase their herds with parasite-killing medicine. They doped every cow until all the parasites were gone. So their cattle had more and more calves, and they ate all the grass, green or not. More hamburgers for everyone!

For a while.

It turned out that those little clusters of bright green, parasite-laden grass were important. They were holding down the topsoil. Without parasites to keep the cows in check, every square inch of grass got eaten, and soon the grassland turned into a desert. New plants came in, desert shrubs that made it impossible for grass to return.

All the cows died. All the snails died. Even the ants got blown away. Without our parasites to keep us in check, we’re all in trouble.

 

Chapter 15 THE PATH BELOW

Joseph Moore was still unconscious, snoring softly on the feathers. Maybe dreaming of his cat master.

I wondered if Dr. Rat would try to explain this new development away as just another hopeful monster. Surely a human who served a peep cat would take a few generations to evolve. Of course, people and cats have been getting along for thousands of years, since the Egyptians worshipped them as gods. Maybe this was just a new twist on that, or on the toxoplasma thing.

Whatever was going on, I had to catch this cat. The yowl I’d heard from the swimming pool must have come from the other end of the ventilation tunnel, downwind. Which meant that it would smell me coming.

“Fine,” I whispered. I was armed with one more can of Crunchy Tuna, after all.

Facing the tunnel, I realized that my night vision was gone. Glimpsing the afternoon sun across the Hudson had left me half blind, seeing only spots and traces against the darkness. I closed my eyes to let them readjust to darkness, moving slowly back down the tunnel.

Then I heard a noise, faint footfalls in the dirt.

My eyes sprang open, but the tunnel ahead remained absolutely black. The only scents came from behind me—the pile of feathers and the sleeping peep. I swore softly no longer so proud of my hunting instincts. Just like Joseph Moore, I had been cornered, blind and upwind. And my spare knockout injector was in my duffel bag.

I crouched in a defensive stance, listening hard.

No sound at all came from the darkness. Had I imagined the footsteps?

My stuff had to be up there somewhere, probably only a few steps away. I gritted my teeth and scuttled forward, sweeping my hands back and forth across the dirt, hunting for the cold metal of the flashlight.

I barely glimpsed her before she struck, barreling out of the darkness and crashing into me, as hard and solid as a suitcase full of books. The impact knocked my breath away and threw me to the ground. Long fingernails raked my chest, shredding my hazmat suit. I blindly swung a fist and connected with hard muscle, driving a grunt from the peep.

“Patricia!” I shouted, half guessing, and she hissed at the sound, scrambling away from the anathema of her own name. I was right—it was Joseph’s wife. The light came from behind her now, igniting a shimmering

halo of feathers wound into her hair and sticking to her skin. With her long fingernails and half-starved face, she looked like a human partly transformed into an awful bird of prey.

She readied herself to spring at me.

“ ‘I’ve got friends in low places,’ ” I sang—the only Garth Brooks song that came to mind. The refrain halted her long enough for me to tear the shredded hazmat suit the rest of the way open.

Patricia Moore stared at my chest in horror; the jolly country singer stared back.

“Oh, yeah!” I said. “She’s my cowboy Cadillac!”

Her eyes widened and she screamed, spinning away to scuttle up the tunnel toward the light.

Another anathema awaited her there: her husband, faceup on the floor. I turned and scrambled deeper into the darkness, sweeping the dirt floor wildly with my palms. Where was my damn flashlight?

My racing brain wondered how long she’d been tracking me. Had she followed me from downwind since I’d dropped into the tunnel? Or maybe she always lurked near her husband, just as Sarah had stayed close to Manhattan.

Suddenly my knuckles grazed hard metal, sending the flashlight’s cylinder rolling farther into the darkness. I reached out, grasping blindly, and at that moment my ears split with Patricia Moore’s scream—fear for her husband and horror at the sight of his beloved face, mixed up in one terrible cry that echoed through the tunnel.

My hand closed on the flashlight.

She was already headed back, loping toward me on hands and knees, growling like a wolf.

I covered my eyes with one hand, turned the flashlight on her, and switched it to full power. Her feral grunts choked off, and the tunnel flooded with light so strong that the blood-pink veins in my eyelids were burned into my vision.

A moment later, I flicked it off and opened my eyes. Against the sunlight streaming down the shaft, I could see Patricia Moore crouching in the center of the tunnel, head pressed against the feather-strewn dirt, motionless, as if paralyzed by one too many insults to her optic nerve.

I set the flashlight on low and found my duffel bag, only a few yards down the tunnel. Pulling out the spare injector and loading it, finally thankful for all those tedious drills in Hunting 101, I whirled to face her. She still hadn’t moved.

Perhaps Patricia had despaired, thinking that her husband was dead, or maybe it was too much to keep fighting in a world that included my rendition of “Cowboy Cadillac.” But for whatever reason, she didn’t move a muscle as I approached across the feathered floor.

I reached out and jabbed her in the shoulder. She winced as the needle hissed, lifted her head, and sniffed the air.

“You’re one of Morgan’s?” she asked.

I blinked. My vision was still spotted with tracers, but her expression seemed thoughtful, almost curious. Her voice, like Sarah’s, was dry and harsh, but the way she said the words sounded so reasonable, so human.

“Yeah,” I answered. “You’re sane?” “Um … I guess.”

She nodded slowly. “Oh. I thought you’d gone bad, like Joseph.” Her eyes closed as the drug took effect. “She says it’s coming soon…”

“What is?” I asked.

She opened her mouth again but fell into a heap without making another sound.

Maybe I should have headed back to the surface to rest up, reload, and share my revelations about the parasite’s new tricks. Maybe I should have waited right there for the transport squad, brought them in by GPS and cell phone.

Both of my captives had been so unpeeplike—Joseph facing the orange late-afternoon sun as if the light didn’t faze him, Patricia speaking so clearly once she’d identified my scent.

Are you sane? she’d asked. Yeah, right. I wasn’t the one living in a tunnel. But it reminded me of the way Sarah had changed after I’d cornered her, asking about Elvis, peering into my eyes without terror. Maybe I should have

mentioned this to someone right away.

Maybe I should have wondered more about what was coming soon. But I didn’t wait around. I still had a peep cat to catch.

After handcuffing Patricia Moore, I called the transport squad, giving them precise GPS coordinates for the captives. They wouldn’t even have to disturb Manny and his tenants to collect the peeps. They could simply put on Con Edison uniforms, set up a fake construction site on the Hudson River walk, and cut their way in through the metal 22 grate at the end of the ventilation tunnel.

They didn’t need me, and with a high-priority work order from the Mayor himself in hand, it made perfect sense to follow the tunnel in the other direction: down the slope, the steady breeze at my back, toward the rumble of the huge exhaust fans.

Under the swimming pool again, I listened to the echoes bouncing down the shattered drain. The basement overhead sounded the same—still just a few dozen rats squabbling and skittering among the feathers. The brood hadn’t returned, and nothing had touched the cat food I’d left behind.

I wondered how far down the tunnel the scent would travel, if floating

molecules of Crunchy Tuna would tempt the peep cat out into the open. With the wind at my back, I was hardly going to catch it by surprise. I kept my flashlight on medium, not wanting to get jumped in the darkness again.

The slope grew steeper, descending as the tunnel continued. The air became chill around me, and drops of water began to plink from the ceiling. The low rumble of exhaust fans grew in the distance, throbbing like a massive heartbeat at the core of the city.

Then another sound floated up the tunnel, an impatient yowl that cut through the low-pitched thrumming. The cat could smell me now and knew that I was coming. I wondered if it also knew two of its pet peeps had been dispatched.

Just how smart was this thing?

The echoes of the cat’s cry suggested a large open space in front of me. The push of the breeze at my back had strengthened, and the pulsing beat of the exhaust fans grew more distinct.

Then I felt something, a trembling in the earth. Unlike the rumbling of the fan, it was building steadily under my feet, until it made the stones in the tunnel walls vibrate visibly. I knelt on the quivering dirt, suddenly feeling trapped in the narrow tunnel. I peered deep into the darkness, one way and then the other, searching for whatever was coming as I tried to fight off panic. Then the rumble peaked and began to fall away, fading into the distance,

just like … the sound of a passing train.

Chip had been right. The PATH tunnel was nearby, and the rush-hour commute was just beginning. The disturbance hadn’t been some rampaging creature from the depths, just a trainload of New Jerseyites headed home. I stood, feeling like an idiot.

But the earth-shaking passage had left something visible up ahead— strands of stirred-up dust hung illuminated in the air. Flicking the flashlight off, I saw shafts of light filtering into the tunnel. They pulsed brighter and then darker in time with the constant throbbing—I had to be close to the exhaust fans now.

The tunnel ended a little farther on, and I stepped down from its open maw into a vast cathedral of machines. Whirring turbines filled the air with the smell of grease and an electric hum. Above me I could see a huge pair of fans turning at a stately pace, the blades eighty feet across; this was Chip’s ventilation system.

Between the spinning blades the sky showed through, the dark blue of early evening.

In my days searching for Morgan’s apartment, I’d often seen this building from the outside, a magnificent column of brick, windowless and ten stories high, like a prison balanced on the river’s edge. The inside was just as cheerless, the greasy machines layered with a slapdash coat of gray paint and

bird droppings. The scant sunlight pulsed in time with the fans’ rotation. The air was drawn steadily toward the fans, carrying dust and the occasional stray feather upward.

I searched the huge space nervously—my peep hearing was useless. But there was nothing unexpected in the jumble of maintenance equipment, garbage, and empty coffee cups. Whatever my quarry was—mutation or longstanding strain of the disease—its pet peeps weren’t preying on the workers who kept these fans going.

But where had the cat gone? That last echoing yowl must have come from in here, but the doors to the boardwalk and piers outside were locked.

The only way out that I could find was a set of metal stairs descending into the earth. I tapped my flashlight on the handrail, sending a clanging beat into the depths. A few seconds later, the peep cat let out a long nyeeeeow.

The creature was leading me down.

“I’m coming,” I muttered, flicking my flashlight back on.

Below was a world of pipes and air shafts, cold water seeping through the concrete that held back the river, staining it with black bruises. The stairs kept going down, angling away from the river until the salt smell of the Hudson faded behind me and the walls were made of the granite bedrock of Manhattan. I was under the PATH tunnel now, in the service area that accessed its tangle of cables and shafts. Chip had a picture in his office of the huge machine that had bored this tunnel: a steam-powered drill crawling through the earth, the source of all his nightmares.

My flashlight fell on a sign hanging from chains draped across the stairs:

DANGER

Area Closed

As if answering my hesitation, the cat yowled again, the cry rising up from below like a ghost’s.

I paused, sniffing the air, the hair on my neck rising. Under the dampness and grease and rat droppings, a strange scent lay, massive and unfamiliar, like a heavy hand on my chest, it wasn’t the scent of peeps or of the deep earth. It was the same foul smell I’d scented the day before. Like death. Deep in my genetic memory, alarms and flashing lights were going off.

I swallowed and stepped over the sign. As my duffel bag brushed the chains, they creaked sullenly with rust.

This far down, the earth looked wounded, wet fissures splitting the granite walls. The darkness inside seemed to repulse my flashlight and sent back long echoes from my footsteps. I saw no more empty coffee cups—every piece of garbage looked smoothed down by time, half rotted away. I remembered Chip saying that PATH workers had abandoned this place, and I could see why.

Or at least, I could feel it: a cold presence on top of the evil smell.

Finally the stairs ended at a rupture in the rock, a fissure large enough to

walk into. I stepped inside, my flashlight glinting off mica-strewn granite. The shadows around me turned jagged.

This was the deepest I had ever been.

The air had fallen still, so I smelled the brood before I heard them. They were huddled together in a ravine of stone, a few thousand rats and their peep cat. Myriad eyes glittered back at me, unafraid of the flashlight.

The cat blinked, yawning, its eyes glittering red.

Red? I thought. That was odd. Cats’ eyes should be blue or green or yellow.

“What’s with you anyway?” I asked the peep cat softly. It just sat there.

The posse of big fat rats still surrounded it, an entourage of heavy, pale bodies, larger than any rodents I’d ever seen on the surface. All the rats were the color of dried chewing gum, their eyes pink, bred almost to albino from generations in darkness.

I carefully pulled a video camera from my duffel bag and swept it across the brood. Dr. Rat would be thrilled to have footage of these deep-dwellers in their natural habitat.

In the silence, a barely audible sound began to make itself heard.

At first, I thought it was the PATH train rumbling past again. But the noise didn’t build steadily. It came and went, much slower than the sound of the fans. I felt the tiny hairs on my arms moving one way and then the other and realized that the air in the cavern was being pushed in and out, as if a slow and huge bellows was operating.

Something down here was breathing. Something huge. “No,” I whispered.

In answer, a spine-melting sound washed through the cavern on a fetid breeze, like the moan of some titanic beast. It was so low-pitched that I felt more than heard it, like the buzz of power lines that my peep senses sometimes detect. Every nerve in my body screamed at me to stand up and run away, the sort of panic I hadn’t felt since I’d become a hunter.

The sound passed away, though the air still shifted back and forth. The peep cat winked its eyes at me in satisfaction.

Okay. I was leaving now … and taking the cat with me. I put the duffel bag aside. If this worked, I was going to have to run fast, carrying as little as possible.

I pulled out my second can of Crunchy Tuna and slipped my gloves on. There was no point in using my knockout injector, which would overdose the cat.

The brood stirred when they smelled the cat food. I waited, frozen, letting the scent carry to the peep cat.

The almost-human intelligence on its face faded, replaced by the same

dull look that Cornelius gets when it’s feeding time: pure animal desire. At least the creature wasn’t some sort of diabolical genius—it was just a cat, really, and a diseased one at that. “Come on, kitty,” I said.

It took a few steps toward me, then sat down again.

“You know you want it,” I murmured, lapsing into my kitty voice and fanning the smell toward the cat. The scent of the huge, hidden thing stirred, and a trickle of sweat coursed down my side.

The cat stood again and moved gingerly across the horde of rats, like someone stepping through a tent crowded with sleeping people. They barely stirred as it passed.

But then it stopped again, a few feet away.

“Extra nummies?” I nudged the Crunchy Tuna a little closer. The peep cat just cocked its head. It wasn’t budging.

Then I remembered Dr. Rat’s perfume of Cal, the family scent distilled into pure essence. Perhaps smelling was believing.

I pulled out the tiny vial and opened it, waiting only a few seconds before screwing the bottle top closed again, not wanting to rile up the horde of rats.

As the smell spread throughout the room, the brood stirred like a single entity restless in its sleep. Snufflings echoed like a horde of tiny whispers around me. The rats would wake up fast once I made my move.

The cat stood up again, stretching, then took a few steps closer to the can of Crunchy Tuna. It remained only inches out of arm’s reach, now staring at the can instead of me, nose quivering, suspicion and curiosity at war inside its little brain.

Of course, it was a cat, so curiosity won…

I snatched the creature up from the floor and squashed it to my chest. Leaping up and spinning around, I dashed back through the rough stone fissure, my flashlight bouncing maniacally off the walls.

The cat let out a disgruntled meow, and squeaks sounded from behind, a sudden panic spreading as the brood realized its master was gone. I reached the stairs and bounded upward, the metal banging like a gong under my boots. The cat fought, yowling and raking my chest, its claws catching the fabric of Garth Brooks’s face in a death grip. But it couldn’t escape my gloved hand.

Still struggling, it let out another scream, this one purposeful and harsh. The hum of turbines and giant fans above grew louder, but before they overwhelmed my ears I heard the rustling of a brood on the move below, like a lawn full of leaves stirred by an impatient wind.

At the last flight of stairs, I paused to peer back down. Rats streamed upward, shimmying along the handrails like tightrope walkers, bounding up the stairs, stumbling over one another in a boiling mass of fur and claws.

I dashed across the exhaust building, the image of stampeding rats spinning in my head, my senses swamped by the pulsing sunlight and

mechanical sounds. We’d learned about massed rat attacks in Hunting 101, how a pack’s chemical messages of panic could urge them into a state of mob hysteria. Once a horde of rats was committed to taking down prey, even a superbright burst from a Night Watch flashlight wouldn’t change their minds. And that went even for normal rats, without the brood bonds and hyperactive aggression of the parasite. The army pursuing me had a master to protect; this was evolutionary perfection trailing me, hungering to tear me to

pieces.

The tunnel leading back to the swimming pool opened up two feet above floor level—an easy jump for me, but a climb that might take the rats a few extra moments. I would need every second of lead time to get to safety through the jammed-shut metal door.

The cat screamed again and struggled harder, and I fell something wet and warm against my chest. It was pissing on me as I ran! Leaving spatters of its scent on the floor, an unmistakable trail for the horde to follow.

“You little shit!” I yelled, leaping up into the exhaust tunnel.

The cat got one leg free and lashed out at my face, getting a single curved claw into my cheek, rapier-sharp and fiercely painful. I dropped the flashlight and grabbed hold of the cat with both gloved hands, pulling it away from me with a rip of skin that felt like yanking out a fishhook.

“Ow!” I screamed at it. It hissed back at me.

The flashlight lay at my feet, but the rumble of turbines behind me was now joined by the rush of tiny claws—they’d almost reached the tunnel entrance. I dashed forward blindly both hands clutching the squirming cat.

Then I saw something horrible ahead … light. Sunlight. I stumbled to a halt.

It didn’t make sense. The only light down here was at the far end of the tunnel, where my captured human peeps lay handcuffed, well past the swimming pool.

I swallowed. Had I gone too far already? Maybe the tunnel was shorter than it had seemed while I’d been crawling and skulking, listening between every step.

I ran a few more steps forward; then I saw them handcuffed on the sunlit ground: Patricia and Joseph Moore. This was the other end of the tunnel, a dead end.

I felt a low rumbling overhead—the transport squad in its garbage truck, getting ready to collect the peeps—and my heart leaped for a moment. Allies were only a few yards away.

But a steel grate still stood between me and them. By the time they cut through it, the horde would have torn me to pieces.

I had to get back to the swimming pool.

I turned from the light and ran, the murmur of the rats building in front of me, thousands of little claws on stone, like the sound of distant surf. The peep cat growled happily in my arms; it could smell its brood approaching.

The blackness before me began to glitter—the glow of sunlight at my back catching a swarm of reflective, night-seeing eyes. The brood filled the tunnel floor, spreading halfway up the walls like a shimmering pink smile.

I tore the remaining shreds of hazmat suit off and wrapped the cat in them to silence it, then pulled out Dr. Rat’s Essence of Cal. You don’t want to cause a rat riot, she had said.

Maybe I did.

I knelt on the ground, facing away from the horde, my body wrapped tightly around the cat. Its muffled growls rumbled like a hungry stomach.

Twisting the cap from the bottle, I hurled it spinning down the tunnel as far as I could and ducked my head to the floor.

Seconds later, they flowed over me, rat claws nicking through the Garth Brooks T-shirt like an Astroturf massage, their thin cries building as they scented what was ahead.

Rats are smart. They learn, they adapt, they know to be suspicious of free peanut butter. But these weren’t rats anymore—they were a mob, whipped into a frenzy, running on instinct and chemical signals. And right in front of them was a trail of cat piss leading to a great big bottle of distilled Cal, the creature they knew had stolen their master.

When the last few had passed, I leaped to my feet, keeping the cat clutched tightly to my chest. It growled uselessly. The brood had found the bottle and fallen upon it in a churning mass.

I dashed back toward the swimming pool, half suffocating the peep cat to keep it silent, knowing they would be following me again in a few moments.

This time, I didn’t miss the echoing presence of the pool overhead. I climbed up into the deep end, then headed for the stairs, grabbing the duffel bag I’d left the night before. A few rats scented their master, but they had hardly begun to stir by the time I got the heavy metal door open. From the other side, I shoved it closed again hard, stuffing steel wool back into the cracks, securing the snipped chains with a Night Watch deadbolt and squishing through the poisonous peanut butter to safety.

When the locker door slammed shut behind me, I collapsed on the floor, shaking in the darkened health club. The peep cat heaved as I loosened my grip to let it breathe again. It growled once, low and long.

You’re dead meat, its eyes said.

“Oh, yeah?” I answered. “You and what army?”

Possibly the army I’d just run from like a headless chicken.

When I’d stopped shaking, I stood up and emptied the duffel bag onto the floor. Stuffing my struggling captive into it wasn’t easy, but I finally zipped

the bag closed, muffling its yowls.

I was still panting, still half in shock, but as I pulled off my gloves I realized that I’d escaped. My clawed cheek felt like a pencil had been shoved through it, but the mission into the Underworld had been a success.

And the peep cat wasn’t so tough after all. Maybe Dr. Rat was right, and this new mutation was no big deal, just another evolutionary experiment gone awry.

It was still pissed off, though. The bag danced, needle-sharp claw tips poking through the vinyl. Not the best confinement system, but it would do for the moment. I only had to make it to the transport squad, a few blocks away. They would have a proper cage, and in any case, I had to drop by and warn them about the loose brood rampaging in the tunnel below.

And that other thing, the big breathing thing, whatever the hell that was

…

Manny’s eyes widened when he saw me. “Are you okay, man?” he said.

I shrugged. “Yeah. But I wouldn’t go down there if I were you.”

His gaze went from my shredded hazmat coveralls to my bloodied face,

then fell on the struggling bulge in the duffel bag. “What the hell is that?” “Just one less thing for you to worry about, Manny. But be careful; there’s

more down there.”

“Jesus, it looks as big as a cat!” He sniffed the air, smelling the tunnel muck and pigeon feathers and feline piss all over me. “What happened down there?”

“Just got a little ugly is all. But it’s under control.”

One hand went to his face. “Maybe you should go to a doctor, man.”

I nodded, realizing that Dr. Rat would be with the transport squad. “Yep.

That’s right where I’m headed.”

I left Manny there at his desk, still wide-eyed and bemused, and headed down the river toward the entrance of the tunnel.

On the way, I spotted a stray cat lurking in the lengthening shadows. A block farther, another peered out from beneath a Dumpster full of garbage. I began to walk faster.

It’s not unusual to see groups of rodents in the city, of course, but wild felines tend to stay alone. That’s just predator-prey mathematics: It takes hundreds of the hunted to keep one hunter in business—there are always lots of sheep for every wolf.

The cats’ smooth movements were so different from those of the scurrying rats—rather than displaying the manic wariness of lunch-meat species, predators always glide along with confidence and grace. Like they belong here and you don’t.

I told myself it was just a statistical fluke, seeing two of them. Maybe it

was because Lace lived so close to the meatpacking district, a place with lots of potential rat food lying around, and therefore lots of prey for feral cats. Or maybe with an angry mutant feline in my duffel bag, I was simply paying more attention than usual.

Like the cat I’d noticed the night before, these two followed my progress with cold, reflective eyes. My nerves were shot from the long day, but I got the definite feeling they knew I had a cat in my duffel bag and were not amused.

When I spotted the activity of the Night Watch across the highway, I didn’t wait for the traffic lights to change.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in!” Dr. Rat called out. “Other way around: I’m dragging it.”

Her eyes lit up as she spotted the squirming duffel bag on my shoulder. “You caught the beastie?”

“Yeah. And its little friends are going crazy down there. You should warn the transport guys.”

“Loose brood? I’ll let them know.”

As she went to talk to them, I slipped under the orange hazard tape strung around the site. The Con Ed truck was parked on the Hudson River boardwalk, its engine humming to power the work lights in the taped-off area. The sun had almost set, bleeding red into the clouds, but it was still warmer up here than down in the depths. After breathing the funk of the Underworld, a little fresh air felt good in my lungs.

The shriek of whirling metal came from the edge of the river, and showers of sparks erupted into the air. The transport guys had built a platform over the water and were cutting through the grate. As Dr. Rat spoke to the team leader, he and a few others started to get into full extermination gear; the Watch could clean out the tunnel properly now that the peep cat was in custody.

Everything was sorted out, more or less.

I wondered about the big thing under the ventilation towers, and if anyone was going to believe me about something I’d smelled and heard—and felt— but not seen.

“Let me put something on that.” Dr. Rat had returned with a first-aid kit, thick rubber gloves protecting her hands. She swabbed stingy stuff onto Joseph Moore’s fingernail marks, then plastered a bandage over the cat scratch on my cheek. Infections don’t get very far with us carriers, but it still feels weird to leave a bleeding wound untreated.

“Okay,” Dr. Rat said when my face was fixed up. “Let’s take a look at your feline friend.”

“All right. Just be careful.”

“Don’t worry about me.” Through the vinyl, she squished the cat into one corner of the bag, then unzipped the top and reached in to grab it. With any

other noncarrier, I would have been nervous, but Dr. Rat handles infected rats all day.

The peep cat emerged into the sunlight, growling.

She dangled it by the scruff of its neck. “Not too different from a regular cat.”

I took my first good look at the peep cat and frowned. Up here in the real world, it didn’t seem very frightening—no strange gauntness or peeped-up musculature, no spinal ridge to show where the parasite was wound into its nervous system. Just those weirdly red-reflecting eyes.

“Maybe the parasite doesn’t have much effect on felines,” Dr. Rat said. “Maybe not on the outside,” I said. “But it had its own brood!”

Dr. Rat shrugged, turning the cat around to look at all sides. It wailed at the indignity. “Rats may just tolerate it because it smells familiar.”

“I haven’t noticed much smell from it,” I said. “And it’s related to me.”

She shrugged again. “Well, so far I haven’t gotten any positive results with PNS. I’ve injected some of its blood into a few test cats, and they don’t show any signs of turning positive. This is an evolutionary dead end, just like I figured.” She looked closer at the peep cat, which took an angry swing at her nose with one claw, coming up short by an inch. “Or maybe this cat is the mutant, and your strain of parasite is the same old stuff.”

“Well, now you can check for cat-to-cat transmission,” I said.

“Sure thing. Just don’t get your hopes up, Kid.” She smiled. “I know it’s exciting to discover something new, and you want to feel like it’s a big deal and everything. But like I keep saying, failure is the rule when it comes to evolution.”

“Maybe.” I looked up the river to where the exhaust towers stood. “But this cat was really smart, almost like it was leading me down. And I think there was … something else down there.”

Dr. Rat looked at me. “Like what?”

“Kind of a huge rumbling thing, and it was breathing.” “Rumbling?” She laughed. “Probably just the PATH train.”

“No, it wasn’t.” I cleared my throat. “I mean, yeah, there was a train down there. But this was something else, even deeper. It smelled like nothing I ever smelled before. And it seemed like the cat was taking me along for a reason, as if it wanted to … show me what was down there.”

Dr. Rat frowned, looking at the captive cat dubiously, then her eyes swept across my sweat-matted hair, my bandaged face, and my torn Garth Brooks T-shirt. “Cal, maybe you should get some rest.”

“Hey, I’m not being crazy here. That guy Chip in Records says that really big, old, monstery things can get woken up when tunnels get dug. And this was right under those exhaust fans.”

She chuckled. “I know all about Records. They’re always telling stories

that give you hunters nightmares. They spend a lot of time reading ancient mythology, you know. But in R&D we try to focus more on the science side of things.”

I shook my head. “This thing wasn’t mythological. It was really big and smelled evil, and it was breathing.”

She lowered the struggling peep cat a bit and stared at me, trying to decide whether I was kidding or in some sort of shock or just plain bat-shit. I held her gaze steadily.

Finally, she shrugged. “Well, you can always fill out a US-29.”

I nodded. The Unknown Subterranean form, also known as the Sasquatch Alert. “Maybe I will.”

“But not till tomorrow, Kid. Right now you should go home and lie down.”

I started to argue, but at that moment a wave of exhaustion and hunger hit me, and I realized that I could go home to Cornelius and Lace and probably sleep for real again. The orange tape was up, the transport squad was here— the site was secured.

Maybe this could wait until tomorrow.

 

Chapter 16

THE WEALTHY DISEASE

Some more thoughts on the goodness of parasites …

Meet Crohn’s disease, a nasty ailment of the digestive system. It gives you the runs and causes severe pain in your stomach, and there’s no known way to cure it. No matter what foods you eat, the pain of Crohn’s won’t stop. The disease keeps its victims awake night after night and is strong enough to drive many into a deep depression.

People who get Crohn’s often suffer their entire lives. The symptoms may go away for a few years but invariably return in all their destructive glory. There is no escape.

So what kind of parasite causes Crohn’s?

Hah, fooled you! Unlike all the other diseases in this book, Crohn’s is not caused by parasites. Quite the opposite. It is probably caused by the absence of parasites.

Say what now? Well, no one knows for sure, but here’s what some scientists have noticed:

Crohn’s disease didn’t exist before the 1930s, when members of a few wealthy families in New York City got it. As time passed, the disease spread to the rest of the United States. It always started in rich neighborhoods first, only making its way into the bad parts of town much later. It took until the 1970s to reach the poorest parts of our country.

These days, Crohn’s is on the march across the world. In the 1980s, it appeared in Japan, just when a lot of Japanese were starting to get really rich. Lately it’s been making its way through South Korea, in the wake of that country’s economic boom.

And guess what? It still doesn’t exist anywhere in the third world. Poor people never get Crohn’s disease. And this has led many scientists to think that Crohn’s results from the most common sign of a rich society: clean water.

That’s right: clean water.

You see, most of the invaders of our guts come from dirty water. If you drink clean water your whole life, you’ll have a lot fewer parasites. But that can actually be a problem. Your immune system has evolved to expect parasites in your stomach. And when no parasites show up, your immune defenses can get kind of … twitchy. Sort of like a night watchman with nothing to do, drinking too much coffee and cleaning his gun again and again.

So when your twitchy, understimulated immune system detects the slightest little stomach bug, it launches into emergency mode and goes looking for a hookworm to kill. Unfortunately, there are no hookworms inside you, because your water supply is cleaner than at any time in human history. (Which you thought was a good thing.)

But your immune defenses have to do something, so they attack your digestive system, tearing it to pieces.

Lucky you.

We humans have lived with our parasites for a long time, evolving alongside them, walking hand in hand down the generations. So maybe it’s not surprising that when we get rid of them all at once, strange things happen. Our bodies freak out in the absence of our little friends.

So the next time you’re eating a rare steak and start worrying about parasites, just remember: All those worms and worts and other little creatures trying to wriggle down your throat can’t be all bad.

They’ve been making us their home for a long, long time.

 

Chapter 17 TROUBLE IN BROOKLYN

On the way home, I bought bacon.

The gnawing in my stomach was reaching critical proportions, my body crying out for meat to keep the parasite happy. One thing about being a carrier. Saving the world from mutant felines is no excuse for missing meals.

I put a can of tuna in front of Cornelius, then headed straight for the stove and set it alight. Then I shut the gas off, sniffing the air.

Something was different about my apartment.

Then I realized what it was—the smell of Lace all around me. She’d slept here, filling the place like a slow infusion.

My parasite growled with hunger and lust, and I hurriedly relit the stove, working until my largest dinner plate was filled with a stack of crispy strips of bacon. I carried it to the table and sat down.

The first piece was halfway into my mouth when keys jingled in the door.

Lace burst through, dropping her backpack to the floor. “Excellent smell, dude,” she said.

For a second, I forgot to eat, a piece of bacon hovering in midair. Her face was lit up with happiness, so different than it had been the night before. An almost orgasmic look of contentment came over her as she breathed in the scent of bacon.

“What?” she said, meeting my dorky stare with a raised eyebrow.

“Um, nothing. Want some?” I pushed the bacon into the center of the table, then remembered the vegetarian thing and pulled it back. “Oh, right. Sorry.”

“Hey, no problem.” She put down her backpack. “I’m not a vegan or anything.”

“Um, Lace, this is bacon. That’s not a judgment call on the plant-or- animal issue.”

“Thanks for the biology lesson. But like I said, it smells good, and I’m going to enjoy it.” She sat down across from me.

I smiled. On the excellent-smell front, Lace’s scent was much more powerful in person. I let myself breathe it in, carefully sampling it in between bites. I had expected her staying in my apartment to be torture every minute, but maybe it was worth fighting my urges, just for this simple pleasure.

Still, I ate fast to keep the beast in check.

“So,” I asked, “are you one of those fake vegetarians?”

“No, not fake. I haven’t eaten meat in, like, a year?” She frowned at the plate of seared flesh and dumped a tub of potato salad and a brand-new toothbrush onto the table from a paper bag. “But the whole vampire thing has been very stressful, and that smell is comforting, like Mom cooking up a big breakfast. It takes me back.”

“That’s natural. When humans were evolving, the smelling part of our monkey brains got assigned to the task of remembering stuff. So our memories get all tangled up with smells.”

“Huh,” she said. “Is that why locker rooms make me think of high school?”

I nodded, recalling my descent under the exhaust towers, how powerfully the scent of the huge hidden thing had affected me. Maybe I’d never smelled anything like the beast before the day before, but some fears went deeper than memory. As deep as the parasite’s traces hidden in my marrow.

Evolution is a wonderful thing. Somewhere back in prehistoric time, there were probably humans who actually liked the smell of lions, tigers, or bears. But those humans tended to get eaten, and so did their kids. You and I are descended from folks who ran like hell when they smelled predators.

Lace had opened her tub of potato salad and was digging in with a plastic deli fork. After a few bites, she said, “So, what’s with the face?”

“Oh, this.” I touched the bandage gingerly. “Remember how I warned you about cats?”

Lace nodded.

“Well, I went down into the Underworld through your swimming pool this afternoon. And I managed to catch… Um, what’s wrong?”

Lace looked like she’d bitten down on a cockroach. She blinked, then shook her head. “Sorry, Cal. But are you wearing a Garth Brooks T-shirt?”

I glanced down at my chest. Through the muck and puckered claw marks, his smiling face looked back at me. I’d been too hungry coming in to take a shower or even change my shirt. “Uh, yes, it is.”

“Ashlee Simpson, and now Garth Brooks?”

“It’s not what you think. It’s really more sort of… protection.” “From what? Getting laid?”

I coughed, bits of bacon lodging in my throat, but I managed to swallow them. “Well, it has to do with the parasite.”

“Sure, it does, Cal. Everything’s about the parasite.”

“No, really. There’s this thing that happens to peeps: They hate all the stuff they used to love.”

She paused, a forkful of potato salad halfway to her mouth. “They do

what?”

“Okay, let’s say you’re a peep. And before you got infected you loved chocolate—the parasite changes your brain chemistry so that you can’t even

stand to look at a Hershey’s Kiss, the way movie vampires are afraid of crucifixes.”

“What the hell is that all about?”

“It’s an evolutionary strategy, so that peeps hide themselves. That’s why they live underground, to escape signs of humanity, and the sun too. A lot of them really do have cruciphobia—I mean, are afraid of crosses—because they used to be religious.”

“Okay, Cal.” She nodded slowly. “Now this is the part where you explain what this has to do with Garth Brooks.”

I grabbed a piece of bacon, which was starting to glisten as it cooled, and chewed quickly. “Records, the department that helps us with investigations, found out that some of the folks who lived on your floor were Garth Brooks fans. So they gave me this shirt in case there was an encounter underground. Which there was.”

Her eyes widened. “Dude! A peep did that to your face?”

“Yeah, this scratch here was a peep. But this one here was a cat— Morgan’s cat, probably—that sort of put up a fight.”

“Sort of? Looks like you lost.”

“Hey, I made it home tonight. The cat didn’t.”

Her expression froze. “Cal, you didn’t kill it, did you?”

“Of course not.” My hands went up in surrender. “I don’t kill when I can capture. No vampires were harmed in the making of this film, okay? Jeez, vegetarians.” I grabbed another strip from the plate.

“So this infected cat is where?” Lace glanced at the closet where PNS had spent the previous night.

“Elsewhere,” I said, chewing. “I left it with the experts; they’re testing to see if it can spread the disease to other cats or not. And the good news is that a Night Watch team is already cleaning up the rats under your building. It may take a few days to seal off that swimming pool, but then you can go home.”

“Really?”

“Yes. They’re professionals, since 1653.” “So you found Morgan?”

“Well, not her. But you don’t have to worry about Morgan. She disappeared.”

Lace crossed her arms. “Sure, she did.” I shrugged. “We can’t find her, okay?”

“And it’s really safe in my apartment? You’re not just saying that to get rid of me?”

“Of course not.” I paused. “I mean, of course it’ll be safe. And of course not on the getting-rid-of-you part, which I wouldn’t do. I mean, you can stay here as long as you want… which you won’t need to, of course, because it’s

safe at home and everything.” I managed to shut up.

“That’s great.” Lace reached across the table and took my hand. The contact, the first since I’d pulled her over the balcony, sent an electric shock through me. She smiled at my expression. “Not that it’s been totally horrible, dude. Except for not having any of my stuff, commuting all the way from Brooklyn, and having your heavy-ass cat lie on me all night. Other than that, it’s been kind of … nice. So thanks.”

She let go of me, and I managed to smile back at her while scraping up the last shards of bacon from the plate. I could still feel where she’d touched me, like the flush of a sunburn coming up. “You’re welcome.”

Lace looked down at her potato salad unhappily. She dropped her fork. “You know what? This stuff sucks, and I’m still hungry.”

“Me too. Starving.”

“You want to go somewhere?” “Absolutely.”

Lace waited for me to shower and change, then took me over to Boerum Hill, one of the original Brooklyn neighborhoods. The elegant old mansions had been split up into apartments, and the sidewalks were cracked by ancient tree roots pushing up beneath our feet, but there were still old-school touches. Instead of numbers, the streets had Dutch family names—Wyckoff and Bergen and Boerum.

“My sister lives pretty close,” Lace said. “I remember a couple of good places around here.”

She followed the street signs hesitantly, letting memories fall into place, but I didn’t mind wandering along beside her. Moonlight lanced through the dense cover of ancient trees, and the cold air was filled with the smell of leaves rotting on the earth. Lace and I walked close, the shoulders of our jackets touching sometimes, like animals sharing warmth. Out here in the open air it wasn’t so intense, being close to her.

We wound up at an Italian place, with white tablecloths and waiters wearing ties and aprons, candles on the tables. It smelled gorgeously of flesh, smoked and seared and hanging from the ceiling. Meat all over.

It was so much like a date, it was weird. Even before the parasite switched off my romantic life, taking women to fancy restaurants hadn’t been my thing. I found myself thinking about the fact that everyone who saw us would assume we were dating. I pretended for a while in my head that they were right, pushing the awful truth to the back of my mind.

When the waiter came around, I ordered a pile of spicy sausage, the perfect dish to beat my parasite into overfed submission. The night before it had taken forever, but I’d finally reached a deep sleep. Maybe tonight it would be easier.

“So, dude, aren’t you worried about that?” She was looking at my

wounded cheek again. Dr. Rat’s bandage had slipped off in the shower, and I hadn’t bothered to replace it. The scar gave me a rakish doesn’t-know-how- to-shave look.

“It’s not bleeding, is it?” I dabbed the spot with a napkin.

“No, it doesn’t look bad. But what if it got … infected or something?” “Oh, right,” I said. Lace, of course, didn’t know that I didn’t have to

worry about the parasite, having already been there and done that. I shrugged. “You can’t get the disease from scratches. Only bites.” This was more or less true.

“But what if it was licking its paws?” she said, quite sensibly. I shrugged again. “I’ve had worse.”

Lace didn’t look convinced. “I just don’t want you turning all vampire on me in the middle of the night… Okay, that sounded weird.” She looked down, her fingers realigning the silverware on the crisp white linen.

I laughed. “Don’t worry about that. It takes at least a few weeks to go killing-and-eating-people crazy. Most strains take a lot longer.”

She looked up again, narrowing her eyes. “You’ve seen it happen, haven’t you?”

I paused for a moment.

“Dude, no lying to me. Remember?”

“All right, Lace. Yes, I’ve seen someone change.” “A friend?”

I nodded.

A satisfied expression crept onto Lace’s face. “That’s how you got into this Night Watch business, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. That’s right.” I looked at the other tables to see if anyone was listening, hoping that Lace didn’t go much further with this line of questioning. I could hardly tell her that my first peep experience had been with a lover; she knew the parasite was sexually transmitted. “A friend of mine got the disease. I saw her change.”

Oops. Should I have said her?

“So, it’s like you said when you were pretending to be a health guy— you’re following a chain of infection. You’re tracking down all the people who caught the disease from that friend of yours. Morgan was someone who slept with someone who slept with your friend who turned, right?”

Now I was playing with my own silverware. “More or less.”

“Makes sense,” she said softly. “Today I was thinking that some people must find out about the disease on their own, just by accident, like I did. So the Night Watch has to recruit them to keep the whole thing a secret. And that must be where you guys get new staff. It’s not like you can advertise in Help Wanted, after all.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” I tried to chuckle. “You’re not looking for a job, are

you?”

She was silent for a moment, not answering my little jest, which made me extremely nervous. The waiter arrived with two steaming plates, uncovering them with a flourish. He hovered over us, grinding pepper onto Lace’s pasta and pouring me more water. The smell of sausage rose up from my plate, switching my still-hungry body into a higher gear. I dug in the moment the waiter left, the taste of cooked flesh and spices making me shudder with bliss. Hopefully, the uncomfortable questions were done with. I watched as Lace wound a big gob of spaghetti onto her fork, a process that seemed to absorb all her concentration, and as the silence stretched out and the calories

entered my bloodstream, I told myself to chill.

It wasn’t so surprising that Lace had spent a whole day thinking about my revelations of the night before. It was crazy to get all jumpy about a few obvious questions. As the sausage suffused my system, placating the parasite, I began to relax.

Then Lace spoke up again. “I mean, I wouldn’t want your job. Mucking around in tunnels and stuff. No way.”

I coughed into my fist. “Um, Lace…”

“But you’ve got those guys who gave you the building plans, right? Records, you called them? And you have to research the history of the sewers and subways and stuff. I was thinking about that today. That’s why I went into journalism, you know.”

“For the sewer research?”

“No, dude. To find out what’s really going on, to get behind the scenes. I mean, there’s this whole other world that no one knows about. How cool is that?”

I put my fork and knife down firmly. “Listen, Lace. I don’t know if you’re serious, but it’s out of the question. The people who work in Records come from old families; they grew up with this secret history. They can speak Middle English and Dutch and identify clerks who lived centuries ago by their handwriting. They’ve all known one another for generations. You can’t just show up and ask for a job.”

“That’s all very impressive,” she said, then smirked. “But they suck at finding people.”

“Pardon me?”

Lace’s grin grew wider as she wound another spindle of spaghetti onto her fork, then put it into her mouth, chewing slowly. Finally, she swallowed.

“I said they suck at finding people.” “What do you mean?”

“Let me show you something, dude.” She pulled out a few folded photocopies from her inside jacket pocket and handed them to me. I pushed my empty plate aside and unfolded them on the white tablecloth.

They were the floor plans to a house, a big one. The labels were written by hand in a flowing script, and the photocopies had that gray tinge that meant the originals had been on old, yellowing paper.

“What is this?”

“That’s Morgan Ryder’s house.” I blinked. “Her what?”

“Her family’s, actually, but she’s staying there now.” “No way.”

“Way, dude.”

I shook my head. “Records would have found her already.”

Lace shrugged, her fork twirling, the last strands of spaghetti on her plate trailing like a satellite picture of a hurricane. “It wasn’t even that hard. All I had to do was go through the phonebook, calling all the Ryders, asking for Morgan. The first dozen said there was nobody there by that name. Then one of them got all paranoid and asked me who the hell I was.” She laughed. “I got nervous and hung up.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

Lace pointed at the papers in my hand. “That’s the place, according to the address in the phone book. It’s even in the historical register—belonged to the Ryders since it was built.”

I stared at the plans, shaking my head. There was no way this could have gotten past Records; the Mayor’s office would have checked with her family directly. “But she’s not there. She’s missing, like I said.”

“You said pale? Dark hair and kind of gothy?”

I opened my mouth, but it took a while for sound to come out. “You went

there?”

Lace nodded, beginning to wind another spindle of pasta. “Of course, I didn’t knock on the door. I’m more into investigation than confrontation. But the house has these big bay windows. And the weirdest thing is, Morgan doesn’t look crazy at all. Just bored, sitting at the window and reading. Do peeps read, dude?”

I remembered the photos Chip had given me and pulled them from my jacket. Lace took one glance at Morgan’s and nodded. “That’s the girl.”

“It can’t be.” My head was swimming. The Night Watch couldn’t have screwed up like this. If Morgan was sitting around in plain view, someone would have spotted her. “Maybe she has a sister,” I muttered, but darker thoughts were already coursing through my mind. The Ryders were an old family. Maybe they were pulling strings, using their connections to keep her hidden. Or maybe Records was afraid to go after the Mayor’s old friends.

Or maybe I’d filled out the wrong damn form.

Whatever had happened, I felt like an idiot. Everyone always joked about how we hunters were too lazy to do our own research, waiting for Records or

the Health and Mental moles to tell us where the peeps were. I’d never even thought to open a phone book and look for Morgan Ryder myself.

“Don’t look so bummed, dude,” Lace said. “Morgan might not be infected, after all. I mean, she looked all normal. I thought you said peeps were maniacs.”

Still dazed, I shook my head and answered, “Well, she could be a carrier.” Too late, I bit my tongue.

“A carrier?” Lace asked.

“Um, yes. Carries the disease, but without the symptoms.”

She paused, spaghetti dangling from her fork. “You mean, like Typhoid Mary? Spreading typhus all over the place but never coming down with it?” Lace laughed at my expression. “Don’t look so surprised, dude. I’ve been reading about diseases all day.”

“Lace, you have to stop doing this!”

“What? Acting like I have a brain? Puh-lease.” She took a bite. “So there are people who just carry the parasite? Infected but not crazy?”

“Yes,” I said, swallowing. “But it’s very rare.”

“Huh. Well, there’s one way to find out. We should go over there.” “We?”

“Yeah, we’re practically there already.” She hooked her thumb toward the door, another satisfied grin spreading across her face. “It’s right at the end of this street.”

Ryder House filled an entire corner lot, a three-story mansion with all the trimmings: bay windows, tall corner turrets, widow’s watches peering down at us with arched eyebrows. In the moonlight, the house had an intimidating look—a little too well maintained to play the part of the haunted manor, but a good headquarters for the bad guys.

I reached into my jacket pocket to heft the cold metal of my knockout injector. I’d reloaded it after taking down Patricia Moore and had decided not to hand it over to the transport squad when I’d turned in my duffel bag. However much Chip complained, sloppy equipment-keeping sometimes had its advantages.

“And you’re sure it was her?”

“Totally, dude.” Lace pointed at a bay of three windows bulging out from the second floor. “Right up there, sitting and reading. So what do we do? Knock on the door?”

“We don’t do anything!” I said harshly. “You go back to my apartment and wait.”

“I can wait here.”

“No way. She might see you.” “Dude, it’s too dark.”

“Peeps can see in the dark!” I hissed.

Lace’s eyes narrowed. “But she’s like Typhoid Mary, right? No symptoms.”

I groaned. “Okay, with typhus, that’s true. But peep carriers do have some symptoms. Like night vision and good hearing.”

“And they’re really strong too, aren’t they?”

“Listen, just get out of here. If she—” My voice dropped off. From the darkness beneath the Ryders’ bushes, a pair of eyes had just blinked at us, glinting in the moonlight. “Crap.”

“What is it, Cal?”

My eyes scanned the shadowed street. In the bushes, under cars, from a high window in the mansion, at least seven cats were watching us.

“Cats,” I whispered.

“Oh, yeah,” Lace said, her voice also dropping. “I noticed that this afternoon. The whole neighborhood’s crawling with them. Is that bad?”

I took a slow, deep breath, trying to channel Dr. Rat’s quiet confidence. It would take generations for the parasite to adapt to new hosts, to find a path from cat to cat. The creatures watching us could be just normal felines, the brood of a crazy cat-lady, not a vampire. Maybe.

Then one of the cats’ eyes caught the light of a passing car, flashing red for a fraction of a second. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry.

Most predators have a reflective layer behind their eyes that helps them see in the dark. But cats’ eyes reflect green or blue or yellow, not red. It’s human eyes that give off red reflections, as we’ve all noticed in bad photographs.

These cats were … special.

“Okay, Lace, I’m going to sneak in there. But you have to go back to my place. I’ll come home and tell you everything I see.”

Lace paused for a moment, thoughts racing across her face. “But what if you get caught? You said Morgan can hear really well.”

“Yeah, maybe. But this is my job, okay?” I felt the reassuring weight of the injector in my pocket. “I know how to deal with peeps.”

“Sure, dude, but how about this: While I’m walking home, I could lean on a few parked cars, get some alarms going for you. Maybe that’ll cover up your noise.”

“Good idea.” I took her shoulder. “But don’t stick around. It isn’t safe here.”

“I’m not sticking around. Do I look stupid?”

I shook my head and smiled. “Actually, you’re pretty damn smart.” She smiled back. “You have no idea, dude.”

Around the corner and out of Lace’s sight, I chose a four-story brownstone to climb. The outthrust stone sill of a second-floor window was an easy jump, and its chimney was pocked with missing bricks and old

slapdash repairs—perfect handholds. It took about ten seconds for me to reach the top, so fast that anyone watching from a nearby window wouldn’t have believed their eyes.

From the roof, I had a good view of the back side of Ryder House. As Lace’s plans had indicated, a balcony jutted out from the highest floor, its wrought-iron doors closed over darkened glass. All I had to do was get to the building next door to the Ryders’ and climb down.

I dropped to the next roof, leaped an eight-foot alleyway, then scaled the next building, winding up perched a few yards above the Ryders’ balcony, where I took off my boots. Even after Lace got some car alarms started, I’d have to step carefully. Three-century-old houses have a way of being creaky.

The cold began to numb my feet, but my peep metabolism fought back, churning from nervousness and all that meat in my stomach. I waited, rubbing my feet to keep them warm.

A few minutes later, the first car alarm began to wail, then more, building like a chorus of demons. I shook my head as the cacophony spread, getting the distinct impression that Lace was enjoying herself.

That girl was trouble.

I dropped onto the balcony softly, its cold metal slats sending a shiver up my spine. The lock on the wrought-iron door was easy to pick.

Inside was a bedroom, the big four-poster covered with a white lace spread. It didn’t smell of peep at all, just clean laundry and mothballs. I crossed the wooden floor carefully, testing every step to avoid any squeaky boards.

A strip of light showed under the door, but when I pressed my ear to it, I heard nothing except the wailing alarms down on the street. According to the plans Lace had copied, the next room had been a small servants’ kitchen back in the olden days.

The door opened without creaking, and I slipped through. So far, the house looked very normal—the kitchen counters were crowded with the usual pots and pans. There wasn’t anything weird, like sides of raw beef hung up and dripping blood into the sink.

But then my nose caught the scents wafting from the floor.

Fourteen mismatched bowls stood in a row, licked clean but smelling of canned cat food—salmon and chicken and beef tallow, malted barley flour and brewer’s rice, the tang of phosphoric acid.

Fourteen—one peep cat was a hopeful monster; fourteen were an epidemic.

Voices filtered up through the shrieking alarms, and the house creaked as people walked across one of the floors below me. I crossed the kitchen carefully, taking advantage of the car alarms while I still could. One by one, they were being switched off, replaced by a chorus of dogs barking in

retaliation. Soon enough, the neighborhood would return to peace and quiet.

I crept into the hallway and leaned over the banister, trying to distinguish words amid the chatter downstairs. Then recognition shivered through me… I heard Morgan’s voice. Lace had been right. My progenitor was really here.

My hands tightened on the banister, and I shut my eyes, all my certainties falling away. Had Records really screwed up, or was someone in the Night Watch helping Morgan hide?

The last car alarms had been silenced, so I decided to crawl down the stairs on my stomach. I crept forward in inches, moving only during bursts of laughter or loud conversation below.

There were at least three other voices besides Morgan’s—another woman and two men. The four of them were laughing and telling stories, flirting and drinking, the clink of ice rattling in their glasses. I could smell an open bottle of rum, the alcohol molecules wafting up the stairs. One of the men began to sweat nervously as he told a long joke. They all laughed too hard at the punch line, with the anxious sound of people who’ve just met one another.

I couldn’t smell Morgan, which hopefully meant she couldn’t smell me. In any case, I’d just showered, and although my jacket still carried a whiff of the Italian place, the rum and aftershave of the two men downstairs would drown it out.

The last car alarm choked off into silence outside.

I inched forward on my belly, oozing down the steps like a big slug, and soon I could see their shadows moving on the floor. Just one more step down and I would be able to peer into the parlor.

Through the slats of the banister, I finally saw her—Morgan Ryder, dressed in coal black against pale skin, swirling a drink in her hand. Her eyes glittered, her whole attention focused on the man sitting next to her. The four of them had broken into two conversations, two couples.

Then I realized who the other woman was: Angela Dreyfus, the final missing person from the seventh floor. Her eyes were wide with perpetual surprise, set in a face as thin as a Vogue model’s. And her voice sounded dry and harsh, even though she kept sipping from her drink. She had to be parasite-positive. And yet Angela Dreyfus was sane, cogent, flirting coolly with the man sitting beside her on the overstuffed couch.

Another carrier.

My head spun. That made three of us: Morgan, Angela, and me, out of the people who’d been infected in Lace’s building. But only one percent of humans has natural immunity, so it should take a population of hundreds to make three carriers. But here we had three out of five.

That was one hell of a statistical fluke.

Then I remembered Patricia Moore talking to me almost coherently after the knockout drugs had hit her, just as Sarah had. And how Joseph Moore had

braved the sunlight, hunting with such determination. None of them had been your standard wild-eyed vampire.

Cats, carriers, and non-crazy peeps. My strain of the parasite was more than just a hopeful monster; this was a pattern of adaptations.

But what did they all add up to?

Something stirred the air behind me, and my muscles stiffened. Soft footsteps fell on the stairs above, so light that the centuries-old boards didn’t complain. A sleek flank brushed against my legs, and tiny clawed feet strode across my back.

A cat was walking over me.

It stepped from my shoulders, then sat on the step below my head, looking directly into my eyes, perhaps a bit puzzled as to why I was snaking down the stairs. I blew on it to make it go away. It blinked its eyes in annoyance but didn’t budge.

I stole a glance at Morgan, but she was still focused on her man, touching his shoulder softly as he made them all more drinks. At the sight, a surge of random jealousy moved through me, and my heart began to beat faster.

Morgan and Angela were seducing these men, I realized, just as Morgan had seduced me; they were spreading the strain.

Did they know what they were doing?

The cat licked my nose. I suppressed a curse and tried to give the creature a shove down the stairs. It just rubbed its head against my fingers, demanding to be scratched.

Giving up, I began to stroke its scalp, sniffing its dander. Just like the cat beneath Lace’s building, it had no particular smell. But I watched its eyes, until they glimmered in the light from below. Bloodred.

I lay there, unable to move, still nervously petting the peep cat as Angela and Morgan flirted and joked and drank, readying the unknowing men to be infected. Or eaten? Were they pretty enough? The cat purred beneath my fingers, unconcerned.

How many more peep cats were out there? And how had this all happened here in Brooklyn, right under the nose of the Night Watch?

After an interminable time, the peep cat stretched and padded the rest of the way downstairs. I started to think about slinking back up to the servants’ kitchen and escaping. But as the cat crossed the floor toward Morgan, my heart rose into my throat.

It jumped into her lap, and she began to stroke its head.

No, I mouthed silently.

A troubled look crossed Morgan’s face. She fell silent, bringing her hand up and sniffing it. A look of recognition crossed her face.

She peered at the stairs, and I saw her eyes find me through the banister. “Cal?” she called. “Is that you?”

We carriers never forget a scent.

I scrambled to get upright, dizzy from the blood gathered in my head. “Cal from Texas?” Morgan had crossed to the bottom of the stairs, her

drink still in her hand.

“There’s someone up there?” one of the men asked, rising to his feet.

As I stumbled backward up the stairs, Angela Dreyfus joined Morgan at the bottom. My knockout injector only carried one load, and these women weren’t wild-eyed peeps; they were not only as strong and fast as me, they were as smart.

“Wait a second, Cal,” Morgan said. She put one foot on the bottom step.

I turned and bolted up the stairs, racing through the kitchen and the bedroom. Footsteps followed, floorboards creaking indignantly, the old house exploding with the sounds of a chase.

Bursting out onto the balcony I leaped up and grabbed the edge of the next roof, pulling myself over and snatching up my boots. Still in my socks, I took the one-story drop that followed, sending a stunning jolt up my spine. I stumbled and fell, rolling onto my back as I yanked my boots back on.

Springing to my feet, I jumped across the eight-foot alleyway and scrambled up onto the roof of the brownstone. I paused for a moment, looking back at Ryder House.

Morgan stood on the balcony, shaking her head in disappointment.

“Cal,” she called, her voice not too loud—perfectly pitched for my peep hearing. “You don’t know what’s going on.”

“Damn right I don’t!” I said.

“Wait there.” She slipped off her high-heeled shoes.

A door slammed somewhere below me, and I took a step back toward the front edge of the brownstone, glancing over my shoulder. A flicker of movement on the street caught my eye. Angela Dreyfus was moving through the shadows, a squad of small, black forms slinking along beside her.

They had me surrounded.

“Crap,” I said, and ran. I leaped to the next building and raced across it, meeting a dead end: an alley fifteen feet across. If I didn’t make the jump, I’d be sliding down a windowless brick wall to the asphalt, four stories below.

A fire escape snaked down the back of the building, where a high fence surrounded a small yard. I pounded down the metal stairs, taking each flight with two quick jumps, my thudding footsteps making the whole fire escape ring. Once on the ground I scrambled across the grass and over the fence into another yard.

I kept moving, jumping fences, stumbling over stored bicycles and tarp- covered barbecue sets. At the opposite corner from Ryder House, a narrow alley full of garbage bags led out to the street—only a ten-foot-high iron fence and a spiral of razor wire between me and freedom.

I tossed my jacket over the wire, then climbed the wet plastic bags, sending rats scurrying in all directions. The mountain of garbage swaying beneath me, I jumped, rolling over the fence, feeling the razor wire compress like giant springs through the jacket.

Then the street rushed up to meet me like an asphalt fist.

Bruised and gasping for breath, I rolled over, listening for the sounds of Morgan following me. There was nothing except the footsteps of the still- scattering rats. I scanned the streets, but Angela was nowhere to be seen.

A single cat was watching me, however, peering out from underneath a parked car. Its eyes flashed red.

Scrambling to my feet, I tried to pull my jacket off the razor wire, but it stayed caught. Abandoning it, I started limping hurriedly in the opposite direction from Ryder House, the wind cutting through my T-shirt, my right elbow bleeding from the fall.

One block later, a cab stopped for my raised hand and I jumped in, shivering like a wet dog.

An epidemic was loose in Brooklyn.

My apartment was dark. I flipped the light switch but nothing happened. I stood there shivering for a moment, my eyes adjusting to the gloom. “Hello?” I called.

In the glow of the DVD-player clock, I saw a human form sitting at the kitchen table. The smell of jasmine was in the air.

“Lace? Why are the lights—?” Something zoomed through the air at me.

My hands shot up and caught the missile, plastic and soft. I looked at it, dumbfounded—my spatula, generally used for flipping pancakes.

“Um, Lace? What are you doing?” “You can see in the dark,” she said. “I… oh.”

She hissed out a breath. “You dumb-ass. Did you think I’d forgotten about when you swung me across to Freddie’s balcony?”

“Well—”

“Or that I didn’t notice when you sniffed that thing on my wall? Or that you eat nothing but meat?” “I had some bread tonight.”

“Or that I wouldn’t bother to follow you for half a block, and watch you climb up a fucking building?”

Her voice cracked at the last word, and I smelled her anger in the room.

Even Cornelius had been quieted by its force.

“We had a deal, Cal. You weren’t supposed to lie to me.” “I didn’t lie,” I said firmly.

“That is such crap!” she shouted. “You’re a carrier, and you didn’t even tell me there was such a thing until tonight!”

“But—”

“And what did you say to me? ‘A friend of mine slept with Morgan.’ I can’t believe I didn’t see through that. A friend, my ass. You got it from her, didn’t you?”

I sighed. “Yeah, I did. But I never lied to you. I just didn’t bring it up.” “Listen, Cal, there are certain things you’re supposed to mention without

being asked. Being infected with vampirism is one.”

“No, Lace,” I said. “It’s one of those things I have to hide every day of my life. From everyone.”

She was silent for a moment, and we sat in the darkness, glaring at each other.

“When were you going to tell me?” she finally asked.

“Never,” I said. “Don’t you get it? Having this disease means never telling anyone.”

“But what if…” she started, then shook her head slowly, her voice dropping to a whisper. “What if you want to sleep with someone, Cal? You’d have to tell them.”

“I can’t sleep with anyone,” I said.

“Jesus, Cal, even people with HIV have sex. They just wear a condom.”

My heart was pounding as I repeated the bleak dogma of Peeps 101. “The parasite’s spores are viable even in saliva, and they’re small enough to penetrate latex. Any kind of sex is dangerous, Lace.”

“But you…” She trailed off.

“In other words, Lace, it just can’t happen. I can’t even kiss anyone!” I spat these last words at her, furious that I was having to say this all out loud, making it real and inescapable again. I remembered my pathetic little fantasy at the restaurant, hoping someone might mistake us for a couple, confusing me for a normal human being.

She shook her head again. “And you didn’t think this would be important to me?”

My pounding head reverberated with this question for a while, remembering the sound of her breath filling the room the night before. “Important to you?”

“Yeah.” She stood and dragged her chair under the overhead light, climbed up onto it, and screwed the bulb back in. It flickered once in her hand, then stayed on.

I squinted against the glare. “I guess everything’s important to you. Do you want to read my diary now? Go through my closet? I told you practically everything!”

Lace stepped down from the chair and crossed to the door. Her backpack lay there, already full. She was leaving.

“Practically everything wasn’t enough, Cal,” she said. “You should have

told me. You should have known I’d want to know.” She took a step closer, placed a folded piece of paper on the table, and kissed me on the forehead. “I’m really sorry you’re sick, Cal. I’ll be at my sister’s.”

My mind was racing, trapped in one of those nightmarish hamster wheels when you know it really matters what you say next, but you can’t even get your mouth open.

Finally, a flicker of will broke through the chaos. “Why? Why do you care if I’m sick?”

“Christ, Cal! Because I thought we had something.” She shrugged. “The way you keep looking at me. From the first time we saw each other in that elevator.”

“That’s because … I do like you.” I felt my throat swelling, my eyes stinging, but I was not going to cry. “But there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“You could have told me. It’s like you were playing a game with me.”

I opened my mouth to protest but realized that she was right. Except I’d been mostly playing the game with myself, not admitting how much I liked her, trying to forget the fact that it was bound to come to this—her feeling disappointed and betrayed, me caught in my deception, sputtering hopelessly.

But I didn’t know how to say all that, so I didn’t say anything at all. Lace opened the door and left.

I sat there for a while, trying not to cry, clinging to that minuscule place inside me that somehow managed to be quietly pleased: Lace had liked me too. Yay.

Some time later I fed Cornelius and got ready for a long night awake in the throes of optimum virulence. I unhid my spore-ridden toothbrush and got out all the Night Watch books I’d secreted away, returning the apartment to how it had been before Lace had arrived. I even sprayed the couch with window cleaner, trying to erase her scent.

But before I went to sleep I looked at the folded piece of paper she’d left behind. It was a cell-phone number.

So I could call and tell her when her building was safe? Or when I was ready to send a replacement spaghetti strainer? Or was it an invitation to a really frustrating friendship?

I lay down on the futon and let Cornelius sit on my chest, comforting me with all his fourteen pounds, and getting ready to relish these questions and others as they danced behind my eyelids for the next eight hours.

Wait, did I say eight hours? I meant four hundred years.

 

Chapter 18 PLASMODIUM

Imagine dying from a mosquito bite.

About two million people every year do just that, thanks to a parasite called Plasmodium. Here’s how it works:

When an infected mosquito bites you, Plasmodium is injected into your bloodstream. It moves through your body until it reaches your liver, where it stays for about a week. During that time it changes into a new form—sort of like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.

Did I say butterfly? Actually, it’s more like a microscopic tank. Plasmodium grows treads that allow it to crawl along your blood vessel walls, and it develops a sort of missile launcher on its head. This launcher helps the parasite blast its way into one of your red blood cells.

