'So? I had children while I was alive. Three litters to my certain knowledge. And they had children, and their children had children. I'm still out there in some form or other. You should sow a few oats yourself, by the way, even if it does go against the grain. It's not as if you don't have the equipment.' He glanced down at Will's groin. 'I could feed a family of five on that.'

'I think this conversation's at an end, don't you?'

'I certainly feel much better about things,' the fox replied, as though they were two belligerent neighbours who'd just had a heart to heart.

Will got to his feet. 'Does that mean I can stop dreaming now?' he said.

'You're not dreaming,' the fox replied. 'You've been wide awake for the last half-hour

'Not true,' Will said, evenly.

'I'm afraid so,' the fox replied. 'You opened up a little hole in your head that night with Steep, and now the wind can get in. The same wind that blows through his head comes whistling through that shack of yours-'

Will had heard more than enough. 'That's it!' he said, starting towards the door. 'You're not going to start playing mind-games with me.'

Raising his paws in mock surrender, Lord Fox stood aside, and Will strode out into the hallway. The fox followed, his claws tap-tapping on the boards.

'Ah, Will,' he whined, 'we were doing so well-'

'I'm dreaming.'

'No, you're not.'

'I'm dreaming.'

'Nol'

At the bottom of the stairs, Will reeled around and yelled back, 'Okay, I'm not! I'm crazy! I'm completely fucking ga-gal'

'Good,' the fox said calmly, 'we're getting somewhere.'

'You want me to go up against Steep in a strait-jacket, is that it?'

'No. I just want you to let go of some of your saner suppositions.'

'For instance?'

'I want you to accept the notion that you, William Rabjohns, and I, a semimythical fox, can and do co-exist.'

'If I accepted that I'd be certifiable.'

'All right, try it this way: you recall the Russian dolls?'

'Don't start with them-'

'No, it's very simple. Everything fits inside everything else-'

'Oh, Christ...' Will murmured to himself. The thought was now creeping upon him that if this was indeed a dream - and it was, it had to be - then maybe all that had gone before, back to his waking, was also a dream; that he never woke, but was still comatose in a bed in Winnipeg

His body began to tremble.

'What's wrong?' the fox said.

'Just shut up!' he yelled, and started to stumble up the stairs.

The animal pursued him. 'You've gone very pale. Are you sick? Get yourself some peppermint tea. It'll settle your stomach.'

Did he tell the beast to shut up again? He wasn't sure. His senses were phasing in and out. One moment he was falling up the stairs, then he was practically crawling across the landing, then he was in the bathroom, puking, while the fox yattered on behind him about how he should take care, because he was in a very delicate frame of mind (as if he didn't know) and all manner of lunacies could creep up on him.

Then he was in the shower, his hand, ridiculously remote from him, struggling to grasp the handle. His fingers were as weak as an infant's; then the handle turned suddenly and he was struck by a deluge of icy water. At least his nerve-endings were fully operational, even if his wits weren't. In two heartbeats his body was solid goose flesh, his scalp throbbing with the cold.

Despite his panic, or perhaps because of it, his mind was uncannily agile, leaping instantly to the places where he'd felt such numbing cold before. In Balthazar, of course, as he lay wounded on the ice; and on the hill above Burnt Yarley, lost in the bitter rain. And on the banks of the River Neva, in the winter of the ice-palace

Wait he thought. That isn't my memory.

-the birds dropping dead out of the sky

That's a piece of Steep's life, not mine.

-the river like a rock, and Eropkin -poor, doomed Eropkin -building his masterwork out of ice and light

He shook his head violently to dislodge these trespassers. But they wouldn't go. Frozen into immobility by the icy water, all he could do was stand there while Steep's unwanted memories came flooding into hi- head.

He was standing in the crowded street in St Petersburg; and if the cold had not already snatched his breath, the sight before him would have done so: Eropkin's palace, its walls raised forty feet high, and glittering in the light of the torches and bonfires that were blazing on every side. They were warm, those fires, but the palace did not shed a drop of water, for their heat could not compete with the frigid air.

He looked around at the throng who pressed at the barricades, daring the hussars who kept them in check with boots and threats. By Christ, how they stank tonight! Foetid clothes on foetid bodies.

'Rabble...' he murmured.

To Steep's left, a beet-faced brat was shrieking on her father's shoulders, snot frozen at her nostrils. To his right a drunkard with a grease-clogged beard reeled about, with a woman in an even more incapacitated state clinging to his arm.

'I hate these people,' said a voice close to his ear. 'Let's come back later when it's quiet.'

He looked round at the speaker, and there was Rosa, her exquisite face, pink from the cold, framed by her fur-lined hood. Oh but she was beautiful tonight, with the lantern flames flickering in her eyes.

'Please, Jacob,' she said, tugging on his sleeve in that little-girl-lost fashion which she knew worked so well. 'We could make a baby tonight, Jacob. Truly, I believe we could.' She was pressing close to him now, and he caught the scent of her breath; a fragrance no Parisian perfumerie could ever hope to capture. Even here, in the heart of an iron winter, she had the smell of spring about her. 'Put your hand on my belly, Jacob,' she said, taking his hand in hers and placing it there. 'Isn't that warm?' It was. 'Don't you think we might make a life tonight?'

'Maybe,' he said.

'So let's be away from these animals,' she said. 'Please, Jacob. Please.'

Oh, she could be persuasive when she was in this coquettish mood. And truth to tell he liked to play along.

'Animals, you say?'

'No better,' she replied, with a growl of contempt in her voice.

'Would you have them dead?' he asked her.

'Every one of them.'

'Every one?'

'But you and me. And from our love a new race of perfect people would come, to have the world the way God intended it.'

Hearing this, he couldn't refrain from kissing her, though the streets of St Petersburg were not like those of Paris or London, and any display of affection, especially one as passionate as theirs, would be bound to draw censure. He didn't care. She was his other, his complement, his completion. Without her, he was nothing. Taking her glorious face in his hands, he laid his lips on hers, her breath a fragrant phantom rising between their faces. The words that breath carried still astonished him, though he had heard them innumerable times.

'I love you,' she told him. 'And I will love you as long as I have life.'

He kissed her again, harder, knowing there were envious eyes upon them, but caring not at all. Let the crowd stare and cluck and shake their heads. They would never feel in all their dreary lives what he and Rosa felt now: the supreme conjunction of soul and soul.

And then, in the midst of the kiss, the din of the crowd receded and completely disappeared. He opened his eyes. They were no longer standing on the street-side of the barricades, but were at the very threshold of the palace. The thoroughfare behind them was deserted. Half the night had passed in the time it took to draw breath. It was now long after midnight.