I want to die, he thought.

As he formed the intention, one of the entities battling in front of him turned his way. He saw a face in the storm. It was bearded, its flesh so swelled with emotion it seemed to dwarf the body it was set upon, like that of a fetus: skull domed, eyes vast. The terror he felt when it laid its gaze on him was nothing to that which he felt when its arms reached for him. He wanted to crawl away into some niche and escape the touch of the spirit's fingers, but his body was beyond coaxing or bullying.

"I am the Jaff," he heard the bearded spirit say. "Give me your mind, I want terata. "

As the fingertips grazed Buddy's face he felt a spurt of power, white like lightning, cocaine, or semen, run through his head and down into his anatomy. With it, the recognition that he'd made an error. The split flesh and broken bone was not all he was. Despite his immoralities, there was something in him the Jaff coveted; a corner of his being which this occupying force could profit by. He'd called it terata. Buddy had no idea what that word meant. But he understood all too clearly the terror when the spirit entered him. The touch was lightning, burning a path into his essential self. And a drug too, making images of that invasion cavort in his mind's eye. And jism? That as well, or else why did a life he'd never had before, a creature born in his pith from the Jaff's rape, leap out of him now?

He glimpsed it as it went. It was pale and primitive. No face, but legs by the scrabbling dozen. No mind, either, except to do the Jaff's will. The bearded face laughed to see it. Withdrawing his fingers from Buddy, the spirit let his other arm drop from the neck of his enemy and, riding the terata headed up the rock chimney towards the sun.

The remaining combatant fell back against the cavern wall. From where he lay Buddy caught a glimpse of the man. He looked much less the warrior than his opponent, and consequently more brutalized by their exchange. His body was wasted, his expression one of weary distraction. He stared up the rock chimney.

"Jaffe!" he called, his shout shaking dust from the shelves Buddy had struck on his way down. There was no answer from the shaft. The man looked down towards Buddy, narrowing his eyes.

"I'm Fletcher," he said, his voice mellifluous. He moved towards Buddy, trailing a subtle light. "Forget your pain."

Buddy tried his damnedest to say: help me, but he didn't need to. Fletcher's very proximity soothed the agonies he felt.

"Imagine with me," Fletcher said. "Your fondest wish."

To die, Buddy thought.

The spirit heard the unspoken reply.

"No," he said. "Don't imagine death. Please don't imagine death. I can't arm myself with that."

Arm yourself? Buddy thought.

"Against the Jaff."

Who are you?

"Men once. Spirits now. Enemies forever. You have to help me. I need the last squeezings of your mind, or I go to war with him naked."

Sorry, I already gave, Buddy thought. You saw him do the taking. And by the way, what was that thing?

"The terata? Your primal fears made solid. He's riding to the world on it." Fletcher looked up the chimney again. "But he won't break surface yet. The day's too bright for him."

Is it still day?

"Yes."

How do you know?

"The process of the sun still moves me, even here. I wanted to be sky, Vance. Instead, two decades I've lived in darkness, with the Jaff at my throat. Now he's taking the war overground, and I need arms against him, plucked out of your head."

There's nothing left, Buddy said. I'm finished.

"Quiddity must be preserved," Fletcher said.

Quiddity?

"The dream-sea. You might even see its island, as you die. It's wonderful; I envy you the freedom to leave this world..."

Heaven you mean? Buddy thought. Is it Heaven you mean? If so, I haven't got a chance.

"Heaven's only one of many stories, told on the shores of Ephemeris. There are hundreds, and you'll know them all. So don't be afraid. Only give me a little of your mind, so that Quiddity may be preserved."

Who from?

"The Jaff, who else?"

Buddy had never been much of a dreamer. His sleep, when it wasn't drugged or drunk, was that of a man who lived himself to exhaustion daily. After a gig, or a fuck, or both, he would give himself to sleep as to a rehearsal for the final oblivion that called him now. With the fear of nullity a rod to his broken back he scrabbled to make sense of Fletcher's words. A sea; a shore; a place of stories, in which Heaven was just one of many possibilities? How could he have lived his life and never known this place?

"You've known it," Fletcher told him. "You've swum Quiddity twice in your life. The night you were born, and the night you first slept beside the one you loved most in your life. Who was that, Buddy? There've been so many women, right? Which one of them meant most to you? Oh...but of course. In the end, there was only one. Am I right? Your mother."

How the hell did you know that?

"Put it down to a lucky guess..."

Liar!

"OK, so I'm digging around in your thoughts a little. Forgive me the trespass. I need help, Buddy, or the Jaff has me beaten. You don't want that."

No, I don't.

"Imagine for me. Give me something more than regret to make an ally of. Who are your heroes?"

Heroes?

"Picture them for me."

Comedians! All of them.

"An army of comedians? Why not?"

The thought of it made Buddy smile. Why not indeed? Hadn't there been a time when he'd thought his art could cleanse the world of malice? Perhaps an army of holy fools could succeed with laughter where bombs had failed. A sweet, ridiculous vision. Comedians on the battlefields, baring their asses to the guns, and beating the generals over the head with rubber chickens; grinning cannon fodder, confounding the politicians with puns and signing the peace treaties in polka-dotted ink.

His smile became laughter.

"Hold that thought," Fletcher said, reaching into Buddy's mind.

The laughter hurt. Even Fletcher's touch could not mellow the fresh spasms it initiated in Buddy's system.

"Don't die!" he heard Fletcher say. "Not yet! For Quiddity's sake, not yet!"

But it was no use his hollering. The laughter and the pain had hold of Buddy head to toe. He looked at the hovering spirit with tears pouring down his face.

Sorry, he thought. Can't seem to hold on. Don't want to—

Laughter racked him.

—You shouldn't have asked to remember.

"A moment!" said Fletcher. "That's all I need."

Too late. The life went out of him, leaving Fletcher with vapors in his hands too frail to be set against the Jaff.

"Damn you!" Fletcher said, yelling at the corpse as he'd once (so long ago) stood and shouted at Jaffe as he lay on the floor of the Mision de Santa Catrina. This time there was no life to be bullied from the corpse. Buddy was gone. On his face sat an expression both tragic and comical, which was only right. He'd lived his life that way. And in dying he'd assured Palomo Grove of a future burgeoning with such contradictions.

Time in the Grove would play countless tricks in the next few days, but none surely as frustrating to its victim as the stretch between Howie's parting from Jo-Beth and the time when he would see her again. The minutes lengthened to the scale of hours; the hours seemed long enough to produce a generation. He distracted himself as best he could by going to look for his mother's house. That had after all been his ambition here: to learn his nature better by grasping his family tree closer to the root. So far, of course, he'd merely succeeded in adding confusion to confusion. He'd not known himself capable of what he'd felt last night—and felt now even more strongly. This soaring, unreasoning belief that all was well with the world, and could never be made unwell again. The fact of time unravelling the way it was could not best his optimism; it was just a game reality was playing with him, to confirm the absolute authority of what he was feeling.