Inside the blood cell, Plasmodium is safe, hidden from your immune system. But it stays busy. It consumes the insides of the cell and uses them to build sixteen copies of itself. Those burst forth and go on to invade more of your blood cells, where they each make sixteen more copies of themselves…

You can see where this might become a problem. This problem is called malaria.

Getting malaria sucks. As your blood cells are consumed by Plasmodium, you get chills, then a high fever that comes back every few days. Your liver and spleen expand, and your urine turns black with dead blood cells.

It gets worse. All those blood cells are supposed to be carrying oxygen through your body. As they get turned into plasmodium-breeding factories, the oxygen stops flowing. Your skin turns yellow, and you become delirious. If your malaria remains untreated, you’ll eventually go into a coma and die.

But why is Plasmodium so nasty? Why would a parasite want to kill you, when that means that it too will die? This seems to go against the law of optimum virulence.

Here’s the thing: Humans can’t give one another malaria, because most people don’t bite each other. So to infect other humans, Plasmodium needs to get back into a mosquito.

This is trickier than it sounds, because when a mosquito bites you, it only sucks a tiny, mosquito-size drop of blood. But plasmodium doesn’t know which drop of blood will get sucked, so it has to be everywhere in your bloodstream, even if that winds up killing you.

In this case, optimum virulence means total domination.

But plasmodium isn’t completely lacking in subtlety. Sometimes it takes a break from killing you.

Why? Because if too many humans in one place get malaria at the same time, it might wind up killing them all. This would be very bad for Plasmodium; it needs a human population to keep breeding. So every once in a while, Plasmodium plays it cool. In fact, one strain can hang around inside you for as long as thirty years before it makes its move.

It lets you think that you’re okay, but it’s still there, hiding in your liver, waiting for the right moment to unleash its engines of destruction.

Clever, huh?

 

Chapter 19 VECTOR

I woke up in a foul mood, ready to kick some ass. I started with Chip in Records.

“Hey, Kid.”

“Okay, first thing: Don’t call me Kid!”

“Jeez, Cal.” Chip’s big brown eyes looked hurt. “What’s with you? Didn’t get enough sleep last night?”

“No, I didn’t. Something about Morgan Ryder living half a mile away kept me awake.”

He blinked. “You did what now?”

I sighed as I sat down in his visitor’s chair. I’d been practicing that dramatic line all the way here, and Chip was looking at me like I was speaking Middle Dutch. “Okay, Chip. Listen carefully. I found Morgan Ryder, my progenitor, the high-priority peep that you guys have been looking for since the day before yesterday. In the phone book!”

“Huh. Well, don’t look at me.”

“Um, Chip, I am looking at you.” It was true. I was looking at him. “This is Records, is it not? You guys do have phone books down here, don’t you?”

“Sure, but—”

“But you’ve been messing with me, haven’t you?”

He raised his hands. “No one’s messing with you, Cal.” Then he leaned forward, lowering his voice a bit. “At least, no one in Records is. I can tell you that.”

I stopped, mouth already loaded with my next sarcastic remark. It took me a moment to switch gears. “What do you mean, no one in Records?”

He looked over his shoulder. “No one in Records is messing with you.” The ceiling fan squeaked overhead.

“Who?” I whispered.

Chip took a breath and gestured me closer. “All I can say is, that case got lifted from us.”

“Define lifted.”

“Transferred to a higher level. High priority, like you said. After you found out her last name, certain individuals told us to track down the other three missing persons but to leave Morgan Ryder alone. They wanted to handle her special.”

A little shudder went through me. “The Mayor’s office?”

Chip said nothing, which said everything. “Um, does that happen a lot?”

Chip shrugged unconvincingly. “Well…” He chewed his lower lip. “Actually, it doesn’t happen that much. Especially not this way.”

“Which way?”

He leaned even closer, his whisper barely audible above the squeaking of the ceiling fan. “With no one telling you about it, Cal. You see, we were supposed to be copied on any info that the Mayor’s office found and then pass it along to you. But you weren’t supposed to know that we’d been pulled off the case. And I’m not supposed to be telling you this now, in case you haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Oh.” I leaned back heavily in Chip’s spare chair, my righteous anger turning to mush. Yelling at Chip was one thing, but busting in to raise hell with the Night Mayor was something I couldn’t visualize. Four-hundred-year- old vampires have that effect on me.

So this was a conspiracy. But the Night Mayor? He was the head guy, the big cheese. Who would he even be conspiring against?

All of us? The whole Night Watch? Humanity?

I leaned over the desk again. “Um, Chip? Seeing as how you weren’t supposed to tell me this, maybe we should pretend that you didn’t?”

Chip didn’t say a word, just pointed to the biggest of the many signs on his bulletin board—even bigger than the We Do Not Have Pens sign—and I knew absolutely that our secret was safe.

In large block letters were the words When in Doubt, Cover Your Ass. Next, I went to see Dr. Rat.

If I could trust anyone at the Watch, it would be her. Unlike the Shrink and the Mayor, she wasn’t a carrier. She hadn’t been alive for centuries and didn’t give a rat’s ass about the old families. She was a scientist—her only loyalty was to the truth.

Still, I decided to proceed a little more cautiously than I had with Chip. “ ‘Morning, Dr. Rat.”

“ ‘Morning, Kid!” She smiled. “Just the guy I wanted to see.” “Oh, yeah?” I forced a smile onto my face. “Why’s that?”

She leaned back in her chair. “Those peeps you brought in yesterday—did you know they can talk?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Sure, of course. Patricia Moore spoke to me.” “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“What about Sarah? She talked to me.”

Dr. Rat shook her head. “No, Cal, this is different. I mean, a lot of peeps become lucid for a few moments after you hit them with knockout drugs. But those two you caught yesterday have been having flat-out conversations.”

I sat down heavily. “But they’re husband and wife. What about the anathema? Shouldn’t they start screaming at the mere thought of each other?” “That’s what you’d think.” She shrugged. “But they’ve been calling from one holding pen to another. As long as they don’t actually see each other,

they’re fine.”

“Is it the drugs?”

Dr. Rat pursed her lips. “After one night? No way. And as far as I can tell, this isn’t the first time they’ve had these conversations. I think they were living together down in that tunnel—sharing the hunting duties, talking to each other in the darkness. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. They’re practically…” She trailed off.

“Sane?” I said softly. “Yeah. Almost.”

“Um, except for the cannibals-living-in-a-tunnel part?”

Dr. Rat shook her head again. “We didn’t find any human remains in that tunnel, Cal. They were just eating pigeons. Come to think of it, those skulls in Sarah’s lair dated at more than six months old. That’s why it took so long to find her—she’d stopped preying on people, had switched over to eating rats.”

“Eww. Ex-boyfriend sitting right here.”

She flashed her don’t-be-a-wuss look at me. “Yeah, well, rat consumption is a lot better than eating people. I think your strain is … different.”

“What about, ‘So pretty I had to eat him’?”

Dr. Rat sat back down at her desk, spreading her hands. “Well, maybe the onset symptoms of the strain are just as bad as a normal peep’s. But eventually the parasite settles down. It doesn’t seem to turn people into raving monsters … not forever anyway.”

I nodded. That theory fit with what I’d seen of Morgan and Angela Dreyfus the night before.

“Maybe we caused this,” Dr. Rat said softly. “Huh? We who?”

“The Night Watch. It’s hard for crazed peeps to run amok in a modern city, especially with us on the case. So this could be an adaptation to the Night Watch. Maybe you’re part of a whole new strain, Cal, one that has a lower level of optimum virulence—the peeps are less violent and insane, the transmission usually sexual. It’s more likely to survive in a city organized to catch maniacs.”

“So more than one in a hundred people would be immune?”

“Sure.” Dr. Rat nodded slowly. “Makes sense, really. Except for the cat- worshipping.” She noticed the change in my expression and frowned. “You okay, Cal?”

“Um, I’m great. But did you just say ‘cat-worshipping’?”

“Yeah, I did.” Dr. Rat smiled and rolled her eyes. “Those two you caught

yesterday will not shut up about the peep cat. Is kitty okay? Can they see it? Is it getting enough food?” She laughed. “It’s like the anathema in reverse; like maybe they used to hate cats and now they love them—I don’t know. Weird mutation, huh?”

“Mutation? A cat-worshipping mutation? One that appears at exactly the same time as a cat-infecting mutation?” I groaned. “Doesn’t that seem like too much of a coincidence to you, Doctor?”

“But it’s still just a coincidence, Kid.” “How can you be so sure?”

“Because the peep cat isn’t viable.” She stood and walked to the far wall, where a pile of cages were filled with various cats, all of whom had the scruffy, streetwise look of strays. “See these little guys? Since yesterday I’ve been trying to produce transmission from the peep cat to one of them … and nothing. Doesn’t matter if they lick each other, eat from the same bowl. Zilch. It’s like trying to force two mosquitoes to give each other malaria; it’s hopeless.”

“But what about transmission through rats?”

She shook her head. “I’ve been testing that too. I’ve tried biting, ingestion, even blood transfusion, and I haven’t gotten the parasite to move to a single rat, much less from rat to cat. That peep cat is a dead end.”

I had to bite my lip to keep from arguing. The peep cat wasn’t a dead end; I knew about a dozen others. But how could I explain about them to Dr. Rat without telling her everything I’d seen the night before? If I told her about Ryder House, I’d have to mention Morgan and Angela, and how I’d found them … which would mean bringing up what Chip had told me about the Mayor’s office. And once I admitted my suspicions about the Night Mayor, I’d have to start my own counterconspiracy.

Suddenly my racing mind was halted by the smell of Dr. Rat’s lair, a scent that had been conspicuously absent the night before: rats. Ryder House had been so clean. No piles of garbage, no reeking decay. No sign at all of a brood of rodents.

“What if rats don’t matter?” I said softly.

She snorted. “You found a huge brood down in the tunnel, Cal.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. Those rats carry the parasite, sure. They were the reservoir. But what if they weren’t the vector for the peep cat getting infected?”

“But I told you, it doesn’t travel from cat to cat. So what else is left?” “Humans.”

She frowned.

“What if this strain really is like malaria?” I continued. “Except with cats instead of mosquitoes? Maybe it just bounces back and forth between felines and people.”

Dr. Rat smiled. “Interesting theory, Kid, but there’s one problem.” She crossed to the cage where the peep cat lay calmly watching us and stuck a finger in through the bars.

“Um, Dr. Rat, I wouldn’t do that…”

She chuckled; the cat was sniffing her finger, its whiskers vibrating. “This cat isn’t violent. It doesn’t bite.”

My hand went to my cheek. “Are you forgetting what it did to my face?”

Dr. Rat gave a snort. “Any cat will attack if you get it mad enough. And anyway that’s a scratch, not a bite.” She turned back to the cat, rubbing its forehead through the wires of the cage. It closed its eyes and began to purr.

“But the cats are important somehow!” I shouted. “I know they are!” She turned to face me. “The cats? Plural?”

“Oh.” I cleared my throat. “Well, potentially plural.”

Dr. Rat narrowed her eyes. “Cal, is there something you’re not telling me?”

There were lots of things I hadn’t told her. But at that moment a horrible thought crossed my mind…

“Wait a second,” I said. “What if the strain spreads between cats and humans without biting? How would that work?”

Dr. Rat’s suspicious expression didn’t waver, but she answered me. “Well, it could happen in a few ways. Remember toxoplasma?”

“Who could forget toxoplasma? It’s in my brain.”

She nodded. “Mine too. Toxoplasma spores are airborne. Cats leave them in the litter box, then they go up your nose. But that would only work from cat to human, not the other way around. For two-way transmission, you and a cat would have to breathe on each other a lot at short range…”

I remembered something Dr. Rat had said the day before, and my stomach did a back flip. “You mean, if the cat stole your breath?”

She smiled. “Like in those old legends where cats were demons? Yeah. That might work.” A frown crossed her face. “And you know, those old stories date from around the time of the plague.”

“Yeah. Plague.”

Dr. Rat’s eyes widened. My face must have been turning odd colors. “What did I say, Cal?”

I didn’t answer. A small but horrible memory had drifted through my mind, something Lace had said the night before.

“Yeah,” I said softly, “really nice.” “What’s really nice?” said Dr. Rat. “I have to go now.”

“What’s wrong, Cal?”

“Nothing.” I stood shakily. “I have to go home is all.” She raised an eyebrow. “Feeling sick?”

“No, I’m fine. This conversation just reminded me, though… My cat is, um, unwell.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “Nothing serious, I hope.”

I shrugged, dizzy from standing up too fast. My throat was dry. What I was thinking could not be true. “Probably not too serious. You know how cats are.”

The cab ride back to Brooklyn was the most unpleasant twenty dollars I’d ever spent. I stared out the window as we soared across the Williamsburg Bridge, wondering if I’d gone insane. Wondering if Cornelius had really contracted the disease from me.

The old cat had never bitten me, hadn’t even scratched me in the last year.

Airborne, Dr. Rat had said.

That had to be nuts. Diseases transmitted by fluids didn’t just suddenly become airborne. If they did, we’d all die from Ebola, we’d all get rabies from a walk in the woods, we’d all be carrying HIV …

We’d all be vampires.

Of course, diseases change. Evolution never sleeps. But my strain was too well developed to be brand-new. It infected cats, turned its victims into feline- worshippers and carriers, created smarter and saner peeps. A whole raft of adaptations.

And those ancient legends about cats stealing breath—those stories were seven hundred years old. If this strain had been around for seven hundred years, where had it been hiding?

Then I remembered the pale rats below the surface, buried deep until the reservoir had bubbled up beneath the PATH train. Could they have been down there in the darkness for centuries, keeping an ancient strain of the parasite hidden?

And the foul thing I’d smelled but not encountered down there. What did a hidden strain of the parasite have to do with that unseen subterranean creature?

The ride took forever, my sweating palms leaving handprints on the vinyl seats, the sunlight flashing through the struts of the bridge, the taxi meter ticking like a time bomb, and the memory that had struck me in Dr. Rat’s office replaying, Lace’s voice saying again and again: “Except for not having any of my stuff, commuting all the way from Brooklyn, and having your heavy-ass cat lie on me all night. Other than that, it’s been kind of… nice.”

“Yeah. Really nice,” I whispered again.

I picked up a flashlight at the dollar store on the way home.

“Here, kitty, kitty!” I called as the door swung open. “It’s nummy-time.”

For a moment I heard nothing and wondered if Cornelius had somehow figured out that I knew his secret and had escaped my apartment for the wider world. But then he padded out from the bathroom to greet me.

I switched on the flashlight, shining it straight into his eyes… They flashed bloodred. He blinked at me and cocked his head.

I crumpled to the floor, dropping the flashlight. In addition to all my girlfriends, I’d infected my own cat. How much did that suck? “Oh, Corny.”

He meowed.

After a whole year, how had I not noticed his eyes? Of course, with my night vision, I almost never kept the lights on. Cornelius came to rest his head on my knee and let out a soft meow. I rubbed him, stoking up a good purr.

“How long?” I wondered aloud.

Probably for most of the last year. Cornelius always slept with me on the futon, and I couldn’t count the number of times I’d woken up with him perched on my chest, bathing me in Crunchy Tuna breath. He could have contracted the parasite even before I’d noticed the changes in myself.

Maybe it had been through him that Sarah had been infected. She’d always complained of his bladder-crushing weight in the morning.

Maybe the sex had been irrelevant. Maybe she’d been his peep, not mine.

Maybe Lace was already …

I stood up and fed Cornelius, going through the motions on autopilot, fighting off panic. She’d only spent one night here, after all. And even if she’d been infected, it wouldn’t be as bad as Sarah. This was an early diagnosis. I just had to get her into treatment as soon as possible.

Of course, getting her into treatment meant going to the Night Watch and admitting that I’d committed a Major Revelation Incident. And telling them everything I’d seen out in Brooklyn, and that the Mayor’s office was covering something up. And trusting them with Lace’s life, when I didn’t even trust them to use the phone book anymore.

I began to realize just how badly everything was about to crumble. The Night Watch had been corrupted and the parasite had gone airborne, helped along by Morgan Ryder—a new Typhoid Mary, with the added bonus of feline familiars.

Even if Lace wasn’t already infected, I had to warn her. No matter how nonviolent Patricia and Joseph Moore might seem at the moment, someone had eaten the guy in 701 and turned his guts into graffiti.

I remembered the motivational computer simulations Dr. Rat had shown in Peep Hunting 101—showing how we were helping to save the world. On their way to being epidemics, diseases reach something called critical mass, the point at which chaos begins to feed upon itself—roving peeps in the streets, garbagemen afraid to go to work, garbage piling up, rats breeding and biting—more peeps. Except that this strain would include nervous people getting cats to save them from the rats, and the cats making more peeps…

You get the picture. In the days and weeks ahead, the time bombs set by Morgan and Angela would begin to explode into temporary cannibals. New

York City was going to get nasty.

I took a deep breath. I couldn’t think about all that yet. The first thing I had to do was find Lace and test her for early signs of infection. I took her cell-phone number from where it lay on the table and dialed.

She answered on the first ring. “Lace here.” I swallowed. “Hey. It’s me, Cal.”

“Oh. Hi, Cal.” Her tone sounded flat. “That was fast.” “Um, what was fast?”

“What do you think? You calling me was fast, dumb-ass.” “Oh, right,” I said. “Well, I had to.”

“You did?” Her voice gave a hint of interest. “Yeah … something’s come up.”

“Like what, dude?”

“Like…” You have contracted a deadly disease. Soon, you may begin to eat your neighbors—but don’t worry, you will eventually switch to pigeons, or perhaps rats. “Um, I can’t really talk about it on the phone.”

She groaned. “Still with the top secret, huh? Need-to-know basis?” “Yeah. But this is something you really need to know.”

There was a long pause, then a sigh. “Okay. I was kind of hoping you’d call. I mean, maybe I was a little bit hard on you last night. But I was kind of angry with … the way things are.”

“Oh. Right.” I had the feeling she was about to get angrier. “Okay. So where and when?”

“Right now. Except I’m out in Brooklyn. Twenty minutes?”

“Okay. I’m hungry anyway. How about that diner where we ate before?

Where was that?”

“Bob’s? Broadway and Eleventh. See you there. And thanks.” “For what?”

“Not hanging up on me.” A pause. “We’ll see.”

We said good-bye and disconnected. Lace had sounded so normal, I thought, allowing myself to hope. Maybe it took a peep cat more than one night to spread the parasite. Or maybe I was grasping at straws. If she’d been infected the night before last, the only symptom Lace would display so far would be a slight increase in night vision.

I headed for the door.

“Meow,” Cornelius cried. He was lying in my way. “Sorry, Corny. Can’t stay.”

He yowled again, louder.

I slid him away from the door with my foot. “Move. I have to go.” He scrambled over my boot and back to the door, still yowling.

“You can’t go out, okay?” I yelled and picked him up, planning to step

out and then toss him back through from the other side. He started to struggle. “What’s your problem?” I said, pulling open the door.

Morgan and Angela stood there, grinning from ear to ear. “How did you find me?” I finally managed.

“I don’t forget the names of people I sleep with, Cal Thompson,” Morgan said.

“Oh.”

“And I thought that looked like you on the tapes, monkeying around in the basement of my old building, being all brave and daring.” Morgan laughed and turned to Angela. “Cal’s from Texas.”

“Yeah, you told me,” Angela said.

“And look, he has a kitty!” Morgan said, reaching out to tickle Cornelius’s chin. “Isn’t it cute?”

“Yes, he is,” I answered, and threw Cornelius in her face.

I followed the yowling ball of cat through the door, whipping the knockout injector from my pocket. Angela’s hands went up to defend herself, the injector hissing as the needle sank into her forearm.

“You Texas butt-head!” she shouted, then crumpled to the floor.

I ignored the squawling mass of cat and Morgan and headed for the stairs. Halfway down, Morgan’s voice echoed through the stairwell. “Stop, Cal!

You’re being a pain!”

I kept running, taking each flight of stairs with a single, bone-jarring leap. “Your Night Watch isn’t going to help you now, you know!” she called,

her sneakers squeaking on the concrete steps behind me.

I’d already figured that much was true; I didn’t trust the Night Watch anymore. But I wasn’t about to trust the person who’d infected me either. From now on, I was on my own.

Reaching the last flights of stairs, I ran through the lobby and burst out the front doors of my building, hoping that by some miracle a cab would be waiting there. The street, of course, was empty of cabs.

But not of cats.

There were dozens of them, maybe a hundred, perched on postboxes and garbage bags, crowding the stoops across the street, all watching me with the same expression of mild amusement.

My knees grew weak, and the world went dizzy; I almost fell to the concrete. But Morgan was right behind me. I pulled my belt from around my waist and cinched it through the curving handles of the front door. Then I took a few deep breaths until the faintness passed.

The cats around me hadn’t moved. Maybe Dr. Rat was right—they were nonviolent.

Seconds later, Morgan approached the other side of the glass door, grabbed the inside handles, and pulled. The belt held tight. It would take her a

while to wear down the leather, or for some random passerby to let her out.

I stumbled back from the door.

“Cal!” she called, her voice muffled through the glass. “Stop!”

I shook my head and turned to walk down the street, ignoring her cries. “Cal!” The sound faded behind me.

The cats watched placidly, no concern in their expressions. But somehow their collective gaze kept me from running—some threat implicit in their eyes suggested that if I disturbed the quiet street, they would turn into an angry horde and devour me.

So I walked slowly, feeling their red-flickering eyes with every step.

Another two blocks up was Flatbush Avenue, busy and normal and not overrun with cats. I stuck out my shaking arm and hailed a taxi to Manhattan.

Halfway across the bridge, my phone rang. It was the Shrink. “Kid, we need to talk.”

“Don’t call me Kid!”

There was a long silence on the other end. Evidently, the words had surprised the Shrink just as much as they had me.

“Um, if you don’t mind?” I added lamely. “Certainly … Cal.”

I frowned. “Hey, wait a second. I thought you didn’t like talking on phones.”

“I don’t, but the world is changing, Cal. And one must adapt.”

I wanted to point out that telephones were so 1881—not exactly cutting edge—but the Shrink’s choice of words froze the remark in my mouth.

“The world is changing?” I said hoarsely. “You hadn’t noticed?”

“Um, I’d say there’s been some weird stuff going on.” I cleared my throat. “And I’m starting to feel like nobody’s keeping me in the loop.”

“Well, perhaps you’re right. Perhaps we haven’t been fair to you.”

The cab slowed as the bridge descended into Chinatown, and a few moments of reception crackle interrupted the conversation. Ahead of me were crowds of workday pedestrians—all within arm’s length of one another—a perfect breeding ground for infection and for sudden violence spinning out of control.

When the rattle in my ear subsided, I said, “And you’re going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Of course. I, for one, have always wanted you to know what’s going on. I’ve always trusted you, Cal. But you see, you’re so very young compared to the rest of us.”

“The rest of the Night Watch?”

“Not the Watch. We carriers, Cal, with all those centuries behind us. And those of us in the old families. Some thought you wouldn’t understand the

way things were changing.” She sighed. “I’m afraid we’ve been treating you as a bit of a human.”

“Um, last time I checked, I was one.”

The Shrink laughed. “No, Cal, you’re one of us.”

I groaned, not wanting to get into some weird semantic argument. “Could you just tell me what’s going on!”

“I’ll let her tell you.” “Her who?”

“Just get where you’re going. Don’t worry. She’ll be there.” Click. She’d hung up.

How did the Shrink know where I was going? I couldn’t imagine the Mayor’s office having tapped my phone. That was way too high-tech for them. Then I remembered Cornelius sitting by the door, yowling. He’d smelled Morgan out there, which meant that Morgan could have heard my conversation with Lace. I replayed it in my mind… Bob’s on Broadway and Eleventh, I had helpfully said aloud.

She would be waiting? But who was she?

I dialed Lace’s number on my cell, but there was no answer. Out of service, the recorded voice said. We were approaching Houston, the cars around us slowing to a walking pace. I paid, jumped out, and ran toward Broadway and Eleventh, trying to untangle the meaning of the Shrink’s call.

The Shrink knew that I knew. My first thought was that Chip had broken his promise and talked to the Mayor’s office, but then Morgan’s words at my door came back to me: “I don’t forget the names of people I sleep with, Cal Thompson.”

Morgan knew that I had forgotten her last name, something the Shrink had always chided me about. But how would Morgan have known that, unless someone had told her?

They were all in it together—Morgan Ryder, the Shrink, and the Night Mayor, along with the other carriers and the old families of New York—all of them knew something about my strain of the parasite and what it meant. They had kept me in the dark from the beginning.

And if it hadn’t been for Lace’s detective work, I would still be in the dark.

Lace … I thought, speeding up.

Rebecky greeted me at the door. “Hey, Cal! Hungry again already?” I tried not to pant. “Yeah. Meeting someone.”

“So I noticed.” Rebecky winked. “I never forget a face. She’s right back there.”

I nodded and headed toward the rear corner table, still breathing heavily, still dizzy, still trying to put together everything I had to explain to Lace, so harried and distracted that it wasn’t until I’d thunked myself down into the

booth that I realized the girl sitting across from me wasn’t Lace.

It was Sarah.

 

Chapter 20

THE PARASITE OF MY PARASITE IS MY FRIEND

Here is the story of how parasitic wasps saved twenty million lives.

But to tell the tale, first you get to hear about mealworms, a kind of insect that’s just as unpleasant as its name. Mealworms aren’t very big—a cluster of thousands looks like a tiny white speck. But this single speck can devastate whole continents. Here’s how:

The average mealworm has eight hundred kids, almost all of which are female. Each of these offspring can have eight hundred more kids. Do the math: One mealworm can produce five hundred million great-grandchildren. And they aren’t really worms at all; the young ones can fly, carried from plant to plant on the wind, spreading infection as they go.

Thirty years ago, a species of mealworm rampaged through Africa, attacking a staple crop called cassava and almost starving twenty million people. That’s a pretty big death toll for a microscopic parasite. Fortunately, however, cassava mealworms have their own parasite, a species of wasp from South America.

A word about parasitic wasps: nasty. Instead of a stinger, they kill with something called an ovipositor, which injects eggs instead of venom. And, believe me, these eggs are much worse than poison. At least with poison, you die fast.

Here’s what wasp eggs do to their unlucky hosts: Some hatch into “soldiers,” which have big teeth and hooked tails. They roam around in the victim’s bloodstream, sucking out the guts of any children left by other wasps. (Parasitic wasps are very territorial.) Other eggs hatch into wasp larvae, which are basically big bloated stomachs with mouths. Protected by their soldier siblings, they ravenously consume the host from within, sucking away its juices as they grow into wasps themselves. Once they’re big enough to grow wings, the larvae eat their way out into the world and fly off to lay more eggs. The soldiers don’t leave, they just stay behind with the dried-up, dying host, having done their duty for their waspy brothers and sisters. (Isn’t that sweet?)

So what happened in Africa? Long story short: The crops were saved.

Once the right species of wasp was let loose, the mealworms were dead meat. Mealworms may spread as fast as the wind, but wherever they go, the

wasps can follow. Wasps can fly too, after all, and they’re pretty much psychic when it comes to finding mealworms. If a single plant in a huge field is infected, the wasps will find the mealworms and inject them with their eggs. No one really knows how wasps track down microscopic mealworms, but some scientists have an intriguing theory:

The infected plant asks for help.

That’s right: When a cassava plant is attacked by mealworms, it begins to send out signals to any wasps in the area. Some unknown chemical rises up and draws the wasps toward it, like a big red highway flare saying, Help me! Help me!

Of course, another way to translate the message is: Mealworms! Get your hot delicious mealworms!

You could say that the cassava and the parasitic wasp have an evolutionary deal: “I’ll tell you when I’m infected with mealworms, and you come and deposit your deadly eggs in them.”

It’s a great relationship, because the parasite of your parasite is your friend.

 

Chapter 21 EX

“Hiya, darling,” Sarah said. “You’re looking good.”

I didn’t say anything, paralyzed by the sight of her. Sarah was utterly transformed from my last glimpse before the transport squad had taken her away. Her hair was clean, her fingernails pink and neatly trimmed; there was no demented gleam in her eye. As her familiar scent reached me through the smell of grease and frying eggs, Bob’s Diner seemed to shudder, as if time were snapping backward.

She was even wearing a thick black leather wristband, a definite reference to Elvis’s 1968 Comeback Special. Very appropriate.

Rebecky slapped down a cup of coffee in front of me, breaking the spell. “Thought I recognized you,” she said to Sarah. “It’s been a while since you’ve been in here, right?”

“Been out of town. Hoboken mostly, then a few days in Montana, of all places,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “But I’m back to stay.”

“Well, good. Looks like Cal here sure missed you.” She patted me on the shoulder, chuckling at my blank expression. “The usual, Cal?”

I nodded. When Rebecky had gone away, I found my voice. “You’re looking good too, Sarah.”

“Been putting on some weight, actually,” she said, shrugging and taking a huge bite of the hamburger in front of her.

“It suits you,” I said. “Makes you look more…” “Human?” Sarah grinned.

“Yeah, I guess.” My mind started to struggle for a better word, but an alarm was going off deep in my brain. “Where’s Lace?”

“Lace, huh?” Sarah frowned. “What kind of name is that?”

“Short for Lacey. Where is she? You guys didn’t…” I looked around for the Shrink’s minders, sniffed the air for other predators. All I smelled was Bob’s: potatoes and meat and onions, all turning brown on the grill—and Sarah, who smelled of family.

She shrugged. “Look, Cal, I don’t know who you’re meeting here. Dr. Prolix just called me ten minutes ago and told me to come here and talk to you. She thought you’d listen to someone your own age. She said maybe you needed a jolt.”

“Well, mission accomplished on that.”

“And she figured it wouldn’t hurt if you saw how well I was doing.”

“Yeah. You look … so sane.” “Am sane. Feels good.”

I shook my head, trying to think straight through the tangle of memories welling up in me. Lace would get here any moment now. Maybe I could run and try to catch her on the way. If Lace said the wrong thing in front of Sarah, the Watch might figure out that she knew too much.

I looked out the window, searching the street for Lace’s face among the lunchtime crowds. But my gaze kept coming back to the girl in front of me— Sarah, alive and well and human.

I couldn’t run yet; I had to know… “What happened?”

Sarah chewed a bite of burger thoughtfully, then swallowed. “Well, first this total dickhead gave me a disease.”

“Oh, yeah.” I drank some coffee, frowned at its bitterness. “I never had a chance to say sorry about that. I didn’t know—”

“Yeah, yeah. I guess we’re both to blame. Safe sex, blah, blah, blah.” Sarah sighed. “Then there was my little … breakdown. But you saw most of that.”

I nodded. “Until you disappeared.”

Sarah took a long breath, staring out the window. “Well, the parts you missed out on are kind of hazy for me, too. Sort of like a long, bad dream. About being hungry.” She shuddered. “And eating. Then there you were again, rescuing me.” She smiled tiredly then took another bite.

“Rescuing you?” I swallowed, never having thought of it that way myself. “It was the least I could do. But, Sarah, how did you get so normal? So fast?”

“Good question, which reminds me.” She pulled out a bottle of pills, dumped two into her palm, and swallowed. “Two with every meal.”

I blinked. “There’s a cure?”

“Sure. They had me straightened out about six hours after I got to Montana.”

“When did that happen? The cure, I mean.” “At least seven hundred years ago.”

There it was again, that seven-hundred-year thing. “The plague? This doesn’t make any sense, Sarah.”

“It will, Cal. Just listen up. I’m here to tell you everything. Doctor’s orders.” She bit deep into her burger, hurrying now that she was only a few swallows from the end.

“Which doctor? Prolix?”

“Yep, the Shrink. She’s been telling me all about what’s coming.” Sarah looked out at the crowds on the sidewalk. “They figured I could take it, because of my personal eating habits lately.” She looked down at her hamburger with momentary suspicion, then took another bite. “And because they don’t have time to mess with me. Or with you, anymore. Time to face

facts, Cal.”

Suddenly, the restaurant felt overcrowded, claustrophobic. I could smell the people in the booth behind me, the pressure of the passersby on the street. “The disease is out of control, isn’t it? We’re going to wake up one day in one of those zombie-apocalypse movies, the parasite spreading faster than anyone can stop it.”

“No, Cal. Don’t be silly. The disease is in control, the way it should be.

The parasite’s calling the shots now.” “It’s doing what?”

“It’s in charge, making things happen. The way it’s supposed to. The Night Watch was always just a holding pattern, keeping down the mutation while waiting for the old strain to come back.”

I shook my head. “Wait. What?”

Sarah held up her fork and knife, looking from one to the other. “Okay.

There’s two versions of the parasite. The new kind and the old kind. Right?” “Two strains, I know.” I nodded. “And we’ve got the new one, you and

me.”

Sarah sighed. “No, dickhead, we have the old kind. The original.” She rattled her pill bottle. “This is mandrake and garlic, mostly. Totally old- school. Until seven hundred years ago, people used to totally control this disease.”

“Until the plague?”

“Bingo. That’s when the new strain showed up.” Sarah shook her head. “You’ve got to blame the Inquisition for that. You know, when Christians got it into their heads that cats were evil and started killing loads of them? That was bad for the old version of the parasite, seeing as how it jumps back and forth between felines and humans.”

“Right… I know about that. But that’s the old version?”

“Yes. Pay attention, Cal. As I was saying, it’s 1300 a.d. and everyone’s killing cats. So with hardly any cats around, the rat population grows like crazy. More human-to-rat contact, evolution of various diseases, fleas and ticks, blah, blah, blah.” She waved her hand. “Plague.”

“Um, I think you’re skipping over something there.”

She snorted. “I’m not the one going for a biology degree. I’m just a philosophy major who eats people. But here’s the bio-for-philosophers version: A new strain of the parasite appeared, one that moved back and forth between rats and humans, without cats. Of course, as with any new strain, the optimum virulence was a mess; the peeps were much more violent and difficult to control. A total zombie movie, like you said.”

“And the old strain went underground.”

“Very good.” Sarah smiled. “They told me you’d understand.” “But that was Europe. This is New York.”

“Rats go everywhere, Cal. They love ships, so of course the new parasites made it to the New World. Even here, the old strain was pushed down into the deep.”

“But now it’s coming back up,” I said. “Why aren’t we doing something about it? Why are the old carriers hiding it from the rest of the Watch?”

“Excellent questions.” She nodded slowly, chewing the last bite of her hamburger. “That’s what you scientists never seem to understand: The whys are always more important than the hows.”

“Sarah, just tell me!”

“Okay.” She placed her palms on the table. “Feel that?”

I looked at the surface of my coffee; its black mirror reflected the lights overhead with a pulsing shimmer. “You mean the subway going by?”

She shook her head, her eyes closed. “Feel deeper.”

I placed my hands on the table, and as the train faded, I felt another, more subtle shudder in its wake. Like something disturbed in its sleep, turning over. Like the trembling I’d felt through my cowboy boots, the first time I’d seen the peep cat.

Sarah opened her eyes. “Our strain is coming up because it’s being pushed

up.”

I remembered the unseen thing I’d smelled in the Underworld, and the shudder in my hands took over my whole body for a moment. “By what?”

Sarah lifted her palms from the table, sighed, then shrugged. “There are a lot of things down there, Cal, things human beings haven’t seen in a long time. We lost a lot of knowledge during the plague. But the old guys do know one thing: When the ground starts to tremble, the old strain will rise up. They need us.”

“Wait a second. Who needs who?”

“They”—she looked out the window at the passing crowds—“need us. We’re the immune system for our species, Cal. Like those kick-ass T-cells and B-cells you always told me about, we get activated by an invasion. New- strainers are just zombies, vampires. But those of us with the old disease, the carrier strain, we’re soldiers.”

My mind spun, trying to reconcile what Sarah was saying with what I’d seen Morgan doing, spreading the disease haphazardly, enlisting hordes of cats. “But why is this a secret? I mean, why didn’t this come up in my Night Watch courses? Does Dr. Rat know about it? Or Records?”

“It’s older than Records. Older than science. Even older than New York. So the carriers kept it a secret from the Night Watch humans, Cal. It’s not going to be pleasant for them, the next few months. But we need all the soldiers we can get. Fast.”

“So you’re spreading the disease on purpose?” I asked, but Sarah’s eyes had left mine, looking over my right shoulder, a pleasant smile filling her

face.

A hand fell on me. “Uh, hey, Cal. Sorry I’m late.”

I looked up. Lace was staring down at Sarah, a little unsure.

“Oh, hi.” I cleared my throat, realizing I’d waited too long; the inevitable collision had happened. “This is Sarah. My ex.”

“And you must be Lacey.” Sarah extended her hand. “Uh, yeah. Lace, actually.” They shook.

“Hot stuff, coming through!” said Rebecky, sliding a plate of pepper steak in front of me. Lace sat down next to me, wary of the woman across from her. Rebecky’s gaze moved among us, intrigued by the obvious discomfort of it all.

“Coffee, honey?” she asked Lace. “Yeah, please.”

“Me too,” I said.

“Me three,” Sarah added. “And another hamburger.”

“And one of those.” Lace pointed at my pepper steak. “I’m starving.” “Pepper steak?” I said. “Oh, crap.”

“Hey, it’s not against the law, dude,” Lace muttered as Rebecky walked away.

“What isn’t against the law?” Sarah asked, licking her fingers. “Eating meat,” Lace said. “Sometimes people change, you know?” Sarah smiled. “Oh. Used to be a vegetarian, did you?”

I started in ravenously on my own pepper steak. Otherwise, I was going to faint. “She was. Until recently.”

Sarah looked from Lace to me, then giggled. “You’ve been very naughty, haven’t you, Cal?”

“It was Cornelius.”

“Could someone please tell me what’s going on?” Lace asked. Sarah sighed. “Well, Lacey, things are about to get complicated.”

Lace raised her hands. “Don’t look at me, girl. I never even kissed this guy. In fact, I’m really pissed at him right now.”

“Oh, poor Cal!” Sarah said. Then she added in a cruel baby voice, “Did kitty beat you to it?”

“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Lace said.

I dropped my fork to the table. Things were spinning out of control, and I had to do something to unspin them. Most important, I had to get Lace out of here, or she would wind up in Montana.

Sweeping Sarah’s bottle of pills into my pocket, I pushed Lace out of the booth and dragged her toward the door.

“What the hell!” she shouted.

“Cal,” Sarah called. “Wait a second!”

“We have to leave,” I hissed to Lace. “She’s one of them.”

“What, an old girlfriend? I could tell that.” Lace paused, looking back at Sarah. “Oh, you mean …?”

“Yes!”

“Whoa, dude.”

As we reached the door, I glanced back. Sarah wasn’t following us, just watching our retreat with an amused expression. She pulled out a cell phone but paused to wave it at me: shoo. For some reason—old loyalty? lingering insanity? — she was giving us time to get away.

The street in front of us was thronged with pedestrians, but I didn’t smell any predators among the crowd—just lots of humans crammed together, ready for infection and slaughter. I kept us moving, tugging Lace along in one random direction after another.

“Where are we going, Cal?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But we have to get out of here. They know about you.”

“Know what about me? That you told me all your Night Watch stuff?”

I didn’t answer for a moment, trying to think, but Lace pulled me to a stop. “Cal? Tell me the truth, or I’ll have to kill you.”

I glanced behind her—still no signs of pursuit. “They sent Sarah to find me.”

“And you told her about me?”

“No! You did. When you ordered that pepper steak!” I tried to get Lace moving again, but she pulled me to a stop.

“What the hell? What’s pepper steak got to do with this?”

“You’re starving, right? Feeling faint? And you’ve been craving meat all day…”

She didn’t answer, just stood there with eyes narrowed, my words finally sinking in. “Um, earth to Cal: You and I didn’t sleep together.”

“Believe me, I know. But you see, there’s this new strain… I mean, turns out it’s an old strain, and it has to do with cats. They’re the vectors we have to worry about now.”

Unsurprisingly, this explanation didn’t alter Lace’s perplexed expression. She just stood there staring back at me. A few passersby bumped into her, but the contact didn’t register. Finally, after ten long seconds, she spoke slowly and clearly. “Are you saying that your fat-ass cat has turned me into a vampire?”

“Um, maybe?” I coughed. “But I can test you, and we’ll know for sure.” “Dude, you are so dead.”

“Fine, but wait until we find someplace to test you.” “Someplace like where?”

“Someplace dark.”

Finding pitch blackness in Manhattan isn’t easy at noon. In fact, finding

pitch blackness in Manhattan isn’t easy anytime.

I considered going to Lace’s apartment, but if the Watch was looking for us, they were as likely to start there as anywhere. I also thought about renting a hotel room and yanking the curtains closed, but if Lace was infected, there was no point throwing away money. We might be on the run for a while.

The pills were still clutched in my hand; even if Lace was infected, we could control the parasite. I could analyze the garlic-and-mandrake compound and keep her human. We could escape whatever the old carriers had planned for the end of civilization.

“What about a movie theater?” Lace asked.

“Not dark enough.” The light from exit signs always drives me crazy during movies. “We need cave darkness, Lace.”

“Cave darkness? Not a lot of caves in Manhattan, Cal.”

“You’d be surprised.” My nerves twitched as a trembling came through the soles of my boots. We were standing on the sidewalk grates over Union Square station. I pulled her toward an entrance.

I swiped us through a turnstile and tugged Lace down the stairs and to the very end of the platform, pointing into the darkness ahead. “That way.”

“On the tracks? Are you kidding?”

“There’s an old abandoned station at Eighteenth. I’ve been there before.

Plenty dark.”

She leaned over the tracks; a small and scampering thing darted among discarded coffee cups.

“The rats won’t bite you,” I said. “Promise.” “Forget it.”

“Lace, we subway-hacked all the time in Peep Hunting 101.”

She pulled away, glanced at the couple on the platform watching us, and hissed, “Yeah, well, I didn’t sign up for that class.”

“No, you didn’t. You didn’t sign up for any of this. But we have to know if you’re infected.”

Lace stared at me, her eyes gleaming darkly, like wet ink. “What happens if I am a vampire? Do you, like, vanquish me or something?”

“You’re not a vampire, Lace, just sick, maybe. And this strain is easy to control. Look.” I pulled the pills from my pocket and rattled them. “We’ll get out of the city. Otherwise, they’ll put you into treatment. In Montana.”

“Montana?”

I nodded, pointing down the dark tunnel. “The choice is yours.”

The 6 train rattled into view, and we waited as the platform cleared. I tugged Lace into the security camera blind spot, just next to the access ladder down to the tracks.

She looked down the tunnel. “And you can cure me?” “Not cure. Control the parasite. Make you like me.”

“What, all superstrong and stuff?”

“Yeah. It’ll be great!” After the cannibal stage was over. “But the disease will kill me eventually, right?”

I shrugged. “Yeah. After a few hundred years.” Lace blinked. “Dude. Major consolation prize.” We ran down the middle of the tracks.

“Don’t touch that,” I said, pointing down at the wood-covered rail running between our track and the next one over. “Unless you want to get fried.”

“The famous third rail?” Lace said. “No problem. I’m a lot more worried about trains.”

“The local just passed. We’ve got a few minutes.” “A few!”

“The abandoned station’s only four blocks away, Lace. I’ll know if the rails start rumbling. Supersenses and everything.” I pointed between the columns that held up the streets over our heads, the safe spots. “And if a train does come, just stand there.”

“Oh, yeah, that looks totally safe.”

We charged down the tunnel, and I tried not to notice that Lace wasn’t stumbling over the tracks and rubbish, as if the darkness didn’t bother her. But it wasn’t cave dark yet. Work lights dangled around us, casting our manic and fractured shadows against the tracks.

The express train swerved into view ahead, taking the slow curve with one long screaming complaint. The cold white eyes of its headlights flickered through the steel columns like the light of an old movie projector. In the strobing light, I saw that Lace had come to a halt. The train was on the express track; it wouldn’t hit us, but the approaching shriek of metal wheels had paralyzed her.

The wall of metal flew past, whipping Lace’s hair around her face and throwing sparks at our feet. Light from the passing windows flickered madly around us, and a few passengers’ faces shot by, looking down with astonished expressions. I put my arm around Lace, the rhythm of the train’s passage shuddering through our bodies. Its roar battered the air, loud enough to force my eyelids shut.

When the sound had faded into the distance, I asked, “Are you okay?” She blinked. “Dude, that was loud!”

Lace’s voice sounded thin in my ringing ears. “No kidding. Come on, before another train comes.”

She nodded dumbly, and I pulled her the rest of the way to the abandoned station.

The Eighteenth Street station opened up in 1904, the same time as the rest of the 6; part of that turn-of-the-century dig-fest, I suppose.

Back then, all subway trains were five cars long. In the 1940s, with the

city’s population booming, they were doubled up to ten, which left the old subway platforms a couple hundred feet too short. During the station- stretching project, a few in-between stations like Eighteenth were deemed not worth the trouble and shut down.

The Transit Authority may have forgotten these underground vaults, but they are remembered by a host of urban adventurers, graffiti artists, and other assorted spelunkers. For the next sixty years, the abandoned stations were spray-painted, vandalized, and made the subject of drunken dares, urban myths, and fannish Web sites. They are tourist stops for amateur subterraneans, training grounds for the Night Watch—the twilight zone between the human habitat and the Underworld.

I pulled Lace up onto the dark and empty platform. Six decades of graffiti swirled around us, the once-bright spray paint darkened by accumulated grime. Crumbling mosaic signs spelled out the street number and pointed toward exits that had been sealed for decades. As Lace steadied herself at the platform’s edge, she looked around with wide eyes, and my heart sank. It was awfully close to cave darkness here; a normal person should have been waving a hand in front of her face.

“So what now?” she said.

“This way.” Deciding to give her a real test, I led her to the door of the men’s bathroom, a relic of sixty years ago. The broken remains of a sink clung to one wall, and the broken wooden doors of the stalls leaned at haphazard angles. The last smells of disinfectant had faded; all that remained was warmish subway air filled with the scent of rats and mold and decay. Distant work lights reflected dimly from the grimy tiles. Even with my fully formed peep vision, I could hardly see.

I pointed into the last stall. “Can you read that?”

She peered unerringly at the one legible line among the tangled layers of graffiti. For a moment, she was silent, then said softly, “This is how it all started. Reading something written on a wall.”

“Can you see it?”

“It says, Take a shit, Linus.’ ”

I closed my eyes. Lace was infected. The parasite must have been working overtime, gathering reflective cells behind her corneas, readying her for a life of nocturnal hunting, of hiding from the sun.

“Who’s Linus?” Lace asked.

“Who knows? That’s been there for a while.”

“Oh. So what happens now?” she said. “I mean, Cal, did you bring me down here to … get rid of me or something?”

“Get rid—? Of course not!” I pulled the pills from my pocket. “Here, take two of these, right now.”

She shook out two and swallowed them, the pills catching for a moment

in her dry throat. She coughed once, then said, “Is it really that dark down here? This isn’t some trick you’re pulling? I can really see in the dark?”

“Yeah, a normal person would be totally blind.” “And I got this from your cat?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“You know, Cal, it’s not like I had sex with your cat either.”

“But he sat on your chest while you slept and … exchanged breath with you, or something. Apparently that’s the way the old strain spreads, but nobody ever told me about it. Things are really screwed up right now at the Watch. In fact, things are about to go nuts in general.” I turned her to face me. “We’ll have to get out of the city. There’s going to be a lot of trouble as the infections set in.”

“Like you said when you first told me about the Watch? Everyone biting one another, a total zombie movie? So why not give everyone the pills?”

I chewed my lip. “Because they want the disease to spread, for some reason. But maybe they’ll eventually use the pills, and things will settle down, but until then…”

She looked at the bottle, squinting at its label. “And these really work?” “You saw Sarah—she’s normal now. When I captured her, she was eating

rats and hiding from the sun and living in Hoboken.”

“Oh, great, dude,” Lace said. “So that’s what I have to look forward to?” “I hope not,” I said softly, reaching for her hand. She didn’t pull away.

“Sarah didn’t have any pills at first. Maybe you’ll just go straight to the superpowers. I mean, you’ll be really strong and have great hearing, and a great sense of smell, too.”

“But Cal, what about the Garth Brooks thing?” “Garth Brooks? Oh, the anathema.”

“It makes you start hating your old life, right?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “But Sarah’s over that too. She was even wearing an Elvis armband.”

“Elvis? What is it with your girlfriends?” Lace sighed. “But the anathema won’t happen to me?”

I paused, realizing I didn’t know anything for sure. None of my classes had covered the cat-borne strain or the ancient garlic-and-mandrake cure—it had all been kept secret from me. I didn’t know what symptoms to look for, or how to adjust the dosage if Lace started to grow long black fingernails or fear her own reflection.

I cleared my throat. “Well, we’ll have to watch for symptoms. Is there anything in particular you really like? Potato salad?” I wracked my brain, realizing how little I knew about Lace. “Hip-hop? Heavy metal? Oh, yeah, the smell of bacon. Anything else I should worry about if you start despising it?”

She sighed. “I thought we covered this already.”

“What? Potato salad?”

“No, stupid.” And then she kissed me.

Her mouth was warm against mine, her heart still beating hard from our dash through the darkness, from the creepiness of the abandoned station, from the news that she would soon turn into a vampire. Or maybe just from kissing me—I could feel it pounding in her lips, full of blood. My own heartbeat seemed to rush into my head, strong enough to pulse red at the corners of my vision.

A predator’s kiss: endless, insistent, and my first in six long months.

When we finally parted, Lace whispered, “You feel like you’ve got a fever.”

Still dizzy, I smiled. “All the time. Supermetabolism.” “And you’ve got supersmell too?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Dude.” She sniffed the air and frowned. “So what do I smell like?”

I inhaled softly, letting Lace’s scent claim me, the familiar jasmine of her shampoo somehow settling the chaos of the past twenty-four hours. We could kiss again, I realized, do anything we wanted. It was safe now, even with the parasite’s spores in my blood and saliva, because she was infected, just like me.

“Butterflies,” I said after a moment of thought. “Butterflies?”

“Yeah. You use some kind of jasmine-scented shampoo, right? Smells like butterflies.”

“Wait a second. Butterflies have a smell? And it’s jasmine?”

My body was still humming from the kiss, my mind still reeling from all the revelations of the day, and there was something comforting about being asked a question I knew the answer to. I let the wonders of biology flow forth. “It’s the other way around. Flowers imitate insects—patterning their petals after wings, stealing their smells. Jasmine tricks butterflies into landing on it, so they carry pollen from one flower to another. That’s how jasmine flowers have sex with each other.”

“Dude. Jasmine has sex? Using butterflies?” “Yeah. How about that?”

“Huh.” She was silent for a moment, still holding me, thinking about all those flowers having butterfly-mediated sex. Finally, she said, “So when butterflies land on my hair, do they think they’re having jasmine-sex with it?” “Probably.” I leaned closer, burying my nose in her smell. Maybe the natural world wasn’t so jaw-droppingly horrible—appalling, nasty, vile.

Sometimes nature could be quite sweet, really, as delicate as a confused and horny butterfly.

The subway platform trembled under us again, another train coming.

Eventually, we’d have to return to the surface, to face the sunlight and the coming crumbling of civilization, to ride out whatever tumult the old carriers had planned now that the old strain was surging into daylight. But for the moment I was content to stand there, the thought of an apocalyptic future suddenly less panicking. I had something that I’d thought lost forever, another person warm in my arms. Whatever happened next seemed bearable.

“Will the disease make me hate you, Cal?” she asked again. “Even if I take the pills?”

I started to say I wasn’t sure, but in that moment the rumbling underfoot shifted, no longer building steadily. Then it shifted again, like something winding toward us, and among the false butterflies of Lace’s hair I caught another scent, ancient and dire.

“Cal?”

“Wait a second,” I said, and took a deeper breath.

The foul smell redoubled, sweeping over us like air pushed up through subway grates by a passing train. And I knew something as thoroughly as my ancestors had known the scents of lions and tigers and bears…

A bad thing was on its way.

 

Chapter 22 SNAKES ON A STICK

The next time you go to the doctor, check out the plaques on the wall. One of them, usually the biggest, will be decorated with an intriguing symbol: two snakes climbing up a winged staff.

Ask your doctor what this symbol means, and you’ll probably get this line: The staff is called the caduceus. It’s the sign of Hermes, god of alchemists, and the symbol of the American Medical Association.

But that is only half the truth.

Meet the guinea worm. It hangs around in ponds, too small to see with the naked eye. If you drink guinea-worm-infected water, one of these beasties may find its way into your stomach. From there, it will make its way to one of your legs, working chemical magic to hide from your immune system. It will grow much bigger, as long as two feet.

And it will have babies.

Adult guinea worms may be invisible to your immune system, but their kids have a different strategy—they set off every alarm they can.

Why? Well, overexcited immune defenses are tricky, painful, dangerous things. With all those baby guinea worms raising a ruckus, your infected leg becomes inflamed. Huge blisters appear, which makes you run screaming to the nearest pond to cool them down.

Very clever. The young guinea worms smell the water and pop out of the blisters. Then they settle down to begin their wait for the next unwary drinker of pond water.

Ew, yuck, repeat.

Guinea worms have been pulling this trick for a long time. In fact, it was thousands of years ago that ancient healers found out how to cure them. The procedure is simple, in theory. Just pull the adult worms out of the victim’s leg. But there’s a trick: If you pull too quickly, the worm breaks in half, and the part left inside rots away, causing a terrible infection. The patient usually dies.

Here’s how the doctors of the ancient world did it:

Carefully draw one end of the worm out, and wrap it around a stick. Then, over the next seven days or so, wind the guinea worm outward, like reeling in a fish in very slow motion. That’s right: It takes seven days. Don’t rush! It won’t be the most enjoyable week you ever spent, but at the end you’ll have your body back in good working order. And you’ll also have a stick with a

wormy thing wrapped around it.

And this icky leftover will become the symbol of medicine. Ew.

But maybe it’s not such a weird symbol. Historians figure that guinea- worm removal was the first-ever form of surgery. Back then, it was probably a pretty amazing feat, pulling a snake out of a human body. Maybe the doctors hung the snake-wrapped stick on their walls afterward, just to show that they could get the job done.

So the next time you’re at the doctor’s office, be on the lookout for this heartwarming symbol of the ancient healing arts. (And don’t believe all that crap about the great god Hermes; it’s all about the guinea worms.)

 

Chapter 23 WORM

“Stay here,” I said. “What’s up?”

“I smell something.”

Lace frowned. “Dude. It’s not me, is it?”

“No! Hush.” I squatted, pressing my palms flat against the trembling platform. The shudder in the graffitied concrete built, then gradually faded again, tacking toward us, back and forth through the warrens of the Underworld. The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up, sensing a low and shuddering note hanging in the air, the same vast moan I’d heard below the exhaust towers.

“Cal? What the hell?”

“I think something’s coming.” “Something? Not a train?”

“I don’t know what it is, except that it’s part of all this craziness. And it’s old and big, and … getting closer.”

A crumbling exit sign pointed up a set of stairs, but I knew from Hunting 101 that it had been long since paved over. We would have to run back to Union Square along the tracks.

But first I needed a weapon.

I brushed past Lace and through the bathroom stall, kicking away the last pieces of wood clinging to one corner of its metal frame. I wrenched the seven feet of rust-caked iron from the crumbling cement and weighed it in my hands. Brutal and straightforward.

“What about me?” Lace said from the doorway. “What about you?”

“Don’t I get a club-thingy?”

“Lace, you couldn’t even pick this up. You don’t have superpowers yet.” She scowled at me and lifted a fragment of rusty iron from the floor.

“Well, whatever’s coming, it’s not catching me empty-handed. It smells like death.”

“You can smell it? Already?”

“Duh.” She sniffed and made a face. “Dead rat on steroids.”

I blinked. Lace was changing faster than any peep I’d ever seen, as if the new strain was mutating at some hyped-up pace, changing as it moved from host to host. Or maybe the beastie simply smelled bad. The stench was

overpowering now, sending signals of alarm and fury coursing through my body. Though my mind screamed run, my muscles were itching for a fight.

And somehow, I was certain they were going to get one. My instincts sang to me that the creature knew we were here; it was hunting us.

“Let’s go,” I said.

We jumped from the platform, landing with a crunch on the gravel bed. As we dashed headlong up the tracks, the lights of the next station glimmered along the curved rails, seeming to pull away from us as we ran. It was only four blocks; and I told myself we were going to make it.

Then I saw—through one of the bolt holes that workers jump into if they get caught by an approaching train—a blackness deeper than the subway tunnel’s gloom. A hole in the earth. A few yards closer, a cold draft hit us, goose-pimpling my flesh and carrying another wave of the beast’s smell.

“It’s coming,” Lace said, nose in the air. She had come to a halt, holding her foot-long piece of iron high, as if she were going to stake a vampire. But this was bigger than any peep, and I was fairly sure that it didn’t have a heart.

“Stay behind me,” I said. I pointed toward the opening. “It’ll come out of there.”

Her eyes peered into the blacker-than-black space for a moment. “So what is this thing again?”

“Like I said, I don’t…” My voice trailed off, an answer dawning on me. Not so much words or images, but a feeling—a generations-forgotten dread, an enemy long buried, a warning never to lose the old knowledge, because the sun can’t always protect us from what lives in the lower depths. I felt again the shuddering revelation from my first biology courses, that the natural world is less concerned with our survival than we ever admit. As individuals, even as a species—we are here on borrowed time, and death is as cold and dark and permanent as the deepest fissures in the stones we walk on.

“What is it, Cal?” Lace asked again.

“It’s the reason we’re here.” I swallowed. The words came from my mouth unbidden. “Why peeps are here.”

She nodded gravely. “Is that why I want to kill it so much?”

I might have answered her, but I didn’t get a chance, because the thing finally showed its face—if you could call it that. The white-pale, squirming shape emerged into the tunnel without eyes or nose, or discernable top or bottom, just a mouth—a ring of spikes set in a glistening hole, like the maw of some mutant and predatory earthworm, adapted to chew through rock as easily as flesh.

Segments ran down its length, like a rat’s tail, and I wondered for a moment if this was just a part of a much greater monster. This white, gelatinous mass emerging from the tunnel might have been its head, or a clawed tentacle, or a bulbous and spiny tongue; I couldn’t tell. All I knew was

what the parasite inside me wanted: My constant hunger had turned suddenly to boundless energy--attack, the parasite demanded.

In a blind fury, I ran toward the beast, the rusty iron in my hands hissing through the air like ancient hatred.

The eyeless beast sensed me coming, its body flinching away, and the tip of my swinging iron barely scraped its flesh, tearing a stringy tendril from its side, which unraveled like a thread pulled from a garment. The tendril flailed angrily, but no blood gushed—all that flowed from the wound was another wave of the beast’s smell.

While I teetered off balance, it struck back, the mouth shooting toward me on a column of pale flesh. I stumbled backward, and the teeth reached their limit a few short inches from my leg, gnashing wetly at the air before snapping back into the beast.

I swung again, striking home in the monster’s flank and squishing to a halt as if I’d hit a wall of jelly, the impact ringing dully in my hands. The huge pale body wrapped itself around the staff, like a human doubling over from a blow to the stomach.

I tried to pull away, but the iron was firmly stuck, and the toothed maw shot out toward me again. The extended mouth slashed past my legs, one stray tooth catching and ripping my jeans. I jumped straight into the air, stomping down on the appendage with one cowboy boot. My weight forced it to the ground, but its slick hide slipped out from under my foot, toppling me backward onto the tracks. The whole beast uncurled over me, rolling more of itself out from the tunnel to crush me.

Then Lace flashed into view, her iron stake slashing through the air and straight into the ring of teeth. At this contact the creature let out an earsplitting screech. The noise was metallic and grinding, like a sack of nails dumped into a wood-chipper. The beast twisted back, crashing against the subway wall, its bulk dislodging a shower of grit.

Lace pulled me to my feet as I yanked the iron staff free, both of us stumbling backward, certain we’d hurt the thing. But the grinding turned to a violent hissing, and a spray of metal shards shot out from its maw, battering us. The creature’s ring of teeth had rendered the iron into shrapnel, which it spat out like a rain of rusty coins. We fell to our knees, and I saw it rearing up again, a new set of teeth jumping out from its hide.

I raised up the iron staff and felt Lace’s hands join mine on the weapon. “The rail!” she shouted in my ear, tugging at the iron. I didn’t have breath

to answer, but I understood, and let her slide the butt of the weapon toward the edge of the track as the monstrous mass descended, impaling itself. Lace jumped away from the pole; I knew I should let go, but the murderous imperative that had filled me from the moment I’d smelled the creature kept my hands on the weapon, guiding it backward until it lodged firmly against

the third rail.

A shower of sparks cascaded from the point of contact, the mad buzz of electrocution sweeping across my body, every muscle locked fast by the wild energies moving through me—enough juice to power a subway train. And yet, despite the pain, all I felt was the satisfaction that the worm, my age-old enemy, was feeling it too, glowing from inside, spiderwebs of red veins pulsing inside its glistening skin.

That pleasure lasted half a second; then Lace was pulling me away by my jacket, breaking my mortal grip on the iron staff. More sparks flew, but the beast didn’t make a sound; it just flailed randomly, like some giant, exposed muscle struck with a doctor’s hammer again and again. Finally, it pulled itself free, retreating back into its tunnel, leaving behind a burned scent of injury and defeat.

But it wasn’t fatally wounded, I somehow knew; it was tougher than that.

I swore and fell back on the tracks, shivering.

Lace wrapped her arms around me. “Are you okay? You smell … totally toasted.” She opened my palms, which were black with charred flesh. “Jesus, Cal. You were supposed to let go.”

“Had to kill it!” I managed through electrocution-lockjaw.

“Chill, dude. It’s gone.” She peered up the tunnel. “And there’s a local coming.”

That focused my mind, and we scrambled into the mouth of the thing’s tunnel, pulling out of sight just as the headlights flared around the corner. The train roared past as we cowered together.

“So this is what you feel?” she yelled over the noise. “When you fight those things?”

“Never saw one before,” I said.

“Really? But it felt…” She was breathing deep, her brown eyes wide and gleaming. “It felt like something we were supposed to do. Like that strength you were talking about, when mothers save their kids.”

I nodded. It seemed too soon for Lace, but I couldn’t deny how well she’d fought. The worm and the parasite were connected; maybe seeing the beast had accelerated her change.

Since my first sight of the creature, the puzzles of the last few days had begun to solve themselves in the back of my brain. This invasion, these ancient creatures rising up through the century-old cracks in the city’s sinews

—halting it was what the old, cat-vector strain was for. This was why peeps had been created.

There were more of those things down here, I could tell—a plague of worms that humanity had faced before. Lace and Sarah and Morgan and I were only the vanguard; we needed lots of help.

Now I understood what Morgan was doing, spreading the old strain of the

parasite, massing a new army to face the coming days. And suddenly I could feel a similar imperative surging through my own body—every bit as strong as the six hundred and twenty-five volts from the third rail—something I had suppressed for six long months.

I took Lace’s hand. “Are you feeling what I’m feeling? A sort of post- battle…”

“Horniness?” she finished. “Yeah. Weird, isn’t it?”

“Maybe not.” Our lips met again, a kiss as intense as the passing train’s thunder in our ears.

 

Chapter 24 PARASITES R US

Let us recap:

Parasites are bad.

They suck your blood out of the lining of your stomach. They grow into two-foot-long snakes and roost in the skin of your leg. They infect your cat and then jump up your nose to live in cysts inside your brain, turning you feline-centric and irresponsible. They take over your blood cells in hopes of infecting passing mosquitoes, leaving your liver and brain crumbling from lack of oxygen. They incense your immune system, causing it to destroy your eyeballs. They take terrible advantage of snails and birds and ants and monkeys and cows, stealing their bodies and their food and their evolutionary futures. They almost starved twenty million people in Africa to death.

Basically, they want to rule the world and will crumple whole species like balls of paper and then reshape them in order to carry out their plans. They turn us into walking undead, ravaged hosts that serve only their reproduction.

That’s bad. But… Parasites are also good.

They have bred howler monkeys to live in peace with one another. Their lousy genes help track the history of the human species. They prevent cows from overgrazing grasslands into windblown deserts. They tame your immune system so it doesn’t destroy your own stomach lining. Then they go and save those twenty million people in Africa, by laying their eggs in those other parasites, the ones trying to starve them.

Which is all quite good, really.

So parasites are bad and good. We depend on them, like all the other checks and balances of the natural world; predators and prey, vegetarians and carnivores, parasites and hosts all need one another to survive.

Here’s the thing: They’re part of the system. Like government bureaucracies with all those forms that have to be filled out in triplicate, they may be a pain, but we’re stuck with them. If every parasite suddenly disappeared from the earth one day, it would be a much bigger disaster than you’d think. The natural order would crumble.

In short, parasites are here to stay, which is a good thing, really. We are what we eat, and we consume them every day, the worms lodged in slices of rare beef or the toxoplasma spores floating up our noses from boxes of cat litter. And they eat us every day too, from ticks sucking our blood to

microscopic invaders reshaping our cells. The exchange goes on unendingly, as certain as the earth traveling around the sun.

In a manner of speaking, parasites are us. Deal with it.

 

Chapter 25 MORGAN’S ARMY

When we pulled ourselves back up onto the subway platform, everyone gave us a wide berth.

You could hardly blame them. We were covered in dust and sweat, our palms reddened with rust, our expressions crazed. And the funny thing was, we were all over each other. Fighting the worm had redoubled my usual implacable desires, and somehow Lace was affected too. We kept stopping just to smell each other, to hold hands tightly, to taste each other’s lips.

“This is weird,” she said. “Yeah. But good.”

“Mmm. Let’s go somewhere a little more private.” I nodded. “Where?”

“Anywhere.”

We ran up the stairs and into Union Square, crossing the park, walking without a plan. The city seemed weirdly blurry around us. My connection with Lace was so intense, everyone else seemed faded and remote. The parasite’s imperative mixed with six months of celibacy screaming inside me, heady and insistent.

I thought about risking her apartment—after all, she’d have to pick up some clothes some time—and started to draw Lace toward the Hudson. But then my eyes began to catch glimpses of them. Their smells grew under the current of humanity in the streets.

Predators.

They were spread out across the crowd, walking not much faster than normal humans, but somehow completely different. They moved like leopards through high grass, leaving only the faintest stir behind them. Maybe a dozen, all more or less my age.

No one else seemed to notice them, but their uncanny movements made my head pound. I’d never seen so many carriers in one place before. Night Watch hunters always work alone, but this was a pack.

And the funny thing was, they were really sexy. “Cal…?” Lace said softly.

“Yeah. I see them.” “What are they?”

“They’re like us. Infected.” “The Night Watch?”

“No. Something else.”

By the time I spotted Morgan Ryder, she was already standing in front of us, blocking our path, wearing all black and an amused expression.

“What do we do?” Lace asked, squeezing my hand hard. I sighed, bringing her to a halt.

“I guess we talk to them.” “How did you find us?”

Morgan smiled, taking a drink of water before she answered. She’d taken us to a hotel bar on Union Square. The others had kept moving, except for one waiting at the door of the place and cradling a cell phone. Occasionally, he glanced back at her and signaled.

Even with Lace beside me, I was having trouble not staring at Morgan. Memories of the night I’d been infected were rushing back into me. Her eyes were green, I finally recalled. And her black hair set such a contrast, gathered in locks as thick as shoelaces against her pale skin.

“We didn’t find you,” she said. “That is, we weren’t looking for you. We were after something else. Something underneath.”

“The worm,” Lace said.

Morgan nodded. “You smelled it?”

“We saw it,” Lace said. “Took a big chunk out of it too.” “It was in the old Eighteenth Street station,” I said.

Morgan nodded and made a hand gesture to the carrier in front, and he spoke into his cell phone.

Our beers arrived, and Morgan raised hers into the air. “Well done, then.” “What’s going on?” I said.

“What? Are you finally going to listen to me, Cal? Not going to run away?”

“I’m listening. And we already know about the old strain and the new, and that we’re meant to fight the worms. But what you’re doing is crazy— infecting people at random is no way to go about this.”

“It’s not as random as you think, Cal.” She leaned back into the plush couch. “Immune systems are tricky things. They can do a lot of damage.”

I nodded, thinking about wolbachia driving T- and B-cells crazy, your immune defenses eating your own eyeballs.

But Lace hadn’t benefited from six months of parasitology. “How do you mean?”

Morgan held the cold beer against her cheek. “Let’s say you’ve got a deadly fever—your body temperature is climbing past the limit, high enough to damage your brain. That’s your immune system hoping that your illness will fry before you do. Killing the invader is worth losing a few brain cells.”

Lace blinked. “Dude. What does that have to do with monsters?”

“We’re our species’ immune system, Lace. Humanity needs a lot of us,

and soon. The worms are a lot worse than a few more peeps, and chaos is a fair trade for our protection. It’s like losing those brain cells when you get a fever.” Morgan turned to me. “And it’s hardly random, Cal. It’s quite elegant, really. As the worms push closer to the surface, they create panic in the Underworld broods; a nervous reaction spreads through the rat reservoirs that carry the old strain. The rats come up through the sewers and PATH tunnels and swimming pool drains. Then a few lucky people, like me, get bitten and we begin to spread the strain. It’s happening all over the world, right now.”

“So where’s the Night Watch in all this? I mean, who elected you the carrier queen? Or whatever?”

“I’m in charge because my family knew what to do, once they saw what I had become. Once I felt the basement calling me, drawing me down.” Her eyelids half closed, fluttering, and she took a slow, deep breath. “I knew the whole planet was in trouble… I was so horny.”

Lace and I exchanged a glance.

“As for the Night Watch”—Morgan rolled her eyes—“they were never more than a temporary measure. I mean, come on, Cal. If you were really fighting to save the world from vampires, you wouldn’t keep it a secret, would you?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Lace spread her hands. “You don’t hide diseases, you publicize them. And eventually someone comes up with a cure.” Morgan nodded. “Which is exactly what the old carriers were afraid of

--science. A cure for the parasite would erase both peeps and carriers. Meaning that the next time the worms rose up from the Underworld, humanity wouldn’t have anyone to protect it—like switching off your own immune system.” She laughed and took a long drink of beer. “There’s only one logical reason you’d have a secret government organization hunt vampires—if you wanted the vampires to survive.”

“Oh.” I gripped my beer glass, certainties falling away all around me. I saw the rows of dusty file cabinets, the ancient pneumatic tubes, the stacks of endless forms. Inefficiency perfected. “So I’ve been working for a big joke?”

“Don’t be whiny, Cal. The Watch had its uses. By keeping a lid on the new strain, it allowed that to happen.” Morgan pointed out the window at the crowded streets. “Big old cities are like houses of cards, giant cauldrons of infection waiting to happen. This was always the plan, huge reservoirs of humans, a potential army of carriers to take on the ancient enemy.” Morgan’s eyes were bright as she downed the rest of her beer, her throat working to empty it. “We’re just the beginning.”

She thumped her glass on the table, laughing, proud that she was one chosen to be the harbinger of doom. And I could smell the parasite humming in her, making every man and woman in the room glance in our direction, making their palms sweat. Without knowing it, everyone wanted to join

Morgan’s army.

The whole thing was madness, but amid all the insanity, one thing kept bugging me. “Why was I kept in the dark? I’m an old-strain carrier, after all.”

For a moment, Morgan looked sheepish. “You were … um, an accident.” “A what?”

“A little indiscretion of mine. It’s not easy, you know, being a sexual vector.”

“Tell me about it. But I was an accident?”

She sighed. “We didn’t want the science types at the Night Watch catching on, not until we’d reached critical mass. So we started in a controlled way at first, with our house cats and a few kids from the old families. Except for you, Cal.” Morgan sighed. “I only wanted a drink that night. But your accent is just so cute.”

“So you just infected me?” I closed my eyes, realizing how much this sucked. “God, you mean I lost my virginity to the apocalypse?”

Morgan sighed again. “The whole thing was really embarrassing; my parents sent me to Brooklyn when they found out.” She shrugged. “I thought I’d be safe in a gay bar, okay? What were you doing in there anyway?”

Lace looked at me sidelong. “You were where?”

I took a sip of beer, swallowed it. “I, uh, hadn’t been in the city … very long. I didn’t know.”

“Hmph. Freshmen. Thank God you turned out to be a natural carrier.” Morgan smiled and patted my knee. “So no harm done.”

“Sure, easy for you to say,” I grumbled. “Couldn’t you have at least told me the truth a little sooner?”

“When those geeks at the Night Watch found you before I did, we

couldn’t tell you right away. It just would have confused your pretty head.” “So when were you going to tell me?” I cried.

“Uh, Cal? Did you miss the last two days? I kept trying. But you kept running away.”

“Oh. Right.”

“A freshman?” Lace said, frowning. “How old are you anyway?”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s much more grown up now,” Morgan said, patting my knee again. “Aren’t you, Cal?”

Hoping to move the conversation along, I said, “So what happens now?”

Morgan shrugged. “You two can do whatever you want. Run. Stay. Get laid all over town. But you should probably join up.”

“Join up … with you?”

“Sure. The New Watch could use you.” She waved for the waitress. “And I could use another beer. We’ve been chasing that stupid worm all day.”

I looked at Lace, and she looked back at me. As usual, I didn’t know what to say, but the thought of us fighting together, the exhilaration we’d shared

down in the tunnel, sure beat the idea of running off to Montana. This was our city, after all, our species.

“What do you want to do, Cal?” Lace said softly.

I took a deep breath, wondering if I was saying too much, too soon, but saying it anyway. “I want to stay here, with you.”

She nodded slowly, her eyes locked with mine. “Me too.” “God, you two,” Morgan said. “Just get a room.”

I realized that this was in fact a hotel bar, and that Brooklyn or the West Side seemed much too far away right now. I raised an eyebrow.

Lace smiled. “Dude. Why not?”

 

EPILOGUE INFLAMMATION

The orange was fading from the sky, but through my binoculars, the waters of the Hudson sparkled like teeth capped with gold, the river’s choppy surface holding the last dregs of the pollution sunset, which was turning bloodred as it disappeared behind the spiked jaw of New Jersey’s skyline.

A warm, insistent body pushed against my ankles, making noises under its breath. I looked down. “What’s the matter, Corny? I thought you liked it up here.”

He looked up with hungry eyes, assuring me that his annoyance had nothing to do with a fear of heights. Just impatience: It was taking the promised nummies too long to arrive.

At first, bringing Cornelius up to the roof had made me nervous, but Dr. Rat says that peep cats have an improved sense of self-preservation. She also talks a lot about feline high-rise syndrome, the magical ability of cats to survive a fall from any height. In fact, with all the time Dr. Rat spends talking about cats these days, she may need a new nickname.

“Don’t worry, Corny. She’ll be back soon.”

On cue, I heard the scrape of cowboy boots on concrete. A hand reached over the edge of the roof, then another, and Lace pulled herself into view, her face faintly red from the effort.

I frowned. “Don’t you think it’s a little light out to be climbing buildings?”

“You should talk, dude!” Lace said. “At least I wasn’t on the street side.” “Like there aren’t a million people on the piers?”

She snorted. “They’re all watching the sunset.”

Cornelius yowled, sensing that our argument was delaying nummies. “Yes, Corny, I love you too,” Lace muttered, slipping off her backpack

and unzipping it. She pulled out a paper bag, which gave off the mouthwatering scent of rare hamburgers.

Cornelius began to purr as Lace opened one of the foil-wrapped burgers for him, laying to one side the pointless bun and wilted leaf of lettuce. He liked the mayo, though, and licked it off her fingers as she placed the hamburger on the black-tar roof. Then he dug noisily into the main event.

Lace looked at her cat-spittled fingers. “Great. Now I’m supposed to eat with these?”

I laughed, pulling my burger from the bag. “Relax. Corny doesn’t have

any diseases. Nothing you haven’t already got anyway.”

“Tell me about it,” she said, glancing over the roof’s edge. “What’s Dr.

Rat always saying? About how cats can fall from any distance?”

“Hey!” I knelt and protectively stroked his flank. He munched away, paying no attention to her threats.

“You’re right anyway,” Lace said. “A fat-ass cat like him would probably leave a crack in the sidewalk, big enough for monsters to get through. Manny wouldn’t like that.”

Manny did like Corny, though. Pets weren’t officially allowed in Lace’s building, but he and the staff had started to make exceptions. With so many people complaining about rat noises in their walls, we’d been lending Cornelius out overnight. A lot of Lace’s fellow tenants took us up on the offer, after we’d explained how once a cat gets its dander inside your apartment, rodents will give you a wide berth. You just had to get used to waking up with him sitting on your chest.

This building was on the front line, after all; Lace and I had made it something of a personal project.

Plus, Lace still had that apartment with the cheap rent and the good views. Once Health and Mental had fired off a few nasty memos to her landlords about the rat issue, they’d extended those seventh-floor leases indefinitely. These particular landlords had plenty of money already, having been New York City landowners for almost four hundred years.

Of course, we know that staying in town won’t be a cakewalk. New York City can be very stressful. There are rough days ahead, right around the corner. It takes some getting used to, going to Bob’s Diner for pepper steak, innocently chatting with Rebecky while fully aware of what’s coming next— the meltdown, the crumbling of civilization, the zombie apocalypse.

Or, as they call it in the New Watch these days, the Inflammation. When the burgers were eaten, I said, “We should get back to work.”

Lace rolled her eyes, always ready to demonstrate her incredulity that I officially outranked her in the New Watch. But she lifted her binoculars, training them on the red-tinged river. “So what are we looking for again?”

“Worm signs,” I said.

“No duh. But no one ever tells me, what in fact are the signs of a worm?” I shrugged. “Worminess?”

She turned from her vigil long enough to stick her tongue out at me.

I smiled and raised my own binoculars. “You’ll know them when you see them. We always do.”

“Sure. But do they even like water?”

“Another good question. After all, the PATH tunnel doesn’t actually go through the water, just under it.” I swept my amplified gaze across to the exhaust towers, the dynamos of subterranean fresh air that had caused this

whole turn of the worm. Above the windowless column of bricks, shapes circled in the fading light, their white feathers toasted a dull orange by the sunset. This was a new thing, the wheeling cloud of seagulls that perpetually hovered over the towers. No one knew what it meant.

Some new airborne vector? Mere coincidence? Scavengers sensing a coming kill?

I sighed. “Sometimes I don’t think we actually know anything.” “Don’t worry, Cal,” she said. “It’s still early days.”

The whoop of a siren filtered up from the street, and we ran to the other side of the building, peering down into the darkness. The flash of police-car lights filled the cavern between our building and the one across the street, the pop of radios echoing up. Definitely an arrest.

“Got your badge?” I asked. “Always. Best part of the job.”

We sometimes have to intervene, when the police are about to take a confused and violent newbie off to jail. We flash our Homeland Security badges and talk some bio-warfare crap, and everyone backs off real quick. Ten hours later, the peep is in Montana, hooked up to an intravenous garlic drip and getting the lowdown way too fast.

Of course, newbies take a lot less convincing, these days. The signs are everywhere.

I focused my binoculars, training them on the crowd gathered around the police car. The cops were putting handcuffs on some guy, and a woman was yelling at him, shaking her purse by its broken strap. A wallet and some other stuff lay scattered across the sidewalk. A backup police car rolled down the block at a leisurely speed.

I sighed, lowering the binoculars. “Looks like a purse-snatching, just a perp, not a peep.”

One thing you can say for them, peeps don’t steal, except for maybe the occasional chunk of meat. They can’t think far enough ahead to go for the cash. And it’s interesting how, even with the Inflammation going on, regular crime still happens. Maybe more so. End of the world or not, people aren’t going to change that much.

“Yeah,” Lace sighed, lowering her binoculars. “This sucks.” Her teeth chewed at her lower lip.

“Don’t worry,” I reassured her. “We’ll get some action tonight. We always do.”

“Yeah, whatever.” She shook her head. “I’m just bummed.” “Why?”

She let out a long breath. “Side effects.” My eyebrows raised. “From the pills?”

“No, the disease.” Lace turned to me and made a face. “I don’t like potato

salad anymore.”

I had to laugh. “Don’t worry. Carbs just don’t do it for the parasite.” “Sure, but what if it’s … you know, the anathema. What if I’m starting to

hate stuff?”

“Is that what you’re worried about?” I nodded sagely. “Well, maybe we should do a little testing, just to make sure.”

I drew her closer, and we kissed. The chill wind kicked up, and Corny padded over to slide figure eights between our ankles, but our mouths stayed locked, warm and unbreakable. So much was changing around us, it was good how this feeling stayed the same.

She still smelled wonderful.

“Hating me yet?” I asked after a while.

“No. In fact…” She stopped. “Whoa. Did you feel that?”

I knelt and placed a palm on the black tar. The slightest rumble filtered up through the fourteen stories of the building. “Two big ones, fading now.”

“I’ll call them in,” Lace said, pulling out her phone, her thumbs darting out a text message to the tracking office.

I sniffed the air, smelling traces of the beasts. Impressive how the scent reached all the way up here, as if the earth were growing more porous every day.

But all I wanted to do was hold Lace again.

“Funny how that happens,” I said. “How we’re always kissing, or about to, when they come around?”

She pressed send, looked up from the tiny screen, and smiled. “You’ve noticed that too?”

I nodded slowly. “Remember, Morgan said she could feel something here, after she’d been infected. She’d sneak down into the basement and the darkness would turn her on. Drive her crazy.”

“That’s parasite mind control, right? Making carriers horny so the disease spreads fastest where it’s needed most?” Lace smiled, pleased at her own analysis; she was starting to get the biology down.

“Sure, mind control.” I frowned. “But you and I are already both infected.

Why does it care what we do?”

“Maybe it just likes us, dude,” Lace said.

She pulled me close again, and our mouths met. The scent of the worms began to fade, overwhelmed by Lace’s jasmine and the salt of the Hudson. We stayed there on the roof for a while, letting the warmth between us build, moved by nothing more than what our bodies wanted from each other. The monsters had passed for now.

Still, part of me is always waiting for the tremors in the earth to come again.

* * *

And they will, soon.

You may have seen the signs where you live. Garbage piling higher and higher on the streets. Pale rats scurrying along the subway tracks. Strangers in black trying to pick you up in bars. A red flash in the eyes of your cat, or its weight heavy on your chest in the morning.

But that’s nothing. When the epidemic really starts to roll, civilization will crumble, blood will run in the streets, and some of your neighbors may try to eat you. But resist the temptation to buy a shotgun and start blowing their heads off. Just feed them garlic and plenty of sausage, and eventually they’ll calm down. You see, they’re not the real enemy. Compared to the monsters coming next, those ravening cannibals aren’t so bad. In fact, they’re on your side.

The real enemy will be close behind, though, and that shotgun won’t help you one bit. Nothing in the arsenal of science will avail against these creatures. A lot of us will die.

Don’t panic, though. Nature has provided. There has always been a defense against the worms, a disease hidden in the sewers and deep cracks, coursing through the veins of a few old families, waiting for its time to bubble up.

So stock up on some bottled water and a few cans of pasta sauce, maybe the kind with extra garlic. Set aside a few good books and DVDs, and buy a decent lock for your door. Try not to watch TV for a few months—it will only upset you. Don’t take the subway.

And leave the rest to us vampires. We’ve got your back.

THE END

 

AFTERWORD

HOW TO AVOID PARASITES

The parasites described in the even-numbered chapters of this novel are all real. Every terrifying process is going on right now in a meadow, pond, or digestive system near you. Possibly in your own body.

As this book may freak out certain readers with its graphic biological details, I feel compelled to share some of the preventative measures I discovered during my research. Sure, parasites are part of the ecosystem, part of our evolution, blah, blah, blah. But that doesn’t mean you want hookworms in your gut, chewing on your stomach lining and sucking your blood. Right?

So follow these simple rules, and you will be much less likely to be invaded by parasites. No guarantees, though. (Sorry.)

1. Sing “Happy Birthday”

Many microscopic parasites (and other germs) exist in the air and on everyday surfaces. They get on your hands, and when you touch your mouth, eyes, or food, they take the opportunity to slip into your body. So wash your hands often, and when you do:

1. Use warm water.
2. Use soap.
3. Sing “Happy Birthday” at a normal tempo. Do not stop washing until you’re done with the entire song.

And by the way, quit rubbing your eyes so much! (Thanks to Yvette Christianse for this one.)

1. If You Eat Meat, Cook It Good

A major vector of parasites is predation: one animal eating another. That’s because when you eat an animal, you’re exposing yourself to every parasite adapted to living inside that animal, and every parasite adapted to all the things it eats.

Meat-borne parasites include hookworms, tapeworms, blood flukes, and more. There are zillions of them. Your humble author is a vegetarian (for non- parasite-related reasons), but you don’t have to go that far. It doesn’t hurt to eat a few worms every once in a while, as long as they’re thoroughly cooked. So don’t eat rare meat, and memorize this simple rhyme:

If your burger oozes red,

Send it back; them worms ain’t dead.

1. Don’t Swim in Tropical Rivers

The tropics are the warmest places on earth, and warm water is a great

place for parasites to spend time outside a host. Commonly, tropical parasites jump from their host into a river, then swim around looking for the next host to invade. They can enter your body through your skin, mouth, eyes, and other orifices. These parasites include the famous guinea worms, those snaky things that roost in your leg and have to be spooled out like spaghetti on a fork. Ew.

The ocean is fine (it’s salty) and so are swimming pools (chlorinated), but don’t swim in tropical rivers. And if you must swim in tropical rivers, for heaven’s sake don’t pee! Your urine will attract a spiny creature called a candiru, which swims furiously toward any urine it smells, and will lodge in your … Well, where it lodges depends on whether you’re male or female, but either way, you don’t want it lodging there.

Just don’t pee in tropical rivers. Trust me.

1. Don’t Have Unsafe Sex

Parasites and viruses and bacteria that have evolved to live in human beings are often found in … human beings. For this and many other obvious reasons, be careful with your body when you’re getting close to someone else’s.

1. You Have Parasites—So Deal With It

Okay, here’s the thing: No matter how careful you are, eventually you’ll wind up parasitized. Some scientists consider all bacteria and viruses parasites; by this definition, having a simple head cold means that millions of little parasites are living inside you. But don’t freak out about it. It’s all part of the rich tapestry of life, blah, blah, blah.

Tough luck. Nature isn’t just the simple barnyard set you got when you were five years old: pigs, cows, goats, and a dog. It’s also liver flukes, guinea worms, and skin mites. All of nature’s creatures have to eat, and it just so happens that some eat you. But it’s not worth losing sleep over. Humans have had these little friends along since the beginning of our species. So deal with it. Hey, at least they’re mostly too small to see, and that’s better than, you know, lions eating you.

And remember, the vast majority of human beings in the developed world die in car wrecks and from cancer, heart disease, and smoking—not blood flukes, lung-worms, rinderpest, or toxoplasmic brain infestations.

Just don’t pee in tropical rivers. Really. Just don’t. No, really.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Here are some books for reading more about parasites and rats and other icky things. Because you know you want to.

Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer (Touchstone, 2000)

Practically every parasite mentioned in this novel can be found in this very enjoyable book, plus many more. Without Parasite Rex, Peeps could not have been written. And it has pictures. But trust me, if you value your sleep, don’t look at the pictures.

Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan (Bloomsbury, 2004)

A beautifully written history of rats in New York City. As a bonus, there’s a field guide to rat-watching in Ryder’s Alley, a tiny little rodent heaven downtown. And yes, there really is a family called the Ryders, who I’m fairly sure are nice people and not really vampires.

Bitten: True Medical Stories of Bites and Stings by Pamela Nagami (St.

Martins Press, 2004)

All you ever wanted to know about diseases that spread through bites and stings, and then some. Did you know that if you punch someone in the mouth, there’s a bacteria that can spread from their teeth to your knuckles and eat your hand away? Hitting people is bad.

The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (going strong since 1859)

The book that started it all. The key to understanding modern biology, from DNA to dinosaurs, and of all the great books of science, the most readable. And those stickers on textbooks, the ones stating that evolution is “only a theory”? Not true. When scientists use the word theory, they don’t mean “something that hasn’t been proven to be a fact.” They mean “a framework for understanding the facts.” So guess what, it’s a fact that human beings have evolved from other primates over the last five million years. (Like we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimps by accident?) But the framework we use to make sense of this fact is called evolutionary theory, Darwin’s awesome mash-up of several concepts: inherited traits, mutation, and survival of the fittest. So yes, we’re all distantly related to modern-day apes. Find that hard to believe? Dude, look around you.

MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM!

 

HARRY HARRISON

Copyright

 

Make Room! Make Room!

Copyright © 1966 by Harry Harrison

 

Cover art and eForeword to the electronic edition copyright © 2002 by RosettaBooks, LLC

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

 

For information address Editor@RosettaBooks.com

 

First electronic edition published 2002 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.

 

ISBN 0-7953-0452-8

Contents

 

eForeword Prologue

Part 1

 

Chapter 1

 

Chapter 2

 

Chapter 3

 

Chapter 4

 

Chapter 5

 

Chapter 6

 

Chapter 7

 

Chapter 8

 

Chapter 9

 

Chapter 10

 

Chapter 11

 

Chapter 12

 

Chapter 13

 

Chapter 14

 

Chapter 15

 

Part 2

 

Chapter 1

 

Chapter 2

 

Chapter 3

 

Chapter 4

 

Chapter 5

 

Chapter 6

 

Chapter 7

 

Chapter 8

 

Chapter 9

 

Chapter 10

 

Chapter 11

 

Chapter 12

 

Chapter 13

 

Suggestions For Further Reading About the Author

About this Title

eForeword

 

It is the year 1999 and the world has become grimly, terribly overpopulated. This is the premise of Harry Harrison’s 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! and fans of his more comic work may be surprised at this bleak, foreboding novel. But Harrison’s purpose in writing this book was serious and his concerns were real. Although his fears thankfully did not become a reality for the inhabitants of New York and the rest of the United States, the novel remains a gripping, thought-provoking work about privacy, deprivation and desperation.

A teeming New York City serves as the setting for the novel’s nimble storyline, a detective’s pursuit of the killer of a nefarious racketeer. While the novel contains elements of classic detective fiction—the hard-boiled protagonist, the seductive mistress, the portraits of corruption and perfidy—Harrison’s true concern is less the story itself and more the opportunity the story offers to take the reader on a tour of a dismal, broken world. Overpopulation has altered daily life in innumerable ways and Harrison is keenly interested in detailing the effects of this catastrophic human burden on all aspects of human relationships.

 

Movie lovers might recognize Make Room! Make Room! as the basis for the 1973 film, Soylent Green, which starred Charlton Heston. Although that film has become something of a cult classic, Harrison and other fans have taken issue with its interpretation of the novel. Concerned about audiences losing interest, the creators of the film made cannibalism, not overpopulation, the thematic focus. As a result, fans of the movie and critics alike will want to revisit the story in its original, un-bowdlerized form.

RosettaBooks is the leading publisher dedicated exclusively to electronic editions of great works of fiction and non-fiction that reflect our world. RosettaBooks is a committed e-publisher, maximizing the resources of the Web in opening a fresh dimension in the reading experience. In this electronic reading environment, each RosettaBook will enhance the experience through The RosettaBooks Connection. This gateway instantly delivers to the reader the opportunity to learn more about the title, the author, the content and the context of each work, using the full resources of the Web.

 

To experience The RosettaBooks Connection for Make Room! Make Room!:

To

TODD and MOIRA

For your sakes, children,

I hope this proves to be a work of fiction.

Prologue

 

In December, 1959, The President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, said: “This government . . . will not . . . as long as I am here, have a positive political doctrine in its program that has to do with this problem of birth control. That is not our business.” It has not been the business of any American government since that time.

 

In 1950 the United States—with just 9.5 per cent of the world’s population—was consuming 50 per cent of the world’s raw materials. This percentage keeps getting bigger and within fifteen years, at the present rate of growth, the United States will be consuming over 83 per cent of the annual output of the earth’s materials. By the end of the century, should our population continue to increase at the same rate, this country will need more than 100 per cent of the planet’s resources to maintain our current living standards. This is a mathematical impossibility—aside from the fact that there will be about seven billion people on this earth at that time and—perhaps—they would like to have some of the raw materials too.

 

In which case, what will the world be like?

Part One

 

MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 1999 NEW YORK CITY--

—stolen from the trusting Indians by the wily Dutch, taken from the law-abiding Dutch by the warlike British, then wrested in turn from the peaceful British by the revolutionary colonials. Its trees were burned decades ago, its hills leveled and the fresh ponds drained and filled, while the crystal springs have been imprisoned underground and spill their pure waters directly into the sewers.

Reaching out urbanizing tentacles from its island home, the city has become a megaloplis with four of its five boroughs blanketing half of one island over a hundred miles long, engulfing another island, and sprawling up the Hudson River onto the mainland of North America. The fifth and original borough is Manhattan: a slab of primordial granite and metamorphic rock bounded on all sides by water, squatting like a steel and stone spider in the midst of its web of bridges, tunnels, tubes, cables and ferries. Unable to expand outward, Manhattan has writhed upward, feeding on its own flesh as it tears down the old buildings to replace them with the new, rising higher and still higher—yet never high enough, for there seems to be no limit to the people crowding here. They press in from the outside and raise families, until this city is populated as no other city has ever been in the history of the world.

 

On this hot day in August in the year 1999 there are—give or take a few thousand—thirty-five million people in the City of New York.

Chapter 1

 

The August sun struck in through the open window and burned on Andrew Rusch’s bare legs until discomfort dragged him awake from the depths of heavy sleep. Only slowly did he become aware of the heat and the damp and gritty sheet beneath his body. He rubbed at his gummed-shut eyelids, then lay there, staring up at the cracked and stained plaster of the ceiling, only half awake and experiencing a feeling of dislocation, not knowing in those first waking moments just where he was, although he had lived in this room for over seven years. He yawned and the odd sensation slipped away while he groped for the watch that he always put on the chair next to the bed, then he yawned again as he blinked at the hands mistily seen behind the scratched crystal. Seven. . . seven o’clock in the morning, and there was a little number 9 in the middle of the square window. Monday the ninth of August, 1999—and hot as a furnace already, with the city still imbedded in the heat wave that had baked and suffocated New York for the past ten days. Andy scratched at a trickle of perspiration on his side, then moved his legs out of the patch of sunlight and bunched the pillow up under his neck. From the other side of the thin partition that divided the room in half there came a clanking whir that quickly rose to a high-pitched drone.

 

“Morning. . .” he shouted over the sound, then began coughing. Still coughing he reluctantly stood and crossed the room to draw a glass of water from the wall tank; it came out in a thin, brownish trickle.

He swallowed it, then rapped the dial on the tank with his knuckles and the needle bobbed up and down close to the Empty mark. It needed filling, he would have to see to that before he signed in at four o’clock at the precinct. The day had begun.

A full-length mirror with a crack running down it was fixed to the front of the hulking wardrobe and he poked his face close to it, rubbing at his bristly jaw. He would have to shave before he went in. No one should ever look at himself in the morning, naked and revealed, he decided with distaste, frowning at the dead white of his skin and the slight bow to his legs that was usually concealed by his pants. And how did he manage to have ribs that stuck out like those of a starved horse, as well as a growing potbelly—both at the same time? He kneaded the soft flesh and thought that it must be the starchy diet, that and sitting around on his chunk most of the time. But at least the fat wasn’t showing on his face. His forehead was a little higher each year, but wasn’t too obvious as long as his hair was cropped short. You have just turned thirty, he thought to himself, and the wrinkles are already starting around your eyes.

And your nose is too big—wasn’t it Uncle Brian who always said that was because there was Welsh blood in the family? And your canine teeth are a little too obvious so when you smile you look a bit like a hyena. You’re a handsome devil, Andy Rusch, and when was the last time you had a date? He scowled at himself, then went to look for a handkerchief to blow his impressive Welsh nose.

 

There was just a single pair of clean undershorts in the drawer and he pulled them on; that was another thing he had to remember today, to get some washing done. The squealing whine was still coming from the other side of the partition as he pushed through the connecting door.

 

“You’re going to give yourself a coronary, Sol,” he told the graybearded man who was perched on the wheelless bicycle, pedaling so industriously that perspiration ran down his chest and soaked into the bath towel that he wore tied around his waist.

 

“Never a coronary,” Solomon Kahn gasped out, pumping steadily. “I been doing this every day for so long that my ticker would miss it if I stopped. And no cholesterol in my arteries either since regular flushing with alcohol takes care of that. And no lung cancer since I couldn’t afford to smoke even if I wanted to, which I don’t. And at the age of seventy-five no prostatitis because . . .”

“Sol, please—spare me the horrible details on an empty stomach. Do you have an ice cube to spare?”

 

“Take two—it’s a hot day. And don’t leave the door open too long.”

 

Andy opened the small refrigerator that squatted against the wall and quickly took out the plastic container of margarine, then squeezed two ice cubes from the tray into a glass and slammed the door. He filled the glass with water from the wall tank and put it on the table next to the margarine.”Have you eaten yet?” he asked.

 

“I’ll join you, these things should be charged by now.”

 

Sol stopped pedaling and the whine died away to a moan, then vanished. He disconnected the wires from the electrical generator that was geared to the rear axle of the bike, and carefully coiled them up next to the four black automobile storage batteries that were racked on top of the refrigerator. Then, after wiping his hands on his soiled towel sarong, he pulled out one of the bucket seats, salvaged from an ancient 1975 Ford, and sat down across the table from Andy.

 

“I heard the six o’clock news,” he said. “The Eldsters are organizing another protest march today on relief headquarters. That’s where you’ll see coronaries!”

 

“I won’t, thank God, I’m not on until four and Union Square isn’t in our precinct.” He opened the breadbox and took out one of the six- inch-square red crackers, then pushed the box over to Sol. He spread margarine thinly on it and took a bite, wrinkling his nose as he chewed. “I think this margarine has turned.”

 

“How can you tell?” Sol grunted, biting into one of the dry crackers. “Anything made from motor oil and whale blubber is turned to begin with.”

 

“Now you begin to sound like a naturist,” Andy said, washing his cracker down with cold water. “There’s hardly any flavor at all to the fats made from petrochemicals and you know there aren’t any whales left so they can’t use blubber—it’s just good chlorella oil.”

“Whales, plankton, herring oil, it’s all the same. Tastes fishy. I’ll take mine dry so I don’t grow no fins.” There was a sudden staccato rapping on the door and he groaned. “Not yet eight o’clock and already they are after you.”

 

“It could be anything,” Andy said, starting for the door.

 

“It could be but it’s not, that’s the callboy’s knock and you know it as well as I do and I bet you dollars to doughnuts that’s just who it is.

See?” He nodded with gloomy satisfaction when Andy unlocked the door and they saw the skinny, barelegged messenger standing in the dark hall.

 

“What do you want, Woody?” Andy asked.

 

“I don’t wan’ no-fin,” Woody lisped over his bare gums. Though he was in his early twenties he didn’t have a tooth in his head. “Lieutenan’ says bring, I bring.” He handed Andy the message board with his name written on the outside.

 

Andy turned toward the light and opened it, reading the lieutenant’s spiky scrawl on the slate, then took the chalk and scribbled his initials after it and returned it to the messenger. He closed the door behind him and went back to finish his breakfast, frowning in thought.

 

“Don’t look at me that way,” Sol said, “I didn’t send the message. Am I wrong in guessing it’s not the most pleasant of news?”

 

“It’s the Eldsters, they’re jamming the Square already and the precinct needs reinforcements.”

 

“But why you? This sounds like a job for the harness bulls.”

 

“Harness bulls! Where do you get that medieval slang? Of course they need patrolmen for the crowd, but there have to be detectives there to spot known agitators, pickpockets, pursegrabbers and the rest. It’ll be murder in that park today. I have to check in by nine, so I have enough time to bring up some water first.”

Andy dressed slowly in slacks and a loose sport shirt, then put a pan of water on the windowsill to warm in the sun. He took the two five-gallon plastic jerry cans, and when he went out Sol looked up from the TV set, glancing over the top of his old-fashioned glasses.

 

“When you bring back the water I’ll fix you a drink—or do you think it is too early?”

 

“Not the way I feel today, it’s not.”

 

The hall was ink black once the door had closed behind him and he felt his way carefully along the wall to the stairs, cursing and almost falling when he stumbled over a heap of refuse someone had thrown there. Two flights down a window had been knocked through the wall and enough light came in to show him the way down the last two flights to the street. After the damp hallways the heat of Twenty-fifth Street hit him in a musty wave, a stifling miasma compounded of decay, dirt and unwashed humanity. He had to make his way through the women who already filled the steps of the building, walking carefully so that he didn’t step on the children who were playing below. The sidewalk was still in shadow but so jammed with people that he walked in the street, well away from the curb to avoid the rubbish and litter banked high there.

Days of heat had softened the tar so that it gave underfoot, then clutched at the soles of his shoes. There was the usual line leading to the columnar red water point on the corner of Seventh Avenue, but it broke up with angry shouts and some waved fists just as he reached it. Still muttering, the crowd dispersed and Andy saw that the duty patrolman was locking the steel door.

 

“What’s going on?” Andy asked. “I thought this point was open until noon?”

 

The policeman turned, his hand automatically staying close to his gun until he recognized the detective from his own precinct. He tilted back his uniform cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Just had the orders from the sergeant, all points closed for twenty- four hours. The reservoir level is low because of the drought, they gotta save water.”

 

“That’s a hell of a note,” Andy said, looking at the key still in the lock. “I’m going on duty now and this means I’m not going to be drinking for a couple of days. ”

 

After a careful look around, the policeman unlocked the door and took one of the jerry cans from Andy. “One of these ought to hold you.” He held it under the faucet while it filled, then lowered his voice. “Don’t let it out, but the word is that there was another dynamiting job on the aqueduct upstate.”

 

“Those farmers again?”

 

“It must be. I was on guard duty up there before I came to this precinct and it’s rough, they just as soon blow you up with the aqueduct at the same time. Claim the city’s stealing their water.”

 

“They’ve got enough,” Andy said, taking the full container. “More than they need. And there are thirty-five million people here in the city who get damn thirsty.”

 

“Who’s arguing?” the cop asked, slamming the door shut again and locking it tight.

 

Andy pushed his way back through the crowd around the steps and went through to the backyard first. All of the toilets were in use and he had to wait, and when he finally got into one of the cubicles he took the jerry cans with him; one of the kids playing in the pile of rubbish against the fence would be sure to steal them if he left them unguarded.

 

When he had climbed the dark flights once more and opened the door to the room he heard the clear sound of ice cubes rattling against glass.

 

“That’s Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony that you’re playing,” he said, dropping the containers and falling into a chair.

“It’s my favorite tune,” Sol said, taking two chilled glasses from the refrigerator and, with the solemnity of a religious ritual, dropped a tiny pearl onion into each. He passed one to Andy, who sipped carefully at the chilled liquid.

 

“It’s when I taste one of these, Sol, that I almost believe you’re not crazy after all. Why do they call them Gibsons?”

 

“A secret lost behind the mists of time. Why is a Stinger a Stinger or a Pink Lady a Pink Lady?”

 

“I don’t know—why? I never tasted any of them.”

 

“I don’t know either, but that’s the name. Like those green things they serve in the knockjoints, Panamas. Doesn’t mean anything, just a name.”

 

“Thanks,” Andy said, draining his glass. “The day looks better already.”

 

He went into his room and took his gun and holster from the drawer and clipped it inside the waistband of his pants. His shield was on his key ring where he always kept it and he slipped his notepad in on top of it, then hesitated a moment. It was going to be a long and rough day and anything might happen. He dug his nippers out from under his shirts, then the soft plastic tube filled with shot. It might be needed in the crowd, safer than a gun with all those old people milling about. Not only that, but with the new austerity regulations you had to have a damn good reason for using up any ammunition. He washed as well as he could with the pint of water that had been warming in the sun on the windowsill, then scrubbed his face with the small shard of gray and gritty soap until his whiskers softened a bit. His razor blade was beginning to show obvious nicks along both edges and, as he honed it against the inside of his drinking glass, he thought that it was time to think about getting a new one. Maybe in the fall.

 

Sol was watering his window box when Andy came out, carefully irrigating the rows of herbs and tiny onions. “Don’t take any wood

nickels,” he said without looking up from his work. Sol had a million of them all old. What in the world was a wooden nickel?

 

The sun was higher now and the heat was mounting in the sealed tar and concrete valley of the street. The band of shade was smaller and the steps were so packed with humanity that he couldn’t leave the doorway. He carefully pushed by a tiny, runny- nosed girl dressed only in ragged gray underwear and descended a step. The gaunt women moved aside reluctantly, ignoring him, but the men stared at him with a cold look of hatred stamped across their features that gave them a strangely alike appearance, as though they were all members of the same angry family. Andy threaded his way through the last of them and when he reached the sidewalk he had to step over the outstretched leg of an old man who sprawled there. He looked dead, not asleep, and he might be for all that anyone cared. His foot was bare and filthy and a string tied about his ankle led to a naked baby that was sitting vacantly on the sidewalk chewing on a bent plastic dish. The baby was as dirty as the man and the string was tied about its chest under the pipestem arms because its stomach was swollen and heavy. Was the old man dead? Not that it mattered, the only work he had to do in the world was to act as an anchor for the baby and he could do that job just as well alive or dead.

 

Christ but I’m morbid this morning, Andy thought, it must be the heat, I can’t sleep well and there are the nightmares. It’s this endless summer and all the troubles, one thing just seems to lead to another. First the heat, then the drought, the warehouse thefts and now the Eldsters. They were crazy to come out in this kind of weather. Or maybe they’re being driven crazy by the weather. It was too hot to think and when he turned the corner the shimmering length of Seventh Avenue burned before him and he could feel the strength of the sun on his face and arms. His shirt was sticking to his back already and it wasn’t even a quarter to nine.

 

It was better on Twenty-third Street in the long shadow of the crosstown expressway that filled the sky above, and he walked slowly in the dimness keeping an eye on the heavy pedicab and tugtruck traffic. Around each supporting pillar of the roadway was a

little knot of people, clustered against it like barnacles around a pile, with their legs almost among the wheels of the traffic. Overhead there sounded a waning rumble as a heavy truck passed on the expressway and he could see another truck ahead parked in front of the precinct house. Uniformed patrolmen were slowly climbing into the back and Detective Lieutenant Grassioli was standing next to the cab with a noteboard, talking to the sergeant. He looked up and scowled at Andy and a nervous tic shook his left eyelid like an angry wink.

 

“It’s about time you showed up, Rusch,” he said, making a check mark on the noteboard.

 

“It was my day off, sir, I came as soon as the callboy showed up.” You had to put up a defense with Grassy or he walked all over you: he had ulcers, diabetes and a bad liver.

 

“A cop is on duty twenty-four hours a day so get your chunk into the truck. And I want you and Kulozik to bring in some dips. I got complaints from Centre Street coming out of my ears.”

 

“Yes, sir,” Andy said to the lieutenant’s back as he turned toward the station house. Andy climbed the three steps welded to the tailgate and sat down on the board bench next to Steve Kulozik, who had closed his eyes and started to doze as soon as the lieutenant had left. He was a solid man whose flesh quivered somewhere between fat and muscle, and he was wearing wrinkled cotton slacks and a short-sleeved shirt just like Andy’s, with the shirt also hanging over the belt to conceal the gun and holster. He opened one eye halfway and grunted when Andy dropped down beside him, then let it droop shut again.

 

The starter whined irritably, over and over, until finally the low- quality fuel caught and the diesel engine slowly thudded to life, shuddered and steadied as the truck pulled away from the curb and moved east. The uniformed policemen all sat sideways on the benches so they could catch some of the breeze from the truck’s motion and at the same time watch the densely populated streets: the police weren’t popular this summer. If anything was thrown at them they wanted to see it coming. Sudden vibration wracked the

truck and the driver shifted to a lower gear and leaned on his horn, forcing a path through the swarming people and hordes of creeping man-powered vehicles. When they came to Broadway progress slowed to a crawl as people spilled over into the roadway next to Madison Square with its flea market and tent city. It was no better after they had turned downtown since the Eldsters were already out in force and heading south, and were haltingly slow in getting out of the truck’s way. The seated policemen looked out at them indifferently as they rolled by, a slowly surging mass: gray heads, bald heads, most of them with canes, while one old man with a great white beard swung along on crutches. There were a large number of wheelchairs. When they emerged into Union Square the sun, no longer blocked by the buildings, burned down unrelentingly upon them.

 

“It’s murder,” Steve Kulozik said, yawning as he swung down from the truck. “Getting all these old gaffers out in the heat will probably kill off half of them. It must be a hundred degrees in the sun—it was ninety-three at eight o’clock.”

 

“That’s what the medics are for,” Andy said, nodding toward the small group of men in white who were unrolling stretchers next to a Department of Hospitals trailer. The detectives strolled toward the rear of the crowd that already half filled the park, facing toward the speaker’s platform in the center. There was an amplified scratching sound and a quickly cut-off whine as the public address system was tested.

 

“A record-breaker,” Steve said, his eyes searching the crowd steadily while they talked. “I hear the reservoirs are so low that some of the outlet pipes are uncovered. That and the upstate rubes dynamiting the aqueduct again . . .”

 

The squeal from the loudspeakers dissolved into the echoing thunder of an amplified voice.

 

“. . . Comrades, Fellows and Dames, members all of the Eldsters of America, I ask your attention. I had ordered some clouds for this morning but it sure looks like the order never got through. ”

An appreciative murmur rolled over the park, there were a few handclaps.

 

“Who’s that talking?” Steve asked.

 

“Reeves, the one they call Kid Reeves because he’s only sixty-five years old. He’s business manager of the Eldsters now and he’ll be their president next year if he keeps going like this.  ” His words

were drowned out as Reeves’s voice shattered the hot air again.

 

“But we have clouds enough in our lives so perhaps we can live without these clouds in the sky.” This time there was an angry edge to the crowd’s grumbling answer. “The authorities have seen to it that we cannot work, no matter how fit or able we are, and they have fixed the tiny, insulting, miserable handout that we are supposed to live on and at the same time they see to it that money buys less and less every year, every month, almost every day. ”

 

“There goes the first one,” Andy said, pointing to a man at the back of the crowd who fell to his knees, clutching his chest. He started forward but Steve Kulozik held him back.

 

“Leave it for them,” he said, pointing to the two medics who were already pushing forward. “Heart failure or heat stroke and it’s not going to be the last. Come on, let’s circulate the crowd.”

 

“. . . once again we are called upon to unite forces that would

keep us poverty ridden, starving, forgotten the rising costs have

wiped out ”

 

There seemed to be no connection between the small figure on the distant platform and the voice booming around them. The two detectives separated and Andy slowly worked his way through the crowd.

 

“. we will not accept second best, or third or fourth best as it has

become, nor will we accept a dirty corner of the hearth to drowse and starve in. Ours is a vital segment—no, I’ll say the vital segment of the population—a reservoir of age and experience, of knowledge, of judgment. Let City Hall and Albany and Washington

act—or beware, because when the votes are counted they will discover . . .”

 

The words broke in crashing waves about Andy’s head and he paid them no attention as he pushed between the painfully attentive Eldsters, his eyes alert and constantly moving, threading a path through the sea of toothless gums, graywhiskered cheeks and watery eyes. There were no dips here, the lieutenant had been wrong about that, the pickpockets knew better than to try and work a crowd like this. Dead broke, these people, all of them. Or if they had a little change it was locked in one of those old clasp purses and sewn to their underwear or something.

 

There was a movement in the crowd and two young boys pushed through laughing to each other, locking their bare scratched legs about each other’s in a tumbling game, seeing who would fall.

 

“That’s enough,” Andy said, standing in front of them. “Slow down and out of the park, boys, there’s nothing for you here.”

 

“Who says! We can do what we wanna. ”

 

“The law says,” Andy snapped at them and slid the blackjack out of his pocket and lifted it warningly. “Move!”

 

They turned without a word and made their way out of the crowd and he followed just far enough to make sure that they were gone. Kids, he thought as he slid the tube of shot away, maybe just ten or eleven years old, but you had to watch them closely and you couldn’t let them give you any crap and you had to be careful because if you turned your back and there were enough of them they would pull you down and cut you up with pieces of broken glass like they did to poor damned Taylor.

 

Something seemed to possess the old people, they were beginning to move back and forth and, when the amplified voice was silent for an instant, distant shouting could be heard from beyond the speakers’ platform. It sounded like trouble and Andy forced his way toward it. Reeves’s voice suddenly broke off and the shouts were

louder and there was the sharp sound of falling broken glass. A new voice boomed from the loudspeakers.

 

“This is the police. I am asking you all to disperse, this meeting is over, and you will go north out of the Square—”

 

An enraged howl drowned the speaker and the Eldsters surged forward, carried on waves of emotion. Their screaming died and words could be made out again, the amplified voice of Reeves, the original speaker.

 

“. . . Folks . . . easy now . . . I just want you to hold on . . . can’t blame you for getting disturbed but it’s not the way you think at all. The captain here has explained the situation to me and I can see, from where I’m standing, that this has nothing to do with our meeting. There’s some kind of trouble over there on Fourteenth Street—NO!—don’t move that way, you’ll only get hurt, the police are there and they won’t let you pass and there, I see them coming now, uptown there, the choppers, and the police have mentioned flying wire. ”

 

A moan followed the last words and the crowd shuddered, the restless movement reversed and they slowly began drifting uptown, out of Union Square, away from Fourteenth Street. The old people in this crowd knew all about flying wire.

 

Andy was past the speakers’ platform and the crowd was thinner, he could now see the milling mob that jammed Fourteenth Street and he began to move quickly toward it. There were policemen along the outer edge of it, clearing a space near the park, and the nearest one raised his night stick and shouted:

 

“Stay back there, buddy, or you’re going to be in trouble.”

 

He nodded when Andy showed him his badge, then turned away. “What’s up?” Andy asked.

“Got a real riot brewing here and it’s gonna get worse before it’s better—get back there you!” He rapped his stick on the curb and a

bald man on aluminum crutches stopped and wavered a moment, then turned back into the park. “Klein’s had one of those lightning- flash sales, you know, they suddenly put up signs in the windows and they got something that sells out quick, they done it before with no trouble. Only this time they had a shipment of soylent steaks—” He raised his voice to shout over the roar of the two approaching green and white copters. “Some chunkhead bought hers and went around the corner and ran into one of those roving TV reporters and blabbed the thing. People are pouring in from all over hell and gone and I don’t think half the streets are blocked yet. Here’s the wire now to seal off this side.”

 

Andy pinned his badge to his shirt pocket and joined the patrolmen in pushing the crowd back as far as possible. The mob didn’t protest; they looked up and shuddered away from the flapping roar of the copters, jamming together like cattle. The copters came low and the bales of wire fell from their bottoms. Rusty iron bales of barbed wire that thudded and clanked down hard enough to burst their sealed wrapping.

 

This was not ordinary barbed wire. It had a tempered-steel core of memory wire, metal that no matter how it was twisted or coiled would return to its original shape when the restraints were removed. Where ordinary wire would have lain in a heaped tangle this fought to regain its remembered form, moving haltingly like a blind beast as the strains and stresses were relieved, uncoiling and stretching along the street. Policemen wearing heavy gloves grabbed the ends and guided it in the right direction to form a barrier down the middle of the road. Two expanding coils met and fought a mindless battle, locking together and climbing into the air only to fall and struggle again and squirm on in a writhing union.

When the last strand stopped scratching across the pavement the street was blocked by a yard-high and a yard-wide wall of spiked wire.

 

But the trouble wasn’t over; people were still pushing in from the south along the streets that had not yet been sealed off by the wire. For the moment it was a screaming, pushing impasse because, though more wire would stop the influx, in order to drop the wire the

crowd had to be pushed back and a clear space made. The police were shoved back and forth in the face of the surging mob and above their heads the copters buzzed about like angry bees.

 

A sudden exploding crash was followed by shrill screams. The pressure of the jammed bodies had burst one of the plate-glass show windows of Klein’s and soft flesh was being jammed onto the knives of glass; there was blood and moans of pain. Andy fought his way against the tide toward the window; a woman with staring eyes and blood running from an open gash on her forehead bumped into him, then was carried away. Closer in, Andy could barely move and above the shouting of the voices he could hear the shrill of a police whistle. There were people climbing through the broken window, even walking on the bleeding bodies of the injured, grabbing at the boxes piled there. It was the back of the food department. Andy shouted as he came closer, he could barely hear his own voice in the uproar, and clutched at a man with his arms full of packages who forced his way out of the window. He couldn’t reach him—but others could and the man writhed and fell under the grabbing hands, his packages eddying away from him.

 

“Stop!” Andy shouted. “Stop!” as helplessly as though he were locked in a nightmare. A thin Chinese boy in shorts and much- mended shirt crawled out of the window almost at his fingertips, holding a white box of soylent steaks against his chest, and Andy could only stretch his hands out helplessly. The boy looked at him, saw nothing, looked away and bending double to hide his burden began to wriggle along the edge of the crowd against the wall, his thin body forcing a way. Then only his legs were visible, muscles knotted as if he were fighting a rising tide, feet straining half out of the auto-tire-soled sandals. He was gone and Andy forgot him as he reached the broken window and pulled himself up beside the patrolman in the torn shirt who had preceded him there. The patrolman swung his night stick at the clutching arms and cleared a space. Andy joined him and skillfully sapped a looter who tried to break out between them, then pushed the unconscious body and spilled bundles back into the store. Sirens wailed and a splashing of white spray rose above the mob as the riot trucks began rumbling their way inward with water nozzles streaming.

Chapter 2

 

Billy Chung managed to work the plastic container of soylent steaks up under his shirt and, when he bent half double, it wasn’t easily noticeable. For a while he could still move, then the press became too much and he sheltered against the wall and pushed back at the forest of legs that hammered him and jammed his face against the hot dusty brick. He did not try to move and a knee caught him in the side of the head and half stunned him and the next thing he was aware of was a cool spray of water on his back. The riot trucks had arrived and their pressure hoses were breaking up the crowd. One of the columns of water swept over him, plastered him against the wall and went past. The push of the crowd was gone now and he tremblingly got to his feet, looking around to see if anyone had noticed his bundle, but no one had. The remnants of the mob, some of them bloody and bruised, all of them soaking wet, streamed past the lumbering riot trucks. Billy joined them and turned down Irving Place, where there were fewer people, and he looked desperately around for a hiding place, a spot where he could have a few moments of privacy, the hardest thing to find in this city. The riot was over and in a little while somebody would notice him and wonder what he had under his shirt and he would get it, but good. This wasn’t his territory, there weren’t even any Chinese in this neighborhood, they would spot him, they would see him . . . He ran a bit but started to pant heavily and slowed down to a fast walk. There had to be something.

 

There. Repairs or something against one of the buildings, a deep hole dug down to the foundation with pipes and a pool of muddy water at the bottom. He sat down next to the broken edge of the concrete sidewalk, leaned against one of the barriers that ringed the hole, bent forward and glanced around out of the corners of his

eyes. No one looking at him, but plenty of people near, people coming out of the houses or sitting on the steps to watch the bedraggled mob move by. Running footsteps and a man came down the middle of the street holding a large parcel under his arm, glaring around with his fist clenched. Someone tripped him and he howled as he went down and the nearest people fell on him clutching for the crackers that spilled on the ground. Billy smiled, for the moment no one was watching him, and slid over the edge, going up to his ankles in the muddy bottom. They had dug around a foot-thick and corroded iron pipe making a shallow cave into which he backed. It wasn’t perfect but it would do, do fine, only his feet could be seen from above. He lay sideways on the coolness of the earth and tore open the box.

 

Look at that—look at that, he said over and over again to himself and laughed as he realized he was beginning to drool and had to spit away the excess saliva. Soylent steaks, a whole boxful, each flat and brown and big as his hand. He bit into one, choked and wolfed it down, forcing crumbling pieces into his mouth with his dirty fingers until it was so full he could hardly swallow, chewing at the lovely softness. How long had it been since he had eaten anything like this?

 

Billy ate three of the soybean and lentil steaks that way, pausing every now and then between bites and poking his head cautiously out, brushing the lanky black hair from his eyes as he looked upward. No one was watching him. He took more out of the box, eating them slowly now, and only stopped when his stomach was stretched out tautly, and grumbling at the unusual condition of being stuffed so full. While he licked the last of the crumbs from his hands he worked on a plan, already feeling unhappy because he had eaten so many of the steaks. Loot was what he needed and steaks were loot and he could have stuffed his gut as well with weedcrackers. Hell. The white plastic box was too obvious to carry and too big to hide completely under his shirt, so he had to wrap the steaks in something. Maybe his handkerchief. He pulled this out, a dirty and crumpled rag cut from old sheeting, and wrapped it around the remaining ten steaks, tying the corners so they wouldn’t fall out. When he tucked this under the waistband of his shorts it did

not make too obvious a bulge, though it pressed uncomfortably against his full stomach. It was good enough.

 

“What you doing down that hole, kid?” one of the blowzy women seated on the nearby steps asked when he climbed back to the street.

 

“Blow it out!” he shouted as he ran for the corner followed by their harpy screams. Kid! He was eighteen years old even though he wasn’t so tall, he was no kid. They thought they owned the world.

 

Until he got to Park Avenue he hurried, he didn’t want to get any of the local gangs after him, then walked uptown with the slow-moving traffic until he reached the Madison Square flea market.

 

Crowded, hot, filled with a roar of many voices that hammered at the ears and noisome with the smell of old dirt, dust, crowded bodies, a slowly shifting maelstrom of people moving by, stopping at stalls to finger the ancient suits, dresses, chipped crockery, worthless ornaments, argue the price of the small tilapia dead with gaping mouths and startled round eyes. Hawkers shouted the merits of their decaying wares and people streamed along, carefully leaving room for the two hard-eyed policemen who walked side by side watching everything—but keeping to the main pathway that bisected the Square and led to the patched grayness of the old Army pyramidal tents of the long-established temporary tent city.

The police stayed out of the narrow paths that twisted away through the jungle of pushcarts, stands and shelters that jammed the Square, the market where anything could be bought, anything sold. Billy stepped over the blind beggar who sprawled across the narrow opening between a concrete bench and the rickety stall of a seaweed vendor and worked his way inward. He looked at the people there, not at what they were selling, and finally stopped before a pushcart loaded with a jumble of ancient plastic containers, mugs, plates and bowls, with their once-bright colors scratched and grayed by time.

 

“Hands off!” The stick crashed down on the edge of the cart and Billy jerked his fingers away.

“I’m not touching your junk,” he complained.

 

“Move on if you’re not buying,” the man said, an Oriental with lined cheeks and thin white hair.

 

“I’m not buying, I’m selling.” Billy leaned closer and whispered so that only the man could hear. “You want some soylent steaks?”

 

The old man squinted at him. “Stolen goods, I suppose,” he said tiredly.

 

“Come on—you want them or not?”

 

There was no humor in the man’s fleeting smile. “Of course I want them. How many do you have?”

 

“Ten.”

 

“A D and a half a piece. Fifteen dollars.”

 

“Shit! I’ll eat them myself first. Thirty D’s for the lot.”

 

“Don’t let greed destroy you, son. We both know what they are worth. Twenty D’s for the lot. Period.” He fished out two worn ten- dollar bills and held them folded in his fingers. “Let’s see what you have.”

 

Billy pushed the stuffed handkerchief across and the man held it under the cart and looked inside. “All right,” he said, and still with his hands beneath the cart transferred them to a square of heavy, wrinkled paper and handed back the cloth. “I don’t need that.”

 

“The loot now.”

 

The man handed it over slowly, smiling now that the transaction was finished. “Do you ever come to the Mott Street club?”

 

“Are you kidding?” Billy grabbed for the money and the man released it.

“You should. You’re Chinese, and you brought these steaks to me because I’m Chinese too and you knew you could trust me. That shows you’re thinking right. ”

 

“Knock it off, will you, grandpa.” He hit himself in the chest with his thumb. “I’m Taiwan and my father was a general. So one thing I know—have nothing to do with you downtown Commie Chinks.”

 

“You stupid punk—” He raised his stick but Billy was already gone.

 

Things were going to change now, yes they were! He did not notice the heat as he dodged automatically through the milling crowds, seeing the future ahead and holding tight to the money in his pocket. Twenty D’s more than he had ever owned at one time in his life. The most he had ever had before was three-eighty that he had lifted from the apartment across the hall the time they had left their window open. It was hard to get your hands on cash money, and cash money was the only thing that counted. They never saw any at home. The Welfare ration cards took care of everything, everything that kept you alive and just alive enough to hate it. You needed cash to get on and cash was what he had now. He had been thinking about this for a long time.

 

He turned into the Chelsea branch of Western Union on Ninth Avenue. The pasty-faced girl behind the high counter looked up and her glance slid away from him and out the wide front window to the surging, sunlit traffic beyond. She dabbed at the sweat droplets on her lip with a crumpled handkerchief, then wiped the creases under her chin. The operators, bent over their work, didn’t look up. It was quiet here with just the distant hum of the city through the open door, the sudden lurching motion as a teletype clattered loudly. On a bench against the rear wall six boys sat looking at him suspiciously, their searching eyes ready to fill with hatred. As he went toward the dispatcher he could hear their feet shifting on the floor and the squeak of the bench. He had to force himself not to turn and look as he waited, imitating patience, for the man to notice him.

 

“What do you want, kid?” the dispatcher said, finally looking up, speaking through tight, pursed lips reluctant to give anything away,

even words. A man in his fifties, tired and hot, angry at a world that had promised him more.

 

“Could you use a messenger boy, mister?” “Beat it. We got too many kids already.”

“I could use the work, mister, I’d work any time you say. I got the board money.” He took out one of the ten-dollar bills and smoothed it on the counter. The man’s eyes glared at it quickly, then jerked away again. “We got too many kids.”

 

The bench creaked and footsteps came up behind Billy and a boy spoke, his voice thick with restrained anger.

 

“Is this Chink bothering you, Mr. Burgger?” Billy thrust the money back into his pocket and held tightly to it.

 

“Sit down, Roles,” the man said. “You know my rule about trouble or fighting.”

 

He glared at the two boys and Billy could guess what the rule was and knew that he wouldn’t be working here unless he did something quickly.

 

“Thank you for letting me talk to you, Mr. Burgger,” he said, innocently, as he felt back with his heel and jammed his weight down on the boy’s toes as he turned. “I won’t bother you any more—”

 

The boy shouted and pain burst in Billy’s ear as the fist lashed out and caught him. He staggered and looked shocked but made no attempt to defend himself.

 

“All right, Roles,” Mr. Burgger said distastefully. “You’re through here, get lost.”

 

“But—Mr. Burgger . . .” he howled unhappily. “You don’t know this Chink. ”

“Get out!” Mr. Burgger half rose and pointed angrily at the gaping boy. “Out!”

 

Billy moved to one side, unnoticed and forgotten for the moment, and knew enough not to smile. It finally penetrated to the boy that there was nothing he could do and he left—after hurling a look of burning malice at Billy—while Mr. Burgger scratched on one of the message boards.

 

“All right, kid, it looks like you maybe got a job. What’s your name?” “Billy Chung.”

“We pay fifty cents every telegram you deliver.” He stood and walked to the counter holding the board. “You take a telegram out you leave a ten-buck board deposit. When you bring the board back you get ten-fifty. That clear?”

 

He laid the board down on the counter between them and his eyes glanced down to it. Billy looked and read the chalked words: fifteen cent kickback.

 

“That’s fine with me, Mr. Burgger.”

 

“All right.” The heel of his hand removed the message. “Get on the bench and shut up. Any fighting, any trouble, any noise, and you get what Roles got.”

 

“Yes, Mr. Burgger.”

 

When he sat down the other boys stared at him suspiciously but said nothing. After a few minutes a dark little boy, even smaller than he, leaned over and mumbled, “How much kickback he ask?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Don’t be a chunkhead. You kick back or you don’t work here.” “Fifteen.”

“I told you he would do it,” another boy whispered fiercely. “I told you he wouldn’t keep it at ten. ” He shut up abruptly when the

dispatcher glared in their direction.

 

After this the day rolled by with hot evenness and Billy was glad to sit and do nothing. Some of the boys took telegrams out, but he was never called. The soylent steaks were sitting like lead in his stomach and twice he had to go back to the dark and miserable toilet in the rear of the building. The shadows were longer in the street outside but the air still held the same breathless heat that it had for the past ten days. Soon after six o’clock three more boys trickled in and found places on the crowded bench. Mr. Burgger looked at the group with his angry expression, it seemed to be the only one he had.

 

“Some of you kids get lost.”

 

Billy had had enough for the first day so he left. His knees were stiff from sitting and the steaks had descended far enough so he began to think about dinner. The same as every other night and every other year. On the waterfront there was a little breeze from the river and he walked slowly along Twelfth Avenue and felt it cool upon his arms. Behind the sheds here, with no one in sight for the moment, he pried open one of the wire clips that held on the tire sole of his sandal and slipped the two bills into the crack. They were his and his only. He tightened the clip and climbed the steps that led to the Waverly Brown which was moored to Pier 62.

 

The river was invisible. Secured together by frayed ropes and encrusted chains the rows of ancient Victory and Liberty ships made up an alien and rusty landscape of odd-shaped superstructures, laundry-hung rigging, supports, pipes, aerials and chimneys. Beyond them was the single pier of the never-completed Wagner Bridge. This view did not seem strange to Billy because he had been born here after his family and the other Formosa refugees had settled into these temporary quarters, hastily constructed on the ships that had been rotting, unwanted, at their mooring up the river at Stony Point ever since the Second World War. There had been no other place to house the flood of newcomers and the ships had seemed a brilliant inspiration at the

time; they would certainly do until something better was found. But it had been hard to find other quarters and more ships had been gradually added until the rusty, weed-hung fleet was such a part of the city that everyone felt it had been there forever.

 

Bridges and gangways connected the ships and occasionally there would be a glimpse of foul, garbage-filled water between them. Billy worked his way over to the Columbia Victory, his home, and down the gangway to apartment 107.

 

“About time you got in,” his sister Anna said.

 

“Everyone’s through eating and you’re lucky I saved you anything.” She took his plate from a high shelf and put it on the table. She was only thirty-seven yet her hair was almost gray, her back bent into a permanent stoop, her hope of leaving the family and Shiptown was long since gone. She was the only one of the Chung children who had been born in Formosa, though she had been so young when they left that her memories of the island were just vague and muted echoes of a pleasant dream.

 

Billy looked down at the damp slices of oatmeal and the brown crackers and felt his throat close up: the steaks were still clear in his memory, spoiling him for this. “I’m not hungry,” he said, pushing it away.

 

His mother had caught the motion and turned from the TV set, the first time she had bothered to notice him since he had come in.

 

“What is the matter with the food? Why are you not eating the food? That is good food.” Her voice was thin and high-pitched with a rasping whine made more obvious because she spoke in intonated Cantonese. She had never bothered to learn more than a few words of English and the family never spoke it at home.

 

“I’m not hungry.” He groped for a lie that would satisfy her. “It’s too hot. Here, you eat it.”

 

“I would never take food from my children’s mouths. If you won’t eat it the twins will.” While she talked she kept looking at the TV screen

and the thunder of its amplified voices almost drowned out hers, throbbing against the shriller screeches of the seven-year-old boys who were fighting over a toy in the corner. “Here, give it to me. I’ll have just a bite myself first, I give most of my food to the children.” She put a cracker to her mouth and began to chew it with quick, rodentlike motions. There was little chance that the twins would see any of it since she was a specialist in consuming crumbs, leftover scraps, odds and ends; the pudgy roundness of her figure showed that. She took a second cracker from the dish without moving her eyes from the screen.

 

The heat and the nausea he was still feeling choked at Billy’s throat. He was suddenly aware of the closeness of the steel-walled compartment, his brothers’ whining voices, the scratchy roar of the TV, his sister rattling the plates as she cleared up. He went into the other room, the only other room they had, and pulled the heavy metal door shut after him. It had been a locker of some kind, it was only six foot square and was almost completely filled by the bed on which his mother and sister slept. A window had been made in the hull, just a rectangular opening with the ragged thirty-year-old marks of the cutting torch still clear around the edge. In the winter they bolted a cover over it, but now he could lean his arms on the opening and look cross the crowded ships to the distant lights on the New Jersey shore. It was almost dark, yet the air on his face felt just as hot as it had all day.

 

When the sharp edges of the metal began to cut into his arms he went and washed up in the basin of murky water behind the door. There wasn’t much of it, but he scrubbed his face and arms and plastered his hair back as well as he could in the tiny mirror fixed to the wall, then turned quickly away and pulled down the corners of his mouth. His face was so round and young and when he relaxed, his mouth always had a slight curve so that he seemed to be smiling, and that was not how he felt. His face lied about him. With the last of the water he rubbed down his bare legs and removed most of the dirt and mud; at least he felt cooler now. He went and lay on the bed and looked at the photograph of his father on the wall, the only decoration in the room. Captain Chung Pei-fu of the Koumintang Army. A career soldier who had dedicated his life to

war and who had never fought a battle. Born in 1940, he had grown up on Formosa and had been one of the second generation soldiers in Chiang Kai-shek’s timemarking, aging army. When the Generalissimo had died suddenly at the age of eighty-four Captain Chung had had no part in the palace revolutions that had finally pushed General Kung to the top. And when the disastrous invasion of the mainland had finally taken place he had been in the hospital, ill with malaria, and had stayed there during the Seven Deadly Days. He had been one of the very first people airlifted to safety when the island fell—even before his family. In the photograph he looked stern and military, not unhappy the way Billy had always known him. He had committed suicide the day after the twins had been born.

 

Like a vanishing memory the photograph faded from sight in the darkness, then appeared again, dimly seen, as the small light bulb brightened and dimmed as the current fluctuated. Billy watched as the light faded even more, until just the filament glowed redly, then went out. They were cutting the current earlier tonight, or probably something was wrong again. He lay in the suffocating darkness and felt the bed grow hot and sodden under his back, and the walls of the iron box closed in on him until he could stand it no more. His moist fingers groped along the door until they found the handle and when he went into the other room it was no better, worse if anything. The flickering greenish light of the TV screen played over the shining faces of his mother, his sister, his two brothers, transforming their gape-jawed and wide-eyed faces into those of newly drowned corpses. From the speaker beat the tattoo of galloping hoofs and the sound of endless six-shooter gunfire. His mother squeezed mechanically on the old generator flashlight that had been wired to the set, so that it could be played when the house current was off. She noticed him when he tried to go by and held out the generator to him, still contracting mechanically.

 

“You will squeeze this, my hand is tired.” “I’m going out. Let Anna do it.”

“You will do what I say,” she shrilled. “You will obey me. A boy must obey his mother.” She was so angry she forgot to work the

generator and the screen went black and the twins began crying at once, while Anna called to them to be quiet and added to the confusion. He did not go out—he fled—and did not stop until he was on deck, breathing hoarsely and covered with sweat.

 

There was nothing to do, no place to go, the city pressed in around him and every square foot of it was like this filled with people, children, noise, heat. He gagged over the rail into the darkness but nothing came up.

 

Automatically, scarcely aware he was doing it, he threaded his way through the black maze to the shore then hurried toward the wide- spaced street lights of Twenty-third Street: it was dangerous to be in the darkness of the city at night. Maybe he should take a look into Western Union, or maybe he better not bother them so soon? He turned into Ninth Avenue and looked at the yellow and blue sign and chewed his lip uncertainly. A boy came out and hurried away with a message board under his arm; that made room for another one. He would go in.

 

When he turned into the doorway his heart thudded as he saw that the bench was empty. Mr. Burgger looked up from his desk and the anger was as fresh on his face as it had been that afternoon.

 

“It’s a good thing you made up your mind to come back or you just wouldn’t have to bother coming back. Everything is moving tonight, I don’t know why. Get this delivered.” He finished scrawling an address on the cover then slipped the gummed-paper seal through the hole in the hinged boards and licked it and sealed it shut. “Cash on the counter.” He slapped the board down.

 

The clip wouldn’t unbend and Billy broke a fingernail when he had to work the money out and unroll one of the bills and slide it across the scratched wood. He held tight to the other bill, clutched at the board and hurried out, stopping with his back to the wall as soon as he was out of sight of the office. There was enough light from the illuminated sign to read the address:

 

Michael O’Brien Chelsea Park North

1. 28 St.

 

He knew the address and, though he had passed the buildings an untold number of times, he had never been inside the solid cliff of luxury apartments that had been built in 1976 after a spectacular bit of corruption had permitted the city to turn Chelsea Park over to private development. They were walled, terraced and turreted in new-feudal style, which appearance perfectly matched their function of keeping the masses as separate and distant as possible. There was a service entrance in the rear, dimly lit by a wire-caged bulb concealed in a carved stone cresset, and he pressed the button beneath it.

 

“This entrance is closed until oh-five hundred hours,” a recorded voice clattered at him and he held the board to his chest in a quick spasm of fear. Now he would have to go around to the front entrance with its lights, the doorman, the people there; he looked down at his bare legs and tried to brush away some of the older stains. He was clean enough now, but there was nothing he could do about the ragged and patched clothing. Normally he never noticed this because everyone else he met was dressed the same way, it was just that things were different here, he knew that. He didn’t want to face the people in this building, he regretted that he had ever worked to get this job, and he walked around the corner towards the brilliantly lit entrance.

 

A pondlike moat, now just a dry receptacle for rubbish, was crossed by a fixed walkway tricked out to look like a drawbridge, complete with rusty chains and a dropped portcullis of spike-ended metal bars backed by heavy glass. Walking the brightly lit path of the bridge was like walking into the jaws of hell. The bulky figure of the doorman was silhouetted behind the bars ahead, hands behind his back, and he did not move even after Billy had stopped, just inches away on the other side of the barred glass, but kept staring down at him coldly with no change of expression. The door did not open.

Not trusting himself to say anything, Billy held up the message board so the name could be seen on the outside. The doorman’s eyes flicked over it and he reluctantly touched one of the decorative

whorls and a section of bars and glass slid aside with a muffled sigh.

 

“I got a message here . . .” Billy was unhappily aware of the uncertainty and fear in his voice.

 

“Newton, front,” the doorman said and jerked his thumb at Billy to enter.

 

A door opened on the far side of the lobby and there was a rumble of masculine laughter, suddenly cut off as a man came out and closed the door behind him. He was dressed in a uniform like the doorman’s, deep black with gold buttons, but with only a curl of red braid on each shoulder rather than the other’s resplendent frogging. “What’s up, Charlie?” he asked.

 

“Kid with a telegram, I never saw him before.” Charlie turned his back on them and resumed his watchdog position before the door, his duty done.

 

“The board is good,” Newton said, twisting it from Billy’s grasp before he realized what was happening, and running his fingers over the indented Western Union trademark. He handed it back and when Billy took it he quickly patted his shirt and shorts, under the arms and in the crotch.

 

“He’s clean,” then he laughed, “except I gotta go wash my hands now.”

 

“All right, kid,” the doorman said without turning, his back still to Billy, “bring it up and get down here again, quick.”

 

The guard had his back turned too as he walked away leaving Billy alone in the center of the lobby, in the middle of the stretch of figured carpet with no sign of what to do or where to go next. He wanted to ask directions but he couldn’t, the automatic contempt and superiority of the men had disarmed him, driven him down so that all he wanted to do was find a place to hide. A gliding hiss from the far end of the room drew his numbed attention and he saw an elevator door slide open in the base of what he had taken to be a

giant church organ. The operator was looking at him and Billy started forward, the telegram board held before him as though it were a shield against the hostility of the environment.

 

“I got a message here for Mr. O’Brien.” His voice quavered and almost cracked. The operator, a boy no older than he was, produced a halfauthentic sneer; he was young but was already working hard at learning the correct staff manners.

 

“O’Brien, 41-E, and that’s on the fifth floor in case you don’t know anything about apartment houses.” He stood, blocking the elevator entrance, and Billy was uncertain what to do next.

 

“Should I . . . I mean, the elevator . . .”

 

“You ain’t stinking up this elevator for the tenants. The stairs are down that way.”

 

Billy felt the angry eyes following him as he walked down the hall and some of the anger caught in him. Why did they have to act like that? Just working in a place like this didn’t mean they lived here. That would be a laugh—them living in a place like this. Even that fat chunk of a doorman. Five flights—he was panting for breath before he had reached the second and had to stop and wipe off some of the sweat when he got to the fifth. The hall stretched away in both directions, with alcoved doors opening off of it and an occasional suit of armor standing guard over its empty length. His skin prickled with sweat; the air was breathless and hot. He started in the wrong direction and had to retrace his steps when he found out that the numbers were decreasing toward zero. Number 41-E was like all the others without a button or knocker, just a small plate with the gilt script word O’Brien on it. The door opened when he touched it and, after looking in first, he entered a small, darkly paneled chamber with another door before him; a sort of medieval airlock.

He had a feeling of panic when the door closed behind him and a voice spoke, apparently from thin air.

 

“What do you want?”

“A telegram, Western Union,” he said and looked around the empty cubicle for the source of the voice.

 

“Let me see your board.”

 

It was then he realized that the voice was coming from a grille above the inner door, next to the glassy eye of a TV pickup. He held up the board so that it could be seen by the orthicon. This must have satisfied the unseen watcher because there was the click of the circuit going dead and shortly after that the door opened before him letting out a wave of chilled air.

 

“Let me have it,” Michael O’Brien said, and Billy handed him the board and waited while the man broke the seal with his thumb and opened the hinged halves.

 

Though he was in his late fifties, iron gray, carrying an impressive paunch and a double row of jewels, O’Brien still bore the marks of his early years on the West Side docks. Scars on his knuckles and on the side of his neck—and a broken nose that had never been set correctly. In 1966 he had been a twenty-two-year-old punk, as he was fond of saying when he told the story, with nothing on his mind but booze and broads and a couple of days’ stevedoring a week to pay for the weekends, but when he had walked into a roundhouse swing in a brawl at the Shamrock Bar and Grill it had changed his life for him. While recovering in St. Vincent’s (the nose had healed quickly enough but he had fractured his skull on the floor) he had taken a long look at his life and decided to make something of it. What it was he made he never added when he told the story, but it was common knowledge that he had become involved with ward politics, the disposal of hijacked goods from the docks and a number of other things that were best not to mention in his hearing. In any case his new interests paid better than stevedoring and he had never regretted a moment of it. Six foot two, and swaddled in an immense and colorful dressing gown like a circus elephant, he could have been ludicrous, but wasn’t. He had seen too much, done too much, was too sure of his power ever to be laughed at—even though he moved his lips when he read and frowned in concentration while he spelled out the telegram.

“Wait there, I want to make a copy of this,” he said when he came to the end. Billy nodded, happy to wait as long as possible in the air-cooled, richly decorated hall. “Shirl, where the hell is the pad?” O’Brien shouted.

 

There was a mumbled answer from the door on the left and O’Brien opened it and went into the room. Billy’s eyes automatically followed him through the lit doorway to the white-sheeted bed and the woman lying there.

 

She lay with her back turned, unclothed, red hair sweeping across the pillow, her skin a whitish pink with a scattering of brown freckles across the shoulders. Billy Chung stood unmoving, his breath choked in his throat; she wasn’t ten feet away. She crossed one leg over the other, accentuating the round swell of buttock. O’Brien was talking to her but the words came through as meaningless sounds. Then she rolled over toward the open door and saw him.

 

There was nothing he could do, he could not move and he could not turn his eyes away. She saw him looking at her.

 

The girl on the bed smiled at him, then reached out a slender arm to the door, her breasts rose full and round, pink tipped—the door swung shut and she was gone.

 

When O’Brien opened the door and came out a minute later she was no longer on the bed.

 

“Any answer?” Billy asked as he took back the message board. Did his voice sound as strange to this man as it did to him?

 

“No, no answer,” O’Brien said as he opened the hall door. Time seemed to be moving slowly now for Billy, he clearly saw the door as it opened, the shining tongue of the lock, the flat piece of metal on the wall with the hanging wires. Why were these important?

 

“Aren’t you gonna give me a tip, mister?” he asked, just to occupy a moment more.

 

“Beat it, kid, before I boot your chunk.”

He was in the hall and the heat hit him doubly hard after the cool apartment, pressing on his skin and meeting the spreading warm that suffused the lower part of his body, just the kind of feeling he had the first time he got near a girl; he rested his head against the wall. Even in the pictures they passed around he had never seen a girl like this. All the ones he had banged had been glimpsed briefly in a dim light or not at all, thin limbs, gray skins, dirty as he, with ragged underclothing.

 

Of course. A single lock on the inner door guarded by the burglar alarm above. But the alarm was disconnected, he had seen the dangling wires. He had learned about things like this when Sam- Sam had run the Tigers, they had broken into stores and done a couple of jobs of burglary before the cops shot Sam-Sam. A sharp jimmy would open that door in a second. But what did this have to do with the girl? She had smiled, hadn’t she? She could be there waiting when the old bastard went to work.

 

It was a lot of crap and he knew it, the girl wouldn’t have anything to do with him. But she had smiled? The apartment was different, a quick job before the wiring was fixed, he knew the layout of the building—if only there was a way of getting by those chunkheads at the front door. This had nothing to do with the girl, this was for cash. He went quietly down the stairs, looking carefully before turning the corner on the ground floor and hurrying on to the basement.

 

You had to ride your luck. He didn’t meet anyone and in the second room he entered he found a window that also had a disconnected burglar alarm on it. Maybe the whole building was like that, they were rewiring it or it had broken and they couldn’t fix it, it didn’t matter. The window was covered with dust and he reached up and drew a heart in the film of dust so he could recognize it from the outside.

 

“You took a long time, kid,” the doorman said when he came up.

 

“I had to wait while he copied the message and wrote an answer, I can’t help it.” He whined the lie with unsuspected sincerity, it was easy.

The doorman didn’t ask to look at the board. With a pneumatic hiss the portcullis opened and he went across the empty drawbridge to the dark, crowded, dirty and stifling street.

Chapter 3

 

Behind the low hum of the air-conditioner, so steady a sound that the ear accepted it and no longer heard it, was the throbbing rumble of the city outside, beating like a great pulse, more felt than heard. Shirl liked that, liked its distance and the closed-in and safe feeling the night and thickness of the walls gave her. It was late, 3:24 the glowing numbers on the clock read, then changed soundlessly to 3:25 while she watched. She shifted position and beside her in the wide bed Mike stirred and mumbled something in his sleep and she lay perfectly still, hoping he wouldn’t wake up.

After a moment he settled down, pulling the sheet over his shoulders, his breathing grew slow and steady again and she relaxed. The motion of the air was drying the perspiration from her skin, a cool feeling the length of her uncovered body, strangely satisfying. Before he had come to bed and wakened her she had had a few hours’ sleep and that seemed to be enough. Moving slowly, she stood and walked over in front of the flow of air so that it washed her body in its stream. She ran her hands over her skin, wincing when they touched her sore breasts. He was always too rough and it showed on her kind of skin; she’d be black-and-blue tomorrow, then she’d have to put heavy makeup on to cover the marks. Mike got angry if he saw her with any blemishes or bruises, though he never seemed to think of that when he was hurting her. Above the airconditioner the curtains were open a crack and the darkness of the city looked in, the widely separated lights like the eyes of animals; she quickly closed the curtains and patted them so they would stay shut.

Mike gave a deep, throaty gargle, a startling sound when you weren’t used to it, but Shirl had heard it often enough. When he snored like that it meant he was really sound asleep—maybe she

could take a shower without his knowing it! Her bare feet were noiseless on the rug and she closed the bathroom door so slowly that it never made a click. There! She switched on the fluorescents and smiled around at the plast-marble interior and the gold-colored fixtures with highlights glinting everywhere. The walls were soundproof but if he wasn’t really deeply asleep he might hear the water knocking in the pipes. A sudden fear hit her and she gasped and stood on tiptoe to look at the water meter. Yes, her breath escaped in a relaxed sigh, he had turned it on. With water costing what it did Mike turned it off and locked it during the day, the help had been stealing too much, and he had forbidden her to take any more showers. But he always took showers and if she sneaked one once in a while he couldn’t tell from the dial.

 

It was cool and lovely and she stayed in it longer than she had meant to; she looked guiltily at the meter. After she had dried herself she used the towel to mop up every drop of water in the tub and on the walls and floor, then buried the towel in the bottom of the hamper where he would never see it. Her skin tingled and she felt wonderful. She smiled to herself as she patted on dusting powder. You’re twenty-three, Shirl, and your dress size hasn’t changed since you were nineteen. Except in the bust maybe, she was using a bigger bra, but that was all right because men liked it that way. She took a clean housecoat from the cupboard and slipped it on.

 

Mike was still sawing away when she passed through the bedroom, he seemed to be exhausted these days, probably tired from carrying around all that weight in this heat. In the year she had been living here he must have put on twenty pounds, most of it around the middle it looked like, but it didn’t seem to bother him and she tried not to notice it. She turned on the TV to warm up, then went into the kitchen to make a drink. The expensive stuff, the beer and the single bottle of whiskey, were for Mike only, but she didn’t mind, she really didn’t care what she drank as long as it tasted nice. There was a bottle of vodka, Mike could get all of that they needed, and it tasted good mixed with the orange concentrate. If you added some sugar.

A man’s head filled the fifty-inch screen mouthing unheard words, looking right out at her; she pulled the gaping front of her housecoat closed and buttoned it. She smiled at herself when she did it, as she always did, because even though she knew the man couldn’t see her it made her uncomfortable. The remote-box was on the arm of the couch and she curled up next to it with the drink and tapped the button. On the next channel was an auto race and on the next an old John Barrymore picture that looked jerky and ancient and she didn’t like it. She went through most of the channels this way until she settled, as she usually did, on Channel 19, the Woman’s Own Channel, which showed nothing but soap-opera serials, one serial at a time with all the episodes compacted together into a single great, glutinous chunk sometimes running up to twenty-four hours. This was one she hadn’t seen before and when she plugged the earphone into the remote she discovered why, it was a British serial of some kind. The people all had strange accents and some of the things they did were a little hard to follow, but it was interesting enough. A woman had just given birth, sweating and without makeup, when she tuned in and the woman’s husband was in jail but the news had come he had just escaped, and the man who was the father of the baby—a blue baby, they had just discovered—was her husband’s brother. Shirl took a sip of the drink and snuggled down comfortably.

 

At six o’clock she turned off the set, washed and dried her glass and went in to get her clothes. Tab came on duty at seven and she wanted to get the shopping done as early as possible, before the worst of the heat. Quietly, so as not to wake Mike, she found her clothes and took them into the living room to dress. Panties and the net bra and her gray sleeveless dress, it was old enough and faded enough to go shopping in. No jewelry and of course no makeup, there was no point in looking for trouble. She never ate breakfast, that was a good way to watch calories, but she did have a cup of black kofee before she left. It was just seven when she checked to see if her key and money were in her purse, took the big shopping bag from the drawer and let herself out.

“Good morning, miss,” the elevator boy said, opening the door with a flourish and giving her a smile that displayed a row of not too good teeth. “Looks like another scorcher today.”

 

“It’s eighty-two already, the news said.”

 

“That’s not the half of it.” The door closed and they whined down the shaft. “They take that temperature on top of the building and bet down near the street it’s a lot more than that.”

 

“You’re probably right.”

 

In the lobby the doorman Charlie saw her when the elevator opened and he spoke into his concealed microphone. “Going to be another hot one,” he said when she came up.

 

“Morning, Miss Shirl,” Tab said, coming out of the guardroom. She smiled, happy to see him as she always was, the nicest bodyguard she had ever known—and the only one who had never made a pass at her. She liked him not because of that but because he was the kind of man who would never even think of a thing like that.

Happily married with three kids, she had heard all about Amy and the boys, he just wasn’t that kind of man.

 

He was a good bodyguard though. You didn’t have to see the iron knucks on his left hand to know he could take care of himself; though he wasn’t tall, the width of his shoulders and the swelling muscles on his arms told their own story. He took the purse from her, buttoning it into his deep side pocket, and carried the shopping bag. When the door opened he went out first, bad party manners but good bodyguard manners. It was hot, even worse than she had expected.

 

“No weather report from you, Tab?” she asked, blinking through the heat at the already crowded street.

 

“I think you’ve heard enough of them already, Miss Shirl, I know I must have collected about a dozen on the way over this morning.” He didn’t look at her while he talked, his eyes swept the street automatically and professionally. He usually moved slowly and

talked slowly and this was deliberate because some people expected a Negro to be that way. When trouble began it usually ended an instant later, since he firmly believed it was the first blow that counted and if you did that correctly there was no need for a second one, or more.

 

“After anything special today?” he asked.

 

“Just shopping for dinner and I have to go to Schmidt’s.”

 

“Going to take a cab crosstown and save your energy for the battle?”

 

“Yes—I think I will this morning.” Cabs were certainly cheap enough, she usually walked just because she liked it, but not in this heat. There was a waiting row of pedicabs already, with most of the drivers squatting in the meager shade of their rear seats. Tab led the way to the second one in line and steadied the back so that she could climb in.

 

“What’s the matter with me?” the first driver asked angrily.

 

“You got a flat tire, that’s what’s the matter with you,” Tab said quietly.

 

“It’s not flat, just a little low, you can’t—”

 

“Shove off!” Tab hissed and raised his clenched fist a few inches; the sharpened iron spikes gleamed. The man climbed quickly into his saddle and pedaled off down the street. The other drivers turned away and said nothing. “Gramercy Market,” he told the second driver.

 

The cab driver pedaled slowly so that Tab could keep up without running, yet the man was still sweating. His shoulders went up and down right in front of Shirl and she could see the rivulets of perspiration running down his neck and even the dandruff on his thin hair; being this close to people bothered her. She turned to look at the street. People shuffling by, other cabs moving past the slower-moving tugtrucks with their covered loads. The bar on the

corner of Park Avenue had a sign out saying BEER TODAY—2

P.M. and there were some people already lined up there. It seemed a long wait for a glass of beer, particularly at the prices they were charging this summer. There never was very much, they were always talking about grain allotments or something, but in the hot weather it was gone as soon as they go it in, and at fantastic prices. They turned down Lexington and stopped at the corner of Twenty- first Street and she got out and waited in the shade of the building while Tab paid the driver. A hoarse roar of voices came from the stalls in the food market that had smothered Gramercy Park. She took a deep breath and, with Tab close beside her so that she could rest her hand on his arm, she crossed the street.

 

Around the entrance were the weedcracker stalls with their hanging rows of multicolored crackers reaching high overhead, brown, red, blue-green.

 

“Three pounds of green,” she told the man at the stand where she always shopped, then looked at the price card. “Another ten cents a pound!”

 

“That’s the price I gotta pay, lady, no more profit for me.” He put a weight on the balance scale and shook crackers onto the other side.

 

“But why should they keep raising the price?” She took a broken piece of cracker from the scale and chewed it. The color came from the kind of seaweed the crackers were made from and the green always tasted better to her, less of the iodiney flavor than the others had.

 

“Supply and demand, supply and demand.” He dumped the crackers into the shopping bag while Tab held it open. “The more people there is the less to go around there is. And I hear they have to farm weed beds farther away. The longer the trip the higher the price.” He delivered this litany of cause and effect in a monotone voice like a recording that has been played many times before.

 

“I don’t know how people manage,” Shirl said as they walked away, and felt a little guilty because with Mike’s bankroll she didn’t have to

worry. She wondered how she would get along on Tab’s salary, she knew just how little he earned. “Want a cracker?” she asked.

 

“Maybe later, thanks.” He was watching the crowd and deftly shouldered aside a man with a large sack on his back who almost ran into her.

 

A guitar band was slowly working its way through the crowded market, three men strumming homemade instruments and a thin girl whose small voice was lost in the background roar. When they came closer Shirl could make out some of the words, it had been the hit song last year, the one the El Troubadors sang.

 

. . . on earth above her . . . As pure a thought as angels are .

. . to know her was to love her.

 

The words couldn’t possibly fit this girl with her hollow chest and scrawny arms, not ever. For some reason it made Shirl uncomfortable.

 

“Give them a dime,” she whispered to Tab, then moved quickly to the dairy stand. When Tab came after her she dropped a package of oleo and a small bottle of soymilk—Mike liked it in his kofee— into the bag.

 

“Tab, will you please remind me to bring the bottles back—this is the fourth one now! And with a deposit of two dollars apiece I’ll be broke soon if I don’t remember.”

 

“I’ll tell you tomorrow, if you’re going shopping then.”

 

“I’ll probably have to. Mike is having some people in for dinner and I don’t know how many yet or even what he wants to serve.”

 

“Fish, that’s always good,” Tab said, pointing to the big concrete tank of water. “The tank is full.”

 

Shirl stood on tiptoe and saw the shoals of tilapia stirring uneasily in the obscured depths.

“Fresh Island ‘lapia,” the fish woman said. “Come in last night from Lake Ronkonkoma.” She dipped in her net and hauled out a writhing load of six-inch fish.

 

“Will you have them tomorrow?” Shirl asked. “I want them fresh.” “All you want, honey, got more coming tonight.”

It was hotter and there was really nothing else that she needed here, so that left just one more stop to make.

 

“I guess we better go to Schmidt’s now,” she said and something in her voice madeTab glance at her for a moment before he returned to his constant surveillance of the crowd.

 

“Sure, Miss Shirl, it’ll be cooler there.”

 

Schmidt’s was in the basement of a fire-gutted building on Second Avenue, just a black shell above street level with a few squatters’ shanties among the charred timber. An alleyway led around to the back and three steps went down to a heavy green door with a peephole in the center. A bodyguard squatted in the shade against the wall, only customers were allowed into Schmidt’s, and lifted his hand in a brief greeting to Tab. There was a rattle of a lock and an elderly man with sweeping white hair climbed the steps one at a time.

 

“Good morning, Judge,” Shirl said. Judge Santini and O’Brien saw a good deal of each other and she had met him before.

 

“Why, a good morning to you, Shirl.” He handed a small white package to his bodyguard, who slipped it into his pocket. “That is I wish it was a good morning but it is too hot for me, I’m afraid, the years press on. Say hello to Mike for me.”

 

“I will, Judge, good-by.”

 

Tab handed her purse to her and she went down and knocked on the door. There was a movement behind the tiny window of the

peephole, then metal clanked and the door swung open. It was dark and cool. She walked in.

 

“Well if it ain’t Miss Shirl, hiya honey,” the man at the door said as he swung it shut and pushed home the heavy steel bolt that locked it. He settled back on the high stool against the wall and cradled his double-barreled shotgun in his arms. Shirl didn’t answer him, she never did. Schmidt looked up from the counter and smiled a wide, porcine grin.

 

“Why hiya, Shirl, come to get a nice little something for Mr. O’Brien?” He planted his big red hands solidly on the counter and his thick body, wrapped in blood-spattered white cloth, half rested on the top. She nodded but before she could say anything the guard called out.

 

“Show her some of the sweetmeat, Mr. Schmidt, I’ll bet she goes for that.”

 

“I don’t think so, Arnie, not for Shirl.” They both laughed loudly and she tried to smile and picked at the edge of a sheet of paper on the counter.

 

“I’d like steak or a piece of beef, if you have any,” she said, and they laughed again. They always did this, knowing how far they could go without causing trouble. They knew about her and Mike and never did or said anything that would cause trouble with him. She had tried to tell him about it once, but there was no one thing she could tell him that they did that was wrong, and he had even laughed at one of their jokes and told her that they were just playing around and not to worry, that you couldn’t expect party manners from meatleggers.

 

“Look at this, Shirl.” Schmidt clanked open the box door on the wall behind him and took out a small flayed carcass. “Good leg of dog, nicely hung, good and fat too.”

 

It did look good, but it was not for her so there was just no point in looking. “It’s very nice, but you know Mr. O’Brien likes beef.”

“Harder to get these days, Shirl.” He moved deeper into the box. “Trouble with suppliers, jacking up the price, you know how it is. But Mr. O’Brien has been trading here with me for ten years and as long as I can get it I’m going to see he gets his share. How’s that?” He came out and kicked the door shut, holding up a small piece of meat with a thin edging of white fat.

 

“It looks very good.”

 

“Little over a half pound, big enough?”

 

“Just right.” He took it from the scale and began to wrap it in pliofilm. “That’ll set you back just twenty-seven ninety.”

 

“Isn’t that . . . I mean more expensive than last time?” Mike always blamed her when she spent too much on food, as if she were responsible for the prices, yet he still insisted on eating meat.

 

“That’s how it is, Shirl. Tell you what I’ll do though, give me a kiss and I’ll knock off the ninety cents. Maybe even give you a piece of meat myself.” He and the guard laughed uproariously at this. It was just a joke, like Mike said, There was nothing she could say; she took the money from her purse.

 

“Here you are, Mr. Schmidt, twenty . . . twenty-five . . . twenty- eight.” She took the tiny slate from her purse and wrote the price on it and placed it next to the money. Schmidt looked at it, then scratched an initial S under it with the piece of blue chalk he always used. When Mike complained about the price of the meat she would show this to him, not that it ever helped.

 

“Dime back,” he smiled and slid the coin across the counter. “See you again soon, Shirl,” he called out as she took up the package and started for the door.

 

“Yeah, soon,” the guard said as he opened the door just wide enough for her to slide through. As she passed him he ran his hand across the tight rear of her dress and the closing of the door cut off their laughter.

“Home now?” Tab asked, taking the package from her. “Yes—I guess so, a cab too, I guess.”

He looked at her face and started to say something, then changed his mind. “Cab it is.” He led the way to the street.

 

After the cab ride she felt better, they were slobs but no worse than usual and she wouldn’t have to go back there until next week. And, as Mike said, you didn’t expect party manners from meatleggers.

They and their little-boy dirty jokes from grammar school! You almost had to laugh at them, the way they acted. And they did have good meat, not like some of the others. After she cooked the steak for Mike she would fry some oatmeal in the fat, it would be good.

Tab helped her out of the cab and picked up the shopping bag. “Want me to bring this up?”

“You better—and you could put the empty milk bottles in it. Is there any place you could leave them in the guardroom so we wouldn’t forget them tomorrow?”

 

“Nothing to it, Charlie has a locked cabinet that we use, I can leave them there.”

 

Charlie had the door open for them and the lobby felt cooler after the heat of the street. They didn’t talk while they rode up in the elevator; Shirl rummaged through her purse for the key. Tab went down the hall ahead of her and opened the outer door but stopped so suddenly that she almost bumped into him.

 

“Will you wait here a second, please, Miss Shirl?” he said in a low voice, placing the shopping bag silently against the wall.

 

“What is it . . .?” she started, but he touched his finger to his lips and pointed to the inner door. It was open about an inch and there was a deep gouge in the wood. She didn’t know what it meant but it was trouble of some kind, because Tab was in sort of a crouch with his fist with the knucks raised before him and he opened the door and entered the apartment that way.

He wasn’t gone long and there were no sounds, but when he came back he was standing up straight and his face was empty of all expression. “Miss Shirl,” he said, “I don’t want you to come in but I think it would be for the best if you just took a look in the bedroom.”

 

She was afraid now, knowing something was terribly wrong, but she followed him obediently, through the living room and into the bedroom.

 

It was strange, she thought that she was just standing there, doing nothing when she heard the scream, until she realized that it was her own voice, that she was the one who was screaming.

Chapter 4

 

As long as it had been dark, Billy Chung found the waiting bearable. He had huddled in a corner against the cool cellar wall and had almost dozed at times. But when he noticed the first grayness of approaching dawn at the window he felt a sudden sharp spasm of fear that steadily grew worse. Would they find him hiding here? It had seemed so easy last night and everything had worked out so well. Just the way it had been when the Tigers had pulled those jobs. He had known just where to go to buy an old tire iron, and no questions asked, and just a dime more to have the end sharpened. Getting into the moat around the apartment buildings had been the only tricky part, but he hadn’t been seen when he had dropped over the edge and he was sure no one had been looking when he had jimmied open the cellar window with the tire iron. No, if he had been seen they would have grabbed him by now. But maybe in the daylight they would be able to spot the jimmy marks on the window? He shivered at the thought and was suddenly conscious of the loud thudding of his heart. He had to force himself to leave the shadowed corner and to work his way slowly along the wall until he was next to the window, trying to see through the dustfilmed glass. Before he had closed the window behind him he had rubbed spit, and soot from the ledge, into the marks the tire iron had made; but had it worked well enough? The only clear spot on the window was the heart he had drawn in the dust and by moving his head around he looked through it and saw that the splintered grooves were obscured. Greatly relieved, he hurried back to his corner, but within a few minutes his fears returned, stronger than ever.

Full daylight was streaming through the window now—how long would it be before he was discovered? If anyone came in through

the door all they had to do was look his way and they would see him; the small pile of old and cobwebbed boards behind which he cowered could not hide him completely. Shivering with fear, he pushed back against the concrete wall so hard that its rough surface bit through the thin fabric of his shirt.

 

There was no way to measure this kind of time. For Billy each moment seemed endless—yet he also felt that he had spent a lifetime in this room. Once footsteps approached, then passed the door, and during those few seconds he found out that his earlier fear had been only a small thing. Lying there, shaking and sweating at the same time, he hated himself for his weakness, yet could do nothing about it. His nervous fingers picked at an old scab on his shinbone until it tore away and the wound began to bleed. He pressed his rag of a handkerchief over it and the seconds crept slowly by.

 

Getting himself to leave the cellar proved to be even harder than staying. He had to wait until the people in the apartment upstairs went out for the day—or did they go out? Another stab of fear. He had to wait but he could only estimate the time by looking at the angle of the sun through the clouded window and by listening to the sound of traffic in the street outside. By waiting as long as he could, then putting it off a little longer at the thought of the corridors outside, he reached the point when he felt that it was safe to leave. The jimmy went inside the waistband of his shorts where it couldn’t be seen, and he brushed off as much dust as he could before turning the handle on the door.

 

Voices and the sound of hammering came from some distant part of the cellar, but he saw no one on the way to the stairs. As he climbed the third flight he heard rapid footsteps coming down toward him, and he just managed to go back to the floor below and hide in the corridor until they passed. This was the last alarm and a minute later Billy was on the fifth floor looking at the golden lettering of O’Brien once again.

 

“I wonder if maybe she’s still home?” he whispered half aloud and smiled to himself. “She’s trouble—you want cash,” he added, but

his voice was hoarse. There was a clear and insistent memory of those round breasts, rising toward him.

 

When the outer door was opened it sounded some signal inside the apartment, that was what had happened last night. This was all right, he had to be sure no one was inside before he tried to break in. Before his nerve failed completely he pushed the door open and stepped inside, closing it again behind him and leaning his back against it.

 

Someone might still be home. He felt his face grow damp at the thought and looked at the TV pickup, then swiftly away. If she asks me I’ll say something about Western Union, about a message. The walls of the tiny, empty chamber pressed in on him and he shifted from one foot to the other waiting for the crackle of the loudspeaker.

 

It remained silent. He tried to guess how long a minute was, then counted to sixty and knew that he had counted too fast and counted it again. “Hello,” he said, and just in case the TV thing wasn’t working he knocked on the door, timidly at first, then more loudly as his confidence grew.

 

“No one home?” he called as he took out the tire-iron jimmy and slipped the sharpened end into the jamb of the closed door just below the handle. When it had been pushed in as far as it would go he pulled hard with both hands. There was a small cracking sound and the door swung open. Billy stepped through, almost on tiptoe, ready to turn and run.

 

The air was cool, the apartment dim and silent. Ahead, at the end of the long hall, he could see a room and part of a dark TV set. Just at his left hand was the closed door of the bedroom, the bed where she had been lying was just beyond it. Maybe she was still there, asleep, he would go in and not wake her at once but . . . he shivered. Shifting the tire iron to his left hand he slowly opened the door.

 

Rumpled sheets, tangled and empty. Billy walked by the bed and didn’t look at it again. What else had he expected? A girl like that wouldn’t want someone like him. He cursed and pried open the top

drawer in the larger dresser, splintering and cracking it with the iron. It was filled with smooth underclothes, pink and white and softer than he had ever felt when he ran his hand over them. He threw them on the floor.

 

One by one he treated all the other drawers the same way, hurling their contents about, but putting aside those items of clothing he knew could be sold for a high price in the flea market. A sudden banging brought back the fear that had been displaced by anger for the moment, and he stood frozen. It took a long moment before he recognized it as water in a pipe somewhere in the wall. He relaxed a bit, was in better control now and, for the first time, noticed the jewelry box on the end table.

 

Billy had it in his hand and was looking at the pins and bracelets and wondering if they were real and how much he could get for them when the bathroom door opened and Mike O’Brien walked into the room.

 

For a moment he did not see Billy, he just stopped and gaped at the ruin of the dresser and the scattered clothing. He was wearing his dressing gown, spattered with dark spots of water, and was drying his hair with a towel. Then he saw Billy, standing rigid with terror, and hurled the towel away.

 

“You little bastard!” Mike roared. “What the hell are you doing here!”

 

He was like a mountain of death approaching, with his great face flushed from the shower and reddened even more by rage. He stood two heads taller than Billy and there was muscle under the fat on his meaty arms, and all he wanted to do was break the boy in two.

 

Mike reached out with both hands and Billy felt the wall against his back. There was a weight in his right hand and he swung in panic, lashing out wildly. He hardly realized what had happened when Mike fell at his feet, not uttering a sound; there was just the heavy thud of his body hitting the floor.

Michael J.O’Brien’s eyes were open, open wide and staring, but they were not seeing. The tire iron had caught him on the side of the temple, the sharp point cracking through the thin bone there and going on into his brain, killing him instantly. There was very little blood since the tire iron remained, a projecting black handle stuck fast in the wound.

 

It was just by chance, a combination of circumstances, that Billy was not caught or recognized when he was leaving the building. He fled in blind panic and did not meet anyone on the stairs, but he missed a turning and found himself near the service entrance. A new tenant was moving in and at least a score of men, dressed in the same sort of ragged garments he wore, were carrying in furniture. The single uniformed attendant on duty was watching the people who entered the building and paid no attention at all when Billy walked out behind two of the others.

 

Billy was almost to the waterfront before he realized that in his flight he had left everything behind. He leaned his back to a wall, then slid slowly down until he squatted on his heels panting with exhaustion, wiping the sweat from his eyes so he could see if anyone had followed him. No one was taking any notice of him, he had escaped. But he had killed a man—and all for nothing. He shuddered, in spite of the heat, and gasped for air. Nothing, it had all been for nothing.

Chapter 5

 

“Just like that? You want us to drop whatever we’re doing and come running, just like that?” Lieutenant Grassioli’s angry question lost some of its impact when he ended it with a deep belch. He took a jar of white tablets from the top drawer of his desk, shook two of them out into his hand and looked at them distastefully before putting them into his mouth. “What happened over there?” The words were accompanied by a dry, grating sound as he chewed the tablets.

“I don’t know, I wasn’t told.” The man in the black uniform stood in an exaggereated position of attention, but there was the slightest edge of rudeness to his words. “I’m just a messenger, sir, I was told to go to the nearest police station and deliver the following message. ‘There has been some trouble. Send a detective at once.’ ”

 

“Do you people in Chelsea Park think you can give orders to the police department?” The messenger didn’t answer because they both knew that the answer was yes and it was better left unspoken. A number of very important private and public individuals lived in these buildings. The lieutenant winced at the quick needle of pain in his stomach. “Send Rusch here,” he shouted.

 

Andy came in a few moments later. “Yes, sir?” “What are you working on?”

“I have a suspect, he may be the paper hanger who has been passing all those bum checks in Brooklyn, I’m going to . . .”

 

“Put him on ice. There’s a report here I want you to follow up.”

“I don’t know if I can do that, he’s . . .”

 

“If I say you can do it—do it. This is my precinct, not yours, Rusch. Go with this man and report to me personally when you come back.” The belch was smaller this time, more of a punctuation than anything else.

 

“Your lieutenant has some temper,” the messenger said when they were out in the street.

 

“Shut up,” Andy snapped without looking at the man. He had had another bad night and was tired. And the heat wave was still on; the sun almost unbearable when they left the shadow of the expressway and walked north. He squinted into the glare and felt the beginning of a headache squeeze at his temples. There was trash blocking the sidewalk and he kicked it angrily aside. They turned a corner and were in shadow again, the crenelated battlements and towers of the apartment buildings rose like a cliff above them. Andy forgot the headache as they walked across the drawbridge; he had only been inside the place once before, just in the lobby. The door opened before they reached it and the doorman stepped aside to let them in.

 

“Police,” Andy said, showing his badge to the doorman. “What’s wrong here?”

 

The big man didn’t answer at first, just swiveled his head to follow the retreating messenger until he was out of earshot. Then he licked his lips and whispered: “It’s pretty bad.” He tried to look depressed but his eyes glittered with excitement. “It’s . . . murder . .

. someone’s been killed.”

 

Andy wasn’t impressed; the City of New York averaged seven murders a day, and ten on good days. “Let’s go see about it,” he said, and followed the doorman toward the elevator.

 

“This is the one,” the doorman said, opening the hall door of apartment 41-E; cool air surged out, fresh on Andy’s face.

“That’s all,” he said to the disappointed doorman, “I’ll take it from here.” He walked in and at once noticed the jimmy grooves on the inner doorjamb, looked beyond them to the long length of hall where the two people sat on chairs backed to the wall. A full bag of groceries leaned against the nearest chair.

 

They were alike in their expressions with fixed round eyes, shocked at the sudden impact of the totally unexpected. The girl was an attractive redhead, nice long hair and a delicate pink complexion.

When the man got quickly to his feet Andy saw that he was a bodyguard, a chunky Negro.

 

“I’m Detective Rusch, 12-A Precinct.”

 

“My name is Tab Fielding, this is Miss Greene—she lives here. We just came back from shopping a little white ago and I saw the jimmy marks on the door. I came in by myself and went in there.” He jerked his thumb at a nearby closed door. “I found him. Mr. O’Brien. Miss Greene came in a minute later and saw him too. I looked through the whole place but there was no one else here. Miss Shirl—Miss Greene—stayed here in the hall while I went to call the police, we’ve been here ever since. We didn’t touch anything inside.”

 

Andy glanced back and forth at them and suspected the story was true; it could be checked easily enough with the elevator boy and the doorman. Still, there was no point in taking chances.

 

“Will you both please come in with me.”

 

“I don’t want to,” the girl said quickly, her fingers tightening on the sides of the chair. “I don’t want to see him like that again.”

 

“I’m sorry. But I’m afraid I can’t leave you out here alone.”

 

She didn’t argue any more, just stood up slowly and brushed at the wrinkles in her gray dress. A very good-looking girl, Andy realized as she walked by him. The bodyguard held the door open and Andy followed them both into the bedroom. Keeping her face turned

toward the wall, the girl went quickly to the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

 

“She’ll be all right,” Tab said, noticing the detective’s attention. “She’s a tough enough kid but you can’t blame her for not wanting to see Mr. O’Brien, not like that.”

 

For the first time Andy looked at the body. He had seen a lot worse. Michael O’Brien was still as impressive in death as he had been in life: sprawled on his back, arms and legs spread wide, mouth agape and eyes open and staring. The length of iron projected from the side of his head and a thin trickle of dark blood ran down the side of his neck to the floor. Andy knelt and touched the bared skin on his forearm; it was very cool. The air-conditioned room would have something to do with that. He stood and looked at the bathroom door.

 

“Can she hear us in there?” he asked.

 

“No, sir. It’s soundproofed, the whole apartment is.” “You said she lives here. What does that mean?”

“She is—was Mr. O’Brien’s girl. She’s got nothing to do with this, no reason to have anything to do with it. He was her cracker and marge—” Realization hit and his shoulders slumped. “Mine too. We both gotta look for a new job now.” He retired into himself, looking with great unhappiness at a suddenly insecure future.

 

Andy glanced around at the disordered clothing and the splintered dresser. “They could have had a fight before she went out today, she might have done it then.”

 

“Not Miss Shirl!” Tab’s fists clenched tight. “She’s not the kind of person who could do this sort of thing. When I said tough I meant she could roll with things, you know, get along with the world. She couldn’t of done this. It would have to be before I met her downstairs, I wait for her in the lobby, and she came down today just like she always does. Nice and happy, she couldn’t of acted

like that if she had just come from this.” He pointed angrily at the mountainous corpse that lay between them.

 

He didn’t say so but Andy agreed with the bodyguard. A good- looking bird like this one didn’t have to kill anyone. What she did she did for D’s and if a guy gave her too much trouble she’d just walk out and find someone else with money. Not murder.

 

“What about you, Tab, did you knock the old boy off?”

 

“Me?” He was surprised, not angry. “I wasn’t even up in the building until I came back with Miss Shirl and found him.” He straightened up with professional pride. “And I’m a bodyguard. I have a contract to protect him. I don’t break contracts. And when I kill anyone it’s not like that—that’s no way to kill anyone.”

 

Every minute in the air-conditioned room made Andy feel better. The drying sweat was cool on his body and the headache was almost gone. He smiled. “Off the record—strictly—I agree with you. But don’t quote me until I make a report. It looks like a break and entry, O’Brien walked in on whoever was burglaring the place and caught that thing in the side of his head.” He glanced down at the silence figure. “Who was he—what did he do for a living? O’Brien’s a common name.”

 

“He was in business,” Tab said flatly.

 

“You’re not telling me much, Fielding. Why don’t you run that through again.”

 

Tab glanced toward the closed door of the bathroom and shrugged. “I don’t know exactly what he did—and I have enough brains not to bother myself about it. He had something to do with the rackets, politics too, I know he had a lot of topbrass people from City Hall coming here—”

 

Andy snapped his fingers. “O’Brien—he wouldn’t be Big Mike O’Brien?”

 

“That’s what they called him.”

“Big Mike . . . well, there’s no loss then. In fact we could lose a few more like him and not miss any of them.”

 

“I wouldn’t know about that.” Tab looked straight ahead, his face expressionless.

 

“Relax. You’re not working for him any more. Your contract has just been canceled.”

 

“I been paid to the end of the month. I’ll finish my job.”

 

“It was finished at the same time as the guy on the floor. I think you better look after the girl instead.”

 

“I’m going to do that.” His face relaxed and he glanced at the detective. “It’s not going to be easy for her.”

 

“She’ll get by,” Andy said flatly. He took out his notepad and stylo. “I’ll talk to her now, I need a complete report. Stick around the apartment until I see her and the building employees. If their stories back you up there’ll be no reason to keep you.”

 

When he was alone with the body, Andy took the polythene evidence bag from his pocket and worked it down over the iron without touching it, then pulled the weapon free of the skull by holding on to it through the bag, as low down as possible; it came away easily enough and there was only a slow trickle of blood from the wound. He sealed the bag, then took a pillowcase from the bed and dropped the bag and tire iron into this. There would be no complaints now if he carried the bloody iron in the street—and if he worked it right he could get to keep the pillowcase. He spread a sheet over the body before knocking on the bathroom door.

 

Shirl opened the door a few inches and looked out at him. “I want to talk to you,” he said, then remembered the body on the floor behind him. “Is there another room—?”

 

“The living room, I’ll show you.”

She opened the door all the way and came out, once more walking close to the wall without looking down at the floor. Tab was sitting in the hall, and he watched them silently as they passed.

 

“Make yourself comfortable,” Shirl said. “I’ll be with you in just a moment.” She went into the kitchen.

 

Andy sat on the couch, it was very soft, and put his notepad on his knee. Another air-conditioner hummed in the window and the floor- to-ceiling curtains were closed almost all the way, so that the light was dim and comfortable. The television set was a monster. There were pictures on the walls, they looked like real paintings, books, a dining table and chairs in some kind of red wood. Very nice for someone.

 

“Do you want a drink?” Shirl called out from the kitchen, holding up a tall glass. “This is vodka.”

 

“I’m on duty, thanks all the same. Some cold water will do fine.”

 

She brought the two glasses in on a tray and, instead of handing his glass to him, pressed it against the side of the couch near his hand. When she let go the glass remained there, defying gravity. Andy pulled at it and it came free with a slight tug; he saw that there were rings of metal worked into the glass, so there must be magnets concealed under the fabric. Very elegant. For some reason this annoyed him and, after drinking some of the cold, flavorless water, he put the glass on the floor by his foot.

 

“I would like to ask you some questions,” he said, making a tick mark on the notepad. “What time did you leave the apartment this morning?”

 

“Just seven o’clock, that’s when Tab comes on duty. I wanted to do the shopping before it was too hot.”

 

“Did you lock the door behind you?”

 

“It’s automatic, it locks itself, there’s no way to leave it open unless you block it with something.”

“Was O’Brien alive when you left?”

 

She looked up at him angrily. “Of course! He was alseep, snoring. Do you think that I killed him?” The anger in her face turned to pain as she remembered what was lying in the other room; she took a quick gulp from her drink.

 

Tab’s voice came from the doorway. “When I touched Mr. O’Brien’s body it was still warm. Whoever killed him must have done it just a little while before we came in—”

 

“Go sit down and don’t come in here again,” Andy shaid sharply, without turning his head. He took a sip of the ice water and wondered what he was getting excited about. What difference did it make who had polished off Big Mike? It was a public service. The odds were all against this girl having done it. What motive? He looked at her closely and she caught his eye and turned away, pulling her skirt down over her knees as she did.

 

“What I think doesn’t matter,” he said, but the words didn’t even satisfy him. “Look, Miss Greene, I’m just a cop doing my job. Tell me what I want to know so I can write it down and give it to the lieutenant, so he can make a report. Personally, I don’t think that you had anything to do with this killing. But I still have to ask the questions.”

 

It was the first time he had seen her smile and he liked it. Her nose wrinkled and it was a broad friendly grin. She was a cute kid and she would make out, oh yes, she would make out with anyone who had the D’s. He looked back at his notepad and slashed a heavy line under Big Mike.

 

Tab closed the door behind Andy when he left, then waited a few minutes to be sure he wasn’t coming back. When he went into the living room he stood so that he could watch the hall door and would know the moment it was opened.

 

“Miss Shirl, there’s something you should know.”

She was on her third large drink, but the alcohol did not seem to be having any effect. “What is that?” she asked tiredly.

 

“I’m not trying to be personal or anything, and I don’t know anything about Mr. O’Brien’s will . . .”

 

“You can put your mind at rest. I’ve seen it and everything goes to his sister. I’m not mentioned in it—and neither are you.”

 

“I wasn’t thinking about myself,” he said coldly, his face suddenly hard. She was sorry at once.

 

“Please, I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just being—I don’t know, bitchy. Everything happening at once like this. Don’t be angry at me, Tab—please. ”

 

“I guess you were being a little bitchy.” He smiled for a moment before he dug into his pocket. “I figured it would be something like that. I have no complaints about Mr. O’Brien as an employer, but he took care of his money. Didn’t throw it around, that’s what I mean.

Before the detective came I went through Mr. O’Brien’s wallet. It was in his jacket. I left a few D’s there but I took the rest—here.” He pushed his hand out with a folded wad of bills in it. “It’s yours, yours by right.”

 

“I couldn’t ”

 

“You have to. Things are going to be rough, Shirl. You’re going to need it more than his family. There’s no record of it. It’s yours by right.”

 

He put the money on the end table and she looked at it. “I suppose I should. That sister of his has enough without this. But we better split it—”

 

“No,” he said flatly, just as the dull buzz of the announcer signaled that someone had opened the outer door from the hall.

“Department of Hospitals,” a voice said and Tab could see two men in white uniforms on the TV screen inset near the door. They were carrying a stretcher. He went to let them in.

Chapter 6

 

“How long you gonna be, Charlie?”

“That’s my business—you just hold the fort until I get back,” the doorman grunted, and looked the uniformed guard over with what he liked to think was a military eye. “I seen a lot better-looking gold buttons in my time.”

 

“Have a heart, Charlie, you know they’re just plastic. They’ll fall to pieces if I try to rub on them.”

 

In the loosely organized hierarchy of employees in Chelsea Park, Charlie was the unquestion leader. It wasn’t a matter of salary—this was probably the smallest part of his income—but a matter of position and industry. He was the one who saw the tenants most often and he lost nothing by this advantage. His contacts outside the buildings were the best and he could get anything the residents wanted—for a price. All the tenants liked him and called him Charlie. All the employees hated him and he had never heard what they called him.

 

Charlie’s basement apartment came with the job, though the management would have been more than a little surprised at the number of improvements that had been made. An ancient airconditioner wheezed and hammered and lowered the temperature at least ten degrees. Two decades of cast-off and restored furniture contributed a note of mixed color, while an impressive number of locked cabinets covered the walls. These contained a large collection of packaged food and bottled drink none of which Charlie touched himself, but instead resold at a substantial markup to the tenants. Not the least of the

improvements was the absence of both a water and an electric meter; the building management unsuspectedly financed both of these major expenses for Charlie.

 

Two keys were needed to open the door and both were chained to his belt. He went in and hung his uniform coat carefully in the closet, then put on a clean but much-patched sport shirt. The new elevator boy was still asleep in the big double bed and he kicked the frame of the bed with his number-fourteen shoe.

 

“Get up. You go to work in an hour.”

 

Reluctantly, still half asleep, the boy crawled out of the bedclothes and stood there, naked and slim, scratching at his ribs. Charlie smiled in pleasant memory of the previous night and smacked the boy lightly on his lean buttock.

 

“You’re going to be all right, kid,” he said. “Just take care of old Charlie, and Charlie will take care of you.”

 

“Sure, Mr. Charlie, sure,” the boy said, forcing interest into his voice. This whole thing was new to him and he still didn’t like it very much, but it got him the job. He smiled coyly.

 

“That’s enough of that,” Charlie said and slapped the boy again, but this time hard enough to leave a red print on the white skin. “Just make sure the door is locked behind you when you go, and keep your mouth shut on the job.” He went out.

 

The street was a lot hotter than he had thought it would be, so he whistled for a cab. This morning’s work should net him enough to pay for a dozen cabs. Two empty pedicabs raced for his business and he sent the first one away because the driver was too runty and thin: Charlie was in a hurry and he weighed 240 pounds.

 

“Empire State Building, Thirty-fourth Street entrance. And make some time.”

“In this weather?” the driver grunted, standing on the pedals and lurching the creaking machine into motion. “You want to kill me, general?”

 

“Die. It won’t bother me. I’ll give you a D for the trip.”

 

“You want me to die by starving, maybe? That much won’t take you as far as Fifth Avenue.”

 

They haggled the price most of the trip, twisting their way through the crowded streets, shouting to be heard above the unending noise of the city, a sound they were both so used to that they weren’t even aware of it.

 

Because of the power shortage and lack of replacement parts there was only one elevator running in the Empire State Building, and this one went only as high as the twenty-fifth floor. After that you walked. Charlie climbed two flights and nodded to the bodyguard who sat at the foot of the stairs to the next floor. He had been here before and the man knew him, as did the three other guards at the head of the stairs. One of them unlocked the door for him.

 

With his shoulder-length white hair Judge Santini bore a strong resemblance to an Old Testament prophet. He didn’t sound like one.

 

“Crap, that’s what it is, crap. I pay a goddamn fortune for flour just so I can get a good bowl of pasta and what do you turn it into?” He pushed the plate of spaghetti away distastefully and dabbed the sauce from his lips with the large napkin he had tucked into his shirt collar.

 

“I did the best I could,” his wife shouted back. She was small and dark and twenty years younger than he. “You want somebody to make spaghetti for you by hand, you should have married a contadina from the old country with broken arches and a mustache. I was born right here in the city on Mulberry Street, just like you, and all I know about spaghetti is you buy it from the grocery store— ”

The shrill ring of the telephone cut through her words and silenced her instantly. They both looked at the instrument on the desk, then she turned and hurriedly left the room, closing the door behind her. There weren’t many calls these days and what few came through were always important and about business she did not want to hear. Rosa Santini enjoyed all the luxuries that life provided, and what she didn’t know about the judge’s business wasn’t going to bother her.

 

Judge Santini stood, wiped his mouth again and laid the napkin on the table. He didn’t hurry, not at his age he didn’t, but neither did he dawdle. He sat down at the desk, took out a blank notepad and stylo and reached for the phone. It was an old instrument with the cracked handpiece held together by wrappings of friction tape, while the cord was frayed and spliced.

 

“Santini speaking,” he said and listened carefully, his eyes widened. “Mike—Big Mike—my God!” After this he said little, just yes and no, and when he hung up his hands were shaking.

 

“Big Mike,” Lieutenant Grassioli said, almost smiling; even a mindful twinge from his ulcer didn’t depress him as it usually did. “Someone did a good day’s work.” The bloodstained jimmy lay on the desk before him and he admired it as though it were a work of art. “Who did it?”

 

“The chances are that it was a break and entry that went wrong,” Andy said, standing on the other side of the desk. He read from his notepad, quickly summing up all the relevant details. Grassioli grunted when he finished and pointed to the traces of fingerprint powder on the end of the iron.

 

“What about this? Prints any good?”

 

“Very clear, lieutenant. Thumb and first three fingers of the right hand.”

 

“Any chance that the bodyguard or the girl polished the old bastard off?”

“I’d say one in a thousand, sir. No motive at all—he was the one who kept them both eating. And they seemed to be really broken up, not about him I don’t think, but about losing their meal ticket.”

 

Grassioli dropped the jimmy back into the bag and handed it across the desk to Andy. “That’s good enough. We’ll have a messenger going down to BCI next week so send the prints along then and a short report on the case. Get the report on the back of the print card—it’s only the tenth of the mouthpiece and snapped, “Come back here, Rusch,” then turned his attention to the phone. the bodyguard to go with it—but the hell with that, there’s not enough time. File and forget it and get back to work.”

 

While Andy was making a note on his pad the phone rang; the lieutenant picked it up. Andy wasn’t listening to the conversation and was halfway to the door when Grassioli covered the mouthpiece and snapped, “Come back here, Rusch,” then turned his attention to the phone.

 

“Yes, sir, that’s right,” he said. “There seems no doubt that it was a break and entry, the killer used the same jimmy for the job. A filed- down tire iron.” He listened for a moment and his face flushed. “No, sir, no we couldn’t. What else could we do? Yes, that’s SOP. No, sir. Right away, sir. I’ll have someone get on it now, sir.”

 

“Son of a bitch,” the lieutenant added, but only after he had hung up the receiver. “You’ve done a lousy job on this case, Rusch. Now get back on it and see if you can do it right. Find out how the killer got into the building—and if it really was break and entry. Fingerprint those two suspects. Get a messenger down to Criminal Identification with the prints and have them run through, I want a make on the killer if he has a record. Get moving.”

 

“I didn’t know Big Mike had any friends?”

 

“Friends or enemies, I don’t give a damn. But someone is putting the pressure on us for results. So wrap this up as fast as possible.”

 

“By myself, lieutenant?”

Grassioli chewed the end of his stylo. “No, I want the report as soon as possible. Take Kulozik with you.” He belched painfully and reached into the drawer for the pills.

 

Detective Steve Kulozik’s fingers were short and thick and looked as though they should be clumsy; instead they were agile and under precise control. He held Shirl’s right thumb with firm pressure and rolled it across the glazed white tile, leaving a clear and unsmudged print inside the square marked R THMB. Then one by one, he pressed the rest of her fingers to the ink pad and then to the tile until all the squares were full.

 

“Could I have your name, miss?”

 

“Shirl Greene, that’s spelled with an e on the end.” She stared at the black-stained tips on her fingers. “Does this make me a criminal now, with a record?”

 

“Nothing like that at all, Miss Greene.” Kulozik carefully printed her name with a thin grease pencil in the space at the bottom of the tile. “These prints aren’t made public, they’re just used in conjunction with this case. Could I have your date of birth?”

 

“October twelfth, 1977.”

 

“I think that’s all we need now.” He slid the tile into a plastic case along with the ink pad.

 

Shirl went to wash the ink from her hands, and Steve was packing in the fingerprint equipment when the door announcer buzzed.

 

“Do you have her prints?” Andy asked when he came in. “All finished.”

“Fine, then all that’s left is to get the prints from the bodyguard, he’s waiting downstairs in the lobby. And I found a window in the cellar that looks like it was pried open, better check that for latent prints too. The elevator operator will show you where it is.”

“On my way,” Steve said, shouldering the equipment case.

 

Shirl came out as Steve was leaving. “We have a lead now, Miss Greene,” Andy told her. “I found a window in the basement that has been pried open. If there are any fingerprints on the glass or frame and they match the ones found on the jimmy, it will be fairly strong evidence that whoever did the killing broke into the building that way. And we’ll compare the jimmy marks with the ones on the door here. Do you mind if I sit down?”

 

“No,” she said, “of course not.”

 

The chair was soft and the murmuring airconditioner made the room an island of comfort in the steaming heat of the city. He leaned back and some of the tension and fatigue drained away; the door announcer buzzed.

 

“Excuse me,” Shirl said and went to answer it. There was a murmur of voices in the hallway behind him as he flipped the pages in his notepad. The plastic cover was buckled on one of the sheets and some of the lettering was fading, so he went over it again with his stylo, pressing hard so that it was sharp and black.

 

“You get outta here, you dirty whore!”

 

The words were screamed in a hoarse voice, rising shrilly like a scraped fingernail on glass. Andy climbed to his feet and jammed the notepad into his side pocket. “What’s going on out there?” he called.

 

Shirl came in, flushed and angry, followed by a thin gray-haired woman. The woman stopped when she saw Andy and pointed a trembling finger at him. “My brother dead and not even buried yet and this one is carrying on with another man . . .”

 

“I’m a police officer,” Andy said, showing her his buzzer. “Who are you?”

 

She drew herself up, a slight movement that did nothing to increase her height; years of bad posture and indifferent diet had rounded

her shoulders and hollowed her chest. Scrawny arms dangled from the sleeves of the much worn, mudcolored housedress. Her face, filmed now with sweat, was more gray than white, the skin of a photophobic city dweller; the only coloring in it appeared to be the grime of the streets. When she spoke her lips opened in a narrow slit, delivered the words like metal stampings from a press, then closed instantly afterward lest they deliver one item more than was needed. Only the watery blue eyes held any motion or life, and they twitched with anger.

 

“I’m Mary Haggerty, poor Michael’s sister and only living relation by blood. I’ve come to take care of Michael’s things, he’s left them all to me in his will, the lawyer told me that, and I have to take care of them. That whore’ll have to get out, she’s taken enough from

him . . .”

 

“Just a minute.” Andy broke into the shrill babble of words and her mouth snapped shut while she breathed rapidly through flared righteous nostrils. “Nothing can be touched or taken from this apartment without police permission, so you don’t have to worry about your possessions.”

 

“You can’t say that with her here,” she squawled and turned on Shirl. “She’ll steal and sell everything that’s not nailed down. My good brother . . .”

 

“Your good brother!” Shirl shouted. “You hated his guts and he hated yours, and you never came near this place as long as he was alive.”

 

“Shut up!” Andy broke in, coming between the two women. He turned to Mary Haggerty. “You can go now. The police will let you know when the things in this apartment are available.”

 

She was shocked. “But—you can’t do that. I have my rights. You can’t leave that whore here alone.”

 

Andy’s patience was cracking. “Watch your language, Mrs. Haggerty. You’ve used that word enough. Don’t forget what your brother did for a living.”

Her face went white and she took a half step backward. “My brother was in business, a businessman,” she said weakly.

 

“Your brother was in the rackets, and that means girls among other things.” Without her anger to hold her erect she slumped, deflated, thin and bony; the only round thing in her body was her abdomen, swollen from years of bad diet and bearing too many children.

 

“Why don’t you go now,” he said, “We’ll get in touch with you as soon as possible.”

 

The woman turned and left without another word. He was sorry that he had lost his temper and said more than he should, but there was no way to take back the words now.

 

“Did you mean that—what you said about Mike?” Shirl asked, after the door had closed. In a plain white dress and with her hair pulled back she looked very young, even innocent, despite the label Mary Haggerty had given to her. The innocence seemed more realistic than the charges.

 

“How long did you know O’Brien?” Andy asked, fending the question off for the moment.

 

“Just about a year, but he never talked about his business. I never asked, I always thought it had something to do with politics, he always had judges and politicians visiting him.”

 

Andy took out his notebook. “I’d like the names of any regular visitors, people he saw in the last week.”

 

“Now you are asking the questions—and you haven’t answered mine.” Shirl smiled when she said it, but he knew she was serious. She sat down on a straight-backed chair, her hands folded in her lap like a schoolgirl.

 

“I can’t answer that in too much detail,” he said. “I don’t know that much about Big Mike. About all I can tell you for certain is that he was some sort of a contact man between the syndicate and the politicians. Executive level I guess you would call it. And it has been

thirty years at least since the last time he was in court or behind bars.”

 

“Do you mean—he was in jail?”

 

“Yes, I checked on it, he’s got a criminal record and a couple of convictions. But nothing recently, it’s the punks who get caught and sent up. Once you operate in Mike’s circle the police don’t touch you. In fact they help you—like this investigation.”

 

“I don’t understand . . .”

 

“Look. There are five, maybe ten killings in New York every day, a couple of hundred felonious assaults, twenty, thirty cases of rape, at least fifteen hundred burglaries. The police are understaffed and overworked. We don’t have time to follow up any case that isn’t open and shut. If someone gets murdered and there are witnesses, okay, we go out and pick the killer up and the case is closed. But in a case like this, frankly, Miss Greene, we usually don’t even try.

Unless we get a make on the fingerprints and have a record on the killer. But the chances are that we don’t. This city has a million punks wo are on the Welfare and wish they had a square meal or a TV or a drink. So they try their hand at burglary to see what they can pick up. We catch a few and send them upstate on work gangs, breaking up the big parkways with pickaxes to reclaim the farmland. But most of them get away. Once in a while there is an accident, maybe someone comes in while they are pulling a job, surprises them while they are cleaning out the place. If the burglar is armed there may be a killing. Completely by accident, you understand, and the chances are ninety-nine out of a hundred that something like this happened to Mike O’Brien. I took the evidence, reported the case—and it should have died there. It would have if it had been anyone else. But as I said, Big Mike had plenty of political contacts and one of them put on some pressure to make a more complete investigation, and that is why I am here. Now—I’ve told you more than I should, and you’ll do me a big favor if you forget all about it.”

 

“No, I won’t tell anyone. What happens next?”

“I ask you a few more questions, leave here, write up a report—and that will be the end of it. Lots of other work is piling up behind me and the department has already put more time into the investigation than it can afford.”

 

She was shocked. “Aren’t you going to catch the man who did it?”

 

“If the fingerprints are on file, we might. If not—we haven’t got a chance. We won’t even try. Aside from the reason that we have no time, we feel that whoever did Mike in performed a social service.”

 

“That’s terrible!”

 

“Is it? Perhaps.” He opened his notepad and was very official again. He had finished with the questions by the time Kulozik came back with latent prints from the cellar window and they left the building together. After the cool apartment the air in the street hit like the blast from an open furnace door.

Chapter 7

 

It was after midnight, a moonless night, but the sky outside the wide window could not equal the rich darkness of the polished mahogany of the long refectory table. The table was centuries old, from a monastery long since destroyed, and very valuable, as were all the furnishings in the room: the sideboard, the paintings, and the cut-crystal chandelier that hung in the center of the room. The six men grouped around the end of the table were not valuable at all, except in a financial sense, although in that way they were indeed very well off. Two of them were smoking cigars, and the cheapest cigar you could buy cost at least ten D’s.

“Not every word of the report if you please, Judge,” the man at the head of the table said. “Our time is limited and just the results will be all we need.” If anyone there knew his real name they were careful not to mention it. He was now called Mr. Briggs and he was the man in charge.

 

“Surely, Mr. Briggs, that will be easy enough,” Judge Santini said, and coughed nervously behind his hand. He never liked these sessions at the Empire State Building. As a judge he shouldn’t be seen here too often with these people. Besides, it was a long climb and he had to think about his ticker. Particularly in this kind of weather. He took a sip of water from the glass in front of him and moved his glasses forward on his nose so that he could read better.

 

“Here is what it boils down to. Big Mike was killed instantly by a blow on the side of the head, done with a sharpened tire iron that was also used to break into the apartment. Marks made on a jimmied-open basement window match the ones on the door and they both fit the jimmy, so it looks as though whoever did it got in

that way. There were clear fingerprints on the iron and on the basement window, the same prints. So far the prints appear to be of a person unknown, they do not match any of the fingerprints on file in the Bureau of Criminal Identification, nor are they the prints of O’Brien’s bodyguard or girl friend, the ones who found the body.”

 

“Who do the fuzz think done it?” one of the listeners asked from around his cigar.

 

“The official view is—ah, death by misadventure you might say. They think that someone was burgling the apartment and Mike walked in and surprised him, and Mike was killed in the struggle.”

 

Two men started to ask questions but shut up instantly when Mr. Briggs began to speak. He had the gloomy, serious eyes of a hound dog, with the matching sagging lower lids and loose dewlaps on his cheeks. The pendant jowls waggled when he talked.

 

“What was stolen from the apartment?”

 

Santini shrugged. “Nothing, from what they can tell. The girl claims that nothing is missing and she ought to know. The room was taken apart, but apparently the burglar was jumped before he finished the job and then he ran in a panic. It could happen.”

 

Mr. Briggs pondered this, but he had no more questions. Some of the others did and Santini told them what was known. Mr. Briggs considered for a while then silenced them with a raised finger.

 

“It appears that the killing was accidental, in which case it is of no importance to us. We will need someone to take over Mike’s work—what is it, Judge?” he asked, frowning at the interruption.

 

Santini was sweating. He wanted the matter settled so he could go home, it was after 1 A.M. and he was tired. He wasn’t used to being up this late any more. But there was a fact that he had to mention, it might be important and if it was noticed later and it came out that he had known about it and said nothing . . . it would be best to get it over with.

“There is one thing more I ought to tell you. Perhaps it means something, perhaps not, but I feel we should have all the information in front of us before we—”

 

“Get on with it, Judge,” Mr. Briggs said coldly.

 

“Yes, of course. It’s a mark that was on the window. You must understand that all the basement windows are coated with dust on the inside and that none of the others were touched. But on the window that was jimmied open, through which we can presume the killer entered the building, there was a design traced in the dust. A heart.”

 

“Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?” one of the listeners growled.

 

“Nothing to you, Schlacter, since you are an American of German extraction. Now I am not guaranteeing that it means anything, it may just be a coincidence, meaningless, it could be anything. But just for the record, just to get it down, the Italian word for heart is cuore.”

 

The atmosphere in the room changed instantly, electrified. Some of the men sat up and there was a rustle of shifting bodies. Mr. Briggs did not move, though his eyes narrowed. “Cuore,” he said slowly. “I don’t think he has enough guts to try and move into the city.”

 

“He’s got his hands full in Newark. He got burned once coming here, he’s not going to try it again.”

 

“Maybe. But he’s half out of his head I hear. On the LSD. He could do anything. ”

 

Mr. Briggs coughed and they were all quiet on the instant. “We are going to have to look into this,” he aid. “Whether Cuore is trying to move into our area or whether someone is trying to stir up trouble and blaming it on him; either way we want to find out. Judge, see to it that the police continue the investigation.”

Santini smiled but his fingers were knotted tightly together under the table. “I’m not saying no, mind you, not saying it can’t be done, just that it would be very difficult. The police are very shorthanded, they don’t have the personnel for a full-scale investigation. If I try to pressure them they’ll want to know why. I’ll have to have some good answers. I can have some people work on this, make some calls, but I don’t think we can get enough pressure to swing it.”

 

“You can’t get enough pressure, Judge,” Mr. Briggs said in his quietest voice. Santini’s hands were trembling now. “But I never ask a man to do the impossible. I’ll take care of this myself. There are one or two people I can personally ask to help out. I want to know just what is happening here.”

Chapter 8

 

Through the open window rolled the heat and stench, the sound of the city, a multivoiced roar that rose and fell with the hammered persistence of waves breaking on a beach; an endless thunder. In sudden punctuation against this background of noise there came the sound of broken glass and a jangled metallic crash; voices rose in shouts and there was a long scream at the same instant.

“What? What . . .?” Solomon Kahn grumbled, stirring on the bed and rubbing his eyes. The bums, they never shut up, never let you grab a little nap. He got up and shuffled to the window, but could see nothing. They were still shouting—what could have made the noise? Another fire escape falling off? That happened often enough, they even showed it on TV if there was a gruesome picture to go with it. No, probably not, just kids breaking windows again or something. The sun was down behind the buildings but the air was still hot and foul.

 

“Some lousy weather,” he muttered as he went to the sink. Even the boards in the floor were hot on the soles of his bare feet. He sponged off some of the sweat with a little water, then turned the TV on to the Music-Time station. A jazz beat filled the room and the screen said 18:47, with 6:47 P.M. underneath in smaller numerals for all the yuks who had dragged through life without managing to learn the twenty-four-hour clock. Almost seven, and Andy was on day duty today, which meant he should have been through by six, though they never left on time. Anyway, it was time to get the chow going.

 

“For this the Army gave me a fine fifteen-grand education as an aviation mechanic,” he said, patting the stove. “Finest investment

they ever made.” The stove had started life as a gas burner, which he had adapted for tank gas when they had closed off the gas mains, then had installed an electric heating element when the supplies of tank gas had run out. By the time the electric supplies became too erratic—and expensive—to cook with, he had installed a pressure tank with a variable jet that would burn any inflammable liquid. It had worked satisfactorily for a number of years, consuming kerosene, methanol, acetone and a number of other fuels, balking only slightly at aviation gas while sending out a yard-long steamer of flame that had scorched the wall before he could adjust it. His final adaptation had been the simplest—and most depressing. He had cut a hole in the back of the oven and run a chimney outdoors through another hole hammered through the brick wall. When a solid-fuel fire was built on the rack inside the oven, an opening in the insulation above it let the heat through to the front ring.

 

“Even the ashes stink like fish,” he complained as he shoveled out the thin layer of powdery ash from the previous day. These he threw out the window in an expanding gray cloud and was gratified when he heard a cry of complaint from the window on the floor below. “Don’t you like that?” he shouted back. “So tell your lousy kids not to play the TV at full blast all night and maybe I’ll stop dumping the ashes.”

 

This exchange cheered him, and he hummed along with The Nutcracker Suite which had replaced the nameless jazz composition—until a burst of static suddenly interrupted the music, drowning it out. He mumbled curses under his breath as he ran over and hammered on the side of the TV set with his fist. This had not the slightest effect. The static continued until he reluctantly turned the TV off. He was still muttering angrily when he bent to fire up the stove.

 

Sol placed three oily gray bricks of seacoal on the rack and went over to the shelf for his battered Zippo lighter. A good lighter that, bought in the PX when?—must be fifty years ago. Of course most of the parts had been replaced since that time, but they didn’t make lighters like this any more. They didn’t make lighters at all any more. The seacoal spluttered and caught, burning with a small blue

flame. It stank—of fish—and so did his hands now: he went and rinsed them off. The stuff was supposed to be made of cellulose waste from the fermentation vats at the alcohol factory, dried and soaked with a low-grade plankton oil to keep it burning. Rumor had it that it was really made of dried and pressed fish guts from the processing plants, and he preferred this to the official version, true or not.

 

His miniature garden was doing well in the window box. He plucked the last of the sage and spread it out on the table to dry, then lifted the plastic sheeting to see how the onions were doing. They were coming along fine and would be ready for pickling soon. When he went to rinse off his hands in the sink he looked quizzically at his beard in the mirror.

 

“It needs trimming, Sol,” he told his image. “But the light is almost gone so it can wait until morning. Still it wouldn’t hurt none to comb it before you dress for dinner.” He ran a comb through his beard a few times, then tossed the comb aside and went to dig a pair of shorts out of the wardrobe. They had started life many years earlier as a pair of Army suntan trousers, and since then had been cut down and patched until they bore little resemblance to the original garment. He was just pulling them on when someone knocked on the door. “Yeah,” he shouted, “who is it?”

 

“Alcover’s Electronics,” was the muffled answer.

 

“I though you died or your place burned down,” Sol said, throwing the door open. “It’s only been two weeks since you said you would do a rush job on this set—which I paid for in advance.”

 

“That’s the way the electron hops,” the tall repairman said calmly, swinging his valise-sized toolbox onto the table. “You got a gassy tube, some tired components in that old set. So what can I do?

They don’t make that tube any more, and if they did I couldn’t buy it, it would be on priority.” His hands were busy while he talked, hauling the TV down to the table and starting to unscrew the back. “So how do I fix the set? I have to go down to the radio breakers on Greenwich Street and spend a couple of hours shopping around. I

can’t get the tube, so I get a couple of transistors and breadboard up a circuit that will do the same job. It’s not easy, I tell you.”

 

“My heart bleeds for you,” Sol said, watching suspiciously as the repairman took the back off the set and extracted a tube.

 

“Gassy,” the man said, looking sternly at the radio tube before he threw it into his toolbox. From the top tray he took a rectangle of thin plastic on which a number of small parts had been attached, and began to wire it into the TV circuit. “Everything’s makeshift,” he said. “I have to cannibalize old sets to keep older ones working. I even have to melt and draw my own solder. It’s a good thing that there must have been a couple of billion sets in this country, and a lot of the latest ones have solid state ciruits.” He turned on the TV and music blared across the room. “That will be four D’s for labor.”

 

“Crook!” Sol said. “I already gave you thirtyfive D’s. ”

 

“That was for the parts, labor is extra. If you want the little luxuries of life you have to be prepared to pay for them.”

 

“The repairs I need,” Sol said, handing over the money. “The philosophy I do not. You’re a thief.”

 

“I prefer to think of myself as an electronic grave robber,” the man said, pocketing the bills. “If you want to see the thieves you should see what I pay to the radio breakers.” He shouldered his toolbox and left.

 

It was almost eight o’clock. Only a few minutes after the repairman had finished his job a key turned in the lock and Andy came in, tired and hot.

 

“Your chunk is really dragging,” Sol said.

 

“So would yours if you had a day like mine. Can’t you turn on a light, it’s black as soot in here.” He slumped to the chair by the window and dropped into it.

Sol switched on the small yellow bulb that hung in the middle of the room, then went to the refrigerator. “No Gibsons tonight, I’m rationing the vermouth until I can make some more. I got the coriander and orris root and the rest, but I have to dry some sage first, it’s no good without that.” He took out a frosted pitcher and closed the door. “But I put some water in to cool and cut it with some alky which will numb the tongue so you can’t taste the water, and will also help the nerves.”

 

“Lead me to it!” Andy sipped the drink and managed to produce a reluctant smile. “Sorry to take it out on you, but I had one hell of a day and there’s more to come.” He sniffed the air. “What’s that cooking on the stove?”

 

“An experiment in home economics—and it was free for the taking on the Welfare cards. You may not have noticed but our food budget is shot to pieces since the last price increase.” He opened a canister and showed Andy the granular brown substance inside. “It is a new miracle ingredient supplied by our benevolent government and called ener-G—and how’s that for a loathsomely cute name? It contains vitamins, minerals, protein, carbohydrates. ”

 

“Everything except flavor?”

 

“That’s about the size of it. I put it in with the oatmeal, I doubt if it can do any harm because at this moment I am beginning to hate oatmeal. This ener-G stuff is the product of the newest wonder of science, the plankton whale.”

 

“The what?”

 

“I know you never open a book—but don’t you ever watch TV? They had an hour program on the thing. A conversion of an atomic submarine, cruises along just like a whale and sucks in plankton, all the microscopic sea things that you will be very surprised to find out the mighty whales live on. All three whales that’re left. The smallest life forms supporting the biggest, there’s a moral there someplace. Anyway—the plankton gets sucked in and hits a sieve and the water gets spit out and the plankton gets pressed into little dry bricks and stored in the sub until it is full up and can come back and

unload. Then they futz around with the bricks of plankton and come up with ener-G.”

 

“Oh, Christ, I bet it tastes fishy.”

 

“No takers,” Sol sighed, then served up the oatmeal.

 

They ate in silence. The ener-G oatmeal wasn’t so bad as they had expected, but it wasn’t very good, either. As soon as he was finished Sol washed the taste of it out of his mouth with the alcohol- and-water mixture.

 

“What’s this you said about more work to come?” he asked. “They have you doing a double shift today?”

 

Andy went back to the window; there was a bit of air stirring the damp heat now that the sun had set. “Just about, I’m going on special duty for a while. You remember the murder case I told you about?”

 

“Big Mike, the gonif? Whoever chopped him did a service to the human race.”

 

“My feelings exactly. But he’s got political friends who are more interested in the case than we are. They have some connections, they pulled a few strings and the commissioner himself called the lieutenant and told him to get a man on the investigation full time and find the killer. It was my name on the report so I caught the assignment. And Grassy, oh, he is a sweet bastard, he didn’t tell me about it until I was signing out. He gave me the job then and a strong suggestion that I get on to it tonight. Like now,” he said, standing and stretching.

 

“It’ll be a good deal, won’t it?” Sol asked, stroking his beard. “An independent position, your own boss, working your own hours, being covered with glory.”

 

“That isn’t what I’ll be covered with unless I come up with an answer pretty fast. Everyone is watching and they are putting on

the pressure. Grassy told me I had to find the killer soonest or I would be back in uniform on a beat in Shiptown.”

 

Andy went into his room and unlocked the padlock on the bottom drawer of the dresser. He had extra rounds of ammunition here, some private papers and equipment, including his issue flashlight. It was the squeeze-generator type and it worked up a good beam when he tested it.

 

“Where to now?” Sol asked when he came out. “Going to stake out the joint?”

 

“It’s a good thing you’re not a cop, Sol. With your knowledge of criminal investigation crime would run rampant in the city—”

 

“It’s not doing so bad, even without my help.”

 

“—and we’d all be murdered in our beds. No stake out. I’m going to talk to the girl.”

 

“Now the case gets interesting. Am I allowed to ask what girl?”

 

“Kid name of Shirl. Really built. She was Big Mike’s girl friend, living with him, but she was out of the apartment when he got bumped.”

 

“Do you maybe need an assistant? I’m good at night work.”

 

“Cool off, Sol, you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it. She plays out of our league. Put some cold water on your wrists and get some sleep.”

 

Using the flashlight, Andy avoided the refuse and other pitfalls of the dark stairwell. Outside, the crowds and the heat were unchanged, timeless, filling the street by day and by night. He wished for a rain that would clear them both away, but the weather report hadn’t offered any hope. Continued no change.

 

Charlie opened the door at Chelsea Park with a polite “Good evening, sir.” Andy started toward the elevator, then changed his mind and walked on past it to the stairs. He wanted to have a look

at the window and the cellar after dark, to see it the way it had been when the burglar came in. If he had entered the building that way.

Now that he had been assigned to actually try and find the killer he had to go into all the details of the case in greater depth, to try to reconstruct the whole thing. Was it possible to get to the window from outside without being seen? If it wasn’t then it might be an inside job and he would have to go through the staff and the tenants of the building.

 

He stopped, silently, and took out his gun. Through the half-open door of the cellar ahead he saw the flickering beam of a flashlight. This was the room where the jimmied window was. He walked forward slowly, putting his feet down on the gritty concrete floor with care so that they made no noise. When he entered he saw that someone was against the far wall, playing a flashlight along the row of windows. A dark figure outlined against the yellow blob of light.

The light moved to the next window, hesitated and stopped on the heart that had been traced in the dirt there. The man leaned over and examined the window, so intent in his study that he did not hear Andy cross the floor and come up behind him.

 

“Just don’t move—that’s a gun in your back,” Andy said as he jabbed the man with his revolver. The flashlight dropped and broke; Andy cursed and pulled out his own light and squeezed it to life.

The beam hit full on an old man’s face, his mouth open in terror, his skin suddenly as pale as his long silvery hair. The man sagged against the wall, gasping for air, and Andy put his gun back into the holster, then held the other’s arm as he slid slowly down the wall to a sitting position on the floor.

 

“The shock . . . suddenly . . .” he muttered. “You shouldn’t do that . .

. who are you?”

 

“I’m a police officer. What’s your name—and what were you doing down here?” Andy frisked him quickly: he wasn’t armed.

 

“I’m a . . . civil official . . . my identification is here.” He struggled to produce his wallet and Andy took it from him and opened it.

“Judge Santini,” he said, flashing the light from the identification card to the man’s face. “Yes, I’ve seen you in court. But isn’t this a funny place for a judge to be?”

 

“Please, no impertinence, young man.” The first reaction had passed and Santini was in control again. “I consider myself knowledgeable in the laws of this sovereign state, and I cannot recall any that apply to this particular situation. I suggest that you do not exceed your authority. ”

 

“This is a murder investigation and you may have been tampering with evidence, Judge. That’s authority enough to run you in.”

 

Santini blinked into the glare of the flashlight and could just make out his captor’s legs; they were in tan pants, not a blue uniform. “You are Detective Rusch?” he asked.

 

“Yes, I am,” Andy said, surprised. He lowered the light so that it was no longer shining in the judge’s face. “What do you know about this?”

 

“I shall be happy to tell you, my boy, if you will allow me off the floor and if we could find a more comfortable spot for our chat. Why don’t we visit Shirl—you must have made Miss Greene’s acquaintance? It will be a bit cooler there, and once arrived I will be happy to tell you all that I know.”

 

“Why don’t we do that?” Andy said, helping the old man to his feet. The judge wasn’t going to run away—and he might have some official connection with the case. How else had he known that Andy was the detective who had been assigned to the investigation? This looked more like political interest than police interest and he knew enough to tread warily here.

 

They took the elevator up from the basement and Andy’s scowl wiped the curious look from the operator’s face. The judge seemed to be feeling better, though he leaned on Andy’s arm down the length of the hall.

Shirl opened the door for them. “Judge—is something wrong?” she asked, wide-eyed.

 

“Nothing, my dear, just a touch of the heat, fatigue, I’m not getting any younger, not at all.” He straightened up, concealing well the effort this required, and moved away from Andy to lightly take her arm. “I met Detective Rusch outside, he was good enough to come up with me. Now, if I could be allowed a little closer to the cool breath of that air-conditioner and permitted to rest a moment. . .” They went down the hall and Andy followed.

 

The girl was really good to look at, dressed like something out of a TV spectacular. Her dress was made of a fabric that shone like woven silver—yet appeared to be soft at the same time. It was sleeveless, cut low in the front and even lower in the back, all the way down to her waist, Andy saw. Her hair was brushed straight to her shoulders in a shining russet wave. The judge looked at her too, out of the corner of his eye, as she guided him to the sofa.

 

“We’re not disturbing you, are we, Shirl?” he asked. “You’re dressed up tonight. Going out?”

 

“No,” she aid, “I was just staying home by myself. If you want the truth—I’m just building up my own morale. I’ve never worn this dress before, it’s something new, nylon, I think, with little specks of metal in it.” She plumped a pillow and pushed it behind Judge Santini’s head. “Can’t I get something cool for you to drink? And you too, Mr. Rusch?” It was the first time she had appeared to notice him, and he nodded silently.

 

“A wonderful suggestion.” The judge sighed and settled back. “Something alcoholic if possible.”

 

“Oh, yes—there are all kinds of things in the bar, I don’t drink them.” When she went to the kitchen Andy sat close to Santini and spoke in a quiet voice.

 

“You were going to tell me what you were doing in the cellar—and how you know my name.”

“Simplicity itself—” Santini glanced toward the kitchen, but Shirl was busy and couldn’t hear them. “O’Brien’s death has certain, shall we say, political ramifications, and I have been asked to follow the progress being made. Naturally I learned that you had been assigned to the case.” He relaxed and folded his hands over his round belly.

 

“That’s an answer to one half of my question,” Andy said. “Now, what were you doing in the cellar?”

 

“It’s cool in here, almost chill you might say after being outside. Quite a relief. Did you notice the heart that had been drawn in the dust on the cellar window?”

 

“Of course. I was the one who found it.”

 

“That is most interesting. Did you ever hear of an individual—you should have, he has a police record—by the name of Cuore?”

 

“Nick Cuore? The one who has been muscling into the rackets in Newark?”

 

“The very one. Though ‘muscling in’ is not quite correct, ‘in charge’ would be more accurate. He has taken over there, and is such an ambitious man that he is even casting his eyes in the direction of New York.”

 

“What is all this supposed to mean?”

 

“Cuore is a good Italian word. It means heart,” Santini said as Shirl came into the rooming carrying a tray.

 

Andy took the drink with an automatic thank you, scarcely aware of the other’s conversation. He understood now why all the pressure was being brought to bear upon this case. It wasn’t a matter of pity, no one seemed to really care that O’Brien was dead, it was the why of his killing that really counted. Had the murder been a brutal accident as it appeared to be? Or was it a warning from Cuore that he was expanding into New York City? Or was the killing a power move by one of the local people who was trying to put the blame on

Cuore in order to cover himself? Once you entered the maze of speculation the possibilities expanded until the only way the truth could be uncovered was by finding the killer. The interested parties had pulled a few strings and his full-time assignment had been the result. A number of people must be reading his reports and waiting impatiently for an answer.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said, aware that the girl had spoken to him. “I was thinking of something else and I didn’t hear you.”

 

“I just asked you if the drink was all right. I can get you something else if you don’t like that.”

 

“No, this is fine,” he said, realizing that he had been holding his glass all this time, just staring at it. He took a sip, and then a second one. “In fact it’s very good. What is it?”

 

“Whiskey. Whiskey and soda.”

 

“It’s the first time I ever tasted it.” He tried to remember how much a bottle of whiskey cost. There was almost none being made now because of the grain shortage and each year the stored supplies grew smaller and the price increased. At least two hundred D’s a bottle, probably more.

 

“That was very refreshing Shirl,” Santini said, placing his empty glass gainst the arm of his chair where it remained, “and you have my most heartfelt thanks for your kind hospitality. I’m sorry I must run along now, Rosa is expecting me, but could I ask you something first?”

 

“Of course, Judge—what is it?”

 

Santini took an envelope from his side pocket and opened it, fanning out the handful of photographs that it contained. From where he sat all Andy could see was that they were pictures of different men. Santini handed one over to Shirl.

 

“It was tragic,” he said, “tragic what happened to Mike. All of us want to help the police as much as we can. I know you do too,

Shirl, so perhaps you’ll take a look at these pictures, see if you recognize any of these people.”

 

She took the first one and looked at it, frowning in concentration. Andy admired the judge’s technique for talking a lot and really saying nothing—yet getting the girl’s cooperation.

 

“No, I can’t say I have ever seen him before,” she said.

 

“Was he ever a guest here, or did he meet Mike while you were with him?”

 

“No, I’m sure of that, he’s never been here. I thought you were asking if I had ever seen him on the street or anything.”

 

“What about the other men?”

 

“I’ve never seen any of them. I’m sorry I can’t be of any more help.” “Negative intelligence is still intelligence, my dear.”

He passed the photographs to Andy, who recognized the top one as Nick Cuore. “And the others?” he asked.

 

“Associates of his,” Santini said as he rose slowly from the deep chair.

 

“I’ll keep these awhile,” Andy said.

 

“Of course. You may find them valuable.”

 

“Must you go already?” Shirl protested. Santini smiled and started for the door.

 

“Indulge an old man, my dear. Much as I enjoy your company, I must keep sensible hours these days. Good night, Mr. Rusch—and good luck.”

 

“I’m going to make myself a drink,” Shirl said after she had shown the judge out. “Can I liven up that one for you? If you’re not on duty, that is.”

“I’m on duty, and I have been for the last fourteen hours, so I think it is about time that duty and drink mixed. If you won’t report me?”

 

“I’m no ratfink!” She smiled, and when they sat opposite each other he felt better than he had for weeks. The headache was gone, he was cool and the drink tasted better than anything he remembered.

 

“I thought you were through with the investigation,” Shirl said. “That’s what you told me.”

 

“I thought so then, but things have changed. There is a lot of interest in getting this case solved. Even people like Judge Santini are concerned.”

 

“All the time I knew Mike I never realized he was so important.”

 

“Alive, I don’t think he was. It is his death that is important, and the reasons—if any—for it.”

 

“Did you mean that, what you said this afternoon about the police not wanting anything moved from this apartment?”

 

“Yes, for the present. I’ll have to go through everything, particularly the papers. Why do you ask?”

 

Shirl kept her eyes on her glass, clutching it tightly with both hands. “Mike’s lawyer was here today, and everything is pretty much like his sister said. My clothes, my personal belongings are mine, nothing else. Not that I expected anything more. But the rent has been paid here until the end of August—” she looked up squarely at Andy, “and if the furniture is left here I can stay on until then.”

 

“Do you want to do that?” “Yes,” she said, nothing more.

She’s all right, Andy thought. She’s not asking any favors, no tears or that kind of thing. Just spreading her cards on the table. Well, why not? It doesn’t cost me anything. Why not?

“Consider it done. I’m a very slow apartment searcher, and an apartment this big will take until exactly midnight on the thirty-first of August to search properly. If there are any complaints refer them to Third Grade Detective Andrew Fremont Rusch, Precinct 12-A. I’ll tell the parties concerned to get lost.”

 

“That’s wonderful!” she said, jumping happily to her feet. “And it deserves another drink. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t feel right about, you know, selling anything from the apartment. That would be stealing. But I don’t see anything wrong with finishing off the bottles. That’s better than leaving them for that sister of his.”

 

“I agree completely,” Andy said, lying back in the soft embrace of the cushions, watching her delicate and attractive wiggle as she took the glasses into the kitchen. This is the life, he thought, and grinned crookedly to himself, the hell with the investigation. At least for tonight. I’m going to drink Big Mike’s booze and sit back on his couch and forget everything about police business for just one night.

 

“No, I come from Lakeland, New Jersey,” she said, “we just moved here to the city when I was a kid. The Strategic Air Command was putting in those extra-long runways for the Mach-3 planes and they bought our house and all the other ones nearby and tore them down. It’s my father’s favorite story, how they ruined his life, and he has never voted for a Republican since and swears he would rather die first.”

 

“I wasn’t born here either,” he said, and took a sip of the drink. “We came from California, my father had a ranch—”

 

“Then you’re a cowboy!”

 

“Not that kind of a ranch, fruit trees, in the Imperial Valley, I was just a little kid when we left and I hardly remember it. All the farming in those valleys was done with irrigation—canals and pumps. My father’s ranch had pumps and he didn’t think it was very important when the geologists told him he was using fossil water, water that had been in the ground thousands of years. Old water grows things just as well as new water. I remember him saying that. But there

must have been little or no new water filtering down because one day the fossil water was all used up and the pump went dry. I’ll never forget that, the trees dying and nothing we could do about it. My father lost the farm and we came to New York, he was a sandhog on the Moses Tunnel when they were building it.

 

“I never kept an album,” Andy said.

 

“It’s the sort of things girls do.” She sat on the couch next to him, turning the pages. In the front were photographs of children, ticket stubs, programs, but he was only slightly aware of them. Her warm bare arm pressed against his and when she leaned over the album he could smell the perfume in her hair. He had drunk an awful lot, he realized vaguely, and he nodded his head and pretended to be looking at the album. All he was really aware of was her.

 

“It’s after two, I better get going.”

 

“Don’t you want some more kofee first?” she asked.

 

“No thanks.” He finished the cup and carefully set it down. “I’ll be around in the morning, if that will be all right with you.” He started toward the door.

 

“The morning is fine,” she said, and put her hand out. “And thanks for staying here this evening.”

 

“I should be thanking you for the party, remember I never tasted whiskey before.”

 

He meant to shake hands, that was all, to say good night. But for some reason he found her in his arms, his face against her hair and his hands pressed tight to the soft velvet skin of her back. When he kissed her she returned the kiss fiercely and he knew everything would be all right.

 

Later, lying on the crisp expanse of the bed, he could feel the touch of her warm body at his side and the light stir of her sleeping breath on his cheek. The hum of the air-conditioner seemed to make the night more quiet, covering and masking all the other sounds. He

had had too much to drink, he realized now, and smiled up at the darkness. So what? If he had been sober he might never have ended up where he was. He might feel sorry in the morning, but at the present moment this felt like the best thing that had ever happened to him. Even when he tried to feel guilty he couldn’t; his hand tightened possessively on her shoulder and she stirred in her sleep. The curtains were parted slightly and through the opening he could see the moon, distant and friendly. This is all right, he said, this is all right, over and over again to himself.

 

The moon burned in through the open window, a piercing eye in the night, a torch in the breathless heat. Billy Chung had slept a little, earlier, but one of the twins had had a nightmare and wakened him and he had lain there wide awake ever since. If only the man hadn’t been in the bathroom . . . Billy rolled his head back and forth, biting at his lower lip, feeling the sweat beading his face. He hadn’t meant to kill him, but now that he was dead Billy didn’t care. He was worried about himself. What would happen when they caught him? They would find him, that’s what the police were for, they would take the tire iron out of the dead man’s head and go over it in their laboratory the way they did and find the man who had sold it to him.

. . . His head rolled from side to side on the sweat-dampened pillow and a low, almost voiceless moan was forced between his teeth.

Chapter 9

 

“That’s not much of a shave you got there, Rusch,” Grassioli said in his normal, irritated tone of voice.

“It’s no shave at all, lieutenant,” Andy said, looking up from the sheaf of report on the desk. The lieutnant had noticed him while he was passing the detective squadroom on the way to the clerical office; Andy had hoped to sign in and leave the precinct without meeting him. He thought fast. “I’m running down some leads over near Shiptown this afternoon, I didn’t want to be too obvious. There probably isn’t one razor in that whole neighborhood.” That sounded good enough. The truth was he had come in late this morning, direct from Chelsea Park, and never had a chance to shave.

 

“Yeah. What’s the progress on the case?”

 

Andy knew better than to remind the lieutenant that he had been working on it only since the previous evening.

 

“I’ve found out one positive thing that relates to it.” He looked around, but there was no one else within earshot, and he continued in a lower voice.

 

“I know why the pressure has been put on the department.” “Why?”

The lieutenant flipped through the pictures of Nick Cuore and his henchmen while Andy explained the significance of the heart on the window and the identity of the men who were interested in the murder.

“All right,” Grassioli said when he had finished, “don’t write a damn thing about this in any reports, unless you find anything leading to Cuore, but I want you to tell me everything that happens. Now get going, you wasted enough time around here.”

 

It was a record-breaker. Day after day had passed, but the heat stayed the same. The street outside was a tube of hot, foul air, unmoving and so filled with the stench of dirt and sweat and decay that it was almost unbreathable. Yet, for the first time since the heat wave had set in, Andy did not notice it. The previous night was an overwhelming though still unbelievable presence, impossible to put out of his mind. He tried to, he had work to do, but Shirl’s face or body would slip around the edges of memory and, despite the heat, he would once again feel the sensation of suffused warmth. This wouldn’t do! He smashed his right fist into his open palm and had to smile at the startled looks of the nearby people in the crowd. There was work to do, a lot of it, before he could see her again.

 

He turned into the alleyway that ran between the locked row of garages behind Chelsea Park and the edge of the moat, leading to the service entrance to the buildings. There was a rumble of wheels behind him and he stepped aside to let a heavy tugtruck pass, a square, boxlike body mounted on old auto wheels, guided by the two men who pulled it. They were bent almost double and aware of nothing except their fatigue. As they plodded by, just a few feet from him, Andy could see how the traces cut into their necks, gouging into the permanent ulcers on their shoulders that stained their shirts wet with pus.

 

Andy walked slowly behind the tugtruck, stopping while he was still out of sight of the entrance, then leaning over the edge of the moat. Filth and rubbish littered the concrete bottom below, and there were wide gaps between the granite blocks where the cement had fallen away. It would be easy enough to climb down the wall after dark, there were no revealing lights nearby. Even in the daytime an intruder would only be noticed by someone glancing out of the closest windows. No one was watching when Andy let himself over the edge and clambered slowly to the bottom; it was like going into an oven here, with the heat trapped by the high walls. He ignored it

as best he could and walked along the inner wall until he found the window with the heart on it, it was very easy to spot and would probably be as easily seen at night as well. There was a ledge just below the row of cellar windows and he found he could lever himself up onto it—and it was wide enough to stand on. Yes, it was very possible to jimmy open the window standing here; the murderer could have broken into the building this way. Sweat dripped from his chin and made dark spots on the concrete of the ledge, the heat was getting to him.

 

“What do you think you’re doing there! You’re going to get your head broken!” The voice shouted down at him and he straightened and looked up at the drawbridge that crossed the moat, at the doorman standing there, shaking his fist. He recognized Andy and his voice changed abruptly. “Sorry—I didn’t see it was you, sir.

Anything I can do to help?”

 

“Yes—get me out of here. Do any of those windows open?”

 

“Just move along a bit, the next one over your head, it’s a lobby window.” The doorman vanished and a few moments later the window creaked open and his wide face stuck out.

 

“Give me a lift,” Andy said. “I’m half cooked.” He took the doorman’s hand and scrambled up. The lobby was dim and cool after the sun-blasted heat of the moat. He wiped at his face with his handkerchief. “Is there any place where we can talk—where I can sit down?”

 

“In the guardroom, sir, just follow me.”

 

There were two men there; the one in building uniform jumped to his feet when they came in. The other was Tab. “Get on the door, Newton,” the doorman ordered. “You want to go with him, Tab?”

 

Tab glanced at the detective. “Sure, Charlie,” he said, and followed the guard out.

 

“We got some water here,” the doorman said. “Want a glass?”

“Great,” Andy said, dropping into a chair. He took the plastic beaker and drained half of it, then slowly sipped the rest. Facing him was a graytinted window that looked out into the lobby; he couldn’t remember seeing any window there on the way in. “One-way glass?” he asked.

 

“That’s right. For the residents’ protection. It’s a mirror on the other side.”

 

“Did you see where I was in the moat?”

 

“Yes, sir, it looked like you were just outside the cellar window, the one that got jimmied open.”

 

“I was. I came down the other side of the moat, from the back alley, crossed it and climbed up by the window. If it was nighttime do you think you would have seen me there?”

 

“Well . . .”

 

“A plain yes or no will do. I’m not trying to trap you into anything.”

 

“The building management, they’re already doing something about the security, it’s mostly the trouble with the alarm system. No, I don’t think I would have seen you at night, sir, not down there in the dark.”

 

“I didn’t think so. Then you believe that someone could have entered the building that way, unseen?”

 

Charlie’s small, piggish eyes were half closed, looking around for aid. “I suppose,” he admitted finally, “the killer could have got in that way.”

 

“Good. And that particular cellar room is the right one to come in through. Easy to get near the window, a broken alarm on the frame, everything just right. Whoever broke in could have marked the window with that heart so he could find it again from the outside.

Which means he had to have been in the building first, probably casing it.”

“Maybe,” Charlie admitted, and smiled slightly. “And maybe he made the mark there after he got in, just to fool you into believing it was an inside job.”

 

Andy nodded. “You’re thinking, Charlie. But either way it could have been marked from the inside first, and I have to operate on that principle. I’ll want a list of all the present employees, all the new ones and all those who have left here in the last couple of years, a list of tenants and former tenants. Who would have a thing like that?”

 

“The building manager, sir, he has an office right upstairs. Would you like me to show you where it is?”

 

“In one minute—I need another glass of water first.”

 

Andy stood facing the inner door of the O’Brien apartment, pretending to be busy with the list of names he had obtained from the building manager. He knew that Shirl might be looking at him in the door TV and he tried to appear preoccupied and busy. When he had left that morning she had been asleep and he had not talked to her since the previous night—not that they had done much talking then, either. It wasn’t that he was embarrassed, it was just that the whole thing still had an air of unreality about it. She belonged here and he didn’t, and if she pretended that nothing had happened, or didn’t mention it—could he? He didn’t think he would. She was a long time answering the door, maybe she wasn’t home? No, the bodyguard, Tab, was downstairs, which meant she was still in the building. Was something wrong? Had the killer come back? That was a stupid thing to think, yet he hammered loudly on the panel.

 

“Don’t break it down,” she said as she opened it. “I was cleaning and I didn’t hear the door.” Her hair was tied up in a turban and her feet were bare. A lot of her was bare since she was wearing just a pale green halter and shorts. She looked wonderful.

 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” he said seriously.

 

“Well, it’s not very important,” she laughed, “don’t look so sad.” She leaned forward and gave him a quick warm kiss on the mouth.

Before he could react she had turned away and gone down the hall. The shorts were very short, and very, very round. As the door clicked behind him he realized suddenly that he was quite happy.

The air was wonderfully cool.

 

“I’m almost finished,” Shirl said, and there was the sudden whine of a small motor. “It’ll just take me a second then I’ll clean this mess away.” When he came into the living room he saw that she was running a vacuum cleaner over the rug. “Why don’t you take a shower?” she called over the sound of the machine. “Mary O’Brien Haggerty will be getting the water bill so you shouldn’t care.”

 

A shower! he thought excitedly. “Since I’ve met Mary Haggerty I’ll be glad to send her the bill,” he shouted, and they both laughed.

 

As he went through the bedroom he remembered that this was the room where O’Brien had been killed—he hadn’t thought about that at all last night. Poor O’Brien, he must have been a real bastard while he was still alive, since there didn’t seem to be a single person who missed him or really felt moved by his death. Including Shirl. What had she thought about him? It didn’t matter now. He dropped his clothes on the floor and tested the water with his hand.

 

There was a razor with a new blade in the cabinet and he hummed happily to himself while he washed the gray whiskers out of it, then lathered his face. For some reason wearing a dead man’s shoes didn’t bother him in the least. In fact he greatly enjoyed it. The razor slid smoothly over his skin.

 

All the cleaning apparatus had vanished by the time he had dressed and gone into the living room again, and Shirl had her hair down and what looked like fresh makeup on. Though she was still wearing the shorts and top, for which he breathed a silent thanks. He had never seen a prettier—no, a more beautiful girl in his whole life. He wished he could tell her that, but it wasn’t the kind of thing he found it easy to say aloud.

 

“How about something cold to drink?” she asked.

 

“I’m supposed to be working—are you trying to corrupt me?”

“You can have a beer, I put some in the fridge. There are almost twenty bottles to finish and I don’t really like it.” She turned in the doorway and smiled. “Besides, you are working. You’re interviewing me. Aren’t I an important witness?”

 

The first sip of the cold beer cut a track of pleasure down his throat. Shirl sat down across from him and sipped at a cold kofee. “How is the case going, or is that an official secret?”

 

“Nothing secret, it goes slow like all cases. You shouldn’t let the TV fool you, police work isn’t at all like that. It’s mostly dull stuff, a lot of walking around, making notes, writing reports—and hoping a stoolie will bring you the answer.”

 

“I know what that is—a stool pigeon! There aren’t really stool pigeons, are there?”

 

“If there weren’t we would be out of business. Most of our pinches are made on tips from stoolies. Most crooks are stupid and have big mouths and when they start talking there is usually someone around to listen. I hope someone talks this time—because it looks like a next to impossible case if they don’t.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

He sipped some more beer; it was wonderful stuff. “There are over thirty-five million people in this town, and any one of them could have done it. I’ll start running down all the former building employees and questioning them, and I’ll try to find out where the tire iron came from, but long before I’m finished the people on top are going to stop worrying about O’Brien and I’ll be off the case and that will be that.”

 

“You sound sort of bitter.”

 

“You’re right—I am. Wouldn’t you be if you had a job you wanted to do, and liked doing, yet you were never allowed to do? We’re over our heads with work and have been ever since I came on the force. Nothing is ever finished, no cases are ever followed up, people really do get away with murder every day and no one seems to

mind. Unless there is some kind of political reason, like with Big Mike, and then no one rally cares about him, it’s just their own hides that they are worrying about.”

 

“Couldn’t they just hire some more policemen?”

 

“With what? There’s no money in the city budget, almost all of it goes for Welfare. So our pay is low, cops take bribes, and—you don’t want to hear a lecture about my troubles!” He drained the rest of the beer from the glass and she jumped to her feet.

 

“Here, let me get you another.”

 

“No, thanks, not on an empty stomach.” “Haven’t you eaten at all?”

“Grabbed a piece of weedcracker, I didn’t have time for anything more.”

 

“I’ll fix us some lunch. How about beefsteak?” “Shirl, stop it—you’ll give me heart failure.”

“No, I mean it. I bought a steak for Mike, the other morning of . . . that day. It’s still in the freezer.”

 

“I can’t remember the last time I had beef—in fact it has been a long time since I have seen a piece of soylent.” He stood and took both of her hands. “You’re taking very good care of me, you know?”

 

“I like to,” she said, and gave him another of those quick kisses. His hands were on the roundness of her hips when she turned and walked away.

 

She’s a funny girl, he thought to himself, and touched his tongue to the trace of lipstick on his lips.

 

Shirl wanted to eat in the living room at the big table, but there was a table built into the kitchen, under the window, and Andy could see no reason why they couldn’t sit right there. It was a steak all right, a

monster piece of meat as big as his hand, and he felt the saliva flow in his mouth when she slid it onto his plate.

 

“Fifty-fifty,” he said, slicing it in half and putting one piece on the other plate.

 

“I usually just fry some oatmeal in the juices. ”

 

“We’ll have that for dessert. This is the start of a new era, equal rights for men and women.” She smiled at him and slid into her chair without another word. Damn, he thought, for another look like that I’d give her the whole thing.

 

There was seacress with it, weedcrackers to sop up the gravy and another bottle of cold beer from which she allowed him to pour her a small glass. The meat was indescribably good and he cut it into very small pieces, savoring each one slowly. He could not remember having eaten as well in his entire life. When he had finished he sat back and sighed with contentment. It was good, yet it was almost too good, and he knew it wouldn’t last: he felt a little gnaw of irritation as the words dead man’s shoes flicked through his mind.

 

“I hope you didn’t mind, but I was more than a little drunk last night.” It sounded crude and he was sorry the instant he had said it.

 

“I didn’t mind at all. I thought you were very sweet.”

 

“Sweet! He laughed to himself. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but never that before. I thought you were angry at me ever since I came back.”

 

“I’ve been busy, that’s all, the place was a mess and you were hungry. I think I know what you need.”

 

She moved swiftly around the table and was on his lap, the whole womanly warm length of her and her arms were around his neck. It was a kiss, the kind he remembered, and he discovered that her halter was closed on the front by two buttons which he opened and pressed his face against the smooth fragrance of her skin.

“Let’s go inside,” she said huskily.

 

She lay next to him afterward, relaxed and without shame, while his fingers traced the outline of her splendid body. The occasional sounds that pierced the sealed window and closed curtains only emphasized the twilight solitude of the bedroom. When he kissed the corner of her mouth she smiled dreamily, her eyes half closed.

 

“Shirl . . .” he said, but could not continue. He had no practice in voicing his emotions. The words were there, but he could not say them aloud. Yet the way his hands moved on her skin conveyed his meaning more clearly than words could; her body trembled in response and she moved closer to him. There was a hoarseness in her voice, even though she whispered.

 

“You’re really good in bed, different—do you know that? You make me feel things that I have never felt before.” His muscles tightened suddenly and she turned to him.”Are you angry at that? Should I make believe that you are the only man I ever slept with?”

 

“No; of course not. It’s none of my business and doesn’t affect me.” The tautness of his body put the lie to his words.

 

Shirl rolled on her back and looked at the motes of dust glinting in the beam of light that came through the crack between the curtains. “I’m not trying to excuse anything, Andy, just to tell you. I grew up in one of those real strict families, I never went out or did anything and my father watched me all the time. I don’t think I minded very much, there was just nothing to do, that’s all. Dad liked me, he probably thought he was doing what was right for me. He was retired, they made him retire when he was fifty-five, and he had his pension and the money from the house, so he just sat around and drank. Then, when I was twenty, I entered this beauty contest and won first prize. I remember I gave my prize money to my father to take care of and that’s the last time I saw him. There was one of the judges, he had asked me for a date that night, so I went out with him, then I went to live with him.”

 

Just like that? Andy said to himself, but he didn’t say it aloud. He smiled at himself: what rights did he have?

“You’re not laughing at me?” she asked, touching her finger to his lips, a hurt in her voice.

 

“Good God, no! I was laughing at myself because—if you must know—I was being a little jealous. And I have no right to be.”

 

“You have every right in the world,” she said, kissing him slowly and lingeringly. “For me at least, this is very different. I haven’t known that many men, and they were all men like Mike. I was just sort of there, I felt. ”

 

“Shut up,” he said. “I don’t care.” He meant it. “I just care about you here and now and not another thing in the world.”

Chapter 10

 

Andy was almost to the bottom of his list, and his feet hurt. Ninth Avenue simmered in the afternoon sun and every patch of shadow was filled with sprawled figures, old people, nursing mothers, teen- agers with their heads close together, laughing with their arms about one another. People of all ages on every side, bare and dusty limbs projecting, scattered about like corpses in the aftermath of a battle. Only the children played in the sun, but they moved about slowly and their shouts were subdued. There was a fit of screaming and sudden movement as they eddied about two boys coming from the direction of the docks, whose arms were spotted with bites and streaks of uncongealed blood. On the end of a string they carried their prize, a large gray dead rat. They would eat well tonight. In the center of the crowded street the tugtruck trattic moved at a snail’s pace, the human draught animals leaning exhaustedly into their traces, mouths gaping for air. Andy pushed through between them, looking for the Western Union office.

It would be impossible to check every person who had gone in or out O’Brien’s apartment during the previous week, but he had to at least try the most obvious leads. Any visitor to the building could have discovered the disconnected burglar alarm in the cellar, but only someone who had been in the apartment could have seen that this alarm had been cut off as well. There had been a short circuit eight days before the murder, and the alarm on the door had been disconnected until it could be fixed. The killer, or some informant, could easily have seen this if he had been in the apartment. Andy had made a list of possibilities and was checking them out. They were all negative. No meter readers had visited the apartment, and all the deliveries had been made by men who had been coming there for years. Negative, all the way down the line.

Western Union was another long shot. There had been plenty of telegrams delivered to the building during that week, and the doorman was sure that some of them had been to O’Brien. He and the elevator boy had both remembered a telegram coming the night before the murder, it had been brought by a new messenger, a Chinese boy they had said. The chances were a thousand to one that it didn’t mean anything—but it still had to be checked out. Any lead at all, no matter how slight would have to be investigated.

Whatever happened it would at least be something to report to the lieutenant, to keep him off Andy’s neck for a while. The yellow and blue sign hung out over the sidewalk and he turned in under it.

 

A long counter divded the office and at the far end of it was a bench on which three boys were sitting. A fourth boy stood at the counter talking to the dispatcher. None of them was Chinese. The boy at the counter took a message board from the man there and went out. Andy walked over, but before he could say anything the man shook his head angrily.

 

“Not here,” he snapped. “Front counter for telegrams, can’t you see I’m the dispatcher?”

 

Andy looked at the sullen fatigue and the deep lines cut into the man’s face by the perpetually pulled-down corners of his mouth, and at the clutter of boards and chalk and washable teletype tape on the desk before him, the peeling gold paint on the little sign that said Mr. Burgger. All the years of bitterness were clear to see in the clutter of the desk and the hatred in his eyes. It would take patience to get any cooperation from this man. Andy flashed his badge.

 

“Police business,” he said. “You’re the man I want to talk to, Mr. Burgger.”

 

“I haven’t done anything, there’s nothing for you to talk to me about.”

 

“No one’s accusing you. It’s information I need to aid an investigation. ”

 

“I can’t help you. I don’t have any police information.”

“Let me decide that. Is Twenty-eighth Street inside your delivery area?”

 

Burgger hesitated, then nodded slowly and reluctantly as though he were being forced to reveal a state secret.

 

“Do you have any Chinese messenger boys?” “No.”

“But you have had at least one Chinese boy working for you?” “No.” He scratched on a board, ignoring Andy.

Perspiration beaded the top of his bald head and collected in droplets on the strands of gray hair. Andy didn’t enjoy putting on pressure, but he could do it when he had to.

 

“We have laws in this state, Burgger,” he said in a low, toneless voice. “I can drag you out of here right now and take you over to the station and throw you into the can for thirty days for interfering with an officer. Do you want me to do that?”

 

“I haven’t done anything!”

 

“Yes you have. You’ve lied to me. You said you never had a Chinese kid working here.”

 

Burgger squirmed in his seat, pulled two ways by the conflict between his fear and his desire to remain uncommitted. Fear won.

 

“There was a Chinese kid, worked just one day, never came back.” “What day was that?”

The answer came reluctantly. “Monday of this week.” “Did he deliver any telegrams?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Because that’s your job,” Andy said, putting a snap into his words again. “What telegrams did he deliver?”

 

“He sat around all day, I didn’t need him. It was his first day, I never send a new kid out the first day, let them get used to the bench first so they don’t get ideas. But we had a rush that night. I had to use him. Just once.”

 

“Where to?”

 

“Look, mister, I can’t remember every telegram I send out. This is a busy office and besides, we don’t keep records. A telegram is received, delivered, accepted, that’s the end of it.”

 

“I know all that, but this telegram is important. I want you to try and remember where it went. Was it to Seventh Avenue? Or Twenty- third Street? Chelsea Park . . .?”

 

“Wait, I think that was it. I remember I didn’t want the kid to go to Chelsea Park, they don’t like new kids there, just the regulars, but there was no one else in, so I had to use him.”

 

“Now we’re getting someplace,” Andy said, taking out his notepad. “What’s the kid’s name?”

 

“Some Chink name, I forget now. He was only here that one day and never came back.”

 

“What did he look like then?”

 

“Like a Chink kid. It’s not my job remembering what kids look like.” He was sinking back into his sullen hatred.

 

“Where did he live?”

 

“Who knows? Kid comes in and puts up his board money, that’s all I know. Not my job—”

 

“Nothing seems to be your job, Burgger. I’ll be seeing you again. Meanwhile try to remember what the kid looked like, I’ll want some more answers from you.”

The boys stirred on the bench when Andy went out and Burgger flashed them a look of pure hatred.

 

It was a thin lead, but Andy was cheerful; at least he had something to talk to Grassy about. Steve Kulozik was also in the lieutenant’s office when he went in, and they nodded to each other.

 

“How’s the case?” Steve asked.

 

“You can do your gossiping on your own time,” Grassioli broke in; the tic in his eye was going fine today, “You better have come up with something by now, Rusch, this is a case, not a holiday and a lot of brass up and down the line are getting peed off.”

 

Andy explained about the disconnected burglar alarm and the timing necessary for anyone to have visited the apartment. He quickly ran through the unproductive interviews he had had until he came to the Western Union boy: this he told in detail.

 

“So what does it add up to?” the lieutenant asked, both hands clasped on his stomach, over the spot where the ulcer was.

 

“The kid might have been working for someone. Messenger boys have to put up ten D’s board money—and how many kids have that kind of loot? The kid could have been brought in, maybe from Chinatown, and paid to snoop the apartments he brought telegrams to. He hit the jackpot first time out when he saw the disconnected alarm on Big Mike’s door. Then, whoever hired him pulled the job and the killing, after which they both faded.”

 

“Sounds pretty slim, but it’s about the only lead you’ve managed to come up with. What’s the kid’s name?”

 

“No one knows.”

 

“Well, what the hell!” Grassioli shouted. “You come up with this fancy damned complicated theory and where does it go if you can’t find the kid? There are millions of kids in this city—so how do we find the right one?”

Andy knew when to be silent. Steve Kulozik had been leaning his bulk against the wall, listening while Andy explained. “Could I say something, lieutenant?” he asked.

 

“What do you want?”

 

“Let’s just for a minute think of this whole case as being inside this precinct. The kid could have come from Chinatown or from anywheres, but let’s forget about that. Say he came from Shiptown, right here, and you know how those people are about sticking together, so maybe there’s another Chink who was using the kid.

Just suppose.”

 

“What are you trying to say, Kulozik? Get to the goddamn point.”

 

“I was just about to, lieutenant,” Steve said imperturably. “Let’s say the kid or his boss comes from Shiptown. If they do we may have fingerprints on them. It was before my time, but you were here in seventy’two, weren’t you, lieutenant, when they brought all the Formosa refugees in after General Kung’s invasion got its ass blown off on the mainland?”

 

“I was here. I was a rookie then.”

 

“Didn’t they fingerprint everybody, kids and all? Just in case some Commie agent slipped in with them before the airlift?”

 

“It’s a long shot,” the lieutenant said. “They were all fingerprinted and so were all the kids for a couple of years after that just in case they might defect. Those cards are all down in the cellar here.

That’s what you were thinking about, wasn’t it?”

 

“That’s right sir. Go through them and see if the prints from the murder weapon can be matched up with one of the cards. It’s a long shot, but it doesn’t hurt to try.”

 

“You heard him, Rusch,” Grassioli said, pulling over a stack of reports. “Get the weapon prints and get down there and see if you can find anything.”

“Yes, sir,” Andy answered, and he and Steve went out together. “Big buddy you are,” he told Steve as soon as the door had closed. “I should be knocking off soon and instead you got me buried in the cellar, and I’ll probably be there all night.”

 

“It’s not that bad,” Steve said complacently. “I had to use the file once, all the prints are coded so you can get to the ones you want fast. I’d help you except my brother-in-law is coming to dinner tonight.”

 

“The one you hate so much?”

 

“That’s the one. But he’s working on one of the fishing trawlers now, and he’s going to bring a fish he stole. Fresh fish. Doesn’t your mouth water?”

 

“Just for a bite out of your hide, you ratfink. I hope you get a bone stuck in your throat.”

 

The fingerprint files were not in quite the same condition that Steve had described. Others had used them since and whole groups of cards were filed out of sequence and one entire boxful had been spilled and afterward had just been jammed back in at random.

Though the basement was cooler than the rest of the building the air was filled with dust and felt almost too thick to breathe. Andy worked until nine o’clock before his head started to pound and his eyes burned. He went upstairs and put some water on his face and breathed in some fresh air. For a few moments he wavered between finishing the job or waiting until morning, but he had some idea of what Grassy would have to say about that, so he went back downstairs.

 

It was going on eleven o’clock when he found the card. He almost put it aside because the prints were so small, an infant’s, then he realized that children grew up and had a closer look at it through the scratched plastic magnifying lens.

 

There was no doubt at all. These prints were the same as the ones that had been found on the window and on the tire iron.

“ ‘Chung, William,’ ” he read. “ ‘Born 1982, Shiptown Infirmary . . .’ ”

 

He stood up so fast that he knocked the chair over. The lieutenant would be home by now, maybe in bed, and would be in a filthy humor if he was wakened. That didn’t matter.

 

This was it.

Chapter 11

 

Far out in the river a boat whistle blew, two times, then two times again, and the sound echoed from the steel flanks of the ships until it had no source or direction and became a mournful wail that filled the hot night. Billy Chung rolled back and forth on his lumpy mattress, wide awake after hours of lying there staring into the darkness. Against the far wall the twins breathed hoarsely in their sleep. The whistle sounded again, beating at his ears. Why hadn’t he just grabbed the stuff and got out of the apartment? He could have done it faster. Why did the big bastard have to come in just then? It was right he should have been killed, anyone as stupid as that. It had been self-defense, hadn’t it? He had been attacked first. The same memory repeated itself again like an endless circle of film in a projector: the iron bar swinging up, the look on the fat red face. The sight of the iron sticking out of his head and the thin trickle of blood. Billy writhed, tossing his head from one side to the other, his fingers pulling at the damp skin on his chest.

Was every night going to be like this? With the heat and the sweat and the memories, over and over again? If he hadn’t come into the bedroom just then . . . Billy groaned, then cut off the sound before it left his throat. He sat up and put his palms to his eyes, pressing hard until the jagged redness of their pressure filled the darkness before him. What about the dirt, should he use it now? He had bought it for a time like this, it had cost two D’s, maybe now was the right time. They said you couldn’t get hooked on it, but everybody lied.

 

Feeling his way in the darkness, he ran his hand up the armored cable on the steel wall to the disused junction box. The dirt was still there; his fingers pressed agains the scrap of polythene it was

wrapped in. Should he use it now? The whistle throbbed through the heat again and he found that he had dug his fingernails into the sides of his legs. His shorts were against the wall where he had thrown them and he pulled them on and reached down the little packet and went and opened the passageway door as quietly as he could. His bare feet were silent on the warm metal deck.

 

All of the portholes and windows were open, blind black eyes in the rust-streaked walls. People were sleeping there, on all sides, in every cabin and compartment. Billy climbed to the top deck and the blind eyes still gaped at him. The last ladder led up to the bridge, once sealed and in-violate before two generations of children had patiently picked away at the covers and shattered the locks. Now the door was gone, the frames and glass long vanished from the windows. During the day this was a favorite playground for the swarming children of the Columbia Victory, but it was deserted and silent now, the only reminder of their presence the sharp smell of urine in the corners. Billy went in.

 

Only the most solid of the nautical fittings remained: a steel chart table welded to one wall, the ship’s telegraph, the steering wheel with half of its spokes missing. Billy carefully opened the packet of dirt on the chart table and poked his finger into the gray dust that was barely visible in the starlight. What did they call it? LSD? It was cut anyway, whatever it was, that’s why they called it dirt. They mixed dirt or something with it to stretch it. You had to take all of it, dirt and all, to get enough LSD into you so you could feel it. He had watched Sam-Sam and some of the other Tigers sniff it, but he had never done it himself. How had they done it? He lifted the crumpled plastic and held it to his nose, sealing one nostril with his thumb, then inhaled strongly. The only sensation was an outrageous tickling and he pinched his nose shut tightly so he wouldn’t sneeze all the stuff away. When the irritation died down he snuffed the remaining powder into his other nostril and threw the scrap of thin plastic to the floor.

 

There was no sensation, nothing at all, the world was the same and Billy knew that he had been cheated. Two D’s shot, gone for nothing. He leaned out of the glassless, frameless window and

tears mixed with the perspiration on his face. He cried and thought about that for a while and thought how glad he was it was dark and no one could see him crying, not him, eighteen years old. Under his fingers the rough metal of the window opening had the feel of miniature mountain peaks and valleys. Jagged, smooth, soft, hard. He leaned close and stroked with his fingertips and the pleasure of the touch sent shivers of love running the length of his spine. Why had he never noticed this before? Bending, he put out his tongue and the sweet-sour-iron-dirt taste was so wonderful, and when he let the sharp front edges of his teeth touch the metal it felt as though he had bitten off a piece of steel half as big as the bridge.

 

A ship’s whistle filled the world with its sound, somewhere out on the river or close by, and he knew that it was more than a whistle, it was music, high, low and all around him and he opened his mouth wide so that he could taste it better. Was it his ship that had sounded the whistle? The dark outlines of spars, masts, wires, funnels, aerials, guys, stays, boats, moved on all sides of him, dancing black patterns against the other blackness of the sky. They were all sailing, of course, he had always known they would and this was the time. He signaled the engine room and grabbed the wheel—the wood of the handles so filling and round as tumescent organs, one for each hand!—turning and steering and sending the ship through the heaving forest of black skeletons.

 

And the crew worked too, good crew. He whispered orders to them because they were so good they could hear his orders even if he only thought them, not said them, and he wiped at his streaming nose. They were down below on the decks doing all the good things a good crew did while he guided the ship up here for all of them. They whispered as they toiled and two of them just below the bridge leaned together and he heard one ask “Everyone in position?” which was good to hear, and another said “Yes, sir,” which was good to hear and he could see some of his men moving on the decks and others at the gangplanks and others going below. In his hands the wheel felt strong and big and he kept it turning slowly back and forth guiding his ship through the other ships.

 

Lights. Voices. Below. People. On deck.

“He’s not in the apartment, lieutenant.”

 

“The bastard got away when he heard you coming.”

 

“Maybe, sir, but we had men at all the hatch ways and stairs. And on the connections to the other ships. He must still be on board. His mother said he went to bed same time as everyone else.”

 

“Well find him. You got half the damned force to catch one kid. So catch him.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

Catch him. Catch who? Why, catch him, of course. He knew who the people were down there, police, and they wanted him. They had found him the way he knew they would. But he didn’t want to go with them. Not when he was feeling like this. Did the dirt make him feel like this? Wonderful dirt. He would have to get more dirt. He didn’t know a lot of things, he knew a lot of things, one thing he knew the cops didn’t have dirt or give you dirt. No dirt?

 

The handrail creaked and heavy feet clanged up the stair to the bridge. Billy climbed onto the steel table and out through the side window on the other side, reached up and grabbed and pulled himself up and out. It was easy. And it felt good too.

 

“What a stink,” a voice said, then louder out of the window below, “He’s not up here, lieutenant.”

 

“Keep looking. Cover the ship, he has to be here someplace.”

 

The night air was warm enough and when he ran it felt solid enough to hold him up and he thought of walking over to the next ship, then he came to the funnel and this looked better. Bolted-on, curved steel rods rose up the side of the funnel making a ladder, and he climbed them.

 

“Did you hear something up there?”

One last rod and there was the top and the shouting black oval mouth of the smokestack black against the blackness beyond. He could go no farther, except inside, and he waved his arm over the nothingness and his foot slipped and for an instant he tottered and began to swim down the long black tunnel, then his hand struck against a bar inside: rough, rusted, coated with crumbling greasy darkness. Up and over he climbed until he half crouched on the bar and held the edge of the metal that formed the smokestack and looked up at the stars. He could notice them now that the voices were only a murmur far away like waves, and he had never seen stars like these before. Were there new stars? They were all different colors, colors he couldn’t remember ever having seen before.

 

His legs were cramped and his fingers stiff where they held the metal and he could no longer hear voices. At first he could not stand and he thought he might drop down the endless dark tunnel below him, and now it didn’t seem as good an idea as it had seemed before. By forcing, he finally straightened his legs and crawled over the metal of the top and found the rungs that climbed the smoothness of the painted metal.

 

When you are born on the ships and live on the ships, they are as a normal a world as streets, or any other. Billy knew that if you climbed out to the tip of the bow and hung and jumped you could land on the stern of the next ship along. And there were other ways of getting from ship to ship that avoided the gangways and walkways and he used them, even in the dark, without conscious thought, working his way toward shore. He was almost there when he became aware of the pain in his bare feet where he had walked along a rusted steel hawser and filled the soles with the sharp, rusty needles of wire ends. He sat and tried to get some of them out by touch. While he was sitting there, leaning against the rail, he began to shiver.

 

Memory was clear. He knew what he had heard and done, but only now was the true import beginning to penetrate. The police had found him and tracked him down, and it was only an accident that he had been topside and avoided them.

They were looking for him and they knew who he was!

 

The sky was gray behind the dark silhouette of the city when he reached the waterfront, far uptown toward the end of the row of hips. There seemed to be people near Twenty-third Street, but it was too dark to be sure.

 

He jumped to the dock and ran toward the row of sheds, a small soot-smeared figure, bare-footed and afraid. The shadows swallowed him up.

Chapter 12

 

The heat wave had gripped the city for such a long time that it was not mentioned any more, just endured. When Andy rode up in the elevator the operator, a thin, tired-looking boy, leaned against the wall with his mouth open, sweating into his already sodden uniform. It was just a few minutes past seven in the morning when Andy opened the door of apartment 41-E. When the outer door had closed behind him he knocked on the inner one, then made an exaggerated bow in the direction of the TV pickup. The lock rattled open and Shirl stood in the doorway, her hair still tangled from the bed, wearing only a sheer peignoir.

 

“It’s been days—” she said and came willingly into his arms while he kissed her. He forgot the plastic bundle under his arm and it dropped to the floor. “What’s that?” she asked, drawing him inside.

 

“Raincoat, I have to take it on duty in an hour, it’s supposed to rain today.”

 

“You can’t stay now?”

 

“Don’t I wish I could!” He kissed her soundly again and groaned, only half in humor. “A lot has been happening since I saw you last.”

 

“I’ll make some kofee, that won’t take long. Come and tell me in the kitchen.”

 

Andy sat and looked out of the window while she put the water up. Dark clouds filled the sky from horizon to horizon, so heavy that they seemed to be just above the rooftops of the buildings. “You

“Have you found the Chung boy?” she asked.

 

“No. He might be at the bottom of the river for all we know. It’s been over two weeks since he got away from us on the ship, and we haven’t found a trace of him since. We even got a paper priority and had identikit pictures printed with his fingerprints and description, then sent them around to all the precincts. I brought copies to Chinatown and all the nearby ones myself, and talked to the detectives there. At first we had a stakeout on the kid’s apartment, but we pulled that off and instead have a couple of stoolies who live on the ship—they’ll keep their eyes open and let us know if he shows, they’re not paid unless they see him. That’s about all we can do now.”

 

“Do you think you’ll catch him?”

 

Andy shrugged and blew on the cup of kofee she handed him. “There’s no way to tell. If he can stay out of trouble, or get out of town, we’ll never see him again. It’ll just be a matter of luck now, one way or the other. I wish we could convince City Hall of that.”

 

“Then—you’re still on the case?”

 

“Half and half, worse luck. The pressure is still on to find the kid, but Grassy managed to convince them that I could do just as well part time, running down whatever leads there are, and they agreed. So I’m supposed to be half time on this case and half time on squad duty. Which, if you know Grassy, means I’m full time on squad duty and the rest of the time I’m looking for Billy Chung. I’m getting to hate that kid. I wish he had been drowned and I could prove it.”

 

Shirl sat down across from him and sipped her kofee. “So that’s where you have been the past days.”

 

“That’s where I’ve been. On duty and up at Kensico Reservoir for two days, with no time to stop by here or even send you a message. I’m on day duty now and have to sign in by eight, but I had to see you first. Today’s the thirtieth. What are you going to do, Shirl?”

She just shook her head in silence and stared down at the table, the look of unhappiness sweeping across her face as soon as he had spoken. He reached over and took her hand but she did not notice, nor did she try to pull it away.

 

“I don’t like talking about it either,” he said. “These past weeks have been, well . . .” He switched the subject, he could not express all that he felt, not at this time, so suddenly. “Has O’Brien’s sister bothered you again?”

 

“She came back but they wouldn’t let her in the building. I said I didn’t want to see her and she caused a scene. Tab told me all the building staff enjoyed it very much. She wrote a note, said she would be here tomorrow since it is the last day of the month, to take everything away. I guess she can do that. Wednesday is the first, so the lease is up at midnight.”

 

“Do you have any plans about where . . . what you are going to do?” It sounded stiff and unnatural the way he said it, but he could not do any better.

 

Shirl hesitated, then shook her head no. “I haven’t been thinking about it at all,” she said. “With you here it was like a holiday and I just kept putting off worrying about it from one day to the next.”

 

“It was a holiday, all right! I hope we didn’t leave any beer or liquor for the Dragon Lady?”

 

“Not a spoonful!”

 

They laughed together. “We must have drunk a fortune in booze,” Andy said. “But I don’t regret a drop of it. What about the food?”

 

“Just some weedcrackers left—plus enough other things to make one big meal. I have tilapia in the freezer. I was hoping that we could eat it together, sort of a finishing-off party or a housecooling party, instead of a housewarming party.”

 

“I can do it if you don’t mind eating late. It could even be midnight.”

“That’s fine by me, it might be more fun that way.”

 

When Shirl was happy every inch of her showed it. He had to smile when she did. New highlights seemed to glisten in her hair and it was as though happiness were a substance that flowed through her and radiated in all directions. Andy felt it and was buoyed up by it, and he knew if he didn’t ask her now he never would be able to.

 

“Listen, Shirl—” He took both her hands in his and the warmth of her touch helped a good deal. “Will you come with me? You can stay at my place. There’s not much room, but I’m not home much to get in the way. It’s all yours for as long as you like.” She started to say something but he hushed her with his finger to her lips. “Wait a second before you answer. There are no strings attached. This is temporary—for as long as you want it. It’s nothing like Chelsea Park, just a crummy walk-up, half a single room, and . . .”

 

“Will you be quiet!” she laughed. “I’ve been trying to say yes for hours now and you seem to be trying to talk me out of it.”

 

“What . . .?”

 

“I don’t want anything in this world except to be happy, and I’ve been happier these weeks with you than I ever was at any time in my life before. And you can’t frighten me with your apartment, you should see where my father lives, and I was there until I was nineteen.”

 

Andy managed to get around the table without knocking it over and was hugging her to him. “And I have to be in the precinct in fifteen minutes,” he complained. “But wait for me here, it could be any time after six, but it’s sure to be late. We’ll have the party, and afterward we’ll move your stuff. Do you have very much?”

 

“It’ll all fit in three suitcases.”

 

“Perfect. We’ll carry it, or we can use a cab. I have to get going.” His voice changed, became almost a whisper. “Give me a kiss.” She did, warmly, sharing his feelings.

It took a heroic effort to leave, and before he went he ran through all the possible excuses he might give for being late, but he knew that none of them would satisfy the lieutenant. When he came into the lobby he was aware for the first time of a thundering, drumming noise and saw the doorman, Tab, and four of the guards crowded around the front door, looking out. They made way for him when he came over.

 

“Now just look at that,” Charlie said. “That should change things.”

 

The far side of the street was almost invisible, cut off by a falling curtain of water. It poured down on the roofs and sidewalks, and the gutters were already filled with a rushing, debris-laden torrent. Adults huddled in the doorways and halls for protection, but the children saw this as a holiday and were running and screaming, sitting on the curb and kicking their legs in the filthy stream.

 

“Soon as the storm sewers block up, that water’ll be a couple of feet deep. Drown a few of those kids,” Charlie said.

 

“Happens every time,” Newton, the building guard, agreed, nodding with morbid satisfaction. “The little ones get knocked down and no one even knows about it until after the rain.”

 

“Could I see you a moment, please?” Tab said, tapping Andy on the arm and walking off to one side. Andy followed him, shrugging into the sticking folds of his raincoat.

 

“Tomorrow’s the thirty-first,” Tab said. He reached out and held the coat while Andy struggled his hand into the sealed-together arm of the coat.

 

“I guess you’ll be looking for another job then,” Andy said, thinking about Shirl and the hammering rain outside.

 

“That’s not what I meant,” Tab said, and as he talked he turned away to look out of the window. “It’s Shirl, she’ll be leaving the apartment tomorrow, she’ll have to. I heard that the old bat sister of Mr. O’Brien’s has hired a tugtruck, she’s moving all the furniture out first thing in the morning. I wish I knew what Shirl was going to do.”

His arms were folded across his chest and he brooded out at the falling rain with the solidity of a carved statue.

 

It’s none of his business, Andy thought. But he has known her a lot longer than I have.

 

“Are you married, Tab?” he asked.

 

Tab glanced at him out of the corners of his eyes and snorted. “Married man, happily married and three kids and I wouldn’t change if you offered me one of those TV queens with the knockers big as fire hydrants.” He looked closely at Andy, then smiled. “Nothing there for you to worry about. I just like the kid. She’s just a nice kid, that’s all. I’m worried what’s going to happen to her.”

 

There’s no secret, Andy thought, realizing this wasn’t the first time the question would be asked.

 

“She’s going to be staying with me,” he said. “I’m coming over later tonight to help her move.” He glanced at Tab, who nodded seriously.

 

“That’s very good news. I’m glad to hear that. I hope things work out okay, I really do.”

 

He turned back to look at the rain and Andy looked at his watch and saw that it was almost eight and hurried out. The air was cool, cooler than the lobby, the temperature must have dropped ten degrees since the rain had begun. Maybe this was the end of the heat wave; it had certainly lasted long enough. There were already a few inches of water in the moat and the surface was dimpled and ringed by the falling drops. Before he had crossed the drawbridge to the street he felt the water run into his shoes; his pants legs were sopping and his wet hair was plastered to his head. But it was cool and he didn’t mind, and even the thought of the perpetually annoyed Grassioli didn’t seem to bother him too much.

 

It rained the rest of the day, which, in every other way, was like any other day. Grassioli chewed him out twice personally, and included him in a general berating of the entire squad. He investigated two

holdups, and another that was combined with felonious assault that would soon be changed to manslaughter or murder, since the victim was rapidly dying from a knife wound in his chest. There was more work piled up than the squad could get through in a month, and new cases coming in all the time while they plodded away at the backlog. As he had expected he didn’t leave at six, but a phone call took the lieutenant away at nine o’clock and all of the day squad still on duty—in spite of Grassioli’s parting threats and warnings—had vanished ten minutes later. The rain was still falling, though not so heavily as before, and the air felt cool after the weeks of continuous heat. As he walked along Seventh Avenue, Andy realized that the streets were almost empty, for the first time this summer. A few people were out in the rain and there were dark forms huddled in every doorway, but the sidewalks and streets were strangely vacant. Climbing the stairs in his building was worse than usual, the people who normally crowded the stoop and curb were sitting here, some of them even lying asleep across the steps. He pushed by them and stepped over the recumbent ones, ignoring their mumbled curses. This was an indication of what it would be like in the fall unless the building owner hired bodyguards to drive the squatters out. It was scarcely worth it any more, there were so many of them, and they just came right back when the guards left.

 

“You’ll ruin your eyes looking at that thing all the time,” he told Sol when he came in. The old man lay on the bed propped up by pillows, watching a war film on TV. Cannon fire thundered scratchily from the speaker.

 

“My eyes were ruined before you were born, Mr. Wiseguy, and I can still see better than ninety-nine per cent the fogies my age. Still working union hours, I see.”

 

“Find me a better job and I’ll quit,” Andy said, turning on the light in his room and digging through the bottom drawer. Sol came in and sat on the edge of the bed.

 

“If you’re looking for your flashlight,” he said, “you left it on the table the other day. I meant to tell you, I put it in your top drawer there, under the shirts.”

“You’re better than a mother to me.”

 

“Yeah, well, don’t try to borrow no money, son.”

 

Andy put the flash in his pocket and knew that he would have to tell Sol now. He had been putting it off and he wondered why it bothered him. After all, this room was all his, they shared food rations and meals because it made things easier, that was all. It was just a working arrangement.

 

“I’ve got someone coming to stay with me for a while, Sol. I’m not sure how long.”

 

“It’s your room, buddy-boy. Do I know the guy?” “Not exactly. Anyway it’s not a guy—”

“Hoo-ha! That explains it all.” He snapped his fingers. “Not the chick, Big Mike’s girl, the one you been seeing?”

 

“Yes, that’s the girl. Her name’s Shirl.”

 

“A fancy name, a fancy girl,” Sol said, heaving to his feet and going toward the door. “Very fancy. Watch out you don’t get your fingers burned, buddy-boy.”

 

Andy started to say something but Sol was out of the room and closing the door behind himself. A little harder than necessary. He was looking at the TV again when Andy left and did not glance away from it or say anything.

 

It had been a long day and Andy’s feet hurt and his neck hurt and his eyes burned; he wondered why Sol was being sore. He had never met Shirl—so what did he have to complain about? Tramping crosstown through the slowly falling rain, he thought about Shirl and without realizing it, began to whistle. He was hungry and he was tired and he wanted to see her very much. The turrets and spires of Chelsea Park rose before him through the rain and the doorman nodded and touched his cap to Andy as he hurried across the drawbridge.

Shirl opened the door for him and she was wearing the silver dress, the same one that she had been wearing that first night, with a tiny white apron tied over it. There was a silver clip holding her copper hair in place and a matching silver bracelet on her right arm, and rings on both her hands.

 

“Don’t get me wet,” she said, leaning over to kiss him. “I’ve got all my good things on for the party.”

 

“And I look like a bum,” he said, peeling off the dripping raincoat.

 

“Nonsense. You look like you’ve had a hard day in the office or whatever you call that place where you work. You need a party. Hang that thing in the shower and dry your hair before you catch a cold, then come into the living room. I have a surprise.”

 

“What is it?” he called after her receding back.

 

“If I told you it wouldn’t be a surprise,” she said with devastating female logic.

 

Shirl had the apron off and was waiting for him in the living room, standing proudly by the dining table. Two tall candles reflected highlights from the silverware, china plates and crystal glasses. A white tablecloth hung in thick folds. “And that’s not all,” Shirl said, pointing to the end table where the neck of a bottle projected from a silver bucket.

 

Andy saw that the bottle had wires over the top and around the neck, and that the bucket was full of ice cubes and water. He took out the bottle and held the label to the light so that he could read it aloud.

 

“ ‘Frenchwine Champagne—a rare, selected, effervescent beverage of great vintage. Artifically colored, flavored, sweetened and carbonated.’ ” He placed it carefully back into the bucket. “We used to have wine in California when I was a kid and my father let me taste it, but I don’t remember it at all. You’re going to spoil me, Shirl, with this kind of stuff. And you were kidding me—you said

that we had finished all the drink in the house—and all the time you had this tucked away.”

 

“I did not! I bought that today, special for this party. Mike’s liquor man came around, he’s from Jersey and didn’t even know what had happened to Mike.”

 

“It must have cost a fortune—”

 

“Not as bad as you think. I sold him back all the empty bottles and he gave me a special price. Now open it, for goodness’ sake, and let’s try it.”

 

Andy wrestled with the wire over the cork. He had seen them open bottles like this on TV, but it looked a lot easier than it really was. He worked it off finally and there was a satisfactory bang that shot the cork across the room, while Shirl caught the foaming wine in the glass that she held ready, just as the liquor man had instructed her.

 

“Here’s to us,” she said, and they raised their glasses. “This is very good, I’ve never tasted anything like it before.”

“You’ve never tasted anything like this dinner before, either,” she said and hurried to the kitchen. “Now sit down and sip your wine and look at TV, it’ll only be a few minutes more.”

 

The first course was lentil soup, but with a richer and better flavor than usual. Meat stock, Shirl explained, she had saved it from the steak. There was a white sauce on the broiled tilapia, which were scattered with green flecks of cress and served with dumplings of weedcracker meal and a seacress salad. The wine went with everything and Andy was sighing with contentment and a pleasurable sense of unaccustomed fullness when Shirl brought in kofee and dessert, a flavored agar-agar gelatine with soymilk on it. He groaned, but he had no trouble eating it.

 

“Do you smoke tobacco?” she asked as she cleared the table.

He leaned back in the chair, eyes half closed and utterly relaxed. “Not on a cop’s salary, I don’t. Shirl, you are an absolute genius in the kitchen. I’ll be spoiled if I eat too much of your cooking.”

 

“Men should be spoiled, it makes them easier to live with. It’s too bad you don’t smoke, because I found two cigars left in a box that Mike had hidden away, he saved them for special guests.”

 

“Take them to the flea market, you’ll get a good price.” “No, I couldn’t do that, it doesn’t seem right.”

Andy sat up. “If you want to do something, I know that Sol used to smoke, he’s the guy I told you about, who lives in the adjoining room. It might cheer him up. He’s a pretty good friend of mine.”

 

“That’s a wonderful idea,” she said, sensing the edge of concern in Andy’s words. Whoever this Sol was, she wanted him to like her, living right in the next room like that. “I’ll put them into my suitcase.” She carried the loaded tray into the kitchen.

 

When the dishes were cleaned she went to finish her packing in the bedroom, and called Andy in to help her get the last case down from the top shelf. She had to change for the street and he helped her with the zipper on her dress and this had just the effect she hoped it would have.

 

It was after midnight when the last bag was packed and she had put on her gray street dress and was ready to leave.

 

“Did you forget anything?” Andy asked.

 

“I don’t think so, but I’ll have a last look around.”

 

“Shirl, when you came here, moved in, I mean, did you bring any towels or bed linen or anything like that with you?” He pointed toward the rumpled bed and seemed uncomfortable about something.

 

“No, nothing like that, I just had a bag with some clothes in it.”

“I was just hoping that you owned some of these sheets. You see— well, I only have one, and it’s getting old, and they cost a fortune these days, even used ones.”

 

She laughed. “You sound like you’re planning to spend a lot of time in bed. Now that you remined me. I remember, two of these sheets are mine.” She opened her bag and began swiftly to fold and pack them away. “He owed me at least this much.”

 

Andy carried the suitcases into the hall and rang for the elevator. Shirl stood for a moment, watching as the apartment door closed, then hurried after him.

 

“Doesn’t he ever sleep?” Andy asked as they crossed the lobby toward Charlie, who stood at his post by the front door.

 

“I’m not sure,” Shirl said. “He always seems to be around when something is happening.”

 

“Hate to see you leaving, Miss Greene,” Charlie said as they came up. “I can take the keys to the apartment now, if you want me to.”

 

“You better give her a receipt,” Andy said as she handed the keys over.

 

“Be happy to,” Charlie said imperturbably, “if I had anything to write on.”

 

“Here, put it in my notepad,” Andy said. He looked over the doorman’s shoulder and saw Tab coming out of the guardoom.

 

“Tab—what are you doing here at this time of night?” Shirl asked.

 

“Waiting for you. I heard you were leaving and I thought I’d give you a hand with your bags.”

 

“But it’s so late.”

 

“Last day of the job. Got to finish it off right. And you don’t want to be seen walking around this time of the night with suitcases. Plenty

of people will cut your throat for less.” He picked up two of the bags and Andy took the third.

 

“Hope someone does bother me,” she said. “A high-priced bodyguard and a city detective—just to walk me a couple of blocks.”

 

“We’d wipe the street with them,” Andy said, taking back his notebook and leading the way through the door Charlie held open.

 

When they went out the rain had stopped and stars could be seen through holes in the clouds. It was wonderfully cool. She took each of the men by an arm and led the way down the street, out of the pool of light in front of Chelsea Park and into the darkness.

Chapter 13

 

It had been strange climbing the stairway in the dark, sweeping the light over the sleeping figures on the stairs while Andy carried the bags up behind her. His friend Sol had been asleep, and they had gone quietly through his room into Andy’s. The bed was just big enough for both of them and she had been tired and curled up with her head on his shoulder and slept so soundly that she didn’t even know it when he had gotten up, dressed and left. She awoke to see the sun streaming through the window onto the foot of the bed and, when she kneeled with her elbows on the windowsill, she smelt the clean, fresh-washed air; the only time the city was ever like this was after a rainstorm. With all the dust and soot washed away it was wonderfully clear, and she could see the sharpedged buildings of Bellevue rising above the lower jumble of tar-black roofs and stained brick walls. And the heat was gone, vanished with the rain, that was the best part. She yawned pleasurably and turned back to look at the room.

Just what you would expect from a bachelor, neat enough—but as empty of charm as an old shoe. There was a thin patina of dust on everything, but that was probably her fault since Andy certainly had not been spending much time here of late. If she could get some paint somewhere, a coat of it wouldn’t do that dresser any harm. It couldn’t have been more gouged and nicked if it had been in a landslide. At least there was a full-length mirror, cracked but still good, and a wardrobe to hang her things in. There was nothing to complain about, really, a little brightening up and the room would be nice. And get rid of those million spider webs on the ceiling.

 

A water tank with a faucet was on the partition wall next to the door, and when she turned it on, a thin brownish stream tinkled into the

basin that was fixed on brackets beneath it. It had the sharp chemical smell that she had almost forgotten, since all the water in Chelsea Park was run through expensive filters. There didn’t seem to be any soap here but she splashed water on her face and rinsed her hands, and was drying them on the tattered towel that hung next to the tank when a clanking, squealing sound came through the partition in front of her. She couldn’t imagine what it possibly could be, though it was obviously coming from the room next door where Sol lived. Something of his was making the noise, and it hadn’t started until after he heard her moving around and running the water, which was nice of him. It also meant that, as far as sound went, this room had as much privacy as a birdcage. Well, that couldn’t be helped. She brushed her hair, put on the same dress she had worn the night before, then added just a touch of makeup. When she was ready she took a deep breath and opened the door.

 

“Good morning—” she said, and could think of nothing else to say, but just stood there in the doorway, trying not to gape. Sol was sitting on a wheelless bicycle, going nowhere—but going at a tremendous rate, his gray hair flying in all directions and his beard bobbing up and down on his chest as he pedaled. His single garment was a pair of ancient and much-patched shorts. The squealing sound came from a black object at the rear of the bicycle. “Good morning!” she called again, louder this time, and he glanced up at her and his pedaling slowed to a stop. “I’m Shirl Greene,” she said.

 

“And who else could you be,” Sol said coldly, climbing down from the bike and wiping the sweat from his face with his forearm.

 

“I’ve never seen a bicycle like that before. Does it do something?” She wasn’t going to fight with him, no matter how much he wanted to.

 

“Yeah. It makes ice.” He went to put his shirt on.

 

At first she thought it was one of these deep jokes, the kind she never understood, then she saw that wires led from the black

motorlike thing behind the bike to a lot of big batteries on top of the refrigerator.

 

“I know,” she said, happy at her discovery. “You’re making the fridge go with the bike. I think that’s wonderful.” His only answer was a grunt this time, no remarks, so she knew she was making headway. “Do you like kofee?”

 

“I wouldn’t know. It’s been so long since I tasted any.”

 

“I’ve got a half a can in my bag. If we had some hot water we could make some.” She didn’t wait for an answer but went into the other room and got the can. He looked at the brown container for a moment, then shrugged and went to fill a pot with water.

 

“I bet it tastes like poison,” he said as he put the pot on the stove. First he turned on the hanging light in the middle of the room and studied the glowing filament in the bulb, then nodded begrudgingly. “Just for a change we got some juice today, so let’s hope it lasts long enough to boil a half inch of water.” He switched on the electric heating element of the stove.

 

“I’ve only been drinking kofee the last couple of years,” Shirl said, sitting in the chair by the window. “They tell me it doesn’t taste a thing like real coffee, but I wouldn’t know.”

 

“I can tell you. It don’t.”

 

“Have you ever tasted real coffee? More than once?” She had never met a man yet who didn’t enjoy telling about his experiences.

 

“Taste it? Honeybunch, I used to live on it. You’re a kid, you’ve got no idea how things used to be in the old days. You drank three, four cups, maybe even a whole pot of coffee and never even thought about it. I was even coffee poisoned once, my skin turned brown and everything, because I used to drink up to twenty cartons a day. A champion coffee drinker, I could of won medals.”

 

Shirl could only shake her head in admiration, then sipped at the kofee. It was still too hot. “I just remembered,” she said, jumping up

from the chair and going into the other room. She was back in a moment and gave the two cigars to Sol. “Andy said I should give these to you, that you used to smoke them.”

 

Sol’s air of masculine superiority fell away and he almost gaped. “Cigars?” was all he could say.

 

“Yes, Mike had a box of them, but there were just these two left. I don’t know if they are any good or not.”

 

Sol groped for memory of the cigar ritual that had once controlled a judgment of this kind. He sniffed suspiciously at the end of one. “Smells like tobacco at least.” When he held it to his ear and pinched the smaller end there was a decided crackling sound. “Aha! Too dry. I might have known. You got to take care of cigars, keep them in the right climate. These are all dried out. They should have been in a humidor. They can’t be smoked this way.”

 

“Do you mean they’re no good? We’ll have to throw them away?” It was a terrible thought.

 

“Nothing like that, relax. I’ll just take a box, put a wet sponge in it along with these stogies and wait three, four days. One thing about cigars, if they dry out you can bring them back to life just like Lazarus, or better maybe, he couldn’t have been smelling too good after being buried four days. I’ll show you how to take care of these.”

 

Shirl sipped her kofee and smiled. It was going to be all right. Sol just hadn’t liked the idea of someone coming to stay with Andy, it must have upset him. But he was a nice guy and had some funny stories and a funny, sort of old-fashioned way of talking, and she knew that they were going to get along.

 

“This stuff doesn’t taste too bad,” Sol said, “if you can forget what real coffee tastes like. Or Virginia ham, or roast beef, or turkey.

Boy, could I tell you about turkey. It was during the war and I was stationed at the ass-end of Texas and all the food was sent out of St. Louis and we were right on the end of the supply line. What reached us was so bad I saw mess sergeants shudder when they

opened the GI cans the stuff was shipped in. But once, just once it worked the other way around. These Texans raise billions of turkeys down there on ranches, then ship them north for Christmas and Thanksgiving, you know.” She nodded, but she didn’t know. “Well, the war was on and there was no way to ship all these turkeys out, so the Air Corps bought them for next to nothing and that’s what we had to eat for about a month. I tell you! We had roast turkey, fried turkey, turkey soup, turkey burgers, turkey hash, turkey croquettes. ”

 

There was the sound of running footsteps in the hall and someone rattled the knob so loudly that the door shook. Sol quietly slipped open the table drawer and took out a large meat cleaver.

 

“Sol, are you there?” Andy called from the hall, shaking the handle again. “Open up.”

 

Sol threw the cleaver onto the table and hurried over to unlock the door. Andy pushed in, sweating and breathing hard, closing the door behind him and talking in a low voice despite his urgency.

 

“Listen, fill the water tanks and all the jerry cans. And fill whatever else we have that will hold water. Maybe you can plug the sink, then you can put water in that too. Fill as many jerry cans as you can at our water point, but if they begin to notice you coming back too often, go to the other one on Twenty-eighth Street. But get going. Sol—Shirl will help you.”

 

“What’s it all about?”

 

“Christ, don’t ask questions, just do it! I shouldn’t be telling you this much—and don’t let on I did or we’ll all be in trouble. I have to get back before they find me missing.” He went out as fast as he came in, the slammed door an echo to his receding footsteps.

 

“What was all that about?” Shirl asked.

 

“We’ll find out later,” Sol said, kicking into his sandals. “Right now we get moving. This is the first time Andy has ever pulled anything

like this and I’m an old man—scare easy. There’s another jerry can in your room.”

 

They were the only ones who appeared concerned in any way and Shirl wondered what Andy could have possibly meant. There were only two women waiting in line at the corner water point, and one of them only wanted to fill a quart bottle. Sol helped to carry the filled jerry cans, but Shirl insisted on taking them up the stairs. “Work some of the fat off my hips,” she said. “I’ll bring down the empties and you can get back in line while I pour out the others.”

 

The line was a little longer now, but there was nothing unusual about it, this was the time when most people started to show up to make sure they had their water before the point closed at noon.

 

“You must be thirsty, Pop,” the patrolman on duty said when they reached the head of the line again. “Ain’t you been around before?”

 

“So what’s your trouble?” Sol snapped, pointing his beard at the cop. “All of a sudden you’re being paid to count the house? Maybe I like to take a bath once in a while so I don’t stink like some people I could mention, but I won’t. ”

 

“Take it easy, grandpa.”

 

“. I’m not your gradpa, shmok, since I haven’t committed suicide

yet, which I would if I was. All of a sudden cops got to count how much water people need?”

 

The policeman retreated a yard and half turned his back. Sol filled the containers, still grumbling, and Shirl helped carry them to one side to screw the lids back on. They had just finished when a police sergeant pulled up on a sputtering motorbike.

 

“Lock this point up,” he said. “It’s closed for the day.”

 

The women who were waiting to fill their containers screamed at him and pushed forward around the spigot, getting in each other’s way and trying to get some water before it was closed down. The patrolman fought his way through the shouting crowd to turn the

valve handle. Even before he touched it the water hiccoughed, died to a thin trickle, then stopped, He glanced at the sergeant.

 

“Yeah, that’s the trouble,” the sergeant said. “There’s a . . . broken pipe, they had to shut down. It’ll be all right tomorrow. Now break this up.”

 

Sol looked wordlessly at Shirl as they picked up the jerry cans, then turned away. Neither of them had missed the hesitancy in the sergeant’s voice. This was something more than a broken pipe.

They carried the containers slowly up the stairs, careful not to spill a drop.

Chapter 14

 

Even though the cops knew who he was and were after him, luck was on his side, that’s what Billy Chung kept telling himself.

Sometimes he would forget it for a while and the shakes would come back and he would have to start thinking all about the luck again. Hadn’t the cops come when he was out of the apartment— wasn’t that luck? And he had gotten away without being seen, that was luck too. What if he had to leave everything behind? He had put his shorts on, and just the day before he had sewed all his money into them because he was afraid of losing it out of his shoe. So he had the loot, and loot was all you really needed. He had run, but he had run smart, going to the flea market in Madison Square first and waking up one of the guys who slept under his stall and buying sandals. Then he headed downtown, out of the district, keeping moving. When the water points opened he had washed up, then bought an old shirt from another stall, and some weedcrackers, and ate them while he walked. It was still early when he got to Chinatown, but the streets were already filling up, and all he had to do was find a clear spot against a wall, curl up and go to sleep.

When he woke up he knew that he couldn’t stay here, this would be the first place that the cops would try, he had to move on. Some of the locals who lived in the street were already beginning to give him funny looks and he knew if his description was out they’d finger him in a minute for a couple of D’s. He had heard once that there were some Chinese over on the East Side and he headed that way. If he stayed anywhere too long he would be noticed, and as long as it was this hot it didn’t matter where he slept. It hadn’t been a conscious plan in the beginning but in a few days he discovered that if he moved around while the streets were crowded no one

paid any attention to him, and he could even sleep during the day, and some at night too if he could find a quiet spot. No one ever noticed him as long as he stopped some place where there were other Chinese in the area. He kept moving and it kept him busy, this way he didn’t worry too much about what was going to happen to him. It would be all right as long as his money lasted. And then . .

. He didn’t like to think about what would happen then, so he didn’t.

 

It was the rainstorm that made him decide that he had to find a place to hole up. He had been caught in it and got soaked and at first it wasn’t bad at all, but just at first. Along with thousands more of the homeless he had sought shelter under the high, soaring roadways of the Williamsburg Bridge, and even here it wasn’t very dry with every change in the wind blowing in sheets of rain. He was wet and cold the whole night, he didn’t sleep at all, and in the morning he climbed the stairway to the bridge to get into the sun.

Ahead of him the walkway stretched out over the river and he walked along it to keep warm, into the face of the rising sun. He had never been this high before and it was completely new, looking down on the river and the city like this. A gray nuclear freighter was moving slowly upstream and all the rush of sail and rowboat traffic scurried away before it. When he looked down he had to hold tight to the railing.

 

Halfway across he realized that he was out of Manhattan—for the first time in his life—and all he had to do was keep going and the police would never find him. Brooklyn lay ahead of him, a jagged wall of strange outlines against the sky, a wholly new and frightening place. He didn’t know anything about it—but he could find out. The police would never think of looking for him this far away, never in a hundred years.

 

Once he was off the bridge the fear ebbed slowly away—this was just like Manhattan only with different people, different streets. His clothes were dry now and he felt all right, except that he was tired and very sleepy. The streets went on and on, crowded and noisy with people, and he followed them at random until he came to a high wall that stretched all along one side of the road and seemed endless. He followed it, wondering what was on the other side, until

he reached a sealed, iron gate with rusty barbed wire strung over the top of it so you couldn’t climb over. BROOKLYN NAVY YARD— KEEP OUT a weathered sign read. Through the bars of the gate Billy could see a wasteland of sealed buildings, empty sheds, rusting mountains of scrap, pieces of ships, broken hills of concrete and rubble. A potbellied guard in a gray uniform walked by inside, he carried a heavy night stick, almost a club, and he looked suspiciously at Billy, who let go of the gate and walked on.

 

Now that was something. Looked like a hundred miles of land in there and no people at all, closed up and forgotten. If he could get in there without the cop seeing him he could hide forever in a place like that. If there was a way to get in. He kept walking along the wall, until the solid stone and concrete gave way to a chain-link fence, rusty and drooping. More barbed wire topped it, but it was clumped rustily together and torn away in spots. This was a piece of street where there weren’t too many people, either, just blank walls of old warehouses. It wouldn’t be hard getting over the fence here.

 

That he wasn’t the first person with this kind of idea was proven a minute later, while he was studying the fence. There was a stirring of motion on the other side and a man, not much older than he was, ran into sight. He stopped a minute, looking up and down the street outside to be sure no one was too close, then bent to the bottom of the wire fence and pushed a jagged boulder of broken concrete under it. Then, in a practiced, wriggling motion, he crawled under the fence, pushed away the supporting chunk of concrete so that the fence dropped down again, rose to his feet and walked off down the street.

 

Billy waited until he was out of sight, then went over to the spot. A shallow impression had been scratched into the ground at this point, not deep enough to draw attention, but deep enough to crawl through when the bottom of the fence was propped up. He pulled the concrete into place as the other had done, looked around—no one in sight was paying any attention to him—and then slipped under. There was nothing to it. He kicked the concrete away so that the fence fell, then ran quickly to the shelter of the nearest building.

There was something frightening about these acres of empty silence; he had never been this alone before, without others somewhere close by. He walked slowly now, pressed against the sunwarmed bricks of the building, pausing and peering out cautiously when he came to the corner. Ahead was a wide, wreckage-strewn avenue of emptiness. Just as he started across there was a movement far down the street and he fell back to the wall as a gray-uniformed guard passed slowly across. When he was gone, Billy hurried in the opposite direction, taking shelter in the shadows of the rusted steel beams of a floating dry dock.

 

From wreckage to ruin he went on, looking for some shelter he could crawl into, to hide and sleep. There were other guards about but they were easy to spot; they stayed on the wider avenues and never came near the buildings. If he could find a way inside one of the locked structures he would be safe enough from discovery. One of them looked promising, a long, low building with a collapsed roof and glassless windows. It was sided with slabs of asbestos sheeting and many of the panels were cracked and one of them had been almost completely torn away. He came close and looked in and could see only darkness. The fallen roof was only a few feet above the floor, making a dark and silent cavern. This was just what he needed. He yawned and crawled through the opening. The big chunk of iron caught him in the side and he screamed in agony.

 

The darkness filled with red tongues of pain as he scrambled backward out of the opening, hurling himself to one side.

Something heavy rushed through the air next to his head and crashed into the wall, cracking and splintering it. Billy stumbled to his feet, away from the entrance, but no one tried to follow him.

There was only silence within the dark opening as he hobbled away as fast as he could, favoring his side, glancing back fearfully at the building. When he turned a corner and it was out of sight he stopped and pulled up his shirt, looking at the scratched rawness just below his ribs that was already starting to turn black-and-blue. It didn’t seem to be more than a bad bruise, but how it hurt.

 

Something to fight with, that’s what he needed. Not that he was going back to that building—never!—he was just going to need a

weapon of some kind in this place. There were shattered chunks of concrete around and he picked up one that fitted into his hand, and even had a broken stub of rusty reinforcing rod sticking out of it.

Lots of other people must have had the idea to hide in here, he should have known that when he saw the guy who came out under the fence. They stayed out of sight of the guards, that seemed easy enough to do. Then they found a place and took it over, keeping anyone else out, that’s how it would be. There might be a way into every one of these buildings, and there might be someone hiding in each one. He shivered as he thought of this and pressed his hand to his sore side and moved away from the shelter of the building.

Maybe he should get out of here while he was still in one piece? But this was too good a spot to leave. If he did find a place to hole up it would be perfect, just what he needed. He should look around some more before he got out. And find something better than this lump of concrete to fight with. He searched as he walked and realized that, in spite of the ruined and crumbled landscape, there was nothing lying about that was small and handy enough to use for a weapon. It was as if many others had been through here before him, bent on the same mission. Clutching the concrete tighter, he limped on.

 

A little later, he wanted to escape this collapsing and rusted jungle, but he had lost his way and could not get out. The sun was hot on the top of his head, bouncing up from the cracked pavement around him. He walked along the brink of a vast and silent dry dock, empty and forgotten, a canyon of scrap-littered silence, feeling like an insect crawling along the edge of the world. Beyond was the oily rush of the East River cutting him off from the distant towers of Manhattan; his side hurt when he breathed and loneliness was a weight pressing down on his shoulders.

 

A dismantled ship rested on blocks at the edge of the water from which it had been reluctantly pulled, its skin peeled off by the wreckers and its rusting ribs standing like the skeleton of a dead sea monster. The work had never been finished; the after part of the ship was almost intact, while some of the deckhouse and the stern were still untouched. There were no openings at ground level, the ship had been a tanker and the transverse bulkhead was still in

place, but high above were portholes and a doorway. It wouldn’t be hard to climb the framework and Billy wondered if anyone had been there before him. They might, they might not, there was no way to tell. He had to rest and the ship made him think of home. He had to try some place. Carrying the chunk of concrete made climbing difficult, but he still took it with him.

 

In front of the deckhouse door there remained only a jagged-edged piece of deck, just a few feet wide. Billy pulled himself up onto this and faced the doorless opening to the cabin, holding the concrete ready.

 

“Is anyone there?” he called softly. The circular openings that had once contained portholes threw beams of light into the interior, bright spots on the deck that made the surrounding darkness more intense. “Hello,” Billy called again, but there was only silence.

 

Reluctantly he advanced through the doorway and into the blackness of the room. No one struck at him this time. Nothing moved and he blinked his eyes, dimmed by the bright sunlight outside, at a dark shape, but it was only a pile of rubbish. There was another pile in the far corner, and he had to look at it twice before he realized that it was a man, squatting against the wall with his legs pulled up before him, looking intently at Billy.

 

“Put that thing down, the thing in your hand,” the man said in a hushed voice, almost a whisper. He reached out a long arm and clanged a twisted length of pipe against the decking. Billy stared at it wide-eyed, and his side ached. He dropped the concrete.

 

“That’s very wise,” the man said, “very wise.” He stood up jerkily, unfolding like a carpenter’s rule, a tall man with spiderlike arms, thin to the point of emaciation. When he walked into a beam of sunlight Billy saw that the skin was stretched tight across his cheekbones and almost hairless skull, while his lips were drawn back to reveal long yellow teeth. His eyes were round as a child’s and of such a watery blue that they seemed almost transparent. Not empty, but more like windows to look through—with nothing to be seen on the other side. And he kept staring at Billy, swinging the pipe slowly, saying nothing, his lips pulled away from his teeth in an expression

that might have been a grin, but also might be something else, very different.

 

When Billy took a slow step back toward the doorway the end of the pipe twitched out and stopped him. “What do you want here?” the whisper asked.

 

“I don’t want anything, I’m going—” “What do you want?”

“I was just looking for a place to lie down, I’m tired, I don’t want any trouble.”

 

“What is your name?” the voice whispered, the eyes never blinked or moved.

 

“Billy . . .” Why had he answered so fast! He bit his lip: why had he given his right name?

 

“Do you have anything to eat, Billy?”

 

He started to lie, then thought better of it. He reached inside his shirt. “Here, I got some weedcrackers. You want some? They’re a little broken.”

 

The pipe dropped to the deck and rolled away while the man stepped forward with both hands cupped before him, towering over Billy. “ ‘Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.’ Do you know where that comes from?” he asked.

 

“No—no, I don’t,” Billy said uneasily, dropping the crackers into the outstretched hands.

 

“I didn’t think you would,” the man complained, then sat down with his back to the wall at the same spot as before. He began to eat with a steady, automatic motion. “You’re a heathen, I imagine, a yellow heathen, though that doesn’t matter. It will to you as to the rest of His creatures. You wish to sleep, sleep. This place is large enough for two.”

“I can get out, you were here first.”

 

“You are afraid of me, aren’t you?” Billy turned away from the unchanging stare, and the man nodded. “You should not be, because we are coming very near the end of fear. Do you know what that means? Do you know the significance of this year, do you?”

 

Billy sat silent. He did not know what to answer. The man finished the last of the crumbs, wiped his hands on his filthy pants and sighed heavily. “You could not know. Go to sleep, there is nothing to worry about here. No one will come near to bother you, we have strict rules of property in our community. Usually it is only strangers, like you, who trespass, though the others will do it if they think it worthwhile. But they won’t come here, they know I have nothing for them to covet. You may sleep undisturbed.”

 

It seemed impossible to even consider sleeping, no matter how tired he felt, not with this strange man watching him. Billy lay against the wall in the far corner, eyes open and alert, wondering what he should do next. The man mumbled to himself and scratched at his ribs inside his thin shirt. A high-pitched hum whined in Billy’s ear and he slapped at the mosquito. Another bit him on the leg and he scratched the spot. There seemed to be an awful lot of mosquitoes here. What should he do? Should he try to leave?

 

With a sudden start he realized that he had been asleep and that the sun was low in the west, coming almost directly in through the open doorway. He sat up in a scramble and looked around, but the cabin was empty. His side ached terribly.

 

The clattering, metallic sound came again, and he realized that this was what had wakened him. It came from outside. He went as quietly as he could to the doorway and looked down. The man was climbing toward him, and the length of pipe he carried was scratching on the metal making the noise that had disturbed him.

Billy shrank back as the man threw the pipe up ahead of him, then hauled himself over the edge and onto the strip of deck.

“The water points did not open today,” he said, and held out an ancient and dented paint can that he had brought up with him. “But I found a place where there was still water from the rain yesterday. Would you like some?” Billy nodded, aware suddenly of his dry throat, and took the extended can. It was filled halfway with clear water through which the caked green paint could be seen. The water was very sweet. “Take more,” the man said. “I drank my fill when I was there.”

 

“What is your name?” he asked as he took the can back.

 

Was it a trap? This man must remember his name, he didn’t dare give him a different one. “Billy,” he said.

 

“You may call me Peter. You can stay here if you like.” He went inside with the can and seemed to have forgotten the piece of pipe. Billy looked at it suspiciously, not sure of his ground.

 

“You left your pipe here,” he called out.

 

“Bring it, if you please. I shouldn’t leave it lying around. Just put it there,” he said when Billy brought it in. “I think I have another piece like that around here someplace, you can take it with you when you leave these quarters. Some of our neighbors can be dangerous.”

 

“The guards?”

 

“No, they are of no importance. Their work is a sinecure, and they have no more wish to bother us than we have to bother them. As long as they do not see us we are not here, so just stay away from them. You’ll find that they don’t look very hard, they can collect their money without putting themselves in any danger—so why should they? Sensible men. Anything worth stealing or removing vanished years ago. The guards remain only because no one has ever decided what to do with this place and the easiest solution is just to forget about it. They are living symbols of the state of decay of our culture, just as this wasteland is a vastly more important symbol, that is why I am here.” He laced his hands about his shins and leaned forward, resting his bony chin on his knees. “Do you know

how many entrances there are to this place?” Billy shook his head no, wondering what Peter was talking about.

 

“Then I will tell you. There are eight—and only one is unlocked and in use by the guards. The others are closed and sealed, seven seals. Does that mean something to you? Seven seals? No, I can see it does not. But there are other signs, some hidden, some clear for any eye to see. And more will come and be revealed to us one by one. Some have been written for centuries, such as the great harlot named Babylon which never was Rome as many falsely believed. Do you know the name of the city out there?”

 

“Here? You mean New York?”

 

“Yes, that is one name, but there is another that it is called and has been called an no one protests its use, that is Babylon-on-Hudson. So you see that this is the great harlot and Armageddon will be here, that is why I have come. I was a priest once, would you believe that?”

 

“Yes, sure,” Billy said and he yawned, looking around the walls and out the doorway.

 

“A priest of the Church should speak the truth and I did and they cast me out for it, and they are the same ones who tempt the Antichrist into their chambers. The college of cardinals has advised the Holy Father to withdraw his ban on the destruction of infant life, and he considers it, when the truth of God’s law is all about us. He said be fruitful and multiply and we have, and He gave us the intelligence to make the sick well and the weak strong, and that is where the truth lies. The millennium is here, now, upon us, a populous world of souls awaiting His call. This is the true millenium. False prophets said it was the year one thousand, but there are more people here in this single city than there were in the entire world at that time. Now is the hour, we can see it nearing, we can read the signs. The world can hold no more, it will crack asunder under the weight of the masses of people—but it will not crack until the seven trumpets blast, this New Year, Century Day. Then we will have the reckoning.”

When he stopped, the thin whine of mosquitoes was loud in the still air and Billy swatted his leg, killing one and leaving a thick splotch of blood that he brushed away with the heel of his hand. Peter’s arm was in the sun and Billy could see the welts and scabs of old bites that covered it.

 

“I’ve never seen so many mosquitoes as you got around here,” Billy said. “And in the daytime. I never got bitten in the daytime before.” He stood up and prowled about the refuse-filled chamber, walking to get away from the droning insects, kicking at dirt-stiffened rags and pieces of crumbling wood. In the center of the rear bulkhead was a heavy steel door, standing open a few inches. “What’s in here?” he asked.

 

Peter did not hear, or pretended not to hear, and Billy pushed against the door, but the hinges were rusted into position and it would not move. “Don’t you know what’s in here?” he asked again in a louder voice, and Peter stirred and turned. “No,” he said. “I have never looked.”

 

“It’s been closed a long time, there might be stuff in there we could use, you never can tell. Let’s see if we can open it.”

 

Pushing together, and using the length of steel pipe as a lever, they managed to move it a few inches more until the opening was wide enough to slip through. Billy went first and his foot rattled against something on the deck; he picked it up.

 

“Look at that, I said we would find something. I can sell it or just hold on to it for a while.” It was a steel crowbar, over a yard long, abandoned here by some workman years before. It was coated with rust on the surface, but was still sound. He put the curved and sharpened end into the opening of the door next to the hinges and threw his weight onto the other end; the rusty hinges squealed and the door opened all the way. There was a small platform on the other side with metal steps falling away from it into the darkness.

Billy started down slowly, holding the crowbar tightly in one hand, the railing in the other, and on the fifth step went up to his ankle in water. “It’s not just dark down there—it’s full of water,” he said.

Peter stepped in and looked, then pointed up at two bright patches above them. “Apparently the top deck catches the rain and it drains inside through those holes there. It must have been collecting for years down here.”

 

“That’s where your mosquitoes are coming from too.” The enclosed space was filled with their humming. “We can close that door and keep them out.”

 

“Very practical,” Peter agreed and looked at the dark surface below them. “It will also save our going to the water point on the other side of the fence. There is all the water we could possibly need here, more than we can ever use.”

Chapter 15

 

“Hello, stranger,” Sol said.

Shirl could hear his voice clearly through the partition that divided the two rooms. She was sitting at the window doing her nails; she dropped her manicure set on the bed and ran to the door.

 

“Andy—is that you?” she called out and when she opened the door she saw him standing there, swaying a little with fatigue. She ran to him and kissed him, and he gave her a brief kiss in return, then released her and dropped into the car seat by the table.

 

“I’m wiped out,” he said. “No sleep since—when was it?—night before last. Did you get the water?”

 

“Filled both the tanks,” Sol said, “and got the jerry cans filled again before it got shut off. What’s going on with the water? I heard some fancy stories on the TV, but it was so much bushwa. What aren’t they telling?”

 

“You’re hurt!” Shirl called out, noticing for the first time the torn sleeve of his shirt with an edge of bandage showing below it.

 

“It’s not much, just a scratch,” Andy said and smiled. “Wounded in the line of duty—and by a pitchfork too.”

 

“Chasing the farmer’s daughter, probably. Some story,” Sol snorted. “You want a drink?”

 

“If any of the alky is left you can cut it a bit with water. I could use it.” He sipped at the drink and sat back in the chair, some of the strain went out of his face but his eyes were red with fatigue and

squinted almost shut. They sat down across from him. “Don’t tell anyone until the official word goes out, but there is a lot of trouble over the water—and there’s bigger trouble on the way.”

 

“Is that why you warned us?” Shirl asked.

 

“Yes, I heard part of it at the station on my lunch break. The trouble started with the artesian wells and pumps on Long Island, all the Brooklyn and Queens pumping stations. You know, there’s a water table under the Island, and if too much water is pumped out too fast the sea water comes in, then salt water instead of fresh starts coming out of the pumps. It’s been brackish for a long time, you can taste it when it’s not mixed with upstate water, but they were supposed to have figured out just how much to pump so it wouldn’t get worse. There must have been a mistake or the stations have been pumping more than their quota, whatever happened it’s coming out pure salt now all over Brooklyn. All the stations there have shut down and the quota coming from Croton and upstate had to be enlarged.”

 

“The farmers been bitching anyway about the dry summer, I bet they loved this.”

 

“No bets. They must have had it planned for a long time because they jumped the guards on the aqueduct, they had plenty of guns and explosives, the lot that was stolen from the Albany armory last year. There are at least ten cops dead, I don’t know how many injured. They blew up at least a mile of pipe before we got through. Every hayseed in the state must have been out there trying to stop us. Not many had guns, but they were doing fine with pitchforks and axes. The riot gas cleared them out, finally.”

 

“Then—there’s no water at all for the city?” Shirl asked.

 

“We’ll bring water in, but it’s going to be very thirsty around here for a while. Go easy on the water we have, make it last. Use it for drinking or cooking, nothing else.”

 

“But we have to wash,” Shirl said.

“No, we don’t.” Andy rubbed at his sore eyes with the heel of his hand. “The plates can be wiped off with a rag. And as for ourselves—we just stink.”

 

“Andy!”

 

“I’m sorry, Shirl. I’m being awful and I know it. But you have to realize that things are just that serious. We can go without washing for a while, it won’t kill us, and when the water is connected up again we can all have a good scrub. It’s something to look forward to.”

 

“How long do you think it will be?”

 

“There’s no way to tell yet. The repairs will take a lot of concrete and reinforcing rods, these are both on top priority, mixing machines, things like that. Meanwhile most of the water will have to come in by railroad tank cars, tank trucks and barges. There is going to be one hell of a problem with distribution and rationing, you can count on things getting worse before they get better.” He dragged himself to his feet and yawned deeply. “I’m going to sack out for two hours, Shirl. Will you wake me up by four at the latest? I have to shave before I leave.”

 

“Two hours! That’s not enough sleep,” she protested.

 

“I don’t think so either—but it’s all I’m getting. Someone upstairs is still pushing on the O’Brien killing. An informer in Chinatown has a lead and I have to see him today, instead of sleeping before I go on precinct patrol tonight. I am slowly developing a big hate for Billy Chung, wherever he is hiding.” He went into the other room and dropped onto the bed.

 

“Can I stay out here while he’s sleeping, Sol?” she asked. “I don’t want to bother him—but I don’t want to bother you either—”

 

“Bother! Since when has a good-looking chachka been a bother? Let me tell you, I may look old but that’s just because of my age. Not that I’m saying you ain’t safe around me, the years for action have passed. I get my kicks now just thinking about it, which is

cheaper anyway and you don’t have to worry about getting a dose. Bring out your knitting and I’ll tell you about the time I was stationed in Laredo, and I and Luke took a weekend pass and stayed in Boys Town in Nuevo Laredo, though on second thought maybe I better not tell you that one.”

 

When Shirl went in Andy was sound asleep, sprawled across the bed fully dressed, he hadn’t even taken his shoes off. She pulled down the curtain and darkened the room, then took her manicure set off the foot of the bed. There was a hole worn in the sole of his right shoe and it stared at her like a mournful dusty eye. If she tried to take his shoes off she knew it would only disturb him, so she went out quietly and closed the door.

 

“Batteries need charging,” Sol said, holding the hydrometer up to the light and squinting at the float through the glass barrel. “Has Andy corked off yet?”

 

“He’s sound asleep.”

 

“Wait until you try to wake him up. When he goes off like that you could drop a bomb and if it didn’t kill him he wouldn’t hear it. I’ll run the batteries up, he’ll never know it.”

 

“It’s not fair,” Shirl burst out suddenly. “Why should Andy have to do two jobs at the same time and be the one to get hurt, fighting for the water for the people in the city? What are all these people doing here? Why don’t they go somewhere else if there isn’t enough water?”

 

“For that there is a simple answer—there’s no place to go. This whole country is one big farm and one big appetite. There’s just as many people down South as there is up North and, since there is no public transportation, anyone who tried to walk to the land of sunshine would starve to death long before he got there. People stay put because the country is organized to take care of them where they are. They don’t eat well, but at least they eat. It needs a big catastrophe like the water failures in the California valleys to move people out, or the Dust Bowl—which I hear has now become international and crossed the Canadian border.”

“Well, other countries then. Everyone came to America from Europe and places. Why don’t some of them go back?”

 

“Because if you think you got problems you should see the other guy. All of England is just one big city and I saw on TV where the last Tory got shot defending the last grouse woods when they came to plow it up. Or you want to go to Russia maybe? Or China? They been having a border war for fifteen years now, which is one way of keeping the population down—but you’re draft age and they draft girls there so you wouldn’t like that. Denmark maybe. Life is great there if you can get in, at least they eat regular, but they got a concrete wall right across Jutland and beach guards who shoot on sight because so many starving people keep trying to break into the promised land. No, maybe we got no paradise here, but it’s at least livable. I got to run up the batteries.”

 

“It’s not fair, I still say that.”

 

“What’s fair?” Sol smiled at her. “Relax. You got your youth, you got your looks, you’re eating and drinking regular. So what’s your complaint?”

 

“Nothing, really.” She smiled back at him. “It’s just that I get so angry seeing Andy working all the time, taking care of people and they don’t even know it or care.”

 

“Gratitude you can’t expect, a salary you can. It’s a job.”

 

Sol dragged out the wheelless bicycle and hooked up the wires from the generator to the ranked batteries on top of the refrigerator. Shirl pulled a chair over to the window and opened her manicure set on the sill. Behind her the creaking moan of the generator rose to a high-pitched whine. She pushed at her cuticle with the orange stick. It was a nice day, sunny but not hot, and it promised to be a nice fall. There was the trouble with the water, but that would straighten out. She frowned a little as she looked out across the roofs and high buildings, only half aware of the endless background roar of the city, cut through by the nearby shrieks of children.

Outside of this business with the water, everything was all right. But it was funny: even though she knew that things were all right, she still had this little knot of tension, a nagging feeling of worry that just wouldn’t go away.

Part Two

 

Chapter 1

 

“Everyone says this is the coldest October ever, I never seen a colder one. And the rain too, never hard enough to fill the reservoirs or anything, but just enough to make you wet so you feel colder.

Ain’t that right?”

Shirl nodded, hardly listening to the words, but aware by the rising intonation of the woman’s voice that a question had been asked. The line moved forward and she shuffled a few steps behind the woman who had been speaking—a shapeless bundle of heavy clothing covered with a torn plastic raincoat, with a cord tied about her middle so that she resembled a lumpy sack. Not that I look much better, Shirl thought, tugging the fold of blanket farther over her head to keep out the persistent drizzle. It wouldn’t be much longer now, there were only a few dozen people ahead, but it had taken a lot more time than she thought it would; it was almost dark. A light came on over the tank car, glinting off its black sides and lighting up the slowly falling curtain of rain. The line moved again and the woman ahead of Shirl waddled forward, pulling the child after her, a bundle as wrapped and shapeless as its mother, its face hidden by a knotted scarf, that produced an almost constant whimpering.

 

“Stop that,” the woman said. She turned to Shirl, her puffy face a red lumpiness around the dark opening of her almost toothless mouth. “He’s crying because he’s been to see the doc, thinks he’s sick but it’s only the kwash.” She held up the child’s swollen, ballooning hand. “You can tell when they swell up and get the black pots on the knees. Had to sit two weeks in the Bellevue clinic to see a doc who told me what I knew already. But that’s the only way you get him to sign the slip. Got a peanut-butter ration that way. My old

man loves the stuff. You live on my block, don’t you? I think I seen you there?”

 

“Twenty-sixth Street,” Shirl said, taking the cap off the jerry can and putting it into her coat pocket. She felt chilled through and was sure she was catching a cold.

 

“That’s right, I knew it was you. Stick around and wait for me, we’ll walk back together. It’s getting late and plenty of punks would like to grab the water, they can always sell it. Mrs. Ramirez in my building, she’s a spic but she’s all right, you know, her family been in the building since the World War Two, she got a black eye so swole up she can’t see through it and two teeth knocked out. Some punk got her with a club and took her water away.”

 

“Yes, I’ll wait for you, that’s a good idea,” Shirl said, suddenly feeling very alone.

 

“Cards,” the patrolman said and she handed him the three Welfare cards, hers, Andy’s and Sol’s. He held them to the light, then handed them back to her. “Six quarts,” he called out to the valve man.

 

“That’s not right,” Shirl said.

 

“Reduced ration today, lady, keep moving, there’s a lot of people waiting.”

 

She held out the jerry can and the valve man slipped the end of a large funnel into it and ran in the water. “Next,” he called out.

 

The jerry can gurgled when she walked and was tragically light. She went and stood near the policeman until the woman came up, pulling the child with one hand and in the other carrying a five- gallon kerosene can that seemed almost full. She must have a big family.

 

“Let’s go,” the woman said and the child trailed, mewling faintly, at the end of her arm.

As they left the Twelfth Avenue railroad siding it grew darker, the rain soaking up all the failing light. The buildings here were mostly old warehouses and factories with blank solid walls concealing the tenants hidden away inside, the sidewalks wet and empty. The nearest street light was a block away. “My husband will give me hell coming home this late,” the woman said as they turned the corner. Two figures blocked the sidewalk in front of them.

 

“Let’s have the water,” the nearest one said, and the distant light reflected from the knife he held before him.

 

“No, don’t! Please don’t!” the woman begged and swung her can of water out behind her, away from them. Shirl huddled against the wall and saw, when they walked forward, that they were just young boys, teen-agers. But they still had a knife.

 

“The water!” the first one said, jabbing his knife at the woman.

 

“Take it,” she screeched, swinging the can like a weight on the end of her arm. Before the boy could dodge it caught him full in the side of the head, knocking him howling to the ground, the knife flying from his fingers. “You want some too?” she shouted, advancing on the second boy. He was unarmed.

 

“No, I don’t want no trouble,” he begged, pulling at the first one’s arm then retreating when she approached. When she bent to pick up the fallen knife, he managed to drag the other boy to his feet and half carry him around the corner. It had only taken a few seconds and all the time Shirl had stood with her back to the hall, trembling with fear.

 

“They got some surprise,” the woman crowed, holding the worn carving knife up to admire it. “I can use this better than they can. Just punks, kids.” She was excited and happy. During the entire time she had never released her grip on the child’s hand; it was sobbing louder.

 

Thre was no more trouble and the woman went with Shirl as far as her door. “Thank you very much,” Shirl said. “I don’t know what I would have done . . .”

“That’s no trouble,” the woman beamed. “You saw what I did to him—and who got the knife now!” She stamped away, hauling the heavy can in one hand, the child in the other. Shirl went in.

 

“Where have you been?” Andy asked when she pushed open the door. “I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you.” It was warm in the room, with a faint odor of fishy smoke, and he and Sol were sitting at the table with drinks in their hands.

 

“It was the water, the line must have been a block long. They only gave me six quarts, the ration has been cut again.” She saw his black look and decided not to tell him about the trouble on the way back. He would be twice as angry then and she didn’t want this meal to be spoiled.

 

“That’s really wonderful,” Andy said sarcastically. “The ration was already too small—so now they lower it even more. Better get out of those wet things, Shirl, and Sol will pour you a Gibson. His homemade vermouth has ripened and I bought some vodka.”

 

“Drink up,” Sol said, handing her the chilled glass. “I made some soup with that ener-G junk, it’s the only way it’s edible, and it should be just about ready. We’ll have that for the first course, before—” He finished the sentence by jerking his head in the direction of the refrigerator.

 

“What’s up?” Andy asked. “A secret?”

 

“No secret,” Shirl said, opening the refrigerator, “just a surprise. I got these today in the market, one for each of us.” She took out a plate with three small soylent burgers on it. “They’re the new ones, they had them on TV, with the smoky-barbecue flavor.”

 

“They must have cost a fortune,” Andy said. “We won’t eat for the rest of the month.”

 

“They’re not as expensive as all that. Anyway, it was my own money, not the budget money, I used.”

“It doesn’t make any difference, money is money. We could probably live for a week on what these things cost.”

 

“Soup’s on,” Sol said, sliding the plates onto the table. Shirl had a lump in her throat so she couldn’t say anything; she sat and looked at her plate and tried not to cry.

 

“I’m sorry,” Andy said. “But you know how prices are going up—we have to look ahead. City income tax is higher, eighty per cent now, because of the raised Welfare payment, so it’s going to be rough going this winter. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it. ”

 

“If you do, so why don’t you shut up right there and eat your soup?” Sol said.

 

“Keep out of this, Sol,” Andy said.

 

“I’ll keep out of it when you keep the fight out of my room. Now come on, a nice meal like this, it shouldn’t be spoiled.”

 

Andy started to answer him, then changed his mind. He reached over and took Shirl’s hand. “It is going to be a good dinner,” he said. “Let’s all enjoy it.”

 

“Not that good,” Sol said, puckering his mouth over a spoonful of soup. “Wait until you try this stuff. But the burgers will take the taste out of our mouths.”

 

There was silence after that while they spooned up the soup, until Sol started on one of his Army stories about New Orleans and it was so impossible they had to laugh, and after that things were better. Sol shared out the rest of the Gibsons while Shirl served the burgers.

 

“If I was drunk enough this would almost taste like meat,” Sol announced, chewing happily.

 

“They are good,” Shirl said. Andy nodded agreement. She finished the burger quickly and soaked up the juice with a scrap of weedcracker, then sipped at her drink. The trouble on the way

home with the water already seemed far distant. What was it the woman had said was wrong with the child?

 

“Do you know what ‘kwash’ is?” she asked.

 

Andy shrugged. “Some kind of disease, that’s all I know. Why do you ask?”

 

“There was a woman next to me in line for the water, I was talking to her. She had a little boy with her who was sick with this kwash. I don’t think she should have had him out in the rain, sick like that.

And I was wondering if it was catching.”

 

“That you can forget about,” Sol said. “ ‘Kwash’ is short for ‘kwashiorkor.’ If, in the interest of good health, you watched the medical programs like I do, or opened a book, you would know all about it. You can’t catch it because it’s a deficiency disease like beriberi.”

 

“I never heard of that either,” Shirl said.

 

“There’s not so much of that, but there’s plenty of kwash. It comes from not eating enough protein. They used to have it only in Africa but now they got it right across the whole U.S. Isn’t that great?

There’s no meat around, lentils and soybeans cost too much, so the mamas stuff the kids with weedcrackers and candy, whatever is cheap. ”

 

The light bulb flickered, then went out. Sol felt his way across the room and found a switch in the maze of wiring on top of the refrigerator. A dim bulb lit up, connected to his batteries. “Needs a charge,” he said, “but it can wait until morning. You shouldn’t exercise after eating, bad for the circulation and digestion.”

 

“I’m sure glad you’re here, doctor,” Andy said. “I need some medical advice. I’ve got this trouble. You see—everything I eat goes to my stomach. ”

 

“Very funny, Mr. Wiseguy. Shirl, I don’t see how you put up with this joker.”

They all felt better after the meal and they talked for a while, until Sol announced he was turning off the light to save the juice in the batteries. The small bricks of seacoal had burned to ash and the room was growing cold. They said good night and Andy went in first to get his flashlight; their room was even colder than the other.

 

“I’m going to bed,” Shirl said. “I’m not really tired, but it’s the only way to keep warm.”

 

Andy flicked the overhead light switch uselessly. “The current is still off and there are some things I have to do. What is it—a week now since we had any electricity in the evening?”

 

“Let me get into bed and I’ll work the flash for you—will that be all right?”

 

“It’ll have to do.”

 

He opened his notepad on top of the dresser, lay one of the reusable forms next to it, then began copying information into the report. With this left hand he kept a slow and regular squeezing on the flashlight that produced steady illumination. The city was quiet tonight with the people driven from the streets by the cold and the rain; the whir of the tiny generator and the occasional squeak of the stylo on plastic sounded unnaturally loud. There was enough light from the flash for Shirl to get undressed by. She shivered when she took off her outer clothes and quickly pulled on heavy winter pajamas, a much-darned pair of socks she used for sleeping in, then put her heavy sweater on top. The sheets were cold and damp, they hadn’t been changed since the water shortage, though she did try to air them out as often as she could.

 

“What are you writing up?” she asked.

 

“Everything I have on Billy Chung, they’re still after me to find him— it’s the most stupid thing I ever heard of.” He slammed the stylo down and paced angrily back and forth, the flashlight in his hand throwing twisting shadows across the ceiling. “We’ve had two dozen killings in the precinct since O’Brien was murdered. We caught one killer while his wife was still bleeding to death—but all of

the other murders have been forgotten, almost the same day they happened. What can be so important about Big Mike? No one seems to know—yet they still want reports. So after I put in a double shift I’m expected to keep on looking for the kid. I should be out tonight, running down another phony spotting report, but I’m not going to—even though Grassy will ream me out tomorrow. Do you know how much sleep I’ve been getting lately?”

 

“I know,” she said softly.

 

“A couple of hours a night—if that. Well, tonight I’m going to catch up. I have to sign in again by seven in the morning, there’s another protest rally in Union Square, so I won’t get much sleep anyway.” He stopped pacing and handed her the flashlight, which dimmed, then brightened again as she worked the lever. “I’m making all the noise—but you’re really the one who should be complaining, Shirl. You had it a lot better before you ever met me.”

 

“It’s bad for everyone this fall, I’ve never seen anything like it. First the water, now this thing about a fuel shortage, I don’t understand it. ”

 

“That’s not what I mean, Shirl—will you shine the light on this drawer?” He took out a can of oil and his cleaning kit, spreading the contents out on a rag on the floor next to the bed. “It’s about you and me personally. Things here aren’t up to the standards you’ve been used to.”

 

She skirted around mentioning her stay with Mike just as carefully as he did. It was something they never talked about. “My father’s place is in a neighborhood just like this one,” she said. “Things aren’t that different.”

 

“I’m not talking about that.” He squatted and broke open his revolver, then ran the cleaning brush back and forth through its barrel. “After you left home things went a lot better for you, I know that. You’re a pretty girl, more than just pretty, there must have been a lot of guys who were running after you.” He spoke haltingly, looking at his work.

“I’m here because I want to be here,” she said, putting into words what he had not been able to say. “Being attractive makes things easier for a girl, I know that, but it doesn’t make everything all right. I want . . . I don’t know exactly . . . happiness, I suppose. You helped me when I really needed help and we had more fun than I ever had before in my life. I never told you before, but I was hoping you would ask me to come here, we got along so well.”

 

“Is that the only reason?”

 

They had never talked about this since the night he had asked her here, and now he wanted to know all about her feelings without revealing any of his own.

 

“Why did you ask me here, Andy? What were your reasons?” She avoided his question.

 

He clicked the cylinder back into the gun without looking up at her, and spun it with his thumb. “I like you—like you a lot. In fact, if you want to know,” he lowered his voice as though the words were shameful, “I love you.”

 

Shirl didn’t know what to say and the silence lengthened. The dynamo in the flashlight whirred and on the other side of the partition there was a creaking of springs and a subdued grunt as Sol climbed into bed.

 

“What about you, Shirl?” Andy said, in a low voice so Sol wouldn’t hear them. He raised his face for the first time and looked at her.

 

“I . . . I’m happy here, Andy, and I want to be here. I haven’t thought much more about it.”

 

“Love, marriage, kids? Have you thought about those things?” There was a sharp edge to his voice now.

 

“Every girl thinks about things like that, but . . .”

 

“But not with a slob like me in a broken-down rat trap like this, is that what you mean?”

“Don’t put words into my mouth, I didn’t say that or even think it. I’m not complaining—except maybe about the awful hours you’re away.”

 

“I have my job to do.”

 

“I know that—it’s just that I never see you any more. I think we were together more in those first weeks after I met you. It was fun.”

 

“Spending loot is always fun, but the world can’t be like that all the time.”

 

“Why not? I don’t mean all the time, but just once in a while or in the evenings, or even a Sunday off. It seems like weeks since we have even talked together. I’m not saying it has to be romance all the time. ”

 

“I have my job. Just how much romance do you think there would be in living if I gave it up?”

 

Shirl found herself close to tears. “Please, Andy—I’m not trying to fight with you. That’s the last thing I want. Don’t you understand . .

.?”

 

“I understand damn well. If I was a big man in the syndicate and running girls and hemp and LSD, things might be different. But I’m just a crummy cop trying to hold things together while the rest of the bastards are taking them apart.”

 

He stabbed the bullets into the cylinder while he talked, not looking at her and not seeing the silent tears that ran down her face. She hadn’t cried at the dinner table, but she could not stop it now. It was the cold weather, the boy with the knife, the water shortage, everything—and now this. When she laid the flashlight on the floor the light faded and almost went out as the flywheel slowed. Before it brightened again in his hand she had turned her face to the wall and had pulled the covers up over her head.

 

She did like Andy, she knew that—but did she love him? It was so hard to decide anything when she hardly ever saw him. Why didn’t

he understand that? She wasn’t trying to hide anything or avoid anything. Yet her life wasn’t with him, it was in this terrible room where he hardly ever came, living on this street, the people, that boy with the knife. She bit into her lip but could not stop crying.

 

When he came to bed he did not say anything, and she did not know what she could say. It was warmer with him there, though she could still smell the gun oil, it must have got on his hands and he could not wipe it all off, and when he was close she felt much better.

 

She touched his arm and whispered “Andy,” but by then it was too late. He was sound asleep.

Chapter 2

 

“I smell trouble brewing,” Detective Steve Kulozik said as he finished adjusting the headband in the fiberglass helmet. He put it on and scowled out unhappily from under the projecting edge.

“You smell trouble!” Andy shook his head. “What a wonderful nose you got. They have the whole precinct, patrolmen and detectives, mixed together, like shock troops. We’re issued helmets and riot bombs at seven in the morning, locked in here without any orders— and you smell trouble. What’s your secret, Steve?”

 

“A natural talent,” the fat detective said placidly.

 

“Let’s have your attention here,” the captain shouted. The voices and foot shuffling died away and the ranks of men were silent, looking expectantly toward the far end of the big room where the captain stood.

 

“We’re going to have some special work today,” the captain said, “and Detective Dwyer here, of the Headquarters Squad, will explain it to you.”

 

There was an interested stir as the men in the back rows tried to see past the ranks ahead of them. The Headquarters Squad were trouble shooters, they worked out of Centre Street and took their orders directly from Detective Inspector Ross.

 

“Can you men in the rear there hear me?” Dwyer called out, then climbed onto a chair. He was a broad, bulky man with the chin and wrinkled neck of a bulldog, his voice a hoarse, bass rumble. “Are the doors locked, captain?” he asked. “What I have to say is for these men alone.” There was a mumbled reassurance and he

turned back to face them, looking over the rows of uniformed patrolmen and the drab-coated detectives in the rear.

 

“There’s going to be a couple of hundred—or maybe a couple of thousand—people killed in this city by tonight,” he said. “Your job is to keep that figure as low as possible. When you go out of here you better realize that there are going to be riots and trouble today and the faster you act to break them up the easier it’s going to be for all of us. The Welfare stations won’t open today and there won’t be any food issued for at least three days.”

 

His voice rose sharply over the sudden hum of voices. “Knock that noise off! What are you—police officers or a bunch of old women? I’m giving this to you straight so you can get ready for the worst, not just yak-yak about it.” The silence was absolute.

 

“All right. The trouble has been coming for days now, but we couldn’t act until we knew where we stood. We know now. The city has gone right along issuing full food rations until the warehouses are almost empty. We’re going to close them now, build up a backlog and open again in three days. With a smaller ration—and that is classified and not to be repeated to anyone. Rations are going to stay small the rest of the winter, don’t forget that, whatever you may hear to the contrary. The immediate cause of the shortage right now is that accident on the main line north of Albany, but that’s just one of the troubles. The grain is going to start coming in again—but it still won’t be enough. We had a professor from Columbia down at Centre Street to tell us about it so we could pass it on, but it gets technical and we haven’t got that much time. But here’s what it boils down to.

 

“There was a fertilizer shortage last spring, which means the crop wasn’t as good as expected. There have been storms and flooding. The Dust Bowl is still growing. And there was that trouble with the poisoned soybeans from the insecticide. You all know just as much about it as I do, it was on TV. What it adds up to is that a lot of small things have piled up to make one big trouble. There have been been some mistakes made by the President’s Emergency Food Planning Board and you’re going to see some new faces there. So everyone in this town is going to have to tighten his belt a

bit. There is going to be enough for all of us as long as we can keep law and order. I don’t have to tell you what would happen if we had some real good riots, some fires, big trouble. We can’t count on any outside help because the Army has got plenty of other things to worry about. It’s going to be you men on foot out there that do the job. There isn’t one operational hovercraft left, they’ve all either got parts missing or broken impeller blades, and there aren’t any replacements. It’s up to you. There are thirty-five million people here counting on us. If you don’t want them to starve to death—do your jobs. Now . . . any questions?”

 

A buzz of whispered talk swept across the crowded room, then a patrolman hesitantly raised his hand and Dwyer nodded to him.

 

“What about the water, sir?”

 

“That trouble should be licked soon. Repairs on the aqueduct are almost finished and the water should be coming through within a week. But there is still going to be rationing because of the loss of ground water from the Island, and the low level of the reservoirs. And that brings up another thing. We been putting the announcement on TV every hour and we got as many guards as we can spare along the waterfront, but people are still drinking river water. I don’t know how they can—the damned river is just an open sewer by the time it reaches us, and salty from the ocean—but people do it. And they’re not boiling it, which is the same as taking poison. The hospitals are filling up with typhoid and dysentery cases and God knows what else, and that is going to get worse before the winter is over. There are lists of symptoms posted on the bulletin boards and I want you to memorize them and keep your eyes open, get word to the Health Department about anything you see and bring in any cases you think will get away. Keep your shots up to date and you got nothing to worry about, the department has all the vaccine you’re going to need.” He cupped his ear toward the nearby ranks and frowned.

 

“I think I heard someone say ‘political officer,’ but maybe they didn’t. Let’s say they didn’t, but I’ve heard it before and you may be hearing it again yourselves. So let’s get one thing straight. The Commies invented that name, and the way they use it it means a

guy who pushes the Party line to the troops, sells them a snow job, a lot of crap. But that’s not the way we work it in this country.

Maybe I’m a political officer, but I’m leveling with you, telling you all the truth so you can get out there and do your job knowing just what has to be done. Any more questions?”

 

His big head looked around the room and the silence lengthened; no one else was asking the question, so Andy reluctantly raised his hand.

 

“Yes?” Dwyer said.

 

“What about the markets, sir?” Andy said, and the nearby faces turned toward him. “There’s the flea market in Madison Square, they have some food there, and the Gramercy Park market.”

 

“That’s a good question, because they are going to be our sore spots today. A lot of you will be on duty in or near those markets. We are going to have trouble at the warehouses when they don’t open, and there will be trouble in Union Square with the Eldsters there—they are always trouble.” A duly appreciative laugh followed his words. “The stores are going to sell out and board up, we’re taking care of that, but we can’t control the markets the same way. The only food on sale in this city will be there, and people are going to realize it soon enough. Keep your eyes open and if anything starts—stop it before it can spread. You’ve got night sticks and you have gas, use them when you have to. You’ve got guns and they’re best left in their holsters. We don’t want indiscriminate killing, that only makes things worse.”

 

There were no more questions. Detective Dwyer left before they had been given their assignments and they did not see him again. The rain had almost stopped when they went out, but had been replaced by a heavy cold mist that swept in from the lower bay.

There were two canvas-covered trucks waiting at the curb, and an old city bus that had been painted a dull olive drab. Half of its windows were boarded up. “Put-cher fares in the box,” Steve said as he followed Andy into the bus. “I wonder where they resurrected this antique from?”

“City Museum,” Andy said. “The same place they got these riot bombs. Did you look at them?”

 

“I counted them, if that’s what you mean,” Steve said, swinging heavily into one of the cracked plastic seats next to Andy. They both had their satchels of bombs on their laps so there would be room to sit. Andy opened his and took out one of the green canisters.

 

“Read that,” he said, “if you can read.”

 

“I been to Delehanty’s,” Steve grunted. “I can read Irish as well as American. ‘Grenade, pressurized—riot gas—MOA-397 . . .’ ”

 

“The fine print, down at the bottom.”

 

“ ‘. . . sealed St. Louis arsenal, April 1974.’ So what, this stuff never gets old.”

 

“I hope not. From what our political officer said it sounds like we might need them today.”

 

“Nothing’ll happen. Too wet for riots.”

 

The bus shuddered to a halt on the corner where Broadway passed Worth Square and Lieutenant Grassioli pointed at Andy and jerked his thumb toward the door. “You’re interested in markets, Rusch, take the beat from here down to Twenty-third. You too, Kulozik.”

 

Behind them the door creaked shut and the bus pushed slowly away through the crowds. They streamed by on all sides, jostling and bumping into each other without being aware of it, a constantly changing but ever identical sea of people. An eddy formed naturally around the two detectives, leaving a small cleared area of wet pavement in the midst of the crowd. Police were never popular, and policemen in helmets, carrying yard-long, lead-filled riotclubs, were to be avoided even more. The cleared space moved with them as they crossed Fifth Avenue to the Eternal Light, now extinguished because of the fuel shortage.

“Almost eight,” Andy said, his eyes moving constantly over the people around them. “That’s when the Welfare stations usually open. I suppose the announcement will go on TV at the same time.”

 

They went slowly toward Twenty-third Street, walking in the street because the clustering stalls of the flea market had pushed outward until they covered most of the sidewalk.

 

“Hubcaps, hubcaps, I got all the best,” a merchant droned as they passed, a small man who was almost lost in the raveling folds of an immense overcoat, his shaved head projecting above the collar like a vulture’s from a ruff of matted feathers. He rubbed his dripping nose with cracked knuckles and appeared to be a little feebleminded. “Get’cher hubcaps here, officer, all the best, make good bowls, pots, soup pots, night pots, make good anything. ”

They passed out of earshot.

 

By nine o’clock there was a different feeling in the air, a tension that had not been there before. The crowd seemed to have a louder voice and to be stirring about faster, like water about to boil. When the detectives passed the hubcap stall again they saw that most of the stock had been locked away and the few hubcaps left on the counter were rusty and scarcely worth stealing. Their owner crouched among them no longer shouting his wares, unmoving except for his darting eyes.

 

“Did you hear that?” Andy asked, and they both turned toward the market. Above the rising hum of voices there was an angry shout, followed by others. “Let’s take a look,” Andy said, pushing into one of the narrow paths that threaded through the market.

 

A shouting crowd was jammed solid between the stalls and pushcarts, blocking their way, and only stirred without moving aside when they blew their whistles. The clubs worked better, they rapped at the barricades of ankles and legs and a reluctant opening was made for them. At the center of the mob were three crumb stands, one of them knocked off its legs and half overturned, with bags of weedcrumbs dribbling to the ground.

 

“They been jacking the price!” a thin-faced harridan screamed.

“Against the law jacking the price. They asking double for crumbs.”

 

“No law says, we can ask what we want,” a stall owner shouted back, clearing the area in front of him with wild swings of an old connecting rod. He was ready to defend with his life his stock of broken bits of weedcracker. Weedcrumbs, the cheapest and most tasteless nourishment ever consumed by man.

 

“You got no rights, crumby, those prices don’t go!” a man called out, and the crowd heaved and surged.

 

Andy blasted on his whistle. “Hold on!” he shouted above the voice of the mob. “I’ll settle this—just hold on.” Steve stood and faced the angry crowd, swinging his club before him, as Andy turned to the stall owner and talked in a low voice. “Don’t be stupid. Ask a fair price and sell your stock out. ”

 

“I can ask any price I want. There ain’t no law—” he protested and broke off when Andy slammed his club against the side of the stall.

 

“That’s right—there’s no law unless the law is standing right here. Do you want to lose everything, including your own stupid head? Fix a price and sell out, because if you don’t I’m just going to walk away from here and let these people do whatever they want.”

 

“He’s right, Al,” the crumby from the next stall said, he had sidled over to listen to Andy. “Sell out and get out, they gonna walk all over us if we don’t. I’m knocking the price back.”

 

“You’re a jerk—look at the loot!” Al protested.

 

“Balls! Look at the hole in my head if we don’t. I’m selling.”

 

There was still a lot of noise, but as soon as the crumbies started selling at a lower price there were enough people who wanted to buy so that the unity of the crowd broke up. Other shouts could be heard, on the Fifth Avenue side of the Square.

 

“This’ll keep here,” Steve said. “Let’s get circulating.”

Most of the stalls were locked now and there were gaps between them where the pushcart owners had closed up and moved shop. A tattered woman was sprawled, sobbing, in the wreckage of her beanwich stall, her stock, cooked beans pressed between weedcrackers, looted and gone.

 

“Lousy cops,” she choked out when they passed. “Why didn’ you stop them, do something? Lousy cops.” They went by without looking at her, out into Fifth Avenue. The crowd was in a turmoil and they had to force their way through.

 

“Do you hear that, coming north?” Steve asked. “Sounds like singing or shouting.”

 

The surging of the crowd became more directed, taking on a unity of movement heading uptown. Each moment the massed chanting grew louder, punctuated by the stentorian rasp of an amplified voice.

 

“Two, four, six, eight—Welfare rations come too late. Three, five, seven, nine—Medicare is still behind.”

“It’s the Elders,” Andy said. “They’re marching on Times Square again.”

 

“They picked the right day for it—everything is happening today.”

 

As the crowd pressed back to the curb the first marchers appeared, preceded by a half-dozen uniformed patrolmen, their clubs swinging in easy arcs before them. Behind them was the first wave of the elderly legion, a gray-haired, balding group of men led by Kid Reeves. He limped a bit as he walked, but he stayed out in front, carrying a compact, battery-operated bull horn: a gray metal trumpet with a microphone set into the end. He raised it to his mouth and his amplified voice boomed over the noise of the crowd.

 

“All you people there on the curbs, join in. March with us. Join this protest, raise your voices. We’re not marching for ourselves alone, but for all of you as well. If you are a senior citizen you are with us

in your heart because we’re marching to help you. If you are younger you must know that we are marching to help your mother and father, to get the help that you yourself will need one day. ”

 

People were being pushed in from the mouth of Twenty-fourth Street, being driven across the path of the marchers, looking back over their shoulders as the force of the crowd behind them drove them forward. The Eldsters’ march slowed to a crawl, then stopped completely in a jumble of bodies. Police whistles shrilled in the distance and the policemen who had been marching in front of the Eldsters fought vainly to stop the advance, but were swallowed up and lost in a moment as the narrow exit from Twenty-fourth Street disgorged a stampede of running figures. They crashed into the crowd and merged with the advance guard of the Eldsters.

 

“Stop there, stop!” Reeves’s amplified shout boomed out. “You are interfering with this march, a legal march. ” The newcomers

pushed against him and a heavy-set man, streaked with blood on the side of his head, grabbed for the bull horn. “Give me that!” he ordered and his words were amplified and mixed with Reeves’s in a thunderous jumble.

 

Andy could clearly see what was happening, but could do nothing to stop it since the crowd had separated him from Steve and carried him back against the quaking row of stalls.

 

“Give it to me!” the voice bellowed again, over-ridden by a scream from Reeves as the bull horn was twisted violently from his hands.

 

“They’re trying to starve us!” the amplified sound hammered across the crowd; white faces turned toward it. “The Welfare station is full of food but they locked it up, won’t give us any. Open it up and get the food out! Let’s open it up!”

 

The crowd roared agreement and surged back into Twenty-fourth Street, trampling over many of the Eldsters, pushing them to the ground, driven on by the rancorous voice. The crowd was turning into a mob and the mob would turn into a riot if they were not stopped. Andy lashed out with his club at the people nearby, forcing his way through them, trying to get close enough to the man with

the bull horn so that he could stop him. A group of Elders had locked arms about their injured leader, Reeves, who was shouting something unheard in the uproar, holding his right forearm in his left hand to protect it; it dangled at an odd angle, broken. Andy flailed out but saw that he would never get through, the mob was surging away, faster than he could move.

 

“. . . keeping the food for themselves—anyone ever see a skinny cop! And the politicans, they’re eating our food and they don’t care if we starve!” The nagging boom of the voice drove the crowd closer and closer to riot. People, mostly Eldsters, had already fallen and been trampled. Andy tore open his satchel and grabbed out one of the riot bombs. They were timed to explode and release their clouds of gas three seconds after the fuse was pulled. Andy held the bomb low, tore out the ring, then hurled it straight-armed toward the man with the bull horn. The green canister arched high and fell into the crowd next to him. It didn’t go off.

 

“Bombs!” the man bellowed. “The cops are trying to kill us so we don’t get that food. They can’t stop us—let’s go—let’s get it!

Bombs!”

 

Andy cursed and tore out another gas grenade. This one had better work, the first one had only made things worse. He pushed the nearest people away with his club to make room to swing, pulled the pin and counted to two before he threw.

 

The canister exploded with a dull thud almost on top of the man with the stolen bull horn, the tearing sound of his retching cut across the roar of voices. The crowd surged, its unity of purpose lost as people tried to flee the cloud of vapor, blinded by the tear gas, with their guts twisted by the regurgitants. Andy tore the gas mask from the bottom of his satchel and swiftly and automatically put it on by gas-drill procedure. His helmet slid down his left arm, hanging from its strap, while he used both hands, thumbs inside, to shake out the mask and free the head straps. Holding his breath, he bent his head and tucked his chin into the mask and, with a single swift motion, pulled the straps over his head that held the mask in place. His right palm sealed the exhaust valve over his mouth as he expelled the air violently from his lungs, it rushed out

of the vibrating sides of the mask clearing away any traces of gas. Even as he did this he was straightening up and putting his helmet back on with his other hand.

 

Though the whole operation of donning the mask had taken no more than three seconds, the scene before him had changed dramatically. People were pushing out in all directions, trying to escape from the spreading cloud of gas that drifted in a thin haze over a widening area of road. The only ones remaining were sprawled on the pavement or bent over, racked by uncontrolled vomiting. It was a potent gas. Andy ran to the man who had grabbed the bull horn. He was down on all fours, blinded and splattered by his own disgorgement, but still holding on to the loudspeaker and cursing between racking spasms. Andy tried to take it away from him, but he fought back viciously and blindly, clutching it with a grip of death, until Andy was forced to rap him on the base of the skull with his club. He collapsed onto the fouled street and Andy pulled the bull horn away.

 

This was the hardest part. He scratched the microphone with his finger and an amplified clattering rolled out, the thing was still working. Andy took a deep breath, filling his lungs against the resistance of the filters in the canister, then tore the mask from his face.

 

“This is the police,” he said, and faces turned toward his amplified voice. “The trouble is over. Go quietly to your homes, disperse, the trouble is over. There will be no more gas if you disperse quietly.” There was a change in the sound of the crowd when they heard the word “gas,” and the force of their movement began to change. Andy fought against the nausea that gripped his throat. “The police are in charge here and the trouble is over. ”

 

He clutched his hand over the microphone to deaden it as he doubled over with agony and vomited.

Chapter 3

 

New York City trembled on the brink of disaster. Every locked warehouse was a nucleus of dissent, surrounded by crowds who were hungry and afraid and searching for someone to blame. Their anger incited them to riot, and the food riots turned to water riots and then to looting, wherever this was possible. The police fought back, only the thinnest of barriers between angry protest and bloody chaos.

At first night sticks and weighted clubs stopped the trouble, and when this failed gas dispersed the crowds. The tension grew, since the people who fled only reassembled again in a different place.

The solid jets of water from the riot trucks stopped them easily when they tried to break into the Welfare stations, but there were not enough trucks, nor was there more water to be had once they had pumped dry their tanks. The Health Department had forbid the use of river water: it would have been like spraying poison. The little water that was available was badly needed for the fires that were springing up throughout the city. With the streets blocked in many places the firefighting equipment could not get through and the trucks were forced to make long detours. Some of the fires were spreading and by noon all of the equipment had been committed and was in use.

 

The first gun was fired a few minutes past twelve, by a Welfare Department guard who killed a man who had broken open a window of the Tompkins Square food depot and had tried to climb in. This was the first but not the last shot fired—nor was it the last person to be killed.

Flying wire sealed off some of the trouble areas, but there was only a limited supply of it. When it ran out the copters fluttered helplessly over the surging streets and acted as aerial observation posts for the police, finding the places where reserves were sorely needed. It was a fruitless labor because there were no reserves, everyone was in the front line.

 

After the first conflict in Madison Square nothing else made a strong impression on Andy. For the rest of the day and most of the night, he along with every other policeman in the city was braving violence and giving violence to restore law and order to a city torn by battle. The only rest he had was after he had fallen victim to his own gas and had managed to make his way to the Department of Hospitals ambulance for treatment. An orderly washed out his eyes and gave him a tablet to counteract the gut-tearing nausea. He lay on one of the stretchers inside, clutching his helmet, bombs and club to his chest, while he recovered. The ambulance driver sat on another stretcher by the door, armed with a .30-caliber carbine, to discourage anyone from too great an interest in the ambulance or its valuable surgical contents. Andy would like to have lain there longer, but the cold mist was rolling in through the open doorway, and he began to shiver so hard that his teeth shook together. It was difficult to drag to his feet and climb to the ground, yet once he was moving he felt a little better—and warmer. The attack on the Welfare center had been broken up, maybe his grabbing the bull horn had helped, and he moved slowly to join the nearest cluster of blue-coated figures, wrinkling his nose at the foul odor of his clothes.

 

From this point on, the fatigue never left him and he had memories only of shouting faces, running feet, the sound of shots, screams, the thud of gas grenades, of something unseen that had been thrown at him and hit the back of his hand and raised an immense bruise.

 

By nightfall it was raining, a cold downpour mixed with sleet, and it was this and exhaustion that drove the people from the streets, not the police. Yet when the crowds were gone the police found that their work was just beginning. Gaping windows and broken

doorways had to be guarded until they could be repaired, the injured had to be found and brought in for treatment, while the Fire Department needed aid in halting the countless fires. This went on through the night and at dawn Andy found himself slumped on a bench in the precinct, hearing his name being called off from a list by Lieutenant Grassioli.

 

“And that’s all that can be spared,” the lieutenant added. “You men draw rations before you leave and turn in your riot equipment. I want you all back here at eighteen-hundred and I don’t want excuses. Our troubles aren’t over yet.”

 

Sometime during the night the rain had stopped. The rising sun cast long shadows down the crosstown streets, putting a golden sheen on the wet, black pavement. A burned-out brownstone was still smoking and Andy picked his way through the charred wreckage that littered the street in front of it. On the corner of Seventh Avenue were the crushed wrecks of two pedicabs, already stripped of any usable parts, and a few feet farther on, the huddled body of a man. He might be asleep, but when Andy passed, the upturned face gave violent evidence that the man was dead. He walked on, ignoring it. The department of Sanitation would be collecting only corpses today.

 

The first cavemen were coming out of the subway entrance, blinking at the light. During the summer everyone laughed at the cavemen—the people whom Welfare had assigned to living quarters in the stations of the now-silent subways—but as the cold weather approached, the laughter was replaced by envy. Perhaps it was filthy down there, dusty, dark, but there were always a few electric heaters turned on. They weren’t living in luxury, but at least Welfare didn’t let them freeze. Andy turned into his own block.

 

Going up the stairs in his building, he trod heavily on some of the sleepers but was too fatigued to care—or even notice. He had trouble fumbling his key into the lock and Sol heard him and came to open it.

 

“I just made some soup,” Sol said. “You timed it perfectly.”

Andy pulled the broken remains of some weedcrackers from his coat pocket and spilled them onto the table.

 

“Been stealing food?” Sol asked, picking up a piece and nibbling on it. “I thought no grub was being given out for two more days?”

 

“Police ration.”

 

“Only fair. You can’t beat up the citizenry on an empty stomach. I’ll throw some of these into the soup, give it some body. I guess you didn’t see TV yesterday so you wouldn’t know about all the fun and games in Congress. Things are really jumping. ”

 

“Is Shirl awake yet?” Andy asked, shucking out of his coat and dropping heavily into a chair.

 

Sol was silent a moment, then he said slowly, “She’s not here.” Andy yawned. “It’s pretty early to go out. Why?”

“Not today, Andy.” Sol stirred the soup with his back turned. “She went out yesterday, a couple of hours after you did. She’s not back yet—”

 

“You mean she was out all the time during the riots—and last night too? What did you do?” He sat upright, his bone-weariness forgotten.

 

“What could I do? Go out and get myself trampled to death like the rest of the old fogies? I bet she’s all right, she probably saw all the trouble and decided to stay with friends instead of coming back here.”

 

“What friends? What are you talking about? I have to go find her.”

 

“Sit!” Sol ordered. “What can you do out there? Have some soup and get some sleep, that’s the best thing you can do. She’ll be okay. I know it,” he added reluctantly.

 

“What do you know, Sol?” Andy took him by the shoulders, half turning him from the stove.

“Don’t handle the merchandise!” Sol shouted, pushing the hand away. Then, in a quieter voice: “All I know is she just didn’t go out of here for nothing, she had a reason. She had her old coat on, but I could see what looked like a real nifty dress underneath. And nylon stockings. A fortune on her legs. And when she said so long I saw she had lots of makeup on.”

 

“Sol—what are you trying to say?”

 

“I’m not trying—I’m saying. She was dressed for visiting, not for shopping, like she was on the way out to see someone. Her old man, maybe, she could be visiting him.”

 

“Why should she want to see him?”

 

“You tell me? You two had a fight, didn’t you? Maybe she went away for a while to cool off.”

 

“A fight . . . I guess so.” Andy dropped back into the chair, squeezing his forehead between his palms. Had it only been last night? No, the night before last. It seemed a hundred years since they had had that stupid argument. He looked up with sudden fear. “She didn’t take her things—anything with her?” he asked.

 

“Just a little bag,” Sol said, and put a steaming bowl on the table in front of Andy. “Eat up. I’ll pour one for myself.” Then, “She’ll be back.”

 

Andy was almost too tired to argue—and what could be said? He spooned the soup automatically, then realized as he tasted it that he was very hungry. He ate with his elbow on the table, his free hand supporting his head.

 

“You should have heard the speeches in the Senate yesterday,” Sol said. “Funniest show on earth. They’re trying to push this Emergency Bill through—some emergency, it’s only been a hundred years in the making—and you should hear them talking all around the little points and not mentioning the big ones.” His voice settled into a rich Southern accent. “Faced by dire straits, we propose a survey of all the ee-mense riches of this the greatest ee-

luvial basin, the delta, suh, of the mightiest of rivers, the Mississippi. Dikes and drains, suh, science, suh, and you will have here the richest farmlands in the Western World!” Sol blew on his soup angrily. “ ‘Dikes’ is right—another finger in the dike. They’ve been over this ground a thousand times before. But does anyone mention out loud the sole and only reason for the Emergency Bill? They do not. After all these years they’re too chicken to come right out and tell the truth, so they got it hidden away in one of the little riders tacked onto the bottom.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Andy asked, only half listening.

 

“Birth control, that’s what. They are finally getting around to legalizing clinics that will be open to anyone—married or not—and making it a law that all mothers must be supplied with birthcontrol information. Boy, are we going to hear some howling when the bluenoses find out about that!”

 

“Not now, Sol, I’m tired. Did Shirl say anything about when she would be back?”

 

“Just what I told you . . .” He stopped and listened to the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. They stopped—and there was a light knocking on the door.

 

Andy was there first, twisting at the knob, tearing the door open. “Shirl!” he said. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, sure—I’m fine.”

 

He held her to him, tightly, almost cutting off her breath. “With the riots—I didn’t know what to think,” he said. “I just came in a little while ago myself. Where have you been? What happened?”

 

“I just wanted to get out for a while, that’s all.” She wrinkled her nose. “What’s that funny smell?”

He stepped away from her, anger welling up through the fatigue. “I caught some of my own puke gas and heaved up. It’s hard to get off. What do you mean that you wanted to get out for a while?”

 

“Let me get my coat off.”

 

Andy followed her into the other room and closed the door behind them. She was taking a pair of high-heeled shoes out of the bag she carried and putting them into the closet. “Well?” he said.

 

“Just that, it’s not complicated. I was feeling trapped in here, with the shortages and the cold and everything, and never seeing you, and I felt bad about the fight we had. Nothing seemed to be going right. So I thought if I dressed up and went to one of the restaurants where I used to go, just have a cup of kofee or something, I might feel better. A morale booster, you know.” She looked up at his cold face, then glanced quickly away.

 

“Then what happened?” he asked.

 

“I’m not in the witness box, Andy. Why the accusing tone?”

 

He turned his back and looked out the window. “I’m not accusing you of anything, but—you were out all night. How do you expect me to feel?”

 

“Well, you know how bad it was yesterday, I was afraid to come back. I was up at Curley’s—”

 

“The meateasy?”

 

“Yes, but if you don’t eat anything it’s not expensive. It’s just the food that costs. I met some people I knew and we talked, they were going to a party and invited me and I went along. We were watching the news about the riots on TV and no one wanted to go out, so the party just went on and on. That’s about all, a lot of people stayed overnight and so did I.” She slipped off her dress and hung it up, then put on wool slacks and a heavy sweater.

 

“Is that all you did, just spend the night?”

“Andy, you’re tired. Why don’t you get some sleep? We can talk about this some other time.”

 

“I want to talk about it now.”

 

“Please, there’s nothing more to be said. ”

 

“Yes there is. Whose apartment was it?”

 

“No one you know. He’s not a friend of Mike’s, just someone I used to see at parties.”

 

“He?” The silence stretched tight, until Andy’s question snapped it. “Did you spend the night with him?”

 

“Do you really want to know?”

 

“Of course I want to know. What do you think I’m asking you for? You slept with him, didn’t you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

The calmness of her voice, the suddenness of her answer stopped him, as though he had asked the question hoping to get another answer. He groped for the words to express what he felt and, finally, all he could ask was “Why?”

 

“Why?” This single word opened her lips and spilled out the cold anger. “Why? What other choice did I have? I had dinner and drinks and I had to pay for it. What else do I have to pay with?”

 

“Stop it, Shirl, you’re being ”

 

“I’m being what? Trughful? Would you let me stay here if I didn’t sleep with you?”

 

“That’s different!”

 

“Is it?” She began to tremble. “Andy, I hope it is, it should be—but I just don’t know any more. I want us to be happy, I don’t know why

we fight. That’s not what I want. But things seem to be going so wrong. If you were here, if I was with you more . . .”

 

“We settled that the other night. I have my work—what else can I do?”

 

“Nothing else, I suppose, nothing . . .” She clasped her fingers together to stop their shaking. “Go to sleep now, you need the rest.”

 

She went into the other room and he did not stir until the door clicked shut. He started to follow her, then stopped and sat on the edge of the bed. What could he say to her? Slowly he pulled off his shoes and, fully dressed, stretched out and pulled the blanket over him.

 

Tired and exhausted as he was, he did not fall asleep for a very long time.

Chapter 4

 

Since most people don’t like to get up while it is still dark, the morning line for the water ration was always the shortest of the day. Yet there were still enough people about when Shirl hurried to get a place in line so that no one ever bothered her. By the time she had her water the sun would be up and the streets were a good deal safer. Besides that, she and Mrs. Miles had fallen into the habit of meeting every day, whoever came first saved a place in line, and walking back together. Mrs. Miles always had the little boy with her who still seemed to be ill with the kwash. Apparently her husband needed the protein-rich peanut butter more than the child did. The water ration had been increased. This was so welcome that Shirl tried not to notice how much harder it was to carry, and how her back hurt when she climbed the stairs. There was even enough water now to wash with. The water points were supposed to open again by mid-November in the very latest, and that wasn’t too far away. This morning, like most of the other mornings, Shirl was back before eight and when she came into the apartment she saw that Andy was dressed and just ready to leave.

“Talk to him, Shirl,” Andy said. “Convince him that he is being a chunkhead. It must be senility.” He kissed her good-by before he went out. It had been three weeks since the fight and on the surface things were the same as before, but under-neath something had changed, some of the feeling of security—or perhaps love—had been eroded away. They did not talk about it.

 

“What’s wrong?” she asked, peeling off the outer layers of clothing that swaddled her. Andy stopped in the doorway.

“Ask Sol, I’m sure he’ll be happy to tell you in great detail. But when he’s all through remember one thing. He’s wrong.”

 

“Every man to his own opinion,” Sol said placidly, rubbing the grease from an ancient can of dubbing onto an even more ancient pair of Army boots.

 

“Opinion nothing,” Andy said. “You’re just asking for trouble. I’ll see you tonight, Shirl. If it’s as quiet as yesterday I shouldn’t be too late.” He closed the door and she locked it behind him.

 

“What on earth is he talking about?” Shirl asked, warming her hands over the brick of seacoal smoldering in the stove. It was raw and cold out, and the wind rattled the window in its frame.

 

“He’s talking about protest,” Sol said, admiring the buffed, blaakened toe of the boot. “Or maybe better he’s talking against protest. You heard about the Emergency Bill? It’s been schmeared all over TV for the last week.”

 

“Is that the one they call the Baby-killer Bill?”

 

“They?” Sol shouted, scrubbing angrily at the boot. “Who are they? A bunch of bums, that’s who. People with their minds in the Middle Ages and their feet in a rut. In other words—bums.”

 

“But, Sol—you can’t force people to practice something they don’t believe in. A lot of them still think that it has something to do with killing babies.”

 

“So they think wrong. Am I to blame because the world is full of fatheads? You know well enough that birth control has nothing to do with killing babies. In fact it saves them. Which is the bigger crime—letting kids die of disease and starvation or seeing that the unwanted ones don’t get born in the first place?”

 

“Putting it that way sounds different. But aren’t you forgetting about natural law? Isn’t birth control a violation of that?”

“Darling, the history of medicine is the history of the violation of natural law. The Church—and that includes the Protestant as well as the Catholic—tried to stop the use of anesthetics because it was natural law for a woman to have pain while giving birth. And it was natural law for people to die of sickness. And natural law that the body not be cut open and repaired. There was even a guy named Bruno that got burned at the stake because he didn’t believe in absolute truth and natural laws like these. Everything was against natural law once, and now birth control has got to join the rest.

Because all of our troubles today come from the fact that there are too many people in the world.”

 

“That’s too simple, Sol. Things aren’t really that black and white. . .

.”

 

“Oh yes they are, no one wants to admit it, that’s all. Look, we live in a lousy world today and our troubles come from only one reason. Too goddamn many people. Now, how come that for ninety-nine per cent of the time that people have been on this earth we never had any overpopulation problems?”

 

“I don’ know—I never thought about it.”

 

“You’re not the only one. The reason—aside from wars and floods and earthquakes, unimportant things like that—was that everybody was sick like dogs. A lot of babies died, a lot of kids died, and everybody else died young. A coolie in China living on nothing but polished rice used to die of old age before he was thirty. I heard that on TV last night, and I believe it. And one of the Senators read from a hornbook, that’s a schoolbook they used to have for kids back in colonial America, that said something like ‘be kind to your little sister or brother, he won’t be with you very long’. They bred like flies and died like flies. Infant mortality—boy! And not so long ago, I tell you. In 1949 after I got out of the Army, I was in Mexico. Babies there die from more diseases then you or I ever heard of.

They never baptize the kids until after they are a year old because most of them are dead by that time and baptisms cost a lot of money. That’s why there never used to be a population problem. The whole world used to be one big Mexico, breeding and dying and just about staying even.”

“Then—what changed?”

 

“I’ll tell you what changed.” He shook the boot at her. “Modern medicine arrived. Everything had a cure. Malaria was wiped out along with all the other diseases that had been killing people young and keeping the population down. Death control arrived. Old people lived longer. More babies lived who would have died, and now they grow up into old people who live longer still. People are still being fed into the world just as fast—they’re not just being taken out of it at the same rate. Three are born for every two that die. So the population doubles and doubles—and keeps on doubling at a quicker rate all the time. We got a plague of people, a disease of people infesting the world. We got more people who are living longer. Less people have to be born, that’s the answer. We got death control—we got to match it with birth control.”

 

“I still don’t see how you can when people still think it has something to do with killing babies.”

 

“Stop with the dead babies!” Sol shouted, and heaved the boot the length of the room. “There are no babies involved in this—alive or dead—except in the pointed heads of the idiots who repeat what they have heard without understanding a word of it. Present company excepted,” he added in a not too sincere voice. “How can you kill something that never existed? We’re all winners in the ovarian derby, yet I never heard anyone crying about the—if you will excuse the biological term—the sperm who were the losers in the race.”

 

“Sol—what on earth are you talking about?”

 

“The ovarian derby. Every time an egg is fertilized there are a couple of million sperm swimming along, racing along trying to do the job. Only one of them can win the derby, since the very instant fertilization takes place all the rest of them are out in the cold. Does anyone give a damn about the millions of sperm that don’t make it? The answer is no. So what are all the complicated rhythm charts, devices, pills, caps and drugs that are used for birth control?

Nothing but ways of seeing that one other sperm doesn’t make it either. So where do the babies come in? I don’t see any babies.”

“When you put it that way, I guess they don’t. But if it is that simple how come nothing was ever done before this?”

 

Sol breathed a long and tremulous sigh and gloomily retrieved the boot and went back to polishing it.

 

“Shirl,” he said, “if I could answer that they would probably make me President tomorrow. Nothing is ever that simple when it comes down to finding an answer. Everyone has got their own ideas and they push them and say to hell with everyone else. That’s the history of the human race. It got us on top, only now it is pushing us off. The thing is that people will put up with any kind of discomfort, and dying babies, and old age at thirty as long as it has always been that way. Try to get them to change and they fight you, even while they’re dying, saying it was good enough for grandpa so it’s good enough for me. Bango, dead. When the UN sprayed the houses with DDT in Mexico—to kill the mosquitoes who carried malaria that killed the people-they had to have soldiers hold the people back so they could spray. The locals didn’t like that white stuff on the furniture, didn’t look good. I saw it myself. But that was the rarity. Death control slid into the world mostly without people even knowing it. Doctors used better and better drugs, water supplies improved, public health people saw to it that diseases didn’t spread the way they used to. It came about almost naturally without hardly being noticed, and now we got too many people in the world. And something has to be done about it. But doing something means that people must change, make an effort, use their minds, which is what most people do not like to do.”

 

“Yet it does seem an intrusion of privacy, Sol. Telling people they can’t have any children.”

 

“Stop it! We’re almost back to the dead babies again! Birth control doesn’t mean no children. It just means that people have a choice how they want to live. Like rutting, unthinking, breeding animal—or like reasoning creatures. Will a married couple have one, two or three children—whatever number will keep the world population steady and provide a full life of opportunity for everyone? Or will they have four, five or six, unthinking and uncaring, and raise them

in hunger and cold and misery? Like that world out there,” he added, pointing out of the window.

 

“If the world is like that—then everyone must be unthinking and selfish, like you say.”

 

“No—I think better of the human race. They’ve just never been told, they’ve been born animals and died animals, too many of them. I blame the stinking politicians and so-called public leaders who have avoided the issue and covered it up because it was controversial and what the hell, it will be years before it matters and I’m going to get mine now. So mankind gobbled in a century all the world’s resources that had taken millions of years to store up, and no one on the top gave a damn or listened to all the voices that were trying to warn them, they just let us overproduce and overconsume, until now the oil is gone, the topsoil depleted and washed away, the trees chopped down, the animals extinct, the earth poisoned, and all we have to show for this is seven billion people fighting over the scraps that are left, living a miserable existence—and still breeding without control. So I say the time has come to stand up and be counted.”

 

Sol pushed his feet into the boots, laced them up and tied them. He put on a heavy sweater, then took an ancient, moth-eaten battle jacket from the wardrobe. A row of ribbons drew a line of color across the olive drab, and under them were a sharpshooter’s medal and a technical-school badge. “It must have shrunk,” Sol said, grunting as he struggled to close it over his stomach. Then he wrapped a scarf around his neck and shrugged into his ancient, battered overcoat.

 

“Where are you going?” Shirl asked, baffled.

 

“To make a statement. To ask for trouble as our friend Andy told me. I’m seventy-five years old and I reached this venerable state by staying out of trouble, keeping my mouth shut and not volunteering, just like I learned in the Army. Maybe there were too many guys in the world like me, I don’t know. Maybe I should have made my protest a lot earlier, but I never saw anything I felt like protesting about—which I do now. The forces of darkness and the forces of

light, they’re meeting today. I’m going to join with the forces of light.” He jammed a woolen watch cap down over his ears and stalked to the door.

 

“Sol, what on earth are you talking about? Tell me, please,” Shirl begged, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry.

 

“There’s a rally. The Save Our Babies nuts are marching on City Hall, trying to lick the Emergency Bill. There’s another meeting, of people in favor of the bill, and the bigger the turnout there, the better. If enough people stand up and shout they might be heard, maybe the bill will get through Congress this time. Maybe.”

 

“Sol . . .” she called out, but the door was closed.

 

Andy brought him home, late that night, helping the two ambulance men carry the stretcher up the stairs. Sol was strapped to the stretcher, white faced and unconscious, breathing heavily.

 

“There was a street fight,” Andy said, “almost a riot when the march started. Sol was in it. He got knocked down. His hip is broken.” He looked at her, unsmiling and tired, as the stretcher was carried in.

 

“That can be very serious with old people,” he said.

Chapter 5

 

There was a thin crust of ice on the water, and it crackled and broke when Billy pushed the can down through it. As he climbed back up the stairs he saw that another rusted metal step had been exposed. They had dipped a lot of water out of the compartment, but it still appeared to be at least half full.

“There’s a little ice on top, but I don’t think it can freeze all the way down solid,” he told Peter as he closed and dogged shut the door. “There’s still plenty of water there, plenty.”

 

He measured the water carefully every day and locked the door on it as though it were a bank vault full of money. Why not? It was as good as money. As long as the water shortage continued they could get a good price for it, all the D’s they needed to keep warm and eat well.

 

“How about that, Pete?” he said, hanging the can from the bracket over the seacoal fire. “Did you ever stop to think that we can eat this water? Because we can sell it and buy food, that’s why.”

 

Peter squatted on his hams, staring fixedly out the door, and paid no attention until Billy shouted to him and repeated what he had said. Peter shook his head, unhappily.

 

“Whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame,” he intoned. “I have explained to you, Billy, we are approaching the end of all material things. If you covet them you are lost. ”

 

“So—are you lost? You’re wearing clothes bought with that water and eating the grub—so what do you mean?”

“I eat simply to exist for the Day,” he answered solemnly, squinting through the open door at the watery November sun. “We are so close, just a few weeks now, it is hard to believe. Soon it will be days. What a blessing that it should come during our lifetimes.” He pulled himself to his feet and went out; Billy could hear him climbing down to the ground.

 

“World coming to an end,” Billy muttered to himself as he stirred ener-G granules into the water. “Nuts, plain nuts.”

 

This wasn’t the first time he had thought that—but only to himself, never aloud in Peter’s hearing. Everything the man said did sound crazy but it could be true too. Peter could prove it with the Bible and other books, he didn’t have the books now, but he had read them so much he could recite whole long pieces out of them. Why couldn’t it be true? What other reason could there be for the world being like this? It hadn’t always been this way, the old films on TV proved that, yet it had changed so much so quickly. There had to be a reason, so maybe it was like Peter said, the world would end and New Year’s Day would be Doomsday. . . .

 

“It’s a nutty idea,” he said out loud, but he shivered at the same time and held his hands over the smoking fire.

 

Things weren’t that bad. He was wearing two sweaters and an old suit jacket with pieces of inner tube sewed on to patch the elbows, warmer than anything he had ever worn before. And they ate well; he noisily sucked the ener-G broth from the spoon. Buying the Welfare cards had cost a lot of D’s but it was worth it, well worth it. They got Welfare food rations now, and even water rations so they could save their own water to sell. And he had been sniffing LSD dirt at least once a week. The world wasn’t going to come to an end for a long while yet. The hell with that, the world was all right as long as you kept your eyes open and looked out for yourself.

 

A jingling clank sounded outside, from one of the pieces of rusty metal hanging from the bare ribs of the ship. Anyone who tried to climb up to the cabin now had to push past these dangling obstacles and give clear warning of their approach. Since the discovery of the water they had to be wary of any others who might

want to move in as occupants. Billy picked up the crowbar and walked to the door.

 

“I made us some food, Peter,” he said, leaning over the edge. A strange, bristle-bearded face looked up at him.

 

“Get down from there!” Billy shouted. The man mumbled something around the length of sharpened automobile leaf spring that he had clamped in his mouth, then hung by one hand and took out the weapon with his free hand.

 

“Bettyjo!” he shouted in a hoarse voice, and Billy jumped as something whizzed by his ear and crashed into the metal bulkhead behind him.

 

A squat woman with an immense tangle of blond hair stood among the ribs of the ship below, and Billy dodged as she hurled another lump of broken concrete at him. “Go on, Donald!” she screeched. “Get up there!”

 

A second man, hairy and filthy enough to be a twin to the first one, scrambled over the rusty metal and began to climb up on the other side of the ship. Billy saw the trap at once. He could brain anyone who tried to get to the strip of deck in front of the door—but only one at a time. He couldn’t guard both sides at once. While he was beating off one attacker the other would climb up behind him.

 

“Peter!” he shouted as loud as he could. “Peter!”

 

Another piece of concrete burst into dust behind him. He ran to the edge and swung his crowbar at the first man, who bent lower and let it clang against the beam above his head. The noise gave Billy an idea and he jumped back and pounded his crowbar against the metal wall of the deck house until the hammering broom rolled out across the shipyard. “Peter!” he shouted once more, desperately, then leaped for the other end where the second man had thrown an arm over the edge. The man withdrew it hurriedly and swung down out of range of his weapon, jeering up at him.

When Billy turned back he saw that the first man had both arms over the edge and was pulling himself up. Screaming, more afraid than angry, Billy ran at him swinging down his crowbar; it grazed the man’s head and thudded into his shoulder, knocking the auto spring out of his mouth at the same time. The man roared with rage but did not fall. Billy swung his weapon up for another blow but found himself caught roughly from behind by the second man. He couldn’t move—could scarcely breathe—as the man before him spat out fragments of teeth. Blood ran down into his beard and he gurgled as he pulled himself all the way up and began beating Billy with granite fists. Billy howled with pain, lashed out with his feet, tried to break free, but there was no escape. The two men, laughing now, pushed him over the edge of the deck, prying at his clutching hands, sending him toward destruction on the jagged metal twenty feet below.

 

He was hanging by his hands as they stamped at his fingers when they suddenly jumped back. This was the first that Billy realized Peter had returned and climbed up behind him, swinging length of pipe at the two men above. In the moment’s respite Billy transferred his grip to the skeletal side of the ship and eased his aching body toward the ground that looked impossibly far below. The invaders had occupied the ship and had the advantage now. Peter dodged a swing of the leaf spring and joined Billy in a retreat to the ground.

Words penetrated and Billy realized that the woman was screaming curses, and had been for some time.

 

“Kill ‘em both!” she shouted. “He hit me, knocked me down. Kill ‘em!” She was hurling lumps of concrete again, but was so carried away by rage that none of them came close. When Peter and Billy reached the ground she waddled quickly away, calling curses over her shoulder, her mass of yellow hair flying around her head. The two men above blinked down at them, but said nothing. They had done their job. They were in possession of the ship.

 

“We shall leave,” Peter said, putting his arm around Billy to help him walk, using his pipe as a staff to lean upon. “They are strong and have the ship now—and the water. And they are wise enough to guard it well, at least the harlot Bettyjo is. I know her, a woman of

evil who gives her body to those two so they will do what she asks. Yes, it is a sign. She is a harlot of Babylon, displacing us . . .”

 

“We have to get back in,” Billy gasped.

 

“. . . showing us that we must go to the greater harlot of Babylon, there across the river. There is no turning back.”

 

Billy sank to the ground, gasping for breath and trying to knead some of the pain from his fingers, while Peter calmly looked back at the ship that had been their home and fortune. Three small figures capered on the high deck and their jeers came faintly through the cold wind from the bay. Billy began to shiver.

 

“Come,” Peter said gently, and helped him to his feet. “There is no place to stay here, no dwelling any more. I know where we can get shelter in Manhattan, I have been there many times before.”

 

“I don’t want to go there,” Billy said, drawing back, remembering the police.

 

“We must. We will be safe there.”

 

Billy walked slowly after him. Why not? he thought; the cops would have forgotten about him a long time ago. It might be all right, specially if Peter knew some place to go. If he stayed here he would have to stay alone; the fear of that was greater than any remembered fear of the police. They would make out as long as they stuck together.

 

They were halfway across Manhattan Bridge before Billy realized that one of his pockets had been torn away in the fight. “Wait,” he called to Peter, then, more frightened, “wait!” as he searched through his clothing in growing panic. “They’re gone,” he finally said, leaning against the railing. “The Welfare cards. They must have got lost during the fight. Maybe you have them?”

 

“No, as you recall, you took them to get the water yesterday. They are not important.”

“Not important!” Billy sobbed.

 

They had the bridge to themselves, an aching winter aloneness. The color of the slate-gray water below was reflected in the lowering clouds above, which were driven along by the icy wind that cut sharply through their clothes. It was too cold to stay and Billy started forward, Peter followed.

 

“Where are we going?” Billy asked when they came off the bridge and turned down Division Street. It seemed a little warmer here, surrounded by the shuffling crowds. He always felt better with people around.

 

“To the lots. There are a large number of them near the housing developments,” Peter said.

 

“You’re nuts, the lots are full, they always have been.”

 

“Not this time of year,” Peter answered, pointing to the filthy ice that filled the gutter. “Living in the lots is never easy, and this time of year it is particularly hard for the older people and invalids.”

 

It was only on the television screen that Billy had seen the streets of the city filled with cars. For him it was a historical—and therefore uninteresting—fact, because the lots had been there for as long as he could remember, a permanent and decaying part of the landscape. As traffic had declined and operating automobiles became rarer, there was no longer a need for the hundreds of parking lots scattered about the city. They began to gradually fill up with abandoned cars, some hauled there by the police and others pushed in by hand. Each lot was now a small village with people living in every car because, uncomfortable as the cars were, they were still better than the street. Though each car had long since had its full quota of inhabitants, vacancies occurred in the winter when the weaker ones died.

 

They started to work their way through the big lot behind the Seward Park Houses, but were driven off by a gang of teen-agers armed with broken bricks and homemade knives. Walking down Madison Street, they saw the fence around the small park next to

the La Guardia Houses had been pushed down years earlier, and that the park was now filled with the rusting, wheelless remains of cars. There were no aggressive teenagers here and the few people walking about had a shuffling, hopeless look. Smoke rose from only one of the chimneys that projected from most of the automobiles.

Peter and Billy pushed their way between the cars, peering in through windshields and cracked windows, scraping clear patches in the frost when they couldn’t see in. Pale, ghostlike faces turned to look up at them or forms stirred inside as they worked their way through the lot.

 

“This looks like a good one,” Billy said, pointing to a hulking ancient Buick turbine sedan with its brake drums half sunk into the dirt. The windows were heavily frosted on both sides, and there was only silence from inside when they tried all the locked doors. “I wonder how they get in?” Billy said, then climbed up on the hood. There was a sliding sunroof over the front seat and it moved a little when he pushed at it. “Bring the pipe up here, this might be it,” he called down to Peter.

 

The cover shifted when they levered at it with the pipe, then slid back. The gray light poured down on the face and staring eyes of an old man. He had an evil-looking club clutched in one hand, a bar of some kind bound about with lengths of knotted cord that held shards of broken, pointed glass into place. He was dead.

 

“He must have been tough to hold on to a big car like this all by himself,” Billy said.

 

He was a big man and stiff with the cold and they had to work hard to get him up through the opening. They had no need for the filthy rags bound around him, though they did take his Welfare card.

Peter dragged him out to the street for the Department of Sanitation to find, while Billy waited inside the car, standing with his head out of the opening, glowering in all directions, the glass-studded club ready if anyone wanted to dispute the occupation of their new home.

Chapter 6

 

“My, that does look good,” Mrs. Miles said, waiting at the end of the long counter, watching as the Welfare clerk slid the small package across the counter to Shirl. “Someone sick in your family?”

“Where’s the old package, lady?” the clerk complained. “You know you don’t get the new one without turning in the old. And three D’s.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Shirl said, taking the crumpled plastic envelope from her shopping bag and handing it to him along with the money. He grumbled something and made a check on one of his record boards. “Next,” he called out.

 

“Yes,” Shirl told Mrs. Miles, who was squinting at the package and shaping the words slowly with her mouth as she spelled out the printing on it. “It’s Sol, he had an accident. He shares the apartment with us and he must be over seventy. He broke his hip and can’t get out of bed; this is for him.”

 

“Meat flakes, that sure sounds nice,” Mrs. Miles said, handing back the package and following it with her eyes as it vanished into Shirl’s bag. “How do you cook them?”

 

“You can do whatever you like with them, but I make a thick soup with weedcrumbs, it’s easier to eat that way. Sol can’t sit up at all.”

 

“A man like that should be in the hospital, specially when he’s so old.”

 

“He was in the hospital, but there’s no room at all now. As soon as they found out he lived in an apartment they got in touch with Andy and made him take Sol home. Anyone who has a place they can go

to has to leave. Bellevue is full up and they have been taking over whole units in Peter Cooper Village and putting in extra beds, but there still isn’t room enough.” Shirl realized that there was something different about Mrs. Miles today: this was the first time she had seen her without the little boy in tow. “How is Tommy—is he worse?”

 

“No better, no worse. Kwash stays the same all the time, which is okay because I keep drawing the ration.” She pointed to the plastic cup in her bag, into which had been dropped a small dollop of peanut butter. “Tommy gotta stay home while the weather is so cold, there ain’t enough clothes for all the kids to go around, not with Winny going out to school every day. She’s smart. She’s going to finish the whole three years. I haven’t seen you at the water ration a long time now.”

 

“Andy goes to get it, I have to stay with Sol.”

 

“You’re lucky having someone sick in the house, you can get in here for a ration. It’s going to be weedcrackers and water for the rest of the city this winter, that’s for sure.”

 

Lucky? Shirl thought, knotting her kerchief under her chin, looking around the dark bare room of the Welfare Special Ration section. The counter divided the room in half, with the clerks and the tiers of half-empty shelves on one side, the shuffling lines of people on the other. Here were the tight-drawn faces and trembling limbs of the sick, the ones in need of special diets. Diabetics, chronic invalids, people with deficiency diseases and the numerous pregnant women. Were these the lucky ones?

 

“What you going to have for dinner tomorrow?” Mrs. Miles asked, peering through the dirt-filmed window, trying to see the sky outside.

 

“I don’t know, the same as always I guess. Why?”

 

“It might snow. Maybe we might have a white Thanksgiving like we used to have when I was a little girl. We’re going to have a fish, I

been saving for it. Tomorrow’s Thursday, the twenty-fifth of November. Didn’t you remember?”

 

Shirl shook her head. “I guess not. Things have been turned upside down since Sol has been sick.”

 

They walked, heads lowered to escape the blast of the wind, and when they turned the corner from Ninth Avenue into Nineteenth Street, Shirl walked into someone coming in the opposite direction, jarring the woman back against the wall.

 

“I’m sorry,” Shirl said. “I didn’t see you. ”

 

“You’re not blind,” the other woman snapped. “Walking around running into people.” Her eyes widened as she looked at Shirl. “You!”

 

“I said I was sorry, Mrs. Haggerty. It was an accident.” She started to walk on but the other woman stepped in front of her, blocking her way.

 

“I knew I’d find you,” Mrs. Haggerty said triumphantly. “I’m going to have the court of law on you, you stole all my brother’s money and he didn’t leave me none, none at all. Not only that but all the bills I had to pay, the water bill, everything. They were so high I had to sell all the furniture to pay them, and it still wasn’t enough and they’re after me for the rest. You’re going to pay!”

 

Shirl remembered Andy taking the showers and something of her thoughts must have shown on her face because Mary Haggerty’s shout rose to a shrill screech.

 

“Don’t laugh at me, I’m an honest woman! A thing like you can’t stand in a public street smiling at me. The whole world knows what you are, you ”

 

Her voice was cut off by a sharp crack as Mrs. Miles slapped her hard across the face. “Just hold on to that dirty tongue, girlie,” Mrs. Miles said. “No one talks to a friend of mine like that.”

“You can’t do that to me!” Mike’s sister shrieked.

 

“I already done it—and you’ll get more if you keep hanging around here.”

 

The two women faced each other and Shirl was forgotten for the moment. They were alike in years and background, though Mary Haggerty had come up a bit in the world since she had been married. But she had grown up in these streets and she knew the rules. She had to either fight or back down.

 

“This is none of your business,” she said.

 

“I’m making it my business,” Mrs. Miles said, balling her fist and cocking back her arm.

 

“It’s none of your business,” Mike’s sister said, but she scuttled backward a few steps at the same time.

 

“Blow!” Mrs. Miles said triumphantly.

 

“You’re going to hear from me again!” Mary Haggerty called over her shoulder as she drew together the shreds of her dignity and stalked away. Mrs. Miles laughed coldly and spat after the receding back.

 

“I’m sorry to get you involved,” Shirl said.

 

“My pleasure,” Mrs. Miles said. “I wish she really had started some trouble. I would have slugged her. I know her kind.”

 

“I really don’t owe her any money. ”

 

“Who cares? It would be better if you did. It would be a pleasure to stiff someone like that.”

 

Mrs. Miles left her in front of her building and stamped solidly away into the dusk. Suddenly weary, Shirl climbed the long flights to the apartment and pushed through the unlocked door.

“You look bushed,” Sol told her. He was heaped high with blankets and only his face showed; his woolen watch cap was pulled down over his ears. “And turn that thing off, will you. It’s an even chance whether I go blind or deaf first.”

 

Shirl put down her bag and switched off the blaring TV. “It’s getting cold out,” she said. “It’s even cold in here. I’ll make a fire and heat some soup at the same time.”

 

“Not more of that drecky meat flake stuff,” Sol complained, and made a face.

 

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” Shirl said patiently. “It’s real meat, just what you need.”

 

“What I need, you can’t get any more. Do you know what meat flakes are? I heard all about it on TV today, not that I wanted to but how could I turn the damn thing off? A big sales pitch program on taming the wilds in Florida. Some wilds, they should hear about that in Miami Beach. They stopped trying to drain all the swamps and are doing all kinds of fancy things with them instead. Snail ranches—how do you like that? Raising the giant West African snail, three-quarters of a pound of meat in every shell. Plucked, cut, dehydrated, radiated, packed and sealed and sent to the starving peasants here in the frigid North. Meat flakes. What do you think of that?”

 

“It sounds very nice,” Shirl said, stirring the brown, woodlike chips of meat into the pot. “I saw a movie once on TV where they were eating snails, in France I think it was. They were supposed to be something very special.”

 

“For Frenchmen maybe, not for me . . .” Sol broke into a fit of coughing that left him weak and white faced on the pillow, breathing rapidly.

 

“Do you want a drink of water?” Shirl asked.

 

“No—that’s all right.” His anger seemed to have drained away with the coughing. “I’m sorry to take it out on you, kid, you taking care of

me and everything. It’s just that I’m not used to lying around. I stayed in shape all my life, regular exercise that’s the answer, looked after myself, never asked anybody for anything. But there’s one thing you can’t stop.” He looked down gloomily at the bed. “Time marches on. The bones get brittle. Fall down and bango, they got you in a cast to your chin.”

 

“The soup’s ready—”

 

“Not right now, I’m not hungry. Maybe you could turn on the TV— no, leave it off. I had enough. On the news they said that it looks like the Emergency Bill is going to pass after only a couple of months of yakking in Congress. I don’t believe it. Too many people don’t know about it or don’t care about it, so there is no real pressure on Congress to do anything about it. We still have women with ten kids who are starving to death, who believe there is something evil about having smaller families. I suppose we can mostly blame the Catholics for that, they’re still not completely convinced that controlling births is a good thing.”

 

“Sol, please, don’t be anti-Catholic. My Mother’s family . . .”

 

“I’m not being anti-nothing, and I love your mother’s family. Am I anti-Puritan because I say Cotton Mather was a witch-burning bum who helped to cook old ladies? That’s history. Your Church has gone on record and fought publicly against any public birth control measures. That’s history too. The results—which prove them wrong—are just outside that window. They have forced their beliefs on the rest of us so we’re all going down the drain together.”

 

“It’s not really that bad. The Church is not really against the idea of birth control, just the way it is done. They have always approved of the rhythm technique. ”

 

“Not good enough. Neither is the Pill, not for everybody. When are they going to say okay to the Loop? This is the one that really works. And do you know how long it has been around and absolutely foolproof and safe and harmless and all the rest? Since 1964, when the bright boys at Johns Hopkins licked all the problems and side effects, that’s how long. For thirty-five years

they’ve had this little piece of plastic that costs maybe a couple of cents. Once inserted it stays in for years, it doesn’t interfere with any of the body processes, it doesn’t fall out, in fact the woman doesn’t even know it is there—but as long as it is she is not going to get pregnant. Remove it and she can have kids again, nothing is changed. And the funny part is that no one is even sure how it works. It’s a mystery. Maybe it should be spelled with a capital M, Mystery, so your Church could accept it and say it’s God’s will whether the thing is going to work or not.”

 

“Sol—you’re being blasphemous.”

 

“Me? Never! But I got just as much right as the next guy to take a guess as to what God is thinking. Anyway, it really has nothing to do with Him. I’m just trying to find an excuse for the Catholic Church to accept the thing and give the suffering human race a break.”

 

“They’re considering it now.”

 

“That’s great. They’re only about thirty-five years too late. Still, it might work out, though I doubt it. It’s the old business of too little and too late. The world’s gone—not going—to hell in a hand basket, and it’s all of us who pushed it there.”

 

Shirl stirred the soup and smiled at him. “Aren’t you exaggerating maybe a little bit? You can’t really blame all our troubles on overpopulation.”

 

“I damned well can, if you’ll pardon the expression. The coal that was supposed to last for centuries has all been dug up because so many people wanted to keep warm. And the oil too, there’s so little left that they can’t afford to burn it, it’s got to be turned into chemicals and plastics and stuff. And the rivers—who polluted them? The water—who drank it? The topsoil—who wore it out?

Everything has been gobbled up, used up, worn out. What we got left—our one natural resource? Old-car lots, that’s what. Everything else has been used up and all we got to show for it is a couple of billion old cars that are rusting away. One time we had the whole world in our hands, but we ate it and burned it and it’s gone now.

One time the prairie was black with buffalo, that’s what my schoolbooks said when I was a kid, but I never saw them because they had all been turned into steaks and moth-eaten rugs by that time. Do you think that made any impression on the human race? Or the whales and passenger pigeons and whooping cranes, or any of the hundred other species that we wiped out? In a pig’s eye it did. In the fifties and sixties there was a lot of talk about building atomic power plants to purify sea water so the desert would bloom and all that jazz. But it was just talk. Just because some people saw the handwriting on the wall didn’t mean they could get anyone else to read it too. It takes at least five years to build just one atomic plant, so the ones that should have supplied the water and electricity we need now should have been built then. They weren’t. Simple enough.”

 

“You make it sound simple, Sol, but isn’t it too late to worry about what people should have done a hundred years ago?”

 

“Forty, but who’s counting.”

 

“What can we do today? Isn’t that what we should be thinking about?”

 

“You think about it, honeybunch, I get gloomy when I do. Run full speed ahead just to stay even, and keep our fingers crossed, that’s what we can do today. Maybe I live in the past, and if I do I got good reasons. Things were a lot better then, and the trouble would always be coming tomorrow, so the hell with it. There was France, a great big modern country, home of culture, ready to lead the world in progress. Only they had a law that made birth control illegal, and it was a crime for even doctors to talk about contraception. Progress! The facts were clear enough if anybody had bothered to look. The conservationists kept telling us to change our ways or our resources would soon be gone. They’re gone. It was almost too late then, but something could have been done.

Women in every country in the world were begging for birth control information so they could limit the size of their families to something reasonable. All they got was a lot of talk and damn little action. If there had been five thousand family-planning clinics for everyone there was it still wouldn’t have been enough. Babies and love and

sex are probably the most emotionally important and the most secret things known to mankind, so open discussion was almost impossible. There should have been free discussion, tons of money for fertility research, world-wide family planning, educational programs on the importance of population control—and most important of all, free speech for free opinion. But there never was, and now it is 1999 and the end of the century. Some century! Well, there’s a new century coming up in a couple of weeks, and maybe it really will be a new century for the knocked-out human race. I doubt it—and I don’t worry about it. I won’t be here to see it.”

 

“Sol—you shouldn’t talk like that.”

 

“Why not? I got an incurable disease. Old age.”

 

He started coughing again, longer this time, and when he was through he just lay on the bed, exhausted. Shirl came over to straighten his blankets and tuck them back in, and her hand touched his. Her eyes opened wide and she gasped.

 

“You’re warm—hot. Do you have a fever?”

 

“Fever?” He started to chuckle but it turned to a fit of coughing that left him weaker than before. When he spoke again it was in a low voice. “Look, darling, I’m an old cocker. I’m flat on my back in bed all busted up and I can’t move and it’s cold enough to freeze a brass monkey in here. The least I should get is bedsores, but the chances are a lot better that I get pneumonia.”

 

“No!”

 

“Yes. You don’t get anywheres running away from the truth. If I got it, I got it. Now, be a good girl and eat the soup, I’m not hungry, and I’ll take a little nap.” He closed his eyes and settled his head into the pillow.

 

It was after seven that evening when Andy came home. Shirl recognized his footsteps in the hall and met him with her finger to her lips, then led him quietly toward the other room, pointing to Sol, who was still asleep and breathing rapidly.

“How is he feeling?” Andy asked, unbuttoning his sodden topcoat. “What a night out, rain mixed with sleet and snow.”

 

“He has a fever,” Shirl said, her fingers twisting together. “He says that it’s pneumonia. Can it be? What can we do?”

 

Andy stopped, halfway out of his coat. “Does he feel very warm? Has he been coughing?” he asked. Shirl nodded. Andy opened the door and listened to Sol’s breathing, then closed it again silently and put his coat back on.

 

“They warned me about this at the hospital,” he said. “There’s always a chance with old people who have to stay in bed. I have some antibiotic pills they gave me. We’ll give those to him, then I’ll go to Bellevue and see if I can get some more—and see if they won’t readmit him. He should be in an oxygen tent.”

 

Sol barely woke up when he swallowed the pills, and his skin felt burning hot to Shirl when she held up his head. He was still asleep when Andy returned, less than an hour later. Andy’s face was empty of expression, unreadable, what she always thought of as his professional face. It could mean only one thing.

 

“No more antibiotics,” he whispered. “Because of the flu epidemic. The same with the oxygen tents and the beds. None available, filled up. I never even saw any of the doctors, just the girl at the desk.”

 

“They can’t do that. He’s terribly sick. It’s like murder.”

 

“If you go into Bellevue it looks as though half the city is sick, people everywhere, even in the street outside. There just isn’t enough medicine to go around, Shirl. I think just the children are getting it, everyone else has to take their chances.”

 

“Take their chances!” She leaned her face against his wet coat and began to sob helplessly. “But there is no chance at all here. It’s murder. An old man like that, he needs some help, he just can’t be left to die.”

He held her to him. “We’re here and we can look after him. There are still four of the tablets left. We’ll do everything that we can. Now come inside and lie down. You’re going to get sick too if you don’t take better care of yourself.”

Chapter 7

 

“No, Rusch, impossible. Can’t be done—and you should know better than to ask me.” Lieutenant Grassioli held his knuckle against the corner of his eye, but it did not stop the twitching.

“I’m sorry, lieutenant,” Andy said. “I’m not asking for myself. It’s a family problem. I’ve been on duty nine hours now and I’ll take double tours the rest of the week—”

 

“A police officer is on duty twenty-four hours a day.”

 

Andy held tight to his temper. “I know that, sir. I’m not trying to avoid anything.”

 

“No. Now that’s the end of it.”

 

“Then let me off for a half an hour. I just want to go to my place, then I’ll report right back to you. After that I can work through until the day-duty men come on. You’re going to be shorthanded here after midnight anyway, and if I stay around I can finish off those reports that Centre Street has been after all week.”

 

It would mean working twice around the clock without any rest, but this would be the only way to get any grudging aid out of Grassy. The lieutenant couldn’t order him to work hours like this—if it wasn’t an emergency—but he could use the help. Most of the detective staff had been turned out again on riot duty so that the routine work had fallen far behind. Headquarters on Centre Street did not think this a valid excuse.

 

“I never ask a man to do extra duty,” Grassioli said, grabbing the bait. “But I believe in fair play, give and take. You can take a half an

hour now—but no more, understand—and make it up when you come back. If you want to stay around later, that’s your choice.”

 

“Yes, sir,” Andy said. Some choice. He was going to be here when the sun came up.

 

The rain that had been falling for the past three days had turned to snow, big, slow flakes that fell silently through the wide-spaced pools of light along Twenty-third Street. There were few other pedestrians, though there were still dark figures curled up in knots around the supporting pillars of the expressway. Most of the other street sleep-ers had sought some kind of shelter from the weather and, though they were unseen, their crowded numbers, along with the other citizens of the city, pressed out from the buildings with an almost tangible presence. Behind every wall were hundreds of people, seen now only as dark shapes in doorways or the sudden silhouette against a window. Andy lowered his head to keep the snow out of his face and walked faster, worry pushing him on until he had to slow down, panting to catch his breath.

 

Shirl hadn’t wanted him to leave that morning, but he had no other choice. Sol had been no better—or worse—than he had been for the past three days. Andy would have liked to have stayed with him, to help Shirl, but he had no choice. He had to leave, he was on duty. She had not understood this and they had almost fought over it, in whispers so that Sol wouldn’t hear. He had hoped to be back early, but the riot duty had taken care of that. At least he could look in for a few minutes, talk to them both, see if he could help in any way. He knew it wasn’t easy for Shirl to be alone with the sick old man—but what else was there to do?

 

Music and the canned laughter of television sounded from most of the doors along the hall, but his own apartment was silent; he felt a sudden cold premonition. He unlocked the door and opened it quietly. The room was dark. “Shirl?” he whispered. “Sol?”

 

There was no answer, and something about the silence struck him at once. Where was the fast, rasping breathing that had filled the room? His flashlight whirred and the beam struck across the room and moved to the bed, to Sol’s still, pale face. He looked as though

he were sleeping quietly, perhaps he was, yet Andy Knew—even before his fingertips touched—that the skin would be cold and that Sol was dead.

 

Oh, God, he thought, she was alone with him here, in the dark, while he died.

 

He suddenly became aware of the almost soundless, heartbreaking sobbing from the other side of the partition.

Chapter 8

 

“I don’t want to hear about it any more!” Billy shouted, but Peter kept talking just as if Billy hadn’t been there, lying right next to him, and hadn’t said a word.

“. . . and I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea,’ that is the way it is written in Revelation, the truth is there if we look for it. A revelation to us, a glimpse of tomorrow . . .”

 

“SHUT UP!”

 

It had no effect, and the monotonous voice went on steadily, against the background of the wind that swept around the old car and keened in through the cracks and holes. Billy pulled a corner of the dusty cover over his head to deaden the sound, but it didn’t help much and he could hardly breathe. He slipped it below his chin and stared up at the gray darkness inside the car, trying to ignore the man beside him. With the seats removed the sedan made a single, not too spacious room. They slept side by side on the floor, seeking what warmth they could from the tattered mound of firewall insulation, cushion stuffing and crumpled plastic seat covering that made up their bedding. There was the sudden reek of iodine and smoke as the wind blew down the exhaust-pipe chimney and stirred the ashes in the trunk, which they used for a stove. The last chunk of seacoal had been burned a week before.

 

Billy had slept, he didn’t know how long, until Peter’s droning voice had wakened him. He was sure now that the man was out of his head, talking to himself most of the time. Billy felt stifled by the walls and the dust, the closeness and the meaningless words that

battered at him and filled the car. Getting to his knees, he turned the crank, lowered the rear window an inch and put his mouth to the opening, breathing in the cold freshness of the air. Something brushed against his lips, wetting them. He bent his head to look out through the opening and could see the white shapes of snowflakes drifting down.

 

“I’m going out,” he said as he closed the window, but Peter gave no sign that he had heard him. “I’m going out. It stinks in here.” He picked up the poncho made from the plastic covering that had been stripped from the front seat of the Buick, put his head through the opening in the center and wrapped it around him. When he unlocked the rear door and pushed it open a swirl of snow came in. “It stinks in here, and you stink—and I think you’re nuts.” Billy climbed out and slammed the door behind him.

 

When the snow touched the ground it melted, but it was piling up on the rounded humps of the automobiles. Billy scraped a handful from the hood of their car and put it in his mouth. Nothing moved in the darkness and, except for the muffled whisper of the falling snow, the night was silent. Picking his way through the white- shrouded cars he went to Canal Street and turned west toward the Hudson River. The street was strangely empty, it must be very late, and the occasional pedicab that passed could be heard a long way off by the hissing of its tires. He stopped at the Bowery and watched in a doorway as a convoy of five tug-trucks went past, guards walked on both sides and the tugmen were bent double as they dragged at the loads. Must be something valuable, Billy thought, food probably. His empty stomach grumbled painfully at this reminder and he kneaded it with his fingers. It was going on two whole days since had had last eaten. There was more snow here, clumped on an iron fence, and as he passed he scraped it off and wadded it into a ball that he put into his mouth. When he came to Elizabeth Street he crossed over and peered up at the spring- powered clock mounted on the front of the Chinese Community Center building, and he could just make out the hands. It was a little after three o’clock. That meant there were at least three or four more hours before it got light, plenty of time to get uptown and back.

As long as he was walking he felt warm enough, though the snow melted and ran down inside his clothes. But it was a long way up to Twenty-third Street and he was very tired; he had not eaten much the last few weeks. Twice he halted to rest, but the cold bit through him as soon as he stopped moving, and after only a few minutes he struggled to his feet and went on. The farther north he walked, the larger the fear became.

 

Why shouldn’t I come up here? he asked himself, looking around unhappily at the darkness. The cops have forgotten all about me by now. It was too long ago, it was—he counted off on his fingers— four months ago, going on five now in December. Cops never followed a case more than a couple of weeks, not unless somebody shot the mayor or stole a million D’s or something. As long as no one saw him he was safe as houses. Twice before he had come north, but as soon as he had got near the old neighborhood he had stopped. It wasn’t raining hard enough or there were too many people around or something. But tonight was different, the snow was like a wall around him—it seemed to be coming down heavier—and he wouldn’t be seen. He would get to the Columbia Victory and go down to the apartment and wake them up. They were his family, they would be glad to see him, no matter what he had done, and he could explain that it was all a frameup, he wasn’t guilty. And food! He spat into the darkness. They had rations for four and his mother always hoarded some of it. He would eat his fill. Oatmeal, slabs of it, maybe even fresh cooked and hot. Clothes too, his mother must still have all of his clothes. He would put on some warm things and get the pair of heavy shoes that had been his father’s. There was no risk, no one would know he had been there. Just stay a few minutes, a half an hour at the most, then get out. It would be worth it.

 

At Twentieth Street he crossed under the elevated highway and worked his way out on Pier 61. The barnlike building of the pier was jammed full of people and he did not dare pass through it. But a narrow ledge ran around the outside, on top of the row of piles, and he knew it well, though this was the first time he had ever gone there at night—with the ledge slippery with moist snow. He sidled along, feeling for each step with his back to the building, hearing

the slapping of waves against the piles below. If he fell in there would be no way to get back up, it would be a cold, wet death. Shivering, he slid his foot forward and almost tripped over a thick mooring line. Above him, almost invisible in the darkness, was the rusty flank of the outermost hulk of Ship-town. This was probably the longest way to get to the Columbia Victory, which meant it would be the safest. There was no one in sight as he eased up the gangplank and onto the deck.

 

As he crossed the floating city of ships Billy had the sudden feeling that it was going to be all right. The weather was on his side, snowing just as hard as ever, wrapping around and protecting him. And he had the ships to himself, no one else was topside, no one saw him pass. He had it all figured out, he had been preparing for this night for a long time. If he went down the passageway he might be heard while he was trying to wake someone inside his apartment, but he wasn’t that stupid. When he reached the deck he stopped and took out the braided wire he had made weeks earlier by splicing together the ignition wires from a half-dozen old cars. At the end of the wire was a heavy bolt. He carefully played it out until the bolt reached the window of the compartment where his mother and sister slept. Then, swinging it out and back, he let it knock against the wooden cover that sealed the window. The tiny sound was muffled by the snow, lost among the creakings and rattlings of the anchored fleet. But inside the room it would sound loud enough, it would wake someone up.

 

Less than a minute after he started the thumping he heard a rattle below and the cover moved, then vanished inside. He pulled up the wire as a dark blur of a head protruded through the opening.

 

“What is it? Who is there?” his sister’s voice whispered.

 

“The eldest brother,” he hissed back in Cantonese. “Open the door and let me in.”

Chapter 9

 

“I feel so bad about Sol,” Shirl said. “It seems so cruel.”

“Don’t,” Andy said, holding her close in the warmth of the bed and kissing her. “I don’t think he felt as unhappy about it as you do. He was an old man, and in his life he saw and did a lot. For him everything was in the past and I don’t think he was very happy with the world the way it is today. Look—isn’t that sunshine? I think the snow has stopped and the weather is clearing up.”

 

“But dying like that was so useless, if he hadn’t gone to that demonstration—”

 

“Come on, Shirl, don’t beat it. What’s done is done. Why don’t you think about today? Can you imagine Grassy giving me a whole day off—just out of sympathy?”

 

“No. He’s a terrible man. I’m sure he had some other reason and you’ll find out about it when you go in tomorrow.”

 

“Now you sound like me,” he laughed. “Let’s have some breakfast and think about all the good things we want to do today.”

 

Andy went in and lit the fire while she dressed, then checked the room again to make sure that he had put all of Sol’s things out of sight. The clothes were in the wardrobe and he had swept shelves clear and stuffed the books in on top of the clothes. There was nothing he could do about the bed, but he pulled the cover up and put the pillow in the wardrobe too so that it looked more like a couch. Good enough. In the next few weeks he would get rid of the things one by one in the flea market; the books should bring a good

price. They would eat better for a while and Shirl wouldn’t have to know where the extra money came from.

 

He was going to miss Sol, he knew that. Seven years ago, when he had first rented the room, it had been just a convenient arrangement for both of them. Sol had explained later that rising food prices had forced him to divide the room and let out half, but he didn’t want to share it with just any bum. He had gone to the precinct and told them about the vacancy. Andy, who had been living in the police barracks, had moved in at once. So Sol had had his money—and an armed protection at the same time. There had been no friendship in the beginning, but this had come. They had become close in spite of their difference in ages: Think young, be young, Sol had always said, and he had lived up to his own rule. It was funny how many things Sol had said that Andy could remember. He was going to keep on remembering these things. He wasn’t going to get sentimental over it—Sol would have been the first one to laugh at that, and give what he called his double razzberry—but he wasn’t going to forget him.

 

The sun was coming in the window now and, between that and the stove, the chill was gone and the room was comfortable. Andy switched on the TV and found some music, not the kind of thing he liked, but Shirl did, so he kept it on. It was something called The Fountains of Rome, the title was on the screen, superimposed on a picture of the bubbling fountains. Shirl came in, brushing her hair and he pointed to it.

 

“Doesn’t it give you a thirst, all that splashing water?” Andy asked. “Makes me want to take a shower. I bet I smell something terrible.”

“Sweet as perfume,” he said, watching her with pleasure as she sat on the windowsill, still brushing her hair, the sun touching it with golden highlights. “How would you like to go on a train ride—and a picnic today?” he asked suddenly.

 

“Stop it! I can’t take jokes before breakfast.”

“No, I mean it. Move aside for a second.” He leaned close to the window and squinted out at the ancient thermometer that Sol had nailed to the wooden frame outside. Most of the paint and numbers had flaked away, but Sol had scratched new ones on in their place. “It’s fifty already—in the shade—and I bet it goes up close to fifty- five today. When you get this kind of weather in December in New York—grab it. There might be five feet of snow tomorrow. We can use the last of the soypaste to make snadwiches. The water train leaves at eleven, and we can ride in the guard car.”

 

“Then you meant it?”

 

“Of course, I don’t joke about this kind of thing. A real excursion to the country. I told you about the trip I made, when I was with the guard last week. The train goes up along the Hudson River to Croton-on-Hudson, where the tank cars are filled. This takes about two, three hours. I’ve never seen it, but they say you can walk over to Croton Point Park—it’s right out in the river—and they still have some real trees there. If it’s warm enough we can have our picnic, then go back on the train. What do you say?”

 

“I say it sounds wonderfully impossible and unbelievable. I’ve never been that far from the city since I was a little girl, it must be miles and miles. When do we go?”

 

“Just as soon as we have some breakfast. I’ve already put the oatmeal up—and you might stir it a bit before it burns.”

 

“Nothing can burn on a seacoal fire.” But she went to the stove and took care of the pot as she said it. He didn’t remember when he had seen her smiling and happy like this; it was almost like the summer again.

 

“Don’t be a pig and eat all the oatmeal,” she said. “I can use that corn oil—I knew I was saving it for something important—and fry up oatmeal cakes for the picnic too.”

 

“Make them good and salty, we can drink all the water we want up there.”

Andy pulled the chair out for Shirl so that she sat with her back to Sol’s charging bicycle; there was no point in her seeing something that might remind her of what had happened. She was laughing now, talking about their plans for the day, and he didn’t want to change it. It was going to be something special, they were both sure of that.

 

There was a quick rap on the door while they were packing in the lunch, and Shirl gasped. “The callboy—I knew it! You’re going to have to work today . . .”

 

“Don’t worry about that,” Andy smiled. “Grassy won’t go back on his word. And besides, that’s not the callboy’s knock. If there is one sound I know it’s his bam-bam-bam.”

 

Shirl forced a smile and went to unlock the door while he finished wrapping the lunch.

 

“Tab!” she said happily. “You’re the last person in the world . . . Come in, it’s wonderful to see you. It’s Tab Fielding,” she said to Andy.

 

“Morning, Miss Shirl,” Tab said stolidly, staying in the hall. “I’m sorry, but this is no social call. I’m on the job now.”

 

“What is it?” Andy asked, walking over next to Shirl.

 

“You have to realize I take the work that is offered to me,” Tab said. He was unsmiling and gloomy. “I’ve been in the bodyguard pool since September, just the odd jobs, no regular assignment, we take whatever work we can get. A man turns down a job he goes right back to the end of the list. I have a family to feed. ”

 

“What are you trying to say?” Andy asked. He was aware that someone was standing in the darkness behind Tab and he could tell by the shuffle of feet that there were others out of sight down the hall.

“Don’t take no stuff,” the man in back of Tab said in an unpleasant nasal voice. He stayed behind the bodyguard where he could not be seen. “I got the law on my side. I paid you. Show him the order!”

 

“I think I understand now,” Andy said. “Get away from the door, Shirl. Come inside, Tab, so we can talk to you.”

 

Tab started forward and the man in the hall tried to follow him. “You don’t go in there without me—” he shrilled. His voice was cut off as Andy slammed the door in his face.

 

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Tab said. He was wearing his spike- studded iron knucks, his fist clenched tight around them.

 

“Relax,” Andy said. “I just wanted to talk to you alone first, find out what was going on. He has a squat-order, doesn’t he?”

 

Tab nodded, looking unhappily down at the floor.

 

“What on earth are you two talking about?” Shirl asked, worriedly glancing back and forth at their set expressions.

 

Andy didn’t answer and Tab turned to her. “A squat-order is issued by the court to anyone who can prove they are really in need of a place to live. They only give so many out, and usually just to people with big families that have had to get out of some other place. With a squat-order you can look around and find a vacant apartment or room or anything like that, and the order is a sort of search warrant. There can be trouble, people don’t want to have strangers walking in on them, that kind of thing, so anyone with a squat-order takes along a bodyguard. That’s where I come in, the party out there in the hall, name of Belicher, hired me.”

 

“But what are you doing here?” Shirl asked, still not understanding.

 

“Because Belicher is a ghoul, that’s why,” Andy said bitterly. “He hangs around the morgue looking for bodies.”

“That’s one way of saying it,” Tab answered, holding on to his temper. “He’s also a guy with a wife and kids and no place to live, that’s another way of looking at it.”

 

There was a sudden hammering on the door and Belicher’s complaing voice could be heard outside. Shirl finally relized the significance of Tab’s presence, and she gasped. “You’re here because you’re helping them,” she said. “They found out that Sol is dead and they want this room.”

 

Tab could only nod mutely.

 

“There’s still a way out,” Andy said. “If we had one of the men here from my precinct, living in here, then these people couldn’t get in.”

 

The knocking was louder and Tab took a half step backward toward the door. “If there was somebody here now, that would be okay, but Belicher could probably take the thing to the squat court and get occupancy anyway because he has a family. I’ll do what I can to help you—but Belicher, he’s still my employer.”

 

“Don’t open that door,” Andy said sharply. “Not until we have this straightened out.”

 

“I have to—what else can I do?” He straightened up and closed his fist with the knucks on it. “Don’t try to stop me, Andy. You’re a policeman, you know the law about this.”

 

“Tab, must you?” Shirl asked in a low voice.

 

He turned to her, eyes filled with unhappiness. “We were good friends once, Shirl, and that’s the way I’m going to remember it. But you’re not going to think much of me after this because I have to do my job. I have to let them in.”

 

“Go ahead—open the damn door,” Andy said bitterly, turning his back and walking over to the window.

 

The Belichers swarmed in. Mr. Belicher was thin, with a strangely shaped head, almost no chin and just enough intelligence to sign

his name to the Welfare application. Mrs. Belicher was the support of the family; from the flabby fat of her body came the children, all seven of them, to swell the Relief allotment on which they survived. Number eight as pushing an extra bulge out of the dough of her flesh; it was really number eleven since three of the younger Belichers had perished through indifference or accident. The largest girl, she must have been all of twelve, was carrying the

sore-covered infant which stank abominably and cried continuously. The other children shouted at each other now, released from the silence and tension of the dark hall.

 

“Oh, looka the nice fridge,” Mrs. Belicher said, waddling over and opening the door.

 

“Don’t touch that,” Andy said, and Belicher pulled him by the arm.

 

“I like this room—it’s not big, you know, but nice. What’s in here?” He started toward the open door in the partition.

 

“That’s my room,” Andy said, slamming it shut in his face. “Just keep out of there.”

 

“No need to act like that,” Belicher said, sidling away quickly like a dog that has been kicked too often. “I got my rights. The law says I can look wherever I want with a squat-order.” He moved farther away as Andy took a step toward him. “Not that I’m doubting your word, mister, I believe you. This room here is fine, got a good table, chairs, bed. ”

 

“Those things belong to me. This is an empty room, and a small one at that. It’s not big enough for you and all your family.”

 

“It’s big enough, all right. We lived in smaller. ”

 

“Andy—stop them! Look—” Shirl’s unhappy cry spun Andy around and he saw that two of the boys had found the packets of herbs that Sol had grown so carefully in his window box, and were tearing them open, thinking that it was food of some kind.

“Put these things down,” he shouted, but before he could reach them they had tasted the herbs, then spat them out.

 

“Burn my mouth!” the bigger boy screamed and sprayed the contents of the packet on the floor. The other boy bounced up and down with excitement and began to do the same thing with the rest of the herbs. They twisted away from Andy and before he could stop them the packets were empty.

 

As soon as Andy turned away, the younger boy, still excited, climbed on the table—his mudstained foot wrappings leaving filthy smears—and turned up the TV. Blaring music crashed over the screams of the children and the ineffectual calls of their mother.

Tab pulled Belicher away as he opened the wardrobe to see what was inside.

 

“Get these kids out of here,” Andy said, white faced with rage.

 

“I got a squat-order, I got rights,” Belicher shouted, backing away and waving an imprinted square of plastic.

 

“I don’t care what rights you have,” Andy told him, opening the hall door. “We’ll talk about that when these brats are outside.”

 

Tab settled it by grabbing the nearest child by the scruff of the neck and pushing it out through the door. “Mr. Rusch is right,” he said. “The kids can wait outside while we settle this.”

 

Mrs. Belicher sat down heavily on the bed and closed her eyes, as though all this had nothing to do with her. Mr. Belicher retreated against the wall saying something that no one heard or bothered to listen to. There were some shrill cries and angry sobbing from the hall as the last child was expelled.

 

Andy looked around and realized that Shirl had gone into their room; he heard the key turn in the lock. “I suppose this is it?” he said, looking steadily at Tab.

The bodyguard shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, Andy, honest to God I am. What else can I do? It’s the law, and if they want to stay here you can’t get them out.”

 

“It’s the law, it’s the law,” Belicher echoed tonelessly.

 

There was nothing Andy could do with his clenched fists and he had to force himself to open them. “Help me carry these things into the other room, will you, Tab?”

 

“Sure,” Tab said, and took the other end of the table. “Try and explain to Shirl about my part in this, will you? I don’t think she understands that it’s just a job I have to do.”

 

Their footsteps crackled on the dried herbs that littered the floor and Andy did not answer him.

Chapter 10

 

“Andy, you must do something, those people are driving me right out of my mind.”

“Easy, Shirl, it’s not that bad,” Andy said. He was standing on a chair, filling the wall tank from a jerry can, and when he turned to answer her some of the water splashed over and dripped down to the floor. “Let me finish this first before we argue, will you.”

 

“I’m not arguing—I’m just telling you how I feel. Listen to that.”

 

Sound came clearly through the thin partition. The baby was crying, it seemed to do this continuously day and night; and they had to use earplugs to get any sleep. Some of the children were fighting, completely ignoring their father’s reedy whine of complaint. To add to the turmoil one of them was beating steadily on the floor with something heavy. The people in the apartment below would be up again soon to complain; it never did any good. Shirl sat on the edge of the bed, wringing her hands.

 

“Do you hear that?” she said. “It never stops, I don’t know how they can live like that. You’re away so you don’t hear the worst of it.

Can’t we get them out of there? There must be something we can do about it.”

 

Andy emptied the jerry can and climbed down, threading his way through the crowded room. They had sold Sol’s bed and his wardrobe, but everything else was jammed in here, and there was scarcely a foot of clear floor space. He dropped heavily into a chair.

 

“I’ve been trying, you know I have. Two of the patrolmen, they live in the barracks now, are ready to move in here if we can get the

Belichers out. That’s the hard part. They have the law on their side.”

 

“Is there a law that says we have to put up with people like that?” She was wringing her hands helplessly, staring at the partition.

 

“Look, Shirl, can’t we talk about this some other time? I have to go out soon—”

 

“I want to talk about it now. You’ve been putting it off ever since they came, and that’s over two weeks now, and I can’t take much more of it.”

 

“Come on, it’s not that bad. It’s just noise.”

 

The room was very cold. Shirl pulled her legs up and wrapped the old blanket tighter around her; the springs in the bed twanged under her weight. There was a momentary lull from the other room that ended with shrill laughter.

 

“Do you hear that?” Shirl asked. “What kind of minds do they have? Every time they hear the bed move in here they burst out laughing. We’ve no privacy, none at all, that partition is as thin as cardboard and they listen for everything we do and hear every word we say. If they won’t go—can’t we move?”

 

“Where to? Show some sense, will you, we’re lucky to have this much room to ourselves. Do you know how many people still sleep in the streets—and how many bodies get brought in every morning?”

“I couldn’t care less. It’s my own life I’m worrying about.” “Please, not now.” He looked up as the light bulb flickered and

dimmed, then sprang back to life again. There was a sudden rattle of hail against the window. “We can talk about it when I get back, I shouldn’t be long.”

 

“No, I want to settle it now, you’ve been putting this off over and over again. You don’t have to go out now.”

He took his coat down, restraining his temper. “It can wait until I get back. I told you that we finally had word on Billy Chung—an informer saw him leaving Shiptown—the chances are that he had been visiting his family. It’s old news too, it happened fifteen days ago, but the stoolie didn’t think it important enough to tell us about right away. I guess he was hoping to see the boy come back, but he never has. I’ll have to talk to his family and see what they know.”

 

“You don’t have to go now—you said this happened some time ago. ”

 

“What does that have to do with it? The lieutenant will want a report in the morning. So what should I tell him—that you didn’t want me to go out tonight?”

 

“I don’t care what you tell him. ”

 

“I know you don’t, but I do. It’s my job and I have to do it.”

 

They glared at each other in silence, breathing rapidly. From the other side of the partition there sounded a shrill cry and childish sobbing.

 

“Shirl, I don’t want to fight with you,” Andy said. “I have to go out, that’s all there is to it. We can talk about it later, when I come back.”

 

“If I’m here when you come back.” She had her hands clenched tightly together and her face was pale.

 

“What do you mean by that?”

 

“I don’t know what I mean. I just know something has to change. Please, let’s settle this now. ”

 

“Can’t you understand that’s impossible? We’ll talk about it when I get back.” He unlocked the door and stood with the knob in his hand, getting a grip on his temper. “Let’s not fight about it now. I’ll be back in a few hours, we can worry about it then, all right?” She didn’t answer, and after waiting a moment he went out and closed

the door heavily behind him. The foul, thick odor of the room beyond hit him in the face.

 

“Belicher,” he said, “you’re going to have to clean this place up. It stinks.”

 

“I can’t do anything about the smoke until I get some kind of chimbley.” Belicher sniffled, squatting and holding his hands over a smoldering lump of seacoal. This rested in a hubcap filled with sand from which eye-burning, oily smoke rose to fill the room. The opening in the outer wall that Sol had made for the chimney of his stove had been carelessly covered with a sheet of thin polythene that billowed an crackled as the wind blew against it.

 

“The smoke is the best smell in here,” Andy said. “Have you kids been using this place for a toilet again?”

 

“You wouldn’t ask kids to go down all them stairs at night, would you?” Belicher complained.

 

Wordless, Andy looked around at the heap of coverings in the corner where Mrs. Belicher and the smaller Belichers were huddled for warmth. The two boys were doing something in the corner with their backs turned. The small light bulb threw long shadows over the rubbish that was beginning to collect against the baseboard, lit up the new marks gouged in the wall.

 

“You better get this place cleaned up,” Andy said and slammed the door shut on Belicher’s whining answer.

 

Shirl was right, these people were impossible and he had to do something about them. But when? It had better be soon, she couldn’t take much more of them. He was angry at the invaders— and angry at her. All right, it was pretty bad, but you had to take things as they came. He was still putting in a twelve-and fourteen- hour day, which was a lot worse than just sitting and listening to the kids scream.

 

The street was dark, filled with wind and driving sleet. There was snow mixed with it and had already begun to stick to the pavement

and pile up in corners against the walls. Andy plowed through it, head down, hating the Belichers and trying not to be angry with Shirl.

 

The walkways and connecting bridges in Shiptown were ice coated and slippery and Andy had to grope his way over them carefully, aware of the surging black water below. In the darkness all of the ships looked alike and he used his flashlight on their bows to pick out their names. He was chilled and wet before he found the Columbia Victory and pulled open the heavy steel door that led below deck. As he went down the metal stairs light spilled across the passageway ahead. One of the doors had been opened by a small boy with spindly legs; it looked like the Chung apartment.

 

“Just a minute,” Andy said, stopping the door before the child could close it. The little boy gaped up at him, silent and wide-eyed.

 

“This is the Chung apartment, isn’t it?” he asked, stepping in. Then he recognized the woman standing there. She was Billy’s sister, he had met her before. The mother sat in a chair against the wall, with the same expression of numb fright as her daughter, holding on to the twin of the boy who had opened the door. No one answered him.

 

These people really love the police, Andy thought. At the same instant he realized that they all kept looking toward the door in the far wall and quickly away. What was bothering them?

 

He reached behind his back and closed the hall door. It wasn’t possible—yet the night Billy Chung had been seen here had been stormy like this one, perfect cover for a fugitive. Could I be having a break at last? he wondered. Had he picked the right night to come here?

 

Even as the thoughts were forming the door to the bedroom opened and Billy Chung stepped out, starting to say something. His words were drowned by his mother’s shrill cries and his sister’s shouted warning. He looked up and halted, shocked motionless when he saw Andy.

“You’re under arrest,” Andy said, reaching down to the side of his belt to get his nippers.

 

“No!” Billy gasped hoarsely and grabbed at his waistband and pulled out a knife.

 

It was a mess. The old woman kept screaming shrilly, over and over, without stopping for breath and the daughter hurled herself on Andy, trying to scratch at his eyes. She raked her nails down his cheek before he grabbed her and held her off at arm’s length. And all the time he was watching Billy, who held out the long shining blade as he advanced in a knife-fighter’s crouch, waving the weapon before him.

 

“Put that down,” Andy shouted, and leaned his back against the door. “You can’t get out of here. Don’t cause any more trouble.” The woman found she couldn’t reach Andy’s face so she raked lines of fire down the back of his hand with her nails. Andy pushed her away and was barely aware of her falling as he grabbed for his gun.

 

“Stop it!” he shouted, and pointed the gun up in the air. He wanted to fire a warning shot, then he realized that the compartment was made of steel and any bullet would ricochet around inside of it: there were two women and two children here.

 

“Stop it, Billy, you can’t get out of here,” he shouted, pointing the gun at the boy who was halfway across the room, waving the knife wildly.

 

“Let me by,” Billy sobbed. “I’ll kill you! Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?”

 

He wasn’t going to stop, Andy realized. The knife was sharp and he knew how to use it. If he wanted trouble he was going to get it.

 

Andy aimed the gun at Billy’s leg and pulled the trigger just as the boy stumbled.

The boom of the .38-caliber shell filled the compartment and Billy pitched forward, the bullet hit his head and he kept going down to sprawl on the steel deck. The knife spun from his hand nd stopped almost at Andy’s feet. Shocked silence followed the sound of the shot and the air was strong with the sharp reek of gunpowder. No one moved except Andy, who bent over and touched the boy’s wrist.

 

Andy was aware of a hammering on the door behind him and he reached back and fumbled to open it without turning around.

 

“I’m a police officer,” he said. “I want someone to get over to Precinct 12-A on Twenty-third Street and report this at once. Tell them that Billy Chung is here. He’s dead.”

 

A bullet in the temple, Andy realized suddenly. Got it in the same spot that Big Mike O’Brien did.

 

It was messy, that was the worst part of it. Not Billy, he was safely dead. It was the mother and the sister, they had screamed abuse at him while the twins had held on to each other and sobbed. Finally Andy made the neighbors across the hall take the whole family in and he had remained alone with the body until Steve Kulozik and a patrolman had arrived from the precinct. He hadn’t seen the two women after that, and he hadn’t wanted to. It had been an accident, that was all, they ought to realize that. If the kid hadn’t fallen he would have gotten the bullet in the leg and that would have been the end of it. Not that the police would care about the shooting, the case could be closed now without any more red tape, it was just the two women. Well, let them hate him, it wouldn’t hurt him and he wasn’t ever going to see them again. So the son was a martyr, not a killer, if they preferred to remember him that way. Fine. Either way the case was closed.

 

It was late, after midnight, before Andy got home. Bringing back the body and making a report had taken a long time. As usual the Belichers hadn’t locked the hall door—they didn’t care, they had nothing worth losing or stealing. Their room was dark and he flashed his light across it, catching a fleeting glimpse of their huddled bodies, a glimmer of reflection from their eyes. They were

awake—but at least they were all quiet for a change, even the baby. As he put his key into the lock on his door he heard a muffled titter behind him in the darkness. What could they possibly have to laugh about?

 

Pushing the door open into the silent room, he remembered the trouble with Shirl earlier that evening and he felt a sudden dart of fear. He raised the flashlight but did not squeeze it. There was the laughter behind him again, a little louder this time.

 

The light sliced across the room to the vacant chairs, the empty bed. Shirl wasn’t here. It couldn’t mean anything, she had probably gone downstairs to the lavatories, that was all.

 

Yet he knew, even before he opened the wardrobe, that her clothes were gone and so were her suitcases.

 

Shirl was gone too.

Chapter 11

 

“What do you want?” the hard-eyed man asked, standing just inside the bedroom door. “You know Mr. Briggs is a busy man. I’m a busy man. Neither of us like you telephoning, saying someone should come over, just like that. You got something you want to tell Mr.

Briggs, you come and tell him.”

“I’m very sorry that I can’t oblige you,” Judge Santini said, wheezing a little while he talked, propped up on pillows in the big dark double bed, smooth blankets carefully tucked in around him. “Much as I would like to. But I’m afraid that my running days are over, at least that’s what my doctor says, and I pay him enough for his opinions. When a man my age has a coronary he has to watch himself. Rest, plenty of rest. No more climbing up those stairs in the Empire State Building. I can confide in you, Schlachter, that I really won’t miss them very much. ”

 

“What do you want, Santini?”

 

“To give you some information for Mr. Briggs. The Chung boy has been found, Billy Chung, the one who killed Big Mike.”

 

“So?”

 

“So—I had hoped you would remember a meeting we had where we discussed this subject. There was a suspicion that the killer might be connected with Nick Cuore, that the boy was in his pay. I doubt if he was, he seems to have been operaing on his own. We will never know for certain because he is dead.”

 

“Is that all?”

“Isn’t that enough? You might recall that Mr. Briggs was concerned about the possibility of Cuore moving in on this city.”

 

“No chance of that at all. Cuore has been tied up for a week in taking over in Paterson. There been a dozen killings already. He was never interested in New York.”

 

“I’m pleased to hear that. But I think you had better tell Mr. Briggs about this in any case. He was interested enough in the case to put pressure on the police department, they have had a man on the case since August.”

 

“Tough. I’ll tell him if I get a chance. But he’s not interested in this any more.”

 

Judge Santini settled wearily into the covers when his guest had gone. He was tired tonight, tireder than he could ever remember. And there was still a memory of that pain deep inside his chest.

 

Just about two weeks more to the new year. New century too. It would be funny to write two thousand instead of nineteen something or other as he had done all his life.

 

January 1, 2000. It seemed like a strange date for some reason. He rang the bell so Rosa could come and pour him his medicine. How much of this new century would he see? The thought was a very depressing one.

 

In the quiet room the ticking of the old-fashioned clock sounded very loud.

Chapter 12

 

“The lieutenant wants to see you,” Steve called across the squad room.

Andy waved his hand in acknowledgment and stood and stretched, only too willing to leave the stack of reports he was working on. He had not slept well the night before and he was tired. First the shooting, then finding Shirl gone, it was a lot to have happen in one night. Where would he look for her, to ask her to come back? Yet how could he ask her to come back while the Belichers were still there? How could he get rid of the Belichers? This wasn’t the first time that his thoughts had spiraled around this way. It got him nowhere. He knocked on the door of the lieutenant’s office, then went in.

 

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

 

Lieutenant Grassioli was swallowing a pill and he nodded, then choked on the water he was using to wash it down. He had a coughing fit, and dropped into the battered swivel chair, looking grayer and more tired than usual. “This ulcer is going to kill me one of these days. Ever hear of anyone dying of an ulcer?”

 

There was no answer for a question like this. Andy wondered why the lieutenant was making conversation, it wasn’t like him. He usually found no trouble in speaking his mind.

 

“They’re not happy downtown about your shooting the Chink kid,” Grassioli said, pawing through the reports and files that littered his desk.

 

“What do you mean—?”

“Just that, Christ, just like I don’t have enough trouble with this squad, I got to get mixed up in politics too. Centre Street thinks you been wasting too much time on this case, we’ve had two dozen unsolved murders in the precinct since you started on this one.”

 

“But—” Andy was dumfounded, “you told me the commissioner himself ordered me onto the case full time. You told me I had to—”

 

“It doesn’t matter what I told you,” Grassioli snarled. “The commissioner’s not available on the phone, not to me he’s not. He doesn’t give a damn about the O’Brien killer and no one’s interested in any word I got about that Jersey hood Cuore. And what’s more, the assistant commissioner is on to me over the Billy Chung shooting. They left me holding the bag.”

 

“Sounds more like I’m the one with the bag.”

 

“Don’t get snotty with me, Rusch.” The lieutenant stood and kicked the chair away and turned his back on Andy, looking out of the window and drumming his fingers on the frame. “The assistant commissioner is George Chu and he thinks you got a vendetta against the Chinks or something, tracking the kid all this time, then shooting him down instead of bringing him in.”

 

“You told him I was acting on orders, didn’t you, lieutenant?” Andy asked softly. “You told him the shooting was accidental, it’s all in my report.”

 

“I didn’t tell him anything.” Grassioli turned to face Andy. “The people who pushed me onto this case aren’t talking. There’s nothing I can tell Chu. He’s nuts on this race thing anyway. If I try to tell him what really happened I’m only going to make trouble for myself, for the precinct—for everybody.” He dropped into his chair and rubbed at the twitching corner of his eye. “I’m telling you straight, Andy. I’m going to pass the buck to you, let you take the blame. I’m going to put you back into uniform for six months until this thing cools down. You’ll stay in grade, you won’t lose any pay.”

“I wasn’t expecting any award for cracking this case,” Andy said angrily, “or for bringing in the killer—but I didn’t expect this. I can ask for a departmental trial.”

 

“You can, you can do that.” The lieutenant hesitated a long time, he was obviously ill at ease. “But I’m asking you not to. If not for me, for the good of the precinct. I know it’s a raw deal, passing the buck, but you’ll come out of it okay. I’ll have you back on the squad as soon as I can. And it’s not like you’ll be doing anything different, anyway. We might as well all be walking a beat for the little detective work we do.” He kicked viciously at the desk. “What do you say?”

 

“The whole thing stinks.”

 

“I know it stinks!” the lieutenant shouted. “But what the hell else can I do? You think it’ll stink less if you stand trial? You won’t stand a chance. You’ll be off the force and out of a job and I’ll probably be with you. You’re a good cop, Andy, and there aren’t many of them left. The department needs you more than you need them. Stick it out. What do you say?”

 

There was a long silence, and the lieutenant turned back to look out of the window.

 

“All right,” Andy finally said. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, lieutenant.” He went out of the office without being dismissed; he didn’t want the lieutenant to thank him for this.

Chapter 13

 

“Half an hour more and we’ll be in a new century,” Steve Kulozik said, stamping his feet on the icy pavement. “I heard some joker on TV yesterday trying to explain why the new century doesn’t start until next year, but he must be a chunkhead. Midnight, year two thousand, new century. That makes sense. Look at that.” He pointed up at the projection TV screen on the old Times Building.

The headlines, in letters ten feet high, chased each other across the screen.

COLD SNAP IN MIDWEST SCORES OF DEATHS REPORTED

 

“Scores,” Steve grunted. “I bet they don’t even keep score any more, they don’t want to know how many die.”

 

FAMINE REPORTS FROM RUSSIA NOT TRUE SAYS GALYGIN PRESIDENTIAL MESSAGE ON MORN OF NEW CENTURY

NAVY SUPERSONJET CRASH IN FRISCO BAY

 

Andy glanced up at the screen, then back at the milling crowd in Times Square. He was getting used to wearing the blue uniform again, though he still felt uneasy when he was around any other men from the detective squad. “What are you doing here?” he asked Steve.

 

“Same as you, on loan to this precinct. They’re still screaming for reserves, they think there’s going to be a riot.”

 

“They’re wrong, it’s too cold and there’s not that many people.”

 

“That’s not the worry, it’s the nut cults, they’re saying it’s the millennium, Judgment Day or Doomsday or whatever the hell you

call it. There’s bunches of them all over town. They’re going to be damn unhappy when the world doesn’t come to an end at midnight, the way they think it will.”

 

“We’ll be a lot unhappier if it does.”

 

The giant, silent words raced over their heads.

 

COLIN PROMISES QUICK END OF BABY BILL FILIBUSTER

 

The crowd surged slowly back and forth, craning their necks up at the screen. Some horns were blowing and the roar of voices was penetrated by a ringing cowbell and the occasional whir of rattles. They cheered when the time appeared on the screen.

 

23:38—11:38 PM—JUST 22 MINUTES TO THE NEW YEAR

 

“End of the year, and the end of my service,” Steve said. “What are you talking about?” Andy asked.

“I’ve quit. I promised Grassy to stay until the first of January, and not to talk it around until I was ready to go. I’ve signed on with the state troopers. I’m going to be a guard on one of the prison farms. Kulozik eats again—I can hardly wait.”

 

“Steve, you’re kidding. You’ve been ten twelve years on the force. You’ve got seniority, you’re a second-grade detective. ”

 

“Do I look like any kind of detective to you?” He tapped his riotstick lightly against the blue and white helmet he was wearing. “Face it, this city is through. What they need here is animal trainers, not policemen. I got a good job coming, me and the wife are going to eat well—and I’m going to get away from this city once and for all. I was born and raised here, and I have news for you—I’m not going to miss it. They need police with experience upstate. They’d take you on in a minute. Why don’t you come with me?”

 

“No,” Andy said.

“Why you answering so fast? Think about it. What’s this city ever give you but trouble? You break a tough case and get the killer and look at your medal—back on a beat.”

 

“Shut up, Steve,” he said, without animosity. “I’m not sure why I’m staying—but I am. I don’t think it’s going to be that great upstate. For your sake, I hope it is. But . . . my job is here. I picked it up, knowing what I was getting into. I just don’t feel like putting it down yet.”

 

“Your choice.” Steve shrugged, the movement almost lost in the depths of his thick topcoat and many wrappings. “See you around.”

 

Andy raised his club in a quick good-by as his friend pushed his way into the press of people and disappeared.

 

23:58—11:58 PM—ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT

 

As the words slipped from the screen and were replaced by a giant clockface the crowd cheered and shouted; more horns sounded.

Steve worked his way through the mass of people that filled the Square and pressed against the boarded-up windows on all sides. The light from the TV screen washed their blank faces and gaping mouths with flickering green illumination, as though they were sunk deep in the sea.

 

Above them, the second hand ticked off the last seconds of the last minute of the year. Of the end of the century.

 

“End of the world!” a man shrieked, loud enough to be heard above the crowd, his spittle flying against the side of Andy’s face. “End of the world!” Andy reached out and jabbed him with the end of his stick and the man gaped and grabbed at his stomach. He had been poked just hard enough to take his mind off the end of the world for a while and make him think about his own guts. Some people who had seen what had happened pointed and laughed, the sound of their laughter lost in the overwhelming roar, then they vanished from sight along with the man as the crowd surged forward.

The scratchy, static-filled roar of amplified church bells burst from the loudspeakers mounted on the buildings around Times Square, sending pealing waves of sound across the crowd below.

 

“HAPPY NEW YEAR!” the thousands of massed voices shouted, “HAPPY NEW CENTURY!” Horns, bells and noisemakers joined in the din, drowning out the words, merging them into the speechless roar.

 

Above them the second hand had finished a complete circle, the new century was already one minute old, and the clock faded away and was replaced by the magnified head of the President. He was making a speech, but not one word of it could be heard from the scratchy loudspeakers, above the unending noise of the crowd.

Uncaring, the great pink face worked on, shaping unheard sentences, raising an admonitory finger to emphasize an unintelligible point.

 

Very faintly, Andy could hear the shrill of a police whistle from the direction of Forty-second Street. He worked his way toward the sound, forcing through the mass of people with his shoulders and club. The volume of noise was dying down and he was aware of laughs and jeers, someone was being pushed about, lost in a tight knot of figures. Another policeman, still blowing on the whistle he held tight-clamped in his teeth, was working into the jam from the side, wielding his club heavily. Andy swung his own and the crowd melted away before him. A tall man was on the pavement, shielding his head with his arms from the many feet about him.

 

On the screen the President’s face flicked out of existence with an almost-heard burst of music, and the flying, silent letters once more took its place.

 

The man on the ground was bone-skinny, dressed in tied-on ends of rags and cast-off clothing. Andy helped him to his feet and the transparent blue eyes stared right through him.

 

“ ‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes,’ ” Peter said, the shining skin stretched tight over the fleshless bones of his face as he hoarsely bellowed the words. “ ‘And there shall be no more

death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.’ ”

 

“Not this time,” Andy said, holding on to the man so he would not fall. “You can go home now.”

 

“Home?” Peter blinked dazedly as the words penetrated. “There is no home, there is no world, for it is the millennium and we shall all be judged. The thousand years are ended and Christ shall return to reign gloriously on Earth.”

 

“Maybe you have the wrong century,” Andy said, holding the man by the elbow and guiding him out of the crowd. “It’s after midnight, the new century has begun and nothing has changed.”

 

“Nothing changed?” Peter shouted. “It is Armageddon, it must be.” Terrified, he pulled his arm from Andy’s grip and started away, then turned back when he had only gone a pace.

 

“It must end,” he called in a tortured voice. “Can this world go on for another thousand years, like this? LIKE THIS?” Then people came between them and he was gone.

 

Like this? Andy thought as he pushed tiredly through the dispersing crowd. He shook his head to clear it and straightened up; he still had his job to do.

 

Now, with their enthusiasm gone, the people were feeling the cold and the crowd was rapidly breaking up. Wide gaps appeared in their ranks as they moved away, heads bent into the icy wind from the sea. Around the corner on Forty-fourth Street, Hotel Astor guards had cleared a space so the pedicabs could come in from Eighth Avenue and line up in the taxi rank at the side entrance.

Bright lights on the marquee lit up the scene clearly and Andy passed by the corner as the first guests came out. Fur coats and evening dresses, black tuxedo trousers below dark coats with astrakhan collars. Must be a big party going on in there. More bodyguards and guests emerged and waited on the sidewalk.

There was the quick sound of women laughing and many shouts of “Happy New Year!”

 

Andy moved to head off a knot of people from the Square who were starting down Forty-fourth Street, and when he turned back he saw that Shirl had come out and stood, waiting for a cab, talking to someone.

 

He didn’t notice who was with her, or what she was wearing or anything else, just her face and the way her hair spun out when she turned her head. She was laughing, talking quickly to the people she was with. Then she climbed into a cab, pulled the storm cover closed and was gone.

 

A fine cold snow was falling, driven sideways by the wind and swirling across the cracked pavements of Times Square. Very few people remained, and they were leaving, hurrying away. There was nothing for Andy to stay for, his duty was done, he could begin the long walk back downtown. He spun his club on its lanyard and started toward Seventh Avenue. The glaring screen of the gigantic TV cast its unnoticed light on his coat, putting a spark into each melted drop of snow, until he passed the building and vanished into the sudden darkness.

The screen hurled its running letters across the empty square. CENSUS SAYS UNITED STATES HAD BIGGEST YEAR EVER

END OF CENTURY

 

344 MILLION CITIZENS IN THESE GREAT UNITED STATES

HAPPY NEW CENTURY!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

  Suggestions for Further Reading

 

Barrett, Donald N. Values in America. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961.

 

Bettelheim, Bruno. The Informed Heart. London: Thames & Hudson, 1961.

 

Boyd, Reynold H. Controlled Parenthood. London: Research Books, 1952.

 

Brown, Harrison. Challenge of Man’s Future. New York: Viking Press, 1954.

 

Calder, Ritchie. Common Sense about a Starving World. London: Victor Gollancz, 1962.

 

Calder, Ritchie. Men against the Desert. London: Allen & Unwin, 1951.

 

Chandrasekhar, S. Hungry People and Empty Lands. London: Allen and Unwin, 1954.

 

Chen, Kuan. World Population Growth and Living Standards. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1960.

 

Cipolla, Carlo M. The Economic History of World Population. Harmondsworth, England: Pen-guin Books, 1962.

 

Elton, Charles S. Voles, Mice and Lemmings; Problems in Population Dynamics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1942.

 

Fabre-Luce, Alfred. Men or Insects? London: Hutchinson, 1964.

Freedman, R., Whelpton, P.K., Campbell, A. A. Family Planning, Sterility and Population Growth. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959.

 

Fromm, Erich. May Man Prevail? New York: Doubleday, 1961.

 

Galbraith, John K. The Affluent Society. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1958.

 

Gottmann, Jean. Megalopolis. New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1961.

Greene, Felix. Awakened China. New York: Doubleday, 1961. Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

London: Jonathan Cape, 1962.

 

Koestler, Arthur. The Lotus and the Robot. London: Hutchinson, 1960.

 

Lewis, Oscar. The Children of Sánchez. London: Secker & Warburg, 1962.

 

Lindner, Robert. Must You Conform? New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1956.

 

Malthus, T., Huxley, J., Osborn, F. Three Essays on Population.

New York: New American Library, 1960.

 

Mills, C. Wright. Power, Politics and People. New York: Oxford University Press, 1963.

 

Osborn, Fairfield. Our Plundered Planet. Boston: Little, Brown, 1948.

 

Osborn, Fairfield (editor). Our Crowded Planet. New York: Doubleday, 1962.

 

Packard, Vance. The Hidden Persuaders. London: Longmans Green, 1957.

Packard, Vance. The Status Seekers. London: Longmans Green, 1960.

 

Petersen, William. The Politics of Population. New York: Doubleday, 1964.

 

Pyle, Leo (editor). The Pill and Birth Regulation. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1964.

 

Pyke, Magnus. Automation: Its Purpose & Future. London: Scientific Book Club, undated.

 

Reisman, David. The Lonely Crowd. New York: Doubleday, 1953.

 

Reynolds, Quentin. Headquarters. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955.

 

Rock, John. The Time Has Come. London: Longmans Green, 1963.

 

Rolph, C. H. The Human Sum. London: William Heinemann, 1957.

 

Salisbury, Harrison E. The Shook-up Generation. London: Michael Joseph, 1959.

 

Stamp, L. Dudley. The Geography of Life and Death. London: William Collins Sons, 1964.

 

Theobald, Robert. The Challenge of Abundance. New York: New American Library, 1962.

 

Vogt, William. People! Challenge to Survival. London: Victor Gollancz, 1961.

 

Vogt, William. Road to Survival. New York: William Sloane, 1948.

 

Whyte, William H., Jr. The Organization Man. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.

 

PERIODICALS

Population Studies–Great Britain

 

Population Bulletin–United States

  About the Author

 

Acclaimed science fiction writer Harry Harrison was born in Stamford Connecticut in 1925. After serving in the military as a gunnery instructor during World War II, he attended art school and spent years working as an artist and illustrator in New York City.

When he began his writing career, he found he needed a change of scenery and moved to Mexico with his wife and child. Harrison’s propensity for itinerancy took the family to England, Italy and Denmark, among other places. During the course of his writing career he published over forty novels including the West of Eden trilogy, the popular Stainless Steel Rat series, Make Room! Make Room! and the graphic novel Death World. His novels have been translated into over twenty five languages, and in 1973 he was honored with the Nebula Award. Harry Harrison lives in Ireland.